Phil noted the marine honor guard drawn up as they exited the airlock. His GuSship was too big to enter their small shuttle bay, which was why he’d chosen it as his chariot.
All Balhee Cluster ships tended to follow the boom and secondary design. Buran’s Energiya Module logic. Excepting, of course, Yaumgan, who just landed an entire ship on the surface like a giant statue.
As a result, nobody but Ewin really did shuttle bays of a size like Urumchi. Or carried GunShips. Gloran did have older vessels that they might now call Light Battleships, converted over into something like Aquitaine’s old Fleet Carriers, but Emperor Adric hadn’t brought one with him.
Probably rightly understanding how irrelevant they suddenly were, against Expeditionary forces. Jež had suggested in one of his letters that the era of the snubfighter was definitively over, at least until technology advanced enough to make them pocket warships with enough shielding to withstand a spread of Pulse-Two beams and a Type-3-Pulse. Plus maybe a small JumpSail.
Which rather well described his GunShip.
Phil made a note to talk to Iveta about something Keller had once done, putting a squadron of GunShips on a converted freighter the size of Packmule, where it acted like a mothership. Fast, heavy, and rude. Junkyard would have all those details at her immediate command.
But for now, Phil was following his people out into a reception bay. Security Centurion Xochitl Dar had gone first, because she was like that. Harinder and Fleet Ambassador Aliza Babatunde followed closely behind.
Phil could see Command Diplomatic Centurion Miliya Gavraba standing over next to War-Captain Tanel. Aliza had assigned the woman to Gloran after Vilahana, partly to reinforce with these folks that Aquitaine was more like Aditi in gender balance.
Nobody had complained here, where they might have at Dalou. Ewin should have thrown a temper tantrum. Yaumgan would have welcomed her with open arms.
Gloran was still the wild card, in too many ways.
Adham Khan, Cruiser-Captain of Juvayni, was second to last, standing to one side with his chest puffed out proudly. Phil took them all in and smiled.
He turned to the War-Captain and bowed his head.
“Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule, War-Captain,” Phil said. “I understand how stressful such situations can be, having been there myself in the past.”
That caught the man off-guard. But then, Phil didn’t talk much about St. Legier. He had been part of Keller’s squadron when the news arrived. And had later walked on the surface, in one of the places left destroyed as a reminder that some crimes were simply too evil to exist.
Buran had been executed as a result of giving that order. And only two Sentiences were currently allowed to exist. The Librarian at Alexandria Station. The Bartender at Petron.
Phil had never met the latter, but he had had a chance to correspond with the former during his time teaching. And to ask her questions about the galaxy that had been before.
“Welcome to Carinae II, First Centurion,” Tanel replied after a beat so short that people might have missed it.
And pigs might fly.
Quickly, Phil got introduced to the many Cruiser-Captains and Frigate-Captains around them, all dressed in close variants of Khan’s black leather with chain mail and a belt knife.
Fleet-Captain Kiri Povoloi was commander of Glanthua’s Stand. He reminded Phil in many ways of a tightly coiled spring. Large brown eyes and brown skin that didn’t go at all with thick, wavy, lemon-yellow hair worn back from a high forehead in a style that reminded Phil of a rooster’s crest. He was as tall as Phil, but still shorter than Tanel, and had an elegance to him that belied the martialness of his costume.
“Fleet-Captain Povoloi, this is Command Centurion Heather Lau, commander of my flagship,” Phil made a point to introduce them directly, after everyone had been named. “Your rough equivalent, given the differences in how the two navies handle rank and command.”
“Ground Control,” the man nodded almost reverently. “A pleasure to finally meet you in the flesh.”
Phil could almost hear Heather’s hackles rise, but she’d done it to herself. Apparently, like Ewin, they were going to see her as a war goddess around here, because they were still a little backwards in gender roles.
At least it gave him an opening to the woman standing somewhat off to one side, with two men guarding her flanks.
“Frigate-Captain Zaman?” Phil confirmed, drawing everyone off to one side before Heather replied to the Fleet-Captain. “Did I have that correct?”
“You do, First Centurion,” Zaman bowed much deeper now. “Commander of the Penal Frigate Arteshbo.”
Phil nodded sagely, then turned it into something of a matching bow. He might be the visitor here, but he also represented a much bigger political power, however far off to their east Aquitaine might be.
“We do not have a similar structure in the Republic of Aquitaine Navy, Frigate-Captain,” he replied. “I would be most interested in hearing how it works at Gloran, since it obviously does.”
All those light-centuries had just shrunk, now that he was sending home physical and social maps of the Balhee Cluster.
Phil turned back to Tanel with a smile.
“How best to proceed?” he asked simply, allowing the man to drive the conversation and the evening forward.
It helped that Phil had done this many other places. And that Gloran officers and diplomats beyond Khan had been able to participate. To learn a more relaxed way of doing things, when everybody always wanted to set out the long tables and argue across them.
Almost as bad as giving speeches to try to impress someone.
“The Emperor has commanded a cocktail party,” Tanel said with a hint of grin that suggested the original order probably would have been a banquet fit for kings.
Big, loud, formal, useless.
Phil nodded and followed as the tall man led him to the various mobs out of the airlock reception area and deeper into the ship.