Captum: The Story So Far - The Final Chapter
October 19th 2952
With the trail for DeadBolts cold, there is little more for the Cobro Force to do but wait for the program Nemesis_One created, which should clean the messages the best possible. Never before has so much relied on so little. The Cobro Force were on alert, waiting for some form of objective to complete or action to take, but the order never came. The Cobro’s that were geared up, ready to fight, ready to revive or ready to do anything have now gone. Sitting idly by was something they could not bear.
Cobra joined the search weeks ago and has not returned to the HQ since news of DeadBolts being missing broke. He and a few others have remained on one of his ships. Sleeping, searching, asking questions of random people then moving on to the next place. Visiting bunker after bunker, outpost after outpost, cave after cave. But after weeks of doing this, even Cobra and crew are exhausted, now simply drifting through the black just outside of ArcCorp’s jurisdiction. Beds aboard are loaded with tiered and deflated Cobro’s, each of them was once a Cobro that vowed not to return unless it was with a one DeadBolts on board.
Back on ArcCorp, as you walk the halls of the Cobro Force HQ at the IO North Tower, there is laughter and talk, but its a shadow of the type you’d have seen before the missing case of DeadBolts. Is it that DeadBolts being missing is impacting the organisation so powerful? Or is it the realisation that no one in this large community is truly as safe as we thought? The Corbo Force prides on its inclusivity, diversity, strength in numbers and might of its security. But if someone can not only go missing but not be found, not even a clue to their whereabouts then just how much should this organisation pride themselves in the ‘security’ they boast so much.
This is the thoughts you see when you walk down the halls at HQ, or down the corridors of the Cobro Force ships. Not so much the plight of DeadBolts which in its own right is both important and should give cause for a solemn mood, but for the fact that promise given to each Cobro when they join is false.
At least, that’s the feeling you now get. The feeling of hope fading.
Corbin_Jones see’s this plight in each Cobro he interacts with. The hopelessness is but a break in the page, its not the footnote. A sentiment he tries to convince many members of the Cobro Force, including himself. With doubt being less of a cloud and more of an everlasting storm in his mind, Corbin_Jones opens his Mobiglas and contacts Michael Dorn, “Mike, do me a favour and re-upload the missing file once more to the public feed.” “Right away Corbin”
October 21st 2952
“Comin’ through, comin’ through!!” cries Jeg86 sailing through the halls at Cobro Force HQ ArcCorp. He hit the office opposite the server room, currently occupied by people still holding out hope for DeadBolts, an number of people are sat in chairs in the room including Fochs, out of breath but with a smile on his face Jeg86 lets out “we just got something!”
Jeg86 continues “The message came in loud and clear about 10 minutes ago (17:06 SET)! Voice print confirms that DeadBolts voice and even better there’s geo data in the message….. WE’VE GOT HIS LOCATION!” the room erupts with cheers and excitement. All is not lost after all. What was once almost a dead floor, dull and grey or some setting from a mundane scene of a movie was now the setting of joy. The air now has a taste of hopefulness, a flavour not many Cobros on the case of Deadbolts had tasted in a long while, a month to be fact. “Right are we good to go?” Fochs asks, “no, we need to call everyone in and take a count. Some of the guys have been out in the black for days, they might not be in the right frame of mind to be doing an op right now” Jeg86 says with a faint smile on his face, catching his breath back.
Fochs takes a moment, then almost in slow motion he stands up out of his chair and faces everyone in the room. Looking around at everyone in the room he takes a deep breath, then he commands the room giving out assignments “okay here’s what we’re gonna do. Jeg I want you to start gathering all the intel we have right now on the DeadBolts situation, confirm the message was recieved where the data says it came from. We know its him, I want to be sure this info in not a plant & I need it here within the hour please, Corbin WAKE YOUR ASS UP!“, “Yes boss, I’m up” Corbin says in a somewhat coherent state. Fochs continues “Nemmy, I want you to put out a all Cobro alert, ‘I want everyone ready and able to do an op ready for dust off in 24 hours’ you got that?”, “Yes Fochs” responds the Cobro devil. Fochs turns to Cyberg, “Cyberg I want you and a few others going out and taking stock of equipment, I feel a fight coming and I want our guys ready to go!”, “You got it” Cyberg responds. “Someone get a hold of Cobra and update him to the situation” Fochs shouts into the room, then turns around and continues, “O5C4R Prep the ships ready to go!” “affirmative” responds the AI construct.
With orders barked Fochs grabs another tech and pushes the tech in his chair over to the starmap terminal. “Right do me a favour, pull up these cords for me…”
After nearly 4 hours all the intel has been vetted, equipment stock taken and assignments nearing complete. “Fochs how we looking?” asks Cobra. “Well everything is god boss, the intel, crews and equipment are all good to go, you just need to say the word and we can get on it…. we’re calling out all the stops on this one we’ve got Cobro Force One good to go along with several medics and nurse staff and we also have….” a glance at Cobra’s face has Fochs a little confused that it stops Fochs updating Cobra in his tracks. “What’s wrong boss?” asks the confused Fochs. “Well do we really need to use Cobro Force One?…. I know its a rescue mission but… but… it’s DeadBolts!”. Fochs laughs, with all the intense work the whole team has put in over the month, the true to form comedy Cobra provides is a much welcome and needed distraction. With a smile and half a chuckle Fochs asks Cobra “ahhh…. what do you want us to do boss?”. “Lets use a Carrack and an C2, so long as there not mine and also can you prep a briefing package, I want everyone on the same page when we go?” Cobra says. “You got it boss”.
October 22nd 2952
Fochs had put out a bulletin requesting that all Cobro’s head to Port Tressler to be briefed on the mission at hand. Including Fochs & Cobra, 47 Cobro’s answered the call to lend a hand to what would now be dubbed, Operation: Captum. Captum being a latin word for captured, seemed fitting. The whole Cobro Force was assembled, so Fochs approached the mobile terminal and laid out the briefing…
The Cobro Force all set their imprints to the Carrack, one of the ships sitting on a pad at the station and then take seats for the trip. The C2 sits on the other pad ready to take off. Fochs informs the Carrack & C2 pilots AKSykeya piloting the Carrack & Corbin_Jones piloting the C2 to get the ships ready for take off. Corbin starts a systems check, initialising the power plant, checking the coolers, powering up the shields checking the weapons… BOOOOOM! The C2 pilot and passengers are all stunned by a massive explosion. Looking around the the crew look for damage to the ship and try to get damage containment for the ship. Corbin has a quick check on the ships MFD’s “normal, normal, nor…..” the glow of fire and plasma catch his attention. All the C2 systems read normal because they are, the C2 is fine. The Carrack is not.
Crammed with over 30 souls for the trip due to safety concerns, it’s now nothing more than a glowing scrap pile, with plasma fires engulfing most of what can be seen as the superstructure of a Carrack, crates and body parts littered around the husk, carried away by the zero G of space. There is nothing Corbin or the crew of the C2 do but watch.
With the set imprint bed now disabled, comm calls are coming in from all over Stanton. “What the fuck happened?”, “Where am I?”, “What did you do?” and so many voices fill the comms channel. One by one they all add to the clutter of voices like a crowd at a bar. “THOSE LITTLE FUCKERS” one of the voices bleats. “Sykeya that you?” Fochs asks fresh off the medbed in ArcCorp. “Yea its me. While I was doing my systems check there was an irregularity in the engine room. When I checked the feed for the room I noticed a plasma charge was building up in the quantum core. Nothing I could do by the time I noticed it!” AKSykeya responded.
Two months ago, Cobra’s 890 Jump was boarded by the Nine Tails, to cut a long story short the Strike Force were able to retake the ship but as a last ditch effort to have the last laugh, the Nine Tails leader activated a plasma overload in the quantum core, something that was found & neutralised by Strike Force at the time.
This was obviously a Nine Tails pre-emptive strike, aimed to send the Cobro’s into disarray.
“Okay, lets just all regroup at Port Tressler and from there we’ll go. Just tighten up the security on those ships” Fochs said. “I can’t believe I had nothing to do with that” Cobra adds.
The entire Cobro Force are once again at Port Tressler and Fochs gives the command to sweep the ship for sabotage and unknow devices. “Fochs we’ve checked the ship top to bottom twice, there’s nothing on board” says Olsa. “Okay, lets get rollin’. 05, take us out” Fochs commands the AI construct. 05 is at the helm of the Carrack, painted in snow white with a yellow trim, the main thrusters light up and burst into action. He eases the mighty ship away from the station majestically, you can feel the pride in the air, if there was air in space.
05C4R primes the engines and engages the QT drive to join Corbin Jones who’s hovering just outside the area of operations. Hovering around 10,000m above ground and 60,000m away from the target bunker, the C2 has been hovering in place waiting for the companion Carrack to arrive. A sound cracks the skies, something akin to a thunder bolt in a storm, moments later and the radar aboard the C2’s pilot systems pings to shout ‘new contact’. Corbin need not worry though, this ping was to be expected. Its the Carrack, in a synthesized voice “Approaching your location & getting into formation Corbin Jones” 05C4R says.
The C2’s main engines light up and burn at full throttle, once the speed creeps up, the VTOL engines disengage. Now both ships can be seen hurling through the sky in tandom, leaving streaks of blue hues in their wake, both set to land just 60,000m away, a short trip for these drives.
Both ships touch down and the ramps open in sync. The Carracks doors opens to see Cobro’s teaming out in the dozens, each with rifle in hand. They march off the ramp with purpose, there is a Cobro to save after all. The C2’s enormous front ramp opens slowly to reveal a fleet of ground based vehicles ranging from Spartans to Cyclones and even a couple of STV’s. “We’ll take the Spartans” claims Fochs. Milleka & Professor_Rhyyt each take a Spartan & jump into the drivers seats of the two goliath APC’s.
The engines fire up and the roar of them vibrates the very sturdy C2 bay floors. They roll out and as they do shake the core of all Cobro’s that stand near. “Okay everyone load up! I want half of you in one Spartan and the other half in the other Spartan, lets go, go, go!” Fochs barks his orders and the Cobro’s fall into the armoured people carriers like ants marching into an anthill.
The last Cobro sits down and the massive vehicles roll off towards the bunker. Its nightfall so the vision is bleak and the journey is arduous, what should have been a day time incursion, is now a night time rush. The darkness mixed with the rocky mountainous terrain has the drivers slither between narrow passages and slopes. Its no easy task.
After 7 minutes of being battered around the inside of the Spartans the Cobro Force have finally made it to the bunker. Thinking they have the upper hand they exit the vehicles and charge the bunker. Bullets wizz and zip by as the first wave of Cobro’s step out of the APC, none of them make it to the bunker doors. “GO GO GO!” Fochs cries, another wave is cut down but sniper fire. “YOU TWO, ON ME!!” screams Cobra as he hurtles out of the Spartan and sprints to the doors.
Wave after wave the Cobros arrive at the bunker, and wave after wave they are cut down. The Cobro Force are being cut down too easy. Its almost like the Nine Tails were each holding rifles that spat out homing bullets and the only action needed was for them to squeeze the trigger, not even look. You could just imagine a montage of the Nine Tails firing their weapons, looking away, backwards, firing from between their legs, all bullets magically finding a target. It didn’t seem to matter where the Cobros were or what cover they took, a bullet was sure to find each of them. But all was not lost, Cobra and his two Cobro Commando’s were in the bunker entrance waiting for more troops to arrive within the cover of the bunker entrance.
However, they can only watch as each Cobro makes the gauntlet and is cut down before they can make it. Cobra sits there engaging the few Nine Tails he can spot, but it’s no use. The Nine Tails were clearly prepared for such an assault, he makes the decision…. “Right let’s go down, push the button.” Cobra says.
They head down to the sub bottom floor and fight their way off the elevator. If bullets in the open outside of the bunker felt like they were wizzing and zipping past before, well they are like a hail storm on a horizonal plane now. The onslaught of bullets, feels like it must be coming from 1000 Nine Tails all formed up perfectly at the other end of the hallway…. “can you push through?” Cobra asks, but no sooner has he asked as he then realised, he’s on his own… the two other Cobros lay on the floor bleeding out.
He has little choice, he brings up his mobi and records a message for the comm relay “tell Vega and my kids I love them… and also make sure that Vega doesn’t check through my browser history, she’s not ready for that… while I think of it, watch over Vega, but make sure she doesn’t get some new guy, that would not be cool. She’s gotta morn me until she’s old ‘n’ grey. She can go datin’ when she’s in her 70’s or somethin’ but hopefully she’ll realise that there’s no one better… wait, I’m going off track, tell them I…”
The message is auto sent to Area18 and received in the buffer of the new mobilglas waiting to be sent with the send button highlighted and gently flashing.
The mobiglas that Cobra is currently wearing. “What tha f….?” Cobra wakes from the medibed with a groggy head. He remembers that he was just about to hit send, and an explosion did the helpful task of reuniting him with the rest of the Cobro’s at Area18. All of the ships and equipment had been destroyed and everyone’s spawns defaulted to Area18. “Glad I didn’t hit that button” Cobra says with a smile.
Cobra’s mobiglas chirps, it’s a message:
“Hello Cobra, you might not remember me, but I did say I’ll get you next time. Well I couldn’t get you, so I thought I’d milk this Bolts clown as much as I could. Truth is we got all we wanted from him days ago, it just took some time to find his Imprint. Well we found it, My guys took it out while your guys were tryin’ to get into my place…. the Bolts guy wont be popping up anywhere else from now on. Hope you got to say goodbye…. lol. Be seeing you Cobra.”
“I don’t know how I feel about that” Cobra says as he shuts the mobi down.
The device chirps again, its a call…
“Oh fuck more training… I mean Fochs”
Days Later Cobra Honours the org with a plague at the HQ
On October 22nd 2952 The Cobro Force set out to rescue DEADBOLTS during Operation: Captum. The Cobro’s were unable to rescue DEADBOLTS, but the valiant effort of those who answered the call will be remembered forever!
