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RP: 188604 [Sector Searchers] Mission 4, Into the Fray Again

A

Alex Hart

Alex had gathered the crew of the ISS Araxie onto the bridge of the craft, and Mikki was uploaded into the ship so that she could listen. He was sitting awkwardly in a chair, facing the group of friends he had made over the last few months. Then he spoke.

"Umm, listen guys, we're going to be attacking a location on Vice. This place belongs to Psychopomp, a group of madmen who are responsible for Araxie's death, all the clones of me floating around out there, and 10 years of suffering I went through."

He twisted the chair back and forth, swiveling it in a fidgeting motion. "Listen, I don't really know how dangerous this will be, and I don't know how long the fighting will last, but I'm almost sure it will take months to resolve the conflict between me, Psychopomp, and the USO."

Alex stood up. "I just wanted to take this time to thank all of you for all the help you've given me, and I wanted to offer you the chance to leave before things get too dangerous. I don't want to put any of you in danger..."

Alex sat back down. This crew had been his family for almost half a year, and he was clearly getting emotional about the idea of having to part with them permanantly, even if only to keep them safe.

@Zack @Arbitrated @LittleWasp @Ethereal @Kashton1 (UKA)
 
ISS Araxie
Bridge

"Well, they got me once. If I try to hide from them, they'll only do it again. If we're going to o something to stop them, I want to be a part of it. The tall woman gently stepped forward after she spoke, placing herself aside Alex as she stood and put a hand onto his shoulder delicately. "And besides, you need someone to fly you in. I'm not going to let you dive in on your own again, Alex!"
 
ISS Araxie - Bridge

Mikali's cutesy avatar was displayed on one of the monitors close to Alex, pouting at him with concern as he spoke, before turning into her usual, cheerful smile. "I'll help you beat up those Cyclopops, Alex! You don't have to worry about a thing!" she declared eagerly over the speakers.
 
ISS Araxie - Bridge

Alex looked at Araxie and Mikali for a moment before a new, husky voice spoke up. It was Raven, the Lorath pilot that they had taken prisoner, and whom Alex had made a tentative friendship with. "I cannot leave. I owe you for sparing my life, and to allow you to die would be un honorable of me." Raven's intentions were clear, but as usual one or more of her words in trade was minced by her inexperience with the language.

She stepped forward. "I will stay here, and fight if need be."
 
ISS Araxie - Bridge Display

"ALEX! You've got about an hour before this operation starts. You still good to go?"

Uso certainly looked different.

Her hair was well brushed, ear-rings were in place, black vest and suit-jacket certainly made it look like she was ready for cocktails rather than combat.
 
Mikali's cartoon eyes widened comically when Uso rather loudly spoke to Alex, her avatar jiggling on the monitor as if shook by an earthquake. "G-goodness!" she blurted out, pouting at Uso, before smiling back at Alex. "Alex, is that your mummy? Is she gonna help us beat up bad guys? That's sooo cuuuute!~"
 
Alex shook his head in mock exasperation. "No, she's got her own mission Mikali."
He turned back to the rest of the crew. "Let's get underway. I'm going to go and check the Unicorn down in the hangar."

After a call to the control tower of the Osman City Spaceport, the Araxie was underway to its destination in the Vice system.

The ship had about a half an hour till it got to the destination system, and Alex took this time to go down to the hangar as he had said he would.
 
Chi-Chi whistled a tune gently as she dug through the mounds of clothes and belongings that packed her cosy room, laying out some bits and pieces on the bed. There was a tactical vest, a catsuit, a small leather holster complete with pistol and a couple of other things. Gazing into the oval, full-size mirror that was propped up in one corner of the room by a battered suitcase. As the watched, her petite, blonde frame shifted and rippled, quickly becoming something else.

After a handful of seconds, a tall and athletically muscled woman was in her place, copper-toned hair trailing down past her shoulders. Chi bent down, tying it up quickly with a few pointed metal spikes, stepping into the catsuit and just about squeezing herself into the tight combat material. Casually, she clipped the holster to her side, the leather wrapping closely around the upper thigh of her right leg. As an afterthought, the vest was thrown on and thick combat boots laced securely.

"Mhm, this'll do.." The Freespacer nodded, giving a quick twirl in her antique mirror for a moment. Time to get to the Bridge and see where she could be of use before they got to Vice.
 
"Aw..." Mikki pouted, sounding disappointed, but gave Alex a smile when he announced he'd be going to the hangar. "I'll get your U1 ready for you, Alex!" The screen displaying her avatar went blank as she diverted her presence to the hangar bay, preparing the mecha there in anticipation of his arrival.
 
Vice>


Once the ISS Araxie arrived in orbit, they would find that Vice had become a hive of activity. There were starships of all kinds coming and going. Civilian freighters, various small craft, even platforms that looked to be made up of several starships hastily wielded together in a low orbit. It was impossible to tell which ones belonged to which groups much less what they had inside of them.



Other USO ships were here as well, along with a handful of Vier's drones, Ragnarok transport shuttles, and an FSC cruiser. Each had their missions, and would be heading to other locations on the planet.



Their target, a rather large storage warehouse, was located just outside one of the main cities, surrounded by a sprawling slum made up of hastily built metal shacks. A large outer-fence surrounded the facility, blocking off a nearly 4 mile in diameter circle. A deadzone had been established between this outer fence and the inner one which had ramshackle guard towers with lights. To illuminate the area during the night.



Further inside was a large landing area for freighters, as well as the massive warehouse itself. A pair of green mecha were on patrol outside, equipped with some of the better Origin industry weapons while thugs half-heartedly patrolled around.



Uso had said there would only be a few tanks....



however this was not the case when they arrived.



Nearly 200 T-69 'Stoneage' tanks were at the warehouse, some of which were being rolled out of the warehouse itself, while most were being parked in storage lots in-front and behind the warehouse itself. Uso had run into these earlier, and provided the technical data they had. The tanks appeared to be manually operated, no computers, and no electricity aside from an EMP generator on the back, which would be a huge problem for Alex's Unicorn if it got too close.
 
ISS Araxie

"It's not very friendly down there... Probably should avoid knocking on the front door." Araxie tutted quietly as she observed the scans of the area, her titular starship cooly holding itself in a stationary orbit for the planet's rotation. "Or y'know, blowing it in."
 
ISS Araxie

"I don't know if that's going to be avoidable, given that our job here is to disrupt Psychopomp's operations." Alex mused aloud, who was now up on the bridge with Araxie, Chi and Mikali, who was in the computers. "But you may be right that a head on attack is unwise."

Alex tapped at the computers of the Araxie for a moment, pulling up the statistics on the ship's heavy laser turrets.

"It looks like we can fire down through the atmosphere to try and disarm the tanks, but there's a risk of us not being accurate enough from up here, and hitting things we don't mean to. On the other hand, if we go too low we might get hassled by those tank cannons. I don't know how long range they are, but I'd wager they can hit us if we get too low."

Alex rubbed his chin. "What do you guys think we should do?"
 
Vier would cut in,

"Alex, one of our teams has run into problems and we are in danger of having numerous fatalities. Can you deploy now to assist? I need to withdraw most of my drones from this area to assist elsewhere."

The implication was pretty clear, the initial attacks were not going as well as Uso had hoped.
 
ISS Araxie

Alex turned to Araxie. "Get us underway now" He simply said, "I'm going to get in the Unicorn." His mind raced. What could have gone so wrong that they needed to call in backup? "Mikali, load into the Unicorn, and help me prepare it for a drop from high orbit. As soon as we're over the site of the other mission, I'm going to drop out the back of the ship."
 
ISS Araxie

"Yeah - I think we need to test their defenses and forces in a few locations before making an actual push. They already know we're here." The titular helmswoman of the Araxie sighed as she settled into her chair again, though the normally comfortable look she put out while sitting there was replaced by a firmer, more upright pose. Not really surprising given that they were basically about to go to war.

"Alright Alex, we'll be in the drop position in about two minutes," she said over the comlink, "We should be able to help you out with periodical bombardment from up here if you need it, but we'll need a good way to know what we're shooting at. If you have something to mark a target with that'll work fine."
 
ISS Araxie - Hangar Bay

"Gotcha, Alex!" Mikki replied eagerly. The U-1 in the hangar bay came to life, rapidly running through diagnostics and moving to the hangar bay doors, where Mikki knelt it, hand outstretched with its palm up. There, she waited for the arrival of Alex, the cockpit open wide, ready to hoist him up into the pilot's seat.
 
ISS Araxie - Bridge

Chi's footfalls padded up to the Bridge entrance, coppery hair trailing down her face as she poked her head into the expansive room. "Wew, coming in fast, hmm?" She stepped past the threshold and stepped up over to Araxie's chair and scope out how things were progressing.

"So, are we gonna be landing at some point or d'ya want me in the turret boss?" Her hazel eyes sweeping up to Alex as he moved to leave the way she had come, resting a hand on the back of the Elysian helmswoman's chair as she waited for orders.
 
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ISS Araxie - Bridge

"Get on the Turrets" Alex told Chi, "I might need help depending on how big the threat is." He then made his way down to the hangar, and hopped onto the Unicorn's hand, and then jumped the entire height up into the Cockpit. "Ready Mikki? Let's get ready to drop."

Alex selected his armaments for the mission, two rifle style gunpods mounted on the arms for storage and use in fighter mode, two racks of ammunition packs mounted on the legs for storage. Lastly, he mounted two sets of submunition dispensers loaded with mini missiles and checked that the internal mini missile launcher cells were loaded, which they were.

He signaled the hangar doors to open, transformed back into fighter mode, and as soon as they were over the drop sight, he nudged the craft out the rear of the Araxie and down through the atmosphere, towards the combat below.

We'll be moving over to this thread now folks.
 
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