| Anomaly Part II:; Now with 100% fewer nudist colonies! | |
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| Topic Started: Jun 22 2009, 02:20 PM (457 Views) | |
| Another Random Geek | Jun 22 2009, 02:20 PM Post #1 |
Chapter Master of the Blood Angels
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Martin Carlson leaned back in his chair and gave the Martian ambassador his third-best scowl. “You know that this offer is unacceptable. We cannot, we WILL not, recognize a Communist government on this world.” The Martian simply gave Martin a bland smile, and took a sip of his wine. “Well, then it appears that we have reached an impasse,” he said amiably. Martin frowned. Not many people could ignore a third-degree scowl. Nonetheless, he recovered quickly and took a bite from the bowl of finger-foods at the center of the table before continuing, just to demonstrate how unimpressed he was. “I suppose we are,” agreed Martin, “What do you purpose we do about it?” The ambassador waved his hand dismissively, “Let’s wait a few weeks, and see if the current military stalemate continues before we resume negotiations. Right now, nobody is in the position to demand anything from anyone else.” “Very well.” said Martin, figuring that the Martian’s assessment was accurate enough. The two men shook hands, and the diplomats left the negotiating table. Following their lead, the aides, sectaries, advisors, and other functionaries left the table and went for the exit. |
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| dinowoman | Jun 22 2009, 04:43 PM Post #2 |
Living Fossil
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"June Smith", as she called herself in public, carried a tray of drinks to a table of rowdy patrons and stifled a yawn of boredom. Just another 15 minutes and her shift would be over. She wondered how her friend Charlotte's latest production had gone that evening. Ever since they had made it back to civilisation almost six months ago, the dancer had been allowing Julia to stay at her apartment. She had been Julia's life saver during those first weeks after the ill-fated mission to Outpost 23. Julia had lost everything, and she had spent the first week or so drifting around in a state of numbing depression, not over the loss of her possessions, but of the people aboard her ship. She had felt responsible; and she still couldn't get over the fact that she hadn't been able to save Stevan Kailash, a man whom she had promised to do her very best to help avoid the death that some evil superior was determined to force upon him. Eventually she had come to terms with things enough to feel able to get on with her life once again. But with no ship and almost no money, returning to her old life as a full-time trader was out of the question. So she went back to the only other job she knew: bar work. The pay was pretty lousy, but at least she was able to help Charlotte out with the expenses and, with what little she had left over, she was starting to engage in a bit of small-scale buying and selling behind the scenes, mainly slightly dodgy narcotics. Finally, the chronometer on the wall of the crowded and none too clean bar displayed midnight. End of her shift. She finished serving her last customer, yelled goodbye over the noise to her colleagues, and slipped out through the rear door, past the staff cloakroom, and out into the night. It was damp and miserable, and the limited street lighting cast a dingy yellowish glow on the normally grey streets. But at least it wasn't cold. A brisk twenty-minute walk brought her to Charlotte's apartment. She wondered if her friend was back from the theatre yet. Unlocking the front door, she stepped inside and switched on the light. "Hi! It's me! Julia!" she called. "Anyone home?" |
 
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| Cataphrak | Jun 22 2009, 11:13 PM Post #3 |
Shut up, I know what I'm doing.
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Operative Lans Decius of the New Karelian Foreign Office flattened himself against the shadows of the run down brick wall, checking to make sure nobody was look his way. With the movement of an eyelid, a refocusing of his sight accessed the neural interface linked over his right eye. His right pupil turned and refocused again as the New Karelian quickly brought up the systems menu and projected it onto a holographic screen the size of a postage stamp over his eye. Once more, his eye moved and refocused and the operative (because "assassin" was such an ugly word) wavered, to the outside eye, the plot of pavement and the column of air which had been but shadow and grit before wavered, and from the darkness, Lans Decius, username St0rmb0t, shimmered into existence. Of course, there had been no outside eyes, Lans had made sure of that. Insinuating, letting alone openly revealing the fact that New Karelia had access to active camouflage technology would have been a disaster in itself. It would have been one more advancement that the superpowers would demand for themselves from the Cyberforum's idea factories, one more trump card from New Karelia's stacked deck lost against the two great, temperamental behemoths known as Pleiades and Mars. Lans slipped out into the light, clad in a nondescript brown leather jacket and grey, somewhat worn cargo pants. Inconspicuously slipping into a hunched, somewhat insular stance, he shuffled down the alley and into the streams of people waking down one of the main thuroughfares of the creatively named Residential Area 41. The place had a name, but nobody dared speak it out loud, not any more. Ever since the ceasefire, the place had been solid Commie territory, with Martian dictator Disney's uniformed goons on every street corner, and big, ugly ISB men in big, ugly suits of Martian power armour (Lans had noted with some satisfaction that the Martian suits were downright shoddy compared to the stuff that New Karelia's client states turned out.) stood at the entrance to any building worth mentioning. Then again, Lans wasn't particularly planning on visiting any of those buildings. Instead, he silently continued his shuffle, conforming to the pattern of the hundreds of others heading for the overcrowded ghetto districts set aside for non-martian residents of the newly occupied city. The New Karelian made no effort to stay hidden, or to avoid attention, such things usually ended up causing more trouble than they were worth, no, as any operative worth their jack knew, the best way to hide was to do so in plain sight. Sticking in with the crowd, he walked sedately past the Martian guards, only sparing a single glance at the shining muzzles of their snub nosed submachine guns. Those guys would be dead in a firefight with proper infantry. Those chromed up muzzles would probably make anybody carrying them go off on infrared and enhanced light sensors like particle fireworks on Linux Day. He didn't dwell on it for long. Keeping focused on his suffocatingly slow downcast trudging, he followed the stream of human drones down the street and turned off at the entrance to a particularly monolithic and stylistically dead apartment block. Slowly pushing himself up each stair, he forced himself to climb the fifteen flights of stairs to the apartment he had been assigned. The bastard Martians had proven themselves just as comically inept at building maintenance as they had been at firewalling networks, the elevators had been down for the past four and a half months. The New Karelian pushed the thought out of his mind as he keyed open the battered plasteel door to his humble lodgings. He had gotten better at climbing stairs, when he had been first assigned to the planet five months ago, he had barely made it up the last three flights alive, now, it was just another thing in his eventful day that he didn't particularly look forward to. It was time for his report. Making sure that his room was locked, he keyed his neural interface again, hacking into the electronic lock, brushing side the pitiful open market safeguards and looking up the usage history, making sure nobody had broken in during his absence. Finally satisfied that there wasn't a team of Martian computer techs listening in on his every move, Lans walked over to the window, blanking it out as he reached for the touchscreen of his apartment's safe and keyed in the 128 digit combination, copied and pasted from his neuro-comp. The safe door slid open to reveal the interface of a long range communications array, conspicuously not Foreign Office issue. (It had been made by a dummy corporation in Antares.) With a commands, he linked his neuro-comp to the ansible and dove into the live firestorm of the local comms network. After a few seconds of looking around, he found what he had been searching for. A few more neural commands piggybacked his signal on a Guild mainline transmission to Aldebaran. From there, he linked to another Guild mainline, this time to Wolf 359. From there, the New Karelian swept aside the Martian encryption protocols with contemptuous ease and finally encoded his signal behind a dummy Martian proxy, linking up the final leg to the unaligned world of Fukushima, where a New Karelian Foreign Office team waited for his weekly report from the other side. A final input signal told Lans that his link was stable and in real time, he opened the channel, audio only. "Control, this is St0rmb0t, clocking in." A moment's silence, then a voice, female, cold, abrasive. "St0rmb0t, this is Facepalm, you're late." "Apologies control, got held up." "Lemme guess, local tournament?" "Hardly, business, not pleasure. Found a target of opportunity this morning." Another pause, did they even care about this one? Lans had brought in way too many targets of opportunity for them to even listen in on them. Maybe they'd just take his word on it and wave him on. He hoped they did, it saved him the trouble of describing the whole thing. Another voice, this one male. "St0rmb0t, this is Bannockburn, go on." Crap. Publius Eugenius Bannockburn was the senior system operator for all Foreign Office operations in the Pleiadian/Martian front. Lans cleared his throat, resolving not to screw up his report, and by extension, his career any any chance of a veterancy. "I found a Martian colonel contacting one of his co-conspirators on my morning sweep. They were using an internal communications channel but I broke through the defences pretty easily. They were planning on assassinating one of Pleiades' senior diplomats, Martin Carlson. The whole thing was planned for tonight, so I had to move in today. Luckily, the colonel himself had put up shop in this local office tower. Aside from the armed guards, it was easy enough to get in on active camo and sneak into the colonel's office while he was.. well, on "break" with one of his lady friends. I accessed his terminal and put the whole conversation log on the main display. Then I dropped a few clues for his secretary to pick up. I even stayed behind to make sure that she called the ISB on him. After I made sure that he wasn't going to be bothering anyone for a while, I got out of there. Not bad for a day's work, though active camo's nearly out of juice, don't ask me for any infiltration missions for the next 72 hours if possible." Another silence, Lans hoped that Bannockburn wasn't on the other end, looking up the "terminate service" button under his personnel profile. Bucolic life as a normal citizen of the Cyberforum didn't appeal to Lans one bit, not any more. "Alright, well done St0rmb0t. You're on free range for the next 96 hours. Keeps your ears open and your eyes peeled for anything new, but if you don't have anything, you're up to your own devices. This is the closest thing you're going to get to leave, so enjoy it." Lans paused for a moment, wondering if that was a reward or a punishment. It wasn't as if there was much to do on the entire damned planet save foil the plots of ambitious Martian and Pleiadian officers. "Thank you sir." "That's all, dismissed." As the channel closed, Lans depolarized his window, staring back at the blood red sunset and the sprawling, smog choked abomination of ruin and decay below it. The place hadn't been so bad before, but now that he had nothing to do... "Leave huh? Wish you were here." ...and I wasn't... |
   -----Smexy-----|----Smartass----|-----...Zeth----- Spambot Kills: x60 | |
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| Inuit | Jun 23 2009, 04:56 PM Post #4 |
You will be one with Mother Russia, da?
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Charlotte lounged at the kitchen counter and sipped at some gin while she mixed tonic water into it. A slice of lemon dribbled juice onto the side of the glass as Charlotte stuck it neatly over the side and then sipped, sighing gratefully as she made an extra one and stuck it in the fridge. Gin and tonic was the perfect solution to aching muscles and anxiety, and she had plenty of both. It'd been a hard day at the studio; opening night was only a few weeks away, and they were only halfway ready. She knew everything would be fine when dress rehearsals came; they always were. She just wished she 'd stop worrying about it. Still sipping at her drink, Charlotte moved into the small pantry and ran her fingers over the dozen or so bottles of wine she kept on the rack at the far wall. She stopped at a nice red merlot and its white counterpart before pushing the white merlot back into its slot and pulling out the red. She had some nice grilled steak left over from the night before- it'd mix well with the versatile wine. There were things for salad in the fridge. With the rest of the apple pie, they'd have a good supper tomorrow. "They" being Julia and her, of course. It'd been some time since Julia had moved in with her, and Charlotte was quite comfortable to the arrangement now. The older woman was good company, and it was good to have someone around who had gone through the same ordeal as Charlotte. Charlotte wasn't weak, but she was still haunted by dreams where Steven grabbed her arm as she escaped with Julia from the ship, and then she pushed him away, so that he slid into the flames, screaming. It hadn't happened like that, she knew, but she still felt like she'd killed him. She focused on her dancing, and she was much better than the first few months after the crash, when she stumbled around sleeplessly and cried at the littlest thing, but she'd started drinking a lot more since she'd gotten home. It was better than drugs or therapy, and anyway, she had Julia. A loud call came from the door, and Charlotte grinned wryly. Speak of the devil, and he shall come. "Hey Julia. I'm in the pantry, I made a gin and tonic for you if you want it, it's in the fridge." Putting the merlot back, Charlotte poked her head into the coatroom and waved before heading back into the kitchen. She'd finish her gin and tonic, bake some cookies, and then head to bed. It'd been a long day. |
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| Another Random Geek | Jun 24 2009, 02:57 PM Post #5 |
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Chapter Master of the Blood Angels
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After a long day of fruitless labor, Martin returned his hotel room, ordered an extravagant dinner from room service, left an extremely generous tip, and watched three old holofilms from his youth on pay-per-view, (All paid for by the Pleadian Government, thank you very much!) before going to bed. He was getting old, and the months of bickering with the Communists had worn him out. At least the Martians unexpected temporary withdrawal from negotiations gave him a few weeks reprieve. He could have a few nice meals, go out and see a movie, maybe write another chapter or two in his memoirs, and generally relax in the perfect safety of the area of the planet designated by the Pleadian military as the "Green Zone." Martin smiled to himself, as he drifted off to sleep. The next few weeks were going to be good ones. |
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| dinowoman | Jun 24 2009, 06:23 PM Post #6 |
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Living Fossil
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"That sounds like just what I need," Julia sighed. She followed Charlotte into the kitchen and retrieved the drink from the fridge. "You know me too well," she grinned. She yawned and leaned lazily against the counter, crossing her feet in front of her. "I'll be glad when I can finally get away from that bar," she began. "I swear the clientele of that place get dodgier by the day. If I didn't know I'd get fired, I'd be tempted to give some of 'em a good swipe upside the head. And I'm sure some of the latest arrivals are spies. Still, I've managed to find a few people keen to buy stuff off me, so I suppose I can't complain. Made a couple of hundred SPC on the side today. I'll keep half to pay for more supplies. But here. Have the other half towards expenses." She ferreted in a trouser pocket and produced her little combined communicator and data device. A few taps on the keypad and she was done. "There. A hundred SPC have gone into your account." She looked up with an expression of satisfaction on her face. "So, how's your day been?" |
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| Experiment 1337 | Jun 25 2009, 10:10 AM Post #7 |
Can't see an invisible ninja.
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Ryan unlocked the door and stepped into his small apartment. He hung his coat and hat on the back of his apartment door, started some coffee, and then sat down, rubbing his eyes. It had been a long, long day. Filled with meetings. Interviews. Annoying people wanting to hire him, but for too little. "What's so hard about understanding $35 an hour?" he growled, frustrated with the world. "They try to haggle me and haggle me and haggle me, trying to drop my rates, even though the ad says '$35 an hour.' I swear, I'm gonna kill some of those bastards." He heard the coffee ding, went into the kitchen, and poured himself a cup. He sipped it slowly, its amazing warmth seeping down his throat and slowly thawing his limbs. It was much, much too cold outside. |
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Releasing control art restriction systems 3… 2… 1. Approval of Situation A recognized. Commencing the Cromwell Invocation. Ability restrictions lifted for limited use until the enemy has been rendered silent. I have no name, only a bar code. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword...when launched out of a rail gun. By day, test subject. By night, ninja. Nightcrawler is the original BAMF. I'm just a fig newton of your imagination. Blink and you're dead. | |
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| Inuit | Jun 25 2009, 09:10 PM Post #8 |
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You will be one with Mother Russia, da?
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Charlotte smiled. "Thanks. I have plenty of money for bills, but now I'll be able to put aside some more extra money." Rolling her shoulders, she downed another gulp of her drink, and shrugged. "Same old, same old. People are getting pretty high-strung, but that's normal." Looking down, Charlotte realized that she was still wearing her jacket over her tanktop, and shrugged it off. Normally she kept it on at all times, but it was hot in the apartment. Slinging it over her arm, she frowned at Charlotte's odd expression, and then relaxed. "Oh, I forgot I hadn't told you about my scars." Looking down, Charlotte pulled up the neck of her shirt to cover the edges of the dark maroon scars that rippled over her torso and right side, and peeked up onto her collarbone. Just the remnants of an old fire, a reminder that life was all too fragile. Shaking her head, Charlotte shrugged, and took another sip of her drink. She didn't want to get onto that line of thought; it wouldn't be good for her health. |
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~Invading your vital regions | |
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| Another Random Geek | Jun 25 2009, 09:50 PM Post #9 |
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Chapter Master of the Blood Angels
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Knock...Knock...Knock... Martin willed his eyes to stay shut. He was tired, and he wasn't getting up. Knock...Knock...Knock... "Can't a person get some sleep around here?!" he yelled at whoever was knocking the door. "I'm sorry sir, but it's very important," said the person outside his room, "I'm with Pleiades Intelligence and Security." "PIS can piss off. I've always received my daily briefings at ten in the morning. What's so important right now?" "We will have to discuss it in private." "Fine, I'm opening the door," relented Martin, as he got out of bed, and let the midnight visitor in. Edited by Another Random Geek, Jun 25 2009, 09:52 PM.
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| dinowoman | Jun 28 2009, 08:43 AM Post #10 |
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Living Fossil
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Julia wanted to ask Charlotte how she had come by the scars. She had noticed before that the young woman always kept herself well-covered, but she had just taken it to mean she felt the cold. She was about to say something, but the way Charlotte adjusted her shirt as soon as she realised Julia had noticed suggested she felt self-conscious about them. Julia decided it might be tactful not to be too inquisitive. "Sorry. Didn't mean to make you feel uncomfortable," she apologised. "I've just never seen you without your jacket before." She could always ask at another time, when the circumstances seemed more appropriate. She yawned again, and gulped down the rest of her drink. "Well, I think I'll go take a shower and then head off to bed. I'm feeling really knackered tonight. See you in the morning." Disappearing out the kitchen door, she made her way to the tiny spare room that Charlotte had provided for her. There was barely enough space for a bed and a chest of drawers, but it was adequate for her needs, and easily held the few clothes and possessions that she'd managed to afford since getting the part-time job at the bar. She grabbed a bathrobe and headed into the bathroom. The warm water of the shower felt soothing on her skin. She had been feeling increasingly uptight recently, which was unusual for her. The atmosphere at the bar had definitely become more unsettled. People seemed more aggressive, especially after a few drinks, and drunken brawls were becoming commonplace. It was as though everyone was suspicious of everyone else. Charlotte was right: people were high-strung. She couldn't put her finger on it precisely, but she had a definite feeling that something was afoot - more so than the general political unease of the last six months. Once her evening ablutions were complete, Julia pulled on the bathrobe, threw her sweaty, smoke-tainted clothes in the laundry basket, and returned to her room, where, without waiting for her hair to dry, she climbed into bed and soon fell into an uneasy sleep |
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| Another Random Geek | Jun 28 2009, 09:57 PM Post #11 |
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Chapter Master of the Blood Angels
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When Martin opened the door, he was greeted by a rather hard punch to the face that promptly knocked him unconscious. When he woke up, he found himself in a rather grimy dark place, roughly tied an extremely uncomfortable chair. This, Martin supposed, is why his mother told him to never talk to strangers. “Ah… Mr. Carlson, you are awake,” came a menacing voice from somewhere in the room. Martin considered saying something defiant, but came to the conclusion that it was wiser to keep his mouth shut, as he was an older gentlemen, with a minimal pain threshold. “You have no idea how pleased we are to have you,” continued the voice, which was apparently giving some sort of villainous exposition speech. “I hope you find your environment pleasant..” Actually, Martin found the environment extremely unpleasant, but his captor seemed to have an inexplicable urge to reveal his plans, so the diplomat wisely decided to keep quiet. “You see, your capture has convinced the Pleadian government that the Martians are not interested in negotiations, while the Martians think the Pleadains framed them in order to provide a Casus Belli. The inevitable escalation has caused my employers’ economies to skyrocket from the increased demand for iron, steel, uranium, plastic, and other materials needed to fight an interplanetary war.” Martin couldn’t help but point out that the odds of his successor’s plans actually working seemed pretty slim. “My dear Martin,” came the laughing response, “Why do you think I have been speaking in the past tense. It already has succeeded. Both factions have committed to total war on XSP-10,947, and the fighting is spreading to nearby worlds. We’ve kept you unconscious for three and a half weeks. I just woke you up to gloat.” Shit. “Who is the “we” you are referring to?” asked Martin, hoping for some more information. “Please, give me some credit, Martin. We aren’t going to tell you anything important. We’re just going to rough you up some more, plant some evidence that says the Martians did it, and be on our way.” ___________________________________________________________________________________ A few days later, a bruised and unconscious Martin was found in a dumpster next to the Pleadian embassy, with a hammer and sickle branded on his forearm. Also found in the dumpster were a discarded pack of Martian cigarettes, and a few scraps of cloth that were identified as fragments of a Martian uniform. When Martin regained consciousness in an Urgent Treatment Center, he attempted to tell others what happened, but only got sympathetic looks. The evidence, he was informed, firmly pointed towards Martian involvement, and the Communists were known to play mind games with their prisoners. Still, Martin remained unconvinced, and resolved to investigate matters once he got out of the hospital. |
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| Cataphrak | Jun 28 2009, 10:33 PM Post #12 |
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Shut up, I know what I'm doing.
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((Erhm... I wasn't expecting something so... drastic, but yeah, I can work with that.)) "St0rmb0t, this is Facepalm." Lans looked up at the incoming comm message. "Shit, what is it now?" This time, Lans was in a local tournament, and he was, as the ancients would have said, "pwning teh nubz". He was leading by six kills in the final round and there was no way in dev-hell that he was going to let the 2000 Pleiadian dollars in prize money slip away. The New Karelian Agent barreled his avatar down a hallway, unlike his player, St0rmb0t, the avatar, not the person, was a big barrelchested man with red hair and impossibly large biceps, decked out in the best body armour and weaponry that micro-transactions could buy. Chainsaw in hand, he skidded down a corner, the whirring blades of his virtual weapon extended, cutting open the abdomen of a "hidden" opponent with a spray of blood and guts. Leading by seven, need three more to win... "St0rmb0t, this is important." St0rmb0t skidded shoulder first across the hallway. With the deft flick of his fingers, Lans switched weapons as the deathmatch game's somewhat wonky physics engine overcompensated for his skid, again, and tossed him right through the door on the other side of the corridor, his armoured shoulder ripping it open as if it were wet paper. Two black suited goons were on opposite sides of the room, too busy plugging away at each other to notice the intrusion. Lans hammered his fire key, a stream of gauss rifle rounds buzzsawed both of the other avatars and half of the room's furniture into pieces. One more... "What is it?" "You remember Martin Carlson?" "Yeah, the Pleiadian diplomat, got nabbed a few days ago. They found his body yet?" Lans instinctively ducked as the sound of an incoming rocket blared in his ears. Spinning around and over, he was just quick enough to get to cover as the RPG warhead filled the room with red-hot shrapnel. Lans swore as his field of vision began to fringe with red. Health regen was off, one more hit and he'd lose valuable fragging time to the respawn counter, giving his rivals ample time to eat at his lead, or worse, take it away altogether. He focused, the smoke trail from the heavy weapon's passage still hung oppressively over the room. The New Karelian swapped weapons again, to the sniper rifle. He knew where his attacker was, or at least, he hoped he knew. Well, here goes nothing. As the ancients used to say; LEEROOOOY!! M'JEEEENKIIINS! St0rmb0t vaulted over the pile of debris into the smoke trail, once he was out, he was fully exposed, if this shot didn't win him the match, he was hosed. A split second later, he was in midair, his rifle came out, scope to the avatar's eye, to Lans' camera. He guessed and he held his breath. His finger pressing down on the fire key felt like the very hammer of the gods crashing down on the puny kingdoms below. "HEADSHOT!" The field of view filtered away as the final scoreboard took its place. Lans was the undisputed winner. "Damn, I'm good." "Carlson St0rmbot, focus!" "I was Facepalm." From the sounds coming from the other side of the link, Lans' contact was certainly living up to her username. "Forget it. Anyways, They found Carlson, and he's alive." "Any signs to the 'nappers?" "Yeah, enough Martian agitprop to run a vid station. You thinking what I'm thinking?" "Frame-up?" "Of course." Lans tapped away a hasty goodbye and copied in his previously prepared acceptance and victory speech. He didn't have time to chat, he had work to do. "St0rmb0t, I want you to find Carlson and talk to him." Lans was already out the door, the only things he left behind were a few hasty words over his shoulder. "On my way, close link." Edited by Cataphrak, Jun 28 2009, 10:55 PM.
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-----Smexy-----|----Smartass----|-----...Zeth----- Spambot Kills: x60 | |
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| Another Random Geek | Jun 28 2009, 11:04 PM Post #13 |
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Chapter Master of the Blood Angels
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(OOC: Yes it was drastic, bordering on stupid. But for me to develop things as slowly as I wanted to would have would have required several more posts, which, for the most part, would have forced everyone, as 1337 so aptly said, to sip on their coffee and wait. I sort of had a revelation, and realized that I'm running an RP, but I was setting things up like a novel [IE: Really slowly.] To keep interest up, I pulled something out of my ass and hoped for the best. I would have taken my time if it were not for the fact that RPs on this site die rather quickly when posts begin to drop off. [See "Freikorps Soriee," "Nothing is What it Seems"] Again, my apologies.) "Visitor for you Mr. Carlson," said a sour-faced nurse, who rudely shoved the guest in, before waddling away. "Do I know you?" Martin asked the wiry olive skinned stranger. Edited by Another Random Geek, Jun 28 2009, 11:22 PM.
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| Cataphrak | Jun 29 2009, 12:34 AM Post #14 |
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Shut up, I know what I'm doing.
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(No problem, the only reason IB is still alive is because I can berate the RPers over MSN.  ))"No, no you don't." Lans hooked up his neuro-comp to the nearest commhub. After setting up a few quick barriers, he looked up the best open source translation program he could find, before loading up the database of languages stored in the vast memory of his head mounted nanocomputer frame. [DATABASE SEARCH> -Pleiadian [CLARIFY] -Diplomatic Langue, Tags: Foreign Affairs, High Strand, Encryption, Top-Secret or Higher. [SEACRHING...] [ENTRY FOUND: Encryption Sequence CUNARIS-SIX, UPLOADING TO TRANSLATION PROGRAM...] He looked around the tiny hospital room, there were listening devices of course, which was why Lans bothered to turn on his personal ECM suite beforehand. The bugs would get nothing but white noise and a particularly delightful 2nd millennium thrash-metal band he had found, the cameras would be lucky to get anything. He swept it to make sure that there were no more obvious eaves droppers. It was clear, the windows were closed, as was the door, and nobody's heat sigs stood out from the other side of the walls. [UPLOAD COMPLETE] Lans winced, Cunaris-Six was entirely based on metaphor, historical metaphor at that. The New Karelian agent deperately hopes his unconventional education was up to the task. "When Tarquin Superbus got driven out of Rome, what god do you think he worshiped?" That rather unwieldy question masked a far more straighforward one. Cunaris-six WAS awkward, but Lans honestly doubted that anyone who didn't have a good classical educations could have decoded it. Even if Carlson didn't understand the entirety of the message, in his context, he would be able to understand it well enough: Who kidnapped you? |
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-----Smexy-----|----Smartass----|-----...Zeth----- Spambot Kills: x60 | |
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| dinowoman | Jun 29 2009, 10:55 AM Post #15 |
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Living Fossil
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Julia stood behind the bar, pulling pints for the few regulars who were still coming in. Things were very different in the place now. Her misgivings had proven to be well founded. The kidapping of the diplomat called Carlson had been the catalyst that had sent relations on XSP-10,947 cascading from a very uneasy peace into actual war. Many of the bar's patrons had disappeared, either recalled to fight or provide support for their respective military organisations, or moved away. Already, skirmishes had broken out in various locations. At this rate it would only be a matter of time before one side or the other launched an attack that would most likely bring about the end of civilisation on this miserable planet. So far, this area had been free of fighting, but there was quite a decent sized Pleiadean population here and Julia didn't hold out much hope of it remaining unscathed for long. She and Charlotte really needed to sit down and make plans. If she still had her ship, Julia would have recommended getting away from this entire region of space, but that wouldn't prove so easy if they had to rely on the commercial transport companies. Not only was long-distance travel very expensive, but so many of the planet's civilian population were trying to get away that seats were booked up weeks in advance. But whatever they decided to do, staying right here for much longer didn't strike her as a very wise idea. |
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5:03 PM Mar 20
