The V'Dan by Jean Johnson

pronouns for ‘they,’ ‘them,’ and so forth.
    “This, of course, goes for any of the beings you are about to meet, including our fellow V’Dan . . . who are
Humans
like you.” He paused, eyed the gathered Terrans, then nodded at Jackie. “Are you ready, Grand High Ambassador?”
    “Yes. Is everyone else ready?” she asked, twisting to look around her. Every member of the Terrans save for Clees had taken a seat; the telepath-cum-reporter hovered at the back of the room, peering through a camera hovering directly in front of him and guiding two more into clinging to the walls, one behind and to his left, the other up at the front of the room, where it attached itself to the ceiling and angled its lenses down at everyone. At the nods of the rest and with no signs of dissent, she turned back to the shuttered window. “. . . You may begin when ready, Your Highness.”
    Nodding, he turned to the room controls.
“Is everyone ready on the other side?”
    A familiar voice came back across.
“Everyone is ready; thank you for being settled on time.”
    Nodding, Li’eth tapped the button that unlocked the window shutters. They split horizontally, rising into the ceiling and sinking into the floor on both sides of the glass, or whatever served as a transparent substance for V’Dan observation ports. On the other side, standing off to the left side of the round-cornered window, Jackie could see Imperial First Lord Mi-en Ksa’an, with his two-tone green stripes and his dark brown hair. His outfit today was a deep blue with overtones of purple, cut in a style similar to Li’eth’s military uniform.
    Behind and beside him were three more V’Dan. Filling the right half of the chamber sat the Choya delegation, a total of five aliens. Jackie knew that two in each party were reporters, news collectors for transforming the account of the meeting into packets that would be sent off on each starship leaving the local system, in the hopes that someone would get this information back to their home governments or to colonyworlds. One of those reporters for each group was easy to determine, too, for they were doing things with objects that seemed to be used for guiding and checking on hovering gizmos. Cameras, most likely, small and vaguely similar to the ones being wielded by their own makeshift reporter.
    The V’Dan were, well, V’Dan. Humans with colorful marks on their bodies, clad in outfits similar to the Imperial First Lord’s. One fellow, sitting next to the camera-tending woman, had chosen a shirt and braid-frogged vest that bared his arms so that his yellow lightning stripes could be seen on his mahogany skin.
    It took Jackie a few moments to realize that the reason for his bare arms wasn’t the heat, since the other V’Dan were dressed conservatively despite the sweat forming on their faces. It was, she realized, because none of the randomly placed, wobbling, forked
jungen
marks turning his dark chestnut skin a vibrant gold on those bared arms reached up past his collarbones. Nothing on neck, nothing on face, nothing visible in the dark brown of his eyes or the short-trimmed, tight black curls of his hair. Though the much-lighter-skinned woman seated next to him, playing with her camera controls, had medium blue blotches irregularly scattered over her limbs, somehow his branching, golden streaks look more intriguing, more prominent, thanks to the sheer amount of skin exposed.
    Jackie didn’t have much more time to contemplate that; they were already being introduced to the foremost V’Dan aside from the Imperial First Lord. That was the Admiral Superior Jes-na Tal’en-qua, a formidable-looking woman with honey-gold skin, brown eyes, dark hair liberally streaked with gray and patches of burgundy, and, of course, burgundy-hued crescents a little bit larger than Ba’oul’s aqua blue ones scattered over her skin, about the size of finger and thumb arched in a large curve.
    “Welcome aboard the
Dusk Army
, Grand