The novel “The Human Division” by John Scalzi was published for the first time in 2013 putting together a number of short stories published previously. It’s part of the “Old Man’s War” series.

The Colonial Union is working hard diplomatically with various alien species to try to build new alliances or at least to make new deals and avoid more wars. The situation is made more complex by the fact that someone seems intent on sabotaging those efforts, for example by destroying the spaceship on which a human ambassador is traveling.

Ambassador Ode Abumwe is forced to meet an alien delegation with very little time to prepare after her colleague who was supposed to lead the diplomatic mission was killed. Harry Wilson is only a lieutenant of the Colonial Defense Forces (CDF) but his intelligence work gives him the authority to assist Abumwe and Captain Sophie Coloma, who is on alert to prevent her spacship from getting destroyed.