Yart Jan’lan was an outstanding political schemer in an entire culture of political schemers. In his mind, his relationship with the Spynet was all for his own benefit. They provided him information directly for his ambassadorial duties, bypassing the usual chain of command, and in turn they often … advised on how he should proceed. As long as this didn’t undermine his position, this seemed a perfectly fair exchange. His own career was far more important than his principles afterall. What was allowing the intelligence agency to influence negotiations outside of the government’s eye, when compared with the prospect of having a distinctly average career?
As son, Yart found himself once again sat opposite the rather ordinary looking human. A little short and skinny for his kind, but there was nothing special about this one. He certainly found it difficult to remember anything interesting about his contact after their meetings.
Odd, how they used humans so often. But then, he supposed it made sense. They were so very
common in the Galaxy, it made sense to have human operatives infiltrating the enemy. Didn’t explain why one of them was handling
his business though. Then Yart found that this just wasn’t worth thinking about, the idea gradually melted away, is if something was pushing it to the back of his mind…
The human leant forwards in his chair, fixing Yart’s attention with his deep, green eyes. “So, are you happy? There’s no need to do anything more than try and keep the peace. Concessions can be made as long as the discussions are well mediated. We don’t have the resources to start another war. We have terrorists on one front, criminals on the other, and we’re about to make matters
complicated with the Republic,” the man said. His voice was calm, but had a crispness that held Yart’s attention and made suggestions sound just a touch like orders. Yart idly mused that a political career would have suited this human well.
“I get it. Keep things calm, pay attention to the different views within the Union,” Yart replied off-handedly. He wanted the human to realise that his orders were not all that important to him. Afterall Jan’lanwas was the second most important ambassador on Bothawui.
“The Union is a loose collection of interests. I’m interested in finding out how each of them takes things. I want to know what they’re after.”
~
The next day, Yart found himself looking through a plastiglass screen as a world he had never visited before. He liked to consider himself as exceptionally well-travelled, which was why he was particularly disappointed that negotiations were being conducted on a space station. Lifeless and grey things, it would have been far more civilised to conduct this at a location with access to food, drink and entertainment. Perhaps that was the point. Short and sharp negotiations, with no distractions. The Techno Union war fleet that he could make out was also part of that suggestion, he imagined. The war machine had been ramping up in scale recently. Production over Bothawui had increased two-fold they said, and they produced just a small section of the fleet.
“Ten minutes to docking. Negotiations start in an hour, but you’ll be escorted to the chambers.”
