"What do you want of this Council, Admiral Jane Hunter?" said the voice.
"Several things."
"State them," said an orange fuzz-ball.
"First, we wish this council to recognize our claim to all systems beyond Owl space."
"What is your population size?" asked the voice.
"Twenty five billion," said Darlene. "Give or take a few million, we're actually not quite sure at the moment."
There was a stir around the chamber. Obviously this was considered significant.
"All will vote," said the voice.
The wall lit up with two numbers, which rapidly changed for about a minute. One was only a fraction the size of the other. When the numbers stopped changing, their translation software showed them an actual number they could read.
"Done," said the voice. "All systems beyond the last Owl colonized system, to the edge of the galaxy, are now designated Human. Next.
"We are under threat from a plant propagated by the Owls. We understand many other species are under the same threat, or are addicted to it in some way. We've been told that once addicted, to stop taking the drug version results in death."
"This is true. What is your position on this issue, which is regularly discussed in this chamber?"
"We want to help."
"Help?" yipped a voice. "How can you help?"
"Apart from wiping out the Owls," growled another voice, "which we will not allow."
"We have experience with addictive drugs in our own past. We are even now working on a cure, a vaccine, or a neutralizing agent for the plant."
"We are making progress," added Darlene. "However, the work would go faster with help from each species wishing to rid themselves of this problem."
"This is out…"
Someone hit the Owl. It fell back into its seat, and was quiet. No-one mentioned it at all, there was no outrage, or calls to sanction the being doing the hitting. Jane began to wonder at the rules in action here, which allowed such things.
"What do you need?" asked the voice.
"Genetic material," said Darlene.
The chamber went silent again.
"We appreciate the magnitude of this request," she added, "and the level of trust which it would entail, especially since we've only just met. But to find a cure, we need to see how the drug interacts with the genetic material of each species affected."
"Is not your own enough?" boomed a voice from the back.
"We do not have anyone infected at this time," said Jane. "What for other species is a drug, for us is poison. Take it or not take it, the result for us is a quick death. Our main issue with it is its ability to infect others at a rapid pace. We were lucky to identify the poison before anyone came in contact with either the plant, or the animal which propagates it. We quarantined the area of space seeded by the Owls, and backtracked one of their seeder ships to find where they came from. Unfortunately, we quickly found ourselves at war with the Owls, who seem to have no kind of ethics or moral code in common with us. We would prefer to work with any affected species to find a cure, than have to wage total war against the Owls."
"What can you offer in exchange for our help?" asked the slow drawl.
"We have a method of detecting ships carrying the drug, plant, or propagation animal."
The silence went on for a full minute.
"There is a motion before this council", said the voice. "Vote now."
This time three numbers appeared. Jane assumed the third number was delegates abstaining from the vote.
"The motion carries. Admiral Jane Hunter. This council offers Humans a seat on this council. Do you accept?"
"Yes, we accept."
"An Embassy suite will be available for you tomorrow. Rules and procedures will be forwarded to you. Those who wish to participate in finding a cure will contact you at their convenience. Do you have anything else to put to this council?"
"Actually, I have a suggestion for another of your local problems."
"Speak."
"The Gauntlet."
"What of it?"
"How much would you like to see it permanently peaceful?"
There were too many responses to make any of them out.
"The Question is asked. Vote."
It only took a few moments this time. Three numbers again, but one number was very low, and the other two much closer.
"The question is resolved in the affirmative. State your proposal."
"Human society has many factions. One of these is militarily powerful, but lacks resources and its own planet. Should you grant the nine systems and four planets of the Gauntlet to us, we will guarantee peace throughout its length, and peaceful passage for all along it. We will place stations for commerce at every jump point into the Gauntlet, protected by ships such as the ones outside this station. In a few months' time, we'll have available a station much larger than this one, which can be modified in any way this part of the galaxy requires of a station, not already being met. As well as being a central place for commerce between all species in this sector, and beyond."
Jane looked around the chamber.
"We can also, should the council wish it, police the traffic of the drug, preventing it from leaving Owl space."
What she didn’t say was, if they solved the death part of the problem, she wouldn’t be asking for permission to eradicate the drug trade completely. It would just get done. But first they had to solve the problem in a useful way. Without it, stopping the trade would doom millions or even billions to death. And she wasn’t ready to do that. Yet.
The chamber was silent yet again. The Owl was awake now, but keeping silent, although looking around at the beings nearby, as if trying to figure out who hit it.
"The proposal is tabled for future discussion. This council ends."
"That went well," said Barf, indicating they should follow him.
Fifty Four
"Nice digs," said Walsh, about twelve hours later, as Barf ushered them into the Human embassy suite.
The time differential would have been a killer for a normal human, since the station was on a substantially different time frame from their own time, both in terms of how long a day was, and where in the cycle they'd entered it. But since none of them needed to sleep, they'd simply turned up when and where Barf told them to.
Or at least, Jane and Walsh had. Darlene was hard at work back on Concorde. She'd pulled three new bodies out of storage, and cloned herself to them, giving each of them a different look.
"Don’t I know that one?" Jane had asked.
"Probably. I used entertainment vids for the shapes, taking them from medical researcher characters in several different old series."
"Ah."
Walsh remained silent, which Jane thought was wise. Each of the Darlene clones was concentrating on the problem from a different perspective. Jane spent a few nanoseconds observing Walsh, and decided he felt left out. His wife now had a purpose he'd never seen in her before, and he didn’t look like he knew what to do with this side of her. Jane distracted him by making him review all the ambassadorial and embassy material they were sent.
Before Barf left them, he'd taken them to a station office, where they'd been issued with a tablet device each, with appropriate earbud for hearing translations privately, and email addresses. The station, and indeed a lot of the galaxy it seemed, used a primitive form of emails, which relied on the tablet devices to receive and send. As soon as they had them, they'd started receiving all kinds of communications, starting with the promised documentation of Council rules and procedures.
Within hours, they were getting requests for meetings with other ambassadors.
And in between, a staggering amount of advertising material of no relevance to them at all.
Jane took a certain amount of delight in routing all the mail to Walsh. Being a pilot, any kind of administration work was something he took long lengths to avoid. But where they were now, the pilot had nothing else to do, and so Jane be
lly-flopped him into the deep end.
In the downtime while they waited to find out where their embassy would be, Jane downloaded the contents of the tablets, gutted them, installed one of their own pads into the tablet case, and updated the new tablet with the download, the operating system of the old one still able to function independently with an interface to theirs, and the translator software. The earbuds became redundant. The new tablet looked like the old one, except it was now capable of taking over the whole station's functions without slowing it down in the slightest.
"How come you had pads on hand?" Walsh had asked.
"Friend of mine liked to use them."
"Of course," he laughed.
By the time they arrived at their embassy, Walsh was up to speed on local affairs. It couldn’t be said he was happy about it, since he'd always gone out into space to avoid all that sort of thing. Happy wasn’t a requisite though, and Jane was happy dumping it all on him.
The suite was large, and contained a large office for each of them, several smaller ones for staff, a conference room, media room, lounging room, and the necessary reception area, all with ambassadorial level furnishings for a wide range of body shapes.
"Please don’t tell me I'm the receptionist," said Walsh.
Barf was horrified.
"Ambassadors do not answer the phones or greet people. You will need staff."
"What's a phone?"
Barf hesitated, not sure if the question was serious or not. The grin on Walsh's face convinced him the question didn’t need an answer.
Walsh however hadn't been entirely joking. He'd found out what a phone was through junk mail advertising the latest types, and been completely amazed by how primitive most of the tech here was. A cross reference with the ship archive showed the technology was comparable with what humans had used half a millennia before.
"How do we obtain staff?" asked Jane, before Walsh could comment.
"I've been temporarily seconded to your staff until such time as the Owl situation sees some sort of resolution. I'm more than capable of running a tiny office like this for you. Assuming you trust me to do so?"
"You're hired," said Walsh, before Jane could say otherwise.
She grinned at him, and he smiled back.
"How do we pay staff?" she asked.
"You will need to set up an embassy bank account. Personal ones also, as well as one for your ship. While docking fees are waived for diplomatic ships, consumables will still be billed to you, should you ask for some. I will arrange for the relevant beings to visit you here. Ambassadors do not visit anyone, except other ambassadors, and who visits who is decided by rank."
"I got that," said Walsh. "I assume we're on the bottom of the rank pile?"
"By no means. Rank is a complex thing, but population is an important function. Yours is a magnitude higher than the average."
"They'll take our word for it?" asked Jane.
"No. You will be expected to make a presentation in the next few cycles, with some sort of proof. If you have images of population counts for each planet, these should be sufficient. At some time in the future, a galactic inspector will visit your worlds to confirm all you say, but by necessity, this will wait until the resolution of your war with the Owls."
Walsh snorted. Barf wasn’t sure how to interpret the noise, or expression.
"No galactic official will travel to the space of a party to a current war," he further explained. "It would show favoritism, and the Galactic Council does not officially favour anyone at the expense of another."
"I can manage a presentation," said Jane. "Will the bank accept trade to start an account with?"
"What did you use with the Owls?"
"Diamonds and gold."
"Both will be acceptable. Stones of various kinds are more or less valuable to different species. Each species when it joins provides a sample of such things, and whatever tradeable value they are in their own currency. This is then compared to the galactic average, and an exchange rate is created based on it. The wider the selection of valuable objects, the better the basis for the exchange rate."
"I brought others, on the basis I didn’t know what was valuable to other species we might encounter, hoping something would be."
"Do you have a common currency?"
"We call it the Credit. It is purely electronic in nature, and is tied to nothing physical. What is used here?"
"The Gal. It used to be called a Galmon, until we discovered a species calling itself the same name. With the advent of recent upgrades in computers, it too is now electronic in nature for those wishing to do without hard currency. But a large portion of the species I know about prefer hard currency, so if you visit them, or trade with them, you may need to obtain some of theirs. But I should add, rank determines whose currency a trade is made in. Those with lesser rank will always offer a trade in your currency, which is why the exchange rates need to be ascertained for new members very quickly."
"Is that why there was such a stir when our population was announced?" asked Walsh.
"Yes. New members usually slot in below the first quartile. You will be in the top quartile. This surprised everyone, since most of the galaxy has been charted, and only emerging worlds now join the Galactic Council in their own right. The average population for these is below two billion. At some point, beings are going to want to know how you were missed, although the easy answer is the Owls were sloppy about exploring the space granted to them originally."
"So the Owls are losing some of their space to us?"
"Yes. Another reason for them not liking you very much. They went to a lot of trouble to claim the space beyond them, and it was only granted on the basis no other inhabited planet was found."
"Where do the valuations take place?" asked Jane, getting the discussion back on track.
"Your ship would be the best place."
"You make it sound like the station isn’t safe," said Walsh.
"Safe enough, but crime does exist. For now, the magic you pulled outside the council will be making groups thinking about targeting you, think twice."
"Which reminds me," said Jane. "What are the rules on station about carrying guns?"
"Private Citizens are not allowed to. Ambassadors and especially their staff, station staff, and council staff, are all expected to be armed. The station itself has a thick enough hull, which firing most guns will not damage enough to cause a hull breach. Anyone who does, generally isn’t allowed back on the station, assuming they survived their own stupidity, and once they are released from custody."
"Better stay on stun," Jane said to Walsh, in AI mode.
"Standard practice," he responded.
Jane had a thought, bounced it around for a few nanoseconds, and decide to voice it.
"Barf, if you work for us now, does that in any way make you a target?"
"Possibly. No. Probably. The Owls are not happy. They did take a shot at you before. They may now target me, especially when those here realize I'm an escaped prisoner, which I said in council anyway. So yes."
"I'm heading back to the ship," announced Jane. "I need to get currency organized for the bank representatives. Barf, come with me, and I'll equip you with our body armour. I don’t like the idea of someone shooting you, just to piss me off."
"What do I do?" asked Walsh.
"Play ambassador."
Fifty Five
Fred thumped down on the mat. He'd been sparring with other people since Justine had left, and was beginning to think her assessment of him had been correct after all. He kept ending up on the mat. He was gratified to see those putting him there were sweating as much as he was, but it was still him on the mat.
"Email for you," pinged in from Justine.
"How urgent?" he pinged back.
"Information, so not urgent. But view before council."
"I'll shower first then."
"You do that."
He headed for the showers after thanking his partner for a
good session.
Jane watched him shower, debating if he was really someone she should allow herself to become involved with. He wasn’t Jon in any way, and it bothered her she was missing him more than she would have liked, more than she ever expected to, and was transferring this to Fred. He also wasn’t Dick, and although it was an avatar having a relationship with him, it depended on how you looked at it. In one way it was her, and in another it wasn’t, being as it was a level removed from her then primary, and another level between herself and her then primary, not to mention herself and her new primary. Complicated was an obvious word to apply to her situation. It wouldn’t be fair on Fred to start something if she later determined her motivations were wrong.
She wished there was someone she could talk to about this. And realized there was. She made sure to pass this highlighted fact along to her new primary.
Fred finished dressing, completely unaware he'd been watched by the object of his current desires. The email was highlighted as important, and he threw the vid to the wall.
"Fred," said Jane. "This is a heads up on the situation developing out here. I don’t want the council to know yet, but we are at war with our neighbor species, but this isn’t a big problem since we out tech them by a large margin. But they do threaten us in the form of the poison they have propagated through the planets within the quarantine zone. We are working the problem."
"You may inform the council that we as Humans have been accepted as members of the Galactic Council Sector Ten, and we have officially been granted all the systems on our side of A001. If we can solve the poison problem, we'll have no expansion issues for a long time to come."
"You need to put a question to the council for me. We need a political name to be known by. Our species is Human, but are we the Empire of Humans, the Human Democracy, Humans R Us, or what? I feel myself that empire is a bad message to send the rest of the galaxy, especially since I've won a lot of battles with the Owls, and being an empire may convince some we have expansionistic tendencies. So council needs to find a title I can present to the rest of the galaxy, which sums us up, but doesn’t foster unwanted perceptions."
Admiral Jane (A.I. Destiny Book 1) Page 22