((We were going to just shove these two descriptions into Hawk, Beirus and Dhubo's turns, but decided it against it.))
The colony, often affectionately called “Adrift” by the colonists for the fact that it is the back-end of NEE space, is a quite large for its kind and situated in the temperate zone of Arietis-4, giving it a comfortable climate of around 25 degrees (Celsius of course) for most days on the surface. The colony itself is unique in that it is an old Pre-Fall design from several thousand years ago.
The surface section of the colony is a large hexagon measuring 14 kilometers across from point to point, this surface rises approximately 100 meters out of the grassy plains surrounding it which provide the food for the colony. This surface consists of a series of plates of varying size that can raise or lower on command allowing the formation of docks for landing shuttles and smaller ships capable of entering atmosphere. In the center is a section that remains unmoving and has a single building complex which contains hangars, office centers and other similar buildings to handle hundreds of shuttles from above and trains carrying food from the outlying farms. Underneath this facility is a large elevator capable of carrying anything up to a large size armor frame, this runs through the central pillar of the colony beneath the hexagonal landing pad. Underneath there are a set of lights that maintain illumination and temperature similar to the surface, with sheer rock walls that descend down for 4 kilometers.
Around the central spire, the colony is arrayed as a spiral that slowly rotates, spreading air from the surface through the colony pit and the industrial works down below. The base of the colony links with industrial centers that keep churning out anything the colony can use or reuse. Along with electricity, they provide anything you can name, provided of course that it can be made with the resources on hand. Despite the efforts of the rotating colony to remove the mix of steam and smog from the lower reaches the industrial centers, are often shrouded by a pea soup fog of steam and smoke nonetheless.
The colonial center has been largely untouched by the fighting with the extremely dense cityscape making piloting a nightmare. There are few people on the streets as the emergency warning has sounded. Normally around now the streets would be bustling with people going to lunch at one of the many food outlets provided by the colony administration, or at private street stalls that while technically illegal, are still generally tolerated. The main streets are logically laid out throughout the mess of buildings with a central highway leading through the center straight from the top of the colony to the base.
The maintenance facility contains some of the only structures 15 stories or fewer in height compared to the usual minimum of 30, with the outlying buildings around the central facility taking up a large amount of space that, if used for housing or offices, would have been able to contain thousands of people. The maintenance facility is able to justify its existence in this format for several safety reasons due to the often hazardous materials they work with; anyway, even if the land the outbuildings occupy was freed up and the outbuildings stacked on the main offices, nobody would be insane or desperate enough to build an apartment block next to such a condensed pile of rocket fuel and high explosives. The central building, the only one taller than five stories, contains the main offices of financial and other non-maintenance staff that oversee the day to day running of the facility as a whole these offices extend for the 3 lowest floors of the building. On the ground floor there are workshops for teaching and use by the public which are open every Sunday when the colony isn’t under siege, there are also consultation offices and a reception area allowing for the commission of works by both public and private clients. Above the third floor are another 10 floors of which 8 are dedicated to housing the facility staff and 2 are dedicated to recreation.
The workshops are all connected to the central hub by underground access tunnels, these tunnels allow for the workshops to be mostly underground with the top side left open for testing and the storage of dangerous materials such as oxy-acetlyene packs and generators that if they do catch fire are separated from the workshops and their personal supplies along with being open to fire department personnel to stop the blaze. The flight systems workshops are the closest to the main building and the vault where dangerous or highly expensive (often these are one and the same) items such as Alcubierre Drives are stored for installation. The AF construction and maintenance centers are along the edges of the facility as they are the least prone to violently explode and the AF’s need space to enter and leave without running into other facilities. The top floor of the flight systems workshops (consisting of gantries over the workspaces) open out onto the large flat concrete slab lined with access roads that consists of most of the area of the facility. The AF construction areas are entirely above ground as they have to accommodate the movement of AF units.
The colonial center has been largely untouched by the fighting with the extremely dense cityscape making piloting a nightmare. There are few people on the streets as the emergency warning has sounded. Normally around now the streets would be bustling with people going to lunch at one of the many food outlets provided by the colony administration, or at private street stalls that while technically illegal, are still generally tolerated. The main streets are logically laid out throughout the mess of buildings with a central highway leading through the center straight from the top of the colony to the base.
"Waitaminute. What- well this can't be good."
Grab box. Wield fire axe. Chuck box at any hostile soldiers, follow up with many chops with axe. Now move to somewhere... safer than here.
No soldiers show up just yet, or at least you don't see any. You do hear them closing in though, or perhaps those are just your coworkers running around and panicking. Either way, you hear someone yelling about having room for another person in their workshop, and seeing as they're in the proper uniform and you're quite certain they are indeed in a Flight Systems Workshop and not some sort of hypothetical windowless van capable of displacing rooms from buildings, you run into it.
Oh was that a bad idea.Perhaps, it is best that bitter anagnorisis comes now than later. But surely, is it not better to live and die in blissful ignorance than to endure this torment? To see truths that man should not know, and to bear witness to such unimaginable evil, what foul transgression have you performed to deserve this? For upon the bench rests another malevolent box, identical to your own.
But, this box is open, it's content lying beside it. The horror, the horror.
Ao Shi
Can't help guys with the barricade, can't work with the frame. What I can do? Well, I can certainly shut down that apparently not-so-archaic porn channel.
Get back up to the platform and confirm the woman is a holograph by feeling her up. If she's solid then apologize and demand her to explain how she did get up there, because no civilians shouldn't be allowed here and she's definitely not part of base personel. Also compliment her hair.
If she's incorporeal then pick up the terminal and try to shut it down. If terminal doesn't exist or work then be very confused and ask the woman what the hell is going on.
As you ascend back to the platform, you notice the terminal, right where you left it and still as functional as ever. The intruder is leaning, back against the safety rail, when you suddenly attempt to disprove her existence via sexual harassment. The result is that, well, they're quite soft and you may or may not be ashamed of yourself.
"Oh~? Getting grabby already? Not even going to buy me dinner first~" She then proceeds to completely disregard your questioning, instead saying
"You're in a bit of a predicament, aren't you? Well, I'm here to help with that, when you're done groping me." When you look at the terminal again, it seems to have been cloven in twain by some unseen force.
A series of consecutive bangs resound from behind you, followed by the faint scent of ozone and a familiar mechanical whirring. Someone down there screams
"IT'S ALIVE! IT'S ALIVE!" before breaking into maniacal laughter. Wat.
There is now a misshapen mass of cables running from the LATRANS generator to three of the chamber's assembly arms, one of which has started twitching sporadically. You're reasonably certain that the arms aren't designed for that, the occasional spark arcing from the hasty connections doing little to discredit that theory. At any rate, it looks like you've got (some approximation of) power again. And countless voided warranties.
((Tradecraft Gained: Bio Scan))"Got it, hallucinatory armor guy."
Keep patrolling. Hope that no System League troops show up.
There still don't seem to be any enemies yet, much to both your dismay and of the trio riding atop your frame.
"Okay, James, it's your turn." the voice squawks through your comms. You hear some movement above as someone shifts their position. Now, this is in definite breach of protocol, soldiers generally are generally meant to be be on alert on all times, as opposed to taking turns on keeping watch whilst the rest of the squad looks at something or other on their phones. But, with a pilot looking through the LUPUS' cameras, and a soldier above covering the blind spots, it really didn't impact performance too much, plus it at least kept morale from dropping too low. Perhaps that's why even the higher-ups stopped caring: it simply wasn't worth admonishing troops over.
As you ascend further up the colony, you notice a white transport truck, not unlike those used for military to move frame parts and supplies. On its side in vibrant colors is a corporate logo in the shape of a stylized optical microscope with sleek text beneath it reading as
Weyland Testing. Not exactly a common sight seeing as there is currently an evacuation in place and, though it isn't actually compulsory just yet, most people have heeded its call. The truck doesn't seem to react to you presence at all, neither speeding up, nor slowing down.
((Tradecraft Gained: Equipment Check))"I'll hold onto that tripping balls suggestion for when we aren't going to be in combat soon. You have a name, or can I call you Jus? And what are you?" Beirus responds to the reflection before he opens a channel to Elias. "Newman, this is O'Greenahan. Did you find a weird box in your frame too? If so, I'd suggest you open it. The interface is pretty archaic, but you'll have to choose a server for it. I chose JUS_AD_BELLUM, doesn't seem to have any problems with it." He states before looking at the reflection again and waiting for a reply.
Do conversation stuff. Once I get an answer from that reflection, gather my squad and move out. We'll be heading around the facility to flank any SL frames. If we enter combat, open up on the SL frames with the autocannon.
The figure nods and promplty vanishes, but the text continues nonetheless.
Jus is fine.
As for myself, I am here to atone for the sins of another. I am here, because from Nothingness came the Devil, and from the Devil came God.
Just think of me as a handler of sorts, I give you assistance and in exchange, you run some odd jobs for me that need to be done.
Your squad races through empty streets lacking in signs of both life and death, looks like the hostiles managed to slip in without encountering any resistance. Unlike Elias, you don't get data projected onto the road surface - it would give away your flanking maneuver. The roads, the markings on them are digital images, capable of being altered and dynamically reacting to events such as car crashes. They weren't always like this, the data used to be projected to HUDs mandatory installed into every motor vehicle.
Well, until people found out they could jailbreak their HUDs. Which promptly went from a safer way to convey driving information into a non-stop porn streaming service. Or worse, kitten image dispenser. Seriously, before HUDs were banned, the leading cause of death for a year was "road fatalities caused by driving while distracted by kitten images projected by jailbroken HUDs".
The approach was tense and quiet, anticipating for all hell to break loose and for gunfire to erupt. That doesn't actually happen, rather as you near the side of the facility, you see a group of Armor Frames, definitely not NEE units. They were skeletal figures, heavily lacking in armor and really enough actuators to support their own weight, yet somehow, they remained upright. Some were perched on buildings, others were patrolling, gilding swiftly across the ground. They're still somewhat distant, with a plaza and ten-lane highway between your squad and them, but, the PHAROAH's autocannon, and the rest of the squad's chainguns are in range.
So, how do you want to take out these oblivious foes? Open fire? Or try and sneak up further?
((Tradecraft Gained: Equipment Check))Miaoko's eyes widened as he heard the alarm. He leaned out of the workshop and yelled, "I've got room in my workshop for.. Two!" (Sorry for the short action, doing this on my phone & don't have access to a computer.)
You succeed in caroling your co-worker into the cubicle. Well, let's see, what do you have? Well, it looks like the workshop still has emergency power, meaning your PDA can still control it. You have a fire extinguisher and your co-worker is brandishing an axe alongside a box not unlike your own. The rumble of cannon fire is gone, and the gunshots are now far and in between, though the shouting is becoming louder than ever.
More text fades into view.
back, had 2 go shout at red for misusing sys rsrcs again
if u need to fix stuff, i can help, just gimme a shout
((Tradecraft Gained: Work, Damnit!))Stand-by for auto-derp.
Whoopsie-daisy, your PHAROAH's electronic systems malfunction for no discernible reason, leaving you talk to Jim whilst engineers hurry to fix.
((Elias will be active as soon as Dhubos posts an action.))
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Topic: Perplexicon - Down the Foxhole - Raining Mecha (Read 176993 times)