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03 Feb 2022User319792
After completing the jump to Outotz LS-K D8-3 with Robert and the rest of the deck crew aboard Nain Incorporated, I made the walk back from the bridge to my quarters with something on my mind. I couldn't piece it together but it sat there, like a blob of dark matter, taking up space that could, and should, be made better use of. Something about the look in the eyes of the Man in the Black Suit when he talked to me about what happened to Coral. She'd been aboard for the week, collecting engineering materials in Keystone. She'd set up a cot in the lounge-area of my quarters and fenced off a quadrant of the lounge for her to conduct whatever projects the Man in the Black Suit had her working on. I'd been keeping a close eye on her and I'd asked Robert and the rest of the crew to report on her activities. Apparently, she'd set up a green house and was growing potatos in the laboratory. Some of the lab-workers reported that she'd been seen talking to the potatos quietly, muttering under her breath once before slamming the viewing window closed and storming back to my quarters. She ate alone, bringing her rations back to my lounge rather than eating in the mess with the rest of the crew. In the monitors, I'd seen her pushing food across her tray, separating certain foods from one another whenever they'd roll or slide across. She was still Coral, but she was also something else.
I decided to stop over at the Officer's mess and pick up a couple of trays of rations for us before making my way into my Quarters' quarterdeck and as I brushed my hand over the entry panel I could hear her speaking to someone.
"<garbled male voice>"
"...Dad, she's going off the deep end. I think the pressure's getting to her. She detonated Napoleon the other night, right on the flight deck after going on some drunken kill-mission. She wants me to take a look at her navigation computer."
This was true. I had initiated Napoleon's self-destruct sequence before stumbling back into the hangar the other night. There was definitely something wrong with my yoke. That goes without saying. I had also been drinking, but that doesn't excuse my staff's poor maintenance. That's just common sense. I considered listening-in some more, but she beckoned me with a toss of a chickpea from a can that she'd had sitting around for just such an occasion.
"We're talking about you going crazy, Cadence. Explain yourself."
The Man in the Black Suit was looking upward at me from his lowered chin, squinting ever just so slightly.
"Its my ship and I can blow it up if I want to. You'd blow yours up if your navigation controls were failing miserably, too."
Coral looked up from her can of peas, which had miraculously grown into two cans, attached to one another via a third, cylindrical, tube that opened into the lower portion of each. She stared at me, the corners of her eyes sharpening and her brows lowering, before looking back at the Man in the Black Suit and interrupting what he'd just begun to say,
"I'll take a look at it. We'll be back in Deciat before the end of the week and I'll start on this information collection mission."
"Have you spoken to anyone about what's happening in Cemiess?"
They both looked over to me, glancing back toward one another, and the Man in the Black Suit began to speak,
"I'd been meaning to ask you about that, Cadence. How..." he lowered his head to his chin, chewing on something, “with how many people have you discussed this whole 'Denton has The Emperor imprisoned and our organization is currently making use of the Empire's Omega Grid' thing?"
I looked at Coral, who was still observing the peas in her cans, shaking them every now and again. The Man in the Black Suit snapped his fingers in my direction and I turned to him,
"Not too many. I'd been hauling for weeks and I needed some conversation while I was transferring my ships onto Nain"
He looked at me and then looked back over to Coral, who'd turned to me as I was discussing my hauling.
"What's the exposure, Coral?"
She answered, flatly, "Its bad."
"How's this bad... at all? First off, you don't know that I'm wrong..." they looked away from one another and both began staring at me, wide-eyed with their eyebrows' raising higher with every millisecond, "Denton's got a history of coming to the aid of whomever seems to be in need and then using his military to enforce his remuneration for his troubles."
Coral looked away and her chest jolted upward, the slightest smile creeping at the corners of her mouth.
"She's been reading up, Dad."
The Man in the Black Suit looked at Coral with a half-smile, his nostrils flaring as he shook his head.
"Cadence, its one thing to use your power and influence to come to the aide of a political faction that's undergoing economic turmoil. Its another thing entirely to imprison The Emperor of the Empire you're sworn to serve."
Coral looked at me and then back to the Man in the Black Suit,
"Princess Aisling seems to think there's something going on. She's even making public requests for the Empire to cooperate with the ACT investigation into the Omega Grid and possible Imperial connections to the NMLA. Maybe Cadence is right, Dad. Even a broken clock is right once a day."
"It's twice-a-day, Coral," she looked away and squeaked a laugh, "and my concern isn't whether or not Senator Patreus has the Emperor imprisoned without the Empire's knowledge or if the Omega Grid system was used by the NMLA to coordinate the 9 Martyrs attack. My concern is that a pilot from our organization has told people that our organization has the use of the Omega Grid- which is currently under investigation by a tri-partite inter-galactic investigations organization- and has said outright that Senator Patreus does, in fact, have the Emperor imprisoned. Can either of you understand exactly what kind of situation that puts us into?
"I told you it was bad."
Coral's voice resonated into her pea cans and she put them down next to a stack of charts that she'd stacked about knee high. She took a monitoring sensor and placed it atop the stack, hanging just over the cans, and activated the sensor, before turning to the Man in the Black Suit,
"The exposure is probably nil. Its a bunch of anarchists in a permit-locked system tucked between Sirius and Utopia. At most it'll filter over as some propaganda or a guffaw amongst any various pilots. Why don't you just get one of our guys over there to run a carwash on the area?"
I didn't know what a carwash was, but I did know that everything The Empress was saying should have left the stuff I was saying ringing true-enough for the suits to exploit. I didn't get what all this garbage about exposure was.
"If The Empress is in complete agreement with me, then why would we need to be concerned about exposure? Aren't we in with the Empire, right now?"
The Man in the Black Suit looked at me hard, again. His eyes were squinted nearly shut, and his lower lip had climbed above his upper lip, the muscles around his mouth trembling and taut. Coral was looking at me, her eyes wide and bright and a smile on her face.
"Cadence," he looked down, over to Coral- who continued smiling at me- rolled his eyes, and back to me again, "First of all, there's no such thing as being in with the Empire. We're trying to make ourselves useful without being overtaken. Second of all, Princess Aisling is not going to 'agree with you,'" I tucked my chin into my neck as he continued, "and finally, its one thing for a member of the royal family- who lost her father to an NMLA plot- to express her concerns about the safety of the Emperor, and support for inter-galactic cooperation at a time when the Empire is being called on to expose itself to investigations by an external super-organization. Its different thing entirely to tell a group of anarchists that our organization has infiltrated the empire's inner workings to gain access to a communications network- that may not even exist- and that you- as a member of our organization- has knowledge that the Senate's leading military voice has secured control of the whole of the Empire."
Coral looked at the Man in the Black Suit, glancing down and back at me before looking back at him,
"Kinda makes us look like bad-asses, Dad. Its solid Power Projection."