Pax Galactica - A Space Opera

Prologue

The silver Partisan-class escort cut its twin torch drives and engaged antigrav as it entered the atmosphere of Dididi-Dididi-Dididi. The trail of red fire that had followed it dissipated. Swooping down gracefully it quickly circled the capital city before coming to a landing on the starpad of an outstretched balcony.

The balcony starpad was the VIP entrance of the Hall of Unity, Integration and Amalgamation. The pyramid-tipped edifice of purple stone and tinted black windows stretched up into the sky and loomed over the rest of the city below. It was the tallest building in the city by law, statute, and common custom.

Charlotte Banks looked at the depressing grey sky through the perfectly transparent windows of the starship and sighed. She rose from the co-pilot's chair.

Stross was already standing, rooting around in one of the supply cabinets. He tossed her a pair of nose plugs. Banks caught them in the air and looked at them in her hand. They were clear gel and full of spiraled up silver wire.

"You sure?" she asked. "This would be a fantastic excuse to go in suited up."

"We're here to deescalate the situation," said Stross. "Arriving in battle armor is not going to give the right impression."

Banks shrugged and put the plugs in her nose. The silver threads unraveled themselves and traveled down her airway into her lungs. It immediately began to oxygenate her blood directly.

Banks sniffed. She always had trouble not breathing for the first few seconds before her mind adjusted.

"Ready?" asked Stross. "I'm going to open the hatch."

"Go for it," said Banks, now comfortably not breathing.

With a hiss the hatch slid open and the two cloaked humans exited the silver twin-engined starship. Banks pulled her green hood up against the biting alien winds, her curly black hair just barely peeking out around the edges.

The rangers walked along the length of the balcony and up to the deliberately imposing entrance to the Hall. Three gug-gug-gugs stood guard.

The gug-gug-gug's naked skin was yellow-orange and wrinkled. They lacked heads separate from their torsos. Instead they had three-sided bodies, resembling lumpen pyramids, and each side had its own eye and mouth.

Attached to the edges of their bodies were three limbs ending in an appendage something between a human hand and a foot that could easily serve as either. Each had three grasping finger-thumbs arranged in an even triangle formation.

They were relatively small, about 2/3 the height of an adult human, but incredibly dense. Most fully grown gug-gug-gugs weighed twice as much as their equivalent human counterpart.

Banks could never get over their mouths. They had lipless but still unnervingly human mouths. It was the teeth and the tongues, she decided.

All three were armed with the usual gug-gug-gug chemical slugthrowers, primitive firearms that used literal explosions to inelegantly fire projectiles at low speeds but high volumes. They were completely useless against a personal shield.

"Zat! Zat! Zat!" yelled the middle guard. "State your name, allegiance and purpose!"

"I am Ian Stross. This is Charlotte Banks. We are rangers with A.R.C. We're expected," said Stross, in the mechanical accent of his programmed High Gug-Gug-Gug.

Banks let Stross do the talking. She didn't relish tasting the disgusting Dididi-Dididi-Dididi air.

"A.R.C?" asked the guard, making the body tip characteristic of a gug-gug-gug sneer. "The Human Cooperative you mean."