New Midgard

Not long after entering the ship with the code provided she located the shower --- she was pleased to immediately note it was a real shower with real water. That was an extreme relief. Quickly stripping down, she stepped into the cascade of water and sighed as she relaxed, closing her eyes and thinking. It had been a long time since she could just even stop and think. Everything that happened, from Jarrako Downs to the after events. It felt like a lifetime ago, closing her eyes she sighed softly, running her hands through her brown locks, softly combing her fingertips to clear the dirt out.

After a few more seconds of caressing her scalp, she lifts her hands to pick up a bottle of some generic shampoo before squeezing the tube into her hand. A sickly green liquid spurted out into her palm. Surveying it briefly she immediately started to massage it into her hair, using both hands.

Once done, she made sure to firmly rinse it out, while cleaning the dirt off her skin, with a bar of soap. In between this, she was just being introspective, but most of all she was wondering about Seth. Honestly, she had expected everyone hated her. In fact, though it made her feel awful, she could have even accepted that. Yet, here she was currently on his ship, using his shower.

Things at one point had been so much easier.

Understatement.

Things at point had been her taking salvaging/smuggling jobs, performing the task with random Joes. No fuss, no must. Just simple, straight-forward in and out type missions or from Point A to Point B. Nothing complex, or overly stressful. In fact, because she was such a great pilot people often ignored her tendency to well screw up simple things like walking or moving, crashing into shelves and generally just being a clumsy twit. Though once behind a flight console, her general coordination with feet did not matter as much.

So what was her story?

Daisy was born in a Spacer Port off the Rim. Her parents were merchants/scrap dealers and generally, she was collecting salvage with her Father. The planet they were on was known from magnetic anomalies that often screwed up ships navigations, because of this lots of space ships crashed landed. After checking for life sign, her Father and she would collect as much as they could carry. From this grew an obsession of alien tech. She loved to study and tried to figure out what made it tick and perhaps even repairing it.

Though when a Reverence crashed, The Aschen reacted and completely decimated the Colony, many lives were lost.

Many people suffered needlessly.

Daisy lost her parents and was left to leave the world to become freelance.

Her unique knowledge helped since people who studied alien tech so extensively were rare and hard to come by. Not to mention her ability to take apart ships was surprising -- most salvagers eventually ended up setting off the self-destruct sequences by too much fiddling.

Daisy had a talent with the tech allowing her to tear out its innards, collect and sell. That and how damn good she was at flying allowed her to earn a living.

With that and how she had studied alien tech so much, she eventually gained knowledge on Xeno history and further studying for sake of understanding better, led to increased comprehension of Galactic History. This is how she learned of Jarrako Downs.

That is how she had got here, all of it made sense up to a point.

Stepping out the shower, she wrapped a towel around her body, and sat down on a nearby chair, closing her eyes once more, "Daisy, Daisy what the fuck have you got yourself into now?" shaking her head, she opened her eyes again, "I don't know... can't be worse than what I was doing before?"

Jason moved out the back of the bar, moving quickly he took the corner, and started watching to see if anything or anyone was on its way. His form would be hazy at best, easily missed from a distance.

Sarah watched the rear as she and Seth moved into the allyway

Mavrick was moving quickly to get to their transport. Jason was gonna have to foot it to the LZ, but that wasn't gonna be a problem.

(short post because upset baby driving Rari insane)

-Landing pad 119-

The dock lights on landing pad one one nine would switch from green to red as the system labeled the Salvatore grounded. Two five man squads in full combat armor made their way onto the platform. "Platform is clear, moving to board." as they approached the ship the lead operator switched to the platform com which would allow him to communicate with the ship.

"Private vessel Salvatore, you have been grounded under the authority of the New Midgard Police, if there are any persons on board open access and prepare to be searched. We will blast the hatch if you do not comply."

A group of men dropped a large box to the floor and began unloading a large breaching device and preparing it...

__________________________________________________

Seth sucked his teeth as they began to move, this whole day was not going as planned, but on the bright side he wasn't attached to at least one of the things these guys seemed to want, the box though, he would have to figure out how to get that back. He wondered why, he couldn't even open the damn thing. But it was his and he wanted it.

He ducked back through the bar as the shooting started, which happened shortly after Maverick had taken out the first squad member. "So any time people want to stop shooting at me would be great."

___________________________________________________

"Man down, man down! Smoke deployed, returning fire!"

The response team flipped to infrared as some pulled their fallen comrade into the back of the APC and others began returning fire. The APCs moved forward, acting as a rolling cover for the men on foot.

"3rd unit mount up, they are heading through the building, alley exits towards 32nd and Edison. Move!" the third truck in the line turned off almost before the order was finished, having trained so extensively they responded almost as if they worked with a hive mind. To some extent that was true, all information was shared between all members with a universal operating codex to streamline snap procedures.

"3rd Unit in route."

"Commaned we have high powered weaponry, suspects are fleeing, request air asset clear to assist and engage"

"Asset cleared response team, eta eight minutes."
___________________________________________________
-somewhere-

The Geist hadn't been deployed as a weapon in centuries, not since the end of the Purge of the Jarrako Downs. The caretakers were in a frenzy as they prepared the transport unit and locked in a destination. Exiting the pocket dimension was something they had come as close to mastering as they could, but it was not a perfect science. The drop point would be mid atmosphere, where the chance of unforseen interaction was minimal.

The transport unit was loaded into the cradle and suspended in the sending unit, which resembled a gimbal. The rings began to spin, slowly at first, gaining speed with each rotation. Finally as the rings became a blur the transport unit disappeared from view.

-above New Midgard-

The transport unit phased into real space above the planet, floating for a moment before gravity began to pull it downward. The latch released and the hatch would peel back, releasing Crowthorn onto the universe once again.

Crowthorne opened her eyes for the first time out of stasis in many years the armor, her body foremost, flaring to life nearly as fast as her swords surged themselves into service. Once more ready for wrath with a flare from small suns of degenerate electron gas restrained just above the hilt. The holstered nova cannon wreaths her arm and some of her shoulder pumping the munitions of wrathful weapons through the Geist's systems. That white knuckled grip of the mind pounding both hearts poured degenerate matter through vent ports in the two holsters. The dropship's ceiling lit in fire as the degenerate matter turned anything it could pump heat into to metal vapor then to plasma. In the sudden explosion of temperature both hands swept the swords from their holsters in a wide arc scoring at the surface of the transport unit. Whether it could take the uncontrolled wrath was of no concern to the Geist even if a wavefront of violently aerating metal would struggle to get out of its own way and leave a fiery meteor of annihilated evidence by sheer accident and barely contained fervor.

The Geist launched with her feet denting the floor to flare her wings into existence driven to leap out of a hatch into the freedom of burning blood in service of the Renev. It had been so very long, so little without combat and service, her idled mind craved to watch the light go out of her targets' eyes. That understanding horror in their eyes as a wavefront of degenerate matter from her weapons turned skin into char and plasma just moments above pumping blood. Service was life. Service was all. Death to all enemies of the caretakers.

That she calmed at all would be overstated at best but the wrath refocused on a fervent analysis of her locality for her targets. The swords slammed back into their sheaths with a morphic humm the light from them dissapated. She scanned every face, traced any weapons fire she could see, and decrypting any feed she could find of that which she could not see. Hovering in the air like the weapon of mass destruction she was an impatient missile waiting to see its target.

As Daisy was getting dressed, the ship's intercom picked up the message from the authorities. Being, Seth had practically saved her bacon, she was not going to lose the ship. One way or another she needed to bypass likely security measures that were employed on impounded vehicles. Thankfully impounds didn't exactly rock military class hardware. Chances are they didn't even bother updating anything for security vulnerabilities or change the default passwords. Being a smuggler/mercenary meant she had quite a bit of experience in removing measures, and if worse came to the worse she could simply blast the generator that powered these mechanisms. Firstly though she needed to finish getting dressed.

Quickly replacing the rest of her clothes before rushing towards the cockpit she passes through each electronic door before falling down on the leather seating. Immediately settling in to review the console. At once it was evident this was pretty advanced tech and could take time unless she brute force the entire system. The danger was, brute forcing security systems was generally unpredictable at best and utterly suicidal at worst. Anything worth its salt had lockouts on failure attempts or delays that made brute forcing them impractical. You had to find a way to that first. The number of times she ever brute forced anything ended up with hardware activating as a result.

Last time she had even tried to do this, she had to use the thrusters of her own ship to destroy the measures which activated. That being a massive particle cannon though admittedly it was a military installation and she and the others had stolen digital schematics for a rival Government. Intrusion detection systems were sometimes passive and looking for brute force patterns.

A sharp deep breath to stretch her lungs before patching directly into the docking systems where she'd need to be very attentive of network activity. Normally she would hack this but reconsidered given how much time she actually had. Evidently, she needed to rush this. Relaxing into the seat she pulled the console onto her lap and began to type:

~>View //Main/
No entity found
~>View //Server/
Permission denied
~>Net Route List --Authoritative
5. Server PERM 644 caec:cec6:c4ef:bb7b:1a78:d055:216d:3a78 AUTHORITATIVE
7. Portal PERM 666 caec:cec6:c4ef:bb7b:1a78:d055:216d:3a78 AUTHORITATIVE
9. Auth PERM 777 caec:cec6:c4ef:bb7b:1a78:d055:216d:42f0 AUTHORITATIVE
~>View //Auth/
//Auth/>ECHO Why would you do this!
Why would you do this!
//Auth/>list *execdb
Primary.execdb.BAK
Primary.execdb
readme
//Auth/>type readme
To my inevitable successor: The department head requested a separate server for authentication but wouldn't let me pay to have a guy install it. I'm just a damned janitor that replaces hardware sometimes.
//Auth/>//external1/integrate --type AI-execdb --breach rainbowtable-civic //Auth/Primary.execdb
[//external1/]Identifying AI executive database format
[//external1/]Loading Civic-AI virtualization module - Settings: LOW, QUIRK, ECC-INCAPABLE
[//external1/]Archaic security hash vulnerabilties detected: SHA128, MD5, SHA1024[not in use]
[//external1/]Further breach search aborted - file protections now insignifigant.
[//external1/]Preloading quantum decryption chip |/-\|/ DONE.
[//external1/]Determining key
[//external1/]Virtualization acquired, deploying sapper defense protocols
[//external1/]Breaching.......... No observed code threat, Done
[//external1/]All current system passwords integrated into knowledgebase.
[//external1/]Switching user context to root.
//Auth/$ROOT>pkill --f ingressmonitor --graceful --fail OPEN
Ingressmonitor process now shutting down
[1974 items] All locks failing open
Shutting down authentication monitors
Notifying IDS of emergency event.
Complete.
[//Server/>]ALERT: COOLANT GATE VALVES IN FULL OPEN STATUS.

Like all Brute Force attacks there were dangers, extreme ones, but by all appearances, she immediately heard the docking clamps deactivating and the locks on the biometric locks keeping the ship grounded were undone. Although her reveries were short lived as at once she saw climbing out of the ground two small Gauzen Cannons. Hurriedly, Daisy started up the flight controls, ignoring all flight checks in favour of just booking it.

Her other hand quickly worked on using the only weapon on this ship to blast the generator powering these turrets. One hand on the flight stick, while other prepared the ship's weapon, she charged the weapon before firing.

Not even waiting, she drew the massive craft upwards, being careful to remain under the radar systems, before increasing power to the thrusters and slamming on the acceleration, hurriedly buckling herself up as she prepared the craft heading straight head on for the bar.

Not far behind her, the generator blew up and at once the alarm in the docking area sounded with piercing klaxon, screaming for attention. Daisy, now in her element once again, careened through upper neighbourhood avoiding passing speeders, and other vehicles.

-New Midgard Flight Tower-

The collective eyes in the flight tower turned as an explosion ripped through the main generator building for the 11 block of landing pads. Warning bells began blaring as people hurried around to deal with the consequences.

"Sir, spacecraft from pad one one nine has taken off despite grounded order."

"We have casualties reported near the blast site."

"Confirmation from boarding team, civilian vessel 'Salvatore' caused the explosion after ignoring grounded order."

The officer in charge slammed his fist on the desk "Get me the air guard, we are considering this an act of terrorism."

---

-New Midgard Air Guard base Iodia-

A police vulture air to ground support craft took off as six  air guard interceptor gunships were prepping for launch as crews rushed to the ready. They would be in the air within minutes, the agile and heavily armed craft ready to deal with the terrorist threat that had been reported.

"Be advised, consider all unidentified aircraft suspect. Repeat, unidentified targets are to be grounded on contact, they may have allies. This is not a drill, lethal force approved on main target, lethal force after aggression approved on all unidentified targets."

---

Seth kept running with the Hex Corps as the response teams followed them through the alleys. He could hear a pulsing chop reached his ears from above. As he chanced a look up he could make out a ship above them with blue lights flashing. He pulled the com out of his pocket and flipped it to his ship channel "Please tell me you are flying my ship Daisy. If I every would love to see your face, this is the time."

Data feeds, news reports, countless textual representations of public information from throughout the city, all these things flashed through Crowthorne's mind. All looking for her targets among pictures and descriptions. Then it came to her the security alert for which there was a nearby explosion. That security crafts were oncoming were momentarily beneath her notice. What led her with glee was the location of the explosion and the owner of the craft whom had just left it. The direct commitment to clear purpose led shiver of ecstasy through her body.

That they weren't caught meant they were at large. Where if one was in the coffin that escapes into clear lines of fire then the other must have been in recent pursuit with enforcement. That trek across the data streams brought her to chatter of Hex Corps enforcement team. Raw inspections of data statistics and voice modeling let her have several good probabilities of their content. All of which warmed her insides with the thought of two the two immolated targets. A telescopic view threw her eye upon her other quarry under a brightly flashing interloper who will burn! maim! kill!

A voice that wasn't Daisy's answered Seth's cry over communicator, hushed at first, could not be contained, "Is she? Has she? Was she? She was! SHE HAS! SHE IS! ᴷᶦˡˡ"

Though far above the vulture threatening Seth a golden eagle inflamed with anger. Her prey, her kill. Only she gets to bring glory to the Renev! The wings rocked backward and the armor writ with death threw itself down at the blinking interloper that approached her quarry. They didn't have to look for a target when it came to them with a gleaming blade that brought perfect fire. The barest touch released a gout of degenerative matter that peeled the reinforced windshield away by melting it into vapor. When an irresistible force met a movable object at great speed the frame itself buckled from the force of the explosion as the geist's legs forced the front of the craft to move out of the way. So too went his body as a pink hand reached out to his forehead. In a split second the pilot's helmet exploded at the neck joint in a shower of metal and blood. The cabin engulfed the copilot had barely the time to raise his hands as the head of his pilot rammed through his helmet. Trailing just behind a sword draining a moving tide of degenerate matter that set fire to anything that could burn.

Some explosions were heat and light others an inferno that set fire to its surroundings. The vulture went up in a thermobaric pulse of metal vapor in a blast wave of such sustained to easily able to obliterate any buildings too close. A miniature star of heat and light that cooked the eyes of the two wingmen immediately behind him. They careened out of control their intakes inhaling hot metal vapor mixed with degenerate matter. Sword held firmly forward she spun in place, untouched by flame and force, desperately evading the sudden explosion. Wings emerged once more to steady her hand to slam the gleaming sword away into its holster at her hip. Her hand raised straight a barrel slipped out of space inside her arm forming and connecting the nova cannon building a focus for barely contained wrath.

Already below the pressure wave had hit ground level igniting living trees and covering everything in liquid metal or shards. Anyone there without rebreathers would simply be wiped away by sudden searing pain as superheated air cooked their skin and lungs from inside. The nova cannon charged itself with a bolt full of that kind of pain a thin envelope imposing death onto the world. Things everything but the Geist could suffer. Bullets from return fire by the three remaining ships smashed into the pink surface and simply slipped like liquid away in a shower of shrapnel.

Her answer came in a blue swirl of hot matter that lanced out from the nova cannon in a hellish crackle of energy projectors. That small fist-sized teardrop tore a pinhole at the most stressed point of impact. Through the window a thin thread of degenerate matter carved a channel then poured into the cabin emptying its immense thermal load and pressure inside. The cabin for a moment glows white hot then the metal of the ship's frame just before another pressure wave detonated a ship shattering another compatriot into burning alive their armor now melted into their bodies with the window that was to protect them.

The third attempted to peel away but the Geist had no mercy. Another ovid fist of wrath projected from the barrel with a roar in a direct hit into hot engine. The resultant detonation inside its core pounded the vessel with an afterburner that rammed it into a building setting several floors alight. The building groaned as superstructure quickly raced toward the temperature where it would have no more strength to stand but the Geist had already pushed the impending destruction out of its mind. That which wasn't a target was unworthy of her notice. The nova cannon slipped back into her armor the thief of life that it was.

Her mind throbbing with the glory of war the wings blinked in and out as she swam through falling debris and dying bodies toward a group of soldiers following her quarry between burning buildings. The moment of impact and destruction did make her feel alive again in service. The targets were hers to destroy nothing would stand in her way. Wings pivoted her to land feet first into the street that buckled and shifted bulging as if clay desperately trying to move away. She didn't bother to extricate her hips from the alleyway the silence and ignorance of all obstacles target devoutly held in her mind.

The geist swam toward soldiers barely hearing rapports of weapons. A small twitch of her mind categorizing the angry meat and their weapons as tactically irrelevant but their pain deeply satisfying. Wings flared and rammed her hips forward through clay-like stone creating a gouge in the earth until reaching the first obstacle at the flank of a response team. The Geist's hands gripped his shoulders and pressed inward folding metal and man to touch shoulder blades. The creature inside the geist momentarily distracted by a brain with the honor to die for the Renev that still barely functioned to receive pain in the short moments of blood before death. She took the fading fire of life with her to the next smashing faceplate and most of a face free with one hand. The first saw its destroyed arms rammed into the mouth of the second breaking the reinforced collar around its neck and snapping the sternum as a second was forced inside. She left the second to asphyxiation or shock she didn't care which.

Just a moment in her mind wracked by long isolation blood overtook duty. Dismantling the ribcage of a third to pound sharp ribs through the chest of a fourth consumed her attention entirely. A fifth drew her ire by way weapons fire while she reveled. A dismissive draw of sword from sheath straight upward through the body imposed an apocalypse of plasma inside to immolate his body sizzling pulverized human meat to rain its way far down the alley toward seth. The blood just slipped away from pink armor like the stone was desperate to evade her touch. She was always immaculate for the Renev, always clean. The Geist turned back to the gurgling man uttering screams she that couldn't pay attention to. She stared at the movement of his mouth desperately wanting to hear the lamentation of the Renev's enemies after so very long. The meat needed to scream for her. She wanted to hear it. She wanted to hear it so very much.

Sat in the pilot seat, Daisy was in her element, as she coordinated her hands to move smoothly through the air. The ships personal communication terminal issued Seth's voice, relieved surprisingly. Nonetheless, she had rather quickly got used to the way this bird flew. Then again that was hardly surprising. Further, it did seem to be made for a quick get away. This would provide ample opportunity. Now just to find somewhere to land and patch a message to Seth. Activating the scan, she occasionally modified her direction to avoid ships searching for her own. It was effortless, not like the actual movement of her body. No that is where Daisy usually found herself struggling to stay standing. Comparatively, with flying, it was like being a damn good swimmer but struggling with strenuous activity on land.

Patching through to Seth she announced, "Okay, boyo, found a disused motorway not far from your location. Best hot foot it to these and we best leave. NOW. I kinda rather brought down the whole of New Midgard on us." blushing, though he did not know, she added, "Be quick." breaking contact, she approached the area, and carefully landed, though kept the generator going and only deployed the flight ramp.

He best hurry, because the longer she was on the ground, more likely those ships would find her. And though Daisy was confident, she was not wholly confident she could out fly them forever.

Speaking to herself she sighed, "Hurry up, I owe you for everything, but if you don't move fast..." shaking her head she simply sat praying to no God, in particular, he was able to make his way here.