Turn 2 - Piece of cake

The 11th campaign
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Nick
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Turn 2 - Piece of cake

Post by Nick » Thu Apr 07, 2011 7:03 pm

Sol system, Earth, Gateway Station, Room 102B
Mission timer: 00.00.00

"Ok settle down people" the Lt said and turned slightly to the Android to her right continuing "Monk, close the door". The Lt didn't wait for an answer instead she moved over to a console on the wall. The door closed without Monk even twitching one of his actuators. The marines looked uneasily on him, he must be hooked up to the mainframe computer network.

The Lt removed a coin sized silvery disc from her breastpocket and placed in on the console. That was a datadisc, the only physical medium still uzed in the 22nd century. A rare sight outside of the military and police. Everything was wireless and electronic these days, however with infinite computing power came infinite security problems. The USCM had solved this blatant security problem by having physical mediums called data discs that physically had to be moved between computers to prevent from hacking attacks. If a system was encrypted with the strongest cryptos available it would still only take a few hours for a dedicated android team to hack it to pieces.

The wall behind the Lt went black as the LED screen faded and started to play the content on the disc. The rooms light dimmed automatically as a menu tree appeared. "Father" the Lt said, calling the stations mainframe. "Yes" the computer answered with a rumbling voice from well hidden sound emitters. "Play file three-five-four-four-three-seven" Lt Ericson said. "Accessing, please wait" father replied laconically. A few seconds passed and the faces of the marines bathed in a blue hue from the menu tree on the large cinematic wall in front of them.

Suddenly a USCM symbol appeared and Lt Ericson stepped up in front of it. "Father, light level up two". The light in the room immidiately increased and the marines could see her much better.

"Welcome to todays Briefing marines. I will try and keep this short and effective as we all now how tedious these things tend to be. For those new to the corps I would like to welcome you especially, you will be looked after by us. Listen to the vets and do exactly as they say and the chances of you getting home with as many orifices as you left Gateway with increases tenfold"

Some of the marines was a bit shocked with the straightforward manner that the Lt spoke.

"You are a strike team, and a fairly large one at that. We are currently at almost three squads, but we might even get a fourth squad - I have filed a request but you know just as well as me that we have severe personell shortages." Lt Ericson moved to the side and requested the squad layout from father.

A tree of how the squads were laid out appeared over a faint USCM symbol.

Seargeant Kurosaki will be the platoon Sergeant. Sergeant Pitt will be seconding him. You can see how I have laid out the rest of the squads here."

Lt Ericson told father to close the squad layout and placed her hands behind her back while moving to the other side.

"The op this time is a patrol of the ICC outer perimeter. Our ship, the USS Costa Guana, will together with the USS Corrado make a sweep. There have been some pirate activity and the ICC wants the ship to make a sweep. Mostly as a show of force and to appease the affected corporations. Should pirates been encountered they are to be boarded and arrested according to the ICC 2222:a act."

"We expect this to be a 38 day round trip with about 34 of these days spent i cryo, unless we detect pirate activity that is. We are also to visit a small unmanned miliary installation on the outer perimeter mid trip to change a communications relay that have stopped transmitting."

As Lt Ericson spoke a star map appeared showing the route the USS Costa Guana and USS Corrado was to take.

"Thats it people. A simple cruise in space, change the relay and back here again before you know it. Now are there any questions?"

<actions>

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Marcus
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Re: Turn 2 - Piece of cake

Post by Marcus » Fri Apr 08, 2011 5:29 pm

Marcus had been listening intently. He only lightly noticed the AP's router trick. A show of force and pirates to boot. That wasn't his cup of juice. The relay though? That got a smirk out of him.

Relays went down from time to time, and it was a big deal. Commerce between planets hinged on relays being up to make sure contracts were still valid, what things were contraband and where, etc ad nausium.

When the LT opened the floor for questions, Marcus raised his hand and waited for a nod before speaking.

"A question on the relay station, Ma'am. Two actually. What model is the station and was the break in communications slow or sudden?"

Both important. Slow breaks usually meant some part was wearing down and depending on the model that could be any number of things. Sudden breaks could mean thing happened to the relay itself. That would almost certainly take time to fix if it was the case.

Depending on the model, some repairs were more expensive that a scrap yard and a replacement.

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Nick
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Re: Turn 2 - Piece of cake

Post by Nick » Fri Apr 08, 2011 5:46 pm

"Monk could you fill in here please?" Lt Ericson turned towards the Android. "Naturally, a subsidiary to Hyperdyne built it so I know the exact specifications. The relay model in question is a Canetech Mark VII burst emitter in the five terawatt range. Not the most common military relay today and the Mark VII are becoming more and more obsolete - Those Mark VII that are left are found in backwater space, well away from the regular space lanes. The current relay was a backup for a nearby Parker-Stetham pulse bouy resonator that was struck by an ore freighter out of course. The backup relays are not activated until needed so we have no idea how long it has been offline, it could have been dead for years for all we know. The last service visit was twelve years ago. This Mark VII is situated on a silica rock about 400 meters i diametre, it could be as simple as the rock having slowly rotated around it's own axis blocking the signal. The planetary system were it is placed is very active with background noise so the weakened signal could easily have been drowned out. Especially considering the rather weak 5 terawatt effect. The planet system in question was in surveyed in twenty-one..."

"Thank you Monk, that'll be all"

Lt Ericson sighed almost invisibly and looked back to the crowd in front of her: "Any more questions?"

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Re: Turn 2 - Piece of cake

Post by Morse » Fri Apr 08, 2011 6:04 pm

Morse didn't move much for the first of the briefing. When he saw the android get the order to close the door, and that he didn't move to do it, Morse rolled his eyes. Fuckin' robot. He thought to himself. He was willing to be the thing had one of those passive aggressive God complexes like some of them did. No matter how highly they thought of themselves, they still couldn't say that they had a mother that wasn't a computer program that was just called such. He redirected his focus to the rest of the briefing. He didn't particularly have a problem with any of the missions parameters, with the exception of the concept they may be fighting pirates. The issue he had, was if the corporates were suggesting there were issues with pirates, it was likely they were just beating around the idea that there was a real problem there.

Either way his concern wasn't on that. It was back to the squad listing. He had never really had the idea in his head that he had been there long enough that they would make him a squad leader. More so he didn't know if he wanted to bother with it. The way he found was best to cope with the idea was just in that it was almost the same thing in that he wouldn't really be deciding much of anything. The sergeants still gave him the orders, he'd essentially just be out walking the dogs. He wondered if he was still able to pull rear guard if he was leading the squad. It seemed like he could, or at least that he wouldn't particularly give anyone a choice if he had that option.

The android started talking again, and he had the dissatisfaction back in his mind. Morse knew a lot about a lot of things. But a lot about this was not something he knew. And he the fact that he wouldn't remember it gave him enough cause to not bother with it. He wanted to get to the idea of what the worst might be. "Whatcha figure's the hardlines on any of em what would resist our bein'in a black like that?" Morse asked. He realized his dialect would likely give a problem with comprehension so he decided to rephrase. "What're pirates expected tuh be packin'?" He asked. The main reason was he wanted to know on a scale of 1 to 10 what his willingness would be to even get off the ship should that come to be the inevitability.

< Tag Lt. or Monk

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Nick
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Re: Turn 2 - Piece of cake

Post by Nick » Fri Apr 08, 2011 6:19 pm

Lt Ericson replied: "They have some kind of hijacked ship, or ships. We are not sure what kind of ships - Probably smaller so they are harder to detect. The armament of the pirates is unknown, most likely small arms of Alexandrian origin like every other thug or criminal out there."

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Re: Turn 2 - Piece of cake

Post by Duncan » Fri Apr 08, 2011 6:57 pm

Duncan raised his hand. "Ma'am, as sort of a piggyback to that question, is the assignment going to affect our weapons and munitions authorizations?" Duncan was more than a little concerned that because of the nature of the mission, they wouldn't have access to the full range of goodies normally available for missions.

He had also seen that he'd been transferred out of first squad, and put into the new third squad. That spooked him to a certain extent. He knew that Silas, his new squadmate, was some sort of engineer. Maybe it meant they were the support squad, and the other two were the gun squads.

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Re: Turn 2 - Piece of cake

Post by Nick » Fri Apr 08, 2011 7:12 pm

"I will leave to Sergeant Kurosaki to select loadouts for the platoon" Ericson replied, giving Kurosaki a glance.

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Re: Turn 2 - Piece of cake

Post by Rascal » Sat Apr 09, 2011 4:18 am

Rascal sat listening to the briefing, humming A Pirate's Life for Me softly to himself as he took notes. Not bad for a first mission he thought, looking back up momentarily as several marines began the inevitable Q&A session. He had to admit to himself, however, that he was still quite unsure of his potential; Boot was by no means a cake walk, yet he still felt that he hadnt learned enough. Hopefully, nothing too serious would occur, and that this mission would just simply be a maintenence op.

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Re: Turn 2 - Piece of cake

Post by Quinn » Sat Apr 09, 2011 5:08 am

Quinn looked over the mission details with a slight frown of concentration. He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. There was one detail that bugged him about the situation as a whole.

"Ma'am, was the freighter manned, what happened to make it go offline and crash, and what was it's cargo manifest?" he asked the Lieutenant, his questions rapid but clear.

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Re: Turn 2 - Piece of cake

Post by Nick » Sat Apr 09, 2011 10:21 am

"The freighter was manned, the crew however were in cryo at time of the accident. The error was tracked down to a bug in the inertia navigation software in a newly installed console on the bridge. The crew didn't realize they had struck the nav bouy until they arrived at earth. Their cargo was 165.000 tons of unrefined ore from Junction Station. " Lt Ericson answered

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Re: Turn 2 - Piece of cake

Post by Obi » Sun Apr 10, 2011 2:05 am

Should pirates been encountered they are to be boarded and arrested according to the ICC 2222:a act."

Obi raised a hand and called out when the LT motioned towards him.

"What are our Rules of Engagement Ma'am? I mean can we just go in and open up, or does Command want us to take prisoner's for intelligence gathering purposes?"

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rednus
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Re: Turn 2 - Piece of cake

Post by rednus » Sun Apr 10, 2011 3:16 am

Rednus sat back and listened intently to the well thought out questions, and paid heed to the answers given.
..so, he thought,
..this will be our first fire-mission with the new guys,
I hope they all make it back.
I'm starting to like some of these 'Boots.
.Cpl Rednus Chappell
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Eightballs, First squad.

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Dirk Pitt
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Re: Turn 2 - Piece of cake

Post by Dirk Pitt » Sun Apr 10, 2011 11:21 pm

Dirk listened quietly as the LT laid the operation out for the men. On the surface it seemed like a simple tour. Look tough, hit any pirates hard and recover stolen property. But in his time in the Corps Dirk had learned one simple rule of life. The easier the operation seemed the harder it tended to get.

Standing up he looked at the officer in charge. " Lt Ericson, during any boarding actions we might take part in should we meet strong resistance what kind of support can we expect from the USS Corrado?"

Dirk sat down and waited for the answer

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Re: Turn 2 - Piece of cake

Post by Nick » Wed Apr 13, 2011 8:11 am

"What are our Rules of Engagement Ma'am? I mean can we just go in and open up, or does Command want us to take prisoner's for intelligence gathering purposes?"
"The rules of engagement are to follow my orders. If I point you shoot. If I don't, You don't. Other than that it is to return fire only if fired upon or if you are about to be attacked." Lt Ericson answered.
" Lt Ericson, during any boarding actions we might take part in should we meet strong resistance what kind of support can we expect from the USS Corrado?"
"The USS Corrado will be in the same system as we are at all times, that means they will be at most one or perhaps two days away at any time. The USS Corrado carries a half marine platoon and in addition to their APCs have access to a light tank as well."

Lt Ericson looked over the crowd but there seemed to be no more questions.

"Ok people, that wraps up the briefing. I wan't the datadisc and simulations to be studied by 1200 hours tomorrow. Dropship prep and loading to be finished by 1600 hours. I want everyone to be in the freezers by 1700 hours and I want to leave Gateway no later than 1800 hours. Dismissed"

With that Lt Ericson nodded towards Sgt Kurosaki and left the room, trailed by monk.

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Re: Turn 2 - Piece of cake

Post by Duncan » Wed Apr 13, 2011 5:58 pm

The briefing over, Duncan ran through the checklist in his head for the prep work. Weapons. Make a request for a better alternative for grenades. HARDCore suits. Probably have to check those for the whole platoon. Duncan walked to Sergeant Kurosaki to take care of one of those items.

"Sir, I was wondering if I could talk to you about the munitions loadout. Since I suspect there will be restrictions on the use of high-explosive ordnance aboard ships, is it possible to have M108 Canister Grenades or perhaps some non-lethal option available? I think either would be a suitable option for any possible shipboard combat environment."

<tag Ichigo>

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