Session 97: Preparation Revisited

The heist of the Frost Fair Blade went off with an acceptable number of hitches. The decoy team decoyed without their cover being blown, and without undue embarrassment. Reunited after an aborted attempt at an island getaway, the full crew of the Starfall is now en route to the Triad, and Tactical Officer Isaline Osler has called a meeting of the senior staff...
****
Isa sits at the table in the conference room, a map of the Triad spread out in front of her. "Captain, let me know if I'm understanding the situation correctly:
"We have stolen a weapon from the Seventh Dawn that also contains an Esper.
"The person who charged you with stealing this weapon claims to have your father as a hostage.
"You don't believe this threat to be accurate, but believe there may be a hostage.
"You don't intend to return this weapon to the person in question.
"We need a way to neutralize the person in question as a threat, retain control of the weapon, and if a hostage does exist ensure their safety.
"Is this a fair summary of our current state?"
Bast, leaning back in his chair, nods at Isa. "In all particulars."
Theoretically, Linnet is taking notes. The recording and/or tactical value of a sketch of Guan Yu's costume remains to be seen.
Yves arrived on time to the meeting of senior officers, if looking rather subdued. Maybe it has something to do with his earlier claim that he finally worked out how to put a water feature into his cabin that can handle any combat maneuver the Starfall might take. Or maybe it has something to do with the unusual degree of puffiness to his fur and hair, and the faint scent of ozone around him. He does seem....dry. Very, very dry. Regardless, he has a notebook out to take notes as well. Or maybe just work out what went wrong with the latest attempt.
"That's not a lot of particulars, Bast. Let's fill in a few more details before we land, please, rather than just walking up to them and winging it all. I mean, there's room to wing a lot of it, but maybe one wing's worth rather than two." Linnet gestures expansively with one of her own wings.
Isa nods. "I have some preliminary strategies, but yes. More detail would be helpful. I can start with my thoughts?"
"Remind me to look up summary for you later," Bast tosses off to Linnet before turning back to Isa. "Go ahead."
Linnet raises an unimpressed eyebrow and adds Bast's captain's hat to her sketch.
Yves appears to be working on some calculations for how long it takes for Isa to reach a point labeled "bad people" starting from various different cruising heights of the Starfall, while taking into account how long it takes for her to see a flare launched from that same point on the ground.
Isa begins enumerating plans on her fingers. "I see three potential courses. A posture of intimidation, a show of force sufficient to deter retaliation, or treachery as a prelude to violence. Given recent events, I have decided that subterfuge and stealth aren't going to work."
Yves looks up from the tiny sketch of a dragoon plummeting with spear at the ready. "...I agree with Isa. At least on that last part."
"...yeah, I think I need to heal up a bit before we try any more stealth." Bast taps on the edge of the table as he talks, a jerky, irregular motion. "And it wouldn't work, anyway - we'll be on their turf, they could have eyes anywhere. So we'll want to go in strong, just a question of how."
Almost as an afterthought, he adds: "I'd give it about even odds that they plan to kill me after the handoff."
"That's not going to happen," Isa declares.
"Oh, I've figured that for a while,," adds Linnet. "Which is why you're taking your muscle, your electricity, and your patch kit with you."
"We can probably kill them a lot faster than they can kill you, especially if they think that you don't think they're going to try to kill you for sure," Yves suggests.  "...assuming that murder is ethical here? I think it is? It probably is, they seem pretty bad."
"We're probably not going to get them on 'show of force' by ourselves, unless we want Bast's name attached to the Starfall and running through the Triad's criminal underworld at the speed of Yves' lightning. Which I presume we do not." Linnet sketches some lightning into the background. This is a very disconnected sketch, but it looks cool.

"Well, I don't exactly intend to let them," Bast continues. "But that seems relevant to our planning here.  The 'not' half on those odds is me wondering what a street gang in Zurvan is suddenly doing with Espers, and whether they'll expect some further use out of me after this job."
"Can we be hired muscle? I've never been hired muscle before," Yves asks, now intrigued. "Bast, who went off somewhere mysterious, did mysterious things, got mysteriously rich, came back with mysterious hired bodyguards, did a lot of murder in an ethical way. That's a different narrative."
"I'll have to practice not giggling, but I'm not ruling it out." Linnet sizes Yves up for 'muscle.'
Isa considers Bast. "We should discuss goals," she says. "And priorities."
"Yes! Like.... collateral damage." Yves frowns at his paper. "Because if we all walk into one place in a city, things could get very... broken... maybe a little faster than ideal."
Bast gives Yves an amused headshake before returning to Isa's more sober assessment.
"Like you said, giving them the Blade is out. I'd rather not even bring it with us, but if it's clear from the start that there's no handoff, then our options get narrowed down to just 'fight' real quick, and I still haven't been able to turn up anything about the hostage."
"We'd better bring it with us; sounds like Guan Yu wants in on the fight." Linnet nods to Yves.
"I'd rather not introduce that variable," Isa says to Linnet.
"I'm less certain on where Guan Yu stands on things from just one speech," cautions Bast. "Yves? You're our expert here."
"Are they going to give us anything on the hostage if we can't even show off the blade?" Yves asks. "And--I think he wants to fight, and he wants to fight for, uh, the good guys? Though I would need to talk to him some more to get a really good sense of what his sense of the morality of warfare is on a broad level, he does accept us so far as people who are trying to do what's right. This whole 'threatening random hostages' thing seems like it keeps us there, from most, I don't know, ethical standards. I've been trying to read about those, but the text gets really hard to follow, really fast." He frowns and mutters to himself, "This is why no one likes moral philosophers."
"If we don't show up, the hostage is dead. If we do show up but we don't show the blade, Bast, what chance do you give the hostage?" asks Linnet flatly.
Isa winces. "Ethics of Warfare was an awful lecture to have first thing in the morning."
"Depends on how well we can bullshit our way through that conversation. We know that thing isn't safe to handle, so bringing a box would make sense. Would they demand to see inside the box before they give us anything?" Bast shrugs by way of completing that thought.
"Can we make a fake blade?" Yves asks. "I mean, do they even know what it looks like? Because we have a great smith around, and we know exactly what it looks like."
"...does Artemicion do glowy special effects?" Linnet's eyebrow is threatening to disappear into her hair.
"What makes it unsafe to handle?" Isa, who was not on the heist, asks.
"If not, there's always some phosphorescent gels, though there's a limit to how fancy those can look," Yves muses.
Linnet responds to Isa: "Frostbite. Burned the ever-loving hell out of my arm when I picked it up.  Didn't burn Yves during their conversation later, so I suppose that varies. That'd be another good thing to clear up."
Isa hms. "Hm. I'm willing to give it a shot."
"So we have the option of a decoy blade, with the caveat that it's going to be really difficult to make the thing look sufficiently supernatural, and the additional caveat that if we bring a decoy, we don't have Guan Yu potentially fighting with us." Linnet nibbles on her pencil, then retraces a thought from the beginning of the meeting. "Bast, you mentioned 'what they're doing with Espers.' Do you have reason to believe this isn't their first?"
"Oh! The frost burn thing! I was wondering about that," Yves says. "So I made sure Guan Yu wouldn't be upset by some testing, and then I asked Apoc to look into it. I could ask him if he has any results yet? Apoc, I mean. I don't ask the Espers to track the results of people handling their, uh, material forms, that feels like it would be. Sort of weird."
Isa frowns at Yves. "Was he the best choice? We know he has an agenda regarding it."
"So we know he has an agenda, and it's not about causing them harm or running off with them or telling other people their weaknesses or anything," Yves says brightly. "Which makes him the perfect choice! Compared to people who probably don't have an agenda, but might have one we don't know about."
Isa doesn't look pleased with this answer, but doesn't disagree with it.
"This is the first I've heard of them showing an interest. They might not even know what the Blade is, exactly. But it's...very different from their usual work, and fobbing it off on me is even stranger. Could be them deciding to branch out, could be someone else acting through them, either option's good for a headache." Bast looks like he's most of the way to one already.
"So then Captain, where would you put 'finding out their game' on the goals and priorities list?" Isa's tone is sweet and polite.
Yves pops out of the room for a moment to check on the results from Apoc, muttering something vaguely about analgesics as he goes.
"Below 'taking them out of the game'. Good to find out more if we can, but I don't see a clear route to that just now."
Isa ticks off fingers again. "Get them off our backs, retain the Blade, rescue the hostage, take them out of the game, find out what they're up to. Anything you'd like to shift around?"
"I figured 'get them off our backs' and 'take them out' for the same goal, sitting at the top. Not seeing a way to separate the two. You?"
"Sure," Isa says. "Give them the blade."
"...so, attack them while they're leaving with the fake?" asks Linnet.
"Do you think that anything short of completely dismantling them means they keep coming after you?" presses Isa.
"I don't think this is the sort of transaction where they get what they want and walk away satisfied. Strela has tried to kill me before; only reason she'd stop now is that I'm useful to them." Bast pauses briefly, then adds: "As long as they think I'm useful."
"So is our goal right now 'destroy them so completely that they leave you alone forever,' or is that not realistic with whoever they're going to bring to the handoff?" asks Linnet without looking up from her page.
"Well then. Why are we discussing anything other than our plan of attack?" Isa asks.
(Linnet's face is totally straight and her pencil has not left her sketch. There's a lot of lightning all over this page and very few useful notes. What minutes?)
Yves pops back in. "Great news, everyone! I brought some helpful answers." He gestures to Apoc, Artemecion, and--he hasn't found a third person with a name starting with A to answer more questions. That's probably for the best.
Artemicion is dressed for the forge, still wearing the thick protective apron. Apoc is dressed for some sort of work that requires a six-button shirt to keep five buttons free. They are both wearing thick gloves, however.
Bast gestures to a couple of open chairs. "What do we have?"
Yves drops back down into the chair he was in before. He smells a bit less like ozone than he did at the start of the meeting.
Apoc goes for the chair closest to Isa, realizes where it is, and decides to take another chair for absolutely no reason at all. "The Frost Fair Blade can choose his wielder," he says. "If he doesn't want you to hold him, he'll let you know with a highly-localized wave of frost. I'm assuming the jackals had something to protect against it so they could store it safely?" After getting affirmation, he continues. "I'd think one of you could even use him as a weapon, so long as he liked the intended purpose. I haven't been able to communicate with him without Yves there, but our first test had me try to pick up the blade without Yves's authorization, and that didn't work out at all."
"Two months and I could make a duplicate that would fool a curator," Artemicion says sharply. "Two days? No."
Linnet glances at Apoc's arms.
Yves makes a sort of apologetic gesture towards Apoc.
"What happened when you tried?" Isa asks. "Be specific."
Apoc takes off the left glove. His skin always trended toward an icy blue, but the color of his hand is significantly cooler than normal, and shards of frosted ice remain around his fingers and on the back of his hand, restricting his movements. "The pain's stopped," he says, "but it'll be a few hours before this goes away completely and I can use my hand again." He tries to close it into a fist, but the ice keeps him from doing so. "I don't expect any permanent damage. The glove's so the Hive stops panicking every time one of them sees me."
He catches himself. "Sorry, skipped to the result. I closed my hand on the handle, tried to lift it, and frost swirled down from the blade to my arm, which hurt like hell. Opened my hand to drop it, then the ice formed and locked it in place."
Isa's brow furrows. "No chance to explain yourself, to make your case?"
"You can use anything in the top right drawer of the lab desk that's not labeled with one of those warning stickers about dangerous species interactions," Yves says, full of sympathy. "...I mean, only some of them actually help with the pain, but the ones that don't at least tend to be distracting?"
"Not a fan of long-winded speeches, our poking stick. Give me that." Linnet walks over and takes Apoc's hand in hers, glares at him to forestall any comment, and throws a bit of Cura his way, minimizing the usual showy effects.  "So, Bast, do we ask for a less convincing duplicate or abandon that idea?"
Apoc tolerates the Cure from Linnet, which is a spikier response than he gives anyone else aboard the ship.
"Also," Yves adds to the officers, "I talked to Guan Yu about some of what happened. He's currently very much not in favor of being taken away from us by strangers, since we're respecting his moral standards, not trying to kidnap him. So he didn't want to chat about being stolen, as he saw it."
"Not sure we gain much by faking it. I'd say leave it or come prepared to defend it. On top of what the Blade can already do to defend itself, that is - gotta admit I'm curious to see Guan Yu in a fight," Bast admits.
When Apoc's hand is looking at least somewhat less dangerous, Linnet slides the glove back onto it and pats his arm in a professional manner. "You'll live. Thank you for serving as Yves' experimental subject. Hope you've learned your lesson." Despite herself, she winks at him, then turns to Bast.  "So do you have any idea how many the four of us are expecting to face?"
"I would rather bring him along, so that he can help defend his own honor against the people who were trying to send him off to--probably nowhere and no one good, even if that meant we got him out of there," Yves says. "But I don't really know tactics very well, so I'll trust whatever Isa and Bast think is best on this."
Isa frowns. "I'll be honest, I'm starting to believe that any plan that involves talking isn't going to go well for us. I'm officially recommending a pre-emptive strike, as hard and as fast as we can make it."
"At no point did we think we were going to be able to talk our way out of this, Isa," Linnet rolls her eyes. "But somewhere in there, we need to get information out of somebody before I have to figure out what color of magic Speak With Dead is supposed to be."
Yves looks down at his calculations about dragoon to surface speed and impact.
"No, we want to get information. It's a low priority."
"You're not the one they're trying to blackmail," Linnet mutters.
"Captain's priorities, not mine," Isa retorts.
Bast considers.  "I'd say we bring him. Better leverage for the information on the hostage, and it should be a nice little surprise for them. And I like plan Hit Hard And Hit First myself, but we probably write off the hostage if we go that route."
"I don't think it's blackmail unless they're threatening to reveal information," Yves muses. "Threatening to kill someone is more like...coercion?"
"At least without some talking happening first, I mean." Bast turns to Linnet for a belated reply. "They have...probably between several dozen and a hundred heads, total? Won't all be there, of course, and much of that isn't muscle. But I expect there'll be more than just Ramoc and Strela to deal with."

A ceiling tile above Bast's head clears its throat.
Bast looks up. "Please tell me you found something."
Isa doesn't. "Tell me they have shallow leadership."
Linnet rolls her eyes at them both. "Hello, Chmurka, nice to hear from you. I hope your day's going well."
"Shallow leadership? Like... superficial?" Yves blinks a few times. "--oh, like, not a whole command structure ready to fill the gaps if the people in charge are, uh..." He glances sideways, then up, at the various people in the room now. "...no longer there."  He is perhaps a little more shy about just saying murder with this much of an audience.
"You're getting it," Isa says.  "Taking out a few dozen will be hard. Three? Not as hard."
"Just those two these days, last I heard," interjects Bast. "Everyone else is meat as far as they're concerned. They'll have some enforcers, but I think they'll be more occupied with grabbing a place at the top than getting back at us if we take Ramoc and Strela down."
The ceiling tile with the vocal fry slides to the right, and the Starfall's spymaster sticks her head into the conference room. "H'lo," she says, eyes scanning the room and finding six other people where she hoped to find at most two. Her ears swivel around to press against the back of her head even as she hangs upside down. "News, recs." Chmurka has gotten even more sentence-fragmented since the Holly Incident.
"Perfect," Isa says. "Can we guarantee both of them would come to the handoff?"
"Yep," Chmurka answers Isa.
"I don't think either of them would miss a chance to gloat. Or to get a piece of me after, if that's their plan. But it sounds like we've got something more solid to go on?" Bast picks up an abandoned mug and raises it slightly towards Ceiling Chmurka. "Want some coffee while you share the news?"
Isa looks at the map on the table. "How hard would it be to make sure every 'customer' in this café square is one of ours?"
"They want to kill you," Chmurka says flatly, then adds "nah" to the coffee offer. "Gonna find and kill all of us, make sure we can't get our spots back. Which is dumb," and here her tone goes bitter, "'cause that's not happening no matter what they do." Bast nods. "That's good to know. Big ambush, or are they getting cocky?"
"See, this makes me feel a lot better about our plan where we kill them first," Yves says. "....in...an ethical manner."

Chmurka quirks one ear to the side, looking at the map above Isa. "Three blocks north, one east," she says, then adds in more information and directions until Isa lands on a block roughly fifteen minutes in from the docks. "One of ours, before we split. They'll meet there if he says," and there she twitches her chin to indicate Bast is the one whose word would carry.
Isa nods. "Set it up. Linnet, talk to the crew; we need enough volunteers to watch the ship. I don't pretend that you'll have trouble finding people to fill café seats."
"On it. Where are we parking, and how are we getting back?"
"At the docks, and on foot." Isa sketches out a couple of quick routes. "Yves, talk to the Blade. Let it know that it'll only be coming out as a last resort, and if it won't accept that it's staying on board."
Yves nods quickly. "He'll understand the tactical reasoning; I just hope it's not a problem for his pride. I'll explain."
"...and how are we not having a bunch of Underminers trailing us back to the ship?" Linnet has mangled the name of the rival gang enough that it's permanently stuck for her.
"We're going to kill everyone who would give that order and leave them fighting over the scraps," Isa says plainly.
"...ethically!"
Isa does not tell Yves what grade she got in Ethics of Warfare.
"How about this - if anyone but one of us picks it up, it's open season, and we ask him to wait for our word otherwise?" Bast looks back and forth between Yves and Isa.
Isa nods. "I'd consider that a last resort," she concedes.
"I think that would help make the situation clear, and give him a good signal for if he should spring his own ambush," Yves says. "I'll tell him that."
"All right. Let's talk about the hostage?" prompts Linnet.
"I have a thought on the ambush," Apoc says.
Yves looks encouragingly toward Apoc.
While Chmurka will offer her input without waiting for anyone to ask for it, Apoc is very aware of his tenuous standing with everyone that's not the incredibly accurate judge of character that is Yves Mjrwin. After the acknowledgement, he continues.
"Anyone with ill enough humor to make an enemy of our captain is not the type to play with merely the cards on the table. Chmurka's intel puts both of our targets here in person, but I should expect they would also be amenable to leaving no survivors behind."
Yves looks briefly puzzled, then more concerned as he follows this line of argument.
"If they have anyone waiting in the wings to provide support, we'd do well to anticipate and mitigate that. To my knowledge, we have yet to recruit a team of assassins of considerable skill." Apoc says. "To that end, I offer my services and my sword in securing a loose perimeter, and should any threaten the actors, the curtain falls."
...Linnet looks as though this causes her physical pain.
"The day I trust you at my back is the day I deserve to be stabbed in it," Isa says plainly.
Yves valiantly resists the urge to offer his sincere and enthusiastic acceptance of this offer while trying to convey his opinion that it's a great idea at Bast and Isa purely through his expression. Also some ear-twitching.
"...so put him somewhere very far from your back?" offers Linnet.
"I tried. We were outvoted."
"...also he'd be guarding the actors, strictly speaking," Yves says.
"And yet, here we are, Lady Osler," Apoc says sharply. "Your plan is sound and one I support, but if anyone with a surfeit of crossbow and a deficit of conscience arrives on the scene, your carefully-created crowd becomes a veritable shooting gallery. I am not your equal on the battlefield but I can acquit myself well cutting a throat and dropping a sniper off a fire escape. I'd no sooner offer to watch your back than you'd need it -- it's theirs that captures my concern."

"That's a lot of streets to cover. Who would you take with you?" asks Bast.
"Explain your reasoning to the crew who'll be in the square, and let them choose who they want watching over them," Isa answers bluntly.  "And hope they trust you more than I do."
"You'll make your pitch after I get them on board in the first place." Linnet nods to him.
"In a perfect world, Captain, you. But you have the leading role to play, and again, we are terribly short on assassins. And Yves, much as I adore your company, you stick to the shadows but only after striking up a conversation to ensure that no one minds." The smile he gives Yves has some gentle needles in it. Then he says what he's not really wanting to say. "Ideally, my partner in this errand of watchful protection would be Diabolos."
"I could talk to Diabolos about it. I think it's a great idea, and of course, the whole 'lurking in shadows' thing really works there. Assuming there are no objections? I mean, from Diabolos either, but I can't see why there would be." Yves is full of the bright optimism of someone who really likes having long chats with ominous masks about their lurking preferences.
Bast makes a decidedly noncommittal hand gesture in response. "See what Diabolos says. It would be good to have eyes on the roofs."
"Right, we ready? Bast, fill your belt, Yves, fill your ozone reservoirs, Isa, sharpen your spear, Apoc, sharpen your wits. I have a flash mob to choreograph."  Linnet stares into the corner and starts ticking off a list in her head.
"I have a lot of people to talk to!" Yves is so enthusiastic. Possibly because all the people he has to talk to are not the sorts of people traditionally called 'people' by the sorts of people who traditionally are.
"Right. And Chmurka? See if we can goad them into bringing the hostage to the handoff," concludes Bast.
"Whoever the hell the hostage actually is," adds Linnet.
"Mmhm," Chmurka says, withdrawing partially but not entirely into the ceiling.
Linnet leads the procession of anticipatory murder out of the conference room, leaving the Captain alone with his thoughts, with the spectre of old villains looming in the near future.
Leaving the Captain almost alone.

"No one else is coming," Chmurka says quietly.
"Is that 'nobody left', or 'not sticking what's left of their necks out'?" Bast asks without looking up.
"Can't find everyone," Chmurka says. She doesn't want to be having this conversation. "But no one's coming."
"You left. Took off after someone, sure. We -- they get that. But word gets around. They know you found something new."
Bast shrugs. "Smart. No point in giving Ramoc's crew a shot at them, not when there's no more Reclaimers to back them up. Can't exactly hold it against them when I was the fir-well, second one out."
He does look up, after that. "Though I'm sorry about where that left you. And all the rest. That's part of why I'm coming back to clean this up, now that I can."
"Yeah." She looks around the conference room, down at the historical artifact of a meeting table, at the technical impossibility of the ancient airship Bast captains.
"I miss how it used to be, sometimes. Wondering if Diamante and Orlen were going to botch something. Watching the Orphans when they were supposed to be watching me. Helping you in the workshop. Listening to Aurin's stories."
"I'll never have that again. Maybe this will be better." Her hand travels to the site of Holly's punch two weeks ago, before she catches herself and pulls it back to her side.
"I'll go find what I can about the hostage's location. Bye, Captain."
Chmurka disappears into the ceiling, pulling the tile closed behind her.
"Good luck, Shank. And pass the word - if we get the Undersiders sorted, I'll be looking for people for some mostly-clean work after."
Bast settles back in his chair, arms crossed on the table before him, alone with his thoughts.