RP: NSS Acadia [Mission 1] A Side: "High and Dry over Golding"

"Didn't Anselm have a drone in the vicinity?"

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"Good point." It didn't immediately occur to Fian because it wasn't his drone nor did he order it. With a few spoken commands he routed the link from Anselm's suit to the squadwide datanet. He also waved away Harrison's suggestion.

There were two DDs just outside the armory door and two more near General Storage 1 and... That was it. Thermal scans also indicated a number of life-forms in the guarded storage room, they were probably some of the station's crew.

Fian minimized his display impassively. "Well... 3 DDs is a cakewalk compared to what we have fought up to this point. The two outside the armory door is fair game, but I'm worried about collateral damage when we engage the other two. Explosives and armor piercing is a no-no, which rules out nearly all our guns. Gotta be quick too or they might do something stupid."

The Master Cheif moved his PPG mounted arm and tapped the weapons case containing the VBCS. "I suppose my AIR-R can quickly melee one of the guards to death, would like another soldier follow me in to deal with the other one. The rest of you will first draw fire by strafing across to the other side while shooting the armory door pair. Hopefully we can take them all out on the first run."

The Aggressor armor perked up. "Volunteering for melee duty Chief." The eagerness in Talbain's voice was obvious. He didn't point out the fact that he was carrying the two Panzerfausts since he would rather be in melee than shooting at the armory guards.

Henry was beginning to fade in and out of consciousness, and started to wake up. This was shown on everyone's HUD's.

"Tell me," Henry asked groggily, but his voice was sounding a lot clearer and more natural, a far cry from his previous monotone. Maybe that brain damage had done something to him, "Why is it that I've been knocked out twice in the course of this mission?"

Henry took a look at what he had. His shields were null and void, his ARROWS were fired, his left arm was buggered, but his HPAR still had ammo in it and his PLA was still useful as long as Henry had power.

"All right." Fian put an armored hand on Talbain's shoulder, it was a little difficult to do because of the limited articulation of the Power Armors and the Aggressor's height. "Trey, Anselm and Viktor, form up single file on the corner. Prepare your guns and move on my mark. Talbain and I will follow behind."

"You." He continued, nodding towards Henry. "Fire from the corner if you want. I don't want you moving around until I can get a medic."

"Roger, sir" Anselm placed himself at the front of the line and readied his drone to jump on one of the guard's faces at the same time the squad launched their assault. When Fian gave the green light, Anselm would boost to the other corner, laying as many HPAR rounds into the guards at the armory door as his drone jumped in front of the storage room guards. The Nepleslian marine flicked his HPAR to fully automatic with relish.

As soon as Henry had come to, Viktor had helped him to his feet gently. "Sir," was his response at suddenly being volun-told to the position of distraction. He was right behind Anselm, ready to do what he did best: draw fire and lay down cover fire in return.

Trey silently got in line, seeing as it was the happening thing to do, or maybe it was orders. Either way, he was there, LBR ready, PLA's ready, and Monoeyes ready to do some annoying, and possibly killing.

"All right." Fian never got tired of saying those two words, it meant everything was according to plan. His thoughts hovered over a mental start button, '3-2-1-0', before pressing down on it hard. "GO GO GO!" He shoved the trio out if their own boosters didn't do it already.

There were two DD's standing on each side of the closed armory door, one had it's back turned to the group, probably trying to hack the terminal open. The second one was a million times more alert... In the wrong direction, it immediately bought its Type 1.5 to bear on Anselm's drone, shredding it to bits.

The two near general storage was a little more oblivous, they seemed more concerned in keeping things from getting out than things getting in. It took them about two seconds after the group had gone out of cover to react, and had only started to bring up their Type 1.5s.

As soon as Anselm and Viktor were out of his way, Trey Boosted out into the Corridor, taking a quick, Monoeye-assisted shot at the one that seemed to be trying to hack the terminal. Sure, it was an easy target, but, all things considered, it was a better one for him than one of the ones closer by, given the situation.

Once the word was given, he was out right behind Anselm, activating his monoeye. He took two shots on the boost at the nearest DD beside the general storage. And then he was behind the corner and spinning a one-eighty just in case someone got the stupid idea to follow.

Talbain was in the process of setting the Panzerfausts down when the Chief had given the order to move. He immediately dropped them to the ground and boosted after Chief Vel Steyr with the intention of making his DD target a permanent attachment to the station floor with a good two handed smash over the head.

While strafe shooting from the hip wasn't the Long Beam Rifle's main point, at this range it wasn't a problem. The shot penetrated the shields of the hacking Dark Demon's rear, passed through the gap between the Fast Boosters and created a loud and sickening 'CRACK!' as it tore through the armor, internal systems and the Jimmy's backbone. The suit bent over backwards so far that one would think there was a very flexible Neko inside.

Because the other guard and the ones near General Storage were poor at lead-shooting, while they aimed at Viktor or Anselm who were the first of the file, most of the shots landed on the Sniper, dropping his shields by a surprising 80%. The barrage and shield distortions made it difficult for him to do anything else but continue on until he reached the safety of the corner.

Unlike Anselm's legs, his arms were in tip top shape. Bracing the HPAR, his suit managed the recoil well, the almost-plasmic coins easily overpowered the Armory Guard DD's shields and a number of shots were evenly distributed all over its body and some parts of the armory door. It was heavily damaged, but still had the ability to continue spraying the marines with laserfire.

Viktor's twin burst broke one of the General Storage DD's shields and made two deep black spots on its chestplate. It was fortunate that the greenhorn's few and controlled shots did not miss to damage the wall behind. Seemingly pissed, the Dark Demon started its hydraulic flaps to launch its micro-missiles but not before Talbain bought his lumbering suit right up to its face. With extreme shield strength and no opposing shields to conflict with, his shield bubble pushed and nearly crushed the DD against the wall. This was before the ID-SOLs nanomuscle enhanced arms did the actual crushing.

Fian was less fortunate. Desperate fire from his intended General Storage target dropped his relatively thin shields to zero and a red beam made a neat scorch mark on his shoulder. However thanks to intelligent design by the dudes at NAM, this thin shielding quickly restored the bubble in a blink of an eye, allowing it to collide, merge and nullify the DD's own shields allowing the Master Chief to bring his Broadsword down with minimal resistance save the little bit of armor covering the DD's head.

The sole surviving but heavily damaged DD seeing that its situation was hopeless, opened up an Alpha strike at its nearest target, sending the biggest possible micro-missile cloud plus one grenade at Fian. If these explosives miss the Master Chief undetonated, it might endanger the hostages inside the storage room.

Harrison, meanwhile, had watched from his cover position the whole time. When the Alpha strike went off, Harrison immediately went into action.

"Chief, careful! Don't get too close to the storage area while those missiles are still on you!" Harrison said, more "stating-the-obvious-while-under-pressure" than "giving-helpful-advice" in his tone. He quickly armed his PLAs and, using his boosters, closed the distance on the cloud of micro-missiles.

Anselm made room for the others to boost past him at the corner, taking the edge of the wall after they passed and putting down long bursts of suppressive fire, monoeyes off, yelling "I love seven-hundred round magazines! TAKE MY *BLEEP*ING *BLEEP* YOU *BLEEP*ING *BLEEP*SUCKING MOTHER *BLEEP*ERS!!!" over an unsecured comm channel, hoping the enemy could pick his taunts up on their recievers, his expletives were censored by his Precipice SAVTECH's standard protocols filed under 'Foreign Relations'. Apparently, unsecured channels were considered part of the international domain.

"FFFFFFFF- DAMMIT!" Trey announced, noting his shields being brought down so rapidly and so much, he hid behind the corner, waiting for them to recharge; if something attacked him now, he'd be in big trouble 20% shields meant death by anything bigger than a DD, which was more than likely given the situation. The Former tech-sentry now Sniper ran a diagnostic on his suit, noting that it worked fine but the shield generator unit was showing quite a bit of wear. It would come back up, but it would never get back to 100%.

Fian was almost caught unawares until the lock-on klaxon and Harrison's warning reached his ears. By the time he finished executing a boost-assisted turn the fast moving grenade had smacked him right in the upper chestpiece, exploding and fragmenting part of the armor while almost downing him had his SAVTECH not caught on to compensate for the shock.

The Master Chief was still ringing in the ears, but luckly PLAs were automatic. The beams from four laser arrays cut through the cloud mercilessly and effectively, only a few managed to escape the beams to detonate on the former mercenary's FIRE1 dealing light shield damage. Semi-accurate HPAR fire and cuss words put another series of holes in the source of their problems, the DD finally knelt over, defeated.

"Ugh." Fian felt like pulling a Henry right now. He cradled his Power Armor's head with his free hand, it didn't have the same comforting properties as doing it out-of-armor but it was a force of habit. "Someone get both doors open, I need to sit down."

The solid double doors of the armory was reinforced with starship grade armor, an easier way of getting inside would be to use the nearby terminal somehow. The single and simple storage door could be easily opened with a press of a button, had the pirates not wielded a bar of metal right across it.

The SAVTECH reported all known hostiles incapacitated as he came back out from cover. Then he paused, realizing that he wouldn't be very helpful if they needed someone with the ability to hack the door. "I'll stay here, sir, and watch the corridor. Make sure we aren't still being followed. They seem to be doing a lot of that today." He crouched against the wall so that he could see down both ends of the corridor, but could easily pull back if need be.

After putting a few extra rounds into the downed DDs, Anselm moved into the open, looking at his comrades, then the armory doors, then to his drone, muttering something offensive, and then finally at the room the hostages were supposedly in. The marine yanked on the welded bar, when it didn't budge he pulled out his Vibrosaw Knife and went to work on the joins, cutting notches into the bar so he could rip it off easier.

While he was at work he voxed his thoughts to the others "Maybe some of the people in this shed can open the doors for us... and fix our suits, don't know about the rest of you, but I hope one of them is a medic, my leg is starting to piss me off."

Anselm wasn't the only one pissed. "What took you so long?!" Shouted one station crew amongst the thirty odd jammed into the small room. The lot of them came rushing out as the floodgates were unbarred. Exactly as what the albino predicted, one of them opened the armory doors without trouble. A number of the captives also included marines bound to the other ships docked in the station, them and a few station crewmembers with pent-up anger quickly suited up in Power Armors to secure the immediate area and to free more captives locked in rooms further down the hallway.

The armory that the group had found wasn't just a place to store weapons and Power Armors but a full fledged marine's second home. Tucked in one corner of the large room was an empty space for pilots to park or enter their suits, lockers, a sink, volumetric projector, two sofas and a snackbar. The rest of the armory was a hive of activity as crew and marine alike came and went, often leaving with a gun and/or suit.

Fian got out of his damaged AIR-R with the intention to use the projector to plan their next move, but found himself sinking deeper and deeper into the cushions. The next line that came out of his mouth was a combination of a stifled yawn, a yelp and a cuss word which produced a long and intelligible sound. "AAAAHBLYD@#*!!BY!!." It was heaven to his bruised body from being in a PA for so long. He certainly isn't in a hurry to go anywhere anymore for the moment. "Someone throw me a drink! Thats an order!"

With the armory door open and most of the space cleared out now, Viktor retreated to the Marine's haven and took a look around. "Wish we would have come here first. Would have been smooth sailing the rest of the way." He spoke more to himself than anything. Seeing the Master Chief relax, Viktor felt comfortable enough to remove the helmet. As for a drink, Viktor figured he could leave that to someone closer to the vending machine.