by P H Campbell
Seren looked at the two of them, then replied, "If you two help my people by helping me, we'll be bosom buddies for life."
CHAPTER 2
When it came down to cases, Seren had to know more about how the galaxy worked.
"So now that you're on the payroll, I'd like to know more about what outside of our little area of the galaxy," she smiled. "I get that there's the Shade Alliance, and the United Galactic Worlds, and that you guys are from the Shade Alliance, who plays kind of fast and dirty at times, while the UGW, as you call them, are overly regulated and regimented, but I need a bit more context about what's going on out there. We seem to have something in our system that both sides desperately want. How would the discovery of our system impact the way things are now?"
"Okay, some history here…" Ash began and her sister sat down, crossed her arms and sighed. More history.
"The Shade more or less came into existence during the Fornyth War," Ash related to Seren. "The basis for it began a lot earlier when entertainment facilities started being built around star-ports on different planets, but there wasn't anything organized. When the war came, they converted most of the space ports to military ports to fight. And because the entertainment catered to, well, a lower class of traveler, the entertainment became less and less legal. To avoid getting picked up, tried, convicted and tossed onto a prison planet, the leaders of the communities by the space ports began to organize, pooling resources and paying bribes and other considerations to the local law enforcement establishments.
"Eventually, the military figured out that letting their people blow off steam in an illicit, but mostly harmless, manner was good for morale, and they began to apply some pressure to the civil authorities to let these places – called Starvilles, since they were mostly villages on the edge of a starport – do their own thing. As long as no one got hurt, even if it was technically illegal, the civil authorities let it slide.
"This lasted for about a hundred years – Earth standard, which is now Galactic standard years. Humans were first to bring faster than light travel to the galaxy, so they base time references on Human home planet time frames."
"Good to know," Seren nodded. "So this war between planets lasted a hundred years?"
"They're called the Fornyth Wars, after the race of creatures we were fighting," Ash continued. "It killed trillions. I don't think they ever had a final count there. Both sides ended up wiping out whole planetary systems."
"Was this far from our world?" Seren asked.
"I don't know," Ash admitted. "But it lists your world in a planetary system that's supposed to be unstable and a major radiation hazard. Maybe the Fornyth didn't invade here because of that. Given the resources this system has, from what I know about the war, if they found it, they would have stayed and mined everything. You'd have to ask them about it, though, assuming any are still alive, which isn't likely. Their home-world, and all the brains they had, were obliterated, ending the war."
"That seems rather drastic," Seren remarked.
"From what I read, they had no means of communication with other species," Ash explained. "They didn't use speech. Only a kind of telepathy. They were insect-like…"
"Insects," Seren mentioned. "I only know about them from what the colonists from the Wethersfield have said. We don't have insects here."
"I noticed that," Looie agreed.
"Back to the history lesson?" Seren prodded, noticing things were getting off track.
"Right," Ash nodded. "Well, once the war ended, law and order came back, and our way of life was getting strangled. Ours being the Shade. So, we pooled our money, Mom and us bought a Seeder Ship – that's like a colony ship on growth hormones for a billion years – about the size of a small moon and makes the Wethersfield look like a rowboat next to a cruise ship – and it went from planet to planet, gathering up all the Shade, and brought them to the Shade home-worlds."
"Sounds very much like what the colonists here did," Seren remarked.
"Yeah, well, Mom didn't take the Seeder she paid for," Looie grinned. "The folks who paid for it came looking for it, and things got ugly for a bit. Then the UGW sent in a ship called the Talon, who had a dreamy pilot who used to be of the Shade, who stopped the attacks on the Seeder and helped us become an independent alliance separate from the oversight of the UGW."
"And that's how it's been for the last ten years," Ash concluded.
"So, you're not at war with the UGW, right?" Seren asked.
Looie shook her head, "No, but we compete for some resources along our borders. We're allowed by treaty to expand, as long as our expansion isn't into UGW-claimed space. And they've claimed a lot more space since then. Colonization was on hold while the UGW was fighting the war. Once it came back on, a lot of planets had a lot of excess population looking for new homes. I hear there's still a year long waiting list to even order a Seeder ship."
"We added about a billion people to our system's planets," Ash went on. "We have the space, but our system isn't very resource rich. So we prospect to find places we might mine for the more vital stuff we don't have."
"And this system has everything our alliance needs to get on its feet," Looie added. "I suggested Mom come here, by the way."
"Why your mother?" Seren wondered.
"Her name's Cinder, Ambassador to the UGW," Ash informed her. "She handles the stuff that comes up between the UGW and the Alliance."
"And this planet, and its resources, is definitely "stuff", since it's on the borders between the two, and already inhabited," Looie concluded.
"When can we expect this aid?" Seren asked.
"In the next few days, maybe?" Ash hazarded a guess. "I sent the coordinates, planetary scanning data and locations for ships to get here. Our planet's about a week away in a slow ship. It'll take them some time to put together a rescue team."
"And the UGW?" Seren asked.
"I'd have to plot that, but I'm thinking about twice as long, even with a fast ship," Looie estimated.
"They might send a Scoutship," Ash mentioned. "They're about twice as fast in H-Space as anything else they've got. But I don't think those things are big enough to have the resources to handle what you've got here."
Seren understood some things by concept, and inferred a lot of others the same way, but the terms for most of them were unfamiliar to her. She knew she wasn't dealing with diplomats. The roles of the two females seemed to be somewhat vague. As prospectors, they seemed to be no more or less competent than some Borderlandians tossed into the mines for serious infractions. Their knowledge base seemed to be eclectic, if not entirely complete. They didn't seem to have much organization, but then, she hadn't seen the Shade Alliance in action around a common goal, either. Nor did she know if the two were typical of those in the Shade Alliance.
"I see," Seren nodded. She reached into her satchel, pulled out her pad and made a call.
"Seren?" Thoria, Head of the Borderlandian Council, asked sleepily. "What's wrong?"
"We have visitors from off planet willing to help us with the illness, Thoria," Seren told her point blank. "One's a Human, the other calls herself a Methman – partially human, mostly not. They're prospectors of sorts from a small alliance of planets. There's also a much larger alliance who they're willing to contact to help us."
"What's their price?" Thoria asked. Leave it to a Borderlandian to wonder about payment rather than wonder at the notion there were non-human intelligent species in the galaxy.
"I expect the leverage will be gratitude for free aid," Seren told her. "There's no up-front payments, from what I'm told, for helping – sort of like how we used to do things during the war of the cycle. But I called you to let you know we will implement new plans to be sure we know where everyone who's sick is, and to let them know to expect new orders. Good news orders – no sense panicking anyone. It's a courtesy call. Besides, their spaceship is ten times the size of an airship and it's very much the opposite of subtle sitting in the middle of the airfield.
Folks will see it and talk about it. Thought you should know that, and what to expect."
"That's good news," Thoria remarked, still trying to process what Seren had told her. "How soon will this help arrive?"
"I think about two quads, from what they said," Seren told her. "Different units of time. It might be sooner or later, depending on how fast they can respond. Make sure folks understand that help is on the way, but isn't here yet. So be prepared for new orders, when they come."
"I'll pass that along to the other councils," Thoria promised. "Are they with you now?"
"Yes," Seren turned the pad around to show Thoria their visitors. "The Human is Looie, the Methman is Ash."
Looie waved in greeting, while Ash inclined her head in a nod.
"You two may become planetary heroes," Thoria told them. "For what it's worth, you have my thanks for your aid in this. We can discuss something more substantial in the future."
"That works," Looie beamed.
"Thank you," Ash replied respectfully.
Seren turned her pad around to her again, and said, "I have some calls to make to my staff. I'll call you back once I know more about what we can do, and what we need to do."
"Until then, Seren," Thoria agreed.
The screen went dark.
"What was that?" Looie asked with no grace at all.
"That was Thoria, Head of the Borderlandian Council," Seren told her. "Borderlandians outnumber Electrians two to one, and Electrians outnumber Magentians ten to one."
"No, her species," Looie asked.
"All of us are descended from the Humans who first landed on this planet," Seren replied. "Technically, we're all Human."
"I've never seen a human who looked like that," Looie admitted with her usual lack of tact. "Most of the beings here are short, round and have dark eyes and hair, but they look mostly Human."
"Most of the workers here at Topside Village are Electrians or Electrian Breeds from the Borderlands, which is below us in large, natural caverns," Seren explained. "The Magentians stay in Magentus for the most part. But we have Magentian breeds in the Borderlands, too. That's what Thoria is. She's the current head of the Great Council, too, which has representatives from all three regions."
"So, what do you do?" Ash wondered. "It sounds like you're in charge, but not."
"I'm the mediator," Seren replied. "Because of what I did to end the wars, and what I did after that, everyone sort of came to me to help fix their disputes. For years, I was on the Magentian Council, mostly leading the recovery efforts. When we found the Wethersfield, and needed a place to put those colonists, we realized we needed more coordination between the three regions. So we created the Great Council to run things, but I'm only ever called in to settle disputes, or lead special projects. Like dealing with the epidemic.
"In the end, it means they usually listen to what I have to say," she concluded with a shrug.
Looie and Ash looked at each other for a second.
'She's holding back something,' Looie mentioned.
'I know, she told me she does magic, but let's not push it now,' Ash suggested. 'She's got talents we don't know about. Best not to piss her off.'
'Good plan,' Looie agreed.
"That's an interesting thing you two have," Seren observed, hearing the interplay between the two.
"Wait, can you hear us?" Ash asked, confused.
"I sort of sense brain activity, and that's unlike anything I've ever sensed before," Seren replied.
'Only someone with the genetic trait can project it, but anyone can hear it if it's projected to them,' Looie told her, her voice in her mind sounding somewhat different from her aural voice.
Seren sensed the brain activity a lot more clearly that time, better understood how to accomplish the trick, then focused, and replied, 'Oh, so it's not that hard to do.'
The volume was thunderous, but it was mindspeech.
"I am officially freaked out, and oddly turned on," Looie admitted conversationally. Turning to Seren, she asked, "How'd you do that?"
"That's a result of having done magic," Seren told her. "When you spoke to me in my head, I got a very clear idea of how you did it. If I find out how something can be done, I can do the same thing with the right technique. It's not the same magic as what I could do with the cooperation of the entity, but it's the magic I told Looie I could do while you were talking to your mother."
"Can everyone here do that?" Ash wondered.
"No," Seren assured her. "Only fully human people can, at least that I know of, and only if they've learned how to do it, more or less."
"Is it a mutation or something like that?" Looie asked.
"If it is, it doesn't show up in my genome," Seren told them. "I had it analyzed about a year ago after we found the colonists, and there wasn't anything overly unusual except for the trait that let me talk to the entity."
"How many people can do magic now?" Looie inquired, realizing that while Seren never told a lie, she didn't tell the whole truth much of the time, either. The woman was smarter, and shrewder, than she'd thought.
"Two," Seren replied. "The other one is the chief director of the medical efforts to combat the illness, and she's the only adult human with the virus so far."
"Bad medical practices?" Looie asked and then said "Ow!" when Ash kicked her under the table.
"Probably nothing she could have avoided," Seren replied evenly.
"You and she are a couple?" Ash said more than asked. "I've seen that look on the face of someone talking about someone they really care about who's not doing well."
"Yes, we are," Seren agreed. "In addition to my other duties as overseer of the total effort, I took over as chief director of her division. And before you ask how I could do that, it's because I inadvertently taught her the techniques and understanding she needed use the same magic to push all her knowledge, and memories, into my head, too."
'We need to tell Mom about this place,' Ash remarked to Looie.
"Full disclosure of what she's walking into wouldn't be a problem," Seren shrugged. "I expect convincing her it's the truth will be the major stumbling block."
"I wasn't talking to you…," Ash noted in mindspeech.
"You shouldn't be able to hear that," Looie added aloud.
"I know," Seren agreed, pressing home a point about honesty and openness. Gathering her arguments, she continued, "It's nothing personal, but anyone I deal with here needs to understand that I will do anything and everything I can to save my people. That will be openly and honestly. I expect open and honest with those I deal with. The more you folks know what I can do, the more likely we'll stay open and honest. Magic can do things genetics doesn't. It's not much compared to what I could do before, but I'm pretty good at working with what little I have."
"What could you do before?" Looie hesitantly asked.
Seren manipulated the pad, then displayed a holo of the Central Transfer Hub, now called The Dome. She expanded it to full size, encompassing the entire room.
"Look up," Seren urged them.
The two did and saw the reinforced steel dome above them. It could cover half a small city, kilometers in width and height. It was a marvel of engineering for such a backward society.
"What are we looking at?" Ash asked.
"My home," Seren replied, pointing up at the dome. "I created that dome in a few centis – which is a very short time. First, I caught the roof shattered by a magical attack as it was collapsing, set down what I could where it wouldn't damage anything, then pushed it all back up, brought out all the steel I could grab with my mind, and created the dome," Seren told them evenly. "I had to ward off a magical attack against me because the other magic workers, who don't do magic of any kind now, wanted me dead. I upset their balance of power."
She switched off the pad, and the hologram disappeared. Getting their attention, Seren continued, "Our people have suffered ten thousand years of nearly impossible struggle, and a thousand years of war between the Electrians,
who didn't use magic, and developed technological means to fight, and the Magentians, only a few of whom could even hope to approach my level of understanding, and magical ability, but were equal to the combined might of the Electrians.
"The battles took place over the Borderlands, because the Electrians and Magentians wouldn't let the attacks hit either side. The Borderlandians had nowhere else to go since the pure-bred races wouldn't let any of us live in their lands because we weren't pure breeds.
"We went underground because living on the surface was tantamount to suicide. And we lived with the ever-present threat of cavern collapse because of the fighting. Tens of thousands of us died every war. My first job was as an apprentice triage medic – again when I was nine. Most Borderlandians know how to set a fracture, staunch bleeding, or know when it's too late to save anyone, and move on to the next person they can save without hesitation, regret or remorse.
"Borderlandians are a hard, practical people who lived with death all their lives. And now we have death visiting us again, a kind of death we haven't been able to stop or hide from or even treat very well. And this is killing our youngest and most precious resource – all of our family. On this world, family comes first. We are desperate, even if we're doing everything we can to fight back.
"Hard, practical, desperate people will do anything to save family."
Deep space was warmer than her tone of voice. She paused, letting that fact sink in.
"I can't do that dome-making kind of magic anymore," she continued with a timing eerie in how effective it was, "but I've learned how to get things done that are equally impressive by different means. We are backward, back-woods, technologically primitive people by your standards. But don't underestimate our will, our resolve or our abilities."
The two women sat wondering how they had been so efficiently reduced to sitting in complete and total awe of the backwards, back-woods, technologically primitive individual who had outsmarted, and out-talented them both.
"I think I get why you're in charge around here, Seren," Ash admitted.
