Still kicking around character concepts, but I'll have something up soon
AndyC Member
Guardian of the Universe
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Opinionated nerd for hire.
Most Recent Posts
At the top of a hill in the middle of a clearing, the small back-country shelter has a light on. Fourteen men just died because of it.
I stare at that lit window, a soft electric glow in the pitch black of the forest, and I feel my hands shaking. I'm partly shaking because my blood is still up, adrenaline shooting through my veins from the fight, and I'm partly shaking because I'm finally starting to feel how goddamn cold it is out here. Going to that cabin will get me somewhere warm...but it also means I'll have to face off with whoever's in there, whoever those soldiers risked coming into my territory to capture.
I take a look at the light at the hill, then back into the freezing chill of the woods.
"Hell with it," I mutter to myself before I start trudging towards the light, "Someone wants to use up all my heat, they're gonna have to fight me for it."
Back-country shelters like this one are made so lost hikers and wayward tourists can have a place to stay if the weather gets too bad. Most of 'em are just a little shed or hut, maybe a cot and a pantry full of canned food. I roam back and forth between a few of them in my territory, and go into town Every once in a while to keep them stocked up- my good deed I do for the privilege of being left alone.
I'd be tempted to say whoever's in the cabin was just some camper who got caught out in the snow...at least, if it weren't for the two squads of American soldiers who were staging an assault on it.
Slowly approaching the cabin, Claws out, I steel myself. Maybe this doesn't need to get ugly- a quick knock-knock, state your name, they tell me what the hell they're doing in my cabin and why the American military is after them, I send them on their way.
Shame it never goes that easy.
Carefully, I make my way to the door, and once I'm able to reach the know, I quickly open it and step inside, closing it shut behind me.
"I know someone's here," I say as I move through the front room, the single light coming from a battery-powered lantern hanging from the ceiling. There's a loud, low buzzing as a propane gas heater in the corner blows hot air (or as hot as it can manage) into the room, its coils glowing an angry red. Scattered across the floor there's a pile of blankets. And the air is heavy with the salty smell of sweat, mixed with something else. Chemicals that give off what's supposed to be the smell of...
*Sniff*
...coconuts?
"Just come on out," I say as I approach the smaller back room, little more than a closet with enough room for a person to lay down. "No need for things to get ugly."
Whoever's in the cabin with me, there really is nowhere for them to hide...
...except when I step through the door into the back room, it's empty.
"What the hell...?" I say, then I hear a creak as one of the floorboards shifts in the front room behind me.
Turning, I step back into the main room...and again, it's empty.
Before I can start searching, I hear something knock against the wall of the back room again. How the hell can someone be so damn bad at sneaking, and still get past me?
Slowly, I take a step back towards the doorway. "I'm not gonna hurt ya," I say, watching the thin wall between the two rooms. "I just wanna know what's...going..."
I step into the doorway, and out of the corner of my eye, I see a small, skinny figure moving through the damn wall.
"...on!"
On instinct, I lunge towards the figure, grabbing it by the throat with one hand, my other hand raised back to plunge my claws into it.
"Lemme go!" she yelps, kicking at me as she tries to break free. It's only once I've got her that I realize the person I'm throttling isn't some spec-ops spook...it's a teenage girl, scared out of her mind.
The kid is a freckle-faced brunette, wearing about five or six layers of fashionable 'winter' clothing that might keep out a chilly breeze. Her cheeks and nose are bright red, eyes bloodshot, a half-frozen drip of snot trailing between one nostril and her upper lip.
"I said lemme GO!" she shouts, and she slips out of my hand like she's not even there. The girl falls to the floor and scurries away from me.
"Easy, kid, easy!" I say, stepping back. "I'm not gonna hurt ya."
"D-don't get any closer," she says, putting on a brave face. Frantically patting down the pockets of her heavy coat, she eventually reaches in and pulls out a pocket knife. "I d-don't wanna hurt you, but if you come closer I'll...I'll cut you, I s-swear to God!"
"Okay, okay, I surrender," I say, putting my hands up to show I'm not a threat. Then I realize my claws are still out, and my arms are caked in gore up to the elbow. I retract my claws back into my hands, and I sit down at the opposite wall. "So. I don't wanna hurt you, and you don't wanna hurt me. How about we just talk it out, then?"
The girl doesn't answer. She just keeps the knife pointed at me, trying to keep her hands from shaking.
"We'll start off easy," I say. "What's your name?"
No answer. Don't give the enemy any information, right?
"Those guys out there," I say, gesturing out the window. "They were coming here after you?"
She hesitates, then nods. "...yeah."
"Any idea why?"
The knife in her hand trembles, and she shakes her head. "No," is all she says, then a few seconds later, she starts again and can't stop. "A few friends and I, we were j-just coming up h-here to go skiing. We'd rented a c-cabin a few miles from here, over near L-Lake Louise. We were j-just having a party, and th-then we see these..these helicopters f-flying towards us. These s-soldier guys, they started yelling at us, and then th-they started shoving us...and then th-they...they started shooting...and I just...I just ran, and I kept running and I-"
"Your friends," I stop her before she has a breakdown. "are they like you? Can they, y'know, do things?"
She sniffles, finally wipes away the snot drip, and shakes her head. "No. I don't know anyone else who's a..."
"A mutant?" I finish her sentence, then slowly draw and retract the claws in my right hand. "Well, you know one now."
Her eyes grow wide, and I can't tell if she's relieved she's found someone else like her, or afraid that she found out she's like me.
"The s-soldiers," she says, looking past me out the window. "Are...are they-"
"Yeah," I answer, looking away. "I got 'em all. Good chance they've got friends, though, and they'll be on their way before too long."
"...oh," she lowers her eyes. "What happens when they come back?"
God damn it. There it is. God damn it.
This isn't your problem, Logan. Those guys weren't after you.
You've been down this road before. You know what always happens when you try to play hero.
You can just walk on out of here. Disappear into the woods. Let this dumb snot-nosed kid figure her own shit out.
You don't have to get involved.
There doesn't have to be any more blood.
This isn't your fight.
....
....God damn it.
"I know a place," I say, hating every word coming out of my mouth. "It's a long way from here- way back East in New York- but it's a place for people like you...like us. Those assholes from the choppers won't go anywhere near it. I can get you there in a few days."
"New York?!" she starts. "But my friends are-"
"-probably either dead or being questioned in some black site," I cut her off. "Either way, there's nothing we can do for them."
She nods, and doesn't speak for a few minutes. She just puts on that brave face again, and chokes down the tears.
For a long while, the only sounds in the cabin are the buzzing of the heater, and the howling of the killer wind outside.
"Kitty," she says at long last. "That's my name. Kitty Pryde."
"Logan," I answer with a nod. "Just Logan."
<Snipped quote by mattmanganon>
A full on justice league team up is probably endgame material
We were close: I had considered applying for Wonder Woman, but I couldn't find a concept that caught my imagination. But then Hex Rider came to me, so I'm happy.
C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L
G H O S T R I D E R
"Time fer you to bite the ground."
Jonah Hex ♦ Bounty Hunter from Hell ♦ Chihuahuan Desert, USA / Mexico
O R I G I N S:
There's a popular ghost story that makes the rounds in the stretches of desert between Fort Worth and Phoenix, as far north as Santa Fe and as far south as Durango. The story's about an old gunfighter by the name of Jonah, a man so ugly that the half of his face that was burned off by the Apaches was considered his 'pretty' side. A man so ornery that even cultists and child-killers called him a monster. A man that some folks say sold his soul to the Devil himself so his guns would never miss. The truth is, Jonah Hex's soul belonged to the Devil from the day he came into this world.
Born to a mother who died giving birth, raised by a drunken bastard with a black heart, sold to the Apaches for whiskey and used as a slave, then riding as a butchering marauder for the Confederates, Jonah's life was one that only knew suffering and sin, taking his share of hurt and learning how to deal some in return. It wasn't until his officers ordered him to burn a church filled with unarmed townsfolk that he'd felt any kind of shame or remorse for what he'd done, and Hex deserted in the wake of the massacre. He prayed for any kind of redemption, anything to clean the stains from his soul, and while Jonah never got his answer from on high, he got one from down below....
The stories say Jonah Hex made a deal with the Devil (or someone on the Devil's dime), to find souls in the world more wretched than his own and drag them down to Hell in order to pay off his debts and earn his salvation. They say he became the Ghost Rider, a spirit of vengeance, a bounty hunter of the damned, doomed forever to ride the length and breadth of the desert to burn away the wicked. And some folks say that for near on 160 years, a string of killings along the Rio Grande have all had a few interesting features in common: a smell of sulfur in the air, bullet holes without bullets, and tracks that look like horseshoes burned into the ground. Some say the wayward soul of Jonah Hex still rides across the West, carrying out his fool's errand, trying to kill his way to Heaven....
Born to a mother who died giving birth, raised by a drunken bastard with a black heart, sold to the Apaches for whiskey and used as a slave, then riding as a butchering marauder for the Confederates, Jonah's life was one that only knew suffering and sin, taking his share of hurt and learning how to deal some in return. It wasn't until his officers ordered him to burn a church filled with unarmed townsfolk that he'd felt any kind of shame or remorse for what he'd done, and Hex deserted in the wake of the massacre. He prayed for any kind of redemption, anything to clean the stains from his soul, and while Jonah never got his answer from on high, he got one from down below....
The stories say Jonah Hex made a deal with the Devil (or someone on the Devil's dime), to find souls in the world more wretched than his own and drag them down to Hell in order to pay off his debts and earn his salvation. They say he became the Ghost Rider, a spirit of vengeance, a bounty hunter of the damned, doomed forever to ride the length and breadth of the desert to burn away the wicked. And some folks say that for near on 160 years, a string of killings along the Rio Grande have all had a few interesting features in common: a smell of sulfur in the air, bullet holes without bullets, and tracks that look like horseshoes burned into the ground. Some say the wayward soul of Jonah Hex still rides across the West, carrying out his fool's errand, trying to kill his way to Heaven....
S A M P L E P O S T:
Stiletta's Bar
Outskirts of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico
"Get the fuck outta here, ugly," the bartender scowled at the stranger in a long black coat and wide hat who stepped through the front door, drawing the eyes of some twenty or so men. "This here establishment's private property."
The air stank of cigarette smoke and cheap liquor, and buzzy, blown-out speakers blared noise that some people called rock music. On a stage toward the back wall, a young lady wearing next to nothing listlessly gyrated, going through the opening acts of a degrading routine she had done a hundred times before.
Stiletta's was a dive bar of the worst kind, once a so-called gentleman's club where lonely and frustrated men could spend a few dollars to have some pretty young thing show some skin and make them forget about their problems for a while. When business began drying up, a crowd of even more unsavory souls had moved into town and claimed Stiletta's as their own.
They called themselves the Road Reapers, a gang of bikers who controlled the stretch of interstate between Albuquerque and El Paso. They were a small outfit compared to most clubs, but the Reapers were known for being especially vicious, using their connections with the southern cartels to run drugs, guns, and people across the border. They had a number of hangouts along their route, and Stiletta's had become a favorite.
"Just here fer a drink," the man said, looking up from under the brim of his wide-brimmed hat, giving the bartender a view of how truly hideous his face was, "An' fer a fella by the name a' Falcon Fleischer."
The two dozen bikers inside stared cold death at the stranger. A few even drew their guns on him. He looked back and forth, one good eye in a half-squint, the other lidless one staring wildly.
"Best not do anythin' stupid, boys," he warned them as he approached the bar, several of the bikers moving in behind him like predators circling their prey. "Ah ain't here fer any a' you...not yet, leastaways. Ah'm only here to see this Falcon fella."
"Right here, ugly," called out a man from the pool table in the far corner. The old man was powerfully built, his skin nut-brown and weathered from exposure to the sun and the open road, and covered in tattoos depicting salacious acts and blasphemous symbols. His long white beard was the only hair on his otherwise clean-shaven head, his eyes covered by a paid of mirrored sunglasses. Over his bare chest and back he wore a leather vest, on the shoulders of which he'd sewn in patches that looked like the talons of a bird of prey-- a falcon, the stranger reckoned. "Whatever it is you've got to say, you've got about ten seconds to say it 'fore my boys blow your fuckin' head off."
"Jess had one question fer ya 'fore you do that," he said, glancing to the dancer on the stage. As he turned, his long black duster shifted, showing the pistol on his hip. "That little thing up there...she even old enough to be dancin' like that?"
*BLAM!*
One of the Reapers had approached the stranger from behind, gun drawn, and fired point-blank. The bikers expected a spray of blood, bone, and brain matter, then they'd cut the man up and feed his remains to the dogs. Wouldn't have been the first person to walk into Stiletta's and not come out.
Instead, when the man's head cracked open, flames spewed out. The bar began to smell heavy with the stench of brimstone, as from the center of the blaze, the stranger's skull spoke.
"That's what I thought," the stranger said as his pistols came up.
The music swelled, and Stiletta's bar filled with screams.
P O S T C A T A L O G:
Coming soon.
There's no moon out tonight.
Black clouds, depositing another blanket of snow across the valley, have blotted out the night sky. The woods are pitch dark, a darkness that feels thick and heavy, and even without a heavy wind, the air is the kind of cold that kills in seconds. Most nights like this, every animal in the valley has either fled to warmer weather, or taken shelter in a burrow or cave. Anything living is staying as still as possible, trying to conserve as much heat as they can; not a single soul wants to be caught out in this cold.
For a hundred miles in all directions, the valley is still.
Most of it, anyway.
The sniper half-buried in snow has a high-powered rifle, the kind that reach out a mile or more on a clear day, and put a hole through anything short of tank armor. He and his spotter have IR scopes that cut through the snow, fog, and blackness like it's high noon. They could pick out a target on the other side of the valley and take its head clean off without them ever knowing something was wrong.
And they're facing exactly the wrong direction.
Creeping up on them is all a matter of patience. Move slowly but deliberately, no errant twitches or shivering--something that's easier said than done, given how goddamn cold it is. Keep low, keep your breath even, don't wear anything that can give off a glint of light...which means I don't bring out my claws until I'm already on top of them.
I take the spotter first, grabbing him from behind and putting my knuckles against his jugular. With a quick SNIKT, any cry for help he might give is drowned in a red gargle. As his body falls to the snow, the sniper turns, but I'm already on top of him. Pin him down with the left hand, and a thrust to the chest with the right, straight through the heart, follow with another through the forehead. Messy, but quick; he's dead in seconds.
I retract my claws and take a moment to go over their gear. No markings or badges, like I expected, but a lot of their gear gives them away.
"Shit," I mutter under my breath as what I find confirms my suspicions.
They're wearing state-of-the-art insulation suits, stuff that not only keeps the cold out, but keeps body heat in to reduce signatures on IR. They've got SDR and sat-com radios, which means they're linked to a wider satellite network. And if the M107 rifle wasn't a dead giveaway, the fact that they flew into the valley on a pair of small, agile helicopters-- Little Birds, I'd bet-- spells it out plain as day.
These guys are American spec ops. Or at least, mercs or other operators patterned off of them. If my last experience with Uncle Sam is any indication, these guys are all the best in their field. They've been given the newest and best equipment that the US's bottomless pockets can buy them, trained in extreme conditions and ordered to meet inhuman standards, then exceeded every one of them.
This was going to get really ugly, and really painful.
I take the sniper's rifle and start scanning the valley. To be honest, I never could shoot worth a damn, but the scope helps me see what I'm looking at.
Two squads of soldiers, six men apiece, advancing on a small cabin I'd put together as a safehouse for nights like these. The back line has five men with assault rifles-- the new SIG Sauer XM7s, by the looks of them-- and a sixth carrying a SAW light machine gun. They've set up a firing line along a high ridge with plenty of coverage of the cabin, covering the other squad as they move in.
The other six men, the ones advancing two-by-two on the cabin, are actually carrying what look like air rifles. One of them takes a moment to put a round in its chamber, and I see the fluffy fletching of a tranquilizer dart.
"They wanna take me alive," I say as I put the rifle down. "Cute."
These guys are professionals, but their brass pretty clearly didn't give them the full picture of what they're up against. Normally I'd prefer slipping away over getting into a fight with US troops, but I've already dropped two of them, and they don't tend to let that go easily.
Besides, whatever Uncle Sam wants with me, it's clear he wasn't planning on asking nicely.
I descend from the sniper's perch and down into the valley. If these boys came down here on a hunting trip, they're about to find out they're not at the top of the food chain in these woods.
"Alpha team, advance," Captain Joseph Bricklemoore ordered, watching the aerial drone feed miles away. "Confirm the asset is in the cabin, then secure. Bravo, eyes open, but do not engage unless fired upon."
Bricklemoore knew he didn't have to state the obvious to his men, but he couldn't help it; he needed this mission to go off without a hitch. He'd had to burn most of the favors he had in high places to even make this mission happen, up to and including slowing down the lines of communication just enough so that the request for authorization would only reach the Director's desk just after they had secured the asset and brought it in.
As far as the higher-ups knew, his men were conducting training maneuvers in Minnesota, not hundreds of miles into Canada. This was, by all rights, a renegade operation, one that would see him court-martialed or worse if it went wrong. But only if it went wrong. And what the Director and the top brass-- and his own men, for that matter-- didn't know, wouldn't hurt them.
Bricklemoore and his contacts had been able to track down a high-value asset, one that had been giving other teams the slip for ages. And he knew that the way things worked in this organization, he was going to have to make some big plays, deliver big results, regardless of whether the paperwork had been signed off on.
The Director didn't like him much, and the Assistant Director especially didn't like him. But when he brought in the asset that even she hadn't been able to capture, he couldn't wait to tell that fat bi--
"Sir, we've lost contact with Charlie team," one of the comms operators interrupted his thoughts. "Charlie two went offline, followed by Charlie one. Their vitals...they've flatlined, sir."
Bricklemoore frowned. "That's not possible. The asset is--"
"Contact! Enemy contact!" came Bravo One's voice over the sat-com. "Bravo Five is down! Requesting weapons free!"
"What the hell, what the hell, what the hell," Bricklemoore muttered, watching the drone footage as a figure moved through the woods, apparently not wearing any thermal gear despite the deadly cold, moving towards the firing line. Its posture, its movements were more bestial than human, a wild animal with a taste for blood.
"Repeat, requesting weapons free!"
Bricklemoore watched the monster as it vaulted from the ground, scaled a tree, then readied to pounce.
"Sir!
"Weapons free," he said. "Light him up."
"Uhhh, sir?" the comms officer said. "There's a call for you."
"I'm in the middle of something here!" Bricklemoore snarled.
"I know, sir," he said, "but it's from the Assistant Director."
The wild man in the woods no longer scared him. Not half as much, at least, as who was on the other line. As the monitors from the drone feed flashed with gunfire, Bricklemoore could feel his ambitions going up in smoke.
Painfully, he took the radio from the comms officer, and spoke. "This is Bricklemoore."
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
Bricklemoore winced, then tried his best to put on a brave face. He could still salvage this.
"I'm securing a valuable asset, one that the MTF has labeled as a highly dangerous security risk," he began, then decided if he was in for a penny, he might as well be in for a pound, "one that your teams have failed to locate, I might add."
"Do you really think we didn't know the asset was in the Canadian Rockies?" the Assistant Director responded. "We stopped pursuing the aaset as soon as it entered the area. That's a restricted area, Bricklemoore!"
"Yes, but--"
"Do you know what a restricted area is, Captain Bricklemoore?"
"...I--"
"Yes or no, Captain?"
"...y-yes..."
"Clearly you don't, because a restricted area is a place where our operators are forbidden to operate. And yet, I see fourteen of our operators-- excuse me, ten, no, nine and counting--operating in an area where they are expressly forbidden to operate. So, I reiterate, Captain, what the fuck do you think you're doing?"
"If we can still--"
"No, Bricklemoore, you can't," the Assistant Director cut him off. "I'd tell you to order your men to pull out, but it's too late. You killed them the moment you ordered them to go into those woods. From now on, the job of securing the asset is going to Colonel Flag."
"C-Colonel Flag, ma'am?"
"That's right. You've just made a mess that's too big for an ambitious dumbass like yourself to clean up. Effective immediately, I'm placing this mission under the jurisdiction of Task Force X."
"Nnnngh....son of a bitch got me good," I say through gritted teeth as I look down at the ruined pulp that was my lower intestine a few seconds ago, lying on my back until enough muscles and tendons form to let me stand back up. Next to me, the soldier with the machine gun gasps a few last times, his body rattling violently, then goes still. With that many shots on target, at that range, his gun cut across me right down the bone, and would have cut me clean in half if it weren't for the gleaming silvery metal that coated my exposed spinal column.
I roll over onto my belly, and white-hot pain shoots through my body as I pull myself across the ground, open wounds dragging across gravel and bark, away from the dead gunner and towards the dying squad leader.
"Hgggk...Momma...I don't....I don't...." he's muttering to himself. He hasn't got long. I crawl towards him until I can look him in the eye.
"Who...who sent you?" I ask. He's fading, so I grab his head with one hand and turn him to face me. "Who sent you?"
"Can't...can't tell..." he says through ragged gasps. "Asset...too important..."
"Asset?" I ask. "Why come...after me...now?"
He looks at me, confused.
"You?" he says, wide-eyed. "Don't even...know...who th...the fuck...you are..."
He tries to take in another breath, then he goes still.
"Then what the hell are you..." I say, as I look up at the cabin, "doing here...."
...the lights in the cabin are on.
[Edit: whoops, posted in OOC instead of IC]
Calling all Mutant PCs: @Pacifista, @AndyC, @Hillan, anyone have designs on Jubilee?
Nope, have at it.
Posts for Logan and Jonah will be inbound later this week, probably Friday-ish.
Main Recreation Yard
Fort Tie Shan
1800 Hours
29 March, 3030
"And you're sure about this?" Captain Sally Roth asked the dirt-covered boy as she tended to the scrapes on his knees and elbows among the crowd of other prisoners. "I need to know this isn't just some story you made up."
"It's true, honest!" Diego said, fussing as she wrapped the big scab on his left forearm, trying not to get stepped on by one of the grown-ups around them. "I think it goes all the way to the outside!"
"Keep your voice down," the Captain said. "If you're right about this, we can--"
"Sal, do you know what's going on?" her cousin Cynthia butted in, shoving and squirming her way through the crowd. "The guards normally don't bring us all out into the yard at once. And they definitely don't leave us out here until--"
"Attention, prisoners!" a voice blared over the loudspeakers in the courtyard. Captain Roth winced as she recognized the voice; it was Grigori Ilyanovich, the former Maskirovka agent who had taken over the operation of the prison, and had interrogated her on more than one occasion. "Due to the changing political and tactical situation on the continent, the circumstances of your captivity are being...altered. Before we begin, we have a special visitor for you."
The doors to the central compound swung open, and several dozen NPDRE soldiers with assault rifles, riot shields, and heavy body armor emerged. Forming a phalanx, they pushed the crowd back until another figure emerged. This one was wearing what appeared to be a PAL power armor suit, decorated in gaudy gold and red trim and a flowing crimson cape. Around him, a paid of small camera drones buzzed, no doubt broadcasting his performance on local news outlets.
"Criminals, malcontents, sympathizers, prisoners all," he addressed the huddled masses, his voice connected to the loudspeakers from a microphone inside his helmet, "I am the Crimson King, proprietor and commanding officer of the Crimson Fists. You are all here because you have committed acts of opposition against the order that the New People's Democratic Republic of Espia have put in place, an order that I have come to this planet to protect and enforce."
Roth scoffed under her breath. Her people hadn't 'opposed' this new order at all; they had been waylaid during the coup, brought here to be used as political prisoners, or as hostages in case Gaius and his Knights gave the new rulers any trouble. She knew sooner or later, they were going to start using them to put pressure on Gaius, and supposed the time had finally come.
"The mercenary terrorists known as Gawain's Green Knights have been a destabilizing figure on this planet for far too long," he stated. "They have raided supply lines, robbing the noble troops of the Espian Guard of food, medicine, and other vital supplies. They have endangered the entire city of South Nui Awa with their squabbling against the Heavenly Sword, and in their dealings with the Liao-loyal terrorists, have acquired weapons of mass destruction. They have slaughtered civilians in the Keahi Township and then pressured Comstar to blame my own loyal Mechwarriors for their atrocities, Mechwarriors whom have bravely sacrificed their own lives in the name of the revolution. I have decided, this shall no longer stand!"
Sally smirked; she didn't like what was coming, but it did give her some bit of comfort to know that whoever this pompous asshole was, the Green Knights had been giving them hell.
"Bring forward the captain of the Green Knights' ship!" the Crimson King commanded. The armed guards pushed forward, driving a wedge to part the crowd of prisoners as they slowly advanced towards Sally and Cynthia.
"Cynthia," Sally asked her cousin, "Did you get everything on the shopping list?"
"We got the last item this morning," the quartermaster of the No Leaf Clover nodded.
"Tell the boys in the machine shop that it's time to make the call," she said, using the toe of her boot to mark a message in short-hand in the dirt as the guards approached. "Send that out onto the airwaves, and pray to the gods of space that the GDK are listening."
"Got it," Cynthia said as the guards grabbed Sally by the arms, dragging her towards the Crimson King. Cynthia looked at the marks that Sally had drawn in the dirt, committed them to memory, then swept them clean.
The NPDRE soldiers were none too gentle with Sally as they brought her to the costumed mercenary, yanking her arms to pull her forward, shoving or smacking her to push her along. Eventually they parted, and Sally found herself facing the so-called King. Up close, she had to admit the theatrical getup was far more intimidating than she'd thought.
"You are Sally Roth, of the No Leaf Clover, are you not?" the Crimson King addressed her.
"Captain Sally Roth," she said, refusing to be cowed by a man playing a holo-vid villain.
"And your ship has been under contract with Gawain's Green Knights for over a decade, is that correct?"
"I let them use my bunks and my Mech bays from time to time," she answered. As the camera drones buzzed around her, she knew this farce was only getting started.
"So then, would you say you have come to know the Green Knights and their people?" he asked, circling her like a predator stalking its prey.
"The Knights are out there," she said, "and they're kicking your asses, by the sound of it. The people you've got locked up in here are my people."
"Then you claim responsibility for the people in this fort?"
Sally stared him down. "I do. If you want to hurt these people, you'll have to answer to me."
The King nodded. "I see. Choose ten."
"I'm sorry?"
"Ten of your people."
"...for what?"
"Oh come now, Captain Roth," the Crimson King said in a condescending voice, "you know full well the answer to that question."
Sally glared laser-fire at this masked bastard. She did know what he meant: he was going to make her pick which of her people he was going to have executed.
"And if I don't, I assume...?"
"Yes," the threat didn't need to be stated out loud: she chooses ten people to die, or he kills everyone. "Go on: I want to see which of the people under your protection that you care for the least."
Captain Roth wanted for all the world to lunge at this monster, to grab one of the guards' weapons and shoot him down where he stood. But she knew that would only get her people killed.
Blinking back a few tears, she said "All right. Ten people. I can do it."
Stepping out into the crowd, she looked at the faces of people she'd worked with for years, people who had trusted her and believed in her. Most were scared, shrinking away from her, terrified that her finger would rise to point them out.
"I'll go," Cynthia said, stepping forward. Sally's eyes widened.
"Cynthia, I--"
"This is what I get for wanting to play space-hero with you and your boyfriend," she said. As she stepped towards her, and made sure the camera drones were far enough away, she said "The message has been sent. The call's going out any minute now."
Sally nodded, and one by one, a few more stepped forward. Old hands who had served on the Clover for as long as she could remember, new recruits who wanted to show that they belonged, parents who wanted to make sure it was them and not their kids.
"Eckstein," she stated the names to the Crimson King as they approached, "Ronaldo, Perry, Qiao, Surin, Gutierrez, Frankfurt, Billingsley, Roth..." her voice caught as she said her cousin's name, "...and myself."
The Crimson King gave a slow, sarcastic clap. "Very good, very good."
His gaze turned towards one of the camera drones, which flew in for a dramatic close-up.
"Colonel Gaius Wayne:" he addressed the camera, "I trust this message will reach you. You and your Green Knights have until 0700 hours tomorrow morning to turn yourselves in and face punishment for your crimes. If you do not, my men will be forced to execute...everyone in this prison except these ten people."
"What?!" Roth lunged, before a sharp blow to from the butt of a rifle sent her consciousness spiraling into blackness.
As the guards began holding back the panicked crowd, a few of the prisoners began to huddle together.
The quartermaster had been meticulous about keeping track of what items the prisoners had smuggled into Fort Tie Shan, or had gotten their hands on during their work shifts. She knew who had what, and what could be done with all of it. Cynthia Roth never cared for the mercenary life or the people who came with it, but she was brilliant at organization and planning.
Thompson had pulled a handful of resistors from a broken electrical fan.
Ramirez had pried some capacitors from some of the power tools at the neodymium mines.
Dobbs had gotten a battery and a length of wire from a flashlight.
Somehow or other, Ahsan had gotten a dead noteputer and grabbed the circuit board.
And Marston had snuck a small soldering iron out of the machine shop.
Towards the back of the crowd-- not so close that the guards would reach them, not so far that they would stick out, the five of them passed the items back and forth, attaching pieces together when the guards were too distracted to notice the smoke from the solder.
By the time the panicking and the near-riot had been quelled, the five had finished the assembly. It was crude, the signal wouldn't be strong, the range wouldn't be far, and the battery wouldn't last, but it was a chance.
"Pssst, hey kid!" Thompson whispered harshly. A few feet away, Diego looked up.
"Me?"
"Yeah, c'mere," he gestured, "Captain Roth has a job for us."
Nervously, Diego approached, and the five big men all turned their backs on him. He realized that with them all surrounding him, the guards couldn't see him.
"Take this," Thompson said, handing the kid a small device with an antenna on one end, a button on the other, and a mess of electronics in between. "You know Morse code?"
"Not really," Diego shook his head.
"Okay," the man sighed, "Then listen to me very carefully. That button on the end of that thing? I want you to press it like this, a 'dot' means you only tap it, a 'dash' means you hold it down for a second. Got it?"
"Got it," he nodded.
"Okay, here goes," the man thought as he ran through the code in his own head. "Okay. Dash-dash-dot...dash-dash-dot...dash-dot-dash....stop. Dot-dot-dot....dash-dash-dash....dot-dot-dot....stop. Dash...dot-dot-dash...dash-dot...dash-dot...dot...dot-dash-dot-dot...."
"Uncle Mack's" Industrial Scrapyard
Property of Maxwell Metals Incorporated
A subsidiary of the Aqua Vitae Corporation
100 km south of Geom Haebyon
150 km northwest of Fort Tie Shan
1850 hours
29 March, 3030
"I don't know how we're going to do it," Cadet Higgins said. "You saw the transmission. If they see our Mechs coming, they'll just waste our civvies anyway."
"Well, we can't just do nothing!" Lieutenant Lyons protested. "Those are our people, we can't just let them be executed!"
The three members of the Green Knights' mobile HQ crew, collectively known as "the GDK" (short for, "those god-damn kids," as the Colonel had been heard muttering on more than one occasion) were bickering inside the monitoring station once again, still keyed up after seeing the news transmission sent out by the leader of the Crimson Fists.
"Maybe you can't," Higgins snorted. "Have you looked at the gun emplacements on that place? Attacking that fort is a suicide mission. Either we don't attack the prison and they all die, or we do attack the prison, we all die, and they all die anyway."
"Guys," Cadet Windham muttered, "Can you quiet down? Something on one of the FM bands is a little--"
"The Colonel will figure it out!" Lyons said. "I know he's got a plan for something like this!"
"Oh gods," Higgins rolled his eyes. "Look, I respect the Colonel just as much as anyone else here, but he's not infallible. If something's impossible, then it's impossible, you can't just wish something to work and--"
"No seriously, guys," Windham said, "One of the civilian channels is getting some weird interference. Let me listen..."
"I'm not giving up on my friends!" Lyons said. "Just because you don't have any doesn't mean--"
"SHUT UP FOR A SECOND!" Higgins yelled out. "Listen to this-- it's an FM signal. I'm tracing the source of the interference, and...yeah, look at this, it's coming from inside the fort!"
Together, the three listened as one of the local country music stations broke into static fuzz, followed by a series of long and short beeps. When the beeping ended, the static faded back into steel guitars and honky-tonk, then a few moments later, the static came back, along with the beeps.
Lyons grabbed a scrap of paper and a pencil, and began decoding.
G - G - K
S - O - S
T - U - N - N - E - L
U - N - D - E - R
F - O - R - T
L - O - O - K
S - O - U - T - H
W - E - S - T
N - O
M - O - R - E
T - I - M - E
C - O - M - E
G - E - T
U - S
S - O - S
T - U - N - N - E - L
U - N - D - E - R
F - O - R - T
L - O - O - K
S - O - U - T - H
W - E - S - T
N - O
M - O - R - E
T - I - M - E
C - O - M - E
G - E - T
U - S
"Holy-- --shit," Higgins and Lyons both said at once.
A few minutes later, Colonel Gaius Wayne stepped out into the main yard of Uncle Mack's Scrapyard, and called out.
"GREEN KNIGHTS!" he shouted. "Mission briefing in ten! This is the one we've been waiting for."
So, y'know how I said I wasn't going to post a second character application until inspiration struck me?
Well....
Well....
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