The admiral's thin lips slowly curled into a crooked little predatory crescent as they listened to what the, ultimately captive, members of Division 5 had to say. It was good that there was little trust towards these shadowy figures that'd scooped the survivors up, it meant the Null Fleet were doing their job well, being an unpredictable blade in the shadows. The disgust, the distrust, the fear - the admiral fed off it like a leech on an artery, and despite only metaphorically holding a blade to each of their throats, the admiral's presence was intimidating enough to make more than a few hairs stand on end.
"Completely separate command structure? absolutely, is the algorithm our boss? no, it's the output from a hive-mind of digital constructs living on an array of elder-strain lunebaren crystal quantum processors, it processes countless data streams every second to provide us with models and predictions to a scary degree of accuracy... to answer your question it serves the role of an oracle, an advisor, allowing us to achieve our ends no matter how disgusting you may find the concept~" they offered as a very base-level explanation, the admiral's voice rising a few excited octaves as it became apparent that this 'Null Fleet' had access to what was basically a chained best beyond comprehension, for better or for worse.
The admiral let out a quiet chuckle and took a moment to compose themself, falling back to those more muted mannerisms as a few wrinkles were straightened out of their black uniform.
"It pumped out a cover story, explaining how with fried comms equipment you sought shelter in an abandoned shack and patched yourselves up, you're still going to need to march to a rather quiet road and get picked up by some long-hauler. But it's perfectly reasonable, it's better if you don't know Leo's cover, makes it easier to believe if you are genuinely clueless," the admiral smirked again, eyes tightening into devious slits.
"You should be thankful, our machine very rarely contradicts itself, but I'm sure you much prefer this outcome to the original one... beds are typically more comfortable than coffins~"
That last bit of information got a few throat-clearings from the surrounding members of the shadowy fleet and a scoff from Kyet, whose hand balled into a fist, she brought that arm back and took a step towards the admiral~
Her hand stopped suddenly, and the curvy operator heard one of the dividing flaps whoosh before registering the sharp pain in her wrist, letting out a yelp of pain at she began processing what was happening. There was a hand wrapped around her forearm, a large hand, and it was attached to something tall~
Standing shy of 7ft was what one might initially assume was a big Daur. The man's relatively lanky limbs were clad in grotesquely defined muscle groupings, orange fur just barely peeking out from under the sleeves of his black jumpsuit as he stood between the Operatives and the Admiral, blotting out the nearby overhead light. Though his pale face wore deep shadows they could still note a few oddities about his sharp features, the tip of the man's nose was black and leathery, framed by small fangs pressing out of his maw and more tufts of orange along the man's jawline, there was almost no sclera visible with those enlarged iris and pupil. Large ears and a healthy tail finished his menacing appearance, hand not budging even a hair as it squeezed down on Kyet's wrist harder, getting another scream of agony from the Operative.
This thing was clearly no Daur nor Laibe, but a cousin of some sort, though adrenaline and Kyet's pained screams made it hard to perform much critical thinking. The black-clad Admiral barely even flinched, in fact, they were almost enjoying the brutality of it~
