Soban
Convention Veteran
- RP Date
- YE 46.2.35
- RP Location
- Kactist Sector
IPS Aletheia
Kactist Sector
YE 46.2.35
The teams met aboard a Separa'Shan gunship. The rocky exterior design with the park on top was unique. The problem that many of the non-Separa'Shan crew found was the near complete lack of seating anywhere on the ship. Many had taken to bringing their own compact foldable chairs with them was easier than standing all day long. For that reason, everyone in the briefing room was standing.
The briefing room was semi circular with tiers where people could stand and see over the heads of those in front of them. In the center of the circle was a Volumetric projector and a place for several people to stand. Standing there now was Chujo Signy Williams of the Seventh Fleet which had requested this assemblage of operation teams from across the Empire along with the Interstellar Patrol captain who commanded the ship and a few other individuals in the command chain.
Amoung the teams in the room was Black Wolf Squad. They were slightly unusual in that they were not a team that specialized in covert operations. They were normally based off of the YSS Koun, which had a rather unique captain in Alastair Belmount. However, they had a rather fearsome reputation as a well tuned team of complete professionals.
The leader of Black Wolf was Taii Sacre Sanssinia, a scarred Separa'Shan warrior noted for her icy Demeanor and the Order of the Blazing Sun she had earned in combat. Her communications specialist, and defeacto second in command was Ittô Heisho Ioamai Lightbringer, a Patrician from a family who's star had been on the rise in Elysia. Sacre's Intelligence Analyst, Nitô Hei Aten, was an Infolife who projected it's self as a ball of shifting lights. The other members of the team were Nekovalkyrja and a single Minkan who mostly seemed to blend into the crowd.
The pale-skinned, black-winged, and black-hairsd Patrician known as Gabriel Aetós - clad in a red-paneled Type 35 Duty Uniform, and currently on loan from the First Expeditionary Fleet - couldn't help but stare at Ioamai's admittedly attractive form, given that she'd seemingly chosen to enlist in the Star Army. This, to the Gabriel, was incomprehensible; though he was enlisted himself due to being pressured into doing so by his father, the thought of a Patrician willingly joining the military that had thrice attempted to eliminate their species from reality simply didn't make any sense.
"Good Morning." Signy said, annoucing that the mission briefing was beginning. A picture of a NMX shipyard appeared volumetricly in the air behind her. "Intelligence has discovered a critical flaw in the enemy Shipyard. The shield that is protecting it needs to be down for several seconds when new ships are launched. The enemy fleet patroling the system makes a direct Starship attack inadvasable. However, thanks to advances in Separa'Shan cloaking technology, we will be able to get a single Cloaked Separa'Shan gunship into the system undetected. Unfortunanatly, we don't believe that an attack by a single gunship will be effective in dealing signifigant damage."
Several points on the shipyard began to glow red as they were highlighted. "However, archetectual intelligance suggests that there are various places on the structure that would be vulnerable to a small strike team planting a bomb. We have also been able to pinpoint the shield generators of the Shipyard. We don't know how well protected the points on the structure are, they could hold barracks of infantry or be completely unprotected. Normally, an attack like this would be only one way. However, a coordinated attack on the shield generators provides an acceptable methood of escape. We will therefore deploy three reinforced teams as close to the generators as possible to provide the greatest chance of escape. Addtionally, we plan to use Teleportation Chambers to allow the strike teams to have a small window to abort their mission as the mission begins. Are there any questions?" The Chujo asked.
Though not exactly thrilled about being essentially sent into Enemy territory without any backup whatsoever, he - despite his best efforts - couldn't find any fault with the Minkan's logic and thus sullenly kept his mouth shut.
A Phod wasn't as reserved as Gabriel, "Ma'am, this strikes me as sticking our hand into a trap."
Signy nodded, "We don't believe that they are aware of the weakness in their defenses. If the shields are not taken down, then the strike team will be at risk. However, that is an acceptable risk. To mitigate against the shields not being taken down, three teams will be assigned with that task. If any one of them suceededs, then we will be able to extract our forces."
There were a few more questions, but they finally quieted down. Strike teams should be assembled at thier designated chambers at 1500." If that is everything, then here is a list of assignments. The details about your strike objective will be sent to each of you." She said and everyone's tablets beeped as they recieved a message with assignments and mission details. Gabriel saw that he would be assigned with Black Wolf. They would be the one of the teams assualting the shield generators.
The communications specialist scanned the room pointing out Gabriel and two other individuals with teams to Sacre. The Separa'Shan nodded as the other team leaders looked for her as well. She headed over to meet with them and Ioamai beckoned Gabriel over.
With a look of wariness, Gabriel headed over in the direction of his fellow Patrician. "Is there somethjng the matter, Lightbringer-Hei?"
Ioamai smiled at Gabriel. The golden haired patrician had a beautiful smile that lit up her whole face. "Not until Sacre gets back." She said with a laugh and the rest of the team chuckled. "That's a joke. Don't take her too seriously with what she says, if she sounds perfectly neutral, that's when something's really wrong. We saw that you would be deploying with us and I figured that we should meet you." She introduced the rest of the team to him.
"I... see," replied Gabriel as he nodded at each squadmate in turn, doing his best to conceal his shock - and disgust - that a Patrician from a family as conservative as the Lightbringers would willingly consort with such heathens. He wondered why a daughter of the Lord was consorting with minions of the Accuser.
He might have been able to conceasl it from most, but Ioamai had dealt with his attitude from many before him and would probably deal with more in the future. Ioamai became more serious, even slightly haughty. "You want to know why I'm sullying the Lightbringer name, Patricians, and Elysians as a whole by serving alongside my comrades." She said directly.
Only the years of tutelage the Santô Hei had received allowed for Gabriel to retain his composure. He thought he had hidden it well. "Well, yes. The Yamataians tried to kill us not once, not twice, but four times, you know."
A fiery light glowed in Ioamai's eyes. "Ah, yes, which one was it that Yamatai started? The one where we invaded hell? The other one where we invaded hell? The one we started because we were angry at losing the first two? The one where we tried to crush the Star Army while it was small? Oh, right, it's none of those. I get the bad blood, my mother was killed in the fourth war. However, people like you live in an imaginary past rather than the reality of the present."
Ioamai was warming to her subject, "After the end of that war, I wore sackcloth and ashes in mourning for a year. I kept coming back to a few basic questions. What is it that we value? If Kleos, what victory did we achieve with the Kleos given to us by our fathers? If Xenia, then how did we treat our own neighbors? If Agape, was what we did loving in any sense of the word? If Sophia, was it wise to launch not one but two wars against a foe who had defeated us twice? If Eudaimonia, did anything we did make us bloom or was the rose of our prosperity crushed under the foot of greed? If Arete, what is excellent about ruined cites? If Aidos, did we show an ounce of humility?" She asked, her eyes demanded an answer from Gabriel.
"I..." began the Archangel, only to scowl as he realized with a flash of anger that he couldn't easily come up with answers to any of the points raised by his fellow Patrician. "...You, as a Patrician, know as well as I do that none of those are meant to be applied to infid-eh, non-Elysians! Didn't you pay any attention in your religious studies - or did you not even bother to attend them like most Plebeians and Caelisolans nowadays?" His rationalizations were flimsy excuses, of course - if one ignored somewhat antiquated social customs dating back to the First Elysian War, it was quite easy to interpret the Elysian values Ioamai had listed as applying to everyone, not just Elysians - but it was all that Gabriel could think of at the moment.
"Is it not written 'One law shall be to him that is homeborn and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you'?" Ioamai asked.
Before Gabriel could answer, the tall lanky Separa'Shan who commanded the small unit returned. "Are you arguing about the irrelevant details of your archaic and scientifically disproven beliefs again?" She asked Ioamai sharply.
Ioamai rolled her eyes at Sacre's question. "Gabriel, this is my anti-theist of a squad leader, Taii Sacre Sanssinia. Sacre, this is Gabriel who will be joining us for the mission."
"I'm not against God, I'm against a stupidity, which the belief in God happens to fall into." Sacre said looking Gabriel up and down, "But if he doesn't have any other mental defects, I suppose we can do this one with an anchor attached. All the other squads seem to have one or two as well."
Only the fact that he feared the chain of command saved Sacre from a verbal lashing by the black-haired Patrician; despite this, however, he visibly bristled at the Separa'shan's comment - and his facial features even reddened by a couple of shades. "Were it not for your rank..." he mumbled under his breath as he reflexively saluted the vastly-higher ranking officer. "Gabriel Aetos... ma'am." However, his eyes betrayed his disgust at being commanded by a non-Elysian and an atheist one at that. Gabriel at least could feel a little kinship with some of the Separa'Shan who believed in their God.
Sacre took his hand and shook firmly. "Mr. Aetos, I do value speaking your mind in my squad. I don't believe in dishing out what one can't take. For example, Ioamai what do you think of my lack of belief?"
"It's stupid, you have to ignore not only science but philosophy to be an atheist. It's an inherently unstable system. One that you can only reach in one specific way, whereas theism has many different lines of supporting evidence." Ioamai replied.
"There, now that it's out there we can discuss it like rational people. That doesn't just go for imaginary topics, like religion, but also for the practical ones like our strategy for attacking our secondary objectives." Sacre continued.
"Very well, then. I believe it is incredibly stupid to send in forces - especially with an untried and untested technology - thus I think it would behoove us to be sent out with teleportation units of our own so that we can extract ourselves should something go wrong, which will definitely happen at some point; 'no plan survives contact with the Enemy.'"
"We will have our own. The weakness of teleportation technology is that it doesn't work through shields. While we will deploy in a fashion to have a few seconds to teleport back, once the shields are back up, we won't have that chance. That's why our primary mission of taking down the shields is so important. Our secondary objective is the biological labs, located two floors below our primary objective. We need to see what they are studying and acquire as much information as possible before destroying the labs. This is a raid, not a pitched battle to hold ground so things will be even more 'dynamic' than normal. Thoughts?" Sacre asked.
Gabriel immediately had several vocal thoughts to share with the rest of the group. "Do we have maps of any kind, or are we going in blind? I'd also greatly prefer if we had some kind of diversion occupying the defender's attention, no matter how small or ineffectual it is, because though it would net me a great deal of Kleos - and though I could probably pull it off - I still have little desire to take on an entire base's worth of hellspawn."
Sacre projected their portion of the station with volumetrics. "Yes and no. I've been told that this hallway here." She pointed to a hallway that ran alongside the lab area and had an entrance into it. "Is known from intelligence gathering activities along with the general purpose of the area inside. Additional technical intelligence has added a rough sketch, but we don't know with any certainty what is inside."
Sacre moved the map up to the shield generators. It was much more through than the grey guesswork of their secondary objective. "We have much better intelligance regarding the shield generators. There are three approaches to the shield generator, so each team will be taking one of them. Only one team needs to succeed for the mission to be a success. So if our job turns out to be 'keeping the defenders off the other team' we can still win."
"It feels like whoever we got the intelligance from was an engineer here." Gabriel said, looking at the data. "If it's not a set up by the heathens to lead us into a trap. Is there any independant confirmation of the hallway, shield generators, or medical facility even exists? The Accuser has a long history of using his forcers to feed he war..." the Patrician paused for a moment to find a term besides 'warriors of the Lord,' as the forces of Yamatai certainly didn't fall under that category - "...us false information."
Sacre considered the Patrican for a moment. "Every idiot knows that'The intel you've got is never the intel you want.' What do you think that means?" She asked Ioamai.
"Notice where we have good intelligance and where we don't, this whole area with the secondary objective, it's practically blank. Assuming we do hit our objective, we'll be coming through what right about here?" He said, pointed to a spot on the map.
Sacre consulted the map. "What about it?"
The Elysian man highlighted a room to the side. "It's in the middle of a corridor, and I'm not sure that's the best aproach. I think if we are able to retreat backwards and drill down here, we'll be in a side room instead."
Sacre considered, "Very well, we'll try it. Any more galaxy brained observations?" She asked, looking around the group.
"Allright, you louts are dismissed. Get some sleep and a meal before we deploy. Mr Aetos, if I may have a word?" She asked.
The rest of the group left for their temporary quarters while the red panel stayed behind. Most of the rest of the teams had already left the large room. Nevertheless Sacre moved to a corner of the room and spoke softly. "Do you want to be here?" She asked.
Gabriel seemed suprised by the Separa'Shan's question. His eyes narrowed and anger rose as she insinuated he wasn't good at what he did. "I voluntarily enlisted in the Star Army of Yamatai. I'm a good soldier and I pointed something valuable out for you." His eyes burned with a 'better than you' fire.
"The exact words of enlistment. Very original, I'm sure your fruit fly brain had to think for a long time to remember that. I can talk to our superiors and get you assigned somewhere more in line with your skills, perhaps cleaning all of the Battle of Binary Star's toilets with your toothbrush. You might prefer it to hanging out with 'grotesque genetic experiments' like us." Sacre said.
Gabriel felt rage building inside of him, she was an officer but she shouldn't speak to him like this. He conrolled his face and emotions. "I never said you were any of that ma'am." He said, trying to walk the straight and narrow, perhaps he should let her talk to whoever about it and get him assigned to a purer team.
"You did with your lazy babboon of eyes. While the army has conscripts, I only want people who want to be here in my squad. I don't need any erstatz soldiers who won't trust their fellow soldiers. I'd rather have a blank file than a specialist who hates his teamates. The only reason I haven't is that I don't want to inflict you on anouther officer."
"Permission to speak freely." Gabriel said stonily.
"Granted, not just now but in the future as well." Sacre said, her green eyes watching the Elysian carefully.
"Ma'am, why are you such a pain? You've insulted my beliefs, you've insulted me, why should I even want to work with your heathen band of intergalactic misfits who treat me like dirt?" He asked, letting his rage boil over.
He didn't get the reaction he was expecting, either she would rage herself or kick him off the team perhaps both. Instead, she nodded thoughtfully, "I'm rough because you need a reality check. I'm not here in the army to provide you with rectal sunshine, I'm here to do the mission as efficently and effectively as possible. If you get in the way of that, then you are either an obsticle that needs to be removed with extreme predudice or irrelevant. My team is one that I've handpicked to be the best I can make them. You should want to work with us because like us or not we are among best at our jobs. I am the seventh most effective medic in a fleet of thousands. Aten is an unparelleled Intelligace officer. Estrid isn't just anouther gun, she's a sharp and attentive legal mind. Do you measure up? Because they do. It's fine if you don't, most don't."
"Of course I'm better than them." He sputtered his pride pricked by Sacre's calm confident words.
Sacre raised an eyebrow, "Then prove it. If you want your chance tomorrow, you can have it. If you would rather go with someone else, that's fine too."
"I'll prove it ma'am, I'll be the best engineer you've ever seen." He said his firm answer tinged with anger.
Kactist Sector
YE 46.2.35
The teams met aboard a Separa'Shan gunship. The rocky exterior design with the park on top was unique. The problem that many of the non-Separa'Shan crew found was the near complete lack of seating anywhere on the ship. Many had taken to bringing their own compact foldable chairs with them was easier than standing all day long. For that reason, everyone in the briefing room was standing.
The briefing room was semi circular with tiers where people could stand and see over the heads of those in front of them. In the center of the circle was a Volumetric projector and a place for several people to stand. Standing there now was Chujo Signy Williams of the Seventh Fleet which had requested this assemblage of operation teams from across the Empire along with the Interstellar Patrol captain who commanded the ship and a few other individuals in the command chain.
Amoung the teams in the room was Black Wolf Squad. They were slightly unusual in that they were not a team that specialized in covert operations. They were normally based off of the YSS Koun, which had a rather unique captain in Alastair Belmount. However, they had a rather fearsome reputation as a well tuned team of complete professionals.
The leader of Black Wolf was Taii Sacre Sanssinia, a scarred Separa'Shan warrior noted for her icy Demeanor and the Order of the Blazing Sun she had earned in combat. Her communications specialist, and defeacto second in command was Ittô Heisho Ioamai Lightbringer, a Patrician from a family who's star had been on the rise in Elysia. Sacre's Intelligence Analyst, Nitô Hei Aten, was an Infolife who projected it's self as a ball of shifting lights. The other members of the team were Nekovalkyrja and a single Minkan who mostly seemed to blend into the crowd.
The pale-skinned, black-winged, and black-hairsd Patrician known as Gabriel Aetós - clad in a red-paneled Type 35 Duty Uniform, and currently on loan from the First Expeditionary Fleet - couldn't help but stare at Ioamai's admittedly attractive form, given that she'd seemingly chosen to enlist in the Star Army. This, to the Gabriel, was incomprehensible; though he was enlisted himself due to being pressured into doing so by his father, the thought of a Patrician willingly joining the military that had thrice attempted to eliminate their species from reality simply didn't make any sense.
"Good Morning." Signy said, annoucing that the mission briefing was beginning. A picture of a NMX shipyard appeared volumetricly in the air behind her. "Intelligence has discovered a critical flaw in the enemy Shipyard. The shield that is protecting it needs to be down for several seconds when new ships are launched. The enemy fleet patroling the system makes a direct Starship attack inadvasable. However, thanks to advances in Separa'Shan cloaking technology, we will be able to get a single Cloaked Separa'Shan gunship into the system undetected. Unfortunanatly, we don't believe that an attack by a single gunship will be effective in dealing signifigant damage."
Several points on the shipyard began to glow red as they were highlighted. "However, archetectual intelligance suggests that there are various places on the structure that would be vulnerable to a small strike team planting a bomb. We have also been able to pinpoint the shield generators of the Shipyard. We don't know how well protected the points on the structure are, they could hold barracks of infantry or be completely unprotected. Normally, an attack like this would be only one way. However, a coordinated attack on the shield generators provides an acceptable methood of escape. We will therefore deploy three reinforced teams as close to the generators as possible to provide the greatest chance of escape. Addtionally, we plan to use Teleportation Chambers to allow the strike teams to have a small window to abort their mission as the mission begins. Are there any questions?" The Chujo asked.
Though not exactly thrilled about being essentially sent into Enemy territory without any backup whatsoever, he - despite his best efforts - couldn't find any fault with the Minkan's logic and thus sullenly kept his mouth shut.
A Phod wasn't as reserved as Gabriel, "Ma'am, this strikes me as sticking our hand into a trap."
Signy nodded, "We don't believe that they are aware of the weakness in their defenses. If the shields are not taken down, then the strike team will be at risk. However, that is an acceptable risk. To mitigate against the shields not being taken down, three teams will be assigned with that task. If any one of them suceededs, then we will be able to extract our forces."
There were a few more questions, but they finally quieted down. Strike teams should be assembled at thier designated chambers at 1500." If that is everything, then here is a list of assignments. The details about your strike objective will be sent to each of you." She said and everyone's tablets beeped as they recieved a message with assignments and mission details. Gabriel saw that he would be assigned with Black Wolf. They would be the one of the teams assualting the shield generators.
The communications specialist scanned the room pointing out Gabriel and two other individuals with teams to Sacre. The Separa'Shan nodded as the other team leaders looked for her as well. She headed over to meet with them and Ioamai beckoned Gabriel over.
With a look of wariness, Gabriel headed over in the direction of his fellow Patrician. "Is there somethjng the matter, Lightbringer-Hei?"
Ioamai smiled at Gabriel. The golden haired patrician had a beautiful smile that lit up her whole face. "Not until Sacre gets back." She said with a laugh and the rest of the team chuckled. "That's a joke. Don't take her too seriously with what she says, if she sounds perfectly neutral, that's when something's really wrong. We saw that you would be deploying with us and I figured that we should meet you." She introduced the rest of the team to him.
"I... see," replied Gabriel as he nodded at each squadmate in turn, doing his best to conceal his shock - and disgust - that a Patrician from a family as conservative as the Lightbringers would willingly consort with such heathens. He wondered why a daughter of the Lord was consorting with minions of the Accuser.
He might have been able to conceasl it from most, but Ioamai had dealt with his attitude from many before him and would probably deal with more in the future. Ioamai became more serious, even slightly haughty. "You want to know why I'm sullying the Lightbringer name, Patricians, and Elysians as a whole by serving alongside my comrades." She said directly.
Only the years of tutelage the Santô Hei had received allowed for Gabriel to retain his composure. He thought he had hidden it well. "Well, yes. The Yamataians tried to kill us not once, not twice, but four times, you know."
A fiery light glowed in Ioamai's eyes. "Ah, yes, which one was it that Yamatai started? The one where we invaded hell? The other one where we invaded hell? The one we started because we were angry at losing the first two? The one where we tried to crush the Star Army while it was small? Oh, right, it's none of those. I get the bad blood, my mother was killed in the fourth war. However, people like you live in an imaginary past rather than the reality of the present."
Ioamai was warming to her subject, "After the end of that war, I wore sackcloth and ashes in mourning for a year. I kept coming back to a few basic questions. What is it that we value? If Kleos, what victory did we achieve with the Kleos given to us by our fathers? If Xenia, then how did we treat our own neighbors? If Agape, was what we did loving in any sense of the word? If Sophia, was it wise to launch not one but two wars against a foe who had defeated us twice? If Eudaimonia, did anything we did make us bloom or was the rose of our prosperity crushed under the foot of greed? If Arete, what is excellent about ruined cites? If Aidos, did we show an ounce of humility?" She asked, her eyes demanded an answer from Gabriel.
"I..." began the Archangel, only to scowl as he realized with a flash of anger that he couldn't easily come up with answers to any of the points raised by his fellow Patrician. "...You, as a Patrician, know as well as I do that none of those are meant to be applied to infid-eh, non-Elysians! Didn't you pay any attention in your religious studies - or did you not even bother to attend them like most Plebeians and Caelisolans nowadays?" His rationalizations were flimsy excuses, of course - if one ignored somewhat antiquated social customs dating back to the First Elysian War, it was quite easy to interpret the Elysian values Ioamai had listed as applying to everyone, not just Elysians - but it was all that Gabriel could think of at the moment.
"Is it not written 'One law shall be to him that is homeborn and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you'?" Ioamai asked.
Before Gabriel could answer, the tall lanky Separa'Shan who commanded the small unit returned. "Are you arguing about the irrelevant details of your archaic and scientifically disproven beliefs again?" She asked Ioamai sharply.
Ioamai rolled her eyes at Sacre's question. "Gabriel, this is my anti-theist of a squad leader, Taii Sacre Sanssinia. Sacre, this is Gabriel who will be joining us for the mission."
"I'm not against God, I'm against a stupidity, which the belief in God happens to fall into." Sacre said looking Gabriel up and down, "But if he doesn't have any other mental defects, I suppose we can do this one with an anchor attached. All the other squads seem to have one or two as well."
Only the fact that he feared the chain of command saved Sacre from a verbal lashing by the black-haired Patrician; despite this, however, he visibly bristled at the Separa'shan's comment - and his facial features even reddened by a couple of shades. "Were it not for your rank..." he mumbled under his breath as he reflexively saluted the vastly-higher ranking officer. "Gabriel Aetos... ma'am." However, his eyes betrayed his disgust at being commanded by a non-Elysian and an atheist one at that. Gabriel at least could feel a little kinship with some of the Separa'Shan who believed in their God.
Sacre took his hand and shook firmly. "Mr. Aetos, I do value speaking your mind in my squad. I don't believe in dishing out what one can't take. For example, Ioamai what do you think of my lack of belief?"
"It's stupid, you have to ignore not only science but philosophy to be an atheist. It's an inherently unstable system. One that you can only reach in one specific way, whereas theism has many different lines of supporting evidence." Ioamai replied.
"There, now that it's out there we can discuss it like rational people. That doesn't just go for imaginary topics, like religion, but also for the practical ones like our strategy for attacking our secondary objectives." Sacre continued.
"Very well, then. I believe it is incredibly stupid to send in forces - especially with an untried and untested technology - thus I think it would behoove us to be sent out with teleportation units of our own so that we can extract ourselves should something go wrong, which will definitely happen at some point; 'no plan survives contact with the Enemy.'"
"We will have our own. The weakness of teleportation technology is that it doesn't work through shields. While we will deploy in a fashion to have a few seconds to teleport back, once the shields are back up, we won't have that chance. That's why our primary mission of taking down the shields is so important. Our secondary objective is the biological labs, located two floors below our primary objective. We need to see what they are studying and acquire as much information as possible before destroying the labs. This is a raid, not a pitched battle to hold ground so things will be even more 'dynamic' than normal. Thoughts?" Sacre asked.
Gabriel immediately had several vocal thoughts to share with the rest of the group. "Do we have maps of any kind, or are we going in blind? I'd also greatly prefer if we had some kind of diversion occupying the defender's attention, no matter how small or ineffectual it is, because though it would net me a great deal of Kleos - and though I could probably pull it off - I still have little desire to take on an entire base's worth of hellspawn."
Sacre projected their portion of the station with volumetrics. "Yes and no. I've been told that this hallway here." She pointed to a hallway that ran alongside the lab area and had an entrance into it. "Is known from intelligence gathering activities along with the general purpose of the area inside. Additional technical intelligence has added a rough sketch, but we don't know with any certainty what is inside."
Sacre moved the map up to the shield generators. It was much more through than the grey guesswork of their secondary objective. "We have much better intelligance regarding the shield generators. There are three approaches to the shield generator, so each team will be taking one of them. Only one team needs to succeed for the mission to be a success. So if our job turns out to be 'keeping the defenders off the other team' we can still win."
"It feels like whoever we got the intelligance from was an engineer here." Gabriel said, looking at the data. "If it's not a set up by the heathens to lead us into a trap. Is there any independant confirmation of the hallway, shield generators, or medical facility even exists? The Accuser has a long history of using his forcers to feed he war..." the Patrician paused for a moment to find a term besides 'warriors of the Lord,' as the forces of Yamatai certainly didn't fall under that category - "...us false information."
Sacre considered the Patrican for a moment. "Every idiot knows that'The intel you've got is never the intel you want.' What do you think that means?" She asked Ioamai.
"Notice where we have good intelligance and where we don't, this whole area with the secondary objective, it's practically blank. Assuming we do hit our objective, we'll be coming through what right about here?" He said, pointed to a spot on the map.
Sacre consulted the map. "What about it?"
The Elysian man highlighted a room to the side. "It's in the middle of a corridor, and I'm not sure that's the best aproach. I think if we are able to retreat backwards and drill down here, we'll be in a side room instead."
Sacre considered, "Very well, we'll try it. Any more galaxy brained observations?" She asked, looking around the group.
"Allright, you louts are dismissed. Get some sleep and a meal before we deploy. Mr Aetos, if I may have a word?" She asked.
The rest of the group left for their temporary quarters while the red panel stayed behind. Most of the rest of the teams had already left the large room. Nevertheless Sacre moved to a corner of the room and spoke softly. "Do you want to be here?" She asked.
Gabriel seemed suprised by the Separa'Shan's question. His eyes narrowed and anger rose as she insinuated he wasn't good at what he did. "I voluntarily enlisted in the Star Army of Yamatai. I'm a good soldier and I pointed something valuable out for you." His eyes burned with a 'better than you' fire.
"The exact words of enlistment. Very original, I'm sure your fruit fly brain had to think for a long time to remember that. I can talk to our superiors and get you assigned somewhere more in line with your skills, perhaps cleaning all of the Battle of Binary Star's toilets with your toothbrush. You might prefer it to hanging out with 'grotesque genetic experiments' like us." Sacre said.
Gabriel felt rage building inside of him, she was an officer but she shouldn't speak to him like this. He conrolled his face and emotions. "I never said you were any of that ma'am." He said, trying to walk the straight and narrow, perhaps he should let her talk to whoever about it and get him assigned to a purer team.
"You did with your lazy babboon of eyes. While the army has conscripts, I only want people who want to be here in my squad. I don't need any erstatz soldiers who won't trust their fellow soldiers. I'd rather have a blank file than a specialist who hates his teamates. The only reason I haven't is that I don't want to inflict you on anouther officer."
"Permission to speak freely." Gabriel said stonily.
"Granted, not just now but in the future as well." Sacre said, her green eyes watching the Elysian carefully.
"Ma'am, why are you such a pain? You've insulted my beliefs, you've insulted me, why should I even want to work with your heathen band of intergalactic misfits who treat me like dirt?" He asked, letting his rage boil over.
He didn't get the reaction he was expecting, either she would rage herself or kick him off the team perhaps both. Instead, she nodded thoughtfully, "I'm rough because you need a reality check. I'm not here in the army to provide you with rectal sunshine, I'm here to do the mission as efficently and effectively as possible. If you get in the way of that, then you are either an obsticle that needs to be removed with extreme predudice or irrelevant. My team is one that I've handpicked to be the best I can make them. You should want to work with us because like us or not we are among best at our jobs. I am the seventh most effective medic in a fleet of thousands. Aten is an unparelleled Intelligace officer. Estrid isn't just anouther gun, she's a sharp and attentive legal mind. Do you measure up? Because they do. It's fine if you don't, most don't."
"Of course I'm better than them." He sputtered his pride pricked by Sacre's calm confident words.
Sacre raised an eyebrow, "Then prove it. If you want your chance tomorrow, you can have it. If you would rather go with someone else, that's fine too."
"I'll prove it ma'am, I'll be the best engineer you've ever seen." He said his firm answer tinged with anger.
