2175 C.E.

XXV: The Debrief of Yong An-Hong

YONG: I don't know the full details of that operation.

TROY: Bullshit. What do you know?

YONG: There is an organization on several Grushan worlds which in English is known as the Peaceable Advancement Society. You have heard of them, I suppose?

TROY: Oh, I know them pretty well. My brother works sometimes with the Federation governor on Hezheran, and he helps them deal with PAS partisans. They're on the Federation's terrorist watchlist.

YONG: Are you familiar with their ideology?

TROY: They've been pushing for a Grushan Interlink based form of Government. Basically they're you and the President, but with tails.

YONG: The PAS has been operating under the Earth Operations Agency since its inception. We have been supplying them with both weapons and funding. They in turn have distributed that funding and research to several non-violent groups. Again, I haven't been briefed on the full details of the operation, but a source that we code-named TROTSKY was installed with an Interlink modified to conform to Grushan biology. TROTSKY infiltrated the Federation's border intelligence offices and, under Mainframe guidance, implanted a virus into the Grushan monitoring system that gave the PAS full control of what they could observe.

TROY: Go back a bit; you managed to get a Mainframe to control a host 250 light-years away?

YONG: No, the PAS constructed a Mainframe of their own on Hezhar under Hegemony instruction.

TROY: There's an actual Mainframe on Hezhar? Holy shit. The Grushan are going to eat this tape alive. I'm going to need everything you know about that thing in a separate report ASAP. Although we'll probably get to it before we're done here. And this TROTSKY fellow, of course. But getting back to the black ship. You sent a science ship to RN-06 3. When did they find the black ship?

YONG: I don't know completely what they found. They sent weekly reports back to the Terran Interstellar Authority, but they were never complete records. I do remember that they discovered a few abandoned settlements, but no significant technological finds. In our last report, they described a subterranean cavern on the Eastern continent that was emitting odd forms of radiation. I can only imagine that this was where they looked. Perhaps it is also where they found the Zaha-Katchem, waiting like so many dragon's teeth sewn in the earth, and awoke them.

TROY: I don't get that reference.

YONG: The last we heard from the science team was a distress signal sent via radio over warp waves. It was picked up by the TSS Swordfish, which jumped to RN-06 to investigate.

TROY: That's the ship you guys lost, right? You said that it had gone to Yveran.

YONG: We took great effort to send our teams to RN-06 in the first place; it seemed foolish to throw away all that effort.

TROY: Okay, fine. But you lost two ships to keep that secret; I hope it was worth it. Did you at least get any decent information from it? Anything on the Zaha-Katchem species or culture?

YONG: Several skeletons were discovered, but none matched the description of the Zaha-Katchem. Xeno-anthropologists I have spoken to believe that the remains uncovered are from a slave race, possibly Sheradzon war prisoners. There was significant ecological damage; high amounts of greenhouse gasses, industrial waste, and biological contaminants littered the landscape that the scientists landed near. The settlement was small and its inhabitants seem to have been killed by biological or chemical weapons.

TROY: What about their technology? I know you said that the crew didn't find much, but did they at least find... I don't know, an airport or something? You never found out what was in the cave?