‘Someone tell me what’s happened, then,’ he said. ‘Apparently I jumped us to Berlenhof but I get the impression all hell broke loose soon after that.’
‘Ah, well,’ and Kris had obviously prepared quite the spiel for this very occasion. Yet even as she put her hands behind her back and stepped forward in her best leading counsel stance, a Partheni officer turned up at the door.
‘Myrmidon Executor,’ she addressed Solace. ‘Pret?’
‘Pret, Mother.’ Solace turned wide eyes on the others. ‘They’re ready for us.’
‘They can wait,’ Olli growled.
‘“They” are humanity’s combined diplomatic staff,’ Kris pointed out. ‘Once you’ve cat-herded them into one room, you can’t expect them to just twiddle their expensive thumbs. Idris, how are you doing?’
He swung his legs over the side of the bed, took to his feet and would have gone face first into the floor if Kris hadn’t caught him.
‘They got another of those chairs?’ he asked Olli.
*
‘That’s Monitor Superior Tact,’ Kris identified for him, pointing out a severe-looking older Partheni. ‘Don’t you love their names, by the way? Sounds like they’re laughing behind your back half the time, doesn’t it?’ Although she was grinning when she said it.
‘Kris, please.’ Idris said. He found the lights in the big circular chamber over-bright. He was sitting lopsided in the motorized chair, leaning on one arm. He hadn’t been able to drive it properly, juddering and scraping the walls. The frustration it had engendered in him had been out of all proportion to the inconvenience. He was a navigator of starships. A goddamn wheelchair shouldn’t be beyond him. Instead he’d ground and rammed and drifted while Olli had surged on ahead with enviable skill. Now they were here, the lot of them, taking up one third of this conference chamber. The other thirds were for the Parthenon and the Colonies respectively.
‘Okay,’ Kris said. ‘So Tact is a diplomat. And if she’s taking the lead, that tells you how they’re playing it . . . I think the woman behind her is Fleet Exemplar Hope.’
Hope looked like Tact’s younger sister, and not much like her name. If Idris had been asked, he’d have guessed at ‘Suspicion’。 There were half a dozen other Partheni behind them, younger, all with variations on the same features. The same ashy-coloured skin and strong cheekbones, a factory-line beauty made uncanny by repetition. Kris didn’t have names for them, just adding, ‘Hope’s a full-on fighter – but you’d expect her to be present, given we’re on her ship. Tact is Aspirat, dirty tricks and espionage. And, from the look I caught, I reckon she’s Solace’s boss.’
Idris nodded tiredly.
‘Now over there . . . that’s Lucef Borodin. He’s out of the High Diplomatic Service Office, here on Berlenhof.’ Kris was indicating Tact’s opposite number. Borodin was stocky, greying, a match for Tact in age, but with twenty centimetres on her in height and thirty kilograms in weight. He had a flat, open face and had turned to smile at the lean woman behind him. The smile was still in place when he faced forward again, but it didn’t reach anywhere near his eyes.
‘Lady at his back is Elphine Stoel. She’s supposed to be DipSO too, but I think she’s really Threat Analysis. You know, the sort Hugh keeps around to predict what the other big powers might do next.’ Stoel was regarding the Partheni with a fixed intensity. A half-dozen younger diplomats were at her back in turn, along with a familiar face – Havaer Mundy of the Intervention Board, looking like his wife had left him.
‘One of the others is probably covert Mordant House too,’ Kris noted. ‘Mundy’s here because he’s met us, has a handle on us maybe. And I guess you know Herself there, beside him.’
Saint Xavienne, of course, watching Idris and nobody else. He managed a faint nod to her.
‘You’ll note no military from Hugh, just civvies,’ Kris added.
‘That good?’
‘Interesting question. You might think yes, but Borodin’s out of Magda. So though he’s not exactly shilling for the Nativists, maybe he’s skewed that way? Also, maybe not sending a soldier to the Parthenon is a kind of veiled insult or something? I don’t know.’
‘Some help you are.’
‘That’s the spirit.’
‘Why are we even here?’
Before Kris could answer that, Monitor Superior Tact finished listening to one of her subordinates and opened proceedings. ‘Menheer Borodin, thank you for joining us.’ She directed a bright smile across the room at the Colonials. ‘I trust our reception has been to your satisfaction.’