Kestrel sat at the table in the conference room of the Black Dawn, and put her hands infront of her.
"Right... Now, about those 'strange chain of events' you were talking about, care to indulge me?"
Captain Richards, leader of the 5 other men at the table, began to speak.
"Where to begin... well, where better to start but the beginning?
We six finished at the very top of the naval academy, two of us even setting new records for training procedure and scoring. When we finished, the navy crafted us into Delta Wing, a special task force for the sole purpose of completing missions that require stealth and non-disclosure. You might say we were fixers, in a sense.
We never received our mission orders from HQ, we were given secure comm uplinks at the highest encryption possible directly from the admiral, and even then, we never knew specifics until the last minutes. For example, on our first mission we were told "Fake rogue attack @ convoy".
Excalibur, Johnson, Wainwright, Larkin, Williams and myself composed Delta Wing, and we had just been formed when we received our first mission. We were to kill a major player in Ageira, who was suspected of being in collaboration with the Lane Hackers, but unfortunately without proof. In the navy, you don't question orders. You just obey. So we did it, we attacked a convoy in which he was a part, destroyed his vessel and all the escape pods, and dressed it up to look like a rogue attack.
Our second mission was the only one in which we had support, and it wasn't actually what we were trained for. Some smugglers came into New York with some artifacts, we were called to intercept. We took out 2 of them before backup arrived.
Our final mission, the one that led us here, was the most grisly we had ever seen. We were ordered to wait at a tradelane in New York for terrorists equipped with bombs masquerading as protesters, and take them out before they could get to Manhattan. Williams had had a bad feeling about that, but what mission has ever been called off due to a bad feeling? We followed orders. we waited at the trade lane until protesters came in sight. I shot out the trade lane and transmitted "You have all been charged with treason, the penalty for which is death." As soon as I did that, my group channel went alive with chatter. They were arguing that they had scanned them, there were no bombs present, there was no threat, but it didn't matter what we said. We had been ordered to kill them. You wouldn't understand the obligation behind that unless you'd been in the navy. So we did, we executed one after the other, their screams horrifying us as we did it, but we kept going. After what seemed an eternity, the deed was done. The civilians, because by now we'd figured out they were, were dead. And then things got interesting.
We'd been set up. Moments after we finished the execution, Southern Alliance fighters were swarming all over us, demanding we turn ourselves over to the authorities for court martial, and every one of us knew what that meant. The navy would deny all knowledge of our operations, we'd be sent to prison, and that would be the end of our 'illustrious' careers. No one really gave the order, nobody really needed to. We all turned and ran for the nearest jump gate.
You dont advance far in special ops without knowing the jump hole system, and we spent the next hour splitting up to confuse the searchers all over liberty. We'd lost them by the time we arrived at Beaumont, where we were going to plan our next move. We were about to dock, when an HF approached us. We were prepared to shoot him down, and would have as 1 on 6, his odds weren't too good, but he appeared friendly to us. Apparently, the lane hackers had known about our operations all along, encryption or no encryption, and had sent one of their allies to intercept and offer sanctuary. So, hunted by pirates and police alike, what else could we do?
We arrived on Freeport 4, and decided to dock for repairs before striking on for Mactan, when Johnson raised the alarm: SA in Magellan. So we undocked and prepared to fight for our lives. The fighting was fierce, and we lost three of our Guardians in that battle, Wainwright's, Johnson's and Excalibur's, but luckily the operators of Freeport grabbed their life pods and we got our men back.
So, here we are. 6 pilots, 3 ships, no allegiances. Any suggestions?"
"Well, that's quite a story. And let me be the first to say, we'd be happy to have you. I'll work on sorting your downed pilots out with some slipstreams."
"Sorted then. Well, it's been a long day, could I grab a bunk before I pass out?"
Kestrel shifts uneasily, looking blankly at the desk for a few seconds before looking back up, sighing lightly. "Well, then... Its a real good thing we have the best techs in Sirius, Mm? Just look on the bright side - You didn't lose your armory, And besides, Slipstreams or Sabres will fair your bunch much more. We'll drop you off at Mactan if you want some sleep, no free bunks on this ship. Welcome to the Hellfire Legion!"
