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Carl "I'm saying we have not very long to even keep that option on the table. Get it started, and we have time to think and plan."
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Feb 10, 2018 03:15
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 20:31 |
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Singh Singh nods, acquiescing. "Fair enough." He flicks a command to the lifters to start their burn back to Outsider space.
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Feb 10, 2018 19:13
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On Course? The comet shudders and begins to move away from the transport as the lifters begin their job. As the engines reach maximum thrust the shuddering continues, causing the netting to flex and tighten as chunks of cometary material come loose. The inertial monitors on the lifters begin to sound warning klaxons as the comet rips itself clear of the clamps and tries to shed the netting with violent shaking motions. The comet comes apart in a loose cloud of ice chunks, revealing the artifact in the center through the debris. The alien craft fires its own engines, vaporizing much of the comet in a massive antimatter torch and slamming into the edge of the net. The net holds fast for now, but it's only a matter of time before the craft spins its engines around and cuts through the carbon fiber.
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Feb 10, 2018 19:29
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Scratch that, was working that post up when GM post went up.
Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Feb 10, 2018 |
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Feb 10, 2018 19:57
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Carl Swearing an old Belter oath, the pilot snarled, "Musk's Roadster! That thing is live! It's active! The hell is it? How can we shut it down? Can we communicate?" His hands were sure on the controls: It looked like they might need to get some manoeuvring done.
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Feb 10, 2018 21:28
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  "There goes being quiet," Teresa says, hands flying across the controls. She looks for anything transmitting off the alien ship while also trying to establish contact with it herself. "Get us close. I'll do what I can here, but I'd wager we'll need to board it." ECM/ECCM (coms/hacking): 4dF+3 6
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Feb 10, 2018 23:53
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Carl "Aye aye. Matching trajectory and orientation for deployment, mirroring positional adjustments. All hands, brace for manoeuvre!" Pilot to move the Vulgar Display of Power closer and match the alien's moves: 4dF+4 5
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Feb 11, 2018 03:01
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Escape Attempt The alien spacecraft pivots within the netting, sending antimatter spraying through the void. Laser beams scatter in the dark as the alien machinery sends transmission after transmission into the outer dark, the contents incomprehensible due to alien language or deep encryption or both. The SRAU computers start analyzing the transmission, comparing the signal to known data. Information on alien cultures, especially precursor ones, is sparse, but the data doesn't match anything on the public net. AI translation is possible in theory, although it takes time. Meanwhile the alien ship has cut engines and coasted back into the netting, sending more laser transmissions to destinations that no longer exist. Matching velocities to the craft takes a few moments, as the antimatter fueled drive is more powerful than the fusion engines humanity uses. After a moment the alien spacecraft appears to power down completely, the lifters resuming their thrust profile to move the ship and the cloud of debris back into Outsider territory.
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Feb 11, 2018 03:19
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Livvy Stuck in her cockpit and unable to do much, Liv was more or less at the mercy of the sudden action. Her sympathetic connection almost overwhelmed her as the alien craft burst free from the asteroid and Scorpion Dreaming's aggression at the sudden appearance of an unknown ramped up. For a moment all she wanted to do was launch and open fire, or better yet to close in and tear it apart. "What the hell just happened!? I've got minimal feeds in here. Tell me we're recording everything, at least!" Contact like this could fetch a hell of a bounty with the Outsider research stations if they got the raw data to back it up.
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Feb 11, 2018 03:52
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Singh "It's the future, baby, everyone's always recording everything." Singh gawks at the alien craft even as he quips about it. After a moment, he adds, "Whatever was inside has busted loose. It looks stuck but only in the way the tiger looks stuck in the rabbit trap you set." He flicks a command to the bay doors, clearing Scorpion Dreaming for launch. "We need to learn something, like, ASAP, so Livvy, do you wanna do some recon on this thing? It's pissed off, and armed, but we don't know anything about it. And try," he says, voice cracking very slightly, "not to look threatening. You get to be the first person to potentially botch interstellar diplomacy." He spends a minute looking at the frequencies used by the craft, then finds a way to transmit a beep, then starts sending a sequence of primes as clusters of 'on' signals. "This is ridiculous," he mutters, "but we don't even know if it thinks we're sentient." One... Two... Three... Five... Seven...
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Feb 13, 2018 00:02
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Livvy The highborn responds in probably the least helpful manner and cackles as she punches the thrust to fire up the A-pods and launch. Scorpion Dreaming's reckless enthusiasm for carnage seems to be in the pilot seat at the moment, but Livvy soon masters herself. Her biomech moves in the random darting pattern it favors when running evasive during the approach toward the alien craft. It coils up, pulling its tail in close, before seeming to 'leap' through open space with its anti-grav pods firing. The bizarre ballet could almost be thought of as a particularly acrobatic athlete kicking off underwater obstacles at they swim. "Alright, I'm good. Feed me sensor data. If I have to move, I want to know about it before it happens." Trying to scramble the alien craft's sensors, for all the good that'll do ECM/ECCM +1: 4dF+1 0
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Feb 15, 2018 18:31
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 "Keep an eye out. Half the system saw that antimatter thrust plume. Someone will be coming to take a look." Teresa has the computer map the coordinates the alien vessel tried to send signals to, then unstraps to head down to board her mecha. "Speaking of looks, I want a closer one. Maybe find a way inside." The Red Devil's cockpit is typical for an Outsider design, a spherical space with a skeletal crash couch for the pilot. As it powers up, AR screens surround her, showing status displays as the systems come on line. As the startup completes, they successively shift to external views, until the entire inside of the cockpit is effectively rendered transparent. Holographic indicators and displays pop into existence, floating in the space around her. "Red Devil, launching." Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Feb 15, 2018 |
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Feb 15, 2018 19:46
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A New Complication As the SRAUs launch, the alien artifact somehow takes notice, perhaps via advanced passive sensors or wavelengths that solar technology cannot yet detect. A hatch appears and opens on one side, propelling outwards a roughly humanoid robot of the same scale as the SRAU, except it has four legs and six arms. Each arm bristles with short spikes that are probably weaponry of some sort, and the whole thing is painted a garish blood red, almost glistening in the starlight.
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Feb 21, 2018 22:25
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Livvy "We got bogies! I'm going evasive!" Livvy pulls the Scorpion Dreaming into a wide arc as it twists and writhes to change its profile. The biomech can contort itself surprisingly, and disturbingly, into very odd positions to confuse sensors. Scramble +3: 4dF+3 4
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Feb 24, 2018 05:41
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Teresa breaks the other way as Livvy dives away, but even if her Red Devil had been as fast as the biomech, Teresa is more focused on her scanners than the maneuver controls. She tries to get a good lock on the enemy, looking for weak points or at least a measure of its likely capabilities. "Half a million years and it's still active. It can't be a living pilot - can it?" Trying to put the aspect Tagged on the enemy mech. Create an Advantage (ECCM+3): 4dF+3 3
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Feb 26, 2018 05:32
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Carl “Opfor SRAU, unknown design! Locking in the Veedop’s armament! What’s our tacsit?” Carl woke the tracking algorithms on the ship’s weapon systems, but held off on firing without clearer intel. Shooting +3 to tag with the aspect “Vulgar Display of Power’s battery locked on” Create aspect ‘VDoP’s Battery locked on’: 4dF+3 3
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Feb 26, 2018 08:51
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Singh Singh had gotten his answer, at least, as the bizarre figure made its way out of the ship towards the others observing it. He makes sure one of the Vulgar Display's cameras was focused on it and tracking its movements, and looked over what - meager - information his ship could tell him. "The larger craft has stopped reactionary maneuvers," he notes, though that much is obvious. "It's waiting to see what we're doing. Do we have anything to work with...?" The last comment is to himself, looking over the sensor data that, the display informed him, didn't conform even remotely to anything in its quite extensive database. He starts broadly, dumping characteristic features of the frequency of the antimatter bursts, the heat profile of the ship itself - making some sense of what little they knew so far, to be able to react in some small way to their opponent if it did attack. Craft 4dF+4 = 3 to make the sensor data useful Is it okay to use Craft like this? There's some debate about how to handle computery stuff in Fate.
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Feb 27, 2018 02:17
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First Encounter The alien SRAU-like dashes forward and stretches its tentacular limbs out towards the Scorpion Dreaming, which barely evades. Targeting lasers and radar paint the machine(?) from the Red Devil as autocannons aboard the transport begin using the sensor data to form a firing solution. Meanwhile Singh begins the analysis of the copious amounts of data they've gathered so far. He makes some progress, discovering the antimatter reaction is highly efficient and uses hydrogen fuel similar to the that used by conventional fusion drives along with the antimatter. In order to withstand the heat of the reaction the ship must have incredible heat sinks hidden somewhere in the hull, and a strike to one would completely cripple it. Unfortunately they're incredibly well hidden and he hasn't managed to locate them yet.
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Mar 2, 2018 21:14
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Livvy Livvy keeps cackling as she dances with the enemy SRAU. The Scorpion can move with the best of them and she can feel how eager he is to tear into the foe. Even now she has to push hard to try and keep it from tearing in with fang and claw. "Tell me what we're doing here? He gets closer and I'm gonna have to start hitting back!"
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Mar 11, 2018 11:47
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Carl This was a far from optimal, far above pay grade situation. Hostile alien invasion of Humanity's home system, or just defending itself from them? Was there even a common medium of communication they could try to use at all? "Looks pretty damned hostile to me, but we're in a damned First Contact sitch. Once we start violence, there's only three ways it can end, one side runs, both sides talk, or one side gets destroyed. Call needs to be made, though. Fire support is ready on the VeeDoP, standing by to hot-drop the Juggernaut if you need us to break out the big guns."
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Mar 11, 2018 13:41
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2/3 Fate Points "Take it down," Teresa declares, putting her words into action as she closes with the alien, the Red Devil's ferro-ceramic fighting claws extending. "The ship is the real prize, and this is in our way." The red SRAU comes in from behind and engages the enemy in a rapid close quarters exchange. Attack (Melee +2): 4dF+2 1 Invoking Get it By Your Hands to make that a +3. Tagged can be invoked for +3 if you engage it in Melee.
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Mar 11, 2018 21:25
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Singh "At this point I don't think it's going to talk to us unless we bloody its nose a bit," Singh says, taking a long breath and shaking his head. "Gotta be something in here..." He flicks through rough scans of the larger ship, its itemized list of components littered with 'unknown' tags. He gets an itch in his fingers, like he'd prefer to be out in Kutki personally probing the alien ship. No sensor readings like the ones you get yourself. Investigate to find some targets: 4dF+3=2
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Mar 13, 2018 01:27
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Livvy Scorpion Dreaming's unholy screech is lost the airless void, but it lets loose anyway as Livvy punches forward into the assault. Brutal claws and lashing tail sweep out at the enemy SRAU. Livvy grins wide as she lets her mech's battle joy wash over her. But their combined eagerness overcomes their mutual desire and she catches nothing but airless space. SRAU Melee +2: 4dF+2 -1
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Mar 15, 2018 07:04
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 20:31 |
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Tangle As two SRAUs engage in melee combat with the thing they pull off a pincer maneuver. While one catches only empty space, the Red Devil manages to grab hold of one of the arm tentacles and tears it loose, causing some sort of thin boiling fluid to leak out into nearby space in a concealing cloud. Singh manages to lock down a few components based on previous footage, locating the laser arrays and the antimatter blast ports. Damage to either of those would definitely get the ship's attention, but not in a good way. Enemy SRAU takes the Consequence Leaking, it uses its action to add the Zone Aspect Boiling Clouds
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Mar 16, 2018 22:14
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