LF Friends, Will Travel

Collateral damage: Part 2

This was not how Claire wanted her first real assignment to be.

Years of hard work had led to this moment, hundreds of thousands of hours working through bureaucratic messes, colony disputes, mindless trade meeting after trade meeting. All to finally get to the holy grail of Terran diplomacy: The official Terran Xeno relations department. A chance to not only meet and explore the universe, but make it a better place.

Claire Weber was the newest member of the team, having started a mere week ago. The first few weeks were supposed to be simple: Get to know people, acclimatise to the sterile boring space stations of the neutral federation and unpack your stuff. This meant when the message went out for anyone and everyone to help with this mess ASAP, Claire was the first and only other Terran diplomat immediately on the station at the time.

Which is how on her first job she found herself walking next to the diplomatic legend that was Jan Eagles, speeding down the corridors in an attempt to try and stop a galactic war.

"So this is the information on prince Hakthas I was able to scrounge up." Claire handed the folder that was thick with papers to her boss as she struggled to keep up the fast pace.

"In summary however, Prince Hakthas was a disliked figure, including amongst the Raha: Considered exceptionally cruel even by their standards. Being fourth in the line to the throne meant he had very little responsibilities, so instead spent his time doing nothing more than draining the Raha royal treasury and 'Joyriding', for lack of a better term, among uncontacted or unaligned civilizations. Being assigned to his personal retinue was generally considered a punishment given to those who couldn't be outright fired or killed".

Claire took a moment to catch her breath, watching Jan go through the information she'd handed him. It wasn't up to her usual quality and quantity, due to having a mere twenty minutes of research and collation time; she desperately hoped it was good enough to not leave a bad first impression.

"However if the alleged murder of Hakthas by a Terran is true, this has some serious repercussions. The Raha has fallen out of favour compared with the other four Estorian royal houses in recent years, due to their staunch belief that starting a war with the Terran Alliance would be a losing proposition. Taking into account the context of the Terran Alliance's actions have slowed the Estorian Empires more recent advances. Having no response to such an action might let the other four houses believe that the Raha royal house no longer 'deserves' their place".

Jan took a moment to look up from the wealth of information he'd been given, on both the alleged murder victim and the ambassador he was about to meet with.

"How long did this take you? You couldn't have had more than half an hour to prepare this amount of information?"

"Around twenty minutes sir."

Claire was not a great schmoozer. She couldn't instantly bond with anyone in seconds. She very distinctly disliked long complicated political plans involving backstabbing everyone, much preferring people to be straight forwards. But what Claire was good at was research.

Claire was a mere 54 years of age, meaning while most Terrans were familiar with Xeno forms of communication, Claire had never known an empty universe: she had grown up with a galactic community and had embraced it. While most Terrans knew of and could use the various species Galnet systems, Claire had spent her entire life with them.

She could tell you on which nodes Lithorian soldiers tended to say too much, which species social media apps were the most used by each sector of employment, and who had the best facial recognition databases. Everyone left a trail behind and knowing everything about the person on the other side of the negotiating table, made working out deals much easier. Diplomacy was simple when you knew exactly what the other person actually wanted.