"And...and this...this is Endless Song Echoing Upon the Depths."
Lou had never seen a Upkin diplomat in the flesh before, not since he had first set foot on Earth what felt like weeks but was in actuality years before. But he had seen them on the screen and read about them in book and he had rather foolishly thought that he had maybe gotten at least a fraction of what it was like. He had told himself that it wouldn't be too shocking, if he mentally prepared himself.
I'm really dumb sometimes,
Lou thought, his hands shaking as Beatrice stepped past him to the edge of the artificial ocean and looked down upon Endless Song.
It wasn't that Lou was
scared
precisely. It was just that he was in sheer awe: the Upkin diplomat was nearly thirty meters long from the incredibly broad sweep of her nose to the curved flukes of her tail, which lifted from the water, creating a glittering cascade of water droplets, sloughing down into the artificial ocean. It was not a true blue whale in shape and conformation -- there had been modifications and additions to adapt the cranium to the initial purpose of the uplifted blues. There were the extra bone spurs along the forehead that were supposed to contain implanted radio antenna, there were the extra eyes for situational awareness, and there were the tentacles that frilled off the sides of her ribbed cheeks, each able to reach out almost twelve meters and grasp with the same strength as a human man.
One such tentacle flowed from the water and reached out to Beatrice -- who was using her moth body for this meet and greet. She gingerly took the tentacle tip in her own dark hand and shook it as the entire artificial ocean seemed to buzz with a deep, resounding song.
The translation harness that Endless Song wore turned that song into a cheerful, matronly voice.
"It is an absolute delight to meet you, Beatrice Benoit."
Beatrice knelt down, her eyes wide. "Your body is very similar to the designs I used for my bioforms in the upper atmospheres of gas giants. But far more dense!" She paused, then blushed. "A-And by that, I mean, I hope that you did not have too uncomfortable trip from orbit!" She looked up at Lou, clearly hoping she had said the right thing. Lou gave her a tiny smile -- honestly, after the past few days, he wasn't sure if there
was
something that Beatrice could say to offend the Upkin.
"You try having a calf or two, ha ha!" the blue whale's chuckle was as warm as her normal habitat was cold. "Oh, I do hate space travel -- but no one else in the Upkin was up to heading all the way out here to continue the peace talks."
"I admit, I am confused by this talk of continuing the peace talks," Beatrice said, sitting down and casually dangling her legs down into the water -- which made Lou freeze. In the long annals of interactions between the Neopolitan Star Kingdom and the Upkin, he knew that the deepest, most easy offense to give was to 'treat them like animals.' Though no Upkin had ever actually been
kept
in zoos, the cultural memory of it had soaked into them like a burn after having scalding water dropped on you. It stung still, centuries later. But if Endless Song was disturbed, she didn't show it. Instead, bioluminescent patterns that had been designed for giving orders and signals to deep sea commandos flickered in a complex geometric pattern along her back.
"If there is any way that I can elucidate for you..."
Beatrice nodded. "Well, I have stopped fighting humans. And humans have stopped fighting me. And I have married Louis. And we have consummated our relationship, though he has yet to sire a child in my body with wombs, but that isn't required for the peace talks. What more is there to talk about?"
"Quite a forward wife for a Neo," Endless Song said, her voice full of mirth at Lou's mortification. He sat down beside Bea, whispering to her.
"You know, ah, you don't
have
to tell people..."
"I am attempting to train you out of your mortification," Bea said, cheerfully. "No one else in the United Human Polities is ashamed of or embarrassed by their sexuality. And furthermore, I enjoy bragging about you, my husband." She smiled, then looked down at Endless Song. "I think I am going to be as transformative for the Neopolitan Star Kingdom as they have been for me!"
"That seems quite likely!" Endless Song laughed. "But to tell you, honestly, these peace talks were arranged while our understanding of you was more rudimentary. You had not even chosen a name at that point, and we did not know the true extent of your hive mind's capacities or how it functioned. There are many different models we theorized about -- for instance, if you were a consensus created by billions of individuals, rather than a distributed intelligence, then it was thought that a similarly complex diplomatic arrangement would be required as it would take to formalize the capitulation of any other interstellar state."
Bea nodded, slowly. "Well, it shall be much simpler."
"Indeed," Endless Song said. "Now, we must discuss, how many of your worlds are oceanic. How many are arboreal?"
Bea cocked her head. "They...are all?" She looked at Lou, her antennas twitching. Lou felt confused as well. He glanced at Beatrice, then looked back at Endless Song as Beatrice continued: "I have terrafromed each terrestrial world to support as wide a range of bioforms as possible, while also ensuring they are tectonically stable. While their current configurations aren't perfect, I will have to change each of them in a hundred or so million years once the continents shift again, I think I should be able to keep up with that rate of change..."
"Excellent," Endless Song said. "The Upkin Kindred list of reparations will begin at three planetary oceans, roughly on par with the Atlantic and Pacific, and arboreal regions. We have exact kilometer and biodiversity requirements, but-"
"Reparations?" Bea asked while Lou gaped in shock.
"Yes, of course?" Endless Song said, her voice growing slightly stern as she continued. "These peace talks did not begin with your marriage. They began with your
surrender
, Beatrice Benoit. And the Upkin Kindred want what they are owed -- in the only thing that has any value: In land, sea and air."
***
"Of all the blaggardly, ungentlemanly, unfair, unkind, dishonorable..." Lou was caught from his pacing by Bea's wasp body. She took hold of him with her hands -- so dainty and small and warm -- and then levered him down into the bed. She swung her legs wide, her wings buzzing, and then molded her entire black and yellow body onto him. She was currently clothed in a ruffly dress that had been designed to accentuate her curves even more than they already were accented -- and as she was built like an exaggerated hourglass, it was almost more lewd than if she had been naked. Then it got considerably lewder than that as she mashed her full breasts against his face and muffled his words in her sleek, black flesh.
"Be quiet, husband," Beatrice's moth body said, then turned to GF and Amy, who were both gaping at the display on the bed as Lou struggled -- trying to both free himself while also not harming his wife's body. But since she felt so delicate and light, and he felt so wrathful that he wasn't sure he could control his own strength, he found himself ineffectually pushing at her shoulders, while her dark lips nuzzled against the top of his head, her nose breathing in his scent. "I need to have your advice, GF and Amy."
"Of course," Amy said.
"What can we do for you?" GF asked.
Bea's wasp body slid her hands along Lou's sides, catching his fingers and guiding his hands to her breasts.
"I..." Bea paused as Lou tried to balance pushing at his wife with not trying to grope her so openly infront of two others. He fell into a murky shadowy space between the two extremes, his fingers squeezing her, feeling the soft molding of her flesh against his fingers, while her waspy rump ground against him. Lou felt as if he was about to faint from the embarrassment...and the arousal. His cock was so hard he could hardly believe it. "The Upkin have demanded I cede territory to them, due to the losses they took in the war. I have gone through the cortical stacks that I have recovered, using the scanner you provided. None of them are Upkin."
"They wouldn't be," GF said, sighing. "The Upkin communities on Charon were mostly aquatic -- they were wiped out by the concussive blast in the water. It'd have turned everything to powder and jelly."
"This is as I feared..." Bea said, her antennas drooping sadly. "I cannot provide reparations in the lost egos of those slain in the war, by me..."
Lou forced himself to shove the lovely wasp-woman off him and to the side. He sat up. "No!" he said, angrily. "I can understand their feelings -- but this isn't a capitulation. You didn't surrender unconditionally -- you sued for a peace, a just peace, a lasting peace!" He stood up, his hands clenching. "There wasn't a single battle in one of your home systems, there are no troops on your home planets, nothing that would normally allow for the diplomatic pretext of annexation or-"
"You're thinking about this like a Neo!" Amy said, shaking her head. "It's not like there are people on those planets -- there are bioforms, which are controlled by Beatrice." She looked at her. "It'd be like...moving your legs so someone else can sit in the same subway, right?"
Beatrice blushed. "It...would be a logistic challenge to...to move the subunits. It may be more efficient to simply recycle them and reconstitute them elsewhere, and leave the biomass for the Upkin..." She bit her lip.
Lou crossed his arms over his chest. "B-But those are your worlds. You built them!"
The warm, soft pressure of the wasp body pressing to his back made him tense. Her hands slid along his chest, her nose nuzzling against his neck, while Beatrice looked at him with her moth body. "I didn't build them," she said. "I just...tidied them."
"Tidied, yeah!" GF said, shaking his head. Then he paused. "Wait, shit, don't give them a damn thing."
"What?" Amy and Beatrice asked at the same time. Lou felt a momentary flare of happiness -- someone agreed with his instinctive sense of raw aggrieved injury. Then he blinked and added his own 'what?' to the chorus, since...well...Godfucker. That was it, why would Godfucker take the hardline.
GF leaned back in his seat, tapping his fingers together. "The Upkin aren't just the Upkin. They kinda fall into five big groups -- most of them are fine. The F.O.Bs -- oh, uh, Friends of Bonobos, they're all the bonobos and apes and other Upkin that have decided to be socialized similar to bonobos. They're chill as hell, practically AnComs. But the Dolphin Clades and the Chimpbol are practically Feds. Who wants to bet they're more than happy to run out and get those planets -- and have decades, centuries, to build population and power bases without UHP oversight. We're going to be going from a tentative to a factually interstellar species. The UHP will not survive the most fashy of the Upkin getting their own colony planets. Which, by the way, are all ecologically perfected paradise planets."
Lou blinked, then turned to Bea. "He's got a point."
Bea blushed. "B-But...why would Endless Song suggest such a thing? She's neither a chimpanzee nor a dolphin."
"Well, firstly, the Upkin groups aren't split on species lines. There's always variations -- heck, I think more than half the Dolphin Clades aren't even dolphins. And secondly, she might just be happy to get them
