Cook's brow quirked with unwonted consternation. "Normally, no, not without consulting with your nominal chain of command—but like he said, when you took over the company, you established a precedent. This is a friendly power, even if not a full ally, and there's a long tradition of attaching foreign observers to general staffs. Besides, there's no way in the current emergency to do any consulting. It's what we diplomats like to call 'a gray area'."