[b][center][h3]Collab Between [@Tortoise] and [@Irredeemable][/h3][/center][/b]

The protectors were feeling much better, now that the Zetan navy was down for the count.

One of the remaining two cruisers, this one adorned with red stripes, took to the task of organizing troop deployments. In the holo-simulations, this was always taken to be a fairly simple job: find cities, bomb them into dust, repeat. Soldiers were just for picking up stragglers and occupying whatever the ECU decided to leave intact.

But now they were having an odd problem.

“Sir,” one junior protector told the chief. “There’s… no cities.”

“You must have read it wrong!” the chief yelled. ‘Yelling’ is the only volume he has. “Try again.”

The junior protector pushes a few more buttons. (He was trained to do this just a few days ago, and was still uncertain in his movements.)

“No, sir, I’m sure. There’s no cities. Not on this entire planet.”

An awkward silence fills the room.

“Well… what is there?”

A research outpost was chosen as their destination. They didn’t know it was an outpost, exactly, but they knew it was small, isolated, and hopefully contained Zetans they could capture to interrogate on [i]where everybody is living.[/i] The shuttle lets down a little roughly, being that the piloting AI is not meant at all for this environment, but the protectors make sure they come out in style. They load their weapons while they walk.

“Open up!”, the commander bangs on the closest thing they can find to a door. “This is the ECU. We have seized this planet. We know you’re in there.”

Zetan weather surveillance outposts were not built with security in mind. They did not have cameras, or guards, or protective measures. What they did have however, was engineering designed to withstand the worst of what the planet could throw at them.

And this one had decided to leave a single warform outside, unpowered. The outpost itself had currently gone into searfront lockdown- an 83c celcius wall of heat was ripping across the surface of Tartarus-Sigma, and it was only a few precious minutes away from gracing the structure. 

With the ECU banging outside, one of the disembodied crewmen from the naval battles took control and moved it towards the commander. Rather than immediately reply, it simply stood there, looking at the small squadron with its sleek, inhuman face.

“Woah!,” a young man jumped back from the moving machine. “Look, commander, here’s one- it’s all robot!”

All the protector’s hands immediately went to their hips, where their metal clubs would usually rest. Today, those clubs were exchanged for sidearms and rifles. They drew them in unison, under nobody’s orders but instinct’s, and raised them midway to the terrifying thing in front of them.

“You,” the commander barked. “We need information. Come with us, and we’ll have a talk.”

Even unarmed, a warform was not defenseless. Hardy, heat-and-cold resistant, with a reasonable degree of strength, dexterity, and, of course, its electrical surprise, this one warform could have seriously damaged the squad as it milled about aimlessly. But, instead, it was here to study them. Zetans didn’t get caught in searfronts anymore. Nobody had, not for centuries. So what did a human being do when exposed to non-fire based flash heat? They could theorise and model it, but nothing compared to empirical data.

“I’m sorry,” the warform finally crackled out. “Are you trying to intimidate a remote-controlled robot?”

The men exchanged glances. They had, each one, assumed this was only an extremely modified cyborg. 

“...hey,” the young one says at last. “Is it starting to feel a little hot to you?”

It was. Out of nowhere, every human realized he was sweating.

“Welcome to Elysium-Sigma.” The form declared. “This monitoring facility is currently in extreme weather lockdown. The Zetan Consciousness thanks you for your sacrifices to the scientific cause.”

The commander tries to yell at the robot, the way his chief does him, but suddenly finds that yelling is becoming very difficult. Actually, it seems hard to breathe at all. The sudden wave of heat, like an open oven, takes all the air straight from his lungs. 

It’s then that a warning traveling up his arms and legs tells him to look down, and when he does- it’s all red. His skin, red, crackling, boiling… soon, they’re all screaming with whatever oxygen they have left.

The team doesn’t make it back to their transport. Four roasting bodies lay in the Zetan sun. The warform alone is still standing.

“Welcome to Zeta-5.” The warform declared bitterly to their burnt bodies. That ship should be good to scrap and see how Hollywoodite troop transports tick. It was something, the Collective supposed.

[center][b]~~~~~~~~[/b][/center]
[right][sub][i](Addressing: [@Irredeemable][/i][/sub][/right]

This is not what they came prepared for. In fact, the Noocracy strictly ordered a blitzkrieg. They would rush in while the toasters still had their pants down, club them to death, and bust up their whole system faster than anyone can say “augmentations.” So to speak.

But as the ECU fleet hovers in orbit over Zeta-5, it became increasingly clear that this would be no quick war. It would be a long, painful, drawn-out siege, the first one in centuries of recorded history. They would need to keep the planet locked down. They would need to face-off against the environment, the native life, and the Zetan resistance fighters. And perhaps most importantly, they would have to stay in blockade, allowing no ships to or from the surface, no Zetan allies to approach, and no space-bound construction.

The protector chief sent his mission report to the Noocratic War Council, but by now, they've watched the whole event themselves. On New Hollywood, people celebrated, believing this to be a victory. But the truth settles in for the protectors ordered to keep orbit on their captive world.

Zeta's navy is gone, their planet is captured, but the real war is obviously only beginning.