✅ Project SETI Trilogy

Chapter Three - Part XXVIII: Quid Pro Quo

          Temetor One, the Bridge

          When it became apparent that the human government had become privy to their unsavoury actions, Ledda went into hiding. She kept the stealth mechanism active whenever possible, and moved the Temetor One regularly. The cloning program was continued with the limited blood resources they still had, and several Nova clones fulfilled their purpose as accelerated breeders. Ever since the incident with Novala, it became procedure to preemptively sedate the clones before they were animated, and as such, not a single clone that came after him had managed to gain consciousness and escape. Nova and Novala had also done quite a lot of damage to their overall numbers, so it became her top priority to try and fix this—the few remaining human prisoners that were capable of being surrogates were also impregnated and placed in fertility pods. They weren't as effective as the Nova clones, but still a help, so it continued.

           "There's an audio-only transmission attempting to come through," one of the communications staff crackled through a speaker on her console. It had also become standard procedure to screen every attempt to contact the mothership, since the humans kept trying to periodically establish contact again. "It's coming from a Satyrian area code."

          "Strange..." Ledda thought aloud. "I'll take the call directly, thank you."

          The Daxut whistled affirmatively and signed off, and at the same time, a light began to flash on the console in front of her. She pressed a button near it, but before the audio transmission went live, she adjusted the settings for the built-in translator with the embedded language information available. When the connection finally did go live, the translation of the other person's speech appeared on a holographic screen in front of her:

          "Greetings... would this be the Temetor One?" a distorted croaking voice asked.

          "This is Prime Sentinel Ledda of the Temetor One," Ledda confirmed. "Who might this be? Your identification suggests you are from Satyrs."

          "That is correct," the voice replied. "My alias is Palka. I wish to remain somewhat anonymous, as I have some rather sensitive information I think you may be interested in..."

          "And what information might that be, Palka?"

          "It's regarding those bounties you have out for Nova Tepez, Gabriel Dejarlais and Temet the Daxut. I myself do not have the resources to try and capture them, but... I did happen to stumble upon the location of Temet and Nova during some routine travel."

          Ledda paused and flicked her long green crown excitedly. "I assume you are expecting something for such information?"

          "You would assume correct," Palka replied. "All I ask, is one third of the reward money for one person. That's all..."

         "Reasonable," Ledda brought up accounting information and prepared to wire galactic credits. "I will give you half that amount now and the other half when I confirm the truth of this information. Deal?"

          "Very well. Please send credits to this account..."

          Ledda sent the requested amount as promised while they were still on the call. Palka received it nearly instantly, and held up his end of the deal.

          "... those coordinates I just sent you apply to Satyrs," Palka explained. "At that location is a plain-looking factory building that is rather infamously owned by a loner human. He's been there for years—he goes by the name Rey Boukel. I live nearby, and he almost never has any visitors, rarely leaves himself, and his entire property is protected by an electric fence that's actually more like a dome..."