Jane took a seat opposite him, and waited while he repeatedly pinged his security detail. She smiled at him, when he gave up.
"I represent Queen Jane of the Kingdom of Hunter's Run, and my name is not important. How I got in is also not important."
Eyes glanced at her left hand.
"Fine Ms. Not Important, from Insignificant Run. What do you want?"
"Coffee."
"None to be had. You and everyone else wants it. Remaining stocks are tightly rationed."
"You misunderstand me. I'm not looking to buy coffee, I'm looking for someone who wants to buy it."
"Everyone wants to buy it. There is none to buy."
"Perhaps not in our space."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Queen Jane has found an alien source for the beans. They're supply for the moment is low, since they consider the plant a weed. But they are prepared to maximize their production for the right incentive."
"Which is?"
"Credits."
"Of course. And your role will be?"
"The Kingdom will act as a broker, supplying a half way base. The suppliers will ship to her. You will collect from her. This mid-point will be in the HR14 system, which used to be known as A001."
"And what does this cost us?"
"Five percent on the value of each shipment, on each end, charged as a shipping fee through our facility."
"That system is still under blockade."
"Queen Jane will seek to have the blockade lifted. The war with the Owls is over, the poisoned planets are being dealt with, and the trade route to your stations shouldn’t need to be blockaded for much longer. With you lobbying the Federation Council, by the time the blockades are formally lifted, we'll have the transfer facility operational."
"Formally lifted?"
"We've already broken it once, moving stations and people into our new space. We have more stations on the way now, and most of our people are a week behind. Within two weeks, there will be no point in having a blockade, if there even is a point to it now."
Jane could see the wheels going around inside his head. His eyes were lighting up Credit signs.
"What are these coffee beans going to cost me?"
Jane smiled at him, and they began to dicker. Unknown to Hyrum, the entire conversation was being duplicated with spokes-Owl, and with only a mildly annoying delay, the two beings were effectively, and unknowingly, negotiating with each other, both having already agreed to pay a combined ten percent of each shipment's value to Jane.
Several hours later, Jane walked into another office. This time the name on the door was Brian T. Blessed Snr.
"Hunter's Run? Yes?"
Jane nodded and sat. The man's face lit up.
"I was hoping I’d be seeing you. I just got off the horn with Hyrum."
Jane waited for it.
"Please tell me you're going to solve my chocolate problem?"
Jane smiled, and nodded.
More dickering began, along the same communication chain as before.
At roughly the same time, the wall hollo in Doctor Hiram Boswell's office lit up with Jane's face on it. Boswell was the administrator of one of the better medical stations, which had once orbited Earth. Jane was sending this in real time, but wasn’t going to let him know that.
"Doctor Boswell, please excuse my intrusion."
"Who are you, and how did you get on my wall?"
"You won't remember me, as our last meeting was before the memory wipe, but I remember you. I have something for you which should interest you."
"What?"
"I'll assume you just asked what, knowing you as I do. I'm currently in orbit of the Owl homeworld, where they have a serious species wide health crisis going on. I'm sending you parts of the Hunter medical database, which contains research and treatments for various conditions ranging from Diabetes, through Liver disease, to Kidney failure. The Owls don’t have these organs as such, but their symptoms are consistent with all of these Human diseases. The current databases don’t contain much, since they were all cured centuries ago. I'm sending you the data on the Owls, and their historical records."
"What can I…"
He stopped when he realized he was talking to a recording.
"What can you do, I hear you ask?" Jane smiled like she was guessing. "Borgcubia is leaving for Hunter space very shortly. I invite you and your station to go with them as far as the HR14 system, where we will facilitate patients for you to study, and hopefully help back to health. The Owls will pay you for the research, and the development of any cures or treatments. The Kingdom will guarantee your safety, but you don't need to join the Kingdom as citizens. Should you or your people wish to in the future, by moving your station to the other end of Hunter's Run, you will have the entire sector to practice medicine on."
Jane saw his eyes light up, but ignored it.
"We are the most medically advanced species at this end of the galaxy, as well as being significantly more technologically advanced. The Kingdom will soon have a pivotal position in the local sector as far as access to a large number of the species out here. The limits to practicing medicine here are something you will have to find out for yourself."
He was nodding now.
"I'll let you get on with reviewing the data. Once you reach a decision, or if you have further questions, contact Ambassador Meg Henman. If you need more information, just ask for it. I'll have the locals organize it. Queen Jane, out."
The hollo vanished, and a huge amount of data began arriving. He started calling people in. Within the hour, he had Jane-Meg on the wall, and they were discussing the move.
Fifty Three
Walsh walked into the center of the council chamber.
"You have news ambassador?" asked Ganshura, who already knew the answer.
"I do. The war with the Owls is over. It cost them a few buildings on their home planet, and they irradiated their own shipyard so it won't be producing any ships of any kind for a good while, but they were made to see reason."
"I don’t believe it," said the fuzz-ball.
The sight of a fuzz-ball pretending to swoon broke up the whole chamber. Walsh waited.
"Queen Jane discovered why the Owls have behaved as they have been. As a species, they have some significant health issues, which they were not even aware of. Since the Kingdom doesn’t have the medical facilities or people to help, she is trying to organize help from the Human Federation. One of their medical facilities will be moving into the Kingdom at least for however long it takes to help the Owls, and it may be available for any other health issues the sector has. We are negotiating with the administrator about making their move permanent and eventually moving them closer to here. In the meantime though, we will pass along any requests for medical help to them, as soon as they arrive in the Kingdom."
Darlene held up her tablet, showing him they were receiving requests immediately.
"What of their poison?" asked the Mushroom.
"They have agreed to remove it entirely from their worlds."
"How did you manage that?" asked the not-croc.
"We discovered they have several plants which Humans value highly, and trade agreements have been made, which should completely replace the Gals the Owls were making dealing drugs. And this is just for human consumption. At some point in the future, these products will become available for the rest of the galaxy to sample, and it may be some of your people will also find them as delicious as we do. Queen Jane informs me a long time ago, the Owls tried to interest other species in what these plants produce, but none liked them. In their raw form, they are not particularly palatable, even to us. But used as a raw ingredient, they become several products we consider wondrous. Maybe you will to. Once our own stocks are replenished, we will introduce them to your traders, and see if any other species find them as we do."
"When can we obtain samples?" asked the Mushroom.
"Once our main station arrives at HR Prime, an
d we have completed some conversion work on it, traders will be welcome. I have no doubt merchants on the station will have stocks to sell. Which reminds me, we have come up with an automated way of docking your ships safely. As you may know, we dock our ships nose into a station, and have front thrusters which push them back when they undock. We are making tugs, which will grab hold of your ships, and dock them side on with our station airlocks. Unloading will be done using our own cargo droids, and the ninety degree gravity shift will not be a problem for them."
"What if we wish to do our own unloading?" asked the fuzz-ball.
"Your ships will need to be modified to have a front airlock of a suitable size, and the front thrusters necessary for nose in docking."
"When can we book shipyard space?" asked the Mushroom.
"You can book ships in immediately, for work commencing as soon as both our shipyard arrives in HR Prime, and you can get your ships there. We have our own building program which will take precedence, but our second shipyard will arrive with our main stations and the first of our people."
"How many ships can you handle?" asked the Bat.
Walsh had anticipated the question, and had Stryker send him an image of the shipyard already on its way. He waved it to the wall screen.
The chamber went totally silent. The combined shipyard mega-structure seemed to go on forever.
"How big are those pods?" asked the not-croc.
"The smallest are Cruiser sized, but a lot of them are rigged for smaller class ships, including fighters and couriers. Our Lightning class courier is currently being mass produced, with diplomatic shuttle use in mind. The larger ones are Battleship sized, and the largest ones are Dreadnaught sized. We have a single Dreadnaught class ship being built at the moment, being my new Explorer Command Carrier. Once it's complete, I'll be leaving this body, and beginning the task of exploring the sector completely."
"Are your freighters as fast as your warships?" asked a yapping voice.
"The Kingdoms are. The bulk of the Federations are much slower, but still faster than yours."
He could see immediately the ramifications were understood. Slower traders would rapidly find it difficult to compete with faster ones.
"How many freighters does the Kingdom and Federation have?" asked a voice from the back.
"I honestly don’t know. The Kingdom would have less than a hundred dedicated freighters, but many of these are tasked to moving food and resources around, so won't be trading. Of the traders, we'll be tasking quite a lot of them to fetching what the Federation is buying from the Owls. A lot of them are too small for long distance trading profitably. The Federation on the other hand has tens of thousands of dedicated trader ships, in varying sizes. A lot of these will be dedicated to moving food and resources around Federation space, and sourcing food from us. But a huge number will begin to trade across the sector and beyond. While they don't remember doing so, large numbers of them used to trade across a volume of space similar to what this sector occupies, so they'll not find it difficult to cross the distances involved. It's also likely a lot of the ships will become available for hire once the blockade ends."
"When will that be?" asked Ganshura.
"Can we buy Federation or Kingdom ships?" asked the Mushroom.
"I'm not sure. In the normal course of events, Queen Jane would have been discussing the blockade in the Federation Council. However, since we're not on that council anymore, as far as we're aware, the blockade hasn’t been discussed yet. However, several sources suggest more than one request for the blockade to end will be made in the next day or so. It could be a few days, or a few weeks. The main criteria I would think will be the making safe of the planets along the way from Kingdom space to the Federation home system. Last I heard, several of these worlds closest to Kingdom space, were still infested with purple plant. It isn’t the threat it once was, but it is preferred it never gets into the human population at all, rather than dealing with it if it does. To this end, the council may delay removing the blockade until at least that corridor is cleaned, and blockade the systems not yet reached. We will of course be breaking that blockade once again, when our last stations and most of our people pass through."
Walsh stopped, and looked around.
"If I may suggest, anyone who is interested in investigating trade with the Kingdom and or Federation, should arrange to have traders or trading officials in HR Prime in several weeks' time. As it’s a week's travel from here for your fastest ships, this gives those a little further away some time to arrive at the same time as those closest get first docking. We'll announce a timetable when we're sure of how long it will take to complete the modifications to our main station. It might be as long as a month, but it certainly won't be less than two weeks. In any case, we'll have a lot of our production stations in orbit soon, and traders will get a chance to sample our products then. It also gets them along the way to Federation space, so they can continue there, by which time the blockade should definitely be lifted."
"Buying ships?" reminded the Mushroom.
"Once the blockade is down, and the Federation ambassador arrives here with a full embassy, I should think Federation ships will certainly become available for purchase. They are all designed for human crews and may need modifying for species requirements, but each of your people will need to determine if this is a minor job, or requires a shipyard. The Kingdom will consider building new ships, but our ship classes are designed for minimal crews, and in fact, quite a few are drones under computer control. We can adapt designs to suit species requirements, and should be happy to collaborate with your own ship designers to integrate crew needs into our designs. They will of course be more expensive than Federation ships, given the extra speed, our cargo droids the ships use, and the computers on board being significantly more advanced than even what the Federation use. How much we allow to be sold on is yet to be determined, since Queen Jane has been fighting a war, and hasn’t yet had time to address the issue of technology. We may require legal bindings to prevent our technology being on-sold. We may require self-destruct mechanisms in the ships themselves to ensure no on-selling. There are still a lot of issues to be resolved before the Kingdom can properly enter sector trading at all levels."
"Who do we contact?" asked the fuzz-ball, who from the sound of his voice, hadn't been fazed by anything Walsh had said.
Walsh waved Janine's contact details up to the wall screen.
"Thank you ambassador," said Ganshura.
Walsh left. He hadn't made it more than half way to his council seat, when he had a message from Janine.
"What the hell did you just do," she demanded. "I've had a hundred requests for custom freighter build options suddenly come in, and more than two hundred bookings for as yet unspecified freighter upgrades. Jane hasn’t told me we're doing any of this yet. How am I supposed to handle these requests?"
Walsh chuckled to himself, but didn’t bother answering. It wasn’t his job after all. Janine would have to talk to Jane. All he wanted to do was shuck this job and get back out into space.
Fifty Four
Jane still had two loose ends before she could leave the Owl homeworld.
Snark had come down from Concorde, and taken his turn negotiating with spokes-Owl. Jane had managed to speed up his communications with home, but the process of negotiating for Owl delicacies had been a lot slower than Jane's. He'd returned to Concorde with a trade agreement in place, beginning with filling his own larders, and renting part of a Battleship cargo bay from Jane for the first leg of shipping a huge consignment back to his homeworld.
Jane had also agreed to transfer the shipment to one of her freighters when they caught back up with them, for the rest of the journey. Jane had lent him an SR droid, so he could organize the storage of containers in the bay, which didn't have any life support. His suit had provided him with a place to put his pad, which Jane had loaned him to replace the too big conventional tablet, which now had suit controls on it, as wel
l as a way of controlling the SR droid, and giving instructions to the cargo droids. Even though the Owls didn’t normally sell their rodents anywhere but the local markets, they'd guaranteed to have all the containers loaded and in orbit before Jane concluded her business there.
Jane had followed the negotiations with interest, checking out the Owl claims. They'd lied about not selling their rodents off planet, but she'd found they had plenty of stocks since a number of scheduled traders had not arrived. Jane suspected the war had scared off a lot of freighters from dealing directly with the Owls. Alliances on the sector council had been shifting as the war conflict had progressed. Walsh had kept her up to date. Even the Bats were putting distance between them and the Owls now.
The first loose end was two Owl fleets, still heading home to defend a world which didn’t need defending any longer. Messages to both fleets had been ignored.
Spokes-Owl had called the family meeting Owls back in, this time in a room used by the military leaders, and capable of showing the entire room on a vid. The top Admiral and General were in attendance, with Jane and Warspite sitting just off camera. With a nod from spokes-Owl, Jane brute forced a com connection in real time, with the Bridge of the lead ship of the closest fleet, now only five seconds delay away.
"Admiral," said the Admiral in the room, "the war is over. You are ordered to disband your fleet, dividing them up into five ship squadrons, each to be assigned to a system for local defense and police operations."
The Owls at the other end looked dumfounded, seeing their top Admiral talking to them live. The fleet Admiral stepped forward.
"I don’t believe you. Not only is this transmission impossible, but I can't believe the families ended the war so soon, given the number of ships not responding to communication attempts. I'm on my way to destroy the alien ship which managed to elude us. You will provide me with its current whereabouts sir."
"Do you know who I am?" asked the General.
A.I. Destiny 2: Queen Jane Page 21