“I am playing rock-paper-scissors with our [i]lives,[/i] Dolce!”

Redana is stressy. When Redana is stressy, Redana does not sleepy. When Redana does not sleepy, she ends up here, a bundle of nervous energy and frazzled hair, in the (now crab-free) kitchens. She is not drinking the calming herbal tea. She is making dangerous gestures with the calming herbal tea, grand sweeping commands that threaten to get tea everywhere.

“So take a look at this one, right?” She flourishes her sketchbook. You might be surprised at how good her technical drawing is; these had some thought put into them, with Hermetic glyphs scrawled in the margins. Displayed on the page is the [i]Plousios[/i] with the kind of hull that cracks asteroids apart and multiple landing bays converted to secondary engine installations: the kind of ship that can make surprisingly sharp turns and hunts its enemies like a nearsighted wolf. “Stellar, right? But what if there’s something we can’t just or don’t want to just punch through? What if we get brought to bear by pirates? If we reduce our Plover bays, we’ll be relying totally on the prow and flying blind against anything too small to bring to bear. But if we don’t have extra maneuvering vents, we’ll be blundering about like a silly drunk Servitor, and say goodbye to outracing anything! Oh, so reduce the heavy plating, Redana, you say!” (Dolce did not say.) “But if we skimp on this, we risk being torn apart by space monsters!”

Even as she says it, she flips another page, and reveals an elegant, stripped-down [i]Plousios[/i], with solar sail mechanisms on every face to unfold when necessary, an unparalleled maneuverability, with landing bays and SP weapons bristling, a corsair-vessel that lives on its speed alone. “Sturdy, swift, and not toothless: we get to choose two. And if I choose wrong you’ll all die when the [i]Plousios[/i] gets caught in the radius of a collapsing star, or when alien locusts tear through our depleted Plover coverage and burrow in to lay their eggs, or when a Star Dragon curls around the ship and squeezes us apart!” She flops, considers a moment, and then contemplatively adds: “Though maybe if we sacrifice Plover coverage, we’ll be lucky enough to be boarded by Azora corsairs and sold into slavery, which [i]doesn’t[/i] get you all killed, so maybe that’s the least bad option?”

Somebody needs to actually drink her tea and calm down, right? And what’s up with her considering everybody else’s safety? Sure, she’s human, she’s tough, but she’s not [i]that[/i] tough, right?

...right?