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RE: From Darkness - Manticore - 12-16-2013
![[Image: IWLddyv.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/IWLddyv.jpg)
LAMBERT
The space surrounding Planet Hamburg had been plunged into pure chaos with the arrival of a full fleet of Rheinland capital ships. Hopelessly outgunned, the Liberty forces struggled to hold the line against the overwhelming counterattack.
It was not going well.
“All hands, abandon ship! We’re going – “ the panicked cry of the captain of one of the Archer-class siege cruisers was cut off as his ship abruptly detonated in a wash of nuclear fire - her fusion core overloading.
“Tighten up that formation, damn it!” Polstari was doing his best to keep the unit under control, but the situation was rapidly deteriorating.
From the cockpit of his Guardian, James Lambert had a front-row view of the disaster as he dodged and weaved, barely given a chance to return fire against the swarm of Wraiths pursuing him. A small part of his mind found it ironic how quickly the tables had turned on his squadron – for now they were outnumbered at least three to one by the Rheinland fighters.
“Bombers headed for the flagship! Thirteen, Five… get over here!” Peterson’s voice, surprisingly calm.
Lambert wrenched his flight stick and his fighter responded, rolling hard to the right and then thrusting hard up towards Peterson’s green blip. Sure enough, three Fafnir heavy bombers had entered a loose formation and were making a torpedo run at the China Lake. Peterson, despite the two Wraiths hot on his tail, weaved across their formation from the left, Vengeance laser cannons spitting blue lances. He scored several hits on the large targets, but took several from his pursuers in the process. His Guardian screamed past them, already dodging more green fire from the Wraiths.
“Hit him now, I got his shield!”
Lambert didn’t think about the risk, he just reacted by lining up his firing approach. Kicking his ship up, down, left, and right with reaction thrusters, he chose the closest target – already exposed without shields thanks to Peterson – and opened up. The first burst went wide, but he quickly adjusted his aim even as the Fafnir pilot weaved. Lambert strained to line up the dancing target reticle as he drew within three hundred meters…
He blasted past just as the Fafnir disappeared from his scanners and his computer automatically targeted the next ship in line. Lambert scored a couple of glancing hits on the second bomber, and then he was past the formation as well.
His ship shuddered and an alarm chirped inside of his cockpit. SHIELD FAILURE flashed onto his console in angry red letters as he pulled the flight stick around in a dodging pattern once again.
“Good shooting, Lambert,” Peterson said, confirming the kill Lambert hadn’t seen for himself. “China Lake, torpedoes inbound on your port flank!”
“We see them,” Polstari’s voice replied, as the enormous dreadnought rolled and desperately pulled its prow up in a dodging maneuver. One torpedo lost lock and wandered off, but the second remained zeroed in on the center bulk of the Liberty warship.
At the last possible moment, dozens of bursts of fire from the dreadnought’s point defense cannons cut swaths of orange fire across the ship’s entire port broadside, catching the torpedo on final approach and detonating it well short of the dreadnought’s hull. Before the crew could celebrate, a large ball of green energy from a Rheinland Cerberus cannon smashed into Polstari’s ship on the bottom edge of the prow. It burned through several layers of armor and then honeycombed decks with effortless ease as escaping air and debris blasted back out from the wound. The dreadnought looked to writhe in agony as her helmsman desperately brought her about to bring the starboard broadside to bear on the advancing Rheinland capitals.
Lambert glanced down at his scanners just as two more Kappas flashed off amid screams over the squadron comms.
“Damn it all… all fighters regroup near the caps!” Peterson shouted.
Then a quiet voice came onto the task group comms for the first time. “Admiral, we need to retreat.” It was Falkland.
Lambert narrowed his eyes as he finally picked out the shape of the Mesa Verde, holding station a solid klick back from the other capitals and safe from everything except a few pestering Rheinland fighters. It was hard to know for sure in the twisting mess of the dogfight, but he thought Falkland had intentionally placed himself further away from Altona and closer to the lane home than any of the other Liberty ships.
There was a disturbingly long pause before Polstari responded. “No, we’re not leaving the marines. Major, pull your men back – Falkland, prepare to recover them!”
There was a burst of static on the comm, then the raw sound of a racking cough. “Sir, we… we’re pinned down here. Getting ripped to shreds.” Major Baugh’s voice was distorted by the echoing bursts of gunfire in the background.
Falkland spoke up again, voice level and reasoned. “Sir, I must protest the undue risk of your ord-”
"Lieutenant Commander, you have your orders. Follow them," Polstari stated coolly.
Still weaving his flight stick with his left hand, Lambert reached down with his right to flip over to the marine unit’s comms once again. His ears were immediately bombarded by the sounds of screaming panic. There was mass confusion among the marines, and now Major Baugh was a confirmed casualty, along with most of his command staff. There was no order structure left in place, and by the sounds of it, the men on Altona had been reduced to small pockets of disorganized resistance.
Much as the situation out here was rapidly devolving towards.
As he brought his fighter around again, Lambert saw the Mesa Verde reluctantly kick into motion, lumbering towards the maelstrom of action near Altona. He knew the ship's interior would be empty, as every single marine aboard had already been sent over. Thus there would be no reinforcements, only a few shuttles that could do nothing but wait for any troops to emerge into docking bays or access hatches.
A new voice on the task force comms, this time the gruff voice of Gunny Brack. “Admiral, Gunnery Sergeant Brack. The situation down here is not good. There’s not many of us left fighting, and at least for my boys, it’s gonna take time to get out for extraction – if we even make it.” His voice was weighed with the solemnity of a man who realized his chances of survival were bleak.
“Do you think you can get your men out of there, Gunny?” Polstari’s voice was grim as he contemplated the decision.
“If I were a bettin’ man, I wouldn’t put money on it, sir.”
Polstari let an audible sigh hiss between his teeth. “Very well.”
“We’ll give ‘em hell for you, Admiral. Get your men outta here.”
“All units, fall back to the Bering gate. Repeat: all units fall back.” Polstari’s order was crisp and unwavering, even as another Liberty gunboat blew apart in the chaos.
Lambert clenched his teeth in rage. They were just going to abandon all the marines – all his marines – here in Hamburg? Leave them to be killed or captured without even trying to pull them out?
“All fighters, cover the capitals.” Peterson ordered.
Lambert ignored him, opening up a private line to the China Lake’s bridge. “Admiral, you can’t just leave those men there!”
Polstari’s face appeared on the comm screen, eyes tight with stress as he glared at Lambert through the feed. “Lieutenant, I’ve given my order, and I expect you to follow it.” The dreadnought shuddered, and the admiral had to brace himself with both hands. “If I send anyone in to pull those men out, they’ll get slaughtered waiting for the recovery ships to get back aboard. There’s no choice now but to save who we can.”
The admiral looked up, cursing under his breath as another one of his cruisers flickered off the scanners in a ball of incandescent light. “Polstari out.”
The screen flickered off with an air of finality, and Lambert’s gloved fist clenched around the flight stick as another pair of Wraiths slipped onto his tail. Slowly, the remains of the task group began to pull back towards the gate, leaving the surviving marines to their fate aboard Altona.
RE: From Darkness - Manticore - 12-30-2013
![[Image: cI9pkRk.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/cI9pkRk.jpg)
ROB
Rob Shaw’s armored boots tramped loose snow up the ramp as he boarded Wayfarer. The dull metallic glow of the ship’s lighted cargo bay reflected off his suit of combat armor as he stopped and turned back to look at the hulking shape of the Gull, parked just across the snowy field in the rapidly gathering darkness. The job was done, and it hadn’t been particularly difficult, either. Rob would never complain when his employer insisted on doing most of the work himself, but after seeing James Arland’s handiwork evidenced aboard that transport, he couldn’t help but to hold a grudging respect for the man. All Rob, Tanya, and Kouta had needed to do was mop up.
He turned back, resuming his walk up into Wayfarer’s belly. The corridors were quieter than usual, as Tanya, Kouta, and Lex were off prepping the Gull for launch. Gage and Sparrow were likely doing the same here, but Rob opted to head for the medical bay instead of the bridge. His crew was more than capable of handling things without him for the next few minutes.
Rob stepped into the medical bay, and immediately something primitive in the back of his mind recoiled at the sudden overpowering stench of antiseptic and bleach. It smelled clean; it reeked of death.
Mentally shaking himself, Rob stepped up to the single bed centered in the relatively small room, and gazed down at James Arland’s unconscious form. The man's black hair was matted to his forehead, and Rob noticed pieces of the armor the man had been wearing laying discarded on the metal floor. Despite the blood-soaked bandages on several parts of his body, Rob’s employer looked peaceful.
Rob glanced over to his right, at the doctor who was busy filling a syringe with a clear fluid. Floretta hummed softly to herself as she worked – a sure sign that her patient was alive and not doing too poorly. Unlike most doctors Rob had encountered, Floretta made no effort to mask her emotions.
She smiled to Rob in greeting as she stepped over and injected the fluid into James’s arm. He was about to ask how his employer was coming along, purely out of politeness, when another voice beat him to it.
“How is he now?”
Rob spun, momentarily surprised that he’d managed to miss James’s partner, who had been quietly sitting on the cold steel floor at the other side of the room. The young woman’s frazzled appearance was a stark contrast to Floretta’s composure. James’s partner’s short blonde hair was messily strewn across her forehead, and her blue eyes gleamed with obvious desperation as she awaited the doctor’s response.
“He’s still doing just fine, Miss Jaeger. Should be waking up soon, in fact.” Floretta’s smile was remarkably genuine, and combined with her musically posh accent it produced an extraordinary bedside manner.
Jaeger frowned slightly, shifting uncomfortably on the floor. Rob was suddenly very aware of the loaded sidearm still strapped to his hip. If he were a bad man, he could throw both of his employers off the ship at gunpoint and take the Gull’s entire haul for himself and his crew. If he were an evil man, he could put a bullet in both of their heads first.
It was a somewhat tempting thought, for the entire haul would be worth at least ten million credits. That was a lot of cash, even though he and his crew had earned more on individual jobs in the past. The problem was that freelancers with a reputation for betraying their employers often had a much more difficult time finding more work later. And when they did… well, things had a certain way of coming back around, Rob had discovered.
Rob Shaw was many things, but he was not a man who’d betray his employer for that kind of money.
Instead, he turned back to James’s partner. “We are ready to make the deal with the Rheinlanders whenever you give the word.”
Her eyes focused on him, momentarily confused before visibly coming to the realization that with James unconscious, she was the one in charge now. “So it’s done, then.”
Rob nodded. “My people are prepping the transport for launch now. Wayfarer is ready to go, but your own vessel…”
“My AI has that handled,” she said, tersely. She began to seem to pull herself back together, and Rob could practically see the gears churning in her mind. “The Rheinlanders had a very specific meeting time established with these traders, and we may miss it unless we depart now. Give the word – my ship will take the lead.”
Rob nodded, glad that she was still willing to go ahead with the deal. Perhaps her partner would wake up before they arrived at the rendezvous. Either way, Rob and his crew would have to assume the guise of paranoid but harmless traders by that point. He stepped out of the medical bay without another word, relishing the taste of the clean, processed air once the hatch hissed shut behind him. First, it was time to get out of this armor – then it would be time to get paid.
RE: From Darkness - Manticore - 01-03-2014
![[Image: Byhs9hb.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/Byhs9hb.jpg)
LAMBERT
James Lambert grappled with paralyzing indecision as he guided his Guardian in a complex evasive pattern. It was the gnawing hesitancy that kept him from doing the logical thing and following the retreating fleet to safety.
He pulled the flight stick around in another practiced evasion maneuver as his time continued to tick away. He hung on between two imperfect choices, paralyzed by inaction, and remained as the sole Libertonian ship that had not begun the slow, agonizing retreat from the Rheinlander onslaught. No, James Lambert still held his ground as enemy fighters and capital gunners continued to lock on to his tiny craft.
He knew he should join his compatriots and run for the safety of home. Unlike at so many other points in his tortured past, he didn’t particularly want to die today.
And yet… the thought of fleeing and abandoning the marines he’d come to call brothers in arms was anathema to him. If there was something he could do to help, some way he could make a difference, he would gladly do it – at whatever cost. Those men deserved better than being abandoned, shot in the back, and dumped out an airlock.
But he had things to live for now, a career back in Liberty, not to mention Pita. What would become of the little ex-Rogue if he never came home? Who would take care of her?
He wrenched his Guardian to the right, grunting in frustration. The last Libertonian ship vanished into the tradelane, and he was alone – forgotten here along with his marines.
Just then, a pair of green bolts from a cruiser hit home, and his ship shuddered as the boiling energy dissipated his shields and ripped viciously into the armor. In that split second of panic, Lambert made a decision.
He brought the nose around, goosing the thrusters as his ship blasted off on a direct course for Altona. With his left hand he brought up a scan of the station, looking for a suitable place…
“Kappa Thirteen, report! Kappa Thirteen!” It was Peterson.
With cold conviction, Lambert reached down and disabled his group communications and IFF transponder. It was much too late to turn back now, and he couldn’t afford to argue the point with the wing commander.
There! A docking bay along the high port side of the station, ripped open to space by marine explosives. The wound in the station’s side looked plenty large enough to support his Guardian, so Lambert brought the entrance up as a subtarget and weaved his way towards it.
Another hit blasted away his recovering shields, and he suddenly realized he would only have one chance to get his ship through the narrow gash. For some reason, that didn’t bother him as much as it should’ve.
He crossed the last few hundred meters in a flash, focused completely on the shape of the station growing rapidly larger out the front glass. He spotted his target landing zone visually, and adjusted his approach angle just slightly. Then, as he closed within a hundred meters, he killed his engines and entered a drifting slide.
He jerked the fighter around just as the hull of Altona flashed past, bringing the ship’s nose to face the station’s side even as he continued to drift past. He waited a brief second, and then… there it was! A docking bay along the high port side of the station, its outer hull ripped apart by explosives, yawned open before him. A maw of steel teeth with a dark throat.
Lambert instinctively aimed for the center of the breach as it drifted past, and fired his thrusters in three short blasts. Immediately the fighter changed direction, accelerating for the gap in the station’s armor. His arm flew down to kill the drift and re-engage his engines as the Guardian narrowly cleared the jagged steel of the gash and entered the small docking bay behind it.
The fighter’s main engines roared to life, and Lambert slammed the reverse as the back wall of the bay leapt towards him out of the darkness. He killed the forward velocity just in time – with mere feet to spare, and with a twitch of the overhead positioning jets he was down on the deck. Engaging the magnetic landing gear, he anchored the Guardian to the floor as he finally let out a long breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding.
Taking a moment to glance around the bay, Lambert realized that he shared it with only one other vessel – one of the Kodiak assault transports the marines had used to insert themselves onto the station. The hulking black shape of the marine craft sat silently several dozen feet away, showing no signs of life. Lambert knew that marine assault pilots were trained to stay with their ships – except for the fact that they doubled as medics and could be called in to the front so they could extract wounded men.
To be certain this was the case, Lambert pinged the inert ship with a standard Liberty Navy hail on a tight beam, but there was no response. Sighing in resignation, he popped the Guardian’s hatch, and reached behind his head to where he kept a standard issue sidearm for emergencies.
He thanked his lucky stars that he’d had the foresight to wear the combat armor as he vaulted from the cockpit, floating in the zero-gee of the unpressurized bay. He secured the sidearm at his waist, and then tied his armor’s communications back into the marine battle net. There was still some scattered chatter, but the channel was far quieter than the last time he’d tuned in. That was not a good sign.
A gentle tap of the small thruster pack embedded in his suit sent him forward and down, towards the secured hatch at the rear of the gutted bay. He grabbed the opening mechanism as he floated up to it, and wrenched the hatch open, assisted by the armor’s servomotors. Air blasted out as the small area beyond rapidly depressurized, but then Lambert was able to float through and secure the hatch behind him. The small corridor served as an impromptu airlock, for it contained nothing aside from an identical hatch roughly twenty feet ahead. Lambert opened this, drawing his sidearm as he did, but it was silent on the other side.
His heavy suit of armor gently thumped to the deck as the station’s artificial gravity generators finally captured his mass. There was air in this portion of the station, now, but it remained eerie in its silence. Lambert briefly recalled the marine chatter about the same silence as they had first boarded the station. The only difference was that they had entered unsuspecting, while Lambert was fully aware that he was walking into a deadly trap.
RE: From Darkness - l3wt - 01-05-2014
![[Image: 8oIyzTl.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/8oIyzTl.jpg)
ARLAND
James was floating in darkness. He didn't know for how long. He didn't know much of anything, in fact, except for one thing. A long reel of images and impressions his brain was subconsciously sifting through.
Falling into a great white abyss. The acrid smell of gunfire, of propellant gases and burnt air. Blood. Music. Faces, shocked, surprised, frightened. Inert bodies lining steel rooms and passageways, dead, dead, dead.
Some idle higher process of his mind stood up and took notice, then. Was he dead too?
Nonsense, piped up another.
If he was dead, he clearly could not be contemplating the theory, or much of anything else.
That didn't do much to alleviate the creeping, droning dread that seeped through to what few parts of his brain was active at the moment.
The images continued. Faster, now. More intense. He could remember pain. Fatigue. A knife going through someone's throat. A holdout, a last stand, or something like it, a good one. Then, much to his confusion, snow and a great deal of wind, a red trail behind him.
A worried face, female, blonde, shouting at him, hair dotted with specks of snow.
His eyes opened, and he snapped into consciousness, revealing an unfamiliar, blindingly white room - and immediately tried marshaling his hands into scrambling about for a weapon for the second it took his brain to become fully operational and his eyes to adjust to the light. They didn't respond well, and the semi-conscious action achieved little but twitching and a dull, throbbing pain.
Then he exhaled, only now taking note of the fact that everything sort of hurt like hell. He couldn't help but tug the corners of his mouth into a slightly distant smile.
What could be better than that particular pain? The fully cognizant knowledge that, despite everything, he was alive?
For a few moments he remained like that, staring bleary-eyed at the ceiling, listening to the heartbeat monitor, the soft hum of the ship. He felt a pang of regret at the way they'd gone about this job. He'd very nearly gotten himself killed in what was best described as a senseless and overambitious killing spree, and put their lives into the hands of nearly complete strangers over money.
They couldn't afford this degree of careless audacity in the future.
Why the crew of the Wayfarer hadn't attempted to exploit and discard them so far was beyond him. Perhaps basic human decency wasn't completely dead after all. They'd be in for an unpleasant surprise if they tried something, anyway. JADE had been programmed with a dead man's switch.
Regardless, he was grateful, and intent on paying his debts. Very carefully, trying not to provoke his injuries - gunshot wounds to his leg and shoulder, the screwed up ribs from the landing - he slowly coaxed himself into a semi-upright position. He wondered, when he looked, would someone be there, or had he been left to his own devices?
As James stirred and slowly tried to lift himself up, Floretta looked up from the medication cabinet she had been digging through with a small noise of concern. She immediately abandoned her search and walked over to the bed, gently placing a hand on James's shoulder.
"Not quite yet, my dear. It's much too early for that," she cooed sofly in her musical accent. "Let's lie back down for a moment."
James looked like he was about to protest, but was interrupted by Lisa leaping up from the corner of the room. She had dozed off while sitting in the floor, and now looked angry that she had missed seeing the man awake.
"James!" she squeaked, rubbing her eyes as she stepped up to the other side of him. "How are you feeling?"
Floretta frowned very slightly at the clear interruption of her work, but remained silent - taking her hand off James's shoulder and taking a small step backwards.
James obliged, he always was a sucker for the gentle-though-insistent kind. He sank back down onto the bed, then focused his attention on Lisa, making a bold attempt at cracking a half-grin.
"Well," he said. Came out raspier than he'd hoped, and his throat felt like someone had gone at it with sandpaper, but he managed.
"I feel like I've been put through a steel press then shot a few times. I feel alive enough, though."
"I don't feel as though I've lost anything too important, I mean." He turned his head towards the Floretta.
"Or am I wrong?"
Lisa frowned, not certain how to take his response. After looking at him for a long moment, she turned her gaze to Floretta, eyes asking the same question.
The doctor stepped forward again, smiling reassuringly as she spoke directly to James. "No, you certainly haven't, Mr. Arland. As far as these things go, you were fortunate. Your armor took the majority of the force from the shock, and those that punctured luckily did not hit anything major."
She paused, pursing her lips slightly. "That's not to say that gunshot wounds and broken ribs are to be treated without appropriate care and caution, but I think it's safe to say that you'll make a full recovery with an appropriate amount of bedrest."
James nodded slowly. "That's a relief."
He focused his attention on Lisa again. "I... have to apologize. I was reckless, it's how I ended up like this. I risked ruining everything for the sake of a cargo hauler."
She shook her head slightly from side to side. "No, you don't have to apologize. It was part of our plan... for the money, right. Jade and I should have prepared the numbers for your drop better, should've made certain you would land safely. You wouldn't have gotten hurt if we'd only done everything else right."
Her face fell, and all of a sudden she couldn't meet his eyes.
He tried to laugh. It wasn't a pleasant sound, and it took considerable effort, but seeing her get melancholy and try to blame herself for all this disagreed violently with him.
"There's no way you could have constructed that guidance system with total accuracy anyway. Besides... You're not the one who decided to jump out of a perfectly good spaceship."
She looked up, frowning sadly. "James, it was... it was part of the plan. And I was supposed to get you down there safely... I'm so sorry. I don't know what I would've done if you had... if things had..."
She blinked furiously as tears crept into the corners of her eyes. "You know what I mean."
Neither of them noticed that Floretta had quitely stepped away while they were speaking, choosing to bury her head back into her search through the medicine cabinet.
James felt infuriatingly helpless, mind gnawing away at finding some way to cheer his partner up, or at least making her stop blaming herself for it all. Perhaps he should try and make her refocus.
He'd chosen a bad time to try and give voice to his darker thoughts. On one hand, he had an urge to vent, to tell her everything that really weighed on him. Tell her how little he thinks of himself sometimes. How the thought of his own death or that of others doesn't seem to bother him anymore, and how that, paradoxically, frightened the hell out of him. That and myriad other worries and cognitive issues he carried around in his mind all day.
On the other, Lisa had enough to deal with right now without having to listen to his bullshit like a damned therapist.
That and the Bretonian in him scoffed at the notion of whining. Stiff upper lip and all that.
"I know. I know. Look on the bright side, though. We pulled it off, I'll be fine, we have the cargo, and soon we'll also have the money, and then we can go back to playing discount supervillains. Just, please don't be so hard on yourself."
She let out a long breath of air, and then seemed to visibly re-gather herself.
"I guess you're right. And on the subject of getting paid... I went ahead and told the freelancers that we were going to the rendezvous with the buyers on schedule. We're actually just getting ready to leave."
She blinked, pausing for a brief moment. "Is that... okay?" Her eyes seemed to beg for his approval.
James nodded reassuringly. "Of course, that's great. There's one problem, though," he began.
"I won't be able to come with you for the rendezvous itself. I'm not able to so much as stand up right now, much less duping the Rheinland Military into buying hijacked materiél. This one you and the freelancers will have to pull off."
She nodded, resolve returning to her features again. "It's okay. We can do it on our own. I'll make sure the freelancers don't try any funny business, too."
She glanced over briefly at Floretta, who was pointedly trying not to pay attention to their conversation as she rummaged through the supply drawer.
James couldn't help but glance over too, and mentally kicked himself for creating an oddly conspiratorial look for the two of them before looking back at Lisa.
"They've not tried anything so far, and the doctor has helped me out. Both are points in their favour. Still, keep your eyes open. And be very careful around the Rheinlanders. Any unusual activity, any heavy ordnance pointed your way aside from the usual levels of security, you get out of there. There's always another buyer."
Lisa nodded. "I'll make sure we're careful. Get in, make the sale, get out. Simple - we've done it before, after all."
She shrugged dismissively, some of her headstrong confidence seeming to return. "I'll keep the freelancers in line, and we'll be back with a pile of credits to split up in no time. Speaking of, it's probably about time for the final prep before we touch down at the rendezvous."
She straightened, looking down at him with a sad smile. "Rest up, James."
He gave a sardonic half-smile in return. "As though I have any choice."
Her smile grew as she turned to speak to the doctor. "Doc, don't let him even think about getting out of bed while we're gone."
Floretta turned to them, relief evident in her eyes as she realized she was once again included in their conversation. "Wouldn't dream of it, dear. Don't worry, he'll be just as you've left him."
James kept talking. His voice sounded sluggish, and his lips still felt distant and alien as they moved, but there was no better way to put on a brave face than with a bit of snark.
"Hopefully I'll be feeling a little better. How many painkillers am I even on? No, really, between you and the suit, Doctor, I probably have more drugs in me right now than your average cardamine enthusiast."
Floretta nodded, as Lisa stepped back and moved to step out of the room. "Yes, you have a number of different medications in your system," the doctor replied, "in fact, it's a wonder you've stayed awake this long. Best to take your partner's advice and get some more rest."
Her blue eyes gleamed as she added, "If you don't, I might have to give you a bit of synthetic encouragement." Floretta smiled as she hefted a syringe she'd pulled from the cabinet.
James slightly raised his hands in mock surrender as he sank further into the bed.
"Yes ma'am." Even in this weakened state he managed an appropriately playful drawl on the last syllable, a clear signal that despite everything, he persisted. He let himself sink further into the anesthetic shroud of sleepiness, and closed his eyes. His breathing steadied within seconds.
Lisa stepped out the door of the medical bay as Floretta moved close to him again, checking his vitals one last time before she'd leave him to sleep.
All credit to Manticore for his parts.
RE: From Darkness - Manticore - 01-11-2014
![[Image: JSx4DDS.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/JSx4DDS.jpg)
STEVEN
Steven Falkland had to suppress the urge to smile as the helmsman guided the Mesa Verde into the lane that would whisk them back to the Bering gate and from there, to Liberty. Things had gone beautifully – in fact, better than he’d imagined. His hated executive officer had leapt at the chance to abandon his duty to save his precious marines. Now, he would certainly die, and once Falkland had played up the man’s dereliction of duty and disregard for orders back in Liberty, he would most certainly be remembered in death only as a reckless deserter.
He reached up to touch the edge of his temple – a place that once had carried a very noticeable scar but was now smooth, unblemished skin. The only downside to things working out this way was that James Lambert would never have a chance to learn the truth of things. The man who played at being Steven Falkland would not get to enjoy his revenge in person. Still, it was a small price to pay, considering.
“Sir, something’s wrong!”
Falkland’s eyes flashed up to the tac screen as the alarmed voice of his helmsman snatched his attention. They had just exited the lane, and the Bering gate stood before them. They were the first from the task group to arrive, as planned, but something was amiss. The gate was… different. Chunks of the enormous steel frame were missing, and it noticeably vented gaseous fuel at several points.
“Ping Gate Control again with our credentials. We don’t have time to waste.” Falkland strained to keep the rising concern out of his voice. Ageira’s gate protocols were highly secure, and did not permit any group, even a house government, to deny passage to any ship with valid credentials. That left only one possible option…
“Sir, they’re not even acknowledging. I’m not getting anything from the gate at all, sir.” This time it was his communications officer.
Falkland frowned, his eyes narrowing. “Flash a priority message to Task Group Command. Tell them the gate is not responding and we are requesting new orders."
Mentally, Falkland cursed his erstwhile Rheinland contact. He’d anticipated the rather overzealous fleet response from the Military, but to explosively disable their own gate leading to Liberty was an entirely unexpected overreaction. He pursed his lips as he thought. Perhaps the measure had been planned for some time, and they had merely been waiting for the appropriate moment.
Regardless, he had no intention of dying here in Hamburg alongside the other Libertonians. He would find a way to escape this, and complete this phase of his plan by returning to Liberty as a heroic survivor of the tragically failed raid.
“Incoming transmission from the flagship, sir!” his communication officer shouted.
“Play it,” Falkland ordered.
“All units, fall back to the Bering jumphole. Sending a waypoint through now.” It was Polstari himself. Falkland watched on the visual feed as the wounded shape of the China Lake appeared from the tradelane behind them. It was quickly followed by two wings of Wraiths, hot on the stern of the Libertonian flagship.
The only other member of the once-proud task group that had made it this far was a lamed gunboat. That ship slowly dropped back to pull alongside the more heavily damaged flagship, attempting to use its remaining turrets to knock the Rheinland fighters back.
“Helm, drop us back alongside the flagship. Guns, get our turrets to continuous rapid-fire. Target the nearest Rheinlanders, and keep it up as long as they stay in range.”
His orders were acknowledged and Falkland watched as silent blue bolts began firing from his ship in a continuous stream. They maneuvered the converted transport to follow the savaged dreadnought as it pulled about and began making the long, slow journey towards a nearby asteroid field. The purple beacon of their waypoint shone from the interior of the field on Falkland’s tactical screen, bright with the promise of safety.
“Kill confirmed,” his tactical officer intoned softly. “Shields reading at eighty percent.”
Three klicks to their stern, two Rheinland battleships emerged from the lane, and opened up at the extreme range – sending mortars and missiles charging up their wake.
“Evasive pattern Charlie,” Falkland ordered, as calmly as possible. “Stay on those fighters.”
The ship lurched into evasive action to avoid the fire now coming from every direction, as they crept at agonizingly slow pace towards their goal. The small distance readings below the purple diamond of the waypoint ticked ever downwards as the three ships charged through a hailstorm of energy. The safety the jumphole represented was tantalizingly close, but with every bracing impact their hope diminished.
Falkland’s scanners updated as asteroids began to appear in front of them, fortunately mostly of the variety smaller than any of the capital ships. His helmsman began to divert slightly from the dreadnought’s course as they swerved to avoid the first of them.
As they entered the field, Falkland suppressed a grimace as his gunner’s accuracy noticeably began to drop, the Wraiths now using the numerous rocks as cover for their attack runs. Still, the danger they represented paled in comparison to the battleships, still slinging missiles and mortars at them from range. The China Lake’s shields were flickering, her hull integrity down to critical levels. One more solid hit from one of those capital-grade weapons would be the end of her.
Abruptly, the fire from the battleships slackened – a final mortar harmlessly pulverizing an asteroid. Falkland looked as his scanner with disbelief as the pursuing battleships began to drop off behind them, now well out of even extreme range. They pulled up on the fringe of the field, refusing to enter.
The Wraiths kept up the pressure but the real danger was now behind them. Falkland allowed himself a small breath of relief as the three battered ships closed on the jumphole. Active scanners reached out ahead of them, probing for a trap but none revealed itself. It seemed the Rheinlanders were content to let them go.
As they arrived at the jumphole and prepared to depart Rheinland space, Falkland thought about the next stage of things. He and Polstari would have to report the events of the last hour to the rest of the primary fleet, and Falkland intended to shine a very unfavorable light on a certain recently-deceased Lieutenant.
RE: From Darkness - Rodent - 01-19-2014
![[Image: XzXV0Hc.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/XzXV0Hc.jpg)
LEWIS
Reginald Lewis leaned against the side of his Guardian, head lowered and shoulders slumped. The adrenaline rush was wearing off, leaving only a seeping tiredness that found his way to his very bones. But he’d made it here, mostly in one piece. Not everyone was so lucky.
He raised his head, hearing quick footsteps coming towards him. It was not a man he recognized, although the Red and Blue uniform of the Bretonian Armed Forces ensured that he was a friendly face. He looked unwashed and tired, hair that might have been a brilliant chrome now a dusty brown-blonde.
“Commander Lewis?” He inquired softly. Soft traces of a New London accent underscored his words, and Lewis surmised that the officer was likely from a well established family...perhaps even nobility. His flinty face and hair lent some weight to that notion. If the nobles were being forced to take to arms… it was not a good situation.
“Lieutenant Commander Lewis. You are?” Lewis said, extending a hand. The Bretonian took him up on the offer, and his handshake was firm and confident.
“Captain Adrian Nelson. I’m in charge of Wikes Base as long as it’s still standing,” He said, leaning back and smiling faintly.
“It should stand a fair bit longer now that the supplies are in.” Lewis said, grinning back and gesturing to docking bays all around him. Wikes was underground as resistance bases were wont to do. Orbital bombardment was too great a concern. Said docking bays were filled with freighters, mostly Libertonian with an odd Camara or Bretonian freighter thrown into the mix. They brought much needed supplies to fuel the resistance. Armaments were the primary cargo on this shipment, but basic amenities like food and water were also being unloaded.
“Best thing to happen to us all month, Lewis. The damned Gallics don’t make it easy to get supplies down here and we were getting stretched to the wire,” Adrian said, nodding softly as he looked around.
“You can say that again…”
This was Lewis’ first escort mission to the besieged planet, and it had been pure nightmare fuel. It had started innocuously enough,from the Magellan system. Their orders were simple, to sneak under the Gallic dragnet and get to the planet’s surface. Contrary to his expectations, getting to Leeds had been the easy part. Apparently the Gallics were more interested in watching for large-scale attacks than monitoring for small fry like them.
As they began atmospheric entry, Lewis had been proven dead wrong. A maelstrom of fire engulfed them as anti-air batteries throughout the planet were alerted to their presence, missiles and shrapnel had turned the air around them into a death trap. Their only way out was to drop as fast as possible to get under Anti-Air coverage.
The entire ordeal had lasted less than fifteen seconds, Lewis realized with surprise. It had seemed far longer… they had lost more than half the convoy in the process. And it wasn’t over yet, for Gallic fighter squadrons had been mobilized to track them down and destroy them, and they had been forced to either avoid them or shoot them down.
By a stroke of luck, they had managed to end up fairly close to Wikes, and thus saved themselves.
“Now you know why they call it the ‘Death Drop’, Yank”, Adrian said, chuckling dryly. He clapped Lewis on the shoulder. “You saved our asses. For a few weeks, at least.”
“Doing what I can, Captain,” Lewis said, earnestly. This earned a shrug from the grizzled Bretonian officer.
“Gallics will be swarming around this area for a while, so you’re stuck here. Enjoy our hospitality and make yourself at home… such as it is,” he said, already walking away. Lewis didn’t press him, the man likely had a whole new slew of work to do with the new supplies. Distributing them properly would take time.
He made his way to the living quarters, a short walk and an elevator ride away. Wikes was all narrow corridors, dim lights and cramped spaces. He decided to find a secure terminal first, to key himself into the Naval network and confirm mission success. It did not take long, people around the base already seemed to have an idea of who he was, and gave him a fair deal of space.
Half an hour later, he’d finished filing his report. It could not be a long one, as he did not trust the security of any communication from Leeds. A basic confirmation of the drop was all he’d been able to file in. That being done, he was about to log off when a report caught his eye.
It was from Admiral Polstari, and the report was titled ‘Unexpected Events at Altona’. It was classified, but Lewis had limited access. Curiosity got the better of him, and he opened it…
“Dear god.”
Polstari was not known for understating a situation, but this certainly counted as one. A Naval attack on Altona, for an unstated objective had been ambushed by a large Rheinland fleet and completely outmaneuvered. The report did not list complete losses and details, and large portions of it were redacted or beyond his clearance, but if he was reading it right...this was the biggest loss Liberty had suffered at Rheinland’s hands in a long while. Not something they could afford at all.
Lewis vowed to find out more when he was back in Liberty Space.
RE: From Darkness - Manticore - 07-20-2014
![[Image: utrsGiL.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/utrsGiL.jpg)
LAMBERT
James Lambert glided, ghost-like, through the tomb-silent corridors of Altona Station. The lights flickered in long, irregular intervals as the station’s power core struggled to keep up with the abuse being heaped upon it. The sounds of distant fighting were beginning to drift to his helmet-enhanced ears, and he moved towards them in a fast crouch, pistol drawn, sticking to shadows whenever he could. This was a major thoroughfare in the station, but it remained dead and empty. Eerily so.
He stepped up to a major crossroads, and with practiced footwork pivoted to check the lines of sight crossways.
Clear, clear… wait.
Movement down the corridor to his left. He ducked back around the corner as the unmistakable sound of boots clanking on the metal deck reached his ears. His suit’s short-range sensors would’ve been able to pick up the contacts and identify them using IFF protocols, but he’d disabled them to be certain he could remain electronically invisible. His ears were still perfectly functional, and he picked out two separate sets of footfalls accompanied by some low-voiced chatter in Rheinlander. Mentally, he translated a piece of their conversation.
“They have us wandering behind the lines while the commandos get to finish the Libertonians.”
“We will have our chance, Flieger.”
“Perhaps. But perhaps none will be left by the time they call us in.”
The footfalls grew louder, and Lambert quickly decided on his plan of attack. With deliberate care, he silently slid a compact combat knife from a sheath attached to his shoulder, holding it in his right hand and the pistol in his left. He pressed himself into a thin layer of shadows along the wall as the pair of soldiers walked past him. Neither spared a glance in his direction, focused completely on their argument. They wore standard equipment for Rheinland garrison marines - light tactical armor and a compact, open-faced helmet.
As they continued past Lambert, he acted.
He leapt forward at the closest man. The active sound damping system on his armor masked his presence until it was too late, and his target had only just begun to turn in suspicion when Lambert’s right hand snaked around him and jerked the knife across his throat, right above the top edge of his own chest piece. It was a messy, deep cut but he savagely yanked the knife through the man’s flesh and out the other side.
He then turned his attention to the second man, who was attempting to lift his weapon to respond. The man had gaped in shock for just a moment too long, however, and Lambert’s left hand came up, pistol leveled at the stunned expression on the Rheinlander’s face.
Lambert squeezed the trigger, and the man’s gaping mouth exploded in a mess of blood.
He quickly holstered the knife and pistol and snatched up one of the Rheinlander’s weapons - a compact assault rifle typical of those used by all marines for shipboard activities. With armor-piercing rounds it could get the job done against enemy marines, but the weapon lacked sufficient power to blow a hole through the side of a ship or station.
He flipped up the red-dot sight and moved deeper into the station, now with a brisker pace. It would not be long before the Rheinlanders knew something had happened in this area. He cut off from the main corridor into a small cargo storage bay, and crossed it as the sound of gunfire grew decidedly louder. Behind the gray, nondescript crates of this storage bay was a large floor-to-ceiling steel door, marked in Rheinlander as ‘Loading Bay 2’.
Lambert had never been much of a techie, but fortunately this particular door required no special authorization to open. He quickly slid his back against the wall to the left as the door panel flashed green and the door split in half and slid open. The volume of the gunfire immediately rose to the din of an active combat zone. His ears immediately picked out the familiar sound of Liberty manufactured assault rifles, along with closer gunfire that could only be Rheinlander weapons.
He snapped a quick glance into the next area, revealing a cavernous transport loading bay. Mooring ports lined the far wall, where cargo could be quickly loaded into the waiting hold of a transport. Tall stacks of cargo containers half-filled the bay, providing cover for both sides in the battle that raged within it. It was a maze of narrow passages between the massive cargo containers, and gunfire flashed and echoed all around.
Lambert stole another glance, realizing that he had somehow emerged into the quietest corner of the bay. Squads of fully armored Rheinland marines were entering the bay on the far side, and their direction led Lambert to believe that the surviving Libertonian marines had been herded into the center of this maze. It was a smart move on the part of the Rheinlanders - back the enemy into a corner where they could easily be finished off with no survivors. There couldn’t be many left.
He considered his options. He had to do something, he’d come this far already. But he either had to go into the bay blind, and hope he could find his marines before the Rheinlanders stumbled across him, or tap into the Libertonian battle net and possibly alert the Rheinlanders to his general position. The lights continued to steadily flicker as indecision grasped him.
The door he’d just opened abruptly sprung back to life, beginning to close.
Of course! This was a Rheinland station, their central control would have been able to determine that this door had been opened. They were closing it remotely!
Muttering a curse to himself, he frantically looked around as the door began to drift back together from both sides. Lambert pushed off from the wall, practically leaping the five paces to a low cargo crate on this side of the door, as tall as his waist and fairly compact. It looked to be made of strong super alloy. Too heavy to lift, he threw his shoulder into it and shoved the crate towards the rapidly-closing door. Engaging the magnets in his boots for additional traction, he threw all of his strength into the crate to get it across the floor. He didn’t think he was going to make it, but then the crate shuddered violently as the door’s twin sides caught on it’s bulk. The door’s internal motors squealed in frustration as the crate stopped the door from closing, but kept applying futile force.
The central controller would know something was wrong very soon, which meant Lambert was out of time. He took a deep breath, and then leapt over the crate and into the chaos of the loading bay.
RE: From Darkness - Manticore - 07-20-2014
INTERLUDE
Pain and confusion reigned in his consciousness, settling over him like a haze. He glanced down at the dark shape on the ground in front of him, a stain of vomit on an otherwise pristine floor. Why was it there?
Abruptly, he realized that his head hurt - like an enormous vice was trying to crush it to a pulp. How had he not noticed this before?
He looked up into the confusing shapes and motion all around him. Where was he? Sounds, flashes of light. Giant walls reaching up towards a ceiling high above, but not quite reaching it.
He tried to move, but he could only seem to rock back and forth. His body was encased in metal armor, stained with blood. Liberty.
The battle. There was some kind of battle going on, wasn’t there?
He contemplated this for a long moment, but nothing else entered his mind.
Suddenly, a man was shaking him and yelling into his face. He pushed the man away - the yelling was making the vice on his head tighten even more. Words. So many… damn… words. Too fast - they raced past before he could catch them. He pressed his hands to his face, squeezing back against the vice.
Slowly, with great effort, he started to catch words here and there. Sir. Why did this person like using that word so much? Was that his name? ‘Sir’ didn’t really sound like a proper name…
Rheinlanders. Enemy. Closer. Die.
Orders. Orders? Orders!
He couldn’t understand what this man kept going on about, or why he should care.
Eventually, the yelling man left him in peace, surely to go bother someone else. Now if only that deafening gunfire would stop…