NationStates Jolt Archive

The sun came early over the horizon of planet Kilari, a simple small minor outpost planet that the Specials had placed a company of mobile suits on and a detachment of the usual Assault Troopers. Captain Dovroska had been given command of the outpost three months prior, and he hated it.

It was a low level post that could have been run by a Lieutenant, or even a First Sergeant. But Dovroska placed his faith in his orders and took proper command over the New Edwards base and its troops which consisted of the 12th Desert MS Company, and the 564th Assault Trooper Battalion.

Dovroska looked out from his lawn chair where he sat, at the rising sun. His tinted glasses kept him from going blind. He watched as the life of the base came to life. Troopers jogging their morning exercise and MS pilots going about checking their equipment, all in a manner of extreme routine and boredom; it was the promise of another boring day.

“Damn but I need to get off this rock,” said Dovroska. He took out a cigar and lit it, then began piously smoking on it until mid-day when he had to start on paper work.

Bump for Einhauser.

The E.N.S. Alexander rumbled through space like a beetle through water, it’s cavernous belly empty except for a single brigade of Marines and their equipment. It was heading for an obscure mining colony in the western edge of the Milky Way galaxy, where the men and machines it carried would be used to keep the mostly-slave population from revolting.

The trip was to be a long one, over six months in transit, as the Alexander was an older-model starship that had not been issued with modern jump drives. Or any other updates, for that matter. It was a miracle that the old workhorse held together at all, let alone braved the radiation storms and micro-meteor showers that were common to this part of space.

Captain Whitley, a portly man in his late sixties, struggled to pry his bulk from the archaic captain’s chair that took up most of the cramped bridge. Eventually one of the two biomechanical bridge officers that were physically built into the bridge decking had to turn away from its post and help drag him to his feet.

After brushing off the crumbs from his dinner that had accumulated on his crumpled jacket, Whitley slouched over to the communications panel set against the rusty back wall. “Attention crew,” he said, knowing full well that most of them would be too drunk to take notice of his announcement, “we will be making a warp jump in roughly ten minutes. Secure military personnel.”

With that out of the way, the captain returned to his chair and watched the flickering viewscreen at the front of the room. When he had judged 10 minutes had gone by (actually it was only 7 ½, as one of the officers informed him), Whitley pressed a button on his chair, and the ship jumped.


OOC: Sorry it took so long man. Jolt was down for a minute.

OOC: No problem man. I'm gonna detail the terrain of Kilari for us, since the map I tried drawing in Paint sucks ass. +.+

IC:

Kilari itself was a small planet, some where along the size of a particularily large moon. At both poles, where nothing but empassable mountains. The Southern Mountains cut into the center of the planet and grew into several ranges.

Cutting down all the way from the depths of the ground in the north, to about a few dozen miles of the equator and into a small valley, ran the planets only fresh water river. It was like a single blood vein in a desert-rock body. Along that river the ground changed from desert to grass plains, varying from a few dozen meters to several dozens miles on either side of the river.

The population of the planet itself was no more than about 100,000 colonists. There were five cities, or towns. Two were on the Mandera River, holding the only two crossing points of the river itself; two on the western side of the river some seventy miles from the river, connected by major high ways which were the only real fast way of moving through the rocky-desert terrain; and a last city East of the river, right on the equator.

The New Edwards base itself was located close to the Lake Valley, the place where the Mandera River emptied in to. It was connected to three of the cities, both of the river towns and the one on the eastern side of the Mandera. Captain Dovroska, upon arrival, had seen fit to keep a watch over the lake, to keep his men and the locals from swimming in it and possibly contaminating the only supply of drinking water on the planet.

Something was wrong. The Alexander was juttering wildly, something that was not supposed to happen. They were still in the middle of a jump, and nothing should be able to disrupt their course.

“Status report,” blurted Whitley, his voice oscillating wildly as his chair shook. One of the bridge officers was jiggling out of its base and onto the floor, and the other one was holding onto the bulkheads with all three arms.

“Ship integrity is at 42%,” droned the intact officer. Of course, when one considered that the ship had been running on 54% integrity for the past decade, it really was not that startling.

“I meant what is causing the shaking!” shouted the captain as he started to slip out of his chair. Both officers flashed the red LEDs imbedded in their chins, noting that something prevented them from speaking. The captain cursed and let himself fall off of his chair.

Stumbling over to the back panel, he grabbed the microphone and yelled for everyone to hang onto something. After releasing the shaking device, Whitley stumbled back to his chair and hit the jump button again. With a shudder, the Alexander dropped out of the warp and found itself in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

The fallen officer was righting itself with its two good arms, and the other was frantically tapping a keyboard, trying to activate the decaying blast doors around the ship. Most of them refused to close, some caught fire, and several fell apart. In fact, not one had closed.

Cursing to himself repeatedly, Captain Whitely settled back in his now-slanted chair and gazed out at the viewscreen. On it was depicted a yellow-ish planet relatively close to the ship, with a slightly green belt around part of it.

Whitely checked the dataslate that told him where to drop off the soldiers. This place met the description, was not logged in the map database, and was the most convenient place to rid the Alexander of the troublesome soldiers.

“Well, that was a lucky break,” said the captain to his officers, who were already coaxing the ship towards the world.

Private Jameson sat in front of his radar monitor sipping absentminded on a vintage bottle of Violent Red cola. He pushed his thick glasses back up from the rim of his nose, the heat of the day causing his spectacles to slip every so often. He sighed, tired and lazy to do much about anything. He was a local man, born and raised on Kilari, and had joined up as a contract volunteer with the Specials unit when it landed.

Now he felt like he was regretting that decision. They’d trained him up, put him in uniform, then sat his ass in front of this small green screened-beeping machine and been told to watch it for little white blips.

It was really rather annoying. Jameson took another sip of his cola and leaned back in his chair. He wiped his arm across his forehead trying to force the sweat away. He looked over to his left out the flap of the large communications tent he was in. The real communications building had been destroyed two weeks earlier when a mobile suit trainee lost control of his Zaku and smashed into it. Jameson himself had barely got out alive. But considering the heat he had to sit through, he felt that death might be preferable.

He went on thinking of his misfortunes and didn’t really pay attention when several white dotes appeared on the radar detection screen.

The shuttles, Halcyon gunships, dropships, and various other container vessels that launched out of the starboard hanger bay quickly accelerated out of the way of the Alexander and dropped toward the planet far below. Flames licked at them, causing huge welts to appear in the metal.

All of a sudden, one after another started to explode, flinging the hopelessly burned passengers into the cold hard void of space. At least, that’s what Captain Whitely wistfully imagined. In actuality, the drop was going perfectly well, and already half the single-ships were in high orbit.

OOC: I g2g for the day. I’ll be on tomorrow.

OOC: No worries, I'm going to rp your ships landing near one of the western towns, probably the one furthest north. Hope you don't mind. That way it gives our soldiers plenty of breathing room and time to ponder where the hell they are and who just landed on the doorstep.

IC:

Jameson's supervisor, Corporal Harris, walked up behind the near sleeping man. Anger was etched into his face as he stood behind the man taping his foot. He took the newspaper that was in his hand, rolled it carefully into a neat cylinder. He took a stance, brought his arm back a long ways, then brought the paper down hard onto Jameson’s head.

With a loud smack, the radar operator was thrown onto the ground. He spasmed out of control for a second, the shock of waking a little much, then came to his feet.

“WHO THE HELL DID THA- ,” he began, and then he saw that it was Corporal Harris. He snapped a hasty salute. “Sorry sir, thought it was someone else,” said Jameson. Harris didn’t bother saluting back.

“I thought you were supposed to be watching the radar screen soldier! Not sleeping! You’ll report to the kitchens at 20:00 hours. I’m sure they can use some help. Now tell me what the hell you thought you were doing when-,” Harris stopped. He looked over Jameson’s shoulder at the monitor. He saw the several white blips appearing. He smacked Jameson again.

“You idiot, something appeared on our scopes. Find out what it is!” The private quickly got into his seat and began tapping into his keyboard. He frowned and began working some more, numbers and small text appearing on another monitor next to the radar one. Jameson read it and frowned more.

“I don’t know sir, the computer cannot identify it. Probability AI says that it’s a good chance of several meteors striking the surface.”

“You’re sure?” asked Harris.

“Yes sir, either that or it’s a ship type we’ve never seen before…mind you we haven’t had our records updated since the last in-ship flight seven months ago, but all my instruments are saying that its most likely just some meteors with metal content,” said the private.

“Alright, keep watching and give me a count of how many ships or meteors hit ground. I’m going to report this to the Lieutenant.”

Harris left the tent and walked over, dodging a few Alpha-class tanks rolling by, and into the Command Logistics building. Several clerks with desks in front of them were sitting in the main area, talking and sorting through paper work. The real bureaucratic heart of the base, thought Harris. He gave one of the clerks his number 2 glare and marched past into the officer of Lieutenant Fuller, commander of the Assault Scouts.

“Sir, we’ve got a problem.” He saluted. Fuller looked up from his desk. He was wearing the tan colored desert uniform and patch of the Assault Scouts, and his skin was sun colored dark. He motioned for Harris to sit down.

“What’s the problem Harris?”

“We’ve detected what looks like either ships or meteors coming down in the north-western quadrant. I would hazard a guess at about 25 blips in all, but that’s just an estimate. I was wondering if you could send some of your boys to check it out. It’s above Sand Rock City, about twenty klicks. So, maybe you could help me out?” asked Harris.

Fuller thought about it for a moment then nodded. “Alright Harris, I’ll send a few hounds out to see the new meteor craters. After that, no more fuss alright?”

“Yes sir, thank you sir.” Harris stood, saluted, and left.

The sandy ground was quickly turning to glass as the retros of the landing craft kicked in. Sand whipped through the air, stinging any exposed eyes and getting between armor plates so that you squeaked when you walked. All that was made worse by the blasted sun that was scorching the desert continually.

“Report,” ordered Brigadier General Reii. The group of soldiers following him all glanced down at dataslates, which would have gotten them cooked by a landing shuttle had Reii not pushed them.

“Forces are deploying throughout the valley,” said one soldier while brushing sand out of the creases in his chest plate, “Still no word from the miners.”

Reii scratched his chin. He had been expecting something… different from a mining world. “I see. Deploy the WSVs and mount up a squad or two. We are going to go on a scouting run.”

OOC: Wheeled Scouting Vehicles (WSVs) are like the warthog from Halo. I’ve got more info on them that I can post, including a picture, but I won’t be able to do that for a while. Needless to say they are armed with three heavy weapons: two pointing forward and a pintel mount in the rear.

ooc:no thats cool, you just tell me when you need to know somethign about my ms's.

IC:

The small amored car drove in four-wheel drive up the steep incline. Sand rocketed back in waves of dust as it passed. It finally came to the top and the driver halted the machine. With a click the door came open and a man dressed in a tan uniform dropped out.

Sergeant Mulkegi stood next to his desert colored scout vehicles and spit out a piece of his tabacco. Reaching back into the car he pulled out some expansive binoculars. He brought them around and looked through.

He saw off in the distance what looked like a long ploom of smoke. He pressed a series of buttons on the side of the binoculars. The image grew closer and much clearer. He saw what looked like a line of moving metal and black. He pressed it again and the image jumped into view.

It was a long line of black clad soldiers.

He put the binoculars away and got his radio out. He spat a big wad of tabacco out first.

"Big Fella, this is Little Fella, do you read me?"

"Little Fella, this is Big Fella, copy."

"We got ourselves a problem...at coordinates Alpha-9'er grid 8, in the North-West quadrant. I'm seeing black clad troops marching from what looks like a bunch of landing pods."

"Copy that Little Fella, commander wants you to get a better look if possible, our orbital sattelites are not yet operational."

"Understood, Little Fella out." Mulkegi strew the radio back into his car and looked back in the direction of the smoke.

"Damn day." he spit another huge wad of tabacco, then got back into his armored car. He decided to take some back trails through a series of ravines he knew of to the east of the hill. Without further a-do he drove off down the hill.

bump

OOC: Here (http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a210/Zipline/Misc/APV.jpg) is a picture of a WSV. Note that this one is made out to be a command vehicle. A standard combat version would have twin heavy weapons above the headlights and a heavy weapon on a swivel mount where the satellite uplink/ communications pod is in this picture.

IC: The sand spat out from beneath the thick treads of the three WSVs as they roared across the dunes. The powerful engines shook the vehicles mercilessly, and the stench of fuel filled the air. The soldiers riding in the machines would let out a whoop every time they went over a hill and caught air (which was every few seconds), and laughed whenever they weren’t.

Going on a patrol in a WSV was more fun than work, most soldiers held, but it was necessary. Even though they were making as much noise as they possibly could, it didn’t really matter. After all, this was a friendly mining world. Wasn’t it?

bump (again, apologies for the delayed response)

bump (again, apologies for the delayed response)

ooc: I'll post later, busy getting some stitches removed, but also that link doesn't work.