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Mother Confessor:

Despite the Uldivarion just starting in on his story, I had tears streaming down my face and my sides hurt from laughter. His speech slurred. His long arms and hands clumsily reenact the events he is telling. Looking ridiculous in his intoxication, and light green tears streaming down his jubilant face.

Marckus:

Captain Graxis, the private, and the pair of Uldivarions sure are having a good time. Must be a hell of a story seeing as they are making a loud spectacle in the cantina. Looking back at Red Wolf as she starts working on her second glass. She simply looks back and shrugs.

“What do you think of the Uldivarions”, I ask her as she takes a sip from the glass.

Placing it back on the table she says,” I don’t know. Never met one. All I have is some basic knowledge that they shove at everybody. So I will have to get back to you on that. Why do you ask ,” she queries back cocking her head slightly in confusion.

“Well you will find out soon enough. We are to dine with their commander in about two hours. I assure you that sober they are much different. Perhaps a bit to polite for my liking anyway. Very strict bunch, though what would you expect coming from the Empress’s Empyreal Armada?”

Again she shrugs. Following it up with,” I did not even know that much, I will admit. I suppose this is a diplomatic encounter?”

Nodding my affirmation, “It would seem so. But I am more curious of the what and the why of them being here. Been mulling through a laundry list of reasons, and coming up empty handed. Not sure what they have for a reason to come all the way out here from Uldivaria. I am sure there Commander will give us an answer this evening over chow,” taking a pause from my answer and glancing back at the four of them having one hell of time, “All I know so far is that they are playing on our side in all of this. I just hope they are ready for it when it gets messy.”

She takes another sip on the glass, her expression a mask of curiosity.

“They better be” , she says taking a glance at the tall blue men,” otherwise the shit storm we are running head long into will be a damned nightmare.”

A single chuckle escapes my throat, “ I will tell you this. They are some hard as nails boys in a fire fight. I just hope they can keep up with the Centurian when it comes down to the grit of what we may have to do in order to hold our own on the field. That aside, I think we stand a reasonable chance if we play our hand cautiously. There is one thing that has been on my mind…”

“Well spit it out then, no point in keeping me in suspense oh wise leader”, she jabs at me half playfully, and half serious.

“Alright, but it is just a damned theory and not an absolute” , I divulge my thoughts on the subject in question, “ Remember the last time there was a rumor going around in the upper circles about a mechanical force to backup the standing military?” She looks back at me, quizzically as she searches the deep recesses of her mind to see if she does in fact have a clue on what I am talking about. The thought crosses my mind that she may in fact not even have an inkling as to what I am talking about. Allowing her a few more moments to see if she can dig up anything from the past on the matter. She concedes with a shake of her head.

“Well there was a mention of it once that I can recall. Anyway, suppose the Chairmen have a few installations on the ground. Certainly would be a reasonable assumption, seeing as they don’t seem to be above manufacturing illegal nuclear weapons amongst other things. For the sake of the argument they have in fact set up a few toy factories in some remote, uninhabited areas.”

“Ok, I am with you so far”, she says taking another sip as she listens to me.

“Now you have these factories running at max capacity producing an autonomous army safely away from civilization. I think the rest should be fairly assessed that a group of greedy power mad pricks would do with such an inexpensive buildup in such an army. Basically on top of the standing Confederation forces, down about seven hundred men from what we have taken out thus far. We are looking at an ant hill that never sleeps, eats, or cares for that matter. Taking this into consideration with my estimation of Confed soldiers before the toy soldiers at roughly ten million strong. Now with a combined effort of real, and toy soldiers that number could be ten fold of that. I hope that is not the case once we see what they have to offer as far as opposition. This does not take into account all the hardware they have. Just figuring out how to take out the toy factories is a problem.”

Finishing up my theory, I begin rubbing my bare head searching for a solution. Red Wolf lights up a cigarette and takes a long draw, a look of concentration on her furrowed brow. We sit in contemplation. Little bit easier now as the rowdy bunch had calmed down considerably.

Red Wolf breaks the long silence of our musings on the issue.

“Did you say nukes”, she asks me as if she had just been slapped and wanted a reason.

I simply nod, and she continues,” What are we talking about heavy duty firecrackers or sparklers?”

“If I remember from what is on file from the captured Terran Titan frame, they are somewhere in the middle. Why”, I inquire back.

Taking another drag on her smoke, and exhaling a thick slow flow of gray clouds,” I think we can work with that, but it will need to be down to the last micrometer if we do use them on the toy factories. Our best bet is to load the warheads into bunker busters, and decimate the internals of each. Should save a lot of rad scrubbing in the killzone”, she stops to indulge in another draw on the cigarette, blowing the fog through her nostrils”, If these are indeed a mid class warhead, then they should in theory contain themselves in the debris upon their penetration of such a facilities. Looking at say between two to five klick EMP, knocking out several hundred if not several thousand tin men after the others get a plutonium enema.” We share in a brief laugh at her jest.

“Sure hope they issue their little robot boys sun block, cause they are going to get one hell of a tan,” she adds causing another round of light laughter.

Seems solid enough, despite the problem of the radiation within the blast area. It could be scrubbed, but that takes time, time we cannot afford. Hopefully there is someone in the lot that could plant these pins in precise locations and sufficient depth. Cause it would be less effective to just pulverize this type of target with more conventional means, and eat up munitions like a bullet sponge.

“We will go with that as an option”, I chime in with some potential problems,” Now to effectively plant them without worrying about them getting shot down in the process. More than likely have an installment of SAMs to prevent a bomber from simply puttering in to make a delivery. Not to mention we have no idea what in the hell the toy soldiers will be packing, but I bet it will be more substantial than standard issue weaponry. Cuts the possibility of auto cannons down considerably, but not out. Perhaps heavy laser turrets to prevent missile strikes, “ it comes out more a question, as I am unsure as it is speculation.

“That is a conundrum we will address when we come to it”, Red Wolf offers up in a hopeful tone.

“Yes, that would be the best way to know for sure if we have a shot or not. I know someone that can help us acquire eyes, though it will take time to gain them. Not going to use a telescope and spit in a prayer, and hope like hell to get reasonably close to the target,” I point out the solution to another problem in this plan.

“Not to pry but, whom do you know that could even get these eyes”, she asks of my acquaintance that she has yet to have heard about, or met.

“Not prying at all, Zlada”, now explaining another piece in the puzzle,” I picked up a trio of hitchhikers, one of which you know, the Andilusion, Rynis. The other two you have not had the pleasure of meeting. A jittery arthropod with a caffeine addiction named Steve. And….”

She cuts me off and says half snickering,” Steve? What does Steve look like exactly?”

“Think of a centipede with lots of little arms each ending in little three fingered hands. Goofy little bugger also has a long lanky mustache and a nervous shifty look about him”, I do my best to describe the small creature.

“And what of this other that can help in attaining the eyes for us, “ she asks me after letting the image of Steve settle a moment.

“A little gecko like female, that seems to have a way with electronics. She helped us get the ship from Helene, by hacking the security pad. As well as working with Graxis to decrypt an encoded message sent by a traitor. Just so you know they caught them. Any way outside of that, her name is Janxica, and she is somewhat friendly despite her rebellious appearance”, I conclude filling in Red Wolf on them.

She seems to mull this over, as she snuffs out the spent cigarette in the ashtray near the wall.

“It would seem we have a good beginning to all of this, but what about the rest of our plans once we hit the ground”, she asks moving to the next obstacle. Rubbing my bare skull again trying to manually pull out a decent thought in my barbarian like mind. This was a less simple quandary to solve. Brute force was not going to be an option as we are few, despite having the more advanced hardware. Going to take a collaboration of all of us to find the best way about waltzing in and taking down a force that large and dispersed. Sure to be a major topic of interest this evening when we work out things with the Uldivarion Commander in our meeting with them.