Sky on Fire (semi-closed)

OOC: OOC thread is here.

It is dripping. Annoyingly so.

James M. Jackson - nobody knows what the M. stands for - is the director of public affairs for Sorban Security. The company was originally incorporated four years ago under another name by nameless others; it didn't take very long to go bankrupt, as many start-ups did when the major companies started fortifying against Earth's new policy direction in Ashen June three years gone.

Jackson is responsible for the renaming of the company. He is Sorbanese by birth, and even he is annoyed at the saccharine patriotism inherent in the new name; he must acknowledge though that such patriotism in times like this helps to keep the customers rolling in. And paying. Mustn't forget the paying.

Jackson's other responsibility is to make sure it shows up big on everyone else's radar. Sorban Security itself is about to jump into the big private security leagues on the Lunar exchange, for which it needs piles of stored credits; Jackson is supposed to coordinate advertising and publicity for the rapidly-growing security agency, because having only a pretty name and a small but generally positive reputation won't ensure the steady liquidity needed for such a quantum leap.

Personally, he doesn't know why they chose him. When he applied at the local housing agency three weeks ago, the 'natural assertiveness' his colleagues spoke so happily of took a sick day, and the 'ingrained, manly confidence' he stole from a book was sufficient only to get him a studio apartment in a depressing dark blue building in the CBD, although it is above the local headquarters of Sorban Security, for which he supposes he should be grateful. One of the roof gutters has rusted open, and rain is splattering outside - the annoying dripping sound previously mentioned.

Right now, all he has going for him is his voice. The SorbSec technicians can work acoustics like a rock star's road crew, but it does not help when the voice being worked is worn and a little cracked from three straight days of stressed talk and the occasional shouted tirade.

Jackson stares out the window. Yelan City, capital of the backwater colony world of Fencher, looks dismal in the pale man-made ambience; the small moon does not shine upon the city because it is blotted out by rolling charcoal clouds, leaving only the street lamps, and the safety strips of the occasional freighter zooming above, to light up the night.

It is depressing. He considers working further on the editing of the last commercial, a relatively new one recorded two weeks ago, but he simply cannot be bothered cutting the clips further, which he has been doing for the last week and six days. No, even the depressing cityscape seems a better alternative than the daily grind becoming the nightly one.

He stares at a pulsing orange dot and idly wonders what it is. Probably an insect on the window.

---

A long way away, there is a large bullet-shaped atmospheric craft blending perfectly with the sky. The stealth of its passage is only spoiled by the roar of its single aft engine and the strings of orange lights following its spine. 'stog' is stenciled in tiny white bauhaus letters under one of the two stubby fins where wings might be; this dropship is owned by the Special Tactics Operations Group, the elite counter-terrorist unit of the Greater Tellurian Police.

When the ship moves, it does so in a disturbingly animal fashion - pitching and rolling in a jerky fashion, like a snake flicking its head, trying to find prey; indeed, STOG dropships are resentfully referred to as 'snakeheads' by the populace they keep under control, and sometimes less resentfully by the officers who run STOG operations - the latter group seems to miss the various negatives associated with the name, but the former appreciate them all too well.

Not that all STOG are bastards by virtue of the vernacular. For example, the silver-haired veteran leading the team, the three diamonds of a GTP inspector on her dark flexarmour and the surname 'McKeaton' engraved on her metal nametag, is the kind of brilliant officer the Force sees perhaps once in a lifetime. She has stopped hundreds of crimes, solved dozens more, and survived five assassination attempts, one partially successful (her right hand is artificial now).

She and her team, who are, for the most part, helmeted, faceless, voiceless constables, genuinely believe that, by way of the attack they're about to execute, they are actually shutting down a major terrorist threat. They've been misinformed; despite its bid for Lunar status, the mark of a company gaining power, the kind of threat SSI currently presents to the existing regime is around the same as the threat presented by the graffiti artists who have become so common in recent months.

Sadly, Inspector Liz McKeaton of the Greater Tellurian Police STOG, Fencher squad, and her team of honest, hard-working constables, are about to commit murder in the name of preventing it. Worse, it will be due to a misunderstanding.

Liz doesn't know this yet. Briefing is complete, and so nothing is said as the dropship's roar drops to the clicking chirping of a cicada and the gigantic bullet drops into a dark alleyway fifty-one metres east of Jackson's second-floor apartment. Why would anything need to be said? Dissecting orders in intricate detail is a useless, time-wasting activity. Further directions will be issued when, and only when, she needs to issue them.

---

SSI has a policy of working on shifts, in the manner of hospitals and other essential services. This is a trait pretty much unique to it in the nine-to-five business of smaller-leagues private security (although into the bigger leagues into which they're attempting to jump, unlimited hours are fairly commonplace). This means that, at any given time - the time right now is about zero-zero twenty-one, twenty-sixth May - there will be a receptionist, three guards and an administrator on duty.

The receptionist is a placid little brown-haired man sitting in front of a grey terminal, looking perfectly happy with the spreadsheeting work he's doing. The three guards are patrolling the three corridors which lead into the lobby: Sorban has an east door opening onto the dark alleyway, a west door opening onto a back street, and a north door leading onto one of the main arteries of Yelan City.

John Tern, employee of SSI since before it was called that, is patrolling the eastern corridor. As with his two fellows, he bears a thirty-eight-calibre carbine on a dust-brown leather sling. Judging from its cleanness and expensive wooden construction, the carbine seems mostly for show; this would be a correct assessment. Against the kind of weapons that, say, a GTP STOG team would carry, a thirty-eight is useless.

There isn't even a round chambered. John won't have long to regret this.

As he nears the door he notices the sounds of the night seem unusually loud tonight, but they fade away as he gets closer. He writes it off to simple lack of other sound - there is the rain, and there is the receptionist's keyboard, and there are his footsteps, and that is it. This is the extent of audio stimuli on this rainy night in the city of Yelan on the backwater colony world of Fencher. Fun.

Something hisses in the strange way that whispering voices do. John stops now, absolutely sure this isn't some trick of the ear - yes, there are definitely whispering voices. Perhaps kids in the alleyway? He increases his pace, ready to move in and deliver a tirade worthy of Mister Jackson ... then one of the voices says, quite distinctly, almost in a stage whisper, "Zulu! Go, go go!" It carries a light Scottish flavour in the spacer mode, and sounds like the voice of an adult woman, not a teenage girl.

Then there's a whistling sound and a clatter, and then the door thuds open against the wall.

---

A moment beforehand
Liz McKeaton crouches by the door, lightly balancing her small-calibre assault rifle in both hands. With five point five-six millimetre slugs, it's not so much what you're firing as how quickly you're firing it. The little gun can put out fourteen rounds per second. Liz is quite satisfied with this.

"One last run over Op Con," she whispers. The constables all nod intently, like a row of mechanoids. "They have a nightshift. Expect fully automatic weapons. Keep in mind that we're loading AP for a reason. Use cover, fire controlled bursts and so forth, standard armafor doctrine ... Are we all ready to go?" They all nod again. It's amusing in a surreal kind of way.

"Alright. Keller, breach on Zulu." A short armoured woman nods assent and moves forward, crouching, with a breaching arm in one hand, supported by one forearm; Constable Keller leans the rifle barrel of a drilling-variant combination gun against the old mechanical lock and waits for the Zulu go code. McKeaton looks around. "Green?" The mechanoids nod. Abandoning all pretence at subtlety, McKeaton stage-whispers, "Zulu! Go, go, go!"

Keller fires the rifle barrel into the door, blowing out the lock. Liang the tall detcon is already up on his considerable feet, moving, leveling a foot at the door, letting it fly forward like a piston. Lock broken, the door whistles inwards and whacks loudly into the wall.

===

Herein are the events immediately following the breach of the eastern entrance to Sorban Security regional station, Yelan City.

John Tern used to be a colonial forces sergeant major. When people fire at him, he is used to firing back. He has a thirty-eight-calibre carbine. There's nothing to stop him from firing. However, he decides the more sensible option is to smash through two plaster walls into the lobby with the GTP STOG team hot on his tail. They are here distracted by the diminutive receptionist, who has a silenced service pistol in one hand, the model most SorbSec staff carry on duty. He makes the mistake of attempting to counter the threat.

By the time Peter Liang is done clubbing the little guy over the head, dragging him into the back room and locking him in an empty cupboard, John Tern is long gone. He is not the STOG team's main concern anyway; there are several objectives they need to do nifty things with, and wiping out the civilian, mostly whistle-clean security staff isn't one of them. The armoured policemen clatter up a flight of metal grille stairs at one edge of the lobby onto a catwalk, Keller and her combination gun leading.

---

Jackson has just made the decision to fall asleep watching TV when his phone rings. He grumbles, wondering who could possibly be rude enough to call at this hour, and takes it. After all, it could be important.

The thin face of Richard Fox fills the TV screen. Where Jackson is a mere department head, his kamerad Fox, a disturbingly fanatical reed of a man with a shock of light brown hair, is the titular managing director of SorbSec. Befitting its nature as a company vocalising opposition to the Earth security crackdown, leadership is decentralised. If Fox is ever killed, the council - led by the nearly-as-influential Jackson - will be able to take over.

"Umm," Fox says, pointlessly. "James, are you aware of a disturbance in your area?" He is formal, as always. Jackson can't help but think of the stiff, madly-ideological Fox as a junior high science master: specifically, Jackson's science master. The old man was always dedicated to his work, and he was good at it, but he had a really, really annoying tendency to waste entire periods on boring trivia. About here is where Jackson cuts off that train of thought. The private sector is not high school; nothing is trivia.

So Jackson listens. His window (one panel uncharacteristically open for an over-warm night) faces onto the street, so he cannot see anything inside the building - 'your area', as Fox put it; there is nothing on the north route except the odd passing powerboarder and, as he watches, a skeletal blue-glowing flicycle in battery-powered cruising mode. Background noise is the same as ever - drum-and-bass music or the occasional shout from the brothel to the west, a familiar clattering of stock being piled up from the metalworker's across the road. The acoustics are a little odd, but that's probably because Jackson usually hears the ambience through the panes, not around them.

He looks back at Fox. "No," he says, wondering if someone's time is being wasted. "No, I can't hear anything."

Fox stares. "Are you quite sure? Your eastern door was unlocked sixty seconds ago. I'm given to understand that's not too standard."

Jackson glances sidelong at the eastern wall. An itty bitty seed of paranoia is germinating in his head. "It shouldn't be. I'll call the eastern guard --" And he is interrupted by the battering of something large and wooden on the equally wooden door to his apartment. It is loud enough that he can hear it through the partition that separates the small studio apartment into a tiny office and an 'economy' private area. "-- Hold on, there's someone at the door," he finishes lamely. His eyes creep to a plastic case leaning against the partition.

"Don't answer," Fox warns him. There is a question in his tone.

"What am I supposed to do?" Jackson retorts. "Jump out the window?"

"Touche," by which word the Director reluctantly concedes the point. By now, Jackson is over near the plastic case. It looks like the kind of thing that might have unpowered tools in it, all very ergonomic, plasticky and yellow. It doesn't carry most anything of the sort - click he unlatches it, and the inside is foam-padded in the manner of a microphone holder ... or a gun case.

He takes a lot of little metal boxes out of one side and a lot of little metal polyhedrons out of the other and starts putting them together like children's blocks. He is surprisingly fast and it doesn't take him long to assemble a small spindly metallic gun that bears a startling resemblance to a mutated Thompson, except with a scope and lots of metal rods. People in the Colonies would be most foolish not to arm themselves; this applies especially to people who might attract Earth's ire. Jackson has a good helping of sense with a sprinkling of self-interest and a creamy topping of idealist paranoia.

The rounds drop into the box magazine with a clatter. Jackson is practiced. The entire exercise has taken less than twenty-five seconds; as if on cue, the door is battered with the same large wooden object, more determinedly - or more desperately, perhaps. There are backpack straps on the case; he puts it on, resting the case on his chest, then lets himself through the partition and cautiously answers the door, where 'answers' is 'peeks through'.

The visitor is John Tern. It almost looks like a disappointment, and yet another repetition of Jackson's habit of going into full adrenaline high before ascertaining the circumstances - but Tern doesn't look calmly amiable. His hair is dripping sweat onto the cheap formica floor. He is carrying his carbine, which is odd for a private visit, and the safety is off, which is downright frightening. Jackson is starting to wonder what the hell is going on; neither Rick Fox nor John Tern are jumpy, but Fox is being cryptic and Tern is being, apparently, terminally nervous.

He lets Tern in. The man is covered in plaster fragments and he's holding his carbine like he's at war. He starts to speak, but Jackson gets in first: "Why do I ... To whom do I owe the pleasure? God, you're in a bloody state," he trails off, and looks at Tern for answers.

Tern appears to recover himself. He looks at Jackson, although his eyes are dancing around like a dog on ecstasy. His first words are stuttered. Not too unusual, considering he seems to have run about half a kilometre - and since it's about five hundred metres' worth of corridors and catwalks of stairs between the eastern guard post and Jackson's place, that might not be too far off.

"Terrans," he says, breathing heavily through his nose, and then through his mouth. He stands there looking dazed while Jackson rushes into the next room and stutters at an unsurprised-looking Richard Fox. Fox's response is, "Run, James." The old man looks calm but sounds shaky and worried. "Get out of there. If it," and from context Jackson interprets that it is the so-madly-discussed Earth crackdown, "if it's started, we're going to need you ... What are you standing here looking at me for? Go!"

"Dramatic," Jackson mutters, dry lucidity cutting through the wavefront of the rapidly approaching adrenaline storm for a moment before subsiding. He rushes out of the private room, past Tern, past the door. Someone says something. He turns to Tern; the man repeats, surprisingly calmly, "You look a sight yourself." Jackson looks down at himself - polo shirt, green slacks, glasses still hooked onto his collar - and laughs.

Tern is right. He looks the part of a disheveled, frightened terrorist, and it won't take much to convince the attacking team (presumably the local STOG) that he in fact is liable to do something foolish at any moment. Care is required.

His feet slap hard against the formica floor, heading east, echoed by John Tern's own slightly irregular march. Jackson thinks about all the reserves training he took. Dismayingly enough, what he can remember of it is rather little: use cover, aim for centre of mass, fire in short controlled bursts, stay low and so forth. Civilians are a danger to military people - what must Tern's training be telling him right now? This is the misery of the private sector. Shouldn't Jackson be calmer ... ? But his mind is jumping from topic to topic. It never does that. Maybe he's keyed up enough - enough? So now you have to be keyed up to be successfully raided by Terrans?

Still, he's surprised he's not crapping himself. It'll happen eventually, he supposes - and then it almost does when fire goes over his head, but it's only Tern firing off a few shots, making sure everything's in working condition. Jackson eeks, but feels alone when Tern splits off from him at the bottom of a flight of stairs. The ex-NCO directs him in a take-no-questions sort of way to get the customers out. There is no question as to who is actually in charge. Not that Jackson objects, though, he's really quite happy with letting real soldiers handle the direct line of fire.

Speaking of real soldiers ... The ground floor of the SorbSec corporate area is a triangle sprouting three corridors. Those corridors have blast doors and roll-a-grilles installed, which is fairly standard and cheap. However, those doors and a bunch of plaster separate them from the engagement zone, and silenced shots are being fired (ergo Jackson would have heard them); there's no way the north and west security teams would have heard them.

Jackson reaches for his mobile - but he left it in the apartment - but there's an intercom on a wall in the corridor down which he is passing towards the customer area and waiting rooms. He presses the button. "Jackson to north and west security," he says sharply, "lock down your respective wings. There is a major situation in progress. Lie low until my mark." Almost immediately, the order takes effect, as there is distant shouting behind him. He catches a few words - commanders ordering their four-man teams to secure resources.

The whitewashed brick and linoleum flooring of the corporate area becomes the paintings and carpeting of the customer zone quite smoothly. Jackson's footsteps are muffled. There is a door ahead - number 31, one of the waiting rooms which opens at one end onto the northern road. The audio security system politely informs him that there is one person inside with no employee tag. Bloody hell, Jackson grumbles warmly to himself, lucidity reasserting itself for a moment, why can't everything be written down?

He opens the door, noting the charmingly antiquated knob, and considering rehiring the decorators responsible - all in a completely inconsequential sort of way. Inside, there is an unoccupied frontdesk, and there are many chairs. One of the chairs is occupied: a kind of abstract sketch of the occupant is printed on James Jackson's brain. The sitting person is a woman - she is slim, and blonde, and moderately tall. Quite composed. He knows the face from somewhere, but the name refuses to come to him.

Reflecting on how odd it is to observe politeness in the middle of a battle, he tries to get her attention. "Er, excuse me?"

---

The receptionist wakes up. He is in a stores cupboard, the door ajar slightly. His back hurts, his gun is gone, his suit is crumpled (as is the rest of him to some degree), and he has a bruise on his head which doesn't seem to hurt at all. It doesn't take him long to remember what happened.

"Oh, bloody hell-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-L-L-LP ..." His voice trails off into the distance in an interesting sort of way. "Somebody dial nine one one!"

[ooc: All personnel employed by or present at SorbSec right now are cleared to join.]