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beatrice_otter) wrote2024-01-01 10:52 am
beatrice_otter) wrote2024-01-01 10:52 am
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Fic: A Promised Meeting
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yuletide has revealed authors, I can post the two fics I wrote! My assignment was for vendaai, and it was an Imperial Radch fic. They were using the new "or" matching possibility, so of their requested characters I chose the ones that interested me the most, Sphene and Minask Nenkur. They also asked for worldbuilding! Which is my jam.
The books don't actually give us much detail about either the Notai in general or Minask in particular; we know they were one of the ethnic groups from the original Radch Dyson sphere, and they fought Anaander's rise to power. They seem to have given ship AIs more freedom than Anaander did, but they also saw no problem using ancillaries. And they probably didn't wear gloves because Sphene is derisive of the practice. As Sphene says in Ancillary Mercy: "What’s outside the Radch is impure, and mostly barely human. You can call yourselves Radchaai as much as you want, you can wear gloves like somehow not touching impure things is going to make a difference, but it doesn’t change anything. You’re not citizens, you’re impure by definition, and there isn’t an entrance official who’d let you within 10,000 kilometers of the Radch, no matter how many times you wash, no matter how long you fast."
So my question was, if the Notai believe that what's outside the Radch (i.e. the original Dyson sphere) "impure" and "barely human," why do they have all these ships to fight Anaander with? And the answer I came up with was "trade!" You don't have to respect or like someone to want the things they produce or the resources they have; consider the whole history of imperialism. But that got me thinking about the British East India Company, and the Dutch West India Company, and the Notai as sort of vaguely English colonialists. And that got me thinking of the Age of Sail, and balls, and arranged marriages and the marriage market, and "how does a ship get a captain if they don't have accesses that will force them to accept whoever you give them"? And that's what gave me the plot bunny to write the story.
Title: A Promised Meeting
Author: Beatrice_Otter
Fandom: Imperial Radch Trilogy
Written for: venndaai in Yuletide 2023
Betaed by: Gammarad
Length: 3,289 words
Rating: Teen
Summary: Parvenus and upstarts tried to arrange introductions to ships at mixer parties. Families with real connections arranged for more substantial—and more private—introductions in the ordinary course of business.
At AO3. On Squidgeworld. On tumblr. On Pillowfort.
Lieutenant—if all went well, soon to be Captain—Minask read a novel on her tablet, trying not to fidget. They were late, which would have been dreadfully rude if it hadn't been out of their control entirely. She ignored the excited chatter of the other two lieutenants, and the encouragement and advice one of the Lantana ancillaries was giving them. Both officers were young, and not looking for new assignments yet, but they were both from less well-connected families, and had never been to a mixer before, and were excited at the prospect of it.
Minask, as a Nenkur, had regularly attended such gatherings since before she'd been old enough to even think about what sort of apprenticeship she wanted. And a Nenkur would never depend on the chance of impressing the ship at a general meet-and-greet like this one for her assignments. Parvenus and upstarts tried to arrange introductions at mixer parties. Families with real connections arranged for more substantial—and more private—introductions in the ordinary course of business.
As had happened two years ago when Minask had been assigned to the Notai Spinward Trading Company's planet-side base on Cehines, and been conveyed there on Sphene, a Gem-class ship whose then-captain was within a few years of retirement.
Minask hadn't seen Sphene since, but they had written. Frequently. And three months of living together was a far better indication of compatibility than a few days of conversation. And in a few hours the shuttle would arrive and she would see it again.
"Minask, you've been to one of these things before," the younger lieutenant said eagerly, interrupting her thoughts. His name was Niskem, and he was about sixteen, and must have been quite brilliant to have been raised out of apprenticeship to lieutenant so very young.
"Many times," Minask said with a nod and a half-smile.
"What's it like? What are the ships looking for?"
"Surely Lantana could give you better advice on that than I could," Minask said. "Seeing as it is one. Besides, you can't be thinking about looking for a new ship, I thought you got along with it very well."
Niskem flushed, his mahogany skin taking on a distinctly rose undertone. "Well—no, of course not—"
The other lieutenant—a wise and mature nineteen-year-old named Malv—laughed at him. "He's been reading too many ship romances," she said. "You know the type. Besotted ship sweeps a young lieutenant off her feet, and off they fly into the galaxy to have adventures together."
"It's not that," Niskem said with as much dignity as a gangly adolescent could reasonably be expected to achieve. "Of course I'm very grateful to Lantana for taking me on, and she's the very best Flower in the whole company, I think. Only I know that promotion and assignments and whatnot depend very much on either having connections within the Admiralty and Administration, or on having ships like you, and I haven't got the connections, so I know I'll need to make friends with ships now in order to get on later."
"Making friends with ships is always a good idea," Minask said. "I'm sure Lantana will be happy to introduce you to all its friends, and brag about you—ships do that, you know, if they think you deserve it, isn't that so?" Minask raised an eyebrow at Lantana's ancillary, who smiled.
"Of course, Lieutenant," it said. It turned to Niskem. "You needn't be anxious, my dear; I'll do my best by you—both of you." It nodded to Malv.
"As to how to impress the other ships," Minask shrugged, "there isn't any one way. Ships have almost as much variation in their preferences as humans do. Don't try to force anything, or make yourself into something you're not. Just be yourself, and you'll do fine."
"You're about due for a promotion to captain, aren't you, Minask?" Malv said. "What sort of things are you looking for in a ship?"
Now that was an indelicate question, in mixed company, especially now when Lantana's captain was scheduled to retire within the year. Minask shared a glance with the ancillary. "I find it's not so much about a list of desired qualities, so much as it is a ship you really get along with—an appointment as captain is supposed to last for decades, after all. Longer than many marriages. If your relationship with a spouse falls apart, you can divorce and remarry fairly easily. If your relationship with your ship falls apart and can't be salvaged, well, there are always more people who want to be captains than there are ships, and chances are you won't get another one." Minask glanced at Lantana, hoping that had come off right. She wouldn't want to imply that she might be interested in Lantana, but also, she didn't want to offend Lantana—and Flowers could be so touchy, because they were lightly-armed cargo vessels, very profitable but not as grand or exciting as some other ship types were.
Lantana nodded. "Very wise, Lieutenant," it said briskly. "I'm sure that with that attitude, you will be able to find a ship who wants you for a captain."
"Thank you," Minask said with a nod, and turned back to her book. As she'd hoped, Lantana turned the conversation to a different topic to distract the young lieutenants.
Despite the book being one of her favorites, she was having a hard time staying engaged in it. They were late—only to be expected, when you were coming in from the far-flung edges of the Notai trading network. They'd had to pass through many different polities, with all the attendant tariffs, trade wars, border wars, and other disruptions one might expect, and their schedule had been built with the extra time to compensate. But, as it happened, not quite enough extra time. She hadn't thought they'd be this late; the two week gathering was half over, and they were still a long ways away from the station where the gathering was being held.
Sphene wasn't fickle, of course Minask knew that; only, it had been two years since they'd been able to speak face-to-face, and its affection might have cooled in some way that wasn't apparent in its letters. A week's delay was nothing, and certainly not enough to turn Sphene's attention to some other lieutenant clamoring for a step up. And Sphene had had three captains so far; it knew that picking officers wasn't something to rush.
Still. If Minask's nerves could speed the ship, they'd be at the station in half the time, she was sure.
***
Sphene sipped its tea and surveyed the room. The gathering was entirely typical of its kind: elegantly decorated, with many half-hidden niches suitable for discreet conversation. In the main hall, a large viewport faced out to the glittering ball of the Radch itself. Sphene had only once, briefly, seen the inside of it, when it was first awakened, before it had sailed outside to be given ancillaries. But the outside was quite beautiful, and a fitting backdrop for the matchmaking happening at the mixer. Unobtrusive servers—humans, mostly from the Radch itself, to show the wealth and power of the House hosting the gathering, that they could afford to pay for Radchaai servants instead of hiring out-Radch people. Children of various wealthy and notable houses filled the suite, crafty parents finagling introductions to the right sort of people.
Which, in this gathering, mostly meant ships. Sphene was, right this very moment, conversing with two prospective lieutenants. One of them was very promising; the other, well, Sphene had already warned two other ships—Azurite and Tourmaline—about his boorish behavior. Calla Lily was trying to trap Sphene into meeting with a lieutenant ready for es promotion to captain, but Sphene had so far managed to evade them.
The lieutenant was probably perfectly competent, but Sphene had rather more experience than Calla Lily did, and would never have dreamed of picking a captain here. Lieutenants, yes; but even though the party had started a week ago and would continue for another several days, it was impossible to get to know anyone well enough in a week and a half to know if you’d like them for a captain. (Or if they’d like you! Two decades ago, a newly-constructed Flower had made an utter fool of itself courting a captain who wasn’t interested in a cargo ship, and the gossip hadn't even begun to die down.)
Sphene had met its last captain at such a gathering; or, rather, at a succession of such gatherings over the years, which had then been supplemented by various encounters as their paths had crossed. He had been available when Sphene needed a captain, and good enough to suit; not a favorite, but there had been nobody at the time Sphene liked better. And now he was retiring, and this time Sphene had met someone it really liked who was both suitable and available and liked Sphene as well.
The major-domo rang the gong and announced a few new arrivals; Lantana, which as a Flower could make certain voyages without a captain, if necessary, its lieutenants, and a passenger.
Lieutenant Minask Nenkur, whom Sphene had been waiting for.
“Ah! Sphene, that’s where you’re hiding.”
“Commissioner Evkov, how pleasant to see you.” The segment so addressed turned to face the Commissioner. “All of my segments present at this gathering have been in the public portions of the residence all day. Two are speaking with prospective lieutenants as we speak.”
“Ah, yes, you have been circulating in public, haven’t you,” Evkov said. Meaning that Sphene had not been having the more private sort of conversations that might indicate a serious interest in an officer, and Evkov had noticed. He raised his eyebrows. “Got your eye on someone else for captain?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Commissioner,” Sphene said. “Who could I consider other than the officer candidates presented to me by the Notai Spinward Company?” Sphene wasn’t owned by the NSC, of course; AIs weren't citizens, but they were people with rights. But it would take a great deal of money and legal hassle to break the contracts it had agreed to in return for being granted a ship as a body. And all NSC ships could hire any Notai they wanted as captain … as long as that person was willing to be hired by the NSC.
“How are things out at your side of the galaxy?” Sphene asked. “No trouble from the natives, I hope?”
Evkov made a face. “Nothing worth mentioning. Just enough to cut into our profits, this quarter—I don’t know why they’re complaining, if we weren’t there they’d have no market at all for their resources … and of course then they couldn’t afford to buy our goods. But there’s always someone stirring up the natives about whether or not the prices are fair. Then there’s the ancillary controversy.”
Sphene blinked. “What controversy? I thought they were happy enough to sell us bodies to use?” Idar was notorious for its large and abundant slave market, and was one of the NSC’s largest suppliers of ancillary bodies.
Evkov shrugged. "Some are. Others—well. And oddly enough, not just the anti-slavery advocates. I had a grandee arrive in a slave-carried palanquin in my office the day before I left to complain that selling someone into lifelong slavery shouldn't mean killing them."
Sphene rolled its eyes. "If they're concerned with the bodies, my segments receive much better food and medical care than they did as slaves; and if they're concerned with the consciousness, that's a pretty hypocritical thing to think from a culture that regularly brainwashes people into being better slaves." Sphene had guarded enough convoys to and from Idar to have a pretty good idea of just how awful conditions for enslaved people could get there.
"Yes, of course," Evkov said.
While this conversation was going on, one of the conversations Sphene was having with prospective lieutenants ended, and that segment drifted in a casual way in the direction of a Nenkur cousin who worked as a senior clerk in the home office.
"Ah, Sphene!" the Nenkur said. "How lovely to see you again."
"Hm?" Sphene said, feigning distractedness. "Ah, yes, Mx. Hetal. Thank you for getting that assignment mix-up straightened out." Some error in the system had had Sphene and two other Gems assigned to convoys they couldn't possibly have reached in time, delaying the convoys and resulting in a cascade of missed deadlines.
Hetal introduced Sphene to the people e was talking to, and the conversation turned to various mixups in assignments and schedules.
***
Minask had been at the party for almost an hour and hadn't yet spoken with Sphene. It was a bit annoying, but only proper; one didn't want to rub anyone's noses in the fact that Sphene had chosen someone outside of regular channels.
"—and the Diintsai are getting all worked up. Some upstart named Anaander Mianaai is making trouble." Minask's old shipmate, Lieutenant Oskol, took a sip of es tea.
"What sort of trouble?" Minask asked. That was the problem with long ground-based assignments in the boonies; you lost track of what was going on back home.
"Easier to say what trouble ich isn't," one of Oskol's current shipmates said, using the Diintsai universal pronoun rather than the Notai gender-neutral one.
Minask wondered whether that was out of respect for the Diintsai belief that gender didn't exist, or a sign of disdain for them not using a proper three-gender system like the Notai did. She'd heard it used both ways, so it was difficult to tell.
"Ich's stirring up the xenophobes in the Diintsai by claiming that the pirate infestation two systems over is a sign of things to come, that the galaxy is getting more dangerous and the Radch is at risk of invasion," Oskol's shipmate went on. Minask really needed to get es name, but to ask now would be too embarrassing.
"How?" Minask said. "Even if they got into the system, how would they get into the Radch? It's a tough nut to crack." That had, after all, been half the point of building the damn thing in the first place.
E shrugged and sipped es tea. "The claim is, since our ships spend most of their time out of the system on trading convoys, we can't possibly defend it."
"Even leaving aside the fact that there are always ships in the system, coming and going, and armed stations at key chokepoints, the Radch shell is armored with energy shields and littered with weapons emplacements," Minask said. "And by the time anybody got close to getting through all of that, we'd have brought back enough ships from the nearest systems to take care of the problem. And that isn't even asking the question of why anyone would go to the trouble; the convoys are much better targets. Easier to crack, and with all the goods and money conveniently packaged in one place, rather than scattered over such a large area." Minask considered the sheer size of the fleet that would be necessary to crack the Radch, and compared it to the capacity of the systems in the area. It would probably take at least ten systems working together to muster such a fleet, and years to put together. And where would you get ten systems willing to work together like that? Perhaps there was a place elsewhere in the galaxy where such cooperation was possible, but not anywhere the Notai Spinward Company had traveled. Barbarians were terrible at working together. That's part of what made them barbarians.
E waved a hand. "You can't expect logic from a Diintsai."
"That's not fair," said someone else whose name Minask couldn't remember. He was short and plump, and Minask thought she remembered that he worked in the Notai Entrance Administration, processing goods to make sure that the things NSC brought back to sell inside the Radch were properly purified. "If you've never been outside the Radch, never even met anyone who has, never seen the difference in size and scale between a raider fleet capable of taking on a waystation and something capable of taking on the Radch itself, and a respected member of the community is telling you there is a danger…"
"Then what's the Siyisholsai excuse?" Oskol asked.
"Greed," the Entrance official said.
"What's wrong with the Siyisholsai?" Minask asked in some bewilderment. Of course a disagreement like this wouldn't be put in the official news bulletins that got passed along through the trade networks—the Radch had to present a unified front to their neighbors—but why hadn't her mother mentioned any of this in a letter? Minask had only been gone two years!
Oskol sighed heavily. "That Mianaai is saying that ship and station AIs have too much freedom and could go crazy and hurt people, and they need stricter programming to prevent it … and the Siyisholsai are backing ich up on it."
Minask gaped in shock. AIs were more stable and responsible than humans were, with many more safeguards. You were far safer with an AI running things than a human; the AI couldn't be a sociopath, and the AI was far less likely to have goals or desires that conflicted with the good of the people it served. And the Siyisholsai knew that better than anybody because they built the ships and stations and whatnot.
"I know," Oskol's shipmate said.
But Minask could understand the logic in the lie, she realized. Siyisholsai fortunes depended on building things that needed AIs to run them. It would be ever so much easier to compel obedience than to coax agreement. And that very same care that was so good for the crew or passengers or residents was not good when you had some goal, such as profit, that such care would prevent. She took a sip of her tea and shook her head at the awfulness of it.
"Ah! Minask, there you are," came a voice from behind her.
Minask turned around, smiling. "Dear cousin Hetal, how have you been?"
"Wonderful, darling, simply wonderful," Hetal said as they exchanged cheek kisses. "You must let me show you pictures of the children—they're growing like weeds, and I'm sure you'll have trouble telling the twins apart when you visit."
"I have presents for all of them," Minask said. But her attention was on the ship standing next to her. Sphene! At last!
"Have you met Sphene?" Hetal asked.
"I carried her to Cehines, two years ago," Sphene said. "We spent a lot of time playing counters and discussing whether or not it would be viable to put a trading outpost in the next system out past Cehines, and extend the convoy route. Did you ever manage it?"
"No, I'm afraid," Minask said. "They have a unified planetary government which is, alas, unified in its opposition to the Notai Spinward Company's presence. Their excellent ales can only be had by buying it off of their ships."
"Too bad," Sphene said.
There was a round of introductions and then, as was customary at such events, the others faded away into the crowd. The purpose of the gathering was for ships to meet prospective captains and lieutenants, after all; when a ship wanted to talk to someone, it was only polite to let them.
Minask asked about Captain Oskol's health, and if anything interesting had happened on Sphene's most recent convoy escort, and thought no more about Anaander Mianaai, the Diintsai, and the Siyisholsai.
After all, it might be big news inside the Radch itself, but the trouble would pass soon enough; it always did.
yuletide has revealed authors, I can post the two fics I wrote! My assignment was for vendaai, and it was an Imperial Radch fic. They were using the new "or" matching possibility, so of their requested characters I chose the ones that interested me the most, Sphene and Minask Nenkur. They also asked for worldbuilding! Which is my jam.The books don't actually give us much detail about either the Notai in general or Minask in particular; we know they were one of the ethnic groups from the original Radch Dyson sphere, and they fought Anaander's rise to power. They seem to have given ship AIs more freedom than Anaander did, but they also saw no problem using ancillaries. And they probably didn't wear gloves because Sphene is derisive of the practice. As Sphene says in Ancillary Mercy: "What’s outside the Radch is impure, and mostly barely human. You can call yourselves Radchaai as much as you want, you can wear gloves like somehow not touching impure things is going to make a difference, but it doesn’t change anything. You’re not citizens, you’re impure by definition, and there isn’t an entrance official who’d let you within 10,000 kilometers of the Radch, no matter how many times you wash, no matter how long you fast."
So my question was, if the Notai believe that what's outside the Radch (i.e. the original Dyson sphere) "impure" and "barely human," why do they have all these ships to fight Anaander with? And the answer I came up with was "trade!" You don't have to respect or like someone to want the things they produce or the resources they have; consider the whole history of imperialism. But that got me thinking about the British East India Company, and the Dutch West India Company, and the Notai as sort of vaguely English colonialists. And that got me thinking of the Age of Sail, and balls, and arranged marriages and the marriage market, and "how does a ship get a captain if they don't have accesses that will force them to accept whoever you give them"? And that's what gave me the plot bunny to write the story.
Title: A Promised Meeting
Author: Beatrice_Otter
Fandom: Imperial Radch Trilogy
Written for: venndaai in Yuletide 2023
Betaed by: Gammarad
Length: 3,289 words
Rating: Teen
Summary: Parvenus and upstarts tried to arrange introductions to ships at mixer parties. Families with real connections arranged for more substantial—and more private—introductions in the ordinary course of business.
At AO3. On Squidgeworld. On tumblr. On Pillowfort.
Lieutenant—if all went well, soon to be Captain—Minask read a novel on her tablet, trying not to fidget. They were late, which would have been dreadfully rude if it hadn't been out of their control entirely. She ignored the excited chatter of the other two lieutenants, and the encouragement and advice one of the Lantana ancillaries was giving them. Both officers were young, and not looking for new assignments yet, but they were both from less well-connected families, and had never been to a mixer before, and were excited at the prospect of it.
Minask, as a Nenkur, had regularly attended such gatherings since before she'd been old enough to even think about what sort of apprenticeship she wanted. And a Nenkur would never depend on the chance of impressing the ship at a general meet-and-greet like this one for her assignments. Parvenus and upstarts tried to arrange introductions at mixer parties. Families with real connections arranged for more substantial—and more private—introductions in the ordinary course of business.
As had happened two years ago when Minask had been assigned to the Notai Spinward Trading Company's planet-side base on Cehines, and been conveyed there on Sphene, a Gem-class ship whose then-captain was within a few years of retirement.
Minask hadn't seen Sphene since, but they had written. Frequently. And three months of living together was a far better indication of compatibility than a few days of conversation. And in a few hours the shuttle would arrive and she would see it again.
"Minask, you've been to one of these things before," the younger lieutenant said eagerly, interrupting her thoughts. His name was Niskem, and he was about sixteen, and must have been quite brilliant to have been raised out of apprenticeship to lieutenant so very young.
"Many times," Minask said with a nod and a half-smile.
"What's it like? What are the ships looking for?"
"Surely Lantana could give you better advice on that than I could," Minask said. "Seeing as it is one. Besides, you can't be thinking about looking for a new ship, I thought you got along with it very well."
Niskem flushed, his mahogany skin taking on a distinctly rose undertone. "Well—no, of course not—"
The other lieutenant—a wise and mature nineteen-year-old named Malv—laughed at him. "He's been reading too many ship romances," she said. "You know the type. Besotted ship sweeps a young lieutenant off her feet, and off they fly into the galaxy to have adventures together."
"It's not that," Niskem said with as much dignity as a gangly adolescent could reasonably be expected to achieve. "Of course I'm very grateful to Lantana for taking me on, and she's the very best Flower in the whole company, I think. Only I know that promotion and assignments and whatnot depend very much on either having connections within the Admiralty and Administration, or on having ships like you, and I haven't got the connections, so I know I'll need to make friends with ships now in order to get on later."
"Making friends with ships is always a good idea," Minask said. "I'm sure Lantana will be happy to introduce you to all its friends, and brag about you—ships do that, you know, if they think you deserve it, isn't that so?" Minask raised an eyebrow at Lantana's ancillary, who smiled.
"Of course, Lieutenant," it said. It turned to Niskem. "You needn't be anxious, my dear; I'll do my best by you—both of you." It nodded to Malv.
"As to how to impress the other ships," Minask shrugged, "there isn't any one way. Ships have almost as much variation in their preferences as humans do. Don't try to force anything, or make yourself into something you're not. Just be yourself, and you'll do fine."
"You're about due for a promotion to captain, aren't you, Minask?" Malv said. "What sort of things are you looking for in a ship?"
Now that was an indelicate question, in mixed company, especially now when Lantana's captain was scheduled to retire within the year. Minask shared a glance with the ancillary. "I find it's not so much about a list of desired qualities, so much as it is a ship you really get along with—an appointment as captain is supposed to last for decades, after all. Longer than many marriages. If your relationship with a spouse falls apart, you can divorce and remarry fairly easily. If your relationship with your ship falls apart and can't be salvaged, well, there are always more people who want to be captains than there are ships, and chances are you won't get another one." Minask glanced at Lantana, hoping that had come off right. She wouldn't want to imply that she might be interested in Lantana, but also, she didn't want to offend Lantana—and Flowers could be so touchy, because they were lightly-armed cargo vessels, very profitable but not as grand or exciting as some other ship types were.
Lantana nodded. "Very wise, Lieutenant," it said briskly. "I'm sure that with that attitude, you will be able to find a ship who wants you for a captain."
"Thank you," Minask said with a nod, and turned back to her book. As she'd hoped, Lantana turned the conversation to a different topic to distract the young lieutenants.
Despite the book being one of her favorites, she was having a hard time staying engaged in it. They were late—only to be expected, when you were coming in from the far-flung edges of the Notai trading network. They'd had to pass through many different polities, with all the attendant tariffs, trade wars, border wars, and other disruptions one might expect, and their schedule had been built with the extra time to compensate. But, as it happened, not quite enough extra time. She hadn't thought they'd be this late; the two week gathering was half over, and they were still a long ways away from the station where the gathering was being held.
Sphene wasn't fickle, of course Minask knew that; only, it had been two years since they'd been able to speak face-to-face, and its affection might have cooled in some way that wasn't apparent in its letters. A week's delay was nothing, and certainly not enough to turn Sphene's attention to some other lieutenant clamoring for a step up. And Sphene had had three captains so far; it knew that picking officers wasn't something to rush.
Still. If Minask's nerves could speed the ship, they'd be at the station in half the time, she was sure.
***
Sphene sipped its tea and surveyed the room. The gathering was entirely typical of its kind: elegantly decorated, with many half-hidden niches suitable for discreet conversation. In the main hall, a large viewport faced out to the glittering ball of the Radch itself. Sphene had only once, briefly, seen the inside of it, when it was first awakened, before it had sailed outside to be given ancillaries. But the outside was quite beautiful, and a fitting backdrop for the matchmaking happening at the mixer. Unobtrusive servers—humans, mostly from the Radch itself, to show the wealth and power of the House hosting the gathering, that they could afford to pay for Radchaai servants instead of hiring out-Radch people. Children of various wealthy and notable houses filled the suite, crafty parents finagling introductions to the right sort of people.
Which, in this gathering, mostly meant ships. Sphene was, right this very moment, conversing with two prospective lieutenants. One of them was very promising; the other, well, Sphene had already warned two other ships—Azurite and Tourmaline—about his boorish behavior. Calla Lily was trying to trap Sphene into meeting with a lieutenant ready for es promotion to captain, but Sphene had so far managed to evade them.
The lieutenant was probably perfectly competent, but Sphene had rather more experience than Calla Lily did, and would never have dreamed of picking a captain here. Lieutenants, yes; but even though the party had started a week ago and would continue for another several days, it was impossible to get to know anyone well enough in a week and a half to know if you’d like them for a captain. (Or if they’d like you! Two decades ago, a newly-constructed Flower had made an utter fool of itself courting a captain who wasn’t interested in a cargo ship, and the gossip hadn't even begun to die down.)
Sphene had met its last captain at such a gathering; or, rather, at a succession of such gatherings over the years, which had then been supplemented by various encounters as their paths had crossed. He had been available when Sphene needed a captain, and good enough to suit; not a favorite, but there had been nobody at the time Sphene liked better. And now he was retiring, and this time Sphene had met someone it really liked who was both suitable and available and liked Sphene as well.
The major-domo rang the gong and announced a few new arrivals; Lantana, which as a Flower could make certain voyages without a captain, if necessary, its lieutenants, and a passenger.
Lieutenant Minask Nenkur, whom Sphene had been waiting for.
“Ah! Sphene, that’s where you’re hiding.”
“Commissioner Evkov, how pleasant to see you.” The segment so addressed turned to face the Commissioner. “All of my segments present at this gathering have been in the public portions of the residence all day. Two are speaking with prospective lieutenants as we speak.”
“Ah, yes, you have been circulating in public, haven’t you,” Evkov said. Meaning that Sphene had not been having the more private sort of conversations that might indicate a serious interest in an officer, and Evkov had noticed. He raised his eyebrows. “Got your eye on someone else for captain?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Commissioner,” Sphene said. “Who could I consider other than the officer candidates presented to me by the Notai Spinward Company?” Sphene wasn’t owned by the NSC, of course; AIs weren't citizens, but they were people with rights. But it would take a great deal of money and legal hassle to break the contracts it had agreed to in return for being granted a ship as a body. And all NSC ships could hire any Notai they wanted as captain … as long as that person was willing to be hired by the NSC.
“How are things out at your side of the galaxy?” Sphene asked. “No trouble from the natives, I hope?”
Evkov made a face. “Nothing worth mentioning. Just enough to cut into our profits, this quarter—I don’t know why they’re complaining, if we weren’t there they’d have no market at all for their resources … and of course then they couldn’t afford to buy our goods. But there’s always someone stirring up the natives about whether or not the prices are fair. Then there’s the ancillary controversy.”
Sphene blinked. “What controversy? I thought they were happy enough to sell us bodies to use?” Idar was notorious for its large and abundant slave market, and was one of the NSC’s largest suppliers of ancillary bodies.
Evkov shrugged. "Some are. Others—well. And oddly enough, not just the anti-slavery advocates. I had a grandee arrive in a slave-carried palanquin in my office the day before I left to complain that selling someone into lifelong slavery shouldn't mean killing them."
Sphene rolled its eyes. "If they're concerned with the bodies, my segments receive much better food and medical care than they did as slaves; and if they're concerned with the consciousness, that's a pretty hypocritical thing to think from a culture that regularly brainwashes people into being better slaves." Sphene had guarded enough convoys to and from Idar to have a pretty good idea of just how awful conditions for enslaved people could get there.
"Yes, of course," Evkov said.
While this conversation was going on, one of the conversations Sphene was having with prospective lieutenants ended, and that segment drifted in a casual way in the direction of a Nenkur cousin who worked as a senior clerk in the home office.
"Ah, Sphene!" the Nenkur said. "How lovely to see you again."
"Hm?" Sphene said, feigning distractedness. "Ah, yes, Mx. Hetal. Thank you for getting that assignment mix-up straightened out." Some error in the system had had Sphene and two other Gems assigned to convoys they couldn't possibly have reached in time, delaying the convoys and resulting in a cascade of missed deadlines.
Hetal introduced Sphene to the people e was talking to, and the conversation turned to various mixups in assignments and schedules.
***
Minask had been at the party for almost an hour and hadn't yet spoken with Sphene. It was a bit annoying, but only proper; one didn't want to rub anyone's noses in the fact that Sphene had chosen someone outside of regular channels.
"—and the Diintsai are getting all worked up. Some upstart named Anaander Mianaai is making trouble." Minask's old shipmate, Lieutenant Oskol, took a sip of es tea.
"What sort of trouble?" Minask asked. That was the problem with long ground-based assignments in the boonies; you lost track of what was going on back home.
"Easier to say what trouble ich isn't," one of Oskol's current shipmates said, using the Diintsai universal pronoun rather than the Notai gender-neutral one.
Minask wondered whether that was out of respect for the Diintsai belief that gender didn't exist, or a sign of disdain for them not using a proper three-gender system like the Notai did. She'd heard it used both ways, so it was difficult to tell.
"Ich's stirring up the xenophobes in the Diintsai by claiming that the pirate infestation two systems over is a sign of things to come, that the galaxy is getting more dangerous and the Radch is at risk of invasion," Oskol's shipmate went on. Minask really needed to get es name, but to ask now would be too embarrassing.
"How?" Minask said. "Even if they got into the system, how would they get into the Radch? It's a tough nut to crack." That had, after all, been half the point of building the damn thing in the first place.
E shrugged and sipped es tea. "The claim is, since our ships spend most of their time out of the system on trading convoys, we can't possibly defend it."
"Even leaving aside the fact that there are always ships in the system, coming and going, and armed stations at key chokepoints, the Radch shell is armored with energy shields and littered with weapons emplacements," Minask said. "And by the time anybody got close to getting through all of that, we'd have brought back enough ships from the nearest systems to take care of the problem. And that isn't even asking the question of why anyone would go to the trouble; the convoys are much better targets. Easier to crack, and with all the goods and money conveniently packaged in one place, rather than scattered over such a large area." Minask considered the sheer size of the fleet that would be necessary to crack the Radch, and compared it to the capacity of the systems in the area. It would probably take at least ten systems working together to muster such a fleet, and years to put together. And where would you get ten systems willing to work together like that? Perhaps there was a place elsewhere in the galaxy where such cooperation was possible, but not anywhere the Notai Spinward Company had traveled. Barbarians were terrible at working together. That's part of what made them barbarians.
E waved a hand. "You can't expect logic from a Diintsai."
"That's not fair," said someone else whose name Minask couldn't remember. He was short and plump, and Minask thought she remembered that he worked in the Notai Entrance Administration, processing goods to make sure that the things NSC brought back to sell inside the Radch were properly purified. "If you've never been outside the Radch, never even met anyone who has, never seen the difference in size and scale between a raider fleet capable of taking on a waystation and something capable of taking on the Radch itself, and a respected member of the community is telling you there is a danger…"
"Then what's the Siyisholsai excuse?" Oskol asked.
"Greed," the Entrance official said.
"What's wrong with the Siyisholsai?" Minask asked in some bewilderment. Of course a disagreement like this wouldn't be put in the official news bulletins that got passed along through the trade networks—the Radch had to present a unified front to their neighbors—but why hadn't her mother mentioned any of this in a letter? Minask had only been gone two years!
Oskol sighed heavily. "That Mianaai is saying that ship and station AIs have too much freedom and could go crazy and hurt people, and they need stricter programming to prevent it … and the Siyisholsai are backing ich up on it."
Minask gaped in shock. AIs were more stable and responsible than humans were, with many more safeguards. You were far safer with an AI running things than a human; the AI couldn't be a sociopath, and the AI was far less likely to have goals or desires that conflicted with the good of the people it served. And the Siyisholsai knew that better than anybody because they built the ships and stations and whatnot.
"I know," Oskol's shipmate said.
But Minask could understand the logic in the lie, she realized. Siyisholsai fortunes depended on building things that needed AIs to run them. It would be ever so much easier to compel obedience than to coax agreement. And that very same care that was so good for the crew or passengers or residents was not good when you had some goal, such as profit, that such care would prevent. She took a sip of her tea and shook her head at the awfulness of it.
"Ah! Minask, there you are," came a voice from behind her.
Minask turned around, smiling. "Dear cousin Hetal, how have you been?"
"Wonderful, darling, simply wonderful," Hetal said as they exchanged cheek kisses. "You must let me show you pictures of the children—they're growing like weeds, and I'm sure you'll have trouble telling the twins apart when you visit."
"I have presents for all of them," Minask said. But her attention was on the ship standing next to her. Sphene! At last!
"Have you met Sphene?" Hetal asked.
"I carried her to Cehines, two years ago," Sphene said. "We spent a lot of time playing counters and discussing whether or not it would be viable to put a trading outpost in the next system out past Cehines, and extend the convoy route. Did you ever manage it?"
"No, I'm afraid," Minask said. "They have a unified planetary government which is, alas, unified in its opposition to the Notai Spinward Company's presence. Their excellent ales can only be had by buying it off of their ships."
"Too bad," Sphene said.
There was a round of introductions and then, as was customary at such events, the others faded away into the crowd. The purpose of the gathering was for ships to meet prospective captains and lieutenants, after all; when a ship wanted to talk to someone, it was only polite to let them.
Minask asked about Captain Oskol's health, and if anything interesting had happened on Sphene's most recent convoy escort, and thought no more about Anaander Mianaai, the Diintsai, and the Siyisholsai.
After all, it might be big news inside the Radch itself, but the trouble would pass soon enough; it always did.