Mutants & Masterminds: StarGate Freedom - Prologue: Mark Sterbenz and Ryan Hawke

[Rorx]

Noon in Colorado Springs

Mark joined Steve, John and a few of the other physics and maths profesors at the refectory at the local university. Rubbing his hand over his face, he glanced at the menu list for the day with an internal cringe Jesus, it's about as bad as back as LANL, but at least these guys get a smaller, private room here. He smiled faintly to the guy in front of him in the line as he grabbed whatever it was that looked most palatable and a side salad, then turned to follow John, his host for these meetings, through the tills and into the Senior Common Room.

He had flown up from Los Alamos the previous day, catching a lift from one of the other LANL guys in his light aircraft. Vincent was one of those who commuted into LANL each day, but rather than drive up from Santa Fe as some did he flew in from about 200 miles away. Whenever questioned about it he just shrugged and said that it was an hour or so either way, and there were no traffic jams at 15,000ft. Mark just appreciated getting a quicker lift than having to drive down to Alberqueque for a scheduled flight. It also allowed him to bring his hunting gear and to make a weekend of it in his home state. It was worth the extra expense on the hire car to be able to catch up with an old friend from highschool hunting for a couple of days.

The morning meetings had gone about as expected, the professors interested in the proposed projects and thinking of which postgrads would be best looking into various aspects of the work while the admin types worried about the funding, the lab space and the other minutae. Lunch was a welcome break from it all. Despite the fact the Mark was fairly used to these hassles, and indeed had been chosen to come up here as he was pretty good at it, that didn't mean that he particularly enjoyed having to work out these details all the time.

1pm

An hour later they were back in one of the conference rooms going over another proposed project to a slightly different mix of professors, although generally the admin types remained the same. The time seemd to pass in a paradox - it felt like it was dragging but when you actually looked at your watch half an hour had gone by. With some relcutance Mark was sent off into another room to discuss details with a couple of the departments administrators.

2pm

Little progress had been made, although it looked that they were willing to take on a couple of the more theoretical projects, with LANL providing the experimental data where required, when a phone call finally found him from LANL. It was Chris King, another team leader and LANL Fellow that Mark had worked closely with other the last couple of years.

"Mark, we got a possible problem. You need to contact the Air force guys at Cheyenne and let them know you are in the area. There is a situation developing, and you may need evacuation, or to put yourself at their disposal."

"What on earth are you talking about Chris?"

"I don't know, Mark! They aren't telling me anything, just that they need to know to get you out of there. Just contact Cheyenne now, and do what they say."

Mark sighs in frustration,"Ok, Chris, I'll do it - I guess Carl was right eh? See you on the flip side."

2:15pm

Mark hung up and quickly made his excuses from the admin types, and leaving a message for Vincent to meet them at their hotel as soon as possible he goes out to the hire car/pickup and tries to raise Cheyenne Mountain. Unfortunately by the time he does so they have already started evacuating the base and he is unable to get an answer. Starting to worry Mark drives to his hotel and picks up his bags. Leaving a message for Vincent, Mark heads out towards the Mountain by car...

[z-Servant of Ra]

To his shock, Mark wasn't allowed near the base. "Orders are that no one goes further than this," a young man said at the gate to Cheyenne Air Force Base, still miles away from the mountain.

"Hold up, you're from Los Alamos?" a man asked. He wore no uniform, only a suit. Mark wasn't sure what he was doing there, but he had some sort of authority, because the guard stepped back, clearly handing the situation over the suit.

"Yes, as I already said," Mark replied.

The suit waved him through the gate, and the soldier let him proceed. "You'll come with me, sir," the suit said, taking him by the arm, then waved for a soldier to grab his bags. "We're moving non-military personnel to Buckley Air Force Base." Mark frowned; that was a small base in Aurora, Colorado.

[Rorx]

Mark straightend up and tried to shake off the arm, although he did keep moving, "Two things. First who are you, and secondly what's going on that would require evacuation of the base and non-military personnel? And don't try to tell me I'm not cleared for it."

Seeing the soldier grabbing his bags he turns and points to his rifle case, "I'll take that one." Clothes he could get issued if he had to, but he'd spent time and good money on those two rifles and the scopes that were also in the case.

[z-Servant of Ra]

"Not here," the man said, waving impatiently. "We'll brief you in route. Hurry up." He waited impatiently as Mark retrieved his rifle case, then kept a brisk pace to the waiting Jeep. Another suit drove them deeper into the base, though not toward Cheyenne Mountain. Instead, they were taken to a helipad, where a personnel copter was idling.

When Mark ducked inside, he found that there was a nearly full house; suits and uniforms alike were already aboard. The door was shut behind him.

"Have a seat, Mr. Sterbenz," the suit who'd been his escort said. "We'll be in the air in a moment." He left Mark to situate himself.

[Rorx]

Mark kept his eyes open on the way to the helipad, evaluating the troop and any equipment movements that he can see. Once at the helicopter he quickly stows the rifle case, upright between his knees if he has to, and looks around at the other people on-board. Initially it is to evaluate who the uniforms are, by branch and obvious rank, but ultimately he is trying to figure out who the suits are and where they lie in the pecking order.

After a moment of looking around he says to the group in general, "So, anybody willing to tell me what's going on?"

[z-Servant of Ra]

"We're under attack by alien forces," a man in a suit answered. He had brown hair and a rather normal appearance with a slight hint of geek, thanks to his glasses. But the body under the suit was clearly in good shape. He was poring over a computer. "Give us two minutes to give you a brie- Damn it. Satellites are down." With an aggrivated sigh, he snapped the case shut and stood.

"Ladies and gentlemen, what Stephen Hawking once predicted is true. There are aliens, they are more advanced than us, and they are pissed." The man paused then said, "I'm David Hudson, formerly of the NSA. I say formerly, because I seriously doubt there will be an NSA soon. We'll be lucky if there is an Earth.

"So far, all we know is that an alien calling himself 'Ra' is demanding our surrender. Though you can't see, right now the sky outside is filled with red 'lightening'. Our squints - our scientists tell me that it's some kind of energy storm reacting with the ozone layer, rather like the Northern Lights. We don't know how he is doing that, or whether it could be used as a weapon against our ozone." He paused and added, "I'm sure you all remember what that does for us.

"If I seem pessimistic, it's because we're fucked," the agent went on. "They started removing our satellites immediately, beginning with our military birds. They have shields our missiles can't penetrate, and energy weapons we can't stop. Our overtures at peace have been thus far ignored. This Ra dick claims he conquered Earth once. He seems to be spoiling for Round Two."

Hudson looked around the room, his gaze intense even through the glasses he wore. "The only pieces of good news I have are the following: not everywhere is being hit at once. Some of the less strategic cities, such as St. Louis and Montreal in Canada, don't seem to be under direct fire yet. We have time to get to one of those places and gather together some support, form a resistance. And two, we beat him once, by his own words. We can do it again."

There was another pause, and he said, "Questions?"

[Mark Sterbenz]

Mark was dubious, but given the activity he had seen back at Cheyenne these guys were obviously taking it very seriously.

"Yeah, I got one. How good does their intel appear to be? Are they going for military targets or just the biggest cities when viewed from space? And if that is the case what is being done to move and conceal the arsenal for later use?"

[z-Servant of Ra]

"Their intel is good," Hudson said, sighing. "They knew about Cheyenne Mountain and will probably have control of it and the StarGate within the hour."

"StarGate?" a general asked. "What the hell is that?"

"I'm going to cover this quickly, so please pay attention," Hudson said. "In the early twentieth century, Egyptian archeologists unearthed a round gate, buried under the sand. With it were two strange corpses, which we now know were part of Ra's army. This gate was named the StarGate, from the translation on the coverstone found over the gate. Less than a week ago, an archeologist by the name of Daniel Jackson figured out how to work it, and a team was sent through. They were to establish contact, assess the threat level, and take appropriate action. They never returned. We believe they were captured and forced to reveal the location of Earth to Ra. We also believe that the Colonel in charge is the source of their information.

"We've started to move the arsenal, but they have a good idea of where some of our bases are - namely, the ones that this Colonel O'Neil would have known about. In some cases, they seem to have intimate access to sensitive information; it varies. Right now, we're proceeding to the base at Aurora, Colorado."

[Mark Sterbenz]

Mark listens carefully and at the mention of the Stargate starts to wonder how it would work, but pulls himself back to the subject on hand.

"Have you been taking into account what branch of the military this Colonel was from? I assume that it would be safe to assume that all major bases of all branches are being evacuated, as there location and size would be a matter of public knowledge? And just what are we supposed to do once we reach Aurora?"

[z-Servant of Ra]

"He was Air Force," Hudson said, tugging his tie loose. "But yeah, all bases are being evacuated of personnel, though the combat troops are often moving to meet the invaders. That was the last directive the Pentagon got out before we lost communication with them ten minutes ago.

"As for what we're doing, I'm just an analyst. That's up to the brass," he said, and took a seat, very definitely turning things over to the generals.

After a second of figuring out who was ranking, one stood. "My name is General Fredrick Donovan. I'm with the Air Force as well. I knew Colonel O'Neill - he was a good man. I know he held out as long as he could.

"As for our plan, we're going to develop a resistance to fight the invaders," Donovan stated. "Priority one is to establish secure communication with all dispersed armed forces and bring them back into the fold."

[Mark Sterbenz]

Mark looks between the men, "Well I'll happily join your resistance, but a comms centre is going to stand out like crazy to a superior technology. What sort of forces have we seen from them so far, and how are ours fairing?"

[z-Servant of Ra]

"We're not yet sure what would be secure communications. They've already grokked our cell phone and radio technology, so we're going to have to find another way to communicate with the men," Hudson spoke up, looking frustrated. "They have fighters which are better than ours. Their weapons are better. Their ships don't seem vulnerable to anything we possess. We're getting down to the 'harsh language' option, and that's not a good one."

[Mark Sterbenz]

Mark considers briefly, "Ok, you say their weapons are better, is that their ship weapons, fighter weapons or infantry weapons? Because if even one of those groups is suceptible to our weapons then we can get them with attrition. After all we have a world here, and they have to ship their stuff in, either with a ship over god knows what distances, or using this Stargate thing you mentioned. Either way this is a warlike world with a lot of personal weapons all over the place, and taking a place to get any use out of it requires troops on the ground. Has there been any encounters with their troops yet?"

He pats the gun case next to him, "I'm no sniper, but I reckon I have a fair chance of getting a head sized shot at about 600 yards with my Kimber Montana and scope here. Last year Colorado sold several hundred thousand hunting licences. That's a lot of people that could be taking out enemy troops if we could get them mobilised and try to reduce the effects of the alien air support."

[z-Servant of Ra]

"I'm sure we'll have Great American Heroes shooting at anything in a gold suit," Hudson said, nodding. "The issue will be getting them together and coordinated. My recommendation is to let the civilians do their thing; they can mask our efforts behind their actions. We'll mobilize those members of the armed forces that we can find, those who will have discipline.

"As of yet, we don't seem to have any superior weapons. Their armor can't stop our bullets with certainty, but their laser weapons cut through flesh, metal, Kevlar, you name it. Their ships are better than ours though we haven't seen any ground based transportation. That either means that they use air ships for everything, or worse: they have some ability to travel effectively without ground vehicles. We're still working on that."

Donovan spoke up. "What good news do we have?"

"They're focused on the bigger areas. We have a short window in which to coordinate at some of the smaller, less strategic bases before we lose them too," he answered. "That gives us a chance to gather up troops and form a solid underground force."

[Rorx]

Mark considers some of the hunters and NRA members he knows and nods to Hudson, "Yeah, let the civies be a smokescreen of minor damage to them to try to hide the hopefully more effective attacks by those trained to do them. Anything managed to put a dent in their aircraft yet?"

[z-Servant of Ra]

"We haven't heard anything yet," Hudson said, "but our troops are engaging them right now. They're routing up to join us at Aurora, so we should have more intel once they arrive. We estimate that they are two hours behind us, and we should land in about five minutes."

"Once there, you'll have half an hour to collect yourselves and get a bit to eat or whatever you need," General Wilson said, his voice carrying over the muted buzzing of the engines. "Then we start the planning."

[Rorx]

Mark keeps his peace, and says a silent prayer for the troops currently engaged.

The landing was thankfully uneventful, and they quickly disembarked the copter ducking under the still rotating blades. Having already eaten earlier Mark wasn't particularly hungry but headed to the mess tent anyway. After all, he supposed that if the invaders knocked out international travel the coffee supply would suffer or disappear.

Turning his mobile off - it would either not work or might be used to find the base by looking for a concentration of sources. He sipped his coffee, trying to appreciate even whatever it was that the airforce called coffee. Mark was still there when a corporal came looking for him as the next meeting was about to start.

[z-Servant of Ra]

There were more people in the meeting, men and women wearing Colonel's eagles as well as Major's leaves. Mark looked around at the room, glad to see that so many of the armed forces had pulled through.

"Generals, ladies and gentlemen, I'm Colonel Bulchoff," the colonel who stepped forward introduced himself. "I'm the ranking personnel to make it out of Cheyenne, excepting yourselves, generals." If that was meant as a criticism, it was subtly veiled. "At this time, we have some intel for you."

He tossed a handful of freshly printed photographs onto the table, showing weightlifters in golden armor, crashed ships in a similar color design, burning merrily and last, some of those weightlifters, shot dead.

"As you can see, their troops and ships can die. Their armor can be pierced by our rounds, provided that they find a weak spot, so we advise the automatic weapons. Our SAMs can take out their ships, but our fighters are hosed dogfighting them.

"We took heavy casualties at Cheyenne," Bulchoff continued, looking worn out at the mention of lives lost. "Specific questions for us, sirs?"

[Rorx]

Mark raises his hand, "Yes, Colonel. Presumably most of your men were armed with M16's using 5.56mm rounds? Did you have any better results with the heavier 7.62mm in some of the machine guns against their body armour? And has there been any sign of them using land vehicles yet?"

[z-Servant of Ra]

"I'll call in one of the Marines that survived and have them give a full weapons report," Bulchoff said, looking weary. He leaned over and whispered to a waiting Major, who ducked out of the room quickly.

"So far, we've seen no land vehicles; an unmanned drone caught an image of them setting up a ring of some sort on the ground not far from the gate of the base itself," the Colonel added, putting another set of pictures on the table. "We're not sure what it does; the drone was shoot down and we weren't able to launch another."

[Rorx]

"Have you been able to get a pair of eyes on that site? It could be important if they were bothered enough to take down a drone."

Mark shrugs, "So how are we going to set up the resistance then?"

[z-Servant of Ra]

"We'd love to get eyes-on, but you're talking about a well-defended position crawling with the enemy. Anyone we send is gonna get killed or captured," Bulchoff said, nodding. "As for the resistance, we're going to turn things back to the generals."

General Wilson spoke up again. "We are planning to find a secure location somewhere in the mountains. From there, we can plan and execute raids and attacks on the main force. These attacks will remain small until we get the intel that we need for focused, precise strikes. We're going to break up into smaller groups, and each of these groups will be responsible for themselves. Questions?"

[Ryan Hawke]

Ryan raises his hand. He'd been one of the few Weapons experts to make it out, and one of the last to arrive at the fallback base. "Sir, the 7.62 did more damage and can peirce the armor, but it takes a number of shots to put them down. Sabot rounds would be ideal, as armor means nothing against them at all. our missile systems take their fliers down no problem, but they're faster and far more maneuverable than even our F-15's. Whatever they're firing at us isn't a solid weapon, it melts armor like wax, my guess is some form of pulsed laser, or perhaps a form of plasma cannon, the sort of stuff that's straight out of science fiction. The only thing I've noticed that's good for us is that the weapons aren't totally accurate, as long as we kept moving we were able to easily evade the fire, and take down a few of the fliers on our way here."

[Rorx]

Mark turns to the weapons expert, "What is your evaluation of their small arms in terms of accuracy, stopping powe and effective range? I assume they are some form of energy weapon as well?"

[Ryan Hawke]

Ryan nods. "They're accurate, in that they're an energy weapon. Anyone hit twice by them is dead, and the first hit is usually enough to render the target unconscious. Either way it opens up a burning hole in whatever it hits. They're short ranged, only 20 meters or so with real accuracy, but in close confines that's more than enough."

[Rorx]

Mark nods in agreement with the expert, "Sounds like they are used to CQB, either urban or possibly internal to whatever there ship are like. In which case we need to turn this into more of a sniping affair where our longer ranged more accurate weapons can take care of them with little immediate threat to the shooter."

He turns then to the general, "How big or small do you intend making these units and how do you intend dealing with issues like resupply? Oh and I'll need to see some examples of their weaponary and armour as soon as possible."

[z-Servant of Ra]

"We're working on securing a body and equipment right now. You'll both be informed when we have them. Hawke's a weapon's expert, Sterbenz. He'll be really useful to you," General Wilson said. He paused as a man came into the room and slid up to him. He whispered something in Wilson's ear, and the general visibly relaxed. "Thank you, Lieutenant," he murmured, then turned back to the room.

"The small attack units will be ten-men strike forces, either soldiers trained for guerrilla fighting or those in training," he said. "We'll select larger units as needed for larger strikes. We're about to become a much more fluid military force.

"As for supplies, we're working on that. We think that we can get some civilian help - letting us store things in barns and old sheds," he added. "Resupply is going to depend on what the invaders do. If they let life continue as mostly normal, then we have some pretty good options we can start immediately. The more they change, the more we'll have to adapt."

[Rorx]

Since the General seemed to imply that he would be working with the soldier Mark made his way over to the Sgt. On arriving he offered him his hand while introducing himself, "Mark Sterbenz from Los Alamos National Laboratory, where ammongst other things I've worked on the proton and neutron accelerators we have at LANSCE. Possibly more usefully, I've been a keen hunter for about 20 years. I guess we'll be trying to figure out their weapons and to come up with adaptations by the sounds of it."

[Ryan Hawke]

Ryan takes the hand and nods. "Seargeant Ryan Hawke, First battallion, 13th Marine Expiditionary Unit. I'm a weapons specialist for the Corps and have been for almost a decade now."

He chuckles. "Like You I've been an outdoorsman for my entire life, hunting camping and hiking."

"From the sound of it, either adapting it, or effective countermeasures."

[z-Servant of Ra]

General Wilson came over and shook their hands, nodding and smiling his thanks and confidence in their abilities. It was hard to think that they might not be able to learn anything, when Wilson looked at them like that. It was possible to believe that they might be able to do anything, when he said they could do it.

The two men were shown to a crude laboratory in the back of a large van. "Sorry about the accommodations," the colonel assigned to them said. His name tag said "Sumner" and Hawke had heard that he was a good officer, if a bit inflexible. "I'll be here to guard you gentlemen while you do your work." The colonel parked himself outside the van, looking stiffly for trouble.

Their real interest was the treasure that was waiting for them in the lab. Most people would have found it odd to consider it a treasure: a twisted, half-wrecked staff-like weapon. But both men knew its worth.

Click to reveal..

Give me Mechanical (High Tech) rolls, DC 10. If you don't have Mechanical (High Tech) (which I don't think you do), you may roll Earth Tech at a DC 20. This is the start to accessing the High Tech Knowledge.

This represents 1 hour of time - feel free to RP it - describe what you do to the weapon, which has been damaged by a grenade. Also feel free to talk amongst yourself. Tell me in hte OOC thread when you're done talking.

[Rorx]

Glancing around the lab Mark props his rifle cae up in the corner then sets up his laptop and finds a camera (digital of course). While he does so he talks to Ryan, "Well Ryan, you've seen one of these is action so lets start with the basics. Which is the business end and any sign of the trigger mechanism? Then we'll need to see if we can get into the damn thing and find it's power source. After that we'll need to try to track how that power is moved and modified through the device to the emitter."

Having finished setting up he looks back up to Ryan, "How does that sound to you?"

Click to reveal..

Craft Mech (Earth Tech) is +7

(07:33:32) ChatBot: (Mark) rolls 1d20 and gets 19.+7 = 26

For when they have got that far

[Ryan Hawke]

Ryan salutes and then Joins Mark at the table, intently scanning the Staff.

Even in its damaged state Ryan quickly identifies the business end and finds what he thinks is the firing mechanism.

"The beam is emmitted here, and I think this stud is the trigger."

Click to reveal..

1d20+12

(22:17:46) ChatBot: (Ryan_Hawke) rolls 1d20 and gets 14.

14+12= 26

[Rorx]

Mark takes appropriate photos, "Hmm, I don't think we'll test it out while it is that condition."

He reaches for the tools available and says, "No stock? They just pointed it in the right direction then? I think we could do better than that once we figure out the mechanism and power source."

Putting the camera on a clamp and switching it to movie mode, "Right, lets take a look inside."

[Ryan Hawke]

Ryan nods and takes some of the finer tools and while carefully maintaining the buisness end away from them he starts to work the casing of the weapon open.

[Rorx]

It opened cleanly and then they had the problem of trying to work out its innards.

"It looks like that vial of liquid is the power source from it's positioning. And what do you make of the control mechanism, it seems to be crystalline?"

[Ryan Hawke]

"Yes, completely alien in origin. Look at how the power transfer system is laid out. This sort of circuitry seems to be completely dependant on the contents of the vial to function, We're going to have to test it to see what sort of composition it has."

He wasn't looking forward to that part. He began cleaning each part. "Ready for detailed analysis of each part?"

[z-Servant of Ra]

Mark and Ryan's contemplation was interrupted by the arrival of a woman. Short blond hair framed her face, but her most striking features were her blue eyes. They shone with intelligence, and neither would be surprised to learn she was a scientist.

"Hello," she said, entering the trailer and extending her hand. General Wilson came in right behind her, nodding to the men. "I know you haven't had long. What do you have?"

They gave a quick debriefing, and the General nodded. "Good work, keep me updated. I found you some help - this is Major Carter. She's an astrophysicist. I have faith that she can help you. We'll be leaving in ten minutes, and you should be ready to work in the back of his van while we move. I know that the situation isn't ideal, but I hope that were we stop will be a more permanent halt."

He left, and Maj. Carter turned to them, her expression confident and ready. "The crystals seem to be the core of the weapon," she said. "Lets see if we can work up a way for our computers to interface with them."

[Rorx]

Mark moved the camera on it's clamp to record the next stage, "Please, go ahead. Although in something so simple as this kind of weapon I wouldn't expect much to interface with."

Mark watched carefully what the Major was doing but otherwise kept his mouth shut. Sometimes you could learn more from watching what someone did rather than pestering them with questions.

[Ryan Hawke]

Ryan quickly showed the Major where the primary circuits were, and gave her his best guess on points to attach her sensors. It's beautiful in the simplicity of design, and just how powerful it is."

"We'd like to do some deeper analysis on the substance in the vial once we get where we're going, as that seems to bee the key to this."

[Rorx]

Mark nods to Ryan's comments, "We believe the vial to be the devices power source. If we could gather more examples perhaps we could modify these weapons for our own troops. Even just giving them a proper stock and grips would improve their accuracy over what the invaders use at the moment."