Sharn With Giant Robots Beta

[Nerd-o-rama]

Rin has a conundrum. On the one hand, she's intensely curious, regards rules and limits as a personal challenge, and has the common sense of a stunned orc. On the other hand, she doesn't want Liz to kill her to have to kill Liz in self-defense while they're in the middle of something important. She comes to the compromise of resolving to open the note where Liz can't see her do it, pocketing it for now.

"Liz, if you've got any infusions left, heal up Thrax. Otherwise, let's get to work."

Rin takes a fifty-foot section of rope and a ten-foot pole out of her backpack (adventurers have hammerspace too, you know) and begins tying them together with a complex knot, and tying the other end of the rope to any sturdy protrusions on one of the Windriders (gonna go ahead and take 20 on Use Rope, if I need to roll it).

"Angel should probably do the actual extraction if she's had experience with this kind of controls. I can fly in first to run interference, and the rest of you cover us. Any problems?" she asks as she tightens up the assembly.

[The_Snark]

"I like the avoiding bloodshed idea," Dove says, not mentioning that she also likes the not being killed idea, and especially not mentioning that she does in fact know Kara Ronah personally. "I'm just not sure I can convince my friends to surrender, much less all of Breland." She thinks about that for a moment. "No, wait, that should be the other way around."

She tries one last time. "Do you think you can persuade Anavel to take a more... tactful approach than demanding them to surrender and kneel? Pride is important to these people, and they're very stubborn. I'm sure you could be a little more subtle about it; contact the rulers after a few anonymous demonstrations of power, allow them to keep their autonomy in name, and you still achieve everything you want to, since they'll understand that you could probably conquer them and will follow your recommendations to keep you from doing it. It would really be better for everyone, I think."

[Elvith Jars]

{{It's quite common for pilots to give flying machines nicknames. For instance, the Black Hawk is known by army grunts as the Crash Hawk because of their unreliability. So they may be officially called Windriders, I wouldn't put it past pilots to nickname them Raptors. That solve our naming problem?}}

Angel nods, accepting her role. "OK, I can handle the extraction run and work the extraction pole." She tries not to smirk at working the pole.

[Magnus_Samma]

Keras shrugs. "I really don't have a lot of say in how this all happens. But I guarantee what he's told you isn't all that's happening, the plan is more complex than anyone's going to let on to some random prisoner who they're only leaving alive because they know I'd get pissed over it and because you can feed your side misinformation. But honestly, there's not a lot that any of us can do either way at this point. You want something to drink before I take you back? I'm sure we've got some tea left, and the beer they had stored here was pretty good..."

"I'm ready to go when you all are," comes Kara's voice over the comm crystals in the Windrider/Raptors (giving them a nickname works for me, if it works for everyone else). "And tell Satoshi that the next time an engineer leaves a phallic object taped to the seat in the adduran I'm going to shove it down his throat. I look before I sit down, for gods' sakes..."

[Winged One]

"Oh, they're, ah, Windriders. I saw some in Wroat." Achille says when he sees the Raptors(we'll go with the nickname thing). He diligently copies how Angel does it with some careful deletion of the parts she added to amuse herself, and isn't anywhere near as unsuited for it as he feared. However, if there aren't enough Windriders for everyone he'll stay behind. "Er, that sounds more like something that Angel would do. Or maybe Master Sergent The Gnome. Anyway, is there any way to put the axe from the Kothar 1 that, ah, Liz came here in on this one? I don't think I'll ever get used to using a, ah, crossbolt."

[Elvith Jars]

"Wasn't me, although..." Angel raises an eyebrow upon hearing about the phallic tapped to the Adduran's seat, and wonders how to modify Stomper's seat.

[The_Snark]

"Maybe," Dove says, disappointed. A part of her is busy telling the rest that it was stupid to get her hopes up, just because the first enemy she'd first met was nice. It sounds very much like Rin.

"I don't taste things very well, but... tea would be nice, I guess. Thanks." It's supposed to be relaxing, after all, and the offer is charming. Nobody bothers to offer warforged drinks, normally. "If you don't mind my asking—because I am about to be sent back, and I'll probably be telling my friends most of this, so I'm not asking you to give me anything secret or dangerous and I don't want you to feel like I'm prying..." warforged don't need to breathe, and can go on for one hell of a run-on sentence... "how are you here? Anavel talked like all of you were around back when you first buried that technology. What were your people, and what ended up happening to them?"

[Nerd-o-rama]

Rin saddles up inside the Windrider, and shifts back to natural form, looking around at the minimal control system in the cockpit and as usual ignoring Kara's conversation. "Nice...I probably can't cast spells out of it though. Ah well, this should be fine for stuff without heavy combat. Alright, everybody. Take your turn and LAUNCH!"

Rin maneuvers her Windrider out of the hangar carefully and puts on a burst of speed once she's clear, banking around the ship in a wide oval and getting a feel for the maneuverability. "Ah, that's the stuff. Nothing like flying." Doing a barrel roll - it never hurts to practice - she comments back to Achille "These things are stupidly agile. I bet even you could hit something with the crossbolts if you had to."

[Winged One]

"Um, it was just an idea. It doesn't seem as hard as I thought it would be, actually." Achille says, taking off after Rin.

[Elvith Jars]

Angel works the controls over and launches the Raptor without much fanfaire. She's in tight formation with Rin and maintaining crystal silence as Rin's Raptor buzzes the airship.

[Lucid_Archon]

Liz is about to hop into her Raptor, when she remembers about Thrax. She quickly finds him and unloads a bundle of repair energy on him. "There, any better?"

Spoiler

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2d8+5 = 14

[Nerd-o-rama]

(Oh crap, Mags is online. Better advance the plot.)

After getting a feel for the machine and waiting for everyone to get out into the sky, Rin points herself in whatever direction Kara indicates. "Fan out, and try to get Dove's attention on the comms crystals. She should hear us when we fly over her position. We'll work out an exact extraction scenario when we find her."

[Magnus_Samma]

The Adduran launches as well, floating near the ship while the raptors buzz around. If someone touches their crystal they can hear Kara arguing with Satoshi about the feasability of mounting a battleaxe on one of them.

"In our language we called ourselves Terran," says Keras thoughtfully, "roughly equivalent of your word 'human,' though I'm honestly not sure if we're exactly the same species as the humans you're familiar with. We're certainly longer-lived, Anavel was about eighty when we were put into the cold sleep, and the rest of us where in our sixties. Hmmm, didn't like that much... it's kind of a pod that you get into and it... stops you. You're not dead, not exactly alive, just... static. They called it hibernation. We were like that for... god, I don't know, thousands of years. We were supposed to serve as ambassadors to the new era, to preserve the wisdom of the past for the future... biological libraries."

He frowns and effortlessly puts his hand through the stone and masonry wall.

"Yeah, that turned out great."

[Nova_Eclipse]

"Indeed. Not great, but definitely in better shape. I should be able to pilot like this. Thanks, Liz."

Thrax turns and heads for his raptor, pausing for a moment when he climbs into the cockpit. He picks something up off the seat and examines it for a moment. He then picks up a note that was hidden underneath it. He seems to raise an eyebrow for a moment, before looking about the hangar. He shakes his head, then sighs and places the object next to his right wrist. The object latches on and integrates itself onto his forearm. He examines it for a moment....then blinks.

"Hmmm...I'll have to track him down later."

He quickly gears up and joins the others in the sky.

[Winged One]

Achille takes a position in sight and com range of at least 2 other members of the squad, but still far enough away that he could pick up something the others don't. Then he starts saying "Dove, tell us when you hear this." over and over in a monotone to com crystal. He's also careful to only transmit to her rather than broadcast openly in a way that might give their presence away to Medea and her allies.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Rin takes a similar tactic, concentrating on communicating with Dove as she flies out along her best guess at the enemy's flight path, and sending out random messages to try getting her attention.

[Lucid_Archon]

Liz hurries into her Raptor, and launches with an uncharacteristic grace. She then tries to position herself equidistant to Rin and Achille as they move.

[Nova_Eclipse]

Thrax falls into formation with the Adduran, separated a bit from it. He opens a secure channel to Kara.

"Commander, how far out should we get from the ship before turning back? I don't think it would be a good idea for the ship to go very long without someone acting as cover for it..."

[Elvith Jars]

Angel flies merrily along, the stick feeling rather comfortable in her hands. Warm and hard. She wonders how the Twelth Strikers got their hands on a Raptor. The one she flew had minor differences to the one she's sitting in now, so perhaps it was a prototype. Reminds me of an extraction run to pick up Gladius when he got stuck in the Mournland with a bunch of angry undead...

Flying along the treetops, looking for possible hideouts, and listening to the hypnotic engine noise reminds her of previous combat training...

"The Mk IX Templar's cockpit doubles as a flyable escape pod," her instructor said. "It's the same design as what you'd find on the Top Cat air superiority fighter. Why have a flying escape pod? YOU can be replaced but the suit's sentient earth elemental control spirit... that's an expensive item! Some of those elementals have been around since the early days of mobile suits! Years of battlefield experience would be lost, so we put the elemental containment core in the pod. When you screw up and trash the suit, you can haul ass out of the battlefield and protect a vital investment.

[Magnus_Samma]

"The Raptors have essentially unlimited range," Kara replies to Thrax. "The Adduran has an indeterminate operational window when running on minimal power, which is just flying around and using the communicators. If we actually get into a situation that involves a fight I may have to return to the ship. Unless anyone has any objections I say we keep sweeping the area until we're too tired to keep going. It'll take awhile to repair the ship, we're not operating under much of a curfew."

Far away, Dove catches a hint of what might be described as static over her comm unit.

[The_Snark]

Dove isn't sure what to say to that. They don't seem to be doing what they were supposed to do at all, but then again she can see why they might not want to give everything to a group of countries at war. Easier to address the trick with the hand.

"How did you do that?" For some reason, she can't tell whether Keras (or the wall) is insubstantial, or whether he's punched a hole through the wall.

Meanwhile, over the comm crystals... "Achille? Rin? Where are you?"

[Nova_Eclipse]

Thrax nods to himself.

"Alright, then, we'll keep sweeping."

He banks a bit away from the rest of the group and punches his throttle to full, opening his comm crystal.

"Answer if you can hear me, Dove...."

[Winged One]

If Achille can actually hear what Dove said, he says to her and the rest of the squad "We took some, ah, Windriders in the direction they took you. Um, where are you?"

[The_Snark]

"I'm at the enemy camp. Look, if you haven't found it yet, don't keep looking. I'm not a prisoner, and now is not a good time to risk another fight."

[Nerd-o-rama]

"Listen," Rin says, trying to gauge how close Dove is by how clearly her voice is coming in and checking around for likely campsites or bases. "We're not here to fight, we're here to get you out if you want to leave...and to know where these bastards are so we can keep an eye on them."

"So how are 'negotiations' going?" she asks.

[Magnus_Samma]

The communication is spoty, barely understandable- you're at the edges of each other's range. But it is possible to roughly gauge which direction to travel in to make the communications clearer.

Keras blinks and pulls his hand out of the rough hole he's punched in the wall. "This? Oh, right, you probably can't do that. Body hardening techniques. Also I'm just really badass."

[Elvith Jars]

Angel flies along trying to triangulate the transmission. Then she gets another devious idea.

"Say, Rin, what would happen if we cranked up a Raptor to full speed, lined up on a target, and instead of crashing into it, droped, oh, I dunno, a big rock? Would that do any damage?"

[Winged One]

"Um, maybe we should kill them anyway?" Achille transmits to Squad 1.1 except for Dove. "Medea said they wanted to destroy the world, and they might be outside their mechs. Er, Dove can't hear me, by the way."

[Nerd-o-rama]

Rin moves in the direction of Dove's location, maintaining a fairly high altitude so as not to alert the bad guys unnecessarily. She repeats her message if Dove didn't hear it.

"Hm," she says back privately to Angel. "That would add a lot of extra momentum to the rock. That's not gonna do as much damage as a full-tilt ram with pyrotechnics, but it'll do more than a catapult."

"And Achille...that might not be a bad idea. Might not, but something tells me that even with us in these things and them on foot, we'd only succeed in pissing them off. Even if we kill one pilot, there's at least two others that'll be out for our blood, maybe more. Plus, we've got a man down there, so it's not like we can nuke the site from orbit."

[Nova_Eclipse]

Thrax moves in the general direction of the others, but stays somewhat further off to the side. He looks out and down, into the treetops before replying.

"I concur with Rin. The chance of us managing to kill one of them before they can get to their suits is probably pretty low as well. Not to mention we might hit Dove..."