by Orion, W. J.
“I’m seventeen, and that’s plenty old enough to make moves in the wastes. This is no bluff and it’s no hoax. I promise you; give me a fair chance, and you will not regret it.”
He dropped the barrel of his rifle away from her vicinity and assessed her. She stood proud against his scrutiny, letting him see her confidence–and defiance. She waited for him to answer.
They’re thinking about letting me in, she sent to Trader Joe.
That’s good.
I thought so. How close are you?
I can’t say exactly, but I did have to follow you for perhaps two minutes. Does that help?
It does, thank you. Yasmine managed to remain still, waiting patiently as the gun-wielding man at the chain link gate turned to speak with one of his allies. They whispered for a bit, growing heated at a times, then they went silent. The man with the gun returned his attention to Yasmine as the person he spoke to departed, slipping through a crack in the fence’s gate. They ran up the hill in the heat of the late morning.
“I’m gonna send one of my people up the hill to see what they say. You sit tight, don’t do anything weird, and we’ll see what they say.”
“Do you mind if I sit?” she asked him.
“You wanna sit in the dirt?”
“Unless you got a chair hiding behind that chain link fence,” she said, and dropped down into a cross-legged sitting position in the middle of the old dirt road. And now we wait.
Chapter Seventeen
Diplomacy, Version 1.0
Handful of people coming down the hill, heading in my direction.
Are you threatened?
Yasmine assessed the six shawl-draped figures approaching alongside the original guard who’d left to deliver the rifleman’s message. They clustered around a central feminine figure wearing the only outfit that looked designed with intention; she wore a beige duster, with a red and green striped scarf wrapped around her face and neck; for a hat, she wore a fedora similar to Trader Joe’s. The woman moved with swift intent, and the others fought to keep up.
You’d like this woman. Great taste in hats. Go-getter.
I do have an affection for your local hat styles. Give her my best. Is this person the leader?
I think so. She just came through the gate with a crowd around her, Yaz thought to Trader Joe as she got up from her seat on the ground. Wish me luck.
“What’s your name?” the woman asked in a deep, tobacco-roughened voice.
“Yasmine Whitten.”
“You’re with the Monoliths?” she continued, adjusting the red and green scarf to cover the lower portion of her face better.
“You could say that.”
“I’d rather you said that, but let’s pretend you did. You’re a little small to be a Monolith. Are you really here to try and barter for the crab ship we’re squatting on?”
“I am.”
“What in the hell makes you think we’d trade one of the most valuable possessions on what’s left of this dusty ball? We’d be a few sandwiches short of a desert picnic to even consider that, and to entertain the idea with a kid who still wears a training bra… no dice. Thanks for coming,” she said, and started to turn away.
“We can trade you food and water. Medicines too,” Yasmine called out as the woman and her retinue turned to leave.
“We can get aspirin from any trader, kid,” she said, dismissing the offer and continuing to leave. “You want a world-class prize, you run a world-class race.”
“We can trade you a vehicle. A truck, or a van,” she shouted.
The woman and her crew stopped at the rifleman’s position. She looked over her shoulder. “Not even close to approaching a fair trade, but you are on the right track. You have two minutes of my time to convince me you have what we would need. Go.”
“The way I see it, you can’t give the ship up for two reasons: one, it’s worth a fortune to the right people, and two, you believe that if the right group gets their hands on it, they’ll use it to get some payback on you for shooting it down.”
“Not bad. Smart for a freshman,” she said.
“Thanks, I think. So, in order for you to give that crab ship up, you’d need value for dollar, and you’d also need a safe exit strategy. Without an ejection seat, there’s no reason to take anything in trade,” Yasmine explained.
“You have my attention,” the woman said, turning fully to face Yasmine.
“So I bring that to you. I can offer you a four-vehicle convoy. Trucks and vans–armed with machine guns and stocked up with enough fuel to make it back to the Station, or as far north as you can take ‘em on this peninsula.”
“What’s the Station?”
“Fuel traders just north of the city. You can get there and trade for more fuel and run until you get bored of it. You can also just use the guns, become marauders of the wastes, and get your gas any other way you like.”
“What’s to stop us from taking your trade and turning those guns on you?” she shot back. “Get the trucks and keep the ship.”
“For one, I think you’re better people than that,” Yaz said. “Beyond that, we are not the kind of people you screw over on a trade. Word would get out about what you did and the rest of the Monoliths would find you. No other settlement anywhere near here would touch you with a ten-foot pole after double crossing us.”
“Sounds like a deal with the Devil,” she said.
“Or a pact with some angels,” Yaz replied. “We’re the good guys, and we know you’re the good guys, too. We need that ship. We’re gonna do good things with it.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
She approached Yasmine in the road, slow and measured, with her hands crossed in front of her, gloved fingers interlaced. When she was a few arm’s lengths away, she stopped.
She has bright blue eyes.
“What are you going to do with my spaceship?”
“We’re going to fix it up, fly into outer space, find the crab fleet, and take our water back,” Yasmine said.
She looked at Yasmine long enough to make the girl squirm with unease. Just as Yaz was about to lose her poker face, the woman laughed and clapped her gloved hands together. She sighed after a bit and looked back at the people who’d arrived with her. They shared in her laughter.
Yasmine stood, impassive, waiting for their condescension to fully mature.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” the woman asked.
“Of course. What else would we need a spaceship for? We’re not going fishing with it,” Yaz said.
“You might’ve been able to convince me of a trade if you’d just left your reasoning as salvage for parts. I might’ve bought into the idea if you’d said you were going to drag it back to some mad scientist lab to be reverse engineered. I think I could’ve even bought it if you were just hoping to live inside the thing, but fly it? Nah. I can’t co-sign on that idea. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because it means one of two things: you’re completely bat shit crazy, and that’s dangerous, or you’re in league with people who can fix it, and that means you’re working with crabs; and that, my patient, cute, little failed-trading friend, I cannot abide.”
“Wait,” Yasmine pleaded, sensing the deal failing. “You don’t understand. We’re not crazy. We’re… we’re able. We’re fighting the bad crabs and we’re winning. We can do this.”
“I don’t doubt that you think that,” the woman with the scarf said. “And your sincerity makes your stated intentions that much more insane in my eyes, kid. Go back to your city, little Monolith, and rock back and forth in the ruins, dreaming underneath your tinfoil hat.”
“If you don’t trade it to us, we’ll take it by force,” Yaz said, trying to sound steely.
The woman in the red and green scarf tightened. “Is that a threat? Are you threatening my people?”
“No, I’m sorry,” Yaz said. “But we will. We’ll hate it, but we’re going to do what we have to. We’ll hate
every moment of it, but we need that ship to get the water back, and we need that water back to save this planet and all the people who are still alive on it. We came here looking to make friends, ma’am, but if we can’t work something out, we’re gonna leave here having made bodies.”
“Try it, you little ass,” the woman grumbled. “I should have Doug here shoot you just for saying that. You know, we won’t roll over so easily. How many crab ships have the Monoliths shot down?”
Yasmine had no answer ready before the woman continued. The memory of the ship Trader Joe helped destroy outside Shant slipped her mind.
“Exactly. You come here trying to take what we earned and I think you’re gonna leave more than a few of your friends up here, and you’ll leave empty handed.”
“We can’t afford to fight each other like this,” Yaz said. “There are too few of us left, and the stakes are too high to waste time spilling our blood in the sand. We have to trust in each other. Find friends instead of enemies when we meet. Please, I’m begging you. At least tell me something you actually want that I can bring back for us to discuss. Give me something I can try and figure out to get that ship from you, fair and square.”
“Bring me crab corpses. Show me six dead crabs from Sturgeon Bay, and I’ll give you that ship with a damned bow on it. Until then, go pound sand.”
“You know crabs blow up when they die, right? I can’t exactly drag them here if we were to take them out.” Not that I would.
“I’ve seen it more than once, kid. Up and close. Sounds like you have a problem to solve.” She turned to walk back up her hill.
“Wait,” Yasmine said, pausing the woman once more. “What’s your name?”
“I forgot my real name a long time ago. No one alive now that my name would mean anything to anyway. My people call me ‘The Teacher’ now. Safe trip back to your tower, Yasmine. Give your Baron my regards.”
They left; and this time, Yasmine didn’t try to stop them.
The man with the rifle shooed her off and chuckled with the two guards that had been there from the start. Yasmine sighed in defeat and turned, walking south down the road back towards Sturgeon Bay. After a few minutes of contemplative silence as Yasmine put one booted foot in front of the other, she reached out to Trader Joe.
Didn’t go well.
Was blood shed?
No.
Then it didn’t go that bad either, Yasmine. What was the final stand of it all?
The woman refused the trade. Said we were in league with the crabs or crazy.
She’s not wrong about either accusation, but those traits are rather charming, given our circumstances in this world at the moment, Trader Joe said. Did she make any counter offers we could reach?
I finally got her to admit that she’d give us the ship if we brought her the dead crabs from Sturgeon Bay.
We can do that.
Yeah, well, we’re not doing that. No one is dying over this, Yaz said.
We shall regroup and come up with a battle plan. Perhaps one that doesn’t involve actual battle.
I can make this work. I can do it. I just… I didn’t expect her to be so… ornery. She surprised me with her anger. I won’t be surprised by her again.
I believe you, he said.
I’m not going back, Yaz said to him. I’m gonna leave their sight and figure out a way to convince them. I can do this.
I don’t think that’s a good idea. We should return and talk it over with your uncle and the crabs.
If my uncle finds out what this Teacher lady said, he’ll immediately want to attack. I can still do this. Let them know I’m okay and that negotiations are ongoing.
Don’t be foolish, Yaz.
I’ve got you as backup. What could I possibly have to worry about?
Chapter Eighteen
Unity, or a Lack Thereof
“Insurrection against the galactic order is what we’re talking about,” Benno said from his position floating above the water at the isolated far shore of Nexus’s polar lake. His tremulous voice resonated outward from his spherical, tendril-covered mass. “The Accordance has protected this station for generations. To act against its intent could bring galactic catastrophe.”
“We did not agree to anything in that pact,” one of the three Perenall envoys said. Eight feet tall (as well as around) and physically built like a cluster of tree branches emanating from a central fleshy torso, the trio of Perenall sat idle on the sand beside the lapping water. With no face to look at, they seemed almost more like foliage than participants in the conversation at hand. “We must act. It is immoral to allow these tentacle-dragging brigands to do what they are doing unmolested.”
“What do you propose, tree?” a transparent cylinder filled with white smoke–a member of the race known as the Umbrals – asked, using a voice box mounted in the mechanical base of its levitating encasement.
“The Collective has focused on an area of unregulated space that brings them through our system regularly. Another fleet of their harvesters approaches our home system to pass by soon. We Perenall propose that we use the proximity of that crab fleet to engage in guerilla warfare. It is high time that the races of our worlds do something about them.”
“And now is the time?” Benno, the floating Irib’dirari asked. “Best case scenario for an action such as this is… what? You destroy or capture perhaps a dozen of their freighters, kill a few thousand of their colonies, then what? That is just one of their fleets, and who is to say how many fleets they have? The crabs will surely come to the Perenall system looking for justice. Your collective planetary defenses couldn’t hold off the power of a large-scale crab invasion. You’d lose your water too. All for a scratch.”
“This,” the Perenall tree-creature said, still unmoving, its branches and leaves swaying in the breeze created by the Nexus life support systems, “is why they reign over us. No one is willing to stand up to them. All of us fear that one day they will turn their hungry gaze our way. But you see, one day they will run out of easy worlds to pillage, and then they will have no one else to rob from but us again. We must take a stand before their predations tear our galaxy apart any further.”
“We agree that action must be taken, but the Perenall don’t have the fleet power to take on the crab harvesters you speak of, let alone the entire might of their empire. If the Ravager escort cruiser currently docked here joins them, the Perenall face twice the threat,” the Umbral’s voice box crackled.
“We would need assistance from other races,” one of the tree people said. “And more specifically, from the Nexus.”
“The Nexus is impartial in all things,” Benno said. “We offer the unbiased court, and the races using our wormholes must abide by the non-aggression treaties we enforce; but we provide no material assistance to any side of any conflict. We shut down wormhole access to any species at war, as you all know. The founding races of the Triumvirate are the same. To take any action such as this would violate the credibility of all we have worked for.”
“I do not ask for material support,” the tree said, its leaves moving gently with no breeze. “Nor overt support, nor a declaration of any kind. I ask that perhaps, when the time comes, the wormhole leading to our system suffers mechanical failures. Buy our forces enough time to defeat the harvester fleet before their cruiser departs here to offer protection to it. Even an hour of delay could swing the battle in our favor.”
“And what if the crabs connect the wormhole failure to the attack? The timing coincidence will be undeniable. They will turn their ire towards the Nexus,” Benno reasoned.
“They cannot. They rely on the services the Nexus offers and could not afford to lose them,” the Perenall envoy explained.
“Unless they aim to take over the entire station, and administer it themselves,” Benno said. “And don’t think for a moment that those tentacled bastards haven’t suggested that scenario casually, as if it was the natural, inevitable order of the galaxy. We exist to serve them, if only
to save them the time and trouble of running this space station themselves.”
Silence sat amongst the gathered plotters like an evening fog. None could quite think of anything they could say to cut through it, to give them a path to follow.
“If they’d only accept arbitration in the court,” the Umbral said. “Let someone crush them on the battlefield here and send them back to their ball of dirty water for good. What about the Sarpalans? Fresh off their win?”
“Perhaps,” the Perenall agreed. “They stand to lose much to crab aggression based on their geographic location.”
“The whine of the last three hundred years,” Benno mused. “And nothing has changed. The crabs don’t need to submit to the authority of the court. They don’t need its protection and know that they could supplant it if they had to, or chose to. They will never fight in the arena for summary judgment.”
“I have six Thornstrike cruisers waiting,” the Perenall said, “plus seven Bramble fast-attack destroyers and our Spore assault carrier. We measure that enough firepower to capture or destroy half of the harvester fleet. We would need an equal amount of martial power to ensure a fast victory or to defend against the crab cruiser.”
“The Umbrals will grant you six Nebula frigates,” the transparent canister of smoke said. “And we can assure you that the other races of the Mulgorod Coalition will offer a similar amount of assistance. They are preparing as we speak.”
The circular balls of pulp and leaves ruffled their thanks.
“This is not the moment,” Benno said. “Your strike against the crabs, it will fail. Your vision is admirable, but shortsighted. Now is not the time.”
“If not now, when?” the tree people asked. “What celestial calamity must we wait for?”
“Unity,” Benno said. “You do not have enough unity. The races of the galaxy are still too fractured and broken in their resolve to do anything about the crabs. You must form a great coalition–one that could overwhelmingly destroy the crab fleets, take control of their worlds to administer them, and still maintain law and order in the populated systems. You do not have the unity.”