Chapter 42 Diplomacy.

Some time later Steuner went to his home world to gather some of his people that would want to come to earth to learn.

Simon and Mikael had some free time now that the pirate hunt was called off,the reason being lack of pirates to hunt down in a hundred light years radius from Sol.

The last mission they went on was to drop a subspace relay between sol system and proxima.

That way the colony had a real time connection with earth.

After that it was decided that they needed some R&R.

The moon base was now enlarged enough to have all the comforts one could dream of.

There was a gym,jacuzzi,massage parlor and even a swimming pool.

The water was no problem at all since there were millions of tons of it floating in space.

There was even a project to drop some ice asteroids into mars in small chunks so that they would melt entering mars atmosphere and make it thicker over time.

The moon was turning into a military base for the fleet so the comforts were added for soldiers to train or use in their spare time.

The only thing that was missing were the fast food joints as the mess hall was open 24/7 and served great meals just like a buffet restaurant so there was no need for another place to eat at.

The newest addition to the base was just being built and it was Simon who had the idea of building a repair dock and a hangar under the surface of the moon.

So far they just parked their ships in orbit or the smaller ones on the surface,now they would have a hangar for the ships.

The best part was that all of their efforts started to bear fruits.

In less than a year there was no more hunger on earth,the schools were everywhere, there were no shortages of resources,and the world unemployment rate was almost nonexistent.

The only unemployed people were those that got injured and awaited their turn in the regeneration tanks.

Medicine progressed so far that there were researchers trying to figure out a rejuvenation process.

Simon,Mikael and Steuner were also gods to all the environmentalists.

The oceans were now free of all the plastic thanks to the drones and some student from France got a bright idea to use drones to plant more trees around the world and he got a thousand drones from the council to try out the idea and it worked.

The forests around the world were getting restored in record time now thanks to thousands of drones that the council decided to use for it after the first experiment proved that it was possible.

The trio was even nominated to the nobel prize in most categories but they declined stating that this was not their invention they just found it and used it so it would be unfair to all the scientists who put their whole lives into the research.

That however didn't stop the world leaders from showering them with medals both civilian and military as they were now part of the Terran fleet and held the unofficial ranks of admirals for humans and War chief for the lizardman.

All three of them had closets full of medals from all over the world.

For now however they were just enjoying their vacation as they knew that it was calm before the storm.

The storm came sooner than they suspected.

On the third day of their vacation there was an alarm and it turned out that someone was attacking the colony they established in Proxima Centauri.

Everyone scrambled and the fleet jumped within 20 minutes leaving behind the defense fleet.

It took them almost an hour to get there and it looked like the fight hadn't started yet.

-This is the Basilisk.Minotaur. What's going on here?

Simon asked through the comms.

-Basilisk we have a hostile force in the system and they are claiming this system belongs to them.

They gave us three hours to leave or they will exterminate us.

Reported the captain of the Minotaur which was a Terran cruiser.

-Stand by I will try and talk with them,since they didnt attack then there is still time to solve this peacefully.

Simon said and tried contacting the aliens.

-This is captain Simon Black from the Terran cruiser Basilisk calling the commander of the fleet that claims ownership of this system to come in please.

-This is Admiral Javin, commander of the Iriani imperial fleet.

What do you have to say?Captain.

The alien on his screen looked like a centaur except that he had scales all over his body and his head looked like he was a distant cousin of a turtle.

-Welcome Admiral, I was sent here to solve the problem we both have.

As you can see this system is already settled and claimed by The Terran Council and we would like it to stay this way.

So I propose that you find another system to settle so that we can avoid a conflict.

Also if you wish then we can find you a system that suits your needs.

Simon offered.

-What sense does this make? We are already here and I am under orders to take this system so if you want to avoid a conflict then get your colonists and leave.

-If that's the case then I suggest we pass this matter to our superiors so that they can sort things out.

Simon proposed.

-This is not a bad idea as I also don't want to fight if I don't have to.

-Then let's call them and set up a meeting.

It took nearly four hours to set up a stable connection between the council and the emperor. 

Both fleets were on standby for now and awaiting the results of the negotiations which were quite cordial.

In the meantime Simon was discussing with the Admiral on a separate channel.

-I'm glad you agreed to this Admiral now we just need to wait and there is a chance that we will avoid fighting.

-Well we also don't want to fight if we don't have to, my species is rather peaceful and we prefer to use diplomacy but the captain of the Minotaur seemed to prefer combat over peace.

The admiral explained.

-Please forgive this blunder Admiral,She just got the ship and this was her first assignment so I suspect she panicked a little when she had her first,first contact and not with one ship but an entire fleet and our species is new to all of this.

Simon apologized for the misunderstanding.

-So that's what it was,I figured out that she was nervous and surprised when we jumped in and opened communication.

In that case there is nothing to apologize about as I had made a similar mistake when I was still just a captain.

The Admiral really started to like Simon.

-Thank you for your understanding Admiral.

-Don't worry captain, we all make mistakes and we are all still learning.

By the way captain, did you notice a decrease in the pirate activity in this sector lately?

-That's kind of our doing admiral,you see we don't like pirates and when we took out a few of them they tried to invade our system,they failed but we lost a lot of good men that day.

That alone would be a normal thing as we attacked them but they wanted to bomb our planet from orbit and that was not something that we could tolerate so we started to hunt them down and soon they left this area because the only other option was to get destroyed by us.

Simon told the whole story.

-So you are the fearsome humans that everyone is talking about.

The admiral laughed.

-If you are the humans then why are you calling yourselves Terrans?

The admiral asked.

-Our home world is called Earth but in one of our ancient languages it translates as Terra.

Simon explained.

The negotiations took two long days and they concluded in a compromise.