ARC2/C41 – Hideout and spoils part 1

Sam had been wandering, if that were the right word, around the void for… Well he didn’t really know. There was no day or night and with everything looking very samey it was very hard to keep track of things like time or focus in general. His mind or whatever was left of him, seemed to lose concentration very easily.

The only discernible change in his surroundings was that the clacking sound from before had been joined by high pitched screeching, so he tried as best he could to head in the opposite direction from those noises. To preserve what little sanity he had left.

Clouds of something still floated everywhere, sometimes in clumps stretching out into the distance. Sometimes solo clouds. He moved straight through them without the slightest ripple on their surface.

Finally, he just stopped and would have sat if he had a body. He was tired.

When he came back to himself, he noticed that as he had been absentmindedly not-sitting, he had started to idly manipulate something. As in front of his position was a strand of long white material. The stuff the clouds were made of he realised. He had just made a cloud strand. Pointless but entertaining, he set about making more.

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Traksis meanwhile pursued the enemies into the MR. She didn’t really feel any allegiance to the Profoss factions and thought she was only going to get herself into trouble with them. So she stealthed and went on her way. She could always join up with another faction if she was really pushed.

Before leaving AF asked her to requisition another AI device, which she managed to locate and pinched with no great difficulty. This led AF to being quiet for an extended amount of time but she didn’t really mind. She had things to think about.

She knew that Sam had wanted to make a place that was home for his people. A place of safety. Traksis didn’t really see Tartris as a safe haven for anyone. It was badly protected and those there were not exactly hidden. Which she actually thought was strange. Previously the resistant had set up a fantastic hideout in the Seracian desert. She wondered why they hadn’t put so much consideration into this base.

She would take her people someone safe where they could hide from their enemies and live in some kind of peace.

So instead of Following the fleeing Seracian forces into the MR Traksis took a one way ticket to Tartris. There she found the resistance had either moved their base or fled. She did however find her kin still located in the same area. Taking them through the MR they left for a home world AF had found met their criteria for a safe zone.

It was a home world that had little or no value to any faction due to its lack of resources and small population. It was called Thelos and was mostly barren which suited her purposes fine.

As a insectoid her natural instincts were to burrow to make a home, the sands of the Seracian desert had been why they had felt at home there.

Scouting out ahead of her group she was glad to see, no one from the local population. They kept moving until they met an area that was a forest of mangroves between an ocean and the desert.

There were quite a few wild animals here that they could feed off if they needed to. Although, her race required little to sustain them and the moss her and sea water was more than enough.

They immediately set to work burrowing to make a network of tunnels that would form the basis of their new home and be undiscernible to any entering the mangroves.

The soil here proved quite difficult to work with so Traksis helped by using her absorption ability to clear through the bedrock. Allowing them to access more suitable rock and earth for digging secure lodgings. The task would be lengthy but with many thousands working together they should have a basic structure finished within a day. Further tunnels would be made extending into other spaces and allowing for exit tunnels.

Traksis feel secure, went off in search of cores to help build up her colony.

She entered the MR and headed for faction territory where she could secretly join in the battling.

AF seemed to have managed to link himself to the AI device giving him back some of his previous abilities and more. He found he could not only utilise Traksis’ body and abilities but her spare capacity also. This meant his processing power had sky rocketed thanks to her high intelligence and perception.

He had already been proactive to try and make optimum use of this, by hacking into servers everywhere to try and find out useful information. Particularly with regard to the last mission Sam had given AF to find data on high level skills like Traksis’. AF did find some abilities that might be useful to Traksis but she as yet had little in the way of credits to purchase such high level skills.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

AF had tried to see if he could in some way obtain more sensory information about the ability, now she was joined with Traksis but as yet had made no progress with this.

Traksis herself now felt free to leave this new home they had created and go in search of spoils.

AF was proving very handy, giving her up to date news on all war developments and even managing to unencrypt intell being sent through faction channels on both sides. AF seemed to have turned into a real beast of an AI.

There were many home worlds to choose from that had battles ongoing. The feed scrolled on and on before her eyes. She just chose a world at random from the first screen and headed into the MR.

Not wanting to get in the way of the Antragros forces, Traksis thought it best to unstealth and approach someone. This would also give her the location of the most heated fighting. She could always split if she needed to.

There were many Antragros troops, many with their familiar snake like appearance. But also there were other more straightforwardly humanoid looking lifeforms.

She approached one of these, having less of a bad feeling about antagonising them. Not wanting to become a pariah with all the factions.

A heavily armoured woman, was just about to set off before Traksis, came up to her asking about where all the action was. The woman rubbed her chin taking Traksis in.

“Red legion here” said the woman thumping her first to her chest.

When Traksis just looked bewildered, the woman expanded.

“Red legion has a proven track record with all factions, with have a 4.1 rating and have come in the top 100 mercenary bands in this sector. The Antragros are giving a good bounty on all kills made. What is your level?” said the woman analysing Traksis, from under her uncut fringe.

“Level 38, I don’t really need a party but thanks for the offer.”

“Are you crazy were going to be going up against the Vanguards finest. If we live the week or not is undecided.”

The woman carried on for a while, repeating what sounded like a sale pitch for her group.

Traksis did lack experience on a large battlefield. She was used to solo fights or large coordinated battles, fighting alongside the rest of her kin.

“I wouldn’t want to sign up permanently to your legion”

“I’m not asking you to. But you could join our force for this battle.”

Traksis thought for a millisecond then replied “Are there any Red Legion already there?”

“Yes. We are the third squad in today. There are two already engaging the enemy in the city nearby.”

“Ok. I’ll tell them what you said” replied Traksis as she shot off towards the location that the legion representative had let slip in her conversation.

AF to pin pointed the location of the city. It turned out to be another Antragros homeworld. The most intense battles were now taking place on their homeworlds most lightly because it would keep them from mobilising all their forces for a revenge attack on the Vanguard.

Hordes of mounted lizard looking warriors on yet bigger reptilian steeds were attacking the homeworld. Traksis also spotted many winged attackers also.

She picked up a token from the Antragros which would pay her a much greater fee that the normal one for cores. The only problem was she had to state which mercenary group she was working for.

Quickly she found another person with similar insignia to the woman she’d been speaking to a minutes earlier and asked for a temporary sign up. All went smoothly and she could get her token and be on her way.

The token was a special device that could be used in within the radius of an Antragros checkpoint. Any cores obtained would automatically be tallied and teleported to a depot nearby.

Traksis wondered how this worked exactly and asked AF to look into it. This type of technology would be amazingly useful for the collection of cores in future battles, if she wanted to take a supply back to her home base.

This would need her to avoid using any of her absorbtion skills to much though as she would not get the cores and the bounty that went with them.

How to proceed? As always it was difficult using her skills with allies nearby.

AF came up with a solution or rather a hack that might work. But Traksis decided it was too risky to try initially. Instead she would just have to defeat her opponents using melee combat.

Except maybe the flying enemies who were staying generally out of range and bombarding there forces from long range.

Flying up, stealthed, she picked of large groups at a time using [Cryo Wave]. Then before the dead beasts hit the ground she made contact with their cores, claiming them and at the same time teleporting them away.

This caused the winged beasts to scatter but still proved effective for a while as they were so numerous. Any that decided to fly down to escape her, she used [Absorbtion field projection] on to avoid them getting out of range. Choosing to absorb their cores rather than let them get away or fall into the hands of others.

Eventually though, the beasts started to retreat into the MR where she currently couldn’t follow them. Not until the MR became designated as the target. It was only when an area became designated that cores would be tallied and counted correctly.

So she flew down to the city below and started commencing melee combat with the lizard warriors there. No warrior was anything more than a number, a credit score. Her incredible agility and other raw stats meant all her enemies were one shot-ed. They didn’t even know what hit them.

Some reacted as they saw their comrades fall, in an explosion of red mist, as Traksis made contact. But know had time to flee. If the battlefield had been open it would have been a different matter but close combat fighting in the city led to poor visibility. So squads would not see that half there number had been mowed down until it was too late.

They did seem to get the message that they were losing after about an hour though and started to move back into the MR, retreating.

At last the MR was designated the new battle area, and she shot ahead of the other troops to gain the most advantage.

On entering, she was internally glad to see a change from the forested MR she had spent to much time in before.

Glacial mounds of ice towered everywhere, that and the blizzard of snow that came at them creating natural cover for their adversaries. When Traksis saw this she felt that perhaps it was not that different from the forests.