Read Online Ambassador 4: Coming Home by Patty Jansen - Free Book Online

ironically not far from where the ship was found.
    Apparently there were people who never left this complex, and whose existence no one knew about.
    Deep inside I sort of knew that I was just making excuses for not having to check out the situation. I mean—how easy would it be just to ask? No, I didn’t want to see him, only to make sure that he was all right.
    Then again, surely Federza had friends who would notify the right people if he had disappeared? Did that require action from me? For crying out loud, I disliked the man and he disliked me. I didn’t, above all, want to give him the impression that I cared what happened to him.
    Overnight, Xinanu’s baby had decided to stay put. She came to breakfast briefly, with red-rimmed, swollen eyes. No matter how many times Thayu said drama queen , to me she did look extremely uncomfortable to me. Her stomach was so ridiculously swollen that she could barely sit, much less walk.
    The assembly would sit tomorrow afternoon. Normally, I would be preparing for the meeting a few days in advance, but I had no idea what to prepare for. I guessed that after the previous debacle, no one had been too keen to invite Captain Luczon again, but the need to develop a unified plan to deal with the ship remained. I had asked for this to be put on the agenda. Didn’t know if it was actually happening. I had a feeling Delegate Namion might leave it off, just to spite me.
    On a personal level, I needed to find something to keep the captain occupied and happy to remain in Barresh. We didn’t want him to return to the ship until we knew the ship’s capabilities. Keeping him here and occupied with something that interested him was the best way of neutralising the ship.
    But no one was giving me any assistance.
    And the captain was downstairs, no doubt just as frustrated with the situation as I was, not understanding it. He had no loyalty to any gamra systems and he would be destructive if he was allowed to get angry, and I just did not know what to do about it.
    I had no messaging account, because I didn’t want to send any sensitive messages either, except to Delegate Namion, asking when control of the account could be returned to me.
    You can use it. It works, was his secretary’s chirpy reply.
    That wasn’t good enough, I told him.
    He replied that he wasn’t sure when they could transfer the account back to me. There appeared to be some sort of error, he said, because so much of that correspondence was coming in should be going to his boss. He needed to investigate.
    Bullshit. Those people were writing to me because they saw me as the person to answer their questions. No matter what position Delegate Namion held, they did not see him as capable of answering their questions.
    I now wished I’d never decided to send him all those messages, but knew that would not have been anywhere near an adequate solution either.
    It was about midmorning when Eirani came to notify me that a visitor had arrived and that he was waiting in the living room.
    My first thought was Federza , because he had the tendency to turn up unannounced, but when I went into the living room, I found, to my surprise, Tayron Kathraczi seated on my couch. He scrambled to his feet when I came in and nodded a greeting. Each time I saw him, I wondered if, when all his fellows on the ship had been woken up, one would be able to see the difference between them and the Barresh Aghyrians. For one, none of the locals had his olive skin, which would have to be pigmented and not tanned, seeing as he spent his life inside a space ship. He wore his dark brown hair—with wavy curls—combed back from his forehead. It wasn’t long enough for a ponytail and barely long enough to go behind his ears. His eyes were so black that you couldn’t see where the irises stopped and the pupils started. Whatever colour they were, Aghyrian eyes were always very intensely hued.
    Without the presence of his captain, he looked less demure, and why oh