David Weber - Hell's Gate

He'd hoped that he'd managed to dodge it when he'd been assigned to the PAAF. Unfortunately, it appeared his bloodline had caught up with him after all.

"According to your personnel file," chan Tesh had continued, "you've served in the House of Lords. Is that right?"

"Not exactly, Sir," chan Baskay had replied. "My father holds a seat in the Lords. As his eldest son, I've deputized for him on a few occasions, mostly while I was still at the Academy." He'd smiled a bit tartly. "Frankly, I think it was his way of trying to convince me to change my mind and go into the Foreign Service instead of the Army. It didn't work."

"I see." chan Tesh had sat back in his camp chair, considering the young cavalry officer for several seconds. He'd wondered why the platoon-captain went by "chan Baskay" instead of the "Viscount Simrath" to which he was certainly entitled.

"I suppose it's ironic?at least?that I should wind up talking to you about this, if you never wanted Foreign Service in the first place," he'd said then. "At the same time, I hope you can understand why I'm glad to have someone with your background available. Frankly, Platoon-Captain, there's no one else out here with any background in diplomacy or high-level politics. I suppose the ideal person for this would have been Crown Prince Janaki, but just between you and me, I'm delighted that he's no longer available."

"You won't get any argument for me about that point, Sir," chan Baskay had said fervently. The mere thought of having the heir to the throne hanging out here at this particular moment had been enough to make the platoon-captain shudder.

"But with him gone, you're our next best choice," the company-captain had pointed out. "On the other hand, I don't suppose this is something we can simply order someone to do."

chan Tesh had paused, looking at him with a waiting expression, and chan Baskay had heaved a deep and mournful mental sigh. He would vastly have preferred to be able to decline, but that was impossible, of course. For a lot of reasons?not least that endless lineage of service to the Winged Crown. A Ternathian noble simply did not refuse when duty called. Not if he ever wanted to face the scrutiny of his revoltingly dutiful ancestors. Or, chan Baskay had conceded, his own conscience.

And at least if he had to do this, he had the proper background for it. chan Tesh was right about that, too. He'd imbibed a basic understanding of political realities almost with his mother's milk, whether he'd wanted to or not. And he'd also had those dozens of generations of blue-blooded ancestors?not to mention his observations of several hundred currently carnate fellow aristocrats?upon which to draw for role models. He'd been reasonably confident he could act the part.

What he hadn't been confident of was whether or not he could do the job. He'd been crushingly aware of the responsibility looming before him, and it had terrified him. This wasn't a job for someone pretending to be a seasoned diplomat?it was a job for the most experienced diplomat Sharona had ever boasted. And what Sharona actually had was … him.

"It's all right, Sir," he'd finally sighed. "I understand, and I'll give it my best shot. How exactly do you and Regiment-Captain Velvelig want me to handle it?"

Which was how he came to find himself riding steadily through the breezy woods under a dancing drift of blowing red and gold leaves towards his first meeting with the representatives of another trans-universal civilization.

A civilization, he reminded himself, with which we're effectively at war, at the moment. Vothon, please don't let me screw this up!

At least he'd had two genuine strokes of luck. The first was his baby sister's idiocy. Charazan Baskay was enrolled in one of those ghastly finishing schools that specialized in turning young ladies' brains into mush, and it appeared to be working just fine, in her case. She'd decided, on the basis of logic so … unique that chan Baskay hadn't even tried to follow it, that it would be a good idea to send him a dress suit and cloak to wear at "cotillions and military balls." Exactly where she'd expected him to find either of those out here on the bleeding edge of the frontier eluded him, and he'd rolled his eyes heavenward and stuffed the ludicrous outfit into the bottom of a trunk the day it arrived. He'd intended for it to languish there until the day he finally returned to Sharona, and he certainly hadn't realized that his batman had packed the contents of that trunk into his duffel bags when he'd been ordered forward with the rest of Company-Captain chan Tesh's column.

But there it was, and he was inclined to see the hand of fate in his batman's apparent lapse into lunacy. Thanks to that, and Charazan, he actually had the proper civilian attire to pull off this charade. He'd blessed his harebrained baby sister fervently when he realized that he did.

The second stroke of good fortune was the presence of Under-Captain Trekar chan Rothag. The dark-haired and dark-eyed chan Rothag was a Narhathan who'd grown up almost in the shadow of the Fist of Bolakin. Where chan Baskay had the fair hair and gray eyes so common among the Ternathian nobility, chan Rothag's hair was so dark a brown it was almost black, and his swarthy complexion and powerful nose could almost as well have been Shurkhali. Unlike chan Baskay, chan Rothag had no connection whatsoever to either the aristocracy or the Foreign Service. What he did have was a Talent which police agencies and military intelligence organizations had always found extraordinarily useful.

chan Rothag was a Sifter. He couldn't read minds, wasn't actually a telepath at all. But he knew, instantly and infallibly, when someone lied. He couldn't magically?chan Baskay shuddered at his own choice of adverb, under the circumstances?divine the truth they were lying to conceal or distort, but knowing they'd lied at all was almost as useful. Most commanders above the platoon level in any Sharonian army tried to get at least one Sifter assigned to them. More often than not, they failed; Sifters were too useful for senior officers to be willing to turn the limited supply of them loose. Balkar chan Tesh, however, had what amounted almost to a Talent for scrounging the personnel he wanted, which was how chan Rothag had ended up attached to his column.

chan Rothag had also spent several days in company with their Arcanan prisoners before Crown Prince Janaki carted them off. As a trained interrogator, he'd found his complete inability to communicate with them frustrating, and chan Baskay knew that chan Tesh had been tempted to send chan Rothag along with Janaki. But the company-captain had decided not to in the end, because there'd been plenty of equally well-trained interrogators further up the chain, while chan Rothag had been the only interrogator at this end of it. Under the circumstances, chan Baskay had decided to regard chan Rothag's continued presence, like that of Charazan's gift, as another example of the hand of fate in action.

"Well," he said now, his voice low pitched as the tangle of fallen and broken trees where the Chalgyn Consortium survey crew had died came into sight, "here we go."

"Be brave, Viscount," chan Rothag replied with a slight smile, using the title by which every member of their party now addressed chan Baskay. "You'll do just fine."

"Easy for you to say," chan Baskay growled back.

"Just play the part, Viscount, and remember our signals." chan Rothag sounded revoltingly calm, chan Baskay thought. Which might be because, unlike chan Baskay, he was about to spend the next several hours basically saying nothing at all. They had no proof at this time that the Arcanan's command of Ternathian was as limited as it appeared to be. If they were concealing a greater fluency, then trained diplomats might well be able to recognize that chan Rothag had about as much diplomatic expertise as a pig on roller skates. chan Baskay had done his best to get some of the rudiments, at least, through to the under-captain, then given up in despair.