[center][h2][b]Ilshar Ard’sabekh[/b][/h2][/center]


Stability, then, had been the goal, assuming the Invictoid was telling the truth; the events back on Zanovia seemed at least to be bearing out its words. It did not so much surprise Ilshar that the Intransigence’s intentions were to all evidence so far indeed quite altruistic, since any number of deeper motivations could have been hiding behind them. What did strike him as strange was that it genuinely had aimed to stabilize this conflict, an unusual thing given that chaos was usually where such organisations thrived. At the same time, the ones he had seen in the past were localized to a single planetary region, perhaps a world at most. On the interstellar scale at which the Intransigence operated, it could very well be that things were very different. Could a spiral of orderly folds taper to an even greater state of flux? Fine thoughts to keep him diverted, but he was glad to leave solving them to the minds behind thinking nodes such as this one.

Far more pressing was the fact that, with the squad moving over to its next order of business, he now had an opportunity to see to his wounds as Alice dropped her charge at the medical bay. As the Invictoid led the greater part of the group towards the vessel connection ports, Ilshar rapidly strode towards the facility. If the Nexus favoured him in this small thing, he would not miss too much of whatever briefing remained in store on the adjoining ship. Looking in remotely was rarely a good substitute in cases like these, especially with how fond their handler was of weaving its wealth of collected footage into its explanations.

There was no point hoping for too much; considering the nature of this vessel, the medbay being busy around the cycle was a foregone certainty. It was at least a pleasant enough place to wait around in, reminiscent of the subterranean gestation creches of Ilshar’s far infancy. Almost regretfully, he shook himself from imbibing the humid atmosphere as fine mechanical claws pulled the shrapnel from his limbs and sealed the gaps left behind in his spongy flesh, and then he was off hurrying again into the humming bowels of the spacecraft, shuffling his shoulders in a cautious test of his arms’ integrity.

The connected ship greeted him with a near brush with new and fanciful mutilation as he narrowly dodged out of the way of two gargantuan vrexul escorting an irritated-looking human. Ilshar was certain the uniformed man had glowered at him as his bodyguards trampled ahead with deliberate obtuseness. In this one thing it seemed the Intransigence was quite typical - one was quick to make enemies, whether one knew them or not.

Guided by his navigation tracker, Ilshar eventually found his way to the remainder of the squad and the presence that was debriefing them. [i]Ixaxxar[/i], the Invictoid said; it was not a word he knew, but clearly this was a [i]nexus[/i], of information and perhaps even consciousness. It certainly knew something about what had been supposed to transpire on Zanovia, though by the sound of it, not everything that had happened had been according to plan.

He was about to speak when another newcomer made his presence known with a somewhat surprising suddenness. New reinforcements for the Envenomed? Time would tell how well that would turn out, though at least the Major did not seem to have shed his discipline with his rank.

[b]“The groundside contact did not name itself, no, but it sounded like it knew something about Intransigence operations,”[/b] Ilshar replied, more for Rho-Hux’s benefit, before turning his full attention to the ixaxxar and pointing at the projection. He remembered the look in that single exposed eye - it had fixed him closely for that one moment. [b]“What I can tell you is that it wanted the League cannon secured. Insistent that we don’t blast it to pieces. But if it thought we could hold it, it couldn’t have known what forces were active in the area all that well.”[/b]