“As you know perfectly well, Lady Nimue, you come to us with most excellent grades and glowing recommendations,” the tall man in a black suit said as they strode up the carpeted stairs, passing staffers dressed down to shirts and vests. The full formal “battle armour” both Lady Nimue Hastings and her erstwhile guide was wearing made them stand out, composed of black three-piece suits with colour-coded ties; salmon for Nimue and purple for her guide. Nimue’s raven-black hair was tied in a tight bun at the nape of her neck, and she had started to regret the choice of pencil skirt instead of trousers about the moment she had run out the door of her lodging in St. Barbara, a full twenty minutes behind schedule.

Getting around in the Inner City of Cordelia was, despite the myriad of modern ways of mass transportation, a hectic and jumbled mess and the inevitable result of millions of humans living on top of each other in a relatively small area. Urban planners and architects had grappled with the issue over efficient and rapid transportation ever since Antiquity on Earth, and the same held true in the 29th century CE as well. Cordelia had intentionally been designed with several “layers” of transportation in mind, in a very literal sense of the word. The ground level of the city which for obvious reasons had been the first laid out and constructed, was leaning heavily into walk-able lanes, roads and paths, and the dream of Morgan Poett, the architect who had been in charge of creating the city when Aurora was but a fledgling colony of a few hundred thousand people, had envisioned a completely motor-free city. Naturally, over the years this had proven a hopelessly romantic idea, and many of the paths had to be given over to groundcars. However, as technology advanced and metallurgy improved, the idea of piedways spread across the human-settled galaxy; pathways for foot traffic that ran over the ground level streets and roads, opening up a second floor to city planners, who grabbed the idea and ran with it. Monorails had obviously been a thing long before Humanity left the gravity well of their cradle star, but now it was common in major cities for the monorails platforms to be interconnected with piedways who crisscrossed all over; it also meant that first and second floors of buildings could house the same types of shop fronts, café patios, even green lungs in form of small parques and pavilions. Then the skycar had made its appearance, and the skies had opened up as a venue for transit as well.

Alas, for all these improvements to the dimensions of transportation, there were still north of fifteen million people in Cordelia, spread out over relatively small area, and the majority of them tended to need some mode of transit to get somewhere roughly at the same times every week-day. Monorail lines ran over piedways, tram cars sped along footpaths, groundcars drove through roundabouts with bike lanes at the outer perimeter, and skycars took off and landed at towers connected with lift to metro line stations that ran all over the city. And yet for all of this, there was still congestion every morning at seven-thirty at the major metro stations, on the monorail stops, the trams were standing room only, and most rent-a-bikes had already been snapped up from their racks by some early (and physically fit) birds. And so Nimue Hastings found herself forced to pay for a personal skycar drone taxi so she wouldn’t be late for her first day of work. Drone taxis came in many shapes and sizes in Cordelia and on Aurora, but of all of them the skycar variant was the most expensive, but also by far the fastest as it simply slotted into the Cordelia All-Link Traffic Overall Network (CALTON), which through the use of two dozen specifically tailored SAIs for this exact city and this exact purpose, monitored and controlled all of the public drone traffic in Cordelia and its suburbs and environs, then the drone taxi simply sped along invisible lanes in the skies over Cordelia to the skycar pad or tower nearest the customer’s desired destination. For Nimue Hastings this morning, that was the northern end of Prince of Arcadia’s Park.

She exited the skytaxi’s automatic door-hatch accompanied by the drones’ androgynous voice thanking her for her patronage, and wishing her a good day, before it took off with a woosh of small vector-jets, making Nimue’s skirt- and frock coat hems flutter. Setting her frock back proper, Nimue looked up and smiled as she saw the massive structure on the opposite side of the four-lane street. She oriented, found a pedestrian crossing, and joined a large huddle of suit-wearing people headed for the huge stairs leading up to the main doors of His Majesty’s Foreign Office. Finished in 2424, Foreign Office House was an expansive complex built in the Neo-Edwardian style, combining elements and inspiration from Palladianism as well as Georgian and Regency styles, and was a sprawling set of buildings that had double-door entrances with adjoining stairs in all cardinal directions from its central location in Prince of Arcadia’s Park just where the Quarters and Gloucester met. King Henry II had insisted on the Foreign Office House being dimensioned for the future and had for the first century and half been extremely oversized for its purpose, but now the 89,000 m2 floor space complex –spread out over five floors– was barely large enough for the thousands of employees and visitors that came through those large doors every day. Nimue could not hide her smile as she took the first step on the stairs up to the main entrances, allowing herself to wallow in pride as she studied the high-arched windows, Ionian-style marble columns, and the seven fifty-metre plinths that were decorated with fantastical carvings of the settlement and history of each of the Auroran worlds; a female anthropomorphised figure representing each of Aurora, Angevin, Amaranth, Cymru, Nova Caledonia, Avalon and Westernesse standing proudly on top of the plinths. She fished out the lanyard from out inside her inner vest pocket and let it hang freely across her chest as she walked up the steps and through the massive bloodoak doors, the card at the end of the lanyard featuring her face in 2.5D with the accompanying text “Hastings, Lady Nimue V. L. – Desk Officer, Analytics Division, Corridor Territories Directorate, HMFO”.

Access to what was often tongue-in-cheek called “His Majesty’s Independent Kingdom of the Foreign Office”, was limited to people who worked there, Members of Parliament attached to any relevant committees, and invitees such as foreign plenipotentiaries, journalists, academics and the like. All entrances were guarded by Cordelia Metropolitan Police officers and numerous seen and unseen surveillance and defensive systems. Not even Royal Navy or Army officers or Royal Intelligence Service members were allowed inside unless they had been specifically invited by someone relatively high up in the FO, or if tasked with work through the Kingdom Defence Council. Nimue had to flash her card to a constable who proceeded to scan it with a service handcom, and she couldn’t fail to note that under the constable’s semi-dress frock jacket, he wore a plate carrier and a strap looped across his chest that held a carbine slung across his lower back. The ‘com pinged an affirmative noise, and the constable gave Nimue a small smile. “Welcome to the FO,” he said, gesturing with an outstretched arm that was both welcoming, but also herding her along; “have a nice first day on the job, Milady.”

The inside was even more palatial than what the outside indicated. The floor on the ground level by the main entrance was a huge Renaissance-style mosaic depicting the voyage of Europa on the back of oxen-Zeus, and the far end was dominated by an ornate grand stairway made of imported Earth maple, painted in ivory white and leaf gold, with delicate carvings along the railings and banisters painted in silver and gold. The roof was three levels up, and featured a heavily stylised painting of the signing of Magna Carta, as well as seven smaller paintings that were similar to the statues on the plinths outside, in all intra-cardinal corners apart from the one facing the entry doors; that was dominated by a large painting featuring the first king of Aurora, William I, and his wife Queen Alexandra, their daughter Louise and son Henry. The whole spectacle was breath-taking both in terms of its ostentatiousness as well as its large scale, but also the implied power that emanated from such imperious and imperial surroundings. The decorations –and by extension the Foreign Office as a whole– seemed to scream wordlessly, we can be this overly dramatic in our trappings and as flauntingly opulent because we know we are the dominant nation in Human Space, and we could not give less of a damn what you think.

There were a number of desks between the tall columns interspersed in the entrance hall, where uniformed clerks sat behind monitors on grav-mounts and received questions or inquiries from the many suit-clad entrants. There were uniformed police here as well, but they were standing off by themselves near the ground floor doors to waiting rooms and visitor lounges instead of in the middle of the cavernous hall. Nimue felt like she, and all the other people dressed in modern clothes, had travelled back in time to the Renaissance palaces of the Medici or the Sforza at their height of splendour.

“Lady Nimue, I presume?”

A serious voice cut her loose from the entrancement she had been caught in, and she spun around on her heel to come face to face with a tall man with black hair slicked back all the way to adhere perfectly to his skull, and a tin pencil moustache. He wore a black three-piece suit and a deeply purple ascot tie and a small pin on his lapel of a crowned feather-pen. Nimue’s reflexed kicked in, and she did a small curtsy.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“At your service, Sir…?”

“Good, you’re early,” the man simply said, not picking up on her socially polite way of asking for his name, “punctuality at the House is not simply a virtue, it is a necessity, and being early is the same as being punctual. Traffic alright?”

“I…” she was about to say she had to order a skytaxi to get here on time, but that would be a tacit admission that she in fact, had been late for her first day.

“I managed fine, sir.” Speaking to this complete stranger at a drop of a hat was extremely uncomfortable for Nimue, and she found she could not look him the eye, so settled for looking at a place between his mouth and nose instead. That usually helped assuage the awkwardness she felt.

“Good show,” the man said with the ghost of a smile hiking up his thin moustache ever so slightly. “Well, hop along then, lots to see, more to do.”

He started to walk past the first sets of columns and clerk desks towards the grand staircase, and Nimue simply followed two paces behind, hoping that some more concrete information would be forthcoming.

“Tell me, Lady Nimue,” the man said without turning, and Nimue could tell that the other people around them were keeping a respectful distance, “what made you join His Majesty’s Foreign Service?”

“I have always been interested in different cultures, sir, and especially the way that culture has shifted and moulded over the centuries since the separation from the cauldron of them all on Earth and into the interstellar societies of today.”

The man did not answer or make any indication that he even heard her answer. She hoped she had been speaking loud enough for him to hear, but she daren’t repeat herself in case she sounded like a moron stuck in a loop. There was, after all, quite a bit of background noise, although the sound level was surprisingly low for-

“I was hoping for a bit more of an interesting answer than that, if you’ll pardon me, Milady.” He hadn’t turned, nor had he slowed down, and Nimue bit her lip. Her mind was racing. She had practiced that little spiel for an entire week for just an occasion like this, and now she was drawing a blank. Six years of university studies are not enough for you, silly girl, you cannot come up with a credible answer as to why you’re here, and you are getting booted out on your first day. Panic gripped her.

“Sir, two hundred years ago someone calculated that the Foreign Office receives about fifteen hundred missives of consequence every hour, pertaining to everything from the declaration of independence of a star system from an interstellar polity, to the new appointment of an ambassador to the capital of an important nation, down to the birth of a fifth son to a fifteenth in-line to an unlanded former royal family in exile. That adds up to thirty-six thousand missives a day, and over thirteen point one million a year. The Foreign Office is the eyes of the Kingdom, without which Parliament would not know how to conduct policy, as any policy is contingent on the events outside the orbits of the worlds of the kingdom. Sir, history has shown that any little event can cause a massive cascade of unintended aftershocks. If I can play only a miniscule part in ensuring that the Kingdom is as well-informed about any events anywhere in Human Space that might influence or affect it, then I will be proud.”

She realised she was slightly of breath, and a few other staffers around them had stopped on their way up the stairs. Her guide had stopped as well, his left foot on the first step. Slowly he turned. His smile was much wider and genuine now.

“I think you’ll find, Lady Nimue, that you can comfortably time that estimate by four these days, things have changed a bit over the course of a couple of centuries. My name is Sir Samuel de Croye-Muir, I am the Director-General of the Corridor Department, and acting Third Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office in lieu of Dame Rachita Suravarjula. Welcome to His Majesty’s Foreign Service, Lady Nimue, it’s an honour to have you.”

Sir Samuel extended a hand and it took Nimue all of two seconds that might as well have been two hours before she grasped the hand lightly, and Sir Samuel squeezed and shook it with a single, vigorous pump.

“As you know perfectly well, Lady Nimue, you come to us with most excellent grades and glowing recommendations,” Sir Samuel said as they continued walking up the carpeted steps of the grand staircase, passing staffers who granted them a wide berth, “as such we expect the very best performance. You may think that you’ve earned an easy pass into His Majesty’s Foreign Service because of your title. Shake that notion immediately, no one who haven’t shown that they belong in these hallowed halls have ever been allowed to work here for even an hour. The Foreign Service is, as you so eloquently put it, the eyes of the Kingdom, but not only that. We are its brains as well, at least part of it. We have over six-hundred thousand employees in all capacities, spread all across the stars, from the lowliest of janitors and front desk clerks to heads of mission and plenipotentiaries on royal commission to junior analysts –as your humble self– and canteen staff.”

They reached the top of the first flight of stairs, which split partway up into further left and right stairs, and Sir Samuel led the way up the flight to the right. It was all Nimue could do to keep up and actually listen and retain what he was saying.

“You, Milady, are taking the first steps into the vaunted Auroran public service. It is a venerable and proud tradition of servitude to the state that has been an integral part of our society for centuries. I imagine, and I do apologise if I am missing the mark or inferring too much, that at least a few of your friends or some in your social circle are planning on joining the Royal Navy or the Royal Army.”

“Yes,” Nimue managed between increasingly quicker intakes of air, “my friends Lady Sélincourt and Alexandra Barham are going to King William’s come autumn.”

“Ah, the other Sélincourt child is joining as well? What splendid news, the whole family in uniform. As for a Barham, that is almost to be expected is it not? Ah, splendid news, yes. There you have what makes Auroran society the pinnacle of modern civilisation, Milady, the spirit of service to the commonwealth. Some join the Armed Forces, some join the medical profession, some dedicate their careers to further the boundaries of knowledge and technology, and while others choose the Civil Service. A whole social class, public servants, a most noble calling, but ours is not the glory but rather the satisfaction of a job well done in service to King and Country. Though not wreath-crowned, we are the gears that turn the great wheel of state.”

Nimue was starting to realise that Sir Samuel was quite a bit of a blabbermouth and she absently started to wonder if this was common among Foreign Service members.

“Be that as it may,” he continued as they walked down a set of wooden-panelled corridors, past large ironwood doors with brass plaques stencilled with the names of former greats in Auroran political history, “I think you’ll fit right in, Milady. I’ve heard from Graeme Shorter, the Director of Analysis at Corridor Territories, your superior, that your Master’s thesis on the changing perception of Corinthian hegemony on the Union side of the Corridor through media usage of disputed maps, was simply top notch. And Shorter also apologises for the deferment of your start by six months, there was a bit of a cock-up at Personnel, it happens sometimes, and I hope you didn't awfully mind.”

"No, sir, I was able to see my family on Nova Caledonia before returning to the capit-ah!"

Sir Samuel suddenly stopped after going down another pathway, standing in front of a wooden door with the plaque Lord Ripon Room – Corridor Territories AB4. With a slight grunt he opened the door, revealing a large floor of desk-stations where each station had up to four monitors on grav-mounts, slots for ‘coms and ‘pads, small privacy bubble emitters, and comfortable swivel chairs.

“This is Corridor Territories Analytics Branch Four, where the focus is on the independent polities of the Corridor. Your desk is at the end to the left there, by the window.”

He pointed and Nimue swallowed, the reality of her chosen career starting to set in and she could feel she was breaking into cold sweats.

“Your former academic supervisor at King Shore’s University praised your work ethic, as well as your impressive and seemingly innate ability to place yourself mentally in the shoes of the small border polities and how they would realistically act and react, given parameters and limitations to deal with. I certainly hope you can continue to bring that same sort of insight here at His Majesty’s Foreign Service. Bonne chance.”

He patted Nimue lightly on the shoulder as he walked back out the door and it slowly slid shut behind him. Nimue was left standing in the doorway as it closed, and the sound made most of the thirty-odd analysts and deck officers in the room look up at her. Lady Nimue Hastings, future Countess of Seraphim had been in many previous situations where she had felt uncomfortable, it was almost a given that she felt uncomfortable in any social setting or an encounter with strangers. But she had never felt as out of place as right now. She nodded quickly to her right and to her left and with as hurried steps as possible without hopefully looking like she was fleeing, she headed to her assigned desk, sat down, keyed the slotted ‘pad to life and turned on the privacy bubble. With privacy somewhat restored she sighed as heavily as she could without moving her body enough to give her panic away. Then she looked at one of the monitors. The official seal of His Majesty’s Foreign Office greeted her and she felt her heart rate rise again and she quickly let the small camera scan her iris so she could access the for-your-eyes-only. One affirmative bleep and a few seconds later, she was greeted to the desktop and no less than forty-five e-letters already in her inbox. She ignored the few formality ones, copied those internal letters that had important dates for later on her personal ‘com. Nimue’s heartbeat was starting to calm down, and looked to get stuck in, the best way she knew how to deal with stress, and opened the first e-letter which caught her fancy, with the title Customs Inspections (Performed/Manned) Observations [3.Pt.Ver.Nom.Sec.] Nova Polonia –D.01.01/75-01.05/75 Gal.Rel – Sc. Cl.L. 03-01.

Nimue’s dark green eyes scanned the document and the numbers. Then she looked at the numbers again, a little voice in the back of her head nagging at her. On the fourth read-through her black eyebrows shot up.