Chapter 22

..[ JACY ]..

They were back on Kiratakurad for another session of talks. They had been at it for Weeks since they arrived. Each Week, the session moved between the planets. The movement allowed by the shuttles. The Kirasai and Ingu’sman spacecraft would take two Weeks to close the same distance. The Kirasai where the dominant species in Komenga. Jacy had learnt that Komenga was actually a bastardized version of a similar word in Ingu’snan meaning second home. The Ingu’sman had known the planet to be habitable before they knew it was inhabited, and they had had plans for it. The natives of Komenga had actually not had a name for their own planet, let alone anything outside of it. Even their space program was largely borrowed from the Ingu’sman. They had focused their efforts elsewhere.

“All we need for the foreseeable future we can get here,” Tauri said. He was one of the three Kirasai in the meeting room. “Joining you will lose us more than we will gain.”

There were three Ingu’sman, three Kirasai, two Kimuvians and then her and Sylvia. Jacy was there in place of Mativo. There might not have been a Second for the expedition, but she was one in all but name.

The Kimuvians, the shorter subordinates of the third planet, had not been present for the first meeting. Sylvia had said their presence was mandatory for the meetings to continue. A Week later, they had received the two representatives, a male and a female. The female was shorter than the male, only by a centimeter or two, and less hairy. She also had pretty noticeable breasts. They were sitting to her right, with the Ingu’sman to the Kimuvians’ right too and the Kirasai to her left. They table was a rough square with rounded corners. All of them were, in all the meetings she had been to. Some of the borrowed designs since the two planets made contact. Just like the vest and pants common with the high officials and what would be considered the elite in Komenga.

“You will want to impose your values on us while refusing to confront your own hypocrisy,” Deka said.

“We know,” Jacy replied. Sylvia gave her a reproachful look then.

But what was she expected to say to that. They had been having the same argument the whole time. The only thing that changed were the words used. The natives to the stellar system had picked up the English language well enough that they barely needed a translator. At least the ones involved in the talks did. There were still several translators in the room in case they were ever needed.

“What she means is that you will be part of a larger civilization,” Sylvia said. Trying to soften the blunt response she had given. “We will do our best to respect your values, ideals and sense of identity.”

She switched to a more firm tone as she gazed from the Kirasai to the rest of the representatives, “But none of that is ever constant, they are always evolving. Our history, and yours too, have taught us that. What we consider ideal, the norm now, could turn out to be barbaric tomorrow. We will do our best to make any transition that needs to happen as smooth as possible for all parties.”

“So, your politicians will not be involved in our affairs?” Leka’nye asked. To Jacy it sounded more like a prodding question, a leading question.

“They will, as you know they must,” Sylvia didn’t miss a beat in answering her. That led to murmuring on all three sides.

Finally, Ngu’mbi spoke up, “We only seek to understand your intentions. We have to be cautious, as you know. Agreeing would have far reaching implications.”

“So would not agreeing.” Sylvia was representing Mativo after all. But the Kirasai took it rather, well, not well.

“Is that a threat?” Tauri asked, flaring his nostrils and forehead blood red, signs of someone who thought they had been crossed. She had learnt a lot during the meetings.

“No.” She made sure they were focused on her by being vocally threating. “Take a large stretch of a rainforest. You, represent a meter square of that. If I cut down all the trees in the rainforest but for your meter square area, rain will stop. It doesn’t matter how well you maintain your meter square. Turn the forest into a desert and I plant trees all around you, you will receive rain no matter how hard you try to keep it out.”

“I don’t understand,” he responded. “What are you saying exactly?”

“She means, what they do will affect us, for good or ill. As long as we are within The Empire,” Minue said as he looked at her for confirmation. He was one of the Kimuvian representatives that had been added to the meeting.

“It’s not like we can choose to relocate or anything,” his colleague added.

“You can just leave us alone,” Tauri insisted.

“You really didn’t get it, did you?” Vasha commented, the Kimuvian female.

“Watch what you say, Gatiku,” Tauri said angrily. And that seemed to infuriate the Ingu’sman and the Kimuvians in equal measure. The last word, she hadn’t heard before.

“No name calling in the meeting,” Wika said angrily. “Watch yourself or you will be kicked out of this room.”

“What?” Sylvia asked as she looked questioningly from one group to the other.

“It’s a derogative term used to refer to the Kimuvians during the slavery era,” Ngu’mbi explained.

“Maybe he should leave?” Sylvia asked as she looked at the Kirasai male in contempt.

“No,” Minue replied. “He can stay. But should he do so again, then he can leave.”

The other two Kirasai nodded in agreement. They hadn’t appeared okay with the utterance either.

“The system of governance seems okay enough for us,” Vasha said into the silence that had been settling in. “But the life of the average citizen sounds like slavery to us. You even call them, worker-slaves? Did I get that right?”

“Yes, you did. But it is not the same,” Sylvia answered.

“It is to us,” Vasha threw back.

“We can’t guarantee anything to you right now,” Jacy tried her hand. “There will be a voyage for some of you to tour the colonies. Then, you can see for yourselves what life is like for the worker-slaves.”

The Kimuvians didn’t push the worker-slave topic further. They only ever brought it up in the meetings once or twice and then dropped it. Maybe they were trying to find discrepancies in our answers but didn’t want to ask too much at the same time fearing we might figure out what they were after. But they still appeared hesitant of the whole thing.

“I thought you would want this more,” Ngu’mbi said, looking at the Kimuvians imploringly. He wanted an answer.

“We do. It will give us room to express ourselves freely. Free from the reminders of our past. But we still need to know we aren’t,” Vasha paused looking thoughtfully at their translator. She whispered something to him, and turned back when he replied, “Jumping from the frying pan and into the fire.”

“You know, the concept of other intelligent species on other planets isn’t such a foreign thing to us,” Wika said. “We discovered our first alien species right next door, unlike you and most of the species you have discovered.”

“We just wish it was us doing the discovering, or that we had met at somewhat equal standing,” Ngu’mbi said. “Alas, you are here, and we are nowhere near equal in standing.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“I wouldn’t say that. If you went back to the planet we originated from, the level of technology is similar to yours in most areas. The only thing that sets us apart is the Mativo-influenced technology,” Jacy said.

Sylvia turned to her aghast. “What she meant is that there are these few individuals who have collaborated together to push some fields too far too fast for the rest of the humans to easily keep up. It wasn’t exactly normal.”

“You mean the Mũtindas?” Deka asked. He looked at his fellow Kirasai before continuing, “I thought they were a family.”

“They are,” Jacy answered.

“Is that the reason they are ruling? All this new technology they came up with?” Leka’nye asked.

“No. I’m a member of the most… the second richest and technologically advanced family and we weren’t leading the planet before the Mũtindas came along,” Sylvia said.

“They wouldn’t be leading either if it weren’t for Mativo,” Jacy added because she felt it was important.

“Yeah. Without Mativo, they would have simply become the wealthiest family and let the League of Nations, the governing body back on Earth, to continue ruling the people.”

“What did Mativo do?” Vasha asked.

“Well, he doesn’t like following laws and rules that impend his own enjoyment of life. He is not the kind of person that enjoys the suffering of others,” Sylvia added as she realized what she was saying. “But he also doesn’t enjoy people’s attention at all.”

“And the more rich and powerful he became, the more people would want to pay attention. All kinds,” Vasha said. And Jacy decided to ignore the last part of that statement, and the look in her eyes.

“Yeah. So when he finally had the technology necessary, he up and left the planet,” Sylvia said.

“And came all the way out here discovering other species and planets,” Tauri said.

“He is an explorer. And the universe is the grandest of target destination,” Jacy told him. “Besides, that’s why we are here. To keep all these species and planets from interfering in his exploration. He can be accommodating, but there is a limit to how much he is willing to bent.”

The Ingu’sman female asked something about taxation and Jacy settled back in the background after that. She still contributed when directly asked, or it was something she thought she knew better than Sylvia. The rest of the time Sylvia did the talking. The taxation talk, as per usual, lasted more than two hours. After it came the space travel talk. The Ingu’sman and Kimuvians were okay with the five Year wait, but the Kirasai wanted it reduced to two at most. They considered their civilization advanced enough that they shouldn’t have the same wait period as the other lesser civilizations. They could more easily understand the technology they needed to work with, they argued. They asked of other ways to make the transition happen faster. There was even offer of marriages. It was talk like that that made it all the more necessary for the five Year wait period. Jacy thought it might not be enough for the Kirasai though.

Jacy was glad when the meeting came to an end for the Week. She quickly left for the shuttle and then the main ship. Sylvia preferred to stay back and explore the different cities the planets offered, even after the incident. A shuttle would come for her when she was ready to leave Komenga.

..[ MATIVO ]..

I was really angry, and the sorry remains of the sims in the simulation room was prove enough. I had a lot of issues that weren’t going away. And to add salt to the wound, three Days prior, a stupid group of Kirasai mob had thought that punching me and pelting rocks at me would make me leave the planet. Jacy had stopped me from giving them a little taste of what I would do to them if they refused to bend.

Apparently, not everyone on Komenga was pro-us. The same way there were some who thought that slavery should still be a thing; an unsurprising find. There was also those that felt like the Kimuvians were encroaching on what was rightfully theirs by being allowed to compete for the same positions as them. We were just the newest addition to the grievances some of the Kirasai thought their current leadership wasn’t addressing. And us being an extrastellar species not protected by any of their laws made for a target for their pend up energy.

Mondhe had been off-training for a Week. I had given her an assignment to create for me an evolution simulation model that helped show how prevalent human like appearance was. Not the upright bipedalism, binocular vision, less body hair or scales or feathers, or the larger in comparison to body brain.

I’m talking about seeing a species and saying, ‘That is human. With slightly weird eyes, nose, mouth and ears; but still human.’ The series and movies I had seen always portrayed most extrastellar species being way too human in appearance. Like they had applied make up here and there, and alas! Alien.

Of the hundreds, I think we had broken one thousand when we began the new expedition. Anyway, of the hundreds of humanoid species we had met under the ten thousand light-Year radius, less than fifty could be said to resemble a human in appearance. Maybe apelike would be more accurate.

But I still needed a scientific explanation for it, and Mondhe was suffering for it. She had started off easy, working with a simple trait that was nature forced. Like the evolution of ruminants and the spread of grass. Showing how long it had taken for the two to come to an equilibrium. Her first trial had had the ruminants dying off before they fully evolved. Her grass had taken over too quickly before the ruminant mutation had had the chance to take hold. Finding that sweet spot had turned out to be the sweet spot of the experiment.

After that, she had half enjoyed herself as she simulated the evolution of some weird features. But that enjoyment had disappeared when I had asked for the more specific human appearance evolution. The main reason for the project though was to keep her brain sharp. She had taken the whole ‘take your time to decide what you want to do’ to heart too much. She advanced in leaps in terms of her fighting prowess but I couldn’t say the same for her intellectual pursuits. Either she was doing it while I wasn’t away, or she wasn’t doing it at all.

It’s not that she wasn’t studying. I knew she was undertaking degrees in FTL theory, nanotechnology and biomechatronics. She had also kept insisting I give her access to the research data we had on the Energy. I finally did, but only the early research data.

That left me with enough time to get frustrated with the other thing; shielding. Weeks working on shielding had reminded me why I stopped working on it the first time. It sucked. It took too much energy out of me, and offered abysmal protection from the average of bullets. It could slow down bullets? So what? The average combat gear could stop bullets. My combat gear made walking in a bullet shoot out feel like being pelted by rain drops; as long as you were a masochist. For the rest of us, it felt like being pelted with fast moving rocks. And unlike my combat gear, the Energy shield offered no noticeable protection from pulse shots. My combat gear tried at least. Maybe someone would discover a way to create a very effective shield, but that someone wasn’t me.

In consolation, I had finally managed to propel my diamond shot faster than sound. But just barely. I was still happy and not happy. I had seen people evade bullets, and those things moved two to four times faster than sound. So had I, but that was more out of intuition than reflexes. Or I just got lucky and ducked in the right direction. Though it is said that if a bullet kills you instantly, then you never hear the gunshot. Don’t ask me what that means, I’m still trying to find out.

So, my faster than sound projectile wasn’t as amazing. Plus, that speed cost energy too. If the energy needed to propel it faster than sound kept on doubling for each times the speed doubles, then at four times the speed of sound I would only manage one shot before I have to deep into my energy organ. It wasn’t worth it unless I was trying to take out a much more dangerous individual from a far. And the fact that the projectile could only take out five people at max and they had to be perfectly aligned in a straight line didn’t help at all.

My most persistent issue; capital. I had the resources, it was the turning of those resources into capital that was the issue. There was just no demand for the things I had to offer. My family and I had been doing fine back on Earth. But we had expanded a lot since then. And I had used up all the capital I was earning to build new bigger ships, and train and employ the crew needed to work on those ships. The crush education of juvenile species was a huge capital guzzler too.

That was why hybridization was a much easier route for me. The hybrids would have human level intelligence and be capable of working as my soldiers by the age of fifteen. I wouldn’t have to teach and train them about citizenry; they would grow up knowing themselves to be citizens of The Empire. The same could be said about the newborns from the assimilated species. But those would grow up hearing whispers of times before from their older species-mates. I was not a very trusting person.

Having a large citizen base was one thing; but they needed a way to make money so they could have the money to give to me. Creating jobs for all those people was proving difficult, and I had yet to make it to a trillion people.

The discovery of a Class Two civilization like the Kirasai, Kimuvians and the Ingu’sman was a much needed relief. Not enough, but it was a sign of good things to come. It would do for a short while though, make it appear like I’m doing something financially sound. All that tax had me salivating; metaphorically of course. No drool here. Now, if only I could discover ten such civilizations in the coming Year; I would be back in the greens for at least a decade.

There was always the last resort; selling some of my ships to outside family members. And then, as the sole supplier of Mutrium and diMutrium, I could charge them exorbitantly for the fuel. It’s not that I didn’t make any profit from selling to my family; there was just not many of them to sell to. I had sold a total of thirty-two ships, half of them custom-designs, to my family. Compare that to the over two thousand ships I called my fleet, and it was nothing.

The ship behind us, Durran, was fast approaching. And with it, I would get news of how my financial situation was back on Ũsumbĩ. Maybe things had turned around and my family had finally cracked the job creation equation. I highly doubted it.

Their lead shuttle had arrived two Days ago and they were getting acclimated to the local stellar system. The three species had yet to agree on a single name for it. The Ingu’sman called their local star, the Sho’sla. And most of us had taken to calling it that too. If they took too long, it would stick. Plus, the Kimuvians didn’t seem to have any issues with the name.