February 21, 2017 " 00:19

It had been a long day for Mach, or perhaps better a long week in general after the shenanigans of the Temple of the Divine Mother cult. Today involved tracking and apprehending a few last remnants of the bastards involved in 'the cleanse' , several actual hunts against the absurd he was used to, some fretting over one friend who had been shot and one apparently caught up in the actually fluster cluck on Valentines, some leg work for a few side jobs all atop of his usual social smokescreen of tomfoolery. To say that he was looking forward to a little shuteye in a warm bed was quite the understatement! Yet the man still had one thing to take care of before he could escape to such which was what saw him in his apartment at that hour searching for Sir Lemon' to feed fancy foods to. Part of their 'don't rip Mach's face off" agreement since his return as he had sort of abandoned her during his incarceration. What' He was a little preoccupied!

Poking around this shadow and that the man clicked his tongue encouragingly with the occasional ""here kitty, kitty?" spoken with just a hint of annoyance to it." Hey, the longer he dicked around here the longer he was away from that dream of comfort to be found in the arms of another. He was looking forward to a warm bed after all which most certainly wouldn't involve the sole other occupant of this bastion (as trying to teddy bearify Sir Lemon would likely end with him, well, missing a face.) And while there was certainly a gamble to be had seeking out such comforts away from his heavily warded apartment he ventured it was worth the risk since, yeah, gambler. Though the fact that he wasn't handing out keys and bringing every hookup back to his place did at least mean he was learning from his experiences" if only somewhat or sometimes.?"

"Here kitty, kitty' you are here, right?" A pause as he listened for any sign of life. "Totally not skanking it up with Tommy's" Maybe smooshing the goosh with Magnus or getting an itch scratched by Sparks or-"

"Mroooooowl"!"

That lone cobalt eye ticked about trying to pinpoint were that very threatening growl came from. Not exactly a smart way to try and locate the spiteful creature but he'd been at this game for the better part of a half an hour and was reaching the limits of his patience for the felines tempers violent towards him or not. "Hey, you quit your shit and we both get what we want, yeah' Learn from my negative example, not to be my negative example!"

Thinking up another insult for the fuzzy little demon his thought train was derailed by the sudden, insistent buzzing that arose in his breast pocket, a muffled yet shrill sounding beep emanating. Odd, he was sure his phone was set to silent. Digging the urgently crying piece of technology out he felt a sense of dread clawing at the back of his neck; the flashing of danger orange, reds, and yellows from the screen causing his stomach to sink. Across the screen spun the phoenix crest of the U.T.R.A. with text blinking just above the acknowledgment button:

EMERGENGCY U.T.R.A. ALERT " HUNTER IN DISTRESS " IMMEDIATE INTERVENTION REQUIRED

They were words no peacekeeper hunter ever wanted to see, words that meant that one of their fellows was in dire trouble and you were the closest unit available for assistance. Thumbing through the acknowledgment that lone cobalt orb widened as he saw not one but multiple instances scroll along his screen, red dots illuminating on the rudimentary map that popped up showing their relative location to him. They were clustered nearly one atop of another, they weren't far, and they were all at a location he knew well " the U.T.R.A. Satellite office.

This wasn't just a hunter that had bit off more than they could chew or had found themselves in a crap situation, this was an all-out attack on the U.T.R.A. presence in Rhy?Din! As for the lone ray of hope that painted this scenario in not so terrible a light, that this was some glitch in the emergency broadcast system or the malevolent work of a hacker, well, those were dashed as he heard the muffled sound of assault rifle fire rise up outside once more punctuating staccato beats to the much heavier thuds and whistles of aggressive magic. The massive portal window that sat at the back of this apartment looking down on the sleepless streets of Rhy'Din cast grotesque shadows on his vaulted ceiling as the night was lit up by the occasional gulf of fiery red or electrical blue hues echoing those sounds far too closely resembling the hell experienced mere days prior.

Clattering upon the floor Sir Lemon would have to figure out how to get at her own Fancy Feast as the hunter scrambled. He geared up as quickly as possible, flying out the door of his apartment in a mad bid to not be too late.

February 18, 2017 - 00:46

It was a slog moving through the labyrinthine military complex which proved to be both nerve wracking and comforting at one. The facility had been built with many twists, turns, and indents precisely to make it disorienting to an offending force (a paranoid decision that seemed to be paying off in spades tonight) and give a defending one a lot of vantages for counter fire, places to set up ambushes, or easily defensible chokepoints. Then again these same defensive features could be easily turned against reinforcements following after making them a double edged sword of utility and leaps of faith that someone wasn't already hiding in a shadowy corner ready to ruin (more so than it already was) his night. Luckily enough it seemed the base, minimally staffed as it was especially for this hour, was proving ample fight for the non-human offenders (a trend that held for every last fighter he'd put down to this point) leaving his potential ambushers far too distracted to be watching their six as they should have been. A critical flaw in tactics along with all the processed mana they were leaving in their wake that the hunter used to great effect as he flanked and wiped out small squads of enemy combatants roaming the halls with minimal injury to himself. Well, relatively speaking anyway as 'minimal' to a monster like him happened to involve a couple more bullet wounds, a fractured rib from a concussive spell that made contact, and the omnipresent smell of blood that washed into his senses both from all the death and mayhem strewn about but also from the dead vitae that oozed form his mucous membranes as the carbine caster still took it's toll on him with each spell he squeezed off.

Working deeper into the base he moved with purpose having first visited the empty officer-on-post's quarters before making his way to central security. After an intense firefight with the mages that had been trying to kick down the door there he found his efforts a waste as the only thing standing within (particularly after all the magic flung at the heavily fortified room) were a couple of mobile sentries left to hold the position. This is what saw him moving now for the administrative command post/secondary security station. It may have seemed like he was wandering about aimlessly in the base and, to a point, he was. But other than the off body of some human schmuck in their skives or some soldier put down with extreme prejudice while holding a chokepoint there had been a lack of U.T.R.A. casualties seen. And since he'd seen no evidence of ghoulification ceremonies or flesh sacrifices than he could only conclude that the soldiers were fighting with purpose in more important parts of the base than the administrative offices up front. And, perhaps more important still, with direction that he was trying to get in touch with so he could break into the loop rather than just blindly walking from one loud explosion to another.

Sliding up to the security door he gave the handle a jostle making sure the latch was still intact before sliding out his ID badge to touch to the RFID card reader. While the attackers were rather well organized they didn't exactly have a lot of? subtle" means of entry as evidenced by the menagerie of melted or blown away doors he'd happened upon during his infiltration. Thus, he figured, if the door was intact than no one who shouldn't be on the other side of the door should be. Not that this stopped him from bursting through the door all "Oh Yeah~!" Cool Aid man style with picked up rifle sweeping the perimeter the second he saw the string of red diodes light up green and heard the magnetic latch release. Rather than a bunch of excited cheers from sugared up children though he found himself staring down the barrels of several bullpup assault rifles held by folks who had a much more stressed and horrified expression to his abrupt entrance.

The tension in the air would have needed a chainsaw to cut through as both parties stared each other down, Mach instantly recognizing the U.T.R.A. uniforms of the soldiers in the room though it was much more of a gamble if they recognized him since he was just wearing a regular old duster with no identifiers sewn on. A few moments passed in highly uncomfortable silence before someone pushed through the wall of armored soldier; an athletic figure in fatigue pants, sockless tennies and an armored vest totting a mess of gold that the schmooze recognized right off the bat. "We really gotta stop meeting like this Lieutenant."

The woman squinted at him before a scowl finally took to those matronly features. "I never thought I'd see the day I'd be saying this but I'm glad to see you Turner." A tired, half-assed salute was offered before they waved the handgun in their hand dismissively at the still petrified soldiers ready to drop him. "At ease men. And you, get in here and close that door. Last thing we need is to just give those bastards an open door to waltz through."

Mach couldn't help but snicker lightly as he stepped into the room, security door pushed quietly shut behind. "Come hither and with bed head to boot, Ms. Calway what?ll the boys think?"

This earned him a rather withered looked, the kind that understood the humor but was in no mood for it. "Cute. Don't quit your day job." Then again despite the caustic manner of their tone there was an obvious relief that took more than a few years off the woman's haggard features. Apparently being a glib jerk didn't outweigh his usefulness as the major combat asset on post which was sorely needed at this moment. Moving his way closer to the group a few of the soldiers seemed to blink out of the narrow haze of their battle born tunnel vision which he knew made everyone look like a nail needing to be hammered as evidenced by the draining of tension from a few of those faces as they finally nodded acknowledgment of the hunter.

"Seems like it'd be a pretty good day to do such..." Past the wall of muscle his gaze was attracted to the dull blue glow of the sole monitor that was on in the darkened room, what looked to be architectural blueprints blazen across the screen. "Gimme a SITREP, how we looking?"

A wry and dry smirk escaped the woman at his little joke, not exactly humored so much as relieved though it was short lived as the tension once more took hold of her features. "Not good." The admission held an uncertain note to it as she was obviously struggled between realism and the need to be optimistic in front of her troops " the proverbial rock and hard place faced by anyone in command. "Enemy forces consisting of standard mil' shop n' go insurgents bolstered by uncut magic support have hit us hard in a three prong attack. Kicked in our front door and have taken a torch to our loading docks, a likely diversion to their third force which came in quiet through the training courtyard. Have laid down a blanket EM dampening field to boot making coordination a bitch."

"Damn..." The word escaped him without thought as he worked through all that in his mind, his word choice feeling wholly inadequate. "I've seen the damage up front, looks like a lot more of 'theirs' have been dropped than ours."

"Yeah....the attack was certainly a surprise but this is a military facility, our response was quick." There was almost a hint of pride in her tone before it was wrung away as she clenched the sidearm in hand. "But still....we've lost a fair number. Whoever this rabble is they're organized and plentiful and this place is hardly a garrison to begin with especially given this time of night - we're pretty much a skeleton crew and they knew it."

Mach chewed on this information, his expression turning coldly serious. "So a three prong attack during our dead hours....sounds like they're after something inside this base, any idea what?"

"Not just inside the base..." These words left the woman bitterly drawing the attention of his lone cobalt blue eye. "I've....gotten reports before the cutoff that a number of ours off base have been attacked....and that's just the ones who were able to report."

He felt his jaw slack at this revelation - just what sort of attack was this!" Questions rushed to his mind though he worked hard to parse through them so he didn't waste anyone's time asking about what he could solve himself. "Shit.....so that's why the outside was looking barren."

"Yeah. Standing order is to keep away and marshal " get our folks together in groups and consolidate our power. We might need it if things go tits up here." They cast a wary look to the upward twitch of his brow. "You are right, the enemy is after something here..." And with that they pointed to the dim monitor and the blueprints on display. His gaze shifted once more to the plans on display and the rather bland looking words printed in the middle of the large rectangle in the center of the display. Who would guess the random muddle of letters 'PK CTRL/STOR' could cause such a cold knot to curl in his stomach until this night.

"The 'peacekeepers'..."

"The 'peacekeepers'." The woman's tone felt just as empty as his stomach did at that simple word which was anything but. 'Peacekeeper' may have been the official PR title of all the U.T.R.A. soldiers running around in Rhy'Din on the mission of cleaning up Tang problems that slipped in. But in this context it was in reference to the less innocuous company of Veld Industries F03G12-M "Peacekeeper" suppression and force multiplication androids that lay in deep storage beneath the compound. Six and a half feet of leading robotics technology plated head to toe with tank grade armor ceramics with inbuilt small arms weapons and a pseudo-caster integrated to the hybrid tech/arcane reactor that powered them. The third prong of the UTRA military doctrine triad including state battlemages and military hunters to stay competitive in a world of not only technological wonder but arcane phenomena that could twist the very rules of reality. While cybernetic legions were nowhere near as versatile as mages or hunters proper they were a heck of a lot easier to mass produce and cheaper to replace; so they were used to pad force differences and give number to Tanga's magical fighting and civil defense forces.

And this was important as out of the thirty or so UTRA personnel stationed in Rhy'Din only about half of them were actually combat qualified and of those barely a handful actually had combat roles that kept them in form. If there was ever any sort of wide scale problem, like say a mad cult from Tang going wild in the streets, the number of folks at this satellite office wouldn't be able to do much but sit back and watch the city burn. No, in those situations the answer was to officially request the city watch to maintain public order and keep civies out of the designated area of operation. Afterwards the UTRA would release the mechanical horde to help pacify the situation with extreme efficiency.

Of course mechanical hordes were a double edged sword depending on who was pushing the button and how they had programmed them. The only real difference between keeping the peace and indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction was just a few flips in the heuristics programming and engagement protocols after all. And it seemed this was a rabbit hole both he and the Lieutenants minds naturally went down as they stared somberly at the schematics. "Shit..." It was a start in conveying the mutual feeling of dread shared between the two leading officers. "Please tell me we have those locked down."

The woman's expression, grave as it was still softened just a touch at that question. "For the time being. Well, in a sense at least." This warranted a peak of brow from the hunter. "Like I said, the OPFOR is pretty well organized and they've been moving with more precision than you get out of dumb luck. I would hazard they somehow got a hold of general blueprints of this building from the municipal building department."

"Yeah, but those aren't labeled as to what rooms are for what."

The woman cast a mild glance at him for his interruption. "I know....which makes me think they had access to electrical code inspector records too. It's not like there's a lot of uses for a large, underground, multi-story storage areas with high electrical in needs but little other utilities, and access to a bulk freight elevator to the surface. Anyway, the frontal attack hit like a sledgehammer, plowed for one of the security control rooms. There wasn't time to send someone down to the storage before a base wide assault lockdown was activated. The loading docks attack seems more like diversion than anything but the fighting was heaviest there per the last report I got. And if they can capture that area they could work on cracking access to the freight elevator."

"And the stealth prong?"

The woman worried her lower lip a little. "A concentrated and covert attempt to access the droid storage from a maintenance entrance inside the base." A finger snapped up to silence his protest. "But it seems we lucked out in this regards." Drawing his attention back to the dull glowing monitor the woman adjusted a few settings until finally two sets of schematics shown on the display, similar but slightly different. "When the hunter before you got this place cratered we didn't rebuild exactly as per the original plans submitted to the city clerk. Things got shuffled around so what was left could be quickly integrated into what was being newly built. And so the maintenance hallway they're assaulting now, well... Pointing from one screen to another the woman waited for him to make the connection.

And what a connection it was as a thin grin pulled upon rugged features. "Waste processing huh....nice."

The matronly woman nodded empathetically though their expression lost any levity it had held so briefly. "Yeah, they're assaulting the new pipes and pump room for all our shit....and I have people defending that with their lives."

"Wait, why..." His words fell silent as he worked through the logistics of that with the realization coming like an epiphany. "....oh, well, clever girl." You want someone to think that something was important then the quickest and easiest way was to pile up security around it.

"Clever, maybe, but good men and women are dying for that ruse." He noted the uncomfortable tension in their voice as they spoke, the thinly veiled attempt to hide anger and guilt that she'd ordered people to die for such a cause.

Mach wanted to comfort the woman, to tell them it wasn't their fault but that of the bastards that were blowing through the base. Yet he knew such words were a poor balm, that no matter who was most at fault you always carried the weight of your orders. Being in command sucked, he knew this well and felt his own guilt as instead of offering words of comfort he pushed forward almost callously. "Do we have a way of getting to the droids ourselves" Make it so we're not just sending folks to the grinder for no reason?"

Calway's expression thinned at that frank assessment but they swallowed down what bile rose, their hands moving to alter the view of the current buildings floor plans. "Yeah....this strike team," a motion to the squad of wooden faced soldiers standing nervously around, "and myself were going to head to this server room where we should be able to access an electrical conduit service-way that'll lead us to the storage room. There we'll blast in and then we can access the master control center, get to activating the legions to help us get back control of the situation. And now that you're here we stand an even better chance of..."

Mach cut off that last, impromptu part of the woman's plan with a shake of his head. "Sorry Lieutenant, I'm not exactly a covert asset." He tapped the bullpup assault rifle he'd picked up along with the large caster carbine that was slung across his back, neither weapon equipped with silencers or muzzle flash suppressors like the rest of the strike forces. A lie of false leading, of course, as hunters had spells that could work better than any mechanical suppressor ever built and were well versed in commando raid tactics. But Mach knew what the best role he could, and wanted, to serve in this situation was....and it wasn't a stealthy one. "But I can make for a pretty good diversion. You said the loading docks were taking heavy fire?"

The woman's features paled as he shot down that idea of having a safety net with them. Not that he blamed her as, yeah, only a handful of folks had real or recent combat experience at this post and Mach was seeing a lack of those folks standing around him right now. "Captain, if we fail to reach the droid control center-"

"Lieutenant, if the docks fall then they're just a couple of blast doors away from not only the droids but our APCs and armory." Blue eye blue watched as the woman bit down on her lower lip, flustered annoyance flashing as they were called out. "Besides, better to split the difference, increase our odds of one of us getting what we need."

Worrying that lip a little more the woman finally let out a stressed sigh, something Mach was quiet used to hearing those few times folks were forced to admit he was right. "I'd heard A2 Jacobson was on the way there to help but, yeah, last report we got before the blackout things were looking grim."

This news struck the man and he didn't even try to hide it as his brows rose. "Wait, Jacobson's here?"

"Yeah, as I understand he's taken to someones bad habit of filing his reports during the night. I assume that's why he was on site when, well, everything hit the fan."

Mach bit back a curse as he hiked his gear, readying himself to leave. "Shit....alright, yeah, I'm going to assist the docks. You get to that server room..." Pausing momentarily he reached into his coat, a little shuffling before he drew out a string of concussive grenades which he set down on the desk. "You run into the OPFOR then toss a couple of these party favors at them while gunning it, don't engage, just get away."

A look of worry pulled taught on the woman's features at his sudden urgency. "I....okay, but, what?s the problem' Is there something wrong with 2Lt. Jacobson going to the docks?"

Not waiting to answer that the schmooze was already rushing for the far door which he entered, the bullpup assault rifle brought up from it's slung position. Pausing a moment to listen for movement on the other side of the door he finally cast a frustrated look back to the worried ensemble. "Yeah....kids got a heroic streak to them, and in this bit of business that's going to get him killed.? And with that the hunter slipped through the door, rushing his way back up towards where he'd heard rumbling explosions before, back up towards the loading docks.