He discusses this plan with the others in the room, and calls Mason to ask about it. Luckily, the consternated arguing serves as good cover for them actually clearing out for her a bit later.

"We're just going to shoot them if this doesn't work probably. Eff-Why-Eye."

"I've killed people before, it's unpleasant but I won't criticize you for it."

"Yeah uh, good luck."

Various rebels file out of the cubicle desk room, reluctant expressions on their faces.

She excludes the people who just left and then pushes her magic to make her seem as trustworthy and authoritative as possible and backs that up with her tone. Then she walks to the door and speaks clearly and loudly with a tad bit of impatience. "Open up I'm special operations. I managed to get them to leave by bribing them but you can't trust scum like that and they might renege."

"-Fuck! At least someone has a fucking plan, thank Ares!"

They open the door. There are three guards in uniform, one with a weapon and the other two unarmed. They all look anxious and furious.

"Special ops? Hell, this is the deep end, isn't it. Okay, what's the plan for getting us all out of here, ma'am? Or are we going to take those anarchists out?"

"There's probably more than we can afford to fight, there's a reason I talked my way past instead of leaving a trail of bodies. How much of a view into the facility do you have? I have a backup plan but you might have access to useful information I don't it took me a bit to get all the way to you."

"Damn. We got caught completely by surprise, they suborned one of the shift supers. They've cut all the hard links, like physically cut them, we only have the cameras in this part of the office because they're wireless."

"Riot team is on the way right? Maybe we should just keep holding out, they'll get to us eventually. Keep an eye out for a good moment to join the fight."

"Unfortunately they're not, this is happening everywhere and other facilities have been deemed more critical. My job is to collect loyal forces and make larger groups that stand a better chance together. Can you tell me what weapons and restraints you have on you?"

"Higher priority? What the fuck could be higher priority, Director Yang's personal suite-"

"Probably. The spaceport, police HQ, Hephaestus Center-"

"Fuuuuuuck, uh. We have one PG-39 here, fifteen rounds and one in the chamber, gene-locked to me but I can unlock it. A few sets of polycuffs, orc rated, some duct tape, and our stun truncheons."

"Alright give me the polycuffs and unlock the PG-39 for me." Can she see their stun truncheons?

The truncheons are all hooked to their belts.

"Yes ma'am!"

"It'll be sweet to see special ops in action, cut some throats and take down the anarchists."

"You look totally harmless, it's amazing, wonder what kind of low-profile augments they use for this shit..."

The gun is handed over after a short bit of messing with it, and several sets of high-tech handcuffs shortly after.

Do the handcuffs look easy to use?

Yep, they're labeled 'place detainee's hands here' and everything.

"Well you're about to get your chance." She flips herself to maximum uninteresting grabs one of the stun truncheons makes a brief attempt to turn it on but if that doesn't work she just hits them with it before putting the cuffs on them.

They react with confusion and then shock and then being handcuffed and swearing. The polycuffs work just fine on legs, too. The shock truncheon seems to have a rather painful effect.

She smiles, nobody badly hurt means a job well done she props the door open and walks back to to hallway where the rebels are waiting dropping her magic as she does. She hands over the gun. "They're handcuffed, disarmed and ready for you to do whatever you like."

The datacenter rebels take a careful look, and then celebrate quietly and start moving the guards towards the other prisoners (a few more guards they managed to surprise earlier). Could she hand over the unlocked weapons? Those would be handy to have in case the police push in, but they're not gonna push it.

The one who talked to her before comes up to her again. "Hey, hi. Mason says thanks, we can uhhh have only one person guard them instead of like six. We're securing the place right now and like... I think he doesn't want to offend you or make you want to leave but he also doesn't know what to do with you now because he told me to keep you busy and explain the platform and answer questions as long as they're not like, opsec or something."

"She should tell the cops to go away and everything's fine!" Another woman comments.

"I don't think that'd work? If we were going to try something like that it'd have to be, uh, part of a more coherent scenario."

"Coherent scenes help a lot, besides if this is a larger rebellion than this one building if they leave they'll probably just hurt people elsewhere. As for your reasons I wouldn't mind hearing more. You already seem like good people with a good cause but I'm missing a lot of context."

"Should I be playing along and assuming you've never heard of the Charters or anything else?"

She sighs wondering if they'll ever believe her. "I would appreciate it if you did."

"The Solarian Compact administrates human space, with a galactic mandate to maintain freedom, peace, and the gate network. To help foster economic growth," a disgusted look, "Large portions of the frontier are given up to the chartered corporations as special autonomous zones. The law still applies here, but good luck getting it to a real court, basically. There are five major Charters, and Elysium - this planet, the system is called Radiant - is owned and operated by Hermes-Ishtar. It's a resort planet, supposed to cater to rich tourists and executives' every whim. Which means the staff gets treated like shit. And Hermes-Ishtar or licensed fabricators you pay company scrip into are the only ways to get the necessities of life."

"Alright seems simple enough, I've encountered a similar setup before though with less of a fig leaf. What are your goals here? Are you just trying to free this planet and if so how are you going to deal with the other parts of the wider polity?"

"I'm not- I'm. Mostly my goal is to quit my damned job. Never do it again. I think the overall goal is... Be independent. Not get crushed when H-I patrol fleets come around. And they will. But fuck, you have no idea how bad it was. It's - it'd sound petty and stupid, maybe, but I was working fifteen hour days certain that I'd get my big break any day now, and then I saw the promotion plans by chance and a - damn slug who can't spot a correlation if it smacked him in his face, was going to be promoted and get triple my pay because he was some SolBank manager's nephew and they want the connection! Years of my life-"

"I'm sorry that happened to you." It seems a bit minor in comparison to people being imprisoned for telling stories but it's still not great.

"And it's just - those stories are everywhere. They make grand promises, get you to give your passion and energy and - and - your whole life, and it turns into a lie, everywhere. Everyone has different horror stories."

Someone else chimes up, "I got an actress role, and they changed their mind and wanted me to do a sex scene later. I refused, but they just fired me and deepfaked it. Image rights, I'd signed them away. It's a standard small role contract, and you'll never make it big if you don't start with small roles, and you'll never get small roles if you try to negotiate on the contracts."

"They managed to claim the original manuscript I've spent five years on as intellectual property. My lawyer assures me that it's legal, 'cause I opened the file at work one time."