"Any more questions?" asked Jane.
"Are you going to turn those off?"
"Not until someone surrenders this planet to me. I want to see a representative of all the families as soon as possible, and if I so much as see a single gun within the city when we meet, I'll leave and reduce this city to rubble from orbit."
"Do it!" came from the ground. "Do it now. This being is insane, but it can do what it says."
"I'm not authorized to get the family representatives together."
The Owl on the ground leapt to its feet, anger now replacing terror.
"No, but I can. Do it now, on my authorization."
"Oh if I must."
"YOU MUST!"
"No need to yell."
Warspite was face-palming.
"Hurry it up," said Jane. "Once these guns have chewed through this building, they will start on the ones next door."
"We're wasting our time here," said Warspite. "Let's just go. Nuke the planet from orbit, and be done with them for good."
He turned to head back to the Lightning, but the remaining Owl started screaming abuse at the Owl on the hollo, and the latter finally started getting family representatives together.
Warspite smiled at Jane, and she nodded back. She knew he'd been joking, but the Owl hadn't.
"Will you please stop shooting?" yelled the Owl, when it was finished with the flunkey.
Jane raised an eyebrow at Warspite, he nodded reluctantly, and the turrets stopped firing.
Fifty One
An hour later they were sitting at the head of a long table.
There were more than fifty Owls at the table, and each one represented a major family. At the other end of the table, was the designated spokes-Owl. They all had drinks in front of them, mostly half emptied already, and plates of what looked like biscuits were placed along the length at intervals close enough to allow all of them to reach one without stretching too far.
The noise was unbelievable. Every Owl was yelling at every other Owl.
"Shut the fuck up!" boomed Jane, in Owl.
The room went silent.
"You." Jane pointed at the spokes-Owl. "We move to the center of the table, now."
They matched action to words, Jane and Warspite rose, and moved down to the middle of the table, where two Owls jumped up. Flunkeys hurried to swap the chairs around. They sat again, this time with the spokes-Owl opposite them, and in conversation range.
The noise started up again. Jane locked eyes with the spokes-Owl, and it banged a block of wood hard on the table. The noise stopped.
"How do you stay upright with only two legs?" asked an Owl somewhere down the table.
"How can you feed yourself with only two arms?" asked another down the other end.
"What are you?" asked the Owl next to spokes-Owl.
The rest of the gabble quietened on its own this time.
"Are you the Humans?" asked spokes-Owl.
"Yes," said Jane. "Our species is called Human. But we have two political entities now. I am Queen Jane of the Kingdom of Hunter's Run, and the other is the Human Federation. You are currently at war with me. I'm here to end it."
"War?" asked a different Owl. "What war? We didn’t authorize a war."
"Your ambassador to the sector ten council declared war on us a few days ago."
"Nonsense," yelled someone else.
Jane cast around for the room's computer system, found it unguarded by any sort of firewall, connected to rudimentary wireless, and took it over. The wall screen slid down, and she started playing her encounter with the ambassador, beginning with her pleas for them not to jump their warships through.
"How are you doing that?" asked spokes-Owl.
"Easily," said Warspite.
A mutter went up along both ends of the table, but all eyes were glued to the screen. They watched their invasion fleet be turned into dust. They watched Jane stun her way through their diplomatic ship. They watched their ambassador declare war.
"Idiot!" yelled someone, and the whole room erupted again.
"How big is your ship?" yelled spokes-Owl at Jane.
Jane threw an image of one of their Cruisers on the screen, and then placed Concorde's Ride next to it. The room went silent very quickly again.
"It means nothing," yelled an Owl at the far end of the table. "They're so big, they need bigger ships to avoid bashing their heads as they walk around them."
The room erupted again.
Warspite mimed using the screen, and Jane nodded to him. He enhanced the rail gun, and removed the rest of the ship, then did the same with a Battleship turret. You couldn't quite fit the whole rail gun inside the barrel of the bigger gun, but it would have been close. When the noise didn’t stop, he compared the size of the solid slug against the size of the energy pulse. When that didn’t work either, he played the image of one gun firing, and the warehouse building vanishing into dust.
The room went quiet again.
"What do you want?" asked spokes-Owl.
"Peace," said Jane.
"You've got it, now go away," yelled someone from the other end of the table, and the noise began to go up again.
"And you ceasing to distribute poison to the rest of the sector."
The room exploded in noise again.
Jane looked at Warspite, and they shifted up into AI mode.
Between sounds, it was very peaceful all of a sudden.
"What is wrong with these beings?" asked Warspite.
"If I didn’t know better, I'd say they were all on drugs."
"Their drug?"
"I wouldn’t think so. None of the other species seemed to be this hyper. It does remind me of several human conditions though."
"Which ones?"
"Really old ones, like six hundred years ago, when humans ate and drank what they liked without any real concern for if their bodies could handle it or not."
"Could there be a comparison here?"
"Could be. You want to research their history, or their medical situation?"
"History please."
"Fine."
Both of them brute forced their way into the city computer network. Warspite found the historical archives, while Jane started working her way through medical facility records, since there were no centralized medical systems. When she completed the city records, she expanded her search to the whole planet.
The two of them sat there completely immobile for two minutes, before any of the Owls remembered they were even there. Two minutes was a long time for any being to remain totally still, and an even longer time for no-one to notice you hadn't moved. But for Jane and Warspite, used to taking a few nanoseconds to do mind things in, sixty thousand million nanoseconds going past on the same task, was an eternity. Two eternities for two seconds.
They both came down to Owl speed at the same time, at least within a few nanoseconds of each other, not something an Owl would notice, and they face-palmed together.
"What is this hand over face thing you’re doing?" asked spokes-Owl, and the noise level began to drop again.
"We've done some research using your computer systems since we arrived," said Jane. "We just received the results. The hand over face thing is something we do when something we find out makes us want to get two Owl heads and bash them together to see if they work better afterwards."
The Owls on each side of them rose quickly and backed away.
"Why would you want to do that?"
"Can we ask you some questions about your species?"
There was silence now. Something about bashing Owl heads together seemed to have had a silencing effect.
"I guess so. If we don’t like the question, we won't answer it."
"Oh," interjected Warspite, "we know the answers, we just want to find out if you do."
The Owls all looked confused now.
"Ask then," said an older looking Owl, a little way up the table.
Jane flashed a product sales image up on the screen.
>
"Is this what you're drinking here and now?"
"Yes, of course."
"All Owls drink it?"
"Most do yes. If not that, then one of its competitors."
"How long ago did the average life span start dropping?"
"What?" asked eleven Owls all at once.
"I've no idea what you’re talking about," said spokes-Owl.
Jane and Warspite made eye contact. Both their hands twitched as they suppressed face-palming again.
"When did you start cultivating the purple plant?" asked Warspite.
"About two hundred years ago. That’s basic history. Every Owl knows that."
"Why did you start?"
"A trader brought it to us. Said it made a wonderful drink. It did. It’s the basis of what's in this drink on the table now."
"Would you say you're addicted to it?"
"Of course not. We just love the stuff."
"Is this what you introduced the rest of the sector to?"
"No. They hated it. We had to take out a lot of what makes it so tasty before they would even try it."
"And once they did?"
"They tell us it addicts them. No-one in two hundred years has been able to convince us of that. It's so obviously rubbish."
"And you make a huge profit selling it to them, and why would you question that?"
"Exactly."
Jane threw another image on the screen.
"What's this?"
"That's a weed," said an Owl further down the table quickly. "Fortunately there is a small market for the plants we pull out."
"But they tell you not to pull them out until the berries are ripe, don’t they?"
"True. I've often wondered why."
The urge to bang heads together was getting more and more difficult to suppress. Jane threw up another image and looked at the same Owl.
"Same with that plant. Same buyers."
"Who represents the buyers of these?"
An Owl raised a hand. Jane gave it a long look.
"And what do you do with them?"
"Trade secret," the Owl muttered.
"You put it in this," Jane pointed to the drink glasses on the table, "and all its competitor beverages, don’t you?"
"How did you know?"
Owls were looking bewildered now.
"Okay," persevered Jane. "Let me get this straight. About two hundred years ago, a trader introduces the purple plant to you. You find it grows really well, and when mixed with other things, it becomes your mainstay beverage. You try to export it, and no-one likes it, so you strip it down until you find something they do like, and ignore their claims they are now addicted to it."
There were a lot of nods. They obviously knew their recent history.
"So as the addiction spreads, demand for your product increases, so you expand growing. And since you don’t need much of the two crops you used to specialize in, you start pulling them more as weeds instead of cultivating them. Over the course of two hundred years, you spread through your local space, then start subjugating nearby species, before turning your attention to new systems you find through a previously unknown jump point. The seeding operation is going well in the new space, when suddenly you encounter a new species who stops your expansion dead in its tracks."
"You."
It wasn’t a question, and the spokes-Owl looked really serious saying it.
"Us. Humans. So as soon as we appear, you attack us. And you keep attacking us, even though your technology is half a millennia behind ours."
"We didn’t authorize a war!" yelled an Owl down the far end.
"Nevertheless, you have been waging one against us. What you have to come to terms with now is, at the very least, we can destroy every shipment of your poison trying to leave your space, and bankrupt all your businesses."
"And at the most?" asked the older Owl.
"We can render this planet uninhabitable," said Warspite.
Jane braced herself for an outburst, but the room remained silent.
"But you do have choices," offered Jane.
"Explain them," said spokes-Owl.
"Firstly, there is significant evidence your species is slowly killing itself. In the last two hundred years, your average life span has declined from eighty of your cycles, down to fifty three."
"How does this become a choice for us?"
"Humans dealt with the medical issues you face some six hundred years ago. While our bodies are vastly different, the underlying biology isn’t dissimilar. I'd be very surprised if our doctors couldn’t quickly find a way of reversing your degenerative body issues. In fact, I can tell you how to stop it from continuing, right now."
"How?"
Jane picked up the nearest glass, and flung it over the head of spokes-Owl, where it crashed against the wall hard enough to break. The remaining liquid inside it splashed across the wall and the floor. She scanned the biscuits, and quickly threw the nearest ones after the liquid.
"You want us to stop drinking our favourite beverages and eating these biscuits?"
"Yes. You're all suffering from degenerative organs leading towards organ failure, of those organs which remove excess sugar from your bodies."
"That’s ridiculous" said the weed buyer Owl.
The word Sugar had translated. Jane threw up an image of the Owl's raw product, just so they knew for sure what she was talking about.
Now spokes-Owl didn’t look the same. He shot an annoyed look down the table, and then looked back at Jane.
"You imply our beverages and food are overdosing us with this stuff?"
"Not only that, but you are also addicted to one of the additives, which is also the same thing which produces a cure to the purple plant, which is why that plant isn’t killing you. We call it Caffeine."
"Say that again?"
"Look at that Owl," said Warspite, waving down the table. "It knows exactly what we're talking about."
All eyes looked at the Owl, which started to look nervous.
"Humans once had a series of drinks and products," said Jane, "which all contained large amounts of caffeine. Caffeine is addictive. Several of the beverages encouraged putting large amounts of sugar in. Others contained large amounts. And the solid food products also contained large amounts of sugar. Sugar in large quantities for long periods causes a lot of medical problems. One of these was called Diabetes, and if untreated, led to the organs for removing waste products from the body shutting down causing early death. Before that, the eyesight is affected, feet deteriorate, and all sorts of other side issues occur."
She looked around the room, and saw recognition in a lot of the faces.
"Yes," she added. "Most of you are suffering advanced Diabetes now. It also accounts for serious mood swings, argumentativeness, irrational decision making, inability to recognize reality from what you want to believe, and a lot more issues. It explains why you fight before asking questions, and why you come across as arrogant, argumentative, and obnoxious."
She braced herself again, but the room was still silent. She noticed no-one was drinking anything.
"You can all change yourselves, by simply stopping eating or drinking anything with either sugar or caffeine in it."
"Easier said than done," muttered the older Owl.
"I know. But we can offer medical help."
"Will you?" asked spokes-Owl.
"We are still at war."
Spokes-Owl looked up and down both sides of the table, getting nods.
"The war is ended. Will you help us?"
"Yes, but I have conditions."
"State them."
"You remove the purple plant from your worlds completely, and stop producing any form of the current plant or drug."
"And if we don’t?"
"I'll do it for you. We have a cure, and spraying a planet with the cure, kills the plant. Any animal ingesting it, is cured, although the craving remains for a time after. You can do it willingly, or I'll do it anyway. Regardless,
no poison will leave your space from now on."
"We'll be ruined."
"No, you won't. I can ensure we will all be getting really rich."
Now she had their complete attention.
"How?"
Jane threw the images of their two weed bushes back onto the screen. She also on a hunch, found another image and put it up there as well.
"Our weeds and rodents will make us rich? What stupidity is this?"
They were all looking confused now.
"The rodent is apparently a delicacy for a Cat species we met recently. One is on our ship at the moment, and in exchange for stocking his ship's freezers, I'm quite sure he will be happy to arrange export of as much of these as you can ship to his homeworld."
A number of Owls were looking like this was the stupidest thing they ever heard, but several of them had Gals in their eyes.
"The image on the right is used to create a product we call chocolate. It’s a high sugar product, but made the correct way, it is one of the most delicious products a human eats, without being more than a minor medical threat. Billions of humans eat this daily, and right at this time, our suppliers cannot keep up with the demand. Stocks will begin running out very soon.
Eyes turned into Gals all along the table now. The word billions seemed to echo around the room.
"The image on the left," went on Jane, "is what Humans call Coffee, and this is the every morning beverage of choice for TENS of BILLIONS of us."
Fifty Two
The Corporate food production stations were in G023 now, being the Human end of their string of four systems. A city was already in the early stages of being built on the planet below, but for now, corporate entities were still based in space.
The blockade fleet had divided in two, and were now at the two outjumps in G025. Jane had taken control of a security droid on Yorktown, and borrowed a Lightning.
After docking at one of the food production stations in G023, she'd given herself access to everywhere she needed to go.
With a completely new look, this time going for young and sexy deliberately, Jane walked into the office of the CEO of the main beverage producing corporations.
"Who the hell are you?" asked Hyrum P. Anderson, the third. "And how the hell did you get into my office?"
A.I. Destiny 2: Queen Jane Page 20
