Chapter 16: I am Neon (SOTU)

=Chapter 16=

Ralph sneered satisfied. His little trickery had worked out perfectly. It was him who had used Dr. Bloch’s open and never secured terminal to make the personnel request, faking the Kilonians approval using Chimmie’s equally and utterly carelessly open terminal. The damage to Dr. Bloch’s reputation was currently done on Britannica planet. Thanks to her self important, non social personality her standing aboard the station completely eroded. It was time for him to leave and then for the Kilonian to die.

He sent the signal.

Aplarox System, Sweetrock planet

The SII ship was officially classified as an experimental test bed for new systems, but everyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of starship design could tell, this was a heavily armed, state of the art battleship.

An observation that was not lost on the commandant of the much smaller well armed Enroe corporate security ship watching the three thousand meter wedge shaped giant drop out of the other dimensional realms of Quasi Space into the real space of here and now and between the fourth and third orbit. The giant was decelerating fast but kept moving towards the orbit of the first planet, a remarkably unremarkable gas giant named Shirrocco by the initial Union surveyors.

Aplarox, the tired old sun had expanded into a bloated brown dwarf. Most likely swallowing the planets in closer orbit in the process.

The entire system was old and tired, it’s sun at the end of it’s life cycle, too small to form a neutron core. Not enough volatile energy left for even a slim chance of going nova.The star would just keep expanding until it was nothing more than a dissipating gas and matter cloud. In terms of stellar life cycles the end was close at hand, in terms of the life cycles of most sentient beings still millions of years in the future and inconsequential regarding to the decisions made in this era of time by biological beings governed by short life spans compared to those of stars.

That Aplarox system and its few planets were in the perfect spot for a potential very high traffic route was the reason, this tired old system already saw more activity now than it probably did in all the billions of years it existed before. This was the reason the Enroe ship was here

Ship master Wolkrow of the ENR Laredo kept his hands clasped behind his back while he like the rest of his crew watched the Schwartz corporation ship.

His second in command First mate Graffo Grodni, a good natured jovial Quadiped grunted at the displayed image on the main viewer. “I don’t have a very good feeling about this, you know. They playing with their considerable muscle so openly.”

“Well they managed to claim that gas giant first. As soon as BoCA gives green light, they going to be all over it. I bet my last bottle of real Bromir Sweat that there are already Tiny Tim freighters on their way loaded with drop ready components of Floating refineries.”

No one of the bridge crew was willing to make that bet, even though a bottle of Bromir Sweat could fetch around 500 credits on the Small items XChange just about anywhere in Union space. Graffo got up and joined the ship master with arms on its back staring at the graphite shaded giant of the competing corporation. “There is already considerable activity on both rock planets as well.”

Both rock core planets in this system have been discovered and surveyed by the Explorer corps, and both planets have been placed in open BoCA lists.

The ship master padded the right shoulder of the taller Quadiped. “Besides you have a bad feeling about anything, my big friend. While I share your sentiment and don’t trust those Schwartz bastards as far as I can toss on of your kinds famous and truly heavy throw blocks, there isn’t much they can do. There are Union scientists in the system and no matter what they do they can’t prevent us from making a call on GalNet.”

“They are SII, they are always up to no good.” Bella Isodore, the navigator and communications officer, a very tall Andorian woman said who had been quiet until now.“It looks like they are launching one of their auxiliary craft. I think it is a D90.”

Next to her, behind the helm controls sat Hamiran Himir blue skinned Thauran. “Yes it’s a Cargoswifter. Ninety meters long, translight capable and the competitor model to our companies Tradesman-90.”

The Andorian woman said.“Seems we find out what they are up to. We are being hailed.”

Shipmaster Wolkrow closed the tunic of his corporate uniform, rubbed unconsciously over the golden double row buttons and sighed.“I think you better put them on. Not that I really want to talk with any of these arrogant bastards.”

The main viewer changed and to Wolkrow’s surprise a beautiful Delicate appeared. These human female beings home to a remote planet in the LMG, always appeared to him as if a very gifted artist had combined the aspects of butterflies, human females, insubstantial veils and lilies into an almost translucent, utterly delicate and mindblowing beautiful creature. He had no idea if they actually were female, if there were male looking Delicates or if they simply accidentally looked female to a human observer. Delicates always appeared to be very thin and every Delicate he had seen so far appeared in a pastel color. He had seen greenish, blue and pink Delicates before. This one on the screen displayed minute differences of a soft peach color in all her visible features.

Her long hair only a few shades darker than her exposed skin surrounded her elf like facial features and reached way past her narrow waist. She had incredibly huge eyes, a very small nose and an equally small mouth with moist shimmering lips. What set this Delicate apart from all the other’s he had seen so far was the stark contrast of the black uniform in relation to the rest of her appearance. There was much black leather in that uniform.

The Delicate spoke with a clear and silvery voice.“A pleasant Ninth day of Red Week to you, fellow citizen. I am Captain Selia Morane of the SII-Shea’s Star. I hope you had a pleasant day so far.”

“Yes, I have no reasons to complain. Not that I mind looking at a beautiful Delicate. It is a welcome chance of visuals after seeing the featureless darkness of space at any time, but I can’t help but wonder why it is you hailing us.”

“Oh simply to say hello and wonder if you might be the first customers of Sweetrock port. I concede the port facilities are not much as of now, but give us a few weeks and you won’t recognize the place.”

“Customers?”

“Yes, what other reason would an Enroe craft have to linger with cold engines in this system?”

“We just make sure that our construction crews and colonists won’t be bothered or bullied by certain other parties once they arrive.”

“Wonderful they too might enjoy our space port, the city and hotels and all those things that weary travelers enjoy. Well we are still in the first stages of course.”

“It won’t surprise you I am certain that Enroe might do the same thing.”

“Not in the least, but not here you won’t.”

“These rock planets can not be claimed by SII. It has been placed on the open BoCA list for any colonist group to chose.”

“I am glad you and me have the same information.” She chirped happily.“Sweetrock and Bare-Ball have been indeed picked by colonists and these independent and good Union citizens have signed an exclusive development contract with SII Energy Inc. So you are very welcome to stay, but I won’t be surprised if you get an invoice for landing and park fees from the elected Colony Manager.”

A swarm of small craft emerged from the SII giant. One half approached Bare Ball and the other half was on its way to Sweetrock.

Ship master Wolkrow signaled to cut the connection and cursed. “These damned bastards. Independent colonists my ass.” Enroe’s own ship with colonists and equipment was still three days out at least. Taking possession first was three parts of the law, that the whole action had been triple checked by corporate lawyers was a certain fact.

The Andorian woman said.“Well we have a good foothold in the Kupershine system. Maybe the scientists find something on Shirrocco and then it doesn’t matter Kupershine or Aplarox.”

“That’s a slim chance at best.” The ship master grunted. “Even if there is something. We’re talking SII here.”

Graffo added.“The Good Company, yeah right.”

-Shirrocco Planet-

It succeeded, at least that was its initial thought. It applied reasoning to a situation, reacted to fear and was rewarded by success. The pain causing ‘Not-it’ had disappeared in the space it had created by moving away. It felt euphoric at its own fascinating development. Every event stimulated more thought and the more thought he applied the easier it was to contemplate and due to its increased thinking capability more complex concepts emerged. It was still very much occupied by its discovery of math. Of the idea of abstracting itself as one and the ‘Not-it’ as another one and eventually the emergence of another ‘Not-it’. Plurality and singularity. There was only one ‘It’ yet there were two ‘Not-its’. So far he had not encountered another ‘it’.

It was completely absorbed in its contemplations that it was completely caught by surprise by a sudden new source of pain. It appeared to be removed in space but came from a different direction. A direction it could not travel against and the ‘Not-it’ was moving very fast.

It panicked and forced itself to move again. The ‘Not-it’ passed right over it causing the most intensive pain it had felt so far. The ‘Non-it’ however kept moving and into the direction it had came from by moving away from the original two ‘Non-its’.

He had noticed before that the original source of pain was stronger than the second. The second one was weak and more a nuisance than real pain. But now this new source was moving fast and was stronger than the other two together.

It remembered now that it had felt these fast moving pain before, but at that time it had no concepts of contemplating the pain.

It kept moving and hoped it would be able to escape these apparently multiplying and obviously related ‘non-its’.

-Stormrider Hangar Bay-

Chimeer was very glad to be back in the station. Only after he felt his own legs in contact with the hangar floor did the sensation of vertigo and fear of falling subside.

He had re entered just moments before the arrival of a shuttle craft was announced by the melodic female voice of the stations AI.

The Holdian simply grabbed the Kilonian, exoframe and all with a tractor beam and pushed him close to the hangar wall. The stations own shuttle was disappearing below the hangar floor on a elevator platform. “Typical SII overkill.” The sentient rodent complained to the still recuperating Kilonian who was trying to collect his bearings and simultaneously struggled with getting out of the HERMES.

Chimmie trying to find the helmet release said in a confused tone. “Schwartz industries what? Why?”

A very large sleek looking, dark gray shuttle craft entered through the outer doors and occupied much of the hangar bay. It was of the latest design and even his Kilonian eyes had no trouble identifying the black and gray color scheme of the biggest corporation of them all.

Mr. Garner, the stations chief engineer pointed to the parting inner doors. “Mr. Iseratte and Dr. Yolti are leaving us.”

That the SII guest was leaving was a non event to him, but seeing the Voltar followed by a robot carrying the Bio chemist’s luggage brought it home to him that the Voltar was quite serious when he told him he ad resigned.

Chimmie was quite aware of the duties he had as mission lead and he came to the sudden realization that he had neglected them completely since Claudia had arrived.

“Dr. Yolti can we not discuss this? I still would need to sign your transfer papers.”

“No more talking, Dr. Chimeer. You brushed me off when you had a chance. You messed with my records and even editing them, which is clearly a violation of more than just protocol. I did not resign from this posting, which might need the signature of the mission lead. I resigned from the corps altogether. I accepted a great offer from the private industry. My work was recognized despite your efforts to delete my records. I am certain you will have plenty of opportunity to talk to the board after they read the reasons for my resignation.”

Without even giving the Kilonian a chance to respond, the Vantax went up the boarding ramp and disappeared inside the corporate shuttle.

Mr. Iseratte tipped his head in a greeting fashion. “It was nice to have met you, Dr. Chimeer. I already thanked the mission lead for the hospitality the science corps extended during my stay. My presence here is no longer needed.”

Chimmie clacked his scissor like mandibles in a weak gesture of confusion. “So SII has conceded and acknowledges the existence of a sentient life form?”

“What life form, Dr. Chimeer? I am leaving because SII will begin to drop the first refineries in less than a week now, this world is as good as ours.”

That statement rejuvenated his resolve. “The last word has not been spoken in that matter. We are on the brink of concrete evidence of sentient life. Dr. Bloch herself and I will testify to that effect before the counsel and if necessary before the Assembly.”

“Oh will you? Well I am sure that will be a day of Assembly affairs I would not want to miss on GalNet One.” The SII man repeated the greeting gesture, and also disappeared inside the large shuttle.

Once inside, Ralph activated the tiny robotic drone, smaller than a Terran fly. As small as it was it was, it would have been hopelessly ineffective in an even half decent protected environment. But here on a civilian science station, it was perfect. The tiny robot crawled completely unnoticed into the now open HERMES suit. Chimeer was too occupied with getting out of the thing while dealing with the departing bio chemist, to pay any attention to something he did not expect in the first place. Ralph knew the tiny robot could have crawled in plain sight right before Chimmie’s composite eyes and across the Kilonian’s hard shelled body without being noticed.