Amala had never really owned any fancy civilian clothes. Academy and Navy both issued you what you needed for formalwear, and she hadn’t been much into dressing up, even as a kid. Not that there had been any money for it on Huldra, beyond the occasional present from a grandma in the post. A decade plus in the fleet as a security specialist hadn’t changed her outlook, as far as she could tell.
No, that took Keller. And zu Kermode. And Keller’s assistant, Marcelle Travere.
Dangerous people.
Amala would have happily gone down there in a dress uniform. Moirrey wouldn’t allow it.
That was how everyone referred to the engineer. Not zu Kermode. Or even Centurion Kermode.
Just Moirrey. Occasionally Lady Moirrey, to needle her.
Once Keller had set her mind on this course of action, the first thing Moirrey had done was take Amala’s measurements, then produced a new outfit the tiny woman referred to as Diplomat-At-Arms.
Amala had to admit it looked good. Long, baggy pants in sleek, black twill guaranteed to be waterproof and outlive everything else she owned. Amala could barely see her boots below the hem, rather than having them bloused at the calf. Long sleeved pullover out of a stretchy material that moved every direction Amala demanded. Also midnight black for the body, with raglan sleeves in a medium gray.
Over everything, a shin-length tabard as wide as her hips in dark gray, hooked at the waist and breast but falling free and open on the sides with long, monk-style sleeves that fell past her fingertips when she stood still. Embroidery on all the edges was done in the exact forest green that had been Amala’s life in uniform for a decade and a half. A tooled leather belt in white to hold it together, but not to attach a sword or holster.
That was on purpose.
Amala thought it was a stupid design, but she was apparently alone in that opinion, as everyone else loved it.
A cloak completed the outfit. Seriously, the woman had made her a cloak. Mottled black with a design pattern Moirrey had called paisley, apparently scorched into the felt somehow, with a dove-gray lining that felt like silk. It even had a hood to pull up against rain, or in case Amala suddenly found herself trapped in a fairy tale with a wolf who needed his ass kicked.
A messenger bag in real leather: a waterproof, fold-over satchel in matte black that held actual paper, like some primitive lawyer, or something.
It was an impressive outfit, Amala had to grant.
Diplomat-At-Arms.
But then Moirrey added the second surprise. Amala had already felt like she was in a fairy tale at that point. With a Fairy Godmother.
And then she met the second Fairy Godmother.
First-Rate-Spacer Vibol Harmaajärvi. Lean, erect, fussy. Old enough to be her father, he had been in the navy since before she was born. With skin as translucent as parchment and a smile that wanted to twinkle at you.
Amala hadn’t even been aware that there was a military school designation for it until she met Harmaajärvi.
Tailor.
A man who specialized in clothes. Mending them. Adjusting them as people changed over time. Making them for a diplomat assigned to Trusski, one who didn’t come with a formal wardrobe, having lived in uniform.
Keller expected her to go down there, to live, in mufti. So she had sent in an expert. One vouched for by Keller, zu Kermode, and Travere. With threats that they would hold her personally accountable if something happened to him, as he had apparently worked his magic on the Fleet Centurion as well.
Harmaajärvi had a wicked gleam in his eyes right now, staring at her across the aisle as the shuttle worked its way down to final approach. Not like he was envisioning her naked. Or rather, he was, and was figuring out how to fix that.
Fix her.
All her life, Amala had been average. Average height for her family and the rest of humanity, average build that only looked better as a result of the amount of time she spent in the gym and training floor. Average looks, with dark hair, dark eyes, skin darker than average for most of Aquitaine and lighter than many of her relatives.
And a beak of a nose that every man and woman noticed. Amala had occasionally considered getting a new one, but that felt too much like admitting they were right about her. The whispers that she was homely and should settle for whatever man would have her.
Whatever life would give her.
Never.
Amala wasn’t sure she was ready to be stunning. Harmaajärvi had threatened exactly that.
The gear she was bringing along was pretty sparse. She wasn’t expecting combat, so had no weapons, no armor, no field gear. She had Pinchon along for that. He was a weapon.
She was a diplomat.
Harmaajärvi had brought with him two meter-cube shipping containers, one with all his tools, the other with nothing but bolts of fabric, personally approved by the three ringleaders.
Ye gods, what had she gotten herself into?
A screen showed the ground coming up to meet them. Amala could see landing pits formed by ram-packing a circle of soil before raising an earthen berm around it, mostly as protection if something failed on landing. Aquitaine did it with a leveled, gravel-covered field kilometers across, with only passenger liners on regular runs having dedicated debarkation facilities. If you were lucky, the navy might park your shuttle under an awning to keep the rain and snow off.
Here, the shuttle was nosing in to land in a bullseye that could have easily held a DropShip with space left over for a handful of admin shuttles like the one bringing her to Trusski. The screen showed something she might charitably call a limousine, along with a few other enclosed vehicles and a couple of flatbed trucks of the type Amala normally utilized to transport troops, when they were on the ground and not expecting to fight.
Diplomat-At-Arms, being given a proper, formal welcome by the Khan of Trusski, and not about to be fired upon.
She hoped.
“Sir, thirty seconds to ground,” the pilot called over the interior comm. “Make the call.”
“Land it,” she ordered, taking a deep breath and trying not to think of whatever outfits Harmaajärvi might come up with to impress the locals.
Diplomacy with an alien culture would probably be less trying than combat.
She hoped.
The hatch opened, with a slight sigh as pressure equalized. Amala had watched the two lines of soldiers form up for reception, funneling her down to a man in what looked like the kind of court robes the history books always showed on Mandarin officials. She didn’t recognize the design worked onto a panel on his chest, but there was no doubt in her mind it indicated rank, school, and social status, if you knew the code.
This might be Scholar Ve, come to greet her personally. To escort her to the Khan.
“Harmaajärvi, you go down first,” Amala ordered suddenly. “Take up the first spot on the right and come to attention. Pinchon, you follow me down. The rest of you stay put.”
A diplomat did not exist in a vacuum. Keller and d’Maine had provided her a small staff to maintain a household. Their term.
An Embassy.
She already knew that Pinchon and Harmaajärvi would end up being the two she relied on the most. Might as well get everyone used to it.
She watched her personal tailor suddenly transform himself into a recruitment poster boy and march down the steps at a slow, formal cadence, like this was drill and judges were assessing tenth-point demerits.
There wouldn’t be many.
Amala took a deep breath and found the calm that preceded combat. What little noise there had been outside had fallen to only the breeze. Even the birds were holding their breath, it seemed.
One step forward, into the local afternoon light spilling into the hatchway. Top of the steps. Pause. Glance around for the snipers she knew had to be somewhere, but they were well hidden.
Emerge. A diplomat butterfly where a marine caterpillar had been.
Three steps to ground.
Eighteen paces past soft-looking garritroopers with shiny buckles and rifles presented for inspection.
Not bad. Her boys would own them on points, but it was a credible-enough performance.
Especially if you hadn’t woken this morning expecting to be invaded.
The man at the end was short.
Amala was used to being shorter than all the men she encountered, and about half the women.
She had at least a centimeter on this man, depending on the heels he had under that robe and how they stacked up against the combat boots hiding under her tabard.
Forty years old, perhaps. Straight black hair, graying in odd stripes. Hazel eyes with an Asian fold, in a round face. Scars from some childhood illness on his cheeks.
Two meters away, she came to rest. Paused.
Measured the man’s calm with her own.
Even. Steady.
“Senior Centurion Amala Michelle Siddhartha Anne Yuey Bhattacharya,” she announced in Mandarin Chinese, just to test the man. “Personal representative of Jessica Marie Keller, Imperial Admiral of the Red, Republic Fleet Centurion, Queen of the Pirates.”
She had to suppress a grin at the ways his eyes sort of crossed at that last part. If you didn’t understand Corynthe, hadn’t known them, bled with them, gotten drunk with them, you lacked all cultural context to understand that Queen of the Pirates was probably her most impressive title.
Those people were intense.
“Scholar Ve Gayav Chuluun Gan,” he replied in that same slightly wheezy Mandarin she had heard earlier. “Advisor to Ul Banop Cheani Yuur, Khan of Trusski. We hereby formally renounce your invasion and declare our intent to rebel against your authority at every opportunity.”
She did grin at that. Someone had read the Laws of Recognized Warfare in the last few hours and understood what Keller had threatened by declaring them. And hadn’t done, just waiting politely in orbit while delivering an ambassador.
Technically, Amala did represent a formal invasion, backed up by one marine, six clerks, and a tailor.
A most dangerous invasion.
She nodded slightly to the man. This was where things got interesting.
Aquitaine had never established formal ties to Buran. Hadn’t even truly understood that they existed as more than a child’s story intended to frighten delinquents into behaving.
Keller might be representing Fribourg here in the red uniform she wore for formal occasions, but this was an entirely Republic affair, including one Imperial Princess who had technically taken up arms under a foreign government.
“The Khan awaits you,” Ve said.
He turned to a small cluster of men and women in similar, if less impressive, robes, standing partly hidden nearby, masked slightly by the cluster of vehicles. At some unseen signal, they glided closer.
“This staff will assist you in establishing your embassy,” he concluded, with the slightest challenge in his voice. As if she was incompetent? Perhaps a sniff down his nose at them. Hard to tell.
Counting coup, Sri? Might I suggest that next time you pick on someone who doesn’t have forty-three siblings and close cousins?
Amala turned, letting her face turn ever-so-frosty.
“Artisan Harmaajärvi,” she called in English, causing the tailor at the end of the line to lean forward and turn to look at her.
She gestured at the half-dozen locals negligently.
“The Khan has provided you a staff to help establish the embassy,” she said, subtly promoting the man to Charge d’Affairs.
She might have done that anyway, considering how efficiently he had used his calm seniority to organize the rest of the clerks, none of whom probably could even spell espionage.
Harmaajärvi nodded and stepped out of line to walk up and stand close by.
She watched them as he inspected the group. Most looked passive, perhaps even tried to appear friendly. One scowled, as if he had just sucked on a particularly bad lemon.
Harmaajärvi noticed.
She doubted he knew any more Chinese than was necessary to order dinner in a fancy restaurant, but he wasn’t going to have any of it.
The tailor stepped close to the scowling man. They were of a height, and both lean. Harmaajärvi was perhaps two decades older. Wiser.
Meaner.
Amala bit her tongue rather than laugh out loud when Harmaajärvi reached out a hand and pulled a stray thread loose from the embroidery on his collar, tsking under his tongue as he did.
The stranger turned scarlet, followed a moment later by white, as rage trumped embarrassment. One hand started to curl into a fist before the stranger caught himself.
Amala noted that roughly half the others struggled valiantly to suppress their own grins. They were the ones at the rear of the group. Presumably of lower rank or status. Apparently, they didn’t have as high an opinion of the man as he himself did.
Harmaajärvi agreed.
“I find most of them acceptable,” he proclaimed mildly.
Scholar Ve was also suppressing his mirth, but Amala could see it in his eyes.
“Thank you for your kind assistance, Scholar Ve,” she said.
He smiled for a flash, and then turned serious.
“I will take your arm now,” he said. “In order to provide proper heraldry, as I would not wish you awkwardness, not fully understanding our ways.”
She nodded, and Ve stepped around to place his right hand under her left forearm and lift it nearly level. Amala found it a very useful way to escort someone, as communication could occur with hidden fingertips, especially under the big sleeves she wore today.
“The Khan is looking forward to making your acquaintance,” he continued, switching to Mongolian. “We receive so little news from the greater galaxy.”
Amala nodded as Ve led her to the limousine, opened the door, and guided her in.
Overhead, Auberon and VI Victrix would be packing up to go hide in the darkness, leaving her here alone as a planetary invasion force, with the assistance of First-Rate-Spacer Harmaajärvi.
At least she would look good doing it.