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RP [Strays] The Higaflan Mutant Crisis

Charmaylarg Dufrain

🎖️ Game Master
RP Date
Ye-47
RP Location
Higaflan System
Freehold System - Freehold - Ricinus Factory

Of the few factories held by the corporation, Ricinus was the smallest. Perhaps only 50,000 square feet of interior space the factory was hardly cramped by any metric for the hundred and more Strays that ever garrisoned the makeshift fortress the factory was a combination of industrial workhorse meets castle and depot all mixed together with a little bit of a distorted vision of a military base as gun emplacements jutted out of holes in the walls and on battlements and towards the skies while hundreds of AAP drones patrolled its perimeter and a small army more laid empty and idle just to be inhabited by the Fairys ready to mobile. Ricinus was, lightly speaking, at least one of the top-ten most fortified places on freehold factory.

And the strays, serious about little, took their home lightly none at all. Each adding their own little touches from welded and riveted sheets of starship armor, to some kind of amalgamation of a shield generator. Each stray was dedicated to making sure their little fortress could survive if not the legions of cats that might someday assail it at least hold out against a second glassing of the moon.

And they believed it would survive, too.

But for all its size, and all that the strays had done to it, the fortress was ever really only ever garrisoned by at most a hundred or so strays at most, not including any Fairys in their drone bodies. This made the fortress factory of Ricinus feel if not unlived in then at least very empty. This meant that when not blackout drunk, lost, dead, or double-lost many of the strays could be found congregating in the factories social spaces;

Games of Kill Ball on the factory floor, as the combination boxing-rugby-basketball game was often picked up over conveyor belts and even in catwalks when getting really intense.

Massive video game or media watching in one of the Silos from signals picked up via the InterNep or Fae.

Weapons testing in one of the empty factory floors with one of the reinforced load bearing walls.

The workshop and the mad machines the strays cooked up for their frames.

The depot where strays worked on their mechs.

And the most important one, the cabana. Little more than a cafeteria the cabana was dressed up like a distasteful impersonation of Hanakos world with little plastic palm frawns lining the walls, glass sands up to the walls, pools of murky water in leaking tubs, an honest to freehold century palm that jutted at an angle due to its height and the ceilings lack of height somehow kept alive, and more. The Cabana was one part mess hall, one part party hotspot as it was at that very moment.

The cabana was filled with the smell and also very literal thick smoke as someone busted out a grill and was grilling off synthetic burger meat, liver-brats, mystery brisket and more filtered only by a small series of pinprick holes in a nearby window sucking oxygen through patches of duct tape over them into the airless void of the moon.

A cry of "Come and get em!" went out as the massive Rhinoscerous of a man, both figurative and literally, Rhindol Cruz shouted as he gestured with the tiny beer in his massive leathery hand and the shovel he was using as a spatula the dripped what to others would be a concerning amount of grease back onto the char broiler as it sparked flames of fire onto the floor where it soaked into and petered out in the sands. A small line formed from the grill as everything that could be used from torilla shells, to slices of bread, to just wrapping the ball-shaped meat patties in as every mutant went from the chow line to a table of what was maybe the largest table of assorted condiments in as many forms as possible. With them small tablets of radiation-blockers and antimutagens were downed to keep mutations from flaring unwantedly and the century of strays mingled and partied like it was YE-47.

Which it was.

The reason for the celebration? A job well done!

Not even that morning the news had come in through the Fae from the most reliable of their lot with the nickname Mutant Ruth for its lances triumph in aiding the benevolent grand viceroy-supreme in the unification and liberation of the planet in the Higaflan system. The grand viceroy, a little rixx none of them could pronounce the name of and just called him Twerp had unified his people after years of struggle and oppression after some cats came in, blew up their entire industry base, sent them a bunch of pixelated images someone had to explain to the locals was pornography, declared that the star army was #1, the kuvexians and rixxikor were at least #7, and that the empress herself wouldn't dump trash on them if they even asked real nice like!

Or something like that.

Twerp and his united army of the free folk (name still pending after it was explained that it might attribute them with freespacers) were fighting a war of liberation against the oppressors who denied their nature as star faring people wanting more than just farming and societal stability and had scraped together a rather nice war chest to hire on a company of Drones and a single lance that, while not inherently expensive, had sweetened the pot with the use of their new shipyard and port the people of Higaflan had been repairing after they said the cats decided that the Yamatain act of clear aggression after the Rixx had been doing hardly anything wrong in their eyes had destroyed it.

And then had re-iterated the lewd parts now that Twerp and his commanders knew to be offended by it.

Twerp promised free, unrestricted use of the shipyard by the Corporation who only needed to supply the materials and blueprints as soon as his liberation army won a very one-sided new civil war. Seeing an easy victory Clotho had taken a lance and a company of drones and by the festive atmosphere in the cabana news had spread far and wide that the planet was now under the rule of Grand-viceroy Twerp and his liberators.

With the help of the strays! Freedom fighters and soon to be in possession of a fleet!

"Dawgs are done, Come n' get em!" Rhindol cried out at the next batch of food as some got up for seconds while the others mingled and partied, the digital avatars of Fairys making a light show in the smoke and on the ceiling as they zipped out through the room excitedly.
 
Yamog only appeared for the second course, looking tired and haggard, though wearing a not-entirely-unpleasant frilly white gown upon their four-armed azure form. Turns out that recruiting for a religious organization took a lot of time and paperwork, not least because all forty of her original vehement admirers had been scooped up from a literal nuclear blast zone. Most of them couldn't read books, never mind operate a computer. The only logical step was to ask Shasta-no-sekai's head quartermaster Phage about giving them all freespacer mindware ports, but that only added to the medical bills and housing costs.

Oh well. At least the country bumpkins were easily amazed and appeased with 'modern' technology.

Four small hands grasped at a comparatively gigantic hotdog. She curtseyed unfittingly towards the rhino-man, himself an incomprehensibly huge construction of meat. Maybe he was related to Luk?

Her large red eye continued to scroll the area for the least actively dangerous place to sit, the spider's gaze landed upon Joanna. The lucky bunny, somehow with all four of their lucky paws still attached.

"Nice to see you in one piece, honey.~" Sneakers squeaked, Yamog gusted onto the metal bench next to her, caressing practically half the girl's body with a wave of soft white curly hair. A far cry from their voice in battle, this version of the petite ball of limbs was chipper and unassuming. "Ain't seen ya since your robot popped it's lid! I dunno how y'all stay... You know, so unmutated... What's yer secret? :3"
 
Luk was in heaven right now-were he intelligent enough to comprehend such a thing-a tray piled high with just about every edible-and quite a few things that weren't. More than a few strays watched in horrified fascination as he seemed to shove what looked like some kind of durandium block-likely placed there by someone when the big lizard mutant wasn't looking. Wayfinder was using this as an opportunity to see what he COULDN'T eat.

So far he'd consumed 3 hubcaps, 6 tacos, a fusion control system along with fissable material(wondering all the while how he was still alive), and a giant pile of mystery meat. It was quite fascinating honestly. Made her wonder if there was any limit to his stomach honestly.
 
Joanna, sitting on the metal bench for a rest, deep into thought about how she will modify her Dynamiteon next when she notices Yamog's approach, the sound of her sneakers' squeaking on the floor as she steps closer causes her to cringe a bit before she looks up at Yamog as she sits down beside her. She listens to her question before thinking to herself, with a finger on her chin, about her "secret to staying unmutated". She continues to think deeply for a few seconds before opening her mouth, ready to reply when her Fairy, Ilayd, suddenly materializes beside her face.

"She is still just in the early stages." Ilayd explains to Yamog while doing some gestures with its little hands. Joanna was about to say the same thing as her Fairy, but with her statement already said, she just gives Yamog a shrug and a smile, though even she does not really know how she managed to stay with little mutations for so long.
 
Cabana

Fairys in the thousands flittered about like a near rave of multicolored lights as the uncontrollable cyber-youths took revelry in the party atmosphere to come from all over freehold in some capacity when they could get leave, or more often leave their tasks automated.

A lack of ambient nanites kept the local amount to just a few hundred of first-come-first-serve fairys to grab control of them as they could while multitudes more had their own little party in the world mirroring their own in the form of the Fae to the point that the intense concentration of digital entities drew attention from ambient poly sentience dwelling beings right up until one of the cyber-ghosts, unable to contain its curiosity plunged its entity through the veil into the digital world that the fairys inhabited.

Had its representation of an avatar been at all biological appearing when the girls noticing a foreign intelligence in their world tore apart its machine code it would likely have been screaming and in pain as thousands of fairys got their own version of a meal as machine code and layers of data and information were pulled apart and integrated and shared amongst them.

The rest of the onlookers chose to keep a healthy amount of firewalls and conceptual distance from then on as they observed the hornets nest in their midst and actually interfaced with a few of fairys who were currently residing outside of the Fae in freeholds semi-stratosphere in a comical display of netcode entities the equivalent to demigods conversing with a handful of little human-nepleslian analog looking female avatars with cutesy butterfly wings as the old ghosts passed on old software the likes of campfire stories to the little sprites they could not but at least respect who took in the code eagerly.

While this went on, In the cabana, Luk began choking.

It had started off as a long piece of sausage casing catching in his throat. Then in an attempt to force it down several buns, chips, and snacks and hard swallowing. When that didn't work reflex and instinct took over as the large mutant began trying to heave the clog up. When that didn't happen and he was unable to both swallow or heave the mass of food out, Luk began to thrash.

His hand banging against the table was just met with raised glasses and mugs of salutations at him. When Mama Ophelia passed him by the matronly mutant blindly passed down a mug of sasparilla near him and started shuffling over, her bandage-wrapped arms and face and tumor-wracked body with its pale-gray skin doing nothing to stop the friendly old biddy of a caretaker from feeling her way blindly around with a tray of mugs to hand out to whoever she sensed nearby.

"Thank'ye momma!" One of the strays, Jax, called out as the blind mutie turned her maw his way and bared her teeth in a rictus grin with a feral raspy "O̵͉̿̀͝f̸̢̟̗̮̌ ̷͍̂̑̈́͝c̵̹̱͍̖̓͒͗̕ò̴͓̥̮̔ù̶͖̳̋͊r̷̠̠̳͐͒͝s̴̭͊́̕͜e̵̪͍̐͗,̵̬̥̩̅ ̵̧̛͓̱̓͝d̴̼̥̗̓e̴̺̬͂̊á̵̛̱̄̕r̵͎̜̦̊̒ͅi̸̧͇̦̜͑e̵̫̹̯͛.̷̲̳̑ ̴̡̇" back at him with the sound of her voice like a wad of steel mesh being dragged through a brass instrument while trying to play it.

"Hey I think Nick is dead!" Someone called out unconcernedly as a few looked over to the form with its head on the table as the lupine man frothed at the mouth without moving until someone nudged him and he snapped up and fell out of his seat to a chorus of laughter.

With everyone more or less fed or currently feeding the cabana turned from a roaring chamber of noise to a more subdued atmosphere or more casual conversation interspaced by the occasional guffaw, shattering of a knocked over glass, or a weird gagging and wrenching noise from somewhere as each random and unidentical table salvaged or built from scrap settled in. Chips, arriving somewhat late with a dirty paper plate of his namesake and a glizzy lacking any bun strolled up to join his lance and before sitting down put the flat of his hand against Luks back as a wad of something resembling a bundle of napkins and bits of burger shot past Charlotte to hit the back of someones head, causing the other mutant to look about wildly for a culprit before settling down as Luk gasped for breath.

"'S nice, this kinda shindig. We dont get much free time with most of the strays all in one place like this often with everything going on." He commented rather impressively while his avian beak smashed crisp salted potato slices showing his practiced ease at speaking fluent trade despite lacking any lips or teeth in which to enunciate. His statement was true to fact any of them short of Luk could tell. With the dangerous environment of freehold factory, and the lack of resources and training for their job the lance would be hard pressed to place more than a dozen of the almost hundred odd mutants in the cabana as being there when any of them first joined with the corporations security force having a high turnover rate while the Terror Wolves enjoyed only a slightly greater amount of survivability due to their mechs.

Those few like chips all seemed to be of the same mind, always looking about, taking in the others, cataloging them. With a bit of a huff, however, lightly slapped the table in annoyance.

"But a mans got bills to pay after all! The damn alimony and brat-support alone is kicking me in the cloaca, and if you think them syndies wont find you even out here and drag you back for not paying off their loans then you better think twice!" He complained, a good several weeks past their last job with only the base pay of whatever amount someone said they made when they remembered to pay them being the only break with more often than not the Mad Mutants own father, the more or less actual CEO of the company being the most compitent person within ten lightyears and with actual buisness-ing experience making sure that even if they werent paid regularly that when he managed to finally come back to paying attention to the Strays they got theirs and usually something to sweeten the pot.

And the troublemakers always found themselves thrown out on the worst jobs...

"Ah mean, we really need a job soon. Not just for me!" He defended, "But for you lot too! I just know you're all going stir crazy right now!"

As he spoke, someone strode up to the table with the thump of boots on the deck and stood behind Yamog over her shoulder. At about five foot nine the man was not very imposing compared to the weird cyclopse but what he lacked in stature the honest-to-yui Human made up for it in pure aesthetic.

Wearing a Barghest hardsuit the former Rogers World man at arms had added his own flare to the armor with the addornment of a tabbard of blue-black and red with the weirding single eye of Yamog taking up prominence over the breastplate, while very poorly welded on spikes of metal jutted from one pauldron and the hilt of a very wicked blade made of a silicone tube wrapped with copper wire and a large battery connected to wires on the pommel that fed into the makeshift power-sword protruded from a mantle of some kind of combination of unidentified leather and a mane of fibre-optic cables so thin and small it looked like a pelt which only complimented the bandolier of energy cells criss-crossing his chest and the Laslock they powered almost as tall as he was that he rested an armored hand on the barrel of like a staff.

The man was Caleb. One of Yamogs zealot 'Knights' and the cause of just some of Chips own current woes as the four-dozen or so Humans had taken over a small former abandoned Voidfolk outpost and turned it into their own little pretend fort with the help of some of the strays to set up oxygen scrubbers and a couple crates of spare rations and expired anti-rad pills and began acting as they wished.

Out of their element, more than anyone else had ever been in the sector her knights were already cultivating mushrooms and had killed more Tech Scum in the past couple of months than any three lances of the Strays had in that same amount of time.

And they did it without getting paid.

"Mayhapse I may be of assistance if you require it, King Roger." Caleb offered, annoyingly rolling his R's and sounding all pompus and fancy-pants despite the fact that he couldn't even read.

Even if some of the mutants couldn't either...

"With my lady's permission, of course." He added, nodding in deference to Yamog sitting in front of him. "I know of just the quest for your great machines that would prove most beneficial to the realm. What say you, Heroes?"
 
Luk immediately grabbed the mug-practically shoving it's contents down his throat and finally forcing the chunk of material down as Wayfinder looked on in amazement. Letting out a few coughs he resumed his meal, scarfing down a few more tacos as if him choking on his meal earlier was little more than a minor inconvenience.

He was going to end up with another chunk of crap lodged in his guller, wasn't he? The fae mused as she checked his mech over.
 
Yamog's brain was subtracted from reality for a while, as their singular peeper just gazed at Luk with a dazed look on their face. The questions of that mutant were twofold- How did he fit all that stuff in his body? What poor wretch was being given the job of cleaning up after him?... A truly terrifying concept.

"...Well, there is always tomorrow."
Her soft tone finally answered Joanna's tone wistfully. "Maybe you'll grow something cool, like some wings or something.~"

It was Caleb that finally snapped them out of it, and she had to funnel down the rest of their sausage, then wipe their hands rapidly.

The willing pilgrims had taken up her banner, her ideas of spirituality- But she knew she had to perform the duties as their lady in return. That was the other half of cults, of being honor bound.

Standing up on the bench so that she was at least about face height with this sterling knight, she made a quick curtsey, before the lower hands deftfully made the threefold signs of the Archaios Anathema. An upper hand transferred a kiss from her blue lips onto the emblazoned eye badge, feeling true treasuring mirth as they smiled upon the man's dour grubby image.

"Sir Caleb, your unit is recovering in strength, is it not? I find myself blessed by your continued dedication." Of course, internally, this came with the nagging idea that we should probably go with them before they burn everything of value down. "Might I ask where your current crusade leads you? Down into the depths of this cursed world, no doubt?"

Did these guys even know about the concept of taking prisoners?...
 
Joanna chuckles at the thought of growing wings while watching the scene of Luk gagging from the sausage and trying to force it down happen in front of her and Yamog.

Hearing Caleb's voice behind her, she turns her head as far back as it can go to see a person clad in a suit of armor, then from the corner of her eyes, she notices Yamog stand up after eating her sausage in a rush. She watches the two of them interact before returning deep into her thoughts for what additions should she install on her Dynamiteon.
 
Cabana

"East, as the stars claim to guide us these days," Caleb despite his hardsuit held out a palm open and facing up as Yamog gently dragged a couple delicate fingers across it, prompting the man at arms to close it gently and make a gesture as if tucking it away into the eye before continuing.

"And not so as of late. In our dealings with the void-folk east of the redoubt we have claimed who have performed their craft to repair what gives our bastion illumination for little more than copper and the right to exchange charts did we pick up tales further east by-"

He continued on for at least another forty of so seconds to essentially say that some spacers had warned some of the knights not to travel too far east due to rampant Tech-Scum activity.

"And when squire Richard, a well-versed scout of the old world did return he did so with a count of three score of the black-metal deathcrawlers as you call them along his travels east."

"Yeah..."
Chips drew out, not sounding very excited by the prospect. "Thirty or so deathcrawlers? Iffin that's so i'd bet it's whatever factory the tech-scum found and been cranking out tanks the past couple years bout fifty or seventy clicks east. Aint nobody done nothin about em cause they don't come this way much and they're a good buffer between us and Mothership Durrandidallica landed out that way who ain't been all that friendly o' us since the Clang bloddied their noses a year or so back."

"Oh, but this is
different." Caleb assured, taking out a rolled scroll of some kind of blurry-yellow plastic canvas likely torn off some insulation and unrolled it over the table, half covering most of their plates.

On it was some kind of hand-painted map that despite being in what looked like some kind of black lubricant or grease still glittering with the sparkling glass sands outside where it was certainly hastily drawn were a series of landmarks. Several week out of date marks for the Deathcrawlers Dick had spotted and their average patrol routes, a nearby tear into the side of the moon from Aetheric lancing and the exposed lattice under the surface of metal structures not uncommon to the moon, a few exposed entrances to underground tunnels the Knights where using to travel safely under the surface..

And finally, right in the center of the overlapping circles of death crawler patrols was some kind of blotchy, A-symetrical shape of bulbous protruding spheres, large towers, strange machine-shapes, and geometric shapes that made it look like some kind of tiered duck-tractor hybrid with treads and an open ramp on the back.

Chips stared at it long and hard, trying to make out the shape before waving his hand in dismissal and then pausing mid motion, some kind of recognition in his beady black eyes as he carefully looked around, and after being certain that nobody was paying much attention to them very slowly and deliberately leaned forwards and started rolling up the map, his voice disbelieving and forced quite as he addressed the knight.

"Who else knows about this?" He asked.

"Myself and my fellows. As well as some of the voidfolk as of six meals ago." He counted off before remembering something else. "And Ser Joseph whom I met when entering this fortress and did speak with for a time."

At that, chips shot up and began looking around, frantically.

"Shite. Joe and his crew ain't here!" He hissed, turning to the rest of the lance.

"Dont rush. Dun even make a scene. But grab everything ye need for a three-day trip and get to the mech bay in the next fifteen minutes." He hissed at barely above a whisper anxiously.

"Damn bastard and the rest of his lance aint even here. Prob got a head start on us already!"

Mech Bay


The mech bay was a circular, cleared out garage on the first level and was the pride and joy of the strays. While not every stray was a pilot, those of the Terror Wolves of Freehold were. And close to fifty mech cradles adorned the garage in a spiral pattern where each pilot stored their own personal machine from the day it was printed. Some were empty, awaiting new pilots to be trained. Others were marked off with tape or canvas over the machine after the death of their pilot for the machine to be taken apart and recycled for future ones.

But almost all were full.

Except maybe five in a row closest to the entrance, the seventy-foot tall bay doors already swung open to leave piles of black glittering sand to be blown in to the airless garage that barely inconvenienced any of them in their air-tight flight suits and helmet-mask combination.

Chips, Caleb, and two other of Yamogs knights were already there; The knights favoring some kind of grav-sled that was little more than three small sections of short wall on a rectangular bed seated above a cab of some kind for driving with seven grav-plates situated at odd angles. The bucket of a grav-sled looked jank, unarmored, and poorly constructed and was almost certainly some sort of salvage from some voidfolk of tech scum the nights had dealings with and seemed to be the three knights means of transportation if all the gear crammed into it was any indication.

"We are saddled and ready at your convenience King Roger, Lady Yamog." The radios in their helmets sounded on the proximity channel. While the knights were inbred and backwards primatives that didn't understand how anything like a battery or even electricity worked they were quick on the uptake of the 'rituals' to use some simple equipment like radios even if they didn't know how to program them or the concept of riding even if their ride was a very dangerous (to themselves) looking grav sled and not some horse or crab.

Mounting high Highwayman, Chips waited for the rest of the lance to arrive and mount their mechs. The mechs usual three-barrels of hyper laser spinning in a startup diagnostic and the heavy laser on one side beginning to glow while finally missiles in their tubes jutted out ready to fire before sliding back into their silos.
 
"Let's go Luk!" Wayfinder chirped; the big lizard mutant had been more or less forced into his machine mid-meal; the poor Strays who'd been tasked with herding him had decided to do so from a safe distance; using a large chunk of spicy-smelling meat attached to a string hanging from a large metal pole. The fae kicked the machine into gear, the light mech's plasma shotgun giving it a menacing look even as the big lizard chomped happily into his 'meal' dripping juices down his front.
 
Yamog's fairy Deimos had requested a Sun Scorpion, but was denied on grounds of the stealth technology being too expensive, for somebody as uncontrollable and melee-obsessed as their assigned pilot in a fight... Something about the fact they'd just been commissioned, and blunting the suprise... But that didn't stop the incessant AI from getting their clawing hands on one of the early production Flyswatters, and having the nose gattling laser hardpoint on that swapped with a spare Scorpion chainsaw arm.

Thus the Savage Proboscus was born, a tall and gangly tripod monster, towering in the gloom of it's pen like some cryptid horror. The colour scheme was a hasty, ruddy red crimson, plastered in many places with obscure runes and parchment. Candles had been lit at one point before the pilgrims were shooed from the hanger, but the crust of wax was still around here and there, making the morbid goliath smell like a mixture of church altar and oil dump.

The last modification was a small detachable flatbed palette on the rear of the hips, with little but a small gaurd rail to keep passangers onboard. Still, it couldn't be any worse than the knight's own transports. LGL and the Macromissile pods, the main armaments, otherwise remained intact.

"It looks glorious. May our enemies be blessed by cold, indifferant annhilation.~" The spider girl regarded regarded the static laden form of her void-black fairy, hanging in the air.

"Missiles and cooling gas loaded, batteries charged." They responded, as contemptable towards the ritualistic aspect, as always.

"I would be blessed to have one or two of your knights in my direct company, sir Caleb!" It didn't effect their demeanour one bit, the intense red eye accompanied by the sparkling glint of their braces. "Perhaps send me one of your younger, less experienced souls, so that I may encourage them spiritually? The choice is yours.~"
 
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Joanna stands in front of her mech as it stays on its designated spot in the hangar bay, hands to the side of her hips and smiling with pride as the modifications to her Dynamiteon are basically complete. While the core mech is still there, the mods changed its overall silhouette to something else, the original side weapon hardpoints are now replaced with articulated struts on both sides of the body that each end with a weapon mount, its legs now upgraded to have improved shock absorbing capabilities at the cost of the missile pod, another back weapon mount, a new canopy piece, and a Swordbreaker on the top of the body in addition to the previous modifications. The mech now resembles a humanoid form, the Swordbreaker mirroring a head, and the articulated struts on the sides of the body mimicking arms.

The mechanics already mounted the mech's weapons as her loadout was already given to them earlier, consisting of a Hyper Laser on the right-side back mount, a Macromissile pod on the left-side back mount carrying 12 Shieldbreaker missiles, a Plasma Breaker on the right articulated strut, and a Hardsell Coilcannon for the left articulated strut.

After a bit of staring, she climbs up the mech and enters the cockpit, dropping herself onto the seat and taking a look around at its repaired interior before starting the mech up.
 
The Great Cerg - 140km east of Ricinus

The Great Cerg was one of those places that gave freehold its idilic charm. Seven-hundred thousand square kilometers of rolling aether-glassed black sands, great chasms from lancing strikes that dropped for miles, little tears in reality from aether-buggery condensed into slivers of event horizon that could either pass you five million kilometers across the system or pass right through your mech like a vibroblade through a stick of butter. And finally; magnificent plasma-charged ion storms that could strip even unshielded starship hull that rolled across the landscape, scouring it of any attempt of voidfolk or mutant alike to settle on the surface save for the great optical tunnels under the surface of the moon.

It was a long voyage by mech. Ten or so hours with occasional stops and some changing as one of the three knights, Caleb, Tindal, or Micah would occasionally ride on the side of Yamogs flyswatter, each of them former Crab Dragoons able to stadle something and stay rather secure as they more listened than conversed with their lady other than to sometimes divert their course or point out some unremarkable landmark. Micah and Tindal spent the most time riding while Caleb, clearly some social standing or rank above them stayed mostly on task.

The mechs and the little grav-skimmer loitered outside one such tunnel. Not so much an entrance as a collapsed pit through the roof of one of the optical tunnels they slid and stomped down through the roof of warped and twisted durrandium plates and into pitch black. Spotlights and smaller illumination lenses clicked on one by one to reveal the scale they now found themselves.

If the average mech of the corporation was between 20-30ft tall, then the ceiling of the tunnel had to be three or even four times that height above their cockpits and easily half again longer with each of the four mechs able to stand side by side if they wanted to and still have enough for another two or three on either side. Pipes and fibrous cables thicker than any man or mutant lined or hung off the ceiling like snakes that fed into the occasional service or side tunnel that more often than not had collapsed into just a wall of black sand or detritus.

The tunnel depressed slightly into an almost noticeable for the scale downwards slope that even with all their lights showed only darkness like a match before the maw of the all-encompassing void.

"This cave system takes us most of the way." Caleb breathed too closely into his hardsuits built in microphone as the more dim swivvel spotlight on the skimmer tracked about as it slowly took the lead, the two other nights unslinging their laslocks with their own almost noticeable smaller taped-on flashlights that they tracked about.

"It's a service line for junkers." Chips said, filling in the silence now that the ambiance of glass sands pelting their cockpits almost made it unnaturally quiet save for the whine of their own servo motors and the the thump of each footfall. "Before the cats came knocking this part of freehold was some kinda megafactory, city, and transit network all in one. There are tunnels like this all over the place that the junkers would travel through and repair various nodes and grids. They also used it for a kind of metro but without no trams; Without no air and no traffic laws sometimes it was just safer and more convenient for large groups of voiders to travel underground to get to various factories instead of navigating the maze topside."

"Pray tell, King rogers. What could construct such networks this wide?"
One of the other knights, Micah asked, the clear wonder in his voice as the tiny little man in his hardsuit could be made out looking around.

"Multi-nuclear boring drills." Chips answered. "I've seen the back of one where the whole thing got lodged under a collapsed factory slab in a tunnel like this. Bout' six-hundred meters long, fifty wide and tall. They use nuclear-fusion pump lasers on a rotating vice to bore through rock and sand. Can make something like two to three hundred meters in a day if one of the tech scum that built a community around digging it out was to be believed."

They traveled like this for a time. The path occasionally branching into an open or collapsed tunnel, or occasionally a massive sealed wall-like vault of a door that bore some claim marker from some corp or mothership or tech-scum group or another while a few even had SnS or Stray tags on it eluding to some of their own corporation having been here prior to mark off the location of one of the many tech vaults under the surface that could either lead to anything from a pristine spacer factor or vault to just another collapsed tunnel on the other side. They would stop at these as Caleb referenced some map under a light to make course corrections or turn them back the way them came entirely. They stumbled upon the other Stray, Joseph, and his lance tracks from time to time but without Caleb and his map eventually saw less and less sign of them as the hours crept on and close to fifteen hours since they departed the Rincinus factory Chips finally called a halt as batteries began to reach lower levels and each of them began to feel the fatigue of the day wear on.

"We'll make camp here and get some rest." Chips pulled them into a side tunnel maybe fifty or sixty meters deep that cut off where another tunnel above it had collapsed ontop and crushed it as they brought their frames to a halt and powered them down.

Camping outside of their mechs, in an airless void wasn't anything new to any inhabitant of freehold. Bubble-tents were unpacked and filled and their airlocks set up and connected to one another like a strange rat maz and circus all in one, as battery banks hooked up to air pumps slowly inflated them and made them breathable while everything from sleeping bags or blankets and small can-stoves were broken out for packaged ration meals as the Strays began to wind down and their mechs slowly recharged as the hyper-cell matrix in each one absorbed new charge from the radioactive star paint and the heat it generated.

Around a large collapseable lantern and bags of ration packs they said their goodnight regardless of the time and one by one mutant and man alike found some semblance of sleep as the third night, Tindal, took the first watch as he patrolled outside the tents with his Laslock.

Three Hours Later

it was a few hours later when the first disturbance roused any of them. Dark, almost impossibly so in their khaki plastic tents they saw nothing. In the same airless void they heard nothing. And yet there was a small flash of light, almost too easy to miss even as it passed through most of the line of tents unheard as it made a hole two-fingers wide near the top of each one.

The second shot, however, was very hard to miss as it passed at about three feet off the ground and by sheer coincidence if it was aimed or not struck through each of the tents and then hit the small hyper-cell battery bank as it exploded outwards and luckily away from the tents but exploded the tunnel into a corona flare of yellow and green as the volatile star paint inside of it ruptured and like the sectors largest exploded glowstick; Splattered everything as super-hot star paint landed on their tents and like flicking the lights on in a dark room bathed each of them in light as a sizzling sound could be made as a drop of starpaint melted through and hit Luk and his muzzle where like a drop of scalding oil was impossible to miss.

Simular events happened to each of them as they stirred and rose, found the air getting thinner, drops of boiler super-caner melting through their tents, and suddenly a flash of red-light and a new hole as some laser bolt passed through as each of them were forced to start scrambling to dawn their suits and grab their gear. None of them were unarmed, Laslock pistols and some SMGs were commonplace issue for the strays but in the lavalamp effect of the paint and the dark it was impossible from inside the tents to find out what was shooting at them as they slowly deflated...
 
Luk was awoken by a stinging in his side-thinking it being some random bug and swatting it aside, he'd found himself being crammed into a suit by...someone before having a large piece of pipe pressed into his hands with the tent slowly being deflated. Not thinking much of it-a not uncommon occurrence for the mutant-he rushed outside trying to figure out what was going on...

Wayfinder herself was trying to find away to get a scan of the area and direct the big mutant-preferably towards their attackers.
 
The sizzling noise of the Starpaint awakens Joanna from her sleep, she slowly opens her eyes and sits up just as the others started to arise from their own slumber. The commotion turns into a confused panic as everyone rushes to get their gear, Joanna being one of them. Once she finishes, she runs outside the slowly deflating tent to assess the situation, quickly finding the camp and the surrounding perimeter to be covered and illuminated with Starpaint. She is under the impression that they are under some sort of attack, though even she is just as unsure about that as everybody else there.
 
All empty space was, of course, silent- but it was a strange fact of living on Freehold that you soon learned to appreciate true radio silence- as in having no electromagnetic background noise. It was often the only way to tell if you were truly under enough concrete, lead radiation cladding, or electrical sheilding to be free of a myriad of constant enviromental dangers.

Sleeping in a glorified plastic bag, the one-eyed princess had never let this crawling paranoia far from her mind. They slept in practically their entire suit minus the helmet... But that still didn't mean they were lucid enough to actually realise what was happening, until shit really started to hit the fan. Yamog was already having dreams like this constantly. It was only really the sudden, searing heat, that made her bolt upright.

"...Deimos, be a dear..." "I am already waking the Proboscus up... Stand by. Control rods are extending."

Blinking rapidly and struggling to find their laslock pistol, Yamog stumbled out, grabbed the zip seal of the tent- stopped themselves- re-screwed the latch of their voidsuit's helmet back on- and then finally shambled out into the open.

The paint was horrible, but in a useful way... A massive heat source was good. It meant they couldn't be targeted in infra-red, at least...

Found the knight's anti-grav skiff and crawled parrallel down the side, trying to get to her mech...

<"Brother Tindal!?... Our Knight Caleb?... Mister Roger?..."> She garbled over the coms net. A cough, and the tell-tale 'pong' of somebody's helmet bouncing on metal. <"...Might I ask whom... it is that beseiges us?">
 
Tunnels

There was no basis for time beyond their suits chronometers as being at least a hundred meters underground in a pitch-black tunnel wide enough you couldn't see either side of it was an intimidating feeling to be forced out of their torpor and into. The world they entered from their waking sleep was a duality of disorientingly bright, and pitch swallowed darkness as artistic splotches of star-paint scattered about and either fell slowly like a rain of fireflies or sprinkled about on the metal deck plating for meters in every direction making a disorienting display that combined with the deflating tents and the lack of orientation was a toll on the mind.

Around them was the skimmer, Yamog having already found it parked close as it was. And the deflating tents now muffling the light. Their mechs were at least fifty meters away into the darkness somewhere that may have eluded them but for the marks on their helmets visors placing them for them. In the pressure and low gravity of the moon it would not be a quick sprint as other events overtook such ideas.

In the dark, lacking any optics to piece it the only way to even know where they were with the glitter of star paint being insufficient was via their fairys communicating to one another and updating their approximate locations. None of them manifested, a wise move as far down the dark black what could either be a mile or just a few dozen meters away a trail of sparks arced in the dark as a power weapon was activated, the brief illumination casting a form as light and sparks trailed and cut with a small explosion of fireflies as the sword cleft a humanoid form barely seen in the dim light of the weapons sweep in twain. It was dark again only for an instant as a constant beam of yellow-orange light thin as a finger darted about like a solid stream where the Knight had been; Sparks flying off the wall behind him as it zig-zagged about looking for its target.

Several meters away the blade roared to life again at the source of the thin beam, the laser darting in a jerk slightly before going out as the momentary flash illuminated the severing of a hand.

And then all was still.

In the lack of air or sound the whole ordeal was entirely silent like looking through a window at a muted scene. No cries, no cracks of energy, no snap of ozone. From the comfort of their mechs they at least normally had the white noise lf errant whirs of servos, beeps of consoles, and the glass sands of Freehold pelting off their cockpits. This was an entirely new and very unwelcome lack of sensory input that when it was finally broken did not satisfy the need when it was fulfilled.

A light snapped on. And then another. And another. and then several more like a sudden search party in the dark as small personal light sources flicked on at the ends of weapons or larger sources carried about on their persons. They were not equal; Some brighter or dimmer, few at the same level or jerking about erratically as lights trailed over each other. A score of them illuminated a still form on the deck around them a ways away; A familiar Barghest hardsuit still on the deck where one of the knights had fallen. A form entered the light to examine the unidentified errant. From the likely hundred meters or so any of the Strays could guess it was the form was humanoid at possibly five or six foot tall. Covered in a patchwork tarp-like cloak not unlike those worn by the pathfinders found on freehold, three arms pushed the cloak aside to expose a thin environmental suit covered in military webbing and as the hood fell back a bubble-like helmet and respirator that reflected like a mirror as the Tech Scum turned over the fell knight and with the wrenching of a cybernetic arms strength pulled the power sword from the cold dead hands of the wan and examined it in the light of its fellows as four or five other techies surged forwards and started wrestling away the mans belongs as armor was removed, his sparse belongings pilfered, and from nearby even the illumination of a light source showed one techie appraising the mans spent Laslock.

Older than the free state the Tech Scum was a catch-all term for a caste of voidfolk-adjacent nomads found mostly on freehold. Abandonded from their motherships, corrupted by means unknown on the polysentience, driven mad by the fall of the free state, or just made that way they were often hostile to all and even their own and driven to purpose known only to or not even to them. Travelling in small bands, solo, or even in massive roving communities they were suspicious and dangerous on the best days and downright a menace on average.

And while many could communicate and function normally and some even inhabited entire settlements or could be found amongst trade caravans they could seldom be trusted with power or numbers over another group hence a band of them traveling through the same radial tunnels as the strays and finding a camp parsley guarded and of clearly smaller size than their own it was almost inevitable that they would attack for even the strays meager supplies and possessions and information.

Or just for the sake of killing them.

At least a dozen of them could be made out from the lights dancing about. And as they looted the corpse of anything worth taking from the deceased knight a team of them spread out, lights dancing and searching about greedily as they and then others behind them who remembered there was more spoils to be had advanced meter by meter towards the starscape of an eyesore that was their camp; A spotlight kicking on and above the scum from some larger vehicle behind them to bathe their camp in a beam as it looked about searchingly and then past them where it locked onto and then transverse from one mech to the others as the main prizes of their raid.

The strays were scattered but still mostly in the dark. And had at most a minute or more before any of the forward most techies came close enough to catch any of them in their lights or start searching the area for them...
 
Yamog felt the loss of the knights deeply- She had risen the poor errant sods from their backwater hole, only for them to die somewhere equally unpleasant, far away from any decent spot for a grave. In most circumstances she would have raged against their deaths, or at least administered last rights- But these were corrupted voidfolk they were dealing with, and any break of radio silence was a liability at best...

And how long would her more savage comrades like Luk stay silent, immobile, hidden?...

At first she was terrified it was a swarm of junkers. Now she kind of wished it was.

"Black claws, swift as night-" Radio off, a whispered pledge. "Embed my movements with savage righteousness..."

And then she crawled. Running was slow and obvious in this gravity. It kicked up dust clouds. But Yamog had four arms... So, face down, legs pinched to the sides of her abdomen, she grabbed at the ashen grit, and climbed horizontally through the dark...

What else was there to do? Activate the skiff, and get shot at? Auto-activate her mech, and get her destination shot at? Talk to her fairy, and give away her location?

No, the one thing these degenerates probably couldn't detect was a swift, purely organic little arachnid, scuttling beneath the glare of burning star paint...

Probably.
 
Joanna, hidden in a dark, recessed spot within one of the enormous tunnel's walls, peeks slightly out to scan the surrounding area. The bunny's gaze darts across the scene in front of her, the only sounds she hears is her own breathing as silence stretches across the dark, empty atmosphere and the lights of the Tech Scum's spotlight and the Star Paint on the ground illuminate the ground and walls. Several silhouettes stand among the brightness, and of course, the corpse of one of the knights being looted of any goods for whatever purposes they may use it for.

She retracts herself fully back into her hiding spot, thinking of a plan to get herself to her mech without getting shot at by an entire faction, though she fails to come up with one, so she waits and hopes for the others to do something first. She peeks out again, seeing Yamog skedaddle across the floor like a spider, which she basically is. It is a brilliant move she thinks to herself, though effectiveness is another story.
 
Tunnels - Camp

In an airless void the lack of sound was surreal as one of the techies came within several dozen meters of the camp and bathed a beam of red light over one of the tents. There was no sound at all like a screen on mute as the form of scrap and wire brought up some kind of weapon and unloaded; Muzzle flashes and the occasional tracer as they stitched one tent and then onto each other with casual ease of attempted murder not unlike the disconnect of simply moving your boot to step on a passing ant.

One of the Tech Scums comrades check the gunman, who flew comically in the low gravity several feet away as the second mad voider examined the now hole-ridden bubble tent before making several clearly angry gestures and bunching the whole shelter up to start shoving it in a bag.

Such scenes were going on all around the edge of the camp as many of the scavengers examined the star paint, tried to pack up their new tents, or huddled over the exploded Macro Cell batteries container likely wondering if it was worth the salvage. These Tech Scum weren't like the larger groups who were organized and used tactics and discipline as their time in the military in the Free State before they were abandoned of their purpose. No these were a wandering band of scavengers that had they met the strays in the open would have avoided them like a plague. While many of them seemed content for the first scraps, others still had their eyes on the main prizes as more lights seemed to be pointed in the general direction of the closest mech than actually searching for the other potential inhabitants of the camp they were raiding.

If there were twenty of them, at least half were busy breaking down the strays camp for them. While the other half was walking through the camp like it didn't exist as one passed mere meters past Joanna without even looking in her direction and then past her. Were there any sound they might have hear her reaction when an armored hand clamped down on the rabbits shoulder and a dark form overshadowed her only for the interior light of the Barghest hardsuits visor to illuminate a familiar face as Tindal, one of Yamogs Knights, looked her over before nodding more to himself than her. Making a few gestures that Joanna could at least guess meant he wanted her to follow him the Knight clutched his Laslock in both hands and stalked through the darkness alongside the walls parallel to the enemy towards her mech.

In a strange twist of fate Yamog had a simular but less welcome surprise as she crawled on the ground like a swimmer in shallow water her hand landed on something that clearly wasn't the ground as her fingers closed around a tarp of some kind and pulled it slightly in her momentum only for a mitten-like glove to launch out lightning fast from the prone form hiding under the tarp that was practically invisible and close around her wrist, yanking slightly as nine tiny red pinpricks of light barely and more noticeable than the dim cherry of a cigarette peered out from the chasm of darkness at her. There was the sensation of something poking against her suit but not penetrating it as what she could guess was a visor of some kind appraised her before retracting the spike-like weapon that very clearly looked like it was made for killing sharks she might have seen on a documentary once, and let go of her wrist as the stranger slunk back into its hiding spot, the almost too easy to miss red pinpricks still watching from some kind of transparent crosshatch of fabric as it did so.

"Ready any time~" Deimos sounded in Yamogs comms without manifesting an avatar, The hidden hunters visor seeming to cock ever so slightly to the side like a curious cat as if it was aware of the Fairy as a light came to within a few meters of her but passed without event.

Tunnels - Tunnels

"I'm tellin ya we were supposed to take that junction a klick back!" Big Tony cursed as his Mean Machine fired a slug from its Guasshammer into one of the advancing Junkers that seemed to be covering the wall as deep as their lights could penetrate as the hoard of murderous maintenance drones advanced on the walls, floor, and ceiling while the four Strays in their mechs steadily walked their mechs backwards and lashed out at their advancing impediment with their weapons like threshing wheat as they did so.

"Well maybe if someone wrote the directions down instead of saying 'Ill remember it, trust me guys' we woulda took the right path instead of taking every wrong turn!" Lisa admonished sounding near hysterical in her claustrophobia despite the fact that the tunnel was big enough to fit a small starship as her much smaller Psycho Armor powered frame grabbed one of the junkers by its face and crunched with her massive power claw while the Pulse Laser on her shoulder fired into the oncoming tide and her free hand brandished a knife large enough to be an industrial-sized cleaver back and forth at two other drones before following up with her trademark "I wanna go hoooooome!" in her nasally whine that made a slight whistle no doubt from one of her nostrils as she did.

"Can it you'se two!" Joe snapped, a thick if short lived pulse of energy from his Crookback and its large overhead heavy laser battery, passing down the tunnel and out of sight as it killed everything in its path before hitting a wall. SnS Crookback fref1.webp

"All that matters is we get there 'fore roger and his lot do. And if that means a few bumps along the way so be it." Joe reminded them again of their final objective before firing again and continuing. "Sides that's the way that Techie barge went down when they saw us anyhow. And last thing we need is to end up in a fight and blocking the path with a bunch of wreckage from that thing and having to turn around anyhow, Right?" He stated finishing with a clear question that none of them seemed to answer.

"Riiiiiiiight?" He asked again, this time more forcefully before harumphing over the comms and when that didn't work trying to deflect the blame yet again.

"Herbert was supposed to remember the directions the sword guy gave us anyway." He murmured, clearly still on the mic as he tried to blame Huthang once again.

"SoOoOrRrRyYy" A very tired and slow-dopey voice came into the eldritch abominations cockpit as Hobbes, Joeseph fairy manifested alongside Titania to fall dramatically into the holographic arms of her sister as a blanket and cute nightcap appeared on the other fairy as she did. "He gets... Grumpy... When he doesn't... Get enough... Sleep..." She drew out every word through her glowing brown avatar.

While it wasn't abnormal for the Fairy it was the same for any of them. Close to fifteen hours in their mechs even the uncomfortably energetic Big Tony had begun to get snippy with each wrong turn in the tunnels and their leaders refusal to stop or make camp for even an instant.

"Herbert on your left!" Joe called out as one of the junkers skittered past his crookback and towards his Sun Scorpion
 
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