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[IronyOwl]

To say that Khate was not known for caution was a bit like saying that Sadish was not known for brevity: It existed, presumably, in some form, but to those hoping to find some it tended to feel like opening the appropriate panel and finding nothing but a post-it note with "TODO: ADD THING" scrawled on it in bright crayon. Sometimes with a little heart and smiley face next to it in a different color, as if to confirm that whoever was in charge of this mess didn't even realize anything was wrong.

Even so, Khate was intimately familiar with the difference between adventurous, heroic, there's-a-trick-to-this "certain death," and actual, literal, 0.00% survival rate that was actually kind of boring certain death. Vera and its Master fell firmly into the second category, not just for her but for literally everyone on board. As far as she was concerned, a wall of indestructible chainsaws was approaching, and she had herself and a lot of other people to get out of its way. Insofar as she was capable of genuine apprehension, that inspired it.

Khate paused only a tense moment, hackles rising as she considered her options, and then launched herself forward.

"HE'S COMING FROM THE FAR WALL DEAL'S OFF NO TIME FOR THE STAR GET OUT NOW IF YOU WANT TO LIVE HOSTAGES ARE MIIIIIIIIIINE!"

Dash for the hostages! Get out once they're in my jaws or dead. If Vera's Master gets within kill range (assuming ~20 feet barring evidence otherwise), that counts as already dead.

[Chevaleresse]

"GOD DAMN-" Yeah that wasn't really unexpected. But, that didn't stop it from upsetting Scarlet; she would rather not see the cane filled with bullet holes today - or any time, really, even if her obsession with gratuitous violence was as unsettling as it was amusing. The grenades wouldn't be good here, as she also did not particularly want to pepper Khate with all of the random unpleasantness the grenades offered - though they'd work well on the upstairs mercs and should be mostly nonlethal. Yeah, that was a good plan; Scarlet tosses a chaos grenade into the balcony containing not-Varkonius and then tries to blind the Fin in the walker temporarily; all of this operating under the assumption that everything erupts into chaos. If not, just be ready to pop anyone who DOES try to shoot at Khate.

[Tiruin]

Meanwhile on the Reunion (timeslip)...

Kesari heard as much from Mickaw that gave her a clear conscience on what to do--it was just like back in the far rim militia, being berated by a senior officer on her idealistic idealisms. Although at the present, this person didn't know her whereas that officer got to, and even supported her idealism as he saw what else was present. She had many thoughts on what to say, even thoughts that began with 'interrupt everyone with your voice in their comms and begin ordering them out of the ship', but was that even wise? Her plan was to either get their aid, or eject them and bore them into safety (possibly keeping one of their bomb shuttles for current use or otherwise), but to also use the information she could glean to help out on the station. Their pay was already into Plan C territory, so the next objective was caring about the lives of the people in this whole mess.

Get a feeling on Mickaw before responding alongside the many chat snippets I could take from him and his crew. Kesari has a partial background of military knowhow--what is she currently dealing with?
What is going on on the station that is being received by the Reunion?
Is there any tracking/comm link between Mickaw and Wilcox or otherwise?

Given the time she had and the links that were to the station, Kesari wondered if she could squeeze a lot more out of the C&C EW suite...before handling the problem on-ship.

I'll be trying to tap into your comms there, guys. I need a sitrep and disturbing you all about it may not help that much.

Grab more info from the station, tap into as much as I possibly can, including possible broadspeakers and intercomms.

Alongside that, get info and situational awareness on the away team--and all possible pathing routes to exits off-station their way (eg the Sled or otherwise).

She mused that given Mickaw's warning, and the lacking notice of either the station blowing up, the away team's profile signatures disappearing, or the cloaked ship changing vector and somehow bore-attacking them, things on-station were as peachy as a clogged drainpipe. Pressure and time were of importance.

Until she noticed that she was working with a marketing C&C.

And to modify that--get ALL exits being presented; that includes exits to other people's ships to avoid the fact that this whole process will be quirkier if I make it specified only for 'our hangar'.

[Digital Hellhound]

Boris' anger grew with every mention of Sadish. He knew just as well the brave Fin was probably dead because of him. At least the bomb hadn't exploded yet, which maybe meant that Kesari had dealt with that particular problem. He had to hope for the best.

'I told you,' Boris growled, spitting blood at his feet. 'It doesn't matter what we believe. We have to try. And it's time you got out of the way.'

As suggested by the narration: rip his head off. Punch his face in. Shut his ugly mouth. BORIS PUNCH. If he relents or surrenders, somehow, just try to knock him out.

[Draignean]

Boris

'I told you,' Boris growled, spitting blood at his feet. 'It doesn't matter what we believe. We have to try. And it's time you got out of the way.'

As suggested by the narration: rip his head off. Punch his face in. Shut his ugly mouth. BORIS PUNCH. If he relents or surrenders, somehow, just try to knock him out.

Mickaw inclined his head slightly, then charged. He went from a dead stop to a full sprint, leaping into the air to tackle Boris.

Boris wasn't fast enough to catch him out of the air, but he shifted his weight to his back leg and braced into the attack. Mickaw clung to him, his expression still blank to a deranged degree, and both of his hands were ablaze with light. Boris grabbed for the smaller man's head with both arms, but Mickaw caught the blow, grabbing and holding the mech's arms at the wrist. Braced as he was with his feet against the main body of the mech, Mickaw pushed the arms away from him and forced Boris spread eagle. Smoke drifted in thin wisps from the metal around Mickaw's hands as it went from dull cherry to bright yellow. Pain flashed up Boris' arms as blisters began to rise and the smoke took on the stench of meat.

"I am sorry. I don't want to kill you, but there is no oth-"

Whatever else Mickaw was saying was lost as Boris body slammed the wall, sandwiching Mickaw between the raw frame of the mining shell and the steel of the Reunion. Mickaw lost his breath explosively at the first impact, but Boris didn't give him the opportunity to get it back. He slammed the wall again, and again. Boris slammed Mickaw into the wall until he felt something pop inside the other man.

Mickaw gasped suddenly, and the heat in Boris' arms began to diminish. Mickaw dropped off the front of the mech, slumping loosely against the wall. There was no corona of energy surrounding his loose hands.

Boris slammed his fist into the other man's chest and began to press, crushing him slowly against the wall. Mickaw scrabbled at the mining rig's fist, but whatever superhuman strength he'd had was gone. He was an ordinary man pushing against Boris' might, which meant he might as well have been a child with a stick fighting a drop marine.

_{"Please... Don't hold my orders against my men... You have to run... "}



Kesari

Get a feeling on Mickaw before responding alongside the many chat snippets I could take from him and his crew. Kesari has a partial background of military knowhow--what is she currently dealing with?
What is going on on the station that is being received by the Reunion?
Is there any tracking/comm link between Mickaw and Wilcox or otherwise?

Kesari flicked through cameras on the Reunion, basically running through the list of options until she found the one that showed Khate's rather distinctive mech. It gave her a point of reference for where the away team was, and let her expand her search from there.  There were two sets of cameras that had been blacked out- one curved along what Kari assumed was the path that Aubrey had taken. The other went along the docks, emerging from the cradle that the parasitized transport had been docked into. It did, however, seem to have a destination that coincided with the away teams current location.

 There were bodies along the edge of the second path- various races, outfits, and weapon outfits indicating the remnants of other mercenary crews. In two places there were other bodies, soldiers in heavy, steeply angled armor. Canes or Claws judging by body type. As Kesari watched, a squat machine pushed one of the armored figures onto a stretcher and began dragging it back onto the dark path of blacked out cameras.

In short, the cameras were perceiving an incipient firefight with the away team, and some group carving a bloody trail of destruction towards the away team. The good news was that the second path wasn't filled with nothing but gooified bodies.

As for Mickaw... judging from the feed Kari had on the Reunion security, she was about to be dealing with a serious clean up issue when Boris squished Mickaw into paste. Granted, that might actually be necessary in order to get him to stop attacking, but... Perhaps not. Boris knew a lot about the darker side of people, but it was also possible he'd drunk a little too deeply from that cup himself. It was an idealistic notion to be sure, but perhaps, just perhaps, Mickaw would be willing to give up and at least try it their way now that Boris had assuredly convinced him that he'd die if he resisted.

Or he'd trigger his bomb out of spite. It depended on whether, at heart, Mickaw was just another person trying to live and make their way as a mercenary and scared beyond the limits of anything he understood and was willing to grasp at any thread of hope, or if he was a more hardened and scarred man who would let everyone around him die instead of clinging to what he perceived as an impossible hope.

As for a comm link between Wilcox an Mickaw, it seemed unlikely. The reason they'd gotten this close was ostensibly to make direct snooping impossible. It would be simple to go and hail Wilcox's ship, but Mickaw probably didn't have a direct line open. Not unless he was much more duplicitous than expected.


Sadish

Action: Now to send the message...somehow!

Sadish sent the message on its way, though without any way to know if it would be received, or what state it would arrive in on the other side.

Which left her on a hospital bed. With nothing to do.

She made a couple mouth popping noises to pass the time. It was harder than it looked. Humans could do it effortlessly, despite the fact they actually had to consciously learn to whistle. Fins, on the other hand, whistled effortlessly and had to learn to make mouth popping noises. It made for an odd cultural divide. There was no such thing as a nonchalant whistle in fin culture, just as there was no such thing as a nonchalant mouth pop in human culture. Sadish was reasonably certain that at least one armed conflict had resulted because of a tragic misunderstanding of mouth pops, but unfortunately her only real piece of evidence was written in a language she didn't understand on a tablet in her lab that she didn't have access to.

Sadish's experimental pops seemed to attract the attention of one of the holographic images of her. It looked at her curiously, the fractured into a dozen very small copies which crowded around Sadish's head making much higher pitched mouth popping noises.


Scarlet

Scarlet tosses a chaos grenade into the balcony containing not-Varkonius and then tries to blind the Fin in the walker temporarily; all of this operating under the assumption that everything erupts into chaos. If not, just be ready to pop anyone who DOES try to shoot at Khate.

When it became readily obvious to Scarlet that Khate was about to charge, an action that she had gotten rather practiced at predicting, she took a running step forward and pitched Boris' grenade up the walkway. She hadn't had enough warning to cook it properly, and it landed on the walkway around where the second floor numbers should begin and began rolling down immediately. One of the mercs even had the presence of mind to try and kick the grenade back off the edge.

Try being the operative part. The grenade popped as soon as his paw touched it, disgorging dozens of smaller spheres with their own independent thrust. Confused gunfire began to erupt as flashbangs, goop bombs, mini EMPs, HE bangers, and tiny nailbombs went off.

Scarlet snapped her aim low, aiming at the head of Wilcox's walker. Actually finding what part was a sensor bulb was difficult, and there would probably be redundancies, but she could take out a good chunk of the Finwalker's vision with a well placed shot. Scarlet dialed the power on her rifle a step past lethal and fired, leaving a scorch mark and a depressingly small furrow on the mech's armor. She'd find out later if the shot had actually been good.


Khate

"HE'S COMING FROM THE FAR WALL DEAL'S OFF NO TIME FOR THE STAR GET OUT NOW IF YOU WANT TO LIVE HOSTAGES ARE MIIIIIIIIIINE!"

Dash for the hostages! Get out once they're in my jaws or dead. If Vera's Master gets within kill range (assuming ~20 feet barring evidence otherwise), that counts as already dead.

If there was one advantage that Khate had in nearly every situation, it was surprise. It didn't matter if her opponents knew she was there, were fully aware of her expressed intentions, and were already on high alert- there was just something about the way that Khate acted that made her foes (and her allies) pause while they tried to convince themselves that what they were seeing was actually happening.

Everyone's attention was immediately focused on Khate from the first moment she spoke, but there was a stunned moment where she got to move almost freely before anyone could react. With the shooters on the walkway up to the rooms occupied by Scarlet's grenade, her only major contenders were the shooters behind the counter and Wilcox himself.

Khate hurled herself at the hostages, retracting her mech's teeth and swiping sideways. She grabbed one in her mouth, and the other in one of her suit's auxiliary arms.  Both screamed. Khate stopped her pell-mell charge by shoulder checking Wilcox. Despite being utterly fuck-huge, the impact forced him back a step away from the hostages and off Vark's panther. It also let Khate use his body as cover from the Fins, which, considering his size, probably worked better than most mid-size walls.

"Stupid bitch*!" Wilcox roared, pivoting to focus his main guns down on Khate. There was a too long moment where nothing happened. The weapons whined as something inside them charged, but they didn't fire. It wasn't much time, but it was enough for Khate to get traction again, her suit's claws tearing into the floor as she pushed back off and leaped for the door.

She didn't even manage to make it a full body length away before something reached out to snag her suit's back left leg. Khate twisted her head back, trying to see how Wilcox had managed to grab her.

He'd... split somehow. There was the 100% real version of him, staring murderously at her with those very large cannons pointed in her direction, and there was a second image of him that seemed to coexist with his space, and that one had her back leg in a firm grip. The second image of him was slightly pearlescent and faded in and out of reality in places, but it was undeniably solid. "You dare cross me?!"

Varkonius, meanwhile, laced his fingers together as though in prayer. This, unlike most prayers Khate had experience with, caused a number of things to happen quite quickly. One of the rooms near the top of the walkway exploded. The detonation caused the pressure sensors in Khate's suit to clamp shut, and it rolled downwards in a fireball that consumed the rooms below it level by level. The good news was that included the gunners on those floors. The bad news was that Khate was right below that fireball, and she was reasonably certain her hostages weren't fireproof.

A slash in nothing opened immediately in front of the fireball as it descended the column of rooms, the open bore consuming the explosion before it ever reached Khate. Of course, every bore entrance was paired to an exit, the aperture of which formed immediately in front of Varkonius. A twenty foot radius cylinder of fire and explosive energy rammed down through bore and was redirected out of a one foot radius aperture. An aperture pointed directly at Wilcox.

A jetstream of fire and burning debris blasted the real portion of the fin-walker in the side, toppling it sideways and pushing it across the lobby. Khate went with it, the shadow version of Wilcox still locked into her leg. She was able to shield the hostages from the impact of hitting the wall, and the fireburst Vark was channeling was too focused on Wilcox to do more than frazzle their hair.

Of course, that still left her with one leg in the grip of Wilcox's ghost-twin while death itself was still in the process of arriving.

*Actually a worse curse than it once was. Basically it combines the best aspects of standard profanity and a rather virulent racial slur.


Aubrey

Aubrey will keep up preparation of previously discussed countermeasures, and flight.

Aubrey had managed to prevent Khate from getting immediately gunned down, which was a small miracle in and of itself. Granted, the forced self-diagnostic that Wilcox's cannons were currently running would probably only last another six seconds or so, but it was something. The bigger problem was the second image of Wilcox that was holding Khate. Aubrey could feel at it with her implants, but it wasn't encouraging.  Metafields were bright and easy to read and interact with -they were essentially just energy projections of very specific micro-geometry- but this didn't feel like a metafield. Rather, it felt exactly like Wilcox, except that Aubrey couldn't get her implants to entangle with the copy. It felt like it should be completely real, like it had its own set of integrated electronics just like Wilcox's real mech did, but she couldn't access it.

As the remaining mercenaries behind the reception desk took aim, both at Khate and at Varkonius, Aubrey made a call.

With the exception of the few fires still burning from polymer based wreckage, the hostel went pitch black as Aubrey killed the lights. Panic fire erupted from behind the reception counter, and bullets struck sparks off every surface. Tagget surged forward to fill the doorway into the hostel, absorbing stray fire.

Bright, wire thin lines appeared and disappeared as Varkonius moved, teleporting to where Wilcox lay fallen. Either the darkness didn't impede him, or he had a hell of a good memory. When he spoke, the comms message was broadwaved, intended for literally everyone- not just Wilcox. "Don't touch my stuff. Bad things happen to people who touch my stuff."

He unclipped something from a thigh holster, a disk slightly larger and thicker than his own palm. It didn't take a mindhack of Aubrey's skill to tell that it was a bomb, likely one designed to blow through heavily armored things exactly like Wilcox.

Wilcox, his primary weapons still out of commission, swung an arm blindly. Aubrey could feel Varkonius open a bore, and she could feel it fizzle out when someone else's interdiction field clamped down over the hostel. Varkonius probably didn't have time to be surprised before Wilcox nailed him in the chest and sent him flying back into the mess of chairs that made up the hostel's breakfast nook. The explosive went flying out of his hands, landing somewhere in the middle of the room.

The doors behind reception opened as Varkonius stood. The lights were still on in the room behind, silhouetting a too-tall Cane with a rainbow coat and a flanking pair of neo-crows in powered armor. The gunners behind the counter stopped firing for a moment and turned quickly to face the Cane.

"Hold your fire, if you would. I have some questions for our friend here."

Varkonius picked himself up off the floor slowly. His panther mimed the motion from across the room, slowly limping towards him until he waved a hand to shoo it backward. He was limping, completely in the open, and Aubrey could trace the interdiction field back to both of the crows accompanying the Cane. Talented he might be, but he wasn't going to break through that on a whim. "I'll happily answer your questions, but you have me at something of a disadvantage."


"I try. Now, you stole something very precious to me, and I'm going to take it back. However, I would like to know how you learned of its existence."


Varkonius crossed his arms over his chest and nodded. "Okay."

The metallic cane arched an eyebrow when Varkonius didn't elaborate. One swift motion from arms of his tech suit had the  neo-crows pointing weapons at Varkonius. They each had a pair of turret style weapon mounts on the 'wrist' of their wings. The same type of weapon as wielded by the camouflaged soldier that had used the missile earlier. Regrettably, any such similar missiles were inactive and out of Aubrey's reach.

Varkonius shrugged at the implied threat. "I said I'd answer questions, but that was a declarative statement. Can't have people saying I'm not a man of my word."

Ka-taeun smiled, shaking his angular head. "Of course, how foolish of me. How did you learn of it?"

"Fuck you."

Ka-taeun's ear flicked, and the crow on his right fired a single shot. It punched straight through the armor on Varkonius' right thigh, sending him down on one knee. "Boy, you've dabbled into something far larger than you can possibly understand. You can answer my questions fully and completely, then die. Or you can hold out valiantly, be brought back to my ship, and be tortured until you pray for the luxury of death."

Varkonius scoffed around a groan of pain. _{"Valiantly..."}

Wilcox mech creaked back upright in the background, the Fin's voice booming out once more. "You need leverage, Ka, I can make the boy talk." A smaller spinal turret turned to towards Varkonius. "The Star, where did you hide it?"

Varkonius' sneered, but barely had time to open his mouth before Wilcox fired.

The panther jerked as the bullet went through its abdomen, dropping in a thrashing, screaming heap. In the lit doorway, Aubrey watched Ka-taeun's expression go from chagrin to transcendent rage.

"Stop! I left it in goddamn high orbit, I will give you the fucking coordinates, jus-"

Ka-taeun threw something before Varkonius finished. It was the size of a grenade and broke into two pieces in midair, two pieces connected by a blazing thread. It struck Wilcox and wrapped around him like a burning belt.  "Do have any idea what you've done?!" He snarled, lips drawn back from multi-hued teeth.

"But, the Star-"

"Is a worthless piece of trash! Worshiped by imbeciles and sought by fools, there is nothing of value in that pitted lump of garbage! One cell of the creature you just injured is worth more than all of your miserable lives!"

The burning thread around Wilcox shivered for a moment, then jumped over onto his patchy duplicate before snapping closed. There was a single spurt of pearlescent blood, then the shadow form slid in half an seemed to decay into thin air. Khate was free. The panther had been shot. Wilcox and the colorful Cane's thing seemed to be on thin ice.

[Tiruin]

Kesari made some quick adjustments as she viewed the Boris-feed and snapped down Mickaw's voice to try, at least, in making a frank order to stand down. There was much on her plate and at this time she wished she could use some help with the eccentricity of the system rather than safeguard itself from distracting her too much. There was just too much to handle--and her quick thinking had not let her go "Boris, stand down!" and deliver her plan to Mickaw and him in the brief moment they had stopped trading blows with each other.

Given what she could steal from Mickaw's words, she could either use it (and her intercept within seconds of it being said) to modify and resend a...better idea to his men, or try her best to alleviate a possible bomb explosion which would dampen her plans to help the away team like one's confidential military plans being leaked via public dinner parties, and soaked with rich fine wine.

Mickaw seemed like the figurehead. He had mentioned his 'associates' would be doing the bargaining if something would happen to him, but thus far she hadn't heard anything in particular mention from the others on the shuttle or on what had happened to Sadish (other than her strange lack of a signal). She knew Mickaw was just being afraid--it was obvious in a man who stated over and over the 'inevitable doom' he, in his reasonable years showing on his face as a mercy, would have felt, and it showed in his words and demeanor that she could understand in her own way having been a university professor who worked well with non-verbal interactions...but that didn't matter much compared to how much was on her plate right now.

She felt like a meatball on spaghetti. In a fancy spot on top, but ready to be mixed in one saucy, steaming pile of noodles. She had a latent feeling of failure already nudging her with all she had thought, but as she began multitasking, she began to speak directly into Mickaw's headset (and Boris' in turn).
"Yield, Mickaw, I have given orders to my man to yield in turn. Get on your shuttle; leave. I cannot work with details of grandeur of a foe--I understand this, I do not aim to fight him, nor do my people. We aim to get people out.

Yours will be the first to safety; please order your men to stand down."

Continue with theme in PMs about possible plan to save the ship/communicate coords or ideas or plans to the shuttle-group.
Intercept Mickaw's dialogue to his crewmen based on my best interpretation of his...near silent words. Possibly even interrupt them with my own voice (through the hangar speakers instead of their comm links)

Send and coordinate information to the away team regarding their position; permission to speak freely granted to GM. Begin monitoring and planning alongisde giving intel to the away team to help! Relay all known information about their vicinity and what to expect. (Also maybe try to plot a plan on saving them, as per PM theme) [Priority: Suggest dropping explosives or otherwise en route or in between the 'darkened camera area' and their current position.]

[Summary: BE the intel officer \o/ Relay concise info to the away team on what I've gained; continue gleaning more info alongside plotting out courses for the away team's safety in context of the situation/s going on. On-ship, try my best to use both communication and the C&C to prevent a nasty happening in our beautiful hangar]

[Dwarmin]

Meanwhile, in the boring med bay, Sadish was getting impatient with her respawn timer. She experimentally poked her hologram.

"...What is this little being, anyway? Is this one of mine I inadvertently created from the puzzle box? Or maybe I hallucinated that. Is it one of yours?

Also, I could really use a magazine or a book or something to read. Is that too much to hope you might have some material available?"

[IronyOwl]

Khate glanced at her allies. She didn't want to endanger them more than was necessary, but she knew what was coming. Vera's Master was a dire threat, and if he wanted the kitty, it probably behooved quite a few people to keep it from him. So when she saw the tense, reluctant cringing in her two teammates, the sort of distasteful grimace that tended to grace people who knew they what they should do but didn't want to, her tail began wagging ever so slightly.

Attention -> Me
Get the bomb to Vark and the crows down if they're not already on me. He'll handle the rest.
Get the two hostages out, Tagget. We'll follow if we can, but I may need to take a different path.

With a languid motion, Khate gently tossed the two hostages she had as far aside as she could- and towards the door.

"I WANT THE KITTY!!!"

And then she was off, bounding towards the wounded panther Vera's Master had wrought everything they'd been through to acquire. She didn't expect to make it far before the crows locked down her mech, but she wasn't about to spare their rainbow colored friend an ounce of panic and rage until they did.

After that... well, that ball was mostly in a professional's court. Hopefully he'd sink the shot and they could go from there.

Toss hostages, hope they run for it. Dash for kitty, grab and keep going for a side door until shit hits the fan. Get out with the panther one way or another; if Vera's Master is obstructed, that may be with everyone else, otherwise just keep going and figure out where we're taking this party later.

[Chevaleresse]

Shockingly, Khate was doing something reckless and foolhardy. Something highly likely to get them shot at best and liquefied at worst. It was a bit late to deny association and she wasn't nearly callous enough - at least, not any more - to shoot her team in the back, so it was time to do the only reasonable thing one could in this sort of odoriferous clusterfuck:

Go in as hard as she could.

Chances were she couldn't take out the enemy crows. However, she didn't need to take them out, necessarily; just disrupt them enough for Khate to do Khate things. Which meant it was time to take out her favorite toys. In a practiced motion, she slung the rifle up and over her shoulder so it'd rest on her back, and hit the switches that would prime her flamethrowers. Wasting no time, she started to move within effective range and spray fire toward them as her friend, hopefully, tried to make her escape.

Time for !!FIRE!! Use flamethrowers to distract the crows doing the interdiction while doing my best to, you know, not die horribly. Skedaddle when we're reasonably clear and the hostages aren't in danger.

[lawastooshort]

Aubrey thought she understood the plan, if possibly not the rationale behind any plan that wasn't running away. That's what a pro would normally do, right? Mission was a bust, head to base. Except! Yes. There was a level above pro, as Varkonius had shown - unpredictable chaos merchant. Time for Aubrey to level up.

She sighed a bit.

"Eejits."

Follow the lead of the others: Aubrey cloaks, rushes to the bomb, gathers it up and throws it to Varkonius, and then rushes back to the exit and cover. Full concentration on doing this without dying! As soon as the bomb is thrown try to mindhack the bore interdictions out the way to let Varkonius act and keep out of the way of all the fire.

[Digital Hellhound]

Boris grit his teeth at Kesari's interruption. Couldn't she see Mickaw couldn't be reasoned with? This was just allowing him another chance to detonate the bomb. Reluctantly, he slightly loosened his grip, allowing Mickaw to respond. If this failed, he and Kesari would have words.

He eyed the shut door he'd trapped Sadish behind. Would he find her corpse and two angry guards when he opened that door? The thought made him want to spare Mickaw even less.

Allow Mickaw to reply to Kesari's message. If he seems to do anything shady, pop his head. If he seems to comply, drag him along to the next corridor where Sadish totally hasn't been rescued by a mutant horde, using him as a body shield against guards who totally haven't been butchered if need be. Continue on towards the hangar from there.

[Tiruin]

Having her eyes affixed to Boris' screen (glancing at the others near the hangar for safety), Kesari remembered one important facet of her adrenaline-filled 'plan' that she forgot to mention.

Hiya!
Forgot to mention; Mickaw/crew comms are spliced. Don't worry about them leaking info.
Take care. No kills please. Be safe. Trying to save hangar.
No sign of Sadish. Hope she's ok. Please check for me. Get yourself prep'd for a routine check.

[Draignean]

Scarlet

Time for !!FIRE!! Use flamethrowers to distract the crows doing the interdiction while doing my best to, you know, not die horribly. Skedaddle when we're reasonably clear and the hostages aren't in danger.

Scarlet primed her flamethrowers and dashed forward, rolling between Tagget's legs and sprinting almost a quarter of the way inside of the room before clenching the triggers and diving to her knees. Twin jets of pressurized flame leaped from her hands, spraying into the multi-hued Cane and the two power armored Crows. The flames became the prime lightsource in the cramped lobby, giving the entire room the general demeanor of an artist's hellscape.

Bullets sprayed out of the fireball as the Crows fired in mostly the direction Scarlet had been. That was the thing about fire- even a hardened veteran encased in a combat shell had a difficult time controlling the primal impulse to run and scream when unexpectedly engulfed in flames. Better, there were very few sensors made that could seamlessly adjust from low-light conditions to the light and heat at the heart of an inferno.

Scarlet was almost feeling optimistic about the plan when an ungodly roar erupted from within the flames. Ka-taeun. Scarlet knew the Hound had a personal shield, one decent enough to stop bullets, but fire was a tricky beast. The actual incendiary mix didn't travel that quickly, and a shield that stopped high-velocity impacts might let it drip through. Or he had a hard shield that didn't stop thermal radiation, and he was literally cooking in superheated air. Either way, Scarlet had a hard time believing that Ka-taeun screaming in pain was a good thing for her team.


Aubrey

Follow the lead of the others: Aubrey cloaks, rushes to the bomb, gathers it up and throws it to Varkonius, and then rushes back to the exit and cover. Full concentration on doing this without dying! As soon as the bomb is thrown try to mindhack the bore interdictions out the way to let Varkonius act and keep out of the way of all the fire.

For a crow still adjusting to confined conditions 'rushing' and 'sprinting' are both very difficult endeavors. Flight for neo-crow requires space, a commodity typically in short supply on ships and space stations both, and the alternative walking gait is a painfully slow one.

Aubrey, thankfully, had made the adjustment years ago. She hopped and flapped at the same time, vaulting through the air in short but meteoric spurts. It was terribly undignified compared actual flight, but it was faster than most people could run and the jerky movement made her cloak even more difficult to track than normal.

The blind fire of the other Crows that Scarlet was setting on fire, however, was operating on blind luck rather than skill or intentional aiming. There was a brief tug on Aubrey's wing, followed by a burst of sharp pain as a stray spray of bullets tore into her wing just below the alulas and directly through the converts and the base of her primary feathers. It didn't feel like a bad wound, but it would certainly hurt her ability to fly with agility until she could get it fixed.

Aubrey grabbed Varkonius' fallen explosive with one arm of her tech harness and pitched it at him, immediately scooting back towards Tagget and the rest of the hostages as quickly as she could while trying to get a feel for the interdiction the other Crows had put up.

It was a good, top ten percent that Aubrey had ever seen -including her own work- and probably would have been the next best thing to unbreakable if they'd still been focusing on it. Scarlet's little lightshow, however, had their attention. The field was running on automatic, without active maintenance, and was thus fragile to a good, sharp, shock.

Aubrey gave it several.


Khate

Toss hostages, hope they run for it. Dash for kitty, grab and keep going for a side door until shit hits the fan. Get out with the panther one way or another; if Vera's Master is obstructed, that may be with everyone else, otherwise just keep going and figure out where we're taking this party later.

Khate threw the hostages with everything she had, sending the two skidding across the ground and practically under Tagget's feet. Stunned, they struggled to crawl to the safety of the door until Tagget swept them back behind him. For the moment, they were as safe as Khate could make them. Which meant she had to work on phase 2 of her 'plan'.

Khate scrambled forward, running towards the wounded panther and away from Wilcox's shifting hulk. He was large, tough, and probably a wee bit beyond Khate's capacity to chew up before there were other, even angrier problems to deal with. Judging by the sound coming from Scarlet's wall of fire, the even angrier problem would also be on fire. Khate didn't want to think about that too hard, so she focused on scooping up the panther in her mouth staying mobile. She could hear Wilcox standing behind her, and while the panther might keep rainbow dog from shooting her intentionally, Wilcox probably had no such compunctions.

Weapons fire, blind and likely aimed at Scarlet, ripped apart the walls and floor. A spray of blood burst out of thin air as a barrage of slugs nearly took out Vark's bomb, and Khate felt a momentary pang of worry for Aubrey. Still, the Crow knew what she was doing, and she could take care of herself.

That fact was reinforced when the bomb seemed to levitate of its own accord and throw itself at Varkonius.

Still hunkered over his injured leg, Varkonius caught the bomb like a frisbee. He looked at Khate for a moment, his expression unreadable inside his sealed helmet. The mercenary grabbed his extremely worried looking goat-in-a-bag, then limped into Khate's charging path.

She didn't have time to stop or even slow down before impact.  She shoulder checked Vark backwards- directly into the mouth of a waiting bore, a bore that her momentum prevented her from avoiding.

Khate emerged on the other side a few yards back, to the left, and above the location she started running from. Specifically, she and Varkonius emerged immediately behind Wilcox's head. Varkonius hit and clung instantly. Khate didn't manage that level of grace. She smashed into Wilcox's back like a train wreck, narrowly avoiding crushing the panther in the process.

The unexpected impact immediately after rising drove Wilcox's mech solidly into the floor, eliciting a roar from the Fin.

Varkonius, now lying  on top of the horizontal mech, slammed the explosive charge solidly into a cylindrical bulge in the massive mech's back.

Khate recognized that Bulge. Her mech had a similar one. That was the battery pack or the reactor, either of which would have to be rather high grade to keep that monster going. Which meant they were going to explode spectacularly.

Does that suit of yours seal?

Also, if my cat dies you're ✖╭╮✖

Scarlet

Things seemed to turn in their favor as Khate bore tackled Wilcox to the ground and Vark seemed to succeed in planting his explosive on the large mech, which meant it was time for Scarlet to back up. Her flamethrowers would need to change over canisters soon, and she REALLY didn't want to be the first thing that Ka-taeun and his goons saw when the fire cleared. All she had to do was get back behind Tagget and-

Two tentacles lashed out from inside the flames, wrapping instantly around both Scarlet's wrists. The tentacles were covered in a layer of charred tissue that cracked and bled as it tightened around her flamethrowers. The flame guttered and went out as the tentacles simply grew over the nozzles. Teeth sprouted from the tentacles- not spines, not claws, but long canine fangs. They drew back for a moment, then sunk in as though the entire arm was covered in jaws.

The tanks of both flamers ruptured, and the pain momentarily brought Scarlet to her knees. No longer constantly reinforced, the flames surrounding Ka-taeun's trio faded enough for Scarlet so see through.

Ka-taeun had been burned badly by Scarlet's assault, and he'd... changed. His lips, his ears, his eyes, and nearly all of the skin on the front half of his body was gone. Scarlet could see the bone of his skull peaking out on the forehead where the skin would have been thinnest. The two charred tentacles that had bitten into Scarlet's arms grow from thick protrusions just behind his shoulders. Yet, despite the horrific burns, he was healing. New pink fleshed rolled out from under the char as Scarlet watched, spreading and regrowing. Scarlet watched as his eyes grew back from nothing, as his tongue and lips regrew and his skin once more sprouted a thick layer of multi-color fur.

Ka-taeun looked at Scarlet, an almost amused expression on his face.

"You are the dead. Enjoy the feeling of a new age running through your veins- it won't last long."

The tentacles released Scarlet's arms at the same moment as a half dozen warnings suddenly popped up on her retina. Her nanites didn't 'talk' to her often, they'd been designed to work completely without her interaction, but they did let her know when they were fighting off something particularly horrible.

At this point they were fighting of something that was ten different kinds of particularly horrible.


Boris

Allow Mickaw to reply to Kesari's message. If he seems to do anything shady, pop his head. If he seems to comply, drag him along to the next corridor where Sadish totally hasn't been rescued by a mutant horde, using him as a body shield against guards who totally haven't been butchered if need be. Continue on towards the hangar from there.

Mickaw nearly fell when Boris' grip relaxed. He stared at Boris, clearly straining with the effort of keeping his eyes focused on the other man.

_{"Morris, Taika. Stand down on the Fin. Enesch... set the detonator back on standby. We've... reached an agreement."}

The effort caused Mickaw to sag further down the wall, but he still stared at Boris. His expression empty.

_{"Tell me... when the time comes... Will you do as I have, and let your friends linger on with false hope, or will you end it quickly?"} Mickaw coughed a tiny bit of blood staining his lips. _{"Hope is but the facepaint of eternity..."}

Whatever poetical thing he was about to say was lost when Boris hoisted him back up and draped him over his right arm as an improvised shield. Not the most civilized use of a prisoner, but no one had ever accused Boris of being the most civilized man.

Boris remotely opened the door to the section that Sadish had been sequestered into. As Boris had feared, there was a mess of blood and bodies on the ground. None, however, were Sadish. There were three bodies on the ground. Two belonged to Mickaw's men. Both had been the remainders of scrapmetal shivs sticking out of them, driven deeply into exposed flesh and chinks in their armor. One of them might be still alive- two shives in the stomach and on through the inside of the thigh. The other, however, had a shiv straight through his left eye.

The last corpse was one that Boris didn't recognize. It was humanoid, naked, hairless, and deathly pale. It had the elongated limbs and thin features of a creature raised in zero gravity, but its eyes were large and clearly adapted for extreme darkness. It had taken a pair of bullets to the chest, and, though its spiderlike hands still twitched, was clearly quite dead.

The only sign of Sadish was a smear of blood leading away from the other bodies, a smear of blood that suddenly terminated between one section of tiled grav-plating and the next.


Kesari

BE the intel officer \o/ Relay concise info to the away team on what I've gained; continue gleaning more info alongside plotting out courses for the away team's safety in context of the situation/s going on. On-ship, try my best to use both communication and the C&C to prevent a nasty happening in our beautiful hangar

Kesari quickly relayed the first half of Mickaw's speech along his open channel, which would hopefully momentarily neutralize the issues on board the Reunion for long enough to get the Away team back onto the ship.

Freed from having to worry if the ship was going to explode or not, Kari kept a steady stream of escape information piped directly to the three members of the away team. They'd know everything she did about fastest routes, placement of any strange soldiers along the way back, and any individuals that chose to chase them.

Of course, the current problem, from what Kesari could see through the station's cameras, seemed to revolve around the fact that Khate was trying to steal Varkonius' pet panther and Scarlet had just been touched by Ka-atuen.


Sadish

Meanwhile, in the boring med bay, Sadish was getting impatient with her respawn timer. She experimentally poked her hologram.

"...What is this little being, anyway? Is this one of mine I inadvertently created from the puzzle box? Or maybe I hallucinated that. Is it one of yours?

Also, I could really use a magazine or a book or something to read. Is that too much to hope you might have some material available?"

Aimasc laughed. "I don't know where they came from, so I can assume they're yours. They never stop being in your image for long. They're rather similar to me, if... disturbingly more advanced. The survivors call you lightbringer. Those little holograms are the only light they have in the dark places of the ship, and they've got almost as high a level of reverence for you as they do for Boris."

 "As for reading material... I have patient histories still accessible, as well as a couple of recorded holoshows from my previous owner and her complete list of textbooks."

[IronyOwl]

Yes and yes

Why do you ask :x

[Tiruin]

Before anything on-ship, Khate received a rather kindly and out of place *blip* sound as she saw a "" appear in her mech UI.

Hey Khate!
Figured some support is needed.
Relaying message to away team; sound dampening ahead! Quickly forward to any allies please!

Deploying AIDS! [Acoustic/Auditory Interference Defense System]
Key in your comms to people you care about. Things will get messy now!
Also I'll fix the name. Unhappy with it as it is!

Update me soonish! Please get back! Will try bringing the ship in to bore range, or trajectory bore range. (Hover pupils vision focus over underlined word for more information)

Back on ship in Kesari's C&C Center
Kesari took another deep breath as the opposable thumbs and digits of her tech harness trembled in anticipation of Mickaw's words--cued to her circlet in emotions, it was a rather cosmetic option that skewed efficiency for personality, but it helped her feel more connected to her tasks. She felt quite calm, or at least as best as she could in not having to splice added things over and over, and hearing Mickaw's dialogue gave much relief. She only wished Boris had installed a catapult in the hangar, much like those dainty aircraft carriers or mobile dreadnoughts of the skies to help propulsion...it'd ease the tension she had with the priority on board.

She leaned over and changed the monitors to view the station feed--thousands of kilometers away, the reception was hazy, and she didn't have as good a view as she would've liked. There was trouble on board and she wanted to help: There was no ordnance to bore in, no actions of direct intervention, and all this panic had her reach over to finish Sadish's leftover squijium that she left behind...only to brush her harness and knock down some kind of metallic container from high up. Upon examination, the container was an object she had thought she lost a couple or so weeks ago, due to forgetfulness.

The container held an old experiment before all this ruckus started, started as a concept back in her university years that eventually progressed greatly during her years in the militia (as support staff), and advanced further when she had met Sadish (as generally she had only been with humans for the most part): She picked up the magnetically shielded container and recalled having stored a particular amount of data about the hearing potential of the 5 Sapient Races, set in various backgrounds and its influences as a product of all those years. The magnetic shielding was to throw off any solar flare interference in its use as recorded data.

Remembering the earlier 'security' fiasco and her apology to the local security...now that they were gone, she could redo the same "advertising accident" as before, but in contemplating what she knew about the station--probably the smart ones would've set their suits or other gadgets to drown out the particular level she had set. While it was to be used in a setting wholly out of current parameters (as Kesari only made it based in part on homesickness, and in part from what she learned and her inspirationsy in military history), she figured she could use the data as parameters to set an auditory attack within a very specific frequency, mixing catch-words and phrases people would usually respond to, especially in a hectic combat situation, and then having it all alternate between a specific range to slow down any mitigation! . . .which would have to be coded to be understood by the ship computer.

As she inserted the data into the ship's computer, she briefly considered the other 'safer' choice of just doing the advertisements again as worry from lack of care within a few weeks may have affected its integrity; this was a quicker and faster option than spending the next few minutes assuring quality. A damaged part of data would get the ship computer going spastically eccentric as everything had to be in order...moreso from Kesari's own tweaking and coding. Remembering a quip she learned from browsing Sadish's textbooks on biology and several diseases complimenting the situation, she tuned in to the away team and began relaying a warning message...

Launch some nice AIDS onto the station to help the away team!

She wondered if inserting Neo-Ape, -Cat, and -Dog memes into the queue was a good idea, and brushed it off to battle tension, deciding anything attention-grabbing from her varied experiences with humans and otherwise (and the intranet) would suffice. Something along the lines of 'sensible' but also 'aggravating', much like how claws on the chalkboard worked on students who thought an engineering teacher was better than some dog. It was like antiquated, theatrical dubsteb; just as good as her one-time job of being DJ Subwoof.

As an aside, she wished she was better with names and naming things. Like Sadish! Or Scarlet.

Kesari shuddered as she imagined how the ship computer advertising algorithm would find and churn this through--hopefully better than how she was getting over the in-between in working various odd jobs (nothing against her morals luckily) before she became where she is now. In the least, adding some epic instrumental music would help, in a different section sent to the away team...hopefully.