Chapter 7: The Mob Home Planet

General Matilda MacArthur from intelligence stood in front of the room, at the invitation of Andrea. She waited for people to settle before she spoke.

“I would like to summarize for you all, how we chose the most likely planet to intercept the freighters. There are five core Mob worlds. We have discovered three more in our interrogations. We knew of the dominant pair of core worlds. We are heading for the original Mob world, called Yimza, where they have the largest university and the largest research facilities. We interrogated both, the original inhabitants of The Mob worlds, as well as the overseers and taskmasters to locate these facilities. The Empire uses dispersed facilities to reduce the risk to itself of a catastrophic attack. We all assumed that The Mob would do the same, but it appears they believe themselves secure. Universities and research facilities are nearly all clustered on Yimza, and fortunately for us that simple fact makes it easier to predict the final delivery locations of the freighters.

“The original inhabitants, the Jumo, are very keen to help us and the taskmasters were very keen to suggest alternatives which indicate to us that they were attempting to divert us from our purpose and know exactly where the freighters are headed. They were all separately interrogated and it is very clear that the taskmasters lie persistently, and their answers are entirely inconsistent with each other. Our telepaths tell us the core world Yimza is the most likely place. Few of the Jumo are telepathic, while The Mob people have the same rate as the Empire.

“When we get to Yimza we will need to wait from twenty-five to sixty hours for the various freighters to arrive. This gives us the opportunity to look at the defenses and neutralize them as necessary. From what we have been able to establish there is likely to be a small fleet defending the planet, there is a very large space-based hollowed out asteroid repair dock which is well defended and has both defensive and offensive capabilities. There are nine space-based defensive platforms, much like those that we saw used offensively, only bigger. These defensive platforms will move position to counter threats. None of the Jumo have been to the asteroid.

“The planet itself has a gravity ten percent above Laomedeia and bit less than Mars and a bit more than Porquenta. It is a beautiful garden planet. Day-to-day life is pleasant as long as people don’t get involved with politics or interfere with the regime.

“General Karen DuPree will command the planetary intelligence operation. She and I have chosen our surface evaluation group. They will infiltrate the planet and evaluate ground defenses. Most people live on a single very large continent, but there are also several smaller continents. They will leave for the planet as soon as we are in range and their initial brief is to identify military targets and bases. Then they will pull back to investigate other areas. This ensures that they are safe if we need to bombard the planet.

“We have been able to obtain preliminary maps that will assist us with our initial tasks. While our people are on the surface we will introduce you to some of the most senior original inhabitants who inform us that they have been planning to take over for some time. It will be worthwhile to spend some time with them as we evaluate the situation and deal with the freighters. They don’t know that we are going to Yimza. I would suggest that until we have concluded our discussions and possible negotiations that we don’t inform them of this fact,” said General Matilda MacArthur before sitting down at her table to continue planning with her group.

The fleet emerged from trans-dimensional space some distance away from Yimza, near a Jupiter-like planet that was at an equivalent distance from the core world, as Jupiter is to Earth.

They looked at the projected holograms as the senior sensor controller spoke from her console while projecting a large hologram.

“The sensors indicate that it is a very active industrial planet, but at the same time quite a beautiful planet with very low pollution. The population is in the order of fourteen billion people. The ambient temperature over this large continent is in the region of 70° F. It is quite comfortable. The mix of gases is very close to that on the ship, any differences are not of any consequence as there is nothing toxic. It is an excellent planet according to the scale of planetary evaluation.

“Initial scans show a very small fleet guarding the planet, but there are three sizes of orbital defense platforms. They are very heavily armed and will prevent us from chasing freighters close to the planet.

“The space dock is also very heavily armored and has considerable firepower. If you look at the hologram in these positions you can see it has long range, medium-range and short-range cannon and it looks like it has hundreds of anti-ship missile launchers in these positions.” She indicated positions on the hologram.

“There are many smaller missile launchers that look like antimissile defense systems. From what we are able to see it is less well defended on the planetary side, but that will have to be confirmed by cloaked probes which will launch in an hour.

“There are many ships being built on the exterior docks of the asteroid. It has the capacity to build four battleships, ten cruisers, twenty-five destroyers, and miscellaneous smaller ships at the same time, while doing repairs to other ships. It is, as you can see, a very substantial facility and would have taken many years to build. The asteroid is almost the size of a small moon at forty-five miles in diameter. When we first looked at it we were uncertain if it had been carved out of an asteroid or whether it has been fully manufactured. We cannot be sure, but we are gravitating strongly towards a metallic asteroid. Our scans cannot penetrate to the interior.

“If you look at the hologram you can see the substantial doors. It is wide enough for two carriers to enter together. The doors lead to the interior and our belief is that even more manufacturing activity occurs inside. The Empire has done similar exercises and our team has seen two of those secret facilities. Usually, mining of the inside continues as soon as a big enough space for manufacture and repair of ships is created. They bring in processors to refine and deliver metals to the replicators. It can be an efficient process if operated properly and supplies convenient material for years.

“We have some of our small probes waiting at the gates. They will enter when the gates open, if they can. I would like to suggest that you send dogs to investigate the inside if they are able to do so.

“We have launched sensor probes to the planet and along the trajectories of likely freighter arrival. In two minutes, we will be able to provide fifteen minutes of warning; and by five hours, eight hours of warning.”

“Jason, let’s try and send the dogs into the asteroid through the gates and see if we can have a look at what’s in there.

“Matilda, you and Karen can continue to update us on the work that your intelligence people are doing. Give me a few minutes, and I will be back. I have also had them looking at the other less likely but possible planets that the freighters might have as destinations,” said Andrea.

The logistics ships of The Mob were massive freighters. They had the capacity to carry seven cruisers in the lower part of each freighter along with a full load. They were used for interplanetary travel, were loaded in space by shuttles that specialized either in freight or were dedicated to mining. The Mob also had smaller more heavily armed and armored freighters, that could move faster and operate in more dangerous conditions. The Empire used the same conceptual model. The larger freighters were more appropriate to move whole factories, the smaller ones to carry high-value components.

Andrea decided to send part of their fleet, as they had ample firepower, to the two other most likely core planets to provide insurance in case The Mob had attempted to reduce risk. She thought that it was less likely but not impossible, taking into consideration the The Mob’s belief that the Empire didn’t know the location of their core planets. It was impossible to cover the entire Mob holdings as there were hundreds of planets with an estimated total population from the pundits in intelligence of between a quarter, and a half a trillion people.

They all agreed that they would need to knock out the planetary defenses. Andrea decided with full agreement that it would be best to gain intelligence on the shipyard first, while the dogs and marine AI’s prepared to take out the platforms and then form a plan to capture the shipyard so that they could then pursue the freighters right to the planet with no appreciable risk to themselves.

The dogs and Marine AI’s spent some time attaching explosives to the platforms on the side facing the planet and were able to do so without detection. They infiltrated the platforms ensuring that all of them had sufficient explosives attached to render them inoperative.

The difficulty that they faced was that there were many freighters that would enter the system that were from within The Mob tentacles, so they had sent communication and sensor probes towards the other planets in order to both provide an early warning of other ships and further fleets arriving or to be able to track the arrival of freighters that they would not need to search. That strategy paid off quite quickly with five freighters arriving in quick succession that they allowed to dock at the massive spaceport without the need for interception.

Mines were attached to the ships of the waiting defensive fleet, to be used if they were not able to successfully enter the ships.

By this time the interrogation of prisoners was well advanced. General Karen DuPree from intelligence approached Andrea and Linda, who called over Jason. She took them into a smaller meeting room to discuss some of the issues that had arisen.

“We have captured many of the so-called taskmasters. The lower level ones we’ve already sent to Porquenta. We have kept the most senior for detailed interrogation. Many of them are weak, untrained telepaths.

“We have established who, are leaders amongst the Jumo group and they are keen to speak to us about what we intend doing.

“We understand that it was the later refugee group that renamed the system “The Mob.” The pre-Mob group likes to call themselves “The People” which in their language is the “Jumo.” I think it’s easier in many ways for us to refer to the pre-Mob people as the Jumo and the taskmasters as The Mob. The taskmasters is an apt description, as that is exactly what they have been and most of the senior ones appear to be the scum at the top of the barrel.

“Fortunately the few Jumo who have telepathic abilities are very weak, totally untrained telepaths, which has enabled us to establish who are the sympathizers with The Mob, and who are the genuine people.

We have managed to identify seven who are regarded as senior in their society, and a number of them are part of an underground who are working to regain control of their system. They are very open with us. One of them was aware of Peter Kane, and knows the person who gave Peter the core world locations.

“The Jumo told us the history as follows: they welcomed a group who were refugees from ‘the so-called evil Empire’ beginning three thousand years ago.’ These refugees offered to lift their level of technology and quality of life enormously. They had the secrets of travel to the stars and could produce economical, non polluting power that could help the Jumo clean up their planet. The refugees appeared to behave very well, and soon many of their members were prominent in Jumo society throughout Yimza. They worked harmoniously together until thirty years before the first Mob war. Jumo technology developed enormously with the help of the group who were the precursors to The Mob. Intermarriage was frequent. They took in many further refugees and described them as good hard-working and industrious people.

“There are two theories about what then happened. The first which most of the more junior officers and less educated believe is: The Mob pretended to be good citizens and were very patient in the infiltration of the society. The more sophisticated believe that amongst the last refugees was a group they call the ‘elites’. They are what we describe as the entities. They very slowly and patiently took control of the refugees and incited them to take control of the Jumo. It was so slow that the Jumo didn’t notice it happening until too late. Interestingly, however, they describe each of the entities very differently, and with very different powers. They appeared to be a team constituted for a purpose, with different skills and abilities. None of the Jumo or the Mob know anything about the Ghoul creature. Those who saw him, said he came down to the planet in a foreign looking shuttle and was organizing his people to take people away from the surface of the planet. Thousands of shuttles like his, but bigger passed them, but didn’t engage in the battles. They saw the Ghoul, grab a few people, and they collapsed inward like they lost all substance. They said his hands sucked the life out of them.

“The majority of senior Mob people live on the planet Yimza below and there are two visible entities with different signatures on our scans. The Jumo originated from Yimza and at the time of the arrival of The Mob had developed spaceflight at the level of your Earth. The planet was unified under a single king.

The Mob worked very hard with the military to assist them in the development of ‘defensive technologies’ in case the evil Empire would attempt to invade them, but this only happened in the thirty years prior to the first war. They began to build a powerful defensive fleet. Everyone was flourishing on the planets as the kingdom had expanded and even though the fleet was expensive it was built and fitted out, without too much pain and sacrifice. The Jumo continued to take in refugees, happy to do so as each new group brought in more expertise and they continued to work very well together. The refugees now ‘The Mob’, by the first war represented close to ten percent of their population and was influential throughout the society.

“There was a sudden takeover of control by a coup d’état ten years before the first war. And from there the situation went downhill for the Jumo with the Mob increasingly becoming more and more like slave drivers.

“They said that The Mob, over the last four hundred years, has captured all civilizations within their reach, and have subjugated billions of people. The Jumo and Mob had occupied twenty planets of their own before attacking and overcoming nearby nation groups. The Mob then began to build starships to add to their fleet. When they were ready, after an extensive period of propaganda talking about the evils of the Empire, they attacked the Empire for the first time. Every ship had failsafe systems of explosives. If it was defeated they were not allowed to be captured and they blew themselves up. The ships might remain but no one living would and the computer systems were non-existent. They justified and explained their rationale for this behavior by saying the Empire tortured all its captives and death was better than torture.

“When the first war was lost, they began to establish a network of spies within the Empire. One of the major elite leaders disappeared and the information that the Jumo leadership managed to gather through their own contacts in intelligence, indicated that this person has very successfully infiltrated into a major family of influence, in the Empire. Because of this they had more success in obtaining weapons and ship technology and so were very much more successful during the second war. They had managed to obtain very much better ship technology, but knew that they were going to be outclassed on the ground.

Since the second Mob war, the Jumo have made a concerted effort to try and look at possible solutions to taking back control of their own destinies, and return their king to his throne.

“They formed networks of people who had no contact with The Mob. This was necessary as The Mob had the capacity to read their minds from close-up and subsequently crush the resistance. It took the Jumo a long time to find out that The Mob was in fact telepathic and that was their methodology.

“There has been significant intermarriage, and The Mob rejected those they regarded as half breeds. That was fortunate in that telepathy began to be bred into the Jumo population. They were able to infiltrate telepathic schools in order to learn the techniques first to resist and then to fight against those with telepathy. Then schools were surreptitiously opened for those with the skills within the Jumo population. Very few of them are strong telepaths. Once they could counter telepathy they were able to infiltrate the Mob more easily.

“The Mob Empire called ‘The Tentacles’ has an organized army of dissidents. They have established factories for the manufacture of weapons and armor and increasingly in recent years had been building gunships, tanks, and fighters. They established contacts via trade with other worlds and came to understand that much The Mob had said about the Empire was false propaganda. On their own without support they believed that they would have had a reasonable chance of taking over Yimza within the next twenty years.

“Their biggest concern has been what had happened to uprisings within other civilizations in The Tentacles. The fleet had gone to those areas and there were stories of beings with terrible powers, pigs that cut people to shreds and hideous warriors with tusks and with enormous strength who appeared to be invulnerable. They heard the stories too often to not believe that some of the elites had unusual and dangerous powers. From what they saw in battle they believed that the Empire had similar people of power who could assist them in taking back their own worlds. They have requested the opportunity to be able to discuss this with the group who control this fleet and thus also potentially with the Empire.

“They are desperate to take advantage of the opportunity and hope we can help them. They don’t know they were already at their core world. They warned us about the orbital defensive systems, the space-dock/asteroid, and the fleet protecting the planet.

“They told me that The Mob, had to split their fleet seven ways and had to use the protective fleets from many worlds. They had given up on the strategy of another wholesale attack on the Empire as they realized that the Empire had grown economically far faster than The Tentacles had and the Empire fleet had continued to grow and had fleets in reserve. The Jumo knew from conversations that they had heard, that the proposed attack was regarded as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to gain the technology they lacked. They had slipped behind the Empire faster and faster as innovation within The Tentacles plummeted. The Mob culture is harsh and demanding and the standard of living has dropped. Taxation for the buildup, prior to the war, has been punitive.

“The forces of the opposition are also aware that many of the people within The Mob are greatly opposed to how The Mob was functioning, but were forced to go along as they had no option. The Tentacles were run as a dictatorship and no opposition was brooked. There is an extensive Secret Service with neighbor spying on neighbor and being rewarded for spotting any possible infraction.”

The Battleship Conference Meeting Room

Both Andrea and Linda were strongly supportive of meeting with the Jumo. Jason agreed in principle but was cautious about a possible infiltrator. He requested both the Marines and Marine AI’s made themselves available and he made sure that his dogs were lying next to him when the group of seven was bought in to join them in one of the smaller conference rooms. Jason was alert and warned the dogs about a potential danger and risk. Jason thought that it was almost inevitable that one of these zombie-like deeply telepathically conditioned assassins, could be an infiltrator within the Jumo.