[OPEN] mod plot | sacking of olympus: harbinger descends

[unplug]

CHARACTERS ▶ All characters opting in
LOCATION ▶ Olympus
SUMMARY ▶ The Zion Defense Grid with civilian relief corps arrive at 1100 6/18, and Commander Gwisin gives the orders for rescue, assault, and investigation. This log is player-run and includes The REAPER simulation option (1 of 3) in the Matrix, as well as rescue activity in the Real. Kill some zombies, save some abducted babies.
WARNINGS ▶ Violence and reference to human experimentation, possibly R.
NOTES ▶ This is Part II of the Sacking of Olympus plot. Questions/investigation here, for example, what happens when you shoot compartment x of the centipede

▶ Sacking of Olympus Part II

REAL: THE ZIONITE RESCUE OPERATION ◀

Gwisin's orders are terse over the comms, two hours before the fleet makes Olympus. Make contact and communication to the best of your ability, restore comms if possible. Provide emergency care, fire control, and evacuation, before the unidentified bogey arrives at city center.

Pandemonium reigns over the populace of Olympus, civilians trapped by fires, drones, and debris. Olympus’ forces have rallied but remain thin on the ground, and the Zionite reinforcements are direly needed. Electronic communications remain down except for the Matrix pirate signal, darkening the panic and despair that have descended over the city; REAPER drones harry every human or ship that tries the ground or air.

Organizing this wide-scale rescue in the face of explosions and still-unexplained abductions comes down to ingenuity and manpower.

REAL: HARBINGER DESCENDS ◀

Thirteen hours after the Zion rescuers arrive in Olympus, the Harbinger does too. The cavern ceiling, dead center, cracks, crumbles, boulders the size of hovercrafts hammering down on the city center. By now, thankfully, the heart of the city is empty of civilians, but as the Machine breaks through, it's instantly clear that isn't going to be enough.

Harbinger is massive. Digging mandibles up front could eat a squid whole, and have room left over to total a hovercraft; its name emblazoned on red on each segment. Scarlet optics glow against its black chassis, and drones flush out of the gasping ports in its sides the same way insects give birth in dozens. Ponderous but unmistakably powerful, the centipede-shaped robot crawls out into a dangle into empty air. Keeps dropping its head toward the city in neat, clockwork degrees, almost elegantly, to let itself down onto the rubbled cavern floor. Erratic gasps and comments sound off across the disrupted networks: the oldest of the humans, civilian or otherwise, have never seen a Machine like this in the Real.

But maybe you remember dreaming a monster like this, from another lifetime.

Pilots throughout the city gun their engines, preparing for a feat of comms-blind synchronization. The battle truly begins.

MATRIX: REAPER COMBAT FREE-FOR-ALL ◀

When the Harbinger arrives, the Matrix pirate signal augmentation doubles in strength. Triples. The operator reports start to come in, distorted from the REAPER signal jamming, but unmistakable. There's a simulation out there, like a bridge to-- what? The Matrix? The programming language carries unmistakable similarities to the Dowager's feed from Kitty Jones' call to the Atalanta, but there's nothing specifically like that strange, consuming pattern in the girl's neuro-output. At least, not on this level of the sim. Not yet.

Jack in, and the first thing you see is the cold belly of a spaceship. What you hear are the screams, bouncing echoes off catwalks and cold corridors. Next, figures coming in a wave of seemingly unstructured attack. In the vanguard, the Husks, screaming zombies-- sinewy, discolored flesh mingled with useless tech components and bioluminescence. Not far behind, the bulbous Scions with their single energy weapons. Bringing up the rear, the Banshees float in deceptively slow at first, only to accelerate into a dazing flash of teleportation, skeletal-faced, real death waiting in their razor hands.

One thing is certain: they're guarding something, though where in the recesses of this ship, the operator must largely guess.

Comments

(Open) Phoenix Crew + Guests

[sfoils]

Nice of the machines to label it for us. [ Wedge thinks aloud, counting each Harbinger emblazoned in each section. It's close to a super star destroyer in its attempt to demoralize through sheer size, but it's still not worthy of a cursory look at the size of that thing.

Even if Wedge wants to say it. Badly.

He'll have to give it to the machines: an insect-shaped machine is much more unsettling than a flying dagger (or, as someone in starfighter command pointed out, a flying pizza slice), doubly so when it wiggles its buggy legs facsimile to a centipede.

Wedge grits his teeth. ] Alright, civilians are out of the line of fire. [ At the center of the city, that is. Wedge can't make the call on the rest of Olympus. ] That segment, its left leg. [ Wedge points at the fifth segment from the head down, its legs the first that touch the ground whenever Harbinger stops praising its machine overlords or whatever the hell it's doing by lifting its torso and wiggling its legs into the air. ] We're shooting at it, and hopefully with that, cutting ourselves an entrance into the sithspawned thing.

[last_ofthe_jedi]

[For once Luke finally feels like he's in his element in this place, the Real, away from his powers and his friends (most of them anyway) and the Alliance. He's taken to the hovercraft like a duck to water and being back in the pilot's seat in a battle is giving him the confident, competitive edge he's been lacking since he arrived.

He guides the ship in clean arcs, controlled turns, but with the speed and grace of a seabird. It's not quite as agile as an X-wing fighter but Luke manages to get just about the best out of the Phoenix that it's capable of. His expression is utterly focused and eerily calm. The stress of the past two or three months has melted away and Luke has found his zen.

He passes under the belly of the beast to give the starboard-side guns an ideal angle, then tilts his head in Wedge's direction while keeping his eyes on the viewport.]

What do you think, Wedge? TRD?

( OPEN | MATRIX )

[scission]

[Thirteen hours of city defence is more than enough to have exhaustion wearing at the underside of Deuc's mind. War doesn't come with convenient breaks for rest, though, and this assault only remains a war through continued resistance - otherwise it would be simple to call it an annihilation instead (he tries not to think of the strange kidnappings too hard). So it is that there's no complaint as the matter of the pirate signal moves briefly to the fore, almost seeming like a distraction alongside the vision of the lumbering beast of a machine dropped into the city centre, but there can't be any coincidences here. And Deucalion is stronger jacked in.

The landscape of cold metal and darkness is disorienting after the heat of underground battle, the overflowing swamp of sensory input after the dullness of a human body. He takes a breath to steady himself, to stretch his spine up straight, feel the strength corded through this fake muscle and bone, the wolf stirring beneath his skin like an animal waking from slumber.

Something shrieks. Several metres away and closing, the lumber of fast, clumsy footsteps on metal. Another scream joins it, and another. This might be quicker with a pack, Deuc thinks, claws unsheathing with a flex of fingers as he moves to meet the enemy head on.]

matrix. closed to kate bishop and johanna mason.

[berserkergang]

[ Even if the linear dimensions of the space-age corridors were not easy enough to navigate, the operative known as 'Thor', which is a hell of a code name, has left something of a trail.

Look. This is the first time he's reunited with Mjolnir. He got excited.

The strange creatures of this world are already difficult to determine even before mangling. A confused mass of biotechnology and black and red gore and human features lies crumpled several feet away from their plug in point, crates strewn and broken where another was flung into it with force. There is a smear of sticky fluid the shape of a man's boot heel that steers around a corner.

And so it goes.

When they catch up, lightning makes strange, crackling shadows flung around the cavern, catwalks crisscrossing above them, with tongues of electricity charge snagging on metal. Thor, in his strange armor and red cape and Nordic countenance, is channeling lightning from the blockish hammer he has pointed before him, a human shaped monstrousity catching the brunt of it. In the next second, a shock of electrical explodes from the figure, lashing straight back at Thor and catching him off-guard, staggering back.

Above them, the shadowy figures of more husks are navigating down the walkways, leaping from ramp to ramp, descending. ]

Horse | OPEN | REAL & MATRIX

[ambidextrosity]

THE REAL

[Stuff Horse does:

Jump off the crude granite rooftop of a home, tackling a drone to the ground in the massive arms of her APU,

Accidentally bounce off the nose of your hovercraft, APU and all, her reinforced alloy elbows winging sparks off your armor-plated windows as she scrabbles to upright again, yelling,] Good fucking catch! [without apparent concern about where she's going to go from here, never mind get down,

smash sideways into the side of a butchered barge, three drones piling up on her in rapid succession, screaming her head off while she rips off her automatic under her arm. That is, you know, until her magazine clicks on empty.] Sshh--ee-it—

[cart a toddler out of the smoking ruin of a REAPER drone. Screaming. At first it seems like she must be in pain or terror, but get close enough, and she's cheering them on, woop woop. The kid, the Vindemiatrix cutting agilely overhead, your ship coming in. It's like she's screaming for fucking joy, and it seems to have dazed the boy in her arms into a stupefied smile--

run rangily across tarmac, her APU long since destroyed now, grease on her face and eyes raw red from smoke exposure, lightning rifle in her arm. She's on her way to a drone. Not one of theirs, but man-made. Data drone. There's something coming up behind her; she swings down behind a blasted wall, eels into the shadows fast. Though not faster than Machines can see.

The drones are after her, perpetually, like they're after every man, woman and child. They dog her long-legged stride with red optics and clutching legs, APU-motorized or otherwise. Sometimes she's ahead by inches. Sometimes, they're nose to nose. Before long, she's bleeding from two or three places, but it's nothing a bandage won't keep together for the next long hour.]

---

MATRIX

This is your operator speaking.

War is going good up here, [casually, like she's reviewing the weather, and not the burning chaos that might cut your life from under you while you're asleep in your chair, fighting imaginary space aliens.] Think Phoenix is going for the robot armpit. Someone blew up the grainery. 'Nother ship radio silent. Pretty smooth, eh. [Under the veneer of crazy person calm, Horse sounds out of breath, but then, she wasn't in the chair the last time you were awake. It must be crazy out there, so many people and too much fire, stops to make then starts again, firing on the enemy then banking out of the way, hiding, people to board, people to disembark.]

But you have a big fucker coming at your six. [And cue the Banshee scream.]

[alsohawkeye]

[ Thor staggers back and a beam of energy lances through the husk that lunges after. It's neater than his lightning, more contained, quieter. Pink-er. It sears a hole into the creature that attacks him, severing a leg and sending it toppling off balance to the floor. Three more in quick succession hit the first ranks of approaching husks, picking them off one by one as they navigate the maze of catwalks ahead. ]

Wow, so when they said 'Thor cleared a path' they weren't kidding.

[ Kate is in purple, suit and headband, her bow a bright and glinting arc of white and gold in the shifting light. She hops down from the railing she'd climbed with a swish of dark ponytail, abandoning the vantage to jog up. There's gore spattered up her shins, smeared on a bare elbow. ]

Hawkeye. [ Is an introduction, the three fingers of her right hand encased in a black shooting glove tapped to her chest. ] You keep doing your thing, I'll cover you.

idk i'm makin things up

[heda]

[ Horse swings down behind a wall just a yard or two ahead of the pursuing drone. She's quick into the shadows but the shadows vanish as a burst of lightning crackles past her, dropping the REAPER out of the air. More follow; more always follow.

The woman with the lightning rifle is soot-smeared, some of it intentionally dragged around her eyes by the look of it, sinking them deep into their sockets. It makes it difficult to tell how old she is. She's dirty and torn up and bleeding like everyone else, but her expression is an impassive contrast to Horse's shouts, fixed in concentration as she waits for a recharge and then blasts the next drone the second the gun is ready.

The third comes before she can muster up another bolt, and she puts down the rifle and draws an actual sword off her back, jabbing the blade up into sensors, hacking at twitching, spidering legs. It's completely insane, but she looks more comfortable with that hilt in her hand than the rifle, still recharging. ]

[ex_paragon697]

[ Luke's smooth flying certainly makes it easier to see out from the bridge at the thing, Steve clutching a handhold less out of unsteadiness than a grim, well, steadying, the familiarity of the creature not lost on him. Yeah, he's seen something like this before. ]

And let's hope there's only the one.

[ This is to Wedge. Turning to Luke with a frown, he asks, ]

TRD?

[last_ofthe_jedi]

Trench run defense.

[Luke's focus never wavers and he guides the hovercraft between the Harbinger's legs, keeping the targeted leg joint in their sights.]

It means I keep close to this thing's body to make us harder to hit. All we have to worry about are the drones. The downside is that a wrong move could send us careening into the hull... but I don't think we have to worry about that.

[A faint smirk is just barely visible.]

[lostsoldier]

[ What Bucky thinks about flying so close to the hull that one wrong move could send them all careening into it is expressed in one flat looked slid from Luke to Steve as he makes his way by the cockpit.

Fantastic. This is the perfect ship for you, Rogers. ]

Worry about it.

[ At least a little. For him. ]

I've got the drones, [ he grumps as he swings up the ladder to the turret. ]

open | matrix

[lostsoldier]

[ It feels like falling asleep. This isn’t his first time jacking in, but this time more than most, after a long day’s battle in the Real, as he leans back into the headrest and steps out into unfamiliar territory to face an oncoming horde with no more nuanced objective than get through them, it feels like going under. Meeting action with reaction, letting instinct guide hand and knife and gun without thought to consequence. Easy as breathing.

As the screaming, scuffling mass of reanimated corpses closes in around the Winter Soldier, an arc of submachine gun fire cuts them down like wheat. Shrieks spike and soften to moans under the whrrr-crunch of metal fingers ripping robotics from organics, spinning rotten flesh spatters up to his elbows, dripping brown and bioluminescent blue from leather gloves and shifting steel plates. Freed metal bones slam into bodies, fling dry and scraping to the floor in growing heaps to be crushed under boot-heel as he pushes right on through.

In the distance, though, beyond the Winter Soldier’s discreet circle of carnage, a long groan sounds as a bulbous blue mass lumbers forth from the crowd. An electric glow flares to life.

That can’t be good. ]

[axeyou]

Stop flirting.

[Johanna is close behind, and doesn't need to jump down from a railing or wear a cute costume to make an entrance. She's also badged with gore, and a more general sheen of sweat and blood. Somewhere, strapped to a chair, Johanna is clean and pale and full of holes. Here in the Matrix, she's gritty and bloody and happy. Her grin is all teeth, white in the smear. And very little of that blood is her own, by the way, and here's why: she's armed with two axes, which means she mostly has to get up close and personal, more physical than the vantage of a bow.

Briskly, she flicks her wrist. A spatter of blood hits the floor. That's as much of an effort as she's going to make toward cleaning her weapons here in the moment.]

I want to see him in action. It's been fun following behind, but I'd prefer a live event, you know?

[And here's the husks still approaching from above, anyways, getting close enough to start being construed as an actual threat. Johanna eyes them up, a quick headcount before she abandons the effort and picks out a target. Shadowed, still a little far off for even a thrown axe, and the angles are all wrong. Johanna turns her gaze forward instead.]

You heard her. She's covering you. Me too. So go ahead. Show off a little, big boy, let's see what you can do.

[sfoils]

Named after the trenches on the surface of many space stations and warships we flew against. [ Wedge grins, the memories as bright as laser fire. ] We called it 'trench run disease'.

Yeah, TRD is fine, Luke. If that doesn't work, you can just... [ Wedge looks at Bucky, mildly worried. Wedge knows these are the growing pains of a newish crew, but it's hard not to take the comment as some sort of slight against Luke; he can outfly Wedge, Force or no Force.

There's nothing to worry about at all. Luke and Wedge have saved each other's lives so many times they've both lost count somewhere around Endor.

Of course, there's no way for the crew to know that. They'll have to built their own rapport with Luke. ] Alright, thanks.

[ex_paragon697]

[ The exhaustion is as universal as the shedding of it upon entering this false Matrix (false, as though the Matrix itself is any more real, but Steve is one who would argue in favor of the distinction). It doesn't completely reverse those hours of work, of continuing to move and fight because it's the only thing to do, whether or not your body wants to allow it. But plugging in mitigates some of the weariness in his head — with a different body, with familiarity. He knows how to keep moving wrapped in this code.

And so he does. After the first weeks of hard training, of relearning how to move and fight in the Matrix, without a good reason to be there his sim hours had dropped off significantly once he'd gotten the hang of it. This, though, is necessary, is a reason (a good excuse) to run unburdened by his own lungs.

Deuc will have plenty of time to tear through some of that initial wave before the shield cuts an improbable trajectory through a swath to his right, nearly decapitating the first few husks before it slows down enough to take down the rest in its path with blunt force. Steve follows it seconds later, a clean line now to retrieving it, flipping it up from the metal floor with his toe and into the chin of the husk it had stopped short of. Steve catches it out of the air before it can go high, too fast for — well — human eyes to follow, and turns to Deuc, stops only a little short to see his appearance, but after a moment he looks away to shove his arm through the straps of the shield. ]

Looks like I'm going your way.

[last_ofthe_jedi]

[With his powers returned to him and his green-bladed lightsaber once more in his hands, Luke is a force to be reckoned with.

He can sense presences all around him, mostly of the odd, demi-organic army surging to protect something. They don't feel living but they're not quite inorganic either. They don't even feel like any cyborgs Luke's ever met.

Then there are the presences of other jacked-in people trying to fight through the horde. Luke knows a few of them but their presences are all unfamiliar to him. This is his first time feeling them through the Force.

Not too far away Luke senses a spike of danger and dread, someone about to be in trouble. His legs are already moving and he leaps without looking to see what it is. The Force tells him everything he needs to know. The green blade of his saber swings to cut cleanly through the Scion's body that was descending on Bucky, ready to fire at him.

It meets no resistance and the Scion crumples as Luke lands in a crouch in front of it.

He's breathing hard and he rushes forward to meet up with Bucky, briefly looking him over for injuries.] Hey, you alright?

[berserkergang]

[ The possibility of careening into the hull sounds-- fine, honestly, you can't obtain glory any other way. Luke's hair is cut suspiciously close to his scalp for all the confidence he is exuding about flying what cannot be a familiar craft, probably, but where's your sense of adventure, one-armed companion of Steve.

These things Thor only barely thinks as glances after him, and apparently decides that's where he's meant to be. ]

I'll best your score, [ he proposes, jovial, for all that he is fully cognizant of the terrible destruction that has brought them here. A battle is a battle, whether he's on the ground and mastering it with his fists, or in the seat behind gun turret controls.

He breaks towards the other ladder, flashing a wide grin. ] The shores of Hel will be ruin with burning metal!

Re: Horse | OPEN | REAL & MATRIX

[metempsychotic]

[ There's little enough joy in the noises Bella refuses to make, yet which surge up her throat each time the air nearby is concussed by a projectile impact, or rent by an electric discharge. She stifles these would-be screams, first by clapping a hand over her mouth, then biting that self-same hand until she leaves deep red marks in her knuckles. It's not even that she's afraid of being heard - the drones have more means than that by which to find her - but to scream is to lose control. That she cannot afford, not even for and instant.

[ She's hurt, that much is plain - red spots the soot-smeared grey of her clothes - though not so badly that she cannot manage to scramble from wall to shattered wall. Indeed, what impedes her more than her injuries is the metal box she clutches to herself, with white knuckled intensity. Apparently unarmed, she avoids the fray as assiduously as possible, choosing the better part of valor at the first sign of conflict.

[ Thus even the sound of Horse's approach, crunch crunch across the rubble of crumbling Olympus, causes her to take cover at first. It is only after a considerable amount of huddling and a few furtive peeks that Bella raises an arm and flails it in the direction of the woman with the lightning rifle. ]

Over here!

[ex_paragon697]

That include ours?

[ Steve's amusement is visible in his eyes more than the slight uptick of his lips, so that it's in turn more wry than jovial, but the look that follows Bucky until he's situated behind the turret is softer and speaks to something good in what was said, even if he's apparently the only one who understands why. If anyone is even glancing in his direction, instead of at the massively destructive undulations of the machine outside and the swiftly curving trajectories of the drones as they seek targets. ]

You can worry plenty for all of us, Buck.

[ Whether that means they'll find their way through the fight or are simply all certifiable is a matter best left to interpretation. Either way Steve isn't himself much more willing to be distracted from the swarm beginning to harry the ship, and he faces forward again to watch Luke evade them, ears taking a pounding at the firing of the turrets, though he doesn't flinch. Closer, they can all see that these are different from sentinels, lacking most of the reach but probably making up for it in their grasp. As though echoing the thought, a hit reverberates through the metal of the ship, louder than the guns and rocking them all as the aft end is thrown upwards, enough to knock any one of them off their feet. Steve barely keeps his own.

The sound of tearing metal is more muffled, but immediate. ]

[ambidextrosity]

[Which leeeeaves

zero robots for Horse, who's squatting behind some brick and breathing dust and growing annoyed, in the intervening seconds, that all these robot sounds are happening but there is no telltale skitter of red optic-lights to guide her shot. A brief moment later, the top of the Zionite's head pops up from behind the broken wall, her brows furrowed, dust gathered in pale relief atop the round roof of her scalp. She's been tired for hours, but she's only started to feel it now, an intrusive burn and tingle behind her eyes, in her arms.]

Bee--eetch, what is this, nap time? [she mutters to herself, partly, but mostly to the tardy robots. And then she sees Lexa. Finds the woman standing out amid the smoke, backlit, past the sparking chassis of one fallen bot. In a moment, Horse hauls herself up into standing, lightning rifle braced on her ribs. The next arc of searing light rockets twenty feet over Lexa's head, catching the grasping machine that swoops down for the swordswoman, clearly to exploit her preoccupation with its equally grabby fellow on the ground. The overhead bot loses power. Starts to fall.

And Horse doesn't know that Lexa is a pirate, so she yells,] FALL BACK.

[ambidextrosity]

[Horse certainly isn't quiet. Flagged, the gravelly ramble of her progress stops moving away from Bella, swings around, and very audibly starts to stump toward her instead, overturning little pieces of gravel and cracking a lot of glass, until she sails properly into view. She looks like a fright, but so does everyone by the standards of 'not in war.' Bella looks like a fright.] You got yourself a war wound, eh?

Medkit's white, [Horse tells her, already hunkering down beside the woman. Despite her interest in the woman's injuries, she presents Bella with her side rather than immediate medical attention for the moment, her eyes focused over the lump of rubble she'd passed through to get here. Watching the outside, still. The lightning rifle, she balances atop the broken barrier that Bella had selected to hide behind. Horse sights down the long weapon, waiting for the red lights to sweep through, for the black bulk of chassis to follow.

There's a mix of a promise and a warning in the gesture she throws Bella sidelong: one quick forefinger uplifted. Just a sec, just one robot, best be quiet. She'll kill the thing as fast as she can.]

William Tsang | OPEN | Matrix (cw language)

[boffing]

[In this scenario, the Banshee has you by the neck. She's hoisting you up, her razor-edged hand pulling back, gnarled muscles cinched tight with violent intent and monstrous competence. Your eyes are watering and the over-spent air is beginning to burn in the bottoms of your choked-off lungs, but the heat of adrenaline, of knowing you're about to die-- that's infinitely worse. (Nearly as bad as this use of second person !!)

And then

bokk

the empty plastic crate bounces off the strange, twisty horns of the monster's head, and the scream she lets off then sounds nearly human. She twists her head to trace the path of the object's flight, and in doing so, the hand that grasps you drops slightly, brings you closer to the floor. Maybe you left something in there that's handy, or maybe the instant's reprieve, your toes brushing the cold metal floor, is enough to remind you of something else you had on you. Anyway.]

Get some cunts! [is the panicky yell from behind the pyramid of other disused crates, to the back of the Zion Defense Grid's jumbled personnel line. William is only a healer and that's important and all, but he's not terrible at throwing lightweight boxes. He has another one balanced awkwardly on his hands above his head right now, ready for a second go, and profoundly lacking in better ideas than that.]

[metempsychotic]

[ No frightfulness can match being Alone Out Here. Horse could be missing bits and pieces, Bella would still greet her with as much relief. Though, as it happens, she's very grateful Horse has all her appendages, and in fit enough condition to wield a weapon. ]

I need to get onto a ship, [ she hisses, following Horse's lead in eschewing introductions in favor of more pressing issues ] Mine was... [ the barest beat's worth of hesitation ] -disabled. [ This is a euphemism: her ship was shot down. So, all things considered, Bella is in fantastic shape, her condition a credit to whoever was in the cockpit at the time.

[ At first sign of trouble, as telegraphed by Horse, Bella ducks down even lower, despite already being securely behind cover. She cowers expertly, with the mum-ness of one deeply committed to survival, giving Horse all the seconds she needs. ]

[ambidextrosity]

[Pew pew.

The flare of the weapon's discharge is harsh and bright enough to illuminate Horse's face for a moment. She has a vivid scab forming over the side of her head, wide and lumpily textured. Probably looks worse than it is-- scrapes are that way, whereas cuts can go deep but look kind of small. No matter what thumped her head, though, Horse's aim is true. The rupture of the bot makes an unmistakable noise, a garbled squeak that seems nearly like a cry of pain, then metal and glass wrecking into the ground.

Horse swings the lightning rifle back over her shoulder. It starts recharging immediately, but both of them know that takes uncomfortably long considering how many things are in the air right now trying to kill them.] No problem, [Horse says, abruptly all teeth, bright in the semi-darkness. Cheery now.] We got lots of those and you a little one, even with the luggage.

[But she isn't looking at Bella in the eye when she says this, preoccupied, pulling the woman's arm aside to try and have a look at her wound. Crippled? Dying? Circle Y or N for each please, it is relevant for Horse's next brilliant exploit.]

[last_ofthe_jedi]

[The tactics of this hovercraft are very different from that of a small fighter. There's less maneuverability and speed and more surface area that can potentially be hit. The loud clunk and dip in the ship's flight path makes Luke tighten his grip on the steering and he lets out a growl of frustration at the rending metal.]

HANG ON!

[That's all the warning anyone's going to get before Luke takes the ship into the tightest port turn he can manage, attempting to throw the drone off of them with inertia.

They can't let that happen again. One hull breach is bad enough. Assuming that someone else is going to go take care of that drone if it's still there, Luke focuses on the others that are still out there, endlessly assailing them.] I need half the guns on the leg and the other half on those drones. Keep them off of us.

[Then Luke suddenly remembers himself and gives Wedge a quick, sheepish glance.] Oh. Sorry, Wedge. That's your call. [This will take some getting used to. Luke is just so accustomed to making all the orders, especially with Wedge around.]

[sfoils]

Can we keep him? [ Wedge chuckled after Thor made for the other turret—now that's more like it, someone cheery, someone who looked at danger and wasn't afraid to laugh at it.

Not that Wedge thought the rest of the Phoenix was afraid of danger, but laughing at it always helped keep some degree of sanity on this extended walk on the wild side.

Wedge doesn't flinch as the guns go off. Instead, he turns his head to the sound of tearing metal, already too familiar for comfort. He feels the turn more than he hears Luke's warning, digging his feet into the soles of his combat boots for some semblance of purchase with their metal floor. It works, somewhat: Wedge keeps his balance, at the cost of coming back at the middle of Luke's 'order'.

He doesn't need to guess what it was, though. ] It's alright. [ He shrugs. No offense taken because no offense was meant; and it is the exact call Wedge was going to make anyways. ] Alright, you heard him: one gun on the drones, another on the leg.

[ Wedge looks out the hovercraft. ] I think we're onto something here. More drones are dropping now that we're targeting the leg.