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.”
​
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.
​
“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.

“You are of course aware of the alien invasion theory of the Great Fire, Congressmember Reyes?” Congressmember Ferrety asked, and this seemed to catch the attention of the only other Human that was there with them. Reyes’ and Ferrety’s presence consumed the space in the conference room so completely that the man, Congressmember Reyes’ assistant, and who introduced himself to Angzal as Tani Naomi, was somehow easy to forget, despite being so broad of shoulder. He sat next to Reyes, his head low over his tablet as his fingers worked furiously, and he would occasionally whisper things to the congressmember that even Angzal couldn’t hear, even though she was sitting only a few seats away. She noticed that Tani smiled by pressing his lips forward and together, and that he smiled often and generally seemed a much softer contrast to Reyes herself who was all jabbing points and angles. Now he had lifted his head, smiling again at Ferrety’s suggestion that Earth had been invaded by aliens two thousand years ago, and Angzal could swear there was a spark of mischief in Tani’s dark eyes.

“I’m aware of the theory, yes,” Reyes responded, “Though I can’t say I subscribe to it. If you’re about to go into a rendition of the Yanus Susin story, spare me, I know how much you Martians are invested in that one.”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” Ferrety said, raising his hands and leaning slightly away from the table. “But in light of our own history, we have to consider the perspective of the Krevali themselves – hardly even begun to explore their own stellar system. They were probably convinced they were the only ones in the galaxy, with the exception maybe of some dismissed lunatic fringe groups who rightfully believed the signals they’ve been seeing were from others like them. And then the Known Reaches in all their terror start raining death on them from the sky.”

That was the curious contrast between the local press and what Angzal consumed of the Mraboran articles on the matter – the former was all Krevali-centred, much like Ferrety’s colourful rendition, while everything she read from home focused entirely on the Thorians, the Krevali reduced to a mere plot device in larger affairs.

“Oh, you have it, too, Gord?” Reyes asked with a condescending smile and crossed her arms. “I thought you better than that.”

“What’s that?”

“This saviour’s complex. That we can swoop in and somehow save the Krevali from the Thorians?”

“And that is such a bad thing in your eyes?”

“It is when we’re the ones that are expected to do it.” The smile disappeared, almost at the same time as Tani’s, who lowered himself over his tablet again. “Don’t quote the struggles of the Krevali to me, Gord. What the Thorians have done to them sickens me as much as it does anyone, but it should not be incumbent on Humanity to step in when others are much more capable.” She pointed with a straight open palm to where Angzal and Rzena were sitting, and unlike Congressmember Ferrety, Reyes offered no apologies.

“So if we sit by because everyone else sits by, doesn’t that make is just as bad? How would have Humanity fared in the Great Fire if there was but one voice to step in and protect us from devastation?”

“You are not seriously trying to leverage this preposterous theory to inform our current decisions?”

“And why should I not?” Ferrety’s puckered mouth shifted slightly to one side as if he was in deep contemplation.

“Other than the fact that still no species has taken responsibility for the attack?” The expressions on Congressmember Reyes’ face struck Angzal as chaotic. The only thing that had been consistent were her smiles, always empty, just the baring of teeth in a gesture that seemed all too familiar to Angzal. “What about the fact that most of them weren’t even aware that there was another sentient species hiding out here in this corner of space?”

“Perhaps the invaders had since been destroyed, which is why there’s no record of them?” Ferrety suggested.

“Or because it’s a nationalistic fabrication made to make us feel better about the darkest time in our history, as if we were a victim of anything but our own stupidity, and that can now be leveraged to justify this insane foreign policy,” Reyes said with another empty smile, and slumped back down in her chair, arms still crossed.

At least during the morning session, before they’d broken for lunch, the two Congressmembers were exchanging endless numbers, Tani pitching facts and statistics to Reyes who then hammered them at Ferrety – potential tax increases lined up alongside casualty figures from previous conflicts – both rendered equally soulless when stripped down to talking points inside the small conference room. These were at least tangible concepts that Angzal could keep up with. Now Reyes and Ferrety moved beyond statistics and descended into pure ideology, a mess Angzal was beginning to doubt that she would be able to untangle.

The two Humans continued to debate the ethics and merits of interplanetary and interspecies interventions, throwing out names of planets that Angzal did not readily recognize, snippets from Human history that were irrelevant to everyone but the species directly involved.

There was a distinct possibility, Angzal admitted to herself, that any other Mraboran plucked at random from inside the consulate building would have done a better job than her. Sure, she arranged the rides, the room and the food. Sure, she was able to fill a seat and not tune out the conversation … for more than a minute at a time. But beyond that, what had been her contribution, and what had been her credentials? There was also that observation from Reyes when they last talked, though it was presented by the Congressmember more like an accusation – that Angzal appeared young for the position she was given. Why had she really been pulled in to serve here? Whose bright idea was it for her to fill her predecessor’s shoes? Rzena seemed more than capable of doing better the things that she was tasked to do, if it weren’t for him seeming to lose interest over the years in affairs both Human and Mraboran, a true citizen of the Known Reaches whose only remaining connection to his first home seemed to be through food.
​
She couldn’t really blame him – there were so few Mraboran on Earth, and most of them she would only see at the consulate. It was like being immersed in a fictional world that ceased to exist when the book was closed, and so outside these walls it was easy to forget that Mrabr, and billions of her people, were actually out there somewhere.