[dogscoff]

The tunnel was packed, and not in a metaphorical sense. From wall to wall, from floor to ceiling, it was jammed with serpentine bodies. A living, heaving, ice-wrapped tube of slithering KanesS, all hoping to get a sniff of the famous aliens. All except Kleesh, that is, who was not looking forward to this at all. She pushed and bit her way through the crowd, in serious danger of outpacing her bodyguards. Somehow though, her entourage managed to stay close. After all, they were far more used to these public tunnels than she was.

The reception chamber was impressive. It had been excavated specially for this occasion, and Kleesh was almost sure that the only reason for this particular extravagance had been to claim that private access to it had not been completed yet, thus forcing her into the humiliation of using public tunnels. This suspicion was confirmed when she arrived and learned that all the other nobles had indeed gained come through a freshly dug private tunnel. Shrikeesh and her little cirle of friends pounced almost as soon as she arrived, obnoxious as ever.
“Ah, sister, we’ve been waiting for you. This is ambassador Frashk of the Drushocka. Ambassador, this is Princess Kleesh, Minister of Galactic Domains. As you can see from her arrival, my sister is very much in touch with the lower classes, which I think is absolutely wonderful. You know, she was really quite popular with the people at one time.”
“Delighted.” Grunted the ambassador in stilted KanesS. Any subtext hidden beneath that comment was completely lost on the alien’s lumpy face. It was the first time Kleesh had seen one of these Drushokans in the flesh- if flesh was the right word- and like every other KanesS who had met one so far, she felt repelled. First contact had been disastrous, a chance encounter that had introduced the KanesS to the concept of space combat and kicked off their own military program. After a number of similar near-misses and trespasses, communications had finally been established and a rough trade agreement drawn up, hence the arrival of the ambassador and this absurd party. Kleesh surveyed the creature before her. It was a large, grey lump, covered in some kind of green fuzz. Its movements were painfully slow, and its speech even more so. It smelled cold and inorganic, she wondered if perhaps this was some kind of machine devised by Shrikeesh as a prank. The urge to bite it, just to see if was really alive, was almost too great to resist.

By contrast, she had felt an instant chemical, almost erotic attraction when she met the Cue Cappan ambassador, who so closely resembled the tender and delicious tentacle-fish that swam beneath the ice of her homeworld: The KanesS obsession with food spills over into nearly all their other emotions and drives, including friendship, love and sex. Their greatest romantic plays almost invariably end with one of the lovers messily devouring the other in a passionate feeding frenzy- one of the main reasons their actors are so highly paid. Thanks to their psychic senses the Cue Cappans were acutely aware of the powerful emotions their appetising appearance inspired in their neighbours, and exploited them to their full advantage. The benefits of the new trade and research alliance weren’t entirely one-way, but there could be no doubt as to which side was profiting more. Every now and again a Cue Cappan trader or diplomat would make a fatal misjudgement and find themselves on the menu, but they fully understood the risks as well as the payoffs, and these incidents were quietly chalked up to culture clash. All in all, the alliance was heated and somewhat tempestuous, but both sides seemed content that the mutual profits justified the strange and volatile nature of their relations.

The Drushokans though, they were a different matter. Quite literally, a different matter- their silicate-based biology was utterly incompatible with the KanesS digestive system, which had evolved in a carbon-based ecosystem. As far as the KanesS were concerned, the Drushokans didn’t look, sound, feel, smell, move or taste like living things, and as such they were generally treated as inanimate objects, as dumb machines, or at best as rather stupid, comical curiosities. Needless to say, relations were not good. After the complaints from the Drushokan homeworld concerning all manner of abuses and unprovoked attacks on their various delegations, Kleesh fully expected an end to the treaty within half a year.

Perhaps then she could get back some of the influence and adoration she had lost to Shrikeesh. The colonisation project was now beginning to yield results, with millions of KanesS successfully exported and a steady flow of goods now being shipped back. Of course it was no good in the eyes of her peers and the public, it had taken too long and Shrikeesh had eclipsed her in the meantime with high-profile but petty and unprofitable barters for exotic foodstuffs from the Cue Cappans.

Kleesh watched thoughtfully as Shrikeesh rehashed one of her favourite speeches into a patronising lecture for the ambassador. It wasn’t for the alien’s benefit of course, none of this was. She was ridiculing Kleesh’s “galactic domains”, exaggerating the crippling costs of colonisation compared to their return, belittling Kleesh in front of her peers. Colonisation might be a slow and costly process, but buying baubles from the aliens would not solve their overpopulation problem and they both knew it. Furthermore, they both knew that whoever could find a satisfactory resolution to the overpopulation issue would have an almost incontestable claim to the heirhood. If she was so publicly opposed to colonisation then, what did Shrikeesh propose as an alternative? What was her plan to manage the population levels and win her the throne?

Kleesh pondered this question in silence. Perhaps if she had seen the hungry glint in her sister’s eye whenever she looked at the alien ambassador, she would have realised the answer.