The barrel of the Impaler particle beam rifle twisted and clattered around the door before falling into the hallway. Against the stronger pull of Phaedra's PPG, the NMX Neko's grip was nothing. The Nepleslian armor's abilities were designed to be superior to the Neko; a direct counter for the normal non-genetically engineered Nepleslians to the Yamataian living weapon.
"Good stuff, boys and girls! Keep up the pressure! Phaedra, lead the push forward! No stopping!" Leon commanded as he reloaded his shotgun, standing above the carcass of the NMX Crab that lay atop Rayne.
"Get up, you lazy arse. We got squids to kill!" he shouted at the wounded man. The Chief expected the wounds to be barely minor. They were Nepleslian Marines, fighting through pain was a hobby! If he was really bad, Romero would deal with it. "Marines, attack!"
-----------------
Laura looked at Rita. "I'm not trained in cybernetic prosthetics! I can repair mechanical things and fix people but not both rolled into one package! It's bioengineering!" she exclaimed.
Then she heard Lisa's call. She darted back into the hallway, firing a burst of coins down the hall at the retreating NMX forces. She slew to a halt at Bastilen. "This I can do!"
She whipped out the MED and plugged the datajockey into the suit. She needed to get a vital statistic reading on the man before she could begin. But off the top of her head, she had a preliminary list of things. His skin had been pierced so that meant that the NMX had gotten through to him. That meant it had very likely poisoned him. "Don't move," she instructed Bastilen, "Less movement, slower toxin spread."
She began fiddling with the injector's settings as a couple of white particle beams flashed near her. Laura ignored them and continued her job.
"Corporal, Sawyer just wants to get enough medals for being wounded so that he can build a little fort of them," Laura yelled as she placed the injector over Bastilen. The clone had set it to infuse the man with medical nano. He hadn't lost enough blood for her to want to pump him with droksin or another drug. The medical nano would, however, deal with any toxins from the exposure to the NMX claws, paws and tentacles.
The NMX, by now, had retreated behind a sealed vertical blast door, stopping the Marines' advance. "Wreno, you pull up any schematics on this next area before the AI kicked you out?"
----------------------
Unbeknownst to the Nepleslians, their enemy was marshaling her forces. With the aid of the shipboard AI, Helszepont had gathered a formidable array of warriors to begin a counterattack. It was clear that there were two groups of Nepleslian power armor infantry. One was just on the other side of this blast door while the other was doing its best to defend the hangars and engine rooms they had captured. Smaller groups of unarmored Nepleslians were running about the ship.
The group in engineering would be dealt with. She had sent a force of thirty Rippers and several dozen shock troopers to deal with them. More shock troopers had been dispatched to find and stop the Nepleslians running around. Another dozen Rippers were posted at the entrances to the bridge. Six shocktroopers had been sent to guard her quarters while another six were tasked with making sure that the Admiral's personal escape craft was not harmed. Finally, Helszepont had kept two dozen Daisy's as her personal bodyguard. The Nekos who formed this bodyguard were her own, trained by the best instructors and rewarded accordingly. Their training and conditioning was so complete that they believed that their entire existence was the protection and pleasure of their Mistress. In turn, her attention to them was the greatest reward. Unlike the majority of NMX Nekos who knew little about their full potential, each NH-29 in Helszepont's bodyguard knew everything that they could achieve, and had used their skills numerous times in combat, making them equal to the Star Army's veterans.
With each and every group, Mishhu Crabs and Nekos filled out the ranks. Cannonfodder for the Rippers and Shocktroopers. Helszepont knew that the Nepleslian Marines who were heading to the bridge would have to come to this junction. It was a large dining hall that they had fortified. As befitted its status as an officer's mess, it was connected to every major corridor in the ship. The Marines were stuck in that side corridor, usually reserved for maintenance crews. The survivors who had just fled through and sealed the blast door confirmed that a dozen or so Marines in Power Armor were behind them. Helszepont grinned maliciously from her own Daisy.
The barricades were set up to create a dead zone between the two blast doors and the NMX. The doors would act as a funnel. Whoever went through first would greeted by massed NMX fire. Her bodyguards and Crabs would make sure that if both doors opened, they would split their deadly fire. But Helszepont was certain they'd only use one door. Nepleslians tended to rush headlong into combat and knock obstacles aside. She liked that about them. It was a similarity in combat styles they shared. But unlike her, the Nepleslians possessed little or no finesse.
So like the patient predator, Helszepont and her forces waited behind stacked tables and debris for the blast doors to open and the Marines to rush through. They could only go forwards. Into the NMX guns. If they retreated, their mission to reach the bridge was doomed to failure.
