Bastion Saturn Read Online Free Page A

acted as local constables while simultaneously going about their daily occupations. Monty Teach was one of those. With his pot farm dome established on Dione, Monty found it advantageous to add cop to his title of farmer. As the Pandoran flotilla came into orbit, both the pot farmer and cop sides of him frowned as he gazed at the arrival on the co-op’s telescope array. The baker’s dozen of farmers and chemists in his syndicate stood in the room behind him and stared at the screen as well. They had set up a bar with real booze and put up a sign that read: “The Dione-Pandoran Company—Together—Better Pharmaceuticals.”
    A guy named Bill Withers had convinced them all to create the first co-op, and then convinced them further that a big cash haul would come from further consolidation with the Pandorans. Withers harrumphed at the approaching ships saying, “Don’t know why they need a police escort. Deal’s all signed off. Formalities is all.”
    Monty said, “Well, if it’s got some official stamp, maybe I better throw on a uniform.”
     
    While the newly minted Officer Day had orders to maintain geosynchronous orbit above the main dome that was labeled on his heads-up as Monty’s Retreat, the Pandoran container ship landed first, followed by the rest of the police escorts. The whole situation felt bizarre to Caleb, made more so by the fact that he hadn’t really been filled in on anything. There had been almost no communication on the trip from Titan, and now that they were at Dione, other than the confirmation of his arrival and the order to stay in orbit, a command followed to maintain radio silence, including all text transmissions. He hadn’t been trained for such a mission, hadn’t been filled in on what the game plan was. His mission packet merely informed him to report to the rendezvous and follow orders from there, and that he was expected to act in a standard security role as described in the police handbook. As he watched the other ships land, he scanned the handbook again in his heads-up display. He couldn’t find anything that quite related to the current conditions. His police shuttle had a fully functioning non-networked computer system with trillions of bytes of info about every known settlement in the system. The non-networked element ensured independence. Networked systems were ripe for AI control, even at an average of 1,400,000,000 kilometers away from Earth. He decided to look up the folks on Dione. There were thirteen registered farms, all also listed as pharmaceutical manufacturers. All of the farms had been established at the edge of the trailing orbit of the moon and therefore less susceptible to hits by foreign objects. They were, however, constantly dusted by the very fine smoky ice powder raining in from Saturn’s E ring. Ten of the farms were family operations with an average of five members. The forty-one children in the group were all home-schooled, but each farm took turns offering extracurricular activities. Four of the children had been born on Dione. Caleb raised an eyebrow as he scanned through the birth photos of one of them. Giving birth information to the governing bodies on Hanson was purely voluntary beyond the sex. One baby was an oddity indeed: it was long and bowlegged with extremely thin limbs and a large head with a puffy face. Was this the future of men in lower G environments? There had been lots of speculation on new races or at least shapes of humans arising from mutations within and around the rings of Saturn. Each moon had its own level of gravity. Titan had gravity greater than Earth’s moon, with air pressure one and a half times as great as that of Planet Earth’s, making the air feel a bit like walking in a swimming pool. What would babies look like on Titan? A flash in the corner of Caleb’s vision caught his eye. One of the farm domes erupted in a huge fireball and just as quickly died down to small scattered flames. Then another one, the explosion