LF Friends, Will Travel

An unlikely source of aid

Date: PST 9 (Post Stasis Time)

I held my head in my paws, forlornly looking at the report in front of me. Disaster, absolute disaster. I sat in my office, the finery of the rooms given to me as elected leader of the Quoxxett Republic was useless. Every campaign promise, every plan, every potential future: All of it now nothing but ash against what was to come.

"It has a fatality rate of 100%, as soon as it infects the plant it will die in less than a week. Nothing we've come up with so far works on curing it. Even worse, the spores it leaves behind are basically impervious to all known pesticides and other methods of control. Basically as soon as a crop is infected, that plot can no longer grow Jwangu Nuts."

I looked up as Oger, the current minister for agriculture, explained what the report had already written down. I could see looked exhausted, fur matted and knotted together, paws being wrung together while his tail drooped. I'd seen this man stand up to the most rigorous of questioning in parliament, rising through the political system without ever faltering. But now he looked broken. Frankly I didn't blame him, this was a near absolute worst case scenario.

We are the Quoxxett, a species of brown furred rodents, standing at a whole 2ft tall. On a galactic scale we weren't really special. Spread over three systems, we had enough technology to stop anyone from easily subjugating us, we had a few areas of simple trade with some of our neighbours: Mostly exporting civilian FTL vehicles and a few cultural entertainment exports. There are over 31 thousand confirmed sapient species in the galaxy, and there are only so many ways evolution can create a small mammal. Rather simply we had nothing special about us.

Apart from one unfortunate fact: we also had a monotrophic diet: Something about the Jwangu Nut was required in our diet, in high qualities. Sure we could "eat" most things, for flavour or temporary energy, but without the single crop we depended on you'd quickly starve. Up until now that hadn't been a problem, as the three systems we had colonised all took nicely to growing the crop.

Until now.

It was just me and Oger in the room. Nobody else, if people knew how bad it could be, we'd lose control of all semblance of society and civilization. We couldn't keep it hidden for long, but we hoped we'd be able to provide a solution, a positive way forward, some hope. We had only spotted the nearly undetectable fungal infection a month ago, but what had started out as a minor increase in food prices was quickly turning into a shortage.

"How much of the current crop is uninfected?" I asked the question, hoping it was something we could contain.

"Basically Zero. We've managed to quarantine some of the uninfected crop, but we're talking enough to feed maybe thirty thousand at most. The main issue is finding uninfected places to grow it."

Thirty thousand... We had a population of fifteen billion.

"Give me options, and please make some of them good."

Oger gave a sigh of defeat in response, bag under his eyes and a mat glossless fur suggesting he's not slept properly for the last two weeks.

"There are alternatives to buy on the Galactic market. We do not have the funds however to feed the current population with that. The Federation is being the Federation, a debate has been scheduled to whether there should be a debate regarding our plight. That is scheduled for a month's time. The Estorian Empire has offered to-"

"No." I interrupted that option. The Estorian empire was a coalition of 5 wardriven nations. Each one considers all other species nothing more than sub-sapient tools for whatever desires they have. Each one is terrible in their own way. I knew what their help would entail: Becoming one of the many subjegated species under their control, shipped off our planets and forced to become slaves and a new race of playthings for them to break.