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Grass Eaters 3 | 35 | Negotiations I
🕑 Added 2025-01-13 16:47:00 +0000 UTCDominion State Security HQ, Znos-4
POV: Svatken, Znosian Dominion State Security (Position: Director)
“We would have to have been hatched addled to accept this idiotic proposal,” Sprabr declared on Svatken’s screen.
“It is merely in discussion right now,” Svatken replied calmly. “But even some of our Digital Guide programs seem to think that a similar deal would be a net strategic benefit for the Dominion. After all, I recall it was you who insisted that we should withdraw our fleets from the ongoing pacification zones to preserve our total fleet strength in preparation for the inevitable attack from the Great Predators. And it was you who insisted we begin negotiations. A first deal like this would open the door to more. That said, I understand your reticence to consider it, given that you would likely be one of our officers handed over to be eaten by the Great Predators.”
“That is not it at all! I can consider the unreasonable terms with rational objectivity like a civilized Znosian. If you allow me full command of all our forces here, I can successfully fight a withdrawal that doesn’t require us to give any concessions to the predators, and we can deny them future use of all these planets with our plan to—”
“What are you talking about?! You already have command! You are the Grand Fleet Commander!” Svatken shouted.
“My task of preparing an adequate defense of Grantor is undercut at every turn by your— your local overseers. Just two weeks ago, I barely survived an assassination attempt due to a leak. I am still investigating it, but I am certain that the leak came from the Grantor City office, and I will get to the bottom of this hole one way or—”
“Be careful, Eleven Whiskers, before you cast doubt on the competence of loyal State Security personnel on Grantor,” she hissed. “We are still investigating your responsibility for— for— for the death of one of our operators who was with you during that attack. I’ll warn you about this again: you appear to have a high estimation of your irreplaceability to the Prophecy. You should lower your estimation quickly.”
“Director, please,” Sprabr almost begged. “This is not a matter of my— I agree that we should negotiate temporary peace with them so we can rebuild our Grand Fleet for a counterattack. But these terms they’ve presented are obviously one-sided! A proper fighting withdrawal will delay them in the Slow Predator’s territory for a year. This additional year will buy us time to rebuild. And the prisoners they plan to return to us— at worst, that is some kind of predator trap, and at best, a few returned spacers will not be combat effective without the new ships. We have plenty of experienced and trained spacers anyway. Additionally, we have no guarantee that they will fulfill their part of the deal—”
“Quite the contrary. In fact, we have put together a proposal that would allow a phased withdrawal of our fleet from the planets along with waves of prisoner exchange that allows equitable guarantees on both sides. It was an unprecedented new task for our Digital Guides, but quite a simple one as it turned out…”
“We are already running simulations on these?!”
She ignored his outburst other than to mildly roll her eyes, “And the return of our disgraced prisoners… they will allow us to finally determine responsibility for the Datsot and Grand Fleet fiascos.”
“Didn’t we get those Great Predator prisoners in Cretae?”
Svatken sniffed twice in part-annoyance, part-disdain. “The Great Predator prisoners we’ve captured so far have proven only mildly useful for that; they were only in their Saturn battle zone, and they did not have the full information on the whole system. The apostates — on the other paw — revealed a great deal, including some second or third pawed information that may implicate… certain Navy officers in crimes of incompetence. Or perhaps worse. Once we repatriate all our prisoners, State Security will take all their lessons into account, and we will make sure that the mistakes that allowed millions of Servants of the Prophecy to fall into enemy hands are appropriately punished to ensure they never happen again.”
Sprabr looked like he couldn’t believe his big fluffy ears. “You want the prisoners back to— to figure out who to execute for the errors in the Datsot and Great Predator Nest invasions?! Why don’t you just shoot me now? That would save you all a whole lot of trouble!”
“Don’t tempt me, Eleven Whiskers,” Svatken warned. “And it is important to determine precise responsibility. How else can we know how to improve? You can’t even tell me exactly what went on in both those campaigns and how we lost! The returned prisoners will.”
He gritted his teeth in frustration. “This is an unserious line of planning. You think you’re getting one over them, but the Great Predators are playing us for fools here. There is no chance—”
Svatken replied calmly, “As I said, this is all still in discussion and we will take all facts under consideration. Unlike your officers, we at State Security are fully trained to deal with predator trickery, and we will begin formal negotiations with the Great Predators when we have fully examined the cases. Your further input on the ongoing discussion is unnecessary.”
“Then why did you call me with this news?” Sprabr seethed.
“To give you new orders. Eleven Whiskers Sprabr, I am hereby officially recalling you to Znos.”
“Recalled?! But I still have important work to do here in Grantor! Is this— is this for handing me over to the predators?!”
“Are you questioning the order?”
“N— no, of course not!” he bowed. “I would never question a State Security order. I am merely… wondering about logistics. The predators have cut off our routes back to the Dominion. How am I supposed to return to Znos without a full fighting withdrawal with my entire fleet?”
“Tactics is your department, Eleven Whiskers. And the predators are barely established in the temporarily lost border systems. Our limited reconnaissance into Crissoel shows that they are still taking time to consolidate their gains.” Svatken waved his concerns away with her paws. “Run the blockade however you must, but take no more than a squadron of ships. Do not use this as an excuse to withdraw the remainder of the Grand Fleet; they will remain behind to defend Grantor.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Coalition Naval Shipyard Datsot, Datsot (18,000 Ls)
POV: Eupprio, Malgeir (Executive)
As a core world of the Malgeir Federation, Datsot was considered a developed planet in an explored system. Just developed enough to have an array of orbital infrastructure spread throughout its planetary orbits to support its population of billions. And not so old that its outer asteroid mines had been stripped bare of cheaply-accessible resources yet. Despite the recent Znosian invasion, much of that infrastructure remained intact beyond the littered low orbit of Datsot itself.
Eupprio’s new shipyard was now a small city in space. It wasn’t as big — not yet — as some of the other orbital facilities in the Federation, but it was certainly the most productive.
Its official name reflected the formal needs of the bureaucracy of both species that the shipyard now jointly belonged to: Coalition Naval Shipyard Datsot. Eschewing that long and boring name, her Terran engineers referred to the massive structures now orbiting Datsot-7 as Plan-B.
Plan-B.
Originally a tongue-in-cheek nickname by some of the engineers from Ceres, it had gained in popularity after the Terrans’ own orbital shipyards over Ceres had been destroyed in a Znosian attack. And with the loss of gas planets in the Republic cluster, they’d decided to move their production facility outside of it entirely.
Plan-B was not a singular gargantuan organism, but rather a series of assembly yards that resembled the ribcage bones of an extinct apex species native to Terra. Eupprio could see flashes of light from the largest ones, the ones they called Raptors 1 to 6, putting finishing touches on the crown jewel of her hundreds of billions of credits in the multi-species investment. Banks in the Republic and Federation had initially helped put up some cash to supplement her reserves from her own businesses — not without generous kickbacks in the latter’s case… and tax incentives for the former. But their investment money had come pouring in without additional prompting after the destruction of the Ceres main shipyards.
The Schpriss, on the paw, did need a little extra shove in the back.
At the other end of the shipyard, eighteen modules nicknamed “Stegosaurs” showed hundreds of smaller attack crafts in states of production, assembly, and testing before they could be loaded onto transport ships destined for the front. The multi-role shuttle design in particular had gone through dozens of iterations, incorporating lessons from the battlefield, everywhere from Gruccud to Saturn.
Eupprio felt a light paw tap on her shoulders. She took a last glance and turned away from the windows to face her loyal friend. “What is it, Fleguipu?”
Fleguipu gave her a small frown. “We’ve got guests. Just blinked in system.”
“Raytech?” Eupprio asked, tilting her head. “Another surprise visit this week? What new gifts did she bring this time?”
The Raytech executive, Martina, had made herself at home at Plan-B. And with the investment and talent she’d helped them pull into the shipyard project, Eupprio had been happy to let her take charge of much of the Terran side of the joint venture.
“No, not Martina.” Fleguipu shook her ears. “It’s the executives from that Stoers group.”
“Maybe they are here for the new food court?” Eupprio smiled. The habitable area of the shipyard — orbiting at a safe distance from the actual production lines at the Terrans’ insistence (not to mention the secret yards perpetually obscured by a planetoid they’d moved into place), had attracted more than its fair share of tourists from the rest of the Federation curious about their new allies. And as it did everywhere it went, the developing field of human and Malgeir fusion cuisine had been a major hit with her people.
“Unlikely,” Fleguipu sniffed. “They are more likely here to… whine. They have… communicated their strong feelings about the way we took the latest Ministry contracts without consulting them.”
“Which one?”
“The next-gen atmospheric— the shuttles with the long names.”
Eupprio snorted. “If they wanted that contract, they should have made better shuttles.”
She knew she was being uncharitable. The Federation shipbuilding titans were still building new hulls off old blueprints designed centuries ago. Some of them had been mildly modified since the war began, yes, but Eupprio regularly saw more innovation on napkins in her mixed-species engineers’ lounges than she did come out of the entire Stoers Shipyard in decades.
As an example, the assault shuttle design proposal out of Stoers had windows.
Real glass windows.
Eupprio knew this because she paid a disgruntled line manager from Stoers a handsome sum of credits to send her a few photographs of their working prototype. When she brought it back to her Terran head engineer for the shuttle project for analysis, he laughed and wheezed so much — she was concerned she was going to have to call the station medic.
Windows. They had glass windows.
For the next month, the inside joke going around her shuttle design teams was competing to cram as many vulnerable glass windows as they could into their existing designs for fun: windows on ship bridges, windows in missiles, windows in windows, glass windows as replacement for armor, they even showed her a computer-generated, construction-ready prototype of a battlecruiser made entirely out of glass. She didn’t get all the engineering jokes, but she enjoyed the cake they baked for her on her birthday: it was topped with colorful frosting arranged to look like a four-pane glass window.
Her team’s eventual superior design had— well, it had fireproof seats and a layered composite hull and backup atmospheric pressure. And that was just the portion of the briefing where they explained the legal requirements of their people before they got to any of the state-of-the-art Terran technology.
She liked to think that kind of unbeatable quality was what won their Ministry shuttle contract — after all, some of the Navy supply officers had friends and families they were going to need to send into battle on those next-generation assault shuttles. But more likely, it was the combination of that with bribes and some light extortion. Surprising her own people’s preconception of their species, the Terrans were no strangers to the game played behind closed doors, and the moral flexibility their simulation computers displayed… she was glad that they merely provided her options.
Judging by her reluctant shrug, Fleguipu didn’t disagree. “Nonetheless, it’s important we play nice with Stoers Group. These people have deep pockets, and their influence extends deep into Malgeiru.”
Eupprio tilted her head back in exasperation and sighed. “Fine. Fine. I’ll hear them out.”
“Just tell them you’re considering their requests — whatever they want, but don’t commit to anything concrete,” Fleguipu suggested.
“What if I’m not considering their requests at all? What if I’m considering having their representatives thrown out the airlock if they—”
“Lie. Against your every instinct — I’m sure — just lie to them. Get them off our backs a few more weeks, and they won’t even be a concern anymore by the time we get the Raptor lines up and running. There’s no need for anything fancy beyond that. Just. Lie.”
“Fine, I’ll give that a try.”
“See? You’re already so good at it.”
Comments
Valdis Trautmanis
Heh, I was expecting Eupprio's old friend Speinfoent on shore leave and coming to visit 😄
