Barachiel, alone in his office and exhausted after yet another day wasted by his fellow "honorable colleagues" grandstanding hour after hour after hour after god
damn hour in the Senate, let out a strangled curse of pure rage, for he knew - oh, he
knew - what was going to happen: nothing.
Nothing, because it was going to be a repeat of that
one despicable affair involving a Caelisolan and a psychotic heretic: the motion to address the issue would be added to one of the dozens upon dozens of "urgent items" on the
Senate's seemingly-infinite list of motions to be presented and - just like the aforementioned
affair - would be promptly ignored, forgotten about, or cast aside as his fellow "honorable colleagues" engaged in debates, counter-debates, counter-counter-debates, counter-counter-counter-debates, and counter-counter-counter-counter-debates over pointless bureaucratic miniuatae that
no one outside of the Senate gave a damn about!
Nothing, and it wasn't just a single
Caelisolan teenager whose life at stake this time - oh, no. It was the lives of over a
dozen Elysians - and worse, a failure to act would make the Empire the laughingstock of the galactic community. And with the International Relations Conference so close...
No, he thought to himself. Something
had to be done - but how? Elysia didn't have an intelligence service or a military, and the
military police, after suffering from years of budget cuts and political appointees, lacked the equipment and mental capacity required for such a task - hell, his own
daughter, Selaphiel, was brighter, smarter, and more cunning then any ten of those ignorant foo-
Wait a moment.
The Patrician paused mid-thought as he remembered something the ever-watchful Selaphiel had reported to him: one of her many friends had overheard one of their friend's brother telling one of his friends about how he'd heard from another friend's sister that her cousin's sister was unhappy with how her boss - a Neko in Logistics - was taking out her frustration over the latest
batch of transfer's lackluster performance on her. He frowned, deep in thought - then smiled, no,
grinned as it struck him. It would cost him quite a few of the favors he'd accrued over the years, would require a
massive amount of funds, and was very,
very risky - but he had a good feeling about it.
Barachiel got up and began making his way to the meeting place Antoni had specified, his former weariness nowhere to be seen as the beginnings of a truly epic plot began taking shape in his mind...