Sylvia held Aval’s gaze, neither of them so much as blinking.
“But yes,” Aval finally confirmed. “All of our ships have been withdrawn a minimum of two skips away from the systems of the La-Tar cluster. We wish to avoid any potential misunderstandings that could undermine these discussions.”
Sylvia took a moment to consider what Oran Aval had said—or more exactly, how she’d said it. She’d replied instantly, but she’d spoken about the system, not the ships. Raven and their Cluster allies had chased a corvette out of Satra, but was it possible Aval didn’t know about that?
If she didn’t know, that suggested that Aval wasn’t being briefed on everything. That was a dangerous possibility. It meant that the Third Voice’s mission could be entirely aboveboard so far as Aval knew—and still a trap.
“I can-will assure you that the La-Tar will-can-not launch an offensive of our own until these discussions are-can be completed,” Rising Principle told the Kozun. “This cease fire fate-time is-was mutual.”
“That will help us all, I think,” Aval replied. “If we can keep our respective fleets at harbor, that gives us time to sort through the complexities of this situation and find a mutually acceptable agreement.”
Rising Principle glared at her, a gesture that was even more intimidating from an Enteni as it required their mouth to be wide open.
“I must admit, Voice Aval, that the situation is not particularly complex from my point of view,” Sylvia observed. “The question is not what happened but what the Hierarchy is prepared to do to guarantee that it won’t happen again.”
“Our word is insufficient, then?” Aval asked.
“Your word is drenched in blood.”
The room was silent again and Oran Aval bowed her head slightly.
“I believe we have all postured sufficiently for the opening events,” she told the other two diplomats. “I would like a chance to withdraw to my shuttle and review the information you have provided.”
“None of this should-could be new to you,” Rising Principle objected.
“Perhaps not. Perhaps you have provided more detail than I had before. Perhaps I merely need to consider the opening positions you have presented,” Aval said calmly. “In any case, I suggest we adjourn for twelve hours and meet again then.
“That will give us all time to consume the positions we face.”
Sylvia glanced over at Principle. The Enteni probably needed the time to chill out. They were gifted at this and had acquired hard-earned experience assembling the alliance that had liberated their world, but they were still young.
“I agree,” she said firmly. “We will all take some time to consider our positions and meet again in twelve hours. Rising Principle?”
The Enteni finally closed their mouth and bowed their head in concession.
“Good.” Oran Aval shot up to her feet. “I will return to my shuttle and rest there. We will speak again soon.”
The Kozun contingent was halfway out of the room before Sylvia could say a word. She let them leave before exhaling a muted sigh.
“That one has-owns no shame,” Rising Principle said grimly.
“That is her job,” Sylvia warned them. “Whatever her morals or opinions, she has to negotiate the best deal she can for the Kozun.” She shook her head. “If I was in her position, you would say I have no shame.”
They’d be wrong, just as Sylvia suspected the Enteni was wrong about the Third Voice. But that shame wouldn’t change the positions that Sylvia would present at the negotiating table.
And if, as Sylvia suspected, the Third Voice was sickened by what had been done at La-Tar, Oran Aval wouldn’t let it impact her stances. Her duty was to extricate the Hierarchy from the war at a minimum price.
Sylvia’s duty, on the other hand, was to make sure the Hierarchy paid so heavily to extract itself from the La-Tar Cluster that they would hesitate to launch another campaign of conquest.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Ser, do you have a moment?”
Henry looked up from the command seat to see Ihejirika standing just inside the central pit of Raven’s bridge. A wave of his hand closed the screens he’d been working on—though he didn’t let himself actively sigh in relief.
As was entirely reasonable, Chief Engineer Song was still on his case about the heat radiator usage rates. Keeping the battlecruiser at Status Two with the gravity shield up required at least three of her four fusion reactors to be online, which produced a lot of heat.
Raven’s hull was covered with featherlike heat-radiator vanes. Fully extended, as they currently were, they made the ship look even more like her bird namesake that she normally did. Unfortunately, any given radiator vane had a limited useful operating life. Most of the time, the ship was only running two reactors outside of combat or skip space, which meant Song could cycle through the radiators and stretch that life.
Right now, that was proving harder than usual and they were burning through the stock of spares almost twice as fast as expected. That meant they only had enough spares for two months instead of four, but it was Song’s job to be concerned about that and find ways around it.
But Henry still found heat-radiation charts to be the single most boring part of his job.
“What do you need, Commander?” he asked Ihejirika.
“We found something odd, going over the Drifter and Kozun ships, ser,” the tactical officer told him. “May I show you?”
“Is it dangerous?” Henry asked.
“Probably not,” Ihejirika said. “Just…interesting.”
“Go ahead,” Henry told him. A mental command surrendered control of several of the large screens around the pit to the tactical officer.
Two images appeared on the screens, two-dimensional projections of a ship part that Henry instantly recognized. They were superheavy plasma-cannon turrets, the main weapon of every Kenmiri and most Vesheron capital ships.
“One of these is the forward turret from one of the Kozun cruisers,” Ihejirika told him. “The other is a randomly selected turret from one of the Guardians. If you can pick out which is which, I’d be surprised, but that’s not entirely relevant right now.”
“What is relevant, then, Commander?” Henry asked.
The two images moved together, overlaying on top of each other. One was shaded in red, the other was shaded in green…and very little red was visible.
“I thought you said these were from two different ships,” he asked. Even the Kenmiri only had so much consistency between turrets.
“I did,” Ihejirika confirmed. “The red-shaded turret is from the Kozun cruiser. The green-shaded turret is from the Drifter Guardian. Their profiles are fundamentally identical. And to make the point very clear…”
A third turret projection, shaded in blue, appeared next to the overlaid pair. As Henry watched, it converged with the others to overlay again.
A lot more blue was visible than red now. The blue turret was distinctly different from the other two.
“The blue turret is the standard schematic projection of a Kenmiri dreadnought’s heavy turret,” Ihejirika noted. “It would have slight variations from the actual construction of any given turret, but it would be close. I would expect, in fact, to see about the variation between the Kozun and Drifter turret between any two Kenmiri turrets.”