by Tom Shepherd
“Maybe Mr. Blue can help with the cultural interface. He’s sailed on Dengathi ships before,” Tyler said. “Where’s your husband?”
“Having a nooner with Yumiko,” Lovey said matter-of-factly. “I believe they plan to take Second Lunch together, after he’s brought her to at least three—”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Back to the flying lessons, please.”
Tyler still hadn’t acclimated to the changes brought by a married threesome under his command. He recognized it was none of his business, and he liked all three—Mr. Blue, his First Wife Yumiko Matsuda, even the sometimes abrasive Lovey Frost, a.k.a., Second Wife. And considering his sexual history, Tyler scarcely commanded the moral high ground on the subject. But that was before Suzie.
Arrupt had spent two weeks teaching the new, human crew what each blinking mini-panel controlled and how those functions shifted, all indicated by color changes. Tyler expected no miracles, but it would be nice to know his people could operate this rattletrap pirate scow without crashing into a moon or inadvertently sending a distress call to other Dengathi spacecraft in the Gate region.
They acquired the vessel the old fashioned way; his mother confiscated it from the bad guys at the Battle of the Alpha Gate. In one engagement M-double-I and Quirt-Thymean forces had destroyed over a thousand pirate starcraft and seized an equal number when the enemy fleet—locked out of an FTL escape by Quirt technology—surrendered en masse.
Arrupt was unfortunate enough to be an able-bodied sailor and backup navigator aboard the Howling Tadpole, one of the vessels caught in the net cast by Admiral Bianca Matthews. He was convicted of piracy and sentenced to die when Tyler appeared at Burl Cain with his passport to freedom. All he had to do was teach them how to fly this Dengathi rust bucket, then find a Jump Gate that was designed to scoot away and hide over a million years ago.
Tyler keyed his datacom to contact the engineering deck. “Paco, how are you and Dorla doing down there?”
“We’re figuring this out, one panel at a time,” Chief Léon said. “Thank you, Suzie, for switching the digital readouts to Terran Standard.”
“Bob’s your uncle,” she replied from inside the MLC.
“No, his name is Alejandro,” Paco said.
“Sorry, luv. Brit-speak. It means Cheers! or All good.”
Her fiancé tapped his comm link. “Quit confusing the crew. That’s my job. Status report?”
“It’s bloody crowded in here, Tyler. I had to budge up to avoid overflow from the Memory Core. The Frogs have a blinding array of useless information, like a metric ton of cookbooks, each with thousands of pages, about how to prepare insects. Starting with live insects. I am praying my bioenergetic filters delete that data when I go external. Speaking of which, may I pleeease go external now?”
“Join me on the bridge.”
She materialized beside him, opposite Arrupt. Suzie twittered and croaked in Regalik. He cackled and bobbed his stubby head.
Tyler frowned. “What did you—?”
“You don’t want to know. Trust me, Ty.”
“Take the communications post.”
“Are we done for the day?” Lovey said.
He nodded. “I think that’s enough. Let’s go home.”
Arrupt chirped and twittered. “Dirt Monkeys no got stamina. No wonder can’t hold breath under pond.”
The command chair could not rotate, so Tyler turned in his seat. “And you have no joy about quitting time, my froggy friend.”
Lovey Frost set course for the CC Wollongong, six light years Spinward of today’s training site. She punched a purple square on the helm and the screens did their star dance as the Howling Tadpole jumped into the swirling rainbow of the Cumberland tunnel.
“ETA to base ship, Lieutenant Frost?”
“Forty-three minutes, Boss-man.”
“More work to do,” Arrupt grumbled. “Crew not ready.”
“Mr. Arrupt, we stop at quitting time. It’s five o’clock in Kansas City, Missouri. It’s time for a cold Harry Truman and a slab of smoky, juicy ribs doused with KC Masterpiece.”
“Got no bug pie? Arrupt need good bug pie, wrapped in porla leaves, stuffed with larvae. Also mud worms good.”
“Raw?”
“You not like fresh food?”
“Yes, sir,” Tyler said. “But I don’t eat anything that, given a little competent veterinary care, might live.”
Suzie and Lovey laughed. Mr. Arrupt managed a Frog smile. “You no so bad for Dirt Monkey.”
Ten
The conference to draw up a peace accord between M-double-I and Tsuchiya Galactic began with an armed truce inside the centuries-old Hall of Negotiations, which rose like a basilica less than a mile from the Jewish Wailing Wall and the Muslim Dome of the Rock mosque.
Tyler Noah Matthews III squared his shoulders and sat at the long, polished stone table across from Haruto Tsuchiya, eldest son of the self-appointed Shōgun who would be Emperor. Surprisingly, the old snake was not in the room. Noah was certain Tsuchiya still consumed the illicit Zyn-Vorkan, healing and life-extending elixir, so he expected a healed and whole Hideki Tsuchiya to present himself at this summit conference.
Haruto’s presence suggested that Rodney had nearly killed the senior Tsuchiya, because his eldest son rarely left New Osaka, where he ran Sakura House as Chief Operations Officer. Haruto was strongly built, with his father’s expressionless dark eyes. He tied his intensely black hair in a traditional samurai top knot, and he wore the same gray kimono and long haori jacket as his father usually did, with the emblem of Sakura House —black, five-leafed cherry blossom flower—embroidered over his left breast. Noah knew he was about sixty years old, but he looked forty-ish.
No one in the room carried weapons of any kind.
Senator Xavier Solorio, Noah’s brother in law, sat in the space to his right. Xavier had assured him these proceedings were sacrosanct and no harm would come to anyone on either negotiating team.
Right. Regardless of the safety zone provided by the Terran Commonwealth at its Jerusalem Capital, Noah posted M-double-I guards with stun blasters in the corridor, closely supervised by armed Terran Marshals. Haruto Tsuchiya had done the same. Both sides were allowed four unarmed security personnel into the actual conference room.
Noah tactfully omitted the real reason for a show of force. His wife, Admiral Bianca Matthews, paced the lobby on the ground floor. and she believed the pendejo who tried to kill her family waited for the peace conference to begin sixteen levels above her.
He knew her well enough to take precautions. Noah contemplated the possibility she might kill all the guards—Tsuchiya’s thugs, the Commonwealth Marshalls, and his own protectors—and breach internal security looking for Hideki Tsuchiya. She would find Hideki absent, but might still strangle his son Haruto with her bare hands.
So, Matthews instructed his people to watch for Bianca, and if she showed her face in the corridor they were authorized to stun the mother of his children and slap shackles on her unconscious form.
Noah wanted Dennis present to represent him, but his youngest brother was double-disqualified. Dennis Matthews was a Commonwealth bureaucrat assigned to Alien Affairs and biased in the dispute by blood relation. Ordinarily, Noah would’ve scoffed at that objection. Dennis always summoned a disturbing level of objectivity when facing a crisis, even if loved ones were involved.
This time, Little Brother the diplomat had contacted Noah and vowed to personally shoot Tsuchiya if he saw the bastard on the capital grounds. Noah talked him down, with thanks for the sentiment, and said his brother’s work was too important to throw his career away. It was a lie, of course, but few people are immune to praise and calls for saintly restraint in dangerous times.
The M-double-I side of the long table looked like a cross section of the Commonwealth, with a green Kolovite and dark red Tarkian to represent the non-human employees. He often felt like Captain Noah, steering an interstellar ark.
T.N. Matthews II
I assumed Tsuchiya senior had sent Haruto and his corporate HQ staff from New Osaka to project a different image. An all-Japanese team of negotiators set Sakura House apart from the pack, and Noah suspected that was exactly what Hideki-san wanted to project today.
Granted, ethnic collegiality didn’t always equal racial prejudice. Several corporations with common languages and cultural backgrounds—Central African Ventures & Projects, Scandinavian Mining and Manufacturing, the Spanish South American Trade and Commerce League, and a handful of ventures from Russian, Chinese, Indian, and Arabic-speaking cultures—all operated from locations scattered among ninety-plus Terran colony worlds.
Sakura House at New Osaka was the exception. Settlers who founded the Colony three centuries earlier had been overwhelmingly Japanese. Tsuchiya Galactic, the richest and most powerful of New Osaka corporations, remained primarily a Japanese enterprise with a sprinkling of non-Asians whose special skills were needed.
Ethnic Japanese living in other Terran colonies and the homeworld should have been fertile ground for Tsuchiya’s recruitment plans, but even the hereditary Emperor of Japan—representing the longest unbroken royal heritage on Earth—were generally displeased with New Osaka’s attempts at claiming to be the true representatives of Japanese culture.
Regardless of the medieval samurai bullshit Sakura House was trying to foist on thirty-second century civilization, Noah knew the impending battle was not about race. It was about the expansionist delusions of that smug cocksucker who should be sitting across the table from him today.
Dr. Ayotunde Nzeogwu, the Chief Mediator, entered and sat at the head of the table. He was a deep brown Nigerian with a broad nose, sparkling eyes, and a small, square chin. Noah recognized him as a longstanding senior official of the Terran government.
Senator Solorio leaned to Noah and whispered, “Nzeogwu will be very fair. This is a good sign, mi Cuñado.”
Noah disliked the Español Nuevo word for brother-in-law. but he nodded without reply.
“Good afternoon, gentlebeings. I am Ayotunde Nzeogwu. My resume should be in your datacoms. The Chief Executive has asked me to meet with you today and see if there is anything I can do to assist you in resolving this dispute.”
Haruto nodded. “Ayotunde, my father’s old friend. How is your health? Your son, Onyedi, recently completed law school, neh?”
Old friend? Noah glanced at Xavier, whose eyes said he understood without words. Senator Solorio shook his head slightly.
“My health is good,” Nzeogwu said. “My youngest graduated with honors. Thank you for asking.”
“Family is everything.” Haruto’s cold eyes stabbed at Noah.
“Dr. Nzeogwu, I am Noah Matthews, CEO of Matthews Interstellar Industries. I believe you know my brother-in-law, Senator Xavier Solorio.”
“Yes, good afternoon, Senator.”
Xavier muttered a few words in the polite discourse of diplomacy.
“Due to the urgency of the situation,” Nzeogwu said, “perhaps we should forgo introductions of your respective staffs and move directly into possible solutions to your dispute. Will that be acceptable?”
“Of course,” Noah said.
Tsuchiya Junior sighed. “Ayotunde-sama, I fear you have arrived today with a series of conclusions that may inhibit any remedy to resolve our differences.”
Nzeogwu leaned forward, but did not place elbows or hands on the table. “It would be of great service, Haruto-sama, if you were to enumerate assumptions which I may have made that might bar progress in these negotiations.”
For the first time in his life, Noah prayed for the Lakota ancestors in his mother’s family tree to guide him. Grandfathers, grant me patience now. Ferocity later, if needed.
“I will speak for my father,” Haruto said. “He wanted to be here but remains too weak to travel.”
Yes, speak for him, while I contemplate the joy of scalping you like an enemy tribesman caught poaching bison in Lakota territory.
“We await your words of conciliation,” Nzeogwu said.
Tsuchiya answered the Mediator with an impassive tone. “Forgive me, Ayotunde-sama, but I have not come here to sign a peace accord with Matthews Interstellar. My father’s grievances will be settled by action through the courts, or alternative means if necessary.”
“Grievances?” Noah said. “Let’s talk grievances. Sakura House and its pirate allies attacked and destroyed my Beta Gate without provocation. Thousands of human and Suryadivan lives were lost. You’re god-damned lucky we haven’t declared war on Tsuchiya Galactic already.”
“I applaud your restraint, as the consequences of modern corporate war are unthinkable..” Nzeogwu said, “Would you assist me by specifying all—uh—areas of concern which each side brings to the table, so I may understand the scope of this mediation?”
“Certainly,” Haruto said.
Noah studied this new adversary. He knew Kichirou, the youngest son, because Tyler and Kiki-san had been playmates in the years when Tsuchiya and the Matthews Family were business partners and—Noah thought—good friends. So much for that delusion.
Haruto’s face was smooth and sleek, with thin lips that looked incapable of smiling. Noah saw the man’s hands briefly, since they rested in his lap under the table, but he’d been impressed by the thickness of his fingers. This guy works out. His head seldom moved, like a serpent ready to strike, and now his gaze fell upon Noah.
“Let’s hear it, Junior,” he said.
Xavier shot him a warning glare, but Noah sat back and smiled, as if to say, “Ball’s in their court.”
“I am unworthy to take the lead in these discussions,” Haruto said. “However, my father suffers from his wounds, and I must do as he commands.”
“Please proceed,” Nzeogwu said.
“Individuals in the employ of Matthews Corporation have committed acts of piracy and violence against Sakura House. We will seek damages for their unprovoked aggression through litigation in the Commonwealth legal system.”
“That is your right, of course, Haruto-sama,” Nzeogwu said. “Do you suppose we could discuss the particulars, with the goal of achieving a settlement without the uncertainty of what will surely be a lengthy, expensive series of lawsuits?”
“Ordinarily, we would happily trust our enterprises into the hands of the Terran Commonwealth for mediation. However, certain mitigating factors make that quite impossible.”
Noah threw up his hands. “Cut the bullshit, Haruto. Answer the question. What are your terms?”
Xavier took a deep breath. “My brother-in-law meant to say—”
“He heard what I meant to say. Let’s see if anybody on their side is man enough to give a straightforward answer.” Noah looked past the son to the father standing invisibly behind him. “What’s your complaint, Señor?”
“You harbor criminals, Matthews-san,” Haruto said. “Both your sons, your daughter and future daughter-in-law attacked our flagship the Nagoto without provocation. Lieutenant Rodney Rooney, son of the Commonwealth Chief Executive, viciously assaulted and maimed ship’s security personnel, after which he callously shot my father with a kinetic blaster. Father wanted to be here today, even after extensive medical procedures, but surgeons have insisted he undergo further regenerative treatments before returning to his duties.”
Noah felt his temperature rise. “Let’s examine that litany of falsehoods. ‘Without provocation?’ Your father seized their unarmed ship with a tractor beam and threatened to destroy the Patrick Henry unless Tyler complied with your demands. And Lieutenant Rooney didn’t assault those guards. The kid whipped them in a fair fight. My only regret is that Rodney isn’t as good with a blaster as he is with katana.”
Nzeogwu cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should review the protocols for negotiation of disputes.”
“That is no longer possible,” Haruto said. “We are prepared to resort to the most extreme countermeasures unless Rodney Rooney and Tyler Noah Matthews IV are surrendered immediately to sta
nd trial at New Osaka.”
Noah put both hands on the table. Tsuchiya’s guards moved closer to their Shōgun’s representative.
“Let me tell you how this works,” Noah said. “You people aren’t getting Rodney or Tyler. We are now officially at war.”
Nzeogwu raise a hand. “Help me to understand how we can avoid—”
“Any ship owned by Tsuchiya Galactic—whether registered to Sakura House or any of your shell corporations—will be boarded and confiscated or destroyed outright. Land-based structures will not be targeted, but if you put ships up, I’ll shoot them down. You can avoid this war by unconditionally surrendering here and now. Do that, and you can keep your mining fleet and commercial starcraft. But all warships and attack craft will be confiscated and scuttled.”
Once again, Nzeogwu attempted to cool the rhetoric. “May I suggest we concentrate on possible solutions and avoid going directly to ultimatums at this stage of the negotiations?”
“Here are our terms,” Haruto snorted, ignoring the Mediator. “We recognize no safety zones. Your colonies and settlements—even your safe haven on the planet Earth—will be destroyed.”
Noah stood. “I think we’re done here.”
“We will take everything away from you, Matthews,” Haruto said. “Your colonies, your fleet, your headquarters at Kansas City.”
Nzeogwu gasped. “Terran targets are not—”
“Shut up, old fool!” Haruto sputtered. He leaped up and faced Noah across the conference table.
“Sit down, before you get hurt,” Noah warned.
“You wanted to kill my father? When you are dead, your wife and daughter will become my personal whores.”
Noah leaped on the table and hurled himself at Haruto. The impact knocked him over the chair and onto the carpeted floor. Noah came up on top and smashed his face repeatedly with both fists. Tsuchiya’s bodyguards moved to intervene, but the four M-double-I troops sprang into action before the men of Sakura House turned on Noah. Lawyers and accountants on both sides ducked behind chairs or crawled under the table. Blind with rage, Noah pounded the middle son like a punching bag.
