[dogscoff]

“So, sister, we meet at Last. ” The younger princess slithered up to the elder with a smug twitch in her tail. “I was hoping we’d bump into one-another. It would be so rude of me to be issuing orders to a sister I’d never even met.”
She looked around quickly, hoping someone would have overheard, but was disappointed. The audience chamber they occupied was one of the oldest surviving excavations on the planet, having hosted at least three hundred generations of KanesS royalty, but it had been designed with an exquisite understanding of acoustics. It allowed a small group of people to speak in effective privacy, even if the place was packed wall to wall with squirming nobles as it was tonight. A perfect design consideration considering the amount of scheming that went on there: For almost as long as society had existed among the KanesS, this chamber had played to host to every conceivable plot of deceit, revenge, treason, assassination and betrayal.

“Ah, yes, Srikeesh isn’t it?” Kleesh deflected the artless little putdown with casual ease. “I’m so glad my Royal Parents found a role for you in my space project. As you know I’m a great believer in new ideas and I think it’s wonderful to trust even a minor task like yours to someone so young and inexperienced. Still, with enough effort I’m sure we can convince them that you’re not completely useless.”

Srikeesh shrank back slightly, baring her teeth. Kleesh consolidated her victory with a dismissive flick of the head as she turned to her other companions. Despite her nonchalant attitude, Kleesh felt genuinely threatened by this upstart sibling. The newly-appointed minister for alien interaction may not yet be skilled in the sniping and barbed conversation central to the royal court’s operations, but few in the nobility actually understood the critical nature of the new diplomatic role assigned to her- which is the only reason it had fallen on her. No KanesS had ever even considered the possibility of alien intelligence, so although everyone had been shocked and appetised by the discovery Last tenth, few had grasped the implications. Not only in regards to interstellar relations and the procurement of vital resources by trade, but also the possibility of competition and conflict.

There was plenty enough competition and conflict at home, of course. Kleesh didn’t doubt for one minute that her Royal Parents had paired her up with this devious and ambitious younger sibling to provoke just that. Kleesh’s fame and power had been grown suddenly when the space project had captured the public’s imagination, and for a while she had been one of the top three contenders for heir. Even if she was a laughing stock now, they were wise to keep an eye on her. It was a standard tactic for the monarchs to set these little tests for their offspring, firstly to see who was most fit for the throne and also, of course, to distract them from any plans to take it before their time.

The fact that she was now being pitted against such a minor princess showed how far she had fallen in her parents’ esteem. The space project had been hugely popular at first, and a prestigious new title had been invented for her: Minister of Galactic Domains. However, with the agonisingly slow progress of the colonisers toward their targets the nobles had lost interest and with it their respect for Kleesh. She should have listened to Shkimsk, who had foreseen this very situation and advised against targeting distant food-rich planets exclusively. By the time they encountered the Cue Cappan ship, she was practically in disgrace and so this Srikeesh else had been given responsibility for communicating with them.

Now Kleesh had to try to work with this insufferable brat. Although no form of hierarchy or command structure had been established between them (the King and Queen would doubtless take great pleasure in watching them fight it out), Srikeesh would undoubtedly find diplomatic reasons to wrest control of the starships away from her. In the meantime, who knew what the Cue Cappans were thinking? They might already be planning an attack, and Srikeesh would be too busy scoring points against her sister to even consider the possibility.