Habia drummed her desk; she had always been an ambitious woman; even when she was a little girl, she had had dreams of making something of herself. Right now, however, she wished she had stayed back on her family’s farm.

Kenya may not have been inspiring, at least from her point of view, but at least crops never deliberately got in her way over the most straightforward task.

Resting her head in her hands, Habia was nearly startled from her chair when her P.D.A. rang. It was an exquisite thing, deliberately made glamorous to impress other ambassadors and dignitaries, a classic powerplay, almost as old a civilisation itself.

“Madam Ambassador, Ambassadors Zumilu, Stod, and Feril will see you now”, a deep voice called from the other end. It was such a brief call there was no need for video chat.

“Thank you, Bidzii; tell them I will be right down”, Habia replied.

She quickly approached her body mirror and straightened herself out, she doubted the alien could tell the difference, but it was always better to err on the side of caution.

That was about as good as she could do on such short notice, running her fingers through her hair and removing any large knots.

Pulling herself away, she grabbed her jacket and left her office.

Her office was located on the Drentonita space station. Drentonita was a word that meant unity in the dominant language of the Yoil, a mammalian race that had a long history in galactic politics.

Space stations were often used as political spots, as space was considered neutral territory as long as it was at least 250,000km from a planet, even if you were in someone else's star system.

Habia had been assigned here two years ago to improve relations with the Yoil, arrange a trade agreement, and forge ties with the other ambassadors. Typical political motives.

Then that cruise ship had gone down in a pirate attack, Habia knew the old spacer legends about Deathworlds, and she was astounded that any crew, other than those who come exclusively from Deathworlds, would even attempt it.

“It doesn’t matter,” thought Habia. All that did was that a human had been on the pleasure cruise and needed rescuing or their remains returned to Earth.

The gravity onboard Drentonita was low, at least for Habia, and she practically flew through the facility. As she passed a fetching bronze tableau depicting the Yoil’s first space expedition, she noticed that a group of dignitaries blocked her passage.

Habia could have asked them to move, but she noticed that the ceiling was high, and she was feeling adventurous and cheeky. She took a few steps back and gracefully leapt over their heads, it may seem childish or undignified, but Habia had learnt that the awe it instilled in everyone was worth the breach in etiquette.

Habia reached her destination at a small conference room, her request at the moment was small, even if it was urgent, and the pomp of ceremony would just slow everything down. The elegant wooden door opened automatically, and she entered.

Sitting at a small table were the three ambassadors; the Yoil were a vaguely ursine race, standing on their hind legs, and despite the low gravity of their world, they were little larger than Habia, at just under two metres tall.

Their faces had three eyes, a standard for all life with internal skeletons from their homeworld, just like two eyes were for most things on Earth. Habia had long lost any sense of discomfort from looking at them and now found their long faces and hairy faces to be quite charming.

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A small selection of food and drink was situated on the table, and Habia wasted no time sitting down and helping herself to a cup of Ririn. A mildly alcoholic beverage to the Yoil, and fruit juice to Habia.

“Ambassadors, thank you for this meeting,” Habia said, putting her cup down. “However, given the seriousness of the situation, I feel it is necessary to skip the formalities and get right down to business,” she added.

The Yoil, or the ones she had met, were creatures of habit, and Habia knew this was asking more from them than it would be from a human, but they were ambassadors like her and had been through similar scenarios before.

“We are more than happy to speed up our meeting,” Ambassador Stod said. He was the most senior of the Ambassadors, having practised his craft for over two hundred years, and despite a few quirks, Habia respected him.

“Thank you. However, I must confess I fail to see the problem here; all our government requests is that you allow a rescue vessel to pass through your system once. They will not even make a return journey,” explained Habia, commencing the aggressive negotiations.

“Our concern Ambassador Habia is that the vessel is armed and carrying a complement of marines”, Ambassador Zumilu explained.

“You read the reports from the Dret travel company; pirates attacked the vessel; we can leave nothing to chance”, Habia replied calmly.

“We understand that, but you must understand that sending any military vessel through someone else's territory without a military access agreement is just unacceptable; if we let you do it, it sets a precedent”, explained Ambassador Stod.

“That precedent is that the Yoil are eager to help any lost souls in the galaxy. It is not a military vessel; it is simply armed and has military personnel onboard; it is not designed for sustained combat with a military ship”, retorted Habia.

Habia was rather frustrated with space travel. One would think all you needed to do what point your ship at a star and hit go. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Firstly, FTL flight was highly inefficient, meaning you could only travel about twenty to thirty light years before needing to refuel.

Now thirty light-years was not insignificant, but it meant frequent stops, and while you were in a system, no ship could not travel faster than light. The gravity of the star, sometimes stars, and planets, threw off the computer's calculations, and the engines were highly susceptible to gravitational waves.

Secondly, while travelling at ten thousand times light speed, there was no time to correct for errors or avoid hazards. This meant that everything needed to be perfect before you set off, and that led to the use of pre-arranged, concrete entrance and exit points.

So even though there were technically infinite ways to enter a solar system, everyone, even an attacking force, always used the known route; it simply was not worth risking billions of credits worth of equipment on that gamble. Not to mention irreplaceable lives.

These factors meant that The Francesca needed to system hop to get to S-41234 and then travel at sub-light speeds to reach DW-4. All this told that assuming nothing went wrong, it would take seven weeks to get there, and they could not afford to waste time in bureaucratic limbo.

“We do not see the need for a rescue vessel; they crashed on a Deathworld, and they will not be alive when you get there”, stated Ambassador Feril.

Habia started to rap her fingers on the table, staring blankly at Ambassador Feril. Ambassador Stod also looked at Feril, and it seemed to Habia that he would have smacked him upside the head if he had not been in company.

Feril glanced back between the two until it finally clicked, and he looked at the floor, embarrassed.

“Need I remind you that a family of your people was on that vessel, a Ulik family, three adults and a child? I cannot even begin to fathom how you can simply leave them behind”, stated Habia.

“Our hearts go out to them, but we cannot risk other Yoil lives to recover them; even if they survived the crash, they would be dead from poison food, predators, the elements or a thousand other hazards ”, replied Ambassador Zumilu.

Detecting a chink, Habia struck, “But no Yoil lives will be risked; the rescue vessel contains only humans, and returning to the notion of precedent. You can claim that it was an emergency rescue vessel, organised at lighting speed with would-be allies.”

The Ambassadors glanced at one another; Habia knew what they were thinking; it would be good publicity. However, Yoil psychology was slightly different from humans, placing more eminence on results instead of effort.

“There is also the fact Madeline Bahn was on that ship; if she survived, she will be looking after them, meaning their chances of survival are much higher than you assume”, explained Habia.

The Yoil did not have the same facial expressions as humans, but Habia had done extensive research, and she saw the signs, the twitching forehead, the pattern of blinks; they were seriously considering it.

Habia smiled; it seemed she would not need five hours after all.