View source for 2024-03-17: Hosing Down The Slaughterhouse Floor

{{Cutscene
|cast=Leina Ashta, Kenanji Avery, Delling Rembran, Ribbons Almark
|location=Orbital Ring
|summary=In the aftermath of Operation Fallen Angel, the pilot of Singularity-2 makes a decision to inform Cathedra of one of Celestial Being's best kept secrets. (Ignore the Date.  Takes place September 0098.)
}}
{{PhaseAndTurn
|phase=1
|turn=3
}}

Throughout the entire night she waited in a hangar on a battleship, in that far too familiar pilot suit; waiting for signs that the Golden Bird had been sighted, for the order to deploy.

It never came.

The Commander made jokes about how they're probably all here for nothing.  She hadn't been sighted in years, after all.  Not since the expedition to Gallia IV.  She was told she should just use this as an opportunity to study  After all the Commander was invested in her school performance.  Now?  Most of her squad was, minus a few resentful holdouts.  They asked about her test scores and the big essays and the like - didn't complain when she skipped a stake out to work on a project.

She couldn't.  

The focus wasn't there amongst the distant buzz of warfare, the intentions of so many at cross purposes, the feeling of some being snuffed out.  She couldn't feel what she really wanted to feel.  She didn't dare to ask for the damage and casualty reports, despite the anxiety.

Her open datapad sat atop a book with old binding, a biography on Aeolia Schenberg.  Another on his intellectual philosophy.  Her paper, a rebuttal to Celestial Being's challenge to the world remained a blinking cursor, with a split screen of a dated outline.  All of it velcroed to one spot so it just wouldn't float away.

She waited.

Eyes distant, as if she could simply reach out and grasp the state of someone she wanted to find, but it didn't work that way.  Hour upon hour, she did the same as the buzz dwindled away to nothing, until her eyes started to drowse and- A door slid open, a large man floating, steadying himself in the low gravity.

"Hey.  How's the paper coming?"

Leina looked up at her Commander, smiled ruefully, and just shook her head.

"Thinking of changing topics."  

"This late?  Might come with a penalty." He mused, but eventually smiled, "Can't say I blame you though.  ...  Anyhow, GN particle interference cleared enough that we've confirmed it's over.  Our bird never showed." Leina felt something in her chest abruptly tighten, as he continued, "So we're going off standby and starting our trip back.  Go catch some sleep."  As he turned around, something gave and she spoke a single word. "...  Wait." 

Kenanji stopped with his hand on the frame, and turned to look at her.

-=-=-

"People are going to talk you know." Kenanji uttered as if to give her one last chance to change the venue based on those optics of Commander and Subordinate flying away on patrol..

"Sure they will." Leina spoke from her place behind him in the cockpit, "But it's like what you always say about talk behind someone's back and 'justice'."

"Sometimes I wonder I only say that because I'm tired of remarks on my weight."

"Nothing wrong with that.  Just has you standing in solidarity with women everywhere."

"Heh."

The Beguir Pente's official reason for deploying was 'patrol' but as magnetic clamps from its claw unit came down to conceal them behind a section of strut, Avery cut the comms and looked at the young woman behind him.

"Private as we can get.  Are you satisfied?"

"Almost." Leina took out her phone, and reached over, taking out her phone, "Do you trust me?" He eyed her for a moment, then nodded, as she put it down upon the console, plugging it into a port, with a certain app active.  There was no visible response from the cockpit, but there was still the impression that something had changed in it's audio systems. 

"Until we're done talking - nothing we say will be caught by the ship's systems or stored on the black box." 

He gave her a momentarily incredulous look, that changed to amusement, "I'm not going to ask you where you got something like that...  and I don't need to remind you that it goes against Cathedra policy." He says, sounding less and less uneasy by the moment, as he fell into his 'cop' routine.  "You've always been very good at memorizing the regs.  So okay, what 'aren't' we discussing about right now?"  The girl settled back into the jump seat behind him, as she asked, "So you're as veteran as they come right?  First deployed even before my Mom did."

"Uh huh." He uttered, with a smirk, "Though I think it'd be in bad taste for any Witch Hunter to pull seniority on someone that served on the White Base." 

They aren't soldiers after all.

Leina nodded thoughtfully and continued, "So of all the raids and police actions and whatever else you've done all over the Earthsphere." It was a difficult decision to let this go, but after what happened, it was perhaps the only thing she could do.  The Shuffle Alliance was gone, and tonight?  So too was all incentive to keep this to herself.  "Have you ever heard of an 'Innovade'?"

-=-=-

"Your request has interesting timing." Replied the soft-spoken, placid voice of a green haired youth, known mostly for the fine work he'd done for the recently deceased Alejandro Corner, "To submit that true GN Drives be placed under Cathedra's jurisdiction only after Celestial Being has been defanged.  Previously your primary interest was in Singularity-3, which did not show itself...  and you fielded not a single Witch Hunter in assistance with the mop up."  As he reclined, unmoving, his smile as artificial as he, he asked, "My superiors have asked me to speak with you, to inform you that they cannot back this without an explanation.  So I'd like to know more of your reasons.  What has changed?  Why now?" 

The grey-haired visage of Delling Rembran, had been staring at him since the call started, in this moment perhaps, his gaze had hardened subtly, as he uttered. "There will be no explanation."

Silence reigned for several long seconds, before he broke the silence, "I see.  You leave me in a difficult position, after all the League has been opposed to any expansion of Cathedra's mandate.  Without knowing more of your intentions, I can hardly justify advising NUNE's assembly that it is in their best interests."  

"I did not ask you to." He turned away from the screen, finger hovering over a button, "Don't waste my time again with your pointless politicking."

The monitor went dark, leaving only a message that the call was ended by the individual on the other side.  Ribbons Almark did not so much as stand up, but there was the preamble of a snigger, "Huhuhu-" Before it became uproarious laughter, "-hahahahaha!"

Leaning forward abruptly as if the movement shifted his mood as well, there was something malevolent in his next words as his laughter petered out to dark anger, "The sheer /arrogance/-!  To speak to me as such!  Truly he must think he is a King among cattle."  The Messiah of this world considered this for a time, and ultimately he smiled...  "There is no need for me to reveal my hand early.  It is only a matter of time before he's undone by the abattoir of his own making."