Diplomacy

In retrospect, the critter incident probably saw me overreact.

There were a number of reasons the Asu ’s critter wasn’t as dangerous as I’d treated it. It wasn’t durable. Adept creations that were built to accommodate movement had to deal with the wear and tear of that movement. Not a lot of Adeptry stuck around long enough for that to matter, but apparently the same principle applied to psionics.

Looking back at their design, it was shoddy. Lucky. Any given instance of the critter would have fallen apart in just a few minutes.

But that was only clear with the benefit of hindsight.

The three of them had been skilled Adepts, I realized. Far more experienced than even most above-average Coalition Adepts. Their chances creating something like the critter would be better than anyone’s, save Nai.

So it was reassuring that they hadn’t managed to recreate it, much less improve it.

Critically, my psionic bomb had obliterated the mirrors included in their intro modules. Without that crucial self-perception tool, it was far more difficult to create anything psionic.

Still, even having overestimated that particular threat, even them having gotten extremely lucky creating something like that, even with the rapid degradation of the critter, I was taking zero chances.

I didn’t stop after I made the first firewall. It was a super simple gatekeeper function: it had a dedicated tool to contain whatever constructs it admitted, keeping them in a very predictable and vulnerable position while the operator checked out just exactly what they were letting into their head. A second firewall one came soon after. It was tied into a stamp series that I wanted to resemble antibodies. The stamps could be used to mark and remember psionic constructs the operator had already rejected. The gatekeeper and stamp firewall pair formed the primary defenses. Then a third, to act as a redundancy. Nai even helped me make a fourth.

Each one needed to be as simple as possible in concept and execution. If psionics were going to spread everywhere, then I wanted everyone to be able to defend themselves. All of this needed to be simple enough that anyone could wrap their head around the basic function of any one piece of the intro module.

Additionally, the simpler a psionic creation was, the slower it degraded. Being supported by an actual mind made a big difference too. Detached psionic creations in the ether crumbled very quickly.

With the double-double firewall worked into the intro module, things would probably stay manageable for the time being. I was encouraged by the fact that the defender appeared to hold a massive advantage in repelling unwanted psionics. Doubly so if they were Adept.

These defenses would prove adequate. At least for now.

Leaving the moon, even just for a day, made me nervous about what might psionically unravel in my absence.

Nai was staying behind with Tiv. Those two could keep an eye on things while psionics continued to be shared beyond my control.

Fenno had been right. Laranta and Serral had never tried to ban sharing psionics because it was impossible to enforce.

I’d rushed into sharing psionics.

It was why Serralinitus and Laranta hadn’t even bothered to try keeping psionics secret. The instant they were shared beyond my immediate acquaintances, there was no controlling who had them.

In fact, given how long Tasser and his group had been using them on Archo, there was a strong possibility that psionics had already made their way into Vorak minds.

That would be problematic.

There were at least a hundred psionic individuals now, just in High Harbor base alone. I couldn’t tell if they’d spread outside the Coalition yet.

Tiv had mentioned setting up an emergency channel, just in case we needed to broadcast to everyone at once. It would be interesting to see how he solved the channel overlap problem.

Radio frequencies weren’t an appropriate comparison anymore. Because modulating radio signals only happened by frequency or amplitude. Psionics wasn’t bound by those dimensions. Even computers were ultimately restricted by binary switches. Every function could be reduced to a whole lot of ones or zeros.

Not all psionics depended on numerology, but the pieces that did need numbers weren’t operating in binary. I’d decided to cater to my audience and used octal numerals for the intro module. Every psionic transceiver had three 8-digit dials to set a channel. Each combination let the transceiver broadcast on a totally separate band.

There were more than five-hundred discrete psionic channels by default. Eight groups of sixty-four. That wasn’t even counting whatever Adepts had already figured out how to modify the transceiver to operate on new, personal channels.

I was struggling to not go reaching for my telepathy while we waited for liftoff. But I needed to keep my head in the game.

I was on my way to have an important chat.

A tiny rocket blasted away from Lakandt carrying Admiral Laranta, Ase Serral, Mu-Rahi Weith, Jage, Leen, and myself.

We had a neat little fifteen-hour flight toward Sorc.

Paris had four major moons, two of which were firmly under Coalition control: Lakandt and Draylend. The third large moon, Hiirak, was a wasteland: completely devoid of anything worth building anything larger than research outposts.

The fourth, Sorc, was controlled by the Deep Coils void fleet.

Ever since the Coalition had loudly declared I was safe on Lakandt, the fleet had pulled back significantly.

And now, in the interest of diplomacy, they were playing host for our little Coalition delegation and their sibling fleet.

Laranta had an unexpectedly civil relationship with the Coils, despite them having been the Coalition’s primary opposition before the Korbanok raid.

But that did not mean we trusted them enough to chat in person. We would not be landing.

In fact, we weren’t even going to get that close to the moon. We were getting close enough to have a light-delay under three seconds. It put us half a million miles out of their reach. That would keep things conversational.

I was surprised at how much nuance there was in interstellar warfare. When we’d launched off Yawhere, I’d wondered if the Red Sails could have just shot down our rocket.

Their tech might be limited in some capacity, but given how easily aliens could manufacture things, there was no chance they weren’t capable of missiles or some kind of orbital gun.

We were protected now by the same thing as then: comprehensive interstellar treaties, the most prominent of which was called ‘Atho’s Drought’.

The contents were simple: no voidcraft, no satellite, no orbital platform of any kind was allowed to carry weapons that could harm a planet below.

So, no firing nukes from orbit, no dropping meteors on entrenched positions, no seeding atmospheres with toxic metals, etc.

It was apparently so viciously enforced, that the only colony to break it had been wiped out. That had been more than a hundred years ago, but the Drought was still observed.

With that treaty so widely observed, a number of more nuanced rules emerged about just what kind of weaponry a ship, or the ground, was allowed to use against another ship. Turning a very long story very short?

Ships didn’t get shot down often. Disabled? Occasionally. Boarded? Much more common. But if someone picked up a reputation for shooting down crewed ships, well then a funny thing would start happening to their own ships…

Technically, there was a slim chance the Vorak would deploy to shoot our ship down.

An Admiral onboard, plus me? Our little sloop was probably the highest value military target in the star system, just for today.

Of course, then someone would have to answer for why they shot down a ship, carrying a First Contact, on a diplomatic mission.

Not a good look.

Tispas might not have cared anyway, but that was why we were borrowing the Deep Coils’ arrays. They’d proved themselves at least trustworthy enough to use as an intermediary.

Once we settled into our orbit, Laranta, Serralinitus, and I all floated into the aft portion of our rocket.

I’d expected a phone call, but apparently if you were an Admiral deigning to take a call from your enemies, you sprang for the video chat option.

For a shuttle this small, our artificial gravity options were quite limited in strength. But even the piddling 0.1 G was better than trying to keep from floating out of my chair.

The three of us—Laranta, Serralinitus, and I—all sat down, quietly going over what we needed to expect.

Soon enough, Weith called over to us from the helm.

“Receiving their signal,” he called.

“Shall we?” Laranta asked, tapping at the buttons of the display.

Serral sent me,

I said.

Laranta flicked the screen to life and two Vorak appeared, one familiar and one not.

The first was, oddly enough, a rather lanky Vorak considering what I’d first called him. He was tall and skinny with dark fur, almost navy or purple. Lighter grey patches peeked out under his chin. Unlike last time, I could see he was wearing a Red Sails uniform today.

Halax’s gaze instantly locked onto me. I had to bite my tongue to keep from reacting. Vorak eyes still made my skin crawl, and I just knew he was thinking about what my most vulnerable spot was. I felt like a choice cut of meat.

The other rak was the first to talk though.

A slightly smaller Rak, but still mean and muscled like Halax was. Their fur was lighter, mostly tan with pitch black spots running down the back of their neck and arms.

For almost three seconds, the rak said nothing. Light delay.

“Ase. Admiral,” they said. I recognized the voice. “I received your, ah… ‘message’ ,” he held up a familiar page with English words on it, “and I couldn’t agree more.”

“Tox,” Serral acknowledged.

After each exchange, a few seconds passed while the signal took its time to actually travel. It was like a conversation in slow motion.

“The pleasantries then?” the Adjutant asked.

“Yes, I think so,” Serral replied.

“Very well, we’re recording this conversation, so are you, we could both deny it, but that would just be crass… Do you continue to affirm that hostilities between these meeting parties will not arise so long as we speak in the pursuit of peace?”

“We do affirm,” Serral said coolly.

“Excellent, so do we,” Tox said, leaning back casually, brandishing my message. “So what is it you were so eager to say, Caleb Hane?”

“I’m looking for my people,” I said simply. “Are you going to help me?”

“...Well, you imbecilic, gullible, haggard whelp, I do love the chance to help the less fortunate.”

Serral started to warn me,

I said, utterly calm..

“I imagine you’re always eager to suck up to someone,” I replied easily, “you incompetent, timid, trophy.”

Laranta’s poker face was excellent. I could psionically sense the flare in her attitude, but nothing showed on her face. At a guess, she was bewildered that Tox was treating First Contact this way.

I was keeping Serral in the loop psionically. He was prepared.

Tox only smiled at my retort.

“Did you expand your vocabulary specifically to poke me with?” he asked curiously.

“If you aren’t sure what the words mean, I’d be happy to look up their definitions for you,” I said.

Serral asked incredulously.

I said.

I said.

“It’s surprising you know how to crack open a book,” Tox said. “Then again, it seems like you’ve had—and needed—plenty of help. As for your people…?”

Tox turned toward Halax.

“How is Nora?” Halax asked—me, specifically.

“She’s alive,” I said curtly.

“You won’t say anything more?” he asked. He sounded almost appalled.

“Right, because you’ll definitely tell me more about the Humans you have?”

My retort landed. Halax even gave a tiny flinch.

That was the crux of this. The Vorak didn’t know that Nora couldn’t talk to us. They had no idea how little we actually knew.

I asked Serral.

“I want to know their conditions. All of them,” I said.

Halax glanced at Tox, conferring with him quickly and quietly. Halax didn’t look elsewhere, but for a split second, I saw it again. Tox’s eyes flickered toward someone just out of view.

Well, we weren’t alone either. But we could consult our allies psionically, with no risk of betraying anything through sight or sound.

Still, something about it made me itch.

“…If you are truthful about Nora, then seventy of them from those three ships are alive,” Halax said. “One died before Red Sails personnel found them—suicide according Nora, and the other died of what appears to be an autoimmune reaction several months ago.”

“You used the data the Organic Authority has on me,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

“We confirmed our own findings with theirs, yes.”

“I don’t like your phrasing, ‘those three ships’,” I told him. “The Red Sails have four ships full of humans. But we all know what happened to that last one. Or, rather, the first one, I should say.”

Halax tried to seize the flow of the conversation. “I told you the other abductees’ conditions, now you answer: is Nora alright? Can we talk to her?”

“No,” Serral and I both said.

Serral continued. “You’ve shared the number of living Humans in Red Sails custody,” he said. “The Coalition isn’t going to volunteer anything beyond the same: we have two living Humans in ours. You’ll have to make do with that.”

Halax looked furious for a second, but mastered his expression after a breath.

“You reached out to us ,” Tox continued. “Clarify exactly what it is you came to say?”

“We have, what I and the Coalition consider to be, unimpeachable firsthand testimony that the Red Sails egregiously violated First Contact edicts one, two, three, five, eight, and fourteen through twenty-one,” Laranta said, speaking for the first time. “You conducted grossly violative medical biopsies on an entity incapable of consenting to them, and subsequently attempted to kill that entity on no less than four separate occasions.”

“…And?” Tox asked.

I blinked in sheer surprise. He wasn’t denying it?

“I’d like to hear you formally answer those accusations,” Laranta said, sounding no less imposing despite Tox’s reaction.

“Guilty,” he said simply. “Red Sails personnel did all of that, mostly on my orders, no less. I understand you went through Ramshackle at the right moment. You have footage of those very events.”

I said.

Serral instructed me.

“But all of that was consistent with First Contact edicts, specifically, the first one,” Tox said, voice completely steady.

“You just plead guilty to violating the first edict of First Contact,” Serral pointed out.

“That’s because we broke part of the first edict in order to uphold the rest of it. The first edict says ‘no entity shall, through inaction or otherwise, harm any First Contacted individual such that individual might be predisposed against subsequent communication’.”

“You stole my flesh and blood, you butcher,” I said. “Hear it firsthand: it made me very predisposed against interacting more.”

“Yes,” Tox said, “we did, specifically your blood. We needed it to save the other one’s life.”

I froze.

“Explain…” Serral said slowly, having seen that I wasn’t in a condition to say more.

“The team we sent to intercept the craft found two survivors within, both injured, one much more severely than the other. Initial testing was rushed, and we were making decisions blind, minute to minute. Once we confirmed the organisms consumed oxygen, our physicians determined that a blood transfusion might give the alien a better chance. Basic testing indicated the first organism’s blood—yours, Mister Caleb—could be transfused to the other. I wholly admit, we deviated from the Organic Authority’s recommendation. But we did it so we might have two points of contact rather than one.”

It was impossible.

My body was shaking while Tox spoke. Hopefully not enough to see, but I felt my fingers go numb from clenching my fists.

I mastered myself though, when I reminded myself.

It was impossible.

That wasn’t just denial.

I’d seen his body.

And Nora hadn’t known about me when we’d first met. She’d conjectured a fourth ship. She hadn’t seen it, or talked to any of its passengers. She’d never met Daniel, hadn’t even been shown his body, or anyone else from out ship. So…

“…But you failed. He died anyway,” I said. “Isn’t that right, Marshal Tispas?”

I psionically felt the flicker of what could only be surprise from Laranta and Serral. I hadn’t warned them I’d noticed the third party. I’d been too caught up.

Tox and Halax both failed to completely hide their reactions. The Adjutant had glanced to the same spot out of view too many times. He was checking with a third person, gauging their reaction maybe.

What had irked me so much were the numbers.

This was all wordplay, mind games, pageantry .

So why, when we’d brought the system’s highest ranking Coalition Admiral, for a total of three people on our side of the table, had they only brought two?

But they hadn’t brought just two.

Not really.

Tox and Tispas were having a spat. They probably didn’t even trust each other to be in the same room right now. But they still were on the same side of a war, still with a common enemy.

Us.

Their rift might not be as wide as we’d thought.

“Technically…” a third Vorak spoke, Marshal Tispas by his voice, “we couldn’t confirm the other Human’s death. We lacked the medical knowledge to tell. Their heart stopped, and we didn’t have anything to compare to until later but the brain electrical activity vanished too. But we’ve had Adepts come back from that before, so we couldn’t actually confirm their death.”

“You’ve had Daniel’s body for months,” I hissed. “Don’t try to hide behind a technicality. He’s dead, and you—”

I clamped my mouth shut, because I’d been about to say something that hadn’t been true.

Of all the things I held against the Vorak, killing Daniel couldn’t be one of them.

Serral told me.

“You should turn over the bodies that were found with Caleb,” Laranta stated. There was a certain power in directness. Less room to wiggle away from exactly what she'd leveled at them.

Tox furtively glanced off screen, presumably at Tispas.

“Turn them over into Caleb’s custody, not even the Coalition,” Laranta pressed. “Let him at least put them to rest however he can. They were abducted with him.”

That was, I noticed, a calculated mistake on Laranta’s part.

Before this point, the Coalition had never actually confirmed to the Vorak they knew I’d been abducted. She was dangling information they already had, even if they hadn’t confirmed it.

And it was all just to gauge their reactions and responses.

Tox and Halax leaned toward each other, conferring quietly. When they came back, they tried changing the subject.

“We’re unprepared to commit to that right now,” Tox parroted the company line. “I’d like to first address—”

“Halax,” I snapped, “if you are at all, even the tiniest bit genuine in your concern for Nora, you aren’t dodging this question. Why aren’t you even willing to return the bodies of those who died around me?”

Halax, to my surprise, appeared like he was about to answer.

But Tox must have decided if Halax was going to spill those beans…

“We can’t,” the Adjutant said grimly, not even bothering to leave me a barb.

I said nothing, letting Serral press him.

“You can’t?” the Ase asked indignantly. “Not you won’t…you can’t?”

“We don’t have the bodies,” Tox said. “Not all of them. We moved them within just a few hours of your Korbanok raid. More than a few were lost in transit.”

“Lost in transit? What does that mean?” I asked.

“A very good question,” Tox said, casting his gaze, very tellingly now, toward Tispas out of sight, “what does that mean, Marshal?”

Oh. Oh.

I followed.

“It means someone with means attacked our freight and stole its contents,” Tispas said. “And I’ve found it’s a short list of who might be raiding Red Sails freight within a day of your attack, Admiral.”

“...You think we farmed that out?” Laranta asked.

“Your troops took our living specimen during the raid, and less than a day later we lose seven bodies in transit? Including that of the other survivor? No, I don’t think you farmed that out to a fringe group. I think the Coalition sent one of its best teams.”

I grumbled.

Serral pointed out.

he said, giving off a flare of vindictiveness.

She did.

“It’s immaterial then. You’re not just going to cede the bodies, you’re going to turn over the surviving Humans in your custody,” Laranta said. “If for no other reason than because none of that justifies trying to kill Caleb Hane in the aftermath of Korbanok. Even if you were trying to save the other survivor’s life in that one instance, you were conspiring to kill Caleb within a day. Thanks to you, his First Contact is going to be remembered for giving him a crash course in Adept combat before a Starspeak grammar lesson!”

“I, and I alone take responsibility for that,” Tox intoned. He’d been ready to hear that. “When Coalition forces took you from Korbanok, I was in command and with the information available at the time, you were identified as a Coalition agent. Given that appearance, I made a determination that this, therefore, wasn’t First Contact. It was a mistake to assume such, and it was several days before we corrected my assumption. We have no excuse, and on behalf of the Red Sails, the Interstellar Congress, and all Vorak, I apologize.”

“Your apology is worth exactly nothing,” I hissed. “Because your Marshal picked up where you left off!”

I was beginning to see more of the picture now.

Tox had made hasty calls in the immediate aftermath of Korbanok, but then kept his distance once I was at Demon’s pit. He had been legitimate when he’d tried to let us pass on Archo. Tispas really had overruled him. And if I understood the Vorak generalities of their command structure, the Marshal would need to be the one to call for outside assistance. Like the Prowlers who’d come for us in the Green Complex.

“Well…you’re not wrong,” Tispas said from out of sight. His voice was lower quality than Tox and Halax’s— it was compressed and grainy. He was talking to them remotely.

“I’ll skip the scales,” the Vorak said, matching Laranta’s resolute tone. “We are not turning over any Human assets. You are. For failure to abide by the second edict of First Contact: quarantine.”

“Caleb has been medically cleared by the Organic Authority,” Serral countered immediately. “His biology poses no relevant risk to Casti, Farnata, or Vorak biospheres, nor is he in any danger from ours!”

“[Mister] Caleb might have been cleared biologically,” Tispas said, harshly grating the English word, “but he presents a unique infectious risk independent of organic structures. A risk, which, after this conversation, I am satisfied he hasn’t shared with you.”

“You want him to be quarantined for something other than disease?” Serral asked, incredulously.

“Oh it’s a disease, all right,” Tispas said. “Just not an organic one, or even a physical one. It’s an abstract Adept-made disease. He’s made something that damages minds.”

“…We’re aware of his unique Adept creations,” Laranta said. I couldn’t tell if Tox and Halax were surprised by that. “We know better than you; they’re not a risk.”

“Oh, I don’t think you do know better,” Tispas said. “Tox?”

Tox, maybe reluctantly, pressed a button on the console next to him.

“What the dear Adjutant just sent you is compiled data on surveys of Shirao Warp-Abridgement Beacons. Notice Beacons Two, Three, Five, Six, and Nine? Every single one of them is completely inoperable. What do you think happens if they all fail? Every single one of them functioned fine, until they orbited into Vorak-controlled void. Their hardware is completely clean; the only remaining possibility is that the Beacon processors were compromised. Beacons Two and Three were last active a little less than a week ago. Nine went dark just over a month ago. And, care to guess when Five and Six went dark?”

Serral and Laranta looked at their screens as the data came to them.

Serral murmured.

“The bridges are out, Admiral! Before the Humans appeared, this system had eleven ways in and out. Now we have six. What do you think happens to the people in this system when there are none? It won’t matter who’s Vorak or Coalition. We’ll all be stranded. The system might survive, but at what cost? How many would die if we were cut off in the void? He isn’t a biohazard, he’s a infohazard . He infects cognition , the very information around him! Even self-contained Beacons aren’t immune.”

Even without seeing the Marshal’s face, his intensity was clear.

“So, Admiral, I will not allow a single Human to leave this system, because whatever he’s made is spreading, and I refuse to let you place that kind of risk on my fleet, much less the whole system. He cannot be allowed to infect more Beacons. Millions of lives depend on interstellar traffic, and I won’t place one life above millions. Not even a First Contact.”

“Tread very carefully, Marshal…” Laranta voice was icy. “You do not get to make that decision by yourself. You’re talking about attempting assassination of a First Contact. The Assembly would dissolve your fleet. Even if it’s you, the people you answer to could never abide it.”

“My friend, for what is at stake…that is a price I am willing to pay.”

I didn’t miss the look of sheer shock that flickered across Tox’s face. It was barely visible, not even lasting a heartbeat.

“Every last one of my soldiers is ready to die protecting him,” Laranta said. “Don’t try it.”

You could almost hear Tispas shaking his head.

“I’m not in a position to ignore the threat you pose, [Mister] Caleb. I realize this is no consolation,” Tispas said to me, “but I know you probably haven’t meant to do any of this. I understand you’re young, and your Adeptry is still new and unknown. But I was there the last time an Adept plague reached critical concentration. An entire planet, still under seal to this day. This time? It’s worse. A whole star system is at risk, and if it spreads? Everywhere is in danger of being cut off. So I’m sorry but I can’t let you even try to leave this system; I’ll do everything in my power to kill you first.”

“So as long as I’m not under your claw…you can’t know for sure that I’m not trying to get back home,” I concluded.

“…Yes,” the Marshal admitted.

“Then we’re done here,” Laranta said, abruptly tapping at her console. The screen blinked out a second later. “Mu-Rahi Weith, take us back! Eyes on the scopes!”

“Yes, Admiral,” he called out. Our craft immediately began accelerating back toward Lakandt.

I knew this conversation would make me mad.

I was still unprepared for how angry I was.

The worst part was I got it. I understood what he’d said. I might even be able to believe it. If he was truthful, if he was correct, and psionics were as dangerous as he thought…did I have a responsibility to die? If I posed that big of a risk to people?

I wanted them to be evil, to be villains.

But the real world wasn’t that pretty.

Sometimes there were just…enemies.

“He could be lying,” Serralinitus pointed out.

“About which part?” Laranta mused. She was characteristically unperturbed by these developments. She must have been used to it, negotiating war, and the fates of millions.

“Take your pick,” I said. “They said a lot.”

“We can analyze what we’ve learned later,” Laranta said. “Let’s fly back to Lakandt first. Decompress.”

Serral nodded. “You handled yourself well,” he said. “How did you know Tispas was listening?”

“Tox… was the one negotiating with you when I was at Demon’s Pit, right? And they knew Laranta was coming today. I didn’t think they would just send the same person they put across from you. We brought a bigger authority, someone with a wider reach, so they needed someone similar. And even if Tox and Tispas are having their little [catfight], they don’t want to advertise it. Especially not to the Coalition. They want to put up a front. I think they were going to have him announce himself at a nice and weighty moment. So, I saw Tox…I don’t know, glancing at someone out of view…I took a guess. It seemed like the right—”

“Caleb,” Serral said, cutting me off.

I blinked. I hadn’t even realized I was rambling.

“Right, right,” I said. “Decompress.”

Our voidship started its little voyage back toward Paris and its moons.

I spent the time tossing psionic signals toward the moon, trying to experiment more with exactly how they travelled, how fast, how far…or, actually, if they travelled through normal space at all.

·····

I jolted awake in my seat.

I recognized.

“How far from Lakandt are we?” I asked Weith at the helm.

“A few hours,” he said. “Why?”

“I just got a psionic signal from Nai,” I said. “It’s a good chance to test the range limits on the transceiver.”

I sent her.