Rush Into Dawn

Chapter 16

General Wellku of the Rychii leaned into the shadowy figure standing at the edge of the room. "The Premier will give in to these ruthless thieves, my friend. I can feel it. Even now his resolve weakens and the future of the Rychii begins to look like those of the slave worlds of Ryooku. How could any of them actually believe the Given? Ships as big as a moon, the power to turn off every communicator on the planet, and who knows what else? But they would come to help us? Educate us? And now this military whatever he is would even tribute us? They have something in mind but "helping" is not on the list I don't think. But we are far from defeated. What we lack in weaponry, we'll need to make up in guile and ruthlessness. Anything less would be to hand our world, our legacy and our future to a new master and none of us plan on doing that just yet. We don't need to beat them, just drive them back, loosen their grip, make them feel we are not worth the trouble. Have we figured out a way to start up their ships?"

"Not quite, but I have all my best engineers working on it. These are complex systems, centuries beyond anything we have seen before, but we've been studying the device retrieved from the one sent back and know how he used it. A biocracker is the term we've heard being thrown around by the prisoners. My chief thinks we may be able to leverage this against them."

"Very good, but we are running out of time. The Given will be on the surface in hours and we need to be ready. As soon as the General meets with his soldiers, the plan has to be set in motion. Do you have everything you require?"

"We do, but you would still risk letting the General address the prisoners, Wellku? It could be the last move we make as free men since you must know the General will be seeking blood payback for the insult of losing his soldiers. If he somehow acquires any inside information, it won't be long before he comes for you."

Wellku smiled. "That's exactly what we want, my friend. By doing so, the General will set in motion a chain of events that has been meticulously planned for months and his anger and need for revenge will be his undoing. It may not happen the way you are expecting but the Given will regret their arrogance and insults."

***

Jehz and the General arrived on the surface of Rychii with high expectations that they could build on the momentum created by the recent conversation with the Vice Premier. The General put their progress down to the show of force and Jehz to his speech with the not-so-subtle compliments, but both saw an opening for possible success with the Rychii had been created. Should the talks proceed productively, they could be at the forefront of solving a very difficult diplomatic situation without further loss of life and claim a significant professional achievement. An achievement that would not be taken lightly when evaluations were done and promotions were being handed out. The Given hierarchy did not have time for resistant planets, they were an incredible resource waste, and managing thousands of planets was a difficult task for a single people. Those that could make this sort of complication disappear were prized and revered.

To smooth things over and save the hundreds of Given still under Rychii control would require walking a fine line of projecting strength while providing the Rychii with the deference and praise they seemed to desire so deeply. The early rounds of talks went well. While involving mostly midlevel diplomatic types, they seemed responsive to Jehz's consistent message of safety and sharing mixed with a focus on the Rychii strength and resiliency. He found stressing the similarities between the Given and Rychii to be especially well received. The General remained somewhat detached, ceding control to Jehz, clearly focused on strategy as he asked to be escorted around while projecting the airs of a tottering elder statesmen who sincerely wanted nothing more than to understand his host's culture and history as much as possible. His plan was to project goodwill and passively accumulate the political benefits of progress while his gun hand lay comfortably on the trigger, waiting for the situation to deteriorate. Either way, the General planned to come out of this mess better than when he came in.