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Scene 1
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Niops VII, Niops System
Niops Association, Antispinward Periphery
July 2944
"...and furthermore… the limits of neighborly conduct…"
Amy froze inside the entryway to the restroom as she heard the Chief Associator's voice further in over the sound of the running sink. How the fuck did the situation get so messed up that they'd let her into the same restroom as her opposite number without any kind of chaperone? With how acrimonious things had been so far, this felt like it was begging for some sort of diplomatic incident.
…Actually, that potentially explained it rather well.
She took only the quietest of steps around the blind bend, getting nearer to the interior of the room without showing her entire body. Harmon was saying something in there, and nobody was saying anything back. It could have been a recording, even.
A peek around the corner squashed the recording hypothesis flat, however. The woman herself stood before the sink, scrubbing her hands absent mindedly as she stared into the depths of the mirror. "...these actions stretch far and away beyond the customary spirit of diplomatic protections and suggest a component of ill-faith in the Marian diplomatic stance…"
Ah, yes, rubber ducking the bathroom mirror. A time honored speaking exercise that absolutely never resulted in any sort of information leak. Amy rounded the corner properly, making a show of surprise as she did so. "Afternoon, Associator Harmon. Fancy meeting you here."
Miliese's head snapped around to Amy in an instant, her hands flying up and smacking against the tap of the sink as she stepped away. "Oh, what in the godDAMN!?"
Amy pinched her forehead in exasperation as the foreign dignitary clutched her self-battered knuckles and hissed. "Would you believe that this actually was a coincidence?"
Giving up on banishing the pain and letting her hands drop to her sides, the Niopsian drew in a heavy breath. "I suppose I bloody well would, yes. Everyone uses the facilities once in awhile. Are you going to be quick about it, though?"
"Well, I was going to." Amy declared with a heavy shrug, stepping further into the room. "But then you were here, talking to yourself, and now I just feel vaguely uncomfortable with the idea of picking a stall here."
Those much-abused hands flew up to cover their owner's face as she let out a squeal like a teakettle, hunching over forward. "Oh my pissing god, you absolute bitch! Don't try to come in here and criticize my rehearsal tactics like you've never done it yourself! Does the concept of gross voyeuristic eavesdropping not exist on your hardscrabble dustball of a nation?"
Amy snorted despite herself. This lady was fucking feisty. She'd known that much from the moment they met. Seeing her in private, though, with no observers or moderators or chaperones… that was a whole other level of it. The mouth on her was a thing of legend, honestly!
"What?!"
Crossing her arms, Amy leaned against the wall. "It's not like I came here to overhear you. It's just that once someone falls into the trap of rehearsing in a public place, it's just a matter of time before someone finds them, and suddenly that second someone has a lot on their mind. Me, when I want to rehearse a speech? I rehearse it in bed at night or in the morning. My husband sleeps like a rock, so it's always a safe bet… at least, when I'm around him. Do you not have anyplace else you feel comfortable rehearsing your arguments?"
Miliese's whole face scrunched up as she contemplated - or at least, Amy imagined she contemplated - the proper way to step around her and leave the room. "How many damned arguments do you have to present before you iterate on your preparation rituals?"
If she ever knew any sort of precise answer to that question, it certainly wasn't left in her head now, so many decades after the fact. "Aaaabout a few. However many it takes to get tired of getting walked in on over and over, I guess. I mean, I'm fifty two, and I've been doing this sort of thing since before I was twenty five. How long have you been talking to the mirror?"
Unfortunately, it seemed like part of what she'd said got lost in transmission. "...No way are you in your fifties. You don't look…"
Stifling a sigh, Amy lifted her hands to her face to mock-preen. "Some people age different. Johann, from our group, looked eighty when he was fifty, and now that he's eighty he looks like he died a few decades ago. Me, I'm the opposite. I look good for my age. Call it a matter of genetics. Seriously, though, how long have you been doing politics?"
"Does that particularly matter?" Harmon challenged, a scowl on her face, before giving in with a huff under the sustained pressure of Amy's stare. "I've held my current position for the past two years. Before that, I held various other positions for seven years, thus putting me at my current age of thirty six. What do you make of that?"
"It's rather young to be leading an entire nation, though I suppose you've got quite a small one." she shrugged, glancing into the mirror. "And yes, I'm aware of the irony of me saying that. The equation is rather different when you're founding a nation yourself rather than stepping up to the reins of one that your ancestors prepared for you. I guess you simply had the right message at the right time for a meteoric rise when people were looking for an answer to our sudden appearance on the stage?"
Finally realizing that the water was still running, the Chief Associator reached over and closed the faucet without looking. "I'll ask that you not speculate about the mechanisms through which I might have purloined my authority. I rose in accordance with the merit I demonstrated and am trusted with the burden of leadership as such, so long as the people hold faith in my administration. It's a rather different concept from claiming it by one's own might and holding it for almost thirty years through the same, wouldn't you say?"
There was a world of difference between the two political leaders of assemblies restricted to the highly educated, but that wasn't it. Far be it for Amy to raise that point too swiftly though. It was actually rather nice having the chance to talk to this woman in an environment where she could be… slightly less defensive about her position and slightly more open to talking freely.
"I don't doubt that you were selected through the confidence of your peers. The people, though, I very much doubt invest a great deal of interest in your politics, given that they by and large lack any window into your administrative or elective process and experience a limited access to education. Aside from your successful campaign two years ago, were there any stand-out moments in your administrative career that fueled your political rise?"
There was a moment of hesitation. "Normal governance isn't a matter of miraculous moments where you become the undeniable center of attention in a stable, well established system. It's a matter of showing consistent day-by-day merit at whatever you're doing at the time and knowing the right time to say the right things. What should the average person care for politics anyways? Their quality of life is secure and stable in all cases. Whatever might be done in a given electoral cycle, it is beyond the realm of their worries."
Perhaps the reason their lived conditions never improved at all was that the ruling class, in being totally separate from and not at all beholden to them, had no incentive to ever do anything for them. Perhaps bragging about how it literally doesn't matter who gets elected and an unremarkable thirty six year old could lead a country not through any exceptional deeds but through politicing and basic competence wasn't a good thing. What did Amy know about any of that, though? "But the government of Niops does do things, right? Do they never impact the civilian population at all?"
Miliese frowned. "They lack the perspective needed to understand the importance of the research we do, and as such have no need to worry about how the funding is allocated. Your fixation on this topic aside, are you sure you don't need to use the facilities sooner rather than later?"
"I'll last." Amy declared, waving a hand through the air. Honestly, she'd just come in here to wash her face originally, but trying to get some introspection out of this puffed up astronomer came first. "So you would say… the work your government does aside from investing in theoretical research is principally a matter of a steady-state administration which doesn't seek to alter anything about its current protocols?"
"From a historical perspective, that could be considered an accurate assessment. Naturally, contact with the outside raises some questions about what other areas may require ongoing consideration."
"The answer to which, it seems, some believe is to simply shut the door and end the discussion to avoid a reckoning with the matter."
Those eyes sharpened. "While the idea that we can simply ignore the threat about being discovered by yet more outside parties is, indeed, naive, concerns about whether outside influences might be destabilizing are certainly valid. Particularly when those outside influences undertake upon themselves to contact the civilian populace and discuss their deranged philosophies with them under the aegis of their diplomatic mission. An academic exchange program should by no means be grounds for popular evangelism."
"It's quite unfortunate, but many of those who most vigorously pursued higher education when we established the Marian administration were the faithful of a local cargo cult. They have learned vigorously and eagerly and possess a healthy perspective on the topic of academic responsibility, but they've come to take certain aspects of their work as genuine divine mandates rather than moral, ethical, or professional principles." Amelia declared, throwing up her hands as she glossed over her own repeated role in creating that problem for herself - or the way she'd gone out of her way to create this problem for the government of Niops. "Much as I wish it weren't the case, there's very little I can say to make them stop. I hope you can accept it as a harmless eccentricity."
Miliese bore down on Amy with an intense frown. "Eccentric though it may be, there is nothing harmless about spreading a rabble-rousing ideology which undermines the social order. Did you not have any less insane individuals on hand at the time?"
Amy figured it was time to drop the hint she was sitting on and let Harmon either figure it out or not. "Most Marians were already onword when we got there, so… no, Milise. I'm afraid it's quite difficult to find any who don't view the shift from civilization running on coal power to civilization running on the power of hydrogen fusion as a significant and transformative life experience. The capacity of science to change people's lives for the better isn't particularly the worst thing to make a religion out of, at the end of the day."
A system that was truly stable couldn't be threatened by something as meager as infrequent talks with an outside power. It was only possible for that sort of thing to happen to a system that was already on unsteady ground - metastable at best, truly unstable at worst. Perhaps the leadership of Niops had already realized that a system founded on the mass indifference bred by the illusion of a life that couldn't get any better was fundamentally fragile in the face of evidence to the contrary, but it certainly didn't seem as though they'd realized that genies hated nothing more than getting back into their lamps.
If they tried to close the door, they'd simply be found and conquered by someone later on. If they tried to maintain contact without changing anything, there'd be a revolution eventually. If they tried to reform the system to maintain some sort of position…well, that would just be a capitulation.
"I believe we both need to get back to our respective wings and strategize with our aides now?" Harmon offered, her brow deeply furrowed.
"I suppose so."
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Scene 2
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Castle O'Reilly, Alphard
Marian Union, Antispinward Periphery
July 2944
The stars were brilliant as they shone through the sunroof of the castle's library, a million and one pinpoints of light sparkling from on-high in the bleakness of the void. On any other night of the month, it ought to have been impossible to see such a magnificent sky. The light of the moon, streaming down through the panels, would have chopped the room up into illuminated squares and flooded their eyes so greatly that the stars were invisible.
As days to have one's birthday went, it was certainly something special. It almost made up for the sheer fatigue of celebrating two birthdays in fewer months, with more not far in the future. The curse of having large families, Helena supposed.
Even through the soundproofing of the structure, the howling of the night winds hit her ears like a sustained whistle, and she snuggled deeper into the bean-bag chair she'd dragged into the room all those years ago. Maybe there was a vision in some people's minds of the 'princess' sitting in only the finest upholstery at the peak of the castle rock, gazing down upon the city below as she twirled a class of grape juice or somesuch, but there were comfier seats in the world than those built to look pretty, and prettier sights than even a nighttime cityscape and its many people.
Though, well, it wasn't as though the stars were empty of people. If she looked the right direction, on the right night, through the right telescope she might even spot the light of Sol - the light humanity's first star had cast off in…it would have had to be around the twenty-four forties. Just around the birth of the first battlemechs, during the Age of War. The name seemed a bit quaint, given how every other age had had its wars - even the peace of the Star League was false - but then, if one trusted the wrong historians, the 'modern age' came and went over one thousand, one hundred years ago, and every era since then was by definition postmodern.
The pure and simple beauty of the stars Ellie saw was at odds with the bloodshed that existed all around them. Nature's fusion engines were aloof to the work of their artificial cousins at humanity's behest, simply heating the void in perpetuity as many billions of bald apes tried their damnedest not to outlive them.
A yawn rocked her chest. She got way too melancholy when she was tired, and yet she couldn't fall asleep - not yet. In the morning, the Claytons would be heading out - back to Kallipolis. It'd be goodbye for a time, connected only by the poor substitute of the telecommunications networks their parents had built up.
The sky was beautiful, but she hated this castle.
The door to the room was almost silent as it slid open, but with no competition but the hushed whisper of the distant air she heard it easily, her entire posture shifting in response as she got back upright. It wouldn't do to look like she'd passed out in her spot or anything. The night was young.
Each step Alan took into the dim space, following the beam of his flashlight, was accompanied by the clatter of porcelain and the sloshing of hot liquids. The cocoa was here.
As he drew close, he dimmed the light, shutting it off entirely once the tray was on the low table. "Still awake, huh?"
She elbowed him in the side without a second thought. "Shush, you. The last time I fell asleep up here, I was twelve. You, on the other hand, I seem to remember you falling asleep up here as late as…oh, seventeen, was it? And when it was light out, even?"
His chuckle was low as he grabbed one of the mugs, the friction between it and the tray creating one long ringing sound. "Might have happened. In my defense, try reading a difficult book in what amounts to a well-insulated greenhouse, while sitting in a comfortable chair, and still keeping your eyes open!"
Rolling her eyes, she located her own faintly glowing mug and seized it carefully by the handle, her night vision damaged a bit by even the brief exposure to the flashlight. "I do that every day, you massive baby. And you're supposed to be the big, learned scholar here. Honestly!"
His voice took on an affronted tone - she could practically hear the pouty look on his face. "When I need to read something, I usually do it on a computer, in a climate controlled room. No sense in risking a papercut or a tired neck for something I'm only reading because it's necessary."
"Yeah, yeah. Well, at the very least you didn't get lost finding the cocoa."
"I've been coming here for over a decade, El. I might as well get lost in my own house."
Ellie took a long sip of the cocoa as she gazed back up to the stars, wondering what the constellation that looked like a boot was properly called by the locals.
"So, eighteen, huh?"
"Eighteen."
"Yup. Eighteen."
Gods, but they were both fucking idiots. If there was one major benefit to the dimness of the room, it was that no matter how weird her expression ended up, Helena didn't need to worry about it being seen. She took another sip. It tasted like there was peppermint in the cocoa.
"Er, uh…" Alan sputtered, evidently at a loss for words. "Eleven more months and we'll be doing it all over again for Gaius and Petra, yeah?"
Stretching out, she wiggled her toes beneath the table as she buried her curiosity over what else he might have been about to say. "I suppose we will be. Here's hoping they can agree to both go on one day instead of claiming their own separate days just 'cause it was past midnight when Petra came out again. One birthday is more manageable for everyone."
She didn't like the long 'hmmmm' that came out of his lips before he said what he was thinking, but there was nothing to be done about it. Nothing could stop him from completing his joke once he thought it up. "So what you're saying is, the two of us need to agree collectively that our birthdays are both on July 11th from now on? Just sorta…average it out to cut down on trips?"
She elbowed him again. "There's a fucking difference, dude! Such a fucking difference! Two weeks and two hours are a whole other level of time difference, and you know it! You've at least got time to forget what cake tastes like and party poppers sound like in that amount of time. Two in two days is just… it's a total overload, on every level."
He slurped his cocoa loudly for a second. "Well, you aren't wrong about the…festivities part of it. I wouldn't say I'd mind using the second birthday as an excuse to hang around one more day, though. There are only so many excuses to meet up in a year, and it'd be a shame to let a calendar day that could be one of them go to waste."
"Hmmmm?"
Absentmindedly, she leaned over toward him, resting her head on his shoulder as her mug retook its place on the tray.
"Oy, oy, oy!" he yelped, nudging his elbow out noncommittally toward her. "None of that. If anyone catches us like this, Johann will butcher me when he finally finds out."
A wave of giggles punched its way brutally out of Ellie's chest. "Are you saying you're afraid of a spooky scary skeleton? You could just run away, you know? Papa's not very fast on his feet. Not sure how you plan on ever getting anywhere in life, or with anyone, if you're that afraid of conflict."
"If I speedwalk away from Johann, he could fall and seriously hurt himself giving chase. I don't want to risk that sort of accident happening." Alan declared, continuing to protest but conspicuously ceasing his act of resistance and returning his own cocoa, as well, to the table.
Helena smirked at her victory, enjoying the cover of darkness. She didn't know what to say, but she didn't really need to say anythi-
"FUCK! MY EYES!"
"JESUS!"
The door to the room had swung open without warning, and just a second later the lights had come on. Having spent the past several minutes sitting in the dark, neither was at all prepared for the sudden illumination of the room, hands flying up to cover eyes that had already closed and shield them from the aggressive glare of the overhead lamps.
From the direction of the door rang a loud, cackling, feminine laugh in a voice Ellie did not particularly recognize, which very nearly masked the two steps of intruding footsteps. "Wassaaap, kids! Damn, were you two making out in here or something?"
Before either of the blinded young adults could bear to look and see who it was, another, more masculine voice rang out in protest, sheer mortification evident in every world. "Sweet christ, Marie, did you have to go in like a damned bulldozer? There's something in this world called tact, you know? It's always nice, but in delicate situations, it's quite literally a priceless commodity!"
The first voice - Marie - let out a long 'hmmm'. "So what you're saying is, it's a rare luxury?"
Helena's mind caught up to the implication a second later, unshielding her eyes and squinting as she glanced over. "Marie?"
Alan was a step ahead of her, though, his eyes uncovered and wide open as he stated, mouth agape. "Holy-! Sis?! What are you doing back on Alphard? It's been what, a decade? I figured you'd have settled down over there by n-"
"Well, you're not entirely wrong on that front~!" the woman chirped without heeding the end of her brother's words, wrapping her arms around her midsection and emphasizing the distinctive bulge that Helena - in her momentarily impaired depth perception - wouldn't have otherwise noticed. "But it's not like I need an excuse to come around every once in awhile, do I? Mom even invited me back at some point."
"That was four years ago." the pale man to her side grumbled, resting a hand on her shoulder, before giving an apologetic look to the two who'd been in the room. "Uhm… Alan and Helena, was it? My apologies for the…violent interruption. I'm Sven. Yo- er, Alan's brother-in-law, I suppose? Though really, I'm sure that sort of declaration is hard to accept on a first meeting."
"Oh, come on, Sven, you don't gotta be so formal with friends and family!" Marie insisted, tapping on her apparent husband's forehead while making eye contact with Ellie. "Speaking of which, happy eighteenth birthday, Els! Sneaking in a little date as your birthday present while daddy's out of the house, huh? Just be careful, little missy. Anything can happen in this world - why, James and I were conceived by two stupid eighteen year old newlyweds once upon a time!"
The eldest O'Reilly child's face flushed beet red a fraction of a second faster than Alan and Sven's, and words refused to spill from her throat. "A-a-a-a-ah!"
"Marie! Please!" Sven cried, clinging desperately to the outrageous human being he shared his life with. "It's time to stop! There are some things you just can't barge in and say to people. Lines that aren't supposed to be crossed. You're killing them - just look!"
"Well, I've missed out on so many years of opportunities! Entirely my own fault, but, y'know." she huffed, pouting at her spouse before giving a catlike smile to the still-seated pair. "But yeah, I'll give 'em some peace and quiet for now. Let's catch up on the past few years later, you two. Okay?"
She didn't wait for a response to make tracks back toward the hallway.
Alan stretched out a hand. "Wait! Sis! When did you get here, and…how did you know where to find us?"
She paused. "To the castle? Like…half an hour ago? Forty five minutes, tops. Anyways, Petra told me where I might find you, so we dropped by to say 'sup' and that's how we ended up like this."
"And…how long are you going to be back?"
"Ain't planned that far ahead. Got a preference?"
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Scene 3
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Niops VII, Niops System
Niops Association, Antispinward Periphery
July 2944
Harmon was swift to speak up once the minutes on the newest meeting were formally declared open. "We formally request that you bar your philosophers from making deliberate contact with the commoners in manners unnecessary for their sanctioned work under the exchange program. This request covers all manner of fraternization, but particularly the transmission of their… theology."
Amelia had well and truly expected that - and by the silence to her side, so had Johann. It was the most natural outcome to playing the 'not formally sanctioned or ordered, but never explicitly banned' card with regards to their activities, after all. Even so, simply agreeing to the request was not the most efficient way to proceed. They needed to seem willing to work with the Niopsians, but coming off as pushovers would do little but hinder later negotiations. "Will that be a precondition to the continuation of the exchange program itself? Further, how are you defining necessity to the work at hand?"
"I hesitate to call it a precondition," Miliese replied, interlacing her fingers, "because the continuation of the exchange program has been, and remains, an uncertain prospect in either event. Your fixation on the applied sciences is understandable, given your circumstances, and we may do well to emulate it for security reasons going forward, but we are uncertain if allowing outside scholars such intimate access to our systems can, in any way, be deemed secure as the former administration thought it to be. That being said, if you were to curb social mixing by your contingent beyond the patently necessary level of requisitions of life and work essentials, we would consider it a sign of your goodwill."
"We are, of course, keenly interested in demonstrating our goodwill in these arrangements. It would surely dampen the enthusiasm of those involved, and I do not personally see the rationale in so harshly constraining access to education, but if that is what it will take…" Amy agreed with a sigh. "Well, consider the order given."
Of course, the rationale was actually quite clear. If education were freely available to all, their ruling class would either disintegrate or need to hamfistedly construct a new pretense for their reign, in a vacuum.
The chief associator smiled as the man to her left spoke up with a hint of levity in his voice. "It would not do to frustrate the commoners by confronting them with their inability to grasp the higher arts of the erstwhile Terran Hegemony, dear Dominus. People have different capacities, and it is the responsibility of an enlightened leadership to ensure that they are not tormented with the limits of their ability, but rather learn to live at peace with them."
Amy smiled back. If they gave her the excuse, it would be rude of her not to say anything, wouldn't it? "How odd. I would relish the chance to review your data on the matter. Twenty some years in, and our surveys and censuses have found quite consistently that the periphery-blooded scions of the Marian worlds learn with no less consistency or competency than the children of the Inner Sphere - of Terra, even - when both are given the same opportunities. Nor have I ever known a person of Capellan heritage to be incapable of erudition - and I count a great number of Capellans among my order's founding members. It would be fascinating to study your methodology and try to identify the source of our disagreement."
The far side of the table bristled at the comment almost in unison.
"Well," Johann interrupted, putting his hands up in a conciliatory gesture. Amelia supposed he felt she might have gone a bit far with that one. "As fascinating as I'm certain these pedagogical questions are to all involved, I would like to propose that we shelve the matter for a later time in order to focus on the diplomatic aspect of… well, diplomacy for the evening. Am I alone in that sentiment?"
As the emotional temperature of the room leveled out its climb, Amy stifled the urge to smile. It was decent management on his part. Her needling had a purpose - gradually forcing the introspection needed to admit the unsustainability of their system in the face of any alternative they couldn't coercively drive off - on the elite of the Association so that they, realizing their weak bargaining position, would yield, but that didn't mean she could do any wild thing to the tensions that she wanted without consequences. The ball was already rolling steadily toward the breaking point of their social order, so ending the overt contact was perfectly viable even if the covert contact couldn't be escalated to compensate, but if the Marians weren't on hand to help them put one back together after the impact the plan wouldn't work out.
"Perhaps Mr. O'Reilly has some sense." Harmon agreed, her eyes narrowed. "In any case, with that matter settled - though we shall want to see it in writing - we can breach the next point of concern. There have been whisperings since your first arrival that speculate with great terror that the Marian dream is to annex Niops and subjugate her people. Of course, we do not give credence to these ludicrous suggestions, but the question remains - beyond the immediate concern of secrecy and mutual protection, what is your interest in Niops?"
Well, while annexation wasn't nearly as far out of the question as Harmon wanted her to believe the Niops Association considered it, Amelia believed she'd quite unambiguously given an answer to that question last time, but it wouldn't be the most times someone had asked her the same question looking for a different answer. "Much the same as our well-wishes for any nation with the wisdom and good taste to remove themselves from the culture of destructive sectarianism and warmongering found in the Inner Sphere - prosperity, human development, stability, economic sustainability, and freedom from tyranny. All the good that human endeavors and the furtherment of civilization are able to create."
All things that House Cameron had spent its entire existence seeking to monopolize or annihilate outright, and many of them - she suspected - things that, though they might voice verbal support for due to their positive connotations, were not high up on the priorities of the Niopsian leadership.
"Hence your overtures about combining our resources to accomplish more than we can individually, I suppose." Harmon acknowledged, waving her hand through the air. "But those are only words, and besides which cannot fully reveal the depth of your intentions. Your support in security arrangements is something which can have concrete, immediate value for us even as it benefits you, but something like industrial and academic support - where productive capital would flow from our lands to yours, to be operated and expanded upon under your control - is incredibly vulnerable to you simply - to use a vulgar colloquialism - taking the money and running. What guarantee can you possibly give us that Niops will benefit from that arrangement? In fact, what guarantee can you give us that you actually possess the growth prospects you claim? Certainly, your people have come far since your arrival, but simple fusion does not evidence the capacity to construct jump drives."
Oh boy, it was time for the questions with inherently inflammatory answers! Amy loved those ones.
"That's a difficult question, the first one." Amy agreed, folding her own hands. "Certainly, short of the impossibility of mind reading, you cannot ever acquire certainty of our earnest intentions until such a time as we properly repay you without some collateral to balance the risks. The problem of what to give a people who have most everything their population could want as a form of direct payment is also difficult. However, I would like to pose the question of what you imagine yourselves gaining by abstaining from the arrangement at some point. The population of the Marian Union currently exceeds seven hundred million, and might exceed two billion by the turn of the millennium in the unlikely event that the rate of population growth remains stable throughout that time."
As the other side of the table watched on silently, waiting for her to deliver her conclusion, she smiled softly. "Your own population… we've estimated about eight million? You've achieved impressive things with very little, particularly considering the small portion of that population with access to education, but there are limits to what you can provide for yourselves. Any sort of large machinery, for example. We, on the other hand, could if pressed endeavor to restart production of the Aquilla class jumpship within this decade or the next, though it would come at a cost to our long-term industrial growth plans and be swiftly obsoleted by the advancement of our machinery. I must reiterate - our offer is based on the premise that your help would accelerate an already in-motion time table, not on the necessity of your help. Our gratitude, I promise you, would be real, but there are time limits on your opportunity to earn it."
Harmon's right hand man coughed loudly to draw attention, fixing Amelia with a sharp gaze - or, perhaps, a sharper one? She hadn't been paying much attention to him so far. "It would be good if you took more care when selecting your words, Dominus. That statement could be interpreted as a threat to the integrity of the Niops Association if we don't go along with your proposal."
She found that kind of funny - no, hilarious. "Oh, my good man, you really must raise your threshold for interpreting things as threats. I'm simply noting that, at your current rate of growth, the Niops Association will remain too minor a power to assert any astropolitical ambitions long after the coming collapse has cleared and new interstellar states have begun to form from the wreckage - indeed, long after the Marian Union has eclipsed your technological peak. It isn't an act of violence to leave you untouched."
The moderator coughed. "In the interest of preventing this from becoming a contest of raw assertions, is there any way you might prove your claims regarding population, industrial, and technological growth potential?"
"Yes, it's all well and good to claim that our help is unnecessary, but without proof of your population and of the depth of your information access and industrial development… well, you could claim just about anything. The only verifiable fact is that you want something from us." Miliese added, leaving not a moment of dead air between the moderator's stop and her own start. She looked about ready to stand up at the far end of the table.
"The opportunity to send a diplomatic contingent to the Marian Union is one we extended to the previous government and, of course, one which remains open to you in the here and now. I'm sure we'd all be perfectly glad to prove the merit of our claims regarding population and industry. As for information…" Johann declared, reasserting his place as the one in charge of the diplomacy.
This time, the Chief Associator actually did rise, gesturing outward with both hands as though welcoming the Marian contingent. "In the interest of magnanimity, I would be satisfied if you simply demonstrated one or two pieces of privileged technological knowledge to prove that this is not simply a bluff to gain access to our data banks - if you can show that much, and we can verify it, I will simply take it as a given that you have sufficient information that we cannot prevent the damage you might cause simply by not sharing. It would be unreasonable of us to demand that you verify each individual bit of technology you possess the knowledge to construct individually, after all. Say…you demonstrated possession of the blueprints for hyperpulse generators and…hm… I suppose it would be unreasonable of me to say the Caspar AI system?"
Amy reached into her pocket, smiling softly. This wasn't her first plan, or even her second plan, but she could play off of this turn of events. Ever the aggressive negotiator, Harmon was, but the Dominus wondered just how much the people of Niops could really verify - true, they were a research outpost, but House Cameron had been an avid enjoyer of keeping its projects in isolation and holding the juiciest secrets closest to its chest. Perhaps they had the data on HPGs, though she doubted it, but data on her great grandfather's project? Doubtful.
The guards on the far side of the room stiffened at even that simple gesture, and the moderator was swift to rise and extend her arm. "Please refrain from rifling around in your pockets unannounced!"
Giving a quick chuckle, Amy made sure to have it sound as awkward as possible. "My apologies - I'm simply retrieving my personal noteputer. I've made preparations for questions of that sort, but I'm afraid I can't remember off the top of my head if I brought those files in particular."
Letting out a sigh, the moderator glanced back to the guards. "Might I suggest that you remove it with just two fingers, to alleviate concerns?"
"A reasonable suggestion." Amelia agreed, slowly plucking the device from the lower left pocket and dangling it between her pointer finger and thumb. "Incidentally, would it be acceptable to those involved if I used the projector here later on?"
Miliese shrugged. "It is there for a reason."
"Thank you."
Flipping open the device, Amelia tapped a sequence of buttons that was ingrained deeply into her muscle memory, first logging onto the device then unlocking the encrypted secondary drive - though as the larger of the two storage media, it strained the definition of 'secondary'. She didn't really need to look around to find out what she had - she'd packed it herself, after all - but she was having fun here, so an act she must have. Rather than searching the contents, as a result, she cued up two alternative files for display before wasting a minute playing a falling block minigame that had been a classic since before the Second Soviet Civil War to create the illusion of activity.
After the silent timer went off, she let out a frustrated 'ah'. "Unfortunately, I don't have those two in particular with me right now. I didn't think they'd be relevant to our discussion today, after all. However, if you're willing to accept substitutes in the fields of communication and artificial intelligence, I did bring data on the K series of communicators and the Moderbjorn series of managerial AI experiments. If you'd like, I'll put those up on the screen."
Harmon made a valiant effort, but alas, she couldn't keep her puzzlement off of her face. "The…K series?"
Amelia wore her brightest and most genuine smile, cocking her head to the side with her eyes closed as she elaborated. "Oh, yes, you know. The K series. Also known as Project Transient, or the Black Box communicator. The Star League's first attempt at a workable FTL communication system was…well, it had some characteristics to recommend it over the later HPGs, to be certain - it was portable, it had a longer range, for mass broadcasts its omnidirectional signal was desirable, and for secretive communiques…well, unlike an HPG it doesn't simply fire radio waves. The signal cannot be received at all without a second one. The downsides, though… comparatively slow, small messages, there an extreme propensity for data interference when multiple were broadcasting due to the single frequency of the first production model, and…well, the bounceback interference problem meant it could never be scaled out into an infrastructural grade network without jamming itself even if more frequencies were opened up, so it was ultimately buried. But of course, you didn't need me to explain any of that to you - as heirs to the Terran Hegemony you were surely quite familiar with the topic already. I simply thought that its downsides were outweighed by its advantages, in our current situation."
"O-of course."
Amelia rose slowly, shooting Johann a grateful smile for not letting any residual surprise from when she'd informed him of the data she was carrying earlier show on his face. It would have made this all so much harder. "Do you know if the projector uses the standard type Q connector? If not, I'll need to get my adaptors out as well."
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Sorry this is out a few hours late. On top of having a hard time focusing this week, I spaced out for the past three hours and forgot to upload the already completed chapter.
