6013 Void Rangers Chapter 1 - For Want of a Strawberry [IC]

[DragonRage]

Escort Missions.  Of course.  And not even the fun kind.  No, you poor saps are stuck escorting three freighters hauling cold cases of strawberries (and other assorted Terran fruits), because the elven population of the Coalition has apparently decided they’re a fad.  To top it all off, they didn’t even give you a decent unit to work with.

 

No, you guys are in the Void Rangers, that experimental unit you’ve all been hearing about.  A grand gesture of peace and cooperation between the Federation, Coalition, and Council they call it, a step toward reconciliation after two thousand years of war.  Most of you are at least half convinced it’s actually your previous commanding officers trying to get you shot in the back.  The rest are the poor suckers and Councilors who volunteered for this disaster in the making.

 

On the positive side, you actually have capital ship support for this mission; no piggybacking off the freighters’ FTL tunneling drives.  Captain La Lune and her dreadnought Crescent have a good if unremarkable reputation.  And legendary Coalition veteran Master Sergeant Sigmus Vulcair has signed up too (for some inscrutable reason), so you know your marines are in good hands.  If only the rest of the crew was as noteworthy.  Or at least as trustworthy.

 

But who the heck is going to bother accosting a convoy full of fruit?  At least you know the shakedown run is probably not going to end with a quick trip to the necromancers in the infirmary.

 

[OOC:  You guys are loaded into your vehicles and/or the capital ship Crescent, escorting a group of freighters supposedly packed with fruit through a rough area of space.  FTL tunneling drives are effectively teleportation, but they don’t have unlimited range and using them too often in sequence can cause problems.  Take the time to decide where each of your characters are, and get to know each other a bit better.  Maybe scout the area?]

[kj1225]

The Revenge and her captain, Captain Roberts, were in the point of the formation. Having a fairly tough little ship meant that it was the best place for that kind of thing, even if it was just as boring as anywhere else. The Ex-Coalition captain turned on comms, hoping to alleviate the boredom with some conversation within the convoy.

"This is Roberts, everything looking good on my end. You all seen anything of note?"

[Chevaleresse]

The primary reply to Roberts's inquiry from the fighter stationed on one of the flanks of the formation was a noncommittal grunt nigh-indistinguishable from a burst of static. The pilot, one Sigurdr Volund, was manipulating a number of controls, trying to eke the maximum performance out of both the data feed from the other ships and his craft's own sensor suite, basic as it was. His specialty wasn't exactly intelligence and data processing, but he knew enough to try and squeeze a little more out of what tools he had available.

 

Analyze available sensor data for anything out of the ordinary.

[Strider]

Somewhere aboard the Crescent, Ciara Walton was in a gym. First a run on the treadmill. Five kilometers, twenty minutes. She kept up a steady pace, feet pounding to the sound of an old song. Lots of electronic beats, something which she found kept her moving quickly. When five kilometers were up, there was a small beep from the machine, and the belt slowed to a halt. She stepped off, experiencing that slight bit of disorientation that comes from abandoning a rhythmic pattern of motion, but it disappeared quickly. Standing now on solid ground, Ciara peered intently at a small bright screen embedded in the wall. She flicked over to the heart rate data, and frowned a bit. Too high, for her standards. And, though she hadn't broken a sweat, her breathing was a bit heavy. That would have to be fixed.

 

Ciara stepped over to a bench, and sat down. It'd be a long trip, so she could take her time with the workout. No need to rush from one machine to the next or anything. She pulled out her iPad, and brought up a book she'd been working on. Sensen's memoirs. She'd been meaning to get around to it for a while, but it was dense, so she had been procrastinating.

[Yours Truly]

Firefight's mecha the "Operator Operator" was quite noticeably trailing behind the Revenge as its pilot casually examined the status of almost every single one of his craft's systems. He cleared his throat after he heard Roberts speak, and he almost immediately responded by saying "This is Firefight, absolutely nothing of interest is going on over here. Over.".

 

He would then check his oddly well made radar systems for anything that is interesting enough to note. Although he quietly hoped that he wouldn't find anything and that this would just be a routine escort mission.

[rustytengo]

Heavy footsteps could be heard as Scrag meandered throughout the Crescent wearing he armor and carrying his weapons around as he did. It was something he always did when he found himself on a new ship or in a new place how else was he going to know the best paths to get to any fighting quickly. Though as he did he seemed to be  in a rather grumpy mood then when they first started out, they haven't been in any fights since he got on this ship and he was starting to get a bit of cabin fever....or he was hungry....probably that since he keeps staring at the freighters when ever he found window that he could see them from licking his lips. 

[LucidRain]

Regi's mechanical arm sparked as he fiddled with its holo-monitor. His real hand swiped symbols and numbers around in the limelight of his makeshift station in the Crescent. He looked at the display with scrutiny, occasionally muttering,

"Shit, that's not supposed to happen." or "Guess they put the wall up for a reason." After a little while more, the Vanian closed down the holo-display and looked at his brand new ship in the hanger on one of the displays. Rogue Entity - a spanking new Arbalest bomber right off the presser, given to him by the Poltergeists - a renowned corp of advanced Vanian hackers, with a special endorsement from their illustrious leader Ha'ala. Looking back at it now, it seemed as if it was a sorry parting gift before she sent him off to this JTF squad.

He switched into a mocking patriotic voice, no doubt a caricature of Ha'ala's voice "You're so talented, Regi! You are destined for greater things, Regi! I'm sending a special recommendation to a special operative, Regi!" 

Changing back to his normal voice, he muttered, "Puerta. She's such an asshole." All that supposed talent, spent on delivering strawberries to the Gods Know Where. Why did they have to bring a whole Dreadnought on this mission anyway?  It wasn't as if some space-pirate was gonna hit them out of the thin air for a bunch of fruit.

Urgh, whatever. At least he had more time to tinker through his mechanical arm. There were so many redundant systems in here, Regi could probably remove half the systems and it would still work to the same capacity.

 

Regi's head perked up at the sound of someone speaking through radio. It was probably against protocol to talk casually through comms, Regi thought jadedly, but then again, everything was against protocol. Either case, the distraction was welcome. Though tinkering was fun, it slowly became a drag after several hours of fruitless attempts to break through one particular system. He opened comes and replied, "Somewhere non-descriptive on the Crescent here. Nothing here either." Regi yawned, bored out of his mind. And for him boredom was lethal. He decided to snoop around on the net and get some more data about the ship's commander, La Lune. Through the power of the internet, he began to find videos, track records and files about her performance, displaying them through his visor's display. He recorded his findings in a separate folder, titling it 'Some People I Should Probably Know'.

 

First off, what kind of name is that? Hell of a way to blow an opportunity to call themselves 'Destroyer of Worlds' or 'Harbinger of Doom'.

Huh. Engineer origin, few hundred years old. 

Frame is female, voice is male. Creepy.

Well, kudos to her, she has an eye lazer. That's pretty cool.

Initial striker kinda fighter. She seems to be the kinda person who'd like an ambush.

 

Regi stashed his summary of the Crescent ship and La Lune away when this too, started to bore him. He'll probably forget about all this detail anyway. Guess he should hit her up personally and see what's up about escorting a strawberry ship. He opened comms and messaged La Lune. "Hey, are we there yet?" Not expecting for her to reply, Regi went ahead with another holistic diagnosis of the ship's cyberframe and check for viruses.

 

[Check for any hacking attempts on the ship's systems. +14 to roll for Counter Intrusion]

Edited October 3, 2017 by PigeonOfAstora

[IntSys]

La Lune sat on a little armchair and stared into the windows of the Command Bridge. The Crescent sailed behind the three meek freighters, forming a diamond pattern, with the dreadnought herself taking a higher elevation than the rest.

The silence was almost as dreadful as the boring escort mission. Whose bright idea was it anyway to get a god damn Council Dreadnought to escort some strawberry cargoes anyway? Her eyes rolled left and right in a habitual fashion, repeatedly scanning for any abnormalities.

In a twist of fate, the abnormality was not outside the glass before her, but rather from her comms.

"Hey, are we there yet?" 

 

A quick recall of the information she received about her current crew members revealed that the voice belonged to none other than a Vanian Petty Officer, apparently a decent hacker. She was somewhat amused by his complete disregard toward the formalities in the ranks, which was quite odd considering him having served in the bloody Fantanan Civil War. After thinking for a few seconds, she decided to answer.

" Petty Officer Regi Arte hen Tesmund, you'd be well-advised to address me by my title at the very least," her voice was almost as cold as the containers in which the strawberries were stored. "Regardless, we are not there yet, if it isn't immediately obvious to you already."

[LucidRain]

Regi looked back up from his security scan, mildly surprised that the captain actually took the time to respond. Well, he guessed that AIs were pretty good at multitasking. After hearing her cold shouldered response, he raised his eyebrow and opened his La Lune notes again, and added to the end,

Pretty freaking cold. 

He considered calling her 'Little Lulu' just to spite her, but after carefully considering his ability to defend himself legally in case it came to a court-martial, he saved the nickname for later use. Instead, he'll try to skirt as many formalities as possible.

"Right-o, cap'n. Just checking, since you never know what scaaary thing might happen to our dreadnought on our trip there, you know?

All this stuff aside, you know who's actually checking if that ship actually has strawberries, or any other reason why they'd send a dreadnaught with a strawberry ship?"

He drew up a list of all the crew and picked the most prominent ones, or the most weird looking. He rapidly processed their profiles and combined it from footage from sources from the internet. Sigmus - the infamous dragon war veteran (though he had no idea what he was famous FOR), Edward Roberts - some shady dude they drafted in for no reason, along with others.

He highlighted Sigmus' name on the message back, along with a very brief profile (satire-lessly, just in case). "Seriously. We have Dr. Sigmus on our deck, a decorated war veteran, and I very much doubt they would send a JTF task force on a milk run. Unless we're at the brunt of some cruel joke, there's gotta be some kind of reason behind this, cap."

 

 

Edited October 3, 2017 by PigeonOfAstora

[IntSys]

La Lune let out a sigh and replied. "We do not possess the authorizations required to frisk our clients. We're in no place to question our assignment. Furthermore, you should be glad that you are on what you call a 'milk run,' if you value your life as much as you should."

The Vanian sent her Sigmus' profile, protesting again.

"And? Do you know the purpose of our unit? We're here to demonstrate the so-called unity between the Federation and the Coalition. Every assignment we complete will further that cause."

[Cool Girl]

15 hours ago, kj1225 said:

The Revenge and her captain, Captain Roberts, were in the point of the formation. Having a fairly tough little ship meant that it was the best place for that kind of thing, even if it was just as boring as anywhere else. The Ex-Coalition captain turned on comms, hoping to alleviate the boredom with some conversation within the convoy.

"This is Roberts, everything looking good on my end. You all seen anything of note?"

"Everything is looking good, Captain!" Norma said in a calm voice. Norma decided to get her weapons ready as she sat next to her vehicle. Shen then decides to ask: "So what's our mission, Captain?".

[LucidRain]

"Well, I just don't feel like we're demonstrating too much unity by delivering strawberries. But I see your point cap'n. When those elves are eating those berries, I am certain the first thing they'll be thinking will be like, 'Man, those Void Rangers are really out there changing the world.' Anyway, glad to be on your ship cap'n."

No I'm not. Puerta, she sounds like a bloody yana.

A 'yana' was a worm-like lifeform that lived in underground tunnels of his homeland Halnoi. It was a pink blob of fat that shook this way and that; every time a Vanian poked it, it would do nothing but go the other way, seemingly uncaring or unaware of something impending to eat them. It was a joke of nature - it only survived because it never had a predator, and never bothered to have anything other than moving. As such, Vanians often insulted others by comparing them to such a creature; small, docile, and exceedingly stupid. In the case of Regi, he used it to call brass who knew nothing but their orders. If he found that Lune was as bad as she sounded over the comms, then he'll take the first ride home. Hopefully, she'll turn out like Ha'ala.

After his unsuccessful attempts to figure out why the hell they were sending a dreadnaught with a strawberry ship, he decided to research more about his other crew, since there seemed to be nothing better to do.

Hmm, let see... how about the muscle packers...ah. This Ciaran looks interesting.

 

Female human - man, humans have really taken over the galaxy.

Ton of information about her, yeah? Would've thought that it would be more classified.

Crap. She looks like another yana to me.

Rich girl saved by man who shot everyone she knew dead. That's a story and a half.

Military training at the age of 15, lost arm and leg. Guess that's something common.

Some limited data around here though. Guess she didn't want her family's privacy to be breached.

Vyi, data around her family in particular sound pretty sketchy. Phah, whatever.

 

He went on to do similar cursory researches around the crew members, but then quickly tired of that too. Urgh.

He tapped the security toolkit again and checked to see if was progressing. He put one finger on the end of the loading bar to see if it did move, and indeed it inched very slowly to completion. Maybe he should rewrite the security program sometime, if it was taking this long to load.

Edited October 4, 2017 by PigeonOfAstora

[kj1225]

"Well Norma, we're delivering a load of precious cargo to a planet of people in desperate need of food."

At least that's what he tells himself to make this less boring. He was tempted to go back to his bunk and sample the best of elven culture. He didn't though. Learned his lesson from the last time he had to fight pirates pantsless.

[Yours Truly]

Giocomo found himself just having to respond to captain Robert's statement with "What the good captain Roberts had forgotten to mention is that the people who are oh so desperate for our precious cargo of oh so valuable fruit; are nothing but a bunch of prissy elves.". He maneuvered his craft to edge out a bit farther away from the Revenge to try and cover a larger area with his scanners before he continued with "But at least the brass had the good sense to send us towards something that we probably won't be able to fuck up too badly.".

[Swampellow]

Shi'fan shifted out of her resting position by the window when she heard her comms ping, reaching over to grab them. The noise normally didn't bother her, but sometimes it was nice to disconnect and just soak in the universe.

 

"Private Shi'fan, port side of the Crescent , no visuals on anything out of the ordinary."

 

The chatter on comm systems was always something Shi'fan never understood lest it was information that needed to be communicated at that moment or risk of peril. It made her think about her time as a scout and how she could go for extended periods of time without communicating with another being.  She wasn't sure why she had volunteered to join this joint task force. Probably some reason, not that she was able to put a tendril on it. 

 

Having already moved from her spot, Shi'fan figured there wasn't much point into returning to her resting state. She grabbed her axe and crossbow; re-holstered them, and began walking down the hallway.

[kj1225]

Roberts was a bit nettled at the attitude of the other captain. Especially since he seemed to not have a grip on common intelligence tactics that have been used since WW2.

"Well Gio, let me ask you something. Have you seen the strawberries for yourself?"

[Yours Truly]

Giocomo's mecha stopped moving away from the rest of the group when he replied by saying "Well of course not, who has the time to look at fruit these days?".

[LucidRain]

The technician looked down at the code and shifted through the lines of code in the security program. "Urgh. Whoever wrote this mess deserves to be executed." Regi tagged several redundancies in the system and decided to let some of the auto-functions on the program environment do its thing. "No wonder. Someone decided to shove in pseudo-code and decided it's good enough for a military class destroyer. Python died 4000 years ago, bosh'tet."

He spun around and decided to tackle the strawberry problem again. After all, it seemed like it was the only thing to do right now - well, the only thing that won't end in Regi screaming at the computer and bashing his head on why it won't work. The Captain obviously had no intent on trying to snoop around on the strawberry ships. Maybe the lower-downs had some more ideas. He opened his profiles and picked a random one, then wired it over through on a private channel. Ciara, the human soldier he had researched earlier.

"How much are you willing to bet that the ships we're escorting aren't strawberries?"

 

 

Edited October 6, 2017 by PigeonOfAstora

[Strider]

At the sudden voice, Ciara perked up, rapidly searching the room for the speaker that gave rise to this intrusion. If it was just an intercom system, there wasn't really any way that she could respond. Unless there were microphones in the room that could catch whatever she said. That would certainly be an invasion of privacy. . .

 

"I'd be willing to bet a hell of a lot. Most ships aren't strawberries. They've got an unfortunate tendency towards being unable to fly, or carry passengers for that matter." There was a slight edge in her voice. It certainly wasn't the captain speaking to her, which implied that someone was using the intercom system for personal use. Perhaps this intruder had some legitimate reason, but the casualness and pointlessness bugged her.

[LucidRain]

Regi snickered at Ciara's witty albeit a little irritated response. "Heh, good one!" Regi said. "I guess spending a few years with the void men do rack up your wits. Anyway, names' Regi."

He glanced at the computer screen, whirring a little as it ran the optimisation simulation over and over again. He frowned at it, as if trying to intimidate it to process faster.

He turned back to Ciara. "So - real question is, why do you think they'd send a dreadnaught to escort strawberry ships?"

Edited October 6, 2017 by PigeonOfAstora

[Strider]

"Lots of explanations. Maybe they wanted to give us an easy first mission that would ingratiate us to the coalition elves. Maybe we're transporting weapons or military tech. Could be that they're smuggling contraband, and we'll get a boarding order once we're far enough from anyone else. Though, no. . . last one doesn't make sense. The freighters wouldn't want us to give them an escort if they were smuggling. Maybe you should go ask Captain La Lune or something. If she knows and doesn't tell you, it's not something you need to worry about." Ciara tapped the screen of her iPad flicking to a new page.

[LucidRain]

Regi spun around in his chair as he listened to Ciaran. "Riiight. Pulling veterans and top-seaters out of their groups and THEN testing them with strawberries." Regi sniffed irritably. Typical brass move, then.

"And yes - I did ask the skipper and she said she didn't know either. So unless she's hiding something too, who knows what's on that ship, eh? Could be a box of yana for all we know."

Urgh- so no-one knew. Not even the Captain. There had to be SOME way to find out. Boredom and curiosity were brothers - and together, Regi couldn't resist. "Any ideas on how to check?"

[DragonRage]

Regi finds no signs of any attempts to hack the Crescent's systems.

 

However, everyone with access to sensor readouts or a window does see the telltale signs of a ship emerging from FTL off the starboard tunnel.  The incoming vessel is protected by a forward-facing hard light shield as it completes its jump, which suggests it's both an extremely powerful ship and expecting whoever is at its destination to be hostile.

 

However, the moment the jump completes, the hard light screen flickers and dies, revealing a rather shabby Vanguard destroyer, an older model of ship being phased out with the war over.  It's far more likely that somebody got their hands on a highly useful ship component, and decided to use it without checking whether their power supply could handle the drain.  The destroyer is painted black, with an actual, bone-white skull and crossbones on the bow.  Like, what the actual slag?  Who does that?
 

The rather shabby vessel sends out a hailing message, for a video conference call with everyone within receiving range.  Those of you who pick up are treated to the rather dumb-looking sight of a pink-feathered elf in a rather stereotypical Terran pirate costume.  His skull-adorned bicorne hat still has a price tag on it; 900 credits at the Bargin Barn.

 

"Yaaarrrr!" He shouts at you in broken basic, with a spectacularly bad Terran accent, which he presumably thinks makes him sound more like a pirate.  It makes him sound like an idiot with a head cold.  "You best be pullin' up and surrendurin'!  We be takin all your strawberries now!  Yarrrr!"

[Yours Truly]

Giocomo simply stared at the Elven humanoboo pirate in frank disbelief for a short amount of time as he simply wondered if any of this was real and that dealing with shit like this would be his life from now on. After the moment had passed the expression on his face shifted into a hopefully threatening one as he replied with "Are you seriously threatening an armed military convoy?". 

 

He quietly hoped that this was all just a practical joke, and that the damned elves at the coalition were just hazing the newly formed Void Rangers. But rather unfortunately Giocomo couldn't help but think about how this made a disturbing amount of sense despite how dumb the Elf seemed. This is why he immediately followed by asking "And who are you supposed to be anyway?".

 

He would then quietly check his scanners to make sure that there wouldn't be any nasty surprises.

Edited October 8, 2017 by Cronos5010

[IntSys]

La Lune honestly felt offended by the sorry excuse of an attack. So much so that she wasted no time and announced to the crew right away. "Attention all crew members, this is the Captain speaking. Ready the Eclipse EMP Blasters. Pilots, prepare for battle."

 

She returned her attention to the elven pirate's call. "These freights are under the joint protection of the UFP, the CSS, and the Council of Five. Cease your aggression and take your Terran float elsewhere, or we'll be forced to retaliate."