"For our own security this message is encrypted. Do not attempt to track this signal. We are contacting you for a job, nothing else. We require the Hard Code Data Server Located inside the Yuska Temari Home Office on Kerska Quartus. Further information will be attached to this message."

...Downloading... Download Complete...

"Right now, the planet is in evacuation. The Oblivion Entity is on an intercept course with the system. The Planetary Defense Force will be maintaining order at the Star Ports. The Control Radars will not notice another ship among hundreds of others. Anti Orbital Batteries will be undermanned. The only resistance will be Yuska Temari Security Forces, attempting to ship out important information to their transports. Remove them, and the building will stand, ready to be cracked open. We want that hard code."

...Downloadin1g...E1rrorR.//1ERR212010101....Connection.---..Interfear2101010101....--

"You must hurry. The world will soon be lost, and with it the hard code. Do not disappo----"

Connection Severed.
Communications off line--- External interference.

"I don't like it."

"Whats not to like? A broken message by a mysterious creep sending us into a dying planet full of people who are scared shitless to steal a fragile heavy box of wires that usually lay behind vaults thick enough to handle heavy lance fire."

Captain Quin was manning the cockpit, talking to the labor droid Fido already making preparations in the cargo hold. They were preparing a couple of tow cables to latch onto the said vault. It was essentially if everything else went wrong. Pull along side the building, hammer it with artillery shells until you get the vault then use the ship to rip it out of the building. Was it pretty? No. Was it brilliant? Not really but they got the message only a few hours ago and were spending the morning on the hyper lane to get into a system that most folks were trying to get out of. This was the best plan they had. "Yeah... should be fine."

Preferably the crew get into the building, find the codes or 'convince' someone to let them borrow it, and maybe carry the server out. That'd be the easy way, and probably knowing her crew, the most fun. But in this line of work, you gotta work with a couple routes.

Fido checked and recheck the airship clamps and cable attachments. "I hope youre not counting on me to lift the bloody thing. Even I have limits. Clamps ready captain."

Usually Quin was all about this kind of thing, but she had a problem getting excited when there was too many damn question about it. Running low on fuel, ammunition, supplies, she could use a score. They all could, and the money was worth it. "Good boy."

She clicked a button which caused the vox on the rest of the ship to alert those getting into the fight. He spirited voice coming on the line. "Hey everyone! Hope you got a good breakfast cause its time to get to work. Setting our entry course now." The ship itself starting hitting the atmosphere causing it to shake violently. The benefits of having a smaller ship. "We're going to pull right to the building. Hit them hard, hit them fast. Ship will circle the block and cover us." Just in case someone got onto a SA battery, or hell even just a manpack rocket, you dont want to stay still for too long.

Literally jumping from the cargo bay onto the roof... Not much of a plan either.

"Well, this is amusing." Ryteb chortled, his glider (or deathtrap, according to the engineers) barreling through the air ahead of the main ship. "Captain, I shall provide support against anti ship weaponry."

As he spoke that over the comms, he sped downwards towards one such item. In a manoveur that seemed physically impossible (if only because the pilot should be puking up his guts from the g-forces) he banked next to one of the larger groups and whipped out his pistol.

"In the beginning, there was the word, and the word was-"

KA-BOOOOM!!!! From the pistol came a crimson fireball the size of a car. It ate through the secrity forces and unfortunate collateral civvies like an acid, dispersing after a few seconds. A smirk, and tint of red in his eyes were his only reactions to the casual destruction. If the people weren't panicking before, they certainly were after he began his minor rampage.

"Kekeke... it is so fun meeting new people..."

The Hen swallows the Worm

She eyed herself in the mirror, only occasionally, glancing up to meet her reflection's gaze and quickly darting her eyes away, as if she had locked stares with a stranger, briefly, scandalously. In one hand she rigorously inverted a cocktail shaker, the other inspecting the scars across her face and clavicle. That day was a good day, the flesh was an ugly pink and the blisters were at a minimum, better than worse days, when her face burned and cracked like splitting, spitting coals. No scar that extensive ever really healed.

Skyldig placed the shaker down on the synthetic wood of the cabinetry, producing a small sieve from a drawer and placing it over the awaiting maw of a seltzer bottle. Emptying out the shaker, the fluid trickled freely through the tightly woven metal mesh, meanwhile, powdery detritus and the undissolved shells of various pills found themselves separated. She tossed the sieve aside, the cleaning bot would retrieve it, clean it, replace it in its designated shelf. Capping the seltzer dispenser, Skyldig fitted into it a shiny ampule of CO2, discharging a sliver of it into an awaiting tumbler to prove to herself it functioned.

Picking up the glass, she gestured it towards herself in the mirror.

"Your drink, Miss."

Before sipping on the narcotic concoction.

The Fox kills the Hen

The single light that hung in the center of her modest cabin burned like the filaments of an oven, bearing down on her as she stripped down her fighting rifle. With the rim of a 6.5mm case she pried up the lip of a pin and pulled it out, retaining it in hand as she worked the bolt handle back, tilting the gun so that the other side of the receiver faced her. Using the pin as a punch she let out another pin below the ejection port, sliding off the bolt handle and placing it aside.

Skyldig worked quickly, methodically, spider-like hands crawling over the gun as she extracted pins and pried on screws, dropping everything in a bucket of acetone that sat on the ground beside her cot. On which she sat cross-legged, pulling off the fore-stock and placing it down on the blanket. From the whole assembly she produced the gas system, fiddling with internal components, all the while lining them up to make the bolt extraction easier. Within a few short moments all the small pieces were being stripped of their gunk in the bucket, as Skyldig rammed a patch down the barrel and polished essential baring surfaces. The disassembled firearm lustered, gleaming as she brushed the parts liberally with oil. As much as the rifle was a glutton for pain she didn't like to be fired dry.

Skydig put the parts back together in a matter of a minute, drawing the charging handle back a few times to ensure proper cycling before leaving the gun aside to load magazines. Which lay stacked and strewn around the room, like some kind of sheet metal confetti.

The Man shoots the Fox

Her armor was not too dissimilar from the set she wore for the clans, though then her armor had been emblazoned with crests and awards, and was painted a deep... Grey. The idea of color was still alien to her, everything was a tone of black, except when in the woods or standing over a body of water, only then would she experience the faintest hint of this strange phenomenon. Color. The lightest twinge of some foreign sensation, that for all she knew could have been an optical illusion, or a parasite living in her eye. She drew the buckles and fasteners, wearing them tight enough to be uncomfortable, something that she could power through nonetheless.

Over her underwear was a one-suit of ballistic weave, to catch any kinetic projectiles that might breach through the upper layers of armor. Over which she would wear a tight lattice of mail, tightly packed rings of bi-metal looped together, to catch spalling and shrapnel that might come loose from the inside of the armor plates. Though this only covered her upper body. And finally the plates, shoulder and neck guards, fore-guards, thigh plates and greaves, gauntlets and gigantic segmented boots. These performed well against some energy based weapons, despite getting very warm upon impact. Less so against ballistic weapons, that had a tendency to dent painfully inwards.

All of this made the armor almost unbearably hot, it would have, had it not been for her body modifications, systems to cool her vital organs and major blood ways.

In the mirror Skyldig polished the plates on her shoulders, rubbing a rag in round rapid motions across the metallic surface. Her waist was dangling with ammunition pouches and hand grenades, like a violent belly-dancer's veil. On her left hip was the seltzer bottle, primed and ready for dispensing, on her right a high-gain communicator, for contacting the ship from planet side. She glanced at herself one more time before pulling on her helmet, and storming through the door, the various articles hanging off her body knocking against each other metallically.

The Devil hunts the Man

The sound of air tattering through the open maw of the cargo hold's rear door reminded Skydlig of the sound of a blowtorch, burning close to her ear. Though of course she knew that from experience. The sky turned, almost suddenly from black to an off white as the Molotov broke through the atmosphere, and the sound of planet wide alarm reached them even from such a height. Meanwhile, she stood there perfectly still despite the juddering of the ship as it slammed through turbulence, threatening to shake apart.

Behind her, FIDO tended to the cables, though she did not approve of the plan, Skyldig admired how the robot would take orders and shut the fuck up.

As the Molotov closed with the building, and flack and rockets rained inwards from roof mounted batteries, explosions rang out in a distance. No doubt the Yokai softening something that didn't require his attention. First thing was first though, in order to capture the vault the ship would need a window of opportunity, away from the fire of the Home Office building. That meant taking out the batteries.

Skyldig began to move towards the exit, as the rear of the ship swung around, facing the roof of the building. The lights in the hold blazed brightly, the thumbs up to make planet fall, a mile above the actual surface. Her brisk walk turned into a trot, the trot speeding up to a jog and then a run as she approached the edge of the platform.

"Good luck!" FIDO called out after her, as her feet become free of the platform, weightlessly careening forwards into the open air.

"Fuck off!" She called in response, not turning to look at the robotic laborer, one hand moving to disengage the safety on her rifle as she approached the asphalt surface of the roof. Her feet crashed into the ground first, left before right, cracks sprawling out from the point of impact as asphalt flaked off the ground. The world seemed to slow down at that instant, as the guards on the roof came to the quick realization that she had landed. Skyldig's forward momentum carried her forwards, as she jumped off the ground the moment she landed, rolling before coming to an abrupt, upright halt.

"Computer, play that good shit." She commanded, as she opened the mouthpiece of her helmet and jammed the nozzle of the seltzer bottle into her lips. Pressing down on the lever a sudsy jet emptied a quarter of the narcotic solution down her throat, her heart and brain responding almost instantly. She went through a series of sensations, ranging from elation to pain to calm to pain to anger to numbness, in the span of time it took to shoulder her rifle and kill the first man she saw.

@Ryteb Pymeroce

The captain had to sign to herself as Ryteb went off and did his own thing, like usual. The kid can only be described as a homicidal terrorist and it was a complete mystery how he has been able to make it this long without getting imprisoned or shot. Maybe it was just luck, or balls to the wall tenacity. Whatever the case, if it kept a PDF response away from the building it was not something she could complain too much about.

And he set things on fire, which was a plus.

His attack splashed a Grav Tank with fire. They weren't expecting incendiaries and so it came as a bit of a shock to the surrounding military police. A few of them were on fire, but the crowd that were simply flocking to the transports got it so much worse without their armor. Kicking screaming rolling, or just falling over.

Still. This kind of woke the tank up and the fire splashed off of its slanted hull. Some damage, the plate catching on fire, but the tops and front were definitely their toughest angles. These things were the problem. Having targeting solutions they could be a problem for something as big as the Molotov, and they were all over the city. Against his quick little skiff, only personal weapons would be his issue, seeing how little the thing was armored.

And thats what they did. There was immediately radio of an airborne attack, though information aside from fire was more or less none existent. Still, it caused all who heard the alarm to turn on their armor's deflectors. Additional protection, though not by much. Then shouldered their rifles and started blasting. Lances of blue streaked through the air, chipping out pieces of the concrete buildings when their shots missed.

The explosion of course would cause the rest of the district to either look to the skies or panic, it was already a doomsday situation and a sudden attack sent the people into fleeing riots. Slowing the response of the PDF further.

---

@Voltus_Ventus

"Rude isn't she?" Said the oversized loader.

"It means she likes you." Replied the captain.

Trying to give Skyldig an exact order honestly wasn't worth the effort. She was good at what she did so honestly it a treat to watch her work. A halo jump from the lower atmosphere. If only everyone was that gutsy.

The rooftop was a series of elevated platforms, ladders stairs and airpads. While there was a bay at every twenty floors or so, most of the rootop was dedicated to these lifts. Possibly because the boardrooms and CEOs were located directly at the top. No knowing if someone important was in the building or was already evacuated.

Still the rooftop had staff. A technician quite confused at the sudden explosive appearance of someone from above was the first to feel her wrath and he didn't stand a chance. The roof was populated by security personal and flight crews. However it seemed that the building was big on security. Each one of the security had padded armor and face concealing helmets, each armed with atleast a fire arm, though some rare few ones appeared to have sub machine guns.

With the attack came those reaching for wrist mounted coms to try to alert the rest of security as others moved in. Flight crews ran for. A quick glance counted more than a dozen, with atleast eight guns bein raised to greet her. She was in an elevated position on one of the airpads, with three others visible from her vantage point, the elevated anteana tower in the middle and the lifts located underneath each airpad. Metal crates were strewn everywhere. The message was right, company were trying to strip the building.

---

Meanwhile the Molotov made its decent. Below, there was a fire explosion and soon after, the rooftop, their insertion point would be a blood bath of bullets. So far so good. There was no flak, no rocket target lock. Skyldig determined where the team would be dropping in. She rolled out the carpet for them.

Lancers and sterling brocades,
The Blood rushed down with the wind,
Upon the vanguard of Menn,
Whom rac'd down path that did wind,
T'wards certain doom.

For a moment the air was still, as jump ships and corporate yachts began to lift off landing pads, the two opposing sides assessing each other in that briefest instant. Before anyone else could move, Skyldig rained a hail of bullets down on an unfortunate guard at the toe of her platform, literally blowing him away, sending the limp body streaking across the ground. As the rag doll came to a stop, holes pumping sterling blood, the guards simultaneously opened fire at Skyldig. She fell backwards, purposefully lying as flat as she could against the platform, hiding in the middle of the flat plane where bullets couldn't find her. To her left feet were rattling up the metal steps to the top of the platform, perhaps one or two security guards making their way up with their guns drawn. Scrambling towards the opposite lip of the landing pad, she dragged herself off, falling through a haze of bullets and behind a metal container she had spied on her way down.

As the security guards crested the steps to find her gone, they crossed the platform with speed, reaching the end that Sky rolled off of just in time for a metallic yellow orb to rise up to meet them. One of them had an instant to look down to the ground, where Skyldig was lying in the fetal position, back pointing to the air as the grenade's fuse ran its course and detonated in mid air. The pair of guess were blown off the landing pad, across its surface and off the side of the skyscraper. A sudden and violent shower of shrapnel slammed into Skyldig, plinking against her armor and stinging as all the metal segments rattlers against one another. Certainly her back would be horribly bruised. There was no time to worry about future Skyldig's pain however. Like a terrible arachnid, She scurried across the metal asphalt rooftop, rapidly taking cover by a crate closer to the center of the roof.

Popping her head over the top of the crate, bracing her body against it, she fired off a burst at a small group of guards crossing the roof, not hitting any of them but causing them to drop for cover. Leaping over the metal container, she advanced on an autonomous rocket battery, slaloming through cover. The Mz-677 was an X-Ray guided middle system, comprised of two batteries of rocket pods, each containing a dozen hollow charge missiles.

Taking cover behind the armored installment, Skyldig extracted a rocket from the back of the turret, lying back against it as it took fire from quick approaching soldiers. Producing a combat knife, she pried the warhead's cap off of the top of the rocket and reached in, fiddling with the timer on the explosive device to delay the detonation. Rescrewing the fuse housing, she stood up, picking up the rocket in both hands and raising it over her shoulder. She slammed it against it's nose, hearing the timer beginning to start before returning it to the rocket pod.

Slipping her fingers through the rings of three grenades, she extracted them from her belt, yanking them free by the pins. There's a common myth abound, that it takes little force to pry the safety pin out of a hand grenade, that would be incorrect, it could take up to 30 pounds of force to dislodge a ring from its captive slot. Leaning to the left, exposing herself from behind the battery, she swung her arm ferociously, painfully whipping it, had it not been for the painkillers flooding her system. Against the friction of springs and the capture hole, the grenades slipped off of their pins from the sheer force of the swing, flying out in all directions and causing a lull in shooting as the guards swarmed for cover.

Skyldig ran in the direction of the thrown grenades, away from the battery and towards the ducking soldiers. Her weight carried her forwards as she hopped momentarily onto a crate, her forward momentum pulling her off the box and into the air as the grenades exploded behind her. The flame radiated behind her, heat licking at the back of her armor, as the explosive force carried her forwards. Aiming down as she tumbled through the air, she emptied her magazine into the helmet of a crouched soldier, drilling through it with ease. The moment her bolt locked back, the magazine empty, the rocket detonated behind her, exploding violently and chain detonating the rest of the battery around it.

A second shockwave, much more powerful than the first flung Skydig forwards, sending the armored figure cascading against the doors of an elevator. The metal peeled away around her, she she slammed into the back wall of the lift, her body crashing into the buttons of the cabin. Lurching hard, the machinery in the elevator spluttered and shuddered as metal ground on metal. The elevator plunged downwards, screaming towards the ground as the brake pads failed. Quickly, with clarity and focus, the bloods still crackling through her system, Skyldig punched through a grate in the ceiling, and clambered out, reaching for a flailing cable that wasn't plummeting down with the cabin. She gripped on to it, the elevator descending down away from it, gravity and her residual speed pulling her down for a few more cubits, whiplash rattling her brain in her skull. Had it not been for the narcotics she would have passed out. Sky swung there for a few moments, her heart pounding in her ears so hard it felt like she was vibrating. Cool air rushed up the elevator shaft as the cabin crashed to the bottom, providing a moment of respite before she started to climb back up, arduously. As she reached the top, the remaining SAM turrets, which were few following the explosion, continued to fire at the circling Molotov, though with no where near enough range to actually reach it.

A large chunk of the building had broken off and rained down on to the street, the sheer strength of the explosion gouging a scar that ran a few stories down. The roof was ribbed with cracks, and from where she stood at the entrance to the elevator shaft, it seemed like the explosion had either killed or maimed everyone on the roof. No one picked through the wounded, ran to their aid, they would no doubt die there lying under a dying star. She dropped her magazine and began going around, loading a fresh one and blasting the straggling soldiers clinging on to dear life. Perhaps it was more merciful, or perhaps it was the drugs in her system driving her. Or maybe it was just her. She began to shut down the SAMs, one by one, limping about in a painless haze as each one fell silent. As she approached the last one shots rang out. The first one slammed into the back of her armor, square in the middle, the next few ricocheting off of her plates.

The wounded straggler clung on to her side with one hand, feebly retaining her insides, the other hand firing wildly at Skyldig with an automatic pistol. She rushed the guard, closing the distance as the builds spiked against her armor, slamming into her ribs with only the ballistic weave between her and certain death. Swinging the stock of her rifle, she knocked the guard down and let the momentum of the swing bring her down on to the woman. They squirmed and wrestled on the ground, the woman firing blindly into Skyldig's abdomen, breaching through the painkillers. Sky grabbed the gun by the muzzle pulling it from between them, ramming her head against the damaged guard's with fervor. Suddenly, the gun fired its last round, ripping through flesh and bone of the finger over the muzzle. Her finger second from her pinkie sailed through the air, but Skyldig was too engrossed killing the guard to worry about it.

An ache slowly start to set in, as Skyldig clutched her side, holding on to her mangled finger in the same hand. She brought the mouth piece of the radio set to her lips, the helmet's rebreather hanging over.

"Did.. I.. Break my record?" She said breathlessly as her vision began to recede around the edges. There was silence for a few moments before Computer replied.

"Previous Record: four minutes, 22 seconds. Current Time: five minutes, 56 seconds. Record not beaten." She contemplated for a few moments, her finger off the communication button, before holding it down to speak.

"Take away the time it took to climb up the elevator shaft."

"New Time: four minutes, three seconds. New Record Set."

"Tell the Molotov this approach is safe, and have Ross waiting to receive me." As she finished her sentence she began to slump to the ground, first sitting, propping herself up with her free arm, before slipping and lying down. She took a few shallow breaths, before falling unconscious.

"If I jumped out right now would I be okay?" Zephyr mumbled to himself after Ryteb caused an explosion that was sure to make them tons of friends. Why was he here, in this deathtrap with his overexcitable crewmate? Probably because Ryteb had asked right after Zephyr had his morning coffee, and he just didn't want to disappoint. Also Ryteb didn't seem like he would be taking no for an answer but that was beside the point.

"Ryteb I know you're having a good time but think we could focus the fire on the guys trying to bring us down?" Zephyr pointed his hand out and fired a firebolt at an oncoming ships engine block to bring it down as he tried to get Ryteb back on task. He also enjoyed the distraction from the fact some civilians were caught in the crossfire. He had to ignore that for now, he told himself that if they hadn't escaped by now they were probably done for anyways.

Or perhaps he could focus on the fact that he could hardly believe this glider was holding the both of them aloft currently. At least is had seatbelts, although that was less surprising than one might think, seatbelts did help with all the flips Ryteb tended to do. The man was nearly twice Zephyrs age but that didn't stop him doing crazy maneuvers. You got used to it if you flew with him enough, used to it to the point where you didn't get sick at least. You never really got over the lurch you'd feel when Ryteb decided to kick it in to high gear. Despite all that though Zephyr really liked the guy, and would be sad if they ever parted ways. He was a loose cannon, but he was also a damn good pilot, despite what other people might say.

"Working on it Zeph..." Felix grunted, currently steering with his feet whilst tinkering with his pistol. Whose bright idea was it to have the modes require two hands to switch? Oh right, him. With an audible click the pistol changed from Burst Mode to Magnum. Just in time, as they had to dodge an incoming projectile. "Got it, really need to work on a better system though."

Pulling the trigger, a spiralling lance of flame about an inch in diameter shot into one of the enemy tanks, boring a hole right through it. No explosion, damn. He really hated wasting energy, mostly because they outnumbered them at least five to one. Firing off a few more shots he managed to take out a couple, and play happy hell with a fair amount.

Zeph was a good guy to have around, one of the only mages who actually acknowledged themselves as such in the crew. Especially since he also used fire magic. Should probably talk to him about- OH #$@#&₩$% THEY'RE USING HOMING MISSILES!!!

Pushed out of his thoughts by imminent danger, he sped upwards, hoping to force the missiles to burn out before they reached them. "I think we may have pissed them off a tad." he sheepishly grinned at his companion.

Malkan held back a sigh as Ryteb sign off the comms to wreck whatever havoc he tended to on missions. There were some days where she wondered why she stayed with this crew. Sure she could understand everyone had different personalities but it didn’t mean she had to agree with all of them. A part of Malkan felt bad for Zephyr who was also on that deathtrap currently. She remembered flying with the yokai a few times and there’s a reason why she avoids it if at all possible.

To be fair, as reckless as Ryteb was, he did know how to create a good distraction. Mal didn’t like the job as it was, feeling that it was too rushed with not enough information. Nor did she particularly like the mention of Oblivion; she’s had enough of demons in her life time thank you very much.

When the lights came on to indicate it was time to jump, Malkan stood. She buckled her bag to her back and strapped it in tight, so it wouldn’t fly around during the jump. Malkan watched Skyldig as she jumped, admiring her confidence. This plan, if you could call it a plan, was crude at best. Not long as Skyldig made her descent, Malkan made hers. Her landing definitely wasn’t as smooth’s as her teammates, rolling forward to break her fall rather than landing on her feet.

As soon as she got her bearing, Malkan ran for cover away from the firefight Skyldig was drawing. She looked around, assessing where she was, and smiled when she spotted a control booth. While she did her best to avoid guards and crew, whenever she ran into someone, Malkan would give them a small shock to incapacitate them or lock up their gun before rushing at them. Even though she wasn’t the best at hand to hand combat, she found his method worked the best since most people relied on their firearm, so it momentarily confused them when they tried to fire at her and nothing happened.

There weren’t as many security guards as she thought there’d be as Malkan made her way over to the control booth, though that was probably because their attention was aimed at Skyldig. She heard the numerous grenades go off as she hid behind a parked airship. Malkan frowned at her right arm which now sported a large gash running up the forearm. She had not expected him to pull out a knife so quickly and had used the arm to block a blow aiming for her face.

She peaked out from where she was hiding to look over at the control booth. There were two guards posted outside who didn’t look like there were going to move any time soon. Malkan debated on what to do. She doubted she could take on both guards, especially with her hand now twitching uncontrollably from the damage. “I guess I’m going to have to use them.” She dug through her backpack for the grenades she had brought. Maybe her crewmates were rubbing off on her more than she thought. After getting her right hand to behave, Malkan pulled the pin and used it to throw the grenade close enough to the booth to get the guards’ attention but far enough that they wouldn’t see her coming. It was also in the direction that Skyldig would be approaching from if she was making her way over to this side of the roof.

Malkan waited for the guards to be far enough away before making her way to the booth. Luckily when she entered, there was only one controller in the booth. Using his surprise to her advantage, she ran towards him and slammed his face in the panel in front of him, knocking him unconscious. Mal pulled him upright again to tie him to his chair. If anyone peered in, it would look like there were still people working.

She glanced around taking the room in. Clearly this was a smaller control room so there wasn’t that much room or equipment, but that didn’t matter to her. Pulling off her googles, Malkan sat down in the other chair in the room, rolling it over to the radio transmitter. While computers could vary vastly between planets, communications generally still relied on radio waves, making them very easy to jam. Mal pulled out a small box from her bag and began attaching it to the transmitter. She let herself get immerse in the waves she could see with her eyes, discerning which waves were used for what. Once the box was properly hooked up, a screen lit. To anyone else, it simply looked like a normal colorful screen, but Malkan had programmed the box in Tekhmi’s own programming language which was a combination of ones, zeros, and colors. As she began to select and pull the channels that she wanted to jam from the air into the box, certain aspects of the evacuation process found themselves unable to communicate, namely the security forces.

As she was finishing up, Malkan received a message saying that Skyldig had cleared a path. She finished up and hid the box as best as she could in the room. Hopefully no one would notice the new equipment in the room with the added chaos that she just caused, but if anyone did all they would have to do is smash the box and all the communications problems would go away. Mal was also hoping they didn't have another system to switch to either; it's not like she had another one of these boxes. Once she was done, she made her way back to the Molotov to regroup.

The Grav tanks had a main cannon and a pintel mounted machine gun turret and while the cannon was not designed for something that fast and small, the machine would do the trick. Thankfully for the flyers, the fire did a good job of keeping their heads down, or just burning it off. They pretty much had this little square in the bag,

But as there was more information... More angry soldiers were going to move in on their position. And just as well, trading blows with the tank sent in another squad from down a side street. At the far corner, there were two soldiers bracing their deflectors as make shift baricades and then engaged in firing back. Somehow though there was a special weapons team, a missile launcher slung over their shoulder. The computers hummed with targeting solutions and their fuel kicked in, sending two missiles sailing down the street right at them, their guidance systems keeping them on course.

---

@nohbdies@Voltus_Ventus[/center]

So that took care of most of the roof and nearly everyone on it. It was only one air helipad, one elevator and one control station still marginally intact, the rest had pieces of grenades, destroyed wreckage and the remains of the SAM missle doing its thing. Skyldig cleared the landing site alright. Leaving Malkan to set up her jammer.

Loading through the transmissions she'd pick upon on some of the chatter before her device kicked in.
"MTF! MTF!? Sir, we lost MTF 12!" "Helipad compromised! Get PDF on the phone." "We'll bring the supplies to the level thirty dock!" "Reroute all classified -----" Then with a scratch of radio static, the jammer focused on the wavelength and set about keeping it from reaching out.

Malkan came back just in time for the big yellow ship with graffetti to set itself down just off the helipad to ungorge the rest of its 'cargo' The rest of the crew for the mission.

A sharp whistle rings out. "Damn I didnt think we'd get this many explosions already." A five foot tall girl with noticably robotic arms, lands on the solid asphalt of the helipad, a backpack on her as she holds a drone of her own design. It rolled off her hand unfurled its legs, prancing off the pad towards the main landing where the elevator was.

Behind her, with a heavy clunk of metal and hoisting his plasma cannon was their brute M. He would already be laying devastating waste to the battle if Sky hadn't beat him too it. But he knew at this point to just stay out of her way. If she got shot or not, he knew her well enough to know she'd survive. His heavy frame nearly crushed the stairs to meet with Malkan, a nod of his helmet before going to the elevator. "My gods damned rappel line broke." Explaining why he was late.

Meanwhile Ross is already heading over to Sky. She is whistling a song playing in her headphones as she begins to take out the tools she's going to need to deal with the soldier's little drug fueled fix and that nasty bullet wound. She took one syringe for waking her up, her arm splitting in another to get out the tweasers, another had some skingraft spray, and the last a painkiller. A bullet was routine, so routine it was almost boring. She approached the dangerous girl with barely a moments hesitation. "Piff, passed out from that. I swear you're getting sloppy." Poking and prodding, her cybernetic limbs whirled about her, extraction, patch job, and then finally a nice set of endorphins and adrenaline right into her chest, get that heart really pumping and back into the fight.

The captain came over the comms, her eye on their radar. "Looking good so far. They're looking for bunch of terrorists down town than here, but that explosion on one of their biggest towers, someone is going to notice." Ross' drone got the elevator working, bringing the lift up to them.

So, we have a good news, bad news scenario. The good news is that most of their weapons are too slow to hit us, and Zephy boy is a great shot on those that can. Unfortunately the bad news was very bad. The magic that was used to supplement minor issues like g forces and fuel, wa coming undone due to the strain. Probably shouldn't have kept using magic to repair it. I turned to my companion with a sheepish grin.

"If we survive this... never mention this to Mal." I deadpanned before we plummeted down, screaming in terror. Zephy was predictably swearing in his oh so exotic tongue (probably what makes him so appealing to women, those vibrations when he hisses must feel wonder- bad Ryteb, no sex when you are facing certain death... or worse.)

Pushing that conversation away, I pulled the craft so that it barreled towards our target. Locking our flightpath, I switched into my full fox form to avoid most of the glass. Please don't be bulletproof. Please don't be bulletproof.



"Thank you for flying Air Ryteb. We hope to see you again soon." I giggled, as I wiggled out of the mangled glider. Zephy was giving me the stink eye for some reason, is he a telepath? If so I reeeeally need to not think about porn. Or where my secret stash of sherberts are. Speaking of which...

Seemingly out of nowhere, I pulled out a bag of my lemon sweets and started eating. Despite the fact I had paws and shouldn't be able to do that. Eh, not my problem.

Malkan got back to the ship without much trouble despite running into a few more guards. It seemed like, without radio communications, they were at a lost as to what to do. Many were either trying to regroup elsewhere to see why communications were down while others abandoned the rooftop to find another ship that would get them off this damned planet.

She nodded back to M as she approached the ship, steering clear of Ross and Sky. From the beginning, Ross had always creeped her out, especially her fascination with prosthetics. While she did help quite a lot with designing her fake arm, Malkan never appreciated her trying to talk her into getting more prosthetics. She briefly glanced over at the two just to assess the situation and was surprised to see Skyldig passed out, though only mildly. That girl did like to go hard at times, always pushing her limit.

“Maybe you’ve put on a few pounds,” she responded drily to M with a smirk. Malkan was in a surprising good mood despite her initial reticence to the job; it was going smoothly so far… She cursed herself for thinking that at all. Generally, as soon as she thought a job was going well, shit tended to hit the fan.

As she waited for Ross’s drone to finish, Malkan sat down on a crate and pulled out a few tools from her backpack to fix her arm.

The pair squirmed, she wasn't good at this and to an extent it hurt, but she kept her mind off it by scanning her eyes about. The Castery was where the molten metal from the smelters was transported in vast, bucket-like crucibles, suspended from impossibly high gantries by Ghargashian sized chains. The heat was almost excruciating, and they both glistened with sweat. Skyldig grunted, looking away and scrunching up her face, half wincing and half scowling while the Slavedriver bit his tongue. A rumbling sound came from his chest, eyes clenched shut, his massive fists gripping down hard on her wrists, threatening to break them. When iron grip loosened she yanked her hands out of his, standing up, her eyes darting around as she fiddled with the rope at waist, tying her baggy pants up tightly.

"We-ll?" She asked, hunched over, the burns on her face peeling from the heat of the metalworks above them. She expanded a claw like hand, and the man grunted, buckling his belt as he began to walk away. "We had a fucking deal!" She barked, standing up straight, coming to just under his height before returning to a stoop "We had a deal." Sky repeated, in forced respect. He looked over his shoulder, rolling his eyes at her before dropping a black plastic bag on the ground at his feet, continuing on his way. The moment he turned away, Skyldig scrambled forwards, falling to her knees as she grabbed the little sachet in her shaking hands.

Pulling the seal open and looking into the bag, she was greeted by the dull luster of a finely granulated, crystalline substance. With haste, making sure her eyes were not deceiving her, she turned the package over so that the front was facing her. In big, bold letters, white against the black wrapper, beneath the chemical diagram of the drug, the words were printed:




She groaned in pleasure, stuffing mouth and nose into the pouch, huffing hard and inhaling the fine powder. Relaxing into her knees, she pulled her face away and closed her eyes, wiping the dust off her face and rubbing it into her gums with her fingers.

Nearby, the sound of metal clattering against metal echoed against the struts. Skyldig dropped the pouch, reaching for her drilling-hammer and growled.

------------------------------------------

"Shut the fuck up..." She muttered, coming out of her drug fueled dream, the cool air rolling against her face. Her helmet lay nearby, hands wandering around under her armor, needles pricking into her skin and drawing threads through gashes and applying painkillers to bruised and cracked ribs. Sky clenched her left fist, feeling the missing finger, "I was just resting my eyes." Her eyes still closed.

The doctor snorted, a single chuckle of mirth escaping her as her robotic fingers explored the soldier's sore body. They had detached in pairs, scurrying about under Skyldig's armor like two legged spiders as they attended to the field fixable wounds. "You're a candle burning at all three ends." Ross mumbled, her eyes darting back and forth in the space between them, watching the various perspectives of the little medic bots on the holographic HUD shimmering in front of her face. She hesitated, her eyes momentarily lingering on the red lines of one of Sky's mastectomy scars before continuing. "Want me to set your ribs, or want to wait until this is all over." She gestured to the to the destruction on the roof with her free hand, pointing around with Skyldig's forcefully amputated finger.

Skyldig opened her eyes, light grey sky greeting her, black plumes of smoke rising up from the peripheries of her vision. She turned to face Ross and saw her finger in her hand, "Aren't you going to put that back on?" She asked, looking down at her now bandaged hand before sitting up. A spike of pain went through her, driving through her ribs and out her back. Skyldig maintained a placid face. The doctor shrugged, tossing it up into the air and catching it.

"It's a bit fucked." She said, inspecting it. The nail had come clean off the front, and the end that was once attached to her hand was incredibly unsightly. She felt around. "Plus it's broken." She was about to ask if Skyldig wanted a prosthetic, but thought better of it, she was a body purist despite her normally crippling narcotic consumption. She turned it over once more in her hand before pocketing it, she could salvage the tissue and regrow a new one, though her supply of Sky's stem cells was running low, so she would have to harvest more soon. "I put some wounding gel on the stub, keep it open and fresh, we'll deal with it once we're ship side." Ross mused, ordering her fingers back to her with an eye gesture.

When the last finger returned to its socket, Skyldig sat up and was relieved she was behind a box. She wasn't as strict about her face as most were back home, but it still irked her, so she kept it covered for the most time despite the crew having all seen it. "Yes, you can fondle me later." She said, in her imperious tone, as her mind wrestled back the mild anesthetic. The dose Ross had given her could probably sedate a large Megasloth, but years of substance abuse and a naturally rapid metabolism meant it didn't last long. Ross went an augmented blue, her blood surrogate rushing to her skin in embarrassment. She stammered, uncharacteristically, as Skyldig stood up and reengaged her helmet, the respirator hanging open exposing her chin, mouth and nose. Swaggering over to where the group had assembled, by the door of the now working elevator, Sky brought the bottle of seltzer to her lips and stuffed the nozzle into the back of her mouth, dousing her throat with the drug-concoction. "She's right." She said in M's direction, gesturing to Malkan with a nod of the head, as she rocked up ahead of them. "You're getting fat."

Zephyr was glad Ryteb was as good a pilot as he was. He kept them out of range of most of the weapons being fired at them, emphasis on the most. What had Zephyr worried wasn't the missiles headed their way, it was that after blasting one with fire it did nothing, meaning they had some kind of heat shielding and he needed a new plan. Luckily for them, fire was Zephyrs secondary trick, his main one being messing with computers. Unfortunately he had to wait for the missiles to get closer in order to change their targeting, which was clench inducing to say the least.

The missiles got closer as Ryteb flew them upwards, and as soon as Zephyr could sense their computers he made a minor easy enough change to angle them towards each other. They collided several hundred meters from the glider but the shockwave was still enough to jostle them. And that was when Ryteb informed Zephyr to not mention what was about to happen to Mal. The glider was in a free fall and Zephyr inadvertently reverted to the native language of his people as he shouted every swear he knew and cursed Ryteb for keeping this thing together with the magical equivalent of duct tape.

The crash was expected and Zephyr shielded himself as best he could. His thick scales were a bit like old fashioned chain mail, at least for little scratches. He felt a bit sore but was overall fine, he glared at Ryteb for a moment before just sighing and letting it go. He couldn't stay mad at the guy, or anyone really, Zephyr was notoriously bad at holding a grudge, he just couldn't bring himself to stay mad at anyone for longer than a few minutes. "Come on fox face, your crash landing was one floor too low, roof access is this way."

Zephyr made his way to the stairs and up on to the roof where he saw The Molotov along with the rest of the crew. They were all around the elevator at this point, "oh good, elevator's working, real glad we won't have to take the stairs. Sorry if you were waiting on us, we ran in to...delays." Delays was one way to put it, Zephyr thought as he side glanced Ryteb.

M made a sound at the convening group. It sounded something like a grunt, a snort, or a short laugh. "More of me to love." The power armor clad gaseous creature was already overriding the elevator to take them through the emergency lift. Go from the top to the bottom now, though with the six of them, it was going to be crowded.

Ross having essentially got all hot and bothered by performing emergency surgery, touching things that ought not be touched in a nonsterile environment, and talking about enhancements on the beserker that was Skyldig she was ready to look for her next victim, seeing that Zephyr and Ryteb had crashed landed, and actually aimed for the top of the building. How nice of Ryteb not to go completely off on his own for a change. The little medic had that cut you open eyes a glow when she saw them. "Have fun boys? Anything contusions, breaks, or lacerations I should know about." Her fingers already twitching in their insect like spidery ways.

Ross' bot did its thing, already sending pulses waves through the core of the building, following along its support struts and over its walls. As soon as it touched down it was making a digital 3D map of the whole building, looking for areas that would be the server room. Malkan's device continued its jamming, and feeding every thing spoken on the buildings vox to funnel it right into the Molotov.

---

On the ship, Fido was filtering out the information, clearing up the chaff and monitoring all the lines.

"Getting awfully quiet back there!" The captain said, the controls being held and bobbed. No way she would risk autopilot this close to a building with potential anti air in the vicinity. "Speak Fido."

"Schematics computed. Uploading floor plan."

All of the Marauder's computers chimed with a full readout of the building, a shared interface for everyone to navigate by.


"Ataboy. Head on down to floor 45. That's our best bet. And theres a secondary loading dock one level below." That was convenient.

---

There was a spark and the elevator began to slowly descend. M shoulder his plasma cannon and swung an arm. "Done. Come on." The elevator shaft meant for cargo and emergency workers descended, anyone late could simply drop down from above.

The descent was slow going from five hundred feet up and as they descended, Fido kept feeding them the radio chatter.

"Fall back to Level 46. We have a Cargo Freighter incoming two minutes! All personal, to Dock 46. Evacuate on that Freighter, on the double!"

"Captain, I'm reading no power on the server room, they must have backed everything up on the Hard Code."

"Which means its probably going to be on that next ship out of here. Shit."

"We've got unauthorized use of the maintenance elevator!" "Barricade the access points!"

Looks like they're going to be dealing with another welcome party, and this time they didn't have the element of surprise... or did they?

As the lift descended bringing them closer to imminent danger, the music pumping through her sound system changed. From the other side of the tinny speakers, the sound of whirring and clicking echoed into her head, as the microphone in her cabin picked up the sound of the tape player swapping cassettes. There was a snap as a new tape was clicked into place and its guard shut over it, and a high-pitched drilling noise as the machine wound the magnetic strip to its starting position. Before a servo pressed down on the play button of the device with a hearty krrchnk. The moments following were filled with static silence, occasionally hissing and popping before a song played.

Behind her M almost choked, before bursting out in laughter. The way the communication system worked was a series of open channels for quick communication during combat, which meant you could tap into anyone's feed at any one moment. Skyldig was aware of this, so placed her music system on a closed channel only she could tap into. But it seemed her music was loud enough to be picked up by her microphone, and thus, M could listen to it. To her horror.

"Oh this is rich!" He cried out, his gloved hand on the front of his helmet as if holding a nonexistent face, "I didn't take you for a Carpenters kind of girl!" He gestured for the others to gather around, with his fingers holding up the number 3, Skyldig's channel.

Under her mask she seethed, as in the background the soft strumming of the Carpenters filled her helmet. Slipping her fingers between a gap in the segmented plates of his armor, she lifted him up and pinned him to the wall of the lift, with a deep and rumbling growl. The suit was light, after all, it only needed to contain a gas, and none of the other extraneous things needed to keep a supple, fleshy body alive. Pressing a knife under the lip of the helmet, she poked at the rubberized gasket of the container.

"I'll fucking space you right now you cretin!" She barked, threatening to evacuate him out of his suit "I-I'll turn you into Green- Green Kibble!" Referring to one of the three kibbles they fed slaves on Pargalon-3. Green kibble, Beige kibble and Grey kibble. The sudden and jostling motion shocked him, but more so he was worried that she might actually do it. He raised his hands up in submission.

"Alright, alright! No one tune in to her band!" He said, hoping to appease her. Ross chortled, not following his advice as the music played in her cochlear implants.

"This is precious!" She cried out, not at all ready to hear the smooth, mellowing music. Almost in disbelief that the Carpenters were in Skyldig's personal collection of music. Before she could turn to confront the doctor, the elevator began to make its short and abrupt slow down. As the door slid open she heaved the giant suit in front of the cabin, shielding them from the small arms fire that was no doubt about to ensue. When the doors fell open, nothing, until a metallic object came skittering and clanking into the cabin. Skyldig looked down at it, her sharp eyes catching the words written on the side of it.




Catching it with her foot, she kicked the concussion grenade back out of the lift, a bright flash of light accompanied by a loud bang splattered the cabin with metal spalling. Pushing M aside, Skyldig drew her rifle in one hand and fired around him, hoping to keep their heads down while she thought. Reaching for a grenade on her belt, letting her rifle dangle by its strap at her shoulder. She groped at thin air, the doctor must have taken the utility belt off of her when they were up on the roof, leaving Skyldig explosiveless. She released a groan in frustration. This was going to take a little more effort than she thought it would, she admitted to herself with some level of irritation, before storming out into the hallway.

Music Playing

"Ding dong,
I know you can hear me,
Open up the door,
I only want to play a little..."

Screams echoed through the corridor as a little girl with fox ears went on a murder rampage. Felix had snuck through the vents and gotten behind the guards. It was such a shame the guards weren't trained for fighting horror movie monsters.

"Ding dong,
You can't keep me waiting,
It's already too late,
For you to try and run away..."

The sounds of bullets accompanied the singing, as the guards tried killing the girl only for her to vanish into the shadows. You could almost hear her thoughts of "Nin-Nin", as she caused her patented chaos.

"I see you through the window,
Our eyes are locked together,
I can sense your horror,
Though I'd like to see it closer..."

She was almost disappointed when the concussion grenade came out, as it meant she wouldn't get to continue playing with them. Felix gave her best innocent expression marred slightly by the fact she was soaked in blood. Also the fact she was currently beating a poor guard to death with his own arm.