Diplomacy Snippet 3

Here we go with #3. I'll probably do 1 more and then stop the teasing and publish the manuscript. :)

Chapter 2

New Tau Metropolis

Vice Admiral Shelby Logan played with a stylus as she listened to a report from a courier that had recently arrived at the Cenarius star system and their newly-installed ansible. She nodded at the news that the pirates had fled.

“Boni, pass on this report to all ships and star systems in the area. Make sure they are on the alert for the pirates.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lieutenant Bonbibi, aka Boni replied. Boni was the admiral's personal A.I. embedded in her implants. She acted as the admiral's virtual chief of staff and clerk.

“And let the Admiralty know with their own copy.”

“Yes, ma’am.

“And, once you are done with that, and since it will probably make its way to the media eventually anyway, run it past operations and then release it to the Public Affairs Department to release to the media. We could use a spot of good news.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the A.I. replied.

Vice Admiral she thought with a rueful shake of her head. She had always wanted flag rank. Well, no, that wasn't quite true. From a child, she'd wanted to succeed her father as chief engineer of Anvil, their space station home.

Despite it falling apart at the time.

Admiral Irons had reawakened the dream of the Federation. She'd always thought about it, dreamed it would come back, but he'd shown her and others that in order to see such dreams come true they had to make them happen.

They had. Through the blood, sweat, and tears they'd made it happen. She'd lost good friends along the way. Too many she thought with a pang before gently setting that thought aside. She ran a hand through her shoulder length brown hair. She needed a trim. She could have Boni do it, but she liked the time out of her busy schedule it took to see a barber and get pampered. The same for her nails.

When Admiral Irons had pitched the idea of Prometheus over a decade ago, she'd been eager to take it up. In order to get there, she had moved from the chief engineer slot on Firefly to the executive officer slot under Renee Mayweather's tutelage. She'd thought she had lost the opportunity when Admiral Irons had been driven out of Pyrax. But he'd held onto the dream and he'd slipped keys and tech to her dad in order to build Prometheus piece by piece.

She had eventually managed to get her delayed command when Admiral Irons had settled in Antigua and begun the serious process of rebuilding and finding a way to combat the Horathian pirate threat. She had taken the Cabeiri class factory tender around one loop in the south of Rho, helping to rebuild those worlds she had stopped at and coincidentally get them interested in joining the Federation again. After that she had been given a new mission, Tau sector.

Her Tau mission had come with its share of surprises. Like her frocked promotion to commodore and all the implants and keys that had gone with it. Boni had come from that process.

Finding plagues rampaging across Tau had forced her to revise her mission plan from the moment they arrived. She'd adapted, and her people had risen to the unexpected challenge valiantly. They'd cleared out a lot of the pirates in the process.

Sometime after they had settled in Tau-1952, she had been promoted to rear admiral and the star system had been renamed New Tau Metropolis by the natives. They had settled in to become the Federation capital of the sector.

She had just gotten the yard up and running and started turning things around when they'd received word that a pirate fleet was coming up their wake. The battle in the capital had been costly but her people had prevailed, driving the pirates off.

From there they'd gone on the offensive to first drive the pirates out of their own capital, Tortuga, one jump away, and then chased them out of their northern base of Dead Man's Hand four years ago.

To say that finding out that the pirates were largely made up of non-humans had come as something of a shock to her and probably to the Horathians that had preceded her. Those same Horathians had brought the plague to sow and had initially tricked the pirates into doing their dirty work. Their foolishness had allowed their own people to be infected, first in Tortuga and then in Harlot's Dream. She had no clue on the number of ships that had been infected by the plagues and lost in hyperspace. She shivered ever so slightly.

Relief from Rho sector in the form of mercy convoys of hospital ships had helped alleviate the suffering in the sector. But just when she had thought they were finally on top of things again, Murphy had put in an appearance to throw her one hell of a curve ball.

The first was in her mission order change. The second had been with finding out some dark secrets about their neighbor to the west, the Tauren Confederation. A third had hit a short time later with the battle of Horath.

Her people had been full of pride and happy that the admiral was finally cutting off the head of the snake. Their pride had turned into horror when word came back through the ansible of the nova bomb and the tens of thousands of Federation lives lost—not to mention the billions of Horathians.

The impact on the fleet had been profound. Second Fleet had been slashed in half. The navy was still rebuilding, but it had put a damper on her mission. She had received only two convoys in the three years since the battle, one containing another draft of ten thousand personnel, and a second being the fourth and final medical convoy from Rho.

That meant they were on their own.

Politicians were still trying to capitalize on the fiasco and tear Admiral Irons down but he refused to yield. Things were still rocky, but he still had a firm hand on the tiller.

There was not much word on the chase in Sigma. The last report had said they had narrowed the search field to under one hundred light years, but it was still like looking for a needle in an awfully big and black haystack.

She shook her head.

“Ma'am, your next appointment is two minutes early,” Boni said quietly, apparently aware of her woolgathering.

“Okay. Give me a thumbnail brief for a refresher and then let Nancy know to show them in.”

“Aye aye, ma'am.”

“~~^V^~~”

Fred Muggs adjusted his suit and then nodded to himself in the mirror. Despite all appearances of confidence, he was still worried about his mission.

In the past four years, his branch of the State Department had grown exponentially. Lots of people had been added, some from Rho fresh out of college but many were natives without proper training.

It kept him from getting a swelled head; he left that to Phoebe and her machinations as a kingmaker.

His lips pursed fondly in memory of his wife. She was working, but he was fairly confident that she'd come up with something to make up for their time apart. Probably something kinky given her current mindset.

He snorted ever so softly as he cracked his knuckles.

Nearly half of the sector had fallen into their orbit and had joined the Federation or were considering doing so. At the moment, he had only a handful of blots on his record. He couldn't do much about Rolling Meadows or Kingdom Come. In fact, their stubborn refusal to join the Federation and maintain their neutrality and sovereignty was a blessing in some ways. The government's gentle acknowledgment of their status had been used as an example for others. In some cases, it had been used as a subtle stick—a way of showing that, yes, they would respect their sovereignty but they would also more or less ignore them. Both worlds were being passed by in trade and other things, unable to benefit as their neighboring star systems had.

The Neochimp chuffed softly to himself. They might not like it, but they couldn't complain either.

Well, they did anyway, but they knew they didn't have a leg to stand on. No one could make them trade with others and the reverse was true. Nor was the Federation interested in extending the introduction packages to them to benefit from if they weren't willing to join up.

He examined his face critically. He had some muttonchops going; he might need a trim. He used the trimmer to remove a couple of errant ear and nose hairs. He winced at the pain of a hair getting yanked out of his left nostril but otherwise remained silent.

His biggest test was yet to come. The Tauren Confederation in the form of an envoy ship was on its way to the capital for final talks. Things were going to get interesting he thought. He was also going to be the head of those talks. Well, Admiral Logan would be there as military governor of the sector, but he knew who would ultimately have to do most of the talking and heavy lifting.

He paused as he remembered the time a ship had waited patiently in the Stunning Sunsets star system. The Confeds occasionally came to trade with the natives. They had to wait there; they couldn't risk jumping into their space and creating an incident or worse, getting blown apart. There was also no set schedule for the freighters to arrive.

It had been a gamble to sit there, out of contact for so long. His people had made the most of it, negotiating with the natives. They hadn't been interested in joining the Federation since they were on good terms with the Confederation and didn't want to be caught in the middle. Not that they had much choice.

But steady pressure had eroded them a bit and they'd thawed. They had been the neutral party needed to make the introductions. His gamble had worked.

It had taken time, but they'd made contact and the Confeds were on the way to the capital. He had already got the basics orders from Secretary Sema. They were to extend an olive branch, and the Federation would guarantee that the prickly Taurens would keep their borders and sovereignty. They would open the door to trade. He had a lot on the table and a lot riding on getting a treaty. Phoebe already saw it as a way to get him out of Tau and on to bigger and better things.

If she only knew what he did he thought with a pang as he finished his morning absolutions.

Commodore Yu had brought back troubling intelligence from her trip in the south. He was still keeping the data under wraps and holding it at arm's length. If even half of it was true, then the Confederation had a lot to answer for.

Unfortunately, there was little confirmation of it or any other data for that matter. The intelligence community was still getting set up, so he hoped they got sorted out soon. He needed all of the intelligence he could in his back pocket. He didn't like going into the talks blind. He was fairly certain the navy was prejudiced by the gorilla's data and testimony. Handling Admiral Logan might prove tricky.

“~~^V^~~”