No, the interrupt was happening anyway, I was rolling for where the Mantis were going to make their landing. The dice decided to pick one of the worst possible spots for you.
Does it ever not?
"We have identified a device that we are unsure of the stated purpose of, but from our observed information it appears to function as a sort of antenna that picks up signals that are disturbing to the human mind."
That hit Ella sideways and she practically demanded to know, "How could you observe that?"
Amber considered for a moment before she said, "Because we have our own methods and we are 'hearing' the signals, even if we can't intercept meaning from them. Given observed behaviours and other intelligence we are not disclosing, we have concluded that your grandmother is not informing the people she gives these cubes to despite their deleterious effects and the danger they can represent. With the current crisis, we feel that discontinuing the project would be prudent, but our projections show that directly confronting the Duchess Stone will not result in a favourable outcome. We thus decided to contact the user we felt most likely to be able to bring the manner up with her in a positive manner."
Okay, looks like there's a triple layer misunderstanding here:
-Anna - Believes the cube to be a psychic tool, likely recovered from the Reavers or the Authority remnants. She should know about Mirande's own puzzle box and assumed that this cube was much the same.
-Ella(and the other experimental subjects) - Were informed of a partial truth(from Anna's perspective), that the cube is a willpower training device.
-Blackthorn - For whatever reason, they are unusually informed of psychic phenomenon, and can 'hear' the cube's dinner bell ringing over L-space. Their precogs report bad ends to informing Anna, for whatever reason.
A massive exhaustion headache closed in on her temples like a spiked clamp and it took an act of willpower to not scream or otherwise lose her composure. As it was she had to take a deep breath with her eyes closed, and when she opened them Amber was looking at her with an all-too-cultivated look of concern. Biting her lower lip, Ella said, "So you want me to confront her over the project?"
"Yes," Amber stated. After a moment she said, "Alternatively, or perhaps supplementally depending on how things go, we might be able to send someone with the resources to suppress some of the negative effects - such as attracting reaver attention."
Gritting her teeth, Ella said, "You want me to accept a foreign agent into my territory, knowing that you know about a classified project?"
Amber confirmed to be a telepath in her own right. That's not an exhaustion headache. That's a psychic attack targeted at making Ella too drained to object to her proposal.
Rolling her eyes, the ambassador said, "Our people would be going through official channels as part of Project Networking, everyone would know they were there. They would make piss poor spies considering everyone being moved around will be assumed to be spies already."
"That just requires them to be more subtle, especially if they are such specialists," Ella replied. "Also, Project Networking?"
"The destruction of the Belters has the other Great Powers worried about catastrophic loss of culture in an attack. We are planning on sending out enclaves to each other to ensure continuity of certain aspects, at least for the duration of the war. Razorleaf Meadows is already on our shortlist due to the community of Indigo Hammer ex-pats. The specialists we would be sending would be because their skills would be worth preserving in the face of the loss of Blackthorn, they would simply be able to assist you while there and keep an ally from suffering unnecessary losses," Amber explained.
I know this one!
http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/The_Empath_Guild
Send out Blackthorn loyal telepaths out to every community to act as communications and basically Astropaths, which also gives them lots of info on what everyone is doing.
Still rubbing her temples, Ella commented sarcastically, "And here I thought this was because you were going to talk to me about my father."
"Your father?" Amber asked, clearly having no idea what the hell Ella was talking about.
Until something dawned in her eyes as she rolled something over in her head and made some sort of connection. Then her eyes started to get very, very large.
Then the screaming started.
"FUCK! FUCK! SHE WOULDN'T! SHE WOULDN'T! NOT WITH HIM! NOT WITH HIM!" Amber started to scream, which of course got Ella going off about trying to get a straight answer from the panicking woman.
Looks like Daddy was kind of fucked up.
As the whole situation descended into chaos with Amber terrified out of her wits as she tried to get away from Ella, who was trying to simultaneously get her to calm down and stop from running, which involved trying to corner her which obviously made the situation worse but Ella didn't care, the view screen concealed in one of the walls of the private room activated. After a moment of neither party acknowledging it, there was a very loud, "AHEM," which caused both parties to look over at the steel haired face of the Duchess Anna Stone glaring at them.
Ceiling Anna is watching.
Actually, Anna's response is TOO prompt. She could assume direct control of a view screen(and attendent cameras) in a neutral settlement on such short notice?
Bullshit. She was probably spying on Ella from the start.
"How could you?! Your own daughter?! How? With him!" Amber screamed in accusation at the screen.
Anna just blinked in unamused confusion and said, "I can only presume that you are referring to the father of my granddaughter? In which case you seem to be privy to more information than I am."
What little blood was left in her face drained from her and Amber said, "You... you honestly don't know?"
Anna flicked her eyes over to the much more emotionally conflicted and confused Ella and said, "I know the boy's name but what trouble he has been up to since he impregnated my daughter I am unaware of. Evidently it is quite a deal, presumably with your government somehow complicit in it."
So it looks like Blackthorn believes that Ella is Green Owl's project to try and breed psychic power into our leadership. Green Owl believes that Blackthorn was behind the shenanigans for political motives.
"He would be a mutant, yes," Anna stated, glancing at Amber for confirmation before she said, "And not just one with the freak ability of super-fertility either."
"You had to have suspected, and with the cube..." Amber began.
"Your freaking out suggests that had I full information I would have taken a different course of action," Anna stated. "Look, Ella-"
And, based on the cube, Blackthorn assumed that Green Owl is much further along on psychic research than we really are, which suggests the cube is made of legit psi reactive materials from somewhere.
Which in turn would put the smell of hypocrisy on Anna's hunt and destruction of Reaver materials from the Blackthorn PoV, because obviously she's harvesting them for raw psi reactive materials.
Which she's not.
