New Tau Metropolis
Fred
Muggs continued to work to coordinate the upcoming peace talks. It was still
tricky; they had to send signals to the nearest ansible and then use their hack
into the Confed network. He was working with Dela and some of the negotiators
that remained in the capital to get a general outline going.
ONI
wasn’t happy about the exposure so the data bandwidth was restricted.
Apparently ONI didn’t want the Confeds to know where the Fed ansible was. It
delayed the talks. With the chaos in the Confederation, that might be
considered a good thing at the moment, however.
The
navy was moving ansibles in to make the communications easier. He was relieved
by that. At the moment, they had too much of a break between conversations. A
basic outline of the peace treaty had been sent but there were errors in
communication.
It
was rather frustrating, especially since the outline and details kept changing
on his side. It seemed the Federation Congress didn’t know what it wanted to do
either. The State Department had several outlines to work from, one dictated by
Admiral Irons which was the bare minimum terms they were willing to accept.
He’d
pointed out that they had problems communicating that to the other side.
Unfortunately, that had opened up a can of worms for him. More teams had been
sent courtesy of the gate and fast couriers to the capital. Additional
personnel were in the pipeline as well. Secretary Moira Sema herself was to
come to sign the accords once they were hammered out and voted on.
They
had already agreed for her and a delegation to travel into Confederation space
to do so in a big publicity thing. He had been told he would be allowed to go
as well.
Before
the bigwigs could come they had to get the document pounded out, however. They
also needed to do their homework and prep work. That meant a stand down of all
military forces and an exchange of prisoners. Also clearance for the attorney
general’s agents and prosecutors to investigate war crimes. Among many other
things, he thought with a rueful slight shake of his head.
Parties
of personnel and ships would have to go in to oversee the Confederation stand
down and report back. That was already in the works. Reparations were an issue
he was still working on. The Confederation wanted their ships back too. The navy
refused; they had those ships and would not give them back until after the
peace treaty was signed, sealed, and delivered.
He
didn’t blame them, not one iota. As much as he wanted to trust some of the
Confederation, you didn’t hand over warships to an enemy who had been shooting
at you not so long ago. Especially not when those same ships had valuable
intelligence in their computers that could potentially be used against his
people.
He
had been sent additional negotiation teams. Instead of using them with the
Confederation, he’d dispatched a few of them to worlds like Stunning Sunsets,
TauG9-77, and Sparkling Seas to negotiate for the Tauren prisoners there. They
were to oversee the process. At the moment, the navy was only willing to do a one-for-one
trade and only release nonthreatening Taurens who had no command experience or
had not been accused of war crimes.
He
grimaced at that. War crimes were one of many thorny issues he had to deal
with. Still on the subject of reparations, he’d asked for the simple return of
the Pele refugees. That had apparently opened a can of worms that had yet to be
unraveled.
Just
before the war the Federation had agreed to evacuate the survivors of Pele, a
volcanic world that was slowly being consumed by its own overactive volcanism.
The population had been reduced to fifty-five thousand souls. It had taken time
for his staff to find a world willing to accept them. They’d found that world
in TauG9-77. Three ships had been dispatched to pick up the survivors and place
them into stasis. They had meager belongings but had been promised credits to
restart their lives on a series of islands on TauG9-77.
TauG9-77
in turn would get additional tax credits for taking in the refugees and had negotiated
for a group of engineering teams. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Spacebees
had sent units to the world to help them rebuild and upgrade to a higher
desired status.
Just
as the refugee ships had arrived the Taurens had crossed the border and invaded.
They had captured the ships and invaded the planet. They’d bit off more than
they could chew with the invasion, however. Despite their low numbers, the
engineers and military units had fought a brilliant guerillas campaign that had
brutally torn to shreds some of the Taurens’ best army units.
In
fact, he had to wonder if that defensive action had been one reason that the
Taurens had stalled on their offense for so long. It probably hurt them more
than they were willing to admit. They’d stuck their massive hands into what
they’d expected to be a soft, easily conquerable world and instead stuck that
hand into a meat grinder.
He
sniffed at himself.
Somewhere
along the way the three captured ships had been sent with their contents of
refugees to Confederation space. There things got a bit murky.
He
had reports from ONI that the three ships had been spotted in use by the
Confederation. The crew and passengers were MIA, however. He worried that they
were dead. If they were, there would be hell to pay.
Hopefully
not. Hopefully, someone had been wise enough to stick those poor benighted
souls in some warehouse in their pods until their sticky situation could be
resolved. Hopefully, he thought with a shake of his head. But until they
figured it out, it was one thing among many he needed to work out.
It
was a saying in his department that sometimes the simplest things were the most
complex to work out. Negotiations took time, and they took a lot of patience
and trust.
Still,
it would be nice to get those people home. They’d suffered enough and getting
them released would be another step in the right direction to finally resolving
the conflict and putting the war behind them.
On
the other side of things, they had the POWS as well as control of Federation
space to deal with. Also, worlds like Stunning Sunsets that had not formally
joined the Federation and then independent worlds like Tau-FRX76 and Tau-2X78
which had been in early talks to join the Federation but those talks had
stalled when the Taurens had triggered their fifth column of activists to take
control.
He
shook his head and ran a hand through the fur on the top of his head. Still
there, he thought moodily. The thought of the fifth column people had brought
up an issue with the Confederation, what to do with those spies. ONI and the
other agencies had yet to identify them all, let alone round them up.
Someone
in Confederation space wanted them as leverage against the POWs and their own
citizens who wanted out of Confed space. That was another thorny issue he had
yet to figure out.
One
among many, he thought with a resigned shake of his head. But, the old maxim
was still true to this day, he thought. “If we are talking, we’re not shooting
at each other. And I’ll take that any day,” he murmured to himself.
“Sir,
don’t forget the mixer tonight. It is in an hour,” his chief of staff said in a
text.
He
grunted and then shook himself before rising out of his chair. He typed out a
response that he was going to go change and collect his wife and then he’d show
up.
“Knowing
her we’ll be fashionably late as usual,” he said.
“Well,
I’m not holding dinner. It’s New Texas beef. I’m looking forward to it,” came
the response.
Fred
chuckled and felt his mouth water a little in response. The only thing that
would get him really going was bush baby. For some reason, his kind still had a
thing for it even all these centuries away from their ancient ancestors.
>>><><<<
Phoebe smiled as she clung to her
son’s arm. Ayumu wasn’t going to be with her much longer. His leave was nearly
up and he was being transferred to his next assignment. He hadn’t talked about
it much though, probably not to distress her.
She smiled to him. He looked
dashing in his crisp naval uniform. So formal, so handsome. She had hopes that
he’d find someone to pique his interest at the dinner parties. So far no luck
on that score. Pity.
>>><><<<
Ayumu fought to tug a finger in
his collar. His mother might like him dressed up to the nines in his formal
uniform but he hated the damn thing. He had worn the thing more in the past
month than he had in his time at the academy. He was starting to regret coming
home for leave.
He nodded politely to Commander
Dolly Merhall. The Neocollie was one of several officers that had been asked to
attend the mixer. She looked more comfortable than he was, but then again she
was a female and also older. As a senior officer, she probably had more
experience with such things.
He on the other hand was a junior
officer who was more likely to be told to keep his trap shut and pass the canapés
over being included in the conversations.
He knew his mother meant well,
but honestly, he was pretty sure they were wasting their time. But he did it
for her since she wanted to preen and show him off.
Not much longer though, he
thought as he checked his internal clock. Another two hours and he could beg
off and slip away to get out of the monkey suit and play Shards, a new shooter
he’d gotten into lately.
Hell, he might even do it in his
buck ass fur just to unwind. A bottle of suds, some fun … his mouth started to
water in anticipation.
>>><><<<
