Author Topic: High End IC Episode II-At the End of the Time Which Can Never Be Returned to  (Read 52375 times)

Offline oslecamo

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:”...A $hip captªin?”

:”Whitel@w exis+s for r&al?”

:”Is th!s an &lectric dre@m?”

:”Pleªse c@ptain me Damariuç!”

:”Nº, Damariu$ mi^e!”

:”Back ºff, I $canned D#marius f*rst!”

:”Nev$rmind that, firs+ we n$ed to tªke ou+ that st%pid sh!p!”

:“Ye@h, how dar& +hat Bastiºn bitçh ke~p Dam#rius aLl to her§elf!”

Several of the ships start slowly turning and advancing towards Bastion, old weapon systems coming to life with sparks, although many others hang back.

:”Their sadness! It’s turning to envy and hate! They’ve been drowned in bitterness so long they’re desperate! You need to be really careful with your words!”

“Or beat some sense in them. Bastion should show who the alpha queen flagship of the fleet is.“

Offline Kuroimaken

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"That defeats the point, Nei! All it'd give them is a different object to be angry and envious about!"

Thinking quickly, Hugo takes the comms.

"Now ladies, be reasonable! Damarius Whitelaw wants all of you to know his love, but he can't very well do that if he's blown to bits. You don't want to appear unsightly before your new captain, do you?

I'm sure you have your pride as ships, and you'd only want to look your best to the one man you think the world of in the vastness of the universe."
Kami darou ga akuma darou ga, ore no michi ni tateru mono NASHI!!

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Offline Raineh Daze

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 "Well, jealous rage is an unexpected reaction..."

Offline Nanshork

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Damarius wants to avoid a fight if he can help it, but he's not sure if treating these ships as lovelorn women is the way to go.

"I can only pilot one ship at a time.  Are you going to fight each other too?  Bastion does not have a sentient AI so she is not 'keeping me to herself', she is my home as well as the home of a couple thousand people and the berth of two more ships.  Regardless, she is mine and I will not let you destroy her. 

Have you forgotten that true Captains go down with their ships?  If you destroy Bastion then you destroy me as well, and I doubt another captain will be by any time soon."


(click to show/hide)

Offline oslecamo

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One by one, the battleships pause their advance, weapons powering down.

:”…We w&re abºut to mAke a big mi$take.”

:”Dam@rius wouLd di& wi+h Bastiºn. A çaptain amo^g capta!ns.”

:”Bu# ou« oWn cªptains an* crew$ abandon&d us, lef+ us @lone.”

:”We wan+ t«ue creWs and capt@ins toO! We neEd t»ue c<ews and capt~ins!”

:”Bu+ they dºn’t ne&d to be ve*y biG crewS. If Bastiºn has a cRew of two thousªnd, sur^ly she can s>are so~e of tHem?

:”We’re preTty autºmated, we doN’t ne´d a lot of creW. A jun!or captai^ and a few aide$ for eaçh of us woUld alrea%y be puRe bli$s. SureLy you ha^e soMe niçe tal&nted ofFicers deserv^ng of a promºtion and who wouLd l!ke to hªve their own batTleship, ri#ht?”

Offline Kuroimaken

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"...damn. That was pretty impressive." Hugo offers in admittance.

Away from the mic, he pulls Damarius over for a second.

"I can make magical, identical copies of two to three of your officers a day if we hang out here for a few. They'll only be about half as effective as the real thing, but that's an alternative in case you really don't want to spare anybody."

Ah, the joys of Shadow Miracles.

"I hate to interrupt what is certain to be a joyous occasion for all involved, your ladyships, but I was hoping you could tell us if anything important has happened in this area of late." ...and why the apparently coherent 'leader' of their group has suddenly fallen silent, but he chooses not to voice that at this time.
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Offline Nanshork

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As an aside to Hugo, Damarius says with a smirk, "It's all true, pure ships don't have escape pods so I wouldn't have much of a choice but to go down with Bastion."

He then lets Hugo take the comms while he walks to an unoccupied corner and starts quickly communicating with his crew.

(click to show/hide)

Offline oslecamo

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"I hate to interrupt what is certain to be a joyous occasion for all involved, your ladyships, but I was hoping you could tell us if anything important has happened in this area of late." ...and why the apparently coherent 'leader' of their group has suddenly fallen silent, but he chooses not to voice that at this time.

:”Dªmarius ar#ived of c0urse!”

:”Wai+, ma$be th&y mea^t befoRe th@t?”

:”Our dªta reco<ders are nºt as gooD as the! us&d to be….”

:”Four other mecha showed up here  twenty five hours, twenty and one minutes, 5587232 miliseconds  ago, unidades terrestres. I’ll send you photon pics”

(click to show/hide)

:”Oh, ye@h thºse one$. Not capt@ins. Not enouGh for a cr&w.”

:”But th&y did ask sºmething, righ+?”


:”Did t#ey? Can’t reme~ber wHat.”


:”They were looking for some ‘Amaterasu’ mecha. Big body, big wings. Lots of leaking nuclear radiation, an unique energy signature. ”

(click to show/hide)

Offline Kuroimaken

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Hugo is getting kind of tired at this game of "good news, bad news". He took the time to step away from the comms for a moment.

"Crap. I remember at least one of those guys being bad news. Murasaki, can you pull the data we got back when Nei came aboard, if you'd be so kind?"

Damarius, I know you work with tons of people, but do you really have enough crew to work with all of these AIs? I know we rushed here because of the danger the Phantom Fleet posed given the circumstances, but I honestly did not expect us to be shorthanded. Think you could reach out to some trustworthy people for a longer term revitalization project? I'm putting together some plans, and I think we might be able to do more for these girls than that. But I don't want to make any promises on your behalf and my contact network is a bit on the shadier side."


Which reminds him, he really needs to contact the three sisters for their progress report sometime soon.
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Offline Nanshork

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After going through his crew records and the sensor logs Damarius looks a little overwhelmed.

"Maybe?  There are too many ships here for me to get a basic crew to all of them.  I can help most but The White Company would be effectively disbanded and my own crew would be severely short-handed and have some combat penalties until I can get replacement crew members, which would take me a while through normal channels.

Any ships that are left without a crew will not respond well.  I didn't realize there would be so many of them, they truly are a fleet..."

I'm not sure who I would reach out to that I would trust with something like this though.

Offline Raineh Daze

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 "Now, why were they looking for me out here...?" Amaterasu wonders, breaking radio silence,  "Though I have to apologise for their inaccuracy, I'm not that much of a mecha, or that big by your standards."

Offline Kuroimaken

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"We can't risk leaving enough of them upset here, and even at my best I can only crank out crew doubles once every 2 days or so. Leaving the job half-finished might just be worse than leaving it undone at all.

We're going to have to compromise on one aspect or the other. Either we fill out the ranks with some people we mistrust, or we burn extra time finding these ships some good crew.

We could try enlisting the Einst Queen's aid for repairs. That'd buy us some time to find even small crews for all these ships. We might have to ask some of the ships to go with her, even. But trying to stall them while giving some ships a crew and leaving others behind is going to be worse, I think. If we reach out to humanitarian organizations, we could even refit some of these ships for rescue jobs.

And Ammy... no offense but to the average humanoid you ARE mecha-sized. Although I wouldn't know what that means to a ship."
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Offline Raineh Daze

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 "Was mecha-sized. I'm not that big any more; if I grew like that it would probably be some sort of supernova." Sure, she was still taller than your average humanoid by a decent amount, but she'd never really gone around at full size much if she could help it. People didn't size most rooms for mecha.

Offline oslecamo

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: "I know many pirates who would love some new ships once we explain them this place isn't haunted after all and how to safely get here. Although, well, they're pirates. And not the 'we just want freedom and finding lost treasures' kind. More of the 'raid, loot and kill' type of pirates."

"Crap. I remember at least one of those guys being bad news. Murasaki, can you pull the data we got back when Nei came aboard, if you'd be so kind?"

:"Certainly, master Lotushand."

(click to show/hide)
:"Remember you can easily check the Recovered Records which I've been keeping updated at any time from your terminals by pressing +."

Offline Kuroimaken

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"Not gonna happen, Nei. We're trying to repurpose these girls, not just hand them off to whomever comes along.

The AA is obviously not an option. Looking into all this future stuff is already above my paygrade, and I have a feeling I'll have to hand in my resignation somewhat soon.

Although there is at least one thing they can do for us."


Hugo quickly types off a photonmail to one of his superior officers. "Found possible lead on the attacks in the black market. Requesting fact-finding and scouting mission on these coordinates. There's a possibility the site is active so leaving to your discretion whether to send in assault squad or sticking to stealth and recon, caution advised."

"Alright, that gives the AA something to do while they think I'm actually working. Kath, see if Arodatam has got anyone on the sentient side that could help us man and crew these ships. She's probably got drones aplenty to spare, but someone that can think for themselves would be ideal.

Steph, any of your research buddies ever wanted his or her own mode of transportation to and from research sites, now is the time.

I'm gonna look into humanitarian organizations that could use some beefy transportation and might not mind doing some repair work for their trouble.

Damarius, sorry to impose on you for so much... but if you can look into fellow companies you can trust, that'd be great. We also need to check into how many people we're actually going to need for this, and the ships trust you more than anybody. Might be a good idea to run some scans on them, too - there's a good chance there's been some programming corruption on them over the years. If it's systemic, we could be dealing with someone deliberately turning this ship graveyard into a haunted house. And if so we'll need to stop them.

Murasaki, you're with me. I'm going to need you to report to the Queen about the situation. She could have some interesting insights on this and I'm sure she wouldn't mind a new toy or twelve."
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Offline ketaro

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"Mmmm.....I guess I could talk to Arodatam." Katherine mumbled. She'd been rather lazily lounging in her mecha's cockpit for much of the conversation rather checked out of it. Behaving. Apparently everyone needed bodies to fill these ships with to tame them, so to speak, now. Ah, thinking of it, she supposed she did have one place to offer up besides asking her own self for help. "Siiigh Anyways, I could ask the Church of Light if you want. I guess I could say we're pretty close, and they're not rabid, murderous pirates like was offered..." she called back to Hugo, sounding rather tired. Or probably just bored. A few moments pass before she pipes in again. "By the way, I can't seem to get any signal out here for that message..."
« Last Edit: July 21, 2019, 06:54:11 PM by ketaro »

Offline Nanshork

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Damarius snorts.  "If there were companies out there that I trusted then I wouldn't have run off into this mess all by myself."

He then does some quick calculations.  "Roughly 2,000 people are needed.  The White Company has 164 members, excluding myself but including Michael," he points at his bodyguard/right hand man.  "Rougly 1,800 of my crew can be sent which would leave Bastion with a skeleton crew and be mostly useless until I can recruit."

He laughs.  "We're not that short....wait.  I have an idea, let me think for a minute."

Offline YuweaCurtis

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Having been tweaking with her armor Steph chimes in when Hugo addresses her, sounding amused. "You must not know my family's reputation well. We tend not to have friends, we typically don't get along well with others. And we tend to push the envelope further than most people with a sense of morality would care for. However, Team Silver is as much as a humanitarian organization as it i a group of mercenaries. If not more so. They could use some for sure." She would go silent for a few minutes, the sounds of small metal and sparks in the background. "I guess there is one place that could use plenty of ships," Her voice was unsure... or least undecided. "There's a planet I'm uh, responsible for, that could use some form of space travel. As far as repairs, me and Rin can both work on the software the ship itself. I mean there's only two of us and we only have so many resources. Rin, please run diagnostics on them and make preparations for repairs." "I'm already on it. Mr. Damarius, let us out if you would." the android asks, undocking so she could go outside of Bastion.

Offline Nanshork

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Damarius lets the ship out absentmindedly.

"Ships, I believe that I can crew you all if that is what you wish," he says still pondering.

Offline Kuroimaken

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Hugo just perks an eyebrow. He's sure Damarius has a reason for making such a bold statement, he just can't see right away if it's feasible.
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