[ Boba's eyes snap open as the sounds of battle reverberate through the transport. The other recruits exchange glances and someone thinks to distribute the weapons mounted on one of the transport walls: simple melee batons with a switch along the handle—stun-sticks, or at least something roughly equivalent to them. Boba weighs his in his hand and is displeased with its lightness, but it's better than nothing.
Rushed chatter fills the small space as the transport rolls to a halt. With no clear chain of command, it's chaos. There's a call to take as many as they can alive and another to eliminate the threat and another to simply survive. Boba does his best to block it out. Who knows if the other recruits are even real or just another part of the test? His eyes lock on Tech—who isn't guaranteed to be real either, but at the very least is more likely to be competent—and shoves his own mask aside so the other clone can hear him over the din. ]
Primary objective is to stop the spread. Taking prisoners is secondary.
[ With that, he places the mask back over his face. Somewhere within him, there is fear. It isn't spice that has driven these people mad, nor any of the same other substances that had contaminated Lenovar, but it is still a kind of mental poison—something that could turn him or anyone around him into someone else, something else. It's the same fear that had kept him up in his cell, staring at the blank ceiling on those bad nights where the switch in his head that usually numbed such emotions simply wouldn't work. He reaches for that same switch now, pictures himself flicking it off with the unthinking confidence he would any other interface in Slave I or his armor—and mercifully, this time, it works.
Just in time, too. The doors swing open to a scene of utter disarray: two groups of Humans battle outside a settlement perimeter, one bearing firearms and armor, and the other bedraggled, screaming, falling upon the first group in a furious wave. The second group holds no weapons, but their hands are stained a pale, powdery yellow and some hold clumps of indistinct organic matter in their hands—spores or fungal flesh, which they shove towards mouths, noses, eyes, any vector they can reach.
The first group may be better armed, but they're also outnumbered: perhaps three or four remain to fight off more than twice as many infected. The bodies of their compatriots are scattered around the scene—not dead, but spasming in the throes of infection, mouths stained yellow or stuffed with fungal matter.
It's a scene out of a nightmare, hellish enough to make several of the recruits in the transport freeze up entirely. Boba isn't one of them. The infected hadn't anticipated the arrival of reinforcements and, for a brief window, they're trapped between the survivors and the transport—a fleeting opportunity to strike.
Boba leaps out of the transport and swings his stun-stick at the nearest infected still turning to face the new threat, slamming it hard enough into his head that it probably would've put him down even without the electric charge. The man crumples to the ground, convulsing, and Boba's head immediately whips around to find another target before their side loses the element of surprise.
Hopefully, he'll have back-up—because as the incident during the briefing had shown, even if he can pack a punch, he can't overcome sheer numbers alone. ]
cw: violence, forced infection
Rushed chatter fills the small space as the transport rolls to a halt. With no clear chain of command, it's chaos. There's a call to take as many as they can alive and another to eliminate the threat and another to simply survive. Boba does his best to block it out. Who knows if the other recruits are even real or just another part of the test? His eyes lock on Tech—who isn't guaranteed to be real either, but at the very least is more likely to be competent—and shoves his own mask aside so the other clone can hear him over the din. ]
Primary objective is to stop the spread. Taking prisoners is secondary.
[ With that, he places the mask back over his face. Somewhere within him, there is fear. It isn't spice that has driven these people mad, nor any of the same other substances that had contaminated Lenovar, but it is still a kind of mental poison—something that could turn him or anyone around him into someone else, something else. It's the same fear that had kept him up in his cell, staring at the blank ceiling on those bad nights where the switch in his head that usually numbed such emotions simply wouldn't work. He reaches for that same switch now, pictures himself flicking it off with the unthinking confidence he would any other interface in Slave I or his armor—and mercifully, this time, it works.
Just in time, too. The doors swing open to a scene of utter disarray: two groups of Humans battle outside a settlement perimeter, one bearing firearms and armor, and the other bedraggled, screaming, falling upon the first group in a furious wave. The second group holds no weapons, but their hands are stained a pale, powdery yellow and some hold clumps of indistinct organic matter in their hands—spores or fungal flesh, which they shove towards mouths, noses, eyes, any vector they can reach.
The first group may be better armed, but they're also outnumbered: perhaps three or four remain to fight off more than twice as many infected. The bodies of their compatriots are scattered around the scene—not dead, but spasming in the throes of infection, mouths stained yellow or stuffed with fungal matter.
It's a scene out of a nightmare, hellish enough to make several of the recruits in the transport freeze up entirely. Boba isn't one of them. The infected hadn't anticipated the arrival of reinforcements and, for a brief window, they're trapped between the survivors and the transport—a fleeting opportunity to strike.
Boba leaps out of the transport and swings his stun-stick at the nearest infected still turning to face the new threat, slamming it hard enough into his head that it probably would've put him down even without the electric charge. The man crumples to the ground, convulsing, and Boba's head immediately whips around to find another target before their side loses the element of surprise.
Hopefully, he'll have back-up—because as the incident during the briefing had shown, even if he can pack a punch, he can't overcome sheer numbers alone. ]