Then Henry realized the request had the tags for an external contact and was being relayed directly to him by Moon’s senior deputy. It was a direct tightbeam radio from one of the Kozun cruisers…and that meant Henry knew exactly who was calling him.
A mental command opened the channel, routing it to the holoprojectors over the desk in his office. He adjusted his own position so the recorder was picking him up clearly—and the commissioning seal and UPA flag behind him.
That precaution proved unnecessary as Star Voice Kalad’s image appeared above his desk. She was clearly in her own office aboard her cruiser flagship, but she appeared to be alone.
“Hi, Henry,” she said in slow English. “It’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you,” he agreed. “You didn’t seem to think it would happen when we last spoke.”
“‘The falcon cannot hear the falconer,’” Kalad quoted at him. She’d acquired a taste for Yeats when he’d been teaching her English a long time ago. Back when he’d been the XO of the UPSF battlecruiser supporting the Kozun Vesheron.
“You misestimated Mal Dakis?” Henry asked.
“So it seems,” she said. “Star Commander Kan bore the burden of his failures alone. I met with the First Voice.”
Kan had been the officer in charge of the fleet that had tried to hold La-Tar against the Cluster and the UPSF. He’d died with his flagship, leaving Kalad in command of the fleet and stuck ordering a retreat she’d expected to cost her life.
Now, the Kozun officer was silent for a moment. She was probably not only deciding what to say but how to say it in English.
“The First Voice agreed with the decision to withdraw. I was commended for my wisdom and promoted, as you see.”
“He is wiser than I had dared hope,” Henry admitted. A wise enemy was also a dangerous one, which wasn’t great for the UPA, but he’d live with that since it had saved his friend.
“He fears you,” Kalad said. Those three words alone told him that she was confident in the security of their communication. That was not a phrase an officer of the Kozun Hierarchy should be using about the First Voice. “Not the UPA, Henry. You.”
“I have no ill will for Mal Dakis,” Henry told her. “He knows that.”
“Perhaps.”
The channel was silent. It was an awkward silence, of friends who’d become enemies and weren’t quite sure what to say.
“Your mate and child?” Henry finally asked. “They are well?”
“They are,” she confirmed. “My mate…feared the First Voice’s wrath as well. But I am here…and Star Commander Kan’s name is…shit.”
“Mud,” Henry corrected with an unforced laugh. “His name is mud is the metaphor you’re aiming for, I think.”
“Shit fits better for Kozun culture,” she told him, her tone playfully prim for a few seconds before she turned serious again.
“Tell me, Henry Wong. Is the Cluster truly prepared to accept peace?”
“They never wanted a war, Kalad. Your people brought it to them, not the other way around,” he reminded her.
“We…” She closed her eyes, struggling for a moment before continuing in Kem. “We would hunt vengeance across a thousand stars, as we did against the Kenmiri.”
Henry took a moment to process that before shaking his head gently.
“Then perhaps it is best for everyone that the La-Tar Cluster’s leaders are more forgiving than the Kozun,” he suggested, staying in English. He knew Kalad could follow it even better than she could speak it.
“You have faith in them, then?”
“If Oran Aval has come for peace, she will find it here,” Henry told his old friend. “If there is anyone here I doubt, my old friend, it is your people.”
And the Drifters, but he wasn’t going to say that. Not yet.
“We are here for peace,” Kalad insisted.
Henry wished he could believe her…but he knew all too well that Kalad, friend as she was, was entirely capable of lying to him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Rising Principle might have been using an electronic translator because their native communication involved color and scent changes too subtle for most Ashall species to even register, but their opening statement was brutally precise.
Even Oran Aval remained silent as the Enteni laid out the impacts of the Kozun invasion. The war dead were one thing, but they continued on with the actions of the Kozun occupation. Retaliatory executions. Random home invasions.
A long catalog of actions that Sylvia could only classify as war crimes—though she had to admit that neither the Kozun Hierarchy nor the La-Tar Cluster were signatories to Earth’s Geneva Convention.
The room was silent after Rising Principle concluded their estimate of the costs of the Kozun invasion to the Cluster. It wasn’t an explicit demand for compensation, but the intent was clear.
Aval finally leaned forward after a minute or so of silence and leveled her gem-blue gaze on Sylvia.
“Neither accepting nor denying the Cluster’s clear demand for compensation, I want to understand what everyone’s starting position is,” she said in her calm Kem. “So, Ambassador Todorovich. What does the United Planets Alliance want here?”
“We want the war to end,” Sylvia replied. “We want the Kozun to acknowledge that they invaded without provocation. We want to avoid being dragged back into conflict in this region by our promises to defend the various planets we have signed treaties with.
“We will defend those worlds, but we would far rather see the Ra Sector flourish in peaceful trade.” She smiled thinly.
“In a perfect universe, we would see the Kozun Hierarchy change,” she told Aval. “We do not acknowledge the transfer of authority by military conquest. By that standard, the vast majority of the territory the Hierarchy claims is illegitimate in our eyes.”
She raised a hand before Aval could object.
“That, Voice Aval, is not part of these negotiations,” she warned. “There are ways, perhaps, that the Hierarchy could come to an agreement with the UPA that would allow future treaties and trade, but the minimum starting point for that is peace with the La-Tar Cluster.”
Sylvia would be delighted but surprised to be able to have that conversation with Oran Aval. The UPA’s government and the megacorporations now beginning to grow their trade networks in the Ra Sector would love to have treaties allowing trade into the Kozun worlds—so long as those worlds weren’t enslaved.
“I see,” Aval allowed. “It is healthy, I think, for all three of us to know where the others stand as we begin these discussions. We all have our objectives and missions here, but we are all here to discuss peace.
“In the interests of a good-faith demonstration of our intent, the Voices of the Kozun have ordered a unilateral cease-fire on our side. No Hierarchy warships will enter Cluster space until and unless I confirm these discussions have ended in failure.”
“And what about the scout ships in the Satra System and elsewhere?” Sylvia asked.
“The Satra System is a skip nexus outside the stars of the La-Tar Cluster,” the Kozun told her swiftly. “Whether it belongs to the Cluster should, perhaps, be negotiated instead of assumed, yes?”