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A Dusty Old Rock

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Somewhere in an asteroid field located in Pennsylvania lies an abandoned station. This certain station was once part of a rebuilding effort of the mercenary group "Forlorn Hope" but is currently uninhabited after the sudden disbandment of said merc-band.

The station has been abandoned for years but this might change in just a matter of hours as a call to all Ex-Forlorn members went out a few days ago.

A call to all Forlorn

Recipient: All remaining members and ex-members of the Forlorn Hope
Subject: It is time to return from the dead.
Location: Hope's Watch
Time: 14/02/827 - 15:00 SMT

This is a message to all remaining members and ex-members of the Forlorn Hope. We have been idle for too long. I know everyone thought this band is dead, yet I say we were just regaining strength. All members who still feel as part of this organization are to meet on Hope's Watch. There is a lot to discuss.

Signed,
Nick Stenn

---

A lone sabre approached the station. Aboard this sabre is Reyna Hunt, a simple merc trying to find a group to stay among.
"What the hell is this supposed to be? When I agreed to come, I didn't know we were going to meet on a goddamn rock."

The sabre approached the station. Interestingly the docking codes she recieved were proper and the autopilot did safely bring the ship int one of the free hangars.

After Reyna left her ship, she made her way through the barely lit corridors to where she was sent to: An old meeting room close to the docking area. It did appear all the work here was dropped on a moments notice. Reyna noticed several tools and materials laying around in the corridors. It appears all the workers left their shifts and never returned to work here.
"At least the life support systems are working..."

Reyna entered the empty meeting room, kicked a chair back and let herself fall into it, placing her feet on the table.
"And as it always is, I am the first to arrive. Amazing..."
She pulls out a knife from her weathered flight-suit and plays around with it, waiting for the other people to arrive. Non of which she ever met before.

---

It actually took several days until anyone would show up. Sure Reyna started getting a tiddy bit uncomfortable after a while. Some even went as far as stating she got annoyed and perhaps even ragey, to the point she would draw a target on the wall and start exercise to knife throwing. The ninja robots still around didn't seem to mind this.

Now she was thinking about it, wasn't it odd there would be robots still working in this dusty place, and ninja ones of all types? Who were these new employers?
The Neural-net message was just some footage of a guy in body armor and absolute epic pecs named Dick Sten or something silly like that. Reyna was starting to think it was a bad idea to have answered that call.

That's when quite some commotion came from the docks. Sighing, she stood up and headed there to see what the hell was happening. Did the ninja robots start some sort of ninja training session or something?

No... No robot in sight. Just two Nyx about to stop above the dusty ground of the aged docks. One was worn out and actually.. Looking like it was about to fall into small bits of junk. The other was in pristine condition. Reyna crossed her arms, waiting for the pilots to step out.
She did not know what she expected.

Certainly not that. Some angry woman stood out of the worn out Nyx and started to curse. Something about having lost a fight or something. She proceeded with slamming the side of the ship with her ship. What a brat.
The man who left the other Nyx was the one in the video footage. He absentmindedly wiped some dust off the nose of his ship while staring at his wing-mate of the time.
"You lost. Get over it." He eventually said, before turning to Reyna. "You answered the call. Welcome. Let's go to the meeting room."

---

Stenn's footsteps ring throughout the station, the once busy halls now heavy with the silence of the forgotten. Once home to a bustling crew, squadrons of pilots and the ever present robot guards, Hope's Watch was a far cry from its heyday. Glancing at one of the few remaining droids that they hadn't managed to sell off to keep the station liquid, Stenn barely noticed Sanada's tantrum as he stalks towards the meeting room, new member in tow. Aside from Reyna's Sabre, Regina's Falchion and Junko's Nyx, his is the only ship present, meaning that the rest of the Knights had either died or decided against answering the call. Well, most of them. He knew that Derek is still alive, and would hopefully arrive shortly, but so many others were missing.

Scowling at a layer of dust on the control panel to the assembly room, he was reminded yet again that the state of the Forlorn Hope was no ones fault but his own. The Knights had done an excellent job trying to fill the gap he had left before his unexpected absence, but in the end, there was only so much you could do with a bunch of mercenaries that relied on the personal ties of one man. Even less when that man went missing and all you had left was now empty promises he had made. He couldn't blame Sarah for retiring when she did, and he could only wonder if he would ever see Elena and Troy again.

The door stuck for a moment, a year of unuse freezing its motors as he keyed in an ancient password, before it reluctantly gave way to the group. Lights dimly flickered on, revealing what had once been the briefing room of all Forlorn operations, before they had disbanded. He smiled briefly at the sight of the case of XC-15's against the wall, the personal weapons of choice of all Forlorn pilots due to their mod-ability and resultant versatility.

"So many are missing." His words are heavy in the air, as he takes his seat at the head of the room, gesturing Reyna to one of the closer Knight chairs, and waving Sanada and Regina back towards their own seats. Both of the Captains chairs remain empty, and he can't help but feel old at the sight. The Forlorn had started in a similar manner to this once long ago. Three independent mercenaries who decided that it was always better to have someone watching your back. All the members had been equals then.

He hid a grimace at the thought. No one could point out the exact moment he had claimed sole command of the Forlorn, but back then, no one had realized the effect it would have. But that was in the past, and the Forlorn were gone. But maybe not for much longer. "I've heard about you Miss Hunt. I wonder if you would have liked us more back when red was our main color instead of blue. He gazes up at the ceiling, his mind beginning to wonder. "Sanada, should we wait to see if any of the others join us, or should we continue?"

---

---

"Yeah, yeah. And you people left me here, waiting for you to finally arrive. I was actually just about to leave when you arrived. But here I am. Still aboard this ***** rock."
Reyna places her feet on the table, fiddling around with a knife again, waiting for something to happen.
"Go on, do your thing. I'm just here because I don't want to die out there and having someone watch you back helps."

---

"I don't know. How many more do you expect, Stenn-san? Will Carmen even come?"
She stared at the woman's boots at the other side of the table, before returning her gaze to him.

"Besides... I would be more interested to check those Cryo chambers of yours to make sure you didn't hurt that poor little girl. Damn this place is dirty."
Junko proceeded with wiping the meeting room's table with her finger, and showed her fingertip to Nick Stenn in an accusatory manner.

Junko did not like alcohol nor did she like people drinking alcohol. The only thing that woman earned from that benevolent action was a stern look.
She shut her eyes and emitted a heavy sigh. Not a single figure she could trust in the people present. Even Stenn. Who could say what his plans were and when he would disappear once again?

Frankly, she only came to see if Carmen would show up. Even if that woman was a Maltese, she could be trusted to some extent... Well... Actually.. Not really. She better not forget all that woman ever did was serving Malta's interests, after all...
Junko was seeing her as a rival of course, but also had more respect for the woman she would ever have admitted.

Displaying a pout currently following this line of thoughts, Junko wasn't paying much attention to the babbling going around about Forlorn and yadda yadda my knights and my Hope watch and "that owo face" too many people missing and Stenn generally acting like he wasn't the cause of all this mess in the first place.

But hey, what could you do.
She only needed some ninja robots to clean the Nyx and perhaps even fix its engines. Then, who knows what would be on the horizon? She considered for a moment talking about that job given to her by that Hogosha Oyabun. But hell. That was only thirty millions credits worth.

As no story is complete without a Z-tier Sirian celebrity, Eliza Valdez Carmen Summers finally arrived at Stenn's roll call location. This delay to her arrival was much a surprise to everyone (by everyone we mean mostly Nick Stenn) as she was the one to convince the cyborg armed mercenary to revive the Forlorn Hope and was also last seen not a system away from where she was now. If asked why exactly Eliza Carmen was this late, she would answer with the "official version" as to why it was so - she was busy tying up some loose ends with her past life. The truth was Valdez Summers was simply playing hard to get and also trying to get back at Stenn for disappearing on her yet again, something which he was very prone to doing, as she learned over the last couple of years.

The number of times she had visited Hope's Watch were easily countable on a single hand, even if you remove a few fingers from it. Most of the station's interior reminded her of other pirate stations carved into various big rocks found across Sirius. The big distinction that earned this place a more fame and distinction were the murderous robots that patrolled the decks. Why exactly did this god forsaken station need killer robots to protect it, considering nobody cared about it, was a mystery that not even the auburn haired heroine could answer. Still, the killing machines were nice enough not to shred, slice, shoot or electrocute Valdez Summers to death upon arrival so that was a good sign, right? Right.

Luckily directions to the various facilities of the station were written in plain and understandable Sirian English, something that Eliza Carmen had no problem with, regardless of what any Xeno activist would claim about the descendants of the Hispania. As she got closer and closer to the assembly room, the auburn haired girl became more and more nervous. This was actually the first time she would meet the members of the Forlorn Hope face to face. Until her own departure from the organisation she operated under the alias of Carmen Summers, supposedly a freelance pilot with ties to Crete and Liberty. As such she always pretended to be unavailable whenever Nick Stenn organized meetings as not to uncover her then much more secret identity.

But the cat was out of the bag by now and people like Sanada already knew her true identity. Still, pretending to be someone else was something Eliza Carmen found fun and liberating to do. As such she could not afford to disappoint the public and a modest masquerade was very much in order. Her delayed arrival actually gave Valdez Summers the chance to visit quite a few stations in preparation and purchase more than a few items of attire, all normal on their own, but quite bizarre when put together. A somewhat expensive endeavor, considering she was currently unemployed and without a source of stable funding, but that Eliza Carmen hoped soon to change.

So with a rather plain Kusarian kimono robe, likely purchased from the Golden Chrysanthemums in Shikoku, a rather pretentious and preposterous Victorian style Bretonian bonnet and sunglasses purchased from a stolen goods flash sale on Cape Wrath with a hefty discount and lastly a slightly charred military grade Rheinwehr sack in hand, generously provided by the neo-Zoners of Freeport 2 for a modest sum of credits, Eliza Valdez Carmen Summers walked into assembly room where the rest had gathered. Seeing that her rather pompous entry was not received with enough attention, she quickly tried to remedy that with the next piece of this show of Mrs World Wide - a very bad attempt at a Houston accent:

"Howdy y'all, I hope I'm not too late for the annual Forlorn Hope anonymous meeting?"