Move 2.2b Recap

Meetings: Reshad, Sasha, Seyli, and Sulen

Sulen greets the group returning from meeting with Flute: "I made tea in the common room. I tried to make coffee but it was more complicated than it looked. Is everyone uninjured?" Reshad says, "Nobody's injured." She thanks Sulen for the tea, and takes a cup. Sasha says, gratefully, "Fuck, yes, I would love some tea." She asks Seyli where they want to debrief.

Seyli has been tense and brooding. Disconcerted by Sasha's suggestion that they take twenty (heptarchate) minutes to yell, they say, "I'm not going to yell and certainly not at you if I was. Sir." Sasha leads Seyli to her office, acquiring tea on the way, and tells them, "Triage. What concerns you most, about that meeting?" Ignoring Sasha's gesture toward a seat, Seyli says, "What doesn't concern me? We're getting tangled up in a mission that involves someone who never lost a fight, without any significant backup, or clear support? Sir, I fail to understand how you can ask that question with the information before us." Sasha says, "Sit the fuck down, Seyli. You're hurting my neck." She attempts to engage Seyli and reassure them they will not be acting alone by saying, "I know you'd prefer a few more moths and a lot more heavy ordnance. But I believe you have not registered that Alaric and Ione and Aymad and I could kill everyone on this station, given a couple hours' lead time. Three, if their firewalls are really good. Humans are fucking fragile and very dependent on specific levels of oxygen."

Seyli sighs and drops into a chair, observing, "I understand a lot of your plans tend to go haywire. But that is...useful information to know. You're right, I haven't put those pieces together about the four of you." They ask what role they will take, as "the only trained infantry person." Sasha tells them, "Your role is security, and our mission is extracting information." She observes that Alaric and Ione have "significant operational experience," but notes that Seyli's ability "to predict the way an armed adversary will react" is important. She asks Seyli what they need to make training the Lanterners "endurable". Seyli ponders what requests are reasonable, and settles on, "Don't send me with the flower girl, if you can help it. I don't have time to teach and babysit at the same time." Sasha says, "Fuck, that would be an operational security nightmare." She tells Seyli that she will send Aymad and perhaps Gerae, "because the man remembers every word he hears."

Sasha warns Seyli that the upcoming all-team meeting will be chaotic, and asks them to bear two things in mind: "First, our fundamental responsibility is to keep the moth alive and report back to Ashari. Second, our resources are fucking strange. If you need something in order to get a job done, ask for it." Seyli assents, correcting from "sir" to "Sasha", and asks, "I trust I'm not going to sound like a moron when I describe a tool that I'm not sure is real but would help?" Sasha says she will offer a bonus if Seyli comes up with something Alaric hasn't heard of: "Did he tell you, he doesn't have a heart?" Seyli answers, "We've not really talked." They ask if Sasha needs anything else from them, and she says she will see them at the all-team meeting in 85 minutes.

Sasha meets next with Reshad and Sulen. She summarizes the meeting with Flute, then asks Sulen, "We have an emergency line to Ashari. Do we notify them of developments now, or do we wait?" Sulen doesn't want to distract or worry Ashari, so they say, "I'd advise against contacting them unless in a true emergency. They sometimes... overreact." They ask how much autonomy the team was intended to have. Sasha says, "They intended us to have a great deal of autonomy." She assumes this means she is responsible for any failure. She adds, "I can set up a fail-safe so that this information is delivered to them, should we find ourselves unable to do so directly."

Team Meeting

Sasha summarizes Flute's orders, concluding, "We suspect that the mission to assassinate Jedao is in Quill's interest, not in the interest of the rebellion as a whole. However, we must bear in mind that Flute's commitment to the rebellion may be genuine." She asks for input on factors to consider and future actions. Sulen says, "I've accessed all the information we have on this Shuos Jedao, and it certainly seems like his assassination is a worthy goal, although it wouldn't have been my priority." Alaric agrees that Jedao is an odd target: "In the long run doesn't his big murder-suicide do a lot of damage to heptarchate forces anyways? Not even that long-run, really. Medium-term at best. Was the war really close to tipping the other way at this point?" Sasha observes, "We don't know who made the choice. Ashari thought that Quill designed the mission. If Quill's working with the Shuos who sent Mishka, she might very well have chosen to assassinate Jedao on the grounds that this will help the heptarchate somehow, in the long run." Alaric suggests, "Maybe it would benefit a specific faction, either in the heptarchate sense of the word, or a faction of the rebellion.

Virmad observes that if "a small client state" could thwart the heptarchate, without Jedao's leadership, "that could both leave it open to external challenges and exacerbate the internal contradictions that let heresies spread in the first place." He points out that multiple assassins might attract Jedao's attention: "If they can draw his attention to the assassins and prevent that damage, who knows what he might accomplish while clear-minded? It was always speculated that his actions at Hellspin might have been connected with the aftereffects of the assassination attempt." The assassination plan seems "ill-advised", he concludes, "But doing nothing will attract attention we don't want from our 'superiors' and their other agents here. I wish we had a better sense of Jedao himself, beyond the historical record."

Sulen asks why Quill would care about the campaign against the Lanterners, rather than simply wanting to remove a talented general: "Do we suspect them of being an agent of the Heptarchate? Or are we merely remaining open to the possibility?" Ione suggests that the team "borrow" Jedao: "We would be removing him, but then we could find out why, or maybe why he thought they specifically wanted him dead." She elaborates, "Could we just. Pretend to kill him?" and offers, "Poison dart that isn't actually fatal sort of thing?" Sasha tells Sulen, "We know that Quill is working with the Shuos agents who sent Mishka. Whether that makes her a heptarchate agent, rather than a faction of her own, is anybody's guess." She tells Ione, "I like the idea of not doing what Quill wants, but I don't see an easy way for us to extract a body, dead or otherwise" when other "interest groups" would take priority. Reshad says that Quill's removal of Mikodez together with "Jedao's legendary mind" make her "think we want him." She suggests that perhaps Jedao "could be persuaded to see the monstrosity the Hexarchate becomes." She tells Sasha that extracting Jedao without Flute's knowledge "may be easier than you think. We botch the mission, and botch it badly. Disrupt their comms, break their plans, and execute our own. No, I'm more worried about the Kel."

Sasha objects, "Jedao's a monstrosity himself, isn't he? He's about to murder his own army. I can see that he would be a valuable bargaining chip. But that's a massive risk for an uncertain payout." Reshad answers, "Hellspin fell out of the deck sideways, though." She tells Sasha that retrieving Jedao would not entail "trying to make him not a monstrosity," but she should "think of it as denying the Hexarchate a weapon - not by destruction, but by theft." Sasha responds, "I wouldn't steal one of the fungal weapons. Because a weapon's no good if you're not willing to use it." She asks why Jedao is different: "Why in all the hells do we think we could use him safely?" Seyli agrees strongly: "Why do we think we could use him when no one else has managed to do so? I'm sure as hell not that special." Alaric suggests that trying to use Jedao, as the hexarchate did, may be the wrong approach: "They also use moths, and while nothing's happened yet, traditionally enslaving strange creatures from beyond space and time doesn't go well either. So far working with a moth for mutual benefit seems to work pretty well though." Reshad says, "Assassinated or kidnapped, either way we deny the Hexarchate his ability. But to Alaric's point - alliance may be more potent yet. And make every plan with an eye to harm reduction." Mafyyil, who admires Jedao's record, suggests, "Can't we, like, talk to the guy? We want to damage the heptarchate. Apparently, so does he, and he's good at it, too." Sasha says, "I don't know what the fuck harm reduction means in this context, or why we're comparing the moth, whose priority appears to be protecting babies, to a man who murders his own people." She warns Mafyyil that talking to Jedao risks him warning the Kel. Alaric agrees, "It does seem like the sort of situation where you kidnap first and ask ideological questions second. Or shoot him, whatever."

Analysis

Seyli's fears, Sasha's attempt to ground

Sulen has feelings about Ashari

Ione is worried about people having strong feelings, which seems like a downside in this crowd

interesting Jedao ethics discussion!

thanks for your thoughts on enslaving strange creatures from beyond space and time, Alaric