Intergalactic

„You traded half of their list for some information?“, Gordon was incredulous.

„And a promise that if we sell this hypercore to any aliens, they are first in line.“, Amara added, continuing to walk briskly towards the waiting shuttle.

Gordon kept pace and looked at her sideways. There were clearly so many things he wanted to say, but didn’t.

„Yes“, Amara answered, „it was worth it. I need the secure conference room. Now.“

Gordon shut up and with nothing but the echoes of their steps they both rushed towards the shuttle bay, immediately jumping into the waiting presidential transport. Only a few minutes later, they reached the skyscraper that was administration and government of Erulas. One benefit of being the president was getting traffic priority. All flying cars in the city ran on autopilot anyway, human drivers were allowed in ground vehicles only. Mostly for nostalgic reasons, the majority of people preferred the convenience of not having to drive themselves.

Amara rushed straight to the secure conference room, where minister Krisi was already waiting, having arrived just moments before.

Amara waited until the door was closed and sealed. All sounds from outside the room disappeared. Its sound proofing was near perfect. The room had no structural connection to the rest of the building, so vibrations did not transfer. It was hanging on four carbon nano ropes that were anchored on both sides on dampening springs. The amount of vibrations that made it across these only connections were statistically less than the Brownian motion in the material. It was also hanging in the center of the building, with no outside walls. It was a Faraday cage and had electromagnetic shielding. It even had an outer layer of very rare and expensive 5D material. In other words: It was the best that human technology could create with regards to making it next to impossible to eavesdrop.

„We are still waiting.“, she said, „for the ambassadors from Dephyr and Dangorod. I asked them to come here post-haste, but we will use the time until they arrive.“

With a gesture, she invited the men to sit down at the conference table. She grabbed a bottle of water and glasses from a sideboard and put them on the table before sitting down herself.

„I spoke with the Felindar“, she began, „because as we know their traders get around a lot and pick up all information they can get. They are not just the traders of the galaxy, but also the information brokers. It was expensive“, she continued, to a small sigh by Gordon, „but worth it.“

She poured herself a glass of water and quickly took a sip before continuing: „Good news is, that Qyrl attack near the pirate station isn’t the beginning of a war. But there will be another war, in a few years. Now I need to point out that most of what I’m saying is a mixture of hearsay and my own conclusions. We’ll go into more details in a separate session.“

Krisi spoke up: „Why are we waiting for the ambassadors instead of using a secure conference call to their home planets?“

Amara gave a slight nod while turning to him. Her hands gripping, then releasing, then gripping the glass again were the only outwards signs of her inner turmoil. „I was about to get to that. Okay, I’ll do that first. The Qyrl have infiltrated us. The Felindar don’t know exactly how and when. But they know that there are Qyrl surveillance posts on all our planets, in some of our asteroid belts and“, she made a short pause to take a breath, „on that pirate outpost, Binary Bloom. We all better remember that name, it’ll come up a lot in the next days.“

The two ministers raised their eyebrows in unison during Amara’s mentioning of a Qyrl infiltration.

„But“, Gordon wondered, „the Junkstorm is hostile to the Qyrl. As far as we know they suffer within hours and take serious health damage within days.“

Amara nodded, taking another sip of water, savoring the cold, refreshing liquid while she sorted her thoughts: „And we thought that isolates us. And yes, while according to the Felindar the Qyrl have actively researched how to shield themselves from the Junkstorm - this is why the occasional unmanned probes we intercept are bio-organic ships rather than the meta-metal construction used in their larger ships. Sure they’re scanning human space, but there are also experiments in Junkstorm shielding. But“, she raised her hand to stop Gordon from interrupting, as she saw him starting to form another question, „they haven’t made much progress in that area. The Junkstorm remains our best defense. Their infiltration is more subtle. There’s a human faction working with them.“

„Come again?“, Gordon said, his eyes wide in disbelief.

„The Felindar have no details on who these people are or why they work with the Qyrl and I don’t want to speculate. But they are positive that the listening posts are manned mostly by humans, with occasional Qyrl visitors.“

„If they have listening posts so close to us, they can intercept pretty much everything.“, Gordon concluded, „But do they have the quantum computing advances to break our encryption?“, he questioned, „Because for all I know, they don’t.“

Amara again agreed: „This is how the Felindar know about the whole scheme. The Qyrl have been buying a nice chunk of that technology from more advanced aliens.“

„They are paying them in tech.“, Krisi suddenly interrupted. He had been silent so far.

The other two looked at him inquisitively.

„Uh“, he said, „that wasn’t in response to your last, anyway. I’ve been thinking how. Sure, cryptocurrency would be a possibility, but that’s a closed system, we’d know if aliens were involved. Intergalactic credits are pretty much cash and untraceable, but individuals who aren’t exporters showing up with them would raise eyebrows. The pirate outposts are the only places where they could spend them easily, and they aren’t known for luxurious lifestyle.“

He looked around from Amara to Gordon and back: „But if they pay them in alien technology, that’s easy to sell and generally people don’t ask where you got it from. We all pretend like we don’t know that a lot of alien tech is stolen.“

„You’re right.“, Amara answered, „That completes the picture. It explains why Binary Bloom is important to them. The pirates built their station into an ancient alien orbital platform. As I understand, a large part of that old structure is still unused. Easy to put an entire base there. This is their local base of operations. They can send one large shipment of tech there once a year or so, then slowly trickle it into the pirate market where nobody asks any questions. It fits perfectly to what I’ve learnt from the Felindar: That the Qyrl attack is on the surface an attempt to grab that hypercore, but they don’t much care if they manage to or not. The real agenda is to destroy the listening post before it is discovered. Something happened on the station that they believe could blow their cover.“

„Where’s Sibastyan?“, Gordon asked with an undertone of nervousness betraying his anxiety, „He needs to order our marines off the station.“

„I left him in the command center. He’s already understood that there’s a risk the Qyrl will bombard the station. But if two ships suddenly leave, they are just as likely to draw fire. For the moment, the marines will stay inside their ships so if the station is breached they are fine. Besides,“ she concluded, „I don’t think the Qyrl will destroy the outpost. It is too useful to them. They will make a show of an attack, miss a lot, hit some of the old alien structure ‚by accident‘, you know the parts their listening post is in, and then disappear, maybe making a show of retreating before our reinforcements.“

„So“, Krisi asked, „What’s our counter-plan?“