Diplomacy Always Goes Better With Tea and Biscuits

[Rue Wydown 0]

Diplomacy Always Goes Better With Tea and Biscuits

Cdr Rue Wydown

 

Well, another successful alien induction into the wonderful world of Jammie Dodgers. Rue leaned forward in her chair, hesitating before sending her brief (and she did mean brief) report to Swain about how her meeting went with the Hakarians. She hadn’t yet heard from the Captain on how his soiree had turned out, for all she knew he was still buggering about with them, or they’d swanned off with him. The former was probably true, the latter unlikely, since she hadn’t heard the Klaxxons blaring...yet.

 

She felt a bit slimy about the pride she had about the meeting’s outcome. Wydown was aware that one should not feel guilty about a peaceful accord achieved. Of course she’d manipulated the hell outta the situation to build a rapport with these aliens, so that was probably the cause of her misgivings of her own behavior. She’d eventually get over it, much the same way she did when she manipulated her ex-husband into precarious situations for the resultant adrenaline rush.

 

In the end, Wydown made it clear that her job was to provide reasonable aide and assistance to the refugees until they reached Camelot. That while she was happy to explain the intricacies and internal politics of the process, even bounce ideas off of them - she was not the decision-maker. Someone well above her pay-grade would be sorting the whole mess out. The Hakarians also now knew that Excalibur had their little Kalith buddy cooling his jets in the brig. It had taken 2 hours to get them to settle after that revelation, but she thought she finally got through to understand that attacks on their ship were not tolerated and, as a result, he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Settling the hostage matter in a nasty little underhanded way that she did - by gassing the bugger like the insect the Hakarians believed him to be - seemed to please one of the leaders enough to reward Rue with a literal pat on the back. She only wished that her own security team (and in particular, Mr Mesner) would forgive her soon.

 

As to gaining any further intelligence on the weapons -- she wasn’t entirely sure she learned anything helpful. She avoided the subject of what they found on the Kalith prisoner’s pod and focused more on why the Hakarians had ejected him from their ship, hoping that they would reveal more information if she just played dumb. She wasn’t a trained interrogator, negotiator or diplomat; whether this tactic was useful or not was debatable. It had, however helped retain the rapport she’d built, so even if she didn’t gain full disclosure during this meeting, the door was still wide open to further discussion.

 

And plenty of humanoid behaviour observations (aka profiling) to report back to SFHQ. Thank you Psychology 302.

 

Meeting complete, everyone safely back on their own vessels and a report sent to her Captain. The only task left incomplete was to give Mal the 411 on her guests. To wit she sent a vague note to Mal to arrange for the two of them to talk over subspace, at his earliest convenience about her ex-husband’s newest toy. Glenna? Genna? What was this girl’s name, anyway? And why was he talking to her daily? To the outsider, it appeared Rue was looking for dirt on her old flame - not an uncommon request with the Wydowns’ shared history. To those in the know, it would be clear Rue was looking for dirt on her old flame -- in exchange for some useful political subterfuge.

 

Mal was surely going to kill her..but if she was going to die, Rue decided she was at least going to enjoy her last moments in the universe.