Previous Next

For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)

Posted on Mon Oct 22nd, 2018 @ 6:59pm by Lieutenant Seregon French & Lieutenant Samuel Clemens XV & Chief Petty Officer Jonas Kader & Lieutenant Alex Sexton & Baroness 2nd Class Schwein von Alcott
Edited on on Tue Oct 23rd, 2018 @ 12:25am

Mission: Hera v Hera
Location: Arrow-class Runabout USS Selune, enroute to Meroset 347, under Blackout Protocols
Timeline: 2395, Enroute to TARGET: HERA! | Intel Operations

As he adjusted the tungsten/rhenium garrote-mount hardpoints on his bracers, the Chief muttered a quiet voice command into his suit-mic, authorizing some background music to start at a low volume level, as he spoke up louder, addressing his crew.

{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKhTk0IynHM}

"Awright, y'all. Lissen up," he drawled, while carefully loading thermic lances into his forearm storage.

"Ah've bin sus'pect'n foah a bit that this Hera gal has gotten herself sum bad intel, pointin' at us an' uhthuh so-cawld lessuh rayces as some sorta ill-begotten bahstu'ds frum this Zeeyews hoahndawg. At this poyn't, we're tuh opuhrayte on thuh assump'shun that she kin be reason'd-with." He activated a control on his gauntlet that popped-out barely-noticeable blades, which had an odd shimmery look to them, along the ouseeter edges of his forearms, then popped them back in with the same control.
"...but make noh m'stake. She eithuh tawks with us, owah she gets huh nethuh's kick'd until she tawks with us, owah she nevuh tawks again."

"Owuh jawb, then, is tah knock th'evuh-livin' hey'ul outta th'powah soahces that make huh light up, while acceptin' that huh minyunz may owah may nawt be az crazeh az she is. This means we do *NAWT* engage 'em if'n we kin evade 'em, an' if'n we can't, we'uh t'try ta 'void doin' perm'nunt hahm to 'em, in case she flips. We jus' may fin owahsel'vs wuhkin' 'longside 'em laytuh."

He made a funny, deliberate twisting motion with his right gauntlet, and it crackled with what looked to be high-voltage charge, then shut it off.

"When d'stroyin' bits'n'pieces uv 'quipment, yer all t'deep-scan 'em b'forehand. We'll have touch-raynge loc'l mesh netwuhk foah each uv'owah suits, with as high an' encryp'shun level as we p'sess. when y'see 'nuthuh team membuh, tag'em wheah'evuh y'can, t'sync up, so owah daytuh has a highuh' chance uv gettin' out an'back t'th'ship durin' ex-fihl."

The Intel-gineer looked around at his crew, as he finished loading the last of several racks of grenades of differing types. "Enneh qwes'shuns?"

The Baroness Schwein von Alcott, dressed in her blue and silver piratical war gear that marked her a member of the Artans rather than the MACO gear of the rest, waved a hand. "Ja. I do not think they will give us quarter so if they will not offer it to us, why should we offer it to them?" The Baroness wasn't too keen on holding back in combat - she'd seen far too many people die from hesitation. She was also one of the only ones aboard that had already faced Hera's minions and survived.

The bushy engineer half-bowed, and nodded in acknowledgement of the Baroness' obvious combat experience in general, and especially her specific experience with Hera's elite troops.

"Usualleh, yu'd be right as rayn, Barohn-ess. An' fuh shuh, we shud'n't give Lyootehn'nunts n' above a lotta slack- they know whut they signed up fuh. But fuh ground troops, gahds, an' wuhkuhs, best t'let 'em run, if'n we can, as long as theah not tryin' t'kill us. Most of 'em ain't ek'zacktleh willin' combaht'n'ts. Ennah r'bellyun in huh ranks'll be watchin' t'see if'n weah th'mohnstuhs Hera's told 'em we ah," he noted, as finished loading the last of the tungsten/rhenium-edged throwing daggers into his woven tungsten/rhenium bandolier. Thex had made good on her promise to integrate the substance into their gear as much as possible. He'd considered having her make him a tungsten/rhenium "straw" hat to go with his tungsten/rhenium string tie cum garrote.

Schwein nodded. She thought she caught most of that - his accent was hard for her to get through with her own Germanic accent but it sounded pretty close to her own pirate code. Kill the combatants and leave everyone else alone.

The tactical teams all seemed comfortable with their recently modified weaponry, even Chief Kader had to admired the intimacy of such a barbaric means to end someone's or something's life. Still, he'd do his part, with no joy if it came to it.

French looked at Alex with a bit of concern in her eyes. Alex returned the look that said go with the flow. As he tug his gloves on and adjusted his gear. That familiar look on his face told French all she needed to know. He was ready for whatever and funnily enough, that made French's confidence rise. This was the first mission she had been on since her last undercover mission two years earlier. As she strapped on her last power pack for her phaser rifle, she walked over to the tactical station on the shuttle, and tapped in a message to all the security personnel on this mission. It simply read, {Stay alive and keep your principals safe.} She walked back over to where Alex stood and gave him a nod that she was ready. "When we deploy, I'd like to be on point." she said loud enough for the team to hear her. Alex sounded off with, "...and I'll be right behind her." Giving his rubber stamp to the proceedings.

The 'red-shirts' all acknowledged the commands from the senior officers as Chief Kader singled them all to activate their tactical recording devices with a single motion of his hand.

As he finished up his tactical gear, and verified his sciences tricorder with the upgraded sensor pack and range boosters was fully-charged, the Mission Commander heard French's almost-giddy-sounding request, followed by a "me, too!" and paused.

"Ah want y'all t'unnerstand sumpin, heah. This mishun isn't sum sorta weekend getaway. It's sereyus, an' dang'rous, an' is lik'ley t'be deadleh to some of yuh. That some'll turn intuh lots moah, if we go in theah thinkin' weah just gonna stomp all ovah 'em an' win with owah Soo-PEER-E-yuh STAH-fleet Stuff," he laid out, gesturing to all the pretty playthings kitted out throughout the cabin.

"THIS. SHIT. IS. SEER-E-YUS. We don' watch out, we take things fer granted, we fuhget whut th'stakes ah, its ovuh. Y'all wanna spend ee-TER-nitteh as a pigeon stoop?? Oah a twisted THING, that ain't got a mouth, but has-ta scream??" He roared, a bit, reminiscent of the Intel Briefing, earlier. "TIGHT'N IT UP. Don't kill unless ya hafta, an' keep y'selves alive'n'useful!"

He went back to checking his armor seals and added, "Helm! Get owah asses down theah. Weah runnin' outta tahm."

The Baroness slid into the pilot's seat and readied the runabout for launch. "Almost mission time ladies!" On one of the upper monitors the time until the mission start time was counting down. As soon as it hit zero and she had the signal from the bridge, she hit the thrusters and launched out of the shuttle bay alongside the Thor, arcing around and heading towards the planet. Unlike the Thor, the Selune had some pretty amazing stealth plating so she knew they'd be safe. The Hera would still be distracting the Chariots just in case though. "ETA to strike zone, six minutes." Banking hard past an asteroid, the Baroness sent the Selune into a spin to mask their already minimized ion trail through the outer asteroid fields. "Hang on, ja?"

As he relied on his gravboots to lock him to the deck, Clemens added one thing via the direct comms.

"Remembuh- on th'way in, stun n'stealth unless ya ain't got no othuh choyce. An' once those gennies go, we gotta bulldoze owah way out." A pause.

"Les' go kick sum gawd-posin' ass, y'all."

Trying to figure out what to expect was anybody's guess, but as for being ready, they were as ready as they were going to get. Alex and French would work great together. French hoped that the rest of the team would as well!

Alex thought about Avender and her part in all of this. He hoped like hell she would come out the other side, but reasoning with a pissed off God might not be the best way to ensure your longevity. Whatever the case, he had to put on his mission face and could not worry about that right now. But if given the chance, he would see to it that Avender made it back, alive and well. Even if he had to sacrifice himself to do it.

Within minutes, the Baroness had set the runabout down at the mission start coordinates, parking in a nice clump of trees and bushes that no one was likely to go into. "We are here, ja? Time to do this." Checking to make sure her weapons were all clear, she nodded to Lieutenant Clemens, who had already made his way to the hatch, and was peering closely at the small viewscreen, which had a full-spectrum video feed of the area on wide-angle, with an multi-band overlay of passive backscatter and RF video feeds.

Once he had satisfied himself that the local area (including below-ground and atmospheric) was actually clear, he gave the ready signal, and unshipped the aft deployment bay door-ramp. He gave his baton a shake, and it extended out to lance-length.

"Yaw is raight, Bay-rohn'ehss-" he swiftly moved out into the night, calling back, with a wave of his arm to follow him, "YeHAW!"

French and Alex moved out just behind her. Weapons drawn and ready for combat. The team moved silently and quick. Looking for anything that could slow them from reaching their goal. So far so good. French just hoped the sword she had chosen which was very similar to the Samurai sword, would do the trick.

Alex took out his tricorder to scan for power sources. The readings were almost off the charts. They were closer than he thought possible this soon. He also knew the importance of finding those weapons and bringing some back for study. At this rate, running into the enemy would happen sooner rather than later.

The tactical crewmen filed in and covered the rear as the Baroness acted as overwatch. As the group medic, it was her job to make sure everyone either came back alive or didn't suffer if there was no saving them.

As for the way in, it was a sewer drain, but it was a surprisingly clean sewer drain. It was probably more of a storm drain than sewer. As the team made their way closer, it was evident that they were barred by only a simple steel gate which was easily bypassed. It wasn't even locked.

As the team entered the cavern system, after the infil experts did their job to clear the area of any traps or sensor devices (of which there were none- which was either worrisome, or encouraging, depending upon how one viewed the news), the Missourian considered what they knew thus far: they'd gotten here without a hitch, which either meant that they'd been incredibly lucky, incredibly skilled, or a combination of both. That, or they'd been expertly-baited into some sort of Doctor Evil style deathtrap, complete with Griffins with Phrickin' Phasers on their heads.

The power readings he was getting were strong, but considering who was getting the juice and what she was using it for, as easily as breathing, it made sense. He recalibrated his sensors to a different scale, to avoid being sensor-blinded by any sudden surges. The energy type was multi-phasic, as he'd suspected it would be, but it looked like the conduit and confinement mechanisms were using some sort of tesserine crystal matrix, with fractal properties as a kind of reinforcement, not unlike the hexagonal cell shapes of Earth honeybee structures used self-bracing techniques. Only the smallest fraction of the stuff was peeking into realspace locally- the rest wound through and past nearby subspace, like some sort of heat dissipation web for a cooling tower. This gave him an idea, as he realized that sheer brute force wasn't going to cut it on this job.

"Kaduh," he subvocalized into his throat mic. "Ah'm gonna feed ya sum readin's ah've taken uv th'conduit systems comin' up ahead. Ah've highlighted sum stuff fuh yuh. Ah want ya tuh calibrate yer ord'nance outputs tuh th'invuhse freqwenceh bahnds listed. Theah's also uh subspayce offseht ah wantya tah add to yuh phasuh emittuhs- it's in th'data dump. Set it up as uh sep'ruht profile on yuh wehpuns, so yuh kin switch back an' foahth."

As he switched off the pickup, he grinned in the darkness, and began humming an old song from his childhood...

{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIAQ5X7W1Oc}

The luck the team was enjoying would be short lived after that point, however. The humming and shuffling of the team carried farther in the cavernous underbelly of the old volcano a little too well and soon they had enemies to deal with. Deadly enemies.

As they rounded one of the corners, what appeared to be a stone statue stood in their path. It barely registered on tactical sensors even when looking right at it other than as stone, but there was definitely something odd about it. It was obviously one of the things warned about in the tactical briefing.

A moment later one of the tactical crewmen in the back called out as he was grabbed from behind by something. Looking back, another of these stone men had him in a choke hold and was slowly squeezing the life out of him, the arm of the statue slowly tightening like a vice. After a few seconds, the man's helmet fractured from the force. These stone men moved slowly, but they were relentless.

Then came a pair of great roars from deeper in the darkness.

There were a pair of Minotaurs coming for them as well.

At the sound of the crewman's cry, Clemens barked out "They kin see in th'dahrk, y'all! Switch t'standard vision, an' d'ploy lightin' measures!" as he raced toward the call, tapping his armor's strength enhancement to full.

{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml4wAnvfM4M}

Schwein focused on the statue at the front of the party, the lights on her helmet clicking on to light it up as she fired several rounds from her plasma lance into it with little effect. Meanwhile, the other two security crewman at the rear were futilely trying to free their comrade from the clutches of the one at the rear as it crushed him to death.

Grinning horribly, the stone toga clad figure gripped the man in one quick motion, causing blood to spray from the now broken body through the tears in the suit. Armor plates had been crushed like styrofoam.

That's when things got worse.

The minotaurs, spurred on by the smell of blood, had arrived.

With now two minotaurs and a marble man in front and a marble man in back, Schwein cocked back and kicked the marble man in the gut as hard as she could in the hopes of at least knocking it over. Thankfully it did, and the impact against the floor shattered it. "Knock it over and break it!" She then started firing into the chest of the first minotaur, which seemed to just piss it off as it snatched up one of the tactical crewmen and started beating him against a wall.

As the Intel Chief saw the crewman crushed, he continued onward, determined to avenge him, and reduce the thing's capacity to further damage the landing party. He activated his gravity boots, using the onboard thrusters, and went from his full run into a leap directly at the center of mass of the murderous mannequin, his right-hand McBainium Gauntlet extended in front of him like a lance, and, remembering the Baroness' shouted intel, slammed into and through the thing like he was cutting a rough diamond. As the pieces fell away, he tucked into a roll and let the thrusters decelerate him on the other side, with a twist, to face the field of combat, shouting, "Daniels, Hasselhoff! foahm up on me, wedge foahmashum TAC-DEHLTAH!"

The two crewmen who'd just watched their friend die horribly honored him admirably by snapping to, and flanking the Chief on either side as a united front toward the battlefield.

French had taken it all in, and this shit show was only going to get worse. She immediately went low to attack the minotaur's legs, whilst Alex took to the sky, jumping with the help of the suit and aiming directly at the back of the head of the horned beast. The two-pronged attack was somewhat successful, causing a slight stumble, but the thing just would not go down.

As the minotaur regained its composure, Alex managed to land mere feet from it with its naked back open for a clean attack at what had to be the spinal column of the monster. Alex swung with every bit of strength he could muster. The effect was not what he had hoped for, but he'd take it. A sizable gash appeared across its torso, ichor spraying outward, though it didn't seem to penetrate into the interior, due to the slashing motion. Regardless, the sound the beast made was deafening, to say the least. The mythical-made-real man-bull spun 'round on the irritant behind him, making grazing contact, which was still enough to send Alex sprawling on the floor with the air knocked out of him.

As the monster grinned ferally, looming over Alex, French did a running flip, landing directly beside it in a flanking maneuver, and drove her Thex-crafted blade directly into the ear of the beast, and through its brain, the blade jutting out through the other temple. The behemoth fell suddenly silent, not making another sound, nor moving. There was an eerie momentary silence, as it fell to the right, away from French, like a redwood cut by a phaser saw. So unnerving was the sight, that French was caught unawares, as the second bovine bastard made its approach, charging head down, horns raking upward in an enraged attempt to gore her.

Because French's stance was rotated, due to the dual-handed blow she'd given, her profile had suddenly become more narrow. This likely saved her life, as the enormous horns, instead of ripping her armor open, instead caught her like a forklift, launching her high into the air over her fallen opponent. When she finally made contact with the cave floor, there was a sickening CRUNCH, as she flipped end over end from the sheer momentum, finally coming to a rest almost out of combat range, and very still.

But somehow the armor had done its job. She opened her eyes and moved slowly to her feet. In the floodbeams of her suit, she could see that the second one had turned his attention to the rest of the group, thinking she was done.

The Baroness was about done with these stone men and these minotaurs in this subterranean area. She pulled out her own short swords and went to work on the second minotaur as well, trying to at least keep it distracted enough with her augmented strength long enough for those with a TR-116C to put enough of those new rounds into it to put it down for good.

As the Piratical Purveyor of Pain and Pleasure whirled around the slow, angry beast, showing it what the Death of a Thousand Beestings felt like, Chief Clemens used comms to round up the rest of the team in a circle around the dance floor. Once it was clear that Minosian menace was faltering, and about to lose interest in the dance, the sign was given, and the surviving members laid in with hot rhenium, and it was mercifully put down.

As the Patched Panacea worked her rough love on the team, and the fallen were properly handled, their Intel Chief and one of Kader's men did some combo recon, with Clemens confirming his earlier readings and Daniels keeping lookout.

"Mahk...covuh me... theah's sumpin' up heah that's lookin' a whole lot like uh junkshun," the steely-eyed rocket man said, as he climbed a small ledge, and peeked over.

The sight that greeted him was a welcome one. As his tricorder-fed HUD started giving him readings, his bushy brows shot up in unison. He scrambled back down the rise, and commed the team.

"Y'all ain't gonna buhleeve whut ah jus' found."

SHORTLY, BACK AT THE BATTLEFIELD SITE

The holoprojection of the next big chamber had been notated in several areas, especially on the upper wall on the right side, where a thin crack in the basalt was highlighted.

"This," the engineer pointed out. "...it's recn't. Th'breakdown's piled up, an' bright, down theah."

He zoomed in, and activated some enhancements. A golden, scintillating glow appeared, spilling through the gap.

"This stuff matches th'readin's Commandah Spock r'corded durin' th'whole Apollo incident. There musta been some sorta minuh seismic event that crack'd th'rock, an' th'shieldin' with it."

He grinned, now. "This is owah tap point. We don't hafta go nearly as fah as we thought we'd planned."

A message came through the comms, updating the mission. Have reached main temple, converge as you are able, bring the Thor. No resistance encountered thus far. Pressing on to temple now. ~LTCDR Paris

A Few Minutes Later

After some discussion on the whether or not to blow the system, rather than disabling it and locking it, the better part of valor won out, and the subspace amplifiers were installed all along the crack, and sealed over, to shape the output of the subspace emissions.

The theory was, when triggered, the subspace vibrations would be directed into the pipeline, and would then make their way not only up the channel to the generators, but also pervade throughout the entire set of subspace manifolds used to construct the pipeline network in otherspace, where the bulk of the structural integrity of the system was reinforced. The crest of the diametrically-opposed wave would build as it ran through the almost-organic pathways of the distribution nodes, until it crashed against the standing wave of the psionic generators, in something similar to a matter/antimatter reaction, which would then back-feed through the entire network, burning itself out as it shattered every piece of connected equipment in the chain, all the way to the wireless emitters in Hera's palace.

As fast as the energy itself could travel, the peculiar nature of waveguide speeds would propagate the shattering effect it many thousands of times faster.

In the temple now. Those generators better blow very soon, Sam, or your favorite first officer and ship’s surgeon are liable to suffer a fate worse than death.

Sam chuckled to himself, glad that none of his people were on the receiving end of the system. He pointed his Sonic Actuator at the rig. "Awright! Ah we reddeh t'have us a hawt n'tasty grill'd Hera?"

A cheer went up from the team, as the SpyMaster pressed the button, and an odd warbling filled the air, and the golden glow faded to purple.

In the distance, the sound of thunder wasn't delicate at all.

 

Previous Next

labels_subscribe