>>52856391A good old fashioned "Plan" chapter, nice. I read somewhere that in a story, there's a few ways to do a plan:
The Reader doesn't know the plan, but the POV does.
The Reader knows the plan, and the POV does as well.
The POV doesn't know the plan.
I think the idea is that the first is best when the POV should be shown to be a genius, the last is best for suspense and turmoil for the POV, and the middle one is difficult to do properly, since you get neither the "gotcha" moment of the reveal, nor the emotional uncertainty on the POV's part. It's best used when the plan actually goes to shit, and then you're playing on the POV's reaction to things falling apart.
In this case, the effect of the "payload" seems mysterious enough that this would be in the third category, I wanna know what that lipstick is gonna do once it gets plugged in.
I like how she swept the deactivation of the explosive charge under the rug like that. Stockholm syndrome works pretty good kek. Seeing the progressive softening of the tsun has been done pretty well.
Was spreading that malware to the ship mainframe her intention the whole time? Rhetorical question.