![](https://i.postimg.cc/K8WL9ssF/f4ae3675e73f1d57c6f3cde45b5dbc96.png)
The commander's words, after showing them the aftermath of their last mission, were harsh but the point he wanted to make was clear... Keeping one's hands clear and following one's morals in the situation they faced was... impossible. Just like the invictoid commander said, there was no room for discussing right or wrong in the war they fought. Doing so would be useless. They only had to be clean and efficient. It was a cold way to thing about things, but it was better than sitting down and spending days and days discussing how they could do things in the 'right' way instead of actually acting.
The invictoid commander's words were like a cold shower for Alice. In a war of that scale, the old sayings about doing a few things that could be considered 'bad' to bring a greater good later on seemed more appropriate than ever. With those thoughts in mind, Alice knew she would have to find a way to ignore her reservations and her morals, if she wanted to continue doing her job.
"I-I... understand commander..." Alice said, looking down. As unpleasant as it might be, she knew the commander was right and trying to argue against his logic would be useless... After all, regardless of how much society changed and evolved, one aspect would always remain unchanged. War.
With those thoughts still in Alice's head, she gave a small bow as she went to take Kleo to the medical bay, where upon arriving, they were silently greeted by a gealtirocht as it motioned for Alice to lay Kleo down on the bed behind a curtain. As soon as she did so, Alice would ask the gealtirocht's help in taking the shrapnel in her back.
"Thank you. Just be warned, Kleo might be a bit... agitated... when she wakes up... If she does so, just send her our way, if she is in any condition to walk or just tell her to wait for us and that we will explain everything to her as soon as possible." Alice said, thanking the gealtirocht both for tending to her wounds and staying with Kleo with a brief, albeit somewhat distant and tired smile, before she returned to where the rest of the squad was.
Alice heard the commotion before she saw the scene as she was reunited with the commander and the rest of the squad. The reason for such was a human, apparently someone with high ranking, who seemed to be incredibly angry about how the commander's actions deviated from the previous agreed plans. Alice merely watched in silence, similarly to the rest of her squad as the human went on about what happened in Prosperity, ending with a rather ominous remark as how they were all disposable for the invictoid commander. Once again, a cold fact, but one that was still undeniably true.
"Disposable? Maybe.. But nobody could straight up order them to die... Or blaming them for surviving afterwards." Alice thought to herself.
With that little 'incident' dealt with by the commander, they continued following him into a room where a strange creature, composed of a swarm of small, strange pieces floating in an orb of ethereal power seemed to be in charge of a command center. This creature, which was introduced as the Ixaxxar node by the commander soon began it's questioning after a brief evaluation of their squad's performance on the last mission.
The question asked by the Ixaxxar node was a very concerning one, bringing to light something Alice seemed to have either missed or forgotten about in the middle of the chaos that previous mission was. The very first informant that met them...
"It seems there was a security breach." Alice said, agreeing with the other Gealtirocht, Rho-Hux.
In hindsight, now that she heard Salvator's report, the so called 'informant' did seem to be rather suspicious...
"Just like Rho-Hux, Ilshar and Salvator said, it does seem to be too suspicious. Whether he was merely an informant or not, he seemed to have a good deal of knowledge on how the Intransigence operates and specifically about our mission there. He seemed to know more than what he should." Alice mentioned with a serious expression.