Kill? Really? That was the most complex order he was capable of? Oh, pitch in whereever she wanted to. Great... Reduced to having to fix others mistakes. Oh wait, wasn't that her job already as a medic? Fix people up because of the mistakes they made? Staying here, asking permission, Laura wasn't going to wait to for Zyv to get his act together.
Laura shoved past Rita and Henry so that she could advance into the wider section of the hallway, towards the room on the right. Her pulse laser array whirred as it rapidly spat invisible laser pulses at the two Nekos in front of her. The laser array, originally designed to kill incoming missiles, was more than capable of targeting and eliminating two NMX Nekos in body armor. Both of them died trying to fend off the Most Brilliant Medic in the Universe and her ego. It was a very one-sided match.
The pair of cats had been using a room for cover but now their corpses blocked the doorway so Laura grabbed both and threw them into the hallway. Only then did she notice that her shields had dropped to 72%, having taken hits from the Nekos farther down the hall.
As the medic took the fore, the rest of the squad slowly followed behind her. The minimissiles from Henry streaked across the hallway, one impaled an unfortunate Neko, and splattered her guts across the hallway in a red mist. His efforts, however, were less than fruitful as the NMX had plenty of time to react. In the cramped hallway, sprays of NMX aether and particle beams managed to intercept the majority of Henry's minimissiles. Only a couple DARTs and ARROWs exploded on the Rippers' shields, weakening but not penetrating them.
Sawyer's volley failed to launch. His Savtech pointed out that there was a 90% chance of one or more warheads hitting one of the three Marines in front of him. Even his plasma bursts were impeded by the presence of the Marines ahead. Each time he thought he had the shot, a Marine would suddenly move into his line fire. The Rippers seemed unfazed from the few plasma rounds that hit.
Zyv's volley of minimissiles flew off course and smashed into the doorway of a room on the left side of the hall, killing the Nekos occupying it. Now that Henry had begun to move out of his line of vision, the younger Marine's HPAR rounds had a clear path to strike at the NMX. Again, the NMX Rippers were completely unimpressed.
But now, they replied in kind. High powered positron cannons swiveled on their backs and locked onto the Marines still in the hallway. And fired. Bright green beams flashed down the hallway. Henry managed to dodge one, allowing it to slam into Zyv. The energy blew through his shields and damaged his right shoulder's Monoeye. The second beam had burned into the wall just to the left of Rita.
Wulfe's attempts to gunfight with the Nekos was pointless. From behind Sawyer, he was blocked by the demolitions expert and Rita. On the occasions when he saw a Neko come out, had aimed and fired, she had already fired and ducked back into her hiding spot as another Neko, somewhere else, popped out and sniped as well.
"Corporal, we need to fire and advance!" Laura yelled at Henry, watching the NMX Rippers advance as they fired with their heavy weapons. The Marines were moving forward much more slowly.
As if jerked into action by Laura's outburst and the near miss, Rita roared and shot forwards with her thrusters into the second room on the left, her PLA whirring and chainsword purring in her right hand. As she zipped in, a wild cackle and a cry of triumph on her lips, the Nekos began screaming as Rita hacked them to pieces.
"Like that!" Laura pointed though she didn't say the rest of the sentence that she wanted to. But not that recklessly
-----------------
Leon glanced at Lisa. She expected it to explode and didn't warn them? That did not make him feel comfortable at all.
"Blackwood! Status on that door?" he yelled at the dancing Marine. She replied with the same information Bastilen had, the door was stuck and not amount of random button pushing was opening it.
Moments later, Lisa was done. She had used the cutter to cut away large chunks of the door. But it wasn't enough to fit a Hostile through. If they squirmed through sideways, the hole was barely too small. "Right, time to apply some muscle. Wreno, push that half in, I'll pull this. Can't have the ladies working up a sweat yet." Leon grabbed the right half of the blast doors, making sure they had cooled to the point where he could touch them without burning himself or having the metal cool off and stick on him. Then he pulled as hard as he could, relying on the extra strength provided to him by the nanomuscles and servos in his power armor. And slowly, he did feel the door slide back.
"Okay, I think that the AI probably just locked you out but didn't actually lock these doors. Put your muscles into them, Wreno!"
