milliways_bar | (no subject)

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There is going to be so much trouble in Philadelphia when Ellen goes back. As much as she'd like to think she can work out some kind of peaceful solution to the whole sorry mess, she's all too aware of that.

Please excuse the pile of armor on her table; she's doing as much maintenance as she can on both the ordinary combat armor and the platemail-looking suit of power armor while she still has the chance. It's just that kind of a day.

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Sasha looks up from his spreadsheets. "Hello, Ellen. You look like you're having an even worse day than I am, can I buy you a drink?"

Ellen glances up from picking a wedge of something out of the webbing between two gray-green plates. "Hi, Sasha," she says. "Sure, that'd be fine- just soda or something, I think, otherwise I'd want whisky, and that doesn't really mix with gear maintenance... How are you doing, should I ask?"

Sasha flags down a wait-rat and orders Nuka-Cola for both of them.

"I myself am well, but the Psychonauts may have seriously underestimated the growth rate in the population of children about to need psi training. It's mostly a financial headache right now, but if we don't find the instructors we need..." He trails off. "What about you?"

Edited 2015-10-02 19:37 (UTC)

"I'd suggest seeing if anybody here could help out temporarily, but I don't know how much good any of the local psykers would necessarily be," Ellen admits. "And I don't really know a whole lot of psykers anyway."

She glances down at her armor.

"The splinter group of Brotherhood Outcasts I'd been warned were following me finally made it to Philly's borders. They shot at a couple of guards and took another one hostage, and they've holed up in a fortified section of elevated highway for the moment."

"I haven't met any myself," Sasha admits.

"Last I heard you were still trying to work out an arrangement with Philly's residents? That sounds like ... extremely inconvenient timing, at the least. What are the odds you can negotiate with the splinter?"

"Not great," says Ellen. "They were sent to grab the General Atomics factory before we could get hold of it. There's not a lot of room for negotiation there unless I can get them to think we'll either destroy the factory or wipe them out if they don't sit down at the table with us."

"If I remember correctly, these are the people who want to salvage pre-War tech and keep it for themselves and no one else?"

"That's them," Ellen says. "Most of the Outcasts are still back in the Capital area, but these guys... they're trying to get themselves enough of a leg up to discredit Elder Lyons permanently."

"This kind of situation is not my strong suit," Sasha admits, "but I'm wondering if there's anything they want even more than that."

"Better tech?" Ellen suggests. "A reliable source thereof? Control of the alien ship in orbit, even though God only knows what they'd do to the poor worker aliens who're living there? There's a couple of things, but I'm not sure how authorized I am to offer them..."

"... and you'd have to worry about what they'd do with them."

"I don't recall your mentioning an alien ship before? I might have just forgotten."

"I don't know if I ever told you about it," Ellen says. "It happened a couple of years ago, not too long after I first got out of Vault 101, but... well, basically there's been a flying saucer full of little green men from some other solar system that's been kidnapping humans and studying them in really awful ways since at least the time of the samurai."

That should do for a start.

Sasha blinks. "No, I remember now, you did tell me about this. You took control of the ship somehow, and are trying to wake up and acclimatize the people who were kept in suspended animation. And I imagine the ship itself must be immensely valuable ... or else an exercise in frustration."

[ooc: dinner, back in 1-2h]

[OOC: my apologies for not tagging back sooner.]

"The ship's stuffed full of alien energy weapons that we haven't been able to reverse engineer yet, not for lack of trying," Ellen says. "My husband is Order of the Sword and he mentioned that there are three Scribes whose only job is to try to dissect and replicate the aliens' power cells for our own use. They've been at it a while. We've been unloading as many people as we can and taking human supplies that the aliens stole, but there's still a lot up there, even if most of it is the property of the worker aliens and off limits to us- which is something the Outcasts probably wouldn't give a rat's tail about, the property ownership, I mean."

[OOC: No worries. I was mostly offline all weekend anyway, and I will have to be slow for at least the next couple weeks.]

"All in all, letting the Outcasts have that sounds worse than letting them have the robot factory. I don't like suggesting this, but ... is 'none of them were ever heard from again' an option on the table?

"--If you'd rather talk about something else, I'd like to know more about the aliens, not least because little green men abducting people keeps being rumored in my world. None of the rumors has checked out so far, but still."

Ellen exhales. "If I have to," she says, "I'm authorized-"

She pauses and holds up a finger. After some fumbling with an object the size of a deck of cards, she produces a significantly larger metal-and-glass device that she claps over her forearm. "My old Pip-Boy," she says. "It's easier than getting a holotape player from the Bar. I've still got my orders on this tape." And sure enough, a moment later a man's voice speaks:

"Paladin 101, this is Senior Paladin Tristan.

"I had hoped to proceed at a more measured pace with an analysis and response of this situation, but our hand is being forced. A group of Outcasts less inclined towards reconciliation, or even peace, was reported setting out from the Capital region not long after your previous dispatch to us. We have solid reason to believe their intention is to make a bid for the General Atomics facilities, putting aside their antipathy towards local assistance if necessary. The opinion of the Elders is that a success on their part will reignite hostilities regardless of Casdin's official stance on the matter. That cannot be allowed to happen.

"You are hereby ordered to secure Brotherhood access to as much of the contents of the General Atomics International physical plant as possible, by armed force, diplomatic means, or whatever other methods may prove necessary. Should the Outcasts establish a presence in the Philadelphia region, avoid open conflict with them unless no alternative presents itself. A squad of junior Paladins and support Scribes has been dispatched to Philadelphia along the route your messages described, with orders to present themselves to you upon arrival. Do what you must until they reach you. That includes whatever resources you may find beneath the city, as well as in it.

"That will be all, until next communication. Go with steel, 101."

"So..." Ellen pops the holotape back out of her Pip-Boy. "If I have to, we can wipe them out. It's something of a last resort, but it's an option."

Sasha's eyebrows go up at seeing a larger object appear out of something tiny, but he doesn't make a huge thing out of it right now.

"But you'd rather avoid that, and it sounds like your superiors would rather avoid that as well. ... Have the reinforcements turned up yet, and what does he mean about 'resources you may find beneath the city'?"

"They're still about a day out," Ellen says. "The beneath part... Officially only one person in the Brotherhood knows about Milliways. Everyone else, Tristan included, thinks I get assistance at critical times from an obscure civilization of some kind of mole people. He's saying it's okay to contact my non-Brotherhood allies for help."

"I see. Well, I do wish I could help, but this is really more my partner's sort of problem. She's very good at persuading people to do things."

Sasha drums his fingers on the table a little.

"They probably aren't going to be scared off easily, right?"

[ooc: going to bed early, back tomorrow]

"Probably not," says Ellen, "but if I can keep them from getting any farther until my reinforcements arrive, they don't have to be scared off entirely. Just scared into holding their position until I've got more leverage to deal with them."

Sasha nods. "I think you mentioned dangerous wildlife in the area? Could you make use of that somehow?"

"It's a possibility," Ellen allows. "Even if you're wearing power armor, it's a little hard to maintain your usual combat discipline if you're being charged by a herd of twelve-foot-long hippos."

"Hippos? In Philadelphia? ... never mind, they probably escaped from a zoo after the war or something. Um. That idea has a certain elegance, but also I can think of several ways it could go horribly wrong for you even if it worked on the Outcasts."

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