SPEAKER ANNOUNCEMENT

[dislinked]

ANNOUNCEMENT
Broadcast over speakers onboard, Doss speaks:

This is a CODE RED ALERT and all hands are required.

Earlier this evening, Bone intercepted a directive from the Architects to initiate a Sterilisation Event in Xitang, China on 01/29/2026 at 1600. There's no information about what is triggering this, but we have a unique chance to save 50,000 souls from eradication.

Evacuation is our primary goal here. We know the blast radius is 15.5 miles (25 km for our non-Americans). We need to get as many people as possible out of the radius as quickly and as efficiently as we can. St James has a suggested approach here. Espionage, consult with your chain of command for assignments.

Ground Forces will be on site getting as many people to safety as possible. Your primary directive is evacuation. Utilize any resources at your disposal.

These people are Veiled. This makes things easier and trickier at the same time. We won't have widespread panic: you're fighting against complacency.

Pilots, your primary directive is drone destruction You're the hail Mary: as long as the drones are targeting you, they can't execute their orders. We need to give people on the ground as much time as we can. You'll be against the big boys, not just the standard drones. They're powerful, but they're slow. Take advantage of your maneuverability.

Strategists, you'll be manning Command with Science. Let them run point on ground communication and stick to what you know best: how to keep our pilots alive.

Remember the mission. Let's go be big damn heroes.

Comments

Maryle & Dom

[chemveil]

 

Science Wing ▪ During the Evening Harmony Lights

 

Dom's circled the Dome four times already, unrelated dossier clutched in increasingly sweaty hands. If he doesn't get this over with soon he'll have to hand Bishop papers that look more like a Rorschach test than reports.

He turns into the Science wing before he can talk himself out of it, down the hall and toward their bay of bright monitors and flashing lights, pausing only long enough to grab an empty wheeled chair that he drags over to Maryle's side. Dom's only saving grace is that years of acting Veiled make it easy for him to school his face into something neutral and pleasant, which he does as he takes a seat and drops the dossier on her desk.

"Dr. Bone, I presume."

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"Ah, Rear Admiral Flores Romero, nice of you to join me," Maryle replies without moving her eyes from the screen in front of her, though a smile ticks at the corner of her mouth.

In fact, she refuses to shift her gaze. She reaches for the dossier without looking at it either, which leads to a little bit of fumbling before she gets her hand properly on it and pulls it in front of her.

"This isn't the latte I asked for."

"The only beans the Mess had left were kidney," he lies when he yanks the dossier back like he doesn't trust her anywhere near it, mostly because he doesn't trust her anywhere near it, despite his bringing it near her. The dossier is released without a fight, and Maryle laughs brightly at the silent implication against her trustworthiness (Dom's probably right).

He's not here to delay things any more than he already has — he is, in theory, over with hiding headaches and hand tremors and done with pretending lapses in short-term memory were simply absentmindedness. His desire to keep up the pretense that he was removed from the field for no good reason has long since been declared dead. But he hasn't had to explain his situation to anyone except Singh and Bishop and that went... rather poorly.

He steels himself against the worst possibility (she uses her stapler on his face and then never talks to him again) and, straightening the papers in the folder on his lap, begins his confession: "Are you busy this evening?" (Well, he tried.)

Finally, Maryle turns fully to look at Dom, tilting her head in the process. Something feels off, though she can't quite put her finger on it, and it settles uncomfortably in the back of her throat. The answer to his question is a lopsided shrug.

"I mean, I can't run off into the sunset with you this moment, but I'm just monitoring the Harmony Lights scan, which pretty much always amounts to nothing. Shouldn't be too long before I'm finished. We getting a kidney bean latte after?"

Mouth suddenly run dry, Dom licks his lips and considers how odd of a reaction that is. Why transfer moisture outside of one's mouth? Isn't it a futile effort? Shouldn't he instead–

Instead, he should be handling matters at hand. Confessions — or more accurately, the prelude to.

"I don't think you'll want to," he admits, fists tensing around the dossier's edge. "There's something I need to discuss with you and you... won't be pleased. With me." And before she can say anything, as if it will help at all to state the obvious, he tacks on: "I know you prefer not to be blindsided by unpleasant things."

Maryle's smile, which was already beginning to wane, completely disappears and the lump in her throat solidifies. Something is wrong. The twisting of Dom's hands only makes her more nervous, and her eyes flit between them and his face before finally holding his gaze. She hears the computer next to her chirp, the start of the Harmony Lights, something that always puts her a little extra on edge too.

"Yeah, I don't think anyone likes that. What did you do?"

The computer makes another noise. Translating, demanding her attention, but for just this moment she ignores it.

"It's a rather long story." Maryle's frown is only a taste of things to come (awful things) and the shame's already started to settle around his shoulders like a shroud. "And not one befitting the incessant beeping from your machine."

Maryle considers just turning off the sound on the computer and making him explain. Surely it can't be that bad, right? Even though she can see the discomfort settling into his frame, and even though he says she'll be upset, it must just be a little thing. A stupid thing.

Unfortunately, she knows should do her job and she lets out a huff of irritation at all three of them (her, him, the computer) before turning to look at the monitor. A quick scan of the message there makes her breath catch, and every thought about Dom's impending admission flees her mind.

"Fuck."

Maryle's plethora of Fucks is just another language Dom's fluent in — and this one's among the worst of her variations.

He wheels to close the distance between them and squints at the screen. If she'd typed 'Fuck fuck, fuck! FUCK! FUCKFUCKFUCK fuck!' he'd probably know exactly what it was about, but this looks like nonsense to his untrained eye. Still, he adjusts his glasses like that will do anything at all. "What is it?"

Automatically, Maryle scoots over to allow Dom a better view before she types a few things, clicks a few things, tries to make sure that this is the actual message. That it hasn't been improperly decoded.

It hasn't.

More prominently on the screen now is a series of numbers (clearly coordinates), a few other numbers, and some letters, the final of which her finger comes to rest under on the screen. Dom's proximity does little to comfort her, and her face is pale as she turns to him and explains.

"A message embedded in the Lights. There's a date and time. Tomorrow, 1600 hours. And these letters mean Sterilization protocol."

"Fuck."