RP:Ignition/Chapter 1

Fleet Actions

 * MV Seikō stationed in Outer Colonies space

Economic Actions

 * None

Vera Tanaka/"Agent Khamsin"
As was her custom, Vera Tanaka woke up at 4:30 in the morning. It was her belief that in order to have a strong mind, one must have a mind capable of performing at 100% capacity at any time of the day without regard to how long a person had been awake. She had read somewhere that, as a young boy, Mozart had been trained in a similar way, and she had been doing the same thing since that day.

She poured herself a glass of water and was just about to start work on her daily 1000-word crossword puzzle when an unfamiliar noise began emitting from one of the radios arranged haphazardly on her shelf. Looking up to find the annoying culprit - which she thought would be some FM-frequency 21st-century televangelist whose broadcast had found its way here after escaping Earth's magnetosphere - she was surprised to find that the source of the noise was the UNSC tachyon radio. Odd, she mused. ''Tachyon radios are usually used for direct transmission between planetary systems. Why would one be transmitting on a radial frequency like that?''

She listened as the radio tuned itself to the message's frequency, which only served to confuse her more. It was fleet orders; she understood that much. What puzzled her was their intent: according to this, the UNSC wanted to re-establish itself as a dominant faction in the Outer Colonies.

"...we need stronger borders if we're going to successfully repel any new threats to the UNSC..." the voice continued.

"New threats?" Tanaka wondered aloud. The only threat being posed to the UNSC was the Covenant Empire. What new threat could they be talking about?

"...Earth was just attacked for the second time in five years..." the voice intoned sternly.

This further confused Tanaka, and with that she shut off the radio and sat down to contemplate its message. No sooner had she done that than Wind Squadron's intelligence analyst, Agent Scirocco, walked in. "Morning, Khamsin. I take it you heard the news?"

"I did," she replied, "and it's really confusing. Why would the UNSC pay attention to the Outer Colonies now, after abandoning us for decades?"

"I'm not sure myself," Scirocco replied. "What I do know is this is going to become quite a mess. We may as well rest now; I have a feeling we're going to be under a lot of pressure very soon..."