Oxham's entourage parted slightly to admit the young officer.
Although the senator's empathic powers were currently suppressed, for most of her life she'd been able to compare facial expressions with what her extra sense told her. Even with the wristband at full strength, she was extraordinarily perceptive. When Lieutenant-Commander Zai stood before her, she could see that he didn't know what to say.
Vadan greeting, she subvocalized.
Five appropriate salutations appeared in synesthesia, but in a flash of instinct, Nara ignored them all.
"You don't look very happy, Lieutenant-Commander Zai."
He glanced over his shoulder at his friends. Turned back.
"I'm not used to crowds, ma'am" he said.
Nara smiled at the honorific. He must be without a handler to have used ma'am instead of excellency. How did the Navy ever win wars, she wondered, when they couldn't manage a cocktail party?
"Stand here by the column," she said. She held her glass up to the light. "There's a certain security in having one's back covered, don't you think, Lieutenant-Commander?"
"Sound military thinking, Senator-Elect," he answered, finally smiling back at her.
So at least he knew her rank. But her politics?
"These columns are stronger than they look," she said. "Each is a single diamond, grown in an orbital carbon whisketter."
His eyes arched up, no doubt considering their mass. Making huge diamonds was easy in orbit. But getting an object that big down the gravity well safely--now that was a feat of engineering. Oxham held her glass of champagne up to the light. "Have you noticed, Lieutenant-Commander, that the shape of the glasses matches the column's fluting?"
He looked at his own glass. "No, Excellency, I hadn't."
Excellency, now. The officer's etiquette training was kicking in. Did that mean she had made him comfortable enough to remember his manners? Or was he feeling her rank?
"But I suppose I personify the analogy," he continued. "I had begun to feel rather like a bubble floating aimlessly. Thank you for offering a safe haven, Senator-Elect."
Out of the corner of one eye, Oxham had watched the rest of the officers in Zai's group. With a glance here, a hand on a shoulder there, they were spreading the news of Zai's defection. Now, an older man of captain's rank was watching. Was he headed over to rescue the young lieutenant-commander from the Mad Senator?
Captain Marcus Fentu Masrui, Elevated, Oxham's handlers informed her. Nonpolitical as far as we know.
Nara raised an eyebrow. Nothing human was nonpolitical.
"I'm not sure how much of a haven you've found, Lieutenant-Commander." She let her attention over Zai's shoulder become obvious. "Your friends seem disturbed."
Zai glanced down at one of his shoulders, as if arresting a turn of his head back toward the officers. Then his eyes met hers again.
"I'm not sure about that, ma'am."
"They certainly look upset." Captain Masrui was still hovering nearby, unwilling to plunge in after Zai.
"Oh, of that I'm positive," Zai said. "But whether they are my friends or not..."
He smiled, but was not entirely joking.
"Success brings a certain amount of false friendship," Oxham said. "At least, speaking from my own perspective, political success does."
"No doubt, Senator. And, in a way, I suppose my own celebrity does have a political aspect to it."
Oxham narrowed her eyes. She knew very little about Laurent Zai, but her preparty briefing had stated that he was in no way a political officer. He had never enjoyed assignment to staff or a procurement committee, nor did he publish military scholarship. He came from a long line of illustrious Navy men, but had never used his name to escape field duty. The Zais had all been warriors, at least on the male side.
They joined the Navy, fought for the crown, and died. Then they took their well-earned immortality and disappeared into the gray enclaves of Vada. What did the dead Zais do then? Oxham wondered. Painted those dire black Vadan paintings, probably, went on endless pilgrimages, and learned appropriately dead languages to read the ancient books of the war sages in the original. A grim, infinite life.
Laurent Zai's doubts were interesting, though. Here he was, about to be honored by his living god, and he worried that his elevation had been tainted by politics. Perhaps he wondered whether surviving an awful captivity was enough to warrant a medal.
"I think the Emperor's commendation is justly deserved, Lieutenant-Commander Zai," she said. "After what you've been through--"
"No one has any idea what I've been through."
Oxham stopped short. Despite his rude words, the man's calm exterior hadn't changed in any way. He was simply stating a fact.
"However painful," the man continued, "having simply suffered for the Emperor is not enough to warrant all this." A small sweep of his hand indicated the party, the palace, immortality. Oxham nodded. In a way, Laurent Zai was an accidental hero. He had been captured through no error of his own, and imprisoned without any hope of escape. Finally, he had been rescued by the application of overwhelming force. In one sense, he had done nothing himself.
But still, to have survived Dhantu at all was extraordinary. The rest of the prisoners that the rescue had found were dead, beyond even the symbiant. Simply suffered, Zai had said. A ghastly understatement.
"Lieutenant-Commander, I didn't mean to suggest that I could understand your experience," she said. "You've seen depths no one else has. But you did so in the Emperor's service. He has to do something. Certain things must be ... recognized."
Zai smiled sadly at her.
"I was rather hoping to hear an argument from you, Senator. But perhaps you don't want to be impolitic."
"An argument? Because I'm pink? Let me be impolitic, then. The Imperial presence on Dhantu is criminal. They've suffered for generations, and I'm not surprised that the most extreme Dhanti have become inhuman--which does not excuse torture. Nothing can. But some things are beyond being excused or explained, beyond logic or even blame. Things that start from simple power struggles--from politics, if you will--but ultimately dredge the depths of the human soul. Timeless, monstrous things."
The young man blinked, and Nara took a drink to slow her words.
"Armed occupation seldom pays dividends for anyone," she said. "But the Empire rewards who it can. You survived, Zai. So you should accept the Emperor's medal, elevation, and the starship command they'll no doubt give you. It's something."