Challenge

Who: Jay, Cassandra
Where: Umajo
When: About three hours after the escape

“Jay?” Cassandra's voice echoed around the mine's command and control room, that the escapees had seized only half an hour previously
"Yeah?" he glanced up from the terminal he was being shown by another inmate, a heavily tattooed man in his mid to late forties
“Can I have a word?”
“Sure, give me a minute”
Turning his attention back to the proffered terminal, he tapped the screen three times, highlighting different points on the map displayed there “Here, here and here” he said “Fortify these locations with whatever you can find; maybe use the ore trucks create choke points - You understand?”
“Sure” the man nodded “Kill zones here and here, right?”
“Good man.” Jay clapped a hand on his shoulder and began guiding himwards the door “Can I leave supply lines and the other details up to you?”
“Yeah, it's nothing I haven't handled before”
“That's why we picked you” Jay smiled, and gently propelled the man out of the room “If you see Gorshkov,” he called after him “let him know that we need his survey results as soon as possible”
“Now,” Jay clapped his hands together and turned back to Cassandra, his smile broadening into one of genuine affection “how’re you doing? Did you guys finish rigging the comms array to try and contact Holly?”
“Yeah, we did” Cass stepped forward into his personal space to embrace him and, before he could protest, plant a kiss on his cheek “That’s for getting that damn collar off me” she murmured as she released him and stepped back “Thank you so much”
"I guess I should thank you for rescuing me earlier on" Jay smiled, his hands trailing reluctantly from around her waist as she moved away - he knew he shouldn’t, but that hug had had felt nice
Cass smiled impishly at this “Told you I’d get around to rescuing you eventually”
“Yeah, yeah” Jay smirked, rolling his eyes as he twisted away from her in a mock huff, trying putting a brave face on the sudden pang of guilt that he felt “I had it all under control”
“What!? How!?”
“Well, you know...” he turned back to her “It was like that time back on Rohypnol VI; except there were twenty HK death bots that time”
“Hah!” Cass grinned broadly “Yeah, right!”
“Anyway” Jay dug his hands into his pockets “What was it you wanted a word about?”
Pursing her lips, Cass paused a moment to contemplate the best way to put what she was about to say
“Well?” Jay raised his eyebrows expectantly
“This...” she gestured expansively “Everything. It’s not going to work”
Jay frowned “How do you figure that?” he asked, folding his arms to regard her levelly
“We couldn’t raise Holly" Cass explained "The fucker tried to kill us not long after we came out of stasis, remember? I reckon we’re probably a couple of centuries before then, so he’s mad and bad right now”
“So no emergency evac?”
“Nope” Cass raised her eyes to meet his “And even if there was, how could we justify it?”
“How do you mean?”
“Come on Jay; you’ve got to have talked to some of the other prisoners. We were in mess hall 77 this morning and there were maybe five hundred prisoners in there, during one of what was apparently three sittings. Do the maths”
“Shit” Jay groaned after a moment
“Yeah, exactly”
“How big is the damn place?”
“I dunno” Cass shrugged and turned to perch herself on the edge of one of the command consoles “Nobody does, but at a conservative estimate: I'd guess maybe three hundred thousand prisoners in a city sized complex”
“Fuck’s sake”
“My thoughts exactly” Cass gave him a tired half smile before taking a deep breath and continuing "You know Lindstrom experiments on people? Even I can’t justify abandoning that many innocents”
"Then he's got to be stopped" Jay said firmly
"Much as I hate the idea of going back there, I agree"
“Do you have a plan?”
“Not much of one” Cass shrugged “We need our time drive to get back to Max and the ‘Dwarf, so we'll need to break back into the place to get that. With all those prisoners, it shouldn’t be too tough to infiltrate a place that size and loose ourselves in the crowd”
“I suppose” Jay murmured, noncommittally
“After that, I dunno... The prison is packed with mechanoid’s, so it shouldn’t be too tough for me to crack whatever security protocol they have in place around their command and control nodes, so maybe we can take control of the place that way?”
“That’s a pretty big maybe” Jay said as an alarm suddenly sounded the control room “What’s that?”
Cass turned to inspect the monitor on the command console
“Dropships” she said after a moment “Ten of them. Probably a whole battalion of mechs and Canaries come to retake this place”



Who: Canaries
Where: Dropzone 3
When: About 10 minutes later
“Canaries!” Victoria yelled above the whining howl of the Warbots unfolding out of the dropships and deploying behind her “Today is when you earn the privileges of your rank”
“This is a standard recapture exercise” she continued “For those of you amongst us who have never participated in one of these, our orders are simple: Each and every single man and woman on this planetoid is to be considered an escapee and must, therefore, be terminated with extreme prejudice”
She paused to let this sink in as she gazed out at the massed ranks of the Canary troopers
“I need not remind you of the punitive penalties facing us all if we fail, or what will befall our lovers, our friends and all our fellow inmates left behind
“For the greater good of the entire prison population, everyone on this planetoid must die”
Blinking rapidly, Victoria hauled her helmet on and swallowed the lump in her throat before continuing
“Lock and load troopers” she yelled, mirroring what was happening at the other nine dropzones “Time to earn your pay!”


<tag>
Canaries – Time for an assault on the main mine complex, by order of Chief Warden Lindstrom; kill everyone, but let’s stop short of killing any of your compatriots eh?
Do you go along with the orders, and what are the penalties if you don’t?

Everyone else – There‘s a battalion of warbots, mechanoid wardens and canaries coming to kill you
What are you going to do about it?
Can you negotiate terms?
Do you run, do you hide?

Artemis – can you come up with a bloody good reason for Lindstrom not to kill everyone?
How do you convince Lindstrom?
</tag>
<ooc>That do ya? ;-)</ooc>