should we help or hinder the assassination of Jedao?

[zuhrovet]

[In the current move, Flute has just informed the team that they are to accompany a group of Lanterner assassins to a conference where the Lanterners will attempt to assassinate Jedao. This post is for reactions and plans, both in and out of character.]

Sasha's quiet as the group heads from the Catastrophe Axe back to the Cantata. She wants to have a cup of tea and spend a few hours working her way further into the Axe's grid, but work comes before play, and figuring out how to handle Flute's instructions will be a fuck of a lot of work.

Once everyone's safely on the Cantata and the lock has closed behind them, she starts issuing orders. "Grid, please ask Sulen to meet me in my office in twenty minutes, and inform everyone there will be a team meeting in the common room in one hour. Reshad, I'll want you in the meeting with Sulen."

She pulls her memory stick out of her pocket and gives it to Alaric. "Find Aymad, stick this in the minigrid--not in the main one--and see what you can find out about the watchers in Flute's system in the next hour."

Then she turns to Seyli. "I know you want to yell. Go ahead and do it. You've got twenty minutes." [These are heptarchate minutes, so it's more like ten minutes in our calendar.]

Comments

Re: no, seriously, are we going to assassinate Jedao? - paging everyone

[bariolage]

"Which is why," Ione interrupts carefully, because she is all for the gentle intrusion into the planning discussion instead of talking over anyone, and she's still nervous around people she doesn't know very well and please no one resent her for her opinion, good thing the only empath in the room is her, "I think we should just borrow him instead. We would be removing him, but then we could find out why, or maybe why he thought they specifically wanted him dead instead of ..." She's lost the hold of the sentence, but still focused on the point.

"I mean. Could we just. Pretend to kill him? And instead keep him for ourselves, at least until we think we actually need to kill him? I could certainly do fake lethal injection," a little wavy-wiggly hand gesture, "And actually have it be temporarily-arrests-life injection instead. Poison dart that isn't actually fatal sort of thing?"


[I like the kidnapping idea, but Ione is also in favor of kidnapping over assassinating because her training definitely tells her that if someone else wants to kill a guy, she wants to talk to the guy first! So for once my character and I agree.]

Re: no, seriously, are we going to assassinate Jedao? - paging everyone

[zuhrovet]

"Sulen, we know that Quill is working with the Shuos agents who sent Mishka. Whether that makes her a heptarchate agent, rather than a faction of her own, is anybody's guess."

Sasha looks at Ione. "I like the idea of not doing what Quill wants, but I don't see an easy way for us to extract a body, dead or otherwise. There's station personnel, Flute's people, the Lanterners, and the Kel, and I see no reason that any of those interest groups would let us retain a corpse."

Re: no, seriously, are we going to assassinate Jedao? - paging everyone

[hoardingpearls]

Reshad has been quiet, thinking, listening. She takes this as her chance to speak. Her mind is in a whirl, without question. Of course it had to be him. Of course this was the pivot point.

"If Quill wanted to make things less stable in the future, she could do worse than to remove Hexarch Mikodez.

"That - and Jedao's legendary mind - incline me to think we want him. Will we succeed on our own? I wouldn't be here I'd I didn't think we have a real chance. But if he could be persuaded to see the monstrosity the Hexarchate becomes..." She slants a shoulder in a delicate shrug.

"As far as getting him out without Flute's knowledge... That may be easier than you think. We botch the mission, and botch it badly. Disrupt their comms, break their plans, and execute our own. No, I'm more worried about the Kel."

[What do you mean, callous? Heh.

Reshad can be persuaded the other way, but she's very interested in kidnapping Jedao instead of killing him. It just hurts to throw away a weapon that good.

OOC I'm a big Jedao fan, but it's nice not to have to try too hard to justify it IC. ;) ]

Re: no, seriously, are we going to assassinate Jedao? - paging everyone

[zuhrovet]

"But Jedao's a monstrosity himself, isn't he? He's about to murder his own army. I can see that he would be a valuable bargaining chip. But that's a massive risk for an uncertain payout." Sasha doesn't understand the urge to see Jedao as a potential idealist. There's no way he could be trusted, not with that record. Or future record.

Re: no, seriously, are we going to assassinate Jedao? - paging everyone

[hoardingpearls]

"Hellspin fell out of the deck sideways, though. A real black swan, from everything I've read; took everyone by surprise." A bit of enthusiasm shows there, the hobbyist warming to her subject. "After a cometary arc of a career."

"Don't think of it as ...trying to make him not a monstrosity. He's one of history's finest." She looks thoughtful, mind racing ahead of speech. "Think of it as denying the Hexarchate a weapon - not by destruction, but by theft."

Re: no, seriously, are we going to assassinate Jedao? - paging everyone

[zuhrovet]

Sasha leans forward. "I wouldn't steal one of the fungal weapons. Because a weapon's no good if you're not willing to use it, and using one of those would make us as bad as the heptarchate. Or the hexarchate, in that case. What makes Jedao different? Why in all the hells do we think we could use him safely?"

Re: no, seriously, are we going to assassinate Jedao? - paging everyone

[kese_seyli]

Seyli's been keeping their mouth shut through this whole exchange, trying to actually hear their crew mates out and get a good read on where they stand and what their skills are. But Sasha makes the most valid point they've heard.

"I agree with Sasha. Why do we think we could use him when no one else has managed to do so? I'm sure as hell not that special." They leave the and I doubt any of you are, either unspoken.

Re: no, seriously, are we going to assassinate Jedao? - paging everyone

[slybrarian]

"Maybe using him is the wrong approach," Alaric says. "The heptarchate uses Jedao, and it ended up poorly. The also use moths, and while nothing's happened yet, traditionally enslaving strange creatures from beyond space and time doesn't go well either. So far working with a moth for mutual benefit seems to work pretty well though."

Re: no, seriously, are we going to assassinate Jedao? - paging everyone

[hoardingpearls]

Reshad nods to Seyli and Sasha both, an acknowledgement of their points. They're good ones, but she hesitates to let that be the only reason to drive the decision.

"Assassinated or kidnapped, either way we deny the Hexarchate his ability. But to Alaric's point - alliance may be more potent yet. And make every plan with an eye to harm reduction." She glances back and forth between them. "Aren't we doing that already?"

Re: no, seriously, are we going to assassinate Jedao? - paging everyone

[zuhrovet]

"I don't know what the fuck harm reduction means in this context," Sasha observes, "or why we're comparing the moth, whose priority appears to be protecting babies, to a man who murders his own people. And no, Fyedlet, we cannot just talk to him. Not unless we want to risk him alerting the Kel, and attacking us."

Re: no, seriously, are we going to assassinate Jedao? - paging everyone

[slybrarian]

"Yeah, it does seem like the sort of situation where you kidnap first and ask ideological questions second," Alaric agrees. "Or shoot him, whatever."

some possible courses of action - paging everyone, especially Iawa and Ione

[zuhrovet]

"I see four possible responses," Sasha summarizes. "Zero, we let the Lanterners make their assassination attempt without interference. One, we let them try, but attempt to secure Jedao if they fail. Ione, Iawa, do you have some sort of drug that might make him come with us willingly? It's going to be a lot easier to fuck the scans so the Kel don't know to follow us than it would be to drag a body through security. Two, we communicate more of our capabilities and assist in the assassination attempt seriously. We could probably smuggle printer components and construct weapons on-site, if we wanted. Or three, we sabotage the assassination attempt and go straight to kidnapping. Given our current lack of information about what Quill actually wants, I favor Option One. Tell me what I'm missing."

mind-altering/sedating drugs - paging Iawa and Ione

[yhlee]

[GM's note on drugs: delight, I am happy to defer to whatever you know from real life or want to invent from Ione's experience here given that I have zero medical or pharmaceutical knowledge. [1] vass, Iawa would have general familiarity with Vidona drugs that make people more complaisant, or sedated, or induce mind-altering states; and God knows, you probably know a lot more about the real life version of this too because I know NOTHING about the real life version of this.

[1] My dad is a surgeon but surgeon's kids either (a) become super-knowledgeable about biology (my sister) or (b) outsource everything to the medical person in the family and end up super ignorant (me).

]

Re: mind-altering/sedating drugs - paging Iawa and Ione

[bariolage]

[I tried to do research to figure out something more terrifying than the real drug available that does this, AND I COULDN'T THE REAL DRUG IS TERRIFYING ENOUGH TO FIT INTO THE H*ARCHATE SETTING AS IS.]

Re: some possible courses of action - paging everyone, especially Iawa and Ione

[bariolage]

Ione cannot put her finger on anything Sasha is missng, and she only squints and tries to look at her nose a little bit as regards that counting method. But she's getting used to the fact that this mission + numbers are going to be weird to her.

"Oh, sure," she says easily, trying not to look pleased or smile, because that would definitely be weird to everyone else. "In what format did you prefer? I have the powder, which can be powerful even when inhaled but if you put it through a ventilation system you'd have either a lot of problems or the most complacent group of people you've ever dealt with and they would be extremely annoying, but they would also probably all forget it happened -- er, anyway, I can also make it into a suspension and we can dart it. He might really hate us, though, there are a couple of side effects ..."

Because that is absolutely the only reason that Jedao would hate them as a result.

"If I have a couple of days and lab equipment and someone else to do calculations for me because that will be much faster, I can adjust the potency."

Re: some possible courses of action - paging everyone, especially Iawa and Ione

[hoardingpearls]

Reshad nods at Sasha's options, and cocks her head curiously at the mention of drugs.
"Harm reduction, in this case, is stopping Hellspin and its associated remembrance, and we have the bonus option of denying Quill what she seems to want by keeping him alive."

She gives Mafyyil a smile, for that suggestion. "We still don't know if we can trust him, and probably can't, but working with someone doesn't necessarily mean full trust. Only that you trust them to act in a known way." Even that is shaky with Jedao, masterful Shuos - but even foxes have patterns.

"Kidnapping asking questions later is probably our best choice. I favor option 3- it's identical to 1, save that we aren't leaving our outcome to chance or someone else's competence."

in the future, we will have more data

[zuhrovet]

[Maybe let's pick up the conversation in this thread, where Sasha has just stormed into the common room?]