“Some must always stand behind the diplomats while others face the enemy,” Henry told Osu Don. “If we are worthy of our commands, we hate every second of it. But it does not invalidate that the work still needs to be done.”
The winged alien bowed their head.
“Of course. I apologize for my manner and thank you for your words,” they said delicately. “It seems, sadly, that our limited time is up. I am sure we will encounter each other again, but today, you are the center of the party, and everyone must have their minute, must they not?”
“Even if we hate every second of it,” Henry repeated with a grin—and was rewarded with a clear laugh from the other officer.
“Good luck with your battle, Colonel Wong,” Osu Don told him.
With a hundred and sixty-two ambassadors to meet, the meetings grew shorter and shorter as the night went on. The names of the factions grew less and less recognizable, too. After the first sixty or so meetings, Henry stopped trying to even remember names.
His internal network could handle that if they ended up being important, but UPA Intelligence files suggested that fewer than sixty of the Vesheron factions could field more than six warships. He figured most of the people who’d managed to send a ship and an ambassador to the Gathering were at least connected to planets, but unless those planets had functioning governments and had enough ships to actually be able to project force outside their own system…they were the small fish in the game.
There were two noticeable gaps in the list, though, and they became more noticeable as the night drew on as well.
“Under-Speaker,” he finally asked Sho Lavah. “Is there no one here from the Ra Province?”
Ra was the closest province to the UPA, the one they most needed to be stable and secure for easy trade. If there was no one there worth talking to from Ra, that suggested problems in the future.
“The Kozun sent an ambassador,” she told him. “He declined to attend tonight. There are two others who are here, but they have made no effort to move themselves up my list.”
Translation: they were small powers the Restan didn’t regard as worth paying attention to and hadn’t tried to make direct contact with their largest nearby neighbor. And the one significant power was intentionally ignoring them.
That was never a good sign.
“What about the Drifters?” he asked. “I saw a guardian out there without a convoy to watch, so I’m guessing there’s an ambassador here?”
“Ambassador Sarkal pled illness,” she told him. Sho Lavah paused, glancing at Todorovich. “The Kozun’s Ambassador made no excuse; he simply declined attendance.”
So, the biggest mobile power—one that Henry very much wanted to ask pointed questions about gravitic resonance warheads—and the biggest power close to the UPA had both declined to show up to the party held in honor of the UPA.
He nodded calmly in acceptance of Sho Lavah’s words. The Restan official was being helpful tonight, but she was probably being helpful to everyone. Her job was to make the Gathering go smoothly and make sure Resta got what they wanted.
The UPA didn’t need her to know that their commander on the scene was concerned.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Henry wasn’t sure he wanted to know what the clearly segregated and secured sections being used for the ambassadors’ quarters had originally been built for. His guess was hostages when the Kenmiri had first taken the system—they had been known to do that, and the hostages had generally been kept in reasonable comfort.
Whatever their purpose, though, the Restan had renovated the spaces quite heavily to make them appropriate for the ambassadors and their retinues. He suspected the UPA had one of the more decorated sections along with having one of the larger ones, but that wasn’t really his problem.
His point of concern was that there was only one way in or out of the apartments. A pair of Restan guards in entirely un-decorative battle armor stood outside the vestibule, matched by a pair of GroundDiv troopers in similar gear inside.
Once they were past those guards, at least, he was able to relax a little bit. They might be trapped inside this space, but no one else was getting in.
“Ser!” The GroundDiv Chief, Bilal Roi, in charge of security seemed to materialize out of nowhere, thankfully waiting a few seconds after announcing himself for Henry to readjust his mind back to English. “We’ve swept everywhere for bugs. I’m one hundred percent certain that the Restan are using the station systems to observe us, but I think we’ve found and disabled everyone else’s microphones and cameras.”
Henry snorted as he traded a glance with Todorovich.
“How many?” he asked.
“Average of fourteen per room,” the Chief replied. “We’ve also got some portable jammers and white-noise generators set up in a couple of key rooms. You should be able to have the conversations in private that you need to, Ambassador.”
“Good. Thank you, Chief,” Todorovich told the man. “Your work is appreciated. I assume you have guard rotations and everything set up?”
The desperately-trying-not-to-look-bored pair that had escorted Henry and Todorovich to and from the party—without being allowed into the party—were already disappearing to their quarters.
“Yes, Em Ambassador,” the Chief replied. “I have two guards on duty at all times, with two for backup or escort as required. We would prefer that no civilians leave the apartments without at least one trooper for escort.”
“Your soldiers also don’t leave on their own,” Todorovich countered. “We move through the station in pairs at a minimum, Chief Roi. If you need more troopers, we’ll bring them over, but I only trust about a third of the people on this station to have a weapon in front of me, let alone a weapon behind me.”
“Understood, Em Ambassador,” Roi confirmed. “I have fifteen troopers and myself. If necessary, I can have a trooper with every civilian and keep two here to guard home base.”
“Good. That shouldn’t be necessary, but some of the staffers will be in separate meetings on their own and they will definitely need escorts.” She smiled. “Now, I may be exhausted, but the Colonel and I need to debrief. Where were those secure zones?”
“Follow me, sers.”
Chief Roi had picked the most comfortable place he could find for his secure zones. The spot he left Henry and Todorovich in had a selection of excessively plush couches placed in a neat triangle, with small tables for food or computer tablets as needed.
The security generator looked like a decorative statue, wrapped in gold foil and with ivory inlays hiding its entirely functional interior.
“This is going to be exciting,” he said dryly. “So, the Londu want to use us, the Drifters might be actively moving against us, and the Kozun are what, ignoring us?”
“And those are only the first three key points of the evening,” Todorovich said with a chuckle. “It’s the Drifters that worry me, to be honest. Everyone relied on them, everyone needed them, but no one ever really managed to ask what their agenda was.
“They did damn well out of the situation under the Empire, but they helped bring everything down. Somehow, I don’t think that they did it all out of the goodness of their hearts.”
Henry sighed.
“Our Set operations alone last year handed over eighty metric tons of gold and platinum to the Drifters for fuel and missiles,” he noted. “We checked the weapons for bugs every time. They didn’t rig them every time, but they did it often enough.”
“Wait, seriously?” Todorovich asked. “They sold us missiles with bugs in them?”
“Everybody was using Kenmiri missiles,” Henry pointed out. “Even the ones we’re building are functionally identical to them. Even on extended logistics, our machine shops could build more, but it was easier to buy them from the Drifters when we could.
“But yeah. They bugged them. Fantastically complex little devices that worked in concert to make sure that whatever one of them knew, the rest did, and any that we
re left were supposed to transmit everything to any Drifter ship in the area.”
He shook his head.
“I think our nomadic caravan merchants knew a hell of a lot more about what was going on throughout the entire rebellion than just about anyone else,” Henry said. “I’m not sure the Vesheron would have survived without them, but I don’t know their agenda and it makes me nervous.”
“Especially when they start making deals to get people to test weapons that can actually threaten our ships?” Todorovich asked.
“Especially then,” he agreed. “It’s not like they need it, either. That guardian out there? It’s got more turrets than a Kenmiri dreadnought, and its turrets are bigger, too. There’s a reason the Kenmiri left the Drifters be, and it’s those things.”
A guardian wasn’t a particularly stable ship in a lot of ways. The Drifters had no ability to build a contiguous hull as large as a dreadnought, so their guardians were a mix of unmatched parts and modules welded together and roughly armor-plated.
They had more powerful turrets than the Kenmiri, but that came at a much higher risk of failure. Henry had seen a guardian lose turrets in a straight fight with a Kenmiri dreadnought. The guardian had won that fight, but it hadn’t been a clean win.
“And the Londu?” Todorovich said. “I find it interesting that the Lord of Ten Thousand Miles is coming on to you, Colonel. It suggests at least some research on your personal tastes. I doubt Kahlmor is inviting you aboard his battleship for dinner without encouragement, let alone permission, regardless of his actual interest in you.”
“It doesn’t take much research to know I was married to a man,” Henry replied. “It would take more for them to work out they’re completely off base. Kahlmor isn’t my type.”
“What is your type?” Todorovich asked, sounding almost relieved to get the question out there.
The Colonel laughed.
“Based on historical evidence? One girl I grew up with in Montana who is now married with two kids and mayor of our hometown…and my ex-husband.”
The Ambassador didn’t quite seem to know how to take that for a moment.
“Wait, two people? Ever?”
“Ever,” he confirmed. “Well, a couple of attempts at other relationships in the Academy, but those petered out fast enough to confirm what the counselor figured. Demisexual was the term they used.” He shrugged. “Academy counselors pay a lot of attention to things the Academy administration can’t officially know about.”
“Not your type, indeed,” Todorovich murmured. “Poor tall bastard. Try not to start a war when you break his heart?”
“We both know any attempt at flirtation with a UPA officer on the part of a Londu Lord of Ten Thousand Miles is carefully calculated and authorized at the highest levels,” Henry pointed out. “I’m more concerned about the Scion’s bloody nephew.”
“They’re monarchists,” she pointed out. “Sending a close blood relation of the Scion is a sign of how serious they’re taking this. Saunt was at his father’s side for some pretty tense negotiations at age fifteen. I doubt that was the first time he’d sat at the negotiating table.
“Don’t let his age fool you; that man has been an active diplomat for over a decade and speaks with his uncle’s voice. There’s almost certainly more experienced advisors in his staff, but he’s not here because the Scion doesn’t trust his judgment.”
“He’s the man the Scion sent to tell the Vesheron to bend over and spread,” Henry noted. “That’s going to be an interesting sell.”
“That’s understating it, Henry.” She sighed. “If I can manage to conclude the Gathering without a war, that’s a hell of a feather in my cap back home. That really is the extent of my orders: just make sure that we’re not involved in any wars.”
“Odds of that?” he asked.
“Decent. The Gathering doesn’t officially start for two more days, and it’s going to be a week just to get through everyone’s opening remarks. There’s a reason I’m not expecting some delegations until day five or six.”
“And the Kozun?” Henry asked.
“They arrived a day before us,” she told him. “I didn’t recognize the name of the Ambassador, either. Something Rojan, apparently. I thought I at least knew of all of their diplomats.”
“Kal Rojan?” Henry asked.
“Yeah,” she confirmed after a moment’s thought. “Why?”
“Kal Rojan isn’t a diplomat,” Raven’s Captain told her. “He’s barely a damn soldier. Kal Rojan is an assassin and a terrorist, the personal bloody-handed knife of the First Voice of the Kozun. He’s an enforcer, not an Ambassador.”
“What the hell is he doing here?”
“I don’t know,” Henry admitted. “But I’m starting to think that I might be more valuable to you from the bridge of Raven than acting as the UPA’s poster boy. And not just because I hate being lauded for Golden Lancelot.”
“You may be right,” she allowed. “I was planning on dragging you to at least one more round of parties and events, but I’m looking at Rojan’s file right now and it agrees with you.”
Todorovich shook her head.
“You are right. I need you on Raven, Captain Wong—and I need Thompson to send me more troops. My back has this itchy feeling, like someone’s measuring it for a knife.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
A pair of Henry’s starfighters rendezvoused with the shuttle less than twenty thousand kilometers clear of Gathering Station, the two Dragoons falling in neatly on either side of the transport.
“Ser, we have a laser com from Commander O’Flannagain,” the pilot reported. With only Henry as a passenger, he’d joined the crew in the cockpit.
“Put it through to my network,” he ordered, blinking a virtual screen up in his view and adjusting his mental state to talk through the network instead of aloud.
The image he received of Commander O’Flannagain was an avatar rather than the woman’s current state. He knew what a pilot looked like in the heart of their starfighter, and O’Flannagain’s feed was entirely lacking in viscous gel and oxygen masks.
“And just what is my CAG doing flying escort, Commander?” he asked dryly.
“I was on the rotation, ser,” she replied. “I only have eight birds and eight pilots, counting myself. We’re keeping two in space at all times, so I’m taking a rotation a day with everyone else. What did you expect, ser?”
“About that,” he conceded. On a carrier, the CAG being in space on a day-to-day combat space patrol would arguably be a minor dereliction of duty. On a battlecruiser, with its single understrength squadron, it was almost necessary.
“What did you need, Commander?” he asked.
“I was hoping for some reassurance,” she told him, her tone light. “My pilots are out and about in this mess more than anyone else, and it’s making me twitchy. I swear at least a third of the ships out there are measuring us up for an alpha strike.”
Henry concealed a shiver.
“I’d have expected a quarter at worst,” he replied. “But then, I’d be expecting the rest to be watching each other. You’re out there, Commander,” he agreed. “Want to take a guess at who has Raven dialed in?”
There was a long silence.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “The Kozun flagship. One of the Restan dreadnoughts—though, to be fair, I think the Restan have at least a turret pointed at every capital ship in this mess. The Drifter guardian. A couple of others I’m not sure about, but those three are the ones we’ve flagged as highest-threat.”
“Iyotake knows?” he asked.
“It’s in our reports and I flagged him down in person,” she confirmed. “Ser…I get the Resta, they’re watching everybody, but the Drifters? The Kozun? I figured the Kozun were going to play nice with us.”
“The Drifters are, if nothing else, experimenting with anti-grav-shield weaponry to sell to everybody else,” he told her. “The Kozun sent an assassin to the Gathering, not a diplomat. I think that
’s because the First Voice trusts said assassin more than any of their diplomats, but still…”
“And the Restan are being justifiably paranoid, because if my people are reading the passive sensor array layouts right, half the ships that delivered the Gathering’s ambassadors have the other half locked up,” O’Flannagain said. “Hell of a peace conference, ser.”
“The Vesheron share one language: the Kenmiri’s,” Henry reminded her. “They only shared one thing in common: a hatred of the Kenmiri.
“Without the Kenmiri, what do the Vesheron become?”
His pilot didn’t have an answer.
“Exactly, Commander,” he told her after ten seconds or so of silence. “Nobody else knows either, but the Vesheron weren’t lacking in internal conflicts even during the war. The main purpose of the Gathering is to set up protocols to try and mediate those conflicts before they become their own wars.”
Iyotake was waiting for him when he disembarked the shuttle, his executive officer giving him a crisp salute with almost-concealed relief.
“Welcome back aboard, ser,” the Lieutenant Colonel told him.
“I relieve you, Lieutenant Colonel Iyotake,” Henry said with a gentle smile.
“I stand relieved,” the XO confirmed. They were as alone as it was possible to be on the flight deck, with the pilots focused on their craft. “I’m guessing O’Flannagain took the chance to fill you in?”
“She did,” Henry confirmed. “I’m guessing CIC and Tactical agree with her?”
He started walking toward his office, gesturing for Iyotake to fall in beside him.
“If anything, she’s underestimating it,” Iyotake told him. “I think she’s missing part of the equation, too.”
“Which is?”
“Not counting our birds, there are a grand total of twelve starfighters flying combat patrol around the Gathering,” the XO said. “Twelve. Two are from Trintar—their corvettes carry four apiece, it looks like. Two are from the Londu. Two are from the Drifters. Four are Restan and two are from the Slant from the Bes Province.”
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