[ may i log: the good fight ]

[barrayarmods]

Who: Everyone
What: The culmination of months of planning and suffering finally comes to bear as the Barrayarans launch their debilitating attack on the Cetagandan base. Politics, as always, go sight unseen but felt everywhere.
When: May 1st - 18th
Where: the Barrayaran camp, the Cetagandan base, Riverfall Village
Warnings: TBD

Quick links:
Riverfall
Barrayar: Camp / Missions
Cetaganda: Base / Missions

TIMELINE
5/5 Eavesdropping
5/7 Hacking
5/11 Mystery Plot
5/15 Attack on the Cetagandan base

riverfall
The village is finally starting to get back on its feet after a few blessedly uneventful weeks. Other than the routine Cetagandan patrols, there hasn't been much activity in the village, and no new strife. The villagers merely continue their rebuilding efforts and tend to their fields, and they'll still gladly accept any help offered by outsiders.

With the village down nearly half its population, there's room to grow, even after last month's fight destroyed some of the homes, so Speaker Gura has been taking in refugees from other nearby hill villages – about ten refugees have moved to settle anew in Riverfall in the last few weeks.

barrayar
The time to strike is now.

All three camps are preoccupied with preparations for the attack on the 15th: as far as Barrayaran intelligence knows, no reinforcements are on their way to the Cetagandan base, and the guerrillas need to strike while the Cetagandans are still down nearly half their forces. It's the only shot they have at forcing the occupying troops to leave Vorkosigan Vashnoi and give them a chance at retaking the city – and they're not throwing away this shot, because they might not get another one.

The political unease surrounding Dorca and Yuri is a quieter tension, plaguing only those politically savvy (or well-positioned) enough to understand the situation, but if you're paying close enough attention to the moody Crown Prince, you'll note that Yuri's primary concern isn't the outsiders, but something much closer to home. He's never been a particularly warm man by anyone's account, but lately he's especially given to foul moods, and only part of it is grief for his most recently deceased son.

All further attempts at hostage negotiation from Zahal have been as curtly denied as the first, and just about as politely. Incorporating a rescue plan into their attack strategy wasn't exactly easy, but they won't get another shot than this at rescuing Princess Sonia – or Byerly, whose cover as a spy was recently blown during a failed attempt at smuggling Sonia out of the base. On the 15th, the Barrayarans prepare for war, some donning Cetagandan uniforms and face paint, others swiping mud over their faces to better camouflage themselves in the dark.

And the attack is a success. There's no real such thing as acceptable loss, but the top brass consider the 70 lives spent on the attack a fair cost for what they got: almost destroying the immediate Cetagandan power supply and the return of their Princess. Plus Byerly. The mood lightens considerably, but there is no rest in war, and just as soon as they take their next victory, Piotr, Dorca and Yuri are already planning the next move: finally retaking Vorkosigan Vashnoi.

camp
All three camps are heavily preparing, officers running drills nearly around the clock, quartermasters taking inventory and making sure every piece of equipment is clean and in working order, medical officers and techs preparing the sickbay tent as best they can for the inevitable injured who will return.

But despite the impending mission, tensions are still rising within the army – while top brass is vocally discouraging the fights that have broken out, it hasn't put a complete stop to them, and no one has openly endorsed the outsiders except for Piotr Vorkosigan. Vorvolk and Yuri are both still staunchly in the skeptic camp at best, but Dorca does not seem to have passed a final judgment on the outsiders before the attack. Perhaps he's merely biding his time, because for all the dissent about the outsiders, the Emperor hasn't barred Piotr from letting them participate in critical missions.

The soldiers make enough noise about it on their own. They're especially tetchy about the outsiders who crossed over from the Cetagandan side – they're as good as spies, as far as some of the soldiers are concerned. But even worse is letting Duv Galeni, a Komarran, not only remain in camp and feed on their resources, but actively participate in missions. For the most part, the soldiers in camp who have known the outsiders from the start and have befriended them are sticking with them, but the half of Piotr's army that was with Vorvolk after the split when the location of their last camp was discovered by the Cetagandans are nearly as suspicious as the Vorbarra battalion. Hostility towards Duv and those who escaped from the Cetagandan camp is especially severe, and it's no secret that some of them would prefer the outsiders dead rather than taking up space and resources in their army, though no one has been so bold as to actually make any attempts. Falco Vorkalloner, one of the Rangers who had been in Vorvolk's half of the army, hasn't been afraid to make his voice heard, though. He's even been heard saying that he thinks someone ought to make an example out of the Komarran and demonstrate just what they think of those who would side with the Cetagandans.

After the attack, the atmosphere of the camp is noticeably changed – the return of the Princess as well as what can only be considered a resounding victory for the Barrayarans has led to a jubilant and triumphant environment. And with Barrayarans, all celebration comes with a whole lot of drinking. Wine, vodka and maple mead are passed around aplenty in the nights and days following the attack, as soldiers burn offerings for their dead comrades and trade stories of action.

The tension with the outsiders begins to lessen after this victory, too. The fact that two outsiders, Wash and Lucy, are responsible for the Princess's rescue goes a long way toward relations between the outsiders and the rest of the army, and after the attack, Dorca gives the outsiders his endorsement as comrades to be trusted and honorary warriors fighting alongside them. Of course, this doesn't mean all hostility and tension merely dissipates – there are still plenty of soldiers like the now-deceased Falco who still think the outsiders are a threat and a parasitic presence. But things do start to lighten up a little after this victory...finally.

missions
General Piotr Vorkosigan himself leads the attack on the Cetagandan base, and Yuri leads his own contingent. Although there are some hitches getting in undetected, their plans to disable base security are overall successful, as is their sabotage of the power supply generators and Sonia and Byerly's rescue.

Meanwhile, Lakshmi and Sisko have found Falco Vorkalloner's dead body, and while it looks like an accident, it also looks like someone might have taken care to make sure it looked like one.

The unabridged mission results can be found here.

cetaganda
The social relief brought by the flower-viewing party quickly fades, and tension settles back over the Cetagandan base, underlined by Zahal's frustration with Piotr's flat-out refusal to meet his demands, or even so much as discuss them. He's sent more than one political ransom demand since Dorca's arrival, too, but to no effect. Given the recent guerrilla activity in Vorkosigan Vashnoi, he knows Piotr must be planning something, but with no informants left in the Barrayaran army, his intelligence is dry, and the investigations into weapons smuggling were ultimately fruitless. All known civilian resistance cells seem to have scattered and disappeared, their bases of operation boarded up or burned down. All he can do is concentrate as many troops as he can afford on the city's occupation, though he doesn't leave the base totally unmanned. But he does add another thousand troops to the occupying force in Vorkosigan Vashnoi in the week before the attack on the base.

Not everyone is being sent over, though, and the transfer doesn't make for as smooth a cover as one might hope. Gail is caught on an unauthorized trip to the city while off duty, and you might hear -- or overhear -- the dressing-down he gets from his commanding officer for it. He doesn't appear to have a ready excuse for it -- at least, not one that doesn't sound flimsy as hell.

Military matters affect those of the Star Crèche, however, and Zahal's frustration does not touch that sphere. Not that it isn't without its own tensions -- anyone who spends enough time with Diya and Sei (and Ba Talim, for that matter) will feel the rising tensions between them, though their origins are as obscure as the haut always are. The Star Gate Project, now officially under the jurisdiction of the Star Crèche, continues on with Micah at the lead, although they haven't for a moment forgotten that they are a prisoner here, or where their true loyalties lie.

After the attack, Zahal's fury reaches a boiling point, and since the Barrayarans did so much infrastructural damage, the consequences of military matters finally reach Diya and Sei, rankling them, too. The power shortage and damage to the science/medical complex has put a serious damper on Star Gate research, although as far as anyone is aware, the gene therapy trials and other related Star Crèche research goes on unimpeded, thanks to the successful protection of the secondary backup generator, which seems to exist only to power the medbay and gene labs. But since power is a hot commodity right now, Zahal is going to start pushing to reroute some of that power to what the haut would probably deem as lower priority needs.

base
The mood around the base is restless, Zahal's frustration trickling down into tensions among his officers and seeping into the very atmosphere. They're hardly prepared for the attack that comes because they don't even know what to expect. The soldiers all seem on edge, nervous, a little tetchy, particularly after Tarn's altercation with Diya and Natasha, and then the failed attempt to smuggle out the Princess -- but that did, at least, lead to the outing of Byerly Vorrutyer as a spy among the Cetagandans, confirming some suspicions held by the higher brass in Cetagandan intelligence. About the only comfort, if one can call it that, in all this tension is Byerly's summary fast-penta interrogation.

The gene therapy trials, despite some...trials, continue, and with much greater success than last month. Sei and Diya are as impassive as ever, but even so, there's a tangible undercurrent of mixed relief and triumph. Micahworks as feverishly as ever on the Star Gate Project with the aid and oversight of the military's scientific division and the exotics working as lab assistants. The satellite launch has proven to be a highly productive venture -- it's yielding data they couldn't have gathered otherwise, which is proving to be critical, and Micah spends time having Kaidan, Symmetra and Pearl put through another series of brain scans and consulting the neurology team as they study the results.

Although Sei is never seen outside of her force bubble, and doesn't actually travel around the base all that much, her presence seems to dominate the more civilian areas of the base, overshadowing even Diya -- although Diya is considerably less visible around the base after her altercation with Tarn. Amai is, of course, somehow seen just about everywhere, a constant social and professional presence that refuses to let anyone forget she's there. But after the 5th, she seems to be troubled -- she's far less impassive than the haut, and her anxiety and discomfort are much easier to see.

After the attack, Diya seems somewhat shaken -- it's almost impossible to tell how Sei is affected, but with facilities down, audits are being done on all existing projects to determine what's important enough to remain active while they have limited power. The base isn't quite in a shambles, but there's a lot of damage -- while the Barrayarans personally only carry swords and bows, they clearly have no issue with taking the Cetagandans' plasma arcs to wreak havoc at home -- and the atmosphere is overall demoralized. Sending more troops to Vorkosigan Vashnoi was clearly the wrong move, and it's a bitter pill to swallow, but Zahal begins to recall troops from the city in small waves to help better man the base, knowing full well that this must have been what Piotr intended.

missions
A few interesting tidbits are overheard in the dark of night, and Amai finds herself in the uniquely uncomfortable position of holding Diya's dark secret in one hand, and Sei's in the other -- and Ba Talim seems to know something, though it isn't clear what. And some creative hacking turns up some unexpected dirt on Sei that makes Diya's illicit ba experiments look like mere misdemeanors.

Despite the best efforts of the soldiers and the exotics and the fact that, even undermanned, they still outnumber the guerrillas by a landslide, the base is still overrun by Barrayarans and their attack is successful. The main and backup power generators are totally disabled for the time being, and it's unclear how long it will be before full power is restored to the base.

The unabridged mission results can be found here.

Note: Gavalas, Olivia, Zahal, Diya, and Sei & Ba Talim are available for threads on request. Hit up Madi (Gavalas, Diya, Sei & Ba Talim) or Ammay (Olivia & Zahal) if you'd like threads with these characters!

Comments

[protocol]

I wouldn't be a very good soldier if I managed to serve twenty years without killing anyone.

[ And he has, in fact, killed a lot of people. ]

You know why I killed her, too. She killed her own brother [ and god North loved her, looked out for her always, he was always so good and Wash is pretty damn sure the only reason he was in this damned Project with the rest of them at all was just to look out for her, he loved her and he killed her in cold blood ] and nearly killed me. Maybe it's her you're looking for, and not me.

[ It was justified, he had no choice. But it haunts him, still. It always will, and that shows some in his voice, the slightest waver, even as his eyes are fixed and hard. ]

[vorrutyer]

[ Good. ]

You're right. If one of your sisters had killed you, I'm sure you'd have rested a lot easier knowing someone blew her brains out in return. Hm? No question you did the right thing there.

[protocol]

[ That gets him something. His fingers twitching, a flare of something in his eyes, his lips pressing into a thin line. ]

If I could have risen from the dead I would likely have hunted them down, yes.

[ He dreams of that, sometimes. North clasping a hand on his shoulder, rifle on his back, smiling as always, colder and sharper than he's ever known him to be in real life, I know what you did, David. North would never, though, despite the nightmares. He was a better man than that, but Wash, though. Wash isn't that great. ]

What's your point, exactly? She's dead and I killed her. If I've earned her brother's eternal hatred, but he's a little too dead to express it. Better I kill her than let her live to fool someone else, better her blood on my hands, than any of my friends'.

[vorrutyer]

Why?

[ He gestures slightly with his fingers, a little tension and relaxation. ]

Would the world have crumbled with her alive? What made her life worth less than yours? You don't even like your own life, do you.

[protocol]

You don't know what I was doing at the time. What any of us were.

[ And at the time, he was on a singular mission, years in the making, driven by a hatred and need for vengeance that still boils in his veins even after the deed is done. He wasn't about to let her stop him. Or anyone else. Especially when it turned out that she was working with the damn Project, after everything everyone there had done to ruin their friends. ]

But, fine. It's terrible I killed her. If her brother manages to come back from the dead, I'll answer to him myself. Then what, Vorrutyer? What's your point?

[ Cause if it's just that he's an awful person? He knows. ]

[vorrutyer]

What were you doing, then?

[ His eyes narrow, very slightly. ]

What justifies that?

[protocol]

I already told you. She killed her brother. She would have killed more.

[ That's clearly only answering the second question, and not the first. ]

[vorrutyer]

You don't know what I was doing at the time, he says, and then, I already told you.

[ He lifts his eyebrows. ]

You're dodging.

[protocol]

Of course I am.

[ So what, buddy. He's been dodging your attempts to find out more about him since you first started talking to him. This is no different. ]

[vorrutyer]

[ Byerly's lips curl in an amused sort of annoyance. He prefers when Wash tries to conceal the fact that he's dodging; it's easier to maneuver around. Stonewalling, on the other hand... ]

Well, it's hard to imagine what it would be. After all, human lives are always worth more than the mission, aren't they?

[protocol]

[ Wash does prefer to be subtle, but he also has no qualms of about just being a brick wall. ]

You're talking about the life of a traitor. [ Knowing full well that Byerly's interest has shifted to what he was doing rather than anything about South. ] She'd made her choice, there. I only followed suit.

[vorrutyer]

The life of a traitor.

[ He tilts his head to the side, resting its crown against the rough bark of the tree. It slows down some of his spins nicely. ]

So is loyalty the highest virtue for you? Betrayal makes one's life worth nothing?

[protocol]

Sure.

[ A remarkable non-answer, and Wash clearly isn't entirely interested in trying to act like it's one. The way he disengages from the game is clear, though, there's something here that's close enough to home that Wash has decided he'd rather go back to stonewalling. What he was doing at the time, what drove it, what happened to him, what happened to all of them. That's what he guards the most.

After a moment, though; ]

She killed her brother. She killed a friend. So I killed her. That really isn't a particularly difficult line of logic to follow.

[vorrutyer]

Oh, not in the least. The logic is clear.

[ He lifts his eyebrows, observing Wash from his canted angle. ]

The fundamental problem is in the tension between the logic and the emotion. Your decision was perfectly, utterly rational, no doubt about it. But it was also a decision that would rip most people with human emotions apart. I'm simply deeply curious about this gap in you. The disparity between your selves.

[protocol]

Maybe I'm just a terrible enough person that it didn't matter so much to me, Vorrutyer.

[ Or maybe at the time he was already so ripped open and so terribly broken that there wasn't much left to break. ]

[vorrutyer]

See, that's the problem.

[ He rubs his head against the bark, enjoying it scratching his scalp. ]

You're not.

[protocol]

[ That gets a reaction. Something flickering in his eyes. It doesn't get to him as much as it would coming from someone else, but Wash doesn't think he's a good person. He knows his friends believe it of him, but he knows he's worse than they could ever possibly know. Miles had been the last person to insist he was a good man, and Wash had quite flatly told him otherwise. ]

Why not? You think I'm a good person, now?

Not that long ago you were just telling me about how I wreck what I love.

[vorrutyer]

That makes you clumsy, not wicked.

[ Another little gesture of his hand. ]

No. My professional diagnosis is that you're twisted up, Wash. A patchwork quilt of painful desires and bad habits. Miserable and broken but with a genuine desire to help - No. You're not good. But you certainly don't rise to the level of terrible, either. You're a child of war. That's all.

[protocol]

[ There's a slight tick in his jaw. An instinctive response that rises up inside him, you don't know half of what I've done, but he bites it down. ]

Wonderful. Not terrible, just a child of war. I'll get a patch sown onto my uniform.

[vorrutyer]

What were you hoping for? Me to drop onto my knees and kiss your boots? Oh, angel, you angel. No. You're not any special sort of fucked-up. You try your best. You don't have the sort of character that poets sing about - you're just a man like any other.

[protocol]

I wasn't hoping for anything, Byerly.

[ Though he just doesn't like being told he's a good person. The way his masochism manifests is mostly here, his refusal to forgive himself, to move on. Torturing himself for everything he's done. Convincing himself he's terrible and broken and far beyond help. The things that he's done aren't pretty, the things that have been done to him are worse, but mostly it's how he subjects himself to them. Repeatedly. ]

If you're satisfied with your diagnosis, then maybe you can stop trying to drag anything more out of me. [ Haha. Unlikely. A pause, and; ] I'd still like to hear about her.

[vorrutyer]

[ His lips peel back from his teeth. ]

Oh, hardly. The fact that you're diagnosed as commonplace-broken is the beginning, not the end. There's so much more to dig into there. For example, how has your fear of intimacy affected your ability to have relationships? I made a mistake that very first time, assuming your awkwardness came out of shyness - but is it actually out of fear?

[protocol]

[ Fear of intimacy and lack of trust in himself means his ability to have relationships is minimal. A whole host of other issues have that nosediving down into the negatives. He sighs a little. ]

Maybe I'm just not interested.

[vorrutyer]

[ A shrug. ]

Certainly possible. And yet. And yet there was that moment in Vorkosigan Vashnoi. Some of the sweetest foreplay I've ever experienced, there in that alley. All that the dish needed to come together was, as it turns out, a little sprinkle of hatred and violence.

[protocol]

If that was some of the sweetest foreplay you've ever experienced, then you need more experience.

Still doesn't change that I'm not interested.