Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns
Dossier: Ivan's Guide To The Main Superstitionist Factions In Moscow
Ivan's Guide To The Main Superstitionist Factions In Moscow
Celestial Chorus: We tried to stamp them out way back in the Soviet Union, but that didn't work quite well. If there's one thing they've learned from their worship, it's how to endure suffering, and they have endured. They don't like us very much, not since we made an entire NWO unit dedicated to infiltrating and subverting any form of organized religion, and they've been on the rise ever since. Which is actually not so bad for us, since they've got a bit of an issue with hemophages. They've infiltrated the shit out of the Spetsnaz and SOBR, though. The Order of the Firebird and Knights Templar, two of their more militant groups, have basically been using 'disillusioned Russian special forces types' as their primary recruit. If you end up in a fight with them, don't expect the usual divine posturing anymore, they've adapted their Reality Deviance to a much leaner, meaner, more professional style, more "We're Badass Because We're God's Chosen Warriors" than "Powered By God's Miracles". No chanting, no prayer, just a quick touch to a Bible and a couple of RPGs through the window. The clerical types are hostile, but these guys are often outright attacking us. Avoid. The good news, if you can call it that, is that they're way more hostile to the Camarilla than they are to us.
Euthanatos: If you make a place a den of sin and corruption, the Euthanatos come to euthanize it. That's what they do, and after decades of fighting in the Ascension War, I have to admire how good they are at it. Surprisingly enough, since the Soviet Union had stayed so isolated and controlled until the Technocracy itself brought it down, there are very few Euthanatoi assassins here. No, ours are a more subtle breed. The "Locksmiths", the Lhaksmists, are their primary representation. More like Virtual Adepts than the stereotypical knife-wielding serial killer, they still do assassinations, but far more subtly. They assassinate character, destroy influence, create chaos, and keep the Camarilla bastards running around putting out fires. Sadly, they have no qualms about using us as scapegoats to draw attention. If they didn't, a formal alliance would not be out of the question.
Virtual Adepts: In a territory controlled by your enemy, those who know your enemy are more likely to survive. The Virtual Adepts survived all the purges in the days of the USSR by knowing us well, and with the collapse of our authority here and the collapse of the USSR, a lot of them moved into the near-anarchical state former Soviet Russia had become. Like the Euthanatos, they spend most of their time annoying the Camarilla, but unlike the Euthanatos they also hold a grudge against us. But like they do in the west, many of them eventually grow up. Of course, the ones who do tend to end up in the west, rather than staying here where they might do some good rather than becoming another corporate cog in a Syndicate software company. A lot of "our" Virtual Adepts are cyberpunks, too, the 80s kind that combine computer hacking, parkour skills, combat expertise, and anarchist ideologies to become a powerful, but very unstable and disorganized fighting force.
Daedaleans/Sons of Ether: I understand that Daedaleans are not your normal Reality Deviants, no. But when the Soviet Union collapsed and our funding went with it... many of us just walked away from the Ascension War. There was no way we would take on such a hostile job without the resources and compensation that normally came with it, after all. Only the old guard were left, those of us too invested and too stuck in our ways to change. Many of my Enlightened Scientists I have trained personally, they do not even know of the glory of the Soviet Union, as my youngest and best simply walked out the door, and I could not, did not stop them.
The Daedaleans are like us, but much smaller and much different. They do not care about Reality Deviance, merely about promoting technology as an aid to the common man. An idealistic, more peaceful way of promoting the well-being of the Masses, and that I admire them, even if they do not understand what we need to do to buy them that ignorance. The Camarilla leave them alone for the most part-all they do is ensure things like 'hospitals', 'industry', and 'society' are in working order, no matter who owns them. They have given up on the idea that this war can be won, and we only have the west's depredations to thank for that.
There are those who disagreed with this course, as there are always those who disagree with every course. Many of them joined with the Tunguska Fellowship-our little branch of the Sons of Ether- in their own fits of madness. I know they call themselves the "Society of Ether" and claim to be all-inclusive now, but here they still proudly bear their nationalist name. I have seen that steam-powered monstrosity you believe might pose as an Etherite machine here. Let me give you some advice, comrade. It will not. The Tunguska Fellowship are not... steampunk reenactors. They have taken Union technology to absurd and dangerous levels-there may be more Technocratic defectors in the Fellowship than there are actual Etherites. That western film? Iron Man? Those superheroes in your comic books? This is the kind of degenerate pseudoscience they use. Horribly prone to malfunction and unreliable, expensive and impossible to mass-produce, reliant entirely on exotic components that outside of wide-scale Reality Deviance or orbital laboratories cannot be synthesized-not these degenerate steampunk fetishists you seem to believe them to be.
Yet, because of their associations with the Daedaleans, and because of how many former "good Technocrats" are in their faction, they may be the easiest ones to deal with. The Daedaleans are even easier, but you will have to have a very good sell for them. They walked away from the war once. They are more than willing to stay away from it.
Celestial Chorus: We tried to stamp them out way back in the Soviet Union, but that didn't work quite well. If there's one thing they've learned from their worship, it's how to endure suffering, and they have endured. They don't like us very much, not since we made an entire NWO unit dedicated to infiltrating and subverting any form of organized religion, and they've been on the rise ever since. Which is actually not so bad for us, since they've got a bit of an issue with hemophages. They've infiltrated the shit out of the Spetsnaz and SOBR, though. The Order of the Firebird and Knights Templar, two of their more militant groups, have basically been using 'disillusioned Russian special forces types' as their primary recruit. If you end up in a fight with them, don't expect the usual divine posturing anymore, they've adapted their Reality Deviance to a much leaner, meaner, more professional style, more "We're Badass Because We're God's Chosen Warriors" than "Powered By God's Miracles". No chanting, no prayer, just a quick touch to a Bible and a couple of RPGs through the window. The clerical types are hostile, but these guys are often outright attacking us. Avoid. The good news, if you can call it that, is that they're way more hostile to the Camarilla than they are to us.
Euthanatos: If you make a place a den of sin and corruption, the Euthanatos come to euthanize it. That's what they do, and after decades of fighting in the Ascension War, I have to admire how good they are at it. Surprisingly enough, since the Soviet Union had stayed so isolated and controlled until the Technocracy itself brought it down, there are very few Euthanatoi assassins here. No, ours are a more subtle breed. The "Locksmiths", the Lhaksmists, are their primary representation. More like Virtual Adepts than the stereotypical knife-wielding serial killer, they still do assassinations, but far more subtly. They assassinate character, destroy influence, create chaos, and keep the Camarilla bastards running around putting out fires. Sadly, they have no qualms about using us as scapegoats to draw attention. If they didn't, a formal alliance would not be out of the question.
Virtual Adepts: In a territory controlled by your enemy, those who know your enemy are more likely to survive. The Virtual Adepts survived all the purges in the days of the USSR by knowing us well, and with the collapse of our authority here and the collapse of the USSR, a lot of them moved into the near-anarchical state former Soviet Russia had become. Like the Euthanatos, they spend most of their time annoying the Camarilla, but unlike the Euthanatos they also hold a grudge against us. But like they do in the west, many of them eventually grow up. Of course, the ones who do tend to end up in the west, rather than staying here where they might do some good rather than becoming another corporate cog in a Syndicate software company. A lot of "our" Virtual Adepts are cyberpunks, too, the 80s kind that combine computer hacking, parkour skills, combat expertise, and anarchist ideologies to become a powerful, but very unstable and disorganized fighting force.
Daedaleans/Sons of Ether: I understand that Daedaleans are not your normal Reality Deviants, no. But when the Soviet Union collapsed and our funding went with it... many of us just walked away from the Ascension War. There was no way we would take on such a hostile job without the resources and compensation that normally came with it, after all. Only the old guard were left, those of us too invested and too stuck in our ways to change. Many of my Enlightened Scientists I have trained personally, they do not even know of the glory of the Soviet Union, as my youngest and best simply walked out the door, and I could not, did not stop them.
The Daedaleans are like us, but much smaller and much different. They do not care about Reality Deviance, merely about promoting technology as an aid to the common man. An idealistic, more peaceful way of promoting the well-being of the Masses, and that I admire them, even if they do not understand what we need to do to buy them that ignorance. The Camarilla leave them alone for the most part-all they do is ensure things like 'hospitals', 'industry', and 'society' are in working order, no matter who owns them. They have given up on the idea that this war can be won, and we only have the west's depredations to thank for that.
There are those who disagreed with this course, as there are always those who disagree with every course. Many of them joined with the Tunguska Fellowship-our little branch of the Sons of Ether- in their own fits of madness. I know they call themselves the "Society of Ether" and claim to be all-inclusive now, but here they still proudly bear their nationalist name. I have seen that steam-powered monstrosity you believe might pose as an Etherite machine here. Let me give you some advice, comrade. It will not. The Tunguska Fellowship are not... steampunk reenactors. They have taken Union technology to absurd and dangerous levels-there may be more Technocratic defectors in the Fellowship than there are actual Etherites. That western film? Iron Man? Those superheroes in your comic books? This is the kind of degenerate pseudoscience they use. Horribly prone to malfunction and unreliable, expensive and impossible to mass-produce, reliant entirely on exotic components that outside of wide-scale Reality Deviance or orbital laboratories cannot be synthesized-not these degenerate steampunk fetishists you seem to believe them to be.
Yet, because of their associations with the Daedaleans, and because of how many former "good Technocrats" are in their faction, they may be the easiest ones to deal with. The Daedaleans are even easier, but you will have to have a very good sell for them. They walked away from the war once. They are more than willing to stay away from it.
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
[x] (1.2x) Traditionalists blowing up a Technocrat's stuff to steal their gear? Sounds totally legitimate. Especially given that this is literally what Rogue Council-sponsored Reality Terrorists and their allies do whenever they do something.
[x] (-0.2x to an option, choose another option) You're pretending to be the Other Side, you've dressed up like the Other Side, and you know that the Order of Hermes, Celestial Chorus, and Euthanatos hate hemophages about infinitely more than they hate the Technocracy. Find out what they're doing and coordinate. And if you know of any magical artifacts the hemophages have that you only need information on... well, those tend to be pretty good bribes. Please stunt this.
Let's bring in the Traditions to fuck up this guy's shit. They have to hate him just as much as us right now.
I don't know the system or setting well enough to stunt this...
[x] (-0.2x to an option, choose another option) You're pretending to be the Other Side, you've dressed up like the Other Side, and you know that the Order of Hermes, Celestial Chorus, and Euthanatos hate hemophages about infinitely more than they hate the Technocracy. Find out what they're doing and coordinate. And if you know of any magical artifacts the hemophages have that you only need information on... well, those tend to be pretty good bribes. Please stunt this.
Let's bring in the Traditions to fuck up this guy's shit. They have to hate him just as much as us right now.
I don't know the system or setting well enough to stunt this...
You could always try using whitewolf.wikia.com as a guide. Again, I can make use of almost anything that doesn't explicitly contradict material I've put down. I might have to change some names, move stuff around, and other editing stuff but doing so is almost always faster than writing it myself, so there.
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
By "not well enough" I mean that I have never encountered it outside of this and one other fic.
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
I believe MJ12 has said that they are currently still valid but aren't going to be counted unless they are posted here.
I'm not counting votes and write-ins unless posted here, due to the :effort: involved. Just repost them if you can.
I'm still opposed to this, on the basis that we're pushing the edge of how unconventional Technocrats can afford to be - making contacts in a way that looks like we could be setting things up to defect is not going to help.
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
There's nothing that says we have to be blatant about it. We could probably use a combination of Entropy/Mind/Correspondence to make it look like we just showed up at the same time and decided to make an alliance of convenience against a mutual enemy.
People may change their votes given that they have time to make them again. Feel free to repost it! You might get Likes, even.
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
More importantly, if the Traditionalists get involved, they may take some of the stuff we want from that guy.
I doubt it. The only way a change happens, given the *arguments* that were made, would be if all of those people didn't come over here.
And that's not the way I would want to get a write-in through. "Well, no one really liked it, but none of those people are here, so congrats you win by default." No, I have my pride. : (
- Location
- Southern Virginia
[X] (1x) You already look like a bunch of fetish prostitutes. Yes, even Kessler. Especially Kessler. Might as well make use of it. Go slumming for vampires who feed on these kinds of people and bonk them over the head with a stake. You suspect you're supposed to actually impale the vampire, but Kessler swears that if you hit them sufficiently hard with the stake nothing will go wrong.
[X] Spend the daylight hours having Serafina make drugs. Focus on anti-hemophagics for our honeypot trap, Reflex Boosters for the bag-team because some of those hemophages go ridiculous fast, and Regen to stabilize the wounded if anything goes badly.
[X] Spend the daylight hours having Serafina make drugs. Focus on anti-hemophagics for our honeypot trap, Reflex Boosters for the bag-team because some of those hemophages go ridiculous fast, and Regen to stabilize the wounded if anything goes badly.
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
The drug? No, his explanation made it clear it wouldn't work because it lacks the Matter component.
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
It ought to work wonderfully for snapping up ghouls or downing our rogue Technocrat folks though, right?
Drugs that use Life effects also require conjunctional Matter to make them work. Drugs which do not use Life to work (such as Stasis) can work on vampires.
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
You have Stasis written as a Time 4/Life 2 effect...
It was supposed to be Life 1, which is used specifically to target the effect. It's "if the user is dying or dead, stop time."
Vampires aren't alive in the normal way, so they're going to be instantly stasised if they can't resist.
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
Ahh. So the Life component is for targetting. That makes more sense.
An important note here: The RAVANA is an Invention, so literally any Enlightened Scientist can use it. It's basically a system that creates Procedures-in-a-can.
So. Let's talk about helping Henriette because Jamelia is a nice person really we make our decisions based on cold logical efficiency and having an agent who is a repressed nervous wreck who falls apart at a mention of the Computer isn't very good.
She won't be as easy as Rose. Rose can be addressed by niceness and pity, and responds to it. Pitying Henriette just gets her prickly. So my initial Stage 1 Plan is to basically show her that she's trusted and valuable, and that we respect her for that, so she doesn't feel she has to prove things to us and that when we try to talk to her we're not doing it because we feel sorry for her.
I may have been watching Watchdogs trailers, so the capacity for her to remotely shut down areas of the power grid for convenient blackouts may be something I want to set up.
...
Continues directly from here.
"Anyway," Jamelia continues, "I wanted to talk to you, Agent Langley."
Henriette bites her lip. "Is it about the 'Henriette the Red' thing?" she says quickly. "Because that was just practicing for the orders you gave me! Nothing more. I know I'm not a trained infiltrator but I'm going to do my best and..."
Jamelia raises her hand. "No, no. That was fine. It was a passable impersonation of a young Hermetic. I'll give you some tips if we actually need to do it, but honestly, I'd like to avoid it. This is mostly a defence measure so you can help Dr Rosario install Interceptors in any vampires we capture. I read your file and noted that you'd come high in your class for the surveillance modules in electronic warfare."
Henriette puffs up her chest. "It wasn't too hard," she says smugly. "That module was all around the design and construction of them, rather than their operation, and I was far ahead of the rest of the training class when it came to microelectronic design."
"I can see," Jamelia says. "I'm the opposite, you might say; I've used them all my career, but they've tended to be off-the-shelf components."
Henriette puts her hands in her pockets. "So, what, you want some newly made ones?" she asks.
"No," Jamelia says, closing the door behind her, and gesturing Henriette to sit. "We have a fairly good supply at the moment. No, I thought we might talk a little bit. About you, and perhaps your future."
Henriette didn't like the sound of the way this was going. "Oh?" she asked.
"Yes. I think you've noticed that this amalgam tends towards more covert operations. Ones where a mech isn't directly appropriate, even if it was available - and it isn't right now."
No, this really wasn't a good way for the conversation to go. She wasn't useless. She wasn't! God, the irony. She'd been talking to that barely-an-AI, Baptysme and she'd been bored skulless with things that couldn't use her talents. Was that the same fame Henriette was going to face? Or worse, was she going to be moved on, another person who didn't want her around?
"As a result," Jamelia continues, "at the same time I've noticed that you're a capable hacker. I was certainly impressed by how fast you neutralised that Etherite HITMark knock-off. And you have had some useful observations. To be honest, I'm not sure we in the Union have previously been using your skills to their full extent purely as a combat walker pilot. Oh, you are very good at that, but - well, for example, take the encounter with ex-Iterator Collins. My simulations predict that it may have been your field-hack of his nanosubstrate in the floor which made all the difference."
Henriette blinked, her chest swelling with pride. "It wasn't anything particularly hard," she says, trying to make it casual. "Sure, none of my graduating class of pilots could have done it, but I never really was playing in the same ballpark as them for material science."
"Perhaps. But if you're going to be assigned to cross-Convention amalgams more in the future, that kind of quick thinking and capacity to make use of hostile environments is a very valuable skill," Jamelia says calmly. "And likewise, on cross-Convention amalgams, it won't be uncommon that your access to your walker will be restricted. Without a dedicated Iteration X support team around, I simply will need to horde it more, only using it when it really has to be used, because outside of the main Iteration X support framework it's hard to get the parts. Do you know why the NWO has used the same power armour models since the 60s?"
Henriette blinks. "Because... uh, the Generation 2 suits are reliable, stable, and are more than enough against most RD threats?"
"Yes, in part. But it's also resupply issues and field maintenance. We can train agents in a single model, and it means we can issue them as-needed." Jamelia brushed down one of her arms. "It's all about having the right things in the right place. And if you can be of use to any amalgam you're assigned to, and operate anywhere in the world in any roles, then you're on the fast path to being recognised. Do you understand what I'm hinting at, Henriette?"
Henriette takes a deep breath. "I... I think so."
"So. Quick question. Let's put you in the position of a field command. You have access to an agent with your skills, and no access to power armour or anything of that nature. You want to make use of them to set up an arrangement which you can call upon later, to support your field teams. It should be cross-applicable to many mission parameters, and should not involve experimental hypertech. Let's get you thinking in the kind of light field ops which are cross-Convention bread and butter."
Henriette bites her lip and thinks. "Material science, understanding of systems... something which can be hit easily. Basic tactics," she says, thinking out loud. "Control the situation. Control the situation. Union forces come with standardised gear unlike RDs. Something which plays off the standardisation." She blinks. "Power. The power grid. I... I mean, she should set up things so she can remotely cut the power to as small an area as possible. That can be hit at a moment's notice, and Union forces come with NVGs so darkness doesn't mean much to us. We want to make it as small as possible so... so minimum collateral damage. And the Moscow power infrastructure is overworked anyway, so it won't draw too much attention?"
"Good." Jamelia smiles. "Make it so, Agent Langley."
Henriette blinks. "You mean that?"
"I have already told Rose that I don't need Enlightened meat robots," Jamelia says, rising "If I need a mindless pretty thing with no initiative which didn't think for itself, I'd get myself a Victor. The same applies to you. I like to work on building the skills of my subordinates, especially if they pass my little tests to see if they might be the right material for later development. You passed that little test. Now let's see if you can enact it."
Henriette swallows. "I understand, Director," she says. "I'll get on it!"
Jamelia pauses at the door. "You might want to change first," she observes, smiling.
Henriette brushes herself down, and remembers she's still wearing the Hermetic outfit. "Yes," she says, flushing. "Maybe... maybe I might need a version of this which stands out less? While still implying I'm with them?" She blinks. "That's why you're just wearing slightly different colours and those earrings and necklace," she realises. "You've pretended to be a Traditionalist before, haven't you?"
"I've been doing this for a very long time," the Director says. "I've done a lot of things"
...
Jamelia smiles to herself as she heads away from Henriette's room. Light field ops. Yes, Henriette might have promise a long way in the future, but if she's going to get any field commands she's going to have to become more observant to people's phrasing and the way subliminal hints like that can guide the course of a conversation.
There's something very broken in her. Something left her terrified by the mention of the Computer, and that's a problem for a member of Iteration X. Something happened out there in the Void, and it was covered up. Probably by the Void Engineers, who patched her back together and handed her to the Earthside Technocracy.
The Void Engineers.
Taking all this funding and never saying quite what it's for. Hoovering up obsolete power armour and out of date HITMarks and claiming it's for "technology-unfriendly dimensions". There had always been questions about their loyalty, and then they handed Siddharth over to her - someone who would have fitted in in pre-1999 Iteration X as a Pogrom fanatic. And then there was Baptysme - an "AI" built by a Progenitor who had gone native in the Engineers.
Jamelia snorted. She'd talked to the girl in the interview. An AI. Sure. Yes, there was something strange about her speech, probably from her accelerated raising, but she was a human hooked into a machine, not one of Iteration X's AIs. She had a more rounded personality than Rose, for goodness sake, and didn't have all that anti-boredom programming common to Progenitor constructs. The Engineers were labelling meat constructs who they'd raised to be fully fledged humans with proper personalities and little mental programming as AIs. Why?
Iteration X's AIs had all been easily linked to the Computer. Easily overridden by it. The same Computer which terrified Henriette.
Jamelia exhaled. She was collecting pieces of a puzzle. She was getting the feeling she might have just got a few edge pieces. But she couldn't press Henriette on things. She needed the girl happ... functional. And she might as well train her up so she wouldn't get annoyed at unable to pilot, so she'd feel useful. She needed her to trust her, so she wouldn't see Jamelia's prying as... well, prying.
She also should get Henriette trained in hyperpsychology. She needed the capacity to tell if someone was playing with her mind with all those demons in her past, as well as the capacity to pull herself back together if something happened. She had to be made less brittle.
She won't be as easy as Rose. Rose can be addressed by niceness and pity, and responds to it. Pitying Henriette just gets her prickly. So my initial Stage 1 Plan is to basically show her that she's trusted and valuable, and that we respect her for that, so she doesn't feel she has to prove things to us and that when we try to talk to her we're not doing it because we feel sorry for her.
I may have been watching Watchdogs trailers, so the capacity for her to remotely shut down areas of the power grid for convenient blackouts may be something I want to set up.
...
Continues directly from here.
"Anyway," Jamelia continues, "I wanted to talk to you, Agent Langley."
Henriette bites her lip. "Is it about the 'Henriette the Red' thing?" she says quickly. "Because that was just practicing for the orders you gave me! Nothing more. I know I'm not a trained infiltrator but I'm going to do my best and..."
Jamelia raises her hand. "No, no. That was fine. It was a passable impersonation of a young Hermetic. I'll give you some tips if we actually need to do it, but honestly, I'd like to avoid it. This is mostly a defence measure so you can help Dr Rosario install Interceptors in any vampires we capture. I read your file and noted that you'd come high in your class for the surveillance modules in electronic warfare."
Henriette puffs up her chest. "It wasn't too hard," she says smugly. "That module was all around the design and construction of them, rather than their operation, and I was far ahead of the rest of the training class when it came to microelectronic design."
"I can see," Jamelia says. "I'm the opposite, you might say; I've used them all my career, but they've tended to be off-the-shelf components."
Henriette puts her hands in her pockets. "So, what, you want some newly made ones?" she asks.
"No," Jamelia says, closing the door behind her, and gesturing Henriette to sit. "We have a fairly good supply at the moment. No, I thought we might talk a little bit. About you, and perhaps your future."
Henriette didn't like the sound of the way this was going. "Oh?" she asked.
"Yes. I think you've noticed that this amalgam tends towards more covert operations. Ones where a mech isn't directly appropriate, even if it was available - and it isn't right now."
No, this really wasn't a good way for the conversation to go. She wasn't useless. She wasn't! God, the irony. She'd been talking to that barely-an-AI, Baptysme and she'd been bored skulless with things that couldn't use her talents. Was that the same fame Henriette was going to face? Or worse, was she going to be moved on, another person who didn't want her around?
"As a result," Jamelia continues, "at the same time I've noticed that you're a capable hacker. I was certainly impressed by how fast you neutralised that Etherite HITMark knock-off. And you have had some useful observations. To be honest, I'm not sure we in the Union have previously been using your skills to their full extent purely as a combat walker pilot. Oh, you are very good at that, but - well, for example, take the encounter with ex-Iterator Collins. My simulations predict that it may have been your field-hack of his nanosubstrate in the floor which made all the difference."
Henriette blinked, her chest swelling with pride. "It wasn't anything particularly hard," she says, trying to make it casual. "Sure, none of my graduating class of pilots could have done it, but I never really was playing in the same ballpark as them for material science."
"Perhaps. But if you're going to be assigned to cross-Convention amalgams more in the future, that kind of quick thinking and capacity to make use of hostile environments is a very valuable skill," Jamelia says calmly. "And likewise, on cross-Convention amalgams, it won't be uncommon that your access to your walker will be restricted. Without a dedicated Iteration X support team around, I simply will need to horde it more, only using it when it really has to be used, because outside of the main Iteration X support framework it's hard to get the parts. Do you know why the NWO has used the same power armour models since the 60s?"
Henriette blinks. "Because... uh, the Generation 2 suits are reliable, stable, and are more than enough against most RD threats?"
"Yes, in part. But it's also resupply issues and field maintenance. We can train agents in a single model, and it means we can issue them as-needed." Jamelia brushed down one of her arms. "It's all about having the right things in the right place. And if you can be of use to any amalgam you're assigned to, and operate anywhere in the world in any roles, then you're on the fast path to being recognised. Do you understand what I'm hinting at, Henriette?"
Henriette takes a deep breath. "I... I think so."
"So. Quick question. Let's put you in the position of a field command. You have access to an agent with your skills, and no access to power armour or anything of that nature. You want to make use of them to set up an arrangement which you can call upon later, to support your field teams. It should be cross-applicable to many mission parameters, and should not involve experimental hypertech. Let's get you thinking in the kind of light field ops which are cross-Convention bread and butter."
Henriette bites her lip and thinks. "Material science, understanding of systems... something which can be hit easily. Basic tactics," she says, thinking out loud. "Control the situation. Control the situation. Union forces come with standardised gear unlike RDs. Something which plays off the standardisation." She blinks. "Power. The power grid. I... I mean, she should set up things so she can remotely cut the power to as small an area as possible. That can be hit at a moment's notice, and Union forces come with NVGs so darkness doesn't mean much to us. We want to make it as small as possible so... so minimum collateral damage. And the Moscow power infrastructure is overworked anyway, so it won't draw too much attention?"
"Good." Jamelia smiles. "Make it so, Agent Langley."
Henriette blinks. "You mean that?"
"I have already told Rose that I don't need Enlightened meat robots," Jamelia says, rising "If I need a mindless pretty thing with no initiative which didn't think for itself, I'd get myself a Victor. The same applies to you. I like to work on building the skills of my subordinates, especially if they pass my little tests to see if they might be the right material for later development. You passed that little test. Now let's see if you can enact it."
Henriette swallows. "I understand, Director," she says. "I'll get on it!"
Jamelia pauses at the door. "You might want to change first," she observes, smiling.
Henriette brushes herself down, and remembers she's still wearing the Hermetic outfit. "Yes," she says, flushing. "Maybe... maybe I might need a version of this which stands out less? While still implying I'm with them?" She blinks. "That's why you're just wearing slightly different colours and those earrings and necklace," she realises. "You've pretended to be a Traditionalist before, haven't you?"
"I've been doing this for a very long time," the Director says. "I've done a lot of things"
...
Jamelia smiles to herself as she heads away from Henriette's room. Light field ops. Yes, Henriette might have promise a long way in the future, but if she's going to get any field commands she's going to have to become more observant to people's phrasing and the way subliminal hints like that can guide the course of a conversation.
There's something very broken in her. Something left her terrified by the mention of the Computer, and that's a problem for a member of Iteration X. Something happened out there in the Void, and it was covered up. Probably by the Void Engineers, who patched her back together and handed her to the Earthside Technocracy.
The Void Engineers.
Taking all this funding and never saying quite what it's for. Hoovering up obsolete power armour and out of date HITMarks and claiming it's for "technology-unfriendly dimensions". There had always been questions about their loyalty, and then they handed Siddharth over to her - someone who would have fitted in in pre-1999 Iteration X as a Pogrom fanatic. And then there was Baptysme - an "AI" built by a Progenitor who had gone native in the Engineers.
Jamelia snorted. She'd talked to the girl in the interview. An AI. Sure. Yes, there was something strange about her speech, probably from her accelerated raising, but she was a human hooked into a machine, not one of Iteration X's AIs. She had a more rounded personality than Rose, for goodness sake, and didn't have all that anti-boredom programming common to Progenitor constructs. The Engineers were labelling meat constructs who they'd raised to be fully fledged humans with proper personalities and little mental programming as AIs. Why?
Iteration X's AIs had all been easily linked to the Computer. Easily overridden by it. The same Computer which terrified Henriette.
Jamelia exhaled. She was collecting pieces of a puzzle. She was getting the feeling she might have just got a few edge pieces. But she couldn't press Henriette on things. She needed the girl happ... functional. And she might as well train her up so she wouldn't get annoyed at unable to pilot, so she'd feel useful. She needed her to trust her, so she wouldn't see Jamelia's prying as... well, prying.
She also should get Henriette trained in hyperpsychology. She needed the capacity to tell if someone was playing with her mind with all those demons in her past, as well as the capacity to pull herself back together if something happened. She had to be made less brittle.