Singing Senator Patreus' Beard - Part I
24 Feb 2018Jellicoe
Newton's Fusiliers safe house, Malenchenko City, Coma"You weren't followed? The man asked as soon as the door closed.
"No." Jellicoe replied.
"You certain?"
"My first officer is a computer and surveillance expert, he was monitoring me all the way, trust me if I'd been followed he'd have warned me."
"Good, we can't be too careful and their cameras might have tracked you anyway so I'll make it quick. I'm Wallaby, good to have you on board."
Good to be here. Do you always give newcomers the location of your safe houses though?"
"No," Wallaby replied with a grimace, "Bur Isaiah and the Boss both vouched for you and that's good enough for me." Jellicoe raised an eyebrow at that news, so this was where Isaiah had wound up. It didn't surprise him, Salomé's death had hit Isaiah harder than any of them, and for him added to the grief was a foolish sense of guilt that as head of her protection wing and the closest friendly ship he had been unable to save her. The truth made no difference to him of course, the truth being that what had doomed Salomé was the time it took Isaiah's ship to lock on and follow the fading signal from her damaged, malfunctioning vessel. Foolish as it might be Jellicoe well understood the guilt himself, his own ship had been a system away with the support wing frantically trying to get to her and he still relived his decisions that night every single day, pointlessly trying to find something, anything he could have done differently that would have kept Salomé alive. What made it worse for Isaiah was that he had got to her, but only in time to see her ship destroyed and Jellicoe knew that for the rest of his life Isaiah would see the 'Seven Veils' explode before him and blame himself because over stressed technology had denied him the thirty seconds he needed. Grief appeared to have turned to anger and the need to hit back, and when Isaiah Evanson hit out it was wise not to be in the way.
Phisto he knew less well, they had been on the same side during Salomé and her co-conspirators dash for Tionisla but Phisto had been with Yuri Nakamura. Both of them had been on the Wreaken job, the systematic assault on the mega-corporations assets and holdings by a horde of independent pilots that had cost the company literally trillions of credits, he and Phisto had for a time been one and two on Wreaken's most wanted list. For all the good it did Jellicoe thought, Col 70 remained locked behind a permit wall with no answers forthcoming about what was going on there. What had happened to the woman who had kicked it all off he wondered? Scarlet somebody or other, Ashcroft that was it, Scarlet Ashcroft, she had abruptly vanished without a word shortly after Salomé's death, had she abandoned the figh? Fear or common sense telling her to disappear somewhere quiet and out of the way or was there a more sinister reason for her disappearance? Either way if the old leaders were dead or lying low then new ones must emerge. At first glance Phisto didn't look like a revolutionary leader, a cocksure gunslinger of a pilot, frequently on the wrong side of the law with a fast mouth and overactive libido but he did have a certain charisma that drew others to him and a way of making anything seem possible, he might not be Salomé but right now he was the best they had.
"The plan is to kick this club of bastards right in the balls, starting right here with our old friend Senator Patty." Wallaby said jarring Jellicoe's thoughts back to the present. "We take Coma, dig in then when we can we expand, set the galaxy ablaze and show that shower of shit that we won't just sit by while they play their games."
"How?"
"A lot of the preparation's been done already, we've been raising money, getting ships and assembling allies, we've got supply dumps and weapons caches all over the station. We're nearly ready to go, what we need are the enemy forces weakening and spreading out so they can't concentrate when we attack. When the time comes it has to be quick and decisive before Patreus or anyone else can send support, we won't win a long war."
"This is something I don't understand," Jellicoe put in, "This is a Federation system, so what's it got to do with Patreus?"
"The great and good of Coma might pay their taxes to Sol and send their man to Congress," Wallaby replied with a smile, "but they take their orders from Eotienses, ol' Denton's bought and paid for every last one of them and he sucks the system dry. Coma's worth a lot of money to ol' Patty so he won't let a bunch of desperadoes like us have it without one hell of a fight."
"So what do you want me to do?"
"Draw their ships away from Malenchenko, make attacks around the system so they have to spread their forces, hit their supplies, their trade, whittle away at their numbers. Think you can do that?"
"I'll certainly give it a try." Jellicoe replied with a wry smile.
OOC note as the subject of Coma has acquired a level of toxicity I should state here that this is not written as an impartial account of events,
it is the very biased story of a man deeply committed to one side. I will also add that I have no personal issues or enmities to any other player whatever their in game allegiance and have always thought the player community to be one of Elite's great strengths. Coma has been great gameplay, that is the important thing