11.12-The Mutiny of the Spaceshippers

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Hello, and welcome to Revolutions.

Episode 11.12, The Mutiny of the Space Shippers.

We left off last time with the Martians rising up, literally.

and overrunning the prime dome of Olympus on the third day of Red.

No one had planned this uprising, it just sort of happened.

The situation remained fluid and chaotic, but it now appeared most of the security services had been disarmed and their weapons now in the hands of, well, whoever grabbed them at the time.

Insurrectionary Martians now wandered freely throughout Olympus, while others hunkered down in their housing allotments, just trying to weather the storm.

Martian leaders, meanwhile, were now faced with some enormous questions.

What do we do?

What happens next?

Who even counts as a Martian leader?

Mabel Dorr and the other members of the Martian Advisory Council were standing in front of Mars Division headquarters when it was stormed, and in fact they had just received word from Director Eva Zhang that she would meet Martian demands.

The annulled would be reinstated, the deportations would end.

But in keeping with the spirit of the times, this was just a beat too late, and an explosion ripped a hole in the side of headquarters before Zhang's concessions could have any impact on the course of events.

But and the other members of the Martian Advisory Council knew what she had done.

So as soon as triumphant Martians flung open the entrance to the headquarters, they raced inside and headed for the director's suite.

Now a few of them, including Kinder James, peeled off to hopefully prevent a massacre of the security service personnel who had surrendered, while the rest followed Dorr upstairs.

They pushed their way through a crowded din of Martians now cramming into the headquarters from all sides, shouting, laughing, some crying, some doing some light looting.

And as always happens in situations like this, bottles of fuel appeared and people started getting tanked.

Dorr and her colleagues made it upstairs to the director's suite, where they found about a dozen armed Martians holding Ava Zhang, some staff, and a couple of disarmed security personnel at gunpoint.

Basically through sheer force of presumed authority, Dorr took control of the room.

Everyone knew who she was, and so when she told the armed Martians, I'm Mabel Dorr, they just sort of accepted that she was in charge.

So she ordered them to go stand guard at the door and not let anyone else in.

Then she turned to Zhang and said, we know you agreed to reinstating the annulled and ending deportations.

We need you to record a vid right now saying that and pulse it out to the entire colony.

Zhang said, fine, but unfortunately you muted the executive mainframe so I can't send a colony-wide announcement.

If you turn the executive mainframe back on, however, and Dorr said, no, absolutely not.

We'll find some other means of spreading the word, but right now, record the vid so we can steer Olympus from total chaos that will consume us all, you most especially, back to something resembling order.

So Zhang complied and recorded the vid.

Now, why didn't the Martian leaders turn the mainframe back on now that they controlled it?

Because they didn't really control it yet.

Now Timothy Werner got lost in the shuffle last week because of everything else that was going on, and we left him off telling Zhang to get things under control.

But then things spun out of control with the riot in expansion 13.

Werner nodded with approval when Zhang ordered a colony-wide quarantine, and then watched helplessly as the executive mainframe was hacked and muted.

A furious Werner ordered his SysTex to override Mars Division commands and assert control of the colony systems directly from Earth.

Now this was easy enough to do in normal times, thanks in part to the centralization of systems by the new protocols, but now they couldn't do it.

Commands from Earth were themselves routed through the Mars Division executive mainframe, which was muted.

So Werner demanded his systex get on top of fixing whatever had caused this, but was thus otherwise helpless to do anything about the Martians overrunning Olympus, except passively watching camera streams he could access, but not control.

Dorr knew enough to know that if the executive mainframe was unmuted, Earth would be able to assert control over the colony, and that could not be allowed to happen.

Instead, Dorr told Zhang to transmit a message to Earth.

Effectively, but not literally at gunpoint, Zhang recorded a message, telling Werner the Martians have taken over Olympus, they have disarmed the security services, and to restore order I have agreed to reinstate annulled Martians and stop all future deportations.

Then she hit send.

Now at that moment, the signal delay between Mars and Earth was about 10 minutes.

So, they'd have to wait 10 minutes for the signal to reach Earth, then wait however long it took for Werner to respond, and then then another 10 minutes to get his signal back to Mars.

So the conversation with Werner would unfold with significant silences in between.

Sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes an hour or more.

After the first message, Dorr and the other members of the MAC discussed what to do next.

Zhang's vid was spreading out, using their personal comms and Society of Martian Black channels with urgent requests to spread it as far and wide as they could.

And at that moment, it looked like they had done it.

They had gotten what they wanted.

Sure, Sure, it had taken an uprising, but now things could maybe go back to normal.

But then, a message from Werner pinged back from Earth.

He said, absolutely not.

The Martians will return control of Olympus to the rightful authorities, hand back all weapons, restore the executive mainframe, and await judgment for what they have done.

Never change, Timothy Werner.

Never change.

But the mention of restoring the executive mainframe did alert them that Werner was almost certainly trying to take control of Mars division systems at that very moment, and that as soon as the mainframe was unmuted, he'd be able to do just that.

So they had Zhang message back.

What you ask is impossible.

Please accept my policy changes.

There is no other way.

Send.

Wait.

And while they waited, Clarice Bo piped up to say that sooner, rather than later, the executive mainframe is going to have to be restored.

and that whatever happens next, we cannot let Earth control our computer systems or we're doomed.

So while the others debated next steps, Bo contacted SysTech she knew in the Society of Martians.

This group had cut their teeth messing around in the archaic systems of the later bird years, and they were the ones, for example, who created and maintained the black channels.

When the new protocols came along, they were also the ones getting massively overworked trying to fix all the bugs and patch all the coding errors.

But while they toiled in exasperated frustration, they started compiling a list of exploitable vulnerabilities they discovered along the way.

And this is the list from which the vital hack that muted orders from the executive mainframe came from.

Now luckily for the Martians, these CISTECs had had a running discussion going amongst themselves about what they would do if, hypothetically, satirically, Mars actually declared independence.

What would have to happen to stop Earth from accessing Martian mainframes?

And those conversations led to proposals, ideas, and suggestions that bit by bit got cobbled cobbled together into a stable architecture for a firewall.

What became the firewall?

There's a great book about this click of cis text by Marigold Beckett called The Firewallers, the Digital War of Independence.

When Clarice Bow messaged to say the executive mainframe needs to be restored, but we absolutely cannot let Earth back into our systems, they pinged back,

Well, we think we know what to do.

And they got to work.

Up in the director's suite, the Martian Advisory Council was debating what to do.

More conservative members like Adelaide Stance said we should focus on restoring order and securing approval from Earth for reversing annulments and ending deportations.

But more radical members like Omar Ali and Mabel Dorr herself said we should go further than that.

Werner has already said no to even those minimal demands.

It even is a negotiating tactic.

We need to demand more, not less.

So we should add to the list full autonomy for Mars Division and demand the resignation of Timothy Werner.

We'll tell them otherwise the railguns will sit silent and no more phosphide will ever leave the surface of Mars.

Then a message pinged back from Werner.

It ignored any of their minimal demands and said instead, Avajang has been removed from her position as director of Mars Division for gross incompetence.

I am taking direct control of the situation.

All Martians will stand down and return control of Olympus to head of security Boris Haptow, who will exercise authority and supervise the restoration of order.

Werner clearly had no idea that at that moment Boris Haptow was sitting in a conference room under armed Martian guard.

This at least convinced even Adelaide Stance that demanding Werner's resignation was now vital.

We cannot do business with this man anymore.

And they knew that if they ran negotiations exclusively through Werner's office alone, they would get nowhere.

They needed to send out a message that could be received by everyone everywhere.

Send it out on every official, unofficial, personal, public, or illegal channel they could tap into.

The entire solar system needed to know what had happened on Mars.

Omar Ali then said, we shouldn't just stop with alerting people beyond Mars.

We should call for them to join us.

Clarice Beau said, well, no Earthling is going to join us.

And Ali said, I'm not talking about the Earthlings.

I'm talking about the spaceshipers.

They've suffered under the new protocols just like us.

They control the space between us and Earth.

If they are on our side, there is literally nothing Earth can do to us.

We all know the shippers.

We've worked with them.

We know what their grievances are.

We should ask them to join us.

This suggestion met with general approval.

Certainly couldn't hurt to try.

They needed all the friends and all the help they could get.

And so they hastily drafted an address for Mabel Dore to record and then broadcast.

She She said,

We, the people of Mars, have been pushed too far by the abusive mismanagement of Timothy Werner and Omnicor.

They now reap what they have sown.

We Martians have taken control of Mars.

We demand that all annulled contracts be reinstated, that all deportations cease, that Timothy Werner resign as CEO of Omnicor, and that Mars Division be made autonomous under Martian authority.

And then she went on to say, we also stand in solidarity with the spaceshipers, who form the vital lifeline between Earth and Mars and who have been just as grievously mistreated as us.

We say to you out there in your ships, join us.

Together, we control the Phosph that keeps Earth alive.

Let your demands become our demands and our demands become your demands.

And until such time as those demands are met, not a single additional shipment of POS5 will ever reach Earth.

And to the people of Earth, please consider what that means for you and your way of life.

We eagerly await confirmation that our demands have been met.

Just as they uploaded and broadcast this message, Marcus Leopold, Ivana Darby, Zhao Lin, and a handful of others arrived at the door of the director's suite.

The guards tried to block their way, but everyone in the room, including Ava Zhang, knew who at least some of them were.

Leopold and Darby especially had been thorns in the side of the legal department for years.

When they came in, Leopold said, We come as representatives of the Martian Assembly, which meets now in the Commissary.

We have just declared independence.

Adelaide Stance said, That's preposterous, you can't just do that.

And Zhao Lin said, Okay, well, we did.

Stance asked on whose authority?

He said, On the authority of the Martian Assembly.

We see that you just broadcasted a list of Martian demands on whose authority did you do that?

Stance said, On the authority of the Martian Advisory Council.

And then Leopold said, the Martian Advisory Council is just that, an advisory council.

You have no more legitimate authority than we do.

We're beyond all that now.

We make our own legitimacy now.

Then Dorr said, you're right, we do.

But the demands that we have just issued will give us independence in all but name.

But at the moment, the logistics and consequences of declaring independence are simply too vast to contemplate.

And I think you well know that if we are making our own legitimacy, that I am by far the most recognizable name, face, and voice on Mars.

I like the idea of a Martian Assembly, and I hope that we can all work together for the benefit of all Martians once we've secured autonomy.

But I'm not going to declare independence.

I do not think that is the way to get what we all want.

Maybe someday, but not today.

The representatives of the self-declared Martian Assembly knew that Dorr was right about at least one thing, that her voice carried more weight than the rest of them put together.

That's why they had just come to get her to join their Declaration of Independence in the first place.

They were about to push the matter harder, but then were interrupted by a message.

Everyone assumed it was from Werner, but instead, it came from the commander of Convoy Group 9 in orbit above Mars.

He wanted to speak to Mabel Dorr.

He had just watched her address and wanted to know if she wanted to know what the spaceshippers would demand in exchange for joining the noble people of Mars in their efforts to earn the respect that they deserved.

Well,

isn't that a development?

When the three days of red broke out, there were 58 FOSS-5 container ships in orbit above Mars.

They were joined by about 200 independent civilian cargo ships, all of them in various states of offloading, onloading, or simply standing by.

They had all been monitoring the situation on Mars since the standoff at Stockade 7 began, and while the official channel said there's a minor security situation but everything is fine, nearly all of them had unofficial contacts among the Martians telling them a very different story.

As I said two episodes back, when the Martians formed the Second Society of Martians in response to the new protocols, the spaceshippers had developed their own networks of increasingly seditious grumbling.

One such network formed inside the officer corps of the container fleet, the other formed among the captains of the civilian cargo ships.

The two networks had points of overlap and contact, and both of them had contacts with members of the Society of Martians.

Over the past few years, they had all compared grievances and possible responses with each other, forming the basis of what was essentially a frack the Earthlings alliance.

It was from those contacts that the officers on pretty much all the ships in orbit above Mars were kept abreast of what was happening on the surface.

And it was something really big.

Now we know that sometimes in history, big structural forces inexorably demand certain outcomes.

But other times, it comes down to the individuals who were in place at a certain moment in time.

And that brings us to the commander of Convoy Group 9, Axel Cartwright.

Axel Cartwright was born on an orbital platform above Luna in the year 2190.

He was a third-generation officer in the FOSS-5 container fleet and was destined from birth to follow his parents and grandparents into the service.

He graduated with top marks from the academy and rose quickly through the ranks of the fleet, thanks both to his family connections and his own excellent performance reviews.

But the thing about Cartwright is that though he was steeped from birth in the life of a container fleet officer, he did not have tunnel vision about his life and career.

He read widely, not just history and politics and economics, but also literature and poetry.

He followed current events on both Earth and Mars, and certainly had opinions about both.

He came of age during the period of geriatric drift in the later bird years, and was frustrated with the general dereliction of duty he saw everywhere in Omnicore, even if the container crews themselves were somewhat insulated from the worst of it.

But it felt like watching a great power in decline, like he was serving as an officer in the last days of the Roman Empire.

One of the things he concluded was that power dynamics inevitably shift.

Kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall.

The only constant is change.

And the trick was to know how to navigate your way through a collapse, if such a collapse was indeed underway.

In 2234, Cartwright was promoted to commander of Convoy 9, 20 container ships that traveled as a group, along with whatever civilian cargo ships requested to join them.

Now during this period, convoy commanders could exert some influence over who captained the other containers in their convoy.

And over the years, Cartwright ensured that people he liked and trusted were in charge of the other ships under his overall command.

It just made things easier.

When Werner and the new protocols arrived, they set off a wave of outrage that swept through the container fleet from senior officers all the way down to common crew.

Morale was plummeting.

Most of the senior officers were limited in their mentality to the immediate issues of pay and benefits.

But when Cartwright joined these off-the-record encrypted discussions, he would nudge the conversation in a more political direction.

You know, we're the linchpin of this whole operation.

Without us, not only does Omnicore collapse, but civilization on Earth collapses.

Ought we not take some notice of what a powerful position we sit in?

Perhaps that's worth more than just better pay.

Among his own captains, Cartwright did not just nudge these conversations.

He led them in the direction he wanted to go.

Cartwright then watched events on Mars closely.

He now had much higher security clearance and knew about the day of batteries and bloody sunrise.

He deplored how the Martians were being treated.

He had spent time there.

He had made friends there.

After the new protocols led to the formation of the Society of Martians, Cartwright had contacts among them too.

He was appalled at how badly Warner was mismanaging the situation, not just on a human level, but also the effect it was having on Phosph production.

Cartwright read the logs, the real logs.

He knew production was in steep decline.

So Cartwright saw in the nascent Martian struggle against Werner possibly the beginning of a sequence of events that would rewrite the power balance in the solar system.

He knew his history.

These things had happened before.

So, Cartwright's off-the-record encrypted communications were not just with fellow spaceshipers and Martians, but also representatives of other corporations on Earth who were always eager to hear about cracks inside Omni-Core and how they might be exploited.

More romantically inclined chroniclers of the Martian Revolution love to speak of destiny and fate.

But let's be real.

It was simply a coincidence of scheduling.

The Commander, Axel Cartwright, was in orbit around Mars when the three days of red exploded.

Official communications kept reiterating the line that yes, there is a security situation on Mars, but everything is under control, please stand by.

But Cartwright knew that wasn't true.

He was following along as best he could thanks to his Martian contacts.

He knew something was happening down there.

But then, even communications from his contacts became irregular and spotty and confusing.

The next thing you knew, they picked up a message being broadcast from Mars.

It was a vid from Mabel Dorr, who Cartwright was well aware of and had even met once at a reception.

He watched with great interest as she not only laid out Martian demands, but invited the spaceshippers to join them.

Cartwright decided to return that call.

So back down in the director's suite, the message came through.

Hello, this is Commander Axel Cartwright.

I would like to speak to Mabel Dorr.

Would you like to know what the spaceshipers might demand in exchange for joining the noble people of Mars in their efforts to earn the respect they deserved?

Mabel Dorr said yes.

Cartwright said, I have always had the pleasure and privilege to work in partnership with both the leaders and the workers of Mars.

We all share the same critical task of delivering to Earth that which they need most.

And instead of treating us with dignity and respect, they treat us with miserable contempt.

So, on behalf of the spaceship,

I would like to further demand the restoration of all previous pay and privileges for the officers and crew of the container fleet, a doubling of the table of rates for the civilian cargo shippers, and an additional annual bonus equivalent to one-tenth of one percent of the value of what we transport to and from Earth each year.

Now, one-tenth of one percent does not sound like much, but given the total value of FOSS5, trust me, this is an astronomical thing he's asking for.

Cartwright then said, let your demands be our demands and our demands will be your demands.

And until we are both satisfied, the 20 ships of Convoy 9 will not leave Mars and Earth will receive no more FOSS 5.

Back down on Mars, Mabel Dore and the other leaders heard this and responded with a mix of excitement and a little trepidation.

It would be incredible to secure an alliance with the spaceshipers.

That's what we want.

But Cartwright is asking us to lock ourselves into demanding Omnicorp peel off a huge amount of credits and hand them over to the shippers.

Dorr said, well, it's no more audacious than demanding autonomy for Mars Division.

Which is when Adelaide Stance said, yes, and we probably shouldn't have done that either.

And in fact, I am washing my hands of all of this.

I will not be a party to this madness anymore, and she stormed out of the room.

But the rest agreed that it would be worth it.

If they could win the shippers over to their side, it would only improve the chances of securing what the Martians wanted.

The bargain struck.

Cartwright then sent a signal to all the ships in the fleet.

He said,

This is Commander Cartwright of Convoy Group 9 in orbit around Mars.

I have been in contact with the Martians.

As you have now no doubt heard, they control Mars.

They demand no more than what they are owed.

They demand no more than what they deserve.

And I for one believe believe that they are in the right.

Timothy Werner has not only treated the Martians with callous disdain, he has also treated the spaceshipers with that same callous disdain.

After much reflection, I have decided to join with their demands.

The annulments must be reversed, deportations ended.

Timothy Werner must resign as CEO of Omnicorp, and Mars Division must henceforth be autonomous.

On behalf of the spaceshippers, we demand the restoration of all pay and privileges to the container fleet, a doubling of the table of rates for the civilian cargo shippers, and an annual gratitude bonus amounting to one-tenth of one percent of the value of all that we carry each year.

This, frankly, is a bargain, and I call on the Board of Directors of OmniCorps to recognize how easy it is to bring this crisis to a conclusion.

And I speak not of the crisis on Mars.

No, I speak of the crisis on Earth.

Because until such time as our collective demands are met, no more Phosphi will reach Earth ever again.

My COM channel is open for all ships who would like to join me.

This was obviously a shocking thing to come over the line.

Cartwright's transmission first reached the ships around Mars, then the ships that were in transit between Earth and Mars, before finally reaching Luna and Earth.

Cartwright's comm channel immediately blew up.

mostly with other commanders saying, what the hell, have you lost your mind?

Then, after the requisite delay getting the transmission to Earth and having Earth respond, came a direct order to Cartwright's first officer.

Relieve Commander Cartwright of his duties immediately and place him under arrest for mutiny.

But Cartwright's first officer was his first officer for a reason.

He was with Cartwright, not against him.

Now, it would have been an incredible turn of events if all the spaceshipers had come over all at once in a mass mutiny.

But Cartwright himself was under no illusions that would happen.

But he figured if even 50 container ships, plus as many civilian cargo ships as possible, mutinied against Omnicore, then that would be enough to force the board of directors to bend.

And he already had the 20 ships of Cargo Group 9 in hand.

They were all loyal to him.

They were all with him.

And so Cartwright and his subordinates started weeding through all the pings they were getting.

No, no, no, you're insane.

No, I support what you're asking for, but no, no, not like this, no.

But every so often, yes.

We're in a 10-ship convoy on the way to Mars, and we will rendezvous with you shortly.

And then, back to no, no, no.

But then, yes, we're one ship, but we're breaking away from our group and turning around.

In the end, the total number of yeses was 37.

Not quite as many as Cartwright had hoped for.

But then, a transmission came through from one of the convoy groups that had said no, and this transmission said, we have relieved our commander of his duties and placed him in the brig.

We stand ready to join you.

So that brought the total up to 44.

Now through all this, Cartwright was also getting pings from the civilian spaceshippers.

And here, it was the opposite of the container fleet.

Here it was, yes, yes, yes, yes, frack them, yes, screw the bastards, yes, yes.

Mostly if a civilian spaceshipper was a no, they just didn't seem to respond at all.

And among those who pinged yes was the young captain of a cargo ship called the Dapple that specialized in boutique wares, and that captain's name was Booth Gonzalez.

The mutiny of the spaceshippers was a formative moment in the course of the Martian Revolution, because what we are watching right now is the formation of what will become the Martian Navy.

For the moment, they were simply joining an aggressive protest to secure concessions from Omnicorp.

But in short order, the spaceshippers will be driven into even deeper rebellion, and even more spaceshippers will join them in the aftermath of, well, we'll get to all that, won't we?

Next week, however, the Martians will continue their argument about independence, because while Commander Cartwright had interrupted them, they were not done with that debate.

They will also set about restoring order on Olympus by organizing the Martian Guard.

And you also may have noticed that when Mabel Dore issued her demands, she was bluffing a little bit.

Because while the Martians did now control Olympus, they did not control all of Mars.

So, next week we will turn our attention to Tharsis and Elysium just to go ahead and make this whole story that much more complicated.

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