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

As Trey's armor picked up the group of approaching PA, he got an idea. Well, it was more intuition, since he was a sniper. In space, his shots do not get bent by gravity like they do in atmo, nor are they ruined by wind or anything like that. Turning towards the group, Trey braced himself against the wall of the trench and set his visual sensors to maximum magnification, then drew a bead with his LBR. He waited for a few moments, assuring himself that he has spot on, as this was a distance shot and wasn't aided by monoeye lock for fear of early detection. The sniper took one breath, held it for a moment, and pulled the trigger. as soon as the positron blast flew from the barrel, the Yamataian-bodied Nepleslian ducked behind the trench wall and followed the rest of the group. Hopefully the shot would both remove an enemy and distract the opposing group.

Trey's shot was impressive even for a sniper such as himself, the bolt flew straight and true smashing into the face of a Crooked Demon that just appeared over the curvature of the station. But however at full shields the CD suffered no permanent damage. Angered, it let off a pair of deadly aether streams, while missing his attacker the beams violently tore open a nearby trench. Two Dark Demons escorting the behemoth also opened fire with their Type 1.5s, suppressing the group.

The trench led into a straight 100 meter long maintenance tunnel wide enough to accommodate two Power Armors side by side. Pipes and wiring lined the pathway while at every 25 meters was a lever to lower or raise an emergency blast door. The blast door at the 75 meter mark was down. The first armory was just beyond this tunnel.

Fian threw an anti-PA grenade over the trench. There were funny sounds emanating from his chestpiece, he needed to get out of this suit soon. "Move down the tunnel. Henry, get that door up!"

"I've got your back, Henry." Harrison shifted to a better supporting position where he had himself blocking any lines of fire directed at Henry while not throwing himself into them, and at the same time opening a new firing corridor. He let loose a round from his PAL at the Crooked Demon, as always hoping to arc it over the beastly armor's head and hit it in the back.

"Right-oh," Henry said as he inspected the tunnel and found the nearest emergency door, moving forwards cautiously with his HPAR raised. He'd never considered how he'd do in an assault role, but he had a suitable weapon for the job.

He'd gotten to the first lever, and bent down to open it, and did so quickly as he crouched down with his HPAR, expecting trouble.

The recoil of the Plasma Artillery Launcher caused Harrison's suit to slide back a few inches, regardless of his magnetic boots. The Crooked Demon took a small forward leap from its current position, something not followed by one of the Dark Demons at it's side which was promptly melted as it was engulfed by the exploding plasma ball. In retaliation the CD fired its own recoilless shoulder mounted aether cannons, the beam landing just infront of the trench throwing up pieces of space station and creating a foxhole wide enough to accommodate a Power Armor.

Fian's grenade exploded somewhere between the two groups harmlessly, the Super Dark Demon suit he wore didn't have the necessary strength augmentation for the 'nade to travel all the way. This time, he hoisted his Type 1 over the trench and used the launcher on that.

The only door down was the one at the 75 meter mark. Henry made it to that point without any trouble. However, just as he was about to pull the lever, the heavy metal door started ascending on its own. Crouched, Henry could see the almost-inhuman feet of his opposition who was also crouching, but seemed to be too tall to look under the door as it raised and was thus unaware.

The CD now closer and obviously aware of them, Trey activated Monoeye lock on it and Aimed his LBR at the monstrosity. Feeling the need to really kill the thing, he activated the continuous stream enhancement and let loose, holding the beam as stable on his target as possible.

Viktor nodded. "Sir." He'd clambered into the WATER armor as quickly as he could, examined his armaments for any noticeable defects, and then strapped the chainsword from the previous battle onto the chestplate. He was grabbing a LBR when the Master Chief was calling everyone out of the Dust Devil. Private Kingston was leaping out of the bay when shots started flying. He began firing his LBR, trying to provide suppressive fire while his team continued to move toward the first armory. Viktor was smack dab in the middle of the squad while they were waiting for the security door to open. He was tempted to activate the WATER's CPD unit on the back, but withheld it; Viktor wasn't sure whether the benefits would outweigh the problems that would be created by such an act. If he had the original Anti-Beam Cloud Dispenser found on the WATER1, he could have just tossed the canister away from his team, keeping them free of its negative effects, but no such luck today.

((Please excuse me for tthe extended absence. More going on over break than I'd anticipated.))

Henry watched the door come up - slowly, and he looked at the crouched legs. The old 'brick shitting' position. His eyes widened and he gaped. He recognised what it was.

A Crooked Demon.

"OH, FUCK!" Henry voiced out loud over radio as the door was halfway open. Chances are that the CD was not aware of his presence.
He immediately pulled a grenade off of the chest of his armour, pulled the pin to explode after a couple of seconds, and rolled it between the CD's legs while the nermium prongs on his Arrestor extended themselves. Once the prongs were fully extended, and the door was completely open, he stabbed them into the groin of the Crooked Demon.

"I'VE GOT A CROOKED ON ME, NEED ASSISTANCE!"

A long lasso-like bolt of blue shot out from Trey's LBR, snaking across the firing line to impact heavily upon the CD's outstretched hands. The powerful stream and equally powerful shield's conflicted, crackling and throwing light all over the area. The Crooked Demon attempted to boost out of the way, but it appeared that all power had been transferred to maintaining the shield bubble and only managed a small sidestep, which the Sniper's Savtech took note of and readjusted the aim. At first it seemed as though the CD could hold it's ground, but at last just as the tail end of the snake slammed into the shields, the bubble cracked and its arms were thrown wide apart.

The Master Chief's enterprising grenade found its way into the CD's dead center, sending it wheeling backwards from the explosion. One of Viktor's suppressive bolts also smacked it on the left shoulder, making it perform a half-twirl from the centrifugal force before finally falling head first into a trench. Damaged, but not entirely out.

The sole remaining Dark Demon was joined by two more of his compatriots appearing on either side of the CD, but not before peppering Trey Penton's shields with laserfire, reducing it by 1/4ths. One more, taking a leaf out of Fian's book, lauched a grenade across using his Type 1.5. The last one released a hail of micro-missiles homing onto Trey's Monoeye signal.

The other Crooked Demon in the tunnel, unaware of the WATER2 on the other side of the door, crooked it's head quizzically at the foreign object rolling past it's legs. It's curiosity was satisfied when the grenade went off just behind it, causing massive damage to it's shield weakness. Henry's M2 followed suit, his shield's conflicting and nullifying his own and the CD's bubble. The prongs found their mark digging deep in the Crook's groin area, digging deep to disable key motors and with the entire weight of Henry's suit pushing down on it, both combatants fell to the floor into a grapple. Trashing about, its claws made shallow but long gashes across Henry's back.

With all his combat expertise and skill, Fian barely managed to intercept the grenade with his Type 1 just before it landed in the trench. The mid-air explosion caused him to duck down reflexively just in time to see Henry go down. Realizing the crap that one of his men was in, and the larger crap if the CD managed to fire down the tunnel and potentially aether skewer THE ENTIRE GROUP, he yelled at the suit closest to the tunnel while pointing one armored finger at the melee, the tone of his voice emphasized the importance of the command. "VIKTOR!"

"Shit" Trey muttered to himself, shutting off his Monoeye and ducking before boosting to the side along the trench, away from everyone else. He didn't need his shields damaged even more than they were. "Nice Save, Fian" He called when the Master chief took out the grenade coming towards the tiny squad. Satisfied with his new position, Trey popped up again, and, without using the blasted Monoeye, Threw up a furious snake of positrons back and forth across the approaching group of DD's before ducking and boosting back towards the squad in case his help was needed. Trey cursed himself for the sloppy actions, but hoped it would cause enough distraction for them to gain some form of advantage.

He just barely heard Henry call for help, but realized how dire the situation was when the Master Chief pointed him in the direction of the tussle. He ceased firing down the trench and moved beyond the door to aid Henry. The beatings Henry received from the Crooked Demon whilst it thrashed about like a three year-old throwing a temper tantrum knocked him unconscious. With his free hand, Viktor reached under Henry's shoulder and pulled him off the CD and unleashed his Laser Array on the unshielded CD's head, trying to buy time and possibly melt sensors; he dealt damage to the sensors, but failed to buy any time or disarm the devices entirely.Henry's limp form was set against the trench wall rather ungracefully and in as much of a slump as the rigid PA would allow. Viktor was now ready to take the offensive. Simultaneously he straddled the CD and drew his vibroblade-longsword; he was attempting a strategy similar to earlier, stabbing downward for the Demon's chest. At four and a half feet, the blade was certainly long enough to make a kill if his opponent was too slow to react.

The blade easily ate through the armor, and it would have been a killing blow, but the Demon's wild swings caught Viktor in the sword-arm, leaving minor grooves and knocking him slightly off-balance. His shields were reduced to half now, but he tried still to drive the vibroblade deeper. That's when the pilot of the CD must have gathered his bearings because the sub-arms shot forth and grabbed hold of the WATER2's wrists. The blade was stopped just a few inches short of the CD's cockpit. Much like the age-old scenes in action movies, these two were now in an epic struggle of might: the Private was trying his hardest to skewer the CD's pilot while the pilot worked his damnest to repel the whirring metal.

While it seems that Viktor's chainblade was going in millimetre by millimetre, something else was dropping too. The Crooked Demon was slowly shifting its weight to allow its shoulder mounted Aether Cannons to eventually bear on the WATER2. It was not immediately clear which will occur first, but by the time it was obvious it might be too late for either party.

Trey's positron stream cut a swath above the heads of the three DD's, breaking the shields of two and causing them to duck in succession like a Wack-A-Mole. In the process however the Sniper has taken heavy suppressing fire to the tune of a shield drop to 30%. Otherwise, there were no other objections to his relocation.

Fian's conventional gunpowder-based counter fire heavily damaged the third DD's shields, his bullets bounced off an invisible layer around the suit but an eagle eyed observer could see that layer getting thinner and thinner. Unlike Penton's suit, return fire from the enemy what's left of his shields and forced him back down. He opened a comm link to Harrison. "William! PAL and suppressing fire!"

His eyes had been locked intensely on the point at which the vibroblade was piercing the Demon's belly, but as the seconds wore on, he looked up toward the head to search for any sort of a reaction; what he saw instead was a pair of aether cannons. He tried to judge mentally just how close he was to instant death. It wasn't much, he was sure. Then came the fierce but brief mental debate of whether to continue digging deeper or retreat and attack from another angle. He was a rather easy target, sitting in the middle of the trench with his back to the approaching enemies. Then an idea struck him. The door. The door was slow enough that the entire team could get through and defend themselves from the approaching enemies; at the same time it would either isolate the CD from its team or finish what Kingston had started.

So, he had a plan. Now he just had to break free of the CD's deathgrip, and get somewhere relatively safe. "Sir! We could activate the door and close it behind ourselves to buy some time for-- ugh! -- to regroup on the other side!" The grunt was due to the Private's exertion in a failed attempt to tear free from his opponent's grasp. "He's got me held down, and planning on using those cannons of his too!"

So, he had a plan, but one he couldn't carry out without some heavy help from his teammates. This was becoming an extremely dangerous situation for Fian's team, Viktor thought. With no other apparent option for the moment, he bore down on the Crooked Demon with all his might and weight. "Just die already!"

"Affirmative, Master Chief. Focusing fire on your targets." Harrison shifted around from his cover position and made a quick trajectory calculation before letting fly with his PAL towards the enemy group supressing the Vel Steyr.

Sensing Viktor's determination via his brainwaves, the Savtech of his M2 activated his Firefly Ion Arrays. At first it was only the small thrusters and verniers, thin blue exhaust flowed from his suit's extremities. Alarmingly this caused the WATER2 to gently float about two inches off the ground, dramatically cutting short the time left before the canons bore on the greenhorn. Then in a vengeance ,after completing propellant condensation, the M2's large shoulder boosters kicked in.

Gusts of light blue particles surrounded the adversaries, Viktor could feel a heavy weight behind his shoulders pushing him downwards into the Crooked Demon. Its sub arms shivered... And then violently snapped, the chainblade slipped into the crevasse so deep only half the handle was now visible outside the body. The CD jerked, trashing Viktor's shields down to 30% before in one last final exertion, bought its main arms down on Viktor's back in its trademark embrace to no harm, the generator and pilot that powered and worked the machine was no more.

Harrison could notice that his PAL was turning one shade closer to the color of the plasma ball he just launched thanks to the heat. Using a quick and easy low-angle shot, the orangish sphere raced across no man's land close to the ground... And passed through the Dark Demon group to disappear beyond the curvature of the station. It seemed that by sheer luck the angular velocity of the ball matched that of the station, and also by sheer luck the passing ball (without containment failure) melted off the head of one DD that decided to stick out of the trench at the wrong time.

Fian quickly fired off two grenades from his launcher, he didn't really care where they hit, as long as they made bright lights to distract the opposition. His tactical overlay showed additional enemy forces converging on the area, like earlier it seemed that they succeeded beyond expectations to draw enemy efforts towards themselves... To the point of being hazardous to their health. Viktor had the right idea, they had to move. "Penton! Grab Henry and meet up with Viktor on the other side. Harrison! Expend your ARROWs and get into the tunnel!" He shouted into the commlink, stowing the Type 1 and boosting towards the first switch, preparing to close it once all his men were through.

"Sir!" The sniper replied, grabbing onto his fellow soldier's power Armour and boosting through the doorway, unconscious marine in tow. He really had nothing more to add to the fight until his shields regenerated, he wasn't sure they would hold up long enough for him to take a decent shot as it were, and he hated being hasty when taking a shot.

The struggle for survival came to an epic climax with Viktor the... well, the victor. He tried to yank the chainsword free of the wreckage, but it was lodged too deeply for him to get a proper grip, nor did he have the time to work it loose. With great disappointment he shrugged off the clawed hands of the Crooked Demon, dismounted the metal corpse, and picked up his rifle. Crouching near the door's button on the other side, the Private was ready to unleash a volley of shots on anyone that dared enter the trench. "Just give me the word, sir, and I'll close the door."

Fian raised his metal encased hand over Viktor's head... And then patted the marine on the shoulder over his commendable second 'kill'. "All right, as soon as Soldier 2nd Class Harrison is through." The Master Chief briefly boosted out of the doorway to let off a few wild bursts of his Chaingun and a single grenade. A beeping red light on his HUD indicated a weak micro-missile lock on from a target beyond visual range, it must be one of the enemy reinforcements. He quickly boosted back into the safety of the tunnel before the missiles rained down randomly outside.

He waved and shouted at the last man outside. "Hoy, Harrison! Forget the ARROWs, get back over here NOW!"

"D'ohh shit!" Harrison had just finished arming his ARROW racks when Vel Steyr gave him the fallback order. With the racks hanging open and the missiles narrowly missing their 'primed to fire' mark, Harrison turned on his heel, shut off the ARROW racks and sprinted for the tunnel.

"On my way, Fian!" He shouted, dropping the "master chief" moniker for the time being.

Viktor slammed the button with the bottom of his fist then began backpedaling, gun trained on the tunnel's opening. Briefly he glanced over at Trey, lugging the unconscious Henry down the hall. "Do you need help, Trey?" Kingston offered his assistance to get the limp body down to the armory.