Starlance

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

The Paladin joined in on the introductions. Nellara. All of the birds so far had fairly nice sounding names, and after all, why not? What did she expect, cawing and hooting? As soon as Nellara put its hands behind its back, Vigdis immediately pointed at it, mimicked its posture and brought her hands in front of her. She was outnumbered and trying to pay attention to several things at once, not being able to see someone’s hands on top of it did no favors for her peace of mind.

Up until that moment, she thought that the strange happenings with Nellara’s orbs and Kareet’s badge might have been some local technology, like electromagnets or miniaturized tractor beams or whatever, any sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic and all that. Before the Yenge showed up, no one thought FTL was possible either. But Nellara and Humanoid Torch’s shows shattered that idea so thoroughly they might as well have used a wrecking ball. “What the FUCK is that?!” She took a few long steps to get away from whatever witchcraft was taking place, slipping into Venerian Russian in the heat of the moment. After that demonstration, Vigdis was visibly reluctant to accept the ball from Nellara, first walking over to the welder and donning her welding gloves. Not a perfect insulation, but better than nothing. A tiny ball made of metal, like you’d find in ball bearings. She rolled it in her palm and threw it up and caught it a few times. Too heavy to be aluminum or titanium, too light for tungsten, wrong color to be silver or silicone… Probably steel or iron, maybe cobalt or nickel. When they figured out how to talk to these people, she’d have to ask if she could break one to figure out what it was made of. Kareet and Kerchak would probably enjoy a demonstration of the metallographic instruments they had in the workshop.

With the captain’s warning, she returned the ball and clapped her hands a few times to get everyone’s attention, then pointed at the airlock, jabbing her finger in its direction a few times and raised her hands in front of her, open palms facing the locals. She didn’t know how else to convey urgency and demonstrate something to be non-threatening.

Of course the first one through the door was a big guy with a big gun…

Getting another idea about how to potentially convey something important to the locals, Vigdis turned to the Captain as soon as she entered, stood at attention and saluted before speaking. “Captain, I was on my way to seal the last hull breach as per the day’s order when these locals caught me by surprise. I’ve been trying to set up some foundation for communication.” She gestured to the writings covering a decent wall area by now, “It looks like we’ve managed to figure out numbers and names. As you can see.” She added when Kareet introduced herself, “I was about to start length and time measurements, but you’re welcome to take over, I’m running out of rope.”

“Doing my best, doctor. To be honest, I nearly shit myself when Nellara showed up.” Vigdis replied to the FTL specialist, indicating the armored bird. “Speaking of which…” Vigdis made her way through the gaggle of humans to clean up the box she kicked over during her panicked retreat from Nellara. She chuckled at Ixtaro’s joke about Spanish, having given that some thought already and decided that she wasn’t cruel enough to confuse the locals with Cyrillics, learning one new alphabet would be enough. Another problem would be actually learning the language, but the mind of an engineer is always working on solutions to problems. And if problems aren’t available, engineers create their own. They’d need to build a library of both alien words and grammatical rules first. She could make a gizmo with a microphone, a speaker and a wristpad connection in half an hour. Then, they’d need someone who knew how to code.

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

With the Peasant and the Scholar - who was named Kareet if she understood correctly - occupied by basic math, Vigdis turned back to the Paladin. She checked her wristpad to see her communicator was set to speak to the command staff. Perfect. Looking the Paladin straight into the eyes - or thereabouts, it had four of them - she slowly raised her left hand to her headset to speak. She spoke slowly and clearly to make it clear that she was not trying to hide anything. “So far it looks like Venerian isn’t on the menu. I’ve got six in here, three definitely armed, all looking potentially dangerous, but so far we’re keeping the peace. Looks like three different species. And there’s… some weird shit happening here.” Maybe the anomalous activity was due to some hidden tech, even if these people looked like they came from a renaissance fair. “If someone else is coming into the shuttle bay, let me know in advance so I can warn them. And if we have any linguists on board, find them. I can’t keep them entertained with basic math forever.” If someone told her they were coming, she’d try to draw the locals’ attention to the airlock door. Even though she was looking at an alien here, she felt a bit weird about giving some of them something to do while the others just stood there awkwardly. Well, suppose if she gave the nerds a puzzle, the soldier should get something they might find interesting as well. Taking a few careful steps forward, she stopped about halfway between the Paladin and where she stood before, slowly removed one of the AP darts from a magazine and held out her hand like she’d done with the marker, offering up the tungsten, press forged 6x50 mm projectile. Despite the kind of armor and storage media on display, an arrow-shaped object was still an arrow-shaped object.

By the time Vigdis turned her attention back to Kareet and Kerchak, they were already busy writing. Understanding, exchange, beginning of communication. She had to suppress a grin as the alien beings understood what she was asking of them, as many animals on earth viewed bared teeth as a challenge or a threat. If Aussies couldn’t win a war with Emus, what chance did she stand against these birds with an unloaded weapon? Perhaps it was a sign of bad character, but Vigdis couldn’t help but think about how, assuming she lived to return home, she’d just accidentally stumbled her way into history books. On second thought, the nerds did more than she asked of them as they also wrote a second set of Arabic numerals. She’d have to compliment Kareet's handwriting later, but why… Fewer numbers… She took a closer look at Kareet's hand. Four fingers, of course.

Now that the ice had been broken, Vigdis somehow felt safer, safe enough to adjust the weapon’s sling so it hung behind her, freeing up both of her hands. She unclipped a five-meter measuring tape from her tool harness and held it up for the greeting party to see. As all the tools she had were vacuum-rated, it too had an aluminum body and belt clip, but with rubber-padded edges and a plastic loop to secure it around the wrist. She pulled an arm’s length out to show them the markings on one side, then let it snap back so they’d know it could do that and hopefully avoid startling themselves with it. Then she pointed at the marker and held out the tape in one hand and an open empty palm, trading the two items.

34₍₁₀₎ = 42₍₈₎

She wrote to indicate that she understood before continuing. Fractions and the same basic four operations with them, numbers squared, numbers cubed, square roots, cube roots. She wrote everything in decimal first, then went back and added octal, writing notes ‘in the margins’ to help with the conversions and crossing them out once she was done with them. The manual conversions gave the nerds more time to examine the length measurements while she worked. Another suppressed giggle at the thought of doing God’s work by spreading the good word of metric units. This time she added a small test, drawing a circle with scratch marks at the 12, 3, 6 and 9 o’clock positions and marking them 360°/0°, 90°, 180° and 270° respectively. Then she drew a right triangle, marking the right angle with another ‘90°’ and its three sides C₁, C₂ and H.

H =

She tapped the unfinished equation with her finger and stepped aside to find some more drawing space, giving them some time to think about the newest set of math. Figuring out the hypotenuse with the Pythagorean Theorem - if they knew of it, whatever they called it - was still elementary school math, so it shouldn’t be too difficult unless they got stumped by the letters - to them unknown symbols. If it looked like they were stuck, she’d wipe the letters off and replace them with actual numbers. But in the meantime, she prepared something else.

h m s
0 0 : 0 0 : 0 0

(10) (8)
1 h = 60 m 1 h = 74 m
1 m = 60 s 1 m = 74 s

Then she maximized the clock app on her wristpad, handed over the marker and waited for the math to be solved or deemed unsolvable, then she’d add time to the list of human measurements they’ve been shown and look forward to learning the local ones. She’d give half of her liver to be able to know the locals’ thoughts when she’d show them the miniaturized computer.

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

So far first contact was not quite what she imagined. An unassuming, yet tall and vicious looking bird. Maybe a Peasant? Another just like the earlier one, but writing into a book. A Scholar. But the next one that entered the Jo made her gasp in abject terror. Tweety’s gymrat cousin, clad head to toe in armor. Even though Vigdis knew it was a bad idea, panic took the helm as soon as the Paladin entered her field of view and she raised her weapon, aiming for center mass while backing up even more until she tripped over a box she couldn’t see and spilled M8 hex nuts everywhere. Now practically squished into the shuttle bay’s starboard fore corner, Vigdis was running out of options. And what the fuck were those balls doing? No, correction, how was it doing that?

Although the Paladin was under the mistaken impression Vigdis would understand Alienese, it fortunately had enough sense to stop next to the Scholar and keep its hands visible, and after a few seconds where one could hear a pin drop, Vigdis slowly lowered the Jackal again, although she nudged the nearest metal ball away from her with her heel. The arrival of Human(oid) Torch shattered her theory that the birds were the dominant species as the local human-equivalent but otherwise did not add to the pile of terrifying bullshit fate had heaped onto her, since it seemed more interested in its companions than anything else. Alright, she was still alive, although hyperventilating in this damn atmosphere was making her light-headed already. She felt like she had to do something before the locals would decide she was boring and try to figure out what humans taste like.

It was then the Scholar spoke again, clearly addressing her as she made a motion with her finger that Vigdis could reasonably assume was trying to get her attention, making the Venerian desperately wish she was a chameleon and could observe something else with each of her eyes. She didn’t want to leave the Paladin unobserved, yet the Scholar was attempting contact. “Kareet?” she tried pronouncing what the Scholar had said, hoping it didn’t include any sounds she couldn’t hear and therefore replicate. Reasoning there wasn’t much else that could mean when coupled with such gestures, she mimicked Kareet’s gesturing. “Vigdis.” But then the Scholar gave her another idea.

Writing!

The fact that one of the aliens was writing meant that they wouldn’t take objection to her doing the same, right? So, very slowly, Vigdis pulled a black marker she normally used to mark damaged sections of hull and material for cutting out of her harness, removed the cap with her teeth so as to keep her shooting hand on her weapon and took a few cautious steps off to the side, keeping her eyes on the aliens until she reached the nearest undamaged wall and started writing:

XXXXI II III IIII III III IIII IIII IIIII
II III III IIII IIII
————————————————————————————————————————————————————
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

2 + 3 = 5 7 - 3 = 4
5 + 5 = 10 10 - 1 = 9

2 . 3 = 6 8 : 2 = 4
17 . 2 = 34 24 : 4 = 6

Still moving slowly even as she wrote to avoid startling the locals with sudden movement, she even managed to write legibly with her left hand. Once she was done she beckoned the Scholar to come closer with her hand, holding the pen out on an open palm and gesturing to the alien, the writing and the marker, hoping the intent was clear enough and the alien wouldn’t suffer anaphylaxis upon contact with the aluminum marker.

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

Strangely enough, Vigdis expected her scheduled work in the next few days to be enjoyable in a way, although when she mentioned it to the table during the first meal after the crash she got a few looks as if she needed her head examined. Working outside, in the breeze, with birds - or so she assumed, who knew what taxonomical classification the things would get - singing throughout the day, great views as the sun - were they still supposed to call it ‘sun’ even if it wasn’t ‘the Sun’? - set… She’d take that over the enclosed docks at Stavanger. At least while the local summer was going. Or maybe it was spring, it was hard to tell.

As soon as the sun - fuck it, it was the local system’s sun, someone who cared enough could name it later - was up, Vigdis was outside, sealing the two smaller hull breaches to make the most of space available inside the ship. The one in the hangar was a different beast, with a decent chunk of the wall missing, likely due to a missile exploding nearby. The Jo wasn’t a warship, a direct hit at that angle would’ve probably stopped in front of the captain’s office and then blown off its entire chin, bridge and all. It was further complicated by the damn air, meaning she would first have to seal it from the outside, then fix the breach from the inside once the air wasn’t a fire hazard in an enclosed space and then go back out and replace the temporary seal with a proper hull patch. At least that was on the schedule before ventilation in the forward quarters died. And then the door to one of the aft quarters. And then lights in engineering in conjunction with heating. The power fluctuations and impact made a mess of the power grid, cables and wires half melted, contacts shaken loose and circuit boards damaged by heat and failing with additional use.

All in all, morning of day three and Vigdis finally had time to get back to the shuttle bay breach. She’d woken up about an hour ago, picked up her meager breakfast ration and went straight to the gear locker before stopping at the armory, as anyone going outside had to bring something to fend off potential wildlife. Hauling the welding rig behind her with one hand and adjusting the parts bag with the other, she hadn’t yet had the time to turn her personal communicator on, missing the Captain’s alert. She hadn’t even had the time to actually load her weapon, something she deeply regretted as soon as she stepped out of the airlock and saw something approaching the breach, evidently looking to get in.

She left the welder where it was and stumbled backward, hands fumbling to reach the Jackal. Then she noticed it: As the creature came closer, light from within the bay revealed it was wearing clothes. That calmed her down somewhat, enough to keep the weapon at low ready and pointed at the ground. Still, she was holding the creature at bay with an unloaded weapon, even if it was unarmed - who the fuck was she kidding, the thing’s face was a weapon! - and banking on the fact that it wouldn’t be able to tell. Rather than further manipulate the object the alien might infer to be a weapon, Vigdis tapped the side of her headset, turning it on. “Shuttle bay, shuttle bay!” She let out a panicked whisper, unsure of which channel she was on and who it went to.

Z-Land

Alena Sokolová

NAME: Alena Sokolová

AGE: 22

WEAPON(s): Hunting crossbow + six bolts, boning knife

BACKGROUND: Born in Olomouc, Czech Republic, Alena's biological parents died in a flood when she was four years old and she was adopted by a gamekeeper and a butcher. Her adoptive father's vocation led her to the outdoors and heavily influenced her decisions regarding her future, eventually leading to enrolling in a bachelor’s gamekeeping program at the Mendel Universty in Brno at 21.

In 2010, Alena got the opportunity to take a semester abroad, choosing the United States. She was out on a three-day deer hunt in the woods of New York with one of her professors, Dr. Mason, when the outbreak happened. Despite having ran out of supplies by the end of their planned outing, which the apocalypse had extended indefinitely, the two promptly turned around and fled back into the woods, reasoning that avoiding cities would be a safer bet and set out South where winters would be more easily survivable.

Trekking across New York, Pennsylvania and clipping the edge of Maryland, staying out of the way and only approaching smaller settlements to resupply, they eventually found themselves in Virginia when their luck turned away. With their medical supplies slowly depleted over the months, and after a bout of ilness left them dangerously low on water, they reluctantly decided to enter Virginia Beach in hopes of restocking on specialized supplies the small towns either didn't have or that had been picked clean by others. This unfortunate decision led to the death of Dr. Mason at the hands - well, teeth - of the infected, leaving her to find her own way out of the city.

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

”There they are! Heading one-seven-three, about 1500 meters out and coming fast.” Marit called out to her lancemates and the tank, hastily putting on seat straps she’d undone to make the wait more comfortable. Arming Archie’s weapons and opening the missile doors, her mighty steed stood up, bristling with missiles and started making his way to the riverbank. Marit used the time it would take the dead meat to get in missile range to divvy up the first targets between her launchers in her mind and deciding on who the next unlucky set would be, prioritizing anything that looked like it could store a reasonable amount of explosives in covered places and ignoring the trucks that had their beds obviously devoted to carrying weapons. A deep rumble of jump jets signaled the Shadow Hawk started its attack. ”Right bank, call out targets if you start getting swarmed.”

As Archie passed the dam, Marit switched on the loudspeakers still installed from the Knights’ policing days on Espia. ”AVC security forces, this is…” She briefly hesitated about using her name out in public. OPSEC was scripture, never know who’s listening and where their loyalties lie. ”...callsign Giggles, Gawain’s Green Knights. We’re here to protect this dam from a suspected Heavenly Sword attack, we’re on your side.” She hoped to clear any possible misunderstandings, unsure of how much the workers had been told. As the stampede approached and Rivers and Steel Rain started tearing into them to bunch them up, Marit flicked the relevant switch to enable weapons locking and the targeting reticle immediately lost its mind. ”Wha- Ah, fuck it…” She mumbled as she gave up on the LRM targeting, Archie picking up into as fast a jog as he’d manage back up a hill to get a better view of the targets for dumb firing.

She hadn’t even made it ten paces when a pair of PPC shots soared across the field and clearly hit something important. With the jamming clearing up, clear line of sight became a comfort instead of a necessity and Marit turned Archie around and back to the riverbank, switching the targeting systems back on, this time acquiring a solid lock as she winced at the Buckshot Boys’ chatter. Slowing to a crawl once she reached the water, she wiggled Archie’s foot with each step to settle it in the silt as she walked him waist-deep into the water, submerging the two additional heat sinks in the legs to further help with heat dissipation. She hoped nothing would happen that would force her to ford the river, unsure of the depth. Were rivers deep under a weir and shallow above it? Shallow under and deep above? Damn Comstar Primers could’ve mentioned that. Advancing a bit downstream, she figured that she had a margin of 90 meters where she could use both missiles and lasers, and by gods she was gonna use it. Soon two medium lasers pierced the darkness, one going low and carving up the dirt while the other one found one of the jeeps, followed by Archie’s three launchers set to chain fire and wide dispersion, their targets chosen to emulate a creeping barrage that swept through the religious traffic jam. A quick glance at the thermometer warned her that she overestimated the cooling a bit, with some of the myomer bundles already starting to show signs of cramping up. ”Do we want any of them alive for a chat?” She asked about the stated secondary objective, seeing as they were rapidly deleting their candidates.

Knights of the Lich Light

Playing the bad guys, you say? Count me in.

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

Vigdis wasn’t all that useful in the first two hours immediately after the crash. Thirty minutes after the ship came to a halt, she found that she couldn’t really put any weight on her left foot. It wasn’t anything new, just the adrenaline of the attack and crash wearing off and her old injury waking up with a vengeance, but it would subside in a few hours. Although the crash was a violent one, fortunately she’d padded and strapped down Fritjof’s carrier enough for him to make it through all of that without any harm done, although he wasn’t happy about being put on house arrest since the crash due to hull breaches he could escape through into the inhospitable air outside. 23,6%. Just above the safe limit. It also told them something else: They weren’t anywhere in Sol anymore. Yay, drive works, I guess?

When the captain called a meeting once the chaos of the first day died off and opened the floor, Vigdis raised her hand. “How’s Varen and when are the coffee rations opening up?” She started with questions before moving on to comments. She could already see a lot of overtime in their future, “About the hull breaches, that might be worse than it seems. Any breach in a compartment on the dorsal half we can find easily enough due to the air composition differences, but any hole in the ventral hull will be sealed by the soil. We’ll have to use the smaller drones to go over it centimeter by centimeter from the inside. I also don’t need eyes on the heat shield to tell you that it’s gone. In the ‘educated guess’ department, the other outboard engines might be a bigger issue. Nevermind being filled with soil, we’re worried about the gimbal mechanisms, both structurally and functionally. Without a crane or a heavy lift VTOL, we might be stranded here. We’ll have details tomorrow.” Vigdis started with the bad news part of what the engineers already knew, which would likely only get worse once they actually had a look. Maybe they’d be able to rebuild one long range antenna, and the resource situation would also depend on how much of the torn off engine they could salvage.

“On the bright side, I had time to look over the structural members. There’s about thirty cracked or snapped ribs on the ventral and starboard side, most of which are repairable. Main girders running the length of the ship are okay, or will be with some reinforcement, except the ventral ones, both of which are snapped in two. They could be patched together, but it will be sketchy at best, but the Jo was built with redundancy in mind, so structurally, a week or two of work, she’ll be fit to launch, fly and land. If we have to, maybe even reach orbit, but the only way we deorbit safely is if we repair the heat shield. That’s a problem of accessibility and materials.” Fortunately, they wouldn’t need to deorbit or even communicate, they just needed to get to Sol. Someone would come investigate the silent ship and pick them up from there. Just as long as it wasn’t her old crew who came for them, she’d never live that down. All in all, it could’ve been a lot worse. Fuck it, they’ve built it once, they’ll build it again. The Jo would fly again one day, even if hunchback, limping and only once. The last part was up to whether the company execs and billing would decide to go with repairs or salvage.

Looking for a zombie apocalypse roleplay.

I'll throw my hat in.

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

Marit quickly found a good enough place to park Archie. It wasn’t ideal, but the ideal was too easy for the enemy to pick out. The runner-up she selected had a rocky outcrop obscuring her view of the north side of the river upstream of the dam, but enough foliage to somewhat conceal the shape of a kneeling Archer and enough clearance to swiss-cheese any boat trying to sneak up on the dam’s upriver wall while having a clear view of most of the Southern access roads. She started scanning the West-South sectors the Heavenly Sword could approach from, occasionally looking up to cover anything sensors might have missed with her own eyes. She should’ve brought a pair of binoculars, stupid.

Still, she felt pretty confident she could detect them despite her general inexperience, she was an Archer driver after all - 13 tons of armor, four tons of hate and the remaining 53 were weapons-grade cowardice. Ideally, she’d be 300 plus meters away from the fight, making the lives on the receiving end short and miserable and sensors would be the only way she could see what was going on. The importance of sensors, that was something she learned on her very first outing, shaking in her boots in half a Dervish that smelled like fish. Providing fire support one second, a Cicada coming at her like a bat out of hell the next. The life and career of Marit Alva Saarinen would’ve been a very short one had it not been for her Lancemates that day. But with the experience of Family Man and Aroxy’s crew, plus the infantry support, the madmen would have to pull off something special to catch them napping. Now, they hurry up and wait.

<Mech powerup detected!>
Betty’s unexpected callout startled her. ”There you are. Reading a heavy ‘Mech on the South bank, that you? What do you think, can the dam take the weight of a ‘Mech if need be?“ She asked just to be sure. If Jon was looking, he would’ve seen Archie’s torso rotating to face where the sensor contact had pinged and waving, ”Hey, now that we’re sort of coworkers, are you going to loosen up a little or are you going to be next in line after Ramrod for stick removal?” She added in a considerably more light-hearted tone.