Month One -- Navigation PhaseTravel on a Rapid-Pair Ship is not, relatively speaking, a very fast process. In absolute terms, of course, it is
blazingly fast, with Rapid-Pair Ships traveling spaces light-years wide in a mere couple of months, but to travellers used to the instant transportation between systems within sectors courtesy of Pair
Stations, well, the wait can seem interminable indeed. After all, while a normal, fixed-orbit Pair-Station simply transfers objects around it to being somewhere around its partner, from one station to the other across star systems instantly, Rapid-Pair Ships take advantage of the limited relative movement involved there to essentially teleport each other (relatively) short distances a very, very, very large number of times, very rapidly. That's typically several million teleportations, in the longest cases billions, and no matter how blazingly fast Rapid-Pair Ships can make those jumps, that's going to take a while.
On the bright side, though, when you're on-board a Rapid-Pair Ship you live like a king, to a degree that is barely an exaggeration. Docking space on a Rapid-Pair Ship has a cost that even empires wince at, and this is the result of the cost of maintenance of the absurdly complex drives and the equally absurd reactors that power them. Therefore, amenities in the passenger parts of the ships like supremely comfortable accommodations, a bevy of unique, varied, and delicious foods, many forms of recreation, and immaculate service all are so cheap in comparison that commercial Rapid-Pair Ship providers find the cost-benefit analysis to be an easy one, and Exploratory Systems Incorporated is no exception.
It's just a shame that Princess Rivalla's Grand Biomechanical Retinue didn't get to enjoy it for more than around a week.
Lanre Adebayo was a career military man, as one tends to be hanging around within a retinue/mercenary company/dying unit for several long-haul deployments. This did not mean that Lanre was a career senior officer, because he hadn't been that by any means. No, Lanre had been a Sergeant when he entered the Princess' retinue, not some officer sitting around in a lounge with champagne and lobster bisque. It was only through both performance and attrition that Lanre had ended up in the position he was in now, at the age of 28.
...so, now that he had the chance to have champagne and lobster bisque and all sorts of nice foods, Lanre wasn't hesitating to take advantage of it. It wasn't something he talked about, being something of an imposingly stoic, private man, but aboard this ship Lanre looked forward to becoming something of a gourmand. The lobster they'd served two days ago had been a bit tougher than he'd imagined lobster to be, but he'd enjoyed the taste greatly. Then it had been this prime rib he'd had yesterday, and though it was a little fatty for his taste, it was still in objective terms a fantastic dish. Now it was these nachos, but with a spread of meat and condiments on top that he'd never seen before. Maybe it wasn't as high culture, but he had started eating and was ready to tuck into the whole dish.
"Laaaanreee!" He sighed, and slumped just a fraction of a degree. "
Laaanreee!" Lanre started eating a bit faster. "It's a three on one! It's a three on one! Lanre, help me out!" Lanre glanced behind him and saw the Princess running away very quickly, being chased by three people... and Lanre recognized the emblem on their clothing. The symbol of the Knights Reliquar, the Arehan shock unit they'd faced on Gurney III.
Fuck. Very quickly, Lanre turned his attention to his food and began shoveling it into his mouth as fast as he god damn could, demolishing the nachos (which were, incidentally, very good), and setting down the plate just in time to turn around in a slow and composed manner to look the approaching three Knights Reliquar right in the eye. Two of them were younger, one young dark-skinned man (younger than Lanre by a fair margin) with a clear naive fire in his eyes, a younger white-skinned girl with eyes that were rather disturbingly cold in comparison, and an older woman, with light blonde hair just starting to turn white, who seemed to have an energy that belied her relative age.
As Lanre stared quietly at the older woman (their commander, he guessed), she spoke up, raising a hand to silence her two subordinates as she did. "So... if the 'Unrivalled' Princess," Lanre could practically see the air quotes around that, "has run to you, I assume that means that you are an officer in her company?"
"I am. Commanding field operations. Captain Lanre Adebayo." A response without hesitation, Lanre not even blinking.
"Alright, then. I am Commandeur des Chevaliers Žaneta Vasiliauskas, leader of this detachment of the Knights Reliquar. I commanded when we fought you on Gurney -- and I cannot tolerate your presence here. But a wide brawl would be too destructive -- let us settle this for now one-on-one. I challenge you to a fistfight, right here, and right now. How do you respond to this challenge?"
Lanre looked around, and sighed. Rivalla was of course here (noisily so), and Mihail was elsewhere in the dining hall, so things could well devolve into a three-on-three if he said no... and one of the involved combatants would be a young teenager. Fantastic. "Mihail, please hold the Princess back." Lanre looked Žaneta dead in the eyes. "I accept. L--" Before he could finish his sentence, Žaneta was on him.
Fists rained down, a wild series of haymaker blows launched by Žaneta that seemed unfocused on being individually accurate. A punch to the arm, hammer blow to the shoulder, fist to the gut, backhand to the hip. It was a shockingly aggressive series of blows that Lanre had not expected in the slightest from a woman that seemed to be in her late 40s, and each blow
hurt, with a surprising amount of strength behind it. At first, Lanre was taken entirely aback, but soon his stance shifted to a defensive one, bracing, weathering the assault. He waited for the moment when her aggression got the better of her, causing her to leave openings, for her to get too confident... and then when that moment came, he nailed her with a savage right hook to the jaw that spun her 20 degrees, nearly taking her off her feet. "You're stronger than I expected," he told her, "I'll give you that. But this won't be too easy."
The enemy commander looked at him... and then nodded. "Mmm." With that wordless acknowledgment, she came at him again, with every bit of the ceaseless aggression as before -- but when he sent a jab out to catch her on the approach, he discovered that her tactics had change significantly. She ducked to the side and sent a pair of blows at his extended arm. Then, when she came in, she clearly had her targets prioritized, blow after blow coming towards his arms, but with the woman possessed of a movement that prevented him from nailing another solid hit on her like that. She kept doing that grab, too, punishing whenever he tried to hit her back, so at first he stopped doing so, just taking the hits. Once Lanre decided he had to take action, though, he intentionally telegraphed his punch, and let her grab his arm again to deal another pair of blows to his elbow... except that this time he suddenly yanked inwards hard with it, sending her stumbling towards him. Head met head,
hard, as he nailed her with his second blow of the fight, a vicious headbutt that left her reeling for a long moment.
She seemed to be rocked, now, almost stumbling, her gaze a bit glassy, although he could still see the determination in it beyond that haze, and in her advance. His arm hurt like hell, especially around the knot of flaring ache in his elbow. It didn't quite feel like it was broken... but it felt close. Still, he had her on the ropes. It'd be just one more hit and--
And that's when the ship's security hauled everyone involved away in front of a shocked crowd of onlookers, which earned the entirety of Rivalla's Retinue a ban from the interior of the
Sojourner, leaving everyone stuck aboard the frigate and shuttles for a solid four months, growing impatient and frustrated. And it turned out that Lanre's right arm had in fact been broken, a small hairline fracture sure, but a fracture nonetheless, making him technically the first combat injury of the Retinue's mercenary career.
At least they still got the ship's food regularly delivered to them.
With the long wait, spirits among the crew were quite high when the
Sojourner finally arrived in the system and released the
Unceasing Progress, the backdrop of stars flashing back-and-forth seizure-inducingly quickly finally replaced by the more serene backdrop of a
stationary system (well, as Peers insisted, relative to the ship). The system had five planets, but the inhabited one was quite easy indeed to pick out and navigate to -- two of the planets were gas giants, one was on the verge of being a dwarf planet very far out, one was a nearly molten rock right near the sun, and the sole remaining planet was a ball of mostly green and brown a
mite closer to the sun-edge of the habitable zone than is typically considered comfortable. Once in orbit over the planet, closer inspection reveals the nature of the planet's, well, nature.
The central third or so of the planet is the most uniform, being mostly a band of wide, scorching desert that seems mostly uninhabitable, with only occasional mountain chains and their associated lakes and streams providing oases. Moving towards the mid-latitudes the terrain begins to vary, sahel terrain broken up by more green savannahs around rivers, in turn spawned and broken up by the mountains, plateaus, and highlands which the planet has in fair abundance. Oceans appear in these mid-latitude areas; small ones, which make up the
minority of the planet's surface, but oceans nonetheless, and with them comes a bevy of more temperate terrain -- plains, forests, etcetera. In the north, the largest ocean exists along most of the northernmost latitudes of the planet, but still leaving a thick inlet of land to extend all the way north, transferring from jungles to forests to taiga to icy, mostly-bare land at the pole. In the south, there are a smattering of smaller oceans, which leave most of the southern hemisphere of the planet sahel/savannah and arid, except for the areas of green that branch out from the areas around the oceans, where you do see warm forests and occasionally jungles, but also much of the arable plains of the planet, especially around the freshwater lakes. A ring of taiga exists around a small ocean at the south pole, though most of that ocean's surface is taken up by the glaciers of the south pole, leaving only a small ring of water.
At night, the patterns of lights reveal the inhabitation of the planet -- quite sparse, with some small towns around the oases in the deserts, with larger cities near to the oceans. Most of the areas around the small southern oceans are largely rural, with one or two cities shining brightly and dominating these oceanic areas, lights thinly scattered beyond them. The two most densely populated areas are the northern inlet, which has several cities and town spread across its jungle and forests, and the largest of the southern oceans, which has an extra-large city shining brightly and a cluster of cities and towns around that city, in addition to the rural population seen around the other southern oceans. There are also a surprisingly large number of mobile settlements that appear to move a little day by day. These are all the steady white color and setup of electric lighting... but those electric lights almost completely vanish around the taiga. Around the pole are tightly clustered setups of a purple haze -- lighting that appears to be magical and ritual in nature, which appears almost nowhere else. Only a few, small, adventurous settlements of either technological or magical nature exist in the taiga, sometimes clearly intentionally set near each other.
Apparently this system is called the Chopta system, at least by most of the people for whom this was the destination who were overheard during the week inside the Sojourner system.
A conversation Lanre had with somebody delivering his meal revealed that the system has been ruled for several decades by the Sommet Empire known as the Empire of the Fifhurst Crown. Apparently, this Empire of the Fifhurst Crown, known more casually as the Fifhurst Empire, Fifhurst Crown, or "the Fifs", operates on a purely technological basis, and although it has been occupied by fighting on its homeworld known largely as "Metropole", it is nominally the largest of the Sommet Empires and maintains a now very limited presence here.
Despite the sparse population, there are apparently several different origins of the inhabitants, and a lot of fighting from factions seeking to establish themselves in the power vacuum.
You haven't been here long enough to establish yourselves in the system, yet.
Destroyed Laser Weapon
Mech Right Arm Scrap
Mech Left Leg Scrap
Mech Scrap with Complicated Electronics
Mech Scrap with Advanced Metals
Destroyed Acid Weapon
Organic Left Arm Scrap
Organic Head Scrap
Organic Scrap with Regenerative Tissues
Organic Scrap with Intact Heart
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Topic: Ramshackle Titans - Rivalla's Retinue Thread - M2 Deployment (Read 10057 times)