RP: Setareh Wing [Five] Just Can't Get Enough

[Ametheliana]

Caliban Verge
VSV Arha
Wardroom
Muna 3, AR 943
13:56, Commonwealth Standard Time

Naak Behea, leader of Setareh Wing and lover of a good adventure, was chomping at the bit to begin the next mission. Since the last one, the wing had been put on standby for a few months as what the Astral Vanguard regarded a reward. For Naak Behea and her military-minded family, it was far from. She and her brothers, sisters, mother, and fathers had all wanted her back on the frontlines where, if history was to be believed, she did her best work man-handling the enemies of the Commonwealth.

A few months after the attempted assault on the Makuzhar's life, every member of the Setareh Wing had gotten a ping on their IroCom, DataRod, or other means of communication—all Naak calling her wing back together.

The black and white haired Lanranr waited in the VSV Arha's Wardroom at a long table for those that had answered the call. She looked to be abstaining from drinking or smoking today as the mission was imminent, to follow just after the briefing. Her fingerless gloved hand was patting the carved wood of the low table to a beat of a song playing quietly in the background of the wardroom. After a minute of waiting after initially sitting down, she laid her palm flat and spoke, knowing the recipient was more than aware enough to hear her.

"Ishtar," Naak began, happy to have reason to call on the always-capable and ever-competent FIOMNI that had worked so well with the wing for so long. She went on, "Would you make sure all members of the Setareh Wing know to come to come to the Arha's wardroom in the next few minutes? They were told earlier, I just want to be sure they are still aware."

 

[Soresu]

As if on cue, the omnipresent FIOMNI's voice piped in through the wardroom's small overhead speakers. "Sure thing, Lanranr!" That was the great thing about being a Natural Intelligence Construct. She could basically be anywhere on the ship physically, and be everywhere at the same time through the networked systems. For instance, at present, her physical shell was in her room aboard the ship. What was she doing you may ask? Sitting comfortably in a giant, padded chair with a gaming device in her hands with a look of deep concentration firmly in place.

The reminder for the rest of the Wing was simple, sending messages to their individual communicators of choice. And if they did not respond well, that was when she used the ship's speakers to make it rather clear they were wanted.

A momentary lapse in her concentration with the game cost her dearly. Her last life, no recent saves, and hours of content lost due to bravado in not setting up an aforementioned save file. Ishtar cried out her defeat, flopping to the carpeted floor of her room and rolling back and forth with the handheld still in her grasp. Defeat had never tasted so horrible.

 

[Blizzard]

VSV Arha
Wardroom

Shaanti was first through the door, freshly showered after a workout and wearing his customary desert uniform. After entering the room, he stopped, put his feet together, and saluted Naak before taking a seat on a couch. More accurately, he took most of the seats.

"Splendid afternoon, Lanranr." He mumbled a little groggily.

 

[Syaoran]

VSV Arha
Engineering Bay

Karuah had thought she would be fine with the time off and that she could just relax, but she had found herself restless with nothing to do. She had passed the time by working with the mechanic crews and doing repairs on anything she could.

Wardroom

She had recieved the message to gather though, and was on her way by time she received the second one. Force once when she arrived she didn't look like she had just come out of the work shop though. She had claned herself up and arrived soon after in proper uniform. "Vaybalri Dhawa present." After announcing herself she made her way further into the room and found a place to sit down.

 

[Gunhand4171]

VSV Arha
Med bay

Dr. Zoren was finishing a procedure when he received the communication. "Sir, you are needed in the wardroom." Called one of the nurses as he placed another stitch.

He looked to his first assist and nodded. "Finish closing up." He ordered as he began to strip off his surgical mask and gloves.

Zoren had not rested while Setareh wing was on standby. On the contrary he had been swamped with SDF debriefings as well as treating wounded soldiers of the commonwealth. "No rest for the wicked." He grumbled as he trudged towards the wardroom.

Wardroom

The doctor walked in and moved off the one side. "Zoren, present." He said, announcing himself as well before plopping down in the first vacant chair he could find.

 

[Ametheliana]

Wardroom

The Lanranr nodded to those of her wing as they came in. Her white bangs that were tipped with black fell over one eye and she moved them aside to get a better visual on the door.

"Ishtar," Naak said, "please locate Vayshirin Ketlalli as well as Marbalri Song and bring her to the wardroom." Turning her attention to those in the wardroom, she said, "What a dream of a day! A new mission is in front of us! How is everyone feeling right now?"

 

[Legix]

Wardroom

"I'm here and I feel awful, boss-lady!"

Irfan was fashionably not-late-but-after-time, a scowl on her face as she made her way into the room. Out of everyone here, she was the one that had lost her precious Lucidity with a field ejection. Even though it had been recovered, she'd still been sour all this time. Getting to apologize to her suit, the sole one that had endured her limit-defying stunts all this time, wasn't even possible because they had been on break!

So understandably, she had been moping about and a bitter lemon.

"I wanna hurry up and get out there!" Reaching her hand up to her now shoulder-length and oddly normal-style haircut, she ran it back with a grumble. "I feel so locked up without getting to fly... you don't trap an Eyr Ranr like this! It's taking everything not to go stir-crazy!"

 

[Orion]

Wardroom

Mox' arrival was far more subdued than Irfan's, and neatly covered by it.

...stir crazy was not on their list of problems. A touch of post-combat trauma, perhaps. A touch of centimeters away from death. A vague realization that they'd likely killed somebody, and how different that was from live fire training after all. A realization that other Iromakuanhe were dead because of their actions, and they weren't sure if that was okay, and they weren't sure if any of this was justified...

But throughout that, they'd played fieldball, and read, and run countless combat sims, again and again and again, searching for different outcomes, and played sitar until their fingers bled, and argued vociferously with Hali, and run countless combat sims, again and again and again, searching for different outcomes, and cooked the most perfect meal of their life, and it had consisted mostly of fried haloumi and sweet onions, but that was fine.

(Did a military culture, by necessity, require an enemy to operate? Did power attract challengers? Did they exist in a universe constantly at war, steeped in it, bred in it? Did the dramatic needs of that universe make peaceful resolutions ultimately impossible? Such questions had been on Mox' mind constantly for those months away from service.)

"...Vayshirin Amaksille Ketlalli. Present."

Everything's fine here. How are you?

 

[Soresu]

Ishtar had finally stopped her rolling tantrum, and had instead just flopped herself on her bed to pout. As Naak's request came through, it seemed the two aforementioned people had already shown up. That just made her job a tiny bit easier. Turning her head to the side, the FIOMNI saw the handheld, and gave it the evil eye. She'd sunk a lot of hours into it, and it had all been for naught. The thought of simply hacking the thing to get back to where she'd been had crossed her mind. But then that'd quite literally be cheating. . . and a waste of her computational capacity.

The Wardroom's overhead speakers piped her synthesized voice in again. "Looks like they showed up before I could reach them! Will there be anything else, Lanranr?"

 

[Blizzard]

Wardroom
"Groggy, but otherwise ready for action. Five of my brothers had birthdays within the past two weeks, so there has been much celebration." Shaanti replied to his superior, rubbing his eyes.

His parents had always had a weird habit of conceiving right at the end of the harvest. Besides him and Tahir, the other five siblings had birthdays within a two week period just at the start of the planting season. It made remembering the dates easier, but that meant five different celebrations. Well, four, since Ishmal and Matra were twins.

Such was the life of an agricultural Curdatl family.

 

[Syaoran]

Wardroom

"I am doing fine." Karuah spoke up softly in response. "I have had a lot of time to work, as well as fine tuning Saeid" Her attention drifted towards Irfan however, she was not in the best of moods and Karuah wanted to cheer her up.

"We can give Lucidity a butt lift after the mission. Something nice and perky?" She spoke without much inflection on that statement so it was hard to tell if she was joking or serious, especially since she had the qualifications to do it if that was a real thing.

 

[Ametheliana]

Wardroom

Naak smiled at Karuah's comment about possible modifications to Irfan's VANDR, nearly missing out on Mox's subdued entrance.

"We'll have to celebrate your birthday five-fold to make up for what you have endured, Vayshirin," Naak said to Shaanti.

She didn't have time to make additional commentary as she had to ask the resident FIOMNI a question.

"Ishtar, will you be joining us for the mission? If so, please come to the wardroom or simply monitor the briefing from your quarters."

 

[Legix]

Wardroom

"Lucy with a bigger butt? Pft..."

Irfan's hand slipped to her right horn, caressing it between three fingers with a grumble. She'd barely got to spend some serious quality time with her Lanbalri lover even in the downtime aboard the Arha. It was an unfortunate case of Ki Lea being a busy woman, she guessed. Birthdays for Butti and Meek Mox's Rump arriving just behind her aside, the Eyr Ranr was trying to get focused and locked in for the briefing. The missing rainbow-scarfer from the session was holding things up a bit of course, though.

"It feels like all that time went by in no time... huh... where's Ki when I need her to help stave off boredom..."

 

[Soresu]

Ishtar's voice piped in again. "I'll monitor your briefing." stated the FIOMNI, "I will also be joining the mission unless you wish I would not, Lanranr?" Back in her physical shell, the NI huffed against the comforter on her bed. Well, at least the mission would give her time to contemplate better methods of winning her game. You know, without it looking super smug on the edge of her bed. She finally hopped off the bed, and went about getting into uniform.

 

[Gunhand4171]

Wardroom

The doctor listened to everyone as the spoke. He pulled out a data rod and quietly finished his op report for the surgery he had just preformed, before he finally spoke once more.

"I've been very busy with patients, nothing out of the ordinary." Zoren finally replied as he put his datarod away. "One of these days I will need to take a damn vacation." He muttered.

 

[Orion]

...oh, but then Mox caught eye of a particular Curdatl, and Shaanti was of course still a precious cinnamon bun (what) that needed to be protected and nurtured and l- ahem never mind all that. For a single, shining moment, everything really was fine here, how are you.

Mox folded their hands behind their back and waited out of the way: there was all manner of small-talk they were simply not comfortable partaking in just now, but a briefing to come. A briefing meant a mission. A mission meant an opportunity to look for different outcomes. A mission also meant the possibility they'd have to kill more Iromakuanhe though. That the wheels of interstellar conflict would sweep them up again, drawing them into the inevitable drama of warfare, the only constant in the grim darkness of this far future.

Okay maybe not so fine. One would never know it to look at their face, though. Mox was the spitting image of calm and composure.

 

[Ametheliana]

Wardroom

Naak nodded to Zoren, then said with a slight smile, "Don't count on one."

To everyone, she said, "We are to investigate the degradation of the spires on Al'Mirzam. There are questions that need solving within the spires as the Commonwealth's lead scientists have found nothing outside of them to point towards any possible explanation. Al'Mirzam is somewhat protected by in-built regulatory systems. We will need to use our wits and strength to get inside a spire and secure an area for which the project's scientists and researchers can work."

 

[Blizzard]

Wardroom

Shaanti glanced over in Mox's direction and did something very unusual. Raising his right hand, he faced his palm towards her, he curved his fingers downwards in rapid succession.

He waved. A little wave from a little (ha, no) cinnamon roll.

But back to the matter at hand.

"What sort of defenses should we expect, if any? Does the terrain allow for us to spread apart, or will we be forced to cluster together and thus become prime targets for an ambush?" Shaanti asked Naak in his odd voice that seemed to echo off the walls despite being barely above a mutter.

 

[Orion]

Shaanti waved at them. Mox couldn't help but crack the slightest of smiles. Cheeks turned the slightest bit pink(er). Internal monologues rushed to battle stations, alternately insisting upon brushing off the gesture, playing it cool, bubbling over and gushing. The first and last options were quickly dissembled with. That left playing it cool.

Mox was not good at playing it cool.

But they lifted a hand in return, wiggled their fingers most coyly, turned much pinker, and proceeded to attempt to strike this entire moment from existence (and/or possibly the entire universe, might have to burn it all down to be safe), suddenly riveting their attention on Naak and the brief mission brief.

"Degradation? Aren't the-" That all sounded like A Bad Thing, and Mox was not well-composed. "-ah, I mean. I had heard the spires were indestructible."

And crafted by the sort of alien civilization that casually constructed artificial superplanets with perfectly balanced seasons and impossible atmospheric conditions.

Everything's fine. We're all fine here. How are you.

 

[Syaoran]

Karuah looked rather surprised at the mission summary they were given, after all they were going to assist with investigating Al'Mirzam. "You mean we're actually going to go there and investigate? Oh this will be intersting. Do they have a blue print of what's been investigated so far? I've always wanted to see the insides of Al'Mirzam."