Katyusha City, Strana Mechty
Kerensky Worlds Republic
Universe Designate MWB-32
16 March 2165 AST.
43 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
The celebrations had lasted most of the day, not waiting for the formal ceremonies at noon when President Dale led the contingent of representatives from the Alliance, Rasalhague, both halves of the former Federated Commonwealth, and the Capellan Confederation (having formally taken responsibility for the treaties signed by the Saint Ives Compact) in signing the formal document recognizing that the long-term goals of the First Treaty of Katyusha had been fulfilled; this, the Second Treaty of Katyusha, formally recognized the independence of the Kerensky Worlds Republic, which had been created and its government elected in the past year.
Dale had given a speech afterward, mostly a congratulatory one. It had been over eleven years since he had last been on Strana Mechty at this point, and in that time the Multiverse had changed considerably. He ended with a formal handing of power to President Valerie Agrel, a former Merchant Caste leader in the Diamond Sharks who had won the Republic-wide election, who shook his hand and thanked him "for his service"; few had forgotten the role that Dale had played in rebuilding them after the world-shattering destruction of the Clans, and here he enjoyed, in most places, a popularity that far surpassed any he had in the Alliance.
It was that night when he sat down for private talks with Agrel, the dinner coming up where Julia would hopefully be on his arm. Dale was in one chair, Agrel across the table in another, and various papers and digital assitants between them and with their subordinates as finer matters of protocol were hammered out; the re-militarization of the Kerensky Worlds, contracts to defense contractors brokered by the Alliance government, training of KWR personnel by Allance advisors and Alliance lease programs for the new KWR military, and other sundry things. The split of the Alliance and FedCom, and the further division of the FedCom back into the component states, had made the situation a bit more chaotic than it had been planned. There were now issues of interest over the former occupation authorities (including a handful of brazen attempts by FedCom, and then Davion, authorities to splinter their occupation zones from the rest of the KWR, not to mention other quibbling matters) to be handled, and the usual affairs of state.
It was only late in this meeting, with dinner imminent, that Agrel carefully looked up and spoke. "President Dale, I'm afraid a recent matter has come to my attention regarding the former warriors, and I need to know the Alliance's stance on this before I take action."
"Go ahead," Dale asked, wondering what the problem could be.
"In the previous weeks and months, my security people have noticed a pattern of behavior among ex-warrior communities. They receive visitors, usually Talorans, and suddenly their spending habits change. They begin conserving, more than usual. Then last week, two events happened that really piqued our interest."
Agrel handed him a digital assistant. "We noticed that a massive amount of ships and transport space was being registered over the next coming months. Most of the transports, furthermore, were of Taloran origin. To top it off... there was violence last week on Huntress. A local vigilante patrol attacked a warrior house.... and the warriors fought back, far harder than ever before, and using weapons that they've never had access to."
Dale leaned back in his chair, not sure what to make of it. The Taloran Empire had never indicated interest in this region before.... but then again, they were such a loose group that some individual noble of great wealth could be capable. Some...
He had a suspect in mind at that moment: Jhayka itl dhin Intuit. She had the wealth to do it, and Dale kept enough tabs on the former Clans to know she had a scion of their warrior program fight and die in the siege of Kalunda. But he said nothing, deciding to allow Agrel to explain. Instead he just asked, "Is that all?"
"Just today I was told that a preliminary report from troops we sent to Huntress to restore order from the incident indicated that said warriors were planning on leaving, and that the Taloran had come to oversee their departure." Agrel put her hands together on the table. "Given the evidence, it's clear to us that this isn't just a small group leaving. A large number, perhaps a vast majority, of warriors remaining here are planning to depart. And we... don't know what to do about."
Dale silently nodded at that. "What do your advisors think?"
"We're divided. Some say we should let them go, others, well...." Agrel sighed. "President Dale, you must understand, one of our hopes for the Republic was that there would be reconciliation with the warriors. They wouldn't be outcasts anymore, but a part of society, even a respected one. The Kerensky Union Party's platform is about honoring the past and making the Republic so that it combines the best of the two ways of life; the one we had and the one you've encouraged us to follow. If the warriors rebuke us, if they turn their backs and leave... it will do damage to that dream. Our heritage is at stake...."
"I see." Dale brought in a breath. He had also entertained notions - and hopes - of reconciling the warriors to the future, and of making them a part of the new society, not simply deposed eugenic warlords cast aside by the force of democracy and history. "Ultimately, President Agrel, one of the integral precepts of our society, the one you're seeking to emulate, is that those who wish to leave it should be free to do so. All of the freedoms in the world are worthless if one is forced to stay. You can no more forbid the warriors to leave than you could force the old independent communities or the Tanites to join the Republic. It would be just as unethical and immoral, and illegal, an act."
"I would recommend you try to persuade them to stay, with public speeches, with promises perhaps of better protection from radicals like on Huntress, and by re-affirming the constitutional rights of the warriors. I would recommend, for instance, that your party grant a high ranking position to Ulric Kerensky, or to other ex-warriors who are prominent and respected by their kin. Do everything in your legal and moral power to encourage the warriors to remain. But no coercion. If nine out of ten warriors decide to throw their lot in with whatever plan the Talorans here have in mind, you must honor that gracefully."
"Mister President, I understand that, but this could be a.... significant population. For instance, in the past week alone financial withdrawals from banks on York increased eight-fold. Given the ship transit plans filed, the capacity we're looking at.... millions could be going, including most or all of the Blood Spirit Clan."
"That's their choice, President Agrel," Dale replied. "It's their right. You should let them go."
"And the members of the Cabinent and Congress who disagree?"
Dale swallowed; he hated having to do something like this. "Tell them, frankly, that there is Taloran involvement that could be high-ranking, and could even have the blessing of the Taloran government.... and that the Alliance will not support any attempts to block the ships from coming or going or prevent the warriors from boarding them."
Agrel nodded. "I shall do that then?" She peeked at a clock. "Well, President Dale... it appears that dinner time is upon us. I suppose this issues can be finished tomorrow?"
"Of course." Dale stood and followed Agrel to the door, motioning for her to go through. "Please, Madame President, ladies first."
"What Price Peace?" - 55 Days Sequel (TGG)
Moderator: LadyTevar
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
-
The Duchess of Zeon
- Gözde
- Posts: 14566
- Joined: 2002-09-18 01:06am
- Location: Exiled in the Pale of Settlement.
Open Space
45 Light Years from the Alliance Border
Universe Designate CON-5
18 March 2165 AST.
45 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
Abdul returned to his bridge watch in the middle of a slight panic; an electrical fire had consumed vital oxygen reserves in one of the engineering compartments, and his men had only now managed to get it controlled before it could get to their fuel bunkers. Such was the shape of the Haleem bin Khalid, named after Abdul's teacher and friend who had died fighting the Alliance anti-piracy patrols ten years ago.
The vessel was one of the only dedicated warships in their arsenal, a light cruiser-grade vessel from one of the small powers out toward Gilead that had mistakingly tried to escort a merchant convoy and which had been seized and captured by Abdul's crew. The crew of the cruiser itself was long-dead, butchered in a fury by Abdul's men, and her owners no doubt believed she had been lost to a malfunction or outright destroyed by pirate attack. That she had been reclaimed at all was a miracle only attributable to Allah guiding the hands of Abdul's technicians and workers in restoring the ship to partial capacity (though a number of her weapons had to be replaced by jury-rigged devices; surplus Cardassian compressor beams bought off the black market had been jury-rigged to replace the plasma cannons that Abdul had destroyed in taking the vessel).
The young man at their sensor station was looking intently. The entire fleet was on the look out for the Greater Satan's vessel when it emerged from its jump toward Meiersworld. Given the course of the ship, Mahmud's data indicated it would stop here to recharge, and if Allah willed their victory this day he would bring the vessel right down on top of them, unprepared for the onslaught of the opening barrage that Abdul and the ten ships he had left were capable of unleashing. It would even then be a close-run thing..... but this was jihad, and Abdul would have every ship lost to ensure that Priscilla Laurentii was sent to her eternal reward of torment.
His nerves wound up, Abdul traveled to the side of the Haleem's bridge where his young servant waited for him. Twelve year old Numair listened intently at the kind of drink Abdul wanted, and scurried off. The boy was an enjoyable companion, especially for those times when Abdul had been forced by anti-pirate patrols to stay away from home for months on end.
Numair returned with the drink a few minutes later. Abdul smiled warmly at the lad, who was clearly anxious; the buzz throughout the crew was that this was a mission of martyrdom. "Numair, you must smile a bit more. Today we shall strike a blow for the House of Islam against it's many enemies, and perhaps achieve Paradise ourselves. Then you shall be granted a great mansion by Allah as every other man here will receive, and 72 virgins to pleasure yourself with over eternity."
Numair gave a stiff nod. Certainly, the boy would prefer that to his usual companionship; Abdul also remembered the dislike that could come from Numair's position. He gave the boy an encouraging smile, getting one in return....
"They're here!" the young man at the sensor station shouted. His machinery came alive with light. "Energy signature, approximately 100,000 kilometers!"
"God is Great," Abdul said happily; a decent range for their weapons, if a bit far off. "Fire all missiles and begin laser targeting! All ships forward! Victory or Paradise!" As the Haleem's engines fired to full, her long-range weapons lashing out, the crew shouted, "Allahu Ackbah!" with joy.
The ambush of the Slashahkimmar had begun. It was over less than a second later. The moment that the K-F drive field on the Slashahkimmar faded, the gravito-magnetic sustainers for the Heim effect field reasserted themselves and the ship was traveling at the equivalent of Warp 3.5--somewhat more than 53 times the speed of light--straight toward the Muslim force. Here in deep space it should have been safe. As a practical effect, the weapons of the ships tore into the unshielded hull with tremendous effect the moment before the massive magnetic fields sustaining the battlecruiser in FTL travel collided with the hull of the al-Khabur, a large liner converted into an armed merchant cruiser, the ship's magnetized hull plates violently meeting the field and being wrenched to pieces in the violence of an immense kinetic collision.
No physical damage was dealt to the battlecruiser. Instead, its heim field sustainers were filled with the abrupt backfeed of their maximum energy capacity, meeting the energy rushing up the ship's internal superconducting distributing network. The opposing currents met in the relay busbars and the result was an immense electrical discharge which would have killed anyone in the room had it been manned, and completely fried it besides. Since they were in peacetime cruising mode the room was not emptied of atmosphere, and the result was a massive and intense electrical fire hot enough to burn steel engulfing the room in a flash fire which expanded outward rapidly, sucking the atmosphere from the nearby engineering spaces and traveling like a sheer, explosive force, the atmosphere itself briefly burning.
A young girl named Jhavasi who was a newly promoted petty officer--one of the volunteers who had stayed behind with the ship when the crew had been demobed--was thrown into the wall with intense violence by the collision. With the shock resistance of a Taloran female she swung herself back to her feet, consciously away that it had been a massive collision of the scale which, if it had impacted the hull directly rather than the drive fields, would have annihilated the ship. She lunged across the room and yanked down hard on the emergency override for the sector's blast doors, which immediately slammed shut in the space of a tenth of a second: Three crewers trying to escape the affected areas were smashed to a pulp by the doors, and thank Farzbardor for it, too, for Jhavasi was flash-burned alive a split second later, to be found with her carbonized, skeletal fingers still clutching desperately to the control she'd activated which had saved the ship's central power routing systems. The ship had been running in normal cruising mode, and there were no preparations for combat or even a collision alarm to give them a split second to prevent it.
The local operational sector director, engineering Lieutenant Kalamas Orilani, reached the moment he'd yanked himself up from the floor when he was blasted out of his chair by the shock of the collision, ripping out a tuft of hair caught under a uniform boot as he slide back into his control, noticing in distant horror the crazy head angle of the snapped neck of one of the crewers in the section who had been dashed against the wall at just the wrong angle. Even as the flash-fire was still spreading from the engine relay busbars he snapped the whole sector down, heedless of the evacuation of those inside the affected areas and knowing well his disciplined duty, and immediately activated the emergency systems which filled the rooms with rapidly expanding fire-retardant foam which would completely fill the compartments, and suffocate any unfortunate survivors still in them. Then he rang the engineering casualty bell, informing the bridge that a major operational system had been disabled, in case the automatic information systems had been damaged in the impact. He hadn't even noticed the shudders of a few energy weapon hits which struck them enpassant as the pirate ships fired their aft batteries at the already-past Slashahkimmar, missiles coming in hot after them.
And able to catch them, for with the heim field sustainers--the cruising impellers, in Taloran parlance--having lost their primary busbar, they were disabled until the power relays could be shifted to the secondary busbars. That meant that they were running at sublight; around .9995c, but still sublight. Whether or not they'd try to outrun the missiles or not was the decision of someone different, and Lieutenant Orilani, having no real idea of what was happening, still calmly went about his duties, mustering all the damage control personnel he could even as the blue hues of battle lighting shifted on throughout the whole ship.
Lieutenant Commander Rihkani had been the watch officer on the bridge. She still was, though it scarcely felt like it as she pushed herself up from the floor. The holotank displayed the information with the touch of a thought from someone who had stayed seated and drew up what the sensors saw in those split seconds as the hull shuddered with further impacts, doing little damage at least as they blew out the metallic hydrogen ERA tanks that they tore into against the unprepared ship, but doing no actual other damage. Shoving herself back into her chair, the young girl-officer, scarcely aged enough for her new rank, closed her eyes and remembered what they’d taught her at the academy, for this, her first action: Survival first. She didn’t have enough time to jack in so she verbalized the orders: “All power to the shields, all aft, everything!” And then she countermanded herself a second later: “Except for fission reactor one!” At the same time she was fumbling for the jack connection into her neck, and had just slipped it into place as battery powered emergency combat lighting came on and a computer warning voice started announcing that the atmospheric systems were down. But they could no longer feel the shudders in the hull. The immense shield-banks of the Slashahkimmar were only at 90% of their maximum power, but that’s because half of the eight solid-state fusion reactors which provided energy for the ship were available, along with three of the four fission reactors, and of course the officer on the bridge who’d reacted to the order, Ensign Sorklaani, had been sensible enough not to deactivate the sensors.
Rihkani was listening to her reporting, even as she sent her own orders via the neural interface: Hot-start all remaining fusion reactors from the power of fission one. Summon all trained engineering personnel immediately to activate the sustainer.
“Missiles coming in. ETA of twenty minutes, Ma’am. It’s a very large salvo; they must have had pods. Estimate about a thousand coming in of several types, but they’re in a stern chase and some of them are shorter range and already seem to be dropping off.”
And... Activate condition one she added finally, the whooping sirens filling the ship now that they’d secured their survival for the moment. She reached down between her legs and popped open the hatch on the bottom of the acceleration couch in which a vacuum suit was held. As she did she realized she’d wet herself out of sheer terror, and was relieved to actually pull on the suit to hide that, at least, a neat seal forming through interconnectors around the neural interface and the tall, ovoid helmet affixing itself neatly. “Set up a plot to engage the missiles and transfer enough energy to activate it at will, Ensign.”
“Any couse changes, Ma’am?” The petty officer at the helm looked back.
“Negative, Sorkasi. We wait for the Captain on that.” However... Prep all the fighters for a sortie. She commanded to the director of the airgroup, just to be ready should the Captain decide to do that. And what if the Captain was injured... Or killed? Rihkani thought uncertainly. Then I’ll have to fight the ship myself unless someone else can get here in time.
“What are the enemy ships doing? Where are they maneouvring?”
“They’re positioning themselves for a hyper-jump. Locals, it seems, ma’am.”
“They’re going to ambush us again since they think we’re crippled and can’t manoeuvre,” Rihkani remarked to no-one in particular. I did right by not manoeuvring yet. She breathed a bit more easily.
Drishalras had been eating dinner together with Jhayka and Danielle when the impact came. In the booth they were sitting in, none had been hurt. But the sheer speed of it meant that their reaction times were slowed by the stunning immediacy, the unexpected nature of the event, when the drugs in the atmosphere made it impossible to precisely know that they had been finishing a transit. Drishalras pushed herself up first, grabbing Danielle next to her by the shoulder. “Dani! We’ve collided with something. Get Jhayka suited up and then get down to engineering and see if you can help!” She’d shouted, suddenly desperately afraid, herself, that she was away from the bridge at a time like this, and not aware, until through a grim silence they heard the shudders of impacts, that they were under fire. The situation took a redoubled urgency.
“To your post, dearheart,” Jhayka, unruffled, said to Drish, and that was that. Trusting in the rest of her family, she finished putting on the lower parts of her vacuum suit and finished the helmet and the seal-checks while at a dead run toward the nearest lift tube directly to the bridge. Behind them, Jhayka quietly finished suiting up, and then looked, fiercely, and with a wry little smile, to Danielle. “Go to engineering and see if you can help. I’ll be fine.”
The shock of the sudden attack had thrown Fayza out of her bed, where she had been laying down and reading over an English translation of the Taloran manuals for the ship. Years of training snapped into place a moment later, and almost without thinking Fayza went for a vac-suit, hearing further sounds reverberating through the hull as she did. She was putting the helmet on when she emerged into the hallway linking all of the better suites, and she shouted, "Vac suits on now!" to the nearest figure. "Make sure everyone is in one!"
She met Dani mid-way. "What's going on?!" she shouted.
"I don't know, Drish thinks we collided with something, but those extra impacts felt like weapon hits to me! I'm heading down to the engineering to see what I can do!"
"I'll come too!" Fayza and Dani moved along toward the rear of the section and the tubes and walkways that would take them to the engineering control section.
Haleem bin Khalid
"What in Allah's name?" Abdul had muttered upon seeing the sight. The battlecruiser appeared right in front of them.... and then it was gone. More than gone, he could see that one of his ships had been destroyed, brushed aside in the prospect, as if the Taloran ship had rammed them. "What's going on?! Where is that ship?!"
"Reading energy signature behind us, Sir!"
"How did they get past us?!"
"Some... some form of faster-than-light drive, not a jump engine either." The rattled sensor officer fed the new coordinates to the helm. "They are moving at near light speed now. We could make a second ambush if we do a short-term hyper to this location...."
"Do so! All ships are to follow! If necessary, they must follow the crew of the al-Khabur in martyrdom!" Abdul took his seat, still rattled by what had happened, and still certain that Allah still meant for them to win.
Slashahkimmar
Further aft, in the quarters allocated to the small Zohan delegation, all four Zohan were on their feet almost before the vibrations from the first impact had completely cleared. Within moments they were racing out of their quarters, pausing only long enough to slip backpack-style repair kits over their shoulders.
"Ter'ohk, Ah'dal, head to the bridge and offer assistance, All'eri'ah with me" snapped Ada'ren in their native tongue, the group rapidly splitting up as they sprinted towards their destinations. As they ran, Ada'ren trailed one hand lightly on the bulkhead and frowned slightly, the main drives were offline, the telltale vibrations absent. A quick blink, and she frowned more as she ran. Impact wasn't severe enough to damage the drives, must be that One Big Busbar, I told Lieutenant Commander Erisani that that would be a failure point. she thought as she ran, a quick glance at the newly minted Engineering Executive who sprinted along beside her, and the two diminutive Zohan shared a slightly sardonic look.
The two Zohan didn't bother with the lift car, rather going for the emergency accessways and using personal gravbelts to hurtle down them at dizzying speeds. As they went, Ada'ren tapped into Damage-Control Central.
"Senior Drive Engineering Executive Ada'ren here, can I get an update on the situation?" she stated crisply into the standard Taloran issue communicator.
"We have lost the primary busbars, backups are showing as green, no response from personnel in 6 compartments in Main Engineering, indication of a severe flash fire in those compartments" came back a crisp male voice that Ada'ren quickly recognized.
"Thank you, Lieutenant Orota. Engineering Executive All'eri'ah and myself are enroute to main engineering at this time, Senior Executive Ah'dal and Combat Engineer Executive Ter'ohk are heading to the bridge." a brief pause "We shall report to Lieutenant Commander Erisani, correct?"
"That is correct, she is in Main Engineering already" came the response.
Even as they spoke the pair of Zohan reached Engineering and passed inside to the disciplined chaos and bedlam of a serious engineering casualty, a quick glance at the status board confirming the situation.
"Lieutenant Commander Erisani!" Ada'ren called out as she deactivate the contra-grav. "Primary Busbar went out?"
The harried looking Taloran looked up from her console briefly. "Primary is out, switching to secondary, we have missiles crawling up our backside and power distribution problems." came the response as Ada'ren reached her. "Where're Ah'dal and Ter'ohk?" she continued before turning to her board and activating her communicator. "Damage Control 2, start rigging the linkup to the impellers." she turned even as an acknowledgement came over the channel. "Doesn't matter, need the parallel distro set checked out and I'm short people,
"We've brought our toolkits and remotes, Lieutenant Commander Erisani" replied Ada'ren, speaking swiftly in fluent Taloran. "We'd be working with Petty Officer Jhavasi?"
"She hasn't reported in, and was in one of the compartments hit with the initial surge." came the response. "Get with PO Vinahsi and her crew, I sent them that way and they've gotten started, that's the slow part of the process."
"Understood" was the simple response as both Zohan sprinted for the access corridor leading to the distribution rooms. Even as they ran a total of four spherical remotes deployed from their backpacks, linked into the cybernetic control systems of the two Zohan, their contragrav systems propelling them along smoothly as they went about their tasks.
Drishalras of the Coasts had finally reached the bridge, stepping over toward the central acceleration couch where Rihkani was pensively situated, strapped in, issuing orders mentally and verbally alike. “Commander, I’m here as your relief,” she said, the two exchanging places without another word, as Rihkani jacked in on the support chair next to her long enough to exchange information on the basic situation.
“Thank you, Captain,” she added as a relieved expression at the end aloud, her exhaustion at having held command for three and a half of the most intense minutes of her life now showing through.
“You did good, Commander. It’s a first time for both of us,” Drishalras answered, looking at the holoprojector. “Sixteen missiles out for the max rangers. But they’re not really the threat, they’re just flushing us toward it...” She mentally flicked on a connection: “Lieutenant Commander Erisani, how much time until we can re-engage the sustainers?”
“Another eight minutes, Your Highness, we’re still mustering crews.”
“It should already be done!” Outloud: “Signal fighter operations to stand by for magnum deck strike.”
“That’s at condition one! We’re still mustering the crews, and they’re sluggards.”
“Go oversee the shift yourself, then, commander. From the time you arrive, I want it up in four minutes. Is Danielle Verdes there?” Meanwhile, outloud: “Warrant Ulashina, broadcast an all-points FTL distress signal with reporting markups of our attackers!”
“Aye aye, Your Highness!” The Warrant officer answered, while another voice overlaid with her’s: “Prepping for magnum deck strike,” droned that report, as though nothing bad was happening at all in any of the world. “CAG commander reports preparations proceeding normally...”
“Yes, she is, Your Highness.”
“Put her in charge.”
There was a brief pause. "This is Danielle," a voice said.
"Hi Dani. Uhm, I need you to run engineering will Commander Erisani finishes the repairs on the cruising impeller busbars."
“Of course," was Danielle's reply. "Hell of a time to get a promotion to Chief Engineer though," was her second comment, humorously stated. "Let me know what you need and I'll get it for you even if I have to pick up a wrench and work the bolts myself."
"Good. I hope the translators do a good enough job. Uhm, I'm going to need you to send power through the busbars at full strength the moment they're connected. And then stand by on my signal to dump it all back into shielding, with full batteries standing by. Energy flow coordination, nothing else. Erisani will handle all the damage. And I'm going to need this in about four minutes, the moment I get the clear signal from her. They're coming around to ambush us again, Dani, and we need to get the jump on them." Outside on the broader bridge she watched as all systems except for shields, defensive batteries, and sensors remained drearily red, cut off from power, and the countdown rapidly continued as the missiles tried to catch them in an impossibly fast stern chase.
"I've got it handled from this end.," Dani said, trying to sound assuring.
"Then we wait. Stand by for the signal, my korana." She used the family term of endearment for among multiple spouses which had no equivalent in English, a reassuring and loving gesture, and then turned to the other desperate duties of a starship captain in such circumstances. She waited the four Taloran minutes which followed, each one 85% of the length of a human minute, and then flipped open the connection to Lieutenant Commander Erisani: “Do I have my cruising impellers?!” The answer to that was had been in the works until just a moment before...
Down in the impeller rooms two Zohan, twenty Talorans, and one slightly hoarse Lieutenant Commander were laboring like trojans on the busbars. The four remotes, once they had completed the survey, had drastically reduced the time required to bring the backup busbar online. As the countdown to the Captain's deadline came closer, Ada'ren waved the Taloran crewers back "Busbars will be ready for power in 15 seconds, Lieutenant Commander Erisani" she reported, as crisp as ever, her environmental suit soiled from a spilled vial of organic superlubricant. "The remotes can finish it up faster and will allow full power on my mark.... mark"
Seconds later came the call from the bridge.
Yes, Your Highness, cruising impellers are ready now on the backup busbar replied Erisani, Full power is available
As Erisani reported that, the power meters on the remotes soared as energy roared through the new conduits into the impellers, bringing them to full power once more. Moments later, the remotes began tracking back and forth, minutely monitoring the feeds and power levels along the entire distribution chain.
"Lieutenant Commander Erisani, no harmonics detected, energy flow is nominal, no eddying detected at this time. With your permission I would like to leave our remotes active to monitor the flow, we weren't able to verify the diagnostic circuits themselves." Ada'ren reported. "I have Engineering Executive All'eri'ah reprogramming one of them for a full survey of the primary distribution grid.”
"Go ahead with, Senior Engineer Executive," Erisani answered. "But understand that we're going to be in combat in minutes at most, if I have the slightest inkling of what Her Highness intends."
"I agree, Combat Engineer Executive Ter'ohk will be disappointed that we didn't bring along a starfighter for her to pilot, we can leave the grid monitoring to the remotes, that should free up personnel for damage-control purposes elsewhere." Ada'ren replied, as the spherical remotes started flitting about, sensors probing at the distribution grid, watching for trouble. The engineers themselves had activated the connections and the ship surged to the equivalent of Warp 1 without even an order from the bridge.
“Miss Sorkasi, full hyperlight acceleration,” Drishalras shouted at multicoloured array of the Heim field effects burst before them and they were abruptly traveling supralight. She waited five minutes on that course through silence and peace and then gave the next order: “Flank deacceleration.” The ship strained as it deaccelerated at slightly less than 2,500g’s with its fully loaded mass of more than sixty million tonnes, transitioning back to sublight. ”Magnum launch!” The fighter crews had their chance now...
In all one hundred and seventy-six short range space superiourity fighters, long-range interceptors, and fully loaded heavy attack bombers were being rapidly launched from both of the Slashahkimmar’s pods and the ventral bays besides, as well as sixteen massive 3,000-ton J’u’crea type gunboats as well. And behind them, as Drishalras had desperately hoped, the piratical squadron had arrived, one cruiser at the head of a motely collection of modified civilian ships, and deploying to ambush her beautiful battlecruiser--which they thought was still traveling at sublight, and in front of them, not already behind them. They were doomed, now. The fighters were twisting around, coming in the opposite direction, and activating their own Heim field drives which brought them racing in at extremely high velocities right up toward the shocked Hijaz squadron.
“Magnum launch completed, Your Highness.”
“Miss Sorkasi, bring us back up to full hyperlight acceleration,” Drishalras ordered once again, the engines of the ship, designed for sustained extremely high accelerations in chase situations, strained to the red by the need of constantly accelerating and deaccelerating, nonetheless held up perfectly. “Mister Erkash, full port helm, course one-fifty true, as soon as we’ve hit hyperlight.” And through the interlink through neural interfaces to Lieutenant Commander Wilusa, the Central Battery Director’s chief gunnery officer, “Commander: All batteries, action port!”
The Slashahkimmar pivoted on heel as she used the arcane interconnections of higher-level dimensions first, in human history, divined by the German physicist Burkhard Heim, to punch with gravito-magnetic fields into a realm where the speed of light was 53.4 times higher than in normal Einsteinian space. She whipped back toward the piratical formation even as her fighter squadrons were deploying into combat formation. And the moment they did, they were attacking. The interceptors and space supriourity fighters went in first, taking losses as they did but firing all their light missiles to suppress the defences of the enemy squadron while the torpedo bombers lined up and completed their firing solutions, driving in point blank. Several of these massive 250t craft were destroyed, but the rest salvoed torpedoes which accelerated more than 9,000 gravities at point-blank range into their targets. Most of these, weak and unprotected and homing only straight in, were destroyed or missed. They connected with four of their targets, and their 10 GT warheads detonated. In each case the ships were destroyed outright. Small and light civilian craft, a single or in one case two torpedoes were more than sufficient to tear them apart utterly, and burnt plasma churned the stars as the fighters finished tearing through the Mohammedan formation, the Gunboats following them in, their guns savaging at one target as they fired their torpedoes at two more; one of which was blown apart with a terrifyingly casual ease.
The fine J’u’creas didn’t take a loss from the attrited squadron as they also moved beyond to form up with the other fighters and await for further orders, now that their torpedoes had been exhausted. And then the Slashahkimmar deactivated her cruising impellers and, deaccelerating on full military impeller sublight power, screeched into the battle, already at an optimum gun range of five million klicks and getting even closer fast on a diagonal course that would bring them to point-blank with the pirate squadron while never masking a turret. The CBD already had her orders, and LC Wilusa personally activated the synchronized main batteries through her neural interface and fired immediately. Twenty-four massive particle cannon with 100 meter barrels fired simultaneously at the obvious target of the military cruiser in the centre of the shattered piratical formation. Each tightly focused particle beam was accelerated to a speed scarcely below the light barrier and contained 1.5 gigatons of energy, the barrels of the guns recoiling fifty meters back and instantly vapourizing dozens of tonnes of organic supercoolants to dissipate the energy of the barrels firing. Within twelve seconds the coolant would be recharged, and three seconds after that, the capacitors would be fully recharged in a marvel of killing science.
On the Haleem, there was not a single thing that could be done. When the energy burst was apparent they had wasted four seconds calculating its vector, and then the helm was put hard over. The Central Battery Director’s computerized predictors had established a spread which covered the movement, however, and that guaranteed that seven of the powerful bolts converged on the area that the Haleem was evading into. More than ten gigatons of energy collided with the elderly and weak light cruiser’s shields at once. They collapsed instantaneously with enough feedback going into the hull to totally destroy the shield generators, the ship slammed a thousand kilometers off course by the sheer kinetic energy of the hypervelocity particle impacts and the inertial compensators failing in several areas of the hull and pulping the crewers there.
It was hardly over. A moment after the particle cannon had been fired, Wilusa’s assistant, Lieutenant Frekhana, aligned the single-arm long range missile launchers to two successive targets, and fired. Thirty-six missiles, fully shielded and with the greatest possible penaids the Talorans could build, rushed ahead of the Slashahkimmar at 4,000g’s of acceleration, each bearing a warhead as powerful as a quantum torpedo. They homed in on the Haleem and twenty-eight of them plowed through the ship’s weak CIWS to strike her. It was a testament to her original builders that she was not destroyed outright, and someone in engineering managed to SCRAM the main reactors as the power overloads destroyed all her functional systems, and the torn and rent hulk crated in two-dozen places tumbled off, a nearly dead ship. The second salvo, fired by the starboard launchers and delayed by having to swing over the hull before fully accelerating, found their target in a small old smuggling craft and simply vapourized it into a staggered series of fractricidal detonations.
The damaged merchant cruiser worked over by the J’u’creas was the next target of the main battery as the Slashahkimmar tore down to point-blank range, every single shot from the enemy’s weaponry repulsed handily by her shielding, while the AMC’s shielding had been taken out entirely by the fire of the gunboats. The full battery fired at point-blank range as Wilusa saw in her mind through the neural interface a perfect targeting solution for the centrally-directed main batteries, and the intersecting beams touched the AMC before they had even been finished generating. The entire enemy ship light up as brightly as a torch, the entire hull glowing an intense white, and when it faded, there was nothing there except for some tumbling and irradiated microscopic debris. More missiles had already been subsequently fired and these had destroyed two more small craft in the formation. The Slashahkimmar raced rapidly away as her gunnery officers in Central Battery Director assessed the situation for further targets while the main guns recharged, the couple of remaining light gunboats which were desperately bobbing and weaving now smothered by the continued firing of the missile batteries.
Then Wilusa suddenly realized that there weren’t anymore targets. Just the crippled hull of the Haleem drifting in space. She took a heavy breath, slick with sweat in her space-suit, and almost collapsed back into her acceleration couch. To emphasize the new lack of urgency, she sent the message vocally rather than via the neural net: “Your Highness, this is the Central Battery Director. All enemy ships have been crippled or destroyed.”
“Farzbardor be praised, Commander. Secure the batteries,” came Drishalras’ haggard voice back. “And his luck with us to--we weren’t damaged a single additional time.”
“The Lord Justice praised indeed,” Wilusa answered, as the message cut out, Drishalras forced back to her other duties. And then, Wilusa was able to watch through her sensors as a sudden blossom of energy signatures showed the arrival of a patrolling Alliance bomber squadron. A patrolling squadron which arrived straight into the charged capacitors of the crippled Haleem, with no power left, but two turrets still intact and their capacitors at full power. The surviving crews fired; one of the Alliance craft was blasted out of formation and spun wildly off, crippled, to the side. Another elegantly dodged the fire, and then all together the eleven intact craft fired their missiles as one.
The Haleem ceased to exist.
On the bridge, Drishalras watched that last engagement stoically, and then looked over to the communications warrant, CWO Ulashina. “Inform them we’ll be launching recovery craft to aide their crippled bomber--and thank them for a prompt arrival.” In her mind, the orders went out: “Recall all the fighters except those standing guard on escape pods and ejected pilots. Send out recovery craft immediately to all pinpointed locations and the Alliance bomber which was just damaged.” Then the next set: ”Secure from action stations and send all weaponry crews to secondary damage control stations. Review all ship status and assign personnel as necessary to begin cleanup of damaged sectors.” Lastly, and grimly, she reviewed the damage statistics provided by the ship’s interface network: The main cruising impeller busbar room and six nearby compartments destroyed, with thirty-one missing; two space superiourity fighters, two interceptors, and three bombers lost, with only fifteen out of twenty-four possible ejects showing on the rescue transmitter broadcasts, five reported dead in the ship from the initial impact shock, and sixty-eight wounded, none seriously, and... Nothing else. She’s virtually unscathed. Panting in her suit, Drishalras settled back, and responded to the next urgent message coming through, a live broadcast from an Alliance battlecruiser rushing at full warp toward their position. The battle was over; the repercussions were just beginning from it, but those, mercifully, were not her’s to deal with, but her wife’s.
45 Light Years from the Alliance Border
Universe Designate CON-5
18 March 2165 AST.
45 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
Abdul returned to his bridge watch in the middle of a slight panic; an electrical fire had consumed vital oxygen reserves in one of the engineering compartments, and his men had only now managed to get it controlled before it could get to their fuel bunkers. Such was the shape of the Haleem bin Khalid, named after Abdul's teacher and friend who had died fighting the Alliance anti-piracy patrols ten years ago.
The vessel was one of the only dedicated warships in their arsenal, a light cruiser-grade vessel from one of the small powers out toward Gilead that had mistakingly tried to escort a merchant convoy and which had been seized and captured by Abdul's crew. The crew of the cruiser itself was long-dead, butchered in a fury by Abdul's men, and her owners no doubt believed she had been lost to a malfunction or outright destroyed by pirate attack. That she had been reclaimed at all was a miracle only attributable to Allah guiding the hands of Abdul's technicians and workers in restoring the ship to partial capacity (though a number of her weapons had to be replaced by jury-rigged devices; surplus Cardassian compressor beams bought off the black market had been jury-rigged to replace the plasma cannons that Abdul had destroyed in taking the vessel).
The young man at their sensor station was looking intently. The entire fleet was on the look out for the Greater Satan's vessel when it emerged from its jump toward Meiersworld. Given the course of the ship, Mahmud's data indicated it would stop here to recharge, and if Allah willed their victory this day he would bring the vessel right down on top of them, unprepared for the onslaught of the opening barrage that Abdul and the ten ships he had left were capable of unleashing. It would even then be a close-run thing..... but this was jihad, and Abdul would have every ship lost to ensure that Priscilla Laurentii was sent to her eternal reward of torment.
His nerves wound up, Abdul traveled to the side of the Haleem's bridge where his young servant waited for him. Twelve year old Numair listened intently at the kind of drink Abdul wanted, and scurried off. The boy was an enjoyable companion, especially for those times when Abdul had been forced by anti-pirate patrols to stay away from home for months on end.
Numair returned with the drink a few minutes later. Abdul smiled warmly at the lad, who was clearly anxious; the buzz throughout the crew was that this was a mission of martyrdom. "Numair, you must smile a bit more. Today we shall strike a blow for the House of Islam against it's many enemies, and perhaps achieve Paradise ourselves. Then you shall be granted a great mansion by Allah as every other man here will receive, and 72 virgins to pleasure yourself with over eternity."
Numair gave a stiff nod. Certainly, the boy would prefer that to his usual companionship; Abdul also remembered the dislike that could come from Numair's position. He gave the boy an encouraging smile, getting one in return....
"They're here!" the young man at the sensor station shouted. His machinery came alive with light. "Energy signature, approximately 100,000 kilometers!"
"God is Great," Abdul said happily; a decent range for their weapons, if a bit far off. "Fire all missiles and begin laser targeting! All ships forward! Victory or Paradise!" As the Haleem's engines fired to full, her long-range weapons lashing out, the crew shouted, "Allahu Ackbah!" with joy.
The ambush of the Slashahkimmar had begun. It was over less than a second later. The moment that the K-F drive field on the Slashahkimmar faded, the gravito-magnetic sustainers for the Heim effect field reasserted themselves and the ship was traveling at the equivalent of Warp 3.5--somewhat more than 53 times the speed of light--straight toward the Muslim force. Here in deep space it should have been safe. As a practical effect, the weapons of the ships tore into the unshielded hull with tremendous effect the moment before the massive magnetic fields sustaining the battlecruiser in FTL travel collided with the hull of the al-Khabur, a large liner converted into an armed merchant cruiser, the ship's magnetized hull plates violently meeting the field and being wrenched to pieces in the violence of an immense kinetic collision.
No physical damage was dealt to the battlecruiser. Instead, its heim field sustainers were filled with the abrupt backfeed of their maximum energy capacity, meeting the energy rushing up the ship's internal superconducting distributing network. The opposing currents met in the relay busbars and the result was an immense electrical discharge which would have killed anyone in the room had it been manned, and completely fried it besides. Since they were in peacetime cruising mode the room was not emptied of atmosphere, and the result was a massive and intense electrical fire hot enough to burn steel engulfing the room in a flash fire which expanded outward rapidly, sucking the atmosphere from the nearby engineering spaces and traveling like a sheer, explosive force, the atmosphere itself briefly burning.
A young girl named Jhavasi who was a newly promoted petty officer--one of the volunteers who had stayed behind with the ship when the crew had been demobed--was thrown into the wall with intense violence by the collision. With the shock resistance of a Taloran female she swung herself back to her feet, consciously away that it had been a massive collision of the scale which, if it had impacted the hull directly rather than the drive fields, would have annihilated the ship. She lunged across the room and yanked down hard on the emergency override for the sector's blast doors, which immediately slammed shut in the space of a tenth of a second: Three crewers trying to escape the affected areas were smashed to a pulp by the doors, and thank Farzbardor for it, too, for Jhavasi was flash-burned alive a split second later, to be found with her carbonized, skeletal fingers still clutching desperately to the control she'd activated which had saved the ship's central power routing systems. The ship had been running in normal cruising mode, and there were no preparations for combat or even a collision alarm to give them a split second to prevent it.
The local operational sector director, engineering Lieutenant Kalamas Orilani, reached the moment he'd yanked himself up from the floor when he was blasted out of his chair by the shock of the collision, ripping out a tuft of hair caught under a uniform boot as he slide back into his control, noticing in distant horror the crazy head angle of the snapped neck of one of the crewers in the section who had been dashed against the wall at just the wrong angle. Even as the flash-fire was still spreading from the engine relay busbars he snapped the whole sector down, heedless of the evacuation of those inside the affected areas and knowing well his disciplined duty, and immediately activated the emergency systems which filled the rooms with rapidly expanding fire-retardant foam which would completely fill the compartments, and suffocate any unfortunate survivors still in them. Then he rang the engineering casualty bell, informing the bridge that a major operational system had been disabled, in case the automatic information systems had been damaged in the impact. He hadn't even noticed the shudders of a few energy weapon hits which struck them enpassant as the pirate ships fired their aft batteries at the already-past Slashahkimmar, missiles coming in hot after them.
And able to catch them, for with the heim field sustainers--the cruising impellers, in Taloran parlance--having lost their primary busbar, they were disabled until the power relays could be shifted to the secondary busbars. That meant that they were running at sublight; around .9995c, but still sublight. Whether or not they'd try to outrun the missiles or not was the decision of someone different, and Lieutenant Orilani, having no real idea of what was happening, still calmly went about his duties, mustering all the damage control personnel he could even as the blue hues of battle lighting shifted on throughout the whole ship.
Lieutenant Commander Rihkani had been the watch officer on the bridge. She still was, though it scarcely felt like it as she pushed herself up from the floor. The holotank displayed the information with the touch of a thought from someone who had stayed seated and drew up what the sensors saw in those split seconds as the hull shuddered with further impacts, doing little damage at least as they blew out the metallic hydrogen ERA tanks that they tore into against the unprepared ship, but doing no actual other damage. Shoving herself back into her chair, the young girl-officer, scarcely aged enough for her new rank, closed her eyes and remembered what they’d taught her at the academy, for this, her first action: Survival first. She didn’t have enough time to jack in so she verbalized the orders: “All power to the shields, all aft, everything!” And then she countermanded herself a second later: “Except for fission reactor one!” At the same time she was fumbling for the jack connection into her neck, and had just slipped it into place as battery powered emergency combat lighting came on and a computer warning voice started announcing that the atmospheric systems were down. But they could no longer feel the shudders in the hull. The immense shield-banks of the Slashahkimmar were only at 90% of their maximum power, but that’s because half of the eight solid-state fusion reactors which provided energy for the ship were available, along with three of the four fission reactors, and of course the officer on the bridge who’d reacted to the order, Ensign Sorklaani, had been sensible enough not to deactivate the sensors.
Rihkani was listening to her reporting, even as she sent her own orders via the neural interface: Hot-start all remaining fusion reactors from the power of fission one. Summon all trained engineering personnel immediately to activate the sustainer.
“Missiles coming in. ETA of twenty minutes, Ma’am. It’s a very large salvo; they must have had pods. Estimate about a thousand coming in of several types, but they’re in a stern chase and some of them are shorter range and already seem to be dropping off.”
And... Activate condition one she added finally, the whooping sirens filling the ship now that they’d secured their survival for the moment. She reached down between her legs and popped open the hatch on the bottom of the acceleration couch in which a vacuum suit was held. As she did she realized she’d wet herself out of sheer terror, and was relieved to actually pull on the suit to hide that, at least, a neat seal forming through interconnectors around the neural interface and the tall, ovoid helmet affixing itself neatly. “Set up a plot to engage the missiles and transfer enough energy to activate it at will, Ensign.”
“Any couse changes, Ma’am?” The petty officer at the helm looked back.
“Negative, Sorkasi. We wait for the Captain on that.” However... Prep all the fighters for a sortie. She commanded to the director of the airgroup, just to be ready should the Captain decide to do that. And what if the Captain was injured... Or killed? Rihkani thought uncertainly. Then I’ll have to fight the ship myself unless someone else can get here in time.
“What are the enemy ships doing? Where are they maneouvring?”
“They’re positioning themselves for a hyper-jump. Locals, it seems, ma’am.”
“They’re going to ambush us again since they think we’re crippled and can’t manoeuvre,” Rihkani remarked to no-one in particular. I did right by not manoeuvring yet. She breathed a bit more easily.
Drishalras had been eating dinner together with Jhayka and Danielle when the impact came. In the booth they were sitting in, none had been hurt. But the sheer speed of it meant that their reaction times were slowed by the stunning immediacy, the unexpected nature of the event, when the drugs in the atmosphere made it impossible to precisely know that they had been finishing a transit. Drishalras pushed herself up first, grabbing Danielle next to her by the shoulder. “Dani! We’ve collided with something. Get Jhayka suited up and then get down to engineering and see if you can help!” She’d shouted, suddenly desperately afraid, herself, that she was away from the bridge at a time like this, and not aware, until through a grim silence they heard the shudders of impacts, that they were under fire. The situation took a redoubled urgency.
“To your post, dearheart,” Jhayka, unruffled, said to Drish, and that was that. Trusting in the rest of her family, she finished putting on the lower parts of her vacuum suit and finished the helmet and the seal-checks while at a dead run toward the nearest lift tube directly to the bridge. Behind them, Jhayka quietly finished suiting up, and then looked, fiercely, and with a wry little smile, to Danielle. “Go to engineering and see if you can help. I’ll be fine.”
The shock of the sudden attack had thrown Fayza out of her bed, where she had been laying down and reading over an English translation of the Taloran manuals for the ship. Years of training snapped into place a moment later, and almost without thinking Fayza went for a vac-suit, hearing further sounds reverberating through the hull as she did. She was putting the helmet on when she emerged into the hallway linking all of the better suites, and she shouted, "Vac suits on now!" to the nearest figure. "Make sure everyone is in one!"
She met Dani mid-way. "What's going on?!" she shouted.
"I don't know, Drish thinks we collided with something, but those extra impacts felt like weapon hits to me! I'm heading down to the engineering to see what I can do!"
"I'll come too!" Fayza and Dani moved along toward the rear of the section and the tubes and walkways that would take them to the engineering control section.
Haleem bin Khalid
"What in Allah's name?" Abdul had muttered upon seeing the sight. The battlecruiser appeared right in front of them.... and then it was gone. More than gone, he could see that one of his ships had been destroyed, brushed aside in the prospect, as if the Taloran ship had rammed them. "What's going on?! Where is that ship?!"
"Reading energy signature behind us, Sir!"
"How did they get past us?!"
"Some... some form of faster-than-light drive, not a jump engine either." The rattled sensor officer fed the new coordinates to the helm. "They are moving at near light speed now. We could make a second ambush if we do a short-term hyper to this location...."
"Do so! All ships are to follow! If necessary, they must follow the crew of the al-Khabur in martyrdom!" Abdul took his seat, still rattled by what had happened, and still certain that Allah still meant for them to win.
Slashahkimmar
Further aft, in the quarters allocated to the small Zohan delegation, all four Zohan were on their feet almost before the vibrations from the first impact had completely cleared. Within moments they were racing out of their quarters, pausing only long enough to slip backpack-style repair kits over their shoulders.
"Ter'ohk, Ah'dal, head to the bridge and offer assistance, All'eri'ah with me" snapped Ada'ren in their native tongue, the group rapidly splitting up as they sprinted towards their destinations. As they ran, Ada'ren trailed one hand lightly on the bulkhead and frowned slightly, the main drives were offline, the telltale vibrations absent. A quick blink, and she frowned more as she ran. Impact wasn't severe enough to damage the drives, must be that One Big Busbar, I told Lieutenant Commander Erisani that that would be a failure point. she thought as she ran, a quick glance at the newly minted Engineering Executive who sprinted along beside her, and the two diminutive Zohan shared a slightly sardonic look.
The two Zohan didn't bother with the lift car, rather going for the emergency accessways and using personal gravbelts to hurtle down them at dizzying speeds. As they went, Ada'ren tapped into Damage-Control Central.
"Senior Drive Engineering Executive Ada'ren here, can I get an update on the situation?" she stated crisply into the standard Taloran issue communicator.
"We have lost the primary busbars, backups are showing as green, no response from personnel in 6 compartments in Main Engineering, indication of a severe flash fire in those compartments" came back a crisp male voice that Ada'ren quickly recognized.
"Thank you, Lieutenant Orota. Engineering Executive All'eri'ah and myself are enroute to main engineering at this time, Senior Executive Ah'dal and Combat Engineer Executive Ter'ohk are heading to the bridge." a brief pause "We shall report to Lieutenant Commander Erisani, correct?"
"That is correct, she is in Main Engineering already" came the response.
Even as they spoke the pair of Zohan reached Engineering and passed inside to the disciplined chaos and bedlam of a serious engineering casualty, a quick glance at the status board confirming the situation.
"Lieutenant Commander Erisani!" Ada'ren called out as she deactivate the contra-grav. "Primary Busbar went out?"
The harried looking Taloran looked up from her console briefly. "Primary is out, switching to secondary, we have missiles crawling up our backside and power distribution problems." came the response as Ada'ren reached her. "Where're Ah'dal and Ter'ohk?" she continued before turning to her board and activating her communicator. "Damage Control 2, start rigging the linkup to the impellers." she turned even as an acknowledgement came over the channel. "Doesn't matter, need the parallel distro set checked out and I'm short people,
"We've brought our toolkits and remotes, Lieutenant Commander Erisani" replied Ada'ren, speaking swiftly in fluent Taloran. "We'd be working with Petty Officer Jhavasi?"
"She hasn't reported in, and was in one of the compartments hit with the initial surge." came the response. "Get with PO Vinahsi and her crew, I sent them that way and they've gotten started, that's the slow part of the process."
"Understood" was the simple response as both Zohan sprinted for the access corridor leading to the distribution rooms. Even as they ran a total of four spherical remotes deployed from their backpacks, linked into the cybernetic control systems of the two Zohan, their contragrav systems propelling them along smoothly as they went about their tasks.
Drishalras of the Coasts had finally reached the bridge, stepping over toward the central acceleration couch where Rihkani was pensively situated, strapped in, issuing orders mentally and verbally alike. “Commander, I’m here as your relief,” she said, the two exchanging places without another word, as Rihkani jacked in on the support chair next to her long enough to exchange information on the basic situation.
“Thank you, Captain,” she added as a relieved expression at the end aloud, her exhaustion at having held command for three and a half of the most intense minutes of her life now showing through.
“You did good, Commander. It’s a first time for both of us,” Drishalras answered, looking at the holoprojector. “Sixteen missiles out for the max rangers. But they’re not really the threat, they’re just flushing us toward it...” She mentally flicked on a connection: “Lieutenant Commander Erisani, how much time until we can re-engage the sustainers?”
“Another eight minutes, Your Highness, we’re still mustering crews.”
“It should already be done!” Outloud: “Signal fighter operations to stand by for magnum deck strike.”
“That’s at condition one! We’re still mustering the crews, and they’re sluggards.”
“Go oversee the shift yourself, then, commander. From the time you arrive, I want it up in four minutes. Is Danielle Verdes there?” Meanwhile, outloud: “Warrant Ulashina, broadcast an all-points FTL distress signal with reporting markups of our attackers!”
“Aye aye, Your Highness!” The Warrant officer answered, while another voice overlaid with her’s: “Prepping for magnum deck strike,” droned that report, as though nothing bad was happening at all in any of the world. “CAG commander reports preparations proceeding normally...”
“Yes, she is, Your Highness.”
“Put her in charge.”
There was a brief pause. "This is Danielle," a voice said.
"Hi Dani. Uhm, I need you to run engineering will Commander Erisani finishes the repairs on the cruising impeller busbars."
“Of course," was Danielle's reply. "Hell of a time to get a promotion to Chief Engineer though," was her second comment, humorously stated. "Let me know what you need and I'll get it for you even if I have to pick up a wrench and work the bolts myself."
"Good. I hope the translators do a good enough job. Uhm, I'm going to need you to send power through the busbars at full strength the moment they're connected. And then stand by on my signal to dump it all back into shielding, with full batteries standing by. Energy flow coordination, nothing else. Erisani will handle all the damage. And I'm going to need this in about four minutes, the moment I get the clear signal from her. They're coming around to ambush us again, Dani, and we need to get the jump on them." Outside on the broader bridge she watched as all systems except for shields, defensive batteries, and sensors remained drearily red, cut off from power, and the countdown rapidly continued as the missiles tried to catch them in an impossibly fast stern chase.
"I've got it handled from this end.," Dani said, trying to sound assuring.
"Then we wait. Stand by for the signal, my korana." She used the family term of endearment for among multiple spouses which had no equivalent in English, a reassuring and loving gesture, and then turned to the other desperate duties of a starship captain in such circumstances. She waited the four Taloran minutes which followed, each one 85% of the length of a human minute, and then flipped open the connection to Lieutenant Commander Erisani: “Do I have my cruising impellers?!” The answer to that was had been in the works until just a moment before...
Down in the impeller rooms two Zohan, twenty Talorans, and one slightly hoarse Lieutenant Commander were laboring like trojans on the busbars. The four remotes, once they had completed the survey, had drastically reduced the time required to bring the backup busbar online. As the countdown to the Captain's deadline came closer, Ada'ren waved the Taloran crewers back "Busbars will be ready for power in 15 seconds, Lieutenant Commander Erisani" she reported, as crisp as ever, her environmental suit soiled from a spilled vial of organic superlubricant. "The remotes can finish it up faster and will allow full power on my mark.... mark"
Seconds later came the call from the bridge.
Yes, Your Highness, cruising impellers are ready now on the backup busbar replied Erisani, Full power is available
As Erisani reported that, the power meters on the remotes soared as energy roared through the new conduits into the impellers, bringing them to full power once more. Moments later, the remotes began tracking back and forth, minutely monitoring the feeds and power levels along the entire distribution chain.
"Lieutenant Commander Erisani, no harmonics detected, energy flow is nominal, no eddying detected at this time. With your permission I would like to leave our remotes active to monitor the flow, we weren't able to verify the diagnostic circuits themselves." Ada'ren reported. "I have Engineering Executive All'eri'ah reprogramming one of them for a full survey of the primary distribution grid.”
"Go ahead with, Senior Engineer Executive," Erisani answered. "But understand that we're going to be in combat in minutes at most, if I have the slightest inkling of what Her Highness intends."
"I agree, Combat Engineer Executive Ter'ohk will be disappointed that we didn't bring along a starfighter for her to pilot, we can leave the grid monitoring to the remotes, that should free up personnel for damage-control purposes elsewhere." Ada'ren replied, as the spherical remotes started flitting about, sensors probing at the distribution grid, watching for trouble. The engineers themselves had activated the connections and the ship surged to the equivalent of Warp 1 without even an order from the bridge.
“Miss Sorkasi, full hyperlight acceleration,” Drishalras shouted at multicoloured array of the Heim field effects burst before them and they were abruptly traveling supralight. She waited five minutes on that course through silence and peace and then gave the next order: “Flank deacceleration.” The ship strained as it deaccelerated at slightly less than 2,500g’s with its fully loaded mass of more than sixty million tonnes, transitioning back to sublight. ”Magnum launch!” The fighter crews had their chance now...
In all one hundred and seventy-six short range space superiourity fighters, long-range interceptors, and fully loaded heavy attack bombers were being rapidly launched from both of the Slashahkimmar’s pods and the ventral bays besides, as well as sixteen massive 3,000-ton J’u’crea type gunboats as well. And behind them, as Drishalras had desperately hoped, the piratical squadron had arrived, one cruiser at the head of a motely collection of modified civilian ships, and deploying to ambush her beautiful battlecruiser--which they thought was still traveling at sublight, and in front of them, not already behind them. They were doomed, now. The fighters were twisting around, coming in the opposite direction, and activating their own Heim field drives which brought them racing in at extremely high velocities right up toward the shocked Hijaz squadron.
“Magnum launch completed, Your Highness.”
“Miss Sorkasi, bring us back up to full hyperlight acceleration,” Drishalras ordered once again, the engines of the ship, designed for sustained extremely high accelerations in chase situations, strained to the red by the need of constantly accelerating and deaccelerating, nonetheless held up perfectly. “Mister Erkash, full port helm, course one-fifty true, as soon as we’ve hit hyperlight.” And through the interlink through neural interfaces to Lieutenant Commander Wilusa, the Central Battery Director’s chief gunnery officer, “Commander: All batteries, action port!”
The Slashahkimmar pivoted on heel as she used the arcane interconnections of higher-level dimensions first, in human history, divined by the German physicist Burkhard Heim, to punch with gravito-magnetic fields into a realm where the speed of light was 53.4 times higher than in normal Einsteinian space. She whipped back toward the piratical formation even as her fighter squadrons were deploying into combat formation. And the moment they did, they were attacking. The interceptors and space supriourity fighters went in first, taking losses as they did but firing all their light missiles to suppress the defences of the enemy squadron while the torpedo bombers lined up and completed their firing solutions, driving in point blank. Several of these massive 250t craft were destroyed, but the rest salvoed torpedoes which accelerated more than 9,000 gravities at point-blank range into their targets. Most of these, weak and unprotected and homing only straight in, were destroyed or missed. They connected with four of their targets, and their 10 GT warheads detonated. In each case the ships were destroyed outright. Small and light civilian craft, a single or in one case two torpedoes were more than sufficient to tear them apart utterly, and burnt plasma churned the stars as the fighters finished tearing through the Mohammedan formation, the Gunboats following them in, their guns savaging at one target as they fired their torpedoes at two more; one of which was blown apart with a terrifyingly casual ease.
The fine J’u’creas didn’t take a loss from the attrited squadron as they also moved beyond to form up with the other fighters and await for further orders, now that their torpedoes had been exhausted. And then the Slashahkimmar deactivated her cruising impellers and, deaccelerating on full military impeller sublight power, screeched into the battle, already at an optimum gun range of five million klicks and getting even closer fast on a diagonal course that would bring them to point-blank with the pirate squadron while never masking a turret. The CBD already had her orders, and LC Wilusa personally activated the synchronized main batteries through her neural interface and fired immediately. Twenty-four massive particle cannon with 100 meter barrels fired simultaneously at the obvious target of the military cruiser in the centre of the shattered piratical formation. Each tightly focused particle beam was accelerated to a speed scarcely below the light barrier and contained 1.5 gigatons of energy, the barrels of the guns recoiling fifty meters back and instantly vapourizing dozens of tonnes of organic supercoolants to dissipate the energy of the barrels firing. Within twelve seconds the coolant would be recharged, and three seconds after that, the capacitors would be fully recharged in a marvel of killing science.
On the Haleem, there was not a single thing that could be done. When the energy burst was apparent they had wasted four seconds calculating its vector, and then the helm was put hard over. The Central Battery Director’s computerized predictors had established a spread which covered the movement, however, and that guaranteed that seven of the powerful bolts converged on the area that the Haleem was evading into. More than ten gigatons of energy collided with the elderly and weak light cruiser’s shields at once. They collapsed instantaneously with enough feedback going into the hull to totally destroy the shield generators, the ship slammed a thousand kilometers off course by the sheer kinetic energy of the hypervelocity particle impacts and the inertial compensators failing in several areas of the hull and pulping the crewers there.
It was hardly over. A moment after the particle cannon had been fired, Wilusa’s assistant, Lieutenant Frekhana, aligned the single-arm long range missile launchers to two successive targets, and fired. Thirty-six missiles, fully shielded and with the greatest possible penaids the Talorans could build, rushed ahead of the Slashahkimmar at 4,000g’s of acceleration, each bearing a warhead as powerful as a quantum torpedo. They homed in on the Haleem and twenty-eight of them plowed through the ship’s weak CIWS to strike her. It was a testament to her original builders that she was not destroyed outright, and someone in engineering managed to SCRAM the main reactors as the power overloads destroyed all her functional systems, and the torn and rent hulk crated in two-dozen places tumbled off, a nearly dead ship. The second salvo, fired by the starboard launchers and delayed by having to swing over the hull before fully accelerating, found their target in a small old smuggling craft and simply vapourized it into a staggered series of fractricidal detonations.
The damaged merchant cruiser worked over by the J’u’creas was the next target of the main battery as the Slashahkimmar tore down to point-blank range, every single shot from the enemy’s weaponry repulsed handily by her shielding, while the AMC’s shielding had been taken out entirely by the fire of the gunboats. The full battery fired at point-blank range as Wilusa saw in her mind through the neural interface a perfect targeting solution for the centrally-directed main batteries, and the intersecting beams touched the AMC before they had even been finished generating. The entire enemy ship light up as brightly as a torch, the entire hull glowing an intense white, and when it faded, there was nothing there except for some tumbling and irradiated microscopic debris. More missiles had already been subsequently fired and these had destroyed two more small craft in the formation. The Slashahkimmar raced rapidly away as her gunnery officers in Central Battery Director assessed the situation for further targets while the main guns recharged, the couple of remaining light gunboats which were desperately bobbing and weaving now smothered by the continued firing of the missile batteries.
Then Wilusa suddenly realized that there weren’t anymore targets. Just the crippled hull of the Haleem drifting in space. She took a heavy breath, slick with sweat in her space-suit, and almost collapsed back into her acceleration couch. To emphasize the new lack of urgency, she sent the message vocally rather than via the neural net: “Your Highness, this is the Central Battery Director. All enemy ships have been crippled or destroyed.”
“Farzbardor be praised, Commander. Secure the batteries,” came Drishalras’ haggard voice back. “And his luck with us to--we weren’t damaged a single additional time.”
“The Lord Justice praised indeed,” Wilusa answered, as the message cut out, Drishalras forced back to her other duties. And then, Wilusa was able to watch through her sensors as a sudden blossom of energy signatures showed the arrival of a patrolling Alliance bomber squadron. A patrolling squadron which arrived straight into the charged capacitors of the crippled Haleem, with no power left, but two turrets still intact and their capacitors at full power. The surviving crews fired; one of the Alliance craft was blasted out of formation and spun wildly off, crippled, to the side. Another elegantly dodged the fire, and then all together the eleven intact craft fired their missiles as one.
The Haleem ceased to exist.
On the bridge, Drishalras watched that last engagement stoically, and then looked over to the communications warrant, CWO Ulashina. “Inform them we’ll be launching recovery craft to aide their crippled bomber--and thank them for a prompt arrival.” In her mind, the orders went out: “Recall all the fighters except those standing guard on escape pods and ejected pilots. Send out recovery craft immediately to all pinpointed locations and the Alliance bomber which was just damaged.” Then the next set: ”Secure from action stations and send all weaponry crews to secondary damage control stations. Review all ship status and assign personnel as necessary to begin cleanup of damaged sectors.” Lastly, and grimly, she reviewed the damage statistics provided by the ship’s interface network: The main cruising impeller busbar room and six nearby compartments destroyed, with thirty-one missing; two space superiourity fighters, two interceptors, and three bombers lost, with only fifteen out of twenty-four possible ejects showing on the rescue transmitter broadcasts, five reported dead in the ship from the initial impact shock, and sixty-eight wounded, none seriously, and... Nothing else. She’s virtually unscathed. Panting in her suit, Drishalras settled back, and responded to the next urgent message coming through, a live broadcast from an Alliance battlecruiser rushing at full warp toward their position. The battle was over; the repercussions were just beginning from it, but those, mercifully, were not her’s to deal with, but her wife’s.
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
Meiersworld Fleet Station, In Lunar Orbit
Meiersworld System, Alliance Colonial Zone
Universe Designate CON-5
19 March 2165 AST.
46 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
The instant that the patrolling cruisers had detected the distant drive flashes, energy spikes, and the signal from the Slashahkimmar, the entire Alliance 8th Fleet had gone on alert. The lighter task force tasked with frontier control dispatched destroyer squadrons to the embattled battlecruiser's position. The first craft on the scene were there from the initiative of an Alliance escort carrier commander, Cmdr. Anahita Razmara of the Sarah MacKenzie, who took the risk and launched over half of her small carrier's fighter contingent to go to the aid of the Slashahkimmar.
The first ship to respond was, like the Slashahkimmar, a new vessel: D.N.S. Scharnhorst, a Kirishima-class battlecruiser still on her shakedown run. One of her older sisters, the John Fisher, arrived on the scene next, and within ten minutes of the attack finishing an entire squadron of destroyers had come on the scene.
The event had made necessary the current meeting in the main war room of the Fleet Station: At it's head was Fleet Admiral Mikhail Gordenny, Naval Forces Commander of CON-5, with his chief of staff Admiral Peter Lewis present, as were the commander and Chief of Staff for the 8th Fleet, Admiral Danielle Thompson and Vice Admiral Roger Mack. The head of Naval Intelligence's CON-5 section, Vice Admiral Alex Towers, was present with Rear Admiral Lucienne du Bois, the head of his anti-piracy intelligence division.
Gordenny began the meeting with an accent that, surprisingly, lacked gruffness. "Our report from the escort carrier on the scene confirms that the attackers were pirates of Caliphal State origin," he commented. "This is a serious development given our assurances as to the near eradication of the Caliphal States' pirate bands. I am asking you now, Admiral Towers, just how a large pirate operation was able to be commenced in our own backyard without your office knowing about it?"
"Well, Admiral, Intelligence is not a certain thing," Towers replied, clearly irritated. Played wrongly, this would be a major blow to his career, an embarrassment that would cost him years of careful influence gathering and rank-climbing. "Our infiltration of the pirate gangs has, I'll reminded you, rendered most of then inoperable. The worst were taken down years ago. What is left are arguably the most paranoid and cautious of the bands. Mostly inactive, far from the old days where they would be in space for months using forward stations to gather prisoners and loot, now only striking out once every several months at high-value targets. I believe that we have already long recommended to your various commands that patrols be varied and less predictable, but I'm afraid that this has not been done sufficiently."
Towers looked directly at Thompson, and the fair-skinned Englishwoman bristled at the jibe. "Trying to blame the 8th Fleet, and Admiral Marshall, for your failures will not sit with me, Admiral Towers," Thompson replied icily, her accent refined and decidedly vicious in tone as she defended herself and the commander of the special anti-piracy task force operating beyond the Alliance frontier in the vicinity of the Caliphal States. "This is not the first time we have been forced to deal with sudden pirate actions with no warning at all from your office."
"Admirals," Gordenny grumbled, getting their attention. "Admiral du Bois, your office is directly responsible for monitoring the movement of the pirate bands. What do you have to say on this?"
The light-haired Frenchwoman had been mostly quiet, letting her superior do the fighting, but now that she had been spoken to she responded directly. "Admiral Gordenny, it is my estimation that the attitude of all forces concerned with anti-piracy are to blame. Since we have driven most of the pirates out, killing and capturing almost all of their top corsairs and leaders in the past ten years, we have allowed complacency to set in. Admiral Marshall is required to engage in anti-pirate patrols with a mere squadron of destroyers and one electronic warfare cruiser where, ten years ago, we had four squadrons under special flag, led by a battle carrier division. My office's budget has become so meager in the last six years, even after the war, that my people can scarcely afford to bribe a spaceyard worker, let alone operate and maintain the monitoring stations necessary to track suspicious traffic in the Caliphal States." Du Bois set her hands on the table. "You wish to affix blame, Admiral, or do you wish to fix the problem? If you wish for someone to blame, blame yourself and your predecessors for slashing budgets and restricting deployment sizes. Blame the Pentagon and the Defense Ministry for downgrading the pirate threat to low priority. So long as we do not maintain the harshest vice, skilled and desperate corsairs will manage to pull off things like this." Her remarks finished, not interrupted only because of the threatening hand raised of Admiral Gordenny, du Bois sat back and awaited judgement.
Gordenny, his jaw clenched firmly, nodded. "A candid assessment, Admiral du Bois. I commend your bravery in giving it to us. In the meantime, we must make preparations for the arrival of the Slashahkimmar to Meiersworld and the Gate Assembly. Given the nature of the corsairs, we must not overlook a religious motive for the attack on the Talorans, and security on the gate must be tripled. Admiral Thompson, if you would please dispatch the 4th Battle Squadron to rendezvous with the Slashahkimmar...."
Washington D.C., Earth
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
The PT-1 had been achieving orbit when Dale had been informed of the attack on the Slashahkimmar. A leisurely landing had changed to a hasty one, with a Marine helicopter arriving on the tarmac literally beside PT-1 to ferry Dale to the Pentagon for a full report before returning home. Even then details were sketchy, save that the ships had appeared to be "of piratical origin" and early reports indicated they were from the Caliphal States.
What had followed was a long, restless night, where Dale got little sleep, grabbing every new development and report as it came in. Yes, the Slashahkimmar had survived the attack. Yes, there had been casualties. No, the casualties had been light.... and finally, yes, the Princess Jhayka and her entire entourage had survived.
That final confirmation had come at 4AM in the morning EST, Dale sitting at his work desk half-dressed and filling out state papers to pass the time as the entire thing seemed poised to explode on him. At 5AM was finally tired and calmed enough to doze off for a few hours, only to awaken at 7:50 (which for him was sleeping in late) when a slew of officials came to meet with him. Hastily dressed, given only enough time for a cup of coffee and a jelly donut provided by an equally-exhausted Julia, he descended to a state room, not the Oval Office, to deal in succession with his press secretary in forming a full, official statement for the press conference being scheduled for later in the day, and then with Defense Minister Darlington and Chief Admiral O'Connell on the naval response and status of the Slashahkimmar.
It was now 10:04 AM. Dale was next due to meet with Sir James Bronson and Samuel White Eagle, Bronson's successor as Director of the Alliance Intelligence Department. His suit looked good, at least, but the bags under his eyes and the worn expression on his face testified to hours of extreme anxiety. A thoughtful White House staff member had brought him a bowl of wheat and blueberry cereal and some more coffee, and he had only the appetite to eat a couple fo spoonfuls of cereal while drinking half the cup. Before Bronson and White Eagle could arrive, one of his staff internees appeared at the door. The dark-skinned young woman was all business, though she did show quite a bit of sympathy for his condition in her expression, and said plainly, "Mister President, the Baroness idhl Ghast is asking to see you."
He had expected as much, though he wished it had come after he got the report from Bronson and White Eagle. Sighing and forcing himself to eat another spoonful fo cereal, he nodded in reply. Swallowing, he managed a "Have her come in," before sipping his coffee again.
The Baroness Ishtajhari idhl Ghast stepped into the President's office quickly, with a bearing which seemed to threaten no inconsiderable consternation over the matter, her ears flattened back like a wolf's inclined to be growling a warning at a foe. From her full height of six feet and eight inches, on the very high end for Taloran females, it was terribly impressive, a light green sash across her chest contrasting a bright yellow blouse and dark red pantaloons. As usual she had an opal-set choker, the Baroness less affected by the tendencies of the Taloran high nobility to entirely eschew from jewelry in the tradition of Saverana I. Fur-lined boots completed the ensemble, and the weather was not that warm, yet, but she'd left her coat on in the building regardless, blue and also fur lined. She paused for a moment, dark purple eyes viewing Dale, her face set with pursed light green lips, and unusually her hair not braided, showing she hadn't had that much time to get ready herself that morning. "An ambassadorial vessel on a mission of peace to your country was attacked less than fourteen parsecs from your border in an area which your ships patrol, Your Excellency. Suffice to say that my government demands an explaination."
He motioned to a chair for her, and replied, "We have an investigation proceeding. I have not been given every fact myself as of yet, but it does appear to be the act of the remaining pirates from the Caliphal States, operating in an area they have never been seen in before. They slipped into the region under careful emissions control and only appeared on the scopes of our local patrol vessels when they opened fire in a failed attempt to ambush the Slashahkimmar when it completed a jump. From what we gather, the pirates were unable to inflict significant damage, though apparently there was a case with the Slashahkimmar and a pirate vessel colliding. And that, currently, is all I know, Madame Ambassador."
"Operating very far out of their area," Ishtajhari answered, before reluctantly moving to sit. "Your Excellency, we have our own sources in the Caliphate, to deal with the issue of piracy, which however stamped out it might be, is certainly not quite dead. We think we can identify the gang responsible for this from the sensor logs of the Slashahkimmar, namely, the light cruiser involved in the attack, and they had extensive ties to the Prantonese section of the underground in Devenshire. If I may state it bluntly, though we don't have definite evidence for it yet," she continued with a cool and dangerous line of thought: "This appears to be an assassination attempt by the government of Devenshire against a certain individual traveling under diplomatic immunity, willing to kill the fourty thousand lives of the crew of our battlecruiser besides. Our displeasure is already being communicated to the Devenshirite government, and we have some reason to suspect a direct hand by Prantonese in the matter. Needless to say that ever since the bizarre efforts of the Devenshirite government to turn political asylum for a single individual into a veritable casus belli we have paid special attention to the behaviour of that erratic state, where, bluntly, freed slaves were given too much power, too quickly, that they were not prepared by lives as free people to exercise wisely."
Dale was somewhat taken aback by Ishtajhari's accusation; the idea that Prime Minister Driscova would okay such a thing was insane, much less Queen Minerva, and the Devenshiran intelligence agency was noted these days for being mostly uneffective (and, Dale suspected, mostly a body in which various other intel agencies fought for the most double agents). "I have to say, Madame Ambassador, that my dealings with Prime Minister Driscova and Queen Minerva make the possibility of it being a government act rather remote, though I would not rule out the Prantonese organizations. As I recall, one such organization tried to abduct and then murder Duchess Verdes when she was finishing her recovery on Devenshire. And I will certainly keep that possibility in mind as we progress. On the matter of the mission, I've been informed that our local fleet elements are no longer leaving anything to chance. Two of our own battlecruisers and a destroyer squadron are escorting Slashahkimmar currently, a Carrier Task Force is currently on parallel course and providing fighter support, and in the coming day the Slashahkimmar's escorts will be joined by one of our battlle squadrons. We are also stepping up security at the Gate Assembly to match that, and the entire 8th Fleet and local Aerospace Force border commands are on full alert. This will not happen again."
"I do trust in your measures, Your Excellency, as does our government. We would like to delay the transfer with a stop at your fleet bases near the gate, however--this is a personal request of the Slashahkimmar's captain--to make arrangements for the return of the bodies of the slain to Taloran space for suitable burial. I am not sure if you're aware or not, but it isn't Taloran custom to commend bodies to the sea, or space, unless health reasons make it necessary. In all fourty-one were killed on the ship and her fighters; the full battle report from the ship notes that five crewers in the damaged area were found alive, having managed to fling themselves into a vacsuit storage locker before the fire reached them. Mainly some plates need to be wielded over damaged sections on the outer hull, and the parts set out for making repairs, which can be conducted by the ship's crew. But a day's stop for the external welding and some assistance with that would be appreciated, and I'm conveying this to you as it does, of course, delay the arrival to four days from now instead of three." The Baroness frowned, one six-fingered hand playing with the end of her long-braided hair for a moment. "I confess that we don't think, ourselves, that Devenshire was responsible, though we won't exclude the idea either. We're still conducting investigations. However, this does lend a strong argument to the idea that the Caliphate should be permanently dealt with, Your Excellency. I suspect the matter will be raised during the other negotiations."
"I have no objections to the delay, Madame Ambassador. I can make sure that any aid needed for repairs is given and that a suitable berth at the Meiersworld Fleet Station be found, and furthermore, the Alliance will assume the costs of shipping the remains of those lost back to Taloran territory." Keeping a hand on his cup of coffee, Dale spoke again before taking a drink, saying, "As for the matter of the Caliphate, my government has grown concerned with the New Hedjaz's inability to fully expunge the pirates from their territories as they promised to do numerable times and to a number of powers. Given Slavian, British, and French interests in that region, it will take some diplomatic work, but I intend to put the question forward with their ambassadors in the coming days."
"Of course. Hopefully something substantial will come out of those discussions," the Baroness answered. "Well, Your Excellency, with thanks for the gesture of humanity in regard to those lost, I believe this concludes matters. The position of our government is not to regard the Alliance at fault in any way, though we would certainly hope more aggressive patrolling in that region results. As for the rest, if we uncovering any discomfiting evidence, I can assure you it will be brought to your attention."
"I hope that such is never the case," Dale said in reply to that. "The Alliance extends it's condolences to the families of those lost in this treacherous affair, and I want Her Majesty's Government to know of the resolve we feel in preventing such a thing from happening again and to these talks bearing fruit in spite of this."
"That will be noted, Your Excellency, with pleasure. And I'm sure Her Highness the Princess of the Lesser Intuit will have her own words for you on her arrival. If I may be excused, now, Your Excellency?"
"Of course, Madame Ambassador. Please, have a good day."
Ishtajhari rose and left, noting on the way out that several members of the Alliance intelligence and security services were waiting to meet with the President. Unruffled, and unsurprised, she carried regally on her way back to the embassy to deal with the further fallout of this matter, and the imminent arrival of the grand delegation.
With the Ambassador gone, Director White Eagle and Security Advisor Bronson entered, a handful of aides with them. "Mister President, I believe you've met Mrs. Kulchak, Mr. Qadar, and Mr. Zhou," Bronson said, indicating a bronze-skinned woman and man and an Oriental man respectively, "and this is Dr. Georg Buell, our leading expert on Islamic militant movements in the Multiverse."
"Gentlemen and Ladies, Doctor, thank you for coming," Dale said, taking a bite of now-soggy wheat flakes and blueberries. "I hope you will pardon the cereal, but I've not had a full breakfast yet."
"Certainly, Mister President," Bronson replied, taking the lead int he discussion as always. "What has been the Taloran response to this incident?"
"What you would expect; they want answers more than we do." Dale moved the bowl away and drank the last of the coffee he had in the cup. When he was done, he asked, "So what do we have?"
"Abdul bin Rashad," Bronson answered. "Mr. Zhou?"
Leaning forward, Zhou spoke with a hint of an accent, but one not too thick. "Abdul bin Rashad is, now was, the successor to Haleem bin Khalid, one of the better corsairs of the Caliphal States. He inherited what was left of bin Khalid's pirate band, and is one of the most skilled pirates still active, at least until yesterday."
"If he's so well known, why didn't we see this coming?" Dale asked.
"Bin Rashad was very careful, Mister President, and his band defied all attempts at getting agents or turncoats into its ranks. We have, over the years, had three of them turn informant for us: bin Rashad caught them all, and only one is still alive because he was lucky enough to find out about it and get to safety before bin Rashad's men could get him." Zhou handed a digital assistant to Dale, showing the face of an Arab man with a beard and mustache, pronounced cheeks, and cold brown eyes. "In addition, recent developments and the decline of piracy in the region led to a downgrade of the priority for intelligence and observation there. We lack the kind of monitoring stations that allowed us to preempt Caliphal State pirate bands ten years ago, and so we rely on agents and informants on the ground who are less accurate in their reports and take longer to make them. Only yesterday did my office find out that his ships had departed the al-Bukar Spaceport over a week ago."
"That will have to change," Dale remarked. "Do we know of his motivation for the attack? I can't imagine he was looking to plunder the ship, but I know that he had motivation to seek the capture or death of at least one person on board."
Zhou nodded at that. "You speak of Miss Laurentii? Yes, it is likely she was the target. The pirates of the Caliphal States have never attacked a capital ship in such a manner. Their intent was clearly destruction, not capture. It is my estimation, Mister President, that their motivation was religious; they sought to kill Miss Laurentii, who is hated by the Muslims of CON-5."
"I believe Doctor Buell can speak more on this subject," White Eagle remarked.
Dale looked to the fine-featured German expert, and he nodded. His accent was thicker than Zhou's, but still not difficult to understand. "Yes, I believe that this was their motivation, Mister President. The death of the Laurentii bloodline is the desire of all the militant Islamic groups of Universe CON-5, and since it became known that she was extended political asylum in the Taloran Empire, there has been a noticable and steep rise in anti-Taloranism among the Muslim populations across CON-5, even penetrating the Druze populations in the New Levant."
After that there was a brief pause. "Gentlemen, Lady, I don't want this to leave this room and run the rumor mills.... Ambassador idhl Ghast has made the statement that her government suspects Devenshiran involvement, specifically Prantonese, in this incident. I need to know.... is this possible?"
"Eminently, Mister President," Buell replied. "The Caliphal States' corsairs have for centuries been one of the unsavory allies of the Devenshiran Underground Railroad, and of the Prantonese one to be specific. Haleem bin Khalid and Abdul bin Rashad were known on many occasions to be in the company of various clerics and imams allied with the Railroad, now many of them figures of varying importance in the Muslim movements in Pranton. Some even now possess government jobs under the Governor-Generalship there."
"I want an investigation," Dale said gruffly. "I want the Devenshiran government notified of my desire for their cooperation and aid on their end. If any such links still exist, they must be cut from both ends. I cannot allow Devenshire's problems to spread to the affairs of other nations, I will not."
There were nods across the table. It was Qadar, an expert on counter-terrorism security operations, who now spoke. "Mister President, I would further suggest a heightened security detail during the negotiations, including round the clock guards. We cannot rule out the possibility of a Prantonese group or a Prantonese-allied group conducting a attack in an attempt to kill Laurentii or any of the Princess Jhayka's entourage, perhaps herself. Nothing can be ruled out. Car bombings, sniper attacks, suicide bombings, even poisonings."
"Do whatever you deem necessary, Mister Qadar. Get Washington Metro PD, the Security Service, even Planetary Security involved if you have to. I want no effort spared." Dale rubbed at his forehead. "Gentlemen, if that is all, I would like to go get some rest and prepare for tomorrow's meeting with the senior members on the Council's Committee on Defense. You know my number if you need anything..."
Meiersworld System, Alliance Colonial Zone
Universe Designate CON-5
19 March 2165 AST.
46 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
The instant that the patrolling cruisers had detected the distant drive flashes, energy spikes, and the signal from the Slashahkimmar, the entire Alliance 8th Fleet had gone on alert. The lighter task force tasked with frontier control dispatched destroyer squadrons to the embattled battlecruiser's position. The first craft on the scene were there from the initiative of an Alliance escort carrier commander, Cmdr. Anahita Razmara of the Sarah MacKenzie, who took the risk and launched over half of her small carrier's fighter contingent to go to the aid of the Slashahkimmar.
The first ship to respond was, like the Slashahkimmar, a new vessel: D.N.S. Scharnhorst, a Kirishima-class battlecruiser still on her shakedown run. One of her older sisters, the John Fisher, arrived on the scene next, and within ten minutes of the attack finishing an entire squadron of destroyers had come on the scene.
The event had made necessary the current meeting in the main war room of the Fleet Station: At it's head was Fleet Admiral Mikhail Gordenny, Naval Forces Commander of CON-5, with his chief of staff Admiral Peter Lewis present, as were the commander and Chief of Staff for the 8th Fleet, Admiral Danielle Thompson and Vice Admiral Roger Mack. The head of Naval Intelligence's CON-5 section, Vice Admiral Alex Towers, was present with Rear Admiral Lucienne du Bois, the head of his anti-piracy intelligence division.
Gordenny began the meeting with an accent that, surprisingly, lacked gruffness. "Our report from the escort carrier on the scene confirms that the attackers were pirates of Caliphal State origin," he commented. "This is a serious development given our assurances as to the near eradication of the Caliphal States' pirate bands. I am asking you now, Admiral Towers, just how a large pirate operation was able to be commenced in our own backyard without your office knowing about it?"
"Well, Admiral, Intelligence is not a certain thing," Towers replied, clearly irritated. Played wrongly, this would be a major blow to his career, an embarrassment that would cost him years of careful influence gathering and rank-climbing. "Our infiltration of the pirate gangs has, I'll reminded you, rendered most of then inoperable. The worst were taken down years ago. What is left are arguably the most paranoid and cautious of the bands. Mostly inactive, far from the old days where they would be in space for months using forward stations to gather prisoners and loot, now only striking out once every several months at high-value targets. I believe that we have already long recommended to your various commands that patrols be varied and less predictable, but I'm afraid that this has not been done sufficiently."
Towers looked directly at Thompson, and the fair-skinned Englishwoman bristled at the jibe. "Trying to blame the 8th Fleet, and Admiral Marshall, for your failures will not sit with me, Admiral Towers," Thompson replied icily, her accent refined and decidedly vicious in tone as she defended herself and the commander of the special anti-piracy task force operating beyond the Alliance frontier in the vicinity of the Caliphal States. "This is not the first time we have been forced to deal with sudden pirate actions with no warning at all from your office."
"Admirals," Gordenny grumbled, getting their attention. "Admiral du Bois, your office is directly responsible for monitoring the movement of the pirate bands. What do you have to say on this?"
The light-haired Frenchwoman had been mostly quiet, letting her superior do the fighting, but now that she had been spoken to she responded directly. "Admiral Gordenny, it is my estimation that the attitude of all forces concerned with anti-piracy are to blame. Since we have driven most of the pirates out, killing and capturing almost all of their top corsairs and leaders in the past ten years, we have allowed complacency to set in. Admiral Marshall is required to engage in anti-pirate patrols with a mere squadron of destroyers and one electronic warfare cruiser where, ten years ago, we had four squadrons under special flag, led by a battle carrier division. My office's budget has become so meager in the last six years, even after the war, that my people can scarcely afford to bribe a spaceyard worker, let alone operate and maintain the monitoring stations necessary to track suspicious traffic in the Caliphal States." Du Bois set her hands on the table. "You wish to affix blame, Admiral, or do you wish to fix the problem? If you wish for someone to blame, blame yourself and your predecessors for slashing budgets and restricting deployment sizes. Blame the Pentagon and the Defense Ministry for downgrading the pirate threat to low priority. So long as we do not maintain the harshest vice, skilled and desperate corsairs will manage to pull off things like this." Her remarks finished, not interrupted only because of the threatening hand raised of Admiral Gordenny, du Bois sat back and awaited judgement.
Gordenny, his jaw clenched firmly, nodded. "A candid assessment, Admiral du Bois. I commend your bravery in giving it to us. In the meantime, we must make preparations for the arrival of the Slashahkimmar to Meiersworld and the Gate Assembly. Given the nature of the corsairs, we must not overlook a religious motive for the attack on the Talorans, and security on the gate must be tripled. Admiral Thompson, if you would please dispatch the 4th Battle Squadron to rendezvous with the Slashahkimmar...."
Washington D.C., Earth
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
The PT-1 had been achieving orbit when Dale had been informed of the attack on the Slashahkimmar. A leisurely landing had changed to a hasty one, with a Marine helicopter arriving on the tarmac literally beside PT-1 to ferry Dale to the Pentagon for a full report before returning home. Even then details were sketchy, save that the ships had appeared to be "of piratical origin" and early reports indicated they were from the Caliphal States.
What had followed was a long, restless night, where Dale got little sleep, grabbing every new development and report as it came in. Yes, the Slashahkimmar had survived the attack. Yes, there had been casualties. No, the casualties had been light.... and finally, yes, the Princess Jhayka and her entire entourage had survived.
That final confirmation had come at 4AM in the morning EST, Dale sitting at his work desk half-dressed and filling out state papers to pass the time as the entire thing seemed poised to explode on him. At 5AM was finally tired and calmed enough to doze off for a few hours, only to awaken at 7:50 (which for him was sleeping in late) when a slew of officials came to meet with him. Hastily dressed, given only enough time for a cup of coffee and a jelly donut provided by an equally-exhausted Julia, he descended to a state room, not the Oval Office, to deal in succession with his press secretary in forming a full, official statement for the press conference being scheduled for later in the day, and then with Defense Minister Darlington and Chief Admiral O'Connell on the naval response and status of the Slashahkimmar.
It was now 10:04 AM. Dale was next due to meet with Sir James Bronson and Samuel White Eagle, Bronson's successor as Director of the Alliance Intelligence Department. His suit looked good, at least, but the bags under his eyes and the worn expression on his face testified to hours of extreme anxiety. A thoughtful White House staff member had brought him a bowl of wheat and blueberry cereal and some more coffee, and he had only the appetite to eat a couple fo spoonfuls of cereal while drinking half the cup. Before Bronson and White Eagle could arrive, one of his staff internees appeared at the door. The dark-skinned young woman was all business, though she did show quite a bit of sympathy for his condition in her expression, and said plainly, "Mister President, the Baroness idhl Ghast is asking to see you."
He had expected as much, though he wished it had come after he got the report from Bronson and White Eagle. Sighing and forcing himself to eat another spoonful fo cereal, he nodded in reply. Swallowing, he managed a "Have her come in," before sipping his coffee again.
The Baroness Ishtajhari idhl Ghast stepped into the President's office quickly, with a bearing which seemed to threaten no inconsiderable consternation over the matter, her ears flattened back like a wolf's inclined to be growling a warning at a foe. From her full height of six feet and eight inches, on the very high end for Taloran females, it was terribly impressive, a light green sash across her chest contrasting a bright yellow blouse and dark red pantaloons. As usual she had an opal-set choker, the Baroness less affected by the tendencies of the Taloran high nobility to entirely eschew from jewelry in the tradition of Saverana I. Fur-lined boots completed the ensemble, and the weather was not that warm, yet, but she'd left her coat on in the building regardless, blue and also fur lined. She paused for a moment, dark purple eyes viewing Dale, her face set with pursed light green lips, and unusually her hair not braided, showing she hadn't had that much time to get ready herself that morning. "An ambassadorial vessel on a mission of peace to your country was attacked less than fourteen parsecs from your border in an area which your ships patrol, Your Excellency. Suffice to say that my government demands an explaination."
He motioned to a chair for her, and replied, "We have an investigation proceeding. I have not been given every fact myself as of yet, but it does appear to be the act of the remaining pirates from the Caliphal States, operating in an area they have never been seen in before. They slipped into the region under careful emissions control and only appeared on the scopes of our local patrol vessels when they opened fire in a failed attempt to ambush the Slashahkimmar when it completed a jump. From what we gather, the pirates were unable to inflict significant damage, though apparently there was a case with the Slashahkimmar and a pirate vessel colliding. And that, currently, is all I know, Madame Ambassador."
"Operating very far out of their area," Ishtajhari answered, before reluctantly moving to sit. "Your Excellency, we have our own sources in the Caliphate, to deal with the issue of piracy, which however stamped out it might be, is certainly not quite dead. We think we can identify the gang responsible for this from the sensor logs of the Slashahkimmar, namely, the light cruiser involved in the attack, and they had extensive ties to the Prantonese section of the underground in Devenshire. If I may state it bluntly, though we don't have definite evidence for it yet," she continued with a cool and dangerous line of thought: "This appears to be an assassination attempt by the government of Devenshire against a certain individual traveling under diplomatic immunity, willing to kill the fourty thousand lives of the crew of our battlecruiser besides. Our displeasure is already being communicated to the Devenshirite government, and we have some reason to suspect a direct hand by Prantonese in the matter. Needless to say that ever since the bizarre efforts of the Devenshirite government to turn political asylum for a single individual into a veritable casus belli we have paid special attention to the behaviour of that erratic state, where, bluntly, freed slaves were given too much power, too quickly, that they were not prepared by lives as free people to exercise wisely."
Dale was somewhat taken aback by Ishtajhari's accusation; the idea that Prime Minister Driscova would okay such a thing was insane, much less Queen Minerva, and the Devenshiran intelligence agency was noted these days for being mostly uneffective (and, Dale suspected, mostly a body in which various other intel agencies fought for the most double agents). "I have to say, Madame Ambassador, that my dealings with Prime Minister Driscova and Queen Minerva make the possibility of it being a government act rather remote, though I would not rule out the Prantonese organizations. As I recall, one such organization tried to abduct and then murder Duchess Verdes when she was finishing her recovery on Devenshire. And I will certainly keep that possibility in mind as we progress. On the matter of the mission, I've been informed that our local fleet elements are no longer leaving anything to chance. Two of our own battlecruisers and a destroyer squadron are escorting Slashahkimmar currently, a Carrier Task Force is currently on parallel course and providing fighter support, and in the coming day the Slashahkimmar's escorts will be joined by one of our battlle squadrons. We are also stepping up security at the Gate Assembly to match that, and the entire 8th Fleet and local Aerospace Force border commands are on full alert. This will not happen again."
"I do trust in your measures, Your Excellency, as does our government. We would like to delay the transfer with a stop at your fleet bases near the gate, however--this is a personal request of the Slashahkimmar's captain--to make arrangements for the return of the bodies of the slain to Taloran space for suitable burial. I am not sure if you're aware or not, but it isn't Taloran custom to commend bodies to the sea, or space, unless health reasons make it necessary. In all fourty-one were killed on the ship and her fighters; the full battle report from the ship notes that five crewers in the damaged area were found alive, having managed to fling themselves into a vacsuit storage locker before the fire reached them. Mainly some plates need to be wielded over damaged sections on the outer hull, and the parts set out for making repairs, which can be conducted by the ship's crew. But a day's stop for the external welding and some assistance with that would be appreciated, and I'm conveying this to you as it does, of course, delay the arrival to four days from now instead of three." The Baroness frowned, one six-fingered hand playing with the end of her long-braided hair for a moment. "I confess that we don't think, ourselves, that Devenshire was responsible, though we won't exclude the idea either. We're still conducting investigations. However, this does lend a strong argument to the idea that the Caliphate should be permanently dealt with, Your Excellency. I suspect the matter will be raised during the other negotiations."
"I have no objections to the delay, Madame Ambassador. I can make sure that any aid needed for repairs is given and that a suitable berth at the Meiersworld Fleet Station be found, and furthermore, the Alliance will assume the costs of shipping the remains of those lost back to Taloran territory." Keeping a hand on his cup of coffee, Dale spoke again before taking a drink, saying, "As for the matter of the Caliphate, my government has grown concerned with the New Hedjaz's inability to fully expunge the pirates from their territories as they promised to do numerable times and to a number of powers. Given Slavian, British, and French interests in that region, it will take some diplomatic work, but I intend to put the question forward with their ambassadors in the coming days."
"Of course. Hopefully something substantial will come out of those discussions," the Baroness answered. "Well, Your Excellency, with thanks for the gesture of humanity in regard to those lost, I believe this concludes matters. The position of our government is not to regard the Alliance at fault in any way, though we would certainly hope more aggressive patrolling in that region results. As for the rest, if we uncovering any discomfiting evidence, I can assure you it will be brought to your attention."
"I hope that such is never the case," Dale said in reply to that. "The Alliance extends it's condolences to the families of those lost in this treacherous affair, and I want Her Majesty's Government to know of the resolve we feel in preventing such a thing from happening again and to these talks bearing fruit in spite of this."
"That will be noted, Your Excellency, with pleasure. And I'm sure Her Highness the Princess of the Lesser Intuit will have her own words for you on her arrival. If I may be excused, now, Your Excellency?"
"Of course, Madame Ambassador. Please, have a good day."
Ishtajhari rose and left, noting on the way out that several members of the Alliance intelligence and security services were waiting to meet with the President. Unruffled, and unsurprised, she carried regally on her way back to the embassy to deal with the further fallout of this matter, and the imminent arrival of the grand delegation.
With the Ambassador gone, Director White Eagle and Security Advisor Bronson entered, a handful of aides with them. "Mister President, I believe you've met Mrs. Kulchak, Mr. Qadar, and Mr. Zhou," Bronson said, indicating a bronze-skinned woman and man and an Oriental man respectively, "and this is Dr. Georg Buell, our leading expert on Islamic militant movements in the Multiverse."
"Gentlemen and Ladies, Doctor, thank you for coming," Dale said, taking a bite of now-soggy wheat flakes and blueberries. "I hope you will pardon the cereal, but I've not had a full breakfast yet."
"Certainly, Mister President," Bronson replied, taking the lead int he discussion as always. "What has been the Taloran response to this incident?"
"What you would expect; they want answers more than we do." Dale moved the bowl away and drank the last of the coffee he had in the cup. When he was done, he asked, "So what do we have?"
"Abdul bin Rashad," Bronson answered. "Mr. Zhou?"
Leaning forward, Zhou spoke with a hint of an accent, but one not too thick. "Abdul bin Rashad is, now was, the successor to Haleem bin Khalid, one of the better corsairs of the Caliphal States. He inherited what was left of bin Khalid's pirate band, and is one of the most skilled pirates still active, at least until yesterday."
"If he's so well known, why didn't we see this coming?" Dale asked.
"Bin Rashad was very careful, Mister President, and his band defied all attempts at getting agents or turncoats into its ranks. We have, over the years, had three of them turn informant for us: bin Rashad caught them all, and only one is still alive because he was lucky enough to find out about it and get to safety before bin Rashad's men could get him." Zhou handed a digital assistant to Dale, showing the face of an Arab man with a beard and mustache, pronounced cheeks, and cold brown eyes. "In addition, recent developments and the decline of piracy in the region led to a downgrade of the priority for intelligence and observation there. We lack the kind of monitoring stations that allowed us to preempt Caliphal State pirate bands ten years ago, and so we rely on agents and informants on the ground who are less accurate in their reports and take longer to make them. Only yesterday did my office find out that his ships had departed the al-Bukar Spaceport over a week ago."
"That will have to change," Dale remarked. "Do we know of his motivation for the attack? I can't imagine he was looking to plunder the ship, but I know that he had motivation to seek the capture or death of at least one person on board."
Zhou nodded at that. "You speak of Miss Laurentii? Yes, it is likely she was the target. The pirates of the Caliphal States have never attacked a capital ship in such a manner. Their intent was clearly destruction, not capture. It is my estimation, Mister President, that their motivation was religious; they sought to kill Miss Laurentii, who is hated by the Muslims of CON-5."
"I believe Doctor Buell can speak more on this subject," White Eagle remarked.
Dale looked to the fine-featured German expert, and he nodded. His accent was thicker than Zhou's, but still not difficult to understand. "Yes, I believe that this was their motivation, Mister President. The death of the Laurentii bloodline is the desire of all the militant Islamic groups of Universe CON-5, and since it became known that she was extended political asylum in the Taloran Empire, there has been a noticable and steep rise in anti-Taloranism among the Muslim populations across CON-5, even penetrating the Druze populations in the New Levant."
After that there was a brief pause. "Gentlemen, Lady, I don't want this to leave this room and run the rumor mills.... Ambassador idhl Ghast has made the statement that her government suspects Devenshiran involvement, specifically Prantonese, in this incident. I need to know.... is this possible?"
"Eminently, Mister President," Buell replied. "The Caliphal States' corsairs have for centuries been one of the unsavory allies of the Devenshiran Underground Railroad, and of the Prantonese one to be specific. Haleem bin Khalid and Abdul bin Rashad were known on many occasions to be in the company of various clerics and imams allied with the Railroad, now many of them figures of varying importance in the Muslim movements in Pranton. Some even now possess government jobs under the Governor-Generalship there."
"I want an investigation," Dale said gruffly. "I want the Devenshiran government notified of my desire for their cooperation and aid on their end. If any such links still exist, they must be cut from both ends. I cannot allow Devenshire's problems to spread to the affairs of other nations, I will not."
There were nods across the table. It was Qadar, an expert on counter-terrorism security operations, who now spoke. "Mister President, I would further suggest a heightened security detail during the negotiations, including round the clock guards. We cannot rule out the possibility of a Prantonese group or a Prantonese-allied group conducting a attack in an attempt to kill Laurentii or any of the Princess Jhayka's entourage, perhaps herself. Nothing can be ruled out. Car bombings, sniper attacks, suicide bombings, even poisonings."
"Do whatever you deem necessary, Mister Qadar. Get Washington Metro PD, the Security Service, even Planetary Security involved if you have to. I want no effort spared." Dale rubbed at his forehead. "Gentlemen, if that is all, I would like to go get some rest and prepare for tomorrow's meeting with the senior members on the Council's Committee on Defense. You know my number if you need anything..."
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
New Tel Aviv, New Israel
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate FHI-8
19 March 2165 AST.
46 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
It was night-time in Washington. Elijah Weisbaum knew this, looking at the comparitive clocks even as the sun still shined brightly over the capital of the State of New Israel, the dome of the Knesset building gleaming in the sky in the distance. The main offices of the Alliance-wide Party for the Protection of Freedom - the long name for the Freedom Party - were abuzz with activity.
In his office, Weisbaum watched the sun in the distance and heard his assistant Yossi arguing in English over the comm unit. Finally the younger man ended the call. "They still refuse to put us through to the President," he said in exasperation. "This is intentional, Mister Weisbaum! He does not respect us at all."
"I have no doubt he is tired given what happened yesterday," Weisbaum remarked non-chalantly. "Mamatmas at least had the skill to not invest himself too thoroughly in one project or another. Dale is not so skilled a politician. He has tied his legacy strongly into the crafting of permanent relations with the Taloran Empire. What happened yesterday.... it is a potential disaster for him."
"I don't think it could be a bad thing for all of us," Yossi said. "The Talorans love freedom in their own way, and they hate fascists. They overthrew the fascists who took the Earth in their universe, and helped free Humanity from that plague."
Weisbaum looked to the younger man. "Are you talking as a lover of Freedom, Yossi, or as a Jew?"
The look on Yossi's face was one of bewilderment. "How.... how could you say such a thing?"
"Because the Talorans do not love freedom as you or I do, no matter how good they were to the Jews of their universe. They would make us bow before their Empress, grant her undeserved adoration, and require us to have further rulers below her stature as well," Weisbaum answered. "Did you not follow the peace for Gilead? They forced us to place a girl, a mere teenage girl not even out of adolescence yet, on the throne of what was once a sovereign republic. Even as they come here to talk peace, they allow the warriors of the old Clans to leave the Kerensky worlds! Yes, they are doing this, and they are allowing those fascist eugenicists to restore their brutal society on Taloran soil. On a planet named Eleutheria! On a planet named for Freedom, the Clans will be reborn, glorified... and their innocent victims forgotten."
Yossi looked at Weisbaum still with bewilderment. "You have allowed your anger over the situation with the Clans to cloud your judgement," he retorted. "For all that you love freedom, Chairman Weisbaum.... you certainly love to tell other people how they must act and who they must befriend."
Wiesbaum didn't respond to that. Instead he picked up his cell phone in one hand, his PDA in the other, and dialed a number. "Yes... can you get me Gertrude Williams please? Yes, tell her Mister Weisbaum called, I have a story that the MWB-32 desk might be interested in."
Washington, D.C., Earth
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
20 March 2165 AST.
47 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
It was past midnight and the Beltway was quiet. At one of the quiet stops south of D.C. proper, before I-95 split into the two halves of the Beltway, Washington Post reporter Jerry Krast squeezed his portly, two hundred and seventy pound frame into a booth at the neighborhood Denny's. The waitress asked for an order and he asked for coffee and a side of hash browns.
After several minutes a coated man walked in and took a seat across from Krast. He looked around a little, his head well-covered by a hat that would obscure his face from most angles. Krast snorted; this wouldn't be his first source to act like a spy. "So, you said it was good?"
"Heard about that Taloran ship that got bushwacked?"
"Yeah, big news there," Krast replied. He sipped at his coffee. "Got an angle on it?"
"You could say that. Here..." The guy took something out of his pocket and handed it to Krast. It was a standard civilian disc in covering. "Nothing top secret.... yet. Just a few memo bits I managed to jot down today. But I'll tell ya now.... this attack? It was out of the blue, but it wasn't just pirates, y'know what I'm sayin'?"
"It was state-sponsered?" Krast asked.
The guy shrugged a little. "Eh, maybe, maybe not. Maybe your definition of what a state is would matter. Lots of people on that ship that've pissed people off. Like the one girl from here, wholesome American sweetheart who married an alien princess and became her second wife? Plenty of religious kooks think a message has to be sent on that. And all those disappointed Gilean patriots that hate that Princess' guts for gettin' 'em ground under. But I tell ya, the best candidate? Well, look at the list on the disc, 'cause I gotta go."
"Thanks," Krast said. He tossed the guy a $20 bill and waved him off. He inserted the disk into his PDA and brought up the files. Mostly photo-copies of hand-written notes that passed some guy's desk at the Pentagon, but his attention went to the list of the Taloran negotiators and their aides. His eyes widened as he recognized the name of the Chief of Staff for the team. "Priscilla Laurentii?" he mouthed, remembering the name. A Devenshire angle, eh? Oh baby, Daddy needs a Pulitzer...
The coated, hat-wearing figure walked a distance away from the Denny's and got to his car. He took the hat off, revealing dark brown hair, and as he tossed the hat in a figure came out of the nearby shadow, wearing mostly black. "You give him the disc?"
"Yup. Got the $20 too."
"Keep it and add it to what I'm paying you to do this stuff whenever I need you to." The figure winked at him. "It'll pay for your college, kid."
"Yeah, sure." The young man slid into his seat and drove off, thinking mostly of dollar signs to get by and not of any trouble he may be causing.
Peter Lundsen watched the kid go, and walked down the street a bit to his own navy blue sedan. He fired up the engine and drove off.
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate FHI-8
19 March 2165 AST.
46 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
It was night-time in Washington. Elijah Weisbaum knew this, looking at the comparitive clocks even as the sun still shined brightly over the capital of the State of New Israel, the dome of the Knesset building gleaming in the sky in the distance. The main offices of the Alliance-wide Party for the Protection of Freedom - the long name for the Freedom Party - were abuzz with activity.
In his office, Weisbaum watched the sun in the distance and heard his assistant Yossi arguing in English over the comm unit. Finally the younger man ended the call. "They still refuse to put us through to the President," he said in exasperation. "This is intentional, Mister Weisbaum! He does not respect us at all."
"I have no doubt he is tired given what happened yesterday," Weisbaum remarked non-chalantly. "Mamatmas at least had the skill to not invest himself too thoroughly in one project or another. Dale is not so skilled a politician. He has tied his legacy strongly into the crafting of permanent relations with the Taloran Empire. What happened yesterday.... it is a potential disaster for him."
"I don't think it could be a bad thing for all of us," Yossi said. "The Talorans love freedom in their own way, and they hate fascists. They overthrew the fascists who took the Earth in their universe, and helped free Humanity from that plague."
Weisbaum looked to the younger man. "Are you talking as a lover of Freedom, Yossi, or as a Jew?"
The look on Yossi's face was one of bewilderment. "How.... how could you say such a thing?"
"Because the Talorans do not love freedom as you or I do, no matter how good they were to the Jews of their universe. They would make us bow before their Empress, grant her undeserved adoration, and require us to have further rulers below her stature as well," Weisbaum answered. "Did you not follow the peace for Gilead? They forced us to place a girl, a mere teenage girl not even out of adolescence yet, on the throne of what was once a sovereign republic. Even as they come here to talk peace, they allow the warriors of the old Clans to leave the Kerensky worlds! Yes, they are doing this, and they are allowing those fascist eugenicists to restore their brutal society on Taloran soil. On a planet named Eleutheria! On a planet named for Freedom, the Clans will be reborn, glorified... and their innocent victims forgotten."
Yossi looked at Weisbaum still with bewilderment. "You have allowed your anger over the situation with the Clans to cloud your judgement," he retorted. "For all that you love freedom, Chairman Weisbaum.... you certainly love to tell other people how they must act and who they must befriend."
Wiesbaum didn't respond to that. Instead he picked up his cell phone in one hand, his PDA in the other, and dialed a number. "Yes... can you get me Gertrude Williams please? Yes, tell her Mister Weisbaum called, I have a story that the MWB-32 desk might be interested in."
Washington, D.C., Earth
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
20 March 2165 AST.
47 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
It was past midnight and the Beltway was quiet. At one of the quiet stops south of D.C. proper, before I-95 split into the two halves of the Beltway, Washington Post reporter Jerry Krast squeezed his portly, two hundred and seventy pound frame into a booth at the neighborhood Denny's. The waitress asked for an order and he asked for coffee and a side of hash browns.
After several minutes a coated man walked in and took a seat across from Krast. He looked around a little, his head well-covered by a hat that would obscure his face from most angles. Krast snorted; this wouldn't be his first source to act like a spy. "So, you said it was good?"
"Heard about that Taloran ship that got bushwacked?"
"Yeah, big news there," Krast replied. He sipped at his coffee. "Got an angle on it?"
"You could say that. Here..." The guy took something out of his pocket and handed it to Krast. It was a standard civilian disc in covering. "Nothing top secret.... yet. Just a few memo bits I managed to jot down today. But I'll tell ya now.... this attack? It was out of the blue, but it wasn't just pirates, y'know what I'm sayin'?"
"It was state-sponsered?" Krast asked.
The guy shrugged a little. "Eh, maybe, maybe not. Maybe your definition of what a state is would matter. Lots of people on that ship that've pissed people off. Like the one girl from here, wholesome American sweetheart who married an alien princess and became her second wife? Plenty of religious kooks think a message has to be sent on that. And all those disappointed Gilean patriots that hate that Princess' guts for gettin' 'em ground under. But I tell ya, the best candidate? Well, look at the list on the disc, 'cause I gotta go."
"Thanks," Krast said. He tossed the guy a $20 bill and waved him off. He inserted the disk into his PDA and brought up the files. Mostly photo-copies of hand-written notes that passed some guy's desk at the Pentagon, but his attention went to the list of the Taloran negotiators and their aides. His eyes widened as he recognized the name of the Chief of Staff for the team. "Priscilla Laurentii?" he mouthed, remembering the name. A Devenshire angle, eh? Oh baby, Daddy needs a Pulitzer...
The coated, hat-wearing figure walked a distance away from the Denny's and got to his car. He took the hat off, revealing dark brown hair, and as he tossed the hat in a figure came out of the nearby shadow, wearing mostly black. "You give him the disc?"
"Yup. Got the $20 too."
"Keep it and add it to what I'm paying you to do this stuff whenever I need you to." The figure winked at him. "It'll pay for your college, kid."
"Yeah, sure." The young man slid into his seat and drove off, thinking mostly of dollar signs to get by and not of any trouble he may be causing.
Peter Lundsen watched the kid go, and walked down the street a bit to his own navy blue sedan. He fired up the engine and drove off.
Last edited by Steve on 2007-09-11 01:16pm, edited 1 time in total.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
-
The Duchess of Zeon
- Gözde
- Posts: 14566
- Joined: 2002-09-18 01:06am
- Location: Exiled in the Pale of Settlement.
The Old Fort,
Valeria, Talora Prime.
19 March 2165 AST.
46 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
There were no real-time communications pretty much anywhere in the Empire save within a close belt around Talora Prime herself. The news was more than a day old of the attack itself, and the further information was not easily coming. Instructions had been sent immediately to the Alliance Ambassador and various amounts of speculation had set in amongst the government. Trilasi itl Eruo, the director of external intelligence, more commonly called the reconaissance bureau, stood before the Empress outlining the information which the foreign ministry had already used in sending its instructions to the Baroness idhl Ghast in the Alliance. The results seemed to be quite convincing.
"Do we have any definite proof that they're connected to such a senior official in the Devenshirite government, Director?"
"No, Your Serene Majesty. The matter is not one which may be made a cause for war; there is certainly not enough evidence. However, we must be able to investigate to confirm whether or not this is the case."
"We do not think that the government of Queen Minerva will ever allow that," Saverana observed after a moment.
"Then we should make such a demand of the impertinent upstart, Your Serene Majesty," rumbled the voice of the Baron Jhistam of Hurracari, the foreign minister, sitting out of deference to his extreme age. "She owes her throne to only half of her blood, and the other half is irrepairably tainted by the most monstrous of crimes."
Saverana sighed. She wanted to just sign the recommendation for the House Medal of Merit, posthumous, for a petty officer on the Slashahkimmar who had perished in the action saving the ship from considerably more damage, and then go to bed. It was getting quite late, and the simple fact was that the attack hadn't actually harmed the critically important mission. Are you guilty for sending that girl and fourty like her to their deaths, or by agreeing to let the Retgariu girl take her ship, did I guarantee the survival of them all? But surely they would have been escorted if it wasn't a battlecruiser... Ah, well. I'll need to convene a design hearing into the faults of the busbar system sometime later this month. That is a rather embarrassing failure. Now, back to this matter with Devenshire..
She glanced up as though she had actually been thinking about the issue at hand rather than delving into the minutinae of the Starfleet and musing on the commendation to the dead crewer. "Well, give Us the declaration that you certainly have proposed."
"Of course, Your Serene Majesty." Jhistam handed over the written hardcopy of the proposed document. It contained a threat to sever diplomatic relations...
"No. Send everything--all this stuff about demanding the right to search for suspects and so on, insisting on full cooperation between our intelligence services, etc. That is all good and appropriate. Send that out, but delete the measure threatening to withdraw our Consul and other recognized personnel and expel the Devenshirite ambassador. There's no need to take such a harsh stance, or make this look like an ultimatum. And We want a document making identical demands sent to the Caliphate, however, leave those threats in for them. They clearly have the majority of the blame now. We will talk sternly to Devenshire like they are children, for in some sense, they are," an irony if one of the youngest Taloran Empresses could ever speak of one, "But We have no intention to threaten them and make this worse than it is."
"Of course, Your Serene Majesty," Jhistam answered, though he couldn't help but feel the uncomfortable possibility that an open-ended demand would be interpreted in the worst possible light. He raised the matter very delicately: "There is a great probability, Your Serene Majesty, that they will respond by doing exactly to us what we were to threaten to do to them."
Saverana glanced in some surprise to Director Eruo. "Do you concur with that opinion?"
She was silent for a moment, judging the matter, then, remembering the awesome tenure of Jhistam, came down on his side. "Yes, Your Serene Majesty, I do."
"Hmm." Orange eyes glanced between the two, calculating, a tad suspicious, and then: "Oh, well. If they choose to do that it will just show how thoroughly immature of a state they are. You have Our instructions, and you are dismissed for the night. Inform Us of any developments in the morning with the usual dispatches at breakfast."
Valeria, Talora Prime.
19 March 2165 AST.
46 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
There were no real-time communications pretty much anywhere in the Empire save within a close belt around Talora Prime herself. The news was more than a day old of the attack itself, and the further information was not easily coming. Instructions had been sent immediately to the Alliance Ambassador and various amounts of speculation had set in amongst the government. Trilasi itl Eruo, the director of external intelligence, more commonly called the reconaissance bureau, stood before the Empress outlining the information which the foreign ministry had already used in sending its instructions to the Baroness idhl Ghast in the Alliance. The results seemed to be quite convincing.
"Do we have any definite proof that they're connected to such a senior official in the Devenshirite government, Director?"
"No, Your Serene Majesty. The matter is not one which may be made a cause for war; there is certainly not enough evidence. However, we must be able to investigate to confirm whether or not this is the case."
"We do not think that the government of Queen Minerva will ever allow that," Saverana observed after a moment.
"Then we should make such a demand of the impertinent upstart, Your Serene Majesty," rumbled the voice of the Baron Jhistam of Hurracari, the foreign minister, sitting out of deference to his extreme age. "She owes her throne to only half of her blood, and the other half is irrepairably tainted by the most monstrous of crimes."
Saverana sighed. She wanted to just sign the recommendation for the House Medal of Merit, posthumous, for a petty officer on the Slashahkimmar who had perished in the action saving the ship from considerably more damage, and then go to bed. It was getting quite late, and the simple fact was that the attack hadn't actually harmed the critically important mission. Are you guilty for sending that girl and fourty like her to their deaths, or by agreeing to let the Retgariu girl take her ship, did I guarantee the survival of them all? But surely they would have been escorted if it wasn't a battlecruiser... Ah, well. I'll need to convene a design hearing into the faults of the busbar system sometime later this month. That is a rather embarrassing failure. Now, back to this matter with Devenshire..
She glanced up as though she had actually been thinking about the issue at hand rather than delving into the minutinae of the Starfleet and musing on the commendation to the dead crewer. "Well, give Us the declaration that you certainly have proposed."
"Of course, Your Serene Majesty." Jhistam handed over the written hardcopy of the proposed document. It contained a threat to sever diplomatic relations...
"No. Send everything--all this stuff about demanding the right to search for suspects and so on, insisting on full cooperation between our intelligence services, etc. That is all good and appropriate. Send that out, but delete the measure threatening to withdraw our Consul and other recognized personnel and expel the Devenshirite ambassador. There's no need to take such a harsh stance, or make this look like an ultimatum. And We want a document making identical demands sent to the Caliphate, however, leave those threats in for them. They clearly have the majority of the blame now. We will talk sternly to Devenshire like they are children, for in some sense, they are," an irony if one of the youngest Taloran Empresses could ever speak of one, "But We have no intention to threaten them and make this worse than it is."
"Of course, Your Serene Majesty," Jhistam answered, though he couldn't help but feel the uncomfortable possibility that an open-ended demand would be interpreted in the worst possible light. He raised the matter very delicately: "There is a great probability, Your Serene Majesty, that they will respond by doing exactly to us what we were to threaten to do to them."
Saverana glanced in some surprise to Director Eruo. "Do you concur with that opinion?"
She was silent for a moment, judging the matter, then, remembering the awesome tenure of Jhistam, came down on his side. "Yes, Your Serene Majesty, I do."
"Hmm." Orange eyes glanced between the two, calculating, a tad suspicious, and then: "Oh, well. If they choose to do that it will just show how thoroughly immature of a state they are. You have Our instructions, and you are dismissed for the night. Inform Us of any developments in the morning with the usual dispatches at breakfast."
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
Royal City, Devenshire
Kingdom of the Devenshires
21 March 2165 AST.
48 Valeria, I.Y. 618
It was usually a planned thing to have a joint session of the Senate, Assembly, and the Council of Lords in Devenshire's Parliament, but the Taloran note that had arrived late the previous night had enflamed the entire city as the new of its contents spread. It was now widely known, and spreading across the Kingdom, that the Taloran ship bearing the Butcher of umm-Kashrash had been on the attacked ship, and that the Talorans were now blaming the incident on Devenshire and demanding that Devenshire permit the Talorans to participate in the investigation.
On the street the rumor intensified. It was a plot! The Talorans would use the "investigation" to press for the arrest and trial of key leaders throughout the Kingdom so that the nation would be weakened; alternatively, that the Talorans would if refused use military force to overthrow the government and restore the Old Guard's survivors and slavery.
Now the Parliament met.... as well as it could. The uproar from the public was fierce and the military had taken preliminary precautions to protect the Taloran consul should any of the tumult become violent.
"The Kingdom of the Devenshires has been insulted! Degraded!" The voice of Grand Duchess Evelyn Chang of Ganzhou rang out in the massive structure that, with dividers removed, allowed for a joint session of the Tricameral Parliament of over 20,000 Assemblymen, Senators, and Provincial Lords. She was at the central table between and above the Senate and Assembly, where the thirteen members of the Council of Lords were placed, including Sara Proctor, Grand Duchess of Illustrious. "The Taloran Empire has all but accused the Kingdom of participating in the pirate attack upon the Slashahkimmar! Now they demand that we permit them to lead the investigation into whether any subject of Her Majesty's participated.... as if that would happen!"
"No, the only clear motivation here is a further slight on the Kingdom. The haughty, arrogant Talorans, full of their contempt for the rights of the common people, dedicated to the expansion of their religion and of their power, are targeting us now for their schemes! Already they hold billions of Human beings under their guns! They seek more! Mark my words, they may even now plot to attack us, seizing upon this opportunity! The Kingdom must throw this insult back in their face! We must mobilize our forces and prepare to defend ourselves, and send out the call to our allies to uphold their promises to our defense!"
"This is lunacy!", Greg Rockwell, Grand Duke of Firgrove, called out. "You have let your pain and your hate rob you of your wits!"
"His Highness of Firgrove is out of order!", was the call from the all three bodies, such that Sara Proctor, seated in their midst, could not tell where it originated.
"His Highness is out of order and will sit!" Prime Minister Driscova proclaimed passively, not liking where this was going at all.
Satsified with the situation, Chang made the formal movement that a resolution be adopted and confirmed rejecting the Taloran note, ordering the expulsion of the Taloran consul, the severance of diplomatic relations, and that the government "begin preparations for war" and send notices to the signatories of the Treaty of Westminster requesting their aid. It received uproarious support from a number of quarters. Senator Rahman of Pranton gleefully seconded it.
Driscova now had to allow one person to make a statement, and despite the number of hands, she, as the protocol for joint sessions usually dictated, turned to the Council of Lords, and to Sara Proctor. Sara stood with a rigid, defiant posture and her face a mask of determination. "The Opposition has overstated the issue," she cried out. "The Taloran note is hardly an ultimatum, and there is no military threat or threat of any other placed in it. There is no reason to begin preparations for war! If we do so, we may very well cause the war ourselves, or if none comes, we are the ones who look like fools to the other nations, and the credibility of the Kingdom will suffer a blow no Taloran demand could equal!"
"As we speak the Multiverse watches and waits. To be decided here is the future of Devenshire's democracy. Will it be a strong and noble one, or will we be seen as only a pack of violent, fanatical rabble? I leave that for you to decide."
"I move that the motion be laid upon the table!"
Rockwell seconded Sara, and so Driscova called the vote. It was crushing: seven out of ten Assembly voters and almost the same proportion of Senate voters voted against her motion. The Council of Lords voted yes by a vote of 8 to 5, but in a joint session that meant nothing even if the Senate and Assembly votes hadn't been so overwhelming as to overturn a Lords' veto.
Rahman and Chang exchanged happy grins, and they looked on and expected victory as Driscova swallowed and called on the resolution to be voted.
The Assembly came down on their side again, by a vote of 76%. There was little reason to be found there; the party whips in favor of the resolution had an easy time maintaining party solidarity, while the government coalition simply collapsed in the face of the anger and insult of the Taloran note.
In the Council of Lords, Sara Proctor watched with dismay as the Grand Duke of Canton, Rupert Taguez, voted on the anti-Taloran side for the first time. The House of Lords did vote against the resolution, but only by the bare margin: 7-6. And if she had failed there....
The Senate results flashed up almost immediately after the Council ones. She looked to the raw numbers of yes and no - 335 yeas, 175 nays, and then to the percentage.
65.6%.
Sara let out a breath, forcing herself to calm down. The surprise reverberated as the results came through. The system showed the margin as well.
Two votes. That had seperated Devenshire from ruin. Those two extra senators who voted no, who made it that result, had kept the Senate from achieving the two-thirds (66%) vote necessary to overturn the Council of Lords' narrow veto.
Chang moaned and fell back in her chair. The old revolutionary and slavery-fighter looked as if every bit of energy had come out of her. Members of the Senate and Assembly seemed to be the same way. Exhausted, angry, unbelieving that the Council had again blocked them on the Taloran issue, stubbornly holding them back...
But not Rahman. He was very clearly not defeated, not exhausted. He stood. "Madame Prime Minister, I request to submit a motion."
Stunned and happy, Driscova's political instincts instantly led her to wariness, but she cautiously nodded. "You are recognized, Your Honor."
Rahman now placed into the digital displays of the Devenshiran MPs his proposal. It was the same as before, but it had been removed of everything but the rejection of the Taloran note and a condemnatory remark, protesting Devenshire's innocence and upbraiding the Talorans for daring to imply that Devenshire "had supported this act of piracy and terror and was unwilling or unable to punish any of her wayward subjects who may have participated".
Sara waited for the resolution to be seconded, this time by Jacksontowne's Grand Duke Charles Kinnelroy, and again rose. "Given the emotions running in the Parliament, I move that we for the moment lay the Honorable Senator's resolution on the table for the day, and return to work tomorrow refreshed and better able to consider these matters."
Screams of "No!" and "Vote now!" echoed in the Parliament. Sara's motion was seconded, again by Rockwell, and the vote was put through.
Again the motion to lay on the table failed, though this time only 60% of the Parliament voted against the motion; clearly even the proponents of the harsher resolution thought the day was lost and that a further attempt should be made later.
But even that was rendered moot, for this time there was no squeaker, and Rahman won handily. The Assembly approved it by an even wider margin than before, nearing 80%. Only one hundred Senators opposed it. The Council of Lords' resistance was rendered moot, but Sara, to her surprise, lost there too; now Grand Duke Mustafa Osmanli of New Anatolia and even Grand Duke Robert Farmer of Earth Province voted in favor of the resolution, leaving Sara, Rockwell, Kinnelroy, and just two others in dissent.
The reasons were obvious. The Taloran note betrayed a certain mentality about Devenshire, it showed how the Taloran leadership viewed their nation, and even if it certainly could have been more vicious, the tone was imperious and demanding enough to be an affront to the rebuilding kingdom. This had, in a way, become more important than Laurentii; it was about vigorously upholding their sovereignty without compromise. Sara herself had not supported just bowing to the demand, but rather asking to negotiate it. With Taloran negotiations with the ADN commencing soon, a Devenshiran request for negotiation on the term would certainly not be unacceptable.
But the insult, frankly, was too severe for the Parliament, and they had now replied defiantly.
Worst of all, the night wasn't over. As Rahman accepted congratulations for his success and sat down, a Senator from Jacksontowne asked to be heard. Driscova, who had been on the verge of ending the session, allowed for him to speak.
"Madame Prime Minister, your role in the reconstruction of Devenshire has ensured you a place in the history books. May God bless you with long life, good health, and happiness." The Senator's voice turned a bit harsh now, as he added, "But your policy regarding the Taloran Empire has failed, and failed miserably! You approached them in the name of friendship, and they have responded by treating you and the Kingdom with scorn, accusing us bluntly of aiding piracy and terrorism. It is clear to me that a new direction is called for in our dealings with other powers. So it is with a heavy heart that I ask the Parliament to consider a vote of no-confidence in your Government."
Sara's gut twisted and her heart fell. She watched Driscova somberly make the request for someone to second the motion, and it was clear that a multitude were ready to do so. Here the Council of Lords' power to arrest the tide was unclear. The Royal Constitution, promulgated under the authority of the Treaty of Westminster, provided the Council of Lords with certain powers, and already the Council had passed resolutions during Driscova's prior elections that supported the issue.... but not yet had they been put into a position of denying a vote of no-confidence. Under the Old Kingdom it had happened at times, when the aristocrats thought a measure too "tainted" by the desires of the freemen, or too likely to give succor to the slave populations, but that precedent was hardly applicable.
The vote came and went. The Devenshire Loyalists defected from the Government, and the right portion of the Liberal Democrats followed; the smaller parties in the ruling coalition fractured, and only the Crown-Conservatives voted en bloc against the measure. The other parties split a bit as well, since some of the Opposition parties nevertheless were not anti-Taloran and viewed the measure in those eyes, and in the end it was a 60% vote against Driscova in the Assembly and a 52% vote in the Senate.
Under the constitution these votes were theoretically challengable by the Council of Lords; no decision had been made either way on it. But the mood the nation was clear. Driscova's popularity had not sustained over the years, as the thrill of freedom and rebuilding and the needs of war had given way to post-war recriminations, political infighting, and petty affairs that had sapped at Driscova's popularity; the Taloran note was the hammer blow that would come down on that weakened foundation and destroy the Government. If the Council voted against the no-confidence motion, it would enrage the nation; the Council's constitutional role was as a brake against bad laws, not to determine the running of the government. Preserving Driscova would only enflame the calls to eliminate the Council by the populist parties and politicians.
Nevertheless, Rockwell tried. He ralled Kinnelroy, and Karlotte Van Schaick the Grand Duchess of Van Tromp Province, and they defiantly voted against the no-confidence measure, but Sara swallowed and followed the example that Mustafa Osmanli set as the current Chairman of the Council, voting to abstain from the vote. By 10 to 3 that motion passed; the Council of Lords did not join the vote one way or the other and Driscova's government was no more.
There were tears in Sara's eyes. She liked Driscova as a friend, and considered her a great woman and worthy leader. She felt like she had just committed the gravest betrayal in her life. But there was nothing more to be done.
"Given the vote by the Parliament, I shall tender my resignation to Her Majesty immediately," Driscova announced in a deceptively-strong voice; she acted stoically even as the rejection threatened to bring her legs out from under her. "Due to the late hour, and the need to form a new government, I hereby adjourn the Parliament, and leave it to the Speaker of the Assembly and the President of the Senate to make preparations for naming a new government." Unspoken for the moment, out of fatigue mostly, was that if a new government wasn't formed soon enough, likely only after a few days, then the Parliament would be dissolved and new elections called by the Parliament, the caretaker PM, or the Queen.
The long, winded session was over. The Parliament began to melt out of the building, bound for their dormitories and homes in the city and surrounding countryside. The populace outside would soon learn of the twists and turns of the session, and the ultimate result. Sara joined the Council Lords in departing through their special exit, her shoulders low and her spirit drained. She would soon be back in her private home outside the Royal City, met by an understanding Julio and crying herself to sleep in his arms.
For her part, Alexandria Driscova was taken out by helicopter and returned to the Ministry Offices down the road, where she went to her office and immediately began composing her letter of resignation. When it was done she was taken straight to her suite across the way in the Ministerial Quarters, where she collapsed into her empty bed and immediately fell asleep.
Because she had already been asleep at the hour, Queen Minerva awakened in the morning to learn that Alexandria, her beloved cousin, had been driven out of office. She immediately wailed, "This is too much. The Kingdom will never recover from this!" And then, as was necessary, she began the deliberations with her husband and advisors on who to appoint to the caretaker government until Parliament could vote in its own.
Kingdom of the Devenshires
21 March 2165 AST.
48 Valeria, I.Y. 618
It was usually a planned thing to have a joint session of the Senate, Assembly, and the Council of Lords in Devenshire's Parliament, but the Taloran note that had arrived late the previous night had enflamed the entire city as the new of its contents spread. It was now widely known, and spreading across the Kingdom, that the Taloran ship bearing the Butcher of umm-Kashrash had been on the attacked ship, and that the Talorans were now blaming the incident on Devenshire and demanding that Devenshire permit the Talorans to participate in the investigation.
On the street the rumor intensified. It was a plot! The Talorans would use the "investigation" to press for the arrest and trial of key leaders throughout the Kingdom so that the nation would be weakened; alternatively, that the Talorans would if refused use military force to overthrow the government and restore the Old Guard's survivors and slavery.
Now the Parliament met.... as well as it could. The uproar from the public was fierce and the military had taken preliminary precautions to protect the Taloran consul should any of the tumult become violent.
"The Kingdom of the Devenshires has been insulted! Degraded!" The voice of Grand Duchess Evelyn Chang of Ganzhou rang out in the massive structure that, with dividers removed, allowed for a joint session of the Tricameral Parliament of over 20,000 Assemblymen, Senators, and Provincial Lords. She was at the central table between and above the Senate and Assembly, where the thirteen members of the Council of Lords were placed, including Sara Proctor, Grand Duchess of Illustrious. "The Taloran Empire has all but accused the Kingdom of participating in the pirate attack upon the Slashahkimmar! Now they demand that we permit them to lead the investigation into whether any subject of Her Majesty's participated.... as if that would happen!"
"No, the only clear motivation here is a further slight on the Kingdom. The haughty, arrogant Talorans, full of their contempt for the rights of the common people, dedicated to the expansion of their religion and of their power, are targeting us now for their schemes! Already they hold billions of Human beings under their guns! They seek more! Mark my words, they may even now plot to attack us, seizing upon this opportunity! The Kingdom must throw this insult back in their face! We must mobilize our forces and prepare to defend ourselves, and send out the call to our allies to uphold their promises to our defense!"
"This is lunacy!", Greg Rockwell, Grand Duke of Firgrove, called out. "You have let your pain and your hate rob you of your wits!"
"His Highness of Firgrove is out of order!", was the call from the all three bodies, such that Sara Proctor, seated in their midst, could not tell where it originated.
"His Highness is out of order and will sit!" Prime Minister Driscova proclaimed passively, not liking where this was going at all.
Satsified with the situation, Chang made the formal movement that a resolution be adopted and confirmed rejecting the Taloran note, ordering the expulsion of the Taloran consul, the severance of diplomatic relations, and that the government "begin preparations for war" and send notices to the signatories of the Treaty of Westminster requesting their aid. It received uproarious support from a number of quarters. Senator Rahman of Pranton gleefully seconded it.
Driscova now had to allow one person to make a statement, and despite the number of hands, she, as the protocol for joint sessions usually dictated, turned to the Council of Lords, and to Sara Proctor. Sara stood with a rigid, defiant posture and her face a mask of determination. "The Opposition has overstated the issue," she cried out. "The Taloran note is hardly an ultimatum, and there is no military threat or threat of any other placed in it. There is no reason to begin preparations for war! If we do so, we may very well cause the war ourselves, or if none comes, we are the ones who look like fools to the other nations, and the credibility of the Kingdom will suffer a blow no Taloran demand could equal!"
"As we speak the Multiverse watches and waits. To be decided here is the future of Devenshire's democracy. Will it be a strong and noble one, or will we be seen as only a pack of violent, fanatical rabble? I leave that for you to decide."
"I move that the motion be laid upon the table!"
Rockwell seconded Sara, and so Driscova called the vote. It was crushing: seven out of ten Assembly voters and almost the same proportion of Senate voters voted against her motion. The Council of Lords voted yes by a vote of 8 to 5, but in a joint session that meant nothing even if the Senate and Assembly votes hadn't been so overwhelming as to overturn a Lords' veto.
Rahman and Chang exchanged happy grins, and they looked on and expected victory as Driscova swallowed and called on the resolution to be voted.
The Assembly came down on their side again, by a vote of 76%. There was little reason to be found there; the party whips in favor of the resolution had an easy time maintaining party solidarity, while the government coalition simply collapsed in the face of the anger and insult of the Taloran note.
In the Council of Lords, Sara Proctor watched with dismay as the Grand Duke of Canton, Rupert Taguez, voted on the anti-Taloran side for the first time. The House of Lords did vote against the resolution, but only by the bare margin: 7-6. And if she had failed there....
The Senate results flashed up almost immediately after the Council ones. She looked to the raw numbers of yes and no - 335 yeas, 175 nays, and then to the percentage.
65.6%.
Sara let out a breath, forcing herself to calm down. The surprise reverberated as the results came through. The system showed the margin as well.
Two votes. That had seperated Devenshire from ruin. Those two extra senators who voted no, who made it that result, had kept the Senate from achieving the two-thirds (66%) vote necessary to overturn the Council of Lords' narrow veto.
Chang moaned and fell back in her chair. The old revolutionary and slavery-fighter looked as if every bit of energy had come out of her. Members of the Senate and Assembly seemed to be the same way. Exhausted, angry, unbelieving that the Council had again blocked them on the Taloran issue, stubbornly holding them back...
But not Rahman. He was very clearly not defeated, not exhausted. He stood. "Madame Prime Minister, I request to submit a motion."
Stunned and happy, Driscova's political instincts instantly led her to wariness, but she cautiously nodded. "You are recognized, Your Honor."
Rahman now placed into the digital displays of the Devenshiran MPs his proposal. It was the same as before, but it had been removed of everything but the rejection of the Taloran note and a condemnatory remark, protesting Devenshire's innocence and upbraiding the Talorans for daring to imply that Devenshire "had supported this act of piracy and terror and was unwilling or unable to punish any of her wayward subjects who may have participated".
Sara waited for the resolution to be seconded, this time by Jacksontowne's Grand Duke Charles Kinnelroy, and again rose. "Given the emotions running in the Parliament, I move that we for the moment lay the Honorable Senator's resolution on the table for the day, and return to work tomorrow refreshed and better able to consider these matters."
Screams of "No!" and "Vote now!" echoed in the Parliament. Sara's motion was seconded, again by Rockwell, and the vote was put through.
Again the motion to lay on the table failed, though this time only 60% of the Parliament voted against the motion; clearly even the proponents of the harsher resolution thought the day was lost and that a further attempt should be made later.
But even that was rendered moot, for this time there was no squeaker, and Rahman won handily. The Assembly approved it by an even wider margin than before, nearing 80%. Only one hundred Senators opposed it. The Council of Lords' resistance was rendered moot, but Sara, to her surprise, lost there too; now Grand Duke Mustafa Osmanli of New Anatolia and even Grand Duke Robert Farmer of Earth Province voted in favor of the resolution, leaving Sara, Rockwell, Kinnelroy, and just two others in dissent.
The reasons were obvious. The Taloran note betrayed a certain mentality about Devenshire, it showed how the Taloran leadership viewed their nation, and even if it certainly could have been more vicious, the tone was imperious and demanding enough to be an affront to the rebuilding kingdom. This had, in a way, become more important than Laurentii; it was about vigorously upholding their sovereignty without compromise. Sara herself had not supported just bowing to the demand, but rather asking to negotiate it. With Taloran negotiations with the ADN commencing soon, a Devenshiran request for negotiation on the term would certainly not be unacceptable.
But the insult, frankly, was too severe for the Parliament, and they had now replied defiantly.
Worst of all, the night wasn't over. As Rahman accepted congratulations for his success and sat down, a Senator from Jacksontowne asked to be heard. Driscova, who had been on the verge of ending the session, allowed for him to speak.
"Madame Prime Minister, your role in the reconstruction of Devenshire has ensured you a place in the history books. May God bless you with long life, good health, and happiness." The Senator's voice turned a bit harsh now, as he added, "But your policy regarding the Taloran Empire has failed, and failed miserably! You approached them in the name of friendship, and they have responded by treating you and the Kingdom with scorn, accusing us bluntly of aiding piracy and terrorism. It is clear to me that a new direction is called for in our dealings with other powers. So it is with a heavy heart that I ask the Parliament to consider a vote of no-confidence in your Government."
Sara's gut twisted and her heart fell. She watched Driscova somberly make the request for someone to second the motion, and it was clear that a multitude were ready to do so. Here the Council of Lords' power to arrest the tide was unclear. The Royal Constitution, promulgated under the authority of the Treaty of Westminster, provided the Council of Lords with certain powers, and already the Council had passed resolutions during Driscova's prior elections that supported the issue.... but not yet had they been put into a position of denying a vote of no-confidence. Under the Old Kingdom it had happened at times, when the aristocrats thought a measure too "tainted" by the desires of the freemen, or too likely to give succor to the slave populations, but that precedent was hardly applicable.
The vote came and went. The Devenshire Loyalists defected from the Government, and the right portion of the Liberal Democrats followed; the smaller parties in the ruling coalition fractured, and only the Crown-Conservatives voted en bloc against the measure. The other parties split a bit as well, since some of the Opposition parties nevertheless were not anti-Taloran and viewed the measure in those eyes, and in the end it was a 60% vote against Driscova in the Assembly and a 52% vote in the Senate.
Under the constitution these votes were theoretically challengable by the Council of Lords; no decision had been made either way on it. But the mood the nation was clear. Driscova's popularity had not sustained over the years, as the thrill of freedom and rebuilding and the needs of war had given way to post-war recriminations, political infighting, and petty affairs that had sapped at Driscova's popularity; the Taloran note was the hammer blow that would come down on that weakened foundation and destroy the Government. If the Council voted against the no-confidence motion, it would enrage the nation; the Council's constitutional role was as a brake against bad laws, not to determine the running of the government. Preserving Driscova would only enflame the calls to eliminate the Council by the populist parties and politicians.
Nevertheless, Rockwell tried. He ralled Kinnelroy, and Karlotte Van Schaick the Grand Duchess of Van Tromp Province, and they defiantly voted against the no-confidence measure, but Sara swallowed and followed the example that Mustafa Osmanli set as the current Chairman of the Council, voting to abstain from the vote. By 10 to 3 that motion passed; the Council of Lords did not join the vote one way or the other and Driscova's government was no more.
There were tears in Sara's eyes. She liked Driscova as a friend, and considered her a great woman and worthy leader. She felt like she had just committed the gravest betrayal in her life. But there was nothing more to be done.
"Given the vote by the Parliament, I shall tender my resignation to Her Majesty immediately," Driscova announced in a deceptively-strong voice; she acted stoically even as the rejection threatened to bring her legs out from under her. "Due to the late hour, and the need to form a new government, I hereby adjourn the Parliament, and leave it to the Speaker of the Assembly and the President of the Senate to make preparations for naming a new government." Unspoken for the moment, out of fatigue mostly, was that if a new government wasn't formed soon enough, likely only after a few days, then the Parliament would be dissolved and new elections called by the Parliament, the caretaker PM, or the Queen.
The long, winded session was over. The Parliament began to melt out of the building, bound for their dormitories and homes in the city and surrounding countryside. The populace outside would soon learn of the twists and turns of the session, and the ultimate result. Sara joined the Council Lords in departing through their special exit, her shoulders low and her spirit drained. She would soon be back in her private home outside the Royal City, met by an understanding Julio and crying herself to sleep in his arms.
For her part, Alexandria Driscova was taken out by helicopter and returned to the Ministry Offices down the road, where she went to her office and immediately began composing her letter of resignation. When it was done she was taken straight to her suite across the way in the Ministerial Quarters, where she collapsed into her empty bed and immediately fell asleep.
Because she had already been asleep at the hour, Queen Minerva awakened in the morning to learn that Alexandria, her beloved cousin, had been driven out of office. She immediately wailed, "This is too much. The Kingdom will never recover from this!" And then, as was necessary, she began the deliberations with her husband and advisors on who to appoint to the caretaker government until Parliament could vote in its own.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
Washington D.C., Earth
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
21 March 2165 AST.
48 Valeria, I.Y. 618
The Baroness Ishtajhari idhl Ghast was dressed in a very sombre fashion, having learned to realize that humans would respond better to ugly black clothes in serious situations, which they regarded as grave. So other than a green sash, she wore a three-fourth sleeved black blouse which had a modestly plunging neck-line and was collarless. Her hair was as severely held back as ever, and the pantaloons were a very dark crimson red which fit in fairly well, with the silver limited to the strings worked into her belt. Rare for her she carried a briefcase, ears kept upright, as she was cleared through security and went up to the President's executive secretary's desk.
The woman at the desk, a freckled girl with bright blue eyes and sandy-blonde hair, smiled somberly at the Taloran Ambassador, preferring to be nice, and said, "The President will be with you in a moment, Ma'am. Can I get you anything in the mean time?"
"Oh, that's quite alright, dear," Ishtajhari said, her ears relaxing a bit. She considered confessing the truth to the girl but remembered that someone like that could never be trusted not to be a spy as a matter of couse, and so she simply stood, holding the briefcase in front of her for sake of a resting pose, hands crossed, and waited.
There was a buzz from the desk. "Mrs. Higgins, if Ambassador idhl Ghast is present, please send her in."
The girl nodded at idhl Ghast, and as she did the door opened and Rachel MacKenzie walked out. Lean and somewhat short, the Chancellor of the Alliance Council was a brunette who cut a smooth figure, her mind being the sharp part of her. "Madame Ambassador," she said in greeting.
"Chancellor," Ishtajhari answered in mild but polite acknowledgement, and then headed into the President's office. She paused just inside the door, looking to Dale, and offering her greetings: "Your Excellency, thank you for the invitation. I understand that the matter that we're to discuss is a rather urgent one?" They probably both knew exactly what it was, and that the other one knew that both knew, as well.
"Madame Ambassador, thank you for coming," Dale replied. He was alone again, for the moment at least. "I had called the meeting to discuss the content of your government's note to the Kingdom of Devenshire, but events have overtaken me. I trust you've heard the news by now."
"I have," the Baroness answered coolly, taking a few steps forward. She had not been asked to sit, and she did not. "The Devenshirite government overreacted, of course. We had no intentions to force an ultimatum against them and we have not shifted any units into CON-5 militarily. I have the direct Imperial communique available, which quite expressly states the facts of the matter and I've actually been instructed to simply show you a hard-copy."
"I'd like to see it, then," Dale responded. He was certain it was already sitting on a desk somewhere in AID's offices, from Devenshiran sources most likely, but he didn't want to wait for White Eagle and Bronson to decide to show him.
The Baroness dipped her ears, reaching into her briefcase and pulling out an embossed piece of paper in the Taloran Embassy's letterhead. On it was a print showing a jumble of communications and tracking headers showing the course that the message had taken under what transmission servers for diplomatic business, and then, for only the second time, Robert Dale got a message from Saverana II Valeria:
"Is the text of the actual transmission sent to Devenshire available?" Dale asked, the text before him tickling memories in the back of his head.
"Oh, yes." The Baroness glanced down and thumbed through the files until she came out with another one, which was also produced. "I had to have my own people do the translation. Apparently nobody in the ministry was really prepared for any of this," she confessed rather wryly, and set down the other hardcopy:
Dale finished the letter and put it back on the desk. "Your Embassy translated this yourselves? So this isn't necessarily the text sent to Devenshire, and what their Government and Parliament read?"
"I don't know," the Baroness answered honestly. "To some extent translation is an art, and this is how our translators handled the matter. I have the original, and.." And she pulled out another copy in Taloran. "You're quite welcome to let your personnel look over that, as well. We honestly, however, intended only what was in the message by what was translated, though, hmm." Abruptly, looking at the hardcopy in Taloran for the first time seriously, she blanched.
Dale noticed her facial expression on reading it. "I don't suppose it comes off quite the same way as the translation your people made for this copy?" He pointed to the English one on his desk.
"Rather, there is a very serious error. An almost silly one, but, well. There's an 'or' left on the end, essentially, though that's not quite the correct term. It's the alphabetical form of a character in Seal Script implying that something else comes after it. My staff simply dropped it as an error entirely, but if you change the ending to uhl from ahn, it provides an indication of imminence, something impending. I do not know how someone might have translated it if they assumed that was the error, rather than the existence of the word here entirely, where it does not make sense."
"And thus your note to Devenshire goes from being an upset, strongly-worded request to an open-ended demand, not an ultimatum only because you didn't actually finish the 'or else' part," Dale remarked. "I'm multilingual myself, Madame Ambassador, and I'm aware of how mistranslations can happen. A translator decides to make a word here or there sound firmer, and before you know it, your note becomes something right out of the July Ultimatum, just a bit softer."
"Well, the damage is done, but we have no intentions of pursuing the matter further, Your Excellency. We have de-emphasized relations with Devenshire ever since the prior incident, and the Imperial Goverment will suffer the consequences. Due to the approaching arrival of Her Highness the Princess of the Lesser Intuit, I'd prefer to refer the matter of whether or not to go public with this, if you'd agree, to her; as I'm not even sure the Imperial Government is aware of the error at this moment..." As a matter of fact, the Baroness was not even sure that it was an error, but the communication from the Empress had made clear that the Alliance negotiations had such a priority over everything else that acting in such a fashion was acceptable behaviour.
At that, Dale could only nod. "I hope the consequences of this don't become too harsh. I needn't point out, I think, that Prime Minister Driscova was working hard to overcome this Laurentii affair and see the establishment of solid and peaceful ties with your Empire. The end of her government and the circumstances of it has potential to become exceedingly dangerous. But in the meantime, I intend to defer any discussions on this matter and on the Caliphal States to my meetings with Princess Jhayka..."
"That's quite understandable, Your Excellency," Ishtajhari answered, retrieving her briefcase and straightening. "With your permission, as I must be sending some very important communiques home to my government...?"
"Have a good evening, Madame Ambassador," Dale said in reply, prompting their meeting to come to an end.
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
21 March 2165 AST.
48 Valeria, I.Y. 618
The Baroness Ishtajhari idhl Ghast was dressed in a very sombre fashion, having learned to realize that humans would respond better to ugly black clothes in serious situations, which they regarded as grave. So other than a green sash, she wore a three-fourth sleeved black blouse which had a modestly plunging neck-line and was collarless. Her hair was as severely held back as ever, and the pantaloons were a very dark crimson red which fit in fairly well, with the silver limited to the strings worked into her belt. Rare for her she carried a briefcase, ears kept upright, as she was cleared through security and went up to the President's executive secretary's desk.
The woman at the desk, a freckled girl with bright blue eyes and sandy-blonde hair, smiled somberly at the Taloran Ambassador, preferring to be nice, and said, "The President will be with you in a moment, Ma'am. Can I get you anything in the mean time?"
"Oh, that's quite alright, dear," Ishtajhari said, her ears relaxing a bit. She considered confessing the truth to the girl but remembered that someone like that could never be trusted not to be a spy as a matter of couse, and so she simply stood, holding the briefcase in front of her for sake of a resting pose, hands crossed, and waited.
There was a buzz from the desk. "Mrs. Higgins, if Ambassador idhl Ghast is present, please send her in."
The girl nodded at idhl Ghast, and as she did the door opened and Rachel MacKenzie walked out. Lean and somewhat short, the Chancellor of the Alliance Council was a brunette who cut a smooth figure, her mind being the sharp part of her. "Madame Ambassador," she said in greeting.
"Chancellor," Ishtajhari answered in mild but polite acknowledgement, and then headed into the President's office. She paused just inside the door, looking to Dale, and offering her greetings: "Your Excellency, thank you for the invitation. I understand that the matter that we're to discuss is a rather urgent one?" They probably both knew exactly what it was, and that the other one knew that both knew, as well.
"Madame Ambassador, thank you for coming," Dale replied. He was alone again, for the moment at least. "I had called the meeting to discuss the content of your government's note to the Kingdom of Devenshire, but events have overtaken me. I trust you've heard the news by now."
"I have," the Baroness answered coolly, taking a few steps forward. She had not been asked to sit, and she did not. "The Devenshirite government overreacted, of course. We had no intentions to force an ultimatum against them and we have not shifted any units into CON-5 militarily. I have the direct Imperial communique available, which quite expressly states the facts of the matter and I've actually been instructed to simply show you a hard-copy."
"I'd like to see it, then," Dale responded. He was certain it was already sitting on a desk somewhere in AID's offices, from Devenshiran sources most likely, but he didn't want to wait for White Eagle and Bronson to decide to show him.
The Baroness dipped her ears, reaching into her briefcase and pulling out an embossed piece of paper in the Taloran Embassy's letterhead. On it was a print showing a jumble of communications and tracking headers showing the course that the message had taken under what transmission servers for diplomatic business, and then, for only the second time, Robert Dale got a message from Saverana II Valeria:
And below it was repeated in the standard Taloran alphabet, with the chasers to the message showing the electronic conclusion. Ishtajhari looked up significantly to the President after he'd had a minute to read it. "I believe that clarifies things, Your Excellency, as bluntly as we may put it."AMBDR GHAST MOST DISCREET. IMPERIAL HOUSEHOLD DIR. MSG ADN PRES. INFORM NOT ULTIMATUM REPEAT NOT ULTIMATUM TO DEVENSHIRE. SIMPLY DEMAND FOR JOINT INVESTIGATION, STOP. DEMAND REJECT INFORMS RELATIONS V. DEVENSHIRE BUT DOES NOT REPEAT DOES NOT RESULT IN ULTIMATUM OR ACTION ON PART OF IMPERIAL GOV. SHOW CABLE TO ADN PRES. IF BELIEVED MORE DIRECT. SIMULTANEOUSLY SENT ENGL HIGH. IMPERIAL HOUSEHOLD DIR.
"Is the text of the actual transmission sent to Devenshire available?" Dale asked, the text before him tickling memories in the back of his head.
"Oh, yes." The Baroness glanced down and thumbed through the files until she came out with another one, which was also produced. "I had to have my own people do the translation. Apparently nobody in the ministry was really prepared for any of this," she confessed rather wryly, and set down the other hardcopy:
To the Government of Her Majesty Minerva R., from HSM foreign ministry: Due to the extensive ties between Caliphal nationals responsible for the recent attack on one of our diplomatic vessels and elements of Devenshirite society, including those with high connections to your government, we would strongly ask that Her Majesty's Government allow for Imperial investigative services to participate in an investigation into those responsible for the act who may be on Devenshirite territory. Because we are deeply concerned of the level at which this these conspirators may have ties, and because of past instability in Her Majesty's realms related to similiar groups and aimed at persons of interest to HSM Government, we must insist that for any investigation to be considered impartial it must contain Imperial elements.
Dale finished the letter and put it back on the desk. "Your Embassy translated this yourselves? So this isn't necessarily the text sent to Devenshire, and what their Government and Parliament read?"
"I don't know," the Baroness answered honestly. "To some extent translation is an art, and this is how our translators handled the matter. I have the original, and.." And she pulled out another copy in Taloran. "You're quite welcome to let your personnel look over that, as well. We honestly, however, intended only what was in the message by what was translated, though, hmm." Abruptly, looking at the hardcopy in Taloran for the first time seriously, she blanched.
Dale noticed her facial expression on reading it. "I don't suppose it comes off quite the same way as the translation your people made for this copy?" He pointed to the English one on his desk.
"Rather, there is a very serious error. An almost silly one, but, well. There's an 'or' left on the end, essentially, though that's not quite the correct term. It's the alphabetical form of a character in Seal Script implying that something else comes after it. My staff simply dropped it as an error entirely, but if you change the ending to uhl from ahn, it provides an indication of imminence, something impending. I do not know how someone might have translated it if they assumed that was the error, rather than the existence of the word here entirely, where it does not make sense."
"And thus your note to Devenshire goes from being an upset, strongly-worded request to an open-ended demand, not an ultimatum only because you didn't actually finish the 'or else' part," Dale remarked. "I'm multilingual myself, Madame Ambassador, and I'm aware of how mistranslations can happen. A translator decides to make a word here or there sound firmer, and before you know it, your note becomes something right out of the July Ultimatum, just a bit softer."
"Well, the damage is done, but we have no intentions of pursuing the matter further, Your Excellency. We have de-emphasized relations with Devenshire ever since the prior incident, and the Imperial Goverment will suffer the consequences. Due to the approaching arrival of Her Highness the Princess of the Lesser Intuit, I'd prefer to refer the matter of whether or not to go public with this, if you'd agree, to her; as I'm not even sure the Imperial Government is aware of the error at this moment..." As a matter of fact, the Baroness was not even sure that it was an error, but the communication from the Empress had made clear that the Alliance negotiations had such a priority over everything else that acting in such a fashion was acceptable behaviour.
At that, Dale could only nod. "I hope the consequences of this don't become too harsh. I needn't point out, I think, that Prime Minister Driscova was working hard to overcome this Laurentii affair and see the establishment of solid and peaceful ties with your Empire. The end of her government and the circumstances of it has potential to become exceedingly dangerous. But in the meantime, I intend to defer any discussions on this matter and on the Caliphal States to my meetings with Princess Jhayka..."
"That's quite understandable, Your Excellency," Ishtajhari answered, retrieving her briefcase and straightening. "With your permission, as I must be sending some very important communiques home to my government...?"
"Have a good evening, Madame Ambassador," Dale said in reply, prompting their meeting to come to an end.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
Meiersworld Fleet Station, In Lunar Orbit
Meiersworld System, Alliance Colonial Zone
Universe Designate CON-5
22 March 2165 AST.
49 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
Drishalras Semitat Retgariu, Princess itl Fisznal, was dressed modestly in the full dress whites of the Taloran Starfleet, including the rather ludicrous bronze globe atop the high-pickelhaube like helmet which concealed her ears. It had been a recent innovation, and was very unpopular, with most of the senior officers preferring to wear the older fore-and-aft hats which left their ears free, and complained it was to much like Army helmets. But it seemed suitable dress for entertaining humans. She'd selected the officers of the Graf von Spee because her captain was seniormost of those on station, and due for promotion to Line Captain soon. But then she'd realized it had a special significance for Danielle, as her old ship, and so Jhayka, who was off to a formal dinner fronted by the Governor of Meiersworld, had encouraged Danielle to remain behind; the Captain of the Von Spee was an old comrade, as were two other members of the mess. The rest of the faces were new.
Danielle was formally a retired officer of the Stellar Navy and thus entitled, on such occasions, to wear a uniform, and so she did, formal dress white like her colleagues with branch color along the cuffs and collar and her Commander rate insignia on the collar as well. Fayza was dressed similarly but unlike Dani was wearing the rate insignia of a full Captain, this due to her symbolic promotion before she was retired.
The current CO of the Maximillian von Spee was Captain Leonard Castle, a broad-shouldered, dark-haired man of commanding presence. He had been a Commander and Executive Officer during Dani's stay, and she was happy to hear he was about to move up to Line Captain rate and a battle division command. She also recognized his XO, Commander Bethany Gould, a blonde-haired, lean-figured woman who had been an officer of the watch during Dani's tour. Finally there was the one closest to her, Lieutenant Commander Lance Oglethorpe, the ship's Chief Engineer, who had been one of her peers as an Engineer's Mate during her tour. The bearded, bearish man was a softie at heart, and Dani had enjoyed giving him a hug when he arrived before they went on to swapping engineer stories during the dinner.
The dinner laid out had been Drishalras' best attempt to arrange at human cuisine, which was not bad, considering the number of humans on the ship. It had been prepared, as a matter of fact, by Xenia's chief chef, and in an unsurprising behaviour from a Romanov scion, was quite German in origin, heavy on sausage and picked foods and dark, hearty bread. Beer was of course served, in a welcome contrast from the Alliance's dry mess. In addition to Drishalras, her korana, and Fayza, there were present Commander Alarni, the ship's executive officer, Commander Seviplati, the Chief Medical Officer, Commander Rikash, overall damage control chief, Lieutenant Commander Erisani, chief engineer, Lieutenant Commander Wilusa, Chief Gunnery Officer, and L.C.s Naviri and Drikani, Astrogation and chief Commissar, respectively. There was also Brigadier Trikanash, commander of the Marine Complement, and Wing Colonel Colleen Winters, the commanding officer of the Slashahkimmar's fighter complement and one of three humans aboard the ship, all women in the Starfighter Corps which was otherwise overwhelmingly made up of Taloran males. To round out the ship's officers ranking enough to be invited were Lieutenant Commanders Rihkani and Mikela, the third and fourth officers of the watch respectively; everyone was at the table, therefore, who held the rank of lieutenant commander or higher, since most of the supporting doctors were clerics rather than officers (speaking of which, Ilavna had gone with Jhayka). Drishalras and Danielle sat together at the head of the table with Captain Castle in the place of honour to their right, and servants circulated ubiqtuitously while the ship's band played lightly in the background. "Captain Castle, I imagine you understand that I'm somewhat distracted by recent events, but there was a point of curiousity I wanted to raise. Why are division officers otherwise nonetheless assigned to command very large ships like your centrepiece fleet carriers?"
Castle wasted little time in replying. "It's due to the prestige and the complexity of commanding a supercarrier, Captain Retgariu. For all intents and purposes a CVS skipper has to coordinate the activity of hundreds of top-rate starfighters and other light craft, thousands of crewmen, as well as ensure the operation of the immediate escorting division of the carrier."
"Just what are your normal fighter compliments, Captain? I assume you're probably aware that currently the Slashahkimmar is functioning in some respects like a carrier as an experimental matter, due to the capability to modular pods. So while I didn't expect it, I've rather had to become an expert on carrier operations by default," she added with a slight smile, having learned some of human expressions from her close experience with Danielle and Fayza, among others.
Castle looked to another officer, the von Spee's astronavigator. The dusky-skinned Cancun native, Lt. Marco Siguez, replied, "The Captain has been a dreadnought man his entire career. I, on the other hand, have served on carriers before. The difference in complement varies by the tonnage of the carrier and its purpose. Strategic Carriers, the 'super carriers', have over twelve hundred craft, most of them combat starfighters. Smaller fleet carriers have over six hundred craft, battle carriers have half that but a larger complement of combat fighters to non-combat craft due to their support roles, and then there are the jeep carriers. Escort carriers, such as the one that launched those bombers that aided you, carry no more than forty craft with as little as twenty combat spacecraft. Their roles are more varied, as you can imagine, and their primary intent has been for work in anti-piracy and anti-stealth craft roles."
Fayza chuckled with good humor. "There has always been a rivalry between the 'Dreadnought' school and the 'Carrier' school in the Alliance Navy. Usually an officer, once he or she gets to a command-level rank, starts specializing in either. Upon which they were usually converted to their school, and want the fleet expanded in their favor at the other's expense."
"We have a much smaller carrier force, as you must be aware of, only about five hundred of all types in commission, the majority of those fleet carriers, but our fighters are larger and for the size of the ship we focus more on protection and defensive firepower at the expense of compliment. I suppose the ultimate example of that philosophy is how the Slashahkimmar is currently equipped, but that's strictly experimental. But it also means that we don't have so much of a carrier specialization available, with just very small and large carriers around, and not many of the former." She took a sip from her wine glass. "Also, of course, as Wing Colonel Winters will be proud to tell you," she gestured toward the human in Taloran dress with a dip of her ears. "Our starfighters are handled by a separate service."
"That arrangement sounds difficult," Gould said from her place at the table. "Though there are those who joke that the Stellar Navy is actually two services; the Carrier fleet and the Dreadnought fleet." There were snickers at the table for that. "We do have a similar arrangement in the Gator Navy carriers... that is, our planetary assault carriers, which don't carry Stellar Navy starfighters, but Marine Corps aerospace fighters."
"We say it's the boys versus the girls," Colleen answered from her seat at the table, an amused smirk on her face. Like most humans integrated into Taloran society, her hair went down to the small of her back, she had it died a vibrant blue, and wore red contacts to better fit in. On the other hand, she was only 5'2", and that led to a contrast even with the Taloran males at the table. "Namely, the Starfighter Corps is the boys, myself included. Sort of. Since our commanders--myself included--all come up from actually having piloted fighters, we have to meet reqs for that. And g-force tolerances for Taloran females are.. Rather dramatically less than for the boys. Jikari can't even join period, and that means human girls like me are rather popular in the Starfighter Corps, but the vast majority of it is a guy's field."
There were some slight chuckles. Lance waited for them to end before asking, "Are you Earth-born or Colony? I've heard that in your universe there's a stronger distinction there."
"I'm a Spacenoid, Commander," Colleen answered with a slight smile. "Which means, neither. Not a terran goverment or their directly held colonies, nor the independent Colonial Confederacy. Rather, I'm from Orbital Side Six, the Orientale Republic--named after the Mare Orientale on the Moon--which is a nation entirely of orbital habitats. There's about eighty bi-coupled pairs these days with a total population of almost two billion. We were the colonists, I'll confess, who revolted against the Fascist EarthGov and prompted the Taloran intervention. I was born thirty years later, and, well, our own starfighter corps isn't that large, and the Imperial Corps paid better. I've been in the service for almost thirty years now."
"I was born on Clarington Station myself," Lance replied. "Four hundred thousand people on Clarington, servicing the asteroid and lunar mines in that solar system and six others. But I think you'll find that among our people, 'Colonial' is a rough term for non-Earthers, whether they were born in space or on another planet or moon."
"That said, we don't have nearly the number of orbital habitats of the Empire," Fayza added. "We tend to settle planets and live on soil. I guess when there's so much open land planetside, less people tend to want to live in space habitats."
"We, Miss al-Bakar?" The speaker was the Chief Gunnery Officer on the Von Spee, Lieutenant Commander Alexia Collins. "I thought you were with them now? A Countess or some such."
Dani looked on the brown-haired woman intently, not liking the way she'd spoken or how she was looking at both Fay and her. Fay smiled softly. "I'm the Countess of Uralstia on Eleutheria, a part of the Principality of the Lesser Intuit.... which is kind of like the Taloran version of an Alliance member nation." Her smile slipped just a bit. "But I was born in the United States, I grew up an American, and in my heart I'll always be an American."
"Not many Americans I know get to be called 'Countess'."
Collins' combatitiveness brought unneeded tension to the entire table... until Lance "Oggie", as Dani knew him, broke the ice - God bless him, Dani thought to herself at that - by looking at her and asking, "Dani, Commander Erisani, how does she run anyway? The Slashahkimmar? I hear you have a dual-superluminal drive system."
"I believe Her Highness knows the human equivalents far better than myself," Erisani began, ears showing some relief herself; all had picked up on the vein of the conservation. "But yes, we use a dual-superluminal system.. Sort of. If we want to be technical, Ktashi drives do not precisely engage in superluminal activity but rather submerge the ship in very powerful gravito-magnetic fields where the speed of light is effectively around fifty-three point four times higher. They require a special 'cruising impeller' to our drives to operate. It was actually the power feeds for this device which was damaged to our recent engagement. I'd add a compliment here to the Zohan techs who aided us in repairing it as quickly as they did; otherwise things might have gotten.. Difficult. As for the other drive, which is our primary faster than light travel method for strategic rather than tactical purposes, it's a semi-instantaneous transmission drive named after the inventor, Dristania. They're capable of a thirty lightyear simultaneous jump every one and a half Taloran hours--a bit less than two hours, eight minutes by your time-keeping, which is pretty much a fleet standard. I understand a theoretician in Terran history divined the principles behind the first of these drives, and the second one, though in a far more primitive form, was the main system for one of the universes in which the Alliance has territory. But on these specific matters, Danielle would know more."
"It's a dual system, a Heim and an advanced Kearny-Fuchida combo," Dani replied for Erisani, glad she had rolled with the conversation and defused the situation.
"That's great. Dani, are they as finicky as Cochrane drives can be?"
"Well.... sometimes, I think," Dani replied. "My experience with them is more limited to the manuals and Erisani's tours on her free time. I'm sure if we had the time and weren't leaving tomorrow, you could tour the ship as well."
"Oh, that's fine, I understand you're having to get to Washington soon. But... you have Zohan you say?" Lance chuckled. "I've only seen a couple at times, but their reputation preceeds them. I wouldn't mind seeing some of their legendary engineering skill in action."
"Oh, they're great. We could've really used a few at Zimmer," Dani laughed.
"I bet! Commander Keller might've been a good officer and a clever engineer, but he couldn't do DC to save his life..."
"It must be interesting for you to meet each other again, having been comrades in action before," Drishalras observed rather innocently. "I think my korana is much pleased to be among old friends after a long journey. She's gotten rather cooped up here. We don't have any holo-emitters or such things for crew recreation, well, especially considering the size of our compliments." That part, though, was probably not something Dani would have preferred her to say, but to Drishalras it didn't bear remarking upon.
"Holodecks? That's a Starfleet toy," Gould said dismissively. "Dani, you haven't been feeding her stories, have you?"
"No, but I think Drish is referring to some of the civilian liners that do have holodecks," Dani replied defensively. She winced a little; Drish hadn't meant anything by it, but Starfleet practices had become known well enough in the Stellar Navy and were usually scorned or ridiculed.
"How big is your crew anyway?" Castle asked Drish.
"With Marines--a brigade--and the onboard starfighter compliment, we're currently maxed out at fourty-one thousand and twenty-seven enlisted personnel and two thousand, seventeen officers, commissioned and warrant, Captain," Drishalras answered, and then added a moment later: "And, yes, I was thinking of a diplomatic courier like the one we'd originally intended to send, my apologies." Her mouth scrunched a bit and her ears dipped forward. "Of course, that meant the misfortune of the attack fell upon us, that I requested permission to take my ship for the mission, but, I suppose, it also made us survive." She was clearly thinking about the deaths in her crew by realizing that there were now slots open in that list of the crew, the fourty-one dead.
Dani and Fay watched without surprise as jaws across the table dropped. "Captain Retgariu, your ship has over ten times the complement of mine," Castle remarked. "How can you afford the manpower costs?"
Oh no, here we go...
"Well, we have the conscription maritime, which consists of a mandatory service levy for all civilian mariners in the Empire. They know what they're getting into by becoming civilian mariners, of course; it makes sure that all of the commercial fleet has military training, also, for the majority of the crewers, which makes it easier to initiate convoying schemes in wartime and so on. The service term is about three and one-fifth human years, or one Taloran year. Other than that we also get an extensive number of volunteers, as our society is highly agricultural and younger children who don't stand to inheirit will often seek out the Starfleet as the premier Imperial service with the best serving conditions, and volunteer as a definitive career and way to contribute to their familial fortunes. I am not really different than that category, frankly; I'm the youngest of three daughters and a son in my family, and that makes me mercifully, may Farzbardor protect my family to keep it so, distant from the throne of Rasilan. A military career was more or less my only option in life, and we're naturally a maritime people."
Dani saw the looks on her former peers' faces and despaired. Not a single one seemed to take the news very well, though most were too diplomatic and mannered to say something.
Most, of course, save for Commander Collins. "You conscript civilian mariners?" she said increduously. "That's simply outrageous. The very idea, I mean, forcing military discipline on a civilian shipman is one thing I'd never want to have to do, and the very idea smacks of impressment, which was outdated centuries ago... and which caused America to go to war with England again at one point."
"A lot of our enlistees are also younger people from various backgrounds," remarked Dani. "City kids, suburban kids, rural, all sorts of walks of life. They sign on for four years of active service and forty years in the reserves, minimum, though we have a pretty good retention rate, at least up to the war when there was plenty of opportunity for advancement."
"There are also, of course, the transfers from national navies looking for a better chance of promotion or better pay, as well as the war-time transfers, enlistees, and drafted personnel in those nations that practice conscription or selective service." After adding that note, Gould looked warily at Collins.
"If they do not wish to do military service, they can find a job in another field," Drishalras remarked with a slight frown, a hand for a moment going to finger her helmet in her lap. "It is similar to impressment, but of couse trying it on a foreign country's nationals would be a gross act of war, so I understand why you fought over it. But we must keep the Starfleet manned, and automation is not preferable to individuals with neural interfaces, nor in controlling repair systems against the number of damage control personnel we can throw into any compartment. And of couse, we do get plenty from the cities. Most businesses are inheirited like farms, after all, so the tendency of younger children to seek military service is universal. Indeed, rare is the eldest child in the military, unless of the nobility, and heirs are never able to make much of career out of it. For that matter, our own conscription systems for the Army only involve an extremely small portion of the population, and a smaller portion still for the Imperial Army," she concluded. "By us, I mean the Great Kingdom of Rasilan, and of course my family has our own military services there. I have not heard much complaint about the system in my time, and I've watched my father handle the personal complaints of many subjects before in my life, as that's an important part of the duty of our noble caste."
All Drishalras' words seemed to do was further stoke Collins' clearly growing displeasure. Castle chuckled a little. "Honestly, Captain, I must commend you. Trying to deal with three thousand enlisted crew and one hundred and eighty-six officers can be annoyance enough. Over forty-seven thousand personnel is more akin to a small city. I don't envy you."
A few of the Taloran officers exchanged looks at that, thinking of all the trouble that the scratch crew had caused them, including in responding to the recent battle. Drishalras didn't mention the matter, however, and just nodded. "It can be daunting, initially, but I have multiple servants and secretaries to deal with essentially all other functions to," a light chuckle, "devote my entire existence to directing the ship without distractions. And the Marine and Starfighter compliments are more or less autonomous in administration and discipline."
"We practice something similar on our carriers," Siguez said, speaking up again. "Usually the pilots and their crews come under a Wing Command Officer who answers only to the CO, and who in turn has a Flight Control Officer who oversees hanger and launch deck operations. Marines are semi-autonomous as well, but we usually don't have large enough contingents on our ships to warrant an officer higher than a Marine Captain."
"Yes, that is a rather drastic difference, seeing as a Starfleet Marine brigade has more than eight thousand personnel," Brigiader Trikanash interjected. "With the fourty-five hundred under Wing Colonel Winters, that leaves the actual Starfleet crew as only about thirty thousand in all."
"Well, I can imagine that many Marines is at least partially necessary given the crew size," Gould replied, "but what do you do with them all? Our Marines are for security purposes primarily, to use in emergencies for boarding ships, sending expeditionary detachments, and in the unlikely event that the ship is boarded."
"Well, they're a raiding asset, since battlecruisers are often on distant deployment," Drishalras spoke up. "Also for first response to local situations. It's desireable to have a very large force which can quickly deal with minor incidents on the frontier. But they are trained for damage control on the ship and so on, and security on other vessels, so one important function is to serve as the security escorts for prize crews. Take ten merchant vessels and put a company on each to guard the detained crew and support the naval steering party, which might be as little as twenty or men, and you've used up two-thousand five hundred marines, and have to replace two hundred bodies in the ship's crew. They're an all-purpose fire brigade for our operations, really."
"Ah. And does your frontier work require much in the way of seizing merchant vessels, for smuggling reasons I presume?", Castle asked. "The Stellar Navy has only recently, since the war, begun to construct actual battlecruisers for just such duties on the frontier, and for the interim in our occupation zones in the Gamma Quadrant and here in CON-5."
Drishalras' answer to Captain Castle's comment brought in a conversation about border policy and expansionism, and, though sometimes delicately and uncomfortably, the conversation neverless continued long into the night, after even dinner had been served, until enough alcohol had been consumed to convince all of the wisdom of retiring for the eve.
Meiersworld System, Alliance Colonial Zone
Universe Designate CON-5
22 March 2165 AST.
49 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
Drishalras Semitat Retgariu, Princess itl Fisznal, was dressed modestly in the full dress whites of the Taloran Starfleet, including the rather ludicrous bronze globe atop the high-pickelhaube like helmet which concealed her ears. It had been a recent innovation, and was very unpopular, with most of the senior officers preferring to wear the older fore-and-aft hats which left their ears free, and complained it was to much like Army helmets. But it seemed suitable dress for entertaining humans. She'd selected the officers of the Graf von Spee because her captain was seniormost of those on station, and due for promotion to Line Captain soon. But then she'd realized it had a special significance for Danielle, as her old ship, and so Jhayka, who was off to a formal dinner fronted by the Governor of Meiersworld, had encouraged Danielle to remain behind; the Captain of the Von Spee was an old comrade, as were two other members of the mess. The rest of the faces were new.
Danielle was formally a retired officer of the Stellar Navy and thus entitled, on such occasions, to wear a uniform, and so she did, formal dress white like her colleagues with branch color along the cuffs and collar and her Commander rate insignia on the collar as well. Fayza was dressed similarly but unlike Dani was wearing the rate insignia of a full Captain, this due to her symbolic promotion before she was retired.
The current CO of the Maximillian von Spee was Captain Leonard Castle, a broad-shouldered, dark-haired man of commanding presence. He had been a Commander and Executive Officer during Dani's stay, and she was happy to hear he was about to move up to Line Captain rate and a battle division command. She also recognized his XO, Commander Bethany Gould, a blonde-haired, lean-figured woman who had been an officer of the watch during Dani's tour. Finally there was the one closest to her, Lieutenant Commander Lance Oglethorpe, the ship's Chief Engineer, who had been one of her peers as an Engineer's Mate during her tour. The bearded, bearish man was a softie at heart, and Dani had enjoyed giving him a hug when he arrived before they went on to swapping engineer stories during the dinner.
The dinner laid out had been Drishalras' best attempt to arrange at human cuisine, which was not bad, considering the number of humans on the ship. It had been prepared, as a matter of fact, by Xenia's chief chef, and in an unsurprising behaviour from a Romanov scion, was quite German in origin, heavy on sausage and picked foods and dark, hearty bread. Beer was of course served, in a welcome contrast from the Alliance's dry mess. In addition to Drishalras, her korana, and Fayza, there were present Commander Alarni, the ship's executive officer, Commander Seviplati, the Chief Medical Officer, Commander Rikash, overall damage control chief, Lieutenant Commander Erisani, chief engineer, Lieutenant Commander Wilusa, Chief Gunnery Officer, and L.C.s Naviri and Drikani, Astrogation and chief Commissar, respectively. There was also Brigadier Trikanash, commander of the Marine Complement, and Wing Colonel Colleen Winters, the commanding officer of the Slashahkimmar's fighter complement and one of three humans aboard the ship, all women in the Starfighter Corps which was otherwise overwhelmingly made up of Taloran males. To round out the ship's officers ranking enough to be invited were Lieutenant Commanders Rihkani and Mikela, the third and fourth officers of the watch respectively; everyone was at the table, therefore, who held the rank of lieutenant commander or higher, since most of the supporting doctors were clerics rather than officers (speaking of which, Ilavna had gone with Jhayka). Drishalras and Danielle sat together at the head of the table with Captain Castle in the place of honour to their right, and servants circulated ubiqtuitously while the ship's band played lightly in the background. "Captain Castle, I imagine you understand that I'm somewhat distracted by recent events, but there was a point of curiousity I wanted to raise. Why are division officers otherwise nonetheless assigned to command very large ships like your centrepiece fleet carriers?"
Castle wasted little time in replying. "It's due to the prestige and the complexity of commanding a supercarrier, Captain Retgariu. For all intents and purposes a CVS skipper has to coordinate the activity of hundreds of top-rate starfighters and other light craft, thousands of crewmen, as well as ensure the operation of the immediate escorting division of the carrier."
"Just what are your normal fighter compliments, Captain? I assume you're probably aware that currently the Slashahkimmar is functioning in some respects like a carrier as an experimental matter, due to the capability to modular pods. So while I didn't expect it, I've rather had to become an expert on carrier operations by default," she added with a slight smile, having learned some of human expressions from her close experience with Danielle and Fayza, among others.
Castle looked to another officer, the von Spee's astronavigator. The dusky-skinned Cancun native, Lt. Marco Siguez, replied, "The Captain has been a dreadnought man his entire career. I, on the other hand, have served on carriers before. The difference in complement varies by the tonnage of the carrier and its purpose. Strategic Carriers, the 'super carriers', have over twelve hundred craft, most of them combat starfighters. Smaller fleet carriers have over six hundred craft, battle carriers have half that but a larger complement of combat fighters to non-combat craft due to their support roles, and then there are the jeep carriers. Escort carriers, such as the one that launched those bombers that aided you, carry no more than forty craft with as little as twenty combat spacecraft. Their roles are more varied, as you can imagine, and their primary intent has been for work in anti-piracy and anti-stealth craft roles."
Fayza chuckled with good humor. "There has always been a rivalry between the 'Dreadnought' school and the 'Carrier' school in the Alliance Navy. Usually an officer, once he or she gets to a command-level rank, starts specializing in either. Upon which they were usually converted to their school, and want the fleet expanded in their favor at the other's expense."
"We have a much smaller carrier force, as you must be aware of, only about five hundred of all types in commission, the majority of those fleet carriers, but our fighters are larger and for the size of the ship we focus more on protection and defensive firepower at the expense of compliment. I suppose the ultimate example of that philosophy is how the Slashahkimmar is currently equipped, but that's strictly experimental. But it also means that we don't have so much of a carrier specialization available, with just very small and large carriers around, and not many of the former." She took a sip from her wine glass. "Also, of course, as Wing Colonel Winters will be proud to tell you," she gestured toward the human in Taloran dress with a dip of her ears. "Our starfighters are handled by a separate service."
"That arrangement sounds difficult," Gould said from her place at the table. "Though there are those who joke that the Stellar Navy is actually two services; the Carrier fleet and the Dreadnought fleet." There were snickers at the table for that. "We do have a similar arrangement in the Gator Navy carriers... that is, our planetary assault carriers, which don't carry Stellar Navy starfighters, but Marine Corps aerospace fighters."
"We say it's the boys versus the girls," Colleen answered from her seat at the table, an amused smirk on her face. Like most humans integrated into Taloran society, her hair went down to the small of her back, she had it died a vibrant blue, and wore red contacts to better fit in. On the other hand, she was only 5'2", and that led to a contrast even with the Taloran males at the table. "Namely, the Starfighter Corps is the boys, myself included. Sort of. Since our commanders--myself included--all come up from actually having piloted fighters, we have to meet reqs for that. And g-force tolerances for Taloran females are.. Rather dramatically less than for the boys. Jikari can't even join period, and that means human girls like me are rather popular in the Starfighter Corps, but the vast majority of it is a guy's field."
There were some slight chuckles. Lance waited for them to end before asking, "Are you Earth-born or Colony? I've heard that in your universe there's a stronger distinction there."
"I'm a Spacenoid, Commander," Colleen answered with a slight smile. "Which means, neither. Not a terran goverment or their directly held colonies, nor the independent Colonial Confederacy. Rather, I'm from Orbital Side Six, the Orientale Republic--named after the Mare Orientale on the Moon--which is a nation entirely of orbital habitats. There's about eighty bi-coupled pairs these days with a total population of almost two billion. We were the colonists, I'll confess, who revolted against the Fascist EarthGov and prompted the Taloran intervention. I was born thirty years later, and, well, our own starfighter corps isn't that large, and the Imperial Corps paid better. I've been in the service for almost thirty years now."
"I was born on Clarington Station myself," Lance replied. "Four hundred thousand people on Clarington, servicing the asteroid and lunar mines in that solar system and six others. But I think you'll find that among our people, 'Colonial' is a rough term for non-Earthers, whether they were born in space or on another planet or moon."
"That said, we don't have nearly the number of orbital habitats of the Empire," Fayza added. "We tend to settle planets and live on soil. I guess when there's so much open land planetside, less people tend to want to live in space habitats."
"We, Miss al-Bakar?" The speaker was the Chief Gunnery Officer on the Von Spee, Lieutenant Commander Alexia Collins. "I thought you were with them now? A Countess or some such."
Dani looked on the brown-haired woman intently, not liking the way she'd spoken or how she was looking at both Fay and her. Fay smiled softly. "I'm the Countess of Uralstia on Eleutheria, a part of the Principality of the Lesser Intuit.... which is kind of like the Taloran version of an Alliance member nation." Her smile slipped just a bit. "But I was born in the United States, I grew up an American, and in my heart I'll always be an American."
"Not many Americans I know get to be called 'Countess'."
Collins' combatitiveness brought unneeded tension to the entire table... until Lance "Oggie", as Dani knew him, broke the ice - God bless him, Dani thought to herself at that - by looking at her and asking, "Dani, Commander Erisani, how does she run anyway? The Slashahkimmar? I hear you have a dual-superluminal drive system."
"I believe Her Highness knows the human equivalents far better than myself," Erisani began, ears showing some relief herself; all had picked up on the vein of the conservation. "But yes, we use a dual-superluminal system.. Sort of. If we want to be technical, Ktashi drives do not precisely engage in superluminal activity but rather submerge the ship in very powerful gravito-magnetic fields where the speed of light is effectively around fifty-three point four times higher. They require a special 'cruising impeller' to our drives to operate. It was actually the power feeds for this device which was damaged to our recent engagement. I'd add a compliment here to the Zohan techs who aided us in repairing it as quickly as they did; otherwise things might have gotten.. Difficult. As for the other drive, which is our primary faster than light travel method for strategic rather than tactical purposes, it's a semi-instantaneous transmission drive named after the inventor, Dristania. They're capable of a thirty lightyear simultaneous jump every one and a half Taloran hours--a bit less than two hours, eight minutes by your time-keeping, which is pretty much a fleet standard. I understand a theoretician in Terran history divined the principles behind the first of these drives, and the second one, though in a far more primitive form, was the main system for one of the universes in which the Alliance has territory. But on these specific matters, Danielle would know more."
"It's a dual system, a Heim and an advanced Kearny-Fuchida combo," Dani replied for Erisani, glad she had rolled with the conversation and defused the situation.
"That's great. Dani, are they as finicky as Cochrane drives can be?"
"Well.... sometimes, I think," Dani replied. "My experience with them is more limited to the manuals and Erisani's tours on her free time. I'm sure if we had the time and weren't leaving tomorrow, you could tour the ship as well."
"Oh, that's fine, I understand you're having to get to Washington soon. But... you have Zohan you say?" Lance chuckled. "I've only seen a couple at times, but their reputation preceeds them. I wouldn't mind seeing some of their legendary engineering skill in action."
"Oh, they're great. We could've really used a few at Zimmer," Dani laughed.
"I bet! Commander Keller might've been a good officer and a clever engineer, but he couldn't do DC to save his life..."
"It must be interesting for you to meet each other again, having been comrades in action before," Drishalras observed rather innocently. "I think my korana is much pleased to be among old friends after a long journey. She's gotten rather cooped up here. We don't have any holo-emitters or such things for crew recreation, well, especially considering the size of our compliments." That part, though, was probably not something Dani would have preferred her to say, but to Drishalras it didn't bear remarking upon.
"Holodecks? That's a Starfleet toy," Gould said dismissively. "Dani, you haven't been feeding her stories, have you?"
"No, but I think Drish is referring to some of the civilian liners that do have holodecks," Dani replied defensively. She winced a little; Drish hadn't meant anything by it, but Starfleet practices had become known well enough in the Stellar Navy and were usually scorned or ridiculed.
"How big is your crew anyway?" Castle asked Drish.
"With Marines--a brigade--and the onboard starfighter compliment, we're currently maxed out at fourty-one thousand and twenty-seven enlisted personnel and two thousand, seventeen officers, commissioned and warrant, Captain," Drishalras answered, and then added a moment later: "And, yes, I was thinking of a diplomatic courier like the one we'd originally intended to send, my apologies." Her mouth scrunched a bit and her ears dipped forward. "Of course, that meant the misfortune of the attack fell upon us, that I requested permission to take my ship for the mission, but, I suppose, it also made us survive." She was clearly thinking about the deaths in her crew by realizing that there were now slots open in that list of the crew, the fourty-one dead.
Dani and Fay watched without surprise as jaws across the table dropped. "Captain Retgariu, your ship has over ten times the complement of mine," Castle remarked. "How can you afford the manpower costs?"
Oh no, here we go...
"Well, we have the conscription maritime, which consists of a mandatory service levy for all civilian mariners in the Empire. They know what they're getting into by becoming civilian mariners, of course; it makes sure that all of the commercial fleet has military training, also, for the majority of the crewers, which makes it easier to initiate convoying schemes in wartime and so on. The service term is about three and one-fifth human years, or one Taloran year. Other than that we also get an extensive number of volunteers, as our society is highly agricultural and younger children who don't stand to inheirit will often seek out the Starfleet as the premier Imperial service with the best serving conditions, and volunteer as a definitive career and way to contribute to their familial fortunes. I am not really different than that category, frankly; I'm the youngest of three daughters and a son in my family, and that makes me mercifully, may Farzbardor protect my family to keep it so, distant from the throne of Rasilan. A military career was more or less my only option in life, and we're naturally a maritime people."
Dani saw the looks on her former peers' faces and despaired. Not a single one seemed to take the news very well, though most were too diplomatic and mannered to say something.
Most, of course, save for Commander Collins. "You conscript civilian mariners?" she said increduously. "That's simply outrageous. The very idea, I mean, forcing military discipline on a civilian shipman is one thing I'd never want to have to do, and the very idea smacks of impressment, which was outdated centuries ago... and which caused America to go to war with England again at one point."
"A lot of our enlistees are also younger people from various backgrounds," remarked Dani. "City kids, suburban kids, rural, all sorts of walks of life. They sign on for four years of active service and forty years in the reserves, minimum, though we have a pretty good retention rate, at least up to the war when there was plenty of opportunity for advancement."
"There are also, of course, the transfers from national navies looking for a better chance of promotion or better pay, as well as the war-time transfers, enlistees, and drafted personnel in those nations that practice conscription or selective service." After adding that note, Gould looked warily at Collins.
"If they do not wish to do military service, they can find a job in another field," Drishalras remarked with a slight frown, a hand for a moment going to finger her helmet in her lap. "It is similar to impressment, but of couse trying it on a foreign country's nationals would be a gross act of war, so I understand why you fought over it. But we must keep the Starfleet manned, and automation is not preferable to individuals with neural interfaces, nor in controlling repair systems against the number of damage control personnel we can throw into any compartment. And of couse, we do get plenty from the cities. Most businesses are inheirited like farms, after all, so the tendency of younger children to seek military service is universal. Indeed, rare is the eldest child in the military, unless of the nobility, and heirs are never able to make much of career out of it. For that matter, our own conscription systems for the Army only involve an extremely small portion of the population, and a smaller portion still for the Imperial Army," she concluded. "By us, I mean the Great Kingdom of Rasilan, and of course my family has our own military services there. I have not heard much complaint about the system in my time, and I've watched my father handle the personal complaints of many subjects before in my life, as that's an important part of the duty of our noble caste."
All Drishalras' words seemed to do was further stoke Collins' clearly growing displeasure. Castle chuckled a little. "Honestly, Captain, I must commend you. Trying to deal with three thousand enlisted crew and one hundred and eighty-six officers can be annoyance enough. Over forty-seven thousand personnel is more akin to a small city. I don't envy you."
A few of the Taloran officers exchanged looks at that, thinking of all the trouble that the scratch crew had caused them, including in responding to the recent battle. Drishalras didn't mention the matter, however, and just nodded. "It can be daunting, initially, but I have multiple servants and secretaries to deal with essentially all other functions to," a light chuckle, "devote my entire existence to directing the ship without distractions. And the Marine and Starfighter compliments are more or less autonomous in administration and discipline."
"We practice something similar on our carriers," Siguez said, speaking up again. "Usually the pilots and their crews come under a Wing Command Officer who answers only to the CO, and who in turn has a Flight Control Officer who oversees hanger and launch deck operations. Marines are semi-autonomous as well, but we usually don't have large enough contingents on our ships to warrant an officer higher than a Marine Captain."
"Yes, that is a rather drastic difference, seeing as a Starfleet Marine brigade has more than eight thousand personnel," Brigiader Trikanash interjected. "With the fourty-five hundred under Wing Colonel Winters, that leaves the actual Starfleet crew as only about thirty thousand in all."
"Well, I can imagine that many Marines is at least partially necessary given the crew size," Gould replied, "but what do you do with them all? Our Marines are for security purposes primarily, to use in emergencies for boarding ships, sending expeditionary detachments, and in the unlikely event that the ship is boarded."
"Well, they're a raiding asset, since battlecruisers are often on distant deployment," Drishalras spoke up. "Also for first response to local situations. It's desireable to have a very large force which can quickly deal with minor incidents on the frontier. But they are trained for damage control on the ship and so on, and security on other vessels, so one important function is to serve as the security escorts for prize crews. Take ten merchant vessels and put a company on each to guard the detained crew and support the naval steering party, which might be as little as twenty or men, and you've used up two-thousand five hundred marines, and have to replace two hundred bodies in the ship's crew. They're an all-purpose fire brigade for our operations, really."
"Ah. And does your frontier work require much in the way of seizing merchant vessels, for smuggling reasons I presume?", Castle asked. "The Stellar Navy has only recently, since the war, begun to construct actual battlecruisers for just such duties on the frontier, and for the interim in our occupation zones in the Gamma Quadrant and here in CON-5."
Drishalras' answer to Captain Castle's comment brought in a conversation about border policy and expansionism, and, though sometimes delicately and uncomfortably, the conversation neverless continued long into the night, after even dinner had been served, until enough alcohol had been consumed to convince all of the wisdom of retiring for the eve.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
First is between me and Ed Korrina, the second between me and Marina.
Washington D.C., Earth
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
22 March 2165 AST.
49 Valeria, I.Y. 618
The official aircar settled onto the deployed landing skids with meticulous precision, exactly where directed. It was still for a moment, then the front right door hissed open. A Marine First Lieutenant in full mess dress uniform stepped out, closed the door with metronomic exactness, swivelled on one heel and unlatched the rear door, holding it open for the occupant.
A lone Zohan male stepped out, clad in a simple white survival suit that was almost severely plain. With a slight twinkle in his eye he nodded to the Marine escort then turned towards the entrance, pacing forward with a calm, unhurried yet deceptively smooth pace. Behind him the Marine trailed along, the aguillette on his shoulders indicating his staff position, the General Staff Corps badge on his perfectly tailored uniform showing his present assignment.
Several minutes later, Mar'tov stepped into the Oval Office, hands now clasped lightly behind his back as his eyes twinkled with the humor every Zohan found in the meticulous protocol and ceremony that occurred in this ancient building.
At the seat, Dale was finishing a written report on the situation from the Caliphate of New Hedjaz. The Taloran note to them had, by all reports, been even fiercer than the one delivered to the Kingdom of the Devenshires, threatening the severing of diplomatic relations (which, for the Talorans, he was told was usually seen as an act prior to a declaration of war), but the Caliphate was not in the position to be as defiant as Devenshire, and the Caliph Husayn and Prime Minister Nasser were already buckling under the demands to preserve the Hashemite Dynasty, the last surviving Muslim monarchy of any authority in all of CON-5. He expected them to give their cooperation, as useful as that could be given the defiant attitudes the Caliphate's own vassals could sometimes display. "Ah, Chief Executive Mar'tov," Dale said upon the elderly Zohan's entrance. "Good to see you back. How are the kids?"
Mar'tov smiled in reply, crossing the room. "They are all well, Di'not is now in her Combat Passage after passing her Test with, I believe the human term would be 'flying colors'" he replied with a somewhat paternal air. "And is already a superb pilot, we have high hopes for her. Once she completes her Combat Passage she is slated to be one of the first group of Zohan to attend your Naval Academy." he continued. "The others have all passed their own Tests and are in their specialty Passages as well." a short pause, as the elderly Zohan cocked his head slightly and looked just a bit critically at Dale. "You look well, President Dale, I would like to repeat the invitation to come visit Victorious, you have been good enough to invite me twice into your home, and I would love to welcome you to ours."
"I've talked with my staff about it. We're trying to arrange a good time for it, perhaps when you start producing those new fighters on contract to the Aerospace Force." The memories of that affair, and the problems the Zohan had in breaking into competition due to the biases and favoritism of the procurement bureaucrats, were not entirely pleasant, and Dale was still dealing with the political fall-out from some of the Council reps allied with the offended firms. "Unfortunately, the position requires me to be in Washington signing two or three hundred pieces of paper every day, sometimes more when the military academies graduate their new classes and I have to sign the commissions." As it was, though Dale didn't mention it, his staff already complained about him travelling too much in the past two years.
Mar'tov nodded in understanding. "That would be a superb time for it, indeed, if it would make things easier we could move Victorious deeper in-system to reduce your transit time." The Zohan had a slightly wry look as well. "And I am learning just how much time I now spend dealing with paper and reports. Almost makes me miss the days when all I had to be concerned with were small things like combat. If I only knew." he looked just a bit wistful for a moment. "You asked me to come here due to the pending arrival of the Taloran's, from what I was told" Mar'tov continued, lifting one eyebrow slightly, turning the statement into an inquiry.
"Yes. I figured you'd want to be here, given the Princess Jhayka's entourage includes some of your people, led by a Senior Executive Ada'ren."
"Ahhh, yes, one of those responsible for our IU drive modification to the Tannhauser Gate," replied Mar'tov, frowning slightly for a moment. "A superb engineer, if slightly absent-minded at times," he continued thoughtfully. "Yes, it would be a good idea for me to meet with them, thank you. Lieutenant Agni was kind enough to brief me on the latest news concerning the attack on Slashahkimmar and the diplomatic repercussions." A slight smile. "You humans continue to surprise me with the intricacies of your relationships," he concluded.
"I assume you're talking about Devenshire. Yes, I'm afraid that's a whole other problem, not to mention that forty Taloran crewmen and women died because pirates were able to slip that closer to our border without being detected," Dale muttered. "But I digress. I believed it best if these Zohan living in the Taloran Empire were met by a friendly face on this end as well. I didn't fully expect for you to come, Chief Executive, but I'm delighted you have. I have high hopes for these talks."
"I hope that I can assist in any way I can, and the same for the Zohan who have chosen to settle amongst you and join their futures with the ADN." a slight pause as the old Zohan's eyes became slightly fey. "May I ask of you one favor, however?"
"Go ahead."
"I would like to be allowed to make an... offer... to the Taloran delegation, specifically to the commander of the Slashahkimmar, with your permission." he held up his hand for a moment as he continued. "Something I hope may well help the talks." he continued.
Dale's curiousity was piqued. "What kind of offer, if I might ask?"
"One you can blame Senior Combat Executive Bri'loni for coming up with" Mar'tov replied, lips twitching "I finally lost the argument, right after I was saddled with this new position. What I would like to offer is to offer to inscribe the names of those fallen aboard the Slashahkimmar upon the memorial to all Zohan and friendly fighters who have fallen in combat." he replied.
Dale heard that and smiled, nodding. "Sure, I have absolutely no objection, Chief Executive."
Meiersworld Fleet Station, In Lunar Orbit
Meiersworld System, Alliance Colonial Zone
Universe Designate CON-5
23 March 2165 AST.
50 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
The hangover was mostly gone when Dani and Fay decided to slip off the Slashahkimmar and enjoy a little piece of home before they left for Washington, formal dinners, stuffy meetings, and a media frenzy. They were dressed plainly, Dani in a sleeveless blue blouse and knee-length navy-blue skirt and Fay in a full-sleeved white blouse and black and white slacks. "Okay, we have about an hour to ninety minutes to go eat some junk food, do some shopping, and generally pretend that we're still just engineers on leave," Dani said to Fay. "Let's get to work!"
"Let's!" Fay giggled; it had been over two years, after all, since they'd gotten to just hang out like this.
"Mind if I join you two?" The voice belonged to the dimunitive form of the slightly older Colleen Winters, who didn't, however, look older than they were, sharing basically the same life-extending technology. She was dressed in a knee-length black skirt and black boots and a net shirt with black and white banded sleeves showing off a red sports bra underneath, and with her contacts out her eyes were blue, creating a strange contrast with her hair and making her every single inch the punk rocker who'd never grown up. She was grinning. "I know I could just wait until, oh, the day after tomorrow to sneak off for burgers in D.C. or something, but I haven't had one in almost three years and I figured there's no damn point to wait."
Dani and Fay exchanged looks. They realized they looked rather plain, and Colleen was certain to grab attention.... but then again, that was the fun part. "I should have worn the tube top," Dani muttered.
"Are you talking about the tube top or the tube top, the one that screams, 'My boobs are Bs going on Cs'?", Fayza asked.
"That one," Dani replied, but she smiled at Colleen. "Well, come along then. There's gotta be a good burger joint in the commercial area."
"I think that living among Talorans for three decades has largely destroyed my sense of modesty in clothing," Colleen grinned with a wry allowance, and followed in their wake. "You know the station better than I, of course. Sort of like coming home?"
"Oh, plenty..."
The two ladies led Colleen away from the docking area and toward the core of the station. Above and below the Core were the military facilities, the private quarters and suites, etc.... but the Core itself was a completely commercial area. Sports bars, cafès, liquor stores, retail outlets - Dani squealed in horror and said, "They turned the Station-Mart into a Wal-Mart?! No!" upon that sight - two holo-chamber arcades, a casino, and for them especially, fashion stores not far from the food court, complete with a McDonalds, KFC, Checker's, a Sam's Wingshack, various Japanese and Chinese restaurants, a pizza place.... "I'm conflicted," Dani wailed. "Burgers or pizza? Burgers or pizza?!"
"Coin toss?" Fayza produced a Taloran latinum coin.
"Coin toss," Colleen agreed. "Pizza was next on the list, anyway." She was laughing, though also staring around in wide-eyed curiousity. "This is just so amazing, though. I've never been to other human worlds from other universes before, and, wow, you like still have all of these chain places which went out of business centuries ago in our timeline."
"They didn't stay in business in all the timelines either. We'll have to take you to a Texas Jack's Chili and Grill sometime. It's from Universe FHI-8 only, some of the best food around. But they don't have one here....." Dani took the coin from Fay. "Heads, burgers, tails, pizza." She threw it up.
When it landed, the image of the Empress Saverana II was facing them. "Burgers it is," Fayza proclaimed.
"I propose a new plan," Dani said. "Burgers now, then we buy pizzas to take back!"
"Sure." Colleen frowned for a moment. "They won't accept Taloran coins as legal tender here, will they? Well, except for their value in latinum I guess. Should we find a currency vendor before trying to order or do either of you still have a cred account or something? One thing the Talorans really did make truly weird back home is how retrograde our money system is, at least from what my parents tell me."
"We have accounts," Dani said. "Treat's on us. God knows I was getting tired of Taloran food..."
They made their way to one of the lesser franchises, Roxy's, with Fay assuring Colleen that the burgers here were good. Dani went up to order first, and chose a fast food meal: a double quarter pounder, everything on it but pickles and onions, and "giant" sized carton of french fries and Coke. Fay's eyes widened a bit. "Damn, Dani, you've been hanging around Drish too long!"
"Oh, damn! That's right!" Dani quickly ordered a second meal like that "to go". "I want Drish to try this out."
Fay chuckled, and ordered a more modest quarter pounder and chose a salad instead of french fries. Next it was Colleen's turn. "Money's no object," she said to her.
"Thank you," Colleen answered. She compromised. She got the regular quarter pounder, with onions, pickles, and lettuce, but got french fries--though only a normal large--and, commenting sarcastically, "Because getting a diet when you pig out is tradition," she ordered a diet coke, grinning the whole while to Fayza. It was nice, for the moment, to just be among humans again.
The cashier was a young woman who was somewhat taken aback by Colleen's appearance, but when a server from the rear came out to help put together their order on a tray, he saw the three of them and gave them a good, long look... but especially Colleen. Meanwhile the cashier asked about the iron band around Dani's wrist. "What's that?"
"Oh, it's a marriage band," Dani said while waiting for her drink to be handed. "Not the diet. The diet goes to her. I want the real deal."
"Sure," the guy said, handing it to Dani. "Who's your punk girlfriend? What's her band? She looks like a Metal Thunder roadie."
"Oh, she's, well...." Dani looked to Colleen to see if she wanted to answer instead.
"Battle Sisters. We broke up a while ago, though. It was a nice gig while it lasted; worked every damn bar on Luna and half the La Grange points back home, over about three years I think." She was grinning broadly, and winked to Danielle and Fayza, adding to them in a sotto voice, "so maybe I slightly misattributed why I got these clothes."
"I am in awe," Dani said in a soft voice. "I never would have suspected."
"Never heard of Battle Sisters," the server said. "Girl metal is usually cool though, with the right music."
"Tell you what, I'm gonna be back through here in a couple months and when I am, I'll come with a full recording for you. We never got quite big enough to worry about that copyright shit. Hail, Hail, Rock an' Roll, brother." With that she offered a grin and grabbed the food, because there was a line starting to grow behind her.
Dani and Fay found a table near the end of the restaurant's cul-de-sac in the Food Court. "A punk rocker. Living with Talorans. Now I've really seen everything," Dani said before biting a french fry.
"Engineering was a really boring prospect, flying fast interceptors and blowing things up sounded more fun to a twenty-year old girl who had already managed to see the underside of every dingy space bar in Earth orbit before finishing my second decade." She munched happily on the fries, liberally spread with pepper and catsup, and then tried the burger and sighed in delight. "Anyway, haven't you seen Taloran chicks dance? Jesus, they're like whirring dynamos when you get them going. I'd sometimes play bass in the mess before I got really Important and Serious, great discord with the other instruments, we could make some pretty crazy sounds. Talorans love music. I guess us Spacenoids got pretty comfortable with 'em right from the start."
"Note to self: play metal and other music to see what gets Drish and Jhayka to dance like that," Dani chuckled.
"The habitats you live in are the really gigantic ones that have cities and everything in the core, right?" Fay sipped at her coke, her burger still mostly untouched as she nibbled on fries for a minute instead. "There are a few of those in the Alliance, but as I said last night, we tend to just build on planets."
"Yeah, we built a bunch of them to get people off-planet after the great resource crash of the 21st century and the bio-wars and the grand Crusade and all the other usual brutal shit of human history which made the 21st century look worse than the 20th. Followed the moment we developed space elevators. We didn't have a damn clue that FTL was possible yet, and it was a lot faster than terraforming. There's like fourteen billion people live in Earth orbit in such habitats these days. Most are still run from the surface. Our side is independent. I just grew up in the westside city of Bunch 29, Karioye, our colony was named. You got used to looking up into the sky and seeing a tube-shaped sun after a while. The colonies use mirrors to focus sunlight into a massive tube in the centre, which gets bright enough to provide all the lighting and heating, and we just close the mirrors for a night cycle."
"Wow, that must be pretty impressive." Fay munched on her burger after saying that.
"What's that other universe that had the big space colonies in Earth orbit? GA-18?"
"The one where they nuked a couple billion people in the first day?" Fay answered after finished swallowing. "Yeah, they had space colonies like that."
"Holy shit," Colleen gasped, briefly interrupted from her food. "That's basically what the UTHP was going to do to us. Nasty to think about it."
"It's pretty rare to see all of Earth go fascist in the rest of the multiverse," Fay answered. "I mean, there are fascist or semi-fascist regimes in human nations across the Multiverse, but all of the Earth? Nope."
"Though we had our close calls, things like these 'Bio-Wars' and 'Grand Crusade' you're talking about," Dani replied. "In my home universe, we had a World War III in the mid-21st Century. Fascists in Europe, India, and Japan managed to dominate other various parts of the world, bribe the Cubans and Mexicans under UN authority, and invade America itself. Then came the fifty years where the Democratic Party was dead, in some cases literally killed by nuthead conservative guerrilas, and we had one-party rule, the annexation of Cuba and Mexico..."
"The 20th and 21st Centuries are usually lumped together as the 'Terrible Twins', with the 22nd Century seen as the time when Humanity finally started getting out into the rest of the stars," Fay added.
"They were worse for us, but it follows the same basic pattern. Global warming, peak oil, Islamist invasions of Europe, the Indian Holocaust, nuking the Muslim world.." She glanced for a moment, apologetically, to Fayza. "After that the USA and China basically took over the world in a unified Condominion and colonized space, but ultimately Europe aligned with other fascist parties worldwide and the Greens and formed a Brown-Green alliance that wrested control of the central gov from the Chinese and Americans. That was the UTHP. The ancestors of Orientale are mostly Canadians and Aussies and Brits, for instance, leaving the surface because of the economic situation, with some Boers thrown in for flavouring. That sums it up, and details aren't for a lighthearted meal," she concluded, finishing off her fries.
"Don't worry about me," Fayza said in reply. "I'm no Muslim. My father's family was. They also swore a blood oath or something to murder my mother if any of them ever laid eyes on her."
"Peak oil and global warming seem to vary in effects by universe, mostly because of the timing of new technologies that reduced their impacts," Dani said, seeking to avoid taking the conversation in that direction. "It's actually kind of funny, but I know way more about the history of technology than I do most other types of history. No wonder I had no idea about that Bernawhatever figure Jhayka was talking about that one time."
"Heh, I mostly read fantasy as a kid. And got most of my history from the old metal classics. We Spacenoids are pretty technologically minded to; but never, ever, try to go up on historical trivia with any kind of Taloran noble. They'll beat you at your own species' history, let alone their own. It's very important to them. History is the legitimacy of the whole Empire." She got a faintly vague look there. "I actually wrote a song, The Duel of Two Lovers, about Valera and Taliya. We had a lot of fans who were LostGen, which, I guess, most humans would count me as these days. It's nice to talk to some humans who don't have that perspective for a change. We'll have to do some touring of Earth together when we get there, if you two can get away from the conferences: It was a typical arrogant Spacenoid thing but I never actually visited the surface back home."
"Oh, Jhayka's already thoroughly schooled me in Human history," Dani chuckled. Her last bit of her hamburger went down, her fry carton empty. "Unnnh.... maybe I should've gotten a quarter pounder after all. So, we have some time left, I vote we go order the pizzas and then go shopping."
"You really, really should leave the over-eating to Her Highess the Captain, yes," Colleen interjected with a teasing smirk. "But other than that, the motion is duly seconded."
"Yes! To the Pizzeria, and then, Gabrielle's!" Fay led them to the pizza place, and the attendants there almost groaned as the trio bought about three pizzas each (to share with the others, of course, and to eat over the next few days). The order completion time, even with Dani bribing them with the offer of a $100 bill apiece, would literally require them to run back to the Slashahkimmar to get aboard before departure time.
"I don't think Drishalras will leave her korana behind, but, let's be fast about this, huh? We've got an hour tops and it isn't snappy on the personnel record of a Wing Colonel to be the last person back on the ship at port departure," Colleen finished. "I want to see this Gabrielle's place."
Fay took the lead again, and brought them to the entrance across the way, leading them first on the path through the divider area where lush greenery and flowers had been planted. The entrance was like that of a terrestrial mall, with mannequins adorned in some of the favored dresses inside. "We used to be lucky if we could buy one dress per visit," Fay explained to Colleen. "And that was only by sacrificing much of our entertainment budget for that time period. Not that we had much time for entertainment whenever the battles were over and the yards at the Luther Station were filled with damaged ships needing repairs."
Dani was looking down the way while Fay said this, and she noticed in the distance a figure wearing a sun dress. "Tabby," she said to herself. "Fay, I'm going to go say hello to someone. You take Colleen in and just wait for me to pay for it."
"Dani, you're the only one with a big expense account," replied Fay sardonically before leading Colleen in.
Dani walked briskly down the way, and called out, "Tabby! Tabby, over here!" When she didn't turn, Dani picked up the pace, and ended up having to nearly run given the pace that Tabby managed in walking the other way. "Tabby, it's me!" she said happily as she walked up beside the woman; Tabitha Sykes was her name, and she was, or at least had been, one of Dani's fellow engineers at the Luther Dockyard. "Tabby, how are you doing?"
"Can't you take a hint?!" the blonde-haired woman grumbled. "What do you want, Your High Mightyness?"
Dani almost stepped back from the pure vitriol that came from Tabby. "Ta... Tabby... I just wanted to say Hi, see how you were doing?"
"I don't even want to be seen with you," Tabby hissed. "You're... oh God, you're such a disgrace! You make us all look bad!" That, of course, had a triple meaning; not just Stellar Navy officer or engineer, but also lesbian; Tabby had been the only other lesbian in their entire section at Luther.Station.
"Look bad? What?" Bewildered and puzzled, Dani looked at her angry friend with disbelief. "What did I do?"
"What did... what did you do? You shacked up with that high and mighty Taloran princess, you helped the Talorans and the other autocrats force a monarchy on an innocent nation, and now you've accepted some kind of mucky-muck title from them and joined your Taloran sugar-momma as a second wife! It's... it's a disgrace to the GLBT community, Dani. You're being everything all the conservative and religious wackjobs accuse us of being!"
Dani's mouth hung open. "I... I did what I thought was right. They tried to enslave me, Tabby. They enslaved Fayza! She was raped and tortured for weeks because of the policies of that 'innocent nation' you're whining about!"
"So? Did that give them the right to put some girl on a new throne? You helped a bunch of reactionary thugs force a nation to become a monarchy, Dani! You helped these Taloran theocrats and their Holy Roman friends impose a religious monarchy on a people who used to be the most tolerant community in the Multiverse! How many innocent lesbians did they rape to try and make them go straight? How many homosexuals, or Wiccans, lost their homes because of those Catholic fundie bastards?! And now you've become a whore to that Taloran so you can live off her money!" Tabby motioned for Dani to go away. "Just... just get out of my sight, damn, I don't even want to look at you, you stuck up elitist bitch."
"Tabby! I didn't do this to get money!"
"Yeah, sure. Whatever," she said as she walked on. "Keep following me and I'll call base security on your ass. Though I'm sure your Taloran bitch-queen will just bribe them to let you go."
Dani watched her walk away. Her legs began to fall out from under her, and she had to get into a seat, where she continued to look off into space, silently weeping at how Tabby had treated her. They'd been so close, Dani being the elder of them and taking the younger girl under her wing, telling her stories and giving her relationship advice....
A lot of time passed before Fay walked up. "Dani? Dani, what's wrong?" she said as she sat down beside her.
"Oh God, Fay, what have we become," Dani whimpered. "Tabby, Tabby Sykes.... she didn't want to talk to me. She shouted at me, she called me a whore...."
Fay's mouth hung open. She slipped into the seat next to Dani. "Oh Dani...."
"She hates me. She... she thinks I married Jhayka to be rich, that I caused what happened to Gilead..." Dani sniffled. "God, why did it have to be this way? I want to be friends. Just because they made us nobles doesn't mean we can't have friends..."
"Some people will be angry," Fay said softly. "It'll take time for them to get over it, if they ever do." She took Dani's hand. "Let's get back to the ship, it's time to go. And we still have to get our pizzas."
Dani nodded, some tears still in her eyes, and stood to follow Fay back to the clothing shop and the pizzeria.
Washington D.C., Earth
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
22 March 2165 AST.
49 Valeria, I.Y. 618
The official aircar settled onto the deployed landing skids with meticulous precision, exactly where directed. It was still for a moment, then the front right door hissed open. A Marine First Lieutenant in full mess dress uniform stepped out, closed the door with metronomic exactness, swivelled on one heel and unlatched the rear door, holding it open for the occupant.
A lone Zohan male stepped out, clad in a simple white survival suit that was almost severely plain. With a slight twinkle in his eye he nodded to the Marine escort then turned towards the entrance, pacing forward with a calm, unhurried yet deceptively smooth pace. Behind him the Marine trailed along, the aguillette on his shoulders indicating his staff position, the General Staff Corps badge on his perfectly tailored uniform showing his present assignment.
Several minutes later, Mar'tov stepped into the Oval Office, hands now clasped lightly behind his back as his eyes twinkled with the humor every Zohan found in the meticulous protocol and ceremony that occurred in this ancient building.
At the seat, Dale was finishing a written report on the situation from the Caliphate of New Hedjaz. The Taloran note to them had, by all reports, been even fiercer than the one delivered to the Kingdom of the Devenshires, threatening the severing of diplomatic relations (which, for the Talorans, he was told was usually seen as an act prior to a declaration of war), but the Caliphate was not in the position to be as defiant as Devenshire, and the Caliph Husayn and Prime Minister Nasser were already buckling under the demands to preserve the Hashemite Dynasty, the last surviving Muslim monarchy of any authority in all of CON-5. He expected them to give their cooperation, as useful as that could be given the defiant attitudes the Caliphate's own vassals could sometimes display. "Ah, Chief Executive Mar'tov," Dale said upon the elderly Zohan's entrance. "Good to see you back. How are the kids?"
Mar'tov smiled in reply, crossing the room. "They are all well, Di'not is now in her Combat Passage after passing her Test with, I believe the human term would be 'flying colors'" he replied with a somewhat paternal air. "And is already a superb pilot, we have high hopes for her. Once she completes her Combat Passage she is slated to be one of the first group of Zohan to attend your Naval Academy." he continued. "The others have all passed their own Tests and are in their specialty Passages as well." a short pause, as the elderly Zohan cocked his head slightly and looked just a bit critically at Dale. "You look well, President Dale, I would like to repeat the invitation to come visit Victorious, you have been good enough to invite me twice into your home, and I would love to welcome you to ours."
"I've talked with my staff about it. We're trying to arrange a good time for it, perhaps when you start producing those new fighters on contract to the Aerospace Force." The memories of that affair, and the problems the Zohan had in breaking into competition due to the biases and favoritism of the procurement bureaucrats, were not entirely pleasant, and Dale was still dealing with the political fall-out from some of the Council reps allied with the offended firms. "Unfortunately, the position requires me to be in Washington signing two or three hundred pieces of paper every day, sometimes more when the military academies graduate their new classes and I have to sign the commissions." As it was, though Dale didn't mention it, his staff already complained about him travelling too much in the past two years.
Mar'tov nodded in understanding. "That would be a superb time for it, indeed, if it would make things easier we could move Victorious deeper in-system to reduce your transit time." The Zohan had a slightly wry look as well. "And I am learning just how much time I now spend dealing with paper and reports. Almost makes me miss the days when all I had to be concerned with were small things like combat. If I only knew." he looked just a bit wistful for a moment. "You asked me to come here due to the pending arrival of the Taloran's, from what I was told" Mar'tov continued, lifting one eyebrow slightly, turning the statement into an inquiry.
"Yes. I figured you'd want to be here, given the Princess Jhayka's entourage includes some of your people, led by a Senior Executive Ada'ren."
"Ahhh, yes, one of those responsible for our IU drive modification to the Tannhauser Gate," replied Mar'tov, frowning slightly for a moment. "A superb engineer, if slightly absent-minded at times," he continued thoughtfully. "Yes, it would be a good idea for me to meet with them, thank you. Lieutenant Agni was kind enough to brief me on the latest news concerning the attack on Slashahkimmar and the diplomatic repercussions." A slight smile. "You humans continue to surprise me with the intricacies of your relationships," he concluded.
"I assume you're talking about Devenshire. Yes, I'm afraid that's a whole other problem, not to mention that forty Taloran crewmen and women died because pirates were able to slip that closer to our border without being detected," Dale muttered. "But I digress. I believed it best if these Zohan living in the Taloran Empire were met by a friendly face on this end as well. I didn't fully expect for you to come, Chief Executive, but I'm delighted you have. I have high hopes for these talks."
"I hope that I can assist in any way I can, and the same for the Zohan who have chosen to settle amongst you and join their futures with the ADN." a slight pause as the old Zohan's eyes became slightly fey. "May I ask of you one favor, however?"
"Go ahead."
"I would like to be allowed to make an... offer... to the Taloran delegation, specifically to the commander of the Slashahkimmar, with your permission." he held up his hand for a moment as he continued. "Something I hope may well help the talks." he continued.
Dale's curiousity was piqued. "What kind of offer, if I might ask?"
"One you can blame Senior Combat Executive Bri'loni for coming up with" Mar'tov replied, lips twitching "I finally lost the argument, right after I was saddled with this new position. What I would like to offer is to offer to inscribe the names of those fallen aboard the Slashahkimmar upon the memorial to all Zohan and friendly fighters who have fallen in combat." he replied.
Dale heard that and smiled, nodding. "Sure, I have absolutely no objection, Chief Executive."
Meiersworld Fleet Station, In Lunar Orbit
Meiersworld System, Alliance Colonial Zone
Universe Designate CON-5
23 March 2165 AST.
50 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
The hangover was mostly gone when Dani and Fay decided to slip off the Slashahkimmar and enjoy a little piece of home before they left for Washington, formal dinners, stuffy meetings, and a media frenzy. They were dressed plainly, Dani in a sleeveless blue blouse and knee-length navy-blue skirt and Fay in a full-sleeved white blouse and black and white slacks. "Okay, we have about an hour to ninety minutes to go eat some junk food, do some shopping, and generally pretend that we're still just engineers on leave," Dani said to Fay. "Let's get to work!"
"Let's!" Fay giggled; it had been over two years, after all, since they'd gotten to just hang out like this.
"Mind if I join you two?" The voice belonged to the dimunitive form of the slightly older Colleen Winters, who didn't, however, look older than they were, sharing basically the same life-extending technology. She was dressed in a knee-length black skirt and black boots and a net shirt with black and white banded sleeves showing off a red sports bra underneath, and with her contacts out her eyes were blue, creating a strange contrast with her hair and making her every single inch the punk rocker who'd never grown up. She was grinning. "I know I could just wait until, oh, the day after tomorrow to sneak off for burgers in D.C. or something, but I haven't had one in almost three years and I figured there's no damn point to wait."
Dani and Fay exchanged looks. They realized they looked rather plain, and Colleen was certain to grab attention.... but then again, that was the fun part. "I should have worn the tube top," Dani muttered.
"Are you talking about the tube top or the tube top, the one that screams, 'My boobs are Bs going on Cs'?", Fayza asked.
"That one," Dani replied, but she smiled at Colleen. "Well, come along then. There's gotta be a good burger joint in the commercial area."
"I think that living among Talorans for three decades has largely destroyed my sense of modesty in clothing," Colleen grinned with a wry allowance, and followed in their wake. "You know the station better than I, of course. Sort of like coming home?"
"Oh, plenty..."
The two ladies led Colleen away from the docking area and toward the core of the station. Above and below the Core were the military facilities, the private quarters and suites, etc.... but the Core itself was a completely commercial area. Sports bars, cafès, liquor stores, retail outlets - Dani squealed in horror and said, "They turned the Station-Mart into a Wal-Mart?! No!" upon that sight - two holo-chamber arcades, a casino, and for them especially, fashion stores not far from the food court, complete with a McDonalds, KFC, Checker's, a Sam's Wingshack, various Japanese and Chinese restaurants, a pizza place.... "I'm conflicted," Dani wailed. "Burgers or pizza? Burgers or pizza?!"
"Coin toss?" Fayza produced a Taloran latinum coin.
"Coin toss," Colleen agreed. "Pizza was next on the list, anyway." She was laughing, though also staring around in wide-eyed curiousity. "This is just so amazing, though. I've never been to other human worlds from other universes before, and, wow, you like still have all of these chain places which went out of business centuries ago in our timeline."
"They didn't stay in business in all the timelines either. We'll have to take you to a Texas Jack's Chili and Grill sometime. It's from Universe FHI-8 only, some of the best food around. But they don't have one here....." Dani took the coin from Fay. "Heads, burgers, tails, pizza." She threw it up.
When it landed, the image of the Empress Saverana II was facing them. "Burgers it is," Fayza proclaimed.
"I propose a new plan," Dani said. "Burgers now, then we buy pizzas to take back!"
"Sure." Colleen frowned for a moment. "They won't accept Taloran coins as legal tender here, will they? Well, except for their value in latinum I guess. Should we find a currency vendor before trying to order or do either of you still have a cred account or something? One thing the Talorans really did make truly weird back home is how retrograde our money system is, at least from what my parents tell me."
"We have accounts," Dani said. "Treat's on us. God knows I was getting tired of Taloran food..."
They made their way to one of the lesser franchises, Roxy's, with Fay assuring Colleen that the burgers here were good. Dani went up to order first, and chose a fast food meal: a double quarter pounder, everything on it but pickles and onions, and "giant" sized carton of french fries and Coke. Fay's eyes widened a bit. "Damn, Dani, you've been hanging around Drish too long!"
"Oh, damn! That's right!" Dani quickly ordered a second meal like that "to go". "I want Drish to try this out."
Fay chuckled, and ordered a more modest quarter pounder and chose a salad instead of french fries. Next it was Colleen's turn. "Money's no object," she said to her.
"Thank you," Colleen answered. She compromised. She got the regular quarter pounder, with onions, pickles, and lettuce, but got french fries--though only a normal large--and, commenting sarcastically, "Because getting a diet when you pig out is tradition," she ordered a diet coke, grinning the whole while to Fayza. It was nice, for the moment, to just be among humans again.
The cashier was a young woman who was somewhat taken aback by Colleen's appearance, but when a server from the rear came out to help put together their order on a tray, he saw the three of them and gave them a good, long look... but especially Colleen. Meanwhile the cashier asked about the iron band around Dani's wrist. "What's that?"
"Oh, it's a marriage band," Dani said while waiting for her drink to be handed. "Not the diet. The diet goes to her. I want the real deal."
"Sure," the guy said, handing it to Dani. "Who's your punk girlfriend? What's her band? She looks like a Metal Thunder roadie."
"Oh, she's, well...." Dani looked to Colleen to see if she wanted to answer instead.
"Battle Sisters. We broke up a while ago, though. It was a nice gig while it lasted; worked every damn bar on Luna and half the La Grange points back home, over about three years I think." She was grinning broadly, and winked to Danielle and Fayza, adding to them in a sotto voice, "so maybe I slightly misattributed why I got these clothes."
"I am in awe," Dani said in a soft voice. "I never would have suspected."
"Never heard of Battle Sisters," the server said. "Girl metal is usually cool though, with the right music."
"Tell you what, I'm gonna be back through here in a couple months and when I am, I'll come with a full recording for you. We never got quite big enough to worry about that copyright shit. Hail, Hail, Rock an' Roll, brother." With that she offered a grin and grabbed the food, because there was a line starting to grow behind her.
Dani and Fay found a table near the end of the restaurant's cul-de-sac in the Food Court. "A punk rocker. Living with Talorans. Now I've really seen everything," Dani said before biting a french fry.
"Engineering was a really boring prospect, flying fast interceptors and blowing things up sounded more fun to a twenty-year old girl who had already managed to see the underside of every dingy space bar in Earth orbit before finishing my second decade." She munched happily on the fries, liberally spread with pepper and catsup, and then tried the burger and sighed in delight. "Anyway, haven't you seen Taloran chicks dance? Jesus, they're like whirring dynamos when you get them going. I'd sometimes play bass in the mess before I got really Important and Serious, great discord with the other instruments, we could make some pretty crazy sounds. Talorans love music. I guess us Spacenoids got pretty comfortable with 'em right from the start."
"Note to self: play metal and other music to see what gets Drish and Jhayka to dance like that," Dani chuckled.
"The habitats you live in are the really gigantic ones that have cities and everything in the core, right?" Fay sipped at her coke, her burger still mostly untouched as she nibbled on fries for a minute instead. "There are a few of those in the Alliance, but as I said last night, we tend to just build on planets."
"Yeah, we built a bunch of them to get people off-planet after the great resource crash of the 21st century and the bio-wars and the grand Crusade and all the other usual brutal shit of human history which made the 21st century look worse than the 20th. Followed the moment we developed space elevators. We didn't have a damn clue that FTL was possible yet, and it was a lot faster than terraforming. There's like fourteen billion people live in Earth orbit in such habitats these days. Most are still run from the surface. Our side is independent. I just grew up in the westside city of Bunch 29, Karioye, our colony was named. You got used to looking up into the sky and seeing a tube-shaped sun after a while. The colonies use mirrors to focus sunlight into a massive tube in the centre, which gets bright enough to provide all the lighting and heating, and we just close the mirrors for a night cycle."
"Wow, that must be pretty impressive." Fay munched on her burger after saying that.
"What's that other universe that had the big space colonies in Earth orbit? GA-18?"
"The one where they nuked a couple billion people in the first day?" Fay answered after finished swallowing. "Yeah, they had space colonies like that."
"Holy shit," Colleen gasped, briefly interrupted from her food. "That's basically what the UTHP was going to do to us. Nasty to think about it."
"It's pretty rare to see all of Earth go fascist in the rest of the multiverse," Fay answered. "I mean, there are fascist or semi-fascist regimes in human nations across the Multiverse, but all of the Earth? Nope."
"Though we had our close calls, things like these 'Bio-Wars' and 'Grand Crusade' you're talking about," Dani replied. "In my home universe, we had a World War III in the mid-21st Century. Fascists in Europe, India, and Japan managed to dominate other various parts of the world, bribe the Cubans and Mexicans under UN authority, and invade America itself. Then came the fifty years where the Democratic Party was dead, in some cases literally killed by nuthead conservative guerrilas, and we had one-party rule, the annexation of Cuba and Mexico..."
"The 20th and 21st Centuries are usually lumped together as the 'Terrible Twins', with the 22nd Century seen as the time when Humanity finally started getting out into the rest of the stars," Fay added.
"They were worse for us, but it follows the same basic pattern. Global warming, peak oil, Islamist invasions of Europe, the Indian Holocaust, nuking the Muslim world.." She glanced for a moment, apologetically, to Fayza. "After that the USA and China basically took over the world in a unified Condominion and colonized space, but ultimately Europe aligned with other fascist parties worldwide and the Greens and formed a Brown-Green alliance that wrested control of the central gov from the Chinese and Americans. That was the UTHP. The ancestors of Orientale are mostly Canadians and Aussies and Brits, for instance, leaving the surface because of the economic situation, with some Boers thrown in for flavouring. That sums it up, and details aren't for a lighthearted meal," she concluded, finishing off her fries.
"Don't worry about me," Fayza said in reply. "I'm no Muslim. My father's family was. They also swore a blood oath or something to murder my mother if any of them ever laid eyes on her."
"Peak oil and global warming seem to vary in effects by universe, mostly because of the timing of new technologies that reduced their impacts," Dani said, seeking to avoid taking the conversation in that direction. "It's actually kind of funny, but I know way more about the history of technology than I do most other types of history. No wonder I had no idea about that Bernawhatever figure Jhayka was talking about that one time."
"Heh, I mostly read fantasy as a kid. And got most of my history from the old metal classics. We Spacenoids are pretty technologically minded to; but never, ever, try to go up on historical trivia with any kind of Taloran noble. They'll beat you at your own species' history, let alone their own. It's very important to them. History is the legitimacy of the whole Empire." She got a faintly vague look there. "I actually wrote a song, The Duel of Two Lovers, about Valera and Taliya. We had a lot of fans who were LostGen, which, I guess, most humans would count me as these days. It's nice to talk to some humans who don't have that perspective for a change. We'll have to do some touring of Earth together when we get there, if you two can get away from the conferences: It was a typical arrogant Spacenoid thing but I never actually visited the surface back home."
"Oh, Jhayka's already thoroughly schooled me in Human history," Dani chuckled. Her last bit of her hamburger went down, her fry carton empty. "Unnnh.... maybe I should've gotten a quarter pounder after all. So, we have some time left, I vote we go order the pizzas and then go shopping."
"You really, really should leave the over-eating to Her Highess the Captain, yes," Colleen interjected with a teasing smirk. "But other than that, the motion is duly seconded."
"Yes! To the Pizzeria, and then, Gabrielle's!" Fay led them to the pizza place, and the attendants there almost groaned as the trio bought about three pizzas each (to share with the others, of course, and to eat over the next few days). The order completion time, even with Dani bribing them with the offer of a $100 bill apiece, would literally require them to run back to the Slashahkimmar to get aboard before departure time.
"I don't think Drishalras will leave her korana behind, but, let's be fast about this, huh? We've got an hour tops and it isn't snappy on the personnel record of a Wing Colonel to be the last person back on the ship at port departure," Colleen finished. "I want to see this Gabrielle's place."
Fay took the lead again, and brought them to the entrance across the way, leading them first on the path through the divider area where lush greenery and flowers had been planted. The entrance was like that of a terrestrial mall, with mannequins adorned in some of the favored dresses inside. "We used to be lucky if we could buy one dress per visit," Fay explained to Colleen. "And that was only by sacrificing much of our entertainment budget for that time period. Not that we had much time for entertainment whenever the battles were over and the yards at the Luther Station were filled with damaged ships needing repairs."
Dani was looking down the way while Fay said this, and she noticed in the distance a figure wearing a sun dress. "Tabby," she said to herself. "Fay, I'm going to go say hello to someone. You take Colleen in and just wait for me to pay for it."
"Dani, you're the only one with a big expense account," replied Fay sardonically before leading Colleen in.
Dani walked briskly down the way, and called out, "Tabby! Tabby, over here!" When she didn't turn, Dani picked up the pace, and ended up having to nearly run given the pace that Tabby managed in walking the other way. "Tabby, it's me!" she said happily as she walked up beside the woman; Tabitha Sykes was her name, and she was, or at least had been, one of Dani's fellow engineers at the Luther Dockyard. "Tabby, how are you doing?"
"Can't you take a hint?!" the blonde-haired woman grumbled. "What do you want, Your High Mightyness?"
Dani almost stepped back from the pure vitriol that came from Tabby. "Ta... Tabby... I just wanted to say Hi, see how you were doing?"
"I don't even want to be seen with you," Tabby hissed. "You're... oh God, you're such a disgrace! You make us all look bad!" That, of course, had a triple meaning; not just Stellar Navy officer or engineer, but also lesbian; Tabby had been the only other lesbian in their entire section at Luther.Station.
"Look bad? What?" Bewildered and puzzled, Dani looked at her angry friend with disbelief. "What did I do?"
"What did... what did you do? You shacked up with that high and mighty Taloran princess, you helped the Talorans and the other autocrats force a monarchy on an innocent nation, and now you've accepted some kind of mucky-muck title from them and joined your Taloran sugar-momma as a second wife! It's... it's a disgrace to the GLBT community, Dani. You're being everything all the conservative and religious wackjobs accuse us of being!"
Dani's mouth hung open. "I... I did what I thought was right. They tried to enslave me, Tabby. They enslaved Fayza! She was raped and tortured for weeks because of the policies of that 'innocent nation' you're whining about!"
"So? Did that give them the right to put some girl on a new throne? You helped a bunch of reactionary thugs force a nation to become a monarchy, Dani! You helped these Taloran theocrats and their Holy Roman friends impose a religious monarchy on a people who used to be the most tolerant community in the Multiverse! How many innocent lesbians did they rape to try and make them go straight? How many homosexuals, or Wiccans, lost their homes because of those Catholic fundie bastards?! And now you've become a whore to that Taloran so you can live off her money!" Tabby motioned for Dani to go away. "Just... just get out of my sight, damn, I don't even want to look at you, you stuck up elitist bitch."
"Tabby! I didn't do this to get money!"
"Yeah, sure. Whatever," she said as she walked on. "Keep following me and I'll call base security on your ass. Though I'm sure your Taloran bitch-queen will just bribe them to let you go."
Dani watched her walk away. Her legs began to fall out from under her, and she had to get into a seat, where she continued to look off into space, silently weeping at how Tabby had treated her. They'd been so close, Dani being the elder of them and taking the younger girl under her wing, telling her stories and giving her relationship advice....
A lot of time passed before Fay walked up. "Dani? Dani, what's wrong?" she said as she sat down beside her.
"Oh God, Fay, what have we become," Dani whimpered. "Tabby, Tabby Sykes.... she didn't want to talk to me. She shouted at me, she called me a whore...."
Fay's mouth hung open. She slipped into the seat next to Dani. "Oh Dani...."
"She hates me. She... she thinks I married Jhayka to be rich, that I caused what happened to Gilead..." Dani sniffled. "God, why did it have to be this way? I want to be friends. Just because they made us nobles doesn't mean we can't have friends..."
"Some people will be angry," Fay said softly. "It'll take time for them to get over it, if they ever do." She took Dani's hand. "Let's get back to the ship, it's time to go. And we still have to get our pizzas."
Dani nodded, some tears still in her eyes, and stood to follow Fay back to the clothing shop and the pizzeria.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
HSMS Slashahkimmar, on Gate Approach
Meiersworld System, Alliance Colonial Zone
Universe Designate CON-5
23 March 2165 AST.
50 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
"Thank you Danielle, that was really good," came the lilting Taloran accent of Drishalras Retgariu, having just annihilated a full giant-sized french fry. Her left hand was now cheerfully holding the burger, and Jhayka, sitting to her left, had a somewhat embarrassed expression on her face as Drishalras started to cheerfully eat that too. An expression which was directed toward Danielle, sitting on one of the jumpseats to the left of the bridge, with an expression broadly equivalent to Why!? The main reason for that was that on Drishalras' right was Elestria Rissandha Valeria, Princess itl Gadharaia, the Empress' personal representative on the mission, and she had a.. somewhat amused look at the unrestrained tendency of Drishalras to overeat which was well on display here as she started on the burger.
The Petty Officer manning the primary helm controls--there was a junior PO next to him on the secondary controls for backup purposes--coolly interrupted the scene, however: "Telemetry feed to gate control mechanism has been established, Captain. What are your instructions?"
"Follow all gate telemetry instructions," Drishalras answered, pausing in her eating for a moment, before glancing over to the Warrant at the communications section. "Put a live feed onto the bridge for any instructions from the gate authority."
A few moments later a male voice came over the feed. "Slashahkimmar, please proceed to Departure Gate Lane One-Four. Special course is being fed to you on datalink now, follow it exactly to stay within the exclusive approach lane reserved for you by Gate Control."
Ahead of them was "empty" space, roughly, though all around them merchant vessels and passenger liners and military warships moved along one lane or another, either arriving in CON-5 or leaving for another universe. As a VIP vessel the Slashahkimmar had been granted its own approach lane, not limited by civilian traffic, and had a departure gate reserved for her use, just as on the other side the Io HE-1 Gate Assembly Control had already arranged an arrival gate and reserved lane for them all the way to Earth orbit.
"Acknowledged, Gate Control. We have telemetry feed and are maintaining approach vector," the Warrant at coms answered promptly, Drishalras herself unconcerned, though she did use her neural connection to bring up an image of the gate in the bridge holotank for everyone to see.
Quietly, Ilavna arrived at the back of the bridge. She'd been somewhat withdrawn the whole journey due to the sickness induced in psychics by constant Dristania drive operations, and she had only now, after the arrival in Meiersworld and the peace from such operations, fully recovered, off the drugs used to suppress psychic impulses, and feeling more herself. She moved over to sit by Danielle, smiling. "This will be the first time I've seen Earth," she admitted
"I'm sure you'll enjoy it," Dani said in reply to Illavna. She looked back to Drish. "Though we'll have to keep a careful eye on Drish. Though at least the fast food industry in Washington will appreciate the boost in income they're about to get."
"I see she's wearing the old uniform," Ilavna observed after a moment, referring to the blues and bright reds, the green and yellow, of the old uniform with its fore-and-aft hat which left the ears free, and looked like something a Spanish colonial governor might have worn in the 18th century, save that the sash made it brighter than that, still. Ilavna, for her part, was dressed in clerical robes. "I've heard most of the crews don't like the new ones. To blank and cumbersome, and to much of an army look." It was small talk, though she added, slyly: "I'm surprised she can still fit into it, though. Drishalras would be the perfect Farzian--if she wasn't such an epic glutton--but at least by eating so cheaply she isn't really sinning."
"I thought gluttony was about eating too much period?" Dani asked innocently, smirking at her karona, while looking to the holotank. "Get ready, this is the fun part."
The view on the holotank showed the massive gate assembly, which was a gigantic, long block hovering just past the fith (uninhabitable) planet of the system. It was one of the largest around due to the sheer volume of traffic it had long endured. At the top and bottom were powerful M/AM reactors, and there were more located along stretches of the Assembly, along with the fusion backups; such was the sheer power needed to open so many jump gates.
On each face of the Assembly was a pair of gates. Two facings were for departures, two for arrivals. The gates themselves had been wisely built to accomodate extremely tall and large vessels, to the point that only Zohan BattleCarriers were considered unlikely to fit. They were currently facing one such gate, inactive at the moment, a ring-shaped object built into a cone deep enough to allow for a ship to stop (with the aid of emergency tractor beams built into the inner portions of the cone) should a gate fail to initialize or collapse before the ship could enter.
Over the feed, Gate Control stated, "Gate initialization in progress. Begin approach."
To use energy sufficiently, it was general practice to have ships begin a slow acceleration toward the gate as it charged and only increase acceleration for entry after initialization. This saved time and gave a generous margin of error to prevent accidents. The helmsman on the Slashahkimmar followed Gate Control's instructions precisely, deceptively calm in making his first IU gate approach.
The rings at the upper edge of the "cone" began to glow brightly with blue energy as their capacitors were charged up with energy from the M/AM reactor group assigned to the gate. The energy surged into the Straczynskium core of the rings and the Taloran sensors undoubtedly picked up some of the particles bleeding off as a result.
Then, as the glow reached its zenith, the energy suddenly erupted from the rings, channeled inward. At the center of the ring the particle wave collided and energy crackled. In front of their very eyes a hole was punched through the formless energy barrier that kept the universes seperate. The resulting wormhole expanded outward to cover the entirety of the ring opening, the event horizon a shimmering surface of crackling energy with green, gold, and light blue colors. The glimmer was, as always, breathtaking for Dani. Nothing was so beautiful, and so very dangerous, as an interuniversal jump point.
"It's about waste, it's less wasteful than eating lots of rich foods..." Ilavna answered, very distracted, as she watched the gate. Jhayka, Elestria, everyone on the bridge was viewing that, except those at their duty stations who were not seeing through their eyes, but through neural interfaces. About the only person who didn't seem fascinated and entranced by the structure was Drishalras, who very coolly finished her burger first, and then commented, broadly, to those present on the bridge:
"Well, this is rather interesting, isn't it? Helm, stand by for reverse emergency flank," she added, revealing that though she appeared only interested in her food she had made herself keenly aware of the risks of the gate transit, and indeed had already alerted engineering to have the power available should it be needed.
But it turned out to be unnecessary. The jump point remained stable, and they entered it. What followed was not quite the same as the non-drug softened K-F/Dristania jumps. The holotank went blank, the sensors of the Taloran craft as incapable of recording the experience as any other device known. Dani felt that strange sense of being outside of her body, of not being anywhere at all, but just being... until reality snapped back into place around them. Open space was ahead, though the locality had clearly changed. In the distance on the holotank was the edge of Jupiter's rings. The transit had been successful.
Ilavna was bent over, and then straightened up unsteadily, and looked to Danielle with very, very wide eyes, breathing hard to compose herself. "Dani, I could feel someone feeling us. I swear it. It's maybe not really there, but I swear it that I felt it. I've never felt something like it before; a Presence, a Power... A Holy one of great age and unslackable intent. Is it normal for your, err, telepaths to get unusual sensations when going through the gate?"
Dani shook her head. "Well, um, not that I've heard of. I bet there's material out there you could find, though, with just some research."
"I need to look at that," Ilavna answered softly. But now her attention, like that of them, was attracted to the thin edge of Jupiter's rings, and the explosive fury of the surface of Io en passant.
"It shouldn't take us long to get to Earth," Dani said. "Not at the sublight speeds Slashahkimmar is capable of. And once we get there, and we go through with the arrival ceremony and all, well then, Drish, there's a meat lover's pizza in our suite waiting to be devoured by you."
"I could just have it brought up here and eat it now," Drishalras answered as she glanced through readouts via her neural interface, and then looked over to the coms section. "Warrant Rikasha, do we have a communication from planetary traffic control for a transfer orbit trajectory? Once we clear Jovian space inform them it's my intent to shape an Earth trajectory at two thousand two hundred and fifty gravities acceleration continuous."
"Running hot, are we, dearheart?" Jhayka murmured. "At least you're not doing this at battleflank."
"We might as well show off," Drishalras answered flippantly.
"Clearance received, Captain," Warrant Rikasha reported.
"Very well, navigation," she address Lieutenant Slikama, "Plot our trajectory to Earth orbit on the stated acceleration."
It only took a few seconds of sensor sweeps and calculations. "Trajectory plotted, Your Highness. We will enter Earth orbit at the desired acceleration in two and one-fourth hours, approximately three by the local time-keeping."
Washington, D.C., Earth
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
The day had finally arrived and as the morning dawn came over the city the officials of the Alliance government made the final preparations for the Taloran delegation's arrival. A Marine Corps band had been arranged, with the tune for the Taloran Imperial fanfare (given that Taloran music generally didn't work with Western-style instruments, it was the best that could be done), an honor guard from the elite Marine Corps 3rd Planetary Assault Regiment (symbolic as it had been in the brigade that joined the relief of Kalunda), a motorcade to bring the entourage from the government section of the new Nicolas Mamatmas Aerospace Force Base (formerly Andrews AFB, reactivated almost entirely for thie purpose and renamed after the late President) to the hotel that Jhayka and the Taloran government had selected to house the massive staff for their time in the city, as well as the secondary motorcade that would bring Jhayka to the White House for the formal press conference.... which worried Dale more than anything given Taloran inexperience with the ravenous media he had to deal with every day.
Dale himself was finely dressed in a business suit, still in his bedroom getting ready to depart for Mamatmas AFB. Julia would be coming, given that Jhayka's spouses would be present as well, and she wore a fine, modest navy blue dress that was high-cut and meant for formality more than flattery. The security people were ready to escort him to the PT-2 Marine helicopter, Michael was sound asleep with his nanny present should he wake up, and the formal luncheon that would be held for Jhayka after the press conference was already being prepared, hours ahead of time. The list of dignitaries was massive; a host of ambassadors, Council Representatives, government ministers, and other elites of Washington society, and similar fare would be had for virtually every dinner planned for the first week. A host of embassies and Washington elites were angling to play a part in the festivities, even without the negotiations taken into consideration, and the government was going to be fairly distracted in the coming days over this.
"Well, here we go," Dale sighed, taking Julia's hand and walking with her to the helicopter. They climbed aboard and the Marine pilot lifted off, flying them over the city, with all air traffic carefully screened for them to be given a clear path to Mamatmas AFB.
The Pentagon
The officers in the Stellar Navy Department were having a normal early day, processing the reports and overseeing the orders that kept the Navy running day-to-day. Various offices oversaw the operations of their individual Divisions, such as Intelligence, Engineering, Procurement, Personnel, and others, and in all the officers monitors usually displayed the various cable news channels as a matter of course.
Currently most of the cable news services: Fox, IUNS, CNN, the BBC, all were covering closely the "imminent arrival" of the Taloran delegation, even as their talking heads debated the issue of the failed pirate attack on the Slashahkimmar and the new Washington Post article, just published that day, on the Taloran and Alliance governments suspecting a Devenshiran, specifically Prantonese, angle to the attack. A couple of channels briefly mentioned as well the news of Taloran involvement in an imminent exodus of the former Clans of Kerensky warrior caste from the newly-formed Kerensky Worlds Republic, but likely to the dissatisfaction of Elijah Weisbaum, the story fizzled in the face of the pirate attack, the fall of the Driscova government on Devenshire, and the arrival of the Taloran delegation.
Legions of cameramen and reporters had arrived at Mamatmas AFB to observe the arrival of the delegation shuttle while the White House Press Corps prepared for the day's luncheon and press conference. Every once and a while the various networks would peek in on their reports waiting on the scene.
Then news begin to trickle in, office by office, that something was going on regarding the Taloran arrival, and the news drew the staffers like flies to honey. Reports remained half-read on tables, forms half-filled out, and coffee cups and tea cups half-empty as everyone rushed from the Pentagon to the parking lot.
Slashahkimmar, approaching Earth orbit.
So far the voyage had been remarkably mundane. It was about two hours and fourty-five minutes later, and the ship was now deaccelerating hard and vectoring toward Earth orbit, with the one planet, one moon system looming larger and larger before all of them. Monitoring was proceeding normally, and everyone was watching with a certain degree of intense curiousity as the orbital facilities of the Alliance of Democratic Nations' capitol were viewed for the first time by the sensors of a Taloran Starfleet ship.
Jhayka was jacked in, reading through the plan for the landing that Drishalras had put together, when she found something in it that made her stop for a moment, however, frowning over to her first wife in the command chair next to her with a slight look of annoyance. "What's this in the plan, Drish? You're going to have me take the ship's Admiral's Barge for the landing with President Dale? A slow, ponderous thing like that?" The next line came out unbidden: "I'm a General, not a navy puke, and certainly not an Admiral."
Drishalras swiveled her captain's chair toward Jhayka and fixed her with a droll, sarcastic stare, brushing a long bright red lock from her face and her ears showing dangerous amusement. "Navy Puke? You do realize, don't you, that BOTH the women you're married to are naval officers? Perhaps you should regret that remark, my love."
Dani looked back where she was viewing another vessel in orbit near them, oblivious to the argument developing between Jhayka and Drish. The long vessel was unlike anything she had seen before. "What's that ship?" she asked the sensor station officer.
"It's showing National Navy Idents, Your Highness," the massive Jikari Lieutenant Trikamalish answered. "Perhaps from a nation which acceded since you left the Alliance?"
"I can't think of any contacted nation that builds ships like that. Mind reading their IFF code?"
"I can transfer them to the display next to Your Highness," the lieutenant answered helpfully, the codes popping up a moment later.
Ada'ren was sitting nearby, frowning slightly as she looked at the nearby vessel. "Those are fifty centimeter PPACs, along with standard 15 centimeter secondaries and full 3 centimeter point defense strips. That must be a Zohan design, but it doesn't match any configuration I am familiar with" she commented quietly.
"Must be the Alliance Zohan clan, Your Highness," Trikamalish commented, not having much else to do at the moment since the feed was updating continuously off the sensors. And anyway, it was seeming like a good idea to be busy when he'd noticed something, in fact, most of the bridge had, which Dani hadn't yet. The conversation between Drishalras and Jhayka was hardly over...
Jhayka had gone on for several minutes with her, now, and the bridge crew remained exceptionally silent throughout the exchange, and Jhayka was looking slightly ruffled but really unconcerned as she continued, a bit lamely but still insistent, "Well, I'm the head of this mission with plenipotentiary powers, so, we're taking an assault lander down to the surface. It's a proper vehicle for getting a General to the surface, and it'll make a nice impression on them."
"You're not a general when you're to arrange a treaty with one of the two most powerful foreign nations in the megaverse," Drish shot back. "You're a special consul with extraordinary and plenipotentiary powers. You're a diplomat now, Jhayka, and no, you're not taking an assault shuttle to the surface of the Alliance capital world! It'll be like a Viceroy landing on an occupied planet or something similiarly odious and the worst possible impression to make."
"Well, I'm in charge here, Drish, so.. I'm doing it anyway," came the inevitable answer.
"No you're not. I'm not going to let you."
"I can order you to do it. Your job on this mission is to make sure that I get here safely. I'm the one in charge of it, and I am not taking an Admiral's barge to the surface!"
"No you're not. It would be the silliest thing you could possibly imagine." At this point the two of them were really going at it, everything else ignored, and the whole bridge was otherwise quiet enough that one could hear a pin drop. And the Empress' relative, Elestria, looked like she was about to break out laughing.
"I'm also the head of the household, so..."
"...You can do whatever you want? No! I'm your wife, not a serving girl, I don't have to listen to you."
"Jhayka, Drish, please!" Dani said, finally cutting in. "Maybe, maybe we can find a shuttle or something...."
"A passenger shuttle? That's worse!" Both of them said it at once, and then stared at each other.
"A gunboat then?"
"Ahm, honourable ladies," Ilavna interjected in turn, and loudly and clearly.. "If an assault lander nor an Admiral's barge nor a common shuttle is acceptable... And I think a gunboat.. Well, as bad as an assault lander, Your Highness.... Can not this ship itself land on the surface of a planet? In the ocean? Like, well.. Every other of our ships that our Starfleet builds?"
Dani's eyes widened a bit; she'd heard about this capability, but the thought of doing it? More than that, however, the realization that Jhayka, and more importantly [i}Drish[/i] had overlooked this capability but Illavna had seized on it, made her start giggling.
"Why, that's a brilliant idea," Drishalras replied to Ilavna. "Thank you, Holy Sister..." She glanced back to Jhayka, looking and hoping for some sort of approval. "The Alliance capitol is near the water, right, my wife?"
"Yes, it's.. Well, somewhere wet," Jhayka answered after a moment. "I think they built it on a swamp."
"Alright then," Drish answered, both of them apparently perfectly serious. "I'll ask for landing clearance. Except, I really need to specify geographical coordinates..." She frowned for a moment, and then brightened. "Put an image of the Earth on the holotank, please." Drish glanced back to Dani. "Ah, could you point to where we need to land close to?"
"Here." Dani pointed to the general area of Washington, or rather what she hoped was Washington.
"Hmmm, there's a large peninsula off the coast. We'll have to land off the shelf, there. And then we can up into the embayment and anchor." With that settled, Drishalras herself contacted Earth traffic control. "This is Her Serene Majesty's Ship Slashahkimmar on diplomatic operations. We are requesting that you restrict airspace over the Atlantic coast from 38 degrees 20 minutes north to 38 degrees 22 minutes north and seventy-five thirty west to seventy-five thirty-five west. so that we may make an approach to land immediately off the continental shelf. Please designate an area of ocean five hundred kilometers north-south by fifty kilometers east-west to allow us a safe landing zone, and provide instructions for a naval air station at which all onboard operational craft can be landed." She concluded, and, while waiting for a reply, contacted Wing Colonel Winters: "Wing Colonel, are your fighters ready for a redeployment flight prior to landing?"
"Positive on that, Your Highness."
Mamatmas AFB
Dale was on the ground, seated in a hanger waiting for confirmation from planetary control on a Taloran shuttle approaching, when one of the Aerospace Force officers came up and asked him to come to the Control Center. Dale followed him through the refurbished base and into the subterrenean levels where Base Control was. The men and women in the room stood at attention upon his entrance until ordered to be at ease, and Dale immediately was given a headset. "Yes?"
"Mister President, this is Director Cowlins from Planetary Control. The Taloran vessel is asking for permission to land.."
"Well, do so then."
"Sir, I don't think you understand. It's not a shuttle they're asking permission for. It's their entire ship."
Dale's mouth opened wide for a moment. "What?! Their entire ship?!"
"Yes, they want to land in the Atlantic and then sail into the Chesapeake."
"Well, uh.... yes, yes, have them do it," Dale muttered. Only now did he remember a report given months ago that the Talorans built all of their warships for wet-navy work as well. "And call them and find out where they're going to come in for the reception."
"Yes, Mister President.."
HSMS Slashahkimmar
"We have clearance!" Drishalras said excitedly. She was already in the process of launching every single craft on the whole ship. "As for where we're coming in... I suppose we'll..."
"Hampton Roads, there's a major naval bay there. If we can actually get the ship across the Chesapeake Bar," Jhayka added after a moment, recalling a detail of human history.
"Well, I'll inform them of that myself.." she said, working the neural interface, and adding: "I'm certain it won't be a problem, though. The ship only needs two hundred and seventy-five meters of water to operate in."
Soon enough it was clear that it was really happening. Drishalras unjacked, got up and started to nervously pace the bridge, making sure everything was ready, while they descended into low Earth orbit, and beyond, approaching atmospheric entrance. Elestria was immensely interested; she had never seen an Imperial ship of this size actually land before. Finally, Drishalras paused by Danielle and confessed. "I've never actually done this before, but the procedure is fairly straightforward."
"Now you tell us," Dani muttered.
That matter confessed, she returned to her command chair and jacked herself back in, taking a nervous look to Jhayka. They were already beginning to enter the atmosphere, the hull heating immensely, for they were coming in fairly fast, but the immense armour easily handling it. Once that it was done, it was not all that far to descend down to the surface, and the holotank showed an external view which was rapidly swelling, the ship tracking over northern Newfoundland on this course as it headed toward its landing site off the Delmarva peninsula.
"Speed five thousand meters per second," the helmsman reported coolly. "Applying gravitic impellers on reverse thrust now.."
"Bring our altitude down to ten thousand meters," Drishalras ordered. The distances ticked away. They blew past Cape Cod and continued onwards, south, further south...
"Four thousand meters per second..."
"Signal the crew to stand by for a porpoising manoeuvre," Drishalras ordered abruptly and started buckling up her harness, a signal for, well, pretty much everyone else to imitate her.
The next few minutes were a period of tension only broken up by Colleen calling in to report that the ship's wing was being accomadated at Oceana NAS in Virginia Beach; the gunboats and other larger craft that a typical base couldn't handle were landing on the Chesapeake to dock at the old navy piers at Hampton Roads. Drishalras noted the information as the speed continued to tick away.
"One thousand meters per second!"
A moment later, from the navigator's station: "We are entering the exclusion zone."
"Alright, take us down to one thousand meters and reduce speed to two hundred and fifty meters per second," Drishalras ordered, fingers twiddling together with some tension as the sea and the gray sky overhead showed on this Atlantic spring day, with heavy swells in the ocean waves below.
"Landing zone in T-30 seconds. Speed at three hundred meters per second and decreasing...." droned the reports. For those observing the event, the battlecruiser, 2,475 meters long, with the massive pods on either wing, higher than it was wide, a tremendous superstructure going up, and turrets going down where it seems it couldn't safely land them with, was coming in marvelously close. The bent-x shape of the aft wings was projecting down toward the water...
"Align the ventral turrets full-aft for water landing," Drishalras ordered. "Once they're locked in place take us down to hydrofoil mode, helm."
The turrets swung back to present streamlined aft fairings forward for the landing, and a moment later the ship began to descend toward the ocean, its massive matte-black hull looming over everything, Seal Script sigils in crimson on the hull and a few gray plates welded over the battle-damage in random places completing the look. The helmsman tensely brought the ship down until a shudder, and a deep rumble, could be felt throughout the entire hull. The massively reinforced ventral gravitic drive fins were now partially supporting the weight of the ship, kicking up huge rooster-tails as friction cut the speed down even further, and other reductions brought it to about one hundred and fifty meters per second.
"Bring us down, Captain?" The helm asked.
"Bring us down!" Drish agreed, speed bleeding away to about one hundred meters per second, and then lower, and lower, and the cameras on the outside of the hull showed the incredible view of the sharply outward curving nose of the battlecruiser, worthy of a clipper ship, slicing into the water.
The force of the water against the hull dragged them down hard and abruptly, and the whole ship nose-divided into the western Atlantic. Outside and in the view could be seen as the thunderous spray of the ocean consumed the ship right up to her central Q turret, and almost entirely submerged the foward superstructure, and then continued on, B and Q turrets disappearing briefly as the spray dashed up aruond the forward superstructure and the ship's cameras just showed water, turned to steam from friction and heat. Water ran along the deck almost all the way to the fantail.
And by that point, the ship's forward progress had been entirely cancelled and bouyancy reasserted itself, with a tremendous rush and roar of water coming up as the bow broached the surface and huge torrents of water ran off the massive hull, the bow raising up and the stern settling a bit, before the bow fell once more and then gradually settled out, with still hundreds of tons of water pouring off of every section of the ship.
"Wow, that was impressive," Drishalras admitted after a moment, glancing around the bridge. "Well, our maximum surfaced speed is a hundred kilometers an hour, and at that speed it's going to probably take us two hours to get to Hampton Roads... Starboard three points helm, then bring us up to our max."
Outside, the ship looked incredible. Three-fourths of the ship's mass was submerged, and so only little of the hull was visible, and it curved inward, as the hull was mirrored, so that the Slashahkimmar looked like an old French battleship with a massive case of tumblehome when viewed in the ocean as this. She turned inwards...
"Isn't the ship supposed to be flying flags when on the surface," Jhayka interjected.
"Oh, ah, yes." With that, Drishalras sent a party out through what were normally airlocks, and in the final and utterly insane touch, a massive sixty-foot Taloran naval jack was rigged to a filiment cable brought along with the party and run up from the after superstructure, with national flags of similar size running up on either side of the fore superstructure. Making a speed of a good fifty knots, she was by that point plowing through a stiff Atlantic breeze with a huge amount of spray kicked up from the bow, scarcely noticing the wave action at all.
And then, just at Drishalras moment of triumph, the communications Warrant Officer intervened to ruin it all: "Uh, apparently the local Coast Guard is contacting us to try and inform us, Your Highnesses, that the Chesapeake Bar is only twenty-five meters deep. We'll ground out before we get there."
The words that followed from Drishalras were distinctly untranslatable, and extremely bad. Ilavna winced on hearing them, but also looked as though she might giggle.
"Well," Jhayka commented sardonically. "I suppose since we've already flown off all of our shuttles, we should ask them to send one for us."
Meiersworld System, Alliance Colonial Zone
Universe Designate CON-5
23 March 2165 AST.
50 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
"Thank you Danielle, that was really good," came the lilting Taloran accent of Drishalras Retgariu, having just annihilated a full giant-sized french fry. Her left hand was now cheerfully holding the burger, and Jhayka, sitting to her left, had a somewhat embarrassed expression on her face as Drishalras started to cheerfully eat that too. An expression which was directed toward Danielle, sitting on one of the jumpseats to the left of the bridge, with an expression broadly equivalent to Why!? The main reason for that was that on Drishalras' right was Elestria Rissandha Valeria, Princess itl Gadharaia, the Empress' personal representative on the mission, and she had a.. somewhat amused look at the unrestrained tendency of Drishalras to overeat which was well on display here as she started on the burger.
The Petty Officer manning the primary helm controls--there was a junior PO next to him on the secondary controls for backup purposes--coolly interrupted the scene, however: "Telemetry feed to gate control mechanism has been established, Captain. What are your instructions?"
"Follow all gate telemetry instructions," Drishalras answered, pausing in her eating for a moment, before glancing over to the Warrant at the communications section. "Put a live feed onto the bridge for any instructions from the gate authority."
A few moments later a male voice came over the feed. "Slashahkimmar, please proceed to Departure Gate Lane One-Four. Special course is being fed to you on datalink now, follow it exactly to stay within the exclusive approach lane reserved for you by Gate Control."
Ahead of them was "empty" space, roughly, though all around them merchant vessels and passenger liners and military warships moved along one lane or another, either arriving in CON-5 or leaving for another universe. As a VIP vessel the Slashahkimmar had been granted its own approach lane, not limited by civilian traffic, and had a departure gate reserved for her use, just as on the other side the Io HE-1 Gate Assembly Control had already arranged an arrival gate and reserved lane for them all the way to Earth orbit.
"Acknowledged, Gate Control. We have telemetry feed and are maintaining approach vector," the Warrant at coms answered promptly, Drishalras herself unconcerned, though she did use her neural connection to bring up an image of the gate in the bridge holotank for everyone to see.
Quietly, Ilavna arrived at the back of the bridge. She'd been somewhat withdrawn the whole journey due to the sickness induced in psychics by constant Dristania drive operations, and she had only now, after the arrival in Meiersworld and the peace from such operations, fully recovered, off the drugs used to suppress psychic impulses, and feeling more herself. She moved over to sit by Danielle, smiling. "This will be the first time I've seen Earth," she admitted
"I'm sure you'll enjoy it," Dani said in reply to Illavna. She looked back to Drish. "Though we'll have to keep a careful eye on Drish. Though at least the fast food industry in Washington will appreciate the boost in income they're about to get."
"I see she's wearing the old uniform," Ilavna observed after a moment, referring to the blues and bright reds, the green and yellow, of the old uniform with its fore-and-aft hat which left the ears free, and looked like something a Spanish colonial governor might have worn in the 18th century, save that the sash made it brighter than that, still. Ilavna, for her part, was dressed in clerical robes. "I've heard most of the crews don't like the new ones. To blank and cumbersome, and to much of an army look." It was small talk, though she added, slyly: "I'm surprised she can still fit into it, though. Drishalras would be the perfect Farzian--if she wasn't such an epic glutton--but at least by eating so cheaply she isn't really sinning."
"I thought gluttony was about eating too much period?" Dani asked innocently, smirking at her karona, while looking to the holotank. "Get ready, this is the fun part."
The view on the holotank showed the massive gate assembly, which was a gigantic, long block hovering just past the fith (uninhabitable) planet of the system. It was one of the largest around due to the sheer volume of traffic it had long endured. At the top and bottom were powerful M/AM reactors, and there were more located along stretches of the Assembly, along with the fusion backups; such was the sheer power needed to open so many jump gates.
On each face of the Assembly was a pair of gates. Two facings were for departures, two for arrivals. The gates themselves had been wisely built to accomodate extremely tall and large vessels, to the point that only Zohan BattleCarriers were considered unlikely to fit. They were currently facing one such gate, inactive at the moment, a ring-shaped object built into a cone deep enough to allow for a ship to stop (with the aid of emergency tractor beams built into the inner portions of the cone) should a gate fail to initialize or collapse before the ship could enter.
Over the feed, Gate Control stated, "Gate initialization in progress. Begin approach."
To use energy sufficiently, it was general practice to have ships begin a slow acceleration toward the gate as it charged and only increase acceleration for entry after initialization. This saved time and gave a generous margin of error to prevent accidents. The helmsman on the Slashahkimmar followed Gate Control's instructions precisely, deceptively calm in making his first IU gate approach.
The rings at the upper edge of the "cone" began to glow brightly with blue energy as their capacitors were charged up with energy from the M/AM reactor group assigned to the gate. The energy surged into the Straczynskium core of the rings and the Taloran sensors undoubtedly picked up some of the particles bleeding off as a result.
Then, as the glow reached its zenith, the energy suddenly erupted from the rings, channeled inward. At the center of the ring the particle wave collided and energy crackled. In front of their very eyes a hole was punched through the formless energy barrier that kept the universes seperate. The resulting wormhole expanded outward to cover the entirety of the ring opening, the event horizon a shimmering surface of crackling energy with green, gold, and light blue colors. The glimmer was, as always, breathtaking for Dani. Nothing was so beautiful, and so very dangerous, as an interuniversal jump point.
"It's about waste, it's less wasteful than eating lots of rich foods..." Ilavna answered, very distracted, as she watched the gate. Jhayka, Elestria, everyone on the bridge was viewing that, except those at their duty stations who were not seeing through their eyes, but through neural interfaces. About the only person who didn't seem fascinated and entranced by the structure was Drishalras, who very coolly finished her burger first, and then commented, broadly, to those present on the bridge:
"Well, this is rather interesting, isn't it? Helm, stand by for reverse emergency flank," she added, revealing that though she appeared only interested in her food she had made herself keenly aware of the risks of the gate transit, and indeed had already alerted engineering to have the power available should it be needed.
But it turned out to be unnecessary. The jump point remained stable, and they entered it. What followed was not quite the same as the non-drug softened K-F/Dristania jumps. The holotank went blank, the sensors of the Taloran craft as incapable of recording the experience as any other device known. Dani felt that strange sense of being outside of her body, of not being anywhere at all, but just being... until reality snapped back into place around them. Open space was ahead, though the locality had clearly changed. In the distance on the holotank was the edge of Jupiter's rings. The transit had been successful.
Ilavna was bent over, and then straightened up unsteadily, and looked to Danielle with very, very wide eyes, breathing hard to compose herself. "Dani, I could feel someone feeling us. I swear it. It's maybe not really there, but I swear it that I felt it. I've never felt something like it before; a Presence, a Power... A Holy one of great age and unslackable intent. Is it normal for your, err, telepaths to get unusual sensations when going through the gate?"
Dani shook her head. "Well, um, not that I've heard of. I bet there's material out there you could find, though, with just some research."
"I need to look at that," Ilavna answered softly. But now her attention, like that of them, was attracted to the thin edge of Jupiter's rings, and the explosive fury of the surface of Io en passant.
"It shouldn't take us long to get to Earth," Dani said. "Not at the sublight speeds Slashahkimmar is capable of. And once we get there, and we go through with the arrival ceremony and all, well then, Drish, there's a meat lover's pizza in our suite waiting to be devoured by you."
"I could just have it brought up here and eat it now," Drishalras answered as she glanced through readouts via her neural interface, and then looked over to the coms section. "Warrant Rikasha, do we have a communication from planetary traffic control for a transfer orbit trajectory? Once we clear Jovian space inform them it's my intent to shape an Earth trajectory at two thousand two hundred and fifty gravities acceleration continuous."
"Running hot, are we, dearheart?" Jhayka murmured. "At least you're not doing this at battleflank."
"We might as well show off," Drishalras answered flippantly.
"Clearance received, Captain," Warrant Rikasha reported.
"Very well, navigation," she address Lieutenant Slikama, "Plot our trajectory to Earth orbit on the stated acceleration."
It only took a few seconds of sensor sweeps and calculations. "Trajectory plotted, Your Highness. We will enter Earth orbit at the desired acceleration in two and one-fourth hours, approximately three by the local time-keeping."
Washington, D.C., Earth
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
The day had finally arrived and as the morning dawn came over the city the officials of the Alliance government made the final preparations for the Taloran delegation's arrival. A Marine Corps band had been arranged, with the tune for the Taloran Imperial fanfare (given that Taloran music generally didn't work with Western-style instruments, it was the best that could be done), an honor guard from the elite Marine Corps 3rd Planetary Assault Regiment (symbolic as it had been in the brigade that joined the relief of Kalunda), a motorcade to bring the entourage from the government section of the new Nicolas Mamatmas Aerospace Force Base (formerly Andrews AFB, reactivated almost entirely for thie purpose and renamed after the late President) to the hotel that Jhayka and the Taloran government had selected to house the massive staff for their time in the city, as well as the secondary motorcade that would bring Jhayka to the White House for the formal press conference.... which worried Dale more than anything given Taloran inexperience with the ravenous media he had to deal with every day.
Dale himself was finely dressed in a business suit, still in his bedroom getting ready to depart for Mamatmas AFB. Julia would be coming, given that Jhayka's spouses would be present as well, and she wore a fine, modest navy blue dress that was high-cut and meant for formality more than flattery. The security people were ready to escort him to the PT-2 Marine helicopter, Michael was sound asleep with his nanny present should he wake up, and the formal luncheon that would be held for Jhayka after the press conference was already being prepared, hours ahead of time. The list of dignitaries was massive; a host of ambassadors, Council Representatives, government ministers, and other elites of Washington society, and similar fare would be had for virtually every dinner planned for the first week. A host of embassies and Washington elites were angling to play a part in the festivities, even without the negotiations taken into consideration, and the government was going to be fairly distracted in the coming days over this.
"Well, here we go," Dale sighed, taking Julia's hand and walking with her to the helicopter. They climbed aboard and the Marine pilot lifted off, flying them over the city, with all air traffic carefully screened for them to be given a clear path to Mamatmas AFB.
The Pentagon
The officers in the Stellar Navy Department were having a normal early day, processing the reports and overseeing the orders that kept the Navy running day-to-day. Various offices oversaw the operations of their individual Divisions, such as Intelligence, Engineering, Procurement, Personnel, and others, and in all the officers monitors usually displayed the various cable news channels as a matter of course.
Currently most of the cable news services: Fox, IUNS, CNN, the BBC, all were covering closely the "imminent arrival" of the Taloran delegation, even as their talking heads debated the issue of the failed pirate attack on the Slashahkimmar and the new Washington Post article, just published that day, on the Taloran and Alliance governments suspecting a Devenshiran, specifically Prantonese, angle to the attack. A couple of channels briefly mentioned as well the news of Taloran involvement in an imminent exodus of the former Clans of Kerensky warrior caste from the newly-formed Kerensky Worlds Republic, but likely to the dissatisfaction of Elijah Weisbaum, the story fizzled in the face of the pirate attack, the fall of the Driscova government on Devenshire, and the arrival of the Taloran delegation.
Legions of cameramen and reporters had arrived at Mamatmas AFB to observe the arrival of the delegation shuttle while the White House Press Corps prepared for the day's luncheon and press conference. Every once and a while the various networks would peek in on their reports waiting on the scene.
Then news begin to trickle in, office by office, that something was going on regarding the Taloran arrival, and the news drew the staffers like flies to honey. Reports remained half-read on tables, forms half-filled out, and coffee cups and tea cups half-empty as everyone rushed from the Pentagon to the parking lot.
Slashahkimmar, approaching Earth orbit.
So far the voyage had been remarkably mundane. It was about two hours and fourty-five minutes later, and the ship was now deaccelerating hard and vectoring toward Earth orbit, with the one planet, one moon system looming larger and larger before all of them. Monitoring was proceeding normally, and everyone was watching with a certain degree of intense curiousity as the orbital facilities of the Alliance of Democratic Nations' capitol were viewed for the first time by the sensors of a Taloran Starfleet ship.
Jhayka was jacked in, reading through the plan for the landing that Drishalras had put together, when she found something in it that made her stop for a moment, however, frowning over to her first wife in the command chair next to her with a slight look of annoyance. "What's this in the plan, Drish? You're going to have me take the ship's Admiral's Barge for the landing with President Dale? A slow, ponderous thing like that?" The next line came out unbidden: "I'm a General, not a navy puke, and certainly not an Admiral."
Drishalras swiveled her captain's chair toward Jhayka and fixed her with a droll, sarcastic stare, brushing a long bright red lock from her face and her ears showing dangerous amusement. "Navy Puke? You do realize, don't you, that BOTH the women you're married to are naval officers? Perhaps you should regret that remark, my love."
Dani looked back where she was viewing another vessel in orbit near them, oblivious to the argument developing between Jhayka and Drish. The long vessel was unlike anything she had seen before. "What's that ship?" she asked the sensor station officer.
"It's showing National Navy Idents, Your Highness," the massive Jikari Lieutenant Trikamalish answered. "Perhaps from a nation which acceded since you left the Alliance?"
"I can't think of any contacted nation that builds ships like that. Mind reading their IFF code?"
"I can transfer them to the display next to Your Highness," the lieutenant answered helpfully, the codes popping up a moment later.
Ada'ren was sitting nearby, frowning slightly as she looked at the nearby vessel. "Those are fifty centimeter PPACs, along with standard 15 centimeter secondaries and full 3 centimeter point defense strips. That must be a Zohan design, but it doesn't match any configuration I am familiar with" she commented quietly.
"Must be the Alliance Zohan clan, Your Highness," Trikamalish commented, not having much else to do at the moment since the feed was updating continuously off the sensors. And anyway, it was seeming like a good idea to be busy when he'd noticed something, in fact, most of the bridge had, which Dani hadn't yet. The conversation between Drishalras and Jhayka was hardly over...
Jhayka had gone on for several minutes with her, now, and the bridge crew remained exceptionally silent throughout the exchange, and Jhayka was looking slightly ruffled but really unconcerned as she continued, a bit lamely but still insistent, "Well, I'm the head of this mission with plenipotentiary powers, so, we're taking an assault lander down to the surface. It's a proper vehicle for getting a General to the surface, and it'll make a nice impression on them."
"You're not a general when you're to arrange a treaty with one of the two most powerful foreign nations in the megaverse," Drish shot back. "You're a special consul with extraordinary and plenipotentiary powers. You're a diplomat now, Jhayka, and no, you're not taking an assault shuttle to the surface of the Alliance capital world! It'll be like a Viceroy landing on an occupied planet or something similiarly odious and the worst possible impression to make."
"Well, I'm in charge here, Drish, so.. I'm doing it anyway," came the inevitable answer.
"No you're not. I'm not going to let you."
"I can order you to do it. Your job on this mission is to make sure that I get here safely. I'm the one in charge of it, and I am not taking an Admiral's barge to the surface!"
"No you're not. It would be the silliest thing you could possibly imagine." At this point the two of them were really going at it, everything else ignored, and the whole bridge was otherwise quiet enough that one could hear a pin drop. And the Empress' relative, Elestria, looked like she was about to break out laughing.
"I'm also the head of the household, so..."
"...You can do whatever you want? No! I'm your wife, not a serving girl, I don't have to listen to you."
"Jhayka, Drish, please!" Dani said, finally cutting in. "Maybe, maybe we can find a shuttle or something...."
"A passenger shuttle? That's worse!" Both of them said it at once, and then stared at each other.
"A gunboat then?"
"Ahm, honourable ladies," Ilavna interjected in turn, and loudly and clearly.. "If an assault lander nor an Admiral's barge nor a common shuttle is acceptable... And I think a gunboat.. Well, as bad as an assault lander, Your Highness.... Can not this ship itself land on the surface of a planet? In the ocean? Like, well.. Every other of our ships that our Starfleet builds?"
Dani's eyes widened a bit; she'd heard about this capability, but the thought of doing it? More than that, however, the realization that Jhayka, and more importantly [i}Drish[/i] had overlooked this capability but Illavna had seized on it, made her start giggling.
"Why, that's a brilliant idea," Drishalras replied to Ilavna. "Thank you, Holy Sister..." She glanced back to Jhayka, looking and hoping for some sort of approval. "The Alliance capitol is near the water, right, my wife?"
"Yes, it's.. Well, somewhere wet," Jhayka answered after a moment. "I think they built it on a swamp."
"Alright then," Drish answered, both of them apparently perfectly serious. "I'll ask for landing clearance. Except, I really need to specify geographical coordinates..." She frowned for a moment, and then brightened. "Put an image of the Earth on the holotank, please." Drish glanced back to Dani. "Ah, could you point to where we need to land close to?"
"Here." Dani pointed to the general area of Washington, or rather what she hoped was Washington.
"Hmmm, there's a large peninsula off the coast. We'll have to land off the shelf, there. And then we can up into the embayment and anchor." With that settled, Drishalras herself contacted Earth traffic control. "This is Her Serene Majesty's Ship Slashahkimmar on diplomatic operations. We are requesting that you restrict airspace over the Atlantic coast from 38 degrees 20 minutes north to 38 degrees 22 minutes north and seventy-five thirty west to seventy-five thirty-five west. so that we may make an approach to land immediately off the continental shelf. Please designate an area of ocean five hundred kilometers north-south by fifty kilometers east-west to allow us a safe landing zone, and provide instructions for a naval air station at which all onboard operational craft can be landed." She concluded, and, while waiting for a reply, contacted Wing Colonel Winters: "Wing Colonel, are your fighters ready for a redeployment flight prior to landing?"
"Positive on that, Your Highness."
Mamatmas AFB
Dale was on the ground, seated in a hanger waiting for confirmation from planetary control on a Taloran shuttle approaching, when one of the Aerospace Force officers came up and asked him to come to the Control Center. Dale followed him through the refurbished base and into the subterrenean levels where Base Control was. The men and women in the room stood at attention upon his entrance until ordered to be at ease, and Dale immediately was given a headset. "Yes?"
"Mister President, this is Director Cowlins from Planetary Control. The Taloran vessel is asking for permission to land.."
"Well, do so then."
"Sir, I don't think you understand. It's not a shuttle they're asking permission for. It's their entire ship."
Dale's mouth opened wide for a moment. "What?! Their entire ship?!"
"Yes, they want to land in the Atlantic and then sail into the Chesapeake."
"Well, uh.... yes, yes, have them do it," Dale muttered. Only now did he remember a report given months ago that the Talorans built all of their warships for wet-navy work as well. "And call them and find out where they're going to come in for the reception."
"Yes, Mister President.."
HSMS Slashahkimmar
"We have clearance!" Drishalras said excitedly. She was already in the process of launching every single craft on the whole ship. "As for where we're coming in... I suppose we'll..."
"Hampton Roads, there's a major naval bay there. If we can actually get the ship across the Chesapeake Bar," Jhayka added after a moment, recalling a detail of human history.
"Well, I'll inform them of that myself.." she said, working the neural interface, and adding: "I'm certain it won't be a problem, though. The ship only needs two hundred and seventy-five meters of water to operate in."
Soon enough it was clear that it was really happening. Drishalras unjacked, got up and started to nervously pace the bridge, making sure everything was ready, while they descended into low Earth orbit, and beyond, approaching atmospheric entrance. Elestria was immensely interested; she had never seen an Imperial ship of this size actually land before. Finally, Drishalras paused by Danielle and confessed. "I've never actually done this before, but the procedure is fairly straightforward."
"Now you tell us," Dani muttered.
That matter confessed, she returned to her command chair and jacked herself back in, taking a nervous look to Jhayka. They were already beginning to enter the atmosphere, the hull heating immensely, for they were coming in fairly fast, but the immense armour easily handling it. Once that it was done, it was not all that far to descend down to the surface, and the holotank showed an external view which was rapidly swelling, the ship tracking over northern Newfoundland on this course as it headed toward its landing site off the Delmarva peninsula.
"Speed five thousand meters per second," the helmsman reported coolly. "Applying gravitic impellers on reverse thrust now.."
"Bring our altitude down to ten thousand meters," Drishalras ordered. The distances ticked away. They blew past Cape Cod and continued onwards, south, further south...
"Four thousand meters per second..."
"Signal the crew to stand by for a porpoising manoeuvre," Drishalras ordered abruptly and started buckling up her harness, a signal for, well, pretty much everyone else to imitate her.
The next few minutes were a period of tension only broken up by Colleen calling in to report that the ship's wing was being accomadated at Oceana NAS in Virginia Beach; the gunboats and other larger craft that a typical base couldn't handle were landing on the Chesapeake to dock at the old navy piers at Hampton Roads. Drishalras noted the information as the speed continued to tick away.
"One thousand meters per second!"
A moment later, from the navigator's station: "We are entering the exclusion zone."
"Alright, take us down to one thousand meters and reduce speed to two hundred and fifty meters per second," Drishalras ordered, fingers twiddling together with some tension as the sea and the gray sky overhead showed on this Atlantic spring day, with heavy swells in the ocean waves below.
"Landing zone in T-30 seconds. Speed at three hundred meters per second and decreasing...." droned the reports. For those observing the event, the battlecruiser, 2,475 meters long, with the massive pods on either wing, higher than it was wide, a tremendous superstructure going up, and turrets going down where it seems it couldn't safely land them with, was coming in marvelously close. The bent-x shape of the aft wings was projecting down toward the water...
"Align the ventral turrets full-aft for water landing," Drishalras ordered. "Once they're locked in place take us down to hydrofoil mode, helm."
The turrets swung back to present streamlined aft fairings forward for the landing, and a moment later the ship began to descend toward the ocean, its massive matte-black hull looming over everything, Seal Script sigils in crimson on the hull and a few gray plates welded over the battle-damage in random places completing the look. The helmsman tensely brought the ship down until a shudder, and a deep rumble, could be felt throughout the entire hull. The massively reinforced ventral gravitic drive fins were now partially supporting the weight of the ship, kicking up huge rooster-tails as friction cut the speed down even further, and other reductions brought it to about one hundred and fifty meters per second.
"Bring us down, Captain?" The helm asked.
"Bring us down!" Drish agreed, speed bleeding away to about one hundred meters per second, and then lower, and lower, and the cameras on the outside of the hull showed the incredible view of the sharply outward curving nose of the battlecruiser, worthy of a clipper ship, slicing into the water.
The force of the water against the hull dragged them down hard and abruptly, and the whole ship nose-divided into the western Atlantic. Outside and in the view could be seen as the thunderous spray of the ocean consumed the ship right up to her central Q turret, and almost entirely submerged the foward superstructure, and then continued on, B and Q turrets disappearing briefly as the spray dashed up aruond the forward superstructure and the ship's cameras just showed water, turned to steam from friction and heat. Water ran along the deck almost all the way to the fantail.
And by that point, the ship's forward progress had been entirely cancelled and bouyancy reasserted itself, with a tremendous rush and roar of water coming up as the bow broached the surface and huge torrents of water ran off the massive hull, the bow raising up and the stern settling a bit, before the bow fell once more and then gradually settled out, with still hundreds of tons of water pouring off of every section of the ship.
"Wow, that was impressive," Drishalras admitted after a moment, glancing around the bridge. "Well, our maximum surfaced speed is a hundred kilometers an hour, and at that speed it's going to probably take us two hours to get to Hampton Roads... Starboard three points helm, then bring us up to our max."
Outside, the ship looked incredible. Three-fourths of the ship's mass was submerged, and so only little of the hull was visible, and it curved inward, as the hull was mirrored, so that the Slashahkimmar looked like an old French battleship with a massive case of tumblehome when viewed in the ocean as this. She turned inwards...
"Isn't the ship supposed to be flying flags when on the surface," Jhayka interjected.
"Oh, ah, yes." With that, Drishalras sent a party out through what were normally airlocks, and in the final and utterly insane touch, a massive sixty-foot Taloran naval jack was rigged to a filiment cable brought along with the party and run up from the after superstructure, with national flags of similar size running up on either side of the fore superstructure. Making a speed of a good fifty knots, she was by that point plowing through a stiff Atlantic breeze with a huge amount of spray kicked up from the bow, scarcely noticing the wave action at all.
And then, just at Drishalras moment of triumph, the communications Warrant Officer intervened to ruin it all: "Uh, apparently the local Coast Guard is contacting us to try and inform us, Your Highnesses, that the Chesapeake Bar is only twenty-five meters deep. We'll ground out before we get there."
The words that followed from Drishalras were distinctly untranslatable, and extremely bad. Ilavna winced on hearing them, but also looked as though she might giggle.
"Well," Jhayka commented sardonically. "I suppose since we've already flown off all of our shuttles, we should ask them to send one for us."
Last edited by Steve on 2007-09-13 02:02am, edited 1 time in total.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
-
Alan Bolte
- Sith Devotee
- Posts: 2611
- Joined: 2002-07-05 12:17am
- Location: Columbus, OH
You guys are just unstoppable. It is both awesome, and a joy to read.
Any job worth doing with a laser is worth doing with many, many lasers. -Khrima
There's just no arguing with some people once they've made their minds up about something, and I accept that. That's why I kill them. -Othar
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There's just no arguing with some people once they've made their minds up about something, and I accept that. That's why I kill them. -Othar
Avatar credit
Alan Bolte wrote:You guys are just unstoppable. It is both awesome, and a joy to read.
We're on a roll right now. But I think it's Marina conspiring to keep me from getting my Dwarf Paladin to Level 50 in WoW.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
-
The Duchess of Zeon
- Gözde
- Posts: 14566
- Joined: 2002-09-18 01:06am
- Location: Exiled in the Pale of Settlement.
Mamatmas AFB
After the delay brought on by the Slashahkimmar's landing, proven completely futile after-the-fact, the ceremony was finally underway. A British Aerospace SOT-4S carefully moved along the tarmac, landing normally as opposed to the VTOL-style landing that had been necessary to bring the entourage off of the Slashahkimmar. As it came to a stop and a ladder was brought up to the side door, the band made its preparations, and the instant Jhayka stepped out the Imperial Fanfare began to sound from the experienced Marine Corps band.
Dale was waiting - his wife by his side and Ambassador idhl Ghast on the other side, with Chancellor MacKenzie, Council Opposition Leader Carlos Tiguez, and Foreign Minister Peter Wells around him - as Jhayka, her wives, and two more Talorans exited the craft. A Marine Corps honor guard moved their rifles to position, their uniforms bearing the rare Kalundan Relief Expedition Commendation proudly and visibly. The flag guard held high the flags of the Taloran Star Empire and the Alliance of Democratic Nations at equal standing, and the wind was calm and the air only slightly cool as the Fanfare played on.
Jhayka lived up to her promise of fame in her appearance. She understood humans well enough, and wore voluminous black pantaloons and a dark blue three-fourth sleeved buttoned blouse with high collar, and a black vest over that, very mostly for a Taloran, with a yellow sash. Her vibrant pink hair, falling below the small of her back, was left unrestrained, and those expressionless mechanical eyes marked her very clearly. Wearing cavalry boots and with her sword at her side, she wore several orders not associated with uniforms only, and held a cane with a silver Ristari-beast's head for the pommel, with which she helped herself down from the craft easily enough, walking with a slight limp.
Drishalras was behind her in the old-style dress uniform, a calculated slight to the hated new dress whites, ready to grab her shoulder if she needed it from her weakness. And Danielle followed her, dressed by the mutual agreement of all in her Gilean uniform that she was entitled to wear after the integration of the old Kalundan military, as being the dress likely to evoke the best feelings in all, reminding them of their heroic status.
The Princess Elestria Valeria had her hair done up in the 'Imperial Style', a bun with a braid wrapped around the base and then extending down as far as it could, with her fine seaweed green hair that matched the Empress', and amber-flecked green eyes. Ilavna Lashila followed her, and then three aides, all Talorans. The rest of the negotiating party was being taken to Washington in a less public fashion.
They assembled at the bottom of the stairs, and with the steel-shod boots clapping against the cement, and the silver point of Jhayka's cane tapping it remorselessly, hair stirred by a bit of wind, they started forward. The fanfare faded, and Hail to the Chief was played, for it was at this moment that Jhayka came forward to pay her respects to the leader of the Alliance of Democratic nations, towering above him by no few inches. On approaching, she clicked her heels and bowed slightly, cane briefly tucked under one arm, regarding him through expressionless metal. "Your Excellency, President Robert Allen Dale. I am the Princess Jhayka of the Lesser Intuit, and my liege has sent me here to treat with you. I thank you for the honour of receiving me, the Empress' representative, and my family, in person as you have done, and offer my respects to you and your's," she added, a faint smile directed to Julia at that juncture.
"You are welcome, Your Highness," was Dale's reply. "It is an equal honor to host such a celebrated figure as yourself, and it is my earnest hope that these talks will bear fruit despite the difficulties we have faced in getting to this point."
"I have every confidence of that," Jhayka answered. "Her Serene Majesty sent me here to successfully negotiate a treaty, Your Excellency. Our nation desires very much only peace and inclusion in a prosperous multiversal community. For the moment, I'd like to introduce Her Highness Princess Elestria, of the Imperial household," she gestured to the Taloran with her strangely done-up hair, "and of couse my wives, Drishalras and Danielle. My confessor, Ilavna Lashila, and the rest of the party is, I understand, already being transported to the quarters that we arranged."
"Your Highness, ladies, greetings." Dale looked back to Jhayka. "Yes, the rest of your entourage and negotiating team is being ferried into Washington and the Hay-Adams Hotel, I believe it was."
At this point, Dale looked to those with him. "I presume the Baroness idhl Ghast needs no introduction. This is my wife Julia, Chancellor Mackenzie..." Dale introduced the others formally and allowed for handshakes and greetings. "If you wish to get out of the wind, I have a motorcade convoy waiting to take us to the White House."
"That would be much appreciated, Your Excellency," Jhayka allowed with a faint smile for human consumption. "Lead on."
Dale directed them into the appropriate vehicles, all bearing Alliance flags on the corners, though his main vehicle had added Taloran markings as well, as well as the vehicle that the Baroness would be traveling in. Dale and Julia would take one with Jhayka and her wives, Elestria was set to ride with Wells and MacKenzie, and the Baroness would ride back with Illavna and Tiguez. Marines closed the doors behind the occupants, and the professional drivers started moving, the police motorcycles and police cruiser moving ahead of them and others preparing to get behind in the standard protective motorcade formation. Julia took over the role as hostess and opened the wine cabinent. "Would you ladies like a drink?"
Both Jhayka and Drishalras said please, as comfortable with alcohol consumption while discussing serious matters as one could be. Both could sit fine in the car for the most part, but their ears were flattened back a bit by the need to avoid the rather short ceiling of the vehicles. It was Jhayka who began to speak first: "I want to raise, and clear up, the matter which began with the unfortunate attack on our ship, Your Excellency. Suffice to say that the government was simply overreacting due to the fact that this mission has been accorded a very considerable priority. The breach with Devenshire is very regrettable. I would have preferred to avoid it, for personal reasons if nothing else, for I owe Sara Proctor in many ways. Unfortunately the politics of state rarely allow these matters to go the way we wish.."
"It has been very regrettable. But diplomacy often depends as much on the skill of translators and the passions of the people involved as it does on mere national interest," Dale replied. "The fall of the Driscova government will undoubtedly hurt us all in a number of ways, and we can only hope the elections that will undoubtedly result may bring her or another reasonable figure to responsibility over Devenshire's government again. As for Sara Proctor, however, I have heard that Queen Minerva will be naming her as Caretaker Prime Minister until either the Parliament can arrange a new government or new elections are called. I have high hopes that if this is true she can at least rein in the less-reasonable elements of the Parliament until passions calm."
"Most Talorans are fairly reluctant to undertake learning alien languages unless of some immediate value to them," Jhayka responded. "I've heard of that cause for what happened, and it's regrettable indeed. But I trust Sara Proctor very much. The situation may see itself repaired once the people of Devenshire observe the fact that we do not, in fact, have any designs against them. Taloran expansion in CON-5, you may note, has been largely limited to planets in very impoverished states that we have largely intervened with to aide in the general vicinity of our existing territory and trade routes, and we scarcely could conceive of wishing upon ourselves the difficult of subjagating a vast and restless human population filled with the passions of fresh liberty. Some of what their press said is therefore.. Quite base, if not outright malicious. But the matter can be easily ignored by us."
"It's said that no people are swifter to take up arms in defense of liberty than those who have not always enjoyed it. Unfortunately, in some cases they can tend toward paranoia," Dale responded, sipping at wine as well. "But that is a matter than is probably out of our purview here. The Caliphate, on the other hand, is a different matter."
"Ah, indeed." Jhayka sipped off her own wine, smiling a bit at the fact that Drishalras was observing the scenery intently and curiously. "Well, as for the Caliphate, I'd propose that we force the extraterritorial opening of their space, allowing our ships to patrol at whim, even in their systems and right up to the atmospheric edge of their planets, in pursuit of the enforcement of anti-piracy and anti-slaving laws understood to be absolute among civilized people, and demand extraterritoriality for our citizens and subjects to make it easier to locate and remove them should they be taken by corsairs, in short making all Caliphal space like international waters, as it were. I do not have any directives from Her Serene Majesty on this matter, and I'll include my recommendations along with any broad-based discussions like this we might have."
"Such was the tenor of my recent discussion with Ambassador Golytsin, the Slavian Ambassador, but I have yet to consult with Ambassadors Shropshire and Gabreaux on the Caliphate matter. I was hoping we could do so with Ambassador idhl Ghast if time allows, but the treaty negotiation will certianly be our priority."
Julia noticed Danielle was sitting quietly, not speaking. "Duchess, isn't it?" she asked. "Would you like a drink?"
Eyes turned to Dani and she shifted a little. "Oh, uh, no, I'm just... sitting here, really. My head hasn't quite wrapped itself around the fact that I'm in a limosine with the President of the Alliance and his wife."
Jhayka chuckled gently and slipped an arm around Danielle's shoulders in a comfortable show of affection. "I suppose that is a very marvelous thing for you, dearheart, even after meeting the All-Highest Empress. Which can be a bit dreamy in that old palace, like it didn't really happen. And since everything else is on the scripted plans for the conference except for this recent matter, I do suppose we have pushed to the limits of our serious conversation until this.. Press conference thing that's coming up."
"Did your advisors help you prepare for the press conference?", Dale asked.
"No, none of them know what one is, I suspect," Jhayka answered bluntly. "Danielle filled me in, and it does not sound pleasant, but, I imagine it cannot be to bad as long as you do not lose your cool. Which seems to be the goal of the interrogators in the crowd."
"Generally. The White House Press Corps is only slightly better behaved," Dale replied sardonically. "But unfortunately you'll have to deal with the conventional press, I'm sure. Just remember that they like anything that grabs attention. If you use that to your advantage, like Nicolas was so capable of, then you can get the press eating out of your hand. Unfortunately, if you do lose your cool, or let your control down for a moment and decide to be too frank at the wrong moment, your face is plastered on monitors and TV screens across the Multiverse saying something easily warped out of context or as a joke to get laughs for a few months."
"Well, then, I suppose my childhood education will show me in as good of stead here as anywhere else. I am more worried of the things they will or at least might say about Dani and Drish, at any rate.." And with that faint frown on her face, she considered the advice carefully. Talking to actual agents of the press--don't they just sit in their offices and write hyperbole and editorials?--was by far going to be the most mystifying part of the whole affair as far as she was concerned.
After the delay brought on by the Slashahkimmar's landing, proven completely futile after-the-fact, the ceremony was finally underway. A British Aerospace SOT-4S carefully moved along the tarmac, landing normally as opposed to the VTOL-style landing that had been necessary to bring the entourage off of the Slashahkimmar. As it came to a stop and a ladder was brought up to the side door, the band made its preparations, and the instant Jhayka stepped out the Imperial Fanfare began to sound from the experienced Marine Corps band.
Dale was waiting - his wife by his side and Ambassador idhl Ghast on the other side, with Chancellor MacKenzie, Council Opposition Leader Carlos Tiguez, and Foreign Minister Peter Wells around him - as Jhayka, her wives, and two more Talorans exited the craft. A Marine Corps honor guard moved their rifles to position, their uniforms bearing the rare Kalundan Relief Expedition Commendation proudly and visibly. The flag guard held high the flags of the Taloran Star Empire and the Alliance of Democratic Nations at equal standing, and the wind was calm and the air only slightly cool as the Fanfare played on.
Jhayka lived up to her promise of fame in her appearance. She understood humans well enough, and wore voluminous black pantaloons and a dark blue three-fourth sleeved buttoned blouse with high collar, and a black vest over that, very mostly for a Taloran, with a yellow sash. Her vibrant pink hair, falling below the small of her back, was left unrestrained, and those expressionless mechanical eyes marked her very clearly. Wearing cavalry boots and with her sword at her side, she wore several orders not associated with uniforms only, and held a cane with a silver Ristari-beast's head for the pommel, with which she helped herself down from the craft easily enough, walking with a slight limp.
Drishalras was behind her in the old-style dress uniform, a calculated slight to the hated new dress whites, ready to grab her shoulder if she needed it from her weakness. And Danielle followed her, dressed by the mutual agreement of all in her Gilean uniform that she was entitled to wear after the integration of the old Kalundan military, as being the dress likely to evoke the best feelings in all, reminding them of their heroic status.
The Princess Elestria Valeria had her hair done up in the 'Imperial Style', a bun with a braid wrapped around the base and then extending down as far as it could, with her fine seaweed green hair that matched the Empress', and amber-flecked green eyes. Ilavna Lashila followed her, and then three aides, all Talorans. The rest of the negotiating party was being taken to Washington in a less public fashion.
They assembled at the bottom of the stairs, and with the steel-shod boots clapping against the cement, and the silver point of Jhayka's cane tapping it remorselessly, hair stirred by a bit of wind, they started forward. The fanfare faded, and Hail to the Chief was played, for it was at this moment that Jhayka came forward to pay her respects to the leader of the Alliance of Democratic nations, towering above him by no few inches. On approaching, she clicked her heels and bowed slightly, cane briefly tucked under one arm, regarding him through expressionless metal. "Your Excellency, President Robert Allen Dale. I am the Princess Jhayka of the Lesser Intuit, and my liege has sent me here to treat with you. I thank you for the honour of receiving me, the Empress' representative, and my family, in person as you have done, and offer my respects to you and your's," she added, a faint smile directed to Julia at that juncture.
"You are welcome, Your Highness," was Dale's reply. "It is an equal honor to host such a celebrated figure as yourself, and it is my earnest hope that these talks will bear fruit despite the difficulties we have faced in getting to this point."
"I have every confidence of that," Jhayka answered. "Her Serene Majesty sent me here to successfully negotiate a treaty, Your Excellency. Our nation desires very much only peace and inclusion in a prosperous multiversal community. For the moment, I'd like to introduce Her Highness Princess Elestria, of the Imperial household," she gestured to the Taloran with her strangely done-up hair, "and of couse my wives, Drishalras and Danielle. My confessor, Ilavna Lashila, and the rest of the party is, I understand, already being transported to the quarters that we arranged."
"Your Highness, ladies, greetings." Dale looked back to Jhayka. "Yes, the rest of your entourage and negotiating team is being ferried into Washington and the Hay-Adams Hotel, I believe it was."
At this point, Dale looked to those with him. "I presume the Baroness idhl Ghast needs no introduction. This is my wife Julia, Chancellor Mackenzie..." Dale introduced the others formally and allowed for handshakes and greetings. "If you wish to get out of the wind, I have a motorcade convoy waiting to take us to the White House."
"That would be much appreciated, Your Excellency," Jhayka allowed with a faint smile for human consumption. "Lead on."
Dale directed them into the appropriate vehicles, all bearing Alliance flags on the corners, though his main vehicle had added Taloran markings as well, as well as the vehicle that the Baroness would be traveling in. Dale and Julia would take one with Jhayka and her wives, Elestria was set to ride with Wells and MacKenzie, and the Baroness would ride back with Illavna and Tiguez. Marines closed the doors behind the occupants, and the professional drivers started moving, the police motorcycles and police cruiser moving ahead of them and others preparing to get behind in the standard protective motorcade formation. Julia took over the role as hostess and opened the wine cabinent. "Would you ladies like a drink?"
Both Jhayka and Drishalras said please, as comfortable with alcohol consumption while discussing serious matters as one could be. Both could sit fine in the car for the most part, but their ears were flattened back a bit by the need to avoid the rather short ceiling of the vehicles. It was Jhayka who began to speak first: "I want to raise, and clear up, the matter which began with the unfortunate attack on our ship, Your Excellency. Suffice to say that the government was simply overreacting due to the fact that this mission has been accorded a very considerable priority. The breach with Devenshire is very regrettable. I would have preferred to avoid it, for personal reasons if nothing else, for I owe Sara Proctor in many ways. Unfortunately the politics of state rarely allow these matters to go the way we wish.."
"It has been very regrettable. But diplomacy often depends as much on the skill of translators and the passions of the people involved as it does on mere national interest," Dale replied. "The fall of the Driscova government will undoubtedly hurt us all in a number of ways, and we can only hope the elections that will undoubtedly result may bring her or another reasonable figure to responsibility over Devenshire's government again. As for Sara Proctor, however, I have heard that Queen Minerva will be naming her as Caretaker Prime Minister until either the Parliament can arrange a new government or new elections are called. I have high hopes that if this is true she can at least rein in the less-reasonable elements of the Parliament until passions calm."
"Most Talorans are fairly reluctant to undertake learning alien languages unless of some immediate value to them," Jhayka responded. "I've heard of that cause for what happened, and it's regrettable indeed. But I trust Sara Proctor very much. The situation may see itself repaired once the people of Devenshire observe the fact that we do not, in fact, have any designs against them. Taloran expansion in CON-5, you may note, has been largely limited to planets in very impoverished states that we have largely intervened with to aide in the general vicinity of our existing territory and trade routes, and we scarcely could conceive of wishing upon ourselves the difficult of subjagating a vast and restless human population filled with the passions of fresh liberty. Some of what their press said is therefore.. Quite base, if not outright malicious. But the matter can be easily ignored by us."
"It's said that no people are swifter to take up arms in defense of liberty than those who have not always enjoyed it. Unfortunately, in some cases they can tend toward paranoia," Dale responded, sipping at wine as well. "But that is a matter than is probably out of our purview here. The Caliphate, on the other hand, is a different matter."
"Ah, indeed." Jhayka sipped off her own wine, smiling a bit at the fact that Drishalras was observing the scenery intently and curiously. "Well, as for the Caliphate, I'd propose that we force the extraterritorial opening of their space, allowing our ships to patrol at whim, even in their systems and right up to the atmospheric edge of their planets, in pursuit of the enforcement of anti-piracy and anti-slaving laws understood to be absolute among civilized people, and demand extraterritoriality for our citizens and subjects to make it easier to locate and remove them should they be taken by corsairs, in short making all Caliphal space like international waters, as it were. I do not have any directives from Her Serene Majesty on this matter, and I'll include my recommendations along with any broad-based discussions like this we might have."
"Such was the tenor of my recent discussion with Ambassador Golytsin, the Slavian Ambassador, but I have yet to consult with Ambassadors Shropshire and Gabreaux on the Caliphate matter. I was hoping we could do so with Ambassador idhl Ghast if time allows, but the treaty negotiation will certianly be our priority."
Julia noticed Danielle was sitting quietly, not speaking. "Duchess, isn't it?" she asked. "Would you like a drink?"
Eyes turned to Dani and she shifted a little. "Oh, uh, no, I'm just... sitting here, really. My head hasn't quite wrapped itself around the fact that I'm in a limosine with the President of the Alliance and his wife."
Jhayka chuckled gently and slipped an arm around Danielle's shoulders in a comfortable show of affection. "I suppose that is a very marvelous thing for you, dearheart, even after meeting the All-Highest Empress. Which can be a bit dreamy in that old palace, like it didn't really happen. And since everything else is on the scripted plans for the conference except for this recent matter, I do suppose we have pushed to the limits of our serious conversation until this.. Press conference thing that's coming up."
"Did your advisors help you prepare for the press conference?", Dale asked.
"No, none of them know what one is, I suspect," Jhayka answered bluntly. "Danielle filled me in, and it does not sound pleasant, but, I imagine it cannot be to bad as long as you do not lose your cool. Which seems to be the goal of the interrogators in the crowd."
"Generally. The White House Press Corps is only slightly better behaved," Dale replied sardonically. "But unfortunately you'll have to deal with the conventional press, I'm sure. Just remember that they like anything that grabs attention. If you use that to your advantage, like Nicolas was so capable of, then you can get the press eating out of your hand. Unfortunately, if you do lose your cool, or let your control down for a moment and decide to be too frank at the wrong moment, your face is plastered on monitors and TV screens across the Multiverse saying something easily warped out of context or as a joke to get laughs for a few months."
"Well, then, I suppose my childhood education will show me in as good of stead here as anywhere else. I am more worried of the things they will or at least might say about Dani and Drish, at any rate.." And with that faint frown on her face, she considered the advice carefully. Talking to actual agents of the press--don't they just sit in their offices and write hyperbole and editorials?--was by far going to be the most mystifying part of the whole affair as far as she was concerned.
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
Royal City, Devenshire
Kingdom of the Devenshires
Universe Designate CON-5
The IUNS feed tapped into by the Devenshiran Planetary News Corporation filled the gallery in the Royal Palace, showing the Princess Jhayka being greeted by President Dale. "Well, at least she didn't bring Laurentii with her," was the sigh that came from the Prince-Consort Friedrich, Archduke of Austria. He was dressed semi-formally, a uniform jacket and trousers on, but not nearly any decorations as he'd be permitted. He remained seated by his wife Minerva, in a blouse and skirt, the two holding hands. Minerva's expression was solemn and disturbed. The fall of the government, and the rejection of her cousin's leadership had taken a toll on her. Minerva had always been reliant on Alexandria for advice and counsel, and had looked up to her as her father Roger had done before his assassination. To be bereft of that advice was harsh, and Minerva's initial response from despair had been to consider defiantly naming Driscova as the caretaker, as she had said to her husband and as she was now saying to the only other person who's advice she desired.
"It is best if we let the Laurentii issue die down for the moment," Sara Proctor said from a nearby chair. She was in a pink blouse and simple blue dress with purple flower adornment, her hair kept neck-level as was her preference. "Your Majesty, I understand why you want Alexandria back. I want her back. But to name her the caretaker would be seen as defying the will of the Parliament. It would provoke a constitutional crisis and cause the Throne great trouble."
"Parliament?" Minerva's tone was bitter, very uncharacteristic for the usually cheerful young woman. "They have taken leave of their senses! To think that the Talorans would invade us to restore my uncle's surviving sycophants?! They rile my subjects up with lies and distortions and now they have deprived us of the counsel of my cousin and damaged our relations with a great power precisely as they begin negotiations with the one State in all the Multiverse with the will and power to defend the Kingdom!"
"Parliament is prone to giving in to its passions, Your Majesty, but when time passes and they realize they were fools, they retreat from them. It is entirely possible that by the time new elections are held, the Crown-Conservatives will be powerful enough to force the re-appointment of Alexandria in any new ruling coalition." Sara sat still in the chair. "You must appoint a Prime Minister that most of the nation will find acceptable."
"Most.... save Pranton," Minerva said wryly.
"Pranton will remain a problem for some time, I fear, until we can ensure that the people there will no longer fall either into the Nationalists' or the Wahhabists' sway. But the rest of the Kingdom is to be considered as well - we cannot let concern about Pranton delay us."
Friedrich nodded slowly at that, and Minerva put her hand on his when he placed it on her shoulder as a physical act of support. The intimacy and love between the couple was one of the aspects of the Devenshiran monarchy that had won it popularity and sympathy, and Sara was happy for that, since it needed all that it could get. "Friedrich has made a recommendation for the caretaker, and I agree with him. The only person who can do it."
Sara did not like the sound of that, nor the look that the Royal Couple gave her. "Who, Majesty?"
"You, Sara," Minerva answered.
Ah, I knew this was coming, I just knew it. "Appointing me to the Prime Minister's office could be seen as a sign of favoritism for my province, Majesty," Sara reminded her with humor, knowing it wouldn't sway her.
"So it would, But this is only for a caretaker government, and there is no rule forbidding it. Your husband or your grandson William could take your seat on the Council of Lords and vote in your stead until the Parliament's elections are over and a new government chosen."
That drew a sigh from Sara. "If it is what Your Majesty wishes, I will accept the position," she said, not particularly liking it, but happy that it'd give her the ability to prevent any more problems with the Alliance and Talorans until elections could be held.
Washington, D.C. Earth
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
The motorcade arrived at the White House without incident, and from there Jhayka and her immediate entourage were escorted inside. They didn't stay inside for long, but were escorted to the Rose Garden where a podium had been set on the step for the press conference, the flags of the Alliance and Taloran Empire set behind the appropriate podiums and a number of folding chairs already set up for the large number of press officials who were present. Holocameras and conventional cameras alike were set up to record the event.
"Most of these reporters are well-behaved, but remember, they're like sharks," Dale's Press Secretary, Ochiyo Kubota, said to Jhayka, a faint Japanese accent in her voice. Kubota was unnaturally tall for a Japanese woman, but still shorter than Dale and thus much shorter than Jhayka. "They all have questions they want to ask, but if you waffle or hesitate or get aggravated on a question, they'll sense that weakness like a shark smelling blood, and they'll switch over to the subject in question and continue on it instead of their own. Remember, be firm but not blunt. Speak carefully and avoid giving them any signs of weakness like that."
"I still have difficulty with that idiom," Jhayka confessed offhand to Dale. "On Talora Prime, what you call sharks comprise the bulk of fish and are usually small and harmless. The most common oceanic predators are giant nautiloids--shelled squid which can be the size of a boat." It was clear that she was distracting herself, as she added a moment later. "But, the advice is taken in the spirit intended. I suppose we should get this over with. The beginning, anyhow."
"Press conferences can always be tricky, and unpredictable," Dale confessed. "I've never liked them much myself. But it is usually seen as a necessary component to my office."
They stepped out of the White House and back into the open, where the sun was now shining brighter. Dale led Jhayka to a position beside the podium while Kubota went to the podium on the right. "Ladies and gentlemen of the Press, I present the President of the Allied Nations."
That was the cue, and Kubota stepped aside to allow Dale to come to the podium. He straightened his tie a slight bit, a usual mannerism, and looked to the digital display placed on his podium where his statement was ready. "Ladies and gentlemen of the press, my fellow citizens, hello. Today, we begin what I hope to be a full and fruitful relationship with the Taloran Empire. Despite setbacks and crisis, expected and unexpected, we have gotten to this day, and I hope to see the days ahead brighter still. It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you the head of the Taloran special negotiating team, Princess Jhayka itl dhin Intuit." He looked over, giving Jhayka the cue to take her place.
Jhayka stepped forward, tapping her cane lightly as she did, right up to the second podium, against which she rested it as, settling her left hand on it, she started to talk. "Citizens of the Alliance of Democratic Nations, I'm pleased to be here on what's surely a fine spring day, hopefully for you all on distant shores as well. The hospitality of your nation has already been considerable, and the trials of my journey, malicious and incidental alike, are easily forgot in the way your government has easily responded to and dealt with them. There are several considerable matters which must be discussed between our peoples. For more than twenty trillion souls who reside in the great Imperial Confederacy that is the matrilege of Valera, integrating with the broader multiverse is no small difficulty. Our traditions are old, and held with the aggression of those who understand them to be the best protectors of liberty within our government. I'm one of them," she added, and allowed herself a slight amused look. "But the concerns of your nation are equally legitimate. We will not leave here without some sort of equitable arrangement on the passport matter, you may be sure of that. As for other affairs, I understand that a great deal of speculation has been excited over the matter of our intentions in regard to the IUCEC. Well, I can confirm them; we do indeed seek accession to the New Brasila treaty, and will be working both with the Alliance government and the IUCEC toward that end."
A reporter raised his hand and was called on. "For the record, Ma'am, are you to be referred to as Your Royal Highness or Your Highness?" The question from the obviously-American reporter brought a cackle from a couple of Britons in the audience.
"Your Highness," Jhayka answered, adding what she hoped was a balance between the chance of being to blunt with that answer, and the danger of talking their heads off about things they wouldn't understand: "'Royal' is quite excessive in my case, I assure you."
A German-accented voice asked, "Your Highness, do you have anything to say on the attack upon your ship and the rumors of involvement by members of the Devenshiran or Prantonese provincial government?"
"If--and that's a big if--any of them were involved it was in a personal capacity and not with the complicitcy of either government, we're quite convinced," Jhayka answered. "The Taloran government does not believe that it was a State act, simply the action of a cabal of individuals. We have our own sources which indicate some of them were of Devenshirite origin but considering the rebuff of our note to their government, it's unlikely the truth of the matter will ever be known. I'm not an expert on relativistic combat by any means but the moment we'd repaired initial collision damage the affair was decided. As for the base of these pirates, we harbour no designs against the integrity of the Caliphate but discussions will be incorporated into these meetings on a joint and international plan to decisively end piracy in the region."
"Do you think the attack was to prevent your negotiations with the Alliance Government or for another reason?"
"Another reason, certainly. I frankly think it was someone's private little war, without any connection to the negotiations whatsoever," Jhayka added. Don't be blunt, the words echoed for her, and for a Taloran that demanded no single-sentence answers. But so far, so good..
"Mister President, what is the Alliance government's position on the Devenshiran government rejecting the Taloran ultimatum?"
"That is a matter for the Devenshiran and Taloran governments, the Alliance at this time has no position beyond a desire to see them come to an accord on the issue," Dale replied.
"Your Highness, what will your government do now that Devenshire has rejected the ultimatum? Will the Taloran Empire respond in any way?"
"It wasn't an ultimatum," Jhayka answered. "We therefore obviously have no intention of responding in any way whatsoever, save perhaps that a warning to Imperial subjects to Devenshirite space due to the dangers of lone citizens acting irrationally suggests that extreme caution should be taken when traveling there."
"But Your Highness, the Taloran note delivered to Devenshire's government clearly had an 'or else' placed at the end," one reporter protested. "How could that be anything but an ultimatum?"
"That was a translation error," Jhayka acknowledged after a moment. "The matter has been clarified to the Devenshirite government to the best of my knowledge. It was not the intention of our government to make any threat toward Devenshire and we will certainly not act in an unfriendly fashion toward them."
A female voice spoke up, "Mister President, do you have any specifics on the plan to integrate the Taloran Empire into the standing IUCEC structure?"
"Such details will mostly be hammered out in the talks we're hosting," Dale answered, "But it is to my understanding that the Talorans would get a voice in the committee and that Taloran pre-conditions to signing the New Brasilia Treaty will be negotiatied and, where possible, accepted. The position of the Administration, again, is that the clear interest of the Alliance and the IUCEC is Taloran participation in the process, and that Taloran interests are well-matched to this."
Another reporter spoke up now, a Cornwall accent sounding throughout the garden. "On passports, Your Highness, why does the Taloran government resist the notion?"
The Empress' demands on the issue may be much for the member states. But we'll try our best, to secure the eight seats that she wants... The question brought her back to the present. "The Imperial government, nor my government, for that matter, for I'm analogous in our system to the head of state of any of the component Alliance states, is not in the practice of data collection on Imperial subjects. The only form of information the government maintains on its citizens is a census which is conducted approximately every thirty-two human years and relies entirely on voluntary reporting."
"What about driver's licenses?" one American woman asked.
"Oh, Guilds issue those to drivers after they pass guild tests," Jhayka answered simply. "There are not very many of them, of course, as vehicle operation is generally a more specialized field. The only exemption is usually for farmers using their equipment on the roads, which is slow enough to do no hurt; and the gentry and nobility can drive as they please, but, generally do not. I've never operated a vehicle before in my life, personally."
"Mister President, do you have any comments on Representative Samari's accusations that you have abused your power and undermined Alliance security by issuing travel writs to Talorans barred from entry over the passport issue?"
"Representative Samari's opinions are his, but I have no desire to get into partisan squabbling on it. I issued travel writs only when necessary to reconcile the innocence of the traveler and the rights of the member nation in question," was Dale's well-put response. "These talks will allow us a mechanism to deal with this issue permanently."
Another voice called out, "Mister President, Chairman Landsky has said he intends to use your actions with the travel writ scandal as a campaign issue this year. Do you think that the Democratic Party could benefit from the perception that your foreign policy is too soft?"
"Chairman Landsky is clear to do as he desires. I happen to have many friends in the Democratic Party, and I prefer to stand above the petty issues of partisanship. Having worked with a Democratic Chancellor for two years already, I do not see why I cannot do so in the future. The Federalists and Democrats were once one party, after all, and I strongly believe, as President Mamatmas - God rest his soul - did, that the two parties are best when they are working together for the benefit of the Alliance as a whole. I will not stray from that principle for a short term gain in elections, and I will most certainly not allow election issues to cloud the more important, long-term issues such as those regarding the abilities of Taloran citizens to travel in the greater Multiverse and participate fully in the Multiversal economy."
"His Excellency is quite correct," Jhayka added. "We will hope to have this issue resolved soon, perhaps a temporary measure to be implemented in the next few weeks and then a permanent one that could come into force within a reasonable period of time."
So far the press conference had been managable, but now this was dashed. One voice called out, "Your Highness, do you have any comment on the recent lawsuit filed by the Citizens United Against Religious Oppression on behalf of primitivist survivors on Gilead against you and your wife?"
"Our legal representation in the Alliance is dealing with the matter, which is completely groundless. We do not even intend to attend any of the proceedings by dint of our diplomatic role here, which must be free of such distractions. As to the matter itself, we opened up an entire continent the size of Eurasia for religious freedom with our actions there, which cost us bitterly. My wife was effectively a vegetable for a year and only the most advanced of artificial intelligence technologies was able to repair the damage she suffered, which was the third successive time she was seriously injured in the war, and she will suffer from neurological issues for the rest of her life. As for me, I do not walk with a cane because it is fashionable, we will put it that way. These injuries were sustained so the people of Kalunda could preserve their own freedom of expression, and so that in the whole of the primitive zone chapel-bells might ring freely and people could bow down openly in public to worship as they wish, and not fear obscene torturers and murder at the hands of the local government on account of their beliefs." And, she could not resist from adding, a bit temptestuously: "There are tens of thousands who died under my command for that cause of liberty, whom this group callously ignores, including a dear friend my wife and I had made over the couse of the siege."
Dale tensed a little, realizing what could happen and hoping it didn't.
Another reporter asked, "Do you dispute the charges from the CUARO and other entities that you masqueraded as their guest so that you could provoke the Normans into a conflict to overthrow their government and pave the way for Farzian missionaryism?"
"I was their guest. There was no 'masquerade' involved. They chose to do what they chose to do, and they suffered the consequences for it. Indeed, some people have even questioned why I didn't act from the start as this CUARO suggests I did, on the grounds any moral person should have fought to free so many millions from slavery. I must say this is quite the tangent from the subject of the conference, however, and a better subject for a recent history lecture. Which I suppose I would be glad to oblige in giving if any university in the area wished it."
Dale was relieved to see that Jhayka was holding her own, but he could see the reporters were interested in things other than the actual treaty subject. When called on, one asked, "Your Highness, why did you give sanctuary to the Devenshiran war criminal Priscilla Laurentii?"
"Priscilla, the First Duchess of Eleutheria, was an honest mercenary; she kept her contract, she fought well above and beyond what I'd paid her to fight, and she brought us out of Ar alive, and did her hardest to relieve Kalunda at every turn and with scratch-forces using makeshift weapons. And now she's a friend and lived in my household since, the least I could do for her. She is neither a war criminal nor an immoral person; there is no finer officer that I could have offered a commission in my military nor a title to. She is all grit, and all loyalty, and it was that perfect loyalty only which betrayed her in Pranton those years past."
"How can you reconcile this to the testimony that she embraced her father and helped him escape, murdering thousands of civilians in the process?"
Dale could probably notice that this comment seemed very near a last straw for Jhayka, and it was probably time for him to intervene to shift the conference back onto a better tack. But first Jhayka would have to answer the question, which she did by biting down on her gray-green tongue damn near until it bled before answering. "She had no way of knowing her father's crimes at that moment, and to hesitate and play lawyer would have meant not just him but all of her troops would have been torn to bits by an armed mob that was acting without restraint and had, I might add, already torn her perfectly innocent foster family apart limb from limb." And, since Talorans had little interest in keeping things family-friendly, and Jhayka least of all at that moment, she added: "Literally" before falling silent.
A reporter asked in reply, "Can you sustain this accusation against the revolting slaves? Do you have proof?"
But Dale could see Jhayka was near the breaking point, and intervened by saying, "These questions are rather broadly off the subject of the coming conference, I'd like to get things back on track here."
His request was, of course, not necessarily going to be heeded. Press conferences could be notoriously hostile if the sharks smelled enough blood, and that usually meant the only solution was ending the conference and accepting the derision and howls of the press. And they certainly sensed some from Jhayka given her tone, even if they didn't know how to read the ear movements that would give away her annoyance and irritation.
Instead Dale got both. The reporter who asked the question sat back down, but another raised a hand question and boldly asked, "Mister President, is allowing Priscilla Laurentii to participate in these talks not a slap in the face against her victims and the liberated former slaves of Devenshire? How do you respond to the calls to have her diplomatic credentials refused?" In other words, they had gotten the rope from Jhayka, and now they wanted to hang him with it.
"Priscilla Laurentii is an accredited member of the Taloran negotiating team and has been granted diplomatic immunity under international law. That is my position on the matter and the only comment I have on it. Now, shall we get back onto the subject at hand? Or if there are no more questions about the negotiations, I can call an end to the conference."
That, of course, brought the reporters back on track; even if some, for ideological or cynical reasons, wanted to continue grilling them on Laurentii, the others had questions remaining and wanted to have them answered. One asked, "Your Highness, what are the Taloran preconditions to becoming signatories of the New Brasilia Treaty?"
"They largely pertain to issues of industrial manufacturing fairness in the location of components and research facilities," Jhayka answered, back to her usual stoic self again. "They're primarily an economic consideration rather than one with the fundamental body of the treaty text." Which wasn't entirely true, but she had no intention of giving away her hand this soon.
"Has the Taloran Empire attempted to copy the gate technology like other non-signatory powers have attempted?"
"Only the usual theoretical investigations at the university laboratory level, independently funded by those institutions. The government had not taken up the issue of interuniversal drive technology before the prospect of IUCEC accession was raised."
"Mister President, do you think the IUCEC will accept any of the Taloran terms?"
"I am very certain they will," Dale replied. Or they'll never heard the end of it from the governments that renew their seats yearly he added mentally. "If that is all for now, the Princess has had a long voyage and I would like for her to have some rest before the luncheon formally begins."
At that the members of the press began standing and moving away while Dale led Jhayka away from the podiums and back into the White House.
"Well, Your Excellency, it seems that you ignored your own advice for the conference. You were quite blunt a few times, there," she offered, smiling very vaguely.
Dale smiled back. "I also told you that press conferences were unpredictable. Sometimes, you have to break the rules to get out of them intact." He chuckled at that as they rejoined the others. "Welcome to Washington, Your Highness. Trust me, the fun has only begun."
Kingdom of the Devenshires
Universe Designate CON-5
The IUNS feed tapped into by the Devenshiran Planetary News Corporation filled the gallery in the Royal Palace, showing the Princess Jhayka being greeted by President Dale. "Well, at least she didn't bring Laurentii with her," was the sigh that came from the Prince-Consort Friedrich, Archduke of Austria. He was dressed semi-formally, a uniform jacket and trousers on, but not nearly any decorations as he'd be permitted. He remained seated by his wife Minerva, in a blouse and skirt, the two holding hands. Minerva's expression was solemn and disturbed. The fall of the government, and the rejection of her cousin's leadership had taken a toll on her. Minerva had always been reliant on Alexandria for advice and counsel, and had looked up to her as her father Roger had done before his assassination. To be bereft of that advice was harsh, and Minerva's initial response from despair had been to consider defiantly naming Driscova as the caretaker, as she had said to her husband and as she was now saying to the only other person who's advice she desired.
"It is best if we let the Laurentii issue die down for the moment," Sara Proctor said from a nearby chair. She was in a pink blouse and simple blue dress with purple flower adornment, her hair kept neck-level as was her preference. "Your Majesty, I understand why you want Alexandria back. I want her back. But to name her the caretaker would be seen as defying the will of the Parliament. It would provoke a constitutional crisis and cause the Throne great trouble."
"Parliament?" Minerva's tone was bitter, very uncharacteristic for the usually cheerful young woman. "They have taken leave of their senses! To think that the Talorans would invade us to restore my uncle's surviving sycophants?! They rile my subjects up with lies and distortions and now they have deprived us of the counsel of my cousin and damaged our relations with a great power precisely as they begin negotiations with the one State in all the Multiverse with the will and power to defend the Kingdom!"
"Parliament is prone to giving in to its passions, Your Majesty, but when time passes and they realize they were fools, they retreat from them. It is entirely possible that by the time new elections are held, the Crown-Conservatives will be powerful enough to force the re-appointment of Alexandria in any new ruling coalition." Sara sat still in the chair. "You must appoint a Prime Minister that most of the nation will find acceptable."
"Most.... save Pranton," Minerva said wryly.
"Pranton will remain a problem for some time, I fear, until we can ensure that the people there will no longer fall either into the Nationalists' or the Wahhabists' sway. But the rest of the Kingdom is to be considered as well - we cannot let concern about Pranton delay us."
Friedrich nodded slowly at that, and Minerva put her hand on his when he placed it on her shoulder as a physical act of support. The intimacy and love between the couple was one of the aspects of the Devenshiran monarchy that had won it popularity and sympathy, and Sara was happy for that, since it needed all that it could get. "Friedrich has made a recommendation for the caretaker, and I agree with him. The only person who can do it."
Sara did not like the sound of that, nor the look that the Royal Couple gave her. "Who, Majesty?"
"You, Sara," Minerva answered.
Ah, I knew this was coming, I just knew it. "Appointing me to the Prime Minister's office could be seen as a sign of favoritism for my province, Majesty," Sara reminded her with humor, knowing it wouldn't sway her.
"So it would, But this is only for a caretaker government, and there is no rule forbidding it. Your husband or your grandson William could take your seat on the Council of Lords and vote in your stead until the Parliament's elections are over and a new government chosen."
That drew a sigh from Sara. "If it is what Your Majesty wishes, I will accept the position," she said, not particularly liking it, but happy that it'd give her the ability to prevent any more problems with the Alliance and Talorans until elections could be held.
Washington, D.C. Earth
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
The motorcade arrived at the White House without incident, and from there Jhayka and her immediate entourage were escorted inside. They didn't stay inside for long, but were escorted to the Rose Garden where a podium had been set on the step for the press conference, the flags of the Alliance and Taloran Empire set behind the appropriate podiums and a number of folding chairs already set up for the large number of press officials who were present. Holocameras and conventional cameras alike were set up to record the event.
"Most of these reporters are well-behaved, but remember, they're like sharks," Dale's Press Secretary, Ochiyo Kubota, said to Jhayka, a faint Japanese accent in her voice. Kubota was unnaturally tall for a Japanese woman, but still shorter than Dale and thus much shorter than Jhayka. "They all have questions they want to ask, but if you waffle or hesitate or get aggravated on a question, they'll sense that weakness like a shark smelling blood, and they'll switch over to the subject in question and continue on it instead of their own. Remember, be firm but not blunt. Speak carefully and avoid giving them any signs of weakness like that."
"I still have difficulty with that idiom," Jhayka confessed offhand to Dale. "On Talora Prime, what you call sharks comprise the bulk of fish and are usually small and harmless. The most common oceanic predators are giant nautiloids--shelled squid which can be the size of a boat." It was clear that she was distracting herself, as she added a moment later. "But, the advice is taken in the spirit intended. I suppose we should get this over with. The beginning, anyhow."
"Press conferences can always be tricky, and unpredictable," Dale confessed. "I've never liked them much myself. But it is usually seen as a necessary component to my office."
They stepped out of the White House and back into the open, where the sun was now shining brighter. Dale led Jhayka to a position beside the podium while Kubota went to the podium on the right. "Ladies and gentlemen of the Press, I present the President of the Allied Nations."
That was the cue, and Kubota stepped aside to allow Dale to come to the podium. He straightened his tie a slight bit, a usual mannerism, and looked to the digital display placed on his podium where his statement was ready. "Ladies and gentlemen of the press, my fellow citizens, hello. Today, we begin what I hope to be a full and fruitful relationship with the Taloran Empire. Despite setbacks and crisis, expected and unexpected, we have gotten to this day, and I hope to see the days ahead brighter still. It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you the head of the Taloran special negotiating team, Princess Jhayka itl dhin Intuit." He looked over, giving Jhayka the cue to take her place.
Jhayka stepped forward, tapping her cane lightly as she did, right up to the second podium, against which she rested it as, settling her left hand on it, she started to talk. "Citizens of the Alliance of Democratic Nations, I'm pleased to be here on what's surely a fine spring day, hopefully for you all on distant shores as well. The hospitality of your nation has already been considerable, and the trials of my journey, malicious and incidental alike, are easily forgot in the way your government has easily responded to and dealt with them. There are several considerable matters which must be discussed between our peoples. For more than twenty trillion souls who reside in the great Imperial Confederacy that is the matrilege of Valera, integrating with the broader multiverse is no small difficulty. Our traditions are old, and held with the aggression of those who understand them to be the best protectors of liberty within our government. I'm one of them," she added, and allowed herself a slight amused look. "But the concerns of your nation are equally legitimate. We will not leave here without some sort of equitable arrangement on the passport matter, you may be sure of that. As for other affairs, I understand that a great deal of speculation has been excited over the matter of our intentions in regard to the IUCEC. Well, I can confirm them; we do indeed seek accession to the New Brasila treaty, and will be working both with the Alliance government and the IUCEC toward that end."
A reporter raised his hand and was called on. "For the record, Ma'am, are you to be referred to as Your Royal Highness or Your Highness?" The question from the obviously-American reporter brought a cackle from a couple of Britons in the audience.
"Your Highness," Jhayka answered, adding what she hoped was a balance between the chance of being to blunt with that answer, and the danger of talking their heads off about things they wouldn't understand: "'Royal' is quite excessive in my case, I assure you."
A German-accented voice asked, "Your Highness, do you have anything to say on the attack upon your ship and the rumors of involvement by members of the Devenshiran or Prantonese provincial government?"
"If--and that's a big if--any of them were involved it was in a personal capacity and not with the complicitcy of either government, we're quite convinced," Jhayka answered. "The Taloran government does not believe that it was a State act, simply the action of a cabal of individuals. We have our own sources which indicate some of them were of Devenshirite origin but considering the rebuff of our note to their government, it's unlikely the truth of the matter will ever be known. I'm not an expert on relativistic combat by any means but the moment we'd repaired initial collision damage the affair was decided. As for the base of these pirates, we harbour no designs against the integrity of the Caliphate but discussions will be incorporated into these meetings on a joint and international plan to decisively end piracy in the region."
"Do you think the attack was to prevent your negotiations with the Alliance Government or for another reason?"
"Another reason, certainly. I frankly think it was someone's private little war, without any connection to the negotiations whatsoever," Jhayka added. Don't be blunt, the words echoed for her, and for a Taloran that demanded no single-sentence answers. But so far, so good..
"Mister President, what is the Alliance government's position on the Devenshiran government rejecting the Taloran ultimatum?"
"That is a matter for the Devenshiran and Taloran governments, the Alliance at this time has no position beyond a desire to see them come to an accord on the issue," Dale replied.
"Your Highness, what will your government do now that Devenshire has rejected the ultimatum? Will the Taloran Empire respond in any way?"
"It wasn't an ultimatum," Jhayka answered. "We therefore obviously have no intention of responding in any way whatsoever, save perhaps that a warning to Imperial subjects to Devenshirite space due to the dangers of lone citizens acting irrationally suggests that extreme caution should be taken when traveling there."
"But Your Highness, the Taloran note delivered to Devenshire's government clearly had an 'or else' placed at the end," one reporter protested. "How could that be anything but an ultimatum?"
"That was a translation error," Jhayka acknowledged after a moment. "The matter has been clarified to the Devenshirite government to the best of my knowledge. It was not the intention of our government to make any threat toward Devenshire and we will certainly not act in an unfriendly fashion toward them."
A female voice spoke up, "Mister President, do you have any specifics on the plan to integrate the Taloran Empire into the standing IUCEC structure?"
"Such details will mostly be hammered out in the talks we're hosting," Dale answered, "But it is to my understanding that the Talorans would get a voice in the committee and that Taloran pre-conditions to signing the New Brasilia Treaty will be negotiatied and, where possible, accepted. The position of the Administration, again, is that the clear interest of the Alliance and the IUCEC is Taloran participation in the process, and that Taloran interests are well-matched to this."
Another reporter spoke up now, a Cornwall accent sounding throughout the garden. "On passports, Your Highness, why does the Taloran government resist the notion?"
The Empress' demands on the issue may be much for the member states. But we'll try our best, to secure the eight seats that she wants... The question brought her back to the present. "The Imperial government, nor my government, for that matter, for I'm analogous in our system to the head of state of any of the component Alliance states, is not in the practice of data collection on Imperial subjects. The only form of information the government maintains on its citizens is a census which is conducted approximately every thirty-two human years and relies entirely on voluntary reporting."
"What about driver's licenses?" one American woman asked.
"Oh, Guilds issue those to drivers after they pass guild tests," Jhayka answered simply. "There are not very many of them, of course, as vehicle operation is generally a more specialized field. The only exemption is usually for farmers using their equipment on the roads, which is slow enough to do no hurt; and the gentry and nobility can drive as they please, but, generally do not. I've never operated a vehicle before in my life, personally."
"Mister President, do you have any comments on Representative Samari's accusations that you have abused your power and undermined Alliance security by issuing travel writs to Talorans barred from entry over the passport issue?"
"Representative Samari's opinions are his, but I have no desire to get into partisan squabbling on it. I issued travel writs only when necessary to reconcile the innocence of the traveler and the rights of the member nation in question," was Dale's well-put response. "These talks will allow us a mechanism to deal with this issue permanently."
Another voice called out, "Mister President, Chairman Landsky has said he intends to use your actions with the travel writ scandal as a campaign issue this year. Do you think that the Democratic Party could benefit from the perception that your foreign policy is too soft?"
"Chairman Landsky is clear to do as he desires. I happen to have many friends in the Democratic Party, and I prefer to stand above the petty issues of partisanship. Having worked with a Democratic Chancellor for two years already, I do not see why I cannot do so in the future. The Federalists and Democrats were once one party, after all, and I strongly believe, as President Mamatmas - God rest his soul - did, that the two parties are best when they are working together for the benefit of the Alliance as a whole. I will not stray from that principle for a short term gain in elections, and I will most certainly not allow election issues to cloud the more important, long-term issues such as those regarding the abilities of Taloran citizens to travel in the greater Multiverse and participate fully in the Multiversal economy."
"His Excellency is quite correct," Jhayka added. "We will hope to have this issue resolved soon, perhaps a temporary measure to be implemented in the next few weeks and then a permanent one that could come into force within a reasonable period of time."
So far the press conference had been managable, but now this was dashed. One voice called out, "Your Highness, do you have any comment on the recent lawsuit filed by the Citizens United Against Religious Oppression on behalf of primitivist survivors on Gilead against you and your wife?"
"Our legal representation in the Alliance is dealing with the matter, which is completely groundless. We do not even intend to attend any of the proceedings by dint of our diplomatic role here, which must be free of such distractions. As to the matter itself, we opened up an entire continent the size of Eurasia for religious freedom with our actions there, which cost us bitterly. My wife was effectively a vegetable for a year and only the most advanced of artificial intelligence technologies was able to repair the damage she suffered, which was the third successive time she was seriously injured in the war, and she will suffer from neurological issues for the rest of her life. As for me, I do not walk with a cane because it is fashionable, we will put it that way. These injuries were sustained so the people of Kalunda could preserve their own freedom of expression, and so that in the whole of the primitive zone chapel-bells might ring freely and people could bow down openly in public to worship as they wish, and not fear obscene torturers and murder at the hands of the local government on account of their beliefs." And, she could not resist from adding, a bit temptestuously: "There are tens of thousands who died under my command for that cause of liberty, whom this group callously ignores, including a dear friend my wife and I had made over the couse of the siege."
Dale tensed a little, realizing what could happen and hoping it didn't.
Another reporter asked, "Do you dispute the charges from the CUARO and other entities that you masqueraded as their guest so that you could provoke the Normans into a conflict to overthrow their government and pave the way for Farzian missionaryism?"
"I was their guest. There was no 'masquerade' involved. They chose to do what they chose to do, and they suffered the consequences for it. Indeed, some people have even questioned why I didn't act from the start as this CUARO suggests I did, on the grounds any moral person should have fought to free so many millions from slavery. I must say this is quite the tangent from the subject of the conference, however, and a better subject for a recent history lecture. Which I suppose I would be glad to oblige in giving if any university in the area wished it."
Dale was relieved to see that Jhayka was holding her own, but he could see the reporters were interested in things other than the actual treaty subject. When called on, one asked, "Your Highness, why did you give sanctuary to the Devenshiran war criminal Priscilla Laurentii?"
"Priscilla, the First Duchess of Eleutheria, was an honest mercenary; she kept her contract, she fought well above and beyond what I'd paid her to fight, and she brought us out of Ar alive, and did her hardest to relieve Kalunda at every turn and with scratch-forces using makeshift weapons. And now she's a friend and lived in my household since, the least I could do for her. She is neither a war criminal nor an immoral person; there is no finer officer that I could have offered a commission in my military nor a title to. She is all grit, and all loyalty, and it was that perfect loyalty only which betrayed her in Pranton those years past."
"How can you reconcile this to the testimony that she embraced her father and helped him escape, murdering thousands of civilians in the process?"
Dale could probably notice that this comment seemed very near a last straw for Jhayka, and it was probably time for him to intervene to shift the conference back onto a better tack. But first Jhayka would have to answer the question, which she did by biting down on her gray-green tongue damn near until it bled before answering. "She had no way of knowing her father's crimes at that moment, and to hesitate and play lawyer would have meant not just him but all of her troops would have been torn to bits by an armed mob that was acting without restraint and had, I might add, already torn her perfectly innocent foster family apart limb from limb." And, since Talorans had little interest in keeping things family-friendly, and Jhayka least of all at that moment, she added: "Literally" before falling silent.
A reporter asked in reply, "Can you sustain this accusation against the revolting slaves? Do you have proof?"
But Dale could see Jhayka was near the breaking point, and intervened by saying, "These questions are rather broadly off the subject of the coming conference, I'd like to get things back on track here."
His request was, of course, not necessarily going to be heeded. Press conferences could be notoriously hostile if the sharks smelled enough blood, and that usually meant the only solution was ending the conference and accepting the derision and howls of the press. And they certainly sensed some from Jhayka given her tone, even if they didn't know how to read the ear movements that would give away her annoyance and irritation.
Instead Dale got both. The reporter who asked the question sat back down, but another raised a hand question and boldly asked, "Mister President, is allowing Priscilla Laurentii to participate in these talks not a slap in the face against her victims and the liberated former slaves of Devenshire? How do you respond to the calls to have her diplomatic credentials refused?" In other words, they had gotten the rope from Jhayka, and now they wanted to hang him with it.
"Priscilla Laurentii is an accredited member of the Taloran negotiating team and has been granted diplomatic immunity under international law. That is my position on the matter and the only comment I have on it. Now, shall we get back onto the subject at hand? Or if there are no more questions about the negotiations, I can call an end to the conference."
That, of course, brought the reporters back on track; even if some, for ideological or cynical reasons, wanted to continue grilling them on Laurentii, the others had questions remaining and wanted to have them answered. One asked, "Your Highness, what are the Taloran preconditions to becoming signatories of the New Brasilia Treaty?"
"They largely pertain to issues of industrial manufacturing fairness in the location of components and research facilities," Jhayka answered, back to her usual stoic self again. "They're primarily an economic consideration rather than one with the fundamental body of the treaty text." Which wasn't entirely true, but she had no intention of giving away her hand this soon.
"Has the Taloran Empire attempted to copy the gate technology like other non-signatory powers have attempted?"
"Only the usual theoretical investigations at the university laboratory level, independently funded by those institutions. The government had not taken up the issue of interuniversal drive technology before the prospect of IUCEC accession was raised."
"Mister President, do you think the IUCEC will accept any of the Taloran terms?"
"I am very certain they will," Dale replied. Or they'll never heard the end of it from the governments that renew their seats yearly he added mentally. "If that is all for now, the Princess has had a long voyage and I would like for her to have some rest before the luncheon formally begins."
At that the members of the press began standing and moving away while Dale led Jhayka away from the podiums and back into the White House.
"Well, Your Excellency, it seems that you ignored your own advice for the conference. You were quite blunt a few times, there," she offered, smiling very vaguely.
Dale smiled back. "I also told you that press conferences were unpredictable. Sometimes, you have to break the rules to get out of them intact." He chuckled at that as they rejoined the others. "Welcome to Washington, Your Highness. Trust me, the fun has only begun."
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
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Sea Skimmer
- Yankee Capitalist Air Pirate
- Posts: 37389
- Joined: 2002-07-03 11:49pm
- Location: Passchendaele City, HAB
Amusing, do the Talorians only think in terms of fjords or something? Its pretty insane to expect a river mouth to be over 275 meters deep..
Keep it coming.
Keep it coming.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Update by Sunhawk:
The Hay-Adams Hotel
For such a luxurious hotel, the suite set aside for Mar'tov and his fellows from the ADN branch of the Zohan was spartan in the extreme, most of the furniture had been removed leaving only a conference table and some chairs, the bedrooms now contained Zohan style sleeping pallets rather than beds, and most of the paintings had been removed, leaving only several landscapes. This set of rooms was commonly used by Mar'tov when he was in Washington, and by the ADN Zohan representatives when he wasn't, so the staff had made accomodations to their guest. Not that it was all that difficult, with how tidy and neat the Zohan were and how few demands they made.
Now, Mar'tov was seated at the conference table, a simple datapad resting in front of him, fingers steepled before his face as he considered the five Zohan sitting across from him.
Ada'ren and the others from the Taloran branch of the Zohan had arrived following the shuttle trip from Slashahkimmar, their own rooms being reserved in a different section of the hotel along with the rest of the official Taloran delegation, but now were sitting there, looking just a bit nervous under Mar'tovs gaze and shifting from time to time like a pack of nervous schoolgirls waiting for the elder Zohan to speak.
"I have arranged for suitable rations to be delivered to your quarters, the staff at this location are familiar with our requirements and shall be available to assist with any needs." he began quietly, drawing nods from the others. "If you require replacement environmental suits we have a supply here, of both standard and cleansuits. Logistics Executive Dol'ti is in charge of maintaining our supply stores, bring any requirements to her attention."
"We shall Chief Executive Mar'tov" replied Ada'ren, in a formal tone. "Our thanks." she continued, a slight hint of stiffness betraying her nerves.
Mar'tov's lips curled into a slightly sardonic smile at that. "Excellent." he replied, then lowered his hands to the table and twitched the datapad. "Now, on to more important matters. You all know my position on this. As we have chosen to join with the ADN, so you have chosen the Taloran Star Empire. Irregardless of that allegiance." he paused and looked each of the others squarely in the eye. "We are all still Zohan, the first truly free Zohan since the Makers' hand touched us. We are not humans or Talorans to allow petty differences to divide us from each other. I say this now, all Zohan who reside within the Taloran Star Empire and take oath of allegiance to the Taloran crown are as welcome on our decks as our own." a slight hint of a smile as the four across from him visibly relaxed slightly. "I trust we are clear?"
"We are, Chief Executive Mar'tov" replied Ah'dal. "However there is another matter."
"I know, Senior Executive Ah'dal." Mar'tov replied, eyes twinkling slightly. "The matter of the IU drive, and no doubt the desires of the Taloran's to utilize your skills to ensure that they are neither cheated nor tricked, and their desire to keep their operations in this field a secret."
All four Taloran Zohan, led by Ada'ren, looked surprised, almost startled. "How..."
"How did I know? It is what I would have done if I were in their position, Senior Drive Systems Engineer Ada'ren. They consider themselves in an inferior position, and thus will seek methods of overcoming the disadvantages they believe they face. In addition they desire a peaceful relationship with what they view as a potentially dangerous competitor." Mar'tov replied, fingers again steepling before him. "Their only previous exposure to humans has no doubt given them cause for concern in regards to the stability of a non-autocratic human government. Therefore, it is of no great surprise that they worry about being 'cheated' and wish to ensure that there own research remains secret, as they do not wish to seem potentially threatening before they are capable, in their own minds, of fully defending themselves."
Ada'ren and the others looked at each other for a moment then back at Mar'tov, who simply smiled again.
"I do not believe that the Talorans or the ADN has any actual desire for an acrimonious relationship, despite what certain fools and idiots may say. Therefore, that lays a burden upon us all." his own eyes became still, almost boring into Ada'ren's, seeming almost like a snake gazing into the eyes of a mouse. "We must act in such a way as builds confidence on the Taloran side, and ensures against misunderstanding on the ADN side. We shall transfer to you the full plans for the Sixth-Generation BattleCarrier and ShieldShip, once you complete the first vessel gift it to the Taloran's, specifically to the Empress herself." he continued. "In addition, I understand that many of you have learned fluent Taloran, we will send several fluent speakers of various languages common in the universes that we have contacted, in exchange dispatch several Taloran speakers to our BattleCarriers. Once they are in place, in conjunction with the gift of the BattleCarrier, offer to the Empress to serve as translators to ensure that no future mistranslations cause severe diplomatic failures. We have prepared a data packet of material that we have determined from our studies of the ADN and other powers to be useful in your own research while not compromising the security concerns of our hosts."
"Do not misunderstand me, Senior Drive Executive Ada'ren, we are as loyal to the ADN as we expect you to be to the Talorans. However we are also loyal to our own. As I am with the ADN contingent of the Zohan, I can claim no authority over your actions and decisions, but can only make recommendations and offer assistance. I expect you to evaluate and judge those recommendations and offers through your own experiences and requirements." he continued, gaze shifting to each of the others. "We are no longer children, nor are we slaves. We are not powerful enough to stand independant of the other powers, and so must make our places within them. We cannot risk that any one of them will turn exploitive and dangerous to our liberties and freedom, therefore we must spread out amongst those who are, at present, congenial to us. At the same token, we must not allow ourselves to be placed in a position of needing to chose between each other and those states that we call home. Therefore, it follows that we must be forever alert to opportunities to strengthen friendly relations between our homes. Am I clear?"
"You are, Chief Executive Mar'tov" came the chorused response, the other four straightening under his gaze.
"Good. I know the intention between this Master Executive Council of yours, and approve fully, I shall send a representative to them." he finished, his smile returning and his eyes dancing slightly. "Any questions?"
Ter'ohk leaned forward slightly. "On reaching orbit we saw what appears to be a new design in orbit, were we correct in our identification of it as a new design of the ADN affiliated Zohan?"
Mar'tov nodded in reply. "It is, on the advice of several of the human officers who have been most helpful in assisting us in adapting to the requirements of the ADN military we have named the new vessel Crouseiur Bataille Ste.Sophia and the class of ships the Saints-class battlecruiser. We have already received some preliminary inquiries from other states within the ADN and the ADN military itself for examples of this ship, but nothing definate."
"Specifications?" came from All'eri'ah.
"10 1.5 meter PPACs in full ball turrets, 6 gigaton output each on a fifteen second recharge cycle in long-pulse mode, 4 gigaton output each on a 10 second recharge cycle on regular pulse, no rapid pulse mode. 96 15 centimeter variable pulse PPACs in phased-array mountings, 48 each dorsal and ventral. 36 10x3cm PPAC strip mounts for point defense and anti-fighter operations. In addition there are 6 capital missile tubes, 24 extended-range counter-missile launchers, 120 standard counter-missile mounts. Maximum tactical speed in electo-gravitic impellar drive is 53.4 times the speed of light, in what the humans call Cochrane drive is .92 lvmax, which is also the maximum non-Gate strategic speed. Shields are sufficient for a full alpha-strike of her own weapons, with armor at the same scale. Acceleration is compensator limited to 2.45k human 'gees' or multiples of the gravitic force of their homeworld."
Ada'ren blinked at that. "1.5 meter PPACs? I was not aware that the cooling issues had been resolved" she replied, tilting her head slightly.
"Senior Weapon Systems Engineer Executive Wa'sant was responsible for the fix, although it did require a five percent increase in mass to the mount, improved tracking motors have compensated nicely." Mar'tov replied, another smile flitting across his face. "Senior Combat Executive Bri'loni is currently in command of Crouseiur Bataille Ste.Sophia and you are more than welcome to visit, indeed I intend to invite the entire Taloran delegation to visit, considering that they have arrived aboard their own latest battlecruiser class design."
He paused for a moment, then smiled more broadly. "And yes, I do have an ulterior motivation for that invitation, the majority of the Taloran delegation have military backgrounds, and both of Princess Jhayka's wives are naval officers. I believe that they would appreciate the invitation and find it enjoyable, and thus a welcome break from these negotiations. The benefits to the Zohan as a whole should be obvious."
Mar'tov rose at that point, prompting the others to rise as well. "Princess Jhayka should be returning from the White House at this time. Please extend to her an invitation to meet with me, and advise her of our intentions vis-a-vis the invitation to Crouseiur Bataille Ste.Sophia." he continued, to nods from the others before the filed out of the room and headed back to their own quarters.
All'eri'ah looked the most shaken of the four, she was the youngest and least experienced, after all, and meeting a living legend was not at all easy, and seeing just why he was one, the reality not just of his words and manners, but the intangible aura of command and presence that he gave off.
"He said we are no longer his to command." Ada'ren murmured, glancing at the others as they walked. "But..." she trailed off, not having to continue as the others all nodded. They might not be under his authority, under his orders, but a whim from him still had the force of iron. The most successful BattleCarrier Fleet Commander in Zohan History, the man who had recognized the nature of the catastrophe arising from the alien swarms before anybody else, and who had the moral courage to order his fleets to retreat before them, and then deliberately baited them onto his own, drawing the vast majority of the pursuit onto his own forces, allowing far more of the others to escape than anybody could have imagined when the slaughter had begun. That Zohan had earned their obedience, even as he disclaimed it, yet at the same time he was right. He was almost always right. They had given their formal allegience to the Empress, and the man who could have easily caused them to be foresworn had, instead, affirmed the rightness of that choice and given them the means to fulfill their instruction in full, and moreover gave them ideas that they hadn't even pondered.
The Hay-Adams Hotel
For such a luxurious hotel, the suite set aside for Mar'tov and his fellows from the ADN branch of the Zohan was spartan in the extreme, most of the furniture had been removed leaving only a conference table and some chairs, the bedrooms now contained Zohan style sleeping pallets rather than beds, and most of the paintings had been removed, leaving only several landscapes. This set of rooms was commonly used by Mar'tov when he was in Washington, and by the ADN Zohan representatives when he wasn't, so the staff had made accomodations to their guest. Not that it was all that difficult, with how tidy and neat the Zohan were and how few demands they made.
Now, Mar'tov was seated at the conference table, a simple datapad resting in front of him, fingers steepled before his face as he considered the five Zohan sitting across from him.
Ada'ren and the others from the Taloran branch of the Zohan had arrived following the shuttle trip from Slashahkimmar, their own rooms being reserved in a different section of the hotel along with the rest of the official Taloran delegation, but now were sitting there, looking just a bit nervous under Mar'tovs gaze and shifting from time to time like a pack of nervous schoolgirls waiting for the elder Zohan to speak.
"I have arranged for suitable rations to be delivered to your quarters, the staff at this location are familiar with our requirements and shall be available to assist with any needs." he began quietly, drawing nods from the others. "If you require replacement environmental suits we have a supply here, of both standard and cleansuits. Logistics Executive Dol'ti is in charge of maintaining our supply stores, bring any requirements to her attention."
"We shall Chief Executive Mar'tov" replied Ada'ren, in a formal tone. "Our thanks." she continued, a slight hint of stiffness betraying her nerves.
Mar'tov's lips curled into a slightly sardonic smile at that. "Excellent." he replied, then lowered his hands to the table and twitched the datapad. "Now, on to more important matters. You all know my position on this. As we have chosen to join with the ADN, so you have chosen the Taloran Star Empire. Irregardless of that allegiance." he paused and looked each of the others squarely in the eye. "We are all still Zohan, the first truly free Zohan since the Makers' hand touched us. We are not humans or Talorans to allow petty differences to divide us from each other. I say this now, all Zohan who reside within the Taloran Star Empire and take oath of allegiance to the Taloran crown are as welcome on our decks as our own." a slight hint of a smile as the four across from him visibly relaxed slightly. "I trust we are clear?"
"We are, Chief Executive Mar'tov" replied Ah'dal. "However there is another matter."
"I know, Senior Executive Ah'dal." Mar'tov replied, eyes twinkling slightly. "The matter of the IU drive, and no doubt the desires of the Taloran's to utilize your skills to ensure that they are neither cheated nor tricked, and their desire to keep their operations in this field a secret."
All four Taloran Zohan, led by Ada'ren, looked surprised, almost startled. "How..."
"How did I know? It is what I would have done if I were in their position, Senior Drive Systems Engineer Ada'ren. They consider themselves in an inferior position, and thus will seek methods of overcoming the disadvantages they believe they face. In addition they desire a peaceful relationship with what they view as a potentially dangerous competitor." Mar'tov replied, fingers again steepling before him. "Their only previous exposure to humans has no doubt given them cause for concern in regards to the stability of a non-autocratic human government. Therefore, it is of no great surprise that they worry about being 'cheated' and wish to ensure that there own research remains secret, as they do not wish to seem potentially threatening before they are capable, in their own minds, of fully defending themselves."
Ada'ren and the others looked at each other for a moment then back at Mar'tov, who simply smiled again.
"I do not believe that the Talorans or the ADN has any actual desire for an acrimonious relationship, despite what certain fools and idiots may say. Therefore, that lays a burden upon us all." his own eyes became still, almost boring into Ada'ren's, seeming almost like a snake gazing into the eyes of a mouse. "We must act in such a way as builds confidence on the Taloran side, and ensures against misunderstanding on the ADN side. We shall transfer to you the full plans for the Sixth-Generation BattleCarrier and ShieldShip, once you complete the first vessel gift it to the Taloran's, specifically to the Empress herself." he continued. "In addition, I understand that many of you have learned fluent Taloran, we will send several fluent speakers of various languages common in the universes that we have contacted, in exchange dispatch several Taloran speakers to our BattleCarriers. Once they are in place, in conjunction with the gift of the BattleCarrier, offer to the Empress to serve as translators to ensure that no future mistranslations cause severe diplomatic failures. We have prepared a data packet of material that we have determined from our studies of the ADN and other powers to be useful in your own research while not compromising the security concerns of our hosts."
"Do not misunderstand me, Senior Drive Executive Ada'ren, we are as loyal to the ADN as we expect you to be to the Talorans. However we are also loyal to our own. As I am with the ADN contingent of the Zohan, I can claim no authority over your actions and decisions, but can only make recommendations and offer assistance. I expect you to evaluate and judge those recommendations and offers through your own experiences and requirements." he continued, gaze shifting to each of the others. "We are no longer children, nor are we slaves. We are not powerful enough to stand independant of the other powers, and so must make our places within them. We cannot risk that any one of them will turn exploitive and dangerous to our liberties and freedom, therefore we must spread out amongst those who are, at present, congenial to us. At the same token, we must not allow ourselves to be placed in a position of needing to chose between each other and those states that we call home. Therefore, it follows that we must be forever alert to opportunities to strengthen friendly relations between our homes. Am I clear?"
"You are, Chief Executive Mar'tov" came the chorused response, the other four straightening under his gaze.
"Good. I know the intention between this Master Executive Council of yours, and approve fully, I shall send a representative to them." he finished, his smile returning and his eyes dancing slightly. "Any questions?"
Ter'ohk leaned forward slightly. "On reaching orbit we saw what appears to be a new design in orbit, were we correct in our identification of it as a new design of the ADN affiliated Zohan?"
Mar'tov nodded in reply. "It is, on the advice of several of the human officers who have been most helpful in assisting us in adapting to the requirements of the ADN military we have named the new vessel Crouseiur Bataille Ste.Sophia and the class of ships the Saints-class battlecruiser. We have already received some preliminary inquiries from other states within the ADN and the ADN military itself for examples of this ship, but nothing definate."
"Specifications?" came from All'eri'ah.
"10 1.5 meter PPACs in full ball turrets, 6 gigaton output each on a fifteen second recharge cycle in long-pulse mode, 4 gigaton output each on a 10 second recharge cycle on regular pulse, no rapid pulse mode. 96 15 centimeter variable pulse PPACs in phased-array mountings, 48 each dorsal and ventral. 36 10x3cm PPAC strip mounts for point defense and anti-fighter operations. In addition there are 6 capital missile tubes, 24 extended-range counter-missile launchers, 120 standard counter-missile mounts. Maximum tactical speed in electo-gravitic impellar drive is 53.4 times the speed of light, in what the humans call Cochrane drive is .92 lvmax, which is also the maximum non-Gate strategic speed. Shields are sufficient for a full alpha-strike of her own weapons, with armor at the same scale. Acceleration is compensator limited to 2.45k human 'gees' or multiples of the gravitic force of their homeworld."
Ada'ren blinked at that. "1.5 meter PPACs? I was not aware that the cooling issues had been resolved" she replied, tilting her head slightly.
"Senior Weapon Systems Engineer Executive Wa'sant was responsible for the fix, although it did require a five percent increase in mass to the mount, improved tracking motors have compensated nicely." Mar'tov replied, another smile flitting across his face. "Senior Combat Executive Bri'loni is currently in command of Crouseiur Bataille Ste.Sophia and you are more than welcome to visit, indeed I intend to invite the entire Taloran delegation to visit, considering that they have arrived aboard their own latest battlecruiser class design."
He paused for a moment, then smiled more broadly. "And yes, I do have an ulterior motivation for that invitation, the majority of the Taloran delegation have military backgrounds, and both of Princess Jhayka's wives are naval officers. I believe that they would appreciate the invitation and find it enjoyable, and thus a welcome break from these negotiations. The benefits to the Zohan as a whole should be obvious."
Mar'tov rose at that point, prompting the others to rise as well. "Princess Jhayka should be returning from the White House at this time. Please extend to her an invitation to meet with me, and advise her of our intentions vis-a-vis the invitation to Crouseiur Bataille Ste.Sophia." he continued, to nods from the others before the filed out of the room and headed back to their own quarters.
All'eri'ah looked the most shaken of the four, she was the youngest and least experienced, after all, and meeting a living legend was not at all easy, and seeing just why he was one, the reality not just of his words and manners, but the intangible aura of command and presence that he gave off.
"He said we are no longer his to command." Ada'ren murmured, glancing at the others as they walked. "But..." she trailed off, not having to continue as the others all nodded. They might not be under his authority, under his orders, but a whim from him still had the force of iron. The most successful BattleCarrier Fleet Commander in Zohan History, the man who had recognized the nature of the catastrophe arising from the alien swarms before anybody else, and who had the moral courage to order his fleets to retreat before them, and then deliberately baited them onto his own, drawing the vast majority of the pursuit onto his own forces, allowing far more of the others to escape than anybody could have imagined when the slaughter had begun. That Zohan had earned their obedience, even as he disclaimed it, yet at the same time he was right. He was almost always right. They had given their formal allegience to the Empress, and the man who could have easily caused them to be foresworn had, instead, affirmed the rightness of that choice and given them the means to fulfill their instruction in full, and moreover gave them ideas that they hadn't even pondered.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
The Hays-Adams Hotel
The luncheon had been mostly uneventful and fast, given the meal was light due to the formal dinner coming that night and the comparitive lack of VIPs in attendance. There had been criss-crossing conversations, and Dani had found herself standing by Jhayka and only contributing when asked, still quite overwhelmed by the whole thing. She imagined Fay might have had time to be a bit more accustomed to it, and dearly wished she was present here, given how busy Drish and Jhayka were chatting with Dale or other present VIPs.
Drish was uncharacteristic in how little she ate compared to everyone else... though Dani supposed she was saving stomach space for the pizzas waiting for them at the Hays-Adams. Jhayka mostly fielded questions about Kalunda, speaking amiably with General Becker on the issue of the trench tactics she'd encouraged the Kalundans to follow. Drish tried chatting up Dale about naval matters, and found herself speaking on them with Julia Dale mostly, herself a former commander (though mostly of stealth ships) and a retired Admiral.
Finally the luncheon ended, and Marines and Presidential Security Service agents escorted Jhayka and the others to their hotel, a mere block away at the Hays-Adam.
On arriving at the hotel, Jhayka led them inside to the hotel's lobby, where they were greeted very warmly by the hotel's owner in person, who had rented the entire hotel except a small section of executive studios which were permanently rented by the ADN Zohan. Security escorts of Taloran origin had occupied the rooms by them, as a practical matter of the paranoiac Priscilla's, and security devices dutifully placed. The rest of the hotel was there's, and fairly crowded. Rooms for the servants and support functionaries; the top negotiators and main accredited staff getting the suites, with a few reserved for other personnel and some rooms available for visiting officers from the Slashahkimmar. Other sections of the staff were accomodated at the Taloran Embassy.
Jhayka had rented the two biggest and most expansive suites for her family. The Federal Suite was for her and whomever she was sleeping with that night; the Presidential Suite, only slightly smaller and in a penthouse arrangement, was provided for which of her two wives was sleeping alone that particular eve. One of the two bathrooms in the Federal Suite had had its bath converted to function as a Taloran-style steam bath. The Taloran Embassy had provided cooks, both human and Taloran, of exemplary ability. In all the out of pocket expenses were millions of credits a day, and Jhayka was, as with most Taloran diplomats on such affairs, paying them entirely herself.
Ilavna, however, already had a message for her, which left Drish chuckling softly and saying: "Picked up an admirer in the Alliance back on Kalunda?"
The flush from the priestess was unusually large for the comment, as she looked up in some surprise and brushed back her cobalt blue hair as she stared toward Jhayka. "Your Highness, it's from the Sergeant at Arms of their Alliance Assembly! The Assembly's committee of operations has invited me to give the opening prayer for the daily session in a week'--err, five days here--time."
"Well, you're certainly welcome to accept," Jhayka answered. "We could use the positive publicity. You cut a fine and modest figure for our faith in public, Ilavna."
"Thank you, Your Highness, but I had not expected it.." She looked to Danielle. "From all you told me of the bad things that happened to you, I had come to suspect that Catholicism or Christianity in general at least was dominant in the halls of governance."
"Well, I think a majority of them are Christian," Dani replied, "but not all of them are like my mother. It's probably some good will gesture, like when they had Kai Bareil give the opening prayer for the Council when he and President Shakaar came back in '58."
"Interesting. Well, it's certainly a welcome gesture. I'll work on a suitable speech and prayer and refer them to your reference..?" The last was directed to Jhayka.
"For any comments, yes, but it's not my place to tell you what to pray, Adept," Jhayka noted mildly. "And where is Priscilla, if I may?"
"In one of the conference rooms, Your Highness, she's watching the press coverage of the events of the day."
"Interesting, well..." She glanced back to Drish and Danielle. "Will you come with us? Apparently she finds something important in watching the local news, and I want to check up on how the preparations are going, anyway."
"Probably so, Mister Culler, probably so," Priscilla whispered to herself, and then glanced back and frowned. "Your Highnesses, Adept. Forgive me. Unfortunately the coverage has.. Generally seemed to turn precisely in the direction of involving me to much. And on entirely to personal of terms."
"My apologies. I fear this will just be the beginning, however," Jhayka answered. "How is the coverage in general, however?" She moved past the issue, but Priscilla had not.
"Moderately well. Some channels having ravening fundamentalists--con men every one--decrying your welcoming into the city as lesbian polygamists. About what I expected there, and that's only on the Christian networks so far. You're already being spun as a very dignified figure and there's been some attempt to suggest you are a champion of popular causes from within the aristocracy back... Home, I suppose." She trailed off for a moment. "Well, I have no other, do I? Mostly my own fault."
"Your home is in mine, Priscilla," Jhayka offered, very gently. "And thank you for your work being as efficient and studious as always, even when these painful memories are brought to the fore."
"You're welcome. Now, however, since I've already compiled a media report for you to peruse," she'd muted the sound, "and I have had quite enough flagellation for one day, I am going to see about cognac here. I'll be fine by morning, as I always am..." She stood abruptly, and stalked out.
Dani watched her go. With pity and sadness she said, "If only people knew what she was really like...."
Jhayka turned back to look at Danielle. "They don't, Dani, my love, and they never will. Who would tell them? She'll probably die like this. Thought in most of the multiverse as a blackguard of the highest sort. Considering her real personal traits, the least I can do for her is endure a bit of poor reputation for sake of my protection of her... I hope she'll die happy, surrounded by children and with a husband who loves her at her side, from some universe where her act is not so easily held against her. But for now, fate's cast her the hardest lot, and there's not much we can do."
In the meantime, Drish had quietly stepped forward, and deftly un-muted the television by guessing in a few seconds, with enough good timing that it came on only after Jhayka's lament.
But as she did so, with Dani looking at Culler's smug face on the screen, a slow smile crossed her face. "Actually, love, there is perhaps a way...."
"Oh?" The screen was forgotten again as both Talorans glanced toward Danielle.
"Have Priscilla offer some up and coming reporter the chance of his or her lifetime," Dani answered. "A personal, exclusive interview."
"How would that work in her favour, Dani?" Drish looked confused. "They'd just ask her nasty questions like all of the others, wouldn't they? And none of them put any sense or context into what they're saying."
"Interviews aren't like press conferences, Drish," Dani said, her mind racing as she thought of how to do it, or at least how she thought it worked. "It'd just be Priscilla and a reporter sitting down with some camera guy and other technical crew having set things up, then the reporter asking quests and Priscilla replying. And Priscilla could possibly insist on being given an original copy of the interview, one we could release if, some reason, the reporter or the editor try to do funny stuff with the interview. And none would if they realized it meant us giving the original copy of the interview to their media competitors."
"It would be undignified for someone of her rank," Drish answered, adding: "Of course, the entire press conference format was undignified. It was very embarrassing to see Jhayka have to do that, and only the fact that it made her on the same level with the Alliance President..."
"I wasn't bothered by it. We're dealing with a democracy, we can't impose our own propriety on them," Jhayka interjected gently, stepping forward and wrapping an arm around Drish's waist, drawing in the shorter Taloran female. "But the irritation is appreciated, because it's nice to know that someone else in the world was as irritated as I was by the end of it." She glanced to Danielle with a sheepish look. "Speaking of which, I hope you won't be bothered by taking the Presidential Suite tonight. Drish was so good as to leave us to ourselves for the trip out, after all..."
"Oh, sure," Dani said. A mischievous grin crossed her face. "Fay and I can have our own little slumber party and do girly things while you two enjoy yourselves. But I don't want to hear another comment about my soon-to-be-dumped-in-the-river special toy chest!"
"I think the reporters here would simply dredge the bottom to recover it. Better wait until we get back home," Jhayka replied with a devious look. "See you for breakfast, yes? Tomorrow we'll be getting a tour of the capitol monuments and offices of government from the Foreign Minister."
"Yes, breakfast... in a five-star hotel." Dani grinned widely. "My stomach is doing a happy dance just thinking about it."
"You had better, considering who I have for the chef." Jhayka smiled slyly. "At any rate, sleep well, my dearheart."
The luncheon had been mostly uneventful and fast, given the meal was light due to the formal dinner coming that night and the comparitive lack of VIPs in attendance. There had been criss-crossing conversations, and Dani had found herself standing by Jhayka and only contributing when asked, still quite overwhelmed by the whole thing. She imagined Fay might have had time to be a bit more accustomed to it, and dearly wished she was present here, given how busy Drish and Jhayka were chatting with Dale or other present VIPs.
Drish was uncharacteristic in how little she ate compared to everyone else... though Dani supposed she was saving stomach space for the pizzas waiting for them at the Hays-Adams. Jhayka mostly fielded questions about Kalunda, speaking amiably with General Becker on the issue of the trench tactics she'd encouraged the Kalundans to follow. Drish tried chatting up Dale about naval matters, and found herself speaking on them with Julia Dale mostly, herself a former commander (though mostly of stealth ships) and a retired Admiral.
Finally the luncheon ended, and Marines and Presidential Security Service agents escorted Jhayka and the others to their hotel, a mere block away at the Hays-Adam.
On arriving at the hotel, Jhayka led them inside to the hotel's lobby, where they were greeted very warmly by the hotel's owner in person, who had rented the entire hotel except a small section of executive studios which were permanently rented by the ADN Zohan. Security escorts of Taloran origin had occupied the rooms by them, as a practical matter of the paranoiac Priscilla's, and security devices dutifully placed. The rest of the hotel was there's, and fairly crowded. Rooms for the servants and support functionaries; the top negotiators and main accredited staff getting the suites, with a few reserved for other personnel and some rooms available for visiting officers from the Slashahkimmar. Other sections of the staff were accomodated at the Taloran Embassy.
Jhayka had rented the two biggest and most expansive suites for her family. The Federal Suite was for her and whomever she was sleeping with that night; the Presidential Suite, only slightly smaller and in a penthouse arrangement, was provided for which of her two wives was sleeping alone that particular eve. One of the two bathrooms in the Federal Suite had had its bath converted to function as a Taloran-style steam bath. The Taloran Embassy had provided cooks, both human and Taloran, of exemplary ability. In all the out of pocket expenses were millions of credits a day, and Jhayka was, as with most Taloran diplomats on such affairs, paying them entirely herself.
Ilavna, however, already had a message for her, which left Drish chuckling softly and saying: "Picked up an admirer in the Alliance back on Kalunda?"
The flush from the priestess was unusually large for the comment, as she looked up in some surprise and brushed back her cobalt blue hair as she stared toward Jhayka. "Your Highness, it's from the Sergeant at Arms of their Alliance Assembly! The Assembly's committee of operations has invited me to give the opening prayer for the daily session in a week'--err, five days here--time."
"Well, you're certainly welcome to accept," Jhayka answered. "We could use the positive publicity. You cut a fine and modest figure for our faith in public, Ilavna."
"Thank you, Your Highness, but I had not expected it.." She looked to Danielle. "From all you told me of the bad things that happened to you, I had come to suspect that Catholicism or Christianity in general at least was dominant in the halls of governance."
"Well, I think a majority of them are Christian," Dani replied, "but not all of them are like my mother. It's probably some good will gesture, like when they had Kai Bareil give the opening prayer for the Council when he and President Shakaar came back in '58."
"Interesting. Well, it's certainly a welcome gesture. I'll work on a suitable speech and prayer and refer them to your reference..?" The last was directed to Jhayka.
"For any comments, yes, but it's not my place to tell you what to pray, Adept," Jhayka noted mildly. "And where is Priscilla, if I may?"
"In one of the conference rooms, Your Highness, she's watching the press coverage of the events of the day."
"Interesting, well..." She glanced back to Drish and Danielle. "Will you come with us? Apparently she finds something important in watching the local news, and I want to check up on how the preparations are going, anyway."
"....a very risky decision by the President and by the Taloran entourage, and I can't help but feel that this is going to explode in their faces."
The comment from Andrew Culling, a think tank specialist on geopolitics in the Beltway area, was received calmly by the host of the IUNS "Frank Reckel Live" panel show. "So you think the President should have refused entry to Priscilla Laurentii?"
"Not necessarily, given it might have insulted the Taloran team, but I think the fact that they brought her was a terrible risk to take. If the reports are true that the attack on their ship was because of her presence, then that decision is directly responsible for the tension between Valeria and Devenshire and for the fall of the Driscova government on Devenshire. Who knows what other kinds of damage this decision can cause? This negotiation may fail simply because Priscilla Laurentii is on Alliance territory beyond the power of the active arrest warrants and the war crimes indictment by the Kelling Tribunal against her."
A second figure showing on the screen, another man with skin a shade lighter than Culling and with a bearded jaw, cut in with a New York accent. "I think it's simply deplorable that the President has caved in on this. The President should have immediately denied her entry. Diplomatic immunity might protect her, but that doesn't mean he had to let her in! A firm protest should have been introduced to the Taloran government immediately and her diplomatic visa refused!"
"Doctor Culler, do you have any remarks on Princess Jhayka's allegation that Priscilla Laurentii's foster parents were murdered by the mobs on Pranton?"
"I have thoroughly researched the Devenshiran slave uprisings, and despite the lack of records, the death of eye-witnesses, and the upheaval from the war, I can honestly say with a great deal of certainty that the Princess is mistaken," Culler replied. "My research, my interview of eyewitnesses, has shown that the only deaths among the 'free' populace of Pranton was either at the hands of the Devenshiran military or the Plymouthite purges in 2159 by the Leewood regime. I will not call it a lie only because I am certain the Princess herself has not researched it at all and has listened far too much to Laurentii and not enough to her victims." Culler pointed a finger at the screen. "And if I'm wrong, if the revolting slaves killed her foster parents, it is likely only as retaliation for her actions at umm-Kashrash, and they are simply two more victims to the long list of deaths she caused!"
"Probably so, Mister Culler, probably so," Priscilla whispered to herself, and then glanced back and frowned. "Your Highnesses, Adept. Forgive me. Unfortunately the coverage has.. Generally seemed to turn precisely in the direction of involving me to much. And on entirely to personal of terms."
"My apologies. I fear this will just be the beginning, however," Jhayka answered. "How is the coverage in general, however?" She moved past the issue, but Priscilla had not.
"Moderately well. Some channels having ravening fundamentalists--con men every one--decrying your welcoming into the city as lesbian polygamists. About what I expected there, and that's only on the Christian networks so far. You're already being spun as a very dignified figure and there's been some attempt to suggest you are a champion of popular causes from within the aristocracy back... Home, I suppose." She trailed off for a moment. "Well, I have no other, do I? Mostly my own fault."
"Your home is in mine, Priscilla," Jhayka offered, very gently. "And thank you for your work being as efficient and studious as always, even when these painful memories are brought to the fore."
"You're welcome. Now, however, since I've already compiled a media report for you to peruse," she'd muted the sound, "and I have had quite enough flagellation for one day, I am going to see about cognac here. I'll be fine by morning, as I always am..." She stood abruptly, and stalked out.
Dani watched her go. With pity and sadness she said, "If only people knew what she was really like...."
Jhayka turned back to look at Danielle. "They don't, Dani, my love, and they never will. Who would tell them? She'll probably die like this. Thought in most of the multiverse as a blackguard of the highest sort. Considering her real personal traits, the least I can do for her is endure a bit of poor reputation for sake of my protection of her... I hope she'll die happy, surrounded by children and with a husband who loves her at her side, from some universe where her act is not so easily held against her. But for now, fate's cast her the hardest lot, and there's not much we can do."
In the meantime, Drish had quietly stepped forward, and deftly un-muted the television by guessing in a few seconds, with enough good timing that it came on only after Jhayka's lament.
But as she did so, with Dani looking at Culler's smug face on the screen, a slow smile crossed her face. "Actually, love, there is perhaps a way...."
"Oh?" The screen was forgotten again as both Talorans glanced toward Danielle.
"Have Priscilla offer some up and coming reporter the chance of his or her lifetime," Dani answered. "A personal, exclusive interview."
"How would that work in her favour, Dani?" Drish looked confused. "They'd just ask her nasty questions like all of the others, wouldn't they? And none of them put any sense or context into what they're saying."
"Interviews aren't like press conferences, Drish," Dani said, her mind racing as she thought of how to do it, or at least how she thought it worked. "It'd just be Priscilla and a reporter sitting down with some camera guy and other technical crew having set things up, then the reporter asking quests and Priscilla replying. And Priscilla could possibly insist on being given an original copy of the interview, one we could release if, some reason, the reporter or the editor try to do funny stuff with the interview. And none would if they realized it meant us giving the original copy of the interview to their media competitors."
"It would be undignified for someone of her rank," Drish answered, adding: "Of course, the entire press conference format was undignified. It was very embarrassing to see Jhayka have to do that, and only the fact that it made her on the same level with the Alliance President..."
"I wasn't bothered by it. We're dealing with a democracy, we can't impose our own propriety on them," Jhayka interjected gently, stepping forward and wrapping an arm around Drish's waist, drawing in the shorter Taloran female. "But the irritation is appreciated, because it's nice to know that someone else in the world was as irritated as I was by the end of it." She glanced to Danielle with a sheepish look. "Speaking of which, I hope you won't be bothered by taking the Presidential Suite tonight. Drish was so good as to leave us to ourselves for the trip out, after all..."
"Oh, sure," Dani said. A mischievous grin crossed her face. "Fay and I can have our own little slumber party and do girly things while you two enjoy yourselves. But I don't want to hear another comment about my soon-to-be-dumped-in-the-river special toy chest!"
"I think the reporters here would simply dredge the bottom to recover it. Better wait until we get back home," Jhayka replied with a devious look. "See you for breakfast, yes? Tomorrow we'll be getting a tour of the capitol monuments and offices of government from the Foreign Minister."
"Yes, breakfast... in a five-star hotel." Dani grinned widely. "My stomach is doing a happy dance just thinking about it."
"You had better, considering who I have for the chef." Jhayka smiled slyly. "At any rate, sleep well, my dearheart."
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
The Hays-Adams Hotel
24 March 2165 AST.
51 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
It was later in the night, just a couple hours short of midnight EST (and therefore the next day on the official AST calendar, which went by GST), when the formal dinner ended and everyone retired to their rooms. Jhayka and Drish had gone to the main suite, leaving Dani in the Presidential Suite, where she was seated on the floor, legs curled up to her chin and a pink nightrobe the only thing she was wearing, while a romantic comedy played on the suite's holo-vid player, which provided the only light in the room. Beside her, on a chair, Fayza was seated in a similar robe, wearing her undergarments beneath it, and busily applying coloring to her nails.
As the movie came to an end, with the local clock showing 11:14PM, Fay looked to Dani and said, "Aren't we starting early? Maybe we should go to bed."
"Eh...." Dani shook her head.
"It doesn't bother you?" Fay asked. "I mean, having to share Jhayka?"
"Honestly? Not as much as I thought it could," Dani replied. She turned the holovid viewer off and hit a light to prevent the whole room from being too dark. "Maybe it's because I get along with Drish so well. I'd like it to be that."
"I remember telling you a while ago that you'd like her," Fay answered. She saw Dani get up and look out the window. The window faced the White House, which remained illuminated in the distance. "Something up?"
"It's just.... wow. I mean, the last couple of years have been insane," Dani said. "Look at us, Fay. We were minor naval engineers once, glorified dockhands really, looking just to get a good rank and retire to go into the civilian field. We saved for the better part of a year to afford that trip to Gilead. I thought a hotel room with an actual kitchen and six hundred channels was luxury. Now we're, well, wealthy aristocrats who will be living in a five star hotel for months as we, well, help determine the future of trillions of people."
"It can be a little.... overbearing," Fay said in an amused understating manner.
"At first I didn't really think about it, but after running into Tabby earlier, I just...." Dani sat on her bed, still looking out at the capital before her and the lights of the occasional aircar moving by. "How many friends do you think I've lost, Fay? How many think I'm some traitor, or even worse, some shameless whore who's sold my body to Jhayka for her money?"
"I don't know, Dani." Fay sat beside her. "I'd hope that they would understand you dearly love Jhayka."
"But that's not how it looks, does it? How many people will not think that I did it for the money and comfort?" Dani let Fay put a sympathetic arm on her shoulders. "How many friends have I lost?"
"I sometimes think the same way, Dani," Fay said. "I just... half the time I think about it, I want to take it back. And I honestly think if I had it to do over again, if I could go through Jhayka's offer again, I'd say no."
:"You would?" asked Dani.
"Yes. Dani... I don't want to be this. I'm an engineer, I'm not some leader or court functionary. Just learning Taloran court etiquette gave me headaches, and I think Jhayka knew that beyond the occasional dinner I'd not do well at all, so she's been good enough to let me slide." Fay shrugged. "I just... I mean, I like the financial security and the luxury, but I just...."
"You want things to be the way they used to be," Dani answered softly.
"Yes. That's it exactly," Fay said. "I want a small house. I want to meet a cute, handsome guy before I get too old, someone who's idea of kinky sex is a slightly different position or maybe a coating of whip cream or something silly, and I want to have a few children, including a daughter I can name after my mother." Noticing Dani's amused look, she added, "The second child will be either Daniel or Danielle, I promise."
Dani giggled at that.
"Jhayka tells me, though, that for the title she gave me to actually continue on, I'd have to marry another count or baron."
"Yeah, the Taloran system is kind of strict. Thankfully I don't have to worry about that because I told Drish that her kids with Jhayka would be Jhayka's heiresses. My kids get to be the Henley heirs." Dani looked to a clock. "Hmm, time for bed I think. Got touring to do tomorrow."
"Yeah. I'll head over to my room." Fay stood from the bed. As she did, a look came to her face, and she turned and asked, grinning, "Mind if I ask you a silly, irrelevant question, somewhat private I guess, but not badly meant?"
"What?" Dani asked as she laid back on the bed.
A quirky, amused look came to Fay's face. "Dani.... when it comes to us, did you ever, y'know, get..... ideas?"
"Ideas?" She saw Fay's rolling hand gestures and realized what she meant. Chuckling, Dani said, "Fay, if this is your way of admitting to being bi-curious, I'm going to have to hurt you."
Giggling, Fay said, "No, silly! My love for vaginas begins and ends with my own. But I guess that answers my question, doesn't it?"
"Yeah, I guess it does. There was a time, Fay, where I would have responded to such a thing with a sore temptation to help you experiment," Dani admitted. "But you're my best friend. Jhayka is my soulmate. That's a different thing altogether. But... what made you ask this anyway?"
"The conversation we had. It occurs to me that if my brain was wired a bit differently, we might have spent that vacation doing something other than trying and failing to vacation on Gilead. And then we wouldn't be here."
"True," Dani admitted. "But it's too late to even think more on the subject. I'm dead tired and I want sleep."
"Which is probably the reason you let Drish have Jhayka tonight as it is," Fay joked as she went to the door. "Good night, Dani."
"Good night, Fay," Dani yawned, laying on the bed and closing her eyes. She giggled a little; there had been times before, in that previous life, where her loneliness would have made her joyous at the idea of being with Fay. But in the long run, Fay was a friend, and Dani's heart and soul belonged to the woman in a room around the corner in bed with yet another woman, a second wife. An arrangement that, to someone from Dani's upbringing, would be strange and even repulsive, but which love had led her to accept without question. Now if only others would understand this...
24 March 2165 AST.
51 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
It was later in the night, just a couple hours short of midnight EST (and therefore the next day on the official AST calendar, which went by GST), when the formal dinner ended and everyone retired to their rooms. Jhayka and Drish had gone to the main suite, leaving Dani in the Presidential Suite, where she was seated on the floor, legs curled up to her chin and a pink nightrobe the only thing she was wearing, while a romantic comedy played on the suite's holo-vid player, which provided the only light in the room. Beside her, on a chair, Fayza was seated in a similar robe, wearing her undergarments beneath it, and busily applying coloring to her nails.
As the movie came to an end, with the local clock showing 11:14PM, Fay looked to Dani and said, "Aren't we starting early? Maybe we should go to bed."
"Eh...." Dani shook her head.
"It doesn't bother you?" Fay asked. "I mean, having to share Jhayka?"
"Honestly? Not as much as I thought it could," Dani replied. She turned the holovid viewer off and hit a light to prevent the whole room from being too dark. "Maybe it's because I get along with Drish so well. I'd like it to be that."
"I remember telling you a while ago that you'd like her," Fay answered. She saw Dani get up and look out the window. The window faced the White House, which remained illuminated in the distance. "Something up?"
"It's just.... wow. I mean, the last couple of years have been insane," Dani said. "Look at us, Fay. We were minor naval engineers once, glorified dockhands really, looking just to get a good rank and retire to go into the civilian field. We saved for the better part of a year to afford that trip to Gilead. I thought a hotel room with an actual kitchen and six hundred channels was luxury. Now we're, well, wealthy aristocrats who will be living in a five star hotel for months as we, well, help determine the future of trillions of people."
"It can be a little.... overbearing," Fay said in an amused understating manner.
"At first I didn't really think about it, but after running into Tabby earlier, I just...." Dani sat on her bed, still looking out at the capital before her and the lights of the occasional aircar moving by. "How many friends do you think I've lost, Fay? How many think I'm some traitor, or even worse, some shameless whore who's sold my body to Jhayka for her money?"
"I don't know, Dani." Fay sat beside her. "I'd hope that they would understand you dearly love Jhayka."
"But that's not how it looks, does it? How many people will not think that I did it for the money and comfort?" Dani let Fay put a sympathetic arm on her shoulders. "How many friends have I lost?"
"I sometimes think the same way, Dani," Fay said. "I just... half the time I think about it, I want to take it back. And I honestly think if I had it to do over again, if I could go through Jhayka's offer again, I'd say no."
:"You would?" asked Dani.
"Yes. Dani... I don't want to be this. I'm an engineer, I'm not some leader or court functionary. Just learning Taloran court etiquette gave me headaches, and I think Jhayka knew that beyond the occasional dinner I'd not do well at all, so she's been good enough to let me slide." Fay shrugged. "I just... I mean, I like the financial security and the luxury, but I just...."
"You want things to be the way they used to be," Dani answered softly.
"Yes. That's it exactly," Fay said. "I want a small house. I want to meet a cute, handsome guy before I get too old, someone who's idea of kinky sex is a slightly different position or maybe a coating of whip cream or something silly, and I want to have a few children, including a daughter I can name after my mother." Noticing Dani's amused look, she added, "The second child will be either Daniel or Danielle, I promise."
Dani giggled at that.
"Jhayka tells me, though, that for the title she gave me to actually continue on, I'd have to marry another count or baron."
"Yeah, the Taloran system is kind of strict. Thankfully I don't have to worry about that because I told Drish that her kids with Jhayka would be Jhayka's heiresses. My kids get to be the Henley heirs." Dani looked to a clock. "Hmm, time for bed I think. Got touring to do tomorrow."
"Yeah. I'll head over to my room." Fay stood from the bed. As she did, a look came to her face, and she turned and asked, grinning, "Mind if I ask you a silly, irrelevant question, somewhat private I guess, but not badly meant?"
"What?" Dani asked as she laid back on the bed.
A quirky, amused look came to Fay's face. "Dani.... when it comes to us, did you ever, y'know, get..... ideas?"
"Ideas?" She saw Fay's rolling hand gestures and realized what she meant. Chuckling, Dani said, "Fay, if this is your way of admitting to being bi-curious, I'm going to have to hurt you."
Giggling, Fay said, "No, silly! My love for vaginas begins and ends with my own. But I guess that answers my question, doesn't it?"
"Yeah, I guess it does. There was a time, Fay, where I would have responded to such a thing with a sore temptation to help you experiment," Dani admitted. "But you're my best friend. Jhayka is my soulmate. That's a different thing altogether. But... what made you ask this anyway?"
"The conversation we had. It occurs to me that if my brain was wired a bit differently, we might have spent that vacation doing something other than trying and failing to vacation on Gilead. And then we wouldn't be here."
"True," Dani admitted. "But it's too late to even think more on the subject. I'm dead tired and I want sleep."
"Which is probably the reason you let Drish have Jhayka tonight as it is," Fay joked as she went to the door. "Good night, Dani."
"Good night, Fay," Dani yawned, laying on the bed and closing her eyes. She giggled a little; there had been times before, in that previous life, where her loneliness would have made her joyous at the idea of being with Fay. But in the long run, Fay was a friend, and Dani's heart and soul belonged to the woman in a room around the corner in bed with yet another woman, a second wife. An arrangement that, to someone from Dani's upbringing, would be strange and even repulsive, but which love had led her to accept without question. Now if only others would understand this...
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
The Hays-Adams Hotel
24 March 2165 AST.
51 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
"It's been a while," Drish spoke softly, leaning in against Jhayka. "And the bed is funny."
"Hah, a good way to distract from the fact it was just last night," Jhayka leaned over and kissed her wife gently on the lips, before pushing herself up. "Though, human beds are odd. Of course, Danielle found the idea of sleeping on a pile of pillows in what she called a 'glorified crate' to be unusual, too, so I suppose it always balances out."
"It does," Drish agreed, also pushing herself up, but then settling against the bedboard and grabbing Jhayka about the waist. "So what's on the agenda for today?" She asked as she brushed a strand of bright pink hair out of her wife's eyes.
"Well, we get to go on a tour of the capitol, and then I have to address to the Alliance Council," Jhayka answered, her implants swinging to gaze at Drish and her ears conveying all that her facial expressions, now, never could again. "You've grown on me, you know? And on Danielle. I had my doubts and fears, but things have come through alright."
Yellow eyes gazed back and then her ears flicked merrily. "Why, Danielle is my korana, it really is as simple as that now, dear. We are all one family together, and a happier one, I suspect, than the Empress Mikela and her wives."
"Of all the things that may be said of the honourable patron of my ancestress, I will agree that 'happy' would never be one of them," Jhayka answered, gently getting loose of Drishalras with a few kisses on the way as she reflected, for a moment, on the paranoid and suspicious figure of that long dead Empress who had propelled the Olothdhakiu to their present wealth and influence. "I suppose I have ended up in the Imperial service just as thoroughly, hmm?"
"It does seem that way," Drish agreed as she leaned over and keyed the service intercom: "Prepare our bath, please," she ordered her batgirl, and then looked back to Jhayka. "Shall we order breakfast while we wait for the bath?"
"You'd never let me hear the end of it if I didn't agree..."
"Hey!" The thrown pillow signaled the degeneration of the conversation into laughter, for the moment. Fortunately after the momentous events of the prior day, the only event of stress on their first full day on Earth would be the address of the Alliance Council, and that was many hours off...
At the Hotel entrance the bus had been made ready, though a lot of the tour to come would be on foot. A detachment from the city police and the Presidential Security Service had been assigned to provide protection, and all along the planned tour there were undercover police and security men in plainclothes to add a further buffer of security. Even the air was to be protected; during the time period of the tour, helicopters for emergency medical evac would be kept prepped along with their attendant teams, and a squadron of F-45 aerospace fighters would maintain constant air patrols over the city. Given the attack on the Slashahkimmar no precaution seemed too much.
Heading the tour would be Foreign Minister Peter Wells, with the Baroness idhl Ghast also coming, though the actual speaker was one of his subordinates from the Foreign Ministry, Trisha Long from the Department of Commerce, who was a native of Washington D.C. in GS-41 and knew this version of DC as well as her home universe's counterpart. She had dressed for the part well, wearing a full-sleeved blue blouse with flower designs upon it and a matching ankle-length skirt that was modest upon her rather thin frame. When Jhayka and the others emerged, Long escorted them aboard and into seats. Her wear wasn't much different from the subdued green sleeveless blouse and knee-length skirt Fayza wore, but Dani had chosen to be flamboyant, with a rich purple and yellow tube top that bared her shoulders and arms completely and just a thin slip of skin at her waist, where her bright yellow and blue trousers went high enough to cover her navel. Long stared at her for just a moment before realizing that pretty much every Taloran in the entourage was similarly dressed, and Danielle Verdes was married to one, so....
They got under way as soon as everyone was secure, but they didn't remain in their places for long. After just a short trip on the city roads of DC, the bus stopped on the road running through the centre of the Mall near to the Washington Monument which was, for the moment, closed off as their first stop. The foreign minister and his assistants were there, as the Talorans and a few of the humans--and this time Priscilla in her field green uniform was there, along with a few human nobles--disembarked. Jhayka, Drishalras, Danielle, and Fayza were all fairly close together, Fayza toward the back and Ilavna by her with Priscilla and the Empress' relative, Elestria.
"How is the crew of the Slashahkimmar doing, by the way, Drish?" Jhayka asked as they stepped forward.
"Oh, we're going to be giving the first group leave tomorrow. As for those we've landed, Colonel Winters is still setting up their permanent accomadations at, ah, NAS Oceana." But they were coming up to their very important tour guides, and Drishalras shut up at that point and tried to look prim.
Wells was dressed in suit and tie for the occasion, which was a bit interesting given that the cool wind of the previous day had given way now to a slight breeze from the south and warm early spring air that made the temperature on the hot side for this time of year - warm enough that Fayza and Dani would be comfortable without coats for their arms. "Your Highness, I hope you had a pleasant sleep last night," Wells said as they entourage disembarked.
"Very well, thank you," Jhayka answered, not mentioning, of course, that it had scarcely all been sleep that she'd been involved in. "It's an interesting feature of the capitol that you have this central area for monuments. Valeria simply has them scattered about, usually associated with a plaza or boulevard associated with whomever the monument is honouring. I'm looking forward to seeing it all." Her head was directed upward consciously toward the top of the Washington Monument. "Is it solid rock, or is it possible to.. Ahh. I see the windows."
"We have a timed schedule of temporary closure of each monument to ensure your safety," Wells explained. "The Washington Monument is first on the list."
"Then, let's carry on, certainly, Minister. I'm curious to learn about it, though I imagine some in the party may already be aware.." She glanced to Danielle and smiled.
The tour thus began, and with a nervous look to her boss for a moment, Long began explaining the history of the monument for the benefit of the Talorans and anyone else in the group who wasn't versed on it. They went straight up to the entrance and took the elevator to the top.
From there, the windows permitted a view of all D.C. Despite being the Alliance seat of government, laws by the city and the acquiesnance of the Alliance Government had prevented the construction of any super-structures that might spoil the scenic view. One could see down both ends of the Mall and to the New Mall that stretched east of the Capitol, the stretch of land that the city of Washington had reserved for constructing monuments and memorials to the Alliance specifically. Long pointed out the buildings that were visible, the universities, the government structures....
Off to the side, Dani was looking out a window lost in thought. Fayza noticed her and asked, "What is it, Dani?"
"Nothing," she replied, sighing. "Just bringing back memories." Her sides tingled as she remembered being at the top of the Statue of Liberty almost four decades earlier, a six year old girl getting her first look at the New York skyline before being tickled by her father.
"Were you here before?" Drishalras asked very innocently, picking up the exchange from a distance while Jhayka was engaged in asking questions to Long, which could be faintly figured out to be about the career of Washington.
"Oh, no, Drish, I've never been up here before," Dani answered. "Do you like the view?"
"It's very impressive. The capitol much reminds me of Valeria, though with even fewer large buildings, which takes some getting used to. You know what Taloran cities are like, and this is very different."
After a moment, she added: "So, what do you think of this General Washington whom it memorializes? It seems like he was an exceptionally tenacious individual."
"Well, he's the Father of our Country. He led the Continental Army against the British and for years fought as the underdog before winning at Yorktown. Then he was our first President."
"The first under the United States Constitution," Fayza said to correct her. "He didn't serve in the first government under the Articles of Confederation."
"I'm not really aware of this history," Drishalras confessed. "But then again, I didn't precisely study much of it before meeting you, Danielle. He holds a rather mythic status which, I guess, is rather unusual to me among republics, which always seemed to minimize individuals. Then again I suppose that might be a bias of mine." She had a wry look at that, trying to acknowledge her own limitations in the whole situation. Drish was young by Taloran standards, and though quite mature it sometimes showed in her uncertainty that she didn't see herself as that old yet, really, comparable with elders or even her wife.
When the sights had been taken in well enough, they made their way back down and started walking across the Mall, while behind them the Park Service re-opened the Washington Monument to the public.
To Jhayka and Drish the World War Two monument was the most straightforward. It was anonymous and vast; when not honouring a single person, in the style of the statues in Lafayette park which they had viewed coming and going to the White House already, it was how the Talorans would commemorate things. Battles and campaigns were listed in bronzen splendour and marble glory. The same qualities which had led the memorial to being panned by most contemporary critics gave them admiration for it, and the basic evil of Hitler and the barbarity of his Japanese allies had an understanding which crossed races and cultures.
For the Talorans in general the Korean war memorial was more obscure, the design not particularly inspiring. It nonetheless excited curiousity: For the education of the Talorans clearly gave them the understanding to grasp the allegory, the portrait in stone made here, the purpose of the rising figures, the almost intentionally muddy imagery, the working of shrubbery into the area. It was more a sort of stylized diorama than not, and Jhayka whispered to Drishalras in the course of it: "Makes me think a bit too much of Kalunda, I confess," but it did not seem like a memorial in the proper sense to them.
The Jefferson memorial was next, and here Jhayka had some questions after she'd carefully walked around the statue, seeing it from every point. "Tell me, if you would--Jefferson was the great proponent in your history of an agrarian society, was he not? I am curious, if you think that he really had any success in bringing about his vision of America. It's a question of interest for us because the whole Empire remains by far the most agrarian of all star-fairing powers of any note."
"Most don't think he succeeded at all, given how powerful America became industrially," replied Long. "But then again, American society isn't as completely urban as other Human nations became, and since our country has such deep agrarian roots, maybe Jefferson was more successful than people ever think. I mean, a lot of nations has turned more and more to Earth-like planets for their agricultural breadbaskets, but virtually every version of America in the known Multiverse has maintained some form of mass agrarian production. If you really want a good discussion on this, I'd suggest you talk to the President. I think he still owns the family farm."
"I'd be very interested in that," Jhayka agreed. "We'd share a trait there; well, not just us, but His Excellency and virtually all Talorans of import. Mostly, one grants, the land is sectioned off to tenant farmers, but agricultural engineering is the basic underpinning of the education of our upper classes. A part, I imagine, Jefferson would find distasteful, if readily understandable. An interesting man, regardless, full of contradictions."
"You mean the fact that he talked about freedom a lot but also owned slaves and even had children with one of them?" Dani said with a hint of snarkyness in her voice.
"There is that," Jhayka acknowledged. "But he was also basically of the aristocracy of Virginia, such as it was--unrecognized by the King of Great Britain in what was certainly an abuse of precedent--and yet is generally associated in his writings with the most radical part of the American Revolution, as it were."
"A lot of wealthy Americans were nevertheless supporters the principles of the American Revolution," Long added.
"Actually, Miss Long, if I may," Fay said, entering the conversation, "when the Talorans think of Revolutions, they think of mobs of people storming the houses of the better-off and imposing social equality at the point of a bayonet. The French Revolution fits their mindset of a normal Revolution far more than the American Revolution."
"The American revolution does seem to have more the character of a dynastic dispute gone awry than a genuine revolution," Elestria spoke up abruptly, and for a moment the attention of those in the party flicked back to the quiet but very attentive representative of the Imperial household.
"Nevertheless we do consider it a revolution, simply because at that time republican government was at its low point," Long said. "Virtually the entire known world were under monarchies of some form or another. Then the American colonists decided to erect a republic instead of simply creating a new throne."
"And that is where the principle differences in our governments have come from," Jhayka mused, to cut off the potential for a more blunt assessment from Elestria. "Even at a juncture that late, I fancy that one, or all, of the worlds which share this history might have found themselves on a course much closer to the Holy Roman Empire."
"It is considered possible by our counterfactual historians. And given the nature of the Multiverse, that's gone from fun theorizing to an actual field," Wells said. "Well, Miss Long, what do you say we give them the grand finale? The last two great monuments in the Old Mall."
"Ah,yes, please, this way..."
They made their way back to the Mall proper, moving along the Reflecting Pool. The weather had remained warm, and had actually seemed to get a bit hotter, justifying after-the-fact the clothing choices of Dani and some of the others. Long didn't seem to be suffering under her own dress, but Wells certainly seemed to not appreciate the temperature in his heavier suit. It was almost unseasonably warm, one of those freak occurrences that nevertheless could happen with seeming ease for nature.
Soon the grand Doric temple was in view; the Lincoln Memorial, with it's thirty-six columns thick and grand, kept to their full greatness by tireless preservation efforts. Inside was the great statue of Lincoln sitting down, the fasces visible upon the Georgia marble as the image looked upon any who entered the central cella; the words of the man who's image had been carved there for all time were placed upon the south and north walls of the outer cellas, while above and behind Lincoln was the inscription:
Dani and Fay both looked on in some awe; neither had been here in person before, and the entire structure seemed to have a magnificance, an energy, that none of the others had yet possessed.
"He was served by such poor generals in the east," Jhayka murmured quietly, with almost a sort of sigh in her voice. "The area of human history I confess to have studied the most, for it was the most like a Taloran war, with the most vicious battles, but truly one of the smaller civilian counts of your conflicts... I confess, however, that the reasons are nobler in truth than inter-dynastic wars which are all we have in comparison. Holding a country together, freeing slaves. These are things that transcend that. And so here is the memorial to a man who deserves universal acclaim," she concluded, in no small part for the benefit of the rest of the Talorans. "Take in what you see carefully, and remember that in every generation there are some of incredible capability who may come forward if needed, regardless of species. He was one of them."
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal", Fayza breathed to herself. Her own family history occurred to her even now; her mother from a land and a culture where there was not equality, a people who would never have allowed Fayza to choose whom to marry, to become a starship engineer, or do any of the marvelous things she'd done in her life.
"I remember hearing one of my peers in Internal Affairs tell me about the time he brought the leader of the Zohan and some of their kids here as part of a cultural tour," Long said aloud. "The place just floored them. It left them utterly speechless."
"It is worthy of high respect regardless of who you are, but if your race was once made of slaves, I imagine it takes on an especial concern," Drishalras commented. "And he deserved a better fate than what befell him, it must truly be said. To be struck down when he had finally succeeded..."
"But isn't that what happened to Valera, in some sense?" Jhayka answered.
"Voluntarily," Ilavna interjected. "Which is what makes Her holy. But this man was great regardless, yes. Blameless, and a martyr of righteousness."
"I just never understood why so many Americans thought so highly of some of the Confederates, especially the generals like Lee," Dani said. "I mean, I remember hearing some enlisted guy when I was in the service go on about how good a man Lee was, how great he was and how the North had nobody to equal him, and that somehow because he fought for his home state that made him some moral exemplar."
"It was more like McClellan was an idiot not to employ his forces aggressively when he had the advantage," Jhayka replied. "Reading about his passive behaviour in command frankly offended me, speaking as a general and a conneisseur of the military art."
"Some fans of history have fun replaying various battles in holochamber arcades," Long said. "I know an arcade just outside of town if you're interested, Your Highness."
"Perhaps, if we have the time..." Jhayka let the thought trail off, not wanting to indulge to much for the sake of her hosts.
Looking at her watch, Long nodded at Wells. "Well, there is one more stop along the way before we get back on the bus..."
The party departed the Lincoln Memorial, making their way down the steps and toward the north side of the Old Mall, following the walkways until they got to their last stop: the Vietnam Wall. It was built in the shape of a wide "V", sunken into the ground with a single walkway following the wall and its shining black exterior. At either end old-fashioned register books allowed someone to see the exact location of the wall, with digital assistant ports for anyone prefering a more modern solution by downloading the registry.
"What is the purpose of this memorial, Madame Long?" Drishalras asked politely, expressing more than a bit confusing that perhaps only Jhayka masked effectively, or knew enough to avoid having. The humans in the group.. Were by far the more understanding.
"The Vietnam Veterans' Memorial was built in the early 1980s and inscribed with the name of Americans killed or missing in the Vietnam conflict of the 1960s and early 70s," Long replied. "At the time the Vietnam War was at the heart of a major social fracture, with many hating and opposing the war and others disagreeing with that opposition. Those who opposed it believe the war should never have been fault, that it was on behalf of a corrupt and undemocratic regime against people who wanted freedom for their homeland, while others believed that the war was necessary to protect Vietnam, and all of Southeast Asia, from the advance of Communism."
"Here in the States it led to the mass anti-war movements and protests, and various incidents like the Kent State shootings. When the war finally ended, and even as it was ending, anti-war protestors and their sympathizers tended to mistreat the veterans as well. Additionally, the veterans had their own problems, such as rampant drug use in the ranks and discontent over their treatment by their country and the fact that they were sent into the war under such circumstances in the first place. This wall was built as an attempt to heal that fracture in society, and to help the veterans cope with what happened."
"To commemorate a defeat in one's own capitol...." Elestria breathed out, looking almost unsteady. She was the youngest of the Talorans there, though she had been trained in the exceptional rigour of the Imperial Household. "You must forgive me, Madame Long, but this is really quite alien to us..."
"Elestria, illustrious princess, it is about the dead," Jhayka intervened, afraid that their guides would be offended. "Soldiers remember their comrades dearly, and perhaps this is more sensible than the sense of shame we'd hold. A Taloran army returning home and facing such treatment would probably turn against the populace, after all, in an exquisitely violent fashion."
"It's been centuries for some universes, and Vietnam still causes a lot of debate," Long added. "America was going through social upheaval at the time. Not all of it was good. In most universes some of the ideas that came out during the 1960s are considered to have been damaging in the long-run. But even with the bad, there was still the good. The social upheaval of that time also brought with it the Civil Rights movement. In a way... the final culmination of Abraham Lincoln's work came them, when the promise of his victory a hundred years before was finally fulfilled after years of broken promises and mistakes."
"And yet, Miss Long, we do have a bit of a way to go in some things," Dani added quietly.
Jhayka glanced to her wife and then back to Long for a moment. "I confess that even though I'm the nominal expert here, the intricacies of exchange between the two of you here escapes me. I will say, though, that it's likely as not something not of particular relevance to our mission of peace.. Which I hope we don't seem to defame by observing these differences, either. For our society it is very difficult to accept any social change as positive, and the idea of social upheaval brings back the most unpleasant of memories, when millions died and the Second Empress took the field."
"I understand, Your Highness," Long replied on Well's behalf, since she was the de facto hostess here. "Part of the reason I asked to come along for this is because I've been one of the advocates of these coming talks, and I want this to succeed as well. And maybe if we understood each other better, it'd prevent problems during the talks."
"I'm given to understand that the precedent you've used to marry Duchess Verdes came from the Second or First Empress, Highness?" Wells asked afterward.
"The First Empress," Jhayka answered. "And it was legally considered permissable before her.. It just hasn't been done much. Mikela the First was a most peculiar individual. More or less, had she succeeded in what she planned, the Taloran Star Empire would more or less resemble the Holy Roman Empire today, rather than its far more feudal and balanced power structure that it possesses as things stand. A state of affairs nobody, including the Imperial family today, particularly finds ideal. She was a larger than life personality in every sense of the words, and ended up marrying six different women in all. Beside her homosexual inclinations and penchant for brides, she spent most of her life in a desperate search for an heir. In the end she bankrolled the largest expansion of gene-engineering technology we ever saw, an effort of almost two Taloran centuries which started with virtually no knowledge of the existence of genes--they were still widely doubted in the scientific community--and culminated in the ability to safely and reliably create parthenogenic children from the genetic material of two females.
"The one child produced with her and her youngest wife became the Empress Mikela the Second, who equalled her mother both in centralizing tendencies and, well, a sense of aggrandizement. She challenged the church over broader uses of genetic therapy, and won to a certain extent, while at the same time being one of the last Empresses to directly see combat during the communitarian revolt I referenced. Their reigns were both extremely long--from the 8th to the 16th centuries of the human count--and oversaw essentially the whole period of Taloran colonization of our solar system after the development of orbital rocketry and up to the cusp of interstellar flight. There is a tendency among us, I admit, to minimize their achievements, but their's is one of the more colourful and eventful periods of Taloran history, and I recommend studying it with some care."
"I'll make sure to have our people prepare a brief on that for our diplomats on Talora," Wells said.
He looked to Long, and a glance at her watch was followed by her remarking, "The bus should be just down the road ready for us, we should probably get going so we can move on to the New Mall."
24 March 2165 AST.
51 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
"It's been a while," Drish spoke softly, leaning in against Jhayka. "And the bed is funny."
"Hah, a good way to distract from the fact it was just last night," Jhayka leaned over and kissed her wife gently on the lips, before pushing herself up. "Though, human beds are odd. Of course, Danielle found the idea of sleeping on a pile of pillows in what she called a 'glorified crate' to be unusual, too, so I suppose it always balances out."
"It does," Drish agreed, also pushing herself up, but then settling against the bedboard and grabbing Jhayka about the waist. "So what's on the agenda for today?" She asked as she brushed a strand of bright pink hair out of her wife's eyes.
"Well, we get to go on a tour of the capitol, and then I have to address to the Alliance Council," Jhayka answered, her implants swinging to gaze at Drish and her ears conveying all that her facial expressions, now, never could again. "You've grown on me, you know? And on Danielle. I had my doubts and fears, but things have come through alright."
Yellow eyes gazed back and then her ears flicked merrily. "Why, Danielle is my korana, it really is as simple as that now, dear. We are all one family together, and a happier one, I suspect, than the Empress Mikela and her wives."
"Of all the things that may be said of the honourable patron of my ancestress, I will agree that 'happy' would never be one of them," Jhayka answered, gently getting loose of Drishalras with a few kisses on the way as she reflected, for a moment, on the paranoid and suspicious figure of that long dead Empress who had propelled the Olothdhakiu to their present wealth and influence. "I suppose I have ended up in the Imperial service just as thoroughly, hmm?"
"It does seem that way," Drish agreed as she leaned over and keyed the service intercom: "Prepare our bath, please," she ordered her batgirl, and then looked back to Jhayka. "Shall we order breakfast while we wait for the bath?"
"You'd never let me hear the end of it if I didn't agree..."
"Hey!" The thrown pillow signaled the degeneration of the conversation into laughter, for the moment. Fortunately after the momentous events of the prior day, the only event of stress on their first full day on Earth would be the address of the Alliance Council, and that was many hours off...
At the Hotel entrance the bus had been made ready, though a lot of the tour to come would be on foot. A detachment from the city police and the Presidential Security Service had been assigned to provide protection, and all along the planned tour there were undercover police and security men in plainclothes to add a further buffer of security. Even the air was to be protected; during the time period of the tour, helicopters for emergency medical evac would be kept prepped along with their attendant teams, and a squadron of F-45 aerospace fighters would maintain constant air patrols over the city. Given the attack on the Slashahkimmar no precaution seemed too much.
Heading the tour would be Foreign Minister Peter Wells, with the Baroness idhl Ghast also coming, though the actual speaker was one of his subordinates from the Foreign Ministry, Trisha Long from the Department of Commerce, who was a native of Washington D.C. in GS-41 and knew this version of DC as well as her home universe's counterpart. She had dressed for the part well, wearing a full-sleeved blue blouse with flower designs upon it and a matching ankle-length skirt that was modest upon her rather thin frame. When Jhayka and the others emerged, Long escorted them aboard and into seats. Her wear wasn't much different from the subdued green sleeveless blouse and knee-length skirt Fayza wore, but Dani had chosen to be flamboyant, with a rich purple and yellow tube top that bared her shoulders and arms completely and just a thin slip of skin at her waist, where her bright yellow and blue trousers went high enough to cover her navel. Long stared at her for just a moment before realizing that pretty much every Taloran in the entourage was similarly dressed, and Danielle Verdes was married to one, so....
They got under way as soon as everyone was secure, but they didn't remain in their places for long. After just a short trip on the city roads of DC, the bus stopped on the road running through the centre of the Mall near to the Washington Monument which was, for the moment, closed off as their first stop. The foreign minister and his assistants were there, as the Talorans and a few of the humans--and this time Priscilla in her field green uniform was there, along with a few human nobles--disembarked. Jhayka, Drishalras, Danielle, and Fayza were all fairly close together, Fayza toward the back and Ilavna by her with Priscilla and the Empress' relative, Elestria.
"How is the crew of the Slashahkimmar doing, by the way, Drish?" Jhayka asked as they stepped forward.
"Oh, we're going to be giving the first group leave tomorrow. As for those we've landed, Colonel Winters is still setting up their permanent accomadations at, ah, NAS Oceana." But they were coming up to their very important tour guides, and Drishalras shut up at that point and tried to look prim.
Wells was dressed in suit and tie for the occasion, which was a bit interesting given that the cool wind of the previous day had given way now to a slight breeze from the south and warm early spring air that made the temperature on the hot side for this time of year - warm enough that Fayza and Dani would be comfortable without coats for their arms. "Your Highness, I hope you had a pleasant sleep last night," Wells said as they entourage disembarked.
"Very well, thank you," Jhayka answered, not mentioning, of course, that it had scarcely all been sleep that she'd been involved in. "It's an interesting feature of the capitol that you have this central area for monuments. Valeria simply has them scattered about, usually associated with a plaza or boulevard associated with whomever the monument is honouring. I'm looking forward to seeing it all." Her head was directed upward consciously toward the top of the Washington Monument. "Is it solid rock, or is it possible to.. Ahh. I see the windows."
"We have a timed schedule of temporary closure of each monument to ensure your safety," Wells explained. "The Washington Monument is first on the list."
"Then, let's carry on, certainly, Minister. I'm curious to learn about it, though I imagine some in the party may already be aware.." She glanced to Danielle and smiled.
The tour thus began, and with a nervous look to her boss for a moment, Long began explaining the history of the monument for the benefit of the Talorans and anyone else in the group who wasn't versed on it. They went straight up to the entrance and took the elevator to the top.
From there, the windows permitted a view of all D.C. Despite being the Alliance seat of government, laws by the city and the acquiesnance of the Alliance Government had prevented the construction of any super-structures that might spoil the scenic view. One could see down both ends of the Mall and to the New Mall that stretched east of the Capitol, the stretch of land that the city of Washington had reserved for constructing monuments and memorials to the Alliance specifically. Long pointed out the buildings that were visible, the universities, the government structures....
Off to the side, Dani was looking out a window lost in thought. Fayza noticed her and asked, "What is it, Dani?"
"Nothing," she replied, sighing. "Just bringing back memories." Her sides tingled as she remembered being at the top of the Statue of Liberty almost four decades earlier, a six year old girl getting her first look at the New York skyline before being tickled by her father.
"Were you here before?" Drishalras asked very innocently, picking up the exchange from a distance while Jhayka was engaged in asking questions to Long, which could be faintly figured out to be about the career of Washington.
"Oh, no, Drish, I've never been up here before," Dani answered. "Do you like the view?"
"It's very impressive. The capitol much reminds me of Valeria, though with even fewer large buildings, which takes some getting used to. You know what Taloran cities are like, and this is very different."
After a moment, she added: "So, what do you think of this General Washington whom it memorializes? It seems like he was an exceptionally tenacious individual."
"Well, he's the Father of our Country. He led the Continental Army against the British and for years fought as the underdog before winning at Yorktown. Then he was our first President."
"The first under the United States Constitution," Fayza said to correct her. "He didn't serve in the first government under the Articles of Confederation."
"I'm not really aware of this history," Drishalras confessed. "But then again, I didn't precisely study much of it before meeting you, Danielle. He holds a rather mythic status which, I guess, is rather unusual to me among republics, which always seemed to minimize individuals. Then again I suppose that might be a bias of mine." She had a wry look at that, trying to acknowledge her own limitations in the whole situation. Drish was young by Taloran standards, and though quite mature it sometimes showed in her uncertainty that she didn't see herself as that old yet, really, comparable with elders or even her wife.
When the sights had been taken in well enough, they made their way back down and started walking across the Mall, while behind them the Park Service re-opened the Washington Monument to the public.
To Jhayka and Drish the World War Two monument was the most straightforward. It was anonymous and vast; when not honouring a single person, in the style of the statues in Lafayette park which they had viewed coming and going to the White House already, it was how the Talorans would commemorate things. Battles and campaigns were listed in bronzen splendour and marble glory. The same qualities which had led the memorial to being panned by most contemporary critics gave them admiration for it, and the basic evil of Hitler and the barbarity of his Japanese allies had an understanding which crossed races and cultures.
For the Talorans in general the Korean war memorial was more obscure, the design not particularly inspiring. It nonetheless excited curiousity: For the education of the Talorans clearly gave them the understanding to grasp the allegory, the portrait in stone made here, the purpose of the rising figures, the almost intentionally muddy imagery, the working of shrubbery into the area. It was more a sort of stylized diorama than not, and Jhayka whispered to Drishalras in the course of it: "Makes me think a bit too much of Kalunda, I confess," but it did not seem like a memorial in the proper sense to them.
The Jefferson memorial was next, and here Jhayka had some questions after she'd carefully walked around the statue, seeing it from every point. "Tell me, if you would--Jefferson was the great proponent in your history of an agrarian society, was he not? I am curious, if you think that he really had any success in bringing about his vision of America. It's a question of interest for us because the whole Empire remains by far the most agrarian of all star-fairing powers of any note."
"Most don't think he succeeded at all, given how powerful America became industrially," replied Long. "But then again, American society isn't as completely urban as other Human nations became, and since our country has such deep agrarian roots, maybe Jefferson was more successful than people ever think. I mean, a lot of nations has turned more and more to Earth-like planets for their agricultural breadbaskets, but virtually every version of America in the known Multiverse has maintained some form of mass agrarian production. If you really want a good discussion on this, I'd suggest you talk to the President. I think he still owns the family farm."
"I'd be very interested in that," Jhayka agreed. "We'd share a trait there; well, not just us, but His Excellency and virtually all Talorans of import. Mostly, one grants, the land is sectioned off to tenant farmers, but agricultural engineering is the basic underpinning of the education of our upper classes. A part, I imagine, Jefferson would find distasteful, if readily understandable. An interesting man, regardless, full of contradictions."
"You mean the fact that he talked about freedom a lot but also owned slaves and even had children with one of them?" Dani said with a hint of snarkyness in her voice.
"There is that," Jhayka acknowledged. "But he was also basically of the aristocracy of Virginia, such as it was--unrecognized by the King of Great Britain in what was certainly an abuse of precedent--and yet is generally associated in his writings with the most radical part of the American Revolution, as it were."
"A lot of wealthy Americans were nevertheless supporters the principles of the American Revolution," Long added.
"Actually, Miss Long, if I may," Fay said, entering the conversation, "when the Talorans think of Revolutions, they think of mobs of people storming the houses of the better-off and imposing social equality at the point of a bayonet. The French Revolution fits their mindset of a normal Revolution far more than the American Revolution."
"The American revolution does seem to have more the character of a dynastic dispute gone awry than a genuine revolution," Elestria spoke up abruptly, and for a moment the attention of those in the party flicked back to the quiet but very attentive representative of the Imperial household.
"Nevertheless we do consider it a revolution, simply because at that time republican government was at its low point," Long said. "Virtually the entire known world were under monarchies of some form or another. Then the American colonists decided to erect a republic instead of simply creating a new throne."
"And that is where the principle differences in our governments have come from," Jhayka mused, to cut off the potential for a more blunt assessment from Elestria. "Even at a juncture that late, I fancy that one, or all, of the worlds which share this history might have found themselves on a course much closer to the Holy Roman Empire."
"It is considered possible by our counterfactual historians. And given the nature of the Multiverse, that's gone from fun theorizing to an actual field," Wells said. "Well, Miss Long, what do you say we give them the grand finale? The last two great monuments in the Old Mall."
"Ah,yes, please, this way..."
They made their way back to the Mall proper, moving along the Reflecting Pool. The weather had remained warm, and had actually seemed to get a bit hotter, justifying after-the-fact the clothing choices of Dani and some of the others. Long didn't seem to be suffering under her own dress, but Wells certainly seemed to not appreciate the temperature in his heavier suit. It was almost unseasonably warm, one of those freak occurrences that nevertheless could happen with seeming ease for nature.
Soon the grand Doric temple was in view; the Lincoln Memorial, with it's thirty-six columns thick and grand, kept to their full greatness by tireless preservation efforts. Inside was the great statue of Lincoln sitting down, the fasces visible upon the Georgia marble as the image looked upon any who entered the central cella; the words of the man who's image had been carved there for all time were placed upon the south and north walls of the outer cellas, while above and behind Lincoln was the inscription:
IN THIS TEMPLE
AS IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE
FOR WHOM HE SAVED THE UNION
THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
IS ENSHRINED FOREVER
Dani and Fay both looked on in some awe; neither had been here in person before, and the entire structure seemed to have a magnificance, an energy, that none of the others had yet possessed.
"He was served by such poor generals in the east," Jhayka murmured quietly, with almost a sort of sigh in her voice. "The area of human history I confess to have studied the most, for it was the most like a Taloran war, with the most vicious battles, but truly one of the smaller civilian counts of your conflicts... I confess, however, that the reasons are nobler in truth than inter-dynastic wars which are all we have in comparison. Holding a country together, freeing slaves. These are things that transcend that. And so here is the memorial to a man who deserves universal acclaim," she concluded, in no small part for the benefit of the rest of the Talorans. "Take in what you see carefully, and remember that in every generation there are some of incredible capability who may come forward if needed, regardless of species. He was one of them."
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal", Fayza breathed to herself. Her own family history occurred to her even now; her mother from a land and a culture where there was not equality, a people who would never have allowed Fayza to choose whom to marry, to become a starship engineer, or do any of the marvelous things she'd done in her life.
"I remember hearing one of my peers in Internal Affairs tell me about the time he brought the leader of the Zohan and some of their kids here as part of a cultural tour," Long said aloud. "The place just floored them. It left them utterly speechless."
"It is worthy of high respect regardless of who you are, but if your race was once made of slaves, I imagine it takes on an especial concern," Drishalras commented. "And he deserved a better fate than what befell him, it must truly be said. To be struck down when he had finally succeeded..."
"But isn't that what happened to Valera, in some sense?" Jhayka answered.
"Voluntarily," Ilavna interjected. "Which is what makes Her holy. But this man was great regardless, yes. Blameless, and a martyr of righteousness."
"I just never understood why so many Americans thought so highly of some of the Confederates, especially the generals like Lee," Dani said. "I mean, I remember hearing some enlisted guy when I was in the service go on about how good a man Lee was, how great he was and how the North had nobody to equal him, and that somehow because he fought for his home state that made him some moral exemplar."
"It was more like McClellan was an idiot not to employ his forces aggressively when he had the advantage," Jhayka replied. "Reading about his passive behaviour in command frankly offended me, speaking as a general and a conneisseur of the military art."
"Some fans of history have fun replaying various battles in holochamber arcades," Long said. "I know an arcade just outside of town if you're interested, Your Highness."
"Perhaps, if we have the time..." Jhayka let the thought trail off, not wanting to indulge to much for the sake of her hosts.
Looking at her watch, Long nodded at Wells. "Well, there is one more stop along the way before we get back on the bus..."
The party departed the Lincoln Memorial, making their way down the steps and toward the north side of the Old Mall, following the walkways until they got to their last stop: the Vietnam Wall. It was built in the shape of a wide "V", sunken into the ground with a single walkway following the wall and its shining black exterior. At either end old-fashioned register books allowed someone to see the exact location of the wall, with digital assistant ports for anyone prefering a more modern solution by downloading the registry.
"What is the purpose of this memorial, Madame Long?" Drishalras asked politely, expressing more than a bit confusing that perhaps only Jhayka masked effectively, or knew enough to avoid having. The humans in the group.. Were by far the more understanding.
"The Vietnam Veterans' Memorial was built in the early 1980s and inscribed with the name of Americans killed or missing in the Vietnam conflict of the 1960s and early 70s," Long replied. "At the time the Vietnam War was at the heart of a major social fracture, with many hating and opposing the war and others disagreeing with that opposition. Those who opposed it believe the war should never have been fault, that it was on behalf of a corrupt and undemocratic regime against people who wanted freedom for their homeland, while others believed that the war was necessary to protect Vietnam, and all of Southeast Asia, from the advance of Communism."
"Here in the States it led to the mass anti-war movements and protests, and various incidents like the Kent State shootings. When the war finally ended, and even as it was ending, anti-war protestors and their sympathizers tended to mistreat the veterans as well. Additionally, the veterans had their own problems, such as rampant drug use in the ranks and discontent over their treatment by their country and the fact that they were sent into the war under such circumstances in the first place. This wall was built as an attempt to heal that fracture in society, and to help the veterans cope with what happened."
"To commemorate a defeat in one's own capitol...." Elestria breathed out, looking almost unsteady. She was the youngest of the Talorans there, though she had been trained in the exceptional rigour of the Imperial Household. "You must forgive me, Madame Long, but this is really quite alien to us..."
"Elestria, illustrious princess, it is about the dead," Jhayka intervened, afraid that their guides would be offended. "Soldiers remember their comrades dearly, and perhaps this is more sensible than the sense of shame we'd hold. A Taloran army returning home and facing such treatment would probably turn against the populace, after all, in an exquisitely violent fashion."
"It's been centuries for some universes, and Vietnam still causes a lot of debate," Long added. "America was going through social upheaval at the time. Not all of it was good. In most universes some of the ideas that came out during the 1960s are considered to have been damaging in the long-run. But even with the bad, there was still the good. The social upheaval of that time also brought with it the Civil Rights movement. In a way... the final culmination of Abraham Lincoln's work came them, when the promise of his victory a hundred years before was finally fulfilled after years of broken promises and mistakes."
"And yet, Miss Long, we do have a bit of a way to go in some things," Dani added quietly.
Jhayka glanced to her wife and then back to Long for a moment. "I confess that even though I'm the nominal expert here, the intricacies of exchange between the two of you here escapes me. I will say, though, that it's likely as not something not of particular relevance to our mission of peace.. Which I hope we don't seem to defame by observing these differences, either. For our society it is very difficult to accept any social change as positive, and the idea of social upheaval brings back the most unpleasant of memories, when millions died and the Second Empress took the field."
"I understand, Your Highness," Long replied on Well's behalf, since she was the de facto hostess here. "Part of the reason I asked to come along for this is because I've been one of the advocates of these coming talks, and I want this to succeed as well. And maybe if we understood each other better, it'd prevent problems during the talks."
"I'm given to understand that the precedent you've used to marry Duchess Verdes came from the Second or First Empress, Highness?" Wells asked afterward.
"The First Empress," Jhayka answered. "And it was legally considered permissable before her.. It just hasn't been done much. Mikela the First was a most peculiar individual. More or less, had she succeeded in what she planned, the Taloran Star Empire would more or less resemble the Holy Roman Empire today, rather than its far more feudal and balanced power structure that it possesses as things stand. A state of affairs nobody, including the Imperial family today, particularly finds ideal. She was a larger than life personality in every sense of the words, and ended up marrying six different women in all. Beside her homosexual inclinations and penchant for brides, she spent most of her life in a desperate search for an heir. In the end she bankrolled the largest expansion of gene-engineering technology we ever saw, an effort of almost two Taloran centuries which started with virtually no knowledge of the existence of genes--they were still widely doubted in the scientific community--and culminated in the ability to safely and reliably create parthenogenic children from the genetic material of two females.
"The one child produced with her and her youngest wife became the Empress Mikela the Second, who equalled her mother both in centralizing tendencies and, well, a sense of aggrandizement. She challenged the church over broader uses of genetic therapy, and won to a certain extent, while at the same time being one of the last Empresses to directly see combat during the communitarian revolt I referenced. Their reigns were both extremely long--from the 8th to the 16th centuries of the human count--and oversaw essentially the whole period of Taloran colonization of our solar system after the development of orbital rocketry and up to the cusp of interstellar flight. There is a tendency among us, I admit, to minimize their achievements, but their's is one of the more colourful and eventful periods of Taloran history, and I recommend studying it with some care."
"I'll make sure to have our people prepare a brief on that for our diplomats on Talora," Wells said.
He looked to Long, and a glance at her watch was followed by her remarking, "The bus should be just down the road ready for us, we should probably get going so we can move on to the New Mall."
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
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Alan Bolte
- Sith Devotee
- Posts: 2611
- Joined: 2002-07-05 12:17am
- Location: Columbus, OH
I'm looking forward to that.Steve wrote:move on to the New Mall."
Any job worth doing with a laser is worth doing with many, many lasers. -Khrima
There's just no arguing with some people once they've made their minds up about something, and I accept that. That's why I kill them. -Othar
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There's just no arguing with some people once they've made their minds up about something, and I accept that. That's why I kill them. -Othar
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Sea Skimmer
- Yankee Capitalist Air Pirate
- Posts: 37389
- Joined: 2002-07-03 11:49pm
- Location: Passchendaele City, HAB
Say I was just rereading one section besides the new stuff, and if sharks are the majority of fish on Talora Prime, then what on earth do they all eat?
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
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The Duchess of Zeon
- Gözde
- Posts: 14566
- Joined: 2002-09-18 01:06am
- Location: Exiled in the Pale of Settlement.
Other sharks. Nautiloids, which are even more common than sharks. Seagoing reptiles. Squid and Octopi. Kelp and floating matter and algae and so on? Sharks are just a kind of primitive fish with only cartilege for bone, their specialization on Earth as predators is by no means absolute or necessary somewhere else.Sea Skimmer wrote:Say I was just rereading one section besides the new stuff, and if sharks are the majority of fish on Talora Prime, then what on earth do they all eat?
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
In 1966 the Soviets find something on the dark side of the Moon. In 2104 they come back. -- Red Banner / White Star, a nBSG continuation story. Updated to Chapter 4.0 -- 14 January 2013.
NAS Oceana
Colleen Winters had been a very, very busy lady the day before, supervising the landing of the entire compliment of shuttles, assault landers, barges, cutters, pinnaces, cargo loaders, tugs, refueling craft, and the EW, bomber, interceptor, and fighter wings. She'd taken the opportunity to at least get in some flight time, hopping onto one of the bombers and displacing the usual pilot to the jumpseat as she brought the mammoth 100-tonne torpedo craft down at NAS Oceana, fortunately able to make a very short distance landing unaided despite being the size of a B-36. The rest of the day had been arranging spare bunkage at the Naval Air Station, which was currently a ground base for a defensive aerospace fighter wing which rotated with another carrier-assigned wing to keep their quals up and supplemented the local national air force in defending Washington, D.C.
Since so many defence functions had moved into orbit, the area around Hampton Roads was scarcely as busy as it had been back in the days when wet navies were predominant, but being this close to the capitol the old bases were now used for innumerable support functions for the ADN's military, and it was still very much a military town. The bright plumage of the Taloran officers, as it were, attracted a lot of attention, but one particular individual attracted more, still, and the base commander had invited her to the mess as a matter of curiousity: And interest. And so Colleen Winters had, with a relieved sigh, just ducked inside for lunch after spending the whole morning from the crack of dawn setting up the arrangements for the maintenance of the Slashahkimmar's wing.
Colleen's entrance was immediately med by the base commander. Commander Yolanda Calley was a well-built, athletic woman, with dusky skin from African and Caucasian parentage. She was an accomplished fighter pilot in her own right, a veteran of the Cardassian War and the later Interuniversal War, where she spent her fair, large share of flight hours in combat conditions against the Dominion. "Wing Colonel Winters, hello."
"Greetings, Commander Calley," Colleen answered, offering a smile, with the high-peaked Taloran helmet tucked under her left arm to let her dyed hair hang down long and free as it was allowed to in the Taloran fashion, even the normal service uniform a bright paegentry of crimson and blue in rigid and crisp lines with plenty of gold braid and silvered epaulettes. "Thank you for inviting me over. I could really use the break at this point..." Her english had a neutral, vaguely British or Commonwealth accent, and scarcely seemed abnormal.
Calley brought Colleen up to a table and showed her the list of side dishes and main courses made available. There was steak and pork with a wide array of vegetables, mashed potatoes, pasta and sauce, fresh from the mess kitchen. "Hey, is Newton on duty?" Calley asked the enlisted man who came up to take their order.
"Yes Sir," was the immediate reply.
"Take a steak, then." Calley smiled slightly. "Newton's straight from Texas, and he uses his dad's spice mix on the beef. It's delicious."
"Hah, Steak, that's only been forever. I think the last time I had it when it wasn't vat-grown was, as a matter of fact, the night before I left for training," Colleen remarked wistfully, though also happily. She promptly ordered the steak, and some pasta with alfredo as the side. "No cheese in Taloran cooking, really, just this yogurt stuff," she explained to Calley, and indeed, a salad with bleu cheese dressing finished things off. And beer. The ships were dry, but the ground-based O-clubs weren't, and for that Colleen was very grateful, being used to the wet Taloran services.
Calley finished her order and the young man left. "Do you ever get ground-side postings?", she asked Winters.
"Fairly often. The Starfighter corps being separate from the Navy, they try to keep as many bases as they can. Of course, orbital platforms, asteroid bases, are just as common. Maybe a third of my service time on each," Colleen answered, relaxing under the circumstances, and wondering if it would be just the two of them or if other officers would join in. Either way, a very hearty lunch was definitely in order. Colleen was very short, but it was deceptive of her appetite.
At that Calley smirked. "I suppose your Starfighter Corps and the Taloran Navy clash as often as the Stellar Navy does with the Aerospace Force."
"Yeah, pretty much," Colleen acknowledged after a moment. "I understand that you have a unified defence department at the highest levels of government. Some Earth nations back home still do... No Taloran nation does, period. So the rivalry can get even more intense, as the minister in charge of each service is just reporting to the All-Highest Empress."
Before Calley could speak further she saw the door open. The man who entered, Lieutenant Commander Douglas Giles, was a leaner man with short cut hair and a dark mustache on his face. She motioned to him and he came over, being met part-way by one of the attending enlistees to find out of he wanted anything to eat or drink. He gave an order and came up to them. "Commander Calley, Commander Winters..."
"Colonel Winters, actually," Calley corrected for him before Winters could.
"Ah. Sorry. I assumed naval ranks," Giles replied, sitting down.
"We had mentioned our rivalry with the Aerospace Force already. Colonel Winters was about to tell us about the even worse factionalism in the Taloran miitary."
"Ah, well, by all means...."
"It's acrimonious because, fundamentally, everyone wants to duplicate each other. The Starfighter corps understandably is seeking to develop a long range strike capability: You've pointed the way for us in that with your bomber operations. But the fleet tends to want to corral extended operation ships--I'll note that the Starfighter Corps for us includes large gunboats of thousands of tons displacement. And then there's Fortress Command, which even people in the Empire don't realize exist, and are our largest 'client'," she said with a laugh. "By which I mean we have more wings stationed with Fortress Command facilities than anywhere else. I never did quite get why the Talorans tend to have a dedicated fortress organization, but it's actually the most numerically largest service. They sometimes deploy large, slow, sublight monitors, in a role to support fixed orbital positions and planetary batteries, and that irritates the Starfleet, which operates battleships in that role.
"Fortress Command? That something like the Planetary Defense Force the Texans in FHI-8 field on top of their Army and Navy and stuff, I guess?" Giles looked up as another worker in the O-club brought them their drinks and food. He took the offered bottle of Schlieger's and downed a swig of it.
"Mmmmn, this is a good steak. Very well seasoned. My compliments to the chef, and, ah, I suppose so. It covers defence of all Imperial institutions and facilities and operation of orbital and system fortifications in important areas, and provides resource coordination with local state fortress command groups. I hear the Zohan are circulating one of their really large designs and Fortress Command is interested in it--which may spark another round of acrimonious infighting. It's amusing, at my level, where I can avoid getting caught in it. Especially when the Empress is Starfleet." She drank some of her beer, too, at that point, and was really comfortably relaxed, feeling as home as she did in a Taloran mess by that point.
Calley and Giles took to their food as well, and nothing was said for the moment as they all enjoyed lunch. They looked up and saw the door open again, and the lanky officer who came in. "Oh boy," Giles muttered upon seeing the brown-haired Lieutenant Commander. "It's Jimmy Cobb."
Colleen caught the meaning, but shrugged it off. Probably just a stickler, she mused. Like the Alliance personnel her age was indistinct; beyond the uniform, what really set her apart was the long and vividly coloured blue hair and the contacts which made her eyes red. The brief silence was just a chance for her to catch up on the linguini alfredo, really...
Cobb made his way toward their table, but didn't sit with them. He motioned for someone to bring him a beer and looked off into space. The trio ate quietly until that quiet was ended by Cobb. Looking up in the air, he said aloud, "Thought you were just a new assignment who went into that freaky gene-modding, then I saw that circus suit excuse for a military uniform, figured you were one of the collaborator types with our guests."
Oh great. Just what I need to ruin a good dinner. Then again, I never passed this up all quiet-like back in the day... "The term collaborator does not do justice to the level of my commitment to the Empire," Colleen answered with sort of a snarky sarcasm. "As a matter of fact, I'm part of it, not just collaborating with it. Wing Colonel Winters at your service... An officer and gentlewoman of Her Serene Majesty's Starfighter Corps."
"So I guess 'traitor' fits better?"
"Commander Cobb," Calley said in a warning tone. She could, and would, use her authority if things got out of hand, though it probably wouldn't go over too well - the O-club was supposed to be a less formal, more relaxed, and very rank-less place, after all.
"I'm sorry, Commander Calley, if my opinions might endanger the promotion you're hoping for if it offends the higher-ups," Cobb replied sarcastically. "But the fact is, she's working with the people who conquered her homeland and stripped it of independence."
"As a matter of fact, by those standards, my whole nation of Orientale is a collection of traitors," Colleen replied gamely between bites of steak, not being civilized or polite here in her eating habits, and reflecting her background a bit more. "You see, the UTHP was about to commit genocide against our entire country, so we sort of asked the Talorans for help. It's a fairly decent deal. We even get represetation in their houses of parliament, and I never saw a Taloran once growing up. We run our own bloody affairs. Now, I'm a citizen of Orientale, not the old UTHP constituent nations, and since we've always been happy with the deal we got, that's what matters to me. Of course, I imagine you'd prefer every one of our colonies got blasted out of space..." She smiled sweetly. "But we, obviously, did not."
"Heh, maybe the Agresskan should've taken a page from that book. Turned Humans against each other first, then they'd have conquered Earth for sure," Cobb remarked, but irritated that his preconceptions hadn't come true, he stalked off.
"Actually, if I may Colonel...." The enlisted man who was serving them, a young E-2 who was rated as a Mess Apprentice, returned, having gotten a drink for another, more distant table. "How is it being ruled by the Talorans anyway?"
"I don't really see it as being ruled by them as such. I mean, I've had a string of Taloran boyfriends, even," she admitted very casually and with a slight and fond old smile. "If a Bajoran was elected Alliance President, would you say that Bajorans were ruling the Alliance? They've really just been around longer, and just happened to knock some sense into our heads. If they really saw humans as only fit to be their subjects, why would they have let our nobility join them? Why would the Princess Jhayka be sleeping with Danielle Verdes, for that matter? Talorans have religious prejudices which can be downright brutal, but not racial ones."
"And what about those religious prejudices, if I might?" asked Giles. "And on that comparison, I'm not sure the analogy of a Bajoran becoming President works too much, given so many of the Bajorans living in Alliance nations are pretty much assimilated into whatever society they're living in. I figure it's more like the one of colonies in the Federation, they have a little bit of self-rule, their own militaries, but they have to pay out the ass to the Federation yearly so the welfare bums can have their public replicators and free goodies."
"Well, we have a lot of self-rule, and our representation is disproportionate. Other than being part of the Imperial Tariff system I can't think of something we really put money into, and it's all evened out at the Imperial level. Their government just.. Isn't that big. Even the Empress just relies on her land holdings for income," Colleen answered. "I'm not, nor have I ever, been precisely interested in political systems, but things back home seem pretty decent." She stretched out a bit and cut off another section of steak.
"The Convocate has absolute power of purse, and they are quite dedicated toward maintaining equal levels of taxation. Our Lord Protector there has been positively ferocious about supporting our rights to our own merchant qualifications, for instance. And I mean Orientale's. Each human government has a different representative. We're a Republic, so it's a Lord Protector. The monarchies simply have their head of state sit on the Convocate. As for the religious issues, well, the Empire will bend over backwards to call a religion monotheistic--for instance, Hinduism, which is a real joke--but if they can't, they do engage in institutionalized discrimination. Atheists don't have a problem, but I won't deny that animists, polytheists, spirit-worships and so on, are treated as evil by definition."
"Sounds like Wiccans would have a hard time there then," Giles remarked. "Dated one, once. People try to make them out to be freaks or devil-worshipping witches and such, but they're usually very good, moral people who just want to do good things."
"Yeah, probably," Colleen agreed. "But Farzianism does like to divide things up by categories. There's even lists of plants which are evil and should be destroyed. Same for animals. They're all long gone now, of course, and the management of similiar species is less zealous. But to them belief in one God is the common unifying theme required of all Imperial subjects. They let atheism slide because they're a deeds-based religion, not specifically a belief-based one. Me, I don't worry about these matters to much, and I've never really been bothered by them. Most Farzian clerics at least have real jobs, which is more than I can say about the pastors back home."
"Oh, what do they do?", Calley asked.
"Mostly they're doctors, witnesses for the courts, professions like that. A lot of them even go around and aide in agricultural matters in the Empire, or work in education. From time to time I've hosted a few in our officer messes, traveling from one place to another free on Imperial warships, or stopping by for a night at a base in a remote area without any hostels or temples that have an area for them to bed down in. They can often be quite interesting company."
"No conversion preaching I take it?" Giles asked.
"It really depends on the individual, but they tend to rely on works. And they're not so uptight about sex, either; well, sex out of wedlock, but they let the priests and priestesses marry and it just isn't so much of a big deal in marriage. Even where pastors can get married it seems like there's always though hangups. I get the idea that they're often quiet, but always extremely dedicated, types."
"One thing I've never understood, though..." Calley looked to Colleen, sipping at her own drink. "The whole thing with most of your Earth being restored to a bunch of old monarchs, including countries that hadn't had one in centuries. I mean, that's what's always been touted by some of the pro-Earth independence groups that have printed articles here in the Alliance. That the Talorans imposed all of these unpopular monarchs back on Earth to control it. I mean, let's face it, most people these days think monarchies are good for nothing more than some ceremony and history."
"The Talorans take personal responsibility in their monarchs to a new level. The humans restored have to either behave the same way, or someone else in the family, I suppose, would have the power to see them dismissed and replaced. Never outside of the dynasty; family matters are kept that way, here. Mostly, though, they're aware of how humans feel, and actually have very liberal constitutions in place, which the Talorans are not bothered with: To them that's a personal choice of the ruling dynasty in question." Colleen shrugged broadly. "It's a big issue for a lot of people, but at least in my generation it wasn't really something that was brought up. Earth had had enough chaos."
"But why monarchies?", Giles asked. "Why not just dissolve the UHTP or whoever they were and leave it at that? They even ripped up the United States and were going to give all of the states back to their original owners until some rebellion apparently made them scale the plan down. That... that's just crazy if you ask me."
"To the Talorans, it had just happened yesterday," Colleen answered simply. "They are a very long lived species, and it's probably their biggest blind-spot. They don't realize how fast things develop among humans. That's pretty much the only reason, and the only reason needed, too."
"I don't know," Giles said with a sigh. "I mean.... the entire monarchy business just strikes me as about people born into wealth who wear silly clothes and get to talk funny. Progress moved us away from that kind of thing."
"Well, do you want to talk to one and ask her what she thinks it's about? One of only four Taloran female pilots in the whole wing--they don't handle G's as well as the guys--is the daughter of some Countess. I'll tell her to come over some night if you want me to. Better her perspective than mine, because, well, I just kill things and break stuff, really, and that is the blessed extent of my participation in things political."
At that he shrugged. "I guess, invite 'em here to the O-club. Just... they're not allowed to shoot Jimmy Cobb. The paperwork would be a bitch."
"Oh, as the challenged party, he'd have the choice of weapons," Colleen answered, grinning.
Colleen Winters had been a very, very busy lady the day before, supervising the landing of the entire compliment of shuttles, assault landers, barges, cutters, pinnaces, cargo loaders, tugs, refueling craft, and the EW, bomber, interceptor, and fighter wings. She'd taken the opportunity to at least get in some flight time, hopping onto one of the bombers and displacing the usual pilot to the jumpseat as she brought the mammoth 100-tonne torpedo craft down at NAS Oceana, fortunately able to make a very short distance landing unaided despite being the size of a B-36. The rest of the day had been arranging spare bunkage at the Naval Air Station, which was currently a ground base for a defensive aerospace fighter wing which rotated with another carrier-assigned wing to keep their quals up and supplemented the local national air force in defending Washington, D.C.
Since so many defence functions had moved into orbit, the area around Hampton Roads was scarcely as busy as it had been back in the days when wet navies were predominant, but being this close to the capitol the old bases were now used for innumerable support functions for the ADN's military, and it was still very much a military town. The bright plumage of the Taloran officers, as it were, attracted a lot of attention, but one particular individual attracted more, still, and the base commander had invited her to the mess as a matter of curiousity: And interest. And so Colleen Winters had, with a relieved sigh, just ducked inside for lunch after spending the whole morning from the crack of dawn setting up the arrangements for the maintenance of the Slashahkimmar's wing.
Colleen's entrance was immediately med by the base commander. Commander Yolanda Calley was a well-built, athletic woman, with dusky skin from African and Caucasian parentage. She was an accomplished fighter pilot in her own right, a veteran of the Cardassian War and the later Interuniversal War, where she spent her fair, large share of flight hours in combat conditions against the Dominion. "Wing Colonel Winters, hello."
"Greetings, Commander Calley," Colleen answered, offering a smile, with the high-peaked Taloran helmet tucked under her left arm to let her dyed hair hang down long and free as it was allowed to in the Taloran fashion, even the normal service uniform a bright paegentry of crimson and blue in rigid and crisp lines with plenty of gold braid and silvered epaulettes. "Thank you for inviting me over. I could really use the break at this point..." Her english had a neutral, vaguely British or Commonwealth accent, and scarcely seemed abnormal.
Calley brought Colleen up to a table and showed her the list of side dishes and main courses made available. There was steak and pork with a wide array of vegetables, mashed potatoes, pasta and sauce, fresh from the mess kitchen. "Hey, is Newton on duty?" Calley asked the enlisted man who came up to take their order.
"Yes Sir," was the immediate reply.
"Take a steak, then." Calley smiled slightly. "Newton's straight from Texas, and he uses his dad's spice mix on the beef. It's delicious."
"Hah, Steak, that's only been forever. I think the last time I had it when it wasn't vat-grown was, as a matter of fact, the night before I left for training," Colleen remarked wistfully, though also happily. She promptly ordered the steak, and some pasta with alfredo as the side. "No cheese in Taloran cooking, really, just this yogurt stuff," she explained to Calley, and indeed, a salad with bleu cheese dressing finished things off. And beer. The ships were dry, but the ground-based O-clubs weren't, and for that Colleen was very grateful, being used to the wet Taloran services.
Calley finished her order and the young man left. "Do you ever get ground-side postings?", she asked Winters.
"Fairly often. The Starfighter corps being separate from the Navy, they try to keep as many bases as they can. Of course, orbital platforms, asteroid bases, are just as common. Maybe a third of my service time on each," Colleen answered, relaxing under the circumstances, and wondering if it would be just the two of them or if other officers would join in. Either way, a very hearty lunch was definitely in order. Colleen was very short, but it was deceptive of her appetite.
At that Calley smirked. "I suppose your Starfighter Corps and the Taloran Navy clash as often as the Stellar Navy does with the Aerospace Force."
"Yeah, pretty much," Colleen acknowledged after a moment. "I understand that you have a unified defence department at the highest levels of government. Some Earth nations back home still do... No Taloran nation does, period. So the rivalry can get even more intense, as the minister in charge of each service is just reporting to the All-Highest Empress."
Before Calley could speak further she saw the door open. The man who entered, Lieutenant Commander Douglas Giles, was a leaner man with short cut hair and a dark mustache on his face. She motioned to him and he came over, being met part-way by one of the attending enlistees to find out of he wanted anything to eat or drink. He gave an order and came up to them. "Commander Calley, Commander Winters..."
"Colonel Winters, actually," Calley corrected for him before Winters could.
"Ah. Sorry. I assumed naval ranks," Giles replied, sitting down.
"We had mentioned our rivalry with the Aerospace Force already. Colonel Winters was about to tell us about the even worse factionalism in the Taloran miitary."
"Ah, well, by all means...."
"It's acrimonious because, fundamentally, everyone wants to duplicate each other. The Starfighter corps understandably is seeking to develop a long range strike capability: You've pointed the way for us in that with your bomber operations. But the fleet tends to want to corral extended operation ships--I'll note that the Starfighter Corps for us includes large gunboats of thousands of tons displacement. And then there's Fortress Command, which even people in the Empire don't realize exist, and are our largest 'client'," she said with a laugh. "By which I mean we have more wings stationed with Fortress Command facilities than anywhere else. I never did quite get why the Talorans tend to have a dedicated fortress organization, but it's actually the most numerically largest service. They sometimes deploy large, slow, sublight monitors, in a role to support fixed orbital positions and planetary batteries, and that irritates the Starfleet, which operates battleships in that role.
"Fortress Command? That something like the Planetary Defense Force the Texans in FHI-8 field on top of their Army and Navy and stuff, I guess?" Giles looked up as another worker in the O-club brought them their drinks and food. He took the offered bottle of Schlieger's and downed a swig of it.
"Mmmmn, this is a good steak. Very well seasoned. My compliments to the chef, and, ah, I suppose so. It covers defence of all Imperial institutions and facilities and operation of orbital and system fortifications in important areas, and provides resource coordination with local state fortress command groups. I hear the Zohan are circulating one of their really large designs and Fortress Command is interested in it--which may spark another round of acrimonious infighting. It's amusing, at my level, where I can avoid getting caught in it. Especially when the Empress is Starfleet." She drank some of her beer, too, at that point, and was really comfortably relaxed, feeling as home as she did in a Taloran mess by that point.
Calley and Giles took to their food as well, and nothing was said for the moment as they all enjoyed lunch. They looked up and saw the door open again, and the lanky officer who came in. "Oh boy," Giles muttered upon seeing the brown-haired Lieutenant Commander. "It's Jimmy Cobb."
Colleen caught the meaning, but shrugged it off. Probably just a stickler, she mused. Like the Alliance personnel her age was indistinct; beyond the uniform, what really set her apart was the long and vividly coloured blue hair and the contacts which made her eyes red. The brief silence was just a chance for her to catch up on the linguini alfredo, really...
Cobb made his way toward their table, but didn't sit with them. He motioned for someone to bring him a beer and looked off into space. The trio ate quietly until that quiet was ended by Cobb. Looking up in the air, he said aloud, "Thought you were just a new assignment who went into that freaky gene-modding, then I saw that circus suit excuse for a military uniform, figured you were one of the collaborator types with our guests."
Oh great. Just what I need to ruin a good dinner. Then again, I never passed this up all quiet-like back in the day... "The term collaborator does not do justice to the level of my commitment to the Empire," Colleen answered with sort of a snarky sarcasm. "As a matter of fact, I'm part of it, not just collaborating with it. Wing Colonel Winters at your service... An officer and gentlewoman of Her Serene Majesty's Starfighter Corps."
"So I guess 'traitor' fits better?"
"Commander Cobb," Calley said in a warning tone. She could, and would, use her authority if things got out of hand, though it probably wouldn't go over too well - the O-club was supposed to be a less formal, more relaxed, and very rank-less place, after all.
"I'm sorry, Commander Calley, if my opinions might endanger the promotion you're hoping for if it offends the higher-ups," Cobb replied sarcastically. "But the fact is, she's working with the people who conquered her homeland and stripped it of independence."
"As a matter of fact, by those standards, my whole nation of Orientale is a collection of traitors," Colleen replied gamely between bites of steak, not being civilized or polite here in her eating habits, and reflecting her background a bit more. "You see, the UTHP was about to commit genocide against our entire country, so we sort of asked the Talorans for help. It's a fairly decent deal. We even get represetation in their houses of parliament, and I never saw a Taloran once growing up. We run our own bloody affairs. Now, I'm a citizen of Orientale, not the old UTHP constituent nations, and since we've always been happy with the deal we got, that's what matters to me. Of course, I imagine you'd prefer every one of our colonies got blasted out of space..." She smiled sweetly. "But we, obviously, did not."
"Heh, maybe the Agresskan should've taken a page from that book. Turned Humans against each other first, then they'd have conquered Earth for sure," Cobb remarked, but irritated that his preconceptions hadn't come true, he stalked off.
"Actually, if I may Colonel...." The enlisted man who was serving them, a young E-2 who was rated as a Mess Apprentice, returned, having gotten a drink for another, more distant table. "How is it being ruled by the Talorans anyway?"
"I don't really see it as being ruled by them as such. I mean, I've had a string of Taloran boyfriends, even," she admitted very casually and with a slight and fond old smile. "If a Bajoran was elected Alliance President, would you say that Bajorans were ruling the Alliance? They've really just been around longer, and just happened to knock some sense into our heads. If they really saw humans as only fit to be their subjects, why would they have let our nobility join them? Why would the Princess Jhayka be sleeping with Danielle Verdes, for that matter? Talorans have religious prejudices which can be downright brutal, but not racial ones."
"And what about those religious prejudices, if I might?" asked Giles. "And on that comparison, I'm not sure the analogy of a Bajoran becoming President works too much, given so many of the Bajorans living in Alliance nations are pretty much assimilated into whatever society they're living in. I figure it's more like the one of colonies in the Federation, they have a little bit of self-rule, their own militaries, but they have to pay out the ass to the Federation yearly so the welfare bums can have their public replicators and free goodies."
"Well, we have a lot of self-rule, and our representation is disproportionate. Other than being part of the Imperial Tariff system I can't think of something we really put money into, and it's all evened out at the Imperial level. Their government just.. Isn't that big. Even the Empress just relies on her land holdings for income," Colleen answered. "I'm not, nor have I ever, been precisely interested in political systems, but things back home seem pretty decent." She stretched out a bit and cut off another section of steak.
"The Convocate has absolute power of purse, and they are quite dedicated toward maintaining equal levels of taxation. Our Lord Protector there has been positively ferocious about supporting our rights to our own merchant qualifications, for instance. And I mean Orientale's. Each human government has a different representative. We're a Republic, so it's a Lord Protector. The monarchies simply have their head of state sit on the Convocate. As for the religious issues, well, the Empire will bend over backwards to call a religion monotheistic--for instance, Hinduism, which is a real joke--but if they can't, they do engage in institutionalized discrimination. Atheists don't have a problem, but I won't deny that animists, polytheists, spirit-worships and so on, are treated as evil by definition."
"Sounds like Wiccans would have a hard time there then," Giles remarked. "Dated one, once. People try to make them out to be freaks or devil-worshipping witches and such, but they're usually very good, moral people who just want to do good things."
"Yeah, probably," Colleen agreed. "But Farzianism does like to divide things up by categories. There's even lists of plants which are evil and should be destroyed. Same for animals. They're all long gone now, of course, and the management of similiar species is less zealous. But to them belief in one God is the common unifying theme required of all Imperial subjects. They let atheism slide because they're a deeds-based religion, not specifically a belief-based one. Me, I don't worry about these matters to much, and I've never really been bothered by them. Most Farzian clerics at least have real jobs, which is more than I can say about the pastors back home."
"Oh, what do they do?", Calley asked.
"Mostly they're doctors, witnesses for the courts, professions like that. A lot of them even go around and aide in agricultural matters in the Empire, or work in education. From time to time I've hosted a few in our officer messes, traveling from one place to another free on Imperial warships, or stopping by for a night at a base in a remote area without any hostels or temples that have an area for them to bed down in. They can often be quite interesting company."
"No conversion preaching I take it?" Giles asked.
"It really depends on the individual, but they tend to rely on works. And they're not so uptight about sex, either; well, sex out of wedlock, but they let the priests and priestesses marry and it just isn't so much of a big deal in marriage. Even where pastors can get married it seems like there's always though hangups. I get the idea that they're often quiet, but always extremely dedicated, types."
"One thing I've never understood, though..." Calley looked to Colleen, sipping at her own drink. "The whole thing with most of your Earth being restored to a bunch of old monarchs, including countries that hadn't had one in centuries. I mean, that's what's always been touted by some of the pro-Earth independence groups that have printed articles here in the Alliance. That the Talorans imposed all of these unpopular monarchs back on Earth to control it. I mean, let's face it, most people these days think monarchies are good for nothing more than some ceremony and history."
"The Talorans take personal responsibility in their monarchs to a new level. The humans restored have to either behave the same way, or someone else in the family, I suppose, would have the power to see them dismissed and replaced. Never outside of the dynasty; family matters are kept that way, here. Mostly, though, they're aware of how humans feel, and actually have very liberal constitutions in place, which the Talorans are not bothered with: To them that's a personal choice of the ruling dynasty in question." Colleen shrugged broadly. "It's a big issue for a lot of people, but at least in my generation it wasn't really something that was brought up. Earth had had enough chaos."
"But why monarchies?", Giles asked. "Why not just dissolve the UHTP or whoever they were and leave it at that? They even ripped up the United States and were going to give all of the states back to their original owners until some rebellion apparently made them scale the plan down. That... that's just crazy if you ask me."
"To the Talorans, it had just happened yesterday," Colleen answered simply. "They are a very long lived species, and it's probably their biggest blind-spot. They don't realize how fast things develop among humans. That's pretty much the only reason, and the only reason needed, too."
"I don't know," Giles said with a sigh. "I mean.... the entire monarchy business just strikes me as about people born into wealth who wear silly clothes and get to talk funny. Progress moved us away from that kind of thing."
"Well, do you want to talk to one and ask her what she thinks it's about? One of only four Taloran female pilots in the whole wing--they don't handle G's as well as the guys--is the daughter of some Countess. I'll tell her to come over some night if you want me to. Better her perspective than mine, because, well, I just kill things and break stuff, really, and that is the blessed extent of my participation in things political."
At that he shrugged. "I guess, invite 'em here to the O-club. Just... they're not allowed to shoot Jimmy Cobb. The paperwork would be a bitch."
"Oh, as the challenged party, he'd have the choice of weapons," Colleen answered, grinning.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
Co-written between myself and Marina.
Washington, D.C.
The early lnch had come and gone, and their tour was now shifted to the New Mall, stretching from the Capitol to the Anacostia River. The only completed monuments that were present were the Wall of Honor depicting the names of Grand Cross winners and the nearly-complete Cardassian War Memorial commemorating the six week war between the Alliance and Cardassia in 2153-2154.
But even if there was little history present now, the New Mall made up for it with beauty. A reflecting pool longer than the one in the Old Mall glistened brightly in the sun, ducks settling on the crystal surface here and there. At one end of the pool, closest to the Capitol, was Constitution Garden. It was filled with flowers from every member nation of the Alliance, arranged by such and with the member nation's flag and name placed on a plaque in front of each flower bed. In the center of the Garden was a simple plinth decorated with an engraving of the Alliance four-colored flame and torch seal and a list of the men and women who first signed the Alliance Constitution, coupled with a list of each member nation to have ratified the Constitution and joined the Alliance since the United Nation-States of Earth - Universe PA-6 - had ratified it on 19 November 2143 AST.
The air was still warm and fresh when the entourage entered the Garden, the first step on their tour of the New Mall. Fayza was especially taken with the brilliant hues and colors of the flower beds, including the most exotic types from worlds like Canopus from MWB-32.
"It's strange," Jhayka confessed as she gazed through the garden, having been before that moment simply leaning on her cane, the perfect example of politeness and relaxed contemplation. "To think that I was alive when your government was formed. That Drishalras was alive when your government was formed. That the Princess Imperial Sikala was already dead when your government was formed. It must still be a very delicate time for your nation, regardless of its power. Even for humans, and you are cursed," at this Jhayka gave an almost sad glance toward Danielle, a furtive one, before looking back, "with such short lives. That the majority of your population, nonetheless, remembers a time when your government did not exist. That, I think, causes the greatest uncertainty in Taloran eyes. We remember vast States of considerable power and resources, which came and went in the blink of an eye. Your Alliance has not even exceeded the duration of Moloyr's Empire, and he built it and lost it while still young. Well, anyway, I can see that a nation built on a solid foundation will long endure, regardless of its present age, but it makes the old nobles who sit in the Convocate and who have daughters and granddaughters and great-granddaughters to the third emanation wary, very wary. That has been the hardest thing in approaching your people evenly for us; the voices that ask 'why compromise anything of our traditions when they will be gone tomorrow.'"
Dani did not give an immediate response to that, but she reacted by looking at Jhayka for several seconds. It needn't be said, of course, that Jhayka would still have half her life, if not more, to live when Dani would be impossibly old and on her way to the grave.
Long picked up on this and wisely chose not to speak on it. "We understand that for a people like your's, who live for so long even without modern medicine, things seem different and look different. The Alliance is young still, very young, and there's no telling what the future will hold for it. But hopefully our peoples can become close despite these concerns about the future."
"That's my intention, Madame," Jhayka answered sincerely. "After all, I remember your marines dropping alongside our's at Kalunda. That speaks the most, really. I don't distrust your people, and, I suppose, the reason I am here on behalf of Her Serene Majesty is because of my ability to communicate that." She smiled for human benefit. "At any rate, it must be very hard to keep all of these plants healthy, making it impression to someone trained in agriculture as myself, as impressive as the other monuments here which I believe we are to see next..."
The walk along the newer reflecting pool was mostly accompanied by small trees and lines of bushes, the usual park greenery. Long made a turn north along one of the walkways, and from there it was not long until they were at the Wall of Honor.
The Wall of Honor was actually three walls, encompassing a block of space in the New Mall with the pathways into it from the south lined out by flower bushes. In the center of the block was a plinth and cube, carved from marble. Each facing had the Alliance torch-and-stars insignia engrave upon it within the borders of a shield. Just the same, each facing presented a different word in perfect Latin lettering. The one immediately facing them, pointing South, was "Honor". Moving around clockwise, the west facing had the word "Courage," the north "Sacrifice", and the east "Glory".
Along the inner faces of the wall were the names, of course, though so far only the western wall had them. The men and women who had won the Grand Cross of Honor, nine out of ten of the awards being posthumous. Their names were listed one by one in order of reception, with the most recent still on the west. Eventually the wall would run out of space, it was expected, and when that happened the monument would have to be expanded.
"Tell me about some of them on the wall?" Jhayka asked as they approached, adding, "For let us not let their acts of valour be silent." Priscilla was for the first time crowding in with some respectful interest: No mere mercenary, she had once been a soldier of a power she had once, a long time ago, had some pride in, and respected these things.
"Unfortunately, I don't know anyone on there," Long replied, walking over to a data kiosk, one of many at some intervals present. "But at these you can read the names and find out what they won the medals for."
"Actually..." Dani had moved down a ways from them, and her hand touched the wall slightly. "I think I remember this name." The inscription of Timothy G. Stanton was her focus, and she asked Long to check it.
Long did so, and nodded. "I can see why. He was one of the Marines that were dropped into Kalunda about the fortieth day of the siege. He won the Grand Cross, posthumously, for holding a position on the forty-fifth day and allowing for friendly units to withdraw from an encirclement."
"The retreat from the last defensive line on the northern edge of the city," Jhayka said in an almost dreamy tone, leaning more heavily on her cane. "It was just a battalion, against a hundred thousand, and we had to evacuate two intact corps from the field..." Even with the dull gray implants covering what once were eyes, it seemed she was at the moment indulging every bit in the thousand-yard stare of a combat veteran who'd never quite get over what went on. "I hope his family has been done right by. There are so many debts to pay from that siege, some far greater than others..." She drifted off, there, and for the moment, at least, it would be hard for the Alliance officials by them to doubt that her intentions with the Clans, that topic of recent debate, were, at the least, sincere.
"The law that established the Grand Cross also established a government-run fund to pay for the education of a recepient's children or other immediate family, and veteran charity groups usually help support the family if it needs it," Long explained. "I'm sure that his family is well cared for."
"Very good," Jhayka answered, letting them linger over the memorial for a while, before moving on to the next and unfinished project, at Long's behest, that of the Cardassian War memorial. This attracted no small amount of attention, both in that it was still under construction, and in that it was seen, in some respects, as the prototypical war that the Alliance had fought by Taloran observers and those of CON-5 alike.
The memorial was nearly done, save for some final trimmings and work, and Jhayka and her entourage had been cleared by the park service for a tour.
Positioned south of the reflecting pool, and not quite southeast of the Wall of Honor, the Cardassian War Memorial was an open courtyard not unlike that of the Second World War monument they'd seen earlier. At the four corners of the Memorial were plinths bearing the names of the star systems and planets that the war had been fought on or near, as well as the sites of the great battles of the war like Darane and Zygola.
In the center, four flagpoles carried the flags of the war's participants; the Alliance, the Federated Commonwealth, the Saint Ives Compact, and the Bajoran Republic. Each pole was placed at the points of a square around the center, where a marble pedastal engraved with the seal of the Alliance bore the bronze likenesses of non-descript persons, an Alliance ground soldier, starship sailor, and aerospace pilot, arrayed almost protectively around bronze sculptures of a Bajoran family. Also engraved into the marble pedastal were the words "For Freedom's Fight".
"I can tell where the inspiration was from, but the sculptures are a very inspiring touch. You've caught well what the war came down to..." Jhayka frowned, glanced around, and then muttered something, and then, slightly louder: "Where did Drishalras get off to, anyway?"
It was only then that Dani - and Fay - noticed that Drish was not to be found amongst the entourage. Everyone began to look around, and when it was clear that Drish was not in the Memorial grounds Wells went for a phone at about the same speed that one of the bodyguards did. "Don't worry, Your Highness, we'll find her," Wells said assuredly as he went about asking DC Metro police for a sweep of the area and every other security measure he could think up.
"I'm not to worried...." Jhayka frowned and her ears flicked down to indicate consternation as she looked to Fay and Danielle. "SHOULD I be worried? I mean, I'm not entirely sure how unsafe we are around here. I certainly wouldn't be bothered by her going alone into a crowded bar or whatnot or otherwise being by herself in the principality, incognito, and I can't imagine her being hurt if open. But what sort of risks are there? Surely not anarchists, as with our communards?"
"Most of our groups tend to be non-violent. It's probably nothing, but the last thing the government wants is something bad to happen on your first full day here," Fayza remarked, still looking around a bit.
"Knowing Drish...." Dani smiled a little. "Well, I think I saw a hot dog vendor a bit to the south of here. We should check there."
"I'd rather everyone stay right here until the police and security settle everything," Wells suddenly remarked. "It's probably nothing, but I want to make sure everybody is safe."
"Oh please, you're acting like some paranoid celebrity bodyguard," Dani retorted. "The vendor was along this way, I think...." She began walking south along the path, much to Wells' consternation.
Jhayka gave a sort of careless shrug, and followed, her cane tapping on the path, and not trying to catch up with Danielle, though she was a bit taller and it made up for the faint limp. It was clear that neither of them thought the situation was very much one conductive to any threat to them, Wells' concerns aside or not. Elestria, who was dignified enough to hang back, seemed suitably amused, and Priscilla was cautious enough to follow, before she realized that she wasn't armed, which left her to grind a heel into the pavement and watch them go.
All of it was for naught, though, for the police found Drishalras first. The officer had to reach up to tap her on the shoulder, with the surprised and laughing man at the hotdog stand now looking more concerned, though Drishalras just frowned as her yellow eyes gazed down to the officer. "Yes?"
"Are you alright, Ma'am?" The young policeman asked bluntly enough. "They really don't want you wandering off.."
"Oh, I didn't think about that, and yes, I'm fine..." She trailed off and turned back to the man behind the stand.
"Still want 'em, Miss?" He asked, gesturing to the two hot-dogs covered in relish, onions, catsup, and mustard.
"Oh, of course." She handed the required currency over and took them. "I was just hungry, that's all," that she was sheepishly explaining to the bemused officer. "They didn't give us much for lunch, and I wanted to see what these tasted like... Oh, hi Danielle!"
"See what I mean?" Dani said, looking back at the others, before watching Drish take a bite out of one of the hot dogs. "All that fuss for nothing. No crazy assassin or scheming mafia type waiting in the bushes to kidnap or hurt Drish. Just her appetite and ability to zero in on junk food from ten miles away."
Long was at least non-plussed, but Wells was clearly a little fidgety and embarrassed. "I apologize if there was any misunderstanding, but we take your security very importantly, especially given what happened on your way here."
"Yeah, I forgot to mention the fear that some Prantonese nut will jump out of the bushes with a suicide belt," Dani added.
"Jhayka and I met in a bar on the Valeria waterfront," Drishalras explained between bites of a hot dog. "I really don't understand why we need to be escorted around. I'm the daughter of the fourth most important person in the Empire and I've never had a bodyguard. I used to go out incognito all the time, to avoid the pomp and ceremony, and I lived in this artists' apartment in the Khalia district before marrying Jhayka... I'm just a naval officer, really, and hopefully a decent wife."
"They're afraid that some terrorist from Pranton or some other place will jump out of the bushes and blow us up or something," Dani remarked with amusement.
"Given your vessel was attacked on the way here, we are concerned with further attempts on your lives," Wells remarked softly.
Jhayka looked more than a little embarrassed at the story of Drishalras' bohemian background, but in the end, stepped close to her and hugged her lightly. "Well, human culture is very different, my dear, and political assassination commonplace. I know you like your food--to much of it!--but let these gentlemen do their business; they deserve that much, certainly?"
"My apologies," Drishalras answered softly after a moment, though in truth it looked like that, since she'd still obtained the hot dogs, she didn't really mind, or care.
"Yeah, 'commonplace', like every hundred years," Dani muttered. "It's just that the first few times have made all of the government security people antsy types."
"That hadn't occurred to me," Drishalras answered with wide eyes. "They made a fair attempt, and I didn't really begrudge them that. I know there's plenty of people angry with us for lots of things in CON-5. Matters of politics. Well, my apologies, again."
Washington, D.C.
The early lnch had come and gone, and their tour was now shifted to the New Mall, stretching from the Capitol to the Anacostia River. The only completed monuments that were present were the Wall of Honor depicting the names of Grand Cross winners and the nearly-complete Cardassian War Memorial commemorating the six week war between the Alliance and Cardassia in 2153-2154.
But even if there was little history present now, the New Mall made up for it with beauty. A reflecting pool longer than the one in the Old Mall glistened brightly in the sun, ducks settling on the crystal surface here and there. At one end of the pool, closest to the Capitol, was Constitution Garden. It was filled with flowers from every member nation of the Alliance, arranged by such and with the member nation's flag and name placed on a plaque in front of each flower bed. In the center of the Garden was a simple plinth decorated with an engraving of the Alliance four-colored flame and torch seal and a list of the men and women who first signed the Alliance Constitution, coupled with a list of each member nation to have ratified the Constitution and joined the Alliance since the United Nation-States of Earth - Universe PA-6 - had ratified it on 19 November 2143 AST.
The air was still warm and fresh when the entourage entered the Garden, the first step on their tour of the New Mall. Fayza was especially taken with the brilliant hues and colors of the flower beds, including the most exotic types from worlds like Canopus from MWB-32.
"It's strange," Jhayka confessed as she gazed through the garden, having been before that moment simply leaning on her cane, the perfect example of politeness and relaxed contemplation. "To think that I was alive when your government was formed. That Drishalras was alive when your government was formed. That the Princess Imperial Sikala was already dead when your government was formed. It must still be a very delicate time for your nation, regardless of its power. Even for humans, and you are cursed," at this Jhayka gave an almost sad glance toward Danielle, a furtive one, before looking back, "with such short lives. That the majority of your population, nonetheless, remembers a time when your government did not exist. That, I think, causes the greatest uncertainty in Taloran eyes. We remember vast States of considerable power and resources, which came and went in the blink of an eye. Your Alliance has not even exceeded the duration of Moloyr's Empire, and he built it and lost it while still young. Well, anyway, I can see that a nation built on a solid foundation will long endure, regardless of its present age, but it makes the old nobles who sit in the Convocate and who have daughters and granddaughters and great-granddaughters to the third emanation wary, very wary. That has been the hardest thing in approaching your people evenly for us; the voices that ask 'why compromise anything of our traditions when they will be gone tomorrow.'"
Dani did not give an immediate response to that, but she reacted by looking at Jhayka for several seconds. It needn't be said, of course, that Jhayka would still have half her life, if not more, to live when Dani would be impossibly old and on her way to the grave.
Long picked up on this and wisely chose not to speak on it. "We understand that for a people like your's, who live for so long even without modern medicine, things seem different and look different. The Alliance is young still, very young, and there's no telling what the future will hold for it. But hopefully our peoples can become close despite these concerns about the future."
"That's my intention, Madame," Jhayka answered sincerely. "After all, I remember your marines dropping alongside our's at Kalunda. That speaks the most, really. I don't distrust your people, and, I suppose, the reason I am here on behalf of Her Serene Majesty is because of my ability to communicate that." She smiled for human benefit. "At any rate, it must be very hard to keep all of these plants healthy, making it impression to someone trained in agriculture as myself, as impressive as the other monuments here which I believe we are to see next..."
The walk along the newer reflecting pool was mostly accompanied by small trees and lines of bushes, the usual park greenery. Long made a turn north along one of the walkways, and from there it was not long until they were at the Wall of Honor.
The Wall of Honor was actually three walls, encompassing a block of space in the New Mall with the pathways into it from the south lined out by flower bushes. In the center of the block was a plinth and cube, carved from marble. Each facing had the Alliance torch-and-stars insignia engrave upon it within the borders of a shield. Just the same, each facing presented a different word in perfect Latin lettering. The one immediately facing them, pointing South, was "Honor". Moving around clockwise, the west facing had the word "Courage," the north "Sacrifice", and the east "Glory".
Along the inner faces of the wall were the names, of course, though so far only the western wall had them. The men and women who had won the Grand Cross of Honor, nine out of ten of the awards being posthumous. Their names were listed one by one in order of reception, with the most recent still on the west. Eventually the wall would run out of space, it was expected, and when that happened the monument would have to be expanded.
"Tell me about some of them on the wall?" Jhayka asked as they approached, adding, "For let us not let their acts of valour be silent." Priscilla was for the first time crowding in with some respectful interest: No mere mercenary, she had once been a soldier of a power she had once, a long time ago, had some pride in, and respected these things.
"Unfortunately, I don't know anyone on there," Long replied, walking over to a data kiosk, one of many at some intervals present. "But at these you can read the names and find out what they won the medals for."
"Actually..." Dani had moved down a ways from them, and her hand touched the wall slightly. "I think I remember this name." The inscription of Timothy G. Stanton was her focus, and she asked Long to check it.
Long did so, and nodded. "I can see why. He was one of the Marines that were dropped into Kalunda about the fortieth day of the siege. He won the Grand Cross, posthumously, for holding a position on the forty-fifth day and allowing for friendly units to withdraw from an encirclement."
"The retreat from the last defensive line on the northern edge of the city," Jhayka said in an almost dreamy tone, leaning more heavily on her cane. "It was just a battalion, against a hundred thousand, and we had to evacuate two intact corps from the field..." Even with the dull gray implants covering what once were eyes, it seemed she was at the moment indulging every bit in the thousand-yard stare of a combat veteran who'd never quite get over what went on. "I hope his family has been done right by. There are so many debts to pay from that siege, some far greater than others..." She drifted off, there, and for the moment, at least, it would be hard for the Alliance officials by them to doubt that her intentions with the Clans, that topic of recent debate, were, at the least, sincere.
"The law that established the Grand Cross also established a government-run fund to pay for the education of a recepient's children or other immediate family, and veteran charity groups usually help support the family if it needs it," Long explained. "I'm sure that his family is well cared for."
"Very good," Jhayka answered, letting them linger over the memorial for a while, before moving on to the next and unfinished project, at Long's behest, that of the Cardassian War memorial. This attracted no small amount of attention, both in that it was still under construction, and in that it was seen, in some respects, as the prototypical war that the Alliance had fought by Taloran observers and those of CON-5 alike.
The memorial was nearly done, save for some final trimmings and work, and Jhayka and her entourage had been cleared by the park service for a tour.
Positioned south of the reflecting pool, and not quite southeast of the Wall of Honor, the Cardassian War Memorial was an open courtyard not unlike that of the Second World War monument they'd seen earlier. At the four corners of the Memorial were plinths bearing the names of the star systems and planets that the war had been fought on or near, as well as the sites of the great battles of the war like Darane and Zygola.
In the center, four flagpoles carried the flags of the war's participants; the Alliance, the Federated Commonwealth, the Saint Ives Compact, and the Bajoran Republic. Each pole was placed at the points of a square around the center, where a marble pedastal engraved with the seal of the Alliance bore the bronze likenesses of non-descript persons, an Alliance ground soldier, starship sailor, and aerospace pilot, arrayed almost protectively around bronze sculptures of a Bajoran family. Also engraved into the marble pedastal were the words "For Freedom's Fight".
"I can tell where the inspiration was from, but the sculptures are a very inspiring touch. You've caught well what the war came down to..." Jhayka frowned, glanced around, and then muttered something, and then, slightly louder: "Where did Drishalras get off to, anyway?"
It was only then that Dani - and Fay - noticed that Drish was not to be found amongst the entourage. Everyone began to look around, and when it was clear that Drish was not in the Memorial grounds Wells went for a phone at about the same speed that one of the bodyguards did. "Don't worry, Your Highness, we'll find her," Wells said assuredly as he went about asking DC Metro police for a sweep of the area and every other security measure he could think up.
"I'm not to worried...." Jhayka frowned and her ears flicked down to indicate consternation as she looked to Fay and Danielle. "SHOULD I be worried? I mean, I'm not entirely sure how unsafe we are around here. I certainly wouldn't be bothered by her going alone into a crowded bar or whatnot or otherwise being by herself in the principality, incognito, and I can't imagine her being hurt if open. But what sort of risks are there? Surely not anarchists, as with our communards?"
"Most of our groups tend to be non-violent. It's probably nothing, but the last thing the government wants is something bad to happen on your first full day here," Fayza remarked, still looking around a bit.
"Knowing Drish...." Dani smiled a little. "Well, I think I saw a hot dog vendor a bit to the south of here. We should check there."
"I'd rather everyone stay right here until the police and security settle everything," Wells suddenly remarked. "It's probably nothing, but I want to make sure everybody is safe."
"Oh please, you're acting like some paranoid celebrity bodyguard," Dani retorted. "The vendor was along this way, I think...." She began walking south along the path, much to Wells' consternation.
Jhayka gave a sort of careless shrug, and followed, her cane tapping on the path, and not trying to catch up with Danielle, though she was a bit taller and it made up for the faint limp. It was clear that neither of them thought the situation was very much one conductive to any threat to them, Wells' concerns aside or not. Elestria, who was dignified enough to hang back, seemed suitably amused, and Priscilla was cautious enough to follow, before she realized that she wasn't armed, which left her to grind a heel into the pavement and watch them go.
All of it was for naught, though, for the police found Drishalras first. The officer had to reach up to tap her on the shoulder, with the surprised and laughing man at the hotdog stand now looking more concerned, though Drishalras just frowned as her yellow eyes gazed down to the officer. "Yes?"
"Are you alright, Ma'am?" The young policeman asked bluntly enough. "They really don't want you wandering off.."
"Oh, I didn't think about that, and yes, I'm fine..." She trailed off and turned back to the man behind the stand.
"Still want 'em, Miss?" He asked, gesturing to the two hot-dogs covered in relish, onions, catsup, and mustard.
"Oh, of course." She handed the required currency over and took them. "I was just hungry, that's all," that she was sheepishly explaining to the bemused officer. "They didn't give us much for lunch, and I wanted to see what these tasted like... Oh, hi Danielle!"
"See what I mean?" Dani said, looking back at the others, before watching Drish take a bite out of one of the hot dogs. "All that fuss for nothing. No crazy assassin or scheming mafia type waiting in the bushes to kidnap or hurt Drish. Just her appetite and ability to zero in on junk food from ten miles away."
Long was at least non-plussed, but Wells was clearly a little fidgety and embarrassed. "I apologize if there was any misunderstanding, but we take your security very importantly, especially given what happened on your way here."
"Yeah, I forgot to mention the fear that some Prantonese nut will jump out of the bushes with a suicide belt," Dani added.
"Jhayka and I met in a bar on the Valeria waterfront," Drishalras explained between bites of a hot dog. "I really don't understand why we need to be escorted around. I'm the daughter of the fourth most important person in the Empire and I've never had a bodyguard. I used to go out incognito all the time, to avoid the pomp and ceremony, and I lived in this artists' apartment in the Khalia district before marrying Jhayka... I'm just a naval officer, really, and hopefully a decent wife."
"They're afraid that some terrorist from Pranton or some other place will jump out of the bushes and blow us up or something," Dani remarked with amusement.
"Given your vessel was attacked on the way here, we are concerned with further attempts on your lives," Wells remarked softly.
Jhayka looked more than a little embarrassed at the story of Drishalras' bohemian background, but in the end, stepped close to her and hugged her lightly. "Well, human culture is very different, my dear, and political assassination commonplace. I know you like your food--to much of it!--but let these gentlemen do their business; they deserve that much, certainly?"
"My apologies," Drishalras answered softly after a moment, though in truth it looked like that, since she'd still obtained the hot dogs, she didn't really mind, or care.
"Yeah, 'commonplace', like every hundred years," Dani muttered. "It's just that the first few times have made all of the government security people antsy types."
"That hadn't occurred to me," Drishalras answered with wide eyes. "They made a fair attempt, and I didn't really begrudge them that. I know there's plenty of people angry with us for lots of things in CON-5. Matters of politics. Well, my apologies, again."
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
The Hays-Adams Hotel
25 March 2165 AST.
52 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
Fay entered the Presidential Suite that night to see Dani at the mirror. Her hair was done in a pony-tail, revealing more of her back than it usually did, and her dress aided with that by being split down most of the back. It was a violent dress with glitter to create a sparkling effect, a contrast from Fay's plain-looking blouse and knee-length dress. "Wow, dinner with the President," Fay said to her as she watched Dani apply eye shadow. "Looking your best too."
"Jhayka likes the eye shadow, it gives me more color," Dani replied as she finished.
"Am I the only one who hasn't colored my hair even a bit?" Fay asked, indicating the fringe of red that was now on Dani's hair.
"You haven't tried to fit in as much or haven't married a Taloran, Fay." Dani began applying lipstick, and thus couldn't speak for a couple moments.
"Ah." She chuckled, nervously, at that. "While you're off having a fancy dinner, I, well, I dunno, I'll sit around, watch TV, maybe go join Priscilla for a while."
"Actually, I was going to ask you something." Dani put the lipstick down and looked toward Fay. The front of her dress was immodest but at least not scandalous, with showing off her body shape rather well while covering the cleavage, with a spaghetti strap that went up her shoulders and around the neck. "Drish doesn't like rich foods too well, and she took a real liking to that pizza..."
"And you want me to have a pizza or two waiting for her," Fay laughed. "There's a mom and pop place near here, they might deliver. I think I'll see if Priscilla wants some pizza or subs too."
"That'd be good."
There was a knock at the door, and when Fay opened it one of Jhayka's Taloran servants was standing there. "Your Highness..."
"I'm coming." Dani smiled again at Fay. "Go. Have fun. Eat pizza and subs with Priscilla, get her to loosen up if you can."
"Yes, Your Highness," Fay answered in faux-obedient tone, and the two friends laughed as Dani followed the servant into the hall.
The serving girl--relatively outnumbered by hotel staff here--led Danielle down to where Jhayka and Drishalras were waiting, dressed in mufti. Drish had a skirt on that seemed almost like a sarong, covered in intersecting geometrical designs in red with blue backing; her blouse was green with white pinstripes and it had a plunging neck with an array of ruffled fabric around it forming intersecting, hanging pieces, and poofed out sleeves with tight wrists. Her hair was braided back demurely, in contrast to Jhayka's flowing pink locks which were unrestrained. Jhayka, for her part, was wearing a yellow high-collared shirt with black stripes, white sash, red vest over it in turn unbuttoned, and blue cape, her pants being the feldverde of the Intu'itan Army with orange pinstripes. It was, in short, very typical Taloran fashion.
Jhayka stepped over to Danielle, smiling as she leaned in to kiss her with green lips and tongue, before lightly whispering, "Well, I imagine this is a big moment for you, but I assure you that you look marvelous enough to fit the part. Ready?"
"About as ready as I can ever be for a private dinner at the White House," she admitted. The human dress she was in was an interesting contrast to the multi-layered and colorful garb that the Taloran ladies of their family were in. "I'd never imagined myself doing something like this."
"That's always what ends up being so cute," Jhayka answered, smiling. "I see it as the most normal thing I can imagine, and your wonder these past few days seems to be such a beautiful thing, so unique and unexpected. I suppose, well, we are certainly being rewarded these days for our past suffering."
Drishalras stepped up, adding, "For that matter, Dani, your modesty does you well. I was always embarrassed by family functions and really just wanted to be left alone to learn and explore..... I wonder what the food will be like? Hopefully not to rich."
"I'm wondering myself. For all we know, it'll be something more like a Thanksgiving meal than some fancy chef dish."
"Well, time for us to go and find out, my dear wives," Jhayka interjected, and grasping her finely worked cane, started off with her slight limp, tip tapping its delicate, crisp rhythm against the floor. "We can't keep the President waiting."
The dining room was just one of many such rooms in the old building, and aside from the usual handful of security detail the only people present were the two households of Jhayka and Dale; their spouses, that is, plus Dale's infant son Michael, dressed as well as he could be for the event. Still not quite two, a high-chair had been secured for him and placed between Julia Dale and an empty chair on one side of the table, the opposite from Jhayka, Drish, and Dani.
It was a private meal, though some formality was still shown; Dale was in a business suit and Julia in a dress only a slight bit less flattering to her than Dani's would have been, covering more of her shoulders and a bit more of the back, with her blonde hair flowing around her shoulders.
The appetizers had been laid out by the kitchen staff before the main course was to be sent. They were informal fare; fried and unfried shrimp, fried sticks with melted mozzarella cheese in them, little popcorn chicken pieces that were mostly there for Michael, who was old enough to know how to pick up the little bits of chicken and eat them with little fuss from his mother.
"The kitchen staff assures me that the dinner will not be banquet fare," Dale replied, "so don't worry about rich and exotic foods that might or might not turn out to be agreeable. God knows we all can get tired of that."
"Oh, that's quite preferable," Jhayka answered as she moved to sit across from the President, and only after he had set down. "Your Excellency, Madame." She let Drish and Dani sort out their own seating arrangements, and she hooked her cane onto the back of her chair. "Sometimes, the fine foods of formal banquets just strike a sour taste in my mouth, when I go and recall days when I have eaten very badly, indeed, as most soldiers have."
"I remember many a meal while on deployment myself," Dale replied. "I hope you have enjoyed the city so far? The Council seemed ro receive you well enough."
"There is plenty of open space, certainly, and many of the monuments are very fine," Jhayka replied. "I was especially impressed by Lafayette square and most of the nearby statues of Union Generals. It seems to be the period in your history when you most closely approached us in your sense of monumental architecture. The city itself... Drishalras is more comfortable in it than I am," Jhayka paused for a moment and then smiled very, very slightly. "I suppose if I was speaking for Danielle, I'd call myself a country girl. Though virtually a city unto itself, the palace complex of my family is extremely remote and entirely surrounded by farmland. Though it makes me think of the port districts where I met Drishalras; very open, the buildings eccentric. Our cities are taller, and to me, a bit stifling."
"I understand that feeling quite well, Highness. I grew up on a farm in the middle of Kansas, miles away from the nearest city. Aside from flying into Boston when going with my mother to see her family in Massachusetts and Maine, I didn't see many big cities until I was older."
Jhayka's ears flexed. "Well, then, we're both very much agreed on that point."
"Your Excellency," Drishalras asked next, as politely as she could, "Is there a ceremonial purpose to the empty chair?"
"No, that was Julia's request," Dale said, looking to his wife.
"I have my reasons," Julia answered with a bit of a smile. "A surprise, for Robert mostly." And in one of those fun coincidences of convenience, there was a buzz from her comm unit. "I bet that's the surprise now. If you'll excuse me, please." Julia got out of her seat, leaving it on her husband to watch their son as he fit another little bit of chicken into his mouth, the last that had been on his plate.
"Very well behaved for a young child," Drishalras continued, her amber eyes regarding curiously the human child for a while. "We couldn't possibly have children I think so very young at any sort of dinner like this... They'd be running everywhere and throwing the food about and the mothers would get no food for having to run to and fro trying to corral them when they respond to the excitement. That's surely the biggest thing between our species."
"He's not quite like his older sister was, Susanna was a bit more active and wild. Mike just likes trying things in his mouth. Like the Empress' list of your negotiating team," Dale said, chuckling a little. Having finished his chicken Michael nevertheless used his little fingers to pick crumbs off the plate to, as expected, place into his mouth. "No pen on my desk has been left un-slobbered upon."
At that Dani broke out with a giggle, though it sounded bittersweet, as she thought of her own baby brother whom she had gotten to see only so briefly.
"He shall be a fine son. Is." Drishalras corrected after a moment, ears diving embarrassedly. "Forgive me. Human development biology is not a strong point. I'm just a ship's Captain, really. This whole thing from security on down to trying to figure out how not to offend people with subtle distinctions in how we consider things or use speech is a bit difficult."
The door opened again and Julia re-entered. Walking in behind her was a young woman with dark hair, pretty enough in appearance, wearing a full-sleeved glittering green dress, very formal looking, more like church clothes than dinner party though. She had striking blue eyes and enough features to tell the others who she was the child of among the First Couple.
Somewhat surprised, Dale stood from the chair and opened his arms enough to embrace the young woman. "Susan! It's good to see you, I didn't know you'd be in town."
"It was my little surprise," Susanna Dale replied to her father, welcoming the hug with her own, then letting her father kiss her on the forehead. "Mine and Julia's."
"Highness, this is my daughter Susanna," Dale said to them as he brought her back to the table, Julia taking her seat back. Susan walked up behind her baby half-brother and gave him a peck kiss on the forehead before taking the previously empty seat.
"Madame," Jhayka answered politely in Susanna's direction. "You are a naval officer, I understand?"
"Yes, I am a Commander in the Stellar Navy," Susan replied. "I've just been given command of the Nikolai Cherenko," she added proudly, quickly appending, "It's my first posting as CO."
There was a definite gleam in Dale's eye upon hearing his daughter's new posting, not that he hadn't known about it, but rather the simple pride of a father seeing his child succeed.
"My first wife has had her first command for somewhat less than one of our years," Jhayka answered with a flick of her ears and gesture in Drishalras direction. "Though I am sure you have heard plenty about our arrival, considering how publicized it has been."
Drishalras seemed naively rather embarrassed, and settled it by talking shop. "Tell me a bit about your ship, Commander Dale?"
"I haven't actually seen it yet," Susanna admitted, taking some shrimp to munch on. "I just got off my final deployment as an XO on the heavy cruiser Cold Harbor. The Nikolai is a new Block II Naresuan-class destroyer, still undergoing its final trial checkup before I take her out on a shakedown cruise."
Drishalras looked like she wanted to say something, and realized how unwise it would be at the moment, and stopped. "Naresuan type? Very advanced indeed. I'd need to look in a silhouette recognition guide myself, so we're even on that. Though I imagine you've seen the Slashahkimmar on innumerable newsvids, swinging at anchor along the coast," she added, still feeling.. A bit embarassed, and maybe showing it a little. It would likely be obvious to Dale; Drishalras had gone straight to command of a battlecruiser on her promotion to post captain without prior experience because she was the daughter of someone very very important.
"Landing your warships on planetary oceans must be rather exciting," Susanna said, and them she added, grinning, "I guess nobody warned you about the Chesapeake Bar?"
Now Drishalras was flushing very hard indeed to that sickly green-gray of a Taloran's blush. "It looked like a glacial fjord formation to me. I'm familiar with them on the northern shore of Rasilan. They're where we normally place servicing facilities for heavy ships on planetary surfaces. And if you think landing a battlecruiser is interesting... Well, I'm sure someone can find holovid footage of the Empress Saverana II landing."
"That'd be a sight to see," Dale agreed.
"You will no doubt have opportunity to equal the military record of your father," Jhayka added assiduously, with her dead metallic gaze upon Susanna for a moment. "There is no finer profession than the profession of arms, certainly, and blood runs strong. Speaking of which.." She looked back to the President. "Your Excellency, I do want to say something here, in private. I actually have an enormous deal of respect for your operations in Clan space, about which, recent events in my life had brought to my attention. If you were given an entirely free hand, the exodus I am organizing today would, of course, not exist."
It was an interesting topic to bring up, but Dale supposed it would have happened one way or another. "I suspected it was you organizing the departure of the un-reconciliable warriors," he said in reply. "I try not to think too much of what might have been, Highness. What has happened, happened, and we'll have to make due with that."
"You've remained quiet tonight, Highness," Julia said, looking at Dani, who was nursing an unfinished plate of shrimp appetizer. "Still star struck?"
"You... you might say that," Dani answered sheepishly. She looked to Susanna afterward. "Did they really add two more missile tubes to the Naresuan II?"
Susan nodded. "Yes, they did. Heavier missile armament is the in-thing after observing various capabilities from other navies."
"Yeah, the Talorans are pretty big on missile weapons in naval combat," Dani added. "Their main energy complements tend to fire slower, but hit harder, than either of our main guns, though."
"I can't say the maximum ROF, but I can disclose the fact that our main batteries normally only fire four times a minute on the Slashahkimmar," Drishalras added a moment later. "The thing I've been curious about is why the Alliance has never gone for detachable, mission-specific pods."
"We tend to specialize with actual hulls," Dale replied. "That hasn't stopped a few of the smaller national navies from looking into mission pods, but our procurement people tend to prefer solid designs built for specific missions and those only."
At that moment the cooking staff brought out the main course. A fully cooked turkey, a side of roasted ham, with mashed potatoes, salad, cooked beets, green beans, and the kind of spread that reminded Dani of a Thanksgiving dinner. "This is the kind of formal private meal my family would have had," Dale admitted to the their guests as he accepted a plate from the server and handed it, out of respect, to Jhayka, before taking another.
"Thank you, Your Excellency." The Talorans seemed suitably curious about the food. "I know ham well, and potatoes, but what are the red.. Hmm. Roots?"
"They're beets, Jhayka," Dani answered for Dale, at which she suddenly blushed and lowered her head sheepishly, afraid she'd spoken out of tone.
"Wow, you really do have the star-struck stuff bad," Susan chuckled.
There was then a kind of shriek, or rather a small wail, and Michael fussed in his chair as Julia tried to get him to eat a small spoon of potato. He resisted for several moments before finally letting his mother feed him the spoonful.
Drishalras seemed supremely happy at that, like it was something that a baby should do, and therefore made the scene more charming and normal. She also tried a beet. "Hmm. I sort of like it. Interesting taste."
"I remember this taste," Jhayka added a moment later, and then, a bit quietly. "Dinner with the Slavic consul in Kalunda. Borscht. It's used as the base in that soup, I'm guessing." It was more of a statement than a question, and the faint curve of her lips revealed an almost dangerous smile. "Forgive me, Your Excellency, but I'm a soldier who remembers the taste of food on campaign more than the sundry formalities of even a private and casual dinner with a Head of State. Then again, I suppose that may very well be one of the reasons Her Serene Majesty sent me."
"I'm not surprised Kalunda weighs heavily upon your mind, Highness," Dale added in reply. "What happened to you, to both of you," and at that he looked to Dani as well, "was a trial that I don't envy you over, but which I'm happy to see you overcame. I did all I could to ensure your relief, fighting the diplomats to ensure the intervention didn't spark a general war and my own defense policy advisors who didn't think we could get to you as soon as we did. I'm sorry we couldn't get there sooner, as I'm sure it would have saved more lives."
"We were relieved, Your Excellency," Jhayka answered with a tad of quietness in her voice, though still quite laconic. "My greatest regrets frankly come after that point. I let someone die to save a nation not my own, and I think she would have gladly given her life for the result that came to pass from it, elevating Kalunda to the first rank of Gilean cities and preserving it for all time. But I won't forgive myself for it until her sister does, and her sister, like enough, will die not forgiving me. Otherwise, God brought me a very fine ending, and those who died did so for the highest of causes, or, in many cases, for their own personal redemption. As did many of those who lived. You can say, Your Excellency, that I defend Priscilla Laurentii not simply for herself, but because of all the people under my command who died knowing that she was trying her hardest, setting out with a couple improvised armoured trains and a few thousand armed men, into the face of whole armies, in a desperate effort to relieve them and save their families, after she had got the youngest of the city and the disabled safely out, also in the teeth of that whole army. Before intervention was settled upon, she was our only hope outside of that city, and though she did not succeed independently, she lashed herself half to death to try her very utmost, and beyond. So, in some sense, I find in living individuals rewards and favours I can give to pay tribute to the dead, and in this, find myself not so much bothered by the lives lost. The point for me, at which I find absolution, is when I make 'they did not die in vain' a literal truth, rather than a simple sentiment of a memorial declaration."
"Well put, Highness, well put," Dale replied. He could sense Julia's concern, knowing she possessed a decent sense of the political problems relating to Laurentii, while Susanna watched mostly with interest. "I confess that even the Alliance might have been hard-pressed to insist on Kalunda's fair treatment, and forbidding the militias of Rosario from operating in its territory, had it not been for the stand they made to the very end. I'm very happy to say that the Empire and the Alliance were able to stand side by side to prevent the attempts by other sundry intervening forces to give control of the region over to the paramilitaries despite their... behavior in other areas of that planet."
Dani looked down as they were speaking, picking at her food, and remembering Tabbi's outbust at Meiersworld Station again. "Kalundan women are usually bisexual and lesbian. Is that reason enough to think they don't deserve our respect?" she said softly.
"Of course not," Susan said defiantly. "I saw the news recordings of the fighting there. The Kalundans deserve every bit of respect we can give!"
"I doubt your maternal grandparents would agree with that, Susanna," Dale said. "Most of the dominant Human religions frown on homosexuality, Highness, which I'm given to understand is one of the clear distinctions between Human and Taloran theology. Indeed, your presence alone has been enough to rile up some of the loudest, if not politically powerful."
"Well, I imagined the subject would come up sooner or later," Jhayka answered, settling back a bit after having eaten no small amount of the meal. She was more used to the human custom over talking over the dinner. "As you know, I'm an anthropologist as a hobby. One thing that all such individuals must emphasize is the importance of creation myths in explaining acceptability in a society. I will lead the debate on where creation myths come from, and their orthodoxy, elsewhere. But certainly in terms of dynastic myth, there is something to the power of the love story of Valera and Taliya which has never been altered. It's precisely the fact that their relationship was never consummated, and that the Empire of her heirs was so overtly religious, that our present practices arise. In short, we gained them because the earliest of the Valerian dynasty really did have a fundamental hand in shaping the nature of our religion, and, even the most powerful rulers are people. Valera and Taliya could be held up as a perfect romantic ideal in a tragic sense, working together so hard for the sake of good that they lost their own relationship. Since Valera was unrepentant in the weeks following the Battle of the Brilar and Taliya's death, she made it abundantly clear that they had been in love, and, there are at least seventeen gold coins still in existence stamped during the succeeding year which show the two together, before In'ghara's coinage replaces them. The bodily ascension of Valera completes the case; since she was unrepentant about her love and yet that perfect...."
"If Valera and Taliya had not been in love, Highness, would Farzianism be as tolerant toward homosexuality as it is now?" Susanna asked innocently.
"No higher proof could be offered by religion than love," pious Drishalras answered with a gentle nod from Jhayka that she'd ceded the question. "It's not much mentioned these days, but Fileya referred to herself as the daughter of Valera and Taliya, not Valera and Tristam. The daughters of the Sword went to no inconsiderable lengths to preserve her memory even as they quarreled with each other. You can imagine it; their first memories were of tents and desperate flight across the desert. They lived their whole lives as refugees or in war, with only their mother to protect them, and then she was gone, and they had an Empire to manage. And yet through that they even brought the word to the founder of my own family's dynasty, Commander. I think the religion was ambivalent on homosexuality at the time; nobody knows for sure. The writings of the Prophet Eibermon do not condemn it, at any rate."
"I would add at least," Jhayka continued, "that homosexuality is more normal for us anyway. There are fewer secondary sexual characteristics which differ in the Taloran species other than height; and the ones on which attraction are unquestionably based are almost all around hair and eye colour, which is why we do not cut our hair; it's the fundamental part of our attractiveness. There's only very slight facial differences which are important otherwise. In short, we have less rigid distinctions between the biological sexes, which produces more bisexuality and so more homosexual inclinations. That is the scientific reason, and religion and science for us are not incompatible."
"I wondered why you grew your hair so long," Susanna said, looking to Dani, as her hair was quite clearly short, not even covering her entire neck.
"Another one of those things that makes us all different, I guess," Julia remarked before taking a bite, leaving Michael alone for a moment as he played with the spoon, sticking the wrong end into his mouth. "What kind of wine would you like me to have brought next?" she asked afterward.
"Do you have a Fonsegrive '40 bottle somewhere on the premises?" Jhayka answered, showing what may have been a slightly calculated knowledge of human wines.
"I can find out, if we don't I'm going to have to have a word with the people in charge of the pantry," Julia replied cheerfully before using a her phone to dial to the pantry and find out what was in the wine cooler. Within minutes she confirmed they had two bottles of that vintage, and it was immediately ordered.
"While we wait for the wine, I'd like to inform you of something else." Dale reached within the business suit, and from its inner jacket pockets pulled out two cases made of fine leather. "I wanted to give this to you here despite my advisors wanting me to do it yesterday during Your Highness' address to the Council. I wanted to keep this private because to do it in public would, in my opinion, cheapen it as just another part of the negotiations." He handed one to Jhayka and then one to Dani.
Dani took it and looked at it curiously, seeing her name embroidered in gold upon the top, certain it was some kind of award. Upon opening it she saw that the case contained a medal struck in silvered bronze. It showed a shield upon which the torch-and-stars insignia of the Alliance was emblazoned with laurel branches in the border. Dani wasn't sure she recognized it, but curiously, turned it over and saw her name stamped into the back of the medal above an engraving of Dale's signature.
"Your Highness Princess Jhayka, Duchess Danielle, I am honored to present you both with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award in the Alliance for those who have done so much to help the cause of the unfree and oppressed," Dale said before returning to his seat. "I don't deny that the two of you had your fair share of combat during the Siege of Kalunda, but what you did on and off the battlefield to destroy the slavery system on Gilead is of even greater consequence, in my opinion, to the bravery you displayed on the battlefield. No matter the problems that the Gilean situation has had, the two of you were the driving force to liberating millions of people from slavery. To me this award is almost paltry with what the two of you deserve and what, I'm afraid, politics may have yet robbed you of. Needless to say I believe your accomplishments in Kalunda, Highnesses, are among the worthiest acts I've seen in my life."
"Thank you, Your Excellency, for an award I do not really feel I deserve, but I recognize why others would justly do so." Jhayka answered after a long pause as she digested it, well aware of the significance. "Circumstances simply gave me an opportunity that no moral person would ignore. I did not engineer those circumstances willingly, or go to Gilead with that intention really in mind. But I imagine you're well aware of that. I did, it's true, seize the opportunity offered, but I like to think many others would have done the same in that situation. And once the burden had been taken up, how could it be put down? Loyalty to one's promises was on the line, and in the end, when I could have left Julio's service and escaped with Danielle on the instructions of.. A certain individual who arrived in the city, whose name remains discrete.. Well, there was to much caught up in it for that. Too many lives on the line. I like to imagine that anyone raised and disciplined as I would see the choice as self-obvious as it was. A million people packed into that city... And I was the only one who knew what their weapons would do if properly used. So I showed them how. The systematic butchery of such warfare will, certainly, stay with me for a while. Steel, gunpowder, and gas. I have been quite disabused of the notion that warfare has become more horrible since ancient ages because of that siege, I will assure you," she added, quietly. "And forgive me for somewhat rambling, rather than offering a proper acceptance speech, but those are my impressions of the event, short of the one which has stayed with me the longest.." A slight curved smile was offered in Danielle's direction.
"Ultimately, I could not deny a naked and starved fugitive from evil and slavery a refuge with me and my own, and as in the end that meant a war of terrible magnitude, the bolt had already been thrown, and the rest of the primitive zone had to be freed. I will admit to you, Your Excellency, here in private, that what I did in refusing to be evacuated was very conscious on my part. I used myself to create a crisis which would force the intervention of the numerous moral nations of the CON-5 universe, for the sake of ending the Gilean system. The Imperial government could not let me die at the hands of a neo-barb army, and so I put my feet down and forced them to rescue me. I threw a war for the entire Empire, and I suppose the morality of the cause is in the fact that I am here today, instead of being beheaded on my return home, or at least exiled at any rate. As for what I suffered, well, the Lord saw us both through in the end, and the wounds are a slight matter. What's a limp to me when I left so many of those I commanded buried in the soft mud of the Kalunda River?"
The assembled took Jhayka's statements in stride, and she was clearly wearing her feelings on the cuff. Dani, for her part, listened to Jhayka speak and simply stared at the medal sadly, thinking of poor Amber and of a host of those young girls in the riverboat fleet who had not survived the war. "I'm.... I'm honored, Mister President," Dani said softly, still looking at the medal, shaken as she thought back to everyone she'd seen in Kalunda. Even to the girl who had drowned in the river, and in trying to save her had cost Dani over a year of her life, her health, and two years with Jhayka.
"Thankfully doing that privately gave you the chance to speak your hearts without worrying about the media twisting it," Dale remarked. He was settling further into his seat when the door opened and a White House kitchen staffer provided the bottles of Fonsegrive '40. As hostess Julia poured glasses for everyone, pulling away when Michael tried to snatch at the bottle, giving an upset squeal at being denied something else to hold and perhaps place in his mouth.
"A toast, Your Highnesses, to Peace and to Freedom," Dale said, bringing his glass up as his wife and daughter did the same.
"To peace and to freedom," Jhayka and Drishalras echoed very politely. After the toast had been drunk, Jhayka clearly had something on her mind. "May I relate a story of those mad times to you? I remember it only vaguely myself, but all the details were related to me in time, and... I think it will ease your conscience, if nothing else, since the political decision has been made already. It is essentially a story about someone who, if she was from another background, would be dining here tonight and receiving this medal along with me, because she deserves it just as much."
"Very well, Your Highness." Naturally, everyone at the table knew whom Jhayka was describing.
"Priscilla Laurentii, well... Trajan Osis, the clansman who saved my life and that of Danielle from a fate worse than death, and kept us alive on numerous occasions later. He had bought a slavegirl, whom he freed immediately, out of obligation. She was dumb, unable to speak, from the brutality visited upon her that I care not to describe. An utterly innocent and utterly violated soul, of scarcely sixteen human years. And he protected her as best he could, and she was the reason, in the end, he gave his oath to me. I took her out of the city, when the siege was beginning, during the breakout effort. Naturally.. I ordered Priscilla to protect her. So while commanding a military force of thousands, and negotiating with a dozen participants in the combat, and making her innumerable efforts to relieve us, she cared for this girl. As she did right through the end of the siege and until, on the day of the fall of Ar, she had to take command on account of my sickness. She never neglected this girl, Julianna, not once, and now, she is making acceptable progress in a human specialist service, which Priscilla insists on paying out of her own scarcely grand salary as a lieutenant general in my Principality's Army. And if you ask Commander Fayza al-Bakr, it was Priscilla who comforted her on her own mental collapse on account of the brutality inflicted upon her.
"She was a mercenary, hired to my service, who went far beyond the requirements of her contract or what she had expected, and yet reserved the time for herself in a chaotic life, at the cost of her rest to the point of exhaustion, for her duties gave her no opportunity for respite, to personally tend to some of those mentally traumatized and scarred by the savage system of slavery and brutality around her. At every step of the way, she was given innumerable chances to show she was not a decent human being, and avoided falling into every pitfall. She went further, for the sake of a few innocents, than any military commander I can think of would have in a time of crisis. Or could have, without some kind of supreme effort I can't describe. Who can spend eighteen, or twenty hours commanding a battle, and then instead of falling exhaustedly to bed, attend to a mute rape victim beforehand? Yet Priscilla did this. I wish every one of those horrid people who say she should be executed could have seen that with their own eyes."
"An understandable sentiment, Highness." Sipping at the wine, and having already finished his plate of food, he added, "The report on Miss Laurentii I was provided has already convinced me that there are problems with the convential portrayal of her as a loyalist of the Old Regime. Unfortunately the politics of the situation aren't permitting any kind of break in that perception, and I doubt there will be for a long time. Especially with the violence of the Prantonese movements."
"I know," Jhayka answered. "And she knows. That is the burden that she has to bear, and she does it fairly well. I cannot help her there. Nor, perhaps, should I. But the story had to be told. The freed slaves of Devenshire may loathe her with all their hearts, but the freed slaves of Gilead...." Jhayka laughed very softly. "Isn't it so remarkable sometimes how a few hundreds of lightyears can cause a complete inversion in the character of a living person, so to speak? I do wonder what the average person in the Alliance thinks of me at times; I don't really know, nor, I suppose, could I ever."
"Most people in the Allied Nations live day to day, doing their work, pursuing careers, raising families, and generally living," Dale said. "They are religious to various degrees, some devoutly observant, others are what we call 'Sunday Christians'. Ultimately, you can't accurately judge the mindset of the entire populace because, say, the Universal Baptist Church has condemned your marriages, since most are too busy living to worry themselves with politics. I suspect that if Priscilla's background and behavior was well known, she might be seen better, but as it is now, she's only seen as some member of the old slavocratic government of Devenshire who took out thousands of civilians and enabled one of the most hated men in Old Devenshire to escape justice. I don't think the Council will allow it to interfere with the treaty proceedings, but it has cost me politically, and may yet cause you some aggravation, as the press conference a couple of days ago has only hinted at."
"The possibility of her arranging an interview with members of the press was discussed," Jhayka answered. "What do you think of the wisdom in that? For a Taloran noble it would be, well, unthinkable, but she is human, and this is a more or less human country."
"It could work or backfire, depending on what kind of reporter you get. Someone with an agenda would possibly ask loaded questions to deliberately provoke and insult her. I'd recommend either an older interviewer, someone committed to journalistic integrity, or a young and upcoming reporter looking for a career-making interview who can't afford to play games."
"Thank you for the advice, Your Excellency," Jhayka answered assiduously. "Obviously it will help us quite a lot if such an interview can aide in putting the matter behind us. My government did, however, want to make a statement by sending her; that much should be obvious. We have our own beliefs, and in some ways they're deeply contradictory to your's, particularly on government. I want to make sure that these issues don't prevent the friendship of our nations, and more importantly, our cooperation on the one matter I'm accredited for which doesn't involve our direct negotiation as such. The Empress sent me here precisely because I like humans to much for my own good, and her desires therefore should be very clear." Jhayka, at that, halfway grinned.
"I can ask my press staff for some suggestions," Dale said. "Off the record, of course."
"Thank you, again," Jhayka dipped her ears. "Speaking of which, that is a matter I'd like to discuss next. Namely, that which I raised--the issue of the Brasilia treaty. Let's get it out of the way quickly; are you willing to have your administration coordinate with my negotiating team, irrespective of the progress of the other negotiations, on the Taloran Empire's accession to the New Brasilia treaty? We can certainly agree, I hope, that it is worth succeeding there even if nothing else does, for the precedent it will establish and the mutual security it will provide."
"Yes, I would, Highness," Dale replied quickly. "Taloran accession to the New Brasilia Treaty, with as many of her reservations accepted as reasonably possible, is a very key component to our work here. Though I hope that the rest succeeds, I consider this a matter of high priority. We will work with your entourage to come to a deal with the IUCEC."
"Then that is the most important, and indeed, only matter of business I can think of covering at this fine table, such as it is." Jhayka answered to the President. "And I thank you again, Your Excellency, for your assistance in that regard. As far as the New Brasilia treaty is concerned, the cooperation of your government is both welcome and crucial, and will be regarded in a positive light in regard to our own negotiations." She let her lips tug into a slight grin again. "Perhaps it is just that I am an amateur with this, but I can't help to feel anything other than that we will find some sort of easy solution which is just not obvious toward resolving the issues in the commerce of peoples between our nations. I was sent here to secure an agreement, and intend to do so, despite the compromises it will require. Do keep in mind, throughout this all, as Danielle gives me the best of chances to do the same, that we are treading close to some closely held and sacred conceptions of what good governance and liberty are amongst our respective peoples, and that makes every move we undertake a delicate one."
"It is no exagerration to say that many Talorans could find the works of a human political philosopher--if they knonw about him or not--named Erik Maria von Kuehnelt-Leddihn to basically summarize, effectively, our views of democratic governance, and, I might suggest him to read to you and your personnel, as an example of a human author, writing in human terms, from a very Taloran viewpoint. In trying to offer a human view of Taloran political and social customs, it is with that fellow, and before him, the rather more famous Comte de Maistre, that I find the best summations."
"I've been briefed enough on Taloran society to know that the issue of information collection is highly touchy for your people," was the reply to that. Dale placed his wine glass on the table, finished, and continued. "I've admittedly not read either, though I've heard of Maistre. I'll extend your remarks to my staff and the Foreign Ministry to help them in their task. We have a lot of bright minds working on this problem, on both sides, and I'm confident some solution can be found that allows for law and tradition to be upheld on both sides."
"We will be trying our best, Your Excellency," Jhayka answered, smiling, before glancing over toward Danielle, unable to resist the comment. Drishalras had taken the earlier reward of her korana and her wife very calmly, since in higher class Taloran society, it was normal to gain such rewards, and she didn't know the significance of it. Danielle, however... "My dear, will I have to teach you how to speak again after that?"
At that moment Dani realized she'd been completely silent since getting the award. "Oh, uh, unnecessary. I can... still speak. Just... a little..." She laughed sheepishly. "A little overwhelmed."
Jhayka couldn't resist, smiling to Dale and Julia, to add: "This is what's so charming about her, you see." She stretched a bit. "Speaking of which, I wish that I could also find some way for the Alliance people to see our family as a normal one, but I am less sanguine about that than any prospects of Priscilla's popular redemption. It really is a bit hard for you to swallow, isn't it? As a people, I mean, no personal implications meant, Your Excellency. And I wouldn't be troubled, anyway."
"A bigamist lesbian marriage? 'Uncommon' doesn't begin to get close to how it's seen," Dale answered. "And it doesn't help that most people think it's polygamist, not bigamist."
"Jhayka has enough of a time keeping one navy girl in her bed, she couldn't handle two of us," Dani chimed in, having recovered enough to snatch the opportunity for a joke to try and keep moods light. It did, indeed, cause an amused grin from Dale and a wide grin from his daughter, though Julia seemed more intent on fussing with Michael to get him to eat a little bit of beet.
"I just keep getting more and more outnumbered," Jhayka muttered rather softly and wryly, though her ears showed her amusement, taking the moment of interservice rivalry, in which Drishalras was equally amused, in reasonably good stride. It provided a comfortable point where, for the moment, they could all be people, rather than the important and elevated individuals that they were, and she let it linger until the conversation again turned to other matters.
25 March 2165 AST.
52 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
Fay entered the Presidential Suite that night to see Dani at the mirror. Her hair was done in a pony-tail, revealing more of her back than it usually did, and her dress aided with that by being split down most of the back. It was a violent dress with glitter to create a sparkling effect, a contrast from Fay's plain-looking blouse and knee-length dress. "Wow, dinner with the President," Fay said to her as she watched Dani apply eye shadow. "Looking your best too."
"Jhayka likes the eye shadow, it gives me more color," Dani replied as she finished.
"Am I the only one who hasn't colored my hair even a bit?" Fay asked, indicating the fringe of red that was now on Dani's hair.
"You haven't tried to fit in as much or haven't married a Taloran, Fay." Dani began applying lipstick, and thus couldn't speak for a couple moments.
"Ah." She chuckled, nervously, at that. "While you're off having a fancy dinner, I, well, I dunno, I'll sit around, watch TV, maybe go join Priscilla for a while."
"Actually, I was going to ask you something." Dani put the lipstick down and looked toward Fay. The front of her dress was immodest but at least not scandalous, with showing off her body shape rather well while covering the cleavage, with a spaghetti strap that went up her shoulders and around the neck. "Drish doesn't like rich foods too well, and she took a real liking to that pizza..."
"And you want me to have a pizza or two waiting for her," Fay laughed. "There's a mom and pop place near here, they might deliver. I think I'll see if Priscilla wants some pizza or subs too."
"That'd be good."
There was a knock at the door, and when Fay opened it one of Jhayka's Taloran servants was standing there. "Your Highness..."
"I'm coming." Dani smiled again at Fay. "Go. Have fun. Eat pizza and subs with Priscilla, get her to loosen up if you can."
"Yes, Your Highness," Fay answered in faux-obedient tone, and the two friends laughed as Dani followed the servant into the hall.
The serving girl--relatively outnumbered by hotel staff here--led Danielle down to where Jhayka and Drishalras were waiting, dressed in mufti. Drish had a skirt on that seemed almost like a sarong, covered in intersecting geometrical designs in red with blue backing; her blouse was green with white pinstripes and it had a plunging neck with an array of ruffled fabric around it forming intersecting, hanging pieces, and poofed out sleeves with tight wrists. Her hair was braided back demurely, in contrast to Jhayka's flowing pink locks which were unrestrained. Jhayka, for her part, was wearing a yellow high-collared shirt with black stripes, white sash, red vest over it in turn unbuttoned, and blue cape, her pants being the feldverde of the Intu'itan Army with orange pinstripes. It was, in short, very typical Taloran fashion.
Jhayka stepped over to Danielle, smiling as she leaned in to kiss her with green lips and tongue, before lightly whispering, "Well, I imagine this is a big moment for you, but I assure you that you look marvelous enough to fit the part. Ready?"
"About as ready as I can ever be for a private dinner at the White House," she admitted. The human dress she was in was an interesting contrast to the multi-layered and colorful garb that the Taloran ladies of their family were in. "I'd never imagined myself doing something like this."
"That's always what ends up being so cute," Jhayka answered, smiling. "I see it as the most normal thing I can imagine, and your wonder these past few days seems to be such a beautiful thing, so unique and unexpected. I suppose, well, we are certainly being rewarded these days for our past suffering."
Drishalras stepped up, adding, "For that matter, Dani, your modesty does you well. I was always embarrassed by family functions and really just wanted to be left alone to learn and explore..... I wonder what the food will be like? Hopefully not to rich."
"I'm wondering myself. For all we know, it'll be something more like a Thanksgiving meal than some fancy chef dish."
"Well, time for us to go and find out, my dear wives," Jhayka interjected, and grasping her finely worked cane, started off with her slight limp, tip tapping its delicate, crisp rhythm against the floor. "We can't keep the President waiting."
The dining room was just one of many such rooms in the old building, and aside from the usual handful of security detail the only people present were the two households of Jhayka and Dale; their spouses, that is, plus Dale's infant son Michael, dressed as well as he could be for the event. Still not quite two, a high-chair had been secured for him and placed between Julia Dale and an empty chair on one side of the table, the opposite from Jhayka, Drish, and Dani.
It was a private meal, though some formality was still shown; Dale was in a business suit and Julia in a dress only a slight bit less flattering to her than Dani's would have been, covering more of her shoulders and a bit more of the back, with her blonde hair flowing around her shoulders.
The appetizers had been laid out by the kitchen staff before the main course was to be sent. They were informal fare; fried and unfried shrimp, fried sticks with melted mozzarella cheese in them, little popcorn chicken pieces that were mostly there for Michael, who was old enough to know how to pick up the little bits of chicken and eat them with little fuss from his mother.
"The kitchen staff assures me that the dinner will not be banquet fare," Dale replied, "so don't worry about rich and exotic foods that might or might not turn out to be agreeable. God knows we all can get tired of that."
"Oh, that's quite preferable," Jhayka answered as she moved to sit across from the President, and only after he had set down. "Your Excellency, Madame." She let Drish and Dani sort out their own seating arrangements, and she hooked her cane onto the back of her chair. "Sometimes, the fine foods of formal banquets just strike a sour taste in my mouth, when I go and recall days when I have eaten very badly, indeed, as most soldiers have."
"I remember many a meal while on deployment myself," Dale replied. "I hope you have enjoyed the city so far? The Council seemed ro receive you well enough."
"There is plenty of open space, certainly, and many of the monuments are very fine," Jhayka replied. "I was especially impressed by Lafayette square and most of the nearby statues of Union Generals. It seems to be the period in your history when you most closely approached us in your sense of monumental architecture. The city itself... Drishalras is more comfortable in it than I am," Jhayka paused for a moment and then smiled very, very slightly. "I suppose if I was speaking for Danielle, I'd call myself a country girl. Though virtually a city unto itself, the palace complex of my family is extremely remote and entirely surrounded by farmland. Though it makes me think of the port districts where I met Drishalras; very open, the buildings eccentric. Our cities are taller, and to me, a bit stifling."
"I understand that feeling quite well, Highness. I grew up on a farm in the middle of Kansas, miles away from the nearest city. Aside from flying into Boston when going with my mother to see her family in Massachusetts and Maine, I didn't see many big cities until I was older."
Jhayka's ears flexed. "Well, then, we're both very much agreed on that point."
"Your Excellency," Drishalras asked next, as politely as she could, "Is there a ceremonial purpose to the empty chair?"
"No, that was Julia's request," Dale said, looking to his wife.
"I have my reasons," Julia answered with a bit of a smile. "A surprise, for Robert mostly." And in one of those fun coincidences of convenience, there was a buzz from her comm unit. "I bet that's the surprise now. If you'll excuse me, please." Julia got out of her seat, leaving it on her husband to watch their son as he fit another little bit of chicken into his mouth, the last that had been on his plate.
"Very well behaved for a young child," Drishalras continued, her amber eyes regarding curiously the human child for a while. "We couldn't possibly have children I think so very young at any sort of dinner like this... They'd be running everywhere and throwing the food about and the mothers would get no food for having to run to and fro trying to corral them when they respond to the excitement. That's surely the biggest thing between our species."
"He's not quite like his older sister was, Susanna was a bit more active and wild. Mike just likes trying things in his mouth. Like the Empress' list of your negotiating team," Dale said, chuckling a little. Having finished his chicken Michael nevertheless used his little fingers to pick crumbs off the plate to, as expected, place into his mouth. "No pen on my desk has been left un-slobbered upon."
At that Dani broke out with a giggle, though it sounded bittersweet, as she thought of her own baby brother whom she had gotten to see only so briefly.
"He shall be a fine son. Is." Drishalras corrected after a moment, ears diving embarrassedly. "Forgive me. Human development biology is not a strong point. I'm just a ship's Captain, really. This whole thing from security on down to trying to figure out how not to offend people with subtle distinctions in how we consider things or use speech is a bit difficult."
The door opened again and Julia re-entered. Walking in behind her was a young woman with dark hair, pretty enough in appearance, wearing a full-sleeved glittering green dress, very formal looking, more like church clothes than dinner party though. She had striking blue eyes and enough features to tell the others who she was the child of among the First Couple.
Somewhat surprised, Dale stood from the chair and opened his arms enough to embrace the young woman. "Susan! It's good to see you, I didn't know you'd be in town."
"It was my little surprise," Susanna Dale replied to her father, welcoming the hug with her own, then letting her father kiss her on the forehead. "Mine and Julia's."
"Highness, this is my daughter Susanna," Dale said to them as he brought her back to the table, Julia taking her seat back. Susan walked up behind her baby half-brother and gave him a peck kiss on the forehead before taking the previously empty seat.
"Madame," Jhayka answered politely in Susanna's direction. "You are a naval officer, I understand?"
"Yes, I am a Commander in the Stellar Navy," Susan replied. "I've just been given command of the Nikolai Cherenko," she added proudly, quickly appending, "It's my first posting as CO."
There was a definite gleam in Dale's eye upon hearing his daughter's new posting, not that he hadn't known about it, but rather the simple pride of a father seeing his child succeed.
"My first wife has had her first command for somewhat less than one of our years," Jhayka answered with a flick of her ears and gesture in Drishalras direction. "Though I am sure you have heard plenty about our arrival, considering how publicized it has been."
Drishalras seemed naively rather embarrassed, and settled it by talking shop. "Tell me a bit about your ship, Commander Dale?"
"I haven't actually seen it yet," Susanna admitted, taking some shrimp to munch on. "I just got off my final deployment as an XO on the heavy cruiser Cold Harbor. The Nikolai is a new Block II Naresuan-class destroyer, still undergoing its final trial checkup before I take her out on a shakedown cruise."
Drishalras looked like she wanted to say something, and realized how unwise it would be at the moment, and stopped. "Naresuan type? Very advanced indeed. I'd need to look in a silhouette recognition guide myself, so we're even on that. Though I imagine you've seen the Slashahkimmar on innumerable newsvids, swinging at anchor along the coast," she added, still feeling.. A bit embarassed, and maybe showing it a little. It would likely be obvious to Dale; Drishalras had gone straight to command of a battlecruiser on her promotion to post captain without prior experience because she was the daughter of someone very very important.
"Landing your warships on planetary oceans must be rather exciting," Susanna said, and them she added, grinning, "I guess nobody warned you about the Chesapeake Bar?"
Now Drishalras was flushing very hard indeed to that sickly green-gray of a Taloran's blush. "It looked like a glacial fjord formation to me. I'm familiar with them on the northern shore of Rasilan. They're where we normally place servicing facilities for heavy ships on planetary surfaces. And if you think landing a battlecruiser is interesting... Well, I'm sure someone can find holovid footage of the Empress Saverana II landing."
"That'd be a sight to see," Dale agreed.
"You will no doubt have opportunity to equal the military record of your father," Jhayka added assiduously, with her dead metallic gaze upon Susanna for a moment. "There is no finer profession than the profession of arms, certainly, and blood runs strong. Speaking of which.." She looked back to the President. "Your Excellency, I do want to say something here, in private. I actually have an enormous deal of respect for your operations in Clan space, about which, recent events in my life had brought to my attention. If you were given an entirely free hand, the exodus I am organizing today would, of course, not exist."
It was an interesting topic to bring up, but Dale supposed it would have happened one way or another. "I suspected it was you organizing the departure of the un-reconciliable warriors," he said in reply. "I try not to think too much of what might have been, Highness. What has happened, happened, and we'll have to make due with that."
"You've remained quiet tonight, Highness," Julia said, looking at Dani, who was nursing an unfinished plate of shrimp appetizer. "Still star struck?"
"You... you might say that," Dani answered sheepishly. She looked to Susanna afterward. "Did they really add two more missile tubes to the Naresuan II?"
Susan nodded. "Yes, they did. Heavier missile armament is the in-thing after observing various capabilities from other navies."
"Yeah, the Talorans are pretty big on missile weapons in naval combat," Dani added. "Their main energy complements tend to fire slower, but hit harder, than either of our main guns, though."
"I can't say the maximum ROF, but I can disclose the fact that our main batteries normally only fire four times a minute on the Slashahkimmar," Drishalras added a moment later. "The thing I've been curious about is why the Alliance has never gone for detachable, mission-specific pods."
"We tend to specialize with actual hulls," Dale replied. "That hasn't stopped a few of the smaller national navies from looking into mission pods, but our procurement people tend to prefer solid designs built for specific missions and those only."
At that moment the cooking staff brought out the main course. A fully cooked turkey, a side of roasted ham, with mashed potatoes, salad, cooked beets, green beans, and the kind of spread that reminded Dani of a Thanksgiving dinner. "This is the kind of formal private meal my family would have had," Dale admitted to the their guests as he accepted a plate from the server and handed it, out of respect, to Jhayka, before taking another.
"Thank you, Your Excellency." The Talorans seemed suitably curious about the food. "I know ham well, and potatoes, but what are the red.. Hmm. Roots?"
"They're beets, Jhayka," Dani answered for Dale, at which she suddenly blushed and lowered her head sheepishly, afraid she'd spoken out of tone.
"Wow, you really do have the star-struck stuff bad," Susan chuckled.
There was then a kind of shriek, or rather a small wail, and Michael fussed in his chair as Julia tried to get him to eat a small spoon of potato. He resisted for several moments before finally letting his mother feed him the spoonful.
Drishalras seemed supremely happy at that, like it was something that a baby should do, and therefore made the scene more charming and normal. She also tried a beet. "Hmm. I sort of like it. Interesting taste."
"I remember this taste," Jhayka added a moment later, and then, a bit quietly. "Dinner with the Slavic consul in Kalunda. Borscht. It's used as the base in that soup, I'm guessing." It was more of a statement than a question, and the faint curve of her lips revealed an almost dangerous smile. "Forgive me, Your Excellency, but I'm a soldier who remembers the taste of food on campaign more than the sundry formalities of even a private and casual dinner with a Head of State. Then again, I suppose that may very well be one of the reasons Her Serene Majesty sent me."
"I'm not surprised Kalunda weighs heavily upon your mind, Highness," Dale added in reply. "What happened to you, to both of you," and at that he looked to Dani as well, "was a trial that I don't envy you over, but which I'm happy to see you overcame. I did all I could to ensure your relief, fighting the diplomats to ensure the intervention didn't spark a general war and my own defense policy advisors who didn't think we could get to you as soon as we did. I'm sorry we couldn't get there sooner, as I'm sure it would have saved more lives."
"We were relieved, Your Excellency," Jhayka answered with a tad of quietness in her voice, though still quite laconic. "My greatest regrets frankly come after that point. I let someone die to save a nation not my own, and I think she would have gladly given her life for the result that came to pass from it, elevating Kalunda to the first rank of Gilean cities and preserving it for all time. But I won't forgive myself for it until her sister does, and her sister, like enough, will die not forgiving me. Otherwise, God brought me a very fine ending, and those who died did so for the highest of causes, or, in many cases, for their own personal redemption. As did many of those who lived. You can say, Your Excellency, that I defend Priscilla Laurentii not simply for herself, but because of all the people under my command who died knowing that she was trying her hardest, setting out with a couple improvised armoured trains and a few thousand armed men, into the face of whole armies, in a desperate effort to relieve them and save their families, after she had got the youngest of the city and the disabled safely out, also in the teeth of that whole army. Before intervention was settled upon, she was our only hope outside of that city, and though she did not succeed independently, she lashed herself half to death to try her very utmost, and beyond. So, in some sense, I find in living individuals rewards and favours I can give to pay tribute to the dead, and in this, find myself not so much bothered by the lives lost. The point for me, at which I find absolution, is when I make 'they did not die in vain' a literal truth, rather than a simple sentiment of a memorial declaration."
"Well put, Highness, well put," Dale replied. He could sense Julia's concern, knowing she possessed a decent sense of the political problems relating to Laurentii, while Susanna watched mostly with interest. "I confess that even the Alliance might have been hard-pressed to insist on Kalunda's fair treatment, and forbidding the militias of Rosario from operating in its territory, had it not been for the stand they made to the very end. I'm very happy to say that the Empire and the Alliance were able to stand side by side to prevent the attempts by other sundry intervening forces to give control of the region over to the paramilitaries despite their... behavior in other areas of that planet."
Dani looked down as they were speaking, picking at her food, and remembering Tabbi's outbust at Meiersworld Station again. "Kalundan women are usually bisexual and lesbian. Is that reason enough to think they don't deserve our respect?" she said softly.
"Of course not," Susan said defiantly. "I saw the news recordings of the fighting there. The Kalundans deserve every bit of respect we can give!"
"I doubt your maternal grandparents would agree with that, Susanna," Dale said. "Most of the dominant Human religions frown on homosexuality, Highness, which I'm given to understand is one of the clear distinctions between Human and Taloran theology. Indeed, your presence alone has been enough to rile up some of the loudest, if not politically powerful."
"Well, I imagined the subject would come up sooner or later," Jhayka answered, settling back a bit after having eaten no small amount of the meal. She was more used to the human custom over talking over the dinner. "As you know, I'm an anthropologist as a hobby. One thing that all such individuals must emphasize is the importance of creation myths in explaining acceptability in a society. I will lead the debate on where creation myths come from, and their orthodoxy, elsewhere. But certainly in terms of dynastic myth, there is something to the power of the love story of Valera and Taliya which has never been altered. It's precisely the fact that their relationship was never consummated, and that the Empire of her heirs was so overtly religious, that our present practices arise. In short, we gained them because the earliest of the Valerian dynasty really did have a fundamental hand in shaping the nature of our religion, and, even the most powerful rulers are people. Valera and Taliya could be held up as a perfect romantic ideal in a tragic sense, working together so hard for the sake of good that they lost their own relationship. Since Valera was unrepentant in the weeks following the Battle of the Brilar and Taliya's death, she made it abundantly clear that they had been in love, and, there are at least seventeen gold coins still in existence stamped during the succeeding year which show the two together, before In'ghara's coinage replaces them. The bodily ascension of Valera completes the case; since she was unrepentant about her love and yet that perfect...."
"If Valera and Taliya had not been in love, Highness, would Farzianism be as tolerant toward homosexuality as it is now?" Susanna asked innocently.
"No higher proof could be offered by religion than love," pious Drishalras answered with a gentle nod from Jhayka that she'd ceded the question. "It's not much mentioned these days, but Fileya referred to herself as the daughter of Valera and Taliya, not Valera and Tristam. The daughters of the Sword went to no inconsiderable lengths to preserve her memory even as they quarreled with each other. You can imagine it; their first memories were of tents and desperate flight across the desert. They lived their whole lives as refugees or in war, with only their mother to protect them, and then she was gone, and they had an Empire to manage. And yet through that they even brought the word to the founder of my own family's dynasty, Commander. I think the religion was ambivalent on homosexuality at the time; nobody knows for sure. The writings of the Prophet Eibermon do not condemn it, at any rate."
"I would add at least," Jhayka continued, "that homosexuality is more normal for us anyway. There are fewer secondary sexual characteristics which differ in the Taloran species other than height; and the ones on which attraction are unquestionably based are almost all around hair and eye colour, which is why we do not cut our hair; it's the fundamental part of our attractiveness. There's only very slight facial differences which are important otherwise. In short, we have less rigid distinctions between the biological sexes, which produces more bisexuality and so more homosexual inclinations. That is the scientific reason, and religion and science for us are not incompatible."
"I wondered why you grew your hair so long," Susanna said, looking to Dani, as her hair was quite clearly short, not even covering her entire neck.
"Another one of those things that makes us all different, I guess," Julia remarked before taking a bite, leaving Michael alone for a moment as he played with the spoon, sticking the wrong end into his mouth. "What kind of wine would you like me to have brought next?" she asked afterward.
"Do you have a Fonsegrive '40 bottle somewhere on the premises?" Jhayka answered, showing what may have been a slightly calculated knowledge of human wines.
"I can find out, if we don't I'm going to have to have a word with the people in charge of the pantry," Julia replied cheerfully before using a her phone to dial to the pantry and find out what was in the wine cooler. Within minutes she confirmed they had two bottles of that vintage, and it was immediately ordered.
"While we wait for the wine, I'd like to inform you of something else." Dale reached within the business suit, and from its inner jacket pockets pulled out two cases made of fine leather. "I wanted to give this to you here despite my advisors wanting me to do it yesterday during Your Highness' address to the Council. I wanted to keep this private because to do it in public would, in my opinion, cheapen it as just another part of the negotiations." He handed one to Jhayka and then one to Dani.
Dani took it and looked at it curiously, seeing her name embroidered in gold upon the top, certain it was some kind of award. Upon opening it she saw that the case contained a medal struck in silvered bronze. It showed a shield upon which the torch-and-stars insignia of the Alliance was emblazoned with laurel branches in the border. Dani wasn't sure she recognized it, but curiously, turned it over and saw her name stamped into the back of the medal above an engraving of Dale's signature.
"Your Highness Princess Jhayka, Duchess Danielle, I am honored to present you both with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award in the Alliance for those who have done so much to help the cause of the unfree and oppressed," Dale said before returning to his seat. "I don't deny that the two of you had your fair share of combat during the Siege of Kalunda, but what you did on and off the battlefield to destroy the slavery system on Gilead is of even greater consequence, in my opinion, to the bravery you displayed on the battlefield. No matter the problems that the Gilean situation has had, the two of you were the driving force to liberating millions of people from slavery. To me this award is almost paltry with what the two of you deserve and what, I'm afraid, politics may have yet robbed you of. Needless to say I believe your accomplishments in Kalunda, Highnesses, are among the worthiest acts I've seen in my life."
"Thank you, Your Excellency, for an award I do not really feel I deserve, but I recognize why others would justly do so." Jhayka answered after a long pause as she digested it, well aware of the significance. "Circumstances simply gave me an opportunity that no moral person would ignore. I did not engineer those circumstances willingly, or go to Gilead with that intention really in mind. But I imagine you're well aware of that. I did, it's true, seize the opportunity offered, but I like to think many others would have done the same in that situation. And once the burden had been taken up, how could it be put down? Loyalty to one's promises was on the line, and in the end, when I could have left Julio's service and escaped with Danielle on the instructions of.. A certain individual who arrived in the city, whose name remains discrete.. Well, there was to much caught up in it for that. Too many lives on the line. I like to imagine that anyone raised and disciplined as I would see the choice as self-obvious as it was. A million people packed into that city... And I was the only one who knew what their weapons would do if properly used. So I showed them how. The systematic butchery of such warfare will, certainly, stay with me for a while. Steel, gunpowder, and gas. I have been quite disabused of the notion that warfare has become more horrible since ancient ages because of that siege, I will assure you," she added, quietly. "And forgive me for somewhat rambling, rather than offering a proper acceptance speech, but those are my impressions of the event, short of the one which has stayed with me the longest.." A slight curved smile was offered in Danielle's direction.
"Ultimately, I could not deny a naked and starved fugitive from evil and slavery a refuge with me and my own, and as in the end that meant a war of terrible magnitude, the bolt had already been thrown, and the rest of the primitive zone had to be freed. I will admit to you, Your Excellency, here in private, that what I did in refusing to be evacuated was very conscious on my part. I used myself to create a crisis which would force the intervention of the numerous moral nations of the CON-5 universe, for the sake of ending the Gilean system. The Imperial government could not let me die at the hands of a neo-barb army, and so I put my feet down and forced them to rescue me. I threw a war for the entire Empire, and I suppose the morality of the cause is in the fact that I am here today, instead of being beheaded on my return home, or at least exiled at any rate. As for what I suffered, well, the Lord saw us both through in the end, and the wounds are a slight matter. What's a limp to me when I left so many of those I commanded buried in the soft mud of the Kalunda River?"
The assembled took Jhayka's statements in stride, and she was clearly wearing her feelings on the cuff. Dani, for her part, listened to Jhayka speak and simply stared at the medal sadly, thinking of poor Amber and of a host of those young girls in the riverboat fleet who had not survived the war. "I'm.... I'm honored, Mister President," Dani said softly, still looking at the medal, shaken as she thought back to everyone she'd seen in Kalunda. Even to the girl who had drowned in the river, and in trying to save her had cost Dani over a year of her life, her health, and two years with Jhayka.
"Thankfully doing that privately gave you the chance to speak your hearts without worrying about the media twisting it," Dale remarked. He was settling further into his seat when the door opened and a White House kitchen staffer provided the bottles of Fonsegrive '40. As hostess Julia poured glasses for everyone, pulling away when Michael tried to snatch at the bottle, giving an upset squeal at being denied something else to hold and perhaps place in his mouth.
"A toast, Your Highnesses, to Peace and to Freedom," Dale said, bringing his glass up as his wife and daughter did the same.
"To peace and to freedom," Jhayka and Drishalras echoed very politely. After the toast had been drunk, Jhayka clearly had something on her mind. "May I relate a story of those mad times to you? I remember it only vaguely myself, but all the details were related to me in time, and... I think it will ease your conscience, if nothing else, since the political decision has been made already. It is essentially a story about someone who, if she was from another background, would be dining here tonight and receiving this medal along with me, because she deserves it just as much."
"Very well, Your Highness." Naturally, everyone at the table knew whom Jhayka was describing.
"Priscilla Laurentii, well... Trajan Osis, the clansman who saved my life and that of Danielle from a fate worse than death, and kept us alive on numerous occasions later. He had bought a slavegirl, whom he freed immediately, out of obligation. She was dumb, unable to speak, from the brutality visited upon her that I care not to describe. An utterly innocent and utterly violated soul, of scarcely sixteen human years. And he protected her as best he could, and she was the reason, in the end, he gave his oath to me. I took her out of the city, when the siege was beginning, during the breakout effort. Naturally.. I ordered Priscilla to protect her. So while commanding a military force of thousands, and negotiating with a dozen participants in the combat, and making her innumerable efforts to relieve us, she cared for this girl. As she did right through the end of the siege and until, on the day of the fall of Ar, she had to take command on account of my sickness. She never neglected this girl, Julianna, not once, and now, she is making acceptable progress in a human specialist service, which Priscilla insists on paying out of her own scarcely grand salary as a lieutenant general in my Principality's Army. And if you ask Commander Fayza al-Bakr, it was Priscilla who comforted her on her own mental collapse on account of the brutality inflicted upon her.
"She was a mercenary, hired to my service, who went far beyond the requirements of her contract or what she had expected, and yet reserved the time for herself in a chaotic life, at the cost of her rest to the point of exhaustion, for her duties gave her no opportunity for respite, to personally tend to some of those mentally traumatized and scarred by the savage system of slavery and brutality around her. At every step of the way, she was given innumerable chances to show she was not a decent human being, and avoided falling into every pitfall. She went further, for the sake of a few innocents, than any military commander I can think of would have in a time of crisis. Or could have, without some kind of supreme effort I can't describe. Who can spend eighteen, or twenty hours commanding a battle, and then instead of falling exhaustedly to bed, attend to a mute rape victim beforehand? Yet Priscilla did this. I wish every one of those horrid people who say she should be executed could have seen that with their own eyes."
"An understandable sentiment, Highness." Sipping at the wine, and having already finished his plate of food, he added, "The report on Miss Laurentii I was provided has already convinced me that there are problems with the convential portrayal of her as a loyalist of the Old Regime. Unfortunately the politics of the situation aren't permitting any kind of break in that perception, and I doubt there will be for a long time. Especially with the violence of the Prantonese movements."
"I know," Jhayka answered. "And she knows. That is the burden that she has to bear, and she does it fairly well. I cannot help her there. Nor, perhaps, should I. But the story had to be told. The freed slaves of Devenshire may loathe her with all their hearts, but the freed slaves of Gilead...." Jhayka laughed very softly. "Isn't it so remarkable sometimes how a few hundreds of lightyears can cause a complete inversion in the character of a living person, so to speak? I do wonder what the average person in the Alliance thinks of me at times; I don't really know, nor, I suppose, could I ever."
"Most people in the Allied Nations live day to day, doing their work, pursuing careers, raising families, and generally living," Dale said. "They are religious to various degrees, some devoutly observant, others are what we call 'Sunday Christians'. Ultimately, you can't accurately judge the mindset of the entire populace because, say, the Universal Baptist Church has condemned your marriages, since most are too busy living to worry themselves with politics. I suspect that if Priscilla's background and behavior was well known, she might be seen better, but as it is now, she's only seen as some member of the old slavocratic government of Devenshire who took out thousands of civilians and enabled one of the most hated men in Old Devenshire to escape justice. I don't think the Council will allow it to interfere with the treaty proceedings, but it has cost me politically, and may yet cause you some aggravation, as the press conference a couple of days ago has only hinted at."
"The possibility of her arranging an interview with members of the press was discussed," Jhayka answered. "What do you think of the wisdom in that? For a Taloran noble it would be, well, unthinkable, but she is human, and this is a more or less human country."
"It could work or backfire, depending on what kind of reporter you get. Someone with an agenda would possibly ask loaded questions to deliberately provoke and insult her. I'd recommend either an older interviewer, someone committed to journalistic integrity, or a young and upcoming reporter looking for a career-making interview who can't afford to play games."
"Thank you for the advice, Your Excellency," Jhayka answered assiduously. "Obviously it will help us quite a lot if such an interview can aide in putting the matter behind us. My government did, however, want to make a statement by sending her; that much should be obvious. We have our own beliefs, and in some ways they're deeply contradictory to your's, particularly on government. I want to make sure that these issues don't prevent the friendship of our nations, and more importantly, our cooperation on the one matter I'm accredited for which doesn't involve our direct negotiation as such. The Empress sent me here precisely because I like humans to much for my own good, and her desires therefore should be very clear." Jhayka, at that, halfway grinned.
"I can ask my press staff for some suggestions," Dale said. "Off the record, of course."
"Thank you, again," Jhayka dipped her ears. "Speaking of which, that is a matter I'd like to discuss next. Namely, that which I raised--the issue of the Brasilia treaty. Let's get it out of the way quickly; are you willing to have your administration coordinate with my negotiating team, irrespective of the progress of the other negotiations, on the Taloran Empire's accession to the New Brasilia treaty? We can certainly agree, I hope, that it is worth succeeding there even if nothing else does, for the precedent it will establish and the mutual security it will provide."
"Yes, I would, Highness," Dale replied quickly. "Taloran accession to the New Brasilia Treaty, with as many of her reservations accepted as reasonably possible, is a very key component to our work here. Though I hope that the rest succeeds, I consider this a matter of high priority. We will work with your entourage to come to a deal with the IUCEC."
"Then that is the most important, and indeed, only matter of business I can think of covering at this fine table, such as it is." Jhayka answered to the President. "And I thank you again, Your Excellency, for your assistance in that regard. As far as the New Brasilia treaty is concerned, the cooperation of your government is both welcome and crucial, and will be regarded in a positive light in regard to our own negotiations." She let her lips tug into a slight grin again. "Perhaps it is just that I am an amateur with this, but I can't help to feel anything other than that we will find some sort of easy solution which is just not obvious toward resolving the issues in the commerce of peoples between our nations. I was sent here to secure an agreement, and intend to do so, despite the compromises it will require. Do keep in mind, throughout this all, as Danielle gives me the best of chances to do the same, that we are treading close to some closely held and sacred conceptions of what good governance and liberty are amongst our respective peoples, and that makes every move we undertake a delicate one."
"It is no exagerration to say that many Talorans could find the works of a human political philosopher--if they knonw about him or not--named Erik Maria von Kuehnelt-Leddihn to basically summarize, effectively, our views of democratic governance, and, I might suggest him to read to you and your personnel, as an example of a human author, writing in human terms, from a very Taloran viewpoint. In trying to offer a human view of Taloran political and social customs, it is with that fellow, and before him, the rather more famous Comte de Maistre, that I find the best summations."
"I've been briefed enough on Taloran society to know that the issue of information collection is highly touchy for your people," was the reply to that. Dale placed his wine glass on the table, finished, and continued. "I've admittedly not read either, though I've heard of Maistre. I'll extend your remarks to my staff and the Foreign Ministry to help them in their task. We have a lot of bright minds working on this problem, on both sides, and I'm confident some solution can be found that allows for law and tradition to be upheld on both sides."
"We will be trying our best, Your Excellency," Jhayka answered, smiling, before glancing over toward Danielle, unable to resist the comment. Drishalras had taken the earlier reward of her korana and her wife very calmly, since in higher class Taloran society, it was normal to gain such rewards, and she didn't know the significance of it. Danielle, however... "My dear, will I have to teach you how to speak again after that?"
At that moment Dani realized she'd been completely silent since getting the award. "Oh, uh, unnecessary. I can... still speak. Just... a little..." She laughed sheepishly. "A little overwhelmed."
Jhayka couldn't resist, smiling to Dale and Julia, to add: "This is what's so charming about her, you see." She stretched a bit. "Speaking of which, I wish that I could also find some way for the Alliance people to see our family as a normal one, but I am less sanguine about that than any prospects of Priscilla's popular redemption. It really is a bit hard for you to swallow, isn't it? As a people, I mean, no personal implications meant, Your Excellency. And I wouldn't be troubled, anyway."
"A bigamist lesbian marriage? 'Uncommon' doesn't begin to get close to how it's seen," Dale answered. "And it doesn't help that most people think it's polygamist, not bigamist."
"Jhayka has enough of a time keeping one navy girl in her bed, she couldn't handle two of us," Dani chimed in, having recovered enough to snatch the opportunity for a joke to try and keep moods light. It did, indeed, cause an amused grin from Dale and a wide grin from his daughter, though Julia seemed more intent on fussing with Michael to get him to eat a little bit of beet.
"I just keep getting more and more outnumbered," Jhayka muttered rather softly and wryly, though her ears showed her amusement, taking the moment of interservice rivalry, in which Drishalras was equally amused, in reasonably good stride. It provided a comfortable point where, for the moment, they could all be people, rather than the important and elevated individuals that they were, and she let it linger until the conversation again turned to other matters.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED