Quoted By:
<span class="mu-b">”You're.. You're only doing this to test me! To see if I can order the death of my own people! That's what this is! I don't want Mitel to die...”</span>
“He doesn't have to. You <span class="mu-i">always</span> have a choice. You can unlock and allow him to fire his gun. Of course, we'll lose out on that research, but be able to recoup some from the body of the Gnarra, and the critical information- but we can recoup some losses. That data will be worth one million DM otherwise...”
<span class="mu-b">”Wait- a million, right? So they are exactly the same! Their value is the exact same!”</span>
“Mhmm. But you're forgetting something- the gun. Mitel will fire his gun exactly once into the creature's central nervous system- this is how Enforcers are trained to kill lethal threats. The electrical energy to power his weapon's magnetic array is almost free with our fusion generators, so that doesn't account to much. The magnetic slug, made of a super-dense material similar to iron, will have a very small chance to dent on impact, which means it can simply be melted down and recycled. But every time that weapon is fired; the magnetic rings inside its barrel will displace slightly; about once every two thousand shots or so- these weapons will need maintenance. It will take a low grade technician only five or ten minutes to realign the magnetic rings. So a slight chance to deform the ammunition, a negligible power cost, one in two-thousandths worth of a single person's work shift... Do you know what that equals to? One Mark. It costs one mark more to keep him alive.”
<span class="mu-b">”I- I don't... I could pay that myself-”</span>
“No, you can't. There are one hundred and eighty billion Jaxtians, don't be stupid, girl. You understand what this means. There is an optimal choice here. What is yours?”
You feel tears running down your cheeks. You don't want to kill him; this kind man who has never done anything to you- you like him. You like his kids, and his wife, and how she leaves out his lunch in a little pattern, or how she waters the flowers on the west side of her house in the morning so she can avoid the afternoon sun... It will ruin them all. You don't want to <span class="mu-i">make</span> a choice at all.
>Allow Mitel to defend himself and survive
>Let Mitel die
