Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

BrikWars fiction in long-prose form. Trigger warning: Walls of text

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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Wed Aug 13, 2014 9:10 pm

In the last few hours, Kialya and her small crew had attempted to get as much needed rest and preparation time as they possibly could as the Mercury Summer continued its slow-burn into the primary system space. The ships transponder signal already locked on the commercial space station they would be docking with for fuel and supplies while Kialya and the crew set about contacting their various low-level marks to begin their infiltration.

Kialya thumbed her way through the holographic datapad in her hand as she showed the other three in the room their primary "mark" - a rat-nosed former marine by the name of Emmerson - a man who looked utterly, indefinably "normal" with the exception of the aforementioned nose.

Upon a single member meeting with Emmerson, the information would be passed on for another contact who was currently based inside S.O.N.I operations planetside who would be able to provide the much needed intelligence that the Emperor himself had tasked the crew with retrieving before then moving onto the second stage of the operation and assassinating Operative known as "Karsus". A goal that would cause all of the aforementioned projects to grind to a crunching halt before the Emperors fleet began whatever move they had up their sleeve next.

Kialya had tried her best to continue the act that she had thus far been portraying - that she was comfortable with the operation and the sheer lack of definable intelligence at her disposal - that somehow the near blind entry into a world she had left long ago would not end up resulting in the deaths of the entire crew including herself. The overwhelming fear that she was simply not ready to return to duty, let alone a duty like this - it felt like a wave of insects relentlessly chewing on the edges of her feigned confidence. It put her so far beyond "Ill at ease" that she was nigh on approaching the less than sane other side of that prospect, which was and emotion she tried to desperately stow away for fear that it was picked up on by the rest of the crew, let alone the psychic she now shared a ship with.

Eventually it was decided that Kialya would go to the meeting herself, minimally armed and in what little civilian clothing she had onboard the ship when it had departed on whatever mission it had left on long ago before it had become a part of the Emperors greater fleet.

Harkins would follow not too far behind posing as a local private security guard for one of the privately owned corporate loading docks, he would then split off and remain in the nearby area if things went south - and then hold position for a short while after the meeting to make sure they had not been sold out to any of the many-possible forces that would jump at the chance to take the ship and its crew dead or alive simply for dipping into the hidden world that they had been introduced too.

Eventually, the ship came to a halt inside a quiet civilian docking bay onboard one of the many nameless industrialised space stations that filled the spacelanes around Scythia's outer orbit, Kialya stepped out into the cavernous open bay and inhaled the overwhelming smells and sounds of grease, oil and endless automation as she looked out behind her into the forcefield that held the inky darkness of the void beyond at bay, and to the other path ahead of her, a maze of corridors, archways, walkways and container crates of every size and shape imaginable.

A moment later, Harkins emerged from the ship behind her, wearing a cut-down version of the standard Scythian marine armour and baseball cap and a sawn off Laser-Carbine repeater used by civilian police and private contractors - the last patches of the red armour had been masked by the deep navy blue of AMScythia insignia.

He put one hand on her shoulder and nodded to her - she turned around to face him and nodded herself, feeling gratitude for the last easing gesture and then turned to face the docking bay again and departed. Moments later Harkins set off as well, and with the docking bay devoid of people - the operation had begun.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Mon Aug 25, 2014 1:29 pm

She had passed through cargo bays in varying states of being filled with people or machines, keeping an eyeful watch on her surroundings and walked onwards to the central loading elevator. Kialya watched as repurposed Golaith mecha units loaded heavy cargo into the central space of the monolithic room as various crew techs and civilian merchants filed in around her in the caged personnel section on the side of the great moving panel as the doors came to a close and they slowly rose upward from the industrial section and up the vast stretch of the central spine of the orbital station. Through a pane of glass longer than a destroyer she watched a sea of ships of all shapes and sizes swim through the dark, a canvas of red, black and gray dots passing above and through the surface of the homeworld below.

She watched as a military vessel she had never seen before passed by the station and outwards to beyond Scythia orbit, it was a blocky vessel that was clearly the size and role of a destroyer from it armament, but she had never been aware of a new destroyer class coming out of the protoype stage for months, if not G.R's ahead - the Kentaurus class had been valiantly filling that role since it had been developed just a few G.R's ago.

She leaned over to ask one of the more talkative technicians she had thus far been ignoring up until now "scuse me, sorry to interrupt. But what ship is that?"

"What ship? Iunno lady, I ain't been navy for years" he replied with a gruff sounding tone "I do know that's one of the new Duke class, they are meant to be a real fracking beast of a ship - wouldn't want to be anyone on the other side of one of them."

She leant back and watched the sea of stars move slowly past, keeping note - she saw a new frigate class drift slowly through the void. It had been classified as the "Reagent" class frigate, but the last time she knew anything about them they had only been on the drawing board. It slunk through fortillas of other vessels, including one new type she did recognise as being in production but had not reached the fleet in time to feature in the battle of Ereberus III - the Tyrant class carrier. It was another vessel that seemed to sulk as it pondered forward like some kind of lumbering beast. She recognised Monarch class vessels from the MK-I to IV types, and a few that she could only have assumed to be the MK-V of the class, covered in guns like the underside of an old sea ship would be covered in barnacles - they drifted in close knit battlegroups between the other comers and goers like great sharks on the prowl for blood.

In her mind she did notice one major thing, the homeworld was always busy . . . but never this busy. Home defence was one thing, but through the small window to the world beyond that she could see it seemed like for every civilian ship, there was a military ship to match it. In fact, everything seemed over-militarised- which was a point only driven in even further when the elevator passed by a hangar defence platform outside - the distances between one station and another could only have been a few hundred kilometers at best, but enough to see by the naked eye that no less than six Despot class cruisers, the almost exclusive toys of the Scythian Office of Naval Intelligence where docked with it.

Somehow this was a thought that filled her with a deep feeling of unease - SONI was meant to be the intelligence gathering sword of the empire, while they had the remit to run their own fleet of vessels or acquire vessels as they saw fit to defend the empire; they where never supposed to be as heavily armed as the ships she saw drifting through the void beyond.

Which was a feeling magnified tenfold when the elevator came to its eventual stop inside the mercantile and trade section of the station.

The Empire was, and always had been militarised from the beginning - since the very first Scythian Emperor was named by the sky-maidens to rule a lost and fractured people. Military service had been mandatory, but eventually had to become the breadbasket to save the collapse of its economy a century ago. So in this regard, everyone except for the young, sick or disabled had served for their mandatory 10 years - everyone moving around in the vast, store filled space had held and fired a weapon, they had served and defended their empire with honour and distinction. So having troops moving around freely was as common as it was to find bread in a bakers.

But to see two armed gaurds at every major intersection was not. Especially when one was a marine, and the other was kitted out in full SIBAS power armour. Military police where nowhere to be seen. The people moved, made deals, chatted and laughed - but no one made eye contact with those meant to be their protectors. She looked up and around to the various holographs projected onto the ceilings of the main promenade and saw news reports - censored reports of the war with the Immortals, a childrens t.v programme, a music video, another news report about civilian suicide bombings in several arcology towers across Scythia.

Then an infogram report on how to spot an Immortal sympathiser.

Then a news report on an attack on unarmed civilians and children in a Scythian school, 13 dead.

Then to report anything suspicious to your closest Civilian Advisor.

As she continued to simply absorb the information around her she was overwhelmed by the atmosphere around her. Fear. Mistrust. Terror on the doorstep.

Inwardly she had begun to question what on Scythia she had missed since she had been deployed all that time ago, she knew about the threats the war had been presenting - otherwise Ereberus III would never have been a target to be re-taken, but the sheer level of ships on patrol, the massive levels of troops on duty in civilian areas, the massive levels of paranoia in the media.

Suddenly she felt isolated, and very, very much alone.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by cleanupcrew » Mon Aug 25, 2014 3:23 pm

I have to say, I love the realism of this newest installment. It's kind of a darker take on the militarism and constant violence of the BrikVerse.

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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Tue Aug 26, 2014 3:56 pm

An hour later Kialya had made her way through commercial habitat modules and a number of smaller civilian hubs, watching the great masses of the Scythian people pass her by as she continued her mission - vast open plazas filled the spaces between allocated modules, open plains of parkland and lakes in space - protected from predatory vacuum by armoured plating and trans-steel glass, she looked up to the sky above and found herself staring down to the sky below.

A few hundred kilometers below the blue sea of the Scythian homeworld could be seen, the singular ocean that cut its way from north to south and took up almost a full quarter of the planet - leaving the rest to what used to be rocky desert until the planet had effectively been terraformed step by step to become farmlands, homesteads and then country-sized super cities and arcology towers that where then inhabited by millions of souls each as the nation she was once proud to serve expanded its war out of the unforgiving sands and forced their way towards the sands.

She watched the world around her, vast, open, public - here it would be difficult for anyone to interfere with her meeting, and harder still for anyone to stop her - she stopped in the middle of a concrete pavilion and sat at the edge of a faux-wooden bench and absorbed what was perhaps her first experience of a serene environment since before her deployment to Ereberus III.

It wasn't long before a figure approached her from behind, placing a hand on her shoulder and making his presence known.

She looked up to see her contact, the man she knew only as "Emmerson" from her briefing docket she had been handed days ago.

He took the chance to speak first "I should let you know now, our time is brief - I don't know how, but you have been noticed by those you are not friends with"

Instantly, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

"Take the data pad in my other hand, laugh and look up at me as if I've just given you a gift."

She did so, faking a laugh as best she could and smiling up at him, he looked down to her with a baseball cap covering the top half of his face as he spoke.

"There is a vertibird flyer on its way down to the surface in 15 minutes, be on it - the pad contains the details of your next contact."

He turned to walk away as he said "Your protector has been seen as well, don't be surprised if he gets jumped by some 'advisers' on the way down. Welcome to Scythia"

Without another word uttered he moved with all the stealth of a snake in the grass as she rose to her feet and quickly absorbed the information on the datapad, there where flight details for a sub orbital vertical takeoff dropship taking passengers down to the surface just a short distance away from where she was now and details of another man, her S.O.N.I contact - another by the name of Tonius, a man who had all the identifying features of some kind of subterranean mammal. She passed through another set of bulkhead doors and towards the loading bay where she passed briefly by Harkins but didn't say a word to him, instead she opted for a new approach and made the briefest of eye contact with him and began trying to shout her thoughts towards him as loud as she could with her internal monologue.

BEING FOLLOWED.

GOING TO SURFACE.

TRACK AND TARGET.


He didn't say anything in reply, she only hoped that with his newly heightened sensitivity he had managed to glean at least a small detail through the use of his psionics, she didn't have the chance to see him grimace to himself and nod as she moved through the airlock doors, a family in front and a group of businessmen behind, she secured herself into a transport seat and pulled the safety harness down over her shoulders and prepared for what would be a journey down to the surface of the homeworld, and into the belly of the beast.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Tue Aug 26, 2014 4:33 pm

Harkins watched as the bulkhead doors sealed, grimacing to himself after Kialya had practically screamed a series of thoughts at him that confirmed what he was already afraid of. He ran his mind back through the events that had lead him thus far.

BEING FOLLOWED.

GOING TO SURFACE.

TRACK AND TARGET.


He had already noticed the sheer military presence that surrounded them on their way through the various utility compounds that made up the multi-purpose station, something that made him feel extremely offput wandering through the place wearing the navy blue dress uniform and body armour of an AMScythia security gaurd with a laser carbine strapped to his chest, his fingers casually gripped the weapon as he prowled behind Kialya. As he watched the people around him go about their buisness he couldn't help but glean the louder thoughts of those around him, voices that practically yelled in his face above the general sea of emotions that made up the usual ebb and flow of what would be any space filled with a couple of hundred people.

The fuck is he doing with a laser carbine here?

Isn't he meant to be gaurding something?

Assholes think they can push us around because they still have guns.

He's fracking looking at me funny.

Anyone here could be one of those Immortal sympathisers . . . just gotta keep your head down.

There she is, moving towards the park. God-damnit, why doesn't this radio work when I need it?


The general consnsus of emotion was fear, fear towards the war, fear towards bombing and random attacks. The last voice however jumped out like a sore thumb, it was professional, but annoyed - and it had a purpose. One he didn't like.

He pushed his mind outwards and found him, another man - wearing civilian clothing but walking with all the grace of a trained python, with a few seconds of focusing on the man in question, he had pulled his mission and purpose clean out of his surface thoughts. He had known Kialya was due to arrived and what she looked like, but not when or how - and he wasn't the only one who knew.

He watched as the man spoke into his wrist as Kialya up ahead moved into the vast open park and sat at a bench, as others moved into the space around - at least three low level SONI agents in civilian clothing speaking into their wrists and trying to converge together on a space where it would be too easy for them to be seen.

Moving on the closest of them, the one who's head he had first pried the thoughts from, he had slunk up behind him with little effort. Waiting for the right moment, he approached from behind as if he was still walking, but the moment he passed by the agent he snapped like a coiled spring and jolted the butt of the laser carbine into his temple and kept walking as if nothing as happened while the other man dropped like a sack of potatoes, his head had been slapped into a bulkhead on the other temple and the two collisions together had knocked him unconscious.

He watched in the distance as Kialya took some type of item from the hands of her mark and he then departed, noting the other two men in the background - they knew what had happened and where now converging on him instead of on her, which was good - it meant that his distraction had open a window, now all he had to do was move.

It took a quickstep somewhere between a walk and a jog as he tried to clear the space between himself and Kialya, with his two newfound aggressors in tow. He pressed his finger to the earpiece that he had thusfar tried to ignore as he opened a comm channel to the Mercury Summer.

"Guys, K made contact, but I have company - be set to move"

A simple beep tone was all the reply he received, onboard the Mercury Summer Larrissa prepared the ship for launch from Drydock as Quaram began suiting himself up in one of the many suits of SIBAS power armour kept safely within the ships armoury.

Harkins made another turn and managed to avoid the chasers for a few moments longer and managed to make eye contact with Kialya as she had practically screamed a series of thoughts at him that confirmed what he had already experienced just getting this far.

BEING FOLLOWED.

GOING TO SURFACE.

TRACK AND TARGET.


He watched as the bulkhead doors closed and she was at least safe onboard the vertibird heading down to the surface as he then slinked away through a side corridor to escape. Unfortunately his followers where screaming their thoughts out far too loud, and he knew he was still being followed.

Rather than waiting to be caught, he passed one corridor and then another as he found himself in a secondary loading bay that was a little emptier than the others and waited at the edge of a container crate as he heard running footsteps heading his way, he took a sharp inwards breath and took the safety off of his laser carbine and prepared himself.

It was one quick motion, launching himself off of the edge of the box in one fluid turn and right into the chest of the shocked agent who had been following - seeing the look of fear as the end of the carbines barrel lodged itself in his sternum and Harkins pulled the trigger.

With a single flash and a dulled "whomph" the laser carbine had vaporised an eight inch semi circle dead centre in the mans chest, the smell of smoked flesh and a dull breathless pain was the last thing he experienced in this world.

Which was when everything went to hell, as weapon alarms suddenly went off - energy detection systems picking up the carbine opening fire had automatically set off door alarms and had set about directing the stations real security forces in his direction.

The other agent, suddenly having to go from a bullrush to get to Harkins to a fear stricken dead-stop watched as Harkins calmly raised the carbine with one arm, he simply didn't have the speed or reactions to stop as the carbine was levelled with his head and the world turned to nothingness as everything from his shoulders up was turned to cauterised ash.

"Guys, everything is about to turn to shit real fast up here, I'll get to you - prepare for extraction!" He shouted down his microphone as he breathed in sharply and began running out of the bay and towards anywhere he could escape the station and get back onboard the Mercury Summer.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Fri Aug 29, 2014 6:57 am

Kialya breathed an inwards sigh of relief as she looked around the innards of the descending veritbird as it had already begun the slow arcing controlled fall from orbit. A reassuring calm washed over her as she felt the slightest of rumbles through her feet as the craft hit the upper atmosphere and a warm red glow rose up and around the veribird - illuminating the inside of the craft with a rose coloured glow through the plastiglass windows. She mused for a moment over the low yawn of falling through the air that this was the eventual result of centuries of development into space based technologies when in this day and age her first visit to the homeworld in several years was in an orbital descent craft that the Scythian people now used as casually as less advanced civilizations would catch the bus.

In the space of time it took all these thoughts to form the pilot was already receiving landing instructions from Ground control. Another example of just how long space and orbital technologies had not only been developed and used but fully integrated into Scythian culture was the vast web of circuits and servers, control nodes and operator blocks that had become the arteries, veins, capillaries, the nerve clusters and organs of a vast bloated creation that was now an organism in its own right - the vast array of people, AI's and machines that controlled the flow of ground, orbit and space traffic for the Scythian empire.

Moments later the vertibird was drawing on its final destination, one of the many enormous arcology towers that where dotted throughout the continent sized cities that covered the worlds surface, cities within cities that housed millions within cities that housed further still. Through a cloud line that covered over half the towers central mass the nimble craft found its way to an external landing bay and slowed its vertical thrust and hovered over the pad before lowering itself onto the titanium slab and shutting down its engines. Within a minute a self controlled docking arm had emerged from inside the building and had attached itself to the exterior airlock of the vertibird forming a soft seal to provide atmosphere and pressure until it was safe to open the door and the passengers to depart, Kialya instinctively dropping to the back of the civilian group, looked out the windows of the docking arm and into the sea of fog and clouds beyond, watching long enough to see craft of varying size and shape emerge and disappear in the thick smog like blanket that surrounded this level of the tower.

When she walked through the exterior loading lounge of the tower it was immediately plain to see that it was somehow more like the Scythia she remembered - there where less military guards on patrol - and those that where on patrol where either green and fresh from basic, or actually getting involved with the people rather than watching like hawks over a flock of wounded animals. She passed through the customs lounge with relative ease and moved through into the true interior of the tower, a vast ring of commercial shopping units, habitation rings, industrial fabricators, hydroponic arrays and free-floating slabs that contained parks, lakes, floating recreational areas of all shapes and sizes, all illuminated by a vast series of mirror arrays placed throughout the top of the structure to give the interior a natural day/night cycle. The original concept had been put together before the Scythian people ever extended their way out into space - a fully contained self-sustaining city within a city, where it would be entirely possible for a person to live out their entire lifetime without actually having to leave the structure. Now over five dozen of these arcology towers dotted the surface of the planet, vast spires of life filled with souls from all aspects of the empire.

Kialya stopped for just a moment, leaning over a glass railing and looking down the vast interior of the tower as she pulled the datapad back out again and reviewed what was supposed to be the next stage of the meeting.

The face that appeared before her was soft, and spudgey - but squashed together. As if his features had been shoved onto something too short to actually include them all together in one place, so it made extra places to sport faial hair that seemed to forget it needed to grow together at the same time, and wire framed glasses that needed to stay on his face, rather than be part of his face. The same went for the rest of his body as well, which radiated the fact that his biology had decided to run out of height before it ran out of weight, and so it had invented and capitalised on the concept of "girth" to make up with it.

This secondary contact' name was "Farguth" and he was due for a meeting, regardless of wether or not someone else arrived to meet with him, in an hour and a half's time, just after sunset on this part of the homeworld - in one of the nightclubs further up towards the towers peak.

She parsed through some of the other details of the information in the docket, his passing relationship with the Scythian Navy and then the Scythian office of Naval Intelligence, his record seemed to stink of a man who had only ever enrolled because he had been forced too, but then had turned his hand to just how many credits he could squeeze his way out of it. Somehow along the way he had decided to grow a soul, because he had obviously started selling to the "good" guys instead of the "questionable" back alley guys.

Eventually she decided with what little time she had left, to make the most of a poor situation and set about her first shopping trip in half a decade to prepare for her first trip to a nightclub in even longer still. She eventually dumped the black civilian trousers for a pair of tough blue "jeans" made from some new type of material that had been introduced through trade with the Preatorian empire and where currently "in style" for the time, and a modern styled blouse that showed off a little more cleavage than she was usually used to - but she figured when dealing with a squidgy little man like Farguth it was best to draw information out of him with honey rather than the stick.

Satisfied with the results of her first shopping trip in many years, she hid the datapad in one of her back pockets and double checked her internal stock list. With the small laser pistol and grenade hidden inside the compartment space of her prosthetic legs she wasn't exactly unarmed, but she didn't feel as comfortable as she would have liked with the situation at hand. Since she had made the trip from orbit she had been utterly out of contact with Harkins, Quaram and Larrissa, and had no idea of the status of the Mercury Summer. With little else she could do about the situation she passed through a nearby Extranet cafe and logged into a nearby terminal.

The Scythian Extranet was another example of just how many technologies had utterly integrated into society on every level - what had originally started as the integrated network of well over 95% of all civilian, industrial and military computers on the planet into forums, sites and pages - the network backbone had been extended to every world in the empire and then cross linked through hundreds of thousands of FTL communications satellites into a series of networks within networks linked across the stars. In effect the entire empire was linked to itself to form a second empire, complete with its own worlds, its own mountains and pitfalls - and enough news for someone to drown themselves in and never be seen again.

She had started off with the most recent news stories, the ones she had over heard in the orbital station above as the holograms fell before her vision in descending order.

"The Immortal war, four years in."

"Civilian bombings damage arcology infrastructure - Immortal Sympathisers to blame - 7 dead."

"Tragedy befalls Allioc VI, Scythian colony made uninhabitable by ongoing conflict."

"Immortal Sympathisers - How, where and why?"

She continued to scroll back through the endless trail of news stories and ever revolving wars between fact and opinion until she eventually found what looked like the beginning of what she was seeing around her - the birth of everything she had been afraid of since she had arrived.

"Scythian Emperor Dead. No heir to be found."

"War council assassinated by Immortal Terrorkahn troopers. Future of war at risk"

"Co-ordinated terrorist strikes by Immortal sympathiser group decapitates stock markets, crippled transport grids. Countless dead."

"War on the homeworld. Immortal Sympathisers within disillusioned youth!"

"Scythian Office of Naval Intelligence declares martial law due to ongoing terrorist strikes!"

"Civilian oversight committee formed until new heir can be found."

Six headlines spelled out the end of the empire and what appeared to be a reign of tyranny and apparent despair as troops moved through the streets like roaming predators, military spending had been driven into over drive - and from her point of view within the Emperors fleet, the Office of Naval Intelligence had seized control of the empire.

Checking the time she still had left, she closed down the terminal and set off on her way to the next meeting - a mixture of fear and expectation mounting in the back of her mind once more.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by cleanupcrew » Fri Aug 29, 2014 10:27 am

Sorry to hear about what happened to your 1 hour and 40 minutes worth of work on Betrayals (from chat last night). I hope you can find it in you to overcome that setback.

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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Thu Sep 04, 2014 11:43 pm

In orbit, the Mercury Summer was preparing to abandon her newest port of call early as Larissa ran through as many of the boot-up procedures as she could before re-engaging the crafts engines before their due departure time and logging them with every red-flag marker on this side of Scythia.

In the Armory room, Quaram had let all known meanings of the word "subltly" as he donned the SIBAS powered armour faster than most men would don a set of clothing and then hefted the weight of a P.A.V.L anti-tank laser cannon to his hip and quickly rotated the tri-barrelled cannon and heated up its power cells ready to fire.

Through the cargo bays above, on the far end of the station - Harkins was busy running for his life as he found himself part of some kind of grand chase scene, as automatic doors closed around him like the jaws of hades and agent after agent seemed to keep appearing from the world around him like a swarm of rats, or locusts - or some other kind of disgusting creature that swarmed or skittered through the undergrowth where pestilence and filth spent their days being the best of bedroom pals.

He turned another sharp corner and ran into another of the plain-clothed rats - a lanky streak of a man who moved with a fluid grace that implied some kind of history in sports, running or acrobatics. He had the chunky form of a Scythian Laser Pistol in his hands, poised and ready to fire at any moment.

The problem for him was, that he was going to go up against a fully trained, psionic, special ops marine.

And the word going through Harkins mind was "Had" - he "Had" a chunky pistol in his hands.

Much like he "Had" hands.

Harkins felt his presence meerly seconds before he actually appeared in his field of vision, and rather than waiting for the man to appear and take his chance, Harkins ran at the corner aiming to claim an exposed part of his body. Such as the laser pistol held in his hands, leading his movements. So this was the place where Harkins ran and grabbed the laser pistol sideways in one hand, and broke two of the mans fingers in one moment as he did so - hearing the shriek of pain, Harkins continued moving - pulling the hand forward some more and bringing the object in his other hand to rest against the other mans wrist.

With another flash of light and a whomph of sound and the man screamed in agony - the barrel of the carbine now ended in mid air, and the other man was now missing his arm from just underneath the wrist-down. All that remained was a gobbed, cauterised stump of what used to be an arm.

Shaking what remained of fingers off the handle of the gun as he ran, he now found himself in position of both the carbine and the pistol - and he kept running for dear life. Somehow he could feel the aggressors as they got closer, it wasn't perfect . . . maybe 25-30 meters at most, but he could feel their intent before they arrived. He could feel the pounding of blood flowing past temples, the harshness of unprepared breath, the sweat of others seemed to permeate the air, the sweat of at least four others clung to him like an imaginary field.

He stopped and stood still for a moment, waiting for long enough for at least two of them to pass before h focused just a little more, he could feel their agitation, their confusion - having to turn back and attempt to re-open pathways already closed by their digital custodians.

Which was when the realisation suddenly occurred to him . . . . why the frack was he bothering with doors?

He turned and ran back to one of the previously locked doors, an automatic bulkhead like millions of others - one inch thick titanium, detection sensors and automatic trigger alarms - any marine worth their salt could break through one eventually, but not in enough time to avoid a bloody and prolonged firefight that would only serve the purpose of getting his ass into either a lot more trouble, or just plain dead.

So he turned his attention to inside the lock, without disassembling it first.

Inside his mind he formed the map of circuit pathways and wiring and focuses on what would be the autolock control board, a very small piece of a greater whole that would obviously, control the doors autolock and release mechanism in case of varying levels of emergency, either involving fire, or explosive decompression.

A moment later a flash of purple flame shot from his eyes down to his trigger finger and then across to the door access panel, burning a pin-prick hole in the outer casing and then chasing patterns of yellow sparks and purple flame along the lines of the board he had pictured in his minds eye.

A split second later the door crackled and released with a slight magnetic *pop* before releasing its mechanisms and opening before him into a secondary corridor that appeared to at the very least, be devoid of life.

Taking this moment to at the very least grin inwardly, he disappeared into the darkness of the stations innards, mentally preparing himself for the next stage of this cluster frack of an operation.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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The Shadowscythe
Touch my cloud song and I will fuck you up
Touch my cloud song and I will fuck you up
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Sat Nov 08, 2014 10:54 am

Kialya's pulse raced through her head as she moved up through the various floors and platforms of the arcology tower, moving through entire floors designated as department stores and retail outlets. The highest floors of the tower where built and marketed much akin to the upper class regions of a ground based city, luxury homes and apartments with their very own skyplex views to low orbit, restaurants built on overhanging ledges of transparent Plas-steel and adamantium to give 360 degree views that included a complete view of the clouds and tower below. Atop all of these was the night district, high class nightclubs and jaunts for the rich and idiotically famous to piss credits like water and drink themselves into oblivion so long as other drugs didn't get to them first.

As she passed through the floors that made up the lifestyles of the scythian elite, she felt a sudden pang somewhere between jealousy and anger. Here in these towers of ivory and silver those who once served but had no desire too, those who did what was mandatory and then escaped to return to their inherited wealth and forget the ideals of duty and honour that forged a people.

Eventually the elevator came to a halt and she stepped out into a glass domed open foyer with small benches and plants dotting the pathway around an open fountain that lead onto a waterfall that then went further down into the tower itself, to flow for half a mile before it became a spray into a gravity supported artificial reservoir that floated in the very middle of the entrance to the wealthy district of the tower.

She continued to walk forwards up and towards the vast spear shaped micro tower Atop the very tip of the arcology tower, an audaciously designed prong of white gold and steel and glass lit from below the tower by pink and purple holographic lights and displays projected against the mists of the clouds that rose and then settled from this hight in the sky.

Remembering her briefing she ran back over the main details of the operation, get inside the nightclub she could know see from the holographic signs was known as "heavens reach" and meet with Farguth and acquire the information she needed and then get the hell out to meet with the others and finish the mission.

As she reached the top of the tower she was stopped by an imposing bouncer who would have made Quaram look small as he demanded her I.d as she placed her finger onto a small handheld biometric scanner and waited with a slip of a missed heartbeat as it turned green and she was allowed entrance to the club, with the lights and heat slamming into her face on opening the doors and the many fold aromas of bodies and alcohol hitting her nose, she stepped through the noise cancelling field and into the booming thunder of music.

The doors closed behind her, as silent alarms went off for a dozen special operations teams. All activated the moment the DNA of a supposed dead woman was redirected and squelched by a wave of colours across the Scythian datanetworks, only local teams moved in. Arming enough firepower to level the entire club and every living thing inside it.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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Touch my cloud song and I will fuck you up
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Sat Nov 08, 2014 12:27 pm

Hawkins however was running, and he was running hard.

Rather than ascending upwards to his destination, he was descending down and through the bowels of the station towards the Mercury summer while trying to avoid the seemingly endless agents from the Scythian Office of Naval Intelligence that seemed to be moving on him from every direction.

Rather than moving to engage them, he moved to avoid them. Using his newfound perception to avoid the agents long before they got to him in a battle of technology against psychic abilities as the agents used the many station scanners to track his progress and lock down section doors ahead of him, only for Harkins to avoid them long before they got to him and force any locked doors open by spoofing the locks with a blast of psionic fire or more bluntly forcing the metal apart before he even reached them without breaking a sweat.

Floor after floor he avoided their reach, from compartment to compartment he dodged and evaded their attacked and tactically ended the lives of those daft or foolish enough to push further and take action against him, leaving a trail of corpses and aggressors behind him.

That was however, until he reached the central corrdor of the station, the vast elevator that held the two halves of the station together, separating him by the distance of miles from his objective.

Down in the cargo bay, the Mercury summer was embroiled in a fight of its own. Quaram had donned a suit of SIBAS powered armour and armed himself with a PAVL anti-tank laser, expecting a fight when Harkins eventually bothered to show up, instead the fight had arrived long before he did and the loading bay was now a fire torn wreck of rampaging heavy weapons fire against pistol blasts a Quaram basically decided not to put up with their shit from the moment they had arrived, tactically destroying any and all forms of cover before destroying the two closest entrances into the bay and forcing the enemy to bottleneck to even get to fire at him, and an open killing field to even get close to him.

Basically, in Quarams world, he was having a metric fucktonne of fun.

Larissa however was in the midst of a near stress aneurysm because despite the fact that the ship was powered up and ready to go, Harkins was in the midst of a combat situation and simply not returning contact due to either inability to do so, jamming, or following Quarams lead and simply having too much fun. Kialya's signal had dropped off the radar completely just as the whole thing had begun and she was left having to bounce and ignore hails from dock control and local police ships as little red markers grew ever closer on her holographic displays.

On the far end of the station, Harkins was rapidly getting into trouble, the central elevator system had been locked down and beyond the reach of even his expanding powers. As a result he was trapped on the platform overlooking the vast hexagonal shaft with agents moving in on him from all sides as he backed himself towards the outer edges of the platform, taking cover behind a nearby lifting mecha as laser pistol fire started raining down onto his position from all directions and so he started taking potshots in return.

The unfortunate issue was, the noose was now beginning to close around him as he could feel reinforcements moving into position behind the agents that had already moved on him, and soon he would no longer be able to hold his own against the sheer tide of bodies that would soon be rushing towards him. Again, the closer they got towards him the more he could feel their intent to either capture or kill him. With the emphasis being on the latter.

His eyes darted back and forth as he took in his surroundings as he took in the sights of how screwed he was, the mecha in front of him was powered down and Ill suited to combat. Behind him was an airlock used for exterior maintenance on the station but the nearby suits where the older generation, clunky and awkward and needed two people to put on properly before depressurizing and using in the dark of space.

Back on the other end of the platform one of the agents had decided to take advantage of his apparent distraction and made a run towards him with the laser pistol charged in hand, Harkins turned on the spot and leveled his laser carbine at his chest and ended him in a trio of shots.

With that he brought a few more seconds at the expense of another smoking corpse on the floor, and in a heartbeat he weighed up his options, and darted for the airlock.

Without a suit.

As the door opened, he concentrated hard on forming a bubble of air around himself and sealing it like a shield and formed it around himself. He then leveled his laser at the far side of the airlock and opened fire.

The world exploded into a sea of black with white stars.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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Touch my cloud song and I will fuck you up
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Thu Nov 20, 2014 9:15 am

Harkins blinked away the wash of lights that overtook his vision as he took in his surroundings.

Stars above.

Ships, stations, defense networks, satellites.

Scythia below, the desert orb covered in continent sized cities and farms, terraformed soils and orbital skyscrapers piercing the thin blue haze of an atmosphere clinging to an ancient world.

He took in a breath as he noticed the paper thin psionic hue over his skin, an almost invisible hue of purple that caught his gaze as he watched himself tumble through the void from the protection of his bubble, the life giving gamble that gave him enough light and heat to prevent a harsh death from the unforgiving cold of space.

He took a moment and clicked his commas system, attempting to open a secure channel to the Mercury Summer - as he made further hails he was met with nothing but static and silence.

Which was when he saw it.

Clinging to the skin of the world, to the skin of Scythia.

Almost invisible, only noticed by his awakening senses - a shadow of an aurora moved in arcs and swoops over the cities and fields of Scythia. It was not so much a shadow as a presence, a lack of light and life that had begun growing like a cancer and was now pushing vast, invasive tentacles of not-light into the skies and orbit above. All held by a tender hook above the Palace of the Emperor.

As he looked into it, he could feel a part of it looking back into him, it wasn't a mind - more a presence, an anchor for something . . . else . . . somewhere . . . else . . .

And he was sinking into it.

He could feel the tug of a gently tide coming inwards around him, lifting his mind from the vessel of his body as time and space somehow became less, and felt insignificant.

He could feel the universe.

And it started with a song . . .

C̙a̛ǹ͕͈͉̰̳͕̫ y̙̻̺͙̟o̷̬u͍̣̝̝̖̪͢ ̡̥̦̖̣ͅh̗̣e̟̦̱͙̳̦ͅa̛͓͎r͍ ̥̦͔̬̜̲͜i̴t͈̼?̪̦̺̭͇̩̖
̟̦̫
͇͞Į̭m̧m̥͔͙͚̬͈͚o̖̝̝̫̫̮͜ͅr͘t͡à͖̘͉̰̟̼ĺi̩̝͙̣̺s̼̦ ̝͘ͅͅOn̻̯ͅͅe͇͟ ͈̣͜ͅa҉̜̜p͟ͅp̫̺͎͟r̙o̰̫a̠̥̠͚̘c̤̞̤͈͉͍h̵̻͎̥̻̯ͅí̘̱͎̟͉̟nͅg ̥G̪͓̹̤͉̠͓a̸͇̫͓͕l̫̙̼̙͜ac͈̬̟͎t͚̜͓͇͓͓i͝c̶͉͔̭̙̥̙̺ ̟̫̠̻P̤̼͕̦͝l͏̝̟̹̖̩̖͖a̝͉̝n̹̣̪͇̲͍̜e̘̩͇̫
͉̲̰̖́
͓͕̹̤̼T̮̱͘h̪̳̲̩̹̱e͟ ͔̪̺̙͇͔͞p̡̻̫ų̰̜̮̫̯̥l̳̲sé̥͎̞͈̮ ̩o̬̠̗͢f̺͇ ̧͉̺t͔h̪͎̟͔͔̺̭e̹͓͇̗ u͉̯ͅni̗̫͍v̝̙͈̪̝͠er̪͙͘ș̺͎̩͔̖͜e̹͟ ̴̣͎͓i̖s̯͎̦̞ ̡͕e̫̗͔̖̟̩ͅnd̨͈̟ì̩̜̱͓͓͙̝n̯̺g̷̜̼͎̟̮̯.
͏
̣̬̝̖T̯̠͈̥̰̥h́e̢̞̭ͅ ̰͚̜̥b̙͝e̠a͇̝̦͍̘s͖͚͈̠t̵̤͇̜ ̬͜i̢s̻̱͇ ̵͖͔a̞͙̫̣̻̰w̴a̧̟͕̻k̩̠̣̘ͅę̖n̡̘͍i҉̘̮͓̠̜̬n̮͙̜̰̫͇͢g҉͙̫,͚̤͓̰̥̬́ ̯̖̻̩T̯̫̪̝̟̳͚h̜͔͔ͅͅe͚̤̩̬̲̞ͅ ̣̫̠S̷̻h͖̼͙̦r̝͖̺a͙͕a̼̗̝͍g̀.͏ ̗̠͙͠T͡h̺͔̩́e҉̖̣̤͇ ҉̪͓͉̱̣̘d̪̦͓͎̱̺ͅe͏̪̪̭̺a҉̣̯̻̳̘̳t̴͍͙͕ͅh̙̯̙̰̻̬ͅ ͎̼o̗͢f̙ ̢̱̮̫̰a͝l̢̯̣̗̟̰l̶͓ ̛͇͕͔̝tḥi̫̦͔̺̹̟̳n̺͍̞͇̥̱g̥̣̤̕s̥̞

̘͈̖A̯͚͡L̩̝̞͉L͏̮͍̗̺ ̶͉̹̙̟̱U̪͍̺̣N҉̝̠̘I̗̗͕͖̬͕̠T̤͕̟S. ̯̹C͚͙͉O͍͔͢D̩̟̤͍E͔̟̳̞̯͚̠ ̡̣̯̱͚O҉̹̝̫̘͖̳L̮̰̠̥͔͇̭̕Y͍͎M͈̥̫̼͙̱̣P̛̳̯̫̩I̻̯͎̖͖̞͟A̵̻̱̟̲̬̟̥ ̭͍̠Ò̖̗̼N͏͖͎͈̻̬͚E͏̦̝ ̗͞H͔A͙S̢̳ ͈̖̮͉̟͈͔̀B̙̀E̝͔̘E͖N̗ ̨̯̞̯̤D̶E̵̻CL̠̳̯͙͔ͅA̫R̯̝̼͙E͓͍͙D̙̻̟̝̳̹.̸̗͈ ̜̭̙͎͙̰͡S͈̪͎̝̫̪̖͟C̨̯ͅͅÝ̬͚͖̪T̮̫H͉̲̲̘̳̻͙I̳̳̩͎̪͠ͅA̴̤̣ ̺͙̪̺͘H̹̠A͍͈̲͙͖͠Ș͕̙̣͔͟ ̪̗͎F̺̘A̫̖̼̰̩̺L̨͈͎͓͓̙L̟EN̗̟̘̦.̟̪̱̹͉̞̳ ͖̼̮͠I͇ ̱̺̱̗RE̸P̻̘͎̥̻͙͈E͡A̡̰̭̥̩̖T͕̩-̬̮̬̺̭͍̳
̱̰͡
A̺͎̭ ̤͞t̩̦̳̘̰͈imḙ͔ ͎͙̰̝̹͕j͖͎̱̮͓̗̯u̷̩̺̣͔ḿ̼̥͕̮̜̳ͅp͔̙͔͜ͅ ̟̙̲͚͢h͞ḛ̢r͔͚͎̻͖e̯̣͙̰͎,̰̩̳̺̹̝͢ ̹̟̝a̳̭̩̩͉͔ ̣̻͓͈̟͙͖r̰̯̬e̼̭ą̠̰͓l̗͍i͚̞͔t̜̘̯͖y͚̮͇̫͍̭͓ ͠ca̟͕̺̳̝̪͇s̳ca̡͙̺̘̼̯̬d̮̜̤̩͙͟ę̪̙̜ ̪̫̲t̲h̟͕̖͕̹ẹ̙͍͉͚r҉e͍̭̫.͙
͎̺̞̟͙̖͎͡
̬̗̲̥͖Sp͏i̩̻͇͇̭ṛ͟i͕͙͎̪͖̹̫͢ṯ̵͚̠ ̭͎̮̘̰̳O̹̼̻͈̬͢f̛͙͖̤̫- ̰̤̜̰̝̟̫͟R̳͖̀a͡g̨͙n̞͍̰͎̹a͓̠͍͖̲b̺̻̗̲̳l͕̺o̫͙̺̱͝k̪ ̻̻̦̭͡i̖̥͝s̡͓͖̩͍̳͓̩ ̣̝̫̯͍̟a̱p̀p̟̠̳̮r̘o̼͔̣̼̺ac̱̲͖̀ͅh̼̖i͕̜͉̹͕̤͈n̷̲̭g̩̬͖̗̥͍ ͚͓͇͙͜t̨ar̷͈͎̬g̞̰̩̞̬͢e̦̠̗̥̱t̨͕̹
̦̯͠
̸̼̠̖̰͖͈̫E̴̮̱̞͕̙͎̣m͈̤̬̥̹p̻̘̹é͏ro҉̞̞̰̣̝r̶̫̞̦̩̯̙ ̪̪̘̬͟o̥̲̱̺f̶̬̠ͅ ͏̻̭͈̬a̜̹̯̭̲ͅl̡̰̘̙̳̩ͅl̡͕͎͍̲̖̠̼,̹̗͙̜ ͖̳̞̭̜l̮͓e͕͔̭̼̯͖̼͜a̤̤̩̞̙d͍̥e̪̦̞̘̖͚r͕̬ of̫̻͝ n̝̤o̰͇̳̻̺͓͖͡n̷̩̭̜͔͕̻e̺̺̻͙̩͇̬.̰̰͙͕̫̱
͔̖̯͜
̞̩̖͡I͎̩̘̼̳̪ḿ͙̗̪ͅm̩̪͠o̩͚̝̥̤ͅr̜̳͈̰͚̱͜ͅt̨̘͕͇̥͇a͕̬l͔͖̝͎̝ ͉̻̟̹y҉̝̥e̠͚͉̺̮͚̺t͍͎͈̲ ͏̲d̤̺̩͡y̳̟̳̹̝i͢n͏̘͚̦̰̫̙g̥̳͢ ̛͙w͉͍͉̺̟͙i̛͉̪̼̫̖̤̦t̟̥̠͔̦h̛̝͍̤̗̣̣̣ ̻e̺ve̬̙̗͡r̶͖y̸̳̖͕̻̺̟̟ ̫̥̕b̪̙̻̕ṛ̭͇̖̀e̗̥̳̠a̩t̶ͅh̛̫̘͚̬̝̜
̵̞̻̘̱ͅ
̲̦̬̭͍̘Ģ̫̩o̸̖̦d̡͇̪̣̫̖̱s̳͢ ̶̱̤͇a̮̣̻̬̺̟͜n̖ͅd͔̭ ̞͉̻͍͠Ḓ̝͉̻̳͚͡e͕̙̻m͏̱̜̖̤͚̪͕o̥̦̮n̮̘͕̲̲s̯͙.
̢̱͓̳
W͏̺͇̲̞͔a̲̫̭̮k͙̮̳͚e̬̘̟̫̟͝ ưp̲͟.̮̩̳͈̩
̨̱̪
̵̣̹͇H͎͠a͉̬r͙k͈̲̥̗͉i͓͓͟n̵̗̞̠̹̤ͅs͎,̖̝̀ ̵̦̝̭̳K͍̘̞̞̜i̲̩̖̫̱͙̭͞a͎͙l̲̱̜̭͙y̥̩͓͇̕a̠̖̯̼̳̩̤,̴̩͈͈̫̮ ̭̝̦̠̳̜S͈̖̲͍̯͖͝h̰̟a̴͍̠̞̬͍̻ḍ̼̤̫̼o̵̤͕̜ẉ͔̭͇ș̸̗̹͍͉̥ͅc͉̯y͙̟̩̤͉t̸̺͍̜͍he̷̟̬̬͚̻.͚̦̰͇̮̭
̗͈̤̮
̠̹W͎a̡͇ͅk̼͓̹̭̺ḛ͖͖̗̮͕̤͔ ̮̹͢up̖͙͙͍̼͠.̗͎


The black non-euclidian mass of curves and shapes aligned its form and the non-wave of psionic power erupted from its form and the Shraags forces burned and died screaming.

The wave then continued, passing through the first of Scythia's moons - its orbital complexes and underground cities, and the glittering stars of the space stations between.

In blink of an eye, five billion lives flashed out of existence.

And he could feel them all.

The three way fight for dominance erupted into fire and death - Ion blasts crossed laser bombardment, antimatter missiles crossed with HIVE rounds, Antimatter projectors blasted through flachette rounds and every manner of death in between as yet more death spheres appeared - the Shraag committing the rest of its fledgling power to the titanic battlefield.

A vast black shape started to blot out the stars themselves, it was a ship - and from Lord Shadowscythes guess, an Immortal ship far larger than anything else he had ever seen - larger than most planets, forcing a hyperwave wake that decimated even battleships in its path as it arrived between camera feeds and satellite arrays.

He ventured only a moments guess at what it was though - a ship like that could only be one vessel, a vessel often hinted at but never proven, IMMORTALIS - The flagship of the Immortal Emperor himself.

He could feel it, the Shraag itself was approaching full power - the void between worlds became . . . hungry . . . with intent, desire, murder.

It was going to take him, the vessel of the Emperor himself. The first Immortal - and fill his body with its own mind.

And then it was going to devour reality.

Everything would end. Light. Heat. Gravity. Life.

Then the multiverse. The cognitive narrative of one universe, all universes - stories bleed into another.

The nature of reality is sapient.

And it was going to die.


Not even the Immortal flagship itself could survive the coming fire.

The outcome was blurred, as output feeds where destroyed.

Dieties from both sides opened fire.

The Shraag committed its forces into ramming Death spheres into the flagship, closer feeds picking up the insecticide thralls spreading out from the impact points into the hull of the mighty vessel itself.

Then gouts of fire from the Fist of Scythia as the Emperors flagship exploded.

Another deity opened fire -the source of the shot unknown, but it fired onto Scythia itself - ripping through orbital defences and into some kind of vast shield which never existed as far as Lord Shadowscythe knew but it seemed to hold for just a moment before it faded.

The blast wiped half a continent away, Countless lives ended in an attosecond of fury as the resulting spread of antimatter annihilated the atmosphere and breached the planets crust,

Then it spread.

The fixed point died.

With it, all hope of survival.

Everything would perish.


Time stood still for Harkins as the rest of Scythia died screaming as the planetary instability and atmospheric damage burned away the air itself and ignited the ground as earthquakes and tectonic damage ended all life on the Scythian homeworld - the sheer damage to the planets mass threw off satellites and space stations as they plummeted into orbit or slammed into each other at inescapable velocities.

The shraags thralls, insectoid beasts from the first culling of the galaxy stormed the Immortalis - eager to constrain their prey as Loveless moved from deck to deck as a force of nature, unstoppable - unkillable. His already considerable abilities as an Immortal being supplemented by the poisonous being he contained.

He reached the bridge of the Immortalis - stretching his fists in every direction, reality bend and buckled as countless Immortals died - as the Emperor of the Immortal Empire fell to his thrall the Immortal flagship exploded from the inside out - a self-destruct mechanism set off to prevent the fall of an empire.

Except all it did was stall the inevitable.

The entire Scythian system winked out of existence like a dying candle.

Harkins watched as the universe unraveled like twine - some paths continued for a time, becoming desolate, apocalyptic realities where there was no survival, only death and destruction.

Others fed into another place, the realms where everything from words on a screen and thoughts from dozens of minds fed into something . . . greater . . .

. . . Brikverse . . .

The word ate at him, like a dream half remembered his mind attempted to hold at it with every fiber of his being.

"Harkins, Harkins can you hear me?! Mercury Summer to Harkins, CAN YOU HEAR ME?!"

The world snapped back and he found himself back within his bubble in the reach of orbital space as he fumbled with his communication systems.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Thu Feb 05, 2015 10:31 am

Eventually his fingers found purchase on the handheld portion of the communication system and he pushed down on the transmitter button hard as he spoked aloud with the throat microphone, after all there was next to no chance to be overheard or eavesdropped in space.

"Larissa, Harkins here - I hear you" He spoked with a hurried voice.

"Where the maidens are you? And where is Kialya? Quaram is blowing shit up left, right and centre over here!"

"Uhm, Larissa . . . not sure how to tell you this - I'm already outside" He replied in a slightly confused tone of voice as he continued to tumble through the darkness of space, protected from a cold, screaming death by a thin bubble of psionic energy.

"I . . . frak damnit" Larissa flustered as an explosion could be heard somewhere in the background.

"What?!" She finally finished.

"Just launch already and home in on my signal, you'll see when you get to me" Harkins replied as he set his channel to autobroadcast and he continued to float.

Meanwhile Larissa struggled to get everything into order she flustered with buttons and starship controls - Like all Scythian Marines she had received a basic "crash course" in starship operations during training - but it had been years since then and she had focused on becoming a medic, hoping that once her ten years service was complete that she could eventually become a doctor or even better, a surgeon. Instead she stuck with being a marine - A marine who was trying to launch a semi-converted freighter under fire.

"Quaram, get inside the ship - I'm gonna launch this bitch!" She yelled over the ships internal comms, for frantic moments the only reply she heard was the constant whine of laser fire from his P.A.V.L as it continued to level the bay.

"Just gimme a damn second, they're pulling out the heavy firepower!" Quaram screamed back down the channel with an every so slight indication of stress in his voice.

Which was just enough stress to make Larissa stop for a moment and switch to the loading bay camera feeds and she saw what Quaram was up against.

Quaram was still stood in the open walkway from the Mercury Summer and the bay was potmarked with explosions and debris - a metaphorical ten mile stretch of corpses and blood - but at the far end of the bay the single remaining entrance was now pouring SIBAS armoured troops armed with heavier weapons than had been seen so far - some even carried P.A.V.L's of their own - which Quaram opened fire on first - but the open battlefield of the hangar bay was now entering its end game.

Soon one of them would slip through his fall of fire and go on the offensive, and if just one of those blasts struck the unshielded hull - it could spell doom for the Mercury Summer, and possibly the end of the mission.

In a moment of panic, a burst of inspiration kicked in and she turned from one monitor to another, fingers dancing across holographic symbols as she began to pull the Murcury Summer backwards out of the bay until the ship was half in and half out of the forcefield.

"Quaram, stop firing and get inside the ship, I'm gonna blow these morons out" She yelled through the ships intercom system as she dialled up power to the shields.

The air around the ship began to crackle as the separate parts of the shield system came online, starting with the magnetic barrier and then dialling up the hard shield systems as the separate systems that would form a defensive blockade against incoming harm rebelled against the solid forcefield halfway across the ships mass.

One bubble formed inside another and the force field began to warp and stress against the field being generated from the ship as the air began to smell distinctly like Ozone, and as more power began to flow from the Mercury Summer the shields from the station began to tear in massive jolts of electrical discharge.

Until the shield burst and the stations docking bay generators exploded.

Followed a nanosecond later by the air inside the bay, and then by everything else.

Unable to stop the cataclysm of destruction - bodies unprepared for vacuum both living and dead where ejected into space.

Quaram laughed to himself as the bodies slammed and burst against the shields of the Murcury Summer as the ship began to pull backwards and flip on its axis, eventually turning to face the space above where Harkins was floating within his psychic bubble.

The engines burst into life as alert signals went out across the system defence force, and eventually two ageing Savager Frigates and a Kentaurus Frigate split off from one of the many battle-groups and powered up their engines and began hunting the Mercury Summer as their weapons powered up.

A dozen pings shot across Larissa's monitors as she ignored several warnings to power down systems an prepare to be boarded followed by many more open channels ordering her to stand down and be destroyed - which she suitably ignored by giving the screen display the finger and closing off all outbound communications except for Harkins.

"Quaram, you still in the cargo bay?" She asked over the ships internal comms systems.

"Yeah, what do you need?" He replied with a renewed sense of calm.

"I need you to open the cargo bay doors and get ready to take Harkins onboard"

Through her displays she saw the ever approaching marker for Harkins, the main mass of the Mercury Summer and the three rapidly approaching markers for the ships in pursuit.

"Harkins, you better be ready - we are getting ready to pick you up and then we are bugging the hell out of this system" She yelled over the comms channel to him as the ship sped up rapidly.

"Larissa, you need to pick me up and then head straight down - Kialya is on the homeworld somewhere" He replied with an all to audible note of panic in his words.

As Harkins watched from the void, he could see the smoke and fire bursting out from the exposed cargo bay of the station and the ever growing red speck in the distance that was the Mercury Summer as it grew ever closer.

He tried his best not to panic as the ship began to draw ever closer - feeling like he was going to be mowed down against the hull of the ship like an ever driving train - he would be dashed across the surface of the ship as an indistinct red smear.

Moment after moment passed as the ship grew larger and larger until he saw the open cargo bay with a single SIBAS suit standing within - Quaram waiting to grab him and take him onboard the ship. He watched the shields dropped as the ship came towards him at even faster speeds, and in a matter of seconds he was swallowed whole by the mass of the ship, Quaram grabbing the outer edge of the psionic field in a bizarre power suited bear hug and the outer bay doors closed behind him.

Within a few short breaths the bay pressurised and Harkins dropped his psionic projection and he tasted the Ozone of the Mercury Summer.

"Nice catch" He said with a nod to Quaram.

"No problem man, you gotta show me how you did that" Quaram replied "Because that was fraking cool"

"Everyone alive down there?" Larissa asked through the ships comms.

"Yeah, and in one piece" Harkins spoke aloud in reply.

"Let's . . . not do that again then" Larissa said as the ship turned on its axis again and gunned its engines to full power for their next destination, within moments they where on course through the upper stratosphere.

Down and down to the homeworld itself.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Sun Aug 02, 2015 11:06 am

"shit, shit, shit, shitshitshitshitshit SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!" Larrissa screamed at the holographic pilot controls as the Mercury Summer descended into a steep fall, less than a minute had passed since the insanity of having to collect Harkins from orbital space without a suit and it seemed like hell on Scythia had erupted around them.

It started with three destroyers turned on their respective axis and began their pursuit, arming weapons and hailing on all frequencies - only for one to somehow loose power to every system and fall dead in the water while another ship had an impatient captain with a short fuse, who opened all small arm weapons be turned on the mercury summer and open fire to disable it - for the third destroyer to move in the line of fire to prevent any possible friendly fire onto the home world. Which was precisely when the fighters arrived. Unlike the destroyers main weapons - which would have been more than enough to level ground buildings on their lowest settings - the fighters had a far shorter range before their laser cannons lost coherency and dissipated into the air.

Fire streaked across the shields of the Mercury Summer from above and below - and sweat began to bead across her skull, eyes being pushed back into their sockets as the artificial gravity systems fought against natural gravity and doubled the air pressure inside the ship. Harkins came bolting through the bridge - grabbing the shoulder rest of her seat to slow his almost 70 degree downwards run, and to turn him on the spot to use his momentum and launch himself at the combat control systems - moments later his hands found purchase and he had slung himself into the seat and pulled the harness over his shoulders, metal clasping against metal as he secured himself and brought the Mercury Summers hidden payload online.

During her older life as a Q-ship the Mercury Summer had been armed with older generation Laser cannon arrays - single barrel turret systems, one above and one below. These had been all too intentionally torn out and replaced by two triple barrelled cannon turrets that had twice the combat power per turret - the whole system had been designed to scare the ever loving crap out of anyone or anything stupid enough to get into range.

Fire burst away as the sheath of orbital freefall passed into clouds and the hull opened above and below - great Titanium plates falling into the hull and sliding apart to reveal the twin turrets which automatically turned to face their opponents - Harkins paused for a moment, just a moment as regret passed through him. Unlike the operatives on the station these where most likely fellow Scythian soldiers - Navy pilots with no ulterior motive other than protecting the homeworld. Morals be damned though - he had to fight for a higher cause.

A mental kick in the teeth later and he pulled the trigger - and the three cannons of the top turret unleashed a torrent of laser fire, and the skies behind them thinned. Some pilots dodged, others where glancing hits, and far more than made Harkins comfortable exploded into pyres of flame falling until gravity eased them into the world beyond.

Larrissa watched as larger targets appeared on the long range scanner systems - a Destroyer, a Frigate and a Battleship all descended slowly above them - and she cursed both inward and outwardly again. Having entered the atmosphere it would take too much time, effort and energy to break orbit again without getting caught by one of those ships - the Frigate took the front line as a pursuit craft, the Destroyer was trying to pull along side and get in front - while the Battleship stayed high above in the cloud layer - halting any attempt at escape.

She watched over her shoulder to see Harkins, who had set the turrets to autofire and was sat with his arms crossed and his eyes closed - seemingly ignoring the panic all around.

"HARKINS WHAT THE MAIDENS DAMN FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?!" She yelled with a mixture of hardly contained anger, panic and fear.

"Trying to find her - she's somewhere above the skyline - one of the arcology towers" He replied, distant and slightly confused.

A second later the sky around them exploded as the Destroyer had pulled along side them, but a kilometer away - and had opened fire with her long range cannons.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Sun Aug 02, 2015 11:47 am

Kialya moved through the spaces between people - catching whiffs of perfumes, both expensive and cheap - alcohol and influence mixed with sound and pheromones covered with a blanket of noise and heat.

The music that dominated all - a thick and clogging beat of drums and electronic riffs that made the backs of her eyeballs pulse in tune with the depth of the bass.

It didn't take her long to find Farguth - on a distant side of the bar, alone in civilian clothing and nursing what appeared to be the thin end of a stiff drink. She motioned closer to the bar and ordered a drink - apparently Britannian Vodka was the order of the day, and it was incredibly expensive considering the two sides where actively at war with one another. The bars owners must have either had a significant reserve or deep pockets combined with a lot of fingers in a lot of pies.

Taking a sampling sip of the burning spirit she took swift steps to Farguth, who spotted her approach and made space for her at the bar.

"You should know, we don't have much time here" He said without introduction, pulling a Scythian datapad from his pocket, it was flashing red with a half-dozen contacts and warnings.

"Take this. Now" He said as he shoved a data storage crystal from his pocket to her hands and locked eyes with her.

"Hearcer and his ilk are more dangerous than even the Emperor can anticipate - Whatever their plan is - it's tied between us and Genoad." He said - looking down to the beeping pad as the drawling tones grew closer and closer together.

"Go. Go to Genoad - the Crystal will help. Stop him. Stop them." He said as the panic grew in his eyes.

"It feels good not to be doing this for money for once, maybe this will save us . . . " He said as his words drifted into silence.

Kialya stood for a moment longer, she hadn't muttered a word in the entire exchange - she finally plucked up the courage to speak, only to be cut off my Farguth once more.

"You need to run, I hope you have a better plan than me. Goodbye." Farguth said - before drawing a laser pistol from a hidden pocket as fast as his pudgey hands could move, safety off and finger on the trigger.

The pistol made final friends with his chin as he pulled the trigger and blew the top half of his head clean off with a dull thud and a flash of blue-white light. There wasn't even time for him to bleed as the suicidal wound cauterised itself and his body fell backwards to the floor.

People turned, people screamed - the music continued regardless as Kialya panicked and grabbed the beeping read datapad from the corpse - the red warning beats almost on top of the centre of the screen, just in time for searchlights to burst through the ambience of the night club from outside followed by a series of automatic laser blasts ripping indiscriminately onto the dance floor - people exploded into balls of burnt flesh and bone as Kialya pocketed the pad along with the crystal and Farguths laser pistol. Diving to the floor she tapped the access panel on the side of her robotic leg and small burn lines cut through the fabric of her trousers - and the automatic holster ejected her own pistol into her hand.

She looked up to see figured dressed almost entirely in black dropping through the windows and ceilings - unmarked weapons, grenades, hand signals - the only identifying marks on them being the red horizontal line painted on their skull emblazoned helmets.

More pain, more fire - more screaming and death. Kialya opened fire on a few of the closest troops - they fell like sacks of dead meat, while the others simply opened fire on everything and everyone who was not a member of their unit.

Crossing laser fire cut bodies in half, shredding meat, muscle and bone, and the nightclub turned into a butchers parade.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Sun Aug 02, 2015 12:10 pm

"Oh for Fuck sake" Harkins you better find her soon or there won't be much of us left!" Larrissa screamed as she attempted to dodge the combined waves of fire, moments after the Kentaurus class Destroyer had opened fire from the side - the Regeant class Frigate behind the Mercury Summer had also opened fire in an attempt to down the smaller Q-ships shields and drive them down towards the ground. Larrissa desperately pushed the engines as hard as they would burn, power from the ships onboard Antimatter Generator pushed as much and as hard as it could to the ships fusion torch engines. which in turn burned so hard in atmosphere that they left a trail of blackened, burned air behind the ship - which fell to the ground as a rain of soot and acidic dust.

Harkins, having left the twin turrets to automatic fire was pushing the boundaries of his perception as far as he could in an attempt to attune himself to Kialya and track her down amongst a sea of consciousness.

He caught flashes of black figures falling through windows and cielings.

A Pudgey figure blowing his own head off in a final act of defiance? Or self pity? Harkins found he could not feel the dead.

A Glass, Britannian Vodka - Burning liquid that slide down the throat.

Nightclub. Smells. Sounds. Heat.

Afterlife? No. Heaven.

Heaven's . . .

. . . Reach

Heavens Reach. Nightclub. Arcology Tower.

His eyes shot wide open as his hands moved into a blur - he opened the navigation console and began a swift search - seconds later the nav system had pinged an Arcology tower that was mere minutes of flight away - and just above the cloud layer.

"THERE! She's there! and she's under attack!" He yelled as he over-rode the automatic firing system on the turrets and attempted to combine blasts on the destroyer that was getting closer and closer to their flank.

"Well what the fuck do you expect me do to about it?! I'm too busy trying to stop us from DYING HERE!" Larrissa shouted in return - anger and hopelessness taking over her usually trained senses.

"Do we have any kind of combat or maneuvering thrusters?" He yelled in return.

"Maneuvering yes, Combat - No!"

"Then get ready to fire the thrusters down and cut the engines for five seconds on my mark!" Harkins yelled at Larrissa as he began frantic typing on the holographic console.

"Almost there . . . " He continued, sweat and panic drifting down his brow " . . . NOW!"

Larrissa cut power to the engines and fired the thruster systems down as the same time, which had the all to predictable result of sending the entire ship down with the grace of an almighty flying brick.

The destroyer that had been getting steadily closer to them drifted ahead as it attempted to slow itself down, while the Reagent frigate behind them - captain and crew caught by surprise - carried ahead, over and in front of the Mercury Summer.

Harkins slammed the fire controls and opened fire on the frigate as it drifted ahead - laser blasts ripped into its lower and rear shields and burst them where they where weakest, from the engines own fusion torch array. The ship, undamaged but suitably frightened; pulled away from the fight in an attempt to regenerate their protective shields - and the destroyer pulled away in front, without full support on their own level, they could simply let the Monarch battleship above track their prey until they could bring in more ships and deal with them for good.

For the moment however, it brought them time, and breathing space - as Larrissa burned the engines back into life and sped the Mercury Summer towards the Arcology tower that was rapidly emerging through the distant haze of clouds
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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