The Orphan Alliance (The Black Ships Book 3) (29 page)

The
Dark Defiance
,
Dactari Space

L
iam
appeared in the conference room,
standing next to Eiboekna. As a neutral in the negotiation, she would stay out
of the lounges to avoid the impression of favoring one party above the other.

Acting as
her security escort, Liam had tried to anticipate every possibility, but when
he materialized on the alien ship, his jaw dropped open in shock. Of all the
scenarios he could have imagined, this would never have made the list. “Tommy?”
 

That easy
grin. “Hullo Dad!”

It was a
long time before Liam could find his tongue. “Why are you here?”

Tommy
gestured around him. “We found the
Dark Defiance
, or maybe she found us,
in that gas giant that Khola orbits, not long after you left for home.”

“We?”

“Kale and
Gelna, along with Kobrak and his pals.”

A grin,
finally. “You smuggled him off the ship in Kale’s footlocker?”

Tommy
grinned. “So you found all the coffee in Kale’s quarters?”

“Sitting on
his bunk,” Liam shook his head. “Pretty lazy, if you ask me. I would have
expected him to hide the evidence a little better than that. Lucky for Gelna
that Harry decided to fake an escape pod accident and write him off as dead.”

Reassured
now that he was really talking to his son, Liam stepped forward and embraced
Tommy. “Thank God you’re ok,” he said as they disengaged.

He held
onto his son by the shoulders. “I was worried about leaving you alone on Khola
and, here you are, on a ship the size of a bloody city, brokering peace between
the Alliance and the Republic.”

Tommy
reddened slightly at the sparkle in his father’s eyes.

T
owers
waved Caul, Harry, Lothbrok and
Flemming to their seats. It was time to settle their strategy for the meeting
to come. In a lounge across the conference room, Flota Mas was already
conferring with three very startled Triumvirs. “Why the hell do you think they
want this broadcast to the entire planet?” Towers dropped into a chair with a
sigh. “I was planning on demanding it as a precondition for talks, but what’s
their
motivation
?”

Towers wanted every citizen on Dactar to hear the entire
conference. He wanted them to realize they weren’t the masters of the damned
universe after all – to learn that their leaders were at a table with enemies
who had the ability to destroy their world at a moment’s notice. Destruction
was never the goal for Towers.

His goal, inspired by Gao’s actions at Tauhento, was to
strike at the enemy’s morale. He hoped that the presence of deadly force in
Dactari orbit would convince them that pursuing an agenda against the Alliance
was far more dangerous than they had been led to believe.

If that failed, then he planned to take the mass drivers
back to Weirfall. If he actually destroyed Dactar, the Republic would quickly
collapse, but the security forces on dozens of worlds would suddenly find
themselves with no duties.

And revenge on their minds.

So why were the Dactari making this easier for him? Why
demand that the conference be fed live to every outlet screen on the planet
below? Even remote villages with minimal connectivity would be getting a live
holo feed, projected by their mysterious host.

“It was
demanded by Flota Mas,” Flemming offered, “before requesting the presence of
the Triumvirs. When they got here, the feed was already running. They could
hardly demand it be shut down, not after the flota’s stirring speech to the entire
planet.” He got up and started to pace, chewing absently on a fingernail.

“His force
was sitting on an ideal ambush site between our three worlds, then they
suddenly start heading for home.” Flemming came to a stop, looking straight
through his admiral. “
Storozhevoy
,” he muttered.

“Gesundheit?”
Harry ventured.

Flemming’s
eyes darted to Harry, slightly confused for a second, then he shook his head.
“No, there was a
Krivak
-class Soviet frigate called
the
Storozhevoy
. In the mid-seventies one of
her officers led a mutiny. They were going to sail her up to Leningrad and
broadcast a message, outing the corruption that was destroying their great
socialist experiment.”

“You think
this Mas fella was doing the same thing?” Towers shook his head. “He doesn’t
seem the type.”

“I agree,”
Flemming finally returned to his seat. “He would be the one who set up the
ambush site. Someone else could have led a mutiny.”

“But if he
lost his fleet to a mutiny,” Caul began pointedly, “then why is he still in
command?”

“We know their
tracers sat at Gaemhaeg station for a long time,” Flemming said with a
shrug.  “He may have regained control with the help of the station’s
security staff.”

“That’s a
hell of a reach, even for you,” Harry said. “We’re spinning a fairy tale out of
thin air here.”

“Then
where’s the commissar?” Flemming shot back bluntly. “This is a negotiation; the
Dactari don’t negotiate a bloody thing without a political officer present. Our
friendly flota didn’t ask for him, so he’s either locked up in his cabin or dead.”

“
Nithhöggr
!
”  Lothbrok exclaimed. “That’s
our mutineer for sure but, if the mutiny was put down, why did Mas ask for full
public coverage?”

Towers
looked over at a sudden movement through the glass. The Dactari delegation was
exiting their lounge, spilling out into the conference area. “We may never find
out,” he said as he rose to his feet. “But his interests seem to be aligning
with ours for the moment, so let’s just run with it.”

I
t was surprising how boring a
meeting of two enemies could be. Tommy was having a hard time keeping his eyes
open as the two sides haggled over the planets that would fall into their
spheres of influence. As the hours progressed, accountants, economists and
lawyers were brought in by both the Republic and, to Tommy’s amazement, the
Alliance.

The
fleet actually brought accounting officers and economists?
He suspected the economists and
accountants were simply logistics officers who had majored in those fields
while at university. The lawyers were less surprising – the Navy had probably
put them through law school so they could serve as JAG officers.

Kale,
sitting to his left, leaned over. “After all the fuss of coming here and smashing
their defenses, the Alliance is just gonna make peace and leave ‘em intact,” he
whispered in disgust. “I’d rather take a Dactari blade in the gut than listen
to much more of this fertilizer. The new structure won’t last a year.”

Almost a
sixth of the Republic was slated to become Alliance territory.

Tommy
nodded. “This business of planets suddenly having to switch over to the
Alliance is going to be a major problem. Not all of them want out of the
Republic, so the fleet is going to end up policing hostile populations as
oppressors, rather than liberators.”

“Which
leaves two questions to answer,” Kale hissed, holding up a finger. “Can we win
‘em over?” He unfolded a second finger. “And when we find out the first answer
is ‘no’, will the economic benefits of holding them pay for the cost?”

I think
there may be a more pressing issue,
Keeva suggested to their minds.
A junior
official in the lounge has just contacted one of the Dactari captains in the
defensive fleet. He’s been promoted to armada second class.

Tommy
frowned at Kale, then held up a finger, nodding to indicate that he would ask
the necessary question.
Please link our overt thoughts.
He waited for a
second.
How does that impact the situation?
They had to keep the
conversation on a non-verbal level to avoid giving away important knowledge.

An
armada outranks a flota,
Keeva explained.
The Triumvirs are effectively preventing Reis Mas
from controlling their forces.

Those
fornicating vitros!
Gelna’s
angry thoughts startled the two Humans. They looked across the table to where
he sat at the end of the Dactari delegation.

They
found themselves painted into a corner when they came aboard,
Kale projected.
They were put on
center stage by Mas and now
they’ll try to get out of this mess by
portraying him as a renegade and traitor.

The
Triumvirs had looked ready to explode when they learned that the Humans and
Midgaard were holding the upper hand in Dactari orbit and that they were being
forced to sit down with an enemy the public were only now learning about.

It makes
sense,
Tommy
replied.
They’re in it up to their eyeballs. They can’t get out of this now
unless they claim that they were being deceived as well. They can claim the
military was keeping everyone in the dark and Mas will make a perfect scapegoat.

So
regardless of what gets decided here,
Kale thought, turning a grim face to Tommy,
Mas
is going to find himself in hot water. We should warn Towers.

You
think there’s a danger?
Tommy darted a glance down the table.

Kale’s
right,
Gelna
insisted.
Mas leads a large force of Krypteia. They won’t let him be taken
in by a pack of lying bureaucrats.

I’m not
sure we should be passing information to any particular side,
Keeva broke in.
We’re here to
provide neutral ground, not to take sides.

No,
Gelna thought emphatically.
We
need to warn the Alliance. This is going to turn into a fight and if enemy
ships are nearby, they’ll get pulled into it. This armistice will collapse and
millions could die if we don’t warn somebody. Come to think of it – and it
pains me to admit it – Kale’s right. This peace seems designed to fail.

What if
we leave the
Firm
Resolve
here in the Republic to moderate the armistice?
Tommy thought.
It
could put a damper on any flare-ups, help keep the peace.

It might
help to have a powerful mediator standing between the two sides,
Kale admitted,
but Keeva’s
controlling the ship. The minute we jump out of here it’ll be adrift with all
those refugees on board.

The
refugees have a stake in what happens to that ship,
Tommy replied.
Maybe they can
provide a volunteer to merge with it?

They
aren’t compatible,
Keeva’s
thoughts seemed troubled.
There is one here who is, though.

Tommy
looked around the room.
There’s only one attendee who has no other members
of their species present.
He paused.

Yes,
Keeva answered.
Eiboekna. I
should have made the correlation when we found the
Constant Vigil
under
the Xo’Khov sea.

We
hadn’t met her yet,
Gelna
gave thought to his friends’ confusion.

No,
Keeva replied,
but I’d met Kobrak
and several of his people before we left Khola.

You
mean…
Tommy
suddenly thought of Ailekna, smiling at him on the cliffs outside of Khulmet.

Yes, the
Bolshari.
Keeva
finished Tommy’s thought.
I’ve checked the files from when you boarded me
and got shot by my drones. The Bolshari all have genetic markers consistent
with my people, and more specifically, the crew records from the
Constant
Vigil.

You’re
saying the Bolshari are descended directly from that ship’s crew – your own
people? Most Bolshari don’t live any longer than a century.
Kale let his gaze wander over to
Eiboekna.

No
wonder I’ve grown to hate living on this ship.
Gelna thought.
My people evicted the
Bolshari from Dactar because of their effect on us, and I’ve spent the last
three years linked to one of their minds.

A
dmiral
Towers sat in a lounge chair, still
looking at Tommy long after he had finished explaining the shifting currents in
the Dactari command structure. “Does this have anything to do with your
suggesting a Bolshari use one of those giant ships to monitor the armistice?”

Tommy shook
his head. “No, sir. We just happen to know of a sister ship that needs a
symbiote. It could do a lot of good…”

“It could
also do a lot of harm,” Towers cut him off harshly. “Harm to your
own
people,
Mr. Kennedy. How do we know she wouldn’t use that ship against us?”

“The
Dactari won’t go for it, anyway,” Harry waved a dismissive hand. “They’re
genetically engineered to obey them. The last thing they want is to have one of
their old masters looking over their shoulders again.”