In the Baleel Prime Minister’s office, slime slowly gathered on the ceiling, formed a long thick drop…

...and fell upon two naked baleel laying on the floor behind the wreckage that was once a well ordered and tidy desk.

“Again!” Jalabel, the Baleean Foreign Minister, exclaimed as she gave Gavomalen, the Prime Minister, a rather slimy Baleean kiss.

“Again?” Gavomalen laughed. “Well, okay...” he said as he started to flow on top of her.

“Not that, silly,” she laughed. “I meant… Wait, you can actually do it again?”

“It seems so,” the Prime Minister replied, turning his eyestalks downward meaningfully. “This Terran music seems to have quite the effect!”

Jalabel giggled and rolled over to accept him.

“Excuse me, Prime Minister?” a young Baleel staffer said as she walked into the room, “I have the latest… ohmycreatorsIamsosorry!” she squeaked and fled.

“That could be problematic,” the Prime Minister said as his “enthusiasm” started to deflate.

Jalabel’s feeding mouth stretched impishly, and she pressed “play” on the next track, looking at him meaningfully.

The prime minister shrugged, laughed, and continued to climb on top of her.

It’s not like it mattered anyway.

They were doomed.

***

A while later, the pair cuddled as they once again watched Jalabel’s favorite video. Strange alien forms danced amid large burning piles of what was identified as currency.

“It just seems so nice!” she sighed. “Did the humans actually get rid of money?”

“I don’t think so,” the Prime Minister sighed. “I think this is just the expression of a dream or something.”

“But wouldn’t it be wonderful? No money?”

“Well, just wait a couple of months,” the Prime Minister laughed. “You will get to live that drea— Ouch!” he squealed as Jalabel hit him with her radula.

“You know what I mean, you pore!” Jalabel laughed as she stroked him with her radula in a much more pleasant fashion.

“I agree that it would be lovely,” the prime minister said thoughtfully. “But is it even possible?”

“Karashel says the Xx did it. In her diary, she went on and on about the Xx Councilor’s grav-limo, how incredible it is, and how it didn’t cost him a single credit. Can you imagine not only being able to have something that nice but every single Baleel being able to have something like that if they wanted? No poverty, no hunger, freedom to be whatever you wanted to be… (sigh)… I could make pottery!”

“I didn’t know you could make pottery,” the Prime Minister said in surprise.

“I can’t!” Jalabel laughed happily, “I’m terrible at it… but I could suck at pottery for the rest of my days!… So could every other Baleel! We could be free to suck at whatever we wanted to suck at!”

“Dare to dream,” the prime minister snickered.

“We should,” she said quietly.

“We should what?”

“Dare to dream,” she replied. “We have followed the rules ever since those assholes invaded our system, and where has it gotten us?”

“Invaded?” the prime minister asked dubiously.

“What would you call it, then?”

The prime minister mused silently.

“Invaded works,” he replied.

“I think...” Jalabel said thoughtfully, “I think we should unleash her.”

“Who?”

A sinister smile spread across Jalabel’s face as her eyes shone with malice.

“Karashel.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll send you the contents of her drive. Our little councilor has a few ideas concerning the Federation and how to deal with them. I say we let her. Fuck, I say we help her.”

“Well, she does have that mysterious ‘favor’ from the Kalent...” the prime minister mused. “I was hoping that we could use it to get a reprieve from our current predicament.”

“And then what?” Jalabel demanded. “We will be right back here within the decade, and you know it. We’ve been ‘targeted’ for harvest, and they are going to scrape us down to nothing. How about we actually fight them?”

“I think the tunes have gotten to you a bit too much,” the prime minister replied. “Fight the entire Federation? It’s impossible.”

“The humans did!” Jalabel exclaimed. “They took on the Vulxeen and won. Hells, the Terrans rebelled against the entire Empire and won!”

“Yeah, but we aren’t humans,” the prime minister replied, “We are just Baleel. What in the void are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Jalabel said thoughtfully, “But I do know that if we don’t do something, we are done for.”

“That’s true,” the prime minister sighed. “Alright. Let’s ‘fight the powers that be’...”

He looked into space for a few moments.

“I think we should invite a few people over for a luncheon and a ‘concert’,” he grinned. “I’ll make the arrangements. And you, tell our little pill popping maniac to wreak havoc.”

Jalabel grinned at him.

“First Lady!!!” a familiar (and frantic) female voice squealed from down the hall. “The Prime Minister is very busy and—“

“I can smell how busy he is from here! Out of my way!” a female bellowed.

The door flew open. (well, opened somewhat quickly. Baleel aren’t exactly fast.)

“Well, well, well...” a baleel female said as she undulated in. “This is why you failed to appear for our scheduled luncheon? I had to entertain those dryflanks all on my own, you pore!”

“I do apologize, darling,” the prime minister said pleasantly. “Something ‘came up’.”

“‘Something came up’? Now that’s rich,” his wife replied coolly. “You haven’t been able to… oh my word...” she gasped as her eyes dilated in surprise.

“You have absolutely no idea how delighted I am that you walked in here while I’m in my current state,” The prime minister said as he offered her a neural interface… “Now, please let me do to you, with you, what I have wanted to for so long.”

“You both have some explaining to do,” the First Lady said as she undulated forward, “… afterwards...” she added with a little giggle as she started to shrug out of her shawl.

The staffer slammed the door closed and decided to just go home for the day. The world had gone crazy, and she really didn’t want to know who went in there next…

...just like she really didn’t want to know that the prime minister was huge!

I mean, seriously...

***

“I gotta question,” Karashel said to Caw as they had a snack in the Xx embassy canteen.

Caw sighed.

“Why must you announce your queries like that?” he groused, “Why can’t you simply ask a question like a rational sophont?”

“Because I know it bugs you,” Karashel smiled. “When you swear, you always say ‘by the progenitors’ or ‘by the ancient gardeners’. Why?”

“Because we prefer to flavor our oaths with things that are real.”

“The progenitors were real?!?”

“As far as we can tell,” Caw smiled as he popped a morsel of green-stag venison into his mouth, “Thanks for letting us have the meat, by the way. it’s delicious!”

“Don’t mention it,” Karashel replied. “Thanks for saving my snot.”

“Hunting is quite the thing for us Xx, you know. Pulling down a healthy green-stag with your bare… whatever you call those… didn’t hurt your image one bit, ‘huntress’.”

“Really?” Karashel replied as she sipped her juice box. “I would have thought you were too ‘enlightened’ for something like that.”

“Well, you would be quite wrong in that regard,” Caw chuckled with a flick of his crest. “We can be quite… bestial under the right circumstances. It’s part of the reason we take care to avoid such things. Anyway, back to the progenitors...”

“The Federation says that they are a myth,” Karashel said as her eyes dilated expectantly.

“You were in the basement of the Locus,” Caw replied. “Where do you think all of that came from?”

“The Progenitors?!?”

“It depends which ‘progenitors’ you are talking about,” Caw smiled. “There was definitely a galaxy-spanning civilization that preceded even the oldest of star-faring cultures today. Much about it, including why it disappeared, is not known, but something was definitely there. And that civilization arose from a single ‘progenitor’, but with very few exceptions, the oldest of the artifacts that we’ve found are only in the millions of years old. The ‘progenitors’ that I am talking about are older still.”

“But you haven’t found any artifacts?”

“Not like what’s in the Locus,” Caw replied, “but we do have proof, even if some supposedly ‘advanced’ races refuse to acknowledge it.”

“What sort of proof?”

“What do you know about evolution?”

“Just the basics,” Karashel replied, “over time, mutation and adaption will favor more fit individuals so that they are more likely to survive and pass along their traits to their offspring. Eventually, this results in new species and if allowed to progress unhindered will eventually produce sapient beings.”

“Close enough,” Caw replied. “However, there is a LOT more to it than just that. You are familiar with the ‘filters’ then?”

“Yes, the big ‘steps’ that life has to take.”

“Well, one of the first ones is a doozie!” Caw exclaimed. “The step from simple single-celled organisms (or equivalent) to more complex ones and ultimately to multi-cellular organisms is impossible!”

“What?” Karashel asked in surprise.

“We have run simulations, very good ones,” Caw replied. “It doesn’t naturally just happen. We’ve simulated hundreds of millions of years, and not once has multi-cellular life just ‘happened’. Not once! We have one simulation that has simulated over three-quarters of a billion years and still nothing. It in no way matches what has happened across the galaxy. Here, the jump only took millions of years, tens of millions at most. It also seems to happen in clearly detectable ‘batches’ where all single cellular life in huge patches of space all ‘miraculously’ achieved the necessary complexity to go from prokaryotes to eukaryotes in the same moment geological time. It’s almost as if ‘something’ dropped by and gave life a little nudge.”

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“That’s crazy!” Karashel exclaimed.

“Most of us thought the same until about two hundred and thirty years ago when we found it, definitive proof of manipulation in every single species we have been able to properly study,” Caw said triumphantly. “They were subtle. I will give them that. They didn’t impose any artificial order or ‘terraform’. They took what was there and improved it by just enough to get the ball rolling, but even a master sculptor leaves the tiniest of chisel marks, and we found theirs! They were real! Ever wonder why we are all so similar? There is a reason.”

“What do you mean we’re similar? We are all so different!”

“Think about it. We are mostly carbon-based, and our metabolisms are similar enough that we can quite often eat food from each other’s planets. Heck, that juice you love so much is squeezed straight from a fruit on my homeworld. What are the odds that would be remotely possible?”

“I never thought about it,” Karashel said, looking at her juice box.

“Nobody does… Except us, of course!”

“All hail the mighty smarty-pants!”

“Progenitor dammed right!” Caw screeched triumphantly.

“So these are the ‘Ancient Gardeners’ you talk about?”

“Oh no!” Caw exclaimed. “They were an entirely different race and one that more than one ‘Elder Race’ remembers all too well! They definitely existed… Hoo boy!...”

“So who were they?”

“The correct question,” Caw grinned, “Is who are they.”

“They are still around?!?”

Caw nodded.

“Where?!?”

“I’ve already said too much,” Caw replied. “Let’s just say there are things out there that make us look like… well… you.”

“And fuck you too!” Karashel laughed.

“Seriously, those things are ancient. The oldest artifacts we have ever translated refer to them as ‘beyond time itself’. It’s crazy, but it’s even written that they were ‘first born’, creatures that were directly uplifted by the progenitors, perhaps even created by them for some reason. That could make their species over a billion years old… and taught by the progenitors themselves. They don’t use any advanced technology, but there are definite traces of it lingering all over their world, not that we get too close. There is a very quiet agreement to stay the hell away from them.”

“I wonder if they could—“

“Absolutely not!” Caw squawked, his crest standing completely erect. “You do NOT want their help. Does your mythos contain sleeping demons or devils that should never be awakened?”

“Sort of.”

“They are like that. They need to remain ‘asleep’. If a fraction of what is written about them in the secret archives is true, they are the LAST thing we want taking an interest in anything.”

“But think about what they could teach—“

“You can learn a lot about gravity by jumping off a cliff, and the end result will be a lot more pleasant than what will happen if The Ancient Gardeners ever get involved.”

“Jumping off of a cliff isn’t so bad...”

“Okay, bad example. You can learn a lot about osmosis by crawling into a salt pile?”

“Salt isn’t so bad if you have snot.”

“How about a nice big pile of five-threes then?”

“Okay… okay...” Karashel laughed, “point taken.”

“How’s your little problem coming along anyway?”

“I have to pee in a bowl twice a week,” Karashel said, making a face. “But as far as the actual addiction goes, whatever the Kalent did worked like magic! I hope our doctor can adapt it to our tech. It could save a lot of lives back home!”

“Well, that’s excellent!” Caw said happily.

“But still,” Karashel sighed. “To think that there is something like those Ancient Gardeners out there. Just imagine what they could share with us.”

“Death,” Caw replied. “The only thing they would share would be death and lots of it. Many of us consider them to be the single greatest potential threat in the galaxy, including the Collective.”

“If they are that dangerous,” Karashel asked, “Then why don’t you and the Kalent and the Veiled Ones and everyone else just go and—“

“Because we can’t,” Caw replied. “Or at least we think we can’t. Trust me, if just one of them survived, the results could be horrific even if they have no surviving advanced technology, which I strongly doubt is the case.”

“Just one?”

Caw nodded solemnly.

“Without tech?”

“According to ancient legends, they were created expressly for the purpose of—“

Karashel’s phone rang.

“Oh shit, It’s the boss!” she gasped as she answered the phone. “Hello, Ms. Jalabel! How are you today?… Well, I’m at the Xx embassy, but I can… If private is what you want, my office here is a lot more secure and… I’m pretty sure the Xx don’t care about our state secrets. The chances of an eavesdropper or a bug is a lot higher at our embassy...”

“You can use our secure communications room,” Caw said. “Even we don’t record what goes on in there, word of the Xx.”

“Caw says their comm… oh you heard… Okay, I’ll call you from there.”

Karashel looked at her phone in confusion.

“She hung up.”

“Is it serious?”

“I don’t know,” Karashel replied. “But I’ve never seen her look quite like that before. I had better call her.”

***

Mark Guilderan, the Republic Secretary of State, glared at his two visitors, the scaly Fed ambassador and some Kalent he had never seen before.

“I’m not in the mood for your bullshit today, Harruux-ta,” he said after a few seconds. It was the truth. He had a lot more pressing concerns of late.

“I will allow you to return to your coup attempt shortly,” Harruux-ta hissed pleasantly as Mark bristled. “I have ten thousand credits bet against you, by the way,” Harruux-ta added with a smile, “Fortunately, I was able to get my bet locked in before the odds shifted so drastically.”

“What do you want, Harruux?” Mark growled.

“My name is Harruux-ta!” the reptilian hissed angrily, raising their torso a full seven feet above the ground.

“Whatever,” Mark replied dismissively. “What do—“

“Perverting my name is a grievous insult, and you know it! Address me by my name, NOW!”

“What do you want, Harrux-TA?” Mark replied with a smirk.

“Now you sully it further?!? How DARE you!”

“I don’t have time for this bullshit,” Mark replied. “Get out.”

“Gentlemen, please,” the Kalent said with a pained bubble. “Harruux-ta, might I remind you that we are not alone, and Mr. Guilderan, may I inform you that I am carrying someone of extreme importance with me.”

“What are you talking about?” Mark asked with annoyance.

The Kalent reverently reached into his bot and pulled out an ornate gold cube.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Guilderan,” a pleasant non-human voice said in perfect Terran.

Mark blinked. This was unexpected.

“Likewise,” Mark replied. “Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with.”

“My name is unimportant and quite the mouthful, so you can simply call me K.T. I do not hold a specific office, but I do hold a rather esteemed position among the Kalent and thus the Federation.”

“Lord K.T. is far more important than any other life form you have ever had the honor of addressing,” the Kalent said smugly.

“My child, Mr. Guilderan has the Imperial Throne on speed-dial,” the box said with amusement. “Let’s not overstate things.”

“As you say, my lord,” the Kalent replied, bowing low in his globe.

Mark leaned back in his chair thoughtfully. He had never seen a Kalent, any Kalent bow and scrape like that before. Even old scaly snatch was acting “funny” around that thing.

This might actually be important.

“Okay, Lord K.T.,” he said in a much more polite tone. “I take it you are some sort of Kalent’ Lord’? I was unaware that the Kalent had nobility.”

“Some of the Kalent insist upon using that term, but I have no title or lands, nor is it a feudal title like it would be in the Empire. They just keep calling me ‘lord,’ and I’ve tired of correcting them.”

“As you say, My Lord,” the Kalent intoned, bowing again. “Thank you for allowing us to address you by that term.”

Okay, now this was just weird.

“The Kalent ‘Lords’ normally stay deep within the oceans of their homeworld and only very rarely speak with outsiders,” Harruux-ta said in a very stiff, formal tone. “In my entire career, this is the first time that I have ever had the honor of sharing the room with one in any fashion, and I consider it one of the high points of my life.”

“You honor me, Harruux-ta,” the box said cheerfully as Harruux-ta looked like she was about to pass out.

“So are you in that little box, or is that a transmitter of some sort?” Mark asked as he glanced at his holo screen. It showed no active transmissions.

“It’s a transmitter,” the voice responded. “I am still on our homeworld though I would love to visit Terra one day. Perhaps in a few centuries, we will be friendly enough for it to be possible.”

Mark idly typed an alert on his keyboard as he listened.

“It’s a simple gravity wave transmitter that is being relayed to our ship in orbit where an active hyperlink communicates with me back in the Federation. It is possibly low enough power for it to not be immediately noticeable,” K.T. said helpfully. “You will undoubtedly detect it in your subsequent investigations.”

Mark scowled at the box. It was a cheap power-play, and it was working.

“I leave the tech stuff to the techs. My job is diplomacy,” Mark said with a smile. “So, what can this diplomat do for you today?”

“There are two reasons why I sought an audience with you,” the box replied as Harruux-ta looked at it with alarmed confusion. “The first and most pressing reason involves a Federation citizen being held in one of your delightful Terran jails.”

“You assholes are in no position to criticize our detention facilities!” Mark snapped as the Kalent hissed angrily.

“Nor was I intending to,” the box said before the Kalent could speak. “Actually, your entire Judicial branch is quite reasonable, and your detention facilities are very humane and well run, at least most of them. I intended no slight, and you are correct. Compared to some facilities in the Federation, your jails are beacons of enlightenment and mercy. I have no doubt that the Federation citizen in question is being well treated. However, I would still like to discuss the possible release of the individual and her return to her home.”

“And just who would this ‘citizen’ be?”

“Nobody of any real importance, just a Plath, goes by the name of Sheloran, I believe.”

“And ‘nobody of any real importance’ has one of you Kalent Lords, an entity that has old scaly britches over there damn near peeing herself and has a Kalent doing headstands in his fishbowl, showing up?”

“The Plath are an unusual case,” the box said smoothly. “They are a simple people, not used to the ‘complexities’ of galactic life and not equipped to deal with foreign powers. By chance, I have a personal friendship with some of them and am shamelessly abusing my power by interceding on their behalf.”

“I see,” Mark smiled, not buying a single word. A few keypresses confirmed his suspicions.

He thought that name sounded familiar.

“Well, that ‘simple person’ is in a whole lot of trouble,” he replied. “She is being held pending trial for multiple homicides. The Republic takes that sort of thing somewhat seriously.”

His eye caught a slight change in the font and format of the record. It was flagged.

Interesting...

“From what our legal experts have deduced,” the box replied, “There is an excellent chance that she will be acquitted in a jury trial, especially since the Harkeen have been classified as ‘raiders’. No jury you can muster will convict someone for killing raiders, even with the… enthusiasm... with which Sheloran did the deed. There is simply no reason to hold her any longer.”

“Like I said, I’m just a diplomat. I leave the legal analysis to the DOJ. I’m sure that everything will work out just as you say, but the system has to run its course.”

“And I have complete faith in that system,” the box said soothingly, “However, diplomacy can have its place even in judicial matters. The Kalent will consider it a personal favor if this individual was released to us, which ties directly into the second reason why I am here.”

“And what is that?”

“The Kalent would like to have an official embassy here on Terra and wish to start forming a direct relationship with the Republic independent of the Federation. Releasing Sheloran would go a long way towards cementing that relationship… and possibly a non-aggression pact? Maybe an exchange of technology that could be of interest?”

“Lord K.T.?!?” Harruux-ta snort-hissed in shock.

“Ambassador,” the box said in a friendly tone, “You have been most helpful, but you can leave now. I would like to speak with the Secretary of State privately.”

“But...”

“We have made our dissatisfaction and our disappointment clear on more than one instance over these past few years, and now the Kalent have decided that it is in our best interests to start interacting with the galaxy directly. You can destroy the Federation, wasting all the time and effort we have expended therein if you wish, but I certainly hope you didn’t have any illusions that we would allow ourselves to go down with it. We have made recommendation after recommendation, and our guidance has been ignored time and time again. The Federation’s handling of the human crisis was the last grain of sand, Harruux-ta, the last grain. We no longer feel that our future is necessarily the Federation’s, and as a result, we are starting to make moves to secure the safety and future of the Kalent should the Federation continue along its self-destructive path. We are still part of the Federation, and we still hope that it finds the right path and are still committed to guiding and assisting all of you, but we are no longer willing to stake our people’s future upon the Federation magically righting itself. The Collective is coming, Harruux-ta. The Collective is coming, and the Kalent need allies worthy of us.”

Harruux-ta made a strangled, sobbing noise.

“But, Lord K.T, we are—“

“A worthy ally?” the box asked politely, “The entire Federation is incapable of fighting the Forsaken. If you are powerless before a handful of freighters and a few insurgents on the ground, what chance do you have against the Collective? No, my dear Harruux-ta, you are not a worthy ally. I’m truly sorry. I truly am, but the Kalent people cannot trust in the strength of the Federation. If it was just a question of martial strength or technology, it wouldn’t be an issue. But, unfortunately, the problems go far deeper than that, and you know it. Now, please depart. If you wish to discuss this at length later, we can do so, but the ‘Lords’ have spoken, and we consider the Federation experiment to be a failure. Now, please go. The Terrans and I have much to discuss.”

With a sob, Harruux-ta lurched from the room, smashing through the closed door as she fled in terrified confusion.

Well, goddamn, Mark thought to himself as he took a deep breath. No matter who would “win” this stupid mess that he had put himself into, he was still the Secretary of State, and this…

This was HUGE.

Patricia Hu, Jon Wintersmith, Momma Augustine, and all the rest could go and fuck themselves for a little bit. If a non-aggression pact with the Kalent was possible…

It would completely ruin what shreds were left of Patricia Hu’s plan…

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

It was time to choose. Who did he work for? Where did his loyalties lie?

“I’m going to need a minute, Lord K.T,” Mark said calmly.

“Take your time,” the box replied knowingly.

Across the galaxy, an ancient and huge Abyssal Lord grinned in the eternal darkness of the trench that he had called home for thousands of years.

“Checkmate,” he chuckled to nobody in particular.

***

Author’s note: The Baleel have a slightly different view of ‘loyalty’ and marriage than humans do. For the First Lady, being “betrayed” by being left hanging during an unpleasant social engagement was far more vexing than finding her husband wiggling around on the floor with the Foreign Minister. What really pissed her off was that he blew off the quite annoying “responsibility” in favor of playing hide the tendril. Her annoyance was akin to a spouse who got stood up for an important date because her mate ran off for a night out with the boys or decided to stay home and play video games instead.

Most Baleel marriages, while nominally monogamous, are tacitly open (or at least have plenty of hall passes). In fact, many Baleel are happily raising children that they didn’t father (or bear in some cases) as their own.

And someone catching their spouse and promptly joining in is a very tired trope in their sitcom, romcoms, and porn.

What had the poor staffer so scandalized was that it was happening in their version of the Oval Office and exactly who was getting freaky.