Log:First Order: Lothal Weapon

Lothal Weapon

OOC Date: December 20 2018
Location: Lothal
Participants: First Order: Hadrix Rol, Ciferni, Artemis, Emma Starflare, and Oran Arcantael as GM

The short story: The Vanguard infiltrates a terrorist cell, and races against the clock to prevent explosives from destroying a First Order cruiser.

The long story:

The mission was simple: There is a terrorist cell on Lothal... and a First Order light cruiser in orbit over Lothal. Intelligence teams uncovered a plan: The terrorists intend to destroy the cruiser by approaching in a 'maintenance vessel', space-walking to plant a bomb, and exploiting a design weakness wherein a badly placed power conduit would blow the whole thing to pieces.

Next step? Send in the Vanguard. The good thing about being Vanguard is that you have a lot of freedom... the bad thing about being Vanguard is that you have a lot of freedom. The instructions were little more than "infiltrate" and "solve this" and for a while, it actually went well. It almost went off without a hitch. Almost.

But then, en route to the cruiser itself, aboard the purloined "maintenance" vessel... the terrorists caught on. And outnumbered. And there may have been some getting hit in the head with unfriendly pieces of metal conduit.

When Hadrix and Ciferni came to, they were not in a cell; this type of ship lacks that kind of facility. They were however handcuffed, to each other, parked on the floor facing back to back -- since then, they've managed to scrape themselves up off the floor, to their feet, and are testing the strength (or lack thereof) of their restraints. Artemis and Emma missed out on being buddy-cuffed to the boys; their hands are behind their backs, and they are starting to come to.

The room is filled with boxes and crates; their weapons and other possessions have to be around here somewhere. The ship's engines sound like they're slowing, followed by far-away clanking as though one vessel has docked with another, airlocks readying.

"Hey!" their 'guard' has belatedly noticed they're up, and the sound of footsteps follow, though no one has appeared yet. The voice sounds female, a little uncertain. The speaker has not appeared yet, must have been a ways away. "What are you doing in there!"

"Oh... they cuffed us..." growling it out more to himself than to Ciferni, at the sound of a voice calling out - Hadrix goes for the angry and pragmatic approach. He grabs the half of the binders cuffed to Cif, and begins pushing while pulling with the arm he has cuffed. Snarling, tendons straining on his neck before a distinct 'CRANK" of metal snapping. Nodding then to Cif, Hadrix moves towards the hatchway. He doesn't respond, hoping that they set up a One Inept Guard to keep an eye on them, flexing his hands and prepping to get some fist-work done as necessary

"Yes, and thanks for yankin-- oh, good." Ciferni wakes up cranky, mostly because his memory of things leading up to being cuffed to Hadrix are charging in like banthas to his thoughts. The sound of the guard catches his attention, and he's hunting the dimness, looking for their stuff, or stuff to use. Hadrix taking the door helps, freeing Ciferni to seek and find gear. It's scattered, but here. "We may be docking," he notes quietly, getting the second rifle he lays hands on to Hadrix. "Suggest rush attack before they can get out for the walk on the hull, but watch for explosives."

Artemis' eyes part subtly as she awakens from her involuntary visitation from the sandman. The cold press of the durasteel ground nearly matches the clammy, slick sheen of partially congealed blood and matted, sweat-infused hair on the crown of the back of her head. Involuntarily, she reaches up to investigate her wound in her fetal position and finds herself unable to do so. The clatter of metal makes it obvious why: cuffed behind her back like some Twi'lek schutta and not even making a few credits in the process.

Huffing with a growl, Artemis tenses her stomach and with splays legs rights herself to a seat position. "Well, this is farkled," she whines under her breath as she tries to roll her neck and shoulders to flush out the stagnant acid in her muscles. Not getting anywhere fast in that venture, she awkwardly shimmies back to try and get her rump up and over the bridge of metal between the cuffs to get her hands in front of herself where she can see what's going on.

Slowly Emma's eyes open and she gives a little groan. Last time she'd been shot, she'd been in far worse condition...but this didn't make life any easier for her. When she tries to move, that tug of her restraints has the blonde woman exhaling a breath of frustration. The sniper had never been captured before. Hell, she was usually the one sent in to rescue captured operatives and personel who'd been caught by slavers. "I've had better starts to operations..." Emma agrees off-hand with Artemis' comment before she too rocks back to try and bring her cuffs past her behind and then under her legs where she could get them in front of her. She hadn't exactly spent a lot of time restrained, but it was much easier to manage with your hands in front of you. Ciferni's comment earns a nod as she inspects her own restraints. "Agreed. But lets try not to cause this vessel to crash while we're on it just yet."

The footsteps and voice resolve into a figure who pops out of the corridor. She's human, short, mousy... she has the look of someone who might be a tech, left behind while the rest of the terrorist team goes on their bomb-setting spacewalk. "NO, what are you DOING?" she gasps when she spots Cif and Hadrix up and about... arming themselves. She has a ring of keys at her belt, some of which look promisingly like binder-keys. Emma and Artemis would probably appreciate getting ahold of those.

"You're not supposed to be doing this," the tech frets. "Stop it!" She slowly puts her hands up. "Please don't kill me?"

"Whats the fun of not crashing the ship?" Hadrix chuckles as he checks his rifle, it's a brief 'is the safety on?' check as the mousey check comes in and starts yelling at him. His first instinct is to drop into stance, aim for the mid-knee and fire. He hits her knee, but the force of the bolt vaporizes a good six inches above and below the joint in a glorious pork smelling cloud of particalized flesh, blood, and bone. He looks down at his rifle, eyes narrowed, "Kriffing bastards were playing with the blasted power output settings..." They touched his gun... they played with it... It doesn't matter where they run, he will find them... and he will kill them.

Getting a weapon to Hadrix first seems to be Ciferni's way of ensuring a violent diversion at the door, and it works. Scrambling forward past his comrade, he pulls the keys off the poor girl and scrambles back. "They'll have heard that. I'll get the others ready." Which means free and arm them, which he quickly moves to do. "Gear over there, anyone hurt?"

As the woman's voice comes to the fore of her mind's eye, Artemis instinctively turns her head to gaze in the tech's direction. The gesture is just in time to watch the limb be cleaved off in the wake of plasma's fury in a rendition that the trooper has seen enough times that it doesn't even cause her eyes to twitch. Instead, she sniffs sharply as the acrid collection of humanoid particulate winds its way along her olfactory glands to irritate her with its sweet carbon tinge.

With that over, Artemis rises to her full height and presents her wrists to the unshaven man to make it as easy as possible for the man to remove her binds.

"Nothing permanent," Artemis reports flatly.

Emma doesn't even blink at the blaster fire dropping the woman with the keys, instead she moves over towards the woman. If she wasn't passed out from the pain, a swift heel of Em's boot should amend that. When her cuffs are removed, the blonde woman is quick to sort through her gear, slinging her sniper rifle over her back before she draws her blaster pistol and rolls her shoulders. "Get yourselves ready, we continue on mission."

Poor tech. She screams as Hadrix shoots her in the leg -- it doesn't /sever/ the limb exactly, but it does leave blood everywhere, and the smell of cauterized flesh mingled with blood. Her leg is dangling from an unsettling, useless scrap of tendon and muscle as she collapses, and sobs... the rest of the group has to have heard that. There is no opposition whatsoever to taking the keys.

The ship shudders as it docks with its target. "Tika?" a comm buzzes, plagued with static. "What just happened up there?"

In the cargo/airlock area, the team of terrorists grimly grab their weapons and drag shelter out of what crates they can, while the bomb squad hurries into EV suits even faster.

Finishing the seals on his new suit, a number of mechanical whirrs and clicks engaging as his helmet locks in place. Hefting his rifle, Hadrix nods, "Copy, sir." He's the low man on the CoC, so he assumes he's the low man on the pole and sets out for point posture, not caring if this one lives, he reaches down to grab her lower leg and yank it off the bit of meat it's attached to before stacking up on the door to peek around and then start towards the airlock area.

As he spots forms in cover, he tosses the lower leg like a stick grenade. It splats across the top and drops onto the blue head of a Duros who lets out a gravely screech, hands flopping in terror and disgust, popping out of cover, only to go diving to the ground when Hadrix's blaster fire starts singing the air all around him. "Targets acquired, in cover"

Ciferni nods to Emma, saying, "Let's make up for lost time then," before moving back to support Hadrix and the push forward. To say the First order Stormtroopers are uniform in style and tactics through rigorous training and steel nerves would not capture their essential... style. For example, Hadrix, as a specimen of the sort of personal style that brings verve and variety to what would otherwise be a mindless slog through salutes.

"I'm not going to admit that worked," Ciferni murmurs to himself, before kneeling under some cover of a corner and adding his own bolts to the din. The cover helps the terroristas, as his rifle only chars the front of the ugly one's cover.

The naturally blonde woman's directions are not required for Artemis to go in to action. With her rifle retrieved, the stock is pressed up against the interior of her shoulder as she follows and drifts into Hadrix's shadow. Stepping over the wailing tech without bothering to take a second glance at the gruff man's desecration of her form, the bleached blonde trooper instead focuses on tracking the man's shots which she aims to echo.

"On your six, Nine-Oh" Artemis declares mechanically as she takes a standing position and trails after her target. When the scream of the man's shot misses, she snaps the muzzle of her weapon mechanically towards the Duros. A swallowed breath and a squeezed trigger is all that presages the humanoid alien's demise.

Em-170 was nothing if not a perfectionist when it came to her craft, so when the first bolt of her blaster pistol misses the target, the blonde woman frowns and shifts her grip to hold the weapon with both hands before firing again. This time, her shot manages to clip the target in its upper chest, staggering the human back while the sniper herself ducks out of the way of returning fire. Wincing a little, she moves to unsling her own rifle. "Advance!" Emma calls. "If we get held up here, those bombs will be planted before we can stop them."

The scrappy crew of freedom fighters panic and scatter when poor Tika's leg is thrown at them. Who wouldn't? Who wouldn't try to dodge flying leg? The Duros meets an ugly end this way, while the average-looking human takes a nasty shot from Emma, but still lives. Their enemies advancing, the ugly, grizzled human yells, "HURRY!" as the bomb squad continues to suit up. They're under pressure. Take too long? Dead. Hurry out into the vacuum of space and miss something important? Also dead.

With blasterfire opening up, Hadrix smiles inside of his armor, blinking through his new helmets holo-display and quietly wishing that they would make these kinds of upgrades to Stormtrooper armor. Seeing her follow and finish the target, he nods appreciatively, "Good shot, Ten-Fifteen." it was a damn good shot, look what it did! Like, wow!

"Copy, sir, advancing." Hadrix intones and starts moving forward, directly into the danger zone. Like he's traveling down a Causeway to the Danger Zone. Rushing in, presenting himself as a target Hadrix makes for the next target he can see, and decides its time to unpretty them. Several bolts splack off of the hardened armor, and some just singe it as he grabs the pretty one by the shoulder and punches the barrel of his rifle into their mouth, breaking teeth before sending blaster bolts and brain fragments out the back of their skull

Once again, we find the unexpected and yet strangely beautiful personal style of the First order Stormtrooper on display. So poetic, so terrifying in their natural habitat. Ciferni, gaining a swift understanding of Hadrix's personal /style/, moves into position behind him as the man heads into the fray directly. Shots sear by him, but terrorists can't apparently shoot under stress. It gains some cover, both of shock and physical blocking, for the older man to take a shot over the terrorists and into the mass of bombers. One goes down, and he shifts only enough to take aim at the next. The more of those that don't leave the ship, the better this goes.

"Good girl," Artemis coos under her breath in a low, dulcet murmur. Whether the accolade is intended for herself or the weapon pressed firmly against her person is unclear. The rifle's muzzle glows for a moment as it vents the excess heat of the powercell's deadly package giving the woman an opportunity to sight her next fleshy target.

As Hadrix takes off, the vanguard tip of the spear, Artemis' legs coil to advance with purpose in the up close and personal trooper's wake. Playing guardian angel, her rifle levels itself at whomever is left behind at Hadrix's flank.

"Copy," Artemis acknowledges as her rifle screams once more. The bolt rips through the air and crashes with deadly purpose in to the genetically impoverished human. The shock to his solar plexus sends the terrorist to the floor allowing the woman to mechanically shift her attention to the more pertinent problem: the bombers themselves.

Orders given and rifle prepared, Emma leans out of her own cover and fires her rifle, super-heated plasma lancing through the head of the target she'd wounded with the pistol. She didn't need to tell the other markswoman the plan of covering the other two while they pushed forward to eliminate the bombers should they not be a target of opportunity, Artemis clearly had it worked out herself. Instead her eyes peer down the same sights she'd looked through many times before as she swings to the next target. The Vanguard was nothing if not good at working against poorer odds.

Poor little Chadra Fan. His comrades are getting shot all around him in what seems a small-scale horror-play of the same story playing out over the rest of the universe -- the First Order is here, and nothing you can do will stop their advance.

He tries to hang on to his willpower, and his weapon. He tries. But his hands are shaking, his friend's LEG is right THERE and if they don't get this cruiser blown up, then -- he breaks down and curls into a little ball, making a terrified cooing-purring sound. Maybe they won't see him.

The deaths of the comrades did what they had to do, though -- maybe. Two out of three of the bombers slip out in their EV-suits and away, wth the precious cargo, hurrying as fast as they can toward that weak spot in the cruiser design. There's not much time. They know there are suits enough for the Vanguard to follow them....

Satisfied with the destruction of his target, a quick visual check by Hadrix shows him Ciferni on his four and Artemis on his eight. With two unconscious and the last terrorist curled up, playing weakling. "I hate when they do that - they'll just use this as a rallying point to gather more to their cause. Casually thumb flicking his weapon to maximum power, he steps towards the hatchway, peering out any sort of port hole if there is one, casually pressing the barrel of his rifle to the chadra-fan's fuzzy body before turning it into an exploded ball of fur, flesh, bone, and tissues.

"If you're one shot short out there I'm going to laugh at you," Ciferni growls, pushing past the OCD trooper to get to the suits. "Enough undamaged suits for us," he calls back, already getting into one and mentioning going over what sort of charge they might be using out there.

Cold precision dominates Artemis' actions as she compartmentalizes the threats in to their constituant parts like vector tables in low level software. The sidelong glance she offers Hadrix is fleeting as she instead focuses on devouring the distance between herself and one of the available EV suits. Putting her rifle down, she slides each piece of the suit on one by one with purposeful, but wasteless actions.

"Who's taking point on the device if it's armed when we get there?" Artemis questions the team, her blue-hued eyes sweeping each member quickly before returning her full focus to the suit.

Double-tapping downed foes could wait, they had bigger threats here anyway. Her own EVA suit is swiftly sipped up, but she'll stop to help Artemis get her suit sorted that much faster. Two people checking one suit was quicker than two people checking a suit each. "Don't miss," she says simply, patting the other woman on the shoulder to let her know she was situated before turning her attention to her own. It didn't matter if she was the last one out, as long as they got there before the bomb was in place. "If worst comes to worst and you can't defuse it? Sling it into space and hope it gets out of range!"

It takes a frustratingly long time - just a few minutes feel like hours - for the Vanguard forces to suit up in their EV kits. Like the terrorists ahead of them, the troopers are constrained by the fact that one little thing can kill you in space - one small mistake. They have hoses to check, pressure, mag boots, lead lines... they're trained for all of this, and maybe even now they can hear some instructor from their basic training days yelling at them to do it faster.

Eventually, the whole team is (lovingly, tenderly) in their survival gear, and they make their way through the series of airlocks. The lead lines of the terrorists stretch ahead of them, and they are some distance away, kneeling down... placing the explosive device.

Suited up, Hadrix takes point again - liking being in front. "Seeing if I can rattle them before they get things in place, sir." sighting down his rifle, after a quick pat to make sure his spare clips are nestled in his belt, now worn as a shoulder strap. Clomping ever forward. He doesn't hit, not too unexpected for the moment, but maybe the sudden addition of crimson bolts of plasma-ey death may cause some issues for the bombers.

"I've worked demolitions, just not in a while," Cifereni replies to Artemis before setting and sealing the helmet. "But I agree that getting it out away from the cruiser would be easier." That said, he heads directly out with his rifle, scanning for the distinctive shape of other suits and finding them. No time like the present, and he immediately sets magboot on the hull and advances as fast as he can, taking aim and firing as he moves. It's a cautious tactic, but it pays off, as one of the bombers takes a shit and goes limp, dangling from their feet like a human-shaped zit on the glorious surface of the cruiser. Cif keeps advancing and firing.

Artemis' response to Emma's instruction is met with nothing more than a flat 'Copy' and a languid blink that takes entirely too long. Returning the favor with a quick inspection of the other woman's suit, it's not long before she steps out in to the void with the others. There's a satisfaction that comes with the first step on to the hull as the metallic cachunk affirms that the magnetic boots are working as designed. Science was never her strong suit but it's not difficult to appreciate the results.

Glancing over her shoulder at Cifereni, she nods gently before turning her attention to the fore. Rifle settled with the horizon line, she takes a pot shot. Her curse echoes her failure: nothing more than static along the comm as she catches her hiss with her teeth.

Of course, the instruction given to Artemis was on the assumption that half the team would go out before the other, but it mattered little. When the they step out into the void they're already working with a thin window of time. Mag-locked to the surface, Emma lifts her rifle and fires a single blaster bolt that zips across the expanse to impact with one of the bombers. Out in the vacuum the super-heated bolt can't quite cause an ignition in its wake, but it certainly leaves the impact zone glowing painfully hot.

Catching a nasty shot from Ciferni, one of the bombers goes limp. He's held to the surface of the cruiser by the force of his still activated mag boots, but otherwise, he flops limply, like a sad, disembodied windsock-figure at a used speeder dealership. His companion takes a shot from Emma, not enough to incapacitate him, but it looks like it hurts. Reeling, he pulls a rifle and tries to return fire, but he's realizing the same thing the Chadra Fan did. You can't stop them. There are more where they came from. They infiltrate as friends. They oppress as strangers. You can't stop the Order. The bomb is set, but you can't stop the Order.

Hadrix continues to care little for loose ends as the vanguard continue their approach. No force wielders, winging their crazy energy beams about or using their horror-holo hooboo jooboo... He can't help but speak aloud, "I was really starting to miss it just being the Corps... being the Vanguard." As he nears he aims for the neck of the unconscious man's suit and fires, so that his body will be there for other to see - as a warning... or at least something extraordinarily spooky. "Area clear" he plants his boots and drops into active guard posture, checking for any visitors that weren't in the cargo airlock, or elsewhere. Should have left that airlock open, shot the two other terrorists into space... well there's still time.

As the last of the vermin fall to the expert marksmanship of his comrades, Ciferni shoulders his rifle carefully and risks some skipping forward along the hull to get to the device. A quick looks tells him... that he worked on one of these before, though it was a smaller model. But... he kneels to begin work, taking care in both what his more bulky fingers do and in remembering. It's a while, but the lights shift down from red to amber to green in the right order, and eventually there is nothing but green, and then it's all powered down and made safe.

The rhythmic, mechanical steps of Artemis' approach mocks that of an AT-ST in its eerily measured cadence. Cachunk. Left. Cachunk. Right. Patience is the name of the game as the spectre of haste buffets the woman's emotional state with its reminders of her fatal imperative: deal with the problem at hand or discover what it's like to be a meat popsicle in the vacuum of space. At the apex of an inhaled breath, Artemis provides her answer to Fate with super-heated plasma. The bolt remains silent in the vacuum of space as the poercell discharges, but its collision with the final bomber is no less fatal for the lack of fanfare.

The bomber's suit is punctured at a weak spot between plates. Like a sucking wound, the scrabbling claws of space rush in to rake at exposed skin with the ferocity of an arctic chill. Skin crackles, splitting at the edges as atmospheric pressure and temperature drop with equal alacrity. The vessels in the veins burst. The bomber's blood roils in a fashion vaguely reminiscent of a pot at full boil. Nothing is left to be seen through the EV suit's visor but the crimson hue of frozen offal and the mottled crust of a sickly corpse.

Targets down, Emma lowers her rifle with an exhaled breath. Calm as she might like to present, even she didn't like being out in the void this close to a bomb. If anything, the last target's death was a fine example of the reasoning why. "Well done," she comments, accented tones conveying her relief. "Everyone intact?" Assuming someone would be polite enough to tell her if they'd died, she turns towards the hatch. "I'll contact command, let them know we're not exploding today."

The bomb defuses, and with the threats neutralized, the post-combat rush fades into the quiet company of two corpses and a machine that isn't going to kill several hundred people today. Uninjured, unstoppable, unbroken, all that remains is for the Vanguard to clean up the explosive and its would-be architects, metaphorically mop up, and go home. Above them, an endless sea of stars twinkle in the velvet black, representing a hundred more systems where the same story is playing out again and again, different actors and the same script.

Unstoppable.