Rim Worlds Republic - IC Roleplaying Thread

[DXM]

At least -- a string to grab a hold of.

"I need to know what you want -- or need -- before I can make an offer of any worth.  What part of that merger contract is most important?  Permanent enclaves?  Staging bases?  Secure manufacturing facilities?"

[Hugin]

Now we are talking

his grim face was lightened a bit as he turned around and sat down again

"Actually, aff. There is an option that might end this war quickly. The only question is: how far can you go to save your nation and your people?"

he opened the datapad and acessed another file which he sent towards the General.

...

[DXM]

Nadir Jump Point, Star System Designation LV-426
Chart Reference 0323

There was a flash of light and a momentary twisting of space -- not that there was anyone there to see it -- and where before there was open void, there now floated a JumpShip, silent and still in the emptiness of space.  Running lights came on, winking merrily in the black, and invisible waves of radioactivity began to spread out from the vessel.  Her active sensors reached out, feeling for whatever celestial bodies inhabited this empty area of space.  They picked up returns from several planets, a few smaller satellite-moons, and a massive asteroid belt hugging the interior of the system's orbital plane.

But the ship's passive scanners were also alert, shifting and shuffling and filing away every little bit of random information that came there way.  Even when there was no human presence in a star system, there were still radio waves to be analyzed.  Most of it was junk radiation, spat out by the planet's slowly cooling primary, or perhaps had made the long journey from another star.  Some it was historically, broken transmissions that made the long voyage from other human colonies.  Picking up such transmissions was rare but it did happen, the most notable case being the Voice of Kerensky that had been encountered by the SLDF army that Annihilated Clan Smoke Jaguar.

The one thing about humanity that will always set it apart, however, is its will to survive.  War, famine, and pestilence have each taken their toll of the human race, but it has always carried on.  Even when resources are at their lowest ebb and every day is a struggle to keep moving, keep breathing, keep placing one foot in front of the other, humanity has survived.

And as the explorer ship RWS Argos sat idly at the nadir jump point of LV-426, this will to survive was made manifest when her speakers stopped emitting the static of stellar radiation and instead gave forth a human voice.

[DXM]

RWS Argos, Nadir Jump Point
Star System Designation LV-426, Chart Reference 0323

Captain Louisa Sulaco nodded to the commtech.  "Put it on speaker."

The voice was distorted, made tinny by the transmission lag and decades-old speaker system of the venerable Argos, but it was still understandable.  ". . ine's collapsed, Hope.  We need. . . rock drills. . . overy teams now!"

The commtech fiddled with his instruments for a moment and muted the speakers.  "Ma'am, wavelength distortion suggests the signal's internal to the system.  Direction finder indicates the second planet."

Sulaco looked at the sensorboards.  "Do we have a feed yet?"

"Pinpointing now, ma'am, but initial read confirms Comm's guess."

"Good.  That's settled then -- this is a lost colony and we're going to do what we can to help them.  Sounds like they're having some problems down there, so inform Lieutenant Payton that I need a ground-team from his engineering crew mustered in the Number Two launch in two hours.  Tell them to bring cutting tools."

[DXM]

RWS Tatasciore, Zenith Jump Point
Star System Designation MB-990, Grid Reference 0223

Commander Gregory Vineman leaned back in his command chair aboard the Scout-class jumper and sighed theatrically.  "I have come to hate my work."

Ensign Sanderson, the Tatasciore's astrogator, smiled to himself.  Vineman prided himself on his sense of humor and ability to keep the bridge crew loose; it had a way of cutting the tension when everyone aboard knew that a pair of old, Succession War-era Eagles was the ship's only real defense against the Clan armies and piratical reavers that plagued the Near Periphery.  It was his way of boosting morale, but he needed someone to feed him lines to work off of.  Usually, that someone was Kevin Sanderson.

"And why is that, sir?" he asked.

A ghost of a smile flitted across Vineman's face.  "Because it is so bloody boring."  There was a series of snickers from the crew.  "No, seriously!  We jump into a new system, take some readings and find nothing.  So we jump into a new system, taking some readings and find nothing. . . and the process repeats itself!  If we had supplies enough, we could keep flying out into the void forever.  There's so much emptiness in the universe, and it feels like I've already seen half of it."

"Maybe so, sir, but you shouldn't think of it that way," Sanderson replied.  "Rather, think of all the other emptiness that you will be the first to see!"

The crew erupted in laughter.  "Oh, oh thank you, Ensign!  You have a talent -- no, a gift! -- for encouraging your captain!"

"My pleasure, sir," he said with a smile.

"So."  Vineman looked at the helmsman.  "Are we ready to jump?" he asked.

"We are, sir.  K-F drive is charged, we are awaiting your signal."

"Destination locked in, Ensign Sanderson?"

"Yes, sir," he replied.

"Good.  Then show me that emptiness you promised me."

There was a twisting sensation, and Vineman felt like his stomach was trying to claw its way out through his puckered asshole, and then the jump was complete.  He forced down the burning bile that always tried to escape after a jump and waited while the Tatasciore's jump-addled systems restored themselves.

"Scanners up and operational, sir," the sensor tech reported.  "First sweep-signals coming in -- Jesus Christ!"

Vineman watched the master plot update and felt the blood drain from his face as the light-codes populated.  Sitting less than a thousand kilometers off their port side was a battle-sat.

[DXM]

RWS Tatasciore, Zenith Jump Point
Star System Designation MB-991, Grid Reference 0223

"And you're sure its derelict?" Vineman asked, his heart still trying to pound its way out of his ribcage.

"Yes, sir," the sensor tech replied.  "Reactor's cold and we're not getting any emissions of any type from it."

Vineman's shoulders sagged and he blew out a deep breath as relief swept through him.  They'd appeared in MB-991 well within capital weapons range of a looming battle-sat.  They were flat-footed, lacking any defense or real way to strike back, but the battle-sat didn't smash them into free-floating ions.  It didn't even hail them. . . because it was shut down, abandoned.  But its presence proved one very important fact.

There had been people here, once.  And they might still be around.

"Have you completed your sweep of the system?" he asked, looking back up at the tech.

"It's cursory, but yes.  Star's a G0, a little bigger than Sol, and has two planets smack in the middle of her liquid-water band, plus two more gas giants further out and a useless rock tucked in tight."

Vineman nodded.  "I want a ground team to move over to the Rigelian, and we're taking the starfighters with us.  If these people had defenses, its not likely that they'd abandoned all of them.  I don't want to start shooting, but I'm also not willing to take any chances."

[DXM]

RWS Argos, Nadir Jump Point
Star System Designation LV-426, Chart Reference 0323


The shuttle swept into LV-426-II's atmosphere and was immediately buffetted by winds in excess of fifty knots.  The pilot wrangled the controls and turned into the wind, the shuttle's aerodynamics helping to cut down on the violence of its maneuvers -- though it also lost speed as it struggled into the gales.  Rain slashed against the viewports and landed a loud, staccato drum against the hull as the shuttle cut its way through swirling masses of clouds the size of continents.

Sitting behind the pilot, Captain Sulaco had to clap a hand over her mouth as he lunch tried to climb out of her stomach and leap across the control boards.  Swallowing the vomit back down with a grimace, she muttered "That tastes awful."

"What was that?" asked the pilot, a somewhat grizzled-looking warrant officer with a handlebar mustache that was so far out of regs it wasn't even funny.

"Never mind," she replied as she checked her pockets for gum.  Nothing.  "Damn."

The pilot pointed at the windscreen and said, "Coming into VFR now."  Bad taste forgotten, she craned forward, trying to see.  The shuttle's altitude dropped down to about two thousand feet and broke through the boiling storm clouds, giving the Argos' crew their first view of the planet below.  Its surface here was barren and rocky, lacking any semblance of top soil.  Ridges and mesas of broken granite dominated the horizon, interspersed with jagged, blade-like protusions of black stone -- obsidian perhaps, or maybe basalt.

It was not exactly the ideal neighborhood to be raising children, that was for sure.

The pilot swung them around a particularly tall mesa, its slab-sided form rising out of the earth like a finger, and the colony below came into view.

The first thing visible was the power plant.  It was a fission reactor -- old technology, and more dangerous by far than a fusion plant -- and it had been set on the far side of a line of granite hills more than fifty kilometers away from the other colony buildings.  The cooling towers thrust up into the air, defying the horrendous winds that so far seemed omnipresent on this world.  There were no obvious roads, marked trails, or even cabling conduits that ran from the reactor to the housing structures.

"Tunnel access, I think," murmured Bigsby Sloan, her chief of engineers.

"I was just thinking that," she replied.

The shuttle swept past the reactor, and Sulaco made a note on her data-pad to have a proper fusion plant built here.  They crossed over the tops of the hills and got a look at the colony complex itself.

It was a giant mishmash of building styles, a result of its no doubt slow growth over the course of decades,  maybe even centuries.  The central buildings were pre-fab, slab-sided modules of hardened steel, their surfaces weathered and dulled by years of exposure to the caustic atmosphere.  Surrounding this was clusters of newer buildings of obviously local manufacture.  They looked slap-dash and a little haphazard but were functional, built onto the outer skin of the original structure.  Some had even been built on top of the roof, creating a third level.  These were made of low-grade mild steel rather than the cold-forged reinforced alloy of the main site, and the weathering was much more severe.  Acid rains had chewed into the walls, and several sections of the outer skin showed welded bulges were spare plates had been used to repair holes in the wall.

"Well," Sloan said, "at least there's something to be said for self-sufficiency."

Sulaco harrumphed and tapped the pilot on the shoulder.  "Alright, Pharoah," she said.  "Let them know we're here."

The pilot nodded and keyed his mic, broadcasting in the clear on all channels.  "Colonial Control, Colonial Control, this is shuttle Argos, over."

He repeated the hail twice more, circling the complex, before they received a reply.

"Ummmm, shuttle Argos, this, uh, Hope Operations Center.  Heh.  Welcome to Medusa."

[DXM]

RWS Rigelian, Low Orbit, MB-991-III
Star System Designation MB-991, Grid Reference 0223

The Leopard DropShip cut through the cloud-marbled skies of Planet Three with the two old Eagle fighters riding shotgun on either side of the Rigelian.  The promised Mechbuster atmospheric fighters rose up to altitude and fell in with the visiting craft, two on either side and slightly ahead of the Eagles, and the whole flotilla dropped down to one thousand feet above ground level as they streaked over the capital city of the planet known as Artemis.  Pennants and banners depicting the Apollonian Shark flew from the towering walls of the fortress-city of Lunea.  Cheering crowds had turned out in untold numbers, the streets filled to bursting with hundreds of thousands of proud Republican citizens.

It was enough to make Gregory Vineman a very happy, if giddy, man.  Hopeful, too.  The Artemisori had maintained their privacy and protected the fact of their existence for centuries against anyone who came snooping around.  They'd been a colony of the original Republic, little more than a deep-space research outpost.  Their garrison had risen up and sided with the anti-Amaris Rim Republican Army during the war against the Usurper; when the SLDF invaded, they cut all ties and physically disabled their HPG as a preventive measure.  Each pirate and explorer who had poking around suffered the wrath of the Hunter's Moon -- the battle-sat that the Tatasciore had run across, currently down due to instabilities in the engine core -- and its people had waited, patiently, for the Rim Worlds to make contact with them again.

The Republic never had.  Until the Tatasciore came calling.

Vineman smiled and straightened him field uniform -- after making contact with the Artemisori, there'd been no time to go back to the JumpShip and retrieve his dress mess -- as the Rigelian set down on Lunar Space Port's Distinguished Visitor pad.  A battalion of tanks lined the red carpet that had been rolled out to the DV pad, and the planetary governor and his entourage were waiting for him.

Artemis wasn't going to rejoin the Rim Worlds Republic; Artemis had never left.