"I'll have the men look for him after we're finished, then. I need to speak with him, too." She fumbles about a pile of papers with one hand and reaches for a drawer with the other. Selim notices that her left has a black glove, although the right is bare. "Ah, the gentleman has already settled himself! Wine?", Elizabeth says playfully as she takes a glass out of the drawer, but Selim politely refuses. She takes offense at this and at his arrogance to sit without asking. "What, do you think we'd poison you? Look!" She pours a bit into the glass, visibly made nervous, and drinks it herself, in-between two sips of tea, obviously not overly pleased by the mixture.
"If we wanted you dead, we wouldn't invest so much effort into protecting you from your own assassins, would we? We are here to help each other, mister premier. You said you had some plans... Could you please elaborate now?"
Monarchist-grade manners were never part of the Coalition curriculum, of course, and as such the would-be Premier hardly noticed his sleights against Captain Hall's patience. He wasn't particularly thirsty at the moment anyhow, and at least the Captain had given him a way to slide out of the mildly embarrassing incident by getting to the heart of the issue at the moment.
" I did indeed have an idea of how this deal would work out, knowing the gist of the system here. As I've said, I didn't plan on sitting idly here anyway. So...", he took a breath to build up some preparation and emphasis, " ... the way I see it, there's a few ways to go about paying Bretonia for its hospitality. I doubt someone with my credentials, or de Grasse for that matter, is in a particularly good position to get a corporate job, so that leaves whatever your government can offer. We presumed the possibilities would involve the military, the intelligence services, or Bretonia's long-standing tradition of privateers. Aside from that, we've been slipping assets out of New Moscow to help establish operations, and ensure our continued possession of numerous valuables."
"What, the Coalition premier, working for the BAF!?" Elizabeth genuinely giggled, something she does very rarely. "No, premier, no. Humiliating you is not part of our plans, and there is a reason why I still call you premier. You see, we too have a plan... But before we discuss it, I would like to talk about these." She promptly pulled out the piece of paper which she had been holding her finger on from the pile and gave it to Selim. It contained a number of questions written by hand, obviously prepared in haste and rather serving as Elizabeth's personal notes than a formal act.
- Who has taken over in the Coalition?
- Do they know where Selim is?
- Is it likely they will sign the Sydney Accords?
- Can Selim call his allies for help? (e.g. Hessians, Order...)
- Can Selim provide access to transmission frequencies of the SCRA?
- General evaluation of the Caolition military?
- Detailed evaluation of the Coalition military on Sydney?
Well, this was quite the surprise from left field. If handing Selim a piece of paper with a lot of sensitive intelligence questions was a calculated shock tactic on the part of Hall, it was definitely enough to widen his eyes by a substantial margin, not to mention the fact all his alternatives seem to have been swept away in the moment. Nonetheless, he thumbed through the contents of the paper before commenting.
" Mmmm, you know, that sort of idea isn't what I had in mind... anyway, if you want me to write any of this down, I'm going to need something to do it with."
Elizabeth stared at Selim in disbelief for a couple of moments. She had calculated that the chance Selim simply hands her the piece of paper back would be greater. As if picking up a holy relic, she handed him her pen in sacred silence.
Given what he did know would likely await him back home, he clicked the pen, put the paper against some conveniently available hard space to write against, and got to work for the next twenty minutes or so, before handing the paper back. If he was going to throw away his nationality and cultural affiliation, he figured he might as well go all the way.
"It's free real estate", Elizabeth's eyes said when they skimmed through Selim's answers. "If what you are saying is true, mister premier, then you are the only premier with a legal right to govern the Coalition part of Planet Sydney. Would you mind if we helped you return to power?"
Even though he was actually quite resigned to the contrary, Selim couldn't help but grin quite heftily at the notion. " Mmmm. I can't really say I would mind that, but you might find the adversaries in the way to be more stubborn than my word can give credit to being."
"Dealing with the adversaries should not be your worry, premier. All you will need to do is call the Coalition population of Sydney for loyalty before it begins. If you are successful, it might even be bloodless. Even if we fail, a spacious mansion on Cambridge at the Steiners' expense wouldn't be the worst place to spend the rest of your life at, would it?"
That got a laugh out of him. " That would be quite swell, but I've still got a few decades of space-worthiness at least before I'm actually material for a retirement home. I suppose, then, we ought to hope that our mutual plans are favored by the coming days."
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