Z
Zack
ON> Queen's Slave,
"ALEX! GET IN HERE AND CLOSE THE DOOR!" Uso shouted from inside of the Queen's slave, the woman hurrying down the ramp and practically lifting up Alex by grabbing him under the arms, taking him right into the ship as the hatch closed behind them automatically.
"I know you and Psychopomp have a thing, and it probably seems like I'm just blowing that off. But. I've been having Ragnarok investigate them, we have a plan to take them on, and we're ready to launch an actual attack."
"I remember how well that went last time..." Alex mumbled. The rest of the crew was present through telepresence, though provisions hadn't been made for them to talk, only to listen, since Alex was in a rush.
"Great, lets skip past that because we're going in 24 hours... and you still need to get to your target.
By the way, here's the intel we have, skim through it and pick a target."
Uso would point to the display table in the middle of the ship. There were nearly a dozen facilities listed, spread throughout the Kyoto sector, most hidden out in deep space... some as close as 188604 itself.
"We're hitting all of their facilities that we know about. This is a full decapitation strike and we're pulling everyone to get this to work. Romanov, their head dickbag has got to be at one of these places...and even if he isn't we've got people inside of PP ready to make a power play. Right when they make their move to oust Romanov we make our move to hit them."
Araxie stepped into the Queen's Slave after she had to convince it to let her in after Uso's little spout of excitement. She shook herself a little bit, her cobalt feathers making a rustling sound as she approached the main hold and overlooked the map. [color#cc0099]"So what's all this again? I heard something about PP...? Oh, PsychoPomp. How'd you guys get this together all of a sudden?"[/color]
"Running through this quick, you know, because time.
I've been working on this for months, but I can't exactly overtly go snooping around PP, nor can we just start attacking any PP stuff we see. We've got enemies literally everywhere. Our only play here was to play it cool, pretend like we weren't going to retaliate for, you know, what they did to you.
We've researched them.
We know where to hit them.
And we can launch a strike now that will knock them... or at least Romanov, out of the game. We do this right there won't be any retaliation, we'll just have one less enemy." Uso said, waiting for Araxie and Alex to respond for only a fraction of a second before continuing herself anyways,
"Which is also why I'm springing this on you now. You guys have no Infosec... you can't just be telling people stuff or doing things, or acting like this might be coming up. I kept it close to the chest so we didn't tip off PP. Now we've got to all hit our targets on the deadline otherwise they'll have a chance to react... hell, for all we know bringing in THIS many people means PP already has a line on what is going on... so we have to act like they are scrambling to defend themselves against this.
Time is running out."
Gut-Stripe stood wreathed in her ornate cloak off to one side, listening to everything with her head tilted to one side. "Uso, I am confused," she said. "What does this have to do with the mechas?"
Alex took a moment to digest the information before he asked a question. "Uso, where do you think I can do the most good here? I've got no real idea of what sort of assets they have availble, and I'm sure you've got some sort of larger plan here."
"I mean... that's pretty much the plan.... HEY GUTTY!"
Uso would break away for a moment, going to rub Gut-stripe on the head, before returning to the mission briefing,
"There is more to it than this, yes, and frankly I don't know all of what is in these facilities. They've got a warehouse out on vice with a decent number of infantry as well as some mecha... you'd be perfect for that... just smash up the place, and secure whatever is inside. Looks like there aren't a whole lot of people there... probably a materials storage yard... either way it seems like it would be suited for the size of your team.
'Course if you need some extra muscle feel free to take drones or hire some local talent."
Uso looked over at Gut-Stripe,
"Also, Alex is going to participate in our Mecha-Triathalon later... I hope. Kinda banking on him to show off the U1 and represent the Tasuki name.... this doesn't have a whole lot to do with that though." She explained.
Gut-Stripe cringed as Uso rubbed her on the head, buzzing her wings and letting out a soft huff. "Please do not do this," she said in her usual deadpan tone, waddling away to stand by Araxie instead.
Araxie interrupted before Uso could continue, "Attacking a warehouse would be beneficial to us if we were engaging in an actual war - it's not just a storage place for supplies, but a distributation center." She paused for a breath, "At the same time, we need to make sure we don't bring the law onto our heads if we accidentally screwed things up while doing so... Are we one hundred percent sure these are all okay targets?" In a sort of half-instinctive action, the angel gently set a hand onto Gut-Stripe and stroked it back and forth for a moment. She remembered I'ee being very prone to physical affection...
The I'ee commander tensed up again as Araxie petted her, looking as if she were going to waddle off to another part of the room again, before relaxing again. Instead, she accepted the pats in silence.
~She's stealing my Gutstripe...~ Uso thought to herself, but there was no time for that.
"Yeah, good point. Don't do anything that'll bring the heat on you... we have plans in place for the facilities on Nepleslia already. Vice already hates us so feel free to go nuts within reason. The whole place is run by gangs and cartels... no real planetary government to speak of meaning no one who's going to show up with a battlefleet to ruin our party. PsychoPomp built most of their facilities really out of the way. While this has made it very difficult to find and survail their facilities, it also means we can have a shooting-fight without having to worry about local cops..."
Alex frowned for a moment. "Most of my crew is made up of noncombatants, so I don't know if engaging in infantry level combat is a good idea. Although I wouldn't be surprised if they had mechanized forces standing by at all times."
Alex seemed more sure of himself now. "What I think would work would be to have the Araxie do an arial pass over the area, and try to draw out any forces besides infantry that they might have and dea with them. Then we could deploy some infantry and tankette drones."
"You know your crew better than I do." Uso stated, "I'm going to be nearby... there is another place I have my eye on... looks like a... like a big 3d printer shop... lots more guys, lots more heavy metals there that we can take and sell. Tankettes should be able to mop up your area easy enough if you can deal with the big stuff. Vice has a lot of heavy equipment but its all pretty low quality."
Alex thought for a moment. "What sort of large scale or heavy equipment are we looking at?"
"On Vice?" Uso asked, pausing for a moment as she pressed some buttons on the console, bringing up a series of vehicle images, "Uhh... this one."
She pointed to a picture of a tank. It was large, bulky, treaded, with manually operated machineguns sticking out on either side of the hull, and large pipes on the back for exhaust,
"T-69 Stonage, its like.... 80-90 ton tank... mostly made from heavy metal and 3d printing. The thing literally runs on explosive fuels and has jack in the way of electronics. Whole thing is manual so that they can mount these big-ass EMP generators on it. Dirt cheap to produce and operate so expect to see a lot of them... but not really a threat to modern gear like the U-1 unless you get too close. Looks like they have other, more sophisticated, mecha too... but they seem to rotate them out so there is no telling if one will be on site by the time we start the attacks.
Figure out what you need fast. You're on the clock here and I've got other teams to brief."
"ALEX! GET IN HERE AND CLOSE THE DOOR!" Uso shouted from inside of the Queen's slave, the woman hurrying down the ramp and practically lifting up Alex by grabbing him under the arms, taking him right into the ship as the hatch closed behind them automatically.
"I know you and Psychopomp have a thing, and it probably seems like I'm just blowing that off. But. I've been having Ragnarok investigate them, we have a plan to take them on, and we're ready to launch an actual attack."
"I remember how well that went last time..." Alex mumbled. The rest of the crew was present through telepresence, though provisions hadn't been made for them to talk, only to listen, since Alex was in a rush.
"Great, lets skip past that because we're going in 24 hours... and you still need to get to your target.
By the way, here's the intel we have, skim through it and pick a target."
Uso would point to the display table in the middle of the ship. There were nearly a dozen facilities listed, spread throughout the Kyoto sector, most hidden out in deep space... some as close as 188604 itself.
"We're hitting all of their facilities that we know about. This is a full decapitation strike and we're pulling everyone to get this to work. Romanov, their head dickbag has got to be at one of these places...and even if he isn't we've got people inside of PP ready to make a power play. Right when they make their move to oust Romanov we make our move to hit them."
Araxie stepped into the Queen's Slave after she had to convince it to let her in after Uso's little spout of excitement. She shook herself a little bit, her cobalt feathers making a rustling sound as she approached the main hold and overlooked the map. [color#cc0099]"So what's all this again? I heard something about PP...? Oh, PsychoPomp. How'd you guys get this together all of a sudden?"[/color]
"Running through this quick, you know, because time.
I've been working on this for months, but I can't exactly overtly go snooping around PP, nor can we just start attacking any PP stuff we see. We've got enemies literally everywhere. Our only play here was to play it cool, pretend like we weren't going to retaliate for, you know, what they did to you.
We've researched them.
We know where to hit them.
And we can launch a strike now that will knock them... or at least Romanov, out of the game. We do this right there won't be any retaliation, we'll just have one less enemy." Uso said, waiting for Araxie and Alex to respond for only a fraction of a second before continuing herself anyways,
"Which is also why I'm springing this on you now. You guys have no Infosec... you can't just be telling people stuff or doing things, or acting like this might be coming up. I kept it close to the chest so we didn't tip off PP. Now we've got to all hit our targets on the deadline otherwise they'll have a chance to react... hell, for all we know bringing in THIS many people means PP already has a line on what is going on... so we have to act like they are scrambling to defend themselves against this.
Time is running out."
Gut-Stripe stood wreathed in her ornate cloak off to one side, listening to everything with her head tilted to one side. "Uso, I am confused," she said. "What does this have to do with the mechas?"
Alex took a moment to digest the information before he asked a question. "Uso, where do you think I can do the most good here? I've got no real idea of what sort of assets they have availble, and I'm sure you've got some sort of larger plan here."
"I mean... that's pretty much the plan.... HEY GUTTY!"
Uso would break away for a moment, going to rub Gut-stripe on the head, before returning to the mission briefing,
"There is more to it than this, yes, and frankly I don't know all of what is in these facilities. They've got a warehouse out on vice with a decent number of infantry as well as some mecha... you'd be perfect for that... just smash up the place, and secure whatever is inside. Looks like there aren't a whole lot of people there... probably a materials storage yard... either way it seems like it would be suited for the size of your team.
'Course if you need some extra muscle feel free to take drones or hire some local talent."
Uso looked over at Gut-Stripe,
"Also, Alex is going to participate in our Mecha-Triathalon later... I hope. Kinda banking on him to show off the U1 and represent the Tasuki name.... this doesn't have a whole lot to do with that though." She explained.
Gut-Stripe cringed as Uso rubbed her on the head, buzzing her wings and letting out a soft huff. "Please do not do this," she said in her usual deadpan tone, waddling away to stand by Araxie instead.
Araxie interrupted before Uso could continue, "Attacking a warehouse would be beneficial to us if we were engaging in an actual war - it's not just a storage place for supplies, but a distributation center." She paused for a breath, "At the same time, we need to make sure we don't bring the law onto our heads if we accidentally screwed things up while doing so... Are we one hundred percent sure these are all okay targets?" In a sort of half-instinctive action, the angel gently set a hand onto Gut-Stripe and stroked it back and forth for a moment. She remembered I'ee being very prone to physical affection...
The I'ee commander tensed up again as Araxie petted her, looking as if she were going to waddle off to another part of the room again, before relaxing again. Instead, she accepted the pats in silence.
~She's stealing my Gutstripe...~ Uso thought to herself, but there was no time for that.
"Yeah, good point. Don't do anything that'll bring the heat on you... we have plans in place for the facilities on Nepleslia already. Vice already hates us so feel free to go nuts within reason. The whole place is run by gangs and cartels... no real planetary government to speak of meaning no one who's going to show up with a battlefleet to ruin our party. PsychoPomp built most of their facilities really out of the way. While this has made it very difficult to find and survail their facilities, it also means we can have a shooting-fight without having to worry about local cops..."
Alex frowned for a moment. "Most of my crew is made up of noncombatants, so I don't know if engaging in infantry level combat is a good idea. Although I wouldn't be surprised if they had mechanized forces standing by at all times."
Alex seemed more sure of himself now. "What I think would work would be to have the Araxie do an arial pass over the area, and try to draw out any forces besides infantry that they might have and dea with them. Then we could deploy some infantry and tankette drones."
"You know your crew better than I do." Uso stated, "I'm going to be nearby... there is another place I have my eye on... looks like a... like a big 3d printer shop... lots more guys, lots more heavy metals there that we can take and sell. Tankettes should be able to mop up your area easy enough if you can deal with the big stuff. Vice has a lot of heavy equipment but its all pretty low quality."
Alex thought for a moment. "What sort of large scale or heavy equipment are we looking at?"
"On Vice?" Uso asked, pausing for a moment as she pressed some buttons on the console, bringing up a series of vehicle images, "Uhh... this one."
She pointed to a picture of a tank. It was large, bulky, treaded, with manually operated machineguns sticking out on either side of the hull, and large pipes on the back for exhaust,
"T-69 Stonage, its like.... 80-90 ton tank... mostly made from heavy metal and 3d printing. The thing literally runs on explosive fuels and has jack in the way of electronics. Whole thing is manual so that they can mount these big-ass EMP generators on it. Dirt cheap to produce and operate so expect to see a lot of them... but not really a threat to modern gear like the U-1 unless you get too close. Looks like they have other, more sophisticated, mecha too... but they seem to rotate them out so there is no telling if one will be on site by the time we start the attacks.
Figure out what you need fast. You're on the clock here and I've got other teams to brief."
