Sophia was standing at the Briefing rooms' table, waiting for all the pilots to arrive. she gave each pilot a small trio of documents pertaining to the coming operation, set to happen 3 days from now, Januray 7th. [color=8882be]"Mondays..."[/color], she sighed.

[color=8882be]"Anyway. As everyones' situated... I'll commence the briefing."[/color], she flipped the projector's switch to on, showing a trio of pictures. The first, titled 'Op 1, Volkov, Weapon Capture' depicted some sort of ultra-heavy artillery, half-buried in a crater and surrounded by archaeological digging and construction equipment. 'Op 2, Paragon, Naval Attack' was some sort of blueprint for a battle cruiser, with many interesting armaments and features, like main guns that looked like they belonged to a proper dreadnought, and some sort of drone deploying system. 'Op 3, Fairbanks, Weapon Test' depicted what looked like a prototype NC.

[color=8882be]"Three Operations over the week. Wednesday, Volkov wants us to capture, or at least neutralize something that those people over at Red-Star dug up from before the war. There isn't much info, Volk couldn't give us much and we barely know shit just from looking at it, but it's apparently a very-high-velocity railgun meant to attack things at intercontinental, or maybe even anti-orbit ranges. Red-star doesn't have the know-how or infrastructure to properly feed this beast anyway, at least in Volkov Security's opinion, so they want us to give it to owners who can take care of it. Them, obviously."[/color]

Sophia went on to describe its' defenses. [color=8882be]"Currently, it's pretty walled up. We seem to have two NC's guarding it, the Red-Oni and Fubuki, a heavily armored unit that specializes in thermal based attacks, and a 'bird-leg' humanoid that focuses on mobility and electronic warfare respectively. Aside from those two stooges, the gun is also defended by a small collective of turrets, most of them fitted with standard medium-ROF, medium damage kinetic cannons, and two of them being light artillery pieces. Nothing Little Dragon and Goldenspur can't handle together, I reckon, so you two'll be heading out for that. Pay is 450,000 credits, divided amongst you two and after taking a cut for SR, that should be 100,000 for each of you."[/color]

[color=8882be]"The Volkov one is the only one that's absolutely necessary, but the other two have a nice fat stack of cash involved too. Paragon wants us to take out a new Denver-Vegas heavy battlecruiser, they suspect DV stole quite a few Paragon-patented tricks, and they want them to know that just because they're the biggest in the west they just can't do that. At least, without any repercussions. It has a small escort fleet of two light cruisers, a submarine, and three frigates. It honestly doesn't need anything else, and Paragon wants us to sink the whole taskforce. Of course, NC's are strong, but they won't be able to completely annihilate a naval vessel: just focus on destroying anything that looks important on it. If the main ship has a nice wreckage for Paragon to later salvage, that's going to be a 200,000 bonus for us too."[/color]

Sophia seemed to do a mental calculation, then continued. [color=8882be]"The entire squad is going to be required for this. This needs to be done Thursday, the 8th. Day after the Volkov OP, in other words. For obvious reasons, this has the biggest possible payout at nearly 1,400,000 bucks. Dividing that, that's 200,000 for each of you, and an extra 50,000 if you manage to damage the main ship just enough."[/color]

She gave an overview on the fleets' total capabilities, [color=8882be]"The primary battle-cruiser has two, double-barreled battleship grade turrets, flinging .350 shells up to 46 kilometers. With their very high muzzle velocity, you'll probably need to dodge their fire while getting into range. Shells that big'll really screw up an NC, which isn't helped by their superb rate of fire for such massive shells... But I'm certain you can dodge them."[/color]

She discussed the submarine class, next. [color=8882be]"DV's premiere and latest class of submersibles. About 80 meters long, somewhat tiny for something that can pack quite a punch. Has long-range, multipurpose cruise missiles. If the battlecruiser gets spooked and really doesn't want to fight you guys at close range, it'll definitely call on its' little friend to fire off a few swarms. Total destructive power should be comparable to the battleships' main guns, and they home in obviously, but it can only fire off so many."[/color]

[color=8882be]"The others-"[/color], concerning the cruisers and frigates, [color=8882be]"Are complete small-fry. Deal with them as you wish, their main guns are a joke compared to the big fish's little number. The cruisers can probably scratch your paint with their Close-in-weapons systems, but nothing to really worry about."[/color]

She then described the third available contract. [color=8882be]"So, Op 3, Fairbanks has heard about the exploits of Jan Van Gent, some how, and want him specifically to help out in testing an NC they made. It's definitely not standard in any case, and they actually want anyone else 'he can bring along'. This is sort of fishy to me, but the pay is nearly on par with Contract 2's, so we should look into it in my opinion. 125,000 for each of you, if you all join in on the fun."[/color]

[color=8882be]"The Prototype NC's cockpit is reinforced even more then usual, so don't worry about damaging it too much. As well, we'll uplink safety information with the Prototype, so he'll know when to stop to test if he needs to. They didn't give too much info about the NC, wanting it to be a surprise so we can't prepare for it in particular. But they did say it's 'going to be a new breed of NC', it's only reasonable to be prepared for anything."[/color]

Sophia sneaked in a quick sip of coffee, [color=8882be]"Any questions for any of the contracts?[/color]