Reclamation (Book One of the Art of War Trilogy), page 30
Yano was still trying to place the man’s accent as he turned smartly out of the room. He turned to Codey. ‘Our mutual employer?’
‘Must be EFFECT,’ Codey said, straightening out his uniform. ‘They’re all a bunch of cunts.’
*
It took both Zvell and Fhalco an hour of strident negotiation with the Tower Custodians to get the ZENs to stand down, and another thirty minutes of rather heated argument between Courte and the kaygryn door guards to get them to open up. Yano and Codey watched from the end of the corridor, standing behind a pair of ZENs both impassively cradling large railguns. At the other end, two more ZENs were barricading off an ever-growing crowd of diplomats, runners and reporters. Yano grinned with deep satisfaction as the ZEN scangrid neutralised all the pressbots in the vicinity, eliciting a great cry of dismay from the assembled press.
Eventually the kaygryn guards agreed that, as long as the corridor remained sealed off by the ZENs, and the ZENs guaranteed to kill any provar who attempted to break the cordon, Courte and his men could enter and ask a few questions of the kaygryn skarls. Yano noticed during the exchange that Courte could speak Argish really rather well – something which required many years of study and, preferably, immersion in the culture. Yano could think of little worse. It really was difficult not to dislike the kaygryn.
They watched as Courte was eventually shown in by the pair of kaygryn. He was gone for less than a minute before he reappeared, his face a rictus of anger. The kaygryn guards, ears back, looked slightly sheepish.
‘What’s going on here then?’ Codey murmured to Yano next to him. Courte was striding down the corridor, talking quietly to someone on the other end of an IHD link. He pushed past the unresisting ZENs and stopped short of Yano.
‘They’ve gone.’ His eyes went blank for a second. When he started speaking again, it was obvious he was no longer addressing Yano. ‘Scrub the satellite feed for the past twelve hours. I want them found.’
‘Is there anything further we can help you with?’ Yano asked, trying to keep a sense of triumph from extending his already wide grin.
‘No, just keep up the excellent work,’ Courte retorted and pushed past both of them.
‘Asshole,’ Codey said, checking the time. The atmosphere at the other end of the corridor was reaching fever pitch. ‘Let’s get the team together. Dinner starts in twenty minutes.’
‘What are we doing, Bal,’ Yano muttered, falling into step beside him.
‘Maintaining appearances.’
*
They learned, sitting tensely in the back of the diplomatic cruiser, that their table at dinner was to be shared by the provar legation.
‘I’m going to have an aneurysm if I get any more bad fucking news,’ Yano complained, watching once more as the Vhalyssian wildflowers sped past. The charity dinner and ball were to be held in the old Summer Palace, a huge building pillared with cream-coloured stone and topped with a vast latticework dome, beautifully appointed with crystal chandeliers cut to the shape of the famous wildflowers, flowing tapestries and murals, an observation mezzanine laden with more expensive artworks, and a stream of running water which ran the circumference of the dining floor.
The ball had been customary for centuries, its purpose to reconcile ambassadors on a personal level who would have otherwise been at odds all day, and thus, as was often the case with attorneys, would have grown to deeply dislike one another professionally. In the process, legations would exchange state gifts and traditionally donate money to charitable causes in the process. To give away this year, the UN legation had a selection of framed, original maps of Europe in the 19th century, a recovered and reconstituted Ariadnian lily, one of the original UN standards replete with radiation burns from the battle of Rawdon’s Wake, and a tea set made of real bone china. Yano would happily have thrown all of it out of the cruiser window rather than give any of it to the provar, but that would not have been very diplomatic.
‘What’s on the menu? Are we even going to have time to change?’ Yano asked. They traditionally wore dinner suits to such events, leaving the traditional diplomatic garb for working hours.
‘Yes, we’ll change. Nothing wrong with being fashionably late,’ Codey replied absentmindedly.
They sped back to the Voscmark Hotel. No doubt Courte and his merry men were searching the building from top to bottom, utilising scangrid, orbital surveillance and good old-fashioned eyeballs to seek out the elusive kaygryn legation, though there was no sign of any of them on arrival. Codey and Yano parted ways and arranged to meet back on the landing platform in twenty minutes.
Alone in his room, Yano allowed his thoughts to disengage from work and wander to Tanja. He was under no illusion that his desire for her was being disproportionately fuelled by her disinterest in him. With his genetically handsome features and tastefully Herculean physique – to say nothing of his devastating charm and intellect – he was bewildered by her distaste. It did not usually take more than a few minutes of conversation at the very most to seduce his mark, and she did not strike him as one who equated professional diplomatic success with attractiveness, though she was undoubtedly ruthless. One had to be as a comms officer with the Human Federal Socialists. But this engrained savviness was not mutually exclusive with sexuality, and he did not think she was immune to his charm.
No, a more personal connection was required, some semblance of effort. She wanted to be wooed. It was impossible not to find him physically attractive – UNDC had seen to that. It was therefore his personality which was letting him down, something which he was usually very good at tailoring.
He grunted out loud, catching his own eye in the mirror. Of course. He had hardly covered himself in glory in the last few days. He had moped, been irritable, petulant – even ignorant. He was not so narcissistic as to not be self-aware. The toxic atmosphere which had permeated the summit had probably further dampened everyone’s libido. He was not blameless, but circumstances – some evidently of his own making – were dictating against him.
He was broken from his reverie by a knock at the door. He answered it to see Codey, dressed in his own dinner suit.
‘Ready?’ Behind him, Kaivan was clutching the case of state gifts for dear life. Abena stood behind him, looking perfect. Of course, she had been genetically tailored to siren-esque levels of beauty, but there was a surfeit of that in Xeno Division and to Yano, enhanced beauty was de rigueur. Though to the common man Tanja would still appear unattainably gorgeous, to Yano she had many visible imperfections – though far from dissuading him, he seemed to find these minute deficiencies all the more seductive, more natural.
‘I am,’ Yano replied, with one last glance at himself. He checked the time: ten past eight. They were ten minutes late, and he estimated it would take another ten or fifteen to reach the Summer Palace. Twenty minutes’ tardiness wasn’t necessarily a problem, but they didn’t want to leave it too long. Their absence would be noted and could be interpreted as an acknowledgement of defeat. ‘Is Siun coming with us?’
‘No,’ Codey said, ‘but Velsze will be sitting on our table, as well as Voctorick Gee.’
A quick check of his IHD told him that Voctorick Gee was one of the golgron representatives, the second in the Alliance diplomatic team. He did not mind having to talk to an alien, no matter how difficult communication was; the problem was the smell. The golgron were methane breathers and wore special gas recycler suits to that end which stank of petroleum and which whirred and clicked almost constantly, scanning the air for rogue particles and pockets of lethal gasses. Being within a metre of one was like standing in the docking bay of a starport.
‘Fine,’ he said, trying and failing to let his mood alleviate. ‘Let’s just get on with it, shall we? Abena, you look beautiful by the way,’ he said, and she smiled broadly.
Codey got the message from McKone in the back of the diplomatic cruiser.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ he said, bringing a hand to his forehead and dragging his face downwards.
Yano felt his hand clench around the beautifully upholstered leather chair. ‘What now,’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘Orders from Vargonroth. We are to secure fresh assurances from the Ascendancy legation that they will allow the evacuation of kaygryn civilians from Anternis on board the UNS Achilles. We have to secure the assurances immediately, and failure is not an option. If they do not agree…’ He paused as his eyes flickered down the remainder of the message. ‘… we are to inform them that the UN Fleet will engage and destroy every Ascendancy ship that attempts to prevent the evacuation.’
Yano remained silent for a full minute. ‘Right,’ he said. Mindful of Abena and Kaivan and his recent poor behaviour, he simply nodded once. ‘Well, we’ll organise a private meeting once we get there,’ he said calmly.
‘Yes,’ Codey murmured. ‘This will get ugly. Uglier.’
‘At least we don’t have Siun with us,’ Yano said reasonably. Codey seemed appeased by that.
Yano spent the rest of the short journey in silence, while Codey took it upon himself to brief the two junior envoys on the ball protocol. They weren’t to go to the toilet once the meal had started; they weren’t to pour their own drinks; they were to stand for the toast and sit for the declaration of peace and goodwill. It was considered execrably vulgar not to have engaged every member of their table in conversation. By the end, both looked concerned.
‘If in doubt, just follow my lead,’ he said. ‘I swear half the rules get broken anyway. You are about to see a lot of drunk aliens.’
They arrived at the Summer Palace to see that many other dignitaries were still in the process of arriving, most of them zhahassi. Their cruiser pulled smoothly up to the entrance, itself unique in that it was on the ground floor, and they stepped out into the cloying night air.
‘Special Envoys Yano and Codey,’ the zhahassi doorman said, bowing low. It was rare to see a zhahassi in a lowly service role, but then the aliens were very good at concealing the lower echelons of their society from the rest of the galaxy.
‘How’s it going?’ Yano said with an easy charisma, gripping the doorman by the shoulder. The zhahassi wobbled its neck in pleasure.
‘They have pushed the dinner back half an hour, sir. Starters will be served at nine o’clock.’
‘Thanks,’ he replied warmly, and detaching his hand from the alien’s shoulder, he made for the interior.
They walked through the entrance hall, where dozens of Tier-Three players were milling about with drinks and entrées. Some were handing over coats to the cloakroom attendants, though how anyone could wear a coat in the stifling evening warmth was well beyond Yano.
‘Right,’ he said, checking his IHD for the seating arrangements. The Summer Palace had detected his entry and sent him a discreet message with the floor plan on it, and a helpful marker which appeared as a pulsing blue arrow in his vision directed him to his table. He made straight for it, peering through the crowds for any sign of the Ascendancy legation. If it came to it, they could always be summoned via the palace’s inbuilt concierge program.
They meandered through the crowds. The tables were wide and circular, each boasting a centrepiece of Vhalyssian wildflowers and a ring of miniature Tier-Three flags. Each one was set for twelve people; unnamed places would be filled with lesser diplomats and zhahassi dignitaries. Given how much the zhahassi prided themselves on international diplomacy and how engrained foreign affairs were in their own political structure, he knew that seats at these tables would have been auctioned off for considerable fortune and favour.
‘Special Envoy,’ someone said from behind him, a vaguely familiar voice. Yano whirled about to see Isao Hasato, the Kansubashi Imperial Envoy, waving at him from a group of quorl ten metres away. He politely excused himself and weaved his way past a few tray-carrying ZENs, plucking a pair of drinks from one.
‘It’s a crime to not have a drink at a state dinner,’ he said, thrusting one into Yano’s hand. It was a fine, violet fluid, a cocktail of edible wildflower paste, edged with the bitter fieriness of Terran-grade alcohol. Yano took a sip and winced. It must have been fifty per cent proof.
‘Christ,’ he said, smiling. He liked Hasato. He was a straight-talking military man, a former Griffin pilot and Admiral of the Kansubashi Imperial Fleet. They had met a few times before, exclusively at diplomatic dinners, and traded correspondence on and off for years.
‘I’ll catch up with you,’ he said briskly to Codey, sending him their table marker. He turned back to Hasato without waiting for a response. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine,’ he replied, ‘just talking to our quorl friends over there about the plight of your United Nations.’
‘Oh yes?’
Hasato nodded. ‘Yes. Mutterings about action against the Ascendancy.’ He looked around subtly to ensure there were no provar in the vicinity. ‘More than just a few summit declarations,’ he said, winking. ‘Something a little more concrete.’
Yano nodded mildly. ‘That is interesting,’ he said, looking over Hasato’s shoulder.
‘Just mutterings,’ Hasato continued. ‘It seems that with the UN and the Ascendancy sliding further and further into conflict, everyone wants to side with the UN. It must be a good feeling.’
Yano grunted distantly. Of course, if they had to come to blows with the Ascendancy, it was comforting to have the rest of Tier Three behind them, but it was disturbing to think they would come to blows at all. It was the best of a bad situation, but he would have preferred the bad situation to have remained non-existent. From the murmurs outside the Grand Chamber, war was not as unthinkable as it might once have been.
‘It would be an even better feeling if it was over tomorrow without a shot fired,’ he said, and he meant it.
Hasato inclined his head. ‘Agreed.’ He subtly checked his surroundings again. His voice was now barely above a whisper. ‘We know about your plans to evacuate the kaygryn from Anternis,’ he said.
Yano should have been surprised, but he was not. Kansubashi diplomatic espionage was second only to that of the Old Colonies.
‘You shouldn’t,’ Yano said in mock chastisement. Hasato smiled at that.
‘I have been instructed by my Emperor to pass on this message.’ He moved slightly closer to Yano so that he was almost talking over his shoulder. A small icon in Yano’s IHD informed him that their conversation had been audio blocked. It was just as well; another icon informed him that three separate terminals had immediately begun attempting to monitor their conversation.
‘The Empire has not forgotten Na-Ban. We have thirty fully armed and operational warships waiting at Tulkaas. They can reach Uvolon in forty minutes. They are yours to command.’ Hasato stepped back before Yano could reply, and the audio block faded away. ‘And she says, “Jesus Christ, I said the moon!”’
Yano took his cue perfectly, arching back with a good belly laugh and slapping Hasato on the shoulder. At the same time, he packaged the man’s message into a highly encrypted bundle and sent it to Vargonroth, bouncing it off Gonvarion’s orbiting FTL comms array.
‘I must remember to tell that to my table,’ he said.
‘You must,’ Hasato replied. They shook hands, and then he was gone, back to the quorl.
Yano excused and pardoned his way through the clusters of diplomats until he reached his table where Codey, Tanja and Kaivan were sitting, Andrea, Bennett and Abena having been relegated to a table redolent of golgron. To his immeasurable surprise, both executors were also sitting down, clad in thick blue ankle-length sarongs, well appointed with intricate gold trim, patiently awaiting their dinner to be served. For all their unremitting arseholery, one couldn’t fault their attendance record.
‘Ghengari-Zecad valta samman’ackha, hai,’ he said, bowing low. Xavanis regarded him casually, and to Yano’s dismay, he noticed that both he and Folgana were still wearing their caldars. He had not escaped the threat of evisceration totally.
‘Samman,’ Xavanis growled. It was better than Ashgurn-valta, though judging from the modulation of the voice it was spoken with no less contempt.
He moved to his seat, which was directly opposite Xavanis. Tanja was on his right, while the chair to his left was empty, reserved for Voctorick Gee. Codey and Kaivan were sitting further round and given the level of noise in the room, almost out of earshot.
Yano took a deep breath. Sometimes, he really loathed his job. < Bite the bullet? >
< Bite the bullet > Codey replied.
Yano nodded to himself, absentmindedly forwarded to Codey the recording of his conversation with Hasato and addressed Xavanis, smiling warmly.
‘I have to speak with you about something,’ he said slowly, making all kinds of gestures to get his point across.
Xavanis growled. ‘Give throat,’ he said, flicking an open palm away from his voice box. Yano wondered idly what the provar had done in his life before becoming a diplomatic executor. Given his impatience and tendencies towards outrage, he would have guessed either some kind of populist politician, insofar as they existed within the Ascendancy, or a military figure.
‘Klashi at vyax herren’ghet ona khatesh,’ he said. ‘Evacuating vhyrmin.’
‘Ai,’ Xavanis said, throwing his chin upwards. He was impatient but certainly nowhere near as hostile. Yano assumed it was the absence of Siun. ‘What?’
‘We want to evacuate kaygryn as well. Evacuation of kaygryn. Ashgurn.’
Xavanis cocked his head, looking vaguely puzzled. Too much Terran. Yano repeated himself with as much Provari as he and his IHD could muster. It took three further attempts before Xavanis and Folgana grasped the basic concept. Given the volcanic anger which seemed to well up inside both provar, it was a small miracle they managed to stay sitting.
‘Ashgurn-valta!’ Xavanis snarled, gripping the edge of the table. Yano thought he was about to flip it, but instead he let go and clenched his hands into fists.
