“This is outrageous, preposterous even. It is a tacit declaration of hostilities; it targets the very foundation of cooperation and interaction between interstellar nations, harming the framework of peaceful process!”

The argentwood flooring was being put to the test as Sebastian N’Dure rapidly paced back and forth, having done it so many times already during the relatively recently started meeting in the Presidium conference room that one might be forgiven for thinking he’d walked furrows into the woodwork. President Terrence Kelley, seated at the head of the magnificent Earth redwood conference table had lost interest following the Secretary of the Treasury’s wild pacing, finding the lack of similar energy from Christina Nguyen, the Secretary of Commerce & Development much more fascinating. Unlike her on-paper superior in the Cabinet of the Independent Systems Alliance, Nguyen was taking the news out from the Corridor professionally, nary a dark brown strand out of place in her short-cut hairstyle as she studied the paper-print situation reports compiled by the staff at the Department of Interstellar Trade.

“An attack on civilisation, that’s what this entails!” N’Dure continued his rant without his ire abating even one bit. “The harassment of honest tradesmen in space is tantamount to a reversion to the unholy barbarity during the latter days of the Verge Federation. Interstellar trade is the very fabric of economic life in the galaxy and challenging that is denouncing the societal structure Human Space is founded upon!”

“Over-under ten minutes before he runs out of invective synonyms and starts repeating himself?” Adalberto Romanchi asked as he leaned over to whisper the question to Latife Çavdarli who had to bring a hand up to hide her grin.

“Under,” the Secretary of the Navy answered the Secretary of the Exterior, not having been able to completely expel the smile from her face, “Sebastian is a Dalry State graduate after all, linguistics is very far from their strong suit.”

“Here’s hoping the chief cuts him short before we have a chance to find out.”

The Presidium conference room was located on the same floor of Constitution Palace as the President’s office, but the noon weather of New Seattle was a dreary rainy one, and big, fat droplets smacked wetly on the large Magnolia Park-facing windows of the room. It was a cavernous niche with a large central redwood table which could seat the entire extended Presidential cabinet, plus the President’s chief of staff and their aides, and there were chairs along the walls for up to ninety more people. The walls were decorated with framed oil paintings of previous ISA presidents and even a few of the less incompetent First Director-Generals of the long defunct Verge Federation. The whole cabinet had been assembled considering the troublesome news coming out of the Corridor, but the meeting was yet to formally adjourn since they were still missing one of the most important constant-seat assured members of this most august council. Secretary of the Treasury N’Dure was about to fire off another barrage of curses as an unseen footman opened the conference room door to admit Fleet Admiral Edwina Bradford and her chief of staff, Rear Admiral Ignace Farley-Thran, both dressed in the black and white day uniform of the Alliance Space Navy.

“Did we miss something?” Bradford asked when she saw the pacing N’Dure and looked at the seated cabinet quizzically. President Kelley shrugged and made a gesture for her sit down.

“Nothing of importance,” he said as the newcomers found their seats and Farley-Thran thumbed a datapad to life and produced a grav-mounted keyboard from his carry-all bag, “just the Purse here practicing his vocabulary skills.”

N’Dure had already stopped his pacing, and now his hands balled into fists.

“It seems, Mr President,” N’Dure said through gritted teeth, “that the gravity of the situation has eluded you. Or does the safe and unfettered passage of our merchant sailors not matter to you?”

Kelley’s eyes sharpened but he refrained from commenting as the door opened again, a quartet of people in pretty conventional dark suits entering and quickly finding seats among the chairs that ran along the wall. Their arrival meant this meeting could finally begin and Bradford took a quick glance among the assembled members of Alliance government. It hadn’t been possible nor necessary to gather the complete cabinet. Notable among the absentees was Adam Dominguez, the Attorney General, Libor Urbánek, the Director of Applied Research, and Kiran Tran, the Secretary of Human Resources. The Secretary of the Interior, Nikoletta Király, was also not present; she’d been waylaid on the way back from Scania by a massive industrial action by orbital foundry workers in Adrestia, and was trying to mediate between the workers’ unions and the Adrestian Orbital Industrial League.

Of those that had made the meeting was the ranting Secretary of the Treasury N’Dure, Adalberto Romanchi, the Secretary of the Exterior, Winston Daifallah, the Secretary of Defense, Latife Çavdarli, the Secretary of the Navy, Christina Nguyen, Secretary of Commerce and Development, and Victoria Patterson, the Director of National Intelligence. The last four to arrive weren’t part of the cabinet, nor did they represent the military like Bradford, but they were arguably the most important people in the room. Bradford had met Permanent Undersecretaries Davies, Tachibana, and Chirathivat earlier on multiple occasions, but she had not had the “pleasure” of talking to Permanent Undersecretary of Interstellar Affairs Riley Amherst before. Amherst was dressed in the same non-descript government issue dark grey suit like his colleagues, but he broke the mould in a similar manner like Intira Chirathivat, since he usually fashioned his black hair in a flashy, almost pompadour-like cut, and seemed to be half-smiling at some sort of private joke.

“If we’re all present,” Kelley said, looking over the modest assembly of the most important political movers and shakers in the entire Independent Systems Alliance, “then I believe we can get to it. I think that Mr N’Dure here will burst with unreleased energy if we let him cook much longer.”

The Secretary of the Treasury visibly didn’t appreciate the mirthful point of view of this discussion, but refrained from commenting on it. Sebastian N’Dure was a hard-line Liberal Progressive, the son of a relatively large realtor business owner, but had chosen politics rather than continuing the family estate. He was a man who firmly believed in the free market, the economic basis of modern society, and the government’s role in upholding the security of that institution.

“As of 30th April of this year,” he said as he once again stood back up (but refrained from pacing this time, choosing to stand with his hands on the back of his briefing room chair), “three-hundred and ninety-two merchant ships under the flag of the Alliance Merchant Marine have been flagged for inspection in the system of Vistula, halted on their journeys from their ports of origin on their way to their shipping destinations.”

His eyes flicked briefly to Nguyen and Bradford before he continued.

“This number might seem low to some, especially since the AMM commands ships in the tens of thousands. But they represent a significant percentage of all ships that have passed through the Vistula System this year. Nova Polonia is a neutral hub-planet in the Corridor, and as such nominally has all rights to their own customs and merchant protection duties. But this is a very significant mark-up in number of hulls halted and inspected, and represents a major loss of revenue for many of our own Alliance’s largest Indiaman and shipping franchises. Every time a ship is halted for customs inspection, it spends a lot of precious hydrogen fuel to power the counter-thrust and coming to relative standstill, but more importantly, it eats a lot of time, the loss of which has to be covered by the carrier line if it is significantly off the contracted mark with their shipping customer. I don’t think I need to spell out how problematic that is for some of the largest carries lines of the ISA.”

“And just why are these check-ups becoming so much more frequent?” The question coming from Christina Nguyen was perhaps innocuous enough, but it carried with it a political undertone that was hard to miss for anyone in the room. Nguyen was from the moderate branch of the Liberal Progressives, and had the Presidential candidate been someone else but Kelley, she would have been the Purse instead of N’Dure. Bradford had to stifle a smile as N’Dure opened and closed his mouth like a beached fish for a few moments before collecting himself sufficiently for an answer.

“The Aurorans, Chrissie,” he managed to produce at length, “the Aurorans have induced, nay, browbeat them to do this. Look how they’ve tightened their border control and regulated trade routes since the Royfort-Euphoria incident, there’s little else to wonder why the Polonians have followed suit.”

“Except,” Permanent Undersecretary Amherst said from the back, his voice barely containing his academic disdain for a mere ‘elected politician’ and not an educated expert in the field being discussed, “that the Nova Polonians aren’t members of the Royal Union, and have no particular love for many of the member states of that body. They exist within their own cultural and political bubble, and associating them with the Aurorans; still only seven worlds strong mind you, regardless of what you think of the Union as a whole, are not only erroneous but bordering on malignant misinformation. Especially when your portfolio is the Purse, Mr N’Dure.”

N’Dure’s already dark complexion was turning ever darker as Amherst talked, but again, he prided himself on not launching into a tirade of backlash answers that would no doubt have weakened his image among the important people in this room.

“Be that as it may, pertaining to the size of the Union,” N’Dure said after taking a break short break to take a sip of water from the glass of water placed on the table in front of his seat, “but you cannot explain away this sudden uptick in customs control, Amherst, as some serendipitous coincidence, you of all people should be aware of the situation on the border right now.”

Amherst’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t drop his half-smile.

“I am perfectly aware what is going on, Mr Secretary, but I am cognizant that what is happening is the equivalent of the opening shots of a silent trade war, with the Alliance and the Union tightening the import-export routes. No, you don’t have to play coy with me, Mr Secretary,” Amherst said while making a stopping gesture as N’Dure opened his mouth to protest.

“I have seen the reports and crunched the numbers, as have the people at the Ministry of the Exterior’s Corridor Bench. And don’t get me started on the nagging from the shipping conglomerates, Nawate and Zweil-Brückmann were both on the horn to complain just this morning.”

Adalberto Romanchi, the actual Secretary of the Exterior, was not saying a word, happy to let his nominal subordinate lead the charge. Representatives from the aforementioned carrier lines had called in order to give Romanchi an earful, but had been redirected to Amherst’s office, where the capable bureaucrat had simply talked around the issue, while subtly hinting that this was primarily the Treasury’s fault, not the Exterior. Romanchi wasn’t stupid, and he knew Amherst was one of the smartest people in the entire ministry, certainly smarter than him when it came to carrying out the subversive knife-fights of inter-departmental rivalries.

“The meat of the matter,” Amherst continued, “is what this slowing down of business in the Corridor represents, in terms of thalers lost, and in terms of interstellar prestige and sovereignty.”

“I might be able to shed some light on that,” Nguyen said, pushing the frame of the glasses she didn’t actually need further up the bridge of her nose. She consulted a very stylish looking handcom, the titanium frame of the smartglass pane gilded in vine-gold.

“According to estimates by the Department of Interstellar Trade, the increased Polonian customs inspections have cost the Treasury something in the region of nine-hundred million thalers in direct surplus taxation of carrier shipping profits over the course of these past five Galactic Relative months. That estimate discounts income tax from the Indiamen crews, skippers, and the export fees of the cargoes being shipped, so consider it a highly conservative estimate.”

Someone blew air noisily out of their nostrils, and a vein appeared in N’Dure’s neck.

“There’s also the overage payments which the carrier lines are forced to pay their shipping partners, which again reduces the overall profit of any trip, further cutting into the taxable margins. That is what the State is losing, the costs borne by the carrier lines and exporting firms, and especially the insurance firms who are demanding higher and higher premiums for cargoes that were previously regarded as unproblematic. The loss of even just two days is now admissible as grounds for dismissal of insurances on cargoes, much to the chagrin of the large carriers and the export-oriented parts of our national economy.”

“Wait wait,” Winston Daifallah, the Secretary of Defense, interjected, holding his hands up in a quizzical gesture, “I may be slightly out of the loop here, but what interstellar legal basis does the Polonians have for interfering with normal mercantile shipping like this? We’d never had problems of this kind with them before now, so what’s changed?”

John Davies, the Permanent Undersecretary of the Exterior answered before Riley Amherst was able to clear his throat and start a new round of slightly patronising explanations. Bradford had to hide another smile as the old, white-haired warhorse gave his junior Undersecretary a very brief sideways glance.

“The interstellar legal basis is exactly what is offered to every sovereign star nation under the Genève Convention of the Law of the Stars, drafted in 2212 and signed retroactively by basically every polity since then. The ISA are signatories, as is Nova Polonia, Ilion, Concord, Harmony, and Ouroboros, the other ‘major’ neutral star nations in the Corridor. The Convention dictates that every nation is the ultimate legal entity within the gravity wells that fall under their direct political jurisdiction, de jure and in a lot of cases de facto as well. And so far, the Polonians have done exactly what they’re entitled to, carry out customs inspections of merchant ships entering their system. What is abnormal is the rate of inspections. It has become the norm due to expediency, common courtesy, and to keep the gears of the gargantuan machine that is interstellar commercial shipping greased, to only perform inspections of ships suspected of carrying contrabands, or to pick only a few Indiamen at random each month to make a show of carrying out customs duties. What the Polonians are doing is practically unheard of in peacetime.”

“Leading me back to the argument that the Aurorans, or at the very least the Corinthians, have put them up to this,” N’Dure commented sourly from his side of the table, having found his seat again a little while ago.

“Not remotely likely,” Romanchi said, having had enough of the filibustering attitude of N’Dure, “the Aurorans and the other major powers of the Union are as dependent on smooth transition of ships and cargo through the Corridor as we are. It simply wouldn’t make sense for them to force a noose on the largest shipping lane in the Galax–”

“If you hadn’t noticed, Adalberto,” Daifallah shot in, “it seems the majority of this newfound interest in shipping is falling disproportionately on our ships, not that of the Union.”

“What is your recommendation, Madam Admiral?”

The voice who had delivered the question was calm and cold, and belonged to President Kelley. He had remained silent ever giving the floor to N’Dure, but now he was boring his cold grey eyes into Fleet Admiral Edwina Bradford. She was pretty sure she didn’t give away her sudden sense of dread at this unwanted attention, and looked at her chief of staff’s notes for a moment before answering.

“I’m not quite sure what you’re asking, Your Excellency,” Edwina answered in a measured tone, “this is quite evidently a case for the diplomatic service of the Exterior to handle, rather than the merit of the Armed Forces.”

Kelley nodded in understanding, more than once, making it evident he was thinking this through. In the meantime N’Dure and Romanchi was arguing varying degrees of likelihood of external influences on the Nowosejm of Nova Polonia leading to the current state of affairs. Daifallah looked as lost as he usually did, the man being woefully ill-suited for the post of Secretary of Defense in Edwina’s humble opinion. Secretary of the Navy Latife Çavdarli and National Intelligence Director Patterson were talking to each other in hushed, almost conspiratorial, tones. The Permanent Undersecretaries Chirathivat and Tachibana were also engaged in discussion, but they kept stealing glances at Edwina, which made the CNO suddenly quite apprehensive.

“A police action then.”

The sentence made the room fall completely silent. Kelley looked around, his face neutral and betraying nothing; only his eyes shone with something akin to emotion.

“If the Nova Polonians are interfering with legal ISA trade and mercantile shipping, outside of what is the norm and political custom of interstellar affairs, then we must react in kind. The Independent Systems Alliance cannot be seen to be held hostage by a trifling single-system polity; there must be a reaction to their offensive actions.”

No one in the room knew where to look. Rear Admiral Farley-Thran had the enviable opportunity to appear concentrated on his minutes, and he grabbed it, peering intently at his datapad.

“Your Excellency,” Romanchi said, took a deep breath to steady his train of thoughts and then continued, “there are procedures and well-established interstellar observances and consuetudes regarding what you, quite casually I might add, refer to as a ‘police action’. And I fail to see what good that might–”.

The President cut the Secretary of the Exterior off with a loud slap of his palm on the wooden tabletop.

“What good, Mr Romanchi?” Kelley’s voice was dangerously icy, and more than a few found the table a very interesting object for immediate study.

“What good it might bring? I will tell you what I what good I see when I look out over this most august collection of politicians and heads of departments. I see a total lack of giving a shit, that’s what I see. N’Dure, you talk a fine talk and act outraged about the current situation which is costing the State in the region of billions of thalers, yet you’re insisting on shoving the whole problem over to either Nguyen at Commerce or to the Exterior. Romanchi, you’re a weathervane who changes position regarding whose wind is blowing in your direction. Of course you know at least someone from the Union have whispered some choice, no doubt honeyed, words in the ears of the movers and shakers in the Polonian cabinet, or else you’d be woefully negligent to the point of almost treasonous. Amherst, you’re a smart lad, and you know it perfectly well. How about you step down from your carefully constructed tower of hypotheticals and predictions, and actually do your job in assisting the Secretary of the Exterior?”

If anyone in the assembly somehow hadn’t felt uncomfortable before, they all certainly were now, including Edwina, who could feel pearls of sweat forming around her white shirt collar.

“I return, once again,” the president said, his voice softer now, but no less menacing for the fact, “to the topic of a police action. The Independent Systems Alliance cannot be seen kowtowing to a minor nation like this, for a multitude of reasons. If I am repeating myself, ladies and gentlemen, then it is to drive the point home with an emphasis. One, it is costing Alliance carrier lines and other companies and firms a stupendous amount of money, which baseline should have caused a more proactive response than just “business as usual” as has evidently been the case from where I am sitting. Two, this is an affront to the greatest nation in the Human history, we cannot simply stand by and let ourselves be humiliated like this. Are we not the inheritors of the Will of Earth and the torch-bearers of the ideals of liberty and democracy? Whenever someone threatens these fundamental pillars of Humanity, it should be our duty to dispel them of such notions, through any means necessary.”

Kelley’s voice was almost as cold as liquid nitrogen now.

“And thirdly, we cannot let the Union get their hands on the Corridor, no matter the costs.”

“Your Excellency…” Amherst began, but an angry sideways look from Kelley shut him up with a click. The President turned back towards Edwina.

“Now that you have the full picture of my opinion on the matter, Ma’am Chief of Naval Operations, what are your suggestions?”

A glove slapped across her face and tossed to the floor at her feet would have been more subtle than what Kelley was currently doing, Edwina thought, her mind galloping for options.

“Your Excellency,” she said after a short while, cognizant that all eyes in the room were on her, “in danger of repeating what Secretary Romanchi was trying to say, there are certain procedures and rules of conduct when it comes to interventions like this.”

Edwina was trying her best to remain impartial and retain her role as the uniformed head of the Navy, but she was perfectly aware that right now, everyone in the room was looking to her to put a controlling hand on the seemingly adrift gubernaculum, from career bureaucrats to populist politicians. And there was a nagging sensation at the back of Edwina’s mind that Terrence Rodrigo Kelley was doing this all on purpose, but she was coming up short as to how and why.

“If this is the express will of the elected President of the Independent Systems Alliance and the High Commissioner of Elysium, then I will do my utmost in assisting in such a venture.”

The confusion was almost palpable, and only the lingering menacing tone of Kelley’s recently delivered lambasting stopped any would-be protests.

“Firstly,” Edwina continued, removing her black and white cap for a moment to run a gloved hand over her very tightly bound brown hair, noting with internal satisfaction that nary a hair had come loose, and replaced the cap, “there is the casus opportunum to consider.”

She licked her lips briefly.

“If the Nova Polonian authorities have overreached their mandate by impeding on interstellar commerce, the Convention of the Law of the Stars has stipulations that open for the use of armed force to secure the safe transfer of civilian shipping, especially if one star nation in particular is being –unlawfully, I might add– targeted. Insofar as I am aware, this is relevant to the current on-going situation in the Vistula System, unless the Director of National Intelligence is holding back information relevant to this discussion…?”

The last sentence was loaded, and Edwina felt a pang of guilt of trying to partly shift focus to Victoria Patterson, a woman she actually admired. The frightfully youthful blonde (at least for her elevated position) in question smirked and shook her head in the negative.

“No,” she said in her heavy Proximan accent, “there aren’t any indications of this happening to Union merchantmen travelling through the same region, although you’re just going to have to trust my word and gut-feeling on this for the time being until I can wrangle my myriad analysts together to create something approaching a coherent report on the subject matter. You know the meme, which is more than half-true: ‘the NIA is a dysfunctional hydra, it has many heads and none know what the others are doing’.”

Artful dodge, Edwina thought to herself.

“With that eventuality out of the way, Your Excellency,” the CNO continued, Chief of Staff Farley-Thran furiously taking notes along the way, “then the hypothetical moves along to the military aspect. The diplomatic niceties and observed traditions demand at least a 48-hour warning sent to our overstars diplomats and plenipotentiaries, and they then have a further 48 hours to deliver the ultimatum that will negate the employment of an armed force. Needless to say, this period of diplomatic grace increases or decreases depending on the distance from the capitol world to the capital of the polity in question. In the case of Vistula and Nova Polonia, the customary 48 plus 48 would be sufficient.”

Edwina could veritably feel Undersecretary Amherst staring daggers into her back, but she simply metaphorically brushed it off and carried on in the same manner.

“But, Your Excellency…” A small smile that was barely noticeable on her well-trained facial muscles that more than once had been likened to a kabuki-mask, was allowed a little more proverbial breathing room than usual, “there is the perception of a military intervention.”

Winston Daifallah, as Secretary of Defence, opened his mouth, but a dual front attack of withering glares from both CNO Bradford and President Kelley shut the man right up.

“Go on, Ma’am Bradford,” Permanent Undersecretary Hitoshi Tachibana said, perfectly aware that he was currently just a facilitator to the proceedings, no matter his actual political pull in the internal workings of the Navy and the political aspect of that extremely bloated part of the armed forces; right now he was just a suit with a mouth that served his nominal political superiors’ purpose.

“A military intervention in a sovereign star system,” Fleet Admiral Edwina Bradford said carefully, “is a much more political undertaking than a military one. As such, the perception of power must be maintained at all times. Any such intrusion into another nation’s affairs must not only be carried out in a nominally maintained manner, it must consequently be perceived as fairly commensurate and measured.”

“What do you mean by that exact wording, Ma’am Bradford?” Secretary of the Treasury Sebastian N’Dure asked, his dark brow furrowed in thought.

“More or less exactly what I just said, Mr Secretary,” Edwina responded relatively deadpan, “the response to the nominally illegal impediment of our nations’ civilian shipping must be put to an abrupt stop, such is the order from the President. But at the same time, we cannot send a full battle squadron into the Vistula System and demand the complete surrender of their system’s control of their own gravity well. That would rightly appear to be a very heavy-handed approach, akin to cracking a walnut with a bunker-buster. As Secretaries Davies, Tachibana, and Amherst would no doubt tell you, this must be handled with a lot more tact. The outside perception is of even more importance than what the Alliance electorate emotes on the matter.”

“She’s right,” John Davies opined from the sides, “if we are seen to send a disproportionately large force into a relative nothing system like Vistula, then we’d be considered nothing but thugs and possible warmongers among the other polities in Human Space, be it right or wrong.”

Silence stretched out for an uncomfortably long period of time as President Kelley tented his fingers in front of his mouth, elbows on the Earth redwood tabletop, deep in thought. Edwina was staring out one of the windows, noting that the rain had ceased, and she could see most of Magnolia Park through the receding mist.

“How many ships would you require, Ma’am Bradford?”

The sudden question caught her once again off-guard, and she looked first at Farley-Thran who offered nothing but an unhelpful shrug. Fuck it, Fortune favours, and all that.

“A composite cruiser squadron, Your Excellency,” she said, quite aware that these words might, like the ancient weapon ‘bonemeranqe’, come around and hit her in the back of the head, “of at least two heavy cruisers to serve as flotilla leaders, a light cruiser flotilla, and a screen of destroyers. If I am allowed to furnish an appropriate subordinate with such a force, I will see to it that we can enforce whatever conditions appurtenant to…”

Edwina was not given the chance to complete her sentence before Kelley rose from his chair and buttoned his charcoal-grey suit blazer back up.

“Good, very good, Ma’am Bradford, I will see to it proper political orders are drafted and sent to your office. Secretaries N’Dure, Nguyen, Romanchi, I believe you all are needed in the upcoming session in the Charter Chamber come tomorrow morning. Mr Amherst, please create an outline for an ultimatum to be delivered to the Polonian Nowosejm; I do believe Mr de Huascar is our plenipotentiary there at the moment.”

Without formally adjourning this extraordinary cabinet meeting, President Terrence Kelley strode out of the doors (opened by those aforementioned seemingly invisible footmen) into the office of the Presidium, leaving the rest of the government and most senior executive officers and bureaucrats in the entire Independent Systems Alliance in his veritable dust.

What have I just done? Edwina thought as Rear Admiral Ignace Farley-Thran collapsed his keyboard and datapad and gave her an icy look she had never seen before from her trusted chief of staff. Have I unwittingly unleashed the dogs of war by unintentionally playing into this man’s hands?