RP: 188604 B7R, Operation Roach Hotel

While Jack's shots damaged the cannon-arm they didn't stop it from impacting with Alex's chest, causing him to let out a loud grunt inside the cockpit as he was sent flying into a tall tree nearby.

"Ok, that hurt... a lot..." He mumbled. "That cannon is getting destroyed." Alex said as he rose out of the tree with his shields sparking and joints protesting.

He let out a barrage of missiles from the pods on his wings, which were near the hips of his mecha. Individually they weren't too impressive, but several shot up the barrel of the cannon, causing explosions at the end.

"Everyone, focus your fire on the cannons!" He shouted over the radio as he began to circle the behemoth and blast away at it.

Landing Area

The Reavers were caught between advancing Rixxikor Deathclaws and the powerful artillery that was beginning to get closer to finding its mark. Corgan was more concerned about the effect it would have on the Infantry that didn't have Power Armor or a tank to protect them. Maybe if they could advance quickly enough, they could outrun the artillery, but getting too close to those fortresses would be suicidal. He just had to hope that Vier had a plan because there was only one thing he could do.

"Button up now! Everyone on foot that can fit should get into the APCs and AFVs, I don't care if you have to sit on someone's lap or put your crotch on their face! When they are full, and I mean so full you can tell what the person next to you had for lunch because of the fact that your head's so far up their ass you can see their stomach contents, everyone outside of a vehicle needs to keep their ass right up against a vehicle!" Corgan ordered.

Corgan ducked down and slammed the hatch of his cupola shut. He made sure it was locked down tight. All around him the rest of the company followed orders. Most of the infantry managed to stuff themselves into the vehicles, although no one was happy about it.

The tanks continued to slowly advance, firing volley after volley of HEAT rounds at the Deathclaws. "OMGs, I want you to return fire at those Deathclaws. You should be able to track their firing arcs back to their locations. Show the bugs how to aim, will you?" He said angrily.

At his instruction, the mobile artillery locked onto the Deathclaws bombarding the shore and tried to silence them for good.

Landing Area
Jack's shots were landing right on target, digging deep gouges into the Rixxikor's cannon.

Inside of the walking fortress there were several ideas as to how to continue, the legs moving towards Alex reaching out to rapidly move towards the U1. The massive fortress trying to run him down and burry his U1 under tons of armor.

Another group of Rixx decided to use the cannons, taking aim at Jack's position. A massive amount of energy feeding into the weapons, the three deep gouges that Jack had ripped in the cannon earlier started to flame up, a hot jet of fire spewing out from the holes in that one cannon while all four took aim at the ground forces nearby.

Alex's missiles would hit home. The cannon they had entered started to flare up, a jet of flame spewing out of the front.


Meanwhile the reavers would start getting hit.


Globs of super-heated plasma would start getting closer and closer. The landing zone quickly turning into an inferno. The heat causing the trees that had been planted their to bust as the water inside of them was flash-boiled. The shields on the reaver's ground vehicles were enough to protect them as they moved forward, but the enemy fire, as well as the actual fire, was starting to follow them. The vehicles in the rear of the formation starting to feel the heat as their shields started to get depleted.

The counter-battery-fire seemed to be far more accurate. Rather than the random firing of the Rixxikor that seemed haphazardly guided, the Reaver's counter-battery fire did have something to lock on. They were able to math-out the location of the Rixxikor deathclaws shooting at them and start firing back rather effectively. Their weapons quickly dispatching two of the craft that were comfortably hiding behind the lines and lobbing projectiles. The rest started to move after shooting, lobbing rounds up through the air and then making a rocket-powered leap to move elsewhere.

This seemed to slow the incoming fire, but not the inferno behind them. The reavers were left with the choice of trying to push through the trees infront of them, or trying to break onto a nearby road which would allow them to travel quite a bit faster.

Jay was getting impatient.

"Fuck it. I'm going for those cannons. You - keep hitting those fortresses."

It's still technically protecting him - indirectly he thought to himself as he fired up his engines.

"Alright guys" he said into the comms. "I'm gonna hit the cannons to give pretty boy here a break."

Jack fired the last round in his magazine at the spider fortress' body before changing mags. He had just finished replacing it when Jay had announced his plans, "Wilco, give em hell, and make sure those two get back alive."

Jack re-sighted the fortress as Jay left and began squeezing off rounds at it's legs and body. Hoping to hit either its power source or to cripple its legs to halt its forward movement.

Araxie shivered herself awake inside the U-1 to see a massive metal spider-thing charging their position unsteadily. Her voice croaked out, still weakened from the impact earlier,

"Alex... Alex! Move! Get up!"

Landing Area
As Jack's shots impacted the legs, the fortress began to slow and smoke began to billow out of it as a shot cracked the casing on what appeared to be an exposed reactor of some sort. An explosion mushroomed and it halted completely.

"Good shot Jack!" Alex called as he slid underneath the oncoming walking fortress and fired his gunpod into the belly of the now immobilized beast As he came out from underneath it he radioed up to the Skyguard ships in orbit.

"Fleet, I want you to use your kinetic turrets to launch a bombardment on the other two walking fortresses. Pummel them to pieces!"

A few moments later a hail of tungsten rods rained from the heavens and slammed into the remaining targets. The walking fortresses were crushed under the weight of the impacts and explosions from them. Alex opened up a radio channel to all the forces planetside.

"Everyone! Their advantage is gone now, wipe these bugs out and free this planet!" Alex yelled, as his mecha struck a pose (by accident on his part) and a cheer was heard over all channels. The skyguard forces rallied, and began to pummel the Rixxicor forces.

The explosion of the first fortress was followed by numerous secondary explosions as the reactors in the weapon arms started to detonate, sending fire and molten metal in all directions.

It wouldn't be long before the drones in space would follow suit, ramping up their beam power until they could start destroying the walking fortresses. There seemed to be little point in trying to take it slow now, as any delay would endanger the ground operation far more than was acceptable.

As the tanks and the variable fighters started to move up, so too did the orbit to surface attacks. The drones stepping up their engagements, walking fortress after walking fortress starting to meltdown and explode, throwing more and more molten metal into the air followed by radioactive bits of machinery and an uncountable number of Rixxikor germs. The counter-fire similarly destroyed scores of drones, and accompanying the Rixxikor fortresses exploding on the ground came a rain of parts from space as the large drone ships fell towards the planet.

The Rixxikor would start to scatter, those that had an appetite for a fight were being rapidly killed off. As the skyguard fleet started to move in close, there was little they could do to stop them.

For now, the enemy was in full retreat while fires were starting to spread all over the continent.

Somewhere on the Battlefield Inside a Customized Variable Fighter


"Well that went better than expected. We'll need to isolate and extinguish those fires before they do any more permanent damage to the planet. We don't happen to have a rainmaker or something lying around, do we? I've checked the hauls and we certainly don't have any true firefighting equipment even if we landed your cruisers." Serai's voice flooded Tasuki's cockpit and filtered through the communication network coldly. "Failing that, we'll need to prepare to airlift refugees and the like."

Landing Area

Alex called to the U1 forces over the radio.

"Alright everyone, we need to put out these fires. Your fighters have gravity manipulation systems, so use those to scoop up water from the nearest body of it and dump it on the fire!"

Soon flight after flight of U1s was dumping water on the fire, keeping it from spreading further.

Smoke rose into the air as Alex ordered his flight came in to land near some of the other troops. To his surprise they began to cheer as he and his comrades landed. Alex emerged from his cockpit and surveyed the casualties.

"Alright, can someone help me get a count on the wounded and dead? We need to start bringing people back up to the ships for treatment and set up field hospitals for those who can't be moved. We also need to start making plans for liberating the rest of the planet."

As he spoke, soldiers began to move and soon a tent was erected and the wounded began to be moved in.

Jack realizing his job was done stowed his cannon and began to survey the damage done from a distance.

Sigh......."The gauntlet that thrust forward, is the one that picks up ash first. Peace to the fallen, may your peace be lasting, and know retribution was swift to thy enemies." He said as the order to commence fire suppression was sent out.

"As they rode across the land, hell followed them. We made a damn mess alright, we need a sub-division to come up with better solutions to this shit." Jack said to no one in-particular, knowing this was something he should discuss with Uso when he finally got to meet her.

Jack converted to fighter mode, and headed to the nearest body of water marked on the U1's nav system.

Landing Area-> Rixxikor Retreat

The fire raining down on Corgan's company did little in the way of damage to the armored vehicles. There was enough advance warning for the supply vehicles to get onto the side road. Corgan kept his armored vehicles advancing towards the enemy. The few dozen Ragnarok soldiers that didn't fit in the vehicles were not so lucky. Most of them died instantly.

Corgan watched as the fortresses were taken down by a hail of tungsten. "They're on the run! Push the advantage. Every Rixxikor bastard we kill is a thousand less we have to kill later." He ordered. The tanks rolled forward, firing only when they had a good shot on the retreating Deathclaws. They locked on with all the offensive minimissiles they had and fired, destroying at least a dozen vehicles and killing about fifty Rixxikor with shrapnel from the explosions.

He didn't see the debris falling from the sky. Even if he had seen them there was no way he could have avoided the debris in time. Dead drones fell all around the Reavers. Corgan shouted, "Fuck! Get us out of he-"

He lost consciousness when wreckage from a drone slammed into his tank. A few other vehicles took hits but most were lucky enough to avoid the fate of their leader. Master Sergeant Darius Bowman gave the order to defend the tank while they tried to extract Corgan and his crew from the wreckage. Ragnarok soldiers poured out of the armored vehicles and got to work, aided by ten soldiers in Impulse PAs.

"ALEX!"

Uso shouted out over the all hands channel,

"I NEED YOU ON NEPLESLIA NOW!"

There was a short pause, an attempt to muffle the microphone,

"they don't have FTL on the U1? And you need like.. 2 dozen? ok fine.... you're lucky you got a good deal on those"

"CHANGE OF PLANS! We're taking the Queen's slave over to Nepleslia, I need like, 2 dozen of your best people who can fly. Meet up with my ship and we'll FTL you over there."

Sarah rushed to aid pulling Corgan from the wreck, as they moved the tank, she attempted to pull Corgan out of the way.

"Damn your heavy." She said as she grabbed both of his arms and began to pull him away with great effort.

"Uso what the hell?" Jay half-yelled into his comms as he jumped off of a flaming deathclaw he'd just riddled with shells at point blank.

"I was Just starting to enjoy myself!"