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Chapter 24
HAWKE LOOKED AT the document BlackSea had sent through a few minutes ago and tapped Riaz for a consult, since the lieutenant had had multiple face-to-face contacts with members of the unusual “pack” while he’d been in Europe. He caught Riaz on his way down from the higher elevations, had to wait forty-five minutes for him to arrive.
“Had lunch?” he asked when the other man walked into his office. It was half past three, but he hadn’t had a chance to eat.
Riaz sprawled into the chair in front of Hawke’s desk. “No, but I won’t fade away.”
“I might.” Putting through a call to the main kitchen, he asked one of the kids on after-school kitchen duty to bring over two plates. “Pasta okay with you?”
At Riaz’s nod, he added in a request for dessert and grinned at the pert response of the head cook, Aisha, when the juvenile on the phone conveyed the request. Hanging up, he handed Riaz a copy of the BlackSea docs. “What do you think about this?”
Unlike most changeling groups, BlackSea wasn’t composed of one particular species of changeling, but was a conglomerate of all water-based changelings. Several worked on Alaris, the deep-sea station located in the Pacific Ocean, not far from the Mariana Trench, though the station personnel were by no means solely changeling.
A large number of BlackSea’s people had normal occupations—in cities located by the sea or near large bodies of fresh water, depending on their individual species. There weren’t, however, any water-based changelings in the greater Bay Area, or along the California coastline. Given SnowDancer and DarkRiver’s heavy dominance in the region, BlackSea’s people had given it a wide berth, not wanting to inadvertently cause a territorial skirmish.
Now they wanted not only permission to move freely in the waters in and around the territory, as well as leave to work in the region, but also an alliance with SnowDancer. However, their vision of the alliance process was very different from Hawke’s. Hence the consult. “Wait,” he said when Riaz began to speak. “Let me comm Kenji in since he’s the point person with BlackSea.”
Toby knocked on the open door right then, using his foot, his hands occupied by a loaded tray. A tug of pride in his gut at the sight of the boy who was now family, Hawke waved him in. “I hear you volunteered to do extra shifts in the kitchen.” According to Sienna, her baby brother was turning into an excellent cook.
Toby nodded, dark red hair sliding over his forehead as he placed heaping plates of chicken and mushroom fettuccine on Hawke’s desk, followed by a large bowl of salad, big hunks of warm garlic bread, two bottles of water, and two enormous slices of baked cheesecake. Last was the cutlery.
Beaming at having completed the entire operation without spilling anything, Toby leaned the tray carefully against the wall. “Aisha said to call if you need more.”
“Thanks, Toby. Give Aisha a kiss from us.” Hawke winked.
Toby left the office with a grin, closing the door behind himself at Hawke’s nod.
“I think she’s trying to fatten us up.” Riaz groaned as he dug into the fettuccine.
“Sorry, too busy dying of gastronomic bliss to talk.”
There wasn’t even a crumb left when they finished. Deeply satisfied, Hawke brought Kenji into their discussion via the big comm screen on the wall to the right of his desk.
“To what do I owe this honor?” Kenji asked, putting down a half-eaten burger, the mysterious bruise on his cheek from the night of the mating ceremony no longer in evidence, though his hair remained a sleek purple sans the gold stars.
Riaz held up the document in silent explanation.
Kenji grimaced. “Yeah, what’s that about? I didn’t say anything to their negotiator, but it’s not exactly how we do things.”
Face-to-face, changeling-to-changeling, that was how SnowDancer began a relationship that had the potential to turn into an alliance.
“BlackSea isn’t usual in any way, shape, or form,” Riaz said, stretching out his legs in front of him after changing position so he could look directly at the screen. “Because they’re scattered worldwide, they’ve had to develop other ways to connect. It doesn’t help that the majority of their membership is secretive and reticent to the extreme.”
Hawke rubbed his jaw. “Yeah, no one’s ever confirmed if some of the changeling species that are officially part of BlackSea even exist.” Water-based changelings didn’t advertise their species, and many chose to live on the small floating cities in international waters that had been permitted them under the accord signed after the Territorial Wars.
The cities were open to anyone—if you could find transport to the location: BlackSea had uniformly chosen dangerous stretches of water to anchor its cities, waters a fish alone would be able to navigate. And since they made sure there were no appropriate surfaces on which to land flying craft, the only visitors to their cities were invited ones.
Even the Psy left BlackSea alone, most probably because the water changelings did everything they could to stay out of the spotlight. Which brought up another question, but Hawke shelved it for now, because Kenji was speaking.
“So, what,” he said, gulping down his soda, “they function like the Psy?”
“In a sense,” Riaz said, furrows between his eyebrows. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking they’re not ferociously loyal to one another just like in any changeling pack, but everything’s recorded and verified so it can be shared with members across the world.”