Lead Recon: "Well, she clearly can't be that good of an 'empath' if she climbed into this tub with us without even realizing who we were?"

Thamarai cringes visibly at this adversarial wording, but nods along to it carefully. She whispers to DZ: "Probably better not to translate that bit, but... yeah. Clearly your companions emotion-senses are fallible? What do you think, DZ? When you think back on it, doesn't anything seem off about the people you were just staying with?"

The tension in the room dropped a little when Thamarai first arrived, but her lack-of-apparent-progress in defusing the situation has caused it to rise again. Fingers are massaging triggers. Their orders were to take DZ and Desskyl alive, but there's not a trooper here who wouldn't prefer a 10% chance of mission failure (most bullet wounds can be patched up if you're fast enough!) to a 100% chance of immediate searing death.

Lead Recon doesn't have her translation privileges back, no. Deskyl drops back to a defensive stance, 'saber still lit but not menacing anyone.

    "She wasn't impressed with their level of independence, which is why she's willing to hear you out. But there's a difference between that and being a slave, and it's not a good reason to take someone from where she wants to be."

"Okay. I think we might be getting hung up here on the definition of a specific word." Which is not a surprising thing to have happen when interacting with a couple of people who have, Thamarai assumes, only been speaking her language for half a cycle at most. "What do you and she mean when you say 'slave'?"

"A person who is owned by another person. Against her will." Deskyl chimes in at this point: "Or if it's harming her, even if she's agreed to it."

"Well. Dragons aren't people. So I would definitely agree that none of the individuals on this ship were 'slaves' in the sense of the word you're used to."

(Thamarai is getting where the hell are you going with this looks from pretty much all her comrades at this point. She continues.)

"How about instead of slave, I say 'person brainwashed into obeying alien tyrants'? Would, uh, would you agree that the people we just liberated were that second thing?"

"Our definition of people includes sapient aliens," she points out, and then Deskyl signs. "She doesn't agree but she does acknowledge that it could be true; we hadn't had a chance to confirm what Culamine had told us about how people choose their vassalages."

"Well. Where we're going, there are people much smarter than me that can explain things better." Thamarai shrugs apologetically. (Emotion read: tense, hopeful). "I'm just a grunt, ma'am. Afraid I can't do much better with words than I already have."

    DZ steps fully behind Deskyl, where she'll be shielded from gunfire. "She's not going to let you take us there."

Thamarai's emotions can be best summarized, at this point, as: AAaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!?

She tries to have more ideas.

She keeps drawing blanks.

DZ peeks out cautiously when there's no immediate gunfire. "She'd rather not hurt you. It's up to you whether you cooperate or - "

One of the terrified troopers opens fire.

To her credit(?) she’s currently sighted in on Deskyl’s kneecap, and the burst of shots she fires is headed in approximately that direction when the sith’s telekinetic shield intercepts them...

Which it does; the bullets simply stop, about a hand's width from her leg, and float there.

Deskyl smirks at the leader. 

Well fuck. This was not in the mission briefing.

Recon Lead fumbles for her radio: “StratCom, this is Gamma Recon Lead. Primary Objective is comp--"

Deskyl gestures with her free hand and the radio tugs out of the lead's hand and flies to hers. She crushes it.

"--romised. Probably brainwashed, definitely armed, apparently indestructible. Please advise."

Lead Recon halfheartedly mumbles out the rest of her status report even after the radio is stripped from her.

    "Are you going to cooperate now, Ma'am?"

Tamarai is quickest to answer that question, perhaps because she is the only one in the room currently who has not recently had a weapon brandished in her general direction.

"I don't think anyone wants a fight here. Speaking for myself, at least, I'll cooperate with any requests that are... safe and honorable?"

(Emotion Read: she is scared that the Indestructible Deathstick Lady's requests will not, in fact, be those things.)

Several troopers nod along to Tamarai's sentiment. A couple of them lower their weapons.

DZ steps around again to relay this.

    "She doesn't want to hurt you, either. She wants the ship turned around - she can help with the inertia, if you'd like - and brought to where the SLAYERs are, to wait for Culamine. You can talk to the others while we wait, and if they want to go, we'll go."

Tamarai crosses the room and briefly confers with Recon Lead.

(Recon Lead seems mildly annoyed by the increasingly convoluted chain of translation-telephone now taking place, but keeps those thoughts to herself.)

"Allied SLAYERs are currently flying in formation with the transport ships." Tamarai turns back to DZ once she's gotten confirmation on the current strategic situation. "Enemy SLAYERs are either destroyed, or unaccounted for further back in the dysofrag fields."

(Oh no.)

"How much life support do we have, and do you have any way of contacting any of Culamine's people?"

"If we keep the civilians sedated, we're in no danger of running out of air and could stretch out our stores of water and rations for a couple of cycles if we really had to."

(She does not particularly like where this line of questioning is going.)

"We don't have any way to contact the dragons or anybody else more than a stone's throw away right now. EM-interference is really bad this degree. That's why we chose it for our operational window."

    "Back to the station, then. Be prepared for course corrections; if she senses any SLAYER pilots on the way she'll want to go talk to them."

Recon Lead: "I'll go notify the cockpit of this change of plans."

She heads for the cockpit.

Tamarai: "There, uh, won't be much station left to go back to... though?"

She fidgets nervously.

Deskyl deactivates her 'saber and gives the remaining soldiers an assessing look before responding.

    "She wants to get in touch with Culamine; it's likely that she'll come back to check for salvage or surviving pilots. Hopefully we'll meet someone on the way, though, who can give us better advice about what she might do."

Another trooper speaks up, hesitantly but firmly.

"I'm not okay with giving the dragons back their slaves. And I'm certainly not okay with being a dragon's slave. If this ship turns around..." She shakes her head vigorously. "It won't. It won't while I'm still breathing."

The other troopers look uneasily between her and Deskyl, torn between admiration and fear. Some start moving to close ranks with her, while others draw back from the anticipated line-of-carnage.