“How well can you take a punch?” asked Deputy Ambassador Schmidt.

Lieutenant Harry Wilson blinked and set down his drink. “You know, there are a number of places a conversation can go after a question like that,” he said. “None of them end well.”

“I don’t mean it like that,” Schmidt said. He drummed the glass of his own drink with his fingers. Harry noted the drumming, which was a favorite nervous tell of Hart Schmidt’s. It made poker games with him fun. “I have a very specific reason to ask you.”

“I would hope so,” Harry said. “Because as conversational ice breakers go, it’s not in the top ten.”

Schmidt looked around the Clarke’s officer lounge. “Maybe this isn’t the best place to talk about it,” he said.

Harry glanced around the lounge. It was singularly unappealing; a bunch of magnetized folding chairs and equally magnetized card tables, and single porthole from which the yellowish green limb of Korba-Aty was glowing, dully. The drinks they were having came from the rack of vending machines built into the wall. The only other person in the lounge was Lieutenant Grant, the Clarke’s quartermaster; she was looking at her PDA and wearing headphones.

“It’s fine, Hart,” Harry said. “Enough with the melodrama. Spit it out already.”

“Fine,” Schmidt said, and then drummed on his drink some more. Harry waited. “Look, this mission isn’t going well,” he finally said.

“Really,” Harry said, dryly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Schmidt said.

“Don’t get defensive, Hart,” Harry said. “I’m not blaming you.”

“I just want to know how you came to that conclusion,” Schmidt said.

“You mean, how did I come to that conclusion despite the fact I’m this mission’s mushroom,” Harry said.

Schmidt frowned. “I don’t know what that means,” he said.

“It means that you keep me in the dark and feed me shit,” Harry said.

“Ah,” Schmidt said. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Harry said. “This is a Colonial Union diplomatic mission, and I’m Colonial Defense Forces, and you don’t want me seen by the Korba because you don’t want my presence to be interpreted as provocation. So while the rest of you head down to the planet, and get to breathe real air and see actual sunlight, I stay up here in this latrine of a spaceship, training your technicians to use the field generator and catching up on my reading. Which is going well, incidentally. I just finished Anna Karenina.”

“How was it?” Schmidt said.

“Not bad,” Harry said. “The moral is to stay away from trains. The point is, I know why I’m kept in the dark. Fine. Fair enough. But I’m not stupid, Hart. Even if none of you tell me anything about the mission, I can tell it’s not going well. All of you deputies and assistants come back to the Clarke looking like you’ve had the crap beat out of you all day long. It’s a subtle hint.” He picked up his drink and slugged some back.

“Hmm. Anyway, yes,” Schmidt said. “The mission isn’t going well. The Korba haven’t been nearly as receptive to our negotiations as we thought they might be. We want to try something new. A new direction. A new diplomatic tack.”

“A new tack that is somehow focused on me getting punched,” Harry said, setting his drink back down.

“Maybe,” Schmidt said.

“Once or repeatedly?” Harry asked.

“I think that would depend on your definition,” Schmidt said.

“Of ‘once’?” Harry asked.

“Of ‘punched,’ actually,” Schmidt said.

“I already have very deep reservations about this plan,” Harry said.

“Well, let me give you some context,” Schmidt said.

“Please do,” Harry said.

Schmidt produced his PDA and began to slide it over to Harry, then stopped midway through the motion. “You know that everything I’m about to tell you is classified.”

“Good lord, Hart,” Harry said. “I’m the only person on the Clarke who doesn’t know what’s going on.” Harry reached over and took the PDA. On its screen was the image of a battle cruiser of some sort, floating near a skyscraper. Or more accurately, what was left of a skyscraper; it had been substantially destroyed, likely by the battle cruiser. In the foreground of the picture, small, vaguely-humanoid blotches seemed to be running from the ruined skyscraper. “Nice picture,” Harry said.

“What do you think you’re seeing there?” Schmidt said.

“A strong case for not letting trainees drive a battle cruiser,” Harry said.

“It’s an image taken during the recent Korban coup,” Schmidt said. “There was a disagreement between the head of the military and the Korban civilian leadership. That skyscraper is—well, was—the Korban administrative headquarters.”

“So the civilians lost that particular argument,” Harry said.

“Pretty much,” Schmidt said.

“Where do we come in?” Harry asked, handing back the PDA. “Are we trying to restore the civilian government? Because, to be honest about it, that doesn’t really sound like something the CU would care about.”

“We don’t,” Schmidt said, taking back the PDA. “Before the coup, the Korba were barely on our radar at all. They had a non-expansionist policy. They had their few worlds and they’d stood pat on them for centuries. We had no conflict with them, so we didn’t care about them. After the coup, the Korba are very interested in expanding again.”

“This worries us,” Harry said.

“Not if we can point them toward expanding in the direction of some of our enemies,” Schmidt said. “There are some races in this area who are pushing in on us. If they had to worry about someone else, they’d have fewer resources to hit us with.”

“See, that’s the Colonial Union I know,” Harry said. “Always happy to stick a knife in someone else’s face. But none of this has anything to do with me getting punched in the face.”

“Actually, it does,” Schmidt said. “We made a tactical error. This mission is a diplomatic one, but the new leaders of Korba are military. They’re curious about our military, and they’re especially curious about our CDF soldiers, whom they’ve never encountered because our races have never fought. We’re civilians; we don’t have any of our military on hand, and very little in terms of military capability to show them. We brought them that field generator you’ve been training our technicians on, but that’s defensive technology. They’re much more interested in our offensive capabilities. And they’re especially interested in seeing our soldiers in action. Negotiations up to this point have been going poorly because we’re not equipped to give them what they want. But then we let it slip that we have a CDF member on the Clarke.”

“We let it slip,” Harry said.

“Well, I let it slip, actually,” Schmidt said. “Come on, Harry, don’t look at me like that. This mission is failing. Some of us need this mission to succeed. My career’s not exactly on fire, you know. If this mission goes into the crapper, I’m going to get reassigned to an archive basement.”

“I’d be more sympathetic if saving your career didn’t require blunt force trauma for me,” Harry said.

Schmidt nodded, and then ducked his head a little, which Harry took as something akin to an apology. “When we told them about you, they got very excited, and we were asked by the Korbans’ new leader—a direct request from the head of state, Harry—if we would be willing to pit you against one of their soldiers in a contest of skills,” Schmidt said. “It was strongly implied it would make a real difference in the tenor of the negotiations.”

“So of course you said yes,” Harry said.

“Let me remind you of the part where I said the mission was going into the crapper,” Schmidt said.

“There is a small flaw in this plan,” Harry said. “Besides the part where I get the crap kicked out of me, I mean. Hart, I’m CDF, but I’m not a soldier. I’m a technician. I’ve spent the last several years working in the military science division of the Forces. That’s why I’m here, for God’s sake. I’m training your people to use technology we developed. I’m not training them to fight, I’m training them to twirl knobs.”