Coloma and Abumwe looked over to Wilson, who nodded. “I am Lieutenant Wilson of the Colonial Defense Forces,” he said. “Captain Coloma and Ambassador Abumwe are members of the Colonial Union’s civil government, as is Mr. Schmidt here.” He nodded at his friend. “The Nurimalis a Conclave military ship, so we have decided that as a matter of protocol, I would be the person for whom it would be appropriate to surrender.”

“Only a lieutenant?” Sorvalh said. Wilson, who was not an expert on Lalan physiology, nevertheless suspected she was wearing an amused expression. “I’m afraid it might be a little embarrassing for my captain to surrender to someone of your rank.”

“I sympathize,” Wilson said, and then went off script. “And if I may, Ambassador Sorvalh—”

“Councillor Sorvalh would be more accurate, Lieutenant,” Sorvalh said.

“If I may, Councillor Sorvalh,” Wilson corrected, “I would ask why your captain seeks to surrender at all. The Nurimalclearly outmatches the Clarkemilitarily. If you wished it, you could blow us right out of the sky.”

“Which is precisely why I ordered Captain Fotew to surrender her vessel to you,” Sorvalh said. “To assure you that we pose not the smallest threat to you.”

Wilson glanced over to Captain Fotew, rigid and formal. The fact that she was ordered to surrender explained a lot, about both Fotew’s attitude at the moment and the relationship between Fotew and Sorvalh. Wilson could not see Captain Coloma accepting an order from Ambassador Abumwe to surrender her ship; there might be blood on the floor after such a request. “You could have made that point much more clear if you had not housed your diplomatic mission to us in a warship,” Wilson pointed out.

“Ah, but if we had done that, you would be dead,” Sorvalh said.

Fair point,Wilson thought. “The Urse Damayis a Conclave ship,” he said.

“It was,” Sorvalh said. “Technically, I suppose it still may be. Nevertheless, when it attacked your ship—and also the Nurimal—it was under the command of neither the Conclave nor its military, nor was it crewed by citizens of the Conclave.”

“What proof do you offer for this assertion?” Wilson asked.

“At the moment, none,” Sorvalh said. “As I have none to offer. That may come in the future, as these discussions progress. In the meantime, you have my word, whatever that will be worth to you at the moment.”

Wilson glanced over to Abumwe, who gave him a small nod. He turned to Captain Fotew. “With all due respect, Captain, I cannot accept your surrender,” he said. “The Colonial Union and the Conclave are not in a state of war, and your military actions, as best I can see, were at no point directed toward the Clarkespecifically nor at the Colonial Union generally. Indeed, your actions and the actions of your crew saved the Clarkeand the lives of its crew and passengers. So while I reject your surrender, I offer you my thanks.”

Fotew stood there a moment, blinking. “Thank you, Lieutenant,” she said, finally. “I accept your thanks and will share it with my crew.”

“Very well done,” Sorvalh said, to Wilson. She turned to Abumwe. “For a military officer, he’s not a bad diplomat.”

“He has his moments, Councillor,” Abumwe said.

“If I may, what are we doing about the Urse Damay?” Coloma said. “It’s damaged, but it’s not entirely dead. It still represents a threat to both our ships.”

Sorvalh nodded to Fotew, who addressed Coloma. “The Urse Damayhad missile launchers bolted on to it, holding nine missiles,” she said. “Three of them were sent at you. Three of them were sent at us. The remaining three have our weapons trained on them. If they were fired, they would be destroyed before they were launched out of their tubes. That is if the Urse Damyhad enough power to target either of our ships or fire the missiles at all.”

“Have you made contact with the ship?” Coloma asked.

“We ordered its surrender and offered to rescue its crew,” Fotew said. “We have heard nothing from it since our battle. We have done nothing else pending our surrender to you.”

“If Lieutenant Wilson had accepted our surrender, then it would have been you who would have to coordinate the rescue,” Sorvalh said.

“If there were someone still alive on that ship, they would have signaled us by now,” Fotew said. “Us or you. The Urse Damayis dead, Captain.”

Coloma quieted, dissatisfied.

“How will you explain this incident?” Abumwe asked Sorvalh.

“How do you mean?” Sorvalh replied.

“I mean each of our governments have agreed that this discussion of ours is not actually taking place,” Abumwe said. “If even a discussion is not taking place, I would imagine an actual military battle will be hard to explain.”

“The military battle will not be hard to handle politically,” Sorvalh said. “The surrender, however, would have been difficult to explain away. Another reason for us to be grateful of the politic choices of your Lieutenant Wilson here.”

“If you are so grateful, then perhaps you can give us the answer we came here to get,” Abumwe said.

“What answer is that?” Sorvalh said.

“Why the Conclave is targeting and attacking Colonial Union ships,” Abumwe said.

“How very interesting,” Sorvalh said. “Because we have the very same question for you, about our ships.”

*   *   *

“There have been sixteen ships gone missing in the last year,” Colonel Abel Rigney explained to Abumwe. He and Abumwe were in the office of Colonel Liz Egan, who sat with them at her office’s conference table. “Ten of them in the last four months.”

“What do you mean by ‘gone missing’?” Abumwe asked. “Destroyed?”

“No, just gone,” Rigney said. “As in, once they skipped they were never heard from again. No black boxes, no skip drones, no communication of any sort.”

“And no debris?” Abumwe asked.

“None that we could find, and no gas clouds of highly vaporized ships, either,” Egan said. “Nothing but space.”

Abumwe turned her attention back to Rigney. “These were Colonial Defense Forces ships?”

“No,” Rigney said. “Or more accurately, not anymore. The ships that have disappeared were all decommissioned former CDF ships, repurposed for civilian uses. Like the Clarke,your ship, was formerly a CDF corvette. Once a ship outlives its usefulness to the CDF, we sell them to individual colonies for local government services, or to commercial concerns who specialize in intercolonial shipping.”

“The fact that they were nonmilitary is why we originally didn’t notice,” Egan said. “Civilian and commercial ships sometimes go missing just as a matter of course. A skip is improperly inputted, or they’re prey for raiders or pirates, or they’re employed to carry a wildcat colony someplace a wildcat colony shouldn’t be and they get shot up. The Colonial Union tracks all legal shipping and travel in Colonial space, so we note when a ship is destroyed or goes missing. But we don’t necessarily note what kind of ship it is, or in this case was.”

“It wasn’t until some nerd handling ship registrations noted that a specific type of ship was going missing that we paid attention,” Rigney said. “And sure enough, he was right. All the ships on this list are decommissioned frigates or corvettes. All of them were decommissioned in the last five years. Most of them disappeared in systems near Conclave territory.”

Abumwe frowned. “That doesn’t sound like the Conclave’s way of doing things,” she said. “They won’t let us colonize anymore, but beyond that they haven’t recently been openly antagonistic towards the Colonial Union. They don’t needto be.”

“We agree,” Egan said. “But there are reasons for the Conclave to want to attack the Colonial Union. They are massively larger than we are, but we still nearly managed to destroy them not all that long ago.”