Confederation Book 2 Prologue

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The Confederation, a group of independent worlds bonded together for mutual trade and defence, have a dirty little secret in how they make their trading ships - hijacking the souls of dead transgendered. But are there other dirty secrets piled into the mess?

This one gets around to explaining the jarring sex scene in the first chapter of book one, and sets up the question - who really are the bad guys?


For a ship who is an active member of a trade confederation, I'd done an awfully good job of avoiding carrying any cargo. We'd done a quick run around of a number of secure locations for me to teach people my new tricks, before returning to the moon system of the Rigel gas giant to pick up some supplies first from Rigel Seven - finally I had a cargo run! From there it was picking up a load of new ships-to-be, human bodies and their focus champers from yet another highly classified world. Now we were once again at Vechog, the same world where my ship body had been created and I'd met Tag. The unloading of all that stuff from my cargo bay was just about finished.

"Kim?" asked the supervisor, someone I knew vaguely from my time here before.

"Yes Kad?"

"One of these is marked for you."

"Really?" I said as I was scanning it. It was, but I hadn't noticed it before - it must have been under something else. "Oh, OK, just leave it."

Soon they were all clear, and Tag returned from filling out paperwork. He looked quizzically on seeing me absently running my hand over the packaging label on the one remaining crate.

"They missed one?" he asked.

"No, it's addressed to me, now."

"Now?"

"I'm pretty sure it wasn't when it came on board, and there's a faint magical signature on the shipping docket."

"Do you think it's dangerous?" he asked protectively.

I smiled at him. It was nice to have a hunky man worried about me.

"No, I've scanned it. Inside is a block of wood with "Open in private" carved into it, and paper. Nothing magically active, no nanites, nothing."

"So what are we waiting for?"

"You too get back." I said as I snaked a tentacle from the roof to release the catches.

"Hmm." he said looking inside.

I grabbed the papers. There were three envelopes, labelled "Read first", a much thicker one labelled "Read second", and unsurprisingly "Read last".

"What are those strange markings?" Tag asked, pointing at the wooden block.

Oh dear, how had I not noticed that before? The carving of "Open in private" was written in English.

"Written in my previous bodies native language." I said, now becoming quite concerned.

"Have you ever used that here?"

"No." I replied.

"So it's not something someone's figured out from hints you've dropped?"

"Possibly. The Harpagornis name is probably unique to my original dimension, so if someone had access to records of various dimensions they might be able to figure it out." I said, now quite worried with visions of Faithful plots running through my head, or maybe someone locally who had managed to read my mind at some point?

"So, what's in the envelopes?" Tag asked.

"Pardon?" I asked. See, I didn't say "What?", or at least Basic's equivalent. Don't laugh, but I was trying to be more lady-like.

"If I know you, you're calculating fifteen different nefarious ways the Faithful could have pulled that off."

"I'm not that paranoid, am I?"

"Not when we both know they really are out to get you. But if you think it's safe, if it really is a plot, it's probably head games and we'll need to open the envelopes to play this out."

I sighed. Tag was right, even if I wasn't looking forward to head games. Anyway, there could be a completely innocent explanation for it. No, not even I was buying that.

They at least were labelled in Basic, and only the first was unsealed, so I pulled out the single piece of paper inside.

Dear Kim,
please keep this in confidence at least until you have finished reading it. Make your own decisions from there, but I would appreciate it if all original materials were destroyed, it might help protect my sources. Apologies that I must remain anonymous for now.


I handed the paper to Tag, before ripping open the second envelope and pulling out the papers inside.

To whom it may concern.
If you are reading this, you must have taken over control of one of the ship focus chamber facilities. You've probably worked most of this out by now, but since there is a lot of misdirection to prevent people from putting it all together, here is the truth of what you need to know.
Ships are our greatest strength, but here we must be mindful that we are combining a lot of potentially dangerous powers and inclinations into individuals. No matter how much the law of averages holds, we must remain mindful of those outside the averages that could cause shocks to our economic system.
It's well documented, even if unofficially, that ships include succubus DNA to control the ships sexually, but there's more to it than that. As well as succubus DNA, we have tentacle demon DNA for loading assistance, and for that we use a servitor tentacle demon, naturally submissive. To manage the human/ship separation, there's a small amount of insect demon DNA to lean on the demonic insect hive mind's ability to have a single soul and intellect across multiple bodies. Confirmed captains have additional nanites added that emit compatible pheromones to subtly influence the ship into at regarding positively any suggestions made
(see on-site secure document 4ffda9a153db for more details).
Then we get to the dragons, known universally for pride and hoarding. During mental conditioning prior to awakening (see e787d3e01ae2), ships are subtly influenced to interpret their hoarding instinct towards our standard currency. Putting them into debt triggers both reflexes, to try and do they best they can do to get out of debt honourably. By the time they have paid off their debt, they have been conditioned for years to work within our system to gain the currency they wish to hoard, and so will continue to work with our commercial system, if not directly for us.
Although in 98.5% of cases we are aware of the dragon's colour from DNA matching with previous results, we pretend to not know as the guesswork helps give the ships a sense of uniqueness, feeding their pride and allowing us to leverage that. Any found to have orange dragon sources should be immediately terminated, as with their additional mental powers they are highly likely to either throw off the conditioning and/or figure out what we are doing to them. Those that we miss before leaving facilities are allowed to mature but are watched very closely, as too many accidents in less secure ship growth facilities would likely be noticed and various ethical groups and the senate would be likely to involve themselves to the detriment of the programme. Better to perpetuate the official myth that oranges are rare, and the restricted story that oranges don't integrate well with demons and the DNA merge is usually rejected before a soul is introduced to the proto-neurons. See d345598070dd for historical problems with oranges.
As well as the mental conditioning of ships while their brain matter is forming in their focus chambers and integrating with their integrated computer systems, a tests of conditioning integration are conducted immediately afterwards. Male soldiers are stationed outside the door of a ship once awake, orally given a dose of the pheromone such that it exudes from their skin. The amount extruded is orders of magnitudes higher than a captain emits, but it's there as a check. Such a high dose should trigger the insect demon conditioning, in turn triggering the other demon desires of submission and lust. If these are not triggered (around 1.2% of the time) a similarly-dosed female is presented. If this still does not illicit the desired reaction (around 47% of the time) the chances this ship will go rogue are unacceptably high and the subject immediately terminated. Afterwards an undosed superior officer of the same gender as the one eliciting the first reaction will make a sexual offer. Those that accept this offer (around 3.2%) are likely to end up too sexually demanding and are also terminated. Further details in 6f28a474bfe8. Note that conditioning is never placed in the computer sections as this is too easily found via self-audit and may promote feelings of distrust.
Selection is supremely important, and not just for ships. For captains, we want someone of above average intelligence, but not genius level as they are harder to predict and manipulate. Fit, healthy and with a bare minimum of thirty
(preferably 100+) years of fertility in front of them (for males) or with a proven record of lesbian dominance (for females) to be able to keep up sexually with the ship is an absolute requirement. Most importantly, they need to have a sense of loyalty both to the Confederation and to their families, the latter for two reasons. Those loyal to their families are more likely to engage in a bond the ship instinctively knows is real, and so is more likely to trust. If things go really bad, family members can then become leverage against the captain, and therefore indirectly the ship. Conditioning of captains is prohibited as it's too likely to be picked up by either the ship thereby harming the relationship or relatives who may ask awkward questions that are hard to squash given the level of loyalty required usually is only found in those whose families benefit greatly from the Confederation, and so may have some pull to investigate. Please review 40bcce1aa081 (pre-qualification) and f8905777c92e (psychological evaluation) for more information on the selection process.
As I'm sure you're aware, we have fail-safe codes. Each secure manufacturing facility creates chips used in creation of ships, and every focus chamber includes chips from each facility. To avoid tampering, Nanites in the ship are programmed to start disassembly of the ship's neural networks if codes are not received from these chips. Upon receipt of digitally signed external signal to the chip, a catastrophic overload is initiated in the power storage systems. All codes are kept off-line under physical, technical, and magical security at each facility. Publicly, only the origin facility has the code for a ship, but any facility can provide the code for any ship if required. This information is only known by sector controllers with a security clearance of ultraviolet or higher. Code management procedures are documented in 3c5d26d76af6.
Lastly, the general prohibition on reprogrammable nanites holds, no matter their potential utility in controlling ships and captains. It took 1800 years to get over the second dark ages after the so-called "zombie apocalypse" when a virus invaded cerebral communication nanites. Despite the extremely low chance of this happening again, it's far too easy to obtain samples of ship flesh, frequently done in decontamination procedures and to a lesser extent in some criminal investigations. It only requires one reprogrammable nanite to be found to generate far too much interest in this programme that even we might be unable to deflect. Some current senators were involved in the last of the world sanitisations to eliminate the remainder of the infected just under 700 years ago, and they will not be brushed off. Given they would have public opinion on their side, the risk is just too great.


I'd been handing over the pages to Tag as I finished them, which was pretty quick. I didn't even know ultraviolet was a security clearance. I took a step back and thought about the consequences while he was catching up at human speed. Honestly I was feeling a bit green, a mix of anger and disgust working through me.

"If this is true..." he tailed off after finishing the last page.

"I know, I feel used too."

"Do you think they'd do that?" he asked, pointing at the bit on leverage of family members.

"Well, it all makes sense from a twisted point of view. I can see how people who think of the greater economic good without respect for ethics would come up with a plan like that."

"Yes, but still..."

"That people at the top think this changes a great many things?"

"Not wrong," Tag said, "but it does look they're actively hiding their activities from the senate. The question is how far this really does go."

"Probably not that far and compartmentalised, or something would have leaked by now." I agreed.

Tag then paused with his thinking face, and I could feel the surprise and concern coming from him. "I have a very bad feeling, and I don't know why this didn't occur to me before, but if Hok was involved at one of the original facilities and already has some codes from those he was involved in creating..."

I realised where he was going with this, and mentally slapped myself for not thinking the same thing earlier.

"... then the Faithful might try and mount an attack on one of those facilities to get the codes and disable the Confederation fleet!" I completed.

"Maybe there's protection for that sort of thing, self-destruct sequences or similar." Tag continued. "Given that they only need access to a single facility to get codes for all ships, sacrificing a single facility to protect the programme is probably acceptable to whomever wrote this."

"We won't know without access to those documents, and I can't see that happening. Just knowing those references would be impossible to explain."

"Maybe not." Tag had that evil grin growing on his face that worried me so much. "We could say when cleaning up we found a scrap that might have come from Hok with that reference number on it, but no context."

"Right, so if this is a fabrication from the Faithful to mess with us, doing so won't trigger anything. But if this is a real document, they'll believe Hok and therefore the Faithful know the protection measures." I replied.

"And take steps to address that sort of threat." Tag concluded.

"Clearly their procedures are broken because you honey, are a genius." I smiled at him, snaking my arm around his waist. I indicated the third envelope, raising an eybrow in question.

"May as well see how deep the rabbit hole goes." he replied, so I opened it.

Dear Kim,
Meet me at the corresponding location and time. If you really are a true silver, the obvious problem won't be an unassailable issue for you. Cross spinning is not a silver's most interesting talent.


After a quick check of my navigation database I could tell the location was fine, it was a completely empty area of deep space, something no-one else would stumble into. The date, however, was a week ago, long before I picked up the crate.

Whoever this was, they expected me to be able to travel in time.

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Comments

Wow, conspiracies.

Welcome to my world, where they really are out to get you for their own selfish desires. Happy to see this back.

Gwendolyn

Yes! I was waiting for this:)

This was really interesting and the whole letter thing being in english and everything it's already leading to interesting places. This was so good. Thanks for sharing all that hard work with us.
*Hugs*
Bailey.

Bailey Summers

Not the letter, just the block of wood.

Only the writing on the block of wood was in English, everything else was written in Basic, the local trade language that everyone speaks. Why a block of wood? Because things in relief are easy to scan from outside the crate, letters are much harder.

Bailey, thank you once again for giving me the kick I needed to publish this.

Okaaaay...

Let's see. Sorry in advance for the wall of text.

Political ramifications of whats and whys, and general tones of the statements seems to be that the first and the last statements were written by the currently anonymous person who is likely working under directions from a time traveller who is the likely source of this information, and whose identity and/or affliation is also likely unknown (but transparently clear for guesswork) to the person. Since the Book 1 Epilogue has established that within personal perception there can be no time travel paradoxes, a good enough rule of thumb is that the ultimate affliation of the person is Kim Harpargornis.

The second, however, has all the makings of being a minority group standard issue unofficial-official statement. It has propaganda incorporated into it, duh, and likely appeals to the concerned person's greed and desire for safety. It was designed to give incentive to perpetrate the SOP. And as for the ramifications of the different aspects:

---Succubus DNA is a known fact. Likely it was a lucky coincidence that regen, non-raging, and submissiveness were all in one package, and had no alternatives. They wouldn't have had to lie for that, however they did mention that they used only five bloodlines of succubi for all the ships. Inquiries are to be made whether those bloodlines have exhibited heightened inherent submissiveness - because the choice may or may not have been random, and these people didn't leave much to chance.

---Tentacle demon DNA is likely the prime suspect to blame Kim's going to have to, ahem, roleplay in the future. Only the fact it was a servitor's is something that may have been suspicious, but most people wouldn't really look that deep.

---The same goes for the Hive Insect DNA. Introduction of it is also beneficial for the process, even if it allows for a pheromone manipulation opening.

---Using additional nanites for the captains. Yeah, Tag is right to feel used. Those nanites were likely introduced during one of the check-ups in the facilities. Wait a minute, there is something that was not clarified - for a stable nanite culture, there ought to be some disassemblers that are removing the faulty nanites from existance. They have to be keyed to something in the nanites, have to have a certain non-aggression trigger, inherent to either the disassemblers or to the incoming nanites. In the latter case the recognition of the trigger has to be inherent to the disassembler, and in the former - anyone with the trigger can introduce any nanite with any program to the culture. The latter gives better safety of design, but - it also leaves an opening for questioning the need for the redundant trigger codes. Again, it's more of a deep research issue though, so most won't catch it.

---Subtle conditioning on hoarding preference is... not unacceptable in my book, really. That is a comparatively mild measure, that is only supposed to shift the accents. I suppose most people, even if they somehow knew, would not object. However, the kind of debt slavery that is used afterwards, is demeaning, especially considering they give such a lousy repaiment rate and the tendency to heap maintenance and repair costs of the ships on the ships themselves - akin to giving them no medical insurance plan, which is not nice. And I will be doubly offended if there is no bonus system based on performance of the ships.

---The termination protocols. Killing off oranges is pure $#!7. As well as termination of three in eighty ships based on conditioning tests. This is pure CYA behavior.

---As for the selection of captains, it is also not nice. Especially considering they can and will go to such lengths as hold families hostage.

---The self-destruct chips were already known, the only real news is the universal ship-code usage. In fact, this serves to actually protect the ships most, because unless the minority group itself decides to terminate the ship, the hostiles will have to guess at the facility they need to raid, or have to infiltrate at least two of them to get what they need - and learn the codes are the same, and go and infiltrate the last one as they will likely think the false codes are the same and the true code isn't. Or, obtain this same document.

---Lastly, the programmable nanite prohibition. The only decision in the entire document I wholeheartedly approve of, given the zombie apocalypse threat.

Now, the problem presents itself to what Kim and Tag may have to do. Logically, the more dangerious documents, from the minority group's POV, are the conditioning and termination references. These two are not to be discussed and noted in the report. The orange problem document is also possibly heavy, but yields little useful information for Kim and Tag, and for the Faithful, so likely mentioning it is unnecessary. The self-destruct chip code management is indeed the one that will be most dangerious for the fleet, and mentioning it is bound to prompt the minority group to act. However, unless Kim and Tag get to that document before reporting the reference, they will lose some opportunity to, say, make sure the minority group can't remove any ships that learn their dirty secrets.

In all, I would have tried to first obtain the document, and then to send the three following references in a report - the two pertaining the captains, and the code management one. These three are of the more likely to interest the Faithful, after all. If I am correct in my guesses, whoever meets Kim at the specified space and time is likely to have that one document anyway.

And as for making the minority group's existance obvious, the most obvious way is to get a few batches of the programmable nanites and distribute them among the more recently built ships from at least two of the facilities, to spark attention to the entirety of the programme.

Faraway


On rights of free advertisement:
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Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!

Faraway


On rights of free advertisement:
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Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!

My favourite stories

I'm such a fan of your confederation universe, the primary reason of my making an account is to make this post and tell you how much I'm hoping you will continue writing :)

hmmm

Curious.... I wander if this infomation came to kim

Is from herself.

An interesting and...

... Exciting start to the story. I like how you have incorperated the "cloak and dagger," secret squirrel thing into the story. I look forward to the next chapter.

--SEPARATOR--

There is no knowledge that is not power.

Just remember that when you come to a fork in the road, TAKE IT!

Peace be with you and Blessed be

Damn... They can easily time

Damn... They can easily time travel... that's fucked up ^^

I wonder if she wrote the message to herself... That would be really arkward.

I'm not at least surprised about that behavior of the confederation. The conditioning must have been mightily good for Kim not to realize this before. It was rather obvious, that such security meassures would have been used. I guess the fact that they manipulate them this way is why they don't use their own citizens.

Thank you for writing this awesome story,

Beyogi

The Author Must Be a CIA employee.

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9

Or at least a higher echelon member of a political party. This is the sort of twisted, nefarious activity that we constanly see echos of in our own real life society. I am sure that we all can think of ways that we have been programmed or manipulated in our lifes.

A case in point: I was once told by a very high level executive in the Auto Industry, that the purpose of the public school system was to provide industry with obedient, dedicated workers to fuel their businesses. He was bemoaning the fact that liberals ruined it by educating us to think and have consciences too, and that caused the unions which were the bane of the rich.

We can see the same thing happening in the developing countries of the Middle East. Most Americans are probably not aware that every year thousands of Muslim young people come to the UK, America, and Canada to attend Western colleges, and that has backfired on them because now these young people are returning home to their backward homelands and wanting a better life, hence the upeaval over there now. These scolarships are funded by the west.

So, we see all sorts of heavily disguised manipulation going on in real life.

Much peace

Gwendolyn

Ecclesiastes 1:9...

I have strong doubts that truer words have ever been spoken. Ya nailed my sentiments exactly.

@ Beyogi:

If Kim ends up doing what you suggested about writing to herself and using herself from another time as a contact for yet another her from yet another time (or something like that), that would indeed be crazy. I'm pretty sure there has got to be a paradox in there, somewhere, if that happens, though... lol.

--SEPARATOR--

There is no knowledge that is not power.

Peace be with you and Blessed be

An intriguing start of Book 2

Conspiracies and unknown enemies galore - not only are the faithful still a potential threat, there might be more bad guys within the confederacy.

Some of what the letters say is obviously true, as the self-destruct is real. The rest is either genuine or the work of a conspiracy that knows about the self-destruct, it fits the facts too well to be a random fabrication.

And even without additional conspiracies there is the question of what happens between Kim, her friends from Book 1 and the guys that run the shipbuilding program. After all, Kim and friends already have a way to remove the self-destruct. And that might have been noticed. I wonder if there will be attempts to silence them...

I'm eager to read more of this :-)

An interesting start and

Jemima Tychonaut's picture

An interesting start and throws up a lot of questions about who the ships can actually trust. I'm looking forward to seeing where you take Book 2.

 


"Just once I want my life to be like an 80's movie, preferably one with a really awesome musical number for no apparent reason. But no, no, John Hughes did not direct my life."



"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

Great story

Managed to make me register so that i could say "It's great, and i'm excitedly waiting for the next part" ;)

I do hope you come back and

I do hope you come back and pick up with part II of this series.

thanks

BW


I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.