Starlance

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

Suddenly knowing things she had no way of knowing was a weird feeling. “Are you… doing that?” She asked Gar’Tan out loud, visibly confused. Confusion would give way to apprehension once Ixtaro confirmed her fears. “Alright, you.” She pointed at Gar'Tan, "Out." Pointing at her head and then a shooing motion, "Otherwise gun." She pointed at the S'Tor again, sticking to the simple way of communicating via known words. Not the best way to convey her grievance, but in the moment that was the best she could think of. Gar’Tan would be able to feel that she didn’t actually mean to harm him or anyone else and her weapon remained untouched on her back, she was just surprised and frightened. Not as much frightened of him or his abilities as of what he could find in her mind. Engineers, doctors and commanders knew too much about the ship, the crew or both to be allowed to have their minds read willy-nilly. Maybe that wasn't how that worked, maybe he was more like an empath, reading emotions and intentions rather than thoughts and memories, but could they risk it? Of course not. Might as well hand them the keys otherwise.

“Let's wait for a middle man who doesn't have critical information in their head and let’s put the brakes on the sharing.” She advised Ixaro. Of course she had no clue how or if Gar'Tan could be prevented from reading them. Tinfoil hat? Lead? Crystals from some New Age loon? Best not explain Jotunheim either, the less talk there is about deities and mythology, the better. Way too many conflicts over theological differences in human history for that to be a good idea.

But even if Gar’Tan stopped poking around her head, he should still be able to understand what she was saying by reading someone who understood her, right? “We’ve actually been able to travel between and even settle the worlds around our star for a long time - for example, Ixtaro is from Earth, whereas I was born on a different world - but we’ve only recently gained the ability to travel to more distant ones. As you’ve no doubt figured out for yourselves, the Jotunheim was damaged by the attack and subsequent crash. It will take time to repair it so we can return home, and we might need help in securing food and materials to do so. That is, those materials that you know of and assuming we can eat your food safely. Neither of us are in position to promise anything, but with our commander’s blessing, we could trade some of our knowledge for the necessary supplies.” She said before Mallory interjected, making her sigh.

“Oh, now he starts organizing things, instead of having people out here on a regular rotation and a civvie on standby to translate through. Fucking officers will be the death of us yet.” The former enlisted woman growled. Screw it, she promised Zeynap she wouldn’t defy her again, Mallory didn’t come up in that conversation. Having told the locals of the good, it was time for the bad, even if what she was going to say fell far outside the realm of any authority she had on the ship. “However, due to a lesson learned in our history, we will not share any knowledge that would give any given group a significant advantage without scholars from other nations present. Either all sides profit, or none do. On that note, and especially given the border dispute, I think Silbermine should be present and have a chance to speak for himself. Herself? Itself?” Vigdis could only think of one sure way to tell and she was not going there. “And if he intends to bring an army to take what doesn’t belong to them by force, it would be polite of us to explain what awaits any who try.”

Mechwarrior: Disposable Heroes

Having demoted herself to a turret for the remainder of the mission, Marit did the only thing she could and aimed at the bend the train would have to round to approach the dam, cursing her luck. She shouldn’t have stopped, that was the crux of the problem. Though she had been standing in the river before and managed to move afterward, what gives? She’d been standing a lot closer to the dam, where the river had to have been altered to build the dam itself. It was probably paved with just a thin layer of silt over it, enough to slip and slide a little, meaning she hadn’t noticed any difference over the unmodified riverbed, but not enough to get stuck in. And when she moved further away, there was nothing stopping Archie from sinking deep into it once she stopped moving, the momentum of the 70 ton - 64 ton given her liberal use of the LRM launchers - machine being enough to yank the feet out of the mud and the ‘Mech didn’t have enough time to sink as deep while he was moving. In hindsight she could’ve seen that coming. At least the empty missile racks made Archie a bit less top-heavy. As Jon’s Marauder walked by, Marit’s mind drifted far across the stars into Davion space, where - as far as she knew - her mother was now saddling a similar BattleMech and briefly wondered what, if any, modifications they'd made to it.

”You’re gonna have to explain that to me, Family Man, I’ve never even learned how to swim, much less stood in the sea.” She replied on the lance channel, as somewhere along the line, she decided that swimming was a useless skill. After all, the parachute had a dinghy attached to it and you couldn't swim in the shower. She knew he meant well and couldn't have known, but those instructions were wholly alien to her.
”And I am cool. That's why I went into the river in the first place.” Since it had little effect on whether she would live or die in the next 10 minutes, being stuck didn't worry her that much. Even if retreat was called, she couldn't have outran a nuke anyway and if Archie fell down, the cockpit was still sealed and the riverbed evidently soft, so the worst thing she could see happening were bruises and whiplash.

Switching to thermal like the others, now guided by the heat of previous strikes against the self-professed doom snake, Marit let her lasers do the talking as she thought about recovery. Where were the tow points for when the maniacs were dealt with? Bottom of the pelvis - underwater, of course. Lower back - facing away from dry land. Up top - too high up, even higher than shoulders. Looked like Archie would just have to grab a tow rope and hope pulling that high up wouldn’t topple him, that’d be just a cherry on top of an already embarrassing cake.

…She didn’t have any tow cables. When the Colonel would review the CVR tapes, he’d get a lovely sampling of Swedish curses. Could she get one break today?

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

At least the sunset was pretty. And to think she took the Stavanger job because she wanted a calm job where she could sleep in her own bed every night. But Fate decided to be a sore bitch and leave her to wonder about how Cortés' crew must've reacted when he burned their ships after landing in America. For her part, Vigdis could say she would have shot Cortés as soon as she saw him with a box of matches and sailed back to Spain at the earliest opportunity. She was torn from her musings by a call from Chief Zhao.
"Vigdis, they want you in the shuttle bay."
"Why? The gate can wait, if at all repairable." She replied, picking herself up.
"It's not the gate. To be honest the guy isn't making much sense."
"If something's wrong, open a maintenance ticket, that's what the system is for. All this manual reporting is just making a mess of things." She complained as she crossed the hull. Better not be some intern complaining that she didn’t do something exactly according to textbooks. Peering down over the edge of the hangar roof, she was about to give a piece of her mind to whoever was in there when the sight left her stunned.

First it was birdfolk, centaurs, an ent… and now a dragonborn. That would explain why she was summoned directly by radio. She had to wonder if some K-A fiction featured something that looked like them.

"Ibarra? What's all this? Tell them to come back during office hours." She joked, leaning over the edge to see the Cuban engineer. “I'll be right there.” Returning inside the ship Vigdis stopped by the storage room along the way to grab a handheld flashlight before joining the hangar party. It was one of the old but immortal models with a tubular body that contained a coil and a permanent magnet to charge it by shaking. The lizardman - a translator of sorts, she assumed - was massive up close. If that was a scholar, what the hell did their soldiers look like?
“Hello.” She waved to the ‘known faces’ before introducing herself to Gar’Tan in the same way they’d done so during the first meeting before demonstrating the flashlight’s function and handing it to him, as he was the only one who hadn’t gotten a welcoming gift yet.

And speaking of centaurs, someone was missing. "Silbermine?" She asked, looking at Nellara. Even if the two groups of locals didn't like each other and even if Silbermine had hostile intent, cutting him out of communicating would only make things more difficult and piss him off.

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

The Jonsdottir Line wasn’t needed in the end. They could all breathe a sigh of relief. There was a welcome pause to return the equipment and decompress before the captain called the meeting, letting Vigdis kind of sort out what just happened in her head. They still had no clue what was happening, where they were or who to believe, but the historical example of native Americans called for caution. But nobody died. Yet. That was a plus.
“I think we should figure out a way to ask them for samples of their food. We don’t know how long it will take to get flying again, and if at least some of their food is edible to us and we could secure a steady supply, we could even thaw out the frozen goods, gain some extra manpower and stop wasting power on the cryo pods in one go.” Technically, she wasn’t supposed to know about those, but power became a hot topic the second they realized the crash scrammed both their reactors and the pods were the first thing Chief Zhao brought up when they discussed power saving measures over lunch.

---

After the meeting, Vigdis hurried to intercept the captain to apologize for sidestepping ehr authority when Ezra spooked the locals and assuring her it wouldn’t happen again before going about her duties. Despite the unforeseen developments, the day was only starting. Seeing a chance to show off one of the many reasons why keeping in humanity’s good graces might be a good idea and taking advantage of the fact that the words ‘stay’ and ‘repair’ were known, she used the two plus gestures to invite any locals that stayed near the ship to her own magic show: It started with a few trips to the storage bay and workshop to bring a fire extinguisher, a few spare welding masks for any onlookers and some hull patches - four millimeter thick rolled titanium squares and rectangles of various sizes. Then she fiddled around with the media player on her wristpad, setting it to loudspeaker. Always work in style and comfort if possible. Using notes she’d made on the second day, the marker and a plasma cutter, she cut the patches into shape so they would fit the jigsaw puzzle that would temporarily cover the hole in the hull. Then came the main number of the show - the tungsten electrode inert gas arc welder.

With the first panel in place, everyone who stuck around would receive a palm-sized scrap of the titanium patches left over after cutting them onto which she wrote the recipient’s name with the welder, or her best guess of how to write the names in latin script based on how they sounded to her, doing her best to explain what it was by pointing and repeating names. She took great care to take the high oxygen environment into account, despite the fact that these welds would not be holding pressure, and a little over nine hours later plus lunch, what had been a hole in the hull that accidentally facilitated first contact with three separate species was once again a wall.

With the work outside done, Vigdis borrowed some quarantine sheets from the medical bay and secured them to the sides of the damaged ramp with the aid of liberal amounts of duct tape to create a temporary seal. The damaged ramp would have to wait, there were more pressing problems to sort out. After waiting for the life support system to normalize the air inside the now sealed shuttle bay so she could work without setting everything on fire and civvies could start cleaning up and organizing the space according to the officers’ wishes, it was another two hours of reinforcing the patched wall and then adding a second layer inside that would actually act as the pressure hull. Work done well called for a beer. Being marooned sucked.

---

Vigdis spent the short remainder of the work day going over the ship’s power grid centimeter by centimeter, looking for any damaged wiring where they could be wasting power to heat losses. Come evening, they weren’t even halfway done when they clocked out. Vigdis stole a few minutes to sit atop the Jotunheim and watch the sunset, this time with a breathing mask. She didn’t want to breathe in the invigorating, oxygen rich mixture before going to sleep, thinking the day’s events would make it hard to fall asleep anyway. Tomorrow, Zhao would take over the power grid unless something more pressing demanded her attention and Vigdis would help Varen with engine checks. That was going to be grim, ultimately deciding if they would ever return home or die on this strange new world.

Left Behind: Mulberry Street

C A R S O N H A C K E T T

_{Location: Valero House}

Timeframe Early Morning

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_{Interaction(s): Survival Squad group chat}

One of the last things Carson expected was a text message. For a moment he thought who it could be as he fumbled for his phone. His dad? Did the Helena approach shore to try to establish contact? Mom or his sisters? He hadn’t heard from them since they sent him a message claiming they were being evacuated out of Fayetteville by air. Nope, a local. Who was Jason…? The skater guy, right. ”You got the message too?” He looked up from the chess board.
Similar questions had swirled around Alena’s mind. She knew the forest cottage where her parents had been spending time was far from civilization. Did her mom or dad find a hill that had cell reception? Nope. ”Aye. You answering?”
”Yeah, I got it, but the meeting’s past my bedtime.” In order to keep the night watch and still get enough sleep, the survivors at Valero’s had staggered schedules, with Carson usually sleeping between 13:00 and 21:00.
”Hmm…” She scratched her chin, scribbling into the watch schedule. ”How about you go to bed when we get back, I’ll take your watch and you take mine? An overnight shift will work better for the hunt than a morning one anyway.” She’d just signed herself up for 21 hours awake with only a three hour power nap, but she’d have things to occupy herself with and university had made her go through worse. That statistics course in the third semester was brutal.
”Alright, thanks.”
With that settled, Carson shot the group a quick message before they went back to their chess game.

Message

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A L E N A S O K O L O V Á

_{Location: Valero house - nearby streets}

Timeframe Noon - early afternoon

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_{Interaction(s): None}

She didn't even know someone in the town had her number, though given the situation she didn't mind one bit. Of course she first had to ask mr. Valero where the gazebo the message referred to was. No matter, as the situation involved all of them, she would've told him of the meeting regardless.
”It’s good to see people taking initiative.” He said, a bit embarrassed that he hadn’t done anything himself earlier, ”Let me know what you cook up. But Eventually, you will have to let others in on it.”
”Stand together or die alone, I know.” She reassured their host, ”If there’s any trouble, call and we’ll come running.”
Immediately, she threw a few extra things into her crossbow case - a spiral-binding notebook, a mechanical pencil and a map she got out of mr. Valero's car, readying it to grab it whole and go when the meeting time approached.

13:30
”So, do you actually know anyone else in that group?”
”Eeeeh… We’ve said ‘hi’ to each other when we passed in the street?”
”You’re not a people person, are you?”
”Well how many do you know?”
”None.” She admitted immediately, ”My flight home was supposed to be leaving ten days from now, I didn’t think it’d be necessary. Aside from you and mr. Valero, the only time I’ve spoken to someone from here at length was when I went to see doc Barlowe to ask if she’d take me on for a few months. Fuck it, let’s go make friends.” She grabbed her trusty, budget Hypertac and slung its the case over her shoulder, setting out early.

The two walked carefully, hunting crossbow and polehammer made of a fence pole, a paving block, rope and duct tape at the ready, taking note of which houses were showing signs of activity and cursing the cold along the way. The walk took about three times as long as it should’ve, Alena stopping every few dozen steps to look around and listen. Everything had gone upside down and inside out. Usually when trying to be unseen and unheard, she looked ahead, trying to pick out horizontal lines in the predominantly vertical lines of a forest, hunting. Now, she was concerned about what was behind her, looking for vertical, humanoid shapes in a city full of vertical lines and pretty much being hunted. Finally, they stood at the designated meeting place.
”Quarter to two. Now, are we that early, or are we in the wrong place?” Carson shrugged.
”You tell me, you were leading.” She sat down, both of them keeping an eye on the earnest buildings.
”If we’re in the wrong place, they’ll send a message.” He dismissed his own concerns, taking a seat on the opposite bench.

Left Behind: Mulberry Street

Generally find Discord to be better than the OOC tab, count me in.

The Eye of the Needle (where Fantasy and Sci-fi collide)

“Iba- wait!” Vigdis tried to grab the Cuban engineer’s wrist, but didn’t react quick enough, “If something happens to you, none of us are getting back to Sol!” She shouted after Ixtaro. Vigdis, Zhao and Varen could to a degree do each other’s jobs, so from a purely resource-management point of view losing one of them wasn’t that big of a deal, but figuring out what went wrong with the FTL drive and how to get it to behave was critical. She wasn’t gonna live out the rest of her days neither here nor during the centuries-long sublight journey home. “If she dies, I’m gonna kill her.” Vigdis growled under her breath, thinking that maybe she should’ve let Ixtaro be scared. Too late to fix that, but despite the necessity of Ixtaro’s survival, Vigdis couldn’t find the courage - perhaps madness - to go out and drag her back. She hoped Eva would.

“We’re holding a choke point, they’ve got Ezra and the two droids in their backs, and we’ve got Eva. We’ll be fine. Why don’t you post up over there?” She tried to reassure Darnell and pointed to the other side of the barricade, formulating it as a suggestion rather than an order to try to get around his combative attitude, “The farther apart we are, the fewer of us they’ll take down with a single area attack.” While spacing was a good thing to do, she mainly just wanted to get the tipsy corporate drone out of immediate earshot before responding to Zhao, since technically passing any information to people inside might’ve been considered insubordination since neither of the officers explicitly allowed it.

“Actually, hold that thought, the captain just walked up to one of them. They’re huge, no way they can maneuver well inside. If they breach, just park two armed sentries in the hallway and wait for them to come to you like Lemmings.” Zhao would’ve noticed Vigdis suddenly sounded a bit more relaxed, “Doctor, come here for a second. I don’t know how much you know, so from the start: Bumped into a bunch of local birdfolk, a centaur and a burning tree-man.” She said to bring both Feng and Zhao up to speed, hopefully without Darnell noticing her mic was open, “We started communicating, kind of, but they seemed friendly. But then a bunch more centaurs showed up, and these guys are loaded for bear. They’ve been yelling at each other in Alienese for the past five minutes now, and now the captain and Ibarra are within stabbing distance. Promise not to laugh at me, but some of the locals are fucking sorcerers. I tried to find a better explanation for what I was seeing, but I’ve got nothing.” The thought of magic was absurd enough on its own, but seemed to be doubly so in the world of engineering, where if you couldn’t model it mathematically, it didn’t count.

The Conflict

Up-close fighting was always messy. Lot more room to fuck something up, which is why she was surprised they completely steamrolled the patrol, four for four successes. Training and nutrition work wonders. The biggest of the bunch looked a few pounds lighter than the smallest one of the team. Looking over the pockets of the poor bastard she killed, he was indeed a poor bastard. Nothing of note to his name except a Vz. 61 and a single 20 round magazine. Probably the FNG, at least it was light to carry. Catching the AK magazine Sean passed her with a “Thanks.” She checked the ammo inside it, finding the cheapest steel-cased Tula one could get. At least it was clean. What was it she heard one of the Tolyatti base’s armorers say? ‘If it can’t run the steel, it doesn’t deserve the brass.’ or some such nonsense?

Seeing the shotgun Hayden recovered, an idea popped into her mind. “Guess she liked to keep something handy for close encounters.” She grinned, borrowing it and ejecting one shell to see what it was loaded with. “00 buck. They’re no breaching rounds, but they’ll work in a pinch. Unless someone wants it more.” She reloaded the shell and held it out for any takers to grab, else she’d keep it for the time being, shoving the loose shells into one of the grenade pouches and hanging the Škorpion in the flare strap by its stock before stacking up behind Hayden again.

She was surprised by the lack of resistance from the locals. Every corner, she expected another patrol, or some alarm as the patrol they’d killed failed to check in or someone found the bodies, but nothing ever came of it and they pretty much walked into Melani’s compound unchallenged. Looked like their initial guess was accurate, and Melani had most of her goons out fighting with little in the way of rear-echelon security. Was she low on manpower, or was she that sure that nobody would or could try to go for her directly? Pride goeth before the fall?

And there was the queen bitch, in the flesh, looking like an idiot with that piece of rebar in her hand. Not that Yekaterina wanted that thing anywhere near her. “Sounds workable, but shouldn’t we prepare a way out beforehand? I’d hate to get lost in here or climb the wall with vengeful skinnies on our backs.” Yekaterina suggested a slight modification of an otherwise simple plan, “Otherwise I’m good to go, waiting on you Beth.” She shouldered her rifle, posted up behind a corner and took aim at two thugs sharing a cigarette a little bit off to the left side, the brick-and-mortar wall providing a good amount of reassuring bulk between her and them.

Left Behind: Mulberry Street

C A R L O S V A L E R O

_{Location: Valero House}

Timeframe Early morning

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_{Interaction(s): None}

Previously: N/A

One of the many things the end of the world as they knew it changed for Carlos was the wake up alarm. More specifically, it gave it its second lease on life. After a decade of retirement and getting up whenever he felt like it, it was taking time to get used to the phone nagging at him as early as seven in the morning. But responsibilities waited and couldn’t be ignored by anyone of sound morals, as by now his guests-turned-companions had been going hungry for five and ten hours respectively.

Getting himself out of bed and dressed, he started making his way to the kitchen when he heard something fall in the garage. Freezing on the spot, he shifted his grip on his cane and faced the door. ”Carson?”
”Yes, mr. Valero?” Came a slightly delayed reply from within.
”Nevermind.” Carlos breathed a sigh of relief, ”Breakfast in half an hour.”
”Okay, thank you.” The youngster had been spending a lot of time in the garage, having removed the alternator and some other components from Mr. Valero’s 2011 Sienna minivan to build a manual generator for when they’d eventually lose power, in two weeks at most in the young electrical engineer’s semi-qualified opinion.

Carlos entered his kingdom, the kitchen, and peered at the list of remaining supplies. Selecting a good mix of the freshest things available, keeping anything canned or otherwise long-lasting for later, he got to work, wondering how long until gas stopped working too and force them to cook outside over an open fire. He loved cooking outside, by choice in the warm summer months, but now the thought was not at all appealing to him.

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A L E N A S O K O L O V Á

_{Location: Valero House}

Timeframe Early morning

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_{Interaction(s): None}

Previously: N/A

The clock on her phone showed 06:41. At long last, another night, another watch was coming to an end. During the two o’clock changeover, Carson reported a loud noise coming from somewhere in the town, though sadly he’d been understandably too startled by the sudden sound to figure out a direction. ”Damn near pissed myself.” She recalled his exact words with a chuckle as she stretched in her rooftop nest and snuggled up more tightly into the ‘watch coat’, a long coat that belonged to Mr. Valero, to keep the cold at bay. Summer couldn’t come soon enough.

The watchkeeping schedule was established the day after the undead first appeared in Huddeen, as neither of the three occupants of the blue house close to the edge of Mulberry street could sleep knowing what was outside. Mr. Valero had a shortened first watch on account of his age between six and eight, Carson took over until two, then it was her turn until seven. The night had at least been calm, save for the mysterious bang that wasn’t her problem as far as she was concerned.

With the clock striking 07:00, she unplugged her phone from the powerbank and made sure the solar panel she usually carried attached to her backpack on multi-day hunting trips was secured to the South-facing roof to recharge it during the day, grabbed her hunting crossbow and started making her way off the roof, driven by the vision of a breakfast.

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C A R S O N H A C K E T T

_{Location: Valero House}

Timeframe Early morning

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_{Interaction(s): None}

Previously: N/A

Thirty minutes was more than enough time to finish everything he could do with what he had available to him. After days of labor, he’d hit a wall in the form of a lack of a soldering iron and some components. He should’ve seen that coming. Now, had they been in a civilized place, he’d just run to the closest home improvement store, but that was a few miles away. Having washed the grime off his hands, Carson made his way into the kitchen to ask Mr. Valero if he needed any help, getting the expected negative answer. The old man enjoyed his cooking, so Carson left him to it and took to setting the table. It looked like poached eggs with toast and tea today.

The door opened and a voice spoke in accented English, heralding the arrival of the third party member. ”Good morning.” She greeted the room and sat down with her back against a radiator. Good to enjoy those while they lasted, though fortunately the house had a wood burning stove.
”So, any guesses as to what the crash was? Burst pipe, collapsing building…?” Alena asked.
”No, nothing like that. Maybe someone drove out here, thinking there wouldn’t be that many zombies here and crashed?” Carson put forward his theory, having had time to think about it.
They were joined by Carlos, who passed their food around. After breakfast, they held their daily briefing, summarizing their watches with the fortunately usual ‘nothing to report’ report, with the exception of the crash and the resulting increased undead activity, but none had come close to the house. The food situation was a bit more pressing. They still had canned and pickled supplies, but they had worked through the meat and dairy supplies quickly, just in case Carson’s guesstimate of power cutout was wrong, and this breakfast was the last of their eggs and the start of their last loaf of bread. The situation, until now manageable, was thrown into disarray by the bang, as all three agreed that going out to hunt now would’ve been a bad idea, giving rise to a mostly solid plan of luring prey to them since they couldn’t go out to find it. Once again, like many times in the past two weeks, Alena had to kick herself for being too cheap to buy her own NODs instead of borrowing her father’s whenever going night hunting and too lazy to bother with all the paperwork required to bring her EDC gun onto the flight.

Left Behind: Mulberry Street

Would the people of Mulberry Street know that/how many others survived and is it known if the undead are actually dead risen again or still living and just infected?