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meetings.
    ‘Okay,’ he told Pari. ‘Let’s do this.’
    She led him back towards the chamber where IPSO’s Defence Funding Committee was in session. As he walked, Will prepared.
    Over the years, he’d developed a Self-Aware Program for political discourse – a persona to hide behind. It worked well but came with costs. The SAP guided his body but didn’t filter emotions, and Will had found that his anger in meetings tended to accumulate. Nevertheless, he reached for the icon labelled Statesman and pressed it against his mind like a mask, turning himself into a Teflon-coated lobbyist yet again.
    At the same time he stretched his mind wide, syncing it with the building’s pervasivenet. Fingers of his awareness slid out to cover the senate’s secure communications traffic. The political backchannels, supposedly invisible to all but the chosen few, fell open to him. Will knew he wasn’t supposed to use his powers to spy on his adversaries, but he’d realised years ago that they were already spying on him. All he was doing was balancing the game. When he’d told Pari, she’d expressed astonishment that it had taken him so long to pick up the habit.
    Will plastered a diplomatic smile on his face, took a deep breath and stepped into the high-ceilinged session chamber. A mahogany podium faced a ring of tall chairs clad in real vat-leather where the funding committee’s members sat waiting – a rainbow-dressed bunch with expensive physiques and flawless hair. The Earther habit of dressing in patriotic sect colours, or House colors, as they now liked to call them, had been making a comeback. Behind them, anti-snooping baffles in Fleet-blue twisted on the walls.
    ‘Everyone, I think most of you have met Captain Ambassador Kuno-Monet,’ said Pari Voss. ‘And those who haven’t will of course recognise him and understand what a privilege this is for all of us.’
    Will waved the flattery away with a self-deprecating hand.
    ‘Captain Monet has come to speak to us on behalf of Fleet Admiral Baron. I’d like to thank him on behalf of the senate for finding room in his schedule to make that possible.’
    Lukewarm applause rippled around the room. In reality most of the senate thought of him as a political halfwit and an annoying obstruction to their plans, just as he regarded them as oily, money-grabbing crooks. But they were all too seasoned to let their opinions show, so the game ticked along as ever. Will surveyed the unwelcoming faces around him and smiled.
    ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, thank you for your time. I’d like to say a few words today about the organisation we represent. IPSO was established with a single goal – to protect a balance of power that would permit Earth and the colonies to prosper together in peace. For thirty years, we have succeeded in that ambition.’
    [ Hah! ]
    That response came on the private channel for Earth’s Free Movement faction – the political face of the Flag-Drop industry. Will ignored it. He’d learned long ago that hearing your opponent’s sarcasm was far more useful than pretending it wasn’t there – presuming you could hold your anger in check, of course. He spoke on.
    ‘Since our founding, humanity has pushed out beyond the gateway-lobe at New Panama and now inhabits over a dozen star systems that formerly belonged to the Fecund species, as well as our own.’
    [ As opposed to fifty systems. ]
    ‘On each of our new worlds, settlers from Earth and the Old Colonies live side by side, creating new economies together. That is an extraordinary achievement.’ He paused for effect.
    { Extraordinarily short-sighted. }
    This latest witticism came from the other side of the house – Isambard Visser, senator for Drexler and champion of furious Colonials everywhere. The anti-Flag bullies in the FPP loved him. Will hesitated for a moment, regaining his poise.
    ‘We have expanded cautiously,’ he went on, ‘because early experiences proved that unchecked