Omoikane 04 Shard-Entelopa

Omoikane 04 - Shard-Entelopa

The planet ahead of us was called Shard-Entelopa. Apparently, Shard was added to any named planet they claimed.

A cruiser left the planet heading for us.  It wasn't quite as big as the Omoikane, but it was big enough.  And advanced.  They slid towards us on well-engineered dilithium warp drives.  

A day and a half later, they dropped to sublight, came face to face with us, and hailed.  The heavy cruiser was the Orion pattern, but huge and advanced.  Kind of pretty, really.

-*-

The man on the screen had a crown. It had crystals in it.  They looked almost familiar.  The crown had fittings to switch the crystal in and out.

Were those crystal computers like the ones used by the Ane?

"I am Admiral Legrano.  Please stand by while I access the ancient data."

He unplugged one of his crystals, set it on a velvet pillow, and plugged the one from the pillow into his crown.

Then his eyes glowed, and the crystals all glowed different colors.  That looked fun.

"The Ane," He pointed, his voice slow, his accent odd. "It is said that when the Ane take vengeance, they take all the vengeance and leave none for anyone else."

I nodded slowly... There wasn't anywhere to take that.

"And..."  he pointed to Li'ira and to Lt. Kat-oh-lo, a Lefyt exchange officer. "Greens.  Yellows.  You host invasive species.  Rulers and Slaves,  corruptions of the True People. Warriors in the Wars of the Gods.  We must resist this corruption."

The glow stopped, and Admiral Legrano seemed to come out of a trance.

He blinked slowly. "Interesting.  We did not know that any of the genetically engineered people survived the War of the Gods. We also didn't realize there were still Ane.  

He looked at Li'ira and me. "What is your Green's position on this ship?"

"Commander O'Keefe is my Executive Officer and Second in Command."

"Tell me - does she exert any undue influence over you? The ancient records say the Greens controlled the minds of their slaves."

"No.  The Federation is staunchly against slavery.  Commander O'Keefe is a trusted commerade."

"You said the Greens ruled their slaves and that the Greens and Yellows were rulers and slaves?" Li'ira asked.

"Yes. Someone named Motharaeus felt that a strong caste system would stabilize the Original Empire, so he created the Greens to rule and the Yellows to serve.  He was considered radical, insane, and sacrilegious. Motharaeus and his Green Warriors were one faction in the War of the Gods. As the Original Empire fell, Motharaeus fled the Empire, never to be seen again."

USS Omoikane, I invite you to Shard-Entelopa for a visit and diplomacy.  But your genetically altered people must be monitored at all times and may not stay."

I nodded, "Thank you, Admiral.  We'll be good guests."

"We will beam the survivors aboard now."

"Thank you, Sir."

The channel cut.

Sharmarlaz let out a breath. "That didn't go badly, all things considered."

-*-

We spent a week at Shard-Entelopa.  It was a pretty world.  Their technology was interesting.  It was refined and elegant.  No wasted lines or space. It was as if they'd been engineering from the same technological base for a long time.

Generally, the people were happy there.  There was a strong class system. I didn't see any non-Orionoids wearing headbands.  I asked Admiral Legrano about his crown. He had a much smaller headband for off-duty use.  The big crown held information necessary for his command station.

The right kind of people could apply for the military or civil service.  The higher your rank, the bigger your headgear.  It did, indeed, have symbology and meaning in its decoration, as well as being a telepathic device.

They didn't want to let us scan them or give us much detail about the operation of these headbands.  Just that they ensured focus and loyalty.

The idea that two people with large hats would have conflicting views on what was the greater good for the Shard amused them.  The big hats would meet in council and talk it out, for as long as it took.  Civil wars, being horrible, were not tolerated.  Corruption was not tolerated.  Their ideas about what amounted to corruption were not quite the same as mine.

The ruling headgear folks were promoted along an orderly, systematic method, including interviews with people up the chain of command.

-*-

It was my favorite time of day.  The snuggle. Today, Li'ira was in jammies.  She wasn't always.  But being off duty gave her an excuse to indulge her urges, and she discovered that sometimes comfortable pajamas were soothing.

Today was Tellarite cartoons.  Loud, talkative, and fanciful creatures loosely based on Tellarites and Tellarite animals built unlikely contraptions and argued with each other, usually in humorously dysfunctional ways.

The underlying message was that you could argue sense into each other if you weren't being dumb about what the argument was ABOUT.  If you were behaving stupidly, then Tellarite Acme came into play.

After that, it was similar to cartoons from Earth.

Li'ira sighed, up against my side.  I was enjoying that quite a bit.

"I don't like this place,"  She said.

I blinked. "Our quarters?"  I'd left most of the interior decor up to her.

That got me a desultory elbow. "No.  The Shard."

"Oof. Yeah.  Agreed,"  I said. "They are not the nicest bunch of guys we've run across."

"They're acting nice."

"They're being diplomatic.  They're sizing us up. I don't expect any trouble on this trip.  But I'll bet they'll be pills later."

"You're still engaging as if we could be friends."

"Yeah.  Setting the groundwork for the long term.  Maybe they'll buy a clue and things won't turn out as badly as I'm thinking."

"From your mouth to The Great Bird's Ears."

"We have to return to a Federation base to get the impulse drives repaired.  Which one do you like for it?"

"1406.  Damyip 14 has most of a shipyard set up there.  They'll be able to knock out the repairs in short order."

I sighed.

"The Damyip?"

"Yeah.  I grew up on stories of the AI war. The Machines were always the bad guys.  The Damyip make me ... uncomfortable."

"What was that Picard said?"  She mimicked his patrician tones precisely, "We come out here seeking new life! Well, there it sits!"

When you find yourself face-to-face with your prejudice, what do you do?  I resolved to attack it.  Later.

At that moment, I had some snuggling to catch up on.

-*-

We had a shore leave along a very nice beach,  Isolated from the natives of the planet.  The ruling hats decided to release word about the Federation in a controlled manner.

There was an incident where Tillean got stung by some weird sea life and began swelling up.  A quick transport and treatment by Dr. Hobolisk resolved it.

"And what did we learn?"  I asked Tillean.  I meant to chide her about carelessness.

"Oh, lots of things!" Tillean beamed. Then she treated me to a thirty-minute lecture about pH levels and protein folding in this flavor of sea life.

I just listened and caught about every 4th word.