Free Homeworld: A Military Science Fiction Novel by Eric S. Brown, Tony Faville

anyone in the room but rather those who were not. First of those not yet arrived was Executive Officer Langston of the Coalition. Who, while tolerated on Earth, rarely left his heavily fortified embassy and when he did, it was under heavy guard.
    He was the one who had called this meeting. Xarn despised how this diminutive human obviously showed his contempt for the other sentients, even those of his own species. In addition to that, he earned Xarn’s distaste by the multitude of scents he used to cover the smell of his own musk. At times it made Xarn wish a First Partas could afford the indignity of a sneeze at official functions.
    Xarn’s ear flicked outwards ever so slightly in amusement as he recalled how this particular human chose to clothe himself. His staff told him that the style was Neo-Victorian, which apparently involved a multitude of buttons, stiff cloth, and numerous apparently useless accoutrements. Such as his richly embroidered black cape, which the Executive Officer made billow with a flourish at any chance he was able to fabricate.
    This always reminded Xarn of the little reptilian sora’te back on the sands of Dar. A small quadruped that would flare its hood to warn off predators but it had no other defenses, not even teeth. Xarn reminded himself that unfortunately the Coalition that Executive Officer Langston represented certainly had more than teeth.
    One of the many useless but amusing bits of trivia Xarn’s staff had learned about the Coalition ambassador was that it took two aides to dress him every morning. Such ostentation was beyond even the ceremonial but comfort loving Darians.
    The other dignitary yet to arrive to the conference, which would more than likely, concern his government more than the rest assembled, was Ambassador Fal of the Earth Republic. The broad shouldered silver haired former Earth Republic Fleet Rear Admiral turned diplomat choice of dress was far less ostentatious than his fellow human. He seemed to go out of his way to be genuinely friendly and welcoming to all of the sentients with the exception of the Coalition’s dignitary.
    Understandably, the relations between those two had become more and more strained as the stakes in the war of words that ambassadors fight had risen tremendously. To date, the civil war among the humans had been more fierce and bloodier than any conflict in their impressively conflict ridden past. It was no wonder that the two of them were seldom seen in the same room.
    Xarn stroked his impressive display of silver whiskers as he pondered the delay. Meetings like this one between all the known sentient races were truly rare and begged the question: why? What was so important that Executive Officer Langston felt the need for all of them to be present?
    Xarn had heard of the Coalition's move on Earth. As it began, their fleet had passed near Darian space and more than one of the Defense Force’s cruisers had detected it on their scanners and reported immediately back to their superiors requesting further orders. In Xarn’s opinion, the Defense Force command staff had wisely been told to let the immense fleet pass unopposed as long as they did not enter Darian controlled territory.
    As Xarn recalled the reports of the scanned encounters, the sheer size of the force gave Xarn an involuntary chill that ran up and down his spine. Had the assault force been en route to his home world of Dar, they would have no more hope of survival than the Earth Republic which was facing certain destruction.
    Xarn knew the Darian’s were fierce warriors. He had trained many of them himself in his younger years. Also their technological achievements were progressing at a promising rate but a fleet the size of the one they had detected would simply overwhelm everything the Defense Force could muster.
    Of course, this had raised a call in the Ka’tta for more resources to be directed to the Defense Force Fleet shipyards and training facilities to quickly enlarge the