( open ) i'll fly you to the moon and back

[initiates]

Date & Time: September 21st - September 30th, 11:59 PM
Location: The Hold, the Moon Base
Characters: Any/all.
Summary: The Transports are evacuating to the Moon Base. Those on the Moon Base try to settle in and figure out their next move. Setting info can be found here.
Warnings: Talk of nuclear warheads and reference to immense loss of life. Please contact the mods should any individual thread get graphically violent or anything else of the sort.
Note: Use date and location tags in your subject headlines! Such as "On the moon, 23rd onward" or "On the spaceship, 25th" or "down at the Hold, 29th."

The Hold is a flurry of activity, grim faced members of the Initiative group directing supplies and people with the subdued air of people facing their own doom, and wondering at how to process the knowledge. None of the Initiative appears unaware of what will happen; their eyes linger on the Transports, expressions pleading, hopeful, doubtful, or immeasurably sad in turn.

Every eight hours, the space ship is sent back up with a load of people and supplies. The pilots are worked until they can't; the AI stolen ages ago by the Initiative greets and corrals people and supplies at both ends, and in the middle step between.

The network continues to broadcast on narrow channels between the Moon Base and Exsilium, up until the time that all connections are lost, with the carrier located en route to Exsilium. The first airship will pass by without dropping anything, but it's too early to celebrate. At a six hour delay from behind, the second airship arrives, and with it, the dark promise of the Black Code's nuclear weaponry.

The six hour window allows for time for those left behind, either by choice or circumstance, to be pulled to the Moon Base with the successful activation of the Transport Pad. New characters will ultimately arrive with the remainder of those not yet on the Moon Base, all in time to witness the explosive contact of the nuclear warhead with the ground of Exsilium live on satellite.

But until then, there's only the hurry, the silence, and the potential for full out rioting should the Transports spread word to the Exiles inevitably left behind to face this fate.

Comments

[inafadingcrown]

[And that sounds like something she would say. Suddenly she finds herself wondering where Frodo is and how he fares. Or if he even lives.

Wordlessly, she takes Elissa's hand in her own, intertwining their fingers.]

And who shall bring the commander hope when her own falters? [She smiles but the sorrow remains in her eyes. She's speaking of Elissa, but really... who pushes back the shadows for the Lady of Light when she cannot?]

[ladyspitfire]

[The touch is unexpected but not unwelcome. It's the first attempt at comfort she's allowed since they've come up to the base. She laces their fingers together and closes her eyes briefly.]

I have often wondered this.

[Because her recruits and her friends give her hope but she does not always allow them to help her. It is her own failing, not theirs, that makes her incapable of true contentment.]

But I have always found hope in the people around me, in those who fight without commanders, without rulers. Who fight simply because they need to. I find it in my friends and in people I care for every day.

[inafadingcrown]

[It's times like this when it's easy to see what draws these two together. Galadriel exhales softly, leaning slightly against her friend.]

You speak with wisdom beyond your years.

[ladyspitfire]

[She moves closer to give Galadriel her side and her shoulder, and it allows her to grasp her hand better. It's a comfort she needs, a warmth she does not often allow herself to have. She suspects it is the same for her.]

I was nineteen when it all began. I was foolish and young and sheltered. I'm twenty-two and I feel so much older.

[And she will die young, decayed from the inside out.]

[inafadingcrown]

[A slow exhale. She feels so old now, even older after hearing that. For what was twenty years to her but the blink of an eye?]

War ages us all before our time. The Artanis you met had seen over a thousand years already- a thousand years spent in peace. And yet in the five hundred years or so of war thereafter, she changed and grew more than she had in all her life before. She became Galadriel.

[A pause] It must sound a great deal of time to your ears, but I was accounted young among my people still. Young and brash.