Curacao Meeting

["TheSparrow"]

Sparrow watched Raven’s toast with a quiet, knowing calm,
her fingers resting lightly on the stem of her glass. The amber brandy,
swirled with the dissolving shimmer of the purple powder she’d added earlier,
caught the warm lighting of the lounge. She took a slow, deliberate sip,
letting the silence stretch just long enough to assert her own rhythm in the conversation.

She set the glass down, the faint clink cutting through the ambient sound of the ocean.

"'Enthusiastic' is a polite way of putting it, Raven,"
she murmured, her voice carrying a warmth that belied the sharp intelligence in her eyes.
She turned her gaze to Caitlyn and Stephanie, her demeanor shifting from the observer to the Matriarch.

"My associate deals in samples, capabilities, everything resolving around navigation.
He establishes the ground zeros' to work from, relations to landing zones, you name it.
But I...", She tapped her own datapad, and a new list overrode the previous projection on the table,
scrolling with efficient, brutal precision,
"...I organize the manpower that will win wars from the shadows."

The holographic manifest resolved into clear, undeniable lines,
displaying the "extensive list of exquisite items" she had secured for this meeting:

• Ageira White Boxes - Scanner-proof, tamper-proof sealed components for Jump Gate construction. Secured with complex biometric keys, they are designed to detonate if opened incorrectly.
  
• Gallic Enfer Blasters - Restricted military hardware, difficult to source outside the Gallic Union's tight grasp.
  
• Military Surplus - Standardized, reliable, and in bulk.
  
• Nox - A volatile commodity with... specific recreational and medical applications.
  
• Volgograd Ordinance - Heavy munitions that speak a universal language.

Sparrow gestured to the scrolling list, then met Caitlyn’s eyes.

"These aren't mere goods, my dears. Consider this a masterclass in the supply chains we can weave.
Consistent. Reliable. And delightfully untraceable.
You may have heard that the Sirius Coalition isn't exactly in a 'diplomatic' mood these days.
Bless their hearts. But it truly does not matter. We whisk these treasures right out from under their heavy noses.
They simply cannot match our finesse in the cockpit.

Honestly, with the way they fly, one might suspect they’ve been indulging in a bit too much of the Cardamine themselves."

Sparrow chuckles while sipping at her amber brandy.

She then leaned forward slightly, her expression hardening just a fraction as she addressed Raven’s lingering question about the 'relic'. She reached into the small, armored satchel at her side -
not the sealed case Raven had brought, but something personal she had carried with her.

She withdrew a heavy, ornate object wrapped in dampening cloth.
As she unfolded it, the alien geometry of a Xeno Relic was revealed - ancient, visibly damaged,
yet resonating with a strange form of energy that seemed to hum against the room's quiet.
She placed it on the table with a heavy thud, the instability of the object palpable.

"The 'weapon' you asked for," she said, acknowledging Raven's request.
"Banned across the Colonies and sourced from the deep Omicron Worlds. It is more than a lethal curiosity -
it is the catalyst for a technological arms race, soaked in the blood of those who failed to control it."

Sparrow paused, her gaze shifting to Caitlyn and Stephanie to gauge their reaction,
before she reached into the satchel once more.

"But that is merely a tool. This..."

She placed a second, smaller heavily shielded containment unit on the table beside the relic.
It hummed with a low, dissonant frequency. Sparrow deactivated the seal.
The box did not contain a gun or a bomb, but a jagged, glowing shard of crystalline circuitry -
an incomprehensibly strange amalgamation of human and alien technology that seemed to shift when looked at directly.

"Artificial Personality Fragment," she explained, her voice dropping slightly. "A salvage from a Gammu AI, representing eight centuries of technological divergence.
Such vessels typically self-destruct to protect the secrets of 'true' AI,
making this shard priceless to groups like The Core. In the right hands, it's a supercomputer.
In the wrong hands... it's a localized apocalypse."

She slid the containers gently toward Caitlyn.

"Consider it a personal gift from the Expendables. A guarantee that we are not merely smugglers, but partners who understand the value of leverage."