Halderai's Story

Halderai was sitting in a groundside spaceport, specifically in a cafe that catered to travelers either not staying in any of the nearby hotels while waiting for an earth side means of transit to their actual location, or otherwise were waiting for the shuttle up into orbit and needed a quick bite or coffee to tolerate exiting the atmosphere. Of course, he wasn't actually introducing himself as Halderai to those who he was currently chatting with, using the alias Ivan Rasputin currently, and wearing a full suit. Granted, in his suitcase was the pilot suit that he wore for actual operations and using his own mobile suit, and said suitcase was resistant to modern scanning methods, throwing out a false reading of items normally found in a suitcase that were not contraband. It was subtle, and absolutely useful for how he was operating. Currently, he was waiting for a new shipment of Suits coming down, with his GM smuggled in a hidden compartment of the massive cargo carrier where other miscellaneous cargo was supposed to be. Bribes had been spread around to avoid checking those miscellaneous supplies, and the weight written off as anomalies. It was going to have a two hour lay over, the same time a launch exiting to a commercial meeting in a luxury space station. One Ivan Rasputin was booked on the flight to that craft, and as the announcment was made, Halderai smiled and shook hands with his 'friends' that he had met. "That's the announcement for my flight, travel safely. No rest for the wicked, eh?" That got some chuckles and best wishes for his meeting, which he gladly took with an easy smile. If only they knew where those wishes of luck were going towards, it wouldn't be so quick to offer them.

Passing through security without event, Halderai slipped off towards a side passage that was forbidden to civilians, authorized personnel only and all that. The only guard there went to raise his weapon, and recognized who the man approaching was. Handing over a bribe to the guard, the man looked the other way, the arrangement already made. What the man didn't realize was that within about ten minutes of him opening the envelope to check the invoice, a powder that would be breathed in would induce a heart attack, and leave it looking like a sadly unavoidable heart attack. Of course, by the time anyone realized that wasn't natural, the mission would be done. Entering the cargo container, he slipped into the back compartment and sealed the door behind him. His custom FMS-002 GM was waiting for him here, and he smiled as he clambered up and entered the cock pit. How fortuitous that loyalty could be rented so easily, and getting a GM smuggled in as a captured mech that would eventually get lost in paperwork, never to be found again in any reference. That expedited with a data virus attached to any reference to the suit would mean no paper trail, and the news would only know of a sudden terrorist attack on another military base. Hell, this was even coincided to occur with another operation to attack another base completely, and he smiled to himself as he ditched the suit in favor of his pilots outfit, and settled into the cockpit formally, suit tucked away in the suitcase. Now to wait.

---

It wasn't terribly long, the crate stopped and the GPS in his suit pinged that he was in the correct location. Game time then, he slipped out of the cockpit, a bag in his hand as he slipped out of the cargo container. The new Suits had already been moved out for inventory, and as it was only three or so in the morning, only a token guard patrol was in front of them. A silenced pistol took care of them before an alert could be sounded, and he clambered up each of the new suits, planting charges in each of the cockpits, capable of causing the reactors of going critical, but only if in a very certain location. Of course, the design schematics showed such things clearly enough, so once he was done, he left each suit apparently unharmed and ran back to his GM, boarding it and bringing it online completely. Of course, he also opened up the hidden compartment and moved fast, leaving the open cargo hanger and preparing an explosive round in his Dober gun, equipping it and zeroing on the barracks. Of course the pilots were not in there, but it would wake them up. He fired, the round punching into the building and going off, killing quite a few people outright and leaving the rest contending with a burning building with the stability compromised. Alarms went off, and soon enough he saw the first of several Suits coming out of the cargo hanger, and as the first one raised a weapon to open fire, Halderai triggered the explosives.

The cargo hanger collapsed as the Suit's detonated and collapsed, throwing the structural stability completely out the window and burying any survivors, which there would have been none. Returning the Dober gun to its hard point, he produced a beam saber and rapidly sped towards the Command Leo, forcing him to equip his own saber in a desperate attempt to defend himself. Blocking the first strike, Halderai stepped the GM back to avoid the counter strike, running the saber right into the cockpit now that the Leo had left itself open. This instantly killed the man and the Suit was destroyed, and Halderai began humming an old song for the recently departed as he ran from the base, practically no survivors, and the few that were left would be in critical condition, and would have no idea what occurred. Job done, shipment destroyed as well as a base effectively rendered useless. He would head for a local factory that was sympathetic with his organization's cause, and had a means of transporting his GM back to base undetected, which Halderai would travel along with. While at the factory he would send a burst transmission on a channel set up for reporting the mission status, sending a Mission Complete.

Halderai was cruising down the road, for all intent, purpose, and appearance he looked like a cargo truck driver. Despite the availability of airlifting and what not, ground transit still had uses where either there were no accessible airports or some other reason prevented easy access to air transit. The drive had been uneventful thus far, no patrols stopping him, no sudden retaliatory attacks, just an easy cruise. He caught the edge of a transmission and tuned in on it, catching the burst and hearing who it was, chuckling to himself. Well, well, looks like he had a new toy then, and chuckled as he boosted the message to base, and shot off a reply. "Oi, Soki, command hears ya loud and clear. Hope you didn't scratch the paint on the new suit." He finished the message and chuckled to himself again, continuing to cruise down the road, having the entire thing to himself for as far as the eye could see. He continued driving, humming to himself now as he cruised, and an all too familiar sight caught his eye. Weapon discharges up in the sky, barely noticeable by the human eye. Hell, he wasn't even sure if it was weapon fire, or some weird anomaly. Pulling the truck off the road, he grabbed a pair of binoculars out of his bag and leaned out the door's window, looking through at maximum enhancement. Sure enough, it was some advanced MS and, what a shocker, a suit another one of his employer's more loyal soldiers used all too frequently. Hell, he recognized the thing simply because of its design, and he leaned back in the truck cabin and grabbed the secure radio and dialed through the different comm channels they used, seeing if he couldn't find the one that man was on.

"Hey boss, where'd you find such a nice dance partner? Normally the folks opposing us can't dance to save their lives." Halderai didn't rush to bail out of the truck and power up his GM suit just yet, especially if the hostile suit had help show up. That, and he was currently way out of range of being able to do a single thing to affect that battle going on up there, and the truck should go unnoticed while powering up his suit would most likely set off all sorts of red flags. He kept watching the fight through his binoculars, staying off to the side of the road for now. That hostile suit could sure move, he gave it that much credit. Looked like a custom job, based on an Aries, and probably would run circles around just about any other standard MS. Probably a commanding officer of some sort, considering the work that had appeared to have been done on the unit. Considering the speed that suit could probably generate, it had to have run ahead of any potential reinforcements, at least for the moment. Try and stop the friendly before it got away after whatever strike it had made. This was what he did for the moment, observed and tried to figure out more about the hostile suit.

As expected, the enemy Ares reacted perfectly to the Epyon's attack, darting backwards to avoid it. Of course, the pilot had to be more than a little surprised by the heat rod whip. After all, such a thing was probably very rarely seen... And most would assume that such a weapon would be impractical, especially when acting as a mobile suit's primary ranged weapon. One would assume that, once the surprise effect was lost, such a weapon could easily be countered. However, those under the influence of such ideas typically ended up dead.
“Well, well...” Faust said at last, the words echoing through the cockpit as this “Chevalier Lightning” character barraged the I-field with more ammunition than those at the Octavious base had even had the chance to fire off. The Epyon had tapped into their comms just in time to catch the woman's (and he was more than a bit surprised to find it was indeed a woman) identify herself and give her short report. “This one really makes those others look pitiful. I almost want to see what else she can do... Almost.”
Faust punched several buttons on the terminal as he brought the Epyon around again to attack the enemy Ares. Various system commands flew across the bottom right corner of his primary viewscreen as the Epyon brought the heat rod whip around in an upward swing, the red hot metal streaming behind the shield as the arm was quickly raised. As this was done the Epyon began feeding new intel through Faust's mind, bringing about the possible outcomes of what he was about to do.
With a few more commands punched into the terminal, the Epyon system activated a few more programs, each put on hold until Faust activated them. The Epyon's beam sword arm tapped against its side, the beam sword attaching to a small (relative term, of course) instrument protruding from the lower section of the hip. When the beam sword was raised again it had a long cord attached to it that fed it power directly from the Epyon's reactor. With that done, Faust punched a few more commands into the terminal, just as the mercenary, Halderai, happened across the scene of the battle. With a thought, the Epyon switched the comm channel to one of their private channels. “This one seems to know a few more steps than the others... But, this song is hardly over.”
Faust neurally activated one of the programs he input earlier and returned his hand to the joystick controlling the right arm and the weapons attached, now abandoning the terminal he'd been so urgently punching commands into. The I-field that had been providing such an adequate defense against the various munitions fired at it began to pulse red as Faust brought the Epyon's verniers to half output, pushing the mobile suit into ridiculously fast charge. As soon as the distance was closed, the Epyon brought the whip back down diagonally, seemingly aiming to dissect the Ares. As the attack was made, the sword arm rose to the side, as if to attack with a horizontal strike. The I-field pulsed red once more, then suddenly burst outwards, the field changing to an electrical field meant to fry the the opposing mobile suit's systems. This attack would, naturally, burn away the generator's energy instantly, but it should bring the battle to a quick end.