Carinae Sector: 01 - Traders' Scourge - Part 1 - Alien Flight by David Buck Read Free Book Online Page A

climb further East, with Russian and central Asian population losses over forty percent. The best estimates in a census taken five years after the Asian flu first appeared, and as the third wave of contagion abated, placed the losses of China and India at seventy percent of their populations.
    The effects on the world were profound, with riots flared briefly in Asia and Europe as the populations panicked. The riots quickly faded away as the full toll of the Asian flu decimated these locations. With the economic power house of China defunct, and the rest of the world’s population either dead or unable to sell raw materials or purchase goods, the world’s economy went into a depression that would last for nearly two decades.
    The political changes to the world resulted in profound effects on the leadership of the USA and the European countries. The pandemic caused rioting to break out, reminiscent of the attempted coup by right wing extremists in 2024, in many major US cities. The US government commissioned an urgent senate inquiry that resulted in incidental criminal charges against senior US officials and leading business figures from the military industrial complexes. Only an abject plea from the US president for not being the cause of this disaster, and to offer every possible assistance world wide, averted a combined nuclear strike from both China and Russia.
    Other ongoing effects of the virus are being researched and relate to the lowering reproductive potential of humans. There are also major changes to the incidences of major diseases in the human population. Several types of cancer appear to have disappeared to be replaced by several new types of aggressive cancers. Further research is also being conducted into losses for other species that are considered to be linked to the appearance of Asian flu. For example, the world wide populations of rats, mice, cats and dogs have been decimated by over seventy percent during the same timeframe as the outbreak of the Asian flu.
     
    See further entries for:
    Population statistics and Asian flu
    Estimated death toll from Asian flu at 3 billion people
    The Asia Pandemic, published by World Health Organization
    The loss of fertility due to the Asian flu, Department of Medicine, John Hopkins University
    The extra-terrestrial origins of the Asian flu, the Trader medical notes
    The ramifications on the world economy post Asian flu, Department of Economic development, University of Toronto
    Co-incidental losses due to pathogens to other species post Asian flu, Biology Department, University of Sydney
     
    Online media entry for Asian flu, October 2060
     
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    The Barus operative strode down the dusty street and ensured that the six Jerecab mercenaries he had recently employed kept their eyes moving around their surroundings. He would have preferred to use Barus or Deltas Vass guards, but so many new arrivals on this remote world would have triggered too much interest. It had been five years since he had led the successful operation on the Vorinne world. The operative had hidden the sensitive weapons equipment in crates in a non-descript warehouse on a small Barus colony world, as he sought to find a way to implement the second part of his plan.
    After several minutes the Barus was sitting in a dusty courtyard of a merchant’s house. He had left his mercenaries waiting outside for him to return. He declined all offers of food and drink as the merchant came to rest across from him. His trading partner was an ancient Cephrit that had traded in the outlying border colonies for many hundreds of years. The Cephrit merchant sat on its rear four legs, flexed its chitin carapace, and then rubbed two front legs together as it quietly regarded him. The Barus kept perfectly still until the merchant finally spoke.
    ‘So you have learnt well the customs of other races