Siren stares at the Cobra for a while longer, either considering her options, or just hesitating. She never particularly had a reason to show her face to her fellow Agents. Frankly it was more comfortable when others couldn't get a read on her, no matter what. She wasn't important. What she did was important.
"Fine." She replies, and for a moment sounding exceedingly worn out as she agrees, standing up straight, and bringing her hand up to her helmet. A quiet hiss is heard as her respirator deactivates, and the seal of her helmet is broken. She peels the bit of technology and head protection off over her ears and brown hair, probably a bit longer than regulation as it was crammed in the helmet. She turns her green gaze up at the man after setting the helmet down on the table, and between the tell-tale signs of sleep deprivation, and the slight haze to her eyes, it was obvious her health was almost tertiary to everything else she did. Or perhaps, her career had already taken its toll on her health. "So far, I've told you little because even I know little." Her gaze focused on Cobra, yet never really looked at him. "There will be no attack for the time, not unless it becomes urgent. I know the people who fought for this gate, but I know not their benefactors. I suspect the benefactors are the nomad agents I spoke of, not the government officials. No, I don't think they've managed to bypass our system yet."
"The system the supergate is in is dubbed Alaska. A secret, but yet the name has been spoken more than I would have ever liked it to be." She inhales as she collects herself once more. "It is where Liberty's forces develop technologies for her defense, and, where people like you would probably disappear to if you were ever captured alive." She huffs out a breath, growing impatient with herself. "Everything I've told you has been.. roughly summarized. I can go into detail on something if I have any to share. And I'm certain you have your own questions, Cobra."
The tension on his countenance recedes with her compliance, though it would perhaps not be a permanent relaxation. He hadn't broken eye contact from the moment that he was given a pair to look at and neither had he stopped contemplating. Something Miller once told him was on repeat in his head, it made a lot of sense in the current situation. "Constant hesitation and excessive caution is no way to live, let alone fight. Liberty shouldn't be afraid to reach out and take what it can, anyone in the way is a liability. Fortune favours the bold, my sleep deprived friend. I won't destroy the gate, because whatever's on the other end deserves to be conquered." He paused momentarily, not a fan of monologues and figuring that she needed a moment to visit so that he had just told her. Liberty and by extension the Xenos stood to gain nothing from being afraid of threats. Both needed to be bold or perhaps even adamant to see tangible results. Strength had to be pursued, and wallowing in the present was no way to do it.
"But, I will help you make sure this gate's benefits aren't hijacked by rich pansies or their friends in the Government. I will confess that I quite like President Hawthorne, she's got guts." It was more than he could say for the agent or a vast majority of the armed forces of Liberty. He didn't need to say it either, it was a shameful truth all of them knew about deep down, buried under layers of denial and justifications. He didn't care for any of it. What lay on the other side of the gate presented a challenge, and he was happy to rise to the occasion.
Color briefly returns to the agents eyes as Cobra entirely misses the threat she was trying to convey to him. Anger over his arrogance? Ignorance? Stupidity? She blinks in a slow, deliberate manner, stowing away the rising emotion before she speaks again. "I believe you do not fully understand the threat we are facing. I suppose I need to go into agonizing detail with you." She drums her fingers on the table again, then shifts her head to look at the holo-display behind Cobra. There's an extended silence as she considers her options.
The almost obsessive amount of caution still didn't seem to be something he was reciprocating. But the question about the table caught his attention. It took a few button presses and then the encouragement of a fairly forceful thump of the hand but it eventually responded and booted up correctly, asking for user input through a debug dialogue box. Someone's navdata console would have to be plugged in. "There. If it stutters hit it." Beckley did not have the furnishings that Ramsey did, something Morreti was no doubt missing by this point.
He stood by, waiting to be impressed, surprised or perhaps most likely just bored. If it bothered the agent this much then it couldn't have been a run of the mill threat, but what new abominations could the sector possibly offer? He felt he'd seen his fair share, but being bound to Liberty had rendered him ignorant of the sort of things that lurked beyond the threshold of the Houses. "Show me what you're losing sleep over." He took a moment to idly slick his hair back, he didn't really need to but did so anyway out of habit.
Siren approaches the worn holo-display, and after a long string of commands, gains access to the machine, and begins to transmit data to it. "This is an Overlord and a Guardian." She says simply enough, the two ships appearing as wireframe models. "These are fighter-sized craft the nomads have." The amoeba-like vessels appear on screen, each with their designations. Fighter, bomber, so on. "Here's what we have assumed is a battleship." The massive vessel appears, but not before a swift kick to the console as it hitches in loading the shape of the nomad. It easily matches the Overlord used as comparison, its organic, jagged figure certainly something beyond human imagination.
"There's more." She says before Cobra can interrupt her. The screen clears of all ships but the Overlord to the relief of the overworked holo-table. Materializing next to it was the massive frame of another vessel. The Overlord was but a toy next to it. "This organism, warform, is dubbed the Ish'tar. There is more than one." She turns her eyes towards Cobra. "It is their second largest form." She swipes a few panels on her wristpad linked to the holo-table, and a recording begins to play, seemingly from a cockpit view of a fightercraft.
The cyan haze filled much of the recording, with jagged icicles being evaded smoothly by the pilot. Audio played from her wristpad, indecipherable military chatter, interrupted by a voice urging a warning of some sort. Abruptly the screen is filled with a violet glow, and then the blue mass of the aforementioned Ish'tar. Three massive expulsions of energy are emitted from its body, flying past the fighters view, who turns just in time for it to witness the impacts tearing through the shields of an Interdictor battlecruiser, with a barrage of fire quickly turning the ship to a smoldering ruin. The detonation of the fusion core quickly knocks out the fighter, and whatever was left of the recording. All in less than a minute.
The screen clears again, left with just the Ish'tar wireframe. "We have only a preliminary scan of this vessel. Eyewitness accounts say it has destroyed Battleships in an instant. Our scientists speculate it has the firepower to level moons, or even planets."
The massive bulk of another ship begins to materialize on the holo-table, dwarfing even the already massive Ish'tar it was being compared to side-by-side. "We do not know how many exist. We do not have a designation for it." She says as she looks at the holo-table, which lets out a frustrated series of computerized beeps, then shuts off to avoid any further damage from overheating.
"And Liberty does not have a real plan should one appear in our House."
Quiet, that's all he seemed to be as he patiently watched and listened to the renders and Siren's explanations. He was hard to read like this, giving away little as he seemed to process everything. "What's stopping them from swinging by right now and vaporizing us all? I don't dismiss the threat they pose, but I think you're jumping the gun on this gate. Ironic, I know. The radical becomes the moderate. But you don't know nearly enough to warrant what you're asking me to commit to." For all he knew destroying that gate might do his interests more harm than good, and if it really did open up a can of worms then Alaska would no longer be a fortress.
This was a fairly complicated situation to navigate, and he needed to be sure that the benefits of whatever choice he made were maximized. "Say I help you pull this off, what then? The gate's gone, we're left with more questions than answers. Maybe even isolated from technology that could help us fight back. Opportunity cost can be applied both ways here." Perhaps he was a madman or a narcissistic thrill seeker, but he felt he had a point worth considering now. The time for jokes and hollow flirtations was long passed, either they were going to agree on a course of action that could potentially undo all the progress he'd made so far, or they'd disagree until there was nothing further to discuss. In any case he wasn't in the business of doing society altruistic favors.
"Besides logistics? We don't know what they're waiting for, or what's stopping them." She says as she turns away from the table to look directly at Cobra. "Their agents invade the bodies of humans, just like you or I. They can puppet your body, and you'll forever be along for the ride. Your only fate is to serve as an infiltrator for the Nomads." She continues, then looks around the room, as if chasing a thought. "They're waiting for critical mass. Critical mass, to have enough agents in our ranks, and for a direct route to our worlds. If they could come straight from the Omicrons to Alaska, they're one more jump away from New York." She looks back at Cobra, realizing she gave away a bit more about Alaska than she had intended to, but it was too late now.
She starts to move away from the head of the Xeno Alliance, rubbing her hands together, the first real sign of anxiety she's shown yet. "I know you, but I don't know you. I don't know what you truly want. Do you want whats best for Liberty? Or just for your people?" She glances over at the man as she slowly paces the room. "I'm beginning to believe what we feel is best for Liberty are not as similar as I hoped, and I don't blame you for that." Her tongue pushes in her cheek as she thinks to herself for a moment. "Liberty is still developing technology against this threat. But we need time. Time this gate would not give us." She stops, looking up at Cobra yet again. "I am investigating both those officials, and their benefactors. And I will keep you updated to what I find, and on any relevant information on the gate."
She crosses her arms, then turns to the table to collect her helmet. "I did not intend to ask for any favors, for your allegiance, or for you to serve as a lackie in my schemes. I wanted you to know what was out there, Cobra. And hopefully when the time comes, I can convince you to help me save Liberty."
Saving Liberty? If he had no self restraint he might have burst out laughing. There was no chivalry involved in the service of ones agendas, whether those be vested in oneself or a nation. Impressively naive idealism if nothing else, a wonder she wasn't dead or worse, then again perhaps this was the worst conclusion because at least in his eyes she was living a lie and trying to sell it to him. "Predictability gets you killed. It's not only my nature to be unpredictable but also in my immediate interest. There's no point discussing what I want, least of all for Liberty. People want many things, often without a willingness to work for it." What did he even want? Come to think of it he just enjoyed all the killing. The challenge made the thrill of every kill more satisfying and there was no movement more downtrodden than this one. It was the purest violent outlet he could give himself.
Shutting off the table's display and taking note of her imminent departure, he decided to clarify the exact nature of his stance on this proposition. "I'll help you kill people you can't. Guilty or not, doesn't matter to me. But nobody that becomes one of us is acting in the interests of your Government, the one that would sooner sell you to me if the margin was compelling enough. We act according to the ideals that made this House great to begin with, despite them being a convenient omission in the present. Liberty or death is a literal expression. But our views on what that Liberty should look like most assuredly do not coincide." It seemed to take a fraction of a second for his current demeanor and tone to revert back to the playfulness of before, it wasn't less fake or truly compelling, instead it was just the hallmark of a sociopath, or maybe worse.
"I'll walk you out, otherwise people will doubt the act." It was important to keep up appearances after all, both of them knew this so well but with vastly different applications of the concept.
"At least this conversation has revealed much to myself." The agent says as she dons her helmet. "Above all else Cobra, be careful. If an infiltrator makes it within your ranks, your people do not have the technology to track them down." She lets out an exhausted sigh as the respiration system re-engages, and she's safely hidden away beneath all of her equipment.
"We'll speak again, I'm certain." She adds as they make way for the hangar. Hate. Pity? She's not certain what to feel. Is he so far gone that he cannot see what needs to be done? Does he just not care? Again thankful for her visored helmet, she can let a few emotions contort on her face as she attempts to figure out where to go to next. Harmony? Speaking with them would be like pulling teeth.
She glances back at Cobra, and offers an uncharacteristic wave with a wiggling of her fingers directed at the man she'd shared so much information with. "Be seeing you, Cobra." She says with a startling shift to a seductive tone, before letting out a girly giggle, and making her way into the Dromedary. She sits at the cramped bridge of the freighter once more, and waits for the green light to leave, raising her fist and resisting the urge to put it through one of the monitors in front of her.
The sudden change in tone prompted him to smirk, if only slightly. It was a good initiative to sell the act but he didn't think the agent to be capable of it, evidently he'd presumed incorrectly. "You will." He said in response, almost as if it were a taunt and somehow genuine at the same time.
She would incur no trouble on the hangar and was cleared to launch and depart the system on her own. She'd be expected to go back the way she came and of course retrieve her ship, which was still on Ames. Perhaps her paranoia might be worse after the meeting, because the inability to acquire a direct acknowledgement of support from Morreti certainly wasn't comforting given the situation. Maybe having Miller around to balance him out would have been a better idea, too late now.