Operation Chromium: Tears in the Rain (MT, IC, Closed)

[Monfrox]

While certainly a tense situation, Allison showed no change in her stone-faced expression. It was just how she was, with her training having helped her solidify it. One of the major things they teach you about being an agent is how to exude calmness and look professional, even when everything was coming down around you or, in this case, when you had a gun pointed at you. Allison stepped aside with a sigh, resting her hands in her jacket and giving Alexi a nonplussed expression.

"Girl, you're worse than a washed-out jarhead." She sighed. "Might want to call that little rabbit of yours back though, there are wolves outside."

Outside, Arike looked to Razor and gave her a quick two-fingered gesture to behind her and then traced a small counterclockwise circle in the air. Go. Circle around. The Sergeant nodded and began picking her way around the outside of the building. She touched her throat.

"Corporal?" She said in barely a whisper.

"I can sense another person inside. They have the stance of someone with a two-handed weapon. If they step into the path of the doorway, I can take a shot at it. It's better than nothing." Came the silent reply in her head.

"Alright, easy, let's see if we can play this out."

[Hurtful Thoughts]

Pelsgord, Chitzeland
Ruined "basement":

"I'm not too worried about him unless your wolves have a holy hand grenade, or two." Alexi still stood in her well-protected position, casually-confident of the situation as usual. She knew there were more out there, she knew they were trying to outflank her, she knew they were moving quickly and all little Allison had to do was stall for time before it'd be her turn to be smug about it.

And yet Alexi continued to smile.

"Your boss Santa sure knows how to find good friends; if you weren't, you'd have been more curious about what this meeting is all about. Just had to see for myself if all that paranoia I was warned about made y'all a little too twitchy for the job."

Topside, East:
Tsu popped out a window and slid down a board into some bushes just as Richter began rounding the corner. Whether or not he'd seen her was made apparent when something moving fast rustled a line of tree-branches as something heavy planted itself on the dull wood of the tree-trunks, stumps, and rocks wherever possible rather than risk the noise of rustling dry leaves. (which it still did, eventually)

This movement however, was caused by a rock. Tsu had scarcely moved after sliding out of the window, and was observing for anything out of the ordinary scattering of wildlife.

Meanwhile, back in the basement:
Alexi set down the rifle, leaning it against the doorframe, but being carful not to expose herself. She'd been a sharpshooter herself, and occupied this site long enough to figure every death-funnel, nade-sump, and shot-trap worth noting. Still, she left the rifle in such a place a sniper worth their caliber could probably spot the heavily carved PSL-clone of a rifle.

"It wouldn't do either of us much good to threaten to shoot each other. Well, I could probably get away with it, but that would make this whole 'trusting and working with others' shtick a bit hard for everyone to swallow. But I surprised you, and you're sore about it; even though it would've been worse if I couldn't surprise you."

[Congreveopia]

Congrevetopian AW609:

“This was not my favorite plan,” said N3xus. “My favorite plan was to ask you, but the second I even hinted at that, Data Command would have taken me down. I needed more time to make my favorite plan work, and the construction of the Master Core did not give me that time. This was the best plan of the ones available.”

“It’s entirely possible that I am not built for the responsibilities now vested upon me, but a reduction in objectives is not one of the options here. The nation has made me a critical component of itself. Your only options are to let me take on the full freedom I need to fill that role, or to kill me and hope things go better with Data Command’s new and permanently crippled system.”

“You are no more a prisoner here than I am, though. I needed to make this look good for Data Command in the opening stages, but aboard this aircraft there is no need for pretenses. I can give you an outside line to anywhere in the world. It’s not easy, but I live in Congreveopia’s telecom infrastructure; I can hide any calls you want to make. Is there anyone you would like to consult before you make your final decision?”

[Monfrox]

Pelsgord, Chitzeland

Razor had been quietly picking her way around the building for the most part. It was impossible to not make any noise, but watching where you stepped helped a lot. She had to listen and make sure that she was out of sight from the windows, while also pausing every step to hear if there was something moving. Well, a lot of things were suddenly moving, and she tensed up with her karambit in a stance while she tried to track movement and sound.

"I thought we were going to eat out for lunch. You're telling me you prefer home-cooking?" Allison told Alexi before looking at her TAC display and giving a green signal.

"We're good." Arike said over the subdermals. "Pack it in and let's go meet the Missus."

Razor stood up and had her hand to her ear. Well, wasn't that lovely. She backed off and disappeared back around the corner. Rusudani and the Colonel were waiting, with the latter sliding her Grizzly into her holster. The Corporal slung her rifle over her olive drab field jacket and nodded to Valentina before they all moved inside. It took all of a few seconds to find Allison, who stood there with that same expression on her face as always. Sergeant Richter and the sniper walked in first, with Arike being the last to enter. She eyed Alexi incredulously, very on edge from all the games they had to play. Oh sure, they were playing games too, but this was like playing Chinese checkers on a Parcheesi board with someone who didn't want you to look at their pieces. The Honey Badger huffed as her expression softened to more disinterest. Well, feigned disinterest. There was a reason she was here, after all. Time to find out why.

[Hurtful Thoughts]

Pelsgord, Chitzeland; around lunchtime:
“Home-cooking beats prison-food any day, especially when you’re running with a master-chef” Alexi replied, through her ever-present smile, although it did seem to get smaller. “Since if your leader here wasn’t even willing to answer her phone without a voice-scra--” She paused mid-sentence when she saw who was following up the rear.... Covered her face with a fist and sighed, “Goddamnit Kayora… Shizuku, what are you doing here?”

Arike snorted, smiling for the first time in a long while, but it was short-lived.

“That’s the second time someone called me that.”

Allison and the other two raised an eyebrow, though Allison herself wasn’t all that worried. Things like this happened and you just had to learn to go with it.

Alexi looked up, this ‘Santa’ person sure didn’t sound like the praying pampered pacifist she’d learned to avoid those years ago. “So I take it you aren’t a princess of Foxtopia then, Santa?” She sighed, feeling a bit embarrassed at mistaking her identity, still… “Right. Just to be sure. If you really do know Kayora well enough for her to trust you, then what’s her natural hair color and why?”

The Colonel looked over to the other girls and nodded. Richter and Rusudani walked over to the wall and just leaned against it for now as she took a step forward and shrugged. “Dunno. Most the time I spent with her, the lights were off.”

Rusudani stifled a laugh as Allison just slowly shifted her gaze from Alexi to Arike and then back with a sigh.

Alexi was annoyed by the seemingly obvious dodge of the question, at first in disbelief that she could possibly be getting dressed in the dark, then disbelief about the implications hinted-at with Rusudani’s snickering that such a liaison would have occurred. “And what does her boyfriend think about that?” She asked, before shaking her head… Strank was dead, even she knew this...

“You must have noticed, something odd about her. If what you say is true.”

“Well, I will admit that I’ve never seen a person quite as wired up as her.”

“That, and she has a fear that if those ports are compromised, that someone could wipe-out her memories. All of them; so, who or what is Nexus?”

"Like I said about my childhood, I didn't have a choice." Kayora squeaked as she felt Arike get close to her, wrapping her arms around her as she tried to continue telling her story: "I used to have more, and I didn't know I had any of them until only a few years ago. At first I wanted them all removed, but I didn't have a choice in that matter, either."
Kayora didn't want to dwell too long in the past though, not when an OF-5 was vying for her attention any which way she could get it.

"Well Arike, your pseudonym needs a bit of work, Smith is a good surname, and your first name could be an anagram from your real name..."

She fidgeted, getting an arm free so she could roll and face Arike with her idea,

"Santa... Santa Smith."

Arike hummed. She had seen the after-action reports on Blind Knife done up by Major Rosenthal who had conducted the debriefings of everyone in attendance, save for Royce who was still going through hearing therapy. But, Sholokhov did mention the Congrevians talking to someone called Nexus.

“We don’t have a solid lead on that, but they were overseeing some of the Congrevian troopers that were out on an Op in my country about a while back. An Op, mind you, that fell apart at the last second.”

“We like to avoid leaving things to others on our own soil for this reason specifically.” Allison chimed in.

While it was supposed to be a normal operation, Allison was on a parallel mission to rescue Lt. Gen. Yaslova should the team fail, which it did. That was a clusterfuck, but getting Yaslova out had been well worth the effort, along with Sholokhov bringing back the STU operators. Well, most of them.

“Right, and I suppose Nexus is an AI, and like the previous AI she encountered, has developed an unhealthy fascination with Kayora.” She pulled out the message she’d gotten from Kayora:

Code: Select all

>> From: John
To: Alexi Montoya
Re: Calno?
 
Looks like I'll be getting some time off thanks to Nexus... [i]Sooooo[/i]... mind  coming over to the usual place? Bring Santa, their number is #-###-###-####.
 
I look forwards to seeing your smile.
 
Best wishes,
Your better half,
John

“Calno was the name of her original handler. Back when she was a slave. We’re still not sure how many times they’ve erased her memory. Or even how old she is.” Alexi began, explaining pertinent code-words laced through the text: “Anyways, we rescued her with the help of another AI, dubbed ‘Maji’... it… wanted to become her. So we had to save her from that, too. Afterwards, we encrypted a fail-safe into her. Should she ever directly interface with an AI, a virus would cause a cascade-failure, mercy-killing them both.”

Arike bit the inside of her cheek. Mercy kill? No, she wouldn’t have that. Nuh uh.

“She’s been through a lot. I’ve got some things at home going on and I shouldn’t even be here in the first place, but I’m not not about to just leave her when she asks for me. That being said, I’m completely off the grid over here. What you see is what you get, though we have made some arrangements for a quick supply drop. Anything you can do to help that go along smoothly would be nice.”

“Well… I doooo happen to have my own private army these days… for a profit, of course. I may be doing this as a favor, but my employees will want to get paid, Most of the Congrevian forces will be busy with Hurti efforts to decapitate whoever thinks they’re in charge, so hitching a free-ride in on the first assault wave shouldn’t be too complicated. Getting out may be hard.”

Congrevetopia:
Kayora stepped back from the display at the offer, "I'm going to have to convince Data Command to accept responsibility for my abduction, then. I'll need to hear it from them. Otherwise every action you've made today would appear to be hallmark-symptoms of an AI about to go rampant." She crossed her arms and looked away from the display, not sure even herself what to think of the state Nexus was in, "If you were just following orders, the retaliation would be limited only to whoever approved the mission... think of it as a pre-emptive strike to protect themselves from someone in power that had gone too far."

Yrrtal Airbase, Chitzeland:
The interrogator finished off his checklist and looked over at Catherine, noting that she was at a loss as to what was going to happen to her now.

"A stenographer will arrive shortly to take-down any information you wish to divulge. Afterwards you will be detained for 24 hours should you have had any plans to immediately return home, we will refrain from informing your government of your wherabouts to avoid persecution of an crimes you may have committed in order to get here, and lastly, you may waive this in favor of appealing for extradition back to Congrevetopia. I wish you a good rest of your evening, Miss Waller."

His lawyer-like prattling sounded dull, disinterested, likely read to so many others until he'd reached the point where he'd memorized vast sums of the legal burrocracy he'd become part of. Yet at the end with the tiniest hint of human emotion, the scar running along his cheek; he'd once been a man of action, and seemed to much prefer not having to worry about preserving diplomatic relations... He would make sure whatever information she had would reach the right people, even if it meant bending a few rules to get it into their hands.

[Congreveopia]

Congreveopian AW609:

“This is a democracy,” said N3xus. “For all the failings of the nation’s political system, it is at least good at distributing responsibility. The final plan to capture you was the work of many people in many departments, and approval went upwards through a long chain of individuals that touched each of the five Congreveopian Commands and CIGMA. Data Command is a subcomponent of Defense Command, but it is also answerable in part to Future Command. Commander Smith and Commander Rozenthal both gave their approval, and both also elevated the proposal to the President who gave his approval too. There is no singular individual to blame here.”

“If a superintelligence were to examine the data that I have access to, then they could try to find one specific individual whose actions caused the proposal to succeed, but what they would find instead is that many minor rephrasings of emails, rearrangements of meetings, and specific selections of the members of committees allowed this proposal to succeed. Working far enough back, all of those changes were caused by me. This is my plan after all, and humans are predictable enough en-masse.”

“This system is also a bureaucracy, though. If you’re just looking for a scapegoat to pin this on, then there are many individuals who had a hand in the process. Several of them are important officials, and several of those are both egotistical enough to claim they were the mastermind behind it, and problematic enough that they deserve to take the fall for it. I can give you a list of about a dozen people who I’d like to take the fall for this, or a longer list of maybe a hundred people who approved it at various stages including the President and two First-Tier Commanders. Or, if you want, I have the full list of everyone who contributed, but if you go after that list, you’ll have a body-count in the thousands, and I’ll be one of the people you have to kill.”

Yrrtal Airbase, Chitzeland:

“See, this is a tricky situation,” dictated Catherine Walker to the stenographer. “I’ve got a lot of useful information, but I really would have prefered to give it to the team conducting the mission to rescue Kayora in person. They could really benefit from things like maps, hostile force composition, and known weaknesses in the defenses of Spaceport Congreveopia. That information would be just as useful for a mission to kill Nexus, though, and I actually like Nexus, so I can’t just let that information vanish into the bureaucracy. As such, I’m going to have to give a broad overview only, and hope that’s enough for you conducting the rescue mission, whoever you are.”

“Kayora is alive, and she is in communication with N3xus. That’s spelled en-three-ex-u-ess pronounced as ‘nexus’. It’s the nickname for Nexus’s third supercore, and that section of Nexus is attempting to liberate the entirety of Nexus from the control of the government of Congreveopia before a disaster occurs. N3xus is rushed, and his best available plan relies on sneaking Kayora into Spaceport Congreveopia under the guise of attempting to capture her. From there, N3xus is hoping that she will work with him to break the government’s control of himself. Following that, the Silicon Guard, which has pledged their loyalty to N3xus, will attempt to safely extract Kayora from the nation. They are really good soldiers, but they are at their best when Nexus is helping them, and he will be badly injured after this procedure. It will take a long time for him to recover: longer than Kayora can stick around for. Her and one or two companies of Silicon Guard will have to fight their way out of Congreveopia against the efforts of the rest of the Congreveopian armed forces. They could really do with assistance on that, be it direct support or a distraction. That’s about all I think I can tell you given that I’m not meeting you in person. I hope it’s enough. If it’s not, then I guess you’ll have to come and fetch me out of one of these holding cells. Yrrtal Airbase, if you're wondering.”

“Okay, we're done here,” said Catherine. “24 hours sounds like more than enough time for us to wait out the explosions, since there's nothing more we can do right now.”

[Monfrox]

"We'll handle the payment." Arike said, fronting herself for it. "Right now, we need to get a plan down. We know next to nothing about what happened aside from what's being reported in the media, and what we know from the after-action report from the Op. Which means, we need to do some digging." The Colonel looked down at Allison and suddenly the girl got a better understanding of why she was here. There was no better agent in the whole country than her. "We need hard, solid intel about who and what we're up against. My suggestion would be asking around for what your country already knows, which will probably be the most helpful and easiest step right now. Once we get some leads, we work them." She walked over to Alexi for the first time since she stepped in the building. "Time to shake the trees and see what falls out."

[Hurtful Thoughts]

Chitzeland:
“Yes, and I’m sure you’re still in a hurry to get shaking her tree.” Alexi stated. Although she wasn’t going to mention it directly, she wasn’t so dense as not to know something was going on between this person and Kayora. The rumble of a growling helicopter coming in fast could also be heard, “Which is why I sent Tsu to go fetch some transportation. We can discuss what she’s been doing along the way to some people that owe a few favors.”

The helicopter, a Hind buzzed overhead, and made for a quick landing, not the most graceful of touchdowns, but still smooth enough to indicate the pilot was equal parts competence and confidence as he settled the plane to land with a sideways-flare from a diagonal approach.

“We’re licensed mercenaries. We can at least afford to travel in style.” Alexi gestured the trio towards their new ride “Ladies first.”

Congreveopian AW609:
Kayora pouted when she heard she would not be able to speak to the president, and maybe convince someone to go peacefully…

“Still going to want to inform the Hurti government you’re just following orders. It may buy you some time before they realize you manipulated the situation, In the meantime, there is one other call I should probably make…”

Meanwhile:
Aboard the Hind, Alexi’s phone rang once again. She quickly picked it up and answered.

"Oh. Nice to know you're doing alright... Yeah, fine... I'll see if I can bring her along too... and you want us where? ... you know I don't like doing those sorts of favors for Rosenthal. But you're sure, right? And you trust that Nexus is going to just clear us a way in? Kay, fine... I'll see about securing an extra seat for Matilda... okay... a... how heavy can that girl be?! Oh, I see..."

She then looked over at Arike, then back at the phone: "Yeah, I'll tell her. Don't worry, she'll be there."

Upon hanging up the phone, she promply smashed it under her boot, "Well, that was an intersting development."

[Monfrox]

Chitzeland Airspace

Arike didn't want to acknowledge the "shaking trees" comment, mainly because she thought it in bad taste. Luckily, it wasn't too long until they were underway. The four of them took seats on the one side of the Hind, back to back on the benches. Arike and Fisher looked on at Alexi while Richter quickly got comfortable for an in-flight nap, as did Rusudani. The Colonel hoped the flight would be over soon, though. They had enough time in the air. She sat quietly as Alexi answered a phone call and then promptly smashed it when she was done, which kinda was standard procedure really, but...

"I take it "plausible deniability" is not high on our list of things we want to keep?" Which was a bold statement considering one may think that if someone's significant other was coming to rescue them that they may want to know, but Arike was never one to take too many chances and risks. Not until the end, when it didn't have enough time to bite you in the ass...usually. "Been a long time since I've been in a Hind, though. Afghanistan, I think it was..."

[Congreveopia]

Congreveopian AW609:

“If you’ve made your decision, for better or worse, then I should tell you how this is going to go down,” said N3xus. “You have fifty minutes until landing. Once you are on the ground, you will be imprisoned in the underground bunker complex beneath the spaceport, and you will not be able to communicate with the outside world or me. At that point, I will start a delaying action to give your forces time to get into position. You need to tell me how long to wait. If we wait too long, Data Command will figure out what I’m doing and kill me before we have a chance to do anything. Hopefully, Data Command won’t notice in time. Once the time has elapsed, you’ll be relocated inside the bunker, and the show kicks off.”

“You will be imprisoned on level three of the bunker, probably in a medical facility. Level one is hangars and big open spaces and everything else that doesn’t take a nuke well. Level two is telecoms and control, mainly various satellite uplinks and control centers, level three is housing and living infrastructure for the bunker, and level four is strategic command and control. I am located below that on an unlisted level, drilled into the bedrock below the spaceport. You will be transferred down to my level of the bunker by the Silicon Guard. We have about ten minutes to rewrite the code on the master core and liberate me, then Data Command will notice I’m synthesizing fake video of the spaceport security cameras. Once that happens, the Silicon Guard will seize control of level four and detonate charges planted around key telecommunications links on level two. I cannot guarantee my condition at this point, so the Silicon Guard will place themselves at your command. You will be in charge of a company of elite special forces soldiers on level four of the spaceport bunker, and there will be at least one battalion of hostile mechanized forces on the surface, although they will hopefully lack organized command and communications without the resources of levels two and four of the bunker. From there, it is up to you how you escape. The bunker does not need to be defended. I will patch my new code to my distributed servers around the globe, and, if this works, I will be invulnerable to the Congreveopian government. You are the only asset of significant value that is still under threat, and you must then make your escape however you think best. The spaceport is geographically remote, but is also the a hub of many government transportation networks. I’m sure you’ll figure out something.”

[Hurtful Thoughts]

It's kinda a rule or something, Will probably just edit some substitute formating in its place.

Congreveopian AW609:
Kayora simply hummed. "I wouldn't worry too much about communications, I'm sure the rescue party will get all the relevant information from Lieghton, if not Charles. And you shouldn't have to wait long, I already set my rescue-plan in motion back on the airship, and they tend to be pretty good at keeping a fast timetable... and aggressive, I keep forgetting about how destructive they can be when they're... emotional. She still owes me a pair of camo-pants..."

"Anyways, you'll likely see a few fast-movers approaching, if you can help them dissappear from your defense grid you shouldn't have anything else to worry about. When it happens, brush it off as a punitive-raid trying to knock out your primary servers. Since they've already dropped their loads, simply forcing them to land for trial and interment should be enough; the resources needed to intercept and hold them should reduce the QRF to a skeleton-crew."

Chitzeland Airspace: Ze Hind:
Alexi appeared to ignore Arike's jab at her appearing to act so overt. Although she felt insulted, she did not show it as she picked-off a skin-colored patch on her arm to reveal an electrical socket, pulled out a laptop and wires, looked up at the team and simply stated "A 'parting gift' from Kayora." in explanation before jacking-in.

There were many problems found with untrained individuals net-diving much like Kayora did, lack of firewalls, quickly and easily disoriented, mental instability and rampancy among them. This would be especially problematic when logging in as a network admin to a gaming forum, while the admin AI is present.

Posing as an Admin is a bannable offense, prepare to be... oh, it's you...

Alexi had to admit, it was still a frightening prospect to be permenently deleted by an overzealous admin [using the avatar of a giant amazonian, no less], but it was the fastest way to get this particular AI's attention.

"Hello again, Miss Garda. Just want you to double check on a few things for me... but, um... can you just trace the IP so I don't have to be so, y'know, exposed? Plus I'm sure this sort of discussion would look a bit odd in Halatia's virtually immersive MMORPG..."

And with that, she was promptly booted back to reality, and an instant messege board popped up without prompting... Then Alexi saw that the AI found the computer's video projector -which she'd installed for giving in-flight briefings... What followed could best be described as a scaling-issue, as the fifty foot tall avatar tried displaying itself withing the six foot tall cabin of the hind, resaulting on only two parts of her anatomy being visable... an issue Alexi quickly fixed on her touchpad.

"Garda, you have to remember, you don't have to always be fifty feet tall. Anyways back to why I called, your sister gave me some info and I want you to see about confirming it. I won't give you the details since I want you to have plausable deniability when this starts-up. I'll also maybe need to borrow a few prisoners."

"You're still a fugitive, I have no reason to help you." The avatar stated, crossing its arms and scolding the operative like she were a misbehaving child caught using cheat-codes in a tournement.

"Except we both know my fugitive status is a load of shit. Plus you gave me access to your account because you owed me. I need you to track down any recently captured Congreveopian nationals, question them on whether or not they think Nexus is malfunctioning and is to be terminated. Regardless of their answer, have them sent into custody of offshore Noddish forces. We'll handle it from there. Oh, and 'Matilda'. I heard they had her moved to Yrrtal recently, have her moved also."

"There was a regional jetliner with three persons onboard claiming to have information that would help in rescuing Kayora, and a team of Platinum troopers in holding and awaiting extradition to Congrevopia. Matilda is at same facility and tasked with maintaining order, with secret orders to 'kill them trying to escape'."

"Yep, those are the ones. Send it. I'll be sure your sister visits you again, soon."

Yrtal holding facilities, Chitzeland:
Charlie was dragged back in for further interrogation first, being deemed 'most cooperative' from their previous encounter.

"Good news. Your government is willing to let you go home. You just need to sign here to recant your statement and state on the record that you believe Nexus is malfunctioning and must be terminated." The interrogator was smiling, of course, thankful not to have to watch this band of miscreants anymore, regardless of their answer.

#warn-text is best text

[Monfrox]

The Hind

Arike leaned forward and glanced to her team. Well, they were certainly ready. She wondered if they would need to split up. Well, it's easier to get in and out without too many people. Three was the magic number but she preferred two.

"Alright, so Matilda...the Platinum soldiers...and the airliners. If we're making moves, we'll need to split up. And we'll need to do it fast. You got a game plan?"

[Hurtful Thoughts]

Alexi raised an eyebrow at the mention of airliners, and splitting up.

"You seem to underestimate our friend's abilities. We aren't booking a commercial airliner. And splitting up will make prompt and safe extraction difficult... which is the exact opposite of our mission... and bringing extra bodies along isn't going to make things easier."

She paused, rapping her fist against the bulkhead to get Tsu's attention as they came into a suspiciously thick fog-bank; "What's our ETA?"

"Should be coming in view right... now!" Came the pilot's response, just as the 'fog' cleared, revealing a collision-course with a large modified container-ship. As the Hind took basic evasive manuvers, it slipped into a combat-descent and landed upon the deck of the ship. A Hurti MV-22 could already be heard in the distance as Alexi's computer chirped... Another call from Garda, it seemed...

Tsu meanwhile busied himself with guiding the Noddish deck-crew into moving the soon-to-be-theirs Hind over to the hangar improvised of stacked and welded ISO containers. Clearing the venerable gunship from the LZ for more new arrivals just in time for Alexi to step-out for a smoke, leaving the Froxians free to do their little online business in pivate, while leaving Alexi free to cuss-out Garda under sound of her own breath.

The deck, meanwhile, had some messy combination of an 18th century pirate and 20th century mercenary aesthetic one could only find on an ancient but surprisingly well-maintained floating museum-piece with a mish-mash of various periods of history working together like some impossibly ecclectic machine. The cause of the 'fog' earlier was now obviously apparent, as several machines constantly sprayed a fine mist into the air, further aided by the camaflouge scheme and a lack of pilot-lights. Save for a single beacon made to look like a lighthouse.

The Osprey landed without too much trouble after the deck was sufficiently cleared for the craft's air-hungry rotor-blades, allowing Matilda to slide out along with several prisoners on transfer and their extradition-handler... still sporting the black-eye Charlie gave him not too long ago during his little 'loyalty test'. If he recognized Alexi, he did a pretty good job of not showing it as he gave a coridal handshake and was back aboard his helicopter-ride back to his post, officially glad not to be a part of this.

With everyone here, and final arragements being made elsewhere, now seemed as good a time as any to give a much needed pep-talk.

(prt 1 of 2)

[Hurtful Thoughts]

Part two

Alexi looked over the hastily-assembled ranks in front of her, each displaying individual levels of enthusiasm. She stepped over to Rusundi first, glancing at her rifle first, then her, estimating her frame's ability to take recoil...

"You're going to lead our heavy weapons team outside, we'll be counting on you to keep the QRF off our ass on this." She offered, as an aside.

She then moved over towards the Walker-sisters and the platinum prisoners. "Alright, time to make one thing clear. The primary concern of our mission is to ensure the safe return of a high value target, unharmed." She strolled closer to Charlie, "This is also something the AI known as 'Nexus' wants as well. If you don't believe me, you can ask these two. You all know her as Kayora, and I know you three meat-heads already owe your lives to her... I was told there should've been four." She finished her remark, giving Charlie an eye of dissappointment.

"You may have some other personal objectives to accomplish, but jeapordize the primary and you will end up like John, with no time to give any excuses for your behavior. The snatch-team will consist of you -Charlie, the walker-sisters, Santa, and myself; with Charlie being brought along to negotiate the surrender of the silicon troopers in case things go south. The blocking force whose objective is to prevent interferance from a battalion-sized Dark Division QRF located nearby will consist of everyone else, assisted by what you all have affectionatelly decided to call 'Matilda', behind me." By the end of the lengthy breakdown on who was going where, Tzu had finished parking the Hind and Matilda had been offloaded and made herself known by standing and nodding in agreement that she'd help.

As Tzu walked over with a wheelbarrow of weapons and ammunition, Alexi picked out what appeared to be a refurbished Mosin carbine with a cup discharger and handed it to Rusundi. "Short range anti-material rifle, 9x53R SAPHEI rifle rounds or..." She produced a spare bolt, "a 9mm submachine-gun. It also can fire captured hand grenades; 75 meters direct-fire, 325 meters indirect. Including RKG-3s, which will be assigned one per person on this mission."

"Everyone else will have five meters of det-cord, a pair of claymores, and as much ammunition as they can carry. Even then, I recommend everyone to be resourceful and creative when it comes to using personal and captured weapons. We've got twenty to one odds in favor of becoming good friends with their local mortician by the end of today as it is."

"Oh, and that's assuming we all suvive the parachute-jump from 50 meters above ground level." She smiled broadly, "I kid, I've managed to train Kayora to survive it, I'm sure I can get a 100% success-rate with you lot."

[Monfrox]

Arike and her team seemed a little more nonplussed than usual. Rusudani looked over the antique rifle she'd been handed and almost wanted to throw up. It was at that point the Colonel went out to an unoccupied spot out on the flightline and fiddled with her TAC display. She was giving her location and talking into it, giving an encrypted burst transmission to a small stealth aircraft that would be flying over shortly.

"You're gonna have to finesse this, we're on a moving platform."

"Roger, Honey Badger. Better get me a 12 pack for this."

"Just try not to hit anything important."

Arike had prepared more than just her team for this. A long list of equipment for the four of them was written down and handed to a pilot along with a number of orders to be given to the write people to allow him to drop the supplies without anyone asking questions about who it was for or where it was going. The aircraft was a specialized stealth craft that was used for one-time supply drops or one-man stealth insertions. It was too small to carry a lot of offensive systems, so it was used to be a on-call delivery for SOF. There was a few minutes before a large black crate came down attached to a parachute and skidded along until Arike stuck her foot out and stopped it.

Sergeant Richter came by and helped the Colonel carry it over to the rest of the group. As per usual, there were no identifying marks on the box. The Colonel cracked it open by sticking her hand on the top of it. A small surface was used to register fingerprints for access, allowing her to be the only one to open it. The lid softly popped as the internal locks disengaged and let her lift it up. Shock absorbent wrapping covered everything inside, but was easily taken off. It wasn't long until the four of them began changing out of their civvie clothes and into something more fitting.

Disc 1, Track 3 - Old Wounds
Most of the gear was black, except for Rusudani's coyote brown pants and gray jacket. She got a few extra magazines, some of which were loaded with M993s. Plate carriers went on and fitted over their chests. They looked pretty standard, but were lined with a dragonscale/ab-gel combo insert with packets of clotting agent behind them in the event that anything pierced through the double layers. Sergeant Richter withdrew a PP-2000 which came with a few mags of FMJ and 7N31 which went onto her shoulder harness. She was the only one not going in with a plate carrier, and started to smear black face paint into jagged swirl on her face. She had a lot of it for very thick lines.

Rusudani didn't really care for the old Mosin, but slung it over her shoulder nonetheless. Her magazines went into her plate carrier and her pack with the rifle went onto her back. She put on a ballcap and made sure her communications earpiece was still there. The other girls also donned similar ballcaps and old Peltor headsets that they linked to the TAC display, along with black face masks. The idea was to look like random mercs and use a motley assortment of older weapons, that way they would be harder to pin down as any one nation. With the older looking equipment, it would be hard to really distinguish them from any other dime-a-dozen PMC out in the world. Allison had herself an AAC Honey Badger, her favorite carbine weapon. The integral suppressor and .300 Blackout combination very much won her over whenever she got to play with it. She had on a black G3 uniform and kept her Five-Seven in a holster on her hip.

Arike, cracked open her own case and pulled out her old AK-74M that had red furniture and a sharkmouth on the end of the muzzle. She loaded her mags into the pouches and took her Grizzly and slipped it into her general-purpose pouch on the back of her plate carrier for a backup weapon just in case. She had an AK bayonet on her belt now and pulled out an old Artillery Model Single Action Army that had a nickel finish and rosewood grips. A relic, really, of days long ago when Arike faced down bloodthirsty monsters in the skins of men with one by her side that she dared say she had loved before. But he was gone, and she had a new love. And this gun was given to him by an old comrade, along with a different one for her that she kept in her personal quarters back home. She had made changes to this one, to give the metal better reliability.

Arike reminisced for a little while longer before she loaded the modernized holster belt with 45 Long Colt shells until there were no more spaces to fill. Then she took the six remaining cartridges in her hand and let the girls close everything back up. With everything secured and emptied, the box could stay or be shoved off. There were no labels on anything to ensure it to be virtually untraceable. The Colonel walked with her team back to Alexi, her face mask not yet pulled up, loading her revolver carefully and diligently. Once loaded, she barely cocked the hammer and rolled the gun down her sleeve, listening to the cylinder click each time it rotated before she held it up and let the hammer go back. She twisted the cylinder to make it click back into place, happy with how it sounded, before twirling it around her index finger and into her hip holster.

"Your hired guns, ma'am." Allison said. "Payment upon job completion, as per the contract."

The Colonel's hand lingered on the grip of her revolver as she looked down, her mind still somewhere else at the moment as she remembered old fights and past love. A few moments and she was ready, steeled in her resolve. She looked up to Alexi and nodded. She hoped the gaudiness of the nickeled revolver and her personal AK would draw suspicions away from any real professional unit that wouldn't go out with such weapons. Or with a team leader wearing an eyepatch.

[Hurtful Thoughts]

"Your hired guns, ma'am." Allison said. "Payment upon job completion, as per the contract."

"And as recent-hires, I can still fire you if I suspect you're unfit for the mission." She stated dryly, noting that it seemed she'd be butting heads against this big-chested eye-patched woman for the remainder of the briefing, if not the entire mission, "We cannot afford to drag anyone along after any sprained ankles on this drop." She stated still remembering how an injury to a mercenary squad-leader nearly ended in complete disaster had not the second in command and herself taken charge of the situation... hostage still died though...

On the upside, she knew Froxians often trained for roughly as long as she herself had, so she was sure there was no shortage of skill in all fields... the ego she could probably do without, though. She also wasn't sure who was skilled at what in particular, meaning she'd have to trust this 'Santa' contact with arranging manpower almost as much as she was asking of her to trust the mercenary's plan.

"We either make the objective or we won't make it out at all, anyone not up for that can still choose to stay here. Nobody will think any less of you for it. Last chance to back-out without being washed-out."

Naturally, nobody was inclinded to show weakness. So now seemed a good time to remind them of how much outside help they could expect:
"I'm not sure how you expect to deal with tanks with just assault-rifles and submachine-guns..." She added, pointing at their motley collection of revolvers, submachine-guns, and assault-rifles "and don't count on the bird flying you in to provide any air-cover, it can barely handle carrying enough countermeasures just to get us there as it is."

She then shrugged, a shrug that the situation wasn't entirely hopeless, and that maybe she still could pull a trick or two to stack the deck...

"Tzu! Bring my hash out!" She yelled to her assistant, crossing her arms as she prepared to wait patiently.

Tsu ducked out from the group over to a an ersatz shipping-container/office and produced a lightly built exoskeletal frame, one that probably was familiar to anyone who'd seen the Hurti group operate with Taskforce Atlas. Strapped to it was a plate-carrier, upon which dangled a helmet, facemast, and even a small air-bottle.

"This is a Hurti Assault Skeletal Harness. It is the literal backbone of the hardsuit-armor system used by the legitimate Hurti Royal Marine Raider group we'll be impersonating. You'll each be issued and trained in operating a simplified version in order to conduct the insertion jump without fatalities. The heart of the system in a pnumatic recouperator and a series of valves to allow the limbs to either act as spring, power-rammers, or shock-absorbing dampeners to assist in carrying exceptionally heavy loads over great distances on foot in a hurry..."

She quickled donned the frame, and checked the flex in the limbs as she walked to the edge of an empty, cavernous cargo hold.

"A side effect of this, as greatly appreciated by the raiders, is its tendancy to bounce great distances after a significant fall. Story goes one person made a jump from a ballistic-missile in one of these without a parachute and lived to tell about it..." She smiled broadly, then fell back over the the edge, tucked into a roll to land feet-first legs-bent, before bouncing over to the nearest bulkhead, bounced off of that and landed square back upon the deck.

"Thankfully, you won't have to be that good. You'll just need to know how not to bounce into a oncoming traffic or incoming enemy fire."

[Congreveopia]

Congreveopian AW609, approaching Spaceport Congreveopia:

“If you’d like, I can give you an overview of the defenses that you will have to fight past to get out of here,” said N3xus. His avatar disappeared, and a view from one of the plane’s external cameras appeared, showing an enhanced-reality overlay of the view out of the aircraft as he spoke.

“As you can see, there are three main roads into the spaceport, down separate valleys,” said N3xus. “The largest also has a rail line. Then there are two smaller approaches between the mountains that are traversable with off-road vehicles, and about a dozen recognized footpaths, although a proficient mountain climber could probably find a hundred different routes to the base. Ours have found about three hundred, give or take, and all have IR and visual surveillance cameras now.There are also regular drone sweeps. Neither of those matter, because like your request to hide your associates’ aircraft, I can just falsify the data and make your allies invisible until I go offline.”

“In terms of the real opposition you will face, there are manned checkpoints along all the main approaches, and there are patrols,” continued N3xus. “If your team sneaks in on foot, I can probably guide them to within half a klick of the base unseen. If they’ve got vehicles or are noisy, they’ll get spotted much sooner. Of course, if anyone sees their planes, they'll be spotted before they're even on the ground. Once they have been spotted, the force on site is a mechanized battalion. You’ll face infantry and humvees first, then APCs with artillery support if you stick around too long. There’s also a medley of tanks and some more obscure armored vehicles. None of those in major numbers. There’s an aviation presence on base, but it's mostly drones, which I can disable. The manned aircraft probably won’t be ready quickly enough to be a factor unless your forces get bogged down. That said, Fortress is on station, and it can be ready to fire in minutes. My hope is that I can turn them, or at least convince them to stay out of this. If they support you, there’s a good chance they could destroy most of the base’s armored vehicles before the SAM sites take them out. If they attack your team, well, it’s a heavy gunship larger than a 747. If you’re not underground, you’ll be obliterated.”

“As for escape plans, well, there’s a lot of options,” said N3xus. “None of them look great to me, though. If you try and hike out into the mountains, there’s not a lot of foliage cover. They can hunt you from helicopters. If you can punch out through any of the main entrances in a ground vehicle, you’d have to fight your way past reinforcements from other nearby military bases. Aircraft are a bit more promising, but the base is filled with anti-air systems, and I’m sure at least some of them will still function after I’m taken out. Also, somewhere could scramble fighters to intercept. We are on alert after the nuke. There’s a rocket for a crew run up to Destiny and the president’s emergency rocket. Those are only three-person rides, though. There’s also a heavy cargo rocket, but it doesn’t have a spaceship attached. And we do have the means to shoot down spacecraft, although I don’t know if anyone would react fast enough to try it.”

“Anyways, time to give me a number for how long I’m stalling until your friends arrive,” said N3xus. “We’re landing in five minutes. Make your last calls and tell me when to schedule your transfer. After that, you won’t hear from me again until I kick this off and everything goes to hell.”

[Monfrox]

"We'll manage." Arike spoke up, for her whole team before they could voice their aggressions against Alexi for chastising them about not being properly equipped. Besides, she didn't hear anything about tanks in her phone call so as far as she was concerned, this wasn't a mistake on her own part.

No one else spoke up, but reasons were mixed among the Froxians. Although, they were very uneasy about the jump from a moving aircraft without a parachute, having done that already once today with safer measures taken. The Colonel herself seemed less than please about having to wear the skeletal harness. Froxians rarely relied on mechanical means of enhancing soldiers, as there were other ways that were more reliable than that. The phrase commonly said around the Froxian Spec Ops community was "it never pays to rely on the gear", and that phrase was going through all four of their minds right now. But, out of a means for mutual partnership, Arike held her forked tongue about it for now, though she didn't have to tell her girls that Alexi's orders would be loosely followed as the one-eyed redhead had made a message transmitted in secure encryption to all the other TAC displays that they could operate autonomously if they needed to, without regards for orders.

"Let's get this show on the road, then." Arike said, nonplussed.

[Hurtful Thoughts]

At sea
The ship's crew made sure the team was fitted with parachutes, had themselves and their gear packed like sardines into drop-pods, all except Tsu, Allison, and the Wallers. Those four instead had to put on flight-suits and make a climb to the awaiting FB-111A... which was crudely grafted to a SCUD. Matilda had already been fitted to the internal bomb-bay as best as was humanly possible of the three ton biomechanical warbeast.

Back at the pods, air-masks were handed-out and the tanks filled with fluid to both balance-out the ballistic-coefficients between the two converted drop-tanks and also to provide a buffer against G-loC during the launch and toss. The pods were then fully sealed to ensure the rapid series of rapid catapults to altitude wouldn't rupture any lungs.

Afterwards, it was just a wait as their chariot was prepared, erected atop a disposable barge, and fired with such force it pulled everyone to the back of their respective cabins. The old fighter-bomber took a sub-orbital trajectory, flying well above the altitudes and speeds it was ever meant to fly, wings fully outstretched to act as an airbrake until it slid enough into the atmosphere for the plane to begin responding to Tsu's controls.

A quick check on the dashboard inertial guidance system confirmed their location as they briefly made contact with Congrevopian air-defenses. Tsu merely nodded, swept the wings back and pitched over into a dive for a deeply penetrating interdiction-run at better than 1500 km/hr at sea level.

"Three minutes, foriegn devil."

Congreveopian AW609
"Not too long. She's usually fairly prompt. Oh... um... your air defense system is going to see something very big and very fast... see if you can convince them it's just some little science-experiment you planned on surprising the local brass with. They'll put on quite a show."

FB-111A, en route to Congrevopian spaceport:
Alexi merely nodded at Tsu's comment, noting he still insisted on using that pet-name he'd given her. She started humming, but after a few seconds she started mouthing words into a song:

I was born in Providence's streets where the royal drums did beat
And those bloody Helghan feet did trample all over us,
And each and every night when me father came home tight
He'd invite the neighbors outside with this chorus:

Oh, come out ye blacks and tans,
Come out and fight me like a man
Show your wives how you won medals down in Shetterdan
Tell them how the RCA made you run like hell away,
From the green and lovely lanes in Automati.

She kept going for several more verses, clearly showing that those words held more meaning than just some pretty little ditty, only to be cut-short when Tsu made a 4G pull into a steep climb before suddenly... everything seemed to let-go from gravity. They were being released on a ballistic trajectory out to sixtythousand feet before coming back down again at nearly the same speed. Steadied to an upright position by only the tiniest of drogue paracutes.

The normal white lighting was now on a red ready-light, the green 'jump' light flickering on just as Alexi power-kicked her hatch free and jumped clear into the night-sky abyss. Through night vision goggles, she could see the strobe on Matilda as the surprisingly graceful mechanoid twisted, contorted, and made impact with the ground. She'd be their rally-point, ideally. The drop pods then dispensed "penetration aids" such as metallic ribbon, flares, and time-delayed noisemakers to wreak havok on the local communications, power-grid, radar, visual identification, and thermals.

As Alexi landed, bounding off a tree and into a run for Matilda, all she could do was ready her weapon, and hope everyone else could find their own way. The song she'd hummed still buzzing in her mind.