Post by Lorpius Prime on Dec 10, 2008 2:30:46 GMT -5
At its surface, the planet the Humans called Earth had a gravitational force almost twenty percent stronger than that of Hyong's homeworld, Karee. That discrepancy, combined with a somewhat thinner atmospheric density, made flight here impossible for Hyong's people. Or rather, it would have been impossible if they had not long ago developed tools for the manipulation of gravity fields. Actually, even with the combat harness, Hyong could not really maintain stable flight for very long. The wings of his species were very nearly vestigial structures, inherited from distant ancestors struggling to survive in a far meaner era of their evolution. Very few of Hyong's people still flew completely unassisted even on Karee these days.
He enjoyed the sensation while he could. One of the more amusing characteristics that Hyong had noticed about Humans was that very few of them ever took much notice of anything that happened above them. He glided right over the heads of eight Humans before a single one noticed him. The first one that did was stepping out of one of their ground vehicles, Hyong passed only a few meters over his head, and the Human cried out and fell backwards onto a sidewalk. Hyong laughed. Intellectually, he knew the creatures on this planet had faced different evolutionary pressures than on his own; but instinctively, he found any organism that could not be bothered to keep a close watch on the skies above to be so terminally stupid that he could not help laughing.
He glided for a few more blocks before it became impossible to remain aloft. Hyong brought his legs forward to brake. Aiming at a tall streetlight, he curled up his wings so that he could grab onto the metal pole with his claws. Down on the ground, a Human child began clapping while its parent stared; Hyong felt pleased that he had accomplished the whole maneuver almost flawlessly despite a lack of practice. He deactivated the combat harness' gravity field and dropped to the sidewalk. The adult human, a female, put her arms around her child as Hyong walked past them.
Hyong blinked a few times to call up a map on his monocle. He was not far from his destination. Walking the last few blocks would not be as exhilarating as flying, but it would only take a few minutes longer. He started jogging down the sidewalk.
There were not very many Humans around; most of them would be inside the many buildings Hyong was passing engaged in some sort of productive work. But he still got plenty of stares. Even though the Republic's embassy was in this city, it had a staff of less than a hundred people, and very few of them ever actually left the compound, so Hyong's kind were a rare sight on these streets. He might have been slightly less conspicuous in one of the Humans' large spaceport cities—where Republican merchants conducted a modest amount of trade—but not much.
The building he needed was seven blocks away. Hyong made it there in ten minutes, most of which he spent waiting for clearance to cross through the Humans' ground vehicle pathways. It might not actually be so bad for the Humans to learn how to manipulate gravity, Hyong mused, it would certainly make travel in their cities much easier, and safer. Hyong managed to survive the journey and walked through the doors of the glass-fronted shop that he was looking for. A glowing sign above the door said "CAFÉ de CONCHITA".
There was a small crowd of Humans inside, but not so many that Hyong could enter without being noticed. Nearly every Human inside turned to gape at him. Most of them were older males, the majority of whom were holding various smoldering objects in their mouths; the smoke apparently had some sort of therapeutic effect to the Humans. Hyong tried to navigate a path through the stunned Humans to the back of the shop.
The Human that Hyong was looking for was neither male nor smoking. She was standing at the back of the crowd, leaning over a wooden counter with her head on her hands talking to one of the shop's customers that had not noticed Hyong's entrance. After more than a decade on this planet, Hyong was beginning to notice the subtle differences among Humans which allowed him to recognize and remember specific individuals. Hyong had never had any trouble telling this particular Human apart from any of the others, however. There were various reasons for this, but the largest was that she kept her hair dyed a bright pink color that did not seem to occur naturally among her species.
Gracia turned her head as he approached and waved with one hand. "Hi Hyong," she said. "Finished with your meeting already?"
The man she had been talking to turned around on his stool and began staring in the same way as the others. Hyong ignored him.
"Gracia," he said, and walked up to the counter beside the man on the stool, "I need your help with—"
"Oh my God, Hyong!" she was now looking at him with an open-mouthed expression like the people he had just walked past. "What happened to your eye?"
Hyong stopped in midsentence and tried to puzzle his way through her confusion. He got it after a moment.
"It is just a… well I don't know an equivalent word," he reached up to his face and removed his monocle to show it to her. "It is like a monitor, but small enough to be portable. I can see fine."
"Oh," she said. Then she tilted her head to one side. "Put it back on."
He did.
Gracia looked at him for a moment, then put one hand over her mouth, covering a laugh. "You look like a pirate," she said.
"A pirate?"
"Yep," she nodded, grinning, "just like a cartoon pirate. I think I'll get you a pirate hat to go with it."
Hyong almost asked her what she was talking about, but he had far more urgent business, and forced himself to put his questions aside.
"Gracia, I'm sorry," he turned his head from side to side imitating the Human gesture, "but I have little time, and I require your assistance."
"Oh, that's right," she stood up straight and folded her arms, "what did you need?"
"You have a communicator, yes? One of your, ah, cell phones?"
The skin on her forehead creased, "Yeah…" She reached into one of the pockets of her pants and withdrew a little red object.
"I would like you to contact someone for me, one of your government's ambassadors, Pascual Molinas. I must speak with him immediately."
"Um, okay…" she fiddled with the device, "what's his number?"
"What?"
"His telephone number? I need his number to call him."
"I don't know, don't you have a communications directory?"
She stared at him for a moment. "You have no idea what you're doing, do you?"
"The embassy handles an interface between our communications network and your own, but I am unable to route through them at the moment. I need a Human communicator."
Gracia rolled her eyes in the way she did whenever Hyong did or said something she thought was stupid.
"Okay. No, Hyong, I don't have a 'communications directory' to just let me call anyone I want." She puffed out her cheeks, "So how important is this, really?"
"I have…" he called up the clock on his monocle, "…two hours to stop a war between our people."
The low buzz of conversation which had returned to the shop since Hyong's entry stopped again. Gracia's eyes widened.
"Carlos!" she shouted, and turned around.
Another Human, who was sitting on a stool behind the counter and playing with some electronic device, stood up. He was dressed in a similar style to Gracia, except that his hair was dyed black instead of pink; a large image of a Human skull leered from the front of his shirt.
"Eh?" Carlos asked.
Gracia pointed a finger at him, "Watch the store for a bit. I have to go save the world."
Carlos snorted, "Right. You and Batman have fun."
Gracia turned back to Hyong. "All right, come here," she waved him towards an unoccupied table on one side of the shop. "Let's see if we can find your friend the ambassador."
She picked up a cloth bag from beneath the counter, the sort that many Humans carried on their backs with shoulder straps. Hyong followed her as she walked around the counter.
"So you do have a directory? You can find his 'number'?"
"I have the internet, Hyong," she put her bag down on the table and opened it. "It's going to tell us his number and what he looks like when he's drunk."
A little less than two miles away, Pascual was immersed in conversation over his own cell phone. Unlike most of his peers, Pascual had never been comfortable with video communications, and usually used his phone in voice-only mode. In this case, however, he had little choice in the matter; participating in a multiple-point teleconference would have been almost impossible without visual references. So Pascual had his stylus-shaped phone bent over one ear, with its screen extended and folded in front of his right eye in a manner superficially similar to Hyong’s monocle. The arrangement did leave Pascual’s hands free, which was a good thing as he needed them to keep from crashing into anything because of the disorienting bifurcation of his vision.
Durante had sent him a driver, thank God, a Private in the Ejército who came equipped with a very nice, very official-looking black car. Once Pascual fumbled his way into the back seat, he didn’t have to worry about his own navigation. The Venezuelan soldier rolled up the windows and sped away without waiting instructions. Pascual breathed a sigh of relief and tried to settle down into the plush leather seat.
The display in front of Pascual’s eye was split into two sections. On the left was the crisis room at Earth Fleet’s headquarters, buried under the mountains of the Venezuelan Coastal Range north of Caracas. Pascual would be in that room himself shortly, depending on how many laws his driver intended to break on the way. The crisis room was a great cavernous area which had supposedly been designed along the same lines as the Situation Room in the American White House, but seemed to have more in common with a filmmaker’s dramatization of the same. Councilors Durante and Trautmann and Deputy Councilor Khatib sat at a long conference table with their assistants and an Earth Fleet Admiral Pascual didn’t recognize immediately. They were all looking at the camera through which Pascual was looking at them. Or, more precisely, they were looking at the screen just below that camera, which was probably showing them a rather unflattering close-up of Pascual’s face in return.
The other side of Pascual’s video display was looking into a much smaller conference room, this one inside the OES building in Singapore. That was an aboveground facility; nothing more than simple leased office space where the OES could maintain a presence in the city-state and Earth Fleet could keep a recruiting office. It did have a functional conference room of its own, however, and Chief Executive Molinas was crowded around a much smaller teleconference system along with Admiral Kozlov and the anonymous gaggle of assistants which followed both men wherever they went.
The connection to Singapore had just come online; Pascual’s uncle had been sleeping when the current crisis broke out.
“Fill me in, Bernado,” Eduard Molinas said.
“Yes, Chief,” the Foreign Councilor said gravely. “Right now it’s all just the Tadpoles. We seem to have dropped the ball staffing their delegation; Rokden apparently started demanding a shuttle to take him back to his ship just over an hour ago. But the valets were trying to pass the word through my office instead of straight over to Pascual, so I’m only just getting on top of things myself.”
Every Earth Fleet officer Pascual could see on the tiny display rolled his eyes, and Pascual winced. But the Chief Executive waved a hand.
“Fix it later, what’s eating Rokden?”
Pascual grimaced right along with his boss; he’d already heard this part of the story.
“Chief,” Durante said, “the Tadpoles want to evacuate. They say the Bats have found out what we’re doing and are going to try to stop us. Rokden claims they’ve dispatched warships to seize the Tadpoles, by force if we won’t hand them over.”
Earth’s highest-ranking official seemed remarkably calm for what he’d just been told; Chief Molinas only tilted his head slightly to one side. “They have?”
Durante shook his head, “Well that’s part of the problem, Chief. Earth Fleet can’t confirm if any—“
“Actually, that’s no longer true, sir,” the Admiral sitting across the table from Councilor Durante spoke up for the first time, Pascual still didn’t know his name. “Admiral,” he nodded to his superior in Singapore just as a junior officer stepped forward to hand something to Kozlov.
The Admiral in Caracas continued, “We’ve just gotten reports from our belt stations and confirmed them with EarthCom telescopes. At least four ships departed Titan orbit about an hour ago, and now they’ve blue-shifted all to hell. The Bats are sending something our way.”
No one spoke for a moment. All the civilians looked ill, while the soldiers kept up their usual hard faces. Kozlov had put his reading glasses on to look over the report he had been handed.
“Well,” Wilhelm Trautmann worked up the courage to speak first, “can we intercept them in the asteroids? That’s why we built the stations, isn’t it?”
Kozlov shook his head without looking up from the report. The other Admiral explained.
“No, Councilor. This has always been the problem with the belt stations. It takes an hour for light to reach us from Saturn. Those ships have been underway for that long, they’re already past our stations. The stations are way too far from Earth for proper command and control from here.”
The Financial Councilor looked chastened, and nodded. But Kozlov added from his own side of the video screen, “It doesn’t matter anyway.” He flicked the paper in his hand, “we’ve pegged these things at over 30 percent of light speed. Even if we were right on top of them we’d have a devil of a time hitting them with anything.”
“Wait,” Pascual said. He sat up, though it was unlikely anyone else could see the gesture from the perspective his phone camera provided. “You said Rokden started complaining an hour ago. If it takes that long for the first signals to get here, how did the Tadpoles already know what was happening?”
Everyone looked at the Foreign Councilor, and Admiral Kozlov raised an eyebrow. But Durante just shrugged, “I don’t know.”
“Some other technology? Faster than light sensors?” Trautmann offered.
“Wouldn’t be the first surprise,” Chief Molinas said. “Where’s Rokden now?”
Durante turned back to the screen, “still at the hotel with the delegation. He was quite angry when we spoke, but he can’t really do anything about it. Even if we wanted to send him back, it would take several hours to get him over to Quito and on—“
“We don’t have several hours,” the Admiral in the crisis room interrupted, “at that speed, the Bats will—“
Pascual lost the rest of what the Earth Fleet man was saying because his phone’s screen started flashing red and overlaid some text on top of the teleconference. It startled him and he jumped back slightly. Someone was calling him.
The flashing screen indicated that the call was coming from Pascual’s secretary. Actually, Audrey was the head administrative assistant for an entire task force of the OES Foreign Ministry, but she handled most of Pascual’s business herself, rather than farming it out to one of her own assistants. Still, it was unusual for her to call him directly while he was out of the office, rather than just send an unobtrusive message.
“Excuse me a moment,” Pascual said to the conference still continuing behind the alert screen, and he switched his signal over to a holding screen. Then he accepted the call.
“Yes?”
If Audrey was surprised to see her boss taking a video call, she didn’t show it.
“Excuse me, Ambassador,” she said, “I know you have urgent business, but you’ve got an unusual call.”
"'Urgent' is an understatement, Audrey, how important is this?"
"I'm not sure. It's a Bat, sir, the one you've been taking meetings with. Or at least he claims to be; but he's not calling through the official line, this is coming from a private number."
"But it is Hyong?" Pascual frowned.
"Well he looks like a Bat over the video, but…" she shrugged. Pascual understood her hesitation, there had been more than one "alien communication" hoax over the past few decades, it was easy enough to fake the appearance of an alien using commercial graphics software or even a simple costume. Audrey went on, "he looks like he's just in some sort of restaurant, too. I don't know what to make of it."
Pascual furrowed his brow in consternation, "did he tell you what he wants?"
"Yeah, he says it's critical that he speak to you immediately to prevent a war. It's why I didn't turn him away. I know there's something going on and—"
"All right, Audrey," he cut her off, "thanks. Put him through, I'll deal with it."
"Yes sir," she nodded professionally. "Transferring the call now."
"Thank you," he said again.
Audrey's face disappeared and was replaced by a blank screen for half a second before the new video feed appeared. It took Pascual a moment to figure out that he was staring upward into a young woman's nostrils.
"Well I'm sorry that we don't design our equipment to clip onto our fur like civilized races, Hyong," the woman was saying. "Now, do you want to put this back around your ear, or do you want to borrow someone else's phone?"
Pascual's vision wobbled slightly as the woman's hand moved. She was apparently holding the headset of the phone to which Pascual had been connected; hence the unconventional angle of vision.
"Um, hello?" Pascual said as he remembered what he was doing.
Someone hissed, and the camera rose and spun rapidly; Pascual blinked to avoid becoming dizzy. When the movement stopped, he was looking down the top of a furry snout.
One of the easier ways to identify artificial renderings or costumes of Bats from the real thing was by the eyes. Most human artists—indeed, most humans—had never seen a Bat up close in person, so they tended to fill in the details with familiar knowledge. Bats' eyes were deeply set behind their snouts and partially obscured by the fur on their faces, so they could not be well seen at a distance. As a result, most human representations of the Bats showed black or yellow eyes, common to many Earth animals.
The eyes looking out at Pascual through the video screen were the steely blue color common to all the Bats he had ever met. Or, the eye looking out at Pascual was that color, the Bat's right eye was concealed behind what seemed to be a piece of coal-black metal. Pascual only had a moment to wonder at that.
"Ambassador Molinas," Hyong Yaheek said. The camera bobbed with the Bat's snout as he talked. "Thank you for taking my call despite the circumstances. I have critically urgent business to discuss with your government."
Pascual did his best to keep his anxiety out of his expression. "I'm very busy at the moment, Mr. Yaheek," he said. "But my secretary said you're talking about war, so here I am. How serious is this?" He was going to be annoyed if Hyong was exaggerating, but given the stakes, it would probably be more upsetting if Hyong was not exaggerating.
"As I said, it is critical. Ambassador Hyarahek has arranged the dispatch of several armed vessels to your world. Unless your government takes immediate action, I believe this will start a war between our people."
Pascual was unsure whether he should reveal that Earth already knew about the ships. It could put the Bat off-balance, and at the very least might speed up the discussion. On the other hand, his superiors might prefer to keep their cards close to their chest. In the end, Pascual decided it wasn't his call to make.
"By now you should know we don't respond well to threats, Mr. Yaheek. Whatever the Bats want, you're not going to get it from us by force."
"You misunderstand me, Ambassador," the camera swung from side to side as the Bat shook his head. "Hyarahek and I are not in agreement on this matter, and I do not believe his actions are in the best service of our colony. My duty obligates me to rectify the situation, but I cannot do so before hostilities erupt unless I have your government's prompt attention and cooperation."
"That's…" Pascual's eyes narrowed and he trailed off. The car had stopped; they were already in one of the buried parking garages of Earth Fleet headquarters. A Fleet security guard opened the car's passenger door.
"Mr. Ambassador, if you'll—" Pascual held up a hand to silence the man. He needed to focus right now, and he couldn't do that if he was trying to walk.
Hyong was implying that he wanted to help Earth work against his own government. But that didn't make sense; the Bat was a uniformed officer of his species' military, and he'd never struck Pascual as the mutinous sort. Even if he didn't like his government's specific methods, it would hardly justify betraying his loyalty to an entirely different species. The only way such behavior could possibly be explained would be if Hyong was actually afraid of what Humanity could do to his race, but Pascual found the very notion absurd. Earth couldn't seriously challenge any of the other intelligent species it had encountered. A large part of the reason Pascual had joined the OES' diplomatic corps was to be a part of Humanity's attempt to thread the needle and survive despite their military weakness. Skillful diplomacy was the only way that would be possible.
It was some sort of ploy. Hyong was trying to confuse Earth's leadership into giving up information or making a fatal mistake.
Even so, it didn't change what Pascual had to do. It wasn't his job to make decisions about how to respond to diplomatic overtures, just to implement them. And Hyong's offer was too radical to ignore, even if it was fraudulent. Pascual had to pass it on.
"All right, Mr. Yaheek," he said. "I'm going to relay your message to my superiors. I'll be putting you on hold while I contact them; it's going to be a few minutes before you get a response."
"I'll wait," the Bat said, "but I cannot emphasize enough how short our time is."
Pascual just nodded before he dropped Hyong's call into the background of his video display along with the teleconference. Instead of immediately calling up the conference again, he looked up at the man still holding open the car door. The security guard wore an Earth Fleet uniform, but he was a civilian employee rather than a ranked soldier.
"Sorry about that," Pascual said, and lifted himself out of the car, "important phone calls and I can't split my attention that well. Which…" He glanced around. Pascual's car had was surrounded by two Fleet security guards, and two EPS men wearing powered exoskeletons. The suits were necessary because both of the mercenaries had apparently ripped the cannons off of a pair of tanks, and were now carrying them as weapons. One of the EPS guys was not-so-subtly eyeing the Ejército private through the driver's side door. Pascual didn't think even Earth Fleet was normally this serious about security, they were spooked.
"Ah, how long does it take to get to the crisis room?" he asked.
"Orders are to take you there immediately, Mr. Ambassador. It's less than five minutes on the tram."
Pascual licked his lips. "All right, take me there," he said.
"Yes, sir." The security guard spun and started walking away from the car, Pascual followed after. Behind him, he heard the other guard shut the door.
The "tram" might have been just an ordinary elevator, just an enclosed metal box with standing room for maybe a dozen if they were well squeezed. But this particular vehicle was capable of more motion than just the vertical axis.
The security guard touched a thumb to an illuminated control panel, then pushed a couple of buttons with his other hand before stepping back into the parking garage.
"This will take you directly there, sir. Another guard will meet you on the other end. Um," he nodded to one side of the box, "you want to hold onto the handrails. Sir."
Pascual did so, and the guard smiled politely as the steel doors rolled shut. The tram lurched to one side, and Pascual was glad he had grabbed the railing or he would have fallen. He wondered if the machine usually moved this fast.
Earth Fleet's headquarters had been designed around a particularly paranoid philosophy. Its builders had burrowed deep into the mountains in the hopes of building a facility capable of not only surviving bombardment from space, but doing so without loss of function, to keep on fighting. With all of its redundancies and widely separated sections, the headquarters actually covered more ground than the city of Caracas itself. The Fleet had gotten a previous, overly extravagant President of Venezuela to put up the cash for most of the construction, or it would never have been built. As it was, the Fleet got their fancy headquarters, and the President's term in office had come to an abrupt end. A probably-apocryphal story claimed he was strangled by his own Minister of Finance.
The tram was necessary to move people across the sprawling subterranean facility, but the Fleet had made sure that the design did not unduly restrict the flow of information. Pascual re-opened the teleconference on his phone's video screen.
Pascual rarely saw his uncle Eduard very angry, but the Chief Executive of the OES was visibly irritated when his image appeared on the screen.
"—job to give me options!" he was growling. "We don't have time to complain about the past."
On the other side of the screen, Councilor Durante's head turned slightly.
"Welcome back, Pascual," he said, clearly relieved by the interruption. "Were you having trouble?"
"Ah, not exactly, Councilor. Forgive the interruption—I'll be there in just a moment—but I've just had an odd conversation that I think everyone should know about."
Chief Molinas turned away from whomever he'd been glowering at—Pascual thought it must be the Earth Fleet Admiral across the table from the Foreign Councilor. "What happened?" he asked.
"I got a call from Hyong Yaheek; he's the Bat who's been pressing me for information on the negotiations with the Tadpoles. We think he's one of Hyarahek's intelligence agents—"
"He is," Deputy Councilor Khatib said. He seemed to have been waiting for an opportunity to contribute something to the discussion.
"—but he was using a civilian cell phone, rather than the embassy line," Pascual continued. "It looked like he'd borrowed it from some local woman, even."
Next to the Chief Executive, Admiral Kozlov smirked, but didn't say anything. Chief Molinas asked, "And what did our furry friend want?"
"He said Hyarahek's the one calling these ships down on us. And he says it's going to start a war unless we let him help us stop Hyarahek."
There was silence for a minute while everyone absorbed what Pascual had just told them. Durante was the first to recover. "It's a trap," he said.
Pascual nodded, "I agree."
"How can you be so sure?" Khatib asked.
The Foreign Councilor turned to him, "You think he's going to mutiny against his own superior? It's ridiculous. And too conveniently timed, they're trying to confuse us, make us hesitate rather than come up with an effective response."
"Because we're doing such a good job of that now," Chief Molinas said as his eyes narrowed.
Durante opened his mouth to respond, but the Financial Councilor beat him to it. "I don't know, can we really afford not to listen to the guy?" Wilhelm Trautmann asked. "Admiral Godavarthi's made it pretty clear there's nothing we can really do before they reach Earth anyway. We're not going to do the Fleet any good in a major battle anyway, let's see if there's a chance we can stop things before it comes to that."
"How much time do we have, Lavrentiy?" Chief Molinas asked Earth Fleet's supreme commander. Admiral Kozlov frowned, then turned to look at his subordinate in Singapore and nodded. The Chief Executive may have been annoyed at the other Admiral, but Kozlov wasn't going to break protocol.
"Maybe ninety minutes, sir," Godavarthi said after just a moment of hesitation, "not more than two hours."
Pascual swayed as the tram came to a halt, and the metal doors slid open. Another guard, this time an actual Earth Fleet Petty Officer with a white peaked cap, stepped forward. "This way, sir," he gestured with a gloved hand. Pascual had to close his right eye to concentrate on where he was stepping. He had come out into a small hallway that led off to several conference rooms, one of which was the big crisis room that Pascual needed. He followed the guard past a security desk, where another Petty Officer—backed up by two EPS men sporting heavy machine guns—waved them through.
In his ear, Pascual's uncle said, "All right, let's hear what he has to say. Pascual, can we talk to this Bat?"
"Just a moment," Pascual said without opening his right eye. The Petty Officer had led him to a wooden double-door at the end of the hall, which was flanked by yet another pair of heavily armed mercenaries from the Executive Protection Service. They were clearly expecting Pascual, however, and did not interfere when the Earth Fleet guard pulled open one of the doors for him.
There were far more people in the crisis room than was apparent through the video screen. Apart from the VIPs seated at the main conference table, several dozen minor functionaries and assistants sat in parallel rows of chairs just outside of the camera's field of view. Then there was a whole host of Earth Fleet personnel milling about or visible through glass-paneled walls, most of them appeared to be technicians monitoring the teleconference equipment or managing the large amount of information passing through the room at several banks of computers.
Most of the people in the immediate vicinity of the conference table turned around to look at Pascual when he entered. Pascual gave a half-hearted wave of greeting, then pointed to the phone resting on his ear.
"Is there a way I can merge this call into the conference?" he asked of no one in particular.
One of the Fleet techies near the wall of monitors displaying the conference room in Singapore and an enlarged image of Pascual's head stepped forward.
"It'll be easier if we just call him," the techie said, "do you have the number?"
Pascual read it off to him. Then he maximized the call to Hyong on his screen.
The Bat's eyes appeared in front of him again, still looking straight forward. "All right, Hyong," Pascual said, "you're getting your wish. We're going to call you right back, so just hold on a minute."
He thought Hyong might have started to nod, but Pascual closed the connection before he could be certain. Relieved to have finally dispensed with his need for the phone, Pascual closed the video conference as well, then folded up the little device and placed it back in his pocket. He walked forward to the conference table and took a seat at the far end from the monitors, next to Omar Khatib. The video screens on the wall were now showing just the conference room in Singapore. The image was big enough that Pascual's uncle almost appeared to be sitting at the same table.
The Fleet techie looked up again, "I've got it set up to place the call, sir," he looked at Admiral Godavarthi, "but I should point out that if this is a civilian phone, it's not going to be secure. We'll be broadcasting in the clear, or near enough. Civilian encryption isn't worth the effort."
"I think the NSA's the least of our worries today, Lieutenant," Admiral Kozlov said. "Place the call."
The techie nodded to the video screen, then turned back to his computer station.
Everyone sat quietly for the few seconds it took for the technician to set up the call, the conversation had been getting tense and no one really wanted to say anything that might set off the Chief Executive's temper. And it would be important to maintain composure while talking to the Bat agent.
The enlarged image of the Singapore conference room was squashed to one side as the Bat snout Pascual had been looking at a few minutes ago appeared on the screen.
Chief Molinas spoke first, "Hyong Yaheek, I presume?"
The Bat's eyes moved slightly, "Mr. Chief Executive, I am honored. And I regret the circumstances of my call."
"Yes," Eduard Molinas said simply, "before we continue, may I ask if we are speaking privately?"
The camera bobbed slightly as Hyong lowered his head to look over the screen. He said, "Gracia, would you excuse me a moment? This is a delicate matter and calls for some privacy."
Benardo Durante, Omar Khatib, and several of their assistants turned to look at Pascual with rather accusatory stares. Pascual did his best to keep a straight face. He had figured the woman Hyong had borrowed his phone from was probably his Venezuelan lover, but had decided to overlook that detail. There were too many other things for the OES to worry about to get bogged down in PR at the moment.
Hyong continued, "I am in a public business, Mr. Chief Executive, but I believe we will be reasonably free from eavesdropping for the moment."
"Are you in the city, Mr. Hyong Yaheek?" Deputy Councilor Khatib had recovered from his astonishment, "We could dispatch a car with a secure telephone for you."
"The business is called CAFÉ de CONCHITA," he mauled the words even worse than Bats usually did by trying to pronounce them as if they were English, "I do not believe it is far."
Councilor Durante covered his face with his hands and muttered, "two blocks from the Foreign Ministry." Khatib pointed to an aide, who quickly stood up and began giving instructions over a cell phone.
Chief Molinas observed this and nodded, "We're sending a car, then, Mr. Hyong Yaheek. For now, however, why don't you tell us what this is about?"
Hyong nodded, "I am afraid, Mr. Chief Executive, that Ambassador Hyarahek has requested several armed vessels be dispatched from our colony to your world. The request has been granted and the vessels are now under way."
"Yes, we have been tracking them," the Chief Executive said, apparently preferring to let the Bats know Earth had that capability. "I hope both Ambassador Hyarahek and Governor Shyankyang realize the gravity of the action they're taking. I thought we had made it very clear last week that we do not appreciate warships in Earth space. Any hostile action taken by these vessels will be considered an act of war against Earth, and we will retaliate with all available means. Bats and Humans have been friends for a long time, but don't expect that to restrain us."
"No, Chief Molinas, I don't. But I believe our problem is that, while Ambassador Hyarahek does understand what he is doing, Governor Shyankyang does not. Hyarahek has manipulated his reports to the Governor to arrange this situation, over my own protests and those of my colleagues."
The Chief Executive of the OES shook his head, "Your bureaucratic infighting is not my concern, Mr. Hyong Yaheek. Earth will hold the Bats responsible for their actions regardless of who is manipulating whom."
"I must regretfully disagree, Chief Molinas, it very much is your concern. I do not think that Hyarahek truly believes he is starting a war; he seems to believe that your government will accept his demands when confronted by the overwhelming force of our ships. As you have already pointed out, this will not be the result, but I do not expect that will stop Hyarahek."
"Then your flotilla will be destroyed, and I will be forced to order Earth Fleet to begin general operations against your Colony," Molinas folded his hands in front of him.
Hyong closed his eyes for a very long time before responding. The officials at the two conference tables were looking at each other and Pascual thought someone was going to prod the Bat with a question, when he looked back at the camera.
"Chief Executive Molinas. I have great respect for your species and your world, and I do not wish to belittle you in any way. But you must understand that your entire Fleet does not have the slightest hope of resisting the vessels currently inbound to this planet in combat. Even if you do not believe me, surely you would prefer to avoid a war between our people?"
His eyes flicked back and forth, but none of the Humans said anything. Admiral Godavarthi was fuming, though Admiral Kozlov had merely leaned back in his chair and was now stroking his chin. Willy Trautmann looked nervous, a feeling Pascual shared, while the two Foreign Councilors both had skeptical expressions. Pascual's uncle, however, just looked cold, and stared back at Hyong with a stony silence.
Hyong stared back; possibly meeting his gaze, then went on. "I can avoid a conflict," he said, "I can secure Hyarahek's removal as ambassador. But it will take more time than we currently have. I will need your cooperation if we are to delay the fighting long enough for my work to succeed."
There was another minute of silence and frozen expressions when the camera looking down Hyong's snout shifted rapidly as he turned.
"Excuse me," he said, and the camera fell away from his face, "but your men with the car appear to have arrived."
The image swirled, showing sunny windows and streaks of people as Hyong put down the phone and disappeared. Pascual looked at the other people at the table; only the Financial Councilor returned his glance, and shrugged. Everyone else was still staring at the empty picture.
The camera moved again, and a new face appeared. She had pink hair and enough facial piercings that Pascual would need a still image to actually count them all. Her mouth opened slightly when she saw the video screen of her phone.
"Uhhhh…" Gracia said.
"Thank you, Miss," the Chief Executive said, "that will be all."
Her face disappeared as the connection was cut.
He enjoyed the sensation while he could. One of the more amusing characteristics that Hyong had noticed about Humans was that very few of them ever took much notice of anything that happened above them. He glided right over the heads of eight Humans before a single one noticed him. The first one that did was stepping out of one of their ground vehicles, Hyong passed only a few meters over his head, and the Human cried out and fell backwards onto a sidewalk. Hyong laughed. Intellectually, he knew the creatures on this planet had faced different evolutionary pressures than on his own; but instinctively, he found any organism that could not be bothered to keep a close watch on the skies above to be so terminally stupid that he could not help laughing.
He glided for a few more blocks before it became impossible to remain aloft. Hyong brought his legs forward to brake. Aiming at a tall streetlight, he curled up his wings so that he could grab onto the metal pole with his claws. Down on the ground, a Human child began clapping while its parent stared; Hyong felt pleased that he had accomplished the whole maneuver almost flawlessly despite a lack of practice. He deactivated the combat harness' gravity field and dropped to the sidewalk. The adult human, a female, put her arms around her child as Hyong walked past them.
Hyong blinked a few times to call up a map on his monocle. He was not far from his destination. Walking the last few blocks would not be as exhilarating as flying, but it would only take a few minutes longer. He started jogging down the sidewalk.
There were not very many Humans around; most of them would be inside the many buildings Hyong was passing engaged in some sort of productive work. But he still got plenty of stares. Even though the Republic's embassy was in this city, it had a staff of less than a hundred people, and very few of them ever actually left the compound, so Hyong's kind were a rare sight on these streets. He might have been slightly less conspicuous in one of the Humans' large spaceport cities—where Republican merchants conducted a modest amount of trade—but not much.
The building he needed was seven blocks away. Hyong made it there in ten minutes, most of which he spent waiting for clearance to cross through the Humans' ground vehicle pathways. It might not actually be so bad for the Humans to learn how to manipulate gravity, Hyong mused, it would certainly make travel in their cities much easier, and safer. Hyong managed to survive the journey and walked through the doors of the glass-fronted shop that he was looking for. A glowing sign above the door said "CAFÉ de CONCHITA".
There was a small crowd of Humans inside, but not so many that Hyong could enter without being noticed. Nearly every Human inside turned to gape at him. Most of them were older males, the majority of whom were holding various smoldering objects in their mouths; the smoke apparently had some sort of therapeutic effect to the Humans. Hyong tried to navigate a path through the stunned Humans to the back of the shop.
The Human that Hyong was looking for was neither male nor smoking. She was standing at the back of the crowd, leaning over a wooden counter with her head on her hands talking to one of the shop's customers that had not noticed Hyong's entrance. After more than a decade on this planet, Hyong was beginning to notice the subtle differences among Humans which allowed him to recognize and remember specific individuals. Hyong had never had any trouble telling this particular Human apart from any of the others, however. There were various reasons for this, but the largest was that she kept her hair dyed a bright pink color that did not seem to occur naturally among her species.
Gracia turned her head as he approached and waved with one hand. "Hi Hyong," she said. "Finished with your meeting already?"
The man she had been talking to turned around on his stool and began staring in the same way as the others. Hyong ignored him.
"Gracia," he said, and walked up to the counter beside the man on the stool, "I need your help with—"
"Oh my God, Hyong!" she was now looking at him with an open-mouthed expression like the people he had just walked past. "What happened to your eye?"
Hyong stopped in midsentence and tried to puzzle his way through her confusion. He got it after a moment.
"It is just a… well I don't know an equivalent word," he reached up to his face and removed his monocle to show it to her. "It is like a monitor, but small enough to be portable. I can see fine."
"Oh," she said. Then she tilted her head to one side. "Put it back on."
He did.
Gracia looked at him for a moment, then put one hand over her mouth, covering a laugh. "You look like a pirate," she said.
"A pirate?"
"Yep," she nodded, grinning, "just like a cartoon pirate. I think I'll get you a pirate hat to go with it."
Hyong almost asked her what she was talking about, but he had far more urgent business, and forced himself to put his questions aside.
"Gracia, I'm sorry," he turned his head from side to side imitating the Human gesture, "but I have little time, and I require your assistance."
"Oh, that's right," she stood up straight and folded her arms, "what did you need?"
"You have a communicator, yes? One of your, ah, cell phones?"
The skin on her forehead creased, "Yeah…" She reached into one of the pockets of her pants and withdrew a little red object.
"I would like you to contact someone for me, one of your government's ambassadors, Pascual Molinas. I must speak with him immediately."
"Um, okay…" she fiddled with the device, "what's his number?"
"What?"
"His telephone number? I need his number to call him."
"I don't know, don't you have a communications directory?"
She stared at him for a moment. "You have no idea what you're doing, do you?"
"The embassy handles an interface between our communications network and your own, but I am unable to route through them at the moment. I need a Human communicator."
Gracia rolled her eyes in the way she did whenever Hyong did or said something she thought was stupid.
"Okay. No, Hyong, I don't have a 'communications directory' to just let me call anyone I want." She puffed out her cheeks, "So how important is this, really?"
"I have…" he called up the clock on his monocle, "…two hours to stop a war between our people."
The low buzz of conversation which had returned to the shop since Hyong's entry stopped again. Gracia's eyes widened.
"Carlos!" she shouted, and turned around.
Another Human, who was sitting on a stool behind the counter and playing with some electronic device, stood up. He was dressed in a similar style to Gracia, except that his hair was dyed black instead of pink; a large image of a Human skull leered from the front of his shirt.
"Eh?" Carlos asked.
Gracia pointed a finger at him, "Watch the store for a bit. I have to go save the world."
Carlos snorted, "Right. You and Batman have fun."
Gracia turned back to Hyong. "All right, come here," she waved him towards an unoccupied table on one side of the shop. "Let's see if we can find your friend the ambassador."
She picked up a cloth bag from beneath the counter, the sort that many Humans carried on their backs with shoulder straps. Hyong followed her as she walked around the counter.
"So you do have a directory? You can find his 'number'?"
"I have the internet, Hyong," she put her bag down on the table and opened it. "It's going to tell us his number and what he looks like when he's drunk."
* * *
A little less than two miles away, Pascual was immersed in conversation over his own cell phone. Unlike most of his peers, Pascual had never been comfortable with video communications, and usually used his phone in voice-only mode. In this case, however, he had little choice in the matter; participating in a multiple-point teleconference would have been almost impossible without visual references. So Pascual had his stylus-shaped phone bent over one ear, with its screen extended and folded in front of his right eye in a manner superficially similar to Hyong’s monocle. The arrangement did leave Pascual’s hands free, which was a good thing as he needed them to keep from crashing into anything because of the disorienting bifurcation of his vision.
Durante had sent him a driver, thank God, a Private in the Ejército who came equipped with a very nice, very official-looking black car. Once Pascual fumbled his way into the back seat, he didn’t have to worry about his own navigation. The Venezuelan soldier rolled up the windows and sped away without waiting instructions. Pascual breathed a sigh of relief and tried to settle down into the plush leather seat.
The display in front of Pascual’s eye was split into two sections. On the left was the crisis room at Earth Fleet’s headquarters, buried under the mountains of the Venezuelan Coastal Range north of Caracas. Pascual would be in that room himself shortly, depending on how many laws his driver intended to break on the way. The crisis room was a great cavernous area which had supposedly been designed along the same lines as the Situation Room in the American White House, but seemed to have more in common with a filmmaker’s dramatization of the same. Councilors Durante and Trautmann and Deputy Councilor Khatib sat at a long conference table with their assistants and an Earth Fleet Admiral Pascual didn’t recognize immediately. They were all looking at the camera through which Pascual was looking at them. Or, more precisely, they were looking at the screen just below that camera, which was probably showing them a rather unflattering close-up of Pascual’s face in return.
The other side of Pascual’s video display was looking into a much smaller conference room, this one inside the OES building in Singapore. That was an aboveground facility; nothing more than simple leased office space where the OES could maintain a presence in the city-state and Earth Fleet could keep a recruiting office. It did have a functional conference room of its own, however, and Chief Executive Molinas was crowded around a much smaller teleconference system along with Admiral Kozlov and the anonymous gaggle of assistants which followed both men wherever they went.
The connection to Singapore had just come online; Pascual’s uncle had been sleeping when the current crisis broke out.
“Fill me in, Bernado,” Eduard Molinas said.
“Yes, Chief,” the Foreign Councilor said gravely. “Right now it’s all just the Tadpoles. We seem to have dropped the ball staffing their delegation; Rokden apparently started demanding a shuttle to take him back to his ship just over an hour ago. But the valets were trying to pass the word through my office instead of straight over to Pascual, so I’m only just getting on top of things myself.”
Every Earth Fleet officer Pascual could see on the tiny display rolled his eyes, and Pascual winced. But the Chief Executive waved a hand.
“Fix it later, what’s eating Rokden?”
Pascual grimaced right along with his boss; he’d already heard this part of the story.
“Chief,” Durante said, “the Tadpoles want to evacuate. They say the Bats have found out what we’re doing and are going to try to stop us. Rokden claims they’ve dispatched warships to seize the Tadpoles, by force if we won’t hand them over.”
Earth’s highest-ranking official seemed remarkably calm for what he’d just been told; Chief Molinas only tilted his head slightly to one side. “They have?”
Durante shook his head, “Well that’s part of the problem, Chief. Earth Fleet can’t confirm if any—“
“Actually, that’s no longer true, sir,” the Admiral sitting across the table from Councilor Durante spoke up for the first time, Pascual still didn’t know his name. “Admiral,” he nodded to his superior in Singapore just as a junior officer stepped forward to hand something to Kozlov.
The Admiral in Caracas continued, “We’ve just gotten reports from our belt stations and confirmed them with EarthCom telescopes. At least four ships departed Titan orbit about an hour ago, and now they’ve blue-shifted all to hell. The Bats are sending something our way.”
No one spoke for a moment. All the civilians looked ill, while the soldiers kept up their usual hard faces. Kozlov had put his reading glasses on to look over the report he had been handed.
“Well,” Wilhelm Trautmann worked up the courage to speak first, “can we intercept them in the asteroids? That’s why we built the stations, isn’t it?”
Kozlov shook his head without looking up from the report. The other Admiral explained.
“No, Councilor. This has always been the problem with the belt stations. It takes an hour for light to reach us from Saturn. Those ships have been underway for that long, they’re already past our stations. The stations are way too far from Earth for proper command and control from here.”
The Financial Councilor looked chastened, and nodded. But Kozlov added from his own side of the video screen, “It doesn’t matter anyway.” He flicked the paper in his hand, “we’ve pegged these things at over 30 percent of light speed. Even if we were right on top of them we’d have a devil of a time hitting them with anything.”
“Wait,” Pascual said. He sat up, though it was unlikely anyone else could see the gesture from the perspective his phone camera provided. “You said Rokden started complaining an hour ago. If it takes that long for the first signals to get here, how did the Tadpoles already know what was happening?”
Everyone looked at the Foreign Councilor, and Admiral Kozlov raised an eyebrow. But Durante just shrugged, “I don’t know.”
“Some other technology? Faster than light sensors?” Trautmann offered.
“Wouldn’t be the first surprise,” Chief Molinas said. “Where’s Rokden now?”
Durante turned back to the screen, “still at the hotel with the delegation. He was quite angry when we spoke, but he can’t really do anything about it. Even if we wanted to send him back, it would take several hours to get him over to Quito and on—“
“We don’t have several hours,” the Admiral in the crisis room interrupted, “at that speed, the Bats will—“
Pascual lost the rest of what the Earth Fleet man was saying because his phone’s screen started flashing red and overlaid some text on top of the teleconference. It startled him and he jumped back slightly. Someone was calling him.
The flashing screen indicated that the call was coming from Pascual’s secretary. Actually, Audrey was the head administrative assistant for an entire task force of the OES Foreign Ministry, but she handled most of Pascual’s business herself, rather than farming it out to one of her own assistants. Still, it was unusual for her to call him directly while he was out of the office, rather than just send an unobtrusive message.
“Excuse me a moment,” Pascual said to the conference still continuing behind the alert screen, and he switched his signal over to a holding screen. Then he accepted the call.
“Yes?”
If Audrey was surprised to see her boss taking a video call, she didn’t show it.
“Excuse me, Ambassador,” she said, “I know you have urgent business, but you’ve got an unusual call.”
"'Urgent' is an understatement, Audrey, how important is this?"
"I'm not sure. It's a Bat, sir, the one you've been taking meetings with. Or at least he claims to be; but he's not calling through the official line, this is coming from a private number."
"But it is Hyong?" Pascual frowned.
"Well he looks like a Bat over the video, but…" she shrugged. Pascual understood her hesitation, there had been more than one "alien communication" hoax over the past few decades, it was easy enough to fake the appearance of an alien using commercial graphics software or even a simple costume. Audrey went on, "he looks like he's just in some sort of restaurant, too. I don't know what to make of it."
Pascual furrowed his brow in consternation, "did he tell you what he wants?"
"Yeah, he says it's critical that he speak to you immediately to prevent a war. It's why I didn't turn him away. I know there's something going on and—"
"All right, Audrey," he cut her off, "thanks. Put him through, I'll deal with it."
"Yes sir," she nodded professionally. "Transferring the call now."
"Thank you," he said again.
Audrey's face disappeared and was replaced by a blank screen for half a second before the new video feed appeared. It took Pascual a moment to figure out that he was staring upward into a young woman's nostrils.
"Well I'm sorry that we don't design our equipment to clip onto our fur like civilized races, Hyong," the woman was saying. "Now, do you want to put this back around your ear, or do you want to borrow someone else's phone?"
Pascual's vision wobbled slightly as the woman's hand moved. She was apparently holding the headset of the phone to which Pascual had been connected; hence the unconventional angle of vision.
"Um, hello?" Pascual said as he remembered what he was doing.
Someone hissed, and the camera rose and spun rapidly; Pascual blinked to avoid becoming dizzy. When the movement stopped, he was looking down the top of a furry snout.
One of the easier ways to identify artificial renderings or costumes of Bats from the real thing was by the eyes. Most human artists—indeed, most humans—had never seen a Bat up close in person, so they tended to fill in the details with familiar knowledge. Bats' eyes were deeply set behind their snouts and partially obscured by the fur on their faces, so they could not be well seen at a distance. As a result, most human representations of the Bats showed black or yellow eyes, common to many Earth animals.
The eyes looking out at Pascual through the video screen were the steely blue color common to all the Bats he had ever met. Or, the eye looking out at Pascual was that color, the Bat's right eye was concealed behind what seemed to be a piece of coal-black metal. Pascual only had a moment to wonder at that.
"Ambassador Molinas," Hyong Yaheek said. The camera bobbed with the Bat's snout as he talked. "Thank you for taking my call despite the circumstances. I have critically urgent business to discuss with your government."
Pascual did his best to keep his anxiety out of his expression. "I'm very busy at the moment, Mr. Yaheek," he said. "But my secretary said you're talking about war, so here I am. How serious is this?" He was going to be annoyed if Hyong was exaggerating, but given the stakes, it would probably be more upsetting if Hyong was not exaggerating.
"As I said, it is critical. Ambassador Hyarahek has arranged the dispatch of several armed vessels to your world. Unless your government takes immediate action, I believe this will start a war between our people."
Pascual was unsure whether he should reveal that Earth already knew about the ships. It could put the Bat off-balance, and at the very least might speed up the discussion. On the other hand, his superiors might prefer to keep their cards close to their chest. In the end, Pascual decided it wasn't his call to make.
"By now you should know we don't respond well to threats, Mr. Yaheek. Whatever the Bats want, you're not going to get it from us by force."
"You misunderstand me, Ambassador," the camera swung from side to side as the Bat shook his head. "Hyarahek and I are not in agreement on this matter, and I do not believe his actions are in the best service of our colony. My duty obligates me to rectify the situation, but I cannot do so before hostilities erupt unless I have your government's prompt attention and cooperation."
"That's…" Pascual's eyes narrowed and he trailed off. The car had stopped; they were already in one of the buried parking garages of Earth Fleet headquarters. A Fleet security guard opened the car's passenger door.
"Mr. Ambassador, if you'll—" Pascual held up a hand to silence the man. He needed to focus right now, and he couldn't do that if he was trying to walk.
Hyong was implying that he wanted to help Earth work against his own government. But that didn't make sense; the Bat was a uniformed officer of his species' military, and he'd never struck Pascual as the mutinous sort. Even if he didn't like his government's specific methods, it would hardly justify betraying his loyalty to an entirely different species. The only way such behavior could possibly be explained would be if Hyong was actually afraid of what Humanity could do to his race, but Pascual found the very notion absurd. Earth couldn't seriously challenge any of the other intelligent species it had encountered. A large part of the reason Pascual had joined the OES' diplomatic corps was to be a part of Humanity's attempt to thread the needle and survive despite their military weakness. Skillful diplomacy was the only way that would be possible.
It was some sort of ploy. Hyong was trying to confuse Earth's leadership into giving up information or making a fatal mistake.
Even so, it didn't change what Pascual had to do. It wasn't his job to make decisions about how to respond to diplomatic overtures, just to implement them. And Hyong's offer was too radical to ignore, even if it was fraudulent. Pascual had to pass it on.
"All right, Mr. Yaheek," he said. "I'm going to relay your message to my superiors. I'll be putting you on hold while I contact them; it's going to be a few minutes before you get a response."
"I'll wait," the Bat said, "but I cannot emphasize enough how short our time is."
Pascual just nodded before he dropped Hyong's call into the background of his video display along with the teleconference. Instead of immediately calling up the conference again, he looked up at the man still holding open the car door. The security guard wore an Earth Fleet uniform, but he was a civilian employee rather than a ranked soldier.
"Sorry about that," Pascual said, and lifted himself out of the car, "important phone calls and I can't split my attention that well. Which…" He glanced around. Pascual's car had was surrounded by two Fleet security guards, and two EPS men wearing powered exoskeletons. The suits were necessary because both of the mercenaries had apparently ripped the cannons off of a pair of tanks, and were now carrying them as weapons. One of the EPS guys was not-so-subtly eyeing the Ejército private through the driver's side door. Pascual didn't think even Earth Fleet was normally this serious about security, they were spooked.
"Ah, how long does it take to get to the crisis room?" he asked.
"Orders are to take you there immediately, Mr. Ambassador. It's less than five minutes on the tram."
Pascual licked his lips. "All right, take me there," he said.
"Yes, sir." The security guard spun and started walking away from the car, Pascual followed after. Behind him, he heard the other guard shut the door.
The "tram" might have been just an ordinary elevator, just an enclosed metal box with standing room for maybe a dozen if they were well squeezed. But this particular vehicle was capable of more motion than just the vertical axis.
The security guard touched a thumb to an illuminated control panel, then pushed a couple of buttons with his other hand before stepping back into the parking garage.
"This will take you directly there, sir. Another guard will meet you on the other end. Um," he nodded to one side of the box, "you want to hold onto the handrails. Sir."
Pascual did so, and the guard smiled politely as the steel doors rolled shut. The tram lurched to one side, and Pascual was glad he had grabbed the railing or he would have fallen. He wondered if the machine usually moved this fast.
Earth Fleet's headquarters had been designed around a particularly paranoid philosophy. Its builders had burrowed deep into the mountains in the hopes of building a facility capable of not only surviving bombardment from space, but doing so without loss of function, to keep on fighting. With all of its redundancies and widely separated sections, the headquarters actually covered more ground than the city of Caracas itself. The Fleet had gotten a previous, overly extravagant President of Venezuela to put up the cash for most of the construction, or it would never have been built. As it was, the Fleet got their fancy headquarters, and the President's term in office had come to an abrupt end. A probably-apocryphal story claimed he was strangled by his own Minister of Finance.
The tram was necessary to move people across the sprawling subterranean facility, but the Fleet had made sure that the design did not unduly restrict the flow of information. Pascual re-opened the teleconference on his phone's video screen.
Pascual rarely saw his uncle Eduard very angry, but the Chief Executive of the OES was visibly irritated when his image appeared on the screen.
"—job to give me options!" he was growling. "We don't have time to complain about the past."
On the other side of the screen, Councilor Durante's head turned slightly.
"Welcome back, Pascual," he said, clearly relieved by the interruption. "Were you having trouble?"
"Ah, not exactly, Councilor. Forgive the interruption—I'll be there in just a moment—but I've just had an odd conversation that I think everyone should know about."
Chief Molinas turned away from whomever he'd been glowering at—Pascual thought it must be the Earth Fleet Admiral across the table from the Foreign Councilor. "What happened?" he asked.
"I got a call from Hyong Yaheek; he's the Bat who's been pressing me for information on the negotiations with the Tadpoles. We think he's one of Hyarahek's intelligence agents—"
"He is," Deputy Councilor Khatib said. He seemed to have been waiting for an opportunity to contribute something to the discussion.
"—but he was using a civilian cell phone, rather than the embassy line," Pascual continued. "It looked like he'd borrowed it from some local woman, even."
Next to the Chief Executive, Admiral Kozlov smirked, but didn't say anything. Chief Molinas asked, "And what did our furry friend want?"
"He said Hyarahek's the one calling these ships down on us. And he says it's going to start a war unless we let him help us stop Hyarahek."
There was silence for a minute while everyone absorbed what Pascual had just told them. Durante was the first to recover. "It's a trap," he said.
Pascual nodded, "I agree."
"How can you be so sure?" Khatib asked.
The Foreign Councilor turned to him, "You think he's going to mutiny against his own superior? It's ridiculous. And too conveniently timed, they're trying to confuse us, make us hesitate rather than come up with an effective response."
"Because we're doing such a good job of that now," Chief Molinas said as his eyes narrowed.
Durante opened his mouth to respond, but the Financial Councilor beat him to it. "I don't know, can we really afford not to listen to the guy?" Wilhelm Trautmann asked. "Admiral Godavarthi's made it pretty clear there's nothing we can really do before they reach Earth anyway. We're not going to do the Fleet any good in a major battle anyway, let's see if there's a chance we can stop things before it comes to that."
"How much time do we have, Lavrentiy?" Chief Molinas asked Earth Fleet's supreme commander. Admiral Kozlov frowned, then turned to look at his subordinate in Singapore and nodded. The Chief Executive may have been annoyed at the other Admiral, but Kozlov wasn't going to break protocol.
"Maybe ninety minutes, sir," Godavarthi said after just a moment of hesitation, "not more than two hours."
Pascual swayed as the tram came to a halt, and the metal doors slid open. Another guard, this time an actual Earth Fleet Petty Officer with a white peaked cap, stepped forward. "This way, sir," he gestured with a gloved hand. Pascual had to close his right eye to concentrate on where he was stepping. He had come out into a small hallway that led off to several conference rooms, one of which was the big crisis room that Pascual needed. He followed the guard past a security desk, where another Petty Officer—backed up by two EPS men sporting heavy machine guns—waved them through.
In his ear, Pascual's uncle said, "All right, let's hear what he has to say. Pascual, can we talk to this Bat?"
"Just a moment," Pascual said without opening his right eye. The Petty Officer had led him to a wooden double-door at the end of the hall, which was flanked by yet another pair of heavily armed mercenaries from the Executive Protection Service. They were clearly expecting Pascual, however, and did not interfere when the Earth Fleet guard pulled open one of the doors for him.
There were far more people in the crisis room than was apparent through the video screen. Apart from the VIPs seated at the main conference table, several dozen minor functionaries and assistants sat in parallel rows of chairs just outside of the camera's field of view. Then there was a whole host of Earth Fleet personnel milling about or visible through glass-paneled walls, most of them appeared to be technicians monitoring the teleconference equipment or managing the large amount of information passing through the room at several banks of computers.
Most of the people in the immediate vicinity of the conference table turned around to look at Pascual when he entered. Pascual gave a half-hearted wave of greeting, then pointed to the phone resting on his ear.
"Is there a way I can merge this call into the conference?" he asked of no one in particular.
One of the Fleet techies near the wall of monitors displaying the conference room in Singapore and an enlarged image of Pascual's head stepped forward.
"It'll be easier if we just call him," the techie said, "do you have the number?"
Pascual read it off to him. Then he maximized the call to Hyong on his screen.
The Bat's eyes appeared in front of him again, still looking straight forward. "All right, Hyong," Pascual said, "you're getting your wish. We're going to call you right back, so just hold on a minute."
He thought Hyong might have started to nod, but Pascual closed the connection before he could be certain. Relieved to have finally dispensed with his need for the phone, Pascual closed the video conference as well, then folded up the little device and placed it back in his pocket. He walked forward to the conference table and took a seat at the far end from the monitors, next to Omar Khatib. The video screens on the wall were now showing just the conference room in Singapore. The image was big enough that Pascual's uncle almost appeared to be sitting at the same table.
The Fleet techie looked up again, "I've got it set up to place the call, sir," he looked at Admiral Godavarthi, "but I should point out that if this is a civilian phone, it's not going to be secure. We'll be broadcasting in the clear, or near enough. Civilian encryption isn't worth the effort."
"I think the NSA's the least of our worries today, Lieutenant," Admiral Kozlov said. "Place the call."
The techie nodded to the video screen, then turned back to his computer station.
Everyone sat quietly for the few seconds it took for the technician to set up the call, the conversation had been getting tense and no one really wanted to say anything that might set off the Chief Executive's temper. And it would be important to maintain composure while talking to the Bat agent.
The enlarged image of the Singapore conference room was squashed to one side as the Bat snout Pascual had been looking at a few minutes ago appeared on the screen.
Chief Molinas spoke first, "Hyong Yaheek, I presume?"
The Bat's eyes moved slightly, "Mr. Chief Executive, I am honored. And I regret the circumstances of my call."
"Yes," Eduard Molinas said simply, "before we continue, may I ask if we are speaking privately?"
The camera bobbed slightly as Hyong lowered his head to look over the screen. He said, "Gracia, would you excuse me a moment? This is a delicate matter and calls for some privacy."
Benardo Durante, Omar Khatib, and several of their assistants turned to look at Pascual with rather accusatory stares. Pascual did his best to keep a straight face. He had figured the woman Hyong had borrowed his phone from was probably his Venezuelan lover, but had decided to overlook that detail. There were too many other things for the OES to worry about to get bogged down in PR at the moment.
Hyong continued, "I am in a public business, Mr. Chief Executive, but I believe we will be reasonably free from eavesdropping for the moment."
"Are you in the city, Mr. Hyong Yaheek?" Deputy Councilor Khatib had recovered from his astonishment, "We could dispatch a car with a secure telephone for you."
"The business is called CAFÉ de CONCHITA," he mauled the words even worse than Bats usually did by trying to pronounce them as if they were English, "I do not believe it is far."
Councilor Durante covered his face with his hands and muttered, "two blocks from the Foreign Ministry." Khatib pointed to an aide, who quickly stood up and began giving instructions over a cell phone.
Chief Molinas observed this and nodded, "We're sending a car, then, Mr. Hyong Yaheek. For now, however, why don't you tell us what this is about?"
Hyong nodded, "I am afraid, Mr. Chief Executive, that Ambassador Hyarahek has requested several armed vessels be dispatched from our colony to your world. The request has been granted and the vessels are now under way."
"Yes, we have been tracking them," the Chief Executive said, apparently preferring to let the Bats know Earth had that capability. "I hope both Ambassador Hyarahek and Governor Shyankyang realize the gravity of the action they're taking. I thought we had made it very clear last week that we do not appreciate warships in Earth space. Any hostile action taken by these vessels will be considered an act of war against Earth, and we will retaliate with all available means. Bats and Humans have been friends for a long time, but don't expect that to restrain us."
"No, Chief Molinas, I don't. But I believe our problem is that, while Ambassador Hyarahek does understand what he is doing, Governor Shyankyang does not. Hyarahek has manipulated his reports to the Governor to arrange this situation, over my own protests and those of my colleagues."
The Chief Executive of the OES shook his head, "Your bureaucratic infighting is not my concern, Mr. Hyong Yaheek. Earth will hold the Bats responsible for their actions regardless of who is manipulating whom."
"I must regretfully disagree, Chief Molinas, it very much is your concern. I do not think that Hyarahek truly believes he is starting a war; he seems to believe that your government will accept his demands when confronted by the overwhelming force of our ships. As you have already pointed out, this will not be the result, but I do not expect that will stop Hyarahek."
"Then your flotilla will be destroyed, and I will be forced to order Earth Fleet to begin general operations against your Colony," Molinas folded his hands in front of him.
Hyong closed his eyes for a very long time before responding. The officials at the two conference tables were looking at each other and Pascual thought someone was going to prod the Bat with a question, when he looked back at the camera.
"Chief Executive Molinas. I have great respect for your species and your world, and I do not wish to belittle you in any way. But you must understand that your entire Fleet does not have the slightest hope of resisting the vessels currently inbound to this planet in combat. Even if you do not believe me, surely you would prefer to avoid a war between our people?"
His eyes flicked back and forth, but none of the Humans said anything. Admiral Godavarthi was fuming, though Admiral Kozlov had merely leaned back in his chair and was now stroking his chin. Willy Trautmann looked nervous, a feeling Pascual shared, while the two Foreign Councilors both had skeptical expressions. Pascual's uncle, however, just looked cold, and stared back at Hyong with a stony silence.
Hyong stared back; possibly meeting his gaze, then went on. "I can avoid a conflict," he said, "I can secure Hyarahek's removal as ambassador. But it will take more time than we currently have. I will need your cooperation if we are to delay the fighting long enough for my work to succeed."
There was another minute of silence and frozen expressions when the camera looking down Hyong's snout shifted rapidly as he turned.
"Excuse me," he said, and the camera fell away from his face, "but your men with the car appear to have arrived."
The image swirled, showing sunny windows and streaks of people as Hyong put down the phone and disappeared. Pascual looked at the other people at the table; only the Financial Councilor returned his glance, and shrugged. Everyone else was still staring at the empty picture.
The camera moved again, and a new face appeared. She had pink hair and enough facial piercings that Pascual would need a still image to actually count them all. Her mouth opened slightly when she saw the video screen of her phone.
"Uhhhh…" Gracia said.
"Thank you, Miss," the Chief Executive said, "that will be all."
Her face disappeared as the connection was cut.