28-01-2002 15:01									#1
	Strange Bedfellows Got spare money?

Lady Deirdre Skye walked down the hall, flanked by blue-suited bodyguards. The building was cold and sterile, and dark to boot. Somewhere at the end of this hall was a door, and beyond that door was the most difficult meeting of her life.

She looked over the map again in her head. By treaty, Hive soldiers were stationed in nearly every Gaian city. Their state-owned mining companies drilled and bored into the Blue Mountains. Their factories dumped tons of acid rain onto her prized hybrid forests every year.

Now Yang wanted to renegotiate. As if he wasn't squeezing enough out of the Gaians already. Had Morgan been teaching him to grasp and pennypinch?

As a young girl Deirdre had always been tall for her age, and as such had received the taunts and stares of her peers. Now she knew what it was like to be on the smaller side. The obstacles were different, but no less crushing.

The unremarkable door opened to reveal an unremarkable room. In the center of the room was a table with a chair on either side. The shadowy corners did not conceal Hive soldiers, inhumanly muscular figures, no doubt armed to the teeth.

A familiar voice said, "Ah, Lady Deirdre. Please, be seated."

If there had not been a need for diplomatic decorum, Deirdre would have jumped out of her skin. The last thing she expected was for Yang to travel so far from home. It boded ill for the negotiations.

"Greetings, noble Chairman Yang," she said, moving tensely towards the table. "I trust this day finds you in good health?"

Crawling to a worm such as he made Deirdre's skin crawl, but she had nothing to stand up to him with.

"As good as can be expected." Yang sat and folded his hands in a businesslike manner. "Now, Lady Deirdre, I wish to discuss the Fossil Field Ridge."

Deirdre drew breath. Off the northern coast of Gaian land, the Ridge teemed with mineral wealth and unique native ecosystems. Several species of sporefish inhabited those waters and no others, along with strange divergently evolving members of the mind worm family. She had only last year forced legislation through the Gaian Parliament of Planet that forbade development of the area.

"The Hive Central Committee feels that in order to adequately continue the Protection Treaty, more resources are needed," Yang said. "That is why I wish to ask that this area be opened to development by our Mining Concern."

"Chairman," Deirdre began, but found herself cut off by Yang's forbidding expression. She cleared her throat and began again. "Chairman, development of the Fossil Field will cause irreparable harm to the local ecology. Are the relevant resources to be found nowhere else?"

The Hive leader's expression barely changed, but Deirdre thought she sensed an undertone of annoyance in his voice. "Lady, do you wish adequate protection from the Spartan menace or not?"

All of Yang's acts of puppet mastery were under the pretext of liberation from the evil Spartan tyrant. Despite the fact that the survivalist movement had been quiet for the better part of twenty years, the Hive still asked for more steel, more synthetic gasoline and diesel oil, more Mohorovicium, more airbases, more barracks, more police "liaisons".

Deirdre looked at the floor. She imagined the sporefish swimming serenely through the Ridge, the kelp waving as if blown by a breeze, the Sealurks leaping at perihelion. She imagined the chanting crowds in the streets of Gaia's Landing, singing "Planet is a person too!" She pictured Hive needlejets wheeling overhead, forests burning, genejack soldiers marching like ants. She pictured the self-satisfied smile of Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang.

Swallowing hard, she blurted out, "I'm sorry Chairman. I - I cannot allow it."

Yang's face darkened. "Thank you for your time, Lady," he said through clenched teeth. "I can only hope that you will reconsider soon."

The gorilla-muscled soldiers stepped out of the shadows, Deirdre's cue to leave. As she hurried down the cold hallway, minders scurrying to keep up, she thought of something else. She would call Morgan. If she contacted him soon enough, it might even make a difference.

Difficult times called for strange bedfellows.

Next time: At what price peace?

	31-01-2002 05:07									#2
	Summer Clearance Sale! Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

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***

Next time: Genejack and the Bean Farmer