Guests to Corsica

[Stolt.]

The security measures at hand made sense to her. She had read reports about how the people of the Coalition lived at Volgograd at Omega – 52. Three or four families would live together in communal apartments so they could watch each other and report any seditious behaviour to the secret police. She didn’t know if this was how apartments there were deliberately designed, or if it was an unintended positive side-effect for the Coalition’s Secret Police. Apparently, the same measure was imposed on the old Sol Coalition as well, and even older Soviet Union before then. Perry wondered if the rest of Outcast society shared the same lack of privacy. She had never set foot upon Maltese territory before.

"My name is Geneviève. My Mistress would like to see you on Corsica."

“By all means, show us the way.”

Perry stared sharply for a few seconds into eyes of the blonde woman in front of her. By mistress, she didn't know if the Outcasts simply had a different ranking structure, or if this woman was a genuine slave placed into this furtive “Corsica Intelligence Division” that had made its recent entry into the intelligence community of Sirius. She had only returned to work a few months prior after spending 4 years raising her family whilst finishing her Ph.D. dissertation in interstellar/international relations. She had written her dissertation on the role of intelligence in bringing about strategic surprise, such as the one Gallia achieved when it crushed the Kusari fleets in the Taus before proceeding to invade Bretonia and maneuvering its influence to bring the new Kusari Republic in as a client state.

It was then that she recognized that this woman spoke with a Gallic accent. She must have been a slave, but Perry also realized that she achieved a meteoric rise in the old =LSF= back in 819 after she managed to break out of Gallic prison with the help of the Maquis and the subsequent extraction by the =LSF=. She was the foremost expert the =LSF= had on Gallia at the time, but nowadays there were many experts on Gallia. Perhaps this woman was not a slave, but someone who was just at the right place at the right time to make it high into CID, just like Perry had with the =LSF= years ago.

However, if she was a slave, the last thing Perry wanted was a situation developing. She could not have a slave come up to her and discretely request help to escape her captors with her help. Perry had been imprisoned before, and being trapped that way was not something she ever wanted anyone to feel. But, she had to maintain her professionalism and cultural sensitivity. She maintained what she could of her composure, but she was sure the blonde woman could tell she was ever so slightly uneased.

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- Dossier on Adrienne Perry