They knew something was wrong. Neither of them knew how to approach him about it, it was the first time in their months together that he was the one to be uncertain and withdrawn, moody. His answers were terse and bordering on rude, the military called at all hours of the day and night, and no one seemed interested in the usual round of ambassadorial dinners. Their own embassies did invite them all over for a dinner, both of which were scheduled for the following week. But until then, it was very much all loose ends and nothing certain.

By the second afternoon Beata cornered him in the family room, found him sitting on the couch with his legs stretched out in a sunbeam. The water dripped off the leaves, a rare moment of break in the cloud cover for this time of year.

"Something's wrong," she told him. Didn't ask, didn't accuse, simply stated the facts as she knew them. "There's something you're not telling us, and it's worrying you. And now it's worrying us because we can't help you deal with whatever it is."

He looked around for Aleksandr, but the other man was nowhere to be found. There was a clattering in the kitchen. It might be him.

Andreas looked back at Beata. Opened his mouth to say something and when she didn't even blink, just stared and waited for him to explain, several possible responses flew out of his head. To deny that anything was wrong would be a blatant lie. To say she was prying was also a lie, she was his wife, and she was due the respect that came with that, which meant being honest with her and allowing them to work out his concerns as a unit rather than doing it all himself. As a unit. Meaning, Aleksandr as well. A few days on his home planet and he forgot that he was married to two people.

That was not something he should forget. Not now, and for damn sure not when Aleksandr got back from wherever he was.

"I don't know yet whether something is actually wrong," he said, after a long enough silence that her face had creased from bland patience to frowning worry. "It might be my imagination, or there might be some reason that makes perfect sense and is safe."

"Or it might be something dangerous," Beata frowned. "Tell me?" Tell us, it sounded more like.

"When we were flying over the spaceport, I saw ... " No, that wasn't the way to begin. "When I left, our forces were up to a certain level of strength, I grew used to seeing a certain number of berths empty in the spaceports."

"And now all the berths are filled, and they're making more."

Aleksandr came through the doorway with a tray and three cups of tea, passing them around. Andreas stomped on the tiny twitch of resentment that her first smile of the day was for him, of all things. That had never happened before, even in their early days. Perhaps because it had mattered less, then. He nodded, recognizing his distraction. "They're making more. More than they should need for peacetime, especially a peacetime in which exploration isn't a priority."

"Is there any other possible use you can think of for the drop ships, the carrier ships?" Aleksandr sipped his tea, thinking out loud. "As far as potential weapons and vehicles of war go, they're fairly small."

"It's possible..." Andreas frowned, trying to imagine what other possible use his government could have for numerous quantities of smaller ships.

Beata spoke up, uncharacteristically moody and short about it. "It's also possible they have shipyards you don't know about."

Shipyards they would have had to have avoided seeing on the way in. Which was possible, although that meant his pilots had to be in on it, or at least know that they were being given a specific route to follow with instructions and ideas of consequences if they didn't.

Which was an angle from which to investigate. "If they do, we can start by interviewing the pilots who took us down," he told them. "We can determine if they knew something, if they were being given a specific route to follow rather than a final trajectory, and by whom, which will then give us someone or several someones to interview as to the purpose of that particular inward trajectory."

"Not to mention the captain of the [vessel], that brought our drop ships in?" Aleksandr murmured, nodding. "Anyone we can think of who we know has been out in the local sectors recently, and by we..."

"You mean me," he nodded, even smiling a little. "Although I can introduce you to some of the pilots I do know." But that wouldn't bear fruit for days, and they both knew it. Not unless they had some occasion to get one of them in conversation, sooner.

Beata's thoughts tripped along the same path, only quicker. "If we host a small soiree, would it be out of line for me to host a dinner party for your friends?" Somewhere it was as though a switch had been turned on in her, from quiet and sad to energized and mind-racing. "We could host a dinner party for your friends and any co-workers you think it would be politic to attend, there are always customs and courtesies for this. Something to, to welcome you back and to greet all your old friends, as well as to show off..."

That was a sticking point that caught all three of them, mouths twisting in various expressions of wry amusement. On their third time out they were by now used to running into one or another cultural practice that forbade some part of them.

"My new wife," he decided, finally. "I assume you're more used to, erm..."

"The auxiliary role?" Beata supplied. Aleksandr chuckled, nodding; the role and expectations of a diplomat were significantly different than those of the supporting spouse of some political or military figure who couldn't be expected to share the experience of military duties. And Beata hadn't carved out a career of her own to play a role at a party, she was used to being Someone's wife or Someone's daughter, rather than being someone herself. "Yes, and as the auxiliary I can also ask questions that would be looked at as impertinent or ignorant, and hopefully get answers."

"Just don't play it too vapid, please," Aleksandr smiled, teeth together and jaw a little tight. Beata gave him a curious look, then laughed and leaned in for a hug.

"Not too vapid. Just the right balance of wide-eyed naiveté and galactic experience." Both men looked at her as she widened her eyes in a reasonable impression of eagerness. "A princess away from her court intrigued by the workings of other worlds and curious to learn everything she can about her husband's home."

Aleksandr looked at her, then pointed a finger at Andreas. "Did you know how dangerous she was when you married her?"

"You married her. Did you know?"

The younger man looked at his older husband, then at their wife. "You'd think someone would have warned me," he grumbled.

Three days transformed Andreas's house into a small palace fit for guests. The lower levels, anyway. Beata supervised the setting up of tables in the backyard (which was a novelty all on its own for Andreas) and things in the lower rooms were moved so that all personal items were out of sight. Then it was just a matter of keeping everything clean before the party. Much easier to do when most of their days were spent discussing the possible controversy or communicating with their own worlds and their evenings were spent in bed, lying together or discussing their future as individuals.

Something more than individuals, but not their respective nations. Their future as themselves, with each other.

It helped. By the time the evening of the party came around Beata felt as though she could be the wife Andreas needed her to be for them to pull this off. The first doorbell rang ten minutes early, not enough to discomfit anyone.

"Welcome, welcome to our home..."

One by one they arrived, were greeted by a small smiling woman in a dress that flattered her figure and her coloring, but chosen not to be too flattering. The subtle decorations at her shoulders and the gold chain at her waist evoked the uniforms of the local military, but not enough that they would notice it unless called to attention. Andreas recommended it would command respect, greater than she might otherwise have as she was an outsider.

Aleksandr hovered around the outskirts of the party, still present in order to avoid unwanted impressions that the treaty or the marriage was somehow faltering, but now strictly in an observational capacity. They had worked that out beforehand, asked him two or three times each if he was all right being a footnote to the marriage. It would play into their expectations, that Andreas was truly married to one person and the other one was an unwanted add-on.

"I still don't like it," Beata murmured to Andreas, under the guise of touching base with him and kissing his cheek. "He already has enough problems with ..."

Too short a time to detail what she thought would be the problem with this plan. Andreas tucked her arm into his and patted her hand, resuming his conversation. "He'll be all right," he murmured back, when there was a break in the talking.

Beata nodded slightly, but excused herself from the group after a moment and circulated more towards the edge of the crowd, glancing at Aleksandr every so often to make sure he was okay. His lips were thinned and his brow furrowed, discontent creasing the lines around his eyes, but his shoulders were relaxed. His hands, one around the other wrist and clasped behind his back, were loose and only twitched a little as he listened. His restless gaze slipped this way and that, but not out of boredom; sifting through the conversation.

No, maybe Andreas was right. He would be okay.

"Are you all right?"

A hand on her elbow, light touch but it was enough to make her feel as though someone had shoved her forward. The room swirled and made her nauseous for a moment, then it passed. "I'm fine," she murmured, patting the other woman's hand in an attempt to make her move away.

Instead the woman, who was older and dressed in civilian clothing, steered her towards a chair. "You don't look fine, you look like you're about to pass out."

Beata thought up several sharp things to say to the stranger, and discarded them all when she sat down and realized she did feel better for not having to keep herself upright. "I'll be all right, thank you," she told the woman, her voice cool and remote for the interference.

"I'm sorry," the woman apologized, smiling, as though that would make it better. "You sort of have to steer them to get them to take any rest at all, I'm afraid I've gotten into the habit."

She had a faint accent, too, different from Andreas'. It took her a moment to place it to the northern continent, not one she'd expected to encounter with Andreas being from a few thousand kilometers away. "Oh." And she didn't know what else to say to that, really.

"There are military folk, and there are career military folk, and I'm afraid you've married the latter..." and then she stopped, giving Beata a measuring look that the younger woman still didn't like. "I'm... sorry, I didn't introduce myself, did I. Camellia diStephano."

A delicate handshake took place. "Beata, as you know. I take it your husband and mine are acquainted?"

"My wife and your husband, yes. I really am sorry, I've ... I'm afraid you have to be assertive in order to not be run over by them, and I've gotten into the habit."

It reminded Beata, then, of being run roughshod over by her mother. "I think I know what you mean," she smiled a little, trying not to dislike the woman immediately. "My mother... actually, almost all the royals of her generation... seem to think that everyone is bound by their duties, their obligations, and that those who do not do what is expected of them are somehow contravening the laws of nature."

A momentary tightness touched the other woman's eyes. "We don't have royals here..." she said quickly, then seemed to take a breath and control herself. "But I think if we did, they would be much like that." Beata recognized the laugh as trying to dispel any discomfort she might have caused, but she didn't think it was to make her, as a stranger, feel better.

"Isn't it the same? Your military folk, your soldiers, feeling that duty and obligation, to their sworn oaths rather than to the idea of some kind of higher calling, but..." Beata felt her smile growing more and more false as she tried to find some common ground with this woman. She felt wrong-footed, and annoyed with herself for being so clumsy in a setting where she should have been handling it as easy as she had told her husbands she would.

"Well, I suppose when you look at it that way..." the woman smiled, and Beata relaxed a little. "It's hard to believe that we can find any kind of common ground, isn't it? But I suppose we have."

It took Beata until the other woman had said that to realize that the uncomfortableness between them wasn't because of anything she was doing wrong, but because she was reacting to the small signals Camellia was giving off. The ones that said she didn't like Beata, had set her mind against her and all new-comers, that she disliked and was disappointed in Andreas and was doing her best to establish her dominance against the hostess, which Beata knew all too well was a sign that her family was intending to expand her power beyond what they had already.

DiStephano, she'd remember that name. If both women were involved in some kind of power grab, it might have something to do with the mysterious ships? At the very least it might be something Andreas would want to know about.

Beata straightened a bit, squaring her shoulders and putting on her court smile. "I find there's always common ground somewhere, even if it's in the unlikeliest of places." If the woman was determined to come up against her, to find something to argue over, Beata would just have to do her best and not give her a damn thing. "We're all reasonable people here..."

Now Camellia searched for something to say, and Beata relaxed, smiling inwardly.

Far from being offended, at the end of the night Aleksandr was bouncing and smug over having heard several conversations, the last few of which took place right in front of him. As though he didn't matter. Beata was a little offended on his behalf, but he didn't seem to mind.

"Most of the conversations I overheard were of no real significance," he told them, rattling off the matter of the conversations anyway in case Andreas had a different opinion. "There were two conversations, one concerning getting troop movements approved by special committee and the other concerning moving drop ships off world and up to their host ships by night, and what night would be most likely to obscure their movement.

Andreas's eyes narrowed, hands freezing in the act of dropping leftover pieces of food from plates into the recycler. "They're keeping this from the oversight committee and masking the resource allocations by trying to push something else through. They're going..." he shook his head. "No, that doesn't make sense."

"Going around behind the backs of the ranking commanders?" Aleksandr shook his head. "I'd say it sounds like at least one ranking commander is in on it."

Beata was too far away to kick his ankle, so she settled for a stern glare. Andreas collapsed against the counter, head bowed and hands lacing slowly behind his neck. She could well imagine what it felt like, if she discovered that the people she trusted to make decisions and lead her were traitors to something she believed so strongly in. Especially when several of them were his friends.

She wondered how many of those were his friends, or how much of it was Aleksandr overhearing the same people talking that she had met and marked out. "We should make a list of names," she said, slowly, and with a hand on Andreas's shoulder. "See how many of the guests..."

Andreas lifted his head after a moment and nodded, jaw clenched. Duty came first, and the preservation of his people and his nation. Above and beyond what he was comfortable or not comfortable talking about.

When it was all said and done at least it didn't look as though there had been too many of the guests involved in the clandestine arms stockpiling. The wife team Beata had spoken with, the ones Aleksandr had overheard, a few more. "Eight in all," Aleksandr scanned the list. "It could be worse. And several of these..."

By now Andreas had come over to their side of the counter, and Beata maneuvered them all into chairs, pulling a couple of them out from under the table. "Several of these are in groups, some might have pressured the others, the wife team, the childhood friends. The bonds are strong, they might not entirely be comfortable with what they're doing, either because it goes against the government and the people or because ..." She shrugged. "What worries me more is that this may just be a representative sampling of a much, much greater group."

Andreas's head jerked in an awkward nod. "It would have to be. In order to get all of these ships built, they would need authorization from a top-ranking general, they would need someone in supply, several someones, to not look too closely at that authorization, they would need... they might have allies at all levels."

"But if this is a representative sampling," Aleksandr pointed out, calm and rational. "Then we have only six or eight for every hundred to worry about. It could be worse."

Beata and Andreas both gave him a level stare for that. No, it could always be worse, but that didn't mean they had to like what they had to work with.

"I can look into who in the military, in the fleet at least, might be a party to this. But they most likely have backing from outside as well..."

"I have diplomatic experience, I can establish contact with the government, work on establishing relations and setting up an embassy here. That'll at least get me into the government buildings, possibly looking in on some of the sub-committees if not actual sessions..." Aleksandr met his husband's startled look with bland amusement. "What? This is what I do, Andreas, remember. I do bureaucracy. I do manipulation of words and numbers to achieve a goal, if there's anyone who can read a hidden agenda in a stack of briefs and reports..."

"It would be you, yes. Thank you." And that was a heartfelt smile, and a steady hand on the younger man's shoulder. Beata's chest unclenched a little, though her stomach still twisted itself up in knots. "Beata, if you would continue to mingle and make friends, and see..."

"Where the allies are, if there's a pattern to how they meet in social groups," she nodded. "I don't know how much I will be able to get out of them at all, given that I seem to be pretty much the enemy, but I'll try."

She put a hand on Andreas's shoulder, and reached out for her younger husband's hand, fingers wrapped around wrists to complete the circuit. "It's not ... an ideal solution," Andreas admitted, "But it may be the best way we can gather the needed information."

"And once we have that information, where do we go with it? Who do we bring it to?"

Andreas scrubbed a hand over his face. "We'll have to figure that out when we figure out who's on their side. Giving copies to people you know you can trust in your home nations wouldn't be a bad idea, though. Just in case..."

The room went quiet. Quieter than it should have been even with none of them talking. The recycler had cut off and the environmental were on standby for the moment, everything was silent. Not even the usual nocturnal insect sounds she had grown up listening to at night, staring at the ceiling in the darkness. It reminded her of those nights when she felt so alone in the big, empty palace, raised by her sisters and her servants and all the creatures of her imagination.

Aleksandr fought back the peculiar déjà vu that crept up on him as he wandered through the halls. Bureaucracy he knew, but the similarity between their cultures when it came to government buildings and the way in which they were organized and laid out was unsettling. He knew with uncanny precision where he would have to turn and how far down he would have to walk to find the offices he needed.

"Are these buildings all laid out alike?" he asked finally, sitting in the reception area and waiting to see one of the Junior Foreign Ministers. And from there he would have an appointment with the Foreign Minister himself and it progressed from there, he didn't have much hope for things moving swiftly.

That was fine; as long as he found out what he needed to know in time, the rest of it could progress as slowly as it needed to. His government could be patient.

It took the receptionist a moment to realize he was talking to her. "Yes, as far as I know. It helps people get familiar with the buildings, gets them where they need to know quicker."

Talking with Andreas had changed him, corrupted his thinking. The first thing he started to say was something about how it made the buildings less defensible as well. He shook his head and tossed that as an idea; he was supposed to be a diplomat, not a soldier. "It's a little unnerving. I keep having the feeling I've been in here before."

She laughed, a little to his surprise. "We get that a lot. It gets easier the longer you stay here, though I don't plan on staying long enough to get used to it."

"Oh?" He couldn't tell if she was flirting or just being friendly. On the other hand, if it had gotten around that his marriage to Commander Zakarios was in name only, she might well feel she was entitled to be flirty. He might as well respond in kind. And maybe it felt good to flirt with a woman, as well, something he had been accustomed to, before. "What do you plan on doing with your future?"

"Well, after I'm done with my schooling and my work here, I'll probably use my contacts and my certification to get a job working for the Ministry. Then I'll just work my way up the ladder till I get to a diplomatic position."

Aleksandr leaned back, keeping the small smile plastered on his face and folding his hands in his lap. He couldn't tell if that was a sop designed to keep him interested and engaged in her and the conversation or if she genuinely wanted to be a diplomat and wanted to get to know him in the hopes that he could help her out with that. It bothered him that he was paranoid enough to think the first and that he couldn't tell between the two.

"What kind of a diplomatic position?" As he understood it, all of the separate member states within the nation had their own embassies or representatives or what have you, and she might mean that.

She shrugged. "Some posting to one of the outer worlds, maybe, representing the capital. Maybe another world, but I don't think I'm ready for that yet, and I don't know if I'll ever be. No offense, but you people are... you're really different, out there."

His skin prickled with the cold. No, she wasn't flirting with him, nor trying to take advantage, she was being as honest as she knew how, and he didn't think she wanted anything from him anymore. He nodded, made some sort of amenable statement, and kept his peace.

"Aleksandr?" the receptionist looked at him over her desk, a light on her console blinking. "She's ready for you, now."

He didn't know what to expect of a functioning political office, not in this nation, but it didn't look too much different from the offices he'd seen . There was very little in the way of decoration, but what was there seemed personal in some way he couldn't identify. Characteristic of her state or region of origin, maybe. Something to do with her family. There were personal pictures on her desk, just two, but about where he would expect.

"Ma'am." He nodded, polite, taking a formal stance that seemed to echo that of their resting position in the military. Hard to say which of them came up with it first, or if it happened simultaneously over a few generations, decades back.

"Aleksandr Belikov, yes?" She had a different accent in her language than he'd heard before. A slightly different way of speaking, too. "I'm Sophie Vandalay, welcome to our world."

He smiled, bowed politely. They had worked out a speech in advance and several phrases to use sprinkled throughout the conversation that would come across as mild, unimposing, standard political double-talk that used many words where one would do to no greater specificity of language. "... we have no interest in affecting the policies of your nation. We simply want to establish peaceful ties on our own merits."

The Junior Minister nodded slightly. "I think we could come to some sort of arrangement, certainly. If you'd like, I can take you on a tour of our facilities so that you can see the day to day functioning of our interior diplomatic offices."

Or at least, as much of the day to day functioning as they would allow a stranger to see, even a cleared by security stranger. He would have to translate on the fly, or perhaps he could take some sort of recording device and they could work through the implications of all the lies and concealment later. Either way, it would be interesting to cross-reference attitudes towards the newcomers by region, to see which were accepting and which were disinclined and which were a mixture of both.

"That sounds like an excellent place to start," Aleksandr nodded, smiling easily and without warmth. They shook hands, leaving him with the impression that she warmed her hands on ice cubes and had had skin replacement surgery recently. Or possibly was a lifelike robot. Or a cyborg.

He was never so relieved to get out under an alien tinted sky.

He got back before Andreas; Beata had been home all day, poking at the data and their social calendar and recovering from a bout or two of dizziness that she complained of. Aleksandr suspected she had been suffering these fits of vertigo and nausea at least ever since the party and possibly since they landed, but it wasn't until now that he really felt able to say anything. "You should see a medical technician," he pointed out.

She shook her head. "I'm fine. I'm just a little overexhausted."

And there wasn't much he could say to that, considering how little sleep all of them had gotten in the last few days. He nodded, sighing and settling down on the sofa, gesturing for her to come sit with him.

"Oof." She ended up sitting propped up against his chest, her feet tucked unceremoniously against the sofa arm. He gave a smile of amusement and a kiss into the top of her head. "All right, then. What have you discovered?"

"That your people have something with the theory that buildings and architecture should involve an eye for aesthetics." He snorted. "I feel as though I spent all day walking down a maze of the same hallways, over and over again. It was like a nightmare."

She laughed. "I meant about this problem and our husband's suspicions. Goof." One elbow came back into his ribs, more pointy than hard, and he laughed too. "I will say, this whole mess makes me wonder if we shouldn't look a little more closely into our own homeworlds."

He made a questioning noise, muffled in her hair. The hesitation between words in the last sentence or so sounded as though she had something specific in mind, although he hadn't noticed anything in the way of suspicious behavior from her kin or her people. "We can make that the next step," he nodded. "What I learned today. I learned that politicians talking out of both sides of their face seems to be a galactic trait and not just a local one..." Which made her laugh. Thank God. "I learned that there is very little in the way of mandated communication between the individual... districts, I think is what they call them. Ideally each representative from each district discusses legislation currently in debate with the others, deciding their position and so on and so forth, but in practice it seems to be mostly thinly veiled insults and attempts at intimidation or bribery."

"Isn't that the same all over the place?" she asked, turning her upper body to face him.

Aleksandr shrugged. "I think we may have it somewhat more institutionalized. There are systems in place that, I suppose, keep the graft to a minimum. Required communication, oversight, regular progress reports. And an underlying expectation that things will be moved along and progressed to a conclusion, even if that conclusion..." He frowned, thinking of recent bills and things he had caught up on while he was home. "Especially if that conclusion isn't favorable to anyone, it seems like. Sometimes."

"Sometimes?" Faint smile, there. She did look pale, and a little unfocused. "And sometimes..."

"Sometimes the obvious conclusion is also the most equitable to everyone. It depends."

"So that explains why your planet seemed to be entirely made up of ..." Beata bit her lip on the last few words, inviting his curiosity. "Sorry..."

His eyebrows rose further. "No need to be sorry when you didn't say anything. Made up of what?"

"Functionaries and bureaucrats?"

No, that wasn't offensive. Far from it, that was something he'd often thought when he was tired of all the endless form-completing and permission-collecting he had to do in order to get anything done around the office. He shook his head, wrapping one arm around her shoulders and hugging her tighter, closer to his chest. "Something like that. I think also we seem to have... for want of a better phrase. Institutionalized making agreements? There are forms to fill out for everything, petitions, appeals that can be filed, and one of the highest priorities is making sure every office has enough staff so that all the forms are processed in a timely manner."

She wrinkled her nose, laughing a little as she burrowed in against him. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you took all the feeling out of it."

"Ah, but you do know better."

For a little while they stayed huddled against each other, and at some point her nuzzling breaths brought his mouth down to hers, and they sat on the sofa and kissed as though they had no responsibilities whatsoever.

Beata sighed eventually. "So you didn't find any sign that this conspiracy, movement, whatever it is, goes along any particular geographic or stellagraphic lines."

"Not that I could tell. I took a fair amount of notes, and recorded when I could, Andreas may be able to make more of it than I could." Being more familiar with his own home territory, of course. On the other hand, he didn't know that Andreas either knew how to think of things in that way or had paid attention before, unless he had absorbed some of the knowledge without knowing it. He had always thought, he realized now, of the older man as somehow more educated and more capable. It was a little disconcerting to realize that nothing in the past year or so (depending on the calendar) had given him the idea that Andreas was prepared to play politics.

Then again, he wasn't familiar with the military world, either. The military was a tool to do the bidding of the politicians, except in extreme cases in history, where it wasn't. Which gave him the equally disconcerting thought that this might be one of those cases.

He kissed the top of Beata's head again. "I think we've gotten all we can out of my notes, at least," he murmured. "Now. Why don't we discuss this dizziness you've got going on, see if there's anything to be gained by persuading you to see a med-tech, hmm?"

His position, by now, was largely a ceremonial one. One couldn't very well be a commander without anything to command. Funny how he had never felt the lack of it till he was surrounded by men and women in the same uniform, with the same marks of rank in various permutations, and all of them with postings or ships under their command except him.

No, that wasn't strictly true. There was precedent for this, floating pilots and commanders and ranking officers who filled voids where needed. Usually they were either investigative personnel of various branches, engineering and science specialists, or some other form of personnel too rare to confine to one post. But not someone in a diplomatic position. There had never been someone in his position before, and it made his fellows uncertain of how to treat him.

He was a soldier. He breathed and lived the procedure of the fleet; you enlisted, you were trained, and you were put into a place from which you could advance if you so chose, within a reasonable pace if you so chose, but your choices were still limited. It had been a comfort to him. And now he was outside of that and the more he encountered other commanders and other pilots who had no idea how to treat him, the less he became certain of how he wanted to be treated, himself. Who he was in this system which had been his home.

"You look like the wrong end of a recycler," Commander Augustus pointed out as Andreas came into the room and threw himself into a chair. "What happened?"

"I went away and got married, that's what happened."

Commander Cosca Augustus was fond of saying he was from an old and proud lineage, but Andreas knew he had changed his name when he came of age and enlisted under his new name to make a reputation for himself. He knew this because they had enlisted at the same time. Everyone had made fun of Cosca for his strange-sounding name and the mythology that went with it; Andreas liked to believe he had always known his friend had promise. Whatever the truth, Cosca quickly proved himself and by now was actually Fleet Commander Cosca Augustus, or so Andreas had heard.

"Yes, I heard that," Cosca chuckled. "Sorry I couldn't be there, disarmament and so on, you know."

"I heard that," Andreas echoed, smiling faintly. "No, it's all right, it's just that I was never ... I never expected to be in this position."

Cosca snorted, pouring them both a completely non-regulation drink. "I remember. We were supposed to be fleet commanders together, protecting the front lines. Until there was no front line to be had, anymore."

Andreas heard the bitterness in his voice, felt a chill of shock as he realized he shared it. The loss of purpose hit him harder than he expected, and bringing it up with Cosca sharpened it into a point between his ribs. "There were still orders. There are still patrols, there is still exploration to be done."

"The scientists tested the samples from the far planets, they already determined there's nothing of worth in them except for mining. And at that..."

"It's not enough to warrant a full fleet, I know, I know." Andreas rubbed his temples, trying to make a little more sense of it all. "Then can you tell me why the number of drop ships and small craft has increased, maybe even doubled, since I left?"

Cosca frowned, leaned forward and straightened his back, fingers wrapped around his glass. "What do you mean?"

Briefly and in terse tone, Andreas gave him the sketch of the situation, what he had seen coming in. He left out, maybe out of instinct or maybe because Cosca hadn't yet told him what he thought of Andreas's marital status, the parts that Aleskandr and Beata had discovered or deduced. Just what he could prove or what he had seen with his own eyes. "I know that part of the reason we pulled back and agreed to this treaty in the first place was because we no longer could sustain the war on both fronts. Is there something I'm missing about...?"

But his old friend shook his head. "Nothing so sinister, old friend. The contracts were set out for a certain number of ships, it's not the manufacturing companies' faults that they were running so far behind schedule..."

"... That they didn't complete the ships in time to get them off the ground before the treaty was struck."

"Exactly," Cosca smiled, sighed, gesturing with his glass.

Andreas leaned back in his chair, wondering if he was right. If that was the only reason, and it was a plausible reason, too. And in the moment between he explained away and Cosca sighed he had believed it, but that was a sigh of relief. He knew that sound from the time they had squeaked past their first exams, from the time they had graduated, and he knew his friend's expression now. It was the expression he wore for the press and for oversight committees reviewing his ship and his procedures. Cosca hated to be second guessed.

But did that mean he was behind it, or did that mean he simply knew about it? Andreas felt his own expression still into a mask of blandness and exhaustion, hated himself a little for it. "I suppose after so many years on the front lines I expected it ..."

"To be another war?" Cosca shook his head. "The war is behind us now. We have a treaty, we are negotiating for trade and land agreements, mining rights. There's no reason to go to war and put all that in jeopardy."

Which was another good point. "What's going to be done with the drop ships?"

His friend sighed again, this one unfeigned weariness. "Broken down again for scrap, most likely. Scuttled before they ever had a chance to see the stars. Or sold to one of the outlying planets of one of the other nations, or parceled out to our outlying planets if the mining companies get ahold of the rights to dig."

Aleksandr's specialty, politics and requisitions. Andreas groaned. "More requisitions and applications and lobbyists. Suddenly life as a floating commander doesn't sound so bad."

They stayed up late that night discussing what all of them had learned, what could possibly be done. Where, if anywhere in the seat of national government, they could turn. There was little in the way of end result, with all of them concluding that they needed at least some more information and follow-up, but one of the side effects was that when Beata's mother called she looked and felt as though she needed about another ten standard hours worth of sleep more than she'd gotten.

"... Beata?" the older woman stared. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, mother, I just haven't been sleeping well, lately." It wasn't the first time she'd called, although it might have been only the third. Not that Beata minded so terribly much, there were other people from her home that she missed more, and she wondered a little how bad of a daughter that made her. But she and her mother had never been all that close, and she wondered why none of her sisters had called. "How have you been?"

"Well enough," she replied. "Beata, dear heart, are you sure you're all right? You look a little pale." Her gaze flicked up and down what the camera allowed her to see of Beata's body, which was about to the hips. "And thin. Are you sure you've been getting enough to eat? I'm sure we could send you ..."

She waved a hand, impatient and wondering why her mother was focusing on food at a time like this. "I'm fine, mother, I've just been a little dizzy lately, it's put me off eating..."

Her mother pounced on that with surprising force. "Tired lately? Headaches that have no source in a medical problem?" Her frown deepened. "Haven't you been to see a med-tech? I'll arrange for..."

"I'm fine, mother," Beata rapped out, harder than she initially meant to but after a moment's consideration she decided her mother not listening to her warranted exactly that tone. "I haven't been to see a med-tech yet because, well, actually, I wanted to talk to you about that..."

"Yes, but dear, if you might be pregnant, you should..."

She kept talking, but Beata was no longer listening. Her mind stuttered and skidded to a halt at the mention of pregnancy. Obviously it was physically possible, the odds at least half again and maybe up to twice as likely for her as for any other newly married woman even where she came from, for usually the marriages didn't happen simultaneously. But, now that she thought of it, where they had, pregnancy usually resulted within the first year or two unless specific measures were taken. At least, all of the ones she knew or even remembered hearing about from public figures.

"Beata, are you even listening to me?"

No. "I'm sorry, mother, I was..." Panicking. "... trying to think of what to tell the men. My husbands." She scrubbed her hand over her face, annoyed at herself for letting her mother's autocratic tone creep into her speech, especially so soon. "We've had a lot to worry about lately."

"Oh?" And just like that, her mother was all sympathetic, sitting down at the console and folding her hands over her knee as though she wanted to hear all about it.

Maybe that was being uncharitable, but the longer Beata was away from her home, the more she realized she missed her sisters more than she had ever missed her mother proper. "There's been some discrepancies here on the ground, that's all," she shook her head. "Andreas is trying to figure out the source of them and if there's some sort of..."

"You think there might be a threat to the treaty?"

Beata didn't know what note that was in her mother's voice, but she wasn't happy about it. The queen seemed to pounce on that as much as she had pounced on Beata's symptoms earlier, and she was tired of feeling like a small creature caught between the hunter's talons and tossed about for amusement. "We're trying to find the source of the problem," she assured her mother, drawing herself up straight and ignoring the abrupt pounding in her head. "Andreas thinks it's a simple clerical error compounded with the delay on a construction project, till the treaty had been signed and agreed upon."

"Sweetheart, if there's a threat to the peace between our nations, we need to know about this. Why haven't you reported..."

"Because there was nothing to report. We are still compiling information; it's a little difficult to go around asking if a new signatory nation is a party to breaking the treaty they agreed to less than..." she frowned. "A little more than one of their years ago." Or was it the other way around. Damn. "Several standard months ago, at least."

"Keep us apprised, then," her mother commanded.

Beata sighed, nodding. There wasn't much point to asking the woman not to use that tone with her; she took the commanding air even with her own husband, the king. "Yes, mother."

"Now..." and then she relaxed, and Beata had the first smile from her mother the whole call. "Tell me how you've been doing, with your new husbands and this potential pregnancy."

It might have been her imagination, but her mother seemed more eager and less happy for her than she would have expected, especially with as much as she seemed to want Beata to be pregnant. Still, she told her as much as she could figure out, which wasn't much. She'd been distracted lately, paying attention to her health as long as it didn't take a turn for the abrupt worse hadn't been on the top of her priority list. And it was just a few dizzy spells, brought on most likely by exhaustion and stress, wasn't it?

She considered Aleksandr's expression when he suggested she go to the med-tech. Not that she would give her mother the satisfaction, but maybe she should go see someone and get a proper diagnosis, so that he wouldn't worry.

"We've been doing all right," she murmured, dragging her mind back into order and putting everything where it belonged, her personal suspicions and thoughts to the back and the public things that her mother could have found out from her spies. "There's been some... adjustment, Andreas is having to return to his home and talk to all his old friends with all the changes he has been through..."

Beata made as much small talk as she could, and got her mother off the line as soon as she could do so without raising suspicion. The Queen had always been aloof, but this did nothing to alleviate her sinking feeling that something was wrong back home, something she wasn't seeing or putting together.

"Beata...?"

Late morning. She was able to sleep in, and her husbands had let her, stealing a few moments for themselves down in the kitchen as they prepared breakfast. She'd had some convoluted reason why that was a good thing while she was half asleep, something to do with them growing closer in the last several weeks and so on, but now that she was awake she couldn't remember the phrasing.

Anyway, they probably knew that she was happy they were coming together. Even if she had been a little pale and withdrawn the last few days.

"Mm? I'm awake," she swung her legs over the side and slid out of bed. "I'm coming.

Aleksandr sat on the bed next to her before she could stand, though. "Are you sure you're all right?"

The question seemed to come out of nowhere, but the expression on Andreas's face as he leaned in the doorway and watched them suggested that she'd been the subject of most of their early morning conversation. It smacked of one of those for your own good speeches that usually ended in something medical or psychological.

"I'm fine..." She hadn't called the med-tech yet, either. She'd meant to, and it had gotten sidelined in all the fuss about the ships and her irritation with her mother. "I know..."

"Your mother called."

Her younger husband's tone and the quirk of his mouth as he said it did much to relieve her worry. Little to relieve her irritation. "She had no business doing that. She has no business interfering in my life, I'm..."

"Responding like a child?" Andreas pointed out.

Beata's lips pressed together as she tried to glare at him, but he did have a point. She took a breath. "She told you that I was having dizzy spells?" And possibly a few other things they'd discussed, but she didn't remember what all she'd told the Queen. "I meant to schedule a visit with the med-tech, afterwards, but..."

"But things kept coming up, and we've been working on my little problem with the..."

"Little?" Aleksandr's eyebrows shot up.

He shook his head, managing a smile at least. "You know what I mean. Things kept coming up, and we never got a chance to sit down and talk about what's been happening."

She couldn't avoid it any longer, not really. Not without lying directly to the both of them, which she didn't want to do. Evading was one thing, but after her mother pointed out the possibility she could no longer say she was blind to it, and knowing the Queen she would have mentioned it to them anyway, when she'd called. "Mother thinks I might be pregnant," she said, even as she drew her knees up to her chest, heels on the edge of the bed. The scary part was that she couldn't say why she was so terrified, except that this wasn't something that was planned, she had never done this before and she was so far away from home.

Neither of them were surprised. Either that possibility had occurred to them already or her mother had told them. Or both. Aleksandr's arm slid around her shoulders. "Then maybe we should go to the med-tech and find out for certain?"

Andreas came and sat down on her other side while she thought about that. Certainty would be better than this tremulous not knowing. And at the same time certainty, if the answer was yes, would bring up a whole host of other problems they would have to deal with while they dealt with a possible wide-spread insurrection on the world they were currently staying, including the breaking of the treaty. In the worst case, they might find themselves unable to leave the planet. And who would help her carry the baby to term, then?

Aleksandr nudged her a little with his shoulder. "Tell us what you're thinking?" he asked. She blinked.

"What I'm..."

"You had that look on your face." He mimed one hand open at his eyes, scared eyes. Maybe she had. She didn't know.

Beata curled a little into him, since he was offering. She kept her eyes fixed on her knees, though. "What if I am? And what if we get caught here, stuck here, with everything that's going on? All of the ships, all of the weapons and the people, what if ..." The scenarios she had been coming up with a moment ago eluded her. Or the articulation of them did, one or the other.

"Nothing like that is going to happen." Andreas reached for and squeezed her hand, thumb rubbing circles along her palm. "We know that this conspiracy, whatever its intentions, isn't so widespread. If nothing else we know there are pilots and ships that are still loyal to us. To the idea of the treaty, and to the government and its folk if nothing else."

"And we won't let anything happen to you," Aleksandr added, though with more reassurance of feeling and less fact, and she wasn't sure which one felt better. "You know that."

"I know." Somehow she managed to twist a bit so that she had one hand clutching one of theirs and one hand curled around the other's arm. "I know that..."

But. There was something, some kind of but in there, and she couldn't tell if that unease was in her brain or in her changing body chemistry. Which, she realized with a sigh, was a problem for a medical technician. Of some sort.

"All right," she said after a moment. "Let's go see a med-tech."

Test results were instantaneous if one wanted them to be, and Aleksandr and Beata did. Andreas was less sure, and so he didn't go with them to the medical center, telling them they would all talk in person when they all got home that night. In the meantime, he could preoccupy himself with what was happening on his homeworld.

Too much was happening, that was the problem. Too much change, too much uncertainty, he was just now becoming used to being part of a family unit rather than with a partner he had grown close to, come to love, built something with over time. And this, his home and the fleet he had believed in, perpetrating either a gross act of miscalculation and reckless spending or directly subverting a treaty he had worked to preserve. And wanted to preserve, he realized.

The progress of nations had been, along with the original treaty itself, part of Beata's nation's traditions. In the end, it had done its job to cement at least the figureheads of the treaty; they had all learned some about each other's worlds and where they came from. They could all speak to their own people and advocate for the others.

"Which helps me not at all in the current circumstance," he groused. Picnic lunch outside of the fleet administration building in the capital, something familiar.

"The current circumstance?"

Andreas looked up. He hadn't expected to hear that voice again, not for a long time, at least. Commander Lara Tolwyn, not yet Fleet Commander, but she wouldn't be far behind himself and Cosca, he thought. But... "I thought you were assigned out at the borders," he said with a smile, standing to exchange quick salutes and then strong, backslapping hugs.

"We got pulled in for new orders," she shrugged as they all took their seats again. "Just got in last night... I think it was last night."

Everyone made faces. "Space does wonders for your circadian rhythms, doesn't it," Cosca remarked. "No, it was last night, I remember because they notified me at some inhumane hour of the morning."

"That's what happens when you're a fleet commander," Andreas retorted, pointing half of his sandwich at his old friend.

Laughter settled the mood. "It's been a while since I've seen you," Lara said, kicking Andreas's foot under the table. "I hear you've managed to secure us peace all by yourself? Again? You keep that up you might get a reputation."

Cosca chuckled, but Andreas wondered how thin the sound was as he glanced over at his old friend before answering. "That was an insurrection and a minor amount of terrorist activity, if you'll remember. We showed up with two Sheridan-Class ships and they wet themselves."

"Still, it was peace." And that was Lara Tolwyn all over. The only member of her family to survive an attack on the maintenance station she grew up on, she had risen through the ranks to become the most decorated ship captain never to fire a shot. She prided herself on using threats, tactics, intimidation and herding to accomplish the mission objective and leave with as few casualties as possible.

Which meant, he realized, that she might even understand why he was going against some things their entire world took for granted in order to preserve the treaty.

"Well, we have peace now. Even if ..."

Her mouth twitched. "Even if no one agrees with the terms, or ... the methods. Entirely." Cosca shifted in his seat, but Andreas snorted. "Yes, I've heard the rumors around you, and I can imagine... which do you prefer?" she asked, and he opened his mouth to answer while she continued. "People asking who you prefer or the ones who just assume?"

His mouth quirked in something resembling a smile. "I think the ones who just assume. We agreed that, in order to make this as much of a non-issue as possible so that we could all focus on getting them acquainted with the lay of the land, that we would just settle into whatever roles seemed to be expected of us."

Which would work, up to a point. Up to the moment where one or more of them needed to defy expectations, which might be sooner than they thought. Everyone acknowledged it with a throat noise and a look away, the natures of which differed depending on the individual. Andreas and Lara's eyes met at the end of it, but Cosca was still staring off into the distance.

"So," she said, when the other man didn't say anything. "You're committed to this peace?"

Andreas nodded. "I am. I was before I knew the nature of the, erm. Arrangement. This war has gone on too long and had cost all of us too much in resources, living and material. There was no way we could recoup the losses, and at least some of our ..." Cosca shook his head. "Some of our allied republics were going bankrupt as a result, you don't think so?"

Lara cocked a brow at him, her lips thinned and her hands curled on the table. Cosca leaned forward. "You don't think we could have recouped the losses? Even if we only succeeded in turning the other two nations against each other, we could have expanded our borders, regained in resources what we might still otherwise have to cede over. And this treaty, you think they'll abide by it?"

"I think ..." Andreas frowned. "Yes, I think they will. I think there is enough at stake here for everyone that they will, and I think that even those who might not view themselves as advantaged as much as they would like by it will go along with it because public opinion says so. We see a different story, Cosca, the people are tired of war, they are tired of being constantly reminded that their loved ones are dying, often without the comfort of a body to bring home. And they see no benefit in continuing the struggle."

If Cosca had any more objections, he didn't see fit to voice them. Lara relaxed when he kept his peace, shaking his head, and turned the topic of conversation back to Andreas and his experiences in the other nations more than the marriage itself, for which Andreas thought everyone was a little grateful. By the time he returned home he felt a little better about some of the changes in his life, at least. Describing them to an old friend who found them more fascinating than strange had helped.

"I don't know..." Aleksandr pushed his hands through his hair, sighing. "I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know what any of us are going to do."

Marko winced in sympathy. They'd been talking for nearly a standard hour, spending most of that time catching up, and neither of them had come to any conclusion about the potential escalation on Andreas's homeworld or the impending fatherhood dilemma.

They had already, at least, passed the question of whose the child was. Aleksandr's glare took care of that.

"How is she taking it?" Marko, on the two or three occasions that they had met, had liked Beata. "Is she doing all right? From what I remember she was pretty young."

"She's ... well, she's handling it with as much practicality as she can manage. I think it scares her." Aleksandr's breath wooshed out. "It scares me. This isn't what... do I look like I could be a father? Do I act like someone's father?"

"I think you have a healthy sense of responsibility, at least. If you..." Marko's grin faded abruptly, and his deep golden skin paled to a sickly shade as he looked somewhere offscreen. Aleksandr's chest clenched. For a moment all he could think was that they were supposed to be done with this, this was over and done with, had finished a year or so ago. "Aleksandr..."

"What are you..." he asked at the same time.

"Turn on your newsfeed."

He did. The headlines started to scroll across the screen, all of them local. "I don't see..."

"Set it to homeworld."

It took him a full minute to figure out where the foreign channels were. As he should have expected, there weren't many of them. The first headlines were almost two standard hours old, reports of ships with no beacon and no colors sighted, visual range, off of Lukyanenko Station. "Where's..."

"Just... keep watching." Marko got up from his desk and went out of Aleksandr's line of vision, but he heard water running in the distance. And he kept watching the feeds.

The more recent ones started to pop up. Reports of explosions, and then a headline that flat-out stated, Lukyanenko Under Attack. Ships that flew no beacons, but they were drop ships, short range fliers and deployed from some carrier ship nearby, maybe a full-on battleship with guns blazing. A battleship would have carried with it signature technology though; all three of them had their own weapons technology, their own signature of cannon and gun. A battleship would have told everyone with a camera within visual range who was attacking, but Aleksandr had the sinking feeling he knew what was going on.

"Marko..." Aleksandr leaned forward when his friend came back. "Can you get me the security report, the investigation... No, can you get me access to the security correspondence?" And at the same time he knew the kinds of permissions that would take, knew how long it would take to get it and swore profusely. Andreas's world moved faster than his, in that respect, more so if they didn't have to go under rule of law. They could destroy at least two more stations in the time it took him to argue with half the people he would need.

"I don't... I can try, Aleks, you know what that would take, if..."

"I think I know who this is and I think I know what's going on, tell them it has to do with the treaty. Tell them..." he leaned forward, the edges of the table cutting into his hands from how hard he gripped it. "Tell them that I have information they will need to identify and defend against these attackers, and..."

And that was overreaching. He knew the moment the words left his lips that he was overreaching, but these were his people dying in fire and twisted metal. And this was wrong, and it would only get worse unless he could stop it.

"Tell them I'm working on stopping it, but I need ..." What authority did he need? The words escaped him, and he had known this for years. "I need as close to full authority as I can get. I need..."

"What? I need specifics, I can't go to the Foreign Affairs with that..."

He needed to calm down and think was what he needed to do. Deep breaths. The headlines had come around to the beginning again and he was opening his mouth to say something desperate when a thick hand clamped down on his shoulder.

"You will need to negotiate from a position of clemency for the perpetrators," Andreas rumbled behind him. Aleksandr had no idea how long he'd been standing there. "It won't go over well with your people, but you will need to let us handle it as an interior matter. If our government allows, some of them may be turned over to your government to be prosecuted as terrorists, but you need to make them understand that there are no guarantees."

He nodded. Thankful for his husband's steady presence, even, in the back of his mind, for the year it had taken them to get to the point where that hand on his shoulder reassured him. "Tell them that I'm working to confirm my suspicion that the faction that attacked the station is a rogue faction, not representative of the government." And now his voice sounded steadier to his ears. As though he knew what he was doing, wasn't panicking. Marko might know him better than that, but few others he'd be talking to today would.

Marko nodded. If he was uncertain about any of this, he didn't let it show. "I'll tell them. ... Good luck."

Aleksandr nodded; Andreas rumbled, "To all of us," behind his ear.

The screen went dark before he could think of anything else to say. He looked over his shoulder at the other man, who looked back at him with military and implacable sternness.

In the end they went all three of them together to interrupt a meeting of the Joint Defense Council and call a special session of the cabinet. Armed with as much footage of the attack and the new ships as they could gather in a day, plus their own sworn testimony as to what they had heard, they managed to browbeat their way into a hearing. Teams of government-paid attorneys scampered back and forth, attended by small flocks of journalists, trying to gather evidence before it was destroyed.

Andreas seemed to bear up the best through it all, or maybe he was just hiding behind military protocols. His old friend was named as one of the top conspirators.

"I can't believe we're doing this," Beata murmured. Despite the med-techs telling her that she was physically fine and healthy, she swayed as though she would blow over in a stiff breeze. They gave her something for the vertigo, which she immediately and stubbornly refused to take. "Can it really be this simple?"

Both men looked at her with different shades of amused disbelief.

"Easy, simple? You call this simple?" Aleksandr snorted, then laughed. "No, you're right, this is simple. On my world, they would still be questioning us."

"No one wants to risk us being right and cause a scandal," Andreas murmured, shaking his head and looking around the halls. People gave them a wide berth, attorneys, judges, legal staff, everyone. "No one's sure we're right, either."

Aleksandr and Beata both looked over at him as he fell silent, jaw clenched. Then they looked where he was looking. Fleet Commander Cosca Augustus marched down the hall, flanked by two guards. Who, by the looks of them, were not there to guard him from outside threats, but to guard against his escape.

"Cosca." Andreas nodded but did not salute.

The other man smiled, thin-lipped and weary. "I didn't expect this from you, Andreas. I ..." he trailed off, searching for words. "I expected better."

"This is better, Cosca. This is better for everyone. For your soldiers and your ships, for the good of our people. You're confusing pride with loyalty."

Beata felt as though they were intruding on an extremely private moment, but she didn't know where else they could go. And she didn't want to leave Andreas alone. The two men stared at each other outside the courtroom, and one by one everyone around them took a step back as the silence stretched on. No one could think of anything to say.

"You've ... you've made a big mistake," Cosca said, evidently unable to come up with anything better.

It had the opposite effect of what he likely intended, too. Andreas straightened, shoulders settling back and chin up again. "I'm correcting a mistake. Whether or not this peace is ultimately for the best, it is not our job to make foreign policy, nor our job to dictate relations with other nations according to our whim. There is procedure for this. There are avenues in place. What you did was treason."

"And what you've done isn't?"

To everyone's surprise, Andreas smiled, tired and sad. "If you think I've committed treason, by all means, bring me up on charges. Until then, answer for your own acts and don't presume to justify them with mine."

Beata snuck her hand into her husband's as the doors opened and the guards escorted Fleet Commander Augustus through them. Ex-Fleet Commander, she supposed, now. If they didn't think there was any proof to find they would have said so by now, called off the hunt, but more and more personnel were being called in to give testimony and she heard whispers in the halls of justice about giving up their fellow conspirators in exchange for reduced sentencing. They practically lived in the halls of justice, now, a far cry from the diplomatic parties and public face her mother wanted her to show. As she heard every other day.

And yet, the war was over. Again. This time it was over before it had even started, leaving everyone in at least this city muddled and confused, and no one else the wiser for how close they had come to rationing and daily headlines of body counts and destroyed stations.

"Did we just avert a war?" Beata swayed a little on her feet. "Did we just avert another war?"

"Not yet," Aleksandr came up beside her, smiling. One arm around her shoulders, the other reaching out to take his husband's arm and tug him back to the present, and to them. "Give it another week."