“You said that we would meet at two!” the Gvortan councilor hissed in annoyance.

“Did I?” Karashel asked brightly as she undulated into the conference room containing him, Una, and two other councilors that formed the Gvortan block. “I’m sorry, I could have sworn I said three thirty. Sorry!”

***

“Ok,” Councilor Laek~Vet of the Besl sneered at exactly the same time as a small reptilian stood in front of him, shaking with anger. “Now we talk.”

***

“Sorry about the delay, gentlebeings,” Councilor Longpaw chirped as he bounced into a conference room where several very agitated well-dressed individuals grumbled.

***

“Hello...” Councilor Rillrillrillrill buzzed as her hood flared, rippling hypnotically, as she opened the door to her conference room just as a timer beeped.

***

“You’re finally here!” an angry avian clucked as the massive lumbering form of the Yuii councilor entered the room…

At precisely three thirty Federation standard time…

***

“Here.” the Gvortan councilor barked as he shoved a tablet towards Karashel. “Sign.”

“No,” Karashel smiled.

“What?!?”

“You heard me,” she smiled. “I won’t be signing that, sorry.”

“You have no choice!”

“Oh but I do, councilor,” Karashel smiled. “And I choose not to sign that agreement.”

“If you don’t,” the Gvortan sneered, “We will sue your race straight into management! There is no way your garbage contract termination will hold up in court! The emergency council said—“

“That we have to honor any standing agreement,” Karashel smiled, “But you stated that you could not pay.”

“That’s just because—“

“The precedent on this is quite clear, councilor,” Karashel replied, “And it has been used repeatedly against ‘lowlies’ like myself. So I’m reasonably sure that the contacts and ‘friends’ you have in high places will choose to protect that concept over your people.”

“Then we will have no choice but to inform the Federation Bank about your people’s fraud!” the Gvortan councilor said malevolently. “You didn’t think you could hide that from us, did you? We own you. We will then be able to call in your debts, and you will go into management!”

“Yes,” Karashel sighed, “It would be a terrible day should that happen. We would be impoverished…”

Karashel smiled pleasantly.

“But we wouldn’t starve to death.”

The Gvortan fell silent.

“You could inform the Federation Bank and all other appropriate agencies about our fraudulent filings, and you could then call in your loans and get all of your friends to do the same… Then you could file a case for stewardship of the Baleean people… How long would that take, even under the best of conditions? Weeks?… Months?… Years if we fight it, which we can…”

A chill fell over the room.

“You see,” Karashel said cheerfully, “We know all about you as well. You have maybe two weeks before the shelves start going empty. With no replenishment, you have maybe a month before everything is gone.”

“Are you threatening us?!?” the Gvorta shouted. “Because if you are, we will crush you.”

“Oh goodness no!” Karashel gasped, “A Baleean threatening the Gvorta? Perish the thought. I’m just making an observation, that’s all. I just thought that I should mention it because if we have to enter a long, protracted legal fight, we will have to generate revenue, somehow.”

Karashel undulated towards the Gvorta.

“And the only thing we have to sell is food… Your food… which we will have no choice but do. Even if we only get a fraction of what it is worth, we will simply have no choice.”

“There is no way you will be able to find a buyer!” the Gvortan sneered, “We will personally see to it that—“

“That the Vulxeen won’t buy?”

“T-the...”

“Ever hear of Korvulxxha Capital?” Karashel asked cheerfully, “It’s one of the big Vulxeen financial thingies. As luck has it, they actually weathered the horrible events that happened over there and, since the stock market is… Well, I don’t really get it, but they have decided to ‘diversify’ into commodities and are happy to buy from us.”

Karashel bounced happily.

“Isn’t that amazing!” she enthused. “She really wants to make a deal with us, too! I like her. She’s nice. In fact...”

Karashel pulled out three tablets.

“You will see that I only have three trade agreements with me,” she bubble-chirped, “Because we have already sold them so much that I can’t meet the demands of all of you.”

The room burst out into angry (and quite frightened) shouting.

“You can’t do this!” the Gvortan yelled, pounding the table with a chitinous fist.

“Why not?” Karashel asked innocently.

“We will get an emergency injunction blocking this and file a criminal complaint about your people’s fraud! As their representative, you could go to prison!”

Karashel smiled… less than pleasantly.

“Now, who is issuing threats, councilor?” she said with a silky slimy bubbly purr. “I was trying to be nice because we have done so much business in the past, and the Baleean people have profited so much due to your kindness...”

She oozed up onto the table, leaning towards the Gvortan.

“The reason why I was so late is that I was in a meeting with the Federation Bank and the Judicial Department where I made a full confession concerning our incorrect filing.”

“W-what?” the Gvortan stammered.

“Oh, it’s going to be quite unpleasant,” Karashel snickered, “You, of course, know what the penalty for that ‘fraud’ is, don’t you? It’s a fine. Fines are only a concern when you can’t pay them, and thanks to the initial sales to those filthy traitors, the forced buyout, and the significant purchase by Korvulxxha Capital, we will have no problem paying it.”

The Gvortan just hissed in shock.

“Of course, we filed a new, correct financial statement that you and any creditors will receive tomorrow. In it, you will find out that we have received a very advantageous line of credit from that same financial… thingy…”

Karashel looked at the Gvortan with moist, alien, merciless eyes.

“Do you have any other threats you would like to try, or can we get down to business?” she said in a friendly but quite menacing way. “Or you can leave and try to secure another food source before your people resort to cannibalism? Are you familiar with The Sol Wars, councilor? It took only weeks before a civilization far more prosperous and stable than your own descended into absolute barbarism. Of course, the Federation wouldn’t let that happen, but you are far closer to management than I will ever be again.”

The Gvortan councilor just stood there in shock.

“In any civilization, there is usually at least one element of scarcity,” Karashel said pleasantly, “In times past, that was usually energy or raw materials… or at certain times in most people’s history, potable water. However, in our prosperous and advanced age, energy is no longer a concern. Fusion has provided us all with a clean, limitless source of all the energy we could ever need, and the fuel is, even with all of the price fixing and artificial ‘scarcity’ imposed on us, still of very low cost. It is not a concern even for us. Raw materials? We can now harvest the full resources of entire systems. Again, here in the Federation, due to exclusivity clauses, price fixing, and the like, it is a little bit of a concern, but once again, an artificial one. There is nothing physically stopping any race from obtaining whatever they need. Water?”

Karashel laughed.

“Even the Federation doesn’t try to corner water. Every system is full of it. Any of us could literally drown our home planets in the water drifting around in any of our solar systems...”

Karashel spread her tendrils wide.

“Yes, pretty much every single thing a society needs is right there for the taking… except for one thing...”

Her eyes gleamed with a moist evil light.

” Food. The complex organic compounds that we all must consume on a regular basis to sustain life are not abundant in the galaxy. You can’t just fly out to an asteroid and scoop it up. It, whether it be animal or vegetable, has to be grown, a time and resource intensive undertaking. Sure it can be made, but that takes a lot of time, effort, knowledge, and the capital resources to do so on a truly industrial level. Only one species does it, and that is only because they had to or become extinct. So, while possible, it cannot be done from scratch before a society implodes… but all of you already know that, or you would not be sitting here listening to a mere Baleel give you a lecture on the painfully obvious.”

Karashel paused while she lined up the three tablets on the table in front of her watching the eyes of each of the four councilors follow their every move… Except for Una, of course. She was looking down at the floor.

“Food is also resource intensive and hard on the environment. It takes millions of square kilometers of valuable real estate and requires the utilization of millions of workers, even with automation so generously provided by you kind people. Those people could be used so much more profitably if they weren’t dedicated to the simple act of keeping civilization alive. Why sacrifice your laboratories, factories… rain forests… for something as pedestrian as food when you can shift that burden to another, lower race? Let them wreck their planet. Let them use their people, especially when you can bully and coerce them into accepting the prices that you set. It’s actually cheaper to exploit some stupid, less advanced race to become the major supplier of something so basic as the one thing that keeps all of you alive.”

Karashel chuckled.

“The only thing is that if you are foolish enough to do something like that,” she smiled, “You had better never let their face out of the mud for even one single breath because if you ever did make that fatal mistake...”

Karashel shook her anterior end sadly.

“It could be bad… All you had to do was be halfway decent, and we would have been happy to be the stupid little idiot farmers that you think that we are, but no. You had to push just that little bit harder. Why pay us at all? Why not drive us into management and then just… take it?”

Karashel pointed at the three tablets.

“Now, three of you will pay for that mistake. One of you won’t,” she smiled. “First come, first served, subject to availability.”

“This is madness!” the Gvorta shouted. “If you think that any of us will bow to a Baleel and your ludicrous demands, you are—“

Karashel idly wiggled two of her tendrils and her left eyestalk.

Councilor Una lunge-scampered across the table, slamming her sigil down on the leftmost tablet with an electronic “beep”.

“Una?!?” the Gvortan shouted.

“I’m sorry!” Una squeaked, “… I’m sorry...” she said as she looked away in shame.

“Two agreements remaining,” Karashel smiled.

The remaining three xenos looked at each other uncertainly. Then, almost at once, they all lunged for a tablet, the Gvortan councilor wrenching it away from the much weaker Illipp.

“What the hell is this thing?” the Gvortan demanded. “It’s thousands of pages long.”

“Don’t sign it then,” Karashel shrugged. “I believe the Illipp seemed rather interested in it.”

“I… I didn’t say that I wouldn’t sign it...” the Gvortan stammered, “I just said that I need to have it reviewed.”

“Take your time,” Karashel smiled, “But, as I said…” she purred as she produced another tablet and handed it to the Illipp councilor, “First come, first served, subject to availability.”

beep

The other xeno with a tablet, the Molovnkt, slammed his sigil down, signing it.

“Damn you!” he snarled.

“You can’t just force us to sign something we haven’t even reviewed!” the Gvortan shouted, “This is extortion!”

“You call it extortion,” Karashel smiled, “I call it, once again, ‘First come, first served, subject to availability’.”

She pulled out her communicator.

“This is a waste of time,” she said into it, “Inform the Vulxeen that our entire stock is available for purchase minus the amounts set aside for the Javv and the Molovnkt. Our remaining ‘partner’ will just have to make do with what’s left…”

The Illippean councilor made a strangled sound and reached into his pocket just as a very clear “beep” could be heard beside him as the Gvortan smashed his sigil angrily against the tablet, nearly cracking it.

beep

“No...” the Illippean moaned in horror as the full implications of that “beep” became clear.

Una buried her face in her hands. It had to be done, but that did not make this any better.

“There… there will be consequences for this!” the Gvortan hissed, glaring at Karashel.

“Of that, there is no doubt… Councilor,” Karashel smiled.