Calculated Risk

Posted on Thu Dec 22nd, 2022 @ 10:03am by Evanna Belyaev & Captain Reuben Gregnol (Mirror)
Edited on on Wed Dec 28th, 2022 @ 12:27pm

Mission: Mirror Mirror
Location: Executive Suite, Imperial Palace
Timeline: 2397
3989 words - 8 OF Standard Post Measure

The view had become stagnant.

Typically speaking, Evanna wasn't one to focus on the frippery of a location's aesthetics. Not because she couldn't appreciate a good view but because she was normally deeply entrenched in so many other priorities that the picturesque qualities of her current home rarely mattered. On the rare occasion that she could stop to smell the roses, or lack thereof, she was usually glad enough to have found a moment's reverie in the chaos and would have taken any scenery as a welcome change to the inside of her office. The past few weeks had flipped her typical operating standards on their head, so to speak, and not for the first time she found herself poised in front of the vast viewport inside the main living area of Gregnol's private suite, starring out at the starry expanse beyond the silhouette of his ship. Evanna had to give credit for the psychological implications of the room's very intentional aspect; nothing chaffed Gregnol's patience more than to be forced to stare at the vessel he had not been permitted to redeploy. As far as views went, it was impressive but it was getting old. Even she could feel it.

It had been half an hour or so since the stoic man had ushered them both inside, past the extra security detail that had been assigned to stand guard outside, and then left her to stand as she still was whilst he moved into his office to bark orders and demand answers. Aside from the communication required when seeking to round up the rest of the fleeing terrorists, Gregnol had not spoken much to her, at least not directly. His behaviour held interesting nuances, an almost covetous need to keep her close that masqueraded as concern, and very well may have been, but he wore a determination in his eyes that Evanna recognised as being far more complicated than mere protectiveness. Conflict was Gregnol's bread and butter, his capacity to be consumed by competing sentiments every bit the hallmark of the man's reputation. He wanted her safe. He also wanted her accounted for.

Still dressed for the evening, arms folded around her stomach, Evanna waited. It was something she was exceedingly good at.

"Fenruse... I do not care if I have pulled you from Aphrodite herself find Ford and get him to my suite." Gregnol spat into his communicator before disconnecting it without waiting for Fenruse to say anything back. She knew her place better since she had been denied her abilities but less than she should knowing how just how taunt his temper was at the moment. He stopped as he saw Evanna still stood by the window watching the scene in front of her. "You should sit or something." He finally commented giving her his attention.

It didn't take a lifetime in the snow to gauge an avalanche before it hit. Belyaev never moved with a great deal of urgency unless the situation called for swift reflexes, but there was no hesitancy to the way she turned to share a look with him and then dropped her gaze as she moved to perch on the arm of the nearest chair. She was here until he asked her to leave, or had her dragged out, and wouldn't have taken the liberty to make herself overly at home without invitation in any case. She remained silent, aware that he had more than enough he wanted to say and that he would speak every last word of it when it suited him to.

The man raised an eyebrow at her compliance and lack of comment on his shortness towards her. “What have you observed?” He asked quietly looking at the view she had been observing.

It was a loaded question, layers deep. Several steps in a waltz far more intricate than the dance they'd shared earlier in the evening. Evanna understood enough to anticipate what was coming, had even gone as far as to orchestrate it to a certain degree by making available far more information about herself than he normally would have been entitled to. The games of others, even her superiors, rarely impressed the young operative. More than that, she was of the opinion that they were straying dangerously close to underestimating the man in front of her, a mistake Evanna didn't intend to replicate. She had watched his career from afar, had tucked away moments of appreciation and admiration as potential motivators and not really expected to ever get this close. Clever people didn't squander opportunities, and Belyaev was an exceedingly clever woman.

Her blue eyes held his firmly.

"Discrepancies," she eventually answered, just as quietly. It would have been a cryptic response had she believed for a moment he'd actually been talking about the view from his quarters. "And missing links. There has been a general acceptance that rebel sentiment has infiltrated the political sphere for a while now but tonight's attempt has escalated the urgency for tracing its source."

Then, because there was no escaping the necessity of it and the moment seemed ripe as any to lay her cards on the table, Evanna lifted her chin slightly and stated, "You've read my dossier." It wasn't a question.

His lips quirked into a slightly smile and he inclined his head. “Indeed. You’ve not been completely honest.” He finally let on that he knew that she had not been completely clear with him. He could not say he had not considered putting her agoniser to find out what he was being lied to about but she had been too interesting to not play with.

"A misdirection through omission alone. I have never directly lied to you. My status as an officer, my rank, my position, all instated legitimately. Assignment to your vessel was partially a personal request." Again, her gaze didn't waver. "My superiors are concerned you are not of the right temperament to trust with recent intel." The blonde pause and eased her head to one side in a gentle nod. "I disagreed."

“Your superiors are?” He said wanting her to say it as he held her gaze but kept his distance. It was certainly a big misdirection in his eyes but a personal request intrigued him. “And why a personal request? Was this always your plan to end up here?” He asked indicating around.

"Exactly what my service record implies." Belyaev's composure didn't shift. The intel operatives that existed layers deep in the Empress' covert forces went by many names designed to exaggerate their existence and relegate them to the mantle of superstition and myth. Evanna preferred not to evoke any of them, particularly now. "I work in Her Radiance's Intelligence Branch, a position I have cultivated over the past 20 years." A quick calculation placed that as far back as her 12th birthday. "One of my fathers is her current Head of Operations."

“Of course you are.” Gregnol commented with a roll of his eyes as he sat down and just stared at her. It all made sense now and he was feeling pretty angry that he might be played.

Her tone was even, the information regaled without embellishment or any haste to seek forgiveness. Ultimately, whilst Evanna knew Gregnol to be a man displeased by secrets kept at his own expense, she also rated his intelligence far higher than some of her colleagues. The work she did flew under the radar for a reason.

"As for my deployment request, I wanted you brought into the loop. When my direct superiors balked at the idea, I sent my appeal directly to the Empress." By now, the level of tenacity and sheer boldness that move required fit entirely with the way Belyaev had conducted herself since arriving. "My original intention had been to approach you much earlier but I hadn't anticipated landing directly into a situation involving your Science Chief. The delay and inevitable subterfuge that resulted is regrettable. It certainly wasn't my preference."

“So this between us was a ploy? To get closer for the Empress.” The man said in a calm voice. It would not be the first time he had been played and he had been one doing the initial chasing but it did not stop the annoyance that he was feeling in his gut. It made sense the disdain that the woman had for the Empress now.

At first, his only response was a raised eyebrow.

"If I recall correctly," Evanna responded eventually, not without humour thought it was carefully cultivated not to chaff, "This was by your design."

Though her eyes had never left his, there was an intent to them now that burned, the dance of kinetic energy that was part of what had fueled their mutual attraction. Very many times in the past, she had entertained the company of others for the sake of the job, or simply to satiate a fleeting need. As much as she wasn't a woman to resort to emotional entreaties, Belyaev had a far too intense relationship with her own motivations to allow misrepresentation to breed contempt. Very carefully, moving in a way that sought to avoid presumption, she unraveled her legs to rise from her seat and approached him slowly, stopping at a distance that was neither cold nor overtly familiar.

"You are the reason I am here. Had it not been important to establish whether the Science Department had been further compromised, I wouldn't have sought to mask my intent at all. It has never been my desire to deceive you, Reuben." The final sentence, rendered in their shared tongue, dipped towards the intimacy that was currently under jeopardy. She was nothing, it had to be said, if not courageous. "And this has certainly not been a politically-motivated development."

Her lips twitched into a faint smile.

"Sharing your bed is going to get me several high-level reprimands. Divulging the nature of the biome project already has, and pre-emptively providing you with a copy of the rebel ship's manifest has further stirred the hornet's nest. Nobody is thanking me for ensuring that you're brought up to speed. It's hardly a ploy."

She regarded him again, as enigmatic and yet surprisingly vulnerable for once, tempered by the resignation that whatever he decided would be something she had to contend with.

"Neither does it come with any regrets."

“Good, never have regrets.” He had only one regret in his nearly 40 years and he would never even admit that to himself let alone anyone else. The woman was perfect and he would hate to take his rage out on her over something he would have likely done himself. “You need reprimands but you will not have any from me but I need to know if there is anything else that is going on. There are too many distractions from in fighting and the rebels for there to be anything left unsaid.” He took her wrist and pulled her closer to him.

Relief wasn't something Evanna was accustomed to experiencing, having spent too much of her life constructing situations that didn't provide any need for it. It was also a dangerous sentiment, one that promoted the lowering of defenses when remaining on-guard was so frequently the only viable option. She reserved an element of composure for the eventuality that he wasn't being genuine, no different to him in that regard, but tucked it away and allowed the bulk of her attention to focus on his proximity and the importance of what they stood to forge together if they got this right.

She laid her hand flat against his chest.

"It may take a while to work back through everything that is known, or at least expected. It would make more sense to do that systematically whilst granting you access to the intel for your own perusal. I can prepare that for tomorrow, we can meet in my office. For now, the only other pertinent detail is that your wife is not the only prominent survivor we have hopes of recovering from this operation."

One night was not going to kill him before he got to know fully what was going on around him. The Empress would have to like it or lump it at the moment. He was doing everything for her.

Her gaze held his for a long moment. Trusting people with personal information was not anywhere in Evanna's comfort zone but this was a man who, by reputation alone, had earned her esteem a long time ago. She was on his ship, and subsequently in his arms, because she saw a better chance of success with his involvement. At some point, he had to know.

"My non-biological father also survived Betazed's destruction. Whilst our intelligence hasn't made it clear if your wife is aiding and abetting of her own volition, there is very little doubt that Talon has aligned himself with rebel sentiments willingly. He is...problematic. And likely part of the reason we weren't fully prepared for tonight's security breach. If our information sources are failing to update us in time, his intervention is almost inevitably part of the disruption. Talon is an exceptionally powerful telepath."

Uncharacteristically, she broke his gaze for a moment and looked away.

"And very prone to using it to control others."

“Jeassaho was when she did not get her own way. What I liked about her.” Gregnol was lost for a moment before he let out a big sigh as he thought on Jeassaho and then the Betazoids he used to align himself with for that very reason. He appreciated power and keeping it around him. He touched her cheek and brought her face to look back at him. “We can punish him when I eventually find the rebels together.” He said simply.

The sentiment earned him a relaxation of her expression into a rare smile, soft and weary. It didn't last very long before a scan of his features left Evanna with her own demons to bury. It wasn't the time nor place, and she was hardly the type to fish for sympathy. "He is dangerous enough that they are considering not even trying to take him alive." She held his gaze, pausing long enough to ensure that her next words hit the mark as intended. "It is why they will likely send you after him, and it is also why I advocated so strongly for you to be made aware of exactly what it was you are hunting. The manifest we found indicates that both Kea and Kohl were transported at the same time. If she is serving on his ship..."

She lifted her hand to settle it against his jaw.

"You may be ordered to fire without consideration for collateral damage."

And so, history repeated itself. Something about it, as the information emerged and the hierarchy's response to it became more and more pragmatic, had prompted Belyaev to question the wisdom of sending Gregnol in with fabricated intel or, at the very least, incomplete understanding of what, and who, he was being asked to eliminate. Tricking him into murdering his wife for a second time seemed unwise to a woman far less likely to view him as an Imperial guard dog than her father, for instance, whose open disdain for the man's bully-tactics would definitely cloud his opinion of his daughter's current location. Depending on the sensibilities of those with the power to decide, she may face consequence at the end of the operation for the sheer amount of details she'd provided without official clearance, but then she'd been very careful to secure the Empress' permission for 'personal discretion' as some measure of protection. It didn't matter, even less now that she stood this close to him and caught glimpses of the man trapped beneath layers of grit and determination. Talon needed dealing with and Gregnol was the man to do it. Giving him full access to every implication was not only a personal kindness, it was solid tactics.

Her cool hands on his jaw, brought him back from the moment that he last made a choice on collateral damage vs the greater good. 50 billion people had made very little indent on his psyche, and his wife had been on the planet. So barely 1000 people on a rebel ship wouldn't even make a dent on his thoughts over whether it was right or wrong. “It would not be an order. I would do it on principle to protect the empire.” He said leaning down to kiss her hard. “And so what if she is on the same ship.”

And so he distracted her yet again, something he was growing altogether too adept at. Evanna wasn't surprised and knew enough to keep herself somewhat in check as it would serve neither of them to become too preoccupied in their natural synergy no matter how tantalizing it was. She returned his kiss but pulled back eventually to respond, an eyebrow cocked once more in amusement. "There is no expectation for you to grieve." The fingers resting against his lapel toyed with the fabric. "The inherent disrespect of sending you into such a situation blinkered was where I saw need to protest. Some distrust your capacity to employ patience when it is warranted." Her lips twitched. "Which is not an unfair observation." She was teasing him, a dangerous liberty and yet not outside the limits of her bravery thus far.

His own lips twitched into a smile and he conceded they did have a point that sometimes he did not have patience but he never lacked in his ability to get the job done no matter the consequences. “You would think after blowing up a world I would command enough respect to assure people of my ability to get the job done.” It was the one thing that made him angry about everything there were still some that doubted him.

Dangerously close to smiling again, Evanna thwarted it somewhat by raising her eyebrows. "If the job involved blowing up more planets, then very likely. The information we have has been compiled over months of intricately-embedded surveillance. We have operatives buried deeply, there is still some delicate work to finalise before the trigger can be pulled." The hand flattened again to pat his chest. "It will become clearer after I brief you tomorrow. All things considered, I'd rather wait until I can lock us behind security I actually trust."

Once again, Evanna paused to scan his features, a woman prone to reading between the lines first, and lingered a moment before continuing. "So, there you have it. At the very least, the tip of my iceberg. All that remains to be seen is what you choose to do with the information." Her lips twitched. "Though before you throw me into an agoniser, I would invite you to consider the possibility that I am likely to respond readily enough to you simply asking. It is hardly easy to unpack an entire lifetime in one breath," she pointed out quietly. "I hope it means something that that I do not fear you knowing my truth."

And she didn't. The last year or so had seen a shift in the ebb and flow of Evanna's tides. The iron focus of youth had served her well, there were very few amongst her colleagues who could best her in systems design and data encryption. But life in anonymity had a shelf life, it seemed, and the cost of having no identity was a certain amount of stagnation and repetition. She was ambitious in her own way, self-contained and yet brilliant enough to know when she was being wasted. Sticking her head up to consider a new direction had curbed a restlessness that had threatened the composure she valued so highly. Control. Meticulous and precise.

"We will be having many conversations over this." He said pointedly letting the conversation on all the information end there. He needed the brief before he jumped to any more conclusions or did something he might regret later. He would hate to kill someone who he needed, later on, it was awkward and embarrassing. "But I will consider that possibility in the future." He conceded to her.

Many conversations indeed. Belyaev didn't suffer any delusion that there was a quick fix, Gregnol was too thorough and too paranoid, with decent reason, to settle for unturned stones. He would poke and prod, and stretch and manipulate, and lean on her as a means of determining her breaking point, not because he derived particular pleasure in the deconstruction of others but because he needed to dissect people before he trusted them. Tolerated them. The lithe blonde wasn't altogether certain that absolute trust was possible, any more than she could honesty declare that she was capable of it herself. All they had was a mutual willingness to parlay whilst they figured it out. She inclined her head to convey her understanding and let her silence speak for itself.

"Good. We understand each other perfectly." He said simply and stroked her cheek taking in her coolness. She was a beautiful woman and her temperament was what he required from her meek, mild and strong. She knew her place and did not challenge him which was what he needed from a lover. "I knew this dress would look perfect on you." He said changing the subject to something that wasn't business. He would have enough of that over the coming hours and days.

Though she may have balked at the prospect of being considered meek, as an attempt to describe her rigid composure and ability to maintain serene neutrality in the midst of chaos, Evanna may have simply chosen to take it as a compliment. This far more direct attempt produced a characteristic half-smile and she resisted, with very little effort required, the obvious retort that involved what it would look like off her. As a flirtation, by her standards, word play of that ilk would have seemed almost crass. Instead, both hands smoothed out the front of his dress uniform, moving slowly over the contours that defined the shape of him. "Formality suits you."

“It makes my blood boil.” He said simply as his stern expression broke into a smile and a shake of his head. “I hate waiting around like this. Waiting for the Empress to decide what to do or not to do. I just want to go after the rebels.” It was all he had wanted to do for months.

"Tonight's events may force her hand." The turn of her head back towards the viewport for a moment cast an air of thoughtful displeasure over Evanna's profile. Ultimately, she had acted in time to prevent the pair of them from being killed, or at least significantly maimed, but close calls were no comfort. Their would-be assassin should not have made it that far armed with anything. "Suicide squads from unstable regions are a development that can't be passed off as normal political interplay."

“True.” Gregnol agreed thinking of tonight’s events as a chessboard where a checkmate had attempted to happen but was thwarted at the last second. It was a minefield of events to process and now the realisation that things had not been 100% honest between them until now slightly tainted his unready unpredictable emotions.

She returned her gaze to meet his.

"If the rebels have made the first move then stopping them before they can enact more will finally be a priority." A slim index finger traced the curve of his rueful smile and Evanna laughed softly, an uncommon sound. "And then you can stop pouting."

“And then I can stop pouting.” He repeated bringing her close to kiss hard. Only two things stopped him pouting when things like this happened and only one of them was available right then and there so he would take what was available.