RP: 188604 [Star Wasp] 7: The Hate Machine

White Lament

Corgan was momentarily stunned by Truffleclub's response. It was probably the most he had ever heard the automata actually say. He sounded like some sort of poet or philosopher, Corgan mused. Maybe he was finally starting to understand Freespacers. Either way, the thought of walking around in someone's insides was not comforting. A ship being alive wasn't a thought he ever had before. To him, ships were just tools to be used and discarded when they were no longer useful. "I think I might be starting to understand. The dreams, that means Polysentience, I think. I can't really imagine having someone else's thoughts inside my head. Sounds kind of intimate." He replied.

The ship's motion would have bothered him if he weren't wearing his Impulse armor. Instead of bouncing around like Uso he managed to find some handholds to grab onto. "I guess I'll have to try out that Neko shooter later. Looks like this is a little less peaceful than I was hoping." He said to no one in particular. "Truffleclub, maybe I will take you up on the dream thing. Think you can hook me up with some Mindware after we finish here?"

He listened quietly to the progress of the mission until Arccos mentioned date night. "So have you not had a date in four years? That's a shame. I'll have to take you out when we get back." Inside his armor, he suddenly frowned. "Not sure what Freespacers do on dates, though. I always imagined you guys troll each other on the Polysentience for fun, or maybe mess with some Yamataian ships." Arccos started giving orders and it dawned on him that this probably wasn't the best time to ask a girl out.

"I'll go in with the ground team then. Think my Impulse is too conspicuous or are we past the "look like a Spacer stage" now?" Corgan asked.

Necromancer Bridge:

Werner sat in his command chair as the ship trudged along next to the White Lament. The ship transmitting the signals that Arccos told them to transmit. "This is an odd mission to be sure..." The XO said moving to his spot at the tactical station.

Werner shook his head. "We don't have to like it, we are getting paid to do it." The captain responded. He looked at the display and watched their progress. "Helm, remember fly erratic." He reminded his young Helmsman.

"Aye sir." He replied.

The ship followed along as they entered the space around the Great Lighthouse. "Comm bring the ship to full alert." Werner said.

"Aye aye." She said. She then opened a link to the ship. "All hands, combat stations, combat stations. This is not a drill. Repeat..."

They stayed in formation as the fleet sent out a runner. As the ship was targeted, Werner shot a message off to Uso using tight beam transmission. "Boss, Necromancer. What are our orders?" He asked

He then opened a private link to the Pumpkin Eater, and forwarded it straight to Aashi as to not have it be heard by anyone else, but her. "Well we are in the shit aren't we... How you holding up over there?"

The Pumpkin Eater

Aashi ignored all other requests but Arccos' and Werner's and said to him over their link, "I think I've been up against much worse, haven't you? I've got a few here that aren't used to being on a space craft and that's disconcerting, to say the least. What about you?"

She listened to those on the bridge with her vociferate their concerns while she brought the Pumpkin Eater down lower, closer to the city, fingers still at the ready to give cover fire if the need arose.

Necromancer Bridge:

"Aye." Werner replied. Aashi could hear him calling out to bring the ship in closer. "It could be worse..." He added turning back to his console. "You could have to take care of me again..." He said with a small grin.

He then added softly, "Are you okay? I would prefer if you were here on the bridge where I could keep an eye out for you. If shit hits the fan you are hauling ass out of here. That is an order. You get behind the Necromancer and get the hell out." He said, concerned for his friend's safety.

The Pumpkin Eater

Aashi let loose a laugh over their link and said, "Taking care of you would be better than taking care of anyone else, the way I see it. I want to make sure you're okay before you make sure I'm okay. Your ribs are still bruised and I know you've been having trouble breathing. Please tell me you're up for this."

To his orders to get out when it mattered most, she replied, "I'd like to think I will. Will you stay close? This is my first time playing with this ship in battle and I'd like to think it'll go as well as everything I remember from my past, but there is the unknown and you being close nullifies any fears I may have."

Necromancer Bridge:

Werner chuckled softly over the link as to not aggravate his previous injury. "I'll be fine Aashi. All I have to do is sit in this chair and make the calls that matter." He replied. "But thank you Aashi..." He said over the link.

As she asked her next question he laughed, which initiated a coughing fit. After he caught his breath he smiled and said. "Of course I will be close by. Take up a position right above us. That will keep you and your ship safe." He smiled. "We need all the ships we can spare."

Begin the Standoff:

"Had two boyfriends since then, Corgan. We can sort out details later or whatever, but don't conclusion jump. I have a nuclear standoff to attend to." Arccos said a bit snippily, moving to stand and watch out the viewing dome, retrieving her quantum node in the process and plugging it in to the side of her skull to get every ounce of processing power she could get. Some clear look of grim determination on her face.

That was actually a yes to Corgan, though. Weirdly enough.

Once more pushing her dual-frequency to the other two ships, Arccos made her call. Everything was out in the open, all eyes were on her. She just had to hold out long enough now. Hopefully this would work, because if not she'd need to make a lot more repairs. Worming her way into backdoors pre-programmed into the Lament's server farm, Arccos started the fight on her own digital frontier. Pushing resets to cut out too many intrusion attempts, and bringing individual portions of it back online one at a time. The important stuff would have to be completely cut off from wireless communications, though.

"Uso, get Vier to keep our air support looking menacing. We want every single eye, camera and sensor package on us. This close to their Shrouds they won't be able to do sensor scans for shit so we'll be able to move on the ground as long as we're not too flashy."

Arccos' face blinked up on the communications of the Necromancer. Staring Werner in the face with a stern look usually reserved for angry schoolmarms.

"White Lament to Necromancer, I want you to do a slow sweep over the city and get a lock on as many of those drones as possible. Work us out a drop vector for an armor team to approach the base of the ruined lighthouse while the Lament keeps them distracted. We want you to look curious, so don't have any weapons go live just yet. Keep as low as you can, as well. Anything they have which can crack your ship is likely heavy grade nuclear warheads, so they won't be able to shoot you if you hang low."

Her face blipped away from the Necromancer, appearing on the comms for the Pumpkin eater this time.

"Cap'n Aashi, we need you for air cover still; if you have anyone on board, get volunteers for an armor drop to get people on the ground. Two teams on different approach is good redundancy. Keep your eyes peeled, but pull out if shots are fired. You don't have'ta risk your neck too hard for this."

Boop, down from the pumpkin eater. Arccos appearing again to shout at Alex.

"You, kid? It got too hot down there for ground support as big as you to be viable, belay the last order and fall into formation with the drones around the Lament. We're going to need you flying around looking menacing. Stand by for extra orders, as you'll be doing rear guard on our retreat."

Finally, Arccos took a deep breath. Doing the quick calculations to work out her own software solution to break through the ECM. This time with a different dual frequency to cut through the interference. There were only so many viable uses of this strategy before it was all depleted, so it had to last. She cut her own connection to prevent any DDOS attacks done to her personal mindware implants. She had to be calm. Be cool. This was okay.

She wasn't doing this for the wrong reasons after all.

Arccos blasted out her own signal to the planet around her, forcing a double-coding fault into the ECM deployed against her. A little polysentience handshake followed by her own voice broadcast, audio only. Trying to at least get the locals to talk.

"So while I can say we came in peace, I'm still trying to work out exactly what we're seeing here from you." Arccos' voice lashed across the city, worming out to reach anything which might be listening. "I'd be inclined to think that you're survivors of what happened here, but you're broadcasting jammercore that's only slightly stale. So you've had some outside contact, but the way you're jamming anything coming close it makes it seem you want to remain insular and silent."

"Judging by the actual production of the music, and the likely presence of Free State Secrets, you might be Locksmiths far from the blue rift which means we're almost certain to not have to worry about pointing missiles at one another... But if you were locksmiths, you wouldn't be running on old kit... So we've stumbled on what here? IWL holdouts keeping Nepleslian hands off the past? Black site trying to recover the secrets of Freehold? Temple guards keeping vigil over the graves of an entire civilisation?"

Her tone was somewhere between condemnation and genuine hope. Violence didn't need to be the answer after all this.

"Or are we just going to stand here until we all rust? Did the ruin of this place break us that hard that we can't even talk anymore?"

The Pumpkin Eater

Aashi gripped the edges of her console until her knuckles paled as she heard Werner's cough and could only imagine what was happening in his body at that moment. Atrocious things was her first guess. Her second was a more hopeful one. She chose to ruminate on the latter, not the former.

"Be safe, my friend," was her clipped reply to him as she took up the position Arccos had asked of her.

She turned to those on the bridge and pointed while she talked rapidly, "Who wants to go run amok? The armory is that-a way. The shuttle Aries can pilot and get you on the ground with is where you'd expect to find it, down that-a way. Get some guns. Have some fun." She made gun-hands and shot at them one at a time before smiling and turning back to the command console.

Standoff Range

Vier would understand the plan, but informing her drones was a bit more difficult. Each had to raise its shields to block out the wash of ECM. The shields could be set to block just about anything, but keeping the subspace radio waves out also meant that the drones were limited to their visual sensors. This was ontop of being too low to orbit, using ships that were designed for deep-space work rather than for planetary heists. Each drone would fall like a rock towards the planet for a bit, before rockets slowed its fall, and then tossed it back up towards space, each trying to stay oriented towards the planet to stay menacing

Then the tanks showed up.

This would at least give the drones something more to do than juggle themselves. Vier would pass along the location of the targets so that the drones didn't have to find them on their own, and then let them open up with their lasers. The ship-killing beams were to project at near their lowest setting, like shining a bright flashlight over the factory, blinding, dazzling, light illuminating the line of tanks that were approaching. It would certainly be annoying for anyone trying to use the visible wavelengths, and also served as a reminder at these beams illuminating the near entirety of this side of the factory had a kill setting.

White Lament

"Yeah, I think we both need to head down there." Uso said, "Vier's basically on autopilot and Arccos has Strategy in hand. Lets go find some spray-paint and spacer-up this armor." Uso's green impulse armor would push off of what she thought was a wall, and land against what was probably a floor, "You figure out where the exit or the spraypaint is on this thing anyways?" She asked Corgan.

White Lament

"This Cloudee would like." Was Truffleclub's response to Corgan, a tone slightly more reassured than the first time. Up to this point they were basically just acting as an impromptu captain's chair for Arccos, still very protective given all of the invisible network aggression going on. It was a lot for the timid machine to take in. But feeling helpful was always a big concern, too. "I will show you paints. I will show you exits. But, you should be safe, is... Spacer guns. We have one-two finagles... You should take, is."

Scrap Brain Zone

Either the drones were programmed to have nerves of steel, or the blinded ones were instead correlating their targeting trajectories with those that could still see. Most of them didn't move other than keeping their guns affixed on the ships looming above. Given that the units didn't seem to have much in the way of radar equipment, either, it was perhaps natural that they were themselves relying overwhelmingly on visual detection.

Communications

A connection. For a few paces, the response was nothing but dead air, but it existed. A bonne fide mindware signal type, pre-packaged with an low-poly avatar that looked like a little brown tank.

~"Do... Do you lot not recognize a warning shot when you see one?"~ An obnoxiously nasal, gruff voice, albeit raspy enough to be the product of humanoid lungs. ~"Not gonna let you have it. Ya bunch of pricks. Dun care how you gonna justify it morally. Dis is 'owr soul..."~

~"And no. Not locksmiths. Not no more. Father's word, how de' y'all think those losers even got the parts to build Cinereal?"~ Just a small stutter in the connection. It seems they had a lot to concentrate on. ~"By looting graves, just like every other sanctimonious bastard out d'ere! But not dis time! Not 'ere!"~

~"So, just go away already. Or I'm really gunna open up."~

The Pumpkin Eater

"Well okay guys, now I can go take you to have some fun." Akemi smiled and waltzed over to the armory. "Aw man, it's all baby stuff," he said before spotting something amusing. "Oh hey buddy, I found your gun!" The Neko turned to the knighted knave and showed him a machine pistol. "It's called a PIMP." He then briefly resumed looking and produced a weapon ideal for his lady friend who didn't mind visibly going gaga over shiny starman stuff. Surely she'd enjoy getting to shoot bolts of energy like Uso's people did.

Falling into formation with the drones, Alex scanned the environment, looking for threats. He wasn't sure how he felt about stealing a cultural artifact, but also knew that the most he could hope for was to minimize the bloodshed on both sides of the conflict. If he had to shoot, he would shoot to disable, not destroy or kill.

Call That Bluff:

As the little tank avatar came into being, Arccos grinned just a little. How... Militant of these guys. A little extra on the up-speed on her connection, and Arccos' own avatar bloomed into being. An indistinct female form swathed in white robes, what flesh to be seen was stitched together from circuitry and baroque lace. She stood somehow immediately before the one she spoke with, while simultaneously standing on a distant horizon wearing the dawning sun as a mantle.

~"I recognized the warning shot, and calculated it to be an acceptable risk."~ She said simply, almost serenely. ~"Same time, if you shoot me down, you'll be finding a whole mothership loaded with enough nuclear ordinance to polish this city smooth crashing down on top of what you're trying to protect. I'm Deoradh, we Grind our dead. So I can live or die with that happening knowing that my carcass will at least be useful."~

Just that little emphasis on her being Deoradh. Demanding justification for these people departing from the values of their people. The last duty of all in the Free State was to return to the people, body and soul, so that the people may continue anew unburdened by the loss of resources within a body. There were no graves for the Free.

~"We can both blow each other up, but I think we're both self aware enough to say that doing so achieves nothing at this point."~ She sounded sad, just that little creep of heartache bleeding into her tone. ~"But I'm not going to argue morality if you think that's how this is going to work. I'll deal in fact. Fact: I'd like to see you here and embrace you as friend and kin. Fact: Despite fact one, circumstances conspire to see us train weapons on one another, for good or ill. And fact: I will see this tower repaired and functional again, with or without your consent."~

The Pumpkin Eater
Ace arrived in the armory. Seeing Olena with the plasma pistol Ace shook his head. "Try not to blow your arm off with that girl." Ace looked around the armory and found a Finagle's Revenge behind some crates in the back which he grabbed. "This should do it." Ace ran over to the hangar bay and jumped in the shuttle. Quickly plugging Aries in and cycling the engines Ace waited for the others.

Pillars Of The Underworld
~♫Kaneda's Theme♫~

~"...embrace me as friend and kin?..."~ A rigid response. They seemed more sour and bitter than anything, pacing their words with a more careful dexterity now. The little tank was not even animated. It just sat there before the glowing deity, tenaciously resolute. ~"I've 'eard that in the past, you know. We all have. T'was supposed to be our mantra... But that is the problem, ain't it? We mixed our poetry and our tactics so hard, dat we thought we could never loose, huh? It wuddn' be a good ending to our little story."~

~"But..."~

~"But reality doesn't work like that. Not gunna to make any 'eartfelt excuses. Call it vanity, but I'll fight you simply because my work is not done 'ere... and you are forgetting that these tunnels survived being glassed by half the Yamatai fleet, in the past."~ The line crackled again. Their physical body was back to work. Cold, brooding rage in their lungs. ~"The Free State is dead, and good fuckin' riddance. We are individuals now. Prisoner, grave, or grinder meat, it's the victor's choice. The weak deserve no such qualms."~

Suddenly, the entire mothership lurched and groaned. Not a physical attack, but... A split second change in the planet's gravity?...

A burst of static corrupted the line immediately, and whether intentional or otherwise, the signal was now dead again. They could probably be rung up again given that the ECM was now becoming more and more ineffectual due to Arccos and Vier's efforts, but the unknown martyr was clearly focusing on lining up those guns once more.

A malestrom of flying lead, hot white pillars like waterfalls inverted upwards into the dull red sky. Inaccurate. Seeking to hit the enemy just by sheer weight of firepower. These were still just converted maintenance drones, after all. Shots were clearly aligned to attempt glancing engines primarily. However, a blind spray as wild as this was almost more like covering fire in action... No missiles yet, for some reason?...

White Lament

*PSSSSSHT*

*SSPPPSSSSSHTTT*

*PPFFT*

Uso had found the spray paint, and was using the edge of her power armored glove to help stencil on pink and white spacer logos, gears, and other artwork onto Corgan's armor.

There would then be a low, deep, thunk reverberating through the ship as the projectiles started to impact the shield, causing Uso to check the all hands channel again.

"HEY ARCCOS! ARE WE SUPPOSED TO SHOOT THEM NOW?" Uso asked,

Meanwhile, outside of the ship Vier was making use of the combat drones, bunching them up in-front of the White Lament, using them to body-block for the larger ship, absorbing as much of the incoming objects with their shields as possible. The smaller craft would put all their energy forward, leaving them vulnerable from behind for the time being. The repeated, heavy, impacts of the drones beginning to knock the spaceships around like bumper-cars.

The drones them started using their lasers at a low intensity, doing their best to try and blind whatever visual sensors were being used... and hoping for the best.

Too Busy to Note the Historic Irony Here:

"Fire at will!" Arccos shouted down the halls to Uso and Corgan. "And forget the paint, we're talking universal hostility from this piece of grinder slag! Get ready to drop once the junkers clear the ground!"

Everything on the ship seemed to shudder at once, as power was re-routed and all wireless communications were shut off. Total spacer combat state counter-ECM strategy: Nothing went anywhere if it didn't go through a wire. All around the ship, the numerous junkers jacked into the nearest network port and hooked up to receive combat orders without their networking being messed with. Starlight capacitors started to hum into life as the reactors dumped power into them in order to power everything needed right this moment.

Back up in habitation, Arccos stepped over to the towering automaton sitting with the two half-refurbished Largegear units, jacking a second cable from the side of her head into it, and then another from it into the wall of the mothership. She had to see to squeezing every ounce of processing power and memory into her personal network for this.

On the exterior of the Lament, a crackling corona of reddish light started to form between the two central pylons of the double-pyramid hull of the mothership. The dimensional shear systems roaring to life and beginning their assault on the integrity of real space. For just a second inside the hulking ship gravity seemed to taste of tangerine marshmallows' stringy elder sister, giving Corgan and Uso a pleasant tingling down their left flanks. But that soon felt normal, and vanished just as soon as it appeared.

As soon as the system stabilized, a flat plane showing the stars beyond this world phased into being. The Lament's Leyline connections straining every system inside, making the mausoleum-like ship give off a wailing whine of every energy system on board pushing to the limit under sheer pressure of the connection. The ship tilted forwards as the bow dipped low to begin scooping up the downed tower, starting at the top transmitter. The whole portal shearing a deep trench into the ground as it took a segment of the scorched earth of Freehold-03 under it.

While the smash and grab extraction came about, Arccos leveled her orders.

"Mech guy, I want you on the hull of the Lament. You're to blast down as many missiles as you can get in your sights. Eatums, give me suppressive fire! Force as many of those drones into cover and off the streets as you can, and commence ascent once I've got the transmitter! Necro! Drop what firepower you have, full bombardment to force them back into the undercity!"

The Pumpkin Eater - Armory

"I'm totally going to get you guys recordings of everything that happened outside after this is over in case we missed something cool," Akemi said as he began spray painting his Impulse power armor with things like 'I <3 Arccos' and 'Waifu Warrior.' Forget fancy Spacer symbols, he'd just wear his heart on his sleeve like all the dirty commies that openly admitted wanting free stuff and a galactic pity party through the polysentience. That was probably Freespacer enough. It would sure be cool if someone on the ground inquired about the object of his temporary devotion.

"I'll make sure you guys get your own space guns to keep with plenty of ammo if you'd like to train in how to use them for protection." Akemi mentally asked the ship what was going on and huffed, "Looks like I might not even be going out to fight stuff. I can talk to machines with my brain. Oh well, they at least can't say I wasn't present."

The Pumpkin Eater - Shuttle

Ace decided to remind the other three of where they needed to be. "Aries could you tell the three in the armory to get in here." Ace remarked quite annoyed. "I don't want Akemi giving them any more dangerous weapons then he already has.

"Sure thing." Aries responded

Akemi and crew would hear a chime go off in the room before Aries voice came through. "Could you three report down to the hangar bay? Ace and I are waiting in the shuttle for you."

The Pumpkin Eater - Armory

"Sure, we could, but we're not in a rush," Akemi answered. "Has he used you to take a look at what's going on down there? I don't feel we'll do much good against a zillion tanks and drones and whatnot. The mecha guy is more suited to that."