Voss stood so abruptly that the motion alone was enough to reset the room's attention entirely.
"Okay." She set her tablet down with a small, decisive click. "This is what me and the old fucks upstairs have cooked up." A faint, dry note in the delivery suggested she found the phrase almost as amusing as she found the meeting it referred to tedious. "In a few weeks, we're sending scientists out. Two objectives. A: confirm whether the earth is actually healing, or whether Kade's little presentation was a very well-produced piece of theater. B: if it is healing, confirm exactly what that means for us specifically — what we can use, what we can't, what's worth the resources it'll cost to find out."
She let that sit for a moment before continuing.
"They won't be going alone, obviously. Each science team gets an escort — Gen 1 soldiers, regular soldiers, mechs where the terrain calls for it." She paused, and something faintly sardonic crossed her face. "I'd have liked to send special grades. They have other tasks. And someone still needs to be standing at the wall if those beasts out there decide they'd like a change in diet." A short, humorless breath. "I don't enjoy leaving anything easy when it doesn't have to be. But easy isn't currently on the table."
A few of the generals exchanged the kind of glance that passed for commentary in a room like this one — not quite surprise, closer to the specific, weary amusement of people who'd worked under her long enough to expect exactly this tone from exactly this kind of announcement.
"Deployment structure," Voss continued, moving on before anyone had the chance to react further. "Teams go out in groups, four zones — north, south, east, west. Each group advances one kilometer into their zone, no further, while the scientists do whatever it is scientists do out there. Assess conditions. Document anything worth documenting. Hold the perimeter while they work." Her eyes swept the table, flat and expectant. "This is a priority mission. I'll be on coms personally for the duration."
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That last detail landed with more weight than the rest combined — a Supreme Commander personally monitoring comms for a scouting operation was not, any of the generals in that room understood, how priority was normally measured around here.
"Questions."
It wasn't phrased as one.
The room considered it anyway, briefly, each general running whatever version of the calculation their post required — resources, risk, the dozen things that could conceivably go wrong sending scientists a kilometer into territory nobody had properly mapped in a decade. None of them found anything worth raising that Voss hadn't already, visibly, accounted for herself.
"None," they said, nearly in unison, the particular respectful unanimity of people who had learned, over long careers, exactly which of her questions were actually questions.
"Good." She was already gathering her tablet, already halfway to somewhere else in her own head, the way she seemed to move through every room she occupied. "Further directives will follow and maybe our little potential special grade might be selected, I'll like to see him in action.Until then." A short nod, more habit than warmth. "See you all."
The generals rose as one, saluting before she'd fully turned for the door, and held the position a beat longer than strictly necessary — not for her benefit, most of them would have admitted, if pressed, but simply because it took that long for the room to remember how to breathe at its normal pace once she'd left it.