Chapter 14

Jasmine just couldn't let go of the thought, "Why had the bandits continued to attack the panda archaeologists even though they had to know that the effort was futile?" Finally, she could take it no longer, she just had to know the answer!

She scheduled some time on one of TWT's long range trans-coms and began searching for the bandit stronghold on Jasong, the panda planet. She found it and watched the activity long enough to identify the leader of the group. When she judged the time was suitable, Jasmine began speaking to the panda, "Pardon me, please, but may I ask you some questions?"

"Get away from me demon! I will not submit to your blandishments!"

"But I am not a demon! I am a sentient being like you, and I want to know what I did to upset you so much. That way I can avoid doing it again."

"You have been helping the infidels to desecrate our temple to our ancestors! You have helped them to invade our sacred place. It will take us months to purify the holy sanctum!"

"Oh, please, neither they nor I understood the problem. We thought you were bandits who were trying to kill us so that you could steal our belongings. We had no idea that you held the ancient structure to be sacred. The people we were protecting were trying to understand and preserve the structure and the beautiful murals. There was no intention of harming anything. The people only wanted to learn!"

"Oh, dear gods! We have made a horrible mistake! Our stories from the past prophesy a coming of outsiders to study and learn of our ancestors and to spread the holy word throughout the land. Oh, woe! How can we repair this blunder?"

"I think that there was a blunder on both sides! I will contact the leader of the archaeologists and ask him to contact you to begin negotiations for a full scale study of the ancient site. What is your name? His name is Oofa."

"Thank you so very much for helping us to repair this unfortunate misunderstanding. My name is Warfal. I am the high priest of the Ancients. What is your name, if you please?"

"My name is Jasmine. I am very pleased to meet you, Warfal. And I am very glad that I was able to help in straightening out this misunderstanding. I wish good fortune to both sides. Goodbye for now. My time is over."

When Doug heard Jasmin's description of their adventure on Jasong, he decided to make it a matter of policy to insure that the people they were protecting had tried talking to the natives before brashly moving in and taking over. They now had Transylvania and Jasong as wonderful examples of how their employers could screw up!

Thus it was that they lost their next two contracts because the conflict disappeared when the two parties actually talked to each other. Oh, well, at least nobody was hurt.

Doug was contacted by a race of people who were being plagued by a rash of pirate attacks on their gorflin warehouses. Gorflin was a spice valued by most of the galaxy and it was used in such small quantities that it was highly profitable to transport it by FTL spaceship. This spice could only be grown on the planet Gorflinia; it literally tasted like shit if it was grown anywhere else. Nobody could figure out why this was true, but there was no denying the fact.

The spice was stored in four regional warehouses around the planet, and the pirates where hitting them when they were filled to capacity, which was twice a local year. So far, nobody had been killed in a raid, since both sides were using stun rifles; but the feeling was that it was just a matter of time until there was a fatality.