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  ‘Don. Any news on that vagrant with the red tunic? I have Director Symonds on my back?’

  ‘No. I did a thorough search, but I haven’t found the third one yet either. I have some ground to travel yet.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Check-in later will you?’

  ‘Sure,’ he answered and hung up.

  Chapter Two.

  ‘Sire, we have detected an unauthorised settlement on the Jupiter moon, Amalthea.’ Emperor Thoro III, sat in the grand chair at the end of the privy council table. It had room for twenty guests and officials. This time it was only one – Lord Marcus Bander, his lead counsel. His right hand. Bander was 600 years old, thin and was 6’2” – taller than the Emperor, which bothered him a little and he would always seek to place himself so that the height difference wasn’t noticed. He looked no older than his fifties. If he was an ordinary member of the public he would probably be in his final century, but because he was part of the elite he fully expected to be immortal. The medical technology to achieve this was prohibitively expensive. If he ever fell out of favour, he had a stash of money to continue living and pay for the medical treatment.

  The Emperor sat bolt upright in his chair. He was 345 years old and had been on the throne for 300 of those. A change at the top happens at most, every 1000 years. Sometimes they abdicated, so they could spend more time free from the rigours of being the Monarch and enjoy their long and privileged life. Currently there were no ex-monarchs knocking around the royal palaces, making trouble for the current one.

  He was dressed in a gold and white tunic, cut in the same way as the civil service red tunic, which indicates rank – that in the order of superiority, only the monarch wears gold and white. The gold thread of his tunic was 22 carat gold and the tunic itself made from the finest silk. The Emperor was thin with a very neat black goatee beard and deep-set light blue eyes, which he used to good effect to intimidate the court members. The privy council wore purple tunics.

  ‘Show me,’ the Emperor asked.

  ‘Yes sire,’ Lord Bander replied. He then made a hologram screen pop up in front of him. He pushed around a file with a hand gesture and cued up footage which had been taken from one of Earth’s big surveillance telescopes, which was in an orbit just past the moon. There were several of these telescopes used to monitor the comings and goings of the solar system. Watching as ships come and go from within the solar system and further out in space. Although Bander had an augmentation to view things direct into his eye, the Emperor did not, as this was considered a security risk. Sometimes the chip gets hacked, although there is a very large well-resourced government agency which prevented such things, as well as private companies helping to patch vulnerabilities, some hackers would get through and people would have to spend hours in a hospital getting their chips rebooted. The Emperor didn’t have any augmentation, as his health and safety had been carefully managed from birth; unlike ordinary members of the public, which would need bodily parts replaced and would enhance themselves to help them compete against their co-workers and rivals.

  The images he was being shown were a series of buildings, connected up with corridors. There was no atmosphere to sustain life, so all the structures must be sealed up and breathable air pumped round to support the life that was there – should there be any. The buildings were a dark brown colour, to match the colour of the surrounding terrain. After studying the images closely, the Emperor asked, ‘The colours. They blend in the terrain. Is that a coincidence?’

  ‘No. The security team at the GSS are sure that whoever built them were hoping we would not notice. They’re designed to be passed over as just another settlement for mining.’

  ‘Human or another species?’ the Emperor asked. Even though humans have been around for over a million years, there was no evidence that any intelligent life shared the universe with us. It was a great mystery that science had been struggling to explain to its population. Many people now believed that humanity was the only intelligent lifeform in the universe. A movement; a school of thought called The Anthropic Principle. It states that the universe had been created exclusively for human beings and that we, as the apex species will spread and populate the universe.

  ‘We don’t know. We have not seen any movement from or to the structure yet. It could just be overambitious humans hoping to claim mining rights.’

  ‘Get a gunship and incursion team down there immediately,’ the Emperor instructed as he waved the screen away from his face. Lord Bander closed it down.

  Chapter Three.

  Don found the third man sitting down lent up against the wall of one of the large buildings in LA. He sprayed the man in the face before he had a chance to wake up. The man moved and put his hands up to protect his face, and coughed and spluttered, then whimpered a little, then died. Don had his father on his mind and it made him pause. He stared at this dead man, who through no fault of his own had ended up here. Nothing he could do now. Perhaps this wasn’t the job for him? He dragged the body over to the harness and loaded him up into the van. He locked the back door and drove away back to the depot where the body will be burned in a furnace.

  Don opened his EyeSpec and called his boss. ‘Any other sightings?’ Don asked his supervisor.

  ‘Just the man in the tunic. There is pressure coming from above on this one. They want him found.’

  ‘Perhaps it was a mistake? Perhaps the man in a tunic wasn’t a vagrant, it was just a civil servant, who had a night out and found himself falling asleep in the street?’

  ‘Could be. But I want you out looking,’ his supervisor said. ‘Everyone on the team will be looking. They’ve all been given the same task.’

  ‘Sure,’ Don said and turned back to head to the garage to get back into his truck. It would be another five hours before he clocked off and he hoped his father had stayed put. The higher ups might know exactly who he is. His name, his old job for the Emperor. The fact that he has a son who works for the Cleaner Corp, tasked with killing people who end up in his father’s position in life.

  He returned at 6pm and pressed his face against the scanner, then pressed his right thumb against it. A double guarantee for ID to get into his apartment. The door hissed open about an inch and Don pushed the door and walked in. His father was sat in front of the television, watching a trashy game show, with a mug of water in his hand. Because of the extreme terraforming that had happened on Earth, coffee and tea wasn’t grown any more. All greenery resources went to oxygen production.

  ‘Hi,’ he said and smiled a nervous smile at his son.

  ‘All right? Settled in okay?’

  ‘Sure. Don’t know how long I will be able to hide from the Cleaner Corp. The Emperor will know I’m not dead. He cast me out for a reason. That the Corp will kill me, because I have no home or income.’

  Don took his jacket off and sat down in the chair next to his father. ‘What did you do for the Emperor? Why did you just disappear?’

  ‘I can’t talk about it. But now I’m out of favour, they want me dead. There’s very little chance of convincing the Emperor to let me come back into the fold.’

  ‘What about the yearly Emperor’s Award? You could go for that. Once you apply, they can’t touch you until the award is announced.’

  ‘Do you realise how many people apply for that? Thousands,’ his father explained.

  ‘Yes, but applying will buy you some time.’

  ‘Okay. Try it.’

  ‘I will go to the Palace tomorrow. You have to collect an entry code from the Palace in person. I don’t know why.’

  ‘I do. So they can track you. See your face. Then they know where you are.’

  ‘I will do it, so don’t worry. Once it’s lodged, they can’t touch you. You can go out and about as usual.’

  Just as Don took a sip of his water, a massive rumble was heard, followed by violent shaking of the building, from side to side.

  ‘Another earthquake,’ his father said. ‘Is this building earthquake
proof?’ he asked as he braced himself against the arms of the chair.

  ‘It’s supposed to be,’ Don replied, as the shaking got worse. ‘This is a bad one. I’m going under the doorway. You should too.’ They both tried to stand up, but Mitus fell back down into his chair, then immediately tried again and headed over to the doorframe. It continued for another minute or so, before an even bigger rumble sounded out. It was so loud that they both had to cover their ears with their hands, as Don’s books and ornaments fell off a shelf, as the shelf rocked, only held up by the stabilising strap pinned to the wall behind it.

  ‘That doesn’t feel like an earthquake. That feels like a building collapsing!’ Don shouted as loud as he could.

  ‘I agree. Shit,’ Mitus shouted back as they both crouched down under the doorframe. After a while the rumbling stopped and the building stopped shaking and as it ended, Don and his father rushed over to the window to see what happened.

  ‘Whoa,’ they both said at the same time, as three large residential blocks adjacent to the sea front, were lying in ruins, plus a number of smaller buildings that had been unfortunate enough to be in their path when they collapsed. They heard alarms sounding and people running from place to place.

  ‘Are they panicking do you think? They don’t seem to know which way to run,’ Don asked.

  ‘I think you’re right. Maybe it’s true, what the protesters and the scientists have been saying all along, that the Earth is becoming unstable because of all the high-rise developments?’ Mitus said.

  ‘What you didn’t believe them all along? I did,’ Don replied.

  ‘I was a sceptic,’ he said, as the two of them watched the chaos out of the window. Then they heard a siren sound off in the distance and simultaneously an alert signals in their vision, via their EyeSpec. Most people had them. The alert was for a tsunami on the LA coastline. Everyone would have got one in the area, telling them to move to higher ground. ‘THIS IS A TSUMANI WARNING FOR THE LA COASTAL REGIONS. PLEASE MOVE TO HIGHER GROUND AWAY FROM THE SEA IMMEDIATELY. DO NOT STOP TO COLLECT PERSONAL POSSESSIONS. PLEASE ENSURE ALL FAMILY MEMBERS ARE ACCOUNTED FOR.’

  The sirens wailed and wailed as hundreds of survivors ran into the line of buildings that were of an earthquake resistant specification, left alone by the earthquake. Don pealed himself away from the window and listened to a noise coming from the landing. ‘People are coming up the staircases and lifts. Shall we let anyone in?’ Don asked.

  His father turned and stared at Don in silence, while he considered his response. ‘If they knock let them in,’ he said. It was a passive approach. Don’t invite anyone in, but don’t refuse refuge either. The voices died down for a few minutes, before Don and his father were drawn back to the coast side window. They could see a large wave crashing into the beach front buildings, the sea wall and the chairs there, washing them into the city streets. The sea water hit the standing buildings. They braced themselves for the building to begin to sway again. The voices outside the door got loud again, then the buildings swayed back and forth three times and then settled. They heard more screaming and raised voices. They looked down at the streets. They could see bodies floating in the ocean water. ‘This is bad. A lot of people are dead,’ Mitus said. ‘The fact is we’ve been mining other planets and moons and building more and more buildings without being too concerned that we’re altering the way the Earth moves through space.’

  ‘That’s what all the protests are about. But I don’t think the Emperor is all that interested. I mean taking buildings down and shifting the materials back into space. It will cost the Earth – no pun intended,’ he said and cracked a smile.

  Chapter Four.

  The Emperor turned his large chair round to face his right hand, Lord Bander. ‘Sire. There has been a major earthquake and tsunami in LA.’

  ‘Send them some money. I’ll leave the amount up to you, once you’ve spoken to the Governor General. He may have an amount in mind.’

  The Palace was called High Tower. It was a state-of-the-art two kilometre high, skyscraper in New York. Manhattan had long been taken over by water since there hadn’t been polar ice caps since the late 21st Century. The building of the Emperors multi-planetary government; Earth, Mars and eight other planets now either having been already life sustaining or terraformed, all have to return to the Emperor to settle disputes, secure funding and to appoint leaders. Democracy has long since failed. It was a very distant memory. Governance by one leader, was now the norm and had been so, for millennia.

  High Tower was the tallest building in New York, and it had the largest footprint. The Palace was topped by the Emperor’s private apartment. It was a huge space, taking the top three storeys of the building, including a landing pad for the Imperial skycar and the security detachment – twenty elite armed guards who protected him round the clock. The middle floor contained his private space. The top transport and security and the bottom, offices of state and its staff. The building held 30,000 workers, who run the Imperial government. There were seven other large buildings which contained civil servants in the area.

  ‘Yes sire,’ Bander said.

  ‘Now you can leave and send in Karry,’ the Emperor instructed. Lord Bander, was used to Karry Diss; the Emperor’s spy master having private sessions with him. And he hated it. He walked through the sliding door and into a large lobby with a secretary by the door and large sofas backed against the wall on two sides with tables nearby. It was richly decorated with gold guilt framed works of art and lavish wallpaper and red carpets. Karry Diss was waiting there. She was bold headed, pale and well built – well trained in the latest martial arts. On the side of her head, behind both ears were circular gold implants about 2 cm wide – Lord Bander had the same kind of implant, but everyone was different, tailored for each person, and some versions were prohibitively expensive. Only the very rich or people who worked at the very top of the government wore them. The rest of the population got lower spec implants to suit their lives, or some people had none at all.

  ‘Karry,’ Bander said. ‘You can go in now.’

  Karry stood up and glared silently at him as she passed by. The door was opened for her, by a guard, who appeared at the edges of the other side of the door. As she passed the guard posted himself outside the door.

  Lord Bander was tall. Taller than most, which is saying something when humans had been growing taller for many millennia; particularly the middle classes. Bander didn’t go into wearing a tunic like the others. He wore black habitually, including a full-length black cloak, with a wide collar which he wore up across his neck. It was made from the finest materials on Earth (or off it) and wore a goatee beard, with flecks of grey and white in it. He was one of the oldest of the Emperor’s close aids. He was in a special bracket of people who were over one thousand years old. He saw this long period of service as a temporary thing; that immortality enabled him to completely change his life from time to time. For now he was the second or third most powerful man in the Empire, depending on your point of view. Now he headed for his office across the other side of the lobby. Inside was his Chief of Staff; a small man with an expensive version of the purple tunic, lined with gold thread and embellishments from the awards and titles he’d received over his long career. His name was Steen and he and Lord Bander shared everything. They were a duo, who trusted each other implicitly. ‘Another private meeting with Karry Diss,’ Bander said. Bander was quite an imposing figure who could physically intimidate others around him, not least with his staring eyes, but also his height and build. He worked out every day. Along with being mentally fit to be at the top of such a vast empire, you also to be prepared to fight off assailants. There had been fifteen attempts against the life of the Emperor in total. Another could be made at any time.

  Bander sat down in his large throne like chair, behind his presidential wooden desk and he stared straight forward to access his EyeSpec. His thoughts instructed a listening device to activate. The Emperor’s private and workspaces
were all lined with signal blocking materials, and in all cases, nothing could penetrate them. Apart from Bander’s latest trick. He used his access to install devices that were nano sized super transmitters, that had been placed through the wall, with a nano wire, to puncture the walls and emit signals that were end-to-end encrypted exclusively to him. From his implant on the right of his head, behind his ear, a tiny gold coloured pin popped out of the gold coloured implant. It then opened up into four arms which flattened out. Within seconds he could hear what was happening inside the Emperor’s office. As his right hand, it was his job – his responsibility to know what was happening and not just what His Highness wanted him to know.

  ‘Karry,’ he said. ‘Please sit.’ He held out his hand and indicated to the chair directly opposite his. ‘I want you to send your Second to the Amalthea moon, to the unauthorised settlement, which I am sure you have heard about.’

  ‘Yes, sire.’

  A Second is an android which has had a neural map of a human being’s brain, uploaded to its computer – also known as GHOST Units. This means that people with dangerous tasks, or when travelling a long way into space, can download experiences and memories of their Second when needed. They can also ‘be there’ and ‘not be there.’ However, these androids are almost always ‘clipped’, which means they may only have a small amount of the knowledge and skills, that the human counterpart has – just enough to do the job required or they maybe time limited. If an android of this type is captured on a military operation, the owner won’t want their entire neural network getting captured and interrogated or hacked, so this is why GHOST’s are clipped down to a functional, operation level, designed specifically for the task at hand.

  They are also not visual copies of their owner. Their heads are covered in a reinforced white silicone cover, and their ears are small dish-like plates that can move and pick up radio and other types of signals. Their faces can be made to look like their owners, but most will have either a generic male or female look. Their bodies are also made from a reinforced silicone cover – their limbs have visible pistons which propel the body and enable dexterity as good as a human body. If not better.