A Galaxy Unknown 10: Azula Carver (20 page)

"Yes, sleep."

~

When Cayla awoke, the room was empty. She excitedly rushed to the bin and saw it was also empty. Hearing voices nearby, she ran to the sitting room next door. The family was in there, holding and petting the cubs.

"Cayla," Jenetta said, "do you feel better?"

The Jumaka padded into the room and over to Jenetta, who was holding the male cub.

"Feel more rested."

"Good. Have you named your babies yet?"

"Want you to name them, Jeneeta, so have names you can say."

"Okay, if that's what you want. We've been talking about what we'd name them if it was up to us. I think this one could be Orlando. He reminds me of a boy I knew in school when I was young because his fur reminds of that boy's hair color."

"Or-lan-doe. Strong name."

"My mom suggested the one she's holding that looks just like you and Tayna could be Cheri."

"Cher-ee."

"Regina thinks the other baby that looks like you could be Kera."

"Ker-ah."

"And Hugh thinks the one with the dark green fur could be Ruby."

"Ru-bee."

"Of course, if you want different names we'll help you select something else."

"No. Names good. Or-lan-doe, Cher-ee, Ker-ah, and Ru-bee."

Cayla continued to rest while the family watched over her young for the rest of day. Expecting that Tayna would also need a pen for her cubs, Jenetta had the staff fix up a second box and bring both to the family sitting room so the Jumakas wouldn't be disturbed during meal times.

Just before dinner, Jenetta walked to her office and composed a vidMail to be sent to all of the absent Carvers.

"Hi, gang, meet Orlando." She held the cub up so the camera could get a good view. "He's one of Cayla's cubs. The other three are named Cheri, Kera, and Ruby. All of them are healthy and just as cute as this little guy, who's about three weeks old now. Cayla wanted privacy for birthing and the first few weeks, so today is the first day we've gotten to hold them. Their mama is a bit worn out right now, but she seems fine. Tayna also had four cubs, but her delivery was later than Cayla's, so she's still staying alone with her brood out in the garden. Perhaps she'll bring them into the house in a week or so, and then we'll learn their sexes and give them names.

"Cayla says— oh that's right, some of you may not know that we can communicate with the Jumakas now. Years ago I retained a wildlife expert who has devoted his life to studying the animals on Taurentlus-Thur to see if he could interpret the sounds they make when they speak to each other. I really didn't expect too much, but I had to try. His results have far exceeded anything I could have hoped for. When Thor joined the family, we learned that they actually do communicate in a spoken language, although it just sounds like growls to us. Mr. Wilkerson developed a translator based on the one we use for alien translations and designed a throat mic like those once used by astronauts and undersea divers. After much work and with great cooperation from the Jumakas, he's come up with a basic dictionary and uploaded that to the translation device. He continues to tweak it, but we can now have conversations with the four Jumakas. I've learned so much about them. And I know now that they are definitely sentient beings in every sense of the word and by every definition used by the Galactic Alliance to determine the freedoms accorded to aliens.

"Time to go. I'll send more soon. I love all of you guys."

Jenetta pulled up her file of addresses and added them to the header so everyone would get a copy of the message.

~     ~     ~

"Christa, thank you for coming," Madu said from her hospital bed after ordering her security detail to turn off the room's cameras and microphones during Christa's visit and shooing them from the room.

"Not at all, Madu. I'm relieved to see you looking so well."

"Thank you. I've been told that my vice-president and my entire cabinet of ministers didn't survive. I was very fortunate. For the past two weeks I've had a urinary infection that keeps me running to the bathroom all day. The restrooms in the government building are all located in the core, near the elevators. It's the strongest part of the building and suffered the least damage. I had just gone to the restroom when the explosion occurred."

"It was an unfortunate accident."

"It was no accident," Madu practically spit out. "The official explanation is that a steam pipe fractured, but we know it was a bomb. We have video footage of an unknown person entering the building with a package the day before and leaving a short time later without the package. We haven't identified him yet, but we will."

"I suspected it wasn't an accident. Pretty dumb of somebody to pull something like that. It's possible to assassinate a single leader and perhaps make it look like an accident, but the entire executive branch of a planetary government with a bomb? Perhaps I can help. SCI is the best security and intelligence organization in the galaxy, after all."

"I was hoping you'd offer. I was afraid you might not after my being so stupid."

Christa didn't respond to Madu's statement. If Madu wanted her to know the details, she'd tell her.

"I have a confession to make. When I agreed to meet with the representatives of TGP, I was aware they reputedly had ties to the Raiders. And I'm sure they were behind the bombing."

"What makes you so sure it was TGP? Did they threaten you?"

"No, not exactly. Oh, Christa, I was such a fool. TGP promised me they could cure our sterility problem, and I fell for their promises. I signed an agreement with them to turn over the cloning and Dakinium manufacturing plans in exchange for the cure. They said they were the only ones in the galaxy who could possibly cure our problem, and if they failed, I would owe them nothing."

"And have you turned over the plans?"

"No. I haven't given them a thing. The agreement stated that there would be no transfer of information until the formula was proven to work. And they haven't given us
anything
yet— but they've begun pressuring me to give them our early research, saying they must have it before they'll give me anything."

"So terminate your agreement."

"I tried. They've threatened to make the agreement public. Christa, I would gladly give my life for a cure to our problem. I was even willing to make a deal with the devil."

"Since Dakistee hasn't been officially accepted as a member planet by the GA Senate yet, you can't be charged with conspiracy to commit sedition, but there's no exemption from sedition charges if you actually do give them the files they want. Although Dakistee is not a member planet, it has been granted special permission to trade with member planets. Usually, non-member planets are restricted from trading with member planets. But— with those privileges, comes responsibility. Uh, you do realize TGP would never make that written agreement public, don't you?"

"No. They said they would."

"If they did,
they
could be charged with conspiracy to commit sedition. They certainly don't have any exemption. In fact, if you sign a confession outlining your actions and provide a copy of the agreement, we can arrest everyone involved at TGP. Perhaps the bomb was an attempt to eliminate everyone who knew about the agreement before it could be made public."

"So I guess they figured they could kill me and my people and seal the secret forever, or perhaps they merely hoped our replacements would be more pliant. Or both."

"Madu, I was never in your office and never warned you about a possible connection between the TGP and the Raiders."

"Don't worry, Christa. I'll never tell a soul you tried to save me from myself. If anyone asks, you didn't come to my office that day."

"That's not what I'm saying. I
really
never was in your office that day."

"I don't understand. Don't worry, I won't betray you."

"The person you thought was me was actually my sister Jenetta— Admiral Jenetta Alicia Carver."

"Jenetta?"

"Yes, she wanted an opportunity to personally gauge your involvement with the TGP and the Raiders. I'm sorry for the
twin
switch."

"But how? I hadn't even heard she was on the planet. And where were the Jumakas that are always by her side?"

"Jenetta arrived in an SC warship and summoned me to come up and meet with her. She told me what she wanted to do, and we changed uniforms. Then she came down to the planet and went to visit you. Afterwards she returned to the warship and we exchanged uniforms again. She briefed me on everything that was said in your office so I'd be prepared if anything came up. An hour later I was down on the planet and the destroyer was on its way back to Obotymot. The Jumakas were left on Obotymot because they would have been a dead giveaway of her identity."

"Then Space Command did actually know?"

"Of course we knew. We knew everything. And if we learned that you had turned over the documents they wanted, I would have been ordered to arrest you for sedition. I certainly didn't want to. On Jenetta's orders, I was to pretend I had actually been the one who visited you, so I told an SCI officer who came to visit me everything Jenetta related to me about the visit. And I was then soundly criticized by the SCI officer for what Jenetta said to you. You're my friend and I didn't want to deceive you and certainly didn't want to arrest you, but I didn't want to see even early research information make its way into the hands of the Raiders."

"I was a fool, Christa, but I would have done anything, and I mean anything, anything, anything, for a cure."

"I understand your reasons, but I don't agree with your actions. What now?"

"Now we start over. I have to put together a new cabinet of ministers and get a new vice-president."

"And what of TGP?"

"They will be forbidden from ever doing business on Dakistee."

"And what will you use as a public justification for that ban? You can't tell the truth unless you give us a confession and a copy of the agreement."

"I'll find a reason. I can't give you a confession at this time. But I'll save the agreement and give it to you at a later time."

"Destroying TGP won't make a difference, you understand. The Raiders have an entire legion of so-called legitimate organizations that they hide behind while they do business. But it will be another thorn in the side of the Raiders and perhaps slow their activities for a while."

"What do you think I should do about their attempt to assassinate me and my people?"

"Continue to insist that the explosion was really an accident and send us the video footage of the suspect. SCI will learn who he is. Cut off all contact with TGP and send them an official letter stating that any and all previous arrangements and agreements with the Dakistee government are now null and void."

"They might try to kill me again."

"Not if they're smart. Your letter, on your official stationery, will make them understand that the government on Dakistee will no longer do business with them. They'll believe you know the explosion wasn't an accident, and they'll have to believe that your intelligence service will be watching them closely from now on. I'm willing to bet you'll never see your TGP contact again. The Raiders have a very low tolerance for failure and stupidity."

"And you believe the Raiders will just go away and forget it?"

"I'm not naďve, Madu, and I know you're not either. The Raiders want the cloning and Dakinium research and aren't going anywhere. I think their next move will be an attempt to get control of the government here by supporting candidates who will do their bidding, just as the large corporations, bankers, and unions on Earth have done for centuries using contributions to political action committees and payoffs laundered through a support networks of lobbyists, media companies, and bought-and-paid-for hacks."

~     ~     ~

"By now I'm sure you're all aware of the explosion on Dakistee that killed most of the executive branch of its government," Chairwoman Gladsworth said to the assembled members of the Upper Council. "The government there is still calling it an accident, but I've learned that the acting chairperson of the Lower Council, Neil Soroman, orchestrated it."

"Good God! The
fool
," one of the council members mumbled.

"Exactly. That was his solution to our directive that he find a way to
make
them deal. He kills them. It's going to be tougher than ever to get the cloning and Dakinium documents now. People will be frightened to death even to talk to our representatives. Oh, how I miss Arthur Strauss. Arthur would have had them queuing up to cooperate."

"Speaking of Arthur," Councilwoman Overgaard said, "we've found Mikel Arneu on Pelomious. He has a new female identity now and is going by the name Aliana Shanara. Our security people have taken him, or rather her, into custody."

"Positive ID?"

"The Aliana Shanara ID is one of the identities we found in the lab where Nicole Ravenau had her people create dozens of new identities before Ravenau destroyed the lab and killed them all. All of Ravenau's, aka Arneu's, programmed images were given to our people to compare with anyone they suspected. Yes, the ID is positive."

"I want her brought here."

"They're on their way in one of our fastest ships. Since we haven't been able to manufacture or amass sufficient Dakinium to sheath a ship, we don't have the speeds available to Space Command. They won't arrive here for another month or more."

"Good work, Councilwoman. I wish Soroman had a tenth your ability. So, everyone, what are we going to do with our fool of an acting Lower Council chairman?"

~     ~     ~

Neil Soroman took another gulp and drained the glass of Kentucky Bourbon. It had been a long day, but he had dinner reservations and tickets to a new show, so he had to hurry home, change, and pick up the woman he had reserved for the evening. He had been reveling in the news of the explosion on Dakistee since it first came over the news. It gave him such a rush knowing he had the power of life and death over the little people— even the little people who aspired to play in the big leagues. The final death toll had been staggering, and he giggled like a schoolgirl every time he thought about it.