Plan Chaos

Plan Chaos had not gone as planned. Though really Astarte felt that she only had herself to blame for that. Unity station was a pit a vipers coiled around each other, and she had tried to disturb that pit by dropping unsuspecting mice into it. It had worked to reveal some of the vipers venom, but one misstep could have cost her the lives of her loyal crew.

It shouldn’t have been as bad as it was. The Union for all its many, many flaws at least tried to be reasonable when it came to deathworlders. It was how she got away with half her antics back in Femeri. But Unity wasn’t even trying to maintain a pretext of being reasonable, they had just brought the hammer of the “law” down on them. Crewmen arrested for littering after tossing trash into a trash can, Limey dragged out of a Balikstro bar for flirting across species lines, and her Marine Captain and Chief Medical officer tazed and beaten for helping a little Drohodron girl find her mother.

Astarte sat in her chair, tapping her fingers in a staccato rhythm after reading Gato and Alwen’s reports. Something was up in this station, some plot that she was unaware of and had blundered into face first. She thought back to her first meeting with Rachel, dressed as the Arbiter at the time. Their first meeting had been confrontational and antagonistic, but now Astarte wondered if there had been some sort of manipulation at play as well?

It seemed unlikely.

For one the Arbiter would have to have a deep and intimate understanding of how Astarte did things, and she was fairly confident that the ADCU didn’t have that kind of knowledge on her. Not unless Domnall had decided to take her out using the ADCU as a proxy. But that seemed unlikely as well.

Rachel also didn’t strike Astarte as a master manipulator on the same level as Domnall. Still, if it hadn’t been some devious scheme then Astarte had to acknowledge that she had made a major miscalculation.

A soft knock broke her out of her musing. “Come in” she called and Karega stepped into her office.

“Limey has been finally released from custody.” He said as he handed her a file.

“About time, anything to note?”

“Well for one, they appeared to be trying to link him with some sort a sex trafficking operation that was shut several years ago.”

She frowned “Why?”

“Unclear, they seemed to be grasping at straws as our Horsemen began circling.”

She sighed. “And second?”

He gave her a wry smirk “Second is that he came out in a women’s dress.”

Aster groaned “Why?” she asked defeated.

Kar chuckled to himself. “The bear spray crap they sprayed him with ruined his original clothes, so they gave him something from their lockup. They claim that the pink poodle dress was the only Terran appropriate clothing they had.”

“They couldn’t just buy him a pair of sweats and a T-shirt?”

Kar shook his head. “They said they couldn’t find any Terran clothiers.”

Astarte sat up “that’s suspicious.”

“Indeed, so I looked into and found that they were telling the truth. There really aren’t any registered Terran clothing shops on this station.”

“On a station with four million Terrans?” Astarte said skeptically.

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“Yes, according to what I dug up Terran businesses have been closing down in mass over the last two decades.”

“Why?”

“Best I can deduce from scanty sources, the regulations pertaining to Deathworlder building requirements have been getting progressively more and more stringent.”

“Building regulations?”

“Yep, the city development board will require an extra inch of concrete in Deathworlder stores, the store closes down for renovations, and then reopen just in time for the latest round of changes.”

Astarte scowled “Rinse and repeat until the business runs out of funds and you’ve successfully driven an ethnic group out of business.”

“Legal business at least. There’s four million Terrans who still need their daily necessities.”

Aster pondered the implications of that statement. Running an illegal business on this station would come with heavy consequences, especially with the SS so focused on Terrans. “Or, maybe some friendly xenos helping out. Humans are by nature social pack animals, driven to make friends and integrate into their community. Not hard to image the neighbors lending a hand.” Another thought occurred to her “How the Hell did four million Terrans find themselves fifty thousand lightyears from Sol anyway?”

He looked up from his report and gave her a puzzled look “You don’t know about the Deathworlder Exodus, it’s in literally every history textbook.”

She glared “Homeschooled, enlighten me.” She said flatly. Her mom and the other old Maidens had taught her as best as they could, but sometimes there were things they neglected to tell her that had bitten her in the ass more times than she cared to count. No one had thought to mention to her that Mars had previously been a cold barren red rock, in her head Mars had always been habitable. It was still hard to look at the Capital of Terran interstellar society and imagine a dusty red world.

“It was pretty major event a little over a century ago, like the Irish potato famine. As Earth death sentence became widely known and the seawalls were being built a lot of people who were less optimistic left Earth for the stars. Lots found new homes on Venus, Mars, Ceres, Titan, and Triton, but another couple million went further afield to Union stations.”

“Right, I know all that, but how the hell did so many people find their way to the core, the sector gates weren’t operational back then.”

Karega shrugged “No, but a lot of major Terran Business’s were setting up shop here at the time. Amaterasu made billions just by being the mediators between Union conglomerates and Earth. People made the long journey to join growing enterprises, and eventually some smaller business moved in to supply the growing Terran populace. It was huge news at the times, millions of Deathworlders immigrating to stations that hadn’t had Deathworld inhabitants for two centuries, it caused a major panic. The occasional passing Human was fine, but whole families coming to put down roots in your neighborhood? A whole litany of laws regarding Deathworlders were passed in record time.”

Astarte snorted “that sounds about right, really what else were they expecting? If you force a deathworld to join your stupid little Union then you should expect some immigrants.”

“Most species are a bit more sedentary than us. Humans are the anomaly in settling literally every corner of our brutal home world.”

The idea needled Astarte as just plain wrong. With so much galaxy to explore who could be content staying in one place? She shook her head. “Okay, so what changed? You said the people moving here had good stable jobs, but now a majority of the Terran population lives in poverty.”

The look of total confidence on Kar’s face wavered like it always did when the conversation dipped away from things he was very knowledgeable about. “Not sure. The immigration slowed down about fifty years ago, after that…” he shrugged.

“Another thing to ask The contact.”

“They agreed to a meeting?”

“Yup, this afternoon.”

He looked surprised “so soon after a week of asking?”

Aster nodded “I think they wanted us to see how dangerous this station was before meeting us. Which means they have been watching as plan Chaos blew up in a our face.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Neither do I, but what choice do we have right now. Somethings going on here, and we know frighteningly little. I don’t like anything about this situation.”

Kar chuckled darkly “Seems we may have bit off more than we can chew.”

Wasn’t that the truth. Aster had thought she was approaching this situation with more than ample consideration. She had been confident from years of running circles around the local authorities in Femeri that she hadn’t given the Core enough credit. This was the center of a galaxy spanning empire, one that had persisted for thousands of years. That wasn’t an accident.

She had been overconfident. After her victories over Kazlum and the High Vicar of the Draxori she had thought the Union would easy. But both the Draxori and Aunviry were the shattered foes of the Union. Her hard won victories should have been proof that the Union was no pushover.

She leaned back in her chair and sighed. And if the local situation wasn’t bad enough there was her father to consider. She had looked into the man, son of the very influential Gin family, founder of the ADCU, and chief of all SS precincts on this stupid station. Hanzo Gin, or Gin Hanzo if she were using Japanese naming conventions, was not an easy person to murder in cold blood.

And killing him could cause complications down the line in retrieving the Terra forming equipment. She had to face the troubling prospect of letting the scum sucking bastard live while they accomplished their mission. And that didn’t sit well with her.

Astarte wasn’t a vengeful person, not in the same way Lucile was. Oh sure, she burn like a supernova with rage and fury. But her anger was a quick, bright thing. Not the slow burning hate that revenge required.

It took serious dedication to hold the slow burning torch vengeance close to your heart for so many years and not succumb to utter despair. How her mother had done so for decades and still remained sane was one of life’s great mysteries.

No, Aster’s hate for her father wasn’t like Lucile’s ever burning flame. Hers was a like a horrific burn on her heart, the scarred over remnants of her rage when Lucile had first talked about the man that fathered Astarte.

The fire itself was long gone, but the burns remained and ached at the memory of it.

Aster looked up at the wall clock as another minute ticked by. “I should freshen up. can’t be late when meeting one of the most powerful contact’s in the galaxy.”

“Need backup?” Kar asked.

“No” she said with a shake of her head. “The contacts only ever met with the leader of any faction, its supposed to prevent any stupid mistakes like trying to kill a contact.”

He nodded “As long as your sure then I’ll leave you to it.” he stood up, reached over, and gave Aster a firm pat on the shoulder. A quiet and unsubtle attempt at calming the roiling turmoil he could see in her eyes.