---Conference---
---Witold’s perspective---
My heavy door flies open, startling me half to death, and an out of breath eleven year old bursts in to my quarters, holding a long stick.
“Witold!They’reatmyhouse!Rightnow!!!WhatshouldI…?!”
“Pawel!” I say, allowing some sternness into my voice “I am an old man!… You are going to give me a heart attack bursting in like that!… What’s so important that you felt it necessary to come in without knocking first?! Explain…. slowly!… Sit down and take deep breaths!”
The boy takes some deep breaths but remains standing as he says “The Demony are in the town! Four that I recognised, two new ones! The gigantic redhead was in my house with one of the new ones! They were with my mama! I tried to fight him but he’s so strong he found it funny!”
“You’re… surprised at being unable to overcome a man you watched singlehandedly kill a zmora?… Even armed, as I presume you were?” I ask, pointing at his stick and trying not to give away any amusement.
“No, of course I didn’t think I could beat him but… he has my mama! I had to try!!!”
“Pawel, sit!” I demand, gesturing to an empty chair.
Reluctantly, the boy takes the seat.
“Tell me, Pawel… were the guards with them?”
He hesitates… then nods.
“Were any of them armed?”
Another pause… then a head shake.
“Other than being chased and caught by the leatherclad hunter, have you seen them undertake any aggressive action… to anyone?”
“Well… they killed that zmora…” he answers, clearly looking for evidence to fit his theory rather than a theory to fit his evidence!
“Was that unreasonable? Didn’t you yourself say they seemed to try and scare it away first? Would any Mazurzy do that? Try to scare away a zmora when killing it was (apparently) so easy for them?”
He frowns.
“Pawel… do you remember what I said yesterday, when you told me of these ‘Demony’?”
He gives an exasperated sigh “…You said there were many different kinds of people in the UTC and that lots of them looked very different from us… You said that, while you’d never heard of a ‘Don’ or a ‘Chwarnii’, you did know what a Neanderthal was and thought my description of that one more or less matched them… You said the thundersticks I told you about sounded like ‘guns’ and, though you didn’t know anything like the sunsword, it could easily be magic that they’d invented between when we got stranded and now…”
“I didn’t use the word ‘magic’ but, otherwise, well recalled…” I chuckle “…Pawel, I know you had a frightening experience yesterday but imagine, for a moment, that these people aren’t Demony… Imagine that they are who they say they are… what would that make this?”
The boy doesn’t answer for a few moments, his eyes darting back and forth while focused on the near distance, before he responds “…The Ratunek?”
“Indeed!… It’s not often in my capacity as Bzowy that I get to play the optimist, Pawel, but, right now… I think it’s much less likely that you were the first person from Malbork to ever encounter Demony and far more likely that you were the first to know anything about the Ratunek!”
He looks doubtful.
“Pawel, if these people reveal themselves to be enemies, we shall have to treat them as such but, unless and until that happens, why don’t we try to treat them as friends?”
Unhappily, he answers “…Alright… Witold…”
“Good!” I smile “Now, why don’t the two of us go and meet them together? I feel there is much for us to discuss!”
He nods.
I rise from my chair and pick up my staff.
The boy and I walk through the (still open) door of my quarters and begin making our way to the Pilecki’s entrance hall, my staff clunking against the metal floor as I walk.
We come to the top of the ramp, that hasn’t moved for around three and a half centuries, and stop.
I look across the town square, directly outside, and up Malbork’s central thoroughfare.
I see a mass of people, gathered in a slowly moving knot.
At the centre of the crowd, I see the recognisable metal helms of the town guards and one distinctively redheaded person who stands head and shoulders taller than the rest!
Though it’s too far away for me to recognise anyone, I can already make out enough detail to see that the ones between the guards aren’t Mazurzy!
The throng approaches the base of the ramp and only the guards and visitors proceed up it, the rest being held at bay by two of the guards.
They get near enough for me to see them relatively clearly.
Every one of them has some feature of their appearance that immediately sets them apart as nonlocals! I may not know every face and name in town but there’s absolutely no way any of these people are from Malbork!
A young woman, less than 10cm shorter than me, with purple eyes, black hair (bar a silver streak at her forehead) and dressed in a cloth robe that gleams like metal, steps forward and proffers her hand to me.
She speaks in a language with a rhythmic, tapping cadence that I do not understand.
A second young woman with dark skin, wearing a long sleeved dress of gold and blue cloth and with her head wrapped to match says “This name is Emiko ‘Grins’ Miyazaki, she is from the United Terran Coalition and speaks for them. She is pleased of meeting you!” gesturing to the woman shaking my hand.
“You speak our language?” I ask the sable skinned woman.
She smiles “I can try. I watched Pawel tell his story… it let me get near to it.” gesturing to Pawel.
I raise an eyebrow and turn to Pawel “Your story?”
He shifts “They asked me to tell them one… I told them the story of the Pilecki… but she wasn’t there.”
The translator answers “I saw it after… it was a really good!”
I smile at the fact that the boy was able to tell the whole story from memory.
The woman in the gleaming robe gestures to a strange faced woman with a heavy brow, no chin and a wide, long nose.
Though a normal height, she has the broadest shoulders, deepest torso and thickest limbs of any person I’ve ever seen!
She must be the Neanderthal…
“This name Thran ‘Gimli’ Hunting… she is my guard.” relays the translator.
Then the Miyazaki woman gestures to a man with copper coloured hair and bright green eyes who stands more than 20cm taller than me and has a powerfully proportioned body.
“This name Victor ‘Hugging’ Taylor and he normally is a guard of a different sort… today though, he is speaking for the ship.” translates the woman in the blue and gold dress.
Then, the lead woman gestures to a man and woman, the former a little taller than me, the latter a little shorter… but still the tallest woman I’ve ever seen!
If the man got a bit of sun on his skin and dressed in Mazurzy clothing, he could walk past me in the street and I might think nothing more than ‘That man who I don’t recognise is quite tall!’ With thousands of people in town, it’s impossible to know everyone, afterall!
The woman, though, in addition to her immense height, has dark skin and thick, curly, dark brown hair, that boarders on black, which would never allow her to pass for a local.
“These names Leon ‘Kennedy’ Byrne and Ziva ‘Murmuring’ Pereira… They are here for the UTC Information Facility.” conveys the woman who, it now strikes me, managed to become almost fluent in Nowo Mazurski, overnight!
Then, the woman in the metal cloth gestures to the translator and speaks.
“My translator I let introduce her own(!)” speaks the translator before continuing “My name Yasmin ‘Yellow Tongue’ Soltani and I am a language expert… mostly, you will be speaking through me, not to me, but I am still pleased of meeting you!”
The strangers now introduced, the leader speaks and the translator relays “Might we know your name?”
“My name is Witold…” I say (a little self conscious of my Mazurski mononym when all these visitors have old Terran triple barrels) before continuing “…I am the Bzowy of the town of Malbork.”
“Bzowy means Ruler?” asks the translator without prompting from the emissary.
I smile and shake my head “More like ‘Scholar’… I only advise our ruling council, the Rada Miejska, as well as organising our meetings… my duty is mainly as a repository of knowledge, though I am often listened to, when I choose to give advice.”
The dark skinned woman relays that to the purple eyed one and receives a reply.
“Mistress Miyazaki asks to speak to the Rada Miejska but knows that might not possible, this day. She wants to confer about the Ratunek with them.”
I shake my head “It will be more than possible! A few hours should be more than enough time for all the Radni to be notified and make the necessary arrangements … In the meanwhile, might I talk with you in the Komnata?…”
---later---
My head is spinning as I sit at the table, at the head of what was once a lecture theatre that now serves as the Rada’s meeting hall.
I asked the soldiers to find and notify every Fojtordenter to make their way to the Conference on the Ratunek, at the tolling of the afternoon bell…
I thought that the four or five hours I gave myself would be more than sufficient time for me to become informed enough but… based on all the things they’ve told me up to now, I don’t know if I’d be ready if I had six months to prepare!
They showed me pictures and recordings of strange creatures that talk like Terrans (admittedly, Terrans speaking Old Polish, which is as close as they can get to Nowo Mazurski until our language has been catalogued, not that that was a problem for me).
I asked them if it was a joke but they insisted that these creatures were not only real but were their crewmates, in orbit around us, right now!
They volunteered to have their image taken, to show us, to help introduce us to the fact that Earth isn’t the only planet that has produced intelligent beings!
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“If… uhm… if there are… tens of thousands of different intelligent species, across hundreds of millions of planets… then why… why has nobody found us until now?” I ask, struggling a little.
“So… I know this is all a lot to take in, Sir…” says Miyazaki, her words still incomprehensible to my ears but their meaning being sent directly to my mind, through the device at my forehead.
I asked if the existence of such technology didn’t render the translator a little pointless but was told they don’t have an infinite supply of them, so she is going to need to translate for the Rada. Also, they apparently can’t be given to children, meaning that Pawel is only able to understand my side of the conversation.
Pawel wasn’t invited to join us… but just followed, without anyone objecting(!)
If he actually becomes Bzowy one day, it might be good for him to be here… preserving this moment in living memory for the longest time possible… though, now I think about it… if this truly is the Ratunek… that might make me Malbork’s last Bzowy!
Miyazaki continues “…the truth is, Sir… the Galactic Union have a system for classifying planets… Class 1 to Class 3 planets, they call ‘paradiseworlds’; the gravity is low, the climate is stable, edible food is plentiful, there is little to nothing in terms of what we would call ‘natural disasters’, no predators, no pathogens, minimal solar radiation etc. etc… Ironically, sapient species from these worlds are on the rarer side, since they’re usually so stable that there is no need for animals to develop advanced problem solving to survive.”
I nod my understanding.
“Class 9s are termed ‘roughworlds’ and are thought to be highly chaotic and adversarial to the development of sapience… to the extent that there are only thirteen sapient species known from roughworlds…”
I give another nod, though I’m not really able to see where she’s going with this.
“Paradiseworlds and roughworlds are both subcategories of ‘gardenworld’… a term that is supposed to include all planets capable of producing or supporting sapient societies… but the scale goes beyond Class 9… Class 10s, Class 11s, Class 12s and Class 12+s are termed 'deathworlds'… planets where the inherent instability of all conditions challenge life to the extent that it was thought that no sapience could possibly arise, no society possibly develop… There are thought to be a few hundred thousand deathworlds in the galaxy… Since the Galactic Union’s formation, a little more than a million years ago, the idea of a sapient deathworlder has been a popular bogeyman in gardenworlder culture… Deathworld systems tend to get avoided like marine ships would avoid rock shoals…”
Seeing now where this might be going, I ask “…And… *ahem*… what ‘Class’ is Nowe Mazury?… What is Earth?”
“This is a high Class 11… Earth is a 12+…” she relays, seriously.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am, I believe you misspoke… You just said that sapience could not develop on Classes above 9…” I answer, a sinking feeling in my stomach.
She smiles mirthlessly and responds “I said that’s what was thought… until around 36 years ago, when a GU freighter pulled into a UTC system to degauss and were challenged to identify themselves by the local Aerospace Control, marking First Contact between our polities and precipitating a War for our extermination which lasted more than 7 years, cost us 70 billion lives and them 20 trillion…”
I feel like I’ve just been punched in the stomach as my pulse soars and I choke out “…*Huff*… Why so… *huff*… why were…*huff*…?”
“…there so many more deaths on their side?… Especially when I’ve already told you how much more sophisticated their technology was than ours?” she provides “Simple… there was good reason for them to fear deathworlders(!)… We are stronger than them, faster than them, we can last longer than them and, at least on questions of survival, our brains make theirs look like the difference engine next to a quantum computer(!) Our ferocity, our hardiness, our ability to strategise, design and reverse engineer instruments and means of killing, our commitment to fighting to survive are things we have in orders of magnitude greater amounts than the overwhelming majority of the galaxy… Every facet of our survival on a deathworld naturally moulded us into the perfect, killing machine, supersoldiers… A five year old Terran would be more than a match for 99% of gardenworld species in an unarmed fight!”
I sit, absorbing that for a long while before I manage to stammer “…But… you s-s-said… the War w-was over…? H-how did it…?”
She smiles and interrupts “Something else that surviving a 3 billion year evolutionary arms race on a deathworld has equipped our species with, [Bzowy], is compassion…! It took them a while to look past the soldiers tearing apart their armies to see the humanitarians following behind but, when they did, they sued for Peace… Of course, their military capacity was fairly spent at that point but, if they hadn’t been reasonably confident of our mercy, they would have made us claw this galaxy from them, planet by planet… which might have taken centuries and would have meant tens of trillions more deaths…”
The Ratunek is much more complicated than I always imagined it!… I more or less thought it would just be a ship (like the Pilecki but bigger) landing outside town and people ushering us on board to take us home!
I never imagined all this stellarpolitical baggage!
“What is the UTC’s relationship with the Galactic Union like, these days?” I ask, forcing myself to remain calm.
“These days?… We’re a constituent member…” she shrugs.
I stare at her, agog, for some long moments before I manage “I’m… sorry?!… We just joined a society that tried to exterminate us?!”
She gives a sympathetic chuckle and says “I see where you’re coming from… but it was decided that pursuing an isolationist policy was extremely likely to eventually lead to a Second War… Better to be on the inside, where we can not only have a say in affairs but also show willingness to participate, show people that we aren’t the monsters they perhaps imagine us to be!… Though, I must correct you about something;… We joined the Galactic Union…” she gestures to the nonMazurzy side of the table “…You…” she gestures to myself and Pawel on the end of the table “…were never legally incorporated into the UTC and were functionally independent from it at the time the Peace was signed… which segues nicely into your options…”
“Our options…?” I ask, feeling a little rejected at the implication that we’re not considered UTC citizens.
“Yes… when your council convenes, I plan to present them a few different possibilities for relationships they might request to have with the UTC… I’ll record it and it will be filed as a formal plea the moment our ship reenters FTLcom signal…” she smiles.
“You aren’t just going to take us home?” I ask, feeling a little stupid, in a way I haven’t for decades.
She nods, conceding “Evacuation is one possibility… though a full evacuation is not possible right now. Not in the ship we came in… so it would take some months for an evacuation to be properly organised.”
“Is there no space on your ship?” I ask, confused… It looked fairly spacious and empty in the videos they showed.
“I’ll let Victor explain that…” says Miyazaki.
The gigantic man clears his throat and speaks “*ahem*…Space wouldn’t be the problem… Hell! Recently, we evacuated an island that had more ’an twice as many as it looks like you got in your town!… The problems are more logistical… When we had those people on board, we were on a planet… we had aid shipments constantly comin’ in! Food, medicine, blankets… necessities, y’know? We also had relief workers on board, helpin’ us look after their needs… but we was still stretched to absolute breakin’ by it… we wouldn’t have any of that help with you, and it’s a long way we’d have to go, through space… Now, there are some differences, like, that was an emergency evac so people weren’t able to bring their own supplies… You guys could bring your own food and such, but then we’d have to dump you on a gardenworld to wait for a proper evac anyway, and there ain’t many gardenworlds equipped to handle ten thousand or so Terran refugees bein’ dumped on top of ’em for months!… If an evac is what you want, I’d say send only your sick, injured and elderly with us… everyone else should wait for a better prepared ship that’d have to be sent from the UTC… We could maybe take a couple of hundred before we start strainin’ our capacity to care for ’em… Zuzana says that you told her her daughter’s got pneumonia? She’d be a priority… her mum’d have to come too, to look after her… Pawel prob’ly couldn’t be left on his own… You might consider comin’ yourself, if there’s space…”
Confused, I ask “Why would I come…? There’s nothing wrong with me…”
“Oh… well… err… no offence but you… you’re just a bit… old…” he says, sheepishly.
I laugh “Yes… I’m 67!… What do you propose to do about that!”
The redhead starts to answer but Miyazaki holds up her hand to stop him before asking “[Bzowy]… how old do you think we are?” gesturing around the line of nonMazurzy.
“You all look to be in your mid twenties… are you not?” I ask.
I had noticed it being strange that all of these people happened to be so youthful… but had chalked it up to coincidence… Now, however, I’m suspicious…
Miyazaki turns to her bodyguard “Thran, dear… how old are you?”
“25.” answers the inordinately stocky Neanderthal, not surprising me at all.
“And Victor… how old are you?” she asks the towering man.
“30.” he answers, surprising me slightly. He looks young for thirty!
“Leon? Ziva?”
“Nearly 41.” lies the blond.
“Nearly 42…” smirks the brunette.
Miyazaki nods and gestures to herself “I am 53… what about you, Yasmin?”
“…I’m about to turn 79.” says the vernal woman who cannot be a day over twenty five!
“Listen…” I say, unamused “…I understand that, from your perspective, I may seem like a simple bumkin but I truly do not appreciate you trying to make jokes at my expense!… There is precisely no way that, even with the 400+ years of separation, you have developed past age!… Entropy is a fact of the universe! What you’re saying is not possible!”
Miyazaki smiles “Did you forget the technological leap forward associated with joining the GU, [Bzowy]…? It did take a bit of fine tuning to stop them from turning our entire bodies into cancerous masses but… regenerative medical technology is a fact of our current reality… and, likewise, I would recommend you making use of it… It will be a shame to deprive your community of you but it would be more of a shame for death to do so permanently!”
I fold my arms and cock an eyebrow “I’ll believe it when I see it(!)… What are our other options besides this two part evacuation?”
“Oh, well… the UTC isn’t in the business of forcible annexation so, as long as we have no reason to believe that this government…” she gestures to the audience seats that will be filled with Radni in a few hours “…isn’t representative of the will of the Mazurzy people, we will be happy to leave you to your independence. We would need to register that fact with the GU but, other than that, nothing would need to change… Though, I would strongly recommend against full isolationism, the galaxy can be a frightening place… Being independent would not preclude you from receiving aid from the UTC, so a request could be made to that effect, if that was your wish.”
I nod “Until you explained about the UTC’s membership in the organisation that tried to exterminate us, I would have said that no Fojtordenter would opt for our continued ‘independence’… Now, though, I’m not so sure…”
“Personally, my recommendation wouldn’t be either of those options…” muses the woman.
“Oh?”
“Personally, I plan to recommend opting for the status of a protectorate of the UTC, on track for full membership.”
“A ‘protectorate'?” I query “Why is that?”
She smiles “The fact that you’ve survived here for as long as you have, in the conditions you have, proves the viability of this world for Terran habitation!… Sure, you may fantasise about a better life in the UTC but, if we evacuate you, your entire, unique culture and history will likely be lost within a generation or two, as you get dispersed into the population! Becoming a protectorate would mean the better life could come to you while what you want to preserve of your culture can be safeguarded… Once you think you’ll be able to stand on your own two feet, you can apply to have your status upgraded to full member, which would do things like fully open your boarders to immigration from the UTC, rather than the only people allowed to come here being aid workers, food production workers, construction workers, sanitation workers, medical professionals and the like… In the meantime, you’d enjoy all of the protections of full membership!”
I think about that for a while “A protectorate… hmmm…”
---Ratimyr’s perspective---
Out all day recovering that zmora carcass with my men, and the thanks I get(?!) Returning to town and finding the Palisade only half as manned as it ought to be because a conference of the Rada has been called, without me, to discuss the fucking Ratunek!!!
I stride up to the Komnata's entrance and wave for my men standing guard to open the door for me.
They don’t open them all the way but I decide to discipline them about it later!
I stride in, seeing all 89 Radni aside from myself in their seats. Then, I look to the stage.
What I see disappoints me…
“It seems the UTC has been taken over by clucking chickens in our absence from it, brothers(!)” I say, gesturing to the table, dominated by women.
This receives a light chuckle from the audience while a nubile, brown skinned woman in a conservative, blue and gold cloth dress gossips into the ear of an equally attractive (though equally alien looking) woman in a dress made of metal cloth.
“傲慢なオンドリよりもめんどりの鳴き声の方がいい(!)” smirks the purple eyed woman.
“She says; better clucking chicken than strutting rooster(!)” relays the woman in blue, also smirking.
This elicits a much heartier laugh than I got.
My anger flares.
“Do you know who I am!? I am the Captain of the guard! I will not be disrespected by a woman who shouldn’t even be in the Komnata!”
The woman in the metal cloth dress rises along with the woman in blue and an extremely fat and ugly one on her other side.
She walks to the edge of the stage, flanked by the other two hens.
She steps down with a clack of her strange wooden sandals and stands facing me, her eyes at the same level as mine!
She looks me up and down and says “残念ながら、見ているのは傲慢なオンドリだけです…”
“She says; It is bad luck that all she sees is the arrogant rooster…”
I backhand her, hard, across the face but no sooner have I done so than my head strikes the stage!
I have an enormous weight pressing down on my chest and my arms are being painfully bent behind me.
“Мин сезне БТК вәкиленә һөҗүм иткән өчен кулга алам.” comes a level voice from on top of me, that I guess must belong to the ugly woman.
“She says: You are being arrested for attacking a UTC representative.” relays the translator.
“You can’t arrest me! I am the LAW in this town! You are foreigners!!! Guards! Arrest them!!!” I shout to the chamber guards… who make no move to help me…
“What are you doing, you idiots! Help me!!!” I shout at the halfwitted guards doing nothing more than staring uncertainly at one another.
“Unfortunately, Ratimyr…” says Witold, sat at the table with his eyebrow cocked wryly and gesturing to my men “…5 minutes ago, they became citizens of the UTC protectorate of Nowe Mazury…” he gestures to me “…and so did you!”