Chapter 2.1 Operation Guillotine

[Will]

"Alpha Team," Lyssa says,"immediate deployment! Niss, send the bot to retrieve that Guardsmen, ASAP, then deploy with the rest of the Alfa Team to the vehicle park and ski lift; Grelude, Dudd, youj're up top with me, just in case the team need air support. Suit up, and move out!"

OOC: Going to kick out the bot to recover a former brother Guardsman, while sending Niss, Ventura, Slayerian, Savrax--, and Mantin down to search the vehicle park and the ski lift.

[jedion357]

OOC: Might I suggest swapping Grelude for Savrax as that would put an officer with the team on the ground and until we here different from Shadow his character may be NPCed for a while. You also have the option of setting the shuttle down tail first at the vehicle park but that would require swapping out the fuel pellet to ensure a safe lift off. Have to look into the time required to change a pellet (no need to do an engine over haul) and Dudd is a good one to be put on that chore plus I'd prefer for active players to lead the action over NPCs

Alyssa will have to start actually rolling against her piloting skill to maintain control as the weather worsens BTW.

IC: There was brief debate over whether to put a parawing on the casualty recovery robot but since it was only a class 2 bot lacking programing to use the parawing it was decided to kick it out a the lowest altitude Midshipwoman Blue felt safe to fly during a rising blizzard. It was certain that it would take damage, which it did but the snowy conditions helped to limit that. Since the Hind was able to drop the bot within meters of the downed Royal Guardsman the simple minded bot had secured him and begun transporting him to the vehicle park under Niss's direction.

[Will]

OOC: Swapped Grelude for Savrax.

[Inigo]

Savrax lets a sizable smile escape as he makes ready to follow instructions for immediate deployment. He gives a rich, “Aye, aye” as he grabs his gear and makes his way aft. He as always enjoyed the personal interactions of his weapons more than manning the ships weapons console and he was very eager to be about it. It’s not every day he had the chance to burn a GOC up close and personal. Not that he would be too close if he used his scope. “With any luck” he thinks to himself, “I’ll get to break in my sonic sword” and he pats it absently as he joins Alpha Team. Setting his helm and gripping his rifle, he announces to Alyssa, “Alpha Team, ready to deploy.”

OOC: Just curious, where (how) do we deploy from the Hind? I can’t seem to find a description of the craft now. Is it an assault scout or is it more of the space shuttle-looking thing?

Will, can you give alpha team a clear set of instructions/orders? So far all I know is that we are checking out a parking lot.

Was Savrax able to find anything of note on the latest thermal scans before deploying?

[Will]

"Alfa Team are to search the ski lift and vehicle park for any signs of the Princess, before moving further upslope to continue the search. They are to try to take any terrorists they encounter alive for questioning, but don't put the mission at risk doing so."

[Inigo]

“Roger that”, Savrax responds noting the need for intelligence and checking his gut reaction of not wanting to take prisoners.

[Will]

OOC: @Inigo: I'm assuming you drop through the belly of the ship.

[umungus]

OOC: I am assuming that Mantin has been in the shuttle?

Mantin puts on a pair of IR googles and locks and loads his Autorifle. He also has a med pack ready.
He deploys with Alpha team.

[Terl Obar]

OOC: I'm back. Between the holidays, a week-long conference in DC, my wife's birthday, and changing jobs again, life has been way too crazy. Don't expect to hear too much from me between now and February (when I start full time at my new job and am working from home in Utah again) but I'll get at least one post a week in.

And since I've been off line for way too long, I'm on the Pelican. Here are a bunch of catch up posts:

BIC:
Tanar lets his curiosity pull him around the weapons shop while Savrax haggles with the shop owner over a sonic sword. It looks a bit fancy for Tanar's simple taste in weapons but he is a Yazarian after all and can appreciate the desire for a classy weapon. Having spent all his credits on his new body comp and combat harness modifications, he deflects any attempt by the shop keeper to make a sale.

...

Tanar listens to Inspector Geordi's explanation and nods, smiling at the comment about 'duty'. "Yes, sir." Tanar replies, "This doesn't leave this room and if anything else shows up we'll contact you either directly or through Ajax." He pockets the card wishing he could probe it with his new gear but knowing that he'd most likely just break it.

...

Once back with all his new combat harness pieces, Tanar carefully removes the three progits from his issued combat harness and adds them to the collection in his new one. He figures he'll just use them until his next payday when he can pick up is own copies of those ones. Besides, this way he doesn't need to reprogram Niss's system for accessing and activating the medical progit as this one is already programmed for him. Once he's satisfied that the body comp is working properly, he starts redistributing his robocomkit components and scanners to the new utility belt trying out different arrangements until he finds the combination of locations that feels and works best for him.

...

Tanar is just settling in for the night before reporting to the Pelican the following morning when the X-ray alert goes out. He listens gravely as the situation is described and orders are given, shaking his head, half in anger and half in admiration at the audacity of the GOC. Whoever is running that show right now has a lot of chutzpah to try to pull this off.

Since most of the team is going off in the Hind for the pickup of the princess, Tanar stays on-board the Pelican to monitor comms and sensors from orbit and help provide intel to the team on the ground.

When he hears Savrax's request for updated weather and satellite information, Tanar taps into the CRM data net and sets up a live feed to the Hind with real-time weather updates. He then starts looking into what other recon assets are available. Pulling up the orbits of the nearby recon satellites, Tanar considers the options.

"Well, there is a photon recon bird over the area now, but with that blizzard, it's going to be fairly useless," Tanar thinks to himself as he looks over the flight paths. "This IR bird will be in range in about 10 minutes, with about 5 minutes coverage on the area, that will help a lot... plus there is a radar bird that will pass nearby about 15 minutes after that, not as good resolution, the angle isn't great, and an active blizzard is going to generate a bunch of ghosts but it's better than nothing...doesn't look like there will be anything else for about 30 minutes after that."

Data in hand, he fires off a priority request for a tasking of the two satellites to do deep scans as they pass over the area the Hind is operating in with real time cross transmission to the Pelican. That done he calls in to the Hind just as the team is about to deploy:

"Alpha team, this is the Pelican. We'll be undocking in less than 30 minutes and will be be proceeding to your location. I've got recon bird taskings for your area coming up. There is an IR bird that will start a pass in..." he checks his chronocom, "8.3 minutes, we'll have a 5 minute collection window and I've requested deep near and mid IR scans. We should get a new image every 10 seconds or so. That should give us the ability to looks for faint signatures as well as target motions. 14.7 minutes after that starts we'll get a four minute pass with one of our radar birds. It's a little off track and the blizzard will degrade things but it should provide some additional intel. That's it for about an hour. There's an optical bird right now and about 30 minutes after the radar bird but all they'll tell us is that it's cloudy with 100% chance of snow. Good hunting. Tanar out."

While he's waiting for the intel data to come in, he makes sure he has an established com link to Ajax and starts prepping the Pelican's systems to get underway and making sure the ship's sensors are all ready to go once they get over the pickup zone.

[jedion357]

OOC: Just a refresher since it comes into play Your combat helms have auto polarizing solar optics (doubles as sungoggles for yazerians), IR optics, a toxy rad gauge and a viso-com that operates through the character's own chronocom over the helm link on the Royal Marine combat harness. (space suit helmet and the orbital jump suit helmets dont have the toxy rad gauge)

The combat harness (except Tanars) The body comp is a standardized (non re-configurable body comp) encased in thin polyplate armor for protection. It has a type B processor, dedicated 1 month power supply as well as helm link, body scan, and med inject progits. A medic will have Interface progit to allow jacking in his Med scanner to attempt an initial diagnosis on any team member (-20%) through the body scan progit without being in close proximity to the subject.
To use the combat harness a marine must plug his chronocom into a polyplate compartment next to the body com. The helm link auto connects to the visocom in the wearer's RM combat helm or a RM pressure suit helmet. The helmlink allows for helm to helm, helm to chronocom, or helm to radiophone communication up to 5 km. The body scan progit updates the team's medic and a ship's sickbay's computer via the chronocom as well. The surgically implanted med-inject drug device holds 1 dose of stimdose and 1 dose of stay dose. It will automatically inject stim dose the first time a character reaches 0 to -9 STA and will then inject stay dose the next time a character reaches 0 STA. The team medic can manually trigger these as well over the chronocom link.

YOU CAN, using these devices home in on a missing team member, share data and images from your optics on you helmets and barring jamming you'll always be in communication.

IC:
Slayerian, being one of two fully qualified ORCAS trained team members, had taken up the position of jump master and stood my the belly cargo ramp. Ventura, also fully qualified, was busy double checking that his heavy weapon was secured for jump.

Slayerian started issuing instructions and orders, "OK, my pretties, the conditions are about the worst you can jump in so just focus on getting down without killing yourself and don't worry about trying to hit the mark in the vehicle park. Once we're down, converge on the vehicle park, you'll be able to us my signal for that. As for the jump we're going to freight train off the cargo ramp. When I call the mark just follow Ventura and don't stop. Click into the static line and your parawing will auto deploy. Obviam nox noctis!"

Ventura chorused back, "Obviam nox noctis and death to the GOC!"

Alyssa brought the shuttle in low and slow [control roll 52] to give the team the best chance to jump in the storm. At the jump point the "go lights" lit up on the shuttle's bulkhead as well as in the HUD display of everyone's helmet. Slayerian bark the order to go and slapped every one in turn as they freight trained off the cargo ramp before following himself.

Alyssa gave more throttle looking for greater air speed and altitude to increase her margin of safety but a wind gust caught her off guard and she started loosing control [control roll 86], scrambling to recover [RS roll 34 and a new control roll 49] she managed to right the shuttle.
Dudd as flight engineer has closed and secured the cargo ramp.

The buffeting from the wind was terrible on the jump team and most were slammed around. Luckily the Royal Marines used a parawing with a low level robotic brain. Its mission was to ensure safe landing during in case of loss of control or consciousness of the operator. Its missions automatically kicked in for everyone except Ventura and Slayerian. Slayerian in typical yazerian fashion had eschewed to use a parawing and Ventura was practiced enough to keep the robotic piloting functions from kicking in. Unfortunately for Ventura he slammed into a parked explorer in the vehicle park ( -7 STA and damage to his heavy laser).

Slayerian landed neatly and while his fellow trooper was shaking off his injury he swept the parking lot. The parking lot was a large ceramacrete pad but empty of all but two explorers with the hotel's logo's, an abandoned but "hot" hover car and cycle.

The rest of the team made it down safely but with a 10- 20 minute walk to reach the vehicle park.

As Slayerian was reporting his findings he stepped on a snow covered grav ski. It was an expensive looking model with lots of bells and whistles.

Ventura had dumped his heavy laser and jacked his laser rifle into his power supply and kept it trained on the barely visible lift house from the cover of an explorer's fender.

OOC: got some sunday morning family stuff to attend too I'll be back to post a little more info latter today.

[Inigo]

Savrax adjusts and secures his helm, plugs his laser rifle into his beltpack and sets it at 5seu while double checking the safety. Securing his weapon he gives Slayerian the attention and respect due him because of his knowledge and experience. When the time came, he calmly tethered to the static line, his smooth demeanor belying the concern he was feeling about the atmospheric conditions. Savrax, while not considering himself a thrill junkie, cannot deny that he loves the exhilaration of such events. However, two things at the moment concerned him. First, he had never jumped under these conditions. But most importantly, nobody's live save his own was at stake during any of his other jumps. Not to mention a life as important as a Royal. So when the go-light shown, he trucked out the back without shouting anything bold or glorious. Only thinking to himself sternly as his feet bounded out of the craft, "Don't screw up".

Sav was shocked and briefly alarmed by the ferocity of the wind. Before he had much of a chance to respond, the parwings bot-brain kicked in. He was both at once grateful that this device would enable him a successful jump, and upset that he was being robbed of an opportunity to test or prove himself. But even as the bot-brain itself struggled to regulate the flight, Sav dismissed his petty and foolish vanity. On his descent, he tried to keep track of where everybody was. It proved difficult due to the gyrations from the storm and the need to keep an eye on or rather, an eye out for the ground. It came suddenly and surprisingly upon him. He came gliding down with all the grace of a tadwallow flicking itself across the mudflats. He was grateful for the heavy, blowing snow so nobody would witness his landing. Not a 10. Heck, not even a 5. But how did the old adage go, "any landing you can walk away from is a successful landing"?

Savrax separates himself from his parawing and sets it aside. Turning to the sky and surveying around him using the IR of his helm he tries to locate his teammates, the Hind, and orientate himself to his target. He glances down as he un-straps his riffle removes the safety while opening his com channel. “Alpha Team. Report.” As he waits to hear his team members report back and give any status, he begins to make his best possible speed to the parking lot.

[jedion357]

Since most of the team is going off in the Hind for the pickup of the princess, Tanar stays on-board the Pelican to monitor comms and sensors from orbit and help provide intel to the team on the ground.

When he hears Savrax's request for updated weather and satellite information, Tanar taps into the CRM data net and sets up a live feed to the Hind with real-time weather updates. He then starts looking into what other recon assets are available. Pulling up the orbits of the nearby recon satellites, Tanar considers the options.

"Well, there is a photon recon bird over the area now, but with that blizzard, it's going to be fairly useless," Tanar thinks to himself as he looks over the flight paths. "This IR bird will be in range in about 10 minutes, with about 5 minutes coverage on the area, that will help a lot... plus there is a radar bird that will pass nearby about 15 minutes after that, not as good resolution, the angle isn't great, and an active blizzard is going to generate a bunch of ghosts but it's better than nothing...doesn't look like there will be anything else for about 30 minutes after that."

Data in hand, he fires off a priority request for a tasking of the two satellites to do deep scans as they pass over the area the Hind is operating in with real time cross transmission to the Pelican. That done he calls in to the Hind just as the team is about to deploy:

"Alpha team, this is the Pelican. We'll be undocking in less than 30 minutes and will be be proceeding to your location. I've got recon bird taskings for your area coming up. There is an IR bird that will start a pass in..." he checks his chronocom, "8.3 minutes, we'll have a 5 minute collection window and I've requested deep near and mid IR scans. We should get a new image every 10 seconds or so. That should give us the ability to looks for faint signatures as well as target motions. 14.7 minutes after that starts we'll get a four minute pass with one of our radar birds. It's a little off track and the blizzard will degrade things but it should provide some additional intel. That's it for about an hour. There's an optical bird right now and about 30 minutes after the radar bird but all they'll tell us is that it's cloudy with 100% chance of snow. Good hunting. Tanar out."

While he's waiting for the intel data to come in, he makes sure he has an established com link to Ajax and starts prepping the Pelican's systems to get underway and making sure the ship's sensors are all ready to go once they get over the pickup zone.

Despite being as busy as he was considering how best to support the team and facilitate getting the Pelican out of the ship yard Tanar still heard the silent whoosh of the bridge lift. A ship yard tech entered with a surprised look on his face.

"Excuse me, but this ship isn't cleared to leave space dock yet."

Tanar could tell he was a low level project manager from his jumpsuit and probably had an inflated sense of his own importance. Traditionally marine crews had razzed yard personal calling them yard dogs and yard personnel had given back in kind though everyone knew they were all essentially on the same side it was all in good fun. Yet something in Tanar's perception told him this particular yard dog was going to stand on the letter of the regs just to show the "space head" who really was in charge.

The realization of that irritated him but he tried to calmly consider how best to handle the obstacle.

He wished the captain was here as he was certain her rank and martial arts training would both give her the authority and the ability to literally throw him off the ship. He also wished Ike or even Dudd was here as the engines needed to be pre-flighted and warmed up and he knew that would take twice as long if he had to do it. Then there was the detail that the full ship's arsenal had been off loaded including all the torps, the small arms, and the laser battery had been locked down for the ship to go into yard hands. He doubted they could reload the torps during the emergency but he would have to take some time to trace the command tree to unlock the firing programs for the laser battery. Just too much to do and this stuffed shirt was going to waste his time.

[jedion357]

Savrax's HUD display told him that he was approximately 60 m from Slayerian and Ventura but he couldn't see them with visibility being down to about 30m. Mantin was 90 degrees to his right about 100m away from him but likely only 60m from the vehicle park as well. Niss was the furthest out but the HUD display indicated she must be at a full run even in the snow.

The lift house was well insulated and while it clearly showed as being warm Savrax couldn't tell if anyone was inside. He wanted to kick the door now with just him, Mantin, Slayerian and Ventura but another ten minutes and he'd have everyone here.

[jedion357]

IC: Grelude was monitoring the the scans and com frequencies as the bucking of the Hind made it clear that Midshipman Blue had her hands full. Suddenly, he cocked his head and said, "Sir you should hear this."

Switching the com feed to a cabin speaker the voice of Lt. Antrin broke in in mid sentence, "...declaring a drive flare out emergency, Clarion Control. If I can't restart going to make an emergency landing in the Glacier Bay area over."

"Clarion Control copies UPF flight 0012. Be advised there is a Royal Marine craft in that area operating with weapons free, make every effort to restart and stand clear. Over."

Funny, it didn't look to Grelude like the UPF fighter was gliding but rather like it was under full power and angling directly for Perry Field. Dudd gave a sharp look at Grelude and the gunner was just as glad he decided to not open his mouth. Someone had obviously called in a favor from one Buzz Antrin and if word got out about what he suspected the UPF pilot was about to do there would be super nova to pay. Not that Grelude cared who shot up GOC operatives as long as they got shot.

[a few minutes latter as the ground team was about to clear the lift house and Alyssa was fighting for control of the Hind once again]
Buzz Antrin's fighter buzzed by the Hind and went into a vertical climb.
"Clarion Control, this is Buzzard, I'm canceling the drive emergency and standing clear of the Glacier Bay area. It seems it was just a glitch in the drive program. Thanks for the warning about marine craft operating with weapons free, I did see their handy work down on Perry Field. Over."

[Terl Obar]

"Sir," Tanar replies, figuring a little politeness can't hurt (using a PER roll here to attempt to provide a positive modifier), "That is completely correct but I believe that status will change almost immediately. In case you haven't heard, we've been activated on an X-ray alert." Tanar pauses for a moment to let that sink in (OOC: I assume that the tech is military and therefore knows what that means, if not let me know and I'll modify my response to fit). "As soon as the captain is on-board we are shipping out. We have a team on the ground and are moving to support.

"Now, if you want to help in the effort," Tanar continues pleasantly, "Let me know what your area of expertise is and I'll let you know where you can do the most good. We're a little short staffed here with part of the crew on the ground. Otherwise, have a seat and you can take it up with the captain when she gets here. In the meantime, I've got a bunch of intel to coordinate."

[Shadow Shack]

Wife was finally released after ten days in ICU (including a day+ at CCU) and two more rehab days worth of physical therapy...still got a series of follow up appoitments so I may be a bit before posting again. I'm whipped, and attempting to assimilate back into something resembling a routine again LOL

[jedion357]

Wife was finally released after ten days in ICU (including a day+ at CCU) and two more rehab days worth of physical therapy...still got a series of follow up appoitments so I may be a bit before posting again. I'm whipped, and attempting to assimilate back into something resembling a routine again LOL

No worries, Shadow, and we're happy to hear she's getting out of the ICU, Grelude should be safe as an NPC riding shot gun in the shuttle (unless someone crashes it), Family has to come first. Plus in all of your focus on you wife it wouldn't surprise me if you'd neglected to take care of yourself so I heartily recommend you spend some time with a grilled burger and a cold beer and veg out for a while for your health and well being.

Jedion

[Inigo]

Sav jerks his head up in surprise at the booming sound of the UPF fighter craft that is long gone now. He assumes that Alyssa made her contact and is very impressed with the speed in which this stick-jockey antagonist of hers has arrived. When he has time, he would like to learn about the story between those two. Or, maybe not. Either way, there is a job here and now. In fact, it is the most important mission he has ever been on. Perhaps, the most important one he will ever be on even if he lives to retire from the service. That thought jars him back to the task as hand.

As he continues running to his destination and listening for Alpha Team he say’s, “Caution Alpha Team. Get visual confirmation of all acquired targets before firing. IR imaging will not give you confirmed ID of your targets. I’d hate for anybody’s career to be cut short by an untimely execution because they shot the princess or her guards by mistake. Get visual confirmation before engaging ANY targets. The Princess and her guard (what’s left of them) may mistake us for GOC in the current situation.

[Will]

Wife was finally released after ten days in ICU (including a day+ at CCU) and two more rehab days worth of physical therapy...still got a series of follow up appoitments so I may be a bit before posting again. I'm whipped, and attempting to assimilate back into something resembling a routine again LOL

All that matters is that she's out of ICU.

Take your time. We'll be holding your spot open for you.

[Terl Obar]

Yeah, Shadow, take you time and don't worry about us. It's good to hear she's recovering.