“How’s our wife?”
“Oh, you know, she’s well. We practiced rolling sushi together the other night. We totally ■■■■■■ it up, just ended up ordering in. We should sync sometime I think you’d appreciate the memory. Or, if you’re done kicking in Balligan’s teeth down there you could take a turn up here in the chair while I get some time away. If I have to give one more speech on our behalf I’ll blow my ■■■■■■■ brains out.”
“■■■■■■■■, you both know we love it. So logistics are all taken care of?”
“Fisher King’s been making regular hot drops with escort from the Wellspring Shard. Northern Coalition kill-teams have been seen hunting for capitals in the area though so we’ve had to reduce our deployment schedule and the amount of time we’re on-station before we jump back out.”
“Here I was thinking egger duty would make you fat and lazy. Looks like only the former’s true… What, I’m joking don’t give me that look. Did you put any more thought into—”
“The Victorieux? Yeah, it’s a bad plan. Would be good for morale? Sure. Would it bring in taxes and another source of income for the Accords? Sure. But the biggest issue I can think of is keeping the poor staff safe. You’ve got yourself an army of devil dogs down there Pixy, and I’m not up here to play judge every time a warclone gets handsy our doesn’t like their dice roll. And I’m not a pimp.”
“Whenever someone fucks up just shoot them out the airlock to cool them dow—”
“We are not shooting anyone out the airlock—”
"Oh come the ■■■■ on, it’d be a simple arrangement. Show aptitude and trust, get a few days liberty in orbit to destress before sending them back down the ladder to Skarkon. You know these troops as well as I do, they won’t ■■■■ up that if they feel like they’re earning a privilege. It’ll keep them from getting bored down below, if nothing else. You know what happens when warclones get bored."
“Fine. But if they end up caving in some poor ArcSec trooper’s skull because they lose at roulette I’m selling the whole damn thing to the Angels as a gift. Did you read the report?”
“What? Oh, yeah, no. I skimmed it.”
“You didn’t read it?”
“Did you?”
“… I’m of the opini—”
“Opinion that we only have so much storage in our head, yeah,sure. No use filling it with this egghead math. Gotta say though, ARC has a knack for graphic design on their ■■■■.”
“So you looked at the figures?”
“I looked at the pictures and scanned Table 4, yes.”
“Notice anything important?”
“To our interests? Only one major source of invasion for Molden Heath. Varigne. Piece of ■■■■ cull-de-sac last I checked, we don’t even have any outposts out there or planetary districts. Do you think EDENCOM will bite?”
“Frankly I’m not sure. We still haven’t received any word on the nature of Red Troop, and everyone in the Round Table is jumpy. If there’s any chance that EDENCOM will try to stick their fingers in the Heath we need to be prepared for that, even if they never show and write off the Heath as not worth it to mount a defense.”
“Have you considered?—”
“Before you finish, I have. The decision to meet the triangles ourselves might be something best left to the Round Table, and I imagine their opinions may swing heavily depending on how this Red Troop business and the initial trig invasions go.”
“Okay, not good not bad. So do we stay the course?”
“Solid maybe. So far as anyone outside the Accords knows, ‘Avalon’ is still just an outpost hidden in Molden Heath. I’ve picked out a few possible opinions, in case Molden Heath becomes a hotbed of EDENCOM activity and we need to pull chalks. Don’t get me wrong, I know we can win this war but at a certain point the safety of our troops comes first.”
[…]
“UNF sent us the system, they’ve had it marked for settlement for a while now but think it’s a good candidate in case we need to take our ball and leave. All in all, I’d say it’s a good place to ■■■■ off to should worst come to worst.”
“Is this the mass the wormhole can support? Can we really do this?”
“We’d have to make multiple trips and work out the logistics of moving everything there but… Similar projects have been done before.”
“What’s the mass of a Fortizar?”