RP: NSS Sledge Mama Ep. 5.5 - I Hear You Like Cats?

Richard let out a sigh and then moved to pick up his minigun, things were just getting started so he wasn't going to leave it behind. "Not the best fight ever but I'm all good." He turned his attention to Kelly to see how she was doing and would respond.

Alec flopped down to a sitting position as the calmness set in, exhausted from the intensity of the combat. His hand ran over the scorched chest plate of his power armor, still hot from shots he'd taken from militant. "I'm alive! Slightly singed but alive!" he announced to the group as he wobbled his way back up to his feet.

The Hostile, standing erect once more made a small flourish with the longsword. A small arcing twirl overhead as it returned to its resting place on one of the armor's magstrips. Pulling the HPAR free, Yuriko came beside one of the more intact Militant units, weapon over the armor's knees as it squatted. The shield stood forgotten for the moment. The Sergent for all intents and purposes appeared to be examining the automaton, her suit's Monoeye system and AI analyzing whatever data it could pick up.

"No damage," finally stating as her suit lifted back to its feet once more, data taking its time to be verified.

Really, she'd used the others of Ylfa's team as bait before her ambush. Hey, it worked, moral scruples be damned. "I've scanned one of the units, my suit's AI'll analyze the data and perhaps shed some intel on this series of Militant."

Jaime finished his look around, finding only a few scrap piles that were once Militants. He screwed up his face underneath his helmet in thought. "I know it's in everyone's minds, but these shits..." He listened to the Sergeant speak, "That might help Sergeant." He looked around again at the damaged walls, and the exit points.

He sighed, "So where to now, Top?"

Mark took a moment to catch his breath before replying. "I'm still able to fight Sar'ent. Scratched and scraped up but I'm not dead yet." He replied with a grin.

Everything shook ever so slightly as a 'light' bombardment somewhere outside sent a deep rumble through the base.

"So we're down one," Ylfa noted, her voice cold. Eyeing Richard, the Master Sergeant watched as he plied the Freespacer with questions, and when she was still and silent, stared to try and rouse her. Ylfa knew that she didn't have to ask them to sound off. Bar jamming, the data feed from their suits was as accurate as it got. Portions of Kelly's suit was marked black - completely breached - and there were no signs of activity whatsoever. Worse, were the internal temperature readings. Any Nepleslian would have been literally cooked alive inside their suit. "Leave her. We still have to catch that POI," Ylfa ordered, her words icy. As the woman readied herself, she looked down the hallway from which the machines endlessly poured. It seemed all the more ominous now, it's dark recesses littered with their scattered remains.

Worse yet, they could see glimpses of fellow marines amongst the ruins now that the fighting had settled.

"Sawyer, unless you want to crouch walk the whole way, switch back to your Hostile. The rest of you, unless there's something else, we move in five." Needless to say, she didn't seem happy in the slightest.

The HUD's display had lit up like a Christmas Tree. Incoming data streamed through like water droplets streaking glass. Observing it all in silence, the Sergeant took in the information with the careful, meticulous acuity of a machine herself. There were no 'Hums' or 'Oohs' or 'Ahs' just silent observance. Hostile poised for action despite its operator's attention being elsewhere. Of course she had heard Ylfa's command. Irrelevant as it was at the moment.

Tritium-Deuterium Fuel, that meant a Fusion Reactor instead of the more common Fission Piles. The armor plating, actuators, servos, internal circuitry and power channels. . . All held an industrialized touch. Freespacers were nothing if not eccentric when it came to the production of their hardware. Regular Militants had their own unique quirks, all thanks to their creators own endemic eccentricities. What bothered her the most happened to be the things AI unit and programming subroutines. Pretty tight encryptions. If she had a couple hours, Yuriko'd crack the thing like an egg provided it did not come with built-in booby traps.

Moving the wreckage with a large, metallic hand, the Hostile then rose swiftly to its feet.

"Master Sergeant Diadottr, these units are not your atypical Militants. That is fairly obvious. What is not is that the manufacture diverges from normal Freespacer design philosophy in a major way. Fusion Reactors, Metamaterial Alloy Plating, intricate circuitry with redundant shielding against surges and finally what makes it tick. The AI and programming have some heavy duty encryption algorithms. If I had to say, these were not built by the 'Spacers. Or at least not traditionalists. These were deliberately made uniform, a big fucking no-no as far as 'Spacers are concerned."

Stripe growled grumpily. "Well that's just what we need. More unknowns." He stated as he kept an eye out for anything that was trying to kill him in general. Now that it was pointed out to him, he couldn't help but take note how
un-Freespacer the complex.

Jamie checked his armor and weapons out of habit, "Copy." His voice was winded but there. He'd also began to take note of the environment as things had died down, it seemed more military to him. He walked up towards the hall and stopped. He had his weapon somewhat lowered but his finger loomed at the trigger guard, somewhat twitchy like. He seemed slightly uneasy, though it could likely be that this was almost as heavy in his eyes as the war was, making him think of his mortality about as much as the mission.

Taking a moment to observe everything, Alec sighed and felt the weight of the situation dropped on his shoulders. The fact they've lost a lot of marines, especially Kelly, put a knot in his gut. Alec made his way back to the ammo pile to stock on rounds before moving through aftermath of the carnage, looking for... well, anyone to help.

Richard did not take long to realize Kelly's situation, her lack if a snarky remark was evidence enough, but the HUD in side Richard's Hostile gave a brutal confirmation. He clenched his fist but didn't say anything, he just held it in. They hadn't known each other long but she was a good friend, and he kept hope that her memory systems weren't destroyed and they could get her back. He marked the location on his systems to make sure he tailed around back later to pick her up. He got to work checking all his weapons to make sure they still operated, and even made sure that all the militants were indeed finished.

Mark sighed and checked his weapon. From his pov this entire mission was starting to go right down the toilet but now wasn't the time to complain. He quietly moved to stand beside Ylfa and waited.

Sawyer would shrug as he exited the Aggressor, stepping over and back into his Hostile, resetting the commands and making sure that the Aggressor was locked down tight so that if more of the militants came through they would find it hard to get into its systems and as a backup he set an emergency self destruct if the computer determined that unauthorized access was being made, setting off the remaining minimissiles as well as melting down the primary reactor core. "Roger that Top. Just making sure nobody manages to use that beast to cause us problems from behind."

When was the last time they had seen Ylfa unhappy? Honestly, truly unhappy? Because right now, she wasn't happy at all.

"Explains why these ones hit Yamatai and the rest couldn't go through with it. Traditionalists don't have the stones," she darkly remarked. What Yuriko had said was disturbing. Not just because of the extra shit they had to put up with. No. It implied that something had fundamentally changed in the Freespacers. At least, this group they were dealing with in specific. If there was a reason to be unhappy, this was a very good reason to be. She snorted. "If you didn't want unknowns, you shouldn't have signed up to be a Devil Dog - its our job to sniff out the enemy," her tongue snapped at Stripe a little. She nodded to Sawyer as he finished up with his Aggressor and Hostile however. There was that much civility left in her shortening fuse. Still, they had a job to do, and though Kelly's remains still glowed and burned, Ylfa refused to glance back, striding forward instead. "On me. We haven't seen the last of them yet."

True to her word, they really hadn't.

As the marines marched forward into the dark, ruined, crater filled landscape their firefight had created, they trod over the remains of numerous Militants. Entire side rooms were blasted open with all the ordinance they had used, the corners especially perilous. However, that wasn't the biggest concern they had at all. No. At first, it was one. Then two, then more. And as they looked, turned on their lights, the marines could see them.

The machines had shut themselves down.

Jaime had his weapon raised as he walked forward along the hallway. He felt like he was being watched as he walked and his heartbeat jumped up slightly. He toggled his light and turned to look at one of the machines, he jumped clean out of his skin but didn't say anything besides the audible gasp. His gasp was followed by, "What the hell?" and then, "Top, I think they're offline."

Stripe raised an eyebrow at Ylfa's rather cranky response, but discarded it for now- he didn't know Ylfa well enough to really care. Hopefully, things would get better. If not... well, he would cross that bridge when he came to it, or blow it up. Whatever works.

He was startled out of his thoughts by the first Militant, by the third he had to bite his tongue- no point in antagonizing Ylfa any further. "Any idea what could cause these things to shut down in mass?" he asked, voicing what everyone was thinking.

The hallway they had come to lay littered with the metal corpses of deactivated automatons. And they passed them, and entered the Domain.

The Silver Shadow sighted down.

Through the scope, they marked the distance to the ‘corpses’ of deactivated abominations, their idle loll a trap suggested earlier. Of course the Marines would punch through; the automatons were only machines, after all, and no one on this base save Shadow knew the real importance of that fact. So from here, this position on high, they had set up a clear, clean shot – a series of straight lines that would have to be charged down, into the broad two-story control tower that concealed the Shadow.

A clearer shot than anywhere else on the base.

Those corpses were range markers, and they had passed the first of them.

Click, click. The Silver Shadow adjusted the sights.

As the crosshairs drifted, they picked targets. Nepleslian powered machines. “Hostile” Infantry Armorsuit, produced by Nepleslian Arms and Munitions. Most of them, they saw, carried HPAR’s.

The first shot of Deliverance cracked like lightning, and thundered against the helmet of the unfortunate marine, shattering its headlamp in a burst of sparks. Shadow did not pause, but shifted slightly to the left, letting the bipod, padded springsteel stock, and their mechanical shoulder soak the recoil as they chose a second time.

Crack! The sound like lightning, the thunder following.

Another shattered HUD.

Copper tinkled on the sheetmetal flooring. No fatalities. Not yet.

In the concealing darkness, they stayed very still, watching.

"Come on you bastards," the Shadow mouthed, mostly to themselves. "Pause for sniper."




Jamie’s head smarted from the stunning bullet, but he found that despite the prolific dint in the place where his headlamp used to be, along with a ringing in his ears, he was fine. His HUD had cracked a little, but his helmet had protected him from having his brains splattered.

Happy birthday.

He barely had time to recover before out of the corner of his eye he spied the same thing happen to Alec, who had moved forwards a little further into the ruined combat zone. He had the perfect view of her headlamp shattering like the sudden, violent blooming of a glass rose, right after the strange, surreal spark of the high-caliber round piercing her defensive shield with pinpoint precision.

Energy might have dissipated against the superior CBS, but…?

The after-shocks of the high-caliber shots echoed in the metal cavern, bouncing around for a moment, and leaving behind it a high-pitched, utterly uncomfortable silence.

The dark, cratered ruination continued unmolested further than the naked eye could see in the dim lighting, and it faded into darkness further away than their HUD’s lights could immediately reach.

Zooming in, far on the other side, they could see a structure of some sort worked into the wall of the asteroid. Between them, and it, was almost a thousand yards of craters, dead, and deactivated droids. It was a killzone. A sniper’s paradise.

And they had gone far enough into it now that they were big gray targets.

Jaime's curses and screaming were muted as his helmet took damage and turned to a more metallic echo. He blew his jets into the closest inlet he could. He let out a muted scream in pain as the suit complained as it hit the wall, his heart rate was going absolutely bonkers. He screamed into his mic, "Sniper! Out your lights!" His HUD was distorted but was clear enough to be seen as he checked his vitals, he still had all his limbs including his right mechanical.

He inched his shoulder and head hurt and the ringing was beginning to die down he looked at the rest of his squad, waiting out of fear or desperation that his helmet won't take another shot.

Richard had followed after everyone as they continued on in silence. There was none of his usual light-hearted, jovial demeanor present but instead only a tension like a razorwire. The moment he spotted the militants he readied for combat, getting into a low stance with his shield in front, but just as quickly as they appeared, they were deactivated. He wasn't about to let his guard down so easily and eyed around to make sure everything was secure.

When the sounds of the projectiles hitting helmets rang out he sharpened his focus and positioned himself. He did not know the exact point of origin but he could grasp the general direction and shifted his shoulder mounted shield in that direction and aligned his barrier in the general direction as well. "WE need to get to cover!" He moved himself to the front of the group to act as a shield. for everyone till they could get away.

Alec cautiously walked among the disabled militants, occasionally tapping them with the end of his bayonet to see if there would be any sort of response from them. "This is like some sort of haunted fun house room..." He tried talking to keep his mouth from going dry from the tension. "Just not quite as fu-"

The sound of a sniper cut him off him of as he hit the deck. His head felt like the hammer of god just smacked him and his ears rang out in pain from the shot. He scrambled behind one of the deactivated in militants, screaming and crying at the same time.