Galactic Ruins

Mex shoved Erik out of the way, eagerness of meeting something far above than the Lieutenant, the actual commander. Her stern face, her firm position, and the way she carries herself upon meeting them was something that instantly impresses her. Without a second thought, she grabbed onto the commander’s hand and shaking it.

“Name’s Mex! I hope we can get along! I’m quite excited for this!”
 
Jack shutting off the data tablet he was reading from and puts it away. Jack walks up to the group and says "Jack ma'am." Jack assumes that the commander already knows that he is a part of this group.
 
Aurelia looked almost caught off guard by Mex's enthusiasm, but returned her handshake with a strong grip anyway. "The pleasure is mine." She turns to look at Jack, addressing him with a courteous nod. "Glad you could join the cause, Jack. Especially on such short notice."

Taking a step back, she glanced over all of them. She had already known who would be part of the Squad, but now that they had met in person, there were faces behind those names and data files. Aurelia saw Mioi's stare and decided to answer.

"Jack is also one of our longtime personnel-- he will be serving as your on-field medic, although he doesn't quite look it. Now that we got the introductions out of the way, we can begin the briefing." She led the group into room 2B, her entourage from earlier having lined themselves up at the walls of the room. Each of them saluted her in unison before leaving, with only Lieutenant Avan staying behind. "There is much to discuss before we can address your first mission." Aurelia stood on a podium that was in front of a conference table with chairs for them to sit in.

"What we talk about here and in the Council Room stays between us," Lieutenant Avan chimed in. "Right now, information has to be kept under a tight lid. Especially when the enemy has probably more in his hands than we know with certainty..."

"Anything new we've found out, we have kept to ourselves for the time being," Aurelia said before turning to the projection screen, showing still shots of Genma from his transmission that was transmitted across the airwaves on that fateful day. "This is our enemy: Genma Platt, leader of... Scorpius."

"....Creepy." Azumi said, taking a seat, but she remembered word for word what Genma said in that video since she was still on Venus at that time.

"Indeed. We've been analyzing the footage including any supplementary eyewitness information from Empress Mystia's troops. We're almost certain that Genma is some kind of machine lifeform, but there hasn't been any clear shot of his entire body. As far as we know, he is a cyborg, but nobody is sure as to what race of alien he is or his planetary origin. Scorpius remains a mystery as well; the entire incident is one big mystery we are trying to solve before we can really make our move as the resistance."

"Considering he chose Mercury first, that gave us a couple hints-- it was the last planet that was terraformed during the Age of Exploration, and was probably the most difficult." Lieutenant Avan explained, pulling up a hologram of the planet through its many phases until modern day. "And even then, it's a planet that is nearly incapable of sustaining life by itself. Fresh food wasn't possible to grow in large quantities because of how extreme the weather is, and that placed a limit on population size. Most of it is freeze-dried anyway, but Mercury has an iron core-- the planet's main exports happen to be materials from the mines that buyers can use to make infrastructure and weapons above all."

"It's a planet whose weather is too extreme for most humans, but almost perfect for non-humanoid species of aliens, cyborgs and machines. A perfect source of raw materials for weapons with a low population using said source-- add in a war that reduced the military numbers greatly, and you have a perfect first conquest." Aurelia's fists tightened the more she spoke, tense from anger. "This alone means that Scorpius at the time was a small organization able to infiltrate Grand Ruler Ethin's territory and assassinate him after they forced him to give into their requests. Not large or strong enough to overthrow a planet like Mars or Earth, but could easily take over Mercury. We suspect Genma has a few particularly skilled people. Probably a hacker as well as criminals that could help him get his hands on destructive weapons. It's most likely none of them are human, or at least, more machine than man."

"But even then, this is our best logical deduction. We have no concrete intel yet, and Empress Mystia refuses to send her men down to Mercury either," Avan said.
 
"Sheesh, his face looks like a discount dollar store Halloween prop," Erik laughed. "But if he took over Mercury, it sounds like he hit the planet when it was most vulnerable. That's what I think. He may look like a freak, but it appears he's a lot smarter than he gives off."

Erik crossed his arms, examining the images and information given to him.

"Well, if he's managed this far, I think he might be planning his next move very carefully. Maybe he has a log he jots down his plans in or some sort of planner? He wants to keep the iron core planet to himself to possibly make more 'bots and weapons. Heh, if I were him, I'd hog all the good stuff and keep everyone else without weapons or materials. ...Hold up, what if he took over Mercury on purpose to hinder the supplies to other planets?"
 
Jack is unaffected by seeing Genma Platt and starts to think "I gong to hold up till the end before asking any thing."
 
"Wow, for a guy like that... he must've tread carefully on his conquest if he managed to make it this far." Mex said. "It's smart of the Empress to not send any men down there if we still don't now much about this... thing; otherwise, they would be blinded by the enemies and whatever potential power they obtained; whether from weapons or machinery."
 
"We considered that, but other than metallurgy, Mercury's economy largely deals with imports. Mars and Earth are far more advanced in terms of technology available compared to such a tiny planet," Avan trailed off. "If anything, they're the ones who rely on the others to survive."

"He's biding his time. It's possible that the next planet he will go after could be Venus, since the Empress's militia not only took a blow from the war, they tied up their own hands so that they could run away while they still have time. It could happen any time now, since that was only 6 months ago. What was immediately concerning is what Genma currently had access to," Commander Aurelia said sternly. 

"Makes plenty of sense to me. Venus has a lot of scrap metal-- it's basically the only way we can make money off what we have," Azumi said, offering her opinion on the matter. "There's also the bismuth, those sell for a pretty penny-- probably even more for those suits and space pirates who like spending their blood money on flashy things off the black market. We've got more weapons than the people on Mercury do, and we can grow our own food, so we don't spend as much money on imports because of the scrap trade. Eventually, there won't be anything left for Genma to mine-- we're the second best option. Not as advanced as Mars or Earth, but Venus is as big as Earth is with way less people on it. It's basically got a target painted right on it."

"A lot of recyclable materials lying in plain sight, and all the manpower he could utilize by forcing Venusians to do the dirty work of taking it all apart-- radiation sickness is probably the only thing that shortens the lifespan of Venus sapiens." Mioi said. "All without spending resources like you would for mining. Empress Mystia can't afford to lose anything more than what she already has."

"Precisely... once we were aware of Genma's presence on Mercury, we worked for hours to disconnect the terminals on Mercury that connect to the Union's servers, and minimize the risk of security breaches... which brings us to your trial mission." Aurelia pulled up a static image taken from surveillance records. The distorted image showed a strange object.
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"The image captured by Earth's telescopic systems has been quite distorted by some kind of interference. It's within Mercury's orbit, but appears to either move very slowly or is stationary altogether-- except neither Venus nor Mercury have any moons in their orbits, so it is an anomaly. It's emitting a frequency that helps conceal its presence to any passing ships with radars. The chairs of the Union council have agreed that the Orion Squad will be sent on a reconnaissance mission to investigate this object and extract any information you find. Clear a path if you must, but for now, it would be best to play it safe and treat this as a matter of stealth. We have no further intel on the object, so we ask you take precautionary methods to infiltrate it after we prepare you accordingly for space travel."​
 
Jack thinks "I gest its as good as any to cut out teeth on."
 
Erik stared at the image with squinted eyes. He didn't seem impressed and already had a frown across his face.

"I guess this is where we gotta prove ourselves, eh?" Erik joked. "Very well, let's get to it. The sooner we get this done, the faster we can find and give that Genma-Freak his sweet justice. Right, so we just gotta go in and get info then bail, got it."
 
"An stealth-based mission, huh?" Mex was a bit disappointed at first because she won't be able to express her strengths and lust for battle. However, she was curious about Genma's tactics. "A glutton-like warlord, won't stop until it takes a bit of everything. Well, I'm ready for this mission then!"
 
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