03-11-2003, 10:09
OOC: This is a closed RP. Right now, if you want to participate, you need to telegram me first for permission.
Here at the highest point of the Citadel, with the ragged clouds streaming by overhead, Xarian felt he could touch the stars.
It was an utterly impractical emotion, of course, and therefore not worthy of the Dictator of Szraion, but he had cherished it since his youth, when he'd killed the previous Dictator - his father - on a night not unlike this one, all those years ago.
Xarian turned, looking out on the wild seas all around. To the West, bright lights showed on the horizon, the marks of human handiwork normally absent from his domain. That was nothing belonging to the Citadel; Szraion's submarine raiders were all either safely in their moorings or off pillaging distant shores.
"Yulian, attend," he said, speaking through the radio link that was one of his few augments as Heart of the Citadel. "I have a visual sighting of a vessel on the Western horizon. Explain to me how my perimeters were breached without my notification?"
Yulian was a cousin, the leader of the cyborgs known as the Ears of the Citadel, who were linked to the radar and sonar sensors which mantained the Citadel's borders.
"I am unsure, Heart," Yulian replied. Augumentation had robbed his voice of whatever human tones it had once possessed; his speech was the cold, unemotional music of the machine. "I shall investigate," he continued. "The intruder appears to be a cargo vessel of some kind, possibly run aground on the Western Reefs. Should I notify the Hands?"
"I shall do that myself," Xarian told him. He had far more respect for the various Arms of the Citadel than for the ordainary humans who dwelled in it's squalid depths, and the Venators, the Hands of the Citadel, he viewed with something approaching awe.
"As you will, Heart," Yulian replied. Xarian closed the link, and contacted the leader of the Venators, Aurelian.
Aurelian was another relative, a half-uncle, and compared to his steely speech Yulian's voice hummed with life.
"I report, Heart," Aurelian said. "What do you wish of me?"
"The Ears report a vessel foundered on the Western Reefs," Xarian told him. No need to let Aurelian know that the ship had passed through Szraion's perimeters unnoticed. "Send some Hands to investigate. They are to retrieve any survivors, and anything of interest if salvageable."
"It shall be done, Heart," Aurelian replied, his voice vanishing from the link.
-----
Thirty minutes later, a small patrol boat was motoring through the tossing waves, carrying twenty Venators towards the bulk of the freighter driven onto the rocks of the Western Reefs.
Unlike the augmented members of the aristocratic line of Szraion, the common rank and file of the Arms of the Citadel, drawn from the savage inhabitants of the deep levels, did not retain their names. In flesh, the squad leader had been known as Blade-of-Broken-Glass; in steel, he was known simply as Hand Twentythree-Alpha, the first member of the twentythird squad of the Hands of the Citadel.
Loss of name did not particularly bother Twentythree-Alpha; human frailties of the mind had been excised along with the frailties of the flesh in his Augmentation.
Bringing the boat alongside the much larger freighter, Twentythree-Alpha nodded to the other members of his squad, and raised his grapnel launcher. A second nod and they fired, vicious barbed metal spears arcing up to punch into the deck of the freighter.
In silence they scrambled up the cables, hand over hand with the unshakeable grip of the Venators, until they reached the deck, sloping somewhat from the angle at which the ship had hit the rocks.
There was a human here, a puny man of flesh looking terrified at the apparitions which had just appeared on his ship; twenty figures glinting with the shine of steel and wire, their black coats fluttering around them like ragged wings.
"This vessel, it's occupants, and it's cargo is now a prize of the Citadel of Szraion," Twentythree-Alpha told the man, "And of Dictator Xarian, Lord of the North, Heart of the Citadel. You shall surrender immediately."
Here at the highest point of the Citadel, with the ragged clouds streaming by overhead, Xarian felt he could touch the stars.
It was an utterly impractical emotion, of course, and therefore not worthy of the Dictator of Szraion, but he had cherished it since his youth, when he'd killed the previous Dictator - his father - on a night not unlike this one, all those years ago.
Xarian turned, looking out on the wild seas all around. To the West, bright lights showed on the horizon, the marks of human handiwork normally absent from his domain. That was nothing belonging to the Citadel; Szraion's submarine raiders were all either safely in their moorings or off pillaging distant shores.
"Yulian, attend," he said, speaking through the radio link that was one of his few augments as Heart of the Citadel. "I have a visual sighting of a vessel on the Western horizon. Explain to me how my perimeters were breached without my notification?"
Yulian was a cousin, the leader of the cyborgs known as the Ears of the Citadel, who were linked to the radar and sonar sensors which mantained the Citadel's borders.
"I am unsure, Heart," Yulian replied. Augumentation had robbed his voice of whatever human tones it had once possessed; his speech was the cold, unemotional music of the machine. "I shall investigate," he continued. "The intruder appears to be a cargo vessel of some kind, possibly run aground on the Western Reefs. Should I notify the Hands?"
"I shall do that myself," Xarian told him. He had far more respect for the various Arms of the Citadel than for the ordainary humans who dwelled in it's squalid depths, and the Venators, the Hands of the Citadel, he viewed with something approaching awe.
"As you will, Heart," Yulian replied. Xarian closed the link, and contacted the leader of the Venators, Aurelian.
Aurelian was another relative, a half-uncle, and compared to his steely speech Yulian's voice hummed with life.
"I report, Heart," Aurelian said. "What do you wish of me?"
"The Ears report a vessel foundered on the Western Reefs," Xarian told him. No need to let Aurelian know that the ship had passed through Szraion's perimeters unnoticed. "Send some Hands to investigate. They are to retrieve any survivors, and anything of interest if salvageable."
"It shall be done, Heart," Aurelian replied, his voice vanishing from the link.
-----
Thirty minutes later, a small patrol boat was motoring through the tossing waves, carrying twenty Venators towards the bulk of the freighter driven onto the rocks of the Western Reefs.
Unlike the augmented members of the aristocratic line of Szraion, the common rank and file of the Arms of the Citadel, drawn from the savage inhabitants of the deep levels, did not retain their names. In flesh, the squad leader had been known as Blade-of-Broken-Glass; in steel, he was known simply as Hand Twentythree-Alpha, the first member of the twentythird squad of the Hands of the Citadel.
Loss of name did not particularly bother Twentythree-Alpha; human frailties of the mind had been excised along with the frailties of the flesh in his Augmentation.
Bringing the boat alongside the much larger freighter, Twentythree-Alpha nodded to the other members of his squad, and raised his grapnel launcher. A second nod and they fired, vicious barbed metal spears arcing up to punch into the deck of the freighter.
In silence they scrambled up the cables, hand over hand with the unshakeable grip of the Venators, until they reached the deck, sloping somewhat from the angle at which the ship had hit the rocks.
There was a human here, a puny man of flesh looking terrified at the apparitions which had just appeared on his ship; twenty figures glinting with the shine of steel and wire, their black coats fluttering around them like ragged wings.
"This vessel, it's occupants, and it's cargo is now a prize of the Citadel of Szraion," Twentythree-Alpha told the man, "And of Dictator Xarian, Lord of the North, Heart of the Citadel. You shall surrender immediately."