#she knew she should've gone into accounting or logistics

[kivaember]

I liked your rambling awhile back on Pater? Do you have any rambling thoughts about Maeterlinck?

I DO HAVE SOME RAMBLING THOUGHTS ABOUT MAETERLINCK.

So, I feel like she's someone who's comfortable succeeding in the middle of the pack, as it were. She doesn't want to stand out, especially in a group like the Vespers, because standing out there would mean getting targeted.

Freud. Snail. Rusty. These are the most well-known Vespers and they're continuously getting targeted by rival corporate mercs or even independent mercs looking to make a name for themselves or to settle grudges. True, it means they feature more in Arquebus's relentless merchendise campaign for the Vespers and even get a cut, but Maeterlinck is content with her current salary if it meant she didn't invite more attention and/or danger upon herself.

She's here to do a job. That job is managing the administrative day-to-day of the Vespers and handling problems that require more finesse than the fuck-off cannons that were the Big Three. Sending Freud in to handle a bunch of MT pilots under their command selling off fuel or ammunition for extra scratch would be like trying to kill a cockroach with a howitzer. Like, yeah, you'd kill the cockroach, but at what cost?

She's got the right temperament for it. She disliked active confrontation and she's not a risk-taker. She prefers taking things slow and careful, and as a result, Arquebus trusts her to handle things discreetly. They know Maeterlinck will never 'rock the boat' or cause a public scandal, and in a way she kind of does have the most corporate trust out of all the Vespers. Snail's too much of an ambitious ladder climber, Freud is Freud, and the rest of the Vespers are viewed as lackeys that would rob the corporation the moment they turned a blind eye to them. Maeterlinck, however, is loyal, discreet and, more importantly, sane and normal.

It does mean she works a little more closely with O'Keeffe than Snail, and their relationship could be summed up as: painfully professional. Maeterlinck has some gripes about how O'Keeffe runs his intelligence ship, but she respects his seniority and wealth of experience. However, she has noticed that there's something off between O'Keeffe and Rusty - but she's not stupid enough to go digging into that because she knows for a fact O'Keeffe could easily vanish her, and she's not risking her life just to learn that O'Keeffe and Rusty are fraternising or something dumb like that. She's just thankful they're more discreet than Hawkins and Pater...

In short, she's the type of coworker who blends into the background, and is neutral enough that she gets along reasonably well with everyone for the most part. She also knows all the gossip and has a keen sense of how to navigate office politics to avoid the worst of it. She adheres strongly to the hierarchy of the corporation and is loyal, but she's mostly just clocking in to earn her paycheck and work towards her promised retirement package.

She doesn't like Arquebus's foray onto Rubicon, in fact. She felt it was way too reckless and brash, and that the Vespers don't have a stable enough foothold to work effectively on the planet. But she kept her doubts to herself bc the corporation ordered them here and they have a job to do. Just shut up and do it, and hopefully she'll get out of this alive with a hefty bonus as consolation...