Co-written by me, Sunhawk, and Marina.
Hays-Adams Hotel
Zohan Embassy Suite
The office was small and crowded, with barely enough room for somebody to sit behind the desk, and even then the desk was small and dominated by a large holographic display. The room itself was larger, but the addition of high-grade security systems, including a full faraday cage to protect against leaking EM emissions, had reduced the usable space significantly. It was a secure space, regularly swept for bugs and surveillance devices, even here in the heart of friendly territory.
What was small and cramped for a human, however, was merely comfortable for a Zohan. Mar'tov sat behind the desk, a neat stack of datachips to one side, while the holographic display was reduced to simply listing text, text that Mar'tov was slowly reviewing.
He'd read this file several times, along with others in this dossier. The top datachip on the stack was neatly labeled with the latest input for this particular dossier, observations from Ada'ren and the other Zohan from the Taloran delegation.
[/i]Devil, or angel... if there is nothing else we have learned about the nature of the universe, it is that we all hold both within ourselves. But which does this one truly express?[/i] he thought to himself, reading over a list of testimonials from the Gilead crisis, while the column next to it listed accusations from Prantonese sources. Both were explicit... yet they contradicted themselves. On the one hand, Priscilla Laurentii was a demon made flesh, a monster who butchered thousands in order to rescue a slave lord, a foul enemy of freedom and liberty. On the other hand, she had served with absolute heroic distinction in the relief of Kalunda, battling against slavers and risking everything to secure freedom and liberty. Which, he mused, was the real Priscilla Laurentii?
A series of raps against the door caused him to look up, one eyebrow lifting, before he reached out and pressed a button unsealing the maglocks. "Enter"
A young Zohan of the delegation staff walked in. "Senior Executive Gra'nil has reported that the leaders of the Taloran delegation have departed for the scheduled meal at the White House." the young woman reported once the door had closed behind her, standing before the desk looking for all the world like a student reporting to a teacher.
"Very well" Mar'tov replied and rose from his seat. "Inform Senior Executive Gra'nil that I will be out for a while."
The messenger nodded, and departed the secure office, holding the door respectfully for Mar'tov as he passed, then sealing it behind them both. The elder Zohan headed straight for the exit from the suite, nodding to the Passager who was currently holding down the small reception desk there.
Hays-Adams Hotel
Taloran Delegation
Having seen Dani off, Fay went to her room and flipped through the phone book to find the local mom-and-pop place she'd mentioned to Dani. After finding the number she put it on her cell and left for Priscilla's suite, just down the hall, and found the door characteristically open.
"Hello, Fay," Priscilla said as she hit the mute button on the holoprojector showing the news, where she was taking notes even as she was reviewing the details of the initial negotiations on the format of the talks. "What can I do for you?" She smiled very gently, and scooted over to make room on the couch for Fay. They had become close friends, after all, when Fayza's mental collapse had forced Priscilla to care for her on the armoured train as well as Julianna, all the while maintaining her own duties. Priscilla, atheist and cynical but still having a resevoir of kindness, was so very different in person from her popular image.
"Well, Dani's off eating dinner with the President, so I have nobody else to spend my time with," Fay answered. "Plus I figured you might be hungry, and Dani wants to have some pizzas waiting for Drish when they're done, so I have the number to a mom and pop place around here that delivers. Pizza or subs?"
"That will be a very interesting delivery," Priscilla answered. "They'll probably be talking about it for weeks. A sub. Italian sausage with stewed onions or something like that." A pause, and she smiled. "How do you like being here so far? I've never seen Earth before myself, after all, seeing how it was ruined in my home universe."
"Oh, Earth is gorgeous. I grew up around Chicago though. Dani and I are Midwestern girls." Fay hit her speed dial, which she'd set to include the restaurant, and began placing the order. Still having a pizza craving, though with some desire for ordered an Italian BLT and a medium pizza with cheese, olives, and sausage, then went on to Priscilla's order and the four large pizzas with extra cheese and meats for Drish. It took her a moment, however, to convince the restaurant that she was actually at the Hays-Adam. When she'd finally convinced them and gave them her credit account information for payment, she quickly dialed security and let them know the delivery would be coming in about an hour. "Shouldn't take them that long normally, but I figured there'd be plenty this way for Drish and Dani, and even Jhayka if she wants some," Fay said almost apologetically.
"Oh, it's alright. I've waited longer for a meal before," Priscilla answered a bit laconically. "I'm more just trying to keep a level, highly amused head at the endless stream of pundits suggesting some sort of nonsensical way to go around my diplomatic immunity, or lamenting it, so they can see me executed. Or simply decrying my existence. I am not quite sure what it is like to be suddenly catapulted into the status of one of the more hated people in the multiverse, at least by certain segments of society. The most amusing ones are the leftists who just want me imprisoned for life. They're more common on the 'net than these broadcasts; which I monitor to, at least the largest independent news and discussion sites. Jhayka really doesn't understand this sort of thing in a democratic society, none of the Talorans do, and it's what I'm best suited for, since my direct participation in the negotiations is.. Inadvisable. Gets to you after a while, anyway." And she added, muttered under her breath, "I'd rather be shot, or hang, thank you very much, than spend that much time in prison."
"Fortunately I don't see either happening," Fay said, taking a seat at the couch. "Does this pick up archived net video blogs and such? I don't think I've ever used a Purcell holoprojector before, I'm used to Sonys."
"It does. It's a very high-end Purcell model, apparently," Priscilla answered. "I remember one from.. Less happy times, when Alliance products started penetrating the CON-5 market." She was quiet, as she meant when she was protecting her father in exile.
"So, still going to do news patrol or do you want to watch something more entertaining?", Fay asked. "It should pick up the Movie Classics Net Database, and I think we get free access."
"I could use the break," Priscilla glanced to Fay with a slightly amused look. "Speaking of which, did you know what Wing Colonel Winters gave me when she stopped by to report to Drishalras on the situation at NAS Oceana? A recording of an old Earth band called the Styx, doing a song called Renegade. She has a very good sense of humour. Or depraved."
"Depraved is probably closer, that woman is loony tunes. In a good way," Fay said with a wide grin. "Hrm, movies... You don't seem the girly movie type, so maybe we can do an action movie and you, being the trained army officer you are, can make fun at all of the Hollywood fakes."
"Oh, this is going to be fun. Sure. You could probably spend all day poking holes in it, too, if they taught you anything about boarding actions."
Suddenly there were three sharp raps against the doorframe, drawing the eye away from the holoprojector. Standing in the open doorway was the diminutive form of Mar'tov, one eyebrow quirked slightly. "I apologize for the interruption." he said, as soon as they were both looking at him, before a faint smile ghosted across his lips. "May I come in?"
"Of course, Chief Executive," Priscilla said, slightly surprised but hiding it well. "Please, have a seat. Fayza had just ordered us dinner from a restaurant near here. Would you like us to arrange something for you as well?" She measured out the usual pleasantries even as her curiousity was overwhelming her.
"My thanks." he replied calmly and stepped inside, crossing to where the two women were seated. "And a cup of water is all, when on Earth I subject myself to human ideas of what constitutes food, but I do not wish to impose." he continued as he reached them, nodding towards Fay before turning his attention to Priscilla once more. "I hope this unscheduled visit is not interrupting anything important, however I wished to speak with..." his lips twitched as a slight sparkle danced in his eyes for a moment "The infamous Priscilla Laurentii and this appeared to be the first opportunity to do so free of the constraints of all of this formality that you humans appear to enjoy so much."
"Oh, it's primarily the Talorans, actually," Priscilla said in reply. "That and I'm rather justly not interested in meeting with most people on this planet, or traveling all that much, either. But since you're more or less right next door..." She smiled very faintly. "Here I am. Fayza will stay, if you don't mind, but you can ask me anything you want in her presence. We're good friends these days."
"You interrupted us about to watch a movie with lots of explosives and impossible uses of weapons and other stuff," Fay remarked non-chalantly.
"I do not mind at all, actually. And I am sadly familiar with such 'movies', some of the Passagers have grown rather fond of them." he replied as he sat down, then cocked his head slightly to one side and regarded Priscilla calmly. "And I actually have a very simple question for you." He paused for a moment, then his lips quirked back into a smile. "Who is Priscilla Laurentii?"
"A creature of circumstance," Priscilla replied simply. "Not really much different from Margaret Arshon in that sense. Maybe Priscilla Anderson is a better name. I loved my foster family very much, and I'm still their girl trying to survive." She squinted a bit, and turned away. "I understand that for those in a similar position to me they usually were given a different name by their mother than by their father. I'm not sure if my mother was composed enough to do that, considering her... Extremely young age. I know that I'll never know one way or another. So, I guess the real me could just be called Nameless. I call myself Priscilla Laurentii because the Talorans expect it of me, and I don't want to offend my hosts and patrons who alone stand between me and the gallow's pole. Though sometimes I wonder if I just shouldn't take it, and end the controversy. Fayza talks me out of it every so often, and I'm not sure why I'm even telling you. Because, I suppose, it's nice to have someone ask that question without making any assumptions beforehand."
Mar'tov simply nodded, although his eyes never left Priscilla's face. "I cannot afford to make assumptions in my position, and it would be criminally negligent for me to make decisions with preconceived and potentially false notions. I have consulted many sources, both those who demonize you, and those who lionize you. But I have not seen anything from you, personally, either way. So please, allow me to ask another question. Which Priscilla Laurentii is the true, and which the false? Is it the Priscilla Laurentii of the Talorans, or the Priscilla Laurentii of the Prantonese?"
Fay almost spoke up at that moment, but a look from Priscilla told her that now was not the time and that Priscilla would have to answer the question first.
"I'm not really an exiled and wronged noblewoman, if that's what you mean by 'of the Talorans', though, I know that it isn't." Priscilla thought for a moment, hand on her chin, and glanced uncomfortably to Fayza and then back to Mar'tov. "Ask her about me while I think for a moment about how to really answer that question. It might be so straightforward for me to simply claim the side of righteousness, but it would also be inappropriate, because I'm not righteous. The facts of the matter aren't in denial, and nobody who acted in that fashion could be called righteous. I just don't think I'm evil, either. And I'm trying to find out how best to put it all. So, ask Fayza, though I hate to put her on the spot about things which hurt her very much."
Mar'tov nodded slightly and turned to face Fay, a ghost of a smile still on his lips, but eyes intent, cocking his head slightly in a silent invitation to speak.
Put on the spot like that, Fay thought of what she almost said. "Chief Executive, I don't know what happened on Pranton, about umm-Kashrash or what have you, but I know that Priscilla was there for me in the worst time of my life, and if not for her I'd have probably ended my own life." Fay looked to Priscilla sympathetically. "I was taken as a slave, Chief Executive, while vacationing on Gilead. I was raped by more men than I'll ever be able to count, I was tortured, I was treated no better than a piece of meat to be passed around. I managed to block it out at first, focusing on escape, then resistance, and helping Erik Berglund. And then my best friend was reported as dead. At that point I fell to pieces. And at that time, despite being in effective control of a sizable portion of the forces that would relieve Kalunda, working twenty hours or more a day, Priscilla would still check on me virtually every free minute she had and make sure I wasn't cutting my wrists. And this was while she was taking care of a teenage girl who'd been so terribly brutalized that she couldn't even speak, and who's care she's been paying for since. I think she'd be paying for mine if Jhayka hadn't insisted as a matter of honor."
Fayza soon realized her fists were clenched. Sense memory recalled the sensation of electricity jolting her, of violation, the things she always tried to keep blocked out of her mind. And she remembered those days when she'd been ready to die, wouldn't eat, wouldn't drink, and when Priscilla at one point had to snatch the razor out of her hand to keep her from cutting her wrists open.
"Priscilla saved my life, Chief Executive. And I'm just one of the people she helped. She threw open the remaining slave cages in East Port and let them go back to their families if she could. She went out of her way to punish the slaver holdouts in East Port. And she was the one who took Ar when the time came. Whatever she did at umm-Kashrash, it wasn't what she is inside. She had what she thought was a good reason."
Mar'tov listened attentively thoughout, the same faint smile on his lips before nodding at the conclusion. "Allow me to be clear, you, based on her conduct towards you and others that you personally witnessed, would consider Priscilla an honorable woman whom you trust implicitly, am I correct?" one eyebrow raised slightly, his tone as level and calm as ever.
Fay looked at Priscilla and smiled. "She saved my life, Chief Executive. That's about as high in trust as someone can get for me."
"Thank you." he replied, the faint smile growing briefly before fading back away, then he turned his eyes back to Priscilla, one eyebrow lifted in a silent question.
"My father asked me to save his life," Priscilla answered simply. "There wasn't time for questions and moralizing. I didn't find out who my mother was until months later, from the Devenshiran wanted posters. He was a sick, sadistic bastard, and he abused my fantasy of finding my family down to the hilt. But I did still believe it, yes, and I shot through those people in Umm-Kashrash all the same. They were all armed, for what it's worth, or standing next to people who were. No, Umm-Kashrash wasn't my sin. It was necessary for my survival and the survival of my men, as well, ignoring the old fat bastard. That mob wasn't going to leave anyone alive. My sin was in staying with him for too long. Not simply shoving him aside, turning him in and escaping or something of that sort. I justified it in protecting the survivors of the cruiser and my battalion, finding them places to settle. Or by sometimes trying to convince myself it wasn't true. Or that it would lead to the loss of all of us, including those who certainly didn't deserve it, into hands of vengeance. Just so, that, in the end as we held him captive, more or less, to keep him from going out and abusing more little girls, he was angrily shouting at me how I owed him everything. How if it wasn't for his singular act of generousity, I'd have been getting raped and knocked up at the age of eleven, too. And it was all I really deserved for not letting him diddle with little girls now. But I didn't owe him anything. If he had just left me to be a farmer's daughter or a footsoldier at worst, yes, I would have owed him a peaceful and happy life; but he made me an officer of the regime, and set me up as his escape hatch. And if he'd left me to be another slavegirl in the house... Well, I'd probably be as bad off as Julianna. But at least I'd have my mother." She shook her head, and lowered it, averting her eyes.
"Chief Executive, I'll never have a mother. I'll never know her or speak to her. I think that's enough punishment. I'm just the filthy little creature she was forced to bear when she should have been playing with dolls, by a monster. An exile; one with wealth and power and responsibility; but an exile all the same. I'll never take my children to the brook where I swam as a girl, and their father's family will be their only family, if I am lucky enough to ever be loved. Now, should I be punished further for not abandoning him until it was a lost cause? Perhaps. I certainly sometimes feel that way. But I've tried to live my life as a moral person since, for what it's worth. The same trait that damned me... My loyalty to those who need it... Serves me well in exile in that regard. I do, really, try my hardest. And I suppose, then, that's the best answer to the question I can give you. I'm not either perception. I'm simply a person who has lived and will died in this miasma, trying to find my way when never knowing my past, and losing all that I did know. I guess all I can ask you to do is think of Julianna in particular, but also Fayza. Would my facing justice not simply hurt them? And why do they deserve anymore pain in their lives? If for no other reason, that is why I maintain my position in Taloran society. They don't deserve to be hurt anymore."
"Very well." Mar'tov replied, eyes never once having left Priscilla the entire time she was speaking. "I came seeking an answer, and I believe that I received it. My thanks, and please accept my apologies for opening any lingering wounds that have not been allowed to heal." he continued, then smiled fully for the first time. "Having found an answer, I find that I am able to make the decision I was contemplating. Priscilla Laurentii, also known as Priscilla Anderson, allow this to be your formal notification." his voice was grave, despite the smile on his lips. "You are, from this day forward, welcome aboard any ship or installation of the Zohan Commonwealth, with no fear for your safety, well-being or freedom. Moreover, I shall, tomorrow, publically state this decision and the reasons for it. Hopefully." he smiled a bit more and leaned back slightly, clearly relaxing just a bit. "having that statement in the public record will help to defuse those who are still able to think rationally about you. In addition, I would also like to formally extend an invitation to yourself, Fayza, and the rest of your delegation to visit Crouseiur Bataille Ste.Sophia in Earth orbit, for the purpose of a tour and transport to the BattleCarrier Victorious. Once aboard Victorious there shall be a ceremony adding the names of the deceased from the unwarranted piratical assault upon Slashahkimmar to the memorial we have constructed honoring those friendly to the Zohan people who have fallen in battle."
"You are being very kind to me," Priscilla answered softly. "I'll extend notice of the invitation to Her Highness, of course, and consider it accepted on my behalf with many thanks."
"I'm looking forward to the visit," Fay added, grateful at hearing what Mar'tov had to say. She reached over and put a hand on Priscilla. "I ordered enough pizza, would you like to stay and enjoy the evening with us?"
"He is certainly welcome to."
"I would be honored to accept, but I must confess that I have not, so far, been subjected to this 'pizza', although Combat Passager Di'not assures me that it is, in her words 'delicious'." he replied, eyes dancing just a bit.
"Oh, it is. Why don't I describe it to you...? Or do you prefer the surprise?"
"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 Capitol, Washington D.C.
27 March 2165 AST
54 Valeria, I.Y. 618
The Alliance Council had grown steadily since the original 20 Representatives and 1st Chancellor - the late Nicolas Mamatmas - had first held session in July 2144 AST. It had doubled it's number within the first ten years... and then more than doubled again in the following 10. Now 105 Representatives stood in its ranks, with one or two more possibly to join in the following election cycle.
This was no ordinary Council session either. After their brief spring recess that served as the halfway point of the first session of the year, the Council would recess for the summer months - starting in May - and not return to session until late July unless an emergency session was to be called. Then they'd continue their lawmaking all the way to December, by which time the November elections would be held and some of them would be faced with leaving the Council when 2166 dawned. And it was those elections that made the session special, as all year long the Representatives would be keenly aware of the media polls and the online straw polls and all the other things back home that would gauge the year's election race. The Federalists - President Dale's party ostensibly - were seeking to turn their plurality into an actual majority, while the Democrats were hoping to chip away at that brief upsurge of the Federalists in the '59 and '62 elections and regain their solid plurality of the earlier Mamatmas years. At the fringes were the various "minor" parties - the Front for Democratic Progress, the Pax Party, the National Powers Party, the Alliance Unionists - that were hoping to maybe add a seat or two in the nations where they happened to be strong, thus ensuring that they would have potential influence with any continued non-majority Council.
The day's session began in the usual fashion. Chancellor MacKenzie, who was in her final year of a 12 year term as Chancellor, called the Representatives to order, and the Clerk of the Council called the roll. When this was over, the Clerk called upon the guest speaker to deliver the day's prayer on behalf of the religious members of the Council.
"The little girl who asked me such brilliant questions when she could first think, whilst sitting on my lap at holiday celebrations," Jhayka remarked eagerly, "Has come a very long way indeed!" One could certainly forgive her the excitement, ears very attentive, as they sat in a fairly small party, Jhayka having insisted to make the trip with a few of their number, that morning, to see Ilavna make her short speech and give her prayer as the guest priest of the opening of the council's session after the spring recess. "Do you remember how innocent she was, when you first met her, my dearheart?" She queried to Danielle, with all the fondness of an aunt. It was strange how the girl, as a servant, caused such emotions in Jhayka, but the impression had been given that most servant families, serving the same nobility for generations, were treated very much as part of the family in many respects.
Dani remembered Illavna's former innocence well, and she replied, "Of course. I wish she hadn't lost so much of it, even if she's still the same, sweet Illavna I remember." She kept her voice down consciously as Illavna came up upon the prayer, dressed in a business-like blouse and jacket with calf-length skirt; Fay, sitting nearby, was dressed similarly, and simply looking on with a slight smile at the event.
"We all left something behind on Gilead," Jhayka answered quietly, and then also fell silent.
Ilavna was dressed in formal priestly robes covered in pictograms of the Seal Script, done in crimson red against light blue. They were quite impressive, with her blue hair falling down behind her, and her figure was striking in the chamber. She stood calmly for a moment, composing herself, for in truth she was very nervous. She had not regularly given sermons, let alone this sort of thing, ever, though she'd been trained for it. And Jhayka stood watching her. But she had to begin, and so she did.
"Assembled legislators of the Alliance of Democratic Nations, I thank you for the invitation to lead you in prayer before the one God, supreme Divinity of the universe entire. This comes at an historic moment for our peoples in which a chance for peaceful cooperation has been extended. To the Farzian we could think of no better thing. Long have conflicts maintained hostile feelings between righteous peoples who should be turning their attentions toward Good. That we have chosen from the first to approach each other in peace is a tremendous thing. That you have chosen, in recognition of our mutual feelings about God, regardless of our race and national status, to allow me this prayer, can only be a sign of mutual respect which is the necessary herald of a good future."
"With some hesitation at the magnitude, I readily confess," she added with an embarrassed dip of her ears downward, "I find myself the representative of eighteen and a half trillion Farzians in the Empire, before more than ten trillions of many faiths in your nation. I have fought alongside your people, as I imagine you well know, and seen your faith as much as your acceptance, a tolerance which remains to us, to your compliment, astounding. You legislate over one of the most remarkable nations, united by neither religion nor culture, and yet healthy nonetheless. And for the health of that nation, then, through the wisdom of your deliberations, I do now pray."
She dipped her own head while tracing out, in air, the seal-script shapes of the traditional symbols of the blessing ritual, more complex, certainly, but in the same vein as crossing one's self. And then she spoke. "Mighty Lord of Justice, creator of all good in the universe and opponent of all evil, I pray as your humble servant, that you would descend with wisdom and touch the minds of these assembled here today. Give them the resolute wisdom that they may, in all their deliberations, choose a just course. Turn all temptation away from them, and let them stand as upright examples for their whole people in knowledge and moderation. May they always do what is right for the people that they have been chosen to represent, never failing their needs, and always through reasonable concourse seeing to the collective health of their State. This I do pray, Mighty Lord, to you, and make these signs your Prophet has given to us." And with that, she repeated the blessing ritual, and raised her hands to the sky, and head too, and then bowed to the invisible, the Lord of Justice on high in the hosts of heaven.
The prayer done, she stepped aside to receive the thanks of the Chancellor, who had officially provided the invitation and called the representatives to order, and then the Clerk of the Council as well, before turning and leaving the dias which was now given over to the Chancellor. It had been short and succinct, and Ilavna had only hoped that, considering the limited time she had for both the speech and the prayer, that she'd chosen her words well. After all, it would surely receive some publicity, and her spirit hoped it all good, for there could be no more prestigious representative situation for her faith.
The overt reaction was, of course, a polite applause from the Council, an applause that was generally unanimous. They had listened to the prayer attentatively and patiently and had generally treated Illavna well. Inwardly, of course, for a number the religion on display was still somewhat obscure to their minds, and trust and respect for the culture she represented not universal.
From the visitors' gallery the applause was mostly centered where Jhayka and the others were seated, not all visitors applauding at all, and some having spent the entire prayer ritual conversing with each other and even mocking what was occurring, though they did not speak aloud due to the likely consequence being security tossing them out. For her part, Dani applauded especially well; Jhayka may have been clear reason for her conversion, but it was Illavna that was the heart of it.
"Do you think it will be received well?" Jhayka asked, happy and apprehensive at once as the applause faded away, not noticing the other guests with less dignified reactions and more interested in the consideration. "She did very well, of that there's no doubt, and I'm quite proud of her, but, how do her words sound to the human heart? You excepted, my dearest Danielle," she added with a soft laugh, and glancing more toward Fayza for her opinion.
"I don't think she could've done any better," Fayza replied succinctly, fidgeting in her chair as the legislative day began with the Chancellor giving a short statement from President Dale and the Government, mostly concerned with the more trivial matters of government that were of little concern to the government.
"Then I'm quite content," Jhayka replied.
MacKenzie finished the opening statements and announced she was ready to present new petitions to the Council. At that moment a number of individuals spoke up, and she gave the floor to Rep. Irina Bukosky, the Federalist Representative of Russia LRC-19. Bukosky was a small woman of lithe frame and dark hair, a former lawyer with her husband a ranking civil servant in the Russian government and her children all school-age. When she spoke in English, as the language of business in the Alliance, it was with a slighter accent than most, but still pronounced. "I would like to submit to the Council's consideration the following resolution," and with a touch of a button it was revealed as a short, but well-put, message of condolence to the Talorans on the deaths they'd suffered on the Slashahkimmar and a condemnation of the Caliphate for "continued ineffectiveness in dealing with the long-standing pirate threat".
The resolution was promptly seconded by Rep. James Pollack of the USA SE-1, a relatively new Representative from USA SE-1. At that point a Democrat - Anastase Marconnet of France LRC-19 - asked to be heard and was granted the floor.
"I have no objection to the resolution's main text and purpose," the French brunette announced, blue eyes glinting in the light of the Council Chamber, "but I oppose the addition of a wholly unnecessary note that unfairly condemns a sovereign state that has done all it can to suppress piracy against tremendous domestic pressures. If Mrs. Bukosky does not remove that term I move that the resolution be laid upon the table."
There was a gentle rustling in the Council, mostly members murmuring to each other. Bukosky muttered something in her native tongue and then, aloud, proclaimed, "I will remove nothing! The Caliphate has failed in its duty and its obligations and must be punished for it, verbally and if need be physically."
Marconnet's motion to lay on the table was then made, and seconded by the one member of the Pax Party who had managed to survive the '62 elections - Rep. Gabrielle Dupont of the Canopian Federation of Universe PA-6 - and the vote to lay on the table was held. It failed by a vote of 80-25, showing just how irritated most Council Reps were with Marconnet's ploy. A vote of a similar breadth, 75-30, passed the Bukosky Resolution, with the thirty dissenting votes being mostly leftist Democrats as well as Rep. Dupont, but with a surprising element: three of the five Freedom Party Representatives.
Had Bukosky simply wanted to extend condolences to the slain Talorans of the Slashahkimmar, the resolution would likely have been unanimous, but she had - for quite different reasons than stated - added the term condemning the Caliphate. By doing so, every Democrat who'd voted no had opened themselves for political attack, even if they would undoubtedly argue the unnecessary terms as being unacceptable. And such were the games that election-year politics could cause.
"I'm very surprised that they've decided to recognize my poor crew," Drishalras sighed softly, looking over the legislators. "A very nice sentiment on their part, at least, with most of them civilized." She was somewhat surprised when Jhayka didn't answer, but Drishalras was by far the most naive of them and it hadn't really occurred to her to expect full support for such a measure; or in short the human legislature had simply lived up to her own low expectations.
The Chancellor did the formal process of having the Clerk take down the decision and the votes of each Representative and communicating the outcome to be transmitted through the appropriate channels. This work done, MacKenzie again allowed for business to be brought to her attention.
The man who stood up, Lewis Stanton of the Midwest Federation FHI-8, was a Freedom Party Representative. "Madame Chancellor, I submit for the attention of the Council the following resolution, of which the relevant legal text will be viewable now, but which I will summarize for you; a formal demand by the Alliance Council that the President of the Allied Nations perform his duty to the innocent freed slaves of Devenshire and to the findings of the Kelling Tribunal, and proclaim as persona non grata the Butcher of umm-Kashrash."
Now that brought some grumbling, and it was clear that Stanton was intentionally introducing this in front of the visiting Talorans - on the day set aside for Illavna's prayer - as a political declaration of hostility. "Will anyone second?" MacKenzie asked.
Instead of seconding, the first person to stand was a Democrat, Rupert Cresting of the United Kingdom AR-12, who pointed a finger at Stanton. "I move that the Council strike this entire shameful display from the record! This is nothing more than a political ploy by Mr. Stanton...." Cresting's heated remark and act of standing up without formally asking for the floor led to a variety of calls from the Council, with Federalists and some Democrats cheering Cresting on and others demanding that the Chancellor call him to order.
And that is precisely what MacKenzie did, the protocol of the situation completely clear. "Mr. Cresting, you are out of order," she asserted hotly.
Cresting took his seat, and MacKenzie called upon Dupont, who somewhat surprisingly voted to second Stanton's resolution; it was not often that the aggressive, semi-militaristic Freedom Party agreed with the pacifist, anti-military Pax Party.
MacKenzie now looked for opposition, and again Cresting was the first to stand. She recognized him and granted him the floor and he erupted in fury. "In the history of parliamentary intercourse that I have long studied, my mind boggles to find a single incident as disgusting, as puerile, and as revolting as this! Mr. Stanton's resolution is nothing more than an attempt at cheaply inflaming political passions and proving his loyalty to his party boss Bloody Elijah! I move that the Council reject the mere notion of entertaining such a...."
"I never thought I would see the day when a Representative of this Council defended a war criminal!" Stanton erupted, leaning forward in his seat. "There is nothing cheap or political about this, this is about justice for murdered civilians which can only be had by Priscilla Laurentii dangling on a noose!"
Applause broke out from some quarters, and from others, sharp cries for MacKenzie to declare Stanton out of order had started the moment he broke out shouting, while Stanton continued by declarations of "this is the best I can sadly do" that were mostly drowned out due to those around him being among the loudest to see him put down. A sharp sound came from MacKenzie's place at the raised dais as she brought them back to order. "Mr. Stanton, you are out of order," she said.
Stanton became silent and the tumult briefly died down. Cresting asked, "Madame Chancellor, given that Mr. Stanton's ridiculous motion is not even worthy of the consideration merited by being laid upon the table, I move that the Council vote to reject it entirely."
"Very well. I..."
"Madame Chancellor, I insist that you allow for my motion to be fully considered by the Council!" Stanton declared from his chair. "It is not common practice for a proposal to be rejected unless none second it, and to do such...."
"This idiotic proposal is not common!" an accented voice called out, identifiable by accent as Valentino Juarez of Venezuela AR-12 - a Federalist - who's remark set off demands for both him and Stanton to be called to order.
Before those calls could reach any kind of crescendo, a clearly exasperated MacKenzie ordered both to order, and thus with them silenced, she sighed and called for someone to second Cresting's rejection motion. That vote was found from Bukosky.
So the voting began on Cresting's motion to outright reject Stanton's motion, which was deemed irregular as legislation lacking in support despite being presented was usually tabled, not rejected. As the call for a vote was held, Stanton shouted, "This is a gross violation of Council protocol and is appeasement conduct worthy of Chamberlain! Perhaps the Government should move those treaty talks to Munich!" This provoked another slew of shouts for Stanton to be returned to order.
"Mr. Stanton, you are out of order again and if you insist on this behavior I will have you expelled from this session!", MacKenzie retorted.
"Yes, Madame Chancellor, I shall obey," Stanton replied sarcastically, taking his seat again.
The voting finished; by a vote of 88-17 the Stanton resolution was rejected from Council consideration. A most curious thing was revealed by the voting, however, in that the Freedom Party did not vote as a bloc as was usual for such charged issues; two members, Rep. Anthony Ducelli of the Republic of Texas FHI-8 and Rep. Emilie Dux of France AR-12, voted in favor of rejecting Stanton's resolution. And this, if anything, drew the attention and curiosity of those who voted.
Jhayka had been drumming her fingers on the armrest of her chair the whole while, as Drishalras looked on with a paranoid look which might seem to Danielle and Fayza like she was vaguely afraid someone was going to come up into the gallery and hang her. At the conclusion of the vote, however, Jhayka flourished a triumphal sort of grin of exagerrated magnitude, flicking her ears lightly and grasping in hand the swagger stick she held like an old friend to rap against the armrest with a flourish, making a noise sort of like a light cough which was lost in the usual background noise of the chamber. "And that, my dear, is democracy--in action!" She concluded with a shake of her head. "Like it or hate it, it's very entertaining."
MacKenzie was now free to resume the discussion of any new business before getting on to other standing matters of legislation, and she prompted another figure to stand, a fellow Democrat. Rep. Andrea Samari, Italy SRC-19, stood to his full height and with the touch of a button transmitted text to the rest of the Council. "I wish to introduce an amendment to the standing Presidential Security Powers Act of 2152, to be transmitted to the Council Committee on Security, that restricts the powers of the President in issuing Presidential Travel Writs in light of recent abuses of this power by the standing President."
It wasn't explicitly said, but the Council Representatives present knew what was being talked about, and MacKenzie sighed. She sympathized with Samari's unwavering hostility to the Federalists and to Dale, who was rather disliked among a number of Democrats who believed he betrayed their political support for his various promotions in the Mamatmas Administration when, in 2161, he declared himself a Federalist after years of fence-sitting and began his campaign for the Federalist nomination for President. But his timing, while clearly meant to further rally the Democratic Party to oppose the Federalists in the coming year and to punish Dale for various transgressions, was clearly uncalled for. "Why did you not bring this up to Representative Barzani for Committee consideration first?" she asked, referring to Rep. Cami Barzani (Fed.-Kurdistan AR-12), who chaired the Committee on Alliance Security that oversaw the legislative end of the Alliance intelligence and security services.
"Representative Barzani received a copy of my submitted amendment last month," Samari claimed, with an innocent grin on his face. "She told me that I needed to have other members of the Committee agree to submit it to an open Committee session. They have not yet done so."
There was an irritated grumble from a few quarters. MacKenzie sighed. "Then, Mr. Samari, I will allow you to ask the Council to instruct the Committee on Security to consider your amendment in session and report to the Council their findings."
"Consider my amendment modified to be such a request," Samari said happily.
MacKenzie called for a seconding, and - unsurprisingly - one came from Stanton, which probably did more to illustrate to Jhayka and the others the true tenor of Samari's amendment than anything they'd heard so far. MacKenzie called for an opposition voice. A number of Federalists offered to respond, but Barzani herself. She was wearing a traditional shawl over her head and a dress adorned in Kurdish fashion, being a practicing Sunni Muslim and a favored Kurdish politician, the widow of a leading politician of Kurdistan assassinated about twelve years prior by extremists who opposed his successful bid to Alliance membership (though back home many suspected the assassination as being sponsered by Turkey).
"I read Mr. Samari's proposed amendment," she said aloud to the Council. "I also read his statements to the media. This amendment which he wishes passed is wholly unnecessary in the long run, a partisan move by a partisan man to exploit a temporary situation. President Dale has not failed to notify the Council's Committee on Alliance Security and relevant governments of those Talorans who, due to the current state of affairs regarding Taloran passport practices, were being granted Presidential Travel Writs. He has made it clear, on numerous occasions, that the measure is a temporary fix that the upcoming negotiations will render unnecessary to continue for longer. There is no need for a change in the law." Barzani did not move to lay the request on the table, mostly because such a thing wasn't really in line with the protocol; it was no longer a resolution but simply an affair of business involving a Council committee. She sat politely, and MacKenzie called the matter to a vote.
The vote was narrower than those prior, as a number of Democrats who had not been swept up in Marconnet's disapproval of "unfair diplomacy" or Stanton's incensed and entirely self-serving righteous anger were swayed by the more pleasant, reasonable-sounding Samari, and their own latent anger at Dale betraying their party in '61. They were obviously joined by the three Freedom Party members led by Stanton, with Ducelli and Dux again breaking ranks, by Dupont of the Pax Party in what was another aberration from that party's usual voting stances, and by the entire bloc of LFPD (La Front Progrès Democratique) who, as Democratic-Socialists, did not like the Talorans at all or the Dale Administration. The Federalists supported their President whole-heartedly, and the four Alliance-Unionists - being absolute free trade supporters who approved of Dale's action as facilitating free trade with the Taloran Empire - backed them, as did the two Freedom Party dissenters and an appreciable portion of the Democrats, mostly the moderate Democrats who were not so antagonistic to Dale as Samari was. In the end the vote was a firm 45-60, a slight majority rejecting Samari's attempt to compel the Committee to consider his amendment. Some of those who voted that way may not have if not for the presence of the Talorans in the visitors' gallery, but no one wanted to grievously harm the government's position with the talks having not yet begun.
Samari took his defeat in stride. He'd made the noise he wanted, and the press would still pick it up. He would keep pushing for the rest of the year if he had to in order to insure that the Democrats regained the plurality of the Council in November.
Thankfully - at least for MacKenzie - the next Representative she called had a mundane issue at hand, and so the excitement seemed to subside.
"And they run a government like this?" Drishalras muttered softly. "These are points of contention for sovereigns, or internal administrative affairs."
"And they disagree, love," Jhayka replied. "Which is what this is really all about. Finding some sort of common ground." She stretched a bit lazily. "Come on. I want to figure out what they've gone and done to Ilavna and then head back to the Hays-Adams. We have seen enough of a legislature in action. Now that the grandstanding is finished, it is just parliamentary manoeuvring of the sort I'm used to in the Convocate. Danielle, dearest? Fayza? I trust no objections?"
"I have to sit through this kind of thing in the House of Lords back on Gilead," Dani muttered, having seemed to doze a little. "I'm all for heading out now."
"As am I," Fay muttered. "If I ever even get the idea of joining a legislature, I want one of you to shoot me."
"I've been assured by Priscilla that she has no intention of forming one for Eleutheria, to quote, 'let's leave them to themselves, this is hard enough without a layer of...'" Jhayka's ears twitched. "What followed was quite inappropriate for these hallowed halls." And with that she rose, and led them out of the viewing gallery with their security guards dutifully in tow.
They found Ilavna conversing with a staffer in the back rooms, and having picked up the girl--who seemed a bit exhausted from the nervous tension of her role--headed down to the carpark. There were a couple 'religion in government is wrong' people with signs, and a slightly larger but still small group with 'alien gods go away' signs which Jhayka frowned at as they were driving off. "It's still rather strange to see people protesting against religion in government. Even the communards want that. Especially them," she added with a twinge of bitterness borne of hard experience. "The others are probably very traditional, aren't they, from a less tolerant Earth religion?"
"There are a lot of people who hate any religious involvement in government and insist on complete seperation of church and state," Fayza pointed out.
"The rest are probably crazy fundies from the boondocks who hate any of 'them durn foreigners and lesbos'," Dani muttered, staring out at the signs, including one group that, given the nature of their placards, predicted God's vengeance upon the ungodly Talorans for tolerating homosexuality.
"Ahh," Jhayka answered as they were leaving the area. "Well, we can only do so much about those opinions among humans. At least they do not exist, and have never existed, back at home."
The extended family entered the lobby of the hotel casually. They barely got half the distance to the elevator when a male voice called out, "Dani!"
Everyone turned toward the source of the voice. Two of their security guards were flanking him, a man in a buttoned shirt and trousers with a tanned complexion. His eyes met Dani's and she gasped in recognition. A big smile came to her face and she squealed, "Dad!"
Raphael Verdes' arms opened wide to catch his daughter as she ran into him, giving him a tight hug. "Woh, I guess you've healed enough that you can do that," he chuckled, holding his daughter close as she clasped onto him.
Jhayka and Drishalras were struck right through. It was a natural response. They were Danielle's family now, and for all that they were happy that this had happened, they were also caught flat-footed. Jhayka, though, realized that introductions came before a frantic effort to prepare a suite and see about meals. So she brushed a hand along Drishalras' back and approached first, limping with the aide of her cane, this moment being one where her lack of eyes hurt her. She realized it left her more distance, and she hoped it wouldn't leave her intimidating to a man whom her beloved loved very much, and to whom all of her nature indicated she must respect.
Dani had let go of the hug a few moments after hearing Jhayka's cane making it's customary sound on the well-kept floor. "Dad, um.... this is Jhayka."
Raphael kept an arm on Dani's shoulders, looking eye to eye, or rather eye to stigmatic implant, with Jhayka. "My daughter-in-law." He seemed taken aback for a moment, since Jhayka - even when her eyes were intact - was hardly asthetically pleasing to human senses. "Nice to meet you finally. I'm sorry I missed the wedding. I..."
"It's quite alright, Sir," Jhayka answered in a, well, meek fashion. "The distance was a very arduous one, and the circumstances unusual. We'd planned for things to be different, but..." She glanced toward Danielle and then back. "Well, war is rather capricious," she finished at last. "I owe you so much, though, for bringing such a wonderful person into this world. Your daughter gave me reason to hope again." It was perhaps uncomfortably public for a lobby like that, but Jhayka, certainly, was not going to ruin the moment with such a consideration.
"I don't suppose your people have the tradition of the father giving away the bride either," Raphael answered somewhat sullenly, revealing that now-crushed, decades-old dream of one day walking his daughter down the aisle. "I.... I'm happy you're all okay. Sara Proctor tried to keep me informed, but it was clear she was busy with other responsibilities and... Agnes started screening our calls and mail. She didn't want any news and she didn't want me to get any news."
"How is Mom?" Dani asked in a very cautious, careful tone. "And Dominic?"
"Dominic's doing fine last I saw him," Raphael said in a very, very painful sounding way.
"Dad?" Dani could sense something was wrong by the way her father was speaking. "....Mom wouldn't have come, not for this. Where is she? What's going on?
Tears had started to form in those pained brown eyes. "When your message got to us last month, about getting married...." Raphael swallowed painfully. "Your mother caught it. She threw it in my face and spent an hour screaming at me for 'sending you to Hell'. She thinks that if she'd gotten to you while you were young, had the Church put you through the wringer, you'd still be straight, and that my encouragement for you to go into the Navy damned you. I left, angry, had some drinks with the guys at work, and when I got home..." He extended his arms helplessly. "All of my clothes were in a pile on the lawn. She told me to stay away, even called the local parish and started a petition for an annulment."
A horrified look crossed Dani's face. "Dad, no, she couldn't...."
Tears were starting to stream down his face. "She doesn't love me anymore, Dani. She... she hates us both."
Dani put her arms around her father again, tears in both their faces now. "And... Dominic?"
"She won't let me see him, she's suing for sole custody," Dominic said softly. "I... I can't afford a lawyer, Dani. And she's got half the parish on her side."
Jhayka looked helpless at this moment, though she didn't dare glance back at Drishalras, who equally felt at distance from the situation. Marriages just weren't supposed to collapse like that, were they? Jhayka wanted to be a source of strength for Danielle but really it was just getting to be to much for her to process, and it very much reminded her that she had married an alien. All the same at heart. It's just culture. But I never expected her mother--her mother!--to turn against her like that. She brought herself one step forward, and paused there, ears flattened back and her face morose. She waited, silently, knowing she couldn't interrupt but wanting in some way to make the bittersweet reunion easier.
"I'll get you a lawyer. I'll pay for a dream team of lawyers if I have to," Dani growled. "I won't let Mom destroy him, and that's what she'll do. She'll terrify him to death."
"I've got a few hundred on me, the last bit I could get out of the account before she got the bank to remove my access," Raphael said. "Found a live-in efficiency I can afford for a week or so, maybe I can find a Labor Ready job..."
"Dad!" Dani shook her head angrily. "I'm sure we have space here, and you're not going out to do hard labor for pennies! I'll take care of you."
"Of course we have space. We'll give him the Presidential Suite," Jhayka spoke up at last, much more confident now. Or at least on somewhat more familiar ground. "Come on, Sir. Let me show to the conference rooms we have laid out. I'll see about having my chief of staff arrange things immediately. You're my father in law, and it's, well, the least that I can do in the circumstances."
Raphael accepted that completely, and in such a way as to make clear that he was, for the most part, a man with a broken heart, his entire world lost to him.
Jhayka was feeling morose, for all the prior excitement over Ilavna's success. She couldn't help it, as, tapping her cane lightly, she led them back along to the conference rooms in the secured part of the hotel where, no doubt, Priscilla would be working dutifully as she always was. Drishalras followed, alone among the others, feeling like family and like she should be there for her korana, but strongly suspecting that nobody had ever quite explained her, or how she fit into the picture, and that now was not the time to add it.
27 March 2165 AST
54 Valeria, I.Y. 618
The Alliance Council had grown steadily since the original 20 Representatives and 1st Chancellor - the late Nicolas Mamatmas - had first held session in July 2144 AST. It had doubled it's number within the first ten years... and then more than doubled again in the following 10. Now 105 Representatives stood in its ranks, with one or two more possibly to join in the following election cycle.
This was no ordinary Council session either. After their brief spring recess that served as the halfway point of the first session of the year, the Council would recess for the summer months - starting in May - and not return to session until late July unless an emergency session was to be called. Then they'd continue their lawmaking all the way to December, by which time the November elections would be held and some of them would be faced with leaving the Council when 2166 dawned. And it was those elections that made the session special, as all year long the Representatives would be keenly aware of the media polls and the online straw polls and all the other things back home that would gauge the year's election race. The Federalists - President Dale's party ostensibly - were seeking to turn their plurality into an actual majority, while the Democrats were hoping to chip away at that brief upsurge of the Federalists in the '59 and '62 elections and regain their solid plurality of the earlier Mamatmas years. At the fringes were the various "minor" parties - the Front for Democratic Progress, the Pax Party, the National Powers Party, the Alliance Unionists - that were hoping to maybe add a seat or two in the nations where they happened to be strong, thus ensuring that they would have potential influence with any continued non-majority Council.
The day's session began in the usual fashion. Chancellor MacKenzie, who was in her final year of a 12 year term as Chancellor, called the Representatives to order, and the Clerk of the Council called the roll. When this was over, the Clerk called upon the guest speaker to deliver the day's prayer on behalf of the religious members of the Council.
"The little girl who asked me such brilliant questions when she could first think, whilst sitting on my lap at holiday celebrations," Jhayka remarked eagerly, "Has come a very long way indeed!" One could certainly forgive her the excitement, ears very attentive, as they sat in a fairly small party, Jhayka having insisted to make the trip with a few of their number, that morning, to see Ilavna make her short speech and give her prayer as the guest priest of the opening of the council's session after the spring recess. "Do you remember how innocent she was, when you first met her, my dearheart?" She queried to Danielle, with all the fondness of an aunt. It was strange how the girl, as a servant, caused such emotions in Jhayka, but the impression had been given that most servant families, serving the same nobility for generations, were treated very much as part of the family in many respects.
Dani remembered Illavna's former innocence well, and she replied, "Of course. I wish she hadn't lost so much of it, even if she's still the same, sweet Illavna I remember." She kept her voice down consciously as Illavna came up upon the prayer, dressed in a business-like blouse and jacket with calf-length skirt; Fay, sitting nearby, was dressed similarly, and simply looking on with a slight smile at the event.
"We all left something behind on Gilead," Jhayka answered quietly, and then also fell silent.
Ilavna was dressed in formal priestly robes covered in pictograms of the Seal Script, done in crimson red against light blue. They were quite impressive, with her blue hair falling down behind her, and her figure was striking in the chamber. She stood calmly for a moment, composing herself, for in truth she was very nervous. She had not regularly given sermons, let alone this sort of thing, ever, though she'd been trained for it. And Jhayka stood watching her. But she had to begin, and so she did.
"Assembled legislators of the Alliance of Democratic Nations, I thank you for the invitation to lead you in prayer before the one God, supreme Divinity of the universe entire. This comes at an historic moment for our peoples in which a chance for peaceful cooperation has been extended. To the Farzian we could think of no better thing. Long have conflicts maintained hostile feelings between righteous peoples who should be turning their attentions toward Good. That we have chosen from the first to approach each other in peace is a tremendous thing. That you have chosen, in recognition of our mutual feelings about God, regardless of our race and national status, to allow me this prayer, can only be a sign of mutual respect which is the necessary herald of a good future."
"With some hesitation at the magnitude, I readily confess," she added with an embarrassed dip of her ears downward, "I find myself the representative of eighteen and a half trillion Farzians in the Empire, before more than ten trillions of many faiths in your nation. I have fought alongside your people, as I imagine you well know, and seen your faith as much as your acceptance, a tolerance which remains to us, to your compliment, astounding. You legislate over one of the most remarkable nations, united by neither religion nor culture, and yet healthy nonetheless. And for the health of that nation, then, through the wisdom of your deliberations, I do now pray."
She dipped her own head while tracing out, in air, the seal-script shapes of the traditional symbols of the blessing ritual, more complex, certainly, but in the same vein as crossing one's self. And then she spoke. "Mighty Lord of Justice, creator of all good in the universe and opponent of all evil, I pray as your humble servant, that you would descend with wisdom and touch the minds of these assembled here today. Give them the resolute wisdom that they may, in all their deliberations, choose a just course. Turn all temptation away from them, and let them stand as upright examples for their whole people in knowledge and moderation. May they always do what is right for the people that they have been chosen to represent, never failing their needs, and always through reasonable concourse seeing to the collective health of their State. This I do pray, Mighty Lord, to you, and make these signs your Prophet has given to us." And with that, she repeated the blessing ritual, and raised her hands to the sky, and head too, and then bowed to the invisible, the Lord of Justice on high in the hosts of heaven.
The prayer done, she stepped aside to receive the thanks of the Chancellor, who had officially provided the invitation and called the representatives to order, and then the Clerk of the Council as well, before turning and leaving the dias which was now given over to the Chancellor. It had been short and succinct, and Ilavna had only hoped that, considering the limited time she had for both the speech and the prayer, that she'd chosen her words well. After all, it would surely receive some publicity, and her spirit hoped it all good, for there could be no more prestigious representative situation for her faith.
The overt reaction was, of course, a polite applause from the Council, an applause that was generally unanimous. They had listened to the prayer attentatively and patiently and had generally treated Illavna well. Inwardly, of course, for a number the religion on display was still somewhat obscure to their minds, and trust and respect for the culture she represented not universal.
From the visitors' gallery the applause was mostly centered where Jhayka and the others were seated, not all visitors applauding at all, and some having spent the entire prayer ritual conversing with each other and even mocking what was occurring, though they did not speak aloud due to the likely consequence being security tossing them out. For her part, Dani applauded especially well; Jhayka may have been clear reason for her conversion, but it was Illavna that was the heart of it.
"Do you think it will be received well?" Jhayka asked, happy and apprehensive at once as the applause faded away, not noticing the other guests with less dignified reactions and more interested in the consideration. "She did very well, of that there's no doubt, and I'm quite proud of her, but, how do her words sound to the human heart? You excepted, my dearest Danielle," she added with a soft laugh, and glancing more toward Fayza for her opinion.
"I don't think she could've done any better," Fayza replied succinctly, fidgeting in her chair as the legislative day began with the Chancellor giving a short statement from President Dale and the Government, mostly concerned with the more trivial matters of government that were of little concern to the government.
"Then I'm quite content," Jhayka replied.
MacKenzie finished the opening statements and announced she was ready to present new petitions to the Council. At that moment a number of individuals spoke up, and she gave the floor to Rep. Irina Bukosky, the Federalist Representative of Russia LRC-19. Bukosky was a small woman of lithe frame and dark hair, a former lawyer with her husband a ranking civil servant in the Russian government and her children all school-age. When she spoke in English, as the language of business in the Alliance, it was with a slighter accent than most, but still pronounced. "I would like to submit to the Council's consideration the following resolution," and with a touch of a button it was revealed as a short, but well-put, message of condolence to the Talorans on the deaths they'd suffered on the Slashahkimmar and a condemnation of the Caliphate for "continued ineffectiveness in dealing with the long-standing pirate threat".
The resolution was promptly seconded by Rep. James Pollack of the USA SE-1, a relatively new Representative from USA SE-1. At that point a Democrat - Anastase Marconnet of France LRC-19 - asked to be heard and was granted the floor.
"I have no objection to the resolution's main text and purpose," the French brunette announced, blue eyes glinting in the light of the Council Chamber, "but I oppose the addition of a wholly unnecessary note that unfairly condemns a sovereign state that has done all it can to suppress piracy against tremendous domestic pressures. If Mrs. Bukosky does not remove that term I move that the resolution be laid upon the table."
There was a gentle rustling in the Council, mostly members murmuring to each other. Bukosky muttered something in her native tongue and then, aloud, proclaimed, "I will remove nothing! The Caliphate has failed in its duty and its obligations and must be punished for it, verbally and if need be physically."
Marconnet's motion to lay on the table was then made, and seconded by the one member of the Pax Party who had managed to survive the '62 elections - Rep. Gabrielle Dupont of the Canopian Federation of Universe PA-6 - and the vote to lay on the table was held. It failed by a vote of 80-25, showing just how irritated most Council Reps were with Marconnet's ploy. A vote of a similar breadth, 75-30, passed the Bukosky Resolution, with the thirty dissenting votes being mostly leftist Democrats as well as Rep. Dupont, but with a surprising element: three of the five Freedom Party Representatives.
Had Bukosky simply wanted to extend condolences to the slain Talorans of the Slashahkimmar, the resolution would likely have been unanimous, but she had - for quite different reasons than stated - added the term condemning the Caliphate. By doing so, every Democrat who'd voted no had opened themselves for political attack, even if they would undoubtedly argue the unnecessary terms as being unacceptable. And such were the games that election-year politics could cause.
"I'm very surprised that they've decided to recognize my poor crew," Drishalras sighed softly, looking over the legislators. "A very nice sentiment on their part, at least, with most of them civilized." She was somewhat surprised when Jhayka didn't answer, but Drishalras was by far the most naive of them and it hadn't really occurred to her to expect full support for such a measure; or in short the human legislature had simply lived up to her own low expectations.
The Chancellor did the formal process of having the Clerk take down the decision and the votes of each Representative and communicating the outcome to be transmitted through the appropriate channels. This work done, MacKenzie again allowed for business to be brought to her attention.
The man who stood up, Lewis Stanton of the Midwest Federation FHI-8, was a Freedom Party Representative. "Madame Chancellor, I submit for the attention of the Council the following resolution, of which the relevant legal text will be viewable now, but which I will summarize for you; a formal demand by the Alliance Council that the President of the Allied Nations perform his duty to the innocent freed slaves of Devenshire and to the findings of the Kelling Tribunal, and proclaim as persona non grata the Butcher of umm-Kashrash."
Now that brought some grumbling, and it was clear that Stanton was intentionally introducing this in front of the visiting Talorans - on the day set aside for Illavna's prayer - as a political declaration of hostility. "Will anyone second?" MacKenzie asked.
Instead of seconding, the first person to stand was a Democrat, Rupert Cresting of the United Kingdom AR-12, who pointed a finger at Stanton. "I move that the Council strike this entire shameful display from the record! This is nothing more than a political ploy by Mr. Stanton...." Cresting's heated remark and act of standing up without formally asking for the floor led to a variety of calls from the Council, with Federalists and some Democrats cheering Cresting on and others demanding that the Chancellor call him to order.
And that is precisely what MacKenzie did, the protocol of the situation completely clear. "Mr. Cresting, you are out of order," she asserted hotly.
Cresting took his seat, and MacKenzie called upon Dupont, who somewhat surprisingly voted to second Stanton's resolution; it was not often that the aggressive, semi-militaristic Freedom Party agreed with the pacifist, anti-military Pax Party.
MacKenzie now looked for opposition, and again Cresting was the first to stand. She recognized him and granted him the floor and he erupted in fury. "In the history of parliamentary intercourse that I have long studied, my mind boggles to find a single incident as disgusting, as puerile, and as revolting as this! Mr. Stanton's resolution is nothing more than an attempt at cheaply inflaming political passions and proving his loyalty to his party boss Bloody Elijah! I move that the Council reject the mere notion of entertaining such a...."
"I never thought I would see the day when a Representative of this Council defended a war criminal!" Stanton erupted, leaning forward in his seat. "There is nothing cheap or political about this, this is about justice for murdered civilians which can only be had by Priscilla Laurentii dangling on a noose!"
Applause broke out from some quarters, and from others, sharp cries for MacKenzie to declare Stanton out of order had started the moment he broke out shouting, while Stanton continued by declarations of "this is the best I can sadly do" that were mostly drowned out due to those around him being among the loudest to see him put down. A sharp sound came from MacKenzie's place at the raised dais as she brought them back to order. "Mr. Stanton, you are out of order," she said.
Stanton became silent and the tumult briefly died down. Cresting asked, "Madame Chancellor, given that Mr. Stanton's ridiculous motion is not even worthy of the consideration merited by being laid upon the table, I move that the Council vote to reject it entirely."
"Very well. I..."
"Madame Chancellor, I insist that you allow for my motion to be fully considered by the Council!" Stanton declared from his chair. "It is not common practice for a proposal to be rejected unless none second it, and to do such...."
"This idiotic proposal is not common!" an accented voice called out, identifiable by accent as Valentino Juarez of Venezuela AR-12 - a Federalist - who's remark set off demands for both him and Stanton to be called to order.
Before those calls could reach any kind of crescendo, a clearly exasperated MacKenzie ordered both to order, and thus with them silenced, she sighed and called for someone to second Cresting's rejection motion. That vote was found from Bukosky.
So the voting began on Cresting's motion to outright reject Stanton's motion, which was deemed irregular as legislation lacking in support despite being presented was usually tabled, not rejected. As the call for a vote was held, Stanton shouted, "This is a gross violation of Council protocol and is appeasement conduct worthy of Chamberlain! Perhaps the Government should move those treaty talks to Munich!" This provoked another slew of shouts for Stanton to be returned to order.
"Mr. Stanton, you are out of order again and if you insist on this behavior I will have you expelled from this session!", MacKenzie retorted.
"Yes, Madame Chancellor, I shall obey," Stanton replied sarcastically, taking his seat again.
The voting finished; by a vote of 88-17 the Stanton resolution was rejected from Council consideration. A most curious thing was revealed by the voting, however, in that the Freedom Party did not vote as a bloc as was usual for such charged issues; two members, Rep. Anthony Ducelli of the Republic of Texas FHI-8 and Rep. Emilie Dux of France AR-12, voted in favor of rejecting Stanton's resolution. And this, if anything, drew the attention and curiosity of those who voted.
Jhayka had been drumming her fingers on the armrest of her chair the whole while, as Drishalras looked on with a paranoid look which might seem to Danielle and Fayza like she was vaguely afraid someone was going to come up into the gallery and hang her. At the conclusion of the vote, however, Jhayka flourished a triumphal sort of grin of exagerrated magnitude, flicking her ears lightly and grasping in hand the swagger stick she held like an old friend to rap against the armrest with a flourish, making a noise sort of like a light cough which was lost in the usual background noise of the chamber. "And that, my dear, is democracy--in action!" She concluded with a shake of her head. "Like it or hate it, it's very entertaining."
MacKenzie was now free to resume the discussion of any new business before getting on to other standing matters of legislation, and she prompted another figure to stand, a fellow Democrat. Rep. Andrea Samari, Italy SRC-19, stood to his full height and with the touch of a button transmitted text to the rest of the Council. "I wish to introduce an amendment to the standing Presidential Security Powers Act of 2152, to be transmitted to the Council Committee on Security, that restricts the powers of the President in issuing Presidential Travel Writs in light of recent abuses of this power by the standing President."
It wasn't explicitly said, but the Council Representatives present knew what was being talked about, and MacKenzie sighed. She sympathized with Samari's unwavering hostility to the Federalists and to Dale, who was rather disliked among a number of Democrats who believed he betrayed their political support for his various promotions in the Mamatmas Administration when, in 2161, he declared himself a Federalist after years of fence-sitting and began his campaign for the Federalist nomination for President. But his timing, while clearly meant to further rally the Democratic Party to oppose the Federalists in the coming year and to punish Dale for various transgressions, was clearly uncalled for. "Why did you not bring this up to Representative Barzani for Committee consideration first?" she asked, referring to Rep. Cami Barzani (Fed.-Kurdistan AR-12), who chaired the Committee on Alliance Security that oversaw the legislative end of the Alliance intelligence and security services.
"Representative Barzani received a copy of my submitted amendment last month," Samari claimed, with an innocent grin on his face. "She told me that I needed to have other members of the Committee agree to submit it to an open Committee session. They have not yet done so."
There was an irritated grumble from a few quarters. MacKenzie sighed. "Then, Mr. Samari, I will allow you to ask the Council to instruct the Committee on Security to consider your amendment in session and report to the Council their findings."
"Consider my amendment modified to be such a request," Samari said happily.
MacKenzie called for a seconding, and - unsurprisingly - one came from Stanton, which probably did more to illustrate to Jhayka and the others the true tenor of Samari's amendment than anything they'd heard so far. MacKenzie called for an opposition voice. A number of Federalists offered to respond, but Barzani herself. She was wearing a traditional shawl over her head and a dress adorned in Kurdish fashion, being a practicing Sunni Muslim and a favored Kurdish politician, the widow of a leading politician of Kurdistan assassinated about twelve years prior by extremists who opposed his successful bid to Alliance membership (though back home many suspected the assassination as being sponsered by Turkey).
"I read Mr. Samari's proposed amendment," she said aloud to the Council. "I also read his statements to the media. This amendment which he wishes passed is wholly unnecessary in the long run, a partisan move by a partisan man to exploit a temporary situation. President Dale has not failed to notify the Council's Committee on Alliance Security and relevant governments of those Talorans who, due to the current state of affairs regarding Taloran passport practices, were being granted Presidential Travel Writs. He has made it clear, on numerous occasions, that the measure is a temporary fix that the upcoming negotiations will render unnecessary to continue for longer. There is no need for a change in the law." Barzani did not move to lay the request on the table, mostly because such a thing wasn't really in line with the protocol; it was no longer a resolution but simply an affair of business involving a Council committee. She sat politely, and MacKenzie called the matter to a vote.
The vote was narrower than those prior, as a number of Democrats who had not been swept up in Marconnet's disapproval of "unfair diplomacy" or Stanton's incensed and entirely self-serving righteous anger were swayed by the more pleasant, reasonable-sounding Samari, and their own latent anger at Dale betraying their party in '61. They were obviously joined by the three Freedom Party members led by Stanton, with Ducelli and Dux again breaking ranks, by Dupont of the Pax Party in what was another aberration from that party's usual voting stances, and by the entire bloc of LFPD (La Front Progrès Democratique) who, as Democratic-Socialists, did not like the Talorans at all or the Dale Administration. The Federalists supported their President whole-heartedly, and the four Alliance-Unionists - being absolute free trade supporters who approved of Dale's action as facilitating free trade with the Taloran Empire - backed them, as did the two Freedom Party dissenters and an appreciable portion of the Democrats, mostly the moderate Democrats who were not so antagonistic to Dale as Samari was. In the end the vote was a firm 45-60, a slight majority rejecting Samari's attempt to compel the Committee to consider his amendment. Some of those who voted that way may not have if not for the presence of the Talorans in the visitors' gallery, but no one wanted to grievously harm the government's position with the talks having not yet begun.
Samari took his defeat in stride. He'd made the noise he wanted, and the press would still pick it up. He would keep pushing for the rest of the year if he had to in order to insure that the Democrats regained the plurality of the Council in November.
Thankfully - at least for MacKenzie - the next Representative she called had a mundane issue at hand, and so the excitement seemed to subside.
"And they run a government like this?" Drishalras muttered softly. "These are points of contention for sovereigns, or internal administrative affairs."
"And they disagree, love," Jhayka replied. "Which is what this is really all about. Finding some sort of common ground." She stretched a bit lazily. "Come on. I want to figure out what they've gone and done to Ilavna and then head back to the Hays-Adams. We have seen enough of a legislature in action. Now that the grandstanding is finished, it is just parliamentary manoeuvring of the sort I'm used to in the Convocate. Danielle, dearest? Fayza? I trust no objections?"
"I have to sit through this kind of thing in the House of Lords back on Gilead," Dani muttered, having seemed to doze a little. "I'm all for heading out now."
"As am I," Fay muttered. "If I ever even get the idea of joining a legislature, I want one of you to shoot me."
"I've been assured by Priscilla that she has no intention of forming one for Eleutheria, to quote, 'let's leave them to themselves, this is hard enough without a layer of...'" Jhayka's ears twitched. "What followed was quite inappropriate for these hallowed halls." And with that she rose, and led them out of the viewing gallery with their security guards dutifully in tow.
They found Ilavna conversing with a staffer in the back rooms, and having picked up the girl--who seemed a bit exhausted from the nervous tension of her role--headed down to the carpark. There were a couple 'religion in government is wrong' people with signs, and a slightly larger but still small group with 'alien gods go away' signs which Jhayka frowned at as they were driving off. "It's still rather strange to see people protesting against religion in government. Even the communards want that. Especially them," she added with a twinge of bitterness borne of hard experience. "The others are probably very traditional, aren't they, from a less tolerant Earth religion?"
"There are a lot of people who hate any religious involvement in government and insist on complete seperation of church and state," Fayza pointed out.
"The rest are probably crazy fundies from the boondocks who hate any of 'them durn foreigners and lesbos'," Dani muttered, staring out at the signs, including one group that, given the nature of their placards, predicted God's vengeance upon the ungodly Talorans for tolerating homosexuality.
"Ahh," Jhayka answered as they were leaving the area. "Well, we can only do so much about those opinions among humans. At least they do not exist, and have never existed, back at home."
The extended family entered the lobby of the hotel casually. They barely got half the distance to the elevator when a male voice called out, "Dani!"
Everyone turned toward the source of the voice. Two of their security guards were flanking him, a man in a buttoned shirt and trousers with a tanned complexion. His eyes met Dani's and she gasped in recognition. A big smile came to her face and she squealed, "Dad!"
Raphael Verdes' arms opened wide to catch his daughter as she ran into him, giving him a tight hug. "Woh, I guess you've healed enough that you can do that," he chuckled, holding his daughter close as she clasped onto him.
Jhayka and Drishalras were struck right through. It was a natural response. They were Danielle's family now, and for all that they were happy that this had happened, they were also caught flat-footed. Jhayka, though, realized that introductions came before a frantic effort to prepare a suite and see about meals. So she brushed a hand along Drishalras' back and approached first, limping with the aide of her cane, this moment being one where her lack of eyes hurt her. She realized it left her more distance, and she hoped it wouldn't leave her intimidating to a man whom her beloved loved very much, and to whom all of her nature indicated she must respect.
Dani had let go of the hug a few moments after hearing Jhayka's cane making it's customary sound on the well-kept floor. "Dad, um.... this is Jhayka."
Raphael kept an arm on Dani's shoulders, looking eye to eye, or rather eye to stigmatic implant, with Jhayka. "My daughter-in-law." He seemed taken aback for a moment, since Jhayka - even when her eyes were intact - was hardly asthetically pleasing to human senses. "Nice to meet you finally. I'm sorry I missed the wedding. I..."
"It's quite alright, Sir," Jhayka answered in a, well, meek fashion. "The distance was a very arduous one, and the circumstances unusual. We'd planned for things to be different, but..." She glanced toward Danielle and then back. "Well, war is rather capricious," she finished at last. "I owe you so much, though, for bringing such a wonderful person into this world. Your daughter gave me reason to hope again." It was perhaps uncomfortably public for a lobby like that, but Jhayka, certainly, was not going to ruin the moment with such a consideration.
"I don't suppose your people have the tradition of the father giving away the bride either," Raphael answered somewhat sullenly, revealing that now-crushed, decades-old dream of one day walking his daughter down the aisle. "I.... I'm happy you're all okay. Sara Proctor tried to keep me informed, but it was clear she was busy with other responsibilities and... Agnes started screening our calls and mail. She didn't want any news and she didn't want me to get any news."
"How is Mom?" Dani asked in a very cautious, careful tone. "And Dominic?"
"Dominic's doing fine last I saw him," Raphael said in a very, very painful sounding way.
"Dad?" Dani could sense something was wrong by the way her father was speaking. "....Mom wouldn't have come, not for this. Where is she? What's going on?
Tears had started to form in those pained brown eyes. "When your message got to us last month, about getting married...." Raphael swallowed painfully. "Your mother caught it. She threw it in my face and spent an hour screaming at me for 'sending you to Hell'. She thinks that if she'd gotten to you while you were young, had the Church put you through the wringer, you'd still be straight, and that my encouragement for you to go into the Navy damned you. I left, angry, had some drinks with the guys at work, and when I got home..." He extended his arms helplessly. "All of my clothes were in a pile on the lawn. She told me to stay away, even called the local parish and started a petition for an annulment."
A horrified look crossed Dani's face. "Dad, no, she couldn't...."
Tears were starting to stream down his face. "She doesn't love me anymore, Dani. She... she hates us both."
Dani put her arms around her father again, tears in both their faces now. "And... Dominic?"
"She won't let me see him, she's suing for sole custody," Dominic said softly. "I... I can't afford a lawyer, Dani. And she's got half the parish on her side."
Jhayka looked helpless at this moment, though she didn't dare glance back at Drishalras, who equally felt at distance from the situation. Marriages just weren't supposed to collapse like that, were they? Jhayka wanted to be a source of strength for Danielle but really it was just getting to be to much for her to process, and it very much reminded her that she had married an alien. All the same at heart. It's just culture. But I never expected her mother--her mother!--to turn against her like that. She brought herself one step forward, and paused there, ears flattened back and her face morose. She waited, silently, knowing she couldn't interrupt but wanting in some way to make the bittersweet reunion easier.
"I'll get you a lawyer. I'll pay for a dream team of lawyers if I have to," Dani growled. "I won't let Mom destroy him, and that's what she'll do. She'll terrify him to death."
"I've got a few hundred on me, the last bit I could get out of the account before she got the bank to remove my access," Raphael said. "Found a live-in efficiency I can afford for a week or so, maybe I can find a Labor Ready job..."
"Dad!" Dani shook her head angrily. "I'm sure we have space here, and you're not going out to do hard labor for pennies! I'll take care of you."
"Of course we have space. We'll give him the Presidential Suite," Jhayka spoke up at last, much more confident now. Or at least on somewhat more familiar ground. "Come on, Sir. Let me show to the conference rooms we have laid out. I'll see about having my chief of staff arrange things immediately. You're my father in law, and it's, well, the least that I can do in the circumstances."
Raphael accepted that completely, and in such a way as to make clear that he was, for the most part, a man with a broken heart, his entire world lost to him.
Jhayka was feeling morose, for all the prior excitement over Ilavna's success. She couldn't help it, as, tapping her cane lightly, she led them back along to the conference rooms in the secured part of the hotel where, no doubt, Priscilla would be working dutifully as she always was. Drishalras followed, alone among the others, feeling like family and like she should be there for her korana, but strongly suspecting that nobody had ever quite explained her, or how she fit into the picture, and that now was not the time to add it.
Last edited by Steve on 2007-12-11 06:48pm, 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
Branch Ave. Metro Station (Green Line), Prince George's County
Valerie Culler was a newer employee of the Hays-Adams, though by no means completely new, and had taken the Metro home following a long day of dealing with irate customers wanting to know why they couldn't make reservations and the minor quibblings of the junior members of the Taloran delegation complaining about one thing or another; a room with a faulty faucet, another where the maid service had forgotten to bring more towels. It was nothing more than the usual grating of customers, but augmented somewhat by the clear irritaiton she and the staff caused to some of the delegation for using simple "Sir" and "Ma'am" opposed to whatever honorrific they expected. Management was trying to educate the staff on the proper forms of address, but the habit of "Sir/Ma'am" was hard to break and with most of the staff showing little desire to do so (it didn't help, on the Taloran side, that Jhayka remained either tolerant of the staff or oblivious, and that some of the other humans, especially Jhayka's human wife, didn't mind the lack of honorrific at all.
She left the Metro station and walked next door to a Roxy's fast food restaurant, where she got a burger and salad for a dinner while waiting for her ride home (a cousin who lived about ten miles away). While she sat and ate a young man came up to her and sat nearby. He looked at her and grinned. "How'd it go at work today?" he said.
"Oh, fine," she said. She'd seen him before, two days prior, hanging out just outside the hotel, where he'd introduced himself as Peter Lyle, a journalist student who was personally trying to get an in-route into the high-visibility talks. He was rather handsome, and Valerie was curious about him, though not entirely in an intimate way. "Griping aristocrats who think 'Sir' and 'Ma'am' are insults and not polite talk, and a host of favored customers who are threatening to take their business elsewhere because management won't allow any reservations to be made for the rest of the year. Though, there was one thing...."
"Oh?"
"Mrs. Verdes-Intuit's father showed up, out of the blue. He was crying about something..." Valerie shrugged. "Looked more like some poor broken guy than the dad of a wealthy aristocrat. I do know that she talked about hiring lawyers. 'I won't let Mom destroy him' or something."
"Hrm, really." Peter smiled widely. "That's kinda cool to know. See you around, Valerie."
"See you Pete," she called out to him as he left.
When Peter got out to his navy blue sedan, he sat into it and started up the electrocell engine. The soft hum filled his ears for a moment as he reached for a cell phone and went for his speed-dial. The number on the other end was to the Christian Association for Family Values, an inter-denominational non-profit activist group that supported the usual line-up of "family values". When the other end came to a recorded greeting for leaving a voice mail, he waited for the beep and said, "Hey, this is Pete Lyle. I found out that Duchess Danielle Verdes' parents have apparently split up and she's going to throw a wad of money into getting her dad custody of her baby brother. You might want to give a heads up to Agnes Verdes and see about getting this into the news. I'll talk to you later in the week."
There were, of course, other avenues to pursue, but this would certainly rile up some of the protest groups and stir further controversy, and the more loudness and controversy and insults, the more likely that Peter Lundsen's mission would succeed and that there would never be a lasting agreement, or peace, between the Alliance and the Talorans.
Valerie Culler was a newer employee of the Hays-Adams, though by no means completely new, and had taken the Metro home following a long day of dealing with irate customers wanting to know why they couldn't make reservations and the minor quibblings of the junior members of the Taloran delegation complaining about one thing or another; a room with a faulty faucet, another where the maid service had forgotten to bring more towels. It was nothing more than the usual grating of customers, but augmented somewhat by the clear irritaiton she and the staff caused to some of the delegation for using simple "Sir" and "Ma'am" opposed to whatever honorrific they expected. Management was trying to educate the staff on the proper forms of address, but the habit of "Sir/Ma'am" was hard to break and with most of the staff showing little desire to do so (it didn't help, on the Taloran side, that Jhayka remained either tolerant of the staff or oblivious, and that some of the other humans, especially Jhayka's human wife, didn't mind the lack of honorrific at all.
She left the Metro station and walked next door to a Roxy's fast food restaurant, where she got a burger and salad for a dinner while waiting for her ride home (a cousin who lived about ten miles away). While she sat and ate a young man came up to her and sat nearby. He looked at her and grinned. "How'd it go at work today?" he said.
"Oh, fine," she said. She'd seen him before, two days prior, hanging out just outside the hotel, where he'd introduced himself as Peter Lyle, a journalist student who was personally trying to get an in-route into the high-visibility talks. He was rather handsome, and Valerie was curious about him, though not entirely in an intimate way. "Griping aristocrats who think 'Sir' and 'Ma'am' are insults and not polite talk, and a host of favored customers who are threatening to take their business elsewhere because management won't allow any reservations to be made for the rest of the year. Though, there was one thing...."
"Oh?"
"Mrs. Verdes-Intuit's father showed up, out of the blue. He was crying about something..." Valerie shrugged. "Looked more like some poor broken guy than the dad of a wealthy aristocrat. I do know that she talked about hiring lawyers. 'I won't let Mom destroy him' or something."
"Hrm, really." Peter smiled widely. "That's kinda cool to know. See you around, Valerie."
"See you Pete," she called out to him as he left.
When Peter got out to his navy blue sedan, he sat into it and started up the electrocell engine. The soft hum filled his ears for a moment as he reached for a cell phone and went for his speed-dial. The number on the other end was to the Christian Association for Family Values, an inter-denominational non-profit activist group that supported the usual line-up of "family values". When the other end came to a recorded greeting for leaving a voice mail, he waited for the beep and said, "Hey, this is Pete Lyle. I found out that Duchess Danielle Verdes' parents have apparently split up and she's going to throw a wad of money into getting her dad custody of her baby brother. You might want to give a heads up to Agnes Verdes and see about getting this into the news. I'll talk to you later in the week."
There were, of course, other avenues to pursue, but this would certainly rile up some of the protest groups and stir further controversy, and the more loudness and controversy and insults, the more likely that Peter Lundsen's mission would succeed and that there would never be a lasting agreement, or peace, between the Alliance and the Talorans.
”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
28 March 2165 AST
55 Valeria, I.Y. 618
It was about 11 that night, already 28 March AST going by Greenwich time, when Fayza was laying comfortably in her bed, in a modest nightgown, the Slashahkimmar's manual in front of her and the holo-player showing Fox Interstellar news for sound. Most of it was in English, but Fayza had a Taloran-English translator on the nightstand in case she wanted to clarify the translation when it didn't make too much sense to her.
There was a rapping on the door which caught her by a bit of surprise, and she had to move the compunit she had the manual loaded upon to swing her legs off the bed. "Coming, I'm coming." She pulled the door open, and saw Drish standing at the door. "Um, Drish? What can I do for you?"
"Many apologies, Fayza, but, uh, Priscilla threw a pillow at me..." She dipped her ears looking a bit befuddled at that one rather recent recollection, and then stepped in, a duffle bag slung over one shoulder. Behind her one of the housekeepers had a fold-out bed on a wheelie and waited hesitantly for some signal that she should come in or remain outside with it. "Can I sleep in your room tonight?"
"Well, uh, sure." Fay opened the door fully and let her in. "Why? What happened? Surely you and Dani and Jhayka didn't have some kind of fight."
"Remember that Danielle's father has arrived?" She stepped in and the housekeeper followed with the bed, politely silent as she set it out--at which time Drishalras, ever courteous, handed her a Riala out of her pocket as she slung the duffle back down. The door closed behind the housekeeper, Drishalras had this somewhat embarrassed look as she elaborated. "So they needed the Presidential Suite, and since, well, nobody had explained me to Mister Verdes yet, Jhayka didn't really think it wise for me to sleep on a spare bed in their suite."
"......ah, I see," Fay said, blushing a little. "Yeah, that might come out of the blue for him right now. We'll let him settle into it." She returned to her bed. "Do you mind the noise? I like having the holo-TV playing when I'm in a hotel."
"Oh, it's not a problem," Drishalras answered, unfolding a light robe and ducking into the bathroom to change and clean herself for bed with the promise "I'll be done in a minute." She returned in, well, a few minutes, yellow eyes glancing around for a moment as she moved to sit in one of the ornate chairs. "This must be a bit strange for you, if you don't mind the conversation. I mean, coming back to the nation of your old service like this."
"Staying in a Ritz instead of a Days Inn, you mean?" Fay replied with a bit of a grin. "It is kind of weird, yeah, though I've been used to ostentatious wealth for a while."
"Well, I've always been one to minimize that, myself," Drishalras answered. "But I more sort of meant the whole thing with your representing a different government. It seems less common among humans than Talorans, though, from what I've read it was once common. A long time ago, when more of your governments were like our's."
Fayza shrugged. "I guess. Like I said weeks ago, I still hold loyalty to my home, and I'm going along with this because I think it's the best for both of us. And I suppose.... just the thought of sometime in the future the Empire and Alliance going to war is a nightmare to me. I've made my place with Jhayka and in the Empire now, but I'll always love my homeland. The thought of having to pick one.... I couldn't bear it."
"I imagine that's how people feel in civil wars," Drishalras mused. "Jhayka said she wanted to visit the field of one of the battles, ah, Antietam, which is near here, from the great old civil war of a nation in this place. She knows so much..." The Taloran girl sighed in a way which surely dreamy, and revealed just how 'young' she remained from her own perspective. "I'm very lucky to be in her life and have the chance to help make it happier."
:"You have, trust me," Fay said. "If Dani's condition hadn't been reversable.... she would've been happy to know Jhayka has someone like you."
"Well, I'm very pleased it was reversible," Drishalras answered simply. "Having her as my korana is well worth sharing Jhayka. It's funny but many people were worried that I'd be jealous..." She brushed a lock of her red bangs off her face as she stood up and went to sit on the fold-out bed instead, before, languidly, settling into it and pulling the covers over herself. Not to go to sleep, simply to be as comfortable as she could. "But though I have more than a few vices I'm not willing to give up, jealousy was never one. I think that people sometimes underestimate how aware I am of such things. Really, I'm very aware. They just have never bothered me. Why should the happiness of someone else do anything but please me as well? Envy is such a frightful emotion."
"The arrangement you three have is.... not very common for Humans. We tend to strict monogamy, and where we don't, it's usually misogynistic polygamy like from my mother's family," Fayza said. "If you weren't tired, I'd offer to have a belated sleepover," she added with a little grin."
"What's a sleepover, Fayza? And, anyway, it's not strictly common"
"A sleepover? It's a ritual for girls in our culture, starting at about age 10. We stay up all night watching movies, playing games, doing our nails, and spreading gossip Dani and I used to hold adult sleepovers all the time."
"Well, that sounds like what you'd do with your cousins and younger aunts and older nieces and so on as a Taloran, but most every night we could get away with it.." She laughed softly. "I guess that's because we have bigger families."
"Yeah, that's always the funny thing. I grew up an only daughter because my mother could never find someone," Fayza said, remembering what her mother had gone through. "She tried, but she didn't want to be property anymore and even American men can be domineering, and those that weren't.... didn't appeal to her in other ways. So it was just the two of us until I went off to the Navy."
Drishalras could only remain silent at that; it was much outside of her experience.
There was a lot of painful memories there, and Fayza was almost choking tears when she said, "I miss my Mom, Drish. I miss her so much."
Drishalras closed her eyes and ducked her head away. She, the cheerful glutton, could not think of something to say. It certainly terrified her that her mother, even Jhayka, would one day in their times die, but she knew she'd be reunited with them in turn, and leave a prosperous family behind, if she were not called sooner to the Hosts of Heaven on high. What was, among Talorans, virtually unheard family dissension to her? And for her Bohemian sentiments, she had not really experienced actual suffering once in her life. She was soft, though she had the decency to know it. At last the soft words came out: "I'm sorry, Fayza," and she could manage no more. It left her tempted to retreat back into the normal duties of a navy officer, where regulation and ritual ensconced her.
Fayza saw Drish and smiled softly. Opting to change the subject, she referred back to the the prior discussion. "So it's not common for Talorans to have more than one spouse, even if you allow it?"
"Well, a fair number are bisexual, actually, though it's become less common with the parthenogenesis technology," the Taloran Captain answered. "Still, it isn't exactly even strange for us. There's one Patrician, Trivalia Uhansdh, of the Quesadi city of Kalimpert, who has two wives. None of us remembered her at the time, though. Silly of me. Probably a couple Countesses and Baronesses... Strange enough to get people talking, even so. Though never condemning. That does, I confess, irritate me about humans. Being homosexual is a normal and fundamental part of who I am, and being told it's deviate or sinful seems so hideous, but it's commonplace around here."
"The Abrahamic religions all have pretty strict prohibitions on homosexuality, though Dani is fond of reminding me that as a sin it's technically minor," Fayza answered. "And your faith aside, I've come to view all religions as having little dark spots. Just some more than others. My mother's grandfather, father, uncles, and brothers, and even a nephew all swore to kill her on sight because she became pregnant with me and fled to America."
"The writings of the Prophet Eibermon form the absolute basis and supreme revelation among monotheistic religions," Drishalras answered, stifling a yawn. "We may sometimes seem quiet about that, but it's very fervently believed."
"So I've been told. Of course, my mother was raised to believe that about the Prophet Muhammed, who married nine year old girls. Though I believe he waited until she was twelve before consummating." Fayza gave a wane smile. "My mother still prayed to Mecca five times a day and was just a bit unsettled when I told her I wouldn't anymore."
"We are not on good relations with Islam," Drishalras replied with some understatement. "I know both you and Priscilla are not really observant, regardless, and you know well the longevity of our faith. So..." She yawned. "I'll just leave it at that, as we're not truly bothered by such people. We just find them a bit more weird than the First Empress." A lazy and slight smile was offered as she closed her eyes, her hair naturally shielding them from the soft light.
"I've never really been observant. Not since I was fourteen." Fayza settled onto the bed and went to press the control to turn it off. But for the first time she looked at the image and was surprised to see Dani. "...Dani's on TV?" She turned it up.
"....source was not identified. According to the report by the religious association, Danielle Verdes has vowed to put the money at her disposal to help her father fight for custody of young Dominic, age 1. The only comment we have gotten from family friends was by Father Puller of the Church of the Risen Savior in Burnsville, who said, 'This parish, this community, and the Church stand behind Mrs. Verdes completely and will do everything we can to ensure she is allowed to raise her son in peace.' We will bring you more as this becomes available."
"In the Lord's name..." Drishalras' ears had neatly swiveled to pick it up after Fayza's comment, and her yellow eyes had opened, following the last of the article. "Someone from in the hotel is leaking information to the press," she observed with a whiplike certitude which belied her rather laid-back and somewhat naive personality. When presented with what was, to her, obvious, she recognized it. Even if it wasn't that way to others. "Jhayka will need to know. Though not tonight. Can't do anything about it at almost the day's end, anyway." Her ears folded in irritation. "Fayza, forgive me if I have to say that Earth has not proved particularly welcoming for my family."
"I understand, Drish, I understand all too well," Fay answered softly as she turned the TV off. "I think I want to lay down now."
The Hays-Adams Hotel
"For the last time, the Duchess isn't commenting on any of this," Fayza said, exasperation showing clearly. "It's a family matter and none of your god damned business, that's why!" She smacked the vidphone to cut the line, the modern equivalent of hanging the phone up with a slam.
She looked over, gingerly, to the others. Dani was seated with her father beside her and Jhayka standing on the other side. Raphael's head was down, his hands on his temples in a rather universal posture of disbelief and frustration.
"I should have dragged you off right into the area we've swept for bugs," Jhayka commented after a moment, her voice a rather morose monotone. "But I didn't want to ruin our family's happiness. Such as it is." Her ears sticking out to the sides in their position of thoughtful consternation, she rested on her cane. "Unfortunately, we can't get heavily involved in this. It will completely distract us from the negotiations, which we cannot allow. And which, if I may be even more paranoid, may be the actual intent. There are elements in the Alliance which certainly believe that engineering the response of the populace to specific events is morally correct. 'Manufacturing consent', I believe it is called, and it's the fundamental basis of most critiques of democratic society I've seen undertaken by scholars back home.." She chuckled drily, though it hid a bite of anger. "There are plenty of people in this nation who do not want to see peace between it, and the Empress. Forgive me, Mister Verdes, but, the nature of our presence has turned a private family tragedy into this... Slanderous involvement in personal affairs by everyone up to and including priests."
Raphael didn't reply, and Dani held onto him with a frown on her face. "If they want to fight, I'll fight. I'll testify in court as to all the hell my mother put me through over the years and I'll bring out every expert I need to in order to win."
"Well, you're not attached to the Embassy in an official capacity..." Jhayka leaned harder against her cane, until it seemed that she'd fall over. "Take the money, hire lawyers, Danielle, my dearheart, but don't get too involved like that. Bury them in expert testimony, certainly, but... Remember that we're here to negotiate the peaceful coexistence of more than thirty trillion sentients. And oh do I hate saying that at this moment."
Fayza took to her seat. "We should stop talking in public around the hotel staff. Reporters can easily appeal to people like that. Make sure we just nod nicely at them and give pleasantries and leave it at that."
"I just think it's stupid. And half the groups that are protesting out there hate the other half!" Dani swept an arm out toward the window. "Have they all taken gone stupid?! And God help any of the staff who've caused this if I find them!"
"They're poor, and likely being paid for it. We'll contact Alliance Intelligence and let them deal with it, we don't need another scandal of our own doing," Jhayka added, feeling a bit.. Isolated in the necessity of her cool position. "As for those groups out there in Lafayette Park, well, I doubt they're really working with each other. Perhaps I should invite the organizers in for dinner over the next few days and ask them to explain their grievances more.. Clearly." Jhayka sniffed. "The sort of messages they put out are confusing and insensate, short, simple sentences which don't really convey enough for me to quite grasp their intentions. Is all your media like this?"
"A disturbing amount of it," Fay remarked whimsically. "In the Service reporters more often than not end up the butt of jokes."
"Ahhh." Jhayka glanced down at the cane and frowned. "I wish I didn't need this thing. It would be nice to pace right now. I have the distinct feeling.. Of someone in the middle of a maelstrom which we can't escape, just ride out."
"That sounds a lot like a media frenzy," Dani muttered. The talking of the media made her think as well, and she asked, "Has Priscilla talked about the interview idea?"
"She said that she had someone in mind, as a matter of fact," Jhayka answered. "I have left the matter primarily up to her, as it is an intensely personal affair for her."
"I hope she chose well," Dani said, sighing. She looked back to her distraught father and gave him a strong hug. "Don't worry Dad, it'll all be fine in the end, I promise."
"We will do our best, Mister Verdes, I promise. We're all family," Jhayka finished softly.
28 March 2165 AST
55 Valeria, I.Y. 618
It was about 11 that night, already 28 March AST going by Greenwich time, when Fayza was laying comfortably in her bed, in a modest nightgown, the Slashahkimmar's manual in front of her and the holo-player showing Fox Interstellar news for sound. Most of it was in English, but Fayza had a Taloran-English translator on the nightstand in case she wanted to clarify the translation when it didn't make too much sense to her.
There was a rapping on the door which caught her by a bit of surprise, and she had to move the compunit she had the manual loaded upon to swing her legs off the bed. "Coming, I'm coming." She pulled the door open, and saw Drish standing at the door. "Um, Drish? What can I do for you?"
"Many apologies, Fayza, but, uh, Priscilla threw a pillow at me..." She dipped her ears looking a bit befuddled at that one rather recent recollection, and then stepped in, a duffle bag slung over one shoulder. Behind her one of the housekeepers had a fold-out bed on a wheelie and waited hesitantly for some signal that she should come in or remain outside with it. "Can I sleep in your room tonight?"
"Well, uh, sure." Fay opened the door fully and let her in. "Why? What happened? Surely you and Dani and Jhayka didn't have some kind of fight."
"Remember that Danielle's father has arrived?" She stepped in and the housekeeper followed with the bed, politely silent as she set it out--at which time Drishalras, ever courteous, handed her a Riala out of her pocket as she slung the duffle back down. The door closed behind the housekeeper, Drishalras had this somewhat embarrassed look as she elaborated. "So they needed the Presidential Suite, and since, well, nobody had explained me to Mister Verdes yet, Jhayka didn't really think it wise for me to sleep on a spare bed in their suite."
"......ah, I see," Fay said, blushing a little. "Yeah, that might come out of the blue for him right now. We'll let him settle into it." She returned to her bed. "Do you mind the noise? I like having the holo-TV playing when I'm in a hotel."
"Oh, it's not a problem," Drishalras answered, unfolding a light robe and ducking into the bathroom to change and clean herself for bed with the promise "I'll be done in a minute." She returned in, well, a few minutes, yellow eyes glancing around for a moment as she moved to sit in one of the ornate chairs. "This must be a bit strange for you, if you don't mind the conversation. I mean, coming back to the nation of your old service like this."
"Staying in a Ritz instead of a Days Inn, you mean?" Fay replied with a bit of a grin. "It is kind of weird, yeah, though I've been used to ostentatious wealth for a while."
"Well, I've always been one to minimize that, myself," Drishalras answered. "But I more sort of meant the whole thing with your representing a different government. It seems less common among humans than Talorans, though, from what I've read it was once common. A long time ago, when more of your governments were like our's."
Fayza shrugged. "I guess. Like I said weeks ago, I still hold loyalty to my home, and I'm going along with this because I think it's the best for both of us. And I suppose.... just the thought of sometime in the future the Empire and Alliance going to war is a nightmare to me. I've made my place with Jhayka and in the Empire now, but I'll always love my homeland. The thought of having to pick one.... I couldn't bear it."
"I imagine that's how people feel in civil wars," Drishalras mused. "Jhayka said she wanted to visit the field of one of the battles, ah, Antietam, which is near here, from the great old civil war of a nation in this place. She knows so much..." The Taloran girl sighed in a way which surely dreamy, and revealed just how 'young' she remained from her own perspective. "I'm very lucky to be in her life and have the chance to help make it happier."
:"You have, trust me," Fay said. "If Dani's condition hadn't been reversable.... she would've been happy to know Jhayka has someone like you."
"Well, I'm very pleased it was reversible," Drishalras answered simply. "Having her as my korana is well worth sharing Jhayka. It's funny but many people were worried that I'd be jealous..." She brushed a lock of her red bangs off her face as she stood up and went to sit on the fold-out bed instead, before, languidly, settling into it and pulling the covers over herself. Not to go to sleep, simply to be as comfortable as she could. "But though I have more than a few vices I'm not willing to give up, jealousy was never one. I think that people sometimes underestimate how aware I am of such things. Really, I'm very aware. They just have never bothered me. Why should the happiness of someone else do anything but please me as well? Envy is such a frightful emotion."
"The arrangement you three have is.... not very common for Humans. We tend to strict monogamy, and where we don't, it's usually misogynistic polygamy like from my mother's family," Fayza said. "If you weren't tired, I'd offer to have a belated sleepover," she added with a little grin."
"What's a sleepover, Fayza? And, anyway, it's not strictly common"
"A sleepover? It's a ritual for girls in our culture, starting at about age 10. We stay up all night watching movies, playing games, doing our nails, and spreading gossip Dani and I used to hold adult sleepovers all the time."
"Well, that sounds like what you'd do with your cousins and younger aunts and older nieces and so on as a Taloran, but most every night we could get away with it.." She laughed softly. "I guess that's because we have bigger families."
"Yeah, that's always the funny thing. I grew up an only daughter because my mother could never find someone," Fayza said, remembering what her mother had gone through. "She tried, but she didn't want to be property anymore and even American men can be domineering, and those that weren't.... didn't appeal to her in other ways. So it was just the two of us until I went off to the Navy."
Drishalras could only remain silent at that; it was much outside of her experience.
There was a lot of painful memories there, and Fayza was almost choking tears when she said, "I miss my Mom, Drish. I miss her so much."
Drishalras closed her eyes and ducked her head away. She, the cheerful glutton, could not think of something to say. It certainly terrified her that her mother, even Jhayka, would one day in their times die, but she knew she'd be reunited with them in turn, and leave a prosperous family behind, if she were not called sooner to the Hosts of Heaven on high. What was, among Talorans, virtually unheard family dissension to her? And for her Bohemian sentiments, she had not really experienced actual suffering once in her life. She was soft, though she had the decency to know it. At last the soft words came out: "I'm sorry, Fayza," and she could manage no more. It left her tempted to retreat back into the normal duties of a navy officer, where regulation and ritual ensconced her.
Fayza saw Drish and smiled softly. Opting to change the subject, she referred back to the the prior discussion. "So it's not common for Talorans to have more than one spouse, even if you allow it?"
"Well, a fair number are bisexual, actually, though it's become less common with the parthenogenesis technology," the Taloran Captain answered. "Still, it isn't exactly even strange for us. There's one Patrician, Trivalia Uhansdh, of the Quesadi city of Kalimpert, who has two wives. None of us remembered her at the time, though. Silly of me. Probably a couple Countesses and Baronesses... Strange enough to get people talking, even so. Though never condemning. That does, I confess, irritate me about humans. Being homosexual is a normal and fundamental part of who I am, and being told it's deviate or sinful seems so hideous, but it's commonplace around here."
"The Abrahamic religions all have pretty strict prohibitions on homosexuality, though Dani is fond of reminding me that as a sin it's technically minor," Fayza answered. "And your faith aside, I've come to view all religions as having little dark spots. Just some more than others. My mother's grandfather, father, uncles, and brothers, and even a nephew all swore to kill her on sight because she became pregnant with me and fled to America."
"The writings of the Prophet Eibermon form the absolute basis and supreme revelation among monotheistic religions," Drishalras answered, stifling a yawn. "We may sometimes seem quiet about that, but it's very fervently believed."
"So I've been told. Of course, my mother was raised to believe that about the Prophet Muhammed, who married nine year old girls. Though I believe he waited until she was twelve before consummating." Fayza gave a wane smile. "My mother still prayed to Mecca five times a day and was just a bit unsettled when I told her I wouldn't anymore."
"We are not on good relations with Islam," Drishalras replied with some understatement. "I know both you and Priscilla are not really observant, regardless, and you know well the longevity of our faith. So..." She yawned. "I'll just leave it at that, as we're not truly bothered by such people. We just find them a bit more weird than the First Empress." A lazy and slight smile was offered as she closed her eyes, her hair naturally shielding them from the soft light.
"I've never really been observant. Not since I was fourteen." Fayza settled onto the bed and went to press the control to turn it off. But for the first time she looked at the image and was surprised to see Dani. "...Dani's on TV?" She turned it up.
"....source was not identified. According to the report by the religious association, Danielle Verdes has vowed to put the money at her disposal to help her father fight for custody of young Dominic, age 1. The only comment we have gotten from family friends was by Father Puller of the Church of the Risen Savior in Burnsville, who said, 'This parish, this community, and the Church stand behind Mrs. Verdes completely and will do everything we can to ensure she is allowed to raise her son in peace.' We will bring you more as this becomes available."
"In the Lord's name..." Drishalras' ears had neatly swiveled to pick it up after Fayza's comment, and her yellow eyes had opened, following the last of the article. "Someone from in the hotel is leaking information to the press," she observed with a whiplike certitude which belied her rather laid-back and somewhat naive personality. When presented with what was, to her, obvious, she recognized it. Even if it wasn't that way to others. "Jhayka will need to know. Though not tonight. Can't do anything about it at almost the day's end, anyway." Her ears folded in irritation. "Fayza, forgive me if I have to say that Earth has not proved particularly welcoming for my family."
"I understand, Drish, I understand all too well," Fay answered softly as she turned the TV off. "I think I want to lay down now."
The Hays-Adams Hotel
"For the last time, the Duchess isn't commenting on any of this," Fayza said, exasperation showing clearly. "It's a family matter and none of your god damned business, that's why!" She smacked the vidphone to cut the line, the modern equivalent of hanging the phone up with a slam.
She looked over, gingerly, to the others. Dani was seated with her father beside her and Jhayka standing on the other side. Raphael's head was down, his hands on his temples in a rather universal posture of disbelief and frustration.
"I should have dragged you off right into the area we've swept for bugs," Jhayka commented after a moment, her voice a rather morose monotone. "But I didn't want to ruin our family's happiness. Such as it is." Her ears sticking out to the sides in their position of thoughtful consternation, she rested on her cane. "Unfortunately, we can't get heavily involved in this. It will completely distract us from the negotiations, which we cannot allow. And which, if I may be even more paranoid, may be the actual intent. There are elements in the Alliance which certainly believe that engineering the response of the populace to specific events is morally correct. 'Manufacturing consent', I believe it is called, and it's the fundamental basis of most critiques of democratic society I've seen undertaken by scholars back home.." She chuckled drily, though it hid a bite of anger. "There are plenty of people in this nation who do not want to see peace between it, and the Empress. Forgive me, Mister Verdes, but, the nature of our presence has turned a private family tragedy into this... Slanderous involvement in personal affairs by everyone up to and including priests."
Raphael didn't reply, and Dani held onto him with a frown on her face. "If they want to fight, I'll fight. I'll testify in court as to all the hell my mother put me through over the years and I'll bring out every expert I need to in order to win."
"Well, you're not attached to the Embassy in an official capacity..." Jhayka leaned harder against her cane, until it seemed that she'd fall over. "Take the money, hire lawyers, Danielle, my dearheart, but don't get too involved like that. Bury them in expert testimony, certainly, but... Remember that we're here to negotiate the peaceful coexistence of more than thirty trillion sentients. And oh do I hate saying that at this moment."
Fayza took to her seat. "We should stop talking in public around the hotel staff. Reporters can easily appeal to people like that. Make sure we just nod nicely at them and give pleasantries and leave it at that."
"I just think it's stupid. And half the groups that are protesting out there hate the other half!" Dani swept an arm out toward the window. "Have they all taken gone stupid?! And God help any of the staff who've caused this if I find them!"
"They're poor, and likely being paid for it. We'll contact Alliance Intelligence and let them deal with it, we don't need another scandal of our own doing," Jhayka added, feeling a bit.. Isolated in the necessity of her cool position. "As for those groups out there in Lafayette Park, well, I doubt they're really working with each other. Perhaps I should invite the organizers in for dinner over the next few days and ask them to explain their grievances more.. Clearly." Jhayka sniffed. "The sort of messages they put out are confusing and insensate, short, simple sentences which don't really convey enough for me to quite grasp their intentions. Is all your media like this?"
"A disturbing amount of it," Fay remarked whimsically. "In the Service reporters more often than not end up the butt of jokes."
"Ahhh." Jhayka glanced down at the cane and frowned. "I wish I didn't need this thing. It would be nice to pace right now. I have the distinct feeling.. Of someone in the middle of a maelstrom which we can't escape, just ride out."
"That sounds a lot like a media frenzy," Dani muttered. The talking of the media made her think as well, and she asked, "Has Priscilla talked about the interview idea?"
"She said that she had someone in mind, as a matter of fact," Jhayka answered. "I have left the matter primarily up to her, as it is an intensely personal affair for her."
"I hope she chose well," Dani said, sighing. She looked back to her distraught father and gave him a strong hug. "Don't worry Dad, it'll all be fine in the end, I promise."
"We will do our best, Mister Verdes, I promise. We're all family," Jhayka finished softly.
Last edited by Steve on 2007-12-25 12:29am, 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
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The Duchess of Zeon
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The Old State Department Building.
29 March 2165 AST
56 Valeria, I.Y. 618
The area was called Foggy Bottom for a reason. Elestria, the Princess of Gadharaia, did not mind much. She had spent most of her life in Valeria, and the city rivaled the Terran London for endless dreary days of omnipresent fog. She was there to watch Jhayka, and to lend the weight of Imperial approval to what she was laying out.
"The issues of safety matters for the operation of Taloran-flagged vessels in Alliance space, and vice-versa, can, I safely say, be established primarily by Starfleet officers of our respective powers," Jhayka was continuing, "with aide from suitable economic experts. But they are the most trained at the maintenance of life in the vacuum. Therefore in the schedule of events, the Duchess of Connaught on our side and Captain the Princess Retgariu will liase with your technical experts to draw up the precise details of the requirements for reference to the Admiralty Law authorities and then final integration to the codex of trade agreements."
"As for the economic section of the codex of trade, we are in principle prepared to agree to the complete elimination of tariffs with the Alliance, with the sole exception of food products and equipment aiding in the production of food," Jhayka added.
Wells' face twisted up slightly at that one. "I take it you mean to include replicators in that category, Your Highness?"
"That's correct, Minister," Jhayka replied. They were sitting in a formal conference room, under fairly high security, as the arrangements for the different aspects of the negotiations were hammered out; who would be meeting with whom, when, and on what grounds.
"Replicators are generally classified as durable goods in the Alliance, and that restriction may cause some issues."
"It is, however, the position of my government."
"So it is. I take it that you're also firm about restricting this agreement to trade-at-borders?"
"We won't cease our funding of industries important to defence, nor our farm subsidies," Jhayka's ears flicked back. "So, yes, though we will, without expectation of reciprocity, provide a declaration of our intent to avoid subsidies outside of those industries, with the proviso of a research exception, but that is standard, yes?"
"Yes, of course. It's also the principle of our government to subsidize all research where possible, since, of course, scientific research is generally shared. I am to understand the same is true for the Taloran Empire?"
"We do not restrict the dissemination of scientific information, outside of military research covered under state secrets, no. So the agreement, I take it, can be pursued along the lines of tariff elimination on all non-agricultural products?"
"We cannot commit to accepting a classification of replicators as 'agricultural products' at this time, Your Highness."
"Noted."
Diplomacy, Elestria mused, is mind-numbingly boring. She glanced down at what had been called a sub-sandwich on her plate, half eaten; there had been a huge one at the refreshments table and she'd helped herself to a slice. How do they stand the meat--this salami?--being so spicy? An inane musing, but then again, it was a suitable place for practicing her discipline.
The two counterparts had moved onto the passport issue. "The Duchess Xenia Alexandria will be in charge of our section team on those negotiations, Minister. The principle remains that the Taloran government will not create a centralized database. With that principle intact, however, I have given her wide latitude in proposing a series of alternatives. Our main interest is in reassuring your government that those entering the country are such people as they say they are, and the Duchess has several proposals along those lines."
"Your government has no intention of issuing passports along normal lines, then, Your Highness?"
"None whatsoever. We are committed to finding a suitable alternative, but we will not create a passport registry of our own, no."
"Hmm. Very well." Wells made a note.
They moved on again, discussing other issues of the passport affair, including the continued Taloran disinterest in demanding passports from Alliance citizens as an issue of principle, wherein Jhayka left open the possibility that if the alternative proved exceptionally cumbersome they might demand reciprocity in it as a matter of fairness. Which was not a good sign, though taken in stride. It was scarcely unexpected, after all; the Talorans seemed to regard the passport issue much less severely than the Alliance, and thought it a distraction from the actual negotiations.
"As for the treaty of friendship, we in principle accept the details laid out in the current version you've provided to us. However, Minister, I'd like to make a few textual revisions, particularly in the Taloran version, which should clarify the precise nature of the declaration between our peoples. I can return that to you within just three days, I think, to see if it meets our mutual agreement. One proviso we'd like to add is a section detailing an agreement for our Starfleets to exchange personnel--the seconding of officers, more appropriately--for persons of developing inter-operability in humanitarian and life-saving operations and stability intervention."
"I'll need to confer with the President and the Joint Chiefs before we can accept that," Wells answered. "I should be able to receive a definite answer by the time you've completed your revisions, however, Your Highness."
"Excellent, then. That leaves the matter of the IUCEC," she then looked toward Elestria, "Which I'd like to put the Princess of Gadharaia in charge of."
Elestria was surprised, but after a moment's thought, it made sense. She recognizes this is most important to the Empress, and she needs to direct all aspects of the operation, where I am quite free of more than observatory duties. I suspect Her Serene Majesty would indeed approve.
"Of course."
"Since we have agreed to cooperate on bringing our accession before the New Brasilia treaty structure organization, I'd suggest that we assign the Princess of Gadharaia to direct discussions on establishing our reservations to the treaty, and once those have been worked out in a fashion which the Alliance finds acceptable, we can jointly proceed to mutual support of our efforts at Taloran accession to the treaty."
"On the understanding of the President's agreement in principle we have no issues with that. We can only make a determination on which reservations we will agree to support when we've seen them, however."
"I'll have a codex of our reservations provided to your office and the President tomorrow," Jhayka answered, bringing the first part of the negotiations to a successful close. But that first part, of course, had simply been to establish the format and terms of the actual negotiations themselves, which could now, finally, begin.
29 March 2165 AST
56 Valeria, I.Y. 618
The area was called Foggy Bottom for a reason. Elestria, the Princess of Gadharaia, did not mind much. She had spent most of her life in Valeria, and the city rivaled the Terran London for endless dreary days of omnipresent fog. She was there to watch Jhayka, and to lend the weight of Imperial approval to what she was laying out.
"The issues of safety matters for the operation of Taloran-flagged vessels in Alliance space, and vice-versa, can, I safely say, be established primarily by Starfleet officers of our respective powers," Jhayka was continuing, "with aide from suitable economic experts. But they are the most trained at the maintenance of life in the vacuum. Therefore in the schedule of events, the Duchess of Connaught on our side and Captain the Princess Retgariu will liase with your technical experts to draw up the precise details of the requirements for reference to the Admiralty Law authorities and then final integration to the codex of trade agreements."
"As for the economic section of the codex of trade, we are in principle prepared to agree to the complete elimination of tariffs with the Alliance, with the sole exception of food products and equipment aiding in the production of food," Jhayka added.
Wells' face twisted up slightly at that one. "I take it you mean to include replicators in that category, Your Highness?"
"That's correct, Minister," Jhayka replied. They were sitting in a formal conference room, under fairly high security, as the arrangements for the different aspects of the negotiations were hammered out; who would be meeting with whom, when, and on what grounds.
"Replicators are generally classified as durable goods in the Alliance, and that restriction may cause some issues."
"It is, however, the position of my government."
"So it is. I take it that you're also firm about restricting this agreement to trade-at-borders?"
"We won't cease our funding of industries important to defence, nor our farm subsidies," Jhayka's ears flicked back. "So, yes, though we will, without expectation of reciprocity, provide a declaration of our intent to avoid subsidies outside of those industries, with the proviso of a research exception, but that is standard, yes?"
"Yes, of course. It's also the principle of our government to subsidize all research where possible, since, of course, scientific research is generally shared. I am to understand the same is true for the Taloran Empire?"
"We do not restrict the dissemination of scientific information, outside of military research covered under state secrets, no. So the agreement, I take it, can be pursued along the lines of tariff elimination on all non-agricultural products?"
"We cannot commit to accepting a classification of replicators as 'agricultural products' at this time, Your Highness."
"Noted."
Diplomacy, Elestria mused, is mind-numbingly boring. She glanced down at what had been called a sub-sandwich on her plate, half eaten; there had been a huge one at the refreshments table and she'd helped herself to a slice. How do they stand the meat--this salami?--being so spicy? An inane musing, but then again, it was a suitable place for practicing her discipline.
The two counterparts had moved onto the passport issue. "The Duchess Xenia Alexandria will be in charge of our section team on those negotiations, Minister. The principle remains that the Taloran government will not create a centralized database. With that principle intact, however, I have given her wide latitude in proposing a series of alternatives. Our main interest is in reassuring your government that those entering the country are such people as they say they are, and the Duchess has several proposals along those lines."
"Your government has no intention of issuing passports along normal lines, then, Your Highness?"
"None whatsoever. We are committed to finding a suitable alternative, but we will not create a passport registry of our own, no."
"Hmm. Very well." Wells made a note.
They moved on again, discussing other issues of the passport affair, including the continued Taloran disinterest in demanding passports from Alliance citizens as an issue of principle, wherein Jhayka left open the possibility that if the alternative proved exceptionally cumbersome they might demand reciprocity in it as a matter of fairness. Which was not a good sign, though taken in stride. It was scarcely unexpected, after all; the Talorans seemed to regard the passport issue much less severely than the Alliance, and thought it a distraction from the actual negotiations.
"As for the treaty of friendship, we in principle accept the details laid out in the current version you've provided to us. However, Minister, I'd like to make a few textual revisions, particularly in the Taloran version, which should clarify the precise nature of the declaration between our peoples. I can return that to you within just three days, I think, to see if it meets our mutual agreement. One proviso we'd like to add is a section detailing an agreement for our Starfleets to exchange personnel--the seconding of officers, more appropriately--for persons of developing inter-operability in humanitarian and life-saving operations and stability intervention."
"I'll need to confer with the President and the Joint Chiefs before we can accept that," Wells answered. "I should be able to receive a definite answer by the time you've completed your revisions, however, Your Highness."
"Excellent, then. That leaves the matter of the IUCEC," she then looked toward Elestria, "Which I'd like to put the Princess of Gadharaia in charge of."
Elestria was surprised, but after a moment's thought, it made sense. She recognizes this is most important to the Empress, and she needs to direct all aspects of the operation, where I am quite free of more than observatory duties. I suspect Her Serene Majesty would indeed approve.
"Of course."
"Since we have agreed to cooperate on bringing our accession before the New Brasilia treaty structure organization, I'd suggest that we assign the Princess of Gadharaia to direct discussions on establishing our reservations to the treaty, and once those have been worked out in a fashion which the Alliance finds acceptable, we can jointly proceed to mutual support of our efforts at Taloran accession to the treaty."
"On the understanding of the President's agreement in principle we have no issues with that. We can only make a determination on which reservations we will agree to support when we've seen them, however."
"I'll have a codex of our reservations provided to your office and the President tomorrow," Jhayka answered, bringing the first part of the negotiations to a successful close. But that first part, of course, had simply been to establish the format and terms of the actual negotiations themselves, which could now, finally, begin.
Last edited by The Duchess of Zeon on 2007-12-25 12:26am, edited 1 time in total.
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.
The Hays-Adams Hotel, Washington D.C.
30 March 2165 AST
57 Valeria, I.Y. 618
Fayza's pained grunt echoed slightly in the gym, pain shooting into her jaw despite the fact that most of the impact of Dani's foot had been absorbed by her black face-guard. The blow was also enough to make her head spin around, and in quick succession she lost her footing and twirled around, falling flat on her belly. She laid there a moment, heaving, sweat visible on the sections of her body bared by the black sports bra and thigh-length boxing shorts she was wearing.
Dani knelt over her, her clothes much the same as Fay's save, of course, that they were the same green hue as her eyes, and a different size given Dani's larger overall frame and more pronounced curves. She took her plastic teeth guard out. "You okay, Fay?"
She spat the teeth guard out onto the canvas and finally decided to lift herself up. "You're kicking my ass here, Dani. Do you think I'm fucking okay?!" With some irritation she forced herself to her feet, picking the guards back up.
"I thought you'd block," Dani said. "I wasn't hitting that hard."
"You've been hitting hard all day. Jesus, Dani, it's like I'm the one who told the media about your family," Fay said in exasperation while picking up her teeth guard. She saw the look on Dani's face and sighed. "Don't take that the wrong way."
"No, you're right." Dani frowned. "After being with Dad these past few days I feel like I need to take someone's head off."
"Where is he anyway? You've barely left his side since he got here," Fay asked.
"He wanted to go to Mass, and he told me blankly that if I didn't start spending time with family and friends again he was going to be very cross with me." Dani smiled half-seriously. "Dad doesn't like it when I brood. Makes him think of Mom." She checked her hair to make sure the buns that held it together were secure. "Okay, I'll make a deal with you. I won't attack. At all. All I'll do is block, and you can kick my ass for awhile."
"Dani..."
"Seriously, Fay. You've only just begun to learn hand-to-hand, I've been training since I was eight."
Fay sighed and brought her hands up, both of them re-inserting their teeth guards. She wasn't very confident kicking, so most of her attack attempts were punches that Dani seemed to block with ease. Finally Fay did try a jabbing kick, and the change was just enough that Dani didn't fully catch it. She took the blow rather well, but for Fay she had at least scored a hit, her first of the day.
The next punches and kicks were also blocked, and Fay was slowing a bit from fatigue. Finally she started to slump against the corner stand, spitting her guard out again. "Jeez.... how do you keep up?"
"Practice, practice, practice, as you'd expect." Dani sighed. "Say, I gave you a few good licks. How about I let you have one back. I won't block?"
Looking at her with a sardonic expression, Fay remarked, "Didn't we spend an hour a couple weeks ago reassuring Drish that you weren't a masochist?"
"Very funny. I'm actually a switch, I'm told," Dani retorted with amusement, "but I'm being serious. Give me a good pop. It'll make up for me using you as a punching bag."
Sighing, Fay stood up and walked up to Dani. She used a quick jab and smacked Dani in the chest, just under her right breast, trying to avoid a painful stomach punch. Dani still doubled over a bit, and put her hand over it. "Ow, damn!"
"Are you okay?" Fay said, now worried she'd actually done some damage.
"I'm... I'm fine, don't worry about it." Dani sat on the canvas and, still grimacing, pulled off one of her boxing gloves. "Fight time is over, I'm going to go shower and join Jhayka and Drish for food and hopefully a movie."
"I can already tell you that Jhayka will be wrinkling her nose the entire time and Drish will probably be more interested in the popcorn," Fay chuckled. She pulled her gloves off and, after stepping over the ropes, sat on the edge of the boxing ring. She smiled wanely and looked back to Dani as she slipped over the ropes. "It's nice having someone, isn't it?"
"Not quite the committed monogamous relationship I thought of having." Dani sat beside Fay and they took their head guards off together. Dani reached back and freed her hair, the ends of which collected around her rear and hips. "But having Drish and Jhayka.... it's not bad. Not bad at all."
"I still envy you." Fayza looked to her friend, hands clapsed in her lap. "It used to be the wild life you'd had, your stories of raunchy sex and hell-raising parties since I'd never done that. Now it's because you're not alone. You've got happy, strange marriage that's netted you a wife and a close girlfriend slash sister slash cousin...."
Dani put a supportive arm over Fay's back and shoulder. "You've had men in your life before, Fay. You're still beautiful."
"Don't give me the canned cheer, Dani," Fay mumbled. "After what's been done to me.... what's going to happen when I find someone and have to tell them, 'Oh, by the way, I got used as a sex-slave for weeks'. When they ask me how many men I've had before them, hell, I don't have a number for them." Tearing up, she stood to her full height. "I'm like a fucking tramp. Worse than a tramp."
"It wasn't your fault," Dani said.
"Yes it was!", Fay insisted vehemently. "I could have listened to you! I could have agreed to go to Lisea. Or your last minute proposal to go to Kalunda when we got to Gilead. I wouldn't have gotten kidnapped, enslaved, and made into a tramp if only I'd listened to you. But no, I stamped my foot down, insisted it was all alright. Then I let that guy get me drunk and take me to the room...."
"It still wasn't your fault." Dani reached out for Fay, but she batted Dani's hand away. "Sit down and calm down."
"I need a shower," Fay said glumly, stomping away. Dani followed her out of the gym and toward the elevator, but Fay would say no more.
Every time Dani thought of something to say, she stopped herself. Can I really tell her 'I know what it's like?' I was tortured for hours and that wakes me up about once every other week. Fay was tortured and raped and gang-raped for how long? How do I relate to that? How do I dare claim to relate to that?
Her moments of indecision left her silent when they got to their floor. Fay managed a "See you later" before entering her room and locking it before Dani could get to the door. Slumping against it a moment, daring to wonder if she should knock, she finally called out, "Fayza!" There was no answer, and Dani could do nothing more but give up and go to shower herself.
Inside, Fayza stripped down and got into her shower, running warm water over herself. It wasn't just the sweat she wanted to wash off, but that feeling of dirt and violation from those awful memories that, so it seemed, would never fade through time. She wanted to feel cleansed.
Fayza ended up seated on the floor of the shower, her legs curled up and her chin resting on her knees, the water running over her and soaking her hair, droplets coming off in front of her eyes. And there she sobbed softly, quietly, for the next few hours.
30 March 2165 AST
57 Valeria, I.Y. 618
Fayza's pained grunt echoed slightly in the gym, pain shooting into her jaw despite the fact that most of the impact of Dani's foot had been absorbed by her black face-guard. The blow was also enough to make her head spin around, and in quick succession she lost her footing and twirled around, falling flat on her belly. She laid there a moment, heaving, sweat visible on the sections of her body bared by the black sports bra and thigh-length boxing shorts she was wearing.
Dani knelt over her, her clothes much the same as Fay's save, of course, that they were the same green hue as her eyes, and a different size given Dani's larger overall frame and more pronounced curves. She took her plastic teeth guard out. "You okay, Fay?"
She spat the teeth guard out onto the canvas and finally decided to lift herself up. "You're kicking my ass here, Dani. Do you think I'm fucking okay?!" With some irritation she forced herself to her feet, picking the guards back up.
"I thought you'd block," Dani said. "I wasn't hitting that hard."
"You've been hitting hard all day. Jesus, Dani, it's like I'm the one who told the media about your family," Fay said in exasperation while picking up her teeth guard. She saw the look on Dani's face and sighed. "Don't take that the wrong way."
"No, you're right." Dani frowned. "After being with Dad these past few days I feel like I need to take someone's head off."
"Where is he anyway? You've barely left his side since he got here," Fay asked.
"He wanted to go to Mass, and he told me blankly that if I didn't start spending time with family and friends again he was going to be very cross with me." Dani smiled half-seriously. "Dad doesn't like it when I brood. Makes him think of Mom." She checked her hair to make sure the buns that held it together were secure. "Okay, I'll make a deal with you. I won't attack. At all. All I'll do is block, and you can kick my ass for awhile."
"Dani..."
"Seriously, Fay. You've only just begun to learn hand-to-hand, I've been training since I was eight."
Fay sighed and brought her hands up, both of them re-inserting their teeth guards. She wasn't very confident kicking, so most of her attack attempts were punches that Dani seemed to block with ease. Finally Fay did try a jabbing kick, and the change was just enough that Dani didn't fully catch it. She took the blow rather well, but for Fay she had at least scored a hit, her first of the day.
The next punches and kicks were also blocked, and Fay was slowing a bit from fatigue. Finally she started to slump against the corner stand, spitting her guard out again. "Jeez.... how do you keep up?"
"Practice, practice, practice, as you'd expect." Dani sighed. "Say, I gave you a few good licks. How about I let you have one back. I won't block?"
Looking at her with a sardonic expression, Fay remarked, "Didn't we spend an hour a couple weeks ago reassuring Drish that you weren't a masochist?"
"Very funny. I'm actually a switch, I'm told," Dani retorted with amusement, "but I'm being serious. Give me a good pop. It'll make up for me using you as a punching bag."
Sighing, Fay stood up and walked up to Dani. She used a quick jab and smacked Dani in the chest, just under her right breast, trying to avoid a painful stomach punch. Dani still doubled over a bit, and put her hand over it. "Ow, damn!"
"Are you okay?" Fay said, now worried she'd actually done some damage.
"I'm... I'm fine, don't worry about it." Dani sat on the canvas and, still grimacing, pulled off one of her boxing gloves. "Fight time is over, I'm going to go shower and join Jhayka and Drish for food and hopefully a movie."
"I can already tell you that Jhayka will be wrinkling her nose the entire time and Drish will probably be more interested in the popcorn," Fay chuckled. She pulled her gloves off and, after stepping over the ropes, sat on the edge of the boxing ring. She smiled wanely and looked back to Dani as she slipped over the ropes. "It's nice having someone, isn't it?"
"Not quite the committed monogamous relationship I thought of having." Dani sat beside Fay and they took their head guards off together. Dani reached back and freed her hair, the ends of which collected around her rear and hips. "But having Drish and Jhayka.... it's not bad. Not bad at all."
"I still envy you." Fayza looked to her friend, hands clapsed in her lap. "It used to be the wild life you'd had, your stories of raunchy sex and hell-raising parties since I'd never done that. Now it's because you're not alone. You've got happy, strange marriage that's netted you a wife and a close girlfriend slash sister slash cousin...."
Dani put a supportive arm over Fay's back and shoulder. "You've had men in your life before, Fay. You're still beautiful."
"Don't give me the canned cheer, Dani," Fay mumbled. "After what's been done to me.... what's going to happen when I find someone and have to tell them, 'Oh, by the way, I got used as a sex-slave for weeks'. When they ask me how many men I've had before them, hell, I don't have a number for them." Tearing up, she stood to her full height. "I'm like a fucking tramp. Worse than a tramp."
"It wasn't your fault," Dani said.
"Yes it was!", Fay insisted vehemently. "I could have listened to you! I could have agreed to go to Lisea. Or your last minute proposal to go to Kalunda when we got to Gilead. I wouldn't have gotten kidnapped, enslaved, and made into a tramp if only I'd listened to you. But no, I stamped my foot down, insisted it was all alright. Then I let that guy get me drunk and take me to the room...."
"It still wasn't your fault." Dani reached out for Fay, but she batted Dani's hand away. "Sit down and calm down."
"I need a shower," Fay said glumly, stomping away. Dani followed her out of the gym and toward the elevator, but Fay would say no more.
Every time Dani thought of something to say, she stopped herself. Can I really tell her 'I know what it's like?' I was tortured for hours and that wakes me up about once every other week. Fay was tortured and raped and gang-raped for how long? How do I relate to that? How do I dare claim to relate to that?
Her moments of indecision left her silent when they got to their floor. Fay managed a "See you later" before entering her room and locking it before Dani could get to the door. Slumping against it a moment, daring to wonder if she should knock, she finally called out, "Fayza!" There was no answer, and Dani could do nothing more but give up and go to shower herself.
Inside, Fayza stripped down and got into her shower, running warm water over herself. It wasn't just the sweat she wanted to wash off, but that feeling of dirt and violation from those awful memories that, so it seemed, would never fade through time. She wanted to feel cleansed.
Fayza ended up seated on the floor of the shower, her legs curled up and her chin resting on her knees, the water running over her and soaking her hair, droplets coming off in front of her eyes. And there she sobbed softly, quietly, for the next few hours.
”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.
Near Lootera, Huntress
Kerensky Territories
Universe Designate MWB-32
1 April 2165 AST.
59 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
Sipajhai Olothdhakiu, the Baroness of Khastim, was seeing her mission finally come to an end. She supported with her right arm wrapped around the girl the form of Tamara, the sibko she had instructed, and then healed from her desperate fight, who had now recovered enough for the moment of standing and watching this immense ship come down upon Lootera, one of four that was arriving and landing on the extremely limited number of large, deep bodies of water capable of handling the Taloran light, fast freighters of 6 megatonnes each empty mass.
As Huntress had the largest refusenik population out of the entire cluster except for the whole clan Blood Spirit, where the lower castes had chosen in the range of 60% to leave against the average of scarcely 1% for most of the others, evidence of the very different Blood Spirit treatment of their lessers, it had resulted in the largest number of the biggest ships in the fleet, other than the Blood Spirit lands. It was for different reasons, of course. The harshness of the Smoke Jaguars had guaranteed that anyone on Huntress more important than the brutalized lowest castes had suffered from constant reprisals, and by far the largest number out of the population of any world wished to leave. In all, almost 250,000 individuals would be making the exodus from Huntress. The capacity of the four ships together was collectively 256,000, so that worked out just fine.
With huge cigar-hulls floating predominantly underwater with a low-slung docking interface and superstructure topside and small, thick gravitic vanes aft, the ships were general purpose freighters instead of the modular freighters used for extensive trade in the core of the Empire. They were intended for running high-valued cargos at speed, in comparison to similar sized tramp-freighters that served the colonies with mixed goods at slower accelerations and drive charge rates, and most of these vessels could be converted to Armed Merchant Cruisers in a pinch.
The coordination of the arrivals at every single one of the worlds of the Kerensky Cluster had not been easy, but had been aided by the fact that all the officers and mates of the ships were regular Starfleet or vassal navy officers on half-pay. A small independent shipping firm might use its own non-combatant officer personnel, and the truly huge combines had their own militaries, and thus their own militarily trained officers, but the bulk of the shipping concerns in the Empire simply hired officers on half-paid, and Jhayka had contracted to one of them for the operation.
Nominally, the ships could carry a much larger number of people within their immense holds. However, there needed to be some way to get the people to the ship, and this meant a provision, in the dorsal modular docking racks, where a very limited number of external cargo containers could be mounted (unlike with the dedicated modular ships), two huge submersible assault ships, each massing almost 800,000 tonnes when fully loaded, and comprising a decent fraction of the potential cargo capacity of the ships. Both were capable of embarking no less than 24,000 humanoids at once. They approached a large loading dock for subsurface mining operations in the oceans, while the massive freighter that they had arrived on (the others were at three other major port facilities near the five major cities of Huntress) stood off in somewhat choppy water which didn't bother the immense bulk.
"From the forces of our liege's warriors, Ovkhan?" Tamara asked as the features of the assault ships became clear, with the obvious guns on them and other things, and the clearly military semi-submersible hovercraft they'd deployed raced in to the beach to pick up more of the refuseniks and carry them to the ships, while Tamara and Sipajhai waited at the rear of a column moving down the dock to be loaded. The local military units were being forced to provide security, as the workers at the docks were rioting both at their management's willingness to lease them for the evacuation operation that day, and in general anger at the warriors.
The atmosphere was tense, but Sipajhai's example, coolly standing very close to the riot-lines (and shots had been fired, and many molotovs thrown), had reminded the Clanners that their destination was not one without some personal courage. And so the masses of humanity were loaded, as they watched, and Sipajhai coolly explained, noble's voice cutting over the noise of the rioters. "Yes, they're of the Coast Guard of the Intu'itan Principality, Tamara. Old reserve assault landers for supporting surface army operations and water-based security patrol. Normally they just have a combat brigade and a wing of aerospace fighters onboard, with support personnel. None of that here, of course, and the weapons are officially deactivated."
"Officially deactivated? Isn't that a bit.. Tricky.. Of you, Ovkhan?"
Sipajhai laughed dryly. "We'll be gone before they notice, like as not, my young warrior."
The compliment left a surge of pride in the young sibko. "We'll load last, Ovkhan?"
"Yes, of course. I'm in charge of the operation, after all, and, well, you have no intention of leaving my side, do you?"
"Absolutely not!"
Sipajhai's ears straightened fondly, her arm lightly around the girl. "I want to put your people off on the right foot, Tamara, and you were very courageous indeed in that shield-fighting. So I've made a decision, that I shall sponsor you for the Imperial Army Academy on Talora Prime at Valeria."
"But what of my Trials, Ovkhan?" Tamara had some consternation at the prospect; she wished to see her own place in her own society assured, after all.
"Well, after them, of course. They are rather a given in you." It's rather nice to indulge a matronly instinct, Sipajhai mused as she allowed a vague, close-lipped, curved grin at the response of Tamara to the compliments. Which were a bit of flattery, but well-deserved. Loading of the disciplined clanners, by the disciplined reservists on the assault ships, did not take long, only about an hour, and then the trip out to the freighter standing off the port was only thirty minutes. Unloading took another hour, and then the return. It was about 1300 hours when the loading of the second and last group began onto each of the assault ships.
At least it was time to go. Tamara, by standing up for some four and a half hours, had been weakened far more than she would care to admit in her wounded condition, and even Sipajhai's rigid discipline did not much encourage the idea of remaining in one place much longer. Anyway, the riot was reaching its infuriated height, and a few more shots were pinging around them. Unruffled, Sipajhai started forward with a slight tug on Tamara's tunic. "Come on, my girl. There's enough room for us on the last of the GP trucks." The Taloran uncomplaining sat among the other clanners, helped in hefting Tamara up onboard, and it rattled down the three-quarters-mile long deep water pier.
It took more than another hour and a half for them to reach the ship and unload. Most of the clanners here, carefully separated by caste, were provided functionally equal sleeping arrangements: Six-high slat bunks filling cargo spaces by the thousands with portable composting toilets provided. Food was made in a section of the cargo area roped off, with a cooking staff having been hired (who had their own better quarters in another converted hold) to man it. Tamara, however, and several of those others wounded or sick, had been provided the luxury accommodations at the top of the crew spaces where a limited number of passengers were normally carried for additional revenue on routes under-serviced by liners.
They had scarcely reached the cabins when the order to stand fast was made, and the ship began accelerating, drawing more and more power, before with a great shudder it was wrenched free of the ocean and shot out of the atmosphere like a rocket, the inertial compensators handling everything after that moment perfectly. Sipajhai casually jacked in and brought up a view of the planet receding behind them as they accelerated clear of the local gravity well, before shifting to superlight Trivaht drives.
"All that we have ever known..." Tamara sighed as the transition to 1c made the planet abruptly recede into simply a greater point of light than the others in the sky.
"But it's also freedom."
"We go on exodus again," the girl answered softly, and with vivid emotion. It was an emotion shared by all of those in Jhayka's fleet of refuseniks. As Kerensky had led them out of the Inner Sphere, now an alien, in debt won by the valour of their own, was bringing them forth out of their universe. But who would lead them? Would she, or would one from among their own ranks? The fate of the clans was not settled; it had indeed just begun.
Kerensky Territories
Universe Designate MWB-32
1 April 2165 AST.
59 Valeria, I.Y. 618.
Sipajhai Olothdhakiu, the Baroness of Khastim, was seeing her mission finally come to an end. She supported with her right arm wrapped around the girl the form of Tamara, the sibko she had instructed, and then healed from her desperate fight, who had now recovered enough for the moment of standing and watching this immense ship come down upon Lootera, one of four that was arriving and landing on the extremely limited number of large, deep bodies of water capable of handling the Taloran light, fast freighters of 6 megatonnes each empty mass.
As Huntress had the largest refusenik population out of the entire cluster except for the whole clan Blood Spirit, where the lower castes had chosen in the range of 60% to leave against the average of scarcely 1% for most of the others, evidence of the very different Blood Spirit treatment of their lessers, it had resulted in the largest number of the biggest ships in the fleet, other than the Blood Spirit lands. It was for different reasons, of course. The harshness of the Smoke Jaguars had guaranteed that anyone on Huntress more important than the brutalized lowest castes had suffered from constant reprisals, and by far the largest number out of the population of any world wished to leave. In all, almost 250,000 individuals would be making the exodus from Huntress. The capacity of the four ships together was collectively 256,000, so that worked out just fine.
With huge cigar-hulls floating predominantly underwater with a low-slung docking interface and superstructure topside and small, thick gravitic vanes aft, the ships were general purpose freighters instead of the modular freighters used for extensive trade in the core of the Empire. They were intended for running high-valued cargos at speed, in comparison to similar sized tramp-freighters that served the colonies with mixed goods at slower accelerations and drive charge rates, and most of these vessels could be converted to Armed Merchant Cruisers in a pinch.
The coordination of the arrivals at every single one of the worlds of the Kerensky Cluster had not been easy, but had been aided by the fact that all the officers and mates of the ships were regular Starfleet or vassal navy officers on half-pay. A small independent shipping firm might use its own non-combatant officer personnel, and the truly huge combines had their own militaries, and thus their own militarily trained officers, but the bulk of the shipping concerns in the Empire simply hired officers on half-paid, and Jhayka had contracted to one of them for the operation.
Nominally, the ships could carry a much larger number of people within their immense holds. However, there needed to be some way to get the people to the ship, and this meant a provision, in the dorsal modular docking racks, where a very limited number of external cargo containers could be mounted (unlike with the dedicated modular ships), two huge submersible assault ships, each massing almost 800,000 tonnes when fully loaded, and comprising a decent fraction of the potential cargo capacity of the ships. Both were capable of embarking no less than 24,000 humanoids at once. They approached a large loading dock for subsurface mining operations in the oceans, while the massive freighter that they had arrived on (the others were at three other major port facilities near the five major cities of Huntress) stood off in somewhat choppy water which didn't bother the immense bulk.
"From the forces of our liege's warriors, Ovkhan?" Tamara asked as the features of the assault ships became clear, with the obvious guns on them and other things, and the clearly military semi-submersible hovercraft they'd deployed raced in to the beach to pick up more of the refuseniks and carry them to the ships, while Tamara and Sipajhai waited at the rear of a column moving down the dock to be loaded. The local military units were being forced to provide security, as the workers at the docks were rioting both at their management's willingness to lease them for the evacuation operation that day, and in general anger at the warriors.
The atmosphere was tense, but Sipajhai's example, coolly standing very close to the riot-lines (and shots had been fired, and many molotovs thrown), had reminded the Clanners that their destination was not one without some personal courage. And so the masses of humanity were loaded, as they watched, and Sipajhai coolly explained, noble's voice cutting over the noise of the rioters. "Yes, they're of the Coast Guard of the Intu'itan Principality, Tamara. Old reserve assault landers for supporting surface army operations and water-based security patrol. Normally they just have a combat brigade and a wing of aerospace fighters onboard, with support personnel. None of that here, of course, and the weapons are officially deactivated."
"Officially deactivated? Isn't that a bit.. Tricky.. Of you, Ovkhan?"
Sipajhai laughed dryly. "We'll be gone before they notice, like as not, my young warrior."
The compliment left a surge of pride in the young sibko. "We'll load last, Ovkhan?"
"Yes, of course. I'm in charge of the operation, after all, and, well, you have no intention of leaving my side, do you?"
"Absolutely not!"
Sipajhai's ears straightened fondly, her arm lightly around the girl. "I want to put your people off on the right foot, Tamara, and you were very courageous indeed in that shield-fighting. So I've made a decision, that I shall sponsor you for the Imperial Army Academy on Talora Prime at Valeria."
"But what of my Trials, Ovkhan?" Tamara had some consternation at the prospect; she wished to see her own place in her own society assured, after all.
"Well, after them, of course. They are rather a given in you." It's rather nice to indulge a matronly instinct, Sipajhai mused as she allowed a vague, close-lipped, curved grin at the response of Tamara to the compliments. Which were a bit of flattery, but well-deserved. Loading of the disciplined clanners, by the disciplined reservists on the assault ships, did not take long, only about an hour, and then the trip out to the freighter standing off the port was only thirty minutes. Unloading took another hour, and then the return. It was about 1300 hours when the loading of the second and last group began onto each of the assault ships.
At least it was time to go. Tamara, by standing up for some four and a half hours, had been weakened far more than she would care to admit in her wounded condition, and even Sipajhai's rigid discipline did not much encourage the idea of remaining in one place much longer. Anyway, the riot was reaching its infuriated height, and a few more shots were pinging around them. Unruffled, Sipajhai started forward with a slight tug on Tamara's tunic. "Come on, my girl. There's enough room for us on the last of the GP trucks." The Taloran uncomplaining sat among the other clanners, helped in hefting Tamara up onboard, and it rattled down the three-quarters-mile long deep water pier.
It took more than another hour and a half for them to reach the ship and unload. Most of the clanners here, carefully separated by caste, were provided functionally equal sleeping arrangements: Six-high slat bunks filling cargo spaces by the thousands with portable composting toilets provided. Food was made in a section of the cargo area roped off, with a cooking staff having been hired (who had their own better quarters in another converted hold) to man it. Tamara, however, and several of those others wounded or sick, had been provided the luxury accommodations at the top of the crew spaces where a limited number of passengers were normally carried for additional revenue on routes under-serviced by liners.
They had scarcely reached the cabins when the order to stand fast was made, and the ship began accelerating, drawing more and more power, before with a great shudder it was wrenched free of the ocean and shot out of the atmosphere like a rocket, the inertial compensators handling everything after that moment perfectly. Sipajhai casually jacked in and brought up a view of the planet receding behind them as they accelerated clear of the local gravity well, before shifting to superlight Trivaht drives.
"All that we have ever known..." Tamara sighed as the transition to 1c made the planet abruptly recede into simply a greater point of light than the others in the sky.
"But it's also freedom."
"We go on exodus again," the girl answered softly, and with vivid emotion. It was an emotion shared by all of those in Jhayka's fleet of refuseniks. As Kerensky had led them out of the Inner Sphere, now an alien, in debt won by the valour of their own, was bringing them forth out of their universe. But who would lead them? Would she, or would one from among their own ranks? The fate of the clans was not settled; it had indeed just begun.
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.
-
The Duchess of Zeon
- Gözde
- Posts: 14566
- Joined: 2002-09-18 01:06am
- Location: Exiled in the Pale of Settlement.
The Hays-Adams, Washington D.C.
2 April 2165 AST
61 Valeria, I.Y. 618
The Hays-Adams lobby hadn't been quite the same since the Taloran delegation moved in en masse, though it seemed no less hectic now that the talks were beginning and the delegation members were running to and fro and ordering room service and everything else. What activity there was on the lobby was watched, hawkishly, by the security detachment assigned to the delegation, buoyed since the attack on the Slashahkimmar, by the Alliance Security Service.
The Press had, mostly, been uninvited up until now, with no members of the delegation having deigned to accept the scores of requests for interviews. That is, until now.
The woman that walked up to the lobby desk was in business clothes, long skirt and business jacket. Her red hair was long, though not Taloran-long, going about mid-way down her back, and if seemed to accentuate her natural attractiveness. She was accompanied by a handful of others at the moment, one woman and two men, who were carrying packs of equipment that was drawing the attention of the security people. With a smile, she looked to the person on desk duty and said, "Hi, I'm Kellie Stevenson, IUNS?"
"Miss Stevenson..." The man checked the computer notes on visitors. "Ah. Miss Laurentii. Have fun."
"What do you think of her?" Kellie asked as she nodded to her companions to let the security people explain their equipment.
The man shrugged. "A few people that've talked to her said she seems friendly enough, but hey, they say Hitler was a funny guy in person. As far as I'm concerned, she's a murderer who's not getting what she deserves because some self-righteous aliens think she and they are better than everyone else."
Kellie didn't respond visibly to that with more than nod. She had her own opinions, of course, but she also wanted to get to the truth.
Security cleared their equipment, and they were escorted up to Priscilla's suite, overlooking Lafayette Park. Along the way their security went from the hotel detectives and Alliance government-provided men to the Taloran ones, and they called out, "Your Grace, the reporter is here," through the door.
"Let her in, by all means." She answered briskly.
"Of course, Your Grace." The security guard opened the door for Kellie. "Miss Stevenson..." He offered.
Inside the room, Priscilla wasn't in uniform but rather a very modest and typical white slacks and light pastel blue shirt over it. Her hair was pulled back into a pony tail, dyed dark purple to help her fit in with Talorans. The clothes looked fairly good on her, with her darkish, Arabic features and skin tone. She had, on reflection, decided not to wear the formal uniform of the Intuitan military. It gave the wrong impression. She stood when Kellie was introduced, too, not precisely what one would expect from a ruling Duchess. "Welcome, Miss Stevenson. Please, come inside and have a seat." There was a chair across from her, a small table between them with water glasses on it.
Kellie nodded to the others and did so. They immediately walked around the place, setting up their equipment to take the multiple-angle images that allowed for both 2D and 3D reproduction. "Is it... Miss Laurentii? Duchess Laurentii?"
"Miss Laurentii, please," she smiled faintly. "I don't really think it necessary to go into the minutinae of the titles the Ruling Princess has given to me, unless you wish to. I certainly don't feel offended by their lack." Only then did she sit, crossing her legs neatly at the knees, dark eyes regarding Kellie over the most semitic feature of her face, a noticeable hook nose.
"I see." Kellie took the seat as well and looked to the others. "It should only take them a couple more minutes to get set up." She looked to them, and in about seventy seconds they nodded to her. "Okay, they're ready when you're ready."
"I'm ready, Miss Stevenson. Go ahead."
"Okay..." Kellie nodded to her technicians and they activated the recorders. When all were turned green she got the thumb's up. "This is Kellie Stevenson, Inter-Universal News Service, with Priscilla Laurentii, currently serving as Chief of Staff on the Taloran delegation in Washington. Miss Laurentii, you are currently wanted for approximately two thousand counts of murder in the Kingdom of Devenshire and have been declared a war criminal by the finding of the Kelling Tribunal. Do you have anything to say on the charges?"
"Certainly I've been judged a war criminal by the Kelling Tribunal. Unfortunately they chose to ignore the practical matters which happened on the ground on Pranton that very unfortunate day. The murder charges are also more or less bundled up into that. We were facing armed opposition with fire coming in from every direction, and a good fifteen thousand attackers, heavily armed from looted armouries and supply drops the Plymouthite forces had made before moving in to actually seize the system themselves. The battalion I was commanding was fighting purely for survival; another very sizable force of rebels had hit our barracks outside of the city shortly after sacking the Grand Duke's residence." She was very composed when recounting that, in some way, finally given her chance to make her final report on the action as though she'd been reporting to the military officers who no longer existed. "There were indubitably high civilian casualties in our breakout. But every shot we fired was in retaliation to the constant harassment fire from every direction as we moved through the city. It was, in short, a nightmare, but one that it's almost impossible for a military unit to avoid when the enemy chooses to attack in that way. Levying charges is based on political motivation, with little connection to the realities of the survival of the men under my command."
Kellie listened non-chalantly. "So your position is that the rebelling slaves caused the civilian deaths in umm-Kashrash? That you did nothing wrong. Nothing that was not militarily justifiable."
"I think all the civilian casualties were Collateral Damage, Miss Stevenson, to use a term which really doesn't do justice to the severity of what happened. I wish we had some way of avoiding it. I'll wish that for a long time." She shook her head wryly. "But they weren't interested in talking, and we weren't interested in dying. It's unfortunate, but, honestly, I can go back through it many times and think about little things I could have done to save a few of my men, but not really altered what happened. They were finally free, and they wanted vengeance. We were part of the government, and our personal crimes didn't matter, one way or the other. Worst or most innocent among us, they would have all been dead. And it is a damned shame, because like as not I tore right through the place in the industrial slave-quarters where a fair bit of my extended family lived. My biological father said as much before he died."
"That brings me naturally to what I was going to ask next. The Kelling Tribunal ruled the incident at umm-Kashrash a war crime on the grounds that by helping Johnathan Laurentii escape, it was the same as aiding a felon in escaping the law. It was, in the words of the Tribunal's head judge Gregory Roeth, 'the principal and underlying act which influenced all afterward, criminalizing them all.'" Stevenson put her hands together on her lap and looked at Priscilla intently. "Tell me, Miss Laurentii, why? Why did you save him? Why didn't you turn him in to the authorities in the years after you fled?"
"There isn't a good answer for that," Priscilla answered very simply. "You save your father, from certain death... I was raised fostered out, I never knew my parents until that night, and then just one. Obviously at first we took him along because we had no idea of his crimes. These things weren't public knowledge; he was a government officer, I was a soldier, regardless of our family relations. He rode in my command vehicle on the trip out. The light cruiser's captain was more or less responsible for what happened for a while afterwards. It was, in fact, his decision for quite a lot of the time. I don't know where he is at the moment; he finally threw my father and the remaining soldiers off the ship, in part because of my dispute with him over his intention to take up piracy, which I imagine he's at right now. Or dead. In that period we heard about the charges, of course, but had every reason of believing they were fabrications. So in that sense, we simply deluded ourselves into continuing to help him throughout that period. It wasn't until it was just about fourteen of us, me, my father, and twelve men left who stayed on because they'd heard their families were dead, or they wanted the money out of his private accounts, that things started to get bad. By which I mean that we caught him doing... Things, which I can only describe as sadistic. Usually to whores and so on. And he expected me as his 'faithful' daughter to help him. Well, we wouldn't. Things spiraled pretty fast after that, frankly. We weren't just running from the law--we were guarding a prisoner, too. The Grand Duke of Pranton, my father."
"He was a twisted man in all respects, and gradually his threats, the longer we kept him confined, grew more livid and extreme. He'd been using drugs and tried to have them smuggled in past us. By the end we were living in a rented home in a backwater system, most of the guys had spent a month in the basement. We had him handcuffed to the bed, while he ranted obscenities about what he'd do to me. He was to much of a threat to our cover, but we couldn't figure out how to get rid of him without ending up caught ourselves. In the end he removed the issue by dying on us. We buried him and, well, that was that."
Kellie listened to the entire thing and tried to maintain her detachment. You should have just turned the bastard in and accepted going with him! she wanted to shout, having taken the time to study up on Johnathan Laurentii's past. "When did you find out about his routine torture of female slaves, girls as young as ten? Or that your mother was one of them?"
"Around that time, just before we started confining him. I mean, found out as in realized it was true. Which was quite the shock and horror to all of us. Me especially, of course. I had thought that somehow I might be reunited with my mother even so. When I confronted him, and he told me that she was eleven..." It was at this point that, quite simply, Priscilla Laurentii's composure brought down, choked sobs coming, embarrassed, regretful. Tortured. "I knew the price of my choices. I hadn't helped my father; I'd helped my mother's rapist. And I would never, never see her. I know that will never happen. And... Well, I don't even really deserve these tears, do I?" She straightened, dabbing at her eyes, though they remained watery. "I confronted my father, and when he realized he couldn't keep me going any longer, he told the truth. I was an amusement to him. An experiment. One, you see, he could have ended at any time he wanted. Legally, I was never a free woman. With the scritch of a pen he could have had me as a slave. I rather wish he had. I'd still have my mother, after all."
For a moment there was silence from Kellie. She'd pondered just what Laurentii would be like since being offered the interview. She'd interviewed a fair number of people in her time, some who were every bit as hated as Laurentii, but none had reacted to their situation quite like that. "Miss Laurentii, what would you do today? Knowing what you know now?"
"I would have left him to the Prantonese. They strung up a lot of innocent people that day, like my foster parents. Indiscriminate, but I know they would have given him what he deserved. And, sometimes justice is indiscriminate, like how you ended the Dominion War. And there's no question in my mind that what the Prantonese did was just. I was definitely one of the 'bad guys' if you will; but, even then, I still would have made the break for the cruiser, after all. I had my battalion to be responsible for, there. I couldn't surrender to the Prantonese mob. With or without the Grand Duke, there was one road to safety, and it was straight through umm-Karshash."
Should she have? Kellie still wasn't convinced it was the only way, or that the massacre had to happen. "So you don't have any regrets about all the deaths that happened that day? You don't think you did anything wrong, that the blood isn't on your hands?"
"I did things wrong. I was a--excuse me, I'd rather say something harsh here--company commander who didn't have remotely enough time in rank to direct a battalion. I didn't have any instructions, any orders. Just frantic reports from the local gendarmie of division-strength forces closing down on my base. And then the Grand Duke shows up and says the planet is lost, by the way, I'm your long lost father, and won't you kindly take me to that cruiser in the umm-Karshash surface dockyards? Well, I was obligated to follow his orders anyway, and for all they got some good press for it, I wasn't particularly interested in ending up in Plymouthite hands, either. I know I would have made for her, anyway. Only solid way off the planet. I tried to negotiate with them, I tried everything to contact them. They didn't even know we had the Grand Duke, as best as I can tell. We wanted through, and they wouldn't yield. Could someone else have done better? Certainly. Could I have gone back and done things better? Oh god yes. And that will haunt me until I die. But I was a twenty-five year old freshly minted Captain with a battalion of one thousand and twenty-four officers and men under my command, and seven hundred supernumerary personnel from the barracks to protect. There's lots of blood on my hands. I will say in confidence that no commander who has to fight through such circumstances will rest peacefully having done so, unless they're a sadist."
There was some silence afterward. Kellie was jotting down some notes, something to put into the written part of her report that would be released on the wires. While doing so, she collected her thoughts. It was pretty clear that she wasn't some steadfast defender of the Old Regime and that she'd been put in an impossible situation. Perhaps the Butcher of umm-Kashrash wasn't what she'd been cracked up to be.
"I can figure you're trying to 'move on'. What do you want to do in your life? What aspirations do you have now?"
"Find someone who's willing to look past my background and marry me. Have a big house in the countryside by a nice brook where I can raise a few children, and ride the fences myself. It's what I always wanted in the end. The Princess Jhayka has added some responsibilities to that, which were not particularly welcome, but I accept knowing it's more or less my fate in life at this point. Mostly, try and make the clans into a decent and stable part of the Empire, and mediate whatever disputes they might have with the Amazons, the other Gilean refugees, and the regular settlers. I don't relish or look forward to that job. But, it does give me plenty of land to choose the best place for a house on." She smiled rather sadly. "It doesn't make up for a lot of things, but it's a life."
"And what about your mother?"
"I.. I don't know if she's alive or not." Priscilla seemed genuinely lost, there, uncomfortably reaching, finally, to take a drink of water. "If she had words for me, I would hear them. But I'm not arrogant enough to think that I could be forgiven."
"There are services, groups that comb remaining records of the Old Regime to find people. Have you thought of asking for their help?"
"Quite honestly, I didn't think that anyone would help me."
And you'd probably be right. Kellie thought of everything that had been asked and said and realized there was nothing more to be said on umm-Kashrash, though afterward was still open. "How did you meet Princess Jhayka? Why has she put so much on the line to protect you?"
"Well, we'd been doing mercenary jobs in that sector of space--lots of tiny single-star governments, or just a couple systems, out that way--when Jhayka was arriving. She heard through some contacts I won't mention out of professional courtesy that we were an excellent security group--I had about ninety employees in all at that point, fifteen Devenshire veterans, the others from a bunch of different places--and brought me in for an interview. She wanted absolute loyalty, and, I'm a trained officer, not a mercenary at heart. I suppose she read that, so she hired me. We went to Gilead, got things set up there on the ground, basically pulled security for her in the primitive zone. She'd rigged up some railroad cars she'd bought into an armoured train, and she'd planned to spend a whole Taloran year--more than three of our's--traveling the rails of an area the size of South America, studying and documenting all the different cultures of the place. I thought it was pretty damned crazy, and at the time thought she was more than a little crazy herself. But she is an alien, and in retrospect a lot of it was just misunderstandings in that light.
"Pretty much the rest is the story of the Siege of Kalunda, Miss Stevenson, and that is, well, covered extensively. Suffice to say that my gunners and my squad got her out of Ar alive, in conditions worse than umm-Karshash. Really, what happened there, well there was this little incident, but sort of famous, which people familiar with late twentieth century history might be familiar with. The Battle of Mogadishu. And that's pretty much what it was. Tens of thousands against about twenty. I was running the train at that point, and I made the decision to fight it out. Nominally my only job was to protect her, so I suppose the first thing that made me appeal to her was rescuing the railroad company personnel when the Normans attacked them, thinking they were involved with us. But for me that was just the right thing to do. After that, we got back to Kalunda and made all the preparations for strengthening the city for the siege. A few days into the siege, she gave me a promotion to Colonel in the Kalundan armed forces, put a battalion of Kalundan troops under my command, and had me run the siege lines with the oldest, sickest, youngest of the city by armoured trains, with the support of a general attack.
"After that, we could have left. But she paid for my services, and I am, in truth, loyal." She grimaced. "It hasn't always been a good trait. So I stayed, and I did my best to relieve the city. Again, and again, even though I didn't make any headway. I guess, in the end, she was impressed with my tenacity. And Jhayka rewards all her friends as generously as she can; Her Highness is punctilious in her love of paying perceived debts. And... I also did a personal favour on her behalf. There was a very, very traumatized slavegirl, whose name I won't say here, that she asked me to care for, because her current protector was remaining behind to fight in the siege. He died there, so I've been taking care of her since."
Kellie nodded at that. "According to the delegation list that the Taloran government released, you are considered the 'Duchess of Eleutheria' as well as having your biological father's claim to Pranton. What - and where - is Eleutheria?"
"It's the reference I made earlier--and I'm sorry I wasn't clear about that--to a planet where I'd be more or less in charge of managing several refugee groups," Priscilla replied. "Eleutheria is the planet's name. More or less it's an autonomous, human-populated component of the Principality of the Lesser Intuit. Uninhabited planet that we're in the process of colonizing."
"And you're in charge of it?"
"Yes."
"And do you think that's fair?" Kellie's tone wasn't too sharp, she'd long learned to sound as even-handed as possible, but she was morally perturbed by the fact that for all the pain that Laurentii had caused - rightly or wrongly - she was going to end up so well off. "Taking aside the issues of justification, of necessity, do you think it's fair that you're going to live the rest of your life as a wealthy noblewoman while thousands of survivors of umm-Kashrash, the ones still alive today, are probably going to live painful lives with all of the scars of that battle, and will live and die penniless? That you're the one who's never going to have to worry about whether there will be any food on the table, or enough? You're the one who'll always have a roof over her head?"
"No. No, it isn't fair at all." Priscilla Laurentii regarded Kellie with a fair amount of composure again, by that point. "But I couldn't alleviate their sufferings; the Waqf--the Islamic charities--wouldn't take my money. They wouldn't take Jhayka's, either. It doesn't make sense, Miss Stevenson. And I don't claim it does."
"And what about your mother? Odds are that if she's alive, she's probably as badly off as everyone else in Pranton."
"I'm very aware of that." Priscilla shifted uncomfortably. "Very aware of it. I can only hope that she's receiving some kind of care."
"You said earlier that you didn't think anyone would help you find her. If someone offered, would you take them up on it? Do you want to see your mother?"
"Yes. If she would see me. If she would talk to me. I expect nothing happy from it, but that's not the point. If she wants to see me, it wouldn't be merely wrong to refuse, but inhuman. I... Owe her that much."
Kellie nodded in an understanding way. "Is there anything else you'd like people to know? About yourself, about what happened, that I might not have asked you already?"
"I harbour only the best of wishes for the success of Pranton and the Prantonese people. I was raised on Pranton, ethnically, I'm half Prantonese Arabic, and, certainly, my mother is of that origin. Though I know they won't take these words well, I nonetheless wish them prosperity and success, however they feel they should go about achieving it."
"Thank you for your time, Miss Laurentii," Kellie said. A hand motion told the technical people to turn off the recorders. Kellie jotted down a final note and took a quick drink of water before extended her hand over to Priscilla.
Priscilla shook Kellie's hand, but didn't speak anything immediately. It was clear that she was rather exhausted by the interview, and with the cameras down, showed it as she'd restrained before. It had certainly been immensely emotionally draining.
One of the techs came up to Priscilla with a disc in his hand. "This is your hard copy," Kellie said. "I can't promise that everything we said will make it in due to time constraints, but my editors won't get screwy with the interview if they know you've got an original copy that can bite them."
"Thank you, Miss Stevenson. Your rectitude in giving this to me definitely proves that your journalism has always been of the finest standards. Which, I knew, contacting you," Priscilla paused for a moment. "And I didn't want someone who would go easy on me, anyway. The subject demands something better than that."
"I enjoy putting to rest bad myths," Kellie said. "For what it's worth... I don't like what you did, but I don't hate you. A part of me still insists you might have been able to find another way and avoid all the killing but I won't hold that against you. You did what you thought you had to, right or wrong."
"You can be assured," Priscilla answered with a hollow, dreadfully stricken expression. "That I'm going to die with those same thoughts on my mind. Now, if you don't mind... I'll show you and your crew out."
2 April 2165 AST
61 Valeria, I.Y. 618
The Hays-Adams lobby hadn't been quite the same since the Taloran delegation moved in en masse, though it seemed no less hectic now that the talks were beginning and the delegation members were running to and fro and ordering room service and everything else. What activity there was on the lobby was watched, hawkishly, by the security detachment assigned to the delegation, buoyed since the attack on the Slashahkimmar, by the Alliance Security Service.
The Press had, mostly, been uninvited up until now, with no members of the delegation having deigned to accept the scores of requests for interviews. That is, until now.
The woman that walked up to the lobby desk was in business clothes, long skirt and business jacket. Her red hair was long, though not Taloran-long, going about mid-way down her back, and if seemed to accentuate her natural attractiveness. She was accompanied by a handful of others at the moment, one woman and two men, who were carrying packs of equipment that was drawing the attention of the security people. With a smile, she looked to the person on desk duty and said, "Hi, I'm Kellie Stevenson, IUNS?"
"Miss Stevenson..." The man checked the computer notes on visitors. "Ah. Miss Laurentii. Have fun."
"What do you think of her?" Kellie asked as she nodded to her companions to let the security people explain their equipment.
The man shrugged. "A few people that've talked to her said she seems friendly enough, but hey, they say Hitler was a funny guy in person. As far as I'm concerned, she's a murderer who's not getting what she deserves because some self-righteous aliens think she and they are better than everyone else."
Kellie didn't respond visibly to that with more than nod. She had her own opinions, of course, but she also wanted to get to the truth.
Security cleared their equipment, and they were escorted up to Priscilla's suite, overlooking Lafayette Park. Along the way their security went from the hotel detectives and Alliance government-provided men to the Taloran ones, and they called out, "Your Grace, the reporter is here," through the door.
"Let her in, by all means." She answered briskly.
"Of course, Your Grace." The security guard opened the door for Kellie. "Miss Stevenson..." He offered.
Inside the room, Priscilla wasn't in uniform but rather a very modest and typical white slacks and light pastel blue shirt over it. Her hair was pulled back into a pony tail, dyed dark purple to help her fit in with Talorans. The clothes looked fairly good on her, with her darkish, Arabic features and skin tone. She had, on reflection, decided not to wear the formal uniform of the Intuitan military. It gave the wrong impression. She stood when Kellie was introduced, too, not precisely what one would expect from a ruling Duchess. "Welcome, Miss Stevenson. Please, come inside and have a seat." There was a chair across from her, a small table between them with water glasses on it.
Kellie nodded to the others and did so. They immediately walked around the place, setting up their equipment to take the multiple-angle images that allowed for both 2D and 3D reproduction. "Is it... Miss Laurentii? Duchess Laurentii?"
"Miss Laurentii, please," she smiled faintly. "I don't really think it necessary to go into the minutinae of the titles the Ruling Princess has given to me, unless you wish to. I certainly don't feel offended by their lack." Only then did she sit, crossing her legs neatly at the knees, dark eyes regarding Kellie over the most semitic feature of her face, a noticeable hook nose.
"I see." Kellie took the seat as well and looked to the others. "It should only take them a couple more minutes to get set up." She looked to them, and in about seventy seconds they nodded to her. "Okay, they're ready when you're ready."
"I'm ready, Miss Stevenson. Go ahead."
"Okay..." Kellie nodded to her technicians and they activated the recorders. When all were turned green she got the thumb's up. "This is Kellie Stevenson, Inter-Universal News Service, with Priscilla Laurentii, currently serving as Chief of Staff on the Taloran delegation in Washington. Miss Laurentii, you are currently wanted for approximately two thousand counts of murder in the Kingdom of Devenshire and have been declared a war criminal by the finding of the Kelling Tribunal. Do you have anything to say on the charges?"
"Certainly I've been judged a war criminal by the Kelling Tribunal. Unfortunately they chose to ignore the practical matters which happened on the ground on Pranton that very unfortunate day. The murder charges are also more or less bundled up into that. We were facing armed opposition with fire coming in from every direction, and a good fifteen thousand attackers, heavily armed from looted armouries and supply drops the Plymouthite forces had made before moving in to actually seize the system themselves. The battalion I was commanding was fighting purely for survival; another very sizable force of rebels had hit our barracks outside of the city shortly after sacking the Grand Duke's residence." She was very composed when recounting that, in some way, finally given her chance to make her final report on the action as though she'd been reporting to the military officers who no longer existed. "There were indubitably high civilian casualties in our breakout. But every shot we fired was in retaliation to the constant harassment fire from every direction as we moved through the city. It was, in short, a nightmare, but one that it's almost impossible for a military unit to avoid when the enemy chooses to attack in that way. Levying charges is based on political motivation, with little connection to the realities of the survival of the men under my command."
Kellie listened non-chalantly. "So your position is that the rebelling slaves caused the civilian deaths in umm-Kashrash? That you did nothing wrong. Nothing that was not militarily justifiable."
"I think all the civilian casualties were Collateral Damage, Miss Stevenson, to use a term which really doesn't do justice to the severity of what happened. I wish we had some way of avoiding it. I'll wish that for a long time." She shook her head wryly. "But they weren't interested in talking, and we weren't interested in dying. It's unfortunate, but, honestly, I can go back through it many times and think about little things I could have done to save a few of my men, but not really altered what happened. They were finally free, and they wanted vengeance. We were part of the government, and our personal crimes didn't matter, one way or the other. Worst or most innocent among us, they would have all been dead. And it is a damned shame, because like as not I tore right through the place in the industrial slave-quarters where a fair bit of my extended family lived. My biological father said as much before he died."
"That brings me naturally to what I was going to ask next. The Kelling Tribunal ruled the incident at umm-Kashrash a war crime on the grounds that by helping Johnathan Laurentii escape, it was the same as aiding a felon in escaping the law. It was, in the words of the Tribunal's head judge Gregory Roeth, 'the principal and underlying act which influenced all afterward, criminalizing them all.'" Stevenson put her hands together on her lap and looked at Priscilla intently. "Tell me, Miss Laurentii, why? Why did you save him? Why didn't you turn him in to the authorities in the years after you fled?"
"There isn't a good answer for that," Priscilla answered very simply. "You save your father, from certain death... I was raised fostered out, I never knew my parents until that night, and then just one. Obviously at first we took him along because we had no idea of his crimes. These things weren't public knowledge; he was a government officer, I was a soldier, regardless of our family relations. He rode in my command vehicle on the trip out. The light cruiser's captain was more or less responsible for what happened for a while afterwards. It was, in fact, his decision for quite a lot of the time. I don't know where he is at the moment; he finally threw my father and the remaining soldiers off the ship, in part because of my dispute with him over his intention to take up piracy, which I imagine he's at right now. Or dead. In that period we heard about the charges, of course, but had every reason of believing they were fabrications. So in that sense, we simply deluded ourselves into continuing to help him throughout that period. It wasn't until it was just about fourteen of us, me, my father, and twelve men left who stayed on because they'd heard their families were dead, or they wanted the money out of his private accounts, that things started to get bad. By which I mean that we caught him doing... Things, which I can only describe as sadistic. Usually to whores and so on. And he expected me as his 'faithful' daughter to help him. Well, we wouldn't. Things spiraled pretty fast after that, frankly. We weren't just running from the law--we were guarding a prisoner, too. The Grand Duke of Pranton, my father."
"He was a twisted man in all respects, and gradually his threats, the longer we kept him confined, grew more livid and extreme. He'd been using drugs and tried to have them smuggled in past us. By the end we were living in a rented home in a backwater system, most of the guys had spent a month in the basement. We had him handcuffed to the bed, while he ranted obscenities about what he'd do to me. He was to much of a threat to our cover, but we couldn't figure out how to get rid of him without ending up caught ourselves. In the end he removed the issue by dying on us. We buried him and, well, that was that."
Kellie listened to the entire thing and tried to maintain her detachment. You should have just turned the bastard in and accepted going with him! she wanted to shout, having taken the time to study up on Johnathan Laurentii's past. "When did you find out about his routine torture of female slaves, girls as young as ten? Or that your mother was one of them?"
"Around that time, just before we started confining him. I mean, found out as in realized it was true. Which was quite the shock and horror to all of us. Me especially, of course. I had thought that somehow I might be reunited with my mother even so. When I confronted him, and he told me that she was eleven..." It was at this point that, quite simply, Priscilla Laurentii's composure brought down, choked sobs coming, embarrassed, regretful. Tortured. "I knew the price of my choices. I hadn't helped my father; I'd helped my mother's rapist. And I would never, never see her. I know that will never happen. And... Well, I don't even really deserve these tears, do I?" She straightened, dabbing at her eyes, though they remained watery. "I confronted my father, and when he realized he couldn't keep me going any longer, he told the truth. I was an amusement to him. An experiment. One, you see, he could have ended at any time he wanted. Legally, I was never a free woman. With the scritch of a pen he could have had me as a slave. I rather wish he had. I'd still have my mother, after all."
For a moment there was silence from Kellie. She'd pondered just what Laurentii would be like since being offered the interview. She'd interviewed a fair number of people in her time, some who were every bit as hated as Laurentii, but none had reacted to their situation quite like that. "Miss Laurentii, what would you do today? Knowing what you know now?"
"I would have left him to the Prantonese. They strung up a lot of innocent people that day, like my foster parents. Indiscriminate, but I know they would have given him what he deserved. And, sometimes justice is indiscriminate, like how you ended the Dominion War. And there's no question in my mind that what the Prantonese did was just. I was definitely one of the 'bad guys' if you will; but, even then, I still would have made the break for the cruiser, after all. I had my battalion to be responsible for, there. I couldn't surrender to the Prantonese mob. With or without the Grand Duke, there was one road to safety, and it was straight through umm-Karshash."
Should she have? Kellie still wasn't convinced it was the only way, or that the massacre had to happen. "So you don't have any regrets about all the deaths that happened that day? You don't think you did anything wrong, that the blood isn't on your hands?"
"I did things wrong. I was a--excuse me, I'd rather say something harsh here--company commander who didn't have remotely enough time in rank to direct a battalion. I didn't have any instructions, any orders. Just frantic reports from the local gendarmie of division-strength forces closing down on my base. And then the Grand Duke shows up and says the planet is lost, by the way, I'm your long lost father, and won't you kindly take me to that cruiser in the umm-Karshash surface dockyards? Well, I was obligated to follow his orders anyway, and for all they got some good press for it, I wasn't particularly interested in ending up in Plymouthite hands, either. I know I would have made for her, anyway. Only solid way off the planet. I tried to negotiate with them, I tried everything to contact them. They didn't even know we had the Grand Duke, as best as I can tell. We wanted through, and they wouldn't yield. Could someone else have done better? Certainly. Could I have gone back and done things better? Oh god yes. And that will haunt me until I die. But I was a twenty-five year old freshly minted Captain with a battalion of one thousand and twenty-four officers and men under my command, and seven hundred supernumerary personnel from the barracks to protect. There's lots of blood on my hands. I will say in confidence that no commander who has to fight through such circumstances will rest peacefully having done so, unless they're a sadist."
There was some silence afterward. Kellie was jotting down some notes, something to put into the written part of her report that would be released on the wires. While doing so, she collected her thoughts. It was pretty clear that she wasn't some steadfast defender of the Old Regime and that she'd been put in an impossible situation. Perhaps the Butcher of umm-Kashrash wasn't what she'd been cracked up to be.
"I can figure you're trying to 'move on'. What do you want to do in your life? What aspirations do you have now?"
"Find someone who's willing to look past my background and marry me. Have a big house in the countryside by a nice brook where I can raise a few children, and ride the fences myself. It's what I always wanted in the end. The Princess Jhayka has added some responsibilities to that, which were not particularly welcome, but I accept knowing it's more or less my fate in life at this point. Mostly, try and make the clans into a decent and stable part of the Empire, and mediate whatever disputes they might have with the Amazons, the other Gilean refugees, and the regular settlers. I don't relish or look forward to that job. But, it does give me plenty of land to choose the best place for a house on." She smiled rather sadly. "It doesn't make up for a lot of things, but it's a life."
"And what about your mother?"
"I.. I don't know if she's alive or not." Priscilla seemed genuinely lost, there, uncomfortably reaching, finally, to take a drink of water. "If she had words for me, I would hear them. But I'm not arrogant enough to think that I could be forgiven."
"There are services, groups that comb remaining records of the Old Regime to find people. Have you thought of asking for their help?"
"Quite honestly, I didn't think that anyone would help me."
And you'd probably be right. Kellie thought of everything that had been asked and said and realized there was nothing more to be said on umm-Kashrash, though afterward was still open. "How did you meet Princess Jhayka? Why has she put so much on the line to protect you?"
"Well, we'd been doing mercenary jobs in that sector of space--lots of tiny single-star governments, or just a couple systems, out that way--when Jhayka was arriving. She heard through some contacts I won't mention out of professional courtesy that we were an excellent security group--I had about ninety employees in all at that point, fifteen Devenshire veterans, the others from a bunch of different places--and brought me in for an interview. She wanted absolute loyalty, and, I'm a trained officer, not a mercenary at heart. I suppose she read that, so she hired me. We went to Gilead, got things set up there on the ground, basically pulled security for her in the primitive zone. She'd rigged up some railroad cars she'd bought into an armoured train, and she'd planned to spend a whole Taloran year--more than three of our's--traveling the rails of an area the size of South America, studying and documenting all the different cultures of the place. I thought it was pretty damned crazy, and at the time thought she was more than a little crazy herself. But she is an alien, and in retrospect a lot of it was just misunderstandings in that light.
"Pretty much the rest is the story of the Siege of Kalunda, Miss Stevenson, and that is, well, covered extensively. Suffice to say that my gunners and my squad got her out of Ar alive, in conditions worse than umm-Karshash. Really, what happened there, well there was this little incident, but sort of famous, which people familiar with late twentieth century history might be familiar with. The Battle of Mogadishu. And that's pretty much what it was. Tens of thousands against about twenty. I was running the train at that point, and I made the decision to fight it out. Nominally my only job was to protect her, so I suppose the first thing that made me appeal to her was rescuing the railroad company personnel when the Normans attacked them, thinking they were involved with us. But for me that was just the right thing to do. After that, we got back to Kalunda and made all the preparations for strengthening the city for the siege. A few days into the siege, she gave me a promotion to Colonel in the Kalundan armed forces, put a battalion of Kalundan troops under my command, and had me run the siege lines with the oldest, sickest, youngest of the city by armoured trains, with the support of a general attack.
"After that, we could have left. But she paid for my services, and I am, in truth, loyal." She grimaced. "It hasn't always been a good trait. So I stayed, and I did my best to relieve the city. Again, and again, even though I didn't make any headway. I guess, in the end, she was impressed with my tenacity. And Jhayka rewards all her friends as generously as she can; Her Highness is punctilious in her love of paying perceived debts. And... I also did a personal favour on her behalf. There was a very, very traumatized slavegirl, whose name I won't say here, that she asked me to care for, because her current protector was remaining behind to fight in the siege. He died there, so I've been taking care of her since."
Kellie nodded at that. "According to the delegation list that the Taloran government released, you are considered the 'Duchess of Eleutheria' as well as having your biological father's claim to Pranton. What - and where - is Eleutheria?"
"It's the reference I made earlier--and I'm sorry I wasn't clear about that--to a planet where I'd be more or less in charge of managing several refugee groups," Priscilla replied. "Eleutheria is the planet's name. More or less it's an autonomous, human-populated component of the Principality of the Lesser Intuit. Uninhabited planet that we're in the process of colonizing."
"And you're in charge of it?"
"Yes."
"And do you think that's fair?" Kellie's tone wasn't too sharp, she'd long learned to sound as even-handed as possible, but she was morally perturbed by the fact that for all the pain that Laurentii had caused - rightly or wrongly - she was going to end up so well off. "Taking aside the issues of justification, of necessity, do you think it's fair that you're going to live the rest of your life as a wealthy noblewoman while thousands of survivors of umm-Kashrash, the ones still alive today, are probably going to live painful lives with all of the scars of that battle, and will live and die penniless? That you're the one who's never going to have to worry about whether there will be any food on the table, or enough? You're the one who'll always have a roof over her head?"
"No. No, it isn't fair at all." Priscilla Laurentii regarded Kellie with a fair amount of composure again, by that point. "But I couldn't alleviate their sufferings; the Waqf--the Islamic charities--wouldn't take my money. They wouldn't take Jhayka's, either. It doesn't make sense, Miss Stevenson. And I don't claim it does."
"And what about your mother? Odds are that if she's alive, she's probably as badly off as everyone else in Pranton."
"I'm very aware of that." Priscilla shifted uncomfortably. "Very aware of it. I can only hope that she's receiving some kind of care."
"You said earlier that you didn't think anyone would help you find her. If someone offered, would you take them up on it? Do you want to see your mother?"
"Yes. If she would see me. If she would talk to me. I expect nothing happy from it, but that's not the point. If she wants to see me, it wouldn't be merely wrong to refuse, but inhuman. I... Owe her that much."
Kellie nodded in an understanding way. "Is there anything else you'd like people to know? About yourself, about what happened, that I might not have asked you already?"
"I harbour only the best of wishes for the success of Pranton and the Prantonese people. I was raised on Pranton, ethnically, I'm half Prantonese Arabic, and, certainly, my mother is of that origin. Though I know they won't take these words well, I nonetheless wish them prosperity and success, however they feel they should go about achieving it."
"Thank you for your time, Miss Laurentii," Kellie said. A hand motion told the technical people to turn off the recorders. Kellie jotted down a final note and took a quick drink of water before extended her hand over to Priscilla.
Priscilla shook Kellie's hand, but didn't speak anything immediately. It was clear that she was rather exhausted by the interview, and with the cameras down, showed it as she'd restrained before. It had certainly been immensely emotionally draining.
One of the techs came up to Priscilla with a disc in his hand. "This is your hard copy," Kellie said. "I can't promise that everything we said will make it in due to time constraints, but my editors won't get screwy with the interview if they know you've got an original copy that can bite them."
"Thank you, Miss Stevenson. Your rectitude in giving this to me definitely proves that your journalism has always been of the finest standards. Which, I knew, contacting you," Priscilla paused for a moment. "And I didn't want someone who would go easy on me, anyway. The subject demands something better than that."
"I enjoy putting to rest bad myths," Kellie said. "For what it's worth... I don't like what you did, but I don't hate you. A part of me still insists you might have been able to find another way and avoid all the killing but I won't hold that against you. You did what you thought you had to, right or wrong."
"You can be assured," Priscilla answered with a hollow, dreadfully stricken expression. "That I'm going to die with those same thoughts on my mind. Now, if you don't mind... I'll show you and your crew out."
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.
The Hays-Adams, Washington D.C.
4 April 2165 AST
63 Valeria, I.Y. 618
Drishalras was very aware of customary hesitancy. Jhayka certainly showed it more than she did. But then Drishalras tended to ignore some more cautious noble behaviours that she didn't have the time for in her life. She was relaxing dressed in spun spider's silk with extra-long sleeves and billowing pantaloons, the top green with white inland and the bottom blue with red, as she knocked on the door to Jhayka and Danielle's suite that evening, and Jhayka opened the door. "Hi, Love," Drishalras offered with a slight smile and her ears dipping forwards a bit as she leaned in to kiss Jhayka lightly. "Danielle is here, right?"
"Yes, of course," Jhayka answered, showing some consternation. "What do you want to talk about?" She asked as she ushered Drishalras in and this time closed and locked the door.
"Well, mostly about telling Danielle's father about me. He's bound to notice it on the news sooner or later," Drishalras started before even glancing to see if Danielle was in that room, and then frowning. "Ah."
"Yes, she's back in the bedroom, one moment..." Jhayka started that way, just to see Danielle coming out already.
Having heard the knock, Dani had retrieved a purple silken nightrobe and wrapped it around herself. Jhayka had mostly been making small talk with her, letting her know the early progress of the talks, though not really getting too far into it. She saw Drish and smiled at her, not speaking right away but moving toward the bar in the suite. "Want a drink, Drish?"
"Oh, please!" Drishalras answered with a slight smile. "Did you hear what I was starting to tell Jhayka about?"
"Yes, I did." Dani reached into the bar and got three glasses. "What kind of drink?"
"It's evening. Port? I've taken a liking to it." She moved to sit down with Jhayka, smiling. "And thank you," she added. "So, I guess what I wanted to discuss is pretty obvious, then?"
"Something I've been thinking about for the past week," was Dani's reply, as she found a bottle of port in the wine cooler and poured a glass. "Jhayka?"
"The same," Jhayka answered. "This is going to be rather delicate, isn't it? It's not like we can precisely hide it.." Metallic sensors focused on Drishalras. "And more to the point, my dear, it would not be fair to you to hide it, would it?"
"Well, honestly, no," Drishalras answered.
"I'm not sure he'll understand it right. And I want to make sure he doesn't think the same thing I did when Jhastimia brought the idea up with me. That'd be even worse for him."
"What did you think when Jhastimia Rulandh brought it up?" Drishalras answered quizzically.
Dani blushed a faint pink. Deciding to answer delicately, she replied, "Group marriage."
"Wha!?" Drishalras blushed furiously green. "Danielle! That would just be so completely wrong and it's like communitarians do and...." Jhayka started laughing, which just made Drishalras blush harder.
"I wager you even made the Archduchess Leluno," Jhayka said with a tad of mock formalness, "blush like a schoolgirl with that kind of question, my dearheart."
"It was worse," Dani admitted, chuckling softly, setting their glasses in front of them, "because my reply was 'I'm not that kinky'."
"Uhm, yeah, that was bad," Drishalras answered, before she realized that Jhayka was just laughing harder, and shot a look to her wife that was somewhat indignant. "There isn't anything funny about people thinking that Danielle and I are having sex too!"
"Actually, yes there is, Especially if it's Danielle," Jhayka answered, still laughing. It was perhaps as amused as Danielle and Drishalras had ever seen her, and for Drishalras, she in the end broke down, shaking her head and laughing ruefully herself.
"You seriously should've seen poor Jhastimia's face," Dani said while sipping at her wine. "She'd never realized that possibility until I reacted that way, because I'd never known this kind of arrangement existed."
"Humans do have a tradition of polygamy where it is not appropriate for the wives, or husbands, to have relationships with each other," Jhayka answered after a moment, still giggling a bit in delighted amusement as she sipped her port. "But I can see why you at once thought of the more lurid and popular example. Very common in the Federation and some more liberal Federation colonies which have joined the Alliance, I understand, group marriages like that which are like those the communitarians prefer."
"I've never heard of anything like this in American culture," Dani replied, "and that's what Dad and I come from. So I have to think of a way to explain this to him without completely and utterly confusing him or making him think it something entirely different."
"Alright then. Looks like we have that settled," Jhayka smiled to Drishalras. "No need to hide after that, I suppose? Fayza isn't getting tired of you...?"
"Oh, not at all. She's fun company. But, yes. And I figured he'd find out sooner than later, anyway." Drishalras offered a smile to Danielle. "Good luck, too."
"How is Fay doing?" Dani asked Drish, in doing so revealing the fact that since their sparring match the two hadn't really talked.
"A bit quiet. We watch the holographic programming often," Drishalras answered. "But she mostly seems fine. I know she's had her share of unpleasantness in the past, so I just try to be cheerful around her and not bother her to much, really."
"We were sparring, Saturday, and she just went all to pieces," Dani remarked. "And since then, I haven't really been able to get her to talk to me."
"Well, I think the company probably helps a little," Drishalras answered. "Perhaps once I've moved out of her suite you should try to speak with her again," she added after a moment. "Though, I think she's been taking to Priscilla, and I know they're pretty close friends. So she's probably alright."
Dani finished her glass, and the conversation went on to other things. She finally excused herself, wanting to give Drish and Jhayka some time together, and found a pen and blank piece of paper to draw her little diagram. It had her name, Jhayka's, and Drish's arranged at the points of a pyramid, and two lines representing the marriages.
Once over at the Federal Suite, she found her father going over notes. His lawyer was going over his first motion to the court on Dominic's custody, and he was also trying to get friends from back home to stem the media tide. "Hey Dad," she said from the doorway.
He turned toward her. The stubble was gone from his chin, but he still looked rather worse for the wear. "Hey, Dani. Getting a little late, isn't it? I figured you'd be with your wife."
"Actually, it's the family I want to talk to you about. Me, and Jhayka... and Drish."
Raphael blinked while Dani went for the side of the bed directly by the desk where he was seated. "Drish? She's... your sister-in-law, right?"
"No, Dad. She's my korana. The word doesn't translate, and so... well, let me just do this the simple way so you don't get the wrong idea." Dani handed him the paper. "The lines represent marriage."
Raphael looked over it for a moment. A long moment, as if he were trying to make sure of what he saw. "So.... you're married to Jhayka... and Drish is married to Jhayka?"
"Yes. It's not very common, but the Talorans do have traditions that allowed for seperate marriages. It's not a group marriage, though. That's seen as wrong."
Looking at the paper and then back to Dani. "So, your wife is married to another woman. It's bigamy?"
"Pretty much," Dani said.
"Why?"
"Because she had no choice. She thought I was gone and then she met Drish, mostly due to her friends who wanted to give her a chance to heal". Dani saw the look on her father's face. "She's not a bad person. Drish is very sweet, and we get along well. She's like... part-cousin, part-friend, and part-sister, I guess you'd say."
"But when you came back, why... why did they stay together? They don't have marriage annulments?"
"Well, no. Not for the kind of marriage that Jhayka and Drish have... or the one Jhayka and I have for that matter." Dani reached a hand over. "Is it okay?"
"I just... it doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and I... why'd you go along with it?"
"Because Drish lets me have Jhayka four out of seven days of the week," Dani joked. Smiling, she added, "I love Jhayka, Dad. And I don't want to hurt her. And.... for what Drish did, being there for Jhayka when she needed it, I didn't want to see her hurt either. So yeah, I have to share my wife. But the fact that I was able to marry Jhayka and be here with her, love her.... it's worth it to me. I really am happy with this arrangement."
There was silence, and Dani could see that her father was still wrestling with the concept a bit. "Well..." He shrugged, and then smiled thinly at her. "I... I guess I'm okay with it then. As long as you're happy, Dani."
"We're all going to be happy, Dad," Dani said in a promising tone, quite ready to move hell and high water to win her baby brother for her father. "I promise."
She got up and leaned over him, hugging Raphael around the neck. "One thing, Dani...."
"What?"
"Drish.... is she my daughter-in-law too?"
Giggling softly, Dani replied, "Well, I think I'll have to ask for you. Maybe over dinner?"
"I'd like that."
4 April 2165 AST
63 Valeria, I.Y. 618
Drishalras was very aware of customary hesitancy. Jhayka certainly showed it more than she did. But then Drishalras tended to ignore some more cautious noble behaviours that she didn't have the time for in her life. She was relaxing dressed in spun spider's silk with extra-long sleeves and billowing pantaloons, the top green with white inland and the bottom blue with red, as she knocked on the door to Jhayka and Danielle's suite that evening, and Jhayka opened the door. "Hi, Love," Drishalras offered with a slight smile and her ears dipping forwards a bit as she leaned in to kiss Jhayka lightly. "Danielle is here, right?"
"Yes, of course," Jhayka answered, showing some consternation. "What do you want to talk about?" She asked as she ushered Drishalras in and this time closed and locked the door.
"Well, mostly about telling Danielle's father about me. He's bound to notice it on the news sooner or later," Drishalras started before even glancing to see if Danielle was in that room, and then frowning. "Ah."
"Yes, she's back in the bedroom, one moment..." Jhayka started that way, just to see Danielle coming out already.
Having heard the knock, Dani had retrieved a purple silken nightrobe and wrapped it around herself. Jhayka had mostly been making small talk with her, letting her know the early progress of the talks, though not really getting too far into it. She saw Drish and smiled at her, not speaking right away but moving toward the bar in the suite. "Want a drink, Drish?"
"Oh, please!" Drishalras answered with a slight smile. "Did you hear what I was starting to tell Jhayka about?"
"Yes, I did." Dani reached into the bar and got three glasses. "What kind of drink?"
"It's evening. Port? I've taken a liking to it." She moved to sit down with Jhayka, smiling. "And thank you," she added. "So, I guess what I wanted to discuss is pretty obvious, then?"
"Something I've been thinking about for the past week," was Dani's reply, as she found a bottle of port in the wine cooler and poured a glass. "Jhayka?"
"The same," Jhayka answered. "This is going to be rather delicate, isn't it? It's not like we can precisely hide it.." Metallic sensors focused on Drishalras. "And more to the point, my dear, it would not be fair to you to hide it, would it?"
"Well, honestly, no," Drishalras answered.
"I'm not sure he'll understand it right. And I want to make sure he doesn't think the same thing I did when Jhastimia brought the idea up with me. That'd be even worse for him."
"What did you think when Jhastimia Rulandh brought it up?" Drishalras answered quizzically.
Dani blushed a faint pink. Deciding to answer delicately, she replied, "Group marriage."
"Wha!?" Drishalras blushed furiously green. "Danielle! That would just be so completely wrong and it's like communitarians do and...." Jhayka started laughing, which just made Drishalras blush harder.
"I wager you even made the Archduchess Leluno," Jhayka said with a tad of mock formalness, "blush like a schoolgirl with that kind of question, my dearheart."
"It was worse," Dani admitted, chuckling softly, setting their glasses in front of them, "because my reply was 'I'm not that kinky'."
"Uhm, yeah, that was bad," Drishalras answered, before she realized that Jhayka was just laughing harder, and shot a look to her wife that was somewhat indignant. "There isn't anything funny about people thinking that Danielle and I are having sex too!"
"Actually, yes there is, Especially if it's Danielle," Jhayka answered, still laughing. It was perhaps as amused as Danielle and Drishalras had ever seen her, and for Drishalras, she in the end broke down, shaking her head and laughing ruefully herself.
"You seriously should've seen poor Jhastimia's face," Dani said while sipping at her wine. "She'd never realized that possibility until I reacted that way, because I'd never known this kind of arrangement existed."
"Humans do have a tradition of polygamy where it is not appropriate for the wives, or husbands, to have relationships with each other," Jhayka answered after a moment, still giggling a bit in delighted amusement as she sipped her port. "But I can see why you at once thought of the more lurid and popular example. Very common in the Federation and some more liberal Federation colonies which have joined the Alliance, I understand, group marriages like that which are like those the communitarians prefer."
"I've never heard of anything like this in American culture," Dani replied, "and that's what Dad and I come from. So I have to think of a way to explain this to him without completely and utterly confusing him or making him think it something entirely different."
"Alright then. Looks like we have that settled," Jhayka smiled to Drishalras. "No need to hide after that, I suppose? Fayza isn't getting tired of you...?"
"Oh, not at all. She's fun company. But, yes. And I figured he'd find out sooner than later, anyway." Drishalras offered a smile to Danielle. "Good luck, too."
"How is Fay doing?" Dani asked Drish, in doing so revealing the fact that since their sparring match the two hadn't really talked.
"A bit quiet. We watch the holographic programming often," Drishalras answered. "But she mostly seems fine. I know she's had her share of unpleasantness in the past, so I just try to be cheerful around her and not bother her to much, really."
"We were sparring, Saturday, and she just went all to pieces," Dani remarked. "And since then, I haven't really been able to get her to talk to me."
"Well, I think the company probably helps a little," Drishalras answered. "Perhaps once I've moved out of her suite you should try to speak with her again," she added after a moment. "Though, I think she's been taking to Priscilla, and I know they're pretty close friends. So she's probably alright."
Dani finished her glass, and the conversation went on to other things. She finally excused herself, wanting to give Drish and Jhayka some time together, and found a pen and blank piece of paper to draw her little diagram. It had her name, Jhayka's, and Drish's arranged at the points of a pyramid, and two lines representing the marriages.
Once over at the Federal Suite, she found her father going over notes. His lawyer was going over his first motion to the court on Dominic's custody, and he was also trying to get friends from back home to stem the media tide. "Hey Dad," she said from the doorway.
He turned toward her. The stubble was gone from his chin, but he still looked rather worse for the wear. "Hey, Dani. Getting a little late, isn't it? I figured you'd be with your wife."
"Actually, it's the family I want to talk to you about. Me, and Jhayka... and Drish."
Raphael blinked while Dani went for the side of the bed directly by the desk where he was seated. "Drish? She's... your sister-in-law, right?"
"No, Dad. She's my korana. The word doesn't translate, and so... well, let me just do this the simple way so you don't get the wrong idea." Dani handed him the paper. "The lines represent marriage."
Raphael looked over it for a moment. A long moment, as if he were trying to make sure of what he saw. "So.... you're married to Jhayka... and Drish is married to Jhayka?"
"Yes. It's not very common, but the Talorans do have traditions that allowed for seperate marriages. It's not a group marriage, though. That's seen as wrong."
Looking at the paper and then back to Dani. "So, your wife is married to another woman. It's bigamy?"
"Pretty much," Dani said.
"Why?"
"Because she had no choice. She thought I was gone and then she met Drish, mostly due to her friends who wanted to give her a chance to heal". Dani saw the look on her father's face. "She's not a bad person. Drish is very sweet, and we get along well. She's like... part-cousin, part-friend, and part-sister, I guess you'd say."
"But when you came back, why... why did they stay together? They don't have marriage annulments?"
"Well, no. Not for the kind of marriage that Jhayka and Drish have... or the one Jhayka and I have for that matter." Dani reached a hand over. "Is it okay?"
"I just... it doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and I... why'd you go along with it?"
"Because Drish lets me have Jhayka four out of seven days of the week," Dani joked. Smiling, she added, "I love Jhayka, Dad. And I don't want to hurt her. And.... for what Drish did, being there for Jhayka when she needed it, I didn't want to see her hurt either. So yeah, I have to share my wife. But the fact that I was able to marry Jhayka and be here with her, love her.... it's worth it to me. I really am happy with this arrangement."
There was silence, and Dani could see that her father was still wrestling with the concept a bit. "Well..." He shrugged, and then smiled thinly at her. "I... I guess I'm okay with it then. As long as you're happy, Dani."
"We're all going to be happy, Dad," Dani said in a promising tone, quite ready to move hell and high water to win her baby brother for her father. "I promise."
She got up and leaned over him, hugging Raphael around the neck. "One thing, Dani...."
"What?"
"Drish.... is she my daughter-in-law too?"
Giggling softly, Dani replied, "Well, I think I'll have to ask for you. Maybe over dinner?"
"I'd like that."
”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
Re: "What Price Peace?" - 55 Days Sequel (TGG)
The Hays-Adams, Washington D.C.
5 April 2165 AST
64 Valeria, I.Y. 618
"Earth still treating you well?" Jhayka stretched back into her chair as her eyes took in her first wife from across the table. "You seem to have adapted to your role rather well."
"They have food stands at all the military bases I'm being invited to tour as part of my role of commander of the military part of the delegation," Drishalras answered with a familiar bit of a tilt to her ears which let Jhayka know she was intentionally playing it up. "So of course it's awesome. The protests have really started getting unbearable ever since the thing with Danielle's father--I still can't believe a family is tearing itself apart like that--cropped up, though."
"Yes, I know, on both counts." Jhayka tipped her head down and stared at her food for a moment before continuing to eat. "It really is a disturbing sign of how alien humans are that they go through these public, messy divorces. And of course it's hurting Danielle immensely, which is exactly why it shouldn't happen." A soft sigh. "And distracting us all from the negotiations, which are not going as well as they could."
"To put it mildly--especially about Danielle." Drish's ears dropped down. "I'm almost tempted to say I take one of the ship's shuttles and go take her off-world for a few days. There's got to be some kind of quiet tourist planet around here or whatnot, and neither of us are that important to the mission."
"Perhaps Fayza could go with her instead; I'd like to have at least one of you with me," Jhayka answered, rather heartfelt at that as she reached across the table to clasp Drish's hand. "This is an enormous degree of pressure, and for all I'm confident of things, working through the incomprehension that the Alliance has for our customs is far more difficult than even combat."
At that point there was a knock on the door. "Hello, Jhayka? It's Fayza," they heard the voice faintly call through the door.
"Ah, just a moment." Jhayka slipped up from her seat and went to unlock the door, and open it at once. "Welcome, Fayza. How may I help you? Drishalras and I were having brunch together."
Fayza was standing at the door in a simple and modest silver blouse, short-sleeved and made of a polyester-silk blend, with a white skirt that went to her knees. A thin smile came to her face as she answered Jhayka. "I'm sorry for interrupting then. I just came by to ask if I could have a bit of a favor."
"No, do come in, tell us what you need.." Jhayka stepped back as Drishalras smiled and waved to Fayza.
"Yeah, come in, Fay, it's not a big deal at all! We weren't doing anything more salacious than holding hands."
With her smile growing a little Fay entered, seeming a bit withdrawn as she did so. "Thanks for letting me in. I know this is going to sound a bit sudden, but... I'm not really involved in the diplomacy here and Dani can provide you the whole 'cultural adviser' bit, so I was hoping if you would let me leave town for a few days. Maybe a week at most."
"Well, what for?" Jhayka asked simply as she pulled out a chair for Fay. "We were actually talking about maybe having you and Danielle leave for a bit to keep the heat off of Danielle, but it's not necessary for her to accompany you and it wouldn't work on Earth, anyway, and if you want to go, we certainly didn't think it would be a problem for you to."
At the mention of Danielle Fayza's face got a bit of a blush. She'd been rather angry with Dani a few days before when it was completely undeserved. "I... well, I want to go back to my alma mater and check up on an... old friend of mine. I haven't seen him in years and I want to change that."
"Ah, an.. old Friend." Jhayka smiled very delicately. "An old lover, I'm guessing you mean?"
"How can you guess that, Jhayka?" Drish flitted her ears a bit.
"I'm better at reading human emotions than you, dear."
"Hmph! No bloody ears..." Drish snorted back in a playful moment.
"Can't hide anything from you," Fayza sighed in defeat. "It's just that... after everything that's happened and seeing you and Drish and Dani all together in one big happy family... I want to try and see if I have a shot at something like that myself. Maybe I'll have to look for it with someone else but I want to see if we can start over from where we were before."
Unspoken, of course, was that there was another consideration on Fay's mind, one of considerably darker tones. Namely the deep, dark fear within her that she would be forever considered "spoiled" by anyone who found out what had happened with her, a fear she undoubtedly she shared with many women who had been victimized as she had been.
"Well, I am not going to stand between you and your happiness. I'd offer to send Priscilla with you, as I know the two of you are very close friends, but she's a magnet for all sorts of attention these days, so I suggest just quietly slipping out alone," Jhayka answered after a moment's quiet reflection.
"That's what I was planning on. I guess I'm the lucky one to be so unknown," she answered happily. "Thank you, Jhayka, you don't know how much it means to me."
Jhayka smiled affiably, as well as a Taloran could, anyway. "Well, I honestly think I do, but that just makes it all the more important. Best of luck to you, Fayza."
"I'll pray that it all works out for you," Drishalras added with an upward tilt of her ears. "You're a really nice friend, Fayza, and if anything comes up you'll just call me and I can go help, alright? I'm not particularly needed here either except for the formal dinners and base tours and I can reschedule those."
"Thank you, Drish. I'll let you all get back to eating, I've got some packing to do."
Later that night a dinner had been arranged in one of the smaller dining rooms in the Hays-Adams, a private affair for the four members of the Verdes-Intuit family currently present. Human food was served in abundance, catered by a nearby restaurant and cleared by security analysis as a standard precaution, with a large roast beef platter, a rotisseried chicken, various sides of certain types of potato dishes, a rich-looking baked macaroni and cheese dish, and the other things that typically made up a family meal as opposed to a fancy "banquet".
Danielle had brought her father down, wrenching him away from the room's personal computer and a list of potential employers to dine with her wife and korana. The elder Verdes was dressed handsomely in a buttoned shirt of blue with white vertical stripes and black slacks. Dani was dressed in one of her more modest formal dresses that she and Fay had acquired during shopping the prior Saturday, a sparkling and sleeveless spaghetti gown that matched her eyes and, now, the inner stripe of her hair, as Dani had taken up dying segments of her hair to achieve a multi-colored effect, using green on the inside with the outer sections red (though the hair directly on her scalp was still her natural dark tone).
Jhayka had insisted that, as the "elder" member of the family, Raphael Verdes sit at the head of the table. Dani was the only one beside him with Jhayka and Drish down from her, putting Jhayka between her wives.
The Talorans tended to dress more modestly; to be precise it had proved that Drishalras had only brought along uniforms, since there were standard evening formal wear for Taloran officers. Jhayka's choice in clothes ended up looking more like early 19th century gentleman's wear than anything else--with the main glaring exception of the cross of vibrant green, red, and blue--and with epalauettes was still highly military, but then again so was the entirety of their social class.
The food, chosen by Danielle, admitted to some confusion from the Talorans, though Jhayka in the end, sniffing delicately, queried first: "That is cheddar, yes, Danielle?"
"Um, I believe so," she answered. "It'd better be."
"Alright, just making sure. There are certain sorts of cheese we can't eat, and it's weird enough I always have trouble telling the various kinds apart." As usual at meals served with human food there was vinegar and salt and some rubbed sage and tarragon on the table, popular spices Jhayka had requested for her officers and herself, herbs and little more to the average human, but to them, quite sufficient for any meal.
Even with Jhayka's response, Dani took the time to take a bite. "Yes, definitely cheddar," she said happily. "Everything should be fine."
"You know, you really didn't have to go quite this far, Dani," Raphael said, putting some portions on his plate. "When you said 'dinner', I figured it'd be some take-out or maybe a couple items. This looks like something they used to give us for holidays at the plant."
"Oh, don't worry about it Dad," Dani said insistantly, getting together her own food.
"Full service from the kitchen is included in the contract I signed with the Hotel, Mister Verdes," Jhayka explained with a typically bland Taloran smile, though her ears were alert and attentive. "So, it's wasted money if we don't order it from the hotel. They wouldn't let me secure seventy percent of the building like I did otherwise, so everything is just folded into the expenses of the mission. Which are not that great--I think our reservation to have the Slashahkimmar refueled on notice cost just as much."
Drishalras looked sheepish. "Nearly so, Jhayka. Meta-stable metallic hydrogen isn't a common fuel in the Alliance, even though it's readily available on the inner gas giant, uhm.."
"Jupiter."
"Your ships are fusion-plant only?" Raphael let out a whistle. "Bet you've got quite a bit."
"That it does," Dani answered for Drishalras. "They still build old-school style, well, old-school for you at least, Dad." Raphael gave his daughter a mocking glare at that remark.
Drishalras giggled at the comment. "As a matter of fact the Slashahkimmar has sixty-eight primary fusion plants, Mr. Verdes, as well as one secondary one in each of the turrets and sensor masts and one for the hangar facilities, and a bank of eight gigawatt-range emergency fission plants buried into the keel for providing basic life support and hydroponics power for up to years."
"Ye-ouch," the elder Verdes remarked with a bit of a grimace. "I thought that rickety old battleship they had me serving on fresh out of basic was bad with thirty-five reactors."
"Well, if you want to be technical, each reactor is in fact a double cycle and contains two reaction vessels," Drishalras admitted with a faint green flush. "But we do it to distribute power generation requirements around. It's basically impossible to catastrophically destroy a Taloran warship."
"Though some of the universes in the Alliance have been using anti-matter-based power generation for a couple centuries, it wasn't until the last sixty or so years that most vessels were switched to matter/anti-matter reactors," Danielle explained, given her expertise on the matter. "For a long time it simply wasn't economical for starship fleets the sizes we had, and older superluminal drives could just be powered by large numbers of fusion reactors. But then the demand for anti-matter power supply went up in order to power the IU Jump Gate Assemblies, new technologies and methods permitted more efficient reactor designs and anti-matter generation plants, so it began to be used more commonly. Dad's battleship service - was it the Oregon, Dad?" - she was answered by a nod - "was on one of the last American SE-1 capital ships to be designed and put into service without matter-antimatter reactors."
"Metallic hydrogen is both an abundant natural resource in gas giants, and has volumetric densities of energy approaching those of anti-matter, so it was a natural refinement of fusion. There was an experiment a while back in a fully computerized anti-matter powered cruiser with the firepower of a dreadnought, but it didn't progress beyond the experimental stages due to concerns about the reliability of a warship of that power controlled by an AI."
"The Metallic hydrogen approach is great. That might be how we would've gone if not for the advances related to anti-matter provoked by the needs of the IU Gate network," Danielle remarked. After taking a bite and having a chuckle, Dani seemed to become somber for a moment. "I called to ask Fay if she was up to having dinner but she didn't answer. Have either of you heard from her?"
"Yes, she was heading off to meet an old flame of her's," Jhayka answered with a fond smile. "He is a professor at some college around here, I believe. Since she's not really needed I gave her permission to slip out for a while."
"Around here, as in HE-1 Earth? I don't.... wait..." Dani made a face. "Is she going to her alma mater?"
"Yes, she said it was on another instantiation of Earth; I'm sorry, but it's still odd to realize geographic features are repeated dozens of times in the Alliance," Jhayka clarified.
"You'll get used to it," Raphael remarked almost flippantly.
Dani, on the other hand, grinned widely and even giggled a little. "She's going to see John! Oh, I told her years ago she should try." Seeing everyone looking, Dani continued, "Well, our gossip wasn't all about my past. Fay had a college sweetheart when she went to Virginia Tech about twenty years ago, they were a major item for years until she finished school and had to begin her service while he went on to play football professionally."
A surprised look came to Raphael's face. He quickly swallowed the bite he had to prevent it from coming out. "Wait... Fay's college boyfriend was John Stayer?!"
Dani smiled widely and nodded.
"A noted athlete, I take it?" Jhayka was chewing delicately on the macaroni, since it seemed a rather light food and chewing harder would make it melt far too rapidly.
"Best defensive lineman the Vikings had in the space of two decades," Raphael boasted. "Sixteen seasons in the NFL, nine Pro Bowl appearances, averaged 10 sacks a season, set the Viking record for most sacks in a game back in '51. Broke the Twin Cities' hearts two years later when they had to trade him for salary cap space." Looking to Danielle and chuckling, he said, "Your best friend is Stayer's college flame? Think you could introduce me?"
"Daaad," Dani giggled. "I've never met the guy, Fayza just talked about him a few times, thinking about trying to see him again and all when the war was over. Though from what she said of their relationship I'd place fair money that, well...." Dani started talking in a "sing-song" tone. "Faaay's gonna get laaaaid..."
"I told her to be chaste," Drishalras commented very meekly.
"But that would be no fun," Dani playfully retorted. "Besides, I think Fay needs a little love and companionship in her life. Hopefully her old flame will get rekindled."
At that point conversation ended for a brief bit, everyone looking to enjoy at least some of the dishes before they grew too cold (though, granted, specialized containers that absorbed and held thermal energy would keep them warm for quite a while), until Raphael spoke up once more. "Last night Danielle explained to me how the family works," he said somewhat delicately. "So I'm your father-in-law, Jhayka, but what am I to Drish?"
"Uhm." Drish glanced up and looked to be thinking hard with her ears flattening back for a moment. "Riret Koranastu, I think, Jhayka?"
"Father-of-korana? Yes that would be about right. I'm afraid there's no english translation, Mister Verdes."
"Is it anything like being a father-in-law or more of an uncle?"
"More of an uncle. Being a korana is being like a sister but it's also different with a bit of a further extension implied," Drish tried to clarify. "And that's the case for Danielle and I. Who is certainly a wonderful person to have around and, oh!, but she makes Jhayka so happy. So, since you're her father, it follows about like that."
"Ah. Well, that clears that up." Smiling, Raphael nodded at Dani. "You've got a wonderful family. Not quite the one either I or your mother imagined but... I think it'll be good. Still..." He finished quick bite. "You've yet to tell me how you two met." He looked from Dani to Jhayka.
Jhayka had the advantage of not having eyes. She used it to the fullest to remain uncomfortably silent even as the cybernetics bored into Danielle.
Drishalras took that as an invitation. "It was at a slave market on Gilead, Mister Verdes. Danielle was escaping and Jhayka was the guest of one of the Normans present, she was going to write an ethnographic series on the peoples of the primitive zone. I understand she fought off several groups of guards after having slipped her bonds on the auction stand, and then ran for an area that ended up being the rail-yards, where she chose by fortune or God's will to hide under Jhayka's armoured train."
Danielle gave Drish a bit of an uneasy look, the why being evident from her father's perturbed reaction. It wasn't that Raphael hadn't known what was done to Danielle on Gilead, but rather that he didn't know the precise nature of Dani and Jhayka first meeting.
"I can't imagine how scared you were," Raphael leaned over and put a hand on his daughter's. "I'm sorry that happened to you."
"I wasn't too scared since I was about to escape," Dani answered, though she would have to admit she had been rather afraid that day. Of course, she followed up instead by trying to sound tough. "Frankly it felt like I was back in High School. A cute girl surrounded by big, smelly guys who wanted to fuck me."
"Danielle, language," Raphael said in a mock-harsh tone.
"Oh, we're all soldiers!" Jhayka declared with a smile and a soft laugh. "But yes, that's quite right."
"But yeah, I used a shard of masonry to cut the ropes loose during the hours before the auction, I finished just in time really. Then I snatched a guard's stun gun and, well, made my escape." As ego-stroking an accomplishment that it was for Dani, however, it wasn't quite a thing she wanted to dwell on, as it usually reminded her of the immense feelings of terror she'd suffered from, as well as the grim fact that her escape was a close-run thing.
"Quite the Amazon in pulling it off, too. I had to stop my host from trying to shoot at her--told him it was not worth the trouble. It wasn't, she would have gotten him, and probably slapped me with the stunner's backwash, too, though it's not like that hasn't happened before," Jhayka finished in some merry amusement. "Though at first, of course, it seemed like an isolated incident, finding her under the train was a marvel, and it was just a matter of course to give her shelter. But things rather acquired a life of their own at that point."
"Oh, you wouldn't have had to worry, the stun gun was out of juice," Dani said. "You should've let that bastard come at me. It might've done him some good to have his ass kicked by some butt-naked escaped..." And at that she stopped.
Of course, it was too late. Raphael heard "naked" and glowered. "Naked?!"
"Well, how else do you auction slaves?" Jhayka answered with a twitch of her ears. "I hadn't thought it proper to mention that part, but, yes."
Dani grinned at her father sheepishly. "Oh Dad, c'mon, they were trying to sell me as a sex-slave, of course they ripped my clothes off so all the bidders could see the merchandise. In a way it was a good thing; can you imagine how much it hurt those guards' misogynist pride to get their asses kicked around by a naked chick?"
"Well, the Amazons don't wear very much more," Jhayka answered with the faintest of innocent grins as she dared to barb her wife a bit.
For the briefest of moments Raphael looked like he would, if given the power on the spot, dash through time, space, and universes to that moment to inflict vengeance upon those who dared to disrobe his daughter. But the moment of paternal protectiveness passed given the humor everyone had toward the situation. "All that really matters is that you're alright," he said.
Thankfully the subject moved on afterward.
The White House, Washington D.C.
Earth, Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
6 April 2165 AST
65 Valeria, I.Y. 618
The reckoning had now come.
It was something President Dale and his foreign policy experts had seen coming for some time, but it made it no easier for them. Standing before Dale in the Oval Office, facing him and his Foreign Minister Peter Wells, was the richly-dressed Ambassador Sir Reginald Hoare, Count of Gibbonshire on the planet Devenshire and Ambassador of the Devenshiran government to the Alliance. He had exchanged the briefest of salutations with the Alliance President before getting down to business. "Mister President, I'm here on behalf of Her Majesty's Government to file an official protest," he began. "You have permitted Priscilla Laurentii, indicted by the Kelling Tribunal as a suspected war criminal, to have haven in Alliance territory. The Star Kingdom of the Devenshires insists this be rectified at once." A diplomat and no fool, he continued, "Her Majesty's Government understands that you are constrained by the rules of diplomatic law and cannot place Laurentii under arrest. However, you could rule her persona non grata and revoke her diplomatic visas, forcing her to return to Taloran territory."
Rubbing at a temple, Dale nodded. "I understand the position of Devenshire in this matter, but I'm afraid that I cannot jeopardize these delicate talks with the Taloran Empire over Laurentii. Furthermore I believe that a positive outcome to these talks is just as much in Devenshire's interest as it is our own."
"Be that as it may, Mister President, the Kingdom of the Devenshires is gravely disappointed that you're permitting a miscarriage of justice to be furthered. And my instructions from the Foreign Office are sadly clear." Hoare took in a breath for a moment, as he clearly had some reservations about what was coming. "Given your decision, my government will now be ordering my recall. It is not a full severance of relations - the Charges d'Affairs will maintain our embassy - but Devenshire will not have a full ambassador to your government for as long as Priscilla Laurentii remains in the capital."
The two Alliance officials nodded slowly. "I'm sorry it's come to this, Mister Ambassador," Dale said. "We both have our duties. Perhaps in time Devenshire will come to understand our position and will restore full relations."
"Time will tell, Mister President. Please excuse me, I must go pack." Hoare left immediately.
Dale looked up to Wells. "I don't suppose I should be too surprised Proctor took this step."
"You shouldn't," Wells agreed. "She's under a great deal of pressure as the head of the Caretaker Government and has to be seen as doing something lest it spark domestic disturbance. Even with her action a number of protests bordering on riots have been suffered throughout Pranton."
"And the negotiations? Are we going to make all this trouble worth it?"
"We have quite a number of snag points," Wells remarked, "but both sides anticipated a long negotiation so I don't think it's a problem right now."
"Ah. Well, good luck with that. You can go now, Peter, I've got to be getting ready for this luncheon with the Federalist Campaign Committee." There was a glower on Dale's face. "At the very least it'll be a little time I can spend with Julia."
"Of course, Mister President."
Blacksburg, Virginia, Earth
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate SE-1
7 April 2165 AST
66 Valeria, I.Y. 618
It was noon-time when Fayza's Cadillac Sierra-model hovercar pulled into the Virginia Tech visitor parking. The in-build piloting system confirmed the power-down of the hover engines and allowed Fayza to unstrap after the eighty minute trip from Richmond Space and Airport in the rented hovercar (the advantage of a hovercar being the "fast travel" low altitude lanes they could use for a more direct trip than the old interstate and US highway roads).
Fayza stepped out of the car and took a moment to double-check her appearance. She had on a sleeveless sea-green blouse and knee-length skirt of multiple irregular colors to look good yet casual, well-applied lipstick, and the other cosmetic bits of someone looking to seem casual while still drawing some attention.
Around for centuries under the SE-1 calendar, the Virginia Tech campus hadn't changed a lot in the twenty years since Fayza had last been on it. Memories of her time here as a college student, educated on the dime of the short-lived Alliance Space Force to become a starship engineer, led her to a building in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies. A directory told her the room number she was looking for, leading her through the halls and by the doors until she arrived at her destination, a door labeled with the name "Prof. J. Stayer. Applied Architectural Science."
Fay spent some time just standing there, letting the class inside finish the period in their work. When it was over she made sure to remain out of the way of the door for them to go back, smiling at the young people walking by and not bothering to return the interested looks a couple of the male students sent her way. She let the professor within finish speaking with a student before going to the doorway.
The remaining figure in the room was a large man, well-built, about six foot three in all and two hundred and fifty pounds or so. His skin was a fine ebony shade, one that easily reflected the light from the richness of the color, with a head of finely-combed dark hair and a pair of brown eyes. A fine jacket of maroon and orange, the state colors, matched his black pants with a maroon-colored shirt below the jacket. He was intently looking at a book below him at the moment Fay took her first steps into the room. "Hello John," she said aloud.
This caused him to look up and over at her. A look of pleasant surprise came to his face. "Fay? I... I wasn't expecting you..."
Closing the door behind her, Fay walked up to her old lover, smiling widely, happily, as she drew close to him. "I told you I was coming as soon as I could."
And then she kissed him. It wasn't just a "hello" kiss either, but a strong passionate one with Fay's tongue immediately going for John's. His arms, as strong as she remembered in her most pleasant dreams, wrapped around her shoulders as he kept up with the kiss.
Their kiss might have gone on longer, and Fay at least felt a temptation to do more despite their location out of sheer joy of being with John Stayer again, but a meek voice interrupted them. The "Oh, uh... Professor?" prompted them to stop kissing and look toward the door and the interloper, a brown-complexioned girl of about five and a half feet height who was blushing as she stood in the opened door, a magenta lab coat covering her small frame. "I... I just had a question..."
"It's okay, Aileen," John said with a half-grin, an arm still around Fayza's shoulder. He fielded the student's question and offered to see her in the afternoon, when his next class began. "So Fay, you made it just before the weekend," he remarked, drawing up a chair for her. "You made it sound in the e-mail like it'd take you a while to get the trip approved."
"Princess Jhayka's quite nice and, I guess, really didn't need me for diplomatic talks anyway," Fay answered happily while finding the chair. For the moment they were on opposite ends of his desk. "So you went back to school after your career?"
Spreading his arms, John answered, "Sure, I figured why not. I was thinking of breaking out into coaching first but when that didn't come around... I actually kind of missed architecture." Grinning slightly, he added, "Almost as much as I missed you."
"I'm happy for you," Fay answered. "So, are you doing anything tonight?"
"I have two more classes and some papers to grade that will keep me busy until about seven thirty, but if you're up for a late dinner we could go to Rigetti's."
"That place is still around?" The Italian restaurant-cafe was a favored spot from her college days among her former dorm mates and other students. "Is Andy still cooking?"
"No, I'm afraid he passed on about six years ago," John answered, "but his grandson Lenny knows all his granddad's old recipes."
"Lenny?" Fay grinned slightly. "He was the twelve year old who used to wolf-whistle at me and Charlene. I hope he's more mature these days."
"Oh, he came back from a deployment to Bajor with a girl he'd married," John answered. "Only Bajoran girl in probably a thousand miles."
"Yeah?"
"Oh yeah. Their kids are often running around the place on weekends. Old Andy spoiled them rotten before he passed on."
"So, what about..." The conversation continued on for a short while, after which Fay - making sure to give John another kiss - left him to his work and the dinner they were due to have that night.
5 April 2165 AST
64 Valeria, I.Y. 618
"Earth still treating you well?" Jhayka stretched back into her chair as her eyes took in her first wife from across the table. "You seem to have adapted to your role rather well."
"They have food stands at all the military bases I'm being invited to tour as part of my role of commander of the military part of the delegation," Drishalras answered with a familiar bit of a tilt to her ears which let Jhayka know she was intentionally playing it up. "So of course it's awesome. The protests have really started getting unbearable ever since the thing with Danielle's father--I still can't believe a family is tearing itself apart like that--cropped up, though."
"Yes, I know, on both counts." Jhayka tipped her head down and stared at her food for a moment before continuing to eat. "It really is a disturbing sign of how alien humans are that they go through these public, messy divorces. And of course it's hurting Danielle immensely, which is exactly why it shouldn't happen." A soft sigh. "And distracting us all from the negotiations, which are not going as well as they could."
"To put it mildly--especially about Danielle." Drish's ears dropped down. "I'm almost tempted to say I take one of the ship's shuttles and go take her off-world for a few days. There's got to be some kind of quiet tourist planet around here or whatnot, and neither of us are that important to the mission."
"Perhaps Fayza could go with her instead; I'd like to have at least one of you with me," Jhayka answered, rather heartfelt at that as she reached across the table to clasp Drish's hand. "This is an enormous degree of pressure, and for all I'm confident of things, working through the incomprehension that the Alliance has for our customs is far more difficult than even combat."
At that point there was a knock on the door. "Hello, Jhayka? It's Fayza," they heard the voice faintly call through the door.
"Ah, just a moment." Jhayka slipped up from her seat and went to unlock the door, and open it at once. "Welcome, Fayza. How may I help you? Drishalras and I were having brunch together."
Fayza was standing at the door in a simple and modest silver blouse, short-sleeved and made of a polyester-silk blend, with a white skirt that went to her knees. A thin smile came to her face as she answered Jhayka. "I'm sorry for interrupting then. I just came by to ask if I could have a bit of a favor."
"No, do come in, tell us what you need.." Jhayka stepped back as Drishalras smiled and waved to Fayza.
"Yeah, come in, Fay, it's not a big deal at all! We weren't doing anything more salacious than holding hands."
With her smile growing a little Fay entered, seeming a bit withdrawn as she did so. "Thanks for letting me in. I know this is going to sound a bit sudden, but... I'm not really involved in the diplomacy here and Dani can provide you the whole 'cultural adviser' bit, so I was hoping if you would let me leave town for a few days. Maybe a week at most."
"Well, what for?" Jhayka asked simply as she pulled out a chair for Fay. "We were actually talking about maybe having you and Danielle leave for a bit to keep the heat off of Danielle, but it's not necessary for her to accompany you and it wouldn't work on Earth, anyway, and if you want to go, we certainly didn't think it would be a problem for you to."
At the mention of Danielle Fayza's face got a bit of a blush. She'd been rather angry with Dani a few days before when it was completely undeserved. "I... well, I want to go back to my alma mater and check up on an... old friend of mine. I haven't seen him in years and I want to change that."
"Ah, an.. old Friend." Jhayka smiled very delicately. "An old lover, I'm guessing you mean?"
"How can you guess that, Jhayka?" Drish flitted her ears a bit.
"I'm better at reading human emotions than you, dear."
"Hmph! No bloody ears..." Drish snorted back in a playful moment.
"Can't hide anything from you," Fayza sighed in defeat. "It's just that... after everything that's happened and seeing you and Drish and Dani all together in one big happy family... I want to try and see if I have a shot at something like that myself. Maybe I'll have to look for it with someone else but I want to see if we can start over from where we were before."
Unspoken, of course, was that there was another consideration on Fay's mind, one of considerably darker tones. Namely the deep, dark fear within her that she would be forever considered "spoiled" by anyone who found out what had happened with her, a fear she undoubtedly she shared with many women who had been victimized as she had been.
"Well, I am not going to stand between you and your happiness. I'd offer to send Priscilla with you, as I know the two of you are very close friends, but she's a magnet for all sorts of attention these days, so I suggest just quietly slipping out alone," Jhayka answered after a moment's quiet reflection.
"That's what I was planning on. I guess I'm the lucky one to be so unknown," she answered happily. "Thank you, Jhayka, you don't know how much it means to me."
Jhayka smiled affiably, as well as a Taloran could, anyway. "Well, I honestly think I do, but that just makes it all the more important. Best of luck to you, Fayza."
"I'll pray that it all works out for you," Drishalras added with an upward tilt of her ears. "You're a really nice friend, Fayza, and if anything comes up you'll just call me and I can go help, alright? I'm not particularly needed here either except for the formal dinners and base tours and I can reschedule those."
"Thank you, Drish. I'll let you all get back to eating, I've got some packing to do."
Later that night a dinner had been arranged in one of the smaller dining rooms in the Hays-Adams, a private affair for the four members of the Verdes-Intuit family currently present. Human food was served in abundance, catered by a nearby restaurant and cleared by security analysis as a standard precaution, with a large roast beef platter, a rotisseried chicken, various sides of certain types of potato dishes, a rich-looking baked macaroni and cheese dish, and the other things that typically made up a family meal as opposed to a fancy "banquet".
Danielle had brought her father down, wrenching him away from the room's personal computer and a list of potential employers to dine with her wife and korana. The elder Verdes was dressed handsomely in a buttoned shirt of blue with white vertical stripes and black slacks. Dani was dressed in one of her more modest formal dresses that she and Fay had acquired during shopping the prior Saturday, a sparkling and sleeveless spaghetti gown that matched her eyes and, now, the inner stripe of her hair, as Dani had taken up dying segments of her hair to achieve a multi-colored effect, using green on the inside with the outer sections red (though the hair directly on her scalp was still her natural dark tone).
Jhayka had insisted that, as the "elder" member of the family, Raphael Verdes sit at the head of the table. Dani was the only one beside him with Jhayka and Drish down from her, putting Jhayka between her wives.
The Talorans tended to dress more modestly; to be precise it had proved that Drishalras had only brought along uniforms, since there were standard evening formal wear for Taloran officers. Jhayka's choice in clothes ended up looking more like early 19th century gentleman's wear than anything else--with the main glaring exception of the cross of vibrant green, red, and blue--and with epalauettes was still highly military, but then again so was the entirety of their social class.
The food, chosen by Danielle, admitted to some confusion from the Talorans, though Jhayka in the end, sniffing delicately, queried first: "That is cheddar, yes, Danielle?"
"Um, I believe so," she answered. "It'd better be."
"Alright, just making sure. There are certain sorts of cheese we can't eat, and it's weird enough I always have trouble telling the various kinds apart." As usual at meals served with human food there was vinegar and salt and some rubbed sage and tarragon on the table, popular spices Jhayka had requested for her officers and herself, herbs and little more to the average human, but to them, quite sufficient for any meal.
Even with Jhayka's response, Dani took the time to take a bite. "Yes, definitely cheddar," she said happily. "Everything should be fine."
"You know, you really didn't have to go quite this far, Dani," Raphael said, putting some portions on his plate. "When you said 'dinner', I figured it'd be some take-out or maybe a couple items. This looks like something they used to give us for holidays at the plant."
"Oh, don't worry about it Dad," Dani said insistantly, getting together her own food.
"Full service from the kitchen is included in the contract I signed with the Hotel, Mister Verdes," Jhayka explained with a typically bland Taloran smile, though her ears were alert and attentive. "So, it's wasted money if we don't order it from the hotel. They wouldn't let me secure seventy percent of the building like I did otherwise, so everything is just folded into the expenses of the mission. Which are not that great--I think our reservation to have the Slashahkimmar refueled on notice cost just as much."
Drishalras looked sheepish. "Nearly so, Jhayka. Meta-stable metallic hydrogen isn't a common fuel in the Alliance, even though it's readily available on the inner gas giant, uhm.."
"Jupiter."
"Your ships are fusion-plant only?" Raphael let out a whistle. "Bet you've got quite a bit."
"That it does," Dani answered for Drishalras. "They still build old-school style, well, old-school for you at least, Dad." Raphael gave his daughter a mocking glare at that remark.
Drishalras giggled at the comment. "As a matter of fact the Slashahkimmar has sixty-eight primary fusion plants, Mr. Verdes, as well as one secondary one in each of the turrets and sensor masts and one for the hangar facilities, and a bank of eight gigawatt-range emergency fission plants buried into the keel for providing basic life support and hydroponics power for up to years."
"Ye-ouch," the elder Verdes remarked with a bit of a grimace. "I thought that rickety old battleship they had me serving on fresh out of basic was bad with thirty-five reactors."
"Well, if you want to be technical, each reactor is in fact a double cycle and contains two reaction vessels," Drishalras admitted with a faint green flush. "But we do it to distribute power generation requirements around. It's basically impossible to catastrophically destroy a Taloran warship."
"Though some of the universes in the Alliance have been using anti-matter-based power generation for a couple centuries, it wasn't until the last sixty or so years that most vessels were switched to matter/anti-matter reactors," Danielle explained, given her expertise on the matter. "For a long time it simply wasn't economical for starship fleets the sizes we had, and older superluminal drives could just be powered by large numbers of fusion reactors. But then the demand for anti-matter power supply went up in order to power the IU Jump Gate Assemblies, new technologies and methods permitted more efficient reactor designs and anti-matter generation plants, so it began to be used more commonly. Dad's battleship service - was it the Oregon, Dad?" - she was answered by a nod - "was on one of the last American SE-1 capital ships to be designed and put into service without matter-antimatter reactors."
"Metallic hydrogen is both an abundant natural resource in gas giants, and has volumetric densities of energy approaching those of anti-matter, so it was a natural refinement of fusion. There was an experiment a while back in a fully computerized anti-matter powered cruiser with the firepower of a dreadnought, but it didn't progress beyond the experimental stages due to concerns about the reliability of a warship of that power controlled by an AI."
"The Metallic hydrogen approach is great. That might be how we would've gone if not for the advances related to anti-matter provoked by the needs of the IU Gate network," Danielle remarked. After taking a bite and having a chuckle, Dani seemed to become somber for a moment. "I called to ask Fay if she was up to having dinner but she didn't answer. Have either of you heard from her?"
"Yes, she was heading off to meet an old flame of her's," Jhayka answered with a fond smile. "He is a professor at some college around here, I believe. Since she's not really needed I gave her permission to slip out for a while."
"Around here, as in HE-1 Earth? I don't.... wait..." Dani made a face. "Is she going to her alma mater?"
"Yes, she said it was on another instantiation of Earth; I'm sorry, but it's still odd to realize geographic features are repeated dozens of times in the Alliance," Jhayka clarified.
"You'll get used to it," Raphael remarked almost flippantly.
Dani, on the other hand, grinned widely and even giggled a little. "She's going to see John! Oh, I told her years ago she should try." Seeing everyone looking, Dani continued, "Well, our gossip wasn't all about my past. Fay had a college sweetheart when she went to Virginia Tech about twenty years ago, they were a major item for years until she finished school and had to begin her service while he went on to play football professionally."
A surprised look came to Raphael's face. He quickly swallowed the bite he had to prevent it from coming out. "Wait... Fay's college boyfriend was John Stayer?!"
Dani smiled widely and nodded.
"A noted athlete, I take it?" Jhayka was chewing delicately on the macaroni, since it seemed a rather light food and chewing harder would make it melt far too rapidly.
"Best defensive lineman the Vikings had in the space of two decades," Raphael boasted. "Sixteen seasons in the NFL, nine Pro Bowl appearances, averaged 10 sacks a season, set the Viking record for most sacks in a game back in '51. Broke the Twin Cities' hearts two years later when they had to trade him for salary cap space." Looking to Danielle and chuckling, he said, "Your best friend is Stayer's college flame? Think you could introduce me?"
"Daaad," Dani giggled. "I've never met the guy, Fayza just talked about him a few times, thinking about trying to see him again and all when the war was over. Though from what she said of their relationship I'd place fair money that, well...." Dani started talking in a "sing-song" tone. "Faaay's gonna get laaaaid..."
"I told her to be chaste," Drishalras commented very meekly.
"But that would be no fun," Dani playfully retorted. "Besides, I think Fay needs a little love and companionship in her life. Hopefully her old flame will get rekindled."
At that point conversation ended for a brief bit, everyone looking to enjoy at least some of the dishes before they grew too cold (though, granted, specialized containers that absorbed and held thermal energy would keep them warm for quite a while), until Raphael spoke up once more. "Last night Danielle explained to me how the family works," he said somewhat delicately. "So I'm your father-in-law, Jhayka, but what am I to Drish?"
"Uhm." Drish glanced up and looked to be thinking hard with her ears flattening back for a moment. "Riret Koranastu, I think, Jhayka?"
"Father-of-korana? Yes that would be about right. I'm afraid there's no english translation, Mister Verdes."
"Is it anything like being a father-in-law or more of an uncle?"
"More of an uncle. Being a korana is being like a sister but it's also different with a bit of a further extension implied," Drish tried to clarify. "And that's the case for Danielle and I. Who is certainly a wonderful person to have around and, oh!, but she makes Jhayka so happy. So, since you're her father, it follows about like that."
"Ah. Well, that clears that up." Smiling, Raphael nodded at Dani. "You've got a wonderful family. Not quite the one either I or your mother imagined but... I think it'll be good. Still..." He finished quick bite. "You've yet to tell me how you two met." He looked from Dani to Jhayka.
Jhayka had the advantage of not having eyes. She used it to the fullest to remain uncomfortably silent even as the cybernetics bored into Danielle.
Drishalras took that as an invitation. "It was at a slave market on Gilead, Mister Verdes. Danielle was escaping and Jhayka was the guest of one of the Normans present, she was going to write an ethnographic series on the peoples of the primitive zone. I understand she fought off several groups of guards after having slipped her bonds on the auction stand, and then ran for an area that ended up being the rail-yards, where she chose by fortune or God's will to hide under Jhayka's armoured train."
Danielle gave Drish a bit of an uneasy look, the why being evident from her father's perturbed reaction. It wasn't that Raphael hadn't known what was done to Danielle on Gilead, but rather that he didn't know the precise nature of Dani and Jhayka first meeting.
"I can't imagine how scared you were," Raphael leaned over and put a hand on his daughter's. "I'm sorry that happened to you."
"I wasn't too scared since I was about to escape," Dani answered, though she would have to admit she had been rather afraid that day. Of course, she followed up instead by trying to sound tough. "Frankly it felt like I was back in High School. A cute girl surrounded by big, smelly guys who wanted to fuck me."
"Danielle, language," Raphael said in a mock-harsh tone.
"Oh, we're all soldiers!" Jhayka declared with a smile and a soft laugh. "But yes, that's quite right."
"But yeah, I used a shard of masonry to cut the ropes loose during the hours before the auction, I finished just in time really. Then I snatched a guard's stun gun and, well, made my escape." As ego-stroking an accomplishment that it was for Dani, however, it wasn't quite a thing she wanted to dwell on, as it usually reminded her of the immense feelings of terror she'd suffered from, as well as the grim fact that her escape was a close-run thing.
"Quite the Amazon in pulling it off, too. I had to stop my host from trying to shoot at her--told him it was not worth the trouble. It wasn't, she would have gotten him, and probably slapped me with the stunner's backwash, too, though it's not like that hasn't happened before," Jhayka finished in some merry amusement. "Though at first, of course, it seemed like an isolated incident, finding her under the train was a marvel, and it was just a matter of course to give her shelter. But things rather acquired a life of their own at that point."
"Oh, you wouldn't have had to worry, the stun gun was out of juice," Dani said. "You should've let that bastard come at me. It might've done him some good to have his ass kicked by some butt-naked escaped..." And at that she stopped.
Of course, it was too late. Raphael heard "naked" and glowered. "Naked?!"
"Well, how else do you auction slaves?" Jhayka answered with a twitch of her ears. "I hadn't thought it proper to mention that part, but, yes."
Dani grinned at her father sheepishly. "Oh Dad, c'mon, they were trying to sell me as a sex-slave, of course they ripped my clothes off so all the bidders could see the merchandise. In a way it was a good thing; can you imagine how much it hurt those guards' misogynist pride to get their asses kicked around by a naked chick?"
"Well, the Amazons don't wear very much more," Jhayka answered with the faintest of innocent grins as she dared to barb her wife a bit.
For the briefest of moments Raphael looked like he would, if given the power on the spot, dash through time, space, and universes to that moment to inflict vengeance upon those who dared to disrobe his daughter. But the moment of paternal protectiveness passed given the humor everyone had toward the situation. "All that really matters is that you're alright," he said.
Thankfully the subject moved on afterward.
The White House, Washington D.C.
Earth, Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
6 April 2165 AST
65 Valeria, I.Y. 618
The reckoning had now come.
It was something President Dale and his foreign policy experts had seen coming for some time, but it made it no easier for them. Standing before Dale in the Oval Office, facing him and his Foreign Minister Peter Wells, was the richly-dressed Ambassador Sir Reginald Hoare, Count of Gibbonshire on the planet Devenshire and Ambassador of the Devenshiran government to the Alliance. He had exchanged the briefest of salutations with the Alliance President before getting down to business. "Mister President, I'm here on behalf of Her Majesty's Government to file an official protest," he began. "You have permitted Priscilla Laurentii, indicted by the Kelling Tribunal as a suspected war criminal, to have haven in Alliance territory. The Star Kingdom of the Devenshires insists this be rectified at once." A diplomat and no fool, he continued, "Her Majesty's Government understands that you are constrained by the rules of diplomatic law and cannot place Laurentii under arrest. However, you could rule her persona non grata and revoke her diplomatic visas, forcing her to return to Taloran territory."
Rubbing at a temple, Dale nodded. "I understand the position of Devenshire in this matter, but I'm afraid that I cannot jeopardize these delicate talks with the Taloran Empire over Laurentii. Furthermore I believe that a positive outcome to these talks is just as much in Devenshire's interest as it is our own."
"Be that as it may, Mister President, the Kingdom of the Devenshires is gravely disappointed that you're permitting a miscarriage of justice to be furthered. And my instructions from the Foreign Office are sadly clear." Hoare took in a breath for a moment, as he clearly had some reservations about what was coming. "Given your decision, my government will now be ordering my recall. It is not a full severance of relations - the Charges d'Affairs will maintain our embassy - but Devenshire will not have a full ambassador to your government for as long as Priscilla Laurentii remains in the capital."
The two Alliance officials nodded slowly. "I'm sorry it's come to this, Mister Ambassador," Dale said. "We both have our duties. Perhaps in time Devenshire will come to understand our position and will restore full relations."
"Time will tell, Mister President. Please excuse me, I must go pack." Hoare left immediately.
Dale looked up to Wells. "I don't suppose I should be too surprised Proctor took this step."
"You shouldn't," Wells agreed. "She's under a great deal of pressure as the head of the Caretaker Government and has to be seen as doing something lest it spark domestic disturbance. Even with her action a number of protests bordering on riots have been suffered throughout Pranton."
"And the negotiations? Are we going to make all this trouble worth it?"
"We have quite a number of snag points," Wells remarked, "but both sides anticipated a long negotiation so I don't think it's a problem right now."
"Ah. Well, good luck with that. You can go now, Peter, I've got to be getting ready for this luncheon with the Federalist Campaign Committee." There was a glower on Dale's face. "At the very least it'll be a little time I can spend with Julia."
"Of course, Mister President."
Blacksburg, Virginia, Earth
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate SE-1
7 April 2165 AST
66 Valeria, I.Y. 618
It was noon-time when Fayza's Cadillac Sierra-model hovercar pulled into the Virginia Tech visitor parking. The in-build piloting system confirmed the power-down of the hover engines and allowed Fayza to unstrap after the eighty minute trip from Richmond Space and Airport in the rented hovercar (the advantage of a hovercar being the "fast travel" low altitude lanes they could use for a more direct trip than the old interstate and US highway roads).
Fayza stepped out of the car and took a moment to double-check her appearance. She had on a sleeveless sea-green blouse and knee-length skirt of multiple irregular colors to look good yet casual, well-applied lipstick, and the other cosmetic bits of someone looking to seem casual while still drawing some attention.
Around for centuries under the SE-1 calendar, the Virginia Tech campus hadn't changed a lot in the twenty years since Fayza had last been on it. Memories of her time here as a college student, educated on the dime of the short-lived Alliance Space Force to become a starship engineer, led her to a building in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies. A directory told her the room number she was looking for, leading her through the halls and by the doors until she arrived at her destination, a door labeled with the name "Prof. J. Stayer. Applied Architectural Science."
Fay spent some time just standing there, letting the class inside finish the period in their work. When it was over she made sure to remain out of the way of the door for them to go back, smiling at the young people walking by and not bothering to return the interested looks a couple of the male students sent her way. She let the professor within finish speaking with a student before going to the doorway.
The remaining figure in the room was a large man, well-built, about six foot three in all and two hundred and fifty pounds or so. His skin was a fine ebony shade, one that easily reflected the light from the richness of the color, with a head of finely-combed dark hair and a pair of brown eyes. A fine jacket of maroon and orange, the state colors, matched his black pants with a maroon-colored shirt below the jacket. He was intently looking at a book below him at the moment Fay took her first steps into the room. "Hello John," she said aloud.
This caused him to look up and over at her. A look of pleasant surprise came to his face. "Fay? I... I wasn't expecting you..."
Closing the door behind her, Fay walked up to her old lover, smiling widely, happily, as she drew close to him. "I told you I was coming as soon as I could."
And then she kissed him. It wasn't just a "hello" kiss either, but a strong passionate one with Fay's tongue immediately going for John's. His arms, as strong as she remembered in her most pleasant dreams, wrapped around her shoulders as he kept up with the kiss.
Their kiss might have gone on longer, and Fay at least felt a temptation to do more despite their location out of sheer joy of being with John Stayer again, but a meek voice interrupted them. The "Oh, uh... Professor?" prompted them to stop kissing and look toward the door and the interloper, a brown-complexioned girl of about five and a half feet height who was blushing as she stood in the opened door, a magenta lab coat covering her small frame. "I... I just had a question..."
"It's okay, Aileen," John said with a half-grin, an arm still around Fayza's shoulder. He fielded the student's question and offered to see her in the afternoon, when his next class began. "So Fay, you made it just before the weekend," he remarked, drawing up a chair for her. "You made it sound in the e-mail like it'd take you a while to get the trip approved."
"Princess Jhayka's quite nice and, I guess, really didn't need me for diplomatic talks anyway," Fay answered happily while finding the chair. For the moment they were on opposite ends of his desk. "So you went back to school after your career?"
Spreading his arms, John answered, "Sure, I figured why not. I was thinking of breaking out into coaching first but when that didn't come around... I actually kind of missed architecture." Grinning slightly, he added, "Almost as much as I missed you."
"I'm happy for you," Fay answered. "So, are you doing anything tonight?"
"I have two more classes and some papers to grade that will keep me busy until about seven thirty, but if you're up for a late dinner we could go to Rigetti's."
"That place is still around?" The Italian restaurant-cafe was a favored spot from her college days among her former dorm mates and other students. "Is Andy still cooking?"
"No, I'm afraid he passed on about six years ago," John answered, "but his grandson Lenny knows all his granddad's old recipes."
"Lenny?" Fay grinned slightly. "He was the twelve year old who used to wolf-whistle at me and Charlene. I hope he's more mature these days."
"Oh, he came back from a deployment to Bajor with a girl he'd married," John answered. "Only Bajoran girl in probably a thousand miles."
"Yeah?"
"Oh yeah. Their kids are often running around the place on weekends. Old Andy spoiled them rotten before he passed on."
"So, what about..." The conversation continued on for a short while, after which Fay - making sure to give John another kiss - left him to his work and the dinner they were due to have that night.
”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
Re: "What Price Peace?" - 55 Days Sequel (TGG)
Washington D.C., Earth
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
The apartment was in one of the seedier areas of town, where people not entirely sure of how long they'd be living in the area could rent weekly without long-term leases or hefty pay. The name it was rented in was that of Albert Rossler, a mid-level official for a state-owned Federation shipping company acquiring raw materials from the Alliance - just the type of person one would expect to prefer such loose housing arrangements.
Within, however, was Peter Lundsen, checking over his IDs and preparing for the next days of work. His various cover identities were thankfully not necessary to maintain often - a phone call here, maybe a meeting once every week to assure some group newly-arrived into town - and as the Alliance was not a survelliance state the risk of being found out by gene-scanners was thankfully low.
So far everything was going according to plan. Various groups had been approached, prodded, cajoled, or otherwise caused to join in various protests about the Talorans. The situation with Danielle Verdes' family had been an unforseen and very welcome boon to his operation, providing the Christian family values crowd a greater symbol to rally around. Not to mention the pacifists, the Wiccan groups protesting what was done to their counterparts on Gilead, the usual college nutcases convinced the Gilean Civil War was staged as an "imperialist exercise", and various trade unions worried that free trade with the Taloran Empire would undercut various domestic industry because of a perception that the Taloran workers, being "peasants" in a feudal society, accepted lower wages and would drive down prices through that.
Of course, this hadn't accomplished everything yet. But the negotiations would likely take a long time and Lundsen knew that the longer it took, the more likely the pressure he was silently building would come into play.
Ultimately, however, one thing was for certain: no matter what means were necessary, he would never let the negotiations succeed. Even if it ultimately meant going beyond the initial limits placed on him...
Blacksburg, Virginia, Earth
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate SE-1
Dinner had been excellent for Fayza and John. Rigetti's was as good as Fay remembered it, their corner booth being lit in part by candlelight in an immensely romantic way while the food had the rich flavor one desired from Italian cuisine.
Their conversation during the meal was primarily small talk, asking about old college friends and such, with only a little bit said about their divergent careers. Though neither had come to dinner absolutely expectant of what would come after, the looks they gave each other and how they'd dressed - John in a crisp-looking suit, Fayza in a green tube-top and split-side dress that showed off her shapely legs - confirmed that the night most certainly wouldn't end at Rigetti's.
When dinner was done Fayza followed John to the upper-scale apartment complex where he lived, near the Virginia Tech campus. She found a parking space near him and joined him to enter his home. Once inside the two exchanged some looks of anticipation, neither sure what was expected of them by the other - more talk? Resting on the coach? - until Fayza, taking the initiative, planted an enthusiastic kiss on John's lips. Embracing and kissing, the two made their way gently toward the bedroom. At the entrance thereof Fayza stopped embracing John long enough to reach for the fasteners of her tube top.
Shortly they were on the bed, their clothing scattered in a couple piles between the bed and the door, and twenty years faded away. It was suddenly like they were in their 20s again, young college students taking great pleasure in their intimacy. They rotated around, one being on top and then another, as their love-making lasted into the night.
The morning came with the sound of an alarm clock awakening the groggy lovers. Fayza took a bit longer to wake up, feeling tired from the combination of her journey to Blacksburg SE-1 and their romp the night before. John was out of the shower by the time she even began to sir. Discarding the towel he had dried off with, he slipped into the bed beside her and put a hand on Fayza's butt. "I thought they taught you to wake up early in the Navy?", he whispered in her ear while moving his hand over her hip and thigh.
"I've not been in the Navy for two years," Fayza answered in a very tired voice.
"And I wore you out that much?", he asked teasingly.
A small smile crossed Fayza's face. "Oh yes you did."
"Well, go ahead and sleep in then," he said. "I've got to head to campus."
"I'll be by for lunch," she promised him. Shortly thereafter she dozed back to sleep.
It was noon-time local when Fay met John at his classroom again. She'd changed into a short-sleeved blouse and slacks this time for the comfort of it and came bearing lunch portions from one of the local Chinese restaurants. "Chicken Chow Mein," she said to him while handing him the bag with his food. "Just like I used to bring you after your summer practices."
"And smelling just as good," he answered, giving Fay a little kiss on her right cheek before leading her outdoors to eat. They took in the sunny, enjoyable weather while finding seats and beginning to chow down. "You're going to get to stay for awhile, right?"
"I was hoping for at least a week," Fay admitted. "But it all depends on if they see a reason to have me return."
"What is it you're doing anyway? I mean, are you actually doing negotiations?"
At that Fay gave a giggle. "Oh, no, not at all. Officially I'm present because I'm a 'cultural advisor', there to prevent the Talorans from causing any problems through accidental remarks or behavior and the like. In truth I'm there because Jhayka basically wanted me to come along. With the exception of the actual negotiating staff and some of their support personnel, most of the people with us are from Jhayka's household."
"And they let her do that?"
"Yeah, they did. The Talorans don't think like us on many issues. As far as they were concerned, Jhayka made a good envoy because she's rich and can't be easily bribed and because she knows things about Humans."
"And what about you?"
"I received a small bit of the Berglund family fortune and an even smaller amount from the liquidation of Norman assets as compensation, plus some very generous gifts from Jhayka. The new Gilean government's also talking about compensation to victims but the measure's being stalled because, frankly, the new government is very very broke."
John nodded. "The news doesn't say much about it... what happened to you on Gilead? I mean, everyone knows about the slavery and..."
Fay's expression went sour. "I'd rather not talk about it," she answered coldly.
"Baby, I'm here for you," John answered, reaching over and taking her hand into his. "If you ever want to talk about it I'm here for you, I'll understand...."
"I just don't want to talk about it, not now," Fay insisted. "Not when I'm finally feeling happy for the first time in so long..."
"I'm sorry, I just wanted to let you know that," he answered softly. "That I've made you happy is enough for me."
Fay smiled sweetly at him before they continued their lunch. As they finished it she reached into a pocket and handed him a keycard. "For my hotel room," she answered with a smile. "For when you get off work."
Smiling slyly, John answered, "Oh, Fay, you're trying to wear me out aren't you?" The only response he got was an equally-sly grin.
Fay threw the trash away and walked up beside John, taking his arm. "Let me walk you back to the classroom."
They were almost to the door back inside when a young man walked up, a look of concentration on his face. "It is you! Damn!"
Fay looked at him funny. "It is me what?"
"Damn, Professor Stayer, you've got one flexible and open-minded lady."
John gave the student an incredulous look. "Son, what are you babbling about?"
"Your chick, I downloaded a video of her from the 'net. One of the 'Berglund's Harem' vids," the young man explained. "He had her tied to some table and was fucking her with...."
At that moment Fay grabbed the student by the collar. Her face contorted with rage and she demanded, "WHERE?! WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU GET SOMETHING LIKE...."
"I downloaded it online, online, it was on one of my favorite porn networks and I was...."
At that point, Fayza desperately needed something to lash out at. And the student before her was the only available target. Her hand made a fist and she struck him in the side of the face hard enough that it made her knuckles hurt even as it nearly broke his nose - had the strike went a little higher it would have probably done so, but as it was it just made it begin bleeding from the left nostril - and sent him flying to the ground.
Full of shame and anger, Fayza immediately turned and began running across the grass toward the parking lot. John watched her go and called out to her, but she didn't heed him.
"Crazy bitch!", the kid cried out. "Fucking slut of a whore, I'm gonna press charges! I'm..."
"You're going to do absolutely fucking nothing if you don't want to have your net privileges revoked for downloading illegal material," John barked, bringing the student to his feet. "Now get the fuck to the nurse's station and keep your damned mouth shut if you want to avoid seeing the Dean."
Still a little pissed but now also afraid and humbled, the kid headed off, holding his nose closed in an attempt to stop the bleeding.
John went to look for Fay, just to find she'd already taken off in her car. He began walking back to the campus, thinking of calling and asking for a substitute, and placed a cell call to Fay first. "Fay?", he asked when she answered.
"I'm sorry John, I'm so sorry... I should've told you...," she sobbed from the other end.
"Listen, I'll come be with you, just tell me where you're heading."
"It's.... it's okay. I'll be okay, I'll see you after your classes are done."
"Are you sure? Fay?"
"I'm sure." A tone told him she'd hung up.
Barely re-assured by hearing her voice, it was nevertheless enough for John to quiet the impulse to go after her and go to his impending classes.
A few hours later John arrived at Fayza's hotel and immediately went to her room. He knocked at the door and heard no answer. Becoming afraid for Fayza he found the key she'd given him and slipped it into the card reader. It flashed green and he was able to unlock the door.
Fay's room was mostly orderly, her things unpacked here and there but mostly still in her suitcases. One of the items unpacked - and on the table near the door - was her laptop computer with a small planetary 'net transceiver lit up at one of the ports. His curiosity overtaking him, John turned the laptop to look at it.
It was a video site, an "underground" one mostly that offered amateur videos uploaded onto it. It showed a download link image with the large caption of "Another Hot Slave Getting Punished"... and a picture of Fayza. John's jaw dropped at the cropped picture of Fay topless, her wrists held above her head by straps at one end of what looked to be a metal table and a pair of alligator clips pinching her nipples tightly. The angle of the photo showed the clips were in turn attached to a portable electrical generator.
Disgusted and horrified, he finally heard a low sob from the bathroom at the back of the hotel room. He went there immediately and stood in the doorway of the bathroom to see what was inside.
Almost immediately he moved toward the bathtub. Fay was there, stripped naked and wet with the tub half-filled with soapy water, sitting with her legs up and her head laying against the corner. Her skin looked irritated as if she had scrubbed it relentlessly.
She had a razor gripped in her right hand.
"Fay! Fay!" John bent over and pulled the razor out of her hand with little resistance, Fay continuing to sob. Opening her hand he could see it had a couple small cuts, the result of her holding the razor tightly. Water splashed as he checked for any cuts on her body, moving at a speed that showed his panic.
A sting of pain came to his right hand. He opened it to see he had done the same, gripping it so tightly that it cut him. He threw the razor into the nearby commode and reached over to embrace Fayza, not caring that he was getting his suit wet as the water sloshed around the tub. "Oh Baby, I never knew what they did to you..."
"It was all my fault," she sobbed. "We never should've gone. We never should've gone. I should've listened to Dani..."
"Shh, Baby, it's all right. I'm here for you..."
"He made me his slut! He's dead and he's still making me his slut! Why?!"
The fear that had risen in him when he saw the razor now turned to rage broiling in John's heart, a rage that made him hate those who had done this to Fayza. He held onto her tightly, running a hand through her wet hair and trying to calm her down as she continued in a rant of despair and verbal self-flagellation. "It wasn't your fault, Baby, it wasn't your fault.... Everything's okay now."
When he was sure Fay had calmed down a little, John went back to her room and found her cell. He moved back to the bathroom to keep an eye on Fay while going for her call contacts. He moved to the one labeled "Dani" and tried to place a call. When informed that the phone he was trying to reach was offline he moved to the next one on the list: "Drish".
"Hi Fayza!" The voice was a lilting, honey-scented sort of accent, not at all human. "Jhayka and Dani and I are at some stupid reception and I'm hiding from all the politicians at the bar."
"Hello, um, 'Drish' is it?" John pronounced it completely phoenetically, making it rhyme with "dish". "This is John, I'm a friend of Fay's. Listen, I need some help here, she's become a wreck." Such a thing was audible now, as John moved closer to the tub and Fay's sobbing was audible.
"Uhm, kreit. Just a second." There was a brief silence with a faint rustling sound, apparently as she slipped out of the main room entirely--to the hallway leading to the bathrooms as a matter of fact, and then found a random corridor and secreted herself in it. "Uhm, yeah, Fayza gets like that sometimes. How bad is it?"
"She had a razor in her hand. I.. if I hadn't shown up when I did I think she might've..."
"...Wait what!? She hasn't done that in over a year--oh God. I need to call Priscilla right away and have her get there. She's the only one who really knows how to deal with Fayza in these moods. Something is very very wrong she just shouldn't be doing this..."
"Well..." He gave a glance to the image on Fay's laptop. "I can tell you why..."
The Hays-Adams, Washington D.C.
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
Drish had come to Dani immediately after hearing about Fay, informing her quietly in the corner while Jhayka endured a conversation with a Council Representative of the Alliance-Unionists about the evils of tariffs and protectionism. The two had quickly indicated to Jhayka, quietly, that something was wrong and excused themselves from the banquet to go upstairs.
They split up at that point, Drish heading to inform Priscilla while Dani went to her room to begin packing. Without being asked to her father immediately joined her, packing some of the new clothes he'd bought with her help for the trip.
A few minutes later, Priscilla entered the room, trembling. "Drish showed me what's got Fayza back into this state. Berglund's sex tapes have been posted on the internal Alliance datanets, Danielle." Priscilla was trembling with rage and fear as she said that. "That would be just the exact one thing that could still fuck Fayza up good after all this--they're all the worst and most explicit of them, too! Let me come with you, please."
"How the fuck did that happen?!", Dani raged, looking for an extra article of clothing.
"I don't fucking know. Someone found the tapes on the Gilead planetary network, some scum-sucking shit for balls from the old regime who fled Gilead managed to get copies for blackmail purposes, they were forged by Devenshire's intelligence services, it could be a thousand things. The point is they're there and Fayza found them and she's presently a wreck and...." Priscilla abruptly punched the wall, tears welling in her eyes. "Damnit, Danielle, I'm going with you. I'm not letting Fayza die on me now!"
"Dad, are you...?"
Raphael looked up from the phone. "Getting us a flight to SE-1, yes. They're finding one for us now. How many tickets?"
"Three. I have an ID card under the name Raefella Arshon," Priscilla commented shortly, showing how serious she was taking the entre thing. She was certainly looking with the single-minded eyes of a woman possessed by a desperate need.
"I swear to God if I find the bastard who did this I'll fucking rip his balls off," Dani grumbled while finishing the packing of her suitcase.
"We just make sure that Fayza is alright," Priscilla answered. "I'm going to go start packing." She turned to step out into the hall, and then paused as she did, looking down at someone. "Jhayka?"
"Drishalras told me, and you're not going anywhere Priscilla. It would cause far more negative spotlight on Fayza and everyone else than your helping her could compensate for. Let Danielle get her and bring her home." Her voice echoed in from the hallway. "I hate to say it, but due to the way you've already been treated here, you'd just be a liability for her."
Dani overheard and stepped out into the hall. "Jhayka, Priscilla has become as much a friend to Fay as I am. Maybe more of one in some ways. And those talking heads on the TV can be damned for all I care."
"Then bring her back as quickly as you can, and I'll release Priscilla of her duties as much as is required. Drishalras can substitute for her. But she's not going with you. There would literally be a thousand reporters following you onto that transfer ship, all asking why Priscilla Laurentii the Butcher of Umm-Rashrash is being allowed to travel for personal reasons inside Alliance Space and what her cause for traveling is. And then they'll all find out about what's happened to Fayza, and repeat it fifty times an hour on your news networks."
At that even Dani had to stop and think. Jhayka was right in that it'd only hurt Fayza all the more to have what happened strewn around the news networks. She gave a strong hug to Priscilla. "I'm sorry, Pris, I really am. I'll bring her back ASAP."
"Thank you," Priscilla sighed miserably. "Don't step away from her for a single instant, Danielle. Just hug her as much as you can...."
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
The apartment was in one of the seedier areas of town, where people not entirely sure of how long they'd be living in the area could rent weekly without long-term leases or hefty pay. The name it was rented in was that of Albert Rossler, a mid-level official for a state-owned Federation shipping company acquiring raw materials from the Alliance - just the type of person one would expect to prefer such loose housing arrangements.
Within, however, was Peter Lundsen, checking over his IDs and preparing for the next days of work. His various cover identities were thankfully not necessary to maintain often - a phone call here, maybe a meeting once every week to assure some group newly-arrived into town - and as the Alliance was not a survelliance state the risk of being found out by gene-scanners was thankfully low.
So far everything was going according to plan. Various groups had been approached, prodded, cajoled, or otherwise caused to join in various protests about the Talorans. The situation with Danielle Verdes' family had been an unforseen and very welcome boon to his operation, providing the Christian family values crowd a greater symbol to rally around. Not to mention the pacifists, the Wiccan groups protesting what was done to their counterparts on Gilead, the usual college nutcases convinced the Gilean Civil War was staged as an "imperialist exercise", and various trade unions worried that free trade with the Taloran Empire would undercut various domestic industry because of a perception that the Taloran workers, being "peasants" in a feudal society, accepted lower wages and would drive down prices through that.
Of course, this hadn't accomplished everything yet. But the negotiations would likely take a long time and Lundsen knew that the longer it took, the more likely the pressure he was silently building would come into play.
Ultimately, however, one thing was for certain: no matter what means were necessary, he would never let the negotiations succeed. Even if it ultimately meant going beyond the initial limits placed on him...
Blacksburg, Virginia, Earth
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate SE-1
Dinner had been excellent for Fayza and John. Rigetti's was as good as Fay remembered it, their corner booth being lit in part by candlelight in an immensely romantic way while the food had the rich flavor one desired from Italian cuisine.
Their conversation during the meal was primarily small talk, asking about old college friends and such, with only a little bit said about their divergent careers. Though neither had come to dinner absolutely expectant of what would come after, the looks they gave each other and how they'd dressed - John in a crisp-looking suit, Fayza in a green tube-top and split-side dress that showed off her shapely legs - confirmed that the night most certainly wouldn't end at Rigetti's.
When dinner was done Fayza followed John to the upper-scale apartment complex where he lived, near the Virginia Tech campus. She found a parking space near him and joined him to enter his home. Once inside the two exchanged some looks of anticipation, neither sure what was expected of them by the other - more talk? Resting on the coach? - until Fayza, taking the initiative, planted an enthusiastic kiss on John's lips. Embracing and kissing, the two made their way gently toward the bedroom. At the entrance thereof Fayza stopped embracing John long enough to reach for the fasteners of her tube top.
Shortly they were on the bed, their clothing scattered in a couple piles between the bed and the door, and twenty years faded away. It was suddenly like they were in their 20s again, young college students taking great pleasure in their intimacy. They rotated around, one being on top and then another, as their love-making lasted into the night.
The morning came with the sound of an alarm clock awakening the groggy lovers. Fayza took a bit longer to wake up, feeling tired from the combination of her journey to Blacksburg SE-1 and their romp the night before. John was out of the shower by the time she even began to sir. Discarding the towel he had dried off with, he slipped into the bed beside her and put a hand on Fayza's butt. "I thought they taught you to wake up early in the Navy?", he whispered in her ear while moving his hand over her hip and thigh.
"I've not been in the Navy for two years," Fayza answered in a very tired voice.
"And I wore you out that much?", he asked teasingly.
A small smile crossed Fayza's face. "Oh yes you did."
"Well, go ahead and sleep in then," he said. "I've got to head to campus."
"I'll be by for lunch," she promised him. Shortly thereafter she dozed back to sleep.
It was noon-time local when Fay met John at his classroom again. She'd changed into a short-sleeved blouse and slacks this time for the comfort of it and came bearing lunch portions from one of the local Chinese restaurants. "Chicken Chow Mein," she said to him while handing him the bag with his food. "Just like I used to bring you after your summer practices."
"And smelling just as good," he answered, giving Fay a little kiss on her right cheek before leading her outdoors to eat. They took in the sunny, enjoyable weather while finding seats and beginning to chow down. "You're going to get to stay for awhile, right?"
"I was hoping for at least a week," Fay admitted. "But it all depends on if they see a reason to have me return."
"What is it you're doing anyway? I mean, are you actually doing negotiations?"
At that Fay gave a giggle. "Oh, no, not at all. Officially I'm present because I'm a 'cultural advisor', there to prevent the Talorans from causing any problems through accidental remarks or behavior and the like. In truth I'm there because Jhayka basically wanted me to come along. With the exception of the actual negotiating staff and some of their support personnel, most of the people with us are from Jhayka's household."
"And they let her do that?"
"Yeah, they did. The Talorans don't think like us on many issues. As far as they were concerned, Jhayka made a good envoy because she's rich and can't be easily bribed and because she knows things about Humans."
"And what about you?"
"I received a small bit of the Berglund family fortune and an even smaller amount from the liquidation of Norman assets as compensation, plus some very generous gifts from Jhayka. The new Gilean government's also talking about compensation to victims but the measure's being stalled because, frankly, the new government is very very broke."
John nodded. "The news doesn't say much about it... what happened to you on Gilead? I mean, everyone knows about the slavery and..."
Fay's expression went sour. "I'd rather not talk about it," she answered coldly.
"Baby, I'm here for you," John answered, reaching over and taking her hand into his. "If you ever want to talk about it I'm here for you, I'll understand...."
"I just don't want to talk about it, not now," Fay insisted. "Not when I'm finally feeling happy for the first time in so long..."
"I'm sorry, I just wanted to let you know that," he answered softly. "That I've made you happy is enough for me."
Fay smiled sweetly at him before they continued their lunch. As they finished it she reached into a pocket and handed him a keycard. "For my hotel room," she answered with a smile. "For when you get off work."
Smiling slyly, John answered, "Oh, Fay, you're trying to wear me out aren't you?" The only response he got was an equally-sly grin.
Fay threw the trash away and walked up beside John, taking his arm. "Let me walk you back to the classroom."
They were almost to the door back inside when a young man walked up, a look of concentration on his face. "It is you! Damn!"
Fay looked at him funny. "It is me what?"
"Damn, Professor Stayer, you've got one flexible and open-minded lady."
John gave the student an incredulous look. "Son, what are you babbling about?"
"Your chick, I downloaded a video of her from the 'net. One of the 'Berglund's Harem' vids," the young man explained. "He had her tied to some table and was fucking her with...."
At that moment Fay grabbed the student by the collar. Her face contorted with rage and she demanded, "WHERE?! WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU GET SOMETHING LIKE...."
"I downloaded it online, online, it was on one of my favorite porn networks and I was...."
At that point, Fayza desperately needed something to lash out at. And the student before her was the only available target. Her hand made a fist and she struck him in the side of the face hard enough that it made her knuckles hurt even as it nearly broke his nose - had the strike went a little higher it would have probably done so, but as it was it just made it begin bleeding from the left nostril - and sent him flying to the ground.
Full of shame and anger, Fayza immediately turned and began running across the grass toward the parking lot. John watched her go and called out to her, but she didn't heed him.
"Crazy bitch!", the kid cried out. "Fucking slut of a whore, I'm gonna press charges! I'm..."
"You're going to do absolutely fucking nothing if you don't want to have your net privileges revoked for downloading illegal material," John barked, bringing the student to his feet. "Now get the fuck to the nurse's station and keep your damned mouth shut if you want to avoid seeing the Dean."
Still a little pissed but now also afraid and humbled, the kid headed off, holding his nose closed in an attempt to stop the bleeding.
John went to look for Fay, just to find she'd already taken off in her car. He began walking back to the campus, thinking of calling and asking for a substitute, and placed a cell call to Fay first. "Fay?", he asked when she answered.
"I'm sorry John, I'm so sorry... I should've told you...," she sobbed from the other end.
"Listen, I'll come be with you, just tell me where you're heading."
"It's.... it's okay. I'll be okay, I'll see you after your classes are done."
"Are you sure? Fay?"
"I'm sure." A tone told him she'd hung up.
Barely re-assured by hearing her voice, it was nevertheless enough for John to quiet the impulse to go after her and go to his impending classes.
A few hours later John arrived at Fayza's hotel and immediately went to her room. He knocked at the door and heard no answer. Becoming afraid for Fayza he found the key she'd given him and slipped it into the card reader. It flashed green and he was able to unlock the door.
Fay's room was mostly orderly, her things unpacked here and there but mostly still in her suitcases. One of the items unpacked - and on the table near the door - was her laptop computer with a small planetary 'net transceiver lit up at one of the ports. His curiosity overtaking him, John turned the laptop to look at it.
It was a video site, an "underground" one mostly that offered amateur videos uploaded onto it. It showed a download link image with the large caption of "Another Hot Slave Getting Punished"... and a picture of Fayza. John's jaw dropped at the cropped picture of Fay topless, her wrists held above her head by straps at one end of what looked to be a metal table and a pair of alligator clips pinching her nipples tightly. The angle of the photo showed the clips were in turn attached to a portable electrical generator.
Disgusted and horrified, he finally heard a low sob from the bathroom at the back of the hotel room. He went there immediately and stood in the doorway of the bathroom to see what was inside.
Almost immediately he moved toward the bathtub. Fay was there, stripped naked and wet with the tub half-filled with soapy water, sitting with her legs up and her head laying against the corner. Her skin looked irritated as if she had scrubbed it relentlessly.
She had a razor gripped in her right hand.
"Fay! Fay!" John bent over and pulled the razor out of her hand with little resistance, Fay continuing to sob. Opening her hand he could see it had a couple small cuts, the result of her holding the razor tightly. Water splashed as he checked for any cuts on her body, moving at a speed that showed his panic.
A sting of pain came to his right hand. He opened it to see he had done the same, gripping it so tightly that it cut him. He threw the razor into the nearby commode and reached over to embrace Fayza, not caring that he was getting his suit wet as the water sloshed around the tub. "Oh Baby, I never knew what they did to you..."
"It was all my fault," she sobbed. "We never should've gone. We never should've gone. I should've listened to Dani..."
"Shh, Baby, it's all right. I'm here for you..."
"He made me his slut! He's dead and he's still making me his slut! Why?!"
The fear that had risen in him when he saw the razor now turned to rage broiling in John's heart, a rage that made him hate those who had done this to Fayza. He held onto her tightly, running a hand through her wet hair and trying to calm her down as she continued in a rant of despair and verbal self-flagellation. "It wasn't your fault, Baby, it wasn't your fault.... Everything's okay now."
When he was sure Fay had calmed down a little, John went back to her room and found her cell. He moved back to the bathroom to keep an eye on Fay while going for her call contacts. He moved to the one labeled "Dani" and tried to place a call. When informed that the phone he was trying to reach was offline he moved to the next one on the list: "Drish".
"Hi Fayza!" The voice was a lilting, honey-scented sort of accent, not at all human. "Jhayka and Dani and I are at some stupid reception and I'm hiding from all the politicians at the bar."
"Hello, um, 'Drish' is it?" John pronounced it completely phoenetically, making it rhyme with "dish". "This is John, I'm a friend of Fay's. Listen, I need some help here, she's become a wreck." Such a thing was audible now, as John moved closer to the tub and Fay's sobbing was audible.
"Uhm, kreit. Just a second." There was a brief silence with a faint rustling sound, apparently as she slipped out of the main room entirely--to the hallway leading to the bathrooms as a matter of fact, and then found a random corridor and secreted herself in it. "Uhm, yeah, Fayza gets like that sometimes. How bad is it?"
"She had a razor in her hand. I.. if I hadn't shown up when I did I think she might've..."
"...Wait what!? She hasn't done that in over a year--oh God. I need to call Priscilla right away and have her get there. She's the only one who really knows how to deal with Fayza in these moods. Something is very very wrong she just shouldn't be doing this..."
"Well..." He gave a glance to the image on Fay's laptop. "I can tell you why..."
The Hays-Adams, Washington D.C.
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
Drish had come to Dani immediately after hearing about Fay, informing her quietly in the corner while Jhayka endured a conversation with a Council Representative of the Alliance-Unionists about the evils of tariffs and protectionism. The two had quickly indicated to Jhayka, quietly, that something was wrong and excused themselves from the banquet to go upstairs.
They split up at that point, Drish heading to inform Priscilla while Dani went to her room to begin packing. Without being asked to her father immediately joined her, packing some of the new clothes he'd bought with her help for the trip.
A few minutes later, Priscilla entered the room, trembling. "Drish showed me what's got Fayza back into this state. Berglund's sex tapes have been posted on the internal Alliance datanets, Danielle." Priscilla was trembling with rage and fear as she said that. "That would be just the exact one thing that could still fuck Fayza up good after all this--they're all the worst and most explicit of them, too! Let me come with you, please."
"How the fuck did that happen?!", Dani raged, looking for an extra article of clothing.
"I don't fucking know. Someone found the tapes on the Gilead planetary network, some scum-sucking shit for balls from the old regime who fled Gilead managed to get copies for blackmail purposes, they were forged by Devenshire's intelligence services, it could be a thousand things. The point is they're there and Fayza found them and she's presently a wreck and...." Priscilla abruptly punched the wall, tears welling in her eyes. "Damnit, Danielle, I'm going with you. I'm not letting Fayza die on me now!"
"Dad, are you...?"
Raphael looked up from the phone. "Getting us a flight to SE-1, yes. They're finding one for us now. How many tickets?"
"Three. I have an ID card under the name Raefella Arshon," Priscilla commented shortly, showing how serious she was taking the entre thing. She was certainly looking with the single-minded eyes of a woman possessed by a desperate need.
"I swear to God if I find the bastard who did this I'll fucking rip his balls off," Dani grumbled while finishing the packing of her suitcase.
"We just make sure that Fayza is alright," Priscilla answered. "I'm going to go start packing." She turned to step out into the hall, and then paused as she did, looking down at someone. "Jhayka?"
"Drishalras told me, and you're not going anywhere Priscilla. It would cause far more negative spotlight on Fayza and everyone else than your helping her could compensate for. Let Danielle get her and bring her home." Her voice echoed in from the hallway. "I hate to say it, but due to the way you've already been treated here, you'd just be a liability for her."
Dani overheard and stepped out into the hall. "Jhayka, Priscilla has become as much a friend to Fay as I am. Maybe more of one in some ways. And those talking heads on the TV can be damned for all I care."
"Then bring her back as quickly as you can, and I'll release Priscilla of her duties as much as is required. Drishalras can substitute for her. But she's not going with you. There would literally be a thousand reporters following you onto that transfer ship, all asking why Priscilla Laurentii the Butcher of Umm-Rashrash is being allowed to travel for personal reasons inside Alliance Space and what her cause for traveling is. And then they'll all find out about what's happened to Fayza, and repeat it fifty times an hour on your news networks."
At that even Dani had to stop and think. Jhayka was right in that it'd only hurt Fayza all the more to have what happened strewn around the news networks. She gave a strong hug to Priscilla. "I'm sorry, Pris, I really am. I'll bring her back ASAP."
"Thank you," Priscilla sighed miserably. "Don't step away from her for a single instant, Danielle. Just hug her as much as you can...."
”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
-
Master_Baerne
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1984
- Joined: 2006-11-09 08:54am
- Location: Wouldn't you like to know?
Re: "What Price Peace?" - 55 Days Sequel (TGG)
I'm glad to see some activity in this story after so long.
Conversion Table:
2000 Mockingbirds = 2 Kilomockingbirds
Basic Unit of Laryngitis = 1 Hoarsepower
453.6 Graham Crackers = 1 Pound Cake
1 Kilogram of Falling Figs - 1 Fig Newton
Time Between Slipping on a Banana Peel and Smacking the Pavement = 1 Bananosecond
Half of a Large Intestine = 1 Semicolon
2000 Mockingbirds = 2 Kilomockingbirds
Basic Unit of Laryngitis = 1 Hoarsepower
453.6 Graham Crackers = 1 Pound Cake
1 Kilogram of Falling Figs - 1 Fig Newton
Time Between Slipping on a Banana Peel and Smacking the Pavement = 1 Bananosecond
Half of a Large Intestine = 1 Semicolon
Re: "What Price Peace?" - 55 Days Sequel (TGG)
Yeah, I was kinda shocked when I went to update it and saw the last update was posted "Jan 04 2008". A year and a half between updates, youch.
It also sets WPP at the longest TGG collab story yet being written in terms of how long between start (late June 2007) to completion (????). "55 Days" previously held the record, I believe we started it in late October 2005 and finished it at the start of June 2007.
It also sets WPP at the longest TGG collab story yet being written in terms of how long between start (late June 2007) to completion (????). "55 Days" previously held the record, I believe we started it in late October 2005 and finished it at the start of June 2007.
”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
Re: "What Price Peace?" - 55 Days Sequel (TGG)
First bit is Marina's, second is mine with Sunhawk co-writing.
Your Serene Grace's communique finds me well in the Alliance capitol. I thank you very kindly for the considerations laid out and cared showed for the unfortunate situation viz. my extended family and the vicious media here. That they have reached you is a considerable misfortune, to say the least, and indeed that such subjects as that of the strange separation of Danielle's parents could become the subject of speculation in the media.
That of Priscilla Laurentii, on the other hand, we cannot so easily ignore. It would have been better in retrospect to keep her at home, not because she lacked any right to come, but so she could care for Fayza al-Bakr back home and out of the spotlight. The lack of ability for her to do so in the current circumstances was only compounded by Fayza's trying to escape it all, or fancy she could live a normal life, which miserably the legacy of Berglund denies her.
Altogether I now find myself in a situation where I cannot yield an inch on personal affairs, or on the issue of Priscilla Laurentii, even merely to send her home, for the Honour of the All-Highest Empress. This is I think however what Her Serene Majesty intended all along, to force the Alliance to accept our people as we are, and present an example of our customs of charity for the entire cosmos to see so that nobody could presume to deny our nature; they would either accept the Taloran people, as we are, or not at all. While I agree with the principles, they have, I fear, cost a great toll on us. I certainly beg you not to consider me again, ever, for such an assignment as this.
But it is an assignment I fully intend to finish admirably. So far the negotiations have been achieved in principle on our accession to the New Brasilia treaty and the reservations appear to be ones that will be accepted by the broader body of New Brasilia participants. The main subject at hand is how many seats we shall receive for our component members, and this may be the principle stumbling block there.
An agreement on a general declaration of peace and friendship, is of an unproblematic nature as we both know. The Alliance loves such gestures and fancies them important, and of course we know they are not so, but its upcoming signing will be interpreted as substantiative progress in the negotiations, which is in a sense useful.
On the other hand we do not wish to give an air of the fact that things will be quickly resolved. I suspect I will be remaining here for many more months in an effort to secure the issue of the passports, which completely eludes a settlement, as does the exact details of a free trade agreement. The issue of our inclusion of food synthesizing equipment in the definition of banned agricultural products and the refusal to allow foreign corporations to bid on military contracts present significantly stumbling blocks though the principle of the agricultural exclusion itself has been accepted.
In light of all this our hosts have nonetheless been largely quite accommodating. The Hays-Adams is a fine hotel very near the Presidential Palace, and the staff mostly agreeable as such people go. President Dale himself is a reliable and accommodating fellow and certainly someone that we can work with.
That leaves me to conclude with pleasure the fact I have at least met Danielle's father, after these long and unfortunate years, though I confess that on personal affairs the lack of harmony in her family and absence of her mother, indeed her mother's behaviour, religious reasons or not, continues to confound me. Nonetheless, I do not think I regret the stress of what is, in the end, the strangest of my assignments.
For my very dearest friend,
All kindness under God,
Jhayka
Alliance Security Agency Offices, Langley
Earth, Alliance of Democratic Nations
11 April 2165 AST
70 Valeria, I.Y. 618
While AID itself occupied the new offices built for it in Bowie, Maryland, the Alliance Security Agency had opted to take over the old CIA complex - not entirely a major surprise given the decision was made under Sir James Bronson's watch. For all that Bronson was now officially in charge of all aspects of Alliance security and advising the President and Chancellor on those matters, Bronson was still very much the Alliance's chief spymaster. AID Director Samuel White Eagle, while ostensibly an independent officer of the government with his own responsibilities, had left his agency virtually at the purview of its first notable chief (not counting the handful of insignificant figures who led the agency under Plotinikov's mismanagement).
An analyst finished filling him in on the progress of investigation into the matter of all the groups who had come to Washington for the explicit purpose of protesting the Taloran delegation. There groups were myriad in their intent and desires and many were contradictory to each other, if not outright hostile. Funds from various donor sources paid for their continued presence and operation, the sources varying from Elijah Weisbaum's proxy anti-fascist, pro-democracy groups to a couple notorious churchmen known for making a ruckus whenever homosexual rights were vigorously upheld in the Alliance government.
For all intents and purposes, the entire thing was innocent in appearance. These groups had their own grievances, slight or not, against the Talorans. Against the Taloran delegation's open homosexuality, against the role the Talorans played in imposing a monarchy on Gilead, against their persistant inability to accept secular government or their known discrimination against neo-pagans.... They had their issues and they were making them known.
But yet there was an itch at the back of Bronson's mind. The varying religious fundamentalists, the neo-pagans, the hedonistic groups, they were all hostile toward each other and yet never seemed to come into full contact. Oh, there had been some incidents. Minor brushes as their marching areas met, or encounters as one protest ended and another began... but they seemed too neat to Bronson. The number of contacts between these groups, those hostile to each other, seemed to happen just often enough to maintain slight friction and knowledge of each other's presence, but never enough to pose any threat to the continued strength of the demonstrations. Their schedules were being well-kept in a way that minimized the contact between mutually-hostile factions. They were, all told, seeming quite lucky in how their scheduling was working.
Sir James didn't believe in that much luck.
"Good job, file the report immediately," he told the analyst, dismissing her with a customary head nod. He watched her go and turned around to face the wall in his office, deep in thought.
When his senses alerted him to the new presence in his office, he openly remarked, "Right on time. Your punctuality remains one of your most endearing qualities, ladies."
"We aim to please, Sir." came from the central figure of the trio as they stepped from the shadows.
Dressed in rather conservative dress-suits with ID badges clipped to them belying how stealthily they had made their entrance, all three were identical, moving almost as one as they moved to stand in front of Bronson's desk. Anne, as usual, did most of the speaking for the group, she'd always been their 'face' after all and even now that all three were working for AID many of their fellow agents only knew of Anne, disbelieving that there were two others that they never knowingly saw. Bronson was one of the few to regularly see the three together, after all, and notations on a file were one thing, it is the seeing that is the believing.
"What can we do for you, Sir" Anne said, lifting one eyebrow slightly in question.
"How well have you been following the news regarding the Taloran treaty delegation and the various protests against them?" The question was almost rhetorical - Bronson could expect the Triplets to have been paying very close attention to such a key event.
"The greatest surge in protest activity since the conclusion of the Dominion War brought together all the various radical anti-war groups." Anne said, frowning slightly. "Albeit with a highly unlikely conglomerate of interests, most of whom hate each other even more than they hate the Taloran's, been expecting a riot to break out at any time but so far for some reason they've mostly avoided each other instead of clashed, which is unusual in and of itself." After a moment she frowned even more. "Am I thinking what you are thinking, Sir?" raising one eyebrow.
Indeed. The Triplets were, as always, a keen group of sisters, and there was a reason Bronson considered them his primary trouble-shooters. And he would need their skills for what he had in mind. "There are many governments who would find strained relations between the Alliance and the Taloran Empire to be advantageous," Bronson remarked. "But not many intelligence agencies have the means, experience, and skill to match that motive."
His thoughts continued from there. British MI-6 from Universe FHI-8 has the experience but, given their recent political turmoil, neither the means nor motive. Even accounting for factionalism in their feudalistic system, Taloran External Intelligence has the sophistication but not the motive. The Habsburg Evidenzburo lacks the means at this juncture, so soon after our first contact, to undertake such an operation, although they undoubtedly have the experience, skill, and desire. Under Katherine's Regency Davion MIIO has lost the means for an external operation of this scope and skill, not when they're so busy keeping the occupied Draconis worlds in line. All that, of course, meant that one culprit stood above all others in motive, means, and skill.
Anne nodded her head slowly as she accessed her PAN to confirm some information, pupils flickering as she read the data via her cybernetics. "The Talorans recently opened an Embassy in the UFP, speculation at the time was that it was intended as a pressure tactic against us." she said, nodding. "Motive and capability."
"You know what this means," Bronson said to them. The implication of whom was responsible was such that it needn't be said. "AID operations on Alliance soil are strictly limited to advisory roles on matters of internal security, so consider yourselves held to such a role. Obviously certain things can be done if done discreetly, but the line is stricter here and our options more limited. And then there is our quarry, whom you can depend to be, if anything, resolutely devoted and incredibly dangerous if backed into a corner."
Anne nodded in understanding "Understood, Sir." she said, not needing to say anything more as the gears started to turn. Yes there were lines, strict lines. But lines are, by their nature, fuzzy things outside the word of mathematics. "We'll get started right away. Alpha priority?"
Bronson gave a quiet nod. With the Triplets, Alpha Priority was about the only priority they operated under, and they were quite capable of making good use of all the resources that granted them.
With that all three nodded in response and turned to leave, filing out of the office and startling the secretary and security officer who'd never seen them enter in the first place. Beyond faint smiles, however, the triplets didn't respond to the consternation, instead already deep in consultation over their linked PAN's.
As they left, Bronson turned his chair away from the door to consider his thoughts on the course of action he'd taken. It was a risk, but such was the nature of these things. In this case it was a necessary risk, for more than one reason, especially given the nature of their opponent.
After years of being waged in the darkest corners of Universe ST-3, the shadow war between Alliance Intelligence and Section 31 was coming home. And the stakes had never been higher.
End of Half (Next up, the Intermezzo!)
Your Serene Grace's communique finds me well in the Alliance capitol. I thank you very kindly for the considerations laid out and cared showed for the unfortunate situation viz. my extended family and the vicious media here. That they have reached you is a considerable misfortune, to say the least, and indeed that such subjects as that of the strange separation of Danielle's parents could become the subject of speculation in the media.
That of Priscilla Laurentii, on the other hand, we cannot so easily ignore. It would have been better in retrospect to keep her at home, not because she lacked any right to come, but so she could care for Fayza al-Bakr back home and out of the spotlight. The lack of ability for her to do so in the current circumstances was only compounded by Fayza's trying to escape it all, or fancy she could live a normal life, which miserably the legacy of Berglund denies her.
Altogether I now find myself in a situation where I cannot yield an inch on personal affairs, or on the issue of Priscilla Laurentii, even merely to send her home, for the Honour of the All-Highest Empress. This is I think however what Her Serene Majesty intended all along, to force the Alliance to accept our people as we are, and present an example of our customs of charity for the entire cosmos to see so that nobody could presume to deny our nature; they would either accept the Taloran people, as we are, or not at all. While I agree with the principles, they have, I fear, cost a great toll on us. I certainly beg you not to consider me again, ever, for such an assignment as this.
But it is an assignment I fully intend to finish admirably. So far the negotiations have been achieved in principle on our accession to the New Brasilia treaty and the reservations appear to be ones that will be accepted by the broader body of New Brasilia participants. The main subject at hand is how many seats we shall receive for our component members, and this may be the principle stumbling block there.
An agreement on a general declaration of peace and friendship, is of an unproblematic nature as we both know. The Alliance loves such gestures and fancies them important, and of course we know they are not so, but its upcoming signing will be interpreted as substantiative progress in the negotiations, which is in a sense useful.
On the other hand we do not wish to give an air of the fact that things will be quickly resolved. I suspect I will be remaining here for many more months in an effort to secure the issue of the passports, which completely eludes a settlement, as does the exact details of a free trade agreement. The issue of our inclusion of food synthesizing equipment in the definition of banned agricultural products and the refusal to allow foreign corporations to bid on military contracts present significantly stumbling blocks though the principle of the agricultural exclusion itself has been accepted.
In light of all this our hosts have nonetheless been largely quite accommodating. The Hays-Adams is a fine hotel very near the Presidential Palace, and the staff mostly agreeable as such people go. President Dale himself is a reliable and accommodating fellow and certainly someone that we can work with.
That leaves me to conclude with pleasure the fact I have at least met Danielle's father, after these long and unfortunate years, though I confess that on personal affairs the lack of harmony in her family and absence of her mother, indeed her mother's behaviour, religious reasons or not, continues to confound me. Nonetheless, I do not think I regret the stress of what is, in the end, the strangest of my assignments.
For my very dearest friend,
All kindness under God,
Jhayka
Alliance Security Agency Offices, Langley
Earth, Alliance of Democratic Nations
11 April 2165 AST
70 Valeria, I.Y. 618
While AID itself occupied the new offices built for it in Bowie, Maryland, the Alliance Security Agency had opted to take over the old CIA complex - not entirely a major surprise given the decision was made under Sir James Bronson's watch. For all that Bronson was now officially in charge of all aspects of Alliance security and advising the President and Chancellor on those matters, Bronson was still very much the Alliance's chief spymaster. AID Director Samuel White Eagle, while ostensibly an independent officer of the government with his own responsibilities, had left his agency virtually at the purview of its first notable chief (not counting the handful of insignificant figures who led the agency under Plotinikov's mismanagement).
An analyst finished filling him in on the progress of investigation into the matter of all the groups who had come to Washington for the explicit purpose of protesting the Taloran delegation. There groups were myriad in their intent and desires and many were contradictory to each other, if not outright hostile. Funds from various donor sources paid for their continued presence and operation, the sources varying from Elijah Weisbaum's proxy anti-fascist, pro-democracy groups to a couple notorious churchmen known for making a ruckus whenever homosexual rights were vigorously upheld in the Alliance government.
For all intents and purposes, the entire thing was innocent in appearance. These groups had their own grievances, slight or not, against the Talorans. Against the Taloran delegation's open homosexuality, against the role the Talorans played in imposing a monarchy on Gilead, against their persistant inability to accept secular government or their known discrimination against neo-pagans.... They had their issues and they were making them known.
But yet there was an itch at the back of Bronson's mind. The varying religious fundamentalists, the neo-pagans, the hedonistic groups, they were all hostile toward each other and yet never seemed to come into full contact. Oh, there had been some incidents. Minor brushes as their marching areas met, or encounters as one protest ended and another began... but they seemed too neat to Bronson. The number of contacts between these groups, those hostile to each other, seemed to happen just often enough to maintain slight friction and knowledge of each other's presence, but never enough to pose any threat to the continued strength of the demonstrations. Their schedules were being well-kept in a way that minimized the contact between mutually-hostile factions. They were, all told, seeming quite lucky in how their scheduling was working.
Sir James didn't believe in that much luck.
"Good job, file the report immediately," he told the analyst, dismissing her with a customary head nod. He watched her go and turned around to face the wall in his office, deep in thought.
When his senses alerted him to the new presence in his office, he openly remarked, "Right on time. Your punctuality remains one of your most endearing qualities, ladies."
"We aim to please, Sir." came from the central figure of the trio as they stepped from the shadows.
Dressed in rather conservative dress-suits with ID badges clipped to them belying how stealthily they had made their entrance, all three were identical, moving almost as one as they moved to stand in front of Bronson's desk. Anne, as usual, did most of the speaking for the group, she'd always been their 'face' after all and even now that all three were working for AID many of their fellow agents only knew of Anne, disbelieving that there were two others that they never knowingly saw. Bronson was one of the few to regularly see the three together, after all, and notations on a file were one thing, it is the seeing that is the believing.
"What can we do for you, Sir" Anne said, lifting one eyebrow slightly in question.
"How well have you been following the news regarding the Taloran treaty delegation and the various protests against them?" The question was almost rhetorical - Bronson could expect the Triplets to have been paying very close attention to such a key event.
"The greatest surge in protest activity since the conclusion of the Dominion War brought together all the various radical anti-war groups." Anne said, frowning slightly. "Albeit with a highly unlikely conglomerate of interests, most of whom hate each other even more than they hate the Taloran's, been expecting a riot to break out at any time but so far for some reason they've mostly avoided each other instead of clashed, which is unusual in and of itself." After a moment she frowned even more. "Am I thinking what you are thinking, Sir?" raising one eyebrow.
Indeed. The Triplets were, as always, a keen group of sisters, and there was a reason Bronson considered them his primary trouble-shooters. And he would need their skills for what he had in mind. "There are many governments who would find strained relations between the Alliance and the Taloran Empire to be advantageous," Bronson remarked. "But not many intelligence agencies have the means, experience, and skill to match that motive."
His thoughts continued from there. British MI-6 from Universe FHI-8 has the experience but, given their recent political turmoil, neither the means nor motive. Even accounting for factionalism in their feudalistic system, Taloran External Intelligence has the sophistication but not the motive. The Habsburg Evidenzburo lacks the means at this juncture, so soon after our first contact, to undertake such an operation, although they undoubtedly have the experience, skill, and desire. Under Katherine's Regency Davion MIIO has lost the means for an external operation of this scope and skill, not when they're so busy keeping the occupied Draconis worlds in line. All that, of course, meant that one culprit stood above all others in motive, means, and skill.
Anne nodded her head slowly as she accessed her PAN to confirm some information, pupils flickering as she read the data via her cybernetics. "The Talorans recently opened an Embassy in the UFP, speculation at the time was that it was intended as a pressure tactic against us." she said, nodding. "Motive and capability."
"You know what this means," Bronson said to them. The implication of whom was responsible was such that it needn't be said. "AID operations on Alliance soil are strictly limited to advisory roles on matters of internal security, so consider yourselves held to such a role. Obviously certain things can be done if done discreetly, but the line is stricter here and our options more limited. And then there is our quarry, whom you can depend to be, if anything, resolutely devoted and incredibly dangerous if backed into a corner."
Anne nodded in understanding "Understood, Sir." she said, not needing to say anything more as the gears started to turn. Yes there were lines, strict lines. But lines are, by their nature, fuzzy things outside the word of mathematics. "We'll get started right away. Alpha priority?"
Bronson gave a quiet nod. With the Triplets, Alpha Priority was about the only priority they operated under, and they were quite capable of making good use of all the resources that granted them.
With that all three nodded in response and turned to leave, filing out of the office and startling the secretary and security officer who'd never seen them enter in the first place. Beyond faint smiles, however, the triplets didn't respond to the consternation, instead already deep in consultation over their linked PAN's.
As they left, Bronson turned his chair away from the door to consider his thoughts on the course of action he'd taken. It was a risk, but such was the nature of these things. In this case it was a necessary risk, for more than one reason, especially given the nature of their opponent.
After years of being waged in the darkest corners of Universe ST-3, the shadow war between Alliance Intelligence and Section 31 was coming home. And the stakes had never been higher.
End of Half (Next up, the Intermezzo!)
”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
-
Master_Baerne
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1984
- Joined: 2006-11-09 08:54am
- Location: Wouldn't you like to know?
Re: "What Price Peace?" - 55 Days Sequel (TGG)
Hopefully, the Star Empire will get wind of what the Federation has been doing and show them why Starfleet ought to have built more dreadnoughts.
Conversion Table:
2000 Mockingbirds = 2 Kilomockingbirds
Basic Unit of Laryngitis = 1 Hoarsepower
453.6 Graham Crackers = 1 Pound Cake
1 Kilogram of Falling Figs - 1 Fig Newton
Time Between Slipping on a Banana Peel and Smacking the Pavement = 1 Bananosecond
Half of a Large Intestine = 1 Semicolon
2000 Mockingbirds = 2 Kilomockingbirds
Basic Unit of Laryngitis = 1 Hoarsepower
453.6 Graham Crackers = 1 Pound Cake
1 Kilogram of Falling Figs - 1 Fig Newton
Time Between Slipping on a Banana Peel and Smacking the Pavement = 1 Bananosecond
Half of a Large Intestine = 1 Semicolon
-
The Duchess of Zeon
- Gözde
- Posts: 14566
- Joined: 2002-09-18 01:06am
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Re: "What Price Peace?" - 55 Days Sequel (TGG)
The Hays-Adams, Washington D.C.
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
12 April 2165 AST
71 Valeria I.Y. 618
Part of the problem in the actual negotiations for Jhayka was finding a way to achieve what she was trying to do. This was far more difficult than it could seem. The Talorans had a customary law, and a religious law, which were largely interconnected. These laws were codified in combination with Imperial pronouncements, and the last time that the legal system had been codified was during the reign of Mikela II. Her mother had codified the legal system shortly before her, but had introduced an enormous amount of secular material into it.
This had been unacceptable in the wake of the Communitarian War, and Mikela II’s retrenchment to the faith. That meant that Imperial law had to be codified again, which led to the need to issue a very comprehensive system for an entire Empire that at that point was now expanding to other planets in its own sprawling solar system. This had been done, and it worked quite well, but it piled an enormous degree of precedent on top of everything else from customary law sources which had been built up in the days since Mikela II.
So Jhayka had, among other things, the task of making sure that her staff was researching properly and that she herself was researching properly the Imperial legal structure behind the entire debate in the first place. It was an exhaustive process and it was particularly distracting as she drank dhpou—what some in the Alliance were calling ‘chicken tea’ these days for the combination of animal bullion and soaked leaf extract stimulant—though ‘chicken cocoa’ was better as it was, in her experience, relatively mild on the stimulant and more similar to the spicy cocoa drink of the old Earth Aztecs and Maya, just with the further addition of fowl bullion. For that matter, the intensity of the differing cultural experiences were very disconcerting at times themselves.
They had been, despite her own relishment of alien cultures. Her own marriage to a human. The way human culture worked here, remained deeply disturbing, disconcerting. And she could only hope that Fayza and Danielle were well at this point, as her objective was to keep a desperately low profile until the media attention faded away. Then, she would learn of Danielle and her father in law’s expedition only when they returned back to this universe to send secured messages. She could no longer trust open communications.
It had, though, at least isolated her from the circus. That had let her focus her efforts onto improving her knowledge of several points of the proposals. This had finally brought her forward into recognizing the main avenue that they had available to pursue. The idea of the “public-private cooperative” from human societies, which she found noxious in general principle (something should surely be one or the other?), she could at least extract from it a working compromise. The Talorans didn’t like the idea of contracting out responsibilities. But responsible positions were often shared between government and non-government organisations in Taloran society. It was phrased in a way, then, that the Taloran elite found acceptable, because it essentially worked on the customary integration of corporate body and state, rather than the contractual substitution thereof.
It was a subtle difference, but an important one. And it was also very common. Many of the subnational jurisdictions of the Empire directly mandated, for example, that powered vehicles over a certain speed on their roads only be operated by individuals with a Guild Accreditation, unless they were of a certain social class. This opened a working path. If humans would accept public-private cooperative arrangements, then they would, she felt, find little difference between that and a law directly non-governmental entities to provide IDs.
This law could not be passed at the Imperial level. But the Empire, based on the customary authority of levying the corvée, could order the subnational states of the Empire to implement regulations governing their entire population. Then the actual law would be passed based on that Imperial Rescript. It also meant that the All-Imperial Legislature could actually be bypassed, as long as the regulation essentially served to mandate essentially that draft cards with a sufficient level of personal identification built into them be issued by the subnational governments.
Then, for persons exempt from the corvée, an entity like a religious body or guild could be directed by the subnational government to issue a card of equivalent rigour. This card would be equivalent to the subnational identification, meet its standards, and therefore be acceptable in its own right. This portion would have to be passed by the All-Imperial Legislature, but since the cards would already be possessed by so much of the population that was eligible for the draft, the preferences they would receive in being able to enter Alliance territory and the territory of other states which would surely follow the example and demand the identification, would force rapid compliance.
Accordingly… It would actually be much easier to pass the agreement that Jhayka had originally thought. It would, of course, have to exempt minor children due to the nature of the arrangement, but Jhayka was confident that a combination of birth certificate and sworn affadavit from a properly-identified adult entering the country with them would be sufficient in those cases for the Alliance’s government. That gave her the grounds for the agreement to succeed, and it was the breakthrough that she had desperately needed from her own side.
Assuming, of course, that the Alliance saw it the same way. And assuming, of course, that the second issue of membership in the IUCEC was agreed to, including the most important provision of them all for that process. Several Alliance member nations retained separate seats on the IUCEC council, functionally allowing the Alliance to act out of proportion to its power as a single state within the IUCEC.
To settle this issue, the Talorans had to allow their own subnational entities to vote as well. But not all Alliance subnational entities had voting rights. The precedent for one power asserting itself leading to a compromise had been with the Soviet Union in most Earth histories and the formation of the United Nations. It had secured voting rights in the United Nations for Byelorussia and the Ukraine as separate states despite them not actually truly being so. The United States had not gained a reciprocal right…
But Jhayka and the Imperial government expected to assert themselves more like the Soviets than to simply let such a thing happen. They had the same concerns, ironically, as the Soviets; of being a monarchial power outnumbered in a democratic sea. So the solution was to adopt the rough equivalent of the Soviet demand. States which were ruled by the Empress directly—like her appointments of the Protectors of the Jikari Republic and the Satrap of the Dalamarian Provincial Authority—as well as Grenya Colenta, would be considered covered by a direct Imperial appointment of the All-Imperial representative. As a concession, then, the right of additional seats would be restricted only to the highest level of Imperial vassals with their own Heads-of-Feudatory, that is to say, the Queens over Queens.
This would provide for the Great Queendoms Midela Colenta and Lelola Colenta to appoint their own IUCEC representatives, as well as the Great King of the Retgariu. A total of four representatives for the Empire would be very close to the figure for the Alliance as a whole, and limiting them to the separately-ruled highest level of Imperial feudatories would provide clear precedent and thereby limit resistance from the other independent states within the IUCEC.
Jhayka set her pen down, sighing softly and trembling a bit. It really was a way forward, and the more she thought about it the more she liked it, so she called Priscilla to her study to go over it with her with a bit of quivering in her ears to indicate her excitement.
“Jhayka?” Priscilla was dressed casually, if well, and had been letting her hair grow, possibly out of the not poorly founded concern of a hair stylist slashing her throat. “You wanted to go over something with me?”
“Yes. I think we’ve found a way forward, assuming the Alliance will accept it, and I want to know what you think of the phrasing for this agreement will be acceptable to them. If so, I am going to go ahead and schedule an immediate meeting with Mister Wells so that we can see if this resolves our substantiative disputes… And gives a path forward, toward actually concluding this agreement.”
Priscilla’s eyes lit up. “Well. Maybe I actually can be a diplomat. Go ahead. I’d like to get this damned thing done, too.” And make sure that Fayza is okay…
Alliance of Democratic Nations
Universe Designate HE-1
12 April 2165 AST
71 Valeria I.Y. 618
Part of the problem in the actual negotiations for Jhayka was finding a way to achieve what she was trying to do. This was far more difficult than it could seem. The Talorans had a customary law, and a religious law, which were largely interconnected. These laws were codified in combination with Imperial pronouncements, and the last time that the legal system had been codified was during the reign of Mikela II. Her mother had codified the legal system shortly before her, but had introduced an enormous amount of secular material into it.
This had been unacceptable in the wake of the Communitarian War, and Mikela II’s retrenchment to the faith. That meant that Imperial law had to be codified again, which led to the need to issue a very comprehensive system for an entire Empire that at that point was now expanding to other planets in its own sprawling solar system. This had been done, and it worked quite well, but it piled an enormous degree of precedent on top of everything else from customary law sources which had been built up in the days since Mikela II.
So Jhayka had, among other things, the task of making sure that her staff was researching properly and that she herself was researching properly the Imperial legal structure behind the entire debate in the first place. It was an exhaustive process and it was particularly distracting as she drank dhpou—what some in the Alliance were calling ‘chicken tea’ these days for the combination of animal bullion and soaked leaf extract stimulant—though ‘chicken cocoa’ was better as it was, in her experience, relatively mild on the stimulant and more similar to the spicy cocoa drink of the old Earth Aztecs and Maya, just with the further addition of fowl bullion. For that matter, the intensity of the differing cultural experiences were very disconcerting at times themselves.
They had been, despite her own relishment of alien cultures. Her own marriage to a human. The way human culture worked here, remained deeply disturbing, disconcerting. And she could only hope that Fayza and Danielle were well at this point, as her objective was to keep a desperately low profile until the media attention faded away. Then, she would learn of Danielle and her father in law’s expedition only when they returned back to this universe to send secured messages. She could no longer trust open communications.
It had, though, at least isolated her from the circus. That had let her focus her efforts onto improving her knowledge of several points of the proposals. This had finally brought her forward into recognizing the main avenue that they had available to pursue. The idea of the “public-private cooperative” from human societies, which she found noxious in general principle (something should surely be one or the other?), she could at least extract from it a working compromise. The Talorans didn’t like the idea of contracting out responsibilities. But responsible positions were often shared between government and non-government organisations in Taloran society. It was phrased in a way, then, that the Taloran elite found acceptable, because it essentially worked on the customary integration of corporate body and state, rather than the contractual substitution thereof.
It was a subtle difference, but an important one. And it was also very common. Many of the subnational jurisdictions of the Empire directly mandated, for example, that powered vehicles over a certain speed on their roads only be operated by individuals with a Guild Accreditation, unless they were of a certain social class. This opened a working path. If humans would accept public-private cooperative arrangements, then they would, she felt, find little difference between that and a law directly non-governmental entities to provide IDs.
This law could not be passed at the Imperial level. But the Empire, based on the customary authority of levying the corvée, could order the subnational states of the Empire to implement regulations governing their entire population. Then the actual law would be passed based on that Imperial Rescript. It also meant that the All-Imperial Legislature could actually be bypassed, as long as the regulation essentially served to mandate essentially that draft cards with a sufficient level of personal identification built into them be issued by the subnational governments.
Then, for persons exempt from the corvée, an entity like a religious body or guild could be directed by the subnational government to issue a card of equivalent rigour. This card would be equivalent to the subnational identification, meet its standards, and therefore be acceptable in its own right. This portion would have to be passed by the All-Imperial Legislature, but since the cards would already be possessed by so much of the population that was eligible for the draft, the preferences they would receive in being able to enter Alliance territory and the territory of other states which would surely follow the example and demand the identification, would force rapid compliance.
Accordingly… It would actually be much easier to pass the agreement that Jhayka had originally thought. It would, of course, have to exempt minor children due to the nature of the arrangement, but Jhayka was confident that a combination of birth certificate and sworn affadavit from a properly-identified adult entering the country with them would be sufficient in those cases for the Alliance’s government. That gave her the grounds for the agreement to succeed, and it was the breakthrough that she had desperately needed from her own side.
Assuming, of course, that the Alliance saw it the same way. And assuming, of course, that the second issue of membership in the IUCEC was agreed to, including the most important provision of them all for that process. Several Alliance member nations retained separate seats on the IUCEC council, functionally allowing the Alliance to act out of proportion to its power as a single state within the IUCEC.
To settle this issue, the Talorans had to allow their own subnational entities to vote as well. But not all Alliance subnational entities had voting rights. The precedent for one power asserting itself leading to a compromise had been with the Soviet Union in most Earth histories and the formation of the United Nations. It had secured voting rights in the United Nations for Byelorussia and the Ukraine as separate states despite them not actually truly being so. The United States had not gained a reciprocal right…
But Jhayka and the Imperial government expected to assert themselves more like the Soviets than to simply let such a thing happen. They had the same concerns, ironically, as the Soviets; of being a monarchial power outnumbered in a democratic sea. So the solution was to adopt the rough equivalent of the Soviet demand. States which were ruled by the Empress directly—like her appointments of the Protectors of the Jikari Republic and the Satrap of the Dalamarian Provincial Authority—as well as Grenya Colenta, would be considered covered by a direct Imperial appointment of the All-Imperial representative. As a concession, then, the right of additional seats would be restricted only to the highest level of Imperial vassals with their own Heads-of-Feudatory, that is to say, the Queens over Queens.
This would provide for the Great Queendoms Midela Colenta and Lelola Colenta to appoint their own IUCEC representatives, as well as the Great King of the Retgariu. A total of four representatives for the Empire would be very close to the figure for the Alliance as a whole, and limiting them to the separately-ruled highest level of Imperial feudatories would provide clear precedent and thereby limit resistance from the other independent states within the IUCEC.
Jhayka set her pen down, sighing softly and trembling a bit. It really was a way forward, and the more she thought about it the more she liked it, so she called Priscilla to her study to go over it with her with a bit of quivering in her ears to indicate her excitement.
“Jhayka?” Priscilla was dressed casually, if well, and had been letting her hair grow, possibly out of the not poorly founded concern of a hair stylist slashing her throat. “You wanted to go over something with me?”
“Yes. I think we’ve found a way forward, assuming the Alliance will accept it, and I want to know what you think of the phrasing for this agreement will be acceptable to them. If so, I am going to go ahead and schedule an immediate meeting with Mister Wells so that we can see if this resolves our substantiative disputes… And gives a path forward, toward actually concluding this agreement.”
Priscilla’s eyes lit up. “Well. Maybe I actually can be a diplomat. Go ahead. I’d like to get this damned thing done, too.” And make sure that Fayza is okay…
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.
-
The Duchess of Zeon
- Gözde
- Posts: 14566
- Joined: 2002-09-18 01:06am
- Location: Exiled in the Pale of Settlement.
Re: "What Price Peace?" - 55 Days Sequel (TGG)
Alliance Foreign Ministry Building
Earth, Alliance of Democratic Nations
They had made their way to the Foreign Ministry building without another pause once the meeting had been arranged. Just Jhayka and Priscilla, something of a gesture to demonstrate both the sincerity of Priscilla as a negotiator, and the confidence that Jhayka still had with her. They were greeted professionally at the door, though a few of the security personnel and office workers couldn’t help but betray daggers at Priscilla.
Wells, on the other hand, was quite cordial. “Your Highness, Miss Laurentii.” He folded some flimsies and looked over. “Some coffee and dhpou?”
“That would be nice, thank you,” Jhayka answered for them both. “I have a proposal for you, Minister, which I hope your government will find acceptable. It is so much of a prospective breakthrough—both myself and the Duchess of Eleutheria,” she pointedly did remind him of Priscilla’s title, though, “agree on that, so we wanted to hopefully open up the negotiations to a final agreement as quickly as possible. If His Excellency the President agrees to this as the basis for the passport or identification matter, then we can also address some important points about IUCEC membership. If both can be agreed to, we then have an agreement on the basic framework of this accord. The other treaties would follow from it and details could be hammered out with rather more leisure.”
The Alliance’s Foreign Minister sucked his breath in. It really did sound like the Talorans were sincerely coming to him with what they thought was a breakthrough. Whether or not it actually would be, though, that was another matter entirely.
Either way, it was obvious that he was going to listen. “Go ahead, Your Highness. I can’t give you any kind of answer until I speak with the President, of course, but I will do so first thing tomorrow if you can outline the details for me, and better yet, provide a hardcopy.”
“Priscilla has one.”
Priscilla smiled a bit blandly at that, pulling some papers out of an attache case in the old fashioned style and tapping them to organise them before handing them over. “Both the proposals for the passport matter, and for IUCEC membership, which we will address tonight.”
“Thank you.” Wells looked down and started to read, even as Jhayka summarised the agreements directly.
“Broadly speaking, the agreement provides a set standard for government issued identification, which will then be provided by a variety of different bodies in the Empire according to that standard, but with the bodies providing ID by their own customary roles. We will work out the exact standard and metric for these identification documents, but as per our prior discussions they will have holo-pictures of sufficient resolution for image recognition software, but not retina scans or thumb-prints.”
“That was per our prior agreement, yes,” Wells replied. “So we don’t have an objection with that component as a matter of course. Please go on.”
“We will take that standard and implement it as the required standard for draft cards, Minister. The Empire compels all of its states to maintain a form of conscription to their respective militias, with certain shared standards on training. So all persons subject to mobilisation in the militia will be required to obtain a card containing the necessary identification information to qualify as a passport, in the course of draft registration. These cards will, however, be issued by the subnational entities—but to standards dictated by an Imperial Rescript, which can be issued without recouse to legislation in the All-Imperial Parliament.”
“...Interesting. Something that had not even occurred to me. This only covers people who have been mobilized or are subject to future mobilization though, does it not? And also, issued by the subnational entities, Your Highness?”
“I will firmly remind the Minister,” Jhayka answered a bit circuitously, “that subnational entities of the United States in this universe and several others for a long time issued enhanced driver’s licenses which were accepted as equivalents to passports by certain close, friendly states.”
They’ve been doing their homework. “That is correct. I will, of course, have to speak to the President about it. This does not, however, address the case of people who are not subject to mobilization or have not been previously subject to it.”
“Yes, but as you can see, we will enter in ‘public-private partnerships’. A bill will be presented to the All-Imperial Parliament as part of this agreement which, when enacted into law, would mandate the subnational entities of the Empire to work on such public-private partnerships, a common concept for you, which would require identification documents to be made available by Guilds and religious organisations. These would be required to meet the same identification standards as draft cards, and the programmes would be overseen by the subnational governments in cooperation with the issuing non-governmental parties to insure harmony with the Imperial law.”
“I see from the printout that this would private total coverage of all adults?”
“That is correct. Children would enter Alliance space on passports and affadavits from accompanying adults only, if the agreement is completed.”
“...That should be possible, in the case of recognized minors, below the age of majority recognized for each species. I’ll have to speak with the President about the other aspects of the agreement, however, and then consult with you.” This really could be it, though! It was, after weeks of incomprehension, really something worth it, that immediately pushed aside all of the endless media problems—endless media circus, really—which had consumed the negotiations recently. They were back to actually doing diplomacy...
“Excellent. Then you will also see our proposal on the matter of IUCEC membership arrangements. This doesn’t address our intended signing statements to the New Brasilia Treaty, of course, but it does address the mechanism of handling the major subnational governments of the Empire. It is based on human precedent, so I hope you will forward it to the President for all due consideration.”
“You have my word on that, Your Highness.”
“Thank you. I find it so ironic that now that we have a breakthrough, we can spend an hour in here and make more progress than we had for the past weeks. Really, if only circumstances could always work out so well.”
“The sentiment, Your Highness, is mutual.” Wells chuckled. “Thank you for your promptness in coming so late in the evening. I believe the President will have an answer for you tomorrow, one way or another.”
“Excellent. We will be waiting.”
As they were shown back out to their waiting limo, Jhayka’s phone trilled, and she pulled it up to her ear after glancing at the screen. “Yes, Drishalras?”
“Jhayka! Danielle and her father are back!”
Earth, Alliance of Democratic Nations
They had made their way to the Foreign Ministry building without another pause once the meeting had been arranged. Just Jhayka and Priscilla, something of a gesture to demonstrate both the sincerity of Priscilla as a negotiator, and the confidence that Jhayka still had with her. They were greeted professionally at the door, though a few of the security personnel and office workers couldn’t help but betray daggers at Priscilla.
Wells, on the other hand, was quite cordial. “Your Highness, Miss Laurentii.” He folded some flimsies and looked over. “Some coffee and dhpou?”
“That would be nice, thank you,” Jhayka answered for them both. “I have a proposal for you, Minister, which I hope your government will find acceptable. It is so much of a prospective breakthrough—both myself and the Duchess of Eleutheria,” she pointedly did remind him of Priscilla’s title, though, “agree on that, so we wanted to hopefully open up the negotiations to a final agreement as quickly as possible. If His Excellency the President agrees to this as the basis for the passport or identification matter, then we can also address some important points about IUCEC membership. If both can be agreed to, we then have an agreement on the basic framework of this accord. The other treaties would follow from it and details could be hammered out with rather more leisure.”
The Alliance’s Foreign Minister sucked his breath in. It really did sound like the Talorans were sincerely coming to him with what they thought was a breakthrough. Whether or not it actually would be, though, that was another matter entirely.
Either way, it was obvious that he was going to listen. “Go ahead, Your Highness. I can’t give you any kind of answer until I speak with the President, of course, but I will do so first thing tomorrow if you can outline the details for me, and better yet, provide a hardcopy.”
“Priscilla has one.”
Priscilla smiled a bit blandly at that, pulling some papers out of an attache case in the old fashioned style and tapping them to organise them before handing them over. “Both the proposals for the passport matter, and for IUCEC membership, which we will address tonight.”
“Thank you.” Wells looked down and started to read, even as Jhayka summarised the agreements directly.
“Broadly speaking, the agreement provides a set standard for government issued identification, which will then be provided by a variety of different bodies in the Empire according to that standard, but with the bodies providing ID by their own customary roles. We will work out the exact standard and metric for these identification documents, but as per our prior discussions they will have holo-pictures of sufficient resolution for image recognition software, but not retina scans or thumb-prints.”
“That was per our prior agreement, yes,” Wells replied. “So we don’t have an objection with that component as a matter of course. Please go on.”
“We will take that standard and implement it as the required standard for draft cards, Minister. The Empire compels all of its states to maintain a form of conscription to their respective militias, with certain shared standards on training. So all persons subject to mobilisation in the militia will be required to obtain a card containing the necessary identification information to qualify as a passport, in the course of draft registration. These cards will, however, be issued by the subnational entities—but to standards dictated by an Imperial Rescript, which can be issued without recouse to legislation in the All-Imperial Parliament.”
“...Interesting. Something that had not even occurred to me. This only covers people who have been mobilized or are subject to future mobilization though, does it not? And also, issued by the subnational entities, Your Highness?”
“I will firmly remind the Minister,” Jhayka answered a bit circuitously, “that subnational entities of the United States in this universe and several others for a long time issued enhanced driver’s licenses which were accepted as equivalents to passports by certain close, friendly states.”
They’ve been doing their homework. “That is correct. I will, of course, have to speak to the President about it. This does not, however, address the case of people who are not subject to mobilization or have not been previously subject to it.”
“Yes, but as you can see, we will enter in ‘public-private partnerships’. A bill will be presented to the All-Imperial Parliament as part of this agreement which, when enacted into law, would mandate the subnational entities of the Empire to work on such public-private partnerships, a common concept for you, which would require identification documents to be made available by Guilds and religious organisations. These would be required to meet the same identification standards as draft cards, and the programmes would be overseen by the subnational governments in cooperation with the issuing non-governmental parties to insure harmony with the Imperial law.”
“I see from the printout that this would private total coverage of all adults?”
“That is correct. Children would enter Alliance space on passports and affadavits from accompanying adults only, if the agreement is completed.”
“...That should be possible, in the case of recognized minors, below the age of majority recognized for each species. I’ll have to speak with the President about the other aspects of the agreement, however, and then consult with you.” This really could be it, though! It was, after weeks of incomprehension, really something worth it, that immediately pushed aside all of the endless media problems—endless media circus, really—which had consumed the negotiations recently. They were back to actually doing diplomacy...
“Excellent. Then you will also see our proposal on the matter of IUCEC membership arrangements. This doesn’t address our intended signing statements to the New Brasilia Treaty, of course, but it does address the mechanism of handling the major subnational governments of the Empire. It is based on human precedent, so I hope you will forward it to the President for all due consideration.”
“You have my word on that, Your Highness.”
“Thank you. I find it so ironic that now that we have a breakthrough, we can spend an hour in here and make more progress than we had for the past weeks. Really, if only circumstances could always work out so well.”
“The sentiment, Your Highness, is mutual.” Wells chuckled. “Thank you for your promptness in coming so late in the evening. I believe the President will have an answer for you tomorrow, one way or another.”
“Excellent. We will be waiting.”
As they were shown back out to their waiting limo, Jhayka’s phone trilled, and she pulled it up to her ear after glancing at the screen. “Yes, Drishalras?”
“Jhayka! Danielle and her father are back!”
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.