[b]Green![/b]

"That's my point," said Green. "Liberalism outlived the [i]planet[/i]. It's not [i]going [/i]to die, and it's certainly not going to die in peacetime with unemployment at less than 15%, no matter how bullshit most of those jobs are. There are people who are genuinely fanatical true believers in liberalism, just like there are people who are genuine true believer conservatives, and they have a lot of political clout. They can't be marginalized electorally and we don't have enough military force to launch a coup."

She observes the change in Eli's presentation for a moment. Respects it. Remarkable, how skilled that shift was. So many small signifiers shifted through light and stance. She pauses and goes on.

"Liberalism, though, is a [i]process[/i]. Its defenders, deep down, don't really care what the process does so long as it goes through the process. It's a bone-deep cultural reaction against monarchy and dictatorship, it's a system with averting civil war as its highest priority. Not getting communism is a reasonable price for a liberal to pay for not getting war. So is not getting justice, equality or freedom. It'll only bend when it becomes convinced that the alternative [i]is [/i]war, and then it'll absorb the idea instantly and in full. How, then, do you destroy the system that just surrendered to you when you're already exhausted from fighting it for that long? You can't, and the coalition collapses."

She listens and thinks to the second half of Eli's speech. She's quiet too, but it's a thoughtful quiet. She can't find flaw with that idea in that expression and is thinking it over, turning it over and over in her mind. She doesn't give absolution but only because she's thinking about it too deeply to project her own ideas in response.

[b]White![/b]

[i]Your strengths are also your weaknesses.[/i] This was the great problem of dealing with the virtuous; the same thing that made them great made them vulnerable. 

She needed a moment to think, which she does by saying 'excuse me', and all three of them taking out their phones so they could text to each other. Kind of a bit rude but Orange isn't here to smooth it over so she hopes there's enough weird professionalism to smooth over it.

White: What is the operation?
Yellow: This is a security apparatus. We don't care about it, in and of itself. We care how it connects [i]out[/i].
Black: This means our priority is to force the opposition to make contact with their handlers in a way in which we can observe them, or force them to deploy resources in such a way that it makes it clear what they're protecting.
White: What is our take on the journalism thing?
Black: A bad plan. It does not accomplish our goals. That is something that a security apparatus would be able to handle at level. That's day job shit for them, it doesn't need to go up the chain.
Yellow: It may inspire a panicked meeting?
Black: The lady whose job is to micromanage disasters is not going to tilt at the presence of a journalist.
White: Then we need to disregard Knightly's plan and divert him into something that makes him feel useful.
Yellow: He's already hyped himself up as a coup performing admiral. Sending him to do background research won't be enough.
Black: Let me talk it through.

"We don't have the initiative," said Black, putting down her phone. "They are here to manage you, specifically. This organization has already taken steps to sideline and observe you. They are here to prevent you, Knightly, and your Allard group, which they have certainly already mapped, from getting out of hand. Currently in this crisis-free situation literally the only thing they have to do all day is respond to things that you do. And even if you somehow unearth hard evidence and get all of them fired that will not blow back onto the people responsible. They can just hire another security apparatus. I am saying this all to be as clear as possible that your perspective is limited. You're fighting spot fires at the entrance while the reactor core is melting down in the next segment. Your target needs to be the thing that is belching new fires through the vents, not the fires themselves."

"So I need you to focus on the figure beyond Mycroft. Mycroft is the problem you can see but she's not the threat to the station. She's working for someone in exchange for something. I don't know who or what. Option one is that she's paid off, in which case if I can identify the funding trail then I can blow it open. Option two is that she's a spook or career mafia or something, in which case if I can identify the commanding organization I can publicize that connection. Either way, knowing you are speaking to a journalist does not get her talking to her bosses. That falls underneath the original umbrella of managing you, and represents a serious escalation of the threat you pose to them. What gets Mycroft speaking to her bosses is something that doesn't fit inside her initial remit of surveilling you."

"And that's why you should fake your own death," said Yellow.
"What?!" said White. "No!"
"What? We're talking about ways to send Mycroft's organization into a frenzy, right?" said Yellow. "They'll freak [i]out [/i]if the subject of their investigation gets whacked by parties unknown. That's a reason to call your boss if I ever heard one."

[b]Orange![/b]

She'll just get it expensed.

One of Singh's old projects was a piece of HR software. It'd scan resumes and work experience, automatically make reference calls, do criminal checks, the works. Released cheap and powerful enough to dominate the entire market for HR. But it also had a special Nepotism Mode which'd flag any resume as a perfect hire and skip them straight ahead to the interview stage. 

It's flimsy as shit as a cover identity. There's nothing real behind it, just the thumbs up from the robot. If anyone goes digging on their own then everything will fall through. But as far as getting her transport out and back, bussing in with a bunch of other new hires and then bussing out when she's not a good fit is the kind of white collar perk Neo Potism can expect from the jobs she applies for.

[Cover 1: Neo Potism, the perfect resume]

... or at least, that's before she realized that Dragon was legitimately out there alone. No oversight, no staff, no personnel. She'd imagined that he'd be trapped but it turned out that he was just as good at trapping himself. 

The idea of taking a ship out felt kind of weak, especially to Blue who was only a few... months or years away from building herself a space-capable frame, but that was kind of the problem wasn't it? If she gave into that impulse and started building a perfect body to rescue Dragon from his own perfectionism she felt like nothing would get done and Monk would get a step closer to understanding buddhism.

So, a ship. What it would take to get would depend on what kind of ship she showed up on. Dragon had an eye for detail and her ride would be noticed and scrutinized, especially if she had to have the conversation with it entirely within eyeshot. 

The first option was to show up in a clunker, a barely maintained wreck that she was keeping running through sheer engineering. It'd get Dragon's attention and he might even deign to fix it but that would be another distraction for him. And it wouldn't get his respect.
The opposite end of the spectrum? A hyper-modern luxury yacht? He'd appreciate the engineering but that risked sending entirely the wrong message about perfection. And he wouldn't respect that either.

Money or lack thereof wasn't a way out of this. She needed something perfect in its imperfection. What she needed was the Space Tether.

The Space Tether was one of those beautifully dumb physics puzzles that only worked in space. Get two objects, tie them together with a big ol' cable, and spin them around and around so they build up momentum with each others mass. Then you cut the cable at [i]exactly [/i]the right second and away you go, all sped up without spending any fuel. There were still a couple lying around in orbit from early 20th century tests that were never worth clearing up. She wouldn't need a full ship for this, she'd just need a cheap flight to deploy a cheap pod and fling herself like a slingshot bullet at the centre of Dragon's project. 

It had the following risks:
1: Dragon wouldn't catch her. Impossible if he was at all like the Dragon she used to know, but maybe he'd gotten slow?
2: She does the math wrong and hurtles herself off into the void for weeks before getting humilatingly picked up.
3: A critical flaw slipped through early-21st century NASA's, mostly, exacting quality control standards and she launches herself into a station defense laser/earth

But one risk [i]not [/i]on that list was 'Dragon won't respect it'.