After the Fall, the secret conspiracy Firewall banded together, coming together across several factions who would otherwise be at odds - hypercapitalists and autonomists; bioconservatives and uplifts; oligarchs and Barsoomians; socialites and scum - for one single purpose.  Humanity had been decimated by the Fall, wherein nine out of every ten humans living were killed.  The TITANs became the new boogeyman.  The one thing that would wipe out humanity, if it was allowed to return and wage war openly on the system as it had been allowed to on Earth.  Agreeing to set aside their differences, the men and women of Firewall - crows, erasers, proxies, and sentinels - agreed to one simple code.<br/><br/><strong><em>There cannot be another Fall.</em><br/><br/>The Solar System, Venus, Gerlach Station</strong><br/><br/>Gerlach, which orbits Venus, is in a sense, one of the shining beacons of hope in the system after the Fall.  Independent, but one of the major bases for argonauts, those proponents of social responsibility and an open-source society (far from the minds of the leaders of many, many other polities), Gerlach is quite simply the usual first stop for anyone visiting the Earth's closest neighbor.  (Well, unless you count Luna.  But let's be honest, only Loonies really see the place as something noteworthy.  Well, them and bankers.)  It had been here, not so long ago, that one of Firewall's agents - a sentinel - had been engaged on a mission of a highly sensitive and covert nature.<br/><br/>In the course of that mission, however...complications had arisen, issues and problems that simply could not be solved by a sensitive and covert hand.  Ones that needed - well, I suppose now it's just best to come out and say that the problems needed bullets.  To the face.  As well as arms and legs and any other major weapon-supporting appendages.  Repeatedly.  The sentinel was not<em>quite</em><em>Predator</em>'s Schwarzenegger, but she had managed to find someone who was, and together they finished the mission, and sentinel invited Schwarzenegger to join Firewall.  (The fact that said Schwarzenegger had a decade-plus case of Lack and had basically been forgotten about in cold storage notwithstanding.)<br/><br/>They had agreed, and upon signaling 'Mission Complete' back to her server proxies, the next set of instructions had been 'Wait for further instructions.'  Of course, they had found ways to work off all that free time...<br/><br/>...but that was all over now.<br/><br/><em>Sentinel Naiad,<br/><br/>You are to report to Gerlach spacedock and meet a mutual representative aboard the courier ship <strong>Hacienda del Sol</strong> within the next 24 hours.  You and your new recruit will be further briefed from there.  Please acknowledge receipt of these orders within 2 hours.<br/><br/>Proxy Kranz</em>