[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/Y9sJ6mj.png[/img][/center]

Above the [i]BRP Jose Rizal[/i], hovering in a patrol helicopter enshrouded in clouds, Callie loosed the energy that had just allowed Cristina to fall a couple of hundred kilometres in a second and let the marrow-deep chill born of divesting herself of that much energy at once melt into her rising adrenaline.

She scanned the battlefield, Charter bypassing the vapour and distance to let her see the deck of the carrier clearly – Obsidian’s operatives exploding out from Mirage Space, Cao Bao’s façade falling away entirely as anticipated, the expected trap sprung…  Her current vantage point gave her all of the visibility she needed, the free-falling and launching of the Mischief Reef mission, there used to seek angles into the tower windows of altogether too many ships, unnecessary for this strike.

Instead, she placed her focus clearly: a portal in the shape of a lattice of arches, each element wide as an atom and invisible to the eye, that with the movement of the carrier slashed at and severed the series of radio antennae attached to the end of its flight deck.  Theoretically, that would make it profoundly difficult, if not impossible, for the flagship to communicate with the rest of the fleet…  Unless Cao Bao was here to repair it.

…and, apparently, the mayhem that Nil had elected to unleash on her surrounds.

[color=f7941d][i]Smoke won’t last on a moving ship but Chinese positions are ineffectual for now, thanks to Mikey,[/i][/color] she affirmed, a slight smile forming in the back of her mind.  [color=f7941d][i]Comes down to the antiquarians, then – Cao Bao if he’s here plus the Wukong cosplayer.  Seems unserious but that’s a pattern with Zodiac and doesn’t –[/i][/color]

Awareness.  Horrifying, [i]visceral[/i] awareness.

[color=f7941d][i]Occam; likely him – could be misdirection – enemy almost certainly doesn’t know of this ability to try deception – alert them [/i]now![/color]

Callie knew that their air support would be able to chain communications from the strike force to the [i]Rizal[/i] and from there, with the ship’s powerful transmitters to pierce the cloud, up to the helicopter – that was how she was going to get the team’s evac orders.  She knew that it [i]might[/i] work in the other direction, too.  But she didn’t know how much clarity the message would reach them with and right now they needed clarity.

Instead, she simply joined space a couple of hundred kilometres apart once more – a far smaller portal this time, opened in an instant – and spoke directly into Mikey’s handheld radio.

[color=f7941d]“Obsidian, imminent threat [i]from your own Arms![/i]  Sergeant Janssens, you are unaffected – neutralise that antiquarian, now!”[/color]

[@Chiro]