Free Sentinels of the Cosmos Trilogy by John Anderson, Marshall May

court that can
carry out true justice; even the President and political
leaders from the whole world only made
recommendations. The principle was that there must
be a consensus among us . Why has this change been
made?
”Charles sits back in his chair, pauses, and looks at
each member around the table before speaking, and
says, “Because Doris died, that’s why. And the
President does not completely trust the organization
without her involvement. In other words he does not
trust us, and there is nothing we can do about it at this
point. He is now going to be meeting with other
world leaders; together they will reach a consensus on
our assignments. He will give us assignments that
need to be carried out. Here is the document, read it
and weep. Why do you think I’m sick, but what can
we do?”
“We could bring this to congress,” Senator Bennett
suggests.
That would mean exposing the entire operation, and
how do you think congress would respond to they’re
having being excluded for 20 years?” Sam offers.
Charles steps in saying, “Thank you Sam for that bit
of sanity; the President is just getting more involved,
that’s all. We have several projects to cover tonight.
Open your folder to number 1456 and you will see
Aziz Torreno. That scumbag was acquitted by an
Italian court because the jury had been bought off by
his father. The Italian Government has requested
justice and asked that we carry it out. Who wants to
handle this one?"
Charles saw Senator Lee from Virginia raise his hand.
"Alright Lee, it's yours - you'll handle all the details,
and you'll use your assigned Guard group."
Senator Lee nodded his acceptance.
Charles said, "Now open folder No. 109, that's right
109, it's a rather old file, the Chase Stern file. Now!
Sam, you are handling this personally?"
"That's right," Sam replied.
Senator Lee coughed and tried to speak: "If I may ask
something here, why was this Guard Chase not
already terminated? My understanding is that he’s not
responding to his assignments."
Charles says, "I already explained all of that."
"You did, when? Humor us," Lee retorted.
"Chase seems to be showing signs of somehow
becoming conscious; I think we should watch him
and see what happens. We should bring him in and
study him rather than terminate him. How stupid to
kill him; it’s obvious that if it’s true it could happen
again so we need to find out what’s causing the
problem and why. Science, pure science,” said
Charles.
Lee was not satisfied with the answer, saying,
"You’re telling us that one of our Guards is no longer
programmable? Are you insane? Get rid of this
thing!”
"Senator Lee, Charles is right, we need to see if we
may have a potentially bigger problem. Killing him
would lose us that opportunity. I've got a handle on
this one," Sam replied.
Senator Kathryn Bennett demanded to be heard. She
was a strong woman; tall, thin, with close cut black
hair and a wide voluptuous mouth, Kathryn had been
working in a man’s world her whole life. She had
sacrificed a great deal to become the U.S. Senator
from Kentucky. The hard chiseled lines on her face
were a testament to the life she had lived. She said
testily, "Robert, Chase is already under my control. I
sent my best Cybarium Guard to fetch him and bring
him back, but there is something else you should all
be aware of. It seems something or someone is reprogramming Chase. We found traces of a new code,
and part of this new code is a new language, like
nothing we have ever seen. Chase is being brought
back as we speak.”
“Good, let’s move on,” Charles says.
“Excuse me Charles but we still need to deal with the
Juan Martinez problem,” said Kathryn.
“Juan is the least of our problems. If someone is re-
programming our Guards that could be a disaster;
think, it could be Russia or China. A new language,
my God! I think we should leave him alone for a
while. He really doesn’t know that much. Maybe
Chase has already