"Listening to others, considering well what they say" (Part 3: Maingate Hotel)

[cityship]

The Maingate Hotel was pretty extravagant, and an entire section of it had been eked out for the crew's use during their stay. They had several suites, three communal areas, a conference room, their own kitchen with a chef on call if they required her.

They were all teleported from the main teleport pad of the hotel into the conference room, which was a large enough room to be able to hold a group their size and had plenty of chairs arranged in a circular pattern so they could mostly all face each other or whoever was in the middle of the room.

Everyone had to settle down so they were all able to talk, and the meeting itself would have to be carefully controlled so they wouldn't all talk over each other. But they were up for the task, right?

[ooc: Guardian Setup, General Mingling, Clone Checkup, Newbie Briefing, General Briefing, More Mingling, Back to the Meeting, and The Idea Guy sections are open. Backup characters introduced to the plot can join in the mingling subthreads if they want. The opening of new subthreads will be announced here and the ooc. Please read the linked OOC post for a plot timeline.]

Comments

[zouichi.livejournal.com]

Zouichi smiled without much humor. "I would prefer to take a more hands-on approach to our response."

Although for him, 'hands-on' typically involved some rather explicit violence.

"However, it looks like everyone in charge is more for measured responses. All they can see is that medical technology. I only wonder exactly how much they'd be willing to sacrifice to get it."

[brustriese.livejournal.com]

"I'm only holding back because the last time I didn't, well..." Signum admits, trailing off and hoping Zouichi paid enough attention to the omnicomms that she didn't have to explain further.

"Command aboard ship is probably as divided as we are down here. It's the people ordering them around whose ethics I wonder about." Hell, now that she thinks about it, Testarossa's a member of Command. Assaulting her practically constitutes an act of war.

"If this ends up breaking down any further, though, you know I'll be on the side of my friends, not a planet of arrogant doctors," she assures Zouichi.

[zouichi.livejournal.com]

"Ah. Yes. That incident." He paused. "I was concerned about the well-being of the rest of the crew. If we suddenly mounted an attack, the other groups could have been subject to retaliatory action with no warning. Considering the ease with which they nullified the abilities of those they deemed 'clones' in my own group, the consequences could have been disastrous."

Zouichi shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. I believe most of the diplomats will be on the side of trying to use the attack on the crew as a bargaining chip. And I'm sure Zetta will insist until he's black and blue that this is merely a game of numbers. Although I'd agree that the GIA is extremely suspicious here -- the Councilor that brought us to the... 'processing center'... insisted that we should have been notified of the planet's policies toward cloned individuals beforehand, that their regulations were longstanding, well-known, and applied to all visitors to the planet."

Then he nodded. "I will also. Not only for those aboard the crew they attacked, but for the people here they've reduced to living machines to make their own lives a little more comfortable."

[brustriese.livejournal.com]

"If that's what they said, either they were lying, or the people behind this mission explicitly left that information out of the briefing," Signum says. "Either way, someone is selling us up the river, and both the Galileeans and the GIA are holding a great deal of power over our heads."

She stops and sighs, before her emotions get too far ahead of her. "Living machines...I used to think of myself that way. It took years for someone to convince me otherwise, and one stupid artifact clock to temporarily take that knowledge back. I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to be completely impartial to people being treated like that under any circumstances."

[zouichi.livejournal.com]

"Well, let's not exclude the possibility that they're both lying. I wouldn't want to be unfair to either side." Yep, Zouichi was kind of cynical about this entire situation. "Kind of makes you wonder what else we aren't being told."

He gave her a wry smile. "I am a living machine. But people on this ship do tend to tell me I'm still a person. I'm glad someone convinced you of the same."

Although he still wasn't a clone.

[brustriese.livejournal.com]

"So am I," Signum said, though her voice is somber enough even she's not sure what part of Zouichi's comment she was replying to. Probably both.

[zouichi.livejournal.com]

He nodded. "In any case, it's best not to let down our guard. At least until we're off this rock."

And maybe not even then.