Bart, a sad look on his face, replies to the Elder,"We failed to save you all. I'm sorry we could not achieve that goal. But yes, freedom too often has a price. I was once a slave. The people at Castle Refuge gave me a second chance at a real life."
After the leader of the slavers talks, Bart stares down at him. "We will do what's right. Take you in and you'll be given a fair trial. The evidence is not in your favor."
The leader shakes his head. ”Fair trial? That’s a good one. On whose authority? The Coalition has our back and the Federation doesn’t care. We got people everywhere and you can’t find us all.”
Barbara does her best to manage the shelter, but the weather's just too severe.
It's an odd phenomenon of the rifted Earth that there's a huge explosion in people with strange new ways to kill other people, but not so much in practical things like making good weather or shelter or clean food and water.
~~~~~~~~~~
"Not much point getting into it, Bart. I've tangled with CS folks before. Most of 'em grew up propagandized into believing they live in the greatest free society in the world and the last hope of humanity. From their perspective, what they were doing wasn't even wrong—just a necessity for the continued prosperity of the Coalition. Most of 'em would reject the notion that nonhuman lives have any value, and thus any tribunal that prioritizes nonhuman lives, or has nonhumans in its membership, is de facto invalid to them. Doesn't make 'em right, but it's a viewpoint that doesn't change with a firm speech, no matter what they show in the old video chips."
"Eh, true. No sense talking to these slavers."
= Success
"Hey - stop trying to wriggle out of those ropes - maybe I should tighten them up just in case..." He flexes his Simvan muscles as he approaches him.
Modifier: +2 (Alertness)
Does the penalty for bad weather affect this?
The leader looks up at Burgurk coming towards him. "Y.. You don't get it. If we fail, we're dead anyway. Dead men tell no tales and all that. I ain't got nothing against you all, it's just a job see, and the Coalition, they pay real good for them blue ones. Like, ten-thousand a head. I see like maybe a quarter of that, but, I can..." He stops when Ounce points out a device to Burgurk that has been pinging in the leader's belt. "Th..that's nothing. Just a timer. We're late and all..." He trails off, knowing the lie is not working.
"Better confiscate that device on his belt. It might be a distress signal or communicator."
Burguk puts his face right up the the man's face and growls at him, showing his teeth as he does so. He reaches around behind him and pulls out the device, and shows it to everyone.
"Anyone got any idea what this thing does?"
Bart takes a look at it.
"Nope."
Ounce narrows her eyes and focuses on her innate ability to detect magical auras and effects.
While there are few magical auras in the area, Ounce picks up a faint trace of one having been attached to the device some time ago, as if they touched it and then gave it to this man. Barbara tells you that the device is a locator beacon, probably either telling someone where they are or telling them where they should be going. As Burgurk handles it, he notes that a set of coordinates and a timer are counting down on it.
"Hey, there's some coordinates being displayed on this thing - any way someone could find out where they point to on a map?"
Bart pulls out a map.
"Let's see..."
"Ah, no clue.."
Burgurk looks at the timer while Bart tries to figure out where to go. The clock appears to have one day, 3 hours and a few minutes on it. According to the map, those coordinates will lead you to a collection of warehouses along the river. Traveling there by foot would take several days, but using the Mammoth would take about half a day. Assuming you didn't run into a snag on the way.
Bart laughs at himself, flips the map over and says "Aha!"
"Sounds like a handoff of captured DBs, probably for sale. Shall we crash the party?"
Sensing what's on Barb's mind after their intense grenade bonding, Bart looks back to the masses of blue people.
"yeah, we need to check this out but we also can't put these people in any more danger..."
"If we can quickly get them to safety, we could then drive the truck down as if we are the people who they are expecting."
That would work for me, but we do need to get these folk to safety and out of the weather.
"Agreed. First priority is protecting lives, then we can investigate," says Barbara. "That said, the GB isn't much good for hauling people around. Should I run guard duty on the truck, or what?"
Bart looks around, a slight look of bewilderment on his face and then starts laughing. "We all need a vacation. We sent all the good poeple back with Captain Tiller. Now, what to do with these.."
Well, we can call tiller back for one more run and we send these folk, suitability cuffed back to hq to deal with. Then we can deal with that locator.
You call Captain Tiller on the comms and he tells you that "...the new blues are safe at home and I can bring your reds in, but that's my last run for a bit. Gotta fix up the old girl a bit before she can go out again." When you mention you have other transport, he says "Roger that. A good find that one, but I'd recommend making sure it don't have any trackers or nothing. Never know these days. See you in an hour or two."
It is almost three hours before Tiller gets back to pick up the prisoners. As the last of them are loaded, he gives you a salute and whistles at the Mammoth. "Nice ride. Still don't beat my girl here. In the sky, you are free." He winks, most notably at the women, and then takes off with the prisoners. You are left alone with your new vehicle and coordinates to the warehouses.
After the prisoners have been secured in the helicopter, Ounce overhears someone in the group make a remark about preferring to see them dead or in pain for their crimes. She tells a story about her experiences with captives.
"I understand the feeling, believe me. Back when I was an orphan living in Newtown and dealing with the injustices I witnessed, I focused my anger on fantasies of what I would to to some of the more brutal actors, until a mentor urged me to instead focus on positive thoughts of how those who do wrong can be helped to see the light by kindness when they expect punishment.
"I was skeptical but tried my best to change my attitudes and thoughts. Later, after I had escaped the horrors of living under coalition occupation, I was making my way toward the Castle Refuge. I was traveling alone nearing a small community when I happened upon a few coalition types assaulting two young women from the town. I heard them joke that after having their way with them, they would make good slaves. This filled me with righteous anger and I wanted to try to kill them all on the spot with lighting bolts.
"They had guns so I first stunned them. I couldn't help including the two young women, but as Gaia smiled on my efforts and the three men were stunned while the women were not. We disarmed them and the two women trained their guns on them while I prepared to tie them up. The men tried to rush us anyway. Rifles fired and I sent a lightning bolt and when the smoke cleared and the sound died away, two of them were dead. We overwhelmed the third and tied him up.
"The two wanted to mutilate the bodies of the dead, but I persuaded them to help me dig shallow graves for them to be placed in, arguing their fate was now in the hands of the great spirit. The living prisoner was sullen and swore at us vulgarities, again making the women want to strangle or shoot him, but I instead healed his wounds and insisted we lead him to some authorities for justice. The locals judged that a suitable fate would be to become a slave of the village, forced to wear manacles and do whatever physical labor was needed. I spoke at his trial and admonished them to treat him in all ways possible as a normal member of the community and to not subject him to physical or verbal abuse, in the hopes the kindness helps him see the light and quit his association with the alliance.
"I traveled on and eventually joined up with the Tomorrow Legion and a year later saw this prisoner free and a member of the legion. We talked and he explained that the kindness shown him in spite of his crimes convinced him the cruelty of the Coalition was not justified. He explained he had always been taught that those who practiced magic and those who shunned the coalition were evil and would kill any coalition member on sight, so they were trained to show no mercy when dealing with outsiders.
"So that is why I believe we should always maintain an attitude of love toward those who oppose us. We must always, of course, defend ourselves and combat requires violence, but there comes a time when it is our duty to give any prisoners punishments that do not treat them as less than human or incapable of reform. I known I'm outspoken on this, but that story explains why I hold to my own personal code of honor to always show mercy when possible."
-> Hearts
Barbara tosses her hair with a grin as Tiller winks. Habituated behavior.
In the transport, she replies to Ounce's story. "I had kind of a similar experience growing up... the Coalition didn't have a foothold in my home territory, but they sure were tryin'. Folks gathered together to keep 'em fought off. Occasionally we'd fight off a squad and wind up with a captive. The ones who'd been raised by the Coalition had no way to know any better. They grew up hearing Coalition propaganda, seeing only Coalition soldiers chasing down rogue D-bees and magicians and psychics... they lived in a world where anything that was different or inhuman was not to be trusted, a threat to the last bastion of humanity. An' the Coalition was going to come to our town and take our people and our resources an' protect us from these threats to humanity whether we liked it or not."
She pauses for a breath and a moment of reflection, then continues, "The ones who joined up from outside were worse, if you can believe it. They'd seen the outside world, they'd experienced other ways of living, but they decided they liked the Coalition. They wanted that. Wanted a world where they were the ones wearing the black boots that were on the necks of anyone who wasn't one of them. Those ones... we hanged 'em."
"There was a psyker came through the carnival one time, pursued by the Coalition. We helped her fight 'em off, an' she used her abilities to feel their motivations and their reasoning... and she said she couldn't do it again. Too horrifying. The sensation of that much hate and lust for power... she couldn't stomach it. So that's why we hanged 'em."
"That, and they killed a bunch of our people, of course. My mentor, my boyfriend... anyone who got in the way."
Looking a bit morose, she continues, "That's why we have to stand up to 'em. Try to give other people something better than the raw deal that some folks already got. Keep people from gettin' killed when they're just trying to live their lives, keep 'em from feeding people into the oppressive war machine. Keep 'em from breaking up families, destroying hopes and loves, grinding down the world to its worst."
"We have to make a world where kids can be kids, where people can have family and love and joy without the oppressive rule of fear and hate."
Bart listens to the stories, keeping his thoughts to himself for now.
Tiller's words may have been a joke but he's checking for bugs, trackers and the like just to be sure...
Bart searches the vehicle up and down in between pit stops on the way to the warehouses, but finds nothing in thew way of tracking devices or listening devices. Either they are very well hidden or there were none to begin with.
Friday, December 29th, 109 PA (2395CE). 0842 hours. 28 Degrees F (-2 Degrees C), Light Wind (6 mph (9 Kph), Cold). CS Missouri Territory, Along Illinois River (Near Clarksville, MO)
You listen to Ounce and Barbara's stories, perhaps pondering your own stories of redemption and loss as you travel the route to the warehouses, taking you through forests, swamps and following a river bank for a few miles. A few times you have to dodge CS river boat and SAMAS patrols, but you get within half a klick (500 meters) before you notice that this set of warehouses is more than well protected. A ley line runs along the waterline, sending static into the minds of the psychically and magically sensitive members of your team. There is a glowing field of force that seems to surround the warehouses and it is feeding off of the ley line, judging by the bolts of power that keep jumping between them.
Now, you know magic when you see it, but that doesn't explain why a Coalition vehicle is parked right out front of the warehouses. You would have to get closer to see more, but the barrier seems to extend about two hundred meters from the center of the facility. Whoever set this up must be powerful indeed. The question remains, how to get inside?
"That's weird. The Coalition is famously magic-averse. Either they're parked outside because they want in and haven't figured out how yet, or they're in some kind of weird scenario where someone put up a magic field around their facility and they're in a temporary alliance? This all seems odd," comments Barbara.
"Anyone think maybe they could sneak up to that vehicle, see who's inside? Maybe swipe some information?"
"Very odd but... didn't we hear about some group in the coalition studying and using magic? Well. Let me get some snowy whites on and i'll see if I can get a better look..."
Bart pulls on some appropriate camo, unless things have changed drastically on the trip, the old white is a good choice. Then he carefully and slowly makes his way towards the vehicle and building.
To keep an active eye out for guards, patrols or similar.
While Bart apparently needs an eye exam, the old stealth skills still work..
Before Bart leaves, Burgurk says "Don't forget, that shield extends 600 feet in all directions from wherever it's centered. How much will you be able to see 600 feet away?".
"Hmmm... can anyone tell what might happen if a living being stepped through it?
"Probably nothing good. Any of you science types recognize this type of shield?"