Offspring Ch. 042

Taking Harkon's transceiver, some Torgon parts and some specially manufactured ones they managed to put a working device together capable of crossing the distance. There was jubilation in the academy when the first Federation transmissions were heard.

Neither humans nor Torgons fancied a Federation takeover. Torgon politicians came up with an elaborate plan, what Feng and I, two centuries later, would call the Oktonian scam. They decided to build an island in the middle of the big ocean on the western hemisphere, fifty miles in diameter. The humans laughed at the idea, they didn't believe it could be done. Torgon engineers proved them wrong.

They filled everything that could float or fly with as much ballast as it could carry, moved it to the target area and sank it, creating an artificial reef. On that they build their island. Five years later it was completed.

They had known from the humans that lithium was a prized commodity in continual short supply throughout the Federation worlds. Using the vast lithium deposits as bait they contacted the Federation and offered a supply under certain conditions. A year later a Federation cruiser arrived to start negotiations.

How they explained the human negotiators who dealt with the Federation on behalf of the Faeries is not known. Perhaps no one cared. At any rate, a deal was struck and led to the conditions we know now.

A decade or so later no Torgons were left alive on the planet. Colonel Emerson does not talk about that, perhaps he himself was dead by then.

There was a lot more detail in the diaries, but for the moment I had seen enough.