Thread by @Lancer_RPG

And now, for Part II of Loyal Wing Solmaz's (@LBrawlo) three part introduction arc!

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“Sixteen KIA, could be more because of the ‘wash-burns.” The deck tech shook her head. “Fucking sludge." She tucked her clipboard and walked to the next shuttle.

Ten of them, ticking and cooling in the Kano’s hanger. Quiet.

They carried the dead.

Solmaz walked behind, arms crossed. Her side ached and her respirator mask fogged. Two Loyal Wings walked at her side — guards, minders, sent by Ibn Bilal to pull her from her chassis before she could launch.

The four of them waked in silence. The Wings gave her space.

“Shuttle 040.” The tech stopped, plugged her slate into a port beside the flank door. “Pilots marked the inside as clear of ‘wash, ten KIA, two from Hamza.” She looked back at Solmaz. “Ready?”

Solmaz nodded. “Open it up.”

The tech tapped her slate, and the door hissed open.

Dead nanites and blood dribbled out from the gutter as the door slid open, splattering on the hanger floor.

A pale arm flopped out of the dark belly of the shuttle, bloodless, scored from a greywash splash, its fingers splayed wide.

Solmaz and the others stepped back.

The tech’s light played over the dark interior of the shuttle.

“He in here?” She asked.

There were no bodies, only the lumpen mass of tangled dead, picked out in stark, flat white. Drained of color, of life, of anything.

Solmaz looked away. “No,” she said. “Next.”

They tried the last two shuttles, more dead Wings and the people they couldn’t save.

No Khalid.

Solmaz waved off her escort and left the hanger, moving past the techs coming in with their pressure washers and body bags.

She turned down a side corridor, and wept.

Khalid’s chassis was marked with black grease pen: KIA-MULCH

Solmaz walked a slow circle around it, checking for any kind of clue. A foreman and his techs stood to the side.

“You said there was no body inside?” She hollered over the din of the pool.

“‘Pit was clean.”

The medicos found Khalid mixed in with the most injured of the refugees, near death, the stumps of his limbs wrapped in rags. Greywash. The last centuries of nanites wriggling across him, trying to consume, to persist.

They rushed him to the medical bay, then called Solmaz.

Solmaz only wanted to touch her baby brother. To kiss his forehead and wake him, and tell him that all would be well.

He was alive.

They had been born into a world that hated them. They had fought to save it, and won.

Every day alive was a revolution, and was enough.

“The greywash is contained, but it persists still.” The medicos told her. “We must keep him still and use our own to root out the Maw’s work.”

Solmaz sat beside his containment tank, head hung.

“We expect another few percent body mass lost to the effort, but he will live.”

“He is all I have left,” Solmaz said, tears in her eyes. A terrible and honest hate gripped her, twisted her gut. “You keep him alive. I don’t care how.”

The medicos assured her they would.

Alone, alone. Solmaz, alone.

Three days out from the Maw’s last stronghold.

Solmaz worked the heavy bag again. Her side ached, but dull. The real pain was the weight of loss, but it was so vast as to be unable to be held, to be faced just yet.

So she drove her fists into the raw canvass, again and again.

She would not lead this sortie. Command was given to Majid, an Honored Wing who once toiled under the Maw’s yoke.

Majid’s chassis was brilliant. A shining gold star, behind which the rest of Makteba Kano’s Albatross followed.

Solmaz controlled her breath during the fall.

The Maw had some anti-orbital fire: massive beams picked out in red by Solmaz’s HuD, stuttering up from its last stronghold.

Few Albatross died — those that did were unlucky enough to be in proximity to the flash-pillars.

The real terrors were ahead, in the deep.

At 20 kilometers, the sky darkened: flak. A brutal cannonade, inelegant but effective.

Solmaz tucked her chassis behind her dropframe. The broad shield, heavy and thick, howled with shrapnel and the terrors of atmospheric entry.

The pilot to her side —Awal— screamed, hit.

Solmaz focused. A shuttle streaked past her, billowing flame and smoke, a flat spin that would end in hard ground, those not yet dead inside only moment from the absolute.

Awal’s IF/F winked red. She, too, dead. Her chassis dragging the both of them down, unstable.

Focus.

She fired her chassis’ directional jets, stabilizing. Her Sek, still under control, picked up the slack, firing in tempo to maintain stability.

The ground, inexorable, eager.

The Maw below, hungry.

Disengage, fire chutes, hard burn, don’t bite off your tongue as counter-k fires. Keep your eyes closed, keep your mouth open. Exhale so your lungs don’t explode.

Solmaz hit the ground in a gout of lunar dust.

All around her, corpses and knights met the earth.

Behind Majid, Chosen to face the Maw, the Albatross advanced.

Solmaz ran low and fast, lance-tip shrieking white. At her sides, other eager Albatross, whooping across the all-band as the Maw’s frontline crumpled.

Solmaz laid waste, but kept her goal: the Maw, beyond.

Consumption. What nearly killed us all. This the Maw pledged.

Us. As if humanity ever thought of her when it spoke of itself.

Union? What had it thought of her when she was nameless chattel?

And the Albatross? What peace had they afforded her?

Her lance. Her grit teeth.

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(Solmaz is @LBrawlo's character for their upcoming Lancer campaign. If you dig this three part intro arc, you can get one for your character as well! Check out the Lancer discord here: discord.gg/TcWQ4Qs for more info on how)