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Post by Pyromaniac275 on Mar 1, 2023 23:22:17 GMT
Felix 44, Second Admiral of the Exile fleet, and the acting overlord of the Organization's operations into Corona could feel the buzzing behind his eyes that signified the beginning of a migraine. This meeting was supposed to have been quick and easy. There were two offers from two different factions for basing and all that needed to be done was decide which to take.
Simple. Easy.
But there was a joke among the Exiles (when dealing with the rest of the Organization) that if you put two egos in a room they would find something to argue about. And sure enough, that was exactly what happened. Scrimshaw, a young Raider upstart, and Diaz, an established commander in Los Ninos, were currently engaged in a screaming match that had been carrying on for the better part of an hour.
Scrimshaw favoured the deal offered by the Tax Evaders, while Diaz’s preference was the one offered by the Taxer Association. That simple disagreement had rapidly devolved into an argument, and now almost an hour later Felix was massaging his temples and listening to Scrimshaw call Diaz a scum sucking slaver fascist, while Diaz called Scrimshaw a naive idealist dumbass. It was a frustrating turn and did nothing to fill Felix with confidence about the success of their oncoming operations. Two commanders who wouldn’t piss on each other if they were on fire was rarely a good starting point for cohesive action.
The screaming was intensifying, he could tell Scrimshaw was barely holding herself back from launching across the table to throw hands, and Diaz’s left hand kept brushing the handle of the sidearm strapped to his thigh. With an internal sigh Felix finally stepped in to end this petty dispute before it really got out of hand.
“Enough!” He cried slamming both hands down on the table to emphasize his point. The screaming might have continued but the subtlest hint of movement from the two guards at Felix’s shoulders was enough to finally quiet the two pirates.
“We’re going to keep this short,” Felix said finally. “You each have two minutes to convince me. Scrimshaw, go.”
The young woman floundered for a moment, the only sound the hum of air recyclers and the rattle of a string of megafauna teeth braided into her hair.
“The Tax Evaders are less likely to find ideological issue with-...”
“Oh please,” Diaz interrupted. “Anything that even smells like a tax and they’ll…”
“You’ll get your two minutes,” Felix cut Diaz off before motioning for Scrimshaw to continue.
“We have a better foundation for a relationship with the Tax Evaders. Money to be made is going to come from raiding the Republic Tax Authority and the people paying them. Tax Evaders aren’t likely to have a problem with that. Plus they’re offering us basing in a populated system. If someone comes after us we can probably count on at least token combat support. Tax Association is giving us an empty system. We’d be totally on our own out there and who knows how long they’ll put up with us raiding prospective tax payers.”
“Diaz, go.”
“Tax Association is giving us a whole system. Room to expand facilities and operations if things go well here. We have room to bring in more ships, more commanders, and larger stations to clear out goods back to the galaxy proper. Tax Evaders are giving us a single moon. Doesn’t leave a ton of room to expand our presence.”
“Ties us down too, get too big and we can’t move ea-...”
“You had your turn,” Felix cut Scrimshaw off. “Anything else Diaz?”
Diaz shrugged and leaned back in his seat. Felix moved his hands back to his temples trying in vain to massage away the throb reverberating around his cranium. Scrimshaw was right, the Evaders were less likely to take issue with raids on the Tax Authority, and as tempting as a system all to themselves was, the dysfunction and small size of the Taxer Association made him hesitant to believe any deal with them would last for any significant length of time.
“We’ll go with the Tax Evaders,” He said finally. “Both of you play nice with the locals. Make a good impression, maybe they’ll help us out more.”
Scrimshaw nodded, and shot a smirk in Diaz’s direction. Diaz grumbled something in spanish under his breath. Tone alone told Felix it probably wasn’t polite, but at least Diaz didn’t argue with the decision.
“Now with that settled, why don’t the both of you go vent your frustrations on the Tax Authority?”
“Sure thing,” Scrimshaw said cheerfully as she rose. Diaz said nothing, clearly moping about the dispute not going his way.
“Get me some goddamn construction supplies!” Felix called after the two of them as they left. “Fuck’s sake…” He groaned once the door slid closed behind them.
“Having fun yet?” His second, Commodore Klemmik commented once she was left in alone in the room with him.
“Not even a little,” Felix muttered. “Like dealing with children. I don’t have children Klemmik. I hate children.”
“Mhm,” She spared him a bemused smirk before sliding a tablet across the table. “What shall I get the fleets on?”
Felix sighed and took the tablet, glancing over it briefly before passing it back.
“Go into the Civil War Theme Park. Pick enough fights to make it look like raiding,”
“Only look like raiding?” Klemmik asked. “So what are we really doing?”
“Probing engagements with the Synnies. Get me some details on tactics and capabilities. They just ate everything around them, and I’m willing to bet they’re not going to stop. If you can, board a ship, pull any information you can. I want to know where their fleets are moving, who their power players are, soft targets, and so forth,”
“As you command,” The Commodore said pushing herself back from the table. “I’ll organize the fleets,”
“Commodore,” Felix called before she left. “Probing engagement. I don’t want to hear about you getting into a slugfest with AOTS-K at this juncture. Low risk engagements, pull back if things get too hot.”
“Of course Admiral,” She gave him a salute and stepped out of the room, leaving him alone with the two guards.
“One of you get me some ibuprofen,” He muttered, laying his head down on the table with a sigh. “And turn the fucking lights off.”
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Post by Pyromaniac275 on Mar 9, 2023 3:10:49 GMT
Setting up a base was a stressful operation in the best of times. One had to corral dozens of heavy industry ships, make sure no corners were being cut, coordinate the delivery and distribution of key materials, and keep everyone and everything moving on time. On top of that colossal task Felix also had to play nice with the Tax Evaders. That meant putting in appearances, showing up to assist in action, and parsing through pages upon pages of intelligence coming from his Captains to decide what was worth passing on to them, what required further verification, and what didn’t deem anything more than a cursory glance.
Those two tasks alone should have occupied all of Felix’s time. It seemed fair to him. Both were tedious, and time consuming, not to mention undesirable.
And yet, in spite of all it took to stand up a facility from scratch and placate their hosts, Felix also had to mediate every squabble and dispute that popped up between Scrimshaw and Diaz. And the two pirates had no shortage of disputes.
Every couple of days there was something. Scrimshaw would complain that she thought Diaz was getting priority for rearming even though she was pulling in more loot. Diaz whined that Scrimshaw was only pulling in more loot because she was boxing him out of the most lucrative trade lanes. Back and forth, on and on, every couple of days there was a new complaint, a new dispute, and a new conflict between the two pirates or their respective subordinates. It was exhausting, and doubly so given everything else he was responsible for managing.
He was an Admiral, fuck that, he was the Second Admiral of the Exile fleets. The most powerful man in the Exiles save for Sol himself and here he was having to nanny two fucking children looking for excuses to pick fights with one another.
The door to the conference room they were waiting in slid open and Felix promptly found himself confronted by the two in the midst of a fist fight.
Surprised? No.
Disappointed? Probably.
His two guards prized them off of each other in short order, and held them back from further engagement while they hurled insults, curses, and accusations at one another too loud and too fast for Felix to even begin to figure out what they were arguing about. He let them carry on while he amused himself trying to decide which of them had got the worse of the fight. Scrimshaw’s left eye was swelling, and she had a split lip. Diaz’s nose seemed broken, and a prominent trio of scratches down the right side of his face were oozing blood.
He shook his head.
“Enough, enough, ENOUGH! SHUT UP! SHUT THE FUCK UP! SHUT UP!” Felix’s shouting finally cowed the two of them into silence. He motioned with his hand and his guards released the commanders. Wisely neither of them resumed the fist fight once they were unrestrained.
“Should I ask what it’s about this time?” Felix said with a sigh.
“This fuck,” Scrimshaw hissed. “Has been executing people for weeks!”
“It’s not an execution, it’s carrying through on a threat when ransom’s go unpaid!”
“Well if they aren’t paying ransoms why do you keep taking people? You know you’re just going to have to kill them at this point!”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you you stupid naive bitch,”
“The fuck did you call me?!”
The two guards reacted fast enough to keep the two of them from resuming the fight and Felix once again shouted them into silence.
“Do I need to draw a line on a map, and down the center of the station to keep the two of you from finding reasons to fight each other?” Felix asked. “Is that what it will take?”
He paused for effect, but when neither of them jumped to answer he continued.
“Scrimshaw, it’s no business of yours how Diaz chooses to run his operation.” He said finally.
“But…”
“Your objections to his methods are noted,” Felix interrupted her. “But unless his methods are actively harming our position with the Tax Evaders then I see no reason for you to meddle in his affairs,”
Scrimshaw ground her teeth together and opened her mouth to say something but Felix interrupted her once more.
“Leave it alone Scrimshaw. If the two of you cannot find a way to coexist I will send both of you back to the Galaxy. Perhaps Dragovich or the Black Skulls could operate here without a conflict every time they set eyes on one another, hmm?”
Scrimshaw scowled, but said nothing else. Diaz was smirking, clearly believing himself to have been the victor of this particular confrontation. Felix shook his head.
“Get out,” He growled, the two guards releasing the pirates once more. Scrimshaw left in a huff and Diaz followed a few moments later. Finally alone in the room, Felix powered up the comms unit.
“Klemmik, report?” He said, a bit harsher than he meant to. If the Commodore was at all offended by his tone, she made no show of it.
“Operations have had a limited impact,” She said grimly. “We’re struggling to pin the Army in any protracted engagement. They withdraw from any fight where they don’t hold a clear advantage. We’ve inflicted some casualties, been ambushed ourselves a few times. I’d characterize the entire endeavor as indecisive,”
“Intelligence?”
“Minimal. Lots of tactical and strategic data for the AI’s to crunch through, but we haven’t got anything actionable on HVTs.”
Felix sighed. After everything with Scrimshaw and Diaz he’d hoped for good news from Klemmik. But alas… no such luck.
“Withdraw and return to base,” He said finally. “Repair and rearm, we’ll need a new strategy.”
“As you wish sir,”
He powered down the unit and sat down heavily. The Exile Admiral sighed and began massaging his temples as he felt another headache coming on.
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Post by Pyromaniac275 on Mar 12, 2023 15:57:19 GMT
Today, was a good day.
Diaz had returned from his most raid in the Tax Payers Association to find the moon base practically abandoned. Only a small token force remained, along with a growing backlog of freighters waiting for the Mirdiff to be dealt with so they could return to the galaxy with their loot. Once he was aboard, and offloading his most recent loot he got the update.
Felix was still tied down on his raid with ASP. While he’d wiped one of the Army’s logistics fleets, he was having difficulty evading their reaction forces. Scrimshaw had run off to try and help him, and Klemmik was off picking a fight with the Mirdiff swarm.
Which meant Diaz now had the run of the facility, and didn’t have to listen to Scrimshaw’s whining about ethics or deal with Felix’s restrictive rules of engagement. He could do whatever he wanted, and that suited him just fine.
But that was only the beginning of Diaz’s good fortune.
Fresh off the elation that he would be on his own for at least the next week or so, he discovered a well dressed man waiting to meet with him. He identified himself as a member of the Chemist Guild, and further informed Diaz that Alistair MacOrdrum had a proposition for him.
Diaz entered one of the conference rooms on the station with the communicator and an inhaler filled with something that looked like orange dust. He sat down and fired up the communicator with a yawn, waiting the several moment for it to connect.
“Ah,” Alistair greeted upon seeing Diaz. “Senor Diaz, truly a pleasure. I trust my associate provided you with my gift?”
“The inhaler?” Diaz asked, holding it into frame.
“Yes, the inhaler,” Alistair purred. “Go ahead and have a puff Diaz,”
Diaz raised an eyebrow, then shrugged and pressed the inhaler to his lips. He breathed deep and the orange dust flooded into his system. It tasted like dirt, and prompted a hacking cough from the pirate, but once the coughing subsided he began to really feel the effects settling in. A tingling euphoria that spread out from his chest, reaching his finger tips and then his toes.
“Ooooh yeah,” He crooned while looking around the room. Everything seemed more in focus, he could see every scratch and imperfection on the metal walls of the conference room. He felt alert, focused, fast and unstoppable. “That is… some good shit hermano,” Diaz said turning his gaze back toward the communicator.
“I’m glad you like it Senor Diaz,” Alistair said with a predatory grin. “It is my latest concoction. Rocket Fuel is our working title for it. I’ve spread some small batches across the market already and demand is only growing,”
Diaz nodded along with Alistair’s words, but it was a struggle to stay focused on the chemist when everything else felt so… so…
He couldn’t even think of a word.
“But there is a small hitch with its production,” Alistair continued, drawing Diaz’s focus back to the communicator. “The drug is refined from a plant we’ve discovered on an uninhabited world in the Invilis Corridor. The plant itself is exceptionally fragile, so fragile it can’t be harvested by machines. It must be cut by hand,”
“Bummer,” Diaz offered, only half paying attention.
“Indeed Senor Diaz,” Alistair said. “Which is where you come in,”
“Nah, I don’t do agriculture,”
“What?” There was the briefest flicker of irritation across Alistair’s features, but he regained his composure quickly. “No, you misunderstand,”
“Understand me then ‘mano,”
He smirked seeing another flicker of irritation before Alistair continued.
“We require a workforce,” He said finally. “Preferably an unpaid one,”
“Aaaaah,” Diaz chuckled. “Now I got you. So you want slaves, is that it?”
“Precisely,” The Chemist said. “And by my estimation you are well positioned to provide one,”
“Mhm,” Diaz said. “For the moment. The wet blanket brigade have all fucked off… but when they get back I’m sure they’ll have objections. The Exiles…”
“The Exiles are of little consequence,” Alistair interrupted. “They rely on us for their treatments. They won’t move against you so long as you’re working for me.” “The raider chick then,” Diaz said.
“Yes… Scrimshaw,” Alistair spat her name. “The Raiders are often problematic. How one can call themselves a pirate and then adhere to their brand of short sighted idealism is beyond me. Can you avoid her notice?”
“For now,” Diaz said. “She’s away… but if she returns and sees slaves moving out she’ll go through the roof,”
“Well,” Alistair said with another predatory grin. “If you can provide a preliminary shipment I can arrange for some Black Skulls to reinforce you,”
“Might be able to take an alternative location,” Diaz agreed. “Clear slaves somewhere else away from her notice.”
“Do we have an agreement then?”
“I believe we do,” Diaz grinned. “I’ll get right on that first shipment.”
“Excellent,”
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Post by Pyromaniac275 on Mar 19, 2023 21:42:41 GMT
Rage.
It didn’t feel like a strong enough word to describe the white hot anger seething in her chest. Returning to their base to find it awash in slaves gathered by Diaz for who only knew what reason was bad enough. She’d pegged him as a despicable little shit since day one in Corona. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that he would sink as low as chattel slavery in the name of money.
But the anger she’d felt had paled in comparison to the secrets she’d beaten out of the first of Diaz’s captains unfortunate enough to cross her path. She was looking for Diaz. She hadn’t known what she would do when she found him. Felix and Klemmik both weren’t around to pull her off of him. Maybe she’d fight him. Maybe she’d cut on him. Maybe she’d do more.
She would never know now.
“He’s gone!” The man had finally told her. “Fuck… I… I think you broke my jaw…”
“Gone where?” She hissed.
He didn’t know. Top secret. Diaz took who he trusted to deliver…
Deliver what?
Plague.
Seething. Burning. Hatred.
She didn’t bother with questions anymore. She had no need of answers. She had men in her employ who could drill a neural processor into the captain’s head and tear the information she desired from his skull, willing or not.
He knew everything she needed. He knew where the plague was headed. He knew how long ago it had left. Even knew which of the ships in the fleet was carrying the vials. She wasted no time informing Felix of what she’d discovered. Overdrive was underway, her whole fleet departing the moment a location was ripped from the captain’s unwilling skull.
Corona 4.
His usefulness at an end, dumped him out the airlock. That was Diaz’s favourite method of execution it seemed.
Turnabout is fair play.
By leaving when she did, she still had a chance of overtaking them. It meant burning hard. She pushed past safe operating parameters, pushing her slip space drives to make the next jump, and the next one, and so forth without waiting for the cool down period stipulated by the manufacturer.
The fleet’s maintenance crews only objected once. She hadn’t meant to take out her anger on them, but she had. If nothing else it sent a message. They understood there was no negotiating with her right now. There was no reasoning with her.
They came upon Diaz’s plague carriers on the edge of the space claimed by Corona 4. He had hailed her, asked what she was doing. She answered with a rain of missiles and railgun
Even if she hadn’t surprised them with the sudden deployment of violence Diaz never stood a chance. There were only thirty or so ships. She outnumbered them five to one. The battle was over almost before it began.
Eleven ships lasted long enough to surrender, among them the plague carrier. She ignored the advice of every captain in her clan and went aboard herself. She hoped that when she arrived on the bridge in her colourfully painted armour to find Diaz. She’d hoped even more that he’d be dumb enough to pull a weapon on her.
Give me a reason motherfucker. Give me a godsdamn motherfucking reason you low life scum sucking fuckwit.
But when she stepped onto the bridge, there was no Diaz. Only one of his lackeys.
“You are so fucked Scrimshaw,” He growled when she stalked onto the bridge. “You roll up and shoot your own fucking people in front of-...”
She put a round of flechettes through his leg. With no armour to protect him, the monofilament shards turned his leg into a mangled mess of bleeding flesh and shattered bone in an instant. He hit the ground screaming.
“Where is it?” She hissed, standing over the man.
“Fuck you, you psycho bi-,”
He screamed again when she stomped her foot on the mangled remains of his leg.
“WHERE IS IT?!”
He hurled another expletive and she put the next round of flechettes through his face. His XO was far more accommodating. She only had to ask him once and he retrieved the vials from a safe in the late captain’s quarters. She inspected them long enough to be sure there was the same number that there had been in the first man’s memories.
“Where’s Diaz?” She asked the XO.
“He’s with the other fleet,”
Other. Fleet.
Once more the hatred burning white hot in her chest flared. She felt like she couldn’t breathe. Like she couldn’t continue existing. She was so angry she just… couldn’t.
“What other fleet?”
It wasn’t one other fleet. It was two, and they were already much too far away for her to ever catch up with them. Her hands shook and her vision felt unfocused. She needed this anger, this rage, out of her body.
“Kill them all.”
It didn’t help. Not when her raiders mag dumped the rest of the bridge crew. Not when the nukes turned the rest of Diaz’s little fleet into irradiated hulks. Not one little bit. She wanted to tear Diaz’s eyes out and make him swallow them. She wanted to beat his head in with a pipe. She wanted to kill, burn, and pillage all that the miserable sack of maggots had ever held dear.
But her own XO calmed her down. Not much. But just enough to reason that they couldn’t go blitzing across the remnants of the Third Republic with all the vials of plague they had lifted from Diaz’s peon. They’d be as likely to accidentally release the virus as they would be to recover the rest of the vials.
She relented.
She left him to figure out their next move. She couldn’t give commands right now. She couldn’t do much more than pace like a rabid beast and wait for the rage to burn a little dimmer.
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Post by Pyromaniac275 on May 19, 2023 2:24:01 GMT
Baron shouldn’t have been nervous. He’d been a neuromancer for decades, and a neuromancer with Black Sail for half of that time. Presenting his work to the various powerful people of the Organization shouldn’t have made him nervous anymore. But this one did.
It wasn’t who he was presenting to either he realized, it was more what he was presenting. After all, Scrimshaw was just another raider clan chief in an organization replete with them. He knew how to handle clan chiefs. They had short tempers, strong beliefs, and a kind of naive idealistic perspective on freedom that he found endearing. Scrimshaw wasn’t much different, the only thing that really seemed to set her apart from every other chief was a bigger, uncontrollable temper.
At least that was the rumour circulating. That she and her people had shot up a bunch of Diaz’s ships over some slight. No one could prove it, and the slight that had (allegedly) incurred her wrath ranged from one too many lewd comments, to a dispute over Diaz’s open enslavement of Coronans. Disagreements between chiefs and slavers were nothing new, but they’d never come to open warfare before…
It would be a colossal escalation if it were true, but thus far no one could prove any of it was.
Even so, Scrimshaw didn’t intimidate him. The virus he’d made was (in his opinion) some of his best work. Maybe even his best. He was nervous, because he wanted Scrimshaw to see that. He wanted his genius to be recognized and validated.
And his nerves were only growing more frayed with each passing second as she watched code play out across the screen. Did she even know what she was looking at? Would she understand exactly what he was giving her?
“Okay,” She said finally shifting her gaze from the code to him. “Give me the stupid person’s description,”
“Uh,” Baron stammered before clearing his throat. “I’ve loaded up this drive with just about every piece of malicious software the Organization has ever made. Bypass tools, brute force programs, and so forth. Then I added a machine learning algorithm and I’ve been training it on our systems, Coronan, and the AOTS-K’s systems. It’s getting smarter every time I run it, learning to…”
“I understand what machine learning is,” Scrimshaw interrupted. “What will it do when I plug it in?”
“Well,” Baron said with a nervous chuckle. “It will try to crash any system it’s connected to, and continuously learn and adapt its tactics to respond to any counter-intrusion and anti-malware present attempting to thwart it. When you plug it in it should cause the system to slow down, hang, crash, and reboot and lock the system in that cycle until it’s disconnected or the system finds a way to thwart it,”
“How long will that take?” Scrimshaw asked, folding her arms and leaning back in her chair.
“Well um… I’m not entirely sure,” Baron answered. “I’ve trained it on every observed vulnerability in the Coronan systems, and it learned some more when Felix was using it against the Synopticon… though it was mediocre at best against the Synopticon. It should work,”
“Should?”
“Well…”
She waved a hand for Baron to be silent and rubbed her eyes.
“Look,” She said finally. “Dassler is off his meds and has made no secret that he will kill the shit out of me if there’s anything off about my arrival. This virus needs to prevent him from doing that long enough for me to reach him and stop him from doing that in person. This is a big gamble, and I’d like to be gambling on something a little more solid than ‘it should work’.”
He rubbed the back of his neck and gave her a sheepish look.
“Should is the best I can do,” He answered. “It’s untested. It works in the virtual environment I built to test it, but if that environment is flawed or missing a critical aspect of the functionality of the Coronan software it would skew the results. In theory it works. But theory is theory and practice is practice. If there were other Coronan systems I could run it on…”
Scrimshaw shook her head.
“I don’t think Dassler’s invitation to my alias will stay open long enough for us to run that test,” She answered with a sigh. “So it’s a big gamble then…”
“It… is,” Baron lamented finally.
Scrimshaw tapped a finger against the table and turned her gaze back to the sea of code dancing across the screen. She didn’t say anything, and her face was locked in an expression somewhere between a frown and a scowl. Minutes ticked by. Each passing second felt like an eternity to Baron as he waited for some sign of what the raider chief was thinking. Finally she sighed.
“I’ll give it a shot,” She said finally. “If it works, beauty. If not…”
She shrugged.
“Well then I suppose I won’t really live long enough to say something mean to you,”
“What will you do about Dassler?” Baron asked, unplugging the device.
“I don’t want to kill him,” Scrimshaw admitted. “Fucked up right? I’ve been talking to this dude for weeks and he’s just a pit of the most vile shit you’ve ever heard someone say…”
“But?” Baron asked. She shrugged.
“He’s off his meds,” She said. “He’s a sick man. Killing a sick man over the shit he said in a psychotic episode just feels… ick…”
She sighed and stood up.
“So maybe I can subdue him. Maybe he’s not so fucked up when he’s medicated. Maybe he won’t leave me a choice and I’ll have to kill him… I guess we’ll see what happens.”
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