Jaedong began panting for breath. This damn woman was fast. Either that or he didn't exercise nearly enough. Same reason why that f*cking trash Calvin could overpower him so easily. Jaedong noticed that the gap between the two of them had almost been completely eliminated. He narrowed down his option list to one. Use the gun.

Jaedong fell into a feet-first slide, trying to maximize decceleration. He pulled out his gun, and held it to the woman's back as she slid to a stop in front of him. All according to plan until he realized that the girl had grabbed onto his clothes and was dragging him into the dirt.

Struggling to aim the gun in the dogpile of limbs, Jaedong realized that he was in a rather hopeless situation yet again. In a fight outside of a frame.

Ibarra's face was very carefully neutral. His mind, considerably less so, although it alternated between hysterical laughter and stupified disbelief. This can't be real, he thought.

"Yes, commander. Go ahead, by all means," he said.

"I'm listening." Piper said. "Whenever you're ready."

Gabe clambered into the lift alongside Alexei. " Thank you again, sir." He said stiffly. " I'd hate to be late to my first briefing."

That's an understatement.

" So, where did you serve before this, sir?" Gabriel asked, intrigued. " I've heard of Lady Bannikberg, of course, but, forgive me if I'm offensive, I haven't really heard about you before."

"I served with Cornwall Regiment, I can forgive you for not recognizing me, not being as famous as Sen and all, but I'm one of the Six Survivors of Stigma, along with the Chief Engineer here."

The lift stopped for a moment, and Issac stepped in with a nonchalant, "Gentlemen," and a nod of greeting before jabbing the button for the correct floor again.

"Ah, Issac my good man, have you been getting up to much good snooping lately?" Alexei asked, half-jokingly.

"Really, it's amazing how much bad luck that girl has...anyway, I guess it won't matter much if she can't be here in person." He echoed the others, "Whenever you're ready, Sir."

As the minutes went by, Varina's attention went elsewhere. She looked to one place then another, twiddled her fingers and her hair until that got boring, eventually sitting forward with her foot bouncing over the other leg. Gradually, she started zoning out until she was in a different place and time.

"Mayday! Mayday! Engines are completely shutdown! Loosing altitude!"

"Pilot, you are above a residential area. Proceed to navigate -"

"Bullshit! I can't steer the damn thing..."

Rohiko noticed her friend's eyes losing their focus. She was leaning a bit to one side as well. She poked Varina a few times.

"Hey Var. You okay?"

"Still no power but I have control now. Descending rapidly... "

"Huh?" Varina was brought out of her trip down memory lane by Rohiko calling her. "What?" she looked around, "Is it over already? What I miss?" Everyone was still sitting around, a few of the others were talking quietly among themselves. Had she spaced out through the meeting?

"Unfortunately, no." Issac took a moment to lean back comfortably against the elevator wall. "With the exception of Mr. Leon, this entire morning has been dreadfully boring. It still seems to be going on forever." Staring dully at the opposite wall, the Praetorian began to feel as though he was forgetting something extremely important. It tickled at the back of his brain like a maddeningly out-of-reach itch. Sighing and silently cursing his hunger, he turned his head toward the second-in-command. "You wouldn't happen to have seen Lady Bannikberg today, would you?"

edited 5th Dec '11 3:23:21 PM by darksidevoid

"Other than hearing her yelling at us over the intercom just moments ago, no. Why?"

"Alright, to recap, the mission before us is a major assault on a Confederate training facility at Minor Dausten. This is the facility itself," Hobbes said, bringing up an image of the cup-shaped space station before zooming out.◊ "The facility has two layers of defenses: an outer satellite field, and an inner battleship fleet. Once we and the 250th Aces eliminate the satellite cluster, a strike team of our friendly battleships will arrive to engage the Emperor-class battleship Sigurd, which is escorted by two shieldguards of its own. Taking down the Emperor's shieldguards will be our primary objective at this stage. After dealing with the Emperor, we proceed to the facility itself. Any questions so far?"

edited 13th Nov '11 3:34:22 PM by Wryte

"It seems fairly straightforward." Piper said.

Jill looked over the battleplans. It was never a wise idea to rush in the planning stages. Missing something here would mean death on the battlefield.

"Do we know how many frames the three ships carry? And if so, of what class?"

Issac Alesci

"Hmmm. Nevermind, then. It's nothing terribly important." The sunglasses-adorned agent frowned as the nagging feeling increased in intensity. As he began to glance impatiently up at the floor indicator, however, the lift slid to a halt and opened to their destination floor with a slight chime. "After you, gentlemen."

War

"Ah yes. I can understand the desire to work alone. However, we'll only be staying for the day, possibly even less than that, so please put up with us until then!" The red-attired woman beamed Delorelai a smile bordering on sincere as she blatantly sidestepped the questions, and seemed utterly oblivious to the snow-haired pilot's hostility. "Pestilence is right, though. Best to get moving. Would you mind showing us to the lab, Doctor Onaki?"

"Shieldguards aren't frame carriers. Emperors usually boast around a dozen frames, but in a scenario like this, I'm going to wager they have a few more on hand. For now let's assume sixteen, and that they'll be protecting all three ships."

Dr. Onaki

"Certainly, right this way."

The Doctor led the two ROZUM agents down several near-identical halls into the lab, Delorelai reluctantly following.

edited 13th Nov '11 7:34:59 PM by BlixtySlycat

"Sixteen?" Piper asked. "That's a lot, but I think we can do it."

Rohiko nodded as well. "I think... We should be able to handle that much. When do we get started commander?"

Hobbes shrugged, aware that Piper couldn't see the gesture. "It's not much worse than what we faced in our last battle, and we'll be teaming up with the 250th as well. I've never worked with them personally, but I know their Commander Shareem by reputation, and I'm not worried," he said. Of course, he'd also heard somewhere that Shareem had bought the satellite a few months ago, but hadn't seen any confirmation one way or the other since.

Varina looked over the map and listened to what her squad members asked. She looked over the map again and noticed something not yet asked.

"What about the satellites? What are we dealing with in regards to those?" Varina asked. "They're not those Thousand-missle-spamming-things I've been hearing about are they?"

Ibarra spoke up. "I'm familiar with the type, actually," he said. "They're usually armed with long-range weapons; Lasers and cannons and such. Missiles... Eh. Not likely." He shrugged and added, "Although they usually have turrets floating around them- Those could have missiles. But I doubt one thousand."

In his head, Flint went over the enemies mentioned so far. "Do these things have any special defenses we should know about? I wouldn't want to end up making the same mistake twice."