Black Temple: Deserters

> how far is it? Could you just go there in a suitably aimed drop pod or something like it?

It's really not that far from the city, fortunately. It even had the decency to land in a nice sand-free zone so it's not going to have riled up the worms.
God those things are a pain, if there's one thing the Temple does right it's wiping those things and their creators out. “We've coincidentally shown up to help you just as you are faced by an insurmountable apocalypse” who even falls for that kind of rubbish?

But no, there's no way anyone is getting you into one of those death traps.

If you get the whereabouts from Meathook, you could always send him to go get a vehicle while you round up the gang. Or vice versa, no real rush. Take it skeezy with these suicide missions.

Yeah... if someone were to describe me and the rest of the Overseer class as the brains of the operation it would be almost literally true.
Looking at Carrion's pointy stumps it's easy to understand where the slave race's derogatory nickname comes from but in truth there's barely a soul among them that hasn't had some kind of body part removed. Just in most cases its in the head, rather than a more conventional amputation. Don't have to worry quite so much about a revolution if only a fifth of the population can think for themselves.

They're all smart enough to follow orders and Meathook's got a longer memory and a bit more cunning than most of them but you wouldn't trust him to pick out the right car if the one you ask for has already been taken out by someone else.
Truth is, most of the work after peppering the city with drop pods was rounding up lost soldiers rather than subduing the populace, once we got organised it wasn't much of a fight at all.

>Well, you may as well take Meathook with you to the docking bay or wherever it is you keep the vehicles. You can ask him about other recruits on the way.

That sounds sensible, it's probably just most efficient to drive around and keep everyone in the back rather than making them walk.

By the sounds of things most of them were just posted near the containment zone to watch people going in and make sure nobody hurts themselves too much in an attempt to escape, which is convenient because the main screening area is just down the hill in this park that got picked for a landing site.
Shambles and Legs appear to have been recruited to check out the AMP building though, which I suppose only makes sense.

Commandeer the most dangerous and destructive war engine you can find. Sounds like you will need it.

Most of the Temple's actual war machines are “unmanned” in that the pilot is an integral part of the vehicle and they also don't have passenger bays.
Actually the transport trucks have built-in drivers too but they are at least a bit more spacious... though there don't seem to be all that many of them parked here. A lot fewer than expected to be honest.

The one in charge of the loan of armoured vehicles is a good man, though a little over fond of heights. The instinct to crane your head up to look at something in the air, even with unseeing eyes, is a heavy and unwanted reminder.

”Greetings Lord Carrion. It is an honour as ever to serve you.”

“Don't call me lord, we are of equal rank. Besides, you know they don't appreciate it.”

“Alas this is true.
If it is transport you're after then I'm afraid I can't offer you much choice. Much of the armour remains in space for whatever reason and a good number of the vehicles we did get access to have already been taken. What's left is all yours, of course.
As far as I can tell plans are to just hole up in this city, do you know why we would do that?”

”You know that she doesn't tell me any more than she does anything else, your guess is as good as mine.
Heaven knows we could be done with this planet in a couple of days if she told us to, I have no idea what the delay is for.”

From the look of it we've still got “Fast, light and entirely unarmed”, “Slowish but almost completely impenetrable” and “Not too slow, not too heavily armoured, six extra guns”.
Take your pick.

SpoilerShow

yes yes yes yes yes!
I'm actually kinda confused about what is happening right now with uh, what's its name, Carrion?
going on a mission to steal some tech from grey temple?

is that right?

Please do stop me if you are ever confused because from the position of the author it is hard to tell if I am hiding information so we can stay concise or if I am just generally being silly and leaving out things I should have let you know.
There are legitimate reasons to be confused at his point of the story!
The Black Temple is reportedly from Earth and is invading... Earth.
They have vastly more powerful techology than the general populace which for some reason they are not using.
Our current friend Carrion has been deputised to steal technology that pretty much already belongs to the Black Temple, before the guys who already have the job of keeping keeping the Temple's secrets secret (the Grey Temple) get there first and do away with it themselves.

Note: A lot of characters in the OP show up as squares on Android.

I guess Android doesn't support small caps
Not really much I think I can do about that one, I'll try and avoid using the character set too much in future I guess >_>

Eagle Time and MSPA Forums use very slightly different quote formatting but I am too lazy to change it for each one.