“They might shoot first and feel bad later,” Sylvia said. “I’d like to borrow you and DesRon Twenty-Seven. That way, if we do get permission to hunt, we’ll have the hulls and ships on hand.
“Plus, your Cataphracts are nice and…awe-inspiring.”
“New, shiny and more advanced than anything they’ll have seen before,” Henry agreed. “You and I and a bunch of La-Tar diplomats? Why does this sound familiar?”
“Because we’ve done it before,” she told him. “Twice. I’m starting to feel like we’re imposing on the Cluster’s goodwill.”
“From what Casto Ran has told me, we’d need to do a lot more than borrow a few dozen diplomats to actually impose on that account,” Henry said. “They may have saved themselves in the end, but we did help. A little.”
“Hopefully, they’ll be willing to help us help everyone,” Sylvia said. “I’d very much like to end the damn war between the Kozun and the E-Two, Henry, and having coms with both sides is definitely the first step to that.”
“No,” he countered quietly, considering the situation with a sad smile. “The first step is talking to the E-Two without getting shot. Let’s go with your plan.”
“All right. If that decision is made…” She smiled brightly. “I believe I was promised a date, Commodore?”
“I do believe you were,” he agreed, letting her smile infect him. “Felix, do we have that vase yet?”
Chapter Thirteen
Their security teams were trying to be covert, but Henry had spent too long coordinating with GroundDiv protection details to miss the presence of the troopers around them. Their car was armored and protected, a slow beast that wound its way through the city unimpeded.
The car that preceded them didn’t look like it was unusual, but Henry recognized the special communications-and-sensor array in the back seat. There were two more—that he saw—in the traffic around them that were also part of their convoy.
Still, that was security being subtle, and they reached their destination without difficulty. The restaurant was tucked away in a warehouse district and had clearly once been concealed from Kenmiri oversight.
Now a large sign had been hung on the front of the building proclaiming it THE FIRST KITCHEN in Kem, and staff in long formal tunics were organizing a crowd of waiting guests. De Angelis pulled the car into a space that was waiting for them, and one of the uniformed staff was waiting to open the door.
“After you, Sylvia,” Henry told her with a smile.
“Em Todorovich, Em Wong, your table is ready,” the staffer told them in Kem as they stepped out into La-Tar City’s evening sun. “This way, please?”
Henry restrained himself from correcting the address—the long-tunicked Eerdish knew who he was, but tonight they were both theoretically civilians. Just lovers on a date.
A date that was currently keeping at least twenty security troopers busy. He shook his head at that and offered Sylvia his arm.
“What is it?” she murmured, stepping into his side.
“Just recognizing the sacrifices made to give us a relatively normal night,” he told her. “Better to realize it’s happening and appreciate it than take it for granted.”
“Agreed.”
Their guide led them past the waiting line and into the restaurant. Henry heard desultory complaints in at least four languages from the crowd—and while he didn’t hear the Kem part clearly or understand the other three tongues, he could guess at the content.
“Why do they get to go in?”
“Because they have a reservation,” the bouncers would reply, soothing ruffled feathers while still not giving a centimeter.
Inside, the First Kitchen looked like exactly what it was: a warehouse space that had been converted into a restaurant. Faced with the limitations of their space and the original need to hide operations from the Kenmiri, the renovators had leaned in to it.
The ceiling was at least six meters above them, with clear, exposed rafters. The tables were utilitarian, with seats that could be easily swapped out for species with different geometry. Light fixtures hung from the rafters above each table, providing islands of soft, brighter light in an overall dim illumination.
Henry didn’t get much of a look at the main floor of the restaurant, as their server led them toward a section at the back where multiple entire platforms, each presumably holding a table and a set of chairs, were elevated above the main floor for privacy and security.
Their guide tapped a command on a concealed wrist-mounted computer, and a stairway folded down from the most isolated platform. He then stepped aside and gestured for them to go up the stairs.
“This is your table, Em Todorovich, Em Wong,” he told them.
Sylvia led the way up the narrow stairs, with Henry two steps behind. Despite their being both collapsible and flimsy-looking, there was no sway to the stairs as they walked up.
There were only two chairs at their table, placed close enough together that they’d be able to touch hands. Dinnerware was already waiting on the table, placed on decorative hand-woven mats that offset the utilitarian white table perfectly.
The platform itself was surrounded by a short wall of one-way glass. They could look out over the entire restaurant, but no one could see them. Henry couldn’t stop himself glancing over the surrounding elevated tables to confirm his initial suspicion.
There were six elevated tables in total, the prestigious private spots in the most prestigious restaurant in the capital city of five star systems. Theirs was the highest, allowing him to get half a look into the others. Two were empty, and the “diners” in the other three were definitely GroundDiv security details dressed up in local clothes.
Henry chuckled and took his seat. So far, the only thing on the table to actually eat or drink was water, so he took a sip of that.
“The other private tables are our security?” Sylvia murmured.
“Got it,” he confirmed.
A dark-purple-haired Sana waitress appeared at the top of the steps a moment later, her tusks gleaming in the light. It took Henry a moment to realize that the young woman’s tusks had been capped with silver.
“Em Todorovich, Commodore Wong,” she greeted them in smoothly fluent Kem. “I am Lotansa, and I will be handling your meal and needs tonight.”
She produced a green glass bottle from behind her back and placed it on the table.
“We have sourced a bottle of Terran Merlot for you this evening,” she told them. “I have a listing of our other beverages if that is unsatisfactory?”
“No, that is fine,” Henry said after a glance at Sylvia. He suspected that the chefs at the First Kitchen had done everything they could to curate a complete experience for them—both he and Sylvia were important to the people of La-Tar.
Saving people from slavery tended to do that.
“We also have a set menu specifically created for the two of you,” Lotansa said a moment later, confirming Henry’s suspicion. “Our chefs have studied Terran cuisine and taste profiles and, ah, experimented on several of the officers from your embassy.”
“I will inform Lieutenant Colonel Thompson that his efforts are appreciated,” Sylvia said with a smirk. “We would be delighted to have the set menu, Em Lotansa. And the Merlot.”
She shared a glance with Henry.
“Who is paying for this?”
“Arrangements were already made with the Initiative Compound,” Lotansa told them. “My aunt, General Kansa, was barely too late in her attempt to cover the costs.”
“I see,” Sylvia said carefully.
“Everyone at the First Kitchen is determined to make this experience as perfect as we possibly can, Em Todorovich,” Lotansa told her. “If there is anything I or any member of the staff can do, you have only to ask.”
“I think we are going to be fine,” Henry said. “You appear to have a plan, Em Lotansa. Carry on.”
The young woman—apparently the niece of an officer Henry knew from another of the Clu
ster’s worlds—bowed and poured the wine before leaving down the stairs. The steps weren’t visible from where he was sitting, but he heard them retract to underneath the platform.
He toasted Sylvia.
“We appear to have made an impression, my love,” he told her in English.
“That we have,” she agreed, smiling as she clinked glasses with him and took a sip of the wine. “You know, most people hold off on that word.”
“Love?” Henry asked. He snorted. “It takes me a year to get to know someone enough to decide they’re attractive. I think I can justify rushing the first steps of the relationship.”
“I’m not complaining,” Sylvia said. “Just observing…my love.”
He smiled and took his own first sip of the wine. Then he paused, blinking at the bottle.
“This is terrible, isn’t it?” he whispered to his girlfriend.
“Oh, yes,” she agreed brightly. “I don’t know where they got it, but the bottle might be ten credits in a store on Procyon. Someone robbed the First Kitchen when they sold them this.”
Henry considered the bottle.
“Want to bet the food is matched to the taste of the wine?” he asked.
“No bet,” Sylvia told him. “On the other hand, that gives the Kitchen’s chefs a chance to redeem the wine.”
“And the wine a chance to destroy everything they make,” he observed. “I wasn’t expecting dinner to be quite so much of an adventure.”
“Henry, you took me to a restaurant on an alien planet with alien cooks. Dinner was always going to be an adventure.” Sylvia’s smile barely managed to soften her severe features, but it definitely managed to soften Henry’s heart.
“We’ll be fine.”
Chapter Fourteen
Sylvia Todorovich was feeling quite pleased with herself—and Henry Wong, for that matter—the following morning. It had been a very good night, even if she now had to face the realities of her actual job.
Arbiter Casto Ran ran the still-under-construction administration of the La-Tar Cluster from a newly built office building on the outskirts of La-Tar City, closer to the spaceport than anything else.
He met Sylvia and her Commodore in the main lobby, smiling broadly as their three security details met and intermeshed around them.
Ran was a tall Tak, an Ashall with pale red skin and white head tentacles instead of hair. He wore a plain black uniform with no insignia and bowed slightly as Sylvia approached.
“Ambassador Todorovich, Commodore Wong, it is always good to see you both,” the Cluster’s interim head of state greeted them in Kem.
“And to see you, Arbiter,” Sylvia replied. “I appreciate you making the time for us on such short notice.”
She’d freely left it to Leitz to organize the meeting while she and Wong had their date night. After being separated for a month, she was willing to lean on her subordinates to get her lover to herself.
“There are few people who have done as much for the Cluster as you two have,” Ran told them. “Come. I doubt this is purely a social visit.”
“Is Rising Principle here?” Henry asked. “This will involve your diplomats as much as anyone else.”
“They are on their way,” Ran said. “Their parent needed them for business of the planetary government this morning. They will join us shortly.
“Please, come.”
Casto Ran’s office was on the third floor from the top of the tower, putting him barely twenty stories above the ground. It wasn’t even a corner office, providing three interior walls that Ran’s people had covered with military-style displays allowing the Arbiter to track all of the reports about the Cluster he led.
Casto Ran had been a Vesheron not-quite-pirate during the era of the Empire. He’d ended up in the Skex System when the Empire had fallen and had put his three ships at the disposal of the local rebels as they took control of the industrial world.
They’d swiftly turned around and made him their leader. Everything that had followed suggested that had been one of the better ideas Henry had seen in his lifetime.
“Rising Principle will be a bit longer than I had hoped,” he admitted, stepping past his large-but-utilitarian desk to stand by the window. “I will continue to keep myself out of the current issues until they ask for my help.
“The Cluster government will not survive long if we start interfering and micromanaging.”
“But you know what is going on?” Sylvia asked, amused.
“Of course,” he agreed. “I cannot mediate their conflicts if I have to trust their information, can I?”
Sylvia’s impression was that Ran had friends and operatives layered throughout all five of the system governments of the Cluster. He was inevitably best informed about La-Tar, but she suspected only communication delays kept him less informed than the local governments on the other worlds.
“Have you guessed what we need?” she said. She figured Ran had more than enough information to put together the situation.
“I am not certain,” the Arbiter told them. “But the desire to include our diplomatic corps, such as it is, combined with the ongoing presence of Twelfth Fleet and the return of Commodore Wong’s squadron… There are clear signs, I believe.
“You have most likely determined that the Drifters have entered the stars claimed by the Eerdish-Enteni Alliance and would like to borrow Enteni and Eerdish diplomats to help smooth your way.
“Am I correct?”
“Yes,” Sylvia confirmed with a swift glance at Henry. “We suspect, given our alliance with the Kozun, that the Enteni and Eerdish may well regard us as potential hostiles. Entering their space without being extremely careful and diplomatic could easily result in a conflict none of us want.
“The assistance of diplomats from the La-Tar Cluster as both heralds and cultural advisors could smooth over troubled waters and clear the way for a joint approach to the threat.”
Ran nodded jerkily, turning to look out the window at the city around them.
“It is hard, as someone born on a factory world and who led a factory world, not to hold grudges against the homeworlds,” he said softly. “I understand, intellectually, that their seemingly privileged position was simply a more delicate form of slavery, with still-brutal controls and horrific costs.
“But they can at least breathe their own air. Build their own ships. No slave world could do both. The homeworlds possessed the industries and resources to survive even as the Kenmiri left the slave worlds to die.
“And the only homeworld ships we saw in the La-Tar Clusters were those of the Kozun, demanding submission,” he concluded. “Seven homeworlds in the Ra Sector, and none, it seems, reached out to help the worlds around them.”
“Your own species never had a chance to,” Sylvia reminded him. “The Kozun overran Tak before the subspace coms even failed. And the others looked to save their own people.”
Ran waved a red hand dismissively.
“You do not need to excuse the failings of the homeworlds or my own cousins to me, Ambassador Todorovich,” he told them. “I understand the burdens they faced. It is always too easy, as a leader, to look solely to those you are responsible for. They are your first duty, after all.
“And yet it is when we stand together that we achieve great things. Skex alone could not have liberated La-Tar from the Kozun. None of the Vesheron alone could have overthrown the Kenmiri.”
The silence that followed Ran’s words was broken by the door to his office opening again. A single figure stepped through, looking like nothing so much as a mobile black Venus flytrap. The massive, fanged maw was open, revealing the eyestalks inside that allowed Rising Principle to see them all.
“I apologize,” the Enteni told them. “The delay is-was greater than were our anticipations.”
“These things happen,” Sylvia said. “We were discussing our needs with Arbiter Ran.”
Rising Principle took a seat on the specialized stools designed for their people.
&n
bsp; “I am-will prepare to help,” they told the others.
“We need a diplomatic contingent from the Cluster to accompany us into Eerdish space, to assist in negotiations with the Eerdish-Enteni Alliance around the pursuit of the Blue Stripe Green Stripe Orange Stripe Convoy,” Sylvia laid out swiftly.
“This will provide both us and the La-Tar Cluster with an opportunity to establish long-term friendly relations with the Enteni and Eerdish homeworlds and hopefully clear the way for Twelfth Fleet to pursue the Drifters who betrayed us all.”
“There are no systems in the Ra Sector I would not be delighted to have mutual trade and communication with,” Arbiter Ran noted. “The more friends we make, the fewer wars our children may have to fight.”
“That is-was our duty, yes,” Rising Principle agreed. “The Enteni homeworld is-was quite some distance, the far side of the Eerdish world and the Makata Cluster. You can-will traverse to the Eerdish homeworld most easily of the worlds that is-are members of their alliance.
“Your problem is-will be that they will see you as Kozun infiltrators. Even with my-our diplomats, you risk conflict before any words are-can be exchanged.”
“That is a risk we cannot avoid,” Henry said grimly. “We can minimize it by heading directly to the Eerdish homeworld and transmitting on entry into each system. If we can make contact before the shooting starts, I would hope that between Ambassador Todorovich and your people, we can avoid a fight.”
“It is-was possible,” Rising Principle agreed. “I believe an Eerdish diplomat is-are your best choice. I have-has a recommendation.”
“We would be content with anyone you send with us,” Sylvia told them. “We would prefer a team, preferably with both Eerdish and Enteni members.”
She wasn’t expecting to get Rising Principle themselves. While they were theoretically a Standard of the Council of Supply that ran La-Tar itself, their main role was as the leader of the entire Cluster’s nascent diplomatic corps.
“Agree-agreed,” Rising Principle said. “We can-will send a team of twelve, including support and some security. The lead diplomat is-will be Yonca, but you know-knew her security chief and lover-partner, Trosh.”
Drifter's Folly (Peacekeepers of Sol Book 4) Page 9