Gleaming Magnet

"Look, Tyrea. I'm not here to win you over with my sparkling personality. I'm just here to lead us to the information we need to find."

"And you're ill-equipped to do that," Tyrea replied, voice clipped. "What training have you, to assume that you can just step in and lead me?"

Elma sighed the air of several centuries, the break of a journey and a sojourn seldom paused, never ended. There were answers for that rather rhetorical question that she could dredge up, to slap right in Tyrea's face, but that would serve no one; it wouldn't even be satisfying. Not to mention having to explain herself just to assuage an upstart's indignance.

"If you won't follow where I indicate, that's your own prerogative. I can only do so much as assume that you'll cooperate at any time, no matter what you say to my face."

Tyrea scowled. Not that she hadn't already been bitter-faced, but now her expression flashed its warning lights, righteously sour.

An upstart. Really, could that be all she was?

"We're not enemies," added Elma, "unless you show me otherwise. Until then..."

Though the numbers of the original military force had been so greatly diminished, upon their landing here, there remained so unearthly many soldiers whose each petty foibles and quibbles just could not be addressed individually. If Tyrea meant to get more air time by making a nuisance of herself, Elma resolved that she wouldn't budge.

No, not enemies. Maybe just a bit misguided on either end (yes, Elma could admit that!), but not fighting for different things.

"I won't choose a division," Tyrea stated, just as Elma was about to turn away. "And I will not be accepting missions from the public console. You will give me your orders directly."

Come again? As if it wasn't a clear gauntlet of self-determination to be crossed, that one could even choose to accept a mission for report from and to Commander Vandham on the console. The entire point was to make it so that one was not so duly summoned, but instead saw the call and answered to it.

Put another way, the point was to avoid arguments just such as this, and redistribute the time invested into each interaction by using technology to balance the bureaucracy.

Tyrea glared down at Elma from a precise, prey-boned vantage, just daring the nominal C.O. to redirect her with any intent to actually make use of her skills.

"My orders," Elma began slowly, "are for you to proceed to the mission console and accept those missions which you feel you are prepared to complete. You will be responsible for your own equipment, your own routine, and your own progress. You will not be special. You will not argue with me in attempt to make yourself special or to insinuate special favors."

All of this, of course, just for Tyrea to grind in her heel and proclaim that she was not to be treated like any memoryless cadet with barely enough facility to handle such banal responsibilities. But if that was the way she wanted this to go, Elma would just have to take a few minutes out to make a report for Tyrea's personnel file.

"I'm better at following instructions than you think," Tyrea spat, instead of whatever Elma had been expecting. "I will not be passed over. I will not give you the opportunity."