Elysium - The Rose and Thorn

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A few days later ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The damaged BCs left warp in the outskirts of Deadman's Port. What followed immediately was one of them suffering a light explosion that sent out debri into the giant cloud of remains from ships, stations and asteroids. Nothing serious, but it was indicative of the current state of the ships. The smaller BC had 2 of it's 4 engines sputtering on and off, trails of smoke trailing behind them. The Irregulars had arrived safely... well as safe as they could given the condition of their ships. They had maintained near complete radio silence to avoid being tracked down, taking jumps through usually absurd directions, avoiding major hubs or anywhere reasonable that might be an ambush.

On the bridge of the bigger BC that served as their current command center, it was chaos of activity. Orders were being barked, people were moving left and right. Sparks were still flying everywhere every time one of the power cores gave a little metaphorical wiggle in it's output. Repair crews were working around the clock along the regular bridge crew. One terminal blew up in a shower of sparks and sooth, quickly to be put out as the person working on it just went to another on and continued work.

"Status report!" Cid barked as one of the repair crew were at the same time helping to make his usual terminal stop flickering. The old man who ran the Irregulars wasn't a happy camper. They had taken a huge blow this time. The UED messed them up badly and he had no idea from where the leak had come... at first. Following the last couple of days in and out of Warp jumps, they had managed to track it down to one of hte newest hires. Apparently he got paid off even before he was hired to leak out any intertesting info. While in and out of jumps, one of the sensor operators had came to Cid with the info they had managed to catch some kind of transmission. After checking system logs, who was where and some creative detective work, they had tracked the bastard. He didn't even understand what he had done and how bad it was. Had gone on a tangeant that it was just business and surely that's how everybody did it to keep an eye on the competition. The bastard still thought he was just selling info to business rivals for extra cash. Needles to say... he's death was rather creative, slow and terrifying.

"Both ships have arrived... relatively intact. We've got main power and shields working for the most part. Won't survive combat, but we should be able to land." One of hte men on bridge reported.

"Our wraiths are shot right now. Can be repaired, but it's gona take more time. Honestly it's a miracle the pilots that returned managed to actually survive and do that. The Avengers( regular fighter craft), we've got 4 of them that are operational. None of our Dropships were damaged luckily. Finally our ground machines... we lost 2 goliaths that were housed in one of the port hangars when a missile hit it." The Chief Engineer reported.

" No new deaths can be reported since last briefing. We lucked out with few KIAs, MIAs and after the fact victims." The guy who was responsible for the human resources added his own report.

"We might have missed a terrible number of deaths, however we're barely above operational numbers right now." Miranda finally spoke when it was her turn. She flickered something on her datapad as the holy display they were around came to life, flickering in and out, but mostly staying legible. In annoyance she kicked teh base of the holo table and the thing stopped flickering, much to her surprise." Huh... anyways. A third of the crew have sustained injuries above moderate that require serious attention. A number of those have missing limbs, a few have survived, however would be bound to the medbay for weeks if not months. I'm forwarding full list of injuries, however I cannot even begin to make assumption as of when some of these people will be ack to working condition. We already ran out of Nanites just stabilizing the worst injuries because of the number of injured."

Cid grunted and everybody from the leaderships of the various parts of the mercenary company looked rather off at the news." We leave nobody behind, Miranda you will get what you need, have a list prepared." The old man stated, knowing it would hit their budget hard, but those were HIS people. He wasn't going to kick them to the curb just because some of the mlost arms or legs. Prostetics it would be if they had to. Even if they didn't return to work as a merc on the field. If they were to retire, they woudld retire with limbs.Just like how they started work." Now... how goes our... situation with Deadman's Port? We got a messege back?"

"I reached my ... friend. She leads a mercenary crew that has grown well since our last visit. Her reputation is one of a ruthless killer, but one that keeps to her contracts. She's got access to at least 4 BCs by last reports when she united a number of the crews on Deadman's Port. Has agreed to house us at her spart port facilities and provide us with both parts and engineers to help with repairs as part of the contract we send over." Miranda replied. remembering her chat with the pink haired Mira Han. She liked the hardboiled merc despite everything. Somehow they got a friendship going.

After that the meeding descended into a chaos of people talking over each other, Cid shouting them quiet like they were kids and then everythign repeating. It was tiring and honestly MIranda felt like it would have been a better time to stay at the medbay by this point...

The last few days had left Ava feeling a bit anxious and unsettled. Miranda had been going between meetings and medical procedures for the more seriously injured, Nick was still sleeping most of the time thanks to the meds he was on and as for Ava herself, she hadn't had much to do. Sure she had helped Miranda a few times, but the reality of it was the ghost did not have the depth of experience that was needed most of the time for the serious cases... and many of the crew that had more trivial medical matters, for which Ava would probably have been better suited in treated at her current level, seemed to be avoiding the medbay right now, likely not wanting to add extra pressure what with all the casualties that had been sustained in the attack.

Adding the feeling of uselessness from that, to the isolation from those who were really now her family, plus the fact the only thing they could do right now was flee for a safe-haven to lick their wounds which had definitely impacted the overall morale of the crew, was making Ava feel a bit perturbed. On top of all of that, being in the medbay since the attack had been taxing. She had kept her psi-screen off as much as she could handle, knowing that the device had the potential for serious drawbacks, but there had been a number of deaths that had occurred, some during the attack and some later, when they succumbed to injuries.

Ava had been close to death before, of course... often had her hand even, but these ones, particularly the more drawn out ones, had been worse. In combat, whether previously or during this attack, adrenaline had been high and that had given Ava something of a buffer, she had come to realize. The drawn-out deaths though, Ava had felt those in full. Even with meds, even if the pain was suppressed, it was the feeling of those people's minds as they were pulled down into blackness that had given Ava nightmares the past couple of nights.

She ran a hand through her fiery hair as she walked down one of the many hallways in the ship, feeling the need to just do... something, anything, to get rid of the pent up unsettled energy and get out of the medbay for a bit. Ideally she would have gotten Nick to practice spar with her, to work off that energy in a way she knew would be very effective for herself but that was a no-go right now. She moved around one work crew in the hallway only having to quickly dodge as another tech came barrelling around a corner, intensely concerned with some gaskets.. somewhere on the ship. The amount of hyper-techy thoughts and words that were coming from the minds all around was something she couldn't even begin to pick apart. It was all just becoming a bit of a blur that was giving her a headache, like being in a noisy crowd when you couldn't make out any words for too long.

Stopping at the first quieter intersection that she came across, Ava stood still for a long moment, eyes closed, teeth clenched. She wanted to hit something, to just unleash, but she held herself back. The repair crews already had enough to do. As she strained between the desire to do something and the restraint, she could feel herself building up psionic energy. It didn't feel like there was an end to it either. There probably was but she couldn't feel it.... She could do.. something.. catastrophic with that much energy.

And that thought was like a bucket of cold water. Her eyes shot open, her face a bit distressed as she let the energy dissipate. She put her hand to the wall to steady herself and realized that it was warmer than the walls normally were. Quickly she looked up and down the nearby hallways to reassure herself that she was alone right now before putting a hand to her head, regretting what she had just been doing. She had been leaking some of that psionic force all around her. If she had released that... if anyone had come around... She was quickly realizing that she could have caused massive physical damage to a person, or fried their minds.

What scared her even more though was that, with how it felt that she could build up that energy, if she went too far, it might be detectable to someone she was now terrified of. The thing that apparently had once been her sister. Ava was mortified that she might have the power to be able to draw that thing and the zerg, especially when there were so many innocent lives here that should never have to face things like that. They likely would have to at some point, but Ava most definitely did not want to be the cause of such a confrontation, and even more so when the mercenary company was so weak at the moment.

Suddenly she didn't want to be alone any longer. With a bit more renewed vigour, Ava quickly turned on her psi-screen and then determined where she was at in the ship and calculated the best way to head up towards the briefing rooms and took off at a fast walk. She didn't even give a thought about if Miranda or even any of the instruments on board had picked up on the build up of psionic energy on the ship. All she wanted to do was be around someone who could maybe console her, maybe even give her a more adequate distraction or sense of purpose.

By the time Ava got to where the department heads were having their meeting, it seemed like there was just as much verbal noise coming from there as the mental noise she had been getting from the ship as a whole. Glancing inside the door, she could see the energetic gestures that went along with the impassioned arguments for one department to get more resources over another and judging by the pained look she could see on Miranda's face, it had been going on for a while. She leaned up against the outside of the doorway, mostly but not totally hidden from the group inside, trying to at least pretend she wasn't eavesdropping as she waited for her friend.

It had been getting ridiculous at this point, Miranda thought after 4 hours of htis meeting going on. Progress had been... there was no progress to speak off. No conclusions, agreements or decisions had been reached in those 4 hours of shouting, screaming, talking shit, adjectives slinging and general behavior of angry kids throwing tantrums. From everybody present only Cid and Miranda were behaving like rational adults. In a way she supposed this only underlined the issues of scaling up the outfit's numbers as they had. Sure Sid originally was very happy the Irregulars had become a mercenary company that could truly be considered a worthy hire for proper missions, but now that half of hte people shouting over each other were new people hired for a reasdon or another to make it all work... he wasn't quite so certain anymore

"No way! That would be suicide! Why waste all those credits and resources on getting more useless mechs!" A voice from somewhere on their left shouted." We should actively upgrade our aerial forces to avoid other cases of being overrun in space!" That was... the new vice lead of the pilots... their old chief pilot got hit by an exploding coupling a few days ago and was recovering. Not that him being a chief pilot meant too much originally, they used to ahve 2 wraights total not too far back. Miranda and Cid looked at the guy, barely out of flight academy agewise, acting like a hotshot... who even gave him vice command?

"Says the guy who missed 2 bombers doing a strafing run!" An accusation came flying from the other side of the holo table.

And like that the meeting was back on the proper track of bugger and all.They were half an hour away from Deadman's port at this point and nobody was properly ready. This was the sixth time this specific coure of discussion was repeating and at this point, Cid was about to remind everybody that the outfit was not a democracy where everybody did what they wanted. The Irregulars were his and while he took advices and left people do their thing when it came down to it, his was the decision that mattered. It seemed the new folks needed to learn it as he debated just shooting somebody to get the tohers in line. They had already executed the traitor as a public statement to everybody about what happened to traitors... what were a few more people? He was Really tempted, his fingers rapping over the handle of his handgun in the holster.

Somebody beat him to the bush however as Miranda just snapped out of nowhere, pulled that fucking huge revolver on her hip and then shot teh vice leader of the pilots in the left hip, followed by a quick second shot to the vice chief of engineering who was present because their engineering leader was too busy keeping the reactor from overheating and blowing them all to kingdom come. The entire bridge, everybody present even the repair crew just froze in place, looking at her in shock, one guy by instinct pulled his own gun only for her to shoot it out of his hands. The expression on her face was probably one for the dictionary to be fitted as a definition of hte word apopletic. What didn't help everything was the fact that she had a line of blood running down from her nose which on it's own was probably not a good thing. Her eyes, especially the left one was quite bloodshot too and the shadows underneath her eyes were deep enough that they can be called suitably BLACK.

"Shut... up. Next person to open their mouth, won't do so again." She growled, everybody stared at her then looked at Sid who just kept quiet which most took as a sign of approval on her actions. Not a good sign." We've been here for over 4 hours... 4 hours I could have used to actually do some good like performing the surgeries we've got backlogged. I haven't slept in 2 days, my last nap lasted barely an hour and I've taken enough stim drugs that I could probably knock out all of our marine units and hten have left over... so everybody will keep quiet or I swear next one who speaks will have a bullet hole in their head." Everybody wisely chose to keep their mouths shut this time. Miranda's anger( putting it mildly) was radiating off her.

"Now that I've got everybody's attention... while everybody was acting like toddlers, me and Cid already decided everything and none of you idjits even paid enough attention to notice it." She hissed." Nobody's getting new funds to increase anything. All funds will be directed to repairs, resupply and hopefully medical supplies. Have any of you even paid attention to what we will be paying for our stay here!?" Her shouts caused a few people to flinch back... or maybe it was her waving her hands around, gun still in them like a lunatic." Repairing the Battelcruiser already left us low on funds and it will cost us almost everything we've got left to do so again while paying starport fees, replacement parts and general services while docked... So all of you will go back to your stations, do inventory checks, figure out how we can make more money and THEN you will be talking afterwards when you can actually provide some benefit... GOT... IT!?"

Cid gruffling huffed and nodded in agreement. He was about to do the same thing before she did it. Somebody didn't seem to have gotten the memo though. The supposed ace vice leader pilot, still crying on the floor, cluthing his leg because of how much it hurt was making noises of pain and every now and then shouting how she was crazy, they should put her in the brig and ranting of who she was to give orders. Which promtly earned him a second shot in the injured leg, this time courtesy of Cid himself.

"I suggest you lot listen to the lady and listen well. I RUN THE IRREGULARS. Not any of you, you are advisors when it comes to decisions, not the decision makers." He reminded everybody, which funnily made all the old timers from before the growth very happy." What Idun said stays... For the leaders of our different sections, only ones I seem to be able to trust to act normally are either out of comission, already too busy to attend or Idun who attended only because she had to give her report on Deadman's Port, so you will listen to the lady or I will personally throw you out of an Airlock to join our friend in drifting out in the void." With his ultimatum made, the meeting suddenly turned quiet as a grave with lots of people checking their data pads for various things, trying to appear busy. He gave Miranda a nod, she nodded back, put away her gun and headed to the door where Ava was waiting by.

Miranda had sensed her approach from very early on, it was hard not to, but she too wasn't in the best of shapes as displayed by the blood running down her nose, her bloodshot eyes and eye shadows deep as the dead space outside their ship. A lot of it boiled down to the fact the doctor hadn't had any proper rest in days and all those stims she was taking? Yeah not healthy... not healthy at all.

"Sorry about that, Ava." She smiled to Ava with her usual smile that was usually only reserved for the ghost, Nick and the people of Kalisti. It looked so... wrong in her current face. Even the honest and ssincere caring smile couldnt' fix the mess that was her looks. Had to be said, she was running raged trying to save people and keep them as whole as possible. She nudged with her head to the side for Ava to follow her down one corridor that led somewhere on deck 4." Hope their presence w3asnt too... like thier mouths." She slowly said as tthey were passing down the halls, lights flicering or missing. One bulkhead was even only half opened, stuck in that state since hte attack. Miranda pulled a tissue from her pocket and wiped the blood from her face, nearly stumbling as she did so, but caught her balance back on." We had been running in circles for hours, couldn't stand them anymore...." What she led them to was one of the cantines. It was pretty wrecked and even the jukebox was fallen over, sparks coming out of it. The tv present was flickering in static. Miranda walked over and around the bar, getting behind it and pulling herself some booze." Want anything?" She asked, voiced tired as she poured herself a whiskey. At least it didn't sound like regular 'I'm tired of this life' tired. It was the sheer raw fatigue of lack of sleep and running on way too many stims and using more stims to stave off the burnout from the earlier ones.