Francine eased off the hyperspace speed and let her ship drop from the Theta-Band of hyperspace, down to realspace. She had to keep an eye on it, since lately the Alpha-Band, known as Hellspace, had been 'kicking' a lot, sometimes grabbing ships as high as the Epsilon-Band and yanking them into the Alpha Band.

The last thing she wanted was to have her furry butt and her ship yanked down and into that kind of shitstorm, especially with the Crusade and the other Idiots stirring up Hellspace.

Her ship, the Football Headed Boy, was massive, slightly larger than a Confederate Space Force super-dreadnought. It wasn't armored as thickly, nor did it mount shoals of weaponry and a thick layer of battlescreens.

Her ship was a Super-Heavy Eta-Class Freighter. Physically larger than a super-dreadnought but massing less than a 10th. The biggest weapon she had was a single plasma wave phased motion gun mounted along the spine and four light nCv cannons to cover the quadrants. Sure, she could drop a couple dozen missile pods, but it wasn't like she was a Weber class podnought.

She eased down a bit more on the throttle, slipping down another band.

Francine was laying in her command cradle, her eyes closed, her neural jack plugged in. The bridge was empty except for a few low-IQ VI's running various stations.

She was plugged in, and it was a one woman show.

To her, she was riding a motorcycle, a big heavy hog, down a mountainside highway. The wind ruffling her fur, the goggles shielding her large eyes, her large hands holding tight to the controls.

She dropped into the system with a streak and a sparkle.

She'd checked the system out almost two hundred and fifty years before. Pretty far into the Long Dark, where there was nothing but planets stripped and ravaged a hundred million years before orbited stars that just wanted to forget the horrors they'd seen.

The system had been empty since whatever had ripped a canyon five miles deep in the protocontinent had left.

But, it had water, good atmosphere, and plenty of resources on the three planets in the Green Zone, a rich asteroid belt, and a handful of gas giants.

It made for a good place to stop off and replenish her systems.

She still had that damn leak in the gas exchangers that she hadn't been able to track down for the last twenty years.

She'd move into orbit, take a couple of weeks to inventory everything from her scrap haul and her salvage, and then explore the planets for a few days each.

One of the beach had lovely purplish-white sand. The odd tinted coral was eaten by tiny fish, who's intestines secreted something that bleached the blue and green coral a purplish white, and pooped out sand grains.

Disgusting, but also kind of neat.

Francine smiled to herself, looking forward to maybe checking out the canyons on the planet in the Amber Zone later. She hadn't been back in five years and...

Her implant informed her she was receiving a comm request.

Frowning, she wondered who else could be here. True, she hadn't registered her ownership of the star system, but still, it was pretty far in the Long Dark, so nobody really had a reason to come to the system.

She opened the link and stared.

A lexicon exchange request.

She tabbed up the standard Confed Junker Code Lexicon and transmitted it, getting back a pretty threadbare lexicon in return that just had a limited vocabulary.

OK, now she was curious.

She stopped the ship in place, disconnected from the eVR system, and brought up the bridge lights. She ordered the VI's into robot frames as she squirmed for a moment in her command cradle. It responded to her commands and shifted form until it was a captain's chair with consoles off to the side.

It took her computer system nearly an hour to decode the lexicon.

Francine frowned at it. There were a lot of words missing. It looked like trade was a nebulous concept, barely understood beyond "I give you something you want you give me something I want" with little value attached.

Welp, here goes nothing, Francine thought to herself, signalling that she had decoded the lexicon and was ready to talk.

She threw up her wallpaper, a light blue field with two white stripes with a laurel wreath and two roses. Beneath it, at the bottom, was "Frensky Junker LLC" in bold blue letters with a white border.

What appeared on half of her screen made her want to climb up on the bars on the ceiling.

It was a Mantid.

Or at least, it looked like a Mantid. It was pretty big. Longer bladearm with what looked like serrrations on the edges. It had spikes in weird places, a big head, longer and thicker antenna.

It was also a Speaker.

"Greetings and Salutations, unknown being of indeterminate sexual and cultural characteristics," the Mantid clicked, the words appearing at the bottom. "Welcome to the We Live Here Now System. I am your visual and aural greeter and virtual host, Klakikatik'alatik'laktikti'ktiknakplinktni'ktnk, but you may refer to me in written or aural or visual communication as Lecturer in the Dark Spaces of Our Solar System Where Visitors Might Arrive to Visit Our Home and Possibly Even Act With Friendship Who Speaks With the Overqueen Klakataka's Authority And Makes Wise Decisions Even When Hungry."

"Uh..." Francine said, staring at the Speaker.

"You may also refer to me in your preferred method of communication as 'Red', as large sections of my well groomed and cared for carapace possesses that color when viewed by creatures who use photons for visual systems," the massive Speaker said. It paused, and Francine wondered if it was taking a deep breath to launch into something else.

"By what nomenclature should this being, and other beings, including those in authority or those who may be assigned a subordinate position to you, refer to you as? You may respond visually, aurally, with writing, or via psychic transmission on mental bands Nu-Six-Nine point Epsilon Gamma Two," the creature said.

Centuries of experience as a junker pulled Francine's concentration back together.

"Why, hello, new friend!" Francine said. "I am Francine "Call me Fran or Fanny" Frensky, a registered and bonded junkman, owner and operator of Frensky Junker Corporation, a Limited Liability Company registered with the Terran Confederacy of Aligned Systems. It is pleasant to view your impressiveness and rewarding to receive your aural communication translated to written text that carries your sublime ability to weave words and phrases."

The Speaker preened, somehow looking pleased. At the bottom of the screen were the words "I am expressing personal internal satisfaction at your words and phrasing."

Francine groomed the hair on her arm, smiling, ensuring that her translator added "I am reciprocating such feelings."

After a moment the Speaker nodded and the screen gave the light gold flash at the borders to signify additional speech.

"The Overqueen Klakataka welcomes you to this, our humble new home system, and welcomes a chance to exchange trade goods and pleasantries with you," the Speaker said. "Her magnificence wishes that she could welcome you to her chamber, but it is in slight disarray due to our recent arrival and she hopes you understand that the lack of invitation is not a sign of rudeness but rather of politeness."

A picture of a green mantid appeared. A little more spikey than normal, but still a greenie.

"These former servitors were only recently discovered to have a sense of self and the capacity for independent and autonomous thoughts, including wants and desires of their own. They are very skittish as they are quite small and delicate. They are currently wondering if you, in your vast and voluminous cargo holds of your wondrously constructed and might trading vessel, have any technology you would be willing to trade for them to examine and marvel over."

Francine nodded. "Why, my good friend Red, I do indeed."

Despite the Speaker's wordiness, he was speaking any junker's language.

And personally, she could do without visiting a Mantid Overqueen's chambers.

"If you do not mind waiting for a period of time, we shall establish a flight path and a proper orbital position around one of the moons that will allow you to engage in trade with one our brand new recently constructed and activated completely functional and totally not just thrown together so as to be dangerous space stations," Red said.

"I thank you, Red of the Most Impressive and Colorful Carapace. I will await with glee for your authorities to assign me a flight path," Francine said.

"I will remain in contact with you until the authorization and flight plans are ready to be relayed. The Wise and Gracious and Gentle and Kind and Beloved Overqueen Klakataka does not want you to come to the conclusion that we do not value your visit by leaving you with nothing more than an empty communications band to listen to why we await the most highly trained and ready at a moment's notice astrogation specialists to fulfill their duties," Red said.

With a sinking feeling, Francine realized that Red intended on talking to her the entire time.

-----------

Francine spent the eighty hours of flight time, during which she had apologized to Red and told him she needed concentration to fly her massive cargo vessel, researching everything she could about pre-Glassing Mantid society.

None of it fit.

She had kept "Red" busy with a 'free sample' of electronic media and entertainment, including a few episodes of Charlie Moomoo and a couple episodes of "Treana'ad in the Big City" as well as some animated gambling programs.

For almost two hours Francine had watched as Red stared at his own screens, moving his bladearm to tap an icon now and then. He had been completely entranced by the 'free sample' and had even asked permission to forward the "delightful and enjoyable entertainment in a visual and aural medium" to the Overqueen and her 'daughters' the Queens.

Francine had scoured her library, finding all the old "High Seas" acquired seasons of various kid's cartoons and entertainment, children's games, and things like that.

She had slowly begun to suspect that the current Mantid culture was an entirely new thing and she didn't want to drop a culture bomb in the middle of it and wreck it all up.

She tabbed the icon for Red and waited a moment for the Speaker to answer. It took him a few moments and Francine wondered what he was doing.

"Ah, Francine, my compound eyes once again are blessed by your simian existence and I marvel at the wonders you have shown my humble personage as well as allowed me to share with Overqueen Klakataka and her daughters," Red said.

"I have a free sample for your greenies to enjoy," Francine said.

Red cocked his head. "Green. A portion of the visible light spectrum. Used as a noun rather than an adjective. Analogous to the hue and tint of an engineer caste individual's carapace," he mused. Then he straightened up and preened. "Ah, you mean the members of the engineer caste! They would enjoy anything that you feel may be of interest to them."

"Forwarding it now. They're logic and mathematical puzzle games," Francine said.

"You are indeed as generous as you are visually appealing and a wonder to freely exchange speech with," Red said. He looked down. "Why, this is quite generous. There appears to be nearly fifty different entertainment programs."

"A modest free sample," Francine said.

"I will forward it to Queen Tikikn'iktinkta'linkikak," Red said. He nodded. "I apologize for terminating our conversation so early, but I wish to know if the Treana'ad Row-Sass will lose his job at the Museum of Natural History due to his sister eating his best friend and coworker's head in an substandard ice cream induced temporary loss of sexual control," Red shook his head. "It should not be amusing, the death of another thinking being, but the fact that Toe-Moss purchased cheap ice cream from a vending machine and thus had his head eaten by Moan-Eye-Caw is thus his own fault, and thus is ironic giving his boasting, making it strangely a highly amusing set of incidents that are the consequences of his own making."

"I'm glad you are enjoying it, Red," Francine said.

She sighed in relief when the long winded Speaker cut the channel.

------------

Francine was perfectly happy to use robots to move goods between her ship and the rather haphazard appearing space station. The Mantid were interested in eVR systems, food forges, nanoforges, small creation engines, games, puzzles, and entertainment media.

Red had been promoted, to use his own words, to "Chief Negotiator, Communicator, Facilitator, and Overseers of Interstellar Cross-xenospecies Trade and Exchange to Those Who Come to Our Home System With the Intent of Peaceful Trade and Barter" and had been filling Francine's ear with chatter for four days.

Francine knew the time had come to the part she had been dreading. She had worked out her anxiety by swinging by her hands and feet from the bars attached to the ceiling of her command deck.

"And what would you like to offer in return, Red ofthe Intersterting and Pleasantly Hued Carapace and Wise Thoughts, Carefully Considered Actions, and Eloquent Speech?" Francine asked.

This was where it often got sticky. More than a few times Francine's question had been answered with missiles or nCv rounds.

"The Overqueen Klakataka would like to offer you, in exchange for all of these wonders, three things," Red said, pausing to preen.

Francine tensed.

"A modest section of property to encompass that lovely lavender shaded silicate coated shoreline, for you to visit and construct a comfortable dwelling upon," Red said. "Two: Free right of passage and resupply in this, our Home System Which We Love and Treasure and Appreciate More Every Day. Three: A slightly used colony ship."

Francine touched her fingers together and clenched her toes.

"May I examine the colony ship?" she asked.

She'd seen plenty of colony ships. By and large they were junk heaps barely held together by vacuum welding and wishes.

Red forwarded her an image and she opened it, bracing herself for disappointment.

Instead what looked like a full blown Goliath Class Harvester sat on her screen.

"It is slow, somewhat ancient, clumsy, and bulky, but it performed its task of ferrying us to this wonderful new planet adequately. Overqueen Klakataka offers this to you in the same spirit of generosity and magnanimous actions as you showed in your gift of a Charlie Moomoo shoulder wrap."

Francine didn't tell him it had been an ultra-king sized comforter she'd tripled the size of and ran off through her nanoforge.

Francine made sure she appeared to think about it for a long moment.

Confed would pay a fortune for an intact Goliath Class Harvester. She'd just mount an eVI control system in it and have it follow her ship.

"In the spirit of friendship between two peoples who has just encountered one another in this malevolent universe, I accept the offer in the spirit it was given," Francine said.

Red bobbed his head. "Excellent!"

------------

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Did anyone else just feel something weird?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Nope.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Nope.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

Yeah.

Wonder what it was?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Hopefully something good.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---