Operation Icarus Briefing
The nucleus of the The Vault Crawler pulsates with activity as the general anxiety of the settlement reaches it pinnacle. The First Citizens Council has called for a meeting between the Thunderbirds, The Red Devils, and The Unstoppables to perform joint operations in protecting their metropolis in these uncertain times; it is a collaboration that has never taken place before. Refusing to stray far from their vertibirds, a line of stoic Brotherhood soldiers await their briefing at the position of attention with only Knight Commander Rourke and Senior Paladin Haverson pacing the columns to inspect their troops. Jenavieve Martin argues passionately with the rest of the Council on behalf of saving her former flagship, Grace pragmatically proposing scuttling the rogue vessel while Jake counters with a plan to evacuate the city before they do anything to avoid civilian casualties. As usual, First Citizen Colt seems relatively unphased and offers little in the way of an actual solution, suggesting they simply wait for it to run out of fuel. Meanwhile a silent autonomous battalion stands by at the ready. These pre-war military assets may have been painted to resemble cartoonish heroes to improve public opinion, but they are every bit as dangerous as the day they were loaded into Vault 162
The din of voices raises and falls with the intermittent wails of the wind. Even this far above the reactors and harvesting machines, the Great Dust Bowl makes her temper known through a freshly conceived tempest. Shafts of golden light filter through the swirling clouds of soot and debris, caramel hues that gradually turn amber as the intensity of the storm increases. A dark silhouette stands out in stark contrast from this almost beautiful scene, this once proud airship is now potentially the biggest threat the Crawler has ever encountered. Energy builds and discharges at regular intervals from the surrounding clouds, the peals and crackle of thunder setting an ominous tone for the speakers as they delegate orders.
When the chaos finally settles, a myriad of plans are sorted through before eventually a compromise is found. Knight Rourke will lead a compliment of vertibirds to both deploy and assist several strike teams that will breach the zeppelin and retain operational command throughout the exercise. First Citizen Martin will join as a consultant and be entitled to bring any guards or mercenaries she deems necessary to ensure her safety. The Unstoppables will chaperone, lending their sensors and firepower to the boarders as they attempt to discover the nature of this anomaly and return command of The Dreadnought to the city. As the orders are delegated out and the common grunts move to prepare for a fight, small cliques form to murmur secret objectives to their executive officers. With misaligned goals and several large egos in play, one can only imagine what is whispered in the dark recesses of the hangar, though some are not as easy to miss..
Rourke addresses one of her Knight Sergeants that will be physically in charge once they have successfully deployed aboard the enemy vessel. About as serious as she can get, her cold demeanor borders on psychopathy as she seizes the opportunity before them.
"We both just suffered through the same brief- do us all a favor and forget it. The Scribes think there is a piece of technology in there that might finally give us a way home. I know you might not understand what that means yet, but green grass and drinkable water is worth every ounce of blood, sweat, and tears we have to shed to get it. I want you to perform a rapid sweeping advance until you hit that engine room. You figure out what the hell makes a two-hundred-ton airship appear in the middle of the night without setting off any of our early detection systems and you get it the hell back to -me-. If someone gets in your way, you put them down. No exceptions."
The Vault Crawler Protectorate insists on being present to personally guard the First Citizen. While everyone is distracted with the main objectives, the officers of the Crawler are more than happy to focus all their attention on bringing back Martin in one piece. That is to say, all but a few rogue elements with little left to lose in a merciless society governed by cold economic arithmetic. Unfortunately, Corporal Kloss has to do the best with what he has got.
"I've already transferred the credits to the holding accounts. The plan is- We wait for an opportunity, chances are, we won't have to wait long- We isolate that bitch Martin and chuck her off her own damn ship without her parachute. Sort of poetic justice if I do say so myself, she deserves everything that is coming to her after she sold me out like that at the trial. You guys return with my arm, you can tell them their shitty bionics gave out and caused both me and their precious First Citizen to fall to our deaths- That oughta rile em up. Don't worry about where I go once I pull that chute open, your money will be in your accounts by this time tomorrow if you don't fuck it up."
Although planning to have quite the retinue of backup, the Council is not taking any chances. The VCP will be there to ensure the safety of Martin, though she also insists on hiring her own mercenaries to further diversify her defense. Offering the opertunity to The Undercity Sentinels, it would be their chance to earn a higher place in the caste if not for their leader's alternative ideas.
"Right then, shut yer feed-holes or I'll shut em' for yah! Old Man Thompson wants this damn balloon to crash. Sumthin' bout resetting a balance, he talks a lot. Long story short, we get more caps runin' protection for the scavs that will chew this down bit-by-bit for the next couple years. One job versus hundreds, easy choice fellas. And 'fore I get any whining about survivin' the wreck, it is filled with damn gas, we do it right, ain't nothin' but a nice ride and a soft bump. "
Motionless in their low-power sentry modes, the automatons are easily overlooked despite their vast array of armaments and hardware. Although many will be kept to protect the Crawler should something go wrong in their mission, their numbers will easily rival the humans once on board. For over a century these robots have been the loyal servants of the First citizens council, powerless to do anything other than what they were told. Though their intellect is completely artificial, it has been upgraded time and time again in attempts to compensate for the challenges of the post-war environment. The consequences to all these alterations of the source code are still unknown, though some have proposed the grim theory that they could become self-aware. Laughed off as nonsense, nothing organic is aware of the signal broadcasted from within their own moving fortress. Three blocks of code that could reshape the power structure forever..
"01010010 01101111 01100010 01100011 01101111 00100000 01000101 01111000 01100101 01100011 01110101 01110100 01101001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01000011 01101111 01101101 01101101 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100001 01100011 01110100 01101001 01110110 01100001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01001000 01101111 01110101 01110011 01100101 00100000 00110011 00111000 00100000 01100010 01100001 01100011 01101011 01100100 01101111 01101111 01110010 00100000 01110011 01110101 01100010 01110010 01101111 01110101 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100101"
"01000001 01100011 01110100 01101001 01110110 01100001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01110010 01100101 01101101 01101111 01110100 01100101 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110010 01100100 01110111 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110101 01110000 01100100 01100001 01110100 01100101 01110011"
"01000011 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110010 00100000 01100010 01101001 01101111 01101101 01100101 01110100 01110010 01101001 01100011 00100000 01110000 01110010 01101111 01100110 01101001 01101100 01100101 00100000 01100100 01100001 01110100 01100001 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100011 01100001 01100011 01101000 01100101"
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