Disclaimer

I am not the owner of the persons of this story met with in the movie and I never will be, I am not making any money whatsoever from this little story and I will never expect to do it either. If anyone feel like building further stories on persons, localities and events here created then they can feel free to do it – provided only that they try to stay in the given pre-histories, given personalities etc., and keep from turning their stories into adult stories. R&R are welcome.

Rising Tension and the Casus Belli

Jake continued hearing reports of sonic booms of space ferries landing and taking off, of ever more confident fishing clans brandishing more and more firearms, confrontations now often erupted into fistfigthing and even exchange of fire at one occasion. Jake saw that this was too obvious evidence of Sky People presence to ignore and decided to investigate in earnest.

Jake paid a visit to the Eymastua clan along with Neytiri, after formal greetings and gift exchanges they sat down over a meal and talked with the clan leaders. Then it was that Burulik, the Eymastua tsahik, presented the damning evidence.

"My son Ngabik'e has a mate with an Amananga sister-in-law. They not so long ago visited his in-laws there and when they came back they told me what they had seen. They had seen some people coming to the meals, tired and dirty like they had been digging in soil. And his mate found this small thing in the bushes when she went to relieve herself. It is very, very evidently a tawtute thing! She tried to ask her people about what was going on there but they didn't want to talk about it, when she presented what she had found they tried to take it away from her by force. She and her mate had to run away from the Amanangas then."

Burulik gave Jake a plastic ID-card, showing the face of a man and he read: "Seyde Tamba". Task: Mining engineer. Able with arms: Yes. Birth nation: Federation of West Africa. Family at home: No. Born Feb. 20th 2131 Health data: 0+CH4KG1-8B78 RDA ID # Pan 6 5678 A"

Jake screamed elatedly, this was the final, undeniable, unequivocal proof of RDA presence among the Amanangas. Burulik was showered with expressions of gratitude and then Jake and Neytiri left the Eymastuas as fast as politeness could allow, and hurried back to the Omatikaya Hometree, to confer with his staff. He declared in a grave voice: "This is the explanation of the funny events since the ISV 'Canopus' left. The RDA is making the clans dig their unobtanium on its behalf, giving them firearms as payment. Thereby they minimize their presence, they keep from irritating the clans undue and they build up a market for their products. We must make the clans aware of their sinister plans."

Messengers were sent around, certainly to the Amanangas, the Atoll Islanders and the Marakxalis but when presented with the evidence their olo'eytkans were intransigent. Said the Marakxali olo'eytkan Banart: "The clans at the Namana Land have joined together to protect their interests, they are free and can do as they like. We are free too and we can do as we seem fit to defend our freedom and rights, and we have found a strong friend who has helped us with means to defend our vital interests. You have founded a Namana Network of clans, we have founded an Ocean Network. Actually, the RDA people we have seen are very different from those You once described to us: They are polite, friendly and unarmed, when they come to take their grey rocks they provide us with useful stuff and then leave as soon as they have put their rocks into their big Metal Ikrans. They most certainly have never tried to influence our life style but leave us absolutely in peace. So do leave us in peace to mind our own business!"

Having this piece of news Jake sat down to think. Norm gave some council: "May be we better accept that this isn't preparing for taking over all of Pandora at all, it might simply be just honest and perfectly acceptable trade? They have finally found a product some Na'vi clans have been hungering for, so what can we do about that? Very little, I would say! Perhaps we should accept some RDA people among us we too, so we can buy some firearms more too?"

Jake replied: "Absolutely not. That is precisely what they are hoping for, an arms race. Tension would build up until a terrible war would be inescapable and then they would earn all the more by selling arms to both belligerent opponents. We are at a serious quandary, Norm. I fear what the outcome of it will be."

Jake didn't know but at the RDA Executive Board they were approaching a quandary too. Ever more clans were producing unobtanium to cover all their martial needs and felt no need for digging up more. To sell more they would have to turn up the level of perceived tension. The Board gave the Intelligence Department green light to launch the operation "Betelgeuse": provocation.

The staff at SecOps department, increasingly acting on behalf of their old and increasingly senile but very pliant commanding general Guerin now had two regiments ready for deployment at Svarog, under marine brigadier Neville Cox and colonel Isidro Cardoso Avellano. More regiments were under establishment, or the units of the unfinished regiments could be speedily ferried in to bring the two regiments now at Pandora back to force if needed.

The brigade had an administrative company, running the base amenities for the soldiers. Each of the regiments had one staff company with a rail gun, a Big Dragon transportation gunship and an unarmed observation helicopter with radio, satellite and walkie-talkie connections, under command by the regiment lieutenant colonel or the regiment major, and seven companies of five Scorpion gunships and five Samson transport helicopters each. Each company consisted of a martial component with helicopters, AMPs and soldiers, and a business component of engineers and techies.

The representatives of the RDA company had now established widespread mining contacts and a few mining stations over very many areas of Pandora, artfully avoiding clashing with the local clans – the brigade headquarter were at an uninhabited and rather barren island, the Sea Maggot Island, around which the Atoll islanders were free to fish. The local ay'olo'eyktan were frequently visited or invited to the base at Sea Maggot Island, to discuss plans and wishes of both parts. But until hostilities broke out the base was deliberately left with only a ghost staff, to not making the Atoll Islanders undue irked.

Brigadier Cox was a martial man coming from the "school of hard knocks", in this case the US Marine boot camp at Parris Island where he had been a drill sergeant once long ago. He was a man looking much like Quaritch once had looked, with glasses and a big birth mark on his left cheek, and without the scars on his head. He was under orders to always behave with restraint and have his men treat the local clanspeople with dignity, to defend themselves on their own only and only strike offensively against enemies in conjunction with their Na'vi allies. However, in cases of no special order he could take action with a very heavy hand: When Hal Nuñez, Vytautas and Ewa Iniskius came on board the ISV "Canopus" they expected to be put into cryo hibernation for the voyage to Earth, they were given injections said to be preparing them for the hibernation but actually they were lethal. The brigadier had no wish to waste load capacity of unobtanium on traitors to the company. And his emotion as to Jake Sully was one of the deepest imaginable contempt: Here was a marine who had forgotten his oath to his fatherland and his corps, a defector who ignored his Marine credo: "Semper fi"!

The messengers from the Namana Confederation of Jake noted the increasing belligerence among the clans at the islands, they were now openly talking about pushing the mainlander interlopers out of their fishing grounds once and for all. The fishing clans of both opponents clamoured ever more for the forces of their confederations to help them defend their own fishing grounds. Avatar spies of the RDA noted the rising tension and dutifully reported it.

So amid rising nervosity a dashing young man, judging from his adornments an Atoll Islander warrior, arrived at the Omatikaya Hometree. He introduced himself as Meku'rull and he behaved with all the restrained yet martial dignity expected from a warrior. Among the people standing and watching the reception were Tomas Jak'itan and Sylwanin Neytir'ite – son and daughter of the couple you-know-who…

Jake and Neytiri sat down around the dinner firepit to entertain their guest. They talked and talked, no conclusive affairs came out of it and Jake had not expected it either, building good relations between two mutually antagonistic parts is a long term project when no common enemy is present. Food was served, eaten and Jake turned to talk with other of his councillors.

Then Meku'rull leaned over to Thomas and boasted with a contemptuous smirk: "Now that the mainlanders are driven off those islands Eywa has regained her balance at long last!"

Thomas reacted with an evil glance and replied that he ought to say so to the coastal clans not him, the Omatikayas were a forest clan and had little to do with ocean fishing. Meku'rull reacted with an uppercut sending Thomas reeling, then tried to trip him into falling down into the firepit. But Thomas had trained martial arts too far to be unbalanced that easily, he quickly regained balance while parrying a belly kick and crying for help. Meku'rull then turned tail (literally) and ran into the forest.

Once out of hearing range Meku'rull took some evasive measures and then he found the radio set he had hidden in a hollow tree. He switched on and whispered: "Agent Bernardo here. Task fulfilled to the best of my ability, provocation done. Target is bruised but alive, but the Omatikayas are out to catch me so the desired effect has been attained. I request immediate evacuation. Follow my radio signal."

Jake was at once informed about what had taken place. He instantly sent out a search party for Meku'rull but his finest trackers couldn't keep track on him for long. That made Jake stop and think – the Atoll Islanders were not famed for their hunting and tracking ability on land… Only the day after they found a forest glen where a Samson gunship had landed and taken up someone – obviously that would-be assassinator. The conclusion was simple: This was a tawtute scheme.

A messenger party was sent out to their islands. But coming to their home tree they were met with olo'eytkan Kia'nak in angered sorrow, his daughter had been found dead with a knife in her rib cage, a knife with carved decorations in the Omatikayan style on the shaft. The messengers barely came away alive. They had some report to give to Jake…

The day after Jake had reports of islanders attacking Iranali'k fishers with guns blazing, crying for vengeance. Jake convened a Confederation meeting, hostilities were now running.

While the olo'eyktans were sitting and discussing measures to be taken, a Sky woman was ushered into the discussion circle. She declared: "My name is Lingu Bao, coming from the Ocean Confederation with invitations for negotiations, I am a emissary from the confederation of which the RDA employees at Pandora are most humble and faithful subjects. Our confederation offers the Namana Confederation ceasefire and negotiations for delineating borders between our member clan territories. We all detest war and we must do our best to avoid it." The case was that the executives at Earth had noted the rising tension and though they would like a lingering, low scale tribal war they saw that a massive scale conflict was on the coming. Such a big conflict was not what they desired, it would be costly and should be defused.

Jake said, with an indignant voice: "Miss Bao, may be You should start with explaining us what your agents have been up to at the Atoll Islander Hometree Island, and towards my own very son?"

The diplomat looked at him in terror. But before she could answer two males from the Mountain clan broke into the discussion circle. They had one Na'vi female tied up between them, adorned like a Marakxali. "Good lords please excuse us, I am Kxapxe and this is Talfikx, we are from the Mountain clan. We beg Your forgiveness for intruding into this solemn meeting but we have captured a female who might be interesting to us all. She sat at our dinner firepit yesterday and talked with people, saying that we ought to break out of the Namana Network – the Ocean Network would happily allow our olo'eyktan into their discussion circle. But then one of our storytellers remembered having seen her before among the Tipani clanspeople some years ago, then she was adorned like a clan I never before heard about. That was shortly after the last space ship left us and now we understood that she is a clever one. So we took her captive and here she is."

Jake gazed at the Mountain clansmen and expressed his gratitude: "Intrusions are most welcome when they give us who are to decide evidence as important as this." And he gave diplomat Lingu Bao a glance dripping with malice.

The female was brought to her knees and Neytiri took her queue and made a tsahaylu connection. The onlookers could see the two of them, the prisoner on her knees was shivering and Neytiri was very obviously in the end barely containing her anger. After some time she disconnected, sent the woman away and spoke with a very angry voice.

"Brothers and sisters, now listen! The true name of this female is Naraporn Sarasinithat, originally from an Earth clan named Thailand, she is an avatar permanently transferred into her blue body, she is a negotiator and one of the sly talkers from the RDA company, trying to make clans leave the Namana Network. I could find out that it is all a plan to make Na'vi clans buy lots of Sky people weapons and pay for them with lots and lots of grey rocks. I found out that the almost murder of our Thomas Jak'itan is part of it and so is the finish murder of Yalu'us Ngonga'ite. They want to make us fear each other to make us buy more weapons. They want to take over all of our world and let us do the killing of ourselves. Our brothers and sisters of many clans have been fooled into it by those treacherous tawtutes! They have even killed three of their own kin for no other reason than that they didn't want to take the work of bringing them back to Earth – the Iniskius two and Hal Nuñez. Their big kunsips are on their way down to this world at this very moment to make war with us!"

She turned at diplomat Lingu Bao and said with a voice freezing with contempt: "So miss Bao, please return to Your den up in the sky now and remain there, and tell your leaders that we of the Namana Network are going to root out all those tawtute places you have put up down here, and take those clans into our network! They will happily join us when they have seen Your treachery!"

Diplomat Lingu Bao left the assembly in a big hurry and ran to the Samson she had arrived in. Once up in the air she reported to her superior, Manolo Kontarides at the Sea Maggot Island: "Our cover has been blown, agent Sarasinithat has been captured and everything she knew has been pulled out of her through the queue connection. Now the Namana Confederation will be on the warpath so alarm our clan allies and send them assistance right away."

Agents took contact with the various clan leaders at once, and they were told this story: "The Omatikayas and their friends have been contacted by our messengers, but their offers of peace have been rejected. They want to make war at our Network! They are coming at you soon – but we have sent for strong Sky people forces to join in the battle as we promised you!"

But what was coming at first wasn't a war party but some messengers. They told a very different story: About tawtutes hiding among them, making them buy firearms just to make them dig up and sell ever more grey rocks. That the son of the sixth Toruk Makto had been attempted killed and the daughter of the Atoll Islanders olo'eytkan had been murdered to incite strife, to make them purchase even more tawtute weaponry. But the clans turned deaf ears to those stories. War!