security considerations

Jo Zebedee

Jo Zebedee

Aliens vs Belfast.
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blah - flags. So many flags.
So, following expert advice, I've gone back to the sequel and left the blinking WIP alone for a while.
Which means I have a new, shiny, blinking WIP to annoy everyone with...

I have a scenario where I have a first family: titular Emperor; daughter who is his only heir; partner, who is head of state; and her brother.
They are very very security aware, so I know that having them all on the same ship for an interplanetary transfer is never going to be believable. (see how far I've moved on in the 6 months here....:p)

The problem is I really need them all on the same transport - going from palace to more secure desert compound - so I'm thinking, very loosely, of some sort of emergency which means they have to leave a palace together in one transport. How big would it need to be? i know eg. the royal family do this, and the president and vice president; would sabotage of one of the ships be enough, or would this close things down even more?
 
It seems unlikely that a group of people that never travels together is to be found to be at a single location where only a single vehicle is available to them when they wish to depart.

What happened to the (up to four) vehicles that brought them there? If they needed refuelling, for instance, wouldn't this be done one vehicle at a time? (Perhaps not, if the four retinues are at loggerheads, and so never coordinate anything.) And is no-one else there? Or did they all arrive on foot? And if the main players do have separate vehicles, they'd all make their way to their separate interplanetary ships. (These wouldn't all be kept together, for the same reasons the people aren't.)
 
It would surely depend on the threat -- security people know that an attack on castle A can simply be a feint to get the VIPs to move so they can be killed en route elsewhere. Sabotage of a vehicle would instantly make them suspect that the point of it was to get everyone together to be wiped out in one go, so they wouldn't risk it.

However, if every transport were destroyed/near-destroyed and the security team were fighting the would-be assassins inside castle A and someone manages to hotwire just one vehicle, then the immediate threat might outweigh the risks of having all the imperial eggs in one basket.
 
It really depends what the emergency is. A few ideas:

If the palace is under attack and falling down around them, they might be cut off from the other ships and forced to go with only one.

If the palace was on fire the flames might block them from getting to the other ships.

If it is a riot, then the mob might block them from the other ships.



If it was just a threat for security they wouldn't use the same ship.

The sabotage method would be a bit strange, and they likely wouldn't go to the one ship that worked because they would believe the owner of the ship was the one who sabotaged theirs, since it is the only working ship.

All being on one ship would make good tension for the story, at each other's necks and such.
 
Didn't want to bore with the details, but here goes.
Two of them are based at the palace, two at the desert compound (this the Emperor and his daughter, so they need 2 ships each time they travel.) The planet is treacherous for interplanetary travel (strong desert, twisting winds, nearly impossible to fly in - sorry Alc, still there. :eek:), and it requires special pilots to fly across - 2 on each flight, I thought.
At the start of the scene they're all at the palace and they need to get to the compound, whether preplanned or emergency isn't critical.
To get the four of them to the compound I figured 2 ships; one with the Emperor and the head of state's brother, who fronts up security, and one for the head of state and the daughter (I'm figuring a head of state can be replaced, but the daughter is the blood heir, and they're terribly keen on such things.)
They'll have arrived on ships; there is no way to walk easily between both.
To finish the picture there is a private docking area at the palace for one ship, so I could close the port, but I used it in the first book, so I am trying to avoid.


So, i took too long to type. The port is easy enough to block access to, so that might work, a fire, or a malfunction in security... but it still leaves me a bit of a repeition of the first book.
 
What about a coup. Would throw all the planning out the window as they don't know who's on which side.
 
The problem seems to me to be one of routes. Because it could be a potential ascension issue, the protected people would leave by separate routes, with their own convoys and security details. Then they would take their separate flights. There would also be back-up routes.

So, you need to close the routes down and the access to separate ships. Which means a big disruption and serious threat to the any of the protected subjects going that route. A major riot or armed insurrection, as WP suggests, could work. The bodyguard detail will evacuate the VIPs.

The next problem will be to close off access to the other ship(s). Presumably they're going to a spaceport, or similar. Which means that if the other ship is not there, there will be access (small transport, helicopter etc.) to get them to it. So, the other ship will have to be sabotaged/destroyed or access to it denied. If it's at another spaceport, or in another section of the same spaceport, you could have further violence there or a threat call.

All in all, it would normally have to be pretty calamitous.
 
It's looking like I might need to find a new opening scene.. the good news is its the opening one. I do have one written but I think I'd like to have a first one that intro's the new characters, with some action. I shall go off and muse....
 
During 9/11 the US president was kept seperate from the vice president, as were the cabinet and senators. I have watched an hour long documentry where the yanks have well laid plans to keep all their VIP seperate no matter what, for the very reasons you want to get your royal family together, in case they all get knocked off.

Tough one Springs1971, I think there would have to be an outside force to have them change plans and travel together. Or - they all wanted to keep and eye on each other and/or were kept in a group by the evil one so she could easily control them all.

I'm not rich and famous enough to really be sure!!!
 
Does this event have to be engineered by the opposition or are you just desperate for any reason to pit tthem all in the one transport, regardless of reason?

If the latter, it has to be something security couldnt predict i.e. not bombing a transport or setting a fire. Unprecedented natural disaster? Earthquake taking out escape routes? Pilot has heart attack and crashes ship into port?
 
No, it doesn't need to be engineered, although it possibly is stronger if it is. I just wonder, the whole Controller aspect - the specialist/ quite rare pilots - is this a possibility; if they didn't have a full complement, and there was a security alert at the palace? So, it's more dangerous to take the chance for them to go seperate without the pilot than to use the (in this case conveniently 2) pilots available and go together?
 
Now it's just like Thunderball, the Bond film. You can nobble a pilot (drugs, blackmail, sex, threats to family, psychic coercion). It needs to be verrrrrry stormy for them to think it's safer together with only one controller; storm of the century maybe; their normal plan B involves a group of standard pilots they select from, but this one's so bad they have to use a controller.

Maybe throw in a solar flare for good measure :D
 
Terrorist threat - The terrorists explode a bomb in the sun which will go supernova in a short period. Only one of your ships is fast enough to rendezvous with FTL capable ship in orbit before the sun blows.

The rare pilots is a possibility, but one would assume the security planners would have considered that.

If one of your main characters in injured, maybe knocked unconscious, the others would want to stay with them. If the daughter is critically injured the father (Emperor) would want to be with her, as would her husband (head of state). The brother also ?

How about - They are planning to leave on two ships, but incompetent guard leads them the wrong way and they don't realise they are all on the same ship until it's too late to change.
 
springs1971 said:
And a volanco and earthquake... I really need to find an alternative I reckon, this is getting to the point where my verrry thin paper tears.... ;)
Click to expand...

Sometimes you do have more than one disaster, especially if the first one triggers the second. As we saw in Japan last year, an earthquake can be followed by a tsunami, followed by a nuclear emergency. Just don't make it too obvious you're herding all your royal eggs into one basket.
 
i think it needs to be more subtle; there is a plot that will build but not yet, and I don't want to ratchet up the external danger straight away. It may be linked to a plot or intrigue, in fact I thought it probably would be but now I think it's too much for the reader to jump to, too soon. the only thing is, I'm wondering am I starting the sequel too late, in which case this is giving me lots of ideas for a mid point high drama.
 
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