Ship Interior - Carina, Otto, Lupin.
Lupins pre-firing and subsequent unloading were cathartic at best for a bad situation. Round slammed seemingly harmless into the flank of the operator's armor and against her cybernetic instruments of death as effectively as if he were pounding his fist into sand.
The momentum however did shift her in a way Carina had not been able to as the static operator slowly started to tilt and shift in the gravity as if falling over in slow motion. Eventually, she had twisted enough that carina was able to slide and wiggle free of her grasp and solve one of many issues piling up. Her oxygen shortage being the biggest concern was at least a delayable death thanks to Otto's spare oxygen tank he had been using for propulsion and some quick scrounging and salvaging from dead Kuvexians to not quite patch the holes but at least ease the flow of escaping air from an alarming level to only a concerning one.
Even her bleeding had been quelled when her contracting muscles and tissue had frozen shut; She couldn't even feel that pain anymore which was both a relief and another soon-to-be emergency she would have to tackle if...
When she got out of this mess.
Figuring out how she was going to get back to the hangar without blacking out from the pain would be the last bulletin point she was processing when she caught sight of a new patch of absolute darkness in the hall observing them. Fear at the arrival of another operator delayed her warning, and the failure of communications made it too late when the new figure glided from the darkness and weaved unseen behind Lupin and Otto.
By the time they noticed it was too late to act. Luckily for them, the operator seemed uninterested in them and passed them all by to the floating corpse of Locust.
The operator appraised the corpse, seemingly confused at the lack of fatal wounds but none the less righted the corpse and continued their examination for another moment before seemingly seeing something with their equipment that could not be seen with the naked eye froze for only a moment before glancing over their shoulder at the three marines.
Placing a hand on the top of the corpse's head and remotely activating a feature, the head simply popped off from the shoulders, blood spewing from the severed head and body alike as a sealant at the base of the neck preserved the head and stopped the bleeding.
Content, The operator turned towards the exit and began to glide back.
It was almost a relief when they went to leave. But right as they passed by the still stunned marines a pistol was casually drawn from its holster with disarming grace and a single flash emanated inside the darkroom bright enough to blind them as a high-powered energy weapon began to discharge.
Ship Interior - Duece.
Locust wasn't dead, she discovered that much through her vitals. The woman's implant had had its neural link destabilized and her tamper-package had activated, blowing away part of her frontal lobe. It wasn't fatal; Her implants long since deteriorated and unreplaced left the charge less than lethal.
She knew from the readings Locust was blind, disoriented, and paralyzed but hardly dead. Regardless she began the decapitation procedure and recovery process while she pieced together what happened.
light damage to the woman's armor, floating shell casings, a wounded baby deer on the brink... Locusts preferred prey...
Duece had been too lax. All the signs of Locusts deterioration had been showing as of late. She figured she delayed the coming episode with that boy on New Bernese, Locust had seemed placated enough and had been marginally sanguine since then. She had clearly underestimated how much shorter between episodes had been.
She would have to ask Kiss to reprogram her again. She still needed locust until she could find a replacement after all; With her team dead or scattered she figured between hers and Kiss' efforts they could scrape the bottom of the barrel enough for a temporary team while new stock were scouted.
Steve would be hard to replace. And Tobias...
Locust had her toys, Duece should be allowed to have her own too. A shame to lose that one.
She sighed inwardly to herself as she prepared to leave, Floating past the little doe and placating with no signs of aggression. It was only when she was between the two actual threats that she acted. Her Nova pistol barked its signature flare and melted the face of the first man, with an empty rifle he had no chance but still managed an impressive dodge to the side avoiding a hole the size of her fist through his skull; Not that it mattered. The high-powered beam melted the front of his EVA suit to his face and where it did pass through boiled his eye into a steaming mess and cauterized half of his handsome face.
The other one, the one on her blind side reacted faster. She knew which one he was, a dropout and washout from the program. He was the bigger threat but was still just another bug to her. It only caused her a moment's delay when he didn't doge; But actually lunged at her, throwing off her aim and making her miss. She let the Nova fall from her grasp and hang by its lanyard while one of her precious kine blades found its way from its sheathe on her chest.
In her enhanced speed from her armor and the lack of gravity, he had no way to dodge when a foot and a half of vibrating durrandium punctured between his ribs and cause microtears as she cut effortlessly through his insides as the blade flailed. From the way, he hung limp shock had taken over quickly and he had blacked out from the pain.
The two had been dispatched in only a matter of seconds. All that was left was the baby doe as Duece floated menacingly towards her, one hand reaching out as she did. |
Shuttle - Sebastian, Lou, Ana.
Sebastian's world had gone dark. One minute he had been barreling towards the enemy frame in the hangar and the next...
Black...
He wasn't dead. That much was clear. He knew his suit's charge was depleted, though if from the batteries finally giving out after days of continued use, damage, or just the dam suit acting up again he wasn't sure.
The last was a pretty likely possibility. Before he had reached the hangar both the VOIDs arms had shot up again and flared the bird at his enemy before things had cut out. He also knew that the enemy wasn't a problem anymore; Thousands of kilos worth of VOID smashing into you at hundreds of miles per hour isnt anything such a small suit can shrug off.
From his powerless helmet, when someone had finally pried him away enough to see, he could see that no matter how good the armor, a mans spine was never meant to bend at a 90 degree angle like that.
Slowly, likely due to all the dead weight he could tell he was being moved until finally the dim interior lights of the shuttle came to and he could see Louis and Ana's faces looking him over.
Others were their too. The red pilot in her EVA suit Facet, An operator in Brivita armor with a severed head in the same helmet, Otto motionless with bandages and sealant over a masty wound in his gut, A twitching and thrashing marine with their EVA helmet melted horrifically to their face to the point he couldn't distinguish who it was, Carina eyes closed and motionless with blood trickling out of patched holes in her suit.
Of all the marines and reds they alone Sebastian could see survived as the shuttle jerked and jolted out of the hangar. When they finally got the release on his helmet off and his massive if overtaxed lungs could breathe again a hollow pit formed in the young SOLs gut.
So this is war?
Ship Exterior - Tobias.
"Just me, Kid." Dreamy Steves voice came through clear enough due to their proximity as he caught the operator descending towards him and settled him on the deck before he could float off into space.
"Just me."
There was no mistaking the disappointment in his tone as he said it, Staring off into space and the distant battle as it raged.
There was nothing to say. So the two simply watched as slowly the fighting tampered into nothing and the ink was silent and dark once more. Only then did steve speak again. It wasn't about the honorable if pointless death of the rag-tag fleet. It wasn't about the possibility of being marooned there until they either suffocated or were captured.
Instead, the nonsequitur steve brought about while seemingly profound made about as much sense as what usually came out of the spook's mouth and seemingly rang some inner cord in Tobias's mind and his mind registered too late what the man was about to do when the finality of the man's tone registered to him.
"When you meet her, Don't fight her, don't rebel against her. She won't hurt you, not in a way that matters at least, she'll need you now that the algorithm has changed..."
Before Tobias could stop him, The operator had already pulled the pin on plasma charged grenade and held it under his chin. The kick Steve delivered was hard enough from the brivitas servo motors to unconnect his maglocked boots from the deck and send him slowly drifting off away from the ship. As he drifted off slowly into the ink Steves final words reached him before the man disappeared in a plume of expanding hellfire.
"I desire nothing more than deep and restful sleep when sometimes I can't help but feel this is nothing more than a frightening dream. Good luck, Kid."
As Tobias was left alone in the ink, and even the distant ship began to look like nothing more than a dot on the horizon a flying black figure began to grow in size against the distant pinprick of light from the ship as a black suit of powered armor began to grow larger in his direction...
