Ken's comlink beeped; so would Lez's as the teenage technician who maintained communications forwarded them a summary of Cinder's message. The young man audibly cursed; was he to have no time to get re-acquainted with Lez or meet up with Mr. Folen? Well, it didn't matter; there were greater matters to take care of.

"Let's go back to the communications room; let's cut the welcome party short as Cinder needs something from us." Ken's voice was a little snippier than usual when he spoke of Cinder, and had [i]slightly[/i] less admiration, too. And with that, Ken would go to the communications room again to assess the information given to them by Cinder. And after further reading of the gathered information, Ken's fury grew at this new group, GORT Company. If Lez was here, he'd say:

"It seems that a new group of slavers, an organized force, has captured a few hundred Vordanians and are taking them to Paradise. We are going to attack these slavers, who call themselves GORT Company, but it will be hard. The difficulty is not just because we only have a few competent people, but also because angering Paradise's owner, Koren Graeff, would be suicide for the Believers as a whole and get more people enslaved." Ken frowned and gave a further explanation. "Paradise has always been neutral ground and any group that doesn't respect its neutrality has everyone else turn on it. Thus, attacking GORT Company in range of Paradise would be, again, suicide."

"But..." spoke Ken, "We have allies in the fight against slavery. While I know you'd want to go after GORT company right away, I think we should gather more groups other than the Believers if we are going to attack them as well as find a way to keep Paradise and the Golden Exchange neutral. Again, it's not what you want to hear, but we need to be wise about this."

If he cannot contact Mr. Folen - the arms deal he was guarding should be starting now - he would begin preparations for a trip to Paradise itself, where he would try and make contact with a famous Anti-Slavery smuggler, the [i]other[/i] Elias.

[@RumikoOhara][@Sep][@Zarkun]