Ozerath

Era of Succession(Closed)

@6slyboy6@Lucidnonsense

RCNS Piggyback
Duranin System

There were a lot of ships in the Royal Commonwealth Navy, and only so many ‘good’ names to go around. The ‘good’ names tended to be snatched up by larger, more important ships; the Unboweds, the Dauntlesses, and the Victories. Vigilance class cruisers were extremely numerous, and had to settle for less striking names. Still, Captain Belthas Rekkavik thought that whoever had named his ship in particular must have been drunk or otherwise impaired.

He was evidently the only one who didn’t like the name. The crew took to it with a fierce pride; amongst the enlisted and even some of the officers, the ship was affectionately nicknamed “Miss Piggy”. Rekkavik would have clamped down on that especially inane nickname, but he was new to the ship and didn’t want to alienate the crew. Being a Valerian in the RCN wasn’t difficult, per say, but it certainly wasn’t easy. Valerians tended to have distinctly flock based mentalities, and that could make it difficult to integrate with a new crew. That, and they lacked the ‘social grease’ that allowed Vit’azny officers to slide up the ranks. Favoritism was sternly frowned on by the RCN, but it could never be eliminated entirely.

Still, Rekkavik was in a good position. He had command of his own ship, a well trained and loyal crew, and a post with plenty of opportunity for advancement. The space around Duranin was surprisingly busy for a colonial world. The planet itself may have been destitute, but there was a thriving asteroid mining industry in the system, and it was a convenient stopping point for traders in and out of Varangian space. And where there were traders, there were smugglers…

“RCNS Piggyback to MSV Tumeric, this is your last warning, stand down for inspection or be fired on,” the comms officer spoke sternly into his headset. Still no answer.
“Looks like he’s going to run for it,” the XO commented.
Rekkavik nodded. “Indeed. Tactical, prepare five EMP missiles for immediate launch, I want that freighter disa-”
“Captain! FTL signature on the edge of the system. No transponder, unknown configuration,” the tactical officer called out.
Rekkavik turned to the main holo display, noting the readouts on the neutral gray blip at the edge of the system. Of the three RCN ships in-system, they were the the heaviest and Rekkavik was the most senior captain, meaning investigating unknown contacts was his responsibility.
“Looks like MSV Tumeric’s lucky day,” he commented. “Prepare for tactical jump, bring us to standoff range.”

With a flash, RCNS Piggyback disappeared, leaving the would be smugglers to get away. An instant later, the warship reappeared in another flash on the edge of the system, at a moderate range from the new contact. Rekkavik peered intently at the readouts as sensors swept over it. “Looks like an unmanned probe” he said out loud. “Unknown configuration eh? Could be a first contact situation then. Prepare a gunship to bring it aboard-”
“Captain, the probe is charging FTL,” his tactical officer interrupted him for the second time in as many minutes. The bridge crew watched as the probe disappeared into FTL and out of their reach.
“Well, so much for that,” the XO commented dourly.
“Perhaps not. Navigation, did we catch the inbound trajectory on that probe?” Rekkavik asked.
“Yes sir, assuming a linear course.”
“Yes, let’s assume that. Plot out the nearest system in the probe’s trajectory, and we may have ourselves its launch point. Certainly something worth investigating.”
The main display zoomed out, and an overlay of the probe’s trajectory appeared, tracing backwards to…
“The Kelmarthy system,” the XO said. “Surveyed but uninhabited, interesting.”
“Interesting indeed,” Rekkavik replied. “Navigation, plot a course to the Kelmarthy system, best possible speed. Comms, inform Captain Brand aboard the Falcon that he has authority over the system while we’re gone. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s see who came knocking.”

RCNS Piggyback disappeared in yet another flash, and the inky void of empty space returned.

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RCN Regional Command
Vasseldorf

“Certainly full of themselves aren’t they?” Commodore Johanson said wryly.
“That they are Commodore,” Admiral Friesland replied. “Still, the telemetry checks out, that temple is every bit as ancient as they say it is.”
“But what do they expect us to do with that knowledge? They were clearly trying to send a message, but to what end? They have ancient temples, they’re powerful psintegrae, so what?”
The two of them were silent for a moment, contemplating the last few images of telemetry from the probe that had investigated the Gashathi temple.
“Show us your potential…” Friesland murmured, then shook his head. They needed clear answers more than anything. “Well, regardless of their ancientness and claims of ruling the universe, let’s treat this as more or less standard first contact. Let’s dispatch Captain Evandriss and the Fearless with a diplomatic team to that world. Have Mjolson head up the diplomats.” He paused. “Better send along the Doldrum, Silkweed, and Bonaventure as well. Oh, and let’s double up the psy-ops branches on all those ships. It never hurts to be careful.”

Era of Succession(Closed)

Enter Javelin.

That leaves four items on the to do list.

Era of Succession(Closed)

Caberra, Commonwealth Constituent World
City of Talusia

Javelin let the warm water run over her hands, turning it red with blood. Not hers of course; it belonged to the three corpses in the next room, each of them freshly adorned with a slit throat. She’d cleaned up all evidence of her own presence, and every trace of their involvement with the human insurgency, which she now knew was called Talon. Javelin considered retrieving the building’s security footage, but ultimately decided against it; simpler to change her face once she left.

This first few insurrectionists had been surprisingly easy to find. Javelin had started with Lydell’s tearful wife, who had pointed her to Lydell’s poker buddies. She’d left the wife alive, a quick probe of the distraught woman’s mind revealing she had no knowledge of her husband’s treason before it came up on the news. Javelin had not honestly expected the ‘poker buddies’ to be co-conspirators, but they were worth investigating. She’d arrived at their apartment door dressed to impress, and implied to the man answering the door that she was looking for a rather special kind of party. She’d soothed his suspicions with a deft touch, been shown to the den, and incapacitated all three men before they could get a word out.

Oresteia taught that physical torture was almost useless for extracting information. Sleep deprivation and mental stress was moderately effective, but a trained psintegrat was best of all. Javelin, happily enough, was a trained psintegrat, and pulling information from the men’s minds had been fairly simple. After that, well, the Queen’s exact words had been “kill them all”, and Javelin was of nothing if not a patriot.

Sufficiently washed up, Javelin made one more sweep of the apartment, making sure there were no clues left behind. She wanted any investigation into the incident to end with unanswered questions. Satisfied with her work, Javelin let herself out the door, down the elevator, and out into the night.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Javelin spent the next few hours slowly letting her face rearrange itself into something new. The Yanissan geneticists who created operatives for Oresteia boasted that their wares were ‘shapeshifters’, but that was overselling it. She was capable of changing her skin and visage in limited ways, but couldn’t do anything to fundamentally alter her skeleton. Still, it was a useful enough feature.

The three poker players had given her a useful amount of intelligence. Some she would act on personally, the rest she’d send back to her superiors. Each of the men knew eachother and one other member of another Talon cell. The orders for the Dubrovnik strike had come through a man called Artemis Lochte, a store owner here in Talusia.

Arriving at Lochte’s store in downtown Talusia, Javelin was somewhat surprised to see it was a high end furniture store selling hand made, genuine wood pieces. She wouldn’t have guessed that Talusia, or even Caberra as a whole, was quite wealthy enough to support such a niche business. There was a young couple inside, well dressed and admiring mahogany bookshelves. Lochte was hovering nearby, keen to make a sale. Javelin needed some privacy, so she gently picked through the couple’s thoughts. Both had doubts about the expense of genuine wood, so Javelin massaged those doubts, gently coaxing them to the surface until the couple decided that they’d better go check synthetic wood options, just to be sure. Once they left, Javelin preoccupied herself pretending to admire a teak bureau until Lochte sidled over.

“Beautiful, isn’t it ma-” Javelin knocked him unconscious with a swift blow to the temple. Locking the shop’s door, she then dragged Lochte into the work space at the back, securely tied him to a chair, and applied a stimpatch to his arm, letting the chemicals slowly revive him. Trying to sift through the thoughts of an unconscious person was an exercise in futility. Lochte slowly came around, his head rolling forwards. Javelin preempted any confusion or obfuscation by reaching out and firmly grasping Lochte’s head by the jaw, forcing his eyes level with her own.
“You, Artemis Lochte, are a member of the Talon insurgency. You played a direct role in an attack on Dubrovnik station over Praetoria. Tell me where the orders for Dubrovnik came from.”
The words were not specifically necessary, but they would focus Lochte’s thoughts and make them easier for her to read. The insurgent didn’t say anything, but his jaw tensed up and he glared daggers back at Javelin. His thoughts scattered to a thousand different places, drowning Javelin out with white noise. Lochte had been trained to resist psionics. Ah well, even the best training could only do so much.
“Dubrovnik,” she said calmly. “Tell me about Dubrovnik.” As she spoke, she began to apply pressure to his mind, no longer skimming through superficial thoughts but actively pushing into his consciousness.

Lochte began to sweat, a good sign by all means. He spoke for the first time since being roused. “Rot in hell, bitch,” was his stubborn response. Javelin was unphased, and pushed harder into his mind, using her words to reinforce her efforts.
“Dubrovnik. Tell me about Dubrovnik.”
All at once, Lochte’s defences failed, and Javelin dove into his mind. There was no pain, contrary to what many thought, but there was a profound sense of intrusion and wrongness.
“Tell me about Dubrovnik,” she repeated, and his thoughts coalesced around that word as Javelin sampled them. She pulled out names and places, sampling them all and filing them away, letting Lochte’s own mental processes push towards what was important. Lochte had been tasked with finding a ship to transport the strike team, and had recruited Captain Lydell. He didn’t know where the strike team members had come from or been trained, but he knew where the power armour had come from...James Gallagher...Duranin.

Javelin sighed in satisfaction. Lochte’s other leads could be pursued by other operatives, but she was going to Duranin. Lochte himself seemed to sense she’d prevailed. “You’ll never stop all of us,” he said, still defiant. Javelin didn’t say anything. She simply drew a knife and slit his throat.

Era of Succession(Closed)

Back from a weekend without internet, I'll be getting to work on various posts on my to do list.

Era of Succession(Closed)

@6slyboy6 I see your post and a response is on my to-do list.

Era of Succession(Closed)

Oz and Spleen

Yet again,

The Imperial Palace, Bushu, Musashi System, The Musashi Empire

Henry Kessel was nervous. Years in the diplomatic corp had not fully prepared him for the complexities of Musashi culture. He traced a finger across the specially prepared mask concealing his face; bright red, with the lion's head emblazoned in gold across the brow. He'd been briefed -- extensively -- on what the Commonwealth knew of the Musashi Empire. Admittedly, it wasn't as much as Kessel could have hoped. He knew the general rules about when to wear the mask and when to take it off, if he could just figure out the apparent rank of whoever he was speaking to at any given moment. He'd also practiced the tricky pronunciation of the various Musashi honorifics, and was fairly confident he could use them correctly.

Kessel was still somewhat bewildered that he, a human --albeit a rather senior diplomat-- had been granted Confidence of the Crown to conduct negotiations with the Musashi, especially after the Dubrovnik Strike. He reasoned that it was partially to present a good face to the Musashi, and partially an attempt by the Government to pre-empt any anti-human violence in the wake of Dubrovnik. Kessel glanced to his left at the lone Su'urtugal that was serving as his attendant and guardian. He didn't care how well the Yanissans drilled loyalty into those brains, there was still something about the blank stare and quiet lethality of Su'urtugal that deeply disturbed Kessel.

A door opened across the room, drawing Kessel's attention. Two women, dressed in extravagant sets of hanfu, stepped into the room. Two Imperial guards could be seen taking up a position on either side of the door out in the hall before one of the women closed the door. She then removed her mask before saying "I present to you Yamamoto Yuki-hime."

"Thank you Rong-chan" The other woman said as she looked at Henry. She ultimately decided to keep her mask on as she stepped further into the room. "May I ask who it is that I have the pleasure of speaking to?"

Kessel rose and bowed deeply. "I am Sir Henry Kessel, of the Imperial Diplomatic Corps. I am here on behalf of her Imperial Majesty and her Government, of the Systems Commonwealth, on a diplomatic mission to the Musashi Empire. It is a profound honour to meet you, Yuki-hime" Kessel managed to stop himself from saying Denka at the last moment, taking his cue from the woman who had introduced the Princess.

Yuki returned the bow before gesturing towards his seat "Please sit Kessel-dono." Settling into a chair herself she somewhat hesitantly commented "I'm not entirely sure where the Commonwealth is located, but I believe it is quite a distance from Musashi. What business do you have here?"

"It is quite some distance from here Princess, on the fringe of old Imperium space, near where the Dominion rises. What we know of the Musashi comes from a very few merchants who have done business in your space. We heard of your war with the Confederation and the subsequent...warming...of Musashi relations, and hastened to present ourselves formally."
Kessel paused for a moment.
"Specifically, I have been given three objectives for my mission here; establish an embassy in the Empire, reduce trade restrictions between our nations, and if possible, negotiate a non-agression treaty between the Musashi Empire and the Imperial Systems Commonwealth."

"The establishment of an embassy can be easily arranged" Yuki said after a moment's pause. "The Emperor has given me the authority necessary to grant land and rights for such. As for the other two... What sort of reduction in trade restrictions are you talking about?"

"Well, Princess, the Commonwealth is flourishing with indepedant traders these days, and products from your nation are becoming more and more in demand. We hope that you might permit more traders to enter your space and purchase your wares. In return, Musashi traders in the Commonwealth would find themselves dealing with...favorable tax rates."

"In principle I have no issue with that" Yuki said. "However my government will have to draft a list of what imports will be allowed. Certainly no forms of media such as books, movie, or music, will be allowed to be imported. I will also have to run this by the Emperor. It... might take some time to be approved. That said I believe that we will be able to come to an agreement soon. As a... gesture of goodwill I can and will decrease our tarrifs with the Commonwealth by... five percent. I will also see about temporarily raising the number of Commonwealth merchants permited access to Musashi until we can work out an official treaty."

"As for a non-aggression pact," Suddenly Yuki sounded very tired. "Once again in principle I have no issue with signing one, but unfortunately I do not speak for the entirety of the Imperial government."

And that was the real problem. As Kessel understood from his briefing, Yuki Yamamoto was the heir apparent and thus most influential voice to the Emperor himself. However, he'd heard rumours that her position had been diminished since the war with the Confederation, and thus, she really did not speak for the entirety of the Imperial government. Hopefully he'd have a chance to speak to the other potential heirs.
"I thank you for your generosity, Yuki-hime. All I ask is that you consider my words. If nothing else, establishing an embassy will help foster a better relationship between our nations."

"Hopefully our two great nations will be able to prosper together" Yuki said. "I shall ensure that the Emperor hears of your proposals. We shall try to give you an answer in a reasonable amount of time. Until then, please feel free to enjoy your stay here in Musashi. In the days to come I will not be available, but I will make sure that a trusted subordinate of mine will keep in touch with you. Is there anything else you would like to discuss today?"

Kessel was quiet for a scarcely perceptible second as he fingered the data disk in his pocket. No, that was not for today. He smiled instead. "Thank you princess, that is all I wished to discuss. I will be certain to learn as much about your vaunted empire as possible in the days to come."

Era of Succession(Closed)

@6slyboy6Do your guys sense psionic activity? I'm just trying to think of a way for your guys to notice that my guys are here. If they can sense psychic activity, I'm pretty sure the Living Hive Mind will be the equivalent of getting hit in the head with a fastball to your guys, since it's basically a whole galaxy just popping up out of nowhere in this galaxy.

@Ragenaut

A bunch of us have psions, psionists, psintegrae, psykers, etc.

I guess that would get some attention, yeah.

Era of Succession(Closed)

Such activity, I like it.

Era of Succession(Closed)

Dubrovnik Station
Praetoria

Dubrovnik Station was perhaps the least graceful space station in the entire Commonwealth. The original structure had been constructed as massive civilian traffic terminal, designed to become Praetoria’s primary orbital hub. Over the years, its needs had far eclipsed its as-built parameters, so the central structure had begun receiving addons and extensions some twenty years ago and hadn’t stopped since. Warehouses, freight terminals, shipyards, hotels, shops, restaurants; all clamoured for precious space somewhere in the mess of Dubrovnik station.

MSV Rosalind was just one of hundreds of civilian freighters docking at the massive orbital complex. She was a big old freighter, worn out but well cared for. She slowly inched her way into her designated berth, pulled along solely by the stations tractor beams now, her GDC powered down.

Captain Ryan Lydell, a human some 43 years old, was an old hand at space travel. In his lifetime, he’d been practically from one end of the old Imperium to the other, from the tip of the Commonwealth to the depths of Musashi space. He tended not to make such journeys anymore; his runs with the Rosalind were decidedly more pedestrian. Lydell was not much of an idealist, but he felt there were some things worth fighting for.

No sooner was the Rosalind securely docked than a customs officer and an armed constable came ‘swimming’ down the airlock tube, floating through the gap between Dubrovnik and Rosalind’s respective gravity systems. The Rosalind had already encountered customs upon arriving in system, but Lydell knew Praetoria’s customs officers well and he’d timed his arrival so that an old friend was on duty. That old friend had given his cargo the briefest inspection before sending Lydell on his way.

Unfortunately that sort of thing wouldn’t fly on Dubrovnik. Customs officers here could feel their superiors breathing down their necks, so they were very thorough. Usually it was nothing more than a time consuming irritation, but today Lydell had other things he needed to do.

“Good afternoon officer,” he said amiably enough as the two officials crossed the threshold into Rosalind’s gravity and touched down.
“Good afternoon Captain Lydell” the customs officer, an efficious Rhodesian replied. “Manifest?”
Lydell had it ready to go. The Rhodesian inspected it thoroughly. “Direct us to the cargo bay please. I’m assuming we’ll find everything in order? You do have a good record with customs.”
“Of course, officer. Perfectly in order.”

The first inspector had satisfied himself with simply opening the storage containers and glancing inside. This one however was much more thorough, selecting containers at random, opening them, stepping inside, scurrying through their depths to verify that their cargo was legitimate, running a scanner over the containers...a time consuming process all around.

It was on the third container he selected that the inspector suspected something was amiss. The industrial equipment at the front of the container seemed to be packed especially densely, to block all view of anything further inside. Not to be dissuaded, the inspector used his small size to squeeze through gaps in the cargo to get a better look at the containers contents. He finally slipped through a final space, and abruptly found himself face to face with a container full of suits of power armour that were most certainly not on the ship’s manifest. “Constable!” he called out, reaching for his comm. One of the suits abruptly reached out an arm and grabbed the Rhodesian by the neck. The armoured fist casually twisted, killing the inspector instantly.

Outside, the constable was looking decidedly bored. His attention was pulled to the container by strange noises. He never saw Lydell draw a concealed pistol and place a laser blast square into the back of his head.

All over the ship, various cargo containers were opening, and sizeable number of power armoured men emerged, hefting railguns, gattling lasers, and a wide variety of military grade equipment. They quickly assembled at the main airlock, and prepared to board Dubrovnik station. Lydell climbed into his own suit of power armour, then turned to his troops. “Well, we have a job to do. Let’s get to it.”

The officials at the first checkpoint barely had time to register what they were seeing before they were gunned down. The armoured contingent didn’t even stop, sprinting past with superhuman speed. They emerged into a primary civilian concourse, and screams began to rise. Still, the soldiers didn’t stop, gunning down anyone in a uniform and anyone who happened to get in the way. An alarm began to sound, and the soldiers were forced to a brief halt at the next checkpoint, which had time to organize a defence. Sadly, the security was meant to deal with civilians, not military equipped commandos, so it was only a brief speedbump for Lydell’s soldiers.

They stormed deeper into the station, encountering increasingly heavy yet still inadequate resistance. Finally, an obstacle came up outside main engineering; a massive blast door. Three men got to work with fusion torches, slowly slicing through the thick metal, while the rest assumed defensive positions down the hall By that time, Dubrovnik security’s heavy response unit had begun to deploy, and now Lydell’s soldiers found themselves up against equally well equipped adversaries. The first of Lydell’s men went down, a barrage of lasers cutting through his shields and melting his armour around him. Lydell had a slight advantage over Dubrovnik security in that he had no concern for the integrity of the station, meaning he could use heavier weapons, while security was confined to weapons that wouldn’t cause massive damage to the station.

A vicious firefight ensued, and Dubrovnik security began to gain the advantage as more reinforcements arrived. Luckily, the fusion torches were doing their work well, and a hole large enough for one man at a time had been cut through the blast door. Lydell went through first, gunning down the engineers with impunity so they wouldn’t interfere. Dubrovnik was powered by a relatively simple but large antimatter reactor; no need for gravitons and a Wronski-Birks reactor with no GDC hogging up energy. Lydell quickly clambered up to the reactor’s antimatter storage pods, its most vulnerable point. He had to hurry, from the sound of it his men were dying increasingly fast. Lydell placed some explosives, then found a comms terminal. He loaded up a program that would give him full access to the stations communications systems. This was the last and perhaps most vital part of his mission. The program completed its work as the last of Lydell’s soldiers fell, and Dubrovnik security began coming through the gap into main engineering. Lydell opened the comms system across all channels, as a Dubrovnik soldier yelled up at him. “It’s over!”

Some things were worth fighting for. Some things were even worth dying for. “FREEDOM FOR HUMANITY!” Lydell yelled, and pressed the detonator.

500 000 people died instantly as an explosion seemed to leap out of the heart of the station. Secondary explosions killed even more as the destruction spread across Dubrovniks sprawling extensions and additions. Civilian ships of all kinds were caught up in the explosions, while more distant compatriots looked on in horror. Then, the remnants of Dubrovnik station began to fall towards Praetoria below.

A quick thinking tug captain likely saved several million lives when he steered his vessel into the maelstrom of debris and set his tractors to halt the descent of a particularly large piece of debris. The Imperial Palace defences--activated the moment word came of trouble on Dubrovnik--blasted everything larger than a fist out of the sky over Vitrograd, limiting the damage to the capital city and the Old Quarter in particular. An arcology downtown took a hit from debris, the impact killing 40 people and setting the building ablaze. Small chunks of burning metal, too small to be targeted by the Palace defences, rained down over the capital, killing and injuring a handful of people out on the streets and causing superficial damage to a number of structures.

But not every city on Praetoria had its skies guarded like Vitrograd’s. A large piece of debris came crashing down into one of the world’s oceans, the ensuing tsunami devastating a number of coastal communities. Another struck the downtown core of Novobinsk, blasting the city off the face of the planet and snuffing out 9 million lives. For the rest of the day, Praetoria’s skies rained fire, but the worst was already done.

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They were calling it the Dubrovnik strike. Accurate, to the point, not too sensationalized; Martuf was vaguely impressed with the media’s restraint. Some few shards of debris were still reentering the atmosphere, appearing as shooting stars in Vitrograd’s night sky. Martuf had been summoned to the Winter Palace. Not officially of course, that would be entirely too obvious, but he had been summoned nonetheless, so he made his way through the Palace grounds, having entered the compound by a secret entrance, flanked by two Su’urtugal. The Palace’s own Su’urtugal chafed at his armed escorts, but his people’s constitution required Lord Captain Commanders to have armed guards at all times, even when visiting the Imperial Queen.

The Winter Palace was the section of the Palace complex reserved solely for the day to day living of the Royal Family. Judging the danger had passed, the Imperskiy Vichnesk had returned the Queen to the Winter Palace from her emergency bunker far below. It was highly unusual for the Queen to summon guests to the Winter Palace; such a summons was generally reserved for close friends or discrete visitors. Martuf was something of both.

He slipped through the gardens, and let himself into the Winter Palace via a sunroom close to the Queen’s quarters. Her Imperial Majesty, Catherine Romanov, was waiting for him, dressed in full mourning.
Martuf raised an eyebrow. “A little much don’t you think?”
The Queen gave him a frosty glare. “Eleven million of my citizens died today, Martuf. Nothing is ‘too much’.”
“My apologies, your majesty. You know how my tongue gets the best of me sometimes.”
“See that you keep it under control in future.”

She was hurting, that much was obvious. Catherine took her devotion to her citizens very seriously. She had to be reeling from such a blow so close to home.
They were silent for a moment, before Catherine spoke.
“What do we know so far.”
“What we do comes from CID; my work is only just beginning but I’ll go over their findings anyways. Captain Ryan Lydell; by all accounts an upstanding and respectable citizen. Experienced merchant commander, pays his taxes, plays by the rules. Exactly zero indication he would ever do something like this.”
“And his soldiers?”
“Very little on them I’m afraid. Copies of Dubrovnik security footage are transmitted to offsite locations, so while we do have footage of the soldiers, their armour makes it impossible to get any facial recognition. Their equipment and their actions tell us a great deal however. Their equipment was high end military--some Commonwealth, some not--certainly difficult to obtain, and very expensive. They were well trained too, very well trained. Possibly ex-military, excellent coordination, they’d rehearsed this, and that means somewhere out there is a camp or a facility training more of them. This group, we don’t have a name for them yet, went from absolutely nothing to the most dangerous group in the Commonwealth in a single attack.”
“I think I see where this is going. You think they had outside help.”
“Absolutely. It’s possible whoever supplied them comes from within the Commonwealth, but more than likely a foreign power is at work here.”

There was another silence. Martuf was the one to break it this time. “I’m putting Javelin on this one. Its jumped to the very top of my priority list.”
“Yes, good...Martuf?”
“Your majesty?”
“Find them. Find them and kill them. Kill them all.”

Era of Succession(Closed)

Posted!

Nobody ever got back to me about sneaking a scout into Sol, so I took some liberties.