Ethernomics: Phoenix Apocalypse Series, #4

By Ernest Nichols

Within 2,000 years, beam stations enable us to colonize the solar system. But the latest beam station going to the asteroid belt disappears. Daniel Walker Harrison discovers a criminal megacorporation uses illegal beam stations and human trafficking to mine deserted Phoenix colonies.

But Ethernomics strikes a deal when Phoenix returns. They tell Phoenix how to defeat earth's solar system defenses in return for destroying earth. Phoenix battleships are soon in low-earth orbit.

Phoenix will extract their ancient database from our electromagnetic field in a way that destroys the earth. Our fleet of sabotaged battleships is powerless as the Phoenix extraction device activates. Buy now to see what happens.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ernest Nichols
• Release date: May 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201185084

Ernest Nichols

Ernest C. Nichols is the author of the Phoenix Apocalypse Series. He brings 20 years of United States Air Force experience and 18 years of high tech, clean-room manufacturing engineering to this science fiction adventure/thriller epic.

Book preview

Chapter 1-Beaming Stations

CRYSTAL CORP, WITH manufacturing facilities in Houston, Texas, establishes global influence by reverse engineering wreckage from the Phoenix invasion of 1,000 years ago. A trio of Phoenix defectors augment and apply that technology for another 500 years. As earth learns to implement new science, we also learn the alien invaders are from earth, and we are their descendants.

We rewrite history books, but the new learning ignores the lesson that advanced technology does not advance our moral compass. Earth uses technology developed by an evil global empire known for totalitarian inhumanity.

Some say escalating evil assured the empire’s self-destruction, but others say destruction of entrenched evil requires costly intervention. Prevention, not correction, is wisdom easily ignored.

Society soon reinterprets or scoffs away the cautionary tales of our pre-history. Secret organizations intend to re-establish the ancient Phoenix Empire, saying our condemnation is unjustified. A few brazenly say the Phoenix Empire failed only because their totalitarian control was inadequate, a shortcoming they will correct.

The last nail in that philosophical coffin is the denial of evil. Social influencers propose that prevention of evil only means the supposed evil didn’t actually exist.

Becoming your own god is an alluring proposal, but the attainment of god-like powers destroyed earth because the gods were evil. It is the flaw each human inherits and the sin each generation repeats.

Some hope space expansion will distract us from ruination long enough to fix the intrinsic defects of our nature. Mining the solar system is the new gold rush and earth companies compete to follow the money.

Most volunteers for space assignments are idealist. These idealists form the crews of beam stations, earth’s primary means of expansion and development. Yes, the lure of a lucrative career in a field as expansive as the universe is appealing, but that appeal is polished by generous applications of romantic idealism.

We construct the first large beam stations between earth, the moon and Mars, expanding solar system colonization at an exponential rate. Mining becomes a major export and Mars becomes a forward supply base, maintenance facility, and construction site for further exploration and expansion.

The most profitable endeavors are mining colonies working the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Thanks to the beaming stations, transporting the minerals is almost like mining our backyard.

The typical space flight is by cargo barges between an asteroid belt beam station and the orbital station at Mars, or surface stations on the moon and earth. Mining vessels within the belt have occasion for long flights, but they minimize travel time by beaming from station to station within the asteroid belt. Spaceship crews stay within two months' travel time of a beam station to minimize chances of going space crazy and to minimize cost.

The science of these stations remains a mystery. The sending and the receiving stations generate a green aura composed of identical atoms. When the ring of atlantium crystals activates, the aura at each station trades places. Whatever is inside the aura goes with it. Distance and time are irrelevant.

When we quizzed our defecting Phoenix engineers about the principles of this entanglement phenomena, they shrugged and said, We lost that knowledge thousands of years ago, but we know how to build it and use it. They provide the recipe for manufacturing the green atlantium crystals that are foundational for our expansion into the solar system.

The current deep space leap is government-funded beam stations assembled in space and towed into the distant darkness by unmanned rockets. Our first is to the closest sun-like star, Alpha Centauri A, but the ETA is tens of thousands of years into the future.

Contrary to near-certain expectations, space is lifeless, and the Phoenix threat is a 1,500-year-old fading memory. We reduce earth’s military to disaster relief and space exploration. Military engineers oversee the early construction efforts for habitable structures for colonization.

Previously, national military forces numbered in the millions. Now, the entire space division, the largest sector of earth’s military, numbers less than 5,000, with a handful of small gunships to curtail space piracy.

Crystal Corp's immediate focus is to place more beam stations in the asteroid belt and another in close orbit to Ceres. The Mars colony hopes that blocks of ice from the surface of Ceres will expand Martian agricultural efforts until Mars becomes self-supporting.

The five asteroid belt beam stations are money makers for iron ore, nickel, aluminum, titanium, and tungsten. Some suspect an abundance of gold, silver, and palladium. Beam Station Six will operate in an untouched region of the asteroid belt, and corporate accountants are dizzy with lucrative speculation. They will begin the energizing ceremony in minutes.

Mars control, from ABS-5. We are ready to receive Beam Station Six.

After Beam Station Six is in position, they beam objects of increasing size and complexity until sending a small cargo shuttle. After they confirm the electrical systems, computers, life support and the shuttle craft hull remains intact. There is little celebration for the successful beaming test because this is merely the first of several hurdles to ice mining on Ceres.

Next comes the space equivalent of a tugboat; powerful engines, with little accommodations for a crew. The tug pushes the beam station, and the station pushes a small freighter with living quarters for a crew that remotely pilots the tug. The beam station has water vapor thrusters for fine-tuning the orbital position and orientation, but the tow craft provides the powerful engines.

Once the beam station is in geocentric orbit on Ceres, and the initial surface structures and habitats are in place, large-scale ice harvesting will begin. They beam Station-7 from Mars to the largest station in the belt.

They tow this one to a mineral-rich segment of the asteroid belt near Vesta. It takes several months to reach the destination, but the crew and tow vessel will return to Mars in a transit beam of a few milliseconds. Mars looks forward to the day when beam stations are like bus stops in a metropolitan area. The profits from Ceres ice, 22 million tons per load, will finance the next beam station construction.

The crew stops one month into the tow to test the beam station they are pushing. It is financially devastating to tow the station the full distance, only to find it they damaged it during the tow. After confirming the beam station works, they use it to swap out the crew. But the new crew is only one week into their mission when they get a radar contact.

Are you sure it’s not an asteroid?

It is correcting its course to intercept us.

Pirates?

Pirates would not be in this undeveloped region, and they’re not big enough to tow this station.

But they can hold it for ransom. Crystal Corp will pay a great deal to keep this thing operational. Alert Mars control about our radar contact and that our mystery visitor is not replying to our radio calls and is not squawking an identity code.

I’m receiving a signal I’ve never seen, captain. I don’t think it’s voice communication or LIDAR or k or j-band radar.

Incoming missiles?

No.

Are they preparing for combat?

I cannot discern their intensions.

The com/nav’s voice trails off at the end of his sentence. His face goes blank, and he sits motionless at his station. The entire four-man crew is soon semi-comatose.

Mars control to ABS-7. Do you have a problem?

Mars control repeats this message until the com/nav replies in a distracted and distant voice. It was an uncharted asteroid. Resuming duties.

Two years later, asteroid miners discover the wreckage of the tow craft and recover the bodies of the crew, but there is no beam station wreckage. The official Space Agency report says the beam station broke away and is drifting towards the Oort cloud.

However, panic reigns inside the Space Agency. It is possible that pirates or a rogue corporation now own a functional beam station. Worse yet, Phoenix agents might possess the beam station.

Chapter 2-Enlistment

JAMES MORGAN NOBLE, Crystal Corp Vice-President for Manufacturing, hates working away from his corporate office. Using a remote office in the manufacturing sector one week a month to focus on employee concerns is the latest managerial misdirection. Suspending this irrelevant practice is high on his agenda.

He sees little justification for this administrative theater and doubts the efficacy of similar efforts forced on other divisional vice-presidents. Encouraging hourly employees to view him as a kindred spirit is absurd. James doesn’t look down on the production workers, nor does he have an elevated opinion of himself. He is simply a realist. But he knows to keep his rationalistic worldview and anti-popularist opinions hidden.

His workers can’t afford to pay his car insurance or his gated community fee. His wife shops at exclusive members-only stores while dressed to the nines, and his children attend an expensive college preparatory academy.

But the worst aspect of his one-week-a-month exile is the mandatory open door policy whose principal product is five days of contradictory bitching. Complaining to a corporate vice-president might be good for personal self-esteem, but it seldom improves production line cooperation or company profits.

He appreciates the simple and efficient concept of chain-of-command. He often complained about this during his stent in the military, but this was his first attitude adjustment after becoming a boss.

He advises complainers to take their problems to their immediate supervisor. His four simple steps are to apprise them of the problem, recommend a solution, take part in the solution, and review the status. But open-door policies are popular with workers because it pushes responsibilities and resolutions onto someone else, and everyone assumes you’ll get what you want if you deliver your grievance in the boss’s office.

However, he engages with concerns beyond the reach of immediate supervisors, such as storage areas for the green crystals. Since corporation commitments include more beaming stations distributed throughout the solar system, crystal production skyrocketed and crystal storage became haphazard.

Security is his primary concern. It’s easy to weaponize crystals, and black market profits are a colossal temptation. Someone recommended etching a serial number on each crystal and tracking each one by date, number, location, and project designation. The cost and effort of this tracking program is justifiable.

But the second concern is more problematic. What are the technical and physiological dangers of stacking 1,000 crystals together? He spends ten hours a day, one week every month, within 20 feet of that stack, protected only by wall studs and sheetrock.

He promoted the guy who suggested the tracking program and put him in charge. This is the reason James Morgan Noble has a low opinion of the open door policy. The man used an existing suggestion program.

He first met the man in his corporate office when he promoted him and selected his input as the suggestion of the year, attended by a substantial performance bonus. James’s bleak office in the trenches and open door policy was irrelevant.

It’s only Monday and my head hurts.

New complainers are outside his office, but in the throes of an all-enveloping headache, he is oblivious to the persistent knocking. He doesn’t remember locking the door, but he is unwilling to cooperate with the company policy today. He almost laughs as faces crowd around the office door window.

His headache subsides while considering the crystal security issue. Storing 500 to 1,000 crystals on factory grounds is an invitation to pilfer. Worse, it’s an invitation for a violent break in to steal a truckload or two. Global carnage will ensue as fanatics invent clever ways to weaponize them.

Crystal Corp will be the company scapegoat, and the corporation will be liable for the destruction and murder committed by criminals. These potential consequences weigh upon him till lunch time.

James notices there are no faces in his window. Whatever weighs heavily on the minds of the complainers isn’t worth five minutes of their lunch break. He snickers aloud at this confirmation of worthless open-door policies.

Focus on security. I will elevate these concerns to the highest corporate levels. If they don’t agree on a solution, I will go to federal and international levels. Lucius Byron Brooks might be a political appointee, but he has the education and experience to provide exceptional insight as director of the newest government division.

Lucius heads the Technocracy Division and is the highest ranking technical advisor to the president and to congress. The Technocracy Division has no policy-making authority, but they influence policy, and their recommendations consistently become government mandates.

He and Lucius run in different social spheres and share no friends. His kids go to more expensive schools and his wife shops in more expensive stores, yet each has benefited from the other’s careers. Lucius has a worthwhile open-door policy, but it’s open only to those on his short list.

Governments and corporations depend on such relationships. James relies on Lucius to elicit government funding for space programs and Lucius relies on James for the latest technological updates. Lucius often bases his advice for congress on advice from James.

And Lucius has a beneficial relationship with Nesh Vidyanand, or Viddy, a powerful World Business Council board member. James can influence global policies, and that realization fans the egotistic flames of personal power. He sweeps this odd thought away and observes he has many odd thoughts while in his forward office.

He arranges a conference call with Lucius and Viddy, but slams his desktop after discovering this conference must happen this week. He wanted more time to prepare, but brightens after realizing something good will occur during his week in Purgatory.

This encourages him to unlock his office door and pretend to welcome the malcontents. Recent procedural changes in the manufacturing process generate a hellish day.

He locks his office door Wednesday morning. He arrives later than usual, so he feels no compulsion to glance towards the faces at his door. He sets a dry erase board near the phone, but angled so curious eyes cannot view his notes. Those entering the office always scan the paperwork on his desk or in his baskets, and everything becomes fodder for the gossip mill.

When his conference call blinks, he is on the phone with obvious glee while the rumor mill makes mental notes. Lucius is in his limousine, stuck in traffic between meetings in Baltimore. Yiddy is flying between Oslo and London as James endures his monthly punishment. They exchange anecdotes and get down to business.

Security is my foremost concern. My company produces something as potentially destructive as nuclear missiles, yet they store crystals in a room next to my forward office and guard them with people wanting longer lunch breaks.

There are few options, Lucius replies. Military security guards are unavailable because of a 99 percent force reduction.

If we upgrade the security guard duties, that requires upgrading their weapons to military hardware, which is costly, Viddy says. And that’s pointless if we’re not tracking each crystal.

A production worker identified the inventory and control problem, James says. I didn’t notice this problem, so the blame falls solely on my shoulders.

Lucian gives a humorless chuckle. Don’t fall on your sword yet. Have you devised an adequate and accountable inventory and tracking system?

That’s in progress, but the company is resisting the cost increase. The new system involves etching an indelible serial number on each crystal and tracking the location. But I have 1,000 unmarked product next to my office. Etching and loading those into the program cuts into everyone’s profit checks, so I’m an unpopular fellow. And the thought of clever pilfering takes my sleep away.

The company security division should shoulder that responsibility, Lucius says.

WBC Chairperson Viyanand’s advice is important because we ship crystals to international construction sites. Those sites beam items into orbit for final assembly of new beaming stations, and that requires stringent accountability. Adequate controls happen only when they go into space.

Are you advocating keeping the crystals inside their country of origin? Viddy asks.

Those international sites provide thousands of high-paying jobs. I’m already hated for taking a chunk out of the Houston quarterly profit-sharing bonuses with my tracking program. I don’t want an international bullseye on my forehead. Let’s make new jobs for international transportation and storage security.

Who will fund it? Lucius asks.

Each nation should do its part, but who will run it?

Crystal Corp is the best choice.

A private company giving orders to other countries is problematic, Viddy says. You are right to address the problem.

Let me run some options. The military doesn’t have the personnel, Lucius says. We can raise the enlistment quota and train them, but that will take a year and we could use something next week. But you end up with the same problem as having Crystal Corp take over the security concerns on an international scale, and Alliance military guards make the political turf wars worse. Now, instead of a private corporation giving orders to foreign countries, we have the Alliance government giving orders to other governments. Something from the World Business Council stands a better chance of working.

Thanks for throwing it back on me, Yiddy says. It will be difficult to work out something that won’t rip apart from disputes involving responsibility and authority. How do we fund this nightmare and who is the designated scapegoat?

Let’s call it Global Space Security, GSS, and make it international and independent, James says. Funding should be pro-rated based on each nation’s participation.

Nobody will go for that, Lucius says. They want business as usual, meaning Crystal Corp pays the bills and takes the blame for screwups.

I agree, Viddy replies. No politician will accept accountability for anything remotely risky, and they will avoid sole responsibility at all costs.

I’m late for a meeting, Lucian says. I’m afraid I’m a NO vote. Nothing bad has happened, so complacency will rule the day.

My political colleague is right, Viddy says. My associates will be unmovable. They will not pay to fix something that is working.

I’ll keep working on this, James replies. I just wish I could have a longer career.

Get some sleep, Viddy replies.

After everyone signs out, James considers his options. To request big money from the VP board to fix something that hasn’t failed is virtual career suicide, and some will doubt his mental state. The boss will downgrade his performance reviews and his corporate future will end. Yet, if the thing he fears happens, his career ends with a prison term.

The safest option is to seek other employment before incurring a blemish on his sterling career. But they might accuse him of doing the damage and leaving before being discovered. If the resignation word leaks out, they will fire him before lunch.

He glances at the faces at his office door and erases his notes. The bottom word on the scribbled agenda is resignation. But as his headache builds, that option seems less devastating. He resolves to leave his door locked while mulling over his dilemma.

He reclines in his chair and swivels to gaze at the blank wall between his office and the crystal storage area. As he struggles with his career uncertainties, he takes several peculiar steps to forestall his looming losses.

He can justify allowing a small production overrun to compensate for unexpected project expansions. He cannot explain why this idea becomes so important, but it is an essential step in a bigger, though undetermined scheme.

The next idea is to get brain scans from the corporate health director and store it on this computer. The scans are a normal step in the process of the corporate health care contract. As a VP, he can view a scan, but storing it on a remote computer might draw attention.

He will weasel an urgent appointment with the health director in this forward office for Friday. The agenda is to assess potential health issues for workers in close contact with the crystals, and to assess health issues from being near the storage area. He will site his own headaches as a starting point.

James is the most despised VP because of tests, evaluations, and programs that cut into profits. He hopes that once the health director is working with him, he can get copies of the brain scans for Lucius and Viddy.

As the VP of manufacturing, I should have a crystal in my office. These crystals are a status symbol of global and solar system economic expansion and success. It will not be my personal property. I should have an artsy display of the product making this corporation great.

He smiles at his plan, even though it doesn’t make complete sense.

And Lucius and Viddy should get one, too. The leader of the Alliance Technocracy Division and the World Business Council should have similar displays of power and wealth.

Chapter 3-Activate

DANIEL WALKER HARRISON snickers while reading the