Astrum's Liberation [DV Group]

[Thoughtless Poet]

In the recesses of Northern Rosinder, there exists a city relatively untouched by the technological progress of the world. In the humble settings of Astrum Noir, people have learned to live with the land and its children rather than against it. The most environmentally-friendly settlement in Rosinder, Astrum is a self-sustaining farming community that prides itself on the harmony its people have found with nature. Adorned with hand-dug canals and quaint but cozy homes, the only noticeable sign of foreign occupation were the rather modern constructs erected during Renovatio's conquest of the territory. These buildings, used by foreign forces to help secure and govern the city, were cold and emotionless to the sight. They seemed to drink in the otherwise lively and welcoming atmosphere from Astrum Noir, and their presence was a constant reminder of the invisible shackles that each citizen wore. Though their anguish was unseen and protests silent, the people maintain a constant mood of timidity and resentment to their occupying guests

[Val]

The red head nodded to the other female and went in first.

The town that General Cale had chosen to be the first to be liberated from Renovatio's control had just come into sight, the little farms having been past and warned while the larger ones were coming into view, and she and the other lieutenant for Dictum Veritas had talked it out the night before while staying in one of the farms that one farmer had been kind enough to lend for a night, and had decided that she'd go in first. Soothe 'em over with a pretty face then tell the villagers to get out, after all, how could one imagine that a face like hers had no qualms about sticking a knife in someones back when they turned?

So she went in first. Waving to the farmers as she passed smiling and nodding as they acknowledged her and a few even started chatting. She'd see those invisible shackles; As one who'd once been forced to submit she knew of such things very well. Those people she told to leave. She told them to spread the word to those who weren't on the main road going in. But sometimes she'd have to stop herself at a house that had a pretty big family, talk with the head of that family, telling them to pack up and leave for the night. Things where going to happen that they really didn't want to be around and that they shouldn't subject their families to. And to get their kids to spread it around. That a group was coming to free the town of Renovatio's grip.

She'd leave the ones that didn't actually believe her to Rooster, confidant that they'd listen to her if they didn't trust a pretty face.

Into the town central. Little shops centered around a square flooring of cobblestones with a gazebo in the center. Probably for when important people needed to speak to give them a sense of authority. General stores, specialty stores, a small in, hell, even a small doctor. But no. Job first, fun later. Now then... The first place to go to spread a suggestion... Pub. The town was small enough that there was only one pub, but while it was day it had more than it's share of young men that snuck away from their farms.

The red head went in, the bar at the back like all pubs that she'd ever been to, the inside dark looking but no less homey for it. A piano sat in one corner, a man playing away on it warbling off some tune while the young men drank, laughed, played their card games, bet, and watched for the local skirts. It was the more sober ones she went to. She chatted them up, spreading the word that Dictum Veritas is coming, and to get the hell outta dodge while the gettin's good. But, to do so in a way that didn't make their "leader" curious and start looking around.

Then she moved on to the bar. She told the bar man the same thing, to let the townsfolk know that shit was going to go down after sunset and to get out while they could. It went like that in all the stores. She'd chat up the people in the stores then talk to the manager themselves, getting them to spread word. By noon almost everyone had heard of this group coming to save them, but whether or not they believed her would be another story entirely.

[Ace]

It was a long wait for sundown.

As agreed, Rooster stayed behind at the small encampment the two had set up just on the outskirts of Astrum. It wasn't much, a real dump actually. Canvas "tents" propped up on sticks and a circle of stones in the center for a fire, but it was only for the one night. And the view of the fireworks was going to be great.

Seeing to her equipment helped the time pass just a little faster. The Lieutenant busied herself checking the entire inventory of her waist pack, testing to ensure that everything she needed to work worked. Every blade was checked for sharpness (or honed until satisfactory), the stoppers to her collection of bottles and vials were all tightly sealed. She paid special attention to a coil of something grey and tacky, almost putty-like. unwrapped it from a waxy, water-resistant paper and closely inspected its length. This was the most important component for that night's mission, so she packaged it back up with extraordinary care before slipping it right into the top of the enchanted pouch slung around her hip.

Cerise eyes glanced skywards, where the sun had taken on a blood-orange hue and just began its descent towards the horizon, barely skimming the tops of the trees. Close enough. The raven-haired soldier started off in the direction of town, slipping her cloak around her, and promptly vanished.

---

Rooster found her first target shortly after breaking the threshold of Noir Astrum, on the fifth shadow that she crossed through. The man had a boisterous red face, thinning hair on top and a bushy auburn moustache that fully covered his lips. She made not a noise from the corner, perfectly invisible to the mortal eye, as he paced around his small dining room and blustered over the nerve of that redheaded girl! He knew what she was up to! Trying to get them out of the picture so she could take his farm, well damned if he would, his granddaddy worked that farm, and his granddaddy before him!

Moet Kercy, the fifth mind you, was a hard man to move. Rooster gave a roll of her eyes. What a gasbag. If she didn't shut the oaf up soon, she might kill him herself. Without a noise the rogue swept forward and blew a cold breath 'cross the back of the farmer's thick, purple neck. That got his attention. The man whirled about, eyes wide, and Rooster stepped nimbly out of his reach just as he gave a groping sweep of those massive arms. "Who's there?!"

"Danger comes." The Lieutenant whispered, pacing her voice so that it passed her lips like a wispy, ethereal hiss. "Heeed me, Moet Kerccyy. Go sssouth tonight, or be the agent of death for your familyyy.."

She lifted the candle off the nearby wooden table, handle still entirely shrouded so that it appeared to inexplicably float, bobbing faintly in midair, directly towards Kercy's face. A blubbering howl broke from the farmer's throat. "MARY!" He thundered as he fled the room in terror . "GET THE CHILDREN! WE'RE LEAVING!"

Sometimes a pretty face might be all you needed to persuade the flock; but make no mistake, bring Rooster in and even the most stubborn of men need not be told twice.

---

The remainder of the late afternoon passed thusly; there were five or six families in Astrum with stubborn fathers, or grandmothers, that refused to budge. Before the sun had fully set every last one of them had experienced a sudden change of heart. They ran for the Southern outskirts, white-faced, and would talk amongst themselves around the campfire that night about the ghost that haunted their town.

Later, after the fireworks, after the people's liberation from the Renovatian regime, those superstitions would evolve into something of a folk legend for the simple farming people of Noir Astrum. Every last one of them would, around a pint or two of ale or in hushed gossip during worship, whisper of the spiritus that had cast its watchful, soothsaying eye over the faithless people and guided them to safety. People were funny that way.

[Ace]

"Commander, uh, we have a problem..." The sentry wished he were anywhere else but here, were anyone else but the poor stooge whose duty it was to report all news, good and bad, to the ranking officer of Astrum Noir's occupying force. It was bad news in this case. Definitely. Definitely bad news. The middle-aged, redfaced soldier wrung his hands.

"What is it, Tinuss?"

"The townspeople are -- missing."

"What?"

"We've, ah, misplaced the townspeople. ... all of them."

FFFUUUUU

---

Rooster waited silently among the shadows while the guard called Tinuss recounted his story. His patrol duty that afternoon had gone totally awry when, by some staggering coincidence or unforeseen force, each home that he had passed upon down the main road had been empty and silent as the grave. The commander paled to hear of this strange story, and then his face flared red with a sense of dire importance. "Gather the troops!" He demanded of his underling, the pair of them bustling for the door.

Flickering her irises to the side, the rebel officer watched them move thunderously into the hallway, their voices dying slowly in volume the further they retreated. Something about finding the villagers, nothing of importance. She was confident that Mira's enchantments could keep the refugee site hidden, and that the men, defeated in their search, would return to base before the night was over to inform Renovatio. They'd be holed up in their war room for hours, deliberating over the possible culprits and arguing over what feasible thing could be done about this outrage.

With the tyrants gone, Rooster slipped to the door and ushered it noiselessly closed behind them. She turned the lock into place and lowered her hood, the vision of her sallow face floating above no body bizarre and disconcerting. The head bobbed across the room to the pace of purposeful strides, to the Commander's massive desk. Towers of paperwork loomed on the metal structure, beside a great humming machine awash in a neon green-blue glow.

Unlike the people of Rosinder that they oppressed, Renovatio was a society heavily reliant on their advanced technologies. Their conquering officers on the fringe were no exception, not when HQ would want to keep them in constant and instantaneous contact. The information in this computer could be quite enlightening... and the destruction of it a loss that would be grievously felt. Deft fingers dropped to the sling around her hip and Rooster withdrew her tiny, steel encased thumbdrive, preloaded with a hacking and de-encryption program of her own creation. Just four short minutes after pushing it the appropriate port, Rooster found herself the proud possessor of so many of their military's protected secrets. Piece of cake.

Now for the fun part. Thin fingers delved back into the recesses of that bag, tucking away the lilliputian storage device and groping instead for the same grey, tacky substance that she'd made such careful inspection of earlier that afternoon. She withdrew the coil with one hand and unsheathed one of the sister knives from her thigh with the other. Settling softly to a seat in the enemy commander's chair, Rooster tucked one leg beneath her and bent down over her work.

She had to cut the explosive carefully. Too much force over a surface area larger than a square centimetre would detonate it, but the rogue worked with the slow attentiveness of a skilled lover; she knew this material in her hands backwards and forwards, all its sweet spots and all its imperfections. The putty was laced throughout with tiny bits of circuitry, chips, and wires, almost too small to even fathom much less to perceive with the naked eye. Severing one stray filament would mean disaster. The functionality of the entire segment would be compromised! Never mind detonating on command, that dream would be history, but the explosive would be suddenly volatile and highly dangerous.

Finally she sliced through, leaving a segment of claylike putty roughly the size and shape of a woman's little finger; enough to take out this entire level of the tower. Other just like it had already been placed around the base, all-in-all enough to make this oppressive thing no more than a dreary memory in the minds of the soon-to-be-liberated Astrum people. Rooster reached beneath the desk, to a place just beneath that formidable machine. It would be the first thing to go. She grinned jeeringly at the thought.

Drawing her cowl back into place, Rooster left the room as instantly and secretively as she came. Mission, accomplished.

[Ace]

The eve of revolution was upon them. It was nearing sundown, now, and most of the Renovatian soldiers had returned to their tower, that disgraceful blemish on Astrum Noir's picturesque horizon, for their evening routines: end-of day duties, supper, recreation, and bed. (And these soldiers sleep peacefully with the heels of their boots on the backs of Astrum's oppressed men, women, and children.)

Silence settled over the town like a layer of fallen snow, as if a shroud descended across the land to muffle anything that might dare raise a noise. The calm before the storm...

and then, when the silence had become so intense that it almost throbbed deafeningly, it was suddenly broken.

A cataclysm of rubble and debris rocketed out from the once proud-standing tower in all directions, shattering the windows of any building unfortunate enough to find itself within forty yards of the detonation. Curling pillars of flame and ashen smoke licked the air, culminating at the apex to a cloud as thick as whipped foam, fifty feet or more in circumference, that seemed to rise until it almost touched the first blinking glimpses of the stars.

The explosion could be seen from far outside the outskirts of town -- that was what Rooster counted on. It was the signal for her mercenaries to sweep into the empty city. She hoped the construction crew, which should have begun its work already, and which was built of a mixture of Veritas soldiers and volunteer Astrum civilians, would see the fireworks and cheer -- boost their moral for the battle to come and quicken their work to ensure that fortification see its completion in time.

Rooster smirked and stepped back into the shadows of the tall clocktower where she waited and narrowed her keen eyes on the ground below, searching for the telltale flicker of movement that meant her recon girls had sprung into action to complete their own leg of the mission.