#'maybe contact girl scouts for a troop I can do some lessons with how to recognize and etc??' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kisskissrommie · 7 years

Text

Cold Winds: The Mission

“Hear tell your ol’ captain’s shipping some big equipment to Kugane,” smiled the miqo’te. She looked confident, and of middle-age which was always a feat for a sailor. “Could be they need an escort. Could be that’ll pay right. Plus, Aurora’s always wanted to see Kugane, right, ‘Rora?”

The hyur woman, whose snow-white hair matched the miqo’te’s, rolled her eyes. “Dear, you’re not getting me thrown out of a hot spring for inappropriate conduct. Learned my lesson at Bronze Lake.”

This made Sasaca grin. She loved her crew, dearly. So dearly, she paid a small fortune out of pocket to keep them and could barely scrape coins together on land. The Crimson Sunrise very nearly broke even working odd jobs for the Maelstrom and cargo escort runs, but being a good guy just didn’t pay what piracy did. She had to admit, M’lani’s suggestion wasn’t without merit.

“But here tell the Snowcat’s on that trek. Meaning it’ll like go all kinds of sideways,” the lalafell cautioned.

M’lani looked incredulously at Sasaca. “Who you callin’ sideways, boss?” Granted she was crooked, bent, warped, but Lani never thought of herself as sideways.

“Lani, if you ever met the Snowcat, you wouldn’t care to hone in on her moniker,” Sasaca chortled. “Not a lovable pirate title like callin’ me Black Rabbit. This woman’s straight cold, even by Ishgard standards. Probably gotta be, bein’ up there with a tail an’ all.” She paused, and looked between Aurora and M’lani. “Did I not tell you about the job she hired me for?”

Sasaca stood on the table. There were a lot of subtle ways the other races found to not take lalafell seriously, and literally talking down to them was one. So while others seemed to decide on sitting reasonable or looming near the back of the room, Sasaca hopped up on the goddamn conference table and set herself eye level with Iris.

“The objective,” said the purple-haired woman seated in front of Sasaca, “is Castrum Aquilonis..” They were looking at a large map hung on the wall behind the Snowcat, Iris Blanchimont, and it did look damned intimidating.

“Even if troops weren’t stationed there, the castrum was build onto a mountain. They’d either need access tunnels, likely trapped, or to climb the icy rock face. There was a reason why for near on a decade no one had bothered looking inside,” Agni explained exactly what Sasaca was thinking. “And there’s the automated systems in place to prevent people from getting access and if we get passed all that, Aquilonis was abandoned for a reason. You’re betting it’s the cold. I’m not taking that bet without some damn good coming out of it. More than we could scavenge after any scrape along the line They’ll also have automated anti-airship defenses unless you’re flying imperial IFF. The thing’s derelict, but impenetrable.”

“That is where Miss Corcavo has an advantage,” Iris smiled warmly at the woman.

The other woman on her feet was a bit tall for a Midlander, which would make her a runt for a Garlean. Maybe the same thing that turned her hair blue stunted her growth. “Right there,” she pointed to a section of the castrum’s layout. “Across the gorge in Snowcloak. That ring gate. It acts as an aetheryte shard, connecting that point and the larger receiver inside via the Lifestream. We turn it on and get it to accept us, we walk in the door and are welcomed as honored Imperial scouts.”

“It’s that simple,” Iris spoke and looked about to move on with the plan, when Illua interrupted.

“It’s not even remotely that simple,” Illua responded. “First off, you need an imperial passcode to unlock the gate. Use of my passcode as the Nightshade would burn me, I’d never be helpful to the Alliance as an intelligence asset again. That said, I should have a cover identity in their system. Just after the calamity I came to root out some theft of medical supplies. My passcode should still be accepted at Aquilonis.”

“Yes,” Iris proceeded with no small hint of irritation. “You are quite useful, Miss Corcavo. And from there it’s a simple job of locating their resting facility and securing prototypes and data.”

“Except...” Illua pressed.

Iris stared Illua down. With her third eye, Illua was the favorite to win the staring contest.

The Garlean cleared her throat. “You didn’t choose the most loyal, that would’ve been your House Knights. Shit, I don’t even know you. You chose mission specalists to a degree, but you could’ve almost certainly found people who would work a case like this for the glory. You could be in the field yourself, identifying valuables. You could have a column to Temple Knights storm the place when I open the door. Except...”

“Except I can’t,” Iris finally admitted. “It’s not going to be a walk in the park and I have to preserve Ishgard’s military resources as things ramp up near the Wall. You’re acting alone, and I will not go with you, because you’re...”

“Expendable,” Sasaca chimed in, and tapped her axe to her shoulder thoughtfully. “Mighty big world you live in that a ship captain, a proper businesswoman, a renegade Primal summoner and a Garlean spy are your ‘expendable friends’, snowcat. What would Felt say?”

“That I should’ve gone fishing, instead this is what I do,” she said it absent any emotion. “It isn’t so much that no one would miss you should you fail, each of you clearly have a place in the things to come. But you are at the unique point of skill and relative secrecy that if you are found Ishgard can plausibly deny our involvement.”

“You bitch.” It was said so simply and coldly that it honestly lacked any real emotional impact at all. As Andromeda’s statement of fact hung in the room, those assembled assessed what they were hearing.

The silence was broken by Sasaca, who lowered her axe and leaned on it’s pole. “Anythin’ else you’re not tellin’?”

The avoided eye contact spoke volumes. “There’s a clock.”

“A clock.” This got Rommie’s concern. She ran a business, she couldn’t just run off to a crazy assignment in the middle of the night. Well, yeah, strictly speaking she probably could. But it’d cause a fuss.

“Most of the Eorzean and Garlean troops are massing near Castrum Oriens. If there’s a break in the cold war, this is where it will get hot. When the wall flalls we’re looking at days, maybe moons of total chaos. No one’s going to notice an alarm going off in nowhere. ‘Maybe it’s a woolly yak again. Or a flock of deepeyes. Who cares.’ We shouldn’t really get their attention.” It was Agni’s reasoning.

Near as Sasaca could tell, Agni was the only one in the damn room who knew how group operations were run and had a fair does of information on the Garleans besides. Ala Mhigan terrorist. They could’ve had a worse magical heavy.

“That’s not the clock,” Illua clarified. “The clock is that in roughly three weeks a troop is arriving to oversee repairs of some of Aquilonis. Even if they can’t render it fully-functional, restoring it enough ti host meetings or receive guests would be a major step forward in troop morale. It would show that we haven’t been handed a series of losses that cannot be met in return with a series of wins. A base at the heart of a weary nation - no offense meant - would be an ideal thing to invest in.”

“Allied intelligence reports were giving us two moons,” Iris sighed. “But my girl in Maelstrom Intelligence said those numbers were too soft. A functional Castrum may be years out, but if we want to salvage, we salvage now.”

“Like, right now?” Andromeda asked, shifting her weight.

Iris shook her head. “It’ll take the Somnambulist a few bells to refuel. We launch from Equinox’s hanger at first light.”

< Cold Winds: The Team | Cold Winds: The Door >

#Cold Winds #Sasaca Saca #Illua Corcavo #Agni Isolde #Iris Blanchimont #Andromeda Dulaque #vignette

2 notes · View notes