gaian consortium 03 - the gaia gambit (2 page)

The Stacian’s expression might have been considered pleasant on his own world, but she found herself wanting to step backward from that penetrating glare.

“Captain sen Drenthan,” she said coolly, as if having an enemy commander contact her privately was something that happened every day. “You wished to speak with me? I feel I must remind you that under Section 56, Paragraph 112, of the Eridani Accord, contact between opposing forces is supposed to be limited to cases of extreme emergency, or — ”

“I am well aware of the strictures of the treaty, Captain Jannholm.” He paused, and the gleaming copper eyes cast downward for a second or two, as if he were weighing what he intended to say next. “However, the treaty was written to foster peace, and what I wish to say to you may help to achieve that end. I would see you in person, here on my ship.”

“You would…” For possibly the first time in her life, Lira found herself at a loss for words. Certainly she had never thought the Stacian commander would invite her over as calmly as if he were extending an invitation for afternoon tea. She gathered herself and said, “I’m afraid that is quite impossible.”

“I am willing to offer up ten of my crewmen in exchange — as a gesture of goodwill. But once I have spoken with you, you will understand why I wished to do so in person.”

Her tone flat, she responded, “Abandoning my post in such a way is completely out of the question.” It crossed her mind to request that he come to visit her here on her own ship, but a second glance at those forbidding brows and that stern jaw told her such a demand would at best be ignored.

“I would not call it abandoning your post. Tell me, have you never once left the
Valiant
to assist the scientists down on Chlorae II?”

He had her there. She had gone planet-side from time to time, since part of her assignment here was to make sure that the scientists had complete access to all the resources they needed. What they all knew was that the
Valiant
served mainly as a placeholder, a babysitter until the GEC’s heavy transports could arrive with the equipment, personnel, and materiel necessary to establish a full-fledged mining colony on the planet.

“That is not the same thing, Captain,” she told him.

“Perhaps not. But you will still be serving the interests of peace.”

“I had no idea the Stacians were so interested in peace,” she returned. Although she had been halfway hoping that he would show some reaction, his expression did not change. At least, she didn’t think it did.

“There is probably much about us you do not know, Captain Jannholm.”

Well, that was true enough. She watched him for a few seconds, the barbarian splendor of his hair and uniform strangely at odds with the sterile interior of her ready room. Possibly she was making a huge mistake, but she hadn’t achieved her current position without taking a few calculated risks.

“Make sure your second-in-command and chief weapons officer are among those you exchange,” she said.

He bowed from the waist. “As you wish it, so it will be.”

Captain Jannholm was smaller in person than he had thought she would be. Something about her stance, the straightness of her shoulders, had bespoken a taller woman, but she barely came up to his shoulder, slight even for a Gaian.

Not that she seemed to notice her lack of height. She stepped into his chamber with her head high, the stars of her rank gleaming on the high collar of her dark-gray uniform. He signaled to the two security officers who had escorted her in, and they bowed, then exited the room.

For a few seconds, neither of them said anything. She seemed content to merely survey her surroundings, from the hangings on the wall to the rugs of woven
chikka
fur on the floor. Rast had heard that the Gaians mocked the Stacian ways, saying their practice of taking luxurious furnishings with them into space proved they were barbarians. For himself, he had never understood the reason for making one’s surroundings as spartan and spare as possible. Save perhaps, that the Gaians were notoriously money-pinching in their ways, and perhaps having such uncomfortably sparse ships was one way of saving a few units.

Then Captain Jannholm fixed him with a direct stare, and asked simply, “What is it you wanted to say to me?”

Now, with her standing before him, broaching such a subject seemed more impossible than ever. She was not, as he had told the admiral, some whore from the brothels of the outer territories. Everything about her seemed correct, from the coil of dark hair on the back of her head to the gleaming toes of her polished boots.

And although he had always thought Gaians plain, with their too-smooth skin and distressing lack of personal ornamentation, he looked on this Lira Jannholm and found her oddly lovely. Perhaps it was something in the curve of her mouth, or the color of her eyes, a clear blue-green that evoked images of deep water, so rare on his home world, and so unlike the copper and gold and bronze hues shared by his fellow Stacians.

But reticence was not a trait the Stacians commonly shared, and he saw no point in indulging in it now. “For some days we have been at an impasse, Captain.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“No doubt you have been cursing my name and wishing me to leave.”

Something flickered near her mouth, a hint of the beginnings of a smile before her expression smoothed itself once again. “I didn’t know your name to curse it, Captain sen Drenthan. But I will admit that my life would be easier if your government would just recognize the fact that the Consortium had first claim to this world, and allow you to withdraw.”

Unwittingly, she had given him the opening he needed. “But that is exactly what I have come here to propose.”

Her brows lifted. “The Stacian government would never permit such a thing.”

Cool thing she was, cool as the color of her eyes. Of course, she had no way of knowing he’d already been granted such permission by proxy, through Admiral sen Trannick offering the wager in the first place. “The Stacian navy does not operate under the same constraints as the Gaian fleet. Individual captains may choose to make such decisions based on their individual situations.”

“And what precisely is the situation?”

He admired how she stood her ground, facing him straight on, even though he towered over her by several handspans and could easily have overpowered her if desired. Quelling a smile of his own, he said, “I will withdraw from the system…if you will spend one night with me.”

For a few long seconds she didn’t move, didn’t blink. Then, slowly, “Is this a joke?”

“A joke?”

The even pallor of her skin didn’t change, although Rast knew humans had a tendency to flush red when faced with uncomfortable situations. She said, her tone even enough, “I suppose I should be glad you said this to me in private, but really — why precisely did you ask to meet with me?”

This wasn’t going quite as he’d planned. He’d expected disbelief, anger, embarrassment. He certainly hadn’t thought his proposition would be viewed as some sort of jest.

“This is why I asked you to meet me in private. Or would you rather I had asked you such a question in front of your bridge crew?”

“I would rather you didn’t ask such a question at all. Has the Stacian fleet stooped so low as to consider such matters even worthy of discussion?”

He might have asked himself that same thing. But trying to explain the intricacies of the wager to this alien woman, of the millennia in which the rituals had evolved, would help very little. To be sure, he didn’t always understand them himself. However, he knew that to back out was inconceivable. He could only pursue his suit to the best of his ability.

“Are Gaians so rigid that they are incapable of exploring alternate means of diplomacy, of peace?”

Finally a few spots of color flared in her face, high up along her cheekbones. “I would gladly meet you at any arbitration table if your offer of withdrawal is sincere. But to expect an officer of the fleet — ”

“I expect nothing. I can only ask. The choice is yours whether or not you consider the withdrawal of Stacian forces from this system worth your…sacrifice.”

He chose the word deliberately, to throw in her face the distaste she must be feeling. Gaians and Stacians had always been adversaries. Truthfully, besides those women who sold themselves to every comer, whether purple-skinned Eridani or hairless Menari, he knew of no Gaian woman who had ever paired with a Stacian man. And of course it was unthinkable that a Stacian female would ever lower herself to bed a Gaian male.

“I will return to my ship now,” Captain Jannholm said. “I trust you will allow me safe conduct for that.”

“Of course,” he replied. Only a very naïve man would have expected her to give an answer immediately. “Shall we say, twenty-five standard hours for you to render your decision?”

Her eyes narrowed, but she only said, “You will hear from me before that.”

Her tone seemed to indicate she had a good deal to say on the subject, but held her tongue to avoid argument. In a way it was amusing to see her veiled outrage, the manner in which she lifted her chin and marched out as soon as he activated the controls for the door so she could exit.

He thought he had a very good idea of what her answer would be.

After returning to her ship, Lira immediately headed for her ready room. What she really wished was to disappear into her quarters, but she had only begun her rotation four hours ago; such a deviation from schedule would have been noted at once. The curious stares of her bridge crew as she greeted them curtly before retreating into her ready room had been bad enough.

Another devout wish was for a good stiff belt of brandy, but such things were rare in the Chlorae system and even rarer on board her ship. She settled for pouring herself a glass of water and staring into the viewscreen on the far wall, the one that showed the form of the Stacian cruiser where it perched in an orbit to match the
Valiant
’s own course precisely.

Of all the —

Over the years, she’d heard a good deal about the Stacians, their warlike tendencies, their fearlessness, their unpredictability. Theirs was a harsh desert world, one where the original lush biosphere that had led to the evolution of sentient life had been decimated tens of thousands of years earlier by a meteor strike. They had lost their oceans and their forests, been driven into the planet’s network of caves, emerging only to hunt the fierce predators that had survived the global cataclysm. They had taken the technology that had been the gift of the Eridanis — a race who prided themselves on sharing their knowledge freely — and crafted themselves into a space-faring power. But of all the things Lira had heard of the Stacians, she’d never heard that they particularly coveted Gaian women. So why Captain sen Drenthan would make such a proposition to her, she couldn’t begin to fathom.

A swallow of water, then another. The outrage began to ebb, as she had known it would. She couldn’t afford to let her emotions get the better of her. Much as she would have liked to tell that arrogant Stacian exactly what he could do with his proposal, she wasn’t in a position to give free rein to her emotions. She had to analyze the situation and decide what to do next. The responsibility for making such a decision must rest solely on her; Gaian regulations regarding fraternization were strict. What sen Drenthan had proposed was something she must keep strictly to herself.

The reinforcements from Gaia were on their way, that much she knew, but the stalemate here could last for some weeks before she might hope for any relief. The lumbering transport ships that carried supplies and colonists traveled far more slowly than the sleek cruisers of the GDF. And once those ships arrived, it was her responsibility to make sure they made planetfall safely, without any interference from the Stacians. It would be far simpler if the Stacians would just withdraw and relinquish their claim to the millenite, a claim that was specious at best. Yes, they had first visited this system, but only to take the crudest readings for their databases. It wasn’t until the Gaians actually landed on the second planet that the Chlorae system’s true worth was realized.

If she did the unthinkable — if she went to him — would he keep his word? She did not know this Captain sen Dranthan, but she knew the Stacians took their bond seriously, which was why the other sentient races had such a difficult time pinning them down to treaties and accords. Once a formal agreement was in place, the Stacians would honor it. That was part of the reason why the Eridani Accord was viewed as such a success.

But to coldly give herself to him, to let him…

The thought trailed off, and she drank some more water in an effort to banish those unwanted images. He was so very large, and so savage-looking, with those fierce ridges along his brow line and the mass of twisted hair down his back. Never mind that in other ways he was as humanoid as she, with ten fingers and toes, two arms, two legs. Scientists had been arguing for generations whether the galaxy was rife with instances of confluent evolution, or whether some long-ago race had seeded its kind throughout the stars. In the day to day, it didn’t matter so much. Gaians had been intermingling with Eridanis since within a decade of first contact, and the other humanoid races had followed suit, save the Stacians and the mysterious Zhore. Then again, no one had ever seen a Zhore outside their enveloping hooded cloaks, so their humanoid nature was still a matter of conjecture.

But Captain sen Drenthan was not a Zhore, but a member of a race that had been skirmishing with the Gaians for the last hundred years. She found it hard to believe that he had suddenly been so overcome with lust for her after glimpsing her on the comm screen that he was willing to relinquish his people’s claim to the Chlorae system. What, then, was his motivation?

Perhaps he had already been given the order to withdraw, for whatever reason, and had come up with this preposterous proposition as a final means of humiliating her. Why she should be made the object of such torture, Lira had no idea, but since she and the Stacian captain had been dancing around one another for the greater part of two standard months, she could see why his patience might be wearing thin. She knew hers was.