A Rebel Yell

“The thing is, there’s not one group out there for you to meet.” Macch commented, gesturing vaguely with his vapor stick at the assembled gathering. The two alien spies had eaten rather a lot of Naera’s cooking before Dustin led them to the meeting room he’d organised for their time on board. Normally, he’d have had this discussion in the ready room, but they were spies after all, even if they were ones nominally working for his father-in-law.

Besides Dustin, the others in the room - Yril’k, Defia and Aricia - glanced at each other in light of the alien’s words. Dustin requesting the presence of the Lieviran at this briefing had surprised her, but his reasoning was sound he felt. In any kind of espionage situation, there was always the potential to take pictures for intelligence operatives back home to comb through, and the flighty butterfly woman was the best photographer he had on board.

Macch, meanwhile, continued his explanation. “See, the Durathisians pride themselves on unity of purpose - all marching in the same direction. That tends to lead to people who don’t follow the march splintering off, but those little splinters all still want to move as one, even if they disagree with each other. So they group up in their own little marches; you got folk who want better treatment for different strata of society, folk who want the military to be more like the feudal knights they were a few thousand years ago, folk who disagree with the attacks on the council, folk who want the entire Durathisian race to adopt pacifism… all of those muddled in with a bunch of others. That’s before you even get started on some of the religious cults.”

Pausing to take another long drag on his stick, Macch grimaced. “And with this war, some of those groups have lined up behind the rest of the empire, some have been suppressed forcibly, and the rest are working together to spite the mainstream - but without any clear leadership because they all disagree with one another.”

Defia leaned forward. “Statement. Distributed leadership is an effective tool for this kind of rebellion. It prevents single points of failures. Addendum. If we interact with one group and not others, will that change the power balance and risk structural collapse?”

Macch shrugged. “Doubt it. Unless the group you talk to starts blasting it everywhere that you’re only talking to them, which we can avoid by talking to a couple of different groups in short succession. Which if you’re gonna try and hit one of the research facilities you’d need to do anyhow.”

Seeing Dustin’s expression, the alien laughed and kicked back in his chair, resting his feet on the table. “It doesn’t take a genius to work that out. Linth and I send out a drop that’s got a whole load of pictures of a black site lab in it, and within a month Earth’s sending a bigwig over to ‘talk’ to the rebels? Besides, if you show up with this fancy ship or even hint you have something on this scale, the rebels are going to ask you to prove you’re on their side by attacking a lab or something anyway.”

“Alright, you’re right.” Dustin said after a moment’s deliberation. “So, if we’re meeting with a range of groups and then hitting a lab, what’s the plan?”

“The ethics committee, yes that’s what they’re called, and the council revolutionaries,” Linth said slowly, the larger alien’s huge hands dwarfing the files he carefully set on the table in front of Sola’s crew. “One group argues for increased sanctions on research, and are not happy at all about the path military science has taken with utilizing Fractal matter, the other are the pro-council faction - as in the galactic council.”

Linth took a long chug of his drink before he continued. “Both groups have operatives working in a field research site not far from here - maybe a three or four day flight, tops, depending on what this ship can do. The site’s hands-off botanical study, so they don’t have any long-range scanning equipment. We’ve got their resupply schedule, so we can dip in and out without being detected.”

Macch stepped in at that point. “We make contact with them, they send a communication to some of their higher ups to confirm what to do, they give us data on an isolated lab they want us to hit, we knock it out, then you get an invite to talk to the bigwigs ‘cos they know you can be trusted at that point. Or at least, trusted enough to talk to via an intermediary, most likely.”

Yril’k’s eyes narrowed. “Any’k information about the kind’k of lab we’k would be targetting’k?”

The aliens exchanged glances. “Not sure on that one, honestly,” Macch said, rubbing the back of his head. “They’ll want it to be a small hit to not draw attention to themselves, probably. There’s a couple of facilities in this area that they could send us after - no idea what goes on in most of them, but the rebels would know. From the files they gave us last time, weapons and biowarfare research, maybe some of that Fractal goop? Could be a reverse engineering site - they’ve a few of those, going over any tech they can find from other species to tear out any value to their empire.”

Dustin frowned at that point. “They shouldn’t have any Sol craft at least, but even so… I don’t like the idea of them pilfering the galaxy for tech instead of negotiating. Add that to the list of their crimes I guess.” Drumming his fingers on the table, he glanced at the women sitting alongside him. “Thoughts?”

Yril’k shrugged. “We move’k as planned? A small’k party, just the few’k of us, as these gentlemen’k suggest?”

Defia and Aricia nodded. “Statement. Without knowing the specifics of the rebels request, it is hard to plan. Assaulting a facility with Sola’s main gun should not prove a challenge, neither should infiltration. Addendum. If we hit a facility containing my kind in an inert form, I would like to try and collect a sample for study before we destroy it. I am… curious as to how they have prevented it from forming a unit and reaching out to the cluster.”

Setting his glass down, Dustin gave her a thumbs up as he swallowed. “Definitely. I also want to know where they obtain their Fractal material from - if we can grab a sample, either you or the boffins back home might be able to tell us. Given that every other time we’ve encountered your kind it’s been either acting as overlords and harvesting a planet or outright cracking worlds, I’m really interested in how the Durathisians get their hands on this stuff.”

Macch took another puff on his vapor stick and nodded. “Alright, well, I already sent your pilot the coordinates so we’re underway. Linth and I got some bits and pieces to pull together on our ship if we’re coming with you - just in case this goes south, we don’t want to be walking into it empty handed, you get me?”

Yril’k clicked her mandibles at that. “Sola has a very’k sizable armoury. If you require’k firepower I can…”

The suited alien gave her a grin and shook his head. “Holdouts and knives are all well and good, miss bug-lady. But if we’re gonna breakout of a trap, we want some of my little custom gifts. Thanks for the offer, but I do my best work with the big guy here.”

Back on board their skimmer a short time later, Macch glanced up from his workbench as he finished soldering a timer onto a vial that would eventually contain a rather potent acid. The little dissolve-all was one of his more useful gadgets for getting out of a tight spot, and he intended to have several on his person when meeting the rebels; the human had rightly spotted that this might be a trap, and if anything the spy was even more cautious than their current host. “What do ya make of the human and his crew, Linnie?”

Behind him, the behemoth gave a shrug, hunched over the lathe where he was busy sharpening one of the massive jungle-blades that were his people’s traditional weapons - and also highly useful when getting out of a tight scrape in a forest, Macch knew from experience. “Dunno. They’re all banging, I can tell you that much.” The man paused to tap his nose then returned to his work. “Not that that’s unusual for an ambassadorial ship. It is unusual for the women to be this competent though. That Fractal one picked up on your cufflinks and my back-dagger even though she didn’t say anything about them, and the bug was reading your pheromones the entire time to see if you were lying.”

Straightening, Linth sighted along the edge of his blade. “It’s good to actually be working with people that are skilled at what they do for a change though, right Macch?” His friend and fellow spy didn’t even look up as he grinned and nodded, dragging another pile of circuit boards towards him to keep working on a few more little surprises.