Raven's Course (Peacekeepers of Sol Book 3)

by Glynn Stewart

  “So, we’re not even telling the Cluster?” Leitz asked. “That seems…rude.”

  “Scorpius isn’t entering anyone’s claimed space,” Henry noted. “The Lon System is enough away from everyone that no one regards it as strategically important; that’s why the Kozun picked it.

  “That works to our desires, as it means Admiral Cheung will bypass everyone getting into position…and returning to the UPA, if everything goes smoothly.

  “We don’t want to admit we ever had a carrier group outside the UPA,” he told them. “My understanding is that the reason for that is twofold: one, that the Security Council doesn’t want to be seen spending that much money outside Terran space right now; and two, that we don’t want our allies thinking that we are willing to send carrier groups out to fix their problems.

  “A potential betrayal by the Drifters represents the first thing I’ve seen Command and the Council regard as a serious strategic threat since the war ended,” Henry said flatly. “And I think they’re right. There are no other players as geographically widespread or as technologically advanced.

  “Even the Kozun are operating with what is fundamentally the Kenmiri base-level tech. The Drifters aren’t. They’ve been working on that tech for years, and they’ve been skimming off the best and brightest of the Kenmiri slave worlds for generations.”

  “They’ve been hugely valuable allies,” Leitz reminded him. “It seems strange to regard them as such a threat.”

  “That’s why Yellow Bicycle is as quiet and low-key as it is,” Henry said. “We’d very much like to be wrong. If the Kozun are honestly coming to talk peace and the Drifters have made honest deals to be neutrals at the peace talks, then Scorpius and her escorts get an extensive exercise in long-distance logistics.

  “But if our fears are realized, there will be multiple capital ships a day’s flight away, ready to come haul us out of the fire.”

  Henry might not like the idea of being rescued by his ex-husband, but he’d take that over fighting a squadron of multiple Guardians without any kind of support or backup.

  “That’s reassuring, at least,” Todorovich agreed. “I’m going to suggest a twenty-four-hour dead-man order to Admiral Cheung to make that even more reliable. If we don’t send a message for twenty-four hours, he brings the carrier group through.

  “We’ll need to make sure we have the skip drones to send a message at least every twenty-four hours—preferably every twelve, really—but that limits the worst-case scenario.”

  “It does,” Henry agreed. “I’ll back you on that, Ambassador.”

  He looked at everyone in the room as he snagged a second donut.

  “Iyotake, Em Leitz. Questions? This is only a high-level summary, though it’s not like there’s much in terms of detail to share.”

  “Do we know the skip time to the system they’ll be waiting in?” Iyotake asked. “That could become critical.”

  “It’s a red giant eleven light-years from Lon,” Henry said. “We don’t have exact masses for either star, but they’re big. My calculations say nine hours, plus or minus forty minutes if the mass data is off significantly.”

  “So, we need a plan to survive against three Guardians for eighteen hours,” Iyotake noted. “Even that is a hell of a call, ser.”

  “I know,” Henry agreed. “But barring stealth tech the UPSF definitely doesn’t have, we can’t hide a fleet in the Lon System. We work with what we’ve got, Colonel.”

  “And we hope that I can keep everyone talking,” Todorovich concluded. “No pressure, I take it?”

  “Between the Cluster and the Hierarchy, these talks will decide the fate of twenty-one inhabited worlds and about fifty billion people,” Henry said quietly. “I don’t think worrying about betrayal should be adding much to the pressure.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Home.

  It was strange to Sylvia, but that was very much the feeling that being back aboard Raven was giving her. The crew wasn’t entirely the same as it had been before, but the losses in the La-Tar Campaign hadn’t been that large.

  She hadn’t known many of the dead well enough to grieve them, but she knew the people who remained well enough to trade greetings and courtesies with many of the battlecruiser’s crew. Shaka’s crew had been respectful enough and had grown more accepting of her over the time she’d spent aboard, but they hadn’t made it to the level of warmth she shared with Raven’s crew.

  The stewarding crew had put her in the same quarters as her last stay aboard. If anything had changed while she’d been away, they’d made certain to put it back exactly the way she’d left it. By the time she got back from her meeting with Henry Wong, much of her gear had been unpacked for her and the room looked exactly as it had before.

  It felt like home and she smiled to herself as she took a seat at her desk. If her experience with the UPSF suggested anything, this would be the last tour of Raven’s current complement. They’d all achieved too much for the next round of promotions not to tear huge holes in the battlecruiser’s hierarchy.

  If the UPSF were smart, they’d move people up inside Raven’s hierarchy and shift as few people off the ship as they could. That would keep the battlecruiser at nearly the same superb level of competence and function.

  On the other hand, she could see why the UPSF would want to take the officers who’d been blooded at the Gathering and in the La-Tar Campaign and move them over to other ships. The Peacekeeper Initiative, especially, was in need of officers who’d fought alongside nonhumans and could both speak Kem and respect strangers.

  Those three criteria were true of more of Raven’s officers than most ships, and that would only make it worse. The promotions would be well deserved, but they’d leave Henry Wong with gaping holes in his crew.

  Assuming, of course, that Wong went unpromoted himself. Sylvia knew her own reports had been positive enough to contribute to his making the jump to a Commodore’s gold oak leaf, and who knew what would happen to Raven when the man became the Peacekeeper Initiative’s second flag officer.

  She checked through her messages. They were much what she expected. Rising Principle and their escorts and staff would be aboard Carpenter by morning First City time. Once the Cluster representative was ready to go, the entire delegation would get underway in a few hours.

  It would be five days to the Lon System. The scheduled date was a week away, though Sylvia expected the Kozun and Drifters to beat them there. Both the Kozun and the Drifters had slightly farther to go, but they’d known sooner than the Cluster had.

  That didn’t help her fear of a trap, but the UPSF seemed to have that well in hand.

  She smiled as she remembered the meeting. It was good to be back on Raven and it was good to see Henry Wong again. Hopefully, she’d have a chance to bend his ear in private after dinner.

  Having spent time among the Drifters again, she was curious what his impression of them was. She’d always been in Convoys negotiating with them, but he’d actually fought alongside Drifter officers and been in forces that had relied on the Drifters for logistics.

  The Drifter Convoys had been a critical component of Golden Lancelot, after all. The UPSF hadn’t had the logistics infrastructure to launch their assassination attacks on the Kenmorad across the entire space of the Kenmiri Empire—only the Convoys had made that possible.

  And now that she thought about it, she wondered if the UPA had warned the Drifters just what that operation entailed. It would have been…typical of how Golden Lancelot was conducted for the UPSF not to have told them.

  They hadn’t even told most of the officers involved what the full scope of the operation was, after all!

  Dinner only doubled down the feeling of coming home. By the time dessert was being cleared away, Sylvia was the closest to fully relaxed she would let herself become outside of her home in the Eridani System.

  “Officers and diplomats.” Henry Wong rose from the table, holding the only glass of wine she’d seen in his hand
all evening. “I give you the United Planets Alliance and peace among humanity!”

  “The UPA!”

  Sylvia took a sip of her own wine, concealing a smile behind her glass. The UPA hadn’t necessarily delivered on that promise as thoroughly as its founders had hoped, what with the war against the Kenmiri, but they’d come closer than many feared.

  It had been born out of the bloody three-way Unity War between the United States Colonial Administration, the Novaya Imperiya, and the hastily assembled United Nations Allied Fleets.

  Like Henry Wong, her ancestors had fought on one of the losing sides of that war. She’d dedicated her life to the organization born out of the defeat of the Novaya Imperiya, recognizing that only standing together made humanity strong.

  “I’ve received final confirmation,” Wong announced as the toast died down. “Rising Principle and their delegation will be aboard Carpenter in just over four hours. Glorious, Raven and Carpenter are all fully stocked and supplied.

  “We ship out in ten hours exactly. I suggest you all get what rest you can and double-check everything in your departments before we leave. There will be limited opportunities for repair or resupply once we’re underway.

  “The last thing we can afford is to appear weak in front of the Kozun,” he reminded everyone. “It is our promise to protect the La-Tar Cluster that has brought the Kozun to the negotiating table. While the negotiations will be in the capable hands of Ambassador Todorovich and Rising Principle”—he raised his glass toward Sylvia—“our part in this requires us to look capable and intimidating.

  “We will not give the Kozun a moment’s hesitation. From the moment we arrive until the moment they sign the peace treaty, we stand guard. We’re going there to end a war, people, but we will show no weakness. Understood?”

  There was a rumble of agreement, followed by a few minutes of companionable quiet before the first person—O’Flannagain, Sylvia noted—slipped out.

  Once the dam had been broken, the rest of the officers followed over the course of about five minutes. Leitz arched a questioning eyebrow at Sylvia as Iyotake left, leaving the two of them alone with Wong.

  “Go check over our people,” she told him. “I’m sure we have everything, but, as Captain Wong said, let’s be certain.”

  “Yes, Em Ambassador.”

  Leitz rose and bowed himself out of the dining room, leaving Sylvia alone with Captain Wong…and two barely touched glasses of wine.

  “Being careful, I see?” she asked, gesturing toward the wine.

  “I find that my nightmares are worse when I have too much alcohol,” he noted. “I’ll trade my fondness for wine and brandy for better sleep and more control.”

  She raised her own glass in silent salute.

  “Anything fascinating happen while I was gone?” she asked.

  “Beyond the Bicycle?” He shrugged. “The Kozun have been clever about keeping an eye on the Satra System, and it’s making the Cluster’s defenders twitchy. I can’t blame them.”

  “I didn’t think hiding a ship was something you could do.”

  “It apparently depends on how much ice you’re prepared to embed a small starship in,” Wong said. “They stuck a corvette in an ice meteor. It worked better than I would have expected, though…”

  He stared silently into his wine glass for a moment before sighing and swapping it for a glass of water.

  “Though?” Sylvia prodded.

  “That ice-coated corvette wasn’t in the right spot to account for all of the ghosts the La-Tar sentries saw,” he admitted. “She did enough damage to one of the La-Tar ships that we pulled back anyway and called it a win, but I have to wonder. We might have missed something.”

  “It sounds like that’s about all the Kozun could have done, though, isn’t it?” she asked. “I presume the sentries are looking for similar ships now?”

  “They are,” he confirmed. “I just have an itch on the back of my neck that says we missed something.”

  Sylvia chuckled.

  “I know that feeling,” she confessed. “The Drifters kept trying to say that we needed to give them grav-shield tech for whatever we wanted them to do. It was almost a joke by the end, but…I have to wonder how desperate they’re going to get. They’ll do a lot to keep their people safe.”

  “They will,” Henry agreed. “That’s why we’re worried about them. I don’t think I’ve ever met a Drifter who I didn’t like and respect, but…”

  He shook his head and drank more water.

  As he was thinking, Sylvia followed his example and swapped her wine for water.

  “I can’t blame the Drifters for being focused on their own people,” he finally said. “We did the same thing when the war ended. Everything the UPSF ever did was to protect our worlds. It took a lot of effort for us to get the Security Council to sign off on trying to do anything outside our borders.

  “But they were always more willing to embrace…expediency, let’s say, than I liked.” Henry was staring off into space, and Sylvia shivered. She couldn’t see what he was seeing, but she doubted it was pleasant.

  “Hey,” she said sharply. “Here and now, please, Captain Wong.”

  He shook himself and smiled wanly at her.

  “Apologies, Ambassador,” he said. “The war was not…pleasant. The Drifters enabled some of the less-pleasant aspects, even putting aside our own endeavors in Golden Lancelot.

  “They survived under the Kenmiri by providing enough value and being dangerous enough that they weren’t worth the effort to destroy,” he continued. “They were working with the Kenmiri to the very end—probably still are, in the Remnant. They didn’t help us for moral reasons, Ambassador.

  “They helped us because they thought they would be richer and safer without the Empire. I’m not certain what that looks like to them, but I can say this: if the Drifters think the UPA is a threat to that safety, especially, they will betray us.”

  “So, I need to convince them we aren’t a threat,” Sylvia concluded. “I wish that felt easier. They were very specific which ships they let us on and even where on those ships we went.”

  “That’s my experience as well,” he agreed. “Even when we were renting lab space from them and had a destroyer division helping the Protectors guard the Convoy, we were very limited in where we were allowed on the Convoy.”

  “You don’t trust them?” she asked.

  “I don’t trust many people at this point, Em Ambassador,” he admitted. “There are Drifters I would trust, officers I have fought alongside and who I think I can predict. But the Drifters as a society?”

  He shook his head.

  “Their goals are their own and they don’t talk about them,” he warned. “I can’t argue with what I know of their goals, but it could easily put them in conflict with us.”

  Sylvia nodded and sighed.

  “That’s fair.” She took a sip of her water and raised her glass in a faux toast to Henry. “But I believe you’ve forgotten something, Henry.”

  “Oh?” he asked.

  “I seem to recall telling you to call me Sylvia.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Any interstellar journey was made of alternating periods of boredom and minor discomfort, interrupted on a semi-regular basis by extreme discomfort as icosaspatial impulse generators kicked the human brain in sensitive parts.

  The flight between skip lines was generally the boring part. Glorious and Raven could both fully compensate half a KPS2, which made that the standard acceleration of the journey. At that acceleration, no one on any of the three ships felt any thrust at all.

  Skip drones accelerated faster enough that there was no problem with the robotic couriers catching up to the ships, allowing Henry to maintain a loose communication with La-Tar and Zion.

  He was keeping enough attention on that cycle to recognize when a drone appeared that was listed as from Zion and was completely off-schedule.

  “Commander Moon, I’ll review the feed from that
drone in my office,” he told the coms officer. “I expect an eyes-only message.”

  “Understood, ser.”

  “You have the con,” he concluded, rising from his chair and passing command authority to Moon. She knew the likely source of the drone as well as he did.

  On his way to his office, he pinged Todorovich through his internal network, letting her know to meet him there.

  The data download from the drone was locked behind the security seals he expected. It took him long enough to work through them that the ambassador was stepping into his office as he finished inputting the last security code.

  “We’re keeping things under lockdown,” he told her. “I need to brief Orosz and my senior staff on Yellow Bicycle sooner rather than later, but this is what I was waiting for.”

  A skip drone was capable of carrying dozens of petabytes of data. The ones Henry was sending back to Zion contained twelve hours of full telemetry from Raven’s scanners, for example. This one contained a single video file.

  “This was sent my-eyes-only,” he continued. “But there was a codicil including you once I was halfway through the security codes.”

  “I appreciate that someone thought to include me in the messages,” the Ambassador said.

  “Honestly, I was planning on including you anyway,” he admitted. “This is your mission as much or more than mine.”

  “I appreciate that as well,” Todorovich repeated with a small smile. “Shall we see what we’ve been sent?”

  Henry swallowed a breath that he hoped Todorovich didn’t notice and started the message. A holographic image of two men in UPSF uniform appeared above his desk, and Henry was glad for the breath.

  He hadn’t seen very many images of Commodore Peter Barrie in the four years since their divorce. It was still hard.

  Barrie looked…good. He was a tall man with pale blond hair, still muscular into his fifties, with warm brown eyes. The uniform fit him like he’d been born in it, and the gold oak leaf of his rank glittered in the lights of his own captain’s office.