Cold War
by Warringer
Chapter Seven
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The years after the First Contact were the years of great change for the USSR and NATO.
The Centauri sold the construction plans for Jump Gates to both nations of Earth and each of them went to build their own Jump Gate, the Nato build theirs near NATO Side 2, while the USSR build theirs near their most important colony on the planetoid Ceres.
Star Charts also came from the Centauri, but both Earth nations were only interested in the actual data, but not in the information about the Jump Routes between the Gates, they had a way to navigate Einstein Space from Jump Space after all, using the natural Tachyon emmisions from known pulsars to estamine their position in Jump Space compared to Einstein Space.
The first trade routes were established with the Centauri while ships went out to make First Contacts with more of the other races in Known Space as the space known to the Centauri soon was called.
In about two years both human nations made contact with most of the races in Known Space, save for the Minbari, a race that was marked as 'Potentially under influence of Shadows or Vorlons'. The race of the Dilgar were also filed under this flag by NATO, while the USSR made contact with them.
It was also the time of colonization and by 2011, both nations had established colonies on twenty worlds and military outposts on other worlds. 80 million people went into outer space to colonize the New Frontier. 46 million Soviets colonized ten USSR planets and 34 million people colonized NATO planets.
At the same time the fleets grew to protect these new worlds from each other and the other races. But not only military fleets grew, trade fleets also grew to trade with the other races of Known Space.
One of the ships that was on a route between Tau Centi and the Narn colony of Kotok was the Enrico Sanchez, a 75 meter long Pallas class freighter, jump capable and able to enter an atmosphere to land. It would become a legend in the first interstellar conflict involving mankind.
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Franklin O'Neill was born in South Side LA, and was a stereotypical black male, about two meters tall and build like a body builder, even if he didn't train for it. Even more stereotypical was the fact that he did belong to a gang for some time, before a friend of his father managed to get him out of it and put him into space as a small mechanic on a small freighter. It had been the best day of his life.
Now he was thirty six and the Chief Engineer of the Enrico Sanchez for three years now and a capable man in the machine room. And he was walking through Katok, the capital city of Kotok with one of his best friends and his right hand, a female Kartanin born in Berlin in 1985 and too human in her beavior for her parents. Her name was Dao-Kay'Hey.
Dao was good two heads smaller than Franklin and build like the predator she was, but that didn't prevent her from having a strange mix of things she liked, like all things cute and cuddly and heavy machinery.
"What do you think," Dao asked and held up some sort of idol that looked like a Narn with a huge version of the male Narn reproductive organ as big as the idol itself.
Franklin couldn't help but stare at that thing. The penis of the Narn looked like a tentacle.
"Would be a great present for Ichiko, I guess."
Dao chuckled and grinned, or what could be called a grin for her, as she mangled the human facial expression. The Narn behind the table of this small bazar was shrinking back a bit as he saw the huge predatory teeth of the Kartanin.
"You can stop grinning, Dao. You scare the vendor."
Dao stopped grinning and scratched the back of her head a bit embarrassed. Now it was Franklins turn to chuckle and he shook his head.
"Well, how much for it?"
The Narn told them the sum for the small idol and Franklin looked at Dao before he tried to negociate, in the end paying only half of the price the vendor had given them before.
After having cheated the vendor they proceeded through the city, before stopping near an electro 4x4 that was from the Sanchez. A few moments later they found a familiar face in the crowd, not much of a challange seeing that the face belonged to the only other human in the city.
The face belonged to David Weissblum, a normal build very normal looking Jew from Tel'Aviv who would vanish in any human crowd. It was an open secret for the crew of the Sanchez that he was an agent of Mossad and responsible for the destruction of several large factories on Regula before he had to go deep cover and was put on the Sanchez to be a contact to the agents in the Narn Regime.
On the Sanchez he was responsible for communication and did a good job with it. Not to mention that he was a very decent guy, through it wasn't all that hard to believe that he was able to kill someone in twenty different way with just his pinky finger.
"Yo, Dave," Franklin called out and Davids head shoot up from what ever he was doing.
David waved and finished his talk with one of the Narn in the crowd. Than after some moments he had navigated though the crowd, a small package in his hands.
"Something for a friend?" Dao asked, speaking English. They all were able to speak the language of the Narn, thanks to some software for their cybrains, so that they could talk to the Narn without a translator.
"Something for a good friend," David said and a slight raise of his eyebrow showed Franklin and Dao that Dave was talking about Mossad.
Dao than smirked and held up the idol and David couldn't help but stare at it as he tried to put the package into the 4x4.
"A little present for Ichiko," Franklin explained and David burst out into laughter.
"You want to give her that?" he asked and a grin split his face.
"Well, she is a cyborg using a shell that seems to be fifteen years old and likes to wear Japanese school uniforms."
David couldn't help but to chuckle again at imagining the face of Ichiko on seeing the tentacle like reproductive organ on the idol.
"You are..."
David could finish what he wanted to say as an intense flash of light appeared over the city, bathing it in an unearthly light, followed by a second and a third flash.
"What the hell..."