“So, to summarise, you consider me egotistical, self-indulgant, overbearinging, clot-headed, interfering and bearing a nationalist agenda. How dare you render such glitteringly inadequate assumptions; my entourage often inform me that I am a paragon of fundamentalist virtues.”
“Unfortunately, that happens to be everything that I consider you to be, Holiday – continuing down the personal vein is hardly going to lead to an adequate conflict resolution.”
“Your attempt to offer me two sides of an absolutist coin fall into what we diplomats commonly moniker the “Red-button-or-handshake” manoeuvre , where you attempt to throw the weight of the decision, or the proverbial “ball”, into my “court”, as it were. I do not deny that you are a “dammed good” doctor of medicine, but however much you smack me around the jaw with your doctorate, I am still not convinced that you prove an adequate representative for the whims of whoever decided to plonk that damnable alien powercore into the Persephone from the very first.”
“…I listen to my people too, my good doctor; hence why I am here arguing with you as a delegate rather than whoring on a beach somewhere sipping sidewinder fang. Note where my transmission originates from – Shasta skyhook, notably, where I am… and should be… presently disembarking into the conference your order happened to hold there. So view my position.”
“…My people – let’s call them that, pray – are disparate, are ununified. They share no common ground on which to rest their feet. Some are Gauls, yes, but some are also Bretonians. Some are Rheinlanders, some are Kusarians; even the odd coalition defector speckles our wings. Yes, I am a royalist. No, I am not an agent of the crown. No, the majority of the Commonwealth are not the… alliance-detesting franks that you conclude we are. Do not judge the entire book by the blurb of the editor, ami.”
“…You trust the judgement of those who think of nothing but the product of their research, that anything is acceptable purely because it could be done. By that logic, then, I could quite merrily blow half of Shasta’s docking bays to merry hell purely by modifying the pressure differentials within the ‘Corbeau’s’ fuel nacelles, but I will not. I will not act in a manner that endangers my own people.”
“…You, however, are perfectly happy to maintain a miniature black hole in the Baffin system, permanently, from the infantile basis that the bomb hasn’t gone off yet and thus never will. Egad man, and you seek to lecture me about saving lives?”
“…I have a modest amount of power, and I am currently employing the majority of it in attempting to moderate a threat to my people which… like a mule… refuses to shift viewpoint no matter how hard you tug on the rope.”
“…For the sakes of all, replace the core with a conventional alternative, and hand the damn warhead you have slotted in there already to the Order Overwatch. Assuming that this… core… is interchangeable with the “khaostone” pre-mentioned by one of your fraternity, you clearly intend to use it against somebody, sometime, for some dastardly purpose.”
“…It will win you no purchase. Please, ami – capitulate for the good of all of our sectors.”
“…I await your call.”
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's outlawed trade unions, determined to take the underworld for themselves.)
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