Weekly Drabble #354 (Patreon)

This week's prompts are "I burn for you" from Jordalus and "space boobies" from uberdrops, bring us back to some more Starcrossed. Enjoy!

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Communications:

It had been a long, tiring day for Arina. Faster-than-light communication bound galactic society together, but it was not without its own problems. Transmissions across particularly long distances had time lag of their own and were prone to signal degradation, requiring dedicated relay facilities to maintain cogent and coherent messages.

Tachyon-burst comms were also not particularly covert; a vessel sending out an FTL signal lit itself up as surely as engaging active shielding, engines or weapons. A final consideration was the power requirements involved; while a capital ship, planetary facility or space station might be able to conduct multiple simultaneous and protracted communications, a small vessel would be limited to short exchanges. A battlecruiser like Nemesis was capable of moderate length two-way communications, but only between two sources. Unless the participants were all within four to five light-years of one another, even dedicated FTL comm facilities struggled with transmissions that had more than a single extra-solar partner.

All of these factors meant Nemesis was far from ideal as a reliable communications platform. First and foremost, the vessel was often on combat operations; revealing its location was... ‘highly contra-indicated’ as Commander Jenavia had mentioned to Arina. Secondly, the energy cost prohibited conversations more than a few minutes long, and any attempt to have more than one other participant in the communication dropped both the time and quality of that transmission substantially.

The problem was exacerbated as, during the Consolidation’s failed, but still ongoing, defence of the Algernon Sector, both sides had targeted tachyon local comm relays. The Primality had done so in order to cripple Consolidation communications throughout the Sector and impair attempts at coordinating strategy, preparing defences or attacking the human reaver fleets. The Consolidation had destroyed their own comm centers to deny their use to the Primality; the humans didn’t have the capacity to replace them. They relied on specially-designed comm relay ships, and in this matter the Primality was a victim of their own success.

The demand for those vessels far outweighed their supply, and their destruction was often a priority for enemy forces, especially as the territory the Primality held increased. In order to relieve some of the pressure on the Primality fleets, the HuDenth had volunteered to protect their ally’s comm ships, pairing attack wings or escort carriers with them. They had more than enough ships to spare, and their stealth systems were second only to that of their allies (although Akshari shipwrights and engineers would vociferously argue that placement). Foes planning to pounce on an isolated relay ship often found themselves surrounded by HuDenth attack ships, much like a hunter stalking a kresp might unknowingly step on a g’ik-gik hive and be swarmed.

That might be interesting on tactical level, but it didn’t change Arina’s current situation. For the last two weeks, she’d been working as an intermediary between the systems of Jhlitan and Ko-soat. For over a hundred years, the wealthier Ko-soat had been exploiting Jhlitan’s resources, pressuring the poorer and less politically connected colony into unequal trade deals and resource allocation. When civil war broke out between the Foundationists and True Council, Ko-soat’s patrons found themselves with much bigger issues and the system’s external support dried up. Things got worse when the Primality arrived in the Sector; though Jhiltan didn’t declare for them, they took the opportunity to revolt against Ko-soat. Most of Jhiltan’s puppet government and other Ko-soati partisans had been imprisoned, and much of their assets were confiscated, including a number of transports and their crews.

Ko-soat was attempting to negotiate for the release of its people and vessels. Jhiltan, swept up in revolutionary fervour and nursing a generations-long grudge, was disinclined to do so and many Jhiltan who’d supported the Ko-soati exploitation of their home system were being put on trial. Several of the highest-ranking governmental officials and wealthiest citizens had already been executed for real or perceived crimes against their fellow citizens. Few of the Ko-soati executives and diplomatic staff that had had the unfortunate luck to be in-system at the time of the coup had survived to see court.

Even low-ranking bureaucrats, middle managers and minor assistants were receiving harsh sentences, and the Jhiltan populace’s mood was dark. There was talk of making an example out of the crews as “plunderers”, and given the fates meted out to their own people and the Ko-soati they’d already captured, Ko-soat was worried for their fate of their remaining people.

Jhiltan, fully aware that their former subjugator no longer had the political, economic or military power to force them to comply as they had in the past, rebuffed every attempt at negotiation. In desperation, Ko-soat reached out to Arina. Though Jhiltan had not allied themselves with the Primality, there was an undercurrent of approval for them and Arina herself within the system. It was Ko-soat’s hope that Jhiltan might be more amenable to their overtures if it came from someone who’d denounced exploitation and corruption. They would never ask anything of the Primality themselves, so the exiled princess was a palatable compromise to both sides.

Arina wasn’t quite certain that Ko-soat had learned much from these events; several of their diplomatic staff were more concerned with the ships and assets remaining within Jhiltan than the thousands of lives that hung in the balance, but she had agreed to try. It was a difficult affair. Jhiltan’s first offer had been to release the crews in exchange for various Ko-soati governmental and corporate figures ‘in order to answer for their generational crimes against the Jhiltan people’. Even if there wasn’t a self-serving aspect to protect their own miserable skins and avoid the consequences of their actions, Ko-soat was unenthusiastic about decimating its own government and industry. Their counter-offer had been just as bad, offering a piddling sum as ‘reparations’ (without admitting any wrongdoing now or in the past).

Things had been continuing in that vein for several weeks, the issues compounded by Nemesis’s own operations and the restrictions on its FTL comm use. She had made both sides of the negotiation aware of the situation, but tempers were running hot and nerves were frayed. During one period of comm blackout, not even particularly long, things had nearly devolved into a shooting conflict, with several hostages nearly getting executed. A war was in neither system’s best interest; Ko-soat’s local garrison had been drained by the Consolidation war effort and Jhiltan had never had much in the way of defences. Any conflict between them was going to be bloody and in all likelihood pointless as neither had the capacity to press any advantage of victory upon the other.

For its part, the Primality didn’t care. Jhiltan had made it clear that despite the fact that many among them might approve of the humans’ actions to ‘liberate the downtrodden’, they had no intentions of joining or materially supporting them and though it hadn’t formally sided with either the True Council or the Foundationists, Ko-soat remained strongly pro-Consolidation. The argument between the two was unlikely to affect anything else in the region and thus, the humans were unconcerned by the brewing tiff between two minor systems.

Arina had managed to convince Nikolai and through him, his superiors, that if she were able to negotiate a bloodless resolution to the matter, it would improve the Primality’s reputation and make other systems consider them as arbiters, increasing their influence and soft power. It would cost them nothing save the power required for her communications between Ko-soat and Jhiltan.

The trick was getting that resolution. It wasn’t easy. In fact, it was far more difficult than her efforts to bring Algernon into the fold – and that was saying something. She’d spent the last seventeen hours first all but begging Nikolai for additional FTL comm usage and then trying to stop Ko-soat from from lunging head-first into a meat grinder. A mob of Jhiltan natives and police had located the mistress of one of their executed government officials and lynched her. She was a Montecardo, and a native of Ko-soat and they’d accused her of being a Ko-soati agent. Ko-soat denied such claims. Arina had no idea whether the woman had been an agent sent to influence the Jhiltan government or an innocent woman with an unfortunate choice in partners. Both sides were adamant, but in the end it hadn’t mattered. Being from Ko-soat had been enough to stock the ire and bloodlust of the locals when they identified one of their ‘oppressors’.

The rest of the day had been spent in tense negotiations talking Ko-soat down from launching a strike on Jhiltan, and getting Jhiltan to agree to arrest and publicly try all persons involved in the woman’s murder, including the police officers. To complete her ‘hat trick’ (a human term she still wasn’t quite sure she understood), she’d gotten Jenavia to reach out to one of the many mercenary forces the Primality frequently employed. Jhiltan and Ko-soat both agreed to their use as security for the hostages and, with some grumbling, Jhiltan agreed to pay the mercenaries’ fees, with the understanding that their service would only be terminated upon the negotiated return of the Ko-soati hostages.

This made sure Jhiltan had a financial incentive not to drag negotiations out, and it showed their commitment to the well-being and safety of the detainees. It also alleviated many of Ko-soat concerns regarding said safety, reducing the pressure on them to escalate; Jhiltan might be paying them, but the mercenaries and the other parties involved were all quite aware who they were actually working for. The Primality would not be terribly pleased if a group whom they had vouched for took a job to safeguard hostages and then proceeded to allow them to be abused, and the Primality’s displeasure was something anyone in the fringe with an ounce of common sense and self-preservation endeavoured to avoid.

It had been a long, stressful day and she was glad it was just about over.

It was late in the evening, but she asked Nikolai if he was available for a briefing on the situation. Her grasp of English was good enough by now that she could avoid asking for a debriefing, but it was the latter and not the former she presently needed.

As soon as she got through the doors to his quarters, she started to disrobe, completely naked by the time she reached him. Arina practically leapt into her lover’s arms, wrapping her legs around his waist, kissing, biting and whispering urgently to him. “I need this,” she pleaded. “I need you. Now.” For once, the heat of his body was nothing compared to that of hers. Arina was all but on fire, the strain and tension of today and all the events leading up to it requiring, pleading for, demanding a release.

He kissed her on the lips, on the cheek, on the neck and shoulder in wordless acquiescence and Arina murmured, panted, purred at his touch. She shivered, digging her fingers into his tunic as he bit her in kind. She tugged at his clothes frantically, refusing to let go or be put down. He pressed her against the wall and she met his eyes, holding tight to him. “I need you,” she whispered again, “and you’re here.”