Telárium, Bridge to Revan part III Options

[Lord Revan]

Ok, this is a tie-in for Revan II going into III. I felt like showing the nature of the war beyond Nirm, where it's pretty much a complicated three-way struggle.
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<<Telárium/Frontier/3 months into Nirm conflict/1238 hours local time>>

The dim sky-blue/ocean-green sun made the vista of Telárium undeniably beautiful. Fiona “Fi” Relyn sat on one of the large jungle trees in the tropical world beyond “civilization.”

She leaned against one of the branches and sighted down her survival rifle’s sights. Five hundred meters downwind, past the stream, and a hike away stood a Jy’Vashi mercenary standing guard. Fi let out a breath, focusing on the shot and nothing more. Those buggers are masters at mimicking statues..... Pity really.

The bead in the center of her scope rested on the insectoid’s broad segmented neck. Her rifle exhaled exactly as its wielder had moments ago. Fi allowed a slight grin of satisfaction. The high kinetic impact round decapitated the Jy’Vashi, ripping apart the creature’s neck. She rolled off the branch, landing lightly.

Fiona didn't enjoy semi-powered armor; it eliminated any possibility of stealth, something she was loath to give up in her line of work. As a ranger, she was a lone operative, or a leader of small bush-fire outfits; she preferred the former where she didn't have as many distractions.
Fi muttered under her breath and the optical display on her headset magnified several times. Through her left eye, the mercenary watched the entrance to the bunker.

Unconsciously, Fiona retrieved the spent shell casing from the ground. As she placed it in her bandoleer; Fi spotted motion at the bunker. Three forms appeared from the darkness.
"Compassion!" She spat, two Zey'Thai fliers, winged insectoids, and a lone Naryyn in psionist armor emerged. Her Blitz-brand survival rifle, even with high-impact rounds, lacked the punch to penetrate T-20 alloy. Not that it would be any easy shot anyway.

Fi crouched and shouldered her rifle again. Well, I've already lost the element of surprise.
One of the Zey'Thai lurched sideways, shuddering under the impacts of twin HI rounds. The psionist ignored the ailing creature and focused on the most likely direction of the sniper fire....

With reflexive speed and precision, Fi withdrew the spent magazine and shoved in a fresh replacement. I should have listened to Keith and taken the aux kit. It was too late to change that, so the mercenary jumped down from the ledge and rushed through the foliage.

<<1243 Local Time>>

Fi took a deep breath; she reached out her mind, scanning for everyone. The merc calmly swapped her rifle for the cut-down Impactor-model scatter gun.

The weapon produced a satisfying clack! as a round went into the chamber. With deliberate slowness, Fi picked her way toward the bunker. On three....
Without warning, a Zey'Thai burst down from the canopy, powerful mandibles ready to rip the ranger apart. Fi shoved the barrel of the scatter gun into the insect's mouth and blew the back of its head apart.

Gore splattered the tree trunk behind the insectoid and the report boomed throughout the region. Fi ignored the disgusting spectacle and turned toward the psionist behind her.
"Lay down your weapons and cease this futile attack. You're under military arrest, ma'am." He ordered in a precise, formal tone. Right, I'm supposed to fall for that act; does he think I'm a moron? She spat silently.

"You're not here on military business, renegade, I wouldn't under your jurisdiction even if you weren’t rogue, because I've orders from the government to either apprehend or eliminate the being who paid you to go AWOL in the first place." To put a period to her sentence, Fi pumped another round into the firing chamber.

"You have three options, one: you take the hefty paycheck you earned and get out before the real military gets here. Two: You can do the unimaginably stupid thing and try and stop me, or three: the noble yet dishonest choice of going to your superiors and reporting whatever intel you might have uncovered during your 'investigation.' " In all honesty, Fi hoped the soldier would take three; otherwise the psionic might haul her over to his employer.

The armored psionist bowed his head as if contemplating, but Fi felt him give the faintest of mental probings. He suddenly perked up after a heartbeat, his visor became transparent.
"Militia Ranger Fiona Relyn; number three seems promising, but I have to ask something first." Fi stared impassively; she knew exactly where this was going. "You despise the Patriarchs and the council, so why are you doing their bidding rather than getting back at them?"

Fiona's expression darkened; when she spoke her words should have frosted over the man's visor. "Head south for twenty klicks, that's where the dropship will land when I'm finished. Get going, now."

His smile faded slightly, but he nodded. "Take care of yourself ma'am, there's alot of things with horrible anger management issues down where the scum was; best not shut the doors behind you if you need to make a run for it."
As the psionist made his exit, he snapped an abbreviated salute. "Best of luck, ma’am." Not even the demons of Fi's past could stifle the shiver the psionist's warning invoked. I'll take no chances then, Fiona swallowed the sense of foreboding and trudged up the hill.

The ranger paused before the entrance, staring into the beast’s open maw. Deftly, she reached for an attachment to her headset.
The ocular device reacted to the low-like conditions and an aquamarine tinged night-vision winked on. Fi took a tentative first step down the ramp, a small, rectangular container on her left wrist clicked open.

Minutes ticked by, and Fi soon found the bunker was more elaborate than she’d ever anticipated. Room after room she entered, there were no signs of life, of battle? More than the ranger could felt comfortable with.

At the sixteenth room, the mercenary stopped. She needed to think this through. First sector, no signs of fighting, the four guards had no signs of fatigue or injury. But now I can’t find any bodies, power is out, and no signs of fatalities due to weaponry.

Fi did not open the door yet, no tell-tale signs of weapon discharge, but there were claw marks, signs of struggle, and subtle splashes of corrosion.
It occurred to the ranger that the psionist or its subordinates had killed the other inhabitants, but that made no credible sense.

Not a bit of psionic activity, and those claw marks are too deep to be Jy’Vashi or Zey’Thai maulings. Fi ground her teeth, no it wasn’t the soldiers, something –more likely a group of things– had killed the inhabitants and disposed of the corpses. How, and why? The lack of answers did nothing to help her.

Well, I could always try accessing the base systems; looks like the things that did this couldn’t detect me if I did. The ranger flipped the overturned chair over and sat down uncomfortable on the alien furnishings.

To her relieved surprise the terminal switched on and appeared to be undamaged. “Here’s to my luck holding.....” Fi whispered, lines of text flooded across her goggles.
Fiona credited herself with being one of the best hackers in the outer territories, being able to think on your feet in technical matters was no less valuable than when behind enemy lines, both went hand in hand.

However, it turned out whoever had built this system had more common sense than most programmers. This terminal could only access a number of systems, and there were many separate areas that were beyond her reach.

Not wasting any time, Fi ran a diagnostic on the status of the facility. She noted the heavy damage to this level..... and the large dead zone several corridors down.
“That’s not suspicious,” Fiona muttered dryly. “Let’s check on the life support systems.” Those results weren’t questionable at all: several vague patches of slightly hotter moving shapes patrolled the hallways not far beyond.

Fi ran a quick tally of the patches and estimated their actual size. Seventeen unknown contacts about the size of the average Hraah'Tai.
She checked the rest of her options: there weren’t any rooms marked as an armory, the creatures seemed to never stray far from the corridor leading to the dead zone.

The ranger frowned; she’d have to operate under the assumption that the contacts were the same things that killed all the staff. Thusly, she’d need to kill them all before entering the mysterious anomaly.

Rising from the chair, the ranger flicked her left elbow purposefully. Her fingers deftly caught the discus-shaped grenade.
With obsessive care, she stuck the explosive perpendicular to the floor, three centimeters away from the door, where its payload would be maximized.

Her readout confirmed the charge was armed, and she placed another grenade on the top of the opposite door.
She set both devices to proximity detonation and set her FOF tag to the non-detonation roster. Reassured that this was enough, Fi activated the bulkhead to open.

Her aural detector picked up faint scraping noises in the distance. Calmly, the ranger raised her shotgun one-handed and rang the dinner bell.
Suddenly, the noises became harsher and rapidly approached. Nearly three hundred years of experience caused Fi to produce another grenade...

In retrospect, the creatures she detected weren’t what Fi should have worried about as much, it was what the ranger hadn’t seen in the dead zone that should have had her worried.....

[The Metal Mallet]

Wow, we got more sideplots forming up eh? Now we're off of Nirn obviously.

[jack cloudy]

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a psychic Plys'Iea lurking about.

[minque]

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a psychic Plys'Iea lurking about.

Hehe....me neither! Fiona seems like a nice girl....