Eavesdroppers: Tomoe

[Harcourt Fenton Mudd]

Shortly after the encounter, Tomoe sat at her desk in an office off of the stations control room, writing messages on the neural net.

To: Dr. John Holliday, MFE
Subject: Bethlehem Station

Konichiwa, John.

I remember some time ago you mentioned needing to 'take another poke' at the Erie situation, and figured the current situation may overlap.
Some militants decided to warn me in a corridor over what I presume is my thusfar unsuccesful attempt to simply open a dialogue with Liberty.
Well, Militants or LSF trying to stir the pot.

Once you're ready to go to Erie, mind dropping by Bethlehem first.
Having a stable station would probably make the ground game a bit more stable too.

--Kashiwaba Tomoe, ZDF Exploratory Corps (I dont care if the main ZDF fell apart, the Corps still exists)

Well, thats one......
If they're militants they'll respect him.
But sometimes it is better to be feared....
And they just got done with a major project so they might have some boots avalible.......

From: Kashiwaba Tomoe, Bethlehem Station
To: Phoenix, via Freeport 11

Hey guys, do you have a squad or two of troops to spare to bolster station security here on Bethlehem?
I haven't even gotten Liberty to respond to any comms yet and already have people trying to intimidate me in the corridors.
They were not exactly convincing at that, but it's the thought that counts.
Pretty sure they were just militants worried I'd sell out Bethlehem like Erie's leadership did way back when, but cant discount them being LSF trying to stir shit up.

But i digress.
Y'all have lots of sway among the more reasonable of the militant community, and the less reasonable know you're not keen on being fucked with.
Having some of your guys needing R&R on a quiet station help with security could help calm the less reasonable element.

--Kashiwaba Tomoe, ZDF Exploratory Corps (I dont care if the main ZDF fell apart, the Corps still exists)

Tomoe sighed and streched.

She hated writing messages, life was much simpler on a ship that was out of contact with Sirius for years at a time, you just sent someone a comm or met face to face.

'Well its time' she thought 'if those jackasses had just waited another hour, they would have heard what Im about to say in this meeting and probably liked it.... unless they really are LSF, then they probably would hate someone being reasonable.'

She got up, making sure her jumpsuit wasn't wrinkled too badly, double checking the concealed weapons and various bits of scientific equipment she still carried out of habit, even if she hadn't regularly worked in a lab for years now.

'Well here goes'

She walked out of her office into Bethlehems command room in the stations core, not to be confused with the control tower that ran docking and posed as the stations nerve center, that was just a decoy, the stations real nerve center was deep within.

"Ok everyone, the various headaches we had to deal with over the past few weeks have delayed this policy meeting, we've all worked together some at this point, so I'll keep it brief, noone likes a self-important command speech that wont end.

Bethlehem is in a fairly good state right now.
That most recent rogue attempt at establishing a presence onboard has been tossed out of the airlock
Maintence having the airlocks gravity generator boost them on a trajectory to burn up on planet Tyrone was a good call.
Mining survey teams, working with elements of the ZDF Exploratory Corps have been giving the WIlkes-Barre field another more thorough look.
Our mining ships are helping to keep Clevland station running at capacity, as well as building up our own resource stockpiles
Liberty ignores us, for now, and we continue to ship smaller ammounts of cargo and slowly expand the station.

That will not last.

I know it, you know it.

As some of you are aware, the other day I sent a brief communique to Liberty, just to open dialouge.

I know, I know, some of you really dont like talking to them, look where that got Erie.

We are NOT inviting them on the station, but at the same time, this nice mostly peaceful status quo we have going will not last.

The solution is simple in its complexity.... diplomacy.

We need to find a way to bring back the old treaty of Bethlehem in some form, to guarantee our neutral status.

I know some of our departments, especially mining and construction, would want to build small outlying stations nearby, but dare not risk the ire of Liberty noticing such a facility before it has expanded enough to defend itself.

Thats why we need to get Liberty to come to some sort of arrangement with us, so we can expand.

Then we need to get legitimate buisness partners for those expansions, if it's making for good buisness Liberty is more likely to actually honor it's treaty and leave us alone, who knows they might even agree to not shoot on sight if we brought some larger ships in to help secure our little region of the system.

Any questions"

The questions were brief, and the meeting ended.

'Now to wait, and see what happens.'