Terms
© 2020 by Walter Reimer


Thumbnail art by  baroncoon


Anulka-mei Balakrishnan glowered at her coffee as she stirred a dollop of sweetener into the hot liquid. Her ears and tail were drooping and her eyes looked bloodshot as she put the spoon on the conference table and lifted the mug to her lips. Behind her, her two aides were yawning. The call from Shumeng had come in the middle of the night, and their conversation had degenerated into a shouting match in what was, for them, record time.

In the end, however, orders were orders.

She sipped her coffee, nearly burning her tongue. Today’s session, no matter how it went, spelled the end of her career. Her ears perked as the door on the opposite side of the room opened and the Imperial delegation walked in.

Balakrishnan saw that the Empire’s envoy was still blinking back sleep. Good; at least they were on level ground in one regard.

She didn’t wait for the vir to park her arse on her chair, declaring the reason for the meeting between sips of her coffee.

Then there was a brief silence.

Navot k’Ven broke the silence by clucking her tongue against the roof of her mouth, the Kashlanin analogue of a Terran expression of disbelief. She recovered herself swiftly and asked, “I beg your pardon, Ambassador Balakrishnan. Could you repeat that?”

The Dhole-Akita canine looked like she’d eaten something distinctly unpalatable. She took a long drink of her coffee before speaking, noting sourly that k’Ven didn’t appear to like the smell. “I said that I have received instructions from Foreign Minister Hwillis, in the name of the Lord Protector himself.” Her curly tail twitched. “In his name, I am instructed to . . . ask the Sovereign for terms.” She looked like she was about to spit, and one of her aides looked ready to cry.

This time she was able to control herself. “Aka. Does the Confederacy truly desire peace, or is this a ruse on Admiral-General al-Sakai’s part?”

“It is a true desire for peace,” Balakrishnan said flatly. “The military leaders may not like it, but his Highness has larger concerns. We need peace.”

“I understand,” and the vir opened up her padd, resting it flat on the tabletop and accessing a file. Once it appeared on the screen, she gave a flick of a claw-tip against the surface and the document appeared on the Terran’s own padd. Navot sat back as Balakrishnan read it.

The canine’s teeth bared, and her ears went flat against her skull. Staring at the screen she muttered angrily, “This . . . this is – “

“This is what you requested, Balakrishnan-jih, in the name of the Lord Protector,” k’Ven said quietly. The finger she’d used to send the document to the Terran scrawled across the padd, doodling a crude sketch of a zh’rekk leaf. “These are the Sovereign’s terms. Will you transmit them to Terra?”

Watching the canine’s belligerent body language wilt into resignation interested the vir solely on an intellectual level. On an emotional level, however, Navot felt a frisson of sheer pleasure run through her. She’d had quite enough of this Terran’s insults and condescending attitude.

Balakrishnan ran both paws across her head front to back as her aides came forward and read the terms over her shoulder. The military attaché looked horrified. “You ask us to disarm,” the canine envoy mumbled.

“You attacked across the border first,” k’Ven pointed out, “and the Confederate government allowed our Embassy on Terra to be massacred.”

“A separate peace with the Colonies?” the Political Officer asked.

“Yes.” Navot deactivated her padd and stood up, rolling the device up into a short baton-like cylinder. “Those are the Sovereign’s terms. We will await the Lord Protector’s reply.” The vir turned and walked out of the room, her tail flicking in an obviously insulting gesture that told Balakrishnan to perform a copulatory act on herself.

Balakrishnan slowly stood and picked up her padd, letting it hang limply like a rag as she headed for the door.

The only consolation she had was that if her career was dead, Shumeng might end up physically dead when she presented al-Sakai with the Empire’s demands.