Many Words

Ippocampos, however, presented Varouforos with a different problem. The alien was influential in its government—the presiding member of some ruling council or another. As such, it had the money. Scads of it, in point of fact. More than even Varouforos ordinarily charged, especially given that what Ippocampos did not bring to the table was a job. Or, at least, not a job for Varouforos and his mercenaries.

The kraken represented a state which called itself the Confederation of Independent Worlds, spread across two dozen star systems populated mainly by kraken and athati just beyond the Imperial border. Some two and a half years earlier, a party of yashcherit raiders had swept across the galactic north, conquering the Confederation and installing their leader as a false Orthodox Patriarch. Varouforos glanced at a portrait hanging on one of the pillars, just below the Autokrator’s. He doubted the news had ever reached old Patriarch Agapios, back on Homeworld.

That was ordinarily where Varouforos would sweep in, taking command of the scattered forces of the government in exile, leading them back to their home, and delivering them to a glorious victory. In this instance, however, the Confederation had managed on its own. The war was won. All that remained was for some representative of the Confederation to sign a piece of paper purporting to guarantee the yashcheritsy would not return, as though it had some strength on its own not backed by force of arms.

Through the psionic translation skepsis box clipped to one of its tentacles, Ippocampos repeated, “We would hire you as our representative at the treaty signing.”

“Again, I do not understand where I come in.”

Ippocampos tapped on its translation box with a tentacle. “Is this thing working?”

Varouforos stifled an exasperated sigh and plastered on a fake smile. “I understand what you want,” he said. “I do not understand why you want me. I am not known for diplomacy.”

“But you are well-known.” The alien waved a tentacle as it spoke, in a fashion Varouforos found almost human. “The yashcheritsy prefer to deal face-to-face.” It gestured to itself. “In a distressingly literal sense. We are not suitably equipped.”

Varouforos canted his head, amused. “You want to hire my face?”

“It is familiar in this part of the galaxy, and will lend gravity to the proceedings,” the kraken said. It hurried to add, “We wish to hire your fleet as well.”

“Of course,” Varouforos replied. “Very well. It is not my ordinary line of work, but I will do it. Fair warning: I do not see it being very difficult, but my rate stays the same.”

“This is acceptable.”

Varouforos raised an eyebrow, then pressed a button on the table in front of him. “Mr. Gray!”

A brown-haired man of average height entered through the door behind Varouforos. “Yes, Navarch?”

“Draw up an agreement for our client here.”

“Yes, Navarch.”

Far aft on the jump ship Morana‘s hull, high above the enormous hangars, the hab decks where hundreds of thousands of crew lived, and the banks of titanic reactors which drove her jump engines, the ship’s command spire rose two stadia above her topside. At the very top was a meeting room, one hundred paces fore to aft. The only furniture was a table nearly as long, space for many scores of sentients. The bulkheads, thirty paces tall, were armor crystal, interrupted only occasionally by support pillars. When Morana was traveling, the swirling electric blue-white of jump space was all the light the meeting room required.

Today, though, her mighty engines were silent, and chandeliers served to light the room. Out the windows were only stars, and, at intervals, Leptis Parva, a blue-green paradise world on the Empire’s far border in the galactic northeast, in the hinterland between Ares’ Arm and Hermes’ Arm.

Out here, the Homeworld Throne held little sway, and the local Themarchos had his hands full between incursions by the D’van and the usual petty squabbles with his neighbors. In such circumstances did men like Konstantin Varouforos make their living.

Varouforos sat at the head of the table. Bobbing gently in the air currents to his right was a kraken—the alien, not the creature of myth. One of its translucent tentacles wrapped around the back of a chair, tethering it in place. The rest of them waved gently in the breeze from the ventilators. Underneath its bell, its gasbag pulsated as the creature trimmed itself for table height. A half-dozen flitters, small flying creatures, circled it. By telepathic link, they were the alien’s eyes. As they whirled around the kraken’s bell, they turned their heads to track Varouforos.

That was good, Varouforos thought. All the better for the creature to see the deep skepticism written across his furrowed brow. “I do not understand where I come in.”

The kraken had arrived some hours ago aboard a diplomatic shuttle transferring from the jump ship Aggressor. It introduced itself as Ippocampos—Varouforos had known more creative kraken in his time—and resolutely refused to leave until it was granted an audience. Varouforos relented, if only to keep the poor alien from wasting away in some waiting room deep in the ship.

Usually, these meetings saw some supplicant, poor in every sense of the word, coming before Varouforos to plead for his aid in some martial matter. Sometimes, even, he could help. There was nothing like an existential crisis to clear a petitioner’s head regarding what he could not live without and what he could afford to lose—or to spend. Not infrequently did the latter category hold something of value to Varouforos.