Planetary Parlay

by Cameron Cooper

  Head shakes.

  “Nothing at all,” Jai said. “Is someone sick?”

  Fiori nodded. “Ven is reacting to something.” She checked faces as she spoke, measuring our health. “Well, you know where to find me.” She headed back down the corridor.

  I grabbed the distraction as a chance to slide away from Jai and moved over to where Slate stood in his corner. “Slate, you heard all the conversations at the dinner table, tonight, yes? You said you could hear a lot more than humans?”

  “That is correct, Danny. I heard all conversations at the table, tonight. I have been sorting them out.”

  “Rayhel Melissa told me…well, he implied that Belfon Constantine is nothing more than a figure head, that he keeps Assembly meetings in order. Is that true?”

  “He said that?” Gratia Rosalie said, coming up behind me.

  I nodded.

  “The indexed responsibilities of the Director of the Assembly correspond to such a description,” Slate said.

  Marlee Colton stood and stretched, making her pretty gown strain. “I can see you guys are heading into a deep hole in the Terran history books. If I don’t get some sleep, I’m going to melt. I’m heading to bed.”

  As she stretched and yawned, one of the Drigu detached himself from the wall and moved carefully across the room, heading for the corridor. At the same time, he stripped off his tunic. As the Drigu wore nothing under the tunic, we all drew in startled breaths.

  “Carr, what the hell are you doing?” Marlee said sharply.

  The Drigu, Carr, turned back at her sharp sound, then looked at Slate, who spoke in Terran, in Marlee’s voice.

  Carr shrugged and spoke.

  “It would be a dereliction of my duty to not help you sleep, as you are alone this night.”

  Marlee’s eyes got very big.

  I think mine did, too.

  “Does helping her sleep mean what I think it means?” Yoan said, sounding dazed.

  “He took off his clothes,” Dalton pointed out, his tone dry.

  “Slate, tell him I don’t need that sort of help!” Marlee squeaked, her arms around her in the most defensive posture I’d ever seen her use.

  Slate spoke—and not in Marlee’s voice.

  A range of expressions crossed over Carr’s face as he listened to Slate. Acceptance, embarrassment, and perhaps even a tinge of regret. Strongest of them was relief, though.

  No kidding, I thought to myself. I’d be relieved, too.

  “Slate, is what Carr was heading off to do…is that normal?” I asked.

  “It is a standard practice expected of the Drigu,” Slate replied. “They are required to ensure the comfort and well being of their masters, using whatever means are required. They have the latitude to determine what the best means would be. Carr presumed that Marlee would want physical release in order to sleep better.”

  I could feel my cheeks heating and I wasn’t the only one toeing the floor awkwardly.

  Marlee gave a self-conscious laugh and headed for her room. Carr, who was dressed once more, followed her.

  Slate said, “Danny, you were asking about The Constantine.”

  “About his role as Director of the Assembly.”

  “I believe I may be able to offer an additional insight.”

  “Yes?”

  “Even though there are no official records to deem it so, the family who holds the Director’s chair in the Assembly are usually considered to be the supreme family among all the primary families.”

  I raised my brow. Had Slate just anticipated my direction of thought? “All equals, huh?” I muttered.

  “So all the families would maneuver to win the Director’s chair?” Marlow asked Slate, coming up beside me.

  “Not all families. The Florina have not put forward a candidate for the Director’s chair in nearly two hundred years.”

  “Why not?” Marlow asked.

  “They have held the Secretary’s chair in all that time.”

  Peter Kole called out from across the room. “Why would they settle for the Secretary’s chair for two whole centuries? Why wouldn’t they try to move up?”

  “Maybe their family wisely decided that such ambition would not serve them in the long run,” Elizabeth Crnčević said, and blew on the contents of her mug.

  “We’re talking about Terrans,” I reminded her. “Of course they would grab at power when they could.”

  “You’re painting all Terrans with the bias you’ve learned from a few of them,” Elizabeth pointed out, her tone sweet.

  I subsided, because damn it, she was probably right.

  “I believe Danny might be right in this instance, Elizabeth,” Slate said, and damn if he didn’t sound apologetic about correcting her.

  “If I’m right, then why haven’t the Florina tried to grab the Director’s chair?” I demanded.

  “Because they have the Secretary’s chair,” Slate replied.

  Jai rubbed his face with both hands. “What is it about the Secretary’s chair that makes it more attractive to the Florins?” he said, sounding very tired.

  I glanced at Marlow and raised my brow. He grimaced and I didn’t need Slate to figure that expression out. Jai would drive himself into the ground to see this mission go right. No one was going to coax him to bed for his own good, not even Marlow.

  Slate answered Jai. “The Secretary of the Assembly coordinates all Terran military forces.”

  Even I snapped alert at that one. “Isuma controls the military?”

  “They report to her,” Slate replied.

  “Can she give them orders they have to obey?” I asked, my tone sharp.

  “That is the defining characteristic of the coordination responsibilities assigned to the Secretary of the Assembly,” Slate replied.

  I turned on my heel to look at everyone who was following this conversation. “Rayhel said the Director was a figurehead. Not in so many words, but that’s what he meant—that the Secretary has all the true power.” I shook my head, looking at Dalton. “That wasn’t a dress she was wearing, tonight.”

  “It was a disguise,” he finished grimly.

  —15—

  I couldn’t sleep. Even though my face felt like it was trying to slide off my bones, and my body ached with the need to stop moving for a moment and rest, I couldn’t get my heart to slow down or my thoughts to stop racing.

  I kept my eyes closed and listened to Dalton’s breath. I may have dozed. But after a while, I couldn’t just lie there anymore. I got up, patted Vara’s head and scratched behind her ears and under her chin, then picked up the Terran robe, slipped it on, and moved out to the common room.

  I wasn’t surprised to find the room wasn’t empty. Yoan sat with a pad on his knee on one side, and on the other, Keskemeti was reading, with a small glass of something beside him. The light of the pad reflected up onto his face, which was not a flattering look for him. It made him appear unbalanced, as if he might break out into a morbid fit at any moment. Or perhaps the light was just reflecting his true nature.

  Someone had spent time organizing the chairs in the room and the crates that held items common to all of us—including the food. The crates had been built into an L shape, running along the wall between the corner and the front door, then jutting out into the room parallel with the other wall. Walking space behind the crates turned that strip into a kitchenette of sorts. The induction plate sat on the crates by the wall, and food items which didn’t need specialized containers to remain edible sat beside it.

  The armchairs which filled the rest of the room had all been pushed back against the walls, which seemed sensible to me. Yet the assembly room, upstairs, hadn’t had any furniture against the walls, either.

  I found sweet biscuits sitting upon a plate, took one and moved over to where Yoan was sitting in one of the chairs with his extra-large pad on his knees. A screen emitter sat on the arm of the chair beside him, and Lyssa was showing on the resolved screen.

  I sat on the cha
ir next to them. “Hi Lyssa. What did you think of tonight’s dinner?”

  “I think Rayhel is to be watched,” Lyssa told me. “The sound cut out now and then, Danny. I think someone might have been wearing a personal privacy bubble of some sort and they were on the edges of your implant’s range. Each time they shifted into range, the sound cut out. Then they’d move out and I could hear once more.”

  “Rayhel, I bet my bounty on it,” I muttered.

  Yoan raised his brow. “You have a bounty riding on this mission?”

  “Figurately, sure,” I said. “I get Van Veen to eat his words if I’m right.”

  “You want to be right?” Lyssa asked, her tone curious.

  “Not even for a heartbeat,” I replied and sighed. “Never mind. I’m cranky, I’m cynical and I always think the worst of people. What are you working on?” I didn’t attempt to look at the pad on Yoan’s knee.

  But he turned it and displayed it for me. “Lyssa and I have been working on this for a few weeks now.”

  I scanned the diagram laid out on the screen. The familiar components. The neat text flagging areas.

  “You’re designing a ship?” I was amazed. “From the ground up?” That would be even more amazing.

  Yoan shook his head. “Wedekind had some good ideas, but they’re out of date by at least a century. We’re extrapolating from where he stopped.”

  “I don’t know about Wedekind being out of date,” I said judiciously. “Most contemporary ship designs are only just catching up with him. Nanobot constructions aren’t yet in every ship.”

  “But they soon will be because of the space savings they provide, and because they just make sense for a ship heading out into deep space,” Yoan said. “They make a ship flexible.”

  I sat back and nibbled at the biscuit. “So, tell me about your design.”

  Yoan raised his brow again. “Really?”

  “Really,” I said. “I’m so sick of politics and double meanings and watching every word in case I say the wrong thing to the wrong people. I just want to sit and listen. I spend most of my life in space, and in ships. Talking about ship design is interesting, at least.”

  Yoan nodded. “I was like that at dinner.” He was still wearing his formal evening clothes, although he had opened the jacket, so the traditional white shirt beneath was on display.

  Lyssa, I noticed only now, was wearing a ribbon in her hair, holding it back from her face.

  Yoan added, “Peter Kole was talking with The Constantine, and half the time I wasn’t sure what they were saying. The words made sense on the surface, but I felt like I was missing bits of conversation that I swear were never spoken aloud.”

  “That’s power players at work,” I told him. “It’s exhausting, keeping up with them, but we’ve got days of it yet. So tell me about your design. Please.”

  Yoan pulled up a batch of diagrams and charts on his pad and walked me through his and Lyssa’s designs for a new ship that they had tentatively named the Lythion, Too.

  I grimaced at the name, but it was a nice statement of what they were trying to design—a better, more advanced Lythion…with something a bit extra.

  “You’re building in some pretty powerful defense systems,” I pointed out.

  “And stealth technology, too,” Yoan pointed out. “Lyssa and I are pretty sure we can crack the tech on the drop ship you brought back from Badelt City.”

  “That would be useful. The Lythion is pretty much invisible already, but only while she’s in deep space.” The matt black coating took care of that. “Which reminds me, make sure you add a Faraday cage around the whole ship. That saved our asses more than once, when we were dealing with the array.”

  “Already included,” Lyssa said lightly. “I like having that there.”

  The bridge had got most of their attention, because it was the most problematic of the fixtures aboard the Lythion. There was too little space, not enough inertia shells, and the windows were too small. They could have chosen to use screens the way most modern ships did, but I bent my head to study the bridge schematic and translate it to 3D. “You’ve got floor to ceiling windows at the front?”

  “Like the Terrans have on their shuttles,” Yoan said. “The windows are too small on the Lythion, but I like being able to look out at space myself.”

  “Hmm… What else?”

  They walked me through the engineering compartment, and it was here I got lost. I was not in the slightest oriented toward astral mechanics. “Give it to me in pictures,” I told Yoan, holding up my hand.

  “Let me try,” Lyssa told Yoan.

  He nodded, sitting back.

  Lyssa chewed her lip. “Put it this way, Danny. The Lythion used to be the fastest ship in the known worlds. This one will once more be the fastest in the known worlds, but instead of newer ship designs catching up with her in a hundred years, it will take twice as long. We’re looking at doing things that no one has ever tried.”

  “It looked a lot like you’ve incorporated some Terran principals,” I said, for I had crawled all over the one mothership we had captured, including the engine room. I didn’t know astral mechanics, but I did know my enemy.

  “That’s what will give this ship the edge,” Yoan assured me. “The Terrans have some interesting ideas about acceleration.”

  “Okay, so she’ll be fast enough that she won’t get lapped inside a generation. Good. But everything you’ve said is a feature is nothing anyone has ever tried or built. You won’t just be building. You’ll have to develop and test. Where are you going to get the money for that?” They couldn’t hit me up for it. They were richer than me. Although if I’d had the credits to spare, I would have handed them over this very minute.

  Both of them slumped and their smiles faded.

  Yoan started packing away the designs and concept drawings. “I just…it’s just theory. Something to do when…” He shrugged. “When we’re here.” He looked around the room.

  I understood the need to be distracted. I was doing it right now. I patted his shoulder and got to my feet. “Keep working on the designs. Get them finished and packaged as a proposal. You never know what’s around the corner.”

  Yoan nodded, some of his former enthusiasm returning.

  I headed for the corridor. Time to try to sleep again.

  Keskemeti had put away his book and was watching me. I would have to brush by his feet to get to the corridor, but he didn’t let me get that far. “Why do you treat it as if it is human and has feelings?” he demanded.

  All the goodwill I’d developed toward him evaporated in that instant. He’d reminded me of the flaw in his character with a single question. I hooked my thumb over my shoulder toward Yoan and the emitter he was using to work with Lyssa on the ship design. “Lyssa is fully sentient, which means she does have feelings. That’s not something I can accuse you of.”

  His jaw worked, but before he could reply, I added, “I thought you were smart, Keskemeti. Then you go and open your mouth and say something so stupid I want to sock you in jaw. Get your feet out of the way. I’m going to bed.”

  He held up his hand. “I retract the question. I am…not myself at the moment.”

  I laughed. “You think any of us is dealing well with this?”

  The hand he raised twined with the other and both squeezed, so the knuckles were white. “I should have sat on the other side of the room, so I didn’t have to look at…that.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Slate stood in his corner and as far as I could tell, he was powered down. Asleep, in mechanical terms.

  “Only, I didn’t want to disturb Yoan,” Keskemeti added. “And I didn’t want to sit near it—her. But that thing is an even greater monstrosity.”

  “It’s a tool, Keskemeti. You have something against food printers, too?”

  He stopped his hand washing. “You don’t understand.”

  “Damn right, I don’t. I’ve never understood what you have against Xaviens. They’re smart, they wo
rk harder than any three people I know, they’re peace-loving and want nothing more than to be left alone to live a human life.”

  “That is what you do not understand,” Keskemeti said. “Does it not bother you, to see humans used as tools, too?”

  I paused. “You mean, the Drigu? Of course I hate what the Terrans do to them. But my getting pissed about it isn’t going to stop the Terrans from using slaves. I’m nobody.”

  Keskemeti’s face transformed. Wisdom replaced the agony that had been building there. “That is where you are wrong, Danny Andela. Any one person can change the entire course of human history, if they want it badly enough and if they are willing to put in the work.”

  “Is that what you’re doing, Keskemeti? Changing all our minds about Xaviens?”

  The wise look faded. “I thought I was,” he said softly. “Then I see that…and I feel such doubt.”

  He was looking at Slate again.

  “I don’t understand,” I said bluntly. “Why does a robot make you squirm?”

  “It isn’t the mechanical that fills me with horror,” Keskemeti said. “It is the people who built it.” He tore his gaze away from Slate and looked up at me. “Terrans use them as assistants, they say. But a translator could have been built into a small box that they carried with them. We have assistants, too.” He fumbled by his side and lifted the pad. “We call them pads, and terminals and computers. But the Terrans had to make their assistants look like men, and force them to follow around behind them, as obedient as the slaves they lord it over.” He drew in a breath, harsh and noisy. “They are the true monsters,” he finished softly, the dread back in his voice.

  It took more than a few seconds for me to stir, pull my gaze away from Keskemeti and head back to bed. So much for going back to sleep. Keskemeti’s existential objection to Terrans kept me flopping about the bed until Dalton growled a protest and threatened to find a pillow somewhere else.

  I was going to be useless, tomorrow, just when I needed all my wits about me for the first formal negotiation session.