Ttomalss
Regarded by many troopmales as the best expert on human psychology, Ttomalss spends most of his time at Yale University, where he offers special elective classes in Race history and culture. It is, as he has claimed in prior interviews, the best way to bring us into the 'right culture'. What he means by that has been the subject of much controversy, in both human and Race circles.
He invites me into his office, which is lined with various human books and essays, ranging from psychology to history to plays. "Reading is one of the few things I have aside from work", he explains as we sit down.
Q: You served as the chief xenopsychologist aboard the Conquest Fleet, but much of your work was overshadowed by the more visible elements of the war. What were the specifics of your job?
A: As a xenopsychologist, my job was study the human psyche, in order to determine how well your species would integrate into our society. Things such as reproduction and child-rearing, as well as regard for authority. I was expecting fairly easy work in that regard.
He swivels an eye turret towards the window.
Clearly, I was mistaken.
Q: I am informed that the Fleetlord had you examine the contact packages that were sent by the UN.
A: Indeed I was. The memory of waking up to be informed of the, er, situation is crystal clear, despite the fog of waking from cold-sleep. As soon as I was informed that your species had advanced in an incredibly short time-frame, I knew that I was going to deal with something outside of my expectations.
Nevertheless, I was a male of the Race, chosen for my position by the decree of the Emperor, and I was going to do my job.
I spent many hours analyzing the contact packages, trying to decipher the code that was human psychology. However, I had little to work with. It was very much like the Golden Records attached to your Voyager probes. A few greetings in various languages, along with various sounds and musical pieces, accompanied by images of various aspects of human civilization. The biggest fact that I gleamed from the packages was that your species gave live birth, and seemed to raise the young that you yourself bore.
That alone would make integration difficult; there would need to be special accommodations for your reproductive biology when it came to matters of everyday life.
The other important detail was that your species was not yet unified, much like the pre-conquest Rabotevs. I put some work into the idea of how that could be either useful or disadvantageous to conquest, but there was simply too little to work with. I did not do the bulk of my research until the start of the war.
Q: What did you do then?
A: In the areas that we established beachheads in, where we could safely do orbital ferries, we began to bring some humans into orbit, along with various trinkets. A married couple from Mumbai'i, along with two young males and some injured girl from Shànghâi. They were shortly followed by three males and two females from Tehran, and an extended family from Muqdisho.
Initially, the plan was to simply have the humans mate, so we could observe the reproductive process, but there was much resistance to that idea, I realized. The girl from Shànghâi spoke some of our tongue, and broached the concept of marriage to me, in order to explain why the couple from Mumbai'i refused to mate with anyone else, even under threat of food withdrawal. Then when I tried to have her mate with members of the family from Muqdisho, she explained some more intricacies of human mating, such as how involuntary mating was considered traumatizing.
The violence that ensued when one of the males from Tehran attempted to mate with one of the Muqdisho women clearly demonstrated that to me.
I was frustrated to no end within five days of landing, when I realized just how different your psychology was from the norm. Thankfully, there was another way for me to gather the data I needed.
Q: What?
A: Your so-called 'internet'. Many of the humans that were brought aboard the Hetto possessed devices on them that had been confiscated for research. Your so-called 'smart-phones' and other computers. I managed to convince the Fleetlord to allow my department to make trips to the surface in safe areas, in order to utilize the internet.
I first went down to Johannesburg, accompanied by the girl from Shànghâi, and gave her a computer we'd taken from a library. The shock and confusion on her face when I commanded her to find pornography was one of the more amusing sights in my life.
Q: So, in order to learn about us, you made some clueless Chinese girl look up... porn, because you didn't know how to use a laptop.
A: Yes, that was my thought process at the time. I still shudder when I think of that time, forcing myself to watch your horrifically... messy mating rituals. One of my assistants vomited onto the table after the first video we were shown, to the amusement of the girl. I did not blame him.
Our research into that was... short-lived. After watching a few more videos of different kinds, as provided by the computer, we then had her research childbirth and nursing, in order to learn about how children were raised. That time, it was me who vomited, after seeing the live young pushed out...
He shudders.
We concluded our research very swiftly, after that.
Q: What did you do then?
A: We brought the girl back to the Hetto, then began focusing on other elements of human psychology. We had the captured specimens share living spaces in a manner similar to how we do so on Home, in order to see how they handled it. In the meantime, we continued trying to use the internet to gather information about your cultures and psychology. I had my assistants working full-time on all the data being sent up from the ground, but it was tedious work. We had to deal with useless information, such as advertisements and gaming sites and the so-called 'memes'.
Ttomalss hisses.
Could you imagine, being selected to the psychologist of the most important undertaking of your species in millennia, and being forced to read such banal statements as "Will Smith is eating soybeans in my bed", accompanied by nonsensical images, or incredibly esoteric humor regarding trivialities of your culture?
Nonetheless, the memes did offer a glimpse into how chaotic and constantly-changing your cultures were, compared to my own. By the Emperor, I started finding memes about invasion itself within days. Combined with the analyses we made into the well-known fictional works, and the nonfiction essays of government and philosophy...
Q: Would you care to go into detail about the works you selected?
A: Naturally. The essays were of greatest interest to us, as they plainly stated the information we were interested in. I read, among others, Plato's The Republic, various works of Hobbes and Thoreau, the Yìjīng, and Kôngzi's Lúnyû, I actually enjoyed the latter two, and suggested to the Fleetlord that we could look to them as ideas on how to bring your cultures to within our standards.
I also researched your so-called 'pop culture', and was surprised to find that there were actual works of fiction dealing with your planet being invaded by alien civilizations. Those were... troubling. It was then that I realized that, in at least the so-called 'Western' not-empires, there would be resistance against our rule to the bitter end.
Combined with that and the... memes, and we began to realize just how alien of a world we were looking at. I made sure to deliver compilations of that information to the Fleetlord whenever I could.
Unfortunately, the research began to trickle down after that.
Q: Why so?
A: I often corroborated during this time with an intelligence officer named Drefsab. He was an agent on the ground, often using the computers himself in order to procure information about human technology and military capabilities. However, your planet began to catch on to what we were doing. In many of the not-empires, they began to censor or police the internet, or even shut it down completely. We had no knowledge of cyber-warfare, or how to work your computers; we could not 'hack' past the obstacles, or use our own computers to link with the internet.
By the time of the ceasefire, I was limited to observing the specimens we had captured, and interrogating them about various aspects of human culture and psychology. I still sent my reports to the Fleetlord, hoping that the knowledge I gave him would allow him to better engage in diplomacy with your world's surviving not-empires.
I was summoned by his side when the negotiations began, though I still doubt how effective my presence was, during those tense talks.
-/-\-
Traoré II
After the meal, Traoré invites me into his study, where he offers me some sweetened fruit and more tea. He sits down at his small disc, and puts on some music as we continue our interview.
Q: What may be your most famous work as a translator occurred during the negotiations after the ceasefire. How exactly did that come about?
A: When the ships landed in Bangui, I realized that my home could be the next on their conquests. Unless I am mistaken, Mali's pre-discovery army numbered only seven thousand or so, and even six years was not enough to sufficiently prepare.
As a member of the UN, I could've used my clout to try and escape the incoming wave. I considered fleeing the country with my wife and son, but I knew I couldn't leave the rest of my family behind. My mother was very ill at the time, and my father-in-law was a parapalegic; we would have to leave them behind if we attempted a mad dash to an airport. And there was no way the UN would extract a translator and his twenty-three relatives in such a time of crisis, when they had much bigger issues at hand.
So, my only option was to keep my head down, and hope that I could ride out the wave, as you say.
Q: How did that go?
A: It kept my family safe. When the Race defeated half of the army within an hour of crossing our borders, and the other half surrendered, they rolled into the country with almost no resistance. I saw the occasional troopcarrier roll by my home, and started to see a few soldiers patrolling the streets when I went to get food. There was some looting and rioting during this time, which they suppressed with ease. I kept my head down, and I was not bothered.
The internet had been knocked out, by my UN-issued satellite phone still worked. I would make reports to my superiors about how the Race's occupation was going. Every last detail could be crucial, in one way or another, I thought.
Then, around a week after the occupation, an officer of the Race knocked on my door.
Q: What was the reason for his visit?
A: He said that they were doing research on translators and linguists, and had noticed that I was a prominent figure in the project to decipher their language. If I were to serve as their Fleetlord's translator, he said, then they would ensure that my family was not harmed by any riots or looters.
The day before, there had been a pressure cooker blast in the market. I'd been unhurt, but it had rattled me to the core, seeing people with mangled faces or missing limbs screaming for help. It easily could have been me, or my wife, or my brothers.
So, I agreed without a second thought.
Q: What happened then?
A: I was escorted to a troopcarrier, and spent the next few hours sitting uncomfortably across from some weary-looking troopmales. I struck up a conversation with them, to pass the time. They appreciated my fluency in their language, and asked me a few questions about my work on the project. One of them asked me if I had ever flown in space before, and made an amused hiss when I told him no.
Then, I arrived at their base. I was sweating when I was pulled out of the troopcarrier, frisked, and escorted to the shuttle. I walked past landcruisers, and saw killercraft taking off. There were two starships nearby, towering over everything else, and I could not help but gawk as I looked up at them.
The shuttle was much smaller than I was expecting; I found myself wondering how could something that looked no bigger than a private jet lift me into space. It was just lying on the tarmac of an abandoned airport, flanked by two killercraft.
They had to jury-rig their seatbelts to fit me when I was strapped in as the shuttle's sole passenger. The seat was very uncomfortable, and the interior was very warm. The pilot casually chatted with me, though I suppose at me is more accurate. I was too busy staring at the window as we took off, almost like an usual airline flight. Then, we got higher and higher, and the killercraft flew away as they reached their operational altitudes.
I felt strange, watching the ground shrink away, then looking up to see the blackness of space. Never had I dreamed of leaving the planet, and yet, there I was.
It was funny, actually. Looking down my home planet, I could see no sign of the war raging across the globe. Despite the enormity of the endeavor for Man, it mattered nothing to mother Earth herself.
Q: What happened after you docked with the Hetto?
A: Adapting to weightlessness was not easy. I nearly broke my nose when I pushed off from my seat, prompting some hissing laughter from the pilot. A few guards entered the shuttle, and pulled me along through the ship. I remember staring at every last alien detail of their ship, from the panelling on the hallways to the color of their lights. I could actually read the signs on the doors as well. Reactor Chamber and Mess Hall caught my eye as I was brought to the bridge of the flagship.
It was a spurious moment, when I was brought face-to-face with Fleetlord Atvar. There he was, the one in charge of the entire invasion, regarding me from across the bridge. There were armed guards in the room, as well as technicians operating holographic panels. In the middle of the room was a hologram of Earth, with patches of it colored in purple.
Q: Purple?
A: Well, I suppose red would have been more fitting for me, as they were invaders. But to them, that was not the case.
Q: Did the Fleetlord speak with you?
A: Yes, he did. He first asked me if I was actually fluent, and looked rather satisfied when I replied in his tongue. He then asked me how many human languages I knew. He was surprised when I told him that I was fluent in nine. I was then directed to a communications station, where there were three other translators. One of them I recognized from the project, but we didn't dare acknowledge each other, out of fear of being seen as conspirators.
A technician sat beside me, in order to operate the equipment that I would be speaking into. Not so much due to a lack of ability, as the equipment was rather user-friendly, but I didn't have any claws to operate it with.
I was first instructed to make a broadcast to various countries whose national language I could speak, in order to inform them that the Race intended to engage in negotiations.
Q: And then?
A: Well... the negotiations began.
-/-\-
Teerts I
Unlike many Race males living in the United States, Teerts owns an apartment in Los Angeles, where he makes a living as a stunt pilot for air shows. He shares his apartment with his friend, fellow pilot Alice Perry, who greets me at the door. Teerts offers me a seat as he pauses his soccer game, and we start our interview.
Q: Flight Leader Teerts, you were one of the first Race males to be taken prisoner in the war. How exactly did you end up in American custody?
A: I was deployed to the Chinese theater of the war during the first days of the invasion. I was actually rather anxious when I was deployed; I could not wait to start tearing apart whatever primitive aircraft was sent my way.
He hisses in mirth.
In retrospect, that was the wrong feeling to have.
Q: What happened then?
A: Chinese stealth fighters.
He mimes a plane flying by, accompanied by a surprisingly-accurate sound of missiles being launched.
Chengdu J-20s, I think. Didn't get a good look at them before they blew up my wingmales. I was understandably freaked out by the idea of Tosevite killercraft that was invisible to our radar. Started wondering if there were secretly a hundred of them trailing after me. When I saw a starship go down, and the others started retreating back up, I panicked.
So, I booked it. Put on my afterburners, and started flying away from the crazy not-empire with its ghostkillercraft. A few started chasing after me, but I had a head-start. Still didn't keep a few bullets from getting in my engines.
I ended up ejecting over the sea. Now, I'm not sure about you, but if you've never even swam in the little salt lakes back Home, and suddenly find yourself surrounded by nothing but water... it's a terrifying, alien experience. Part of you starts making up beffel-pellet that you know isn't right, but it's still freaking out, and eventually the animal brain takes over.
I was lucky. A destroyer fished me out of the sea, hissing and thrashing like a tsiongi, and I was taken into custody by the Nihonjin. I was astonished by the concept of warboats, once I stopped shrieking.
I wasn't in Nihon long enough to see anything, before I was transferred to their buddies in the US. Felt strange, being ferried in a C-130. The Tosevite guards looked like they had better gear than the troopmales, with all that body armor and high-tech trinkets.
Anyway, I ended up falling asleep, and woke up in a base in Nevada. The Tosevites were making jokes about me being there, but I didn't get it. "Looks like there's aliens in Area 51 after all, hurr durr hurr." Your laughter's hideous, even after all these years, but it was terrifying back then.
Q: What was your time on the base like?
A: Questions. Lots and lots of questions. They started with boring but important stuff, first. "What can you safely eat, do you need any special accommodations for your biology, ssa ssa." Then they started asking me questions about military matters. How many of me are there, how many weapons did we have, and other stuff. When they realized that I didn't have much to say on that they started asking me about killercraft.
Q: What exactly did they want to know?
A: They wanted to know about the hydrogen engines. Apparently, they'd managed to dredge up the remains of my killercraft, and were curious about how we didn't need to use petroleum or other fossil fuels for it.
I couldn't tell them much. I was a pilot, not an engineer. Eventually, more males started showing up in the base, and we were allowed to mingle with each other. I guess they found some who knew more, or were more willing to talk, because the questioning stopped after the first few dozen showed up.
All in all, it could've been worse. I was constantly afraid they were going to do something like put out my eye, or start twisting my claws off. I actually started gaining weight from how rich your food was.
All I did for a few weeks was eat, watch some pro-human movies in the rec room, and exercise behind barbed wire fences. Some Tosevite taught a male about soccer, and we got the hang of it pretty fast. I started looking forward to the games we held between each other. Sometimes we'd do Rabotevs vs Race, or Race vs Hallessi, and sometimes landcruiser crews vs troopmales.
Didn't get much news during that time. I kept wondering if landcruisers would suddenly smash through the gates and announce that the planet had surrendered, or if some soldier was going to announce that the Fleetlord had called it quits.
When the negotiations began, we were allowed to listen on the radio to the talks. I was anxious for the resolution. On one hand, it'd be nice if the not-empires surrendered, and I could get out of captivity. On the other... I was afraid that I'd be thrown right back into a meatgrinder if things didn't work out.
He hisses again.
Didn't expect what actually happened.
-/-\-
du Joncherè I
Anne-Sophie du Jonchère agrees to meet me in the Louvre, near the Mona Lisa exhibit. A tall and thin figure, her blonde hair is worn in a tight bun, showing only a few streaks of grey, and her blue eyes regard me intelligently past a pair of wireframe glasses. After exchanging greetings, we walk slowly walk around the museum as I ask my questions.
Q: The ceasefire of December 7th is often regarded as a watershed moment during the war, and one that you directly participated in. Could you offer any insight into public perceptions during that time?
A: It came as a shock to almost everyone. When the ships came down, and the war began, negotiations had left our minds. I think it is the non-humanity of our enemy, and the fact that they were wholly outside of our normal view of everyday life, that made negotiation so unthinkable. This was not two countries fighting over a territorial dispute, or one invading another for oil. This was humanity, all of humanity, fighting for its independence against an alien foe from a distant star.
It was easy to think of them as some sort of monolithic, malevolent force, especially where I was in New York. The war was so distant at the time; some rather uncouth people I knew snidely called it the Third World War. Not just because of the fact that it was a global conflict, but because almost all of it was taking place in third-world nations. The Americans have always struggled with showing concern for the peoples of Africa and the Middle-East, and an alien invasion did little to change that perception.
Yet, at the same time, it still affected many people. There were many with friends and family in the affected countries, and with the internet, we had a glimpse into the war that would not have been possible, even twenty years ago. People were scared of what was going to happen next, if the aliens were going to come to their country. When they read the news, or saw the reports on the television as Africa was almost completely swallowed up, and the Middle-East overrun, they were scared. I felt scared. The front lines in Northern Africa were less than two thousand kilometers from the borders of France, within the range of their killercraft. If they wanted, they could have bombed the home of my family, even if such an attack was unlikely to succeed.
That fear only got worse when Pyongyang and Larkana were swallowed in nuclear fire. Suddenly, the fear of the Cold War had returned, to terrorize the younger generations who had never felt it. I called my family in France, as though I was afraid that they would be suddenly engulfed in an atomic exchange.
So, the ceasefire came as a collective sigh of relief for the world at large. The serpent of war had relaxed his coils around us, and we could breathe freely again.
Q: Was that when you were called into the UN Special Assembly to represent your nation?
A: Oui. I was summoned to the UN building, and quietly ushered into an armored room that had been built into the lower levels. I was struck by how few other representatives there were.
Q: Why was that? Hadn't several countries set up governments in exile?
A: They had, but I was informed that the Race was only interested in speaking with certain countries. The rest could listen in from the general assembly room, but could not participate.
Q: That easily could have soured relations.
A: Yes, but it was agreed that it was worth securing peace, and avoiding nuclear war. The representatives knew that, even if they were unhappy with it.
So, I sat down at the table, feeling more out of my depth than I had ever felt before. Half an hour passed, then I received the shock of a lifetime when the doors opened.
Q: Why?
A: A male of the Race had entered the room, flanked by our security guards. He was unarmed, and unclothed. The only thing he had was a black box with a lens on it, which he set down on the table. I was too busy staring at him to really hear what he was saying. It was the first time I had seen one in the flesh. He was much smaller than I expected, almost like a... a child. He made me think of a child wearing an elaborate costume. I had to keep from laughing when he hopped onto the seat and scooted his chair over, with his little legs dangling.
He said in very poor English that he was Pshing, a low-level male, sent by the Fleetlord to physically represent the Race at the meeting. I am still convinced that it was some sort of power-play, to show how little regard the Race had for us, when they couldn't be bothered to learn our language and sent the equivalent of a secretary to speak with us.
Q: What happened then?
A: He flicked a button on the box, and there was suddenly a hologram of the Fleetlord in the middle of the room. Mon Dieu, the detail was almost perfect. Another power-play, I think.
The Fleetlord spoke in those hideous hisses and clicks, and I heard a man's voice in my headphones, acting as a translator. He said some long and boring title along the lines of "Presenting the Fleetlord, as ordained by some long-dead Emperor of the true culture...", and then the talks began.
I must credit the poor soul who had to serve as the Fleetlord's translator, as he was very tactful. Believe me, as a Frenchwoman; I could hear the snootiness and disdain in that Napoleon of a chameleon's voice. "We deign to speak to the divided not-empires of Tosev Three that have not yet joined the Race", and so on.
Q: What were the first point of the negotiations?
A: That the Race did not desire nuclear war with us, citing that it would only result in pointless death and render the planet unsuitable. He established that the Race would only use its atomic arsenal as a "tit-for-tat" deal. That is to say, if we nuked two Race bases, then they would nuke two of our cities, but stop at two. There would be no escalation on his side, if there was no escalation on our side.
Q: Essentially, it was MAD.
A: The United States and the Russians disagreed. They warned the Race that, if any more cities were destroyed, they would launch ICBMs at the fleet in orbit until every last ship was radioactive dust.
The look on the Fleetlord's face showed us that he realized they weren't bluffing. It was telling that his reply wasn't "I don't believe your primitive species can do it," but "Such an attack would also destroy your satellites and induce Kessler syndrome".
Q: Kessler syndrome?
A: It's, uh, when enough things get destroyed in space, that all the debris would destroy more satellites like some kind of domino effect. I've been told that a paint fleck once damaged a Space Shuttle's window, since everything moves faster than bullets there. Maybe. I'm not a scientist; I just researched it after the meeting. The point is, the debris would have made space travel impossible for decades. Which, when there was another enemy ship coming, could be a death knell.
I should've been suspicious when the American representative didn't seem fazed by that threat. I thought it was typical American bravado at the time...
Uh, moving on. The Fleetlord had decided to move on from the nuclear debate, and laid out some facts. Chiefly, that more than a billion people were in Race-occupied territory, that nearly forty countries had surrendered or been conquered, and that they had plenty of more manpower to spare. He was essentially showing off his little chameleon muscles. He naturally didn't mention how the Russians had easily kicked them out of Mongolia, or how they had been slaughtered at Cairo.
Q: What were the responses?
A: I said that the French were not one of the countries under their rule, and never would be. As did the other EU nations. The Americans and Russians made mention of the starships they had destroyed, and the Chinese representative pointed out how there were more people in his one country than there were in the continent the Race had almost completely conquered.
I must admit, it felt good, thumbing my nose at the leader of the army that was trying to take our planet away. Of course, we did it in a rather gentle fashion. We could not be submissive at all, as that would show weakness, but too much hostility could have caused him to cease negotiations. We were almost like a bunch of middle-aged housewives, passive-aggressively sniping at each other.
Then, the debate got interesting.
Q: How so?
A: The Fleetlord began pulling up... images, that his soldiers had taken. The genocide in Darfur. The starvation in the slums of Mumbai and Mogadishu. He showed pictures of Afghan village women joyously taking off their burqas after being freed from the oppression of their government and the Taliban. He showed us the brutality of the North Korean camps, along with some sick merde that only some top-level intelligence officers had probably known beforehand, if that. I honestly felt nauseated, as he pulled up picture after picture after picture, telling us the stories behind each and every last one of them.
He went on a diatribe, claiming that witnessing Man's inhumanity to Man had only solidified his desire to secure the planet. He said that we, as a collective of disjoined and broken cultures, were unfit to rule ourselves. He said that there was no genocide amongst the Race. No racism, no sexism, no homophobia, or religious intolerance. No rapes, no drug trades, no disenfranchisement. He spoke of how his soldiers had ended the genocides, and were now pulling the disenfranchised to their feet.
It was a surprisingly well-put argument. While I opposed their imperialism and cultural destruction, I must admit... the idea of a society where I could walk without being harassed, or where my husband didn't get pulled over by the police because of his skin color... it was a pleasant thought.
The Russian ambassador was quick to call him out on the whole "Lizard-man's burden" angle he was coming from, and the Chinese representative retorted that safe streets were not worth the destruction of everything that made us human.
Of course, all of these arguments were semantics, really. They had not contacted us for a philosophical debate on our worthiness to rule ourselves.
Q: What was the main point of the negotiations, on the Race's behalf?
A: The Fleetlord made an offer to us, though I'd say he made an offer to the Americans and Russians. He would not invade them, or their allies, which included my own country. He would not invade any other countries. In exchange, we would not launch counteroffensives against the Race, and let them fully cement their hold on the nations they had invaded already.
There were other, smaller points. The return of all prisoners, and a ban on research into Race technologies, along with restrictions on the trade of ginger. Meanwhile the Race would allow the conquered peoples to keep their internet access, and would allow the UN to send inspectors to ensure there were no abuses in occupied territory.
Q: I imagine the response was less-than-stellar.
A: Smiling broadly Oh, and from so many directions! The Chinese president spat that such an agreement would entail China having no allies in its attempts to drive the Race out. He not-so-subtly implied to the others that he'd ensure we went down with his country in that scenario if it was just suddenly left out to dry.
I and several other EU representatives stated that the Race was occupying countries we had agreed to protect, chiefly our former African colonies, and that we wouldn't even begin to consider such an agreement until those nations were granted back their independence.
The American President demanded that the Race leave Brazil, due to its mutual defense pact with America, and also spoke of the other incoming ship. He showed the Fleetlord the Cassini images, much to everyone else's chagrin, and called for the Race to instead ally itself with all of Earth against the incoming ship, pointing out that it was moving awfully slow for something with a fusion drive.
Then, he shocked the Fleetlord by saying that they would protect the Colonization Fleet if the alliance was made.
Q: But the Fleet was twenty years away at the time.
NATO had already learned of the Fleet's existence from its prisoners by then. The American and Russian Presidents decided to use that as a bargaining chip, pointing out that the other ship could pose a direct threat in twenty years' time.
Q: What happened then?
A: The Fleetlord declared that he would review the points we'd made, and would hold another session the next day, at the same hour. Then the hologram disappeared, and Pshing was escorted out by the guards.
I was frustrated at the lack of progress we had made. But, at the same time, I was relieved. He said he would continue the talks tomorrow, which meant the ceasefire was going to last at least another day. Every day we spent in the ceasefire, was another day everyone could get a breather, move troops around, and get ready for when the other ship arrived.
We stop at a display showing off various pieces of clay, with writing etched into its surface.
This is a Hittite copy of its treaty with Ancient Egypt. In fact, this is the oldest known peace treaty, both by human and Race standards. That's one thing we have that's older than them. Almost everything before their Empire was thrown to the dustbin of history, and with it they lost a lot of things. They had almost no knowledge of treaties, or diplomacy. They were unused to have to speaking with someone as an equal, and not someone to just conquer and make their own.
She smiles at the fragments.
But they were going to have to learn.
You have been reading:
Worldfall, Chapter Five: Negotiations