A Critical Meeting

[Kazinsal]

A waitress with short electric blue hair came by and set down three pint glasses and a pitcher of beer in the center of the table -- almost certainly one of the locally-produced lagers, knowing tastes around here -- and a gin and tonic for Harold. She disappeared as quickly as she had practically willed herself into existence.

As he took a sip of his mysteriously-appearing cocktail, he nodded. "The complex part about running a warship up here is being stuck between several extremely dense rocks and a hard place," he said as he sat the drink back down. "The wonderful folks from Crayter will absolutely shit themselves if they see a Storta around, and will probably drool on the 'fire everything' button without even bothering to listen to you as you try to convince them you're not an Outcast. Malta can't figure out how to have any sort of sane authoritative organization or even any sort of proper records-keeping for more than nine months at a time, so they might think you're some kind of thief or something like that, and random families will refuse to listen to your story as well."

He poured a beer and smiled. "The good thing is, we won't be a problem for you. And we can try to convince Crayter that you're not, in fact, a Maltese strike force. All my department wants in return is that if you're going to make any trouble, don't bring it to Canberra. The Quartermaster's office wanted a valuation and appropriate payment but I told them the ship technically wasn't worth anything to us because it wasn't in our possession and was written off years ago, so they'll send over the paperwork to transfer the title of the ship to you once this meeting has concluded."

"Of course, that's just the Relations side of things." Harold took a sip of his pint -- definitely Lyneham Gold Lager -- and paused for a moment. "I'm sure my friend from Intelligence here has something to relay from everyone's favourite spooky Taskmaster."

He grabbed a handful of pretzels from the bowl that had quietly appeared on the table at some point in the past few minutes.