Episode 4: The Siege of Echo Valley

Started by HumanHyperbole, March 09, 2021, 03:24:47 PM

Izak Archer

July 12, 2021, 05:27:44 PM #20 Last Edit: July 12, 2021, 06:14:59 PM by Izak Archer
Izak was still standing next to Holger as everything went to hell in a hand basket. Smelling smoke, he ducked into the lab space and grabbed a miraculously full fire extinguisher. Coming back to the small room they would up in, he watch Breene half tumble, half-slide down the stairs.

Clearly some things never did change even after leaving the military.

It was one SNAFU after another on this job after another with this schmuck. He made high command seem competent. It was absurd. Now, they were in a burning building waiting to see if some other half baked plan would work.

Izak took a slow breath in, and slowly exhaled. That having not worked, with his free hand, he reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose, he then started counting quietly to himself.

"1...2...3...4...5...nope," Izak said with a sudden change in volume as his hand fell back from his face.  Izak walked over to Breene and swung the fire extinguisher at just the right height to break the client's nose. But only enough force to do just that. No need to leave him unconscious.

Holger Heyerdahl

July 13, 2021, 01:10:23 PM #21 Last Edit: July 13, 2021, 01:14:48 PM by Lomari
Halfway up the stairs, Holger was ordered back down. Without complaint, he turned and marched back down and was soon joined by the rest of the crew in varying states of war-torn distress. This was a familiar scenario to Holger. Trapped underground, enemy air support flying above, wounded comrades, the smell of smoke.

"Are you feeling Welsh today?"

Momentarily confused, Holger cocked his head. "Welsh, no William Breene, my ancestry hails from..." And then he got it and he smiled. "I understand, William Breene." He scanned the room and immediately found the oversize, cast iron chimney that supplied warmth to the whole house. It would be perfect. But before he could start turning it into a mighty explosive weapon, Izak seemed to let the stress of their battle get the better of him.

In the war, the Ginger Giant had seen more than his fair share of stress induced outbursts. A doctor such as Missy might have a more clinical name for it, but Holger knew it as shell-shock. It could manifest in many ways but anger and violence were certainly key indicators. Holger still had dreams sometimes, waking up in a cold sweat, forgetting that he had been safe from war for a long time now. As a Corporal he was partially responsible for overseeing morale. And these old instincts took over.

His affection for the handsome William Breene notwithstanding, Holger was in between Izak and the Irishman like a shot, one hand grabbing the fire extinguisher and ripping it from Izak's grasp. He leveled his other hand, finger outstretched into Izak's face. "No, Izak. We are all the same here." And before Izak could respond, Holger dropped the fire extinguisher on the floor and wrapped the navyman in a great, big bear hug. "It is alright, Izak. You are safe."

Releasing Izak after perhaps too long, Holger held him at arm's length and smiled. "Better. Now, you will load the chimney with shrapnel. Melody and William Breene will help. In the war, we used nails, glass, rocks, and our feces, but you will make do. Alan?" His voice boomed to the assistant, who seemed surprised Holger knew his name. "Do you have any explosives?"

Alan adjusted his glasses. "Oh, yes. We have something. You just need to add one thing to it before it's basically - oh my God I know what he meant by Welsh..." He emphatically shook his head. "You can't use the chimney as a cannon!"

Holger looked at Alan strangely. "Yes we can."
Dialogue Color - Orange

Missy Etheridge

Jo's silence was a bit worrying, Missy thought as she glanced up at him gazing vaguely around the room."Shock? Really?" she asked, briefly pausing her focus on his leg to lean up and check his pupils' size. "I thought you were supposed to be some kind of badass hacker pirate outlaw. Follow my finger." With this instruction, she began moving her finger slowly back and forth before his face.

Missy knew full well that no amount of badassery could hold off the effects of a sudden drop in blood pressure, but she kept talking while she turned her attention back to the bullet wound. If he really were going into shock, her voice would give him something to focus on. Dìyù, if he stayed annoyed at her, all the better. She had seen patients pull through far worse odds just out of sheer bloody spite before.

"This is barely anything, just a little extremity puncture." Missy found a large piece of shattered lab glassware within reach and a rag to wrap around one end, giving her a makeshift knife to help remove Jo's pant leg at the knee, then tear the fabric into strips she could use as bandages. "Didn't even come close to any important joints, the kind of wound that Holger probably wouldn't even notice." The scant amount of alcohol Izak found went to sanitizing a scavenged pair of calipers. "Never mind, I take that back; don't use Holger as an example. This won't hurt a bit," she lied cheerfully before using them to extract the bullet with ruthless efficiency.

With that done, Missy rinsed the wound as clean as she could get it with the bottled water and briskly wrapped the fabric strips around it, finishing everything up with the medical tape. "There. I don't think it hit bone, but I'll need to double-check it back at the ship and make sure you don't have any bone fragments floating around. For now, this should—"

Missy was interrupted by an almost literal explosion of the rest of the crew thundering back into the lab, one right after the other. She jumped to her feet to stand between Jo and the rest of the chaos, particularly making sure that Breene's dive down the stairs didn't launch him right into her patient.

"I think my tailbone is broken..." he whined.

"Too bad," Missy said sarcastically and with no sympathy whatsoever. "We only get one broken bone per mission, and Holger already used it. Speaking of which, will you finally let me see that finger?" she asked, rounding on the giant.

Before he could show her,  though, Izak apparently decided to test that one-broken-bone rule on Breene's nose. "Wángbādàn!" Missy shoved her sleeves up her elbows and advanced on Izak, but Holger's hug quite possibly saved the gunner's life. She settled for standing back and yelling at him instead. "Do I not have enough to do already, you ben tian sheng de yi dui rou?!"
Dialogue color: Cornflowerblue | 6495ED

Talk less. Smile more.
Never let them know what you're against or what you're for.

Joakim Soong

Shock. Jo remembered that from the first aid course. A person in shock must be kept warm. Do not give them liquids even if they ask for something to drink. That was fine. He wasn't thirsty anyway. Speaking of which, why couldn't they have taught them what to do if you're the one going into shock? What a waste of money.

Jo followed Missy's finger with his gaze when prompted. He continued to follow her hands as they got to work on his leg. He wished she didn't have to ruin his pants. He only had like two pairs to begin with. He hated shopping. Watching the prim and proper doctor with her manicured nails and flouncy hair get her hands all dirty and bloody like this felt like seeing her out of her element, but in reality, this was actually her element, wasn't it? Weird. She was better suited for this than he was. He may have chosen this life, but it had chosen her, like some kind of flouncy-haired elven warrior princess...

A sharp pang of pain cut through Jo's increasingly disjointed train of thought as Missy dug into his shin to retrieve the bullet. He grunted something that might have been a swear, but it was caught in his gritted teeth and tightly pressed lips. The pain was so intense it seemed to shake the very foundations of the house above them.

And then... then it wasn't that bad anymore. More of a dull ache. He could live with that. Wait, maybe that was bad. The edges of his field of vision were blurring. Uh oh. Yup, definitely bad. He needed to stay present, needed to ground himself somehow. Maybe listening to Missy's annoying voice would do the trick, but the doctor had stood up and was disappearing down a dark hallway that kept getting narrower and narrower around her until it had swallowed her up, and then everything went black.
Dialogue color: teal

Melody

First, Izak lost control.

Melody moved to grab him, but Holger got to him first. Probably for the best, really. She would have been less likely to give him a hug and pep talk. Her answer might have involved cuffs or zip ties and putting him in the corner until he could behave. In the Navy, when you were stuck on a small vessel, sometimes in shuttles meant for one, someone going off their rocker was incredibly dangerous and had to be dealt with swiftly and without mercy. Otherwise, the mission would fail and everyone else would fall with them. Of course, this wasn't the Navy, and Holger had more experience dealing with ground troops who'd gotten lost in the heat of battle, so she did nothing.

Then, Jo fainted.

Her move to rush to Izak shifted as she hurried to the techie's side, the Captain looking like she was trying to herd cats. A noise of overwhelmed frustration gurgled in her throat, her hands settling on Jo's shoulders to keep him from slumping too far to one side or the other.

Oh, and Holger was wounded?

Melody took a deep breath. Then another. And then a third. Why wasn't this helping? Her eyes closed tightly and she held her breath instead, listening to the pounding of her heart in her ears and letting that relax her. She let the air our on an exhale and looked around slowly. Melody still didn't know what the Welsh thing was about, but Alan seemed suddenly concerned about them using the chimney as a canon and she stopped trying to figure it out.

"I need a distraction so I can get to the ship. We just don't have enough fire power and lighting the house on fire was a real shiny idea but it wasn't an offensive attack and once the house burns down they'll just have to pick through the rubble, find us here with nowhere to go, and then fill us with holes. If I can get back to the ship, Izak and I can get the turrets going and get this stupid situation sorted. I can also try again to reach out to them on Revenge's comms. Can your 'use the chimney as a canon' idea get me to the ship? Between a canon and fire, I'm willing to make that run if you think it'll work," she said to the room, looking at Holger first, then Breene, and finally Izak.

Dialogue Color: Brown

William Breene

July 22, 2021, 09:14:36 AM #25 Last Edit: July 22, 2021, 09:21:13 AM by William Breene
*Crack*

At the moment the fire extinguisher made contact with his nose, Willy's brain became something of what he'd describe as "A shapeless blur of rage."

He felt his hand make contact with his holstered pistol as the blood started to stream down his face. Izak had definitely broken it though how badly, his brain hadn't even begun to process yet. Breene had shot up to his feet without realizing it, his hand was still resting on his holster.

What did Doctor Donner tell you to do in these situations? "Count to three, if you think you're actually in mortal danger, go ahead and start killing people or whatever it is you do for a living."

One. Two. Three.

William looked around, Holger had calmed Izak down, Mel looked like her blood pressure could pump a baseball through a garden hose, and Jo was having the best time out of all of them and was passing out. His hand came up off of his pistol finally.

"I need a distraction so I can get to the ship. We just don't have enough firepower and lighting the house on fire was a real shiny idea but it wasn't an offensive attack and once the house burns down they'll just have to pick through the rubble, find us here with nowhere to go, and then fill us with holes. If I can get back to the ship, Izak and I can get the turrets going and get this stupid situation sorted. I can also try again to reach out to them on Revenge's comms. Can your 'use the chimney as a canon' idea get me to the ship? Between a canon and fire, I'm willing to make that run if you think it'll work,"

Breene knew the doctor was busy. Using both hands, he set the chunk of cartilage in his nose back into place. More blood poured out and he somewhat futilely tried to stem it, pulling up his shirt as an impromptu bandage.

"Hóuzi húndàn!"

Willy could help with a distraction. He was born to distract.

"If they have the right chemicals in there, we can turn this Welsh Cannon into fireworks."

He jogged, holding his shirt up to his face, over to the locked cabinet they'd opened. Rifling through he discarded several and threw them behind him to get them out of the way. One split open and started eating into the floor. He looked back, shrugged, then saw the two jars he needed.

Through his shirt he asked the man who'd just tried to break his face minutes ago for help.

"Ithak canf yu halp meh pack a cannon round inta ths cofvee canisther?"

Breene offered him a symbolic olive branch for now. But he was smirking under his bloody t-shirt pressed against his face. He'd get the purple belly back later. Hopefully, he could understand him, the blood-soaked t-shirt held against his face was making Breene's speech increasingly muffled.

Izak Archer

Holger sent the extinguisher flying and grabbed Izak while Missy started yelling. After standing there for a moment awkwardly bear hugged Izak cleared his throat as Holger let him go. Perhapx they all had a point. His temper had been getting the better of him today...

Or more like the whole job thus far. But that was neither here nor there.

"Alright, alright, no maiming the client," Izak said with a sigh with his hands up in the air in mock surrender. He stood their and listened to the plan. It was a gorram crazy as everything, else they had encountered that day, so he was not in a place to object – not after snapping on their semi-moronic client.

Izak took a brief look around the room. "Shiny, let's blow up some morons." Without another word he followed Breene into the next room so they could get to work. He nodded when he asked for his help. Before he took the canister though he held up his index finger and then reached into his back pocket. He pulled out a cloth napkin from breakfast that he grabbed but never used.

"This will do better than your shirt while we start. You can knock me onto my backside later. I know its a moot point but, I'm sure the boss would find it entertaining. Well, that and from one fella with a short fuse to another I'd say I deserve it."

HumanHyperbole

Working together, Breene and Archer were able to improvise a cartridge for the cannon. A fistful of the chemicals the deceased professor had been using for synthesizing his drugs would create a sparkling display in the air, sealed inside a mound of mud from the dirt floor. Smoke began to overwhelm the room just as they completed the cannon round.

The guest star quickly, and surprisingly volunteered to provide near-suicidal covering fire.

"You guys go for the ship! I'll handle the Russos."

Before Holger could volunteer to help his new handsome friend, the crook pointed at the injured Jo, who wouldn't be able to get himself to safety. They exchanged grave, knowing nods. The Revenge crew readied themselves by the stairs. The fire had spread and they'd have to hold their breath and run through the torrent of heat and smoke to the total uncertainty and certain danger raining down from the sky. An impromptu fuse was made from explosive chemicals left in a trail up the stairs behind them, it would only take a moment for the fire to reach the trail and set off the Welsh Cannon.

"Three... two... Nobody get mad, I called the cops! Let's go!!!

Acting as if "Nobody get mad, I called the cops." was Irish for "one" Willy bolted. Shrieking and yelling as he burst through a burning door with his metal arm, he ran off in the opposite direction of the Revenge. He fired the last magazine for one of his pistols into the air as he sprinted across the open field. The other Pirates made it through the smoke and the flame relatively intact, but bullets from Yank and Valiente's shuttle started peppering the ground near them.

Breene found himself freezing out in the open as the professor had. History repeating itself he pointed his weapon impotently at the shuttle. He fired one round in futility before the hammer struck an empty chamber.

"C'mon you upscale psychopaths!!! Nǐ xiǎng yào yīxiē ma? Wǒ zhè li yǒu dōngxī gěi nǐ!"

Breene then unbuckled his belt, pulled down his underpants, and aimed his pale, but well crafted by many squats, posterior at the mercenaries' shuttle.

"Bié gàosù wǒ nǐ bù ài tā!"

Inside the shuttle, finally able to stop laughing, Valiente shifted the ship's turrets to Breene as their primary target. The Revenge crew was *mostly* in the clear. The sky was filled with black smoke, and fleeing auto-gryos. One crashed in the distance as Melody's foot hit the metal ramp of her beloved vessel. And then just as anyone might have started to wonder if the Welsh cannon was going to work:

HISSSSSSSSSSSS

The chemical fuse went all at once in a fiery rush, lighting up the entire basement.

BANG

The round shot up into the air and exploded about 10 meters above the burning cabin, the concussion of the blast knocking the shuttle slightly off course it sprayed its cannon rounds randomly into the air as the ethically unencumbered sellswords tried to regain control of their ship. Inside, the Revenge's proximity alert was beeping up a storm. Its radar system was struggling to track all the improvised helicopters but was having no trouble registering the "Friendly" IFF of the fellow Alliance vehicle that just penetrated the planet's atmosphere.

The communications system blinked to life, a notification blinking in bolded text:

HAIL INCOMING:: ALLIANCE MARSHAL SERVICE - HMS WYATT

Breene's cops were going to arrive any second, but his own fate was unclear to the Revenge as they clamored into the ship. Yank and Valiente's bullets now ricocheted off Revenge's hull. They weren't about to risk hull breach but the turrets were strong enough to disable Revenge's weaponry. The crew only had seconds to act. Fight, or just hit the gas and leave Breene, and their payment behind to an uncertain fate.

Melody

Melody had flittered between helping Breene and co with the explosive setup, and staying positioned between Missy, Jo, and the smoking entryway back up into the house.

"You guys go for the ship! I'll handle the Russos," Breene instructed. She did not care what he'd be doing and had mostly already forgotten who the Russos were. The bulk of her mental synapses were focused on getting her crew back into the ship and getting out of here. And then getting paid. At mostly the same time that Breene was gesturing toward Jo, Melody was nudging Holger and gesturing toward the downed techie, both of them having the same idea. "You grab him and I'll shepherd everyone else between us to the ship," she told him, nodding and frowning up at the giant.

"Three... two... Nobody get mad, I called the cops! Let's go!!!"

"Oh, gorramit," she cursed, reaching down to grab Missy's upper arm and then the back of Alex/Alan's shirt, she waited for Holger to grab Jo before shoving them along behind the brute of a man, staying in the back to make sure no one could grab her people from behind. "Off we go, left foot, right foot, stay close to Holger, that's it," she encouraged gruffly, her expression tight and severe.

When they'd cleared the burning building, one hand over her mouth and her eyes narrowed, she pulled the two non combatants to a halt as the bullets peppered the ground by their feet. She contemplated shoving them back inside, which was still on fire and not the best plan. However, Breene's quick 'thinking' and diversionary tactics tossed that clean out of her mind. "Okay, hup hup, keep going," she shouted to them over the sound of the shuttle, flames, and the gyro machines.

Pushing the group up the ramp, she only released Missy and Alex/Adam/Alan when they'd rounded the corner and gotten out of the line of fire. She stumbled as the 'canon' went off, but righted herself and carried on. "Holger! Take Jo to the med-bay, Missy, you head that way too. Once you're done with that, Holger, see about getting the weapons from the armory and helping direct Breene back to the ship, if he's alive. Izak, see if you can get on the turrets and get any of them working, I need a diagnostic on the state of our weaponry! Jo, run a check on... oh wait, yeah, uh... as you were!" she ordered before turning and heading up to the bridge.

Melody's hands ran over the console with the ease gained from years of practice and no  small measure of a natural affinity for ships. She closed the main cargo doors but opened the smaller hatch on the underbelly for Breene to come through if he wasn't swiss cheese, a red light flashing by the small entrance for him to see. The ship grumbled and then roared to life as she powered it on, disgust registering across her face at the chaos of the ship's proximity sensors.

A beeping and blinking at the comms caught her eye and she grimaced. He hadn't been kidding about calling the cops...

HAIL INCOMING:: ALLIANCE MARSHAL SERVICE - HMS WYATT

"Uhm...Maybe if I just ignore that no one will notice..." she muttered to herself before leaning forward to accept the hail, her knuckle flipping the switch to turn on the video feed. "Marshal," she greeted dryly, ignoring the explosions and chaos that was very likely coming across the call, "Captain of the Revenge, Mel, speaking. To what do we owe the pleasure of this hail?" she added, frowning deeply at the screen and the person on the other side.
Dialogue Color: Brown

Holger Heyerdahl

Holger's cheek rested against Jo's as the hacker was draped unceremoniously over the giant's shoulder. He nodded to Melody at his instructions, knowing that a good soldier didn't ask questions; they got the job done. And in this case, his job was to drop Jo off as quickly as possible so he could start shooting the people who were shooting at his crew. Missy hot on his heels, Holger barreled through the innards of the Revenge and finally to a room he knew all too well. Sort of. The majority of the time he had spent here was a bit of a fog.

He turned, Jo's legs knocking supplies off of a nearby shelf as he did, and looked at Melody. "Where?" He turned again, Jo's arms flailing and doing their own bit of collateral damage to Missy's organization. "Here?" Holger decided here was better than there and dropped Jo onto a bed with very little grace. "He is a soldier now. You are a soldier now. Welcome to the Resistance." He smiled broadly, grabbed Missy by the shoulders, and for a split second it may have seemed he might kiss her if it weren't Holger doing the holding. But instead he forcibly moved her out of his way and he was gone, back into the passageway to find some weapons to kill some people with.

Moments Later...

Holger stared at the rack of weapons in the armory, trying to pick his poison. He knew a situation like this called for something special as his eyes fell on the glass case marked Prototype - Use Caution.

Holger smiled.

Moments Later... Again...

Blood dripped down from his hand as he locked a magazine of slugs into the Geneva, a suitably heavy automatic shotgun. Holger loved the feel of it in his hands and smiled proudly as he hefted it for Melody to see. "Look what I found, Melody!" He saw that she was on a call, and moved on to give her space.

Descending the ramp, he readied the weapon and spoke, though he was not close enough for anyone to hear him, let alone his target: the shuttle. "I do not know who you are or why you shoot at us. You shoot at me. I will kill you. You shoot at my crew. I will kill you. You shoot at the strange Doctor August? I do not care so much. But, you shoot at William Breene?" Holger leveled the weapon and pointed it at the shuttle as it righted itself from the concussion of their Welsh Cannon. "I do not know who you are, and now I never will."

He opened fire.
Dialogue Color - Orange

Joakim Soong

The first thing Jo registered when he came to was that his face was pressed against Holger; he recognized the smell from that dreadful morning they'd woken up in their hangover pile, and for a second he wondered if he'd somehow repeated the mistake of getting hammered with him despite promising himself he'd never do it again. Then his legs made contact with something, quite violently, sending a jolt through his system and alerting him to the throbbing pain in his shin. It all came rushing back to him -- well, to but it more accurately, hazy, disjointed pieces slowly emerged from the depths of his cloudy mind. He was mostly concerned with the fact that he was being carried around like a sack of grain.

Actually, a sack of grain might get treated with more care.

"I can walk," he lied and patted Holger's shoulder... at least that was what he wanted to do. In reality, his declaration came out as a muffled, unintelligible groan, and his arm merely twitched a little before going limp again.

Finally, Holger put Jo down, less gently than he'd have preferred -- but he was just grateful to be horizontal and static.

"Did we win?" he asked Missy once the giant had given his pep talk and left the room. His bodily faculties were quickly returning online, including his voice and, regrettably, ability to feel pain, but his head still felt fuzzy.
Dialogue color: teal

Missy Etheridge

September 22, 2021, 10:16:08 AM #31 Last Edit: September 22, 2021, 10:19:00 AM by Missy Etheridge
As ever-increasing smoke poured out of the building behind them and a sharp tug on Missy's arm made her stumble to a halt just in time to avoid her own shin getting shot, Missy made the grudging decision to forgive Melody for manhandling her. This once. Maybe.

She was gracious that way.

Following that up with the decision to order Missy into the medbay as if she couldn't figure that out for her own gorram self put the captain on very thin ice, but there were bigger things to worry about at the moment. Like getting to the medbay, for instance.

Hot on Holger's heels, Missy had to duck the moment she entered her home base lest she get clocked in the face by a flying Jo-foot. A box of disposable scalpels took the blow for her instead and scattered its contents across the floor.

"Mister Holger, would you—" Missy's demand broke off as she was forced to duck again, this time from a shower of saline capsules that went flying across the room thanks to Jo's limp hand.

"Where?"

"Would you KINDLY—" There was nothing kind about Missy's tone.

"Here?"

She heard glass of indeterminate origin shatter somewhere in the medbay, and a dozen rolls of gauze bounced merrily across the floor in different directions.

"PUT the patient down and leave, Mr. Holger," she finally roared at a surprising volume for her small frame, pointing a trembling finger at the door. "Preferably without doing any MORE damage to him or my office!"

Jo landed on the bed with a painful-sounding thunk. When Holger took her by the shoulders, she stared up – very far up – into his smiling face with her jaw and fists clenched, breathing hard through her nose and wearing an expression more often seen on angry bulls in old Earth-That-Was cartoons. For the second time in ten minutes, she was forcibly moved over, and then a strangled shriek and a roll of gauze both bounced harmlessly off Holger's back as he disappeared across the threshold. It was dubious whether he would even notice the blow but should have counted himself lucky that Missy's furiously grasping hand had found the gauze before she flung a scalpel or whatever glass had broken after him instead.

There was a bleary noise from the bed, and Missy's face changed in an instant as she popped up at Jo's bedside, the angry-bull expression morphing into a cheery smile and scrunched-up nose.

"Did we win?" he asked.

"Yep, probably!" Missy had no idea what the win condition of this little adventure was and frankly didn't care, but she rather doubted it could be counted as a victory. Still, nobody had died – well, nobody on the crew, anyway – so that was close enough to a win for patient-soothing purposes. "Everything is super," she assured Jo.
Dialogue color: Cornflowerblue | 6495ED

Talk less. Smile more.
Never let them know what you're against or what you're for.

Izak Archer

Following the rest of the crew out of the burning building, Izak caught the impact of the round on the shuttle in his peripheral vision. He started laughing so hard he began cackling.

"Well how do you like that, it worked!" He then doubled timed it the rest of the way to the ramp.  Patting his pockets quickly he ducked inside and headed up to the bridge darting past the others and following Melody up. He presumed Jo would be okay, so long as Holger did not toss him like a sack into the medical bay. His excited footsteps followed him into the bridge. Ship-to-ship combat was more his forte after all, and that shuttle was the perfect opportunity to try out the defense systems. Getting to the bridge he half slid, half dropped into his seat, which worked well...

...save for the dull thud as he collided with the corner of the console groin first. He winced as he thudded into his seat and started working to get the weapons online.

"Well, that's Karma," he said to himself as he slumped over.

Then the marshal joined the party. Izak made one choice. Keep working and stay quiet. His moment of embarrassment was disrupted by Holger appearing with the prototype shotgun. Giving the bearded crazy uncle of the revenge a thumbs up, he was just glad someone could use the gorram thing. Now it was just a hurry up and wait game while Melody sorted things out with the marshal.

HumanHyperbole

October 08, 2021, 01:03:02 PM #33 Last Edit: October 08, 2021, 01:07:42 PM by noseatbelts
Smiling back at Mel on the other side of the vid-screen was Noah MacArthur.

"Good afternoon, Captain. I heard a rumor there was something of a 'kerfuffle' as our mutual associate put it. I think he might have undersold it. What are you lot up to mucking about with the Russo's and half this planet?"

He looked at his radar screen quizzically for a moment.

"What are those? Helicopters? Crickey you've got a steampunk militia up your arses don't you?"

============
MEANWHILE....

At that moment the Russo's managed to get control of their shuttle after being destabilized by the canon shot, an entire magazine-load of deer-slugs peppered the vessel.

Yank spat out his cigar and eyed the shuttle's optical suite. He popped his sunglasses off in exclamation.

"Gorram this dude, he got a Gennie?"

"Gennie" was the nickname for the experimental weapon the Russos themselves had been coveting: The Geneva. As soon as it hit the black market, they'd been bidding and burying to get their hands on as many as they could. A handheld automatic shotgun, with the right rounds a man on the ground could feasibly threaten small aircraft. Of the type, both he and Valiente were currently occupying.

From Holger's perspective, he could see their orbital booster starting to fire up. They were going to try a "Crazy Ivan". If they pulled it off they'd burn their fuel in the atmosphere to create an explosion that would take out anyone on the ground and at least cripple Revenge and the Wyatt and rocket their shuttle back into space.

===========
Back to Mel's conversation:

Just offscreen, another accented voice chimed in. His wasn't New Melbourne, rather somebody from the core.

"Crazy Ivan!"

The Alliance vessel's advanced scanner's detected the shuttle's engine charging up for the escape maneuver. The handsome law-man apologized to his fellow Captain.

"Bear with me for a moment..."

He grabbed on with both hands to handles above his head. The Wyatt accelerated at the shuttle like a shot from a gun, it seemed the ship's pilot was ready for such a maneuver.

"BRACE!"

The Wyatt rammed straight into the shuttle, sending it careening off in a trail of smoke. The Wyatt spun around, recovering control quickly, and deftly before orbiting back around to where it had been previously hovering. The Russo's shuttle limped away for a moment, leaving a thick trail of black smoke, before hitting the vast empty plains between them and the mountains. A small plume of smoke puffed up into the air with little fanfare.

"Well now that's out of the way we can finally have a conversation, Captain. Where's my confidential informant?"

Melody

"Good afternoon, Captain. I heard a rumor there was something of a 'kerfuffle' as our mutual associate put it... What are those? Helicopters?" Melody shrugged. She wasn't up to date on what the townsfolk were calling their rickety sky cages.

"Look what I found, Melody!" The Captain turned her head to look at where Holger was in the doorway, her gaze lowering from the giant's face to the giant's gun. She nodded a little and watched him totter off, eager to find some violence.

"Crickey you've got a steampunk militia up your arses don't you?" Turning back to the screen, she shrugged again, her jaw clenched tightly and her brows furrowed. He still hadn't really gotten to the point of the call, yet. She figured he was who Breene meant when he said he'd called the cops, but she was also sitting in a stolen Alliance vessel and wasn't sure if this was them getting pinched while also being under attack. She hoped the scrub job Jo did on the vessel would keep them out of the hot seat.

There was an explosion from outside the ship somewhere and Mel looked out through the front view ports, simultaneously checking their proximity sensors and grinding her teeth. She didn't think that was their ship and there were no alerts sounding on the console, so it must have been whatever Holger had run off to do.

"Bear with me for a moment...BRACE!" Splitting her attention between the man on the screen, the view from out the ship's windows, and the sensors laid out before her, Melody watched them ram their ship into the attacking shuttle. The crease in the center of her brows smoothed out and her shoulders relaxed by a full inch. She stood up and leaned over the helm, watching the enemy ship limp off and crash somewhere in the distance. "Hmm," Mel muttered in muted appreciation.

"Well now that's out of the way we can finally have a conversation, Captain. Where's my confidential informant?" Mel sat back down with a heavy puff of air, her arms crossing over her chest before one hand rose to rub over her face.

"I'm assuming Breene is said 'confidential informant'," she wagered, her face still covered, fingers now pinching the bridge of her nose. "Well, we got options. Could be he's outside, turned to soup, or he's heading back into the ship and will be up on the bridge to annoy me any moment now," she told him, craning her head to look at Jo's station behind her and the security camera feeds.

She'd left the bottom hatch open for Breene to sneak in, so she checked that feed first. Then she eyed the cargo ramp feed where she could see Holger at the end of the ramp looking mighty pleased with himself. "Don't think you really answered my question. To what do we owe the pleasure of your appearance? Didn't think the welfare of confidential informants was this important, for a Marshal to show up and..." she gestured vaguely at the situation, eyeing him again through the screen.
Dialogue Color: Brown

Holger Heyerdahl

Holger's smile turned upside down as he saw his new pet weapon seemed ineffective against the enemy shuttle. As he watched them right themselves from his attack, their engines glowing brightly, he said aloud, "I wish I had a bazooka." He knew nothing about ships and piloting, only that this one was pesky and annoying and it was a shame that he had not shot them down. But then, another ship swooped in to save the day, and this time, it seemed as though it worked. Holger didn't know who this ship was either, friend or foe, and he wished again for a rocket launcher to be sure, and cursed his lack of a spare drum for his new toy. "Or even a rocket propelled grenade. It would not need to be fancy."

The Wyatt, though he didn't know to call it that, knocked Yank and Valiente, though he did not know those were their names, out of the sky and into the nearby snow covered field. Shrapnel and sparks from the collision landed precariously close to Holger, though he did little to get out of the way. If this Moon saw fit to end him today, then he would accept her decision. Who was he to argue with a Moon? But now, Holger believed that this new ship was a friend, so he did not find himself concerned with them any longer. He pulled his rather large knife from his belt and began walking toward the crashed Russo ship, eager to finish the job.

And then a thought occurred to him. "William Breene?" He said, calling above the engines of the Wyatt. His pace quickened with his pulse as Holger realized that he had not seen his new friend in some time. "William Breene!" He scanned the area where he had last seen the handsome man and feared the worst. His eyes darted back to the crash site, his priorities torn between love and war. "Williaaaaaam Breeeeeeeene!"
Dialogue Color - Orange

William Breene

November 01, 2021, 04:20:06 PM #36 Last Edit: November 01, 2021, 04:22:54 PM by William Breene
This is it. I am dead. And this is my hell.

It was the horrid smell of chemical fire. William was close enough he could still feel the heat. It was that heat and the sulfurous, smokey aroma, and immediate searing pain in his ass. Surely this was hell, and the devil had gotten to work with his torture straight away. Even after a ride on Charon's ferry his posterior was not catching a break.

Then some freak notion entered his mind: to open his eyes and take a look at his personal tribulation. The light rushed in, as it would in hell. But then as the world slowly came into focus, it didn't look quite like hell. Nope. Still Dangun.

"Shit!"

His ass was actually on fire. Willy Breene shot up onto his feet despite the likely injury to his tailbone from before, and frantically tried to take off his pants as he ran at full speed around the firey crater that once was his friend's cabin, and past his corpse, and the flame-haired Viking-looking man.

"Medic!"

He stopped hopping out of his smoldering pants and stopped in the threshold of the ship, now clasping his previously mentioned hind section. The eldest William Breene noticed that while his tailbone still hurt like hell, and it felt like he might have a minor burn, beyond the singed boxer-briefs and the broken nose, he was fine. Breene laughed immediately, realizing his error.

"Oh man... that's mostly a false alarm..."

Willy Breene being himself, he pondered how to get somebody besides Holger to help him to moisturize this fresh wound. Hearing the Wyatt's landing jets kicking on, the Celtic Corsair immediately sucked in air through his teeth.

"Ahhh... Mel's gonna punch me again..."

Now wasn't the time for mending his butt when his nose was probably about to be further broken. As Willy sprinted for the cockpit, unencumbered by pants or roughly forty percent of his boxer-briefs, said pants lay on the cargo-ramp, burning. A spark popped and fizzed as the incendiary round used up the last of its fuel. The guest-star's life, or at least his butt being saved by the extra Guidance Chip he'd had sewn into the back pocket.

Joakim Soong

November 08, 2021, 08:29:53 AM #37 Last Edit: November 08, 2021, 09:26:54 AM by Joakim Soong
Location: Med Bay

The ruthlessly efficient side of Missy that Jo had caught a glimpse of in the basement was gone, and she was quickly reverting back to her usual chirpy uncanny valley mode. It was a shame. Jo had kind of liked the other Missy... well, relatively speaking. 'Preferred' was perhaps the more accurate word.

"Yep, probably! Everything is super."

"Go team." He had regained enough strength and feeling in his limbs to accompany his sardonic reply with a listless little fist pump before his hand fell and rested on his chest. He shifted uncomfortably on the bed and braved a peek at his injured leg. He couldn't make out much from this angle, which was probably a good thing.

"How bad is it?" He tried not to sound concerned, but anxiety was beginning to creep in now that he was out of direct harm's way.
Dialogue color: teal

Izak Archer

Izak spent his next few moments in the cockpit running through the checklist of items to get the weapons systems on the ship active. It was nice being a gunnery team of one – he only had to monitor himself. Of course it did have its downsides as well.

Better still was the automation of the ship's point defense system. Press a button and watch any threat disappear. It was brilliantly efficient when used properly, but outright dangerous when left alone.

The only thing that grabbed his attention was when he heard the word "Brace" from Mel's call. Watching from his seat, he watched as the marshal grounded the offending shuttle.

"Hmph, not bad," he mused quietly to himself. Clearly the marshal did not screw around. That aside, it did not sound like Mel was going to get straight answers.  But given what just transpired Izak stopped going through his weapon checklist. No reason from them to get shot at or rammed. Or accidentally shoot someone.

HumanHyperbole

November 24, 2021, 03:38:41 PM #39 Last Edit: November 24, 2021, 03:53:39 PM by HumanHyperbole
"I'm assuming Breene is said 'confidential informant',"

Noah smiled knowingly but shrugged in a terribly feigned denial of such a notion.

"Well, we got options. Could be he's outside, turned to soup, or he's heading back into the ship and will and will be up on the bridge to annoy me any moment now."

The busy Marshal looked at his watch. They seemingly had places to be and the Fed had a couple of spinning plates to keep in the air. Metaphorically speaking.

"Don't think you really answered my question. To what do we owe the pleasure of your appearance? Didn't think the welfare of confidential informants was this important, for a Marshal to show up and..."

"I know you're going to hate this response but that information is related to one or more open investigations and disclosing the nature of any operations or even commenting on their existence could... gorram it you know what I mean. He's a sneaky little shit but..."

Speak of the devil. And he will arrive. Seeing the pantsless Breene arrive behind Mel in the cockpit he tried to pivot quickly.

"Anyway, Breene, I was telling the Captain here what a sneaky little bugger you are. I'd say it's great to see you're okay but I was hoping they'd get another one of your limbs."

Maybe not pivot, but rather just pivot, then directly insult. MacArthur turned his attention back to the Captain of the Revenge.

"I've dispatched a few of my subordinates to help clean up, but only in a euphemistic sense. We, unfortunately, don't have the time to break out the dustpan, nor for me to dispense with too much fèihuà... I'm going to overlook the origins of your ship for now. Just keep an eye on Breene for me for a bit."

The self-identifying Irishman winced, then tried to force a smile, turning to his prospective new Captain. Pantsless, injured, bleeding from the face and ass, he tried to lay on the charm through his toothy grin.

***********
MEANWHILE....

Valiente limped away from the wreckage of a burning building. It was hard to tell amongst all the twisted and burning metal where the shuttle he emerged from began, and all the destroyed equipment and tools ended. He spotted a shape coming towards him, silhouetted against the lights of the distant ships and the fading sunlight.

"Ay! Hold it there! Wait, never mind, get your ass over here!! Was that your shop? I'd apologize for your predicament but I need somebody to get my boat sailin' QUICK."

The burning wreck behind him made the sanity of such a question immediately troublesome. But the problem of insanity is trouble reserved for resolution by the sane. Today the man faced with an insane demand as he stood before the burning rubble of his livelihood was one Ick Rosewater. The gun Valiente had pointed at him was named "Silvia", but who asks for a gun's name?

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