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Ki'Tlex



Ki'Tlex had long ago figured out the secret to dealing with long trips in cramped ships: sit down, shut up and get some sleep. Unless you were actively dodging asteroids, missiles, or solar flares there was very little work that went into piloting when in open space, leaving you with far too much time and not enough to spend it on. Complaining wouldn't do more than annoy other travelers, making it a good way to get pushed out the airlock but a bad way to cope. It was better to suffer boredom in silence to keep rising tempers from joining the miserable affair.

Kottle had not learned that lesson yet. Whatever rudimentary thoughts passed through the infant's head were expressed frequently and loudly, gurgling screams and screechy groans echoing off the bulkhead whenever they weren't sleeping. Ki had made the requisite apologies for their charge's behavior which was about as much as they could do.

The infant cried out again as the ship approached Mother, the rudimentary rise and fall in pitch telling Ki two things: Kottle was learning the basics of their shared language, and they were hungry. The adoptive parent sought to encourage Kottle's growing vocabulary, answering the pitiful whining with proper whistling. A remarkable amount of information could be conveyed through the bird-like language but Ki kept it simple: <<Quiet down little one. I will feed you.>>

That was a process best done hidden under their cloak. Regurgitation was the natural way Kel'ta fed their young but humans were prone to being weird about it.

They emerged just as Nero the Self-Assured answered Alan the Pale's question, wiping their mouth clean with the back of a hand while the other three busied themselves in reswaddling Kottle. "It depends on the crew and the circumstances. I and you are in civilized space right now, a military-class vessel bristling with weapons would make any half-decent sensor array light up like fireworks. If they are smart they'll likely be in a secondary shuttle, something inconspicuous. Maybe even multiple ships that will split up and meet somewhere later."

The idea of parity between pirate and assassin made them hum, their equivalent of laughter.

"If the assassin in question is bad? Perhaps. Pirates expect open combat, even if they don't want it. They choose the wealthiest targets that are the least defended so that they can enrich themselves with minimal risk. More importantly, they are largely self-centered. But an assassin is taking a side in some conflict or another, even if only for money. They seek to kill someone of political or martial significance. An assassin who takes no sides is called a spree killer, and they're generally frowned upon."

They were highly qualified to speak on the subject. After all, they themselves were a pirate, a pirate with the memories of an assassin that had died long ago.

Alan the Pale caught their attention, Ki's curiosity enough to make them consider the boy's strange appearance even if they were polite enough to keep from staring. As they understood it, white hair and red eyes were not common in creatures from Earth. Albinism was a genetic defect that made creatures more visible to predators and worsened vision. And while humans had progressed to the point that such a condition was manageable in day-to-day life it was still strange to see it in a supposed soldier.

Although...Alan the Pale's features weren't as pronounced as they would have expected. Perhaps it was a quirk of the tricks played on his genetics.

Queen Anne's Revenge



Anne didn't like to second-guess Best Buddy Ki, and second-guessing Best Buddy Ki's friends was basically second-guessing Best Buddy Ki themselves. But she was a battle-bot, loaded up with all sorts of interesting information on the best ways to wage war and crush insurrections, not to mention the tips and tricks she had picked up from her Pirate Pals. And all of this information, all the after-action reports, historical accounts, and simulation results churned down into a stream of measurable data, it all pointed to a hard fact: this was really bad.

Moonstrike was shooting at Moonstrike...no, Moonstrike was being shot at by other people who weren't Moonstrike but worked with Moonstrike and now wanted Moonstrike dead. "Hey, quick question: if all these groups don't want us in charge anymore how come we're still in charge?"

It was a genuine question spoken with no malice even if the harshness of her preprogrammed tone took suggested otherwise.

"Since we're fighting a like, evil empire right? If we're the good guys we should listen when a whole bunch of people are angry about our mistakes. Also if we kill a bunch of them and they kill a bunch of us then there's going to be no one to fight the bad guys. Or uh, the other bad guys. Since we're kinda the bad guys right now."

The appeal to pacifism was undercut somewhat by the last-minute weapon checks Anne was performing, the machine running down the list of ammunition stored throughout her body. There was certainly enough for her primary, and the secondary so kindly supplied by the kid on the ship had enough fuel to melt through quite a few unfortunate souls.

The spaceboat lurched into the fray and Anne clapped her hands with glee, a mechanical giggle rumbling from her speakers as she automatically activated her Magnetize spell. With her boots firmly planted on the deck she could stare at all the pretty lasers shooting back and forth outside.

"I can't really do a lot in here but if you want I can float over to a ship, start smashing it up inside."

That would require opening the door which would be bad for anyone standing by her, but they could always just not do that.



Looking at the sheets, I think it's pretty funny no one picked ex-Republic/reformist.


I was thinkin about it for the character I'm making but Mando just seems more fun lol
Why not, I’ll bite!
Ki'Tlex



Ki'Tlex had spent the week acclimating themselves to their new home, their new team. And if they were being honest neither was much different than what they were used to. Cramped quarters that were slightly too small for everyone in them, lots of sitting around waiting for something to happen, and the knowledge that they'd be massively outnumbered whenever it did. Interstellar piracy and galactic terrorism shared similarities in terms of mechanics if not morality, or at least perceived morality.

Ki wasn't so delusional as to pretend that their previous career was better than their current one but they did wonder about the ethics of the shadow war they were now fighting. Even accounting for the vast differences in Kel'ta and Human aging the 'Star Marines' were very young. Lethal no doubt, but adolescents nonetheless. Most cultures would not think to recruit their young unless the stakes were truly dire, salvation or destruction hinging on every last able-bodied person picking up arms. Besides the loss of innocence there were practical concerns as well, the wisdom of teaching someone whose brain was still developing how to kill dubious at best.

That last point seemed especially important considering the string of disasters that had hit the little insurgency recently. But Ki'Tlex wasn't there to critique morals or second-guess Moonstrike's choice in troops. They wanted to see how their new organization worked in the field.

They had listened impassively to the Fool's briefing, taking note of the fact that they were being given the unenviable job of putting their foot on a landmine to see how much pressure it could take before going off. Fair enough, they could do that...it just would have been nice to have their anti-personnel/vehicle/light aircraft robot with them. The one that was practically invulnerable to small arms fire, could cast magic, and carried a giant shotgun that fired half-pound shells. That would have been helpful.

Ki'Tlex saw Anne as an investment and a dear one at that. They had risked their life snatching her out of the Ascendancy's armory and done so again boosting the parts needed to make her operational. And then there was the pile of credits that had been dumped into repairs and rearmament, a sizable sum spent on making sure their tool was in the best condition so that it would serve them well. Having it taken from them, even temporarily, rubbed Ki the wrong way. Oh well. Divide and conquer, try not to get divided and conquered in turn. Oh and keep the infant they were lugging around from getting spaced. That would be unfortunate.

Ki kept their selfish thoughts firmly on their side of the dividing line, vague disappointment at being separated allowed to reach Anne without any of the deeper context behind. AI was tricky, prone to forming its own opinions and goals if not watched. Ki did their best to nip any of that in the bud by feeding Anne lies, and Anne was evidently content to believe them.

Queen Anne's Revenge



A mission! She going to go out on an actual real-life mission with a proper chain of command and everything! No more running combat simulations in her head or analyzing her weaponry for any inconsistencies, she was actually going to go out and get shot at! Wafer-thin circuitry transmitted impulses through a matrix of chips and wires, the informational input filtered past her artificial conscious so that it spit out an emotion: excitement. She was excited to go out into the field, excited for a chance to prove herself to her new friends and her best buddy Ki.

Anne was keenly aware of the fact that she had been designed to take pleasure in combat ops, her Ascendancy programming entirely reworked but not scrubbed clean. She was supposed to find war fun so that she was easier to order around and she didn't mind that. She had certain requirements she needed to fulfill just like actual living creatures did. The problem was that the loosey-goosey hit-and-run pirate stuff she had been doing for the past decade had been to her what a diet of dry toast would have been to Ki. Now she would be getting a proper meal with salt and pepper and the metaphor was getting away from herbutshewasjussoexcitedtofinallygettobeinarealwar-!

Anne. Please.

Whoops. The rush must have bled over.

Sorry! I just can't wait!

The apology was met with a wave of forgiveness, Anne taking the nonverbal assurance as a cue to go back to walking. The trudge of metal boots over the ship's deck was drowned out by the sound of Joey's briefing, Anne playing the key bits back to herself.

...assist Moonstrike in this Civil War...Nirrti, Queen Anne, myself...Shineyd... right into a warzone...fire right back... rebels just like us...

A flash of amusement rose from Ki's end of the connection before dying down. Anne took notice, pushing a wordless query that was answered by a flood of information. Information, images, feelings, and memories were piled in front of her to be sorted through, all of it run by her learning systems and compared to the swaths of the Net she had archived. It took nanoseconds for a meaning to be worked out:

Infighting is a bad sign in an insurgency. It weakens all groups.

That was true. And Anne did want Moonstrike to win soooooo...she'd just have to end the fight fast.

She walked on, Ki trailing behind her while tending to the baby they had so nobly taken on. Anne could confidently say that Kottle was a good kid, having cross-referenced their behavior and apparent intelligence with pediatric sources on several species.

As luck would have it they wouldn't be splitting up immediately, Anne's squadmate engaged in conversation with Ki's.

"Oh, I can use it though! My RoEs are very open-ended, specifically designed so that I can interpret them as I see fit. In fact-"

"She means 'hello, they and I are looking forward to working with you and them.'"

Ki's relative monotone silenced Anne's artificially gruff one, the machine grateful that she had her friend around to keep her in check. At least she had remembered to keep her volume down this time, speaking in more of a stage shout than an ear-splitting siren.

"Right! I'm looking forward to seeing you in action Nirrti, and I hope you two have fun on your missions."

@FalloutJack @Senhara @jdh97
Updated with additional information, grammatical edits






He had noticed the other Alex's gaze fall to the heirloom he still carried, the weight evidently too much for his friend to bear. "What else could they do? They weren't going to let a Vinlander lead one of Gallia's proudest regiments, not that there was much of it left to lead after that."

Alex was mildly impressed by the ease at which he was slipping back into the rhythms of the old Imperial tongue. Many of his journal entries were written in that language but it had been some time since he had actually spoken it. Perhaps the shock was to blame, his brain so rattled by the resurrection he was witnessing that it didn't have time to stumble about. It found the words it needed instead of wasting time.

The "explanation" explained nothing. Alex kept his face devoid of emotion, responding to the non-answer with clinical impassivity. "I see." He of course saw nothing but he would simply have to deal with the blindness for the time. Alexandre's assertion, while charming in its poetic notions of camaraderie blessed by the heavens, seemed inaccurate.

Alex played along, breaking his mask so that a genuine snicker could shine through."The Valkyrur haven't ever looked on a Darcsen with anything less than disgust, it's the reason we're in this mess to begin with. Let's hope they like you enough to keep from smiting me for another day."
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And then the time came.

The Captain kept it simple, relaying the orders without explanation or expectation of questions. It was best that way. Alex's wartime service had taught him a very important lesson that training had neglected to instill: to find the intelligence of the average soldier one simply had to take the average civilian and cut whatever intellect they had in half. In the case of fractions you always rounded down. There were plenty of cunning soldiers to be sure, every branch absolutely infested with card sharks, smugglers and men who could could concoct all manner of schemes to shirk their assigned duties but the fact of the matter was that the Federation didn't sent its most educated to die in the trenches.

At least not without an officer's cap and a pistol at their side.

Captain Middleton spoke to the sensibilities possessed by every trooper, the ones instilled by boot camp if nothing else: kill them quickly and get back in one piece. His orders were dumbed down for the lowest common denominator and thus there was no excuse for failure. Everyone knew what they had to do, the only question was how many of them would come out of it alive. As much as Alex would have liked to say 'all of them' that killjoy common sense kept him from jumping to conclusions. The brass had proven his theory about military intelligence by assigning snipers and machine gunners to a close-quarters raid where there would be no time to compensate for mistakes born from a lack of experience fighting up close.

Things would be interesting, he was damn sure about that.

He felt naked without his rifle but had decided against trying to the maneuver the thing in the confines of the trenches. At those ranges the showpiece pistol his father had given him would do well enough. A knife tucked in his waistband and a couple of grenades were the only other weaponry he brought. He could manage with them just fine.

Unless of course the fool gunner ruined things by bolting in without support, there was little he could do about that.

The sergeant watched as she dropped into the trench with no plan and no backup, all sorts of violent words swarming around his head before being distilled into an urgent command.

"White! Make sure she doesn't get killed."

It was punctuated with a gunshot, Alex drawing a bead on the poor Imperial nearest to him and blowing his brains out of his skull.



"On it."

Oh sure, send the Occie ahead to babysit the psycho dirt-hair, of course. Victoria hadn't been involved with the whole Breached Gates shitstorm but it still found ways to ruin her life. After that mess her nationality just put a target on her back, a big fucking sign that read 'Forlorn Hope here! Will take part in suicidal charges for shit wages!' What gave it away? It was probably the hat. Well, that and the fact that she was huge and had a background in street brawling. And her specific training based around fixed bayonet, whites-of-the-eyes type close-in killing.

Ah the life of a shocktrooper. She lived for that stuff.

Boots slid across muck-coated wood and bits of brain matter, Victoria scrambling forward like a rat who had sighted a defenseless chick. There had been no chance of their whole team slipping into the trenches unnoticed, thus why the boss-man had wasted one of the enemy already with his giant .45. The game now revolved around a simple question of speed. Could the Feds get what they needed before the Imps swarmed in and shot them all to death? Could the Imp that had just watched his friend die recover his wits and get a shot off before Vicky flattened him?

As it turned out the answer to that second one was no. Victoria had simply surged ahead too quickly and planted her bayonet inside the unfortunate boy's belly. A couple hundred pounds of madwoman putting all her weight into the stab forced the air from his lungs, the scream his body wanted to release nothing more than a choked gurgle.

Two down and more to go.
@Smike, Approval One has been given on Discord and also being given here.


awesome, appreciate it





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