RP: Bounty Hunts [Bounty 1]: Sand Rally

Amanozako heard the approaching sound, bringing her impaler up, flicking off the weapon's safety as she turned her red eyes towards the oncoming sound.

She cursed as she saw what was coming. A pack if meter or so tall bipedal lizards, all scales, razer claws and mouthfulls of teeth!

"Everyone up! Incoming!" she announced loudly. One of the creatures was leaping at her, she squeezed off a burst of fire at the creature, making sure to put enough into it to stop it dead in its tracks.

Svante awoke with a start. As uncomfortable as it had been, he didn't regret that he'd slept in his armor with his weapons close at hand. He bolted up from under the blanket he and his partner had been resting under, already coming up into a crouch and drawing his pistol. He could see shadows moving around in their position, attackers of some kind, and he heard a familiar sound: an Impaler rifle opening fire with a burst. Something about these silhouettes - something in the way they moved. He hadn't spent long on the planet but he'd seen how the locals tended to move. Plus since he was one, he could recognize how a human being would move. These attackers - didn't seem to move like either. No shouts of aggression or orders, no weapons fire. Wildlife. But at the same time - not necessarily untamed.

They could have been sent by bandits.

If that was the case, they wanted this position to get exposed and occupied.

He looked back to his partner as she started to get up, "Keep your eye on the convoy!" He called.

Taking aim at one of the silhouettes, he squeezed off two rounds from the silenced pistol before taking aim at another and doing the same. A reduced muzzle flash and noise meant he wouldn't destroy his natural nightvision or hearing every time he fired, plus any bandits who might have sent these things would account for one less gun if they were watching from a distance such as at the base of the hill.

He held his position, crouched down there to cover Nais' back from possible attacks while she kept her eyes on the convoy.

Sleeping with his armor on was no problem for Desmond. Having grown up inside a freighter with bad insulation problems, the Bounty Hunter was more than used to having to constantly wear the over-encumbering void-suits for extended amounts of times. That, added with the uncomfortable desert sand turned his sleep into an uncomfortable and light one, it hadn't taken anything more than Svante's and Amanozako's warning to jolt him awake and sitting, brushing the sand cape that had been covering him away.

The bounty hunter drew his sidearm and unsheathed the heavy machete from its resting place on his back. He didn't key the power field around it on, not wanting to reveal his position in the night. Using the neural interface from his Muur, the bounty hunter checked the reading from the deployed sensors to get a sense of the location of where the 'visitors' were in.

"I'm on it." Desmond announced over comms, his voice noticeably more gravely from having just woken up as he pressed his back against a rock and focued ahead of him and towards where the silhouettes were moving around. He switched the frequency to the caravan's to address the mercenaries there, "Heads up, contact on the hill." He said, gun raised and ready as he waited for a good opportunity to fire present itself; He wouldn't risk shooting his weapon and give away his position until he was sure he could hit anything.

Amanozako was fast. Faster then normal nepleslian for sure, that made her able to get her rifle up and power it fast enough. As the large lizard leapt through air, two thin blue beams flew through air, each only visible for tiny fraction of seconds as a hot stream of particles soared through air. Thank to the small time of their existence they could not really blind others in the group, which was quite frankly a really good thing. What they did was that both hit the lizard as it flew through air, ready to get his long clawed front limbs into Amano. It made two tiny holes straight through him. What it did not do, was stop it. Energy is bad at stopping a 200 pound lizard midair. Amano tried to get out of the way, but she was not fast enough, the lizard hit into her land send her to the ground, the rifle clattering out of her hands. When she looked up, she saw another monster looking down on her, its two eyes looking straight into hers.

Svante's pistol puffed at the silhouettes running between the rocks. A screech could tell him, that at least once he might have hit. One of the shades stopped as it went, turned and started making its way towards him. It was fast, very fast and it seemed that even if he had hit it once, that was not enough.

Next to him Nais, quickly got up grabbing her rifle and put on a night goggles, just in time to see another monster leaping at her. There was no time to shoot, so she just lifted her rifle and forced it in its mouth as she was pushed to the ground, claws screeching over her armour. 'FUUUCK! HELP!' She shouted, trying to keep the mouth full off teeth away from her face, with her rifle.

Desmond felt a relaxing feeling of stone against his back, it meant that was covered. His eyes were quickly getting accustomed to the darkness surrounding the outcrop of stones.
'The hells is goin on?' Des could hear the voice of the mercenary commander in his ear. 'Do you bastards need reinforcements? Who is attacking you? Anyone give me sitrep!'.
The young bounty hunter was not given much time to reply as he heard a screaching, something climbed his rock from the other side and soon hiss could tell him one of the lizards got on the top of rock he used to cover his back. As he looked up, he could see two points, made in the darkness by the lizards eyes as it looked down on him.

Casteel was awoken, by something running straight over her. It did not injure her, but it sure as hell hurt like... well hell, when a 200 pound monster-lizard used her as a pavement.

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2 kilometers above.

'Shit we are pretty late, Lapas we are going to drop you down right now. There is a grav chute in the back, put it on!' Kendra shouted through intercoms at Iroma in the back of the shuttle. There was a grav-chute for sure. It looked rather old. 'From what I hear, our buddies got into some sort of fight. I wanna keep the shuttle back as a surprise, but I can drop you right now. You got twenty seconds.'

Lapas was a pilot and as a pilot he knew this shuttle at least a bit. He knew that the way this shuttle drops its payload of soldiers is by opening its floor. He ran and quickly put his arms through the belts of the chute, just in time to get ready as the floor indeed open and he fell into darkness. Somewhere under him he saw the lights of the camp and near it a small blue dots of energy weapon being fired.

With his back against the rock, Desmond found himself watching the two separate discharges from Amanozako's particle rifle, and then hearing the reports from Svante's pistol, which sounded like and wasn't louder than a tennis ball hitting something. He tried to assess the situation as it all happened to report it back to the caravan; However, that never happened. "Looks like wildlif- Ah, shit." He started to say, looking up from where he was as small pebbles cascaded down and hit his helmet and shoulders once the lizard had climbed on top of the rock, the bounty hunter found himself in a moment of eerie calm as he stared at the lizard's eyes and it stared back at him.

As the thing stared at him, he gripped at his blade harder, toggling the power field on the blade as he stood on a more balanced stance, readying the blade. As he heard and felt the field's usual humming, which set his teeth on edge with the vibration, he raised his other arm, pointing his automatic pistol at the lizard and opened fire, letting loose a very long burst of shots, baring his teeth at the heavy creature in challenge.

Lapas rather liked the feeling of flying, it was pleasant serene akin to dreaming. Falling, falling was not like flying. As he got closer to the ground he could make out what could only be assumed to be his team fighting.

He hit the ground hard and rolled, his eyes already adjusted to the darkness thanks to his fall. Lapas pulled out his Laiz rifle and fired at the first lizard he could see. He desperately wanted to make a some kind of witty one liner but he was to busy trying to keep track of the lizard things.

Amanozako cursed as she was knocked down by the dead lizard and her rifle was sent tumbling just out of reach. She looked up to see another one standing over her, it's reptilian eyes starting down at her just above mae full if razor like teeth.

The neko moved quick, drawing one of her HHG's and emptying the hand cannon into it's gut.

Casteel admittedly was not the lightest sleeper, but being the last to wake was rarely a problem for her. The surprise was worse, though; she felt the breath crushed right out of her as the lizard casually swarmed over sleeping back and rebounded off her stomach like she were so much dead turf.

"SONUVA--" she croaked as she flung the sleeping bag off and rolled aside in case there were more runners. D: Then it was a mad scramble up to her feet -- like everyone she she had fallen asleep in her armour, who wouldn't? -- and to take a quick glance around to assess the situation visually. She heaved for breath, wincing at the foot print-shaped bruise that was likely forming over her ribs.

By then, the riding-lizard was dead and someone was being pinned, from what Cas could see. Her cybernetic eyes did not need to adjust like natural eyes, and could pierce through the darkness easily.

"Tits," the large woman growled as she whipped out her handgun out from where it had been strapped to her side. Without pause she gripped the weapon in both hands and fired two rounds at the shadow looming over Nais.

"Well this is pretty much par for the course taking mid watch" Raven muttered as he sighted one of the reptiles and fired a short burst from his rifle at it, planning to either take it down or wing it so that the next shot he took would kill it.

Things we happening fast. Desmond stared into eyes of a monster above him, Amano was about to get munched on, by another. Raven had several around him and Nais was defending herself. Not to mention it was dark and hard to see and something suddenly kicked a ton of sand up next to the outcrop of stones, hunters used for their night camp/watch place. It was an iroma, stopping his fall with gravity parachute, the force kicking up sand in miniature sandstrom. It was not enough to limit vision, it was just a bit annoying.

Lapas could see boulders and fight amongst them, with more lizards running to it. To his right the small hill was going down and there he could see a circle of merchany carts with a lot of tiny dots running around there. As he tossed the chute, one thing was sure. It did not seem like that lizards paid any attention to him.

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As danger loomed over the hunters, they stared right back at it and then kicked it into gnats. Nais was about to have her throat torn out by a claw, when suddenly bullets hit the big lizard and force tossed it off the mercenary woman. The lizards tossed around on the ground, obviously not finished, with meager pistol rounds. Nais quickly scrambled away, then aimed her rifle and fired twice into the monsters head, killing it instantly.

Casteel had reason to be happy about as she jsut saved the merc, but then she heard shuffle and did not react fast enough. A lizard came from her flank, jumped and bit into her forearms. Her protector stopped the animal teeth, but the woman could feel that the monsters jaws had a lot of force. In anyway a 200 pound lizard hanged off her right forearm.
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Amano quickly rolled herself away and fast drew her HHG, its barrel aimed straight at the beast. She smirked as she started pulling the trigger. HHG was a gun reserve to military for quite a reason. It packed a punch comparable to rifle, using the right kind of ammo. And Amano had the right ammo. First red round hit the underbelly of a lizard and made a cavity big enough for Casteel to put her head in, then second shell hit, and third and then fourth. Amano soon saw that there was no need to empty her gun into the lizard, because after four rounds there was not much else to shoot into. This gave her a room to breathe, gather herself and help others.

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Raven raised his rifle and suddenly it was dark no more. Green bolts of fire riddled the body of lizard running jumping over the rock at the hunter. The GSAR did its job well. Raven quickly shifted his fire, looking for next target, which would present itself fast. Behind Svante, who was busy fighting a lizard came up, stealthily crawling at his back.

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Desmond's hand went up, his barrel aiming at the head of large lizard above him. Bullets started spewing out of automatic gun, but sadly none hit as the lizard jerked back and swung its clawed hand at the weapon. Its claws scraped over the side of of the firing gun and sent it flying out of Desmonds hand with surprising force. The Lizard then jumped over Desmonds head and landing on the ground in front of the hunter, turning to face him. It roared in the night, dwarfing any other sound.

Desmond had better angle to look at the lizard now. It was a bit larger then others and he could see metal collar around its neck. It opened its clawed hands in a gesture of combat and smirked. "Let's dance" the lizard said to Desmond, who was now armed only with his machette.

Desmond stared at the lizard in front of him, still reeling from the blow to his hand. He was expecting anything from the lizard, for it to lunge straight at him, or circle around like he thought any other natural predator would; What he didn't expect was for it to actually talk to him. The effect was obvious, making the bounty stand in place dumbstruck for a brief moment and wonder whether he had heard it or not. It didn't matter in the slightest, he could ruminate on that later when he wasn't in danger.

Not wanting to waste time, he set his mind back into the fight. He couldn't stay in the defensive any longer, but facing the lizard directly was risky, too risky, but it was surely the leader of the pack, and killing it would cripple the group as whole. Slowly but surely, the bounty hunter started to circle the large beast, machete ready as he tried to gain time when a plan of action slowly formed on his head.

Suddenly and without warning, Desmond sent a wordless command and the lights from his helmet suddenly sprung to full power, shining a bright white light on his foe.. He knew that if there were any shooters that was akin to painting a large target on his head, but he had no other choice. Springing himself forward and advancing in long strides, he raised the machete and struck with a diagonal slash at the lizard.

Amanozako let out a breath. The thing was dead, a watermelon sized hole blown through it's chest cavity. She scrambled back to her feet, taking a breath and surveying her surroundings, she recovered her impaler as she took stock of what was going on around her. The others were all dealing with their attackers, some with more success than others. The neko looked out, seeing how many more of the lizards were coming in, taking aim to blast any more to bits.

Lapas thought it was best to keep to cover and slide in and recon the enemies current fight. If he could see that enough lizard were far away from his comrades he'd start raining grenades on the lizard combatants.

Raven would shift aim to take a shot at the lizard crawling up behind Svante. He'd take careful aim at the creature and fire a short burst of aimed shots at it. Intending to either kill it in that burst or at least wound it to give Svante time to react to the being trying to sneak up behind him.

Desmond hurled himself forward, shining the lights at the lizard. It recoiled and closed it eyes, cursing through its voicebox. The blade in Desmond hand flew forwad, but the lizard was already stepping back. Still the metal connected with scales, biting into the lizards chest. It roared in pain and from what was a retreat, he turned to a charge. The top of its head flew straight into Desmond's belly sending the man back first into the large behind him. The the teeth came, biting into the young hunters calf. The sharp set of teeth find a spot between armoured plates of Muur armour and drew blood. Desmond had time to react his, machete came down again, but the lizard shifted itself to the side as it let go. It was not fast enough.

The sharp, power-field enhanced blade bit into the lizards meat and made its was through. The beasts left arm flew off. "Gaaah FUCK!" The lizard cursed and whimpered in pain. It jumped few meters back and glared into the ligths of Desmonds helmet. "I will see you again later bastard! Got a taste for you now!" It shouted and dissapeared into the darkness.

"Hey this Jaina, you guys need some backup?" Everyone with radio on, could hear the voice of the mercenary captain. "I will send few men up- OH FUCK!" The comms suddenly shutted themselves off, with an explosion sounds off from the camp and loud roaring sound.

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Amanozako aimed her rifle at the nearest beast and killed it, shining the area with blue beam once again. She could hear a strange sound and strangest was that it was coming from below.

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Lapaz noticed a large group of lizards moving outside the outcrop. Pulling the pin off a hand grenade he picked back on the ship, he made a perfect toss. With so much sounds around, none of the lizards seemed to even notice, something fell amongst them. They did notice the explosion. Shrapnel flew around, shreding the bodies of those that were not killed by the blast wave of the explosion. Only then Lapaz realised that those lizards were actually running away.

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PEW! PEW! PEW! The energy rifle in Raven's hands crackled stabbing through the lizard that was about to munch on Svante. The holes only slightly bigger then from a needle ate through the beast and destroyed his vital organs. Without as much as a whimper, the best fell down dead.

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It seemed all lizards were gone by now, only a mere distraction as some of the Hunters did expect. Looking down towards the camp, the team could see chaos. A lot of it. On the other side of the camp from the little hill that hunters used, about half a dozen of small sand-hovercrafts rolled down onwards the camp. The mercs in the camp, already opening up on them.

Those were not the problem. The drill was the problem. In the middle of the camp, giant drill-like tank emerged, eating through the ground it aimed up at the sky at first, before felling on the ground as it emerged from its hole. A cloud of sand went up, covering most of the camp, so Hunters could not see what was going in inside, but they did have a good view of the bandits in buggies.

Sitting down and watching the small red stains that dotted where the lizard had gone around his armor and bitten him, Desmond slowly recovered from the brief fight. What had winded him more than anything was the fact that there had been a talking lizard, not the physical part of fighting it. The sound of the reptile's blood sizzling and boiling on his blade because of the power field brought the bounty hunter back to reality, making him toggle off and sheathe the -then bloodless- blade.

"Son of a bitch." The bounty hunter muttered, still watching the direction from where the 'leader' of the pack retreated to.

He felt his leg with a cautious hand, then got up once it was decided that no major damage had been done to it. Sure, it was still bleeding, but he judged that it wasn't serious enough as to make him go into shock in the next few minutes; He even doubted he would need stitches. Once the business of getting up was done, Desmond went back to his sleeping spot and retrieved his rifle and pistol, holstering the latter and hefting the former.

"Amano, Raven, with me! You too, horny guy!" Desmond shouted, the last bit directed to Lapas as the bounty hunter spotted him, not mentioning how the Iroma wasn't even supposed to be there anyway. "You stay here and give cover." He added, directing that bit to Svante, the other hunter's female friend and Casteel. He could trust Raven, the Iroma and maybe the neko if she was in front of him, which was why he was bringing them along, but he had no idea who the other three were, so he'd rather leave them on overwatch.

Making his way down the higher ground, Desmond at first ran, then dropped and slid on the sand until he reached a more horizontal surface. He jammed a finger on the side of his helmet, toggling the comms, "Jaina, tell your guys to hold fire, I'm approaching." the bounty hunter said, the last thing he wanted was to be lit up by the other mercs. He waited for the others, crouching down and aiming his rifle at the cloud of dust.

In the rush of battle, it was easy to get lost in the flow of things. As much as Svante didn't want to ever admit it, he was so caught up in the flurry, the sounds, and the lights that it wasn't until he turned around to watch it hit the ground dead that he realized one of the bastards had been sneaking up behind him. Growling in irritation, the former Marine grabbed his shotgun, and was ready to continue the fight until one of the other mercs that had been brought in started barking orders like he was the boss of all of them. As proud as Svante was and as much as he would normally enjoy punching somebody like that out, he understood the importance of the situation, and for all he knew among the man's friends: this fellow was the boss-man in charge. Besides, the situation wasn't really good for arguing or in-fighting as the sounds of combat carried up from the camp.

Svante only nodded at the orders and sprinted for he and Nais' sniping spot overlooking the camp. He set up his spotter's scope, safely stored away, and in good condition from when he'd gone to rest. Set up on the camp he waved Nais over and looked for targets in the camp, tracking the thermal signature through his scope. It was the advantage of a spotter and sniper scope both being rigged for thermals to pick out targets in the desert night. Sand clouds wouldn't disrupt them the same as others.

He keyed his radio to Desmond, "Yoah, chucklefucks." He began, "I don't know if you happened to bring a damn rocket launcher but I don't think your fancy black armor is going to help you go toe to toe with a tank. So if you've got any sort of ideas, I'd love to work with you on it."

Lapas smiled at the sight of the wounded lizards retreating. But yet again his wise cracks were cut off by even more chaos, he wouldn't be able to keep up with out venting his needless snark on the world. But he shut up and joined Desmond.

He turned to Desmond "You guys started all the fun without me I'm hurt. So do we have a plan or should I just make it rain shrapnel and pray anything remotely friendly brought an umbrella?"

As the stabbing pain registered in her forearm from the lizard jaws clamped hard onto the bulk of her forearm, all Casteel could think about was how much it would cost to get her arm replaced. Lizards bites were just swarming with bacteria, and she knew how likely an infection would turn to gangrene if the bite were left untreated in a dryass environment like the sandy desert. Such thoughts flickered past in an instant however, and in the next second she had her pistol jammed right between the offender's eyes.

There was no time for clever quips. A quick squeeze, BLAM! And all Casteel could hope for was for the fangs to slide out rather than tear out...

"Definitely not getting paid enough for this shit" Amanozako grumped as she reformed with the rest. She was not pleased to see what had come while they had been busy dealing with the lizards. Armored hover vehicles and a subterranean delivered tank. Not good.

The ex-NMX Neko crouched behind cover, peering out from her protection enough to try and see what the hell was going on in the camp and if she could identify the type of tank being employed against the caravan.