Futuristic Red Queen Operator: Operation Silver Lynx

[AtlannianSpy]

Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean...

Twin prows cut through the rolling surface of the ocean, clearing the way for the truly titanic mass of steel that followed afterwards. One of the last mega carriers still surviving from the days of the United States, the Elizabeth couldn't compete for sheer tonnage with the massive freighters that plied these same waters, but were those ships had a blunted, ponderous bulk the Elizabeth was a predator, all sharp angles and sleekness, even its twin flight decks angled into an arrow head shape that seemed to hint at violence.

These same flight decks swarmed with activity as human in functional looking coveralls that seemed like ants when cast against the size of their conveyance dashed two and fro, readying the Elizabeth's complement of fixed wing and rotary aircraft for action. Many of the flight crews were kept entertained despite their busy work by a jocular voice emanating out from radios, PA systems and in many cases sub dermal implants.

"Whhhhaaaaaaat's up Gang? It's ya boy DJ Jester here coming to you live on Radio Red Queen! The only radio station by and for the good folk of Red Queen Security! From the lowliest hygiene technician all the way up to the bossman himself, Radio Red Queen is here for you, taking calls, laying down tracks and asking the big questions in life that keep us all up at night like 'What the hell kind of meat it is that the cafeteria puts in the meatloaf to make it that colour? We're still working on that one I'm afraid, but I do have another big announcement!"

If an outside observer could see through the thick hull plating of the Elizabeth they would have been able to perceive a subtle ripple through its crew as people looked up from their work, nudged each other or leaned over to crank up the volume on some audio device or another in anticipation of something.

"That's right Ladies and Gentlemen today is embargo day! I've been officially given the go ahead by the bigwigs to announce our current destination! Those of you with high enough clearance will already know this but in keeping with opsec protocol over 73% of our total workforce are not briefed on our upcoming destination and contract until we are a mere 24 hours away! That makes embargo day a big deal! Most of you will have gotten in some action with one of the many unofficial betting pools, so quick remember that employee on employee violence is against company policy even if that scumbag owes you money! Apply to HR for arbitration instead of settling things with your built in weaponry or you'll end up cooling off in the brig!

With the formalities out of the way it is my pleasure to announce we will shortly be arriving in Coriolis! This cozy little city on the eastern coast of the Hudson bay was first established by the Neo Hudson Bay Company to source lumber and some key mineral deposits but the war of Quebecois independence saw Coriolis' population swollen by waves of Anglophone refugees to become a metropolis in its own right! Speaking of the Neo Hudson Bay Company, those fine folks will be our primary client for the duration of our stay in not so sunny Canada! The NHBC have been eyeing off some tasty looking deep core mineral veins on nearby Baffin Island but the island has been controlled by a SERO colony for some decades now who will need to shown to the exit before the worker bees can get down to extracting all those juicy heavy metals!

That's right folks we're fighting the good fight today! Operation Silver Lynx as the ad men and women have termed it, will involve linking up with the NHBC militia for a series of island hopping, amphibious arctic assaults, pruning back SERO territory and giving all of NA a little more breathing room! So get your tuques on and get ready to kick some crystallised zombie ass!"

Despite not being able to see his audience, Jester was an experienced enough radio presenter to leave a brief pause for the listeners to cheer or chatter among themselves for a moment.

"On another note, we have a new team of Operators who have clawed their way out of sim training and are ready for action! Team 38 consists of operators Monitor, Daredevil, Hard Knocks, Butterfly, Hornet and two other members! Give them a warm welcome and wish them luck folks! Operation Silver Lynx will be their first taste of combat as Red Queen Operators, with 23 hours until landfall these rookies have less than a full day to prepare themselves for their own personal D-day! I wonder what they're up to right now?"

Spoiled Bread Orikanyo Zufaix R U S T

 

[Spoiled Bread]

Stella Morris
Location: Elizabeth

Stella was more than excited for her first mission. After months of rehabilitation and simulated training she's finally able to touch some real grass on real land, last time she did it her face melted from radiation afterall. For this special occasion she use her credits to treat herself with some Charlotte's salted caramel ice cream. Her artificial tastebud was far from perfect and lacks the olfactory component of it, especially for things like umami and spiciness, but its pretty decent for sweetness and saltiness, and this ice cream was practically the best fits for her right now.

She sat on the cafe's table alone, happily scooping the one feet tall of cold desert from the glass and putting it inside her mouth. DJ Jester continued with some other news but she could feel some gazes from the other customers on her after that announcement. Stella was almost unable to hold back her grin, she picked Daredevil as her callsign and then she installed this red devil horns add-ons on her head just so everyone know she's THE Daredevil. A 2000 IQ move!

Finishing her ice cream, Stella packed some extra snacks before heading to the docking bay. Her kamikaze drones were considered volatile weapon so they would only be put inside her hours before a mission to make sure all of them were working properly.

"Ah, speak of the devil." A tall woman with blonde curly hair greeted Stella when she entered the workshop. She's Tristana, Stella's technician who was tasked to make sure she didn't blow herself from inside out.

"I just finished recharging your drones so we can calibrate them no-" Tristana's words stopped when she spotted the paper bag. "Is that for me?"

"Actually bought it for myself, but eh, you can have it." Stella shrugged as she surrendered the snacks. The technician didn't waste any time to open the bag and stuffed several pastries inside her mouth at once, she was too absorbed in her work to notice that she hadn't had any meal since yesterday morning.

"Yfou aref a lifhe shaver. Thank youf."

"Don't speak with your mouth full!"

After Tristana finished her meal, she pulled a briefcase with a connector cable attached and plug it into Stella's port, which was concealed just below her left ear.

"Done, they're all yours." Opening the briefcase, A hundred of wasp-shaped drones came out buzzing out of it. Overall these drones had black skeletal structure but their abdomen had a blinking red light which simply means their safety system was off and they're ready to be detonated.

"I'm the bee queen now." This was not the first time Stella handled these guys. Her harframe had a pretty good processing power for its class which allow her to partition her own thought process and dedicate some of it solely for controlling the drones. She concentrated for a bit and the blinking red light into green one. The safety was on and they're ready to be stationed.

Despite having a pretty standard model, Stella's drone bay was rearranged so it could be placed all over her body instead of having it in one place. Of course this means she could only carry small drones but that was more than enough for her. Dozens of small hidden compartments opened all over her body and with some mental instructions from their new host the drones neatly lined up and entered the compartments.

"Now that I think about it, this process looks kinda creepy. Very fitting for a devil like me." Stella let out a laugh but Tristana simply shrugged.

"Everything good? You don't feel like blowing up?"

"Nope."

"Sweet, you are good to go."

 

[AtlannianSpy]

Riley Whitaker

Callsign: Monitor

​

Riley clicked her tongue, the sound not coming out quite right from her synthetic mouth.

Aerial Visibility is next to nothing Riley thought, not bothering to express her irritating visibly. To an onlooker the young woman might have appeared to be spacing out, sitting at a functional office chair in her spartan quarters with a vacant looking expression on her plain features. Of course anyone familiar with HARframes and their operators would more than likely realise the truth: that she was looking through some document or another with the aid of her frame's internal processors and VR display.

In this case Riley was flicking through an album of surveillance photography, which mostly amounted to a lot of pictures of dense, white cloud cover viewed from above. The client for this operation, the Neo Hudson Bay Company, had forwarded an intel packet to Red Queen, some of which Riley was authorized to look at even as a rookie but not all of it was useful. In this case the NHBC hadn't bothered with lower flying recon drones which might have been able to go in under the cloud line. Probably it was judged to be too expensive, well established SERO colonies like the one they would be assaulting on Baffin island often fielded anti air units easily capable of beaming drones out of the sky with sorenkoff lances, so low flyers usually didn't make it back.

A Red Queen Operator doesn't need perfect intel or support to succeed Riley reminded herself to cool her frustration. They can adapt to evolving situations on the ground, controlling the shifting field of battle instead of being controlled by it. Still it was annoying to have a possible avenue of preparation sealed off by someone else's decision, especially since that someone was likely some suited corporate goon who wouldn't dare go anywhere near the battle. Still, there were other things Riley could do to prepare, no matter the situation there was always something one could do to shift the odds in their favour, it was just that most people either didn't see it or didn't bother. Riley however was determined to succeed at everything she did and that meant taking every advantage preparation could bring her.

With a thought, Riley dismissed the useless surveillance data and brought up the notes she had on the other members of team 38. They weren't very detailed or explicit, just observations from their meetings in sim training as well as what she recalled of the equipment and augments they favoured.

Daredevil, Hard Knocks, Butterfly, Hornet, Stargirl and maybe one more... hmmm.

Together they painted an eclectic picture, with a wide range of capabilities, but that was true of any squad of decently equipped operators. The team as a whole was probably packing less firepower for their weight class then their peers, with a single heavy sniper rifle boasting their largest calibre weapon and the 462 Daredevil was packing the best they had for sustained, automatic power. Still the drones and grenades they had on hand would compensate for that a little and they were nearly all equipped for melee combat which was often a feature of anti SERO operations. The real brightside in this composition was mobility, between a reaper-pack, a wildcat system and Riley's own skyhook system they probably had enough mobility to carry the rest of the squad along with them, as a team they would be able to choose favourable terrain for engagements and likely be able to retreat safely in the face of bad odds.

I wonder if we'll be assigned scouting duties Riley mused and then shook her head. No matter what assignment she was given she would succeed, she would make her parents proud.

 

[InsaneAsylum]

Khaliuna Nonoba​

The firing range had become Khaliuna’s safe space recently. The build up to her first mission was nigh unbearable. This wasn’t just a game or simulation anymore. This was a real mission where she’d be using her skills in an actual real life mission. What made it all worse was that they’d be dealing with SEROs.

Memories of running down a hallway came to the forefront of Khaliuna’s mind. She could recall the iron grip of one of the NonobaCo engineers that tried to protect her, dragging her towards the escape shuttle. If it weren’t for them, she wouldn’t be here right now.

Suddenly, a high-pitched ding shook Khaliuna from her spiral. Three targets popped up down the range. She reached down to her lower back, grabbing one of her spitfires. In one fluid motion she pulled the gun from her back and pointed it down the range firing three short bursts. Each target had several holes in and near their centers.

“Too slow,” Khaliuna commented. She looked down at the gun in her hand. Noticing how painfully tight her grip was on it, she took a deep breath.

Not everyone got as many chances at life as her. From escaping a space station to surviving a crash landing, she had already been inches from death twice. Yet each time she had no way to protect herself, and no way to fight back. Things were different now, and she couldn’t afford to get cold feet. She was getting to see the world afterall! Something she always dreamed of, but never thought to be possible.

Apparently the mission was in a place called Canada. Una tried to do a bit of research about the place before her visit, and there were several things she was excited to see. The most important of which being the chance to see a moose! It seemed like a fairytale creature, with its sheer size and huge antlers.

 

[Orikanyo]

David Darner


"Hmm hmmm...." a metallic voice hummed a tune only heard by it'self. A ear piece givung not a sound to the world outside but one solely to him. Music, he lived music, above all else it was music that really made him tick. Though, one might say that the whole mechanical body thing may be to a detrement to understanding the human condition, David found it to be...

Well...

A work in progress but worthwhile considering as one might a human body. The human body wasn't perfect, genetic disorders, organ failures, hell even chenical imabalances were common. This was the same in his current form to. His facial skin pulled lightly as he observed himself in the mirror... He liked to keep his face clean, thankfully cligged pores are a thing of the past but a clean face is a happy face. He prodded lightly at a point of metal from his understructure, getting a dropplette of water off it before he gave his reflection a nod.

"After it all, its still you..." he stood tall again, his other ear perked up, an announcment... Ah... their landing soon, his was the first act up on point. He paused his tunes and closed the interface for his chats, he had to focus.

Chaos was a fun chatting interface, real easy to keep open if your doing something and had IT(Intercranial typing) interfaces to help with speedy chat. Sort of like thinking to type and your fingers doing it but through a program.

And sharing stuff from hardrives, like art.

And art that shouldn't have been shared.

Or pictures of cute cats.

That said, he stepped out of his little room, he had brought in a mirror himself just so he could do those little exercises, keeps the mind sane, restablishes sentience and stuff. If the brain sees itself, it knows itself. Whatever it may look like, it is the face it is behind. It is what it sees.

In the hall, he moved aside for the smaller folks and kept to the sides, the parts of the walkways specifically for HARframes. He would need to breifing soon no doubt... or... maybe he was to be called somewhere...?

He was passing the gun range, noteing a few shots off in earshot. Popping in, he called out.

"Yo Nonoba! Still sharp shootin?" He called out, giving a wave to a fell rookie.

InsaneAsylum

 

[InsaneAsylum]

David Darner


"Hmm hmmm...." a metallic voice hummed a tune only heard by it'self. A ear piece givung not a sound to the world outside but one solely to him. Music, he lived music, above all else it was music that really made him tick. Though, one might say that the whole mechanical body thing may be to a detrement to understanding the human condition, David found it to be...

Well...

A work in progress but worthwhile considering as one might a human body. The human body wasn't perfect, genetic disorders, organ failures, hell even chenical imabalances were common. This was the same in his current form to. His facial skin pulled lightly as he observed himself in the mirror... He liked to keep his face clean, thankfully cligged pores are a thing of the past but a clean face is a happy face. He prodded lightly at a point of metal from his understructure, getting a dropplette of water off it before he gave his reflection a nod.

"After it all, its still you..." he stood tall again, his other ear perked up, an announcment... Ah... their landing soon, his was the first act up on point. He paused his tunes and closed the interface for his chats, he had to focus.

Chaos was a fun chatting interface, real easy to keep open if your doing something and had IT(Intercranial typing) interfaces to help with speedy chat. Sort of like thinking to type and your fingers doing it but through a program.

And sharing stuff from hardrives, like art.

And art that shouldn't have been shared.

Or pictures of cute cats.

That said, he stepped out of his little room, he had brought in a mirror himself just so he could do those little exercises, keeps the mind sane, restablishes sentience and stuff. If the brain sees itself, it knows itself. Whatever it may look like, it is the face it is behind. It is what it sees.

In the hall, he moved aside for the smaller folks and kept to the sides, the parts of the walkways specifically for HARframes. He would need to breifing soon no doubt... or... maybe he was to be called somewhere...?

He was passing the gun range, noteing a few shots off in earshot. Popping in, he called out.

"Yo Nonoba! Still sharp shootin?" He called out, giving a wave to a fell rookie.

InsaneAsylum

Khaliuna looked over quickly, squinting her eyes a bit before a grin spread across her lips. She hadn’t spent a ton of time meeting her peers and teammates during her time at Red Queen. Being recognized was a nice shot of dopamine after such and edgy flashback session.

“Hard Knocks! What’s up!” Khaliuna called out. She waved gently with her free hand before motioning to the targets she just hit.

“I’m trying to unleash my inner cowboy right now. People love a good quick-draw.”

Orikanyo