Session date: 2025-07-13
Saturday, January 9, 3025
Joanna proceeds to a fine restaurant, the Franklin, for the rendezvous. Nathaniel and Cosmo accompany her openly, while Max and Axel follow discreetly at a block’s distance. Giragos approaches Joanna’s car and takes the driver’s seat, pulling them down an alley to the restaurant’s employee entrance in the back.
He leads her into the restaurant employees’ changing room. Two women in civilian clothes but with military haircuts search her and remove the batteries from her computer and communicator.
Joanna is waved through to the dining room, where Giragos is waiting in a private booth with a built-in noise machine. The two compare their collected intelligence. Giragos is surprised at the rumors of a DEST operative. In exchange, he gives Joanna a photograph of a train carrying four assault mechs in Golden Sun colors: an Awesome, Battlemaster, Atlas, and even a King Crab. The photograph is dated December 9, which is before the Fed-Sun intervention.
Giragos tells Joanna to wait, and he leaves. The two soldiers from the changing room appear, now in dress uniforms. They announce the Supreme Commander of the Sayama Volunteer Forces. Major General Lennox Gibson, a handsome man with gray-streaked hair, enters the booth.
Gibson thanks Joanna for preventing civil war and calls her a hero. After appropriate diplomatic patter, he shows her a dossier. Stephan Arshigunian, a member of the world Diet, is dealing arms to the three major powers of the region and suspected of spying for the Combine’s ISF. Gibson asks the Second to attack his mansion and kill him; the SVF can’t move against a member of the civilian government themselves for fear of looking like a military coup. Gibson will hold a live fire exercise without informing the AFFS, giving the Second an excuse to deploy, and offers them 50% salvage rights.
Conferring back at base, Nathaniel puts two conditions on the operation. The Second must independently confirm Arshigunian’s crimes, and they must have a cover story for any battle damage and ammunition expenditure. One on one, he and Joanna discuss their respective duties to Brevet Major Macathasaigh, the overall strategic situation, and the truth. They agree that withholding the operation from Macathasaigh will better serve the Federated Suns than involving him in an extrajudicial killing.
Joanna holds a long-planned movie night, which grows rowdy, but remains under control.
Sunday, January 10
Nathaniel reports the assault lance to Macathasaigh, who thinks the news may get Moselle Battalion some additional support from the crown.
Joanna gives a sermon about the New Avalon Catholic Church’s perseverance during its early days under the Amaris regime.
Returning to planning the op, Nathaniel suggests they use SVF repair and salvage facilities. Max investigates Arshigunian’s past, and finds evidence that he has been laundering money through a series of failed construction companies. Axel accesses the transfer records at the local HPG station and confirms that Arshigunian has sent regular messages to various planets in the Combine’s Benjamin Military District and also received payments from various shell companies on Luthien itself.
Satisfied, the Second commits to the op.
