Geneviève waited behind a monitor the entire time the SIS agents underwent the procedures after their arrival on Ruiz. They might have noticed something was amiss, if they had reckoned that the system would be buzzing more with Outcast activity. Currently, most of the Outcast forces were standing down following attempted negotiations with the Order, who held a presence in the system of Omicron Beta. Gen made a mental note to find an excuse for that she could use at a later date, should the Bretonians inquire about why this was the case. It wouldn't do to disclose to them why the system was so quiet.
She had watched the Bretonians leave their ships, after which they were padded down for obvious weapons, then brought into a decontamination chamber. It served two purposes. Firstly, the system really was slightly irradiated, and second, the medical staff would be able to subject the Bretonians to all the scans necessary to determine that they wouldn't be undermined by the Nomads. Standard procedure, really. Especially when it came to matters involving Corsica. Stroking a strand of thin, blonde hair behind her ear, Gen put the thumb to her mouth idly as she watched the people inside the cell. Soon, they were given a stack of new clothes to wear. Their normal clothes could contain bio agents that could harm the population of Corsica. They had to be thorough. Another person would maybe be bashful at seeing the other people change clothes, but Gen hardly batted an eye. Something like a right to privacy didn't exist in the same way as in the houses, at least not on Malta. It had a way of warping perceptions, appropriating people to resemble itself. They would leave the Bretonians like this for a while. It didn't necessarily serve a purpose, since the scans were done quickly and trace amounts of radiation banished soon, but it was all about appearances. They wouldn't be able to rule out that more was at play while they waited, and that would make them more insecure. Roughly fourty minutes, she stood like this, staring at the screens, listening to the words that were exchanged in the cell. Idly, she found it amusing that she could hold still for so long.
Dropping the hand that had been at her mouth to her side, she switched off the monitors and headed out of the small room she had been in. Only now did she notice how much fresher the air was on the corridor. Less ozone. There was nobody in sight, but she knew where to go. Her paces echoed through the hallways as she made her way to the decontamination chamber and approached a console, pushing the button to let her speak to the people inside. "That is quite enough. We apologize for the inconvenience." Her Gallic accent was evident, and she made no attempt to hide it. She idly wondered how they would react to being greeted by a Gallic woman and their surprise at finding out that the CID was actually hers. It had been Gen's idea to pose as the one bringing them to Corsica, since this way, they wouldn't expect her to also be the one they would be talking to once they got there. It would give Gen ample opportunity to assess the Bretonians and see if they were worth working with in the end. The easiest way to see how a person's character was like was not by engaging them as equals, but to see how they treated those they saw as their inferiors. For all they knew, Gen could be a slave girl forced into service. The door of the decontamination chamber slid open and the blue glow inside stopped. Gen had never been particularly beautiful by any standard. She knew she could appear this way, if she wore the right clothes, assumed the right posture, smiled more and wore a bit of makeup. Still, seeing the woman that was Perry, she briefly felt slightly self-conscious in her black and grey CID uniform consisting of something akin to suit pants and jacket that did not reveal cleavage. "My name is Geneviève. My Mistress would like to see you on Corsica."
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.
The look of unease on Perry's face was the intended result of what Geneviève had tried to accomplish. It didn't tell her anything about what exactly unsettled her, but from the fact that the look had only come up after seeing her, she deduced that she was in fact the source, and not the treatment. "Please, if you would." Gen made a handmotion that reminded of a buttler waving guests further, further solidifying the picture she was trying to paint. The group started to move and Gen was content with not speaking, since they would have enough opportunity once on Corsica. It was pretty much the only space where she could be sure to not be spied on. Given the Maltese' relative proximity to the Nomads and the Crimson Cross' open arms to them in the past, one could never be sure if the simple construction workers or logistics personnel that ran around here really were what they seemed, even if sporadic tests were put into place. Gen had gone to painstaking lengths to keep Corsica clean like that, and as a result, most of the station under the dark hole was vacant today, only a small number of people actually operating it, most of the dry docks deserted.
They would soon arrive in another hangar, where Gen ushered their guests into a shuttle craft that was clearly of Maltese origin. Not only because it had the Maltese Cross on the sides. There was something to the way the Maltese preferred heavy machinery and over-the-top engines that belied their handiwork whenever one looked at a spacecraft envisioned by them. Gen could appreciate that. There was no way to see space from where the Bretonians would sit. This way, they wouldn't be able to tell directions or anything that was inside Omicron Phi, like Bastia Station or the Dreadnought Captana guarding the jump hole towards the adjacent Nomad system. "It won't be long. The Administrator will welcome you upon arrival," Gen stated once everyone had settled. She realized the stay they'd had had been little more than a hassle up until now, but it wasn't like she was supposed to entertain them. She kept observing the assorted people, mien unmoving. Since she had accidentally stripped and enslaved the Gallic crown princess, there was precious little shame Gen still felt when unabashedly staring at people. She played with the thought of flying the shuttle herself, but dismissed the thought. There was someone already there who could handle that, and sending him away would just delay everything. Besides, it would deprive her of the opportunity of staring. There was quite a lot one could read out of the demeanour of people, especially when they were in a foreign environent.
The conference room at the facility was transparent. It was dark outside, with only a little light coming from the stars through the station's windows. The base was dimly lit, with most computers designed with LED screens so that information could be seen clearly in the dark, but not so bright that it would hurt someone’s eyes. The conference room’s walls were made of bulletproof glass, presumably so that those inside could see if a situation was developing outside. She glanced at the blonde woman outside once more.
She checked her briefcase once more for the intelligence report that her assets from Kusari had 'liberated' from Gallia. She didn't know much about the Maltese role in their fight for Gallia, all she knew from rumours was that there was a distant system which connected the territory of the National Council to the territory of the Gallic kingdom. She didn’t even know if this was true.
Perry came here to construct a meaningful relationship with the Outcasts. Several years ago she was within the =LSF='s leadership under its former Director Joseph Dawson. She had a somewhat public role back then, hence why never worried about sharing her real identity. A simple background check would've revealed her true name and history anyway.
Her method of intelligence collection was not to simply go around collecting data on enemy bases or planets but rather to develop relationships. Get someone to trust you, and they freely give you the knowledge you desire, most of the time without even realizing it. She had a number of false identities to "make friends" across several systems, but here, she was herself. And the Outcasts weren't going to give her any intelligence by simply blurting it out. But all she needed to do was to establish that trust. Most spies would consider that impossible, as realpolitik is a necessary skill for the job. But she didn't care. She always managed to find quality intelligence by building trust which went beyond simple photographs, videos, sound recording or stolen documents for the Bretonian Defence Intelligence Staff to analyse.
She checked her documents once more and waited patiently for her counterpart to present herself, all the while she thought about whether her history with the =LSF= would entitle her to a cold treatment from her hosts. She wanted to build a working relationship with the outcasts from 0, but she was afraid her history would have already given them reason to distrust her while she was in their territory.
There had been nobody when they had landed. No little group to welcome them, nobody to exchange pleasantries. Gen knew that this approach was prone to confuse the Bretonians. Wasn't Corsica supposed to be a stronghold of the Outcasts, a place, that was more tightly guarded than even Malta? What if someone ran away to cause mischief? The truth was, there was nothing preventing them from running per se. It wasn't necessary to herd them in like that. Corsica was a maze of corridors, most of which not in use. What little was vital to the station was guarded by more than just humans. Someone making off on their own would invariably get lost and starve to death, probably to never get found again. The only way to safely maneuver the station was to remember the way one needed to take in order to reach the populated parts.
They marched in silence for around thirty minutes. Whether due to politeness or trained professionalism, Perry remained stoic throughout the entire trip. Gen figuted that the thought of Gen making fun of them with this had crossed Perry's mind, though it didn't matter in the long run. Finally, they reached a door after what felt like the hundredth crossed corridor, guarded by two men in grey uniforms. The door opened automatically upon the group approaching, admitting the view onto a neat conference room, not fitted for more than ten people. They were six, so it would be alright. There was a door, through which one could see the giant hollow constuction inside the Corsica asteroid. It seemed like they were somewhere in the very center of it, occasional arcs of lightning cracking through the space between one side of the chasm to the other. It was impossible to really guess the distance between the sides, but it had to be at least multiple kilometres.
"I apologize for the effort you needed to take," Gen spoke after they had all seated themselves, the Bretonians on one side, Gen on the other, alone, facing Perry. "You may call me Geneviève, and I am the Administrator of the CID. Please, this room is the safest haven Malta can provide for you. The station is somewhat of a giant Faraday Cage, meaning there is no way someone on the outside can spy on, or trace your movements. Please, what did you want to talk about?" She kept a close eye on Perry, wanting to see if she had been able to guess that she was the one she had wanted to talk to all along. The woman had to be smart, else she wouldn't be here, but Gen wondered if she had anticipated something as obvious as this.
The CID was less...corporate than she was used to. For the first 17 years of her career with =LSF=, Perry worked as an undercover counter-intelligence officer within several of Liberty's major corporations. She ran two careers, one as a spy, and one as an engineer and later, a consultant. Her job was to protect Liberty's intellectual properties from corporate or foreign espionage. When she requested a transfer out of the counter intelligence almost a decade ago, she returned to see the =LSF= adopt a corporate tone to its management than before. The top position was officially called the Executive Director at one point. With SIS, she joined the organisation early during its founding several months ago, it was a small and disorganised, it gave Perry the freedom to organise her own assets to her own convenience. She was often jokingly referred to as the human resources lady, given her polite professional tone in her communications transmissions to her spies and her allies.
So when Genevieve took her through a confusingly daze-inducing maze and presented herself as the administrator, she tried, perhaps terribly, to hide her bewilderment through her legendary unblinking stare directly back at Genevieve. The secrecy given the facility's security measures made her wonder whether the CID had established itself as a Deep State within Malta. The Outcasts employed a completely different system of counter-intelligence & intelligence protection, one that she only saw within a few LSF stations which had the most sensitive data and projects.
"I apologize for the effort you needed to take, you may call me Geneviève, and I am the Administrator of the CID. Please, this room is the safest haven Malta can provide for you. The station is somewhat of a giant Faraday Cage, meaning there is no way someone on the outside can spy on, or trace your movements. Please, what did you want to talk about?"
Perry pulled up her briefcase and tapped in the security codes before several mechanically constructed locks automatically unlocked one after the other. She softly turned the briefcase around and in it were several old documents detailing a Gallic intelligence report which had been written up right before the revelations of their existence. Included, was an analysis of the report written by a military intelligence analyst from the BAF's Defence Intelligence Staff.
She gave her Outcast counterpart a few minutes to shift through and scan the summary of the documents. "From what we understand, an unknown Gallic intelligence agency was directed by the leadership of the Royal Navy to increase intelligence funding on the border you share with them. The report is old, but we believe it may signal an increase in intelligence funding in your region of space, over time." Perry had an innumerable amount of questions for her counterpart, but she wanted to gauge their interest first.
Adrienne came here not just as a spy, but as a diplomat. Perry was patient, she would wait to see how they could conducted their diplomacy.
Gen paid close attention to Perry's countenance as she revealed herself. The security measures for this place were immense, and she could only guess that Perry had been reckoning with something more impressive than her to present itself. Alas, Gen was as average as one could get. At only a height of 1.6 metres, Gen was tiny, a truly unassuming figure.
She took the documents from Perry and skimmed through them. "I see," she stated slowly, reaching the analysis part. "I am sure that, since we share professions, you know that we need to always assume our enemies to be bigger, smarter, and scarier than ourselves. We of course assumed that the Gallic Crown would keep eyes on us." She put down the documents. "The minefield is a double edged sword. It is a choke point. Neither side can make significant strides within the territory of the other, yet we lack the means to seal it. Meaning we just contain it." She took a deep breath, sinking back in her chair. It was so big that she almost seemed like a child in it, in a perverse way, given the environment and the uniform she wore. "The CID assumes that the Gallic Crown, and indeed anyone, knows everything." She raised a finger and tapped the table. "-except that which happens here, on Corsica. Preparing for worst-case scenarios is a surefire way of not getting surprised, only underwhelmed, and given the superior capabilities of the Gallic Navy, this approach is called for." Taking the reports, Gen put them back into the case. "And this is why we are not surprised to 'ear about this report you 'ave obtained, although it does raise one question." A pause, that was more for dramatic effect than anything else. "Who is Y?"
It wasn’t something that the DIS nor the SIS had caught onto. Up until this point, Perry and her peers back home assumed “Y” was just another station chief or mid-ranking intelligence official. Perry took another look at the copy of her report which clearly stated that “Y” believed a 12% increase in intelligence funding was not enough. She realized she didn’t notice it the first time because this intelligence pertained to the Outcasts, not to Bretonia. She had mistakenly dismissed it when she analysed the report. Her counterpart of course could see the significance of this figure, “Y” wanted more funding to collect intelligence, and threaten Maltese national security. These documents were dated almost a decade ago, this "Y" could be in charge of regional intelligence operations in this sector if he had gotten his way. Perry made a note to make sure to have a psychologist at the DIS create a profile of this “Y”, even if all they had was this little bit of information on him, or her.
“We don’t know who this “Y” is, we assumed he was a mid-ranking official. To be perfectly honest, the pressure on our front is so great that the importance of “Y” flew right past us during our analysis of the documents. Of course, “Y” wants to increase intelligence on your front, so naturally you caught this detail. I’ll have the DIS issue a psychological profile of this person, however all we know about him is in this document.” She paused for a second while her thoughts shifted to the Outcast front.
“How is the war on your front? The news on our end is showing GRN raids with several battleships multiple times a week. But we don’t know much about the war on your end, perhaps New Paris is still collecting intelligence. It’s entirely possible that if this “Y” has had his way, their intelligence forces may be in charge of this front using sabotage and subterfuge to undermine you, while their military undermines us with armed force. We are both at the frontlines of this behemoth.”
However, "Y" wasn’t the only thing that caught Perry's ears. This short, blonde woman in front of her, kept mentioning more and more about how New Paris had their spies everywhere, except for Corsica. Corsica always seemed to secure, with a maze to confuse, and make it even more difficult from the outside to draw up a blueprint of the station’s interior, externally. Either Perry should be honoured that she was awarded the trust of being present on this station, or this woman was hyping up the importance of this location. Either was possible, ruses were natural in this field.
The issue about this Y was not something that Gen figured could be solved like this. They had too little to work with. Of course, there was the chance that the letter was an initial, but if it was, there were probably a bunch of people with a name starting with that letter. "I believe we cannot do much about this Y. Even presuming that they are indeed a real person and not just an organisation in actuality, we 'ave too little work with." She winced inwardly as she wasn't able to pronounce the H sound. She tried to avoid using the sound as much as possible while speaking, but there were limits to how much that was possible.
"The front with Gallia has become quite harsh since the Gallic forces were driven out of Tau-44 by the Colonials. A lot of manpower was freed during their retreat, and currently, their battlegroups are deployed along our front with Gallia," Gen told the other woman in regards to her other question. "Truth be told: We can 'ardly 'old our ground. There is only so much manpower the Nation can muster, and Gallia has many worlds that breed fodder for their fleets." She tapped the screen before motioning to the briefcase. "If you are going to report anything to your superior, I'd suggest you recommend implementing legislature that requires women to bear more children. I'd assume Bretonia also needs the hands to emerge from this war at some point."
Bretonia, and by extension Sirius, had been in a state of total war for such a long time that Perry was used to hearing such suggestions already. It wasn't very shocking. It would take 16-20 years for a baby boom to materialise into extra manpower for the war effort, but the Hispanians know better than anyone else how to create a stalemate so crushingly grinding so as to drag a war on for centuries.
"Although you might not hear it in public, I'm sure our Parliament has considered such measures already. Notwithstanding our mutual war against Crete, Bretonia's has been in a state of war for nearly a decade a half now, since 813. Nevertheless, I'm glad that our alliance of convenience is building...some sort brotherly bond between our two nations. It would be beautiful to see this workout in both of our favour one day."
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