A Time for War, a Time for Peace - Keith R. A. DeCandido [25]
“It’s my job to be a pain in the ass, ma’am.”
“Explains why you’re so goddamned good at it.” She finally made it to the replicator. “Coffee, black, unsweetened.” The replicator hummed and provided a large mug with the needed beverage. “And will you, for crying out loud, call me Nan? We’re not on Cestus and it’s not like I’m president or anything.”
“We’re hoping to change that, ma’am. Still having the dreams?”
Nan took a sip of her coffee, the feel of the hot liquid in her throat having a cascade effect on the cobwebs in her brain. Getting Esperanza not to be deferential was a hopeless cause, but that didn’t stop her from trying. She spent too much damn time in Starfleet is the problem. “Yeah. It’s ridiculous. Eleven years as governor, been through DMZ refugees, a major galactic war, and a Gorn invasion, and I sleep like a rock. I decide to run for president, and now I’m dreaming I’m sitting on the Gorn throne with a Metron glowing in front of me while two Vorta ask me if they can invade my planet. This is what happens when you move from the kiddie table, I guess.”
“Probably, ma’am. The staff and I will be waiting for you in the lounge.”
Nan took a final gulp of the remainder of the coffee. Starting to feel almost lifelike. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Okay, ma’am. See you in half an hour.”
“You know, Esperanza, one of these days I’m actually going to make it somewhere when I say I’m going to for the express purpose of pissing you off.”
“Don’t go to any trouble on my account, ma’am. See you soon. Out.”
One shower and another cup of coffee later, Nan put on a brown suit and ran a brush through her paper-white hair. Damn, she thought, looking in the mirror at her wrinkled face, tanned from eight decades of exposure to Cestus’s rays, I got three more worry lines. Esperanza would say she was seeing things, which was why she resolved not to share her recognition of these new wrinkles with her campaign manager.
Buoyed by the caffeine rush and the thought of visiting Earth for the first time in almost three years, Nan exited the stateroom—still too damn big—and walked the few meters across the Palombo’s middle deck to the lounge, arriving precisely half an hour after she told Esperanza she’d be there in twenty minutes. Damn her, anyhow.
The lounge was almost as big as her stateroom, which Nan found ridiculous. Someday I’ll understand the human need to make everything bigger.
Present were the “inner circle” of her campaign staff. Seated on the large couch, drinking tea from the service that they took with them everywhere, were her speechwriter and political advisor. The husband-and-wife team of Fred MacDougan and Ashanté Phiri looked nothing alike—he was tall, pale, and bald, she was short, dark, and wore waist-length braids—but regularly finished each other’s sentences. How endearing that was depended entirely upon Nan’s mood. Still, they were both excellent at their jobs, and had been part of Nan’s team from her earliest days in politics on Cestus, when they were interns helping the campaign that got Nan elected as representative of Pike City’s Fifth District. Nan was also the one who, after they’d been dancing around each other for ten years, told them both to stop being morons and get married already.
Standing at the replicator and removing a plate of donuts from its slot was the deputy campaign manager, Helga Fontaine, whom Esperanza insisted on hiring despite her being too young to have even hit puberty. In truth, she was thirty, but that still made her a toddler as far as Nan was concerned. Helga was talking with the transportation manager, a taciturn Triexian named Bral—if there was any more to her name, Nan had never been informed of it. Curled up in the chair perpendicular to the couch was the tall, lithe, furry form of M’Tesint, the Caitian whom Nan had hired as press liaison at the recommendation of Fred and Ashanté. Nan had to admit that she had done an excellent job