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“Hello, Tred.  May I come in?” Zachariah Urle asked.

Tred stared, dumbfounded, into the mostly-mechanical face of the Executive Commander.

“Of course you’realwayswelcomeExecutiveCommanderUrle!” he finally said in a rush, stepping back and opening the door fully.

Urle glanced at the door – most people never really made use of the fact that they could open just partially, but Tred was in the habit of never fully opening his door until he had to.

Continuing to stare at Urle, Tred wasn’t sure what to say.

The Executive Commander was a friendly man, and Tred felt more comfortable around him than any of the other command staff.  But only in comparison; the man still intimidated him.

“I imagine you’re here to see what I’ve been working on for the Ambassador,” Tred stammered out.

“Yes, that’s right,” Urle said, but he said it in a way that put Tred at ease.  “I hear you worked pretty hard to learn drone modding to make it.”

“Yes,” Tred admitted.  “I didn’t want to mess anything up and hurt her . . .  I mean, in theory it should all be perfectly safe, it’s just feeding in data to existing ports, but . . . you know.”

Urle didn’t seem to find anything wrong with Tred’s stammering sentence, just nodding.  “Is this it?”

“Uh, yes, that’s my prototype.  If you think it’s good enough, then-“

“It’s very good,” Urle said, approaching the device and kneeling.

It was not a traditional floating drone, but had four sets of treads on independent struts, allowing it to move smoothly along even rugged surfaces and steps.

The body was really just a long, verticle tube, though with some embellishments he’d added that seemed right.

Urle looked at him quizzically gesturing to the small wings he’d carefully cut and ground from a sheet of pearlescent steel.

“Er,” Tred muttered, flushing red in the face.  “She’s – Ambassador Jophiel, that is – species are called Star Angels, so I thought . . . an angel should have wings.”

Urle nodded, accepting the answer without question, and then looked at the head.  It consisted of two sets of eye-like sensors on a spherical head that was mostly unadorned, save for some careful gold patterning he’d put on.

He’d lacked the real skill for it, but he’d picked out the pattern and let a drone apply it.  He liked how it had come out.

“This looks very nice,” Urle said.  “I can see a few micro-cracks in the casing, but they shouldn’t cause any problem.  I’ll run further scans, but I can’t see that this could in any way harm the Ambassador.”

“Oh, thank you sir!  Send me your notes on the cracks, though, I’ll repair them all!”

Urle glanced at him again, and Tred automatically prepared a defense – to say that the Ambassador should have the best, since she was the first Ambassador of her kind!

But Urle only nodded pleasantly again.  “I’m sure the Ambassador will be very pleased with your work, Tred.  If all goes well, I’d like to recommend you for a Medal of Ingenuity in engineering – I don’t think anyone has actually done something of this caliber for a Star Angel yet, and it deserves recognition.”

Tred found himself flushing again, a rush to his head almost making him dizzy.  “Thank you, sir!”

“No need to thank me.  If I may ask, though . . .  and this is just a personal question, you don’t have to answer.  What is the relationship between you and the Ambassador?”

Tred’s mind blanked.  “Sir?” he mumbled, jaw dropping slightly.

“That’s okay, don’t worry,” Urle replied pleasantly.  “I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.”  He looked to the drone again.  “Honestly I was going to offer my expertise if you needed it, but you’ve gone above and beyond with this.  Be sure to show this to Cutter and Sulp, I’m sure they’d both be just as impressed.”

Cutter was Tred’s actual superior, but he’d always found the Beetle-Slug inscrutable and demanding.  The being never seemed to offer praise, though to be fair he also was never rude.  Only pragmatically critical.  Tred wasn’t sure he could even imagine the being gushing like Urle was.

“Thank you, sir.  I will, sir.”

Urle moved to the door.  “If you do think of anything I can do to help, just let me know, all right?”

“I will, Executive Commander.  Absolutely!”

“Oh, one last thing.  I know this has all been sort of an unofficial commission you’ve taken on, but Ambassador Jophiel has put in the paperwork to ask for you to be her official aide and engineering liaison.  It’s not really an administrative role, since she doesn’t do much in that regards . . . mostly honorary.  I wanted to bring it up with you, though.  You’re free to refuse, of course, she already said she’d understand if you felt it was too much of a burden.”

“No, not at all!  I mean, it’s not a burden I’d . . . I’m more than happy to continue to help the Ambassador, or rather to help her now as an aide and engineering liaison . . .”  He trailed off.

“Great!  You’ll get an official letter soon, before the play.  Which,” Urle consulted his clock.  “Is just over twenty-four hours from now.  Do you know what you’re wearing?”

“Just my normal uniform,” Tred mumbled.

“That’ll be fine, really.  All right – carry on, Engineer.”

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Urle had made it only a few steps from Tred’s work room when the call from Brooks came in.

“Ah, Ian, how was the party?” he asked.

“Nevermind that.  We have something more pressing.”

There was no image, but Brooks’s tone made it immediately apparent that this was no social call.

Urle stopped, stepping to the side in the hall.  “What is it?” he asked, spooked by the tone.  He added some extra layers of encryption to his end of the call and made sure none of his audio was anything but digital.

“I just had a call from Trevod Waites-Kosson.  He is demanding that we transfer the women who are requesting amnesty back.  I need to you to look into the laws and treaties we have with Gohhi – is there a case here?”

“What’s his reason?” Urle asked.  “I mean, the whole point of amnesty is that they’re given refuge from persecution.”

“Murder.  The two thugs that they fought to escape from are dead, and now they’re charged with the crime.  I know that we can’t let this happen, but I need to know that our case for protecting them is air-tight.  He says he’s willing to push this, and he claims to have the backing of the rest of the bourgeois leadership.  If they push with their resources, I’m thinking they might be able to cause a lot of trouble.”

“Why would they want to go after these women this hard?”

“It’s not about them.  It’s about Jan Holdur.”

It clicked for Urle and he took a deep breath.  “So they’ll go all out.”

“That’s right.  In a few hours we’ll be getting the demands from the Gohhian lawyers and we’ll have to go over them carefully.  We’re going to need to talk to the women again about their story.  The parts that didn’t fit, we have to know the truth.  Even with their resources, the Lord Executives will have a hard fight, but there might be some detail we don’t know that tips this in their favor.”

“And we can’t let them win,” Urle said.

“Agreed.  Get the women separated and talk to them again – I’ll brief Kiseleva and send her down to aid you.  I don’t want them to think they’re in trouble or danger, but we do have to impress the importance of knowing the truth.”

“I don’t believe they did anything to deserve being sent back,” Urle said flatly.

Brooks had said nothing to the contrary, but he had to say it.

The Captain replied immediately, his words firm.  “I don’t either.  But we have to be prepared to fight for them.”

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