ic Incursion: Backwater

[Darksider42]

Poor GPS positioning and a map marked by a Grue that assumed everyone knew what he was referring to. Considering some navigational conditions Ruby had to work with in the past, this was easy. There was a few moments the crowds nearly threw her off course, but she managed to find her way though the teeming masses to their destination. Switching off her wrist comp and the map, she sized up the situation. It took her a moment before she shrugged and turned to the others. "Right, So how do you lot want to do this then? Go in loud or do we do this with a bit more...finesse than usual?" It was always nice to know what everyone else was gonna do before everything went to chaos.

Edited December 13, 2014 by Darksider42

[TheAbsurdist]

Her expression was flat, and she gave Ruby the equivalent of her 'are you being serious' wry expression, which was to cock her head and glare at Ruby.  Then came that raspy voice, "Yes, because clearly I am the best choice for skulking about."  Arms folded across her chest, and she slowly settled in a crouch as she lifted her head and looked towards their destination, testing the wind.  "I smell sweat, and dust, and desperation."  Her eyes shifted a little bit as she relaxed to seeing in the more relative thermal signatures.  "I can moved fast enough that I can hit after you guys sneak in, and go through the front door and meet you.  When there is problems.

 

Not if.  She was a bit of a pessimist.  It was a racial trait.  "Or we can just try to be sneaky.  And then deal with what happens."  She shrugged a little bit, before breaking off into something in her native tongue.

[Brown Dynamite]

"I hate getting rough unless absolutely need be.  We could take the time to come up with a plan since we're not under any time constraints.  But someone's feeling temperamental."  Roulette pointed at Bliss with a smirk on his face.  He then gave the building another look.  The real reason he wasn't keen on sneaking in was if the door was locked and they couldn't break in he would have to just blow it off anyways.  "So, how about we give Bliss a chance to take out that aggression."

 

Roulette pulled out the bottle of questionable alcoholic quality.  Thrusting it outwards towards Ruby.  As if expecting her to grab it saving the explanation thereof.  "So we smash things.  And earn that property damage allowance put into this commission.  But first a little misdirection."

[Darksider42]

Ruby smiled as she tapped something near her collar. "Plans don't normally survive contact with the enemy Turk. Direction helps though." She said just as her head was slowly consumed by black tar and vines of pure gold come to life before warping and hardening into the familiar appearance of her helm that haunted her companions for so long. Her heads up displace lit up and already started analyzing and displaying information about her surroundings. "Finesse Bliss, I didn't say a thing about playing it quiet. Never goes well when we do." The bounty Hunter said with a shrug as she took the bottle from bliss and put it down on the ground. 

 

"I'll give you support if it looks like he's gonna pull something surprising on you. Otherwise I'm making a dash for his little hideout." With that said, Ruby drew both her sword and her pistol. 

[Gizmo]

While the trio of bounty hunters deliberated amongst themselves the Broan guarding the storehouse tilted his head to one side and narrowed his eyes, searching the alleyways and rubbish bins littering the surrounding streets. Slinging her assault weapon from her shoulder and holding it at the ready she stomped forward in the direction of the Voidrunners, displaying better hearing than they might have expected or at least demonstrating clearly that their stealthiness needed some more work. Spotting them, the Broan gave a start. "You lot! Don't move!" she shouted in a snarling bass rumble, training her rifle on them and raising the comlink on her arm toward her mouth, ready to report them to her boss!

[TheAbsurdist]

She stopped, sighed, and looked over her shoulder at the other two, and then she sighed, softly, shaking her head, before a tendril lashed out and used it to grasp at a nearby building, and pull her along as she rushed ahead towards the Broan.  Not happy, not happy at all.  She growled and brought her arms back, to ready her attack.

 

As she neared the Broan, while still in the air from her swing, she brought her arms down, both tendrils shooting out and wrapping, coiling around the Broan's bulk, before she hit the ground, on the mid-joint of her legs, skidding on the dusty floor of this dirt ball planet.

[Gizmo]

The guard let out a choked off grunt of surprise as her startled attempt to catch herself from her fall was cut short by Bliss' sinuous hold. Before she'd had a chance to radio in their position her limbs were locked into place and her vision was swimming, attempts at cogent thought thwarted temporarily by the abrupt trauma. Dust and sand puffed up in a cloud as the tangled pair stuck the ground, coating the former gladiator's shins. The Broan's comm crackled to life with a burst of static and a voice called, "What is it, Joon?" After a pause, whoever was on the other line spoke up again, "Joon? What's-- Joon, respond now!"

[Darksider42]

"Bloody hell..." Ruby grumbled as the Broan spotted them. She was hoping for a little more time to get ready, but once again fate had other ideas. Not even something simple goes right. 

 

Scowling a bit behind her helmet, she charged forward just behind the cybernetic gladiator. She ran just past her before turning on the spot and bringing her strange blade down on the guard. While it looked like it hurt, she could tell it would require one more good blow before the alien was down and out.

[Brown Dynamite]

Roulette didn't run as the other two rushed ahead.  He was in no hurry and hadn't quite thought it an appropriate use of time to try and figure out what they were up to.  He arrived on the scene to see the barely conscious Broan.  Fighting back the smile.  Their methods did get results.  In the intermi Roulette made his way over to grab the comm that was going off.
 
Trying to force the guard to state that the situation was alright was too risky a call.  There was too much of a chance that she'd be defiant even while fighting consciousness.  So Roulette did what he did best.  He lied.  "Um hey, I don't know who this is.  Your friend seems really, really, drunk though.  Is that normal?  Can Broans even get drunk.  You might want to send someone to get them.  Frakking lying here smelling like booze and vomit.  What the glark?  Frakking gross I stepped in that."

Roulette began pouring the bottle of questionable liquor that Ruby ignored on the ground as he spoke.

[Gizmo]

There was a short, awkward pause over the comm line before the voice answered back, "Yeah, I'm calling cull'n puckey, chummer. Don't move." Roulette could faintly hear stomping boots in the background as the speaker headed upstairs to confront them, just before a low, honking siren began playing from somewhere within the storehouse, muffled somewhat but unmistakeable as a call to arms. It looked as though the decision to try a more direct approach had been made for them!

[TheAbsurdist]

Looked back at Roulette and the comm, and then she growled.  "Fine, we'll let... ourselves..."  And with that she wrenched her form, twisting at her waist, and swinging with the Broan coiled up in her tendrils, and she slammed her against the door.  Hard.  "...In!"  It was simple physics, or something.  All she knew was that it felt satisfying to hammer the Broan into the door.

 

And by that effort, open the door with the Broan.  By open, Bliss knocked the portal clean off it's hinges, hell it's frame.  It was hard to see her strength sometimes, and then she showed it off.  With a thunderous effect.  With the Broan unconscious in her tendrils, she released her, and moved into the building proper.  

[Gizmo]

With the sand based wall around the door frame crumbling, light poured into the storehouse. The ground level was only about half full, some of the crates marked clearly as food or medical supplies while others were covered haphazardly with tarps or knocked over on their sides. Of much more interest was the large trap door in the middle of the floor that was even then in the process of sliding open, revealing a downward staircase and a pair of guards charging up to meet them, including the second Broan who had been with the sheriff earlier in the day. They stopped short as they reached the top of the stairs, looking between Bliss and their unconscious coworker. One of them, a thick-necked Lor, managed, "...Joon?"

[Darksider42]

Ruby paused as she looked at the wreckage the cybernetic alien just caused. "...You are currently my favourite crew member Bliss." She finally said as she made a dash to right next to the smashed portal for cover. Peeking out from her spot, her HUD quickly made an update on the situation for her. 

 

Only two? Well they are not the Deimos gang, that's for certain. She thought as she leaned out of cover and took aim at the Lor guard and fired her nano slug right into his chest. Thankfully she had remembered to put the gun in non-lethal mode. He wasn't going to die but it was going to sting a lot.

Edited December 29, 2014 by Darksider42

[Brown Dynamite]

Roulette really would rather mitigate the amount of senseless violence.  Not for any reasons of wanting to avoid inflicting harm.  He had a taste for it, if less so than his two teammates.  But there was something to be said in trying to maintain a reputation of efficiency not just destructiveness.  Off course that boat had long sailed.  Their reputation for massive property was certainly well earned for a reason.

 

Raising two fingers to the side of his visor.  "You're not the only one that prefers the company of Bliss."  Roulette casually muttered as he took aim of the second guard.  Then a beam of violet colored light shot forth with blinding speed.  Hitting the second Broan square in the chest with the aim o knocking him right back down the stairs.

[Darksider42]

Who she prefers still remain a matter of debate. Ruby thought as the ray of energy from Roulettes eyes sent the last guard flying before knocking him out cold. She did wonder briefly if she should alert someone to the food and medical supplies being hoarded here. Then of course she remembered that their payday was likely downstairs. One problem at a time. "Well then, lets keep moving." She announced as she dashed forward and headed down tot he stairs, gun still aimed at anything that might jump out and ruin her day.

[Brown Dynamite]

Roulette eyed the food and medical supplies for a moment.  If the sheriff didn't have a stranglehold on the city before.  It was pretty easy to see how Zaul could get it.  It wasn't what they were there for.  Any interested third parties would soon be privy to details as they were clearly going to make some noise.

 

The Zultasian considered blowing a hole in a wall to further that effort.  Before, putting that thought aside remembering they already had some less than friendly attention coming towards them.  So Roulette followed after Ruby.  His visor glowing as the former conman readied to sling something more than words at the first opportunity.

[TheAbsurdist]

Held at the door for a moment, looking back behind them, her eyes narrowed, the light harsh to her eyes.  She was used to less...  Shaking her head she darted in after the others, her arms held back behind her, trailing her tendrils as she moved, able to catch up to them readily.  But then the enhanced gladiatrix was able to move past them, she didn't.  Despite her terse, violent, and often time confrontational manner she was taking up rear guard with the aplomb of a former soldier.  And the tendrils were out, ready to attack as needed.

 

Flashing back a bit to when she had just gotten them, remembering how difficult they were to adapt to, the sense of them, then extensions of her.  Now... they writhed and lashed about to match her impatience.  She had met the victims, it reminded her, in some fashion of her world, not so institutionalized perhaps.  She was not a revolutionary... but then they lived in interesting times.

[Gizmo]

Both the stairs and the basement chamber to which they led were carved out of the same compressed sand and occasional slab of stone that characterized the upper levels, with metal support beams spaced evenly throughout for good measure. Once they passed through the stairwell the harsh artificial lights were almost as bright as the merciless sun outside, something about the quality reminding the Voidrunners of a hospital or laboratory. Another set of stairs downward sat at the far end of the room and a branching hallway nearby suggested at least another room or two at this level, large enough that the bare handful of guards they'd run into seemed increasingly disproportionate. There was something to be said for secrecy, certainly, but it was beginning to feel like they were missing something important.

 

There were more crates down there but also technical equipment a wide margin above most of what they'd seen on the planet so far if only in terms of maintenance, even if it was still clearly pieced together from whatever had made itself available over time. It made more sense how Zaul was able to keep a metaphorical eye on everything in the city with a few camera feeds, one of which they recognized as the spaceport where they'd docked. Something on a table next to a bank of computers caught Ruby's attention, something that would have evoked the shape and size of a briefcase back on Earth but which she recognized as the portable analytic recorder their target had been spotted with when the bounty was placed. Even now it was open and hooked up to what she assumed was a decoder, churning through the encrypted data recorded there. More data that a single weapons blueprint would have required...

[Darksider42]

A sense of foreboding started to creep up one Ruby as the adrenaline from the fight before started to fade. "Its always the simple jobs isn't it?" She said as she observed the cold, sterile rooms and went deeper still in the facility. â€‹"Starts with chasing after some idiot who nicked off with something valuable and you end up-" She paused as she stumbled on the mass surveillance equipment and what she could guess was the plans. 

 

"...Over your head." She concluded

 

.The bounty hunter sheathed her sword and started unhooking the recorder from the computer. "Someone keep watch on the door." She said as she continued with the disconnect. Only thing she could conclude from what she had seen so far was that Zaul was trying to make some cash off of their target. Although she suspected there was more to it than that.

[Brown Dynamite]

"Ruby, you made sure to check that was what we were here for first right?"  Roulette openly questioned ignoring the request to watch the door.  One could interpret it as expecting Bliss to be eager to take up the flank.  More likely, Roulette just wasn't following the request, because he didn't care for it.

 

"Would hate to go off world with Zaul's itinerary or the local financials instead."  The planet had thus far proven itself a low rent version of Zultas.  And Roulette didn't exactly care for getting too comfortable when the heart of the Khanate was somehow worse for the wear than thiis place.  So he could fully understand wanting to get the in and out as quick as possible.

 

But, they might as well make sure they were earning their pay in doing so.  Or else they were wasting their time smashing things up for free.

[TheAbsurdist]

 

Drew to a stop and pressed flat to the wall near the door, she wasn't hiding per say, she was waiting.  It was too easy, and she wanted to watch the other stairs while near the ingress to this room, intent on at least distracting anyone else who came into the room that wasn't once of them.  It was sophisticated, but she wasn't the best at dealing with gadgets.  Hitting people yes, reverse engineering anything... no.

 

She glanced over to them, and made a small sound as she remained at her perch, more than willing to start hitting someone.  Or plural.  She wasn't picky, and there had to be more people here.  It was never that easy.

[Darksider42]

Ruby rolled her eyes as she holstered her nano-pistol. "Fine. Though the thing matches the description of the case Tiggs was hauling." She said as she attempted to hook her wrist bound computer witha small extendable cable. A holographic screen appeared in the air as she started navigating the ethereal User Interface while working with the recorders hardware. "Now eyes to the door. This is gonna take longer now you got me digging though it and I would not be surprised if Zauls thugs got word out to the cavalry. Medical is not cheap or in easy reach out here." The bounty hunter continues as she went on with her task.

Edited January 9, 2015 by Darksider42

[Gizmo]

The bulk of the decrypted data that scrolled across Ruby's projected display consisted of dense dense sensor readings that would require analysis by trained professionals before they could be interpreted into anything useful with petabytes of still unreadable data promising even more of the same. A video file from the basic visual sensors of Tig's ship stuck out from amidst the rest, however, and she pulled it up.

 

The video's metadata indicated that it had been recorded at the edge of the Lor-Van system but it was the time stamp that caught her attention: simultaneous with the destruction of the Lor homeworld. Part of the image was obscured by ferrous rock, the edge of a crater of an asteroid concealing the smuggler's vessel from the instantly recognizable needleships, silver slivers of metal streaking purposefully back and forth in the foreground. The sensors were focused past them, however, on a much larger ship. It wasn't so large as the moon sized weapon of which the Voidrunners and the rest of the galaxy had heard rumours but rather closer to scale with one of the orbital cities the refugees of that attack had escaped upon, a much more efficient design. Spines curled upward and downward from along its edges toward the middle and from the angle of the recording it was hard to shake the impression of a massive, all consuming maw.

 

The sensors had recorded well outside of the visual spectrum for humans and a helpful overlay showed bursts of radiation from engines and gathered energy from readied weapons. The maw station - mobile though it may have been its size and design made it hard for Ruby to think of it as a 'ship' - was certainly well armed and defended, practically beyond all reason but what had set off silent alarms on Tig's vessel was the sheer volume of transmissions coming from it. Lines of data stretched from it to each of the circling needleships and their larger brethren, while countless more speared outward to the center of the system and elsewhere. There was no mistaking it: the entire fleet of ships were little more than puppets and this was the puppet master pulling the strings.

[Darksider42]

"Well, it is a...Weapon of some kind at least." Ruby said as she watched the file play out. Why the Lor posted it as weapon plans or what hauling this off the planet meant for the voidwalkers was another thing entirely. At least the price tag on the recorder made sense. This thing really wants to be my problem. She noted glumly. Shutting down her wrist comp, she continued to disconnect the recorder from the decoder. "Still the same thing Tigs ran off with. Details different, jobs still the same." Getting the thing properly packed, Ruby drew her nano-pistol once more and nodded to the door. 

[TheAbsurdist]

She frowned, well frowned more, than normal.  "The Sheriff is likely going to be topside.  We need to get ready to go.  Am I taking point?"  Her voice raspier than normal, as she kept watch on the two entrances to the room, her hands closing and opening in rapid succession in anticipation of violence or something else.  Anything really.  It was an unconscious this she always did with anxious.  It might be a racial trait, but her species was insular, and generally left other interstellar race alone it was still hard.

 

Then she stopped, and she tilted her head as she looked at Ruby.  "What is it?"