Penny

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

The barrel of Sayeeda's plasma rifle shimmered as the heat of the barrel distorted the air around it. A high rate of fire burned barrels out quickly but a new barrel was a cheap price to pay for survival. The Xenos lapped forward like a wave of angry chitin, snapping at the heels of the retreating Knights.

"Well it seems she wants to pay you a visit," Sayeeda said dryly as she slotted a fresh magazine into her weapon. The thing was deceptively fast, its long legs gave it the appearance of lumbering but the vast strides meant that it covered alot of ground. It crunched through its own troops with no concern for the casualties it caused, crushing its smaller brethren beneath vast clawlike feet. THere was a sudden sound like a giant cat vommiting and black ooze gouted forth at firehose presure. The mass of reeking substance caught one of the fleeing Knights mid jump and he tumbled to the earth, screaming and tearing at his helmet. The creatures washed over him without a pause.

The milita broke and ran with cries of terror. Many of them simply through their weapons to the ground and bolted. Sayeeda supposed she couldn't really blame them but her contempt for untrained militias, already well substantiated by experience grew a measure.

"Make for the ship!" she screamed over the chaos, her voice peircing and commanding. The best she could hope for was to give some order to the rout.

"Captain, my men inform me that they will have completed loading by the time we reach the ship," Astador's voice informed her over her mastoid radio. He sounded tight, but in control. That might well be true but even if so they wouldn't be able to get aboard and lift before the lumbering behemoth reached it.

"Roger that, we will fall back and meet you at the ship," she replied. They had to find away to side track the giant.

"Be ready," Sayeeda said to Neil and sighted at the creature carefully. One of the creatures eyes flash heated to steam as the plasma rifle cracked, and it whipped its head around in anger and confusion. Junebug stood and snapped the bipod shut as the thing turned its remaining baleful eye upon her.

"Time we got the hell out of here," she said mildly and turned and bolted without another word. The main swarm seemed to be content to pursue the retreating Knights as they, by previous agreement, made a long looping curve back towards the ship, giving the civilians the maximum amount of time to get on board. The monstrosity however, had another target in mind. Rather than fleeing towards the ship Sayeeda and Neil fled south into the increasingly rugged and broken terrain to the south east of the settlement. Sayeeda turned twice and fired aimed shots into the creature but it still gained at a prodigious rate.

"Captain I..." Neil said dubiously.

"Don't worry I have a plan," she said pointing an out stretched finger at a narrow ravine a few dozen yards ahead of them. The thing was less than fifty meters behind them now and gaining quickly. Branches slapped at Sayeeda as she unhooked a smoke grenade from her belt and hurled it infront of her. It sputtered dark black smoke almost immediately as the chemical accelerants kicked into gear.

"Jump!" she commanded as they reached the newly formed smoke bank. Both captain and pilot leaped over the three meter ravine with ease but the pursuing creature, half blind and with the smoke to content with was not so lucky. Sayeeda and Neil managed to scramble up over some dark granite boulders when the thing hit the ravine, its left leg finding nothing but empty air as it cleared the smoke. It half dropped into the ravine but its momentum carried it forward, smashing its legs and waist against the rock wall of the raving with a spine chilling snap and pop. The thing thrashed the edge of the ravine with its arms crumbling hundred of kilos of dirt and rock.

Neil leaped forward and leveled his flamer, pouring a long blast into the things face as it snapped and spat in impotent frustration, The chitin burned and ran like wax, the other eye bursting like a dirty soap bubble under the onslaught.

"Bet you wish you got the chance to do THAT to your step mother," Sayeeda declared, a hint of satisfaction in her voice for a rare change.

@POOHEAD189

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Sayeeda settled her helmet onto her head and adjusted the fit so it rested comfortably. The medigel beneath her garments was still uncomfortably slick and the slight differential rate of evaporation made her feel chilled. The militia hunkered down nervously around her. It was an understandable reflex even though nothing they had seen suggested that the xenos could bring any projectile weapons to bear. She unslung her plasma rifle, snapped open the breech and examine the mechanism. Satisfied she closed the lock and worked the action ejecting the poker chip like cell and snatching the spinning disk from the air. Although plasma guns were reliable tech the tolerances were tight enough that veterans learned to give their equipment every assistance they could. Junebug tucked the unspent round into an equipment pouch and unhooked her canteen and took a long drink.

Below them the Knights were arranging themselves in a loose skirmish line at the edge of a recently hewed field. The crop was unfamiliar to Sayeeda but it seemed to consist of finger thick brownish stalks. She wondered how tall the stuff grew before it was harvested. Travelling the stars gave one a wide palette for crops and even though Terran varieties tended to predominate the galaxy was full of strange and partially edible biota.

"When we collect all this reward money, we need to invest in a vehicle," she mused as she watched the oncoming alien through her magnified view. The crops further out were somewhat longer and so the enemy was visible more by the movement in the grasslike undergrowth. Range finders ticked down in her augmented view.

"Damn, they can move," she commented, clocking some of the smaller creatures at over thirty kph. This could get really messy if they were smart enough to flank the Knights. Pulling out in a hurry was likely to be a non starter. She glanced back towards the ship and wondered if they could use the ship for some fire support. Probably not a great idea if they were going to be trying to load civilians, the side scatter from the heavy guns would make the ship unapproachable.

The helmet carroted a sudden new target in the distance and her head snapped up to follow the movement. At the hiveship fragment, something much bigger was emerging from its transport pupa and beginning to lumber towards the group. The estimate from the helmet gave its arrival at ten minutes. It seemed to be moving slowly but builing up speed rapidly.

"Didn't see anything like that at the asteroid," she said to Neil and pointed with an outstretched finger at the much larger Xenos.

"We better be ready if these things try to flank the line, these farmers wont last two seconds if they get behind us." Crouching down she unsnapped a bipod from the front of her rifle and thumbed the holographic sight to life. The leading creatures would be in range within a handful of seconds ans she needed to make sure they came right at the Knights.

@POOHEAD189

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

"Very few things going on in this system are good things," Sayeeda rejoined dryly. Verbally, as her hands were still inside the autodoc, she qued up the sensor data, a synthesis from the Highlander's own sensors and the sytem wide net they were tied into. Scrolling back the data she traced the object back into space and found it on an intersecting track with the PDC batteries that had recently opened up.

"Looks like a piece of a bioship that got gutted by the defensive screen," she told Neil.

"Yeah well it dosen't look that gutted from here," crackled his reply. Cursing she ordered the auto-doc to begin its disconnect sequence, and over rode several of its mechanical objections to the half finished job. The machine hissed with the gentle discharge of various gasses and the withdrawal of integrated IV access points. Even on a state of the art system the disengagement would take several minutes. In the mean time she remoted a view to one of Highlander's optical sensors, closet to where Neil's comm system emenated. The top of the bioship, a lumpy charred thing like a burned lemon was visible several miles distant. She rolled the maginification forward and got a hazy view of the surface of the thing. Chambers in the... hull for want of a better term, were popping open like pimples, oozing some sort of slime as nightmarish creatures, difficult to view at this magnification but similar to what they had seen on the moon, emerged and shook themselves like wet cannines. As she watched parties of the creatures began setting out a dozen or so to a group.

"Scouting," Sayeeda said, despite the fact that Neil didn't have access to the video and could only guess at what she was talking about. They were radiating away from the downed ship like spokes on a wheel, unfortunately one of the spokes seemed to be pointed within a few degrees of the village.

"Neil get inside, break. This is Highlander Six to Tin-man command," Sayeed went on, tripping the comm circuit to the Knights.

"This is Sword Seargent Atrador of the..." the Knight began to respond, the irritation at her impromptu callsign clear in his voice. Sayeeda grinned and squashed his transmission. In a military net the highest ranking officer speaking would be given priority by the AI controling the circuit. Sayeeda wasn't technically in a net with Atrador but she had the advantage of the Highlander's commo suite, which had orders of magintude more power than any practical man portable gear.

"Yeah yeah, save it for the Nun's or whatever. We have incomming from the impact site. What is your ETA on the evacuation."

"I estimate twenty minutes to get all civilians aboard if we prioritize them over the foodstuffs," came the somewhat sullen response. That wasn't going to be fast enough, not by ten minutes at least. The auto doc cracked open and Sayeeda climbed out, naked except for the clinging antiseptic slime the machine used and started grabbing for her clothes.

"Neil better round up whatever fighting statuary isn't actively helping people," she decided, stepping hastily into her pants and pulling them up over her hips.

"We need to buy ten minutes."

@POOHEAD189

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

The Highlander shuddered for a moment in dynamic stasis before settling to the thruster burned earth. The yellowish local grass flashed to fire for an instant but was quickly snuffed by the hungry intakes of the settling starship. The low scrubby bushes surrounding the hillside came alive for a moment as dozens of small reptiloid animals, local fauna who had chosen to freeze rather than flee when the metal behemoth roared down from the heavens, reevaluated their choice and bolted for safety.

The Highlander perched on a slight hillock several hundred meters north of one of Fornax's outlying hamlets. The village, whatever it was called, differed only in arrangement from the dozen they had already visited. For that matter it seemed of a piece with a half dozen worlds Sayeeda had seen during her time with the Armored. To a tanker, villages were places where indiges with RPG's could hide, or insurgents could melt away into in times of trouble. They provided no real cover from plasma weaponry though, provided you were willing to use it on what some might consider civilian targets.

"Disembarking," came the mechanical voice of one of the Knights as they unassed the vehicle through one of the boarding gates, already striding across the charred hilltop towards the gawping villagers, integral speakers blasting edicts of evacuation. It would take them a few minutes to convince the villagers that they really should abandon everything they owned and flee to the massive fortress-like fabrication cities. Junebug viewed the knights with a certain amount of professional contempt. They were certainly brave and skilled but their structure was too feudal to allow for much tactical flexibillity and their armor, impressive and effective on lower tech worlds, wouldn't be particularly effective against the kind of modern plasma weapons or high intensity EM pieces Sayeeda was familiar with. To a rabble of villagers like those below, they must have seemed the the emissaries of an angry god.

Sayeda sat in her command chair, though her body below the head was covered with the metal plasitc shell of the auto-doc which she had moved from the medbay/galley to the bridge. Periodically she felt her flesh jabbed by needles or cooled by the infusions of various drugs. According to Looney's somewhat jaunty assessment shed be 'fit to wrestle a greased pig' in no time, although the abominable accent rendered the word as 'peg'. In the background she kept an audio feed of the battle in orbit playing. Sayeeda was no Navarch but it didn't sound to her like things were going well. Most human warships of any size relied heavily on manuevering through the RIP to close interstellar distance and evade their enemies. The strange dark matter shadow the aliens were casting made that impossible and the Fornax fleet didn't seem to have the training in squadron operations to make up the loss.

After the meeting they had been 'escorted' to their ship and had their cargo off coffee unceremoniously dumped onto the dock. Sayeeda had objected stenously before the commander of the Knights curtly informed her that the Duke would indemnify her for the loss. After that they had flown from one outlying village to another, ferrying people back to the central cities as quickly as it was possible.

"We really should have lit for orbit when we had the chance," Sayeeda spoke softly so as not to be overheard by the pair of Knights who had remained on board.

"This is likely to turn into a real shit show."
@POOHEAD189

The Book Club

@POOHEAD189 I read the whole extant series (till about book 9 billion?) when I was a girl more than once and I recently read the final book just in the interest of completeness. Robert Jordan had actually died by that point and Branderon Sanderson did a good job of finishing it off although I could sense him feverishly tying off the 10 billion plotlines Jordan had laid down. Did anyone still care that Perrin once killed some Whitecloaks? Apparently so many people...

I should point out that I'm not badmouthing the series, the books are wonderful and I love the world even if Rand is sort of a woolheaded fool!

The Book Club

@POOHEAD189 Oh god the Wheel of Time. A series which reminds me that once I had copious free time. Now I shall raise my chin at you while wearing a dress that has three paragraphs of description.

The Book Club

Non Fiction: History

A Distant Mirror - Barbara W Tuchman

An extraordinary slice of Medieval History organised around the life of one of the Peers of France. It touches on every strata of medieval life in France as well as dealing with the major calamities of the the era, the Hundred Years War, The Papal Schism and the Black Death. As well as being extraordinarily evocative, it is extremely well researched and well referenced. Unlike a lot of historical works, Tuchman's prose is amazing and the way she organises the work around the life of Enguerrand de Coucy VII gives it an immediacy and personal stakes which are rare in historical texts.

Fiction: Sci Fi

With the Lightnings - David Drake

With the Lightnings is the first book in the Republic Of Cinnibar Navy (RCN) series. It follows the adventures of two young nobles of the space nation of Cinnibar as they are thrust into leadership rolls during a coup on an important strategic ally. The protagonists are explicitly modeled on the Aubrey/Martin books by Patrick O'Brien but the characters leap of the page with a verve and vigor you rarely see. The two protagonists provide vastly different lenses for viewing the same events which creates a contrast and a tension that I found extremely enjoyable. Drake has an incredible ability to evoke detail and writes brutal action scenes (based on his own experience in Vietnam). It uses the same psuedo-napoleonic conceits that alot of space opera uses but because it is so upfront about it I didn't find it nearly as tough to swallow as something like Honor Harrington.

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

"Colonel Gerharht," Sayeeda began in a measured one, "Do you have a holo projector available?" The Colonel nodded and began to speak into her lapel communicator. The buzz of conversation in the room began to rise as the various members of the council took up various excited conversations of their own. The small knot about Cho-Lan seemed to be gaining in heat and venom as various lords exchanged quiet urgent words.

The Duke arched an eyebrow at the mercenary captain, a warning smoldered behind his eyes, warning her that she better not be wasting his time. After a moment two uniformed militia hurried across the floor, carrying a dated but functional holoprojector between them. They lay the unit on the ground and powered it on, a blank ambiance of light springing to light above it at the touch of a button. Junebug knelt beside the unit, unhooked her helmet and plugged the output cable into the unit. The projection shimmered into a series of alpha numeric characters.

"Booster, playback beginning at time-stamp Hotel One Seven Niner," she commanded. The projection shifted to the slightly shaky view from the camera in her helmet as she exited the airlock. The Magos Biologus moved closer, eyes bright with interest. The file had no sound associated with it and so a hush fell across the assembled crowd.

"Booster, triple speed, pause at weapon discharge for one second before continuing." The events on the asteroid base played out in shaky relief. There was no visual enhancement so the footage remained grainy but it was clear enough. Junebug felt her adrenaline glands tighten as she relieved the scenes the footage. There were several shots of the xenos and the horrible fate they had inflicted on their human victims.

When the footage reached the portion where the scientists were sequestered behind their shielded compartment she paused the recording. A shocked murmer ran through the crowd.

"Who are these men!" the Duke thundered, the Magos peered closer at the footage though it was difficult to make much out from the low quality recorder. Sophisticated computers could polish the image up somewhat, though it still might be hard to positively identify a face. The room grew quiet.

"Advance five seconds," Sayeeda commanded. The shot showed her pulling the grenade and rolling it across the floor before turning. THe blast wasn't in the shot but it was clearly evident when the view frame pitched forward violently.

"Is there any chance they survived?" the Duke asked in a cold deadly voice.

"Doubtful," Sayeeda said professionally, "It was a fuel air charge we use for busting bunkers, probably lucky it didn't depressurize the asteroid."

"Did we hire mercenaries to murder our citizens!" one of the Lords near Cho-Lan thundered. The Duke turned a baleful glance on the coterie of nobles. Then he turned to the Magos who was busy reviewing imagery on a smaller display.

"What is your assessment Rogefar?"

@POOHEAD189

The Sunday Group

Very glad to see people proactively delving into each others mysteries. I find alot of roleplays falter because people are too protective of what is interesting about their characters.

Penny's Plots

Hi There,

I am looking for advanced writers who are interested in both exciting action and character development. All the usual stuff applies, blah blah blah. I'm looking for creativity and the ability to play multiple roles within the RP.

Plots:

Pulp Adventure!

This will be a globe hopping adventure set in the roaring 20s. Inspirations include Indiana Jones, The Masks of Nyarlothotep, Atlantis and other such pulp staples.

Star Wars - The Sparks of Rebellion

This story will track the beginnings of one of the earl rebel cells. The players will likely be civilians or have limited military experience. I'm interested in both the human costs of insurgency as well as action adventure.
Star Wars - After Alderaan

This story will take place on Couruscant and follow characters who flee imperial service ahead of the inevitable purges of Alderaanian's in imperial service. The players primary goal will be to escape and/or to hit back at the Imperials.

PM me if you are interested.