RP: 4th Fleet (NSN) [Mision 5.1] Operation Roundhouse

Bridget eyed one of the hanging carcasses. She poked it with her HPAR. "I can't even tell what this is anymore..." She shuddered and turned around. "Maybe I don't want to know what it used to be. Blech! Well, Boss," she said to Ulrich, "not much here, huh? Where to next?"

"No. Damn it. I didn't get shit." growled Bastilen in response to the Sergeant. He growled grumpily, yanking the wire firmly from the console, before rolling it up and stuffing it away. "The viruses didn't even get into the system. I should've waited first. Stupid. Fucking stupid!"

Crash! Bastilen put his fist through the console, before pulling out a circuit board like some kind of bleeding heart, before tossing it away.

"Wreno, can you open this blast door?"

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"Yeah, just... just give me a second." grunted the tech expert, shaking his hand of oozing chemicals, slime, and wires. If he had not known any better, he would assumed that circuit board was a heart. None-the-less he turned off, prying the door open, and ran across the hall, his quickly disappearing into the disturbing mix of coils.

"Just need to make sure I don't... Drop the..." said Bastilen as he worked, pulling and cutting wires. "... Locks. Sometimes that happens."

Zzzt.

"Not this time, though."

"No. Damn it. I didn't get shit," growled Bastilen.

"Volkov, get your squad assembled out here," said Leon.

"Cavaliers, on me!" said Phaedra, coming up along side Leon while the P4C worked on the large blast door.

"Prepare for entry!" she said, her HPAR ready for whatever was on the other side of the door.

Rita had been following along calmly and silently, taking stock of the situation with cold detachment and giving her superiors the opportunity to lead her around by the nose like the attack dog she was. When they finished off the nekos, she wiped her chain longsword on the wall and leaned up against a nearby pillar. She stood quietly, after a while sheathing her longsword and letting her LPA drop to her side, suspended by the sling. She crossed her arms and began to tap her foot, then looked over to Henry and shook her head.

"What are you waiting for, fucking New Years? Let's get a move on, I'm itching to splatter something squishy."

Ulrich prodded one of the slabs of meat and grimaced "Euch, it's damn near enough to put a man off his dinner. Ulrich shrugged and turned away from the butchery, making his way toward the door "We should fall in with the others...Oh and love, no need for the boss stuff, I'm just Ulrich" Ulrich chuckled "The boss is the scary one that shouts at us a lot".

Sawyer moved to link up with Morris and his team, his LPA at the ready and his bag of breaching charges safely stowed just in case they had need of them. "So what's the plan?" he asked as he waited for the rest of the fireteam to form up. He wasn't sure what he felt about the death of Corporal Rui other than that he was determined to make sure that the man's death was not in vain and that they were successful in taking this ship over.

Henry had Aubrey, Stenton, Stones and Rakowski to work with. It was time to move them around and get them to continue on. The remark from Stenton had gotten Henry snapped out of his angst.

"Roger, Sir." He replied to Leon. Henry was going to continue the mission regardless, but having to reassure that fact to his superiors was protocol, and protocol could be a bitch at times.

Taking a look around the room and finding nothing else of interest, Henry exited the room for the Sailors to come and hold. He hoped they'd treat Ran's body with some respect as well, but Henry wasn't all that optimistic about those chances.

"Hm, door ahead." Henry said, moving in to inspect it. He motioned for the others in his squad to get into position, and be ready, "Could be another corridor. They could be waiting for us in a pincer." He had his HPAR raised in his right hand as he raised his left hand to operate the controls, then paused lowered his hand.

"Actually, let's surprise them. Sawyer, plant us a charge, will you?" He stood back to let the man work his 'magic'.

Sawyer grinned inside his helmet as he simply activated his mic in acknowledgement before moving up to the door and pulling his bag of charges out, working with a practiced ease he set up one of his breaching charges and pulled out the detonator. He took the time to make sure that it was precisely placed to cut through the center of the door and make a hole big enough for them to pass through. Looking at the others he motioned for them to back up and take cover from the backblast area. After they did so he said over the squad comms "Fire in the hole, fire in the hole, fire in the hole" and pressed the detonation button causing the 2 and half blocks of RX-33 to detonate along with the set of det cord connecting them all to detonate in a thunderous explosion hopefully ripping the door open and flaying everything on the other side with deadly shrapnel.

"Finally." Rita scoffed as they exited the room. She switched her HPAR to her right side and her LPA to her left, letting the latter droop down with the grip of the former tightly in her hand. Then she drew her chain longsword back out and waited to engage the whirring blade, her back pressed up against the wall a few meters from the door. "Hell yeah. Blow that shit open and we'll nuke 'em till they glow, then shoot 'em in the dark."

When the explosion came, Rita braced her suit against the wall until the shaking stopped, then stuck her left arm out, letting her HPAR rest on top of it with the sword carried horizontally. The gun was leveled at the doorway, ready to blast anything that came through to smoldering giblets. "Time to get handled, motherfuckers!"

Henry wasn't about to let the dust settle. He had to capture the element of surprise after all, "Alright let's go! Move move move, Stenton, Stones, Left! Aubrey! Rakowski, Right!"

Henry was the first to move, and stayed in the middle of the formation, hugging the wall with his HPAR pointing rightwards to assist Aubrey and Rakowski. He had to even out the squad's greenhorns with the more experienced members, while keeping himself in the middle in case the brunt of the fight came from either side.

As the dust settled, blueish-white particle beams darted out towards Henry and Rita. The lances crashed into the metallic bulkheads around the Marines as well Rita's shields, casting a glow in the smoke. However, as the Marines looked around, all they saw were Neko infantry backpedaling to get away from the Marines. They tossed several grenades, causing thick grey smoke to cloud the corridors and mask their retreat.

Sawyer reacted to the smoke grenades by hurling a pair of plasma grenades at the area where the Nekoes were while muttering to himself "Seriously you damned cats should have used real grenades not those pansy smoke bombs"

Rita engaged her thermal optics, peering through the smoke at the glowing figures of the nekos trying to get away. With her HPAR carefully rested on her arm, she fired shorts bursts of coinshot one after the other in quick succession. Her mechanical limbs afforded her unnatural precision with eacho shot, her HUD displaying targeting lines between the barrel of her gun and the enemies through the veil. She grit her teeth in concentration, choosing not to taunt her foes for once.

The plasma grenades detonated in the hallway but the blinding flash of light from the explosion made it impossible to see if any Nekos had died. It also blinded Rita who was using her night vision mode when everything went white from the plasma detonations.

When the light dimmed, none of the Nekos or their equipment could be seen. Only a deep scoring in the middle of the hallway where the grenades had exploded. There were, however, a number of open doors in this hallway.

Henry had gotten used to door-breaching routines. Door blows open, move swiftly with gun out, then raise gun, and fire at targets whilst avoiding anything that shouldn't go down. The only thing that wasn't according to this routine, but wasn't exactly unwelcome were the smoke grenades.

The Monoeye suite had some infrared and nightvision packages installed amongst other things which wouldn't set off the tell-tale stream of subspace particles that'd give away anything's position - then again it was bleeding obvious that the NMX ship was being invaded by some very angry marines.

Using the infravision to see through the smoke, he made double-tap shots against the unarmoured targets that were retreating. Sawyer's plasma grenades had whited out his display, and he opted to wipe the image so he could see again in a hurry.

Then there were the doors. After seeing no more visible threats, Henry was the first to move forward, HPAR still up. All of the doors were open, but this could mean that someone, or more likely, something was hiding behind them and those Nekovalkyrja he, Sawyer and Stenton just gunned down were cannon fodder. He raised his hand to the others to slow down and move quietly as Henry poked the muzzle of his HPAR into the first room, finger on the trigger...

Prior to leaving the scene of Ruis death Zyv did two things. The first was to pick up an NMX hat, shake off the blood and brain and tuck it away. The second was to check the corporal’s body for any piece of kit that could still be used, Rui would not need it but Zyv just might.

After that it was do as told and don’t get shot.

Ending up on the side of the corridor that was not occupied by NMX and the firefight dying away without his taking part in it Rakowski continued to cover the teams collective six as they made their way down the corridor but was ready to move up and assist as needed.

"Rightio, Ulrich!" said Bridget, taking a small leap over to the cans of food. She stacked three on top of her helmet and turned a pirouette. The cans didn't move. She looked at Ulrich. "I always wanted to try that in my suit." She let the cans fall to the ground on their own as she moved into the hallway and caught up with the rest of her team.

Lisa left the room saying "clear!" As she got out. This ship was horribly the meaty walls were making her sick. She never understood how could those neko live in this. There was no time feeling sorry, especially not for nekoes. Lisa might not be bloodthirsty as Leon seemed, but these cat-eared women were still enemy. She would still rather take them prisoners then execute them like Laura just did.

"I'll move up!" Lisa said and moved forward, her large gun was perfect for covering others, but she had to enter first. Also it looked like her fusion cutter won't be used since, Wren could hack everything anyway. Lisa moved to the door an leaned outside, quickly looking around and scanning area with her gun, ready to shoot anything NMX. Shit, I should have taken a drone. She thought for herself.

Sawyer moved to stack on the door opposite of Henry, turning on his IR sensor suite and moving into the room with his weapon at the ready prepared to fire on any hostiles in the area. As he entered he'd check his front and then swing towards the open area of the room to check it for targets as he moved towards the corner of the room.

A grenade rolled along the floor, clinking against Henry's foot and exploded. The explosion and fragmentation had been absorbed by Henry's armor but the kinetic energy and shockwave sent him backwards, out of the room and into the smoky hallway. It was followed by a loud, defiant screech and two particle beams that were absorbed by his shields.

Almost immediately, more particle beams lanced through the smoke from farther down the hallway. Most of them passed harmlessly but one did strike true against the back of Zyv's shields. The firing continued as a second volley crashed into each of the Marines. Both Sawyer and Rita saw that their shields had dropped to 60% from the two volleys. Henry had escaped it as he tried to recover on the floor. In the cramped and confined space of the hallway, where they could barely advance two abreast, the Marines had no cover except the open rooms.

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As Leon, Phaedra and their subordinates walked down the other corridor, they too saw that the rooms were open, unlike the fleshiness of previous ones and that this corridors was purely metallic with metallic doors. They could even see where the fleshiness abruptly ended and was replaced by steel bulkheads.

And far ahead, the Marines saw an advancing group of NMX soldiers. About a dozen or more Neko light infantry led the way followed by two NMX shocktroopers and a Type 32 NMX, which was obviously the commander as it led from the rear. Leon, who led from the front, felt disgusted at that sort of leadership.

"Spread out, take cover in the rooms and open fire!" he ordered his unit. He dashed forward into a room on his left, immediately followed by cry of surprise and a quick discharge from the shotgun. "Son of a bitch!"

Laura, who was farther behind, couldn't follow as she was blocked Phaedra and Lisa. So instead, she moved to a different room and took cover in the doorway to fire at the advancing NMX.