RP: SFS Service to the Free State: Glorified Border Guards

"Well damn, I missed the show." Alistair Thorn said as he walked through the hanger. His cybernetic eye scanning the deck, looking at all the Marines scrambling around.

He ran his fingers through his hair as he took another look at his orders one last time, even though he had looked at them three times now."So, I'm guessing that is where Corporal Laura Romero must be." He said after hearing the AI's announcement. He pulled up a map to the lounge and quickened his pace. Once Alistair finally reached the door to the lounge, he took a calming breath and stepped inside.

He managed to make it in before any of his new teammates. Alistair stopped in front Laura with a crisp military salute, which was drilled into his mind during everyday at basic. "Ma'am, Private 3rd class Alistair Thorn reporting for duty. Here are my orders. Also if I might add, can't wait to get started." Giving The Corporal a slight smile.

Phase stood silent and still as the Freespacer envoys came onto the ship and towards the meeting. It was only after Romero had effectively dismissed the lot that they finally began to move once more.

"Aaaah? I apologize, I got distracted by a notification. There was a machine drag race going on in Funky City, and I just could~not re~sist~"

The Type Four traced one of their arms up with the backside of their hands with the other held out in a cupped gesture, as if making a valid point.

"I thank you for the compliment, Laura Romero. It was a trial effort that ended in moderate success. I think I can make nice improvements on my motions in the future~"

Phase took their large body and brought it to the lounge, parking it next to the door before dismounting. They walked on those staggered legs into the room and took a seat on one of the couches, folding hands over eachother politely. A bit of adjustment to the legs were made, a casual 180 degree turn in the joints, so that they would be able to sit on the couch nicely.

Laura almost snatched the datajockey, fear and disgust vying for first place. Fear that she had been handed another greenie and disgust at his cheerful enthusiasm. Her eyes darted through the wording, looking for the important parts. This fool was indeed a greenie from boot! He hadn't even been on any boarding op!

How did Sergeant Volkov never kill any of her greenies? What secret did she have? How did she manage to spare such morons from her wrath? Laura felt that she should resist the urge, she knew she should. But his eagerness when they had a small Spacer fleet sitting on top of them...

Laura glared at Alistair. "You can't wait. Maybe you haven't been paying attention but we're this," she squeezed her right index finger and thumb together, "close to being in a shooting war with the Spacers. And we don't even know which Spacers! You should have been given to a line unit! Not a squad that has to depend on well trained, experienced Marines leading and teaching the Spacers how to act something like a professional military all the while looking like bloody saints! Stow your attitude, sit down, and listen to what my sods have accomplished."

At that moment, Senior Chief Blacken walked into the lounge carrying a datajockey. "Romero, good stuff out there. No time to debrief. 'Sides, all I'd say is that you need to fuckin' protect your assets better. Everyone did what they should have done. Got us a real dodgy one. IWL Spacers just wasted a Nepleslian flagged merchant and it looks like they're moving to board it. Your squad is being directed to interdict them and keep them off the ship. You got a pair of Spacers in your squad so the Skipper is hoping they'll be able to get a direct line to those gearheads. Fuck if I know what that merchie did but. Don't. Screw. Up. Get moving," he said.

"Thanks," she said to the Chief. "Move your ass, Thorn!"

"ACE, message to my squad. Get back in armor now and back on the shuttle! Power armor, maximum aggression loadouts!" Laura shouted as she sprinted out of the lounge, past the Chief.

"Acknowledged, Corporal. Message being relayed now."

---------------------------------

Bernhard was just finishing his shower when the wretched AI blared. "Attention. Squad Romero," ACE began and then played an audio recording of Laura, "Get back in armor now and back on the shuttle! Power armor, maximum aggression loadouts!"

He swore loudly and turned off the shower. Bernhard grabbed his towel and began drying off when Laura dashed past, slapping his butt. "For luck," she called, heading straight into the armory. Bernhard swore again and hastily began throwing on his clean uniform.

Eir couldn’t help but be happy about the glowing review thus far. She knew deep down that everything might have gone better, but for a first mission on a mostly green squad, she had to agree that everything went exceptionally well. The idea of assistant squad leaders made things interesting. She had no doubt this rather colorful group would have very different styles and priorities when they were put into the role. She also realized she had no idea what ‘Spacer leadership looked like, or even could look like. They seemed a very independent sort of people. If she were to be pragmatic, though, she had to wonder if the Corporal was at all concerned with the fact that the ‘Spacers may find themselves at odds with their squishy squad mates.

Eir was going to give the squad name some thought. The week’s pay was not as much of a temptation for her as it would be for others, but she was all for the idea of everyone working together a little more closely, and hell, why not make sure their own name got some respect in the process. She stripped out of her armor with the same practice she had putting it on, making it look almost second nature. During her certification process her instructor had been rather strict that any marines piloting his armors where going to look as good getting in and out of them as they were on the battlefield.

She was quick to strip and get into the shower. Showers were one of Eir’s favorite things. It was easy to gather your thoughts in the shower, and there were few pleasures quite like it after a hard day’s work or exercise. She knew she always caught eyes for her powerful build and because of all the ink she wore. After so long, though, she was fine with it.

Then the dreaded words came. “Attention. Squad Romero.” What followed was the inspiring face of their commanding officer informing them they were headed back into the field.

Eir could only respond to the announcement with a dejected sigh. There went her chance to spend some quiet time getting her thoughts in order. She was quick to lather up, wash up, and get out. She almost jumped straight into the fresh uniform, not even having time or bothering to dry her hair. Apparently the idea of combat fatigue was alien to the Nepleslian military. She began a fast jog down the hallway. By chance she passed by the shuttle pilot who had given her bad directions just a few hours ago and decided to give him a proper one fingered Nepleslian salute as she passed, the sound of his laughter following her.

She hit the armory just in time. A few of the machine heads were getting into position to disarm her Devastator.

“Hands off! I just got redeployed!”

The mechanics made snide comments; everyone hated being interrupted doing their job and these two where no exception. Thankfully they also knew never to get in the way of a jarhead and their armor and went about their business of helping someone out more thankful as Eir started to suit up.

“Hell of a day,” she muttered.

"That could have gone much better..." Alistair thought, watching as Laura's face contorted with anger. "I guess I should have read her file better. All I know is that the only way to fit in here, is to put your head down, shut up, and do your job." Alistair sat down on the couch, fiddling with his locket. After the Chief gave Laura the news, Alistair was half way out the room when he heard Laura call "Move your ass, Thorn!"

Alistair hauled ass to the armory to receive his load out. Looking at all the techs milling about, he called out, "I need a Hostile suit prepared for combat. Heavy loadout, ASAP!" As he was getting the suit fitted to him, he interfaced with the suits helmet. "Well everything in here seems to be in working order, though I think I can boost the computers processing output by at least 7.28%." His mind a bundle of nerves, though he wasn't going to show it. He quickly fell into what he knew how to do, use computers.

His mind was set. Algorithms running though his thoughts all at once. As he walked, he felt his locket bounce across his chest, and it put his mind to ease. "Wish me luck Sis. I'm gonna prove how valuable I can be here. Then once I become strong enough I will come back and make the men who took you from me pay." Alistair was ready to prove to Laura and his new squad that he was no ordinary greenie. He was here to become the best damn marine these people have ever seen. "Let's go." He said to no one in particular as he made his way to meet up with his new squad.

The string of compliments did not phase Linda, she had a pretty good assessment of her own performance and knew where she made her mistakes and was thinking it over in her head. It did surprise her a bit that the new squad seemed to fire on all cylinders with the other teams as well though, but gun fights were after all the specialty of the marines. When dismissed, contrary to expectations, Linda did not have more words for Laura, not now while they were on stand by at least.

She removed her armor quickly and began tapping away at her Datajokey, this time setting up a report of the boarding incident while it was still fresh in her mind, There was no telling what would come next and if the memories would quickly wash away in the excitement. She only looked up when the green horn made his introduction, it had been a while since she saw someone get on the bad side of their squad leader so quickly. Hopefully command knew what they were doing assigning a fresh recruit here.

Linda managed to get down the main details of her report and was fleshing it out when everyone was called to suit up once more. She stopped her report and headed back to the armory, she had made sure not to wander too far away since she was on stand by. Once at her Raider she began making the needed preparations an syncing everything again before stepping inside the armor.

Eir would have been lying to herself if she said she did not enjoy the feeling a suit of power armor gave her. She enjoyed it more then she thought she would from the day she first got suited up in her first Hostile. It made you feel like you could make a difference, like you could take on the whole damn universe if you had to; it was invigorating.

Once Eir was sure she was properly sealed in her armor, and that ACE had done all of the proper checks, she took a few experimental steps. As always the suit fit like a glove, just a really bulky one.

Thankfully, it was also a second skin bristling with enough firepower to start its own small, but extremely bloody war. It sounded like that was exactly what might be happening, she could only hope that if so, it remained short. What concerned her most at the moment was why they were being sent back to the shuttle. The negotiators were already with the Captain and the ship they currently occupied was not space dust, so it meant they must still be talking. It was not hard to put the pieces together and realize something went wrong.

She double-timed it through the halls till she hit the shuttle bay. Since she seemed to be one of the first there, she slowed her jog to a proper walk. No reason to rush it if she was waiting for the others. It was then that she noticed another Hostile near the shuttle. That was normal enough, but she did not recognize the ID tag ACE was feeding her. A greenie? Now? He must be the best the world ever saw, or command seriously messed up the paperwork. The poor bastard.

“You either have a very interesting sense of timing, or the worst luck I have ever seen in a person.” Eir smiled at him as she made her way up. Not that anyone could really see that under her helmet. Her voice was warm enough, though. “You here to fill one of the holes in our squad?”

Alistair made it to the shuttle early, trying not to piss off his new COs. He watched as the shuttle was prepared. The flight deck was packed with naval personal scrambling about the deck. Alistair had to play the waiting game now.

He started to question why command would put him here with such a high risk team. Sure he was a computer specialist, but it didn't make him special enough for such an assignment. After his new CO chewed him out for just for trying to make a good first impression, he had his doubts.

No he couldn't think like that. He is here because he excelled in training. He was among the highest ranked in his class. He would become the best damn marine ever.

"You either have a very interesting sense of timing, or the worst luck I have ever seen."

Alistair was shocked out of his stupor by a new Devastator that was striding over to him. It must be one of his squad mates. She seemed friendly enough.

"You here to fill one of the holes in our squad?"

"Oh, hey there. I didn't see you walk up." Alistair said turning to face her. "I think I might have the worse luck around here. I managed to get on the Corporal bad side in half an hour. She must hate my guts." He laughed sticking out his hand. "I'm Alistair Thorn, your squad's new computer specialist. It's a pleasure to meet you miss..?"

"Hmm? Back to work already? What a shame, I had been hoping to get to know the crew more," Phase sighed. They returned to their larger body for a brief few minutes once more, bounding over to the shuttle in long strides. The thing came to a skidding halt in the shuttle bay and about-faced, allowing its occupant to eject themselves. The smaller, sleeker form hopped their way into the shuttle once more to jack into the control console like they had only a few minutes prior.

"Aaaah, so dull," the spacer noted, glancing at one of their wrist joints. The time, as it always was, was shown on that labyrinthine, shifting dice shape, carefully illuminated so that only the correct numbers were surrounded.

The larger body's cross-shaped plate light up again, leaving out a pupil of darkness. Which had focused on the new recruit and Eir.
"Hmm? Computer specialist? Does that mean you want to take a closer look at my inner workings~?" They asked, a brass-capped hand coming up to their face in an imitation of the classic "Oooooooo" gesture that children often used.

Eli never even really stepped out of the armor. The debrief and such happened so quickly, and he said so little (effusive praise and the normal, Eli Garvey-standard fear of spaceships notwithstanding) and reacted so slowly he just, never really stepped out of his Hostile. He'd gotten about halfway unbuttoned before the recall sounded; he'd simply climbed back into his armor and sealed himself up. It was good to be in high demand, wasn't it?

A newbie had appeared since he'd drifted off to his own little world. Newbie? He'd barely scratched his own paint, but he'd come out from a firefight alive, and that at least meant their were creases in the leather of this boot. His Hostile, still kitted out, turned to face the newcomer.

"Ohhhh, dem new guy eh?" Eli said, smiling behind his armored helmet. "Welcome, mon. Take it yeh got your typical chewin' from dem boss lady, seh yea? Yeh seh yeh work wit' computers? Handy."

He held up an armored finger, fat as a sausage. "Dis be deh only ting I know to operate. Yeh lucky dem gave yeh a brain, mon."

Eli put an armored palm to his chest. "My name Elijah Garvey, pleasure is all mine. Dat bein' said, yeh gonna need to grab a suit and get wit it, mos' righteous. We got us a little meetin' need adjudication, seh yea."

Eir smiled under her helm. It looks like the greenie was at least well received by most of the others, maybe a bit too well received by Phase.

“Come on, everyone. Let’s get on the shuttle. It sounds like the Corporal is already in a bad mood. Doesn't have much ground to skin us alive if we are strapped in and ready. Meet 'n greet can wait till then.” She was hardly a commanding officer, but it seemed just like good solid advice to give. It was strange, but Eir realized so far she had had little time to actually speak with anyone in her squad - at least in ways that didn't revolve around the mission. Hopefully that would resolve itself soon.

Eir started to make her way onto the shuttle, having to be careful how she turned because of the bulk of her tower shield. She sat down and strapped herself in properly before laying back, waiting for the others to join her. Whatever their new mission would be, though, the idea of it nagged at her. She had a feeling things were going to get a lot worse before they got better.

Well, at least Alistair's new team likes him, though Phase did unsettle him. How could he not, when a 8 foot tall robot starts to hit on you. Still though, Alistair felt an almost immediate bond with his new team.

"I really appreciate the warm welcome everyone. It really is a pleasure to meet you all." He said.

Alistair stepped into the shuttle and sat next to Eir, strapping himself in. He now had to wait for the Corporal.

Alistair, left to his own thoughts, once again became nervous. This will be his first actual mission, and it terrified him. He reached up to grab his locket, but soon remembered that there was an armored shell covering his body.

It didn't matter though, he has trained for this. Nothing he will face can be as bad as the Deckers. Alistair, with a new conviction, crossed his arms. Ready for war.

"Nibbly-Smith, you're number two for this run! Plug into ACE and check the mission download," Laura said as she bounced over in her VOID. ARROWs, plasma autocannon and other accouterments in place. Oddly, though, she had a large sword in her holster in place of the usual VBCS. She didn't have the VOID's large backpack installed. Hanging from her waist were several stun grenades.

Chief Greer took a minute to join them, in a Hostile with a rampant bear painted on his left shoulder. An AS4GS shotgun slung over his armor's back was the only visible weapon he carried. He had a MED attached to the back as well as a medikit.

"Some of you probably met him but Private Thorn is our newest greenie," Laura mentioned as she climbed into the shuttle. "Try not to let him get wasted on his first day."

The rest of the squad bundled aboard after her.

The mission download Eir had was sparse on detail. All it had was that the ISS Hard Liquor had broadcast a mayday before it was cut off. The nearest vessels were all part of the IWL-identified fleet and the sensor readings were showing them closing on the ship. So the Navy was taking it that they had done something to the ship. The ROE for this was the same - only fire if fired upon. Schematics for the ship's class were available and unhelpful. The ISS Hard Liquor was a Red Hill 1B ship but beyond that information, nothing else could be gotten about the ship's manifest or crew. Except this time they should have that information. The Ulfberht's sensors had logged that it had docked at Null & Void yesterday and departed this morning. Someone there should have that information.

"Dolly, you're flying the shuttle again. You and Keid, see if you can figure out any information on the ship through your fancy Polysentience. This bird supposedly docked yesterday and we have got zip on its crew and cargo. Harm'ny, let's get going! Fast as you can without turning us into jelly. Nelson, check on the IPG net for anything on this ship. Connections to the IWL or other organizations and so on. Nibbly-Smith, switch to channel four. Lieutenant Keno, please check on the rest of the squad and make sure their equipment is all set."

"Right, Eir," Laura switched over the private channel, "How do you think we should play this? Going in blind again with a possible international incident on our hands."

Eir watched Laura as she made her way over, more than happy to get this show going and to find out what the mission was. She was slightly less happy when she found out this would be the mission she would be number two on. Like with all bitter pills though, Eir was quick to swallow this one. She swapped over to the private channel.

She was poring over the information ACE had fed her. It didn’t take long to realize that what she had was a complete lack of it. A confusing lack of it, to be honest. She double-checked to make sure what little she was reading was accurate.
“Honestly, Ma’am? I don’t like the look of this at all, and there is a lot at stake. We need to know more. Ideally more before we even consider a boarding action. ACE tells me we are a few minutes away from fleet backup arriving. I say we use that time to gather some intel and let that added weight of a few dozen more ships cool down the political climate a bit. In the meantime we get the shuttle in close and ping the Hard Liquor and the ‘Spacers in the area, see if anyone bites. Hopefully by then the IPG spook or the ‘Spacer’s probing pays off as well and we can start to put together a picture.” She paused briefly. “We know what we think this looks like, but with a lack of proof for all we know whoever is piloting the Liquor did something dumb like open fire on the ‘Spacers, or got caught with their hands where they shouldn’t be. For all we know, the ‘Spacers are responding to the mayday same as us. No record of weapons fire supports this to a limited degree. What we can do is if we get a response order the ship back to the Ulfberht. This is clearly our jurisdiction and we can hope the crop of ‘Spacers we are about to run into have the same respect for that fact that their diplomat had with the Captain being in command of the ship.” She shifted in her seat a little. “Long and short of it is, until we get something, anything really, I would advise against sticking our collective necks out.”

Laura smiled beneath her helmet. Smart cookie, this one. Doesn't fall back onto the assumptions foisted on her.

"Hoping that the Spacers respect us, considering they're IWL, is risky. They don't exactly have the best relationship with us. But good start. More that can be done. We haven't even made use of Harm'ny for any of these things. He's just as intelligent and capable as Keid or Dolly but lacks the experience. On the other hand, he is also packing starship grade equipment that can help us. So, we can ask him to make the contact and do a sensor sweep of the area. Even an active sweep wouldn't cause them to fire on us because he is Spacer, like them. They may be ready to go toe-to-toe with us but they're not going to want to suddenly kick off a civil war. Go check on the squad, especially the new guy. After me and the Chief, you're the most experienced Marine here. I'll go talk to Dolly and Harm'ny."

Laura broke the connection and moved into the shuttle's cockpit. "How's it going, Dolly?"

Eir was okay with the idea of a little risk. When you had less than nothing, sometimes you had shake the tree a bit. It was somewhat of a revelation for her to realize she was the third-most experienced Marine of the group. That was likely why she drew the short straw when it came to first commands.

“Oh well… Nothing left to do but make lemonade,” she muttered to herself before swapping off the private channel to the one the rest of the squad was using. “Okay everyone, listen up. Looks like we may have a rough time ahead of us. Intel is pretty thin on this one, but we are working on trying to clean that up. In the meantime we need to keep as low a profile as possible. No out-going communications or feeds unless the Corporal or I give it the go-ahead. We know you want to tell your girls or boys back home how much of a badass you are, but I would rather you do it in person later. Any questions?”

Right now she was wearing a helmet, so no one could see the smile on her face or really see her as she looked around the Marines present, but the slight shifting of her armor suggested the latter.

As Alistair checked the data ACE provided him, he realized that there was very little of it. All we know is the make of the ISS Hard Liquor and that two spacer ships are coming after it. Still, Alistair started hatching out a plan to maybe get more intel. He knew though, he had better run this by Corporal Laura and Eir. He formulated his thoughts and opened the squad link.

"Corporal Romero and Eir, I have an idea to get some more intel on the murky situation were in now." Alistair started, tying to not sound too excited as he got into the details. " My idea was to use Harm'ny's sub routines. I would have Harm'ny mask its signature and start dumping mass amounts of needless information into their system. This would cause the spacers system to be bogged down trying to process the massive info dump. While their ships systems are bogged down, I can then insert my own programs into the system to find out as much information as possible. When the programs are about to be detected, they will destroy themselves, sending as much info to us as they can." Alistair took a deep breath. "So, can I have your permission to enact my data heist? I can 100% assure you that they wont be able to tell that we had anything to do with it."

It sounded simple as he said it, but knew that he will need to be quick on his virtual feet for this to succeed. No matter what though, if this could save a teammates life during the mission later, then he would not fail them. The silence was almost deafening as he waited for a reply.

Linda had gotten everything situated in her Raider once more, getting the same standard load out and the Light Coil Autocanon with 2 HE magazines and 2 standard magazines. She didn't pay much attention to the welcoming of the new guy, not yet at least. She wanted to see what he had up his sleeve and if he'd stick around long before she bothered even trying to intimidate him. As for her orders, she didn't need to be told to begin sweeping the IPG network for Intell on the ISS Hard Liquor, as well as trying to match the signal from the IWL one to any in the database.

While sorting through the IPG information network she received the IPG report on Private Thorn just in time as he began to speak up about his idea. It was creative, that was for sure and it might actually work. "If you flood their systems with information they will know someone is doing a Cyberwarfare attack and even if they can't do a sensor sweep they will know that someone is there, and since it's Nepleslian space they might point at us anyway. I would suggest using Harmony's processing power to instead actively protect whatever worm you put in their system and try to make it as invisible as possible."

"Hmm?"

The freespacer swiveled their neck to face Laura, thankfully turning their body in tandem so that they didn't reach that uncanny valley owl effect.

"The shuttle is ready for launch-" they said, making a cursory sweep with their other body before being the last boarder, "-now. Please keep your arms and feet inside the shuttle at all times and please, no flash photography."

The shuttle lurched forward as the doors sealed. The occupants were jostled but otherwise untouched. The larger body fished something out of one of their torso panels and passed it through the cabin, gesturing for one of the human occupants to pass it on to the smaller body.

"Now, Laura Romero, what answer did you want to that question? The short one? The one I just gave? The longer one? The one that has nothing to do with the situation?" Phase said, their little body completely devoid of the usual odd mannerisms. It looked like piloting the shuttle was a little more focus-intensive than it seemed.

Eir shook her head - or rather the massive torso of her armor shifted a bit, simulating a shake. “At this point we can’t take the chance. Normally I am all for a bit of recon in whatever way it comes, but as it is we are one false word from what could be a shooting war with the ‘Spacers. I get it that you’re good at what you do, but I can’t authorize any sort of action that may start it. We are under very strict and clear rules in regards to this. Don’t worry though, if we end up on that ship you are going to have plenty of work to do. Plenty of time to change the fate of Nepleslian life everywhere then.” The last bit was said with a hint of amusement.

She looked among the squad. She really wished she had more for them but she had to trust in the skills of those already assigned to less invasive forms of information gathering.

“Maybe if we knew a bit more about what’s going on we could take the risk…” She looked at Linda now. “Any word?” She knew the corporal was dealing with Phase and their Ship. It was still weird to think of it as its own unique identity.