Chapter 9: Meeting the other Uzliumbax

Emperor Cassius, Jason’s uncle called from his palace on Laomedeia. “Jason, I have a delegation here from the Galaxy of the Azloc. They are a pretty advanced civilization, somewhere around your level as far as I can tell and they want to discuss an alliance to defend against the Azloc. They want to speak to you before they talk to anyone else. Can I bring them and Alana to visit this weekend?”

“Cassius we would love to see you both. I miss you guys terribly. Studying and the heavy duties of an Empire eats all my time. I was sent some of the best wines Earth produces by Lauren and we have a few new ones produced on Mars. Some people from Earth brought a vineyard’s worth of their best vines. There are several great areas on Mars, they told me.” Jason replied.

“Jason, you have the easiest life of any Emperor I’ve ever encountered,” said his aunt Alana. You delegate everything to everyone else and then complain. You have one social engagement a week and one meeting. How much easier can it get? Poor Philippa has her work to do as Queen of the Collective, she also has to manage your Uzliumbax assets as well as your holdings in the Jumo Empire. She is going to need to enlarge her building and treble her staff. I have never heard her complain once.”

“Philippa is very capable and I have full confidence in her abilities. My Uzliumbax house or as they call it here, an Association, could do the administration easily. She has plenty of help, but she does have a lot to do. She too is a great delegator.

“Just as you started restructuring the University Alana, you now have to do it again!” Jason remarked changing the subject.

“The previous restructure works perfectly well. We only need to implement the new education. I have been personally undergoing an update to the new mathematics of the Uzliumbax. It is very impressive. It looks to me that the work of the last million and a half years was done by brute force and even though it works, it needs a non-AI brain to simplify it for us. It works, but we need to make it human elegant.” Said Alana.

“Yes, I did notice how different the work of the AIs is. It will give the mathematicians plenty of work for the next two hundred thousand years,” said Jason.

“Cassius, how is it going with the refugees?” he then asked.

“The steady stream continues. I do see considerable value in the beings who are joining us. Many of them are way ahead of where we were and most of the species are adapting well to our Empire. I did do one thing to help a lot. I consulted the Collective doctors to give them alternate forms. It made it much easier for many of them to fit in. The refugees are the Azloc’s loss and certainly our gain. There are some first-class scientists amongst them and I have sent them off to Porquenta. Thank you for sending us the Uzliumbax scientists for sabbaticals. They are very easy to get along with and are very helpful. Our universities are benefiting from an exchange of people from all the allies. There is a feeling of energy and optimism which I have not felt for a very long time. The other good thing is our dissidents are not causing trouble. We did use your pod interrogation idea for each and every refugee. The criminals and other scum amongst them are in stasis.

“Anyhow, Jason we will see you on the weekend. The princesses want to come along, and my prodigal son has returned from his scouting mission. His entire mission could have been accomplished in one of our new ships in two or three months. He is surprised at the new world that has arisen in his absence. Surprised may not be a strong enough word. He is very keen to meet his cousin who came to us as a physical wreck and is now an Emperor. He has seen the long version of your history including the recent updates that you sent. He has a rank of colonel. He’s being promoted to the XO of one of our newer battleships.” Cassius told him, Alana added.

“Cassius gave him some Uzliumbax and Destroyer simulations. He also cannot believe how difficult the new simulations are. He has leave for two months before he rejoins his ship.”

“Alana, we have a series of officer update courses that take six weeks. He might like to spend a bit of time at the War College here. They are starting the inaugural courses in a week. He will be able to meet the Gromelix who are coming across here in droves to do the courses,” said Jason. “I suspect our allies will find they need a lot more to catch up. Brecht’s sister Kreb is enlarging the College here to cope with future demand.”

“I will talk to him and I will let you know as soon as I can what he wants to do. He is not one of those people who likes to hang around and do nothing. There is an excellent chance he will accept. He can stay with us in our suite at your palace while he looks at the content and decides. Knowing him it is an offer he will feel is too good to refuse.” Alana replied.

***

Jason hugged Cassius then Alana then Julie and Claire before he was introduced to Prince Alfred. Alfred had the same charming manner of his father and he eagerly accepted the opportunity to do the officers’ course.

“Jason, our guests are settling into their rooms. They are fluent in Empire standard and will join us when we are ready for them,” said Cassius.

“Linda, Andrea, Celia and Felicia the Kings and Queens along with our intelligence people and a couple of the Destroyer women will be joining us. Philippa sends her apologies; she is frenetically busy sorting out my affairs in the Uzliumbax Empire. She will be here later tonight. The women are on their way as are the rest of them. Thomas thinks our visitors are another main branch of the Uzliumbax. Let us make our way to one of the conference rooms. They are all waiting for us,” said Jason.

Cassius made a call to the guests and indicated to them where to go as they strolled together to the conference room, while Alana, Alfred and the two princesses made their way to the royal suites.

“Jason, I would like to introduce you to Adm. Lisossa Sondadar, Gen. Marast Frichassa and Gen. Ilassan Bemis. Adm. Lisossa heads the group.” Cassius said.

Jason introduced his people and when he introduced the Destroyers they were agitated and excited.

“I would suggest as I usually do, we keep this informal and use first names only. Can you ladies and gentlemen explain your purpose in being here?” Jason asked.

Lisossa nodded her head – “as you know, we come from the galaxy adjacent to the Empire. We are called the Dinnion. We are one of the two dominant species in that galaxy and increasingly we are being threatened by the Azloc. They have previously invaded your galaxy when they perceived themselves under threat. We do believe our galaxy is threatened by the Destroyers. Do you have an alliance with the Destroyers?”

“No Lisossa we don’t have an alliance with them. They have made strenuous attempts to attack my people the Uzliumbax. We captured a major fleet of theirs and the crew decided to join us. I would like to give you a little background that may help explain what we know, and it may save a little time and discussion. We believe and have had some separate corroboration that a people who were ancestors to the Uzliumbax traveled to universe Bekta Delta. We further understand a splinter group left Bekta Delta to seek mammalian forms. We do consider it is possible this splinter split in half. One half became the Uzliumbax and the other half the Destroyers believe, are your people. They believe you are relatives of theirs and for that reason they leave you strictly alone. We can see we share Destroyer genes and we can see we are converging genetically with them. Despite them having their origins in reptiles they are becoming much more like us and we are becoming increasingly humanoid and less like an ape. The Uzliumbax, during the time I was exploring other universes put themselves into stasis and are only now coming out of stasis.

“After we fought two battles with the Destroyers, they have retreated, some to Bekta Delta, but also to Bekta Alpha as it has more resources than Bekta Delta. We know very little about the Azloc. Cassius has learned whatever we know from the refugees. We also know, during the last war the Azloc could not communicate with us and vice versa. We are now scouting the Azloc planets to evaluate our risk and to find out more about our possible enemy.

“As soon your people entered the room, I had a feeling at a psychic level we are somehow related. If you agree it will be simple enough to test it.” said Jason.

Lisossa nodded. “We do know we came from Bekta Delta. We did not know we were possibly related to the Destroyers. We would never have suspected it at all as they were so different from us.”

Jason pointed out the Destroyer women and had Andrea stand next to them to show how humanoid the Destroyers had become.

The Dinnion group looked at them intently and nodded sagely then Lisossa continued.

“The situation we face is a difficult one. The Azloc are very difficult to communicate with on a verbal level. They speak in a highly condensed way leaving essential detail out. We have a similar level of advancement to them. We have both left each other strictly alone and have respected our mutual boundaries.

“One of the junior Azloc Queens visited us recently. She wants us to work with them against the Destroyers. The way she spoke indicates that they are terrified of the Destroyers. During that meeting we discovered that we and they share telepathic communication, but on a secondary band. We were both excited to discover this, but even though telepathically they communicate a little more, it is not enough to make much of the conversation and dialogue meaningful and understandable. We gathered that there was an advanced species who mentored the Azloc. They believe that the Destroyers eradicated them. We understood the basis for the fear they have. The Destroyers rampaged through our galaxy and did much damage in the past. They did not attack us at the time. We never knew why, now we do!

“We explained to the Queen we have encountered the Destroyers and their ships on several occasions and we have never been attacked. The Queen returned a month later and took us to a planet that was a smoking shell. The Destroyers attacked the planet, invaded it and then pulverized it. It was a shocking sight. They have given us six months to make up our minds. We don’t know what they’re going to do if we refuse to join them. The level of anxiety of the Queen was palpable.