[QUOTE=F T;50359975]"I will try to shorten my story as much as I can as to not waste your time. To sum it up, I do not know who I am. I do not know [I]what [/I]I am, either. I may look human..."
Frosty opened his mouth to reveal the black inside of his mouth along with his malformed teeth.
"...but not quite. I was found frozen by my friends in a starfighter, but I woke with no memory of my past. All I know of myself is I was frozen for a [I]very [/I]long time, I am some form of human, I was part of some human military judging by the uniform of which I wear before you, and this symbol I found printed on my starfighter."
Frosty took out a drawing he made of the symbol.
"My colleagues and I suspect it was the symbol of some special Sol task force or something related to the matter. So here I am looking for answers."[/QUOTE]
The man nodded and carefully inspected the drawing in silence. "I fear that I am not able to give you the answers you need, for I do not recognize this symbol. However, it does appear to be of terran design. Albeit old."
He returned the paper. "As for your physical condition, I've only seen similar traits with older models of androids and synths. This doesn't have to mean anything however, as I've met veterans who too share the same traits however in their case it had been caused by radiation."
"No one wants to kill the bartender and if i need to shoot a gun, I'll point and pull the trigger. Easy as that." Ahaz yawned. "I'm heading to bed. Write down the drinks that you take and I'll bill you when I get up."
Ahaz walks over to his cabin and shuts the door.
Valkyrie chuckled a bit after Ahaz walked off. "I killed a bartender. Guess I'm no one." she said to herself with a smirk, before finishing her drink and sliding the glass across the bar. She turned and sat back against the bar, thinking about what she could do with that drone she had bought. It needed a paint job, of course, but what internals did she need to change besides making it automated?
"...I see. Still, I very much appreciate the assistance. Though I do have another question. Do you happen to have a map? With all these monuments and statues around, it seems very easy to get lost in."
The man nodded. "Of course child." He produced a small holoprojector from a concealed pouch.
"This map will guide you. Kindly return it to any of the caretakers when your journey here is done."
He gestured towards the edge of the main statue zone. "I recommend visiting the Zeruel monument which is located on a hill a small distance away from the statues honoring our soldiers. It marks an important event which was, like your current one, shrouded in mystery. I bid you farewell child, I wish for you to have a safe journey."
With that said the man bowed and excused himself, wandering off between two rows of statues.
"Thank you very much, sir."
Frosty replied with a slight bow himself, and began to wander among the statues towards the Zeurel monument.
[b]"Alright. Thanks again Maddox. Let me know when you're done?"[/b][i] Johannes then follows Taylor.[/i]
"Well, this is the mess. Bar is back there. Engineering is down that way." said Taylor, as they passed through the mess hall. "Here's the Cargo Bay. Medical and Science are down that way. Bridge is up there..." she continues to explain as they walk through the ship. Then they head into the Crew Quarters. "Crew Quarters...and here's your room." she finally says, stopping outside of an empty room. Next to 'THE F-ZONE'.
[i]Johannes nods and murmurs in agreement throughout the tour. When they stop at his berth, he turns his head to look at the sign on the door reading "THE F-ZONE".[/i][b] "Charming. I'm sure my neighbor and I will be best of friends."[/b]
(( but f-zone means frosty's-zone! ))
[QUOTE]"Charming. I'm sure my neighbor and I will be best of friends."[/QUOTE]
"Yeah..." she said, her voice trailing off as she looked at the sign. She stepped over, opened the door, and peeked in. "Oh, this is Frosty's room." she said, before shutting it. One of his guns was on his bed inside. "F-Zone means Frosty's Zone." she said, with a nod. She then opened Johannes' door. "Well, get squared away. If you need anything, shoot me or one of the others a message." she said, giving him a thumbs up. And with that, she departed, heading back towards the Mess.
The sounds of Bucky's game blare down the hallway. The sounds of cannons and rocket engines roaring away in glorious life-like holographic grandeur.
[i]Johannes nods and goes to step into his room, then realizing he doesn't have access to the ship's comm system yet steps back out and calls out to Taylor.[/i][b] "Wait hold on I don't haveaccesstotheship'scoms- fuck she's gone."[/b][i] Johannes stands there looking down the hallway, then turns his head and stares at "THE F-ZONE" sign.[/i][b] "...I don't trust that sign..."[/b][i] He mutters, with one hand on his hips, exactly like this.[/i]
[t]http://i.cubeupload.com/2ujDqy.png[/t]
Alex walked out of the kitchen. "Hope you like seafood, because of some idiot we got send a whole lot of it. As in, we need to eat this for a few days straight if we want to prevent it from going bad and making the ship smell awfull. Today's special. Giga shrimp."
[QUOTE]"Hope you like seafood, because of some idiot we got send a whole lot of it. As in, we need to eat this for a few days straight if we want to prevent it from going bad and making the ship smell awfull. Today's special. Giga shrimp."[/QUOTE]
"Ah, Valk's gonna love this." muttered Taylor as she walked over. "If it does go bad, we can just fire it out the airlock." she said, with a chuckle.
"Getting the smell out will take longer. Anyway. The whole cooking will be mostly automated, but it will take several hours."
[QUOTE]"Getting the smell out will take longer. Anyway. The whole cooking will be mostly automated, but it will take several hours."[/QUOTE]
"Yeah. Got time to kill now." she said, folding her arms. She then remembered Jag's training from earlier. "You were a pit fighter, right? Up for some hand-to-hand sparring?"
Alex thought about it for a few seconds. He hadn't had a proper spar in a while. "Yeah. Let's go."
"Alright...this place got a place we can brawl? Rather not smash anything important..." she said, looking around the mess hall. Tables, chairs...
"I got an idea." Alex called Vakarus on the comms. "Vakarus. Can we use your training room for a bit?"
"Naturally Alex'vakrin." Vakarus's training room was a smaller separate room connected to the armory. A marked square at the center of the room was the designated training zone while the walls of the room were lined by benches and racks.
[Crashing for the night. kilerbav's got control of Taylor. Can use Valkyrie for whatever, since she's just sitting at the bar at the moment.]
Alex looked at Taylor. "We're golden. We can use the 'dojo'. After you."
Neasha appeared from the main tunnel into the crew quarters section of the ship. Spotting Johannes lingering in the hall, she smiled as she remembered that she was planning to give him something. "Hey, newbie. I've got something for you-" she said, unclipping her personal comm device from the collar of her shirt. "The Boss just sent me a message, saying that I'm about to be transferred onto the 'big ship.' I don't exactly know what that means, but at the very least I know I won't be needing this anymore. Anyway, I need to finish getting my belongings packed up; they told me this was probably going to happen..."
Neasha trailed off as she unlocked and entered her cabin, an almost zen-like space which was sparsely decorated. From inside, her voice emanated: "oh, and tell Hariim to recode that device so that the system sees it as you and not me."
---
[I]10 Minutes Earlier[/I]
"Red! Long time, no see," greeted Rask with an extended hand. The masked operative shook it readily.
"Lieutenant," Red replied with polite respect, "you look less like a mercenary these days. You came to Mars in peace, I assume."
"Well, somebody's gotta set an example, keh," he replied as Yanim finished catching her breath. Unlike Rask, Yanim was armed and ready for a fight, if need be, including her bullet-proof coat and her marksman's rife. The heavy gear and poor-quality air were a difficult combination.
"I made the mistake of attending the Grand Prix without a weapon," Yanim grumbled. "The first time I go planetside in a year without a gun... Look what happens. I end up running from a fight and nearly get my damned leg blown off."
"Of course, we've heard about Asset Protection's involvement. It's unfortunate that Brigg's death couldn't be disguised as an accident," Red remarked. "That's going to make our job a lot harder."
"That's not our concern," Rask interjected. "You wanted a man killed, and we killed the fuck outta him."
"Well there's no denying that," Red replied with a chuckle. "But the idea was that we were trying to temper hostilities between rivals before another pointless war overtakes the southwest, but now YsCom thinks Tri-Enterprises was behind Brigg's death."
"Easily disproven," Yanim asserted.
"Of course," Red agreed. "But the question is whether YsCom will listen or if they've gone deaf on war drums. But I digress, you did your job and that's why we're still doing business with you. Speaking from a purely operational standpoint, I'm surprised you all pulled it off."
"So, are we gonna address the elephant in the room, or what?" Rask wondered aloud.
"The 'Aurikha' is its name," Red explained. The kanads recognized the reference; it was the name of a historic advocate of the UGC Charter, Aurikha Vor'Pangn. Red continued: "it was launched under a different name, back in 2347. Never saw active combat with the Black Fleet... it was too old by the time the Sanghvi War came around, but it did serve as a repair platform for fighters and other small crafts."
"So how did Argos get a hold of it?" Yanim asked.
"Because the Collective handed it over to the UGC when the Mantle imploded. It was a better ship than what most of the poorer factions in the southwest could muster, so for the better part of a decade it was basically the lone sheriff on the frontier."
"Until the humans started really striking it rich, I'm guessing?" Rask said.
"Exactly. Once Yscom came to fruition it was only a matter of time before the Aurikha was either decommissioned or destroyed-"
"-or [I]captured[/I]" Yanim interrupted. Red nodded, implying that the UGC had misguidedly employed the ship during their ill-fated campaign against YsCom during the previous year. The two kanads took a moment to appreciate the impressive history of the vehicle. "So," Yanim continued, "what happens to it now?"
"It's so large and cumbersome, and so empty, that we'd barely make anything by scrapping it out," Red began, "and yet it's too much of a waste to scuttle it. We think that it would be best utilized as part of a contract."
"Ah..." Yanim sighed with bittersweet disappointment, sure that Red was about to try to buy out the Terika-Belladonna company on behalf of Argos. What he said instead surprised her.
"What I'm going to ask of you is no small favor," Red explained, somewhat gravely. "It's about the war out east. We're not picking a side, but you're going to need to if you choose to go."
"An' what does Argos want with that clusterfuck?" Rask asked, crossing his arms with apparent suspicion.
"Technology," Red answered, sternly. "While the kanads and sanghvi are out there proving that 'blood begets blood' after all, there's a pair of unique devices which, in the right hands, could be worth far more than this carrier and essential to peace in the west. But in the hands of anyone else, they're practically worthless, or possibly even a cause for war. As you can probably already assume, Argos has the right hands."
"So why do you need a contractor to recover these devices?" Yanim asked, equally skeptical.
"We are being watched," Red answered with unusual emphasis. "If we were to send one of our own teams out there where they don't belong, our rivals will see it happening, no doubt, and find a way to interfere. We can't have that. And every hour we waste trying to find a suitable contractor to do the job for us, they get closer to figuring out our next move. Worse yet, at any moment, your kin and the sanghvi could end up bombing the shit out of those planets and then everyone loses."
"Who's watching?" Rask demanded.
"The Death Vigil, for one," Red answered. "They were behind the assassination of Donatello on Prospera, if our intelligence is correct. They pose a great threat to the west."
"Even with Mordecai assassinated?" Yanim asked, rhetorically.
Red's answer gave her an unpleasant chill. "Don't believe everything you read."
"Well shit, Red. How long are you giving us? Some of our crew's wounds haven't even healed up from the Prospera mission," Rask reasoned.
"Two weeks, including travel time. Given that you'll need to deliver the goods to us, that means three days there, and three days back, eight days to get the job done. That might not be enough time, so you'll need to cut a deal with someone else."
"How so?" Rask demanded.
"One device is on Sirgas, and the other is on Voyak. At this moment, the sanghvi are preparing to invade the former while the kanads have already committed to occupying the other. So the idea is simple- sell yourselves to one side or the other. While you're lighting up sanghvi or kanad military, take a moment to secure the device. Meanwhile, your 'allies' on the other planet will repay your assistance by recovering the second device."
Yanim lifted her cap and ran her hand through her hair. "And the ship?"
"You'll have it today," Red answered. Rask sharply exhaled and cursed in the kanad language under his breath.
"We'll take the job," Yanim answered.
---
[B]Summary of the Prologue:[/B]
On January 8th, 2385, the Muramasa, a ship belonging to the Terika-Belladonna Company, docked at the lunar trade port of Virtue in the Sol system. Under the directive of the company's first lieutenant, Rask Vor'Pangn, the ship took on a rookie crew and departed for the eastern border planet of Itara, an isolationist agricultural state which has recently been occupied and placed under control of the Kanad Collective's Black Fleet. Their unmet employer, Yanim Terika, supposedly awaited them there, having stayed behind from a previous mission in order to assassinate a public figure named Kupro Kupra. However, en route to the planet, the new crew was informed that Yanim had not reported on the success of her mission, and had likely been captured.
The rendezvous soon became a rescue mission, and Rask was forced to lead an away team to assault a city police department in an effort to locate Yanim. By the time her location had been determined, the local authorities were already in the process of turning Yanim over to the kanads, who wish to prosecute her as a terrorist. Rask then lead the team to intercept and recover her. Meanwhile, Neasha Kyral, the company's second lieutenant, lead a ship-based crew into combat against the Black Fleet itself, helping to delay Yanim's extradition and clearing a path of escape for the crew. In the end, the new crew recovered Yanim and escaped the planet with only a single casualty, inflicting severe losses on the kanads and the native tetrian collaborators who assisted them.
[B]Summary of Chapter 1:[/B]
After a brief stopover at the Albitsky Asteroid Field, the Muramasa crew traveled to Prospera, a gambling Mecca in human space. Yanim had learned that the kanads were using a security agreement with the tetrians to manipulate the flow of the interstellar food trade in hopes of causing a shortage in vulnerable border states. The human factions had boycotted tetrian goods out of suspicion of this intent, but the kanads were successfully skirting regulations by selling to the human crime syndicate "the Mafia," whose throwback aesthetic shaped the resort planet Prospera into a corrupted cyberpunk Las Vegas. The crew was ordered to find a way to sabotage the F-Max Grand Prix, a major sporting event that the Mafia was attempting to fix for a massive profit. Yanim hoped that the syndicate would negotiate if brought to heel, but the reality was far messier.
After bribing and assaulting key racers and Mafia figures, the crew entered its pilot, Owen Jackson, into the Grand-Prix. Owen, a former race driver, managed to pull off an upset victory despite rampant Mafia efforts to cheat the race in favor of their patsy. As a result, recently-ascended Mafia leader Donatello was assassinated, and two of his sons became rivals in a mob war. Meanwhile, Red, the mysterious Argos contact with which Yanim has worked in the past, appeared on Prospera to offer the crew a job. Richard Briggs, an YsCom official who sought war against the flagging trade conglomerate Tri-Enterprises, was due to be assassinated. The killing was meant to look like an accident, but after Tri-Enterprises' Asset Protection PMC intervened, kidnapping Briggs, the crew was forced to assault them directly and killed Briggs in the process.
The crew then traveled to Mars, entering into another contract with Argos to retrieve a pair of unexplained devices from the planets Sirgas and Voyak, where war is in the process of breaking out at any moment. Although the crew has just saved the east from a food crisis, they will have no time to rest as they take their guns directly to the front lines.
[B]Chapter 2
[/B]
[video=youtube;652KDcqOn7U]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=652KDcqOn7U[/video]
[quote]Yuga, this is Yanim. We have quite a job to discuss. I can happily also announce that the company has acquired a new headquarters- that carrier, it is ours, [I]sedrozha![/I] (one-who-takes-my orders!)[/quote]
((We Terika dogs now folks.))
Yuga stood and watched as the service crew departed, having finished changing the fuel rods.
As she turned around and was about to head back into the ship she got a call form Yanim.
She turned around and looked up at the towering colossus of a ship. She took out her compass without taking her eyes of the Carrier, "Very well, you have me intrigued. I assume you'd wish to speak to me in person regarding the details?"
LEON 'LION' EASTLINDHT
"I wonder why he is called Lion. He certainly does not look like one." thought Frosty as he passed a statue of one particular SDF hero.
Suddenly a armored hand fell on Frosty's shoulder.
"You should've seen him in action. You would've understood why." Said a man dressed in black SDF armor.
"Who was he?" replied Frosty.
[B]"Oh! Okay great thanks"[/B][I] Johannes gladly accepts the comm link and then takes his helmet off, opening up a side panel on the right side and plugging the comm link into it. He puts the helmet back on and after the firmware installs on his helmet's computer, an opaque window appears showing the UID's and names of all users currently using the ship's network. Johannes keys the comm link to ping Hariim.[/I]
[highlight]Hariim: Comm link ping from Neasha.[/highlight]
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