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Petals of Titanium -- My Life as a Mecha Setting Bridge Bunny Quest

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"Ms. Birch," Andre begins, slow enough that you can tell she's trying to supress annoyance, "you will of course be reimbursed for any necessary requisitions we are forced to make, as outlined both in the Military Requisitions Act and the Wartime Measures Act."

This second proclamation leads to a weighty, prolonged silence on the other end of the line. Invoking the Wartime Measures Act allows much broader use and seizure of civilian resouces -- to be repaid at a later date where possible -- it also, however, necessary declares that the Rose has just come from or is heading to active combat with an enemy considered to be the enemy of the Imperial throne or its representatives. "... is there something we should know, captain?" the harbourmaster asks, slowly.

"Any relevant information can be exchanged in person, I think, Ms. Birch."
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Information on the impending invasion might be part of the payment for supplies?
"It's a common modification, ma'am. They've swapped out the standard emitter for a high powered, aftermarket defence model, and upgraded the power supply at the back. It's not a military weapon, exactly, but at the right range they can cut through armour. It's illegal."
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These are people who don't care about showing minor illegal modification so if they're hiding something it is probably far more serious.
It's unlikely that you'll actually need the Creole to communicate, but having translators on hand, it was decided, will dramatically reduce the likelihood of information being passed over your heads unbeknownst to the shore party.
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North's job is to insure something isn't unnoticed due to a language gap, and maybe fish for information.
"Welcome to our station, Commander," he says, before reaching out and clasping her warmly by both shoulders. The effect of this overly familiar greeting -- by aristocratic standards, at least -- seems to leave her stiff and speechless. Choi releases Perbeck, apparently oblivious to the lack of propriety. "This is Mara Birch," he says, identifying the woman beside him, "our Harbourmaster. I believe you've been communicating with her already. And this is…" he hesitates, looking suddenly fairly uncertain that he should have brought the third stationer along at all. "... this is Heinrich Lee. He's… well, he handles a lot of procurement and inventory issues."

"Among other things," Lee says, with a languid shrug. You can see Grayson's shoulders tense at this last remark -- he's evidently still unhappy with the station's open flaunting of imperial law. Lee pays no mind to Grayson, however, and instead, his eyes flick over to the sidearms worn by Perbeck, and the two marines. His easy smile shrivels up and dies, a little. "We don't ordinarily allow personal firearms anywhere on the station," he says, voice clearly disapproving.
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So Lee is at an absolute minimum someone who can procure stuff i the middle of nowhere either by being a scavenger, a pirate, and/or via connections with the other side.
"Hold on there, miss," Lee says, suddenly reaching out his free hand to close yours back on the handle. "You might want to hang onto that just a little longer."

You only have time to consider informing him that you're an ensign, not a miss, or to consider how his hand lingered just slightly longer than was necessary over your own, before you find out what he meant.
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Well he quite clearly think North is attractive, which might be useful.
Your group proceeds in a line, Perbeck at the front, marines at the back, led onward by the nervously chattering Choi and the silent, sullen Birch. You pass people coming the other way with some frequency. Most watch your group, with your uniforms and weapons, with obvious but silent suspicion. One, though, speaks to Lee, in a conversational tone, words the odd hodgepodge that constitutes Saturnian Creole: ⟨"It's done, Heinrich."⟩ He glances meaningfully at your group. ⟨"I'll take them out again when the Impies are gone."⟩
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So out of curiosity what, or who do people think "they" are? The way I see it the other side might've sent negotiators to the minor stations, or maybe they "rescued" some crew from one of the sides whose expertise they've been making good use of?
In response, Lee only nods shallowly. His eyes scan over your group, noting Anja's raised eyebrows, and your scrutinising glance, and almost imperceptibly winces, before letting himself drift to the back of the group, until he's walking alongside you and Anja. When he speaks, it's in a low tone, and in the same language the strange man had used. ⟨"Most girls in uniform can't be bothered to pick up Saturnian,"⟩ he comments.

Anja grins at him. When she replies, the sharper tones of her accent seem obvious compared to the broader stationers. ⟨"I wasn't born wearing a uniform, Mr. Procurement."⟩
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Considering he was noted to be the younger man when has he met women in uniform? Unless he was talking about someone from the other side? Also the fact that Anja likes Lee obviously means he is a bad boy of some variety. :V
⟨"North was born in a uniform,"⟩ Anja quips. There's an odd quality to the acoustics in the corridor -- sound kept at a low, conversational tone scarcely travels.
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Guilty as charged, and is the acoustics a design flaw, or feature?
⟨"An imperial warship -- even a small one -- shows up out of nowhere with battle scars, and invokes the WMA,"⟩ he says, blunt all of a sudden. ⟨"And now your boss's boss won't give us a scrap of information. We need to know what's out here if we're going to keep ourselves safe, yes? We need to know if there's suddenly a pirate gang that serious out here, or if the zealots have finally decided to stop fucking around in Jupiter and deal with you lot here."⟩
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While he has a point... I suspect them learning about the zealots arrival will slow down negotiations, which might be a good things depending on what exactly they're hiding.

[X] Offer veiled hints without openly admitting the truth

For the moment this has my vote.
 
Any reason not to play off his attraction and imply while flirting with him that we'd need some info from him in exchange for our own? And not just his contact info?

I mean, for starters, we could try to find out whether it would be safe to leave the civilians here. Or what he was trying to hide from us Imperials, so that we know if it impacts the likelihood these people sell us out to the incoming Crusade.
 
Eh, the kid will probably be back. You know how it goes, she gets the boot so she spends episode 2 trying to sneak back into that bay and getting in Perberk's mech in time for the pilot to walk into the bay and catch her in the act.

...Admittedly if not we just got ourselves one step closer to ending up in a mech ourselves due to kicking out a potential cast member. Oops!

[X] Offer veiled hints without openly admitting the truth

These guys are neutrals and don't want angry Zealots backstabbing them. But on the flipside we can't just go 'oh yeah we just came from getting wrecked and wrecking them almost as well', because panic/looking weak. Buut if we leave them uninformed they'll get pissed and we'll have to deal with those armor-cutters doing a crappy job on our repairs, which we don't want.
 
The Sandman said:
Any reason not to play off his attraction and imply while flirting with him that we'd need some info from him in exchange for our own? And not just his contact info?

I mean, for starters, we could try to find out whether it would be safe to leave the civilians here. Or what he was trying to hide from us Imperials, so that we know if it impacts the likelihood these people sell us out to the incoming Crusade.
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I'd expect North to fish for information in between flirting with Lee, and using subtle hints as bait. Also leaving the civilians isn't going to happen because they're family members of Imperial soldiers, and even if they weren't this isn't a reputable station.
 
[X] Clam up, follow Grayson's lead even if the Saturnians don't like it
 
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ShadowAngelBeta said:
Our boss is the hardass XO that no one likes and end up getting everyone in more trouble because of either that or being a fanatic or some sort. He's the straightman that ends up shooting everyone in the foot because we need to bend to survive.

So, no, my initial reaction is very much not to bother listening to him most of the time.
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Have you...actually been reading these past few updates?

Because if you have, you'd realise that Grayson was the one who overruled Mazlo in determining the value of the data we were collating from the rogue signal and in doing so saved all our asses. It's explicitly noted that he's pretty easygoing most of the time, it's just that Lee turned what was already a pretty stressed mood into something worse.

He's not worth pissing off our boss as far as I'm concerned, especially when it's entirely within Grayson's right to not casually go sprouting off valuable military intelligence to strangers. Doubly so when that little conversation he just had with his friend indicates he's no friend of ours.

[X] Clam up, follow Grayson's lead even if the Saturnians don't like it
 
SirLagginton said:
Have you...actually been reading these past few updates?

Because if you have, you'd realise that Grayson was the one who overruled Mazlo in determining the value of the data we were collating from the rogue signal and in doing so saved all our asses. It's explicitly noted that he's pretty easygoing most of the time, it's just that Lee turned what was already a pretty stressed mood into something worse.

He's not worth pissing off our boss as far as I'm concerned, especially when it's entirely within Grayson's right to not casually go sprouting off valuable military intelligence to strangers. Doubly so when that little conversation he just had with his friend indicates he's no friend of ours.
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I don't remember names, I remember faces. He's acting like a hardass, so I assumed he's the hardass.

I don't see how Lee's done anything yet either. Yeah, he's the shady shit guy, but that just comes back to the issue of if we don't bend, we die. If he can't deal with it, he shouldn't be out here unless we somehow have literally no one else who could be here to do... whatever it is he's doing.
 
[X] Clam up, follow Grayson's lead even if the Saturnians don't like it
Maybe if this guy was a friend of ours.... but loose lips sink ships.
 
ShadowAngelBeta said:
I don't remember names, I remember faces. He's acting like a hardass, so I assumed he's the hardass.

I don't see how Lee's done anything yet either. Yeah, he's the shady shit guy, but that just comes back to the issue of if we don't bend, we die. If he can't deal with it, he shouldn't be out here unless we somehow have literally no one else who could be here to do... whatever it is he's doing.
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I don't know about you, but historically giving away military intelligence was the sort of thing that got people killed, not the other way around.
 
[X] Clam up, follow Grayson's lead even if the Saturnians don't like it

If 5 years of EVE online ever taught me anything about Sci-Fi its that the walls ALWAYS have ears and that loose lips may not sink your ship but it sure as shit could sink your buddies. Like its cool that you wanna help out the dudes who POSSIBLY may be willing to help us further but for all we know some Zealot spy (who may not know his buddies are in the AO) is watching a security camera and is willing to hang us out to dry after we leave or sabotage our ship while on dock, just shut up take your shit and go.
 
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ShadowAngelBeta said:
Benefits: Give the civilians a heads up, get out of here sooner/with less trouble, task-force might be chasing us
Cons: Might be people willing to sell us out, spies
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This is not a military station either and we have no proof that these zealots are going to fire on civillian targets, this could be a 'Mecha Anime' and the tropes almost always go 'theres bad dudes on both sides' and we have no proof that either side is or is not genocidal beyond the fact that our ship isn't shooting civvys on friendly territory. It's entirely possible our pursuers could just leave this station alone and not fire on them.
 
[X] Write-in
-[X] Play along with the flirting, imply that since we'll be here for at least a few days we might see our way towards giving him some info if he gives us some in return. Use that to buy enough time to ask the Captain whether she wants us to quietly leak anything via this backchannel. If she does, exchange information. If she doesn't, make it clear next time we see him that we were spotted chatting and our superiors read us the riot act about infosec. If he just wants to keep it casual, though, we'd still enjoy some company while in port.

There. Hopefully that threads the needle of giving the guy nothing right now while leaving the door open to give him info later or at least to have a casual fling while we're here.
 
Hrrrm...My understanding is that legally speaking-we have the right to demand what we're demanding.

The thing is, for us to HAVE that right, someone needs to have seriously shot at us. Which they have! And these people want to know what's up with our demands and if that means they need to run or get ready to fight.
The way I see it, if we tell them, we gain some degree of loyalty-they want to be left alone, and I don't see any reason for them to side with the opposing side.

The problem, as previously mentioned, is the idea that they actually if not are aligned with the enemy, is hosting someone who is, and thus they'll know where we are and be able to flatten us. I'm going to assume they're not in bed with the bad guys directly if only because that seems to suggest we're about to get crushed unless we cut and run immeadiately...Which we can't do as we literally came here to not suffocate in space.

Soo in all honesty, bad guys are probably going to find out about us from these guys, except...They already know about us via the last fight, and my read is that they were *really* hoping to win via some sort of blitzkrieg style strike that knocks us out-a dragged out slugfest our faction would win.

The more I think on it the more I think it might be a good idea to tell them, even if they come for us, and we're NOT the protagonist...We can still go down fighting/tie up assets that would be useful elsewhere...Well, that's me starting to think like I'm from the Imperium of Man.
 
ShadowAngelBeta said:
Benefits: Give the civilians a heads up, get out of here sooner/with less trouble, task-force might be chasing us
Cons: Might be people willing to sell us out, spies
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Thanks! Sorry it came out a little more aggressive than I meant it to. I do think that the civillains point is the most pertinent one. OriginalName has a point that our pursuers could just leave the station alone, but we have no way of knowing if they'll do that until they've done it or haven't. In which case it probably is best to play it safe, genre conventions be damned; just because this is in a mecha setting doesn't mean it has to follow all the mecha tropes to the letter, after all. Getting out smoother is kind of a nice bonus. Zaealix does a good job on the calculus of them hosting/being enemies or allies too. I kind of like Sandman's write-in but I don't really feel comfortable flirting with the dude; he seems kind of sketchy and the idea of a fling with someone who I can't see any interest in is... blegh to me.


[X] Offer veiled hints without openly admitting the truth
 
Zaealix said:
Hrrrm...My understanding is that legally speaking-we have the right to demand what we're demanding.

The thing is, for us to HAVE that right, someone needs to have seriously shot at us. Which they have! And these people want to know what's up with our demands and if that means they need to run or get ready to fight.
The way I see it, if we tell them, we gain some degree of loyalty-they want to be left alone, and I don't see any reason for them to side with the opposing side.

The problem, as previously mentioned, is the idea that they actually if not are aligned with the enemy, is hosting someone who is, and thus they'll know where we are and be able to flatten us. I'm going to assume they're not in bed with the bad guys directly if only because that seems to suggest we're about to get crushed unless we cut and run immeadiately...Which we can't do as we literally came here to not suffocate in space.

Soo in all honesty, bad guys are probably going to find out about us from these guys, except...They already know about us via the last fight, and my read is that they were *really* hoping to win via some sort of blitzkrieg style strike that knocks us out-a dragged out slugfest our faction would win.

The more I think on it the more I think it might be a good idea to tell them, even if they come for us, and we're NOT the protagonist...We can still go down fighting/tie up assets that would be useful elsewhere...Well, that's me starting to think like I'm from the Imperium of Man.
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It's still not our call to make either way, if you have doubts that the Captain has our best intreasts in mind than bring it up with her, don't make a unilateral decision with Opsec otherwise, its just not wise.
 
[X] Clam up, follow Grayson's lead even if the Saturnians don't like it.

OpSec is important.
 
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