"Luddites are on the station? Why didn't you stop them?"
"You're the one who wanted me to take them with me."
"You could've told them that they don't have permission to board the station."
"They're acting independently if you were willing to appease the church, I figure that I should appease the church as well."
"I suppose it's on me Rochelle I didn't give the guidance necessary to allow you to prevent them from doing what they would. I should've suspected as much, clarified more, it's fine."
"I think it can't hurt that much to have them on that station. They are accepting the risks that we don't want to take, maybe they'll bring me back a camera or two."
"You do know that ideology is a ticking time bomb? You know that a person saved by the church has a one in twenty chance of joining the church?"
"Don't remind me, it's disgusting."
"Did you know that a person who joined the church has a one and five chance of increasing the value of their labor?"
"You don't have to sell me on the church sir."
"Look my point is they directly cut the profits or rather, I guess it's not directly it's indirectly. But it is a known function of their ideology, they're going to cost us for every person they save."
"I know it's destructive, and we're not supposed to notice. Why did you order that I take them along?"
"That old devil's political machine has a lotta strings they can pull, and there is a little old wisdom that they do have. Which reminds me. Have you been utilizing the Grand Magus?"
"He's a glorified chatbot, I don't think he's going to say anything super useful. No offense to the old man of course. He may be wise, but aside from impressing my interns with his quotes, I don't see a tangible value added from his contribution. "
"Is that all Mr.Rochelle?"
There were a thousand ways that his superiors could have sussed out that such a name frustrated Rochelle or that it was a mannerism of the Grand Magus. To show any recognition of the phrase or pattern was greater weakness than emotion however.
"Unless you count his knights risking their necks to go poke the fire, do you know it's a little unnerving having these guys on this ship? Makes me wonder if he's gunning for my job"
"I don't think that you have to worry about that. Just be honest with him and you should get along with him fine."
"Noted"
"Anything else?"
An honest opinion, every word of it was true, but this troglodyte on his pulse wasn't going to rest until Rochelle incriminated himself. It was perhaps best to change the subject. The line was recorded, what was something they would have to answer?
"You are aware that I have submitted a worst-case scenario to you, correct? I suppose it could always be worse but the one I submitted is pretty bad."
"Yes, we are reviewing it and it seems serious. You have permission to do everything that you proposed. In fact we are wishing right now that you had a couple extra assets"
"There's no way we could've known that this would happen predicting the future is impossible."
"No, this is a growing trend. We're going to need a larger contingent in the future."
"Larger means easier to observe."
"That is increasingly not our concern."
"You are being very forward with me. This is a lot more information than I am used to."
"You might need it in the future, so I have no problem saying it right here in the open."
"What is the estimated time of arrival?"
"Don't worry about that you will know."
There was more to that statement. It was said almost with a wink.
"Got it, sir"
"And Rochelle"
"Yes? sir"
"I'm telling you explicitly right here in right now the grand Magus is not an inquisitor he does not work for the syndicate. You can be honest with him."
"Of course, sir"
"You tell me if there are any problems with communication between you two."
"I don't think there are any problems in communication between us, the old man has been lovely, his religion just puts me on edge"
"There's more that you were not telling me"
"What do you want me to say?"
"I want to know if you have any problems with him."
"He really is the least of my concerns."
"You don't find him long-winded and stubborn annoying to talk to?"
"To borrow their wisdom these church folk are so polite. I don't want to spoil their good names and manners they work so hard for."
"Don't tell me you're becoming emotional Rochelle this is wasting our time. I think you're learning too much from that old man."
"Fine my answer is simple. I do find him a drain to talk to. It takes too long and he talks too much. It's downright creepy having a CQB team of armored fanatics on the ship. Those church freaks are paranoid. That paranoia is contagious. It messes with the crew, it messes with the ship, it messes with me. Is that the answer that you want?"
An admission of weakness, a gauntlet thrown, it was rather funny the way everyone tried to act like a robot when robots could genuinely replace them if only they were a couple rings down the totem pole. The goal had officially become hunting for non-traitorous creativity a long time ago, not that the old culture died.
"Yes, Rochelle don't worry, that's normal. Once again I have to tell you. Don't worry they absolutely do not work for the syndicate."
"Forgive me, sir, but we hired them they do work for us. They are fully capable of having multiple allegiances. They are exactly the sort of people I feel don't belong on this kind of mission."
Rochelle was veering close to traitor speak, not that anyone would ever say so.
"You don't have to tell me Rochelle, I know, I call it a bad omen."
Yea you sure do, my game is to make it bad for you as well, Rochelle couldn't fix what was already broken.
"Command is it gonna love that name write that down sir"
"Bad omen?"
"That's a good T-shirt. Absolutely sir."
"So is 'Kiss Ass' It's going to be operation Kiss Ass for you operation bad omen for everyone else"
A death sentence, Rochelle rolled his eyes openly,
It was good to show a little bit of human emotion, especially that which could be easily interpreted. It made one attractive to one's under links, the simple charisma of a cartoon character. Rochelle was advertising that now. As was their boss, the remote meeting would've been recorded. It ended with a polite, but dejected and pleasant sounding ding.
Indeed, it was a remote meeting using some of the most secret technology ever devised by syndicate minds, the Q-router, the quantum router.
It was a way to skip the physical limitations of time in space. The quantum field had allowed these innovations. However, the main issue came from the massively high energy and massively high corrosion rates associated with any materials that were involved with quantum or QTECH.
Most Q technology was single use, which made it prohibitively expensive indeed. Other faster than light transmission and travel technologies existed, but with similar limitations. For most purposes, quantum was the most cost effective method, especially for communication.
Actual travel was much different
When bossman said that Rochelle would know when reinforcements were arriving bossman was referring to a unique sensor trace that proceded the opening up of some Lagrange point, This was not QTEC, though the ship that arrived to initiate the sequence may have been a Q ship
Lagrange hopping is called G tech, at least among those who are not land-bound civilians
Which created the awkward terminology that could be easily interpreted by anyone who was listening
Bossman could not say "we will send a Q ship to deploy a G hopper" without accidentally exposing the explicit nature of technologies and movements planned.
Instead, given a limited number of technologies that could be used to provide Rochelle reinforcements on short notice It was one that Rochelle would notice before it manifested. The sort of thing Rochelle already knew to look for.
And that was the Q to G process which further implied that it was not going to be an expeditionary or scout force that came through the system, but a full fleet. As G was expensive to start but allowed for scale, both in time and mass.
This did not imply anything about the enemy threat, it implied more about the state of human, or rather syndicate command.
Rochelle was going to be asked to do more than they had wanted to do indeed every human in the system was probably about to be asked to do more than they had wanted.
The eye of Sauron was here, or would be very shortly. The syndicate did not deploy a fleet unless they wanted something and when they wanted something it was invariably money. The sort of money that had not really been properly imagined yet. There were numbers that would in 50 to 100 years boggle the mind. Something big was in this system.
Rochelle had about 48 hours at most to get their affairs in order such that they could profit from being here because this location was going to be the right place and the right time for a very small minority of people. Everybody else had to worry about going into crippling debt and very extended family members being sued into oblivion because those who commanded fleets were the most insulated, and most ancient and most privileged of syndicate shareholders, they were untouchable kings of kings. The information and status and leverage they wielded was unknowable, mythical, they made the church look like, well, a local church.
And the reality was that strength spoke to strength. It was best to be a rat and leave the scraps to others. But Rochelle had stayed too long in his role for that to be easy.
His mind raced
He could ransom survey data. No, that was too weak handed and simple minded. He could save the station, no the knights had beat him to the punch through nothing but simple morality. The station was only an hour shuttle flight from here perhaps his own team could be sent to capture the monster, and take the credit. that would step on Church toes, but it might be worth a shot
Rochelle frowns and thought of an ancient meme.
"10 million bucks or an hour in this room"
Rochelle was getting an hour in the room whether he wanted it or not. The gag of the old image was that the risk of being in that room was never as apparent as it truly ought to be.
But the opportunity called
One only lives once, so why not ride the lightning it would be regretted for the entire life if the opportunity was not taken.
But nothing seems like a good idea
And lacking any good ideas Rochelle considered the worst ideas
Specifically, he asked himself to conjure the riskiest gamble he could.
Rochelle had gotten lucky more than once before so it was foolish to try for another win. lightning does not strike twice, yet for those it strikes once it's much more likely to.
Consistent luck a myth
Rochelle breathed deeply trying to calm himself.
Every pullback is an opportunity. It was important to count the assets currently available. The boss man said to sit tight and wait for more assets. As soon as those assets arrive so too with rival commanders, and in that petty mess of crabs, trapped in that miserable little bucket to be carried to the boiler and seasoning pit by the king, was misery, defeat and mediocrity.
"The Red Solstice is a state of the art monolithic platform for multi operation and multi domain warfare" the old brief rang in his head.
That is to say it was a jack of all trades in the master of none . A glorified flag flyer. It could do a little bit of everything, but when the fleet came, it would be the least favorable ship, and probably the first day some commander would ask it to do some silly and inglorious task unfit for the fleet specialists.
That was assuming that there would actually be a battle. The fleet itself might be doing a little more than raising a flag, and then venturing on somewhere else to intimidate that little lizard in that little suit of armor with a show of force. This was arguably more dangerous than a battle as bored commanders and admirals would become familiar with the Red Solstice as an errand ship for pissing on the locals while they admired the blue orb and purchased it by the fear of their cannons.
The syndicate remained confident that they were technically superior to those little lizards. The new footage Rochelle has collected revealed that those little lizards are much cooler operators than originally thought. So Rochelle had proposed a scenario in which this little lizard had back up. He had hoped to receive an extra scout vessel to better observe the enemy, and perhaps collect salvage. Most importantly, extra assets increased the headcount of the people he had managed, which was the only number that mattered to the bosses.
Instead, the bosses seem to have completely overreacted. They were taking this threat very seriously, which meant that Rochelle had underestimated the value of this planet, even though the Grand Magus had told him exactly what was going on.
The Grand Magus didn't actually have a bad plan at all, attempting to implement the plan even right now would be admirable in the eyes of most shareholders. but Rochelle didn't know what shareholders are going to show up and there were odds that ones that did not approve would show up which would be the end of his career
Doing nothing would also be the end of his career
Capturing the little monster might be fine. That had the highest odds of preserving his career, but it would also align him with the church, which was a black mark for future progress.
Damned if you do damned, if you don't, the thoughts raced back-and-forth through his mind. Infuriatingly all they could do was paralyze him in the face of real action.
A bad plan, executed right away is better than a good plan execute in a week from now. He told himself.
And so he executed the very worst plan he could think of.