It's been over two decades since first contact. In all that time, humanity has never had a chance to negotiate for peace. Then they got a transmission, in a new language. They sent it over to their best translator, and got back an invitation to a peace conference. There was a time and a date, and a location a few wormholes away, where they were permitted to send an envoy.

The celebrations, the relief, it was all kept quiet. Who knew if it was a trap? But if it wasn't...

Earth had been invited to send an envoy, singular. The Chinese and the Russians and the Americans feuding over it would have been a mess, particularly given that there were *maybe* three people on Earth who could do the job, and of them one was the obvious pick, but agreeing on him might have taken more time than the four days they had, given that they also had to prep him. One brave old man. So the key heads of state were told in the usual update at the end of the week, and the head probably wouldn't get promoted ever again but that was fine, he liked his position, and they couldn't get him fired over this. 

Tybalt was told he wasn't an ambassador plenipotentiary, and he was told he was not to make any deals. He was told to be polite, at almost all costs. He was given a rapidly assembled list of key questions, and as much coaching as they could cram into that very limited time, along with a few more books for him to read on the way. They gave him Hans Morgenthau and the introductory materials given to American donor-ambassadors and the COSMIC TOP SECRET version of the latest analysis of alien intentions and motivations. And they hoped.

On the bright side, he's alive, and seems unharmed. He was dropped off where he was picked up eight hours ago, carefully escorted back to earth orbit and directly to the UN. They'll give him a hero's welcome if they can confirm his news isn't unspeakably depressing, and figure out...something else...if it is.

They have a long list of questions, once Medical has processed him. Everything's fine on that front, at least. They were told to send earth rations, and did.

The team is a collection of professionals. A small enough group not to crowd the man. In person, at least. After last time, this is a conference call that's looping in the heads of government for the People's Republic of China, the Republic of India, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United States of America, and of course the French. But they're all muted, and they know it. If they have questions, they can wait till the end and feed them through translators like people who are not trying to intimidate the volunteer who took this mission on.

In the lead is Ajay Cameron DCMG, the head of the British mission to the UNSDF: normally a subordinate represents him on the Diplomatic Team, that being a career backwater that does nothing aside from read and write academic reports about how, in theory, diplomacy with the aliens might be conducted, if they could succeed at any. Until The Message arrived, that is. To his left is the American representative, Mark Fitzgibbon, the only person who was active in the Diplomatic team pre-mission, in large part because his is a senate-confirmed position. To his right is the Chinese representative, Yao Jun, who is determined that Mr. Evans have a good impression of him and of China, regardless of his personal feelings about the British.

They all stand when Mr. Evans enters. They didn't need to discuss it. Ajay welcomes him, and they all sit when he sits. "Thank you so much, Mr. Evans. First of all, is there anything we urgently need to know? Is there likely to be a large invasion force on your heels?" They'd already asked him to communicate anything truly urgent, of course, but this helps break the ice.

"We had a deal, didn't we, uh, Ambassador?" Tybalt really isn't sure what the right title to use is but Ambassador seems like a safe bet. "Cup of tea before any questions. I cannot emphasise enough, there is absolutely no good tea out past Saturn." 

"Of course, Mr. Evans. I'm sorry for your travails. What would you like?"

Ajay has brought Earl Grey, PG Tips, Fortnum and Mason Royal Blend, and an absolutely lovely loose-leaf Yao Jun gave him when the latter joined, complete with documentation on the price of said tea in the rural Western Chinese village where it could be had for slightly more than a smile. As bribes went, Ajay really didn't mind this one. He wasn't much of a tea drinker, really, and only had three or four cups on a typical day, but the stuff Yao Jun had provided was exquisite.

Some of the most powerful leaders in the world are quite possibly on the line, already. They were told that the interview would go at the pace most comfortable for Mr. Evans unless there was a compelling reason to act otherwise, and that everything useful would be sent to them once it was properly compiled and cross-checked.

"Just Earl Grey, thank you so much, milk and a sugar."

Once he is confident tea is on the way and he will not be left to die of thirst, Tybalt pulls out his notebook and his Parker fountain pen (he's had it for decades, a gift from his mother for getting into Oxford) and a small microfibre cloth which he uses to meticulously clean his spectacles.

"The short answer is that I don't think any outlier events are imminent, but I also don't have any specific reason to rule out that an alien is going to try and blow up the moon tomorrow, because I still don't understand why they wanted to do that the last three times they tried it. I have gathered that it was three different attempts by three different factions, though two of them might be the same faction wearing different hats and one of them might not exist anymore... I'm sorry, I feel like I'm going crazy - not in the sense of exposure to alien minds making me lose my humanity, no Lovecraftian nonsense, I think I'd go just as crazy if I tried to understand European fishing rights disputes. As far as I know, no invasion tomorrow."

An aide has been dispatched to the electric kettle in the kitchen down the hall.

"Sounds like a regular Schleswig-Holstein problem. Well, let's start with the basics. Who are the major players in galactic affairs?"

A relatively easy question to start them off. They've had some guesses, listening in on enemy comms, but this will be much better confirmation.

"Let's see. My power doesn't really do proper nouns very well, so I don't really know what they call themselves - here on Earth it gives me knife-people and javelin-people for Saxons and French. The big ones that eat planets, that we've been calling space dragons, are called planet-eaters or devourers or something like that in most languages. Nobody likes them. The littler draconic ones with the solar-sail wings are actually nothing to do with them, and call themselves suncatchers, which I think is quite lovely honestly. I think there's seven or so big factions in our area, but there might be twelve. One is definitely an empire pretending very hard to not be, kind of a Russia Belarus sort of situation - oops, I'm not supposed to say that in front of the United Nations, am I-"

No, you're really not.

But this is a debriefing of a Héritier fresh off a mission.

"Just focus on telling us what you observed, as best you can, and don't worry about offending anyone. I don't think the two of us particularly want to get into conversations about who is and isn't an empire, eh?" Ajay's previous mission was in Canada, and some of the mannerisms stuck.

Well, they haven't given him tea yet, so he doesn't feel too responsible for anything he says wrong.

"Well, naturally. So, I think there's five species really fighting over this area, not including us, but humans all have to get along because we're stuck sharing a planet together, and some of our neighbours have more resources and fewer enemies and so aren't as, shall we say, blessed with camaraderie and esprit de corps. In particular one of our closest neighbour species appear to be in an entrenched civil feud that, as far as I can tell, is mostly religious in character. I'm counting them as either two factions or three depending on whether... as far as I can tell the, uh, space Pope? Whether he blesses their war or not. I asked them a lot of questions and the answers were mostly very confusing. I think space Pope might be a computer but also might be a giant lizard - have I mentioned how unhelpful it is when my power doesn't do proper nouns nicely?" 

Even a decent electric kettle (he'd had to buy one out of pocket) takes time.

"OK, five species, and most species are unified internally, at least militarily, but one of them is having an ongoing internal conflict. Please, go on. You're still by far the best translator we have available: nobody is holding your uncertainties against you."

Standard protocol, partially for evidentiary reasons and partially to avoid getting yelled at by anyone afterwards, is to first prompt someone to recount as much as they can in their own words, and then go in afterwards in detail with the questionnaires and uncertainties. But this might be a long one. 

"Oh, no, more than just one of them is having an ongoing internal conflict! That's just the most interesting of the internal conflicts. Five species, at least seven factions, maybe twelve factions, and there were more species at the summit but I don't think any of them are particularly invested in our neighbourhood. The species with space Pope, that's the one I've been calling squidflowers, I can't figure out if they're more like octopodes or mushrooms - I'm sure you've got some official sounding name for them - they're the ones who fired that giant death laser at Jakarta that one time - anyway, one of their factions is very friendly with the suncatchers and one of them really hates them. The suncatchers are all united. But the, uh, cyborg lions? Fluffy robot guys who tried to steal Titan? They're the ones who are maybe an empire but trying to say they're totally not. There's a lot of different types apparently, but... different bio, same implants. I don't think it's a Borg situation."

Ajay...really expected that 'ongoing space war' would have made most species more unified. Maybe it wears off. Maybe their populations got too large. Overpopulation has not been a problem people have worried much about, since Contact.

The alliance status vis a vis the suncatchers is important: they'd thought it was a fickle and constantly changing status, which made as much sense as anything else in this insane war. Some analysts still insisted that it could only be explained in terms of playground training, that nobody would invest this many resources into an economic backwater, or perhaps a deliberate policy for bleeding off surplus male-equivalents. Differing internal factions made more sense. Apparently space has many more species-internal violent conflicts than humanity had realized.

Also, apparently Mr. Evans is ordering information by what he, personally, finds interesting. This is going to be a very long watch session for the aides who get stuck doing live transcription. That is also not Ajay's problem. He can just be curious for a bit. "Huh, more internal conflict than I expected. We unified reasonably well under the threat of alien invasion. I wonder if they just got populations large enough that they naturally split, or if it's becoming multi-planetary, or just simple time."

He clears his throat. "Anyways, we can ask for the full species rundown in a bit. It seems like interstellar politics is, if anything, substantially more complex than the Cold War was. But that starts to get us into the other big question: why are they fighting here? Why are they attacking us? What do they want?"