Flute gives Reshad an interested stare. "Well," she says, very mildly, "once you became involved with our organization, and had access to any of the master timeline summaries during New Recruit Orientation, surely you could have guessed that involvement with 'that fox' in this place and time was at least possible."
Flute is attentive to the details of the equipment that Alaric and Reshad point out, and asks, "How many heavies do you have trained in its use? Not because we expect to send you in to do the job, naturally, but because you'll need to instruct our Lanterner friends. We are working with professional military, fortunately."
Flute's demeanor turns to amusement when she hears Sasha's questions. "So you're not all mouth," she says; it's insulting, but there's a testing quality that suggests that she's deliberately provoking Sasha to see how she'll react. "The projected assassination is in five days, when General Jedao will be attending a conference on local security considerations. We'd like you to accompany our Lanterner friends to the conference and spend the travel time, four days, helping them practice with the equipment."
The last question gives her pause. "Whether it will work? Historically speak, it already almost worked. As far as we can tell from the historical record [1], the main mistake the Lanterners made was only sending a single assassin. We're going have multiple assassins on Jedao. With any luck, one of them won't miss. And beyond general fox paranoia, he has no reason to suspect assassins on what is, at this point in time, friendly territory."
[1] [The story only specifies that Jedao survived a shattergun assassination attempt. I'm going to rule that it was a single assassin, historically speaking.]
Re: meeting with Flute, cont'd
Flute is attentive to the details of the equipment that Alaric and Reshad point out, and asks, "How many heavies do you have trained in its use? Not because we expect to send you in to do the job, naturally, but because you'll need to instruct our Lanterner friends. We are working with professional military, fortunately."
Flute's demeanor turns to amusement when she hears Sasha's questions. "So you're not all mouth," she says; it's insulting, but there's a testing quality that suggests that she's deliberately provoking Sasha to see how she'll react. "The projected assassination is in five days, when General Jedao will be attending a conference on local security considerations. We'd like you to accompany our Lanterner friends to the conference and spend the travel time, four days, helping them practice with the equipment."
The last question gives her pause. "Whether it will work? Historically speak, it already almost worked. As far as we can tell from the historical record [1], the main mistake the Lanterners made was only sending a single assassin. We're going have multiple assassins on Jedao. With any luck, one of them won't miss. And beyond general fox paranoia, he has no reason to suspect assassins on what is, at this point in time, friendly territory."
[1] [The story only specifies that Jedao survived a shattergun assassination attempt. I'm going to rule that it was a single assassin, historically speaking.]