srwu | There are still two Team Jelba members left...

[1]

[It comes up out of the blue. Or rather-]

-Uah!

[Elma, banged up as he is, comes back online in Sakihama's hangar. Although clearly in need for some maintenance, the little Subot instead has other concerns, like-]

-Yes! It worked!

It was a really huge gamble, but there's been some precedent in intentionally crashing computer systems to clear the way to encrypted data, and I was able to pull it off! I was able to access the encoded data involving Operation Doll and what Major Ingram had been trying to have us do.

It'd been about Armana... it'd always been about her from the beginning! Ingram had known she had been interested in Earth and decided to come here, but also that she was, was like a target for someone in the Balmarian Empire. I don't know if it was for assassination... o-or maybe just bring her back early like what the Golar Golem were talking about... but it was something Ingram had wanted to prevent.

We were supposed to pick her up at the colony, but... we must have missed her. Like we were too late, or she spent far shorter there than we'd expected. And instead we were attacked by the Golar Golem, trying to pursue after her... where everyone but Selena-

[-Wait. Selena. A glance at the Soleares, and Elma's tiny frame tilts forward in worry.]

Miss Selena... please be alright.

Everyone we... when the Soelares was damaged and buried under the rubble, Selena and I made a really quick plan just in case we weren't able to protect Armana from Spectra and the other Balmarians. She let me keep piloting the Soleares, while she...

Well I don't entirely know because she just said she'd follow her women's intuition but I know she wouldn't have given up on saving Armana!

[2]

Miss Selena...

[With his own repairs taken care of, Elma's attention shifts once more to the dismembered Soleares. Repairs for such a frankenstein of a machine are possible, but Albhard had weeks, and fewer mounting threats when he built the machines out of the remains of Team Jelba's mechs and the Gesterben.

[For even more thorough repairs? In less time? Well...]

... Don't give up. Just worry about saving Armana... so I can worry about saving both of you!

[... He'd just have to do it. Somehow.]

[3] (locked to NPCs)

[Hopes may have been placed on Selena, but to somehow find and save Armana would be a tall order. She'd been spirited back to the Balmarian fleets in the system, protected by countless ships and machines should an attack come. And if one were to somehow breach the Huleh carrying her, they would be met by the faceless, unrelenting soldiers of the Golar Golem.]

[Silent, ever-watchful and always on patrol for intruders, and with a helmet that masked all of their emotionless faces. Or in one case, masked a clever little smile.]

Armana's quarters should be the next one over.

[They'd been dogged and dutiful, that was for sure. But in the chaos of the battle, between Loni's arrival and then the SSR's on top of that, to say nothing of Armana nearly dying... it hadn't been all that easy for Spectra's flunkies to keep track of the Princess at every possible moment. She'd had only minutes to disguise herself as the princess, and outright swapping places of her had been impossible... but pretending to be Armana and tricking a distracted Golar Golem pilot into letting her into the cockpit? And after that, killing them, wearing their clothes, and passing off as them when nobody onboard knew anything about Team Jelba's skill in the field of disguises? Compared to some of hoops she'd jumped through in the past, this was nothing.

[And Armana's quarters were unlocked too, good. Things were finally looking up...]

Tags: