Tabula Rasa Roleplayers

((Note-this is a continuation of the former Unfortunate Casualties...I felt that one was a little too broad so I am going to attempt to narrow the scope. I do request that you read a little of the previous "installment" first just to get an idea of what happened instead of requoting myself 40000000 times-thank you ahead of the times on the reads and posts. Note that this is still OPEN RP but I ask that you send me a pm if you wish to get a deeper side of the roles...))

Linda resolved into her athletic frame as she dropped out on the other side of the teleporter in Mt. Hellas. She was battered and beaten, torn and tired. Her sidearm was missing yet the holster was still there. Her hybrid of stealth and reflective armor had seen better days. Her blue eyes scanned over the flux of wounded at the base as her steps quickened. She was looking for someone and she hoped that no one was following...

The base lights flickered as she walked by, disrupted by the recent electrical displacement that she had made by throwing lightning around earlier. She had a schedule and she was set on following it. She laughed inside at how whenever she mentioned command people always assumed it was AFS related. She reflected that thought with self loathing at how she was so tangled up in the web that was about to cause death.

She finally spotted the man that had been described to her. He was just around 6 feet, brown hair, dark eyes, pale skin, and a wirey frame. She slid up against him and grabbed his arm, dragging him with her into a corner.

"Do you have it?" She asked with an edge in her voice.

The man simply nodded as he pulled out a package from his satchel. From what Linda knew, he was just a demolitionist working for AFS and the package was a high grade explosive. The action from earlier at Lightning Fields was sure to distract AFS forces for several hours but that wasn't the purpose according to her "orders" set upon her. She wasn't supposed to care even though she did. She felt pity for the man as she made her way back towards the teleporter, snaking in between the wounded with the package in her hand like a laptop and another satchel around her waist, knowing that he would not survive much longer...

Linda's steps quickened as she raced to the teleporter and set the waypoint to Irendas. Just like that, she had disappeared and reappeared in the penal colony. She had some spare time and she intended to use it.

She tried to make herself appear a little more normal as she changed her pace to a light walk. She knew she was receiving some rather interesting stares as she walked by. Especially from the men of the base...But she kept walking, making her way down into the sub levels of the base and eventually getting into the dorm labelled "Dormitory A."

She slipped into the first room on her left and closed it. She sat on the edge of the bed and rested her eyes for a moment, still exhausted from earlier. There she came to despise herself as she started thinking back on the events that got her into this mess. She was still fully aware of the explosives as she dropped the now open satchels to the floor.

There was no going back...there never is... She thought.

She broke out of her thoughts and reached a hand under the bed. Her hand came back with a large lockbox. She then ran a finger over the front scanner and watched as it hissed and popped open to reveal several disassembled firearms...She then placed the lockbox on the floor.

If there is a God...let him forgive me for what I am about to do... She thought as she laid back, preparing for some rest. She wouldn't move for a couple of hours as she watched the ceiling...

Zara moved through the confusing corridors of Irendas colony with only faint twinges of misgiving. She had been... what was the word? Decanted. Yes, she had been decanted only three months previous. Her brother Karl said she had been born, but it was nothing like birth. She had looked up -birth- in the database and her experiences had been nothing at all like that. She preferred the clinical term, since she had gestated and grown inside a tank for six weeks, instead of inside a person for nine months. Many people, her new kin in particular, felt a bit disconcerted by her impersonal approach. She felt as they did, she knew this in ways that most people could only guess at. She smiled in memory. Sara and the others make a great argument. Logical too.
She had great difficulty expressing it however. Among her kin it wasn't a problem. Her brother, (sire, clone tissue donor, whatever) had been there when she was decanted, she had spent almost every waking minute near him. They were different, oh goodness, were they EVER different. He liked building things and she lived to blow things up. But they knew each other. On arriving at Irendas colony, Karl had sent her in search of food in the Dormitory and she had gladly complied. But now... She had gotten turned around and now she was completely lost. Most of the people were sleeping and she was loathe to wake anyone. She was getting more and more nervous as she descended. Maybe it was her Forean ancestry... She was always much more at home outside, even on Areki. She continued on, then stopped short. The sign she saw was the same one she had passed less than ten minutes ago.
No use... I'm lost...

((Zara is a demolitionist. This is fairly is obvious from her harness, festooned with gear for making things go boom. She is also lost and only now starting to get a worried about it. She is logical and knows she can't be COMPLETELY lost, but she has never been in Irendas before.))

Linda broke out of her "sleep" and sat back upright on the edge of the bed. She picked the small weapons case up and sat it next to her. Rummaging through it she pulled out the new weapons, assessed the freshly repaired armor which she promptly traded out her old armor for, and began assembling the firearms starting with a pulse pistol. It made a satisfying hiss as it accepted the mag that Linda had just put into the feeder. It fit perfectly as Linda slid it into the holster.

She checked the new series three incendiary shotgun, laser chaingun, a new rifle, and a torqueshell rifle in turn. She stuffed them all, in compact form plus the ammunition, into her 'pack and slid it over her shoulders. Sure it had some weight to it but they might all be necessary at the end of the day...She then retrieved the two explosives from the ground and fixated them into one duffelbag that slid over the pack and nestled into her left thigh.

She was really weighted down as she slid the now empty case back under the bed and walked over to the door. Her freshly painted bane blood red hybrid armor reflected the few lights in the room. It was almost blinding if she stared at it until she slipped her helmet on (for the first time in many days). The HUD blinked online and performed a diagnostics test on her physical condition as she opened up the door, leaving the dorm room.

Several feet down the hallway she bumped into a seemingly confused forean on her way out, temporarily blinded by the HUD's still processing view. She didn't bother looking back or saying sorry as she kept walking, heading for the exit. She fiddled around with a few extra little goodies in the duffelbag that she had snuck along for a little extra punch in case of a few unexpected surprises...She was too preoccupied with herself to notice the forean's reaction if there was one...

Zara was startled when the human woman bumped into her, then realized from the opaque visor that the human probably couldn't see her. She looked after the woman, bemused as to why she would be walking if she couldn't see and then realized that there was an exit sign in the direction the woman had taken. She was so glad to get out of the catacomb-like dormitory that she paid little mind to the woman who had bumped into her. She found the mess hall on the way out and picked up ration packs for herself and her brother. She picked the best flavors she could find, not that there was much selection.
Green and red... yuck... I hope the new flavors come into general production soon...
As she left the dormitory, she saw the distinctive red armor of the woman who had bumped her moving off into the distance.
She's in a hurry... And that color scheme is distinctive. Almost the same color Ed favors.
Zara snorted to herself. I hope she has more sense than Ed does...
She moved out looking for her brother.

Linda walked across the yard much more casually than when she had gone to the dorms. She looked and felt renewed but it still didn't stop her from feeling worthless like the worms in the ground. A light fog had settled in around the outpost and the surrounding area. She went about her business, stopping at several of the shops, stopping here and there; meanwhile the duffel only got lighter. She made a circuit and stopped by each door to the underground facility, slapping a small device covertly on the outside of the door where they would never be seen.

Then she started to make her way back across the yard. She looked at each person that she passed with skepticism as the helmet's scanner went over them with extreme detail, noting blood type and other anonymous or even pointless information. Command had been very specific in the orders on casualties, only the "specified" targets were to be disposed of.

She made her way into the local command tower and took the teleporter up to the top floor. She appeared in the command center where there were only 3 people at various stations. The whole base was like this due to the earlier events at Lightning Fields, reinforcements had been sent to the base from here-Irendas. Command had set up the base for only a minimum of bystanders were around but Linda still had to be careful...

Out of the three men in the tower, two were lit up by the HUD as specified targets. Linda acted smoothly and professionally, moving the duffel up and over her head. It dropped to the floor and the pressure detonator activated, an emp pulse rippling through the towers electrical system and ultimately disabling the teleporter. The three men looked over at Linda in surprise but it didn't matter.

With one smooth motion Linda drew the pulse pistol and fired three rounds at the two men indicated by the hud, dropping each before they got out of their command chairs. The third managed to get out of the chair just before Linda smacked the pistol against his head, knocking him out. The whole ordeal took less than a couple seconds to resolve. She then tied up the knocked out man and dragged him into a corner of the tower.

She would have a few minutes before someone got curious and would threaten the rest of the plan, but that was more than enough...

Karl froze as his scanner beeped. It had registered an EM discharge nearby and he frowned as he scrutinized the readings. It had been strong enough to register, but weak enough not to be easily traceable. He checked his gear but the pulse was not repeated. Without another pulse he couldn't track it. He shrugged and then realized something. No yellow column of light in the middle of the base of the tower. The tower teleporter was out. Again...
“Joy... whoever thought melding Brann and human technology would be easy or quick, I want to hurt....” he pulled out his tools and made his way into the tower. He scanned the area, realized that the EM pulse he had sensed must have come from the tower. Wouldn't be the first time.
“Wonder what piece of lowest bidder crap blew THIS time?” He started his scanning, lookimg for ways to repair the garbage he could see. Funny, nothing seemed to be broken, well, not any more than usual for this piece of crap post.
“Come on... Come on... What happened?” he cursed under his breath as he tried to make sense of the situation. "Come to Areki, see the sights... WORK DARN YOU! See the rocks... See the fire... meet interesting Bane, blow them away... Stupid idiots crossconnecting these blasted..." He broke off as something shorted out. When nothing exploded he resumed both his work and his diatribe. It never occured to him to try the emergency ladder. Probably because it was 100 meters up with no safety cage, and while he was no coward he DETESTED heights.

((Karl is an engineer and very good with machinery, but he has a short temper when it doesn't do what it's supposed to))

A constant beeping noise disrupted Linda's focus as she went about reinitializing a select few computers ment for security personnel. The emp charge that had gone of seconds before was very ingenious, designed to disable a set electrical device attached to until deactivated yet still causing a big enough of a charge to temporarily disable other local electronics. In just a little bit, dozens of charges similar to it would go off. But it wasn't that time yet.

Linda let her HUD scan over people on the monitors, still able to detect enough information in order to determine their states. Numbers of the people that appeared were red. A total of a dozen soldiers and a less than a third of that in receptives wandered the base, unaware of the danger they were in.

*BEEP*

Linda cursed under her breath as she looked into the monitor in front of her displaying a rather large man, on the ground floor, trying to fix the teleporter. If the man managed to get up things would be really hard to explain. He was blue on her HUD, meaning that he was a receptive and clean as a whistle. The HUD displayed a name over the monitors picture-Karl Kalenath. She quirked an eyebrow, surprised that such a strong receptive would be at the base when all the reinforcements had moved to Lightning Fields...

She needed to decide what to do with the man...She could act like some sort of accident happened but he might still ask questions. She could fight him, but in close quarters she wasn't a strong melee fighter and her pistol would be useless as it was an EMP based weapon. In short, she would get her ass kicked...

The are other possibilities... She thought as she started to disable the EMP charge...

Karl continued to struggle with the recalcitate machinery. It just would NOT work. Not surprising, given how thrown together the gear had been and how jury rigged the whole system actually was. He spared a moment to think fondly for his systems and bots, but they were all designed for the battlefield.
Nothing to blast here. not that I don't want to... He thought with a grimace. Something teased at the back of his mind but he ignored it as he focused his concentration on getting the <expletive> machinery working again.

Having always something to do, Major Andyrs walked purposefully past the tower heading off to another briefing by High Command. With a glance as he passed he could see a Engineer working on a console that was clearly not working. Being the leader of the 1st Engineer Battalion he immediately took interest in what was happening and he slowed his walk. As the man was clearly getting more frustrated with the equipment he decided he'd take a moment to go help, rather then watch someone make it worse. Most of the time, his Engineers spent a great deal of time trying to undo someones "fix" to a problem. Though he didn't doubt that people got the gear working, it'd just broke down quickly or even worse, not hold up when a Bane attack came.

The tower seemed really quiet as he approached, but he didn't think much of it. From first glance, it looked like it had lost power, which was odd considering that the area around seemed just fine. Standing at the entrance to the tower he spoke up, "Mind if I take a look at that?" His eyes scanned the other man carefully, checking for any rank or unit markings.

Karl jumped, he had never even heard the officer come up behind him. He spun, barely missing cracking his head on the panel he had been working on. He noticed:
1)The man was a major
2)He was in the uniform of the 1st engineers
3)He was an engineer himself and was looking worried at Karl's increasingly frustrated attempts to get the blasted machinery working.
4)The major was expecting a response
“Sir. Karl Kalenath. Engineer. 9th Special Ops detachment. ” Being in a secure environment and outside, technically anyway, he saluted “Tower teleporter is out. No sign of damage. It just won't work.” And he grimaced.

"Woah, settle down there soldier." He returned the salute quickly and gave a half grin. "Didn't mean to startle you, but you look about as wound up as a jack rabbit running from a coyote." He looked at the man for a moment before speaking again. "Did you notice that most of the tower looks dead? Cause it's not just the teleporter." Pulling out his repair tool he quickly calibrates the settings and begins running a scan. "I've always found it best to take a step back before diving right in. Looks to me like you just ripped open the panel to see what was wrong." He gave a questioning look to the other Engineer.

"Names Major Andyrs, by the way. 1st Engineers."

“Major.” Oh boy... Ed's commanding officer... Keep it simple... “Uh, no sir. I didn't notice that.”
He looked sheepish as he scanned the surrounding area, and sure enough, the entire tower was down.
Oh... boy... Not good.
“This is the third time this week the teleporter has gone down so I assumed...” He broke off and winced. Looking at the panel, he HAD grabbed it a bit hard.
He waited for the major's response.

"You know the definition of 'assume', right? Makes an ass out of you and me. A bit corny, but it gets the point across." A small grin spread across his lips as he continued his scan. "Though whats odd is that the running light on the wall just outside it working just fine. So this grid has power."

After a moment of pondering he asks almost absent mindedly, "Did Crusty hit this tower with some kind of emp weapon? Maybe a Stalker outside?" He looks up to the top of the tower for a moment, but shortly returns his attention to Karl.

His repair tool beeps a few times.

Karl kept his focus on Major Andyrs.
"None that I saw sir. No effects, no incoming fire, just off."
He prayed silently that Zara would see the officer before finding him. She had the tact of a brick sometimes and offical scrutiny was the last thing they needed right now.

Looking down at his tool his grin turns more serious, "Are you sure? I'm getting some odd readings from the kit here. It has the distinct footprint of an emp weapon." He leverages the tool towards Karl, "Can you see that there?" He points to a specific reading, "That's the last voltage that hit the system. It's three-hundred and fifty percent above normal levels, not a big blast but big enough to fry the systems."

He looks around the area with a cautious eye.

"I was on my way to the Military Surplus, sir. I had just been speaking with Quartermaster Hacienda." he scrutinized the readings. "You are right. But... No blast sir. I would have seen or heard SOMETHING."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a white skinned form in Mech armor approaching and again he prayed Zara would leave the talking to him. Then, wonder of wonders, she saw the officer, turned and went into the Military Surplus. He almost sighed in relief, but that might be misconstrued so he focused on the problem.

"Nothing else seems to be wrong with the systems, even with an EM pulse, they should have come back up by now... This is odd."

"We'll have to do a deeper scan. It could have fried a circuit." Adjusting his repair tool once again, he sets to finding the root of the lack of power in the structure. "You should put that panel back together, that's not going to fix the problem."

"Yes sir." He replied and bent to his task.
He took care to put it back together correctly, not just throw a quick fix in. Both the fact that a more experienced engineer was watching him and the fact that he detested sloppy workmanship spurred him to make it right.

He felt a silent com buzz as Zara queried him and he responded with a different buzz, telling her that he was ok and to stand by. Luckily the Major seemed too engrossed in his own work to notice. He hoped so anyway. He closed the panel with a look of relief and turned back to the Major.

Linda had watched the two for a while, satisfied that the emp "leech" was doing a darn good job of blocking them. She recognized the Major the second that he stepped into view; he was at lightning fields for a time during the aftermath. She didn't know his name but she would probably find it out sooner or later. Probably later seeing as how he was a neutral target and clearly not infected with anything.

Time to play a little game...

She held up a remote detonater and pushed the small device's red button down. As she did, lights started to go out across the base, doors locked instantly and magnetically. That combined with the night, made the base an invisible ghost town. Everything that was inside was trapped there as was the opposite.

Linda redrew her pistol, deactivated the leech which turned the power grid to the tower back on, and stepped through the portal. On the other end she dropped the leech back down behind her back, making sure that no one had seen it. She then took aim at the two men standing in front of her. She was probably going to be threatened with a courtmartial afterwords...

"Don't do anything brash. Just go through the teleporter." She said rather blankly as she waited for either of the two to make a move. She realized that the pistol in her hands was useless against them as it was an emp weapon, but the intimidation remained.