A pretty young woman stood in a three-piece suit. Behind her, hundreds of bright red flashes burn across the background. Above her was a huge complex of large, gray metal buildings, with fresh burn scars covered most of them. The remains of fences tried to encircle the whole place but most had been smashed to the ground by the heavy treads of armored personal carriers. The bodies of men and morphs littered the ground, their bodies scored great burns from laser fire.

“This is Linda Dole for the Haven News Network” said the smartly dressed woman, ducking each time a stray laser blot burned over head, “Just hours ago, battle erupted within the Kinglington Protection Agency as their Morph soldiers rose up in rebellion. It is believed that the CEOs are dead or missing and the company as collapsed. The Morph’s reasons for doing so are as yet, unknown. Within an hour of the rebellion, forces belonging to the political group, Humanity Above, appeared on the seen and…..”

A large explosion behind her cut off Linda. As she and the cameramen in front of her were thrown the ground, the camera captured the images of what appeared to be a power plant bursting into the flames, with large jagged chunks of metal flying through the air. Before either of them could move, the camera recorded a large metal shape

A lone ship passed through the void of space, on route to the planet of Mjolnir, an out of the way world on the outer rim of colonized planets in the Nova galaxy. Not the largest or most heavily armed vessel, the Star’s Tail was still a warship, her belly covered in laser batteries and five missile pods mounted topside. The twin warp engines mounted in the stern left behind a shimmering cloud of ion particles.

Deep within the Star’s Tail, in the small stateroom of the captain, a small cloud of strong, bittersweet smoke gathered around the head of a dark eyed man. A small cigar of carlia leaf burned, held between his lips, the smoke escaping from his lungs in tendrils from his nose and the corners of his mouth. Carlia leaf was twice as addicting as Terran tobacco but instead of causing cancer like its tobacco relative, Carlia only caused allergic reactions in some people. For the man himself, the effects of the smoke caused feels of calm to ease his mind and shut down the nerve’s ability to send pain signals to the brain.

Alex Drake stared it the computer screen in front of him, the video looping back to display of Linda Dole’s last report. An uneasy frown caressed his lips around the small cigar. His company was gone and it’s undoing was caused by a rebellion of Animorphs. The ship’s crew was mostly human but his company of mercenary troopers was mostly made up of Animorphs, with only the officers from the rank of sergeant and up being fellow humans. Add to that, a large number of Heavy Morphs, built for heavy labor but they did cause him any fear. Heavy Morphs were loyal, stupid and strong, much like Lenny from the Terra book called Of Mice and Men, lost in ages passed.

Luckily most the laser rifles and carbines were locked up in the armory, which needed the command code of two officers and a hand scan to open it up. Upon his hip was belted on his sidearm, a Merizen model 13, on of the most common laser pistols in the universe with plenty of knockoffs to drive the price down. That was proof enough that something was wrong, he never went armed aboard ship until they were about to make planet fall. Alex took a deep pull on the cigar, causing the burning red tip to flare brightly.

“Now hear this” he said, pushing the ship’s intercom, “This is Captain Drake, all officers are to report to the conference room. All Morphs are to report back into their quarters on the double.”

With that, he released the intercom control and stood up. Tucking a thin, shinny metal case into his pocket, Alex left his quarters and ended down the paneled corridor towards the inner workings of the upper deck of the Star’s Tail. Down below him, for two decks, were the quarters and rec rooms for his company.


(want to know more and join up? Please see the OOC thread and post a character there: chaotic-space-ooc-t13281.html )

As the heavy stomp of combat boot echoed through the corridor, Alex stoked the butt of the pistol at his side. How many of the soldiers he had fought beside had been in on the uprising back on Haven? He almost didn’t notice the cigar burning dangerously need his lips. Muttering to himself, he pulled the stub from his mouth and rubbed the burning end on the heel of his left boot.

As the conference room door hissed open, he snapped a relaxed salute to the assembled sergeants and the four lieutenants, before walked to the head of the room.. Calmly he pulled the metal case and withdrew another cigar, sliced off the tip, placed it between his lips and lit it. After taking in a deep pull at the burning Carlia leaf, he took a sidestep to the left of a large screen and picked up a remote from a holster on the wall. The largest button was pressed.

A pretty young woman stood in a three-piece suit. Behind her, hundreds of bright red flashes burn across the background. Above her was a huge complex of large, gray metal buildings, with fresh burn scars covered most of them. The remains of fences tried to encircle the whole place but most had been smashed to the ground by the heavy treads of armored personal carriers. The bodies of men and morphs littered the ground, their bodies scored great burns from laser fire.

“This is Linda Dole for the Haven News Network” said the smartly dressed woman, ducking each time a stray laser blot burned over head, “Just hours ago, battle erupted within the Kinglington Protection Agency as their Morph soldiers rose up in rebellion. It is believed that the CEOs are dead or missing and the company as collapsed. The Morph’s reasons for doing so are as yet, unknown. Within an hour of the rebellion, forces belonging to the political group, Humanity Above, appeared on the seen and…..”

A large explosion behind her cut off Linda. As she and the cameramen in front of her were thrown the ground, the camera captured the images of what appeared to be a power plant bursting into the flames, with large jagged chunks of metal flying through the air. Before either of them could move, the camera recorded a large metal shape

After one loop of the program, Alex pressed the mute button and stood in front of the screen. His eyes scanned over the crowd of human officers, all twenty-four of them, watching for fear or anger or shock. His own was a flat slate. With smoke leaking from his nose, he drew a deep breath.

“As many of you can guess” he said, “None of us now have a company that we belong to or on a pay roll.” He sighed and took another pull on the cigar. “What we do have however” he continued, “Is an armory full of weapons, a scout class warship and crew, enough heavy morphs and supplies to build a small military outpost and one hundred and eighty morph troopers and exotics that we can or can not trust. So the question becomes, what are we going to do?”

Alex almost sighed in annoyance as Lieutenant Lesser bumbled his way into the conference room. the younger man was defiantly good at his chosen profession and loyal to boot but his showing up late and cracking his head on the projector was not the best signal coming off of him during this time of crisis. However, he was going to need all of these officers if he to get them good positions in a new company or start their own.

Alex's eyes drifted over to Sergeant Hannover. Somewhat of an oddball with a passion for outdated railguns, the sergeant was one to live up to his nickname of Overkill with the beastly thing he carried into battle. His ideas had merit and at least he voiced them instead of being one of the milling mass of humans in the room. He drew in another puff of Carlia smoke into his mouth, letting it leak out from his nose and corners of his mouth, much like a dragon right before it breathed fire.

"The question Lieutenant is what we are going to do without a company to pay us" said Alex but before he could go on, two voices broke in.

"We should shoot the lot of the Furs" came the somewhat squeaky voice of Sergeant William Orange, a young man new to the outfit and untested in battle.

"Yeah" came the voice of Staff Sergeant Aakar Ngô, "We can't trust them."

A frown crossed Alex's face, while the fresh faced Sergeant Orange might be written off as a nervous kid, Sergeant Ngô was not. He was one of the oldest members on the Star's Tail and should have known that his words were foolish in any case or were possibility the wisest given the situation. A large snort caused a billowing cloud of smoke to escape Alex's nostrils.

"We cant" he said slowly, "Not without screwing ourselves. If we kill them, we'll look like a bunch of cowards and thieves to anyone we try to hook up with, if we join a new company. It will appear that we fled company headquarters and stole this ship to make your escape without them to prove that we were on a mission."

"Now Sergeant Hannover has an interesting prepositional" Alex continued, not waiting for a rebuttal from the two sergeants, "However, it does have a few flaws. While I do not find a Morph to be any more or any less then a man on the battle field, the rest of the population feel differently. If we were to charter a new company with such regulations, not only would we have every nation and mercenary company breathing down our necks and wanting us arrested, where would we recruit from? Runaways? That would just be another reason for them to hunt us. I believe that the best option is to form a new mercenary company with much more relaxed regulations for Morphs to ease the tensions, maybe even pay"

"Which brings us to another concern" he continued, "We have very limited funds at the moment and we're going to need much much more to continue in any course of action. I know that there are three job offers with in a few hours travel of our current position, so I will call for a vote. Everyone who wishes to charter a new company raise your hand and call out a name for it."

Giving everyone a second to think it over, Alex raised his own right hand and called out, "War Ravens!"

The other officers looked hesitant; shuffling in place, rubbing hands, a few crackled their knuckles, other bites their lips in indecision, some looked down and a number of the younger men were wide eyed. One of the older sergeants raised his hand almost lazily, content to go with whatever the new company was called. He had been shifting from company to company and the trip was shorter this way. More hands were raised, now that someone had lead the way. A few hearty cries of "War Ravens" or "Clan Phoenix" and one of "The Enforcers" echoed around the room as all but three hands were raised.

"Then it is done" called out Alex, signaling everyone to be quiet with up raised hand, "A new company is born this day, be we Ravens to grow fat off the spoils of war or Phoenixes rising from the ashes. Now then Until we have enough money to sit down and build a base and eat at the same time, I will remain in command and we will go by the name Avions. Once we have time, a new name and true charter will be drafted. Now, go get the soldiers ready for a fight and tell them their getting combat pay. Their get a one percentage from our next job, which I off to grab. Dismissed."

With another cloud of smoke billowing from his nose, Alex walked from the conference room, heading down one deck to the transmitter room. It was such a strange place for it on this class of warship, down in the bowels of the ship and in among the trooper's quarters, instead of up with the officers. Not that it bugged him to be down with his troopers but a few of them did make his skin crawl.

As he turned a corner, Alex all but tripped over the massive Caninemorph that everyone (including herself) called Mutt. Recovering himself enough to look like a proper Officer, he looked down on the soldier with a mix of annoyance, sadness and happiness. He liked Mutt, even if she was mostly a Heavy Morph that could weld a gun and had a sprinkling of brains. The sparking hole in the wall and smashed keypad told the whole story.

"Oh Mutt" he said in a somewhat affection tone, "What did you do this time?"