Vampires in Space

HAD

I handed Bob's document to Denise, who read it dutifully. As if she was not aware of everything in it and more already. It is not saying anything bad about Bob that this document was not as detailed as what Denise already knew. Far from it. Bob works in R&D for me. He is not the head of Crew like she is. He does not have her extensive and ancient network. Besides all of that, security threats are way outside his normal purview. Credit to him he knew about it and brought it to Denise and my attention. Bob fits well into my organization: He does not take to being siloed any more than I do. I grabbed him from Malcolm Le Pen's orbit for a reason. He cares about this company and our ethos even without knowing the underlying reason. If Bob is worried about an operation, he researches it. When the time comes, I'll offer Bob a choice about turning and coming with us off the planet and toward the stars.

This latest crop of Humanists, being anti-anything not rich, old, and white, has been on our Vampire radar for a while. In my short, by Vampire standards life, I have dealt with their kind on numerous occasions. A long time ago, Denise and I took out a hugely well-financed version of this flavor of hate group. It is not only true that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. So is the price of being different: How one has to defend oneself from the intolerance of some groups that feel inferior and look for something to bolster their feeble egos. Hate keeps getting hope and popping back up in different places. In different starting locations. Denise and my last major operation was in Europe. Here we are once again in the US. No shock it's Denise and I in the thick of it again either. The good part of it is that since it's taking place in NorthAm, I don't have to worry about pissing off EuroCrew. NorthAm Council made me a Council member, and Victoria, the Council Head, trusts us.

Trusts us for a solid reason. Vampires are better hidden than we have been due to worldwide work by Crews and new permissions to get more 'firm' with hate groups like this.

Being the noxious weeds they are, hate groups keep reoccurring. The darkness in the human soul that leads to groups like this is always sprouting into the vacuum we create when we take out one. You blow up their castles and take all their money? Eventually, they come back. Another reason we have to get gone. We are on a social treadmill. Sooner or later no matter how good we are, our time will run out. Anything that can go wrong will eventually go wrong.

Denise, head of security for IE and co-lead of the NorthAm Crew, has been at the forefront of our efforts to stop groups like this. Time to pop this pimple before it turns into a sebaceous cyst. Again.

Denise looked up from Bob's document. "The vulnerability is the train. I am sure that is stating the obvious. It is hundreds of kilometers of track to cover. They can stop a train with a strike at any place along its length. They can strike at the time of their choosing, and they do not need to know the train schedule. Taking out the track stops the train no matter where or when they do it."

"Meaning the drone escorts are useless." I observed.

"Not useless, but not all we need either." Denise replied. We are re-having a conversation we have already had but for Bob's benefit. "We need to activate contingency plan HAD."

"HAD?" Bob asked.

"Before your time. We knew that infrastructure was an attack point. We developed contingency plans when we built the train line. HAD is Humans Are Dumb." Denise told him. "I wanted 'Humans are Evil', but HAE did not have the same ring to it."

"Humans Are Scum was also tossed pretty quickly." I said.

Not all humans are dumb. Bob looked at her with suspicion. "You had a plan already. You knew about this threat."

"Long ago, Bob. Did not even need to be this particular threat. I am head of corporate security. You don't build a solar-powered train carrying stage one treated sewage without considering as many scenarios as you can imagine. This is just one of them."