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0079.9.12 Two fours and an ace of diamonds. It seemed all the scientific knowledge in the world couldn't make you better at poker. Frederick grumbled, his ability to tell a lie severely hampered by the inquisitive and worldly nature that he sought to convey. Looking up at Jesup, he put his cards on the table. "Fold." "Aww come now 'doc, it's only us two playin' and there ain't no money involved." Clyde sighed, leaning back in the old wooden chair and looking up at the ceiling. He'd brought that chair all the way from Paradise, carved it himself. He was proud of that chair, liked the way it creaked when he leaned back. One day it would break, but Clyde figured, that day it would have lived much more than most chairs. His mind slowly coming back to his company, he looked doctor Montgomery in the eye as the wiry man started to explain. "Folding is part of the game, when you don't have good enough cards for a strategic advantage, you fold." Everyone loved Doc' Montgomery, but he seemed more at home with books than with people. More than one man on the Lunatics Dream thought it funny that Frederick was so put off by the Jovians. "Yea' but doc, you fold because you don't want to lose any money. If there's no money involved then theres no need to fold." Both Clyde and Frederick knew they would soon reach an impasse. This wasn't their first game of poker. "Well look doc', I don't mean to be demeanin' r nothin' but-" Clyde was cut off as Paul-Henri Fournier, the ships cook, poked his greasy face through the door to Clyde's room. "Why if it isn't fixin'n'stitchin'. You two boys courting each other again? It's lunch time." Paul was quite the card, his thin face and jet black hair covered in the telltale signs of the greasepan. "Aww' we don't need any of your fine mess Mr. Fournier. I've still got some of those old packaged burritos I bought in Side 3, I'm sure Tabetha will be right good as to fix 'em up for us." Clyde pointed over to the microwave on the far side of the room with a stubby thumb. Jesups left thumb was a little shorter than the right, he'd broken it no less than four times. "Clyde, are you meaning to tell me that that thing over there will fix a burrito that tastes better than my souflet? There's not a man in Paradise wouldn't think you the craziest greasemonkey alive." Fournier hated microwaves. The thought that a machine could cook half as well as a real human being disgusted him. "Now now, lets not spoil anyones temper or their appetite. We would be delighted to join you for lunch." Frederick smiled softly, picking up his bag of books and measuring instruments he walked down the hall. The Lunatics Dream, as with most interplanetary craft, sported a small rotating gravity deck. Although the gravity was only two thirds that of Earth, it was quite comfortable. Jonas remarked on numerous occasions that the gravity aboard the Dream felt more like Mars than the colonies of Side 6 and Side 3 did. The mess hall was a small room in the top deck of the ship, with one large window peering through the ceiling, not that there was too terribly much to see. The three men opened the door to find more than half the crew already at work, devouring Paul's French cuisine. It had been said that he was the only man who really kept the ship interesting when there was nothing left to do, and Jonas had made sure that they spent more than the alloted amount on food and ingredients. A revolution simply would not run on an empty stomach, so it stood to reason that it would run better on a stomach that was fed well. Even still, Keller's diet was very simple, the grey haired man sitting at his table, a months old Carson city newspaper laying at the side of his bowl of oatmeal. Two days ago Hudson had asked him if he was trying to make an image, trying to eat the food of the martians who lived in poverty. Jonas said that he didn't mind the comparison, but in reality he just loved a good bowl of oatmeal. Several mugs of coffee mixed with whiskey were raised high as Fornier came in the room, followed by applause for another meal well prepared. Clyde and Frederick fixed their plates and sat down with the rest of the crew, two or three tables filled with men while Jonas sat alone. After a few minutes, Jonas looked at the silver watch he kept in his pocket, smiled, and cleared his voice. Everyone stopped talking, knowing that their leader was about to speak. "Friends, I'll make this short and sweet. Look to the stars." Keller snapped the casing of the pocketwatch shut, and the lot of them looked up at the window over their heads. As the gravity block rotated slowly, the small specks of white on the horizon slowly began to change. A few seconds went by, and then creeping out of the corner of the window, a red ball, about the size of a Clear Creek quarter, slowly came into view. The murmurs of the crew went silent almost immediately, a handful of tears running down the faces of the tired men. Jonas got up and walked over to the chair of the Lunatics Dreams captain, Polonias Geoffrys. Slapping his old, rusty hand on the mans shoulder, Keller smiled in a way that only a father can smile. "You tell 'em Jeff." Polonias laughed. Everyone else called him captain, cap'n, or some manner of title, but Jonas had always called him Jeff. Polonias had been the captain of the Dream long before Jonas had acquired it, and Jonas felt that talking to Geoffry's like he was family was a much closer thing than referring to him as a soldier. "Well boys, ship should be turning around right now, we'll be lowering the sail in about two days. We're halfway home." 0079.10.15 The ARES 1st Autonomous fleet was still several days out from their destination, a standard orbit just above the Martian atmosphere. The two huge Interplanetary Transport Crafts had stopped their deceleration just one day ago. Both the Lunatics Dream and Madmans Ire had been made from the same design, although the Dream had been heavily modified on Phobos some time ago. The ships were shaped like huge nails, coming to a point at the head and then widening out towards the back. The solar sails, now folded inside the ships, were stowed just under the bridge along with the laser array that pushed the ship when the sails were active. Behind the bridge was a large cylinder that was detached from the outer hull, that rotated slowly while in flight, giving the comfort of gravity during an elongated flight. Even with the fastest ship in the solar system, a trip from Earth Orbit to the Jovian colonies took more than a month one way, and it would take just under two weeks for the fleet to reach Mars. Three of the four cargo bays were held on three external struts far away from the main body of the two ships, that doubled as the system to create the motion necessary to rotate the gravity block. Underneath the gravity block was the fourth cargo room, that doubled as a large hangar capable of carrying mobile suits. The Lunatics Dream housed ARES five mobile suits, while the Madmans Ire housed their domestic shuttle, the Epicurean Diplomat. Behind the rotating cargo bays and the gravity block was the engine cluster, a single conventional rocket engine as well as four nuclear pulse engines. Because of the pulse engines, the Lunatics Dream and Madmans Ire could accelerate quickly to speeds equivalent of conventional mobile suits, without utilizing the easily damaged solar sail. Interspheral regulations prohobited the use of solar sails a certain distance from Earth, as the ships sails were almost as wide as a space colony, and could easily damage and disrupt smaller craft. The system these ships used to make it from Earth to Mars was relatively simple. The Solar Sail was deployed at the edge of the Earth Sphere, and a combination of radiation from the sun, the ITC's own laser array, and the nuclear pulse engines was used to accelerate the ship to speeds unthinkable by military craft. Once they had reached a certain point in their journey the fleet turned around and used the exact same methods to decelerate, planning their journey so that once they were in an area where they might run into other spacecraft the sail could be stowed. The only part of the Earth Sphere where this tactic was not possible was while travelling through the asteroid belt. While collisions with asteroids are extremely rare in that region, a single rogue rock could tear enough of a hole in the sail to prevent the fleet from ever making it to Jupiter. Getting around this problem however was relatively easy, the fleet would just accelerate and decelerate twice each on their way to Jupiter. Jonas, now aboard the Madmans Ire, gazed on at his home planet, as it slowly became larger and larger. He wondered whether they really needed to follow the regulations of the Earth Federation. It had been a full day since they'd entered what was officially the Mars Sphere and they hadn't seen a single spacecraft, probably because his two ships were very likely the only ones currently in the entire Spheral territory. The Epicurean Diplomat had been launched an hour ago, Jonas had asked that they make the fleet look as grand as possible as they moved towards orbit, on the offchance somebody actually did see them. The Diplomat was a brand new shuttlecraft, shaped somewhat like a large jumbo jet on Earth, although more streamlined. The reason Jonas had purchased it was obvious, the ITCs were too large and too strangely shaped to dock in most space colonies, they were never meant to do so. The shuttle was used as a go between, and it had helped him quite a lot during his stay in the Earth Sphere. Amongst the help Jonas had found at Side 3 was the crew of the Madmans Ire. Every single one of them, although it was only a crew of eleven, was a refugee colonist from Side Four, people who were sick and tired of the war and wanted a new life. Jonas had promised them a new life on Mars, and he was sure he could deliver that promise. The crew of the Ire were more than ready to strike back at the Duchy and the Federation for the wrongs that had been committed against them, but Jonas had maintained that survival came first. He would not have a war with Earth or the colonies before Martians were free. The red globe in front of him reaffirmed that promise. Jonas looked at Raphael, the captain of the Ire, and smiled. Without a word, he pushed himself up out of his chair, floating towards the back of the bridge. The sensation of coming out of the bridge and onto the gravity block was a strange one, and took a bit of practice. Opening the circular door connecting the two, Jonas moved his body sideways and began walking along the floor of the room in front of him. When you were looking into the rotating gravity block from the bridge everything looked very strange, but once you had stepped into the room itself your body quickly re-oriented itself. John Seak greeted Jonas inside the block, and Jonas shook Seaks metal hand firmly. John Seak was the son of one of the richest families in Von Braun, and before he had gone to Mars he had been in a tremendous accident during his former job as a private investigator. He'd lost two legs and his right arm, and his family had payed a princly sum to have state of the art prosthetics installed using mobile suit technology. Seaks legs and arm were fully electronic, and he could move them with just as much ease as his own limbs, although his inorganic limbs were in what John liked to call "peak physical condition." He was not a superhuman, but he could run as fast and lift as much as any Olympic gold medalist, something which had earned him a lot of respect on Mars. Jonas wasn't really sure why he had come to Mars. Seak had his own story that he had never told, but what Jonas was sure of, was that he was a good friend. "We've got a bit of a problem, Jonas." John said, tipping his hat to his comrade and leader. Jonas motioned for Seak to walk with him, the two making their way slowly to the cargo bay in the back of the ship. "Since we left, some entrepenouring brat has started setting up Asteroid Mines. More than one of them. Ellison contacted me as soon as we got inside the Sphere. He says he's got the bastard cornered but without our help he can't get inside." Jonas mulled the situation over in his mind a bit, not saying much. "So you're telling me they've started to build mines in orbit? More deathtraps for my people?" He was already angry. On Mars, there were only two real jobs. You either were a miner, or you worked for the Federation. The first choice took your life, and the second took your soul. "Worse than that boss." John shook his head. Jonas smirked a little, he was always amused with how Seak called him 'boss', a Lunarian way of being polite. "They've brought people from all around. Earth, the Asteroids. They're trying to forge a better price than what the people can make on the surface by cutting out the liftoff fees at Amador City. They have their way every man on Mars will be out of a job in a year." The two walked in silence for a while, coming to the portside airlock above the cargo bay. Putting on their normal suits, they opened the airlock, holding on to railings as the air inside the room was sucked out. Seak pressed a button on the roof of the airlock and a small wire with a magnet on the end shot out, connecting to a similar airlock on the Lunatics Dream. As long as the ships were flying in formation they could transfer crew and cargo this way, making it very easy to move between ships. Grabbing a small motorized handle, Jonas, and then John, made the half minute trip over to the ARES flagship. "Do these mines have names?" Jonas asked, hiding his anger. They'd gone on in silence for a few minutes, McEvoy and Kyle joining them. Matt McEvoy and Hudson Kyle were both close friends of Jonas', and together they made up the mobile suit contingent and the armed core of ARES very limited military force. Although Jonas only owned five mobile suits, with Samson having a sixth sitting at the small colony on Deimos, that was probably more mobile suits than any other group in the Mars Sphere owned. Further, what ARES lacked in quantity it made up in quality, the number of Rick Doms Jonas owned exceeded that of some high priority Duchy battlegroups. "Equity Return and Market Value" Seak answered, the four of them coming up to the bridge. Jumping off the gravity deck and going awkwardly into a float, Jonas rested his hands on the back of the captains chair, looking at the red orb once again. "Captain, set a course for the Equity Return. We need to send a message." 0079.10.18 "Capitalists scum, you are far from home. You've come to reap the bounties of our motherland without our consent, and continue to do so with misplaced pride. You infringe on our airspace and challenge our right to self-determination; something each and every man, woman, and child on that inhospitable red ball behind you has fought tirelessly for for so long. You spit on their legacy. So now I spit on you." Jonas held his hand to the intercom, the fleet half a kilometer from the airlock of the Equity Return. There was no answer. Samson had said he'd been here twice, and gotten no answer. There were clearly miners in there, they'd holed themselves up something fierce, and they weren't going to come out. Not for Samson, not for Jonas, not for anybody. He wondered for a second what kind of a leader would give them such a brazen sort of ignorant determination, but it made no difference. Jonas would drive these men off his planets orbit if it killed him. "Fire." Hudson Kyle and Samson Ellison opened fire with their 360mm bazookas, shelling the asteroid slowly but surely. 360mm shells slammed into the hard rock making up the roughly circular mine, no doubt collapsing corridors and causing electrical failures inside the mine proper. Emptying their magazines, both pilots slammed another set of rounds in their chambers, shot after shot impacting the mine wall. Still no answer. "Well then, I guess we'll just have to go in and get them." Jonas said, almost happy at the idea. He picked an old wooden rifle up from under the chair where he sat, turning to the crew. They were already prepared, the lot of them wearing normal suits and standing by the airlock. "John, Mutt, I want you two to go in first." John Seak was an obvious choice for point man, stronger and faster than the rest of them by far. 'Mutt' as the crew liked to call McEvoy had been doing this sort of thing since he was a child, and was the best shot on the Dream. "Dale, Paul, Clayton, Kenneth, you three will take the back. Clyde, you guard the good doctor." Jonas grinned. Frederick was more than a little bit against this line of action. "Mr. Jonas, I'm sure they'll listen to reason. I know my way around an injury but I can't fix death." "They've already had their chance at reason doc', and they ain't listening." Jonas' words were firm and assertive, and everybody knew there would be no turning back now. The nine men loaded rifles, shotguns and pistols, with McEvoy strapping a bandolier of grenades over his shoulder. John fingered a desert eagle, while Clyde checked the rounds in his submachinegun. The only one of them who wasn't armed was the doctor, and Frederick was more than a little worried. "Don't fret none doc', I promise we'll all git' through this'n one piece." Matt said with a grin. Clasping their helmets, the group opened the airlock and started to float steadily towards the large airlock in front of them. It took Clyde about two minutes of fingering but eventually he managed to short circuit the manual control, which had been locked tight. The cargo bay door opened with a clang, a half a dozen armed men in normal suits waiting for them on the other side. Before anybody could fire a barrage of heavy snowball sized shells slammed into the cargo bay, followed by a second and third barrage. The six men guarding the cargo bay were all hit and killed, the Rick Dom behind Jonas pumping expended cartridges out of its shotgun. "That's about all the help I can give you boys." Hudson said with a smirk. "Samson and I'll be out here watching for any trouble, you lot give 'em hell for me." "You heard the man." Jonas said, the nine ARES soldiers floating into the cargo bay and letting their lightly magnetized boots set down on the mine floor. Clyde moved quickly to the door, setting an explosive charge on it and moving to the side as Clayton closed the airlock hatch. The explosion was silent, the lack of air in the cargo bay preventing the noise from travelling, and air was sucked out into the cargo bay even as its own systems refilled the large rooms atmospheric supply. Jonas propped the visor on his helmet, wanting these capitalist bastards to see the face of the man that was going to kick them off his planet. There was no noise for a few seconds, and then Matt swung in first, only to be hit with a pistol round in the side. Fornier grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him back, Frederick running up to the wounded man. "I thought you said we'd get through this in one piece?" Frederick demanded, and even as he did John swung into the hallway from the other side. Using his titanium arm as a shield, he blocked a pair of pistol rounds and then returned with his own, hitting the man at the end of the hall between the eyes. Matt grinned, feeling to make sure the bullet hadn't gone anywhere important and then standing himself back up. "I'm still in one piece ain't I? I been hit harder than this by Martians, these assholes ain't half as tough." Refusing Fredericks medical expertise, Matt moved in behind John. The two came to the end of the hallway, which forked right and left. McEvoy poked his head out the right side as John did the left, both of them pulling back a moment later, followed by precipitous gunfire. John reached for one of Matts grenades even as he did the same, the two of them pulling the pins and throwing them, letting the explosive bounce down the hallways. The two grenades exploded and the ARES men were quickly into the breach, firing on injured miners before they could get ahold of the situation. "We gotta split up. First to peg that Silverthorn gets one of Paul's homemade cherry pies. You don't mind that sort of a wager, do you Paul?" Jonas took a glance over at Fornier, who laughed as he checked the barrels of his shotgun. "Not at all, but this isn't what I was hired on for Jonas. Lets get this over quickly shall we?" "My thoughts precisely." Frederick groaned. The nine men fanned off into two groups, Frederick and Clyde following the injured McEvoy while Jonas and Fornier went with Seak. As they moved along, a bulkhead opened up behind Frederick, a man coming out of it and shooting Jesup in the back three times with a pistol. Dale turned around, taking a shot in the shoulder as he fired his shotgun, the miners thin form going limp as his body took the entirety of the blast. "This is NOT what I think of when I envision the term 'one piece.'" Frederick yelled, hoping Matt could understand his consternation as he brought out his equipment, moving as fast as he could to tend to Clyde and Dale. "Don't git yerself too worked up doc... We'll be playing poker agin 'fore you know -AGH" Clyde yelled as Frederick quickly pulled a bullet out of him. "I'm not worked up old friend, but you are going to have to sit still if you ever want to be able to lean back on that chair again." The doctor smiled softly, placing medical instruments in a line on the floor even as he worked. At the end of each hallway was a solid door, which fortunately for ARES remained unlocked. John Seak opened his first, the door opening up into a communal two story common room. The four remaining men, Silverthorn and three miners, had barricaded themselves in the far end of the room. One man fired a shotgun at Seak, who had his metal arm in front of him to block the blast, but he couldn't stop every pellet. Taking a large amount of lead to his gut, he gritted his teeth with pain, but luckily the blast had been from a good twenty meters away and his arm had stopped most of the rounds. Before the man could fire again John kicked off the floor, floating over the roof towards the barricade. Jonas moved in behind him, firing shot after shot with his rifle, forcing the four men down. Matt and the rest of his crew came in on the far end of the room, slowly moving to flank their opponents. One of the miners moved his head up to fire, and in the same moment Jonas pulled the trigger, somehow knowing he was going to do it. The miner fell back dead, and a moment later McEvoy rolled a grenade across the floor of the room. The explosion threw the remaining three men into the air in the zero gravity environment, the ARES soldiers dropping two with their rifles shortly after. The remaining man, who didn't have a gun of his own, drew a long knife and floated at Seak, thrusting the weapon towards his left leg. He was surprised when the blade broke against the titanium skin underneath Johns normal suit, and Seak kicked out with his other leg, the powerful appendage breaking a hole in the mans face that would never be fixed. They never found out which one was Silverthorn, and Jonas didn't want to be talked to much directly following the battle. For some reason all the deaths had made him woefully sick to his stomache, for reasons even he couldn't quite understand. As they moved back to the Dream, he confined himself to quarters even as James and Gregory set the explosives on the Equity Return, wondering if they'd have to do the same thing when they attacked the second mine. They'd gotten lucky, only three men wounded. He didn't know if the next assault would end without any casualties. Jonas Keller - 2 CP gained, 1 days injury Matt McEvoy - 2 CP gained, 3 days injury Samson Ellison - 4 VP gained, no damage Hudson Kyle - 4 VP gained, no damage Antoni Silverthorn - 1 CP gained, dead 7 days |