Rhona W

Thunderbolt Black (Fighter Pilot Mercenaries)

GM post is up! Make ready with your replies.
And - shock - an enemy mercenary company appears!

Thunderbolt Black (Fighter Pilot Mercenaries)

The small flotilla of riverine craft were a mess after the round of attacks by the Black Knights flight dedicated to ground-attacks. With Kei's assault rounding off the run on the small force of repurposed civilian boats, the reinforcements were left treading water, floundering or drowning - or floating in charred, dead lumps with the flow towards the ocean. The attack on the ground had, for the moment, been broken. A breathless message from Major Constantine confirmed as much; the Gendarmerie and Militia forces had been able to take back positions to the edge of town, forcing the surviving rebels to fall back to earlier positions, and giving the defenders a line to hold, until the Thunderbolt Black ground reinforcements arrived with armour and heavy weapons.
The majority of his ordnance expended, Scott turned his attention back to the skies, bringing his flight back into formation - and was immediately alerted by St Helen to the ongoing duel between the air-to-air flight, and their newly arrived opponents.

***

The quick reactions of Marciano and Dmitry kept them alive and unhurt. The inbound AAM's were fired from long-range, and with a poor initial lock from the front angle. As the ADV and the SU-35 broke sharply and blasted out countermeasures, the brightly burning flares were enough to distract the inbound missiles - or at least, for long enough that they had trouble re-acquiring their targets, and self-destructed instead.
From the direction of the missiles, a pair of aircraft blasted past, performing their own superbly executed break, splitting wide and curving in the morning skies, faint trails of vapour gleaming from their wingtips as the two sleek, angular tactical aircraft turned to engage.
The pair were a mis-matched duo; an SU-37 Terminator and a Dassault Rafale. Both were coal-black, with the Rafale having electric blue accents on the wingtips, canards and rudder, and the Terminator having deep orange in the same places. Both also sported a horned skull insignia in various places, and the numbers '2' and '5' in gothic script. Each were laden down with ordnance, both aerial and ground-attack, and at the sight of the Black Knights, turned to engage their aircraft. The Rafale began to pursue the Tornado, positioning itself between Marciano and Stalin, while the Terminator harassed its' sukhoi stablemate, driving hard towards Charnel with the powerful radar in the SU-37's large nose hunting down the Ukranians' aircraft as it banked to 270 degrees at the apex of its' climb, hammering down hard toward his plane.

Scott observed the situation from his position. St. Helen had fed the image from the powerful and huge AESA radar in the ASF-14's nose to his console and he quickly assesed the situation. His ordnance for ground attack was virtually depleted. Both Kei and Rodrieguez had more rounds to expend, however, and the airstrip was visible. The pair of bandits hadn't dallied with the ground-attack flight as of yet, and Austin looked to be in the clear too: perfect opportunity for a two-on-two.
"Short Round, Spirit. Go turn that Airstrip back into a jungle clearing. Break. Viking, this is Heartbreak; go give Charnel a hand with his new fan, I've got Stalin's tail, over"
He pushed more power into the ASF-14's engines, the wings sweeping back that little more as he climbed and banked, angling to slot in on the SU-37's tail as it dove for Stalins' jet. "Razorblade, lock that fucker up for me!" he grunted over the intercom, keeping his eyes fixed on the gleaming shimmer of the Terminator, a good half-mile distant above the sea of green below.

The skies over the airstrip were clear; the airstrip itself was nothing more than a logging camp roughly repurposed into a temporary strip. Sheds for construction equipment, now left out in the open, shielded the few light aircraft and helicopters in position, and sandbagged heavy machine-guns or truck-bed mounted guns were the only air defences along with handfuls of shoulder-fired SAMs dotted here and there.
Traces, aimed manually and fired too early or on reflex, curved wildly up into the skies along with small-arms fire, and it was easy to see people running in terror as the sounds of the oncoming jets was heard. The last Dragonfly from the earlier attack was still at the end of the runway, waiting for whatever the rebels had planned for it.

GEARS - Mecha Sci-fi with Anthro characters. RP in a detailed, story-driven world.

New GM post is up for you all to follow up - sorry to those who didn't get a chance to post this time around, but you had 8 days to make one :P You'll just have to deal with it and post in this round instead.

GEARS - Mecha Sci-fi with Anthro characters. RP in a detailed, story-driven world.

"So—what sorta place are we looking for? You know, other than, ‘it’s blue,’ or, ‘it’s made o’ aluminium.’”

Blade grinned and tapped his PADD as he pulled it from its' pouch on his belt. An image of the place they were looking for shimmered to life in the air above the device. It showed a building that, like many of the structures in the area, was built of the local sandy stone. It was relatively non-descript, with a large metal warehouse - much as Adrian had deduced - attached to the rear of the more conventional stone-built office and store-front building. A green sign hung out the front, displaying the name of the trading and logistics company.
"This is the one we're after. Accordin' to the Intel snoops an' their investigatin' on th' 'net, this place is th' registered address fer that company the Landcruiser Ken intercepted belonged to. An' that's on toppa what else we know." He turned a corner, leading them away from the busy port and its' walled enclosures. More avenues of large warehouses and other similar storage structures spread out, with the occasional corner store, coffee shop or other eatery for the workers mingled in. Down some of the longer streets, it was even possible to see where they petered out into the dust of the badlands once more.
"There we go," he said, pointing diagonally across an intersection as a truck rumbled past. Their objective was in sight.
"Okay then," said the fox with a firm nod. "I'll take the lead, an' you follow. We'll have t' try and talk him inta revealin' where the others were headed, and then come up with an exit if it all goes t' tits. We're lookin' fer a group headed from th' North t' Landren or th' south. All right, let's go".
Silverwind crossed the street and pushed open the door. An electronic bell sounded, and a bored-looking capybara behind the desk looked up, raising his eyebrow at the pair as they stepped in.
"Good afternoon, my friend." said Silverwind, affecting a convincing, and completely different thick Northern Empire accent to his normal growly drawl. "I was hoping we might be able to do business, yes? I was directed here by... friends of mine. They came by here a few days ago, a small group of them, all travelling together"
The Capybara folded his arms on the desk, and sat a little straighter. "Business? What kind of business? If you need something hauled or shipped, then we're happy to help. Especially if it's on the recommendation of a previous customer..."
"Well," said Silver, and leaned a little closer, looking around and then beckoning the capybara to lean in as he leant on the desk, the curious man doing so as Silver lowered his voice conspiratorially, glancing around. "You see, my friend and I are interested in travelling somewhere, to meet up with group who were in here a short while ago. We got delayed, you see, and they told us where to meet up with them." The fox put on a puzzled look for a moment as the Capybara drew back, frowning. "I hope we're in the right place. My friend here-" he gestured to Adrian "-has doubts about our journey. We'd hate to have to take our money elsewhere, after making such an effort to gather it all".
The capybara's expression flashed greed for a moment, and he shook his head. "No, no. I'm sure I can arrange something... please," he said gesturing to Adrian. "Why don't you tell me what you're looking for? We'll step into the back office. It's... more secure for this kind of deal..."
The rodent rose from his seat and gestured to them both to step through a door into the rear office of the building. Silverwind lead the way, glancing back out the door, and around the room before stepping through. The smaller room at the back contained several desktop data-slates and office chairs, along with various filing cabinets and cupboards. The Capybara started to shuffle through sheafs of printouts in a drawer, before withdrawing a manila file and placing it on one of the desks. He studied the pair of them, before looking to Adrian.
"So, where was it you were headed again?"

****

In the bar, things had not - thankfully - gone stereotypically. The music had not stopped playing the instant Mike and Aidan had walked through the door, nor had every pair of eyes in the place been on them and all the conversation stopped. Like most bars or pubs, no one had spared them a glance that they'd noticed; after all, most people were there to enjoy themselves.
The mink at the bar glanced up as the pair approached, and then raised an elegant eyebrow as Aidan spoke up, shutting her PADD down with a gesture, the display - which looked like maps and charts of the region - disappearing with a swipe of her long, dainty fingers. She turned her cool blue eyes on the canine and tilted her head before answering in a mellifluous, musically accented voice characteristic of the Republic of Hirona, to the East of Martenstown and the Badlands.
"I'm sorry, were you talking to me?" she asked in some confusion. "I think you might want the bartender," she continued, gesturing to a large and portly bear who was leaning on the bar from behind at the other end, polishing a pint glass. The minks' eyes roved over the pair of GEAR pilots, her fingers drumming on the countertop once before she looked over at the ursine, and then back to the pair. "Was there something else I could help you gentlemen with?" she asked after a moment more.

***

In the Marketplace, the hulking vulpine and his companions stopped ahead of the trio from the Roughriders and began to haggle with the owner of the GEAR parts stall. Clearly Imperial accents could be heard as the group got closer to the stall.

Thunderbolt Black (Fighter Pilot Mercenaries)

Yeah, I wasn't really including you Foster as I saw your status and realise that you'll be otherwise occupied right now. I'll write in a few references to what you've said so we can assume Kei carries out those actions in the meantime.

And The Mage, I'll bear that in mind for you too, thanks for letting me know. I'll get the post up later today.

Thunderbolt Black (Fighter Pilot Mercenaries)

FYI boys and girls - you have one more day to make your IC posts, then my next one is going up.
Those of you in the air-to-air combat especially might want to do something about the missiles headed for you. It will end badly otherwise.

Thunderbolt Black (Fighter Pilot Mercenaries)

Busy with work. Trying to get back into my writing while I'm all caught up with RP. Organizing stuff for the next episode of my podcast too.

GEARS - Mecha Sci-fi with Anthro characters. RP in a detailed, story-driven world.

Well, it's as I always say - if I don't know about it, I can't plan for it. If you guys had let me know, then I would've written it into the post, so you could have followed it up. I had already planned the mission as it is in the post, so I'll be proceeding that way. I'll try and write in some of the elements you've mentioned as we go on though.

Task Force Lima (COMPLETED)

I'm all up for making a post, but is there anywhere in particular Scott should be, i.e. with any group or anything, or should I just jump in an have him follow Jan and Zhenya up?

GEARS - Mecha Sci-fi with Anthro characters. RP in a detailed, story-driven world.

Post is up with leads for you all to follow in your respective teams. I'll let you all react, and then put up posts after each team has had a go. I deliberately split people up into random groups - the intention being to get everyone talking to each other. Es, I also left the fireteam behind for that reason - it gives Es (the character) more of a chance to get to know and work with some of the GEAR pilots, instead of being in your own little cell as normal.
Hopefully this will move relatively quickly - I have ideas about how it will go, and how it'll lead into our next big action scene, and then into our next mission, too.
I also hope there'll be a chance for a bit more light-heartedness; I think we could use some to break things up.
I also intend for us to get some more heroic and kick-ass action in shortly too. It's getting a bit too grim-and-gritty at the moment.