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  She pushed him away, laughing. “Yeah, yeah. The both of you always tell me that as well.”

  Naero hugged her like the sisters they had become. “We only say that because it is true.”

  Sharrah smiled. “I do love my work. You needn’t worry. Kyra and I and the pink ladies of the Shai will see to them. Uncle Jan and his wives come by to see the girls regularly. So do Great Aunt Sleak, Zalvano, Tyber, and all the rest. You should see how big little Gallan is getting. Shetharra just loves him so. They play so well together. Go on then. Save the galaxy as you do. Things will be just fine here.”

  Naero and Khai said their great thanks a final time.

  2

  The conference negotiations with the Gigacorps was being held on Rillian-4. All fifteen of the Gigacorps, including Joshua Tech, had high level emissaries there, along with many representatives and delegations from many important regions, sectors, and worlds.

  Khai had departed that morning to take counsel with the Mystics.

  Naero was happy to be reunited with her good friends and family, Lady Shalaen of the Yattai, and Tarim of Fleet Maeris Security. When the three of them were together, it seemed as if they never stopped laughing and hugging each other. But they had to be sober during the negotiations.

  These meetings were incredibly serious and important.

  At present, the Gigacorps were bent on reclaiming their right to enforce and bring back their ironclad tyranny on the lander worlds of humanity.

  The Alliance argued that they had forfeited those rights and all claims to authority and dominion when they blindly unleashed a hyper-violent, uplifted alien species and other alien enemies upon humanity–which came close to wiping out said humanity.

  And although their lackeys and slaves had been defeated, those alien masters still lurked out there somewhere in the galaxy and beyond, poised and planning to renew their attack on humanity and restart the grim wars all over again.

  As usual, the Gigacorps lined up their goons and lackeys to make their threats and spew their ridiculous lies, denials, and delusions.

  Jibben Denlevy of Stellar Corps: “Left to themselves, these reeling worlds are once again falling into the expected and predicted chaos of local planetary and mob rule. The Corps only wish to restore proper order!”

  Admiral Nathan Joshua responded. “All troubles created and exacerbated by offworld Corps agents, thugs, and agitators sent down to those worlds to cause just such problems to erupt, as a pretense and an excuse for the Corps militaries to launched brutal subjugation campaigns against their own populations. Populations who have seen fit to reject and defy Corps dominion and enslavement. We have hundreds of hours of vid proof and confessions to prove every one of these accusations many times over.”

  Mya Gringold of Chikara Corp. “The human worlds are lost without the divine guidance of the benevolent Gigacorps and their mastery at management and solid economic structures. Only rebels, revolutionary radicals, and deluded fools are resisting the reinstatement of Gigacorps power, driven by outside influences who want these worlds for themselves. These worlds must be pacified, and re-educated in order to return them into the fold of associates. The Alliance has no right to take them.”

  Aneko Kimura piled in, before a response could be made. “The truth is that the Gigacorps worlds are lost without Corps control and management governance. The populations of these worlds are screaming and begging for the gentle, unseen hands of the Corps to return with their control, their guidance, and wisdom to make these worlds profitable again within the Gigacorps sphere of influence, and law and order. Order will be restored once again, at all costs, against rebels, rioters, and hooligans of every stripe, both local and invaders. The Alliance and their spack backers need to back off. This is none of their affair. We own these systems and their populations.”

  Nathan Joshua rose up. “That is an utter fabrication and a lie. Independent Webnet polls show that by far, the human worlds demand local autonomy and an end to the harsh, arbitrary strictures of Gigacorp subjugation and the defacto seizure of virtually all wealth and resources on such worlds.”

  The Gigacorps emissaries blinked in abject horror.

  Trennen Gormen of Krupp Corps responded in stunned disbelief. “But as we have proven, we own these worlds and their populations. They are ours. How can our property be denied us? This is wrong. Their resources and profit and wealth structures are ours to manage as we see fit. Such is our due for the benevolent management of these worlds, who would be lost without our wisdom and our guidance. These people cannot effectively and efficiently do all of these complex things on their own. They are like the cattle of Old Earth, and we but herd them as best we may.”

  “That is exactly the point,” Carrie Sommers of Gelden Corps stressed. “By what right does the Alliance or any of these persons presume to dictate to us, the owners, what should be done with our property? We do not answer to any of you or them. The owned do not have any right to question the owners or deny the owners any of their sacred rights of ownership and control. This is against all of our most sacred, cherished beliefs. By what right do you force us to give up our rights and beliefs?”

  Nathan Joshua grew insistent. “We can argue these follies until the stars go out. But hear this declaration: From this point forward, the Alliance and the humanity of the human worlds declare openly and emphatically that by the Rights of Sentient Liberty, no sentient being can be held as property.”

  Trennen Gormen of Krupp Corps laughed. “As illegal and impossible as that is, then the Gigacorporations will still have ownership and control over these physical worlds, their wealth systems, and all of their physical property.”

  He smiled knowingly. “And quite soon, without ownerships access to habitation, or even to air, water, and sustenence, the ignorant, human cattle will quickly capitulate to the old ways, and freely contract themselves and their children to become willing associates to the Gigacorporations once again, in perpetuity. And once those contracts are renewed, they can never be broken, and things can get back to normal. A normal that is inevitable.”

  “Wrong,” Joshua stated. “The Time of Corporate Dominion and Tyranny is at an end, whether you like it or not–whether you admit or not. The bulk of humanity are not cattle, as you claim. And no longer shall defacto, Gigacorporate Aristocracy, in any of its forms, be allowed to use contracts to force free beings to enslave themselves or exist in perpetual slavery. Under the explicit laws of the Rights of Sentient Liberty, any such contracts are automatically null and void, wherever they exist or are found, into the future, while humanity and sentients exist in our galaxy!”

  A groan of disbelief and shock rose up from the Gigacorp delegations.

  “Blasphemy!”

  “Sacrilege!”

  Joshua gripped the table with both hands and leaned forward, continuing to speak calmly and rationally. “I repeat, corporations are a business structure, not a dogma, religion, or cult. So, tell me then; tell us all. How will the Gigacorps respond to a world such as Lyrion-5, who have openly declared and established a democratic republic after the Ejjai invasion? How exactly will the Corps go about reinstating their rights?”

  “That is easy for any sovereign state to answer. If rebellious worlds to the legal and benevolent Gigacorporate authority are not willingly re-established, then such worlds shall be pacified to an acceptable level.”

  Nathan Joshua folded his arms in front of them all, standing defiant. “Pacification sounds like such a harmless word, ambassador. Come now, enough Corps doublespeak. Isn’t pacification code for military assault and subjugation by force–to the point of death and slaughter?”

  “The Gigacorps are well within their rights as legal governing, sovereign authorities. Defiant rebels who will not bow to reason must be dealt with and reduced to proper, manageable levels for the good of the population of each world.”

  “So, ambassador, at last were getting to the point. When you say reduce, you mean kill. And what percentage of th
e population of each world is it acceptable for the Corps to kill–for the good of the people of each world?”

  “An acceptable percentage of reduction, I assure you, all for the good of the population to bring them to see reason and accept Gigacorporate will and rule once again. All for their own good.”

  “Ambassador,” Joshua said, “we actually have that percentage of acceptable reduction planned by your military. We intercepted those orders and decoded them as they were being transmitted. In fact, it is eighty-seven percent. Let us make this clear to the entire galaxy, and to all of the worlds threatened with such ‘reduction.’ The Gigacorps, in their gracious benevolence, are fully prepared to kill off eighty-seven percent of the population of any world that resists their tyranny, and their naked aggression. That is nearly nine out of ten of every person living on these worlds! Even the Ejjai could not kill so many.”

  “Admiral Joshua, you are clearly twisting the facts. In most cases, it is believed that these worlds will surrender to reason after only a forty or fifty percent reduction. Then everything can go back to the way things were. Back to being normal. We think it will be a small price to pay, and give us a chance to weed out any other troublesome elements on our worlds, such as the impaired, and those who are too old to be of use. Our populations will be left docile and obedient after a good culling of any troublemakers and undesirables.”

  Joshua knitted his hands together, after bowing his head. “You blithering, fanatical quisling. You vapid, horrific, mouthpiece. Do you not even have the wit to see that this is exactly one of the worst forms of tyranny ever exposed, that must not only be confronted and exposed, but also destroyed?”

  The ambassador huffed. “How you continue to twist our logic. It is not tyranny if the cattle are forced to see reason, and willingly agree to contract themselves and their offspring to us!”

  “No! It is exactly the worst kind of tyranny if that is the only logical choice you allow them, in order to stay alive–after killing half or more of them off!”

  “That’s not our problem. If they agree to such a contract, then they are bound to it once they do so. A contract is the law! The basis of all law. Is the Alliance against the rule of law now as well?”

  “You want a legal excuse to subjugate and exploit humanity forever.”

  “As is our right! We keep telling you, it is not exploitation if the cattle agree to it. That is freedom for all! It is a freedom that all must be forced to admit, accept, and agree to. Are you against freedom now?”

  Joshua persisted. “Freedom does not give the Corps or anyone the right to enslave others by convenient legalism and corporate doublespeak, allowing populations of world after world no other viable choice. That is the worst license and sophistry ever created.

  “That is precisely why the perverse and twisted law that you adhere to is now declared null and void by the very humanity you seek to enslave by it. In fact, the entire sick and oppressive corporate structure as upheld and envisioned by the Corps is now entirely defunct, and expressly illegal across all of these worlds. They are now declared free of Gigacorps law and rule. Forever!”

  Corps people leaped to their feet and actually screamed and howled.

  Nathan Joshua stood tall, behind powerful shields as debris and garbage showered the location where he stood.

  He persisted, despite the near riot.

  “The corporation was never meant or intended to be warped and twisted into a system of interplanetary governance or religion. It was an economic structure, developed to focus on managing profitability for a business. It was never meant to me fashioned into a gigantic system to rule over all of humanity, and deny them their liberty or freedom forever and ever.”

  Jibben Dunlevy shook his fists defiantly. “The cattle would be nothing without us! They cannot govern themselves or properly direct their economic or other affairs. Where will they be without us to manage everything for them? We are the best of them! We are the achievers. The leaders deserve to own and control everything!”

  Joshua shook his head. “Not any more. The fact is, given a choice, the people of nearly every world reject the Gigacorporations and their tyranny wholesale. And humanity does not need parasite corporations; such corporations need humanity as their hosts to feed off of.

  “There are proven forms of human governance that work, such as the democratic republic, that actively suppresses Tyranny. Joshua Tech uses corporate structures to form sustainable economies for all, not just a few. We have proven that it can be done. If a system can be rigged against humanity, then it can also be rigged to work for humanity.”

  “Die, blasphemer!” A chair bounce off the shield, just as several shots rang out from the Gigacorps delegation. A delegation that was supposed to be unarmed.

  Naero had stood by too long as it was, scanning the Corps people and studying them carefully. Now her plan of action was clear.

  She used the voice.

  “Enough!”

  That single word was both a sonic and mental attack. Naero used it to partially stagger, stun, and disorient the Gigacorps delegation, almost a hundred in number.

  Next, she reduced the weapons they brandished to dust and rose up in her Shetanna guise.

  The vidstreams were still broadcasting the event across the entire Webnet for everyone on every world to watch.

  She transfixed nearly a hundred corps people in glowing pods of scarlet Chaos energy, holding them still, doing them no harm as yet.

  She used her gravwing and rose up above them in full-on Shetanna mode, blazing blood-red energy katanas. “This is a day of liberty for all of humanity. The power of the Gigacorporations has been broken, exposing them for the tyrants and malignants that we have always known them to be. The time of their sick, deluded cult of greed is over. But let us see them as they really are. How many of them are even human still?”

  Half of the pods rose up in the air.

  Naero put forth her Cosmic energies, causing them to writhe, transform, and expose them for what many of them actually were–advanced alien symbiot agents, posing as Corps delegates and leaders.

  People everywhere screamed in horror.

  Naero’s voice rang out. “The Gigacorps made their deals with these devils and inflicted them upon humanity! How many human worlds suffered from the alien invasions and had their children flung screaming into the spinning blades of the Ejjai meat ships?”

  Viewscreens showed feeds from hundreds of important lander homeworlds

  Scores of Shetanna’s replicants hovered over the gigacities, exposing the alien symbiot shapeshifters who had infiltrated the Gigacorps leaderships and power structures.

  People on those worlds chased the horrid, alien things out into the streets and cornered them for all to see.

  “The authority of the corps has been completely invalidated, for the simple fact that many of them are no longer human. They are enemy alien agents, shapeshifters who have infiltrated the corps at the highest levels, in order to pit all humanity against itself. They want us to waste time fighting each other, while they plot to destroy us and enslave what is left!”

  On the vidscreens and in those streets, masses of people swept over the exposed aliens and dragged them down. Many of those people recalled the grim losses they had suffered during the Ejjai Invasions.

  Now they wanted vengeance.

  Shetanna sent her swords away and continued to speak. “And when your worlds were shattered and without hope, and the filthy Ejjai murderers stalked your streets and hunted you and your families at will, who was it that came to your aid when you had no hope, and crushed the invaders in the darkness? Was it the Gigacorps?”

  She pointed an accusing finger straight at the Corps. Lackeys.

  Crowds and massed throngs all over the Alpha Quadrant roared in answer. “No!”

  “You’re damn right it wasn’t. Despite all that you had been taught to hate them, despite a Corps plot to destroy them, it was in fact the Forty-nine Free Spacer Clans and their
forces who dropped everything and came to your defense, Bled and died for you, and saved you from our mutual alien enemies. Valiant Spacer fleets roared in and blasted the Alien fleets to dust. Courageous, unstoppable Spacer Marines hopped from world to world, obliterating the invaders wherever they could be found. And then they left, to do it all over again on another world. Spacers were your champions, humanity.”

  Across the known worlds, billions of people took up the chant.

  Shetanna! Shetanna! Shetanna!

  Naero raised both her hands to speak again. “No, Shetanna was there, but she was only a small part of that great victory. Without the Free Spacer Clans backing her up, and leading the bulk of the fight, that victory would not have come. And tell me this. Did the Spacers come to your world as conquerors, or liberators? Show me one of your worlds where Spacers came and did not leave–where they acted the tyrant and took over even one of your worlds?

  “It cannot be said or done, because it never happened, ever. Spacers believe in freedom. In liberty. Your worlds belong to you, and it is up to you to govern and guide them at the local level. Humanity and all of the other sentients in our galaxy are free to manage their own affairs. And there is no longer any need for the tyranny of the Corps to control you. It is all obsolete. especially now, since many of them have been exposed as being infested by agents of our mutual, alien enemies. The Corps have been compromised. They cannot be trusted.”

  Waves of cheering erupted. Naero had to wait for it to die down.

  “The Alliance of Free Worlds stands ready to both help and protect. If you and your worlds wish for a better life for all of your peoples, we will show it to you. We can show you worlds where such things are being accomplished this very second. No perfection or utopia, but good systems that work well, and have proven to be sustainable. These things can and do exist, if good people focus their efforts on working together to make them so. Anything can be made not to work if people try hard enough. That is folly and stupidity. The Corps never allowed any other system but their own. There are other ways that work far better, for everyone.”