Galactic Union HQ

"Emergency Session 18 of the Galactic Union, for the record," Secretary General Amanda Wilson said as she looked solemnly around at the hundreds of creatures in the chamber. At first, the Galactic Union headquarters were located in New York City, sharing spaces with Earth's United Nations. Then, as many other planets joined it, the UN General Assembly Hall became too small.

A new, larger facility was built at Galactic Peace Island, formerly known as Navy Island, a previously uninhabited island on the Niagara between the US and Canada. The new assembly chamber was large enough for every planet to have one permanent seat. Though some would choose to participate in its proceedings virtually, every one of them had visited its spacious halls. The structure itself represented their sacred and collective agreement to resolve their differences together, to face big challenges together, and to guard the interests of all sentience.

This was where galactic slavery was banned. This was where the first interspecies anti-piracy military ship was commissioned. This was where the ambassador of Ribb had come to humbly beg to be allowed to rejoin the galactic community.

For humans, its location and the extreme technological requirements needed to quickly construct the large hall also served as a convenient reminder to the galaxy of the importance of the species that hosted and built it.

"We have received a special petition regarding the issue of sovereignty over a member planet. I yield my time to their representative, joining us via virtual FTL comms," Amanda continued, pointing at the massive viewscreen above her.

The screen cleared, and a large parrot like face appeared with intricate red and black paint adorning its features.

"Hello Union members, my name is Mollikutta. I am the former Governor of Zakabara Second, and I am here to represent the interests of my people," she said calmly but loudly. There was a hubbub in the assembly hall. Zakabara already had a representative! Eyes began drifting towards the stunned Popptaw at the front of the chamber.

"My people of Second split off from Zakabara Prime many thousands of years ago. We have developed a distinct culture, and distinct interests. Our people no longer wish to accept the jurisdiction and administration of our planet from Prime. We would like to ask the Galactic Union to grant us sovereignty over our planet, our resources, and our space."

A loud squawk broke through the shocked chamber. It was Popptaw.

"This is ridiculous! Zakabara Second is and has been a colony of Zakabara for all of our history! I am the true representative for all of our people, all of our species, and I demand that this pretender be ignored by this chamber from here on out!"

The older species were nodding or agreeing silently. After all, Zakabara was not the only species that had a colony or two. Some younger species were looking to develop their own, and their ambassadors were now suddenly worried about whether they'd retain control over them.

Mollikutta was undeterred and continued, "unlike the representative from Zakabara Prime, I was chosen to lead our people with a majority voice vote last night."

It was not easy convincing the crowd to let her stay on with a promise of facilitating independence, with her being the symbol of the Primers on their planet for months.

The flashy entry of the humans in their helicopter at the palace grounds did the trick. Mark promised the mob elections and everything. Humans had a lot of credibility in the galaxy, with their cultural and economic exports.

At this point, there was more whispering and even some gasps in the chamber. They were all familiar with the concept of electoralism; that was how Earth and the GU conducted business, but few other species practiced it internally.

Mollikutta continued, "my people deserve the right to determine the future of our destiny, not to be treated as second class citizens by an oppressive regime from a faraway planet that does not understand our people or our problems!"

The undecided chamber looked to the great powers of the galaxy to see what they had to say.

Amanda spoke up simply, "the people of Earth stand with the people of Second."

Seeing this, Gubarak, the ambassador of Gakrek quickly followed, "Gaks stand with the people of Second."

"The Zeepils of Zeep-zep support the Seconders' right to self-determination."

Finally, an electronic tally showed an overwhelming majority of support for the independence of the people of Zakabara Second, with many older species choosing to abstain instead of casting their lot with Prime.

A subsequent vote gave the Galactic Union the powers to oversee the transition.

As Popptaw stormed angrily out of the chamber, Mollikutta wasn't sure which she found more beautiful: knowing that her people had a brighter future ahead of them, or watching the middle finger that the galaxy had just shown their other oppressors on Prime.

Construction Site 1, Gophor Spaceport

Grayin's heart sank as she saw Rey and Enrico walk over, hand in hand. She had hoped that it would take them longer to figure out what she was doing here and to start asking questions, but the growing pile of material and chopped wood frame in the lot she'd chosen wasn't easy to ignore.

After all, they were easily visible from their neighboring restaurant. And nobody liked competition.

"Hello Rey, hello Enrico" she said timidly, not wanting to start a confrontation this early in the business.

"Good morning, Grayin," Rey greeted politely, "and N'har. How are things going? Looks like you guys are building some kind of a permanent structure here. Does this have to do with the spaceport?"

From the familiar look on her face, Grayin knew the jig was up. She couldn't lie, so she tried confidence. "We're building a new restaurant building here. It'll be a two-story one, just like yours, except we'll also have a front patio. Like one I've seen on a magazine from Earth."

Rey smiled broadly and said, "that's very nice. Good luck with that! And don't go anywhere, we'll be right back in a bit."

Ah, shucks! They're gonna go get that security guard that they hang around. We should have thought of that, she thought. Maybe if we hired a couple of them, they wouldn't be messing with us.

About an hour later, to her surprise, Rey and Enrico came back not with Grob, but with a plastic folder with a stack of papers held in it.

"These are the contact information for the construction contractors we had on Earth for the more advanced issues we had when we were building our restaurant," Rey said. Handing her the folder, she added "and we've got our blueprints in there in case you need inspiration, as well as some interior design ideas. And let us know when you need help with water, electricity, and waste management."

"Huh?" Grayin was dumbfounded.

"You said you're constructing a new building here, right?" Enrico asked affably.

"Yes. But why are you helping us?" she asked suspiciously. Surely, they couldn't be naive enough to not recognize the obvious site of a future competitor, right?

"Oh, we're not worried about the competition if that's what you're thinking," Enrico smiled. Then he added, "besides, N'har here helped us out a bunch when we were building our business." He went over and patted the stunned N'har on the shoulders. "It's about time we returned the favor."

Grayin was not sure if she'd gone crazy, or if it were just these two humans. Perhaps it was both.

They were not crazy.

Having gone to Hamburger University, Rey was familiar with the clustering effect. Enrico, who had been to a street lined with restaurants, also intuitively understood its existence. Hell, even the food vendors at the spaceport market knew this subconsciously.

Businesses tend to cluster. For a long time, economists ignored this tendency because economists were generally not businesspeople. In the 1980s, as the field of business strategy really began to hit its stride, some of them started to take notice and study the effects of clusters.

Why do businesses open up next to each other even though they'd face the stiffest competition there? As it turns out, the reason mostly has to do with economies of scale.

When you ship something, like say napkins, to a hundred restaurants on a hundred different streets, it is costly. Far costlier than shipping napkins to a hundred restaurants on a single street. Apply that to every consumable good or maintenance need of every restaurant, and what ends up happening is that the cost of doing business in a cluster turns out to be much lower than outside. Sure, there may be strong competition, but clusters also increase foot traffic, which increases the overall pool of customers.

This also happens on the labor side. That's why so many IT workers live in the Silicon Valley, why so many prospective actors and actresses live in Hollywood, and why so many jewelers live in Antwerp. In the even longer run, successful clusters make successful cities, and successful cities rake in profits for its businesses.

In the case of Gophor, Rey and Enrico could not wait for the spaceport to develop a food court, with an even cheaper supply chain for imported goods from Earth. Additionally, the only logical move for these new buildings later on would be to hook up their utilities to their infrastructure. That would not only decrease their own cost but possibly allow them to earn a profit off that early investment.

And it was certainly going to happen sooner or later, so why not maintain a good relationship with the folks who were about to maintain a large workforce and potential customers in the area?

They offered the working Gaks some free ice cream (luckily, the ice cream machine was not broken that day), and went back to work.

Four Months Later

Grayin designated her new buildings Site 1, Site 2, and Site 3. They lined up side-by-side next to the next to the existing McDonald's building. Because many of the construction Gaks who were on her projects also worked with Rey, they were familiar with many of the human invented building techniques that were required.

They could employ more workers with their lower pay, and after a short four months, the exterior for Site 1 was mostly completed. After a risky operation that shut down McDonald's itself for a weekend, they also managed to hook their building onto Rey's "utility company".

After they celebrated the building's completion, the first thing they did was to ask Rey and Enrico whether they had an idea who on Earth would be interested in their new building. For reasons she and N'har still could not understand, the humans had been genuinely helpful and seemed utterly honest about their intentions to help her succeed.

"Hmmm," Rey thought out loud when they asked, "there are a few restaurants that could really round out this spaceport. I think your best bet for the most money would be some kind of a luxury or fine dining establishment for traders."

"Yeah, when we started, there were barely enough traders to make us profitable on them alone," Enrico completed her thought. Then he explained, "we got lucky that our business is cheap enough for locals. Now most of our business is with Gaks. But with how many bigger ships are coming in with larger crews, I think you could definitely sustain a restaurant that charged higher prices for less volume."

Grayin had seen human commercials for fine dining restaurants. Big empty spaces between tables, fixed courses, and very fancy service. She wasn't sure that it would be the right business model for Gophor, even with the increase in foot traffic. And she knew next to nothing about starting a restaurant business. But she didn't have to run it. She just had to rent it to someone who would.

"Okay," Grayin decided, then asked, "so who would you suggest we contact for someone who would be interested?"

Rey thought about it for a while, but she realized she didn't know. Her contacts really didn't extend much beyond the company she'd work for her entire life. She replied honestly, "I don't know. You could contact Izzy, who we got to handle our rental deal, and ask her if she could give you a recommendation. That's what I'd do."

After getting Isabella's contact information, Grayin and N'har thanked them and started strategizing the call.

Chicago, Earth

"It's another alien trying to rent us property on line three, Izzy," her secretary said to her calmly, as if this was something he did every week.

In a way, it was. Thousands of planets had seen what happened on Gakrek with Rey's franchise. If they were not innovative, at least they could copy. Isabella had to reject many good offworld deals that just didn't have the right infrastructure or didn't make business sense, especially on the smaller spaceports.

She did pretty well for herself too. New corner office. New secretary. New frequent flier card for the recently opened Galactic Express chartered flight company, for when she needed to inspect prospective renters or sellers.

"From where?" she asked smoothly. She had one of those galactic maps projected onto her office wall, with flags on some of her acquisitions. Some school aged kids are learning galactic geography now, but a textbook couldn't teach you which planets had the best economic conditions and on which ones the bribes were cheaper. No, that's what Wikipedia was for.

"It appears to be Gakrek," her secretary replied, "Gophor Spaceport."

Isabella frowned. That's where Rey's franchise was. She wasn't sure there were enough local customers there to support two franchises, and if it did, expanding the spaceport one would probably be the smarter move. She picked up the phone. "Hello, this is Isabella at Franchise Realty Corporation, how may I help you today?"

"Hello Isabella, my name is Grayin. I am from Gophor, on Gakrek. I am a friend of Rey, and I am trying to rent out my property. She said you might be able to recommend someone we could talk to," came her translated voice through the phone.

"Sure," Isabella said, looking up contacts on her tablet. It would be nice to do Rey a favor here. After all, Rey had kickstarted her own offworld real estate career. "What kind of business are you looking for?"

"Oh, it's very similar to Rey's building. We have an additional patio out front with space for outside seating, but other than that, it's pretty much the same. She even let us use her blueprints. We're hoping to find a fine dining business willing to take it on," Grayin replied, mirroring what the humans told her earlier.

"I see," Isabella replied, still searching but suddenly paying a lot more attention to this conversation. She could add two and two together. If this was a completed building just like their existing franchise and this was a friend of Rey's, the business opportunities here were… "Just out of curiosity, how much are you looking to charge for rent?"

Caught slightly off guard, Grayin answered honestly, "we thought we could charge 120,000 credits a month to a big chain, a little more than Rey's because we have more space."

Holy smokes, Isabella thought, another unbelievably great deal. Gophor was just the gift that kept on giving. Normally, her managers wouldn't approve a deal renting another piece of real estate right next to one of their franchises for fear of cannibalizing their own business, but commercial real estate was their bread-and-butter moneymaker. Who cares what fine dining restaurant the folks upstairs would eventually decide to sublet this out to? They wouldn't turn down a free win like this one.

"In that case, I think I might actually be interested in your space," Isabella said, putting down her tablet. "When are you free to do a walkthrough?"

Site 1, Gophor Spaceport

Grayin and N'har watched warily as the spaceport manager entered the front of their newly built construction. It was Garber. Grayin knew exactly what he was there for.

"Welcome to our new building, Garber," she greeted him at the door with a neutral tone, "how can we help you?"

"Ah, Grayin. It's nice to see you," Garber said in a grating snivel, "you look well. I was sad to see you leave our space traffic control tower."

You probably just missed skimming off my salary, Grayin fumed, but kept that part to herself.

He continued, "as you know very well, we have a tradition of maintaining our spaceport here on the donations of our merchants. I'm here to assess a suitable amount for your new store."

"How much do you have in mind?" N'har asked.

Garber looked over as if he'd just noticed N'har's presence, and stroked his snout thoughtfully. He knew he wildly undercharged the humans in the other store. He would not make the same mistake here.

Garber didn't know how much Rey's franchise was actually taking in income, but he thought a ten times increase would be a fairly safe bet. "I think we can start at five hundred fifty credits a month," he sniffed, "that seems reasonable to me."

Both Grayin and N'har managed to keep their composure at this incredibly low figure that represented less than 0.5% of the deal they were going to sign with Isabella later.

N'har glanced to his left, where he noticed Grayin was already taking out her wallet. He gave her a slight shake of his head and sent her a telepathic "no" with his eyes. He would rather Garber not come back with a higher "donation" request every time they built a new building here.

N'har pretended to haggle with Garber, "that seems like a lot of money, Garber. I hear Rey pays much less than that. And we're going to build several more buildings here in the future."

Garber chewed on that thought for a while. After all, he was a reasonable and logical Gak. If what they were saying is true, there will be plenty more credits to extract from them in the future.

"Hmm, in that case, I can give you a discount. Five hundred credits a month," Garber said generously, then added, "but you have to donate that same amount for every new building you put on my spaceport. That's my final offer. We all want your business to be successful."

N'har almost had to stop Grayin from throwing her GC card at Garber.

Constellar Contracting started as a mercenary company on Earth, increasingly taking over the combat roles in humanity's numerous small wars. Due to limited oversight on their operations, they were able to aggressively expand during the early 21st century.

Unfortunately for them, peace came to Earth. It wasn't full utopian world peace, but with economic booms happening on every corner of the globe and weather patterns stabilizing with humanity's fix for climate change, there was less motivation for planetary conflict.

So Constellar turned to the stars. Even in the great galactic Pax Hominum brought on by Earth's economic expansions, there were plenty of opportunities out there for a corporation offering premium security solutions.

After all, there were plenty of conflicts and business to go around in a galaxy of thousands of planets. Olgix was merely one of them.

Territorial Space, Zakabara Second

"Space Lord, we have an incoming communication for you!"

Canouah, the great Space Lord of Zakabara, looked at his subordinate with surprise. His underlings were getting very good at their tasks and normally did not need micromanaging to enforce this months-long blockade. Annoyed, he said, "very well, open it."

"This is Commandant Marie Laurent of the French Space Force, representing the Galactic Union Peacekeeping Force. We are here to enforce our mandate under explicit invitation from the government of Zakabara Second, to ensure that their legal territorial space remains clear of hostile ships. And to facilitate the resumption of trade to the planet. Please stand down your ships and vacate this area within twenty four hours to ensure a peaceful transition of power. Thank you for your cooperation."

Then the human connection cut out without waiting for a reply.

"Someone get me planetary command!"

"How many ships do they have?" Popptaw asked from the viewscreen. Clearly, fighting her way out of this situation was in her instinct.

"Unknown. We could only find the source of the one ship that brought the message, but once they ended their transmission, they sped into a debris field and vanished among the trash," cursed Canouah. He had heard about how Earth ships could disappear like a worm in the mud, but hadn't truly believed it until he saw with his own two eyes. "We can't fight an enemy we do not see, with weapons we can't match, and numbers we don't know."

"So we just give up? We spend all that time and resources building a space fleet for you, and they mean absolutely nothing just because Earth sends maybe one ship?!" Popptaw asked furiously.

"No, we can move back to Prime and protect our home from the humans for when they invade us," Canouah said sadly, "but we can't engage them offensively in deep space around Second. It will just be a waste of ships, and as far as we know, they can build many more of them than we can. We should pull our ships back to defend home."

"No!" Popptaw screeched. "You won't take one step backwards from our defense of OUR system! That's an order!"

"What do you want me to do? Just shoot randomly at empty space until we hit something?" the exasperated space Lord asked. Then, looking at the phone, he realized she'd already hung up.

"What do we do, space Lord?" one of his loyal lieutenants asked, looking at him for guidance on the ambiguous and clearly stupid order.

Canouah thought for a while. Then he had an idea, "we'll wait out the twenty-four hour time limit. If we see any of them, we'll shoot at a couple of them and tell Popptaw we tried. Then we pull back. I'm not going to let thousands of my birds die just because she forgot to take her pills this morning."

Gophor Spaceport, Gakrek

"Do you think we should tell them they're pretty much getting fleeced by Izzy?" Enrico asked, looking out their second story window at their neighbors celebrating the deal signing.

"Nah, it's not that bad for them. One hundred twenty is below market value, but they'll still make their startup costs back in less than half a year," his girlfriend replied. "Besides, no need to go over and ruin their party. They'll learn to charge a higher price next time. Just like how Izzy learned to put that new utility clause in offworld deals."

Most of Grayin's family and friends were here to join in on the celebration. N'har's clan was back on Yis'Meh, but they would be sure to celebrate with them later as well.

"Chug! Chug! Chug!" the crowd yelled at N'har as he guzzled down his mug of Earth imported beer. They didn't live on a wealthy planet, but nobody ever accused the Gaks of not knowing how to have fun.

In one quick motion, he quickly drained his cup, and then turned around to plant a big sloppy kiss on the sensitive snout of a surprised Grayin.

The crowd went silent for a second.

Then, unanimously, they roared their approval in a loud cheer.

A beet-red Grayin returned the favor.

Territorial Space, Zakabara Second

"We see a ping again, commander!" Rekala reported. The humans had some strange technology that allowed them to disappear into the background of orbital debris around Second, but from time to time, they would show up on the radar as they maneuvered.

His commander mulled over this latest development and her orders.

"How far are they from us?" she asked.

Frowning at the radar, Rekala replied, "The ship radar thinks it might be about 320 kilometers away, but its signature is weak and that's at the very edge of our detection range."

"Are they within the MAR?" she asked. This was a loan word borrowed from humans. Many of their technology had been public knowledge, and the nerd birds who scoured the Internet for valuable information had found an air-to-air combat tactical guide.

It became standard training material for Zakabaran spacecraft crews. In this case, MAR stood for Minimum Abort Range. It's the range at which the target would no longer be able to avoid missiles fired from the spacecraft by firing their thrusters.

"No, commander, way out. They'll have over half a minute to respond if we fire now," Rekala replied.

His commander contemplated the information. Their standing orders were to fire warning shots at the humans, but not to destroy them. She doubted that was even possible in the first place.

"Alright, let's load up our missile and fire it at the signature. Let's see what they do."

At the very least, this should be a training experience for the crew. Like most of the Zakabaran fleet, they'd only fired a missile once before, and they had to retrieve and top up the fuel in it after the exercise. Some crews had not even been allowed to train with the system at all.

"I have a lock, commander," Rekala said. He didn't want to start an interplanetary war today. But he wasn't going to disobey orders.

"Fire," she said with more certainty. He depressed the trigger.

An indigenous copy of an old human missile slid out of the cargo bay.

And then, nothing happened. It just sat there.

"What the hell?" Rekala exclaimed, "it worked last time!"

When air-to-air missiles were invented on Earth, they encountered many issues. Early missiles were generally unreliable.

One of those problem missiles was the American-made AIM-4 Falcon. The Falcon had bad combat performance. It was designed to shoot down enemy bombers rather than fighters. It ended up doing neither. The American planes that could only carry missiles, specifically the Falcon, were often outclassed in dogfights by Soviet made planes over Vietnam. It achieved few combat kills.

The biggest problem with early experimental Falcons was that it was completely enclosed in a tube before deployment, so it could only lock-on after launch. This meant that early tests of the Falcon involved firing the missile at where you see the enemy planes, and then hoping that the seeker on the Falcon would also see and track the target on the way.

This was the model that the Zakabarans copied. However, the engineers on Prime were not stupid. They knew this was an issue from the start. They solved this problem on their copied missile; it had a radio that allowed it to communicate targets with the ship's radar before it fired. The lock-on could be done before firing.

The second biggest problem with Falcon was that the seeker was slow because its coolant took a long time to cool. It would take many precious seconds to lock onto enemy planes. The engineers on Prime disregarded this problem. This made sense because ships would have plenty of time to see the enemy in space before they were in range. Combat in space happened much more slowly than in an atmosphere.

Unfortunately for Rekala and his crew, the coolant in the radar seeker was consumed as it tracked a target. After they fired their missile in the training exercise, they retrieved it and topped off the fuel. They did not refill the liquid nitrogen for the seeker.

When the missile deployed, its radar turned towards what the ship told it was an ugly human target… and saw absolutely nothing.

"Alright, let's get out of here before the humans see us!"

"They're moving away from us now," the sensor operator reported to Lt Col Riku.

"Hmm… I wonder if they even saw us."

University of Zakabara Prime

"So they can only be fired once?!" Canouah shouted at the lead engineer angrily.

"Well… if you want to use it again, you need to refill the coolant as well," she told him.

"Why weren't we made aware of this?!"

"You never asked! We didn't realize that you were going to fire them multiple times! And oh yeah, you may need to manually reset the onboard computer."

"What?!" Canouah asked, confused. "Why the computer?"

The engineer fidgeted uncomfortably and explained, "there were some bad memory leaks in the guidance program, so we just doubled the onboard memory and figured that it was a problem that would solve itself when they hit their targets and exploded."

That… was simultaneously the most brilliant and idiotic thing he'd ever heard.

Canouah shot her a withering glare, and then he picked up his radio to his lieutenant. "Yeah, pull back our ships to the line the humans drew. All our ships. We need time to refit and rearm them."

"If we start a fight out there now, we'll do no better than the frogheads."