CSNS-Enterprise: Commonwealth anti-Zebesian contingent Battlefleet Tsunami
Admiral Samual V. Yoshiro had sent his requests down and with that, the Frigates broke off and assumed Escort Duty of the centrists. The Tercios and the Xiognu had a formidable arsenal of point defense weapons, but they also carried formidable arsenals which could throw around much heavier missiles and energy mounts than most ships their size could. The main stratagy of Atlantean Naval Warfare was decapitation. Strike hard at a distance the heaviest assets. This offensive capacity might serve them well in the comming ingagement.
SDNW4 Story Thread 2
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
Last edited by Zor on 2011-03-05 03:03am, edited 1 time in total.
HAIL ZOR! WE'LL BLOW UP THE OCEAN!
Heros of Cybertron-HAB-Keeper of the Vicious pit of Allosauruses-King Leighton-I, United Kingdom of Zoria: SD.net World/Tsar Mikhail-I of the Red Tsardom: SD.net Kingdoms
WHEN ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE ON EARTH, ALL EARTH BREAKS LOOSE ON HELL
Terran Sphere
The Art of Zor
Heros of Cybertron-HAB-Keeper of the Vicious pit of Allosauruses-King Leighton-I, United Kingdom of Zoria: SD.net World/Tsar Mikhail-I of the Red Tsardom: SD.net Kingdoms
WHEN ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE ON EARTH, ALL EARTH BREAKS LOOSE ON HELL
Terran Sphere
The Art of Zor
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
Midgar, Shinra RepublicFingolfin_Noldor wrote:When the Shinrans finally issued their usual communiques of welcome and the docking location, the starship cruised to its designated position and docked. The Sigillite smiled, tapping some of the old memories of his long dead predecessors and doing a brief run through of all their personal experiences and memories. Yes, this was going to be something of a walk in the past. Humans rarely changed much anyway.
Co-written with Fingolfin_Noldor
Decius the Sigillite was met by Secretary of State William Wright on the landing pad, and after the usual pleasentries exchanged taken to see the President.
"Welcome to the Republic. We were pleased when we heard the Imperium would offer assistance to deal with the threat posed by the MEH," said President Cid Shinra.
"Thank you, Mr. President, for the invitation. Yes, the Imperium does view the MEH as a threat to the stability of the galaxy. The MEH must be either reasoned with, or failing that, they must be made compliant," Decius replied with as congenial a voice as possible, yet with a hard edge. "The Imperium is however interested in knowing the timeline for the expedition so that it can adequately prepare for such an endeavour as large as this. We would also like to know what kind of commitment the other states can bring to the table."
"Our preliminary plan for attack calls for a start date somewhere within March 3401. However, as we have not yet heard back from some other potential members of the coalition, we can not offer a firm date at this time. Likewise, until we have heard more from the other parties, I cannot yet answer your second question. We have invited the other members of our proposed coalition to join us here as you have done; hopefully when they have all arrived we can begin to firm up the details of our operations." President Shinra leaned back in his chair. "Again, we are glad for the Imperium's quick response and offer of support. However, this also means that, for right now, the only information we can offer you is very preliminary, as I'm sure you can understand. It is not an easy nor speedy process to bring together a large multinational force such as this, after all," the President said with a smile.
"I understand, Mr. President. Just how much will your own nation commit? This would be at best an expensive endeavour, not least the occupation that will surely come after? Other issues the Imperium would have would be who would be in overall command, or would it be at best a collaborative command effort?"
"At this point, our intelligence regarding MEH capabilities is sketchy, at best. If the Imperium has better information, we would be glad to have it. As such, our preliminary plan is to commit at least one Battle Carrier group, six Carrier Groups and all of our Assault Groups as part of a combined Fleet, and given that what data we have suggests the MEH ships to be fairly large and powerful, we will also likely detach two or more Star Battleships to the effort. This will be lead by one of our Grand Admirals, Gilad Pellaeon, whom I hope you will be able to meet during your visit. Our occupation forces will be substantial, and include our regular Army and Military Police units. Numbers will be determined based upon how the occupation will be set up; joint occupations or seperate occupation zones for example. Regarding command issues, I think it might be easiest to have a semi-collaborative command. There would be an overall 'commander' but said individual would mostly be utilized for coordination efforts and logistics. Tactical commanders for given theaters are more likely, and of course depend on which forces are assigned to which theater. The disposition of forces being along the lines of 'where do we need a given capability' most rather than concerns of nationality, I hope. This is why we are planning on extensive pre-operation exercises, to smooth over any rough spots differences in doctrine and technology may present as much as possible."
Decius nodded, "The Imperium for its part will at least deploy one Astartes Battle Barge and one Navy Battleships, and one Astartes Strike Cruisers, along with each vessel's intendent fleet. Perhaps more as the Navy and Astartes continue their assessment of fleet active strength. However, I would however note that such a large collection of warships will attract perhaps undue attention? Perhaps more discretion is adviced?"
"Indeed. We'd rather not open up an invitation to the galaxy to start blasting the MEH. Our intial commitment will likely be around half that number, and hopefully with our allies we can gain enough control of local space to mitigate anyone else wanting to attack, as we are certain there will be several. The MEH has not been making many friends from what we can tell. And having a disorganized mass of warships engaged in battles would not be a good thing. Our forces will of course increase as the operation expands."
"I would point out Mr President that many nations have varying approaches towards command and control and often it is best for well defined zones of operation to be defined, while maintaining a common IFF to prevent friendly fire incidents. That being said, I would expect that many preliminary meetings between the various services to take place before any substantial military action takes place. More so that many of us have never even so much as worked together, and in the case of the Bragulans and the Imperium, we have more often than not, ended up on opposite sides of the equation."
Bragulans? Why bring them up? wondered President Shinra. "Well, that is why we're hoping to run exercises, though your concerns are valid. Ultimately I suspect a large part of this will depend on what strategy we ultimately adopt, which will be influenced by the intel we can gather on the MEH and what forces the coalition can bring to bear. Which will be hashed out by many meetings between now and then, as you noted." Privately, President Shinra decided to step up efforts to find out what the Bragulans were doing, but aloud he said, "Are there any more questions you have at this time?"
"No Mr. President, there are none. However, we should have the meetings as soon as possible to at least have the relevant generals and admirals who will lead the attack get acquainted."
"Agreed. We'll be arranging these meetings just as soon as the representitives can be gathered."
This is the price of war,
We rise with noble intentions,
And we risk all that is pure..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, Forever (Rome: Total War)
"On and on, through the years,
The war continues on..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, We Are All One (Medieval 2: Total War)
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." - Ambrose Redmoon
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." - Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
Co-written with Siege!
Zubrich Planetary Police Precinct Lugano-1
The blast caused chaos in more than one place. The ZPP precinct in Lugano was a posting most police officers considered cushy and uneventful: they spent their days directing drones that chased pickpockets identified by AI systems, and listening to complaints about noise, loud music and nudist Zigonians. Terror attacks were a theoretical possibility, but the town was politically insignificant, and automated systems were enough to pick up the occasional lunatic trying to bomb a power station or a crowd of tourists.
That was why the precinct was now a site of absolute, absurd panic, as officer ran around the building, shouted at each other, grabbed their service weapons, asked their commanders for directions and generally overreacted. Which was why a response that in any other city would’ve taken at most five minutes stretched into an utterly unacceptable fifteen.
The result was still quite impressive, though, as a swarm of police LARCs, six light wheeled armored vehicles, two hoverlift gunships and more than fifty armed officers descended upon the network hub: not counting the news drones that arrived mere seconds after the explosion and were already broadcasting the fire and police response throughout the Zubrich networks: fortunately for the CEID team, the blast and their little sabotage caused widespread bandwith clogging and errors, making the reports difficult to circulate outside of separate government networks.
However impressive the show of force might’ve been, the brief delay in police response allowed August and Freki to exit the facility with their stolen memory chips. They still had no idea what exactly happened, but decided they’d have plenty of time to find out later. August rushed at street level, his adaptive disguise allowing him to blend into crowds of onlookers, rapidly changing his look. Freki instead used his current body to blend into high-level drone traffic, monitoring the situation and updating August in real-time. Their current objective was to get as far away from the hub as possible, and it looked like they may just succeed - until one of the LARC gunships angrily patrolling the area descended rapidly and swept its disruptor array over a crowd, messing up August’s adaptive disguise.
“This is the Planetary Police! Stop immediately!”, the gunship blared through its loudspeakers. The pilot wasted no time calling for help, but he found his communications jammed. His quarry in the meantime leapt across the street from a standing start and disappeared into a crowded store, the adaptive disguise still flickering from its brief encounter with the disruptor.
Of course, that couldn’t - and didn’t - quite work as far as blending in with the crowd was concerned, as August’s battle-armored body was now surrounded by a flickering, messy projection which if anything made him stand out more than his true hulking form. The crowds scattered in panic when he came crashing through the front door, throwing aside a security bot that tried, impotently, to stop him with a wireless taser. Downloading a detailed map from the store’s public-access server, the replicant began to make its way through the building.
It would be improper to say he was scared. More annoyed at the sudden appearance of rare and expensive anti-espionage technology in the hands of police on a fringe world like Zubrich. His control systems were scrambled, and he’d need time to restore the disguise - and even then, another disruptor sweep would surely defeat it again. Fortunately, he still had backup.
Freki, I need those gunships taken care of.
The response was but slight sideband scatter full of joyful glee.
Outside, both gunship circled above the block, sweeping their disruptors over crowds of people rushing out side doors, when one of them exploded with no visible cause, raining debris on the sidewalk below. The second LARC reacted quickly, rapidly gaining altitude, and acquiring the perpetrator - a cloud of small drones, previously hidden amongst the swarms of various media and C4I machines now cluttering the airspace. It didn’t waste any time, blasting it with two high-powered lasers.
Amazingly, it missed. One of the bigger drones angrily buzzed right next to the gunship’s hull, cutting off one of the grav-modules with a scythe of invisible force. The gunship spiralled to the ground and crashed between abandoned ground vehicles littering the street.
Done, the drone pulsed to its partner below.
August, having resolved the problem with his disguise, was observing the carnage through a hijacked media drone feed.
Goddammit, Freki!, he pulsed
What?, came an innocent response. The wreck of the first LARC was starting to shake with secondary explosions of its ammunition and power sources, spewing thick black smoke into the air.
We better move. They might send the Army if this keeps up.
Oh yes. You should go right, by the way. There’s armor coming your way from the left.
August skidded to a halt and turned around just as the first light armored vehicle rounded the corner. Unfortunately, when they saw a civilian change directions mid-stride during a full on run, they correctly assumed it was a disguised foreign agent, and opened fire.
August dove forwards, his heightened senses allowing him to watch the air sizzle and evaporate as it came in contact with the high-powered autolaser. Almost without a stop, he bounced off the sidewalk and leapt across the street, latching onto the facade of the store he just left, scaling it with a few rapid movements. Another autolaser burst set the entire facade on fire and blew large chunks off it, peppering August’s force-shield with white hot shrapnel.
Freki then swept in, low above the street, only to pop up at the last moment and fry the LAV with two energy blasts at close range, blowing out its sensors and fire control electronics. Before he could pop back down, an autolaser burst from one of the remaining LAVs caught his body square in the side. August watched as the cluster spiralled out of control and disappeared between two buildings. He wasted no time and broke into a run, leaping across streets and alleys separating the loosely clustered buildings of Lugano, moving south, straight towards the lake. He could handle the remaining LAVs himself, but not before heavier forces would start arriving.
Not too far away, a lithe figure of a Maibatsu Type 23 Assault Frame slid into a vent and activated its adaptive disguise. Legion didn’t really believe in luck, but he had to admit the turn of events was an awfully chaotic variable to introduce into its plans: the coincidence of running into the CEID team at the precise moment it planned to blow up the hub was incredibly improbable. It didn’t matter, though: the tracker program warned Legion of the intrusion, and the hub’s main storage servers were still blown apart even if the bomb wasn’t optimally placed. All that was left now was the bank’s mainframe.
Almera Colony
Algeira, Newark, five years ago
Fifty thousand marks were merely half a year’s salary for most Algeirans. For someone from Pelania, it was an unimaginable fortune. It was enough to get the two brothers, Malik and Jamal, set up comfortably: they got new identities, rented an apartment and found jobs. Algeira was so much different from the poor, dilapidated nation they both came from: safe, well-organized, with plentiful food, work and entertainment. Life was good for the brothers, even with the growing internal dissent and common rioting that was increasingly plaguing the country. Newark was still rather quiet, though.
They still had problems, of course. Malik never came to terms with what they did back home, to get the money. He still had nightmares from that fateful night in Corinth, where they murdered an albino girl so that they could sell parts of her body to rich collectioners. He often woke up in the middle of the night, panting and sweating: he’d walk to the fridge, get something to drink and sit still until morning - and that fateful night wasn’t any different. Well, until he got to the kitchen, anyway.
“Hello”, he heard a voice from the darkness. Malik yelped in fear and dropped the water glass, which shattered on the floor, “Remember me?”
He didn’t, but years of living in Pelania did its thing. He leapt into the living room and grabbed a large club the brothers kept there for just an occasion, shouting to warn Jamal. His brother didn’t need any extra warning, though: he was already out of bed, running towards the living room with a hatchet in hand.
Armed and ready, they faced the kitchen door. A woman came out of them in not much of a hurry, seemingly oblivious to the two strong, armed men standing before her. She only wore a pair of tight jeans and a white t-shirt, clearly showing she had no weapon.
“Get out!”, Jamal screamed at her, waving the hatchet around, “Or else!”
The woman nodded sagely, as if she remembered something, “Ah, yes, right. It’s the new body. Of course you can’t recognize me.”
Jamal glanced at his brother. Malik shrugged, trying not to show his fear. The woman seemed just...crazy, but something in what she said brought back the terrible memories he was trying to forget every day.
But could it really be? The woman standing in their living room was healthy ; The girl that haunted Malik was an albino. The brothers’ victim was also young, barely more than a child, while here was a fully mature woman. And lastly, she wasn’t dead, which was probably the most important detail.
“GET OUT!”, Jamal’s scream brought Malik back to reality.
The woman sneered, “Or what? You’ll call the cops?”
Jamal screamed and swung the hatchet. Malik watched with utter horror as his brother was thrown across the room by some unseen force, crashing into the wall and instantly going limp. Malik stood there, paralyzed with fear, as the woman approached him and grasped his head firmly.
“You can’t recognize me, but I can. Both of you.”, she whispered, staring into Malik’s eyes. The man whimpered, having found something in her face, something horrible, the tell-tale sign of a mind consumed with hate.
She started slowly, deliberately twisting his head around with inhuman strength.
The Blackjack, in orbit over Zubrich
She was roused from her sleep by an urgent data packet from the Dollmaster. Having to work across a tertiary data-band was awfully annoying, but had the benefit of data standing out from the usual mental activity of a human brain - kind of like low-resolution black-and-white images would stand out from your typical visual input.
Vilena Soruga, report to the CIC immediately, Dollmaster demanded across the link. Another artifact of having to work with low-bandwith comms bands was that very little real work could be done outside the ship’s command centre.
Vilena quickly got up from her spartan cot and left the tiny cabin assigned to her during the stay aboard the Blackjack. A detached part of her mind, the analytical side of her added to the original personality, noticed the usual gloomy interiors were now well lit. Either the ship went into a day cycle, or it was now operating at a higher state of readiness.
The CIC was awash in visual information, so Vilena guessed it was the latter. The moment she stepped through the armored door, she was accosted by hologrammatic displays showing the planet below, and dozens of news channels. She could already see the problem: most of the news feeds had smoke, fire or both on them.
What happened?, she inquired the ship’s CI. Dollmaster replied quickly, in his usual detached tone.
I have been intercepting news reports about a series of terrorist attacks against network hubs on the surface, including the one in Lugano that agents August and Freki were infiltrating. I may need to consult with you. Stand by.
Vilena took a moment to review the information that was flooding her senses. Friday entered the CIC as she was doing that - the CEID psion had already used her d-link to get intimately familiar with the situation, and couldn’t help but smirk at the Collector liaison’s attempts to filter through the inefficient visual media.
“Having trouble, hon?”, she asked with a wry smile.
“No”, Vilena replied, staring at the visage. Her augmentation allowed her to sort and collate information much quicker than baseline humans, but it still took several minutes before she had a good idea about the situation.
“Zubrich military has been put on high alert”, Dollmaster interrupted, “They are switching codes. I will be unable to monitor government communications for some time.”
Even Friday was beginning to get somewhat worried now, her amusement now replaced by a professionally cold, analytical demeanor.
“Any chance your people had something to do with it?”, she asked Vilena, this time without a hint of irony.
Vilena replied without taking her eyes off the screens, “Negative. Our team was operating in Lugano at the time... besides, we hadn’t even touched at least 60% of the destroyed nodes.”
Friday went over the materials again in a split second. The crazy girl was right - “When can we reestablish communications?”
“If we are to remain undetected, another three to four kiloseconds...”, there was a brief pause, “...or not. I am receiving a...submesonic feed from the surface.”
With a flicker and crackle, another hologrammatic construct appeared between the already nigh unreadable displays. The video was garbled and flickering, and the audio much worse. Vilena didn’t want to think how the transmission would feel when received directly: though Friday’s sudden scowl seemed to indicate just how bad.
“We have secured a small submesonic core”, One’s voice barely came through, but was generally understandable.
“Hold on”, Friday frowned. “There are no submesonics in Lugano, the nearest one...”
“...is located at Lausanne Air Force Base”, Dollmaster finished for her, “I am receiving a position feed from the Collector team which confirms their location.”
Friday shot Vilena a look. “What are they doing there?”
One didn’t deem the question important enough to answer, choosing instead to continue with his situation report, delivered verbally due to the low bandwith of that particular submesonic core, “The Lugano operation was a complete failure. Both targeted network hubs were destroyed by an unknown actor. We have also discovered the fact similar attacks have occurred throughout the planet, and thus decided to immediately reestablish communications.”
The CEID agent’s frown deepened. “LEGION is cleaning house.”
“A reasonable assumption”, Dollmaster confirmed, “I am running an analysis on the attacked networks, but I lack full data at this moment.”
Vilena pulled up the list of all the attacked nodes they knew about so far: it was most likely incomplete, as the scale of the attack caused widescale network disruption - normally, Dollmaster would be able to ascertain the exact amount of targeted nodes, but they didn’t have access...
“One”, Vilena turned to the emotionless robotic mask staring at her through the hologrammatic screen, “Set up an access point for Dollmaster through the core.”
“Affirmative”, the screen replied, and cut the video feed to conserve bandwith.
As soon as it had an opening, the CI began scouring what was left of the Zubrich Datasphere for data, rapidly building up a database. It began to search for clues, common elements that connected the attacked nodes together: it juggled massive amounts of information, comparing it to billions of data points per second.
Due to the narrow pipeline connecting Dollmaster to the planet, the process took an agonizing ten minutes to accomplish, but the result was as precise as ever.
“Every single one of the attacked nodes ran contractual services related to offsite backups and traffic monitoring for the First Security Bank of Zubrich.”
“Son of a bitch...”, Friday hissed. Everyone expected LEGION to try a more subtle approach to covering his tracks, but that made a lot of sense. Electronic attacks could leave recoverable data, while vaporizing a computer mostly didn’t, “...can you figure how many hubs are still left?”
“Of course, Agent Friday...”, Dollmaster seemed slightly annoyed at the suggestion he did not already consider the possibility, “...none.”
“That only leaves the records stored in the bank itself.”, Vilena noted, “Will he try to break in there?”
Friday sneered, “He could try...it would save us all a lot of work with the security setup they have there.”
“We can’t risk him blowing up the bank. That’s literally our last lead!”, Vilena shot back, “We must get there first and secure the data we need.”
“Vilena Soruga’s assertion is correct. It is very likely the attacks were part of a well-prepared operation. It is likely LEGION has determined a way to penetrate the bank’s defences already, and is merely carrying out his plan.”
With a garbled crackle, One came back on the line, “Then we should proceed immediately. I have just discovered that units of the Zubrich Army and heavy Planetary Police responders have been ordered to converge on the planetary capital. I am having trouble determining the reason.”
“What? How did you do that?”
“We have our methods, Agent Friday. I suggest everyone in orbit prepare for insertion into the capital, while we attempt to outrace the locals on the ground.”
The feed was cut before Friday could deliver her irritable response.
Lausanne Air Force Base, surface of Zubrich
One turned away from the submesonic core assembly, located securely in a vault below the airbase complex. He passed a drooling guard without attracting a single glance, then casually leapt up an empty elevator shaft, using his body’s built-in gravitics. From there, it was a short walk to the lobby.
All the guards from the surface had gathered there. They were staring at the walls and mumbling to themselves, completely oblivious to the caped skeletal figure walking amongst them.
Something flickered and appeared between the men. Agent August looked around, briefly disoriented before regaining his composure, and stared at the Collector agent from beneath his battle-armor’s mask.
“You know, when your buddy said he’d bring me to you...I kind of assumed he meant a vehicle.”
“What’s the status of Agent Freki?”, One didn’t deem it necessary to comment, chosing instead to skip straight to the point.
“Down in the city. I would’ve been unable to get to him in time before heavy army units arrived.”, August replied without a hint of concern in his voice, “His frame will self-destruct if tampered with, so there’s no risk of the operation being compromised.”
“Good. Standby...”, there was a brief pause as the Collector transferred the contents of his conversation with Dollmaster to August, “...we should proceed immediately.”
August half expected them to just...teleport to the capital, but he heard the low hum of an approaching LARC instead. He made a note of that - whatever device or trick the second Collector used to rapidly bring him here had a range below four hundred twenty kilometres.
The heavy LARC transport stopped outside and opened its side ramp. Without a further word, One boarded the vehicle. August looked one last time at the mumbling, drooling guards - recording them in every EM spectrum he could - and followed suit.
The vehicle’s cockpit was occupied by a floating serpentine creature resembling a snake’s skeleton, coiled on one of the seats. It touched the controls with one of its razor-sharp claws and the vehicle lifted off, rapidly gaining speed.
All that was left was hoping they’d get to the capital before the Army.
Baerne, capital of Zubrich
Government Plaza
Legion watched the Planetary Police surround the bank’s headquarters. They had, predictably, figured out what connected all the destroyed network hubs together. They did have CIs of their own, after all, and it wasn’t exactly hard to add two and two together. At least not for something more efficient at thinking than a squishy organic.
So far, everything was going well: save the mishap at Lugano. Legion didn’t expect the CEID to move that efficiently: he was vaguely aware of their movement across the planet, of course, but them arriving in Lugano at the exact same time his bomber did was an unfortunate coincidence. Still, they didn’t manage to actually save the hub, so the whole thing worked out in the end, even if Legion had to sacrifice that organic. Small loss.
This time, however, it had to go just right. The First Security Bank Of Zubrich was a facility up to all galactic standards, and that included their security setup: while Legion could penetrate it, doing that usually required painstaking preparation, for which he just did not have the time. The sensation of doing things by the seat of his proverbial pants was somewhat new, but enjoyable. While he had no adrenal glands, he enjoyed the stimulation of the myriad possibilities arising from such improvisation.
But enough introspection. It was time to check his assets. He began to send secured messages across the temporary shadownet he set up in the neighborhood.
At about the same time, two women briskly made their way across the tight, winding streets of Baerne. They did not particularly stand out from the colorful crowds of tourists and locals mingling on the streets, except perhaps for Agent Friday’s gigantic, all-black eyes. Even Vilena’s cybernetics were nothing out of the ordinary on that planet: while its architecture was rustic (to not say archaic), modern amenities were quite common on Zubrich thanks to its proximity to Solarian space and general wealth.
They, too, carried a shadow network, separate from the planetary datasphere, shared between all agents in the area thanks to extremely sophisticated frequency-hopping comms links. Even Vilena was allowed access, though Dollmaster took great pain to separate her from any sensitive information.
Above them, hiding in the cluttered airspace, a swarm of control drones dubbed “The Eye” by the Collectors hovered, coordinating all the CEID and Collector assets. As Vilena and Friday neared the city centre and became more and immersed in the crowds gathering around the First Security Bank, they began receiving their first intelligence via the network.
404 and EFK are on the ground and moving in across the lake. I am setting up the battlespace...now.
A thorough image of the city whirled into existence, colorful and complicated beyond comprehension of unaugmented minds, simultaneously delivering several layers of important information in an organized and clear manner, with special consideration to the wide open plaza in the center of the city, surrounded by numerous government and banking institutions.
Good. We’re approaching the bank., Friday communicated in this strange way that took microseconds to express, yet delivered so much more information than talking.
Remember the plan. We only get one shot at this.
The women soon entered the Government Plaza and pushed through crowds of onlookers towards the perimeter. They behest the impressive display of military and police hardware patrolling the perimeter.
They’re just getting organized, Friday observed, They’ll start scattering the crowds any minute now.
They stayed in place, safe for the time being, watching and carefully analyzing the information collated for them by The Eye, looking for vulnerabilities or any sign of Legion’s activity. Each second the robot merc did nothing meant more police arrived, more security holes got patched by government CIs and, of course, it was another second closer to Vilena and Friday getting their heavy support.
We might be overestimating him, it was Friday again, An attempt to infiltrate that place now would be suicide.
Vilena didn’t transmit a reply, but the sidebands clearly indicated that she, too, disbelieved Legion could pull it off, Collector hacking techniques notwithstanding.
Time passed. Planetary Police sappers arrived and entered the building, no doubt to check it for explosives. Eye’s microcameras swarmed through streets and buildings, constantly changing ID codes and disguises, camouflaged as media drones, maintenance bots or police assets. They wormed their way into any building they could, checking out for snipers and hidden observers.
We are in position., 404 reported, and the battlespace helpfully indicated the location of the last two Collectors. 404’s partner, the gigantic killbot, didn’t even try to hide: it strode amongst the crowd, emitting police ID tags and displaying Planetary Police insignia with its holo emitters. Friday had to admit she was impressed with both the subtlety and sheer audacity of that approach, and judging from the sidebands - so was Dollmaster, who had a much clearer picture of the EW activity involved in pulling that off.
No contact., The Eye reported dutifully.
Should we move in?, the Killbot seemed...impatient. His transmissions seemed almost like a growling animal...for Friday, they reminded her of Bragulan minds she had the opportunity to probe.
Negative. The target may be attempting to draw us out into the open. Standby., Dollmaster tempered him. The CI was running through hundreds of thousands of scenarios, taking into account all the thousands upon thousands of factors and variables that comprised the situation. Simultaneously, it was running electronic interference with Zubrichian military and police networks, and attempting to evade detection by orbital patrols. It was satisfied by the fact that it could finally make some use of a large chunk of its processing capacity: it wasn’t often the brooding CI had the opportunity to be challenged, even slightly.
Movement in the crowd, another communique from The Eye broke the routine and introduced an extra set of variables. There were several people trying to leave the crowd at the same time. Time seemed to slow down, as enhance situational processors of everyone involved analyzed the situation. And then, the final straw.
I am detecting shielded plasma explosives.
Briefly, Vilena flinched, as if she wanted to cry ‘bomb’ to save as many people as possible, but that would betray their position. Friday had no such compunctions: she began swiftly moving away from the explosives, caring little for the people around her, using psychic influence to create a path and wall of bodies shielding her from the explosives.
And then, something happened. Sudden bursts of activity on police radio crossed the battlespace with an emerald flare, followed immediately by policemen beginning to hastily widen the perimeter around the bank. Bullhorns blared, urging people to move back. The crowd wavered and squeezed together and began moving back, creating a tightly packed mass of people.
Creating a target, Vilena realized.
It’s an engineered situation., Dollmaster summarized quickly, one step ahead of everyone else who wasn’t a CI, There’s been a call from inside the bank claiming there are bombs inside. Probable purpose is distraction of the police forces present, secondary goal is probably exposing our assets for termination.
Orders?, Friday asked with surprising calm
Play dead, was the split-second response.
Then the entire square exploded.
Flashes of white-hot energy erupted from deceptively small packages, instantly converting the air around them into plasma and creating an overpressure wave. Plasma explosives were not a particularly good choice for antipersonnel work, but they made impressive blasts, terrifying and powerful, setting people on fire, scorching lungs and burning out eyes. Mushroom clouds rose, the temperature difference sucking in debris and body parts and then scattering them like a cyclone. As a byproduct, the explosives also emitted a large pulse of radiation. Major parts of the police network went dark instantly, rid of input from their drones and cameras. Military networks did not, as they were hardened against such an occurrence, which led to an instant and terrible information deficiency and spiraling assumptions from police officers on the scene.
And, of course, the crowd panicked. Then the shooting started, and some military drones shot back, and things started going even more to hell. Heavy ordnance raked windows, police fired on the military and the military shot back, civilians were fleeing in panic with police drones attempting to chase down misidentified suspects. Friday saw such things more than once in her lifetime, during training and afterwards, when advanced star nations of the galaxy attacked places with not enough sophistication in their military. Solarian doctrine especially favored strikes against enemy control and communications networks, lightning raids against command centres and other, more subtle techniques at sowing confusion and chaos. Apparently, Legion’s Collector training went along similar lines, only taken one step further - Zubrich was not your usual shitworld, after all, even if it was still a step below a major star nation in technology and organization.
Fortunately, the CEID shadownet was robust and resillient, and the minds controlling it were far more powerful than anything installed on Zubrich. Not one CEID or Collector agent had lost coordination or situational awareness, and they sprung into action the moment Dollmaster ascertained the situation and distributed the orders, which only took the slightest moment.
HQ, First Security Bank of Zubrich
Moments later
The Maibatsu Type 23 assault frame was a favorite of Legion’s for a while now. It had the sort of perfect blend of agility, brute power, ease of maintenace and electronic warfare gear to make it - with certain modifications, of course - the ideal tool for doing high profile mercenary work in Wild Space.
The only tool Legion liked better than a Type 23 frame were two of them in tandem.
The lobby filled with bullets almost instantly after the plasma explosives detonated. Cops guarding it were still focused on the bomb threat manufactured by their system, and never expected the assault. Nevertheless they quickly responded, pushing the mysterious attacker back with automatic fire which shredded the art-deco interior and set parts of it on fire.
Legion’s second body waited for an opportunity high above, near the “artificially created” entry point, and ended the brief firefight quickly with a burst of grenades, before leaping down two stories.
The two faces of the same robotic mercenary looked at each, exchanging a few electronic data packets, and proceeded deeper into the building.
Government plaza
He’s inside! Damn he’s good..., Friday let slip, a hint of emotions long suppressed leaking onto the sidebands. The square was a scene of absolute, absurd chaos, with police holding a perimeter around the bank and attempting to fend off attacks by the military - and all inadvertedly protecting Legion from the CEID and Collectors.
Dollmaster, this whole thing is going to shit. We need to act now or the target will close our only remaining lead.
Intelligences exchanged data and ran more simulations, a flurry of ethereal communications when they evaluated risks and tried to see through enemy strategy. It only took microseconds, real time as far as organics were concerned. And the results were quite worrisome: it almost seemed as if they were being manipulated into taking certain paths through the whole debacle. Dollmaster had to admit the elegance of this approach: the sheer brutality left little room for maneuvering. The whole situation was reduced to a simple binary decision.
You are authorized to go in. Any means necessary., Dollmaster pulsed dryly. The CI seemed dismayed at the turn of events.
Their government won’t like it, Friday, on the other hand, obviously didn’t give a damn. She just wanted it on record.
We should be able to handle it. Apprehend the target.
Fine. We’re moving to breach the perimeter.
The Collector killbot growled with poorly hidden satisfaction.
Zubrich Planetary Police Precinct Lugano-1
The blast caused chaos in more than one place. The ZPP precinct in Lugano was a posting most police officers considered cushy and uneventful: they spent their days directing drones that chased pickpockets identified by AI systems, and listening to complaints about noise, loud music and nudist Zigonians. Terror attacks were a theoretical possibility, but the town was politically insignificant, and automated systems were enough to pick up the occasional lunatic trying to bomb a power station or a crowd of tourists.
That was why the precinct was now a site of absolute, absurd panic, as officer ran around the building, shouted at each other, grabbed their service weapons, asked their commanders for directions and generally overreacted. Which was why a response that in any other city would’ve taken at most five minutes stretched into an utterly unacceptable fifteen.
The result was still quite impressive, though, as a swarm of police LARCs, six light wheeled armored vehicles, two hoverlift gunships and more than fifty armed officers descended upon the network hub: not counting the news drones that arrived mere seconds after the explosion and were already broadcasting the fire and police response throughout the Zubrich networks: fortunately for the CEID team, the blast and their little sabotage caused widespread bandwith clogging and errors, making the reports difficult to circulate outside of separate government networks.
However impressive the show of force might’ve been, the brief delay in police response allowed August and Freki to exit the facility with their stolen memory chips. They still had no idea what exactly happened, but decided they’d have plenty of time to find out later. August rushed at street level, his adaptive disguise allowing him to blend into crowds of onlookers, rapidly changing his look. Freki instead used his current body to blend into high-level drone traffic, monitoring the situation and updating August in real-time. Their current objective was to get as far away from the hub as possible, and it looked like they may just succeed - until one of the LARC gunships angrily patrolling the area descended rapidly and swept its disruptor array over a crowd, messing up August’s adaptive disguise.
“This is the Planetary Police! Stop immediately!”, the gunship blared through its loudspeakers. The pilot wasted no time calling for help, but he found his communications jammed. His quarry in the meantime leapt across the street from a standing start and disappeared into a crowded store, the adaptive disguise still flickering from its brief encounter with the disruptor.
Of course, that couldn’t - and didn’t - quite work as far as blending in with the crowd was concerned, as August’s battle-armored body was now surrounded by a flickering, messy projection which if anything made him stand out more than his true hulking form. The crowds scattered in panic when he came crashing through the front door, throwing aside a security bot that tried, impotently, to stop him with a wireless taser. Downloading a detailed map from the store’s public-access server, the replicant began to make its way through the building.
It would be improper to say he was scared. More annoyed at the sudden appearance of rare and expensive anti-espionage technology in the hands of police on a fringe world like Zubrich. His control systems were scrambled, and he’d need time to restore the disguise - and even then, another disruptor sweep would surely defeat it again. Fortunately, he still had backup.
Freki, I need those gunships taken care of.
The response was but slight sideband scatter full of joyful glee.
Outside, both gunship circled above the block, sweeping their disruptors over crowds of people rushing out side doors, when one of them exploded with no visible cause, raining debris on the sidewalk below. The second LARC reacted quickly, rapidly gaining altitude, and acquiring the perpetrator - a cloud of small drones, previously hidden amongst the swarms of various media and C4I machines now cluttering the airspace. It didn’t waste any time, blasting it with two high-powered lasers.
Amazingly, it missed. One of the bigger drones angrily buzzed right next to the gunship’s hull, cutting off one of the grav-modules with a scythe of invisible force. The gunship spiralled to the ground and crashed between abandoned ground vehicles littering the street.
Done, the drone pulsed to its partner below.
August, having resolved the problem with his disguise, was observing the carnage through a hijacked media drone feed.
Goddammit, Freki!, he pulsed
What?, came an innocent response. The wreck of the first LARC was starting to shake with secondary explosions of its ammunition and power sources, spewing thick black smoke into the air.
We better move. They might send the Army if this keeps up.
Oh yes. You should go right, by the way. There’s armor coming your way from the left.
August skidded to a halt and turned around just as the first light armored vehicle rounded the corner. Unfortunately, when they saw a civilian change directions mid-stride during a full on run, they correctly assumed it was a disguised foreign agent, and opened fire.
August dove forwards, his heightened senses allowing him to watch the air sizzle and evaporate as it came in contact with the high-powered autolaser. Almost without a stop, he bounced off the sidewalk and leapt across the street, latching onto the facade of the store he just left, scaling it with a few rapid movements. Another autolaser burst set the entire facade on fire and blew large chunks off it, peppering August’s force-shield with white hot shrapnel.
Freki then swept in, low above the street, only to pop up at the last moment and fry the LAV with two energy blasts at close range, blowing out its sensors and fire control electronics. Before he could pop back down, an autolaser burst from one of the remaining LAVs caught his body square in the side. August watched as the cluster spiralled out of control and disappeared between two buildings. He wasted no time and broke into a run, leaping across streets and alleys separating the loosely clustered buildings of Lugano, moving south, straight towards the lake. He could handle the remaining LAVs himself, but not before heavier forces would start arriving.
Not too far away, a lithe figure of a Maibatsu Type 23 Assault Frame slid into a vent and activated its adaptive disguise. Legion didn’t really believe in luck, but he had to admit the turn of events was an awfully chaotic variable to introduce into its plans: the coincidence of running into the CEID team at the precise moment it planned to blow up the hub was incredibly improbable. It didn’t matter, though: the tracker program warned Legion of the intrusion, and the hub’s main storage servers were still blown apart even if the bomb wasn’t optimally placed. All that was left now was the bank’s mainframe.
Almera Colony
Algeira, Newark, five years ago
Fifty thousand marks were merely half a year’s salary for most Algeirans. For someone from Pelania, it was an unimaginable fortune. It was enough to get the two brothers, Malik and Jamal, set up comfortably: they got new identities, rented an apartment and found jobs. Algeira was so much different from the poor, dilapidated nation they both came from: safe, well-organized, with plentiful food, work and entertainment. Life was good for the brothers, even with the growing internal dissent and common rioting that was increasingly plaguing the country. Newark was still rather quiet, though.
They still had problems, of course. Malik never came to terms with what they did back home, to get the money. He still had nightmares from that fateful night in Corinth, where they murdered an albino girl so that they could sell parts of her body to rich collectioners. He often woke up in the middle of the night, panting and sweating: he’d walk to the fridge, get something to drink and sit still until morning - and that fateful night wasn’t any different. Well, until he got to the kitchen, anyway.
“Hello”, he heard a voice from the darkness. Malik yelped in fear and dropped the water glass, which shattered on the floor, “Remember me?”
He didn’t, but years of living in Pelania did its thing. He leapt into the living room and grabbed a large club the brothers kept there for just an occasion, shouting to warn Jamal. His brother didn’t need any extra warning, though: he was already out of bed, running towards the living room with a hatchet in hand.
Armed and ready, they faced the kitchen door. A woman came out of them in not much of a hurry, seemingly oblivious to the two strong, armed men standing before her. She only wore a pair of tight jeans and a white t-shirt, clearly showing she had no weapon.
“Get out!”, Jamal screamed at her, waving the hatchet around, “Or else!”
The woman nodded sagely, as if she remembered something, “Ah, yes, right. It’s the new body. Of course you can’t recognize me.”
Jamal glanced at his brother. Malik shrugged, trying not to show his fear. The woman seemed just...crazy, but something in what she said brought back the terrible memories he was trying to forget every day.
But could it really be? The woman standing in their living room was healthy ; The girl that haunted Malik was an albino. The brothers’ victim was also young, barely more than a child, while here was a fully mature woman. And lastly, she wasn’t dead, which was probably the most important detail.
“GET OUT!”, Jamal’s scream brought Malik back to reality.
The woman sneered, “Or what? You’ll call the cops?”
Jamal screamed and swung the hatchet. Malik watched with utter horror as his brother was thrown across the room by some unseen force, crashing into the wall and instantly going limp. Malik stood there, paralyzed with fear, as the woman approached him and grasped his head firmly.
“You can’t recognize me, but I can. Both of you.”, she whispered, staring into Malik’s eyes. The man whimpered, having found something in her face, something horrible, the tell-tale sign of a mind consumed with hate.
She started slowly, deliberately twisting his head around with inhuman strength.
The Blackjack, in orbit over Zubrich
She was roused from her sleep by an urgent data packet from the Dollmaster. Having to work across a tertiary data-band was awfully annoying, but had the benefit of data standing out from the usual mental activity of a human brain - kind of like low-resolution black-and-white images would stand out from your typical visual input.
Vilena Soruga, report to the CIC immediately, Dollmaster demanded across the link. Another artifact of having to work with low-bandwith comms bands was that very little real work could be done outside the ship’s command centre.
Vilena quickly got up from her spartan cot and left the tiny cabin assigned to her during the stay aboard the Blackjack. A detached part of her mind, the analytical side of her added to the original personality, noticed the usual gloomy interiors were now well lit. Either the ship went into a day cycle, or it was now operating at a higher state of readiness.
The CIC was awash in visual information, so Vilena guessed it was the latter. The moment she stepped through the armored door, she was accosted by hologrammatic displays showing the planet below, and dozens of news channels. She could already see the problem: most of the news feeds had smoke, fire or both on them.
What happened?, she inquired the ship’s CI. Dollmaster replied quickly, in his usual detached tone.
I have been intercepting news reports about a series of terrorist attacks against network hubs on the surface, including the one in Lugano that agents August and Freki were infiltrating. I may need to consult with you. Stand by.
Vilena took a moment to review the information that was flooding her senses. Friday entered the CIC as she was doing that - the CEID psion had already used her d-link to get intimately familiar with the situation, and couldn’t help but smirk at the Collector liaison’s attempts to filter through the inefficient visual media.
“Having trouble, hon?”, she asked with a wry smile.
“No”, Vilena replied, staring at the visage. Her augmentation allowed her to sort and collate information much quicker than baseline humans, but it still took several minutes before she had a good idea about the situation.
“Zubrich military has been put on high alert”, Dollmaster interrupted, “They are switching codes. I will be unable to monitor government communications for some time.”
Even Friday was beginning to get somewhat worried now, her amusement now replaced by a professionally cold, analytical demeanor.
“Any chance your people had something to do with it?”, she asked Vilena, this time without a hint of irony.
Vilena replied without taking her eyes off the screens, “Negative. Our team was operating in Lugano at the time... besides, we hadn’t even touched at least 60% of the destroyed nodes.”
Friday went over the materials again in a split second. The crazy girl was right - “When can we reestablish communications?”
“If we are to remain undetected, another three to four kiloseconds...”, there was a brief pause, “...or not. I am receiving a...submesonic feed from the surface.”
With a flicker and crackle, another hologrammatic construct appeared between the already nigh unreadable displays. The video was garbled and flickering, and the audio much worse. Vilena didn’t want to think how the transmission would feel when received directly: though Friday’s sudden scowl seemed to indicate just how bad.
“We have secured a small submesonic core”, One’s voice barely came through, but was generally understandable.
“Hold on”, Friday frowned. “There are no submesonics in Lugano, the nearest one...”
“...is located at Lausanne Air Force Base”, Dollmaster finished for her, “I am receiving a position feed from the Collector team which confirms their location.”
Friday shot Vilena a look. “What are they doing there?”
One didn’t deem the question important enough to answer, choosing instead to continue with his situation report, delivered verbally due to the low bandwith of that particular submesonic core, “The Lugano operation was a complete failure. Both targeted network hubs were destroyed by an unknown actor. We have also discovered the fact similar attacks have occurred throughout the planet, and thus decided to immediately reestablish communications.”
The CEID agent’s frown deepened. “LEGION is cleaning house.”
“A reasonable assumption”, Dollmaster confirmed, “I am running an analysis on the attacked networks, but I lack full data at this moment.”
Vilena pulled up the list of all the attacked nodes they knew about so far: it was most likely incomplete, as the scale of the attack caused widescale network disruption - normally, Dollmaster would be able to ascertain the exact amount of targeted nodes, but they didn’t have access...
“One”, Vilena turned to the emotionless robotic mask staring at her through the hologrammatic screen, “Set up an access point for Dollmaster through the core.”
“Affirmative”, the screen replied, and cut the video feed to conserve bandwith.
As soon as it had an opening, the CI began scouring what was left of the Zubrich Datasphere for data, rapidly building up a database. It began to search for clues, common elements that connected the attacked nodes together: it juggled massive amounts of information, comparing it to billions of data points per second.
Due to the narrow pipeline connecting Dollmaster to the planet, the process took an agonizing ten minutes to accomplish, but the result was as precise as ever.
“Every single one of the attacked nodes ran contractual services related to offsite backups and traffic monitoring for the First Security Bank of Zubrich.”
“Son of a bitch...”, Friday hissed. Everyone expected LEGION to try a more subtle approach to covering his tracks, but that made a lot of sense. Electronic attacks could leave recoverable data, while vaporizing a computer mostly didn’t, “...can you figure how many hubs are still left?”
“Of course, Agent Friday...”, Dollmaster seemed slightly annoyed at the suggestion he did not already consider the possibility, “...none.”
“That only leaves the records stored in the bank itself.”, Vilena noted, “Will he try to break in there?”
Friday sneered, “He could try...it would save us all a lot of work with the security setup they have there.”
“We can’t risk him blowing up the bank. That’s literally our last lead!”, Vilena shot back, “We must get there first and secure the data we need.”
“Vilena Soruga’s assertion is correct. It is very likely the attacks were part of a well-prepared operation. It is likely LEGION has determined a way to penetrate the bank’s defences already, and is merely carrying out his plan.”
With a garbled crackle, One came back on the line, “Then we should proceed immediately. I have just discovered that units of the Zubrich Army and heavy Planetary Police responders have been ordered to converge on the planetary capital. I am having trouble determining the reason.”
“What? How did you do that?”
“We have our methods, Agent Friday. I suggest everyone in orbit prepare for insertion into the capital, while we attempt to outrace the locals on the ground.”
The feed was cut before Friday could deliver her irritable response.
Lausanne Air Force Base, surface of Zubrich
One turned away from the submesonic core assembly, located securely in a vault below the airbase complex. He passed a drooling guard without attracting a single glance, then casually leapt up an empty elevator shaft, using his body’s built-in gravitics. From there, it was a short walk to the lobby.
All the guards from the surface had gathered there. They were staring at the walls and mumbling to themselves, completely oblivious to the caped skeletal figure walking amongst them.
Something flickered and appeared between the men. Agent August looked around, briefly disoriented before regaining his composure, and stared at the Collector agent from beneath his battle-armor’s mask.
“You know, when your buddy said he’d bring me to you...I kind of assumed he meant a vehicle.”
“What’s the status of Agent Freki?”, One didn’t deem it necessary to comment, chosing instead to skip straight to the point.
“Down in the city. I would’ve been unable to get to him in time before heavy army units arrived.”, August replied without a hint of concern in his voice, “His frame will self-destruct if tampered with, so there’s no risk of the operation being compromised.”
“Good. Standby...”, there was a brief pause as the Collector transferred the contents of his conversation with Dollmaster to August, “...we should proceed immediately.”
August half expected them to just...teleport to the capital, but he heard the low hum of an approaching LARC instead. He made a note of that - whatever device or trick the second Collector used to rapidly bring him here had a range below four hundred twenty kilometres.
The heavy LARC transport stopped outside and opened its side ramp. Without a further word, One boarded the vehicle. August looked one last time at the mumbling, drooling guards - recording them in every EM spectrum he could - and followed suit.
The vehicle’s cockpit was occupied by a floating serpentine creature resembling a snake’s skeleton, coiled on one of the seats. It touched the controls with one of its razor-sharp claws and the vehicle lifted off, rapidly gaining speed.
All that was left was hoping they’d get to the capital before the Army.
Baerne, capital of Zubrich
Government Plaza
Legion watched the Planetary Police surround the bank’s headquarters. They had, predictably, figured out what connected all the destroyed network hubs together. They did have CIs of their own, after all, and it wasn’t exactly hard to add two and two together. At least not for something more efficient at thinking than a squishy organic.
So far, everything was going well: save the mishap at Lugano. Legion didn’t expect the CEID to move that efficiently: he was vaguely aware of their movement across the planet, of course, but them arriving in Lugano at the exact same time his bomber did was an unfortunate coincidence. Still, they didn’t manage to actually save the hub, so the whole thing worked out in the end, even if Legion had to sacrifice that organic. Small loss.
This time, however, it had to go just right. The First Security Bank Of Zubrich was a facility up to all galactic standards, and that included their security setup: while Legion could penetrate it, doing that usually required painstaking preparation, for which he just did not have the time. The sensation of doing things by the seat of his proverbial pants was somewhat new, but enjoyable. While he had no adrenal glands, he enjoyed the stimulation of the myriad possibilities arising from such improvisation.
But enough introspection. It was time to check his assets. He began to send secured messages across the temporary shadownet he set up in the neighborhood.
At about the same time, two women briskly made their way across the tight, winding streets of Baerne. They did not particularly stand out from the colorful crowds of tourists and locals mingling on the streets, except perhaps for Agent Friday’s gigantic, all-black eyes. Even Vilena’s cybernetics were nothing out of the ordinary on that planet: while its architecture was rustic (to not say archaic), modern amenities were quite common on Zubrich thanks to its proximity to Solarian space and general wealth.
They, too, carried a shadow network, separate from the planetary datasphere, shared between all agents in the area thanks to extremely sophisticated frequency-hopping comms links. Even Vilena was allowed access, though Dollmaster took great pain to separate her from any sensitive information.
Above them, hiding in the cluttered airspace, a swarm of control drones dubbed “The Eye” by the Collectors hovered, coordinating all the CEID and Collector assets. As Vilena and Friday neared the city centre and became more and immersed in the crowds gathering around the First Security Bank, they began receiving their first intelligence via the network.
404 and EFK are on the ground and moving in across the lake. I am setting up the battlespace...now.
A thorough image of the city whirled into existence, colorful and complicated beyond comprehension of unaugmented minds, simultaneously delivering several layers of important information in an organized and clear manner, with special consideration to the wide open plaza in the center of the city, surrounded by numerous government and banking institutions.
Good. We’re approaching the bank., Friday communicated in this strange way that took microseconds to express, yet delivered so much more information than talking.
Remember the plan. We only get one shot at this.
The women soon entered the Government Plaza and pushed through crowds of onlookers towards the perimeter. They behest the impressive display of military and police hardware patrolling the perimeter.
They’re just getting organized, Friday observed, They’ll start scattering the crowds any minute now.
They stayed in place, safe for the time being, watching and carefully analyzing the information collated for them by The Eye, looking for vulnerabilities or any sign of Legion’s activity. Each second the robot merc did nothing meant more police arrived, more security holes got patched by government CIs and, of course, it was another second closer to Vilena and Friday getting their heavy support.
We might be overestimating him, it was Friday again, An attempt to infiltrate that place now would be suicide.
Vilena didn’t transmit a reply, but the sidebands clearly indicated that she, too, disbelieved Legion could pull it off, Collector hacking techniques notwithstanding.
Time passed. Planetary Police sappers arrived and entered the building, no doubt to check it for explosives. Eye’s microcameras swarmed through streets and buildings, constantly changing ID codes and disguises, camouflaged as media drones, maintenance bots or police assets. They wormed their way into any building they could, checking out for snipers and hidden observers.
We are in position., 404 reported, and the battlespace helpfully indicated the location of the last two Collectors. 404’s partner, the gigantic killbot, didn’t even try to hide: it strode amongst the crowd, emitting police ID tags and displaying Planetary Police insignia with its holo emitters. Friday had to admit she was impressed with both the subtlety and sheer audacity of that approach, and judging from the sidebands - so was Dollmaster, who had a much clearer picture of the EW activity involved in pulling that off.
No contact., The Eye reported dutifully.
Should we move in?, the Killbot seemed...impatient. His transmissions seemed almost like a growling animal...for Friday, they reminded her of Bragulan minds she had the opportunity to probe.
Negative. The target may be attempting to draw us out into the open. Standby., Dollmaster tempered him. The CI was running through hundreds of thousands of scenarios, taking into account all the thousands upon thousands of factors and variables that comprised the situation. Simultaneously, it was running electronic interference with Zubrichian military and police networks, and attempting to evade detection by orbital patrols. It was satisfied by the fact that it could finally make some use of a large chunk of its processing capacity: it wasn’t often the brooding CI had the opportunity to be challenged, even slightly.
Movement in the crowd, another communique from The Eye broke the routine and introduced an extra set of variables. There were several people trying to leave the crowd at the same time. Time seemed to slow down, as enhance situational processors of everyone involved analyzed the situation. And then, the final straw.
I am detecting shielded plasma explosives.
Briefly, Vilena flinched, as if she wanted to cry ‘bomb’ to save as many people as possible, but that would betray their position. Friday had no such compunctions: she began swiftly moving away from the explosives, caring little for the people around her, using psychic influence to create a path and wall of bodies shielding her from the explosives.
And then, something happened. Sudden bursts of activity on police radio crossed the battlespace with an emerald flare, followed immediately by policemen beginning to hastily widen the perimeter around the bank. Bullhorns blared, urging people to move back. The crowd wavered and squeezed together and began moving back, creating a tightly packed mass of people.
Creating a target, Vilena realized.
It’s an engineered situation., Dollmaster summarized quickly, one step ahead of everyone else who wasn’t a CI, There’s been a call from inside the bank claiming there are bombs inside. Probable purpose is distraction of the police forces present, secondary goal is probably exposing our assets for termination.
Orders?, Friday asked with surprising calm
Play dead, was the split-second response.
Then the entire square exploded.
Flashes of white-hot energy erupted from deceptively small packages, instantly converting the air around them into plasma and creating an overpressure wave. Plasma explosives were not a particularly good choice for antipersonnel work, but they made impressive blasts, terrifying and powerful, setting people on fire, scorching lungs and burning out eyes. Mushroom clouds rose, the temperature difference sucking in debris and body parts and then scattering them like a cyclone. As a byproduct, the explosives also emitted a large pulse of radiation. Major parts of the police network went dark instantly, rid of input from their drones and cameras. Military networks did not, as they were hardened against such an occurrence, which led to an instant and terrible information deficiency and spiraling assumptions from police officers on the scene.
And, of course, the crowd panicked. Then the shooting started, and some military drones shot back, and things started going even more to hell. Heavy ordnance raked windows, police fired on the military and the military shot back, civilians were fleeing in panic with police drones attempting to chase down misidentified suspects. Friday saw such things more than once in her lifetime, during training and afterwards, when advanced star nations of the galaxy attacked places with not enough sophistication in their military. Solarian doctrine especially favored strikes against enemy control and communications networks, lightning raids against command centres and other, more subtle techniques at sowing confusion and chaos. Apparently, Legion’s Collector training went along similar lines, only taken one step further - Zubrich was not your usual shitworld, after all, even if it was still a step below a major star nation in technology and organization.
Fortunately, the CEID shadownet was robust and resillient, and the minds controlling it were far more powerful than anything installed on Zubrich. Not one CEID or Collector agent had lost coordination or situational awareness, and they sprung into action the moment Dollmaster ascertained the situation and distributed the orders, which only took the slightest moment.
HQ, First Security Bank of Zubrich
Moments later
Code: Select all
First security ring subverted. Waiting for access to second ring.The only tool Legion liked better than a Type 23 frame were two of them in tandem.
The lobby filled with bullets almost instantly after the plasma explosives detonated. Cops guarding it were still focused on the bomb threat manufactured by their system, and never expected the assault. Nevertheless they quickly responded, pushing the mysterious attacker back with automatic fire which shredded the art-deco interior and set parts of it on fire.
Legion’s second body waited for an opportunity high above, near the “artificially created” entry point, and ended the brief firefight quickly with a burst of grenades, before leaping down two stories.
The two faces of the same robotic mercenary looked at each, exchanging a few electronic data packets, and proceeded deeper into the building.
Government plaza
He’s inside! Damn he’s good..., Friday let slip, a hint of emotions long suppressed leaking onto the sidebands. The square was a scene of absolute, absurd chaos, with police holding a perimeter around the bank and attempting to fend off attacks by the military - and all inadvertedly protecting Legion from the CEID and Collectors.
Dollmaster, this whole thing is going to shit. We need to act now or the target will close our only remaining lead.
Intelligences exchanged data and ran more simulations, a flurry of ethereal communications when they evaluated risks and tried to see through enemy strategy. It only took microseconds, real time as far as organics were concerned. And the results were quite worrisome: it almost seemed as if they were being manipulated into taking certain paths through the whole debacle. Dollmaster had to admit the elegance of this approach: the sheer brutality left little room for maneuvering. The whole situation was reduced to a simple binary decision.
You are authorized to go in. Any means necessary., Dollmaster pulsed dryly. The CI seemed dismayed at the turn of events.
Their government won’t like it, Friday, on the other hand, obviously didn’t give a damn. She just wanted it on record.
We should be able to handle it. Apprehend the target.
Fine. We’re moving to breach the perimeter.
The Collector killbot growled with poorly hidden satisfaction.
Last edited by PeZook on 2011-05-13 09:06am, edited 1 time in total.
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.
- NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
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Force Lord
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1562
- Joined: 2008-10-12 05:36pm
- Location: Rio Piedras, San Juan, Puerto Rico
- Contact:
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
CNS Datton, Sector C-6
Unreal Time
Okay, supplies are running out. Better get to the Etat as fast as possible.
"Get us out of here helmsman," ordered Captain Forg.
"Yes sir."
The Datton, after some minutes of recharging its systems, came out of its hiding place, still cloaked. It positioned itself for the jump to hyperspace.
"Coordinates marked for D-6."
"Jump."
And the Datton went into hyperspace.
Unreal Time
Okay, supplies are running out. Better get to the Etat as fast as possible.
"Get us out of here helmsman," ordered Captain Forg.
"Yes sir."
The Datton, after some minutes of recharging its systems, came out of its hiding place, still cloaked. It positioned itself for the jump to hyperspace.
"Coordinates marked for D-6."
"Jump."
And the Datton went into hyperspace.
An inhabitant from the Island of Cars.
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Darkevilme
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1514
- Joined: 2007-06-12 02:27pm
- Location: London, england
- Contact:
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
The Blue Ocean's people, Aka the Squidoid nation. Sector A 25
Thousands of years ago the Squids of the Blue Oceans had gained the gifts of society, intelligence and language from evolution's capricious pseudo-pods and their world was changed.
Hundreds of years ago their society gained the gifts of technology and access to the land from the benevolent hands of voyaging humanity and their world was yet again changed as the wonders of the stars and the knowledge and wisdom of a thousand worlds was opened to them.
Months ago an unfathomable tumult had descended upon the peaceful waters of the void above and spilled the blood of many of the Ocean's people who travelled the oceans above. When the waters of the void had stilled strange new beings broadcasted their presence discordantly and drove away those who had would come to speak and trade with the Ocean's people.
It was decided that the people of the Ocean would wait and listen, they would see if there was anything they could learn from these loud newcomers or whether the newcomers would bring conflict with them. What had begun as curiousity had turned to alarm and misquiet and then finally faded into a deep and yet wary disappointment. These newcomers had no wisdom to impart, nothing to teach the people of the Ocean except the follies of a society drunk on excess and made stagnant and noisome by the loss of honest toil. Had events not intervened to their detriment the Ocean's people would have left these creatures to their claims of happy-ness and their base and distracting arts.
Council of darkest blue where calm waters meet the deep
“Red of the coasts above. You have called the meeting of Reds, why?” The speaker asked, flashes of orange on the tentacles of the many other squids present indicating that they echoed the sentiment, a meeting with such haste had been called only seldom in the history of the Ocean's people.
“Because our way of life has become threatened by recklessness, discord and lack aforethought.” Red of the coasts above replied, several of the squids paling in shock at how casually he seemed to list off the gravest sins in the eyes of the Ocean's people.
Red of the coasts above paused for contemplation and then continued “But it is not US who are guilty of these careless acts, it is those who claim to the Azure hue of happyness while bearing the sickly grey of indulgence. They are the discordant beings who have brought this doom upon us through no fault of our own.”
“Red of the coasts above, if you speak of a real and dire doom then speak plainly.” one of the myriad Red tinged squids interjected.
“If it pleases the council I shall. Those who claim to be an empire of many happy oceans have via their carelessness brought the green and warlike forces of chaos incarnate towards our space. The Welcoming Azure Glimmer on its passage to the Klavostanis has detected a great upswelling of movement from the oceans of the Chaotic ones and this movement will fall upon us in several days.” Red of the Coasts above explained, no one did not know who the chaotic ones were, the orks. Whose base, warlike and thoughtless nature was diametric'ly opposite their own.
“Is it possible this wave will not fall upon us Red of the Coasts above?” Red of the fires asked.
“Possible but unlikely, I urge that we do not risk our annihilation on such a hope.” Coasts Above replied.
“Agreed. But what options do we have if not to hope that our presence will go unnoticed?” one of the Reds asked earning the immediate agreement of others. They were not prone to gambling least of all with the fate of the Ocean's people, such things would betray the trust of those who had chosen them as Red.
“Can we not rely on the Warning Yellow Flash of last resort?”
“The Yellow Flash is but one ship and cannot stand alone against the hordes of chaos, we require the might of many ships for our defence. We must plead with the MEH for their protection. They have brought this upon us, only the most infantile society would not see their obligation to correct this.” Coasts Above stated earning shock and a flurry of retorts from the assembled Reds.
“The MEH are such an infantile society! They will scorn our plea!”
“Better that they scorn us than welcome us, think what associations with such a society would do to us. They would be the school of poison-backs in which we shelter from the Rendfish only for our salvation to bring us a slow and bloating death!”
Had a diver been observing the council chambers at this point he would of found himself seemingly alone of a sudden as the Reds abruptly assumed the hue of their surroundings in fear and shock at that thought. The Idea of becoming like the MEH.
However there was no diver and no stopping what came next, for as soon as the Reds recovered from such a thought and reappeared the council debate became by squid standards quite heated. It would be several hours before the need for haste over aforethought would be remembered and the council would come to a decision...
OOC:
The Ocean's people are a species of intelligent aquatic squids in sector A25 who were uplifted from stone age technology by humanity. They have a single inhabited world, a dozen or so trade and patrol ships and a single 100 point warship.
Thousands of years ago the Squids of the Blue Oceans had gained the gifts of society, intelligence and language from evolution's capricious pseudo-pods and their world was changed.
Hundreds of years ago their society gained the gifts of technology and access to the land from the benevolent hands of voyaging humanity and their world was yet again changed as the wonders of the stars and the knowledge and wisdom of a thousand worlds was opened to them.
Months ago an unfathomable tumult had descended upon the peaceful waters of the void above and spilled the blood of many of the Ocean's people who travelled the oceans above. When the waters of the void had stilled strange new beings broadcasted their presence discordantly and drove away those who had would come to speak and trade with the Ocean's people.
It was decided that the people of the Ocean would wait and listen, they would see if there was anything they could learn from these loud newcomers or whether the newcomers would bring conflict with them. What had begun as curiousity had turned to alarm and misquiet and then finally faded into a deep and yet wary disappointment. These newcomers had no wisdom to impart, nothing to teach the people of the Ocean except the follies of a society drunk on excess and made stagnant and noisome by the loss of honest toil. Had events not intervened to their detriment the Ocean's people would have left these creatures to their claims of happy-ness and their base and distracting arts.
Council of darkest blue where calm waters meet the deep
“Red of the coasts above. You have called the meeting of Reds, why?” The speaker asked, flashes of orange on the tentacles of the many other squids present indicating that they echoed the sentiment, a meeting with such haste had been called only seldom in the history of the Ocean's people.
“Because our way of life has become threatened by recklessness, discord and lack aforethought.” Red of the coasts above replied, several of the squids paling in shock at how casually he seemed to list off the gravest sins in the eyes of the Ocean's people.
Red of the coasts above paused for contemplation and then continued “But it is not US who are guilty of these careless acts, it is those who claim to the Azure hue of happyness while bearing the sickly grey of indulgence. They are the discordant beings who have brought this doom upon us through no fault of our own.”
“Red of the coasts above, if you speak of a real and dire doom then speak plainly.” one of the myriad Red tinged squids interjected.
“If it pleases the council I shall. Those who claim to be an empire of many happy oceans have via their carelessness brought the green and warlike forces of chaos incarnate towards our space. The Welcoming Azure Glimmer on its passage to the Klavostanis has detected a great upswelling of movement from the oceans of the Chaotic ones and this movement will fall upon us in several days.” Red of the Coasts above explained, no one did not know who the chaotic ones were, the orks. Whose base, warlike and thoughtless nature was diametric'ly opposite their own.
“Is it possible this wave will not fall upon us Red of the Coasts above?” Red of the fires asked.
“Possible but unlikely, I urge that we do not risk our annihilation on such a hope.” Coasts Above replied.
“Agreed. But what options do we have if not to hope that our presence will go unnoticed?” one of the Reds asked earning the immediate agreement of others. They were not prone to gambling least of all with the fate of the Ocean's people, such things would betray the trust of those who had chosen them as Red.
“Can we not rely on the Warning Yellow Flash of last resort?”
“The Yellow Flash is but one ship and cannot stand alone against the hordes of chaos, we require the might of many ships for our defence. We must plead with the MEH for their protection. They have brought this upon us, only the most infantile society would not see their obligation to correct this.” Coasts Above stated earning shock and a flurry of retorts from the assembled Reds.
“The MEH are such an infantile society! They will scorn our plea!”
“Better that they scorn us than welcome us, think what associations with such a society would do to us. They would be the school of poison-backs in which we shelter from the Rendfish only for our salvation to bring us a slow and bloating death!”
Had a diver been observing the council chambers at this point he would of found himself seemingly alone of a sudden as the Reds abruptly assumed the hue of their surroundings in fear and shock at that thought. The Idea of becoming like the MEH.
However there was no diver and no stopping what came next, for as soon as the Reds recovered from such a thought and reappeared the council debate became by squid standards quite heated. It would be several hours before the need for haste over aforethought would be remembered and the council would come to a decision...
OOC:
The Ocean's people are a species of intelligent aquatic squids in sector A25 who were uplifted from stone age technology by humanity. They have a single inhabited world, a dozen or so trade and patrol ships and a single 100 point warship.
-
fgalkin
- Carvin' Marvin
- Posts: 14557
- Joined: 2002-07-03 11:51pm
- Location: Land of the Mountain Fascists
- Contact:
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
Insects Underfoot
Inner Sphere, Glimmering Kadath (Homeship One)
System 345690-3, Sector H-4
Unreal Time
It had been scant minutes since Resolution had finished transferring the data received from the Monolith, but for the Lords assembled in the Council the time seemed more akin to an eternity. At last the leader of the Walkers-in-Shadow spoke.
“This data is remarkable…” aaaKaaa said as the AI’s cores continued their analysis. “It would take a while to process it all, but I can already say that it alone made this whole New Unity idea worth it.”
“I am overjoyed that our little plan has earned the approval of the great aaaKaaa,” Ten Thousand Beacons In The Darkness sneered.
“Silence, both of you,” The Feeling Of Complete And Utter Dedication to Duty, To The Expense Of All Else, In The Face Of Certain Doom interrupted it. “You shall not bicker and jest about the Demogorgon’s wisdom. Especially when there is still work to be done.”
“Yes. Our ship has come under attack,” said Devourer Of Worlds, Slayer of Suns. “We must deal with the aggressor as soon as possible. I have already ordered to recall Resolution In The Face Of Danger and replace it with three Type II Utility Ships.”
“You mean the Chamarran aliens?” It That Wishes It Saw Everything, No Matter How Great Or Small said. “We must first understand the motivation behind their actions. All we know so far is that although they have traces of god-taint in them, they are not agents of the Enemy, and they do not consider themselves to be at war with us. This definitely warrants our investigation. Puny thing!” it commanded. “Tell us what you know of them.”
“Yes, Master,” The Enormous Struggle Of Fighting Against One’s Own Nature. “The Chamarran Hierarchy is a state on the other side of the galaxy from us. It is one of the civilizations of extreme interest to us, as they have appeared out of nowhere in the year 3042. Our research indicates that they do not know of their own origin, and information received from Resolution confirms this. All this suggests possible divine involvement. As to the actual workings of their civilization, we have only limited information due to the distances involved. From all indications, however, they have no centralized decision-making structure and their administration is riddled with inefficiencies. There are superficial resemblances of their society to our own power structures before the Purpose, but we do not know how deep these similarities run, or their cause.”
“That is very disturbing information,” Steady Brilliant Throbbing Of Plasma Exhaust Against The Blackness of Space As Dimensional Boundaries Blur And The First Glimmer of Hyperspace Appears said. “I propose we make this Chamarran Hierarchy our highest priority from now on.”
“I agree,” said Devourer Of Worlds, Slayer of Suns.
“What should we do now? Should we contact them?” asked Curiosity Killed The Seeker And Destroyed His Universe Too.
“Absolutely not!” said The Feeling Of Complete And Utter Dedication to Duty, To The Expense Of All Else, In The Face Of Certain Doom. “It is too dangerous.”
“Their ship has gotten away,” It That Wishes It Saw Everything, No Matter How Great Or Small pointed out. “They may well expect us to contact them and protest the attack, and not doing so might raise their suspicions. So far, they know next to nothing about us except that which we chose to reveal. They might decide to find out more. This, we must prevent at all costs.”
“But would our refusal to contact them lead such action on their part? How are we to know this?” Ten Thousand Beacons In The Darkness asked.
“Perhaps the Collectors know?” Steady Brilliant Throbbing Of Plasma Exhaust Against The Blackness of Space As Dimensional Boundaries Blur And The First Glimmer of Hyperspace Appears asked.
“Yes, we should contact them,” It That Wishes It Saw Everything, No Matter How Great Or Small said.
“Great Ones, the puny thing knows another way,” The Enormous Struggle Of Fighting Against One’s Own Nature said.
“Yes? Speak.” It That Wishes It Saw Everything, No Matter How Great Or Small said.
“In the past few months, the beings under my control have come across references to something called the ‘Shinn-Hokkaido Incident’. From what we have discovered, the incident involved a standoff of sorts between two Collector Monolith and superior forces of the various local powers.”
There were mutterings of surprise from the Lords present as they imagined the magnitude of the confrontation.
“Fool, what does that have to do with the Chamarrans?” Ten Thousand Beacons In The Darkness asked at last.
“During that confrontation, there was some sort of incident involving a Chamarran stealth ship. It was, apparently, captured by the fleets of the state known as the United Solarian Sovereignity. The Chamarrans had sent a large fleet of their own to attempt to retrieve it. Then, the incident was resolved diplomatically and the fleet turned around and went home.”
“Well, at least we know that they’re like this to everyone. That’s a relief,” aaaKaaa joined the conversation.
“What do you mean?” It That Wishes It Saw Everything, No Matter How Great Or Small asked.
“The attacks. They weren’t singling us out. They do it to everybody. Must I spell everything out for you?” aaaKaaa grumbled.
“That is useful information to have, yes,” said Steady Brilliant Throbbing Of Plasma Exhaust Against The Blackness of Space As Dimensional Boundaries Blur And The First Glimmer of Hyperspace Appears. “But how does this present us with an alternate course of action? We have already agreed to contact the Collectors over this…”
“Because, o Great One, the Collectors are not the only ones who have the information that we need….” The Enormous Struggle Of Fighting Against One’s Own Nature said.
Shortly thereafter…
-------------
Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin
Inner Sphere, Glimmering Kadath (Homeship One)
System 345690-3, Sector H-4
Unreal Time
It had been scant minutes since Resolution had finished transferring the data received from the Monolith, but for the Lords assembled in the Council the time seemed more akin to an eternity. At last the leader of the Walkers-in-Shadow spoke.
“This data is remarkable…” aaaKaaa said as the AI’s cores continued their analysis. “It would take a while to process it all, but I can already say that it alone made this whole New Unity idea worth it.”
“I am overjoyed that our little plan has earned the approval of the great aaaKaaa,” Ten Thousand Beacons In The Darkness sneered.
“Silence, both of you,” The Feeling Of Complete And Utter Dedication to Duty, To The Expense Of All Else, In The Face Of Certain Doom interrupted it. “You shall not bicker and jest about the Demogorgon’s wisdom. Especially when there is still work to be done.”
“Yes. Our ship has come under attack,” said Devourer Of Worlds, Slayer of Suns. “We must deal with the aggressor as soon as possible. I have already ordered to recall Resolution In The Face Of Danger and replace it with three Type II Utility Ships.”
“You mean the Chamarran aliens?” It That Wishes It Saw Everything, No Matter How Great Or Small said. “We must first understand the motivation behind their actions. All we know so far is that although they have traces of god-taint in them, they are not agents of the Enemy, and they do not consider themselves to be at war with us. This definitely warrants our investigation. Puny thing!” it commanded. “Tell us what you know of them.”
“Yes, Master,” The Enormous Struggle Of Fighting Against One’s Own Nature. “The Chamarran Hierarchy is a state on the other side of the galaxy from us. It is one of the civilizations of extreme interest to us, as they have appeared out of nowhere in the year 3042. Our research indicates that they do not know of their own origin, and information received from Resolution confirms this. All this suggests possible divine involvement. As to the actual workings of their civilization, we have only limited information due to the distances involved. From all indications, however, they have no centralized decision-making structure and their administration is riddled with inefficiencies. There are superficial resemblances of their society to our own power structures before the Purpose, but we do not know how deep these similarities run, or their cause.”
“That is very disturbing information,” Steady Brilliant Throbbing Of Plasma Exhaust Against The Blackness of Space As Dimensional Boundaries Blur And The First Glimmer of Hyperspace Appears said. “I propose we make this Chamarran Hierarchy our highest priority from now on.”
“I agree,” said Devourer Of Worlds, Slayer of Suns.
“What should we do now? Should we contact them?” asked Curiosity Killed The Seeker And Destroyed His Universe Too.
“Absolutely not!” said The Feeling Of Complete And Utter Dedication to Duty, To The Expense Of All Else, In The Face Of Certain Doom. “It is too dangerous.”
“Their ship has gotten away,” It That Wishes It Saw Everything, No Matter How Great Or Small pointed out. “They may well expect us to contact them and protest the attack, and not doing so might raise their suspicions. So far, they know next to nothing about us except that which we chose to reveal. They might decide to find out more. This, we must prevent at all costs.”
“But would our refusal to contact them lead such action on their part? How are we to know this?” Ten Thousand Beacons In The Darkness asked.
“Perhaps the Collectors know?” Steady Brilliant Throbbing Of Plasma Exhaust Against The Blackness of Space As Dimensional Boundaries Blur And The First Glimmer of Hyperspace Appears asked.
“Yes, we should contact them,” It That Wishes It Saw Everything, No Matter How Great Or Small said.
“Great Ones, the puny thing knows another way,” The Enormous Struggle Of Fighting Against One’s Own Nature said.
“Yes? Speak.” It That Wishes It Saw Everything, No Matter How Great Or Small said.
“In the past few months, the beings under my control have come across references to something called the ‘Shinn-Hokkaido Incident’. From what we have discovered, the incident involved a standoff of sorts between two Collector Monolith and superior forces of the various local powers.”
There were mutterings of surprise from the Lords present as they imagined the magnitude of the confrontation.
“Fool, what does that have to do with the Chamarrans?” Ten Thousand Beacons In The Darkness asked at last.
“During that confrontation, there was some sort of incident involving a Chamarran stealth ship. It was, apparently, captured by the fleets of the state known as the United Solarian Sovereignity. The Chamarrans had sent a large fleet of their own to attempt to retrieve it. Then, the incident was resolved diplomatically and the fleet turned around and went home.”
“Well, at least we know that they’re like this to everyone. That’s a relief,” aaaKaaa joined the conversation.
“What do you mean?” It That Wishes It Saw Everything, No Matter How Great Or Small asked.
“The attacks. They weren’t singling us out. They do it to everybody. Must I spell everything out for you?” aaaKaaa grumbled.
“That is useful information to have, yes,” said Steady Brilliant Throbbing Of Plasma Exhaust Against The Blackness of Space As Dimensional Boundaries Blur And The First Glimmer of Hyperspace Appears. “But how does this present us with an alternate course of action? We have already agreed to contact the Collectors over this…”
“Because, o Great One, the Collectors are not the only ones who have the information that we need….” The Enormous Struggle Of Fighting Against One’s Own Nature said.
Shortly thereafter…
Secure transmission from the Lost Emissary Fleet to the BEEEF to the United Solarian Sovereignity
Greetings, fellow sapients.
We require the assistance of your decision-making structures and, particularly of the member of your civilization designated “Flash Stalin” on a matter of some import to us. We are prepared to offer substantial compensation in exchange for this assistance.
Please indicate your preferred method of establishing secure communications or the meeting venue of your choice so that we may discuss this issue privately.
Representing the Lost,
Shroom
-------------
Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
Presidential Palacefgalkin wrote:Secure transmission from the Lost Emissary Fleet to the BEEEF to the United Solarian Sovereignity
Greetings, fellow sapients.
We require the assistance of your decision-making structures and, particularly of the member of your civilization designated “Flash Stalin” on a matter of some import to us. We are prepared to offer substantial compensation in exchange for this assistance.
Please indicate your preferred method of establishing secure communications or the meeting venue of your choice so that we may discuss this issue privately.
Representing the Lost,
Shroom
Sovereign Center, Solaris Major
“Those guys again?” If Victoria Sinclair seemed impatient, it was probably because she was. “What do they want this time?”
“They ask to enlist the help of Brigadier Stalin,” Olympic explained. The Advisory's voice was bland as cardboard, indicating it had not formed an opinion on the matter yet. “For what, they do not say.”
“Do they now?” The President leaned over the table, causing her white suit to rumple and show more cleavage than was technically decent. She frowned quizzically. “How droll. These are the angel guys, right?”
“Demons,” Olympic corrected her with a roll of his avatar's holographic eyes. “They appear to be demons. Or at least there's some consensus amongst the human visitors to the Extravaganza that that's what they look like. Myself, I think the resemblance to the imagery produced by bronze-age superstitions is superficial at best. Why would demons need starships?”
Sinclair seemed to have already lost interest. “Bah, who cares about theology anyway. What do you suppose this band of alien weirdos want with Flash?”
“Maybe they want to make him a deal for his soul,” Olympic's voice turned bitingly sarcastic. “A crossroads may be involved.” The President looked at him, obviously not getting the reference. The Advisory shrugged. “All data so far collected points to these 'Lost' being wholly unfamiliar with not just the polities of Known Space but also local customs and etiquette. Their actions – such as sending out that survey, attending the Extravaganza, getting frisky with the Bragulans – are clearly aimed at remedying this deficiency. One imagines then that their desire to consult the Brigadier stems from this same desire to gather intelligence on the local goings-on. To someone who doesn't know anything about the Koprulu Zone the Brigadier would be a treasure trove of information.” The Advisory looked thoughtful, then added, “provided they can get it out of him before he starts shooting them, of course.”
“So it's information they're after,” the President nodded. Theology might not be her strong suit, but this was something she could understand. “And they are prepared to offer something in exchange. Do we know of anything they have that we want?”
Olympic took a split second to go over the observations made of Lost technology at the Extravaganza. “Their technology is... unusually quirky, but insofar as we have been able to determine not based on unknown principles. It is my estimation that the most valuable thing they have to offer at this stage is information – who are they, where did they come from, what are their purposes, and so forth.”
“Hmm,” Sinclair seemed a little disappointed that sorcerous daemonic weaponry wasn't on the table. “I suppose it won't hurt to let them talk to Stalin for a while. Where is he?”
“The Brigadier is presently overseeing repairs carried out on the warships of the 616th at the Tannhaus Orbital Dockworks.”
“Alright then, set it up.”
Secure transmission from the United Solarian Sovereignity to the Lost Emissary Fleet to the BEEEF
If upon visiting the Solarian mission at the Extravaganza your representative can present diplomatic credentials, Brigadier Stalin can be made available for secure teleconferencing.
Compensation to be negotiated at a later time.
Cordially,
xOLYMPIC
SDN World 3: The Sultanate of Egypt
SDN World 4: The United Solarian Sovereignty
SDN World 5: San Dorado
There'll be a bodycount, we're gonna watch it rise
The folks at CNN, they won't believe their eyes
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
The New Humanist
Lieutenant Director Hugh Bishop Tapped to Lead Office of Foreign Relations
In a move analysts predicted, the Department of the State and Coordinator Stein have appointed Hugh Bishop to direct the Office of Foreign Relations. This move comes on the recent assassination of Director Amos Bowman by a terrorist suicide bombing. The former lieutenant director of the Office, Mr. Bishop was seen by many as Bowman's protege; he has been personally involved in the Office's recent diplomatic overtures, including the controversial talks with the Centrality and first contact with the civilization calling itself the Lost. His hands-on approach has seen his fortunes in the Office rapidly rise, making him the youngest director of the Office in its history. Mr. Bishop spoke of his appointment in a prepared statement.
"No doubt, it's with a heavy heart that I accept the Coordinator's appointment. Comrade Bowman was to all a loyal servant of the people, and to many - including myself - a friend. I have faith, however, that he would urge the government and Office to move forward towards the future, delaying neither out of respect nor sadness. To Amos, nothing took priority over the good of the people - as he said, 'the hand extended in friendship is as important as the fist raised in defiance.' With this in mind, we will move forward to a world where the Humanist Union secures the future of its people not just with revolution, but with diplomacy."
Mr. Bishop's enthusiasm for increased diplomatic normalization is not without its critics in the public and in political office, who charge that late Director Bowman's more measured approach was more mindful of the public good, the state's future, and 'moral decency.'
Related Articles
State Funeral for Amos Bowman Set
Remembering Director Bowman
Investigation into Director Bowman's Assassination Continues
Lieutenant Director Hugh Bishop Tapped to Lead Office of Foreign Relations
In a move analysts predicted, the Department of the State and Coordinator Stein have appointed Hugh Bishop to direct the Office of Foreign Relations. This move comes on the recent assassination of Director Amos Bowman by a terrorist suicide bombing. The former lieutenant director of the Office, Mr. Bishop was seen by many as Bowman's protege; he has been personally involved in the Office's recent diplomatic overtures, including the controversial talks with the Centrality and first contact with the civilization calling itself the Lost. His hands-on approach has seen his fortunes in the Office rapidly rise, making him the youngest director of the Office in its history. Mr. Bishop spoke of his appointment in a prepared statement.
"No doubt, it's with a heavy heart that I accept the Coordinator's appointment. Comrade Bowman was to all a loyal servant of the people, and to many - including myself - a friend. I have faith, however, that he would urge the government and Office to move forward towards the future, delaying neither out of respect nor sadness. To Amos, nothing took priority over the good of the people - as he said, 'the hand extended in friendship is as important as the fist raised in defiance.' With this in mind, we will move forward to a world where the Humanist Union secures the future of its people not just with revolution, but with diplomacy."
Mr. Bishop's enthusiasm for increased diplomatic normalization is not without its critics in the public and in political office, who charge that late Director Bowman's more measured approach was more mindful of the public good, the state's future, and 'moral decency.'
Related Articles
State Funeral for Amos Bowman Set
Remembering Director Bowman
Investigation into Director Bowman's Assassination Continues
Truth fears no trial.
-
fgalkin
- Carvin' Marvin
- Posts: 14557
- Joined: 2002-07-03 11:51pm
- Location: Land of the Mountain Fascists
- Contact:
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
The Bragulan Economic Exposition Extravaganza of Friendship (BEEEF)
Vlyadibragstok, Southeastern Severnaya Sector / just beyond Northwestern Lena Sector
Unreal Time / October-December 3400
Shroom was a very happy daemon, for it had been a very good day. First, the Bragulans had come through at last, delivering the informations on the MEH, the Refuge, and even throwing in IBGV reports on the other nations of the galaxy as a bonus. The Lost’s payment for this intelligence, a transport carrying many tons of orichalcum had travelled to Bragule via warp gate, unloaded its cargo and then continued on to Vlyadibragstok. The Lost had discovered the dangers of the galaxy first-hand and had determined that never again shall their Emissaries be abducted by giant apes or sneaky catgirls. They would assign bodyguards, elite killbots of the Abaddonae, to all delegations to ensure their safety. But while the others diplomats had to do with mere robots, Shroom, being the senior Emissary of them all and the victim of the King’s deprivations was singled out for special treatment. Thus, the Lost ship delivering the orichalcum also delivered her new bodyguard, and what a bodyguard it was!
Like her, the being known as Schuhart was a Greater Daemon, but that is where the similarities ended. A lifelong member of the Abaddonae, Schuhart was of the 666, the true elite of the Lost’s military, each one specially modified to be a walking weapon of mass destruction. So when she saw the daemon’s tall form making its way through the crowds she did what any Ambassador would do when finally meeting her assigned protection. She beamed at it and waved frantically.
Schuhart the Bodyguard
Silently, Schuhart cursed its cruel fates, but such was its Duty, and so it merely stared at its superior in her pathetic fleshy body and then mumbled a greeting.
Shroom took it as a good sign, for the good day was nowhere near over and promised even more excitement and diplomatic victories. Just minutes before the daemon arrived, she received a message from the Sovereignty.
--------------
Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin
Vlyadibragstok, Southeastern Severnaya Sector / just beyond Northwestern Lena Sector
Unreal Time / October-December 3400
Shroom was a very happy daemon, for it had been a very good day. First, the Bragulans had come through at last, delivering the informations on the MEH, the Refuge, and even throwing in IBGV reports on the other nations of the galaxy as a bonus. The Lost’s payment for this intelligence, a transport carrying many tons of orichalcum had travelled to Bragule via warp gate, unloaded its cargo and then continued on to Vlyadibragstok. The Lost had discovered the dangers of the galaxy first-hand and had determined that never again shall their Emissaries be abducted by giant apes or sneaky catgirls. They would assign bodyguards, elite killbots of the Abaddonae, to all delegations to ensure their safety. But while the others diplomats had to do with mere robots, Shroom, being the senior Emissary of them all and the victim of the King’s deprivations was singled out for special treatment. Thus, the Lost ship delivering the orichalcum also delivered her new bodyguard, and what a bodyguard it was!
Like her, the being known as Schuhart was a Greater Daemon, but that is where the similarities ended. A lifelong member of the Abaddonae, Schuhart was of the 666, the true elite of the Lost’s military, each one specially modified to be a walking weapon of mass destruction. So when she saw the daemon’s tall form making its way through the crowds she did what any Ambassador would do when finally meeting her assigned protection. She beamed at it and waved frantically.
Schuhart the Bodyguard
Silently, Schuhart cursed its cruel fates, but such was its Duty, and so it merely stared at its superior in her pathetic fleshy body and then mumbled a greeting.
Shroom took it as a good sign, for the good day was nowhere near over and promised even more excitement and diplomatic victories. Just minutes before the daemon arrived, she received a message from the Sovereignty.
The mention of the Solarian spire brought back unpleasant memories of her time as a captive of the giant ape, so she had decided to put Schuhart to good use and bring it along. She sent a message to the Solarian humies, informing them of her arrival and waited for their confirmation, while flipping through the IBGV’s dossier on them (or, rather, the introduction to one of the many thick leather-bound folios that comprised the Bragulan report on the depravities of their hated enemies). Then, once word had been received, she grabbed a few samples of goods for trade and her bodyguard, told her Bragulan handlers she had been overcome with a desire to see the crater that was her resting place of her hated tormentor and set off towards the giant Crystal Palace in the distance, towering over radioactive tundra like a stiletto stabbed into Byzon's furry hide.Secure transmission from the United Solarian Sovereignity to the Lost Emissary Fleet to the BEEEF
If upon visiting the Solarian mission at the Extravaganza your representative can present diplomatic credentials, Brigadier Stalin can be made available for secure teleconferencing.
Compensation to be negotiated at a later time.
Cordially,
xOLYMPIC
--------------
Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin
-
fgalkin
- Carvin' Marvin
- Posts: 14557
- Joined: 2002-07-03 11:51pm
- Location: Land of the Mountain Fascists
- Contact:
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
Lost Diplomatic Ship
In Orbit Over Earth
Sol Sytem
Sector A26
Multiversal Empire of Happiness
Unreal Time
Despite being in the happiest place in the galaxy, Emissary Zorgy was profoundly, existentially unhappy. In fact, he hated everything about the current assignment, and the hideous blubber-covered body that he had to use for the mission was merely the first item on a very long list of things that drew his ire, and not even the worst.
Emissary Zorgy
That honor was reserved for the fatties. Ever since the Leader had refused to meet with him and forbade all contact, he spent his days and his nights (for daemons didn’t sleep) watching the MEHnite entertainment holo-channels. Seeing hours and hours of disgusting bloblike humanoids copulating with each other, less obese humanoids, and members of other species of the galaxy (mostly Chamarrans and Dorei, for some reason, but also Bragulans, Vinaarans and even the occasional Ork) has filled him with indescribable rage. Copulation, of course, led to procreation, and the thought of more of these disgusting fatties coming into existence was unbearable to him. For a being steeped in Duty as he was, the sight of these…creatures existing without a Purpose, in fact being as far away from having a Purpose as possible was almost bad enough to cause physical pain. He hated it, and he hated them and he fantasized about ripping them limb from limb and feasting on their fatty innards while sucking in their souls, savoring their pain and fear.
But, of course, he was still an Emissary and so had his Duty. When not watching MEH holo-porn, he spent hours and hours overseeing the scanners, for the Lost diplomatic ship had scanned everything in range with their theological defense sensors. The results were quite unsettling, the pervasive god-taint present on most of the disgusting fatties and their absurd technologies. Still, there were many possible reasons for a having such a taint, minor enough to rule out them being active minions of an actual god and Zorgy could not jump to conclusions, no matter how much he wanted to. He needed scans of their Leader to be sure, but that was the one thing that evaded him for the luxurious palace she lived in was somehow protected against such scans, itself a disturbing thought. And so he waited and waited, with only fatty porn for comfort, for Sasha the Leader to expose herself to him.
And then, one day, the wait was over. With astounded eyes, Zorgy watched the flagship of the MEH Navy, so very appropriately named Density, hyper into the system and assume a leisurely orbit over the planet while waiting for the Leader to board it. Unlike the palace, the warship had no theological defenses whatsoever, granting the Lost ship an excellent look at the Leader as her ship floated majestically (or wallowed like a pregnant beef, depending on one’s perspective) towards the transit hub at Your Anus. At first Zorgy was surprised at this and even suspected a trap, but then he remembered that this was a land of disgusting fatties ruled by a brainless god-child and such trickery was surely beyond them.
EHW Density, the only Pellaeon Class Star Destroyer in existence (and which is not named Pellaeon)
“The Demogorgon preserve us!” Zorgy breathed out and collapsed into his seat, for being fat was a terrible strain even for his ectoplasmically-infused muscles. The reinforced seat itself collapsed under his massive girth and he fell on the floor, crushing an unfortunate imp standing behind him.
“GRAAAAAAARGH!” Zorgy roared as his killbot bodyguards tried to lift him off the floor. He could feel the imp struggling weakly, completely enveloped in his blubber, indicating that it was still alive. “Someone get me a Living Brick!”
There was no time to waste. He had to report this right away.
-------------------------
Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin
In Orbit Over Earth
Sol Sytem
Sector A26
Multiversal Empire of Happiness
Unreal Time
Despite being in the happiest place in the galaxy, Emissary Zorgy was profoundly, existentially unhappy. In fact, he hated everything about the current assignment, and the hideous blubber-covered body that he had to use for the mission was merely the first item on a very long list of things that drew his ire, and not even the worst.
Emissary Zorgy
That honor was reserved for the fatties. Ever since the Leader had refused to meet with him and forbade all contact, he spent his days and his nights (for daemons didn’t sleep) watching the MEHnite entertainment holo-channels. Seeing hours and hours of disgusting bloblike humanoids copulating with each other, less obese humanoids, and members of other species of the galaxy (mostly Chamarrans and Dorei, for some reason, but also Bragulans, Vinaarans and even the occasional Ork) has filled him with indescribable rage. Copulation, of course, led to procreation, and the thought of more of these disgusting fatties coming into existence was unbearable to him. For a being steeped in Duty as he was, the sight of these…creatures existing without a Purpose, in fact being as far away from having a Purpose as possible was almost bad enough to cause physical pain. He hated it, and he hated them and he fantasized about ripping them limb from limb and feasting on their fatty innards while sucking in their souls, savoring their pain and fear.
But, of course, he was still an Emissary and so had his Duty. When not watching MEH holo-porn, he spent hours and hours overseeing the scanners, for the Lost diplomatic ship had scanned everything in range with their theological defense sensors. The results were quite unsettling, the pervasive god-taint present on most of the disgusting fatties and their absurd technologies. Still, there were many possible reasons for a having such a taint, minor enough to rule out them being active minions of an actual god and Zorgy could not jump to conclusions, no matter how much he wanted to. He needed scans of their Leader to be sure, but that was the one thing that evaded him for the luxurious palace she lived in was somehow protected against such scans, itself a disturbing thought. And so he waited and waited, with only fatty porn for comfort, for Sasha the Leader to expose herself to him.
And then, one day, the wait was over. With astounded eyes, Zorgy watched the flagship of the MEH Navy, so very appropriately named Density, hyper into the system and assume a leisurely orbit over the planet while waiting for the Leader to board it. Unlike the palace, the warship had no theological defenses whatsoever, granting the Lost ship an excellent look at the Leader as her ship floated majestically (or wallowed like a pregnant beef, depending on one’s perspective) towards the transit hub at Your Anus. At first Zorgy was surprised at this and even suspected a trap, but then he remembered that this was a land of disgusting fatties ruled by a brainless god-child and such trickery was surely beyond them.
EHW Density, the only Pellaeon Class Star Destroyer in existence (and which is not named Pellaeon)
“The Demogorgon preserve us!” Zorgy breathed out and collapsed into his seat, for being fat was a terrible strain even for his ectoplasmically-infused muscles. The reinforced seat itself collapsed under his massive girth and he fell on the floor, crushing an unfortunate imp standing behind him.
“GRAAAAAAARGH!” Zorgy roared as his killbot bodyguards tried to lift him off the floor. He could feel the imp struggling weakly, completely enveloped in his blubber, indicating that it was still alive. “Someone get me a Living Brick!”
There was no time to waste. He had to report this right away.
-------------------------
Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin
-
Lord_Of_Change 9
- Youngling
- Posts: 145
- Joined: 2010-08-06 04:49am
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
NEUPREUSSEN
Hoffmann looked at the election results. A complete disaster, of course. It was to be expected. After a recent holovision documentary had revealed the horrors of the 'short, victorious' Volksland War, he had been called to account and barely managed to keep his position, using some nobody bureaucrats and admirals as scapegoats. However, the Conservatives were simply not seen as credible now. Still, he would accept defeat with dignity, to do otherwise would be unbecoming of him. He rapidly began preparing a concession speech.
===
The Atlaskinder were ready. For years they had been waiting, waiting to rise to the occasion. However, things had delayed them, but not for that long. Karl Jaeger looked at the wall he had just graffitied, the message on it was simple - Freiheit, Gleichheit, Brüderlichkeit. The revolution, he guessed, was coming soon.
Sector T-7
The Ork Warlord looked at the (stolen) map. It was of Prussia, a state his Boyz had faced before. They were nothing that couldn't be krumped, and they had krumped many humies before. He didn't even consider anything before privately deciding to start a Waaagh! against them. After all, they were only humies, weren't they?
Hoffmann looked at the election results. A complete disaster, of course. It was to be expected. After a recent holovision documentary had revealed the horrors of the 'short, victorious' Volksland War, he had been called to account and barely managed to keep his position, using some nobody bureaucrats and admirals as scapegoats. However, the Conservatives were simply not seen as credible now. Still, he would accept defeat with dignity, to do otherwise would be unbecoming of him. He rapidly began preparing a concession speech.
===
The Atlaskinder were ready. For years they had been waiting, waiting to rise to the occasion. However, things had delayed them, but not for that long. Karl Jaeger looked at the wall he had just graffitied, the message on it was simple - Freiheit, Gleichheit, Brüderlichkeit. The revolution, he guessed, was coming soon.
Sector T-7
The Ork Warlord looked at the (stolen) map. It was of Prussia, a state his Boyz had faced before. They were nothing that couldn't be krumped, and they had krumped many humies before. He didn't even consider anything before privately deciding to start a Waaagh! against them. After all, they were only humies, weren't they?
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
Co-written with Shroomie
Previously on SDNW4...
Wild Space Sector BB-25
Planet Almera
Washingtoff, Algeira
Triumphant! Triumphant at last!
The people, sovereign and free, dragging their oppressors out of their hovels.
Down with the corrupt government! Down with the parasites and thieves taking your hard earned money under threat of force!
A professor, being viciously beaten in front a burning university. Students, lined up and shot for the liberal lies they spread on tubenetwebs. The universities, burning to light the new era.
No longer shall we tolerate the homobortionists and pinkoid communisians amongst our midst! No longer will the common man be robbed to help the lazy, the stupid and the unenterprising!
The bureaucrats, the enablers and the stockholm-syndromed slaves, their heads shaved, chased through the streets.
This is an hour of reckoning! On this day we take what is rightfully ours and cast off the shackles of the corrupt, oppressive, socialist government! Today we return to the visions of our godly founding father, the saint of freedom! Today, we rename our country and return to its roots. We are no longer Algeirans! Algeira is dead along with its thieving Big Government!
THIS. IS. MURCA!
Cried the bearded citizen. He was now Sovereign. He was now free!
He chopped off another arm of a liberal writer with his machete.
They all burned, for the citizens were now sovereign and the free market would provide! They’d rationally decide on the best provider of services with the best value and through competition would receive excellent service for a low, low price.
And nobody would even think about strongarming himself around, because then he’d get voted out of the market - just as Saint Murcan delineated in the constitution. The true way. The only way.
The new government would not be Big. In fact, it would be quite Small, and thanks to responsible fiscal policy it would be able to finance a grand and proud army to defend the only free nation on Almera - by killing anyone who disagreed! Even when cutting taxes to near zero, it could create a better Army than any of its evil, socialist (it was a dirty word, hence why it was spoken in italics for extra disdain) predecessors could.
Truly it was the best way to govern, for what measured a country’s worth better than the ability to kill and maim? Surely not welfare (another dirty, dirty word) of its citizens, for welfare was something you had to work for by yourself!
No, it was in deathcare. The Murcans crushed their enemies, saw them driven before them, and heard the lamentations of their women.
Several months later
Washingtoff, Murca
The Hill
So much freedom in the world now!, thought the Almost Sovereignest of the Sovereign Citizens, Thick Chinny, as he watched the ruined - no, not ruined, cleansed! - city from the window of his office. Well, not his office, as it belonged to Sovereignest Citizen Shrubya, but despite the fact his superior was elected in a truly fair and free election (guided and tightly controlled by the Sovereign Citizens so that undesirables and libruls couldn’t sully the democratic process, of course), Thick Chinny was certain he could do a better job. That office should be his.
Doesn’t matter right now., he chastised himself, rubbing his third chin, In due time the free market will reward me for my skills and aptitude.
In the months since the righteous revolution and running of the libruls, Murca had transformed. It was now a paradise unlike any other on this godforsaken planet, where men were entitled to the sweat of their brow and nobody told anyone what to think or who to give their money to - and it was a grand first step. But it was not enough, for the Revolution could only survive if the threat of socialism was eradicated from the planet forever. And for that to start, Murca would have to apprehend the biggest, foulest socialist of them all, that thief and liar Bari’Bama.
The door to the magnificent office opened, and in walked Gorge VW. Shrubya, the Sovereignest Citizen, flanked by military officers.
“Gentlemen, welcome”, Chinny said, as if the office was his already, “Please get settled down. Can I get you something to drink?”
Seeing Shrubya’s sullen expression, like that of a beaten puppy, Chinny quickly corrected himself, “With the Sovereignest’s permission, of course, sir.”
That seemed to cheer up poor Shrubya, and the briefing could commence unhindered.
“We have prepared the information you requested.”, the highest ranking officer with a lot of random badges on his chest spoke up first, “Our DOOMBROOM satellites and PRYER intercepts have located the HIV target in Pelania. COLON already had ASS TURDS on the ground and are looking to PIN his exact location.”
Shrubya seemed confused, but wasted no time admitying to it, which was surely a mark of a great leader, “I do not understand anything you just said, but I’m sure my most trusted friend and honest associate Thick Chinny here can translate.”
Fighting the unbearable smugness, Chinny helpfully reduced the complicated technical brief to a few simple words Shrubya could understand, “They know where Barry is, just not precisely.”
“Holy mother cow!”, Shrubya went all excited, “Can we bomb him?”
“Well, no, sir, we are still attempting to, ah...”, the officer fought down the urge to blurt more acronyms, “...find the precise target to bomb.”
“But wait,”, Shrubya frowned again, engaging his mental faculties into overdrive, “You said you knew where he was.”
“We know the country, not the exact place”
“Good enough! We can bomb a country! Go ahead and bomb it now!”
Thick Chinny sighed. Just why the rational actors making objectively optimal decisions could have elected this man was beyond him. But the free market worked in mysterious ways, “Sir, let us at least learn which country it is.”
“Oh, right. That would be cool. Which country is it?”
“Pelania, sir.”
“Oooh! Pelania! Excellent! Now go and bomb it!”
“The Sovereignest is trying to say...”, Thick Chinny intervened again, “That Pelania is harboring an enemy of Murca, and thus must be freedomized to liberate them from socialist tyranny of that fiend Bari’Bama.”
Shrubya nodded, “Well said, Chinny, well said.”
“We’ll draft an order for the military, sir.”, the officer nodded. He longed to test his new toys, finally rid of the controls of those flaccid, limp-dicked civilians of the Bari’Bama administration. The general doing the brief had long since forgotten how it was in the good old days, the days of old Algeira who didn’t hesistate to maim people who annoyed her.
Truly, those were great times indeed. First they’d bomb Pelania... and then... the world!
Oho, Murca
Kunt State University
These were the last liberals on Algeira. The sovereign citizens of Murca had thought they had gotten them all, but it turned out there were pockets of leftist resistances scattered in some of the intact universities. Of course, they had fully expected deceit from these demonrats, for they weren’t called lieberals for no reason. They even lied about being exterminated! They were unpatriotic even in death, even refusing to repent for their sins to the last moment!
The lieberal collapsed to the ground, and a pool of blood formed as he bled from the gunshot wounds on his gut. A woman bent down and screamed in horror at the sight of his prone form, while another bystander stood by and looked on in shock. A big mistake, for the next staccato burst of gunfire cut him down where he stood, while the bullets merely whizzed over the kneeling woman’s head.
Private Freedom-Class Chet Fisto aimed at the woman with his Armalyte.
Goddamn woman, dressed so immodestly too! he thought as he squeezed the trigger. Die, you filthy liberal whore!
He fired, but a hand pushed his Armalyte off the mark at the last moment. The first rounds merely ripped the woman’s arm off her shoulder, while the rest missed the rest of her and flew into the crowd of other protesters - who promptly began to scream.
“Wait!” cried his superior officer. “You’re not authorized to open fire! Get your damned ROE right!”
“Then how am I supposed to kill these librul sumbitches anyhow?” Fisto shouted back. Screw ROE vs. Wade, he wanted to bust some caps!
“Use your bayonets, stupid!” his CO admonished.
Oh! That was so obvious! Fisto smacked his forehead, but only hurt his hand against his helmet. “Ow!”
He fixed his bayonet, along with the rest of his guardsmen. He went ahead and stabbed the disarmed woman in the face, the bayonet blade carving through her nose bridge and digging deep into the rest of her skull. There was a spurt of blood, her eyes rolled backwards and her arms jerked a little bit. She made a gurgling sound as her last breath went out of both her mouth and her excavated nasal cavity, and then she went limp - just like the rest of these liberal arts majors.
He placed his foot on the woman’s throat and pulled his buried bayonet off her face. He turned back to the rest of his squad, who had just fixed bayonets on their rifles and were eager to follow in his league.
“Follow me, men!” PFC Chet Fisto shouted. Together they stormed the crowds of liberal protesters and unionist communoids. Their army green fatigues were stained with blood, turning into a reddish camouflage pattern like one would use if Murca was invading hell. “Hut-hut-hut-hut-hut!”
The unpatriotic demonrats fled like the rodents they were. They trampled over each other, trying to get away from the bloody bayonet blades that came for them, that mercilessly stabbed into them, making their breasts bleed blood from the milkbags. Many fell on the ground, trampled underfoot, and were easily stabbed by the Murcanational Guardsmen. Chet Fisto himself preferred to do things thoroughly, so he stabbed a liberal repeatedly until it stopped moving. Others, whose ranks were lower than that of his Private Freedom-Class stature, preferred to stab just once or twice, before leaving the libruls to bleed to death on the pavement. Sloppy work. The noncoms who joined in showed their professionalism, working in teams, stabbing individual demonrats repeatedly, working together to rip and tear, sticking bayonets into abdomens so the coiling intestines would spill out.
Chet Fisto wouldn’t let them one up him. No way. He smacked one librul in the head with his riflebutt, cracking it against her skull. She collapsed and he raised his bayonet high into the air, reading to thrust it into her. Her eyes opened wide in fear. Chet sound it very satisfying, he savored the moment. He brought his bayonet down to kill her and -
“Wait!” a hand grabbed his shoulder.
“What?!” Chet Fisto cried out in frustration. “Ah, crap. I mean... what, sir?”
“We’re getting new orders. Urgent ones, right from the top. We’re leaving Kunt State and mobilizing. They’re sending us out,” his CO with BO said. “Leave these hippies and head back to the Doomvees, trooper. That’s an order from the Shrub himself.”
“Right,” Chet composed himself and turned back to look at the librul he was about to stick with his bayonet. She was crawling away now as blood leaked from her nostrils and ears. Instead of crawling on the ground, she was crawling on the bodies of all the other student protesters. She screamed as some of the half-dead and mostly-dying liberals reached out to her for dear life, clawing at her clothes, her limbs, her hair. “And what about them, sir?”
“Don’t worry. We’ve got something special, just to finish them off,” the CO grinned. Some of the other troopers, NCOs, started throwing grenades into the heaps of dead and dying liberals. But instead of exploding violently, the grenades began to emit white smoke. The clear powdery snowflakes were carried by the wind and landed on the crippled and immobilized survivors, who began to scream as the stuff burned whatever and wherever they touched. There was fire, they could hear sizzling as flesh was chemically broiled. Men, women and children screamed as their faces caught fire, as their clothes lit up in flames. Some tried to get up and run, but they only fell as their flesh and muscles were burned away to the bone. They crumbled into ash. “I love the smell of white phosphorus in the morning. Smells like... smells like freedom.”
The Next Day
Oho, Murca
123 Fatlas Smuggedsville Trailer Park
Joey Jojo was watching the news and enjoying the TV after a hard day’s work cleaning up Mrs. McGee’s septic tank. He wasn’t a septic tank cleaner, he was a plumber, but sometimes he just had to do it the hard way to earn something extra. Unlike some other folks, who were dead by now, he didn’t have a college degree. He knew those were no good, and so he dropped out after high school and married his wife, the prom queen, who he’d gotten pregnant. Some laughed at him for never graduating, but he knew one day he’d show them. That day came when they were all rounded up along with the professors and teachers and doctors and other intellectuals, and shot, over there in Kunt State. That day was yesterday, and Joey Jojo proudly held on his trophy as star quarterback as he watched the news. He had been proven right.
He was a man who stuck to his convictions. He always knew Bari’bama was trouble, he never liked Barry’s kind. That was why he had joined the sovereign citizen movement and shaved his head to its skin. It had been hard when the revolution came, his wife actually dared to disagree with him, but he set her right with his own hands - right in front of the children too, to show them what was what and shut them up. That day on, none of them dared give him any lip. He was the man in this house, the only man, no matter what those goddamn homobortionists wanted. He showed them, just like how he showed all his old classmates. It wasn’t easy being a father of five kids. They’d get what he gave and like it, or else.
“Leftists are the most violent prone segment of the Murcan population. That's why I hold that Democrats, Liberals and other criminals should be rounded up and in many cases hanged so they won't get lots of innocent people killed and brutalized.”
Blenn Geck was saying in the TV, commenting on yesterday’s events. Jojo got off his seat and hooted whenever he saw the faces of his old classmates in the report on the Kunt State Freedomization, they even used the high school graduation photos too! He remembered how his then-girlfriend, and now-wife, bought the high school year book and showed him the graduation pics, and how angry he’d gotten. How he’d hit her with the fucking year book...
Suddenly, Blenn Geck disappeared from the screen and was replaced by something else. Jojo felt angry again, Blenn Geck was his favoritest fair and balanced journo. But wait, what was this?
WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM TO BRING YOU URGENT NEWS
Previously on SDNW4...
In the bloodstained streets, the victorious sovereign citizens were cleaning up their sullied nation. They lined up the doctors and nurses who had worked in hospitals and abortion clinics funded by money Bari'bamacare stole from the tax payers.
A Shroomedian took his grenade launcher and began executing them one by one.
"But the country's disintegrating. What's happened to Algeira? What's happened to the Algeiramerican dream?!" cried one of the nurses.
The Shroomedian pointed his grenade launcher at her.
"It came true. You're lookin' at it."
He fired.
Wild Space Sector BB-25
Planet Almera
Washingtoff, Algeira
Triumphant! Triumphant at last!
The people, sovereign and free, dragging their oppressors out of their hovels.
Down with the corrupt government! Down with the parasites and thieves taking your hard earned money under threat of force!
A professor, being viciously beaten in front a burning university. Students, lined up and shot for the liberal lies they spread on tubenetwebs. The universities, burning to light the new era.
No longer shall we tolerate the homobortionists and pinkoid communisians amongst our midst! No longer will the common man be robbed to help the lazy, the stupid and the unenterprising!
The bureaucrats, the enablers and the stockholm-syndromed slaves, their heads shaved, chased through the streets.
This is an hour of reckoning! On this day we take what is rightfully ours and cast off the shackles of the corrupt, oppressive, socialist government! Today we return to the visions of our godly founding father, the saint of freedom! Today, we rename our country and return to its roots. We are no longer Algeirans! Algeira is dead along with its thieving Big Government!
THIS. IS. MURCA!
Cried the bearded citizen. He was now Sovereign. He was now free!
He chopped off another arm of a liberal writer with his machete.
***
The people cheered the defeat of their hated oppressors, that band of pigs only concerned with stuffing their own faces at the taxpayer’s expense. The Sovereign Citizens now reigned supreme, and every facet of the old, evil, socialist regime was cast down. They began with the obvious: the government offices, the hated tax collectors who spent their days twirling their moustache and coming up with new ways to fleece the people ; The equally evil mass transit ; And, obviously, the disgusting slime of homeless shelters and soup kitchens.They all burned, for the citizens were now sovereign and the free market would provide! They’d rationally decide on the best provider of services with the best value and through competition would receive excellent service for a low, low price.
And nobody would even think about strongarming himself around, because then he’d get voted out of the market - just as Saint Murcan delineated in the constitution. The true way. The only way.
The new government would not be Big. In fact, it would be quite Small, and thanks to responsible fiscal policy it would be able to finance a grand and proud army to defend the only free nation on Almera - by killing anyone who disagreed! Even when cutting taxes to near zero, it could create a better Army than any of its evil, socialist (it was a dirty word, hence why it was spoken in italics for extra disdain) predecessors could.
Truly it was the best way to govern, for what measured a country’s worth better than the ability to kill and maim? Surely not welfare (another dirty, dirty word) of its citizens, for welfare was something you had to work for by yourself!
No, it was in deathcare. The Murcans crushed their enemies, saw them driven before them, and heard the lamentations of their women.
Several months later
Washingtoff, Murca
The Hill
So much freedom in the world now!, thought the Almost Sovereignest of the Sovereign Citizens, Thick Chinny, as he watched the ruined - no, not ruined, cleansed! - city from the window of his office. Well, not his office, as it belonged to Sovereignest Citizen Shrubya, but despite the fact his superior was elected in a truly fair and free election (guided and tightly controlled by the Sovereign Citizens so that undesirables and libruls couldn’t sully the democratic process, of course), Thick Chinny was certain he could do a better job. That office should be his.
Doesn’t matter right now., he chastised himself, rubbing his third chin, In due time the free market will reward me for my skills and aptitude.
In the months since the righteous revolution and running of the libruls, Murca had transformed. It was now a paradise unlike any other on this godforsaken planet, where men were entitled to the sweat of their brow and nobody told anyone what to think or who to give their money to - and it was a grand first step. But it was not enough, for the Revolution could only survive if the threat of socialism was eradicated from the planet forever. And for that to start, Murca would have to apprehend the biggest, foulest socialist of them all, that thief and liar Bari’Bama.
The door to the magnificent office opened, and in walked Gorge VW. Shrubya, the Sovereignest Citizen, flanked by military officers.
“Gentlemen, welcome”, Chinny said, as if the office was his already, “Please get settled down. Can I get you something to drink?”
Seeing Shrubya’s sullen expression, like that of a beaten puppy, Chinny quickly corrected himself, “With the Sovereignest’s permission, of course, sir.”
That seemed to cheer up poor Shrubya, and the briefing could commence unhindered.
“We have prepared the information you requested.”, the highest ranking officer with a lot of random badges on his chest spoke up first, “Our DOOMBROOM satellites and PRYER intercepts have located the HIV target in Pelania. COLON already had ASS TURDS on the ground and are looking to PIN his exact location.”
Shrubya seemed confused, but wasted no time admitying to it, which was surely a mark of a great leader, “I do not understand anything you just said, but I’m sure my most trusted friend and honest associate Thick Chinny here can translate.”
Fighting the unbearable smugness, Chinny helpfully reduced the complicated technical brief to a few simple words Shrubya could understand, “They know where Barry is, just not precisely.”
“Holy mother cow!”, Shrubya went all excited, “Can we bomb him?”
“Well, no, sir, we are still attempting to, ah...”, the officer fought down the urge to blurt more acronyms, “...find the precise target to bomb.”
“But wait,”, Shrubya frowned again, engaging his mental faculties into overdrive, “You said you knew where he was.”
“We know the country, not the exact place”
“Good enough! We can bomb a country! Go ahead and bomb it now!”
Thick Chinny sighed. Just why the rational actors making objectively optimal decisions could have elected this man was beyond him. But the free market worked in mysterious ways, “Sir, let us at least learn which country it is.”
“Oh, right. That would be cool. Which country is it?”
“Pelania, sir.”
“Oooh! Pelania! Excellent! Now go and bomb it!”
“The Sovereignest is trying to say...”, Thick Chinny intervened again, “That Pelania is harboring an enemy of Murca, and thus must be freedomized to liberate them from socialist tyranny of that fiend Bari’Bama.”
Shrubya nodded, “Well said, Chinny, well said.”
“We’ll draft an order for the military, sir.”, the officer nodded. He longed to test his new toys, finally rid of the controls of those flaccid, limp-dicked civilians of the Bari’Bama administration. The general doing the brief had long since forgotten how it was in the good old days, the days of old Algeira who didn’t hesistate to maim people who annoyed her.
Truly, those were great times indeed. First they’d bomb Pelania... and then... the world!
Oho, Murca
Kunt State University
These were the last liberals on Algeira. The sovereign citizens of Murca had thought they had gotten them all, but it turned out there were pockets of leftist resistances scattered in some of the intact universities. Of course, they had fully expected deceit from these demonrats, for they weren’t called lieberals for no reason. They even lied about being exterminated! They were unpatriotic even in death, even refusing to repent for their sins to the last moment!
The lieberal collapsed to the ground, and a pool of blood formed as he bled from the gunshot wounds on his gut. A woman bent down and screamed in horror at the sight of his prone form, while another bystander stood by and looked on in shock. A big mistake, for the next staccato burst of gunfire cut him down where he stood, while the bullets merely whizzed over the kneeling woman’s head.
Private Freedom-Class Chet Fisto aimed at the woman with his Armalyte.
Goddamn woman, dressed so immodestly too! he thought as he squeezed the trigger. Die, you filthy liberal whore!
He fired, but a hand pushed his Armalyte off the mark at the last moment. The first rounds merely ripped the woman’s arm off her shoulder, while the rest missed the rest of her and flew into the crowd of other protesters - who promptly began to scream.
“Wait!” cried his superior officer. “You’re not authorized to open fire! Get your damned ROE right!”
“Then how am I supposed to kill these librul sumbitches anyhow?” Fisto shouted back. Screw ROE vs. Wade, he wanted to bust some caps!
“Use your bayonets, stupid!” his CO admonished.
Oh! That was so obvious! Fisto smacked his forehead, but only hurt his hand against his helmet. “Ow!”
He fixed his bayonet, along with the rest of his guardsmen. He went ahead and stabbed the disarmed woman in the face, the bayonet blade carving through her nose bridge and digging deep into the rest of her skull. There was a spurt of blood, her eyes rolled backwards and her arms jerked a little bit. She made a gurgling sound as her last breath went out of both her mouth and her excavated nasal cavity, and then she went limp - just like the rest of these liberal arts majors.
He placed his foot on the woman’s throat and pulled his buried bayonet off her face. He turned back to the rest of his squad, who had just fixed bayonets on their rifles and were eager to follow in his league.
“Follow me, men!” PFC Chet Fisto shouted. Together they stormed the crowds of liberal protesters and unionist communoids. Their army green fatigues were stained with blood, turning into a reddish camouflage pattern like one would use if Murca was invading hell. “Hut-hut-hut-hut-hut!”
The unpatriotic demonrats fled like the rodents they were. They trampled over each other, trying to get away from the bloody bayonet blades that came for them, that mercilessly stabbed into them, making their breasts bleed blood from the milkbags. Many fell on the ground, trampled underfoot, and were easily stabbed by the Murcanational Guardsmen. Chet Fisto himself preferred to do things thoroughly, so he stabbed a liberal repeatedly until it stopped moving. Others, whose ranks were lower than that of his Private Freedom-Class stature, preferred to stab just once or twice, before leaving the libruls to bleed to death on the pavement. Sloppy work. The noncoms who joined in showed their professionalism, working in teams, stabbing individual demonrats repeatedly, working together to rip and tear, sticking bayonets into abdomens so the coiling intestines would spill out.
Chet Fisto wouldn’t let them one up him. No way. He smacked one librul in the head with his riflebutt, cracking it against her skull. She collapsed and he raised his bayonet high into the air, reading to thrust it into her. Her eyes opened wide in fear. Chet sound it very satisfying, he savored the moment. He brought his bayonet down to kill her and -
“Wait!” a hand grabbed his shoulder.
“What?!” Chet Fisto cried out in frustration. “Ah, crap. I mean... what, sir?”
“We’re getting new orders. Urgent ones, right from the top. We’re leaving Kunt State and mobilizing. They’re sending us out,” his CO with BO said. “Leave these hippies and head back to the Doomvees, trooper. That’s an order from the Shrub himself.”
“Right,” Chet composed himself and turned back to look at the librul he was about to stick with his bayonet. She was crawling away now as blood leaked from her nostrils and ears. Instead of crawling on the ground, she was crawling on the bodies of all the other student protesters. She screamed as some of the half-dead and mostly-dying liberals reached out to her for dear life, clawing at her clothes, her limbs, her hair. “And what about them, sir?”
“Don’t worry. We’ve got something special, just to finish them off,” the CO grinned. Some of the other troopers, NCOs, started throwing grenades into the heaps of dead and dying liberals. But instead of exploding violently, the grenades began to emit white smoke. The clear powdery snowflakes were carried by the wind and landed on the crippled and immobilized survivors, who began to scream as the stuff burned whatever and wherever they touched. There was fire, they could hear sizzling as flesh was chemically broiled. Men, women and children screamed as their faces caught fire, as their clothes lit up in flames. Some tried to get up and run, but they only fell as their flesh and muscles were burned away to the bone. They crumbled into ash. “I love the smell of white phosphorus in the morning. Smells like... smells like freedom.”
The Next Day
Oho, Murca
123 Fatlas Smuggedsville Trailer Park
Joey Jojo was watching the news and enjoying the TV after a hard day’s work cleaning up Mrs. McGee’s septic tank. He wasn’t a septic tank cleaner, he was a plumber, but sometimes he just had to do it the hard way to earn something extra. Unlike some other folks, who were dead by now, he didn’t have a college degree. He knew those were no good, and so he dropped out after high school and married his wife, the prom queen, who he’d gotten pregnant. Some laughed at him for never graduating, but he knew one day he’d show them. That day came when they were all rounded up along with the professors and teachers and doctors and other intellectuals, and shot, over there in Kunt State. That day was yesterday, and Joey Jojo proudly held on his trophy as star quarterback as he watched the news. He had been proven right.
He was a man who stuck to his convictions. He always knew Bari’bama was trouble, he never liked Barry’s kind. That was why he had joined the sovereign citizen movement and shaved his head to its skin. It had been hard when the revolution came, his wife actually dared to disagree with him, but he set her right with his own hands - right in front of the children too, to show them what was what and shut them up. That day on, none of them dared give him any lip. He was the man in this house, the only man, no matter what those goddamn homobortionists wanted. He showed them, just like how he showed all his old classmates. It wasn’t easy being a father of five kids. They’d get what he gave and like it, or else.
“Leftists are the most violent prone segment of the Murcan population. That's why I hold that Democrats, Liberals and other criminals should be rounded up and in many cases hanged so they won't get lots of innocent people killed and brutalized.”
Blenn Geck was saying in the TV, commenting on yesterday’s events. Jojo got off his seat and hooted whenever he saw the faces of his old classmates in the report on the Kunt State Freedomization, they even used the high school graduation photos too! He remembered how his then-girlfriend, and now-wife, bought the high school year book and showed him the graduation pics, and how angry he’d gotten. How he’d hit her with the fucking year book...
Suddenly, Blenn Geck disappeared from the screen and was replaced by something else. Jojo felt angry again, Blenn Geck was his favoritest fair and balanced journo. But wait, what was this?
WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM TO BRING YOU URGENT NEWS
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.
- NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
Technocracy of Umeria, The Fringe
Had the Umerian known his thoughts were echoing those of a man in his position weeks before, he might have been amused, or perhaps more cautious. Instead, he was considering how, very frequently, a runner caught themself through their action. That wasn't to say the Internal Security Directorate was lax, but finding one man on the fringe was like trying to find a single grain of sand in a haystack. These outlands simply didn't have the layers of security found on more developed worlds, and the locals were less likely to cooperate (not just here in Umeria, but in many nations, the agent knew). Doubtless, this was why their target - that is, Brandon Klein - had been skulking on the edges of society since the Union had fingered him as suspicious.
Ultimately, the Humanist Union's Department of Internal Intelligence had been quite useful in advancing the sting to this stage. Digging into the background of their target had revealed that an unknown - but one matching Klein's description - had nearly fallen into a DII trap before vanishing something like five years ago. Apparently the Union was operating false revolutionary cells aimed at states experiencing unrest, including Umeria itself. The idea was simple enough; pretend to be a group of "freedom fighters" and identify/control those citizens who fall into the trap, arresting them where necessary for rehabilitative justice.
A more clear picture of Klein had emerged as a result of the DII's linking of these two fugitives as the same man, and they'd been able to give the Umerians a basic psych profile. Klein was smart and capable, for example, but arrogant and a bit lazy. It was something this sting would turn against him.
The Internal Security Directorate had decided to try a honeypot of their own, working with the Union's revealed attention. A few delicately-constructed farses (combined with miscrediting of actual unrest) gave the ISD the appropriate justification to quitely start asking around the "private" circuit for potential counter-intelligence agents to throw back against the Union. It had taken a while, but their target had emerged, perfectly willing to work for the ISD. The trick had been to track him down without spooking him, and the Umerian security agent wasn't sure whether that had been luck or the hard work of the eggheads. Probably both.
They had ultimately tracked Klein down to a run-down set of flats, again near a spaceport. Here, as back in the Union, he had picked one packed in against other high-rises, only the Umerians had the advantage of knowing why this detail was important. If the entry team lost him, they had guessed his next move - an ESPer's leap to the next building.
Right into the agent's arms.
The agent didn't expect it would come to that, though he readied himself nonetheless when the operation began; he might get only a second to react before his target realized the danger and counterattacked. Radio chatter told him, to his shock, that Klein had indeed gotten the drop on the breaching team and was making for the window. Rather than dwell on this, he took a breath, readied his rifle, and fired.
The shot was perfectly-timed, with Klein crashing into the agent's room only to be instantly hit with the electro-dart. They were crude weapons, but useful. As Klein spasmed and then laid still, someone down below activated the null field generator. Securing the target's hands and feet, the agent briefly considered how eager the Union would be to get their hands on Klein. He didn't envy the ESPer.
Unknown Location
Humanist Union
The interrogations had begun immediately after Klein had awoken from his drugged stupor. Hours of questions from a rotating team of pale, fish-like DII spooks. Klein, for his part, maintained his ignorance. He wasn't going to give the Union all the cards in his hand - what precious few he had in this sterile white cell - without a way out on his part secured. He didn't need his precognitive ability to know that once he'd outlived his usefulness, the DII would send him off for 'enhanced resocialization.'
One of the interrogators had cottoned to this and noted that his continued refusal would force their hand; the DII would resort to cruder methods of interrogation if they felt that talking was useless. They didn't mean torture - Klein knew that - but rather the other fruit of the poisoned tree that had led to enhanced resocialization techniques. They could indeed force their way into his mind, but they might in the process destroy the intelligence they were looking for. Klein seriously doubted if they'd take that risk, and ultimately, he was right. He waited for the inevitable - amnesty, and an offer to change employers. One was important as the other; after all, a free agent stood on his reputation, and what good was amnesty if he was a rat?
What Klein didn't know - couldn't know - was that the DII had no real expectation of his cooperation once captured. Attempts to build up a rapport, to intimidate, to threaten - all failures, but accounted-for failures. The real process didn't begin until that charade had been played out. Klein found himself left increasingly alone, day after day. Interrogation - the DII spooks always called them "interviews" or "chats" - became sporadic, then stopped entirely. Gradually, as the days turned into weeks, Klein began to wonder if he had played coy too long. His sleep was suffering, and he could hear indistinct sounds from what he assumed were other cells - others who the DII had captured? If so, what use was he? Resist as he might, Klein's mind began to steadily betray him, and he filled the hours with morbid, paranoid scenarios on what the DII had found or was doing. It was the only form of entertainment he had most of the time; he was only allowed exercise an hour a day, and the jailors were always watching.
Klein's steady descent could be understood, perhaps, if one knew that the DII had been pumping a very particular drug into the air of the cell. Odorless, colorless, and tasteless, its effects were gradual. Increased susceptibility to suggestion, paranoid delusion; in greater doses it could cause dramatic psychotic symptoms, but the DII had no reason to confirm their specimen's fears that he was being drugged. At night, when the specimen drifted into an uneasy sleep, the room's secreted speakers played an endless mantra of paranoid whispers, the sort of thing he wouldn't remember but, when combined with the drugs, was steadily breaking him down. In three weeks, the DII had Klein where they wanted him.
Attempting to think of nothing, Klein jumped when the buzzer that signaled an incoming visitor spoke for the first time in...well, he wasn't sure. He didn't need to be told to stand back, ambling over to the room's small table and trying to compose himself as the door slid open. It was Gerard Belkan, always his fav- wait. Klein craned his head to see what looked to be a pair of guards escorting another prisoner hurriedly down the hall. It would be the first time Klein had seen another incarcerated soul here. Gerard noticed his gaze and quickly stepped to intersect it as the cell slid closed again, not bothing to explain his actions.
Klein was waiting for Gerard to begin his typical routine - idle chat followed slowly by "on topic" questions - but the man surprised him when he instead produced a ream of forms and began filling them out in silence. Twenty minutes, a half hour, maybe more passed before Klein simply couldn't stand it and spoke, voice cracking with lack of use, "Aren't you going to ask me anything?"
It looked as if Gerard was simply going to ignore him before he finally spoke up, not bothering to cease his writing, "You're being discharged," he said.
Klein didn't quite believe what he'd heard, "Excuse me? You're letting me go?"
Gerard looked up briefly and made a face, "Of course not. You're being transferred into the regular justice system for your resocialization and release."
A more mentally healthy Klein might've considered this a farse, but today's Klein was anything but healthy, "Y...you're serious? What about the bombing, the information?"
Gerard ignored him, sliding a form across the table for him to sign with a soft-tip marker, "This is to show I've informed you of your release and your charges, which I'm not going to bother to go over again. Save me the time for a change, we'll just use the surveillance video otherwise."
Klein held the marker, numb, "But...you can't just throw the issue away."
Gerard looked annoyed, "We haven't. We just don't need you."
Numbly, Klein signed the form, speaking as Gerard took it back, "Look, we can work something out..."
A buzzer sounded, and two unidentifiable guards entered the room. Gerard stood, ordering the forms, "There's nothing to work out. Come along now."
Klein stumbled through the halls with disbelief - this had to be some sort of trick, a game. The only reason he knew anything was by chance, how could they capture someone else? Any moment now, they'd stop, and -
They'd made it to a vehicle bay; a prison truck idling, waiting for its charge. As the guard went to manhandle him into the truck, Klein's last resolve broke and he struggled back, raving, "I'll help you! I'll help you! I'll tell you everything!"
Gerard replied calmly, indifferently, "You can't help us and we already know. You had your chance and you lost it." The guards continued to shove the struggling Klein forward.
Now the prisoner had lost any semblance of self-control, "You can't! You can't possibly! Listen, I'm not even supposed to know what I know, it- it could still be useful! Please! I'm telling the truth!"
It seemed that Gerard was going to ignore Klein's pleas when he raised a hand for the guards to stop, "I'll hear you out. You'll have five minutes."
"And you won't send me for resocialization?" Klein asked pitifully. It was all Gerard could do not to sneer.
"If your information is valuable, we won't have any choice in the matter."
Klein didn't think he had ever felt more gratitude in his life than he did right now.
Elysion City, Elysion
Humanist Union, Sector L1
There was a sense of finality when Lieutenant Director Daniel Bryan slid the completed Bowman Report across Masterson's desk, standing at ease as the older woman scanned its pages and flicked over the summary, "So New Havonian seperatists set the whole thing off."
"Yes m'am," Bryan said, "Mostly disaffected mid-military officers, government bureaucrats, some industrial big wigs...you know the sort. Bowman was targeted due to his importance in normalizing and maintaining relations with the sector since annexation. They were hoping to destabilize our control using the Centralist talks as a fig leaf."
Masterson scowled, "More trouble than it's worth, that whole sector and that planet in particular. Every time we turn around, the roaches start crawling out of the walls."
Bryan didn't necessarily agree with the woman's evaluation, but he didn't contradict her, "Of course, what's really interesting is who the plotters claim was backing them."
"Foreign investors, yes," Masterson said, letting the report fall to her desk, "We peel back a layer and another one reveals itself."
"At this time," Bryan said, knowing the director's question without having to ask, "We have no leads, only guesses. It will take time and much reviewing, but we expect to find a thread to grasp somewhere. No conspiracy is perfect."
"The sooner," Masterson said, "the better."
Had the Umerian known his thoughts were echoing those of a man in his position weeks before, he might have been amused, or perhaps more cautious. Instead, he was considering how, very frequently, a runner caught themself through their action. That wasn't to say the Internal Security Directorate was lax, but finding one man on the fringe was like trying to find a single grain of sand in a haystack. These outlands simply didn't have the layers of security found on more developed worlds, and the locals were less likely to cooperate (not just here in Umeria, but in many nations, the agent knew). Doubtless, this was why their target - that is, Brandon Klein - had been skulking on the edges of society since the Union had fingered him as suspicious.
Ultimately, the Humanist Union's Department of Internal Intelligence had been quite useful in advancing the sting to this stage. Digging into the background of their target had revealed that an unknown - but one matching Klein's description - had nearly fallen into a DII trap before vanishing something like five years ago. Apparently the Union was operating false revolutionary cells aimed at states experiencing unrest, including Umeria itself. The idea was simple enough; pretend to be a group of "freedom fighters" and identify/control those citizens who fall into the trap, arresting them where necessary for rehabilitative justice.
A more clear picture of Klein had emerged as a result of the DII's linking of these two fugitives as the same man, and they'd been able to give the Umerians a basic psych profile. Klein was smart and capable, for example, but arrogant and a bit lazy. It was something this sting would turn against him.
The Internal Security Directorate had decided to try a honeypot of their own, working with the Union's revealed attention. A few delicately-constructed farses (combined with miscrediting of actual unrest) gave the ISD the appropriate justification to quitely start asking around the "private" circuit for potential counter-intelligence agents to throw back against the Union. It had taken a while, but their target had emerged, perfectly willing to work for the ISD. The trick had been to track him down without spooking him, and the Umerian security agent wasn't sure whether that had been luck or the hard work of the eggheads. Probably both.
They had ultimately tracked Klein down to a run-down set of flats, again near a spaceport. Here, as back in the Union, he had picked one packed in against other high-rises, only the Umerians had the advantage of knowing why this detail was important. If the entry team lost him, they had guessed his next move - an ESPer's leap to the next building.
Right into the agent's arms.
The agent didn't expect it would come to that, though he readied himself nonetheless when the operation began; he might get only a second to react before his target realized the danger and counterattacked. Radio chatter told him, to his shock, that Klein had indeed gotten the drop on the breaching team and was making for the window. Rather than dwell on this, he took a breath, readied his rifle, and fired.
The shot was perfectly-timed, with Klein crashing into the agent's room only to be instantly hit with the electro-dart. They were crude weapons, but useful. As Klein spasmed and then laid still, someone down below activated the null field generator. Securing the target's hands and feet, the agent briefly considered how eager the Union would be to get their hands on Klein. He didn't envy the ESPer.
Unknown Location
Humanist Union
The interrogations had begun immediately after Klein had awoken from his drugged stupor. Hours of questions from a rotating team of pale, fish-like DII spooks. Klein, for his part, maintained his ignorance. He wasn't going to give the Union all the cards in his hand - what precious few he had in this sterile white cell - without a way out on his part secured. He didn't need his precognitive ability to know that once he'd outlived his usefulness, the DII would send him off for 'enhanced resocialization.'
One of the interrogators had cottoned to this and noted that his continued refusal would force their hand; the DII would resort to cruder methods of interrogation if they felt that talking was useless. They didn't mean torture - Klein knew that - but rather the other fruit of the poisoned tree that had led to enhanced resocialization techniques. They could indeed force their way into his mind, but they might in the process destroy the intelligence they were looking for. Klein seriously doubted if they'd take that risk, and ultimately, he was right. He waited for the inevitable - amnesty, and an offer to change employers. One was important as the other; after all, a free agent stood on his reputation, and what good was amnesty if he was a rat?
What Klein didn't know - couldn't know - was that the DII had no real expectation of his cooperation once captured. Attempts to build up a rapport, to intimidate, to threaten - all failures, but accounted-for failures. The real process didn't begin until that charade had been played out. Klein found himself left increasingly alone, day after day. Interrogation - the DII spooks always called them "interviews" or "chats" - became sporadic, then stopped entirely. Gradually, as the days turned into weeks, Klein began to wonder if he had played coy too long. His sleep was suffering, and he could hear indistinct sounds from what he assumed were other cells - others who the DII had captured? If so, what use was he? Resist as he might, Klein's mind began to steadily betray him, and he filled the hours with morbid, paranoid scenarios on what the DII had found or was doing. It was the only form of entertainment he had most of the time; he was only allowed exercise an hour a day, and the jailors were always watching.
Klein's steady descent could be understood, perhaps, if one knew that the DII had been pumping a very particular drug into the air of the cell. Odorless, colorless, and tasteless, its effects were gradual. Increased susceptibility to suggestion, paranoid delusion; in greater doses it could cause dramatic psychotic symptoms, but the DII had no reason to confirm their specimen's fears that he was being drugged. At night, when the specimen drifted into an uneasy sleep, the room's secreted speakers played an endless mantra of paranoid whispers, the sort of thing he wouldn't remember but, when combined with the drugs, was steadily breaking him down. In three weeks, the DII had Klein where they wanted him.
Attempting to think of nothing, Klein jumped when the buzzer that signaled an incoming visitor spoke for the first time in...well, he wasn't sure. He didn't need to be told to stand back, ambling over to the room's small table and trying to compose himself as the door slid open. It was Gerard Belkan, always his fav- wait. Klein craned his head to see what looked to be a pair of guards escorting another prisoner hurriedly down the hall. It would be the first time Klein had seen another incarcerated soul here. Gerard noticed his gaze and quickly stepped to intersect it as the cell slid closed again, not bothing to explain his actions.
Klein was waiting for Gerard to begin his typical routine - idle chat followed slowly by "on topic" questions - but the man surprised him when he instead produced a ream of forms and began filling them out in silence. Twenty minutes, a half hour, maybe more passed before Klein simply couldn't stand it and spoke, voice cracking with lack of use, "Aren't you going to ask me anything?"
It looked as if Gerard was simply going to ignore him before he finally spoke up, not bothering to cease his writing, "You're being discharged," he said.
Klein didn't quite believe what he'd heard, "Excuse me? You're letting me go?"
Gerard looked up briefly and made a face, "Of course not. You're being transferred into the regular justice system for your resocialization and release."
A more mentally healthy Klein might've considered this a farse, but today's Klein was anything but healthy, "Y...you're serious? What about the bombing, the information?"
Gerard ignored him, sliding a form across the table for him to sign with a soft-tip marker, "This is to show I've informed you of your release and your charges, which I'm not going to bother to go over again. Save me the time for a change, we'll just use the surveillance video otherwise."
Klein held the marker, numb, "But...you can't just throw the issue away."
Gerard looked annoyed, "We haven't. We just don't need you."
Numbly, Klein signed the form, speaking as Gerard took it back, "Look, we can work something out..."
A buzzer sounded, and two unidentifiable guards entered the room. Gerard stood, ordering the forms, "There's nothing to work out. Come along now."
Klein stumbled through the halls with disbelief - this had to be some sort of trick, a game. The only reason he knew anything was by chance, how could they capture someone else? Any moment now, they'd stop, and -
They'd made it to a vehicle bay; a prison truck idling, waiting for its charge. As the guard went to manhandle him into the truck, Klein's last resolve broke and he struggled back, raving, "I'll help you! I'll help you! I'll tell you everything!"
Gerard replied calmly, indifferently, "You can't help us and we already know. You had your chance and you lost it." The guards continued to shove the struggling Klein forward.
Now the prisoner had lost any semblance of self-control, "You can't! You can't possibly! Listen, I'm not even supposed to know what I know, it- it could still be useful! Please! I'm telling the truth!"
It seemed that Gerard was going to ignore Klein's pleas when he raised a hand for the guards to stop, "I'll hear you out. You'll have five minutes."
"And you won't send me for resocialization?" Klein asked pitifully. It was all Gerard could do not to sneer.
"If your information is valuable, we won't have any choice in the matter."
Klein didn't think he had ever felt more gratitude in his life than he did right now.
Elysion City, Elysion
Humanist Union, Sector L1
There was a sense of finality when Lieutenant Director Daniel Bryan slid the completed Bowman Report across Masterson's desk, standing at ease as the older woman scanned its pages and flicked over the summary, "So New Havonian seperatists set the whole thing off."
"Yes m'am," Bryan said, "Mostly disaffected mid-military officers, government bureaucrats, some industrial big wigs...you know the sort. Bowman was targeted due to his importance in normalizing and maintaining relations with the sector since annexation. They were hoping to destabilize our control using the Centralist talks as a fig leaf."
Masterson scowled, "More trouble than it's worth, that whole sector and that planet in particular. Every time we turn around, the roaches start crawling out of the walls."
Bryan didn't necessarily agree with the woman's evaluation, but he didn't contradict her, "Of course, what's really interesting is who the plotters claim was backing them."
"Foreign investors, yes," Masterson said, letting the report fall to her desk, "We peel back a layer and another one reveals itself."
"At this time," Bryan said, knowing the director's question without having to ask, "We have no leads, only guesses. It will take time and much reviewing, but we expect to find a thread to grasp somewhere. No conspiracy is perfect."
"The sooner," Masterson said, "the better."
Truth fears no trial.
-
Force Lord
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1562
- Joined: 2008-10-12 05:36pm
- Location: Rio Piedras, San Juan, Puerto Rico
- Contact:
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
The Central Times-Military
Dispute over Navy budget?
There has been disagreement over the amount of money the Navy should recieve, and how it should be used. The Navy has plans to upgrade both it's battleline and carrier force from superheavies downwards. It wants the first part of the improvements to happen this year, but the Center of War insists that the Navy should wait until 3402 since military spending for this year will be much lower than last year. This conflict of priorities is likely to continue until Dirad Kierger assumes power.
Article comes before January 8, 3401.
Dispute over Navy budget?
There has been disagreement over the amount of money the Navy should recieve, and how it should be used. The Navy has plans to upgrade both it's battleline and carrier force from superheavies downwards. It wants the first part of the improvements to happen this year, but the Center of War insists that the Navy should wait until 3402 since military spending for this year will be much lower than last year. This conflict of priorities is likely to continue until Dirad Kierger assumes power.
Article comes before January 8, 3401.
An inhabitant from the Island of Cars.
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
Remember these guys?
28 August 3400
Orange Free System
It had been a boring and tedious process wiring The Captain into the Angmarid freighter. Somehow, nothing had gone wrong aside from the expected, normal little bugs that occur when a new system is put into a new ship. They hooked him up to the systems and tested them and all it all it was quite tedious and boring, which was a good thing for both Kees' and Jan van Maan's sanities and The Captain's anger levels but not so much for any readers, so this will all be skipped.
Then there was refueling, recharging, pumping water, all those sorts of supply issues. That was also boring so it'll also be skipped, except for this picture:
Once life support was up and running throughout, the mercenaries of Multi-Planetary United began to bring in the prawns Khe!Srri.
Mostly they were brought in giant container loads, brought by truck and train and all sorts of other transportation modes, including one slightly ironic moment when a container came pulled by a group of harnessed Khe!Srri. Rarely a handful escaped, but they were mostly recaptured or shot. An impromptu elevator was set up to ferry each group to the holding cells, along with supplies.
Due to corruption, cheaper dog food was sometimes substituted, with the bureaucrat responsible pocketing the difference.
That afternoon, Jan took some time off for one last meeting with Jacob Pama at the MPU headquarters. Jacob's idea, and when Jan was in and the door was shut, he set a small and slick (and likely illegal) field jammer on his desk.
Jan's voice did not say it, but his expression and posture did. “Oh no.”
Jacob leaned over. “Bru, did you ever think hard about your future, what you'd like to do?”
What is the trick? What is the trick? What is he trying to get at?
He continued. “I'm guessing from your silence that you've been trying to live day to day, just surviving, scraping by, not being able to think in the long term. Been too long? That's no way for a van Maan to live.” Jan looked increasingly nervous. “After this job is done and your record is clean, what do you plan to do?”
“Go back home.” There was a pause, as if Jan planned to say more, but then he leaned back and decided to stop there.
“So that's it? Go back to the plantation, see if Da and Mallie will take you back?” He sneered.
“They will,” Jan said defensively. “I'm family, so I can go back. They just won't talk about the time that Uncle or Cousin Jan had to go away for a while. That's the way we deal with it, and after a few weeks, they won't care anymore, because they can always use more hands and someone who can handle farm equipment.” I said too much. What is the trick here? Where is the trap?
“So that's it? You won't want to consider, shall we say, 'higher aspirations'?”
“No!” What is all this sneakiness for? Just a job offer at MPU?
“With your recent experiences and first-hand knowledge of the seedier parts of the former Outlands-”
“I don't care! I don't want any more of this fake excuse for a life!”
“-many options available-”
“No!” And this last one, Jan punctuated by jumping up and banging his fist on the table. “No! I don't know what your bosses are trying to put you up to, but I just want to go home! Go home and not think about any of this ever again! Ga!” In exasperation he swung his arms out, accidentally knocking the jammer off the desk. It made hardly a sound as it landed on the thick, expensive carpet, but there was no way of telling if it was still working.
“Then I suppose that is that,” said Jacob as he picked up and checked the jammer. He sat back in his chair and slid it out of sight. A tap of a buzzer on the wall panel, and the door reopened, letting the security back in to escort out van Maan. “Farewell, Jan, until we meet again.” When the door was closed again, he went back to work, getting a few items of work done before he started his vacation, which would come very soon.
Meanwhile, back at The Captain, Version 2.0 (tentative), Josse leaped upon Oatmeal's back. “Find Notsix! Notsix! Hurry!” Oatmeal sped off, down the corridors of the freighter, hunting for her scent, as the tiny Tym clung for dear life. It didn't take long.
“Good boy! Good Oatmeal! Notsix! Notsix! There's a problem! It's bad!”
“A problem?”
“It's really bad!” she squeaked.
“How so?”
“Really, really bad!”
“What, if I may ask, IS this problem?”
It came out as a breathless rapid string of words. “Our circulation systems won't handle the load and the scrubbers will be overburdened during the trip and I don't think we have cargo room enough-”
“Short version, please, little Josse!”
“We're over-capacity!”
That made Notsix blink her tiny dark eyes. “How over-capacity?”
“We're supposedta take a hundred thousand prawns, right? But they've already loaded a hundred fifty thousand and keep bringing more up! And there's a big long queue outside! The ship will be overburdened! Our primary sewage-” and she went back into her long list of everything that would go wrong, a list that became increasingly technical. Notsix ignored it to transmit the message to her spouse.
The Captain! Hear?
Yes, I heard, my dear. I'm counting now. There was a pause of a few seconds. She's wrong. One hundred sixty six thousand and counting.
She sighed and rested her head-plate against a wall. “What will we do?”
I wish I knew. We are in no situation to argue, either.
28 August 3400
Orange Free System
Then there was refueling, recharging, pumping water, all those sorts of supply issues. That was also boring so it'll also be skipped, except for this picture:
Due to corruption, cheaper dog food was sometimes substituted, with the bureaucrat responsible pocketing the difference.
That afternoon, Jan took some time off for one last meeting with Jacob Pama at the MPU headquarters. Jacob's idea, and when Jan was in and the door was shut, he set a small and slick (and likely illegal) field jammer on his desk.
Jan's voice did not say it, but his expression and posture did. “Oh no.”
Jacob leaned over. “Bru, did you ever think hard about your future, what you'd like to do?”
What is the trick? What is the trick? What is he trying to get at?
He continued. “I'm guessing from your silence that you've been trying to live day to day, just surviving, scraping by, not being able to think in the long term. Been too long? That's no way for a van Maan to live.” Jan looked increasingly nervous. “After this job is done and your record is clean, what do you plan to do?”
“Go back home.” There was a pause, as if Jan planned to say more, but then he leaned back and decided to stop there.
“So that's it? Go back to the plantation, see if Da and Mallie will take you back?” He sneered.
“They will,” Jan said defensively. “I'm family, so I can go back. They just won't talk about the time that Uncle or Cousin Jan had to go away for a while. That's the way we deal with it, and after a few weeks, they won't care anymore, because they can always use more hands and someone who can handle farm equipment.” I said too much. What is the trick here? Where is the trap?
“So that's it? You won't want to consider, shall we say, 'higher aspirations'?”
“No!” What is all this sneakiness for? Just a job offer at MPU?
“With your recent experiences and first-hand knowledge of the seedier parts of the former Outlands-”
“I don't care! I don't want any more of this fake excuse for a life!”
“-many options available-”
“No!” And this last one, Jan punctuated by jumping up and banging his fist on the table. “No! I don't know what your bosses are trying to put you up to, but I just want to go home! Go home and not think about any of this ever again! Ga!” In exasperation he swung his arms out, accidentally knocking the jammer off the desk. It made hardly a sound as it landed on the thick, expensive carpet, but there was no way of telling if it was still working.
“Then I suppose that is that,” said Jacob as he picked up and checked the jammer. He sat back in his chair and slid it out of sight. A tap of a buzzer on the wall panel, and the door reopened, letting the security back in to escort out van Maan. “Farewell, Jan, until we meet again.” When the door was closed again, he went back to work, getting a few items of work done before he started his vacation, which would come very soon.
Meanwhile, back at The Captain, Version 2.0 (tentative), Josse leaped upon Oatmeal's back. “Find Notsix! Notsix! Hurry!” Oatmeal sped off, down the corridors of the freighter, hunting for her scent, as the tiny Tym clung for dear life. It didn't take long.
“Good boy! Good Oatmeal! Notsix! Notsix! There's a problem! It's bad!”
“It's really bad!” she squeaked.
“How so?”
“Really, really bad!”
“What, if I may ask, IS this problem?”
It came out as a breathless rapid string of words. “Our circulation systems won't handle the load and the scrubbers will be overburdened during the trip and I don't think we have cargo room enough-”
“Short version, please, little Josse!”
“We're over-capacity!”
That made Notsix blink her tiny dark eyes. “How over-capacity?”
“We're supposedta take a hundred thousand prawns, right? But they've already loaded a hundred fifty thousand and keep bringing more up! And there's a big long queue outside! The ship will be overburdened! Our primary sewage-” and she went back into her long list of everything that would go wrong, a list that became increasingly technical. Notsix ignored it to transmit the message to her spouse.
The Captain! Hear?
Yes, I heard, my dear. I'm counting now. There was a pause of a few seconds. She's wrong. One hundred sixty six thousand and counting.
She sighed and rested her head-plate against a wall. “What will we do?”
I wish I knew. We are in no situation to argue, either.
DPDarkPrimus is my boyfriend!
SDNW4 Nation: The Refuge And, on Nova Terra, Al-Stan the Totally and Completely Honest and Legitimate Weapons Dealer and Used Starship Salesman slept on a bed made of money, with a blaster under his pillow and his sombrero pulled over his face. This is to say, he slept very well indeed.
SDNW4 Nation: The Refuge And, on Nova Terra, Al-Stan the Totally and Completely Honest and Legitimate Weapons Dealer and Used Starship Salesman slept on a bed made of money, with a blaster under his pillow and his sombrero pulled over his face. This is to say, he slept very well indeed.
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
Mission: classified
Location: classified
Date: classified
First went the diplomatic yachts and the defending warships, and later there were others. Wherever they went, there was always at least one Aggregate among the entourage who was given a bland and low-ranking title, one that could easily be ignored. Knowledge of their true status and responsibilities was limited to a select few who could be trusted not to divulge any information on them.
By day or in the open, they were like any other Aggregates, in their shiny little carts and squishy little bodies, looking adorable and harmless, if not outright helpless without their technological aids. In a couple locations, they engineered a moment where a cart tipped over on some stairs or other obstacle, and everyone around had to make quick work and a big scene (with pretense of trying to make it seem little) of scooping up the frantically peeping little blobs and righting the cart.
But in the shadows, in those ventilation shafts and dark alleys out of sight, away from prying eyes? It was quite different.
There were many variations. Some wore special suits covering their small bodies, while others had implants all under the surface; some added attachments, and a certain elite few used only their natural talents and trained skills. Some used combinations. There was little consistency in method, only in results. They had been tested and their ranks weeded at Prajuk's Horizon and a score of other occupied territories and facilities. Only the best, those who could gather the most information the fastest and most of all, not get discovered while doing it, were allowed to ply their craft Outside.
As a general rule, Modulars did much better at it than Aggregates. Their cells could operate somewhat autonomously, not requiring difficult work-arounds to maintain a connection with the others, and they had a much easier time performing tricks like making themselves transparent or changing colors.
But there was no room for a Modular tank on the yachts, and it was decided to keep the existence of the entire race quiet, so as not to disturb the other races among the stars and to hold a few secrets until they were needed. Therefore, the best of the best Aggregates went instead. And so, on many worlds across known space, rolling and flowing and squeezing through tiny crevices that nothing hard could fit through, the spies did their work. They picked up dust on the surfaces and absorbed it into their bodies for future analysis, to study the skin cells and industrial pollutants or whatever else they found, watched and listened or planted tiny devices that did such for pickup later, performed scans, and many other tasks.
And most of all, they worked very hard to not get caught in the bizarre and frightening space Outside. Not enough was known out there, and correct decisions could not be made without accurate data, but they could not afford to start hostilities.
Result: My spies are cuter than yours!
Location: classified
Date: classified
First went the diplomatic yachts and the defending warships, and later there were others. Wherever they went, there was always at least one Aggregate among the entourage who was given a bland and low-ranking title, one that could easily be ignored. Knowledge of their true status and responsibilities was limited to a select few who could be trusted not to divulge any information on them.
But in the shadows, in those ventilation shafts and dark alleys out of sight, away from prying eyes? It was quite different.
As a general rule, Modulars did much better at it than Aggregates. Their cells could operate somewhat autonomously, not requiring difficult work-arounds to maintain a connection with the others, and they had a much easier time performing tricks like making themselves transparent or changing colors.
And most of all, they worked very hard to not get caught in the bizarre and frightening space Outside. Not enough was known out there, and correct decisions could not be made without accurate data, but they could not afford to start hostilities.
Result: My spies are cuter than yours!
DPDarkPrimus is my boyfriend!
SDNW4 Nation: The Refuge And, on Nova Terra, Al-Stan the Totally and Completely Honest and Legitimate Weapons Dealer and Used Starship Salesman slept on a bed made of money, with a blaster under his pillow and his sombrero pulled over his face. This is to say, he slept very well indeed.
SDNW4 Nation: The Refuge And, on Nova Terra, Al-Stan the Totally and Completely Honest and Legitimate Weapons Dealer and Used Starship Salesman slept on a bed made of money, with a blaster under his pillow and his sombrero pulled over his face. This is to say, he slept very well indeed.
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
Written with fgalkin!
The Bragulan Economic Exposition Extravaganza of Friendship (BEEEF)
Vlyadibragstok, Southeastern Severnaya Sector / just beyond Northwestern Lena Sector
Unreal Time / October-December 3400
The Solarian Crystal Palace towered imperiously over the frozen radioactive wastes of Vlyadibragstok like a giant stiletto stabbing Byzon’s furry side, forever. Its impressive appearance overawed the BEEEF-goers and drew guests away from the main bunker, while its advanced defenses ensured that only those whose presence was actually desired were allowed entry. The rest, be they rampaging giant apes or even the mighty Legions of Liberation had to wait outside for the hosts to change their mind and let them in.
Fortunately, the Lost’s diplomatic shuttle had been expected and so they encountered no troubles as they approached the Solarian tower. Inside the shuttle, Shroom readied herself for first contact with the Sovereignty. She was still wearing the Imperial Commissar’s uniform she liked so much, so she adjusted the peaked cap and smirked.
“Here, Schuhart, carry this,” she told her bodyguard as she handed it a large leather briefcase, containing, among other things, samples of orichalcum and therefore quite heavy.
“No.” came the response.
“Please?” she tried.
“No.”
Shroom was quite taken aback at the Daemonhost’s refusal.
“But I’m the Emissary! You must obey me!” she protested.
“Correction: I must protect you,” the Greater Daemon said. “I obey my Master, Devourer Of Worlds, Slayer of Suns only.”
“But…” Shroom said, even as the shuttle had made its landing. “Bah! I will deal with you later. Follow me!”
She picked up the briefcase herself and walked towards the exit ramp, the two meter form of her bodyguard towering over her. Once out of the shuttle, she beamed at the Solarian party waiting for her.
“Greetings!” she said. “I am Emissary Shroom and this here is my associate Schuhart. We have come to offer you the hand of friendship from our people.”
The emissary was greeted by a small group of humans, most of whom wore business suits and some of whom wore reflective sunglasses even though they were inside and there wasn’t all that much sunlight. One of them, a red-haired woman in a pinstripe suit, stepped forward. “Welcome to the Crystal Palace,” she said. “My name is América Timex-Sinclair. I am the Director of the Solarian Business Syndicate, and I have been sanctioned to conduct first contact on behalf of the United Solarian Sovereignty.” She appeared to be listening to something for a moment, then looked over the emissary’s shoulder at Schuhart. A minute frown curved her brow. “Madam emissary, I’m not sure what your... associate... is exactly, but I can tell you my security team does not like the look of him at all.” She made a small gesture with two fingers, and two dozen men in mirror-chrome armors appeared to materialize out of thin air. They carried very large beam rifles and remained only briefly visible before reactivating their scatterscreens and vanishing again. “Would you care to explain his presence?”
“Certainly!” Shroom’s grin grew wider. “Schuhart here is for my protection. I mean, the last time I ventured outside I was abducted by a giant ape, and there were other, somewhat similar incidents occurring elsewhere in the galaxy. So, it is now our policy to bring an armed escort to prevent capture to all first contact situations. I do apologize for this, and for causing you undue distress.”
The frown deepened. "Madam emissary, this is a high-security facility. One the continued existence of which is in continuous peril by simple virtue of being located on a Bragulan world. Your thing with the giant ape had half the Legions chomping at the bit to level this place. And according to our sources you have been... quite friendly... with the Bragulans. Now, my government may have promised you an audience with Brigadier Stalin, but this is not a government facility, so my sis the President is not actually in charge here. Mister Castel here," she pointed at one of the men wearing sunglasses, "is. Bluntly speaking, he does not trust you, and he trusts your associate even less. Now, I can guarantee your safety and get you the audience for which you've come here, but only if your... associate... remains here in this bay for the duration of your visit."
“We are friendly to all peoples of the galaxy,” Shroom frowned, for the Sovereignity people were being most unfriendly. “We could be just as friendly to you, if you give us the chance. Mr. Castel,” she turned to look at the sunglasses-wearing man, “if the presence of Schuhart disturbs you so, you can perhaps find comfort in the fact that we are willing to trade some of our defense technologies, if the price is right, so perhaps you too one day will be able to create its like.”
“As for this being some sort of Bragulan trick,” she continued, “may I remind you that it was your side that had suggested this meeting, when they could have used anything else. We thought you would just give us a secure hyperwave or submesonic channel, to be honest. And now you are trying to separate me from my bodyguard. If I were paranoid, I would say that it was your side that has the nefarious designs, to capture me and find out the subject of our recent Bragulan negotiations, perhaps?”
América Sinclair raised an eyebrow and looked at Castel. The man in the black suit shook his head. Sinclair looked back at Shroom and shrugged. “I would argue that it’s you people who wanted something from us and not the other way around, madam emissary... If I felt like arguing. But I don’t. So I’ll just say that if you can’t abide by our terms, then it’s time for you to leave.” She waved a little wave, and for a moment she looked disturbingly like her sister. “Tah. If you still want to talk, well, I’m sure you can find Solaris in a telephone-”
Castel bent closer to her ear and whispered something. Sinclair scowled a little. “... or we could do that,” she admitted and looked back at the Lost emissary. “Mister Castel has suggested a work-around that may yet solve our little predicament. If one of your ships opens a hyperwave channel to the Palace, we will route the signal through our submesonic link to the Brigadier. There may be a slight lag on the line, but if it’s good enough for you, it’s good enough for me. What do you say?”
Shroom considered her options. On one hand, the Solarians were being most unfriendly indeed. On the other, they WERE deep inside Bragulan territory and subject to their endless dickeries. Having experienced these dickeries firsthand during the demonstration of the Sphere of Exclusion, she could certainly sympathize with the humans. Even if their leader was a complete and utter bitch.
“Very well,” she sighed. “If you don’t want us here, we’re going. I’ll call you back from orbit.” She turned around to walk up the shuttle ramp.
“Note: If I wanted to kill you, all of you would be already dead,” came Schuhart’s low rumbling voice. Its horned head rotated around, making a full circle and looking, in turn, at each of the FORCE operatives hidden behind their scatterscreens. The next moment the daemonhost was suddenly facing backwards towards the shuttle without making any visible effort to turn around. It followed Shroom up the ramp, its long black cloak completely smooth and motionless as if it was standing still.
“By the Eternal Fires!” Shroom cursed as soon as the shuttle’s ramp closed behind them. She commanded the Lesser controlling the shuttle to establish contact with the Palace and send them a secure hyperwave frequency for the teleconference.
Then she sat down and brooded. Her very good day had suddenly turned not so good. She tried to pinpoint that exact moment and realized that it was when she met her new bodyguard.
“You!” she turned to it. “It’s all your fault!” she paused as she considered that it wasn’t actually Schuhart’s fault as daemons did not believe in luck. Still, she couldn’t take her words back now that she said them. “You shouldn’t have showed off like that, either. Now, you’ve confirmed that their fears were justified!”
The daemonhost gave her an expressionless look. “Note: It is standard practice to use the effect highly advanced technology has on primitive beings to gain an advantage in combat.” Shroom blinked in surprise.
“Except that there was no combat and they’re not particularly primitive. Did that part escape you? For all we know, they were able to scan you and gain an impression of your capabilities.”
“Note: the likelihood of that outcome is miniscule. You are severely overestimating their capabilities.”
“That is irrelevant!” Shroom snapped. “You are not a diplomat! Get it through your extra-thick polyalloy-enhanced skull! You’re not trained for this. You told me your job is to guard me, and that’s what you get to do. You don’t get to show off because someone hurt your feelings. Otherwise, I will have to report this and you will be reassigned. Do you understand me?”
Schuhart looked at her and said nothing.
The Bragulan Economic Exposition Extravaganza of Friendship (BEEEF)
Vlyadibragstok, Southeastern Severnaya Sector / just beyond Northwestern Lena Sector
Unreal Time / October-December 3400
The Solarian Crystal Palace towered imperiously over the frozen radioactive wastes of Vlyadibragstok like a giant stiletto stabbing Byzon’s furry side, forever. Its impressive appearance overawed the BEEEF-goers and drew guests away from the main bunker, while its advanced defenses ensured that only those whose presence was actually desired were allowed entry. The rest, be they rampaging giant apes or even the mighty Legions of Liberation had to wait outside for the hosts to change their mind and let them in.
Fortunately, the Lost’s diplomatic shuttle had been expected and so they encountered no troubles as they approached the Solarian tower. Inside the shuttle, Shroom readied herself for first contact with the Sovereignty. She was still wearing the Imperial Commissar’s uniform she liked so much, so she adjusted the peaked cap and smirked.
“Here, Schuhart, carry this,” she told her bodyguard as she handed it a large leather briefcase, containing, among other things, samples of orichalcum and therefore quite heavy.
“No.” came the response.
“Please?” she tried.
“No.”
Shroom was quite taken aback at the Daemonhost’s refusal.
“But I’m the Emissary! You must obey me!” she protested.
“Correction: I must protect you,” the Greater Daemon said. “I obey my Master, Devourer Of Worlds, Slayer of Suns only.”
“But…” Shroom said, even as the shuttle had made its landing. “Bah! I will deal with you later. Follow me!”
She picked up the briefcase herself and walked towards the exit ramp, the two meter form of her bodyguard towering over her. Once out of the shuttle, she beamed at the Solarian party waiting for her.
“Greetings!” she said. “I am Emissary Shroom and this here is my associate Schuhart. We have come to offer you the hand of friendship from our people.”
The emissary was greeted by a small group of humans, most of whom wore business suits and some of whom wore reflective sunglasses even though they were inside and there wasn’t all that much sunlight. One of them, a red-haired woman in a pinstripe suit, stepped forward. “Welcome to the Crystal Palace,” she said. “My name is América Timex-Sinclair. I am the Director of the Solarian Business Syndicate, and I have been sanctioned to conduct first contact on behalf of the United Solarian Sovereignty.” She appeared to be listening to something for a moment, then looked over the emissary’s shoulder at Schuhart. A minute frown curved her brow. “Madam emissary, I’m not sure what your... associate... is exactly, but I can tell you my security team does not like the look of him at all.” She made a small gesture with two fingers, and two dozen men in mirror-chrome armors appeared to materialize out of thin air. They carried very large beam rifles and remained only briefly visible before reactivating their scatterscreens and vanishing again. “Would you care to explain his presence?”
“Certainly!” Shroom’s grin grew wider. “Schuhart here is for my protection. I mean, the last time I ventured outside I was abducted by a giant ape, and there were other, somewhat similar incidents occurring elsewhere in the galaxy. So, it is now our policy to bring an armed escort to prevent capture to all first contact situations. I do apologize for this, and for causing you undue distress.”
The frown deepened. "Madam emissary, this is a high-security facility. One the continued existence of which is in continuous peril by simple virtue of being located on a Bragulan world. Your thing with the giant ape had half the Legions chomping at the bit to level this place. And according to our sources you have been... quite friendly... with the Bragulans. Now, my government may have promised you an audience with Brigadier Stalin, but this is not a government facility, so my sis the President is not actually in charge here. Mister Castel here," she pointed at one of the men wearing sunglasses, "is. Bluntly speaking, he does not trust you, and he trusts your associate even less. Now, I can guarantee your safety and get you the audience for which you've come here, but only if your... associate... remains here in this bay for the duration of your visit."
“We are friendly to all peoples of the galaxy,” Shroom frowned, for the Sovereignity people were being most unfriendly. “We could be just as friendly to you, if you give us the chance. Mr. Castel,” she turned to look at the sunglasses-wearing man, “if the presence of Schuhart disturbs you so, you can perhaps find comfort in the fact that we are willing to trade some of our defense technologies, if the price is right, so perhaps you too one day will be able to create its like.”
“As for this being some sort of Bragulan trick,” she continued, “may I remind you that it was your side that had suggested this meeting, when they could have used anything else. We thought you would just give us a secure hyperwave or submesonic channel, to be honest. And now you are trying to separate me from my bodyguard. If I were paranoid, I would say that it was your side that has the nefarious designs, to capture me and find out the subject of our recent Bragulan negotiations, perhaps?”
América Sinclair raised an eyebrow and looked at Castel. The man in the black suit shook his head. Sinclair looked back at Shroom and shrugged. “I would argue that it’s you people who wanted something from us and not the other way around, madam emissary... If I felt like arguing. But I don’t. So I’ll just say that if you can’t abide by our terms, then it’s time for you to leave.” She waved a little wave, and for a moment she looked disturbingly like her sister. “Tah. If you still want to talk, well, I’m sure you can find Solaris in a telephone-”
Castel bent closer to her ear and whispered something. Sinclair scowled a little. “... or we could do that,” she admitted and looked back at the Lost emissary. “Mister Castel has suggested a work-around that may yet solve our little predicament. If one of your ships opens a hyperwave channel to the Palace, we will route the signal through our submesonic link to the Brigadier. There may be a slight lag on the line, but if it’s good enough for you, it’s good enough for me. What do you say?”
Shroom considered her options. On one hand, the Solarians were being most unfriendly indeed. On the other, they WERE deep inside Bragulan territory and subject to their endless dickeries. Having experienced these dickeries firsthand during the demonstration of the Sphere of Exclusion, she could certainly sympathize with the humans. Even if their leader was a complete and utter bitch.
“Very well,” she sighed. “If you don’t want us here, we’re going. I’ll call you back from orbit.” She turned around to walk up the shuttle ramp.
“Note: If I wanted to kill you, all of you would be already dead,” came Schuhart’s low rumbling voice. Its horned head rotated around, making a full circle and looking, in turn, at each of the FORCE operatives hidden behind their scatterscreens. The next moment the daemonhost was suddenly facing backwards towards the shuttle without making any visible effort to turn around. It followed Shroom up the ramp, its long black cloak completely smooth and motionless as if it was standing still.
“By the Eternal Fires!” Shroom cursed as soon as the shuttle’s ramp closed behind them. She commanded the Lesser controlling the shuttle to establish contact with the Palace and send them a secure hyperwave frequency for the teleconference.
Then she sat down and brooded. Her very good day had suddenly turned not so good. She tried to pinpoint that exact moment and realized that it was when she met her new bodyguard.
“You!” she turned to it. “It’s all your fault!” she paused as she considered that it wasn’t actually Schuhart’s fault as daemons did not believe in luck. Still, she couldn’t take her words back now that she said them. “You shouldn’t have showed off like that, either. Now, you’ve confirmed that their fears were justified!”
The daemonhost gave her an expressionless look. “Note: It is standard practice to use the effect highly advanced technology has on primitive beings to gain an advantage in combat.” Shroom blinked in surprise.
“Except that there was no combat and they’re not particularly primitive. Did that part escape you? For all we know, they were able to scan you and gain an impression of your capabilities.”
“Note: the likelihood of that outcome is miniscule. You are severely overestimating their capabilities.”
“That is irrelevant!” Shroom snapped. “You are not a diplomat! Get it through your extra-thick polyalloy-enhanced skull! You’re not trained for this. You told me your job is to guard me, and that’s what you get to do. You don’t get to show off because someone hurt your feelings. Otherwise, I will have to report this and you will be reassigned. Do you understand me?”
Schuhart looked at her and said nothing.
SDN World 3: The Sultanate of Egypt
SDN World 4: The United Solarian Sovereignty
SDN World 5: San Dorado
There'll be a bodycount, we're gonna watch it rise
The folks at CNN, they won't believe their eyes
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
Hippolyta Island
United Enclaves of Gilead, Hobbs, Sector X-13
23 August 3400
The days since the Jieshi militant attack had seen Dani and Amber, among others, turned into instant celebrities. The Gilean Enclaves were offering them rewards for what they'd done; the monarchs of the sector, save Ivalice and Cornelia, had granted them various medals and awards while back home they had made headlines with what they had done. Their usual Liberal and Labor friends had expressed gratitude on their survival and marvel at their "sheer audacity"; their usual Tory enemies, on the other hand, had done an about face, albeit one with a hint of insult to it, by praising the fact that even they, the "hedonistic young peeresses" that they were, had still fought back against those who sought to abduct them and had saved the Grand Duchess of Tyconia and her sister from murder (naturally the implication was that if they had been capable of such, imagine what a proper exemplar of Anglian virtues could have done?).
The convention had been understandably short-circuited by the affair. The Grand Duchess and her entourage had been taken off world and back to Tyconia within 36 hours of their rescue, whisked back to the security of their capital and the many guards and troops there. Reina had offered Dani and Amber, as well as Sarina and Helena, invitations to the royal wedding to come the next year, and Sarisa had teasingly offered to spar with both to test their mutual martial arts acumen. Both offers were being taken up for a later date; counter-offers of attending their own wedding, when it came, had been made and provisionally accepted.
With Sarina in the hospital for the first couple of days, not to mention the hounding press about them, Dani and Amber had been denied the quiet, sensual vacation they'd hoped to enjoy. Finally, frustrated with her inability to enjoy even a night with Amber, Dani had decided to deal with the problem in a direct way; she had literally bought her own island, amongst a chain of tropical atolls a thousand kilometers to the west-northwest of the Gilean mainland, and taken Amber there for their last day. There was nothing on the isle; it was far from resource deposits in the ocean, it lacked even the slightest capability to sustain a population with only one patch of palm trees to one end of it; in other words, perfect for a pair of lovers hoping for some time together. And given the circumstances that had led to this, Dani had mischievously named the island after the mythological Queen of the Amazons, it would even appear as such on planetary maps soon enough.
Just two hours had been needed for automated machinery to give them a prefab bungalow with their own electrical system, aided by daytime solar battery charging, and after the day was spent setting up their "love shack" the way they wanted it Dani and Amber had begun to examine their new hideaway. They were in tube tops made of a gentle, transluscent material that was a pleasure to wear and which didn't hide what lay below them, merely slightly obscured it. Similar material was used for the skirts that were draped around their waists and hips; the colors were matching as well, as the outfits had been bought speedily for the purpose of this long, romantic walk together.
As they walked along, hand-in-hand, the two lovers breathed in the scents of the ocean around them. They were not telepaths, but they did not need such talents to know what one another was thinking. Their acquaintance, while still not as long as those of others, was sufficient to make their thoughts plain to one another. Dani stopped walking first, prompting Amber to do the same. They clasped their hands together closely and up toward their chests, or rather the shorter Amber's heart. "I don't think I say this often enough, Amber..." Dani's green eyes had a bit of a twinkle to them. "...but I love you."
"You do say it often enough."
"Well, let me say it again. I love you. I love your wit, your steadiness, your passions, your pride, and I want to have you as my wife. I want to live the rest of my life with you."
Amber smiled at her. "It's almost like a dream, really. You are the most beautiful woman in the entire galaxy and amongst its wealthiest. You could have any woman you set your eyes on, just about. And you've picked me, and I'm just this young girl who's got more land and titles than actual money."
"I know." Dani pressed her head against Amber and kept full eye contact with her. "You could have come to me at any time and asked me for money, but you wouldn't. You couldn't even do it the night you brought it up. I saw you wrestle with it every time I sent a payment to cover your family debts. That fierce pride... don't ever give it up."
Dani took her hands away from Amber's long enough to reach into the folds of her waist sash. What she brought out was a ring box, and within were two rings; the one Amber had intended to give her this night and which she'd given after Dani's impromptu proposal during the hostage crisis, and a similar ring - just as beautiful - that had been added to the box. "I figured we might as well do this with actual rings," Dani said before going down to one knee. "Amber Kelly, will you marry me?"
With tears forming in her eyes, Amber got to a knee as well and took out the second ring from the box, sliding it on her right hand ring finger. After doing so she took the box and reversed it toward Dani. "I will. And will you marry me, Danielle Verdes?"
"I will." Dani accepted the ring and put it on her hand. She let Amber keep the box, secured snugly in the folds of the cloth at her hip, and took Amber's hand again. "You know, we don't have to have a major social event wedding in Westminster if you don't want one. I honestly don't care either way, we could just find some small church in the Caroline Islands, or on Wellington Bay...."
"You and I both know that for people of our standing, you don't get to do big things privately," Amber lamented, tears streaming from her eyes. "Let our friends and allies have the grand social wedding they'll be expecting. Then we will get away from the capital and spend time together, just the two of us."
"We'll come back here, my beautiful Amazon," Dani said. "We'll have our honeymoon on this island, and our anniversaries too." Smiling, she stood with Amber. Their night was growing short, given the setting sun in the distance. After the night they'd be racing to put everything back in the shuttle to be back tomorrow, since they were due to leave for home later tomorrow. But right now, at this moment, the only thing that mattered to her was the twinkle from Amber's tear-filled eyes, the way the sun of Hobbs glistened on Amber's beautiful body, and the way her heart fluttered with joy at knowing that she didn't have to worry about losing this proud young woman ever again.
With her hand on Amber's cheek, Dani pulled herself close and placed a warm kiss on her bride-to-be's waiting lips.
National Palace of Tyconia, Carwen
Grand Duchy of Tyconia, Janus System (Sector X-13)
27 August 3400
Druni fidgeted in the dress she'd been tasked to wear for the formal function, in which Reina had formally inducted her as a Knight of the Order of St. George "for services to the House of Schweizer and the Tyconian nation". A villa in the coast outside of the city was being leased to her free of charge for when she wanted to leave the city, while she was permitted a room in the palace whenever she desired to stay. A stipend was being provided for her, modest by the standards of her hostess but extravagant by Druni's standards; most of it would go to charities and, honestly, to the coffers of the Order, because for all she didn't think it was her path, Druni still felt loyalty to the Silver Moon.
"You make that look good," Sarisa had told her when the night began. They were together again with the dinner winding down; Druni was wearing a Dorei fashion gown which was essentially, to Humans, a tube-top with transluscent material over the belly and a complete dress down to the ankles and her non-heeled shoes (Dorei had never developed the dreaded "high heels" of Human fashion, and Druni was not foolish enough to try them). The color of the material was a mix of purple hues and blues that went well with Druni's own blue skin. Sarisa was in a more modest, proper evening gown in the national colors, and clearly chafed at it.
At Sarisa's arm was a well-dressed young woman, tan-complexioned like Danielle and Amber had been, but of Tyconian nationality. She had been introduced as the Lady Meira, the daughter of the Marquess of Zaragosa, with the given name of Catalina; Druni didn't need telepathy to know the young woman was a fellow ESPer and Sarisa's lover, or at least her partner - Druni was unsure if the emotions between the two girls were any different than what she and Zaria had felt back in the cloister.
Or me and Nika, Druni had to admit, looking to her smartly-dressed partner who had let herself be pulled away to talk to a couple of the other daughters of Tyconian politicos and nobility. Nika was a bit older, after all, and their relationship was still very much one of two pleasure-seekers caught in a constant struggle to see who could out-sex the other one in the bedroom. The Korugan girl was admittedly growing on her, Druni had to admit, but there was a part of her that was guarded. It didn't help that Korugans were so notoriously hard to read telepathically, regardless of their actual ESP.
Worst off for Druni was this wouldn't be the last time she had to go through with this. She had an official invitation now to the wedding when it happened, and Queen Hilda was going to present her a membership in the Order of the Eagle in a ceremony beforehand, which meant having to wear these overdone dresses again and to put up with giggling young girls who, straight or not, told the absolute worst dirty jokes about lesbians that Druni had ever endured (and, having been an Acolyte in the Silver Moon, she had heard a surprising number of such when one considered the Silver Moon's otherwise-stoic reputation).
"Well, it's nice to meet the competition finally," Catalina joked aloud, looking over Druni and jostling her out of thought.
"What? Competition?" Druni looked flustered between the two.
"What Cat is referring to is the usual gossip amongst us daughters of nobility," Sarisa replied with a smile. "The common perception, Druni, is that you are my paramour."
"What?!" Druni's flustered look turned to a blush of sorts. "But... we've never... Catalina, you know..."
"Oh, I know full well Sarisa only brought you so that you could meet Master Maroh and learn to use all your gifts," Catalina said. "But a lot of people think Sarisa brought you here to be a lover. Don't worry, tonight is our debut as a couple, and the fact that Nika could barely keep her hands off you when kissing earlier was seen by enough people to shift the gossip talk."
"So you two are..."
"Well, we're not getting married," Sarisa insisted. "At least, not yet..."
"My family will be angry with me if I don't take a husband," Catalina reminded her, before smiling and adding, "It's a good thing Father and I came to an understanding long ago that I will always be angering the family, but that I am still his daughter."
"I've heard some people saying that if Reina is going to marry another woman I should find a husband. To that, well, I have only one thing to say." Smirking, Sarisa planted a kiss on Catalina's lips.
Druni giggled at that. Wearying of the party, however, she decided to seek out Nika... whom, it seems, she couldn't find.
It hadn't been hard for Nika to slip away from the party. She soon found herself in an empty parlor, the door behind her secured. She turned back from it to see a man sitting alone at the table. Any Tyconian would know him immediately as Premier Dragovich. She, however, knew him another way. "Hello, Green 1," she sighed.
"Green 20," Dragovich answered with a false smile. "I see you have worked your magic. Does Druni suspect...?"
"No, no she doesn't," Nika replied. "Nor do my parents. As far as either knows, I just happened to enjoy tea so much I had a chance meeting with Druni."
"Good, good. And your appearance tonight was key, it should finally put to rest the idea that Sarisa brought Druni here to be her lover," Dragovich stated. Nika knew as well that Sarisa's meeting with Catalina Meira wasn't exactly a stroke of chance either; the Marquess Zaragosa was a political ally and the social party where they'd met was one Dragovich had helped to set up. All in all, the Organization was just as capable of playing match-maker as it was of messing with assassins. "You did well at Halsing. I would have hated to have asked Queen Hilda to accept having a husband, given her... orientation."
"And what about Blue 4?", Nika asked.
"His remains were found. He'd activated his wipe protocols, so whomever came for him didn't get anything crucial," Dragovich answered. "We believe the most likely culprit is the Ebon Blade operative Druni ran into, according to her statements. Such a figure has already been strongly indicated as breaching our server security in Asimovia."
"Then this was a false flag operation," Nika remarked. "The Jieshi militants were patsies."
"Yes, it does look that way. But we're not sure yet whom the Ebon Blade operative is working for. Princess Sara and Prince Vayne are equally capable of hiring such monstrous people to do their dirty work."
Nika nodded at that, trying not to think too much about her potential foes. The powers behind the thrones of Cornelia and Ivalice..
"Anyway, keep close to Druni," Dragovich said, heading toward the door. "Just remember not to get too attached. No single person is more important than the Plan, and we may have need of your services elsewhere."
My services as a trained guerrila fighter or my services as a whore?, Nika had almost wanted to ask, but she knew it could be either. She merely nodded, not wanting to offend the head of her Chrome, even as she began to think of Druni and how much she genuinely liked the Dorei girl.
No, not just like. I love her. I love her passion, her courage, her attitude, everything about her.
Before he stepped out, Dragovich turned and spoke yet again. "Also... be careful around her instructor. I know you have orders to monitor, but if you ge too close and he suspects, it might lead to inconvenient truths being leaked out before their time." With that final instruction, Dragovich left.
Sighing, Nika counted to fifty and left herself, taking care not to get close to Dragovich again as she went to find Druni and, hopefully, get away from this stuffy party.
Caroline Palace, Cornelia
Kingdom of Cornelia, Arabica, Sector X-13
28 September 3400
Princess Sara had just returned from a visit to the border fortifications, and a clandestine meeting with the governor of a Republican province contemplating returning to the Kingdom, when Tabitha herself returned. "You look unwell," Sara said matter-of-factly to Tabitha.
The interrogator-assassin nodded briskly. Sara was, unfortunately, a good judge of demeanor regardless of her lacking ESP. Tabitha had been required to go back to the Tower. That meant debriefing of her operations and having to play with some of her fellow Ladies, and playing with ladies could get... rough. Only the most truly masochistic of them ever fully enjoyed it and Tabitha she preferred the "sado" part of "sado-masochistic". It also meant participating in the breaking and training of new initiates to the Ebon Blade and, no matter how sadistic one had become, having to see other young girls suffer as you once suffered had an effect on the mind that only the oldest Ladies ever really moved beyond.
Still, between torturing adolescent and teenage girls and the suffering of debriefing and other things, Tabitha had prevailed in cracking the encrypted communication logs she'd recovered from the android at Halsing. And that made the trip worthwhile.
"I have gained some good information from the data recovered at the Halsing operation," Tabitha informed Sara. "Most of the android's communications were with proxy servers and temporary commlines that lead nowhere. But, on the day of the attack, there were two phone calls that I managed to get a receiving number for despite his excessive encryption." She handed Sara a digital pad with the numbers. "You recognize the calling code?"
"Tyconian," Sara said, nodding. "Someone in Duchess Reina's entourage?"
"Yes. I had sniffer AIs rummage through the comms for the group that was listed for the trip to Halsing. One name stands out; Nika Soran. She is listed as a guest of the Duchess Sarisa."
"That's a Korugan girl," Sara said aloud. "The one with that Dorei Silver Moon member you fought, if my reports from Carwen are to be believed. So the Order is my foe? Protecting one of their own I imagine." She made a mental note to have State Security begin harrassing the Order in her borders and, if possible, assassinating its Knights and Sisters in the Republic.
"The Dorei girl is ex-Silver Moon," Tabitha added. "But not in the Order anymore, I could tell that by how she fought. Besides, the Silver Moon would not have permitted King Charles to die, it's not in their Code. If they were responsible for ruining your orders, they would have blocked them completely. No, this is someone else, someone who benefited from having the King die but not his daughter."
"The only that accomplishes is to ensure the union... succeeds." Sara furrowed her brow from concentration. "After all, King Charles might have eventually remarried, and there is conservative opposition to the inheritance going to an 'unnatural' child born of two women. If he had sired Hilda a half-sibling said factions might have latched upon this child as an alternative heir and the Union would have been dashed. Someone in Tyconia or Fynn, then? Though I can't imagine any Fynnian okaying the assassination..."
"The Tyconians aren't likely to either, too much risk," Tabitha answered. "But perhaps a third party with interests in ensuring the two realms unite would. A third party with, potentially, contacts in both kingdoms, and even elsewhere."
"Agreed. I shall have Security begin arrangements for you to head to Carwen. Find Nika Soran and see where she leads you," Sara ordered.
United Enclaves of Gilead, Hobbs, Sector X-13
23 August 3400
The days since the Jieshi militant attack had seen Dani and Amber, among others, turned into instant celebrities. The Gilean Enclaves were offering them rewards for what they'd done; the monarchs of the sector, save Ivalice and Cornelia, had granted them various medals and awards while back home they had made headlines with what they had done. Their usual Liberal and Labor friends had expressed gratitude on their survival and marvel at their "sheer audacity"; their usual Tory enemies, on the other hand, had done an about face, albeit one with a hint of insult to it, by praising the fact that even they, the "hedonistic young peeresses" that they were, had still fought back against those who sought to abduct them and had saved the Grand Duchess of Tyconia and her sister from murder (naturally the implication was that if they had been capable of such, imagine what a proper exemplar of Anglian virtues could have done?).
The convention had been understandably short-circuited by the affair. The Grand Duchess and her entourage had been taken off world and back to Tyconia within 36 hours of their rescue, whisked back to the security of their capital and the many guards and troops there. Reina had offered Dani and Amber, as well as Sarina and Helena, invitations to the royal wedding to come the next year, and Sarisa had teasingly offered to spar with both to test their mutual martial arts acumen. Both offers were being taken up for a later date; counter-offers of attending their own wedding, when it came, had been made and provisionally accepted.
With Sarina in the hospital for the first couple of days, not to mention the hounding press about them, Dani and Amber had been denied the quiet, sensual vacation they'd hoped to enjoy. Finally, frustrated with her inability to enjoy even a night with Amber, Dani had decided to deal with the problem in a direct way; she had literally bought her own island, amongst a chain of tropical atolls a thousand kilometers to the west-northwest of the Gilean mainland, and taken Amber there for their last day. There was nothing on the isle; it was far from resource deposits in the ocean, it lacked even the slightest capability to sustain a population with only one patch of palm trees to one end of it; in other words, perfect for a pair of lovers hoping for some time together. And given the circumstances that had led to this, Dani had mischievously named the island after the mythological Queen of the Amazons, it would even appear as such on planetary maps soon enough.
Just two hours had been needed for automated machinery to give them a prefab bungalow with their own electrical system, aided by daytime solar battery charging, and after the day was spent setting up their "love shack" the way they wanted it Dani and Amber had begun to examine their new hideaway. They were in tube tops made of a gentle, transluscent material that was a pleasure to wear and which didn't hide what lay below them, merely slightly obscured it. Similar material was used for the skirts that were draped around their waists and hips; the colors were matching as well, as the outfits had been bought speedily for the purpose of this long, romantic walk together.
As they walked along, hand-in-hand, the two lovers breathed in the scents of the ocean around them. They were not telepaths, but they did not need such talents to know what one another was thinking. Their acquaintance, while still not as long as those of others, was sufficient to make their thoughts plain to one another. Dani stopped walking first, prompting Amber to do the same. They clasped their hands together closely and up toward their chests, or rather the shorter Amber's heart. "I don't think I say this often enough, Amber..." Dani's green eyes had a bit of a twinkle to them. "...but I love you."
"You do say it often enough."
"Well, let me say it again. I love you. I love your wit, your steadiness, your passions, your pride, and I want to have you as my wife. I want to live the rest of my life with you."
Amber smiled at her. "It's almost like a dream, really. You are the most beautiful woman in the entire galaxy and amongst its wealthiest. You could have any woman you set your eyes on, just about. And you've picked me, and I'm just this young girl who's got more land and titles than actual money."
"I know." Dani pressed her head against Amber and kept full eye contact with her. "You could have come to me at any time and asked me for money, but you wouldn't. You couldn't even do it the night you brought it up. I saw you wrestle with it every time I sent a payment to cover your family debts. That fierce pride... don't ever give it up."
Dani took her hands away from Amber's long enough to reach into the folds of her waist sash. What she brought out was a ring box, and within were two rings; the one Amber had intended to give her this night and which she'd given after Dani's impromptu proposal during the hostage crisis, and a similar ring - just as beautiful - that had been added to the box. "I figured we might as well do this with actual rings," Dani said before going down to one knee. "Amber Kelly, will you marry me?"
With tears forming in her eyes, Amber got to a knee as well and took out the second ring from the box, sliding it on her right hand ring finger. After doing so she took the box and reversed it toward Dani. "I will. And will you marry me, Danielle Verdes?"
"I will." Dani accepted the ring and put it on her hand. She let Amber keep the box, secured snugly in the folds of the cloth at her hip, and took Amber's hand again. "You know, we don't have to have a major social event wedding in Westminster if you don't want one. I honestly don't care either way, we could just find some small church in the Caroline Islands, or on Wellington Bay...."
"You and I both know that for people of our standing, you don't get to do big things privately," Amber lamented, tears streaming from her eyes. "Let our friends and allies have the grand social wedding they'll be expecting. Then we will get away from the capital and spend time together, just the two of us."
"We'll come back here, my beautiful Amazon," Dani said. "We'll have our honeymoon on this island, and our anniversaries too." Smiling, she stood with Amber. Their night was growing short, given the setting sun in the distance. After the night they'd be racing to put everything back in the shuttle to be back tomorrow, since they were due to leave for home later tomorrow. But right now, at this moment, the only thing that mattered to her was the twinkle from Amber's tear-filled eyes, the way the sun of Hobbs glistened on Amber's beautiful body, and the way her heart fluttered with joy at knowing that she didn't have to worry about losing this proud young woman ever again.
With her hand on Amber's cheek, Dani pulled herself close and placed a warm kiss on her bride-to-be's waiting lips.
National Palace of Tyconia, Carwen
Grand Duchy of Tyconia, Janus System (Sector X-13)
27 August 3400
Druni fidgeted in the dress she'd been tasked to wear for the formal function, in which Reina had formally inducted her as a Knight of the Order of St. George "for services to the House of Schweizer and the Tyconian nation". A villa in the coast outside of the city was being leased to her free of charge for when she wanted to leave the city, while she was permitted a room in the palace whenever she desired to stay. A stipend was being provided for her, modest by the standards of her hostess but extravagant by Druni's standards; most of it would go to charities and, honestly, to the coffers of the Order, because for all she didn't think it was her path, Druni still felt loyalty to the Silver Moon.
"You make that look good," Sarisa had told her when the night began. They were together again with the dinner winding down; Druni was wearing a Dorei fashion gown which was essentially, to Humans, a tube-top with transluscent material over the belly and a complete dress down to the ankles and her non-heeled shoes (Dorei had never developed the dreaded "high heels" of Human fashion, and Druni was not foolish enough to try them). The color of the material was a mix of purple hues and blues that went well with Druni's own blue skin. Sarisa was in a more modest, proper evening gown in the national colors, and clearly chafed at it.
At Sarisa's arm was a well-dressed young woman, tan-complexioned like Danielle and Amber had been, but of Tyconian nationality. She had been introduced as the Lady Meira, the daughter of the Marquess of Zaragosa, with the given name of Catalina; Druni didn't need telepathy to know the young woman was a fellow ESPer and Sarisa's lover, or at least her partner - Druni was unsure if the emotions between the two girls were any different than what she and Zaria had felt back in the cloister.
Or me and Nika, Druni had to admit, looking to her smartly-dressed partner who had let herself be pulled away to talk to a couple of the other daughters of Tyconian politicos and nobility. Nika was a bit older, after all, and their relationship was still very much one of two pleasure-seekers caught in a constant struggle to see who could out-sex the other one in the bedroom. The Korugan girl was admittedly growing on her, Druni had to admit, but there was a part of her that was guarded. It didn't help that Korugans were so notoriously hard to read telepathically, regardless of their actual ESP.
Worst off for Druni was this wouldn't be the last time she had to go through with this. She had an official invitation now to the wedding when it happened, and Queen Hilda was going to present her a membership in the Order of the Eagle in a ceremony beforehand, which meant having to wear these overdone dresses again and to put up with giggling young girls who, straight or not, told the absolute worst dirty jokes about lesbians that Druni had ever endured (and, having been an Acolyte in the Silver Moon, she had heard a surprising number of such when one considered the Silver Moon's otherwise-stoic reputation).
"Well, it's nice to meet the competition finally," Catalina joked aloud, looking over Druni and jostling her out of thought.
"What? Competition?" Druni looked flustered between the two.
"What Cat is referring to is the usual gossip amongst us daughters of nobility," Sarisa replied with a smile. "The common perception, Druni, is that you are my paramour."
"What?!" Druni's flustered look turned to a blush of sorts. "But... we've never... Catalina, you know..."
"Oh, I know full well Sarisa only brought you so that you could meet Master Maroh and learn to use all your gifts," Catalina said. "But a lot of people think Sarisa brought you here to be a lover. Don't worry, tonight is our debut as a couple, and the fact that Nika could barely keep her hands off you when kissing earlier was seen by enough people to shift the gossip talk."
"So you two are..."
"Well, we're not getting married," Sarisa insisted. "At least, not yet..."
"My family will be angry with me if I don't take a husband," Catalina reminded her, before smiling and adding, "It's a good thing Father and I came to an understanding long ago that I will always be angering the family, but that I am still his daughter."
"I've heard some people saying that if Reina is going to marry another woman I should find a husband. To that, well, I have only one thing to say." Smirking, Sarisa planted a kiss on Catalina's lips.
Druni giggled at that. Wearying of the party, however, she decided to seek out Nika... whom, it seems, she couldn't find.
It hadn't been hard for Nika to slip away from the party. She soon found herself in an empty parlor, the door behind her secured. She turned back from it to see a man sitting alone at the table. Any Tyconian would know him immediately as Premier Dragovich. She, however, knew him another way. "Hello, Green 1," she sighed.
"Green 20," Dragovich answered with a false smile. "I see you have worked your magic. Does Druni suspect...?"
"No, no she doesn't," Nika replied. "Nor do my parents. As far as either knows, I just happened to enjoy tea so much I had a chance meeting with Druni."
"Good, good. And your appearance tonight was key, it should finally put to rest the idea that Sarisa brought Druni here to be her lover," Dragovich stated. Nika knew as well that Sarisa's meeting with Catalina Meira wasn't exactly a stroke of chance either; the Marquess Zaragosa was a political ally and the social party where they'd met was one Dragovich had helped to set up. All in all, the Organization was just as capable of playing match-maker as it was of messing with assassins. "You did well at Halsing. I would have hated to have asked Queen Hilda to accept having a husband, given her... orientation."
"And what about Blue 4?", Nika asked.
"His remains were found. He'd activated his wipe protocols, so whomever came for him didn't get anything crucial," Dragovich answered. "We believe the most likely culprit is the Ebon Blade operative Druni ran into, according to her statements. Such a figure has already been strongly indicated as breaching our server security in Asimovia."
"Then this was a false flag operation," Nika remarked. "The Jieshi militants were patsies."
"Yes, it does look that way. But we're not sure yet whom the Ebon Blade operative is working for. Princess Sara and Prince Vayne are equally capable of hiring such monstrous people to do their dirty work."
Nika nodded at that, trying not to think too much about her potential foes. The powers behind the thrones of Cornelia and Ivalice..
"Anyway, keep close to Druni," Dragovich said, heading toward the door. "Just remember not to get too attached. No single person is more important than the Plan, and we may have need of your services elsewhere."
My services as a trained guerrila fighter or my services as a whore?, Nika had almost wanted to ask, but she knew it could be either. She merely nodded, not wanting to offend the head of her Chrome, even as she began to think of Druni and how much she genuinely liked the Dorei girl.
No, not just like. I love her. I love her passion, her courage, her attitude, everything about her.
Before he stepped out, Dragovich turned and spoke yet again. "Also... be careful around her instructor. I know you have orders to monitor, but if you ge too close and he suspects, it might lead to inconvenient truths being leaked out before their time." With that final instruction, Dragovich left.
Sighing, Nika counted to fifty and left herself, taking care not to get close to Dragovich again as she went to find Druni and, hopefully, get away from this stuffy party.
Caroline Palace, Cornelia
Kingdom of Cornelia, Arabica, Sector X-13
28 September 3400
Princess Sara had just returned from a visit to the border fortifications, and a clandestine meeting with the governor of a Republican province contemplating returning to the Kingdom, when Tabitha herself returned. "You look unwell," Sara said matter-of-factly to Tabitha.
The interrogator-assassin nodded briskly. Sara was, unfortunately, a good judge of demeanor regardless of her lacking ESP. Tabitha had been required to go back to the Tower. That meant debriefing of her operations and having to play with some of her fellow Ladies, and playing with ladies could get... rough. Only the most truly masochistic of them ever fully enjoyed it and Tabitha she preferred the "sado" part of "sado-masochistic". It also meant participating in the breaking and training of new initiates to the Ebon Blade and, no matter how sadistic one had become, having to see other young girls suffer as you once suffered had an effect on the mind that only the oldest Ladies ever really moved beyond.
Still, between torturing adolescent and teenage girls and the suffering of debriefing and other things, Tabitha had prevailed in cracking the encrypted communication logs she'd recovered from the android at Halsing. And that made the trip worthwhile.
"I have gained some good information from the data recovered at the Halsing operation," Tabitha informed Sara. "Most of the android's communications were with proxy servers and temporary commlines that lead nowhere. But, on the day of the attack, there were two phone calls that I managed to get a receiving number for despite his excessive encryption." She handed Sara a digital pad with the numbers. "You recognize the calling code?"
"Tyconian," Sara said, nodding. "Someone in Duchess Reina's entourage?"
"Yes. I had sniffer AIs rummage through the comms for the group that was listed for the trip to Halsing. One name stands out; Nika Soran. She is listed as a guest of the Duchess Sarisa."
"That's a Korugan girl," Sara said aloud. "The one with that Dorei Silver Moon member you fought, if my reports from Carwen are to be believed. So the Order is my foe? Protecting one of their own I imagine." She made a mental note to have State Security begin harrassing the Order in her borders and, if possible, assassinating its Knights and Sisters in the Republic.
"The Dorei girl is ex-Silver Moon," Tabitha added. "But not in the Order anymore, I could tell that by how she fought. Besides, the Silver Moon would not have permitted King Charles to die, it's not in their Code. If they were responsible for ruining your orders, they would have blocked them completely. No, this is someone else, someone who benefited from having the King die but not his daughter."
"The only that accomplishes is to ensure the union... succeeds." Sara furrowed her brow from concentration. "After all, King Charles might have eventually remarried, and there is conservative opposition to the inheritance going to an 'unnatural' child born of two women. If he had sired Hilda a half-sibling said factions might have latched upon this child as an alternative heir and the Union would have been dashed. Someone in Tyconia or Fynn, then? Though I can't imagine any Fynnian okaying the assassination..."
"The Tyconians aren't likely to either, too much risk," Tabitha answered. "But perhaps a third party with interests in ensuring the two realms unite would. A third party with, potentially, contacts in both kingdoms, and even elsewhere."
"Agreed. I shall have Security begin arrangements for you to head to Carwen. Find Nika Soran and see where she leads you," Sara ordered.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
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Force Lord
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1562
- Joined: 2008-10-12 05:36pm
- Location: Rio Piedras, San Juan, Puerto Rico
- Contact:
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
Mayniland, Feelipeens
Unreal Time
"So this is the local Bank?"
"Looks good for a Feelipeeni building. Pity."
In front of the individuals was none other than the Feelipeens National Bank, where the people of the Feelipeens stored their hard-earned money, only for Shroomarcos to steal it for himself. Most of it was in New Switzerland, but the Feelipeeni ruler still kept some of the cash in the Bank. The Bank itself was indicative of Shroomarcos's care of his people, which wasn't saying much.
"You have the IID?"
"Yep."
"Good. Let's do this."
Unreal Time
"So this is the local Bank?"
"Looks good for a Feelipeeni building. Pity."
In front of the individuals was none other than the Feelipeens National Bank, where the people of the Feelipeens stored their hard-earned money, only for Shroomarcos to steal it for himself. Most of it was in New Switzerland, but the Feelipeeni ruler still kept some of the cash in the Bank. The Bank itself was indicative of Shroomarcos's care of his people, which wasn't saying much.
"You have the IID?"
"Yep."
"Good. Let's do this."
Last edited by Force Lord on 2011-03-02 09:42am, edited 3 times in total.
An inhabitant from the Island of Cars.
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Force Lord
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1562
- Joined: 2008-10-12 05:36pm
- Location: Rio Piedras, San Juan, Puerto Rico
- Contact:
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
En route to Sovereignty
Unknown Ship
Unreal Time
The man was silent. He was surrounded by darkness.
Seven. Zero. Sixty-five.
The numbers beckoned him, tormented him. They told him what he needed to do.
Fifteen. Thirty-two. One-hundred.
He was a man who tried to stay invisible, and failed. Now they were turning him against his government, and he had no say in the mattter.
Ten. Forty-one. Five.
He could't get the numbers out of his head. Now they controlled him, and by extension whoever was controlling the numbers.
Procedure complete. Subject: Alexei Masonov. Codename: Nova. Destination: Solaris. Objective: Inflitration.
Alexei Masonov was not the man he once was. What was left of him was buried beneath a shell created by his captors that would fool everyone who knew him. Especially CEID.
And now, he was now a tool. A tool for revenge.
Execute Operation Charybdis.
The ship continued to it's destination...
Unknown Ship
Unreal Time
The man was silent. He was surrounded by darkness.
Seven. Zero. Sixty-five.
The numbers beckoned him, tormented him. They told him what he needed to do.
Fifteen. Thirty-two. One-hundred.
He was a man who tried to stay invisible, and failed. Now they were turning him against his government, and he had no say in the mattter.
Ten. Forty-one. Five.
He could't get the numbers out of his head. Now they controlled him, and by extension whoever was controlling the numbers.
Procedure complete. Subject: Alexei Masonov. Codename: Nova. Destination: Solaris. Objective: Inflitration.
Alexei Masonov was not the man he once was. What was left of him was buried beneath a shell created by his captors that would fool everyone who knew him. Especially CEID.
And now, he was now a tool. A tool for revenge.
Execute Operation Charybdis.
The ship continued to it's destination...
An inhabitant from the Island of Cars.
-
Shroom Man 777
- FUCKING DICK-STABBER!
- Posts: 21222
- Joined: 2003-05-11 08:39am
- Location: Bleeding breasts and stabbing dicks since 2003
- Contact:
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
Maynilad, Feelipeens
Unreal Time
The businesses were closed, the banks were empty, schoolchildren were at home, there was no work that day, for it was a holiday. A holy day, unlike any other. For the first time in centuries, the Feelipeens was blessed with such an occasion, thanks to God Almighty, thanks to the Salvador Niñyo and the Jesukristo. Thanks to their beloved leader, Ferdinand Shroomarcos, whose just rule ensured that God blessed the country with bounties.
Now, another great blessing had come. From Earth itself, homeland of all humanity, of all Christianity, came the voice of God in the universe, his messenger of peace and hope. The priests of all priests, the spiritual leader of countless billions of Catholics in Earth and Space, the father of the Church of martyrs, the shepherd of the one true Roman Catholic Church.
The Holy See. The Father Pope. The Santo Papa.
"In nomine Patris et fillii et Spiritus Sancti..." he chanted as, before them were thousands upon thousands of Feelipeenis - who had left their homes and workplaces in Maynilad, who had flocked from the outlying provinces of planet Luz, who had come by the thousands from off-world, just to witness the Holy See do mass and consecrate their peoples with the blessings of the Jesukristo. Countless nuns had marked themselves with charcoal and donned sackcloth, and wept at the sight of the Blessed Father anointing them. Mothers raised their little babies into the air, to be within visual range of the Santo Papa, so that he may bless them just by seeing them with his eyes - which were God's eyes! They had come here from so far, paid for the trip with all their savings and monies, and waited for the Pope even when they ran out of food and water, for such was their faith and religiosity. It had rained so hard the past few days, the monsoon had come causing floods on the poorest districts of Maynilad, but it had been taken as a sign of God showering them with water to cleanse them of their sins. It was... it was a miracle. Finally the Pope ended his mass. "Amen...!"
Poor homeless children released countless pigeons into the air to mark this momentous occasion. In any other day, these birds they had caught would've been chopped to bits and grilled over the hot coals, and sold on street stalls, but not today. They had fasted, slaking their intense hunger by huffing glue, just so they might give these pigeons to the Santo Papa. It was a beautiful sight, the white doves of peace flying into the clear blue skies, just like in the Bibliya when Moses released his arkbirds after drowning everyone on Earth for their sins in the Deluge that came after the Diaspora. Men, women and children wept and squeezed their crucifixes. The Jesukristo had protected their country from such disasters, from such afflictions, because they believed in him, and they had been given a great leader - who the Santo Papa himself blessed.
The Pope praised the Feelipeenis for their unyielding faith, for being a nation of true believers amidst the unbelievers and apostates of the Spin Zone, a shining beacon in such godless times. He praised them for following the only true path of Christianity and not swaying into the mistaken ways of the Lutherans and Anglicans, faiths founded in misconceptions, and in the adulteries of godless Kings. He also praised them for fighting against the atheistic communistas and centralismos, whose ideologies threatened true Catholic values and would undermine the good old-fashioned family traditions that kept the Feelipeenis so strong and together.
Those were what he said, and those were what the Feelipeenis took to heart. They were good Catholics, all of them. The goon squad of Shroomarcos collectively crossed themselves and kissed their rosaries, knowing that they would be forgiven for dealing with those professors and activists, that they were doing the good work in keeping their country safe. In these troubling times, in a gesture of support, the Santo Papa chose to bless Shroomarcos' guards and quoted the sayings of Thomas Aquinas, for they were soldiers waging a Just War.
It was then that Shroomarcos came to the Santo Papa, who was holding a confession, and there Ferdinand told the Holy See his many sins.
Shroomarcos' shed a single tear as he did so. He knew he had done so many bad things, but in his heart he always knew that what he did was always for the good of the people. But sometimes... sometimes it was just so difficult.
The Pope placed a supporting arm on his shoulder and blessed him, and told him that he understood. He told Shroomarcos to recite five Hail Marys, and that would absolve him of all his sins. God would forgive him for the good works he did, and for his faith in the Jesukristo.
Shroomarcos thanked him and kissed his hand again. He had been vindicated. His spirit cleansed. The great weight on his shoulder disappeared almost immediately. He lit some candles for the dead souls in Purgatory, and went into the prayer booth to recite his Hail Marys while clutching his rosary.
As he went by, he passed by Imelda, who was also going to the Santo Papa. She was wearing a black veil and... did she just change her shoes again? She looked at Shroomarcos and gave him a conspiratorial wink.
Oh no. Madre Dios. Shroomarcos shook his head and shivered.
"Hello, Your Eminence..." Imelda said softly as she walked into the Pope's room. Her stiletto heels were clacking against the tiled floor. "Did you want to see me, Father? I've come to confess my sins, and I've been a very sinful girl..."
She took a communion waffle out from... somewhere. She nibbled on the host seductively.
The Pope smirked and looked down, away from her, blushing.
"Come on, Your Eminence." Imelda bent down and whispered into the Pope's ear so sensually. "Let me show you my sins..."
She giggled. She fucking giggled.
Shroomarcos emerged from the prayer booth feeling better about himself. As he passed by the Popes sanctum, he heard strange sounds. He wondered if it was just the Belgian choir boys practicing their high pitched chanting in ominous Latin, echoing throughout the cavernous cathedral's confines. Suddenly, a cry of "Jesus Christ!" rang out from inside the Pope's quarters.
Shroomarcos stood there for a moment, before shaking his head and carrying on.
The Holy See has said that his trip had been very exhilarating and exciting, and after having the pleasure of visiting the Feelipeens and journeying across space, he will be taking a short rest to contemplate the blessings and insights he himself had received from what he described as "a wonderful and very pleasurable nation blessed by the Holy Spirit in all manner of ways."
In his trip, he also praised President Ferdinand Shroomarcos for being a "defender of the faith" in a region fraught with "godlessness, sinfulness and secular temptations" and praised the Shroomarcos government for its protection of traditional family values and Catholic religious freedom, and lauded the Feelipeeni government's closeness with the Catholic Church as an example other nations' governments should follow.
Unreal Time
The businesses were closed, the banks were empty, schoolchildren were at home, there was no work that day, for it was a holiday. A holy day, unlike any other. For the first time in centuries, the Feelipeens was blessed with such an occasion, thanks to God Almighty, thanks to the Salvador Niñyo and the Jesukristo. Thanks to their beloved leader, Ferdinand Shroomarcos, whose just rule ensured that God blessed the country with bounties.
Now, another great blessing had come. From Earth itself, homeland of all humanity, of all Christianity, came the voice of God in the universe, his messenger of peace and hope. The priests of all priests, the spiritual leader of countless billions of Catholics in Earth and Space, the father of the Church of martyrs, the shepherd of the one true Roman Catholic Church.
The Holy See. The Father Pope. The Santo Papa.
"In nomine Patris et fillii et Spiritus Sancti..." he chanted as, before them were thousands upon thousands of Feelipeenis - who had left their homes and workplaces in Maynilad, who had flocked from the outlying provinces of planet Luz, who had come by the thousands from off-world, just to witness the Holy See do mass and consecrate their peoples with the blessings of the Jesukristo. Countless nuns had marked themselves with charcoal and donned sackcloth, and wept at the sight of the Blessed Father anointing them. Mothers raised their little babies into the air, to be within visual range of the Santo Papa, so that he may bless them just by seeing them with his eyes - which were God's eyes! They had come here from so far, paid for the trip with all their savings and monies, and waited for the Pope even when they ran out of food and water, for such was their faith and religiosity. It had rained so hard the past few days, the monsoon had come causing floods on the poorest districts of Maynilad, but it had been taken as a sign of God showering them with water to cleanse them of their sins. It was... it was a miracle. Finally the Pope ended his mass. "Amen...!"
Poor homeless children released countless pigeons into the air to mark this momentous occasion. In any other day, these birds they had caught would've been chopped to bits and grilled over the hot coals, and sold on street stalls, but not today. They had fasted, slaking their intense hunger by huffing glue, just so they might give these pigeons to the Santo Papa. It was a beautiful sight, the white doves of peace flying into the clear blue skies, just like in the Bibliya when Moses released his arkbirds after drowning everyone on Earth for their sins in the Deluge that came after the Diaspora. Men, women and children wept and squeezed their crucifixes. The Jesukristo had protected their country from such disasters, from such afflictions, because they believed in him, and they had been given a great leader - who the Santo Papa himself blessed.
The Pope praised the Feelipeenis for their unyielding faith, for being a nation of true believers amidst the unbelievers and apostates of the Spin Zone, a shining beacon in such godless times. He praised them for following the only true path of Christianity and not swaying into the mistaken ways of the Lutherans and Anglicans, faiths founded in misconceptions, and in the adulteries of godless Kings. He also praised them for fighting against the atheistic communistas and centralismos, whose ideologies threatened true Catholic values and would undermine the good old-fashioned family traditions that kept the Feelipeenis so strong and together.
Those were what he said, and those were what the Feelipeenis took to heart. They were good Catholics, all of them. The goon squad of Shroomarcos collectively crossed themselves and kissed their rosaries, knowing that they would be forgiven for dealing with those professors and activists, that they were doing the good work in keeping their country safe. In these troubling times, in a gesture of support, the Santo Papa chose to bless Shroomarcos' guards and quoted the sayings of Thomas Aquinas, for they were soldiers waging a Just War.
It was then that Shroomarcos came to the Santo Papa, who was holding a confession, and there Ferdinand told the Holy See his many sins.
Shroomarcos' shed a single tear as he did so. He knew he had done so many bad things, but in his heart he always knew that what he did was always for the good of the people. But sometimes... sometimes it was just so difficult.
The Pope placed a supporting arm on his shoulder and blessed him, and told him that he understood. He told Shroomarcos to recite five Hail Marys, and that would absolve him of all his sins. God would forgive him for the good works he did, and for his faith in the Jesukristo.
Shroomarcos thanked him and kissed his hand again. He had been vindicated. His spirit cleansed. The great weight on his shoulder disappeared almost immediately. He lit some candles for the dead souls in Purgatory, and went into the prayer booth to recite his Hail Marys while clutching his rosary.
As he went by, he passed by Imelda, who was also going to the Santo Papa. She was wearing a black veil and... did she just change her shoes again? She looked at Shroomarcos and gave him a conspiratorial wink.
Oh no. Madre Dios. Shroomarcos shook his head and shivered.
"Hello, Your Eminence..." Imelda said softly as she walked into the Pope's room. Her stiletto heels were clacking against the tiled floor. "Did you want to see me, Father? I've come to confess my sins, and I've been a very sinful girl..."
She took a communion waffle out from... somewhere. She nibbled on the host seductively.
The Pope smirked and looked down, away from her, blushing.
"Come on, Your Eminence." Imelda bent down and whispered into the Pope's ear so sensually. "Let me show you my sins..."
She giggled. She fucking giggled.
Shroomarcos emerged from the prayer booth feeling better about himself. As he passed by the Popes sanctum, he heard strange sounds. He wondered if it was just the Belgian choir boys practicing their high pitched chanting in ominous Latin, echoing throughout the cavernous cathedral's confines. Suddenly, a cry of "Jesus Christ!" rang out from inside the Pope's quarters.
Shroomarcos stood there for a moment, before shaking his head and carrying on.
THE MAYNILAD BULLETIN
The Holy See concludes his visit to the Feelipeens after holding a mass in Maynilad, meeting the Presidential family, conferring with Cardinal Sin and members of the local clergy, and touring the holy sites of the Feelipeeni planets. He blessed the Feelipeeni people and congratulated them for their struggle for freedom, and for upholding the Catholic faith and praised them for being the only officially Catholic nation in the Spin Zone - urging other states and other peoples to follow the lead of the Feelipeeni people in living humble, but faithful lives in keeping with the tenets of Catholicism. The Holy See has said that his trip had been very exhilarating and exciting, and after having the pleasure of visiting the Feelipeens and journeying across space, he will be taking a short rest to contemplate the blessings and insights he himself had received from what he described as "a wonderful and very pleasurable nation blessed by the Holy Spirit in all manner of ways."
In his trip, he also praised President Ferdinand Shroomarcos for being a "defender of the faith" in a region fraught with "godlessness, sinfulness and secular temptations" and praised the Shroomarcos government for its protection of traditional family values and Catholic religious freedom, and lauded the Feelipeeni government's closeness with the Catholic Church as an example other nations' governments should follow.
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source)shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN!
Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people
- PeZookShroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic
Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
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Simon_Jester
- Emperor's Hand
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Battle of Zebes, Chapter Thirty
Kaiser-class Battleship Prinzregent Luitpold
Damage Control Bunker 935
2055 Hours Coalition Fleet Standard Time
Edmund, as senior assistant to the staff of the Anglian naval attaché assigned to Prussia's Second Fleet, had very little in the way of assigned duties when it looked like everyone was going to die horribly. Things like compiling reports, checking the accuracy of computer translations, using the computer to check the accuracy of his own translations... none of them really made all that much sense when there were a truly unreasonable number of torpedoes coming your way. So naturally, he'd rounded up his batman and gone off looking for a suitable hole to hide in.
The best hiding place in the system, hands down, went to the Zebesians and their planetary fortress, which had shown a remarkable resistance against the Prussians' best efforts to bomb the planet into the Stone Age earlier in the afternoon. Edmund, on the other hand, had been forced to make do with a heavily armored damage control bunker aboard the Prussian flagship- one of the storage facilities for repair parts. Since it would rather defeat the purpose of storing repair parts if the place you kept them itself wound up in need of repairs, Edmund could see the reasoning behind making this compartment so heavily protected.
Not only was this compartment well armored, it was conveniently close to the escape pods- always a plus.
On the downside, there was a Prussian damage control officer in the place, which was strange given that the ship was currently being used for target practice by some of the most ferocious pirates he'd ever heard of. You'd think they'd all be busy running around trying to patch the holes. Then again, there was only one Prussian officer in the bunker, and that officer was Lieutenant Georg. If Edmund had been in charge of engineering on this tub he'd've probably left Lieutenant Georg behind to twiddle his thumbs while the rest of the crew got on with the real work too.
For the life of him, Edmund couldn't understand why Second Fleet had seen fit to fight it out, instead of legging it like a sensible chap. Like that von Musel fellow, who'd had the sense to run away with an entire squadron of battlecruisers covering his arse. Now, Prussians might go on a lot about common sense, but that was real common sense. Edmund wished he had a squadron of battlecruisers so he could do the same thing, instead of being stuck on a battleship that had just done its best to tie itself into knots twenty minutes ago, commanded by the very model of a modern Prussian admiral.
So here they were, strapped into a side-alcove that was, in theory, admirably designed to protect them all from harm- guaranteed not to be damaged or lose pressure during the battle. Of course, the whole thing had been put together by Prussians, so Edmund clutched at the breathing mask in his hands, twisting the pliant, flexible plastic slightly.
Georg must have somehow perceived Edmund's tension. "Don't worry, sir! This compartment is totally indestructible! Solid as my grandfather's wits, haha!"
"I take it the apple didn't fall far from the tree."
"Really, sir, you should have more faith in Prussian engineering!" Georg rapped his knuckles on the thick metal plate that formed one wall of their shelter.
"...Tell me, Georg, does the Prussian naval design bureau offer places to serving field officers? Particularly senior ones- commodores, admirals?"
"Oh, no sir, it's an entirely different chain of expertise, with internal promotion. Like the medical corps. It's practically impossible for someone from command track to get a placement, without first going through extensive engineering training."
"So, let me get this straight. The men who designed this ship don't come from the same schools which taught the men who command this fleet?"
"Certainly not!"
"Well then, I'm sure we'll be all right." Edmund leaned back in his seat, whistling some tune he'd forgotten the name of. Things seemed better already... then, of course, someone had to go and ruin it. This time, his batman.
"Permission to ask a question sir?"
"Permission granted, Baldrick, as long as it isn't the one about where babies come from."
"The thing is... The way I see it, right now we're getting beaten on, right? And, a while ago, we weren't getting beaten, right? So-" Edmund closed his eyes, God save me is he going to be babbling about this all day? "-there must have been a moment when us not getting beaten went away, right? And us taking a beating came along. So, what I want to know is: How did we get from the one case of affairs to the other case of affairs?"
There was a real question buried in there somewhere, he could smell it... "Do you mean 'What went wrong?' "
Dawn broke over marblehead. Baldrick's face lit up. "Yeah! Why didn't I think of that?"
Edmund gritted his teeth. "I couldn't begin to guess. In any case, what went wrong was..." Then the cretin-lieutenant had to break in, of course. Georg pounded his fist on his thigh and shouted.
"What went wrong was the vile Zebesians and their treacherous ambush in overwhelming numbers!"
"Georg, the Coalition fleet at present consists of a dozen heavy capital ships plus escort and heavy cruiser support, while the Zebesian fleet consists of whatever warships they managed to find under the cushions right before the match started. I hardly think that we can be entirely absolved of blame on the 'overwhelming numbers' front."
The Prussian nodded. "Oh, no, sir, absolutely not." Of course, then he had to go and spoil that too, leaning over and whispering to Baldrick.
"Mad as a bicycle!"
The poor fool still looked confused. He waved his finger in the air a little, then scratched his nose, which apparently jarred loose something capable of being used as brains because he said something.
"I heard that it started when the Prussians started trying to calm some bees."
Lord preserve me. "I think you mean it started when the Prussians bombed Zebes. They wasted all their ammunition, you see..."
"Nah, there were definitely bees involved, sir."
"Well, possibly. But the real reason for the whole thing was that it was too much effort not to lose the battle." The dogsbody looked, if such a thing was possible, even more blank-faced and befuddled than usual. Edmund sighed and tried again.
"You see, Baldrick, in order to win the battle easily, a super-concentration developed: a huge Prussian fleet on one side, and a bunch of feeble little pirates on the other. The idea was to have one vast overwhelming army, crushing the opposition all in one go, before they could fight back properly. That way, there could never be a really dangerous battle where we might all be killed."
"But, this is sort of really dangerous, isn't it, sir? And... mightn't we all be killed?"
Edmund nodded. "Yes, that's right. You see, there was a tiny flaw in the plan."
"What was that, sir?"
"It was bollocks."
Baldrick picked at his ear and frowned. "So... the bees are just out of luck then, I guess."
Missile Frigate Gacknik
Starboard Flank Group, Zebesian Fleet
2056 Hours
"...Wow." The battery crew watched the fire mission monitors as one of the human battleships started coming apart at the seams. Sitting out on the flanks they were only dealing with the lighter human battlecruisers- but that didn't stop people from sneaking a peek at the situation in the center when they could get away with it.
"Score one for the Imperial Navy."
"Dunno, I'd say it's the new guys with the weird ships that are doing most of the work."
"Yeah, but who opened the door for 'em? You see that?"
"Say, I think that's one of the beasts our guys hit earlier! Target eight!"
"That'll teach 'em..."
"Too bad we missed, I told you they were going to try strobe jamming in an expanding spiral but no..."
"Shut up, Kurgo, we hit that transport..." Nugak wasn't really sure if they'd hit the human troopship or not but it had been their secondary target and it had broken up, not that their battery was the only one launching at it. Not by a long shot.
He still wanted Kurgo to shut up. Kurgo was almost as big a jerk as the pincer dudes with the arm cannons who kept tromping around the ship. Then the chief shouted- and everybody shut up.
"Hey, listen up! Command says it's use it or lose it time! We're throwing everything, no more time to waste standing around and letting the beamships keep softening 'em up."
"Sweet. What's our target?"
"Primary is Target 32, the big railgun cruiser on the edge, there. Secondary is Target 109, that missile frigate in the middle. Set it up!"
"You got it, chief." Everyone started buzzing away, making sure the missiles had their locks, that none of the computers had caught a sudden case of Brain Juice Rot or anything. It was all OK, so they slapped the 'go-code' buttons. This time they were firing on Central Control's signal, not their own. Maybe somebody else was having trouble, because second after second ticked by without a launch.
Wait for it... wait for it... AAAAAAH!
Designed to throw as many missiles as possible as fast as possible, Gacknik skimped heavily on such luxuries as shock absorbers to take up the recoil from its own launch tubes. Violent clangs, crashes, and rattles echoed along the frigate's corridors as the feed tubes slung another set of missiles up into the ready magazine...
WHAM-WHAM-WHAM-pause-WHAM!
The chief shouted. "Kurgo, we've got a hangfire. Get on that." He slapped a button on his console; status lights flashed the puce of "out of action- noncritical malfunction."
"On it. Umm, OK, just a datatrunk shook loose. Lemme switch to backups and get a minibot on it."
The Urtraghans imported this minibot chassis from another setting; its exact origins are unknown
Disruptor Cruiser Ludelatar
Temporary Flagship, Kavoolite Contingent
2100 Hours
Admiral Delion nodded in approval as Captain Hanno organized his ship for the next torpedo attack. While Ludelatar had been well placed for him to transfer his flag once they blew the shuttlebay doors clear on his own warbird, the cruiser's flag bridge had been destroyed in action against the human battlecruisers. That left Delion crowded into the ship's main command bridge along with those responsible for fighting the ship itself- he did his best to stay out of their way while monitoring the overall progress of the battle.
His signals section had identified two of the battleships in the human center as probable command ships. Cosmog's fleet was already nearly finished with the first one- they'd had to blast it into a half-molten wreck, raking fire along its entire length to put it down, but they'd done it.
Now he had the other one picked out- by luck, one they'd dropped a spread on earlier, and that had already been damaged. This time, the identification was tentative, and Cosmog was skeptical about whether his target "B3" was in fact an enemy squadron leader (perhaps the fleet flagship? Who could say?). But Delion thought it was worth a try, and at this point the fuzzy little admiral's pride was clearly involved- he didn't much care which battleships the fleet attacked, so long as it managed to score kills before the humans' reinforcements arrived.
Delion tried not let the fact that Cosmog looked like a child's self-propelled toy fool him; this one was as proud, aggressive, and capable as most Kavoolite flag officers. No great sparks of genius that he could see, and perhaps a little too incautious, but definitely solid.
He felt a twitch of nostalgia watching the tactical section set up their torpedo attack- there was nothing like single-ship command. They went about it with drilled precision, most of the fleet's other ships reporting readiness behind them. The moment came; Delion gave the word.
"Fire!"
Kaiser-class Battleship Prinzregent Luitpold
Flagship Second Fleet
2101 Hours
Nein. Nein. Nein...
Admiral Gregor Von Mückenberger sat with his visor down, concealing his pale, shaken face. He was doomed, betrayed and doomed! The accursed von Musel's desertion left his command open to be raked by the enemy torpedo attacks, and now the Zebesian fleet directly ahead was blasting in immense force at the gaps opened up in the battleships' defenses. Bödicker, his friend... destroyed like that.
He knew, somehow, that he was next- they'd finish what they started twenty minutes ago, that soon he would be no more. His strength had crumbled- his ships had no reserves left; two of his battleships' main gun ammunition was already expended, and the fleet would be out of fuel in no more than half an hour. Not that he'd live to see that.
As if by sympathetic magic, the collapse of his fleet's fighting power had taken the fight out of him. How could anyone fight on so, against such an overwhelming foe? It was against all common sense...
And yet on some level, he was glad his chief of staff had no common sense at a time like this. Where von Mückenberger felt himself collapsing under the weary weight of years spent planning and organizing the Kaiserliche Marine only to see it brought to such a crisis... Arnold was at his peak. It was as if, even when all was lost in this moment of crisis, he was born for action!
Arnold was busy talking to the electronic warfare officers, gesturing and waving his arms- von Mückenberger couldn't see what he was up to. The conversation was going fast- finally, the chief of staff yanked something away from the computer and trotted across the bridge toward him, smiling broadly.
"Good times, sir!"
Is he insane?
"Arnold, those torpedoes..."
"I've got it, sir."
"Don't you see their targeting sensors?" Those missiles' guidance sensors were incredible- impossibly high emitter power; how were they doing it?
"We can beat this."
"Arnold, look at the plot, they're going to hit us!"
"The hell they will!"
Arnold slammed a data-module into one of the ports on the side of the admiral's console. Apparently he'd already programmed it with command overrides. Von Mückenberger watched the distribution of the fleet's ECM change as ships responded to the new directives- hyperwave 'casters adjusting their broadcast patterns and frequency profiles. The sidebar on his display gave him only an executive summary; even from that he could tell that the signals section had come up with something creative.
And as if by magic, the Kavoolite torpedoes veered off course, charging off in seemingly random directions, detonating in the middle of empty vacuum. They were saved! For now, anyway.
And Arnold, for reasons von Mückenberger would never understand, kept smiling at the display. Staring at the light codes of the distant dorsal group firing these deadly missile attacks, he spoke two words.
"Lights out."
Disruptor Cruiser Ludelatar
Temporary Flagship, Kavoolite Contingent
2103 Hours
"Something's wrong with our target illuminators. Nail it down."
This was definitely a problem. The Empire was well aware that its technology lagged behind what was available from the mighty states beyond the shoals. The technical gap hit particularly hard in missile guidance, one of the Imperial Navy's specialties; their answer was crude but effective: subspace illuminator beams, to light up the torpedo's target and steered it in when its own sensors failed.
Apparently, this batch of humans had found a way to interfere with the illuminators- and hopelessly confuse the torpedoes. The talk among the weapons section grew concerned.
"Can we counter this?"
"Probably, but the only solution I know of is part hardware. We'll need some time."
"Expedite and refine estimates; I want us hitting reliably again as soon as possible."
The Kavoolite admiral frowned. "Communications! Keep all ships updated on the situation. And get me a channel to Cosmog."
Lacking the practiced skills of a flag bridge comm team, that job took longer than it should have, but they patched him through. Delion gave his report as neatly as possible.
"Admiral, we're having serious problems with our targeting systems. We're working on it, but for now you'll have to do shield-breaching out of your own resources; I cannot promise torpedo support in less than a kilosecond."
The moogle bared his teeth slightly and gave a slight twitch of the head that left his pompom bobbing up and down. "Understood. Am switching targets to other ships that look like... easier targets. Ku-" That last word was bitten off strangely; the Kavoolite still didn't understand what Cosmog kept trying to say at the end of sentences that way.
Delion gave a respectful salute to the senior admiral, keeping a straight face with all the training years at the naval academy could give him, and cut the circuit. If that target had been the humans' flagship, they'd just bought themselves quite a bit of time.
Valkyrie-class Battlecruiser SMS Brunhild
Returning to Zebes
2100 Hours
Korvettenkapitän Siegfried Kircheis took in the near-solid images of the allied squadron leaders as they appeared- quick succession; everyone knew they had only twenty minutes or so to plan before arrival. All were equal in nominal rank, or as close as made no difference; it was a conference of peers, not a set of marching orders.
Most unusual, of course, was the Eoghan officer Pdeudemar, commander of their Fourth Cruiser Squadron; he looked like a bright-eyed, hyperinquisitive giant mongoose, which was hardly a surprise, since he was. The Eoghan seemed a bit twitchy, but nothing Siegfried knew about him led him to expect any problems from the alien; twitchy curiosity was simply their idiom.
Zhong Jiang Lin of Tianguo seemed fairly unremarkable- an experienced commander at the level of a squadron or two; even with the best efforts to keep circulation up, the Tianguo fleet's nigh-immortal officers made for long postings.
Liggs, the Centralist, looked like a man trying to hide his nervous tension, with only a modest amount of luck. Siegfried sympathized. Liggs was responsible for roughly four times the forces he'd commanded at Hawk's Nest a month ago; it couldn't be easy. Being breveted into a position of such responsibility, the largest single fraction of the rescue force, and on such short notice... it was the kind of thing only Reinhard would have been confident about.
Then there was the Umerian, Yang, busily defining the slouch for the ages. He had one elbow propped against the arm of his chair, his other hand rubbed at the back of his neck, and his eyelids drooped. Siegfried couldn't quite bring himself to take the fellow seriously, not when his posture would make good material for "how not to do it" in a course on military deportment.
Reinhard will want to set the agenda. Can he make these people listen? We don't have much time.
"Good evening, gentlemen. First matter, a warning. The Zebesian center's ships use an inertial neutralization drive, similar in some ways to your own, Admiral Lin. Low inertial mass while underway, very good evasive profile, optimized for beam combat."
Lin's mouth twisted upward at the corner. "Don't worry, we're fairly good at beam combat ourselves."
Yang rose from his slouch and started sketching something with a light-pen. Repeater displays showed it to the other admirals. "Hmm. Send us, the Tianguo squadron, and the beam-heavier Centralist ships to take on their center, while the rest of our forces take on the flanking groups... but we want to herd them away from the hyper limit. Wide emergence pattern, like... so? Here, here, here, and here?"
Siegfried had been watching his commander closely, and he saw Reinhard's jaw drop slightly- though only for a fraction of a second before he recovered his composure.
"Yes, that was what I had in mind..."
Siegfried found himself taking the Umerian more seriously now, and noted that Yang looked a bit surprised himself. The Umerian replied with a slightly strangled "Oh. Good."
"Admiral Liggs, your command, with its low-velocity weapons, may face some difficulties engaging the Zebesian center effectively, but we'll need you nonetheless."
"My two capital ships are both energy weapon-heavy, especially the battleship Frod. We should be all ri-" Liggs turned away, listening to something or someone outside the display. He looked very unhappy.
"I've just been informed that the battlecruiser Trogdor has suffered another engineering casualty. Hyperdrive failure- apparently, they skipped some steps on a checklist. The captain and chief engineering officer will be punished appropriately, but their replacements don't know how long it will take to effect repairs. That said, my one capital ship is nonetheless energy weapon-heavy. We'll manage, gentlemen."
Reinhard nodded. "I propose that my battlecruisers take lead position, to best mask our approach from the Zebesians with ECM. We should aim to destroy this fleet, not merely frighten it off.
Pdeudemar squeaked in approval. "I like it. My stealth frigates on the flanks?"
"Workable."
Yang lifted a hand to shoulder level, one finger raised.
"Could you please transmit records of the Zebesian center in action? My SCIENCE! officer would like to take a look at them."
"Of course."
The discussion went round for a few minutes, with Reinhard describing the dispositions of the Zebesian fleet and explaining what he wanted done. The other admirals seemed to acquiesce, making reasonable proposals about how best to use their own equipment as slight modifications to the general plan that Reinhard- and, apparently, Yang working independently- had devised.
The one thing that worried Siegfried was that Liggs kept insisting on a heavier role for the Centralist force than he felt comfortable with. But Reinhard didn't object- either because he didn't care if they took the risks, or because he expected something out of Liggs Siegfried didn't. He hoped it was the latter.
There were only a few minutes' time to spare; the conference ended in short order. As the image of Rear Admiral Lin faded, Reinhard sighed. "After years of dealing endlessly with people of no account, I find two men who bear watching in one day."
"Sir?"
"The Umerian, Yang. It's one thing when you guess my plans, Kircheis, that's you. We've known each other since my idea of naval tactics was to run around in the backyard making spaceship noises. But when someone I've never heard of in my life until the week before last can figure out what I want to do, without prompting, before I even open my mouth..."
"I see."
"I must be losing my touch."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that. It'll be fine."
"Still, troubling."
Damage Control Bunker 935
2055 Hours Coalition Fleet Standard Time
The best hiding place in the system, hands down, went to the Zebesians and their planetary fortress, which had shown a remarkable resistance against the Prussians' best efforts to bomb the planet into the Stone Age earlier in the afternoon. Edmund, on the other hand, had been forced to make do with a heavily armored damage control bunker aboard the Prussian flagship- one of the storage facilities for repair parts. Since it would rather defeat the purpose of storing repair parts if the place you kept them itself wound up in need of repairs, Edmund could see the reasoning behind making this compartment so heavily protected.
Not only was this compartment well armored, it was conveniently close to the escape pods- always a plus.
On the downside, there was a Prussian damage control officer in the place, which was strange given that the ship was currently being used for target practice by some of the most ferocious pirates he'd ever heard of. You'd think they'd all be busy running around trying to patch the holes. Then again, there was only one Prussian officer in the bunker, and that officer was Lieutenant Georg. If Edmund had been in charge of engineering on this tub he'd've probably left Lieutenant Georg behind to twiddle his thumbs while the rest of the crew got on with the real work too.
For the life of him, Edmund couldn't understand why Second Fleet had seen fit to fight it out, instead of legging it like a sensible chap. Like that von Musel fellow, who'd had the sense to run away with an entire squadron of battlecruisers covering his arse. Now, Prussians might go on a lot about common sense, but that was real common sense. Edmund wished he had a squadron of battlecruisers so he could do the same thing, instead of being stuck on a battleship that had just done its best to tie itself into knots twenty minutes ago, commanded by the very model of a modern Prussian admiral.
So here they were, strapped into a side-alcove that was, in theory, admirably designed to protect them all from harm- guaranteed not to be damaged or lose pressure during the battle. Of course, the whole thing had been put together by Prussians, so Edmund clutched at the breathing mask in his hands, twisting the pliant, flexible plastic slightly.
Georg must have somehow perceived Edmund's tension. "Don't worry, sir! This compartment is totally indestructible! Solid as my grandfather's wits, haha!"
"I take it the apple didn't fall far from the tree."
"Really, sir, you should have more faith in Prussian engineering!" Georg rapped his knuckles on the thick metal plate that formed one wall of their shelter.
"...Tell me, Georg, does the Prussian naval design bureau offer places to serving field officers? Particularly senior ones- commodores, admirals?"
"Oh, no sir, it's an entirely different chain of expertise, with internal promotion. Like the medical corps. It's practically impossible for someone from command track to get a placement, without first going through extensive engineering training."
"So, let me get this straight. The men who designed this ship don't come from the same schools which taught the men who command this fleet?"
"Certainly not!"
"Well then, I'm sure we'll be all right." Edmund leaned back in his seat, whistling some tune he'd forgotten the name of. Things seemed better already... then, of course, someone had to go and ruin it. This time, his batman.
"Permission to ask a question sir?"
"Permission granted, Baldrick, as long as it isn't the one about where babies come from."
"The thing is... The way I see it, right now we're getting beaten on, right? And, a while ago, we weren't getting beaten, right? So-" Edmund closed his eyes, God save me is he going to be babbling about this all day? "-there must have been a moment when us not getting beaten went away, right? And us taking a beating came along. So, what I want to know is: How did we get from the one case of affairs to the other case of affairs?"
There was a real question buried in there somewhere, he could smell it... "Do you mean 'What went wrong?' "
Dawn broke over marblehead. Baldrick's face lit up. "Yeah! Why didn't I think of that?"
Edmund gritted his teeth. "I couldn't begin to guess. In any case, what went wrong was..." Then the cretin-lieutenant had to break in, of course. Georg pounded his fist on his thigh and shouted.
"What went wrong was the vile Zebesians and their treacherous ambush in overwhelming numbers!"
"Georg, the Coalition fleet at present consists of a dozen heavy capital ships plus escort and heavy cruiser support, while the Zebesian fleet consists of whatever warships they managed to find under the cushions right before the match started. I hardly think that we can be entirely absolved of blame on the 'overwhelming numbers' front."
The Prussian nodded. "Oh, no, sir, absolutely not." Of course, then he had to go and spoil that too, leaning over and whispering to Baldrick.
"Mad as a bicycle!"
The poor fool still looked confused. He waved his finger in the air a little, then scratched his nose, which apparently jarred loose something capable of being used as brains because he said something.
"I heard that it started when the Prussians started trying to calm some bees."
Lord preserve me. "I think you mean it started when the Prussians bombed Zebes. They wasted all their ammunition, you see..."
"Nah, there were definitely bees involved, sir."
"Well, possibly. But the real reason for the whole thing was that it was too much effort not to lose the battle." The dogsbody looked, if such a thing was possible, even more blank-faced and befuddled than usual. Edmund sighed and tried again.
"You see, Baldrick, in order to win the battle easily, a super-concentration developed: a huge Prussian fleet on one side, and a bunch of feeble little pirates on the other. The idea was to have one vast overwhelming army, crushing the opposition all in one go, before they could fight back properly. That way, there could never be a really dangerous battle where we might all be killed."
"But, this is sort of really dangerous, isn't it, sir? And... mightn't we all be killed?"
Edmund nodded. "Yes, that's right. You see, there was a tiny flaw in the plan."
"What was that, sir?"
"It was bollocks."
Baldrick picked at his ear and frowned. "So... the bees are just out of luck then, I guess."
Missile Frigate Gacknik
Starboard Flank Group, Zebesian Fleet
2056 Hours
"...Wow." The battery crew watched the fire mission monitors as one of the human battleships started coming apart at the seams. Sitting out on the flanks they were only dealing with the lighter human battlecruisers- but that didn't stop people from sneaking a peek at the situation in the center when they could get away with it.
"Score one for the Imperial Navy."
"Dunno, I'd say it's the new guys with the weird ships that are doing most of the work."
"Yeah, but who opened the door for 'em? You see that?"
"Say, I think that's one of the beasts our guys hit earlier! Target eight!"
"That'll teach 'em..."
"Too bad we missed, I told you they were going to try strobe jamming in an expanding spiral but no..."
"Shut up, Kurgo, we hit that transport..." Nugak wasn't really sure if they'd hit the human troopship or not but it had been their secondary target and it had broken up, not that their battery was the only one launching at it. Not by a long shot.
He still wanted Kurgo to shut up. Kurgo was almost as big a jerk as the pincer dudes with the arm cannons who kept tromping around the ship. Then the chief shouted- and everybody shut up.
"Hey, listen up! Command says it's use it or lose it time! We're throwing everything, no more time to waste standing around and letting the beamships keep softening 'em up."
"Sweet. What's our target?"
"Primary is Target 32, the big railgun cruiser on the edge, there. Secondary is Target 109, that missile frigate in the middle. Set it up!"
"You got it, chief." Everyone started buzzing away, making sure the missiles had their locks, that none of the computers had caught a sudden case of Brain Juice Rot or anything. It was all OK, so they slapped the 'go-code' buttons. This time they were firing on Central Control's signal, not their own. Maybe somebody else was having trouble, because second after second ticked by without a launch.
Wait for it... wait for it... AAAAAAH!
Designed to throw as many missiles as possible as fast as possible, Gacknik skimped heavily on such luxuries as shock absorbers to take up the recoil from its own launch tubes. Violent clangs, crashes, and rattles echoed along the frigate's corridors as the feed tubes slung another set of missiles up into the ready magazine...
WHAM-WHAM-WHAM-pause-WHAM!
The chief shouted. "Kurgo, we've got a hangfire. Get on that." He slapped a button on his console; status lights flashed the puce of "out of action- noncritical malfunction."
"On it. Umm, OK, just a datatrunk shook loose. Lemme switch to backups and get a minibot on it."
The Urtraghans imported this minibot chassis from another setting; its exact origins are unknown
Disruptor Cruiser Ludelatar
Temporary Flagship, Kavoolite Contingent
2100 Hours
Admiral Delion nodded in approval as Captain Hanno organized his ship for the next torpedo attack. While Ludelatar had been well placed for him to transfer his flag once they blew the shuttlebay doors clear on his own warbird, the cruiser's flag bridge had been destroyed in action against the human battlecruisers. That left Delion crowded into the ship's main command bridge along with those responsible for fighting the ship itself- he did his best to stay out of their way while monitoring the overall progress of the battle.
His signals section had identified two of the battleships in the human center as probable command ships. Cosmog's fleet was already nearly finished with the first one- they'd had to blast it into a half-molten wreck, raking fire along its entire length to put it down, but they'd done it.
Now he had the other one picked out- by luck, one they'd dropped a spread on earlier, and that had already been damaged. This time, the identification was tentative, and Cosmog was skeptical about whether his target "B3" was in fact an enemy squadron leader (perhaps the fleet flagship? Who could say?). But Delion thought it was worth a try, and at this point the fuzzy little admiral's pride was clearly involved- he didn't much care which battleships the fleet attacked, so long as it managed to score kills before the humans' reinforcements arrived.
Delion tried not let the fact that Cosmog looked like a child's self-propelled toy fool him; this one was as proud, aggressive, and capable as most Kavoolite flag officers. No great sparks of genius that he could see, and perhaps a little too incautious, but definitely solid.
He felt a twitch of nostalgia watching the tactical section set up their torpedo attack- there was nothing like single-ship command. They went about it with drilled precision, most of the fleet's other ships reporting readiness behind them. The moment came; Delion gave the word.
"Fire!"
Kaiser-class Battleship Prinzregent Luitpold
Flagship Second Fleet
2101 Hours
Nein. Nein. Nein...
Admiral Gregor Von Mückenberger sat with his visor down, concealing his pale, shaken face. He was doomed, betrayed and doomed! The accursed von Musel's desertion left his command open to be raked by the enemy torpedo attacks, and now the Zebesian fleet directly ahead was blasting in immense force at the gaps opened up in the battleships' defenses. Bödicker, his friend... destroyed like that.
He knew, somehow, that he was next- they'd finish what they started twenty minutes ago, that soon he would be no more. His strength had crumbled- his ships had no reserves left; two of his battleships' main gun ammunition was already expended, and the fleet would be out of fuel in no more than half an hour. Not that he'd live to see that.
As if by sympathetic magic, the collapse of his fleet's fighting power had taken the fight out of him. How could anyone fight on so, against such an overwhelming foe? It was against all common sense...
And yet on some level, he was glad his chief of staff had no common sense at a time like this. Where von Mückenberger felt himself collapsing under the weary weight of years spent planning and organizing the Kaiserliche Marine only to see it brought to such a crisis... Arnold was at his peak. It was as if, even when all was lost in this moment of crisis, he was born for action!
Arnold was busy talking to the electronic warfare officers, gesturing and waving his arms- von Mückenberger couldn't see what he was up to. The conversation was going fast- finally, the chief of staff yanked something away from the computer and trotted across the bridge toward him, smiling broadly.
"Good times, sir!"
Is he insane?
"Arnold, those torpedoes..."
"I've got it, sir."
"Don't you see their targeting sensors?" Those missiles' guidance sensors were incredible- impossibly high emitter power; how were they doing it?
"We can beat this."
"Arnold, look at the plot, they're going to hit us!"
"The hell they will!"
Arnold slammed a data-module into one of the ports on the side of the admiral's console. Apparently he'd already programmed it with command overrides. Von Mückenberger watched the distribution of the fleet's ECM change as ships responded to the new directives- hyperwave 'casters adjusting their broadcast patterns and frequency profiles. The sidebar on his display gave him only an executive summary; even from that he could tell that the signals section had come up with something creative.
And as if by magic, the Kavoolite torpedoes veered off course, charging off in seemingly random directions, detonating in the middle of empty vacuum. They were saved! For now, anyway.
And Arnold, for reasons von Mückenberger would never understand, kept smiling at the display. Staring at the light codes of the distant dorsal group firing these deadly missile attacks, he spoke two words.
"Lights out."
Disruptor Cruiser Ludelatar
Temporary Flagship, Kavoolite Contingent
2103 Hours
"Something's wrong with our target illuminators. Nail it down."
This was definitely a problem. The Empire was well aware that its technology lagged behind what was available from the mighty states beyond the shoals. The technical gap hit particularly hard in missile guidance, one of the Imperial Navy's specialties; their answer was crude but effective: subspace illuminator beams, to light up the torpedo's target and steered it in when its own sensors failed.
Apparently, this batch of humans had found a way to interfere with the illuminators- and hopelessly confuse the torpedoes. The talk among the weapons section grew concerned.
"Can we counter this?"
"Probably, but the only solution I know of is part hardware. We'll need some time."
"Expedite and refine estimates; I want us hitting reliably again as soon as possible."
The Kavoolite admiral frowned. "Communications! Keep all ships updated on the situation. And get me a channel to Cosmog."
Lacking the practiced skills of a flag bridge comm team, that job took longer than it should have, but they patched him through. Delion gave his report as neatly as possible.
"Admiral, we're having serious problems with our targeting systems. We're working on it, but for now you'll have to do shield-breaching out of your own resources; I cannot promise torpedo support in less than a kilosecond."
The moogle bared his teeth slightly and gave a slight twitch of the head that left his pompom bobbing up and down. "Understood. Am switching targets to other ships that look like... easier targets. Ku-" That last word was bitten off strangely; the Kavoolite still didn't understand what Cosmog kept trying to say at the end of sentences that way.
Delion gave a respectful salute to the senior admiral, keeping a straight face with all the training years at the naval academy could give him, and cut the circuit. If that target had been the humans' flagship, they'd just bought themselves quite a bit of time.
Valkyrie-class Battlecruiser SMS Brunhild
Returning to Zebes
2100 Hours
Korvettenkapitän Siegfried Kircheis took in the near-solid images of the allied squadron leaders as they appeared- quick succession; everyone knew they had only twenty minutes or so to plan before arrival. All were equal in nominal rank, or as close as made no difference; it was a conference of peers, not a set of marching orders.
Most unusual, of course, was the Eoghan officer Pdeudemar, commander of their Fourth Cruiser Squadron; he looked like a bright-eyed, hyperinquisitive giant mongoose, which was hardly a surprise, since he was. The Eoghan seemed a bit twitchy, but nothing Siegfried knew about him led him to expect any problems from the alien; twitchy curiosity was simply their idiom.
Zhong Jiang Lin of Tianguo seemed fairly unremarkable- an experienced commander at the level of a squadron or two; even with the best efforts to keep circulation up, the Tianguo fleet's nigh-immortal officers made for long postings.
Liggs, the Centralist, looked like a man trying to hide his nervous tension, with only a modest amount of luck. Siegfried sympathized. Liggs was responsible for roughly four times the forces he'd commanded at Hawk's Nest a month ago; it couldn't be easy. Being breveted into a position of such responsibility, the largest single fraction of the rescue force, and on such short notice... it was the kind of thing only Reinhard would have been confident about.
Then there was the Umerian, Yang, busily defining the slouch for the ages. He had one elbow propped against the arm of his chair, his other hand rubbed at the back of his neck, and his eyelids drooped. Siegfried couldn't quite bring himself to take the fellow seriously, not when his posture would make good material for "how not to do it" in a course on military deportment.
Reinhard will want to set the agenda. Can he make these people listen? We don't have much time.
"Good evening, gentlemen. First matter, a warning. The Zebesian center's ships use an inertial neutralization drive, similar in some ways to your own, Admiral Lin. Low inertial mass while underway, very good evasive profile, optimized for beam combat."
Lin's mouth twisted upward at the corner. "Don't worry, we're fairly good at beam combat ourselves."
Yang rose from his slouch and started sketching something with a light-pen. Repeater displays showed it to the other admirals. "Hmm. Send us, the Tianguo squadron, and the beam-heavier Centralist ships to take on their center, while the rest of our forces take on the flanking groups... but we want to herd them away from the hyper limit. Wide emergence pattern, like... so? Here, here, here, and here?"
Siegfried had been watching his commander closely, and he saw Reinhard's jaw drop slightly- though only for a fraction of a second before he recovered his composure.
"Yes, that was what I had in mind..."
Siegfried found himself taking the Umerian more seriously now, and noted that Yang looked a bit surprised himself. The Umerian replied with a slightly strangled "Oh. Good."
"Admiral Liggs, your command, with its low-velocity weapons, may face some difficulties engaging the Zebesian center effectively, but we'll need you nonetheless."
"My two capital ships are both energy weapon-heavy, especially the battleship Frod. We should be all ri-" Liggs turned away, listening to something or someone outside the display. He looked very unhappy.
"I've just been informed that the battlecruiser Trogdor has suffered another engineering casualty. Hyperdrive failure- apparently, they skipped some steps on a checklist. The captain and chief engineering officer will be punished appropriately, but their replacements don't know how long it will take to effect repairs. That said, my one capital ship is nonetheless energy weapon-heavy. We'll manage, gentlemen."
Reinhard nodded. "I propose that my battlecruisers take lead position, to best mask our approach from the Zebesians with ECM. We should aim to destroy this fleet, not merely frighten it off.
Pdeudemar squeaked in approval. "I like it. My stealth frigates on the flanks?"
"Workable."
Yang lifted a hand to shoulder level, one finger raised.
"Could you please transmit records of the Zebesian center in action? My SCIENCE! officer would like to take a look at them."
"Of course."
The discussion went round for a few minutes, with Reinhard describing the dispositions of the Zebesian fleet and explaining what he wanted done. The other admirals seemed to acquiesce, making reasonable proposals about how best to use their own equipment as slight modifications to the general plan that Reinhard- and, apparently, Yang working independently- had devised.
The one thing that worried Siegfried was that Liggs kept insisting on a heavier role for the Centralist force than he felt comfortable with. But Reinhard didn't object- either because he didn't care if they took the risks, or because he expected something out of Liggs Siegfried didn't. He hoped it was the latter.
There were only a few minutes' time to spare; the conference ended in short order. As the image of Rear Admiral Lin faded, Reinhard sighed. "After years of dealing endlessly with people of no account, I find two men who bear watching in one day."
"Sir?"
"The Umerian, Yang. It's one thing when you guess my plans, Kircheis, that's you. We've known each other since my idea of naval tactics was to run around in the backyard making spaceship noises. But when someone I've never heard of in my life until the week before last can figure out what I want to do, without prompting, before I even open my mouth..."
"I see."
"I must be losing my touch."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that. It'll be fine."
"Still, troubling."
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
Previously, on 'Property of an Apexai'...
Sovern-Ruprecht auction house
Shin-Hokkaido, United Solarian Sovereignty
Shin-Hokkaido, more than any other planet in the Sovereignty, was a place of opposites. Those who were rich were immensely so and lived in the towering highrise of the cy-claves; those who weren't eked out a living in grungy block houses and destitute arcologies. The poor perhaps weren't poor by galactic standards, and no-one in the Sovereignty was starving exactly, but they were a definite underclass, kitted out with cheap corporate wetware and treated as little more than organic extensions of the computer systems they watched over, kept down by their lack of access to the high-end gene-jobs and augmetics that allowed the truly wealthy to stay comfortably ahead of the masses in terms of looks, skill, health and strength.
A great many among those masses of course resented their corporate overlords for this, and there existed a far-flung resistance of anarchic elements, lead by cyberdeckers and street samurai who battled the corporate security of firms like Maibatsu, Tambu and Shoa in cyberspace as well as in the 'deep reality' of everyday life. The idealists among the resistance limited themselves to acts of petty mischief, vandalizing the omnipresent corporate hologlow, spraying graffiti or pirating software. But there was also a hard core of rebels, united in the Shindatai movement, who went far beyond that. They firebombed the offices of the megacorps, engaged in brutal ambushes and shoot-outs with corporate security, and trashed entire servers with black market killsoft. And despite their best efforts, corpsec seemed unable to root them out entirely.
With the ever-present threat of the unwashed proles coming to do violence hanging over everyone with money it was little wonder then that the Sovern-Ruprecht auction house was defended by a small army of goons decked out in suits of sleek Maibatsu power armor. There were, of course, also other reasons: for one, a lot of the people who were attending today's auction were very powerful and correspondingly, very dangerous. The auctioneers had been in the business long enough to know that many of the K-Zone's leading personalities believed that it was better not to pay for something one could get for free, so it was best to deter them from getting any funny ideas about stealing the merchandise before anyone had paid for it. The goons and their pulse laser carbines were one part of the auction house's deterrent: its state-of-the-art layered security system was the other. Every item up for auction was locked in a stasis field wrapped in force screens so tight you'd burn down the entirety of Sovern-Ruprecht's before you'd put a dent in them.
At least that meant that for the moment the Rarity was well protected, Liberty thought as she entered the auction hall. The ballroom-sized space was ostentatiously furnished with polished woods from Anglia, crystal chandeliers from the French Empire, portrait paintings from all corners of Known Space, and embroidered carpets from Klavostan. The chairs had old-fashioned paper labels on them, each with the name of the person who'd reserved in embossed in gold. Liberty had been entered under a fake ID as a representative of the Orion Bank. She slowly walked to her seat, taking her time to scan the hall for familiar faces.
There were just over two dozen people here, and all of them were formidable in their own right. In the front row there was a man with his hair slicked black and a diamondoid transceiver in his ear. Her implants ran him through the Directorate datapacket she'd received earlier and came up with his identity: he was Rico Ciampi, a shady high-class lawyer who worked for Uncle Enzo, the boss of the Cevaukian Mafia in Sovereign space. Ciampi exchanged dagger-like glares with a man in oriental robes a few seats over. A series of tubes carried a sickly green smoke-like substance from under the embroidered dragons to his nose. He was Fu lo Suee, an agent of the TechnoTriads, another of the myriad crime rings from Cevault and a mortal enemy of Uncle Enzo. He was a long way from home in the Ascendancy, which probably explained the hulking Nakhtar bodyguard. The armored alien threw menacing glares at anyone who so much as came close to his charge.
There were others in the room too, and most of them were criminals of one stripe or another, if not because they regularly violated the letter of the law, then at least the spirit. One row over, Liberty saw a representative of Xifan Jae, the CEO of Maibatsu and another for Arcturus LaMerck of LaMerck Industries. There was an astonishingly beautiful brunette with high cheekbones and a red dress who represented a consortium of investors from Zedath-Kalesh; she sat next to the astonishingly rich Haruuhist infotech baronesses Doe Tsukino, who wore a young girl's body of the latest Holy Empire fashion. Directly behind the girl sat a Byzantine rogue trader, a sturdy man draped in finest velvets whose powdered face was studded with golden implants. At first glance he seemed like a poof, but given his diplomatic credentials and the way his eyes kept measuring the distances between the other occupants in the room, Liberty suspected CEID's assessment of the man as an Inquisitorial agent to be correct. Then there were a handful of holostars and other celebrities who though rich beyond measure almost assuredly didn't have the wealth to buy any of the objects on sale today, and thus were here only to be seen and admired. Who certainly were wealthy enough were the two men who came in shortly after each other: heavy-set Edmund DeBarros, CEO of DeBarros General Products, was flanked by an lithe and well-dressed aide who though appearing entirely organic was in reality a cybrid controlled by one of the CIs that worked for his company. By contrast Sidney Hank had come alone. Liberty tried not to raise an eyebrow when the reclusive founding father sauntered into the room, hands stuffed into the pockets of his million-credit suit: he was not part of the briefing package, which meant the Directorate hadn't known he was attending. Then again he was a familiar face, she knew about him from previous briefings so it shouldn't really matter.
Weirdly enough, there were no Apexai in the room. As expected their senators had protested the sale, alleging that the Rarities were lost relics that rightfully belonged to the Apexai exodites. That claim had been rejected in arbitration, but Liberty had expected them to make at least a token attempt to buy back their legacy if it was so important to them.
A rail-thin man in a pompous old fashioned coattail suit walked onto the stage. The people in the hall took their seats, Liberty sitting down on the third row, behind the puissantly rich moguls but well ahead of the crowd of bimbettes and celebutantes in the rear. The Orion Bank was a good cover, it managed a number of CEID slush funds and per the Directorate's standing arrangements with the bank she was allowed to spend a rather outrageous amount of money. It was doubtful it'd be enough to secure the Rarity, but it would hopefully sell her cover identity to the room. The stuffy man stepped behind a wooden lectern and scratched his throat. Slowly the buzz in the room died down. “My name is Troostwijk,” the man introduced himself, “and I will be your auctioneer for this evening. If everyone is settled in? Yes? Then we'll begin with the first item...”
The auction started. First up were a series of nouveau-chichi 3d holoscapes from the Empire Star Republic, vulgar things of clashing neon depicting explicit... well, the digital catalog described it as 'erotics', but really it was just porn at its most obscene. Doe Tsukino giggled and the Byzantine visibly reddened under his cosmetic dye; the crowd of vapid holostars began an enthusiastic bidding war, driving prices through the roof to the barely suppressed glee of the auctioneer.
Next was a series of pieces from the Lord Prestwick collection. The recently deceased Anglian aristocrat had been a safari enthusiast, but his frequent trans-galactic hunting trips had left his family in dire financial straits. They were selling off some key pieces of his trophy collection, among which a series of grotesque Karlack artifacts, including polished skulls, stuffed bioforms, others that were preserved in clear liquids. The room gasped as soft stage lights played tricks on eyes still hungry with rage. Several of the ultra-rich were interested in these pieces, but the Byzantine outbid them all by paying an exorbitant sum for the entire collection. Liberty updated the datapackage on the man with a mental annotation: possibly Ordo Xenos?
The auctioneer continued with a matching pair of Deinonj eidolon swords dating back to the Ark-Cevaukian War. The ethereal, smog-like weapons sparked a furious bidding war between Rico Ciampi and Fu lo Suee, but both were ultimately outdone by Edmund DeBarros, who simply kept raising his bid with ten million credits at a time until both mobsters were left with nothing to do but stare outragedly at the back of the industrialist – stares that were promptly answered by his aide, who most likely doubled as his bodyguard too.
Finally the auction arrived at the Apexai collection, which comprised a number of relics, key piece of which was of course the Rarity. A collection of rare stills of Apexai wardiscs in action against Bragulan battleships was snapped up by LaMerck Industries; Tsukino outbid Xifan Jae and Arcturus LaMerck on an old Apexai instrument fashioned from a psychoplastic that tuned to the owner's mind and produced different tones depending on mood.
And then, the Rarity.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we come now to the crown jewel of today's auction,” Troostwijk deftly intoned. “One of the Apexai Rarities.” An gloved aide carried in the small egg-shaped jewel and placed it on a silken cushion on a pedestal. Light from the glow-globes glittered off carved platinum bands and was then absorbed by the strange black crystals that dotted its sides, creating weirdly shifting patterns of shadow and light with a life of their own. A reverent silence settled over the room and remained unbroken until Troostwijk said “bidding starts at one hundred million credits. Do I hear one hundred million?”
The woman from Zedath-Kalesh slowly raised a hand. The bidding was on. The first minutes were a blur. The price of the Rarity went up unbelievably fast: between Tsukino, Jae, Hank and DeBarros it had doubled before Liberty remembered she was supposed to bid as well. To see her name marked down as having bid two hundred and thirty million credits took her breath away. It was a fake identity, but even so – it was an incredible amount of money. Then the Byzantine raised his hand and the price went up to two hundred and fifty. Hank spared the Inquisitor an irritated glance, raised his hand and called “five hundred”.
Liberty blinked and, from the gasps she heard in the back where the clique of wannabe's sat, she wasn't the only one. Still, as needs must. She raised a hand and said “six hundred”. She felt the attention of the room turn on her like a spotlight. Well, at least she'd caught their attention now.
DeBarros raised the price to seven, the Byzantine to eight, then Jae's representative to nine. Hank raised his hand again. “One billion.”
The brunette investor frowned a little and said. “Five billion.”
Hank turned around to look at her. “Ten.”
She stared at him. Her expression had gone icy. “Fifteen.”
Edmund DeBarros let out a short bark of laughter. “Alright then, Hank. You're on. Thirty billion.”
Liberty willed her voice not to quaver. “Forty,” she called and desperately tried not to think about all the things that kind of money could buy. In a way, she realized, it helped that 'forty billion' was so abstract she had little concept of just how much it really was. Well, beyond 'a lot' at least.
But her bid didn't make the woman from Zedath-Kalesh pause. Hell, she didn't blink, didn't even miss a beat. “Fifty.”
The representative for Maibatsu was hushedly exchanging rapid-fire questions over a personal commlink. Finally he raised a hand. “Seventy,” he called.
“I'll be damned if I let Jae outbid me,” rumbled DeBarros. “Ninety!”
“One hundred,” said Hank by way of reply. He somehow managed to sound a little bored.
“I think somebody knows something I don't,” Liberty heard Tsukino murmur. And even the unflappable Troostwijk had raised an eyebrow.
“One twenty,” Liberty heard someone say. Then she realized it was her own voice, and she knew she'd reached the limit of what the Directorate had allowed her to bid. The Orion Bank could float a lot of losses, especially with the kind of money CEID put in its slush funds, but there were limits to even that, and this was it.
Clearly there were others in the room who had no such difficulties. “One hundred and forty billion,” said the brunette. Her face had gone completely calm and her eyes glittered dangerously.
Jae's representative was shaking his head. Hank had gone still, his eyes flitting between Liberty, the brunette and Edmund DeBarros, who saw it and smiled broadly. “Two hundred!” he called. The CEO looked around with a triumphant expression on his face, expecting none to match his bid – but the smile was wiped from his face as the brunette raised her hand.
“Two fifty,” she called.
DeBarros scowled and named an even higher sum. The woman and he exchanged a flurry of bids and before long the auction ticker indicated a price of three hundred billion credits. Finally the CEO glowered and, when Troostwijk looked at him, shook his head.
“The going price is three hundred billion credits for the Zedath-Kalesh Investment Group” announced the auctioneer. “Three hundred billion for the Apexai Rarity, lot 1258. Going once... going twice...”
Hank lazily raised a hand and named a price. A collective breath went through the room. Troostwijk's eyebrows shot up. Liberty blanched. She'd just heard the man toss away the quarterly domestic product of an entire industrial subsector like it was nothing. The woman from Zedath-Kalesh had gone very still, and finally, slowly, shook her head.
Troostwijk hammered it off. The rabble of wannabe's erupted in excited babble. Edmund DeBarros stomped over to Hank and slammed a hand down on his shoulder. The woman from Zedath-Kalesh remained motionless, her expression completely blank and lifeless. Liberty began to disentangle herself from the crowd. It looked like the Directorate had found a new prime suspect in the murder of Agent Parole Jejune...
Then the doors to the room exploded in a gout of flame and splinters that perforated the designer skins of the nearest holostar. Out of the cloud of smoke charged men, heavily armed men in gray combat armors of a Byzantine make that definitely wasn't worn by Maibatsu corpsec. They carried compact plasma rifles, some of which smoked from recent discharges, which they kept pointed at the crowd of people. For a moment everyone in the room froze as the armors swept forward. From somewhere deeper into the building came the sounds of battle. Then the screaming started. The flock of wannabes panicked. One of the celebutantes made a run for the door, and was brutally gunned down by one of the attackers, a burst of plasma fire blowing his chest cavity out in a gout of superheated flesh and blood. The screaming stopped as suddenly as it had started. Flames licked along the wooden paneling of the auction hall. One of the armors jumped onto the stage shoved Troostwijk aside with such bone-breaking force that the auctioneer was smacked into the wall with a sickening thud. He collapsed to the floor, leaving runnels of blood dripping along the wall. Liberty heard Tsukino whimper somewhere in the crowd. Then the armor grabbed the Rarity off its pedestal and turned to the crowd.
“Listen up!” a gravely voice erupted from a digital vocalizer that whined with feedback. “We are Gamma-Sigma, and we are taking the Rarity. Anyone who wants to object,” he waved his plasma carbine in the air. “Can argue the matter with Old Sparky here.”
Fu lo Suee's alien bodyguard let out a pitched growl. The towering, scaly Nakhtar had been the bane of Cevaukian troops during the Ark-Cevaukian War: violent, nine feet tall, 400 lbs killing machines, they were impossibly hard to kill and had a love for killing things that rivaled that of the worst Ork. And this one was no exception. The alien was unarmed – no weapons had been allowed into the auction house – but it didn't need one. The Nakhtar simply grabbed the nearest power-armored trooper, swung him around with inhuman force and smashed him into his nearest comrade.
To their credit the attackers reacted quickly and with expert precision. The nearest troopers unleashed a fusillade of burning plasma fire that caught the alien in a crossfire. The bolts seared burning chunks of alien matter, but incredibly the Nakhtar didn't die. A nanotech fusion of biological and mechanical parts at the molecular level, a Nakhtar could survive destruction of seventy percent of its body and still fight on, which this specimen demonstrated by grabbing the rifle of one of the disabled armors and blasting one of its attackers in the face with a salvo of plasma fire that exploded the head of the man within in a gory explosion of burning blood.
Liberty dove for the floor and did the first thing that came to mind. With a pulse of thought, she keyed her comms implant and accessed the d-link cipher of the man who was her chief suspect for the death of her colleague – or at least had been until a few seconds ago.
Sidney Hank manifested in the blank white emptiness of the virtual d-link thoughtspace as an impeccable copy of himself, suit included. The tycoon wore an expression like she was a minor irritation. “Is this really the time?”
Liberty ignored him. “My name is Liberty,” she introduced, “I represent-”
“I know who you represent,” he interrupted her. “Miss Liberty Kincaid of CEID Zero.” Back in actuality, Liberty realized Hank had hit the deck as well, and was crawling out of the crossfire which, by virtue of the layout of the unfolding battle, was the same direction she was crawling in. The Nakhtar had taken out another of the grey-armored attackers, but more of them were coming through the doors now, peppering the room with deadly fire that scythed down many of its occupants who were, after all, ill-used to open warfare. “And let me tell you, I'm not a big fan of the people you work for, so make it quick.”
Liberty saw Edmund DeBarross' CI bodyguard take a plasma bolt for him, and decided to focus on the digital conversation. “Alright, good, so you actually know your business,” her avatar nodded. He seemed at least taken aback at her frankness. “Look, I have just one thing to ask... Are these guys with you?”
“Are they-” she got the distinct impression Hank's avatar rolled his eyes. “Of course they are not. I just bought the god-damn Rarity, why would I need to steal it now?”
“Save yourself the expense?”
He was definitely rolling his eyes now. “Lady, I wouldn't do something this vulgar if it killed me, let alone to spare some pocket change. Besides, does it look like they're with me?”
“Fair enough,” she shrugged. “That's really all I needed to know right now.”
The thought-space dissolved and just in time too, because the Nakhtar simply exploded. One moment the alien was still there (for a given value of there), defiantly firing the looted plasma rifle from its hip despite being completely gored and scorched by plasma fire. The next, the temperature in the room dropped to sub-zero in a second and the Nakhtar vanished in a wreathing ball of blue psionic fire. The firing stopped ever so abruptly. When Liberty turned to look, the brunette in the gorgeous dress had disappeared. In her place sat a freakish abomination. It looked rudimentarily human, but the proportions were all wrong, like a puppet crafted by a kid with only a faint grasp of the human physiognomy. Its body was too small, its legs too long, and its head was grossly deformed. Thick black pupil-less eyes surveyed the room. Its features were twisted in a malevolent sneer. There was a kind of unpleasant overpressure in the room, like the very air had been weighted down and laced with dancing psionic static. It punched the air from Liberty's lungs, threatened to suffocate her.
Second-generation hybrid. Shit, that was one hell of a psiocopic screen if it managed to fool the entire room with it... So maybe first-generation, she realized. Suddenly she was glad for the Directorate-spec implants that warded off the worst of the psionic effects. Most people in the room were not so lucky – in fact, only a few seemed to be able to fend off the mind-twisting effect of the hybrid's aura. Hank was managing, but Liberty could see from the look in his eyes that he was feeling the strain. The Byzantine, hunkered down in the far corner, had it even worse. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck! We're all gonna die in here!
But the hybrid simply stood up, weird legs bent backwards at an inhuman angle. It held up a four-fingered hand, and then just as sudden as it had come, the psionic pressure vanished. So did the hybrid, and all the grey-armored men – they simply disappeared, teleported away in a series of thunderclaps as air rushed in to fill sudden vacuums.
Suddenly, the ruined auction room was very silent. Flames licked across the ravaged ceiling. Charred blood and guts were strewn liberally about. The smell of ozone and carbonized flesh filled the air. Survivors sobbed hysterically. From deeper inside the building came the sounds of raging fires. In the distance sirens were approaching.
Liberty crawled up from the floor. She took stock of the situation, looked around, came face to face with Hank. The tycoon looked disheveled, his suit ruined. Parts of his arm were scorched by a near-miss of a plasma round. “Well then,” she said.
“Well then,” he concurred. Sidney Hank looked at his ruined arm, then back at her. “Still think I'm behind this?”
“I rather doubt it,” she admitted.
“Then I think we have a common goal just about now, yes?”
“Find out whoever the hell these Gamma-Sigma guys are,” she nodded. “And where the hell they got a hybrid to back them up. But hold on,” she frowned. “I thought you didn't like the Directorate?”
He smiled grimly. “I don't. But I didn't begin this nation because I'd like everything it did, Miss Kincaid. The ends justify the means.”
She arched an eyebrow. “And we are the means?”
A shrug. “Right now the end is to retrieve my Rarity. I imagine you were here for reasons associated with whoever just took it. The enemy of my enemy...”
“Is my friend?” she finished.
He looked at her, smiled a little. “Is potentially my ally of convenience for a little while at least, I would say.” He stuck out a hand with his intact arm. “What do you say?”
Liberty shook it. “Let's go hunt a hybrid.”
Chapter 1 wrote:“One of our data-trawlers has reported that one of the Rarities is going on sale at Sovern-Ruprecht auction house. It is the first Rarity on the open market in ninety-eight years, and a perfect match to the fake that Jejune had on him when he died. The chance that this is a coincidence is deemed to be so small it might as well be nonexistent. The fake that Jejune was killed over must somehow be linked to the real one going on sale next week. Therefore, we want you to be at the auction.”
Chapter 2
Sovern-Ruprecht auction house
Shin-Hokkaido, United Solarian Sovereignty
Shin-Hokkaido, more than any other planet in the Sovereignty, was a place of opposites. Those who were rich were immensely so and lived in the towering highrise of the cy-claves; those who weren't eked out a living in grungy block houses and destitute arcologies. The poor perhaps weren't poor by galactic standards, and no-one in the Sovereignty was starving exactly, but they were a definite underclass, kitted out with cheap corporate wetware and treated as little more than organic extensions of the computer systems they watched over, kept down by their lack of access to the high-end gene-jobs and augmetics that allowed the truly wealthy to stay comfortably ahead of the masses in terms of looks, skill, health and strength.
A great many among those masses of course resented their corporate overlords for this, and there existed a far-flung resistance of anarchic elements, lead by cyberdeckers and street samurai who battled the corporate security of firms like Maibatsu, Tambu and Shoa in cyberspace as well as in the 'deep reality' of everyday life. The idealists among the resistance limited themselves to acts of petty mischief, vandalizing the omnipresent corporate hologlow, spraying graffiti or pirating software. But there was also a hard core of rebels, united in the Shindatai movement, who went far beyond that. They firebombed the offices of the megacorps, engaged in brutal ambushes and shoot-outs with corporate security, and trashed entire servers with black market killsoft. And despite their best efforts, corpsec seemed unable to root them out entirely.
With the ever-present threat of the unwashed proles coming to do violence hanging over everyone with money it was little wonder then that the Sovern-Ruprecht auction house was defended by a small army of goons decked out in suits of sleek Maibatsu power armor. There were, of course, also other reasons: for one, a lot of the people who were attending today's auction were very powerful and correspondingly, very dangerous. The auctioneers had been in the business long enough to know that many of the K-Zone's leading personalities believed that it was better not to pay for something one could get for free, so it was best to deter them from getting any funny ideas about stealing the merchandise before anyone had paid for it. The goons and their pulse laser carbines were one part of the auction house's deterrent: its state-of-the-art layered security system was the other. Every item up for auction was locked in a stasis field wrapped in force screens so tight you'd burn down the entirety of Sovern-Ruprecht's before you'd put a dent in them.
At least that meant that for the moment the Rarity was well protected, Liberty thought as she entered the auction hall. The ballroom-sized space was ostentatiously furnished with polished woods from Anglia, crystal chandeliers from the French Empire, portrait paintings from all corners of Known Space, and embroidered carpets from Klavostan. The chairs had old-fashioned paper labels on them, each with the name of the person who'd reserved in embossed in gold. Liberty had been entered under a fake ID as a representative of the Orion Bank. She slowly walked to her seat, taking her time to scan the hall for familiar faces.
There were just over two dozen people here, and all of them were formidable in their own right. In the front row there was a man with his hair slicked black and a diamondoid transceiver in his ear. Her implants ran him through the Directorate datapacket she'd received earlier and came up with his identity: he was Rico Ciampi, a shady high-class lawyer who worked for Uncle Enzo, the boss of the Cevaukian Mafia in Sovereign space. Ciampi exchanged dagger-like glares with a man in oriental robes a few seats over. A series of tubes carried a sickly green smoke-like substance from under the embroidered dragons to his nose. He was Fu lo Suee, an agent of the TechnoTriads, another of the myriad crime rings from Cevault and a mortal enemy of Uncle Enzo. He was a long way from home in the Ascendancy, which probably explained the hulking Nakhtar bodyguard. The armored alien threw menacing glares at anyone who so much as came close to his charge.
There were others in the room too, and most of them were criminals of one stripe or another, if not because they regularly violated the letter of the law, then at least the spirit. One row over, Liberty saw a representative of Xifan Jae, the CEO of Maibatsu and another for Arcturus LaMerck of LaMerck Industries. There was an astonishingly beautiful brunette with high cheekbones and a red dress who represented a consortium of investors from Zedath-Kalesh; she sat next to the astonishingly rich Haruuhist infotech baronesses Doe Tsukino, who wore a young girl's body of the latest Holy Empire fashion. Directly behind the girl sat a Byzantine rogue trader, a sturdy man draped in finest velvets whose powdered face was studded with golden implants. At first glance he seemed like a poof, but given his diplomatic credentials and the way his eyes kept measuring the distances between the other occupants in the room, Liberty suspected CEID's assessment of the man as an Inquisitorial agent to be correct. Then there were a handful of holostars and other celebrities who though rich beyond measure almost assuredly didn't have the wealth to buy any of the objects on sale today, and thus were here only to be seen and admired. Who certainly were wealthy enough were the two men who came in shortly after each other: heavy-set Edmund DeBarros, CEO of DeBarros General Products, was flanked by an lithe and well-dressed aide who though appearing entirely organic was in reality a cybrid controlled by one of the CIs that worked for his company. By contrast Sidney Hank had come alone. Liberty tried not to raise an eyebrow when the reclusive founding father sauntered into the room, hands stuffed into the pockets of his million-credit suit: he was not part of the briefing package, which meant the Directorate hadn't known he was attending. Then again he was a familiar face, she knew about him from previous briefings so it shouldn't really matter.
Weirdly enough, there were no Apexai in the room. As expected their senators had protested the sale, alleging that the Rarities were lost relics that rightfully belonged to the Apexai exodites. That claim had been rejected in arbitration, but Liberty had expected them to make at least a token attempt to buy back their legacy if it was so important to them.
A rail-thin man in a pompous old fashioned coattail suit walked onto the stage. The people in the hall took their seats, Liberty sitting down on the third row, behind the puissantly rich moguls but well ahead of the crowd of bimbettes and celebutantes in the rear. The Orion Bank was a good cover, it managed a number of CEID slush funds and per the Directorate's standing arrangements with the bank she was allowed to spend a rather outrageous amount of money. It was doubtful it'd be enough to secure the Rarity, but it would hopefully sell her cover identity to the room. The stuffy man stepped behind a wooden lectern and scratched his throat. Slowly the buzz in the room died down. “My name is Troostwijk,” the man introduced himself, “and I will be your auctioneer for this evening. If everyone is settled in? Yes? Then we'll begin with the first item...”
The auction started. First up were a series of nouveau-chichi 3d holoscapes from the Empire Star Republic, vulgar things of clashing neon depicting explicit... well, the digital catalog described it as 'erotics', but really it was just porn at its most obscene. Doe Tsukino giggled and the Byzantine visibly reddened under his cosmetic dye; the crowd of vapid holostars began an enthusiastic bidding war, driving prices through the roof to the barely suppressed glee of the auctioneer.
Next was a series of pieces from the Lord Prestwick collection. The recently deceased Anglian aristocrat had been a safari enthusiast, but his frequent trans-galactic hunting trips had left his family in dire financial straits. They were selling off some key pieces of his trophy collection, among which a series of grotesque Karlack artifacts, including polished skulls, stuffed bioforms, others that were preserved in clear liquids. The room gasped as soft stage lights played tricks on eyes still hungry with rage. Several of the ultra-rich were interested in these pieces, but the Byzantine outbid them all by paying an exorbitant sum for the entire collection. Liberty updated the datapackage on the man with a mental annotation: possibly Ordo Xenos?
The auctioneer continued with a matching pair of Deinonj eidolon swords dating back to the Ark-Cevaukian War. The ethereal, smog-like weapons sparked a furious bidding war between Rico Ciampi and Fu lo Suee, but both were ultimately outdone by Edmund DeBarros, who simply kept raising his bid with ten million credits at a time until both mobsters were left with nothing to do but stare outragedly at the back of the industrialist – stares that were promptly answered by his aide, who most likely doubled as his bodyguard too.
Finally the auction arrived at the Apexai collection, which comprised a number of relics, key piece of which was of course the Rarity. A collection of rare stills of Apexai wardiscs in action against Bragulan battleships was snapped up by LaMerck Industries; Tsukino outbid Xifan Jae and Arcturus LaMerck on an old Apexai instrument fashioned from a psychoplastic that tuned to the owner's mind and produced different tones depending on mood.
And then, the Rarity.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we come now to the crown jewel of today's auction,” Troostwijk deftly intoned. “One of the Apexai Rarities.” An gloved aide carried in the small egg-shaped jewel and placed it on a silken cushion on a pedestal. Light from the glow-globes glittered off carved platinum bands and was then absorbed by the strange black crystals that dotted its sides, creating weirdly shifting patterns of shadow and light with a life of their own. A reverent silence settled over the room and remained unbroken until Troostwijk said “bidding starts at one hundred million credits. Do I hear one hundred million?”
The woman from Zedath-Kalesh slowly raised a hand. The bidding was on. The first minutes were a blur. The price of the Rarity went up unbelievably fast: between Tsukino, Jae, Hank and DeBarros it had doubled before Liberty remembered she was supposed to bid as well. To see her name marked down as having bid two hundred and thirty million credits took her breath away. It was a fake identity, but even so – it was an incredible amount of money. Then the Byzantine raised his hand and the price went up to two hundred and fifty. Hank spared the Inquisitor an irritated glance, raised his hand and called “five hundred”.
Liberty blinked and, from the gasps she heard in the back where the clique of wannabe's sat, she wasn't the only one. Still, as needs must. She raised a hand and said “six hundred”. She felt the attention of the room turn on her like a spotlight. Well, at least she'd caught their attention now.
DeBarros raised the price to seven, the Byzantine to eight, then Jae's representative to nine. Hank raised his hand again. “One billion.”
The brunette investor frowned a little and said. “Five billion.”
Hank turned around to look at her. “Ten.”
She stared at him. Her expression had gone icy. “Fifteen.”
Edmund DeBarros let out a short bark of laughter. “Alright then, Hank. You're on. Thirty billion.”
Liberty willed her voice not to quaver. “Forty,” she called and desperately tried not to think about all the things that kind of money could buy. In a way, she realized, it helped that 'forty billion' was so abstract she had little concept of just how much it really was. Well, beyond 'a lot' at least.
But her bid didn't make the woman from Zedath-Kalesh pause. Hell, she didn't blink, didn't even miss a beat. “Fifty.”
The representative for Maibatsu was hushedly exchanging rapid-fire questions over a personal commlink. Finally he raised a hand. “Seventy,” he called.
“I'll be damned if I let Jae outbid me,” rumbled DeBarros. “Ninety!”
“One hundred,” said Hank by way of reply. He somehow managed to sound a little bored.
“I think somebody knows something I don't,” Liberty heard Tsukino murmur. And even the unflappable Troostwijk had raised an eyebrow.
“One twenty,” Liberty heard someone say. Then she realized it was her own voice, and she knew she'd reached the limit of what the Directorate had allowed her to bid. The Orion Bank could float a lot of losses, especially with the kind of money CEID put in its slush funds, but there were limits to even that, and this was it.
Clearly there were others in the room who had no such difficulties. “One hundred and forty billion,” said the brunette. Her face had gone completely calm and her eyes glittered dangerously.
Jae's representative was shaking his head. Hank had gone still, his eyes flitting between Liberty, the brunette and Edmund DeBarros, who saw it and smiled broadly. “Two hundred!” he called. The CEO looked around with a triumphant expression on his face, expecting none to match his bid – but the smile was wiped from his face as the brunette raised her hand.
“Two fifty,” she called.
DeBarros scowled and named an even higher sum. The woman and he exchanged a flurry of bids and before long the auction ticker indicated a price of three hundred billion credits. Finally the CEO glowered and, when Troostwijk looked at him, shook his head.
“The going price is three hundred billion credits for the Zedath-Kalesh Investment Group” announced the auctioneer. “Three hundred billion for the Apexai Rarity, lot 1258. Going once... going twice...”
Hank lazily raised a hand and named a price. A collective breath went through the room. Troostwijk's eyebrows shot up. Liberty blanched. She'd just heard the man toss away the quarterly domestic product of an entire industrial subsector like it was nothing. The woman from Zedath-Kalesh had gone very still, and finally, slowly, shook her head.
Troostwijk hammered it off. The rabble of wannabe's erupted in excited babble. Edmund DeBarros stomped over to Hank and slammed a hand down on his shoulder. The woman from Zedath-Kalesh remained motionless, her expression completely blank and lifeless. Liberty began to disentangle herself from the crowd. It looked like the Directorate had found a new prime suspect in the murder of Agent Parole Jejune...
Then the doors to the room exploded in a gout of flame and splinters that perforated the designer skins of the nearest holostar. Out of the cloud of smoke charged men, heavily armed men in gray combat armors of a Byzantine make that definitely wasn't worn by Maibatsu corpsec. They carried compact plasma rifles, some of which smoked from recent discharges, which they kept pointed at the crowd of people. For a moment everyone in the room froze as the armors swept forward. From somewhere deeper into the building came the sounds of battle. Then the screaming started. The flock of wannabes panicked. One of the celebutantes made a run for the door, and was brutally gunned down by one of the attackers, a burst of plasma fire blowing his chest cavity out in a gout of superheated flesh and blood. The screaming stopped as suddenly as it had started. Flames licked along the wooden paneling of the auction hall. One of the armors jumped onto the stage shoved Troostwijk aside with such bone-breaking force that the auctioneer was smacked into the wall with a sickening thud. He collapsed to the floor, leaving runnels of blood dripping along the wall. Liberty heard Tsukino whimper somewhere in the crowd. Then the armor grabbed the Rarity off its pedestal and turned to the crowd.
“Listen up!” a gravely voice erupted from a digital vocalizer that whined with feedback. “We are Gamma-Sigma, and we are taking the Rarity. Anyone who wants to object,” he waved his plasma carbine in the air. “Can argue the matter with Old Sparky here.”
Fu lo Suee's alien bodyguard let out a pitched growl. The towering, scaly Nakhtar had been the bane of Cevaukian troops during the Ark-Cevaukian War: violent, nine feet tall, 400 lbs killing machines, they were impossibly hard to kill and had a love for killing things that rivaled that of the worst Ork. And this one was no exception. The alien was unarmed – no weapons had been allowed into the auction house – but it didn't need one. The Nakhtar simply grabbed the nearest power-armored trooper, swung him around with inhuman force and smashed him into his nearest comrade.
To their credit the attackers reacted quickly and with expert precision. The nearest troopers unleashed a fusillade of burning plasma fire that caught the alien in a crossfire. The bolts seared burning chunks of alien matter, but incredibly the Nakhtar didn't die. A nanotech fusion of biological and mechanical parts at the molecular level, a Nakhtar could survive destruction of seventy percent of its body and still fight on, which this specimen demonstrated by grabbing the rifle of one of the disabled armors and blasting one of its attackers in the face with a salvo of plasma fire that exploded the head of the man within in a gory explosion of burning blood.
Liberty dove for the floor and did the first thing that came to mind. With a pulse of thought, she keyed her comms implant and accessed the d-link cipher of the man who was her chief suspect for the death of her colleague – or at least had been until a few seconds ago.
Sidney Hank manifested in the blank white emptiness of the virtual d-link thoughtspace as an impeccable copy of himself, suit included. The tycoon wore an expression like she was a minor irritation. “Is this really the time?”
Liberty ignored him. “My name is Liberty,” she introduced, “I represent-”
“I know who you represent,” he interrupted her. “Miss Liberty Kincaid of CEID Zero.” Back in actuality, Liberty realized Hank had hit the deck as well, and was crawling out of the crossfire which, by virtue of the layout of the unfolding battle, was the same direction she was crawling in. The Nakhtar had taken out another of the grey-armored attackers, but more of them were coming through the doors now, peppering the room with deadly fire that scythed down many of its occupants who were, after all, ill-used to open warfare. “And let me tell you, I'm not a big fan of the people you work for, so make it quick.”
Liberty saw Edmund DeBarross' CI bodyguard take a plasma bolt for him, and decided to focus on the digital conversation. “Alright, good, so you actually know your business,” her avatar nodded. He seemed at least taken aback at her frankness. “Look, I have just one thing to ask... Are these guys with you?”
“Are they-” she got the distinct impression Hank's avatar rolled his eyes. “Of course they are not. I just bought the god-damn Rarity, why would I need to steal it now?”
“Save yourself the expense?”
He was definitely rolling his eyes now. “Lady, I wouldn't do something this vulgar if it killed me, let alone to spare some pocket change. Besides, does it look like they're with me?”
“Fair enough,” she shrugged. “That's really all I needed to know right now.”
The thought-space dissolved and just in time too, because the Nakhtar simply exploded. One moment the alien was still there (for a given value of there), defiantly firing the looted plasma rifle from its hip despite being completely gored and scorched by plasma fire. The next, the temperature in the room dropped to sub-zero in a second and the Nakhtar vanished in a wreathing ball of blue psionic fire. The firing stopped ever so abruptly. When Liberty turned to look, the brunette in the gorgeous dress had disappeared. In her place sat a freakish abomination. It looked rudimentarily human, but the proportions were all wrong, like a puppet crafted by a kid with only a faint grasp of the human physiognomy. Its body was too small, its legs too long, and its head was grossly deformed. Thick black pupil-less eyes surveyed the room. Its features were twisted in a malevolent sneer. There was a kind of unpleasant overpressure in the room, like the very air had been weighted down and laced with dancing psionic static. It punched the air from Liberty's lungs, threatened to suffocate her.
Second-generation hybrid. Shit, that was one hell of a psiocopic screen if it managed to fool the entire room with it... So maybe first-generation, she realized. Suddenly she was glad for the Directorate-spec implants that warded off the worst of the psionic effects. Most people in the room were not so lucky – in fact, only a few seemed to be able to fend off the mind-twisting effect of the hybrid's aura. Hank was managing, but Liberty could see from the look in his eyes that he was feeling the strain. The Byzantine, hunkered down in the far corner, had it even worse. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck! We're all gonna die in here!
But the hybrid simply stood up, weird legs bent backwards at an inhuman angle. It held up a four-fingered hand, and then just as sudden as it had come, the psionic pressure vanished. So did the hybrid, and all the grey-armored men – they simply disappeared, teleported away in a series of thunderclaps as air rushed in to fill sudden vacuums.
Suddenly, the ruined auction room was very silent. Flames licked across the ravaged ceiling. Charred blood and guts were strewn liberally about. The smell of ozone and carbonized flesh filled the air. Survivors sobbed hysterically. From deeper inside the building came the sounds of raging fires. In the distance sirens were approaching.
Liberty crawled up from the floor. She took stock of the situation, looked around, came face to face with Hank. The tycoon looked disheveled, his suit ruined. Parts of his arm were scorched by a near-miss of a plasma round. “Well then,” she said.
“Well then,” he concurred. Sidney Hank looked at his ruined arm, then back at her. “Still think I'm behind this?”
“I rather doubt it,” she admitted.
“Then I think we have a common goal just about now, yes?”
“Find out whoever the hell these Gamma-Sigma guys are,” she nodded. “And where the hell they got a hybrid to back them up. But hold on,” she frowned. “I thought you didn't like the Directorate?”
He smiled grimly. “I don't. But I didn't begin this nation because I'd like everything it did, Miss Kincaid. The ends justify the means.”
She arched an eyebrow. “And we are the means?”
A shrug. “Right now the end is to retrieve my Rarity. I imagine you were here for reasons associated with whoever just took it. The enemy of my enemy...”
“Is my friend?” she finished.
He looked at her, smiled a little. “Is potentially my ally of convenience for a little while at least, I would say.” He stuck out a hand with his intact arm. “What do you say?”
Liberty shook it. “Let's go hunt a hybrid.”
SDN World 3: The Sultanate of Egypt
SDN World 4: The United Solarian Sovereignty
SDN World 5: San Dorado
There'll be a bodycount, we're gonna watch it rise
The folks at CNN, they won't believe their eyes
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 2
MEH Space
Aboard the NSAS Turtles All the Way Down
Pilot Sobchak was on edge. The eight cups of coffee probably weren't helping, but it was definitely more due to him trying to balance on the razor's edge of flying close enough to the Ork ship's exhaust to minimize their own stealth silhouette, but far enough away to not be burned up by the same exhaust.
"Walter, you doing okay?" inquired Commander Djangles.
"I'm doing just fucking fine and fucking dandy, Commander! Trying to keep us from fucking dieing today!" he yelled in a voice that even his longtime friend couldn't decipher as just trying to maintain distance or genuinely irate.
"Why can't you use the autopilot? It'd at least let you sleep. I know you've had some modifications to reduce your need for sleep, but it has been damn near a week."
"Goddammit, Djangles, these bastard Orks have shitty technology! The exhaust flares up sometimes and I have to pull back, or it sputters and I have to pull forward or it starts doing this weird thing where it starts shooting out green and red and I have to make sure we don't burn in a goddamn ork fireball!" Sobchak yelled.
"Doesn't the autopilot AI have decent settings for that?" Djangles asked, some hesitation in his voice.
"Damn it, Donny's no good as an AI! He just fucking talks and talks and talks!"
"I am the walrus," chirped Donny the AI.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP, DONNY!"
"Walter, just calm down. Anyway, I have to go brief the rest of the team," Djangles excused himself.
Commander Djangles strode to the communal room with purpose.
"Men, we're on a dangerous mission, as I'm sure you're all aware. So, while we never strive for violence against anyone, we must be prepared to defend ourselves against either the Orks or the MEH. Are all of you up to date on your fighting styles?"
"No one can stand against my fire-breathing fists," replied Sergeant Topper Harley.
"Excellent, the rest of you?" asked Djangles.
The rest answered in the affirmative, except for one Obi-Wan Wilton.
"I'm just a journalist,sir."
"You're going to need to learn, son. This is dangerous territory, and just pointing and shooting a gun isn't going to be enough. You'll need to learn psychic and melee combat, especially if we go against Orks. Luckily, we have Master Yogurt in cryostasis. He'll train you. Ocean, thaw out Yogurt!"
"Of course, sir."
Aboard the NSAS Turtles All the Way Down
Pilot Sobchak was on edge. The eight cups of coffee probably weren't helping, but it was definitely more due to him trying to balance on the razor's edge of flying close enough to the Ork ship's exhaust to minimize their own stealth silhouette, but far enough away to not be burned up by the same exhaust.
"Walter, you doing okay?" inquired Commander Djangles.
"I'm doing just fucking fine and fucking dandy, Commander! Trying to keep us from fucking dieing today!" he yelled in a voice that even his longtime friend couldn't decipher as just trying to maintain distance or genuinely irate.
"Why can't you use the autopilot? It'd at least let you sleep. I know you've had some modifications to reduce your need for sleep, but it has been damn near a week."
"Goddammit, Djangles, these bastard Orks have shitty technology! The exhaust flares up sometimes and I have to pull back, or it sputters and I have to pull forward or it starts doing this weird thing where it starts shooting out green and red and I have to make sure we don't burn in a goddamn ork fireball!" Sobchak yelled.
"Doesn't the autopilot AI have decent settings for that?" Djangles asked, some hesitation in his voice.
"Damn it, Donny's no good as an AI! He just fucking talks and talks and talks!"
"I am the walrus," chirped Donny the AI.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP, DONNY!"
"Walter, just calm down. Anyway, I have to go brief the rest of the team," Djangles excused himself.
Commander Djangles strode to the communal room with purpose.
"Men, we're on a dangerous mission, as I'm sure you're all aware. So, while we never strive for violence against anyone, we must be prepared to defend ourselves against either the Orks or the MEH. Are all of you up to date on your fighting styles?"
"No one can stand against my fire-breathing fists," replied Sergeant Topper Harley.
"Excellent, the rest of you?" asked Djangles.
The rest answered in the affirmative, except for one Obi-Wan Wilton.
"I'm just a journalist,sir."
"You're going to need to learn, son. This is dangerous territory, and just pointing and shooting a gun isn't going to be enough. You'll need to learn psychic and melee combat, especially if we go against Orks. Luckily, we have Master Yogurt in cryostasis. He'll train you. Ocean, thaw out Yogurt!"
"Of course, sir."
SDNet: Unbelievable levels of pedantry that you can't find anywhere else on the Internet!
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Simon_Jester
- Emperor's Hand
- Posts: 30165
- Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm
Re: George at the BEEEF
The Bragulan Economic Exposition Extravaganza of Friendship (BEEEF)
Vlyadibragstok, Southeastern Severnaya Sector
Umerian Pavilion
Goddamn Unreal Time
George Jetson was feeling glum, and decided to take his lunch break a little early. This led him past many of the other booths and kiosks of the Umerian pavilion. So far, the Umerians had enjoyed a relatively quiet corner of the BEEEF, except for the occasional altercation near the UMERTHIRST booth. Even those usually weren't too destructive or brutal, except for that one time when the Astonishing Bulk had doubled back through the booth and gotten into a fight with a mutated roidasaurus from Zigonia.
The atmosphere was mostly cheerful, with a variety of products on display ranging from personal accessories to (advertisements for) antiship particle cannon. The pavilion advertised and offered examples of the finest fruits of Umerian manufacturing, Umerian engineering, and above all, Umerian SCIENCE!
George skirted around one particularly massive crowd composed almost entirely of Bragulans, packed so thick he could hardly see what they were trying to buy. He wasn't the only one with that problem, either; a little humanoid in a brown robe was hopping up and down on the fringes of the bear crowd trying to get a look too.
George's curiosity burned through his bad mood, and he slipped around behind the booth of another tool and die company to find... he could swear he remembered it being here... yes! A stepladder! Clambering up to a greater height, he could see over the crowd of bears pressed around the kiosk.
One of the bears raised her paws to her muzzle and sniffled a little.
"It's... It's beautiful!"
Jetson craned his neck... and saw, hung by the kiosk window, a sign!
He saw many Bragulans with pen in hand, filling out order forms for great numbers of the signs. Then one waltzed up to the counter and plopped down a pile of UN credits. A clerk nodded politely, then called to someone in the back room. George heard electrical buzzing, strange chemical bubbling noises, and someone shouting "It's ALIVE! Bwa-ha-haa!"
Soon, the clerk slipped away for a moment and returned, holding a suspiciously shiny version of the basic sign. Chrome-plated, perhaps? With extra colorful anodization? Who could say?
He wondered why the Bragulans found the signs so desirable. Ah well, more power to these guys. At least they'd been smart enough to find a product their customers would actually buy. Whereas Mr. Spacely had sent George and the Spacely Sprockets sales team off to sell the Bragulans vacuum tubes of all things. The task seemed impossible... and kind of dumb, to tell the truth.
George slipped down from the stepladder and moved on, passing a large, trendily-decorated booth with a great banner suspended over it. Bracketed between the starship-and-sun logo of the Space Security Force and the MiniProd cogwheel-and-hammer stood a boldfaced title:
Posters and scale models advertised a wide variety of particle beam weaponry; George was half-tempted to pick up a free brochure, but ultimately decided against it because he couldn't imagine needing (or being able to buy) a proton cannon any time soon.
George found the place he was looking for, got in line, waited a bit, and plunked down the starbucks for a bronto-burger. In this case, the brontoburgers were merely a concession stand so that visiting customers would have something to eat, not a major part of the trade expo. Not with the NenAltKik preparing the stuff- moxli, they were the ones who really knew how to serve up brontosaurus. But this stuff should be good enough. He took the fast food off to a bench, sat down to eat, and sighed.
His meal was interrupted by a man wearing a jetpack. A pretty good one, too- an Aerohopper 7000.
"Greetings, my friend. You look troubled. Is something wrong?"
"...Who are you?"
"I am Zack, a humble servant of the cause of Shroomanism. I came here to buy this jetpack, but I sense that my travels along the Path of Awesomeness aren't yet done here. Do you perhaps have some insanely difficult and unlikely task that needs doing?"
George slumped. "My boss sent me here to sell vacuum tubes to Bragulans."
The Shroomanist clicked his tongue. "Insanely difficult and unlikely indeed."
"It seemed like a good idea back home, but every time we try to sell our switching tubes to them, they just... just... laugh."
"Hmm. I sense that you stand in a fork in the road, my pocketless friend. Down one path, leads the lameness of trying to do something impossible and dumb, and failing. Down the other, the awesomeness of trying to do something impossible and dumb, and succeeding! Perhaps I might be of some assistance in your quest."
"But... but how?"
"Let us remember what Bragulans prize in technology- not sophistication or miniaturization, but durability..."
BEEEF
Spacely Sprockets Booth
A Day or Two Later
Brryz Grrasim shambled past the booth inexplicably selling Byzonist signs, which sold like hotcakes on Bragsday morning. He wondered how the remote and puny Umerianoids had come upon Byzonist sloganage, especially one so elegant and resonant that it was practically Zen Byzonism. However, he had already purchased enough of the signs for his office and the mandatory signs to be posted in the offices of his underlings. Today was not a day for purchasing signs. Today was a day for fucking laughing!
He had heard of the puny Umerianoid company which had been mad enough to come to the BEEEF advertising vacuum tubes! Of all things! He supposed that he should be grateful to the Umerians for allowing such idiots to come here, for they had provided many sad bears with great entertainment!
->
From sad bear to happy bear
Brryz wandered up to the booth. At the moment, no other Bragulans were present; he had it to himself. A puny human with red hair and a big nose tended to some unknown piece of machinery, while other humans stood around. One man, inexplicably wearing a jetpack, strode up to him with unbecoming confidence in a human, which would normally have earned him a Bragful beating- but one had to be polite as part of Glasnot, at the BEEEF.
"Hail, oh noble bear. I am Zack, here to present to you the fine products of Spacely Sprockets. Specifically, Spacely's most radical high-power, high-durability switching systems!"
"You are the ones who are trying to sell vacuum tubes to Bragule, da?"
"But these are no ordinary vacuum tubes, comrade! First, let us demonstrate the function of the device. Engage the switches!"
The big-nosed Umerianoid pressed a button. There were many whirring and buzzing noises, along with great shininess. Then, KABOOOOOM! A solid arc of lightning appeared across a pair of carefully insulated pylons.
"What you see before you is one point twenty one jiggawatts of electricity, carried across this busbar!" The jetpack-man gestured grandly, keeping his hands far, far away from the machinery. "Now, my pocketless friend will demonstrate the switch! Hit it, George!"
The big-nosed guy, apparently named George, did so. Suddenly, the bar of lightning died and the vacuum tubule began to glow as it blocked off the massive flow of electricity. George pressed the button several times, each time sending a signal to the Umerian tube, and each time the bar of lightning appeared or disappeared. So far, so unimpressive. The созд tube could do the same, and so could the ржит. The mighty илли would even fucking laugh at a mere 1.21 jiggawatts.
"So, this is what you wish to sell to mighty Bragule?"
"You ain't seen nothing yet, Comrade Bear! Power it down, boys."
George complied, carefully reaching one arm out behind him into empty air while the other touched the control panels for the high voltage system. Brryz noticed that the Umerianoid was wearing insulated boots of truly epic proportions, fit to rival the most heavily insulated of Bragwear.
"Now that the machine is safely grounded, we will remove the switching tube and demonstrate its true awesomeness." The Umerian George unscrewed the tube from the machine. Zack crossed the room and picked up a seemingly random hunk of metal- no! A frying pan! He then turned to George and shouted:
"Pull!"
George slung the tube across the room, straight for Zack, who hauled off and smacked it with the frying pan. It whizzed through the air, fast as the eye could follow, then slammed against the Bragcrete wall of the exhibition room. Which, being elderly Bragcrete, chipped.
George trotted over to the wall and scooped up the tubule. He gave it a brief glance, then walked over to the machine and screwed it back in. Brryz waited for the punchline, when the human device would surely exploderize into a thousand pieces, riddling the foolish Umerianoids with glass fragments. It had to be hopelessly damaged, beyond any possibility of repair...
Then George cut in the power. And it the punchline failed to punch! The Umerian flipped the switch back and forth, for all the world as if the vacuum tubule had never been moved from its slot!
Most disturbing. The созд and ржит tubes would have been ground glass and confetti after an impact forceful enough to chip Bragcrete. The mighty илли would survive structurally, but to actually use it... very dangerous, a risk to be taken only be the most lowly of conscripts. Indeed, the Umerians had developed a most commendably durable device here.
"As you see, thanks to the power of SCIENCE!, Spacely Sprockets' shock-resistant, nuke-resistant, EMP-resistant Gamma-Zeta-Three line possesses most excellent, nay, most radical, even nigh-cartoonish levels of durability and ruggedness! Datasheets for performance are on the table before you."
Hmmmmms. I think I will take one of their brochures. This needs to be reported to the Ministry...
"Hmmms. I think I will take one of your brochures. This needs to be reported to the Ministry..."
"Very well. Go forth and awesomize, noble Comrade Bear."
Brryz left the Umerian pavilion in a state of confusion.
Vlyadibragstok, Southeastern Severnaya Sector
Umerian Pavilion
Goddamn Unreal Time
George Jetson was feeling glum, and decided to take his lunch break a little early. This led him past many of the other booths and kiosks of the Umerian pavilion. So far, the Umerians had enjoyed a relatively quiet corner of the BEEEF, except for the occasional altercation near the UMERTHIRST booth. Even those usually weren't too destructive or brutal, except for that one time when the Astonishing Bulk had doubled back through the booth and gotten into a fight with a mutated roidasaurus from Zigonia.
George skirted around one particularly massive crowd composed almost entirely of Bragulans, packed so thick he could hardly see what they were trying to buy. He wasn't the only one with that problem, either; a little humanoid in a brown robe was hopping up and down on the fringes of the bear crowd trying to get a look too.
George's curiosity burned through his bad mood, and he slipped around behind the booth of another tool and die company to find... he could swear he remembered it being here... yes! A stepladder! Clambering up to a greater height, he could see over the crowd of bears pressed around the kiosk.
One of the bears raised her paws to her muzzle and sniffled a little.
"It's... It's beautiful!"
Jetson craned his neck... and saw, hung by the kiosk window, a sign!
Soon, the clerk slipped away for a moment and returned, holding a suspiciously shiny version of the basic sign. Chrome-plated, perhaps? With extra colorful anodization? Who could say?
He wondered why the Bragulans found the signs so desirable. Ah well, more power to these guys. At least they'd been smart enough to find a product their customers would actually buy. Whereas Mr. Spacely had sent George and the Spacely Sprockets sales team off to sell the Bragulans vacuum tubes of all things. The task seemed impossible... and kind of dumb, to tell the truth.
George slipped down from the stepladder and moved on, passing a large, trendily-decorated booth with a great banner suspended over it. Bracketed between the starship-and-sun logo of the Space Security Force and the MiniProd cogwheel-and-hammer stood a boldfaced title:
High Energy Beamline Export Company
When you need it vaporized by lunchtime.
When you need it vaporized by lunchtime.
Posters and scale models advertised a wide variety of particle beam weaponry; George was half-tempted to pick up a free brochure, but ultimately decided against it because he couldn't imagine needing (or being able to buy) a proton cannon any time soon.
George found the place he was looking for, got in line, waited a bit, and plunked down the starbucks for a bronto-burger. In this case, the brontoburgers were merely a concession stand so that visiting customers would have something to eat, not a major part of the trade expo. Not with the NenAltKik preparing the stuff- moxli, they were the ones who really knew how to serve up brontosaurus. But this stuff should be good enough. He took the fast food off to a bench, sat down to eat, and sighed.
His meal was interrupted by a man wearing a jetpack. A pretty good one, too- an Aerohopper 7000.
"Greetings, my friend. You look troubled. Is something wrong?"
"...Who are you?"
"I am Zack, a humble servant of the cause of Shroomanism. I came here to buy this jetpack, but I sense that my travels along the Path of Awesomeness aren't yet done here. Do you perhaps have some insanely difficult and unlikely task that needs doing?"
George slumped. "My boss sent me here to sell vacuum tubes to Bragulans."
The Shroomanist clicked his tongue. "Insanely difficult and unlikely indeed."
"It seemed like a good idea back home, but every time we try to sell our switching tubes to them, they just... just... laugh."
"Hmm. I sense that you stand in a fork in the road, my pocketless friend. Down one path, leads the lameness of trying to do something impossible and dumb, and failing. Down the other, the awesomeness of trying to do something impossible and dumb, and succeeding! Perhaps I might be of some assistance in your quest."
"But... but how?"
"Let us remember what Bragulans prize in technology- not sophistication or miniaturization, but durability..."
BEEEF
Spacely Sprockets Booth
A Day or Two Later
Brryz Grrasim shambled past the booth inexplicably selling Byzonist signs, which sold like hotcakes on Bragsday morning. He wondered how the remote and puny Umerianoids had come upon Byzonist sloganage, especially one so elegant and resonant that it was practically Zen Byzonism. However, he had already purchased enough of the signs for his office and the mandatory signs to be posted in the offices of his underlings. Today was not a day for purchasing signs. Today was a day for fucking laughing!
He had heard of the puny Umerianoid company which had been mad enough to come to the BEEEF advertising vacuum tubes! Of all things! He supposed that he should be grateful to the Umerians for allowing such idiots to come here, for they had provided many sad bears with great entertainment!
->From sad bear to happy bear
"Hail, oh noble bear. I am Zack, here to present to you the fine products of Spacely Sprockets. Specifically, Spacely's most radical high-power, high-durability switching systems!"
"You are the ones who are trying to sell vacuum tubes to Bragule, da?"
"But these are no ordinary vacuum tubes, comrade! First, let us demonstrate the function of the device. Engage the switches!"
The big-nosed Umerianoid pressed a button. There were many whirring and buzzing noises, along with great shininess. Then, KABOOOOOM! A solid arc of lightning appeared across a pair of carefully insulated pylons.
"What you see before you is one point twenty one jiggawatts of electricity, carried across this busbar!" The jetpack-man gestured grandly, keeping his hands far, far away from the machinery. "Now, my pocketless friend will demonstrate the switch! Hit it, George!"
The big-nosed guy, apparently named George, did so. Suddenly, the bar of lightning died and the vacuum tubule began to glow as it blocked off the massive flow of electricity. George pressed the button several times, each time sending a signal to the Umerian tube, and each time the bar of lightning appeared or disappeared. So far, so unimpressive. The созд tube could do the same, and so could the ржит. The mighty илли would even fucking laugh at a mere 1.21 jiggawatts.
"So, this is what you wish to sell to mighty Bragule?"
"You ain't seen nothing yet, Comrade Bear! Power it down, boys."
George complied, carefully reaching one arm out behind him into empty air while the other touched the control panels for the high voltage system. Brryz noticed that the Umerianoid was wearing insulated boots of truly epic proportions, fit to rival the most heavily insulated of Bragwear.
"Now that the machine is safely grounded, we will remove the switching tube and demonstrate its true awesomeness." The Umerian George unscrewed the tube from the machine. Zack crossed the room and picked up a seemingly random hunk of metal- no! A frying pan! He then turned to George and shouted:
"Pull!"
George slung the tube across the room, straight for Zack, who hauled off and smacked it with the frying pan. It whizzed through the air, fast as the eye could follow, then slammed against the Bragcrete wall of the exhibition room. Which, being elderly Bragcrete, chipped.
George trotted over to the wall and scooped up the tubule. He gave it a brief glance, then walked over to the machine and screwed it back in. Brryz waited for the punchline, when the human device would surely exploderize into a thousand pieces, riddling the foolish Umerianoids with glass fragments. It had to be hopelessly damaged, beyond any possibility of repair...
Then George cut in the power. And it the punchline failed to punch! The Umerian flipped the switch back and forth, for all the world as if the vacuum tubule had never been moved from its slot!
Most disturbing. The созд and ржит tubes would have been ground glass and confetti after an impact forceful enough to chip Bragcrete. The mighty илли would survive structurally, but to actually use it... very dangerous, a risk to be taken only be the most lowly of conscripts. Indeed, the Umerians had developed a most commendably durable device here.
"As you see, thanks to the power of SCIENCE!, Spacely Sprockets' shock-resistant, nuke-resistant, EMP-resistant Gamma-Zeta-Three line possesses most excellent, nay, most radical, even nigh-cartoonish levels of durability and ruggedness! Datasheets for performance are on the table before you."
Hmmmmms. I think I will take one of their brochures. This needs to be reported to the Ministry...
"Hmmms. I think I will take one of your brochures. This needs to be reported to the Ministry..."
"Very well. Go forth and awesomize, noble Comrade Bear."
Brryz left the Umerian pavilion in a state of confusion.
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov