RP: 5th Fleet [Chapter Three] Attackers

Damien dropped back as the tunnel began to collapse around him. It was a scary thought to be crushed alive down in the tunnel. Luckily none of the massive rocks hit him. Damien relieved temporarily soon found out that there was something more dangerous coming. The giant mech crashed through the ceiling and grabbed one of the new recruits to the squad. Damien watched in horror as the recruit was ripped apart by the larger mech. Damien scattered with the rest of the squad and watched as they poured on the fire.

Despite their numbers, Damien questioned their ability to bring down the mech with small arms fire and began to look for a way out. Damien figured that the enemies couldn't have just disappeared as they didn't appear to have optic camo. Even then they still would have seen them through the dust. Damien decided to make his way through the rubble and see if he could figure out how the enemy made it out so he could tell everyone else. He knew he would have to be careful though as he could end up like Max if he let his guard down. Hopefully the rest of the squad could keep him covered while he worked on finding a way out.

Niel was running low on viable munitions, he had two grenades that he could use as distractions and two that could actually damage the thing. Apparently the optics were tootough to damage with the available weapons. That didnt stop them from being obscured or the pilot distracted momentarily.

Making the most of what he had Niel vacated his shelter and popped his last shrapnel granades at the mechas head and as they exploded he fired the remaining thermite explosives at the joint between head and neck. He dove back into cover attempting to evade the inevitable retaliatory fire.

"Finchard reporting out of anti-armour ammo" he transmitted over the squads communications.

Scheißedreck.

Fieke bit down on her tongue as she took two steps backwards while switching out the half-mag in her ASGR for a fresh clip – once she started firing at the NMX's newest contender the Abwehran didn't want to have to stop until her rifle had given its all.

Bringing her weapon up to her shoulder and aiming for the unforntuanately placed gatling gun on the enemy mech the OriSec Corporal remembered at the last second that she had been essentially ordered to stand down.

Frowning Fieke shook her head to herself minutely – that had been before someone had been sliced in half by a mechanized behemoth that was quite likely to kill them all.

“Gruppenführer.” Fieke switched on her coms to address Squad Leader Nakamura. “Rejoining combat due to changes in the situation.”

Realigning her aim one more time Fieke depressed the trigger on her ASGR and sent a stream of 8x100 mm darts on their way towards the enemy's whirling gatling gun.

The booming roar of automatic and heavy weapons fire from the squad echoed back into the tunnel as smoke obscured the form of the Render, if only briefly. It made to move, ducking low to get a better aim into the inky blackness; not that the level of light mattered to its sensors, which could see the entire squad plain as day regardless.
The Gatling cannon continued to whine on, spewing bullets in rapidfire as the humongous machine's shields absorbed nearly all of the fire, finally failing just in time for a few of Niel's grenades to impact- fruitlessly, on the armored hull of the Render as the Hei found out the hard way that it did not, in fact, have a neck.

The leg joints, on the other hand, took a small beating, and while they weren't destroyed completely, the bits of fragmentation that got stuck in the crevices managed to slow it, if only just, and reduce the range of motion. Still, the thing pressed on, even as Fieke's fusillade of ferocious fire flung furiously across its lower extremities.

"Communication is the key here!" the Juni's voice called out over the radios, simultaneous with a silent response to Fieke's address. "We need to coordinate attacks! Just flinging fire against it will only annoy it!" he explained, sending a small readout on the intelligence they currently had on the render Mecha to the squad at large.

"Anzu, Rin, go with Damien around the back and start pummeling the engines! The rest of you, ignore the joints and fire instead on the rocket launchers at its sides!" the Juni ordered. As if to answer his transmission, the Render launched off a missile from one of its pods, a Pneumatic POOF announcing the event moments before the rocket ignited, firing its way straight at the Orisec Officer, as if the cosmos were telling the Abwerhan woman that she had gone the wrong way, or some other less than benevolent thing. Somehow, with all of Fieke's bullet spray, however, one of the Depleted uranium darts managed to nick the missile, causing it to veer wildly off course and instead impact on a wall nearby, causing the tunnel to shudder once more. A chunk of the wall came down, billowing dust around the squad once more, obscuring them much less than they would have liked in this age of near-magic sensors that could see through dark, durst, smoke, and even foliage.

The dainty red armor zig-zagged while standing on the ceiling, dodging incoming fire and trying her best to attract its attention away from everyone else.

Hearing Nakamura's orders, the four floating gun-drones that were deployed from her back erratically zipped about in the air above the squad like deadly hummingbirds, spreading out further. Raising her palms, automatic energy pulses rapidly peppered the 'eyes' to try and annoy the bio-mechanical monstrosity into paying her some attention. At the same time, hot lances of energy shot out of her floating assault drones at the missile pods as the side, all focusing on the upper-right launcher.

"Get it to cook off," Sif sternly added over the comms.

Despite spending the initial part of the mecha assault dodging falling debris and gun fire Freyja had managed to grab out her LASR-SLAG from the rack on the side of her daisy (quite a feat while doing a backflip to avoid gatling fire) and put away the now ineffective plasma rifle. Aiming for the right missile pods she unleashed a salvo of three thermite grenades before running to find more temporary cover.

After reloading Freyja fired another three rounds at the other missiles on the left before realising she didnt have any more high explosive rounds, quickly switching rifles the nekovalkyrja began targeting the gatling cannon mount with plasma bolts.

"Anzu, Rin, go with Damien around the back and start pummeling the engines!" ordered the Juni.

"Hai," Rin said in response. Using the fallen pillars and rubble as cover, she began to work her way to the left side of the tunnel. Rin stayed low and out of sight as well as she could; becoming singled out by the Render was deadly. At a concealed position near the rear of the Render, Rin waited for her comrades to get into place before she advanced further.

Damien continued around the rubble and wasn't really finding a way out. Before he could ask what he was supposed to do, he heard the Juni give new sets of orders. "Anzu, Rin, go with Damien around the back and start pummeling the engines!" he heard over the comms. Damien had apparently inadvertently flanked the Render. "Dumb luck" Damien thought as he eyed up the Render. Damien knew that his rifle would be mostly ineffective without the combined firepower of the two heavy weapons members of his squad. Damien used his AEIS link to target the engines and pass the information along to Anzu and Rin who he hoped were moving into position.

"Anzu, Rin, I'm passing targeting data to you. If we hit him together we can do some damage!" Damien said with as much confidence as he could. He wasn't sure if their combined fire would do much damage, but it had to be better than random firing. Maybe if they hit one spot, they might be able to do something other than annoy the Render. Damien popped in a fresh mag lined up his rifle and prepared to fire in unison with the rest of his team.

Anzu frowned as the high explosive only managed to knock out the shields for a few moments. "Just gotta keep poundin' it." Then, she sighed as her orders came in. Well, that was the end of that. She'd had a good run this time. The Neko shrugged. Already near one side of the tunnel, she pushed forward that direction. Sensors on high alert, active camo doing what it could to disguise her movement. Not firing yet, just lugging that massive weapon as she concentrated on trying to move behind the monster while remaining in one piece.

She accepted the data from Damien's viewpoint, the other soldier already somehow at the rear of the machine. She didn't have high hopes for both her and Rin making it around to join him, not with those claws easily able to cover the entire tunnel, but orders were orders. Anzu began preparing to fire as soon as she neared the side of the Render. If she made it into position, fine. Otherwise, at least she'd get in one shot while she was good and close.

Aya smiled at Rin's response despite the rather grim situation the squad found themselves in. The giant NMX war machine was proving incredibly resistant to everything they were throwing at it, which was both disconcerting and disheartening. The Juni's recommendation was at once obvious (albeit only in hindsight) and illuminating. Though Aya didn't have much time to scan through the abbreviated intelligence brief, she got the gist of it.

Sif's stoicism still managed to elicit a quiet awe from the Neko, but the pressing nature of the Render's presence sharpened Aya's mind and hence her situational awareness. Scrambling to another piece of rubble, Aya also focused her fire on the Render's upper right launcher, taking the red hued PA's attack on that area as an implicit indication of where to concentrate their shots. As she reloaded her LASR-SLAG in (relative) safety, Aya attempted to send her suit's targeting and telemetry data to the members of the squad whom the Juni hadn't directed to co-ordinate with him. Hopefully, their shots would be much more accurate and effective for it; they were already giving it everything they had.

"Keep moving! Do not stand still!" Kai ordered swiftly, as he followed his own order, continuing to spray rifle fire toward the missile pod on the side of the Render mecha. As everyone's combined fire poured onto the missile pod, it exploded, causing the mecha to reel to the side, but due to its four legs, the contraption remained upright, and now it seemed to be quite angry. this was good for Anzu, Rin, and Damien, as they had been overlooked in the conflagration, and had successfully traversed to the back of the mecha. The sudden fire from the three of them, closely timed as they circumnavigated their enemy at roughly the same speed, caused one of the thrusters at the rear of the mecha to also explode. It was wounded, and it now smoked from the damaged sections, but it continued angrily fighting, thoughtlessly firing the Aether cannon into the ceiling of the tunnel before it, causing yet another section to crumble.

As if all that was not enough things going on, the render mecha swatted its powerful claws at the nearer Sif, the red power armor unable to dodge it completely, Nishizaki heisho would find her armor becoming suddenly even more lightweight as its right arm was severed clean off near the shoulder, dropping uselessly to the floor, while the armor itself was flung into the wall, dissapearing in a cloud of smoke and debris. To add to the confusion, the other armors in front of the render; Kai, April, Fieke, Aya, Freyja, and Niel, noticed warnings on their HUD's informing them they had each been targeted by one of the missiles in the remaining missile pod, which made a series of pops, launching the munitions into the air.

They had only moments to react.

Leaping to the side, the Sylph dodged!

And lost her right arm as a massive Zesuaium blade cleaved through the shoulder! Blood briefly sprayed out of the stump in a violent torrent, but stopped as quickly as Sif was sent flying like a red ball into a wall. Embedded in the cement for a moment, she fell to the ground before getting up on her feet. Without a single word, she backed off, her drones relinking with her suit and nestling into her back again as the even lighter power armor took refuge nearby one of the large pillars, partly obscured from sight. Caught briefly topping off her best weapons, she could do nothing but raise her good arm and bring the palm to bear, rapid fire pulses of energy cutting through the air like a machine gun at the missiles.

"Shoot them down or take cover!" she raised her voice.

"What the!.." Niel threw himself backwards with a yell bringing up his rifle to shoot at the incoming projectile. He had no Idea if it would work but if they we hit fast enough they might cook each other off. This brought him into the firing arc of the gattling cannon and the Hei found himself among a hail of steel.

'This ain't gonna end well' he thought. Attempting to evade Niel rolled to the side using his inherant inertial control to propel himself fairly fast, as he did so he fired flares from his armours countermeasure systems in order to distract the missiles targeting systems.

Though the armour cushioned most of the impact force ramming into the tunnels wall left Niel slightly winded. He blinked and breathed deeply to clear his head.

Damien looked up at the success of his fire. The Render was injured but not out of the fight. He looked up at the wounded enemy and wondered if the explosion had been enough to open up the inner parts of the machine. Ejecting his spent magazine and reloading a fresh one, he waited while his sensors went to work on finding a weakspot in Renders's back. Everything seemed to be happened in slow motion as Damien heard the tell-tell pop of a missile leaving the tube. This wasn't good as Damien knew his comrades were in trouble. He said a silent prayer for his comrades in front of the mech, hoping that they would escape harm. Hopefully they wouldn't have to live up to their names. If they didn't take this bastard down soon, they would all be killed.

As Damien finished his reload, he aimed his rifle and passed the sensor data on to Anzu and Rin, hoping another combined assault would do the trick. He didn't wait to confirm what it was. The smoke obscured his vision but he hoped that his sensors wouldn't fail him. Worse case they would/should default back to the other thruster bank. At least that's what he hoped... "TAKE THIS MOTHERFUCKER!!!" he shouted as he dumped more fire into the Render, hoping to take it down before it could ruin their day...

Using the sensor data he provided, Rin targeted the same target as Damien. She hoped they could disable the Render quickly before it could cause more damage to the squad or the tunnel. Raising the Gauss Bazooka to her shoulder, she aimed carefully at the second thruster assembly and fired another sabot round. Rin then ducked back behind cover after firing the projectile.

The chaos of the skirmish made it difficult to focus on any one thing, something aggravated by the fact that Aya's HUD was currently screaming a missile lock warning. Aya's countermeasure pods burst into life as the Neko's warning systems continued to fret away. She didn't stay idle either, trying to keep moving and activating her thrusters in short, erratic starts to make it more difficult for the missile to maintain a lock.

Furthermore, she took aim with her LASR and tried to shoot down the missile, relying heavily on the Daisy's sensors to make up for the stresses and strains of combat as well as the difficulty of the shot. There was a terrible personal-impersonal duality to the missile: it was, of course, just a machine. A bundle of circuitry, rocket propellant, and a pack of explosives sheathed in metal. However, it only had one single-minded purpose in its electronic brain, one overriding objective that guided everything it did: it wanted her, and only her, dead. A reaper made steel, all the more implacable and chilling for its artificial nature.

Aya hoped that she would prevail.

Anzu grinned as she made it into position to fire. Then cackled as their combined assault actually slowed the beast down a bit. She didn't have long to gloat, as chunks of the ceiling began to fall again. Taking Kai's advice, she moved as she loaded another round. The missiles that suddenly filled the air in front of the Render made her next target clear. While the other two fired on the thrusters again, Simo aimed another high explosive round at the remaining missile pod. Hopefully she could take it out before it fired again, or at least disrupt the next salvo.

Explosions. Explosions. And more explosions. The members of Squad XIII were all silently thankful that their suits automatically compensated for the noise, because otherwise it would have been too much to bear, echoing off the walls of what was left of the tunnel. As the dust and debris filtered away, the squad would find that miraculously, none of them had been hit. Unfortunately, the Render was still standing, and now, it seemed even more angry as smoke now billwed from both of its sides, as well as both of the rear thruster packs. For all intents and purposes the mech was stuck down in the hole it made, and now had but two options: Kill, or be killed.

For obvious reasons, it seemed intent on the former option, and now it lunged at the recoiling squad, still too confused by what was going on to deal with the trio whom had snuck behind it. A sickening crunching, cracking noise was heard as its upper end smashed into the crumbling roof, tearing the anti-orbital cannons free of their mounts to send them crashing angrily down to the ground, all the while that pesky Gatling cannon had somehow continued to work, spraying more bullets at the squad, even as they found themselves in possession of more and more cover with each tumbling, crashing bit of debris that fell from the ceilings and walls.

"Just keep shooting at it!" the Juni ordered, seeing no other alternative for the moment.

As the missiles turned into brilliantly bright blasts of light, Sif used the chance to pick up her severed arm and slide back into the shadows. The way the faceless armor held her amputated limb in the dim light and stared at it was a depressing and macabre sight, but not until she cocked her head - in how she held herself, Sif simply seemed to ask, and in her typical deadpan voice, 'Hm. What do I do now?'

But that didn't matter to the rest of the squad.

Before they knew it, fire raked at their backs as a trio of Reapers suddenly appeared on their rears! The enemy armors that had previously escaped had piled out of one of the side maintenance tunnels and took position before shooting their guns into the squad's backs! A lance of light reached out for the squad's leader, Nakamura, aimed squarely for the back of his head - it quickly splashed across his energy barrier before the veteran quickly spun about and counter-attacked, suppressing the enemy with a long stream of fury.

But not before it was too late.

The other two Reapers had leaned out of their cover, and focused all of their firepower on one person - Aya! The ratta-tat-tat of a stolen LASR was joined by a second burning beam in tearing through fire-weakened barriers before gnawing into armor. Sparks flew off her back as though a dozen giant grindwheels were biting her armored body while massive hailstones went on pelting and bruising the poor Neko. Before she could even act, a blinding hot lance pierced through her body. A single round slipped in between her back plates, punching a neat hole right in between her two lower left ribs twice as it entered and exited before embedding in her chestplate.

But as the LASR armed Reaper readied the finishing burst, a red blur slammed into it from the side, feet first. Smashing it into a concrete wall, a dark form could be seen raising a flail-like weapon high before bringing it down, brutally caving in the Reaper's helmet, red flecks spattering across them both. The second Reaper ganging up on Aya fired and hit - but not before the damage was returned with interest, the dainty armor zooming off into cover again, bloody severed arm in hand!

"New girl's hit." She tsked to herself, readying another round. "Now ain't a good time to die, newbie! You still got orders to follow!" Anzu dodged another chunk of falling ceiling, looking up at the ever-widening hole for a moment, before darting to another temporary piece of cover. Noticing the fallen cannons, she highlighted the damaged mounts. A moment later, another high-explosive round was on its way, hopefully rubbing salt right in the wound she'd spotted.