2023-01-21: Bureaucratic TELLING DAD

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Jerome Borda set his desk phone down after a draining call with a girl who might as well be his daughter. His niece, at least. He'd been a friend of her father's back in the One Year War, and after Carl and his wife had passed, Jerome had taken custody. She'd had an argument with a good friend and had a favor to ask of him about it.

Jerome pinched his nose. "Girl that age should be asking me for Fire Bomber tickets, not..."

His gaze traveled to the document in front of him again. One of the few people in human space with clearance to read the whole thing.

WHISPERED, the header line said.

"Christ," he groused, and this time rolled in his chair, tilting his head up, to the massive emblem that took up most of the wall behind his desk. A shield emblazoned with a globe; in front of them both, a sword. A ribbon labeled MITHRIL curled across it all.

"Carl," he sighed. "Your girl's found a real firebrand for a friend."

Then he turned back to his seat and hit a single button, to give a call to one of his least favorite people.

"General Amit," grunted Mayer Amit, the head of Mithril's intelligence division.

"Mayer," Borda replied. "I need a reply on that W proposal."

Mayer sniffed. "On an insecure line? Not a chance."

"You don't consider telepathy a secure line, you goat!"

"It isn't. I don't consider your proposal particularly relevant, either. WHY am I supposed to authorize teenagers to know about one of the greatest threats to global security physically capable of occurring?"

"You know good and god damn well why! Those kids deserve to know what they're part of!"

Mayer Amit made the least impressed noise a human being could make. Jerome knew because he made it so often they had enough samples to study it. Painrose had maybe a bit too much fun, down in R&D. "Those kids aren't cognitively developed for another five years, and the mere fact they're talking about walking out shows they can't be trusted with it. We still can't trust the House, either. Not with the condition it's in now."

'The House' was Mithril's codename for the Shuffle Alliance, used exclusively internally. Jerome chewed his lip. Sucked it until it popped out of his mouth loudly, an irritated clap.

"This is getting us nowhere."

"Good, you noticed. Is that all?"

Borda huffed a breath. He contemplated another report. A little stone on his desk he'd been given. A game board piece, one of the larger white ones. It contained his own personal Shuffle Alliance NFID. He picked it up and turned it in his fingers.

"...no. Think I'm not giving it to you this time, Mayer."

Amit grunted again. He heard writing on Amit's side of the line. "Oh, negotiation? You know I'm better at this game, Jerry."

Borda held his figure up into the fluorescent light of his windowless office. "I'm calling a general meeting."

THAT got the old bastard to put his pen down. "You're bringing Mallory into this? You may be close to Testarossa's daughter, but--"

"That's Colonel Testarossa, leader of a Mithril Operations Division Fleet, General," Jerome said, emphasizing each component forcefully. "And while you've been taking notes on Muruta Azrael's nose hairs, she's been stretching herself to breaking, keeping the planet from shaking to pieces. I'm done waiting."

"I'm taking this proposal to Council, and the Merida Island plan, too."

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