The young man sat against the wall, his clothes still raggedy and his face covered in dirt. It looked like he hadn’t showered in days. He had minor bruises and cuts all over his body for everyday wear and tear, and looked even more beaten after Thorn had ruffled him earlier. He looked quite tired, and had a look of lost hope. “We are not terrorists. They only call us that, because they don’t know what else to call us. We may blow up buildings, or rob stores, but we do it only to obtain what we need.
“I…I once worked for Jerad, for years. I was a bioengineer at one of his plants. I met with the cargo ships which had just picked up their shipments from Draloos V and helped them to unload it, and disintegrate the biomatter into energy and diverting the power.”
“Diverted where?”
“To other manufacturing facilities. For food production, materials manufacturing, basic supplies. The facilities could replicate most of what we needed. The limiting factor was only the energy that was required to run all of the replicators, which turned out to be rather large because we have very few other means of generating our own. But at some point, Jerad started ordering bigger and bigger shipments from Draloos V. We must have been transporting four or five tons of biomatter a day. And yet, the output available to the public was not keeping up. The excess shipment had to be going somewhere.
“I started investigating further, showing people that the math just doesn’t add up. Before I knew it, I was fired by Jerad for asking too many questions,” he said. “Jerad is not who you think. He is actually quite a wealthy, and a very dangerous, man. He, and many other government officials, are intentionally keeping us at a certain level of poverty. By maintaining the guise of desperation, he invokes sympathy from the Federation, allowing our government to receive supplies on a continual basis.”
“And he is denying you the vaccine?” Jenovia asked.
“That’s right. We don’t know how he was able to develop it or how much he has made,” he said.
“What does Jerad want?” Thorn demanded to know.
“Draloos IV and Draloos V have been at war, for, I don’t know…over a year now. We don’t know who started it. But we do know that Jerad is part of the reason why we are still at war. At one point, Jerad was ordering the shipments to include the aliens. At first, it was an accident. The cargo ship transported a single organism, but when he found it and studied it he soon began to understand their dominant role on Draloos V.
“He saw them as a threat, because any intelligent being would understand and be offended by what we were doing: he was stealing resources that belonged to the aliens. He understood that the ecosystem was sufficient to sustain itself on its own even if we took as much as we did. The aliens were in the way of that.
“Jerad knew that if he transported the organisms under the guise of typical biomatter shipments, no one would be the wiser, because the matter is disintegrated almost the instant the cargo ship arrives back here on Draloos IV. We keep no records of what we take. He understood that on the planet the aliens were interconnected, and that by transporting away colonies of the organism, he was disrupting their network. And with each shipment, he was transporting more and more. By his calculation, he would eradicate the aliens in only six months.
“But his calculation assumed a constant growth rate. His method of eradicating them it wasn’t fast enough. The aliens were recovering almost as quickly as we were killing them. Even more, they became aware of what we were doing and we were angering them in the process. He knew he couldn’t go there and send a whole fleet there without arousing suspicion from the Federation. The Federation was providing us with necessary supplies, so we were being monitored very closely.
“Then the cargo ships started to come under attack. The aliens were retaliating. Instead of more resources, we were getting less. The aliens were adapting quickly to the situation. Cargo ships were getting destroyed one after the other. Jerad understood that this was a serious problem, and he began to panic. In desperation, he called the Federation for assistance.”
“But he didn’t want to,” explained another. “He was nervous that the Federation would find out what he was doing.”
“I think we need to get you people off the planet. We need to tell Captain Santiago that he needs to start executing his evacuation plan,” Jenovia told them. “You can’t stay here.”
“Jerad won’t let you evacuate the planet.”
Jenovia nearly gagged by what he was telling them. “He won’t let you leave? What do you mean by that?”
“He has never let anyone leave. Do you honestly think anyone here wants to stay here? ”
“But there are so many of you. There are over one billion people on the planet. How does one man stop you?”
He shot a look at Thorn. “His security forces are more sophisticated than you think. He has weapons, and security forces that are loyal to him. Because he can pay people, he can exert more control. He can stop us from boarding any ship, or even from communicating with anyone on the outside. Sure, many people slip through the cracks, but overall he runs a tight ship.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Jerad cannot be one of the most powerful man on this planet. What about the political leaders?”
“They all work together,” another told her. “They essentially distribute the resources among themselves.”
“And plus, even if we leave, where can we go? We are not Federation citizens. We can’t just waltz in and say, ‘Hey, we need a place to live and eat,’” said another.
“Of course you can. You are human. The Federation will grant you some rights and protection through our borders,” she replied.
“It might be difficult now that we know that your population is carrying a foreign virus,” Thorn said.
“Jenovia, I would love to discuss this with you further. But please tell me, is your ship nearby?” Jordan asked.
“Yes, it’s currently orbiting Draloos V,” she answered him.
“Do you have a Starfleet doctor on board?”
“Yes, we do.”
“I need one last thing from you. You must promise me to take my wife and my two daughters aboard. She’s very sick. If there’s any hope to save her, I would take it,” he pleaded. “Already my children are at risk. I sacrificed everything to get the vaccine, but now that hope is gone. I…I have nothing else.”
Thorn just shook his head. Jenovia gave Jordan a sympathetic look. “We can’t take everyone who has been infected…”
“Please…” he pleaded.
Jenovia turned back to Thorn. This was a bigger problem than either of them imagined when they first volunteered to assist them. “We need to get the captain.”
