Chapter 32
They gathered their meager belongings and made their way to the engineering section of Venus. Despite the late hour or maybe it was because of the early hour, 3 AM, the pathways were not deserted and they encountered several people along the way. John didn't expect any trouble and they didn't get any. They went straight to John's office and deposited all their worldly belongings.
They set up a mat for Lisa, and she created a tiny nest of some of his things around her. Both talked for a few minutes, held each other and kissed lightly, before Lisa crawled into her nest to go to sleep. John watched this incredible woman drift off to sleep trusting that he would take care of everything. His heart filled with love as he watched her, but worry was etched all over his face.
John left to go to the conference room and all the other department managers were already there. The first thing John checked on was to make sure everyone had their families sequestered on the engineering floor. There were a few exceptions, but about 90% of the people were there. The remaining people still had shifts to complete and should arrive at the conclusion of their work. So they couldn't isolate the engineering deck until they arrived.
John had been thinking a lot about what needed to happen and as he arrived, he addressed the group, "I don't want any of you to be deluded. This is going to be a long hard struggle and I believe people will die along the way. These are vicious people that will stop at nothing to maintain their power. Our objective should be to restore humanity to Venus as quickly as possible with a minimal loss of life. So my question to all of you is what do we want to accomplish?"
John stood and went to the whiteboard and began jotting down all the shouted objectives. He was giving everybody a chance to speak, but ultimately he knew what the goals needed to be. When the ideas dwindled to silence John looked back and circled all the main points that he felt like he needed to be accomplished then he addressed the group.
"None of us have the business astuteness to run a multibillion-dollar casino. The business model that was created here should not change; it works, creates profit and jobs for everyone. However, they have taken it to the extreme, with death, dismemberment and torture and we can't tolerate that. Our job should be to establish a safe environment for everyone that works here, visits here and lives here. I believe our objective, as shown in the circled items on the whiteboard, should be to establish a governing body sole responsibility for the safety of everyone aboard Venus."
"What is the safety of everyone aboard Venus entail? It should involve an independent counsel with a possible governor and a completely independent police force. This means the current counsel's thugs have to go and a new independent police force would take their place. A civil disobedience code and punishment would also have to be created, but we have lots of examples to draw from. I'm sure as time goes on other things will crop up, but I don't think we should mess with the main purpose for Venus. It was designed as the ultimate playground for adults, as well as a permanent space manufacturing and research platform. It should remain so with as little interference as possible. However, everyone aboard Venus should be accorded safety and security. My friends I think that should be our ultimate goal."
There were murmurs of discontent and some even wanted to profit from taking over Venus, but the overwhelming majority sided with John. He even ask for a vote on the course of action, and everyone except for five people raised their hand. Now that he had a goal and a consensus it was time to turn to tactics.
John let the silence drag on and finally looked at everyone and began again. "Okay, I think we have a consensus of what we want to be, but now we need a name to define who we are. I know with everything were facing meaning ourselves may seem trivial, but it tells people on earth what kind of people we are."
"We need to come up with a name that shows we will not be trivialized. We are serious about our freedom, serious about human rights and serious about our right of self-determination. I'm open to names and ideas." John returned to the whiteboard and went to an open space to begin writing.
As he expected many thought this to be a trivial matter, but John knew if they were to begin negotiating with people on earth, the name had relevance and power. The first name was generic with no power in it. The second shouted name was a joke, and John turned and leveled him with the gaze of pure malice and disgust. He withered under John's intense gaze and soon apologized. After that everybody took the exercise seriously and they finally came up with the name, "The Sovereign Space Station Venus."
John made sure everyone used the same name with every bit of communication that left Venus. John also turned to Ken and said, "Get your best editors and work with marketing and legal people to create a Declaration of Independence. We also need to create some kind of a manifesto that explains why we're doing what we're doing. We don't want this to be gruesome but we need to explain that everyone here lives in fear of being their next victim."
John felt like they were working on some of the long-term items and now needed to work on their security. So he waited for all the sidebar conversations to die down and brought up the subject again of isolation. They needed to isolate themselves, and they needed to isolate the Council and all their thugs.
As they spoke of the isolation, George spoke up and mentioned that the Council has their own internal surveillance systems. George thought some of his hacker crew could temporarily shut off much of the surveillance systems, but he doubted he could shut down for longer than a couple of hours. He would do what he could but there were limited capabilities from their side and that meant the Council would know the minute they started the isolation.
John returned to his seat and continued, "I believe our first objective should be isolation, both inside Venus and all external communications to earth. I'm sure that somewhere along the lines they will attempt to take control of Venus by force and we will need to be prepared against that eventuality. At some point we may have to give them a demonstration of our resolve and we need to agree on how far we are willing to go. Finally we will need negotiations with the Council and the cartels on earth and we may need mediators to help accomplish this. So let's get started."
The first order of business was security and isolation. The information technology group along with the structural and the gaseous group needed to work together to isolate the engineering section. They also needed to work together to conceive of ways to isolate the Council and all their thugs. There were two unknowns with the first being all the guests that were currently enjoying themselves. How would they react and could they be isolated. The second unknown was the entertainment staff and what their reaction would be. John suspected that there would be people on both sides and so they needed to be isolated as well.
As part of the safety protocols there were airtight bulkheads throughout Venus. The original purpose was to isolate any leaks that may occur, but now they could be used to isolate any potential troublemakers. The structural, gaseous and information-technology groups all worked together on a plan to bring them all together. George, Ian and Mike all thought they could trick the various sensors in Venus and force the isolation doors open and closed as they desired. However, there could be some problems because with the isolation doors closed the air is also shut off.
John called in the "Sewer Rats" to help with the isolation because they knew all the ways around all the systems. Ian from the structural group had a similar group that was familiar with all the underbelly of Venus and suggested that the two groups work together to complete the isolation. John agreed and thought this was a great idea.
Once the security was in place they needed to plan a negotiation course for Venus. John hoped if they paralyzed counsel with the physical and communication isolation, that maybe negotiations could proceed at a rapid pace. However, he was under no illusions that this would be quick and painless. The Council and the cartels were used to being omnipotent with no one challenging their authority.
John mused out loud, wondering how the Council will try to restore their power. Everyone was silent for a second, then everyone started throwing out ideas. They varied from an armed incursion from earth to an attempt to destroy Venus rather than let them win. However, one of the more likely scenarios was a takeover of all other systems from the ground control station. Everyone agreed this could be a big problem, because they could undo all the isolation protocols they had set in place.
Everybody started talking at once tried to come up with ideas to stop them, and John had to shout to regain control of the meeting. "I think we all agreed now that this will probably be one of their first modes of attack and we need to find a way to counter this. We need the isolation team to work with communications to determine if the ground station goes way will there be any impact on our systems. In addition, are there any other ways to completely block the ground station from gaining access to Venus?"
Jack from the communications department spoke up saying they had run scenarios where the ground station disappears before. There were long-term issues that involved software and systems upgrades, but no problems in the short-term. Then he dropped the other shoe, "They have completely redundant systems and everything they have is tied into Venus. We could block them, but only temporarily, because eventually they could get around any roadblock we put in place."
