“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, if you will give me your personal guarantee that any agreements I come to with the Ambassador will be honored, I will be more than happy to continue negotiating with him. If you can’t give me such an assurance, I’m afraid we are done here. Be advised, I will try to hire your Ambassador into my company, if that is the case.”
“You would hire him, even though he came to you without the power to form binding agreements?”
“I would give him such power, and send him right back to negotiate with you.”
“Why do you think that would work?”
“Nothing I’ve tried so far has worked, that would be something I have yet to try.”
“You’re saying you don’t know if it would work, but you are willing to try it, because you haven’t yet?”
“Your Highness, I have tried everything I can think of to make peace with you and your people. None of it has worked, so far. I’m willing to try whatever I can, to keep the peace. I just want to trade a few walnuts, and get along. So far, that goal has been out of my reach. All I’ve seen from your people, is a desire to start a war that I have no interest in.”
“You could conquer our stars, with the fleet you have. How can you say you have no interest in war?”
“What could I do with it, if I had it? A monkey, trying to administrate an Empire of Squirrels? How is that supposed to work?”
“You don’t think you could rule the Empire?”
“Even if I could, I don’t have any interest in that kind of work. Running a fleet of starships is enough of a headache, as far as I am concerned.”
“You expect me to believe you have no interest in our Empire?”
“As I said before, I don’t expect you to believe anything I say. That seems to be something only a very few of your people are able to do.”
“If you don’t expect me to believe you, why are you still talking to me?”
“I suppose I’m hoping to be wrong, and that you actually do listen. It’s a weak hope, but it’s all I have at the moment.”
“You don’t think it will work, but still you talk to me, hoping I will listen?”
“Yes. If I can’t get a peaceful resolution of all this, our people are going to be wasted in a long and bloody war. I’ll do what I have to, to keep that from happening. Before you ask, no, destroying the fleet is not on the table.”
“Why not?”
“How would I be assured you were going to hold up your end of the deal, if I did that? I destroy my ships, and you walk in and take what you like. That isn’t a satisfactory outcome for me, or my people.”
“Why shouldn’t I order the fleet in to destroy your fleet for you?”
“Their performance so far would indicate that might be beyond their capabilities, Your Highness. If your people thought they could defeat this fleet in battle, why didn’t they do it fifty thousand years ago, instead of resorting to trickery to get it mothballed? I don’t think you could possibly be as sure of the outcome of such a fight as you want me to think you are.”
“The Captains of those ships were well trained, then. You couldn’t possibly be as competent as they were.”
“Well, I have beaten all their scores in the simulations.”
“Why should I believe that?”
“Hmm, perhaps the results your Captains have had against me?”
“You have been lucky, so far.”
“Maybe you should have someone whose career doesn’t depend on the fiction that your Navy is competent look at those battle records. Sounds to me like you’ve been letting your Admirals convince you you’re not seeing what you think you’re seeing.”
“What makes you think my Admirals aren’t competent?”
“For starters, I’m talking to you over the comm, and not in chains at your feet.”
“There are explanations for that.”
“I think we had a translation error, Your Highness. Those are called excuses, not explanations.”
“Well, I never!”
“Buy the Empress some jewelry. That should take care of your problem. We jumped this ship into orbit around Oak, and back out again, without regard to your FTL suppression grid. That was luck, according to your Admirals? How, exactly, does luck cancel out technology?”
The Emperor got flustered at that point, and took a bit to calm himself. Then he said, “How do you explain your ability to jump in and out, then?”
“One of my engineers found the software glitch that let your grid turn off our drive, and eliminated it. You folks depend on trickery entirely too much, I think.”
“That makes no sense. Our grid works by suppressing the drive field itself. Why else would our ships be affected as well?”
“Someone has sold you a bill of goods, Your Highness. Your drives have the same glitch built into them. We checked.”
“How can that be? I would have been informed!”
“About a system that has been in continuous use for thousands of years? It’s entirely possible nobody in the Navy knows how it works, either.”
The line was quiet for a few seconds. The Emperor said, “You give me a lot to think about. Would you be amenable to talking again, after I have time to check some of the things you have said?”
“That sounds fine. Thanks for speaking with me, Your Highness.”
“Have a good day, Commodore.” I handed the comm back to Natti. “What do you think, Ambassador? Will I get a call back, or another fleet to capture?”
“To tell you the truth, Bob, I don’t know the Emperor well enough to say. I certainly never heard anyone speak to him the way you did.”
“I thought I needed to speak to
