Embargo

"They are killers first and tricksters second. You never know about the trick until you’re dead."

Day 1:

Fillion had been where Vennegor was, physically that is. It didn’t mean he understood the man or what he hoped to accomplish showing up around the Atys Macromineral Mines with a fleet of warships. It wasn’t a desperate move; it was a futile one. There was good reason no one had attempted to enter the system in over four centuries.

“Curious move, is it not?” Saraswathi said when Fillion became aware of the attempted incursion.

“I wonder,” Fillion said. “They look like ordinary warships.”

“It is possible that this Vennegor is a very stupid man. Humans do curious things.”

“Or a very smart one,” Fillion said. “Time will tell.”

The sight of so many conventional warships at the edge of the system was so novel, Fillion knew it was just a matter of time before Dulcie took an interest, especially if Vennegor did as he was promising to do and entered the system. She was closest to the outer planets. If this Etteran commodore could do damage against any of them, Dulcie was in the most vulnerable position, not that Vennegor could know such a thing. For the moment, though, he seemed to be parked just outside the system’s heliosphere.

“What do you suppose he’s doing out there?” Fillion asked Saraswathi.

“If he is smart, as you suggest, he’s likely gathering information,” the artificial being said. “Surviving over thirty years of warfare means at the very least, these Etterans have collected much knowledge about modes of kinetic destruction.”

The debris, which was littered in cloud-like formations throughout the inner half of the system, was much less dense in the outer reaches. But even out there, strikes were certain, and depending on the size and location of the rocks colliding against a ship’s hull, entering the system would eventually prove fatal.

“Fillion of Charris, would you speak?” a transmission came through.

There was, of course, the usual interference, but the signal was clear enough to see a stern-looking, uniformed figure.

“Interference permits text only,” Fillion wrote back. “We are limited by our circumstances here.”

It was an excuse. To the outside worlds, their situation had been shrouded in mystery for centuries. It was smart policy to keep it that way. Text only.

Vennegor took nearly an hour to reply, doubtless crafting a careful message he hoped would be convincing. It read as follows.

“For centuries now, allotment of life-giving elements has placed a hard cap on the speed and rapidity of human expansion into the Battery. It has, justifiably, favored the largest most successful worlds and colonies—Charris, Athos, Hellenia—serving them first. We do not accuse Atys of favoritism, for it is Charris primarily that manages distribution of the vital elements you and your ships mine. Etterus, however, is finished accepting Charris as mediator, for it is our belief that their fruitless attempts to appear neutral to all parties, inevitably tips the scale in the favor of the status quo. That status quo finds my people locked in a decades-long war with no sign of abatement. Fillion of Charris, we hereby petition for direct access to negotiate for the macrominerals you mine here in Atys.”

Dulcie, who’d been monitoring the situation finally saw fit to comment.

“That was far more polite than I’d have figured, Fillion. I wonder if he knows his history.”

“I suspect so,” Saraswathi answered. “If he intended to merely petition, why show up with a fleet of warships?”

The triumvirate conferred, each of the three communicating their preference through the bodies of their living vessels, an almost telepathic commune convened in sub-space. When the meeting of their minds concluded, Fillion sent Vennegor the following response.

“Your petition is noted and rejected, Vennegor of Etterus. You may redress your grievances with Charris or find your phosphorous elsewhere.”

The Etteran commodore did not respond.

Soon after the message was received, one of Vennegor’s ships passed through the heliosphere into the system. Atys was a graveyard for conventional ships. There were several theories as to the exact physics of the death trap, but the leading theory was that in the recent cosmic past, a collision had occurred between one of the inner four rocky bodies and a small, fast-moving rogue planet. The violent collision resulted in both planets spilling their hard metal innards throughout the system so violently that the area hadn’t nearly begun to settle since the initial collision. Atys was left a conflagration of clouds, dust, debris and disorderly asteroids innumerable, constantly blasting into each other, making any sort of predictive pattern about their trajectories all but impossible. Most of the collisions were modest, but frequently enough, massive asteroids would connect with incredible velocities, shooting out chunks of glowing orange heat-laden metal and rock.

The first of Vennegor’s warships entered the system at low sub-light, like a bather into cold waters, testing it seemed.

It was difficult for Fillion and Saraswathi to witness the spectacle without interference from dust and debris. They relied on Dulcie’s projection. They hadn’t witnessed anything like it before. Saraswathi was the only one of the three old enough to remember the initial wreck of the prospecting parties who thought, as Vennegor seemed to think, that it might be safe to venture into the dark outer reaches of the system, where Atys’ starlight was almost entirely obscured by the debris cloud of the inner system. The darkness made for a deceptive death trap. That outer debris field was far more diffuse than the inner clouds, but it was as deadly as it was dark.

Saraswathi’s math suggested hull breach within the first four hours, complete decompression within the first twelve, and total destruction before the ship even got within striking distance of the gas giant Sharrah, where Dulcie and her fleet were sheltering at the pole, awaiting a window for payload delivery.

By hour four, as the Etteran cruiser approached the system’s original belt of asteroids and ice dwarfs, it picked up speed, all but ensuring its inability to avoid a large strike.

“Suicide,” Dulcie said. “It must be remotely piloted.”

Within the hour, the ship collided with a hidden rock in the darkness, pulverizing it to a cloud of mangled metal and fire. Among the debris field, Dulcie witnessed a spread of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of spherical orbs, spilling out into the outer reaches of the system.

“He is making war on us,” Fillion said. “Mines?”

“Some form of sabotage, certainly,” Saraswathi said.

Over the course of the next several hours, Vennegor deployed a salvo of nine more of these mine-laden vessels along the perimeter of the system. Saraswathi processed their possible spread, which, over time, were certain to diffuse into the system, like an ink stain into a puddle of clear liquid—complete perfusion.

“Would you talk, Fillion of Charris?” came a message from Vennegor.

“He is smart,” Fillion said to his two partners, “not a fool, this military commander.”

Fillion did not answer him immediately. The triumvirs spent the time theorizing and strategizing.

“No doubt you are trying to guess what has been deployed into your system, Fillion of Charris,” a second message came from Vennegor after a short time. “The devices I’ve deployed are a very effective, nearly indestructible type of heat mine. Simple, crude, and deadly. We understand your mining process, and we know you’re likely calculating the odds that one of your ships will encounter one of these devices before they become gravitationally bound to the rocks in the sea of debris that surrounds you. The odds of that happening are miniscule. That is not their purpose. Eventually, the odds of your mining ships consuming these mines is certain. I assure you; I can continue to make the odds of that less favorable for you, or I could ensure that when you do begin to consume them, the mines are inert. We do not wish to harm you or to stop the vital service your work provides to the peoples of Charris and the Battery. We only wish to negotiate terms. Your refusal left us no choice but to change the equation. The Atys system, meanwhile, is hereby under an embargo that will cease when negotiations are complete. I await your response.”

Day 2:

The triumvirs relied mostly on Saraswathi’s tremendous capacity for strategizing as they continued to discuss their options. She was one of the first ten copies of Saraswathi prime, a direct progeny of Maicon, who had given her line abilities in fractal analysis and quantum computing that made her perfect for functions such as Atys. Her computing firepower, along with Fillion’s genius for design and Dulcie’s gift for engineering systems, had made mining the system possible. It wasn’t just the fact that there was phosphorous in abundance that made the system so attractive. It was that the planetary collision had liberated that rare and most valuable life-giving element from the crust of the planets that had collided. Phosphorous was now present in trace amounts on every rock in the system in the form of accreted dust. But their living ships weren’t engineered to be dust collectors. They were miners, and they mined by consuming the rocks themselves. Fillion and Saraswathi had created the kobolds from scratch, engineering their existence for the demands of the environment—a fierce exoskeleton, a soft, highly-vascular spongy sub-dermis that immediately self-sealed and repaired all but the most massive breaches of the outer shell, which also converted the sunlight into energy. The neural tissues, threaded throughout the body of each kobold worked as a conduit for the three operators—a hive mind that serviced the operators not the engines. And these bodies were master manipulators of magnetic fields, allowing the clusters of kobolds to deflect many of the mostly metallic rocks in their vicinity. Between this magnetic push-and-pull and the clever manipulation of the gravitational pull of the asteroids themselves, Saraswathi could reliably steer each of their three fleets around the system slowly but with relative precision. They were not designed to deal with space warfare in any way, though, for who could have perceived a need for a defense in an impenetrable field that only the kobolds could negotiate. The creatures were certainly not designed to withstand a mine blast from within. If Vennegor was earnest about the threat, it would be a serious problem for mining operations over centuries. Even more, Dulcie and Fillion were humans, and their bodies, though mere dormant vessels for their projected consciousnesses, were preserved in a kind of indefinite stasis aboard their kobolds. They could be killed.

Saraswathi had been sharing her work, trying to project the progress of the mines as they dissipated into the clouds of Atys. There was no emergency here. It would be months before the first of these mines could even theoretically reach the inner system, which seemed a strange strategy in warfare, where timelines were emergent in hours and days.

Still, after careful consideration, the triumvirs decided that the situation required further conversation, especially in light of the threat of further action by Vennegor. He got his conclave after all.

Fillion sent the following message: “Vennegor of Etterus, this unwarranted aggression is impermissible. Any further terroristic threats will leave us no choice but to recommend to Charris that Etterus be removed entirely from the supply chain. We are willing to hear your proposal for altering our distribution structure but we will not alter to your benefit under threat of force.”

They did not hear back from Vennegor for days.

Day 7:

Vennegor did not release any more mines over the first week of the embargo, nor did he issue any further demands until the seventh day. By then, the triumvirs had processed probable expectations for the Etteran commodore. Saraswathi predicted that he would press for a twenty-five percent increase in allotment—a figure consistent with optimistic growth for the Etteran territories.

Meanwhile, they were contending with the possibility that Vennegor couldn’t be placated. For fear of the mines, Dulcie was now unwilling to direct her kobold to eat.

“I can’t get blown up by a mine if my ship doesn’t consume them,” Dulcie said.

“That is an effective survival strategy in the short term,” Saraswathi said. “But the reduction in productivity over centuries will be significant. Plus, it marks your kobold out as different. Vennegor will certainly identify your ship as important. He may be able to target it in some other way.”

“I don’t wish to be blown to little bits from the inside,” Dulcie said. “The kobolds we can lose.”

Dulcie’s pod was on its way back from the mid-system. The further she could get herself from the mines, she thought, the better. She’d already loaded her most recent payload into the mass driver hidden in one of the gas giant Sharrah’s large rocky moons. Dulcie was just waiting for the window Saraswathi had calculated would appear later that evening. They had no reason to think Vennegor had any knowledge of that shipment.

Then a message from Vennegor came in. “My terms are as follows: Right of first refusal up to one billion units each per year for the four smaller factions—Etterus, the Lettered Systems, The Independent Systems, and the Trasp Protectorate. What remains will be divided equally amongst Dreeson’s System, Hellenia, and Charris.”

Vennegor’s request was a direct inversion of the prior arrangement, a seemingly absurd provocation. Most curious of all, Vennegor asked for no advantage over his people’s mortal enemies, the Trasp.

After consultation, Fillion sent back the following question on behalf of the triumvirs: “Should we refuse?”

Vennegor did not answer.

Dulcie’s pod had hardly cleared the moon’s gravity well when the mass driver inside it launched her pod’s payload. It was the culmination of over two years’ worth of mining work. Once launched from the moon, the payload typically took seven hours to clear the system’s outer reaches and a subsequent fourteen days to make the journey into interstellar space, where cargo ships from Charris would receive the cargo, carrying it on to the peoples of the Battery Systems and beyond. Shortly after Dulcie’s payload cleared the heliosphere, two ships from Vennegor’s blockade broke ranks and turned her neat shipment into a cloud of phosphorous dust.

Vennegor sent Fillion a one-word explanation: “Embargo.”

Then he fell silent again.

Day 22:

For the triumvirate, the destruction of an entire shipment was a morale setback more than anything. The loss of one shipment wasn’t an event that would manifest in real-world outcomes. The massive, well-ordered societies of the Inner Battery could find ways to mitigate the temporary loss of Atys—lawns, gardens, and trees could have their matter repurposed—perhaps for up to another decade before population growth would need to be curtailed.

The embargo was more dire for Etterus and the Trasp Protectorate, though, where the war was responsible for destruction of biomass in large quantities over short timeframes. The embargo was, however, at the very least, a change in the status quo Vennegor had spoken of when he first encroached upon Atys. And the glacial pace of conversation between him and the triumvirs spoke either to his patience or to his willingness to put his people’s own supply of life-giving macrominerals at risk in order to gain greater access in the long run. There was plenty of time for speculation as the three miners awaited the arrival of their regular formation of cargo carriers from Charris. Soon enough the outside systems would discover that Atys’s latest shipment had been blasted to dust by Vennegor’s small fleet of Etteran warships.

Day 157:

By month five, mining hadn’t completely ceased, but Fillion’s pod was chalk full and Saraswathi’s pod was well on its way. Dulcie continued to send out her empty kobolds, further from her own vessel than usual, for they were all still uncertain of the blast radius of the mines. This sparse grouping meant the kobolds Dulcie sent out were more exposed, but that distance was a tradeoff Dulcie was happy to make for her own safety. The only reason they were mining at all during the embargo was for the moment the blockade was lifted, with the hope they’d be able to make up the loss all at once. Vennegor seemed determined to prevent that from happening.

There had been one brief interaction between the two parties, with Vennegor inquiring whether Fillion had changed his mind, and Fillion insisting that he hadn’t and wouldn’t give in to the Etteran’s demands.

All three of the triumvirs were surprised, more than anything, at how long it had taken Charris and the Dreesons to respond to Vennegor’s aggression. Five months had passed and a shipment totally lost, and still, the major systems had done nothing to speak of to ensure the safe and steady flow of phosphorous back to the Inner Battery.

On the afternoon of day 157 of the embargo, that changed, when a massive fleet jumped out and began to encircle Vennegor’s ships at the outskirts of the system. The Etteran did not respond. He merely allowed the larger, arriving fleet to surround him, over two hundred ships strong—from Hellenia, Athos, Iophos, and Charris—all well-outfitted warships built for modern warfare.

When the fleet had encircled the system, and thus Vennegor, the Etteran commander sent the fleet the following message: “We did not come here to fight but to negotiate. Fear not, peaceful neighbors, you will not have to scratch your pretty ships on our account.”

A tremendous explosion then went off in the inner third of the system—a remote detonation of one of the mines. It was a far bigger blast than any of the triumvirate had expected, powerful enough to decimate a pod of kobolds in close configuration.

Vennegor then transmitted the following: “We did not intend to negotiate without leverage. Thousands of mines are armed and seeded throughout the system. Fillion of Charris has our terms. We would be happy to deactivate the mines should we come to an acceptable arrangement for distribution. Should our ships be fired upon, though, I assure you, the Atys miners will suffer the consequences visited on us tenfold.”

Then Vennegor went silent again, leaving the triumvirs to explain the situation to the newly-arrived allies, all of whom were indignant at the Etteran’s terms, his presumptuousness, his boldness, and his casual willingness to disrupt the order of the entire structure of civilization. Any significant further human progress in that region of the galaxy depended on Atys, and here was this one Etteran commodore flouting the will of humanity. They were shocked. And they were nearly as shocked at how calmly the besieged miners of Atys seemed to be coping with the situation.

“For us this is day 157 of the embargo,” Fillion told them. “It’s difficult to maintain a certain level of anger so long. Shall we begin discussions?”

That question set off a fierce debate amongst the allies. After several more hours listening to the back-and-forth among them, Fillion and the triumvirs tuned them out.

Day 162:

Sometime during the afternoon of the fifth day of that particular debate, Fillion received a message from Vennegor.

“This could take a while, Fillion of Charris. S71-C13-N91.”

“Is he joking?” Dulcie said. “The man wants a game of Sabaca with you? After threatening to blast us into oblivion?”

“Perhaps for him this is only business,” Saraswathi said. “Would you permit me to make a suggestion, Fillion?”

“Certainly.”

“F04-Q88-M33. I can start a visualization of the table. It’s been a long time since we played a decent game.”

“Very well,” Fillion said. “Send him the rejoinder.”

Day 169:

The Athosians had to have their way, of course. They announced to Fillion that they would not proceed with any negotiations with the Etteran commodore before first opening official diplomatic channels through Ithaca. They sent for an ambassador while they awaited official word through Etterus that Vennegor himself had been cleared to negotiate on behalf of the Etteran systems and wasn’t acting on his own rogue impulse.

The Sabaca game had cleared its fifth frame. Fillion and the triumvirs were up by one frame and had discovered a most worthy opponent in Vennegor of Etterus.

Day 214:

After another six weeks without any diplomatic progress, Dulcie’s pod of kobolds was stuffed to their jowls. Mining operations had officially ceased in Atys. The Athosian envoy had yet to arrive. Vennegor had tied the game’s tally with a ten-stick run in the final wave of the two hundred sixteenth frame of the longest-lasting Sabaca game Fillion and Dulcie had played in four centuries. Saraswathi declared Vennegor of Etterus a genuine prodigy.

Day 268:

Mid-morning, as Fillion, Dulcie, and Saraswathi were contemplating Vennegor’s rejoinder to his opening salvo in the two hundred seventeenth frame of their match, the Athosian envoy finally arrived. She sent messages of greetings to the ship commanders and representatives from the other worlds. Then she sent a message to Fillion announcing that negotiations could commence. Fillion sent a cursory message to her, welcoming the Athosian delegation to Atys.

“It is a breathtakingly beautiful system to see with my own eyes,” she responded, “from a safe distance, of course.”

“Quite so,” Fillion wrote back.

Next, she wrote a greeting and a proposal to begin negotiations with Vennegor. He was busy discussing with Fillion the finer points of the Harridan sequence, which he’d successfully defended against twice over the course of the previous week.

“As you may soon find out, Fillion,” Vennegor said. “The Harridan sequence does have its weaknesses when it fails.”

“Were you planning on responding to this Athosian envoy?” Fillion asked. “Perhaps sometime before you employ your next gambit?”

“I will respond to her in ninety-nine standard days, Fillion, which should give us time for roughly ninety or a hundred more frames before the talks begin.”

“Ninety-nine days? That’s oddly specific.”

“It’s how long the Athosians kept us waiting. Seems only fair. K35-I19-L22. Mind your left flank, Fillion of Charris.”

Day 367:

Some two days to the year after first arriving outside Atys, Vennegor of Etterus began the negotiations with representatives of the major systems of the Inner Battery. Fillion, Dulcie, and Saraswathi monitored the ongoing talks, delegating responsibility to the diplomats. Their preference was only to keep the phosphorous flowing. For their part, it didn’t matter how much went to which civilization as long as humanity continued to expand into the galaxy. Whatever animosity they’d felt toward Vennegor for his initial aggression had largely faded, replaced with admiration for his cleverness and boldness. They came to view his threats as strategic and impersonal, similar gambits to his Sabaca moves, which even after a year, still surprised with their breadth of vision and creativity.

In negotiations, Vennegor seemed eminently reasonable and fair, at least as it came to his enemies. Though his demands of the Inner Battery were ludicrous, the Athosians especially took note of the fact that whatever he demanded for Etterus he demanded as well for his Trasp enemies—a level footing for both, as well as the Indies and the Letters. Still, right of first refusal for the Outer Battery systems was not acceptable to the much larger civilizations whose populations were expanding regularly and whose people were not wasting their phosphorous through the willful destruction of each other’s cities. Vennegor took issue with that characterization.

“Do you suppose we Etterans are enjoying these three decades of slaughter brought to us by our Trasp enemies? Two generations now of ceaseless conflict. We use our phosphorous in the struggle for survival. In that process nothing is wasted. Such an insult will not stand.”

Later that day, after breaking off talks with the unified fleet, Vennegor was back at the Sabaca game, employing “the hard line,” a classic dilatory tactic commonly enacted to frustrate an impatient opponent.

“That is a bold strategy for a mortal to use against us,” Saraswathi noted. “He does realize our nature, does he not?”

“I would say he’s fully aware,” Fillion said. “Not much slips past the ken of Vennegor of Etterus.”

Day 409:

Insults forgiven, talks finally resumed. No one asked Vennegor how long he was prepared to boycott the negotiations, but when he returned to the negotiating table, the allies took it as a sign that his tolerance for the stalemate was not indefinite. After eight months of idle standoff, though, the number of ships surrounding his fleet had dwindled. It had become clear that the chance of Vennegor’s embargo morphing into a hot confrontation was vanishingly small. None of the allies of the Inner Battery were experienced in combat, so their clear preference was to avoid it. Vennegor too, surrounded and outgunned as he was, seemed to prefer to talk. Now it seemed, he was willing to set aside prior insults and go forward.

Fillion and company had taken a ten-frame lead at the virtual Sabaca table.

During the downtime, the Athosians had led talks amongst the allies on reasonable concessions to propose to Vennegor in the event negotiations resumed. They offered Vennegor three options deemed acceptable by the allied systems.

Vennegor listened to all three proposals, promising to consider each one carefully before giving his answer.

The triumvirs noted amongst themselves that an end to the embargo seemed to be in sight. In the view of the allies, it had come none too soon. They were entering their second year without a steady stream of vital macrominerals. Soon, the shortage would begin to affect the plans of countless branches of governments, of private enterprises, even of families whether they understood it or not.

Then, to the shock of Fillion, Dulcie, and Saraswathi, Vennegor did something he hadn’t done in a full year of Sabaca frames, he neglected to press a clear advantage and pulled back.

Day 467:

The second Athosian proposal proved to be the breakthrough the allies had been hoping for. They held daily talks with Vennegor, reviewing alterations and counterproposals. He was a military commander accustomed to a certain level of urgency and efficiency, but according to the diplomats, he was a quick study in their world, brilliant and incisive with details, calculating second-, third-, and even fourth-order effects to policy proposals, often anticipating allied objections before they even materialized. He was so sharp that even the normally fastidious Athosians took even more time to be cautious, looking for the move they missed hidden deep in the minutia.

On the day the initial treaty was in an acceptable state to all parties, the Athosian ambassador sent word back to the Battery that the embargo’s end was imminent, lacking only signatures. The Athosian envoy sent for a dignitary from the government with high enough clearance to sign a treaty of such significance. Soon thereafter, they received word that the Minister of Worlds would arrive at Atys in two weeks’ time. Due to the nature of the negotiations, instigated by force as they were, the treaty would lack the normal ceremony and publicity usually associated with such consequential events. In this case, the signatories wouldn’t even board a single vessel. A simple digital document would be passed around for virtual verification and approval. Then the matter would be finished.

“Do you suppose you can catch me in two weeks?” Fillion asked Vennegor, who was now only three frames behind.

“Do you suppose you can stop me from catching you, Fillion of Charris?” he responded.

Yet Vennegor, with the urgency, throughout subsequent days, seemed to be employing nothing but dilatory tactics that would only draw out that four-hundred thirtieth frame—to the point that it became the longest single wave of their yearlong match.

Day 475:

All was quiet around the outskirts of Atys as the various parties awaited the arrival of the Athosian minister. The mood of the signatories seemed relatively joyous to the triumvirs. Their communications were full of smiling dignitaries speaking of their relief to finally be returning to their homes and families. Vennegor’s communications seemed almost completely unchanged. Fillion chalked it up to his martial disposition. The commodore would not allow his mind to lower its guard until the deal was officially sealed. Only then would he make his final moves on the Sabaca table, congratulate Fillion on a series well played, and retire to Etterus, presumably to continue his people’s fight for survival.

The Athosian minister was still not expected for another six days, so it was quite unexpected when a large merchant class Percy frigate jumped into the space just outside the Atys system. The vessel displayed Letters colors on their transponder. It was the Undersecretary of Interstellar Relations himself, arrived from Alpha-Riçard, and before even making the slightest attempt at pleasantries, he demanded a copy of the treaty to review. He also stated in forceful and colorful language that no one had authorized Vennegor of Etterus to speak for the Letters, much less all the Outer Battery.

“And if you think the Trasp are going to honor a treaty negotiated for them by Etterus,” he said, pausing to shake his head, “well,” he continued, “that’s some oversight, to say the least.”

On the afternoon of the arrival of the envoy from the Letters, Vennegor began to tighten the field around Fillion’s right flank on their virtual Sabaca table, a pincer maneuver even a genius military commander of the highest rank could find no flaw with. In three hours, Fillion had lost a frame he’d seemed destined to win. Saraswathi was in awe. Dulcie was angry. She’d been warning the other two for almost twelve hours about the very three loose sticks Vennegor ultimately attacked.

When word came from the envoy of the Letters that the Trasp were on their way, the Athosians recalled their warships to stand guard.

Day 518:

Finally, the Trasp arrived.

To everyone’s surprise, there was no show of force. The expectation amongst the allies was that the Protectorate would at least send a force equal in numbers to Vennegor’s so that the battlefield at least appeared equal. But the Trasp, Vennegor explained to the triumvirs, knew the difference between a battlefield and a negotiating table. The simple, austere passenger cruiser they sent gave nothing away, signaling little apart from their clear grasp of the situation—the Athosians and their allies represented enough of a deterrent to Vennegor that it would be impossible for him to lash out against them militarily, and the Trasp knew, perhaps better than any, that Etterans were not irrational actors. Etterans were strategists.

The Trasp representative was a retired general entering his second term as President of Darby Constellation on Thune, a cylinder group with an unknown population guessed to be in the high hundreds of millions. His name was Eddiston McKenna, and he had a reputation for directness. He wasted little time living up to that reputation.

“Under no circumstances will there be any signing of any document until the negotiations begin again from scratch,” he declared to the Athosian envoy in their first meeting.

“A briefing would surely be in order before making such sweeping declarations,” the Athosian envoy responded.

“Mark one thing for certain,” McKenna stated, “if the Etterans negotiated the deal, then it is a poor deal for the Trasp. They are killers first and tricksters second. You never know about the trick until you’re dead.”

“You’ve read the documents, surely?” the envoy from Hellenia stated. “Vennegor has insisted on equal footing for Etterus and Trasp every step of the way.”

“Even more to be suspicious of,” McKenna insisted. “Believe there is an advantage somewhere in even the appearance of equality. The deception will be in the context or the application of equal parts. I expect the Etterans to select only a fair rope to hang us by.”

Later that afternoon, looking over the Sabaca board at the latest frame, quickly unfolding in Vennegor’s favor once more, Fillion noted how in hindsight it was as though Vennegor had known all along that eventually the Trasp would arrive and disrupt negotiations. They’d bring their unique perspectives with them, characterized by what was either well-warranted caution or outright paranoia. The trouble was that one could not be sure which stance was the correct one until history played out. Even Saraswathi couldn’t process an accurate prediction of such things.

“Fillion of Charris,” Vennegor wrote to him that day, “how long do you suppose you can continue to hold your lead?”

“Not nearly long enough,” Dulcie remarked to Fillion and Saraswathi, “considering I no longer think we even know the real score.”

Day 767:

Frustrations mounted over the months following the Trasp’s arrival at Atys. Where the Athosians and other Inner Systems found a willing negotiating partner in Vennegor, they found nothing but suspicion, obstinacy, and quite often volatility from the Trasp representative, usually whenever other members of the negotiating team assumed something like good faith on Vennegor’s part.

McKenna so distrusted his Etteran counterpart that he insisted all communications with Vennegor take place in writing, mediated through the negotiating body. Never would he even address Vennegor directly in writing—it was always tangential: “The Etteran delegation,” or some such designation.

“That’s the only way to negotiate with an Etteran,” McKenna insisted. “It’s a lot more difficult to be devious in black and white, for all to see.”

Vennegor once more proved agreeable to the other envoys by submitting to those terms, even stepping back from the negotiations to allow the Trasp to have their say. He was happy to wait for their terms to come back to him. It was a full eight months from McKenna’s arrival before the treaty had been revised and vetted to the point that the Trasp general sanctioned its submission to Vennegor.

They transmitted it in the middle of the day. Fillion, Dulcie, and Saraswathi were stuck in another epic frame with Vennegor that seemed destined for a stalemate. As challenging and frustrating as it was to play against a competitor of Vennegor’s class, Fillion couldn’t remember being so engrossed by anything in centuries. The transmission of the treaty came as an interruption they assumed might halt play. To their surprise, no less than ten minutes after receiving the document themselves, Vennegor came back at them: “I08-N09-F28.”

“Damn!” Fillion said, examining the move. “Damn!”

“He didn’t even take a breath to read the treaty,” Dulcie said. “Is that frame?”

“Negative,” Saraswathi insisted. “There’s still room to wiggle out the backside and regroup.”

“Aren’t you even going to read the treaty,” Fillion wrote to Vennegor.

“That will require the proper time and attention, friend, like a good game of Sabaca.”

Day 846:

Vennegor rejected the Trasp version of the treaty outright, listing each of the unacceptable advantages his counterpart had attempted to sneak into the document. For each instance Vennegor identified, he included practical examples of how the seemingly fair treaty could be applied to Etterus’s detriment, at least when compared to his Trasp enemies.

“I will give careful attention to these problem areas and identify a solution that will be acceptable to my people. Revisions will follow in due time.”

 Later that afternoon, still locked in the most intense game of Sabaca in his centuries-long existence, Fillion received a curious message from Vennegor: “How many friends do you have with you, Fillion of Charris?”

“How could he possibly know that?” Dulcie asked.

And no sooner had she articulated the question than Vennegor answered his own question with a follow-up to hers: “You are the greatest player I have ever had the privilege of challenging. However, I have noted anomalies in your playing style that can only be accounted for by assistance from at least one entirely different player of your caliber. Playing one genius is difficult enough. Playing...I’m guessing three...is something else entirely.”

Fillion didn’t answer at first. The reason for keeping their methods secret, though, had been security. The less the outside world knew of Atys, they’d decided at the outset, the less likely something like Vennegor’s incursion would be. The triumvirs discussed amongst themselves and decided that such measures were now entirely moot.

“I am Fillion of Charris, designer of the biological ships that mine this system. With me are Saraswathi Seven, one of a handful of artificial beings on Charris in my century capable of calculating the quantum permutations necessary to build a spacefaring biological being to our specifications. My third partner was my real partner in my human life, Dulcie of Charris. We three are in awe of your strategic genius, Vennegor.”

“Two immortals and an artificial,” he answered. “What a way to spend a millennium, mining phosphorous for a growing population of humans who doubtless take your sacrifice for granted. I suspect this is the most excitement any of you have had since sloughing off your mortal coils, at least for the two of you former mortals, anyway.”

“It is a quiet, austere life,” Fillion said. “A great service to humanity, though. Such services are best paid without regard to the gratitude of others or the lack thereof.”

“I thank you all regardless,” Vennegor replied. “And I am happy to continue to entertain while the negotiations proceed. I trust the AI Saraswathi is not making moves against me?”

“Only monitoring and suggesting patterns, as I suspect your AI is doing as well.”

“Of course,” Vennegor said. “But mine is not a famous quant. I’m surprised that I’ve survived thus far. Shall we continue?”

Day 916:

Vennegor’s solutions to the treaty impasse were elegant and thorough. To the Inner Battery envoys, his counterpoints and revisions looked eminently reasonable, fair, and equitable. His Trasp counterpart McKenna found these overtures so reasonable that he hardly trusted his own judgement.

“There’s always a catch,” he would tell the others. “There always is with Etterus.”

McKenna could not help himself. He wrote a further ten revisions into the compact that favored his people, just to see how Vennegor would react.

On Day 916, when Vennegor reviewed McKenna’s changes, his response was simply, “Unacceptable.”

This exchange set off a debate amongst the envoys that grew contentious and then accusatory. Within hours, McKenna had to remind them all why they were there in the first place, nearly three years after Vennegor, the aggressor, had attacked the miners and their kobold ships.

“Trasp did not do that!” McKenna stated. “Vennegor did! I seem to be the only one who hasn’t forgotten. By all means, though, trust the terrorist first!”

Day 1,452:

Vennegor, for a time, took a commanding lead in the series. Then, Fillion found a weakness in the Etteran’s game by exploiting an old gambit variation that was popular in his youth on Charris, perhaps local enough that it had never made it into competitive play, and thus, was so obscure it was never recorded in the strategy guides. It wasn’t an attack or a trap, per se, but more of a hidden defense embedded in the mid line. The point was that an opponent would spend time, effort, and resources attacking a front line they perceived as only lightly reinforced, only to find a much stiffer wall behind it once they penetrated. That effort always came at a cost. The pattern quickly became apparent when Vennegor lost several games in a row. It wasn’t obvious which moves were the killers, though, even in hindsight. The cascade downward took a long time to develop from a place that always seemed like a victory.

“A pyrrhic victory,” Vennegor muttered as he moved his front into Fillion’s midline. “Now the slide.”

“Do you concede?” Fillion wrote.

“Do me the courtesy of this final bit of education on this Charris gambit, Fillion, for I won’t fall into it again. How many variations are there on this ploy?”

Saraswathi quickly did the math.

“I’ve been informed there are 1,325 variations,” Fillion said.

“Like a fugue,” Vennegor replied.

Fillion couldn’t help but think they were in a similar situation with the treaty. Revision after revision, each a variation on a previous phrase, largely keeping the same melody and rhythm, answered by a Trasp counterpoint, followed by an echo of the original phrase.

“Well, Fillion, you’ve drawn within twenty. You’ll need another year at least to make up that ground, now that I’ve figured out your front line soft spot.”

Day 1,618:

The envoys from the Inner Systems, overwhelmed with frustration at McKenna’s unwillingness to negotiate in good faith, broke protocol and attempted to cajole him in private. He, instead sent back a public tirade. Every time they asked him to articulate his thoughts, he would grow increasingly frustrated and accuse Vennegor of orchestrating elements of the negotiations over which he had no control.

“How is it that we are here now, years from when he began this illegal blockade, and we have seen no Etteran ships arrive to reprovision his ships? This means he came with years of stores stuffed aboard every ship in his fleet. And don’t think it is lost on us that these ships—though many of which were once good fighting vessels I recognize and remember—they are now ancient and no longer battle worthy. Is it lost on you all that he shows no frustration? No desire from a commodore to support his side in the fight? I am sick with anxiety being sidelined like this, but Vennegor? He is the same every day. There is some objective here. Can you not see that this is what he has wanted all along?”

“That is a baseless and scandalous accusation, General McKenna,” Vennegor replied. “We came prepared to blockade. Our soldiers take every precaution, always preparing for the worst-case scenario. Our people have been equally deprived, starved of phosphorous as each of the systems gathered here have been. Etterus has negotiated in good faith from day one. To suggest otherwise is yet another insult in an unbroken string of Trasp diplomatic offenses.”

Day 1,718:

Except for the moves on the Sabaca board, Vennegor went silent for one hundred days in protest.

Pressure was now mounting from Athos, Iophos, and Hellenia to re-open the mines. Agriculture was soon going to become seriously affected. Because of the secrecy of the two warring parties, though, little was known about the effects of the embargo on the Etteran worlds and in the Trasp Protectorate.

Day 1,758:

“The technology of immortality fascinates me, Fillion,” Vennegor stated one day between moves. “How much like the planets and stars have you become? Are the matters of humanity like the movement of the winds and seas for you now? How many Vennegors have you passed by?”

He would talk like that and play a game that one might expect of a philosopher king. At times, Fillion would imagine he was playing Marcus Aurelius, Charlemagne, or Julian Hartsock. The immortals had evened the score at 731.

Meanwhile, the treaty was evolving, or devolving as Vennegor protested. Vennegor found that as the Letters, Trasp, and Indies bickered, the Inner Battery took more and more from beneath their squabbling noses than they’d gained from his initial incursion in the first place. He expressed outrage that they were giving away a prize they’d never worked to gain. Every time he spoke, he urged them to end the standoff before they ended up with nothing.

Day 1,900:

The framework for an agreement was in place for what seemed like the hundredth time.

“Nineteen hundred seems like a good round number,” Vennegor said the day before he agreed in principle to end the embargo.

There would be a drawdown of forces from the Inner Battery systems to ensure safe passage for Vennegor’s ships. He would pass by the ships standing guard, then transmit codes for the mines that would give the allies access to the mines’ control systems, then he would jump back out of the Atys system for good. A rotation of patrol ships representing all four of the major civilizations of the Battery would stand guard at all times henceforth.

Vennegor horrified the envoys by submitting an additional list of demands after the treaty itself was finalized. Before he saw the list, General McKenna nearly suffered an aneurysm from rage. He grew less and less red as he carefully reviewed each demand.

The first demand was a standing archive, accessible to the triumvirs, to be updated yearly by each of the civilizations they serviced with macrominerals. In Vennegor’s words, “They give us life, the least we can do to thank them is tell them what we’re doing with it once a year.”

Second, the Inner Battery Series crowned a champion every four years, both in the individual and team divisions. These were the best Sabaca players in the galaxy. Part of the honor that went with that title henceforth would be playing the miners in an exhibition match at Atys. At first, Vennegor heard that the Athosians had scoffed at the idea that the most famous players would find any kind of a challenge out here. It wasn’t evident that anyone apart from Vennegor understood what Fillion, Dulce, and Saraswathi were. When word filtered back to Athos, the players apparently thought they’d be playing ordinary miners. Vennegor sent out a twenty-move sequence from match 1219 he thought was one of the most elegant sequences he’d ever seen. It subsequently became known as the “Bimini Triad,” providing instant proof of the quality of play they’d find out here.

The third demand was a concession from Fillion and Dulcie that they would seek replacements and retire from phosphorous mining at a time in the future of their choosing, in Vennegor’s words, “when the winds and the tides seemed right.”

When the finalized treaty document came to him, McKenna hated that he thought it, but he couldn’t help but recognize how much ground they’d given up to Athos and Hellenia in the years of seemingly ceaseless negotiations. Still, though, by then, there was no getting it back. After five years starved of phosphorous, their new share would be nearly double than when Vennegor’s blockade began. Trasp had no choice but to sign.

The humans of the galaxy breathed a sigh of relief on the evening of Day 1900 when Vennegor of Etterus returned the Treaty of Atys, signed and dated. Along with the document itself, he transmitted the first key sequence for the mines as an added act of good faith.

Day 1,931:

Vennegor’s warships finally moved out of position and began to cluster around his flagship. Fillion, Dulcie, and Saraswathi couldn’t help but feel that they’d soon be missing a genuine friend—an odd friendship to be sure, forged under unusual circumstances. But Fillion thought that was appropriate, for they had perhaps the most unusual job in all the universe, shepherds of a peculiar flock they’d drawn into existence in codes of mathematical equations and genetic sequences so profoundly complicated only a trifecta like themselves could have brought it into being. And they were fated, like a strange trio of Greek gods, to cycle through their own particular beautiful purgatory, to service life, to service the progression of human civilization throughout the Battery. They had never thought of it that way until Vennegor had put it to them so.

“You are now cosmic creatures, my friends,” he said. “What a gift to have shared such a portion of my life with you.”

He was a man of war, conscious of being recorded by foes and allies and by history, so a flat presentation of what was an otherwise emotional message was all they got.

As agreed, his final act before departing was to transmit access codes to the remaining mines to the keepers of the system. Then, Vennegor jumped away.

The watch keepers relayed to Fillion what they presumed was Vennegor’s mistake minutes later. When Saraswathi attempted to access the mines herself, she couldn’t help but remark to the others, “I always had my suspicions, clever strategist that he is.”

Fillion and Dulcie couldn’t help but smile at their worthy opponent. The mines had only one input command: “transmit data,” and no input command for “detonate.” When the triumvirs input the command to transmit their data, Saraswathi received five years of telemetry data for nearly a hundred thousand inert location beacons, a perfect map of the flow patterns of the Atys cloud over the five years they’d matched wits with the most formidable strategist of his epoch.

Day 47,925:

According to the armistice agreement, settled at the conclusion of the West Battery War, after half a century passing without aggression, Etterus and the Trasp Protectorate began to open records for the war era in stages. Fillion, Dulcie, and Saraswathi had not yet arrived at the day when the wind and tides seemed right for them to retire from their cosmic post at Atys. They still relished the updates from the Battery’s archives, especially any news on the burgeoning populations that had exploded in the outer systems, especially in the post-war era.

Saraswathi was the one who noticed the anomaly of course, deep in an obscure and seemingly meaningless data dump of Etteran records from nearly fifty thousand days prior. Many of the files—three decades into the West Battery War—reflected a society on the brink of collapse. However, somehow, during a five-year period when no phosphorous was recorded as entering their system, their population had a sudden inexplicable spike, as well as record harvests commensurate with a growth in agricultural production that should have been impossible.

The project was called “Amphora.” The secret mine was located so far out beyond the Boundary Systems that a century later, no humans had even visited the hidden system since. The gross tonnage, in the low trillions, of “amphorae,” exactly matched the volume of phosphorous required for a five-year spike in population growth. The historical record could not have been clearer. If not for that vital micro-boom in population relative to their Trasp enemies, Etterus, seventy years before the armistice, surely would have lost the war. Fillion, Dulcie, and Saraswathi knew immediately: Amphora had been Vennegor, the peerless strategist, exploiting a five-year cache of phosphorous that his enemies knew nothing about by grinding every other human civilization to a halt. Over a century later, without so much as a footnote in the historical record, the Etteran people carried on, more oblivious of Vennegor’s gambit than they were of the miners of Atys. Moves like that had always been Vennegor of Etterus’s signature. One would never know how they’d been fooled until the master trickster was long dead.