13th April
04:43 GMT
"Victory!" / "Victory!" / "Victory!" / "Victory!" / "Victory!" / "Victory!" / "Victory!"
Jade and our dinner guests raise their tankards in a salute, then the locals -a four eyed humanoid species- immediately chug a gulp. Jade follows suit with a
little less enthusiasm, careful not to obscure her sight-lines as she does so. Caccanah just takes a small sip while the clicker serving as L.E.G.I.O.N. coordinator chugs
too much and ends up choking on the stuff, prompting a friendly expression of amusement from the locals.
Okay, the locals' potato bread type thingy is
done, the fish analogue will be ready to serve in a few minutes… I check the grill and the scraal -eight-legged pseudo-insectoids that the locals think are fine dining- are… Done. I pick up a pair of tongs from the work surface and transfer them to small plates. Drizzle of the flavoured oil… And
carefully check the
faux-insectoid for the officer with the alternate digestive system… Okay! I load them onto the floating serving tray and push it into the dining area.
"…looked like-"
Caccanah holds her hands up to her forehead and mimics the eyestalk gesture
someone made.
"-
this, and the guards dropped their weapons without even
trying to fight back."
Jade looks
mildly relieved to see me as I place a plate in front of her slightly tipsy colleague, immediately drawing her-
"You
cook too?"
-attention.
"I'm a man-
" From the affirmative gesture from the locals I hand plates to next -an officer in the planetary police called Baezen and someone from their intelligence agency named Trouk- it looks like I copied the local dish
reasonably well.
"-of many talents.
"
K-Ku'ss seems a little uncomfortable.
"I don't think I can digest this."
"Already thought about that. Yours is synthetic, designed to replicate the taste and texture of a scraal without actually
being one. It's perfectly fine for you.
"
"Oh. Thank you."
"That's a
fake?" Seinea, one of the locals and a strong political proponent of N.E.M.O. cooperation, takes a closer look. "Where did you get it? I've never seen one that good before."
"Oh, I made it myself. I'll send the design to one of your vegetarian food companies after dinner.
"
I put down the last plates in my and Jade's places, then take my seat next to her. Jade pulls off a leg, dips it in the oil and then bites the oiled end off. Really, it's remarkable how edible alien food generally is. But… Humanoid species generally have similar nutritional needs, fruit-bearing plants need animals to eat their fruit in order to spread their seeds, so it's not that unusual for a person to be able to pluck a fruit from just about any planet in this galaxy and be able to eat it safely. Or at least as likely as it is on their home planet; plenty of
fruit on Earth are poisonous to humans, after all.
K-Ku'ss picks up her faux-scraal and gently begins feeding it into her mandibles. She's remarkably adept at the process. Not a drop of oil or faux-bug juice drips onto the table and I can hear the quiet crackling as the carapace is crushed.
"So…
What exactly was the Reach trying to do here?
"
Jade glances in my direction.
"Do you want a
full report?"
"I'm not
that boorish, Jade.
"
Trouk makes a gesture of disbelief with his right arm. "We've known that the Reach were going to head this way for generations. We've tried guarding against them, making alliances… We usually spot infiltrators and patsies pretty quickly-"
My eyes dart to Jade and she slightly inclines her head. The summary is
mostly true, though it does skip over the brutal totalitarianism they've had to instate to do it. Of course… There's a
reason why they're our strongest partner in this region of space. When
any internal division is a target for Reach leveraging… Not allowing any works
really well for keeping them out.
"-but some entertainment programs created by our allies-"
Vassals, but they're not
total dicks about it.
"-only get light-"
Medium. If you want to ask a politically sensitive question, best do it in private.
"-censorship." He looks around at his fellow members of the local establishment. "I suppose we should take it as a mark of our success that the most they can do is interfere with our children's entertainment."
Baezen makes a gesture of disagreement with his eyestalks. "That is what happens when standards are allowed to slip; enforcement was
lax."
"What exactly was this children's program supposed to do?
"
Baezen looks around to… Ceally, who works for their intelligence service as a scientific advisor.
"Mm?"
"Pael wants to know how the Reach's program was supposed to work."
"Oh. Well, we've known for a while that certain sounds combined with certain colours can induce predictable emotional responses in our species. The stun projectors used by the low-police use a very particular pale blue combined with a high pitched tone to render suspects unconscious without risking injuries. But the Reach have.. been studying our brains. They were able to introduce a signal which would render those exposed to it susceptible to pro-Reach ideas. The complexity of it is greater than anything we've tried ourselves; we thought that level of control was only possible in
fiction. But… They managed it."
"Did they give you any trouble?
"
Caccanah nods. "We had.. five..?" Jade nods. "Five assassination attempts from people they've used their signal on already. There was nothing linking them because they were responding to the signal rather than making decisions themselves. But the security at their base wasn't a problem because they were just supposed to be the security for a television production company."
I nod, finishing my own scraal with knife and fork rather than the more manual option my fellow diners are going for. This sort of infiltration is what the Darkstars exist to prevent, and from the reports I had my rings feed my brain this sounds like it was another resounding success for Jade. Which in turn firms up our support in this region of space. While we haven't got the Reach
completely enclosed -that would be more or less impossible- we now have allies and N.E.M.O. members all around Reach space. I…
Think the totality of our military power is greater than theirs, though not all that much is made up of ships designed by Dox's team or under his direct command. The Reach warships have a technological advantage on everything else, even if they
can't use them aggressively without starting a war with the Green Lantern Corps.
Seinea slides her empty plate forwards. "Have you studied our cooking for long?"
"No, but I've studied a great many different culinary traditions. Specifics vary, but a lot of things are the same.
"
Wallace seemed to enjoy insectivore week well enough, until Richard told him what he was eating.
"Are you a professional chef? That's… Not the match I would have expected-"
I frown at Caccanah, who isn't watching.
"-for an operative like Jaed. And I don't recognise your species; have you been in the service of the Controllers for long, like the clickers?"
"Oh, gosh no. Our homeworld is a long way from here, and I've worked for the Controllers for less than a year.
"
Jade nods. "This is a personal vocation, for both of us."
"Then how did you get here?"
I pick up the empty plates with orange filaments, to the visible surprise of several present, and float them back into the kitchen.
"Long range teleportation.
"
I raise my right fore and middle fingers to my forehead and
vanish, reappearing in the
kitchen.
"Does anyone want a refill?
"
