Reaching Out

Posted on 08 Feb 2024 @ 6:54am by Lieutenant Commander Maurice Rubens

Mission: M4 - Falling Out
Location: Rice Rubens Quarters
Timeline: 0945 HR - DAY 22
1829 words - 3.7 OF Standard Post Measure

“Two sugars, no cream,” Rice slid the coffee over to Honor and sat down across from her. Moon had evacuated their quarters earlier that morning, bound for the Promenade. Her shop had energized her in a way he’d never seen her, even when she was being sought after by the biggest theater productions on Earth.

Rice, on the other hand, felt frozen out. He’d known that there would be times where he’d be left out. The galaxy-sized issues that once orbited him had been replaced by more mundane moons. He wanted those issues to energize him the way Moon was, but found that most days his mind slipped to thinking about the conference. He was finding the normal conversation of two old friends difficult to focus on when all he really wanted to know was what had been going on in that room for almost two weeks.

“Your sister’s doing good?” Rice asked, sipping at his own cup of tea.

“Mmm,” Honor replied, blowing across the coffee. “Just had her fourth child a couple months ago. Kehinde was ten pounds. I can’t even imagine trying to push that one out. She swears it's her last, but that’s what she said about Umar.”

“Did you get back to see them after you got back?”

“Just one day. I’ve been promised that I’ll actually get leave when this is all over. It is mandated leave, but that doesn’t seem to stop anyone.”

Rice ignored the obvious opening to question how the conference was going and smiled. “Leave it to Josie Bettendorf to ignore mandates.” He took a sip, feeling out the moment. Not yet. “With all that time gone, no new partners I should be jealous of?”

Honor snickered into her coffee taking her time to drink. “Oh, jealous? The engaged guy asks if he should be jealous?”

“You’re the one that got away, or so many in my office whispered behind my back at the time. Or, to think about it, to my face.”

“God. It’s been a long time.”

“A little over seven.”

She stared into her coffee, a slight smile creasing her lips. “I don’t know why we thought it would work, do you?”

“Great friends. Wanted to similar outcomes.”

“But the way we worked clashed. That was the whole damn problem. You started picking up too much from the Romulans.”

Rice snorted. “You make it sound like I joined the Tal Shiar. How were we supposed to get anything done if we didn’t? That’s been the Federation’s problem since day one with the Romulans. Too many people try to placate them. Kirk showed us in 2266 that -” He sighed. Honor shifted uneasily in her seat, too, staring down at her coffee. The old arguments came too easily, perhaps that was why they'd only talked, rarely and when work required it, through official channels for these last few years.

“I really hope I’m not the reason you’ve not…”

“What? God no. You’d be surprised to find that jumping between Romulan and Klingon space doesn’t offer much time for romance. I wouldn’t give it up for that, though. I’m doing good work. I can see it.”

“I remember those days.”

“Is that why you’re…” Honor pointed to the uniform Rice was wearing and then circled her finger around the room.

“I think so. Maybe. Moon and I weren’t happy where we were, that’s actually a big part of it.”

“She’s nice and I always liked Dae-Jung. He must be thrilled.”

“I think he’s scared spitless that she’s living on the edge of Federation space in a station that has a history of crazy things happening to it.”

“There’s that. But you’re happy here so far?”

“I love being with Moon,” Rice said, then shrugged, “As for the work: so far, I’ve spent most of my time trying to assemble a staff with at least some experience. The other bit is spent trying to convince one half of the natives on Loki III not to loathe our existence, and the other half that we’re more than puppets in their ongoing political intrigue. Then you’ve got new Romulan colonies sprouting up on a planet with enough xenophobia already, so…The work has potential.”

Honor nodded along. This was another reason they wouldn’t have worked out: with other diplomats, Rice was all business and he never really let other people in. A few words for his fiance and then a diatribe on work, all angling to get her to move the conversation toward the Conference.

“Yeah, so, you’ve been dying this entire time to ask me about the conference,” she finally said, interrupting a long soliloquy on the tribal politics of Loki III.

“I’m patient.”

“Yeah.”

“You wouldn’t be here otherwise,” Rice went on, “If you’d wanted to have coffee as friends, almost two weeks in is awfully long time to wait. Problems?”

“Yeah.”

Rice nodded. “Yeah. Didn’t take a crystal ball to see that it was going to happen. Harshman doesn’t want us anywhere near Korix. She thinks we need to fix all our problems in the Federation before trying to help someone else.”

“There are a lot of problems.”

“There are always a lot of problems. Problems are just part and parcel to life. Doesn’t mean we should stop helping people. Right? So, let me guess. At the beginning of this whole exercise, and considering the players, I figured the talks would end up in only one place: finding allies. Harshman is banking on the fact that we don’t have many allies to turn to. Who would’ve thought that our golden age of alliances would end because the Romulan Empire fell apart?”

“That sums it up,” Honor nodded. Rice had always had a prescient ability when it came to negotiations or talks, even when he wasn’t in the room. “She’s agreed to let us reach out to the Romulans.”

“Free State?”

“Who else?”

Rice looked down at his nearly empty cup. He stood up to get a refresh. From the replicator, he said, “You’re looking for a recommendation then? Who in the Free State government to talk to?”

“Yes.”

The coffee cup appeared and he leaned against the wall in thought. After a couple of minutes Rice shook his head, “You’d be better off reaching out to the Republic.”

“You know we can’t.”

“Why not? You wouldn’t need to recognize them.” He walked back over the table and sat down. “How well versed are you on Earth history?”

Honor gave him a withering look. He was famous for yanking examples in history into his arguments to give them the sheen of wisdom, but sometimes she wondered whether he was doing it just to show off. “You can find an example of this scenario in our history?”

“Close enough: Taiwan. For the latter half of the 20th, they had defense agreements with a bunch of countries that didn’t formally recognize their existence.” Honor’s look didn’t change. “Right. Harshman would probably blow up the station rather than changing Federation policy that much. Fine. Let’s see...”

Rice could always tell when he entered a grand diplomatic arena. Most believe it started when negotiations began over the rules of a meeting. Who would be there, who would sit where, what they could talk about, what they couldn’t talk about, when to take lunch, when to break out into smaller group sessions, when to sleep, and so on. Those were just the spoken rules for the contest, not the beginning.

Over his career, he’d realized diplomatic battle was never then nor at the start of a conference or negotiation. It may not even happen in the first week, maybe not even in the first year. People would talk, talk, talk without anything actually happening. But then, something would. A chink in metaphorical armor would be found; a tiny lever in negotiations. That’s when the real affair began. Honor’s question was the starting gun for Rice. He’d been unceremoniously dismissed from the proceedings, but he sensed it like someone could feel a storm brewing in the distance. He was in the arena now. Considering the dilemma and the people involved, it was going to get ugly. Rice steadied himself: he didn’t particularly like ugly, but he'd sooner get to it than try to make it a magnanimous affair that devolved later into an often uncontrollable affair with no ending in sight.

“Inimik Dita. She’s Second Secretary of the Vi Party, a small partner in the ruling coalition. They control the government ministry for shipyards, which might seem inconsequential, but gives them considerable sway with the Romulan merchants and leverage over the Romulan military, too. Vi is important and is more or less pro-Federation. Get the Vi pulling for you and it could work out.”

Inimik, for all her power, was nothing more than a pawn for greater players in the Free State. But she lusted to have those shackles removed and continuously sought powerful allies that she could use. She practiced a high politic that Rice was certain Honor wasn’t ready for; he wondered if Gordon would suss it out. Either way it was a dead end from the very beginning, Inimik might string them along for a little bit, but that’s as far as she would go to milk whatever she could from the interaction.

Truth be told, the Free State was in no position to help the Federation and no one in their government would suggest otherwise. He wasn’t kidding when he said the better option was the Republic. An alliance of Reunificationists and the Qowat Milat, the Republic was quite different from the Free State, where secrecy was still ingrained at every level of the culture. They might actually help because it was the right thing to do.

Instead, Rice would work with the tools he’d been handed: a distance from the conference and a question from a colleague. He could already see a dozen avenues forward approaching Inimik might open up. He didn’t know which would suit furthering the cause, that was for later. This was just the opening move.

Not that he’d share any of that with Honor. She spoke true when she said they worked differently. She was altruistic, which made her good at working with local communities and individuals she could build trust with, but terrible working with politicians. And Gordon…Rice didn’t know him well enough to know what he would think of this. Best to keep it to himself.

“Let me refresh your cup while you get Gordon here. We’ll need to talk about how to approach her.”