Post by Sheng on Jul 30, 2023 2:45:12 GMT
Dawnsand
New Archon | Abandoned Colonist Settlement | Restricted Province #A-9
18:50 AST
Archon-1 grimaced mentally as he thought about the rather precarious situation he was rapidly finding himself in. The unrest in the Outer Colonies was growing exponentially and with a good portion of his resources tied up either in Corona or against the SR, he was way more limited on options than he'd like, to make things worse was that his modernization programme was burning through a lot of SIGEC and even more time and those were the two things he was quickly growing scarce on. The Alternative Programme was progressing at an acceptable rate, but he wanted it done faster- They were only just now figuring out what they needed to do to be able to contain long-term portions of antimatter. The war was also not going well on his front either, at the start he had hoped that even though his ships were outdated they'd at least be able to hold out until the new models could be deployed but he was rapidly proven wrong by the Selenican's overwhelming advantage in firepower. Their shields just couldn't handle the raw force that their tachyons were dishing out, a fact that was costing him dearly and had forced him to deploy what scant upgraded forces he had.
He sighed as he briefly linked his mind to the locked door in front of him and sent the command requiring it to open, stepping inside the pearly white laboratory as several Reborn paused at what they were doing to look up at him but a quick glare from him sent them scrambling back to working on whatever it was they were working on. Even the Council was beginning to lose faith in him, with 5, 3 and 7 pushing for him to open peace talks with the Selenicans before things got out of hand, hell even his inner circle was beginning to entertain the ideas of a peace treaty and that was what finally had pushed him to compromise by allowing RANGSI to host a summit regarding the issue. He had to buckle up and lock this shit show down, and soon or else he had the itching feeling at the back of his processor that he'd end up lucky to escape this with his head at all. Luckily he had a few cards up his sleeve yet, with Cross having dispatched some of his operatives to pick him up and transport him to "Blackout" and himself having dispatched the First Fleet to intercept a joint Unmari convoy between the Novish, SR and a few others he couldn't remember the name of, loaded with valuable raw material. Things were looking tense but nothing had happened yet that couldn't be turned around if he was careful enough and played his hand right.
He continued walking towards the opposite end of the Laboratory, briefly glancing at the scientist's various workstations to check up on their progress. This was his own personal laboratory and one of the most well-defended secrets in the entirety of the Second Dawn, after the failure of the Pillbox he had recalled his most prized assets here to pool resources together in a place he could easily keep an eye, and a few rifles, on. They were working on various odds and ends; ways to improve the new pulse laser systems, and armour composite designs, but he could barely focus on them as he entered the elevator on the opposite side of the room and waved his hand in front of the control station to order it to bring him back up to the surface. He rolled his shoulders briefly in anticipation as the elevator rapidly ascended the concrete well it was hidden in, yellow dim lights flashing briefly as it passed them in its journey and then a quiet ding as it came to a halt at its destination.
He waved his right hand in front of the control station again which caused the doors to slowly slide open, revealing two automated turrets immediately swivelling and pointing at him, the machines tracking his every step whilst he walked down the ruined corridor of the building the lab was built under. Finally, once he was at the opposite ends the turrets let out a brief beep before they both shifted back to the idle position. As he pressed through the decrepit structure the sound of rocket engines was beginning to enter his hearing with the ominous roar rapidly growing in volume as the object neared his position. He approached the rusted front double doors and reached out with both hands to push them open, the rocket engines nearly tripling in volume as he exited the abandoned building as was met with the sight of a pitch-black heavily armoured shuttle touching down on the obsidian-like sand some twenty metres away, a pink globe of New Archon overlayed by a pink triangle was shining on the visible side of the shuttle facing him; The emblem of Potius Cras.
As he approached the now-on-the-ground shuttle he had to reduce the volume of his hearing due to the sheer volume of the still firing engines of the shuttle whilst a side door slid open to the side and two heavily armoured black-painted Reborn rushed towards him and each put a hand on his shoulder, keeping his head down whilst guiding him towards the vehicle. A third figure dropped down and extended a hand towards him as he approached, screaming over the absurdly loud engines near them "IT'S AN HONOUR, SIR! MY NAME IS CODEX, FIELD OPERATIONS COMMANDER. WE'LL BE TAKING THIS SHUTTLE TO THE AEGIS AND THEN PROCEEDING TO BLACKOUT! E-T-A NINE HOURS!"
Archon-1 responded with a brisk nod before reaching out and grasping a sidebar on the shuttle and pushing himself up, the two soldiers quickly hopped after them and proceeded inside whilst Codex pulled the side door closed and the shuttle began to ascend once more.
"Blackout"
Vanguard | Potius Cras Research Facility | Restricted Province #G-12
27:50 AST
Cross looked outside of one of the one-way windows as the "Aegis", one of their premium inter-system cruisers, slowly began to descend down into the sub-terranean hangar bay. It's blue atmospheric chemical rockets burning almost a bit too brightly to directly look at whilst it hovered in place to allow various sensors to scan the vessel looking for any possible source of contamination, two large quad-barreled pulse laser turrets tracking it whilst the scan took place until various lights in the hanger switched to green and the turrets dis-engaged and lowered their barrels back down. He reached down to a console below him and lightly reached out to press into one of the holo-buttons on the console below, causing the observation deck's shutters to slowly descend over the windows present.
His dark frame gleamed ominously in the fluorescent white light above them, his frame was quite the unique one. With a solidly built scaled body and four burly arms instead of two, the structure itself much more humanoid if you ignored the metal scales. In place of the standard Reborn wedge-head was a long serpentine snout and two narrowed serpentine eyes with emissive pink irises, towards the back of his head was a clearly inwardly folded cobra's hood. But the most intriguing part was "below the belt" as one would say, in that in place of legs was a long snake-like tail with a razor sharp tip. His scales were primarily midnight black with a slight deep purple sheen but his under-belly scales were a pale creamy white, going from his lower jaw all the way down to the tip of his tail. He wore what seemed to be some sort of purple and blue shark-skin suit that had to be absurdly expensive with a creamy white dress shirt with silver buttons underneath, in addition was a long and wide pink tie going all the way down before disappearing into his jacket. Sticking out of his front right pocket was a white and silver embroidered handkerchief with the PC logo imprinted in the classic pink tone visible for all to see. He also wore a pair of antique aviators with shining silver rims, which were just far down enough on his snout that he could easily look over them if he chose too.
He chuckled to himself as he looked down upon the security camera footage displayed from the holo-projector and saw Codex and what could only be Archon-1 disembarking from the "Aegis" with the famous- or rather, infamous Councilor glancing around the newly renovated facility in poorly concealed awe. To be entertaining the presence of such a feared and despised politician who not only had a rap sheet longer then the distance between the Golden Expanse and Outer Rim but was gazing upon his facility with awe? Well that was quite the ego-booster if he said so himself. He watched them disappear deeper into the facility underneath the very observation deck he was standing in, deciding that he might as well go and meet his newfound guests. Reaching down and pressing a clawed finger through the same holo-button which caused the projector to dissipate the projection, he then pushed himself away from the shuttered windows and slithered his way to the elevator on the other end of the deck. He reached out and pressed another one of the holo-buttons which caused the elevators engraved black doors to quickly slide open with a quiet chime, slithering into the elevator before reaching down and pressing another one of the holo-buttons to bring himself down to the first floor.
As the elevator started to descend and a subtle, gentle tune started to play he let himself stretch out a bit to work some of the kinks from his cyber-muscles before he spoke to his subordinate and his technical boss. Rolling his shoulders and pushing his arms and fingers outward briefly before letting them fall to his sides once more, it was then that the elevator came to a slow halt at it's destination and the doors slid open with another quiet chime. He slithered out into the main hallway and immediately the sounds of metallic foot falls against polished porcelain tiles came into his auditory sensors, turning to his right he saw Codex and Archon-1 approaching him whilst looking lost in some sort of amusing conversation with Codex shaking slightly from mostly depleted laughter. As they neared him he inclined his head slightly before saying "Good evening, gentlemen. It pleases me greatly that you could make it here on such short notice." Codex gave him a respectful nod and Archon-1 inclined his head in a similar way as he had. He gestured down the wall and turned around, starting to slither down it with the two picking up the pace briefly so that they brought themselves side by side with him.
As they walked down the hall Cross continued speaking, mostly to Archon-1, "I hope you are pleased with your facility, Satagon. Our team put great effort into ensuring it's confidentiality remained uncompromised and it's apparatus fully stocked and ready for the monumental task ahead of us. Our Head Researcher, Purge, along with his subordinates; Tempest, Faust, Avitus and Bones have done quite well in preparing the laboratory for reception and initiation into the project. Now that the Probe is here we will begin the operation in earnest, with phase three scheduled to begin tomorrow morning." Archon-1 looked quite pleased with the report, nodding his approval immediately after Cross had finished before Codex chimed in "In addition, security has never been tighter. Squads; MORTEM, Containment One and Containment Six have confirmed that op-sec is stronger then ever. We have also taken the liberty of confiscating all employee's personal electronics as well as full-body searches being integrated at every check point. In the containment chamber itself we have a wide variety of methods to ensure compliance as well as containment redundancies should the probe attempt excessive assimilation at any given moment. Should the absolute worst come to pass, a nuclear warhead is held directly under the containment chamber and there are escape shuttles docked at the surface concealed by the prison's abandoned yard. We have prepared for every possible situation and you can rest assured, a security breach is impossible."
Cross chuckled before nodding in agreement, Archon-1 seemed very happy with Codex's statement as well. He responded "Well I'm ecstatic to hear that you two have taken every possible step into ensuring the efficient conduction of this operation, I am quite sure you both have heard me rant and rave about it's importance enough but it truly can't be put into words just how meaningful this could be for us. Imagine, a Third Dawn armed with technology and knowledge beyond anything we've ever dreamed of. Harnessing the science of this 'Old Invader' could very well be what restores us to our former glory, what propels us into being the Galactic Pioneers that we should be. We could even take the fight to threats such as the Synopticon or even turn the technology back on the 'Old Invaders' themselves!"
Cross nodded along to what Archon-1 was saying, he obviously agreed otherwise why would he have sunk as much resources and effort into his little fantasy as he already had? By the time his train of thought ended they had reached a sealed bulk-head with a yellow warning triangle and an OI probe symbol plastered on the front, the text below it reading "DANGER: NEUMANN-HAZARD BEYOND THIS POINT." He pulled out a key attached to his necklace and Codex did the same, with both of them moving to opposite sides of the bulkhead where two glass cases were, it scanned them briefly confirming their digital signature before the glass cases popped open revealing the slots for each key. With no hesitation they looked at each other and nodded, both inserting their keys at the same time and twisting in opposite directions which caused a red light at the top of the bulkhead to begin flashing whilst a siren started blaring and the bulkhead slowly started to slide open.
The two then came back to stand next to Archon-1 as the interior was revealed to them; a massive hangar bay with an array of turrets pointing towards a massive containment chamber in the centre of the hangar. Archon-1 felt the servos in his leg grow weak as he stared ahead at the sight in front of him, for inside the containment chamber was the very thing he'd wanted ever since he had learned of them...
An Old Invader Probe.
Archon-1 chuckled to himself before looking to Codex and then to Cross before returning his optics on the magnificent sight in front of them. As he stared at his latest trophy his chuckling died down and he said "Isn't it beautiful? Such raw technological prowess... In that machine there are secrets that not a single person in this galaxy is aware of, and here we are with a specimen of them right in front of our very optics. This is it, gentlemen. This is our chance, a key of which to open the very gates of heaven itself and all we have to do is take the first step." And that was just what they did, stepping into the room as the bulkhead hissed before it slowly started to shut itself behind them whilst they took in the sight of their prize. They didn't have an ounce of fear in them, too captured by the possibilities that their captured toy now presented to them.
Something, they'll soon come to regret...