Nerrone's Rangers IC [Thread 1]

"The Ceris'? They're light interceptors, a solid hit or two should take care of their shields, but don't underestimate their speed," Kwa replied, "I don't know if there's anything I can do about the transport short of ramming it... And I promised Dagon I'd never do that again."

It was true: after that little escapade getting rid of the stink of Dagon's regurgitated dinner had taken almost as long as it had to rebuild the front end of the ship.

It had taken a long time to rebuild the front end of the ship.


An alert blipped on the Lacuna's sensor readout: one of the Ceris' had broken formation and was on an intercept trajectory.

And so it begins.

Without another word, Kwa switched the ship controls to manual and tipped it into a steep dive just as she had earlier, hurtling downwards towards the floating city far below. The interceptor changed course to follow, while the other remained behind to protect the transport.

Bor angled his fighter towards the Ceris pursuing the Lakuna. As the distance between them closed to five kilometers, Bor disengaged the cloaking device and shifted all power to his forward cannons. At two kilometers, he fired six rounds of laser-fire at the Ceris and arced between it and the Lakuna. He then powered the shields and glanced at the sensors to see if his shots had connected.

The Coalition couldn't believe their luck; Here we are, the task force's commander mused, scouring space for a single rusty, run-down spacecraft in a sector, let's be totally honest, filled to bursting with run-down smuggling vessels, and what's the first one we run into?

...No-one back home would ever believe me.

"Alright sir," the voice of Kestrel 1, piloting the first Ceris, broke through on the comms, "We're getting radio silence from the vessel. Moving to intercept now."

"Affirmative Kestrel 1, exercise caution: we do not want to inflict fatal damage."

"Understood Commander; seems they've decided to make a break for it. This won't take lo—HOLYSPODE!"

The flurry of shots came out of nowhere; Kestrel 1 banked hard to the left, but not nearly fast enough. The Ceris came away with a damaged engine and no shields.


Kestrel 2 needed no orders: the second Ceris broke formation and took an arcing trajectory, attempting to get behind their unexpected assailant to gain the upper hand.


Meanwhile, the Lacuna continued to plummet downwards; any minute now Kwa would break through into the ionosphere, even as Kestrel 1 aborted its intercept trajectory and began evasive maneuvers, preempting further attacks from Bor.

Keeping an eye on Kestrel-2 on the scanners, Bor pursued the badly-damaged Kestrel-1. Once he had a clear shot he took fired (one pulse this time, in the hopes of avoiding overheating the weapons).

Kestrel 1, its speed impeded, still managed to evade Bor's shot: if there was sound in space, the blast would have whistled over the bows. Kestrel 1 continued to make jerky movements and sudden rolls, relying on his wing-mate to attempt to get Bor off his back.

Kestrel 2, looping around to approach Bor's fighter from behind and to the left, let loose a string of blaster bolts, aiming for the engines.

All four ships continued to dive downwards towards the atmosphere of planet Ariid. A cloud, a vast white mountain in the sky, loomed to the right. The Lacuna, leading the pack but still pursued indirectly by Kestrel 1, was already about to pass it by. The ground beyond — dry, cracked wasteland that it was — looked about as inviting as a brick wall to a speeding motorist approaching a bend in the road.

I've never played chicken against the ground before, Kwa mused, let's see if we can make it blink...

Bor managed to avoid most of Kestrel 2's weapons-fire, but one pulse managed to clip his starboard wing and knock out one of the cannons. Bor cursed in Lynski and banked left, hoping the sudden change in direction would get the Ceris fighter off his tail.

He activated his comms device: "Kwa, this is Bor. I'm gonna try to get these fighters to follow me towards Santa Frerraro. Get the Lakuna to Las Thaddas and try to lay low until the mission's complete, then get out of the system as fast as you can. The Coalition will probably lose interest in you once the city falls. Hurry, I don't know how much longer I can hold them off."

Bor angled the fighter towards Santa Frerraro and accelerated, dodging weapons-fire and hoping the fighters weren't scrambling his signal.

Flank couldn't see the sprite's claws, but he could feel them rest upon a band of armour that stretched across and over the very top of his chest. The slow progress of opening the door began to test his patience. Flank could feel the familiar flame rise up from his chest, his neck, and then out of his mouth.
"Raaargh!"
Flank felt a new wind of energy occupy his whole body, and in his short outburst he pulled the hatch door with new strength, but like the sprite he used his wings as well as his hands.
He flapped his wings towards the door to pull it out of its frame. With each powerful beat the air blew around the end of the hallway in a violent whirlwind. He could feel the sprite take a lower position on his back to avoid being hit by his wings.
To Flank's amusement, the door began to open at a faster rate than before. But the effort still needed more muscle.

"But they're not after you, it's the Lacuna they— dammit!" Kwa cut herself off as a pair of blaster bolts flew past the cockpit: Kestrel 1 was on her tail again. She barreled right as another shot whipped past; the damage to the Ceris' engines had removed from him the advantage of speed, but the Lacuna was still a big target. Kwa maintained her nigh-vertical dash downwards, pushing the engines as hard as she dared. At this rate, the ship would pass within meters of Las Thaddas.

Concentrate, concentrate!

Meanwhile, Kestrel 2 was just about keeping pace with Bor — his sweep left had set back the second Ceris a fair distance as it corrected its trajectory, but the pilot still chanced a couple more shots at long range, hoping to slow Bor down enough to catch up. Santa Frerraro was still out of sight, a lot further inland, but they were approaching a mountain range: like a row of dragon's teeth in the moonlight, snow-peaked and impaling the sky.

_______________

Beneath Las Thaddas, the rust of ages finally gave. At last the strain paid off and the wheel jolted round — Dagon lost his balance and toppled backwards with a surprised grunt.

Bor was already as concerned as could be expected, but Kwa's words filled him with a cold dread. He glanced back at the sensors and saw that she was right - Kestrel-1 was still after the Lakuna...and without weapons, the freighter was a sitting duck.

I don't have time for this, Bor thought angrily. He suddenly cut his engines, bringing his speed down to 20 kph in seconds. Bor brought his forward cannon to full power, waiting for his pursuer to overshoot his target.

As the door flung open Flank flew backwards at speed, almost landing on the sprite who clung to his back, which would have crushed him.
As he rose, he dialed his home number a second time in hope of catching his room mate. It still cut to static.
Avoiding The Psychic One's range of hearing he approached the Pack leader.
In an undertone, he spoke: "Hey, I... I have something to take care of up on the surface of the city. Do you mind if I go up to... sort it out?"

Kestrel 2 realised he was gaining on Bor, and took advantage of this fact to loose a barrage of shots as the gap between them closed — before realising what Bor had planned. The Ceris overshot dramatically, despite the pilot's best efforts to bank left and come around.


Kwa couldn't afford to stray too far from her trajectory to dodge — any second now the Lacuna would pass dangerously close to the top of Las Thaddas.

Almost there, almos—

The whole ship shook and from the engineering deck came the sound of an explosion.

—No shields. Stay on target! A single bead of sweat dripped from her head and down her neck. She was unaware of it; unaware of the heat in the cockpit, the insistent beeping of the ship's console as it indicated that the shields had overheated, the beating of her heart. She stopped breathing. Held her breath.

_____________________

Dagon, picking himself up off the ground, turned to look at Flank. Their new accomplice seemed genuinely worried about something. Or was it the fear of being found out before he could run back to his superiors and give away their plans and location?

...He blinked and shook his head to clear it — sometimes, he thought to himself, the little voice in his head sounded far too much like Kwa.

"Okay," He eventually replied, "But before you go, let's sort out your comm channel so we can stay in contact, assuming this darn interference ever lets up." He told Flank the frequency and access code for their comm network. His instincts told him he wouldn't regret it. They'd steered him true so far.

"Right then," He said, turning back to the valve on the door, "let's get 'er open!"

Bor fired five rounds of laser-fire from his remaining cannon, aiming at Kestrel-1's weapons array. Then he fired up the engines and raced back towards Las Thaddas, hoping the Lakuna was still in one piece.

At this range, Bor's shots were accurate: Kestrel 2 took a pair of hits to the hull and another on the prow, crippling the Ceris' guns. The blows sent the fighter craft pinwheeling off course dangerously, and Bor was a speck on the horizon before Kestrel 2 had righted itself and the pilot's head had stopped spinning.


The edge of Las Thaddas flashed past the Lacuna's cockpit. Kwa could almost hear the rush of air as it passed.

Now.

She wrenched on the joystick with all her strength, pulling the ship out of its suicidal dive. Kwa felt the G-force tugging on her skin and spine as the Lacuna leveled out, ever so slowly — or had time simply slowed down?

*KRACKOOM*

A sound like thunder roared behind her, and for a second night became day as a yellow fireball lit up the ground below. Kestrel 1 hadn't pulled out fast enough.

It had worked.
For a split-second, Kwa allowed a spark of relief and exhilaration to rise in her chest.

And then she felt the side of the Lacuna clip a jutting pipe — an invisible spear of metal in the darkness — and Kwa's world became a spiraling, nausea-inducing hell.

A normal pilot might have cheered, or at least grin with relief. But Bor was a seasoned combat veteran, and only allowed himself a small nod before turning his mind towards the remaining Ceris fighter.

A starfighter the size of a small house exploding in the middle of a city doesn't go unnoticed. As Bor approached Las Thaddas, he raised what would have been an eyebrow at the large explosion that lit the sky ahead of him. Alarm took him when he noticed something too large to be debris tumbling away from the conflagration.

The Lakuna.

Bor quickly maneuvered toward the out-of-control freighter as it tumbled towards the ground far below. He quickly pondered his situation. There was no way he could get a transporter lock on Kwa in this state (at least, not without embedding a large piece of the Lakuna's cockpit into her body) and his fighter didn't have a tractor beam. After a few precious seconds of thought, he maneuvered to within five meters of the "bottom" of the freighter and began to rub his shields against its hull.

If they were lucky, this would slow the Lakuna's death-spin to the point where Kwa could take control (assuming she was still in a condition to do so).

If they weren't lucky, the already-weakened hull would shatter against the shields and the freighter would disintegrate in mid-air (probably destroying Bor in the process).

((Lacuna is spelled with a C rather than a K, just to let you know. ))


The Lacuna continued to spiral down towards the ground, but the hull yet held.

At this point, Kwa was flailing wildly at the controls, focus shattered, completely helpless and barely aware of how far away the ground was. Thus passed the next few seconds... until, somehow, a tiny measure of stability returned. She gripped the controls with renewed determination, and gunned the engines intermittently, gradually wearing down the vessel's dizzying rotation and slowing the ship's inexorable descent.

Bor's maneuver, borderline insanity though it was, had served its purpose, and the Lacuna slid away from him as its thrusters pushed it in unpredictable directions.

Inevitably, however, gravity took its toll, and the Lacuna finally met the ground. A cloud of dust was sent skyward as the ship's remaining forward momentum drove it a hundred feet along the surface of the planet. Finally, it came to rest.

In the cockpit, bruised, battered and bleeding, Kwa lolled forwards in the pilot's seat as the engines stalled and a measure of blessed silence descended upon the vessel.

((This will be long. Skip, if you want to. All you need to know is that Flank left, got rid of the legs and started to come back. He'll be a while. Stop me now, Dragonman! ))

Flank exhaled the air he held as the leader of the small gang gave him his frequency. Once he had it, he picked up his insectoid legs and ran back through the hallway. At junction B53, he jumped into the air, spread his wings, aimed his head and FLAK cannon forward, and activated his jet boots.

He soared down the length of the hallway in his advanced flight state that his race's military simply named 'The Jet'. He passed B50 and continued onwards. After half a minute of flying, he angled himself upward, deactivated his jet boots and landed on the metal floor with an ominous BOOM. He was very heavy.

He had arrived at the flight of steps that he took to get down there. Five floors long and Flank couldn't fly up them. He had to run. He didn't have very long. As he ascended the metal, grated steps, his heart pounded with a familiar heaviness. He remembered when he was back on Cortyax, training to be a Ravis gunner. In one day he would quickly ascend one hundred flights with a backpack full of lead. Anyone and everyone who wanted to get into the Ravis military had to get used to carrying almost their own weight in metal. A lot of it was on the inside of him.

Flank heaved the air into his lungs, using one hand on the hand rail to help ease his burden. At long last he came to the top of the stairs and arrived in a huge warehouse, still under the surface of the city. It was a vast place, full of crates and cargo containers. As Flank crossed the space, wheezing, looked around the vaguely lit warehouse with his FLAK cannon, always on the lookout for anything hostile. Another aspect of military training.

He approached the spiraling flight of stairs in the corner of the immensely huge area, and once again commenced his unorthodox exercise. At the top of the twisting steps, there was a large, rectangular door with a hatch wheel in the middle of it. He spun the wheel for three revolutions with one pull and kicked the door open. Daylight assaulted his two robotic eyes, dazzling bright after an hour and a half in the dark underground. It was warm, too.

His apartment was way up in the residential area of the city, and he was down at storage. It was times like this that he wished his Narcon V2 attack craft had not been stolen or he would be able to cover the distance in a single minute. Sighing, Flank continued his exhausting trek to warn his room mate of the coming events.

He ran through the streets of Las Thaddas, strangers eying him suspiciously and warily. Women pulled their children close, people shut their windows and doors, and others fled the streets. Flank was once again reminded of his intimidating, terrifying outward appearance. Flank could never be treated like a friendly being in the entire city. It was what made his only friend so valuable to him. He could relate. While Flank had metal implants on his body, his friend had most of his body replaced altogether. He worked as a mercenary, but when an assassin's grenade launcher came into play, he lost most of his natural body to its violent explosion. More than half of his body weight now counted as metal.

Flank finally arrived at the base of the apartment building, his unit was seven floors above him.
"Screw that!"
He activated his jet boots and continually flapped his wings, lifting him into the air, much faster than anyone would expect to see such a heavy individual fly.
At length, he came to his floor, and landed on the shabby balcony. He pushed the screen door open and stepped into the poorly built apartment. Almost all of the paint and wallpaper had peeled off the walls. The carpet was half eaten by moths. But what worried Flank most of all was that all of his, and his friend's possessions were gone.

He exited through the front door and jogged down the stairs that led to the floor below. Once there he continued down the stairs until he heard the unmistakable CLUNK-step-CLUCK-step.

Flank caught his room mate walking down the steps at his own pace, unaware of Flank's presence.
"Maarucye!" Flank called.
At the sound of his name, he spun around to face Flank. If Flank was scary then Maarucye was freaking terrifying. Three of his four limbs were metallic; only his right leg was organic. His right hand, however, had been reattached to his robotic right arm. There were metal plates all along his back, and around his neck. His left eye had been replaced and there was a plate on his head that connected the robotic replacement to his neck. There were even metal shoulder guards installed above his arms.

But among all of this, Flank was only worried about what he carried: a large cardboard box, and two backpacks on his shoulders.
"What hap--"
"We got evicted, Flank. That buttmunch landlord bumped the rent time an hour forward and I couldn't afford it. What happened? You said you'd be back in an hour and you were gone for two. And what the HELL are you holding?!"
Flank stepped toward his room mate.
"Listen! You need to get out of here!"
"Yeah, I was halfway through that." Was Maarucye's flat reply.
"No, you need to get off the city!" Flank replied. "Look. I can't tell you why, but you need to get onto a plane to Santa Ferraro, now."
"But why?"
Flank put his head in his hands. "Damn it, man."
He faced his friend again. "I can only tell you that this city is about to lose the race to the resource deposit they just found. I can't tell you how I know. But you have a head start. I need you to get to the air port to get yourself to Santa Ferraro. But before you do..."
Flank stepped forward and dumped the insectoid legs on top of Maarucye's box, ignoring his disgusted reaction.
"Get to the bazaar and sell these at the pharmacist. twenty quid per kilo. This should sell for three hundred quid, buy a ticket out of here and use the surplus to get a house in Santa Ferraro."
"What about you?"
"I will have to leave. I'm really sorry, but I have to go, and it will benefit you the most of you can truthfully say you don't know where I went."

Maarucye was silent. Stunned, even.
"Y-you're leaving...?"
Flank took his friend by his metal shoulders.
"Look, I know this is fast, and you've really been a great friend to me. But I have to go now, and I hope that these legs will help you start a better life on the city that will prosper. Now get to the bazaar, pharmacist, sell the marrow, twenty spucks per kilo, plane to Santa Ferraro. OK?"
As Flank turned to jump off the side of the stairway, Maarucye interrupted.
"Hey, Flank!" He tossed one of the backpacks he carried to Flank, who barely caught it.
"That's all your stuff in there. I trust you, Flank. I trust you with my life. If you need me off the city, I'll go. But before that..."
He put down everything he carried and stepped forward to give Flank a hug. They could both have been completely robotic, for the sound it made, but Flank hugged back.
As they pulled away, a wry smile spread over Maarucye's mutilated face.
"Goodbye, Flank."
With a salute, Flank toppled backwards off the edge of the stairway. From there, Maarucye caught a fleeting glimpse of Flank, soaring towards the storage district in his jet position.

"Bor to Lacuna!" Bor shouted into the comm as he slowed down and prepared to land. "Kwa, are you all right?" As he touched down a hundred yards from the wrecked Lacuna, he glanced at the sensors to check on the Coalition troop transport, which he'd nearly forgotten about during the dogfight.

Silence greeted Bor on the comms. Aboard the Lacuna, Kwa spent a full ten seconds in blissful unconsciousness.

Then it all came back; all the bruises, the cuts and the foreboding aches all broke in a wave over her body as she jerked awake. Kwa groaned, momentarily disappointed at having had to wake up, and finally reached out for the comms:

"...I'm fine," she gasped. Another few seconds passed: she flipped a few switches in the cockpit. Nothing.

"...Don't know about the ship."


On Bor's sensors, it appeared that the Coalition transport was headed in the direction of Las Thaddas — whether that meant it was docking with the city itself or planned to pursue the Lacuna, however, was impossible to say.

Relieved, Bor turned his full attention to the incoming transport. "You should probably put some distance between you and the Lacuna," he advised. "The reactor could still blow up, and you don't want to be inside if it does.

"That transport's heading towards Las Thaddas, though I can't tell if it's coming after us or trying to dock with the city. What should I do about it?"

"...The transport?" Kwa blinked, gradually regaining her senses, "...The transport. They could be civilians. I don't like collateral damage."

Moving slowly, she released the catch on the pilot seat's safety harness and shakily pushed herself to her feet, keeping hold of the chair's arms to stop herself falling forwards and giving herself a concussion on the dashboard. That, she felt, was one indignity she would prefer not to suffer today.

It took her less than a minute to gather her equipment, plus a traveling cloak to guard against the cold. The movement was painful at first, but by the time she climbed out of the emergency hatch on top of the Lacuna she felt slightly better, though perhaps not ready to run a marathon.

The prospect of leaving the ship here, unguarded, for any curious locals or lowly scavengers to come and pick apart, was not an appealing one.

_________________
--Las Thaddas bazaar--

Maarucye hurried towards the pharmacy, carrying his box with the insectoid legs resting on the top, and his backpack slung across one shoulder. It appeared the news of expensive insect marrow had spread somewhat; there was a line.
The level of salable insect marrow greatly varied among the occupants on the line. An old man with a plastic bag full of dead flies, a bar tender with a dog-sized cockroach lying dead in his arms, and even a shifty insect-like individual in a suit was at the counter trying to sell what looked like one of his own limbs. Maarucye could only count five on his body.

As he stepped into the poorly sterilised room, the entire line gave way, some of its occupants whispering among themselves. Maarucye stepped to the counter and dumped the insectoid legs in front of the shaking pharmacist.
"That will be all." He said, blankly. The pharmacist split the legs open with a knife and scraped the brown marrow onto a set of scales. The transaction was quickly made. Maarucye strode out of the pharmacy, fifteen kilograms lighter and three hundred spucks richer. He set off for the airport.

__________________
Flank flapped his wings to give him some more lift as he flew to the storage district. He carried his backpack in his left hand to compensate for the weight on his right shoulder, if not poorly.
From his vantage point, he saw a ship near the side of the city. He aimed his FLAK cannon at it and zoomed his point of view with the scope. It was unmistakably a Coalition ship.
"The Coalition?" He muttered. "What are they-- Oh God!"
He tried to contact the rangers on his comm link, but it still cut to static.
"Damn it!" He shouted to himself. "What the hell is wrong with this thing?!"

He was almost upon the door, so he deactivated his jet boots, rolled forward in the air, and landed hard upon the ground. Not waiting to find out of anyone saw it, he bolted straight into the doorway to the warehouse. Instead of taking the stairs, he jumped off the top and flew across the length of the great space. He arrived at the long flight of stairs and hurried down them. He had something to tell the Rangers.

As Rhak climbed through the world of whispering pipes and sparkling cables he could feel a faint vibration through the machinery.
"Was the city about to collapse?" Rhak thought. He frowned when the vibration disappeared. What was going on outside this city?
He continued under walkway, getting to the ledge at the far side of the Aegra.

The pumping station was larger than Dagon had expected: were it not for the machines and pipes that crowded everywhere in a sort of organised chaos, the space would have been as big as the inside of a cathedral. He took a moment to gaze around at the place as the lights came on, detecting movement, and whistled appreciatively under his breath.

"Someone did a helluva job on this place. Makes you wonder who was crazy enough to go and build a flying city... each to their own, I guess." His words echoed around the room, but were ultimately lost to the rumble of machinery as it pumped coolant to the gargantuan engines below.

"...Right then, let's get started placing them charges. Grecsh, if you would?" The bag of charges was produced and placed on the ground. There were seven of them: black metal cylinders, each about a hand's breadth in diameter and an inch deep, with adhesive panels on one side.

"Alright," he said, hefting one in his hand, "we need to put one of these on each of the red pipes, got that? They should be dotted around the—" An alarm blared suddenly, drowning out his voice completely.

...Just our rotten luck.

The good news they managed to successfully open the long rusting door. Bad news, alarms were blaring out. Chalen tried his very best to shout at Dagon. "We always get rotten luck almost all the time don't we!" Chalen flutterd continusly up and down but is not totally worried..yet. "What are we going to do?!"

As the group was getting ready to place charges, Celdryc heard the alarms blare. He immediatly had a plan."Give me the charges, I'll place them in stealth while you guys hold off whatever guards or other thing that alarm is bringing"
______________________________

Io was relieved when the Aegraa turned his fire away from him. What was better: The Aegraa had stopped paying attention to IO. This was a bad thing to do. He concentrated fire on the Aegraa and threw another plasma grenade, hoping this one would make its mark if the Aegraa had not seen the throw.