RP: NSS Altomir [Mission 1.1] Gathering the Bearings

As Ruse was making his way across the garage floor towards the corner his savitech alerted him to the fire coming on his previous position. Ruse cursed silently at the fact the mech was still around and kicking. At least Ruse was taking solace in that the mech still didn't seem to have an exact fix on their unit. Focusing his right shoulder monoeye back on his original position, Ruse stopped as he noticed his counterpart had done the same. Then his savitech begin blaring warnings as the mech below had let of another volley into their building. “Oh shit!” Ruse thought as the top floor of the garage began to collapse.

Thinking quickly Ruse activated the suit's gravitic drive to cushion the fall. Falling through the cloud of debris and dust, Ruse fell through the floor loosing his footing as he landed landing on his back side and quickly rolled to his feet and quickly made his way to the low wall surrounding the floor of the garage facing the subway. Seeing his counterpart had done the same Ruse fixed his suit's monoeyes on the street below. Checking over his LSP over as he viewed the situation below. “ Yeah sounds like a plan. Besides whats the worst that could happen? We get shot?” Ruse joked as he fallowed suit with Daniel. Activating his suit's shields and his gravitic drive again Ruse jumped down to the street below readying his weapon for action.

Whether it was because of the severe beating the Render had taken, or perhaps an acute loss of sensor functioning from the attacks directed at it, the large NMX mecha did not notice Alexandra Mayhew moving towards it from the rear, the full of its attention apparently directed at the parking garage. The mechanized brute attempted to fire upon the building again, however as the guns above its head seemed to cease to function, simply sitting there emitting the telltale hum of impending aetheric death. It was possible that it was simply waiting for a clearer shot.

Ruse and Daniel would find sneaking out of the building to be a simple feat; their NIGHT02 armorsuits were well-equipped for evading enemy sensors. Given that the offending Render mecha was heavily damage and supposedly experiencing a vast array of malfunctions, the duo would be met with little resistance to their escape, despite a few low emissions from their suits drive systems.

Alexandra's PPG latched onto the Render on point as she aimed her arm towards it. Given that the NMX mecha was markedly heavier than her Hostile, her armor was yanked in its direction, giving her an instantaneous acceleration. Her VCBS sank into the machinery, a slew of sparks pouring from the entry wound. The Render lurched up to retaliate, spinning around while Alex stuck to its back.

---

Despite two of the Rippers (A and D) being dealt with, the last of the three (B) found itself hard-pressed for options. The armorsuit paused for a moment as it considered its position, suddenly without support and up against more opposition than it had originally found. The Ripper chose to flee, spinning around towards the southeast and activating its thrusters towards the parking garage. Perhaps the Ripper felt more confidant in its escape if had the large superstructure of the garage to block and impede the gunfire from the marine group at the mouth of the subway entrance. What it did not count on was the two NIGHT02 armored soldiers directly in its intended path. The Ripper seemed unaware of their presence, despite the Render actively firing upon them; perhaps communications between the two were momentarily severed, or another one of many possible issues.



Regardless, the Ripper (B) bounded in a serpentine pattern towards the parking garage, attempting to escape while evading fire from the marines behind it.

Saveli rolled off of the Ripper he had just stabbed to death with the others. He offered just a moment of respite to catch his breath and sheath his knife, before hunting his rifle down. Luckily, it appeared to be safely nestled a few feet away, and he quickly scooped it up, using his shoulder mono-eye to gauge the situation.

"We need to keep that Ripper suppressed! It can't get away!" the Iromakuanhe turned, and shouldered his Impaler, trying to pepper fire the large Mishhu armor as it tried to get away.

Daniel Rand broke into a run towards the subway entrance, the nano-muscle fibers of his armorsuit augmenting his physical strength and allowing him to move with inhuman speed. He barely managed to take a few steps before noticing the sole remaining Ripper swerving back and forth in an evasive pattern of movement and approaching his position -- fleeing from the marines in the viscinity of the subways entrance that were trying to take him out.

The marine began strafing north-east up the road whilst keeping his LSP trained upon the Ripper. Pulling the trigger of his submachinegun, Daniel unleashed a barrage consisting of dozens of armor-piercing rounds in the space of a few heart-beats -- aiming for the power armors optics-studded head.

"Haives! We've got incoming!" Daniel shouted in alarm to his squad-mate over their shared comms frequency.

Now that Ruse was on the street level he had trained his center mono-eye on the action at the subway entrance while his left was locked in the direction of the Render and his right was sweeping the street to the north east and behind him. Ruse was just beginning to take his first steps towards the subway entrance when his savitech alert to the remaining Ripper's sudden change in course. He quickly decided not to head in that direction as the Ripper made its escape towards where he was his counterpart were located apparently unaware of them.

“Rodger that.” Ruse stated over his squad's comm as he began back pedal as he began training his weapon on the incoming Ripper. With assistance from the on-board savitech Ruse took aim at the Ripper's neck and head area, letting loose a volley of fire from his LSP. As he was doing so Ruse was backpedaling up the street towards the northeast corner of the parking garage.

The Ripper, surprised by the sudden attack from the advantageous NIGHT-armored soldiers, could not dodge the first volleys of fire from their LSPs. The propelled rounds tunked against the armored exterior, the force of the rounds and close proximity lurching the body with each direct hit. Although damaged and between a rock and a hard place, the Ripper had not forgotten what its objective was. Utilizing its thrusters, the Ripper chose to charge the two in front of them with a surprisingly swift boost of last-minute velocity, still aiming for the shaky security of the parking garage.

Alexandra did not plan to let go. She still had to go and check on Bernhard. Bringing down Render was most troublesome without proper ammunition. What Alex wanted now was full rack of Arrow missiles. Those would deal with this beast easily. She did not have those though. She only had a knife...

The backpack had to be the mecha's power source. Or was it just for its AA guns? Alex did not know, but she did not care. If the AA guns will be disabled that would be enough. Alex held for her dear life and tried to drive her blade as deep as possible, ready to use her push/pull platings to latch herself on again, should the mecha shake her off.

Daniel could see that his LSP's AP rounds were making some impact, smashing the Rippers armor plating into impotent shards and partially exposing what lay beneath -- but not enough to matter. The brainslave of the Ripper apparently wasn't giving up or going to slow down -- in fact, despite the repeated hits it had taken the 440lbs of enemy armorsuit was hurtling towards Haives and Daniel's position at an accelerating pace, carried forth by its powerful burst thrusters. At this rate, it would force its way past the two marines and into the parking garage within a matter of moments.

In the space of a heartbeat, Daniel came to a split-second decision. Because his gun wasn't having much of an effect, the marine decided to hit the bastard with something with a little more weight -- 1.3 short tons to be precise. Even as the Ripper came flying towards the two marines and the cover of the parking garage that lay behind them, accelerating ever faster, Daniel kicked off the ground -- activated both his armors gravitic and plasma drives -- and aimed himself on an intercept course for the incoming Ripper.

Daniel braced himself for the impact. The marine was betting that his currently unscathed shields could bare the brunt of the massive kinetic impact that would occur during their collision -- in addition to any accidental friendly fire. His NIGHT2 armorsuits hardened electrostatic shields were designed to absorb powerful energy blasts and hypersonic projectile fire on a similar energy scale to the collision that would occur, but fortunately the Ripper had no shields of its own -- or at least they were heavily depleted by its earlier firefight. Nothing protected the Rippers exterior surface from a head-on collision with a powerfully-shielded object nearly six times its own mass, propelled forward by an even more powerful drive system.

This is really going to hurt, Daniel thought to himself. He really hoped his suits internal inertia-dampening system was working properly.

Ruse cursed as he watched his shots just bounce off the incoming Ripper's armor and only leaving an increasing number of dents. But the worst of it to Ruse was that the Ripper was certainly aware of their presence now as evidenced by Rippers bursting towards the duo of Night armors. Ruse was beginning to spool up his thrusters and gravitic drive to boost away from the oncoming Ripper. It was then that his squad mate decided to do nearly the same only in the opposite direction. “ Well this is going to be interesting” Ruse thought as he stopped moving backward and instead focused his efforts to keeping within 3 meter radius of his squad mate.

Ruse then boosted up above the two power armors to line up some semblance of a clean shot. “Alright savitech keep this shot clean I don’t' want any stray pellets hitting friendlies.” After conferring with the on-board computer Ruse aligned his sights to the best of his abilities and let go a volley of LSP fire at the head unit of the Ripper and let his savitech control the fine tuning as the burst commenced.

Bernhard stayed where he was, feeling the Hostile pump him with drugs. Painkillers and others. He wasn't entirely sure right now and couldn't recall the complete list. It did, however, have the effect of clearing up the fog covering his eyes and pushing aside the pain in his back.

The latter wasn't entirely gone. With each heartbeat, Bernhard could feel the pain shoot through his back. But it was tolerable, he could function. Barely. If he remembered right, Laura had suffered a similar injury during the 87I mission. And she had wanted to continue right on with the mission.

Well, Bernhard didn't have the luxury of calling for a medical shuttle now. He wasn't even sure what the situation was anymore. His hearing was dulled, a side effect of the drugs he reasoned, as he listened to vague commands and soft thumps of gunfire.

So he crawled around, looking for his HPAR. Bernhard knew he had dropped it somewhere.

Thomas withdrew his VCBS from the dead Ripper, storing it back on it's sheath. He remembered that they had taught him during training that sometimes it was unavoidable to get in melee with the enemy; he hadn't really paid much attention to that up until that moment and although the nanomuscles on his PA did almost all of the job for him, the marine was still breathing heavy from the occurred.

He looked around for Saveli, moving to where the Iroma was trying to hit the enemy Ripper with the salvaged rifle. Thomas drew his own sidearm, aiming the LSP at the fleeing enemy armor and trying to get a lock on it with his Hostile's Monoeyes. As the target was highlighted by the sensors, his suit's Savtech began to run in a quick calculation, advising the marine not to fire due to the low chance of hitting.

Thomas kept his gun pointed at the enemy PA, trying to decide whether to fire a volley at it or not. After deciding not to waste the little ammo he had, the marine lowered his LSP, letting whoever was in the building finish the job.

The collision and subsequent streams of bullets from the NIGHT02's LSP rounds handily dispatched the weakened Ripper. Although the NMX machine crashed heftily into Daniel's armorsuit, intending to burst straight past him and put the two stealth armors between it and the marines behind it, the Ripper's chances of success were far too low; one of the many cases of a brain-slave's disregard for itself working against it.

---

Back in the street between the parking garage and the decimated office building, the Render mecha, badly damage and still reeling from Alexandra's foot-long vibrosaw knife embedded into its back, started to slow its thrashing to a creaking metallic halt. The numerous battle scars present over the armored chassis seemed to take their toll, pierced metal and blackened, burnt machinery beneath each jagged wound. It did not remain at rest completely for long, however, the deadly mechanized menace whirring back to life for but a moment.

In that moment, several small ports on top of the Render opened with a popping hiss, released a stream of ten or so miniature missiles. The small warheads streamed from the top of the mecha and darted in all directions, flying in erratic and seemingly unpredictable and aimless paths. Two collided against the sides of the office building, small contained explosions crumbling whatever structure was left in their path, while another pair swirled their way directly into the pavement. A couple of the minimissiles streamed towards the entrance to the subway and, although quite close, detonated at a safe distance at the paved area around the stairwell. The remaining warheads all rose and fell in the same strangely ineffective pattern, warranting caution only until it became clear that the missiles were seemingly unguided and not so threatening. In the confusion of the blasts, however, the true purpose of the Render's final act became clear.

Amidst the small swarm, while all of the other missiles veered in different directions, a single warhead flew directly vertical into the misting sky. This one sailed skyward at a quick pace while the rest of its brothers and sisters spent themselves upon the scenery. Several hundred feet in the air after only a few short seconds, this final miniature missile detonated with a markedly different effect; a bright, lingering flash of murky crimson. A flare of some sort. A signalling flare. The intense red light of the Render's launched flare bathed the immediate area in a sickly sanguine. The descent of the bright object was slow, an enormous plume of thick, brick-red smoke floating further into the sky while its source fell to earth. The flare silhouetted the buildings and street in its crimson color, unmistakable in appearance for miles.

As the red flare fell from the sky, Grand Admiral Flint Vanderhuge had just begun to emerge from the recesses of the subway station, helmet donned and his massive pistol and knife in each hand. Deciding he would like to participate in the combat a bit too late, Flint was just in time to witness the signalling flare as he pulled the visor back off again, watching the sky with a faint smirk. The massive ID-SOL didn't seem too worried about the fact that it was possible every NMX squadron in this section of the city would no doubt be heading in their direction. It was true enough; Flint Vanderhuge wasn't worried in the slightest.

"Welp. That's it, then. Time to get this party moving."