"We aren't running a popularity contest. They have - some advantages, in handling this situation, they know a little bit more about what the fuck is going on...and they clearly can't do it alone."

"I looked at the autodoc for their leader. He's human. Could be an Earther. Maybe he is, and lying, but -"

"Well, there's an obvious way to check."

"Is there?"

"We transmit what's going on! These people showed up in the Anubis shuttle, they say they're from another planet. Then either someone knows them, or no one does."

"Then Mars will know we have their ship."

"Yeah."

"We are not telling Mars we have the Roci."

It's Nayoki's turn to be very confused! 

They don't like her. That's fair and reasonable. They...think Leareth might just be lying about everything? That's - less reasonable, surely? They saw her Gate in, and were baffled by it. They experienced compulsions and set-commands. They know that Nayoki has Mindspeech, and can communicate with the Proto. If Leareth were lying about Velgarth, then - surely there should still be an enormous pile of unexplained mysteries? 

Nayoki is a bit offended at the claim that they can't handle this on their own, even though it's not wrong. She's torn between frustration at Leareth for not planning better, and guilt, that Leareth was delegating the planning to her, because he was dying, and he trusted her to get it right and she - didn't. Not that it's clear what else they could have done, really; they were already stuffing Julie's shuttle as full as they reasonably could, adding a hundred backup sheep wasn't an option. 

It seems incredibly disastrous for them to, what, send a message to the entire world somehow, informing them of Leareth's existence? Nayoki briefly considers trying to put in some compulsions against that, but it's kind of fraught as a plan, she's not good enough that they definitely won't notice. Besides, it sounds like they're leaning against for their own, sensible reasons; she'll just have to keep an eye on it. 

She closes her eyes. Focus. She can do this. 

And she informs the mage guarding the spy that he can take a break, and steps into the room. 

:I want to talk: 

"Hey. I didn't catch your name, earlier -" 

:Nayoki. Acting commander of this team: 

And she waits. 

He's so annoyed that just after he convinced the last group of people not to kill him - and it was a close call - now there are new people! At least they haven't threatened to kill him, but, you know, some people don't bother threatening first.

"That's one hell of a comms setup. I assume you can't tell me anything about it? Compliments to your engineers, anyway. Uh, just between you and me...where is this ship going? She's had a interesting couple of weeks."

:I imagine so!: Nayoki looks around for a chair or something to sit down. :I suppose I could tell you our destination, but I think it would be fair to trade that for other information. The ship's crew told us that you are a spy - I want to know who you report to: 

I'm not a political spy, he says. (He's lying). That's a great way to get yourself killed, especially these days. I did strictly legal corporate work. Legal, but not the kind of thing that makes you popular, and when I got in some hot water I jumped on the next ship out, which turned out to be this one, which seems to attract every shitshow in the solar system. (He's still lying, but not about that last part).

Nayoki nods along, like she believes him and agrees; she lets her lips twitch a bit at 'great way to get yourself killed' and snorts at the ship attracting every shitshow in the solar system. 

She leans forward when he finishes, with a faintly conspiratorial expression. :It really does! We did not mean to come here specifically, but - we have an advanced form of instant transport over long distances, and the targeting landed us almost on top of this ship: She's not sure if the spy knows about the sample of Proto in the cargo hold. :Anyway. Maybe you can explain some more about the 'interesting' last few weeks? The crew were rather reticent when I asked: 

Were they really? They picked an odd time to decide it wasn't public, it's all over the system. So as I understand it, this batch were crewing the ice hauler Canterbury, Jupiter to Ceres, picked up a distress call, got on a shuttle to go look at it, and then someone blew up the Cant right in front of them. They go on broadcast to the whole system, tell everyone that Mars did it and is coming to finish the job, then go silent. Which causes a big fuss, of course. Mars denies it. They're picked up by the Martian flagship of the Jupiter fleet, the Donnager, and then the Donnager comes under attack and self-destructs. They showed up at Tycho with this pretty little gunship, and I assume they're running some errands for Fred Johnson, now, but they haven't told me what. 

This is all basically true.

:I think they found it suspicious that we were not aware, since it was international news, and they were not interested in enlightening us?: She frowns. :They claimed this ship was 'legitimate salvage' but I am not really sure what that means here, legally speaking. It belonged to Mars previously, and I assume they would object to this crew having it?: 

One assumes!  He is confused about her question here, who goes around taking over ships while being innocently confused about the laws relating to doing that? Uh, if they found it drifting with the crew dead or evacuated, that's legitimate salvage; if they killed the crew then obviously that's, uh, piracy and murder. If they stole it out of the Donnager's hold - well, I can't really think how they'd have done that, and Mars might pretend something else happened just to avoid the egg on their face, but that would be theft, not salvage. 

:Right: Nayoki still has a lot of questions, but they're mostly related to her having no idea what any of the relevant laws are. Probably it makes the most sense to learn to read the language and then see if it's on the computers on the ship and whether she can figure out how to catch herself up. 

:What was the hot water you got yourself in?: 

:Oh, uh, I'd been passing information on personnel and R&D at Luna Mutual on to my employers,: he is making this up on the spot, though pretty convincingly, :legal stuff, you know, not learned through wiretapping or trespassing, just old fashioned talking to people, but I got found out and their private security's nasty so I figured I'd ship out.:

He's impressively good at lying and she's kind of enjoying watching the process, but he's also annoyingly good at not thinking about the true information where she can read it, which is making this take forever. 

She sighs, discreetly, and pushes a bit with Mindhealing. I am a powerful stranger. Your employer would want to make overtures to me. I will help him. You could negotiate with me on his behalf. 

If this doesn't work, she can straightforwardly throw a coercive compulsion on him, but it'll be VERY obvious, whereas this at least stands a chance of going unnoticed. 

(It has generally not occurred to Nayoki to have any moral qualms about sneaky use of Mindhealing, but if it did, she would still be of the opinion that it seems fine to do to lying spies with eyeball recording devices.) 

"You know, what I think you ought to do," he says, "is take this ship to Earth, surrender to the UN, and explain what is going on. You won't get in trouble, I'm sure of it." He's not sure of it but he does work for them.

Nayoki leans in, shaping her face into an expression of hope-relief-doubt-disbelief. 

:- I hope that is the case! It would simplify things so much for us if there is a competent and reasonable organization that we can interface with here. What does the 'UN' do?: 

"...it is the government. Of Earth. They're very - competent, reasonable, democratically elected, a signatory to and the writer of most treaties regarding - spaceship theft, and other things that are going on...I think they would be delighted to get the Rocinante with even a partial explanation of what all is going on, and I'm sure that you and your friends would be well compensated for your work in sorting things out."

Nayoki is reading all of his thoughts close-up. How much of that inspiring speech does he actually believe is true? And what is he thinking and not saying?