== Part 21 – Help Wanted ==
Melissa Steiner giggled as Hanse Davion finished the story of a particularly embarrassing incident in his youth. She had already known he was charming and witty and above all intelligent before she had ever met him for the first time since she was twelve. But in her eyes, his willingness to share such tales that made him look like anything less than a paragon of virtue put him head and shoulders above so many other nobles that she had met so far in his short life. Melissa could see herself loving this man who she was betrothed to, and if she never had been betrothed to him for reasons of State, she was sure they would have been good friends.
The trip from Tharkad to New Avalon had been far more harrowing than planned, and Melissa was glad to find this man at the end of it.
"So what did you..." Melissa began when she was interrupted by the door sliding aside and Quintus Allard, Hanse's spymaster and the head of MIIO, joined them on the balcony.
"What is it, Quintus?" Hanse asked.
"A message from the Archon, my prince," Quintus said, presenting him with a sheet of paper. "It just arrived by fax."
Melissa's good mood evaporated. Black Boxes were code named as fax machines, largely because actual fax machines were the interface used to send messages through them. Message transmission was slow as molasses – slower really – and whatever was sent through them had to be extremely important and sensitive for her mother to use them instead of Comstar's HPG network.
Hanse took the paper. As he read it, hit face began to make an... interesting expression.
"Hanse, what is it?" Melissa asked, concerned.
"Darling," Hanse replied. "I think someone may have slipped your mother far too many strong drugs."
"Ah, Baron Taggart," Katrina Steiner said warmly. "Thank you for coming so promptly."
"When my Archon summons me, I could do nothing but come as promptly as I could," Baron Richard Taggart, Dick to his friends and close associates, said as galantly took her hand and kissed the back of it. "But I was not surprised. I knew you would one day recognize my amazing talents!"
Katrina's smile grew slightly less warm. Oh, God, she thought. He was one of those kinds of courtiers. She had suspected as much when Simon told her that Taggart was an absentee lord, and it was unpleasant to have her suspicions confirmed the instant he opened his mouth.
"Hmm, yes, I do indeed recognize your talents," Katrina replied. Or lack thereof, she didn't say aloud. "Please Lord Taggart, tell me about your realm."
"My... realm?" Taggart stammered, surprised. "Oh, it's nothing noteworthy. It's a planet named Langhorne, just a small holding on the edge of the Periphery. It's nothing special."
The fool didn't even have the wit to try to put as positive a spin on Langhorne as he could. Katrina groaned inside. This was the last person she wanted as point man for a sensitive diplomatic mission to a significant military power. Which meant Katrina needed to find someone else to be her ambassador to the Cylons and make sure this fool didn't botch things for the Commonwealth just because it was his planet that the Cylons had taken a liking to.
"Have you recently received any messages from Langhorne, Lord Taggart?" Katrina asked innocently.
"I did actually," Taggart replied, trying and failing to hide his confusion. He clearly had no idea why Katrina had summoned him. "Just the standard updates on financials. Oh and a letter about some new investors from the Periphery. They arrived yesterday, but there was nothing important in them."
"Well it seems the LIC received a report from Langhorne yesterday as well," Katrina told him. "A report that they brought to my immediate attention. Would you like to hear what it said?"
"Uh, what?" Taggart squeaked, suddenly realizing that he had been caught out. Something important had to be going on on Langhorrne if it had caught the Archon's immediate attention. He got control of his voice and said more normally. "What did the report say, my Archon?"
"The report said that your 'unimportant Periphery investors' arrived in a Warship, Baron," Katrina said, dropping any pretense of camaraderie. Now she was speaking as a Lady to her Subject, and the Subject had better listen as closely and carefully as he could. "That these 'investors' are planning a major expansion of Langhorne's industry to the point that your realm could eventually rival any major industrial world in the Inner Sphere like say, Hesperus II."
"Surely not, my Archon!" Taggart said, shocked. "How could mere Periphery barbarians accomplish such a feat? Surely you do not believe they can?"
"I do believe it, Baron," Katrina told him. "I believe it because no one who can build and operate Warships is to be taken lightly in this day and age. I believe it because I have seen the recordings of them demonstrating technologies well in advance of anything ever seen in the Inner Sphere including Star League lostech. So what I want from you, Baron is to do nothing but be as cooperative as you can with my ambassadorial team as you can. If you can do that, then Langhorne may well be transformed into one of the crowning jewels of the Lyran Commonwealth, and your fortunes and status will increase in lockstep perhaps even with a new title to go with it.
"Yes, my Archon," Taggart replied, his face starting to get dreamy as he imagined the untold status and riches that success would bring. There was no way in hell that Katrina wanted this fool as a Duke of the Commonwealth, and she made a mental note to look for a more reliable – or at least competent – relative of his that she could replace him with.
"Make no mistake, Baron," Katrina continued. "I am not blind to the dangers here. While a new heavily industrial world would be of great benefit to the Lyran Commonwealth, I cannot discount the possibility that these investors of yours, these 'Cylons' as they call themselves may be planning to lop off and annex our worlds along the Periphery starting with Langhorne. Rest assured that I will make precautions to prevent that very thing."
Given the abysmal state of Langhorne's industry as was common throughout the Inner Sphere, even in the Lyran Commonwealth, Katrina was certain that if any annexation attempt by the Cylons was planned, it would not be until after they had significantly built up Langhorne's industry and the planet actually became a worthwhile pretext for them to fight over. Which meant she had a few years yet before the Cylons made their move... if that was what they were planning to do. But there was no need to tell Baron Taggart that.
"But," Katrina said, her voice dropping low and becoming truly dangerous. "If I discover that you interfered with my ambassadors and turned what could have been allies and business partners into enemies that the Commonwealth can ill afford to fight, then... Well, I'll leave the consequences up to your imagination. Am I clear?"
Taggart nodded his head quickly, his face pale.
"Good. Now go," Katrina told him. "The diplomatic office will contact you later with the details of their travel plans. As Langhorne is your planet, you may travel with them so that the needs of your realm are properly taken into consideration. Or you may remain on Tharkad is you so choose." Fool he may be, Taggart was still a peer of the Commonwealth and Katrina was obligated to give him this one fig leaf. She hoped he would stay on Tharkad because her people did not need him underfoot causing them problems.
"Of course, my Archon," Taggart said quickly, bowing as he backed his way out the door. "At once Archon!" And then he was gone.
Katrina stood for a moment, staring hard at the door to make sure he was really gone. Then her shoulders sagged and she sighed.
"He's going to botch this, isn't he?" Katrina asked the empty air.
A hidden wall panel slid aside and Simon stepped out from behind it. "Most likely, yes," he agreed.
"Keep an eye on him, Simon," Katrina told her spymaster. "And make sure he doesn't botch things up for the Commonwealth... one way or another."
"Obviously, we should send a regiment of our finest assault mechs to this Langhorne," Katrina's second ambassadorial candidate said after he been initially briefed on the Cylons.
"Colonel, you think we should send ground forces to fight a Warship?" Katrina said neutrally, struggling to keep the doubt out of her voice. She had selected this man because of his reputation for being a fighter. But she was quickly coming to realize that being a fighter was his only command virtue.
"Of course," the Coloniel said confidently, perhaps overconfidently. "But it won't come to a fight, Archon. These are just Periphery barb merchants. Their 'Warship' is clearly just an oversized freighter and their only offensive power is just some aerospace fighters with primitive weaponry. We go in, wave some PPCs and Lasers in their faces, and they'll fall right in line with what we want."
"I see," Katrina said slowly. "Thank you for your advice, Colonel. That will be all."
"Ha, you had me going there for a moment, my Archon, but this is clearly just the trailer for some upcoming holovid movie. Science fiction is not one of my interests, but I can still recognize it when I see it."
Katrina's heart sank. This noble woman was as reliable negotiator as Katrina could ask for, a staunch supporter of Katrina and her policies, and was very level headed if a bit unimaginative. And now Katrina was realizing that she was too unimaginative for this mission.
"Meh. Throw money at them. Everyone loves money. And everyone knows Periphery scum are poverty stricken. It's the perfect plan!"
Katrina resisted the urge to pound her head on her desk. It was a nice desk. She didn't want to replace it.
"So, what's your assessment?" Archon Katrina Steiner asked, desperately hoping this one at least had some common sense.
"This is amazing, my Archon," said Eve Steiner. "This is real? This isn't some PR stunt for a new holovid movie?"
Eve was of course a member of House Steiner, albeit a distant cousin of Katrina and scion of a cadet branch so minor that Katrina hadn't even heard of them before Eve had been recommended to her. Eve was a newcomer in the Foreign Affairs office who had done some good work and on paper seemed the best that Katrina had available on hand. Everyone else that Katrina trusted that was more senior than Eve was already either tied down because Katrina needed them right where they were, or couldn't be recalled in a timely manner, or had already been interviewed and found unsuitable for one reason or another. At the very least, Katrina needed someone on Langhorne who could hold things together diplomatically until Katrina could get a more capable.
"It is very real," Katrina assured her. "Not only do we have the reports from the LIC field office and the local news – which oddly don't seem to be getting a lot of replay here from Tharkad's own news outlets..."
"I'm guessing the news services on Tharkad don't believe the reports and won't deign to give them air time," Eve suggested.
"I expect my public relations briefing later will tell me the same," Katrina said smiling. Eve was doing well so far. "But as I was saying, we have other sources than what I've shown you confirming that the Cylons and their technological capabilities are real. That in fact, they have more technological tricks that they haven't shown the people of Langhorne. Unfortunately, how we can't tell you what those additional capabilities are, because doing so would give away the method of how we learned they existed at all, which is also classified. I hope that's not a problem?"
"None at all, my Archon. I understand." Eve seemed completely sincere. Score another point for the young lady.
"So back to my original question then," Katrina continued. "What is your assessment of these Cylons?"
"They're an interesting mix of what my little brother would call 'schizotech'," Eve began. At the Archon's puzzled look, Eve explained, "The term is a portmanteau combining schizophrenia and technology, and is used to describe the kind of fantasy worlds in the stories he likes where civilizations have bizarre combinations of advanced and primitive technology being used together. Like a world that can mass produce Battlemechs, but their most advanced gun they can arm them with is a black powder rifle."
"Why, Eve, that almost describes real life," Katrina said dryly.
"Indeed, Archon," Eve agreed. "But back to the Cylons. While they have hyperadvanced transportation technologies, their armor and weapons appear to be woefully behind our own. Their plans to expand Langhorne's industries as well as other planets is clearly their attempt to upgrade their arms and armor to match Inner Sphere's standards, in which case their mobility advantages will give them unalloyed strategic supremacy over the rest us. And they know their advantages because they haven't so much as hinted that they're willing to trade any of their antigravity or FTL technology. Everything the Cylons are willing to sell or supply is already something that someone in the Inner Sphere can already make or else gives no obvious strategic advantages over the Cylons."
Katrina nodded, impressed with the analysis. They matched her own.
"Secondly," Eve continued, "the very fact that they're openly trading for technology instead of sending in spies and infiltrators to steal it suggests that their goal is not naked conquest. Oh, they might try to annex Langhorne to 'protect their business interests' after they turn it into a major industrial hub. And honestly, if they do turn Langhorne into a major industrial hub based solely on their own resource investments, they'd have every right to think they own the planet regardless of whoever technically owns it on paper. But I suspect that they will let us keep the planet as long as they get their cut of its industrial output. At least as long as no larger conflict between the Cylons and the Commonwealth happens of course."
"Of course," Katrina agreed. Again, the analysis nearly matched her own.
"The biggest wild card though is that the Cylons appear to have no identifiable leader or hierarchy," Eve continued. "All of them seem more or less interchangeable, at least within the confines of each clone line, and no particular clone type or individual seems to take the lead all the time, even inside any of their small mixed ground parties. They've even openly debated and argued with each other when making what should be command decisions."
"Hmm, you don't think we've just failed to identify the leaders because of all the identical faces?" Katrina asked. Eve's analysis was starting to diverge from Katrina's.
"It's possible, but I don't think so," Eve said. "I think we need to be prepared to deal with some kind of pseudo-hive mind created by the mass cloning and this mental connection that they all seem to share. What's more, given the total lack of success in trying to determine what radio or microwave frequency that their mental communications uses, especially when they were mass beaming information to a ship in orbit from inside an enclosed building which we know will often have steel structural members in the roof that can interfere with radio communications, I'm prepared to entertain the notion that the Cylons have additional secret technologies, such as a communication method that doesn't use radio, but some alternate carrier that I've never heard about?"
Katrina sat stunned. Did Eve just deduce Black Box technology from just a bare handful of ambiguous facts? And did she just subtly ask if the Commonwealth was secretly eavesdropping on the Cylon using that same technology? And as far as Katrina knew, the notion that the Cylons were using Black Box tech on an individual level hadn't even occurred to anyone else at all that Katrina knew of, least of all herself.
"Eve, I do believe that you are the perfect diplomat to represent us on Langhorne," Katrina told her warmly. "Or at least, you'll be the perfect aide to someone more senior if I can dig one up from somewhere. But as it stands right now, I think you'll do well as our ambassador to the Cylons."
"Thank you, my Archon," Eve said, bowing. "I am most honored to be of service, and by your high opinion of me."
"Go and get ready for the journey to Langhorne," Katrina told her. "I'll have more detailed instructions sent to the Foreign Affairs office before you leave Tharkad. And I'm sure the office will put together a staff of assistants to travel with you."
After Eve had gone, Katrina considered her options. Even if the younger woman's theory was wrong, the fact that she even thought of it proved that she was willing to consider possibilities that others automatically discarded. Eve also didn't seem like the kind of woman to become overly invested in her own personal theories either to the point of ignoring evidence to the contrary, although only time would tell with that. Katrina felt that if any person could get the Cylons to agree to an alliance or even just a non-aggression pact, it would be Eve Steiner. But Katrina was experienced at politics as well as warfare and had to consider that the Cylons might not want peace no matter what Eve might say to them. So Katrina needed a backup plan in case negotiations failed and the Cylons turned hostile. And the Cylon's military assets appeared to be almost entirely aerospace based.
"Damn," she muttered. "Now I have to see what aerospace assets I can spare from the coming offensive."
The door slamming was a sure sign that the Baron of Langhorne was unhappy.
"Richard, is something wrong?" Lady Desiree Taggart asked her husband. She looked up from the interesting correspondence from their majordomo to see Richard stalking across the foyer in a fury.
As far as her husband was concerned, Desiree was the perfect wife. She was drop dead gorgeous, willing to look the other way when he engaged in trysts with other women, was actually willing to join in when she did catch other women, and she always had some sage bit of advice that seemed to advance his standing in the Lyran court. Her only fault was that she was born a commoner, but Richard was willing to overlook that because of all the other benefits that she brought to their marriage.
"The Archon is planning to take away my landhold," Richard snarled.
"Oh, surely not," Desiree said doubtfully. "The Estates General would riot if she unseated a peer without cause."
"Oh, she didn't say so in so many words," Richard told her as grabbed a bottle from the minibar and started pouring him a drink. "But there's some neobarbs on Langhorne that she thinks it's important and I'm being shut out of the negotiations right from the start! Oh, she says I can go with the ambassadorial team to 'be consulted on Langhorne's needs', but I can read between the lines. The Archon doesn't want me there to 'get underfoot' during negotiations. And if she doesn't trust me to negotiate for the Lyran Commonwealth, she certainly isn't going to trust me with Langhorne if it really does get turned into a realm worthy of being a Dukedom."
"Hmm, perhaps you can prove your worthiness?" Desiree suggested.
"What do you mean?" Richard didn't even appear to wonder why Desiree hadn't asked what he meant when he said Langhorne could become a Dukedom.
"As you said, the Archon has no confidence in your negotiating ability," Desiree told him. He just grunted. "So clearly what you need to do is prove to her that you are worthy of a Dukedom."
"And how do I do that?" Richard asked, swirling his drink around in its glass thoughtfully. "Years of currying favor in the Court hasn't even gotten me the title of Graf, let alone Duke."
"Clearly, you must go to Langhorne and assist the Archon's ambassador however you can," Desiree explained. "Take some initiative! Show the Archon what you can do! Prove to her that you deserve to be a Duke!"
"Yes... yes, I think I will," Richard said, setting his drink down without ever having taken a sip. "Hold on, I need to make some calls."
"Oh, thank Blake that was so easy," Desiree whispered to herself in relief after Richard had disappeared into his office. "I didn't even need to convince him to go to Langhorne."
