I stared at my comp with disgust. 13 hours correcting idiot mistakes by customers with classic “Gummint School” educations were not the greatest way to “make my day”.

The message was enough to almost stop my heart! I quickly texted Mariana and asked “Just leaving job site, did you feed the dog this morning?” Having carefully concealed the fact that we had had to put down the dog the year before, I was sure it would not be noticed. Being the Vet’s network administrator helped greatly. Give someone something for free and they ask very few questions.

I then went to Grandpas old vault site and pulled out the carefully prepared boxes. Grandpas matched Colt Series 70’s and Grandmas left handed Randalls along with the two AMT Off Duties. Checked qiuckly that there are six mags for each and 500 rounds of .45 ACP per person.

The big Gerber Mark IIs were in there as well as the Bill Kane skinners.

Parking two blocks from the house, I went in through the back gate and retreived the two Max-Ruck back packs and carry bags we had brought home from the service.

I quickly called a friend at work and said “Bob, Mariana and I are going to run over to Dallas for the weekend. Could you watch the place for us? Naw, bussiness for her, hobby for me. Shes got some property in a deal and I want to play at the Dell/HP/Intel memorial. Yeah, see you Monday!” With everyone looking East, we were ready to go West.
I opened the home safe and removed 3 labels “UNWG Communications-Crypto Security”, the only good thing to come from Gummint contracts. Slapped them on the three retrieved cases and called the courier service for expedited pick-upat Mustang Corners.
Out the back door and 15 min. to Mustang Corners. Mariana was waiting there with her emergency kit already changed into her traveling clothes. 5 minutes later the courier pick-up arrived; they were used to this. Drops from here were a standard routine of mine for multi-customer trips. Two minutes after that the boxes were on the the way to HOR/Lancer ramp; with luck they would beat us there.

I changed in the public Rest room and the then it was on the road to Phoenix SkyHarbour SpacePort.

No problem at the check-in, with our bank accounts why? Glad to see that the big guy had actually created the “cruise” and all the relavent references. That made me a little more sure that this guy was not a UNWG plant. We were at max risk at that point.

Then of course, the bad point. Some Security Drone wants to know why Mariana is carrying fifteen circuit boards on the top of her ruck. Her carefully rehearsed answer is perfect, “Ask the damn inventor who can not leave his job behind for a damn vacation!” Looking fairly stupid I show the drone my ID and the microtool kit at the top of my ruck. ” I just could not fit them in the same bag I said and I am working on another patent.” I got the stupid GEEK look we were hoping for and moved on. Funny, they did not look any farther. Give the drones somthing easy to quetion and they think they have done there job
The idiots had missed the real treasure, the fruits of my first patent. A little HP 100020 with 240 Terabytes of memory built on my patent. People thought I had sold too cheaply, they did not know about that little baby. All I needed was a sun to keep it running, it and the four clones stashed throughout our rucks. In every root directory was a lovingly protected copy of “How Things Work”, Grandpas little boy was not going to run stupid.

Paranoid, of course we were. For ten years we had been the “Blue Helmets” best hitters. If we could not see the problem, who the hell could?

Finally arrivaing at HOR we were greeted by an obvious security type flashing StelCo ID.

“LTC Stuart and SFC Stuart I believe?”

“And who is asking?”

“A friend believe me and could you get you hand off of that CIA letter opener?”

Laughing we relaxed and told him we needed to go to the frieght ramp for Lancer.

He then laughed and said “for those three cases strapped on top of your rucks? And belive me, I do not want to know!”

I breathed deeply and relaxed for the first time in ten hours!

Free at last!!!

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