Mobile Suit Gundam: Pax Iove (An Original Gundam AU Advisorquest)

[x] Female
[x] Hypatia 'Tia' Khwarizmi
[x] You were the captain of a Union Fleet vessel turned to science.

As the doors slide open, you force down the old instinct to snap to a salute. A Consul does not rise for their peers - not even for the Chair. It has been a long time since Bohumil Thomas was your superior officer, but his sheer presence is undiminished. Shaggy silver hair frames his dark, scarred face like a lion's mane; his blue-and-gold pinstripe suit deliberately evokes his old Union commodore's uniform, a burnished brass symbol of Quaoar sitting on his breast in lieu of his medals.

"Khwarizmi," he gives you a small nod as he walks to his seat, "I see we've made the same mistakes." He gestures around the room and chuffs. "Nice to see at least one... reasonable face from Fleet, even if a step removed." You give him a questioning look, and he grumbles out "Weywot's foisted Whipporwhil on us."

After an awkward pause, you settle on saying "She's better than she was." You can't deny that Anastasya Whipporwhil can be... difficult. You'd worked with her when you were both Palomar skippers, and while you couldn't fault her as an officer, she wouldn't be your first choice of politician. Brilliant by any measure, but almost unaware of it, assuming the rest of the world could keep up with her indefinitely, and growing brusque and dismissive whenever someone inevitably fell behind. You'd reached a kind of rapport by the time you and the Belogradchik mustered out, and last you'd heard she'd moved up to a Kilauea - but all of that was after Thomas retired.

"You never had to read her reports, Commander."

His voice takes on a light tone as he sounds out your old rank, and that's the only thing that stops you from snapping into a salute - which is damn good timing, because as you open your mouth to reply, the door slides open again to admit three more of your fellows, led by Kızılırmak herself, stone-faced as ever. She nods to Thomas and then to you, and slumps across the seat opposite the Chair's; her posture seems more like a child on a long shuttle ride than the Mother of the Constitution standing among the Consulate. Her prosthetic eye slowly flickers with pulses of forest-green light, just bright enough to be distracting.

You don't know the other two: a pale-faced young man in an ill-fitting suit, and a round woman with brightly-dyed hair and an ostentatious lace dress. As they settle into their seats - the man to Thomas's left, the woman halfway between you and Kızılırmak - the door pushes open again, and Whipporwhil bounces into the room. She notices you and waves before all but skipping to a chair one step from Kızılırmak's right - and to your immediate left; the pulsing glow of the latter's eye is now scattered across the room by Whipporwhil's brightly polished buttons and epaulets. A projector turns on with a click, and a flickering hologram of a vaguely familiar face (an Assemblyman? Some kind of politician, anyway, and why else would one be offworld?) fades in on Thomas's right.

Next is a brawny woman in simple work clothes and steel-toed boots, the ever-present symbol of the Maintenance Workers hanging from a gold chain around her neck. She stares at the projected man, rolls her eyes, and takes a seat to your immediate right after giving you a curt nod; her choice was clearly less out of interest in you, and more about being as far from the hologram as possible. She is shortly followed by a man you can only describe as the walking image of a politician, who even stops in the door to wave to some distant crowd before stepping through the door to let it close behind him. He makes a circuitous walk around the table, offers you a clearly practiced smile and a "nice to meet you", and takes the last empty chair.

There is a silence, and the atmosphere in the room slowly shifts. Kızılırmak straightens in her seat, Whipporwhil's energy dissolves into steely focus, and the woman from Maintenance crosses her arms and locks eyes with the smiling face in the hologram. Power has a gravity all its own, and here you stand at its event horizon.

As Thomas opens his mouth to call the session to order, you take one last stock of your position.

What other advantages do you bring to your position? Approval voting - top two will be chosen.
[ ] Contacts in the wider ORHF.
The Outer Reaches Home Fleet - much like the Outer Reaches itself - is an institution that exists largely on paper. Paper in the Earth Sphere. While it's formally a centralised organisation based on Pluto, Haumea has the only proper berth for its flagship, and the Eridians aren't even pretending the new "5th Flotilla" is anything but a thin coat of Union paint over Titanite irregulars. It can take months to travel from Quaoar to Pluto, so most members of the 3rd Flotilla have never even left Quaoar orbit - but the last time they did, you and the Belogradchik were among the number. While it can take hours to send a reliable message between Outer Reaches worlds, that's still enough to keep enough a regular - if asynchronous - correspondence with some of your nominal former comrades. Improved information about developments on Pluto and Haumea - though nothing sensitive. Easier access to potential interplanetary projects.

[ ] Advice from your predecessor.
Rajesh Kreimhilding is a hard man to find, having all but disappeared from public life between the pressures of his contentious anti-corruption efforts, his failing health, and the Titanite conflict bringing a decisive end to his long career as a pro-Union "end of war" pacifist. You were not his first choice to succeed him, but you also weren't his last, and as much as his speeches seem ironic now, his efforts to turn Fleet assets from "waiting for a war that will never come" to a constructive, scientific purpose were what catalysed your own career. While he's withdrawn from the political sphere, he's still willing to meet with you for drinks and offer a few words of advice from a man who wrangled the Institutes for twenty-five years. Personal action to meet with Kreimhilding, gaining bonuses on internal Intrigue or Diplomacy actions.

[ ] Ongoing experiments.
Your appointment was far from a sure thing, and you still have several existing agreements with the Institutes for use of Belogradchik in the works. Keeping to the tentative schedule would occupy your ship for most of a year, but your new position gives you a bit more negotiating room - by making your office a formal partner in the experiments, you can get an in with the Institutes, access to their research, and best of all, not need to pay for it. Locks Belogradchik and 1 Official action for several turns, but that action will consume no Resources and be accelerated.

[ ] An elite crew.
While most of Belogradchik's crew remained in the Fleet, those who stayed with the ship were truly passionate about her mission - and trained the Institute students and civilian spacers who filled out the complement up to their own exacting standards. Belogradchik may not be a warship anymore, but her crew are still a match for any Palomar in the Fleet in anything but the actual shooting. Belogradchik's reroll applies to Martial checks as well as Learning.

[ ] A dedicated support station.
The Belogradchik was laid down at Juvit Yards like any Quaoarian Palomar, but once you left the Fleet, you lost access to their dedicated berths. While the wealthier Institutes would gladly cover fuel and maintenance while you worked on their projects, you and their smaller rivals preferred a more independent arrangement, and eventually purchased an old mining yard to serve as a permanent berth. Now that you have been brought back into government service, that independence will make it easier to supply and deploy the ship for your own priorities, not just the Institutes'. Belogradchik costs no Influence to deploy.

[ ] A rare medical note.
Non-invasive brain-computer interfaces are a well-established technology, but starkly limited in the type of information they can impart back to the user. BCI backlash - or more properly, irregular neural feedback rejection - begins with nausea, disorientation, and mild headaches, but can quickly and unpredictably escalate to migraines, scarring, and in some cases, irreversible and continuous degeneration. This normally limits the use of the technology to systems which translate readily to familiar sensations - the most famous case being the humanoid form of the stable suit (and now, the mobile suit). You're one of the lucky ones, though, and have a much greater tolerance for irregular feedback, suffering only a very mild form of rejection with almost no risk of degradation - enough that you've been cleared to use irregular interfaces as part of your work. Though as an unfortunate consequence, the captain's chair on the Belogradchik would see the ship impounded in the Venus, Earth, and Uranus Spheres. Personal action to create a Bespoke Neural Interface for an Asset, granting substantial bonuses when you are personally operating them. Belogradchik gains a Bespoke Neural Interface.

[ ] A peculiar insight.
The term "Adaptive" is used in hushed tones on Quaoar. It's no secret that humanity has adapted to space colonisation - the bolts and plates in your bones, the nanopumps in your arteries, the wires and foils beneath your skin are all routine procedures once hailed as medical miracles. But the idea that humanity is adapting in ways beyond deliberate modification is controversial, especially in matters of the mind. The Institutes have their own theories, but they keep them close to the chest, both out of fears of being overtaken, but also its possible social ramifications - at least one professor told you she wasn't publishing anything until she was certain it "wouldn't throw fuel on that mess on Neptune". (Her department head was quick to assure you that her exclamation of "grant money be damned" was purely rhetorical.) Yet you can't deny that you feel something on the edge of your consciousness; little more than glimpses of possibilities, but real enough to have saved you and your crew out in the black. Gain Latent Adaptive trait (???). Personal action to study your condition.

* * *