BorisMake an offer that he'll most likely laugh at, but oh well. Fight on! Keep on the defensive, try to find an opening, try not to die. In the unlikely event of victory, open the door and deal with the guards with Sadish that totally haven't been murdered by mutant ship ghosts, that would be a crazy assumption to make.
Mickaw stared at Boris, trembling visibly.
"Coward? You call me coward?" The mercenary's snarl had not diminished, and a hint of fire burned behind hollow eyes.
"What do you know of cowardice, old man? Cowardice is inaction, in standing by on blind faith that someone or something will save you while death looms! I have defied the most powerful man I know, and I cast my lot, and those of my command, on one slim hope. One!"Mickaw lashed out, his shielded fists moving with augmented speed, striking Boris' suit with ringing blows that echoed in the enclosed corridor. Boris kept defensive, catching blows on the refitted mining unit's heavy arms. The punches were like sledgehammers, but that was par for the course. Mickaw's problem was that he simply didn't have enough mass to land a crippling blow or push Boris by sheer force, and such blow ended up pushing him backwards in the same way that catching Boris' punch had whenever he struck too heavily.
"The only person you've abandoned that could have been saved was the Fin. No, I don't believe in honor, but it's telling that your friend died desperately believing in an honor that your first action was to betray. Death is final. No more precious ideals, no more righteous anger, no more opportunity make wrongs right!" Mickaw took a quick step back, shaking his in disgust.
"You delivered your friend a painful death, and for what? Your morals? Your selfish sense of bravery? Your cowardice and inability to accept the truth? You are more delusional that she was if you think any of that was worth her life."Had Boris not already made up his mind to keep the fight defensive, there was a very good chance he would have attempted to rip the smaller man's head directly from his shoulders. As it was, the hair of delay his resolution brought him was enough to realize that Mickaw's augmented blows had been doing more than merely denting the suit. All across the mining rig's arms, where Boris had been catching blows, the metal frame and reinforcement struts were glowing in patchy, cherry red. The shields around Mickaw's hands weren't just reinforcing his strikes, they were agitating everything he touched. If quick blows were enough to get metal red hot, Boris wasn't keen on finding our what would happen if the other man actually grabbed him.
KesariIntercept Mickaw's comms; do not give notice that he is being cut off--intercept his signal and interpose it with my own; change any words towards a...better outcome for pacifying the crew or stalling for time and more information.
And also interfere with the other crew's comms too--jam or manipulate those who are distanced from each other in anyway to not give off alarm or increase tension.
Kesari sliced in on the same frequency that Mickaw had been using. With luck, his crewmen wouldn't notice the difference and he hadn't been beaming back some constant signal pulse that triggered his crewmen to start counting down when interrupted. So many variables in the calculation.
Kari didn't know exactly what Mickaw would say to the man he'd left behind to keep him from blowing the shuttle's improvised bomb, but she didn't have a lot of time to improvise. She had, at best, a couple minutes. At worst, seconds. Kesari flew through the assembled clips she had of Mickaw talking, selecting one from when he'd sounded a bit more sane and had been talking with Sadish, piping it through on his channel.
"Hold on."
It was a ridiculously simple message to send back, but, since Mickaw had to have been sending it every two minutes, what he actually said couldn't have been that long. There was a pregnant silence on comms, finally followed by a receipt pulse. There was no reply to go along with it, but they at least acknowledged that they had received, and the ship hadn't exploded yet. A fair indication that it had gone alright.
Kari took a deep breath and flicked the shipwide intercom on. All that was left now was to pray that there was some shred of sanity, of reason, left in Mickaw or his men. She could make sure they'd hear her, but it was up to them to listen.
Kesari spoke, and hoped her words didn't fall on deaf ears.
BorisMickaw's fist struck Boris' armor time after time, ringing blows that left behind patches of hot metal and filled the closed off corridor with a sound like a man hammering sheet metal. Kesari's voice cutting in was a welcome relief, and the sudden change made Mickaw take a quick step back. The other mercenary's implants had shown no sign of running out of energy, and Mickaw himself had shown no sign of slowing. He was too fast for Boris to pin down, and light enough that he could use his augmented strength to push off of Boris' punches and end up out of range. That noted, Boris was too strong and well armored for Mickaw to risk trying to land a grab or crippling blow. Still, Boris was sweating inside his armor, both from exertion and the heat-buildup from Mickaw's never ending rain of blows. The mining rig could take a good amount of heat, but it was old, and overheating could still fry a circuit pretty easily. If it came down to a battle of attrition, Mickaw's current state had the advantage.
Mickaw backed off slightly as Kesari continued, and, in a curiously protective gesture, positioned himself between Boris and the crow and human that had been taken down early in the fight.
Mickaw sagged into himself when Kesari finished, finally dropping his gaze from Boris.
"Of all the craven pirates, of all the self-interested schemers, of all the cold hearted murderers, you had to be the one crew of goddamn idealists," Mickaw whispered, a bitter smile flashing across his face.
"You are all mad."Mickaw raised his eyes back to meet Boris', the fury drained from them.
"Do you truly believe you can fight a man that cannot be fought? Do you truly believe that you can save people who cannot be saved?"Boris didn't trust the calmness that Mickaw seemed to have found. He'd seen it too many times. Kesari, Sadish, they were good people- they cared about life, without regard for who it belonged to. They didn't understand that this man didn't value any life but his, and perhaps of those he felt responsibility for. If he felt he was backed into a corner, that there was no hope left, he would be a very desperate man indeed. Considering that Kesari might have just convinced him that he was going to die, that meant things were going to escalate.
Boris had the feeling that, whatever his answer was, Mickaw's response would be savage and deadly. It would likely afford Boris the opportunity to strike back in full, and Boris rather favored his odds of coming out on top in a direct contest of power. Still, without a nudge to make Mickaw reckless, it wasn't likely that Boris would walk away unscathed.
Sadish"I guess I'm stuck here too, then, at least until my wounds heal a bit...I do wonder..." She took a look at her rig, hopefully it hadn't been damaged too badly...
Action: Sadish contemplates if she still can communicate with her drone, and if so, if she can send a message to the crew through that.
Sadish felt OK. Not great, but certainly not as bad as she'd ever been. This wasn't even as bad as the time she'd tried to bottlefeed the orphaned tentacle leviathan she'd found on Hykia , though much of her current comfort could probably be attributed to various drugs. Sufficient drugs could make a compound fracture feel like the color purple, which made it difficult to do a self assessment.
Her rig, on the other hand, was much easier to assess. It had a hole in the side where the bullet had gone in, but seemed otherwise intact. It was still connected to her eye just fine, and the displays were all working. The only problem was that it was reading a complete lack of signal. The Reunion was made principally of metal, and much of that metal was run through with electronics and subsystems, and so, if that was the end of the story, it was natural that there would be a great deal of interference and difficulty in getting a signal if you were more than a room or two away from the source. But that wasn't the end of the story. The Reunion had been a resort, and heavens forfend that a client lose signal while trying on their new lead-lined coat in a tinfoil lined broom closed situated directly above the engine room. There were signal boosters, noise scrubbers, and transmission relays set up in triple redundancy all across the ship. The aforementioned broom closet would probably get better reception than most prime-tech traffic control towers.
Losing connection on the Reunion was unnatural, but, whether it was a problem with the rig or with with the local area, there was still a chance that Sadish could communicate with her drone. She'd designed it to be able to pick up and investigate strange signals, even ones that were little more than noise. It had led her on more than one wild tuna chase, but it might still be able to hear her if she was broadcasting at her rig's peak intensity.
Unfortunately, the reverse was probably not true. Her rig didn't have the tech the drone did, and would be unable to get anything back from the connection. She could probably talk, but she didn't have a way to listen.
Aubrey"I can try, Khate. Unless it is an extremely quick operation, however, I am not sure now is the time. Varkonius and multiple targets are in the hostel ahead. Let me look, though."
Briefly assess if Aubrey could mindhack those gunlocks off.
The physical implementation of the locks was simple, no extra components, just integration into the actuators of Tagget's mech and his rig. It wasn't even localized to his limbs- he couldn't even get around the gunlock by making an oddly shaped gun and firing it without using his hands. The program was adaptive, and would detect that Tagget and fired a weapon, freeze the suit, and would register the method of firing for preemptive freezing on all future situations. Interestingly, the log of such unconventional firings was completely empty, and the log for total number of times the suit had locked up bore only a single entry. Aubrey was reasonably confident that, had this been Khate, the log file size would have taken up most of the suit's free memory.
The program itself was marvelously complex, an intricate piece of work if Aubrey had ever seen one. Typically gunlock programs were simple, strightforward pieces of work. Like prison shackles, they could be tough and well made, but rarely would they be called advanced. This one, however, was. It definitely wasn't standard corporate work, and seemed very like a custom job. Whoever made this was on Aubrey's own level, and breaking it might take her days.
Tagget dropped his voice very low as Aubrey examined the locks. He likely intended to speak for Aubrey's ears only, but between Khate's boosted hearing, Scarlet's paranoia, and him whispering like an old man, his words likely spread farther than he intended.
"If you can take them off, say you can't. Please."
KhateKnock politely on the door. If sort-of-diplomacy is sort-of possible, mention that death incarnate has arrived and will shortly murder them all, and inquire if I could please have the hostages with that in mind.
When diplomacy fails, just rush the place shouting don't mind me just here for the hostages, grab them, and run for it.
Khate knocked on the door. The sounds on the other side of the other side abated abruptly. Aubrey didn't warn of an impending barrage of enemy fire, so Khate shouldered the door open, adding another body of mechanized firepower to the scene.
"Hi! So, just so you're all aware, death incarnate is probable coming to murderize everyone. Like with the hostages too. So, since they're not really useful to you guys for anything, can I have them?" Many, many weapons suddenly focused on Khate. The mercenaries arranged on the spiral climb up to the rooms seemed indecisive as to whether to sight in Varkonius or her. The three behind the counter seemed to have come to the conclusion that Khate, being new, was the more imminent threat. The finwalker in the center, Wilcox's, loomed over Khate's mech considerably. He was big, like Sadish levels of Big. Also, it looked like there were more guns integrated into his mech than Khate had hardpoints on hers- which was sort of disappointing. Fins were lucky. They were big by default, which meant when they got guns and power armor and mechs, it was even bigger.
It wasn't that Khate felt inadequate, her guns were of a perfectly adequate size for her body, it was just, well, they could always stand to be bigger.
Varkonius' reaction was by far the oddest. He cast one deliberately lazy glance at Khate, then started to turn back to Wilcox before doing a double take and staring at Khate with a puzzled expression. For all the world it looked like he recognized her and was trying to place where he'd seen her- though Khate was quite sure she had never seen him before.
The massive finwalker changed position after a moment, focusing back on Varkonius.
"Ah, yes. Of the Reunion crew. I assume my lieutenant has already given you your offer. I imagine you'd like to sweeten the deal by... trading back the hostages to AL-Loy. Considering what you did to Zee's crew, you're clearly worth it. I have no issue. Help me break this man, and your promised reward will be given.""Or you could give me back my cat and we could all go home?" Varkonius interjected, nudging the goat a little farther away from his right foot.
"I have no idea why it attracted this much trouble, but there's an acre of you people to just one me. Furthermore, my secretary tells me that my buyer's ship appears to have an unidentified vessel riding piggyback, one that also blew up an AL-Loy patrol boat without making a fuss. Not that I'm averse to that," Varkonius added, seemingly as an afterthought,
"but it tells me I'm probably not going to get paid by my original client. I can promise that the Star is not on my ship, and all of you can go have a lovely scavenger hunt searching for it before this 'death incarnate' the DNR wolf mentioned can show up while I go somewhere less..." he shot a sidelong look at Wilcox.
"Stupid.""No. You'll stay and you'll give us the star. You can do it now, or you can do it after I serve your... animal to you in a bucket." Wilcox shifted his weight, and the panther let out a pained mewl, its claws scrabbling on the metal ineffectively.
"Don't." The single word hung in the air, the threat implied as clearly as though Varkonius had raised his knife.
The situation looked imminently violent, the niggle was in how Khate wanted to fit into that violence.
ScarletIf there was something to be said for Khate's plans, it was there simplicity. Open door, demand hostages, get out with hostages. Boom, done. It was the kind of plan that could survive contact with the enemy and allowed a lot of room for improvisation. It also gave Scarlet the kind of conniptions that made her feel her age. They were outnumbered, outgunned, and happened to be carrying around a bunch of walking liabilities. Hell, in order for this to turn into a wash, the enemy didn't even need to down her, or Khate, or Aubrey. They just needed to panic or kill enough hostages.
Ty looked up at Aubrey, the expression clearly expecting the much older (though seemingly equivalently old) woman to do something fantastic. Honestly, aside from
the grenades Boris bought, she didn't have a lot of area suppression options beyond her flamers, and they were mostly effective against people in standard armor- not full mechs.
AubreyAs the three-way standoff with Khate, Wilcox, and Varkonius peaked, Aubrey didn't have much to do but keep an eye on the cameras and prepare to do fifty things simultaneously. No strangely armored soldiers came from behind, no snipers on the upper floors of the hostel seemed to be lining up pot shots at Khate. There was no-
A little yellow warning signal informed Aubrey that a camera had just dropped off the network. It wasn't one of the ones she was actively tapping, but it had been on the Hostel's network before going down. The camera label was BGGE_RM, and, if the location was right, was somewhere beyond the door behind reception desk. Someone there did not want to be seen, and the options for who that someone was weren't great.
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Topic: Small Mercies (IC) | Death is knocking, and he wants to buy a goat. (Read 53180 times)