by Aer-ki Jyr
But not in an uplifting way. As many small things that there were that he was impressed with, the mass of what he was learning was junk. Problems on top of problems on top of problems. People clinging to tradition and beliefs and habits, all of which preserved the status quo and hindered problem solving. Most of Davis’ wonderment came from a sense of ‘how could they be that logistically stupid?’
He was also learning the various grudges between races, and who trumped who in the galactic turf…but also realizing that there were pockets of space where the rules reversed themselves, which was something that hadn’t been present on Earth. He’d had a long conversation with a particular Scionate vendor they happened across, and it dawned on him that the lack of communication, and often transit, between star systems created a sociological factor that he hadn’t had to deal with regarding the former nations of Earth, where everyone knew what everyone else was doing.
That wasn’t the same out here, with some races being the big dogs in their core systems but subservient ones on the fringes. It became clear to Davis that ‘locality’ was the driving factor, divvied up largely by star system rather than by planet. The same was somewhat true within Star Force, but due to the relay network and the way Davis had built their supply and transit system they were more connected that most of the other races appeared to be, who basically left isolated systems writing their own rulebooks.
The Scionate, by the name of Gas’para, had been a soldier prior to going into the shipping business and becoming a galactic traveler. He’d set up operations throughout 23 system before hearing about and scouting out Bolo, then deciding to move his headquarters here in order to access the hub of interracial commerce. He said many others had done the same, especially information brokers, for the traffic coming through the system was far greater than any other within the region.
He’d told Davis that wherever his shipping contracts went, they had to learn and adjust to the local culture, and as such the Scionate had got a feel for a few of the tendencies present in this part of the galaxy. Some temperaments were strict, others with a nearly total lack of oversight and control…which was bad for business, save for the adventurous sort who didn’t mind gambling their credits, and sometimes life, to exploit an opportunity.
But the biggest thing Gas’para explained to him was the naivety the local populations had regarding one another. Most people were not travelers, and with the isolated nature of the smaller systems they developed some vastly different cultures regarding trade, commerce, transit, permissions, and a host of other things a shipper had to deal with. And almost exclusively, they all believed there was only one way to do things.
Bolo was different, he’d said, being such a mix and having 10 ways of doing something sitting within 10 blocks of one another. He credited Star Force’s guiding structure within Bolo’s business society, citing that without it he didn’t think that the planet could sustain itself.
Davis had went on to have an in depth conversation regarding that point before bidding the shipper farewell and moving back out into the traffic flows and looking for a restroom with Human accommodations. He had some trouble removing his armor once they found one a couple of blocks away, but the enclosure was private and gave him a shield from prying eyes while he disconnected the cod piece and took a much needed leak.
He met Morgan outside the cubicle, with her waiting on him while several other races with similar biological needs were coming in and out of the other ‘stalls’ that, like all Star Force designs, were a private, tiny room that had no distinction between male or female…or in this case any race that was bipedal. Quadrupeds had another restroom facility, with a few others for more specialized needs.
Despite the filters on his helmet, Davis was exposed to a host of new smells that the air scrubbers were fighting to eliminate, prompting a private chuckle on his way outside, for this was an area of interracial relations that hadn’t crossed his mind before.
“Where to now?” Morgan asked via comm as she scanned the sea of irregular people through her black striker helmet.
“Security station. Let’s see if they can point us towards some of the problem areas.”
“Looking to pick a fight?”
“I need to find the problems if I’m going to fix them.”
“I’m looking forward to that,” Morgan said, stepping out into the foot traffic under the bright walkway lights with Davis following a step behind her. It took them a lot of walking until they got to the Star Force security outpost, which was little more than an emergency response firebase situated in one of the more remote regions of the city to decrease response time, but it held more than 20 staff with multiple rooms, allowing Davis and Morgan to have a private conversation with the ranking officer.
“What sort of trouble are you looking for?” she asked, wearing the light golden flex armor that most of the security division preferred, giving them adequate protection for their day to day work without the bulk of their combat armor.
“The kind that you have trouble dealing with, or can’t get at at all,” Davis said through his external mic.
“If we know of a problem we deal with it,” the security officer said, crossing her arms over her chest and tapping her upper arm with a gloved fingertip. “But there are always rumors we can’t track down. We have monitoring equipment on all public areas, but most of the activity around here occurs in private zones.”
“Any ongoing feuds?” Morgan asked.
“Nothing major around here, but the Davpz have tried to wall off a niche up in sector 831. You might want to check there. Rumors of intimidation and scare tactics. Security dealt with the obvious stuff, but there’s still a bit of a bad vibe, or so I hear.”
“Thank you,” Davis said, turning and heading for the door before looking back. “From your point of view, what’s the number 1 thing that needs to be improved on this planet?”
“On this planet? That’s a hard question to answer. Guess the biggest thing is not enough Humans around. Sometimes it feels like we’re the visitors.”
“Thank you,” Morgan said, following Davis out into the traffic flows again and over to a transit terminal where they boarded a tram that took them across the city to a rail line network that connected the entire planet. They both caught a nap on the trip across the continent to sector 831 then took some down time in the Human complex there. Davis stayed put, as usual, and dug through the local databases as Morgan got a few hours of workouts in at the local sanctum before coming to pick up Davis for his much shorter version. After they both completed their workouts they headed back out into the streets, with Davis having identified a particular individual he wanted to talk to.
It took them several hours to locate it, having to move through a large facility that was not open to the public, but eventually the two Humans found themselves in a nest of reptiles that looked to be assembling small components with their 8 digit hands…all four of them, plus using their short tails to grasp larger objects, as well as move around from various perches. Davis had to walk a zigzag course to get past them all, eventually coming up to one of the knee-high creatures that their guide lead them to.
“You wish to speak with me?” Hi’ch’mek asked in the trade language, looking up from the computer nexus cluster it was assembling from a box of components.
He’s not the one, Morgan told Davis.
“We’re looking for unregistered individuals, and we think you might have some knowledge of their whereabouts,” Davis said, looking down on the small reptile.
Good, Morgan said as the Davpz visibly flinched. Keep pressing.
“Why do you ask me? I know nothing.”
“I’ve been analyzing some of your economic figures. You’ve been consuming more foodstuffs than needed, which I suspect have been rerouted elsewhere.”
Got it, Morgan said, telepathically pointing Davis to another section of the facility.
“We eat more than we appear,” Hi’ch’mek said as Morgan walked past him and
Davis fell into step with her a moment later. “Where are you going?”
“To your stash,” Davis said as dozens of the Davpz jumped down off their platforms and rushed to block their way, spamming the floor with bodies.
Morgan simply waved a hand and pushed them aside, opening up a meter-wide walkway that she telekinetically held open until they passed through, with the reptiles scrambling back into the gap behind them as more and more came into view, flooding into the area in response to a primitive telepathic call that their race possessed.
Morgan pointed to a piece of equipment, seeing below it with her Pefbar.
“Remove the concealment or we will,” Davis threatened. “No one will be harmed.”
“There is no concealment,” Hi’ch’mek denied, only to have Morgan step up and, with a thought, activated the powered attribute of her armor, sliding a hand into a small gap on the underside and lifting the car-sized chunk of metal and tubes up off its hidden railing, popping the guide wheels off track and tipping it over onto its side, revealing a tunnel hidden in the floor.
“You were saying?” Davis asked as the little aliens swarmed around Morgan and tried to block her from going down…but the trailblazer merely stood in place, waiting to see what Davis wanted to do.
“There are hundreds down there,” she said through the comm as she focused her Ikrid down further than her Pefbar would reach. “I think they’ve been digging underneath the utility grid to add unsanctioned additions to the complex. Habitats, I think, given how closely they’re packed together.”
When the Davpz didn’t answer Davis knelt down and looked Hi’ch’mek in the eyes. “I know there are more of you down there. If we check their genetic codes will we find that there is no record of them in our database. Explain why not, and do not lie to me, I can tell when you do.”
Hi’ch’mek hesitated, not sure what to say and desperately searching for some way out of this when Morgan sighed.
“It’s not what we thought. They’re being hunted and have been trying to group together for mutual protection,” she said, digging into its memories. “They’re bullying everyone around them to create a defensive perimeter.”
“Hunted by who?” Davis asked over the comm while the Davpz still couldn’t find anything to say.
“They don’t know. But there have been too many of them disappearing to be coincidence.”
“Why haven’t they reported this?”
Morgan hesitated for a moment, trying to dig into less accessible memories. “Xenophobia. They don’t trust anyone other than their own.”
Davis turned back to the Davpz. “How long have your people been going missing?”
The little alien was silent.
“How long?” Davis insisted.
“Three years,” it finally answered.
Davis knelt down again. “You should have told us. We’ll find out what’s happening and stop this, I promise you. But these people down there,” he said, pointing at the tunnel entrance, “have to be registered. We have to know who’s living on this planet to make sure we can take care of them.”
“We only trust our own.”
“Then why did you come to this planet?”
“We have no planet of our own. This world is one of few accepting people in. We have few options.”
Davis raised a warning finger, despite the fact he knew the Davpz probably wouldn’t understand the gesture. “Do not prey on others here again. If something bad happens report it. You have friends to watch your back so long as you behave yourselves.”
“We do what we have to to protect our own.”
“We protect more than our own, and we will protect you as well.”
“You have not.”
“Because we didn’t know there was a problem because you didn’t report it,” Davis said, knowing there was some blame to be had regardless. This sort of thing should not have been happening on any Star Force world, even one as loose as this one was run. “Bring your people out from below. Security is going to log them into our network and you’re going to provide as much information as you can concerning the people who have gone missing. Agreed?”
“Will we be expelled?”
“No, but you will comply with our rules from now on.”
“Agreed.”
Davis stood up and looked at Morgan. “Call it in.”
“I just did.”
The pair stayed put until security got there, then they left and continued on with their wanderings, checking back in over the following days until security finally got a lead after going back through security camera footage. They’d picked up some of the missing individuals and followed them on the old recordings, eventually finding a handful of kiosks where they entered and never came out of again.
Morgan took up the investigation from there, heading directly to one of the locations and beginning a sweep of the minds present with Davis tailing her and security waiting nearby, ready to be called in when needed. They spent the next hour wandering throughout the Chartran shopping complex where all kinds of small, technical devices and parts were available for sale. The facility had many interior divisions, giving it a close feel despite the fact that there were well over 1000 people browsing about inside.
Finally Morgan came across an individual with the memories she was looking for, and after a thorough information download she yanked the ape-like Dangon out from behind the counter it was working behind with a strong telekinetic hold and dumped it on the ground in front of her. A moment later she delivered a light kick to its thick midsection and doubled the thing over, then she stepped forward and reached down, grabbing the shorter alien’s head, whereupon she twisted it in a flash, snapping its neck.
She let go and let the body fall to the ground, and despite the lack of a telepathic link he could tell by Morgan’s body language that she was furious.
“What just happened?” he asked over the comm as the workers and customers nearby flew into a frenzy, yelling and running about to get away from the pair of Archons.
“The Davpz were right. They were being hunted. This one killed several of them, plus a lot of other smaller races. He ambushed them here, injecting them with a sedative then hiding them away in the storage area. He comes back later, kills them, and cuts them up into bits that he smuggles out as cargo to a dealer who we’re about to pay a visit to.”
Davis swallowed hard, finding his stomach unsettled. “A meat black market?”
“Yes,” Morgan said, the word dripping with anger.
“I thought we didn’t execute people,” Davis said evenly, asking it as a question rather than an accusation.
“We don’t kill our prisoners,” Morgan explained, not taking offense, knowing that Davis had never been in a battle, let alone a war, “but we choose who we take prisoner, and I wasn’t feeling generous,” she said as security came into view, running around the corner to the Archons’ location, responding to Morgan’s comm summons.
“Remove the body and explain to the locals that he was a murderer who’s been using their store as a hunting ground. Then get more boots in play, I’m going to give you a list of individuals to round up shortly,” she said, looking at Davis. You coming with or do you want to sit this out?
“Coming with.”
“Sorry for the unexpected show,” she said, switching back to their private channel.
“Show me what you saw.”
“You don’t want me to.”
“I trust you, but I need to know.”
“Alright,” Morgan said, transmitting a select few of the memories she’d taken from the Dangon. They weren’t as crisp as what she had seen, but they were mostly intact, preserving the graphic nature of the ‘work’ the now dead individual had been doing.
Morgan saw Davis bend over in his armor, then not stand back up straight for several long seconds as he fought to keep his stomach intact.
“You alright?”
“No, but I’ll live. Let’s get the others before they kill anyone els
e.”
Morgan clapped him on the shoulder and gave the security team a few more instructions, then Davis broke into a run to stay with the Archon as she lithely wove her way through the pedestrians enroute to a location only she knew. He stayed tucked up behind her so not to lose the clear path she was plowing for him, and as he did he came to several conclusions.
One was that if the growing population in the ADZ was left to their own ways then more stuff like this would happen. The second was that even if Star Force devoted itself to policing worlds like this in sufficient numbers and scrutiny to provide a typically safe Star Force environment to live in, that they’d never have enough people to do it. Humans accounted for less than 1% of the ADZ population, and most Humans were civilians, not Archons and security forces.
The third conclusion was that Morgan had been right to kill the bastard on the spot. When he’d seen her do it he’d questioned the move…not her motives, but the fact that word would get around that an Archon had just walked into a store and killed one of the employees. The public didn’t know about their psionic abilities, and even if they did it conflicted with Star Force’s no death sentence policy. But as Morgan said, Star Force did kill, and their military was quite experienced with it. Normally that killing happened on the war fronts, but the reason for it remained the same no matter where it happened.
Star Force was a defensive body that protected others from killers, whether they be lizard, Skarron, or a butcher like this. Morgan had talked with him several times about the Archons’ efforts to find a way to combat the lizards without having to kill them at every turn, but it wasn’t until now that he fully understood that dilemma. It wasn’t a moral conflict, but a matter of patience. The Archons, and Star Force overall, were treating their enemies with a respect that they didn’t deserve, not because of a code or a promise, but simply by choice.