@Xandrya@PlatinumSkink@BKburke@Tickout@Dark Light@Turbowraith@Banana@Silver CarrotStryker smiled and nodded as Taleste announced her arrival, he should've known she'd be among the first to arrive. Arex slipped away without a word, just as a few others arrived, Stryker glanced up from his coffee and nodded at each of them as they arrived. Soon enough, Tobi came along, pushing a small datapad into his hands.
"Appreciate it Tobi. The others are fine, doc's got em pretty well stabilized, one less thing to worry about for the moment at least"
Word came through the comms that Tibulus and Joe also wouldn't be attending, Stryker agreed to let them listen in from the cockpit and cargo bay, respectively, and went about setting the datapad to broadcast his announcements.
Grayson, unexpectedly, was the last to arrive.
"Sorry 'm late" he muttered as he fixed himself a cup "Long one las' night."
"Ok, we're all here now, minus the few that couldn't make it for various reasons, but they're all listening in" Stryker began "I guess we should address the elephant in the room....." a sip as he contemplated how best to put this "You know what? the details don't matter in this case. The short answer is, like always, the Alliance fucked us. They're the reason all of us are into this situation to begin with, so we'll stick the blame firmly to them and say no more about it right now. The real announcement, or whatever you wanna call this, just a quick, to-the-point info dump of where we're going, and what those bastards have us lined up to do next, just give me a second here"
He brought the mug to his mouth again and finished it off as he opened up the briefing file on his datapad.
"As some.... most of you will know, there's more stations like Minos all over the Deadzone. Mining hubs that fell over time into nothing more than pirate bays. In particular, we're headed out near the edge of the Deadzone, to Serros Station. That's the rallying point, because apparently, this is a 2 ship job, I don't know, maybe the other's a distraction or something, anyway they're reaching out to a merc crew to provide support. The target is Ne'ero Sol, a Trakerian who rules a faction of, to quote Dawson 'Feddy-sympathizing bastards.' Near as I can tell, his people have been in charge of Serros for years now, and according to this, time for a regime-change. Now, I've gone through this intel packet a couple times, all it really tells me about Sol and his pirates is exactly that, they're an ever-expanding band of cutthroats, slavers, and generally shitty folk. But it's not as simple as show up and bomb the shit out of it. Reason number 1 is because there are people living there, people completely unrelated to what we're doing here. Number 2 is just as 'simple' again, Dawson's version of the word, Sol's death will open a power vacuum among the 3 or 4 other crews that want to rule the roost over at Serros, and the idea is that whichever crew comes out in charge of the place, that's who we approach to try and make inroads. We build contacts with them, it helps us in the long run, apparently. There's way more to it than that, the intel actually refers to a plan carried out in phases, and Sol has a couple of high-ranking lieutenants that'll need to go too, but we can get into the specifics in a couple of days, when we get closer. I can try and answer any immediate questions now, but if there's nothing, then I guess that's it?"
FourtyTwo