Raven's Course (Peacekeepers of Sol Book 3)

by Glynn Stewart

  “I’d be more concerned with the spacers trying to smuggle people back aboard Shaka for assorted reasons,” Sylvia said. “The Drifters really want our gravity tech, and they are willing to trade sex for far smaller favors than that.”

  None of the crew she could see were outside of the usual robe-and-mask assemblage of working Drifters, but they were Duty Masks, not Face Masks. No one aboard this ship was meant to be identified by guests later.

  “I presume there are sections of the ship where they are wearing, ah, tighter robes?” Vasilev asked.

  “That would be my assumption, yes,” Sylvia murmured. “There always seemed to be when we were arranging resupply for the UPSF during the war.”

  The younger woman glanced at a cloth-shrouded booth that appeared to be selling personal energy weapons.

  “I forget that you probably saw more of the Kenmiri Empire and Vesheron than I did,” she admitted. “I was a gunnery officer on one of the carriers for Golden Lancelot.”

  Vasilev shivered.

  “That was enough.”

  “I visited a lot of places and negotiated a lot of things,” Sylvia agreed. “Food, missiles, allies, soldiers, ships—I’ve traded all of that for all of that at one point or another.”

  “Should we be being more careful about what we say aboard their ship?” Vasilev asked. “Even in English?”

  “They know exactly how far we trust them—and vice versa,” the ambassador said with a chuckle. “Yes, they are recording us, and yes, they can translate English by computer. We’re far from topics I’d be concerned about.”

  The Commander chuckled and stepped over to the booth, studying the handheld energy weapons through their sealed display cases.

  “I feel like we should be sending a quartermaster over here to stock up on these things,” she muttered to Sylvia.

  “That’s part of what we were buying here,” the ambassador admitted. “We picked up ten thousand beam rifles and five thousand pulse pistols. That’s what’s in the crates we loaded into Shaka’s cargo compartment.”

  That was what Felix Leitz had organized with the Convoy Quartermasters. The UPA was producing energy weapons of their own, but production wasn’t where anyone would like—and their tech wasn’t up to reliably producing pistol-sized weapons yet.

  The Drifter shopkeeper emerged from behind a curtain, wearing the plain light blue Duty Mask everyone aboard Trust in Fortune was wearing.

  “These are the finest examples of Convoy craft!” they insisted in Kem. “The Commander will not be disappointed. Protect yourself, your lover, your family!”

  Vasilev managed to avoid looking trapped, but Sylvia suspected it was a challenge.

  “I have a service sidearm for if I ever need one,” she told the Drifter. “They are elegant-looking weapons, though.”

  Sylvia had to agree. Energy weapons were generally blocky things, to control heat dissipation and recoil. These had those edges smoothed into curves and filigreed with precious metals. They rivaled the pistol Henry Wong had lent her on one occasion—and his weapon had been a Kenmorad Consort’s gun reengineered by a loyal crew.

  “And you, Ambassador?” the shopkeeper asked. “An elegant weapon for an elegant diplomat, to show you speak with more than words?”

  The Drifter was certainly well informed, though that wasn’t entirely surprising. Sylvia figured the casino ship’s crew had been briefed on all of the senior officers of Shaka’s crew.

  “No, thank you,” she told the Drifter. “My words are more effective than any weapon I could carry.”

  “Shame, shame. Well, look if you wish; I am here if you change your thoughts.”

  Sylvia was about to thank the Drifter when her internal network chimed.

  The Drifter vessel they’d sent to Kozun had returned to the system. They were a day earlier than Sylvia had expected, which was either a very good sign…or a very bad one.

  “Vasilev, I need to get back to Shaka,” she told the other woman. “It looks like it might be time to get to work again!”

  Sylvia ended up almost alone aboard the shuttle, the spacecraft heading back toward Shaka only carrying her and her GroundDiv security detail.

  They’d crossed barely a third of the distance between the two ships when Leitz contacted her from the destroyer.

  “Em Todorovich, we have a coms request from the Protector-Commander,” he told her. “I can ask them to wait until you return aboard?”

  “They’re going to see it anyway, Felix,” Sylvia replied with a chuckle. “Who are we hiding from? Relay it to the shuttle and I’ll take it in my internals. Shouldn’t add too much time delay.”

  “Understood,” her chief of staff said. “We’ll have them connected momentarily.”

  It was a bit longer than momentarily before the relay and connection were set up, but it was still only a couple of minutes before a two-dimensional projection of Third-White-Fifth-Gold appeared in front of Sylvia.

  Since she was using her internal network, which had obvious issues with having an image of her, they were speaking to an avatar image of her. It wouldn’t make much of a difference, but they would be able to tell.

  “Ambassador, it appears my timing is less than optimal,” the Protector-Commander noted.

  “Teta,” she agreed. The word meant touch and had the same connotations as touché in English. “But my mission here is important and I understand the courier ship you sent to Kozun has returned.”

  “It has,” Third-White-Fifth-Gold replied. “We now have an official response from the Kozun Hierarchy to your request.”

  “And?” she prodded.

  “They have agreed to the meeting but have conditions and terms that will need to be met,” the Protector-Commander told her. “Some of those conditions involve the resources of Convoy Blue Stripe Green Stripe Orange Stripe.

  “Would it be possible for you to meet with the Council of Ancients once more, Ambassador Todorovich? We believe this would be more readily negotiated in person.”

  That was ominous. More than anything, it probably meant that the Drifters were going to try and negotiate gravity-shield technology out of her again.

  Swindle was probably too harsh a word, after all.

  “I see no inherent issue with that,” she conceded. “But I would like to review the terms the Kozun have requested prior to that meeting.”

  “If you wish to redirect your shuttle toward the garden ships, I will make certain a summary is forwarded to you,” the Protector-Commander promised. “I think all will benefit from a speedier resolution to this situation.”

  That was a new sense of urgency that Sylvia hadn’t managed to get out of them before. Though…it was also possible that urgency was merely at the realization they could get paid twice now.

  It was easy to stereotype the Drifters as greedy, but the scale of the Convoy outside Sylvia’s shuttle told her the truth: repairing and running those ships, feeding and caring for their crews…just keeping the millions of people living aboard the ships of Blue Stripe Green Stripe Orange Stripe was an immense and expensive task.

  The Council was responsible for all of those lives. Every resource they could acquire was one more shield against a cold and horrific death for millions of people.

  She could understand where they were coming from…even if she wasn’t going to give them what they truly wanted.

  Sylvia Todorovich was also responsible for millions of lives, after all.

  Chapter Fifteen

  By the time her escorts peeled off at the top of the Council of Ancients’ auditorium, Sylvia had gone over the Kozun’s requests three times and she was truly optimistic for the first time since she’d started on her mission.

  The Kozun had specified a location: a blue hypergiant three skips from La-Tar. They were sending one of the Voices of the Kozun, the religious and secular heads of the Hierarchy. They wanted both sides to send three ships—specifying that at least one “Cluster” ship should be UPSF—and they wanted a three-ship
neutral detachment. They weren’t even setting any preconditions to the negotiations; everything appeared to be on the table.

  Of course, the neutral detachment was going to be a headache. The rumors UPSF intelligence had heard suggested that the Kozun were actively at war with at least two other nations—neither of which the UPA was in contact with yet.

  In fact, the only shared contact the UPA and the Hierarchy had was the La-Tar Cluster, and since the negotiation was officially between the Hierarchy and the Cluster, they definitely didn’t count. The only option on the table, of course, was the Drifters.

  And that was why Sylvia made her way down the steps to face the robed and masked figure at the center of the auditorium. It was the same Ancient with the blue-whorl-marked silver mask as the last time, and they bowed slightly as she approached.

  “Ambassador Todorovich, it seems the Kozun have listed several conditions for your negotiations,” they told her. “We of Blue Stripe Green Stripe Orange Stripe are prepared to help you meet those conditions, if you so desire.”

  “It seems to me that the Convoy will ask for payment for such assistance,” Sylvia pointed out. “And that such payment shouldn’t be borne by merely one side of the negotiation.”

  “We could not send three Guardians away from the Convoy without significant compensation, no,” blue-whorls agreed. “This Council could not do so, in fact, without guaranteed compensation.”

  “You did not answer my question,” Sylvia pointed out. “Did the Kozun offer you any payment for this service?”

  Blue-whorls chuckled and made a conceding gesture with his left hand.

  “They did,” he allowed. “Their payment would suffice for half of the rental of three Guardians. We will require payment for the Cluster’s side as well, to guarantee our neutrality.”

  If one side was shouldering all of the mercenaries’ bill, after all, the mercenaries weren’t neutral.

  Sylvia kept her face calm as she studied the Face Mask of the Councilor, then glanced around the tree-shrouded meeting space. They were right, both in that she didn’t want the Kozun to be paying for their entire bill, and that in sending three Guardians away from the fleet was a major ask.

  They probably didn’t need three Guardians. But that was clearly what Blue Stripe Green Stripe Orange Stripe were going to send, which meant that the Cluster had to pay for it—and Sylvia was speaking for the Cluster there.

  Which meant the UPA was going to pay for it.

  “Well, then,” she said. “Let us begin, then, with my rejecting the suggestion you are about to make. We will under no circumstances trade the gravity-shield technology for anything. I am prepared to pay in refined metals and willing to consider other potential agreements, but that is specifically off the table.”

  From the shuffling around her, that had been exactly what blue-whorls had been about to suggest—and no one there was particularly surprised by her shutting it down.

  “It would certainly be our preference to trade in technology and change your thoughts on that point,” blue-whorls admitted. “If that is not possible, for a task of this magnitude, refined metals will not be enough. They will be required as an initial payment, but future value must also be agreed upon.”

  “And what did you have in mind?” Sylvia asked carefully. She still had five tons of refined palladium and ten of refined iridium to work with, but she wasn’t sure if that would be enough for even half of three Guardians.

  “We require exclusive trading rights with the La-Tar Cluster for a period of no less than four thousand Kenmiri days,” the Councilor told her. “Plus either eleven tons of refined palladium or twenty-two tons of refined iridium.

  “The UPA will not give up our own trading rights to the La-Tar Cluster,” she replied. “With that codicil, I am prepared to discuss shared exclusive rights with the government of the Cluster. I cannot fully commit them to that without discussions that are impossible from here.

  “I can offer ten tons of refined iridium and, say, three tons of refined palladium, as well.”

  The councilors exchanged looks and she could hear whispered conversations behind the masks. The Drifters didn’t have internal networks, but they definitely had radios built into their Face Masks.

  “This is acceptable if the Convoy is permitted to establish a trading post in a UPA system with a population of at least four hundred million,” blue-whorls finally told her.

  Only decades of practice kept Sylvia’s face calm. The United Planets Alliance didn’t have an official isolationist policy, but the general tone of her government’s actions since the war had been to keep the former Kenmiri Empire in their own stars.

  She had the authority to agree to said trading post, but she wasn’t sure how well it would go down. On the other hand, it would probably be good for the UPA to have an alien presence in their own worlds.

  “Done,” she said sharply. “Details will need to be established later, but I can commit the United Planets Alliance to permit a trading enclave in the Procyon System.”

  Procyon had two billion people and was the closest of the major eight UPA systems to the former Empire. Sylvia wasn’t entirely sure what a Drifter trading enclave would even look like, but it would probably be valuable to both sides.

  “Then we have a deal,” the Councilor told her. “We will send a trio of our Guardians to the Lon System for the agreed upon time. Is there anything else you would desire of us, Ambassador?”

  “I believe our business is done,” she allowed. “It has been a pleasure to trade with you, Councilors. I will have the final installment of cargo delivered while we retrieve our crew from Trust in Fortune, and then Shaka will leave for La-Tar.”

  She’d be sending a skip drone as soon as she was back aboard the destroyer, though. That way, everyone would know what was coming.

  Soon enough, Shaka would be back in unquestionably friendly skies—and Sylvia Todorovich would be transferring back to Raven. Entirely to be aboard the more impressive and better-defended vessel.

  Entirely.

  Nothing to do with spending time with Raven’s captain.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “She did it.” Iyotake sounded stunned as the briefing video from Todorovich ended. Raven’s senior officers were gathered around the table in their conference room, all of them looking at the spot where the hologram had just disappeared, with various levels of surprise.

  “I had faith in Em Todorovich,” Henry told his XO. “But yes. I’m more than a little surprised by the level of willingness to talk the Kozun are showing. There are only seven Voices of the Kozun, after all.”

  “What does that mean for the negotiations?” Ihejirika asked, the tactical officer looking thoughtful.

  “It means that Mal Dakis is sending someone who absolutely speaks for him, who can commit the Hierarchy and who likely has no limits on what they’re permitted to offer,” Henry concluded. “The Voices are theoretically equal. No one is going to pretend the other six don’t answer to Dakis, but he can’t gainsay anything they say in public, either.”

  “Not without shooting another round of prophets, anyway,” Alex Thompson said grimly. Raven’s GroundDiv commander was a solidly built blue-eyed and blond-haired man who could have stepped off a recruiting poster. “If he disavows a Voice’s actions, I’m guessing he has to disavow the Voice entirely.”

  “And that’s a threat to his power base he can’t risk,” Iyotake guessed. “So, if he’s sending a Voice, he trusts them?”

  “Completely,” Henry said. “I’m as surprised by the escort rules as anything else,” he continued. “I was half-expecting them to try to prevent us bringing Raven, but the requirement to bring a UPSF ship…they’re practically inviting us. Specifically.”

  “Trap?” O’Flannagain suggested, the fighter officer looking tense. “They could be setting us up.”

  “They definitely could be,” Henry conceded. “We’re expecting some kind of trouble.”

  Only Iyotake and Moon we
re cleared to know about Yellow Bicycle. Scorpius and her battle group were two days away from their jump-off point, one skip away from La-Tar. That, if Henry was reading the timing right, would be perfect.

  If the Kozun wanted to start a fight, they were going to have an ugly surprise coming.

  “We’ll probably bring Glorious with us, unless the La-Tar want to bring two ships of their own,” he continued, letting that comment sink without notice. He’d brief his people on Yellow Bicycle once they were on their way—they’d need to know then and there’d be less chance of a leak.

  “Who do you think they’ll send to negotiate for them?” Iyotake asked. “I’m guessing we’re not running that negotiation?”

  “No, from what Todorovich said, we only took the lead with the Drifters because we had existing structures there and the Cluster didn’t really,” Henry said. “The Cluster will lead at Lon. I’m guessing they’ll send Rising Principle. They spoke well to put together the alliance and their parent trusts them.”

  “And Adamant Will, whether they like it or not, is now First Standard of the Council of Supply,” Iyotake agreed.

  Adamant Will was an Enteni, the former head of the emergency council that had functioned as an underground government during the Kozun occupation. Their sole child was Rising Principle, the Enteni diplomat Raven had hauled around to every world in the Cluster to assemble an army.

  “Well, I look forward to meeting the flytrap again,” O’Flannagain observed, her tone jokingly disrespectful. “They had a surprisingly good sense of humor for a walking plant.”

  “Perhaps you think that because you have a terrible sense of humor for a human,” Iyotake said repressively. “Behave, Commander. We have work to do.”

  “Your fighters are going to be one of our aces in the hole,” Henry reminded the CAG. “There’s a reason we kept you under wraps in Satra. The GMS birds are going to be an ugly shock to anyone who tries to jump this conference.”