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+--- Thread: Adrienne Perry: Detailed Volume #2 - The Hindmarsh Account (/showthread.php?tid=178981)
RE: Adrienne Perry: Detailed Volume #2 - The Hindmarsh Account - Stolt. - 04-27-2020
Suddenly the houses were on lockdown. Overnight, Liberty transformed into an unthinkable military dictatorship. The trade lanes were empty. Business activity halted. People were restricted to their homes and anybody who came outside was imprisoned, if they were lucky. Most of them were executed on the spot, in public view. Police and military officers would find anybody violating the 24 hour curfew and put a black bag over their head in the streets. While the curfew-breaker begged not to be killed, or screamed that this was against Liberty’s constitution, they’d have a bullet pierce through their skull clean. They'd be left in the floor with a hole in their head. Medical services were not allowed to remove their bodies; those bodies were left there as a warning to the others who would violate Liberty’s new totalitarian military dictatorship. Sometimes this would happen with rows of people, executed in full public view. This was not the 800 A.S. Hindmarsh imagined. Who the hell was he working for?
Nevertheless, Hindmarsh was left to his own devices. The woman with the purple eyes kept trying to meet with him in person. But he didn’t trust the purple-eye’d b****. He only communicated with her through a videoconference link.
Until one day, eight men and women rappelled down to his condo at Los Angeles and broke through its windows, completely black-clad with balaclavas and black combat suits. He was blinded by multiple flashbangs before they cornered and cuffed him. *F***, was this her doing? I should’ve killed that purple eye’d thing. I waited too long. F*** this, I deserve this for my own stupidity.*
His front door blew open and multiple purple eye’d men and women stormed through. For the next 28 minutes, he took cover and hid under a desk while the unknown black-clad special operations team and the purpled eye’d incubi-infested a**holes fought each other through his sizeable apartment. Expensive furniture and artwork was bullet ridden, ripped and torn apart. At the end of it, there were a lot of dead, purple-blooded bodies thrown all over his apartment.
RE: Adrienne Perry: Detailed Volume #2 - The Hindmarsh Account - Stolt. - 04-27-2020
The special operations team put a black bag over Hindmarsh’s head and began to collect whatever documents, discs or other intelligence data they could that was in his condo. A passenger transport appeared on the side and he was hauled into it along with the rest of the special operations team. Outside, two unknown, dark gray/black fighters engaged a squadron of Liberty Navy Defenders while the passenger ship escaped out of Planet Los Angeles.
In the ship, the special operations team began to shift through the intel on the Nighthawk program. They knew about the stealth fighter, there’s no other reason for them to come after him. Hindmarsh didn’t care much for the new dictatorship running Liberty. These guys were probably trying to restore the democracy that existed before it, or stealth technology amid the chaos. After several hours of reviewing the documents and discs, videos and photographs and voice recordings that were in Hindmarsh’s Condo, the special operations team took off the black bag over his head, and removed their balaclavas too.
“You know you’re f***ing lucky to be alive. Considering you started a f***ing war with the other houses, you’re lucky you’re useful enough to live.”
“They were blackmailing me you son of a c*ck-bite.” Hindmarsh bit back.
“Oh, you mean like all those people you blackmailed, drove to suicide and bribed?!”
His imprisoner began to punch him in the face repeatedly, he punched faster and harder after each hit.
RE: Adrienne Perry: Detailed Volume #2 - The Hindmarsh Account - Stolt. - 04-27-2020
“You f***ing traitor, you don’t even realise what you’ve done!”
Hindmarsh lay there with a bruised and bloody face, broken nose and swollen eye with blood dropping out of it. It’s officially now, he’s going to have to start wearing an eyepatch.
“…What are you talking about?” Hindmarsh said with a pained and raspy voice.
A woman in the special operation team yelled “We call those things Nomads. The ones with the purple eyes and parasites. Their infesting us and trying to get the houses to go to war so they weaken us all before conquering and exterminating our species.” She sighed, she was tired. She probably hadn’t gotten much sleep. None of them sounded like they had enough sleep, probably for days on end. They must have been on drugs just to keep up.
“…How’d you know about….about me?” Hindmarsh asked. He needed to know where he went wrong. “…And,… and why am I being kept alive? What…do you want?”
Their team leader walked away from him. Whoever this guy was, he was probably an honourable man. He didn’t want to waste his sight on Hindmarsh, a traitor not just to Liberty, but to his own species.
“We need you…to train us how to fly that ship. Its got their weapons, we’re going to need those torpedoes in our fight with the nomads.” The special operations team leader said in a tired voice. He sounded…overstretched and elderly. He’d been doing this sh*t for too long.
“Oh, you need the stealth capabi-”
“No, we’ve got a cloaked battleship we're using for recon. We need your ship for its adapted torpedoes.”
The woman in the special operations team became vehemently alarmed. “Wait John, shut the f*** up! We haven’t tested him for infection yet!”
RE: Adrienne Perry: Detailed Volume #2 - The Hindmarsh Account - Stolt. - 04-27-2020
In the coming days, Hindmarsh found himself imprisoned on-board the rumoured Osiris-class battleship, equipped with a cloaking device. His ship was no longer the most advanced in the Navy. Apparently, it never was.
He was with the Order, a small but well-connected organisation trying to liberate the Houses of the influence of the aliens. He was kept imprisoned at their base in Planet Toledo. They ran several, invasive tests into his body but he was cleared of infestation. He was still himself. Somehow, this made the team leader even more disappointed. “At least your actions would have made sense if you were infested, but now I know that you just chose to be who you are: a little s***.”
“How did you find me? The Nighthawk program was meant to be top secret, there couldn’t have been more than three dozen people who were authorised to know about it.” Hindmarsh still wanted some answers.
The Spec-ops team leader named John came and sat down next to him in his prison cell. Hindmarsh wouldn’t have any way of knowing who this guy was, other than his special operations skillset, his comon name, and his face.
“We knew about the Nomads before the Houses recognised their threat. My job was to target the infested woman who was in contact with you. Her name, before she was infested-”
He took a pause, a sigh and a deep breath. “Her name was Morgan. She was my daughter. I witnessed her infestation and then I witnessed the LSF do nothing about it. And that’s where the Order found me. I was tasked with tracking her down. I found a guy, a guy you blackmailed who decided to run away from Alaska. I was part of the Osiris program which had a higher security clearance so I was familiar with the Nighthawk stealth-ship program and figured we might be able to use it. We didn't have many ships to requisition anyway. I met that guy you blackmailed, who ran away from Alaska and Liberty swearing never to return so that he could keep his family safe. I met him, and found out what you had done. And I followed my daughter and saw the Nighthawk get upgraded with the adapted torpedo systems. That made your ship even more valuable. So I came after you, and then I saw my daughter shoot at you and shoot at me.” The team leader’s voice softened
“I’m surprised she didn’t infest you, but I’m thinking that was just pure luck. And you have too much of that.”
RE: Adrienne Perry: Detailed Volume #2 - The Hindmarsh Account - Stolt. - 04-27-2020
Eventually he’d be made to train them on how to fly his stealth ship, the Nighthawk. This was unnaceptable. He wanted to break out of that prison, steal his ship back and use those damn torpedoes on the Nomads. To him, this was not about survival, nor was it about revenge. It wasn't about justice or saving the human race. He was going to commit genocide against whatever those aliens were. He just needed to figure out a way to get out of the prison. But soon, that became unnecessary.
One day the grounded started shaking. He could see through the windows, people were either running to their spaceships or to bomb shelters They were loading up supplies, screaming all around. The same special operation team leader, 'John' who imprisoned him, the father of the infested woman “Morgan”, came by and unlocked his jail cell.
“This is it!” The team leader yelled right in his face! “We don’t have time anymore, WE are ALL you’ve got to survive this, so get on that ship of yours and use those damn torpedoes! We need all hands on deck! I don’t f***ing trust you but I’ll make you answer for what you’ve done after!” The team leader pushed him into his stealth ship and Hindmarsh strapped on his belts and took off from the planet.
RE: Adrienne Perry: Detailed Volume #2 - The Hindmarsh Account - Stolt. - 04-27-2020
Above the planet, several battleships and spacecraft made of light attacked the few squadrons the Order had. Hindmarsh was impromptu grouped up with a makeshift squadron. The squadron leader ordered him to hold his fire on the torpedoes and instead escape to a set of coordinates he transferred via the Neural-net. At the coordinates, there was something that looked kind of like an alien jumpgate and there were several alien battleships there. He hid behind the dark asteroids that were enveloped by the green space of the Edge Worlds. There were other Order squadrons hiding there, waiting for the further instructions. Meanwhile over Toledo, a battle for survival raged. Finally, they got the command from the Battleship Osiris to launch the attack. The hotshots called, Trent, Juni and King were on their way, as was the battleship. The order ships emerged above the asteroids, over and below the Nomad battleships and fired their torpedoes. Hindmarsh fired last, the other bombers were meant to take down the shields but he would deal the killing blow. Within a few minutes, the Nomad battleships were down and the Osiris had arrived and deployed it flak turrets to mop up the remaining Nomad fighters. And then they all jumped through the alien jumpgate.
At the other side, they realised they were caught within a dyson’s sphere. An earth-like atmosphere surrounded them, it was like an inverted but habitable planet around a star. But none of that mattered. Hindmarsh didn’t last more than three minutes. A nomad fighter pivot behind his ship and started strafing it. He asked for assistance but nothing came. The Order had the Osiris with them now, they didn’t need Hindmarsh and his torpedoes. They didn’t need the traitor.
Hindmarsh's Nighthawk got shot down and disabled and his ejection seat didn’t work. Once he was down as a target, the Nomad ship selected another target and flew away. Eventually, the a bright light shone in the Nomad city, a bright jumphole was created. The Nomad Artifact that the pilot Trent had been carrying had been activated. It pulled all the Nomads into it, and they were gone.
The Order had won, but Hindmarsh lost.
RE: Adrienne Perry: Detailed Volume #2 - The Hindmarsh Account - Stolt. - 04-27-2020
The Order returned to Toledo and left him for dead. It didn’t matter whether they cared if he was alive or not. They abandoned him, because he was a traitor. And he knew they abandoned him – the Nighthawk's stealth technologies were inactive.
Hindmarsh triaged his resources. There was no food, but there was limited water. He opened his flight deck windshield and floated in the skies inside the Dyson Sphere and began repairing his broken ship where he could. After several days, his ship was working again. He activated his Mirage technology and the optical camouflage. He set off for the Alien jumpgate and arrived back in Omicron Minor. Here, he put the ship to autopilot and instructed the ship computer to get gim out of the Omicrons and back into civilised space. And then, he laid down on his side on his flight seat, and closed his eyes, and didn’t wake up for another 24 hours.
RE: Adrienne Perry: Detailed Volume #2 - The Hindmarsh Account - Stolt. - 04-27-2020
Eventually, he got back to liberty. The Order left him for dead, so they didn’t know he was alive. And everybody on the Nighthawk stealth-fighter program? They were dead, purged by the LSF. Turns out they had all become infested. Democracy was restored in the Republic. Trade was resuming and people could leave their households again.
Hindmarsh still had his bank accounts though. The ones hidden in tax-havens. He flew to Freeport 2 where he found a Lane Hacker who was willing to build him a new identity for a hefty price. His new identity was ironclad, it included a fake birth certificate, school history with degrees that could pass off as authentic, a work history, credit card history. Everything you would verify in a background check was solid.
With this, Hindmarsh signed up for the LSF and started purging the Nomad-infested humans. He kept his stealth ship hidden at a secret facility, never to be flown again. All he wanted was a war so he could make more money with that thing but instead he went through a bunch of PTSD-inducing crap and now he wants to commit genocide on some purple sh**.
It wasn't just the Nomads he was going to kill though. He spent years investigating and waiting for the right time. Occassionally, he would leak intelligence on infested people to the Order, because he knew they’d launch a surgical strike to take out those infested Wild. This pissed off all of the Houses and eventually they decided to re-designate the Order Overwatch as a terrorist organisation. While that was happening, he investigated Morgan so that he could find out more about her father. He had all the time in the world, and in 808 A.S. found out who and where he was. The Special Operations team leader who captured him during the Nomad War commanded an Order hit squad that primarily battled Das Wilde in Rheinland. They were there to search for, and destroy infested individuals.
Hindmarsh flew his experimental Nighthawk stealth ship one last time, all the way to Planet Stuttgart. On the far side of the planet, he remained hidden, using its stealth technologies at full power. He sent one last transmission to Morgan’s father, opening up a videoconference with him. “Hey ***hole, it’s me, the Traitor. I don’t have anything intense to say to you, you’re going to die today, wear something comfortable.”
And with that, he fired his nomad torpedoes into Stuttgart, right at the building that Special Operations Team Leader was in. In the subsequent weeks, local media suggested it was a bomb by the Unioners that brought that building down. But the MND investigated the torpedo explosion because they knew something wasn't right.
RE: Adrienne Perry: Detailed Volume #2 - The Hindmarsh Account - Stolt. - 04-27-2020
Present year– 827 A.S.
“Perry, you’re gonna want to look at this. I just confirmed the existence of the active-camouflage technology you said probably didn’t exist”
That was Danny Cohen calling Adrienne Perry. He was a good friend. He found her out when she began to lobby with local politicians within Liberty's Senate Intelligence Committee He liked her ideas on the Control Group. They formed it together, because they loved their country.
“Mirage technology, optical camouflage and stealth-coat painting, all of it. We know optical camouflage exists [LINK], but the other technologies were theoretical. I think I found something though. It’s linked to a guy named Briarson Hindmarsh, you ever heard of him?”
Perry listened in keenly to Cohen’s findings. She was grocery shopping. Her young children rested and played together on the trolley cart while her husband was at home. All of them were still under witness protection. There were LSF officers assigned to her security while she shopped. She didn’t know who they were because they were discrete and blended in with the other shoppers. It gave her the feeling of a normal life, before she was in the LSF. She was just a consultant assisting small and large businesses run efficiently. A part of her regretted her career choice; when she was younger and divorced her husband, she just wanted to dive into her work and distract herself, and the =LSF= always had work to be done. But after all these years and her reconciliation with her ex-husband and his indomitable support, she questioned whether putting them through all this was truly worth it. It didn’t matter now though. She had done enough that she wouldn’t be able to leave this life.
RE: Adrienne Perry: Detailed Volume #2 - The Hindmarsh Account - Stolt. - 04-27-2020
“Danny,” Perry exclaimed with quieted excitement, “How did you find this?! Tell me what you’ve got.”
“I had that girl, Vove Tague, you know the hacker we rescued? I had her get access to some classified fi-“
“Wait what the f*ck Danny that’s illegal.” Perry was pissed but tried to keep quiet in front of her kids in a public area.
“Perry we’re gonna be doing a lot of illegal sh** in and out of Liberty, is this really the time?” Danny asked.
Perry let out a frustrated sigh as she put facepalmed. He had a point, but Vove was a civilian. She wasn’t one of them. A lot of risks were going to be taken in the near future. Vove was untrained, unproven and a liability.
“Alright," Perry said frustratedly, "Tell me what you’ve got.”