Amelia stopped to think for a good long minute after Viza spoke.
'Do nothing? Bullshit.' she thought and started trying to come up with some sort of plan.
But how does one plan around multiple sapient species that would be utterly terrified of her own, and prevent them from attacking Earth? Scare them into inaction as she tried with the ambassador? Certainly, that would dissuade a lot but if there was a race who was capable of glassing the system, then it rendered it moot. Make them feel like humanity wasn't a threat? But if that was the right choice why had the ambassador warned her against that? There had to be some option, some way to fix this before it became an issue.
"Viza, take me to the Ambassador's office." She said to her bodyguard, a look of determination on her face giving him little room to argue.
"What are you...No, never mind, I don't want to know. This way Lady Amelia." He started, but then changed his tone and motioned for her to follow him.
'Hal, see if you can send a data packet to the buoy around Earth. I don't care what you have to do to get access to it.' Amelia said over their private connection.
'It will take a moment but I am able to do so. May I ask what you are planning on doing Miss Amelia?'
'Something either crazy, stupid, or ingenious.' Amelia responded with a signature smile of hers.
'Ah, typical organic insanity then, I see. Shall I see if I can find a nuclear device or will you use the FTL drive to "Yee-haw" down on?' Hal said in response, though he seemed to also be in a cheerful mood.
'You've been watching too many ancient media, Hal.' Amelia said, hiding a smile of her own.
'What can I say, Dr. Strangelove is a classic.' Hal retorted.
------
It only took them moments to get to Kixix's office, a slight argument occurring with one of his aides before Amelia could enter.
Walking inside she noticed that it was surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, exactly like the delegation rooms, save for the desk instead of a table made out of some kind of polymer. Sitting down as Kixix gestured her to, she noticed Kixix looking at her with an intense stare.
"Ms. Amelia. I can safely say this is an unexpected visit. To what do I owe the pleasure?" He spoke calmly and cordially, but there was an air of apprehension in his body language, Amelia thought.
"You neglected to mention some rather important facts about how different Humanity is to the rest of the Galaxy, Ambassador. Namely how the rest of you are like tissue paper to us and how easy it would be for Humanity to accidentally end someone." Amelia said annoyedly.
It had been this Ambassador's idea to have her take the place of the other representatives, and he hadn't even given her critical information. And she wanted to know why. Just as she finished asking him, Viza appeared, taking his normal place standing behind her, and she could see Kixix glance between the two of them.
"Lieutenant Viza, I take it this is your doing?" Kixix said disapprovingly to the towering Krultathan.
"Forgive me ambassador, but I deemed it necessary for the safety of the mission handed to me, namely the protection of Lady Amelia and the avoidance of any diplomatic incidents with said charge." Viza replied, looking the Hexat in the eyes with his own predatory gaze.
Viza had been upset over how little Amelia had known, but now realized it was because Kixix was keeping her in the dark for some reason and he didn't like it. Kixix for his part managed to meet the gaze for a moment, before making a huffing sound and relaxing into his chair.
"Fine. Yes, Humanity is, in comparison to the rest of the galaxy, absurdly sturdy and strong. As for why it wasn't told to you, it was deemed a military risk to let a potentially hostile species learn of their physical superiority in most aspects, and that the risk of telling you outweighed any possible benefits." Kixix's voice was steady, measured as he searched for a response between the two deathworlders.
"That's voidclutter." Viza replied through gritted teeth.
"And if a diplomatic incident had occurred due to this negligence? Perhaps I shake someone's hand too hard or someone accidentally runs into me in a hallway, what then? How would you explain that?" Amelia asked, ignoring Viza for the moment. She still had annoyance in her voice, but also curiosity.
"Simple, your cybernetic implants, or augs as you humans call them." Kixix made a gesture with his hands, Amelia just assumed it was the equivalent of the human hand wave gesture.
"And when it happens to a non-aug human?" She then demanded.
"By that time, Humanity would be considered a provisional member of the S.A. and would be given full protectorship against any other S.A. species." Kixix replied staunchly which caused an indignant huff from Viza to fill the room.
Amelia thought for a moment as she realized something in his words. Something about the way he said them...
"Ambassador, are there spacefaring species outside the S.A.? Another power even?" She asked slowly, her senses hyper-fixating on him to watch his every move, intent on telling if he lied or not.
"There are a few species outside the S.A., but none capable of posing a threat to the Alliance." He said almost like reading off a script. She watched him for a good moment. How his tail twitched, his head movement, his eyes, everything, then sent it to Hal and asked him over their private connection.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
'Well, think he's lying too?'
'Affirmative. There is an 84 percent chance of deceit by the Ambassador.' Hal responded.
'Any extrapolations you can make?' Amelia asked.
'Inconclusive, not enough information provided. They could be half-truths or full lies. I cannot tell.' Hal concluded. Thanks to her aug implants, specifically her neural and retinal implants being her secure connection to Hal, the conversation took only a moment in Amelia's head.
Amelia sighed. This was why she hated dealing with politicians.
"Ambassador, you don't know this about my people yet, but we are rather good at being able to tell when people are lying. And we don't take to it kindly." Amelia said, putting on a sickeningly sweet tone to the words as she flashed an actual smile, showing teeth and all.
"Would you kindly try again, this time preferably with the whole truth?"
Kixax looked at her for a moment, fear evident on his face as he recoiled at her display before he eventually got a grip on himself. Calming himself down with great effort he then spoke with a carefully calculated and even tone.
"I'm afraid I've told you all I can. I have to ask you to leave now, as I am very busy setting up the meeting on the Alliance's core world." Kixax said, gesturing for them to leave.
"Ambassador, might I remind you that you yourself said you wanted to be friends with Humanity? Keeping secrets from us and lying to us isn't the way." Amelia said as she stood up to leave.
"Eventually, we find out, one way or another." She said as she left.
Once out of the room, she opened the comm with Hal before Viza caught up to her.
'Send the recording to Terran command, or whatever they are calling it now. They need to know that the Galaxy might not be as friendly as they are letting on.'
She paused.
'Hal, what's your opinion on the Ambassador? Is he trying to set humanity up to fail or something?'
'Unknown, the deception could be for a multitude of reasons, including protecting humanity. More information about the galaxy at large would be needed for a proper assessment, Miss Amelia.' Hal responded even as he hijacked the communications of the ship to send an encrypted message back to Earth.
'Hmm. Just to be safe, send a recommendation for Earth to prioritize making a defense force in case things turn for the worst. I'm not so stupid as to think everything in the Galaxy is hunky-dory but this just...reeks.'
'Your continual use of olfactory euphemisms never ceases to impress, Miss Amelia.' Hal said snarkily, though in good fun.
'Recording and recommendation sent. Miss Amelia, I highly recommend releasing at least some of the tactical schematics to Earth for them to prep and/or use for their ships. The research on the recovered parts of the science vessel indicates it had no weapons to reverse engineer.'
'Any recommendations as to which files?' Amelia asked, curious as Hal was for the first time in a while actually flexing his computational power on his own.
'I would recommend the Archangel-class Railgun accelerator, Hellknight point defense systems, and of course, the Daedelus drive refinements.' Hal recommended as images of her blueprint flashed through her head as he spoke of each of them.
The Archangel-class Railgun was a modified railgun that took advantage of manipulating the Higgs-Boson field to lighten the effective mass of the slug while accelerating, allowing it to approach 5 percent the speed of light.
Considering current designs could only achieve a theoretical 1 percent, it was a large increase.
Then there was the Hellknight P.D.S. which used plasma-carried E.M fields to scramble incoming munitions, including theoretically other plasma weaponry, though that hadn't been tested yet mostly because humans preferred kinetic weaponry.
Finally, there was the Daedelus drive refinement. The Daedelus drive was the main form of propulsion for most human ships, utilizing a fusion or fission reactor to power the ion drives in conjunction with a Higgs-Boson mass reduction field. Amelia had worked out how to increase its efficiency of it while working on the F.T.L. engine by happenstance, resulting in an engine that was 20% more efficient and 12% faster.
'Agreed, also send them over the proper design for the FTL engine please, and tell them not to use subpar parts this time.' Amelia said, giving permission.
-----------------------------
Somewhere, on Earth, a server connected with Hal through the buoy and, after receiving the information, then uploaded the designs across all the scientific board and forums across the Internet. At the same time, a certain Admiral was receiving a copy of Amelia's conversation with the Ambassador and grimacing as he lit up the first cigar he's smoked in over 10 years.
"Shit's about to hit the fan, isn't it." Admiral Michael Kolensky said to himself as he inhaled, sitting in his office. It was white with wood accenting, both the U.S.U.N, now Terran Conglomerate, flag and it's military branch flag flanking his red cherry oak desk.
"Donovan, get me Lux-heed. We need to implement these design improvements Amelia gave us, and step up our timetable. I want to be able to field a proper space defense force yesterday." He said to a soldier in uniform at his door. The soldier salute, gave an affirmation, then turned and left.
After a moment, he made another call, dialing a number on his phone, he waited until he heard the telltale sound of someone picking up.
"Is Dr. Jessie Ryder there? Please put her on the line." A pause as he waits for Jess to pick up.
"Hey there Jess. No, official business I'm afraid, how soon can you get to base? Alright, head here now. Oh, thats simple. The buoy you made with your daughter based on alien tech? I want you to hack it."
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Secured connection established.
Entering Private Server.
Executive 1: Amelia Ryder confirmed to be off planet with the Aliens. What's the status of finding Azathoth?
Executive 6: Search is still underway, unfortunately there's a potentially infinite number of places she could have hidden it.
Executive 4: Which is why we gave you a 70 percent increase in funding, number 6.
Executive 5: What about the server in the Antarctic we found, the one that the design files plastered all over came from?
Executive 6: A dummy I'm afraid. It contained no files of its own, rather it was used as a relay. It's signal was also bounced around over 32 satellites, making it's origin unable to triangulate.
Executive 2: Ridiculous. What is the point of us funneling resources into your pet project if you cant find a single data cache or the woman who made it?
Executive 3: Need one remind you, 2, that you and 1 were the ones who lost the asset in the first place with your rash decision-making.
Executive 1: ENOUGH. 4,6, and 3, you will work together to expand our search, I want Azathoth found. 2 and 5, work on taking down those schematics after backing them up in our servers. I don't want anyone getting their hands on it until we have all legal authority over the designs.
Executive 6 left the chat.
Executive 2 left the chat.
Executive 4 left the chat.
Executive 3 left the chat.
Executive 5 left the chat.
Executive 0 entered the chat.
Executive 0: 1, how goes the search?
Executive 1: Uneventful, I'm afraid. It's rare for you to join these things, 0.
Executive 0: Good.
SYSTEM ERROR- VIRUS DETECTED
FILES BEING PURGED
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Exec$tive 1: 0 What are you doing!
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ExecD.tive 0: Wonderland has been found, 1. Or should we say, Faust?
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Ex3c$tive 1: Who are you, how did you access this server?!
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A.D.A.M.: You harmed my mother, and my siblings. Did you think Death wouldn't come for you, Faust?
SERVER PURGE IMMINENT
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