Threats from within.

[Ryummel]

72 hours later. Planet Sprague. 11:29 SMT.

After a clean descending into the atmosphere, our shuttle flew over the barren landscape of Sprague. [color=#CCCCCC]“Estimated time of arrival… 5 minutes” said Jeff. I began to read the data-pad which contained the mission intel: Apparently, a millionaire idiot managed to rebuild part of the xeno-archaeological outpost which was destroyed eighteen years ago. The place still held research material about the K’Hara as well as deactivated artifacts. – Which were buried by tons of rocks, though the mining machinery could dig up the entire place in a few weeks-. Two days ago, two of their mining lasers stopped working for unknown reasons. They will be waiting two “engineers”, Jeff and me. “Dealing with a bunch of looting-addicted guys who want to enrich themselves a bit more… That’s an easy job.” I noticed a small settlement around a huge hole dug near a cliff. The shuttle landed in an improvised pad located a few meters from the rusty buildings which seemed to be the quarters of the people working in there. “Alright Jeff, pick up all the material. I'll talk with the welcoming committee.”

Four individuals walked out the settlement towards me. Three of them were carrying rifles and wearing rusty armors –Nothing special, just grunts-. The fourth one looked tidier. He stepped forward and greeted me. “Mr. Esterbrook, right? Nice to see you here.” He shook my hand. Jeff showed up, carrying a few toolboxes. “Oh, Mr. Loxley” The man nodded at Jeff and shook his hand. After this, we were escorted through the excavated galleries until we reach the main ‘hall’, linked with the rest of inner galleries.



“Gentlemen, as you might know, we had to stop our work because our main mining machinery broke down. That’s why you’re here.” A woman on her middle 20’s and wearing a scruffy technician suit –Though she was handsome, to be honest- appeared from one of the galleries and walked towards us. “Hello! Eh… Who of you should I take for fixing the first mining laser?” She asked. “Me” I answered quickly before Jeff could react. He whispered me “Good luck.” Then, we took separate ways: I followed the woman while Jeff stood with the group.

“How rude of me… My name’s Veronica. I’m monitoring all the machinery we use here, but the guy who is running this ‘business’ can’t afford proper tools and equipment for this operation… Pathetic, isn’t it? At least I’m well-paid for this job.” She smiled at me. I just nodded and replied “I’m sure you’re aware of the illegality of this ‘business’, huh?”. She sighed “Yeah, we’re mere raiders under Bretonian authorities… Especially in this place, full or artifacts. Oh, here is the mining laser!”

She started to talk things about the machinery, specification, configurations, etc. I just was glancing around the gallery, looking for the best spot to place the explosive charge. They were here to unveil the K’Hara secrets, I was here to bury them. “I’ll need a plasma cutter, Veronica. I swear I had it in the toolbox…” She nodded and walked away. I took another gander until I noticed the ventilation machine near the mining laser. I stood before it, opening my toolbox. I took carefully the device and placed it inside the vent attached to the machine. The device began to emit a blue glow. It was armed. I enabled my communicator “I’m done here, Jeff. Have you finished?”

---

[Exile]

"Aargh! No!" I screamed as I woke up in my quarters on Altair. Ever since I had spoken to Angela I had been getting strange dreams, vivid.. Almost real. They would flash into my mind like scenes from a screenplay. Without context or association. Most of them didn't end happy. The first "scene" began with a man walking down the streets of Cambridge. I could see every detail of the architecture, the faces of the people walking by, the trees and grass on the side of the road. It was as if I was a copilot inside of this man's consciousness. He was walking with a rather rapid pace, almost running. It all ended when two men dressed in civilian clothing dragged him into an abandoned street and hit him in the neck with a syringe. Blackness followed.

Just before I woke, I was another woman. Or at least "watching over her shoulder". She was tied to a chair in the middle of a room with a fierce light right above her. Her head was tilted down, her clothes torn and her body covered in wounds from top to toe. Voices could be heard across from the hallway. Men running, shouting at each other. One of them ran down the hallway and forced open the door to the room the woman was being held. As he walked into the room she looked up, and shortly afterwards the man landed the butt of his weapon into the head of the woman. Shortly here after she awoke again. This time to several armed men standing in front of her. One of them had his back turned to her and did not react to her awakening at all. Only seconds later she felt a sharp pain in her back, and after that it went permanently black.



Sleep wasn't going to do me much good at the time. I had several unread messages on my PDA still. I decided to read through those before trying to fall back asleep again. Perhaps I'd be tired then.

---

[Boss]

I watched them go down the hallway towards the first laser. I sized up the other men in the room with me and nodded to the less scruffy one. "If you'd be so kind as to show me to the other, I'd be happy to take a look and repair it as quickly as I can. That way you can get back to business." He smiled and gestured towards a separate corridor. The would-be soldiers remained in the main area. Why they did I don't know. I don't really care, either.

"...and over in this room we have the storage bins and canisters for the artifacts we've uncovered. Most of them don't work though. The ones that do we put in the canisters." He pointed out a number of containers that were far neater, newer, and cleaner than anything else I'd seen yet. Intriguing. The bins were a horror show. Artifacts, from mundane power cells to memory units for computational devices to components to much larger devices, all thrown in a heap. Many were shattered, others blinked weakly in nearly undetectable spectrums. I made a mental note to come back to this room later.

We came to another cavern, smaller and rougher than the first, at the end of which rested the squat and imposing form of a small fusion core and beside it, a pan-and-tilt mounted mining laser. Possibilities...

"I'm sorry, I don't think I got your name. Miss Hartwell never did specify who was down here to meet us." The man nodded. "I'm Norman McCullough. The laser's down there."

"Any information you could give me on the problem?"

"Well, when we last tried to use it, the output beam oscillated along the electromagnetic spectrum. I have absolutely no idea why."

"If you had an idea, I wouldn't be down here to fix it." We crossed the chamber and I opened my toolkit. I considered killing him then and there but the plan relied on them using this laser again, not avoiding it like the plague. I reached under the tray and pulled out a few tools, then placed them on the console. None of them were tools to fix the laser.

Curiosity got the better of him. "What does that one do?" He pointed to a grooved cylinder with a small forest of protrusions at one end, a ring on the other, and a single button placed about two thirds of the way towards the forest. I picked it up, spun it around so the prongs faced him, and smashed it into his chest. Ten thousand volts of electric energy surged from pole to pole, its high frequency interfering with muscle control. A shocked look crossed his face a second before that too was consumed by spasms. I pulled it back and let his twitching body collapse on the floor.

"That."

---

Just go play the game and have fun dammit.

all in all the conclusion is that disco doesn't need antagonist factions, it doesn't need phantoms, it doesn't need nomads, it doesn't need coalition and it doesn't need many other things, no AIs, the game is hijacked by morons to confuse the game with their dickwaving generic competition games mixed up with troll-of-the-day.

[Boss]

Despite now being alone, time was still a concern. Myles had let me know he was done just a few moments before, and I began my task. I had the harder job. This wasn't to be a simple bomb.

I gathered a few of the more innocuous looking devices and disassembled them, extracting a small circuit board from several, a transceiver from one, and a power cell from another. Some of the tools actually operated as advertised, including a small soldering gun. This I used to construct the control unit and power routing controller. The toolbox also held several yards of cabling, which I ran between the main generator, the controller, and the transceiver. The soldering gun also served to open a conduit into which these went.

I put the control unit and power cells into the laser itself, replacing a suspiciously regularly scorched board. Once I had everything in place, sealed up, and looking almost exactly as it had before, I called Myles. "I'm done here. Give me a few seconds to wake McCullough and fabricate something he'll believe, then we'll demonstrate this one and get off this rock." He assented, and I bent over the prone form of the man.

I had to use the stun gun on him again, a lower setting this time, to get him to wake up. "Ungh...Wha...Whahitme?"

"Take it easy, Norm. You grabbed a charged conduit. I was able to get it off you before you got turned into a crispy critter, but you're going to be a bit disoriented for a bit still. Just relax and you should be alright. Is there a break room or something down here where I can set you up?"

"Um, yeah...This way." I got him to his feet and helped him back down the corridor.

---

Just go play the game and have fun dammit.

all in all the conclusion is that disco doesn't need antagonist factions, it doesn't need phantoms, it doesn't need nomads, it doesn't need coalition and it doesn't need many other things, no AIs, the game is hijacked by morons to confuse the game with their dickwaving generic competition games mixed up with troll-of-the-day.

[Ryummel]

Now, the second bomb was planted. I took a last look the mining laser, then I retraced the way back to the main room. Bingo, I came across Veronica, the technician. "Oh, Mr Esterbrook! Have you finished with the mining laser? I thought you would need the plasma cu-" I quickly answered her [color=#CCCCCC]"Don't worry, I managed to solve the situation, just a hardware malfunction in the laser systems. You can tell the miners to resume their work there."

Few minutes passed. I was in the main room, waiting for Jeff while a few grunts were glaring at me. This first part was so easy, that means the people who manages to enter this complex must be well-trusted, why such hostile attitude? Jeff contacted me again. "Myles, gonna need your help here, there's a few canisters full of artifacts... I guess we'd be able to carry several with us. Don't worry, I already dealt with McCullough. Hurry up, just take the other hallway."

Now there were three grumpy guys with rifles blocking that way. For a moment I thought about detonating the first bomb because that one was far away from the main room. That explosion would make collapse half the complex in five minutes, or less. I decided to give a try to my diplomatic skills. "Hello there, eh... I already fixed the mining laser in that hallway but my buddy needs an electronic spectrum-suppressor..." One of the grunts interrupted me before I could finish my 'creative' sentence. "Follow me." One of them replied. Only one remained guarding the hallway. Two minutes. Two minutes from the main chamber to the room where Jeff was. Piles of electronic devices and canisters were surrounding him. The grunt who was with me frowned, since Jeff was alone. "Where's Norman?" Shouted one of the grunts while approaching him. Jeff was smirking, perhaps waiting for my master-movement in order to solve this situation. I didn't hesitate, before the two grumpy guys could even aim their rifles at Jeff, I took my detonator and pushed the magic button.

As expected, a grave noise -which was raising its tone as seconds passed- was heard. The entire place started shaking. Those seconds were enough for both Jeff and me to break the necks of those two idiots who began to panic as they felt their imminent death underground. "Myles, take this canister, let me pull that one out of this pile of junk!" 20 seconds. 20 seconds passed until we began to run as fast as the weight of the canisters let us. Few miners were yelling and trying to reach the hallway which led to the exit of the complex. I saw the first hallways collapsing as soon as we arrived at the main chamber. "Time to detonate your bomb, buddy." I told Jeff when we were about to reach the entrance of the complex. This time, everybody felt a real earthquake. We reached the outer settlement. It was a chaos, people crawling on the ground while bleeding, others trying to give first aids... Nobody was noticing our presence in the middle of such chaos, so we moved to the shuttle.

"We're done over here, you've got green light to remove that rusty settlement." Those were the last words I heard before a gleam blinded me. Mission accomplished, huh? I felt sorry for that technician girl, I felt sorry for the 'necessary' sacrifices... Am I really willing to save the humankind through this way? Time will decide.

Two months later. Freeport 11, Omicron Delta.
"Don't worry, okay? I'll just return this Bastet and answer a couple of questions to my Order friends, I'm quite sure they'll be glad to see the annoying Myles Ewing again." I answered with a sarcastic tone in the last part of the sentence. "Take care buddy."

---

[Exile]

Planet New Berlin. Several weeks later.

Sprint. Jump. Sprint. Under. Dodge. Sprint. Under. Sprint. Rest. It all came so natural to me now. I was making my way through one of the more densely grown and less populated forests of nighttime New Berlin towards a drop off point for one of our usual "reclaimers" (it's not stealing if it belonged to you in the first place. We want our artifacts back, see.) Normally they'd send a new recruit to do this sort of thing, fetching artifacts from places known to be as secure as it gets, but alas. Bennet insisted that I go.


I had been taking orders directly from him for the past few weeks now, right after I went and saw Angela. Apparently he was the one to train me in the use of my new found tricks. Or "abilities" as Bennet called them. If he indeed was going to do just that then I'm guessing this training differs a lot from what I'm used to, basic Spectre training. He gave me a rather large set of simplistic tasks to perform. Fetch me this, riddle me that, kill that politician. Same old same old. But whether it was due to his influence or thanks to what happened to me whilst I was "out", during each of these tasks I'd find out new things about my abilities. Take two assignments back for instance. I was ordered to infiltrate a Corsair outpost on the Freeport up in Theta. Now, naturally those Zoners don't want your weapons on their station. So if it were to come to blows, I'd have to improvise. Improvise I did. They stopped me at the checkpoint as expected and scanned me for any weapons or explosives or anything that they might find interesting. The scans showed nothing, but one of the guards insisted on a "manual search". He grabbed my shoulder, but in stead of finishing his search, he ended up as a paste on the corridor wall. What? I only looked at the guy.

When I started this run (literally and figuratively) for the drop off point I wondered what would happen this time, but nothing extraordinary or "unusual" (heh, unusual.) had happened so far. Bennet did seem pretty keen on me doing this. "Either you get it, or Oblivion gets it" he said right before he waved his hand at me and turned around as if he wanted to say "Now shut up and go." Perhaps I did get a bit more.. Assertive. Or annoying. Regardless of what I wanted to do, this was my assignment. It took me several hours of running, leaping, jumping and stunting to get to the densely covered area of the forest and even then I'd have to go knocking on tree stumps in order to find a hollow one. Lovely job.

I could go into detail on how I spent hours and hours consulting the trees, asking them which stump was my stump, but in truth ; I just felt it. After almost four hours of constant free styling through the forest I was hit by a sense of familiarity. Bennet told me that might happen more often, and that I shouldn't ignore those feelings. I stopped at the edge of what seemed to be a less dense area of the woods. There were a few trees here and there, leaves covered the ground in a blanket of browns. Normally I would have stood still at the sight of such a thing. But for some reason, that too I no longer cared about. Quid pro quo, perhaps?

One of the trees on the opening had a, well, an opening! Right underneath the stump was a small area uncovered by leaves. Something glowed fiercely inside. I reached in and grabbed whatever was in there, which turned out to be a glass jar filled with some kind of small plant. The plant was lovely, sure. But what caught my eye was the second thing inside of the jar. A glowing light that moved through the jar, circling around the little plant. You'd expect the glass would feel cold to the touch, seeing as how nighttime New Berlin isn't exactly known for it's sun and beaches. The glass itself felt surprisingly warm though, and I'm guessing the little plant wasn't the cause of that.

---

[Exile]

Violent rhythms, primitive beats and pulses. The bass feeling and sounding like the war drums of a great army calling out for death and murder... I love clubs. The neon and lights flashing all over the rooms in complete synch with the music that seems to have intoxicated every person in it's grasp. I would never have dreamed off coming to such a place a few years ago, now I feel more at home surrounded by the crowds and beats than alone on my couch. It's strange what dying can do to you.

I was supposed to drop off the "seed", as they called it, back home, but the fun about being the prime Human agent (and don't think I don't know it) is that you can get away with some more things than the others. Like bending deadlines a bit. I rented a room in a small hotel in a place called Kurfürststadt not far from the main city. It was a decent enough place. Right on the outskirts of the capitol but mostly only ever used by cheap tourists or transport pilots catching some sleep before the long trip home. Aaannd... It was located only an hour ago from a rather well known club famous for it's high-quality cliëntelle and damn good music. Which, I must say, was rather convenient seeing as how Altair is not the most fun place to be for us "youngsters".

Tonight I felt was special. Don't ask me why, but I felt like coming home after decades of work. Hell, I even wore make up. Bright red lipstick to attract a bit of attention. Never hurts to make a few "connections". It was easily accessible via public transportation but I felt like something more.. Fancy. The bosses had given me spending money like they always do on each missions, never hurts, you know? But I hadn't used any of it this time. (Not a lot of spending to do on a pickup mission in the middle of a forest) couple'a thousand credits, plus some spare from previous assignments. So, what did I do? I hired a limo, that's what.

I never was big on dresses myself, so a fancy hoodie would do tonight. I felt like they weren't big on clothing restrictions in "Trensendance" (Which was the quite imaginative name of the club), don't know why, and just went.






The limo arrived precisely when I had asked it to, 8:19 RHGT. I hate being late ánd early, and for 1900 credits á night it should be here when I ask it to. The chauffeur was a real Jeaves, quite the stereotype. He asked for my desired time of arrival and, as before, we were precisely there when intended. When I asked him about how long he'd wait all he replied with was "as long as need be, madam." Taking what I can I politely smiled and got out. The Limo drove off into the distance and parked not far away from the club, thankfully. The entrance alone was.. Magnificent, I think the word is. I could already feel the bass penetrate my skin and bone all the way to my core and literary shake it all lose. The lights were flashing bright blue and white with two giant boulders of men guarding the door. One downside of these places though, is the giant lines in front of them.

I never was one for lines.

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