The V'Dan (36 page)

Hana’ka looked around at her officers, few of whom were looking either at her or at the Terrans. “Does anyone else wish to say something on the subject of treating these Terrans as our equals, versus as children?”

“I have a question, Eternity,” one of the generals near Li’eth stated, a grand general from the look of his solid gold X insignia. At her gesture, he eyed Jackie. “You said that every military member at this table has had combat experience, yet the only enemy you have mentioned are some sort of vastly superior beings who can only be harmed by holy abilities . . . and you have only introduced three of you as being holy ones. If there are only three of you who have faced this enemy successfully, I would like to ask—with respect and curiosity—where have the combat experiences been attained for the rest of your officers?”

Jackie winced a little—more internal than external. He just had to ask that question. Drawing in a deep breath, she explained, “We have a region, called the ‘Middle East,’ which lies at the confluence of three or four continents and subcontinents, depending upon how you look at them. It is also a vast region of the confluence of several religions, some of which are close to each other in all the key elements and historical background, but which differ vastly in the details and the cultural implementations. Based on all the archaeological records we have been able to uncover . . . that area has been in conflict for at
least
as long as your people have been separate from ours, even if the origins of most of those religions officially started only slightly farther back than your War King’s lineage began.”

“Every once in a while,” al-Fulan stated, contributing to the explanation, “my kinsmen in those regions get a bit too zealous, and what we have come to call the Bush Wars flare up again. They supposedly started with a legend of a burning bush declaring moral and religious superiority for one group over all others—which obviously caused a lot of warfare, though war was not unknown in the region before then—and they have since then been triggered by all manner of bushes. Conqueror bushes, greedy bushes, spice-trade bushes, religious bushes,
resource bushes, idiot bushes, ideological bushes, vengeance bushes . . . you name it, and it’ll go up in flames like a fat-soaked bush in the area.”

“We may be a united government for the vast majority of our people, even on the regional level,” Lieutenant Paea added from al-Fulan’s other side, “but not everyone agrees with the idea. There are other regions that have experienced turmoil as well. Most recently, the eruption of al-Tair, a volcano along the southeast edge of that confluence of continents, caused a region to be cut off from immediate assistance in evacuation. Ideological fanatics decided to seize control of the region, and the civilian Peacekeepers were unable to stop them. Our company, under Captain al-Fulan’s command, was the closest force to respond at the time. We do have fresh combat experience under difficult circumstances, I assure you.”

“As for the Space Force Navy, we may not be able to dent the hulls of Grey ships,” Commander Graves stated, “but we are trained to fly close enough to get a psi within countering range. That means being able to evade and outmaneuver ship-capturing equipment. We also train extensively for enemy combat in case any of those ideological fanatics get their hands on a starship . . . and we train for enemy vessels with all manner of capacities and weapons cargos, from slow-moving atmospheric craft to ships that can teleport across a battlefield. Instantaneously.

“About the only
good
news concerning Grey tech is that whatever permits them to pop around instantaneously is too large to put on any ships smaller than your space station,
Dusk Army
,” Robert confessed dryly. “That, and it doesn’t seem to like targeting small, fast, dodging vessels; nor does it seem to be usable near large gravity wells, such as getting too close to moons or planets. As for their
reasons
for trying to kidnap Humans, we’re still not sure. The only good news in that is how they don’t seem inclined to kill us, just experiment on us. Since we believe heartily in the concept of bodily autonomy for all, we have gotten exceptionally good at strike-and-run sorties and other forms of tumultuous skirmishing.”

His words garnered a few confused frowns. Colvers stepped in for him. “I was informed in one of my conversations with the Countess S’Arrocan that your people have what
is known as the ‘coin-and-cup’ game. We call it the ‘shell’ game, where you hide a pebble or a coin or such under one of three or more containers of some kind, all of them identical. You mix them up rapidly enough, the enemy will not be able to get a clear shot at the cup containing the coin . . . in this case, someone with the mind tricks to thwart the enemy and chase them away.”

“Mixing them up fast enough to confuse them as to which ship has the ‘coin’ might also work, if we weren’t dead certain they can lock onto that ship, once identified,” Robert said. “So we mix them up beforehand so they don’t know which is the important ship until it’s already whipped past and stung them into leaving. Not everyone in the Special Forces Psi Division is as strong as MacKenzie, so some of those ships have to get very close.”

“Our ships are therefore constructed to be fast and highly maneuverable,” Brad stated. “Some of that comes from being small, reducing the energy requirements to move their mass. The rest of it comes from engineering design and piloting skill. I’ve been going over the public files on your artificial-gravity designs; if we can implement them into the next batch of our ships, we can increase our maneuverability by 500 percent. The training to get over the new flight capacity learning curves will take a few weeks, but couple that with our hyperspace engines, and we can increase the efficacy of our usual in-and-out tactics, which is strafing our lasers from the edges of combat and firing drone missiles for further targeting obfuscation and hopeful impact.”

“By ‘hopeful’ impact,” Robert clarified for his copilot and gunner, “he means we still have yet to do any training runs against derelict Alliance vessels so we can test our weapons against your hulls and know exactly what we have to trade and what we need to upgrade.”

“Which brings us to the purpose of this meeting, meioas,” Jackie stated, picking up that thread. She reached for the topmost stack of clipped papers. “Since our communications and computational systems are still mostly incompatible, the SF-SF—that’s an acronym for Space Force Special Forces—has pulled together a list of general specifications on what we can
do with the
Embassy
fleet itself and collated them into a printout summary.

“Please pardon the font we used for your language; our coders didn’t have a lot of time to make it look pretty,” she added, unclipping the stack, selecting a sheet for herself, and handing the stack to al-Fulan, who took one and passed it to his left as well. “On the bright side, there should be enough copies for all. Naturally, there are a few things
not
listed in this summary. We may be generous and openhanded by preference, but we are neither innocent nor stupid. You can, however, trust us when we say we prefer peace over war and friendship over enmity.

“Or as the Afaso martial arts system, which holds the tenets of practical pacifism close to its heart, likes to say . . . we may not care to
start
any fights, but we sure as hell will finish them.”

“Grand Captain Maq’en-zi, you are
not
leading this meeting,” one of the other grand generals stated—no, he was a grand admiral, Jackie realized. His knotwork had the same loops to it that the woman, the high admiral, had, and which some of the others—presumably the generals high and grand alike—did not have on the golden front panels of their coats.

“No, I am not,” Jackie agreed smoothly. “Your Empress is leading this meeting. However, given that she has not interrupted me, she has for the moment ceded the floor to me. For which, she has my thanks, as I’d like to dispense with unnecessary delays.”

“She has what the what?” someone asked, a man seated next to the high admiral who had condescended but who was carefully being silent now. “That is a very strange phrase.”

Li’eth quickly stepped in, reaching out to Jackie’s mind for a better explanation. “The term comes from their parliamentary government. The person doing all the talking may not be the leader, but usually they talk while standing in the central floor space between or before the risers holding the other members attending that meeting. That floor space, where the speaker stands, is normally under the control of the highest-ranked person at the meeting . . . or, alternately, under the control of the person arbitrating the meeting, or even the person who assembled the meeting. To ‘cede the floor’ means to hand
over that right to speak—but not the control of the overall meeting—to the next or current speaker.”

“
Cur-nel
Maq’en-zi is correct,” Hana’ka said. “I am allowing her to speak. That
is
why she is here, gentlemeioas. I, too, would like to dispense with unnecessary delays. Your comment about who is leading this meeting, Grand General Ma’touk, is a double-edged sword. I appreciate your defending my authority. However, the way you expressed it was dismissive of the Grand High Ambassador’s right to discuss her people’s military expertise.” She accepted the diminished stack of printouts being handed to her, took one, and passed the stack to her left, then fixed the general in question with a pointed look. “I believe you owe our incipient ally a brief apology.”

“. . . My apologies, Grand High Ambassador
Cur-nel
,” he stated, dipping his head.

Wrinkling her nose on the title-stacking, Jackie eyed either end of the table, then addressed the Empress. “Eternity, I would like to suggest that we dispense with ranks and titles for this meeting. Our Terran ranks are immaterial to this discussion; you are not in our chain of command. We are here because we are the experts who have been assigned to
be
here. And since we are not in
your
chain of command, your own ranks—I should say,
their
own ranks,” she amended, “are equally meaningless to us though we acknowledge they are important to you.

“Until we are cooperating together—and we have not even set up a system for that just yet—such things are mouthfuls that are getting in the way. Particularly if I keep having to switch hats, so to speak, from being military advisor to being civilian representative and back, over and over.”

“We
do
have an idiom about switching hats when switching points of authority,” Li’eth stated dryly when she finished and looked around.

“Thank you, Liaison. If this were one of my civilian side meetings, I would have a small rebellion on hand from all the nobles who would protest that protocol is everything,” Hana’ka stated, her gaze holding steady with Jackie’s. “But as this is a military meeting, and the War Queen expects her military to be efficient . . . we will dispense with titles for the moment. We rarely use them as it is when we are alone,” she added,
giving her officers a pointed look. “In the interest of expediency, we will afford our Terran guests the same familiarity and courteously assume them to be our equals.”

Another of the women at the table not quite snorted in reply. She gestured with a medium-purple-striped hand, aiming a vaguely dismissive sweep toward the Terrans. “Eternity, they are
hardly
our equals when not even—”

“—Our. Equals,” Hana’ka asserted, cutting off the high general seated near her son’s attaché. “Or did you suddenly gain an overwhelming amount of extremely detailed information on Terran military might in the last nanosecond? No? Did you miraculously morph
into
a Terran military advisor, an expert in all things related to their combat skills and technology? No?
Leftenant Superior
Kos’q knows more about Terran military capabilities than
you
do, High General, and he lies near the bottom of the Second Tier in rank. However, he has my respect for that knowledge, and for his willingness to share it with us both in his debriefings earlier and in this particular meeting.”

(
Well,
that’s
a good sign,
) Li’eth whispered in Jackie’s mind.

(
What is?
) she returned, curious.

“As it stands, Generals, Admirals, the only people in this chamber who know the most about the Terrans
are
the Terrans. I will give them the full and thorough respect that superior knowledge deserves, and hope that, by it, we as a nation will earn their trust. I suggest you start giving them a high level of respect and trust as well, in the hopes that we will attain their loyalty to our most pressing cause.”

(
She’s firmly on your side at the moment. Of course, you should give her an overt show of your trust and respect in return.
)

(
Already on it. Also, I like your mom. Or rather, your Empress,
) Jackie clarified. (
I haven’t “met” your mother, yet.
)

(
Eventually, you will,
) he allowed.

“The Eternal Empress has our respect for striving to remember that we are not V’Dan,” Jackie said quietly. “She remembers that we are not to be judged as V’Dan, by being careful not to judge us as markless V’Dan juveniles. She in turn knows that we are striving not to judge you as Terrans . . .
which means we are striving not to be offended by each and every condescending, dismissive remark. I do admit, however, that it will be easier if you kind meioas would help hold up your own end of that task by
refraining
from doing so.

“We came here believing that you are experts in V’Dan military capabilities. We also came here with the expectation that you would understand and grasp that we in turn are experts in Terran military capabilities. Shall we get back to discussing those capabilities in mutually respectful ways?” Jackie asked. “Or do any of you have another inappropriate observation to make?”

The high general blinked and stared a few moments, then looked at her liege. “Are you going to chastise them for talking to us that way, Eternity?”