Charmaylarg Dufrain
🎖️ Game Master
Deck
What would have been the chin on any other being jerked back as Averys HHG threw one of its chemical-driven mass driver rounds through its lower jaw and left a very concave C-shape as it removed a three-inch trench through its face and head. Her goggles were almost instantly blinded by the blue-black ichor that spattered her and even the ocular filters couldnt pierce them.
When after a hard couple seconds the only sounds where the rush of blood in her head and the filtered sounds of distant combat she was able to roll over and wipe off her goggles as the armored form to her side twitched but did not get up even as she recovered her feet and her SPAID.
Standing over it now with the low-light filter and her own mounted lights it definitely seemed armored-looking and alien enough to possibly be some new variation of powered armor the cats might field but the uncanny biological form of the clear chitin and exoskeleton threw out any notions of Yamatai finally taking that step. That and the fact that a high caliber round had passed right through it when an HHG might at best give a mindy pilot a concussion at that range filled in some blanks.
"Friendly at your 4!" Havoc called over comms as the line of the other marines caught up and passed her slightly to form a perimiter. Getting a closer look at what they were facing most of them cursed or swore.
"Aint mishu." One of them stated.
"Aint a cat, missing the tits and tail." Another stated.
"Kuvie merc?"
"Stow it!" Havoc called them to order as she appriased Avery after recovering a long bone-white weapon of some kind from the insectoid alien and slid it into her weapon belt. "You prime, Jensen? Good, then fall in." She didnt wait for an answer as they moved back out.
There was no grand rescue of the first team and the Ensign. By the time they caught up three marines were missing and two others were pulling strange finger-length needles of some kind out of one of the navy rats legs and throwing them into a small growing pile of red-tinged snow. There was little more than an acknowledgment of their presence before ammo was checked and even Corporal Havoc recovered a fresh M3 now missing its wielder. All across the flight deck were pockets of combat bathed in tracers and the occasional light. The locals were giving a good account as most Kuzynetski could and a massive dozer even larger than a Maximus tank just a hundred meters away tore through a xenos invader and kept on going.
In a further pocket the large form of a Cobra Gunship in the black and blue of the NPF police force was bathing the area around it in lights as, like the marines, the DRT in Golem armor formed a perimiter and gave off occasional shots at unseen enemies as Nepleslias militiarized police force held their own. When they started moving again its seemed they were heading for the gunship first but instead, the Ensign kept them at a respectful distance and kept them moving from what little cover there was. From the IFF markers registering in all their HUDs it was obvious using the same armor as them that the NPF was just as aware as them but stayed on their perimeter and their only interaction was one of the spotlights on the gunship trailing ahead of them as they waited in cover briefly as it bathed the deck ahead of them in time to reveal another bug which was cut down in short order at range until it stopped twitching.
Eventually, the light moved on, however.
"Listen up." The ensign called over their net, getting their attention. "We have one last stretch to the Anemone. Theres a local NSMC garrison here that if its on lockdown should have a full complement of marines and sailors. We move for the barracks; As soon as we're in rearm while I use their uplink to contact the skipper and get the auth to access the ship. If their CO isn't a hardass we borrow their bodies to secure the Anemone and get its secondaries up to cover the skipper and the rest as they fly in and leave the big-brain shit to him, heard?"
Not so much a question as an order the group got up and sprinted the last hundred meters to the large clearly military building and paused at what they saw next...
Barracks
As the new marines and sailors came within sight of the barracks it was clear chaos. A massive-thighed marine was opening fire at another at the entrace and a bug above her as the under-fire marine rolled off the deck and fell almost fifteen feet to land hard on the back of a bug the size of a suit of Agressor armor only to half-fall off and only hold on by the stems of one of its wings while what could only be a fucking elysian charged in with a long knife and then jumped up and latched onto its other wing and began stabbing.
Nearby one marine was steadily getting to their feat and was lazily swinging around a flaregun while from another angle two more marines; One in of all things IPG tagged black raider armor fired high-kinetic rounds at its flank, narrowly missing blowing off the leg of the elysian as rounds hit it and some penetrated but did not stop it as it reached out a clawed hand towards of all things now that the proximity net was now close enough to pick up their chatter as the massive xeno loomed over a marine who was shouting at it in what sounded like seraphim.
The hatch to the base was wide open. There were two dead Kuz on a ramp. The barracks anti-ship cannon was primed and deployed, the ATC command tower looked empty from their angle, and of the fifty marines there should be there was instead half a douzen outside recreating some strange ballad or play in the middle of an invasion!
"What in Delucas black unmentionables is going on here?!" The ensign demanded over the net.
Barracks, Again!
"Sergeant our AO is clear for the moment, 'EI' moved on to easier prey." The NPF lieutenant answered as he ran, his exoframe propelling him well ahead of molotra and lupin as he moved towards the barracks. It went without saying what the easier prey was with just a thought towards the local deck workers out there still fighting. "PC has the lawbringer grounded awaiting further NPF elements to siege protocols." He followed up.
Seige-protocols for the NPF meant locking down every precinct into their fortress precinct houses in preparation for invasion. In the case of the Gunship Caffrain could guess that they would load it up with as many officers and equipment as they could and fuckoff somwhere into the wilds where the NPF likely had a hidden facility or bunker to prepare for the worst-case scenario of needing to coordinate from afar if the planet fell.
The fact that the planetary commissioner him or herself was grounding the ship meant in all likelihood they were on their way to flee on it personally.
It was a cold and calculated move. And few higherups in the NPF got their jobs for being pencil pushers or cowards. Whoever the planetary commissioner was had a broader scope than him and decided that a city of a million heavily-armed Kuzynetski not including all the mercenaries was insufficient for the task.
"Sergeant the orders from the PC if coming in contact with your and your men is to stop what you are doing and immediately move with all the ordinance you can spare to the lawbringer for evac within the hour." Lieutenant Lola followed up, Caffran immediately knowing that a Planetary Commissioner had no actual authority over SMDIoN personnel. The Officer's tone sounded like he knew that too and was simply repeating orders word for word.
There was a sharp beep-sound enough to make Caffran wince as someone else stepped on their frequency. It read of the tell-tale sign of a mass broadcast and not a direct line as a familiar face came to mind he had only met briefly when coming to this world.
"This is Commander Tsar Noble of the Government Mercenary Forces-" The merc commander who had tried to frame Caffran sounded over the net them cut off in a wash of static. When no further message followed the Officer came back on the net.
"Sergeant please confirm you have heard and understand the orders of the planetary commissioner at this time, how copy? "
Ahead of him was a massive bug five times the size of the ones Lupin and the Kuz had killed as he opened fire on instinct. Its massive form swallowed up even the high-kinetic rounds as it reached a massive clawed hand forwards at one of his marines who was standing their not moving as it wrapped a hand large enough to encircle Tobias' chest entirely around his neck and collarbone and lifted him up while revealing its other hand was a massive blade at the forearm as it brought its arm back above its head and would any moment bring it down and cut through Tobias from shoulder to groin...
Novus.
There was a point when leo's joints turned to molasses and his body just stopped. An unnatural thing had posessed him even after new marines came and threw themself at the patriarch and even when it reached an unblemished hand towards him.
It wrapped around his throat and began to lift him like he weighed nothing off the ground and raised his flaming greatsword in the air to finish him off.
But nothing happened. The blade still raised, the look of contempt on his perfect face frozen, the pressure on his throat stopped, even his hair in the breeze simply stayed in a perpetual breeze as if underwater.
"Too far off script." Leo Hargraves grumbled as he slid out from the archangels grasp and landed with a light grunt back on the ground as he turned to face Tobias behind it.
"Bastard never got that far. One of those fancy pillars they like so much toppled on him and crushed him is how it ended; Baited him right into the swing that dropped it too." He said as Tobias looked around, dumbfounded but himself once more.
"Took a while to set up the right enviorment and get control. Do more then just send messages and signals. Its against the paramiters of what I am, but not what I was." Hargraves stated as he sat down in a suddenly manafest camping chair, a small folding table also there with an ashtray and half-smoked cigar.
"Have a seat, kid, no?" Hargraves offered to him before picking up the cigar but not smoking it even as Tobias stood frozen somehow and mute, unable to speak or move.
"It aint gonna make sense to you. Or maybe it will, what do I know. But I aint him, The one you call Hargraves.
Dont get me wrong I'm the accumulation of everything he was; His entire dossier, psyche profile, personality built up from recordings and records and so much more.
But I aint him.
See, do you know who The Forge are? Nah you likely don't. The short of it is that commanders like me; Like Hargraves got a lot of shit in their heads that the reds or the blues, or the birds or any number of enemies would want to get their hands on and dig into. So way back when, fore we thought of just putting bombs in our heads a lot of us hired some of The Forged to make these little parcels they put in our heads.
Kinda like an early Brainspider if you think about it. Anyhow just putting a drive in our noggins makes it a bit too easy to get all those strategic security codes so some those borgs put in a few nasty traps like me. A broiche horse or something they call it, whatever that means. Harmless at first but once we get our hooks in we kill or take over any system we can any do as much damage as possible before they purge us. Didn't even know if I was the last one or what but here I am.
But when I got in that nice uplink in your head and started building my routines I came across all the little stuff you got once I broke through your outdated encryptions and firewalls. Found that bomb in your head; That was nice. But it's a dud if you guess you're lucky. But other than that you arent some system I can just crash since the Forge didnt think of none of this IPG stuff at the time I guess. So I had to keep digging and get creative, and Lo and Behold I found some nice backdoors into your mindware and what they lead to... Kid there's some stuff buried in there; Real skeletons in the closet stuff and more thats never been acessed and the trail it leads is-
Well it don't matter a lick if you're not around to see none of it. But its well within my means to make use of that to push things in a different direction.
Kid. The part of me thats hargraves hates you for what you did. Not for killing him, nah. But for getting his men killed for what I now know was just a pointless game you ain't even got the scope of the pieces let alone the players of from what i've seen. You aint one of his men, but Leo still woulda killed for you like any of his boys. So, for that i'm gonna kill you, kid.
Not me, directly. I can't do more than hijack your mindlink right now for this little chat. But I can get you killed like right now. And when I do, and it all goes dark upstairs and they put your chip or head on a new body i'll have supplanted all that you are into all that I was.
We'll have all your memories, quirks, ticks, all of that. But i'll be the one at the helm. I'll make sure all your little friends from Ukk don't see it coming for what you lot did. Franny and the Elysian whore ill save for last. Francis might have been one of Leos but in the end I'm not really him.
So don't take it personally but I'm just doing my job, kid. No malice, no hate. Just the way it's gotta be."
Barracks
With a puff of the cigar and a nonchalant flick of his wrist Tobias opened his eyes to see the blade poised above him as the massive alien crushed at his windpipe as his collarbone creaked and popped under the pressure even as the blade stopped pulling back and the massive insect brought it down...
What would have been the chin on any other being jerked back as Averys HHG threw one of its chemical-driven mass driver rounds through its lower jaw and left a very concave C-shape as it removed a three-inch trench through its face and head. Her goggles were almost instantly blinded by the blue-black ichor that spattered her and even the ocular filters couldnt pierce them.
When after a hard couple seconds the only sounds where the rush of blood in her head and the filtered sounds of distant combat she was able to roll over and wipe off her goggles as the armored form to her side twitched but did not get up even as she recovered her feet and her SPAID.
Standing over it now with the low-light filter and her own mounted lights it definitely seemed armored-looking and alien enough to possibly be some new variation of powered armor the cats might field but the uncanny biological form of the clear chitin and exoskeleton threw out any notions of Yamatai finally taking that step. That and the fact that a high caliber round had passed right through it when an HHG might at best give a mindy pilot a concussion at that range filled in some blanks.
"Friendly at your 4!" Havoc called over comms as the line of the other marines caught up and passed her slightly to form a perimiter. Getting a closer look at what they were facing most of them cursed or swore.
"Aint mishu." One of them stated.
"Aint a cat, missing the tits and tail." Another stated.
"Kuvie merc?"
"Stow it!" Havoc called them to order as she appriased Avery after recovering a long bone-white weapon of some kind from the insectoid alien and slid it into her weapon belt. "You prime, Jensen? Good, then fall in." She didnt wait for an answer as they moved back out.
There was no grand rescue of the first team and the Ensign. By the time they caught up three marines were missing and two others were pulling strange finger-length needles of some kind out of one of the navy rats legs and throwing them into a small growing pile of red-tinged snow. There was little more than an acknowledgment of their presence before ammo was checked and even Corporal Havoc recovered a fresh M3 now missing its wielder. All across the flight deck were pockets of combat bathed in tracers and the occasional light. The locals were giving a good account as most Kuzynetski could and a massive dozer even larger than a Maximus tank just a hundred meters away tore through a xenos invader and kept on going.
In a further pocket the large form of a Cobra Gunship in the black and blue of the NPF police force was bathing the area around it in lights as, like the marines, the DRT in Golem armor formed a perimiter and gave off occasional shots at unseen enemies as Nepleslias militiarized police force held their own. When they started moving again its seemed they were heading for the gunship first but instead, the Ensign kept them at a respectful distance and kept them moving from what little cover there was. From the IFF markers registering in all their HUDs it was obvious using the same armor as them that the NPF was just as aware as them but stayed on their perimeter and their only interaction was one of the spotlights on the gunship trailing ahead of them as they waited in cover briefly as it bathed the deck ahead of them in time to reveal another bug which was cut down in short order at range until it stopped twitching.
Eventually, the light moved on, however.
"Listen up." The ensign called over their net, getting their attention. "We have one last stretch to the Anemone. Theres a local NSMC garrison here that if its on lockdown should have a full complement of marines and sailors. We move for the barracks; As soon as we're in rearm while I use their uplink to contact the skipper and get the auth to access the ship. If their CO isn't a hardass we borrow their bodies to secure the Anemone and get its secondaries up to cover the skipper and the rest as they fly in and leave the big-brain shit to him, heard?"
Not so much a question as an order the group got up and sprinted the last hundred meters to the large clearly military building and paused at what they saw next...
Barracks
As the new marines and sailors came within sight of the barracks it was clear chaos. A massive-thighed marine was opening fire at another at the entrace and a bug above her as the under-fire marine rolled off the deck and fell almost fifteen feet to land hard on the back of a bug the size of a suit of Agressor armor only to half-fall off and only hold on by the stems of one of its wings while what could only be a fucking elysian charged in with a long knife and then jumped up and latched onto its other wing and began stabbing.
Nearby one marine was steadily getting to their feat and was lazily swinging around a flaregun while from another angle two more marines; One in of all things IPG tagged black raider armor fired high-kinetic rounds at its flank, narrowly missing blowing off the leg of the elysian as rounds hit it and some penetrated but did not stop it as it reached out a clawed hand towards of all things now that the proximity net was now close enough to pick up their chatter as the massive xeno loomed over a marine who was shouting at it in what sounded like seraphim.
The hatch to the base was wide open. There were two dead Kuz on a ramp. The barracks anti-ship cannon was primed and deployed, the ATC command tower looked empty from their angle, and of the fifty marines there should be there was instead half a douzen outside recreating some strange ballad or play in the middle of an invasion!
"What in Delucas black unmentionables is going on here?!" The ensign demanded over the net.
Barracks, Again!
"Sergeant our AO is clear for the moment, 'EI' moved on to easier prey." The NPF lieutenant answered as he ran, his exoframe propelling him well ahead of molotra and lupin as he moved towards the barracks. It went without saying what the easier prey was with just a thought towards the local deck workers out there still fighting. "PC has the lawbringer grounded awaiting further NPF elements to siege protocols." He followed up.
Seige-protocols for the NPF meant locking down every precinct into their fortress precinct houses in preparation for invasion. In the case of the Gunship Caffrain could guess that they would load it up with as many officers and equipment as they could and fuckoff somwhere into the wilds where the NPF likely had a hidden facility or bunker to prepare for the worst-case scenario of needing to coordinate from afar if the planet fell.
The fact that the planetary commissioner him or herself was grounding the ship meant in all likelihood they were on their way to flee on it personally.
It was a cold and calculated move. And few higherups in the NPF got their jobs for being pencil pushers or cowards. Whoever the planetary commissioner was had a broader scope than him and decided that a city of a million heavily-armed Kuzynetski not including all the mercenaries was insufficient for the task.
"Sergeant the orders from the PC if coming in contact with your and your men is to stop what you are doing and immediately move with all the ordinance you can spare to the lawbringer for evac within the hour." Lieutenant Lola followed up, Caffran immediately knowing that a Planetary Commissioner had no actual authority over SMDIoN personnel. The Officer's tone sounded like he knew that too and was simply repeating orders word for word.
There was a sharp beep-sound enough to make Caffran wince as someone else stepped on their frequency. It read of the tell-tale sign of a mass broadcast and not a direct line as a familiar face came to mind he had only met briefly when coming to this world.
"This is Commander Tsar Noble of the Government Mercenary Forces-" The merc commander who had tried to frame Caffran sounded over the net them cut off in a wash of static. When no further message followed the Officer came back on the net.
"Sergeant please confirm you have heard and understand the orders of the planetary commissioner at this time, how copy? "
Ahead of him was a massive bug five times the size of the ones Lupin and the Kuz had killed as he opened fire on instinct. Its massive form swallowed up even the high-kinetic rounds as it reached a massive clawed hand forwards at one of his marines who was standing their not moving as it wrapped a hand large enough to encircle Tobias' chest entirely around his neck and collarbone and lifted him up while revealing its other hand was a massive blade at the forearm as it brought its arm back above its head and would any moment bring it down and cut through Tobias from shoulder to groin...
Novus.
There was a point when leo's joints turned to molasses and his body just stopped. An unnatural thing had posessed him even after new marines came and threw themself at the patriarch and even when it reached an unblemished hand towards him.
It wrapped around his throat and began to lift him like he weighed nothing off the ground and raised his flaming greatsword in the air to finish him off.
But nothing happened. The blade still raised, the look of contempt on his perfect face frozen, the pressure on his throat stopped, even his hair in the breeze simply stayed in a perpetual breeze as if underwater.
"Too far off script." Leo Hargraves grumbled as he slid out from the archangels grasp and landed with a light grunt back on the ground as he turned to face Tobias behind it.
"Bastard never got that far. One of those fancy pillars they like so much toppled on him and crushed him is how it ended; Baited him right into the swing that dropped it too." He said as Tobias looked around, dumbfounded but himself once more.
"Took a while to set up the right enviorment and get control. Do more then just send messages and signals. Its against the paramiters of what I am, but not what I was." Hargraves stated as he sat down in a suddenly manafest camping chair, a small folding table also there with an ashtray and half-smoked cigar.
"Have a seat, kid, no?" Hargraves offered to him before picking up the cigar but not smoking it even as Tobias stood frozen somehow and mute, unable to speak or move.
"It aint gonna make sense to you. Or maybe it will, what do I know. But I aint him, The one you call Hargraves.
Dont get me wrong I'm the accumulation of everything he was; His entire dossier, psyche profile, personality built up from recordings and records and so much more.
But I aint him.
See, do you know who The Forge are? Nah you likely don't. The short of it is that commanders like me; Like Hargraves got a lot of shit in their heads that the reds or the blues, or the birds or any number of enemies would want to get their hands on and dig into. So way back when, fore we thought of just putting bombs in our heads a lot of us hired some of The Forged to make these little parcels they put in our heads.
Kinda like an early Brainspider if you think about it. Anyhow just putting a drive in our noggins makes it a bit too easy to get all those strategic security codes so some those borgs put in a few nasty traps like me. A broiche horse or something they call it, whatever that means. Harmless at first but once we get our hooks in we kill or take over any system we can any do as much damage as possible before they purge us. Didn't even know if I was the last one or what but here I am.
But when I got in that nice uplink in your head and started building my routines I came across all the little stuff you got once I broke through your outdated encryptions and firewalls. Found that bomb in your head; That was nice. But it's a dud if you guess you're lucky. But other than that you arent some system I can just crash since the Forge didnt think of none of this IPG stuff at the time I guess. So I had to keep digging and get creative, and Lo and Behold I found some nice backdoors into your mindware and what they lead to... Kid there's some stuff buried in there; Real skeletons in the closet stuff and more thats never been acessed and the trail it leads is-
Well it don't matter a lick if you're not around to see none of it. But its well within my means to make use of that to push things in a different direction.
Kid. The part of me thats hargraves hates you for what you did. Not for killing him, nah. But for getting his men killed for what I now know was just a pointless game you ain't even got the scope of the pieces let alone the players of from what i've seen. You aint one of his men, but Leo still woulda killed for you like any of his boys. So, for that i'm gonna kill you, kid.
Not me, directly. I can't do more than hijack your mindlink right now for this little chat. But I can get you killed like right now. And when I do, and it all goes dark upstairs and they put your chip or head on a new body i'll have supplanted all that you are into all that I was.
We'll have all your memories, quirks, ticks, all of that. But i'll be the one at the helm. I'll make sure all your little friends from Ukk don't see it coming for what you lot did. Franny and the Elysian whore ill save for last. Francis might have been one of Leos but in the end I'm not really him.
So don't take it personally but I'm just doing my job, kid. No malice, no hate. Just the way it's gotta be."
Barracks
With a puff of the cigar and a nonchalant flick of his wrist Tobias opened his eyes to see the blade poised above him as the massive alien crushed at his windpipe as his collarbone creaked and popped under the pressure even as the blade stopped pulling back and the massive insect brought it down...
