[A fine state of affairs, yes no?]The sky-bike pilots, of course being of the Coalition, turned from their pursuit of the golden flying woman and went on an attack run against the TW Express 3-9. Why an observer may ask, since the train did nothing hostile and was almost completely unarmed.; because the Coalition are mandated to attack anything magic and / or techno-wizard in nature… no exceptions. Fortunately the 3-9 was immune to energy attacks and had fairly advanced magitech force-fields. Garrus began to snipe the Sky-cycles control surfaces while Leena (unsuccessfully due to range of psionics) tried to gain mental control of the machines, and Anon attempted to talk reason with unreasoning, jaded, propaganda-brainwashed fascists. One Sky-cycle was disabled and as the second came around for a ripple-fire mini-missile strike, the TW Express 3-9 ley-line teleported; arriving in Silvereno with an apology to all passengers for the detour over the P.A.
Team Alpha just shrugged and took the shortening of their travel time in stride. While Rika, Garrus & Shalyndra all headed off to the Trails-end Saloon & Tavern, Anon & Leena took some time to talk together, and found they had quite a bit in common, more than they had differences.
Over at the Saloon, the non-human trio caused a bit of a stir as they entered, but were soon just another part of the evening scenery after the captain ordered several drinks and was greeted by the bar-keep ‘Buck’ like a long lost niece. The ice was further broken when Garrus inquired about a poker-game in progress, and asked to join in (winning the pot in the second hand). Soon, the two techno-philic members of the group joined the rest, with Anon realizing he had more money than he knew to deal with and buying a round for everyone in the Saloon. Leena even went as far as having a few “girly” drinks, having the sugar cause her to become even more hyper and then collapsing.
The Next day had everyone nursing minor hangovers (Rika pulling her ‘purification’ trick on Leena and having her RUN to the bathroom to expel the alcohol residue), but recovering fairly quickly. Anon, Rika, Leena and Shalyndra all crowded into Anon’s Triax Forager (a mess of spliced wires and controls), while Garrus remained behind to “keep the bench warm”. Shaft 8, about 5 to 10 miles away was an easy jog for the war machine. Unfortunately this was not to be a peaceful day. As the Forager crested a rise and exited from the dense tree-line, it was in time to see a missile strike next to the workmen’s dormitory, blasting the heavy SDC structure into splinters, with another striking the office building (and Anon’s previous employer) in the process. Over the radio could be heard a broken-English voice demanding;
“All your shineys be belonging to us yes no? You will be running and leaving shineys behind for El-Bandito’s of Don Toranado!”
A quick scan of the surrounding area showed no less than 2 Icarus flight units, a spotter helicopter, a Titan Robotics Heavy-Combat mecha, and the personal vehicle of Don Toranado; a Grey Falcon jump-jet.
Meanwhile one of the free-lancer Borgs on guard duty:Tim had been in Silvereno for nearly 2 weeks. In the grand scheme of things, not long at all. For a mercenary full-conversion ‘Borg assigned to guard duty on a silver mine that was supposed to be shut down (but for some reason was open again; despite another 3 workers having gone missing roughly 8 days ago) it was tedious.
Last night the Techno-Wizard Express 999 from Lazlo (early, due to Coalition interference) had pulled in; being on-call at the dig-site though, Tim could only watch the black-iron magical locomotive pull into the town proper via his cyberoptics. Of interest was the Triax Forager bot with the large mining drill attached to one of its forearms being unloaded from one of the box-cars. Looked like a new excavator was going to be assigned to one of the numerous mines. Tim down-timed; plenty of opportunity to find out what was happening tomorrow, as he was going be given his R&R time the next day after the afternoon shift.
July 3rd dawned clear and peaceful. Tim spent some time talking to the latest member of mine-shaft 8’s support staff; a rather attractive though introverted D-bee woman, calling herself Matraess, once of Shemarr. The 7ft. tall, scarred sack-cloth garbed woman was in charge of kitchen duties for the work shack & dormitories. While making coffee, Matraess (in broken English) asked why Tim stayed as a guard when he obviously, despite being a male, was a warrior born. Surely not because of money (the pay was barely adequate) or possibility of honour in combat?
As Tim was about to reply, a massive explosion outside flattened the dormitory, tearing apart the flesh & blood members of the guardsmen who were still out of armour (some only wearing trousers) in a cloud of splintered cinderblocks and wood. Tim himself and Matraess became buried under the debris. One more explosion occurred, shifting the rubble slightly…then… the noise of jet thrusters.
Hours or minutes later, he felt the weight on top of his frame shift and move by some outside force; a golden & coral pink glow seeped through the holes & cracks between the detritus. As the wreckage was cleared from his face he gazed up at a strange sight. What he could only think of as a faerie goddess 12ft. tall with 4 arms, glowing butterfly wings and dressed in a flowing gown the same colour as the halo about her body.(
http://i408.photobucket.com/albums/pp164/taalismn/img214.jpg )The figure used all 4 arms to clear enough debris away for Tim to work himself out from under the rest. Smiling, the “goddess” pointed to the pile next to him, and though her lips did not move, a pleasant young girl voice came through his audio system clear as if she was speaking directly into the microphones;
“She is badly hurt as are your companions who weren’t killed when those bad people in the sky sent down their spears. Help me dig out who we can save, then you really should go and punish those bad people. That sound fair?”Tim the Borg agreed and, taking up his vibro claymore and arming his two ancillary laser-weapon limbs, charged out towards the battle.
Back with Phoenix Force Alpha:Rika & Shalyndra debouched from the Forager using Rika’s ‘Hinas’ psi-mystic portal power, and began to arm up to go and try and assist in the defense of any survivors at the shack. Back in Silvereno proper, Garrus took charge of organizing a posse to defend the town in case any of the pirates tried to attack there, and then sniped the spotter helicopter out of the sky.
Jack Chirax, nearly 2 months in remedial training, was called up to go support his team A.S.A.P. (as Rika had sent an emergency ‘calling’ talisman to Phoenix Nest high command for reinforcements), and was sent via dimensional teleport spell. Rika & Shalyndra were surprised and somewhat non-plussed that only one person had been sent in support. Lt. Chirax just took the situation in stride and then, taking off in his Red-Hawk power suit, engaged the juicer Icarus units; killing one of them outright, and then disabling Don Toranado’s Grey-Falcon in less than 15 seconds.
The tide quickly turned however. Despite loosing their leader and loosing 3 of their air assets, the bandito’s had more people to throw into the fray (nearly a dozen hover cycle riders, approaching from the North towards Shaft
, and those still present counter-attacked viciously. First Jack Chirax’s power armour was blasted by nearly half a dozen mini-missiles (all armour piercers), causing the power-suit to fall from the sky, and the Titan mecha released 3 medium range AP missiles into Anon’s forager. Being busy trying to save the PA pilot (and failing to catch him, the forager being a lumbering-slow brute of a machine), the Triax machine’s torso was blasted wide open, causing the ejector seats to force-evacuate he and Leena: Leena being psionicly linked to the machine when it “died”, fainted.
Tim the Borg, meanwhile, charged the Titan heavy robot and let lose with his own missile supply and laser limbs, eventually getting close enough to attack it with his sword.
Over at Don-Toranado’s parachute landing site, the bandito’s on hover bikes were berated by their obviously insane leader, and when Shalyndra came onto the scene with a ‘multiple image’ spell in effect, making it seem like there were nearly 8 masked elven killers in the trees, the hover-bikers shot their leader and retreated.
Eventually through concentrated infantry fire, and the intervention of the glowing 4 armed woman, the Titan combat robot was rendered non-functional and the pilot (a “green-skin” ork) forced to surrender.
The strange woman introduced herself as Ava “avatar of Shemarra” and apologized for not helping sooner, but stipulated she did not enjoying fighting. After reassuring everyone that a fair number of the people within the dormitory had actually lived, Ava disappeared in a burst of golden mist, leaving Phoenix force and Tim gob smacked.
When all was said and done, the ork prisoner turned over to the sheriff, and Phoenix Force fêted that evening for preventing the ‘Dread Pirate Don-Toranado’ from sacking the silver mine of Shaft 8, everyone settled down (barring a “misunderstanding” when Anon shot Tim with a low-output laser to prove a point) and used Tim’s family home in Silvereno as a base-camp until the TW express 3-9 returned to take them back to Lazlo.
Four days it would be until they could. During this period of time, Anon & Leena bonded and discussed their goals and dreams, Tim was slowly courted to join up (even as a free-lancer) with the team, and the Titan Robot was repaired by Leena, as a prize-of-battle to replace the lost Forager. A portion of the salvage of the Red-Hawk and Forager went towards a widows & orphan fund for those slain at the work camp, and the rest towards replacements for the two, now steedless, pilots.
It is now July 6, P.A. 109.