Raven's Course (Peacekeepers of Sol Book 3)

by Glynn Stewart

  “Captain Wong, this is Star Voice Kalad of the Kozun Hierarchy,” his old friend told him in Kem. She was speaking slowly, as if she knew he’d be taking the time to study her face and be certain it was her.

  Like any Kozun, Kalad looked human enough up to about the level of her eyes. Instead of eyebrows, however, the Kozun had plates of bony armor that rose up from what would be eyebrows on another Ashall and angled back across the front half of their skull.

  Kalad herself had close-cropped auburn hair on the back half of her head and burning crimson eyes that were leveled calmly on the camera. Despite her apparent calm, though, Henry Wong had long since learned to read the microexpressions shared by all Ashall.

  They couldn’t necessarily be attached to specific emotions, but he could identify if an Ashall was feeling positive or negative—and the longer he’d known someone, the better he could read them.

  Kalad was as relieved to be speaking to him as he was to see her. When they’d last spoken, she had inherited command of a Kozun battle group after he’d destroyed their flagship and sent them running. She had taken responsibility for ordering the retreat and had clearly expected to be punished for it.

  Instead, she appeared to have been promoted. She’d been a Star Lance—equivalent to his own Colonel—then. Now she was a Star Voice, equivalent to a UPSF Commodore.

  Mal Dakis, it appeared, was perhaps not as lost to reason as even his own people feared.

  He realized he’d completely lost track of Kalad’s message and reset it to the end of her introduction.

  “I am in command of the escort of the Third Voice of the Kozun, Oran Aval,” she told him. “In the interest of preserving Her Holiness’s safety as well as the security of my command, I agree with your suggestion.

  “We will maintain position at the Sodulis skip line until the Drifter contingent arrives. In the absence of treachery on the part of the La-Tar Cluster, I can assure you of the safety of your ships.

  “By the word of the Voices of our Gods, we are here to make peace. Not wage war.”

  She bowed her head and the message ended.

  Receiving the message in his internal network meant that his moment of shock had been almost entirely inside his head. Moon had clearly realized that was a possibility as soon as she’d IDed the Kozun officer, and made sure to give him the chance to internalize it before the crew saw it.

  If his reviews hadn’t already been glowing enough to guarantee Moon’s next promotion, he’d have had to edit them after that!

  “Thank you, Commander Moon,” he said quietly, then straightened. “All right, everyone,” he continued sharply. “Our old friend Star Voice Kalad is in command of the escort over there and has agreed to hold positions until the Drifters arrive.

  “Now, I trust Kalad, but we still can’t assume that she’s not under orders to lie to us,” he continued. “We’ll keep a very close eye on our Kozun friends the whole time we’re here.

  “For now, though, we wait. The Drifters should be here soon enough.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Captain Wong to the bridge, Captain Wong to the bridge.”

  Years of practice made waking up instantly an old habit for Henry. There was a moment’s more delay than usual this time, as he had been having surprisingly pleasant dreams. Given his normal range of nightmares, even somewhat-awkward dreams about his civilian counterpart were a welcome change.

  “What is it?” he asked over his network as he grabbed his uniform and began dressing.

  “New contacts,” Iyotake told him. The XO was on the bridge, holding down the night watch. “We have three very large contacts on the line we’re expecting the Drifters along. It looks like things might finally be getting underway.”

  “Understood.” Henry replied. “I’ll be there in two minutes.”

  Practice meant he was overstating that by thirty seconds, but it still gave him plenty of time to straighten the uniform—it was self-pressing and almost impossible to wrinkle, which helped—and quickly run a comb through his hair and a depilator over his face.

  He emerged onto the bridge perfectly turned out and looking entirely calm. Iyotake rose from the central seat as Henry approached, gesturing his captain over.

  “Report,” Henry ordered.

  “Three contacts, as I said,” the XO told him. “Engine signatures suggest eight to ten million tons apiece.”

  Henry nodded his understanding—and ignored the choked whistle of one of the junior tactical officers as they confirmed that number.

  “I see we got Blue Stripe Green Stripe Orange Stripe’s best,” he observed. Kenmiri dreadnoughts ran up to ten million tons, but he’d never seen anything except the smaller six- to seven-megaton units in Vesheron hands.

  The Drifters assembled Guardians at both scales, but he doubted Blue Stripe Green Stripe Orange Stripe had more than a handful of ten-million-ton warships.

  On the other hand, the Kenmiri wouldn’t send three unescorted dreadnoughts anywhere. If a Kenmiri Remnant force had decided to crash this party, those three dreadnoughts would have brought at least thirty smaller ships with them.

  “Do we have any communication from them yet?” he asked.

  “Not even identity beacons,” Iyotake said. “They’ve been in-system for ten minutes plus lightspeed delay. They have to know we and the Kozun are here.”

  “And that we’re both a dozen light-minutes or more away from them,” Henry said. “They’ve got the time to sort out what they want to do.”

  “True enough. What do we do?” his XO asked.

  “We wait for them to hail us—and then we turn the whole situation over to Todorovich and Rising Principle. This is only our show for a few more hours, XO.”

  It took over an hour for the Drifters to finally contact Henry’s flotilla. He had to suspect they’d talked to the Kozun first, but he had no way of proving that and he wasn’t sure it would matter.

  The figure that appeared on Henry’s screens was shrouded in the same robes as every Drifter he’d ever encountered. They wore a Face Mask in reds and blue, and a doubled length of silver chain hung around their shoulders and held a steel shield in the center of their chest.

  “Captain Wong, Ambassador Todorovich, Ambassador Rising Principle,” they greeted everyone in Kem. “I am Protector-Legate Half-Blue-Third-Red. I am tasked to act as the neutral guarantor of the peace negotiations between the La-Tar Cluster and the Kozun Hierarchy.

  “My ships are en route to a specific set of coordinates well away from the skip lines and local debris, to make certain of our security from unexpected surprises,” Half-Blue-Third-Red told them. “Those coordinates will be attached to this message.

  “I expect all of your vessels and the Kozun vessels to rendezvous there in twenty-four hours, at the exact time agreed to in the prior arrangements. Where things proceed from there, I leave to your delegations, but I will maintain security of that zone and neutralize any force that threatens the peaceful completion of these negotiations—whether that force is external or internal to those negotiations.”

  The mask twitched slightly.

  “I do not guarantee success; that is up to you. I merely guarantee that no outside force will prevent you and the Kozun completing your discussions, however they end.”

  The message ended and Henry silently studied the image.

  “Did we get those coordinates, Moon?” he asked the coms officer.

  “Yes, ser,” she confirmed.

  “Forward them to Bazzoli and the other ships,” he ordered. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  He pinged Todorovich via his internal network as Raven’s engines came online.

  “The Drifters are here,” he told her. “They’ve set the coordinates for the meeting, and everyone is headed there. We’re all expected to be there in twenty-four hours, so that’s how long we have to sort out the plan.”

  “Anything of concern yet?” she asked.

  “Everybody showed up with a heavie
r force than I was expecting,” he admitted. “I expected one Kozun cruiser and three smaller Guardians, not three cruisers and three of the larger Guardians I’ve seen.

  “There’s a lot more firepower in this system than I was expecting, and it’s making the back of my neck itch.”

  “Is it enough to risk the backup plan?”

  “No,” he conceded. “Everyone is saying and doing the right things so far. Do you think you’ll get everyone on board with meeting on Carpenter?”

  “That everyone has brought capital ships might actually make that easier,” Todorovich told him. “Carpenter might be the least threatening starship here!”

  “There’s no ‘might’ to that,” Henry admitted. “Everything else here has shields of some kind, if nothing else. That makes her look quite fragile right now.”

  “We’ll be fine, Henry,” she said. “Fragile is to our advantage, especially once we’ve got the Third Voice of the Kozun aboard.”

  He could feel the surprise in her tone through the network.

  “You’re surprised they actually sent a Voice?” he asked.

  “I’m not entirely sure how the ranking of the Voices breaks down, but yes,” she admitted. “Is the Third the third-most powerful? That’s what I would guess, but from what we know, any of them would be a commitment here.

  “They’ve sent someone who can actually bind the Hierarchy. That’s as positive a sign as I can get for them actually wanting peace.”

  Henry nodded, biting back his follow-up. He really didn’t want to put Sylvia Todorovich on the most fragile starship in the system…but he had no real reason he could give for that other than not wanting to risk her.

  And that wasn’t something the commander of her escort could permit to get in the way of her job.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sylvia made one last check around her office on Raven. To her eyes, it was horrendously overdone, but every single piece of decoration served a specific purpose. The commissioning seal of the battlecruiser, a side view of a bird in flight with a quill pen, was inlaid on the wall behind her in gold.

  Flanking that seal on either side was the eight-star half-circle-on-blue flag of the United Planets Alliance. The flags were stiffened with wire, just enough to keep the symbol fully visible.

  The big faux-wooden desk with its built-in screens, holographic projectors and haptic interfaces was actually Henry Wong’s spare, currently using those screens to show another copy of the raven-with-quill symbol.

  “We’re ready, Em Ambassador,” Leitz told her from the door. “Are you?”

  “Everything is in place,” she confirmed, checking her own stiff suit carefully in a holographic mirror. “I’m good.”

  She took her seat behind the desk and leveled her best sharp look on the recorder.

  “Voice Oran Aval, I am Ambassador Sylvia Todorovich,” she introduced herself in Kem. “I am here in the Lon System to assist Ambassador Rising Principle in the negotiation of a peace treaty between the La-Tar Cluster and the Kozun Hierarchy.”

  The time delay was down to about five minutes, but she was still sending this as a prerecorded message. Five-minute gaps in the conversation did not lend themselves well to remaining professional.

  “While I understand that you do not regard the United Planets Alliance as entirely neutral in this matter, I stand sufficiently outside the involved parties to act as somewhat of a third party,” she continued. “As such, I feel I am best suited to establish the fundamental final details of our negotiations.

  “The primary piece still outstanding, I believe, is the physical location of the talks. The Drifters are only acting as guarantors of our physical security. Their own rules and regulations will prevent them from hosting the discussions that we need to have.

  “Equally, I hesitate to put myself or Ambassador Rising Principle in your hands aboard a Kozun capital ship,” she continued. “While I, of course, would prefer to carry on these discussions aboard Raven, I recognize that would be unacceptable to you.

  “Given the vessels available to everyone present, I would like to suggest that we meet aboard Carpenter, for two reasons: firstly, Carpenter is the least heavily armed and defended vessel here. She is a former Kenmiri escort, lacking energy shields or heavy plasma cannons. We all know the type, and despite being a formidable vessel, she is the most vulnerable of our options.

  “That creates a shared vulnerability that I believe is the best option available to us,” she told the Voice.

  “Secondly, however, all of this began with the Kozun invasion of the La-Tar Cluster,” Sylvia noted coldly. “It seems appropriate to me that this conflict end on a vessel belonging to the people of the La-Tar Cluster.

  “While we are certainly prepared to consider other suggestions, I believe that meeting aboard Carpenter is our best choice.

  “I await your response, Voice Oran Aval.”

  She cut off the recording and relaxed slightly in the chair.

  “Felix?” she asked.

  “Said everything we need to say,” he confirmed. “You look intimidating as hell.”

  “That’s not hard when aboard Raven,” Sylvia said. “And the Voice isn’t going to have much difficulty feeling intimidating when she’s sitting on Star Voice Kalad’s flagship. That’s part of why I want to have the talks on Carpenter. That gives Rising Principle an advantage, one they can use.”

  “And we don’t necessarily need that advantage, Em Ambassador?”

  “The Kozun know damn well that if they actually push the UPA too far, we have the power to end them,” Sylvia said quietly. “I think that’s more than enough weight in my corner, don’t you?”

  “Fair,” Felix conceded. He stared vaguely off into space for a few moments, the sign of someone accessing their internal network. “I’m no Forces officer, but those look like big ships to me. Is that what we were expecting?”

  “No,” she said. “That’s sixty percent of what we thought their capital-ship strength was.” She brought up the image of the three cruisers in her own internal network.

  “IntelDiv estimated they would have been able to build five of those ships, and Wong blew one of them apart at La-Tar,” she continued. “So, they believe that the Hierarchy has one dreadnought and four cruisers. If there’s three cruisers here, then…”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t know enough to judge the validity of IntelDiv’s estimates,” she admitted. “Nor do I know the Kozun as well as Captain Wong. I could see them sending half of their cruisers here, to make an impression, but even that would mean IntelDiv was badly off on their estimates.”

  And if they were off on the estimate of how many heavy warships the Hierarchy had, even the assumption that the UPA could take the Kozun out began to be suspect.

  “That’s…concerning,” her chief of staff murmured, clearly following her line of thought.

  Any further discussion was interrupted by a ping from Lieutenant Commander Moon. The Kozun had replied. With a mental command, Sylvia wiped away her view of the tactical situation and put the Voice of the Kozun’s message on the holoprojectors.

  Like Sylvia’s own office, Voice Oran Aval’s surroundings were very clearly carefully constructed. While Kozun warships almost always had chapels of some kind aboard, she doubted they carried thrones delicately carved with religious iconography.

  The white-stone seat was probably eight feet tall, with an immense back rising well above the slim figure of the Third Voice of the Kozun. Sylvia wasn’t familiar with the script or the imagery of the artwork carved into the seat, but she suspected the throne predated the Kenmiri occupation of the Kozun homeworld.

  It was probably designed for this exact purpose, but it still represented a religious and cultural artifact of unquestionable value. The tapestries hung to either side of the throne were easier for Sylvia to read, with scenes of what would have been saints and miracles for a Catholic Christian on Earth.

  Combined, the Third Voice had clearly
assembled a miniature religious throne room aboard the ship carrying her, a temple as much to her power and authority as to the Kozun gods.

  “I am Oran Aval, Third Voice of the Kozun,” the Kozun woman introduced herself, her voice surprisingly soft and delicate. She was a frail-looking woman, though some of that could have been the background, with pale blond hair pinned up into a hairstyle that partially covered her forehead armor plating. What was visible of the armor plates was covered in a mesh net of gold chain set with sapphires that matched the Voice’s eyes.

  “We speak for the gods,” Aval continued. “And after them, we speak for the people of the Kozun Hierarchy. We reject, Ambassador Todorovich, your description of our actions in the La-Tar Cluster. You misunderstand the holy duty of the warriors sent to the Cluster. We did not invade anywhere…but that is a discussion for a later time.

  “Your suggestion of holding those discussions aboard the escort Carpenter is acceptable to us,” she finished. “We will be accompanied by an escort of sixteen sacred guardians, Paladins of the Seven.

  “They will be permitted their arms and armor. If we are to step aboard one of your vessels, this is nonnegotiable.” A hand waved delicately through the air and Sylvia focused on the fingers for a moment.

  Delicate Oran Aval might appear, but her hands were callused and scarred. She had not only worked with her hands in the past, but some of those scars were familiar to Sylvia: they were a distinct pattern that resulted from repeated use of portable energy weapons.

  Even the best shielding, after all, didn’t entirely keep the heat from the hands of the wielder.

  “I and my Paladins will arrive aboard Carpenter thirty-seven minutes after we reach the rendezvous,” Aval concluded. “We will speak further then, Ambassador Sylvia Todorovich.”

  The message ended and Sylvia snorted.

  “I see that we aren’t going to be given a choice in how Her Holiness comes to us,” she said aloud. “Fortunately, her assumptions are well within what Rising Principle and I discussed. We’re fine.”