by J. N. Chaney
“These planets are in our space!” Kira said.
“They are, yes,” Damien replied. “But the Danzur claim that we’ve got no actual presence on either of them. Their argument is about position. Since the planets are at the edge of our space, they can dispute our ownership of them. Smug, but effective as an argument, and not one that we’re prepared for. Not now, anyway.”
“Seized as compensation toward reparations,” Kira read aloud, then she tossed the data pad onto the table. “Reparations for what?”
“If you read on, you’ll see that they’re blaming the ON for—” He picked up the data pad, scrolled, then also read aloud. “For unreasonable blockage of trade with the Nyctus, particularly for krol-kazan, an essential component of a lucrative, value-added industry—blah, blah, blah.”
“In other words, we wiped out that Nyctus planet and it’s costing them commercially, so they’re pissed off about it,” Kira snapped.
“I think that about sums it up.”
Kira stood and paced. “That’s ridiculous. We’re at war with the Nyctus. Are we supposed to worry about—shit, about their trading and commercial relationships before attacking them?”
“Well, my answer to that would be of course not. But my answer doesn’t matter,” Damien said.
Kira stopped a few centimeters from a bulkhead, took a moment to reign in her anger, then turned back. “So what do we do about it?”
“I’d recommend sending a diplomatic missive to the Allied Stars Xeno-Affairs Department,” Damien replied. “Tell them our understanding of what happened and ask them not to go off half-cocked. Specifically, ask them not to do something stupid like confronting the Danzur militarily. I mean, those planets might be part of our strategic inventory, but we’re not using them at the moment and don’t have any plans to use them any time soon. Not that I’m aware of, anyway.”
“Wow.”
Damien blinked. “Wow?”
“Yeah. Wow. Can I ever tell that I’m a soldier and you’re a diplomat.”
Damien’s eyes narrowed, but he smiled. “Oh? And how’s that?”
“Because my gut reaction is screw ’em, let’s take those planets back and show these asshole aliens who’s boss.” Kira crossed her arms and smiled ruefully. “Your gut reaction, on the other hand, is to do the smart thing.”
Damien grinned. “Smart? Maybe. All I know is that it’s the best way for me to avoid getting drafted and finding myself hugging the dirt, fighting for control of some uninhabited hunk of rock.” He glanced at his fingernails. “My manicure would never last.”
Despite herself, Kira laughed out loud.
Kira glanced sidelong at Damien. “Okay, I’ve read this twice now and have no idea what it’s trying to say.”
Damien glanced at the door to the meeting room. Tadrup should be walking through it any minute to discuss these latest developments.
He turned back to Kira. “What part don’t you understand?”
“Uh, the part between the beginning and the end,” she said. “Why say marmalade when you can say jam?”
Damien just stared for a moment. “What?”
“Why say marmalade—what? Haven’t you ever heard that before?”
“I’d have remembered if I had,” Damien said. “To put it another way, what the hell are you talking about, and why not say jelly?”
“Okay, you’ve got a third path. Point for you, but my meaning is to keep the words simple when you can,” Kira said.
“You’ve clearly never been a diplomat. It’s like we get paid by the syllable when writing comms,” Damien said, smiling. The door behind him began to open, revealing Tadrup and another pair of Danzur functionaries. “Showtime,” Damien muttered.
Tadrup began snarling, hissing, and spitting. “Greetings, my friends,” was what came out of the translator. “I trust you have had an opportunity to review our latest proposal, version seven point seven point one. You will likely notice that it has changed substantially from version six point eight point five. We believe, given the inclusion of new material, that it warranted a complete version change.”
“You’re referring to the part you obviously added to justify seizing two Allied Stars planets,” Kira said, her tone blunt. She felt Damien glance at her, but she kept her gaze fixed on Tadrup.
It gave her no small satisfaction to see the Danzur taken aback. “You—” he began, then he leaned toward one of his functionaries and hissed something. The other Danzur nodded and left. Clearly, they’d caught the Danzur off guard. They probably thought word of the seizure of the border planets hadn’t arrived yet—and equally probably planned to use that information in the same way that it had just been used against them. One of the parties had been knocked off their game as expected. It just wasn’t the humans.
Damien capitalized on the aliens’ moment of discomfiture. “It’s somewhat disappointing, Tadrup, that you didn’t see fit to discuss the matter of your reduced trade with us before acting so precipitously. We’d be more than happy to add some form of enhanced Allied Stars trade with you to offset any losses resulting from our ongoing war with the Nyctus.”
Because there are going to be a lot more of those losses coming, Kira thought but didn’t say.
“My apologies,” Tadrup said, “but the Central Council wanted to avoid a direct confrontation with your military forces. They undertook this operation without informing anyone who wasn’t absolutely required to know, including me. Accordingly, I was only recently informed of this myself.”
“You wanted to avoid a military confrontation with us by invading our space and seizing our territory?” Kira said, but Damien cut her off.
“What Kira is saying, is that if we had had an opportunity to discuss this with you beforehand, no such move on your part would have been necessary. The risks of such a confrontation could have been avoided.”
“Does that risk still exist?” Tadrup asked.
“In such complex and evolving situations such as this, risk of unintended clashes between military forces is always a factor,” Damien said. “That’s why we seek to avoid them.”
Kira looked down at her data pad and pretended to read it, while Damien and Tadrup continued their intricate diplomatic sparring. Satisfied that Tadrup’s attention was safely off her, she drew a small amount of magical potential from the surrounding ether, then channeled it through her mind like conduits guiding electrical power, using them to establish a psychic link between her and Tadrup. She worked carefully, only slowly increasing her presence on the fringes of the Danzur’s mind. This wasn’t the first time she’d reached out and touched the aliens’ thoughts, but this was the first time it was in earnest, and not just an experiment to make sure she could even do it in the first place.
The babble of Tadrup’s thoughts rose like the murmur of an unseen crowd. Even more than those of humans, Danzur minds hummed with both conscious and unconscious activity on multiple levels. Kira couldn’t comprehend how a Danzur could get through their day, or even make sense of the world around them. They lived with such a clamor of thoughts, feelings, considerations, understandings, biases, and just general mental babble. But what Kira found a confusing slurry of psychic noise was just the way things worked for the Danzur. It meant Kira had to wallow in the onslaught of mental images and impressions, struggling to make sense of it all. She needed to find his current thoughts, which would revolve around the seized planets, and should therefore be prominent, at the forefront of his mind—
Thorn Stellers.
Kira reeled back. Of all the things she’d expected to find in Tadrup’s mind, Thorn’s identity had definitely not been one of them.
She pulled back her thoughts before she ended up betraying herself, then just sat for a moment, mind racing. Why the hell was Tadrup thinking about Thorn? Why was he so prominent in Tadrup’s mind? Had she let something slip about him? But, no. One thing she’d been meticulously careful about had been not mentioning anything about the ON, including its organization, dep
loyments, ships, and personnel—especially Starcasters, Thorn foremost among them. Not only would it be an egregious violation of operational security—OPSEC—it risked giving the Danzur additional leverage against them.
The Danzur knew about Thorn, of course. He’d been part of the group that had made first contact with them. Tadrup himself hadn’t actually met Thorn when he’d been here, she knew, but he figured prominently in the Danzur’s thoughts. Far more so than simply knowing of him would explain.
Kira needed to talk to Damien, now. She could think of only one way that wouldn’t arouse undue suspicion among the Danzur. Once more, she gathered power and focused it on the Venture, which was docked only a hundred or so meters away from where she sat. She immediately touched the mind of one of her crew and grabbed the man’s thoughts, then she shaped them into something else, a new imperative.
Damien turned to Kira. “What do you think? Is there any way we can—”
“Excuse me, ma’am,” a voice cut in over their comm. “A message has just arrived for you and Mister Forester. It’s marked priority alpha.”
Kira felt Damien look at her, but she just tapped her comm. “We’re on our way.” She turned to Tadrup. “My apologies, but priority alpha means—”
“That we must recess so you can attend to this,” Tadrup said. “Yes, I quite understand. Let us convene again in one hour.”
“Thank you,” Kira said, then she headed for the Venture, Damien at her side.
“I wonder what the hell this is about,” Damien said, his voice pitched low. “Hopefully, it’s not that shots were fired. I mean, we’re guaranteed diplomatic immunity per our initial agreement with the Danzur, but you never know with aliens.”
Kira narrowed her eyes but said nothing until they were safely aboard the Venture. Even then, she took a moment to fling a veil of magical denial around the ship. This was a specialized sort of Shade, isolating the ship not just from electronic and other mundane intrusions, but psychic ones, too. Not that the Danzur seemed to have any ability to use magic.
But maybe they did and just kept it well-hidden, and that’s how they’d learned about Thorn.
“Okay,” Damien said to the Rating who’d called them. “Where’s this urgent message?”
The man just stared. “I don’t know, sir.”
“You—what?”
“I don’t know. There isn’t one, as far as I know.”
Damien stiffened. “Then why did you—?”
“That was me,” Kira said as her Shade effect firmed up. She had to keep a glimmer of her attention on it to maintain it, but not enough to be a problem. In fact, she thought, she’d better get used to having to do this if the Danzur could somehow access their thoughts.
Damien turned to her. “You?”
“Yes.” She turned to the Rating. “And I’m really sorry. I made you call us up. I needed to get us out of there.”
“You . . . made me do it, ma’am?”
“Yes, I did. It’s not something I’d ever do unless it was really urgent.”
The Rating curled his lip. “Huh. Kinda wondered why I was telling you about a message that didn’t exist.” Kira waited for him to be outraged, but he just shrugged. “Hey, if you can do that, ma’am, there’s this Petty Officer back at Code Gauntlet that owes me some money but doesn’t pay up.”
“Hardly an interstellar emergency,” she said.
“But whatever this is about is?” Damien asked.
Kira nodded. “Tadrup was thinking about Thorn Stellers.”
“Thorn Stellers—you mean, the Starcaster?”
Kira nodded.
Damien gave her a blank look. “Okay. What was the context?”
“I don’t really know,” Kira said. “Danzur minds are basically alien, so they’re not easy to understand. All I really got was Thorn’s identity and some sort of connection to this trade dispute.”
“He was involved in first contact with the Danzur,” Damien said, “so it’s probably not surprising.”
Kira shook her head. “It’s more than that. He figures prominently in Tadrup’s mind, and it’s not just some sort of historical interest. He’s important to Tadrup now.” She stared for a moment, thinking. “Someone must have revealed something about Thorn to him.”
“Well, I only know Stellers by reputation, and even then, not in any sort of diplomatic context.” Damien glanced at the Rating. “Maybe one of the Venture’s crew?”
The Rating held up his hands. “Wasn’t me, sir or ma’am. I’ve exchanged maybe a dozen words with these Danzur the whole time we’ve been here.”
Kira nodded. “This isn’t the Venture’s first run around the planet doing this sort of diplomatic thing. I’d be surprised if any of her crew let anything slip.” She sighed. “It’s not like this is a hard science, but Tadrup’s thoughts just didn’t have that sort of feel to them, that one of us had said something out of turn. There likely would have been some sense of one of us attached to Tadrup’s thoughts. If he’d heard it from me, for instance, there’d be something of me associated with it. That’s especially true if I’m sitting right in front of him.”
“Unless Tadrup was just told about Stellers by another Danzur, right?”
Kira shook her head. “This isn’t like chemistry—put this together with that and get this third thing every time. So I can’t say that’s not the case, no. Hell, for that matter, I can’t say for sure if the Danzur might actually have some type of magical or psychic power that we just don’t know about.” She paused, considering that, but finally shook her head. “But I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s it. I think Tadrup got information about Thorn from someone else.”
“A spy, maybe? Somewhere in the ON?” Damien asked.
“How about the Nyctus?” the Rating said, and they both turned to look at him. He immediately looked sheepish.
“Oh, uh . . . sorry, ma’am, sir. Guess I was just thinking out loud.”
“It’s a good thought, Rating,” Kira replied. “Actually, a very good one. The Nyctus know all about Thorn. He’s probably at the top of their hit list, in fact.”
“The implication of that is pretty disturbing,” Damien said.
Kira nodded. “Yeah. It means that there are ongoing relations between the Danzur and the Nyctus—and that Thorn somehow sits in the middle of them.”
Damien nodded across the table at Tadrup. “I think this is acceptable. We’ll stipulate to bullet points one through six, and eight through fourteen. I think we need to do a little more work on seven, and fifteen through eighteen.” He smiled. “But it’s the closest we’ve ever been to agreeing on what we’re going to discuss.”
“Perhaps,” Tadrup replied.
“Perhaps?”
“The situation is constantly evolving,” the Danzur said. “We should still consider these provisional.”
Damien leaned back. Kira leaned forward. They’d anticipated this in the wake of their conversation aboard the Venture about Thorn. The Danzur were either playing them and the Nyctus against one another, or worse, they were in league with the Nyctus and were just stringing them along.
So, it was time to hit back.
“Does this evolving situation involve Thorn Stellers?” Kira asked, her voice mild.
Tadrup’s mouth opened and closed. “I . . . am not sure what you mean. Who?”
“Tadrup, please,” Kira said. “Let’s not waste one another’s time. We’ve received information that you’re interested in Thorn Stellers, and we have a pretty good idea why.”
Okay, that last part about the why was a lie. But it had been Damien’s suggestion to include it. You could often get complete information about something out of someone if you could convince them somehow that you already knew part of it. It made perfect sense and underscored why Damien was here—he was really, really good at this diplomatic stuff.
Tadrup just sat for a moment. One of his underlings leaned in to whisper, but he waved the other Danzur off.
“Very w
ell, then. Thorn Stellers represents a problem. He was responsible for the destruction of our trade in krol with the Nyctus. It is for his actions that we are seeking reparations.”
“The Nyctus are our enemies,” Kira said. “We’re at war with them. We’ve got no choice but to take every opportunity to attack and defeat them.”
“We accept that as true,” Tadrup said, “but also as irrelevant. Your conflict is of no concern to us. The effects of it, however, are.”
Kira glanced at Damien. She couldn’t help the sinking feeling that these negotiations had just slammed into a wall of stubbornness, and maybe even duplicity, and that the whole mission was about to fail.
Which would be a disaster. The ON would be hard-pressed to fight on two fronts.
“There is, however, a relatively easy way of resolving this matter,” Tadrup went on, suddenly looking and sounding a little more controlled.
“What would that be?” Damien asked.
“Allow us to take Thorn Stellers into custody. We will consider that sufficient reparation. At that point, we will withdraw from the disputed space and conclude a treaty with you that specifies respect for territorial boundaries, non-aggression, and the basis for a full trade agreement.” Even for a Danzur, he looked smug.
It took Kira a few seconds to realize that Tadrup had actually just said that. When she spoke, there was no outrage, just disbelief.
“Take Thorn into—what? Why?”
Tadrup’s dark eyes gleamed back at Kira.
“Why, to hand him over to the Nyctus, of course.”
13
Morgan once more drifted directly beneath the ice, but upside down this time, her small feet pressed against the rough, frigid ice that hemmed her world. She wanted to feel the ice, to know it—and the sensation was something new. It wasn’t pain, not yet, but she liked the way the ice stretched away as she hung there in the dark and quiet of her watery home.
