solid understanding of that, we know nothing of them that they do not want us to know.”
“Well hurry up and learn it,” The Ambassador muttered, “as nice as it is to have a reasonable opponent across the table, now I’m going to be driven to utter madness asking myself that question every time they capitulate on one of my points.”
SIenel smiled widely, “A pleasure to give you a taste of my world, Ambassador.”
“Get out,” The Ambassador ordered, humor mixed with disgust in his voice, “All of you, I need my rest before we begin again.”
*****
On the Mexico, Sorilla stared at the ceiling of her room as she sacked out in the narrow bunk.
The situation was playing out differently than she’d envisioned, and she was quickly finding herself in a position to be both more, and less, effective than she had expected. Her job was normally to slip in beneath the notice of the local officials, in this case the Alliance, and find dissidents to leverage into something that she could work with.
Not an easy job as a stranger in some third world country, but at least there she’d been human and most of the places she’d been sent her darker skin and some proper local dress allowed her to blend in decently. Here, she was working at a disadvantage right from the get go.
A disadvantage she’d just had blow up in her face, and now she was being watched by the local security service.
On the flip side, Sorilla thought she could probably play that into a little more access on the official side of things. Too bad that wasn’t her job, nor her specialty.
We need a company man to fart around on that kind of work, I’m a combat trainer damn it.
Still, she could turn that access into a source of information that might help her with her task, if she could play it right.
She just needed to figure out how the hell she was supposed to play it right.
*****
“She’s been identified as a Major Aida.”
“Terran diplomatic security, I presume?”
“Official Alliance reports say so, however the unofficial notes tell a slightly different story.”
“Explain.”
“Sentinal Commander Kriss listed her as a potential Sentinel, but he cannot yet confirm. If she is a Sentinal…”
“Then she is not here as security, unless the Terrans are very different from us indeed.”
“Yes, Master.”
“very well, we have time. Have her followed, see what she does. We may be able to use her presence as the catalyst we need to start this balloon burning.”
“Yes, Master of Fleets.”
Chapter Nine
Sorilla broke with the main group on her second visit to the station, opting to ‘escort’ a minor functionary on his VIP tour of the facilities. She couldn’t learn what she needed to from the inside of a conference room, she needed to see the people. As much of the people as she could, given that she was on a space station that probably catered to the Alliance’s top ten percent.
Some judicious questions, combined with the Admiral’s earlier research, gave her an idea of how the local economy ran. It was what would vaguely be considered socialist on Earth, which didn’t surprise her. On the scale that the Alliance worked, a socialist economy would be unwieldy, inefficient, and likely corrupt… but it would function, if only barely.
Few other types would, from her knowledge of history, due to problems scaling them up.
Communism worked great, up to maybe four dozen people. Libertarianism was a bit better, and could handle thousands before it started to fall apart. Capitalism worked best on scale, but it too began to implode once you moved close to the billion mark or so and began to factor in multiple local governments.
Socialism always sucked, and tended to work like a glacier moving uphill, but it worked at pretty much every scale in the same way. It was reliable, even if you could only rely on it to piss you off and barely get anything done.
The Alliance wasn’t entirely socialist, however, and it didn’t take her
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