TS6 - Chapter 20

Jaalin was glaring at Belle, and it took everything in Kat to not laugh at the lokkel as Belle calmly sipped a cup of tea.

.”I’m trying to open your people up to the galaxy,” Jaalin ground out, all four of her hands opening before squeezing into fists.  “Clan Ahn would front the cost of building a state of the art spaceport.  In exchange, your company could rent out a substantial amount of space for shops and hangars, letting you have the first crack at tourists and merchants.”

“But your contract gives Clan Ahn extra territoriality rights over the spaceport,” Belle replied smoothly.  “Almost as if it is an embassy or something.  If I’m reading this right, Grocorp wouldn’t be able to inspect or tax any cargo unless it actually left the grounds of the spaceport itself.  That means that an enterprising individual could purchase products tax free from the trade hub that you’re proposing and transport it via shuttles to another port where it could be removed and sold, duty free and without any sort of inspection.”

“No,” she said, smiling thinly, “I reiterate my previous proposal.  Grocorp has extracted enough information from the downed stallesp ship to build our own spaceport.  Admittedly, it would be fantastically expensive and a bit run down and spartan by galactic standards, but we would own it completely and we would be able to dictate what trade comes in and out of it.  It would be our honor to host a Clan Ahn enclave on spaceport grounds.  Within the enclave itself, extra territoriality is something we could come to an agreement on, but there is no chance that we would accept those rules being applied more generally.”

Jaalin sighed, defeated.  “Fine.  Honestly?  If your goal is to build your own spaceport and let us have an enclave in it, I don’t want the enclave to be miserable.  Would you mind if our first decade’s rent was the plans for a more modern spaceport?  Stallesp technology gets the job done but it's ugly, inefficient, and prone to shorting out under stress.”

“Do we have the infrastructure to replicate lokkel technology?”  Kat asked. “Grocorp has access to a decent amount of hybrid technology, but the equipment we’re using to design crystal matrixes is clunky and slow.  Heck, we’re still ironing out the kinks in personal shields.  If, as I suspect, lokkel technology is more sophisticated, I’m not sure we even have the equipment needed to smelt the alloys let alone do precision work.”

“That we can work with,” Jaalin replied.  “Caln Ahn won’t be sending you anything cutting edge or even high tech, but it should be within a couple generations of the knowledge you’ve… acquired from the stallesp.  It also shouldn’t be too much trouble for us to send along sample equipment.  Ostensibly, that equipment will be for installation but it is standard to send spare parts or even spare copies of the machinery.  Your people seem adept at reverse engineering, so with any luck that will be enough for you to decode some of the methods we use to build our simpler equipment.”

Belle leaned back in her chair, face porcelain blank for a couple of seconds as she thought over Jaalin’s offer.  Finally, she cocked her head slightly, locking eyes with Kat, tossing the question to her.

Kat blinked once, rapidly checking back into the conversation and mentally going over the back and forth between Belle and Jaalin before responding.

“Honestly?  I think the spare equipment might be even more valuable than the designs or rent.  Our people have gotten pretty good at cobbling together serviceable technology from examples.  They still haven’t replicated full stallesp tech yet, they aren’t even a quarter of the way there, but the stuff our lab is spitting out is hundreds of years ahead of the rest of the planet and it has only been about a year.  Give them some more time and equipment to break down and rebuild, and I’m pretty sure we should be able to put together a halfway serviceable spaceport.”

“I don’t know how quickly we can build it though,” Kat continued.  “A lot of that will depend upon what construction equipment and parts we need to use.  Stallesp tech needs a lot of isotopes that don’t occur naturally, and that required us to spend months on building enrichment plants in order to supply the necessary raw materials.  That isn’t even delving into industrial scale production.”

Her eyes flickered, bringing up a report on the smartpanel over her eye.  Another blink switched the paperwork out, replacing it with a spreadsheet set side by side with descriptions of the various manufacturing lines used for hover cars and advanced construction exoskeletons, the pared down civilian version of APEX suits.  Both products were resource and time intensive as well as being Grocorp’s biggest sellers.  Kat doubted that either of them would involve half as much work as actually establishing and building anything resembling a modern spaceport, but they were the closest example she was going to find.

“Right now we’ve managed to produce a derivative of the alloy the stallesp use for the interior of their ships,” she remarked, eyes vaguely glassy as she flicked through page after page of reports and diagrams.  “The armor that they’re using on the outside and for the engine and weapon housings is well beyond us, but we are able to make a version of their ordinary construction alloy that’s about ten percent heavier and with eighty percent the tensile strength of the original.  Our engineers are able to produce it at scale, but they still haven’t figured out a way to mass produce the crystal arrays used to control stallesp technology.  Right now we’re using a mixture of chip based circuitry to supplement the crystals, but that doesn’t completely eliminate the need for them.”

She shrugged helplessly.  “My scientists can grow the crystals, but grow is the operative word.  Every control crystal is completely bespoke meaning that it requires constant supervision and weeks if not months of monitoring and tweaking before it is ready for installation.  Even then, the end product is maybe only a quarter as good as the stuff we were able to salvage from the stallesp life support system, and we frankly don’t even know how to compare it to their fire control.  Those crystals are running equations in dimensions that the scientists are struggling to even understand.”

“Likely mana controls,” Jaalin responded, nodding thoughtfully.  “Consensus scientists have been working on fully unlocking mana technology for millennia.  Progress has been made, but all of the truly impressive equipment is made by the architects.”

“Architects?” Belle asked, sliding into the conversation with a single raised eyebrow.  “What do you mean by that?  Is the Galactic Consensus actually inventing its own spaceships or are you simply reverse engineering advanced technology the way we are?”

“They’re sometimes called the gardeners, the ancestors or the architects,” Jaalin replied.  “If you’ve spent any time in the tower, you’ve probably seen some references to them.  The most common theory is that they were the first group of people to discover mana and psi energy, but no one really knows what they are or if they’re still even around.  For all I know, they might not even all be the same race.  The architects might be a collective of different races that assembled everything back when the galaxy was young.  Personally though?  I think they’re still here.  After all, the dreamscape relays keep appearing from somewhere.”

“So I guess you’re partially right,” the lokke l continued.  “Most equipment in the Galactic Consensus has been studiously researched and developed by the constituent races over the course of hundreds and hundreds of years.  Outside of the tower and the machinery used to gain access to the tower, there aren’t many artifacts from the architects, but everything we have is as far beyond our scientists as stallesp technology is beyond yours.

“Then it shouldn’t be too much of a problem for your people to provide technical instruction on putting together the precision machining we will need to assemble your spaceport,” Bell responded.  “There doesn’t seem to be any stigma on reverse engineering in the Consensus, so there shouldn’t be any reason to delay our technological advancement out of some patriarchal desire to make us ‘figure it out on our own.”

Kat blinked.  That was new to her.

“Wait a second,” she said, raising a hand to interrupt the quick back and forth between Jaalin and Belle.  “Are you saying that the relay in orbit was made by the gardeners?”

“Yes,” Dorrik said with a nod.  “Well, at least we think so.  There is a dead world orbiting a neutron star near the galactic core.  The planet is covered with great spires.  Etched into those towers are depictions of massive creatures that many think are the architects.  Occasionally, a relay simply appears in orbit.  There is no rhyme or reason to the process, and monitoring the space around the world only makes things more confusing.  An entire bank of sensors can’t even document their appearance.  Instead one minute there is no array and the next it has been there for three hundred years.  No one knows what to make of it, so most people do not try.”

“That is equal parts fascinating and terrifying,” Kat said, a frown clouding her face.  “What makes the two of you think that the architects or the gardeners or whatever you want to call them are still around though?  The relays could be spawning as the result of an automated process.”

“Unlikely,” Dorrik replied.  “Whenever a relay spawns, an expeditionary fleet discovers a new race one to two days later.  There are actually monitoring stations that reach out to the scout ships as soon as a new array pops into existence to try and track down which one has discovered the new species.”

“Huh,” Kat said, flummoxed.  “Has it ever been wrong?  I mean, has there ever been a relay that appeared when no race was discovered?  Or the reverse I guess.  Someone found a new race and there wasn’t a relay for them.”

“Only the Klummox,” Jaalin replied.  “They were a race with a race that inhabited the moon of a gas giant in a system where there was another sapient race.  They were discovered a couple weeks after the Tiaano, but there was only one dreamscape array for the two of them.”

“That was later disproved,” Dorrik replied, his voice taking on the distant scholarly tone the lokkel always adopted when reciting facts.  “Approximately a century later, members of the Klummox and the Tiaano managed to interbreed, proving that they were actually the same species, albeit with different coloration and secondary features.”

Kat opened her mouth to change the subject only for the full weight of Dorrik’s response to floor her.

“Wait,” she said, mind still reeling.  “What you’re saying almost makes it sound like the neutron star or whatever actually knew ahead of time that two groups of aliens in the same star system were related. That’s-”

She stopped, shaking her head as she struggled to process the concept.

“Well, that’s almost as insane as the planet knowing when to pop out a new relay.  Whatever intelligence is controlling that production sure seems like it is significantly more knowledgeable than the smartest of Consensus explorers and anthropologists combined.”

“Xenologists dear,” Belle said gently.  “Anthropologists study humans.  I doubt any of the beings in question have decided to make a detailed study of our race.  Xenologists focus on sapient species that do not share the same homeworld as the scientist in question.”

“You seem awfully calm about all of this,” Kat replied.  “I know the tower itself tells us that climbing enough levels might reveal the gardeners at the top, but that always just seemed like flavor text to me.  Something it says to everyone to encourage them when they ascend a level as opposed to an actual statement that borderline omniscient aliens are monitoring me.”

“The tower has never said that to me when I ascended a level,” Belle replied.  “Of course, I have been much more methodical about the leveling process than you.  It took me months of safely raising my skills and acquiring equipment and team members before I challenged the floor guardian of the first floor.  In fact, if you ask some questions of players of the prior generation, I think you will find that my experience is more typical than yours.  Only after you blazed the way and established subscription funnels in order to let lower level players bounce back and rejoin the tower if they died in an early dungeon did we start to see accelerated clear rates.”

“Only about ten percent of climbers get a notification about the gardners,” Jaalin agreed.  “As you climb higher, that number goes down.  No one can pinpoint exactly what makes it disappear from an avatar’s level up prompt, but the consensus seems to be that people who stop pushing themselves stop receiving the notice.  Everyone in my team still gets one, but my team has managed to clear every dungeon at the highest difficulty on each floor before advancing even if we are not moving forward at the same breakneck pace as yours.”

“Okay, but everyone realizes that this is crazy right?”  Kat asked glancing from Jaalin, to Dorrik, to Belle, and back to Jaalin again.  “Like if everything you’re saying is true, these gardeners are actively monitoring us.  That means that the updates I’ve been getting since after my class evolution-”

She trailed off trying once again to struggle through the full import of her thoughts, at least before she articulated them out loud and managed to make herself seem like an idiot.  Her suspicions hinted at something huge going on, but at the same time, she didn’t want to ramble as if she were the center of galactic attention only for everyone to just laugh at her delusions.

“We’ve grown distracted,” Jaalin cut in.  “I will put together a proposal detailing a proposal for the enclave rental and use it as credit against the fair market value of the designs and technical diagrams you will need to build the machines you use to build the spaceport itself.  It will take a couple of days for me to run some cost comparisons.”

“Honestly,” she muttered to herself.  “This is going to be so slow and the spaceport is going to end up being sub standard.  I hope you know that.  You’re going to end up with a spaceport that only services the most rickety and disreputable of merchants and transports.”

“We are going to end up with a first spaceport that is seedy and disreputable,” Belle agreed.  “The second spaceport, after humanity is more familiar with your designs and methods, will be much better.  That way we can let the first spaceport fall into a bit of disrepair.  With any luck, it will turn into Earth’s primary hub for criminal activity and smuggling, depriving our rivals of offworld access.”

Jaalin glanced at Dorrik, but the other lokkel was too perplexed by Belle to act embarrassed or flustered.  Instead he cocked his head to the side, as if a change in perspective might make her words suddenly make sense.

Kat took pity on the two of them, chiming in with where she suspected Belle was going with her idea.

“Earth has a long history of sanctioned criminality.  Certain actions are illegal, but they are still celebrated so long as they fall within agreed upon bounds.  That’s actually how I got my start.  I was originally an illegal courier.  Everyone knew that people like me existed, and if I got caught the authorities would have treated me harshly, but at the same, people like me benefited everyone in a position of power.  Everyone understood that the runners and samurai existed and even if they broke the law, so long as they broke it in minor and socially agreed upon ways, no one would actively go after you and try to break your organization down.”

“Exactly,” Belle agreed.  “Humanity will break any rules you try to lay upon it.  I do not believe many absolute truths, but that is one I stand by.  If you put up a sign that says ‘do not touch’ it is the very nature of our race for one malcontent to touch it.  That is why people like me have learned not to govern with an iron fist.  Rather than try to force people to do exactly what you want of them at all times, you can guide them and monitor them as they engage in illicit acts.”

“And it’s not just monitoring,” Kat said, nodding to Belle.  “We can benefit from selective enforcement as well.  For example, if we ban a certain kind of arms transaction, it won’t stop people of means from buying those weapons.  Instead, we limit the supply, and by controlling the marketplace where people can buy from the existing supply, we can direct it toward some of our less legal associates.  That way, on the surface, Earth will have smuggling and a criminal underbelly, but for all practical purposes we will be in charge of both the white and the gray market.”

Belle smiled at her.  Not the usual predatory grin that never touched her eyes.  A genuine smile.

“You’ve learned so much Miss Debs,” she said warmly.  “By controlling both the primary spaceport and the secondary ‘illicit’ spaceport, we can profit from both, but we can also funnel advanced weapons and equipment to our deniable assets.  That means increased profits as well as increased control even if the system creates an illusion of chaos and choice.”

“I’m afraid to ask,” Jaalin said hesitantly, “but what do you mean by disposable assets?  I hope you mean something like missiles or grenades that can only be used one time, but-”

“Mercenaries.”  Belle replied.  “Ostensibly independent, but actually affiliated with a specific corporation, executive or shareholder.  Part of the sanctioned criminality I mentioned earlier.  Everyone who is anyone has a group or ten that works for them.  Using samurai to do your dirty work and then denying you ever employed them is a time honored tradition.  The samurai have a code of conduct.  They won’t reveal who hired them, and corporations don’t pursue a group for doing a job when the actual blame lies with their employer.  That layer of obfuscation is enough that no one can know for sure who the actual perpetrator is.”

“But are there not unfortunate side effects from this policy?”  Dorrik asked.  “It is my understanding that one of the largest mercenary groups on your planet aligned itself with the stallesp and that is the source of this Mr. Jackson that seems to plague you.  Are you not concerned that by tacitly recognizing a lower quality spaceport for smuggling and minor crime that you might recreate the very problem that brought you here?”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Kat replied.  “Millennium was a truly independent organization rather than one that was affiliated with a specific company or sponsor.  They grew out of an environment where the various megacorporations were at war with each other without any true hegemon.  Now, Grocorp is strong enough to choke out any competition like Millennium long before it has the potential to actually threaten our control over the system.  Mr. Jackson is a product of the circumstances that surrounded his rise to power.  Given the increase in wealth and control that will go along with my ascension if I manage to beat him to the punch, I will be able to ensure that someone like him never has the chance to rise to the top again.”

“Plus,” Belle said, smiling beatifically, “I’m going to kill him.  It’s all well and good for a samurai to take part in the great game as a piece, but he has tried to kill me twice now without any orders or job to drive him.  That is an affront that I cannot stand.  Letting him get away with it would make me look weak, and although I am many things, I am most certainly not ‘weak.”

Jaalin frowned, her crest freezing.

“You can’t do that,” she said, her voice practically a growl.  “It’ll throw everything into doubt with the ascension if a candidate assassinated the other on the eve of the ceremony.  Katherine needs to triumph in a way that is above board and beyond reproach.”

“I don’t think you understand dear,” Belle replied, her smile slipping as it took on a wintery tone.  “Miss Debs won’t be doing anything.  Mr. Jackson has wronged me personally.  I’m sure she will benefit from my actions, but ultimately they will have nothing to do with her.  When I kill the man, it will be solely for my own enjoyment and benefit.”

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