Under the City

*ping*

Intel » "We heard all that, you know. Honestly, you think we don't keep tabs on what you people are doing? If we didn't, we wouldn't be able to give you up-to-the-minute tactical advisories. But anyway, Command want the line so I'm going to give it to them."

Command » "I'll cut to the chase. This artifact business is news to us as well. If it's true then we need to secure it ASAP, but we can't afford to draw attention to any ops or divert forces from elsewhere. Our commsat picked up more of those insertion spheres inbound, set to make planetfall in a matter of hours. We'll have a better idea of the artifact location when the Main Tower is secure. Coyote and Lance are secondary objectives at this point. As you're the only unit we have in the tunnels right now, your primary objective is to locate the artifact site and secure it until we can figure out what it is, and whether or not we can move it without ripping up half the city. The unknowns Fang may have spotted earlier are likely on the hunt for the site as well, if they are aware it exists. If they are out there and are aware that it exists, do not let them find it. Command out."

Intel » "Since he so helpfully neglected to mention it, the tunnels are infested by subverted colony robots, the 'infection' appears to be capable of leaping between them in the absence of the 'officer' robots. Whilst a lot of them down here are maintenance and construction drones, it's still going to be a fighting advance between sites, as they'll probably have armed themselves with whatever they could find. I've narrowed down the four most probable locations - the deepest tunnels with any unusual emissions - and uploaded them to your tactical net already. Each one has a lift rig at the top leading down to the drilling rig near the bottom. Pick one and get moving."

[SITE ALPHA]
Intel » "Alpha is the closest to your current position but also the shallowest. Records show it was also one of the ones most recently expanded, though, so a quick check couldn't hurt."

[SITE BETA]
Intel » "Beta is the least-recently expanded site, but it's giving off some weird electromagnetic interference. It could just be they struck some ore with unusual properties."

[SITE GAMMA]
Intel » "Gamma is the deepest by a long shot, and it's almost dead-center under the city... not too far from your current position. Expansion work logs stop a couple of weeks before the attackers landed, but work could've been intentionally continued off-record or simply not logged at all."

[SITE DELTA]
Intel » "Delta is the furthest away, but also quite shallow. I'm getting similar anomalous interference from it as I get from Beta, but the two sites are almost on opposite sides of the city."

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Pre-FTL ships would have been automated and restricted to the Sol system, although it's possible an old autofreighter was gutted and refitted for human operation at some point shortly after the FTL tech was reverse-engineered, since it'd be faster to refit existing ships to support the drives and habitation than to wait for purpose-built ships to be completed. Apart from internal stresses from introducing an atmosphere (along with humidity and all that good stuff), space travel probably wouldn't do much to a vessel in terms of wear and tear (unless something hits it, in which case you get not much wear and a whole ton of tear) so a ship could feasibly last a long time if well-maintained... though most sane spacers would probably junk them given half the opportunity.

"Just so you know Intel, I appreciate the information."

Intel know's that I support command and that you all distrusted them. That's going on your record.

Go with the team.

My record's gonna be clean, I didn't agree to anything.
> Do whatever Mr. CO (Grif) tells us.

"..."

Wait for more orders.

Wise move. You remain neutral to both sides

Except Command & Intel in this case. They'd like it a lot.

Command and Intel don't hold the guns, Jones...

No, but they would hold the armoury, the garage, the barracks, etc.

In short, don't piss off Command! I imagine it would be bad to have the other squads sent after us.

That would be bad-ass, we'd be like a sci-fi bad company :3

It would, but it would also be harmful to our well being.

They do if the Ulysses is airborne or in low-orbit.

Also, do I need to remind you what happened to Big Momma when she got hit by one of Broadsword's railgun shots?

Thought not.

Indeed it would be. We're already a bunch of misfits. Maybe we could go rogue in Part 2?

But that would depend on Arcalane to let the story go that way.

Dagenham is a bastard anyway