Ambassador 3: Changing Fate: Ambassador Space Opera Thriller Series (Ambassador: Space Opera Thriller)

by Patty Jansen

  Two other two top brass officers stole curious glances at me. Not quite meeting my eyes, but getting very close.

  There was a short and uncomfortable silence. They didn’t like this, oh no, they didn’t.

  “Apparently, I’m here to negotiate on your behalf. I’m supposed to be briefed about the most recent details of the situation.” And it would also be nice if someone could be a bit clearer about the plan and what they wanted me to do. All these silences unnerved me. These people unnerved me and their behaviour was just weird.

  “It’s a matter of urgency,” Shazayu said.

  “I understand that.”

  “I don’t think you do.”

  “Then explain it to me, because I cannot negotiate unless I know what’s going on.” And by hell, something was going on, and I was getting very, very uneasy about this.

  “Coming here, you asked questions about our engagement with this ship so far.”

  “I always ask lots of questions. That’s what I do.”

  “We’re keeping the ship trapped in this locality. They’ve escaped us twice, but now we’ve disabled their drive by counteracting the energy buildup. You asked why we don’t just shoot them.”

  “I’m guessing you’re a bit hesitant about shooting at something of which you do not know the strength. You want to make sure that when you shoot, it will have the desired effect. Also I guess you’d rather talk with these people to see if they have anything valuable on offer.”

  “That was our thought. At the first location where we caught up with them, we established contact. They have been reading our communications. The Exchange is as open as an Outer Circle bar, and it’s easy to tap in. We knew they were doing this and hoped it meant that they had gained an understanding of our society.”

  “Are they really as good with languages as the rumour says they are?”

  “Yes, they are. Quite extraordinary. These people are genetically indistinguishable from the Barresh Aghyrians, but they are more difficult to deal with.”

  I was asking myself Is that possible, but of course it was. “That sounds like you’ve spoken with them.”

  “We have.”

  “You spoke through the radio?”

  “At first, yes.”

  “You went to their ship?”

  “A small shuttle. Eight aboard.”

  I really did not like her little hesitant silences and the fact that I needed to ask everything. She seemed . . . disturbed, damaged almost.

  “I’m guessing they were shot at?”

  “They did not come back.”

  Now we were getting to the meat of the story. “This was the contact you had with them before the images of hostility we’ve seen on the other recordings.”

  She consulted briefly with the officer next to her, who gestured, Yes.

  “The recordings you saw were of the parties we sent to retrieve them.”

  That part suddenly made sense. “Did you try to talk to them?”

  “We did. They responded by jumping away from us. We followed, asked for the return of our people. They said their genetics were interesting, and sent us a document that went into great detail about how we were the descendants of the sixty-four couples that they left on Asto in preparation for colonisation of worlds with hostile climates, never thinking that they might need those characteristics to survive on their own world.”

  I would have started feeling sick here, if I wasn’t feeling nauseous already. “Did they say anything of the fate of those people you sent?”

  “They did not. We asked them for details. We brought in more ships. And they jumped out of our reach again. So we called up experts in anpar travel. We devised a plan, a sling network to trap them and disable their drive. When we found them again, we put the plan into action and that’s where we are now. The ship is not talking to us.”

  “Have they made any demands?”

  “No. They’ve stated that they won’t talk to us because we’re inferior. We’re not real people.”

  “Because they produced the Coldi race?”

  “Because they think they own us.”

  “That’s why you want me, right?”

  “Hopefully they will talk to you.”

  “You want me to go there and negotiate for the freedom of your envoys?” If they were still alive.

  “That’s it.”

  Shit. I should have known that it was something this. Coldi were bad at negotiation, but they couldn’t shoot, because . . . yeah, why? They normally didn’t care all that much for a few lives if it was to the benefit of Coldi society. A cold chill went over my back despite the stuffy and hot air. “Can I ask who these hostages are?”

  “You wouldn’t know any of them, except one: Asha Domiri.”

  Chapter 23

  * * *

  HOLY SHIT AND fuck on a fiddlestick.

  Thayu let out a small squeak when the officer mentioned her father’s name, very uncharacteristic for her.

  Thay’?

  Her face had gone white and her eyes were wider than usual. It was the first time, ever, that I had seen her display any emotion in relation to the man who was her biological father. She had even locked him inside a safety bunker when we were in Asto, and she had discussed his ambitions for the top job in a detached manner

  Cory, please?

  The earrings that dangled on both side of her head glittered with the same blood red stone that I wore. I had no idea how she saw the colour—Coldi didn’t see red—but it was significant for them. It was a ruby, the Domiri clan colour. I belonged to the clan. Asha was the clan leader.

  Then it struck me that this was also the reason why everyone was keeping the issue quiet. Coldi being Coldi, they had thought nothing of their leader going over for talks, because that was the way Coldi did business. But take out Asha, and the entire army would again go through the resettlement of positions that we’d just seen with Risha and Taysha on Asto. A whole army incapacitated through infighting.

  And that—I felt cold—might even have been the Aghyrian aim. They studied Coldi society. They knew how to deliver a crippling blow to it without firing a single shot. And it could be that Ezhya had asked me, in a roundabout way Go over there and find a way in which we can hit them back.

  Shit indeed.

  Our meeting with the top officers was finished. Some of the officers that I hadn’t been introduced to slunk from the room like pink-uniformed ghosts.

  Their un-unified and somewhat hesitant appearance now also made sense to me. With Asha gone, cracks were already appearing in the loyalty networks. People were not sharing things as they should because they could use knowledge to their advantage later.

  They could keep the current structure in place for perhaps a little longer, but Asha’s absence was a vacuum that people felt a pathological need to fill.

  “We have a shuttle waiting for you,” Shazayu said.

  I glanced sideways at Thayu. She nodded and had that I want to come look on her face. Yet she must know that she couldn’t.

  “Have you had any contact with the ship recently?” I asked.

  “We’ve sent them a message with information about you and your genetic print.”

  I wasn’t going to worry about how they obtained that, even though my conscience told me to do just that. There was no privacy when Coldi were concerned. I should have been used to that long ago. There would have been plenty of opportunity for them to collect this material. “Have they replied? Do they indicate that they will let me board?”

  “Not yet. They’re likely to have their own scans that they have applied to us in the past.”

  “Who is to say that they’re not going to shoot us to pieces like they’ve done with the other two ships?”

  “Nothing, except we’ve let them know that we have the capacity to destroy their ship.”

  Except of course the big ship and the Asto military’s sling ships had antimatter and gravity wells on board that would likely wipe out the entire fleet if the cont
ainment fields around those energy sources was breached. Any attack on the ship might well backfire. And no one knew if they were capable of destroying the Aghyrian ship. No one knew what kind of weapons they had.

  Damn it. This mission was even more stupid than going to Asto to try and rescue Ezhya’s position. “I’m going to have to go in with some assumptions. I’m going to assume that if they wanted a conflict they would have already started one. So either they want to talk, but maybe not to you; and I’m also going to presume that the presence of all these ships is not truly keeping them here, but they’re playing along, just to see what they can get out of us. Or they’re waiting for some parameter—”

  “—a second ship turning up?” Shazayu asked.

  “By my reckoning, they would not need to wait if they have additional ships. If this ship can jump here, then others could do the same. If they’re waiting for something, it’s likely to be something that they don’t control, like the alignment of stars. Alternatively . . . The Aghyrians used their own genetic material to create you, didn’t they?”

  “Yes, as far as I understand.” She raised her eyebrows. “Why?” Coldi did find it distasteful to be referred to as an artificial race, but I was going to have to address it.

  “If they share a lot of their genetic material with you, they may share some of the same characteristics.”

  Her frown deepened.

  “Supposing all the gamra entities banded together and hired an army of Tamerians for a stand-off against Asto—”

  “There aren’t enough Tamerians to make an impression on our army.”

  “You don’t know that. And supposing there were. Just suppose.” I knew Coldi weren’t very good at taking hypothetical situations seriously and this was going to be a stretch for her.

  Thayu frowned as well. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

  “Just wait. Let me make my point. Supposing Asto is under threat and the enemy is clearly stronger. What would Ezhya do? Would he flee? I don’t think so. Would he pretend to be more than what he is?”

  Shazayu looked at me sharply.

  “Because that’s what Asto does best, isn’t it? Looking bigger than they really are. I have, for example, no idea if all the ships I’ve seen surrounding the Aghyrian ship are real, are war ships capable of inflicting damage, are the entire fleet or are only part of the fleet. And I’m not even considered to be an enemy.”

  It seemed that Thayu got what I was aiming for. “Do you think they could be bluffing?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were. Add up the facts. They haven’t said what they’re doing here. They haven’t contacted gamra even though I’m sure they’re aware of it. They have just given the local Aghyrians some empty and unconnected information with half-hearted promises. If they really had so much powerful technology, would they have come back here in the first place? They consider us primitive and not worth the time, so there must be a reason why they want to come back. My guess is they’re pretending to be all-powerful. My guess is that the Exchange sling is probably the only thing they’ve got. If they were really that powerful, they would not let themselves be captured like this.”

  Shazayu said, “I hope you’re right. I think they’re waiting for us to give them an excuse to destroy us. And then they will move to Asto.”

  “What is there for them? The Asto they left was a green planet. Today, it’s desert. The oceans are poisonous. The climate’s too hot for them. The land will no longer support its people. Asto farms in space. It buys food from Ceren. Why would they want to come back?”

  “Because it’s Asto.”

  It was a strange thing to say for a hard-nosed military officer, and more sentimental than I was used to from Coldi. Underneath all the bluster, they were very protective of their world and aware that its previous inhabitants could return and demand a share in its control. “We won’t know until we talk to them. So let’s go. I just want to be sure that this is all the information you have and there are no further nasty surprises to come. Did Asha, for example, send any communication before he was supposedly restrained?” If he was still alive.

  “The ship only lets out communication approved by them.”

  So that was as I thought. I hoped to hell that I’d now finally been given the last pieces of information.

  A junior crewmember arrived with two flight suits of the type I’d sometimes seen pilots wear. The suit had a mask and a harness for two small air tanks.

  “For emergencies,” Shazayu said.

  A junior officer showed us into another room where we could change.

  I floated in the air, trying to find a place to hang my suit while I took off my onboard overalls. In my experience so far, everything to do with the Asto army required an extraordinary amount of changing clothes.

  I didn’t find a hook for the suit, so Thayu held it for me, while I fumbled to take off the overalls.

  “I don’t think it’s fair of them to ask you to do this,” Thayu said. I was surprised at how angry she sounded.

  “They clearly ran out of options.” I was doing my best to stay calm and to quell my stomach, but the latter wasn’t working very well. My hands were clammy and my face sweaty. When I took off the top part of the overalls, the air from the vent made me shiver. Again the shirt that I wore underneath was soaked in sweat.

  Getting changed in zero-g is not easy, and the tight rubbery suit didn’t make it any easier. I ended up holding onto a wall railing while Thayu pulled the material over my feet.

  “Are you holding up?” she asked me, while doing up the fastening at the front.

  “Compared with what we’re facing, I guess I am. But I could be better.”

  “What you’re facing, not we. I’ll try to stay with you for as long as I can, but ultimately, you’ll have to go into that ship alone. It worries me.”

  “It worries me that Veyada and Sheydu were left behind somewhere, probably kept back by Ezhya, but I wish I knew where they were.”

  I hugged her. Her breath made a cold spot in my neck. I stroked her face. Her skin felt warm and dry.

  Last time we’d been in danger—although not nearly as much danger as I was facing now—I’d had the opportunity to sleep with her one more time. We didn’t have that luxury now. And in hindsight, the problems we had faced back then were a pale shade of what I was facing today.

  We left the room where a pilot—I was starting to recognise the markings—was waiting for us. The man took up the subservient position for us, and Thayu tapped him on the shoulder.

  While we pulled ourselves through the corridors, he explained to us that he could only get to within a certain distance of the ship. “Any closer and they start to make threats. We will fly to this distance and announce you. If our previous experience is anything to go by, they will guide us into the ship. Or it may be that they want you to come alone and you may have to pilot the pod. I understand you have some flying experience?” He didn’t meet my eyes, according to protocol.

  “Um . . .” I did have some experience, but it was in a winged craft in the atmosphere and it had been with an experienced pilot sitting next to me. I had zero experience in zero-g flying.

  Thayu said, “I can pilot the pod. Let me come.”

  The pilot turned to her but didn’t meet her eyes. “They seem cued to our genetic material.”

  “I can hide behind the engine shield.”

  “No, Thayu. That’s not in place for nothing.”

  “Hmm, it may be good to have another person on the pod if it comes to that.” This was Shazayu behind us.

  “No, Thayu, that would be dangerous.”

  “And what you’re doing is not dangerous?”

  I spread my hands and let them fall again.

  “If you are captured on that ship, I want to be with you.”

  There was no persuading her, and Shazayu didn’t seem to think that it was as bad an idea as I did.

  We returned the docks, where the same shuttle that had
brought us here waited for us.

  We climbed on board. Inside the cabin sat two copilots, different ones from the crew that had come here with us. These were lower-ranked crew, I was sure. Both pilot and copilots were expendable. Their loss would not upset too many loyalty networks.

  Great.

  We strapped in our seats. There was no need for the gel-filled bags or the partition.

  We also had the luxury of being able to see the front viewscreen.

  The cabin went dark the moment we left the dock, with just blue light from the screens lighting the pilots’ faces. The shuttle moved past the side of the ship like a fly hovering over a horse’s back. Then the pilot pulled us out of its shadow and we crested the army ship. In the corner of the viewscreen I thought I spotted some kind of weapons mount before it vanished from view.

  The Aghyrian ship came onto the screen, massive, silent and dark.

  For a long time, no one spoke. The incredible size of the ship stunned us all into silence. It was one thing seeing it on a screen, but another seeing it from a tiny ship in the middle of space.

  For a while, we described a curved path towards the ship.

  Soon, the hull of the ship took up most of the forward viewscreen. The pilot enlarged the view. Smaller protrusions dissolved from the larger mass showing increasing amount of detail. A lot of the outer protrusions looked weathered, some even bent as if they had been hit by space rocks or debris.

  An airlock entry door scrolled over the screen, a square opening with an inner ring that looked extendable. A yellow sign on the outside proclaimed a mysterious command in a type of script I was unfamiliar with. Oh, I could see that it was Aghyrian, but written in such a way that with my limited knowledge of characters, I couldn’t make sense out of it.

  I made note of all these protuberances, collecting pictures of detailed features on the hull.

  “I’m sending a signal now,” the pilot said.