Wreaking Havoc
o.O.o
". . . No," Evren says slowly, dragging the word out into multiple syllables, each separately infused with a different flavor of appalled bafflement. "I'm fairly certain that's not how wiretapping works. Isn't the entire point to ensure that the target doesn't know you're eavesdropping?"
"Exactly. Which is why we need a distraction," says Jorgan.
Force save them all. "No, we'd need multiple distractions. Multiple viable targets. Otherwise, even if we succeed in tapping the outpost, the Knights would realize the larger force was merely a diversion for this specific objective—why else commit to such a risky and costly operation to so little benefit?"
Jorgan frowns. "I'm pretty sure you're overthinking this . . ."
"And even then," Evren continues doggedly, "any competent commander would insist on checking all our targets for anything amiss. Once they found the tapped comms, we'd be worse off than we are now—they could feed us false intel at their leisure. The plan would be fine if we wanted to destroy the outpost. But wiretapping it? No. I am not willing to gamble my people's lives on enemy incompetence like that. And in any case, we have neither the troops nor the resources nor the time for anything on a scale to make it feasible." He doesn't know that for sure, but he has no desire to risk what troops they do have, or Odessen's location, on such a shoddy plan.
"What, so we should call it a day? Do nothing?" Jorgan demands.
Evren stares at him as the last shred of hope that he might finally have encountered someone halfway sensible withers and dies. "The Republic's finest," he says under his breath. Then he says, "Find me a Knight uniform and I can walk into that outpost completely undetected on my own."
"Whatever happened to I'm not keen to push my luck?" Theron asks. "Thought you were kind of . . . upset about that, when we recruited Kaliyo."
"We're in Arcann's backyard on your insistence, yet again," Evren says irritably. "We've fought enough skytrooper patrols to point the way straight to us. You're a spy and they're Special Forces and somehow not one of you has even the remotest concept of subtlety. This entire operation is a catastrophe waiting to happen and to top it all off my boots are absolutely encrusted with swamp muck—of fucking course I'm upset! I am even more upset! But if we're doing this, we're doing it quietly and without avoidable casualties!"
o.O.o
