<div dir="ltr"><span id="gmail-docs-internal-guid-e2d00eb7-7fff-d3e0-1f8f-8be9d02159b3"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">NRPG: The Peter Principle - that people have a tendency to be promoted to the level of their optimum incompetence.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">RPG:</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Mission: Andromeda's Chain</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Day: 1</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Stardate: 2446.01.03</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">(USS Exeter – Bridge - Empress Lana Wakeman – 0510)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.656;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">“Lieutenant Frost, keep to the plotted vector, keep us at the optimum distance between the two shuttles.” </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">“Yes Empress. We’re due a course correction in 2 minutes, Comms is spotty though, tactical isn’t doing their job, we’re losing signal off an on.” Trinity purred happily.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">“Understood. Tactical, We need constant communication with the shuttles, you don’t want to fail us.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">(Reply any at tactical iyw)</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">The Empress sat back on her throne, mistress of all she surveyed, hooking a leg over the arm of the chair she felt the power and influence around her. The Exeter was all but hers, the centre chair all hers.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">All hers? ~No. Lana fumed. A cadre of resistance held out, uncaptured and uncontrolled, an outlier in her line of best fit. It was something that should be pruned and eradicated as soon as possible.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">There was a problem though. As the Empress regarded the arm console, the one that should have granted her access in its entirety to the ships systems on a Command level, she had nothing, she tapped a command that should at least have shown some base level diagnostics.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Nothing.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">~What did you do what did you do what did you do?~ She was almost unable to admit it, but she had badly miscalculated the Commanders resourcefulness, she had appeared on all fronts as a half interested coaster, a legacy that had assumed her Peter Principle early in her career. That had been before she had looked into Ailynn’s eyes, looked deep into them, as few before had done, and she indeed had seen a playful fool.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">It hadn't, however, been the pleasant kind of playful; it was the look of a female tiger who had wounded a young deer for her cubs to tear apart. It was the look of an orca that saw a wounded seal that it would now play with before consuming nontialently. The Empress had seen the depths of the Commander's indomitable will as she had looked into her eyes. For the minutest instant had seen the true being in front of her, and it had wrong footed the Empress completely; this was a true vergence, a genuine wildcard. Something flickered, deep in her, but she had long forgotten so much, she only saw her goal, and her destined domination.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">~The Fool was the only one who may legitimately strike a King~</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">~What game...what game?” Empress wondered. ~What are you up to?...Nevermind, my influence is all that there is.~</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">She regarded the console one last time, dismissing it as inconsequential, just like all the many things that didn’t fit her pattern. It would, unbeknownst to her, be her first major mistake, as the events of an hour hence would prove.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">~It will be an interesting game~ she pondered as she shifted her pose on her throne. The Ailynn in her home universe had been killed at the hands of the cult of the Pah Wraith, so The Empress herself had actually never met Ailynn in the full Command of all of her immeasurable ability, never come under the full devilsnare of that awful gaze. Silently, she cursed Veronica for making this come to pass. She’d managed to change so much this time.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Femtoseconds passed, leaving only thought, and beyond that, only to herself a solitary thought flickered; a quote of Moriarty to Holmes.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">~If you are clever enough to bring destruction on me, rest assured that I will do as much to you.~</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">“Billy.” She spoke, breaking the silence. “I desire my guests at my side.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"> </p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">She snapped her full, awful attention to him, “BRING THEM.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">(Reply Billy) </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.9872;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">(Posted by Mark)</span></p></span><br class="gmail-Apple-interchange-newline"></div>