"The Consu have given the Rraey technology that puts them far ahead of the rest of the cultures in this part of space," Jung said. "Even for the mighty Consu, tipping the balance of power in the region has to have repercussions."
"Unless the Consu shortchanged the Rraey," I said.
"What do you mean?" Jung said.
"We're assuming that the Consu gave the Rraey the technological expertise to create the skip drive detection system," I said. "But it's possible that they simply gave a single machine to the Rraey, with an owner's manual or something like that so they could operate it. That way, the Rraey get what they want, which is a way to defend Coral from us, while the Consu avoid substantially disrupting the balance of power in the area."
"Until the Rraey figure out how the damn thing works," Jung said.
"Given their native state of technology, that could take years," I said. "Enough time for us to kick their ass and take that technology away from them. If the Consu did actually give them the technology. If the Consu only gave them a single machine. If the Consu actually give a shit about the balance of power in the region. A lot of 'ifs.'"
"And it is to find out the answer to those 'ifs' that we're going to drop in on the Consu," Crick said. "We've already sent a skip drone to let them know we're coming. We'll see what we can get out of them."
"What colony are we going to offer them?" Dalton asked. It was difficult to tell if he was joking.
"No colonies," Crick said. "But we have something that might induce them to give us an audience."
"What do we have?" Dalton asked.
"We have him," Crick said, and pointed at me.
"Him?" Dalton said.
"Me?" I said.
"You," Jane said.
"I'm suddenly confused and terrified," I said.
"Your two-shot firing solution allowed CDF forces to rapidly kill thousands of Consu," Jane said. "In the past, the Consu have been receptive to embassies from the colonies when they have included a CDF soldier who has killed a large number of Consu in battle. Since it was your firing solution specifically that allowed the quick end of those Consu fighters, their deaths accrue to you."
"You've got the blood of 8,433 Consu on your hands," Crick said.
"Great," I said.
"It is great," Crick said. "Your presence is going to get us in the door."
"What's going to happen to me after we get through the door?" I asked. "Imagine what we would do to a Consu who'd killed eight thousand of us."
"They don't think the same way we do about that," Jane said. "You should be safe."
"Should be," I said.
"The alternative is being blasted out of the sky when we show up in Consu space," Crick said.
"I understand," I said. "I just wish I'd been given a little more lead time to get used to the idea."
"It was a rapidly evolving situation," Jane said nonchalantly. And suddenly I got a BrainPal message. Trust me—it said. I looked back at Jane, who was looking placidly at me. I nodded, acknowledging one message while appearing to acknowledge the other.
"What do we do after they're done admiring Lieutenant Perry?" asked Tagore.
"If everything goes according to past encounters, we'll have the opportunity to ask up to five questions of the Consu," Jane said. "The actual number of questions will be determined by a contest involving combat between five of us and five of them. The combat is one on one. The Consu fight unarmed, but our fighters will be allowed knives to compensate for our lack of slashing arms. The one thing to be especially aware of is that in previous cases where we've had this ritual, the Consu we've fought were disgraced soldiers or criminals for whom this battle can restore honor. So needless to say, they're very determined. We get to ask as many questions as the number of contests we win."
"How do you win the contest?" Tagore asked.
"You kill the Consu, or it kills you," Jane said.
"Fascinating," Tagore said.
"One other detail," Jane said. "The Consu pick the combatants from those we bring with us, so protocol requires at least three times the number of selectable combatants. The only exempted member of the delegation is its leader, who is, by courtesy, the one human assumed to be above fighting with Consu criminals and failures."
"Perry, you get to be leader of the delegation," Crick said. "Since you're the one who killed eight thousand of the buggers, by their lights you'd be the natural leader. Also, you're the sole non-Special Forces soldier here, and you lack certain speed and strength modifications the rest of us have. If you were to get picked, you might actually get killed."
"I'm touched you care," I said.
"It's not that," Crick said. "If our star attraction was killed by a lowly criminal, it could jeopardize the chances of getting the Consu to cooperate."
"Okay," I said. "For a second there, I thought you were going soft."
"No chance of that," Crick said. "Now, then. We have forty-three hours until we reach skip distance. There will be forty of us in the delegation, including all platoon and squad leaders. I'll choose the rest from the ranks. That means that each of you will drill your soldiers in hand-to-hand combat between now and then. Perry, I've downloaded the delegation protocols to you; study them and don't screw up. Just after we skip, you and I will meet so I can give you the questions we want to ask, in the order we want to ask them. If we're good, we'll have five questions, but we have to be ready if we need to ask fewer. Let's get to it, people. You're dismissed."
During those forty-three hours, Jane learned about Kathy. Jane would pop into where I was, ask, listen and disappear, off to tend to her duties. It was a strange way to share a life.
"Tell me about her," she asked as I studied the protocol information in a forward lounge.
"I met her when she was in the first grade," I said, and then had to explain what first grade was. Then I told her the first memory I had of Kathy, which was of sharing paste for a construction paper project during the art period the first and second grades shared. How she caught me eating a little of the paste and told me I was gross. How I hit her for saying that, and she decked me in the eye. She got suspended for a day. We didn't speak again until junior high.
"How old are you in the first grade?" she asked.
"Six years old," I said. "As old as you are now."
"Tell me about her," she asked again, a few hours later, in a different place.
"Kathy almost divorced me once," I said. "We had been married for ten years and I had an affair with another woman. When Kathy found out she was furious."
"Why would she care that you had sex with someone else?" Jane asked.
"It wasn't really about the sex," I said. "It was that I lied to her about it. Having sex with someone else only counted as a hormonal weakness in her book. Lying counted as disrespect, and she didn't want to be married to someone who had no respect for her."
"Why didn't you divorce?" Jane asked.
"Because despite the affair, I loved her and she loved me," I said. "We worked it out because we wanted to be together. And anyway, she had an affair a few years later, so I guess you could say we evened up. We actually got along better after that."
"Tell me about her," Jane asked, later.
"Kathy made pies like you wouldn't believe," I told her. "She had this recipe for strawberry rhubarb pie that would knock you on your ass. There was one year where Kathy entered her pie in a state fair contest, and the governor of Ohio was the judge. First prize was a new oven from Sears."
"Did she win?" Jane asked.
"No, she got second, which was a hundred-dollar gift certificate to a bed and bath store. But about a week later she got a phone call from the governor's office. His aide explained to Kathy that for political reasons, he gave the first place award to the wife of an important contributor's best friend, but that ever since the governor had a slice of her pie, he couldn't stop talking about how great it was, so would she please bake another pie for him so he would shut up about the damn pie for once?"