RP: Die Screaming [Die Screaming] Pick A Place And Die There.

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

RP Date

YE:45

RP Location

Stenkagorad - NYRDs facility medical wing.

There was no mass awakening. No chaos. No threat.

Over the course of two days, they awoke from severe fatigue and minor injuries too tired to stay awake until forced to by peckish nurses waking them on the hour, every hour until finally they could retain their consciousness. From there bodily functions took over and after being led to bathrooms and carefully cleaned by a team of nurses of their gender each marine found themselves lazing about in recovery.

They also, for a change, were not naked. Simple patient scrubs were provided and in the case of Quilly even a hospital gown was provided for her cramped wings to hang out of, for which the nursing staff coddled her to no end the sight of an Elysian in such parts of the DIoN as rare as myth.

No. For once they were safe.

In time they were moved together in the same room. Hospital beds more comfortable than they were used to arrayed nine to a side in a long, too-white sterile room of whirring bedside machines and chrome durrandium racks upon which bags of clear intravenous fluid hung from which connected to the wrist and forearm of life-sustaining nutrients and antibiotics.

Men came from various local authorities. The NPF sent special investigators and agents, Large officious-looking Kuzynetski men from the local governors office in cliche greatcoats. Well-dressed couriers from the other local governor asked too many clarifying questions. Both sides of the local security forces. An agent of the Planetary commissioners office. Three Jiyuu wardens from the SAW corps. Adjucators from the local transit and salvage guilds.

Men and women waited in practical lines to hear the same statements over and over while offering no forthcoming answers from their end. It wasn't until Borok Kuzynetski came under supervision of two NPF officers half his size and a third his weight to supervise him as he came to see and collect his son was there even the semblance of an idea what was going on.

"Wear and fatigue in the shuttles hull outer plating gave in re-entry."

Shot down or not. Abandoned and attempted murder. The death of good men.

And it was swept under the rug by all sides as happenstance and coincidence and their statements fell on deaf ears as unreliable or unacceptable testimony.

The same day the NPF took Kiril back with them was the same Francis was wheeled into their room. Looking more hale but just as weak as when they last saw her the physically young but actually old former Commissar was pushed about in a wheelchair being too weak to walk after the cloning as atrophied and unused muscles on her new body were stimulated through electrical nodes hooked up to her major muscle groups that causes her to have micro-jerking and twitching fits as her body was stimulated to aid the muscle growth as the last of the nanites in her system died off.

Too weak and mentally worn from the experience even her usual Misandry felt forced as she practically rasped through a new throat half-hearted insults and jibes while a fresh agitated pink line where her head had been surgically removed and the new body grown from it connected and would eventually fade as well.

No. They truly were safe for once. Their gear and belongings were shipped to their billet at the starport and as soon as the NYRDs doctors gave the OK they would catch a transport there straight from the NYRDs building and could start, for once, a mundane posting.

Star Port - Marine Billet

When the Zachitnik shuttle crossed the massive hive city it was a breathtaking sight for such an out of the way and developing settlement. From the windows massive hive-spires rose in mega-blocke buildings that houses thousands each while the sheer heat of the thermal vent under the ground where it was routed vented constant steam to the point where even during their brief movement from the shuttle pad to the shuttle itself it felt hardly like a world still in its iceage and more like the inside of a humid factory as not even snow reached the inner parts of the city.

Beyond that, at the fringes the massive megaforge, large than most starships stood domineering like a titan over the city as massive pipes large enough for the shuttle to fly inside of fed water into the massive structure where steam constantly spewed out of like geiser from the top. Every minute or so there was an almost perceptible ripple the started from the megaforge and passed through the city as it fed more steam out as the water connected with the massive thermal vent to forge Nermimum and other materials and also provide power to the city in abundance.

But when they arrived at the starport, on the very edge of the settlement and built on the massive wall that it hung over it was a different story. While the massive flight decks were heated to prevent ice and snow buildup, when the shuttle landed and disembarked them at the end of one of the flight decks the deck was warm beneath their feet but the air was once again a frigid arctic chill strong enough that to do anything but lean into it would topple the lighter marines like Quilly and Carina over entirely and if not for the stippling of the flight deck to grip painfully onto could take them a hundred meters or more over the edge of the flight deck and falling hundreds of meters to their deaths...

Were any of them not holding her wheelchair, Francis might have been coasting off the edge by now; Too weak and even bundled up the newly revived marine was shivering like a leaf.

As the flight crew helped unload supplies they got a look at their new billet.

It was several stories tall with the lowest level having no windows and being the widest with a single long, steep, congregated ramp landing up into a covered entrance with a sturdy looking blast door. Above that was five more levels, each progressively smaller with the top levels being mostly glass-lined flight-controller-style boxes to oversee the flight operations and monitor traffic from the starbase.

It was a standard prefabricated military structure.

And it was wholly unimpressive...

Behind them, the shuttle began to whir and prepare to take off and leave them, breaking the marines from their stupor as they were left alone outside of their new home.

 

[Arbitrated]

Emergency Care Center

Quilly's recovery was swift - at least by Nepleslian standards, as her battered body knit itself together under the guidance of the nurses and technicians. She hadn't received much outright damage in the crash by some freakish form of luck, but she also had to spend nearly an entire day with her wing fully stretched out to ensure it wouldn't get too stiff by staying compact while the damaged muscles healed. Luckily nothing was broken - she remembered having to get her arm broken twice by the doctors back at home because it started to set too soon, in a bad state.

But, barring some discomfort born of actually being somewhere comfortable for once and the constant attention her speckled plumage granted her, Quilly picked up some pepe once she finally processed that she wasn't going to have to fight through a whole city this time! At least not literally, the eagerness to catch clout by interacting with an "exotic" person like her was a different story...

Home Base

The Elysian was quite excited to feel the heat of the city - anticipating potentially cruising about on the ample updrafts in her free time - only to shiver in the biting cold of the fringes once again. Damn, we were so close, she thought as she helped drag some boxes in, keeping her flight-limbs compressed against her back lest a gale would turn he into a pamphlet bound for the nearest hero's face in some dramatic comedy skit. Seeing as Francis would spend her strength and the next forty-eight hours complaining if a filthy Y-chromosome had the gall to move her wheelchair, Quilly spared everyone the ire by doing it herself, taking the ginger burrito and pushing her up the ramp and around the bend to the door. Barring the protest, though, Francis was promptly left one room in to at least keep her outta the cold (and the way) as the Little Death filed their way into the building.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Molotra had spent her days since waking up in a feeling of utter euphoria. Shocked and confused by how they had survived. Almost gaining a newborn fear of the cold, of being ordered back out into that white waste once more... But there was also the blessing of polysentience access, of being able to retreat from this bleak 'real' world and drown their troubles in an internal world of music, nostalgia, information...

An unplugged torso in a hotwired electric wheelchair, she spend her time bundled in a grey hoodie sweater, face obscured by dark glasses and the green muzzle of gas mask... Still... Swooned by the quiet confines of the healing chambers... moving out into this comparatively grand, yet empty new 'house'... with what she was coming to realise was the closest thing to family she really had... Her mind began to wander back, to that great and ancient intelligence she had witnessed, in what felt like a dream... It felt so long ago now...

"...Lupin... Was any of that... simulation of... a dark hospital? From a long time ago? Was that... real?..." She addressed the angular boyish soldier from waist height, chair's motors churning from the added load of food crates she was towing. Beneath the glasses, her eyes took on a strange look of reminiscence... but also, a kind of hidden embarrassment, like they'd been trying to talk to him for years now, but never able to break that stubborn mask of iron. "Do you remember... the great lady?..."

Too embarrassed to say much else. But it was obvious that she was wondering how they had all survived, yet again. Maybe rather thankful that he was still here, too.

"...Ha. It's dumb.... Ignore me." The eyes projected a smile, though the lower half of their face was still hidden by the mask. At some point they had strung one of the ginger braids from her hood and was messing with it between their fingers. "I'll put the beers in the canteen.... They actually supplied us lots of good food here. C-c-come f-find me if you wish to... wastefully increase body mass with me!..."

A rapid turn, nearly jack-knifing their trailer.

It felt wrong to be in a good mood. Suspicious.

But the white snow billowing through the bright windows actually looked rather nice, in this dimly lit complex. Within the adjacent viewport, the speckled wings of their resident angel was doting on an old soldier, given new life.

Spoiler

"~...I bow to the solar wind.~"

The first line of a common mecha-druidism prayer found it's way to her lips. Maybe Molotra didn't really believe it. But it some how felt nice to believe that this was a blessing from a higher power, perhaps? She kept it low. Didn't want the others to hear.

"~The star's light to burn the forests of the wicked, the clouds brining a rain of wisdom~"

"~Ancient metal, the heart of steel~... The old dreamers live in your mind's ocean now...~"

It hurt. The concept of accepting the psychedelic lore of her misguided species. It made her wince to even care about those pathetic wretches.

But how many times now, had they all been broken and remade? By what power? Where was she supposed to place this feeling of thanks?

Spoiler: Memory_Fragment_Reconstruct_84982B5154.JG12

 

[SirSkully]

Lupin had far too many bags hanging off his frame, the majority of it was made from some kit that'd survived the crash and a few personal effects, but some gear belonging to both Quilly and Francis also swung back and forth with each step. He could take it, it was the least he could do to help the team get settled in this gutted excuse of a billet, they could use a bit of rest in something other than a hospital~

Lupin paid little mind to the snow that got brought in with him, figuring there'd be more as gear was dragged in, they could clean up later. Instead he moved to offload Quilly and Francis' bags against the base of a wall, keeping them accessible but out of the way for now, moving to hook a smaller bag of Francis' over one arm of her chair. There was no fanfare, Lupin just silently pulled the zipper part-way back for the fallen-commissar and then continued on his way, following after the quickly retreating Freespacer.

"Molo, wait up~" Lupin piped up, gear making all sorts of sounds as it scraped and clattered against him, the sniper was moving fast for being so seemingly inundated with supplies. His pace slowed as he passed into the canteen behind her, towering twice over the former forklift even with his natural half-slouch.

"It~" Lupin started, letting out a small huff as a gloved hand scratched against the light stubble on his mocha-hued features, peeling the amber-lensed aviators off his eyes now that they were inside, retroreflective flesh in his eyes reflecting the small bit of light bleeding into the gloomy room.

"It's as real as any memory, I remember a woman, an older admiral... what she said stuck with me but everything else is fragmented, mangled, like the barbs breaking off a crossbow bolt~" the sniper admitted, stuffing the glasses into a breast-pocket as he appraised the room, eyes scanning wall-to-wall.

"I doubt that's the last of it and I'm sure our friends have this place bugged, so keep your head on a swivel. Let me know if you need any help rearranging things, else I'll go see if I can go power everything else up," Lupin nodded, he liked how that observation deck looked from outside and he was sure it held a slew of control panels but it could use some up-armouring.

 

[club24]

Real Hospital Hours

During those 2 days Haisely was probably conscious more than the others on account of only going through the latter portion of hell, and every time the nurses roused her she was as cranky as the time before. The nepcat didn't like being coddled and doted on and decided to just go along with it eventually, huffing and accepting food begrudgingly.

The recovery couldn't end fast enough.

House Hours

Compared to all the others Haisely had a lot less to drag in, namely she had a few odds and ends in her pockets, all her gear from home was shipped here before they arrived and she had arrived on the planet with nothing thanks to that captain kicking her out.

”Well this stinks. Guess it beats hospital…” she muttered to herself, weaving around the others to make her way inside, hands firmly in her pockets and head low. The Nepcat made a beeline for their rooms, hoping to find them labelled so she wouldn’t need to go looking through all of them to find hers.

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

Home?

The 'marine billet' was clearly made for more than a half dozen plus marines. Greeted by dim flickering lighting and a slightly less-cold interior the new inhabitants explored their new home.

With five interior levels from the ground floor and two below it was aa mixture of cramped twisting halls and constant stairwells.

On the basement floors that connected underneath the flight deck was two long tubes easily fifty foot wide and two hundred across. In one, enough supplies efficiently packaged and arrayed to last a half hundred men until the death of the local sun. Icecream, MREs, dehydrated foodstuffs, vacuum sealed raw foods; A mixture of rations and any food one could imagine all packed in boxes in a -5 degree bunker not needing any active refrigerant.

In the other, a long power bank and generator combination that was idle. With only a little effort the power was flipped and backup became primary as heaters and full lighting came on and started immedietly filling the barracks with a dry and consistent heat to break the chill.

On the ground floor was the living arrangements. Crew-cabins not unlike those on a starship with two a cabin arrayed in seemingly segregated parts of the floor for what might have been intended male and female living spaces with one shower-bathroom combo for each wing. As well as a singular and spacious kitchen-mess combo not large enough to accommodate the 50-planned marine-contingent of the barracks implying multiple shifts to cover. A small service elevator from the mess lead directly down into the storage areas.

In one such room, as Molotra prayed, it could have been nothing but a coincidence as a light flickered in seemingly no pattern at all, or perhapse some coded morse message she yet did not know in confirmation or not of her voice in the dark...

Likewise there was a wardroom with multiple terminal screens and a wide, currently frosted-over bay window to look out away from the city and into the wider world. A small medbay-style room with one bed and a locker for medicines, and an empty room with the hookups for a Twinmaker cloning vat clearly not yet installed.

The second floor was much more utilitarian. A machine workshop connected with lathes and presses and various tools for the maintenance of the barracks was paired with a spread of gunsmithing and armory tools of surprisingly robust quality likely sourced from the Kuznyetski locals and was purpose-intent for a bordering armory with an imposing Nermimum-lined bulkhead that was just large enough for three men to fit in but contained wall to wall firearms and ordinance in safety cubbords while a second bulkhead held enough ammunition and tooling to make more enough to fight off half the city.

The rest of the floor had the facilities to manufacture equipment via a fabricator and the storage space to keep excess spare parts for just about anything.

To get to the third floor one would notice the extra height compared to the second as a clear armored shell lay over the second floor four foot thick of a likely mix of durrandium and nermimum that was likely intended to survive a barrage from light starship weaponry. Junker-bays pock marked the belt but no automata emerged from their lockers.

The third floor was half the size of the second. Half of the floor was outside through a bulkhead that over rails overlooked the flight deck. A covered emplacement not seen from the ground obscured a crew-served light anti-starship platform that from its vantage could overlook every vessel on the flight deck and every starship bunker at the other side, while a sealed door in the ceiling implied it could also be opened and pointed spacewards as a light anti-entry denial weapon. The rest of the floor in its interior was the power generator for the sawn-off plasma lance and a stairwell leading to the next.

The fourth floor was a command-deck/ATC style room of too many screens, terminals, and communications stations. Monitors .... Monitored every vessel not only currently flying within the settlement and beyond but all those currently in system that the starbase in orbit was tracking. Projected flight paths and deviations were marked and there was an easy-comm able to reach out to any vessel within moments via a military communications override.

There was a terminal that communed entirely with the starbase. Over one hundred and forty-two messages were backlogged from the starbase. Most were very breif with the last few listing:

>Seize settlements center of governance.
>Seize settlements center of governance.
>IPG distress beacon detected, priority tasking; Move assets to secure at once.
>Seize settlements center of governance.
>Seize settlements center of governance.
>Seize settlements center of governance.
>Seize settlements center of governance.
>...

Most were sent directly from the starbase and all went unanswered as the senate-appointed 'Governor' constantly sent almost daily orders to seize the local governors' administration complex and arrest the man. There was a similar comm-console from the local channels that implied the local governor was demanding the same of the starbase.

And then there was the IPG beacon the team had activated which had been detected by the barracks sensors but was unstaffed and also... Went unanswered...

The fifth and final floor was nothing more than an open viewing room with 360-degree windows that overlooked the flight deck in its entirety. A few viewing optics were mounted to better look out at distant craft. It was here that The Ship could be seen.

Sitting in a starship cradle it was impossible to miss a military vessel compared to even the local militia ships. Dark, and idle even the running lights were dead and inactive as the ship lay empty and seemingly lifeless. The dark-green olive paint was marred in some places with new Nermimum patches and a collection of ice and snow the name of a ship known to any member of the 309th could be read painted in large yellow letters on the ships flank.

The NSS Anemone, with its white and purple flower painted at the end of the name; One of the four Jackdaw class corvettes of Jackdaw Hunter Pack 4 that alongside the Ink Eater, War Owl, and now Grand Admiral Calloways Sickslayer and the pilots of the Aquila Flight had helped turn the tide of the New Bernese conflict.

Of the four, three were damaged or lost in the Tripple Front War that most of the team had 'died' in while Calloways Sickslayer stood as the undersized flagship of his assault fleet.

It took only a cursory glance at the fourth-floor terminals to find out that the Anemone had taken its licks, been patched up after the war, and now sat empty and untouched. The ships ACE, still active, gave daily updates to the ships still satisfactory status. All tests always came up within acceptable parameters, all startup simulations ran perfectly, all accommodations were still ready for a crew.

It did not take much reading between the lines to read the unspoken anxiety of the AI of a grounded vessel with no crew and its increasing desire to sail the stars once more...

With the barracks now explored there was little else to do but settle in. For the duration this, was home.

It would be roughly a week of graceful, tedious, nothing for once before the fucking IPG came knocking at their door as three black-coated individuals both knocked literally and hit the greeting buzzer...

 

[Arbitrated]

The calm before the next shitstorm
Because we've gone five days of living without being thrown at death and that feels wrong

Quilly had made herself busy exploring the facility soon after Francis had been taken care of, the brunette bird quickly finding the munitions dump and armory and consequentially expressing her approval with a "YES!" which would have woken up half of the Ruthless Riders had they been sleeping in their rooms at the time. Beyond completing her tour, she didn't make herself busy on the first day.

The second, however, found the demolady setting up a game of billiards in the wardroom and inviting - or more accurately, coercing - anybody she saw to take their shot in a match against her. For someone shorter than the cues were she was the expert of handling them, her skill only offset by the hubris of trying "trickshots" if she gained the lead. By the end of the day she'd found herself down in the food bunker to help with meal prep from a lost bet against Tobias, stacking up whatever was requested into the service lift with foggy breaths.

By the fourth day Quilly's fondness of blueberry-based food was known to the whole bunker, and the islander's bravery of the cold had come back enough to provoke curious looks towards the sleeping Anemone. Exploring a famous ship like that tickled her mind, especially with no specific duties to attend to in the meantime - and knowing the AI, it'd do the ship some good to have a couple souls on board again if for a few hours. Sometimes, she'd just look over at it from the observation platform, snacking on blue-tinted preserved pastries and contemplating something.

 

[club24]

The Closet with the Tech

Haisely had immediately found herself a space little bigger than a closet in the basement to live in rather than the quarters upstairs. With a corner dedicated to her equipment and a beanbag taking up most of the other available space she confined herself here for most of the time between their arrival and the arrival of the IPG.

Unfortunately for the antisocial nepcat she had to venture out of her hole in the wall by the second day to obtain snacks and was roped into a game of billiards with Quilly. Haisely handn’t really been around elysians before so she tended to stare at her wings quite a few times. The nepcat had also never played this game before, at least in reality, and so the match was not particularly long between the two of them.

She was also dragged out on a trip by Masato, Haisely will remember this.

 

[Cowboy]

Hospital

Caffran had always been a quick healer. The first thing he had done was lodge a formal complaint against the mercenary force that had left him and his men to die in the cold. That had gone about where he had expected it to go, nowhere. Next he tried to get in touch with command that had send them here in the first place. That had fallen on deaf ears as well. After the second day when it became clear that they were on their own, Caffran mostly just disappeared. He would swing by daily to check on his men but for the rest of the time he was nowhere to be found.

Home Base

Caffran waisted no time in getting their new 'home' locked down. He himself spend most of the first day exploring every corner of the base. The Sargent wasn't one to trust any place too much until he had personally seen to it. Once he had established that the place was secure, he set about his team becoming familiar with their new base, although he didn't push them too hard. They had been through a lot. He even played some pool against Quilly, losing $10 to the little birb.

Caffran also had a long talk with Tobias. Caffran knew that most of his team had worked together for a very long time and they all viewed Tobias as their leader. Heck, even Caffran thought that the man should be the one in charge over him but that was the way things were. What Caff wanted was for his team to work well together and to do that he needed to know the strengths and weaknesses of them all. And who better to get that from than Tobias.

Caffran also set Tobias to do a through scan of the base to check for any listening devices or any other unwelcome surprises. After that, Caffran asked Tobias to attempt to hack into the cities mainframe and see what he could find out about the situation here. He was especially interested in what was going on between the two powers here and wanted a heads up if a fight might rear up and directly or indirectly affect them.

It was after the first week and Caffran was outside, checking the perimeter, when he saw three large individuals heading for the base. Caffran was covered with his camo-cloak, which he had rubbed snow onto to better blend in with the landscape. He moved silently through the snow as he stalked his prey, studying them and how best to take all three out as quickly and quietly as possible. It wouldn't have been either he was forced to admit. The three dark coated individuals reeked of IPG. Caffran let them get all the way to the door and start knocking before he made his presence known. "Something I can do for you gentlemen?" Caff said casually as he seemed to appear out of thin air behind the three.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Norf Fortress

While Molotra appreciated the open nature of the windows and corridors of the small base from an aesthetic point of view, it immediately concerned them that it was all so vulnerable to infantry attack. The fact the gun on the roof gave them some retaliation against air targets was good, but it was the enemy within that still concerned her after that last escapade. This still very much felt like enemy territory to her, with the lack of other Nepleslian Marine personnel standing as a testament to that fact.

Thus, as her very genes seems to dictate, the ginger tank decided it was time to fortify.

The first day was spent checking out the machine workshop and the operability of the Junker hive- She also had a look onboard the NSS Anemone for additional tools and weapons. It was tempting to sit and chat with the AI. Or Lupin, now that they were finally somewhere semi-civilized and not coated in organic filth... But a one armed, no legged meat beanbag wasn't what the group needed in a pioneer, so Molotra stashed her emotions away for now.

There would be time to navel gaze about that obscure dream entity later, too.

Days 1-2 = Mobility upgrades. They created a facsimile of their old tank tread lower half, by breaking down a snowmobile and a cluster of power armour spares they found onboard the ship. The legs just sank into the tundra anyway.

Days 3-4 = Infrastructure upgrades. They made the forth floor command deck into a proper security room, reconfiguring the cameras, doors and power generation systems so that they'd only be accessible from these locked terminals only. They put a mini-fridge in here and turned the lights off to lure Haisely in, hoping to leave her in charge of sorting through the data dumps.

Day 5 = Actual dumps due to abuse of painkiller medication and roughshod circuitry on her new spinal mount. She made beef stroganoff, and wolf boy let her sleep on his abs whilst they watched bad yamataimation.

Days 6-7 = There weren't enough raw materials, and Caffran would probably be pissed if she started welding shutters to the windows, so Molo just reinforced the interior locks and created a way to remote control them from the command room.

She was in the middle of mounting an M3 rifle onto the security camera outside the new security office, when a bleak-sounding proximity sensor triggered outside the compound... Who were these three cretins?

 

[Alex Hart]

A Box in the Snow in the Middle of Nowhere

Tobias' stay in the hospital was as uneventful as the others, save perhaps for the difficulty that he'd had coming back up from the level of sedatives that had been needed to originally put the man under on account of his augmentations. After waking back up, he'd taken to wearing looser clothing when not required to go out into the cold. A phantom burning sensation sometimes persisted, an echo of what he had seen and felt just before going under by the skimmer.

Speaking at length with Caffran, Tobias outlined the strengths of each of the marines from the original group. Quilly's explosives expertise made her an asset in most situations save for sealed environments. Lupin's sniper training, eyesight, and superior strength made him a dangerous combatant at any range. Molotra's engineering expertise was second to none amongst the crew, and her hacking abilities almost as polished as Tobias'. Finally, both he and Carina were IPG trained, in one way or another. Though their primary assets lay in their soft skills, his preeminent hacking abilities and her medical exertise, tested under circumstances most medics would shudder to imagine, both were still dangerous combatants as well.

Following the group's arrival to their new base of operations, he had set about his new tasks with the demeanor of a man glad to have a distraction after so much time sitting around in the hospital. He'd spent the first day surveying the base, and setting up his own room. With so few marines in a base designed for more than five times their number, it was easy enough for the tech specialist to find his own room. The other bed was quickly converted into a workbench, and unused monitors from around the base were repurposed to Tobias' needs.

On the second day he helped move items out of the storage room, though not alone thanks to a billiards bet he'd won against Quilly. He suspected that the Elyian's penchant for what she called "Trick Shots" stemmed from the same sense for flashiness that her love for explosives did. Most of that day was spent in the un-insulated storage basement, cheeks reddened from the chill as the two worked to move usable supplies up into the main areas of the base.

The rest of his week was then spent sweeping the base for any listening devices, and probing and compromising the cybersecurity of the city's digital infrastructure, at Caffran's request. His objective was primarily focused on channels used for communiques and orders, so as to get a feel for troop movements. He also made efforts to make backdoors for himself in any automated defenses, just in case the group had occasion to contend with them.

All the week though, in the back of his mind, Tobias was probing his mindware. Hargraves was in there, he knew. Somewhere, the digital ghost of the man lived on. Whether he meant harm or aid, the former operative wasn't yet sure. Hargraves had saved his life once, out there in the snow. But for what reason?

When the IPG showed up, and there was no mistaking the operatives of his former employer, Tobias did his best to make himself unobtrusive. Not scarce, for that would attract attention to the lack of someone who was supposed to be there, but instead he simply attempted to busy himself with normal looking tasks, in anticipation of any search conducted by the operatives.

 

[SirSkully]

Freezer Isle
Lupin was feeling the repercussions of fighting back against the medical staff's insistence on keeping his IV drip in a day or two longer, but did his best to swallow that down and busy himself like the others, there was a lot that needed to be done after all.

Lupin consulted Quilly and Molotra where their respective expertise became relevant, helping to bolster the prefab's defences with some nasty surprises of his own design, bundles of shrapnel-loaded explosives linked to an array of fine-tuned sensors hidden in vents and behind support beams at important choke-points throughout the base sat inactive until the ominous-looking transceiver he'd wired into the control room was sent the appropriate command from one of them. The sniper spent his free time between tinkering with and performing maintenance on gear down in the armoury, stalking large omnivores through the surrounding tundra, watching the skies for out-of-place objects posing as stars or sleeping in his bunk - having taken some time blacking out the room as much as possible and replacing the lights with dim infrared bulbs to help counter his constant string of migraines all the snow seemed to be causing. Trading a few non-critical supplies with the locals was a good way to get his hands on extra components they might need and also helped clue him in on what the locals might be gossiping about, small breadcrumbs he made sure to pass back to Tobias and the others when appropriate.

Falling asleep watching obscene animations with Molotra was something he needed almost as much as the healing tankette did, it helped refresh him more than any IV bag could ever hope to.

When the IPG triggered proximity alarms Lupin had been resting, the beast he'd finished cutting up not even an hour ago sitting in the chilled tunnels down below, the disruption of his beauty-sleep causing a few grumbles as the secret prince stepped through his heavy curtain with his carbine and belt in tow. While their proposals to weld windows shut had been shot down Lupin was able to convince Caffran to let the team stack some overturned steel tables and other bits of furniture to form a decent barricade near the main entrance, with so few of them calling this place home it wasn't like they needed all that space to eat, and it gave them more room to store non-perishable supplies in the cafeteria.

"Kennedy here~" Lupin half-yawned over the comms network, securing the various straps of his battle-belt as he quickly padded up the stairs. Lupin brought a few video-feeds up on his HUD as the cold hit him, making the sniper pull his jacket tighter as he used one of the external catwalks to get a better angle on the strangers. If only he hadn't lost his good coat to the team's devious angel.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but we're not expecting anyone," he continued, rifle bracing against an ice-bitten corner of the building as his optic honed in on Caffran and his guests, hood pulled tight to help not bleed as much precious heat out into the frigid air.

"I don't like it, they're practically peacocking but I haven't seen any unusual ships land, why such a direct and blunt method of approach?"

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

Base

Three individuals in the crisp black-gray-blacker uniforms of the Intelligence and Pacification Group loitered just outside the front hatch when Caffran somehow materialized without making a sound on corrugated metal to an impressive show of stealth.

Of the three, only one so much as acknowledged him as a woman swung around and glared him down with a paranoid intensity while her two fellows simply shared a look before also turning to Caffran.

If three people could somehow form a three-way triangle of opposites it would be the three operators. The first, the woman, was so staggeringly rail-thin that even through her thick winterized uniform she made quilly seem husky in comparison. Though her eyes were obscured by the trademark operator shades the socket around one was visibly stapled open around the socket in a way that would likely look comical on anyone less intense as a face with skin so tight stretched around her hairless head as if it was not her own pulled her face into a perpetual sneer flashing constant chrome teeth of a full set of durrandium replacements all sharpened to a sharp tearing point.

The next was the Atypical full ID-SOL. Taller and broader the man was still young for his species being barely seven foot tall and possibly only five hundred pounds he was wearing the usual IPG uniform instead of the thicker winterized greatcoat with cliche arms bared with an almost coat of arm hair and even his under blouse unbuttoned a few notches as if the cold was nothing more than a spring chill he could not be bothered to dress for. Arms as thick as tank barrels crossed as the SOL gave Caffran an approving grin but still stared down at him at least physically.

The third was the most out of place.

Despite once ruling the sector and being a core Nepleslian species it was uncommon to see a Delsaurian anywhere outside of their home world. It was completely unheard of to find out on a frozen world so far from the deserts. Broader than it was tall the reptilian stood at just over three and a half foot and looked much thicker abreast than most of the Delsaurians with shaved down horn nubs protruding from the gray-yellow scales of its head and the comically worn operator shades it balanced on its snout from which yellow eyes looked impassively at the Sergeant appraisingly.


It was the latter, the Delsaurian who spoke.

"Caff-ran Cantur-bury." It hissed an intonation, immedietly recognizing him somehow despite his cloak and full winter gear.

"Your skillss are quite impre-ssive in the flesh."

The reptile waddled forward and even offered Caffran an handshake in greeting.

"I am oper-ator Niless." He introduced himself.

"Drewski." The Sol barked as much as the haughty nature of his kind was drilled into him but offered only a nod in greeting.

"Operator Noellastrubeck." The woman intoned almost melodically even over the wind and without moving her lips or teeth that were there anyone else present Caffran might not believe it came from the wild-looking woman at all.

Without further ado the Delsaurian pulled a mylar-looking evidence bag from his coat and Caffran could not help but curse internally as to what the transparent bag held as a familiar looking data-slate was held up like a totem at him.

"Ass-emble your mariness, Sergeant Cantur-bury." The reptilian operator lowered the bag but did not remove it as the atmosphere perceptibly changed about them.

"It iss time to set the rec-ord straight on your rec-ent advent-ure."

Wardroom

Thirty minutes later the team was reluctantly gathered as the Operators introduced themselves again and placed the evidence bag on a table for everyone to see. The three operators did not speak at first as they weathered a still weak but at least on her own two feet Francis Euphorias tyrade of cursing as the woman strained the amount of syllables she could manage between breaths to the point she was practically bracing herself on one of the tables as she fought between the urge to breath and not pass out and to continue her seeming attempt to place some kind of actual curse on the three but most especially the massive SOL as the wire-thin woman seemed invisible to her and the Delsaurian clearly in unknown territory, and at Caffran himself no doubt blaming him for whatever the familiar data slate she did not recognize but had at least recalled from told events from the team being somehow his fault.

"All the way down to my elbow and then I'll twist-" She paused to pant, her face beet-red as she dry-swallowed a pill from a small tin they had all become familiar with as Francis downed her Medicine that mediated her more fell moods and kept her stable enough that she did not get committed.

When the Delsaurian found enough of a pause and actually found the time to compose itself from the impressive tirade of entire dictionaries worth of constructive cursing it cleared its throat with all the sound of a parched man hacking sand from his lungs.

"Yess... Well... That clearly jusst happened." The reptilian gave Francis an impressed nod that almost started her up again before it continued.

"Let me allevi-ate any con-cernss before we begin; None of you are in trouble. My associ-atess and I are ssimply here to sset the record sstraight on your latesst ess-capade and how thingss will work going for-ward."

"But firsst. What do any of you know about the Moto-yosshi?" Niles asked, completely throwing any of them off guard from where they thought the conversation might be going.

Beside Tobias, a familiar form chuckled softly.

"This should be good." Colonel Hargraves shook his head ruefully.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Wardroom

Baddum-ka-klack~Baddum-ka-klack~Baddum-ka-klack~Baddum-ka-klack~

An unnerving sound reverberated around the hard silica panels of every empty corridor in the base, not unlike a spattering of large robots all leaping away from the wardroom in unison. Less paranoid creatures might come to the conclusion that all of the doors had just been locked at once.

The sound of a small electric motor followed up next, along with the plod-plod-plodding of rubberized tracks.

That wasn't a robot either. What reopened the door and briskly entered was a stocky, compact soldier with sunglasses, orange braids, a green armoured vest, and a twin linked M3 laying across the flat bed of their significantly armoured caboose.

"Sergeant Canterbury, Sir!" Molotra regarded him with a metal handed salute, probably more respect than she had offered him their entire period of service together... This was, of course, because they were being devious. Looking straight ahead, they acted like this was some officially appointed practice, avoiding eye contact with anyone at all. "The area is secured. Do our visitors have any documents or identification they perhaps want transporting to a secure location?"

Even if they could talk brain to brain like with Tobias, she doubted Caffran would take her sending him suggestions all that well. So she did the 'technically not insubordination' thing of being way too helpful, instead.

Like heck she trusted these guys. She didn't trust the actual IPG. She didn't trust anyone in the goverment. On this planet, or on planet Nepleslia.

 

[SirSkully]

Lupin had sat himself up atop one of the few remaining tables in the wardroom, rifle well within reach as the sniper brought a cigarillo out from under his jacket, hands making practiced moves to bring his arc lighter up when something Niles said made the young man pause. The mention of the Motoyoshi clan, and memories of a squad member still missing in action, the man he had been somewhat of a muse to at one point.

"Former Senator Takagawa represented one of their planets, they brought in a former empress and re-established her as the head of the clan," Lupin started, rolling the cigarillo around as it slowly began smouldering, a pleasantly spiced smoke wafting from its end.

"...and Corporal Ötto Reiter, one of our former squad-members who is still officially missing in action, had a kid with one of them," the sniper spoke with a heavy sigh, smoke rolling past his lips as the lighter was stuffed back into his hip pocket, trying not to let memories overwhelm him too much as his gaze shifted back to the trio of spooks. Offering them little more than an observant frown to accompany his words, silently agreeing with Molotra that some further form of identification would ease some of the tension in the room.

"But I'd love to know what this has to do with us~"

 

[Arbitrated]

Quilly had seem thoroughly unaffected by the Franciscian onslaught against the three spooks, simply observing the redhead visually until she'd finally kept her mouth shut for about three seconds. Those who knew their anatomy could guess that the local demo had simply deafened herself, using the small muscles Elysian ears were gifted with for this purpose. The blue-eyed angel paid diligent attention to the briefing - could it be called that? - and had to suppress a chuckle at Molo's jab of "helpfulness" to remain somewhat professional.

She answered the inquiry honestly, "The Motoyoshi, they're the imperialist and pro-Neko part of Yamatai... Unless you mean the ones that formed the UOC in the early thirties. Most of their assets should be on the other side of inhabited space - a hundred lightyears away." To call her confused wouldn't be quite right - Quilly knew that Yamtaian ships could move incredibly quickly. The way she responded implied that she was curious, anticipating that one of the Nekovalkyria would be ready to mnake planetfall in the next hour...

 

[Alex Hart]

Tobias had done his level best to put up his usual disarming facade. Unlike the majority of those that the marines had interacted with in the recent past, there was a chance that these IPG agents knew some portion of the identities of those who had been inside the Swamp, a part of Killgee's orphanages. Enough to place them as anything other than normal marines, if they were unlucky enough. The hacker hoped that they were part of the portion of the IPG that did not "need to know" about Killgee's operations.

"The Motoyoshi? I thought they used to be the ones who be kinda anti-imperial a decade or so back, but they've been pretty gung-ho for the empress from what I've seen in recent news." Tobias said, a thoughtful expression on his face as if a signficant amount of mental energy was being put towards recalling the information.

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

Wardroom

"All very ass-tute." Niles nodded, clearly pleased though giving Molotra a strained look.

"You aint wrong, kid." The SOL operator, Drewski acknowledged Tobias as well, taking up the reins of the conversation as his big meaty fingers made a snapping motion and then pointed at Lupin with a followed up "Bingo."

"Anyhows your dead buddy," Drewski started, before clearly catching a look from someone in the team or perhapse self correcting himself before continuing, "Your missing buddy, Ritter or however the Abs pronounce shit went and broke the cardinal rule about cats; Keep it in your pants. Neko are clinging, overly emotional, and hormonal and imprint on the first gary or mary to show them a lick of attention. Ritter-man fell for that trap and knocked up one of them on a liason he should have known better."

"Nekovalkyrja can conceive of child by the simple desire to do so with a 100% conception rate." The strange ventriloquist operator with the overly complicated name added.

"And normally this wouldn't be an issue. Plenty of young men and gals end up in that scenario when going over their on transfer or transit; Surrounded by men and cats on average lookin' like they came off of Akemis deluxe calendar shoot, You know the one with all the foam?"

"What concernss young trooper Reiter," Niles continued. "Is the particular woman in quess-tion."

"A Motoyoshi." Drewski looked about ready to spit.

"The Motoyoshi clan, family, faction, you name it. They're one of the most influential groups in the sector whose political capital can leverage even the Sky marhal himself if they wanted to. They're got empresses' old and young, and famous admirals and figures under their banner and this girl in question just so happens to be one of the daughters of Big-Katsuko herself; Their matriarch.

So when you all decided to die in the tripple-front war like good patriots do that included your buddy Ritter and just about everyone else save the walking depressed head in a jar you knew that the yellows decided to magic her back to the land of the living.

Then Katsuko uses that political weight o-hers to start asking questions about her misguided daughters' forbidden lover now that she starts popping out his kittens which puts then-admiral Calloway on the spot and responsible for turning up answers."

There was a palpable change of the atmosphere in the room as the large SOL looked across at Masato before speaking next.

"Dont know how much those of you that made it somehow told your new buddies. We arent high enough on the chain to know, and it aint in our wheelhouse anyhow. But whatever secret it is, it was enough for Calloway on his promotion of 'GA' to ghost the Motoyoshi for half a decade now to keep it.

So when you lot show back up the big man running the 4th fleet secret-squirrels you somwhere far away where the cats don't have a lot of eyes to look if you get my drift."

"Like a big snowball in bum-fuck knowhere." Hargraves connected the dots next to Tobias heard only to him.

"Bingo." The SOL pointed again, this time at Tobias at his comment he hadn't known he had made.

"Sso when you sstart getting involved in ssector afairss upon your arri-val..." Niles let the statement hang on their first moments arriving in Svodog and Stenkagorad and the crash and subsiquent scandal.

"You get grunts like us getting the Intelligence Liason for an entire assault fleet breathing down our necks to bury the matter before SAINT start connecting the dots on former exchange officers of their and the kin of nobles and semi-famous starship captains are getting up to and see names that if they start running them through a database end up on the desk of... "

He let the statement hang.

"So just about everyone involved now has been thoroughly threatened, coerced, bribed, or greased to keep their yaps shut soon as we got here. And hopefully with SAINT focussed on the Kodians little civil war they got going on right now nobody noticed you and wont be black-bagging you on some former empress' command."

Which leaves us with this." The formerly produced tablet was lifted up before being dropped none too gently on the table.

"If any of you care to remember there was supposed to be an officer and staff here when you arrived to report to." The female officer jogged their memories of their duty orders.

"This tablet is blank. Pretty simple and lacking any encryption cause it has shit all on it. It just has a DNA imprint and a signature of the local military authority. And no, canturberry it aint you. You were just the backup plan and your Lieutenant Devone fell hook line and sinker into it when he singed for Tsar and his men to search for your crashed shuttle under his authority.

What he signed away was essentially the rights to that starship you all get to look at like a lawn decoration every day to the mercs for the meager somme of thirty thousand Davis Alliance."

On referencing it the SOL took another bag out of his coat, much larger than the first which was filled the six stacks of rubber-banded 100-DA bills to which he slapped on the table like it wasnt twice a years salary for most of them.

"Change the IRFV and you can fly it off blending in with all the local traffic and nobody will ever know until its too late and the paper trail leads out of the system and you see it to the blacks or some rouge trader for a few hundred million Davis profit. While its a shame your LT took the blame for it by association and he's already in the NPFs custody taking a whole slew of this mess on his shoulders. He'll be spending a few decades in the swamp, but don't feel bad about him; Enough turned up when we gave him a good background check that you wouldnt want him anywhere near your Elysian chick anyhow.

So with the MEC-H we recovered the NYRDs are defrosting your new CO who should be here within the month and the rest of your new comrades you'll be sharing the rest of your careers here with where you cant make any noise."

"Did all of-that make ssensse you you, Do you have any quess-tionss?"

 

[club24]

Haisely had been trying, so, so very hard not to visibly express her huge reserve of enthusiasm during this discussion. After basically being told the be there or else she had trudged down the hall hoping to avoid it but sadly for the nepcat her plans were foiled every time.

By the time she’d finished playing solitaire in her head, and coincidentally just before the girl could try to figure out some other game to imagine there was a mention of a large amount of money and that fucking ship that she was kicked out of.

And something about the elysian but eh, wings weren’t her thing.

”Yeah I got one, what’s the going tax-rate on a starship sale these days.”

It was less of a question and more of a semi-coherent statement that wasn’t quite sure of itself. Haisely didn’t care about taxes, she had heard the phrase muttered with such distain in her past she’d simply never bothered to look into it, but it seemed almost appropriate in her head to ask.

 

[SirSkully]

"It's a shame, really," Lupin mused, a forlorn plume of smoke making its way past his lips before they pursed, the sniper's usually-stoic exterior betraying his frustration towards what the trio of strangers were telling them. While the small hacker inquired about taxes on that dry-docked ship outside he'd been thinking long and hard, trying not not frown too much, the snow-induced migraines and fear of a sudden raid in the middle of the night made him do that enough already.

"All these suicide missions we've managed to pull through and you'd rather have us rot away on some inconspicuous little ball of ice than put us to work where we can actually do something to try and make things right," he continued with a huff, eyes narrowing thoughtfully at the IPG arbiters for a short moment before making his move. Reaching back behind the lightly pointed shape of his right ear Lupin procured a small data-shard etched with complex circuitry of a Freespacer origin. A high-quality little air-gapped storage medium that the lad thumbed over a few times before holding it up for closer inspection, barely larger than his thumbnail. The whole situation frustrated him to no end, not only that he was being forced to rot here, but that newer additions to this shitstorm like Quilly, Caffran, Haisley and Masato were being dragged down with them via association. It wasn't fair, and it certainly seemed at least partially illegal, but then again this was the IPG.

"Everything I managed to record and capture when Tsar and his men abandoned us at the crash site has been copied to this; patches, uniforms, specifities like that. I'm not sure how damning any of it is, or if it's anything you don't have already, but if it does turn up anything could you possibly see about making our situation a little less undesirable?"

Of course this wasn't the only copy floating around outside his head, and there was no way in hell he'd be slotting it back in after the three stooges were made aware of it, but Lupin figured it couldn't do much harm to try and barter with them - even if it didn't get the squad in a room with that blonde bastard...