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

Anselm took one look at Viktor and slumped in envy "Holy Hell..." "I've bigger explosions though... take that, stupid techy PPA" the marine mentally stuck out his tongue and made faces, since his helmet was off.

Talbain all but ignored the announcement that came over the speakers, instead focusing on his monstrosity of breakfast bar, energy drink can, and HE explosives. When the Chief gave the order to move he took a look at his nearly complete bomb and giving a slight sigh stood up and sprinted to his Aggressor. Since he had only wanted it reloaded it was ready and waiting to go when he climbed in.

After initializing the systems the ID-SOL had just one question, "Where to Chief?"

Viktor smirked again and glanced at Anselm. "Don't worry, man, I'm not about to steal the spotlight. This thing's built to be support, not the star of the show. If anything, I'm just gonna make you look better." Then he faced toward the door again, awaiting the Chief's orders.

"We'll do whatever we can to help Captain Vera until our own Captain Esther tells us what to do." Fian Vel Steyr stated, while snapping on his helmet. His suit read all green, with no permanent damage from the grenade. "Single file, we'll head towards the internal dockyards."

The group passed freshly wasted enemy suits and scrapped Jimmies in every corner, enemy resistance in the area was gradually decreasing. Was it the hard work of the newly liberated marines or was it because the pirates had other priorities? As they moved on intervals between each pile of junk gradually increased until they were out of the safe zone, the soldiers of the NSS Acadia were on their own once again.

Fian, in his heavily armored suit managed to sneak up behind two navy files peeking round a corner. They were staring at a small hall with four elevator doors, both fully expecting shit to come from that direction. After a bit of shoulder shaking to calm them down, the Master Chief managed to get them in speaking condition. "What's going on?"

"S-s-some of us went up to the secondary control tower, they aren't back yet. I-I told them not to go!" Yelped one.

"Coordinating the resistance would be easier with the tower, it might also be possible to re-activate some of the station's systems." The other one explained, regaining a bit of composure with friendly marines around.

Shoving them away to safety, Fian slid along the sides until he almost reached another corner, he motioned for another person to do the same for the other wall and to clear the blind spot immediately and simultaneously once he got there. The master chief would call the lift after that. The rest were to take defensive positions wherever they can.

Trey remained at the corner; although he knew he was the best shot in the group, he also knew he wasn't the most helpful in close quarters. he did however, charge the PPP in case things got hairy. He remembered how useful and powerful the PPG on the AIR Power Armor was, and knew that if push did come to shove, well, he could push quite forcefully now.

Deploying his drone to search down the rest of the hallway Anselm had a moment of inspiration "Viktor, that VOID has remote drones- how far can they travel from you?"

"One Kilometer, Anselm." With the elevator space declared safe, he moved into the opening and surveyed the walls. Nothing remarkable. He turned his eyes toward his allies, observing them, awaiting feedback and discussion.

"Right then, suppose we go up in four groups, one for each elevator with those drones of yours providing enough cover so that we can get out of the lifts when the doors open." Looking around he surveyed the group "Of course we could just use three or two lifts to bring the team up... what d'you think Master Chief?"

The elevator that Fian called had arrived, as soon as the doors opened a puddle of blood rushed out to pool around his feet. There were at least five people in that lift, hard to tell because the biggest chunk of remains were only as large as a fist. Not one square inch of the floor was not covered in that mess. There were no bullet holes on the opposite wall, but the roof was almost completely perforated.

One of the Navy files ran off screaming. The other stared in horror. "I'm not going in there!"

The Master Chief himself was also fixated by the butchery. "So. Am. I."

Harrison looked at the elevator. And I don't mean glanced. He locked eyes with the mess on the floor and stared that gore down like a fucking gunslinger. Concentrating very hard on it, he calmly stepped across the hallway and into the elevator. The smell caught him first; blood, burnt flesh and ozone- not all that pleasant when combined together, but it wasn't the first time he'd smelled it.

"Well," The old merc said, "Let's go!"

Talbain came around the corner in time to see the mess of bloody mush come spill out of the elevator. He halted taking a moment to soak in the scene. Bloody bits and an elevator roof shot to hell. When Harrison moved to the elevator a though hit him. Bloody, bloody means fresh and the direction of attack was obvious.

He started to shout "HARRISON AMBUSH ABO-"

"BY THE MAK-!"

Two positron bolts, one after another, passed through the roof with negligible resistance and slammed into Harrison's shields. The first one hitting dead centre dissipated much of the shield energy, the second one broke it with much effort and in its weakened state, damaged the ex-mercenary's beloved Plasma Artillery Launcher. What followed next was a literal rain of bullets which was probably what killed the Navy files earlier. They finished off the PAL, riddling it with so many holes that the SAVTECH quickly flushed the pre-charged plasma back into the UCF-4u generator. They also penetrated the head unit and luckily only broke the Medtech Emergency Cryrofreezer, damaged the upper shoulder armors, snapped some coolant tubes and screwed over half the micromissile launcher hatches.

More damage would be forthcoming if the Master Chief didn't stop yelling halfway to activate his PPG. The invisible tractor beam met no resistance from Harrison's shields because it was non-existent and not because his SAVTECH let it through. The ex-merc was violently jerked out of the lift to slide across the floor and into safety.

The lift itself was not there anymore as a Panzerfaust slammed into it, breaking it to pieces and falling further down into the elevator shaft. Fian raised his shields to absorb the collateral damage from the explosion and when that cleared up, boosted backwards to grab Harrison by the iron collar and pulled him all the way back into the corridor.

"-VE SHIT!" was the way the ID-SOL's sentence ended when the literal rain of death started.
Talbain instinctively took up his AMP and prepared for an assault on the ambushers but when the Chief had pulled the shot up Harrison out of the elevator he instead took up a defensive position. If they came down to finish of the marine they would get a nice helping of automatic fire of their own.

"Holy Hell" Trey muttered, looking at the bloodbath and subsequent hail of bullets and gunshots. Obviously, the elevator was NOT the way to get up in there, it was simply suicide. "If we really need to take this tower, I would suggest coming at it from outside" the Sniper suggested, keeping his LBR sighted on the elevator. He had never seen such gross mutilation and carnage, even after spending a good portion of his life in the military. He hoped that Harrison was okay, taking that many hits that quickly could be nothing but trouble.

"Fuckers!" Harrison cursed as he looked up at the holes in his (brand new) armor. "God damnit!" He continued to spew curses as light speed as his damaged armor's systems began shutting down from damage. He finally completely busted out of the armor, standing in shirt, pants and boots with no armor whatsoever. As he sprinted back from the damaged armor and towards the safety of the withdrawn corner, he felt the damage wrought upon his own body. A series of bruises had blossomed on his PAL shoulder, head, and legs, and he was bleeding from a small cut on his cheek.

Adrenaline, however, seemed to have momentarily over-ridden the instinct to cry out in pain as he headed back towards the armory, only noticing the wounds as he arrived at the door and began comandeering a spare EARTH armor. Having finally noticed, "Hey, I've been shot to shit", and dressed in armor up to his shoulders, the cursing dam not only released its floodgates, but burst, and Harrison released enough bad words in the span of a second to make even Rocketass blush.

"Someone let me at those fuckers, and gimme some morphine!" He finally shouted, after recovering from his cursing streak, "I want some revenge!"

Viktor gazed upon the remains of slaughter in silence. Nothing could be said to change the fact that those men had been shredded to a point beyond recognition, nor could he blame those pirates: when you were faced with multiple guns from above, shit happened. He waited calmly for Harrison to resuit and the MC to decide their new plan of action. "I'm going to agree with Trey, sir. Outside seems to be a much better angle. If you like, I can stay here and keep them distracted with the probes while you head up there, although the extra shielding will probably be really nice once you get into the heat of things. They seem to have quite a few guns."

"Someone let me at those fuckers, and gimme some morphine!" He finally shouted, after recovering from his cursing streak, "I want some revenge!"

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"KNOW YOUR PLACE, SOLDIER!" Fian shouted at Harrison, while he reserved counselling of the little mistakes each of his squad members made till after the mission, he was absolutely pissed that the ex-merc was looking to get himself killed again. "Do I look like your mother to you!? Don't come whining to me when you get hurt out of your own carelessness! Trust me when I say this isn't the end of it!"

The Master Chief then took a deep breath, and addressed Trey's and Viktor's suggestion. "Possible, but its going to be difficult to avoid attracting unwanted attention with three big ones." He said, gesturing to the two Aggressors and one EARTH1. "However, we can rush the elevator shaft with suits like these. If they can't knock out a FIRE1 in one strike, I doubt they can handle two bullet sponges and one blockhead."

He then held one clenched fist near his temple, trying to think of the finer points of the plan like unit positioning while flushing the excess rage out of his system.

"So we send our bullet sponges up first, each in a different shaft, with my shields just ahead of them to take the blunt of the force. If they can't take out a FIRE1, they'll probably can't take out one of my shields before we climb the shaft. My only worry is big weapons at the top; it's possible they're withholding something." He was surveying the four elevator shafts, mulling over his own idea.

"I have a suggestion." Talbain chimed in. "If there are any panzerfausts around or stored in the armory we could use their fly-by-wire mode to get an actual view of the inside of the elevator and hopefully take out a hostile or two"

""Nah, we are looking at possibly 2 PLAs and one Type 1... Or more. Also, I would like to keep collateral damage to the elevator shaft to the minimum." Fian broke out of deep thought. "Anselm, Talbain and Harrison. Take one shaft each and on my mark, bust out and keep ascending. I'll call all the lifts down to the lowest floor so they wont get in the way."

"Viktor, Trey. I want you two to stand on top of the lifts on the lowest floor and provide support. Prioritize those coming out from floors behind the heavy armors."

The Master Chief pointed to the elevator doors. "Get into position, those with probes, shove them out now so we can get a glimpse before we begin."