"There you are!"
Vanya plopped down on the sandstone half-wall next to Corporal Goss Vorysadora. She ignored his exaggerated "startled" jump. She handed him one of the two tube-shaped breakfast concoctions in her hands.
"Oh. Thanks, Commander." Goss peeled one edge of the tortilla away to peer at the contents. "What's in this?"
Vanya harrumphed. "Food. Protein, lipids, a few carbs, some kind of shredded vegetation, and a flavored sauce. From a food cart about a block and a half away. The smell of it isn't burning away my sinuses, so I figure it's fine. Why, do you want to swap?"
Snickering, Goss made a show of taking a large bite.
"I'm off duty, Commander," he volunteered when the quiet had stretched on to half the meal.
"I'm not," Vanya admitted. "I'm eating, though. You're my witness. Thanks for teaching me how to say 'Okay, Dad' in Mando, by the by. Maybe I can get through the rest of today without having to deploy it over comms."
Goss snuck a sideways glance at the Jedi.
"I heard you're going to whup my shebs over the doorknockers," he said abruptly. Instinctively he took a larger bite of the remaining sausage than was probably wise.
Vanya did not sigh, but she did make a point of breathing slowly as her gaze wandered across the plaza.
"I was annoyed as heck," she admitted. "The ramifications walloped me all at once. I had to say something to influence two separate warrior cultures at once away from casual use of your new tactic. First think I thought was, 'let's hint at a drop into the cacky'. If I'd had time," Vanya shrugged, "would have been more effective to suggest this COULD be great IF ONLY certain arrangements are made."
"What ramifications?" Goss demanded, wounded.
"Goss, love, you baited people into dangerous terrain so they would lash out at malicious forces. Including energy weapons and assorted machinery. For no benefit immediate or eventual to the people you used. For a whole lot of cost to them. You told them a hugely expensive lie, you can't even know which lie because nobody knows yet, and you had no plan to compensate."
"Oh." Goss chewed unhappily. He swallowed. "You got a real thing about consent, Commander. I know that. I just," he trailed off for a moment as he hunted for not the best words but the most accurate ones. "Never crossed my mind."
"I know." Vanya gave him a quick one-armed hug. "You had a hundred problems, you figured out a quick solution for one of them, you sent it off and turned your attention to the remaining pile of a hundred 'n' twelve problems. I know. My job, one of my jobs, is to get you access to information for good decision making." She dug out a cleaning rag to wipe her fingers. "We're going to solve this. And it'll be the kind of solution that reduces your pile instead of multiplying it."
Goss knew enough to wait for the punchline.
"I don't think I deserve the Sad Doggo face, vod. Seriously. You're going to take a detail of your favorite inventive Fremen over to the Revolving Temple and bargain some translation databanks from Ghostie Elnon for how he communicates with the Aur'rook. That's step one. You can probably do that between patrols today."
"Okay?" Goss sounded dubious. He wondered where the hitch would be hiding.
"Once you've got a translator sufficiently compiled, the yard for the Revolving Temple is a good spot to try a few of the smaller Aur'rook until you find one interested in a resource swap. That's the first half of step two. Second half: Be transparent about working your way toward a fair and mutually beneficial ongoing bargain with the Aur'rook. Bear in mind during it that the Crimson Nova had been stealing their children for fights in the gambling pit they used to have under Dewback Stables. The more open and obvious you can be about what you want, why you want it, and what hazards you foresee, the better. Your goal is going to be a mutual aid arrangement between the Freedworlds surface folks and the Aur'rook. Find out what they want, need, and need to avoid, and find it out by asking them directly. Talk about how to do team tactics. Find out what local species can swim in the shallower, grittier sands around the Ports -- and how to tune the doorknockers to draw those not adult or child Aur'rook. Copy?"
Goss rubbed the back of his neck. "How is this any different from officerin'?"
Vanya turned to stare directly at him. "What?"
"You know." Goss waved vaguely. "Doing officer work. I'm a noncom. I like being a noncom! I don't want to officer." He noticed a smear of bright yellow on his hand.
Vanya dug her cleaning rag back out of its pocket. "Suck it up, kitten," she advised briskly. "You went halfway and stopped. It made more trouble for you. Now you're going to finish it right. Here, lemme see your neck a second."
As she industriously scrubbed the sauce off the back of his tunic, Vanya returned to her marching orders. "Once you've got a workable deal outlined with the Aur'rook, you and your Fremen buddies take this to whoever counts as 'top brass' in the Freedworlds government."
"I don't have the pull to get on Chancellor Kanter's schedule," Goss grumbled.
"That's a fair point." Vanya ran through her mental databank. "Try a local Hutt name of Derma. Actually, let me revise that: first go find a Twi'lek name of Trenloe. Tell him you've got a done deal ready to make the Freedworlds safer, but you need his boss to take over because you're a foreigner. And because you don't want to be an officer. Tell him Chaplain Ysadora says this falls into the same category as an ethical obligation to hothouse flowers. Feel free to not know what that means. What's important to you is, if you get Trenloe on board then you'll have Derma on board, and that gets you through step three. You should have completed the whole program by next Atunda."
Goss thought the list over. "Copy," he acknowledged at last. "Why do I feel like there's a step four coming my way?"
"Because you are a smart man," Vanya said. "Goss, I love you. I love how you approach puzzles. I love your joy in the Drone Wars thing, especially since you don't just use it for your own creativity but as a channel for others to turn destructive impulses into constructive ones. I love that you dedicate yourself fully to making a mess. And then you enjoy picking up all the pieces, starting over but in a more knowledgeable and happier place. The message I want you to take away is absolutely not 'don't think up and implement creative ways to address an overwhelming danger.' You hear me? You're a clever soul. Stay clever. Include in your inventiveness not only the first splash, but also how you want the ripples to spread."
Goss felt odd about that. The commander was always easily affectionate. She admired an individual's skills in a casual way, without prompting or fuss. In ten years he could count maybe four times that he had heard anything like this -- a reminder that she watched people all the time. She remembered not just what they did but how they went about it. She thought about what lay deep underneath the surface of people.
She picked up on things that maybe did not want to be known.
Goss found himself wondering yet again, as he had done five years ago after getting dumped into a veterans' support group, who might conduct the same ongoing analysis of their commander. Complete with the rare carefully-timed emotional stun grenade.
Vanya patted him between the shoulder blades. "I think I got it all before it could set. Sorry, I should have handed you a napkin with the ration. That ronto thing-a-ma-bob really is drippy, isn't it?" She rolled up the stained rag tightly before she shoved it back into a pocket. "Step four, and yes I know you're going to roll your eyes at me for this. Step four, I want you to write longhand on a flimsiplast one hundred times, 'I will not treat people like things'.
Goss squawked. "What, am I four?!"
"One hundred times," Vanya repeated firmly. "Call it religious penance. There's got to be something that qualifies as spiritual counseling or I don't get paid for this morning's duty."
"Commander," Goss said, exasperated, "you don't draw pay!"
"That won't stop 'em," Vanya lamented. She dug out her datapad. "Speaking of the Ministry of Finance: Davish found us a bigger ship. I like it so far! But all the decent padding, mattress and bench cushions and whatever, got harvested way back. I need to look into cheap replacements. Hey, that reminds me: the Nova stole a certain High Vorish personal storage trunk. Should you happen to spot anything like it in your adventuring, drop me a note? And Davish, I think. Somebody snarled up my Holonet account. I don't always transmit or receive when my local unit thinks it did."
Goss nodded absently. He thought he had nothing more to say until the moment after Vanya got to her feet, pulling the hood of her cloak up to ward off the rising sun.
"Commander?"
"I am right here." Her response was the same reassuring, affectionate, confident reaction that had been tradition since the the Twilight assault. She kept the hood in place but turned to face him fully, expression interested and welcoming, her arms loose at her sides,
"Can I have one of the Variwalkers?"
Whatever requests she might have anticipated, that was not among them. Vanya blinked a couple of times.
"The ... the seven meter tall lizard people statue things?"
Goss nodded earnestly.
"From the Eonae chamber yesterday?"
Goss did not know what an 'eeyon nay" was but he was willing to ignore that in favor of arranging his face to look earnest yet forlorn. "They're heavy armor, Commander, designed to operate in this environment. I'm a heavy armor pilot. I think it's a smart match. And with all these warlord raids, you know, I work better when I'm in the right kit."
Vanya looked at him. "They aren't mine, vod'ika!"
That did not count as a flat refusal. "But you can figure out who's got authority, right, Commander? And convince 'em?"
Maybe he overdid it a little, because the corner of Vanya's mouth twitched upward. "Far as I can deduce, Goss, they belong to either Master Kit'Sedda or to Babulya Belshanna. Maybe to Salbur, if they turn out to be Eborrean instead of Bendu. You planning to emigrate to Freedworlds citizenship so you can qualify as a resident pilot candidate?"
Goss tilted his head in consideration. "D'you think that would do it?"
"No."
"I can help figure out repairs," Goss offered. "Maybe identify the fueling mechanism. C'mon, Commander, I'd be whizzer in a heavy mobile infantry rig that transforms into a starfighter!"
"You're going to wind up on an episode of your cousin Sev's holovid serial." Vanya studied him for another minute. She dug out her datapad. She flicked her way through several digital note stacks.
Finally she sighed. "Goss ... no. The answer is 'no'. You can help the locals investigate these things as your other duties permit. You can even volunteer to help design and implement the training program, if your current chain of command don't squash it because they need you elsewhere. But I'm not going to give you a sanction to commandeer a possible religious weapon from a lost sect."
"You're so mean to me," Goss crabbed, but he was laughing when he said it.
"If you hadn't needed a wet blanket, you would have hit up Davish," Vanya said amiably.
"There was a chance you'd say 'yes'." Goss picked up his helmet.
"Goss, I love you eternally. I'm not going to steal you a gizmo because you turn on the mopes at me. See you later today?"
"Roger that." Impulsively he reciprocated Vanya's earlier one-armed hug. "Have fun storming the castle!"
Vanya grinned. "Often. Force be with you!" She headed off to the nearest cross street at a trot.
Poor Goss. He can't use the local sandswimming life as living anti-vehicle weapons unless he arranges ahead of time to compensate them. He can't have a Gundam mecha. His chaplain is so MEAN to him!tl;dr
Dear GM: On the first morning after the events of 3.07, before or maybe during Chancellor Kanter's tour and the day before her speech:
- Vanya wants to set Goss to some early solid steps to bring the Aur'rook into the Freedworlds Republic as equal signatories to a given mining colony or the Kerplocken Brigade or any other component society. She's using "mutual defense bargain" as a means and Derma the Hutt as a driving force.
- Vanya wants to indirectly nudge the Port Etmar street level rumor mill into a low pressure search for the personal goods chest stolen from Danar's quarters on the Kylo's Star. She hopes that if word of it turns up here on this planet, the team can trace down where on Chalcedon the entire Crimson Nova pirate clan retreated to. They need to be deloused!
- Vanya has ideas regarding the origin of the Variwalkers. Her player suspects Vanya is completely off-base, but we'll see what happens.
