Commander Jane Shepard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
earthborn) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
abraxaslogs2022-10-07 04:18 pm
earthborn) wrote in abraxaslogs2022-10-07 04:18 pm
Per Aspera ★ October catch-all ★ Open
Who: Shepard and various + Open
When: October
Where: Around Cadens and Shepard's Horizon
What: Shooting Range practice & lessons, social mingle, and some planned threads
Warnings: guns, cursing, likely discussion of violence
I. Range at the Horizon
The Normandy loomed over the shooting range, all two-hundred sixteen meters of sleek faster-than-light spacecraft. It was parked, ignominiously, on the dirt itself in very much the way that the real Normandy would only have been if it were trapped in dry-dock for repairs.
Today's occasion is nothing so necessary.
Instead, on the ground-space aft of the cargo hold there's been set up a shooting range. It looks a little makeshift, but it's serviceable enough. The Horizon's ubiquitous wish-fulfillment makes set-up and tidying simple enough, for a start.
Off to the left, there stand a few weapons racks, featuring a variety of firearms ranging from the types of firearms that might be familiar to any member of the Cadens military to a row of oddly-shaped rectangular devices representing weaponry native to Shepard's own home-universe, each gun neatly folded-down and in its place.
There are half-a-dozen shooting lanes with targets of varying distance and sophistication, ranging from holographic figures posed in attitudes of threat, paper cut-outs with zones of deadliness printed on them, vaguely humanoid outlines in plywood, aluminum, and sand-backed paper. There's even a line of bottles perched on a metal crate off to one side: the labels are printed in an alien script, and not all of them are completely empty. The lanes themselves are nothing more glamorous than strips of soil and grass, with an odd mix of gravel, beachsand, and whatever else had come in from the bordering Domains. Shepard had chosen this spot specifically for its position at the crux of several, unclaimed, and unlikely to be contested; all the better for a meeting-place.
In any case, Shepard is on-hand to assist. There's even a sign:
PRACTICE RANGE OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
help yourself if you know what you're doing
assistance available upon request
II. Rager at the Horizon
The cargo bay of the Normandy stands open, the wide bay door slid down to form a sturdy ramp, and up in the belly of the ship itself, amongst the crates and spare machinery is... a wet bar? Well, it's a table surface, and there are a variety of options, which may or may not be familiar. Serrice Ice Brandy, Batarian Fire-whiskey... Ryncol? Maybe you just want to stick with a nice beer, or seltzer-water, or maybe someone here should reconsider the combination of guns and alcohol.
Or maybe you should just go home, if you're going to be a coward about it.
In any case, Shepard is there, standing behind the bar, sitting around in the shade having a drink, or just messing around with the equipment. Step on up, and have a go, why don't you? It's hardly a wild party, but it's not as if anyone has anything better to do.
III. October Event
[ TBA ]
When: October
Where: Around Cadens and Shepard's Horizon
What: Shooting Range practice & lessons, social mingle, and some planned threads
Warnings: guns, cursing, likely discussion of violence
I. Range at the Horizon
The Normandy loomed over the shooting range, all two-hundred sixteen meters of sleek faster-than-light spacecraft. It was parked, ignominiously, on the dirt itself in very much the way that the real Normandy would only have been if it were trapped in dry-dock for repairs.
Today's occasion is nothing so necessary.
Instead, on the ground-space aft of the cargo hold there's been set up a shooting range. It looks a little makeshift, but it's serviceable enough. The Horizon's ubiquitous wish-fulfillment makes set-up and tidying simple enough, for a start.
Off to the left, there stand a few weapons racks, featuring a variety of firearms ranging from the types of firearms that might be familiar to any member of the Cadens military to a row of oddly-shaped rectangular devices representing weaponry native to Shepard's own home-universe, each gun neatly folded-down and in its place.
There are half-a-dozen shooting lanes with targets of varying distance and sophistication, ranging from holographic figures posed in attitudes of threat, paper cut-outs with zones of deadliness printed on them, vaguely humanoid outlines in plywood, aluminum, and sand-backed paper. There's even a line of bottles perched on a metal crate off to one side: the labels are printed in an alien script, and not all of them are completely empty. The lanes themselves are nothing more glamorous than strips of soil and grass, with an odd mix of gravel, beachsand, and whatever else had come in from the bordering Domains. Shepard had chosen this spot specifically for its position at the crux of several, unclaimed, and unlikely to be contested; all the better for a meeting-place.
In any case, Shepard is on-hand to assist. There's even a sign:
help yourself if you know what you're doing
assistance available upon request
II. Rager at the Horizon
The cargo bay of the Normandy stands open, the wide bay door slid down to form a sturdy ramp, and up in the belly of the ship itself, amongst the crates and spare machinery is... a wet bar? Well, it's a table surface, and there are a variety of options, which may or may not be familiar. Serrice Ice Brandy, Batarian Fire-whiskey... Ryncol? Maybe you just want to stick with a nice beer, or seltzer-water, or maybe someone here should reconsider the combination of guns and alcohol.
Or maybe you should just go home, if you're going to be a coward about it.
In any case, Shepard is there, standing behind the bar, sitting around in the shade having a drink, or just messing around with the equipment. Step on up, and have a go, why don't you? It's hardly a wild party, but it's not as if anyone has anything better to do.
III. October Event
[ TBA ]
no subject
It had been an intriguing contrast; Shepard's not immune to curiosity just because she doesn't usually have time for it. She is still human, after all.
"How does all that and the uh— bow and arrows, square with there being spacers?"
no subject
Luckily, she has a moment with which to stall, which she does by firing the gun. Not quite on target, just yet--there are adjustments to be made as she gets used to the weight of it in her hands and the way it moves when she fires.
"Our Earth had to start over." She thinks that will explain the advanced, yet somehow ancient technology in her domain, alongside more primitive elements. "The spacefarers, they left a thousand years ago, after things got bad. When they came back, they didn't exactly like what they saw."
no subject
She trails off, chewing on it, and then seems to remember herself; Shepard turns to face Aloy almost abruptly. She'd seemed grim about it earlier, when the conversation had briefly touched on the Geth, but without detail. Shepard wanted those particulars.
"Tell me what you mean by 'start over'. I can figure a certain level of destruction, but what I saw looks like you got put right back to the stone age."
no subject
There's some distaste in her voice. Despite the fact that she certainly understands the value of a place like this, she's not sure she'll ever be entirely comfortable with it. Seeing Shepard turn all her attention towards her, and not the target, she lowers the rifle and lets it rest idly at her side.
"Total destruction and then reconstitution of the biosphere." Aloy says as a statement of fact, though it's difficult not to hear the twinge of pain in her voice--Zero Dawn was able to bring life back to Earth, but that doesn't change how much was lost. "Everything you saw in that bunker was ancient technology."
no subject
Shepard blinks at her, and simply digests for a moment.
Ancient technology isn't exactly a foreign concept, that's easily squared away. Less neat is the concept of that tech being human in origin. Ancient has always meant alien, something beyond normal comprehension.
total destruction of the biosphere
"Fucking hell," Shepard says. It's appalling, the whole concept. They'd lost the damn homeworld, and not even to some outside threat— was she hearing this right? Synthetics had, had what, risen up and killed them all? It was worse than Reapers; the Reapers you could at least blame on someone else.
Somewhere in the distance, a tremor strikes the earth, a subtle but present rumble of the Horizon itself responding to Shepard's disquiet. Her face is still impassive; Shepard has always had good reason to take pride in her poker-face.
"How?"
no subject
"Humans got used to fighting wars with machines instead of soldiers. Self-sustaining armies that could turn biomass into fuel in emergency situations. I guess that worked well for a while, but then there was a glitch, in one of the units. Made the whole swarm go out of control. They spread it to others."
She figures Shepard can probably fill in the blanks from there.
"No backdoor." That's the part that gets her, every time. The hubris of it. Faro, thinking he could control that kind of monster, that he'd never need an emergency shutdown. "So, they reproduced. Corrupted other machines. By the time someone found the glitch, it was already too late."
no subject
No backdoor, no backup plan, no contingency worth caring about, and why would you? No profit in giving a damn about people, after all. The most careless, high-handed, egotistical shit you could imagine— The worst evil in the world is so common and banal that you barely have to name it, always. As common as dirt and twice as filthy.
"We Gethed ourselves, with military mechs, without even getting to the next star-cluster first. That's just sad. Pisses me off."
It was enough to make you want to punch something. Someone. The Horizon shifts again, like an uneasy cat, and Shepard has to exert real effort into not simply stalking over to the gun-rack in search of a less appropriate way to vent her agitation. Shepard folds her arms again instead; control yourself, breathe, you are better than this. You are.
"So business as usual," If you're hearing anger in her voice, it's because she's angry. It's not even her world, but then... since when did it have to be? Shepard didn't have to live somewhere to despise the waste of it all, "How'd this finally circle back around to you, and your kind of people? You don't strike me as the kind of person who goes on ice and lets the chips lay where they fall, and nobody survived that kind of apocalypse, not for long."
no subject
Shepard seems all at once shocked and not. Maybe more outraged, that something like this was even allowed to happen. The shift in the Horizon has Aloy looking over her shoulder, until things settle again. When she continues, it's with slight trepidation, not only because she hasn't told this story in detail yet, but also because Shepard appears to be taking this slightly personally.
Or, at least, she feels the same anger at how unnecessary all of it was. How avoidable, if not for one man's ego.
"There was a group of scientists. When they figured out what went wrong, they did the only thing they could--a failsafe, for after everyone was gone."
Because everyone was gone. Shepard puts that much together. "GAIA, the AI they developed, spent hundreds of years brute-forcing the shutdown code for the swarm. Then, she started to rebuild. Automated terraforming."