>>5678087“…I’ll have to speak to Taski about it.” All eyes turned to the head of the table. Keimann’s eyes glittered darkly, and his voice was as hard as steel. “But while their concerns are valid, a strike is <span class="mu-i">unacceptable</span>. Not when we haven’t even finished mining the Teladi’s next shipment of ice for Spare Fleet.”
The Supreme Archon looked as if he had aged several years since the last time Larid had saw him. It hadn’t helped either that, in the haste to call the meeting, he’d arrived unshaven and underdressed. Sweatpants ill-suited him, but he at least had the decency to throw on a military jacket atop his t-shirt.
But he didn’t feel too much sympathy. It had been Keimann’s plea for aid that eventually led to Farren’s involvement in the whole mess. The Jedi didn’t need the Force to know that the Ferroan was feeling incredibly guilty, and that he was cringing under the frosty stares of the Triumvirate.
“And what do we tell the people in the meanwhile?” General Sho demanded.
“Tell ‘em the truth,” drawled Aure. “Freak accident happened and they woke up something in hibernation. No different from a mynock or an exogorth, or whatever the hell those space whales are from old myths and legends. Force knows that this part of space has strange and unexplained alien life.”
Larid wasn’t the only one who picked up the inflection. Pass it off as just a result of bad luck. Incredibly bad luck, but one that wasn’t any cause for fear. Obviously, security would be amped up, but Force willing, there’d be far less of these encounters, and the MSDF would be able to (gradually) wean the additional manpower back to Operation SPHERE.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t any real way for them to say that this was a one-off thing. As far as the entirety of the room was concerned, this was the first time that they’d ever dealt with something of this kind. They were in an intelligence blind spot, and were desperate to try and rectify that. Ghost stories and hearsay passed along from ship-to-ship were being scrutinized like academic sources. A discrete request for information had been sent to the Teladi, and the ransacked treasures of the Tof poured over for any sort of clues or context.
“I suppose that will do as a stop-gap measure,” Mercantor rumbled, “But I couldn’t help but notice the fact that we left out what was <span class="mu-i">inside</span> of the bioship.”
An uncomfortable silence fell upon the assembly as the overhead lights dimmed. The holotank in the center of the room, displaying a map of Operation SPHERE’s ongoing progress, derezzed and disappeared. Then, all eyes in the room were glued to the holographic images of Farren Gaelle and the alien warrior, dueling in the (literal) guts of the bioship.
Keimann was first to speak. “I’ve seen my fair share of species in the Tof’s slave markets. I can safely and definitely say that I’ve never seen anything like…that.”
(cont.)
