Chapter 218 - COMPROMISE

Negotiations commenced Singapore facility conference room private discrete preventing media coverage planetary broadcast escalating public scrutiny pressuring both sides maintaining positions rigidly uncompromisingly preventing compromise achieving realistically pragmatically necessarily. Timeline 48 representatives—Rama, Sekar, Nakamura—attended coordinating Coalition council members supporting cooperation 58% majority maintaining defending protecting. Volkov faction representatives—Commander Volkov herself plus two senior Champions (graduated 1980s, veterans forty years service both)—attended coordinating opposition 42% substantial minority requiring accommodation preventing Coalition fragmenting catastrophically.