"Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?"
After an unpleasant but perhaps insightful stay in Carthag, the CHOAM team received the required clearance to go over the pole into a small base amid the desert wilderness, a spot on the False Wall South.
The mission has received two new desert-rigged thopters [Quality 1] from Count Fenring to make up for the lost and damaged ones.
[There may still be important consequences of the Carthag situations that haven't been resolved yet, hence a tentative summary.]