Well look at me. Actually posting stuff.

One of the things I’ve been trying to do this year was pushing my way further into reading. As for most things in life, my main motivation for this is my wife, who’s had her own record-breaking reading year and who’s trying to get through all the Booker prize longlist novels before the shortlist is even announced. So inspired by her, I’m also trying to make this my most prolific reading year yet.

The book I read most recently was Katabasis by R.F. Kuang. I’d read Yellowface before, which became one of my favourite books that year, so I was really curious about this one, and once a signed copy came up for auction in support of the Vancouver Writers Fest, I couldn’t pass up a chance to grab it.
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At first, I would say I was disappointed. Not because I necessarily expected something similar to Yellowface, but I think I felt the pacing slog in the first third and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the main characters and their motivations. That said, by the halfway mark it really grew on me and then I just zipped through it, hooked on all the various twists and turns and the character development for the protagonists.

Figuring out how to use this site again is a bit like relearning to ride a bicycle – I can do it, but feel extremely wobbly and there’s a good change I end up in the ditch. I believe the last couple of entries have contained some kind of commitment to post more often, so this time I will just skip the trite promises. Whatever comes will come. The point is, I have some time right now to try to get my feet wet again.

I will mention, however, that one of the motivating reasons for me to try to post here again as this is pretty much the only place left on the internet where to find me. I have long abandoned Twitter (as well calling it anything else), Bluesky never caught on for me and a few months ago I decided to leave Instagram, finding that it was sucking up way too much of my time. I try to stay plugged into current events through some feeds where I don’t have an account, and therefore less temptation for interaction, and so far that’s been working well for me. All that I side, I still have ambitions to be a writer who would one day like to connect to his readers, so this is the one thing I would like to keep alive for those purposes.

Specific updates will hopefully come in due time but for now just a few broad strokes about the last couple of years. I’ve never stopped writing – I’ve finished a few projects and queried for agents to no success and currently I’m working on a new novel I’m especially excited about and can’t wait to provide more details. Life has generally been busy with kids and work, but life-long goals of publication die hard.

One thing I did want to note is that yesterday I’m pretty sure they were filming season two of Off Campus outside my office window, if the Massachusetts (no I did not spell that correctly the first time) licence plates were any indication. There was really something in the uncanny valley about watching students walk by knowing they’re not real people, but extras following some carefully crafted cues. I imagine they’ll be filming a bit over the next week or two before the students come back for the fall semester.

There’s a lot to catch up on, so let’s start with one of the most exciting things. For many years I’ve chronicled my journey here to completing my first novel. These would be all the entries on this site mentioning “Wake the Drowned”, though I have since renamed it to the more palatable “Now Leaving Middleton”. In my own real-life plot twist, Now Leaving Middleton did not end up being the first novel I actually completed.

Back in October 2022, around the 19th anniversary of when my wife and I started darting, an insane idea popped into my head. We often mused at the time that our story felt straight out of a teen romcom movie, so I thought, why not make that a reality? And why not make that a gift to her for our 20th anniversary?
I had less than twelve months to plan, outline, write, edit and format for printing an entire novel, even though I’ve never completed one before, nor have I ever written romance. At the end of the day, a perfectly realistic goal, right?

Well apparently it is, when it’s fueled by love and dedication. Pardon the corny. It also didn’t hurt that I knew the subject matter pretty intimately. And though I took many, and sometimes significant, artistic liberties in order to fit our story into a proper romance arc, there are huge chunks of the novel that match nearly one-for-one to true events. The secret mutual crushes, back-stabbing friends and unsupportive bigoted parents that exist within the pages were all based on real life. The resulting book was as much a market-ready teen romance book as it was a true family chronicle.
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The one thing I really wanted out of this project though was an actual physical book, and here it is in all its glory:

Now, let’s be clear, this is not published, but it is printed, with only six copies in existence, all of which are at our house. Formatting this from scratch to look like a real published book when you open it was a tonne of fun, as well as designing my own cover, back cover and spine. Here’s a sample of what it looks like on the inside:

One last note I want to make is on the title. Aside from the obvious reference to my wife and me, it’s also a play on our own song, which played the same important role in our relationship as it did for Aurora and Connor, the heroes of the book. Except in our case, the song was Lifehouse’s “Hanging by a Moment” rather than the titular “You and Me”.

And that’s the story of how a labour of love turned into the first novel that I’ve ever completed. Getting this milestone out of the way and proving to myself that I can do it was immensely important in removing some mental roadblocks for me. I quickly finished my second novel soon after, and have a couple of other projects on the go I’m excited about. It also opened up for me an opportunity to test out the querying world and trying to get an agent to get the book published, and that story is worth its own post.
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The hardest part though was probably working on such a large writing project and not being able to share anything about it with my wife. Though the surprise at the end was completely worth it. And if you think I’ve learned my lesson, think again, because I’m currently working on another inspired by and dedicated to her novel. Good thing she doesn’t check this website.

I’m not sure it bodes well that one of my New Year’s resolutions was to start posting here again and we’re more than halfway through January and here I am with my first entry. That said, I’m refusing to put a lot of stock into omens. Looking back at the last entry here, I also spoke of resolutions and being kind to myself to avoid burnout, and given how that turned out, I think I will be just fine. The (mostly) one-project-at-a-time approach has been suiting this part of my life much better.

Also looking back at that entry, I peppered it with all sorts of announcements and updates, promising to elaborate later, and neglected to do so. Part of me is tempted to do one massive info dump, but perhaps I’ve finally learned my lesson, and I will not be overwhelming myself with a mini-novel about the last two years of my writing life.
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So I’m going to practice leaving well enough alone and ending the update here. My commitment to post more is out in the world now and therefore giving me a bit of external pressure. So if anyone is out there, there will be plenty more to come.

I usually do some big New Year's Review posts but I skipped this completely last year, and not sure I have the bandwidth for it this time around. I guess one of my resolutions would be to be kinder to myself and not spread myself too thin at the risk of burnout. It was one of the reasons I abandoned tracking my daily word counts as I found that I was just putting way too much pressure on myself, even though I had previously sworn up and down that it doesn't happen. So I guess being more self-aware would be a good goal, too.

However, just because I don't track my daily writing goals anymore, doesn't mean I'm not being productive. I reached a very important milestone last year, which is that I finally finished my first novel, and it wasn't even the one I was working on for years. Instead, I leapfrogged it by plotting out, writing, editing, formatting and even printing a new novel project in the span of about 11 months. I'll have more on that later, but for now I just want to say how unbelievably excited I am to have completed this project and to have been able to finish a novel after chasing the goal all these years. And my previous WIP is just 1.5 edited chapters away from being done, so that would make it two novels completed within a few months of each other, and I can definitely live with that.

I've also got a local project I'm working on for a theatre production - something completely off the beaten path for me and still in its preliminary stages, so I will save saying more on that until all the papers are signed. All I can say is that I'm both excited and terrified for it.

All in all there is groundwork here for this to be the most significant year for me in my writing journey, so I'm keeping all my fingers crossed.

I feel like I'm getting on a bicycle for the first time in two years, except instead of a bicycle, it's the Weebly interface.

It was a little sad seeing that my last handful of entries on this site were the automated chapters of The Bloodlet Sun already in the queue, a project I had since abandoned. That said, even though I haven't been blogging these last two years, it doesn't mean I've been idle. Far from it. Just over the last year I've managed to write an entire novel from conception to final edit, as well as just about wrapped up editing on that first novel I was writing, which ended up getting leapfrogged, and will now officially become my second novel.

With two manuscripts I'm proud of under my belt, it's time to take some earnest steps out into the open world of publication and try to cross into that final frontier.

There may be stirrings here and there, though I won't say anything more at the moment, but will catch up here in due time.

In the weeks that followed the deployment of the Human and combined ORC fleets to Krevali, little changed on Earth. It was a planet that was not even on the fringes of any potential war, so any death, should it come, would take place so far away it was almost theoretical. One only needed to know which blocks to avoid in order to keep any reminders out of one’s day-to-day life.

One such problematic block happened to contain the Mraboran consulate, which the authorities ensured would not again become the epicentre for the kind of large protest that Angzal and Rzena were swept up in earlier, but which assurance did not extend to dispersing the small crowd that gathered around its entrance every day, because this was mostly targeted at the Mraboran, and minimally disturbed the Human residents of Malbur. For the Mraboran, there was no coming through the front doors anymore, and even Humans who worked in the building, most of them completely unrelated to the consulate, were eyed with suspicion by the irate protestors.

There were other ways in – such as subterranean passages from adjacent buildings – that made the staff feel closer to vermin than guests of this world, but all they did was shrug it off and view the whole situation as the cost of doing business on Earth, leaving their colourful griping confined to the walls of their office.

They had all taken these back entrances, at offices across the planet. All except one. Not the Ambassador, not even a consul, but an upstart deputy consul from one of the lesser of the major Earth cities who, despite being pulled aside by local police on several occasions, insisted she would continue using the front door.

“Please, Deputy Consul, if there is an unfortunate altercation, it would happen too fast for us to be able to protect you.”

“You did a bang-up job of protecting me the last time. I wouldn’t expect this to be any different.”

“As we’ve said, we’re actively pursuing the suspects in the assault on you and your associate.”

Angzal had been pulled aside by three members of the local police force – not the chief, she’d obviously had more important things to attend to, but one of her sergeants, the one with the droopy mustache who smelled vaguely of some kind of boiled vegetable, and two of his officers. They had been waiting for her that morning, so they could have a chat in full view of the crowd that only grew in its agitation, slinging jeers at Angzal that she couldn’t quite make out.

“Far be it for me to tell you how to do your job,” Angzal said, “But I think it would have been significantly easier to pursue them when they were arm’s length from the officers who’d witnessed the assault with their own eyes.”

This Sergeant always tried to start speaking Trade Thorian with her and it seemed to make him visibly uncomfortable to hear a Mraboran respond in Standard Earth Commercial. Not to mention that he’d start sweating his boiled vegetable sweat more anytime she’d show her teeth, so she made sure that her canines were on display as much as possible.

“As we’ve said before, we are internally investigating the incident.”

“Yes, Sergeant, and I’m sure you have your best people on it. Hopefully the same ones that were able to get our man within a mere two hours of the fight he was involved in, even as he was in the process of trying to get off world.” Before the Human managed to sputter anything in response, Angzal said, “Are we finished here?”

“Of course, Deputy Consul, you’re always free to go.”

Angzal glanced behind her at the crowd and then back to the police officer. “That’s an exaggeration and you know it. Thank you for your concerns, Sergeant, I will take them into advisement.”

With that she turned around and headed back towards the protestors who eyed her with acute interest. Despite what many thought, including some at her office, Angzal did not do this to send some kind of message, or as a gesture of defiance. It had been far more base than that. She did it because it fueled her anger. She submitted to the throngs of screeching Humans every morning before work because she secretly hoped that one day one of them would give her just the right excuse to snap, to wreak havoc on their fragile cowardly little bodies and then enter her office, seek diplomatic immunity and then get shipped off to some faraway Mraboran colony hopefully as equidistant from Earth and Mrabr as possible.

On that morning, she reached the doors largely unmolested, the crowds seemingly at least somewhat skittish about the small police presence that watched her go inside. Fine then, she thought, some other morning, and some other idiot, this planet did not have a shortage of them.

“Sergeant Ram thought he’d have a chat with me this morning,” Angzal said as she opened the door to her office. “Should worry more about that moustache of his. What is it with bald-faced species –”

“Shut the door,” Rzena said and the abruptness of this request made Angzal comply without question, not even registering the audacity of it. “You’re lucky you got in when you did. We’re told this’ll probably hit the local news within the hour.”

“What’s going on?” she asked and Rzena passed her his open tablet.

“This was relayed from the Ambassador a few minutes ago, passed through our own emergency communication channels.”

Angzal picked up the tablet, her eyes scanning the text as the sound of her blood rushing through her ears grew ever louder.

“How did this happen?” she asked, hearing her voice turn gravely.
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The Human fleet sent to Krevali had been destroyed.

Coming into the office the day following the concluded negotiations between Congressmembers Reyes and Ferrety felt like being in a city on the edge of a hurricane. Her own private skies were gray, the wind was agitating the trees, and Angzal wasn’t sure if the tempest would pass her, or rain destruction over her life. The worst part was it did not seem to affect anyone else. The few people she saw greeted her just as they would any other day, and no matter how the vote would go that afternoon, it would have no effect on their day in the slightest, other than maybe in a couple of months they would need to learn the name of the new Deputy Consul.

Rzena came in late. He’d never come in late before and neither of them drew any attention to this. There was a report that had come in from the previous night that a Mraboran got into a fight with three Humans. Predictably, the three Humans lost, and one of them nearly lost their life, and still could have. Neither Angzal nor Rzena shared their conjectures about how that fight may have started, but it nevertheless hung between them as Rzena denied calls from journalists and Angzal fielded calls from officials.

“Can you keep an eye on the news for me and let me know how the vote goes down?” Angzal asked after getting off a very vague conversation with the regional police chief.

“Already on it,” Rzena said, showing her his tablet that was showing the news feed, while his computer monitor was dedicated for his work, presumably, as it was turned away from Angzal.

“Never took you for one who’d have any interest in the news feeds.”

“This is the most exciting thing to have happened to this rock in a decade.” Rzena shook his head, then looked at Angzal. “I’m not dead inside, contrary to what you might believe.” This definitely was a concept that was difficult for Angzal to wrap her head around as she was certainly feeling increasingly deceased with every passing hour. Perhaps she could make the day go faster if she started packing her desk right then.

Rzena, clearly a creature of habit, readied himself for lunch at precisely the same minute he had every day. “You coming out?” he asked, sounding vaguely bored about the upcoming answer.

“No, I’d rather not.”

“It might do you good,” he offered with a shrug, “Might be a distraction at least.”

“Actually, what’s likely to happen is that someone looks at me slightly askance and I end up tearing their throat out in front of the entire office.”

“Well in that case, the rest of us could use that kind of distraction.”

Angzal waved him off and the door behind Rzena closed.

What she didn’t tell Rzena was that she had completely lost her appetite, but he didn’t need to know that. Sure, she was playing up her mood so that Rzena and her could have a laugh about it, but on the inside, matters weren’t much better than what she was letting on. All she wanted to do was retreat to her den, her apartment, and lick her wounds until this was all over, and the Human Interstellar Dependency Congress could vote to seal her fate.

Her lamentations were interrupted by Rzena’s return from lunch, an early return, which having so far been an unencountered occurrence told everything Angzal needed to know about why he was back.

“You haven’t been watching the news?” he asked, seemingly annoyed that she indeed needed him for such a simple task. He handed her his tablet, and then walked around her desk to watch the broadcast already in progress.

“And a mere hour before the final Congressional debate and vote on the Krevali intervention, Congressmember Frances Reyes, for the Mer Pacific region of Earth, was taken to the Malbur Medical Centre in critical condition. Doctors have so far been unable to determine the nature of Reyes’ sudden illness and she remains under observation in what is described as life-threatening condition.”

“What,” Angzal muttered, mostly to herself. Did Reyes hand over her instructions to her caucus? Did she get a chance to introduce her amendments? And then, shamefully, bringing up the rear: was she going to be alright?

“After some delay, the HID Congress proceeded with the vote in Reyes’ absence, and the motion was carried with no amendments. It is estimated that the bulk of the Human and ORC fleets should reach Krevali within three weeks.”

The broadcast continued into details about the vote itself, cutting away to graphics that set out which factions voted which way, all done up in lavish colours to keep even the idiots engaged. Angzal though no longer was and let the chattering of the Human reporter recede into noise. Noticing this, Rzena took back the tablet and walked back to his desk.

“Well,” Rzena said, switching off the rest of the broadcast, “Congratulations.”

“What?” Angzal raised her eyes and looked at her assistant. “What ‘congratulations’? What the hell was that?”

“What was what?” he asked, turning away from her and back to his screen, “You won, the Humans are sending their ships to Krevali and we can keep doing what we’ve always been doing, which, rounded down, is absolutely nothing.”

“Forget all that.” Angzal was beginning to lose her patience, and the worst thing was, she wasn’t entirely sure where it was coming from. “What about Reyes?”

“What about her?”

“This doesn’t bother you at all? That she looked fine yesterday? A little worn down from the negotiations maybe, but on the verge of something that could keep her from this vote?”

“It’s one Human, Angzal,” Rzena said. “This is nothing to lose sleep over.”

She agreed with this, in principle. Hadn’t she? A Mraboran working for the Mraboran people on a rock inhabited mostly by those who were not like her. What were the Humans truly to her?

“It’s just that. This feels … hollow somehow. Was there even a difference that we made here, or did this illness do our job for us?” Angzal asked.

“Hollow victories still count as victories. And if even victories make you feel hollow, there’s really no hope for you.” He looked up then and seeing her face, laughed and shook his head. Was there anything this man said that he fully meant? “Besides, it seems like her caucus ended up splitting on the issue, so it would appear that you made a difference after all. And that she never introduced her amendment and they ended up sending the full fleet? Not sure the Ambassador would fault you for deferring to Congressmember Reyes’ health problems to solve that.”
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He was right. She was going about it all wrong. She should have been thinking ahead to her next conversation with the Ambassador. Surely no glowing praise ought to be expected, but it would go far more pleasantly than their last interaction. It would have to, otherwise what was the point of all this?

“You’re doing well,” Rzena said when the two of them were alone, and Angzal knew she had all his sympathy even though the tone of his voice was meant to project the exact opposite.

“I’m going to get us reassigned,” Angzal said without lifting her head from the table.

“Perhaps, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be included in that.”

“I’m sure I’ll discover a way to take you down with me.”

She opened her eyes to the wood grain of the table staring back at her. Was this faux wood or real? It was hard to say given that even though they had trees on Mrabr, and had used them for furniture and decoration, they were, of course, vastly different species. The colour would have been different, and the pattern itself. Everything here that wasn’t fully foreign was different, sometimes in an uncanny undecipherable way like this tabletop. Angzal wished it was proper for her to unbind her tail, let it twitch and rage in a full display of what she was feeling inside.

“What do you think they’re discussing right now?” Rzena asked, bringing Angzal back to the room.

“I don’t know, probably strategizing on how to get the whole Mraboran Protectorate into a war with the Thorian Empire over a single unremarkable planet.”

“Maybe they’re busy looking for the next flight to Mrabr so she could present her case there personally.”

“She would succeed, too. All they’d have to do is spend fifteen minutes in the room with her and those cowards will be shoving babies into torpedo tubes.”

Angzal lifted her head, looked out the window. The sun had only just begun to set, tempering the outside colours with the blues of early twilight. She envied Ferrety, who was out there, breathing in the fresh salt air blowing in from the bay, instead of sitting here just in case Reyes returned early only to announce that she decided to keep being a problem after all.

“Do you believe any of that?” Rzena asked. “What you said about the Protectorate and our people in general?” Was Rzena asking because he agreed or because it offended him? It was never easy to tell with Rzena.

“I said what I said to get the result our people needed,” Angzal answered.

“Sure, yes, you said it, but did you believe it?”

“Does it matter if I believed it or not?” She was both annoyed that he kept asking and that she didn’t actually have an answer. “Who knows? You say something enough times you start believing it.” The cut on Rzena’s brow was not well-healed but was well-hidden by his fur, and attracted no attention from any of the three Humans who’d been in the room with him. He missed only a single day of work, and when he returned, neither of them talked about what happened during the protest. “Rzena, you’ve been doing this for fifteen years. How tired do you feel?”

“You know when you hadn’t eaten for far too long, and the sharpness of hunger gives way to a numb emptiness? It’s kind of like that.”

Ferrety returned punctually, twenty-eight minutes after Reyes called her half-hour break, but Reyes herself did not afford them the same kind of courtesy. They waited for her mostly in silence, the pool of small talk having been exhausted, but also because they had to steel themselves for whatever onslaught Reyes would return with.

There was something Angzal noticed about Ferrety during that time, glancing at him while the Martian Congressmember was absorbed in his tablet, and that was that the longer you looked at him, the more it seemed like he wasn’t actually there. There was, even when measured against her own limited experiences, something not quite Human about him. It could have been just that she was used to Earth Humans, and not “rockhoppers” as those from Earth referred to the colonists, or it simply could have been that this was the longest day of her life.

Finally, Reyes returned, nearly an hour after she left, and in typical Reyes fashion offered no apologies for her lateness.

Tani Naomi took a seat, but did not pull out his tablet, instead folding his hands in front of him on the table. This was going to be short. So short that Reyes did not bother to sit before she spoke.

“I can’t vote in favour of this – what is in my opinion, completely insane – proposal.” She then lowered herself into her chair, her eyes on her notes, and Angzal wondered why she would even bother sitting down rather than just walking out of the room. It was something in Tani’s face though, how his eyes wondered around the room but didn’t make eye contact, even though the corners of his mouth twitched upwards ever so slightly, that suggested more was coming. Congressmember Reyes settled in her chair, put her arms in front of her on the table and intertwined her fingers. “I do, however, also believe that even insanity deserves to be heard.” She paused, chewed on her lip and gave her assistant the briefest of sideways glances. “I will instruct my block that they can have a free vote on this.” Ferrety nodded with restraint while Angzal felt her own spine slacken. “I don’t know if this will get you the votes you need to tip the balance. Honestly, I doubt it.”

Was this victory? It certainly didn’t feel like defeat. Far more than she expected mere seconds ago but miles from what she’d hoped for. Reyes, though, was not quite done.

“I will let my caucus have a free vote on this, but I will first call for an amendment to reduce the size of the fleet to half of what is currently being proposed. It’s senseless to commit nearly the entirety of our forces to something where other species won’t lift a finger.”

Judging by his expression, Gord Ferrety was going through the same motions as Angzal – relief, annoyance, frustration, trying to forcibly remind oneself to be happy that, in the end, this was better than nothing.

“Thank you, Congressmember,” Ferrety said a little stiffly, “I look forward to working with you on this initiative.”

“I will not be working on any initiative. And there is no need to thank me. There’s no need to feel any kind of satisfaction from this. This has been nothing but a symptom of a failure, and it would be a shame to have reached the stars after so long, only to be slapped back down to the ground. Now if you’ll excuse me,” Reyes said, standing up again, though her hands were still leaning on the table, “A have a Congressional session to prepare for.” Without further fuss, she turned to leave the room, paying no more attention to either Angzal or Congressmember Ferrety.

Only Tani, just as he was about to step out of the door, flashed Angzal a small smile, nodded, and said “Deputy Consul”. Watching him leave, Angzal wondered how someone so seemingly pleasant could be working with Reyes.

“Well I think our work here is done,” Ferrety said, all tension now drained out of him like bad blood.

“Yes, more like ‘done for’,” Angzal answered.

“Oh, cheer up, Deputy Consul. Congressmember Reyes can be very stubborn when she passionately believes in her version of what is right. I think all things considered, we did as well as we could have hoped.”

Angzal saw that the sun had already set, so she offered Ferrety to arrange an escort back to his hotel.

“No, that’s quite alright,” Ferrety said, “I can find my way just fine, maybe take in more of the city before I turn in for the night.” She’d wonder later, what it was that she had seen, if it was anything at all, that brief flash in his small black eyes, as if again he was phasing out of actually being there in the room with them.

With the Humans gone, the conference room now felt huge. Rzena had turned off his tablet and was looking out into the darkness of the window. Did it remind him of that night a week ago? Did it make him hesitant to make the final decision to leave and walk through the evening streets of Malbur back to his apartment? It did for Angzal, and she didn’t want to have been alone in thinking it.

“See you back here tomorrow?” she asked finally, and for a long moment he didn’t answer, and didn’t even look at her.
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“And tomorrow and tomorrow,” Rzena added and rose from the table.

“Look, Frances,” Congressmember Ferrety started as Angzal tuned back in, the calm façade in his voice cracking, and the fatigue showing.

“Ah, so I’m finally ‘Frances’ now, Gord?” What did seem indefatigable was Congressmember Reyes’ derisive smile, and her comment made Ferrety steady himself, take a breath, and start over.

“I recognize that there’s grey areas in intervening in the affairs of other people or other species, but I’m having trouble seeing what that grey area is in this case. The Thorians have clearly violated the Treaty of Krevali with this invasion, a treaty that includes the Human Interstellar Dependency as one of its signing members. If we just let them ignore the letter of an agreement that was earned by Human blood, what value does that blood have then? What is the worth of Humanity and Human worlds in the larger universe?”

“And how far do we take this, Gord? What lengths would we be willing to go to in order to defend this affronted dignity of ours? So we send a few ships to make a statement and then what? Would we engage in any direct conflict? Or would we put actual boots on the ground and support a full-scale liberation? It’s a fight we can’t win, Gord,” Reyes’ voice turned quiet, a volume Angzal didn’t think it was capable of reaching, and the way she gathered her eyebrows together, it made her look almost sad. “Not against the Thorians. But there are others that can. Mrabr is so much closer to Krevali than we are and the Mraboran have a history with the Thorians that predates the Great Fire for us. Let them handle it. Provide other support if we must, send resources from the same colonies you claim would be dismissed as irrelevant, but keep our Navy out of it.”

There was something going on behind Ferrety’s small black eyes – the calculations he was going through seemed removed from the conference room and there was a harshness that entered those perpetually slightly puckered lips of his. Could he feel the same thing that Angzal was feeling? That things were slipping out of her control. ‘We want the best’ is what the Ambassador had told her, but Angzal’s best did not reach those standards. How did she find herself on the crest of this ripple – a conversation between two irrelevant Humans that could potentially send a wave to the other side of the Known Reaches, perhaps encouraging the Hatvan to start taking cues from the Thorians? Did Angzal want another flare up like the Hatvan Troubles, or something even worse? Did she want another useless tussle over border worlds that had traded hands dozens of times over the last few thousand years? Would the Ungadath survive another battle over their territory between the two Empires? Or will they go by way of the Jadafeon – obliterated from existence and living on as historical curiosities?

Congressmember Reyes continued to press Ferrety with fantasies of Mraboran, or even more laughably, Hatvan intervention, to the point where Angzal found herself unable to listen anymore. The words were pressing on the inside of her lungs and she thought she would soon burst if she did not interrupt.

“You must recognize, Congressmember, that this is an empty alternative?” Angzal said, finding the impossibly rare break between Reyes’ sentences, and drawing all eyes suddenly on herself. “No one there will step up to do anything no matter how much you fantasize about it. Look at the Mraboran Protectorate. We’ve got our old foes the Hatvan on one side, the Thorians on the other, and internal independence movements that need crushing. Our plate is full, and we’re not about to add the Krevali or anybody else to it. There’s a routine we’ve found ourselves in, and we’re perfectly comfortable with things continuing just as they are. Those who deserve little get little. Those who deserve a lot, get a lot. Those who get to decide who deserves little and who gets a lot? Well, who knows who appointed them to determine that, but no one’s about to question it. The Thorians may have upset the equilibrium we’ve enjoyed for decades, but that will safely remain their problem. Do you think anyone on Mrabr cares what happens to a bunch of backwater savages, or what a species that are two hundred years removed from being backwater savages thinks on the subject of Mraboran relations with the Thorians or anyone else?”

The room remained silent when Angzal finished, sitting there at the edge of her chair and trying to mask her heavy breathing. “You want to make a difference?” Angzal asked. “Then go ahead and make it. But if you want someone else to do the job, then you can just as well wait for this table to launch itself to Krevali.”

Reyes sat, legs stretched out under the table, the fingers of one hand drumming on top of it. Tani’s hand was hovering over his tablet, his eyes staring at the side of the face of the Congressmember that he served. Ferrety was equally immobile, as if afraid to scare away whatever thought process Reyes may have been going through. As for Angzal, all she was at this point was exhausted, and just wanted to go to bed and wake up somewhere that didn’t smell so strongly of Humans; even here, at the Mraboran consulate, there had been no escaping it.

“It’s getting late,” Congressmember Reyes said, sounding as tired as Angzal felt, “And I still need to prepare for tomorrow’s vote.” It had been a valiant effort in any case, Angzal thought and then wondered if perhaps there was some remote Vaparozh mining colony that was about to get a new interpreter. “We’ll need to confer before we wrap this up. Can we use the same breakout room again?”

“Yes, go ahead,” Angzal answered.

“Good, we’ll see you again here in a half hour.” Reyes gave a short nod to the room and then had Tani follow her out the door. When they’d both gone, and left the two Mraboran and the Martian Congressmember to continue avoiding eye contact while fishing for the next thing to say, Ferrety did the sensible thing and excused himself. “Maybe I’ll go take a walk, breathe in some of that fresh Earth sea air.”
​
“See you back here in half an hour then,” Angzal said, not bothering to hide her resignation, and dropped her head down to the table the moment the door was closed.