Barracks
Haisley crept arduously slow, heart pounding like a drum the sound of the blood in her ears as she willed every step forwards. The base was small comparatively but there were too many halls, too many turns, too many rooms and doors left open that she nearly blew a hole in a half douzen random objects by the time she covered most of the ground floor.
She was nearly the last section near the entrance when she heard it first before she saw it. Teetering between being hyperfixed and deaf the unnatural rapid chittering she heard before the crash as something heavy and plastique toppled around a corner just ahead. Freezing with anticipation her hands went from borderline adrenaline shakes to stone still with her weapon pointed forwards and her body ramrod straight.
When it came into view the sheer alienness of it gave her pause and it simply
walked on by without looking her way as it passed by the hallway.
It was, however, just about out of sight when the last view of its back stopped and froze. Wings on its back folded flat twitched and with a very fluid and human motion it
leaned back and looked down the hall at her over its shoulder. Slowly, like a predator stalking it moved one leg back and slid back into the hallway to face her. Roughly her height if not considerably bulkier the alien insectoid flexed a dual set of mandibles in a quiet almost sigh as it stood off against her.
Despite the fact that it could not see her eyes it acted a moment after Haisleys were drawn down to the long, smooth, bone-white scepter in one of its clawed hands to identify it as a weapon as it lunged. Unnaturally fast it practically
flew down the hall towards her, rapidly covering the distance as chintinous armored plates flexed and wings unfurled and whipped about like a dragonflies wings as they beat too-long against the walls. The uncanny movements and actions of the alien through her mind in a loop as her body fought its own fight or flight response until it was less than ten feet away from her and within a hairs breath from reaching her.
It pulled its strange weapon back in a thrusting motion and lunged it straight towards her.
Barracks Exterior.
Quilly and Tobias made it to the base of the stairs leading up to the deck into the barracks when their comms went ballistic. It was neither interference or the like but choppy and cut off much like when the decibel meter was too high and it blocked the audio. From the clipped tones and experience it was easy to tell it was Francis shouting or screaming like usual right up until the first gunshot broke through the sound of the wind.
Her live feed was still active but was undiscernible as the latency tried to catch up as its operator clearly moved and turned constantly. Blocked by the view of the cowflop they only saw the bloom of the flare against the reflecting snow from their end and then the feed exploded in light as the flare overloaded the low-light vision mode of her golem armor.
Coming around the cowflop at a considerable clip Francis Euphoria slipped in the slush and snow saving her accidentally as a form the size of an
agressor suit of powered armor slid past as well just missing her as it swung a massive flat blade from its arm right where her midsection would have been. Not going far the claws on its feet got traction and it thrust down at her again narrowly missing one of her legs as she rolled and kicked away, her HHG blind firing in its direction.
Not missing a third opertunity it extended out an open clawed hand and wrapped it around Francis leg, dragging her towards it even as she kicked at it with her free boot and even threw a clearly empty HHG at it; Missing remarkably.
Adjusting its grip the almost fourteen foot juggernaught got a hand large enough to wrap around her entire waist and picked her up like a deadlift before thrusting back down and slamming francis hard enough against the deck that slush and slow splashed away from her in a wide circle as she went limp. Lifting her limp body back up infront of itself the blade that made up its entire right arm at the elbow joint extended back to thrust.
Having happened all in the span of less than ten seconds there had been little time to react. Perhapse fifty feet away Quilly and Tobias saw as it paused, moved Francis body slightly to the side where it was no longer obstructing its view, and looked right at the Elysian and former Operator. Released from its grasp, Francis crumpled to the deck as without hesitation massive wings flared and began to beat like a hornets as it launched itself forwards with tremendous speed towards the two with one arm extended in their direction and the other ready to cleave into them.
Deck
When a body is hit by bullets there tends to be a small pause as the area deforms with sometimes a little black or red dot where the bullet passes through before the vaccuum releases and blood pours out. When Lupin unloaded close enough to Caffran and Molotra that they could
feel the rounds passing by their heads the insectoid took them much differently.
The body did not deform or jerk but instead cracked inwards like pottery or ceramic. There was other firing as the Kuznyetski shot at both it and another emerging from the bio drop pod and by the time Lupins magazine had gone empty it had finally collapsed back.
While the one crawling out was no longer moving as its head and upper body where turned to modern art, the one Lupin gunned down still twitched and moved as if underwater as arms reached out grasping and legs curled inwards. Its head lolled side to side and mandibles gnashed right up until the moment one of the Kuz deck workers sprinted up and shot it through the head and its body curled up into the fetal position and moved no more.
All told three others had tried to crawl out of the cowflop and were all gunned down. The pressure of the fluid comming out had pushed the corpses out of it and was now simply deflating like an untied water ballon with no further signs of exfiltration.
The deck workers had quickly moved to their wounded comrades. The first one had been puntured by a neat circle of six little bone-white needles roughly seven inches long and slightly thinner than a pencil. They embedded almost half way into his right pectoral and made an almost perfect circle. The Kuz helping him had clearly a hard time removing them being seemingly perfectly smooth and hard to grip right until he grabbed it with a pare of channel locks from his belt and ripped them out. The wounded man screamed and thrashed but after it was all said and done the wound barely bled.
The other deck worker wasnt so lucky. The needles had passed right through the back of her neck and into her spine and brain stem and a lethal angle and no longer moved.
"Space marine!" One of the non injured Kuz ran up, as tracers and laser bolts began to fly all over the flight deck as the well armed Kuznyetski clearly faced the same problems.
"Are you hurt?" The deck worker asked an odd question, pointing at his chest before Caffran realized he was pantomiming
his chest.
Looking down at the Raider armor there where three groups of needles. One over high heart, another right at the collarbone, and one set by the groin. Each was barely an inch deep somehow as Caffran recalled the strange scepter weapon pointed at him for a durration. They were barely deep enough that he could simply
brush them with his gauntlet and they fell out and to the deck.
Not a hundred meters away a small pop of a grenade went off. Not attributing the native gunsmiths to explosives a Courier robot drone strolled within view, Dual M2 rifles on automatic firing at something and a grenade launcher on its back firing sporratically. Not quite within identification range for his IFF Caffran, Lupin, And Molotra could at least tell that the NPF DRT teams seen earlier were in organized combat at the other end of the flight deck showing they at least werent alone when it came to firepower. The lights of their Cobra gunship on full blast around it as they formed a perimeter around it and fired into the dark as the ships secondary armaments tracked around but did not fire.
"What do we do now?!" The same Kuznyetski asked, drawing their attention back to him as the two others loaded their injured comrade into the back of their vehicle.
"I cannot get through to the terminal, there's too much traffic!"
The answer came when a hundred meters away a shuttle slammed to the deck and marines IFF codes only just appearing all around it began winking out.
Shuttle
Avery Jensen sat nervous but ready in the hold of the Zatchnik shuttle as it weaved unadvisably and dangerously through the skyscrappers of the settlement of Stenkagorad.. Barely a day arrived and still being processed at the NYRDS facility amongst a couple other fresh marines and a healthy half hundred of NSN sailors she was one of the cherries on top of the cake being one of the last the Captain had been waiting on as he awaited his new ship crew, its marines, and those poor souls revived at the local facility it would take on hand.
Tomorrow would be the day when they would move to take up the task of reviving the NSS Anemone from its slumber and take the old warhorse of a ship back into the stars. It was one of those nights where nobody would be getting any sleep due to all the preparations needed and both energy and Anxiety were high.
When the building went into lockdown and the staff started panicking there was a million stories and no clear answer. The Captain himself took command of all the marines and Navy personnel himself and with his authorization each and every sailor and NSMC marines had busted out their kit from the crates loaded and ready to transport via the shuttle pad at the top floor of the skyscraper.
Fifty marines, most combat capable sans those still dealing with the trauma of revival and fifty sailors had secured the facility and were already trying to get to the bottom of things when an Ensign came about and volunteered ten of the marines, Avery one of them, and five of his combat-rated sailors to secure the Anemone at the starport.
Through a tradition of never taking the easy route it was up fifty flights of stairs in full Golem armor with her Spaid as one of the heaviest-loaded marines when Avery, the Ensign, and the others made the shuttle port. With only one shuttle it was the most that could be transported until more was acquired from the Anemone. The shuttle had been airborne less than five minutes when, through the cockpit window visible from the hold Objects half the size of a house began falling on the city.
Taking evasive maneuvers the Navy pilot flew under and around skyscrapers and anything to shield them until after several minutes the rain of death had stopped. Now, circling the starport from a kilometer up there was nothing much that could be seen in the dead of night and the snow except for the raging chaos of tracers and lasers of small arms not only on the flight deck but also the terminal and just about everywhere any of them looked.
The Kuzynetski were a hardy and weapons-obsessed people where every single one of them was armed in one way or another and the sheer volume of fire was at least understandable.
"Shit, are they actually rebelling?" One marine asked, well aware of the local tensions against the two rival governments.
"Stow it!" The Ensign shouted over the comms, his flak vest tight and a 12mm Ripshot in hand as he pointed to several marines.
"Havoc, Iccar, Holyman, Ester, Jensen; Cover from the doors, Havoc is in charge. Holly, Pepper, Biff, Ferris, Floss; You five are on me we get my boys to the Anemone and get her secondaries up."
"What are we even shooting at? Arent there supposed to be a marine billet at the starport?" Holly, a Jiyuiann marine asked, her Styrling longshot sniper rifle cramping in the tight confines.
"If it shoots as us or the blue-boys we shoot back, heard?" Corporal Havoc gave her a light punch on the helmet of her Golem armor.
Making a steep corkscrew down towards the flight deck the G-forces pulled on every present right until it pulled up sharp and with the practiced ease of a Sailor the Ensign launched himself to the side foor and flung it open; Himself, five marines, and three sailors running out.
Taking the seats facing the door each of the marines still in the shuttle watched their IFF icons start to move away right as a form flew into their midst with remarkable speed and tackled one of the marines. In the low-light vision mode of their Golem Armor they saw several others rush in as well with humanoid but alien-distinct forms as six hostiles entered their midst and engaged in close combat too fast to counter or support.
From the sound of heavy landings on the shuttle roof they were also a target as one landed right to the side of the shuttle and within view.
"Enemy powered armor!" Corporal havoc shouted as the marines opened fire as it flew out of sight above them.
"The hell was that! Where those WINGS?!" Ester shouted as the shuttle, still only about ten foot from the ground hovering lurched forwards and within a second the shuttle slammed hard onto the deck hard enough to crack teeth and give whiplash and vertigo until it slid and stopped gridning on the deck.
"Ah, fuck!" Someone cursed as Jensen came to her senses, her seat a perfect spot to see into the cockpit where half the transparent Durrandium that made up the cockpit glass had a hole melted through both it and where the pilot had just been by the look of the headless torso.
