Andrea leaned back into her chair and regarded Orange in silence for several moments. The maid's grin didn't bother her, but the implication behind it did. There was an assumption buried beneath the criticism that Andrea found herself increasingly unwilling to let pass unchallenged. An assumption that because she had spent the last several days speaking to department heads, reviewing budgets and attempting to understand the corporation she'd inherited, she had somehow forgotten the objective.

It was wrong.

"I think you're misunderstanding me." Andrea said at last, her voice calm. Not defensive. Calm. "I haven't forgotten the mission." Her fingers folded together atop the desk. "But I've spent the better part of a week discovering that every single person who reports to me has spent years adapting themselves around it. Research has been fed to the point of [i]obesity[/i] because of it. Interior has been hollowed out because of it. Security has been handed a blank cheque because of it. Every conversation I have eventually leads back to the same place."

Andrea's gaze remained fixed on Orange.

"The Hecatoncheires." For the first time since the conversation began, there was a slight edge to her voice. "What I'm trying to determine is whether the people pursuing that objective have left me with enough of a company to achieve it."

Because that was what truly irked Andrea, the idea that her promotion had only been deemed correct because she was going to be a good dog and go after the Hecatoncheires immediately, rather than taking charge of the mega-corp that she had been [i]put in charge of[/i]. The mission and the corporation were being treated as though they were separate things by this maid, and therefore the same by Everest. But they weren't. Not entirely. Mrs. Everest might be willing to sacrifice Lhotse in pursuit of the objective, but somebody still had to decide which sacrifices were useful and which were merely wasteful. Andrea was increasingly convinced that there was a difference.

"You've... accused me of babying my asset." A faint smile touched the corner of her mouth. "And perhaps that's true." She shrugged slightly. "But [i]I[/i] don't think that's what's happening. I think I've inherited an ongoing war with the one organization currently suspected of possessing a Hecatoncheire." The statement settled heavily into the room. "The Admiral has convinced me that the war is winnable. That had never really been my concern. Scipio's enthusiasm had practically guaranteed victory, you see. My concern is the time it takes. And the consequences of dragging our feet."

The concern was consequences. The concern was that wars had a tendency to become self-justifying, and then become incredibly bloated and things that decimated economies and personal wants and needs. Mrs Everest wanted the Polygon Hecatoncheire, but the war was only going to get in the way of that.

"The longer the conflict continues, the more opportunities our opponent has to adapt." Andrea slowly rose from her chair and crossed toward the window overlooking the city beyond. "The longer it continues, the greater the chance that whatever asset we're searching for is relocated, concealed, traded, destroyed, fragmented or simply [i]vanishes[/i] into the fog of competing interests." She clasped her hands together in front of her to enunciate her point. "So if Polygon possesses a Hecatoncheire, then I don't merely want to defeat them. I want to reach the point where they lose the ability to hide it from us as we close in on it."

There was a difference. An important one. Military victory and strategic success were not the same thing. History was littered with examples of people achieving one and failing the other.

"So no, I wasn't asking for money because I care about quarterly earnings." A small shake of her head. "I was asking for money because I believe speed has value." The smile returned briefly. "And because every MacroCredit spent shortening a conflict is potentially worth several spent managing its consequences. That said, you've made a fair point." She returned to her desk. "Mrs. Everest has entrusted me with control over the company." Her hand settled against the polished surface. "I currently have eight Macro Credits remaining to split between two departments that will not doubt expect over double that for themselves. Scipio took the lion's share, Eager has enough from previous years to stay afloat on half of what he wanted, and Trajan very simply [i]needed[/i] what she got."

Not many. Not enough. Certainly not enough to make everyone happy.

"Which means I am approaching the point where I need to stop asking how to preserve every part of Lhotse and start asking which parts are genuinely important. Because despite your belittling rhetoric, I don't believe Mrs. Everest views the corporation as [i]entirely[/i] disposable." The statement was delivered with quiet confidence. "If she did, she wouldn't have spent decades building it."

Factories. Shipping fleets. Universities. Political networks. Entire cities economically dependent upon Lhotse's existence. Nobody accumulated that much infrastructure accidentally. Nobody maintained it for that long unless it possessed value. The question was what kind of value.

"So let me ask a more useful question." Andrea folded her arms. "If I need to burn a section of Lhotse to the ground in order to accelerate the mission..." Her gaze never left Orange, now more intense than it had been at the start of their conversation, "...which section would Mrs. Everest miss the [i]least?"[/i]