Application
Player Information ;
Your Nickname: Brig
OOC Journal: twopoinsettias@lj
Under 18? lol no
Email/IM: twopoinsettias@gmail.com
Characters Played at Singularity: n/a
Character Information ;
Name: Allison / Tex / Agent Texas
Canon/AU/Original: AU
Reference: brb
Canon Point: pre-series
Setting: So in the future mankind has attained slipspace travel, and established space colonies, and promptly gotten embroiled in a war against an alliance of alien races called the Covenant that think humans are a heresy to their religion. Like most wars against aliens, this one was going pretty badly for the humans due to the fact that the Covenant had access to much more sophisticated technology, and especially had mastered Forerunner biotechnology.
Wtf is biotechnology? Basically, the idea that you can combine metal and living tissue to the point of engineering a true hybrid creature. Not a living thing with metal grafted onto it, or a metal thing with some self-contained organic tissue, but a creature with living metal skin, organs, and synthetic tissue that could self-repair and power itself by organic means, instead of relying on external batteries or fuels that would constantly have to be added.
Biotech is used by the Covenant in three main areas:
Armor: Instead of utilizing a conventional computerized HUD, the Covenant armor is both organic and metal, jacking into its wearer's nervous system the same way the Flood does canonly. Bio-armor can self-repair to an extent and enhance the wearer's senses (vision, motion tracking, etc) like a computerized HUD but does not utilize an AI. Covenant armor is like wearing the living skin of a predator that has much keener vision, hearing, reflexes, etc, and takes a great deal of training to utilize effectively. As the military backbone of the Covenant, Sangheili are more likely to be found wearing bio-armor than the other species.
Spaceships: The Covenant use two different kinds of living ships, supported by numerous varieties of ordinary non-living ships. The transport bioships are almost indistinguishable from ordinary ships to the point where the only thing 'living' about them is their onboard computer, which is designed like a nervous system and has some organic components. These ships can also self-repair but have to be fueled conventionally. Their main quality is an intuitive ability to navigate slipspace, allowing Covenant ships (using the bioships as markers) to plot courses that mechanical guidance systems would never follow due to safety protocols. Living ships can fly closer to other objects in space and recognize anomalies more effectively than the automated vessels favored by humanity. Transport bioships tend to reach a cap size, however, and require more intensive care, so they are not intended to be used in battle. A bioship could very easily dock in a larger ship's bay and simply wait there to be used for months or years, so long as its organic components are put in proper stasis. Bioships also do not rust.
The second class of bioship are the smaller warships, which carry only one or two pilots/gunners and are much like their transport cousins in that the onboard computer system is the only organic aspect. These have to be fueled conventionally but retain the ability to intuitively navigate both slipspace and battlefields. For reference, they're very much like the living Cylon ships of Battlestar Galactica, minus the squishy innards.
Atmospheric/ground vehicles: Most of the Covenant vehicle classes in Halo have some organic components, ranging from very mechanized vehicles to equivalent creatures that are actually ridden. Different Covenant races prefer different degrees of mechanization. More organic vehicles are picky about their handlers and might be thought of as armored domesticated animals rather than indifferent vehicles. The Covenant breed and engineer these types to be self-sustaining on battlefields where spare parts and well-equipped repair bays are likely to be in short supply. Vehicles with a greater degree of mechanization can't simply be bred in the wild without a full laboratory dedicated to their care, vehicles that are more organic are more willful, independently intelligent, and have to be tended like a domesticated beast. For reference, the Star Wars dewback lizards.
For the beginning of the war, the Covenant forces were able to outmatch human military power in space and on the ground due to superior numbers, technology, slipspace navigation techniques, etc. Even Dr. Halsey's SPARTANs could only do so much as individual soldiers, and it was her research on captured Covenant bioarmor that made the MJOLNIR suits so effective. The most updated MJOLNIR armored suits are alive in the same fashion as the Covenant armor is, albeit on a lower level of technology and still requiring a great deal of mechanization.
Various military projects were funded to try and bridge the technology gap between human and Covenant. One, known as Project Freelancer, was interested in mimicking Covenant biotechnology and allowing it to be used by ordinary soldiers, not just SPARTANs. By breeding and augmenting reptilian creatures captured from a Covenant outpost, and then using AI programs to create a "human" mind inside the alien creature's body that would understand human speech and commands, Freelancer hoped to give their elite soldiers a partner lifeform; mobile, armored, self-sustaining, capable of tremendous damage in battle without the risk of simple animal aggression being turned on humans. In other words, the Freelancer agents would be K-9 handlers, but their 'dogs' would be fire-breathing mechanical dragons implanted with AI.
How dragons work: Like Mass Effect's turians, dragons grow natural metal scales and grow into formidable armored beasts, so all their mechanical enhancements have to be done when the dragons are newborn. When still embryos in soft, newly hatched eggs, they are removed from those eggs, surgically modified during their entire incubation period (which is prolonged to encourage growth), and then placed inside a new, artificial 'egg' for the natural hatching process, which is induced. The AI program for any given hatchling is implanted in the infant's neural port while the psyche is still developing, allowing the AI and hatchling to 'grow up' together for maximum synchronization. The dragon instincts become the hindbrain, the AI program the forebrain.
Hatching is a profound experience for a dragonet. The struggle of breaking free from a shell often influences the AI/dragon's personality, and the first half hour of a dragonet's life is also where it bonds with a human partner. To choose a partner, hatchlings use a combination of physical sensory information (sweat pheromones, DNA from a bitten finger, etc) as well as computer data on each candidate fed to the AI. More candidates are present at the hatching than there are dragons, so the babies are given a wide range of choice. A dragonet that refuses every candidate may or may not become feral and uncontrollable after a few days, and usually has its AI removed and is released back into the wild or kept as breeding stock. Ordinarily the hatchlings pair up quickly, with the AI nudging them towards more compatible partners. Forcing a dragonet towards a certain human individual has never resulted in a successful bond.
The bond between dragon and rider is a little different than the bond between canon AIs and their partners. Instead of a constant mental link mitigated by a given Freelancer removing their AI or armor, a dragon and its rider are bound by a low level constant link between the AI chip in the dragon skull and the neural interface in any candidate's head. The inherent alien-ness of the dragon mind keeps a certain distance between them, so for example it is actually easier for a dragon to describe an object than try to get their partner to 'see' through their eyes, because the perceptions are still radically different. In battle, the level of mental synchronization is forcibly increased by use of a direct umbilical cable, usually trailing from the dragon's head ala the braid tentacles in Avatar. For hatching, particularly, part of the 'test' of any candidate is getting a squalling, hungry, and sometimes violent dragonet to allow its tendrils to be handled.
Some dragons with exceptionally high sync rates with their partners develop a rare organic empathic bond, cultivated by biting or poisoning their partners. An empathic bond, unlike the wireless communication between chip and neural interface, can't be shut off or disrupted electronically. This has caused some unforeseen problems, especially when the dragons rise to mate, as the empathic bond causes the rider to feel the overwhelming desires of a dragon in heat. Riders are encouraged to arrange a willing partner if their dragons are due to rise in a mating flight, as the mental "participation" of the rider seems to increase chances of fertilization. Most of the fighting dragons are male to suit the male majority of partner candidates, and to prevent a female fighting dragon from having to be grounded every time she got pregnant. The Project maintains a small number of feral beasts for breeding stock, mostly female, and use the larger fighting dragons as studs to encourage larger eggs and/or specific characteristics. Mating flights tend to heighten libidos all around, not just for the riders or even for riders with empathic bonds. Even unpartnered dragons project themselves on a chemical (pheromone) and empathic level and will affect anyone in the vicinity. There are drugs to keep a dragon sterile and suppress their heat cycles but only female fighting dragons are encouraged to use them, as natural aggression in the males makes for better fighting machines despite all inconveniences.
In this AU, the AI chip is never (or rarely) physically present inside a Freelancer's data port since removing a chip from a dragon is dangerous. At best, the dragon body goes into a coma and can be kept in stasis with proper facilities. At worst, the dragon reverts to its animal instincts and becomes uncontrollable. An AI chip might be able to survive the death of its dragon body, but the trauma often remains to cause future issues. AIs intended for dragons tend to work best when they think of themselves as that one individual dragon and not consider the easy solution of dumping their body for a new one. Because of this, dragonets are treated very much like children, educated and trained gradually instead of uploading all necessary information directly into the AI. Dragon AIs are designed to communicate primarily with their partners and only experienced individuals can successfully jack directly into another computer network. The more an AI begins to think of itself as a computer and not a dragon, the lower its synchronization rate with its own body often becomes, which is why a starship AI can't simply be stuck into a dragon and expected to work. While all AI are created with hypothetical equal capacity, the limitations of any individual dragon's mind causes imbalances so that there are, just like humans, bright and curious dragons alongside slow or uncreative dragons. Adult dragons can sometimes be re-assigned to new partners, or will occasionally accept temporary re-assignments if their partner is injured or otherwise not available for a mission. In general, though, dragons crave their egg partners and are never quite as willing for others. Those with empathic bonds never form another, even if their original partner is killed, and never achieve a very high rate of mental synchronization via the neural interface with any new human partner.
Dragons develop special abilities as they grow. Offensive abilities include things like breathing fire, spitting acid, poisonous claws or fangs, etc. Defensive abilities include things like color-change camouflage, invisibility cloaking, small-scale forcefields, etc. Many of these talents end up reflecting on the dragons' partners as well. The final upgrade to a Freelancer's bio-armor (which is a lower grade version of SPARTAN armor) involves linking dragon and armor. For instance, a dragon with the ability to change the color of its scales will have some of those living scales integrated into its handler's armor, so that it will have the same capability. A dragon with accelerated healing will pass that ability onto its partner via the armor. Dragons with fireproof scales, or scales that are resistant to acid, or dragons that breathe different chemicals in gas or liquid form all have some reciprocal effect on their partner.
Ranking: Freelancer candidates are encouraged to leave their old lives at the door. Recruits are assigned codenames that reflect their rank and seniority within Freelancer, starting with Towns and then working up to Cities. Capitols are mission leaders and prime partners-to-be for hatchlings, or have recently partnered with a hatchling but haven't yet gone on their first live mission. A full active Freelancer agent is a State, although this does not always necessarily mean the individual is partnered with a dragon. Nation and Continent rankings are so far only assigned to SPARTANs, who are not precisely within the same program, but share the use of bio-armor.
Personality: Tex got off to a rocky start, spending her childhood in a "maximum security" orphanage that presumably wasn't too pleasant. She became a soldier because it gave her freedom from the restrictions of her old life, and eventually started to entertain the idea of becoming a mercenary someday so she could set her own terms and no longer have to take orders simply for the sake of taking orders. As of her canon point in the AU, however, none of the awful things have yet happened that will push her over from dedicated soldier to survivalist mercenary fugitive.
Tex is ruthless, efficient, highly skilled, calm and daring and practical and all the other things that a highly trained soldier ought to be in the face of danger. She's just not very nice about it. Weighty things like the fate of humanity can move her, certainly, and she has her own codes of conduct that she lives by, but pinning down right and wrong and motivation with Texas is sometimes a little tricky. Ending a war is an Important Thing worth sacrificing for. Turning on your own comrades depends on the stakes. Siding with evil crazy people is usually out of bounds, but again, stakes.
Mostly, she's a level-headed pragmatist with a side of bad temper and a mercenary bent. Considering that she's partnered with an insubordinate and violent dragon, Omega, who daily threatens to eat her or set her on fire and actually attempts to eat other people, 'bad temper' can be translated as 'will beat the hell out of you with your own snapped off arm for $10, or for insulting her, or for being just so incredibly retarded in front of her.' She is not interested in being patient with bullshit, either from her dragon or from other people.
Tex likes money, weaponry, competence, survival, defying the odds, defying the odds in a way that completely sticks it to someone calculating those odds, money, and the satisfaction that comes with knowing that she's one of the best at what she does and that someone somewhere out there goes to bed every night hating her for it. Also the satisfaction of shanking people who deeply, deeply deserve to be shanked without warning, mercy, or hesitation. She likes that too. In fact it's hard to tell where Omega ends and Tex begins, because Omega's aggressive and covetous nature certainly influences Tex, but some people would say she's always been a rotten bitch and Omega only enhances what was already present in her personality. Her promiscuity is at least somewhat dragon-influenced, as Omega is one of the older, larger dragons and used consistently as a stud for the breeding stock. Also, Tex very much believes in manipulating men in order to get an advantage and doesn't feel the slightest bit ashamed using them. In her opinion, the military (and society at large) is so gender biased that a girl has to do whatever she can to make her way. On some missions she simply finds it easier to pretend to be a man by using a voice changer and never removing her helmet, and it wouldn't be a lie to say that Tex sometimes deliberately tries to bring out the worst in men (by flirting or what-have-you) and then judges them harshly for it.
Tex is perfectly willing to cooperate with her comrades, however, if they don't make a point of irritating her. She does prefer to work alone and chafes internally sometimes at taking orders (or Omega does for her) but she's well aware of the value of a team in some situations. Still, she'd rather be on her own and not responsible for idiots or worrying about taking an idiot's orders. She's used to being ostracized as well, given her gender, her amazingly high mission scores, and her infamously unmanageable dragon. The Director of Project Freelancer has taken a special interest in her and Omega, which hasn't led to any good feelings amongst the other Freelancers. Tex is also the sort of girl that finishes a fight, no matter who starts it. Omega himself is considered a bully and a menace, even to the other dragons, and some of the resentment towards him carries over to Tex, which she in turn makes little effort to diffuse peacefully.
Nevertheless, deep down Tex has a decent heart and would prefer people not kill her friends and would like the war to come to an end and nobody else have to be sacrificed. She devotes a great deal of energy to keeping Omega under control, sometimes to the point of isolating herself deliberately and making no deep connections with her comrades that might someday be jeopardized by Omega accidentally or deliberately savaging that person's dragon. She broke off her engagement to her childhood sweetheart Leonard Church after Omega's first few mating flights, unable to make her fiance understand that a ring meant nothing in the mental grip of a dragon in heat. Church's disapproval over Tex joining Freelancer is a constant bone of contention between them, although underneath their petty bickering and snarling they're both still very much in love. Due to Omega's consistent use as a stud dragon, Tex is expected to make herself available to the partner of any female harnessed dragon that Omega might fly in order to 'enhance' the mating flight and the chance of conception, and doesn't always scruple at dragging some unsuspecting dude into a closet when Omega is being particularly overwhelming. There's also some ugly muttering about what goes on behind closed doors when the Director of Project Freelancer calls her in for personal meetings. Because of this, Tex occupies an unfortunate position in the Project, both desired and resented.
As a side note, Tex is actually an AI. She doesn't know it, her friends don't know it, and it's probable that nobody else aside from the Director of Project Freelancer knows it. The original Tex, the girl named Allison, died at some point according to the Director, and it's presumably his doing that she was resurrected in her current form.
Abilities and Weaknesses:
Tex: extensive combat training, infiltration training, temporary invisibility due to Omega's cloaking ability. Voice changer in her helmet that allows her to sound male. Empathic bond with Omega, which shortens her temper and increases her sexual appetite and covetousness towards money, power, sex partners, etc. Omega is a willful, violent and often malicious beast that likes to argue with Tex and hide things from her and get by with anything he can, and a mental argument in the middle of a battle can leave both of them distracted. Nor is Omega always willing to come to Tex's rescue, or she to his, and Tex has more than once deliberately starved Omega to keep him grounded as punishment. Neither he nor Tex have yet discovered their own abilities to bodyjack but may in the future. In the past Tex has been subject to unexplained blackouts and even hallucinations, and these episodes seem to cause Omega to go mindlessly berserk.
Omega: Flights limited by his fuel supply. Natural metal-reinforced scales and bones, claws, fangs, with temporary invisibility as his defensive ability. His offensive ability is to spit napalm, which can remain unlit or be ignited as it leaves his mouth. He is mostly immune to his own fire, at least in the area of his throat and jaws. To keep up a supply of the necessary chemicals to produce napalm, Omega has to produce/feed on them, and so for instance drinks gasoline like water. Without supplying himself with necessary chemicals, Omega will lose the use of certain abilities, although unlike an entirely organic creature he won't get 'sick' from being starved. Omega is a scheming bastard but not the brightest crayon in the box, easily enraged, easily distracted and flattered, and arrogant. He has a flagrant disregard for anything smaller than him as a threat, and like any male dragon is very proud of his own virility and battle prowess. Despite his contentious relationship with Tex, he is fiercely possessive of her.
Inventory:
- 1 battle rifle
- several Covenant frag grenades
- 1 magnum pistol
- modified MJOLNIR bio-armor
- 1 dragon (Freelancer Type-35 Aerial Assault Vehicle #389423-DRC0-92387348753)
- Omega's riding gear and harness
- some supplies kept in the harness, rations, spare parts, extra ammo, odds and ends for dragon upkeep.
Appearance: Like most of the characters in Red vs Blue, Tex has no canon appearance aside from her black MJOLNIR Mk VI armor (seen here: http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/rvb/images/4/4b/Tex2.png). The armor is said to have been specially developed for the Freelancer program; aside from the standard equipment like HUD, motion tracker, and AI slot, Tex's armor has a cloaking ability that allows her to go invisible and fool electronic motion trackers, but still appears as a transparent ripple to the naked eye when she moves. The cloaking does not extend to pressure sensors or audio. In general the armor makes her faster and stronger, more effective than the equipment worn by the rest of the simulation soldiers (Caboose and the others) and less effective than the equipment of a real SPARTAN like Master Chief. Tex's also has a voice modifying device which she uses to disguise her voice as a man's.
For out of armor appearance, Tex is average height, well muscled and athletic, with short red hair, blue eyes, and a large star tattoo over her spine. She has quite a few scars, both combat and surgical and more than a few from her own dragon. Her PB is Kari Berg.
Omega's PB is the Chromatic Black Dragon from Dungeons&Dragons. He is somewhat larger than this size comparison, about the size of an African elephant and weighing in around 7-8 tons. His scales are a glossy black and resemble obsidian rock, with red undertones to his belly and gray metal accents.
Age: Tex is in her early twenties, Omega is like. Four.
OC/AU Justification ;
If AU, How is Your Version Different From Canon, and How Will That Come Across? ._. Dragons. Also, this is essentially pre-series Tex, before the Epsilon incident and the Project getting shut down, and Freelancer itself has been in operation for a much longer time than it has in Red vs Blue. This Project has an established history of breeding dragons and has been using dumb AI programs to try and create dragon AIs. Other smart AIs have been utilized but only inferior versions. The current incarnation is unique in that the Director was finally able to secure a top of the line smart AI, the Alpha, which could have easily gone into service on a battleship or space station.
If OC, Did You Run Your Character Through a Mary-Sue Litmus Test? e.e
And What Did You Score? e.e;;;;;;;;
Samples ;
Log Sample:
The reports were still pouring in by the time the second of this colony's suns finally slipped below the horizon. Thousands of Covenant troops, they said. The fortresses were overrun, and the great guns that might have kept Covenant ships off the remaining evacuation shuttles had gone silent. There were still hundreds of civilians left to evacuate with a Covenant fleet en route, probably to glass the planet, and an entire army of aliens lay between the remaining military forces of the colony and the people they were supposed to rescue.
In other words, just another day on the losing side of the war.
The commanders had been arguing for the better part of an hour, waving their hands at holographic displays and demanding reports from their scurrying aides, while the small group of armored Freelancers stood silent and impatient off to the side. The Freelancers were the reinforcements the colony had begged from the UNSC. There were only ten of them.
Tex watched the men, exhausted and despairing and bitter, wrangle futilely amongst themselves. The words were running together now about how they were doomed, the UNSC hadn't sent them SPARTANs, what good could one small squad of soldiers do, how would they rescue the civilians, how would they rescue themselves before the Covenant fleet arrived. She could sympathize with their frustration after weeks of steady retreat, holding the Covenant off so the shuttles in each major city could get away, but when her chronometer finally ticked to one hour and fifteen minutes with no resolution as to how to quarter and supply them for the night, much less how to proceed with a battle plan, she stepped forward and placed her gloved hand on the holographic map of the battlefield, disrupting it.
"We move at dawn," she stated, voice changer rendering her words flat and masculine. "Your orders are to assist with the evacuation while we engage the Covenant forces."
The commanders shifted back involuntarily from her, unnerved by her featureless visor and the finality in her voice. One of them protested weakly, "But, what good could ten soldiers possibly--"
"We are twenty," another State said beside her, just as cool and emotionless though he was speaking out of turn. "Our dragons are waiting just outside the camp."
There was a moment of silence, everyone to a man staring, before they all started clamoring at once. They had asked for SPARTANs, not science projects and zoo animals, how could anyone have thought sending ravening beasts to the frontline was a good idea, utilizing them was out of the question, etc.
Tex had had enough. She simply turned on her heel and strode off, leaving the other States to make arguments in her place or follow as they wanted. As the mission leader it was technically her job to see all the details finalized, but she wasn't a diplomat or a babysitter, and after a long flight with a cranky, whining dragon she was in no mood to entertain ignorant questions that would've been answered by their hosts reading the briefing they'd been sent. One of the others could play ambassador. They'd probably be better at it. Tex wouldn't even be in charge of a group like this, certainly not by preference, but for her dragon, who wouldn't take orders from any of the smaller beasts who were also assigned to this mission.
The rush of wings above her didn't even draw her glance. Omega dropped out of the night sky and backwinged, landing heavily beside her in a gust of gasoline stench and shaking the ground with his impact. His obsidian shiny scales reflected the lights of the camp as he folded his wings and dropped his great horned head to her level. The soldiers around them stared, mouths open and dropping things they'd been holding, and quickly made themselves scarce, but fortunately no one screamed or ran headlong in a panic. They had, after all, seen the dragon formation arriving several hours ago, winging over the camp to land a safe distance away as there was not quite enough room in the crowded camp for ten dragons to bivouac. Omega, one of the largest, had to pull his wings in tightly to pace alongside her, though she was walking a cleared avenue meant for tanks.
He snorted contemptuously at the soldiers who instantly vacated the area and their posts, no doubt to spread rumors of dragons running amok, and his mental voice was a low rumble like thunder in her head. ::They run like rabbits. This is what we're here to rescue?::
"If they'll let us," Tex answered, sharing Omega's annoyance. This mission had not been spur of the moment. The details had been communicated to the colony military leadership several days ago, but they had refused to accept Freelancer as a viable substitute for SPARTANs and kept asking for a "real" rescue.
::Leave them to burn,:: Omega suggested blithely, his indifference washing strong for a moment through their empathic link, and Tex would've jabbed him with her cattle prod if she'd had it with her. Comments like that were exactly what made his wing-mates and their riders look askance at him, and frightened the poor groundling bastards who had to rely on him for air support or rescue or whatever in any given mission. At least he'd had the decency to not say it aloud, but she doubted that had been deliberate consideration.
"We're not leaving anyone," she snapped. "Orders are orders, and the civilians certainly won't care who or what is doing the rescuing." Not to mention Omega would never let an opportunity for battle go by, even if he had no interest in preserving any human lives with his efforts. "Did you send someone to scout around?"
::I went myself.::
While most of Omega's body was metal and jutting bone spurs, the dark gray tendrils that trailed from underneath the spiked ruff on his neck were unarmored and pliable. She barely had to reach up before one slid velvet-smooth into her hand, and she connected the end directly to the data port at the base of her skull instead of bothering with her own length of connecting cable. There was a click and then the world fell away for a moment, as it always did in the rush of high synchronization. Suddenly Omega's breath was her breath, the great lungs expanding and contracting, the hearts beating in her chest pumping hot black blood through the fine synthetic veins of her furled wings, warming them. She smelled the camp as Omega did, the stench of human meat, the savory lingering drafts of oil and vehicle exhaust, and the familiar smells of his wingmates, one a female soon coming into season.
Omega purred softly at her notice of that. The sound vibrated throughout her chest and sent a low jolt of desire through the pit of her stomach, but Tex came back to herself quickly, taking a gulp of cool evening air and smacking her armored glove against his equally armored cheek.
::Get over yourself. Report.::
Painstakingly, a mental picture began to form in Tex's head, the dizzying shades of color that were Omega's senses of smell and taste factoring into his perception of the battlefield he'd overflown. She had to stop a moment and rest her arm along his great head, trying to make sense of the confusing images that were only natural and intuitive to him.
::A Scarab,:: she noted, keeping to silent communication so as not to alarm the already spooked soldiers in the vicinity. Not that there probably were any. ::That's how they took the fortresses.:: She sent a short burst of irritated admonition at Omega, too, he had flown incredibly low over the enemy to get a better look. His cloaking ability kept him off motion trackers, but that didn't mean he couldn't be heard or even smelled while in the air, especially by the Covenant beasts, and his cloaking would eventually fizzle out under a determined hail of bullets.
::I considered doing something about it,:: he responded smugly, not chastised in the least.
::With what fire? You're low on juice and you know it.::
Omega's neck frill slicked back in vague annoyance at the reminder. ::I don't need anything to crush metal.::
"You need plenty of something to fly." She disconnected the link abruptly and darted in between a pair of vehicles, snagging a pale-faced boy by the back of his uniform collar before he could flee. "Hello there. My dragon is thirsty."
The boy was busy staring at Omega over her shoulder, terrified gaze reflecting the mountain of black scale and curving bone horns that was the dragon's head lowering to inspect his rider's catch.
"Oh don't mind him," Tex said briskly. "He's not hungry right now--"
::I am hungry.::
"--but he is in need of some liquids," she continued, ignoring the interruption. "What have you got around here for jet fuel? Gasoline?"
::This isn't very good,:: Omega said thirty minutes later, licking the bottom of a shredded fuel canister disconsolately. ::It's old.::
"It's what they had to spare."
::They could spare more for someone who is going to fight their battles for them.::
"It's your battle too, you goddamn whiner," Tex admonished automatically, busy tugging on the straps of Omega's harness. Size and strength aside, Omega was valued particularly for his camouflage ability, which would let both him and his rider fly unnoticed over the enemy encampment and, if all went well according to the plan she and the other States had worked out for themselves, drop Tex quietly into their Covenant camp with a load of explosives waiting to be rigged on timers. It would fail if even one harness strap went flapping loudly in the wind and alerted any sentries, or worse, the Covenant beasts. A sentry might investigate a noise on his own and be silenced. A roused drake would simply start squalling and wake the entirety of its flock, and probably the rest of the army.
For whatever reason, possibly due to their firmly superior technology, the Covenant hadn't been interested in breeding many animals for atmospheric flight. The bio-ships had pilots, not riders, and had nowhere near the autonomy of a dragon, which might fight without its partner. Bio-ships were also rarely committed to ground operations that could be covered by purely mechanical Ghosts or troop carriers. The ground forces themselves utilized various breeds of drakes, flightless draconic creatures, and Omega had seen dozens of their flocks in his fly-over, tangled together in knots of scale and leathery hide.
Without wings even the wiliest, most vicious drake was no match for a dragon in flight, but the creatures were still dangerous. Tex had no particular worries about Omega in the air, but on the ground a flock of smaller drakes could swarm over him and cripple his wings, and a large one engage him directly. Like dragons they had special abilities, breathing fire or frost or spitting poison.
::They are nothing,:: Omega insisted, picking up something of her distracted thoughts. ::Flightless lizards crawling around on the dirt. It would be a much better challenge if they had brought a sandworm, or one of the serpents.::
Tex didn't bother to correct him. Sandworms ate cities and sea serpents sank battleships meant for space. She-- and he-- had only been lucky so far to have not run into them on a battlefield.
"If you're done, we need to get aloft," she said instead. "That Scarab needs to be out of commission before the sun rises."
Omega liked the idea of being solely responsible for killing the Scarab. Not so much the part where they would spend all night sneaking around and setting bombs, and then detonate them to signal the colony forces and the rest of the Freelancers to attack, while Omega and Tex would have to head back here to rest and refuel before they could participate in the battle. Omega was a heavyweight dragon and couldn't fly all night and all day without refueling, or at least not with the agility he would need in the dawn battle.
The black dragon tossed the last empty canister away from him contemptuously and reared up on his hind legs, beating his wings strongly to see if the harness shifted or felt loose. Tex squinted behind her visor to see the straps hidden by the motion of his wings but found nothing to complain of, and Omega planted all four feet again, his frill rising in excitement despite himself. He didn't lower a shoulder to Tex but he didn't need to, already long used to swinging herself up by his spikes. She took her place on his shoulders, settling into the saddle and latching herself to the harness as the gray tendrils that grew along the length of his neck like a horse's mane stretched towards her. She took the nearest few in her hands to stroke, and was rewarded by a sudden spike of pleasure across the empathic channel. Omega's frill swelled and stretched to its full height, his tail lashing, and suddenly the tendrils were out of her hands and fitting themselves to every data port down the back of her armor, jacking in neatly all the way down her spine even as his muscles bunched and he launched himself into the air. The very first wingstroke they always took together, minds linked so tightly she saw only what he saw, felt only what he felt, and the familiar burn of battle-eagerness swept through both of them. He wanted to roar but she had to do it for him, inside her helmet and muted where it would be lost in the rush of wind, and then came the second wingstroke and they were away.
Network Sample:
[ The video feed turns on, revealing a figure in black, futuristic armor with a featureless visor. The background behind the person is taken up by trees, indicating a wilderness area...
And also a dragon the size of an elephant, mantling over the corpse of what looks to be some poor herbivore dinosaur and enthusiastically disemboweling it. The awful sounds of this play as background to the speaker's exceptionally mechanical, flat tone, disguised as male by the helmet's voice changer. ]
To whoever runs this place, and I do not mean that goddamn AI, you have five minutes to start providing information, or I decide that this is a Covenant military operation, and I turn him loose.
[ A hand is waved in the direction of the dragon, who glances up at the motion with gore dripping from his jaws, and hisses like a snake. ]
Five minutes start now.