Ayaka and Joon-ho looked over their orders, which were incredibly broad. Normally, military orders would provide detail after detail, along with multiple contingencies at every escalation step up to and including planetary destruction.

Thanks to training in the simulation, they even knew what a planet looked like after being hit by one of the spinal-mounted planetkiller coilguns mounted on some of the TFS ships. And they also knew what would happen if even a TES exploration cruiser were to continuously bombard a planet with their spinal-mounted coilguns.

It only took the two a few minutes before Ayaka began asking questions. Who is going to be assigned to our task force, Admiral? she asked.

Whoever you need, Captain. You have full authority and first priority to pick whomever you think youll need on your team.

What about materiel, Sir? It simply says here that well have full access to any and all necessary resources.

Full access means full access. You even have first priority on the protostellar forge, and if a project is currently underway, depending on its level of completion, you can kick it out of the queue and take its place.

The weight of the mission was growing heavier on Ayakas shoulders by the moment as she continued hearing the dreaded full support answers from the fleet admiral. What about training, Sir? We dont have many, if any, xenodiplomacy specialists in the task force.

Let me put it to you this way, Ayaka. Full access means full access. As long as you can establish a permanent, beneficial connection with the trees, you can have whatever you want. Ill even authorize a fleetwide connection and stand-down so you can train your personnel at the highest possible level of time dilation in VR. The only, and I stress ONLY, requirement being asked of you is that connection. Understood?

Yes, Sir, Ayaka and Joon-ho chorused.

Very well. Get to work, Fleet Admiral Bianchi ordered.

Ayaka and Joon-ho snapped to attention, then headed toward the door. But before they walked through it, the admirals voice drifted to them once more. And one more thing, Captain. You and your team report directly to me.

Ayaka turned and saluted, then marched through the door, her spine ramrod straight and shoulders back.

......

Orders in hand, Ayaka and Joon-ho immediately got to work. The admiral approved their request for three days of fleet stand-down and max-dilation VR training environments, using Joon-hos memories as the basis for the treefolk representatives. And while that environment was being built, they werent idle themselves; instead, they were sorting through the dossiers and records of every single member of Task Force Proxima.

With the AIs help, they had narrowed their candidate pool down to a thousand potential members, but the final goal was to only have five diplomats with two squads of marines providing both security and ceremonial details. After all, their negotiations with the trees would be a groundbreaking, epoch-making event in both societies history books... or whatever the trees used to record their history... if anything was recorded at all, at least.

When they were notified of the training simulations completion, by unspoken agreement, they both took to their pods in order to continue their work there. Considering the vast number of ships in the fleet, they were able to achieve an 80:1 time dilation rate, which would give them about 8 months of subjective time to build their team and learn the ins and outs, such as they were, of dealing with the treefolk.

Meanwhile, outside of the VR environment, the protostellar forge ramped up to a hundred percent of its capacity, all projects that had yet to enter the pipeline delayed in favor of stocking up brick after brick of raw material.

Something within her told Ayaka that she would soon need as much raw material as she could get her hands on.

Three days later.

Ayaka and Joon-ho were in a lander, preparing to head back to the surface of Proxima Centauri b. Opposite them were the three people they had finally settled on to join the diplomatic mission: Leigh Ayers-MacDougall, a tall brunette from Australia with an olive tan; George Stefanopolous, a medium-

height Greek man with dark, curly hair; and Boris Rustakovya, a tall Russian with blonde hair and blue eyes that looked like he had been chiseled out of a granite cliff, and could carry the rest of that cliff on his back if need be.

Leigh was a botanist and had been poached from Dr. Standing Bears team, where she served as the head researchers right-

hand woman. In her spare time, she just so happened to be a nyxian agent as well. She had been recruited by the NIS straight out of her masters degree program after a disastrous marriage ended in a catastrophic divorce and was one of the intelligence branchs finest twists... not that shed found any use for that particular specialty as part of Task Force Proxima, of course, though her personal VR space had caused her ships AI to put a number of flags in her confidential record.

George had been a lawyer specializing in contract law before signing up to join ARES after his wife had gotten caught up in one of the cultist attacks on Mykonos, where they had been vacationing at the time. When hed graduated his training, he had been placed as a bosuns mate and worked his way up to the rank of BN2, or bosuns mate second class. Contrary to most lawyers, especially those that specialized in negotiations and contracts, he was a gruff, silent man who spoke little and listened much.

But the oddest of an odd selection of diplomatic members was Boris. Standing well over six feet tall and being almost as wide in his shoulder circumference measurement, at first glance one would quite likely think that he would punch first, then punch later, then punch some more if the first two didnt get his message across. However, that was absolutely not the case; Boris was a rather jovial, outgoing, pacifist vegan. He also held multiple Ph.D.s in specialist fields of psychology and was a practicing ships psychologist on the TFS Proxima herself. He had been added to the diplomatic mission as its xenodiplomacy specialist, at least insofar as anyone could be considered as such.

Heading up their marine detachment, which the admiral had increased from two squads to a reinforced company of five squads, was Major Viktor Petrovich, seconded from his position as the commanding officer of the marine contingent aboard the TES Farsight. Unlike the others in the diplomatic mission, he had volunteered for groundside duty instead of being poached from other positions in the fleet.

The light in the passenger compartment of the lander flickered from amber to red as the pilot received clearance to launch, and soon after, he executed a textbook combat launch complete with both manual and AI-controlled evasive maneuvers from the moment they left the comparative safety of the TFS Proximas boat bay.