Session 6. Rescuing Lynx and Meeting the Wolf Legion
Score: 527 | 8/10/19 |
Fisher Price and Dubious Ellen both claimed they would tell no one what happened; the general feeling was that history would not be kind to those who were involved in creating the Exile and tracking it back to realspace. The Witching Hour traveled to Bander 99, an unpleasant little spaceport with good prospects for spacers finding work. On the way, O pushed all the Exilic energy out of the Witching Hour and those aboard (except himself.) The risk of contamination was as low as they could make it as they reached transmission range of the vast computing network of civilization.
Distress Call
Silea sent Flavius an urgent message to come pick up his "wayward recruit." Flavius immediately realized Lynx must have materialized on Doktu, where he crashed six years ago. The Witching Hour tesserarched to Doktu on high burn, arriving in two days. Flavius managed to find contacts working in the massive military of the planetary defenses that were four kilometers deep above the planet. He called in favors from his time in the Wolf Legion, persuading some soldiers with low morale, who issued him codes to travel down to the planet surface.
Upon getting close enough for low-risk transmissions, he contacted Silea and was directed to Base Camp 3 with oblique language; as they arrived, ignoring the blaster fire from the woods, they realized Base Camp 3 had slain their commanding officers (and displayed the battle standards) and were in a state of revolt. They met Lynx, in the flesh and armored as a Wolf Legionnaire once more, and they were hustled into a cellar. There were eyes in the sky, watching the rebels, and their time was short.
Rescue
Lynx showed them his arm stump, which could fill out into an energy prosthetic when he was loaded with enough Exilic energy to manifest a functional shadow of the arm. They discussed the rebellion and the upcoming end of the Wolf Legion, and the desperation of their situation. Then the battle stations alarm sounded.
A Dragon ship was winding through the sky nearby, and it launched an unprecedented 500 battle drones at the fortress to slaughter everyone and raze it to the ground. The Wolf Legion deserters fought as best they could, some trying to kill Flavius and Lynx as a last rebellion as the drones swarmed the fortification. Using their Exilic powers as well as their natural, cybernetic, and mutant abilities, the spacers knocked down deserters and blasted bots. O's tactical bot took some heavy fire, but helped protect him. Flavius was battered and zapped within an inch of his life, but he made it to the ship, and Lynx used telekinesis to help clear it off as O hacked into the control network of the bots, recruiting some (but escaping from the neural connection before hacker-hunting software caught up to him.)
Vizor, Mira, and Tasha had remained aboard the ship. They were slow to open up for the spacers to board, so O hacked into the ship security and opened it up as Flavius battled with the bots using a standard from a slain officer as a weapon. As the spacers piled aboard, they called out to surviving legionnaires, and ten of them managed to make it aboard as the Witching Hour lifted off from the overrun site, escaping in a hail of blaster fire.
One of the deserters had fired on the spacers before taking refuge with them; it seemed enough to threaten her to behave now, then the spacers turned their attention to more pressing problems.
Duel
As they were flying away, assaults stopped, and they received a transmission from the Hunter, a god-like untouchable force of predation and death that was the very real boogyman of Flavius' youth. The Hunter challenged them to a duel, one of them against him, stakes being the lives of those aboard the Witching Hour being forfeit in loss and escape being allowed in victory. After a brief discussion, they agreed.
The Witching Hour landed, and Flavius prepared to meet the Hunter. When the Hunter decloaked in his elite gear, Mira had just finished painting woad on Flavius and she conducted last rites of her religion for the Hunter. Then the battle started. O pushed Exilic energy into the elite suit and damaged it, and also connected the spacers in a telepathic network. Lynx scanned the Hunter for secrets and discovered his brain was in a jar in his chest, the whole body was a construct.
Meanwhile the Hunter was pounding Flavius down, in a casual sort of way. Flavius let his rage rise, and he physically changed, growing into a wolfish monster that tore at the Hunter's chest, digging down towards his irreplaceable life force. The Hunter panicked and fled, leaping from the cliff over the ocean, and Lynx used telekinesis to amplify his fall. Still, the Hunter survived, and called in to the planetary defenses to allow the Witching Hour to escape. As they did, the spacers made sure to tell the deserters about the Hunter's secret.
As they flew away, the Hunter contacted them, genuine in his gratitude as he thanked Flavius. It was understood that now the Hunter had been well and truly threatened for the first time in a long, long time, and he finally had a worthy hunt ahead of him.
422/2/10