“Welcome onboard,” he said, calmly. “Please, make yourself at home.”
“Please remain where you are,” the Marine ordered. “Is there anyone else onboard this ship?”
“No,” Pompey said. Gwendolyn had started complaining, after the second day, that there was no one to do the hard work of cooking, cleaning and washing clothes. Pompey had taken it in his stride. Besides, his clothes were relatively simple. “We’re alone.”
The Marines didn’t take his word for it, unsurprisingly. Two of them remained on the bridge, not quite pointing their weapons at Pompey and Gwendolyn, while the remainder searched the ship from end to end. They didn’t find anything; Passion was unarmed, designed to be operated by a single person, as long as the automatics held out. Eventually, the Marines placed the entire ship into shutdown mode and led the two visitors into the shuttle. Inside, their bodies were thoroughly scanned, then confirmed clean. Pompey had even removed the implanted weapons he’d been given when he’d qualified as a security officer.
“Take a seat,” the Marine ordered, pointing to a pair of metal chairs. “We’ll have you on the superdreadnaught soon enough.”
Pompey nodded. Gwendolyn, for a wonder, kept her mouth shut. The Marines were being fairly decent, under the circumstances. If Pompey had been in charge of supervising unexpected guests, he would have searched them more carefully. But that would have been inconsiderate.
He smiled inwardly as the shuttle disengaged from the starship. They’d made it — and they’d made contact with the rebels. Now the ball was in Gwendolyn’s court.
“Interesting,” Colin commented, as the two newcomers were escorted out of the shuttle and marched towards the conference room that had been put aside for the meeting. “What do you think they want?”
“Lord Pompey and Lady Gwendolyn, both from the Cicero Family,” Mariko commented. It was rare to hear her speak at all, certainly not before Daria. “Both quite young, in age as well as body. Pompey is twenty-seven, according to the files; Gwendolyn is twenty-two. I think they’re probably rated as expendable if the talks go badly wrong.”
She paused. “But the Family Head is also unusually young,” she added. “He might be more flexible than the others.”
Colin nodded. It did make a certain kind of sense. The Thousand Families were dominated by the elderly, many of whom had allowed themselves to ossify mentally. It was true of the Imperial Navy too, he knew. The Admirals at Luna Base were often old enough to be Colin’s grandparents, but they still refused to retire gracefully and allow the young to move up and take their places.
“You clearly didn’t waste your time,” Daria said. “What else did you pull from the files?”
“Almost nothing about them specifically,” Mariko admitted. “The files rarely hold detailed information on non-naval personnel.”
There was a tap on the hatch. Colin tapped his console and the hatch opened, revealing the Marines and the two newcomers. He deactivated the monitor screen and stood as the newcomers were shown into the compartment, studying them both carefully. There was an air of competence around Pompey that he would have found reassuring, if they’d been on the same side. He was bland, utterly inoffensive… and his eyes were observing everything. It was impossible to escape the feeling that, young as he was, Pompey was a formidable man.
Gwendolyn was younger, wearing a dress that showed her assets to best advantage. Colin couldn’t help a flicker of attraction, which he fought down ruthlessly. Gwendolyn had clearly dressed to short-circuit their minds and it was working. Her face was perfect, the result of genetic engineering or cosmetic surgery, her hair shone like the sun. But her eyes were flickering everywhere, drinking in the entire compartment. No matter what she looked like, he realised, she was very capable at her chosen field. Her family had chosen its emissary very carefully.
“Welcome onboard,” Colin said, once the newcomers had sat down and the Marines had withdrawn. “I trust you’ll understand if we choose to forgo protocol for diplomatic meetings. It has been so long since they were actually necessary that we were unable to discover what the protocol actually was.”
Gwendolyn gave him a smile that was surprisingly sweet. “I quite understand,” she agreed, warmly. “Protocols have been out of date for centuries.”
Colin fought down the urge to snort rudely. The Empire’s idea of diplomacy boiled down to pointing a gun at someone who had something the Empire wanted and ordering them to hand it over — or else. And there had never been any hesitation about applying the stick if the carrot failed, assuming there was a carrot. There had been no attempt to bargain with Jackson’s Folly and her daughter worlds, even though it would have cost the Empire nothing to try to dicker. The Thousand Families had once owned the biggest stick in the known universe. Applying it had become second nature.
He studied Gwendolyn for a long moment, then smiled. “Let’s be blunt,” he said. “Why are you here?”
Gwendolyn placed her fingertips together and leaned forward, calling attention to her cleavage. “My family feels that we should attempt to open lines of communication,” she said. “There may be grounds for a mutually acceptable compromise.”
Colin lifted his eyebrows, deliberately exaggerating the gesture. “Our objective is to replace or reform the Empire,” he said. “That would include splitting up the Thousand Families into more manageable entities, at the very least, and removing all the laws they created to boost their own position at everyone else’s expense. I confess I have no idea what your family would consider a mutually acceptable compromise. Our goals are in complete opposition to yours.”
“Thank you for being blunt,” Gwendolyn said. She gave him a charming smile. “You must realise that destroying something the size of the Empire will be difficult. I do not believe that you have a significant advantage in firepower, even if you do have the assistance of the Geeks and Nerds. The further you move from your bases, the harder it will be to support your offensive.”
She was right, Colin knew, although they’d raided enemy bases for supplies. Tyson alone had given them enough missiles and spare parts to keep the offensive going for months, unless missile expenditures skyrocketed. Which might well happen, he had to admit. The closer they got to Earth, the more heavily defended worlds they would have to reduce or occupy. It was quite possible that the offensive would grind to a halt just short of Earth.
“You might be surprised,” he said, instead. He schooled his expression to remain calm, wondering just how good she was at reading people. It was possible that she had more experience than a standard intelligence officer. The Thousand Families could afford the best training for their children. “But what is your point?”
“Either way, a long war would be utterly devastating and whoever won would have to spend years picking up the pieces,” Gwendolyn said. “Economic ties would shatter, planets would starve… I believe you know the possible consequences. And the aliens would take advantage of our distraction to attempt to turn on us…”
This time, Colin snorted out loud. There were ten intelligent races known to exist, apart from humanity, and nine of them were effectively helpless, kept under such firm control that they couldn’t even build anything more dangerous than a steam engine. The tenth race had vanished long ago and no one had seen a trace of them since then. Unless there was another race out in the Beyond with an Empire that matched humanity’s — and he doubted it, because the Empire wouldn’t have hesitated to brand them a threat if they existed — aliens were no threat to humanity.