Firestar

“They have sown the wind,” she whispered. “They shall reap the whirlwind.”

---

“Commander Pagadan,” Eldest Elizabeth said, smiling up from the table. “It was nice of you to agree to meet on such short notice.” She was an older woman with white hair and pale skin. She was wearing a dark gray suit similar in cut to what he had seen the civilians wearing at the tactical forum two weeks before. Her dark eyes were sharp, though, and she gestured at the chair across the table from her.

“Do be seated, please,” she said. “I’d get up to greet you properly, but my hips aren’t what they used to be. Is there anything I can get you?”

“That’s all right, Ma’am,” Commander Pagadan said. “Your invitation was unexpected.” They were meeting in a small room in Government House. The room was dim, except for a solitary light directly over the table. He could see the outlines of a window, but only because the Nebula was visible through it.

Eldest Elizabeth favored him with a social smile. “I’ve taken the liberty of ordering for you. Your dietary needs aren’t the same as ours, and the cooks have prepared something you should find suitable.” She gestured, and an aide appeared with a wine bottle. “This was approved by the doctors.” The aide filled a glass for Commander Pagadan and retreated into the shadows, leaving the bottle behind.

Commander Pagadan sniffed the wine and essayed a small sip. “This is native to your planet?” Eldest Elizabeth nodded. “I believe I have had this before. It was at a diplomatic reception I attended last year. Very rare, very expensive.”

She laughed briefly. “Here in First Landing, this is considered an ordinary table wine.”

“Do you know the price this brings in Republic City?”

“I find it curious that you know the price of wine.” She sipped from her own glass. “I did not think a serving naval officer would be aware of something like that.”

“My uncle made a fortune by trading in off-planet delicacies such as wines.” He sipped again, rolling the golden liquid across his tongue. “Officers in my line of work have to master many different skills, and the knowledge necessary to appreciate a good wine is one of them.”

Eldest Elizabeth nodded. As they ate, she politely asked after the health of the other PSK officers and what family they had. Finally, though, over dessert, she put her fork down and folded her hands in front of her.

“I understand that you were serving on the Staff of your Admiral Bloodstone when this opportunity arose.”

“Yes, Ma’am, I was.”

“I surmise that your official duties were to help smooth any differences between your government and Admiral Bloodstone.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” he said slowly. “Most of my duties involve the paperwork that inevitably finds its way to a high-ranking officer’s desk.”

“We have our own paperwork,” she said, smiling wryly, “and I have learned that those who master it must have many other skills as well.

“Enough of that, though. The Families have decided to send an Ambassador to the People’s Star Kingdom. Furthermore, we have decided to send a squadron of ships along with our Ambassador. They will be ordered to serve alongside your fleet in operations of mutual benefit.” She paused, measuring the man. “Your reaction?”

Commander Pagadan covered his feelings with another sip of wine. It wouldn’t be appropriate to reveal the enormous sense of relief he felt. “I can’t predict how such an envoy would be received,” he said at last. “There are those in our government who believe that as we are engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the Empire, we have neither the time nor the energy to devote to what would amount to a gesture.”

“Alliance,” she said, watching him intently.

One word, one simple word, but it had involved nearly a tenday of non-stop arguing before the Council had approved her speaking it to this ... man. What had swayed the final vote had been the annual Genome Report, a summation of the current state of diversity in the Families. Sixty generations had used up nearly all of the possibilities with the DNA available to the Families; they urgently, and in the report ‘urgently’ had been capitalized and underlined twice, they urgently needed an additional source of human DNA.

In the last 100 years, the Families had traded for genomes at Blue Water and Prenger Station, but with the war, that had become more and more difficult. Eldest Shawna Reboullet of Family Inland Sea on Weon had pointed out the obvious: make genome trades with the PSK. The People’s Star Kingdom was vastly more diverse and more easily accessible than Blue Water or Prenger. If they were allies, the Families Navy would only have to escort the merchant ships halfway there. The PSK Navy would escort the ships the rest of the way, and that would free up Families warships for use elsewhere. The increase in their naval strength would allow them to carry the war to the Idenux.

That had bothered some of the members of the Conservative Faction on the Council. They were mostly members of smaller Families with little or no investments in space, and regarded the war as little more than an inconvenience. Some of them had gone so far as to object to the whole idea of a trade, saying the handful of new genomes they could expect to secure wouldn’t be worth the expense and risk involved.

Admiral Carter had disrupted their arguments when she’d reported how Captain Petra Johnson had extracted ‘payment’ for helping the Spatha, 371 viable genomes that were controlled by the Navy. These genomes had tested as compatible with Families stocks, but radically different than anything they had.

Admiral Carter had ended her speech in blunt terms: vote in favor of the alliance and certain issues important to the Navy, and she would grant access to those genomes.

The furor from her speech was still rumbling in the back corridors of Government House, but no Family Eldest could afford to pass up those genomes. The division that had followed that speech had been a mere formality.

Eldest Elizabeth revealed none of that to Commander Pagadan. These outsiders from the PSK didn’t have to know the internal details of the debate in the Families Council. The explanation that biological policy often drove Family policy could wait for another day.

“In all fairness, Ma’am,” he said finally, “the People’s Star Kingdom encompasses 15 worlds. The Families have only three. Most of the decision-makers back home would think that you might be a burden on us.”

“In all fairness, Commander Pagadan,” Eldest Elizabeth replied, matching his tone, “the Families have the resources of more than 30 worlds to draw upon. Five worlds in this nebula we call home are now habitable, and three of those are populated. In another 30 years, two more will have growing settlements on them. By then, we will probably be drawing resources from another 30 uninhabitable planets beyond the 20 we currently use. While none of those 20 systems can support life, they do have planets, planetoid belts, and other stellar debris that are quite useful and relatively easy for us to exploit. We have barely begun to tap those resources.

“Let me give you an example. We have needed the resources from the planetoid belts of just two of those systems to build and support our Fleet over these last 30 years. Within five years, we will have doubled our current resource capacity, and that is a conservative estimate. Those systems are located in regions that are dangerous to people who lack our specialized equipment and the processes we have developed to extract those riches.

“With all due respect, Commander, I would suggest that while we lack the industrial resources of the PSK, the raw materials the Families can tap are considerably greater than those of the PSK, and we don’t have someone actively trying to disrupt or destroy them.

“The possibilities that result from our sending raw materials to the PSK are staggering.” She didn’t add that there would be a flow the other way: different technologies, different approaches, and genomes, precious genomes.

“Our biggest problem, Commander, has been finding crews for the ships we build.” She deliberately left the possibilities from the trade unstated, another suggestion from Eldest Shawna. “We could easily launch three ships for every one in service today while maintaining all of our current ships at full combat stretch. Furthermore, we could supply those ships at any level of combat out to a distance of several hundred light years from this system. Unfortunately, we cannot crew that many warships or the support ships and bases that we would need to do that.”

Commander Pagadan took another sip of wine to hide his surprise. He wondered how much she knew of the PSK’s problems? The Kingdom had an enormous population, and a matching industrial capacity. Moving industries into space had been mandated long before the first war with the Empire. Scarcely any major industry remained on the surface of any PSK world. From the beginning of the current war, the Empire had targeted those space industries. If what Eldest Davenport said was true, the PSK should seize every opportunity to make this alliance happen. Exploring one was certainly within his instructions, but he needed to know more before he could commit to even the most limited of proposals.

“What ships are you proposing to send on your goodwill visit?” he asked.

“We propose to send a Fleet Carrier, a Light Carrier, their accompanying escorts, a squadron of cruisers, and an additional squadron of escorts,” Eldest Elizabeth said. “That would be 24 warships. In addition, several support ships would accompany them. We would need to lease a place where we could establish a base of some kind for the crews of these ships.”

“That’s a great number of ships,” Commander Pagadan said. Neither he nor Commander Young had been able to learn the exact size of the Families Navy. He had thought the Families might send one or two ships, not a complete Task Group. Clearly, they were serious about this proposed alliance.

“Is it wise to take so much of your strength away from defending your home planets?”

That question had been hotly debated in Council as well. The answer was complex, involving juggling ships between the Frontier and Main Fleets, two new squadrons of ships that were undergoing trials, and the temporary deployment of Phormio, the second of the Strike Carriers, in the Home system.