Nerrone's Rangers IC [Thread 1]

He took the sword, and stayed in the living room. Meanwhile, Crycell was looking for something to cure Bor. He asked to no one in particular, "Does anyone know where Kwa is?" Another Ranger answered him.

"You guys should probably hang around," Dagon told Feren and IO, "Las Thaddas is another city on the other side of the continent: should be far enough from this whole mess that you don't get any trouble, with any luck."

Kwa heard Crycell call, and stuck her head through the doorway to the ship's living area: "What is it?"
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--Coalition HQ, Planet Tareen--

"Both of them?"
"Yes, commander — Corporals Bronsted and Faust are now both very much dead: Faust's life-signs went out several minutes after Bronsted flat-lined." For the past few minutes, the situation room in Coalition HQ had been in uproar as the situation on planet Ariid had spiraled out of control. It was only now, as the locals established their perimeter, that the CLEU team was beginning to make sense of events.
"And Eddings?"
"Sergeant Eddings is en route to the police station on Santa Frerraro now to investigate," Lieutenant Dallan comforted himself with the fact that he was being paid overtime for this — the barrage of questions was almost too much for him to maintain a professional front at this time of night.
"So what do we have?"
"Two minutes of an interview with one of the people identified in the Ezekiel IV black market raid, and the feed from a couple of discreet cameras Faust had in place: one outside the interview room, one in the foyer. We're processing the data now."
"Show me the tape."

Dallan handed his commanding officer a headset and played the file:

"...who you're up against. Kwa is our main co-leader, she's someone to watch out for. Dagon is another co-leader. There was also—"

The headset was removed and handed back to Dallan.
"...Lieutenant, get me a ship."
"Commander?"
"Now."
"...Yessir."

Kaaran slumped further into his chair, his breathing back to normal, yet his muscles still felt like they were on fire, now that the Adrenalin was fully out of his system. He could hear the hubb-ubb of the conversation, but wasn't listening. Once he heard his name and he whipped his head up, before realising they will still carrying on with the politeness, and formalities of introductions. He looked down at his Launcher, still with a gaping hole in it's side, and realised it was about time he went and patched up his launcher, and fiddled with the ammo clip on his new pistol.
He hauled himself up, and hobbled off to his cabin, closing the door behind him. The Recoil chamber was an easy fix, he just filled in the hole with a nanotube enforced polymer putty, something any respected techie should carry. He was running a bit low, and so applied it sparingly. He then turned to the ammo clip, looking at the power source, and adding a simple Socket, and common transformer, to provide a rechargable power supply. He then tweaked the Bullet carriage itself to accomodate normal rounds, like they used to use in the forces. Those good old times, well they were coming back round if his plan worked.

Celdryc left IO to go to his room. There he pulled out the supplies he had bought, and began attatching the generators he bought to a small metal box made of parts that used to be his computer.

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IO, responding to Dagon, said: "I don't really get in trouble in this city anymore. I blow up a building or break someone out of prison, the police come, I remind them that I saved the city multiple times, and they let me off the hook. This doesn't happen too oftten, but it works when I do something im not supposed to." Then he continued: "However, I'd like to travel with you, as I am sure this is not the first time you've attracted the attention of the CLEU and my relationship with them is rather...aggresive. Of course if you allowed me to travel with you, I would help out in situations not involving them as well. Whatever you decide, I request that we stop at a guard tower near the outskirts of the city. I need to pick up a few things." By now he had removed the machine gun from his hand and put it in a bag on his back, which turned his mechanical arm back into looking like an arm.

Dagon thought for a moment before replying: "...Well alright, but leave the kitchen sink behind, wouldya? We're tight enough on space here as it is."
He called out in the direction of the cockpit: "Hey, Xol! Got a pit stop to make en route to Las Thaddas — IO here has some stuff to pick up."

"Sure thing," Xol yelled back. He turned the ship around and headed for Las Thaddas.

Feren was not even sure what the next step was for him. He tidied up the mess he'd made, by packing everything except for one evidence, he sat down and pulled out his RDA. Time to find out what he can about the illegal device.

He unzipped the evidence bag and took out the device, he started to frown, as he looked over the device as he realised it had a microchip in it. This meant there was an implant in it, he only hoped it belonged to no-one. He fired up his RDA and tried to remotely connect to the device, the military spec of his RDA meant that fewer protocols were required to access the data on the device. The microchip inside must be damaged as the data was taking time to load.... "Oh, dear Vermillion" he said in both an angry and confused tone, "This cannot be good.".

"We've got an unconscious ranger here," replied Crycell. "Not sure what his name is, and I'm pretty sure he needs medical attention." He stood there, looking uncertain with Bor slung over his shoulder.

"Set him down on one of the bunks," Kwa ordered, "we've got bandages and proper medical supplies around here somewhere — check under the sink or in the cargo hold."

She began making her way to the holo-screen on the far side of the living area, fishing around in her satchel for the datapad she had been given in her meeting. Dagon was left to peek over Feren's shoulder as he worked, sharing his perplexity.

Kwa would begin the briefing soon.

Feren could sense Dagon's presence through Dagon's body heat, but he was not too bothered by this, as the information he was seeing was both in Ergonian and and, to the say least, relatively complex to understand. A lot of the data was corrupted as well, which did not help. However, one thing was clear as day to read on his screen, which anyone could understand, the name at the top of the screen (which displays at all times when reading Ergonian Implants) was in Universal Characters - as all Ergonian names tended to be.

"DOCTOR MEHMET VERCINOX"

Feren knew this man, and there was no logical reason for this implant to be in this device, here.

He turned to Dagon, and spoke.

"This is not good! I know, or knew, this Ergonian, there is no obvious reason for his implant to be an a device, that should not even be in this system. This device is registered to the doctor, but I can only assume someone dumped it on Ezekiel IV to eliminate the evidence of wrong doing."

He frowned back at the screen, he thought for a moment or two, looking at the data. Evidently the implant had been removed five days ago, since all vitals data stopped then. he turned back to Dagon....

"What were the CLEU doing here, anyway? That cannot be a coincidence!"

I monitored the engines and looked at the pile of scrap metal and old computer hard-drives I had collected over the time...Biogenic re-generators...Good for scabs and cuts. A few hundred input/output cables...Many simple uses. All of a sudden, an idea sparked in my mind. I got a typing pad and vigorously The Dude of Honor up new and amazingly...original...designs that could back up the entire ship...and help on missions. What an idea I had....

(Mwahahaha!)

Dagon scratched his head, "Well they like to keep up a presence in all their systems, but... yeah. There's really no way they should have responded that fast." He frowned, "You think they're on the trail of this 'Doctor Vercinox' person?"

Feren smirked, Dagon had basically suggested what he was thinking and dare not speak, but having done so, he felt a sense of relief.

"It had crossed my mind, Dr Vercinox is, or at least was, a Government consultant when I was last there, which was about a month ago. Several years he was assigned as the official doctor to a small unit I led during the most recent war with The Krayven. There are only two reasons his implant is here, either the CLEU or whomever captured him and removed it, or he removed it himself. Why he'd remove it himself is beyond me."

"So what do you plan to do with it?" Dagon asked, "I take it mailing the darned thing back to the Coalition with a box of chocolates and an apology isn't on the agenda?"

"Well" Feren laughed, 'An interesting though' he chuckled to himself. "I really ought to get this back to Ergenon VII where it belongs." He put the device as close to his RDA as he could and started scanning. More details appeared on the screen, it least 5 items:

"Ergonian x 2
Mallium
Ezekielian
Human
Zaxian"

"It's identified 6 individuals whom have touched this device, my RDA cannot be more specific than species, it is Military Spec, only Law Enforcement have RDA's with that capability. I can guess the Ergonians, and I think the Zaxian is him, since he stole this device from that shop." He points at Quark, but not in a ccusatory way.

"The Ezekelian is obviosuly the shopkeep, it is the Mallium and the Human that is the issue. I can only assume one of the Mallium we encountered in the station is a match, and the Human?" he paused for a second "They could well have removed the chip from Dr. Vercinox."

He shook his head... "I think I have to find Dr. Vercinox. You guys going anywhere near a CLEU compound any time soon?"

"Not if we stay on Ariid," Dagon replied, "Planet Tareen is where they have their base of operations, though. I reckon we're going to end up there sooner or later, Spode help us."

He doubted the Coalition had any motive to abduct a doctor from a neighboring empire — they were usually too concerned with keeping the peace in their corner of the galaxy to do something that could so easily cause a gigantic political incident.

At least, he was pretty sure they were.

In that case, perhaps I can be of use to you guys until I can work out the next step. Though a long distance communication to my homeworld would be useful."

He smirked at his RDA as he put the Microchip Designator back into the evidence bag and put it in his bag.

"Alright everyone," Kwa announced, booting up the holo-screen in the living area to begin the briefing, "We have an assignment."

"This is the city of Las Thaddas — schematics courtesy of Santa Frerarro's surveillance archives," A holo-projection lit the room with blue light — at first glance Las Thaddas looked a lot like Santa Frerarro: a huge diamond-shaped machine with buildings on top and a monstrous set of anti-gravity engines below, keeping the entire city off the ground and fully mobile. Las Thaddas was wide where Santa Frerarro was long, however, and in place of towers Thaddas hosted an array of metal dome-shaped buildings at its heart.

"Let me give you an outline of the situation: The cities of Santa Frerarro and Las Thaddas have been rivals for quite some time. Now things are coming to a head and the governors of SF have contracted us to... skew the odds in their favour. It's all about survival of the fittest on Ariid: the planet is so wasted that any natural resource is hotly contested, and my but they've found themselves something to fight over."

The hologram of Las Thaddas was minimised, and what appeared in its place was a map of the continent — the two cities were marked as rectangles, and a pair of dotted lines indicated that they were both headed directly for what looked to be a mountain: "The latest scans on this unremarkable pile of rock in the middle of the plains have shown that it contains a completely untapped supply of Zirthinnite ore: I'm not a geologist, but that stuff is apparently worth enough money to start a small war over, and that is exactly what is going to happen if they both try to mine it out at the same time. Both cities are roughly two weeks away from it, and our job is to make sure Santa Frerarro gets there first, and has enough time to extract the Zirthinnite and get away before Las Thaddas arrives — which means we need to open up a gap of about two weeks minimum by, and they were quite clear on this, any means necessary."

"With me so far?"

Kaaran had finished making final attachments to his equipment, and put in the last few screws, and was waiting for the adhesives he had used to dry. He took of his battle-gear, and was left stood in the Form fitting, yet still spacious clothes and standard Leopods enviro-protection-gear. He put his battlegear away, and walked out of his cabin, back into the living quarters, halfway through some kind of Holo-presentation, he picked up the general drift of their next task, and when Kwa finished talking he raised his voice saying
"So we are going to sabotage a flying city, so that it is unable to get to a resource rich area, right?"

"Exactly," Kwa replied, "How we complete this task has been left down to us, but the schematics of Las Thaddas that we have been provided with are quite thorough."

The hologram of the city reappeared, with several areas highlighted in red: "The obvious target would be to directly disable their engines, or at least cause an issue that will force them to stop or slow down for a couple of weeks. The problem is, these engines are big: I've seen capital ship hyperdrives that are dwarfed by these things — they're huge, some parts of it are as old as the city itself and there's a whole network of fail-safes designed to minimise damage if something goes wrong. Structural analysis has identified the greatest point of weakness to be this coolant pumping station." The display zoomed in on an area far below the surface of the city towards the back: a knot of corroding machinery tying most of the pipes in the area together on their way to the engine drive cores.

"If we make enough mess in there, coolant will stop flowing to the port engine array and they'll be forced to shut it down for repairs which, depending on how thorough we are, should keep them grounded for as long as we need without blowing the whole city sky-high — at least in an ideal world. We'll have to sever the connection between the port and starboard coolant systems so they can't simply have the one we leave intact pick up the slack — that would slow them down, but not nearly enough."

"So we split into 2 teams: Team A will infiltrate the pumping station on the port side of the city and set up some charges in key locations — if we don't have enough explosives we may have to improvise — whilst Team B locates the pipe running between the two coolant systems and severs the connection, if at all possible. There will be a computer system in place that automatically controls the flow of coolant, so if that can be put out of action Team B won't even have to lift a blowtorch."

Xol was liking this job. A good chance to get his hands dirty, with a good payoff at the end.

"I request to be put on Team B. My skill with technology should prove useful in shutting down any necessary computers."

Grecsh too was excited. A chance to make a big mess and leave whilst seeing the reactions of others. Oh, and there was the money...

"I'll go with Team A. And I'll be sure to supply everyone with any explosives I feel we might need."

Feren knew a little about Zirthinnite, he had been in charge of a unit to disable a Zirthinnite mine on Krayven-XII.

"Zirthinnite is useful stuff, you can make super strong metal alloys with it, and, at the right temperature and with the right know-how, you can use it to make an explosion large enough to take out one of those engines. And no, I have no clue how to do that, just saying that is why it is valuable stuff. And believe me, when a Zirthinnite bomb goes off, you don't want to be in the vicinity."

He looked at the plans, and could see that Kwa's plans were very workable, he did however wonder whether this was worth it... however, these guys could just as easily dump in the middle of nowhere.

Celdryc didn't even have to think about which team he would join(He had joined the others a little while after the briefing began). His skills would be perfectly suited for infiltration and placing charges. "I will join team A" he stated. After the briefing was over, he would head to the engine room.

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((I have assumed that we already made the quick stop IO requested, which is how he got his other two weapons on the ship.))Just as with Celdryc, IO saw that it was obvious which team could use his skills. He would join team B, for it was clear that in this situation "Put out of action" meant utterly destroy."I think I would be best suited for team B" He said.

((To avoid confusion, I think that when we split up, we should do this: Only Relevent to Team A: Write in red Only Relevent to team B: Write in cyan Relevent to both teams(Ex. Speaking over the comms to communicate with members from both teams) :Write in green. This would allow people to know which posts to read depending on their team, so that they don't think that they are in combat with something the other team is fighting, for example))

"Dagon will supervise Team A," Kwa continued, "and I shall probably remain aboard the ship to coordinate the mission and provide support if necessary. If anyone else has a preference as regards the team they are in, speak up — we'll need to keep A and B evenly balanced, however."

After finishing my blueprints, I went to see what was happening. "I request to be on team B, as I am Chief Engineer and good with computers. I will set up some little devices I have that may help and bring them along. I've patented over 64 new hacking algorithms that my old planet used in a war..." I suggested.