#6 by Carnifex

(This has some violence in it, knives and guns and death and stuff. Just so you know.)

Osaka Storage Facility had seen better days. Since the Outcasts sacked Honshu and the government fell the station had changed hands several times, being the major storage of basic supplies in the system had made it a prized target. Osaka's location out in open space, the most empty area of the Honshu system, made gaining the element of surprise impossible and as such the resistance fighters were slowly losing their ability to take and hold the station under the superior force of Outcast attacks. At present the Outcasts held the station and were quickly digging in, in preparation for a counter offensive.

Having powered down his ship and set it adrift so that it looked like yet another casualty in an ever growing list Carnifex donned his EVA suit and set out into the emptiness of space. The suit was a stealth adaption, with less armour to reduce inertia and paint on the outside to reduce his signature on small, fighter mounted, scanner rigs. It was outfitted with a cold-gas thruster attachment for zero-G EVAs like this one. While the Outcasts and the resistance had been duke-ing it out for the station (and the Outcasts doing rather well this time it seemed) Carni slid effortlessly through the silent vista of small fighters and bright explosions onto the hull of the station. Finding a section of hull damaged by a torpedo he crawled into the dark forgotten pockmark and waited. Once the Outcasts had secured the space around the station they sent in their strike teams and took control.

Carni set to work on the nearest door with a small hand held computer, his past as a Lane Hacker going to good use as he tapped into the door's mechanism that linked it to the station's main system and carefully severed it. This door now belonged to him. He opened it and the section inside vented, he hoped that no one would have relaxed enough yet to be watching a little breach warning while there still might have been Old Kusari officers on the station. Once inside he closed his first door behind him and found himself in a small corridor. Taking the door at the other end for his own as well he opened it and air rushed into the small corridor. Still in his suit he started searching the station for his target.

He was looking for a Kusari deserter, Ryutaro Shimamura, a prominent officer who his client in the resistance wanted made an example of. An eight million credit example. He knew he'd be somewhere near the station's main computer trying to gain control of it after the Old Kusari resisters locked it down to slow the Outcast's claim on the facility. His job was to also put in place new security lockdowns in case the Outcasts lost the station again. Carni had been tracking him for a few days now and monitoring communications.
Carni was lucky not to have been seen while he moved about; he figured the Outcasts would be moving quickly to establish a perimeter around centres of control and to bring in re-enforcements. Reaching the room that housed the main computer he could see from a distance a tired looking man at a main console with three mean and thoroughly dirty Outcasts looking over his shoulder.
"Looks like I've found him," thought Carni.

He slid silent as a cold, hardened wolf around behind the group of men. One of them seemed to be looking around. Carni stopped, breathing gently. He only had a small energy weapon at hand for use at range if he was spotted. He also had two knives at sides but they wouldn't be much help against three, maybe four, well armed men. When it was safe again he kept moving slowly. He was behind them now. Carni could smell them, the smell of soldiers recently in a life or death struggle with other people, the smell of adrenalin and fear and anger. Silently, with practiced silence, he drew his knives, one in each hand. As he moved in to strike like an evil spectre one of the Outcasts sensed that he was there and began to turn. As fast as his arms could move them he plunged both knives into the backs of the necks of the other two soldiers and kicked out the legs of the turning man with one leg. Now off-balance himself he drew his energy pistol and put a large cauterised wound in the chest of the fallen Outcast just as he raised his own assault rifle to fire. Three Outcasts now lay dead or near death at his feet, sweat beading on his face and breathing heavily through his opened visor he looked up at his target.
Ryutaro was stumbling backward in disbelief. The surprise on his face seemed utter until Carni put a charred hole in one of his legs and it grew in intensity before being diluted with pain. Carni wasted no time, by now anyone nearby on the station would have heard him. He grabbed a knife from one of the dead bodies and plunged it into Ryutaro’s chest bringing forth a short, pained scream followed by silence.

The moment his target hit the deck he was running. The adrenalin surged in his veins like fire. Rounding a corner he came face to face with an investigating soldier, probably another deserter from the devastated and disorderly former Kusari. Acting on instinct he hit him in the face with his gloved hand and flattened him without breaking step. As he neared the two newest doors to his collection he could hear some footsteps behind him. Sealing his visor he switched his suit's support back on. The cries and noises behind him were gaining; he was not as fast in his suit as angered pirates in station assault gear. Reaching the inner door he stopped, turned and anchored his feet to the metal deck with the magnets in his boots, bracing himself. Just as his pursuers rounded the corner into the small space he hit a control on the small hand held device that he had used to hack the door controls. The doors opened up onto open space, venting the atmosphere. A few shocked screams very suddenly died away and all the pirates were knocked flat and kicked forward by the explosive decompression. Emergency bulkheads sealed behind them as they floundered dying on the floor and Carni made a break for the breach in the outer hull. Leaping full speed into the enveloping black he vented almost his entire remaining thrusters to accelerate himself toward the spot where he had left his ship. Sending out tight-beamed signal to it he activated an auto-power up sequence and a tracking beacon so that he could find it. Unfortunately he knew everyone else would too.
"Time to be hunted," he thought to himself.

#5 by Ghost

It had been somewhat like a bolt of lightening, they were there and then they weren't. An entire war had ensued, one of the most technologically advanced nation's was now just a reach away from pirate control and they had only flown eleven missions throughout the entire ordeal. He could've made assumptions, mental accusations about what was "really going on" and who might be pulling the strings, but it was clear. High command had been just as confused as he was. Kusari had been on a rampaging warpath that could have cut Liberty down the middle and in one day, refocused its military strength back into itself. Rheinland, who blind sided both Liberty and Bretonia with an unannounced alliance with Kusari was now pleading for peace. President Abma and the Liberty DoD had dug in and still refused come out of full defensive posture. All the while, Her Majesty's military stood by and watched the events unfold with an expression of disbelief and confusion.

Ghost sighed as he entered he watched the Tau-29 --> Tau 31 Jump Gate open and begin its artificial phase align. The White Dawn and Angel's Embrace, hospital ships of the Queen, activated their docking strobes and slowly lumbered into the bright light that would take them to the now fortified Tau 31, from which, they would proceed on to Leeds. The Planetform Inc. terraforming outpost on Planet Harris would now be home to some 3,000 Armed Forces fighter pilots and the gates to the other Taus on the far side of the system, the new front line. They'd been ordered to gun down any pirate elements unlucky enough to be found and it had been hinted that High Command wanted no prisoners.

As his wing prepared to jump, a large BMM convoy came through. The company, along with Border World Exports and small contingent of Gateway traders were cashing in on the unstable gold mine that was Kusari. With the Emperor dead and the military tied up with the pirates and themselves, the embargo on Bretonia had been unofficially lifted. The civilian companies, at least the ones who hadn't fled the house, placed an overflowing amount of orders to the western trading companies who's cargo they'd been starved of the since the beginning of the war. Prices on exports to Kusari shot up like a ship in atmospheric escape. A "Danger Tax" had been added to the original subtotal of all orders, since traders would now be flying into "hostile territory", but even this hadn't lessened the number of orders Bretonia received.

As the SAS wing of three passed the convoy, Ghost thought he caught a glimpse of the smiling freighter pilot - the dollar signs nigh visible in his eyes, and the thought of danger absent from his mind. Business and politics..had they both not been able to flourish on each other's failures what kind of world mankind be living in.


(All my blogs can now be found here, indexed in this blog. If you enjoy my writing then please explor them and read 'Carni's Corner' for more background on them.
Link to Carni's Corner )

#4 by Carnifex

Carnifex, having managed to find a new Barracuda FAF on Planet New Tokyo, was now sticking solely to the core system. Kusari was slowly becoming a scene of total chaos. Since the apparent death of the Emperor the economy had bomb shelled and remaining sections of the military had started to disagree with each other about what should be done to halt the advance of the Dragons. There was probably a power struggle of some sort going on behind the scenes but what concerned Carni most was that people were starting to stop paying him. A lot of civilians were just getting away from the approaching front lines mostly in the direction of Shikoku. Some ships had even tried to make their way into Liberty as refugees but there were rumours starting to abound that some were disappearing without leaving wreckage or record of their passage through Kepler or Galileo. People pointed to the rise of the CTP since the end of the war, but pirates normally leave wreckage so Carnifex didn’t put much stock in that.

However no matter what was going on in the crumbling state or on its “southern” borders it wasn’t the problem of the BHG. Not for much longer anyway, the way the war was going soon the BHG would start openly taking jobs against what was soon to become a rebel element in a new Kusari state. As Carnifex patroled past the dark side of Kitadake toward the Hokkaido Jump Gate he wandered how much dirty laundry Kusari had and how much of it he might be able to turn into money.

#3 by Dragonslayer

Dragonslayer sat in the bar of Freeport 6. He had bought a new ship here and changed his transponder to identify his ship as a Kishiro Technologies ship. As he sipped his sake, he contemplated his delima. The Emperor was reportedly murdered, the Empire was crumbling under the combined Dragon and Outcast assaults. Even the Seii Taishogun had disappeared. He had no illusions what would happen to him if he was caught by the Dragons, being the last Samurai of the old Emperor. He had no idea where to go from here, other than to occasionally try to kill a few Outcasts for revenge.

#2 by Blackrain

It had been a surprising time for all during the Outcast campaign of Kusari, but least expectant of this were the Corsairs. The Outcasts had long been enemies with the Corsairs, and when Kusari had let out a hand to help the Outcasts, months ago, the least they expected was Kusari to then be attacked by the Outcasts. It happened too fast for the Corsairs to rally.

I was aboard Cadiz when I first recieved news of this from our spies in Kusari. The naval forces had been defeated at Kyushu. Then fell the Nagumo. We first recieved a call for help the day before Honshu was taken, but at the time our forces were too spread out to assist. Then the Emporer was murdered. The Kusari citizens were told to flee. Since then, the old Seii Taishogun turned up in Omicron Gamma. We let him stay, we would let out a hand to help anyone fleeing Outcast rule. Kusari crumbled, one week at a time. There is just a small resistance left at New Tokyo and Shikoku now, the rest are either dead, fled, or submitted.

#1 by Carnifex

Carnifex slunk away from the fight in his escape pod, his ship destroyed in the intense fire. He watched out the tiny port hole as Nansei Research Station rotated distantly into view and bright flashes of weapons fire could be seen raging about it. The last few defending ships were now on the back foot. He sent out a narrow band signal on an obscure frequency and a few minutes later a single bounty hunter fighter making for Tsushima Depot sped past and picked up his small escape pod.

It had been this way for weeks, the Outcasts attack, Kusari falls back and the Dragons come in and finish off what, if anything, is left. Many bounty hunters like Carni had flocked to Kusari despite strict restrictions on the war zone hoping to take advantage of the weakened house and make some fast cash from their desperation. However now that the ‘war’ was looking more like a rout the bounty hunters were less enthusiastic. If the Blood Dragons did eventually become the new government the Hunters Guild would want to keep the option of business as wide open as possible (provided the Dragons didn’t hold any grudges which was yet to be seen).

None the less war was still making for good hunting in Kusari. Firstly Outcasts were now everywhere, especially in Hokkaido and Kyushu. They had come from the border world systems like a dirty pack of locusts with high-powered particle weapons and made their first strike right for Planet Kyushu. All at once demoralising the Kusari military and crippling the centre of supply distribution and ship repair in the system. That planet was still effectively blockaded, what few ships made it close enough to enter the atmosphere were lost to the crowds of civilians who were frightened and cut off from all news of the outside or were destroyed while trying to get away from the planet by the thick pirate presence. Few bases now remained in Kyushu that weren't in the same situation or worse.
On top of that, Kusari were paying bonuses for captured Blood Dragons and, just recently, were paying truly exorbitant prices for the deaths of any deserters. A few rumours were even going around that some bounty hunters were retiring rich by cutting deals under the table with Kusari officers for helping them to desert their outfits. Sometimes Blood Dragons even financed the costs for important military figures to get a bounty hunter to help them fake a death or escape while on patrol. A recipe for a lot of backstabbing and money making in the eyes of an experienced hunter.
Carnifex was one of the rare cases in which a hunter would take part in defending a station from Outcast or Dragon attacks. The payment he received just for engaging in the fight was more than enough to cover the cost of a new ship. When it came to defending their stations, to say that Kusari were desperate would be an understatement, and Carni was more than happy to cash in on that opportunity.

As he stepped onto the landing deck of Tsushima Depot for the first time since the start of the war he breathed deeply the smell of frightened civilians, damaged ships being hastily repaired and the makeshift military morgue on the other side of the bay for crewmen who were killed in battles aboard the few gunboats and cruisers still in one piece on this side of Kyushu. Carnifex made his way straight for the ship dealer in the hope that he would find something to his liking that was still in good condition.