2067/MISSION: Ring of Thorns (1)

MISSION: Ring of Thorns (1)
Date of Scene:	20 April 2015
Location:	Flotilla Space
Synopsis:	The Starbound Flotilla and their allies pursue an Avian pirate gang, the Ring of Thorns.
Cast of Characters:	428, 596, 626, Starbound Flotilla, 754

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Starbound Flotilla has posed:
    RING OF THORNS
    "THE CHOP SHOP"

    The Flotilla is here. Or at least a part of it. The main fleet, including the Core Fleet and most of the associate fleet members, is currently hanging back at the edge of the sytstem, far from sensors. The Core Fleet's only sent in George's ship, a modern blocky sort of number with a deceptively harmless looking assortment of basic defenses. Blackout's ship will likely be invited along too, as will any ships who can keep a low profile. Most of today's group is Flotilla associates, though a small job offer or some communication from Juno to the Confederacy might have brought out a little more.

    Today's target is a space station found in orbit around a dead planet. It looks less like a space station and more like a temple, though, wrought out of what appears to be stone, carved heavily, and generally appearing to be some kind of mesoamerican structure, despite being very large and sitting out in space. It's not one singular structure, of course; it appears to be modular, built out of many smaller ones linked together, rather haphazardly in fact. Large CRYSTALS are featured in many places, dark red and glowing with power.

    They have open hailing frequencies, a system of sweeping SENSORS around them intended to detect incoming ships, and a reasonable degree of shielding and armor according to data George has pulled. The group is free to catch a ride inside his ship, and while it's still a bit small, it's much more convenient now that there's something like an airplane's worth of crew space in it now. The Starbound Flotilla's core fleet itself is all piled into his ship. George speaks over radio, and PA. "Alright gang, coming in on the chop shop now. How do you kids wanna play this? Negotiate, haggle, infiltrate... We could just board and blow them up, honestly. Objective's the same though. Got a tracking beacon on one of the ships in there. Grab it and book it."

HK-47 (754) has posed:
While the thought of instant gratification in the form of wide-output explosives is certainly appealing to HK-47, the first law of all targeting protocols is to know one's enemy. As such, while a blaster carbine shot to the head solves most problems, it is best to know what awaits before going that route.

As such, he decides that the less obtrusive measure is best... for now. Plus, he has his disgusting facade of 'meekness' to keep up.

"Advisory - Negotiation would be the best pretense with which to board their holdings. It would also provide notable tactical information about them and whatever customs they have for future encounters... and it would also place us in a convent position behind their station's external defenses, should the enticing prospect of violence be taken up by them."

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Different from the small transports of the Core Fleet is the sleek black ship hanging at the edges of the group. It's a curiously asymmetrical thing, bearing neither roundels nor sigils to betray its allegiance. It could have come from anywhere, though its design echoes Galactic Imperial aesthetics in its "eyeball" cockpit module, and the predatory sweep of its cockeyed wings and ion sublight drives.

It broadcasts no IFF and seems to leave very little in the way of signature, be it from heat or from residuals. Whatever the thing is, it's built for stealth. It's made to /hide/, and hide it does, difficult to spot so long as it doesn't move; simply a hole where stars behind it ought to be. That black durasteel hide doesn't reflect very much light. It hasn't activated its cloaking device just yet but it's still a subtle presence.

For now it waits, hanging back with the Core Fleet. Profiles don't get much lower than Inquisitor Starkiller's ship when it doesn't want to be found.

Juno's voice crackles to life over the local broadband.

    [Blackout to Core Fleet. We could board and blow them away, but do you really want to do things that way? It's going to be incredibly messy, and it's more than likely to attract other unwanted attention. I think it would be better to handle this with a light touch.]

She seems to hesitate for a moment.

    [Negotiation might be better, but infiltration would be best, at least for me. Do you think you could distract them somehow? I believe I can get in there if you can keep them busy; I have a friend here who can pilot my ship, and if it's functional, I can pilot the ship with the tracking beacon out. What do the rest of you think...?]

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
    Kyra is, of course, aboard George's ship. Fortunately, Kyra is pretty small herself so piling onto the ship isn't that much of a problem. She might not be expecting mass combat today because the very visible CURE-ALL is not with her at the moment, replaced by a sleeker hunting rifle of Galiandan make. Her clothing is bulky, no doubt concealing a number of mixtures and potions beneath it.

    "I agree with Blackout-I'm partial to infiltration myself." Kyra says, leaning back in her seat with one leg crossed over the other. She stretches her arms out and rests them behind her head. "If that goes south, then we switch to plan B." Kyra's eyes flicker. "Blow shit up. I've come specced for both options."

    She pats her side, perhaps to indicate the stuff she has up her sleeves.

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
    "Huh. Infiltration looks like the way to go. I'll run a radio line there, we'll run the robot's plan. We can keep their sensors and guards at attention on us instead, while we negotiate some boarding, and then work from there. Blackout, you can head around the back if you wanna, they should drop shields long enough for me to head in and then you can jump in too. Or you can head in the front with us." George calls out from the cockpit again, casually. "Wing it, I say."

    "Hey, Kyra! You're a cute young harmless girl and not a known associate of the ex-leader of a gang of rival pirates like the rest of us. I'll hail 'em, you give 'em a talk? Blackout, you can too if you wanna take that route, sounded like you might wanna slip in the back." George breaks off from formation, his boxy, long craft pushing forward and more towards the Chop Shop itself. "Alright, ringin' 'em up." The sensor sweeps are starting to focus on George's craft, meaning there ought to be gaps for Juno's cloaked ship to get into a particular position soon...

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
    Juno's asked for a distraction, and distraction is happening. Sensors, small little gem-mounted stone machines, are scanning the area around the station every so often. Most are focusing on George, but some are still scanning the environment. Even while cloaked, if Juno's in those sensor beams too long, it'll set things off! She can now pick an ANGLE OF INFILTRATION, and should get to it while avoiding the more sparse beams quickly!

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
    The radio crackles to life. A screen somewhere across from where Kyra's sitting in the cramped space shows bursts of static as some ancient camera system tries to link. She gets a jittery picture from the neck up of what looks like a grumpy-looking humanoid bird of prey, covered in crimson feathers and looking very incredulous. "Name and business or you get the lasers." He squawks, clearly the kind of person who doesn't want time wasted.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
The black ship doesn't so much as move, though Juno's hands rest over its controls, waiting until it's time to manoeuvre the ship. She keeps her attention on the pilot console displays, although every so often her eyes flick to HK-47, very possibly to make sure he's not /sabotaging/ her ship.

What can she say? Her experience with droids so far hasn't exactly been stellar. This 'protocol droid' is starting to make PROXY look like a saint, though...

    [They'll never see my ship.]

Leaning forward, her fingers dance across the controls. The subtle hum of the ship's engines changes.

And then it /vanishes/.

One moment it's there, hovering behind the Core Fleet; the next, the very space around it seems to ripple, shimmering, until there's nothing there to see but the stars beyond it. Only the keenest of instruments would detect the heat signature of the engine as the Rogue Shadow moves to ghost behind the rear of the pirate base.

    [I'll slip in behind them. My ship has a cloaking device, and they'll never see it. I should be able to get aboard their base and abscond with your prize before they know what's going on.]

The ship angles between the sensor sweeps, although in the cockpit, Juno's busy sweating her seat. It's not easy, considering there's no visual confirmation; she's relying entirely on instrumentation and instinct to thread her way in towards the base.

    [Damn. They're a little paranoid, aren't they? They've got sensors everywhere here, but don't worry. I can slip in past them, but I'll need you to keep them busy for a moment more...]

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
    Kyra lifts an eyebrow and then her hand so she can push back the hood of her hoodie. She's assuming that their radio might have a visual component too so if they can clearly see that she's an adorable teenaged girl, then she'd presumably have an edge. "Sure. These guys are neutral towards Humes-er, humans, right? What'll I tell 'em? That I'm just a lost little traveller looking for a resupply? Oh, or maybe I can go the less innocent route and tell 'em that I stole this ship and I'm bringing it in for parts. Or maybe that's too suspicious..."

    Oh wait, SHOWTIME.

    "Hi there! You can call me Alma-" Kyra gladly hijacks the name of her little sister, "-and I'm looking to convert this ship into cash. Fast. The faster the better, let's just say. It needs to disappear."

HK-47 (754) has posed:
As a droid programmed for subterfuge, Hk-47 finds himself very much partial to the idea of an infiltration... and perhaps even some sabotage, fate permitting.

If only he were that lucky, limited as he was aboard Operative Blackout's ship by his personal assistance droid masquerade, observing the meatbag pilot her craft from his observation chair, somewhat impressed.

"Appraisal - Operative Blackout, you surprise me with your aptitude for planning, mea... organic that you are."

"Recitation - Stealth and aversion of combat, boring as it is, would be our best opportunity as it provides the largest percentage of gain - information gain, identification of target individuals, and working structural demographics with which to extrapolate the construction and layout of future installations built by this race."

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
    The Rogue Shadow has a hell of a cloaking device. While those sensors are sweeping around might detect a stray bit of head signature here, an odd bit of light refracting wrong there, but Juno's infiltration skill ought to be enough to handle this. Unfortunately, she probably won't be able to pass through the bubble shield around the whole station without crashing through it, which is good because someone else manages to negotiate the shield down after a small delay, to allow another ship at the front to go through. Looks like HK-47's idea is working! Mostly!

    Now it's time to identify what sort of traditional space-station structures Juno would target in trying to start the infiltration on... This is a large one, with full residential, station-to-ship combat, environmental, and hangar sections, with varying degrees of security and defense. Where might she start?

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Juno flicks a brief glance toward the protocol droid currently occupying the co-pilot's seat. It's distinctly suspicious. Most of the time, the people in that seat are people she implicitly trusts with her life, but right now she's splitting her attention between making sure she can slip in past the sensor lines, and also making sure that droid isn't sabotaging the Rogue Shadow.

"Oh, excellent. I was so concerned that I might not have your approval," Juno mutters, hands and eyes on the controls. The only sign of her tension is the way her jaw muscles work; but there's no mistaking the absolute sarcasm in her response. "I'm an intelligence operative; what do you expect? I'm not going to go in there with both cannons blazing. I'm a starfighter pilot, but in case you hadn't noticed, this isn't a starfighter. What it /does/ have is a sophisticated cloaking system, and that's what we need right now."

"Blowing that base all to bloody hell isn't going to help us," she points out, eyes flicking over the pilot console displays, hands moving automatically to dance over the controls; correcting trim and heading without conscious thought. "It would get us what we want in the short term, but it would also bring down every pirate ship in the solar system on our heads, more than likely. They'd have time to raise an alarm, at the very least, and we'd also risk destroying what we've come to get."

The Rogue Shadow turns a slow, banking turn, twisting until it can roll almost belly-up to slip between sensor array lines. It's only visible through the shimmer of displaced space, though, and the slight warping of the stars behind it.

    [I think I've got an in. Excellent work.]

Juno's response is terse, even as she attempts to slip in past that shield while Kyra ekes her own vessel on through. Her eyes skim over the readings on her consoles as she tries to decide exactly where to bring the ship down.

"PROXY, give me the sensor readings. Quick."

The polite, heretofore-silent droid sitting in the jumpseat behind HK-47 speaks up, yellow photoreceptors flickering. He's a gangly sort of droid, a little less sleek in general appearance than HK-47. "Certainly, Captain Eclipse. There is a hangar below us, approximately thirty degrees toward magnetic north, which should provide us a suitable point of entry."

"Defenses?"

"I cannot discern at this time, Captain Eclipse."

Juno sighs and eyes the base dubiously.

    [We're in, George. Give us a few moments. I'm going to find us a suitable place to bring the ship down; somewhere that won't have the entire base flocking to our position.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Zwei has come along for the ride, both literally and figuratively. Asche has been positioned a few hundred kilometers from the station, where it anticipates he will be beyond the interest of its scanners with his negligble heat signature. The larger Armiger is already heavily armed, waiting for the signal to discharge futuristic hellfire on the installation at a moment's notice. Weiss is aboard George's ship with the others, actually wearing her vacuum sealed armour for appearance's sake. Her role is to get inside via whatever means the group feels necessary to map out the base, secure the ship, and designate which points to blow up.

    "Not bad~" she says over the radio, both to Juno and to Kyra. "I was considering just threatening them, but this works too!" Predictably, she doesn't appear armed, since that situation can be easily rectified at a moment's notice.

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
    Kyra's cover story works like a charm. "Another one, huh? Alright kid, we can move those parts." The bird doesn't look like he's particularly apologetic about the rudeness before, but the hostility's defused. Kyra at least has managed to get the shields down so George can dock. It worked! And he just... Hung up right away.

    "Hahaha, see, you're a natural there, kid. Don't worry, Human-Avian relations are mostly fine. And this plan should be OK, we won't be disassembled for a long while. Alright, I'm not putting the Mendacity in the hangar, they can close the door. We'll pretend we're having a misunderstanding and head to the external dock." George says. "Good work there too. Okay, so, Black, Droid? How distracted do you want 'distracted' to actually be here? I bet we can draw off pretty much all the guards if we get a little bit loud, but we won't be able to empty out much if we just make a scene of the docking thing." He's lining up airlocks now. The rest of the Starbounders are getting into hiding positions. They're going to let Weiss and Kyra handle most of the in-person stuff.

    They can exit now, and greet their welcome party however they like.

HK-47 (754) has posed:
As hHK-47 examines the design of the station - modular in overall structural layout - he runs over the checklist. Residential would be a good place to target personal, but the objective is also to not cause too much chaos yet. The hanger section would carry the ships and the most personal in a situation such as this.

"Recommendation - Environmental areas might have the least amount of personal out of the many segments of this station. If the gangly conglomeration of holo-projectors and sensors cannot pinpoint an exact count of the defenses, then we would be best suited toward directing our efforts toward breaching that area."

"Addendum - If nothing else, we may gain access to agricultural data so as to learn what their composition is... and what sort of chemical components are toxic to them, should you decide to poison their air-filtration systems from the environmental control station. As a space station is an isolated environment, controlling the environmental systems means controlling the station... and the lives of all atmosphere-dependent meatbags aboard."

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Juno keeps her eyes on the Rogue Shadow's console displays, and she only half registers the voice of George when he asks what kind of distraction she wants. Reluctantly she tears her gaze away from them, looking out the viewport towards the base itself.

She glances aside only briefly to regard HK-47. "Mind your manners," she snaps. "PROXY's a trusted ally of mine, and my direct superior." Her eyes turn forward again, flexing her fingers over the ship's <span style="color:ontrols.

    [cxterm81">I think the hangars are our best option. The further away from them that I infiltrate, the greater the risk there is of bringing down the base's entire defenses on my head. If I can get in, activate the ship, and get away quickly, all the better.</span>]

She glances back. "PROXY."

"Yes, Captain Eclipse?"

"I'm going to bring the Rogue Shadow in and disembark in the hangar. I'll need you to pilot the Rogue Shadow back out. Head for the Core Fleet and head in hot; they're not going to be happy about unexpected visitors. And keep the internal systems locked down, if you would."

"Certainly, Captain Eclipse."

Juno's not dumb or gullible enough to leave the Rogue Shadow alone with a questionable droid; she's got its internal systems locked down and behind a metric truckload of Imperial security, up to and including voice authorisation and biosign recognition from its sensors.

Smart girl.

    [I'm bringing the ship in, George. I'm going to need that distraction in approximately five minutes.

With that, the ship streaks down for the hangars, and owing to its cloaking, it manages to get right in.

The real fun's going to start once the cloaking device deactivates, and a sleek, predatory transport ship suddenly appears in the pirates' midst. Right now, though, the ship is merely waiting in the hangar itself. Waiting, invisible; while Juno waits for that promised distra<span style="color:tion.

    [cxterm81">Now, if you'd be so kind. I've got about fifteen minutes left on my cloaking device before I have no choice but to bring it offline.</span>

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Weiss has already complimented Kyra, and so there's no use further tooting her her horn even when she's impressed that it actually worked. She hadn't really expected especially tough landing security from neutral pirates running an actual business, even if a very shady one, but she had anticipated there would be a little more suspicion than that. Maybe the harmless little girl thing really pays off? "Sounds like a plan!" she says to George, tapping the side of her helmet so that part of the opaque faceplate turns transparent to show the upper half of a clearly avian face; or at the very least it projects a convincing three dimensional fascimile of transparency. "Should be plenty of time before they start wheeling out the hull cutters, though you might have to argue with them a little. Feign ignorance."

Ithe steps off of the Mendacity as soon as the airlock as cycled, taking up a position ahead of Kyra and anyone else who might be disembarking. "Wow! So you're just rude to everyone!" she directs at HK, not actually sounding particularly offended. "Don't worry, I'll forgive you when you thank me in a moment!" With that, she surreptitiously deploys a swarm of miniscule sensor drones from the fabricator unit over the armour's shoulder, just barely too large to count as a nanomachine. They work in much the same way as Asche's drones, though they trade powerful emitters useful for kilometers of resolution for stealth applicability, fanning out down the corridor and splitting up into any adjoining hallways they can find, mapping out the facility in real time with microwave through to x-ray emissions. Anyone with a device capable of displaying images gets the secure feed.

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
    Kyra waits just a beat to see if the Avian on the other side is going to buy an adorable teenager hijacking a ship. Hey, maybe that kind of thing is normal here, she doesn't really know and will take that risk anyway. Mentally, she's already preparing additional fake details to throw in there if she needs to.

    Fortunately, it's unnecessary. "Great, see you soon~!" Kyra gives a little wiggle of her fingers at the screen just as the Avian hangs up.

    "...haha." Kyra laughs, "Why thank you, George, Weiss. Glad humans aren't the 'shoot on sight' kind of relations, though. And, well, they didn't /specify/ where we were suppose to park this thing anyway, right? Sounds like a perfectly reasonable misundersanding to me."

    For the purpose of leaving the ship, Kyra swings her hunting rifle around to her front so she can rest a hand on it, but not have it up and ready to shoot someone. It's just to serve as a subtle reminder that although she's a teenage girl, she's an /armed/ teenaged girl that just stole this ship.

    "Hey-" she says privately to Weiss via radio. "Play along, we need some drama."

    Kyra then shoves her way past Weiss, bossily getting ahead of her, "Oh no you don't, I'm not letting you fuck up the haggling this time." She seethes, "Not after that shit payout we got from the last rig because you don't have the guts to play hardball." Kyra turns to face the guards and gives them a thin smile. "Yeah, pay no attention to her, business will be coming through me today."

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
    Heading into the hangar should be simple. The shimmering, nigh-invisible ship ought to be able to get in, but there's a mess of ships already here. An ATMOSPHERIC NANOFIELD keeps the environment both open and not-deadly. The HANGAR is exactly where all the other crafts in various states of repair are kept. They seem to have primarily been preying on sleek, elegant HYLOTL craft, but there's a mix of castle-like Glitch craft and body, modern Human craft in here.

    Initial scans are going to be tough to work with. There's also a fair number of pirates in here. Avians, usually the type looking like birds of prey. They're humanoid birds, universally. Like Pavo, though, they make a bit of a show of being pirates by nature, wearing the cliche outfits of such people. Though the dramatic coats and dirty shirts and tricorn hats and such are all rather servicable combat gear of a high rate. This local galaxy's version of Durasteel plates them at key areas, among other things. At work on stripping various parts out of various ships, they don't notice the light shimmer of the ship setting down in one of the few gaps there are in the hangar floor.

    Finding the ship itself will need a bit of scouting. Hopefully it's still whole! The pirates present will also need some dealing with, in the capacity of a distraction or other ways... There's probably not enough here to really kill HK, but these guys might be a bit tough and scrappy.

HK-47 (754) has posed:
As he looks over the organic targets, HK-47 runs through his possible combat scenarios. The armor on their bodies makes blaster fire likely ineffective - at least for basic blaster fire. However, their faces and bodies beneath their clothes are lined with coats of feathers that represent their avian heritage.

It could be considered amazing how the definition of something changes by context. Whereas one would see a 'coat of feathers'... HK-47 saw only 'a coat of a convenient flammable substance.'

As such, he filters through his internalized wrist-mounted weapons, selecting his flamethrower - mounted in his right arm-casing - for the hopefully-imminent event of combat. He also readies his plasma grenade for instant immolation of clustered-together meatbags. However, he awaits until his intervention is needed, as he does not wish to openly display to Blackout his true nature until it is necessary.

After all... what was a proper introduction without a slight hint of a dramatic flare to it?

"Statement - I await your signal, Master."

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
The Rogue Shadow slips smoothly into the hangar, unhindered by any defenses in place. Nobody's noticed yet that there's a foreign ship in their midst, and with a little luck, nobody's going to notice until it's far too late.

"Get the ship out of here on my mark, PROXY." Juno all but leaps out of the pilot's seat, only to have the lanky droid with the yellow photoreceptors take her place. "I'll signal you once we're aboard."

"Yes, Captain Eclipse. Running sensor scans on the inert ships now."

"Don't bother; we haven't got time. Let me slice into them." Juno reaches for the controls over PROXY's skinny shoulder, fingers all but flying as she investigates the computer cores of the ships, rapidly sifting through each one until she finds what she wants. "There; the other end of the hangar. That one. Its core is different."

Reaching for a storage compartment beside the ship, Juno retrieves her blaster, checking it over briefly before sliding it into the empty holster at her belt. "You're with me, HK. Let's get its engines online, and then burn sky until we see lines."

The Rogue Shadow shimmers back into existence at a command from PROXY. "The hatch is open, Captain Eclipse."

"There's our cue. Let's go." Juno raps on HK's streamlined 'head' with two knuckles as she passes, all but sprinting down the corridor for the hatch, and into the hangar.

She lopes down the ramp with her blaster drawn, eyes already appraising the number of pirates present. Avians, birds, pirates; vicious fighters. "Distract them, HK; I'll get that ship up and running!" she orders, even as she heads for the Avian ship on the other end of the hangar at a dead run. With luck she won't be shot at in passing... but that's probably way too much to hope for. Juno is a very good sprinter, but she's only a mortal human with the element of surprise on her side.

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
    The interior is immediately being mapped out by Weiss. It's nearly -- NEARLY -- undetectable, but some minor alerts are going out. Small bumps in background radiation associated with new visitors get some suspicion going. Of course, Zwei will easily get to tell that they're getting a little antsy. They may be able to use this to fuck with their distraction levels... The man who was on the radio is the one who's meeting them at the front. The interior of the structure is, oddly, wood-panelled. It looks like the interior of a pirate's ship, down to crates and such all over the place. The man's sleeveless armor and short trousers make a piratey sort of look while making him seem incredibly scrappy. Crimson feathers and a hawkish sort of composition to his looks further give him a vivid and lively and aggressive sort of look.

    His radio is squawking in his ears, incomprehensible to the pair due less to volume and more to unparsable piratey dialect. "You two." He says. "Where's the third? You have a Novakid with you? Our sensors are picking up something like one of them." The tiny traces of Juno? Not enough to identify her, but enough to He tries to lock in on Weiss, who looks like an Avian, but winds up getting intercepted by Kyra. "I'll negotiate with who I want. You're going to explain what kind of heat your parts have." Behind him are a few lazy guards, their weapons not drawn or visible yet, just as the main Ringer's aren't. "And then we're going to get your ship moved to the hanger and you out a teleporter and out of here. You've got a Sparrow-Class. Our rate's ten thousand pixels standard for that. Anything else on it?"

    Now's a good time for a distraction!

HK-47 (754) has posed:
This could not be a more perfect opportunity to do one of the things that HK-47 enjoys best - drawing attention to a perfect application of directed chaos. The master has commanded he distracted them... and distract them he shall. In the most permanent way possible.

"Interjection - Surprise, meatbags!"

The next second, a compartment slides open in the droid's wrist as he sees the avian targets already approaching, fingering their weapons at the sight of Blackout in a conspicuous dead-run - surely an attempt to harm his master... and HK-47 is programmed to never let his master come to harm.

He brings his arm up and instantly activates his flamethrower, spraying molten death across the first two meters in front of him in a side-to-side arc, immolating any and all avian meatbags in his path as he strides forwards toward their idle weapons, intending to arm himself in short order.

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
    Yep, Juno's right on the money here. SUDDENLY THERE IS ANOTHER SHIP HERE. Thankfully, it's suddenly around a lot of other ships, but it's still suddenly there. A few Avians have noticed that, and are wandering towards it, confused. Looks like cloaking tech isn't something that this galaxy has! There's some chatter until Juno's suddenly BOOKING IT out of the hatch. "AVAST!" Someone's shouting! "One'a them damn bareskins stowed away! Get 'er!" There's a few Avians jumping into action! They're very agile! They intend to jump up on top of the nearby ships, dashing alongside her! They've already drawn ERCHIUS FLINTLOCKS, heavy pistols of some incredibly dangerous description!

    A pair of them attempt to do that plan. HK winds up roasting them immediately as they're taking off. A pair of them wind up slamming onto one of the ships, one crashing right through the cockpit glass, both writhing. As HK continues its flamethrower assault, many more of the investigators are writhing and screaming too much to get anywhere near Juno. The writhing man on fire in the cockpit sets off retro thrusters for the ship. It immediately lopsidedly turns over and begins rolling, slamming its way around the hangar in a horrible comedy of screaming, burning man, twisted steel, and crashing spacecraft.

    Juno should have a clear path to get to the strange Hylotl ship -- it looks mostly intact! -- as long as she books it quick.

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
    "Novakid? Nah." Kyra waves dismissively, "No, it's just the two of us." The lead guy, whom she recognizes as the one that contacted her on the radio, gets a pretty visible look-over from the white mage. She does't look terribly impressed, especially when he tries to assert an attempt to negotiate with Weiss.

    "Oh, you want storytime. Alright, I'll give you a story. This thing's actually a double steal job, you see? I don't know where it came from originally but it was in the hands of a nasty, thorny little Floran. Fortunately, we were lucky enough to find out about it before it got its little plant-hooks into it. I thought I had offed the thing but apparently not good enough. Furthermore, I don't think it was a lone Floran interested in this ship."

    "Ten thousand pixels, huh. I thought a Human ship would get a little more pull than that. It's one of the two-thruster models." Kyra seems ADORABLY DISAPPOINTED.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Weiss micromanages the microswarm spreading out into the facility, mostly ignoring the minor alerts going off for the most part. Her priority is on mapping out where the facility's defensive installations are and dispersing the information throughout the group. The tiny machines settle on any access points into the station's electronics they can find; wiring, power crystals, control panels, whatever. The faint radiation signals die off as they find their places, slipping between stone blocks and wooden panels until they coat the relevant connections like a fine dust.

    "Whoa, what?! What's this bullshit all of a sudden?!" Weiss screeches at Kyra, synthesizing avian voice tones from recordings of Pavo. "It was either that or nothing! It's your own goddamn fault for trying to fence shit that costs so much to handle! If you'd stop picking marks so hot that it takes a month to strip all of the-" And such is the point where she should be conveniently interrupted by the base's active scanners going off. Playing the radiation warning from earlier off to her advantage, Weiss wirelessly taps the covert operations machines to alter the more thorough scan's results to find enough rads on the Mendacity to indicate a nuclear weapon. She'll have done this only after disabling the relevant defensive weapons, breaking their encryption with the kind of quantum computing algorithms that probably still won't be invented for quite some time in this world.

    "Ahhhh shit! I told you they'd notice!" she says, palming a fake detonator from nowhere using some sleight of hand and split second fabrication. "Alright nobody move! You're buying this piece of shit whether you like it or not! If I push this button, we teleport out and you go boom, got it?"

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
The element of surprise is an incredibly useful thing to have on one's side. It gives Juno the few seconds' worth of a head start that she needs. She isn't fool enough to look over her shoulder or acknowledge the defenders in any way; she simply throws every spare ounce of energy she has into /running/.

Juno Eclipse is, fortunately, a very good sprinter. She's not superhuman, though, and one of them manages to get a shot off before a good number of them are roasted. Staggering mid-stride, Juno snarls in pain, clapping her empty left hand over her right shoulder -- but she doesn't slow down.

If she does, she's going to get run over by a spaceship or something. What the hell is that idiot in the cockpit doing? No time to look.

She can feel her lungs burning even as she swings herself around to the choice ship, throwing herself into whatever serves as its cargo hatch and flinging herself into the pilot's chair. Her fingers veritably fly over the controls, ignoring the burning in her lungs or the numbness settling in her right arm; the blood slicking the controls.

"Gotcha," she growls, punching in coordinates and jerking the throttle. It's enough to get the ship out in a decidedly hasty trajectory. She fiddles for a moment before finding the comm controls, activating the loudspeaker.

"Come on, come on, come on," she mutters under her breath, waiting for the equipment to respond.

    [PROXY, rendezvous with the fleet. We'll catch up to you. HK, get back aboard before those ships start wandering through the hangar; I don't have enough space in here to manoeuvre away from them.]

    [Affirmative, Captain Eclipse.]

Now, it'll just be to get out of here in one piece, she thinks, bobbing one foot in impatience.

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
    As soon as the blaring red lights alert a !!!RADIOLOGICAL ALARM!!! the pirates are in action. The leader of them draws a humming energized POWER CUTLASS from his back, while the three guards he brought each draw one-handed ERCHIUS FLINTLOCK PISTOLS. The station's crew are immediately unable to provide backup in the HANGARS because they're suddenly trying to get the station-to-ship guns to actually work!

    The detonator's out, and the leader's narrowing his eyes, the cutlass humming and crackling with power. He tilts his head. "You nuke one of ours, Thornwing will find whatever the hell you hold dear and turn whatever planet it's on to slag down to the core." He's still not moving though. "You want to scam the Ring of Thorns with a game like this, you won't get what you want and you'll lose what you got." But he is staying still. And Weiss ought to be able to tell from biometrics that he's just got a really damn good poker face, and is lying through his beak.

    Notably, they're all focusing on Weiss, instead of Kyra, because she looks like an Avian, sort of, right now. Kyra should be able to execute any QUICK SCHEMES without having those probably-dangerous erchius flintlocks putting a round through her.

HK-47 (754) has posed:
As sad as it is, all good things must come to an end. However, the number of smoldering avian meatbag carcasses more then makes up for the short duration of his combat sortie.

"Acknowledgement - Yes, Master!"

He bolts for the ship's open bay, speeding up to it as fast as his frame allows and matching up the gangplank - after tossing his plasma grenade into the hanger bay for good measure, incinerating any meatbags that attempt to run up after them.

However, he is still a bit apprehensive about the reaction from Blackout once she looks out her canopy and sees the extent of what he has done. Obfuscating his assassination protocols will likely be impossible with her now.

On the other hand, he could have the relief of not disguising his true nature with her, and that alone was enough to compensate.

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
    Well THAT definitely caused some drama! Inwardly, Kyra is laughing, but she does offer an angry, "See, no, this is why I do the negotiating from now on." Not that it amounts to anything more than background noise drowned out by radiation alarms.

    While the attention seems to be squarely on Weiss now, she takes the opportunity to grasp her hunting rifle in both hands and lift jut slightly. She's shooting from the hip to minimize her own movements, which makes it a little less accurate but Kyra is confident she can hit feathered skin with the payload.

    She's using her darts again but the resevoirs on these are filled with something a lot worse than just tranquilizer. Any Avian struck is going to start feeling very, very sick very quickly. It'll start with chills, then tremors, followed by migraines and mild hallucinations. They will feel lethargic and sore.

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
    Juno can get in! It looks like the local copy of S.A.I.L. has been fighting off disassembly for a very long time. There's a ton of strange wood growths all throughout the Hylotl-designed elegant interior, but the Starling ship is still in working order! Albert immediately transmits something to her -- some codes from their original client to disable this particularly resilient S.A.I.L., but it'll still need some of Juno's hacking ability to get the ship going. She'll need to slice through some of its fresh, new defenses that it adapted up!

    Meanwhile, the slamming wrecking ball of a ship has come to a stop, so the Avians are getting their shit together a bit, though the plasma grenades kill several more of them and keep the survivors on their toes. Juno shouldn't take more than a few minutes to get this done, but the Avians did keep track of where she went! Many of the survivors are yelling rude oaths or similar, firing off more shots, mostly at HK's violence, and trying to use their superior air mobility. HK will probably need to get into cover in the ship's cargo hatch itself, unless he wants to tank that sparse rain of HEAVY shots! Wow, that Erchius gives a BRUTAL kick to the shots! HK will, in any case, need to handle the defense against these.

    After this, though, Juno should be able to get the ship lifting off and blasting out! This one is confirmed to be the one with the hidden blackbox tracker, and all the incredibly valuable data therein!

HK-47 (754) has posed:
The flock of meatbags approaching the ship engage in what seem to be swarm tactics, intending to use attacks to barrage them.

So naturally, he robs them of the chance.

Aiming his arm, he prepares one of his incendiary darts, launching it out - straight for the growing pool of fuel leaking out from the damaged vessel as he pulls all the way back into the ship, slamming the hatch to close the ramp as he makes for the cargo bay.

"Warning - I recommend we vacate the area immediately, Master!"

Zwei (596) has posed:
    "I can't really think of anything I'd particularly care about losing, so isn't that a shame! Do you really think we'd be fencing this kind of junk if we did?" Weiss' personal interdiction field spreads out several meters, invisibly expanding to cover Kyra should anyone start shooting. "Consider this getting what you deserve for being so goddamn sloppy. I severely doubt that Thornwing will look on this kind of failure and go 'yeah you know what, fuck those guys!' instead of stringing you up by your guts." Of course, Weiss is lying through her teeth too. She has no idea what Thornwing is like, but the advantage here is that she doesn't have any natural stress reactions to suppress. That said, she's pretty impressed by the stone-face gig the crimson avian has going on. Were she a vulnerable and fleshy singular being, she'd probably feel pretty intimidated by now.

    Matters aren't really helped by Kyra opening fire, but by that point it's really too late to stop things from spiralling out of control. She has more than enough of a reaction speed to scan the darts mid-flight and determine that they aren't some kind of deadly neurotoxin, and so she humours the white mage by responding nonlethally herself, popping the wristguard on her free hand and opening fire with her multi-PDW on what equates to a taser round setting, firing delibitating pulses of electrical energy into neural and muscular systems, staying put so that her shields protect Kyra while she clears out anyone within firing range.

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
The ship is a little different from the designs she's used to, but Juno Eclipse is a pretty handy engineer and mechanic. It doesn't take long to wrap her head around the slightly different control schematics, or the tweaks here and there to the systems she's accustomed to.

Thankfully, she's also an accomplished hacker, used to breaking into far more secure systems than a derelict ship's artificial intelligence.

Fingers fly over the controls as Juno practically sweats in her seat, consumed with nervousness over the timer ticking at the back of her mind, and the chaos going on all around them. Yet she's a professional, and handles the situation with as much professionalism as she can muster; putting aside her snapping at the recalcitrant and slightly homicidal droid.

"Come on, you bucket of bolts," she growls, sifting through the mainframe for her quarry. And then she abruptly whoops, thrusting her uninjured fist skyward in victory. "Gotcha!"

Engines rumble to life, and Juno wrenches the controls. The ship slews sideways, spitting sparks as its hull drags against the downed ship; making even more of a chaotic mess. No doubt the Avian pirates are forced to tumble out of the way of the blackbox-bearing ship as Juno pushes it.

Once she's gotten clear of the hangar, she'll punch the engines for all they're worth, attempting to run for the Flotilla up above. Reaching up, she rakes her hair out of her face, wincing at the pain and the smear of blood left on the side of her fa<span style="color:e.

    [cxterm81">I'm going to need somebody to knock out that shielding around the base itself. I don't care what you have to do, but give me a window I can climb out of. I've got the ship and I'm going to need room to run for the Flotilla.</span>]

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
    Weiss tanks the bluff like a champ by virtue of not caring about anything like that. Which is a good thing. Thornwing really is the kind to slag entire planets over horrible vendettas. Meanwhile, she confidently talks down the leader while Kyra abruptly poisons all three of the pirates behind him. They become deathly ill very quickly, rapidly shifting the playing field in terms of Weiss' negotiations, even moreso when their erchius flintlocks go off and are blocked by Zwei's well-prepared shield. Good fucking christ they have a kick to them though, for a flintlock-type weapon these are really futuristic guns..

    "...You don't know Thornwing well. Fine. Name your price." Zwei will have about one chance to haggle a price out of the piratey leader man here,, something more in the realm of hundreds of thousands of Pixels, delivered in a swiftly-tossed tiny metal pod of some kind, but they immediately need to go, because there's a lot more pirates trying to get into position around the group, and a heavy bit of independent drone defenses and piratey starling and sparrow ships getting into action.

    "Hey, we're totally just gonna not give them the Mendacity anyway, obviously." George says, laughing a bit, and opens the airlocks back up. Weiss ought to be able to retreat easily, at least, though those guns have enough kick to pose a threat to her too if they bring out more!

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
    The pirates are starting to get antsy, despite the burning line of fuel to the ship outside... Not noticing it, they're preparing heavy weapons! Retrieving large launchers from crates, they're starting to batter the ship that's their objective, but suddenly a burst of blue light coming out of one thruster bowls them over, and the ship blasts out of the hangar, just as the far end and everyone around it are consumed in the blast of a large Starling-class detonating! Sequential explosions dramatically pursue Juno and HK out of the hangar, but they should be mostly fine by the end of it. While it's a little singed, alarms going off to alert everyone aboard of the damage, the objective is still in one piece and it's still spaceworthy. Streaking around towards the front, the Mendacity should undock safely just in time to meet up with the new vessel... Hopefully. And ideally, something will be just about to take out the shields here, and release them both!

Kyra Hyral (626) has posed:
    Kyra's smile widens a little bit as she sees the three pirates go down. Weiss might notice that she's watching those three very carefully as they writhe and fail to actually shoot Weiss there. She murmurs a few things appreciatively.

    "Oh, we know him well enough." Kyra says cheerfully, waiting for Weiss to wrap up 'negotiations' before she backs her way back into the ship. She keeps that gun of hers raised the whole while until she's on the Mendacity alongside Weiss, well past the airlocks.

    "Well that went well." Kyra says cheerfully. "I didn't think we were gonna extort money out of that one too. Nice one, Weiss!"

HK-47 (754) has posed:
From the cargo bay, HK-47 feels the explosions rocking the vessel, as well as hearing alerts from the increase in hull temperature.

Perhaps there was indeed such a thing as doing one's job too well?

However, the sight on the display screen of the hangar bay being consumed in a vibrant fireball is one he will certainly commit to his memory banks, as well as the sight of many burning meatbags flailing around in a blind panic as their lives are extinguished.

"Observation - There are just some days when you feel it is truly a good to be functional."

Granted, Blackout would not likely agree... but one could not have everything.

After all... if it was always that easy, then where would the fun be?

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Of course, extorting someone for money under a bomb threat when you aren't even planning to sell them anything is totally immoral and no good guy should ever do it. There are two pertinent facts here. a) Zwei is not really the type of person to be concerned with moral standing where it doesn't negatively affect them in any way, and b) these people are violent criminals, so nobody really cares how it treats them. As such, Weiss snaps the pixel canister to a magnetic anchor and then zaps the pirate without so much as a word of thanks, turning around and hurrying Kyra along by pushing her if necessary before more pirates show up.

    "Affirmative!" she says to George over the radio at the suggestion of abruptly reinstigating the operation of the systems she'd just turned off. She leaves the micromachines behind entirely, disabling the shield for as long as necessary for Juno and George to escape, dragging Kyra on board as quickly as possible. She tosses the fake detonator on the way back, waiting for the signal before broadcasting the activation signal, followed by the signal that will cause the machines to disintegrate. "I guess we probably don't need to blow this place up anymore. Kind of a shame!"

Juno Eclipse (428) has posed:
Although the ship behind her detonates, the shockwave is actually more of a help than a hindrance. It gives the Starling-class the extra kick it needs, shoving it out of the hangar and giving the thrusters a little help.

Juno's still forced to fight against its sluggish controls, though, huffing a breath through her teeth as the ship threatens to slew into the hangar door. She stops it, but not before it scrapes a bit of cosmetic plating off the ship on the way past.

And then, suddenly, they're free.

    [Visual confirmation on the Mendacity. Good to see you again, George. Let's get out of here.]

Juno sounds calm and professional in spite of the smoke trailing from one side of the ship, and the electricity arcing through the raw spot that surface plating had been scraped off of.

    [Time to see how fast this can go once those shields are offli--I said shut up until I need your opinion, rustbucket!]

The last is slightly off-mic, because Juno was busy turning around to snap at HK-47 again. Whoops.

Turning forward, she scans the ship's primitive sensors and controls, frowning her displeasure. It's positively Stone Age compared to the sleek elegance of the Rogue Shadow, and the discrepancy is annoying. At least it's in reasonably good hands; she trusts PROXY to pilot it true enough to have a ship to go back to.

She'd better, or she's going to have a lot of explaining to do to Starkiller.

"Just... can it, and sit in the cargo hold, and don't make any noise. Okay? I'm dropping you off at the Citadel once we're done here. And good riddance," she mutters, under her breath.

Fortunately, all in all, it seems to be a successful mission. The shields shouldn't prove too much of an issue to their motley crew -- after all, they'd gotten in, right? They'll certainly be able to get out again.

Even so, she finds herself grinding her teeth.

...This was supposed to be a /stealth operation/, and instead they're piloting a ship out of a hangar full of burning pirates while being pursued by explosions and haunted by the stench of burning Avians. That's the last time she trusts anything to a /droid/, or at least a droid that isn't PROXY. Actually, to hell with it, that's the last time she's trusting anything to a droid. PROXY can get lumped in there too.

Fortunately, Zwei is on the ball, and Juno senses as soon as the shields are free. Punching the throttle for all it's worth, she clutches the controls as the ship shudders around her.

    [We're clear of the shields. Estimated time to rendezvous with the Flotilla, two minutes and fifty seconds. Well-done, everyone. Thank you. We'll have this delivered to you and once the ship is docked, I can go to work slicing out that information for you, George. Oh, and please thank Albert for me, will you? That data was a tremendous help.]

Starbound Flotilla has posed:
    The station-to-ship weapons go off all at once. Lasers blast in all directions but the ones that matter. The hangar is exploding, and now there's a lightshow! It immediately tears the shield apart, taking it right back down. The Rogue Shadow, the fresh new objective ship, and the Mendacity are all breaking away, leaving stunned pirates in their wake, as Zwei jacks their cash, zaps their leader (he goes down, but has possibly survived to fight another day!) and all three can tear ass back to where the whole Flotilla lays waiting just outside the system. It should be safe to execute an FTL jump from there, and for the Rogue Shadow to cloak anew.

    The CHOP SHOP now has a busted hangar module, sick crewmen, and a lot less cash than they started out with. The Flotilla, on the other hand, has Juno and the blackbox tracker, freshly ready for the gang to find out the exact coordinates of that nice little planet the Ring of Thorns has been operating out of. Good deal. A good raid.