Post by Lorpius Prime on Jun 15, 2009 1:43:32 GMT -5
Hyong did not win his game in 27 moves. Pascual wondered if he'd actually thought he would, or if he had just said that confuse his opponent. Whichever the case was, Hyong had clearly had something planned, because 46 moves later, he had the clear edge. Onadunwe now owned less than a quarter of all the pieces on the board.
Hyong's wings were almost fully extended and slid across the table every time he made a move. Pascual was no longer sure if the twitching wings had been a sign of anger at all. Hyong was hunched forward to stare intently at his PDA as if it were a helpless prey animal.
Onadunwe had changed too. It had taken Pascual longer to notice, but her head was now nearly half again as large as it had been when she first sat down. The furry black crest which ran along the top of her skull and down her back had mushroomed into a large bulb covering her scalp. The bulb pulsated rhythmically, as if it was breathing.
She wasn't playing as quickly, now, but hesitated for several seconds before each move. She was probably losing confidence, unnerved by Hyong's comeback.
After almost a minute of waiting this time, Onadunwe placed her next piece, capturing a six-long chain from Hyong. Hyong immediately raised his own arm to strike at the PDA, but before he finished the motion, the lights in the conference room turned red.
"What the—?" Pascual looked up.
The lights returned to their normal bright white, but speakers mounted around the ceiling began wailing an alarm. Pascual put his hands to his ears.
A nervous voice buzzed from the speakers: "All hands to combat stations! All hands to combat stations! General alert, all hands to combat stations!"
Combat stations? Pascual bolted up from his seat. But rather than simply standing, however, the motion carried him up off the floor and into the ceiling where it met the wall behind him. The Barn Swallow had not yet resumed acceleration. The back of Pascual's head struck a handle bar on the ceiling, and he bit his lip.
The aliens in the room managed to keep their seats, but they were looking about the room, clearly confused themselves.
"What is happening?" Hyong demanded.
Pascual, still rubbing his bruised head, thought that he would like to know the answer to that question himself.
Task Force One had been underway for 71 hours. Accelerating at one half of standard Earth gravity, the 19 Human ships and 1 Tadpole transport had travelled over 160 million kilometers from Earth. After accelerating so long, the ships were now travelling at 1.25 thousand kilometers per second relative to planet Earth. At that velocity, Task Force One was a weapon of mass destruction even before its warships launched the 784 nuclear warheads they carried.
Earth Fleet subjected every one of its officers to intensive psychological screening before any were allowed anywhere near the controls of such vessels.
At the midpoint between Earth and Mars, 19 vessels deactivated their primary engines—dangerous weapons in their own right—to "flip" over before accelerating in the opposite direction. One ship did not.
The Uruguay was Commodore Lee Xi Feng's flagship, and the lead ship of Earth Fleet's most powerful class of heavy cruisers. Like most of Earth Fleet's interplanetary ships, the vast majority of its mass and volume was given over to the engines and propellant which allowed it to cross the great distances of space so quickly. Wrapped around that mammoth drive assembly, however, was the deadliest weapons platform ever constructed by Humans.
The Uruguay mounted 20 railguns in a ring around its cylindrical shell. The railguns were similar in design to those mounted on the surface warships of some of Earth's wet-navies. But at 250 meters, the Uruguay's guns alone were longer than most of those floating ships. The guns were just under 1 meter in diameter and could fire 500-kiloton hydrogen bombs mated to lasing rods and guidance packages at 15 kilometers per second. Each gun was mounted on a turret that could rise up to 60 degrees off the ship's axis, and rotate 20 degrees to either side. With all its guns fully extended, the Uruguay looked like a spiny sea creature.
All its guns were not fully extended. From its current position, every other ship of Task Force One was comfortably within the arc of the Uruguay's primary weapons. The Uruguay fired. All twenty cannons sank were slammed back on the hydraulics of their turrets; their barrels glowed orange as the radiator coatings dissipated heat. The great ship shuddered as thrusters fired to correct for the force which threatened to throw the ship off axis.
The twenty projectiles were long strips of chrome-plated steel that had been encased in paraffin and then wrapped in a thin copper sabot. Each was travelling at 5 kilometers per second when it left the barrel of its railgun. The heat of firing caused the projectile casing to expand until the chrome strips were travelling within meter-wide bubbles of molten material.
The closest ship to the Uruguay was a Luzon-class destroyer, the EFS Gotland. The crew of the Gotland had less than six seconds to react before two Uruguay's chrome slugs passed within two kilometers of the destroyer. This was enough time for the CIWS radar to activate and plot the course of the projectiles. But by the time the Gotland's laser pods were ready to fire, the slugs had passed harmlessly on their way.
The next closest ship was the EFA Santa Cruz, a propellant tanker. The Santa Cruz also had a CIWS system, but it failed to detect the single projectile which passed by the tanker. The captain of the Santa Cruz would not even realize that his ship had been targeted for several seconds more.
Two more tankers suffered near misses without responding before Task Force One's ammunition hauler, the EFA Kilimanjaro, detected and destroyed one of the projectiles at a range of 3 kilometers.
"There we go," Lieutenant Cheyo shouted with noticeable relief.
Xi Feng was grimacing at the plot on her monitor. By the rules of this exercise, she had just "killed" six of her own ships—including two destroyers—in less than thirty seconds without a response from any of them. The monitor blinked: seven ships.
"Ouch, that's the Congo," Cheyo narrated. Xi Feng had to bite her tongue against the profanity it wanted to
So far the only ships which had survived were their ammunition hauler and a single propellant tanker.
Xi Feng gritted her teeth as the ship rattled. That was the second volley.
"Aha!" Cheyo cried. "Bermuda and the Cyprus both just made it with room to spare—oh… but we just lost both our freighters."
Well so much for this mission, Xi Feng thought to herself with a sigh.
"All right, the front end's waking up," Cheyo said as the Lithuania shot down all three slugs entering range of its lasers. One of those had been intended for the Danube, and Xi Feng was glad to see the destroyer pick off the remaining projectile heading its way.
"Okay, we're doing better for the second round. Third wave's coming up in just—whoa!"
Angry beeping noises filled the bridge. An alert popped up on Xi Feng's monitor and showed two new ballistic plots which intersected the Uruguay.
"Commodore, the Cyprus just returned fire," Lieutenant Cheyo said quickly, his voice becoming much graver as he focused. "All right I'm setting—dammit, hold on!"
The Uruguay shook as the firing program it was operating launched the third and final volley of projectiles from the railguns.
"Right then," Cheyo continued once the thrusters had corrected, "engaging hostile targets… now!"
Unlike the railguns, the laser pods produced no noticeable shock when they fired. But Xi Feng's monitor beeped softly, and the two projectile paths which had appeared were wiped from the screen.
"Good work, Lieutenant," Xi Feng congratulated her Tactical Officer. "Just be ready for more." She turned her chair slightly, "Commander Donaldson, did you tell them that they were allowed to shoot back?"
The intelligence officer shook his head, "No, sir."
Xi Feng smiled, "Very good, then." She'd have to give Commander Salazar a commendation for his initiative and preparedness.
Which is a hell of a lot more than most people are going to get out of this, she thought as the EFA Douala failed to engage the projectile targeted at the tanker for the second time. Everyone else at least managed to shoot at the second volley, even if some of them only did so inside the kill zone and the EFA Nightingale's laser missed its target for whatever reason.
They did even better against the third volley. Xi Feng, however, frowned.
"Lieutenant Raptis, please contact the Douala and inquire as to whether her crew noticed that we have begun the training exercise arranged for this journey."
"Aye sir," the communications officer acknowledged. The bridge was silent for a few moments as Raptis sent his message and waited for a reply.
"Commodore," Raptis said after a minute, "Lieutenant Commander Gordon reports that the Douala was unable to bring up their tracking radar in time to respond effectively. He sends his apologies."
"I see," Xi Feng tapped a finger on her armrest. "Lieutenant Cheyo, instruct gun ten to load a training round and fire at the Douala's kill zone. Please don't actually hit the ship."
"Aye sir," the tactical officer began tapping at his console.
"Lieutenant Raptis, please notify Commander Gordon of the order I have just given."
"Aye sir."
"Ready to fire training round on gun ten, Commodore," Cheyo said after a few seconds.
Xi Feng counted to ten in her head, and then said, "Fire."
Everyone watched the plot of the training round as it twinkled and sped away from the Uruguay. Forty seconds later it had passed straight through the Douala's kill zone and into open space without being engaged.
"No response from Commander Gordon," Lieutenant Raptis reported in a hesitant voice.
Xi Feng nodded. She rubbed the thumb and forefinger of her left hand together.
"Interesting."
By the time Commander Sykes finally returned his calls, Pascual was feeling rather vindictive.
"I'm sorry, Ambassador," the Barn Swallow's captain said through the monitor, "but we've had a bit of a situation here."
"What the hell happened, Captain?" Pascual demanded, still rubbing the back of his head. He'd been less than pleased to discover that his scalp was bleeding from where he'd struck it on the ceiling bars.
"Commodore Lee initiated an exercise to test the Task Force's point defense readiness. It… caught us off-guard." Sykes' eyes narrowed as he glanced towards something beyond the camera's image.
"An exercise?"
"The Commodore simulated attacks on all Fleet ships in the Task Force using dummy rounds to see if our point-defenses would detect and destroy the projectiles."
"And how did we do?"
Sykes grimaced, "Seven ships passed, including the Commodore's flagship."
"Well were we one of them?"
"I'm afraid not, Ambassador. The dummy rounds got close enough for a nuke to destroy us."
Pascual winced, but then shook his head.
"Captain, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't spring any more surprise combat exercises on us. Our guests are rather understandably agitated, and the fact that I don't know anything just makes it worse. I'm pretty agitated myself, for that matter, and, well…" he turned his eyes up to indicate the hand he was still holding to the back of his head.
"I'm afraid you'll have to take that issue up with the Commodore herself," Sykes said. He sighed, "The exercises are necessary. We need to be able to defend ourselves—and our guests in particular—in the event of a real attack. Right now we're not doing so well, so we need to practice."
"Even so, Captain…" Pascual frowned. "Very well, I'll raise my concern with Commodore Lee."
Sykes nodded, "I'm sorry, Ambassador, but I need to get back to work. Is there anything else?"
Pascual was annoyed by Sykes' curt tone, but he shook his head, and then watched the monitor go black as the call ended. In fairness, Sykes was probably quite busy dealing with the aftermath of a training exercise in which his ship had failed miserably. Still, Pascual had his own problems to deal with in the form of surprised and upset aliens, and at least Sykes should have had some inkling that this sort of thing might happen. Pascual had been totally clueless.
He stepped into the small bathroom of his cabin to wash the blood off of his hand. The water left the sink faucet much more slowly than Pascual was used to on Earth, but still managed to splatter wildly in the low gravity. Pascual watched for a minute as the red-tinged water was vacuumed down the drain. He finished wiping his hands on a towel and then left the bathroom to walk back into the conference room.
Hyong was the only one still there. The Bat was sitting at the table and tapping at his computer. Pascual sighed and glanced at Rokden's door. He didn't want to disturb the Tadpole Ambassador, but he needed to explain about the exercise.
"What happened?" Hyong asked as Pascual stepped up to the table.
"It was a drill," Pascual said. He put a hand on the back of one seat and toyed with the notion of sitting down. "Some sort of exercise for the whole task force."
"And did your ships perform well?"
"Not exactly. Apparently we're dead now," Pascual shook his head. He went ahead and sat down. He could knock on Rokden's door in a minute.
Hyong looked up from his computer. Pascual raised an eyebrow as the Bat glanced about the room. "That's disappointing," Hyong said after a moment, "I always thought there would be more women."
Pascual snorted, "You do believe in an afterlife, then." Humans had never been able to get a straight answer out of the Bats about their religion.
"We have a general expectation, or perhaps a hope, for one," Hyong said. He looked back at his computer and scratched at his chin with one claw. "But our concept is less formalized than I understand it to be among your species."
"Someday when I've got a little more time I should sit down with you and write a comprehensive guide to your species," Pascual mused. "You've given me more information in the last three days than we've been able to pry out of your ambassadors in three decades."
Hyong was silent for a moment, and then said, "It is a cultural barrier. There is a great deal of information that I am explicitly forbidden from telling you for security reasons. But our representatives are reluctant to share any knowledge with your species, even to answer harmless general inquiries such as these, because they see no advantage to them. They prefer to keep you ignorant about us, so that you perceive us as… mysterious. They believe that gives them stronger negotiating positions and keeps us safer from any cunning ploys you might attempt."
"And you don't agree?"
"I think your ignorance makes the possibility of dangerous misunderstandings more likely. Misunderstandings that might encourage your species to do something stupid," he looked up at Pascual, "such as attempting to fight our warships if they demand the surrender of people in your custody."
Pascual met his gaze, "Do you really think there's anything you could say which would convince us to betray our promises and guarantees?"
Hyong tapped a claw against the table. "Probably not. But if you understood us better, you might have an easier time articulating your own perspective to our representatives in a way that they can understand. As it is, they find it easy to simply dismiss your arguments out of hand."
Pascual shook his head, "You know, if you really understand this so well, maybe you should be the Ambassador to Earth. Has a new one been selected yet?"
"I believe that Governor Shyankyang may have selected the new Ambassador, although I cannot confirm that. I am, however, certain that it will not be me."
"Well, our loss then," Pascual shrugged.
"Indeed."
Hyong's wings were almost fully extended and slid across the table every time he made a move. Pascual was no longer sure if the twitching wings had been a sign of anger at all. Hyong was hunched forward to stare intently at his PDA as if it were a helpless prey animal.
Onadunwe had changed too. It had taken Pascual longer to notice, but her head was now nearly half again as large as it had been when she first sat down. The furry black crest which ran along the top of her skull and down her back had mushroomed into a large bulb covering her scalp. The bulb pulsated rhythmically, as if it was breathing.
She wasn't playing as quickly, now, but hesitated for several seconds before each move. She was probably losing confidence, unnerved by Hyong's comeback.
After almost a minute of waiting this time, Onadunwe placed her next piece, capturing a six-long chain from Hyong. Hyong immediately raised his own arm to strike at the PDA, but before he finished the motion, the lights in the conference room turned red.
"What the—?" Pascual looked up.
The lights returned to their normal bright white, but speakers mounted around the ceiling began wailing an alarm. Pascual put his hands to his ears.
A nervous voice buzzed from the speakers: "All hands to combat stations! All hands to combat stations! General alert, all hands to combat stations!"
Combat stations? Pascual bolted up from his seat. But rather than simply standing, however, the motion carried him up off the floor and into the ceiling where it met the wall behind him. The Barn Swallow had not yet resumed acceleration. The back of Pascual's head struck a handle bar on the ceiling, and he bit his lip.
The aliens in the room managed to keep their seats, but they were looking about the room, clearly confused themselves.
"What is happening?" Hyong demanded.
Pascual, still rubbing his bruised head, thought that he would like to know the answer to that question himself.
* * *
Task Force One had been underway for 71 hours. Accelerating at one half of standard Earth gravity, the 19 Human ships and 1 Tadpole transport had travelled over 160 million kilometers from Earth. After accelerating so long, the ships were now travelling at 1.25 thousand kilometers per second relative to planet Earth. At that velocity, Task Force One was a weapon of mass destruction even before its warships launched the 784 nuclear warheads they carried.
Earth Fleet subjected every one of its officers to intensive psychological screening before any were allowed anywhere near the controls of such vessels.
At the midpoint between Earth and Mars, 19 vessels deactivated their primary engines—dangerous weapons in their own right—to "flip" over before accelerating in the opposite direction. One ship did not.
The Uruguay was Commodore Lee Xi Feng's flagship, and the lead ship of Earth Fleet's most powerful class of heavy cruisers. Like most of Earth Fleet's interplanetary ships, the vast majority of its mass and volume was given over to the engines and propellant which allowed it to cross the great distances of space so quickly. Wrapped around that mammoth drive assembly, however, was the deadliest weapons platform ever constructed by Humans.
The Uruguay mounted 20 railguns in a ring around its cylindrical shell. The railguns were similar in design to those mounted on the surface warships of some of Earth's wet-navies. But at 250 meters, the Uruguay's guns alone were longer than most of those floating ships. The guns were just under 1 meter in diameter and could fire 500-kiloton hydrogen bombs mated to lasing rods and guidance packages at 15 kilometers per second. Each gun was mounted on a turret that could rise up to 60 degrees off the ship's axis, and rotate 20 degrees to either side. With all its guns fully extended, the Uruguay looked like a spiny sea creature.
All its guns were not fully extended. From its current position, every other ship of Task Force One was comfortably within the arc of the Uruguay's primary weapons. The Uruguay fired. All twenty cannons sank were slammed back on the hydraulics of their turrets; their barrels glowed orange as the radiator coatings dissipated heat. The great ship shuddered as thrusters fired to correct for the force which threatened to throw the ship off axis.
The twenty projectiles were long strips of chrome-plated steel that had been encased in paraffin and then wrapped in a thin copper sabot. Each was travelling at 5 kilometers per second when it left the barrel of its railgun. The heat of firing caused the projectile casing to expand until the chrome strips were travelling within meter-wide bubbles of molten material.
The closest ship to the Uruguay was a Luzon-class destroyer, the EFS Gotland. The crew of the Gotland had less than six seconds to react before two Uruguay's chrome slugs passed within two kilometers of the destroyer. This was enough time for the CIWS radar to activate and plot the course of the projectiles. But by the time the Gotland's laser pods were ready to fire, the slugs had passed harmlessly on their way.
The next closest ship was the EFA Santa Cruz, a propellant tanker. The Santa Cruz also had a CIWS system, but it failed to detect the single projectile which passed by the tanker. The captain of the Santa Cruz would not even realize that his ship had been targeted for several seconds more.
Two more tankers suffered near misses without responding before Task Force One's ammunition hauler, the EFA Kilimanjaro, detected and destroyed one of the projectiles at a range of 3 kilometers.
* * *
"There we go," Lieutenant Cheyo shouted with noticeable relief.
Xi Feng was grimacing at the plot on her monitor. By the rules of this exercise, she had just "killed" six of her own ships—including two destroyers—in less than thirty seconds without a response from any of them. The monitor blinked: seven ships.
"Ouch, that's the Congo," Cheyo narrated. Xi Feng had to bite her tongue against the profanity it wanted to
So far the only ships which had survived were their ammunition hauler and a single propellant tanker.
Xi Feng gritted her teeth as the ship rattled. That was the second volley.
"Aha!" Cheyo cried. "Bermuda and the Cyprus both just made it with room to spare—oh… but we just lost both our freighters."
Well so much for this mission, Xi Feng thought to herself with a sigh.
"All right, the front end's waking up," Cheyo said as the Lithuania shot down all three slugs entering range of its lasers. One of those had been intended for the Danube, and Xi Feng was glad to see the destroyer pick off the remaining projectile heading its way.
"Okay, we're doing better for the second round. Third wave's coming up in just—whoa!"
Angry beeping noises filled the bridge. An alert popped up on Xi Feng's monitor and showed two new ballistic plots which intersected the Uruguay.
"Commodore, the Cyprus just returned fire," Lieutenant Cheyo said quickly, his voice becoming much graver as he focused. "All right I'm setting—dammit, hold on!"
The Uruguay shook as the firing program it was operating launched the third and final volley of projectiles from the railguns.
"Right then," Cheyo continued once the thrusters had corrected, "engaging hostile targets… now!"
Unlike the railguns, the laser pods produced no noticeable shock when they fired. But Xi Feng's monitor beeped softly, and the two projectile paths which had appeared were wiped from the screen.
"Good work, Lieutenant," Xi Feng congratulated her Tactical Officer. "Just be ready for more." She turned her chair slightly, "Commander Donaldson, did you tell them that they were allowed to shoot back?"
The intelligence officer shook his head, "No, sir."
Xi Feng smiled, "Very good, then." She'd have to give Commander Salazar a commendation for his initiative and preparedness.
Which is a hell of a lot more than most people are going to get out of this, she thought as the EFA Douala failed to engage the projectile targeted at the tanker for the second time. Everyone else at least managed to shoot at the second volley, even if some of them only did so inside the kill zone and the EFA Nightingale's laser missed its target for whatever reason.
They did even better against the third volley. Xi Feng, however, frowned.
"Lieutenant Raptis, please contact the Douala and inquire as to whether her crew noticed that we have begun the training exercise arranged for this journey."
"Aye sir," the communications officer acknowledged. The bridge was silent for a few moments as Raptis sent his message and waited for a reply.
"Commodore," Raptis said after a minute, "Lieutenant Commander Gordon reports that the Douala was unable to bring up their tracking radar in time to respond effectively. He sends his apologies."
"I see," Xi Feng tapped a finger on her armrest. "Lieutenant Cheyo, instruct gun ten to load a training round and fire at the Douala's kill zone. Please don't actually hit the ship."
"Aye sir," the tactical officer began tapping at his console.
"Lieutenant Raptis, please notify Commander Gordon of the order I have just given."
"Aye sir."
"Ready to fire training round on gun ten, Commodore," Cheyo said after a few seconds.
Xi Feng counted to ten in her head, and then said, "Fire."
Everyone watched the plot of the training round as it twinkled and sped away from the Uruguay. Forty seconds later it had passed straight through the Douala's kill zone and into open space without being engaged.
"No response from Commander Gordon," Lieutenant Raptis reported in a hesitant voice.
Xi Feng nodded. She rubbed the thumb and forefinger of her left hand together.
"Interesting."
* * *
By the time Commander Sykes finally returned his calls, Pascual was feeling rather vindictive.
"I'm sorry, Ambassador," the Barn Swallow's captain said through the monitor, "but we've had a bit of a situation here."
"What the hell happened, Captain?" Pascual demanded, still rubbing the back of his head. He'd been less than pleased to discover that his scalp was bleeding from where he'd struck it on the ceiling bars.
"Commodore Lee initiated an exercise to test the Task Force's point defense readiness. It… caught us off-guard." Sykes' eyes narrowed as he glanced towards something beyond the camera's image.
"An exercise?"
"The Commodore simulated attacks on all Fleet ships in the Task Force using dummy rounds to see if our point-defenses would detect and destroy the projectiles."
"And how did we do?"
Sykes grimaced, "Seven ships passed, including the Commodore's flagship."
"Well were we one of them?"
"I'm afraid not, Ambassador. The dummy rounds got close enough for a nuke to destroy us."
Pascual winced, but then shook his head.
"Captain, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't spring any more surprise combat exercises on us. Our guests are rather understandably agitated, and the fact that I don't know anything just makes it worse. I'm pretty agitated myself, for that matter, and, well…" he turned his eyes up to indicate the hand he was still holding to the back of his head.
"I'm afraid you'll have to take that issue up with the Commodore herself," Sykes said. He sighed, "The exercises are necessary. We need to be able to defend ourselves—and our guests in particular—in the event of a real attack. Right now we're not doing so well, so we need to practice."
"Even so, Captain…" Pascual frowned. "Very well, I'll raise my concern with Commodore Lee."
Sykes nodded, "I'm sorry, Ambassador, but I need to get back to work. Is there anything else?"
Pascual was annoyed by Sykes' curt tone, but he shook his head, and then watched the monitor go black as the call ended. In fairness, Sykes was probably quite busy dealing with the aftermath of a training exercise in which his ship had failed miserably. Still, Pascual had his own problems to deal with in the form of surprised and upset aliens, and at least Sykes should have had some inkling that this sort of thing might happen. Pascual had been totally clueless.
He stepped into the small bathroom of his cabin to wash the blood off of his hand. The water left the sink faucet much more slowly than Pascual was used to on Earth, but still managed to splatter wildly in the low gravity. Pascual watched for a minute as the red-tinged water was vacuumed down the drain. He finished wiping his hands on a towel and then left the bathroom to walk back into the conference room.
Hyong was the only one still there. The Bat was sitting at the table and tapping at his computer. Pascual sighed and glanced at Rokden's door. He didn't want to disturb the Tadpole Ambassador, but he needed to explain about the exercise.
"What happened?" Hyong asked as Pascual stepped up to the table.
"It was a drill," Pascual said. He put a hand on the back of one seat and toyed with the notion of sitting down. "Some sort of exercise for the whole task force."
"And did your ships perform well?"
"Not exactly. Apparently we're dead now," Pascual shook his head. He went ahead and sat down. He could knock on Rokden's door in a minute.
Hyong looked up from his computer. Pascual raised an eyebrow as the Bat glanced about the room. "That's disappointing," Hyong said after a moment, "I always thought there would be more women."
Pascual snorted, "You do believe in an afterlife, then." Humans had never been able to get a straight answer out of the Bats about their religion.
"We have a general expectation, or perhaps a hope, for one," Hyong said. He looked back at his computer and scratched at his chin with one claw. "But our concept is less formalized than I understand it to be among your species."
"Someday when I've got a little more time I should sit down with you and write a comprehensive guide to your species," Pascual mused. "You've given me more information in the last three days than we've been able to pry out of your ambassadors in three decades."
Hyong was silent for a moment, and then said, "It is a cultural barrier. There is a great deal of information that I am explicitly forbidden from telling you for security reasons. But our representatives are reluctant to share any knowledge with your species, even to answer harmless general inquiries such as these, because they see no advantage to them. They prefer to keep you ignorant about us, so that you perceive us as… mysterious. They believe that gives them stronger negotiating positions and keeps us safer from any cunning ploys you might attempt."
"And you don't agree?"
"I think your ignorance makes the possibility of dangerous misunderstandings more likely. Misunderstandings that might encourage your species to do something stupid," he looked up at Pascual, "such as attempting to fight our warships if they demand the surrender of people in your custody."
Pascual met his gaze, "Do you really think there's anything you could say which would convince us to betray our promises and guarantees?"
Hyong tapped a claw against the table. "Probably not. But if you understood us better, you might have an easier time articulating your own perspective to our representatives in a way that they can understand. As it is, they find it easy to simply dismiss your arguments out of hand."
Pascual shook his head, "You know, if you really understand this so well, maybe you should be the Ambassador to Earth. Has a new one been selected yet?"
"I believe that Governor Shyankyang may have selected the new Ambassador, although I cannot confirm that. I am, however, certain that it will not be me."
"Well, our loss then," Pascual shrugged.
"Indeed."