Scene #5656: A Dying World's Refuge

Owner	Pose
August Kohler	Norn's fate was decided years ago. An artificial planet designed to outlive the death of the Sol System's star, Norn was thought to be the immortal stronghold of humanity. However, humanity itself was not immortal. Over time, humanity became one with their assistant androids, becoming a new race known as the 'Cybered'. The Cybered, in turn, were thought to be the new immortal. But sometimes, nothing lives forever. Norn's artificial star reactor has been on the horizon of meltdown for a decade. At first, few Cybered left, but in the last few years, the planet has evacuated. Norn has been thought to be empty for several months now, just a ruin of a utopia. The distress calls proved that wrong. It's the last days before the reactor is expected to be destroyed and Norn is expected to be wiped out. However, a group who has until now been without connection due to the lack of infrastructure has finally managed to craft a signal strong enough to reach the Multiverse. The SOS only says two things. 'Please evacuate us.' and 'There be monsters.' Arriving on Norn, the first thing that can be noticed is how dark everything is. The city where the distress call came from, a stainless steel row of buildings and land canals, an old population center, is pitch black. The signal leads north, towards a cluster of skyscrapers. Getting to it through the city isn't difficult. Or, wouldn't be... If it wasn't for the hissing noises of gears and clacking, approaching on the warpgate minutes after people arrive. Something's coming. And it doesn't sound friendly, though it's not in sight range yet, and doesn't appear to have noticed you, either. Why are you here, and what are you going to do?
Evangeline	When the 501st Joint Fighter Wing received the distress call, only one 'witch' was available to answer. The little Neuroi known as Evangeline has followed the signal here, and in the darkness is is visible only by the few glowing lights on her body, much like those of an aircraft. She has been floating at the landing point for the past few minutes, just trying to see into the darkness with her sensors. Radar doesn't paint a very good picture, infrared might fare better. Both are used on the landscape and any nearby objects. As that scraping approaches, Evangeline turns toward it. She doesn't really have a way to project light, but the ends of her sleeve-like arms light up with a sinister red energy that serves as both minor illumination and a visible warning to anything that might be approaching. "....identify yourself..." her soft, synthesized, nearly monotone voice calls into the dark, broadcasting from both a small speaker-watch on her arm and over the radio.
Batou	The dark city looms ahead as Batou switches on his thermals, looking for any signs of movement on the horizon. Batou and Eye are here in a Paladin transport to assist in the evacuation of these stragglers from this hellhole. Tachikoma whirs beside him as Batou looks at Eye, frowning. "Ruined wastes seems to be our specialty, Eye," Batou muses. "You can hear that too, I assume." Batou opens the back of Tachikoma and pulls out a mean looking machine gun, courtesy of Section 9, about half as tall as himself, and cocks it, chuckling. "We'll do just fine. Tachikoma, when you see them, start lobbing grenades, I'm not playing around today," orders Batou. Tachikoma emotes a salute, and readies itself. "Roger!"
All-Seeing Eye	All-Seeing Eye is here for the same reason his fellows likely are--to serve the multiverse's citizens in their time of need. His secondary objective is to look good doing it, but he rarely has to try in that regard. Some people are just blessed! When he emerges through the warpgate, it's astride a hoverbike, carried by jets of purple flame that illuminate the area around him. Evacuations are certainly within the resources of the Paladins to carry out, but in his experience, things that lurk in the dark don't often get along with transport craft. Sure, he could radio in for evac personnel right away, but that pesky whatever-it-is will have to be dealt with first. Luckily, he's the deal-with-it sort! "But of course, Batou!" With a smile, the Exalt heads towards the sound, using his echolocation to pinpoint both its location, and its appearance within the darkness. This causes him to end up near Evangeline, who he regards with a curious, if nonthreatened expression. "Comply within five seconds or be recycled!~" adds the Exalt in a convivial tone. Should five seconds pass without answer--even if, and perhaps especially if it's extremely large, he activates the integrated Essence cannons in his eyes. Bolts of purple lightning streak from his eyes, racing towards the source of the sounds. The weapons fire also deactivates his hoverbike, which quickly powers off and folds itself away, thus obviating any expedient escape.
Kotone Yamakawa	The Call had gone out while Kotone had been in the Paladin's hangers working on her ship. It had fairly good cargo for it's size and it also did have digital carrying abilities if that was needed. It hadn't taken her long to spool up the drives and set her nav point for the planet. While things were going on she suited up with Therm Optic Came, a weapon and loading some supplies into her Matter Manipulator as she went. She also made sure to not forget several safety bits of hardware in the event yet again she needs to jack into some alien computer systems of some sort. She had beamed in from her ship and was a bit behind Eye and Batou. "Talk about it, I always find myself crawling through them and ...wait is that a spider tank?" She pauses looking at Batou's robotic partner for a moment. "Eye sir I'm ready to go and let me guess if we need something to jacked into I'm up for that?" Then comes the weapon "Wait whose there?!"
Staren	A world where humans merged with machines to live forever! And they even had to plan to outlive Sol! Staren could learn a lot from a place like this... ...So of course, it's on the eve of destruction. A call for evacuation, from a part of the multiverse Staren can't just FTL jump his ship to. Hopefully, the people trapped here can be led out a warpgate, if the 'monsters' can be held off long enough. And since Staren doesn't know who's coming with him, or what he'll need to do, he brings some extra manpower of his own: Two large constructs, ten or eleven feet tall, made of concrete but painted up to look like steampunk clockwork constructs. They're armed with kanobos. There's also a human-size robot -- its skin clearly metal and lacking facial features, it wears military-looking body armor and carries a rifle of some sort. Rounding out the group are two metal unicorn statues a little over four feet high. Staren himself is riding a bipedal construct made of wood painted to look like metal. Where one might expect an upper torso and head, however, has been replaced with something like the inside of a car -- places for a few people to sit, and a control panel in front of the driver -- the shape of this 'cockpit' exposes the upper bodies of the occupants, in this case Staren. Two arms hang down from the 'body', each of which is holding an assault rifle. All in all it's maybe 9½ feet tall, 11 if you count the exposed part of its occupant. Staren's in his usual armor. Staren immediately starts searching for wireless signals. Not only to find the inhabitants, but any information he can download about this society while he's here may well be useful to his own aspirations to one day make utopia. He also sends up some quadrotors to try and get eyes on the clacking menace. Seeing others he recognizes here, Staren gives them a friendly nod.
Ezekiel Gravez	A rough voice came over the comm frequency, with a heavy drawl. The sound of the channel was crackly and carried a slight static to it, "Dis is code Omega zero one one niner respondin to requess. I'ma en root to designation Planet Norn to pick'n up refugees 'n whatnot." There was a white noise that cut off part of the message, but faded back in mid-expression, "with food n medical. Blue blip is'n me. Unarmed but come in peace. Identify yerself, please? M'hoping I'mma not de only one 'ereabouts. May require assistens." There is a pulse beacon blip, as mentioned on the local navigation grid. It appeared to be a non-descript clunky and slightly armoured bulk hauler, the variety often used by cargo vessels or low-key smugglers. The comm screen shows a rather large human, with a brown cowboy hat, wearing a matching brown longcoat. One hand tips the hat and attached to his farearm looks like an advanced computer merged into a shiny cybernetic gauntlet. One of the fingers has a long needle like projection tha glistens in the cockpit lights.
August Kohler	Requests for the creatures to surrender only helps them better locate you through sound. 'Creatures' is a bit wrong, though, because there is no organic life on Norn. Instead, a swarm of small drones, old and showing it, start coming at the group. They're not here for a welcome party, as several of them start talking in what are obviously prerecorded messages. "Defensive mode activated. defensive mode activated. Master Number ERROR CODE: 433, please remain indoors and call authorities. Please remain indoors and call authorities, Master Number ERROR CODE: 433." Their single 'eye' on the legged little robots suddenly begins to light up and fires lasers at the multiple Elites! Several are, however, blown to pieces by Eye's cannon, which seems to spur more further inside the city, as the noises start echoing. Staren's eye in the sky (and therefore everyone connected to it) can spot them throughout the buildings, seemingly personal multipurpose drones coming out of the woodworks. The drones catch something else - what appears to be a tall humanoid on a rooftop, looking down a...rifle? Regardless, while the drones are not individually powerful, there's a lot of them, and they all seem to be hostile! Luckily, there's a lot of buildings and ways to weave around in the large city, plus they could likely be ambushed, and they also don't seem to be directly attacking the hauler or similar 'terrain', just any signs of actual people.
Ezekiel Gravez	&t The hauler veers off to circle around and fall back a little. A large searchlight projects down in front of the fuselage, and into the grounds below. The pilot appears to be searching for a safe spot to land.
August Kohler	Ezekiel would be able to find a spot a bit back beside a crumbled (and thankfully abandoned) building, where the drones aren't in firing range of.
Batou	Well there they are. Tachikoma starts to lob grenades into the swarm of bots as Batou hops atop Tachikoma. "I'm rolling forward on them," Batou calls to the others, opening fire with the large machine gun on the stragglers that survive the blasts, bullets cracking the pavement as they hit it. "Hey Staren, who the hell is that up there on the roof? Looks like they have a weapon. Any truth in that?" With a smile, he relays on his comms to All-Seeing Eye. "Also, Eye, I remember you boasting about wanting to fight that guy at the emcampment a while back. Just how good are you?"
Evangeline	Thanks to her sensors Evangeline is able to patch in to the drone cameras pretty well. The automated enemy drones start firing, and Evangeline's shield flares a few times as shots impact hexagonal blue energy panels all around her. She takes off to avoid further shots and starts firing her own. Despite her size, Evangeline has firepower more like that of a starship. She aims at the ground drones firing on them and unleashes a large beam of her own! A beam nearly as tall as the small drone-like creature herself! Wherever it hits, the beam causes a sudden but not really fiery explosion. It is more like something is hit and then simply...pops. The only flames would be from fuel within the drones, assuming they have anything combustible on them. "...there are...a lot of them..." she says as she weaves between buildings and other obstacles.
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa seems it's automated defence systems and she curse her SMG comes u p and she's moving to open fire. "Great the defence systems are out of wack. We need to push for the source of the signal." She'll take a few shots at some of the drones. She'll have to get her answers out of Batou later, for now she breaks into a run to keep up with. She'll open fire with her SMG she'll also kick in her cloak. <<I'll pick off what I can, Batou.>> <<Staren got any ideas if you find something akin to a terminal let me know I could try to shut down the drones>> Kotone will be looking for wireless signals or something akin them as she goes and she sees Batou also taking out the heavier weapons and a few grenades of her own join the assault as she moves. <<Eye sir? Anything you need me doing>> She'll keep track of the mysterious Cowboy sniper and Eve as well. The former was unknown but the latter was very welcome.
Staren	Staren tries to hail the mysterious figure. Do they even have a radio? The drones (and that's odd... the distress call said 'monsters', and the people here know what drones are) demand a response, though. Staren's 'mech' isn't really meant to stand up to much firepower -- ironically, the forcefield that catches any shots aimed directly at him weathers the hits better. Staren sets his little squad to self-defense -- the mech and synth fire their rifles, the nanotech-augmented bullets acting like hardened AP rounds against the drones' metal chasses -- the two large constructs wade up to the horde of drones and start swinging -- and the unicorn statues move in front of people to act as cover, their solid metal bodies tanking hits. They're not good for much else... One of his quadrotors makes a beeline for the figure on the roof. Staren can't spare the focus to issue a more complex command, but he does transmit his voice over its speakers: "Here to rescue you! Don't shoot! What's going on, are these the monsters? Or are you?" To Kotone, he replies, <"I'm too busy playing shooter and RTS at the same time over here, maybe the Tachikoma can try to hack them?"> He doesn't know that Ezekiel is a hacker, yet.
All-Seeing Eye	Excitement flashes across the gentle features of Eye's face--the drones may not have intended to be the welcoming party, but that's what he sees them as. The chorus of pre-recorded messages is interspersed with the cracckle of electricity. Fully formed whips of materialized purple lightning are now held in Eye's hands, and he begins to spin them so quickly that their forms blur into discs. Emerging from the sleeves of his patent leather longcoat, two steel cables whip through the air, each one also crackling with electricity. With his impromptu target shields and whips, the Exalt leaps even further into the crowd of drones, deflecting lasers where he can and striking at exposed targets with the steel cables. The lightning he holds in his hands occasionally illuminates his grinning face, and in turn, the cannons in his eyes. Those cannons have plenty to give the drones as well, shots bouncing between them and off of scenery to hit others at odd angles, even targets directly behind him. He doesn't bother moving between obstacles or in any way running away from the drones, even as lasers singe his clothing and fly dangerously close to his face. No true Champion would run away from so meager a threat! Besides, he's demonstrating his combat prowess to his subordinates, who surely need the guidance of an Exalt. Over the comms, he offers a response to Batou. "See for yourself, darling~!" Kotone's question comes just as a laser shot pierces his shoulder. He hisses in pain--but pain is good. Pain is the most excellent teacher in all the world. Despite the smoldering wound, he still refuses to retreat. "Ah, Kotone! Since Staren's occupied, why don't you assist the Tachikoma? Do take your time--I haven't had this much fun since Denandsor!"
Ezekiel Gravez	The aerospace hauler lands in its intended position, which is to say - precarious at best. There is the sounds of drones being crushed by the magskirts as it rounds about and drops to ground. Moments later, the tall and well built man emerges from the cargo hold. An automated flood lamp sprays a blast of high intensity light and swivels around. "I won' be a minute, Pete. Keep the engine warm." He calls back to someone inside the hauler itself. The longcoat flaps in the wind, and a large revolver is drawn. Several drones begin to chatter and gather within the lamp arc. There is the sound of hum, as if something is powering up. Zeke mutters something and the Revolver seems to come alive with a blue glow around the cylinder. A couple of shots ring out that sound like a distant whipcrack of digital thunder. Satisfied that the coast is clear, he visually scans the locale. It looks like some sort of ruined recreation area seemingly for children. Ezekiel tilts his head and leans down to pick up a component from the broken drone. At once across the marquee of his internal cybernetics reads data and information relevant to a cursory search. "Cheap alloy," He tosses the charred remains back into the ground. Raising the mechanical gauntlet, he speaks at it.
August Kohler	The drones aren't powerful. They're actually pretty fragile, and their numbers and laser cannons are all they have going for them. Evangeline manages to blow through several, while the grenades send them flying into chunks and Batou's machine gun allows them to start paving a way forward. Eye's whips tear through them as do the cannons, dicing them apart Kotone's search for a computer signal will find a still working terminal inside what appears to be an office building through the swarm, which can't see her through her cloak. With some quick hacking, she can turn off several of them, especially a bunch of the reinforcements, but it seems they don't all correspond to the same terminal, so she can't shut every single drone down from there. Finding other sources or hitting them directly would be necessary to shut down the whole swarm, though it'd probably require some teamwork. The drone Ezekiel finds is cheap as hell, but the components inside can give a hint to the signal of the /rest/, allowing him to assist in the hacking easily if he wishes. Staren's drones provide him cover, while the rifles take out the enemy drones, though once his quadrocopter is up, the sniper takes aim at it briefly before moving his rifle. He's fully mechanical, some sort of android, so definitely one of the Cybered. "Thank the gods, someone's here. No, but they're a sign the Juggernaut's coming. It's driven most of them crazy. Engineer Leto-63, stayed behind to see if we couldn't figure out what was wrong with the reactor when comms were shut off by the monster. Just, we need to get to the hospital, the rest are there, and we can get out of the-" Ledo-63 suddenly diverts with his rifle as a sudden /howl/ echoes through the air. A building suddenly crumbles as a massive fifteen-foot tall mixture of steel and plantlife smashes forward, a giant steel bar growing out of its wooden arm which has been reinforced with steel and technology. It has a single eye that traces, looking for signs of intelligent life, before suddenly ramming forward at the group, moving to slam apart as many of them as possible, while the drones move around, on top of, and under it to survive. It speaks no words, only screams.
Batou	Batou is stunned at the fluidity of Eye's fighting style, and quits firing for a moment, before a heavy frown smears over his face. "Not that impressive, Eye, catch this!" With that Batou runs into the onslaught, alongside Eye. Batou takes momentary control of the Tachikoma, lining up a grenade shot. "Thinks he can out do me, huh? Heh, he's no Major..." A quick thunk from the grenade launcher sends a round directly to Eye and Batou, with Batou jumping into the air to spike it up and over them with his foot.
Evangeline	Luckily the drones are hardly a danger, and after the first shot Evangeline realizes this and uses much smaller and more easily directed blasts. Each beam is only enough to bring down the small flying drones. That is until that giant creature arrives. Well...giant for most standards. Evangeline fights things much bigger on a regular basis. Still, it looks dangerous. She is about to fire when...she notices Eye and Batou having some sort of fighting competition in the middle of a battle. The little Neuroi tilts her head in curiousity, though without any sort of facial features it could be hard to tell. "...Leto-63...leave this to us...you should get the people to the evacuation ship..." she says over the radio before she charges up her beam again. Larger target means larger beam. "...don't get close..." she warns her allies quietly before she fires another Breaker Beam. It's her strongest attack, meant to shatter fortified enemies. Hopefully it will leave some kind of mark! She may not have much in the way of personal style, but her attack is still pretty eye catching as it illuminates the area in that sinister red glow.
Kotone Yamakawa	<<Good thinking Staren>> She's cuts her assault as she picks up the signal and she'll keep moving for it. Putting her focus on getting to the terminal. <<I will Eye, don't have too much fun, all right?>> She picks up speed mas she heads for the terminal she's picked up she has an pretty good idea of what to do. It looks like it was an office once or something along those line she'll be quick to pull jack out of a device on the back of her neck, and she moves to plug it int it will take a moment for her to get in but thankfully she is able to shut down some of the drones, also over the tac net she sees the stunt Batou pulls off. <<Well Batou, you are certainly upping the ante there ain'tcha?>> She makes sure the shutdown command goes out but she frowns she has a notable portion of the horde but not all of them. <<Good news and bad news, good news I got some of the drones to shut down from an terminal. The bad news it looks like they split up the drones from various terminals. If we are going to shut more down I'm going to need help.>> Everyone on site is included in Kotone's transmissions. <<So got any ideas we'll have to pool what we can do if we want to get more.>>
Batou	Tachikoma leaps onto the side of a building, up and out of eyesight around of the giant monster, communicating with Kotone directly. "Kotone, Tachikoma here! I'm aiding your hacking efforts, considering the giant monster! Feel free to use my boosted signal and processing power to your advantage!" Tachikoma's vision shifts to directly access the net, showing up on Kotone's terminal as a smaller version of itself, and waves.
Ezekiel Gravez	Zeke climbed up the ladder on the side of his Hauler to get himself into a good position to actually oversee the battle. The nanites within his computer grid were ripping the code apart in large chunks, and spitting out known data. The translation program was working fast, and by the time he finished the climb the important bits were already broken. Zeke worked quick mentally, while his cybernetic eyes zoomed deeper into the battlefield A virtual work screen emitted from the cyberdeck attached to the gauntlet, and an entire block of data parsed from the microholo. Good good, he thought. The screen blanked as the nanite worked the second nanoprogram. The marquee read in azure letting, 'ENGAGED COMM CRACK V 1.0' Drones began to stiffen and stagger around the local vicinity, causing their movements to be jerky and even clumsier than before.
Staren	They found a person! Yay! They found the monster! Boo! As it charges, Staren and his constructs move out of the way, although as soon as its charge stops, the two large humanoids step up and attempt to wail on it with their kanobos. Staren turns his walker's guns on the Juggernaut's head, hoping that if he dumps enough bullets in its face he'll break the eye. The other constructs continue trying to protect against the drones. Since Kotone's identified a terminal, he has his support AI look out for any more that are seen through construct or drone eyes. In the meantime, he talks to Leto-63 through one of the quadrotors.
All-Seeing Eye	Just when Eye begins to get bored of the drones (clearly, they weren't made for rough-housing!) the scream of the patchwork colossus pierces the air. The creature's girder-arm is swung towards him with surprising speed. But that isn't what catches his attention, even though it arguably should. "Not that impressive?" His voice practically drips with indignation. And such is the extent of his indignation that he doesn't move out of the way of the colossus in time. When Evangeline's beam strikes the creature, Eye is hit by that girder-arm, taking the blow directly in his center of mass. The impact sends him flying over the cyborg's head, and, consequently, over the grenade. But he won't be insulted, least of all by a subordinate! If he were 'not that impressive,' would he be made a Warden so early in his career? Preposterous. A whip snakes out from Eye's ankle, and with a kick, the steel cable coils around the live explosive, dragging it along with him. Sailing through the air, Eye lashes out with one of the whips on his arm. This he uses as a sort of grapping hook, swinging himself around a smashed-out street light with the grenade in tow. At the apex of his swing, he gives a kick, sending the grenade flying towards the colossus. He lands a few feet behind Batou and points a finger accusingly, a disdainful frown on his face. "Lesson number one, darling," he says sternly. The Exalt flips his long, black hair over his shoulder. "Never, ever doubt me." A hand is placed to his ear, and he responds to Kotone. "Do what you can, dear. We'll hold the Colossus down while you work."
August Kohler	Leto-63 takes a single shot at the thing to draw its attention, but it doesn't seem to dent it. Evangeline does, however! The breaker beam slams into the Juggernaut, tearing a hole through its chest. There's a massive gaping hole...which begins to regenerate back together by absorbing the metal of the buildings around them, merging it into the plantlife and technology inside it...but then, Staren's constructs attack it, while the walkers blast on the eye. The Juggernaut roars again, as the healing suddenly stops, and it starts to tilt. It moves to swipe at Staren's walker and try and crush it... When a grenade suddenly flies into its eye. There's a boom as the Juggernaut suddenly falls backwards and collapses, not moving. Leto-63 is clearly counting, and sighs relief when it doesn't rise back up. The drones are still moving for the time being, but their lasers suddenly start getting janky as Ezekiel hacks into them, lowering their threat by quite a bit. Via the boosted signal, meanwhile, Kotone can get into the rest of the terminals from her current location, hacking into them and shutting down the rest of the drones. The threat is over. Leto-63 rappels down the building on a cable system he obviously had pre-setup, as he then proceeds to bolt towards what appears to be a hospital. After a bit, several similar androids come out, and start to approach the group. It's time to get off this dying metal rock.
Batou	Batou is thrown away by the girder, slamming into the wall and continuing through it, smashing onto the ground inside the building. A quick system warning alerts him that his left hand was rendered in the impact, but nothing else damaged. Just as he has time to look up, he sees Eye catch the grenade despite the fact that he was hit as well, and slam it into the beast. As Eye lands and chastises Batou, he is reminded of The Major. He doesn't like that, but that's enough for now. "Fine, fine! I'll take your word for it!" Batou spits indignantly, standing up and shaking his coat. Tachikoma clicks off the comms, giggling for a moment to itself. Certainly something to relay to the group, that's for sure!
Staren	Staren's squad is showing the signs of wear. Lasers have blown chunks out of the large golems and the walker, the android's armor is partially burned, the pony statues are cracked and pockmarked from repeated laser strikes... They can't fight an army of drones forever. Fortunately, they don't have to. Just as his walker is getting grabbed by a giant fist, fingers digging into the wood, and Staren gets out of his seat and starts to bail, the juggernaut goes down. Once the refugees are recovered, Staren is full of questions about their society and technology as they all make their way back to the gate!
Evangeline	Without a core to worry about the battle seems pretty easy for a change, and Evangeline moves to fly escort for the androids running to the ship. "...it looks like the area is secure..." she says over the radio in that soft voice of hers. "...good job everyone..." She makes sure any remaining drones can't get a shot in on the survivors, using herself as their shield. "...if we are done...I should get back to base...it is after bedtime..." she says. Which might seem odd to those that know she doesn't sleep.
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone is franticly getting to work with the huge drone going after the rest of the rescue party. She knows it's got to go downa nd she's able to gvet some very timly help given Ezekiel quite impressive fear of hacking against the drones. She will be trying to as quicklya s possible get to the other terminals and with her singal boosted it's now possible for her to work some more shutdowns hopefully enough to get the surivors out of this place, as she doesn't want to stay here or fight a drone army forever. Kotone once the fighting settles down will rejoin the party melting out of the shadows as her them optic cameo turns off and she seems to be paying attention to the questions and answers Staren asks and the answers they give, she'll chat a little with them on the way out herself though.
Ezekiel Gravez	Ezekiel ushers whatever passes as refugees into the Hauler, getting them comfy and set for takeoff. Any Elites are also given space, if need be. Supplies in the back of the cargo hold are raided for blankets and other comforts to make the takeoff even less stressful for all involved. The hauler door seals shut and Pete the NavDroid punches in coordinates to get them back to a point to liaise. Over the comm Channel the pilot speaks, "Alright Vanguard, we are five by five. I'm takin the payload to Jonestown Station, and get'm set up right. I'll meetcha 'll at the Thirsty Devil later, if'n yall 'bout? Zeke Gravez here, good work folks! Over and out!" He clears atmosphere, and makes best comfortable speed out of orbit. Zeke sends out navigation coords to the rest of the group for reference. Alongside the message is an android wearing a bowler with a fake mustache and a monocle on. The digital image tips its hat as a calling card and clears the signal.