"True, but that wasn’t what I meant. I really don’t want to show anyone how advanced our guns are. In fact, being able to survive being hit by theirs is also too much information given away. So let's be discrete, and get in and out without being noticed."
"Ten four."
Jane shot a glance at him.
"Sorry. Old habit. Don’t know where it comes from."
Jane knew. She inwardly cringed at why.
"It wasn’t so much what you said, as how odd it sounded in Owl. Be careful what you say. Just about anything could give us away as not being the species."
"Roger that."
He cringed immediately, but Jane smiled.
They walked into a huge hall, populated with booths, all selling something, but according to the information display on the wall by the entrance, most were selling some variation of the drug tailored for specific species.
The two of them wandered for a while, observing the buying and selling procedures. Jane was relieved to find there was no central money of any kind. Most booths displayed a comparison guide for varying amounts of the drug, in dozens of different forms of currency. The currencies varied according to the species the drug was best for. But what made Jane feel happier was most of them also bartered for anything of value, as long as the two parties could agree on an exchange rate.
The stick insect had made it quite clear that while the plant and drug were instantly addictive, not all species could consume the plant. While some could eat it as a vegetable, others were forced to smoke it, inject a liquid version, or combine it with something specific, in order to make it non-lethal. And it was lethal to many species in any pure form. Just as lethal as not getting it at all. Hence what looked like thousands of different variations.
"I've got this," said Jane. "You go get the stick insect's stuff. Meet you back at the ship."
"Fine."
He turned, and headed for the nearest exit. Jane looked around for a booth with Owls buying. She spotted one a short distance away, and moved to join the short queue.
While she waited, she paid attention to how much each Owl was buying, and what they paid in. Also to the way they used their bodies to pay, and collect the drug. The drug itself, she noticed, was packaged carefully so no accidental exposure could occur, even if some major accident happened. The not addicted were obviously taking great care to not expose themselves.
Jane had done a lot of buying in her short life, mostly using avatars on freighters, sometimes in some strange places all over human space. Human space that was. But this was something else.
"How much you want?" asked the vendor.
"Ten standard," said Jane.
"How you pay?"
Jane reached into the bag with her right hand, and drew out a small pouch. From it, she extracted a small diamond with her neck arm hand. She passed it over. The Owl placed an eyeglass to its left eye, and examined the diamond.
"Two."
Jane had expected this, and extracted a second diamond of the same size. It was examined, obviously passed, and the Owl handed down ten packages. Jane accepted them using her left hand, as she'd seen others doing.
"Next."
Jane deposited the packages in her shoulder bag, along with the pouch, and headed towards another booth, where she joined another line. This one had a stick insect vendor.
"How many?" asked the vendor when it was her turn.
"Three," said Jane.
"Why this variant?"
"Prisoner. Need to keep him happy for a while."
The being made a noise which Jane interpreted as laughter.
"How pay?"
Jane reached into her bag and brought out a small ingot of gold. She passed it up. The vendor dropped it on a set of scales. The attached screen lit up with a set of numbers. The vendor turned to Jane.
"Superior grade. Too much for purchase of three. You want more, or make change in inferior metal?"
"How much more?"
"Seven."
"Happy prisoner sing longer. Done."
The sound came again, and the vendor passed down seven packages. Jane pushed them into the now almost full bag, and turned away.
She'd almost made the exit, when she heard gun shots.
Forty One
Fred woke to find Justine standing at the bottom of his bed. He very quickly made a tent with his left knee. Jane ignored the tent. She'd seen more than that already, but wasn’t going to tell Fred. It would only encourage him after he got over his shock. Or so she thought.
"Rise and shine sunshine. You have a vid to watch."
"Something funny?"
"Something important."
He pulled the sheet over his head, and turned over on his side, gently.
"Don’t make me get you up."
"Fine, I'm up. Give me five, and I'll meet you in the dining room."
He made it in six. Jane didn’t comment. He sat and a butler droid put his normal breakfast in front of him. He munched for a minute.
"You mentioned a vid?"
The wall lit up, to show Jane, with some older man he didn’t know.
"Fred, we have a situation out here. You need to know about it in advance so you can prepare for any negative reaction in council. The aliens we encountered here are drug producers, responsible, according to one being we saved from imprisonment, for the addiction of billions of beings across this galaxy."
Fred was awake now. He didn’t stop chewing, but his attention was on the vid.
"I'm sending a vid for the council to view, as I need their mandate to take any action. The purple flower we encountered on planets beyond G014 is the origin of the drug. For humans, this plant itself is poisonous to the touch, and tests so far indicate the belt suit may not provide adequate protection. It's vitally important you push for a blockade in G014 to ensure no human civilian ships encounter the plant. You also need to support my proposals for moving the fleet into G025, and the ground force into G023 for an eradication campaign. If we can successfully remove the plant from a planet it's already on, we may eventually be able to colonize them. If not, we may have to consider sterilizing the planets."
Fred's jaw was hanging open now.
"There will be calls for me to send the data about the plant and the drug. This can't happen. If the drug were to be synthetically produced, and managed to break containment, it would be catastrophic. Where I am now, one more ship with addicts on it is good business. I don’t intend to fall victim, but if it happens, better here than in Gaia space."
She looked down at him with a serious look.
"Brief our allies Fred. Humanity is on a knife edge as it is. But now we find our nearest neighbor has the means to wipe us out. Now is not the time for hotheads to call for war. We need more information. We need confirmation from others deeper into this galaxy of what the true situation here is. In the meantime, we need to quarantine the rest of this galaxy, while we attempt to determine if we can remove the threat from other planets. Our fleets should be sufficient to the task, and so far, no-one knows we have more than the ships I have with me, or even where we came from. We'll keep working on the drug at this end looking for an antidote to the poison, or at least, a vaccine to prevent it being poisonous on first touch. Ideally, I'm hoping for something we can adapt to save other species, but we'll need more data for that. One of my requests will be permission to seek out what we need."
"We got a break, in finding all this out before G014 was seeded. It gives us expansion room for now, and a buffer zone between us and our neighbors. All I need is the council to sign off on what needs to be done. Your job is to make sure they do. Jane out."
The vid ended, and Fred sat there, his mouth still open.
Several hours later, Fred paused the vid, since no-one could hear Jane over the uproar what she'd said had caused. He looked at Jane-Justine, sitting beside him. She was taking a very long moment, head down, thumb and first finger of her left hand holding the bridge of her nose. Beside her, Sarah was face-pa
lming. He looked across to the Gaia twelve, and they were all sitting there quietly, looking bemused at the rest of the chamber. Madam Chair was unsuccessfully trying to bring the chaos under control. He continued looking around, and found Queen Liz sitting there laughing. He wondered what the joke was.
A file pulsed in from her. The ping which followed, said "Put this on the vid."
He looked at her, and she made a show of covering her ears. He grinned, nudged Jane and Sarah, and covered his own ears as they looked at him. Looking across at the Chair, and the Gaia twelve, he grinned at them, waggled his hands, and clamped them tightly over his ears. Nine of the twelve did the same as fast as they could, and the rest followed. No-one else noticed, although the rest of the British delegates had already followed the example of their Queen.
The screech which blasted through the room a few seconds later, completely stopped everything else. It lasted seconds longer than was comfortable for anyone. Hands began to lower from ears tentatively once it was apparent it had actually ended.
"Thank you Baron Hunter," said Madam Chair. "But on this occasion I think most of us would have preferred Colonel Henman shooting someone instead."
Fred and Jane lost it, followed by Queen Liz.
Jane stood. She was given leave to speak.
"I appreciate the news has shocked this chamber, and I understand why so many of you are calling for war. But let me be quite clear about a few things Admiral Jane has said."
She looked around to make sure she had everyone's attention. She did.
"We are not at war with anyone. Nor is it in our interests to declare war on anyone in this galaxy. Not unless they do so first, and only if they are aggressive. You all should be aware of just how vulnerable we are at the moment. Most of our people are on stations. It will be months before we resettle most of them. One single missile through their shields with the toxin these aliens have in their possession, would wipe out all life on that station. They must never be given an opportunity to find us. The fastest way for humanity to commit suicide is to go to war right now. Are you really suicidal?"
She looked around the room, and made eye contact with a number of the previously most vocal people, until they shook their heads.
"The aliens have no idea where we came from. We have the block point to their space more than adequately defended against the forces we already know about. Unless the aliens determine where we are, and send a force an order of magnitude larger than so far seen, we are quite safe from them."
Her eyes swept the room again.
"I suggest we listen to what Admiral Jane wishes us to authorize her to do."
She looked at Madam Chair, and received a nod, and looked the nod on to Fred. He skipped the vid along a small way, and started it playing again.
"Delegates," said Jane from the wall, "there are things to be done, and I need to know which of them you will authorize me, my fleets, and the ground forces to do. First, we need a blockade in G014 to prevent any ships leaving our existing space. The risk of encountering and being infected by this toxic drug is too high to take any risk. Becoming infected results in both addiction, and a lingering death. The death is faster if the addiction is not fed. Once dead, the body is still infectious. Therefore, we must prevent any ship leaving our space, and in the event one does make it, should it return, it must be destroyed."
A rustle swept around the room, but no-one spoke.
"We have civilian ships already exploring outside Gaia. They must be warned to stay out of G014, or be destroyed. Second, we need to move warships into G025, to give ourselves a buffer zone. The fleet will need to cover two jump points instead of one, but our ground forces won't be needing more than a token escort. Third, we need to send our ground forces down to the G023 planet, where they must attempt to eradicate the plant and animal the drug comes from. If we can cleanse the planets in twenty three, four and five, we gain more planets for our people. If we cannot, the situation becomes a lot more dire."
"Fourth and most importantly, I need to seek out the closest galactic government, which I'm informed is about three days further into the galaxy from where I am now. We need to find out what the situation really is, and if we are welcome or not in attempting to deal with the situation on our end. I could simply wage a war here now, shut down the drug production where I find it along the way, but I'm told billions will die as a result since there is no cure. Waging such a war may even be worse than the reason for waging it. I will not act in such a way without knowing the full consequences. We may have to fight our way there, but I intend to avoid a fight wherever possible. Should one happen, I believe I have sufficient ships and firepower to prevail, although I'm glad the big ships I have with me don’t have crews. The risk to them would be too great. The three of us have already been at risk and managed to stay unaffected, but this is as much a matter of luck, as anything else.
"I need you to authorize me, and the two with me, as diplomats for humanity. I will attempt to keep communications functioning, but should the comnavsats be destroyed behind me, I will have to continue on without any oversight by the council."
She paused, but the room remained silent.
"I await your instructions."
Forty Two
Ding!
"So the drug sensor part of the freight scanner works now?" asked Walsh.
"Seems to."
"I've never heard of the tech."
"Very few have. Friend of mine came up with the idea, and some tech people modified a mineral scanner to scan inside of ship's hulls. Jon then tweaked the programming for detecting drugs and a few other things."
"Was this Jon your lover? You keep mentioning him."
"PAT!" yelled Darlene in the distance.
"Sorry," he said, "didn’t mean to pry."
"Not lovers, no. Just very good friends at the end. More like a brother than a friend, in truth."
Ding!
"Are we going to hear this with every ship we pass?" he said, changing the subject before it became really awkward.
"Probably."
"Why make it then?"
"The fleet back home need it. It's vital no ship carrying the drug in any form gets into our space. Ours or anyone's."
Ding!
"Can we turn that off now?" asked Darlene.
Jane laughed. They were still sitting on the ground next to the downed alien ship, which of course was close enough to set the detector off if the scanner was turned on. She turned it off. The specs for the modifications she'd made to the scanner, and the code for detecting the drug, was sent to each of the AI's, with instructions to build enough of them to equip the whole fleet.
"I think we may need to leave soon."
"Have we outstayed our welcome?"
"We never were welcome."
"True."
She watched the monitors as ground forces closed in around Concorde. On the HUD, she could see the fleet which had previously engaged them, forming up in orbit overhead.
On the ground outside the cargo bay airlock, the aliens they'd stunned were waking up again.
"One last try to talk to these people."
"People?"
"Sure. Better get used to aliens being people."
Walsh shook his head, and followed her. As much as he tried, he couldn’t fault her logic.
Down on the ground, they approached the alien Walsh had shot earlier. It watched them approach, but didn’t speak this time.
"Greetings," said Jane, in its language, causing quite a bit of shock to those listening. "Why did you fire on us, when we were attempting to meet you peacefully?"
"You are in our system without the proper protocols. All know to enter our space without our permission is punishable by death."
"We didn’t know. We're new to this end of space."
"Your mistake then. You should have stayed home."
"Ah, no," said Walsh quietly. "The mistake is yours."
"Ignorance is no defense anywhere."
"Naked ag
gression without bothering to talk first is simply arrogance."
"You are the aggressors. We are simply defending our space and business interests."
"Why do you run drugs?" asked Jane hurriedly, to stop Walsh saying any more.
"It’s a business, like any other business."
"It doesn't bother you killing so many people who can't get ahold of your drug, or cannot afford it?"
"Why should it?"
"Is your whole species involved? Or is this just some group's operation."
"You really are ignorant. Each family runs its own operation, and competes for the best zones. We look forward to finding your people, and including them in our zone."
"Have you heard of karma?"
"Who are they? Is that what you call your people?"
Walsh face-palmed for a few moments.
"We are leaving now," said Jane
"You have our prisoner. You will return it."
"No, I'm afraid that won't be happening. We'll be taking it back to where it comes from."
"You will try."
"You will try to stop us?"
"We will stop you."
Jane stopped herself from delivering the 'you will try' line back at the smug looking alien, and she nudged Walsh as he opened his mouth so he wouldn’t either.
Jane shook her head.
"Come on," she said to Walsh, and turned towards the ramp up to the cargo bay.
She'd taken only a single step when she went flying forward, landing in a heap. She was up again and twirling before Walsh could reach her, Long Gun already coming up. Sensors locked on to the position of the shooter, a sniper rifle coming into focus as she looked that way, a face behind it. Her Long Gun spat a single pulse, and the shooter went down.
Jane lowered her gun, watching troops beginning to appear all around them. She looked back at the alien they'd been speaking with.
"It's your choice. The wreck of this ship is as solid as it is only because I held back when you attacked me. If your people want to die, continue to provoke me. I will defend my ships, and from now on, the gloves come off. If you continue to attack us, we will destroy those who do so. Leave us alone, we will leave you alone."
Admiral Jane (A.I. Destiny Book 1) Page 16
