RP: NSS Acadia [Mission 2]: Brotherhood and Sisterly Love

Anselm quickly spun on his heel as something tapped very hard on his foot with time enough to see the thing whip back under the floor.

"Bloody Fucking Shit!" he yelled, stumbling backwards into the blast doors. the marine almost shot the floor with his AOP but quickly realized it would have been a bad idea.

"Lilly, Viktor, we got squids, get these damn doors open- mine first, then flank- NOW!"

The albino was not happy and tried to raised the Master Chief- or anyone on his comms "MC, anyone, situation FUBAR, we've got Mishhu on the ship! Repeat, we've got fucking Mishhu- ON- THE- SHIP!"

"Well fuck me sideways, I was fucking right!" Viktor practically shouted, surprised by the sudden arrival and departure of the Misshu bit. However, he didn't enter a state of shock but instead moved forward with all necessary haste and activated the blade of his CFC and began the quickest hack-job he could, straight top to bottom. Once it was done, he backed into what had once been the CO's quarters. "See you on the other side," he said before disappearing from sight, shoulder armor scrapping against the door frame.

Fucking Misshus? It really WAS going down the way Viktor had predicted, and for once he would have been happier being proven wrong.

While Amelia had her leg wound attended to by a medic, Phaedra made her way back towards Gamma Squad's location; just outside the computer core.

She arrived behind a throng of marines as one of them shouted "Fire in the hole!"
Phaedra turned her face away from the blast as the breaching charge blew the door inward. She lept up and stormed into the computer core behind Morris and the other marines.

Viktor was greeted by what's left of the Pirate Captain sprawled over the bed and the rest of the room, as though something exploded out of him. Instead of the heavily armored and large door outside the hallway, there was a man-sized one but equally armored one in the CO's quarters leading into the bridge, but the slide-type opening mechanism instead of an interlocking one only required him to cut through one side, at least one minute of work even with a CFC.

A shudder ran through the ship as the NSS Emden engaged its Ion Drives in an effort to turn towards the Mishu fleet.

This shit isn't supposed to happen! Fucking Mishhu, baiting us like animals, that's what we are to them, fucking livestock! Well, if we are nothing but animals, we certainly won't be tame.

Anselm growled in frustration, Njord jumping back several feet as red shells impacted the main door to the bridge, causing it to topple inwards. The marine ejected the spent drum and loaded a fresh one, still debating whether or not to use his drum of GREEN shells inside the ship. Drawing Sindri in his off-hand the marine leapt onto the door in an attempt to squash anything unfortunate enough to have been under its shadow and still be alive, activating all three monoeyes and sweeping through the room for any sign of what was sending the Nepleslians to their enslavement.

Viktor's eyes scanned the mess, but didn't put any effort into an analysis: he was already thoroughly aware of what had occurred here. Stepping up to the door, the CFC was reactivated and Private Kingston made quick work of what little metal stood between him and the next room. His next move was like something straight out of the movies, hefting his Power Armor's boot to push the door off outward.

If only it were so simple. Rather than knocking it straight off the track, the door bent outward and attempted to make its way into its recess in the wall; it made it halfway before grinding to a halt. The VOID was a great machine when it came to hiding embarrassment. Viktor shook it off quickly as he scanned the room with his own pair of eyes and the M7's monoeyes. His LPA was raised at the ready. From the corner of his eye, he could see Anselm was already in the room.

"Gimme a sec," Stubbs told Henry as he planted the strip-like explosives around the door and wired them up with relative ease. He handed Henry a remote with a big red button, "Your call."

"Thank you. Please clear the area." Henry advised to the team as he moved to the side. Once everyone was well away, he pushed the button. The explosives on the door exploded in quartet. The door was well and truly off of its hinges. In fact, there was no door to speak of now.

"Bugger me," Hicks mumbled as he inspected the damage and poked his rifle in, "Looks clear to me. I'd hate to be whoever was on the other side."
"Fuckin' oath," Silver swore, "It'd ruin ya day."
"Good work, Stubbs." Henry commended as he moved in with his Styrling Dart raised.

The computer room was shrouded in darkness. Henry got his datapad out in preparation for jacking into the computer, but he didn't have a torch handy.
"Move in," Henry requested as Silver and Hicks moved inside.

The marines first saw the back of the Mishhu before it turned around, maybe it was confident that the door would hold against the regular PAs of the Nepleslian army (which, the VOID and M1 Lancer are hardly 'regular'), or perhaps it had simply resorted to edging on the four zombies upfront in desperation. The former bridge crew of the NSS Emden had empty eyes and were lethargically tapping away at their respective stations, a single small out-of-place bump were seen under their skins and behind their necks. Surprisingly the squid's mind control managed to get them this far, but a large 'MAIN COMPUTER CORE OFFLINE' marquee across their screens proved to be too difficult for the zombies to process.

The one that busted out of the captain was only a few hours old, but it was still a prime example of its race. It was supported by a mass of tentacles that sprouted out from two bases located on both sides of its underside. A transparent slime flowed from these bases, coating the grey-brownish appendages and parts of the floor. Standing up, it was around the height of an average human but due to its mushroom-like head, was many more times longer lengthwise and widthways. The head, which was the single largest bodily feature of the Misshu, was comprised two pairs of small sockets which housed its eyeballs and nostrils, and a single large toothy jaw that could fit the broad side of a pig. Under the dim light of the bridge, its skin appeared to be brown and flaky.

The grand scheme was on the verge of success, but the chances are that it would not live to see it. Desperate, and clearly out of its oversized mind, it launched its assorted tentacles at the marines in a final bid at self preservation.

Anselm sneered at the revolting pile of non-human flesh that launched it's tentacles at him. They impacted harmlessly, for Anselm at least, on the barrier created by his attendant shield drones as the marine plunged the whirling saw-toothed vibrosaw towards his opponent's head, which, admitedly, was all there was to really target anyways. The AOP battered one of the zombies in the Albino's way, not being very useful among the command consoles as anything else. During this impulsive movement the marine failed to launch any of his ussual attempts at wit, he doubted the thing in front of him would be able to hear his words, or even understand them; eliminating the threat of capture was far more important.

Viktor fired his LPA in a couple short bursts while he reactivated the CFC. Once the energy was flowing, he began hacking at the tentacles that were sizzling against his shields. It wasn't long before Anselm's aggressive behavior had drawn all of the Mishu's attention. Kingston was then free to maintain some distance and keep the tentacles clear of Anselm's backside with his LPA and CFC interchangeably.

The Mishhu seemed to at first resist Anselm's attack, rising up higher on its base tentacles even as the weight of the Albino's Power Armor pressed down on it, but the chain sword's length was disappearing into the creature's head was irresistible. Finally it collapsed into a heap of appendages, the only thing moving was pieces of its gray matter being excavated by the CSS. Some of it landed on the Zombies, who were still ineffectively waving their hands over their locked consoles. The computer core just needed a simple hardswitch reboot to get anything working again.

A quick look up to the main screen on the bridge showed the NSS Emden already enveloped by the Mishhu fleet's gargantuan Interdiction field as of five minutes ago, forward elements of the fleet will arrive in ten. The NSS Acadia was nowhere in sight. A glimmer of hope was in the form of the Anti-Interdiction Buoy left behind by the Acadia, escape was still possible if the field generated by the Buoy overlapped non-interdicted space, which it wasn't, but instead overlapped another A-I Field created by another Buoy further away which overlapped another Buoy which lead into freespace. The Acadia could be seen at the edge of this third field, ready to drop another Buoy if it had to.

"Hey I don't think I can keep an eye on forty something prisoners for long, get us out of here!" Fian implored over the squad-net.

Anselm looked at the bridge, somewhat disappointed at the lack of resistance he encountered.

"Does anyone know how to fly this thing?" he asked as if it were a matter of course and not the most important item on the 'list of things to do so as to avoid capture and implantation by sadistic Mishhu'. Waiting for an answer, the Albino calmly sheathed his messy chainsword and the ordinance launcher; then, pulling out the HPAR he put a coin through each of the slaves' craniums.

"A coin for the ferryman, be on your way..." he mumbled, pressing the linear rifle's barrel to the forehead of a young woman. Her half-dead face looked familiar, at least until the semi-molten cone of metal obliterated her features.

"No time for sentiments, Anselm." Harrison grunted as he hauled the last few weapons away from the prisoners. He scowled, looking out the hangar doors into the bleakness of space occupied by the Mishhu. Things had headed south surprisingly quickly, with the tentacle-fuckers suddenly swarming onto the ship. That definitely wasn't a good sign for their survival.

The merc turned towards Fian, opening a COMM again. "You know anything about ship operations, Chief?"

"There's plenty of time," Anselm quipped back at Harrison, wondering if he'd left his comm on when he did the last zombie in "they just aren't letting us have any of it."

Not daring to doff the suit that had protected him from a tentacle attack that no doubt would have killed him... or worse, the marine carefully tapped at the keys of one console, trying to get it functioning.

"Uh, just guessing, but whoever locked the mainframe up, might be doing us all a favor if they... fixed it." he said in a dour tone, as if the lockout hadn't been needed with him dicing up the... er, 'enemy combatants' on the bridge.

Having nothing of value to contribute to their current predicament, Viktor also aided in the elimination of the zombified crew. It was a simple process and a breeze if he didn't think about who and what they had just been perhaps minutes ago. He managed that well enough, but it was still rather depressing to engage in such a routine. Execution was never something Private Kingston could or would enjoy. There was no sport, there was no rivalry, and there was no challenge. It was straight-up murder, even if performed out of pity.

"I'm no techy, but I do have a good history with machines. Might I suggest we just reboot the whole thing?" If it worked for a PC, why not the processing core of a spaceship? It was nearly analogous, one was just a lot bigger and more complex than the other.

...Stopping to think about it, the Private Power Armor pilot felt like a damn fool for suggesting something so simple-minded.

Anselm looked over at his wing-mate, broadcasting over the suit's loudspeaker instead of the comms "Sure... but... where's the on/off button?"

Morris' work would be interrupted suddenly by a small, heavy, metallic object being flung through the dark room at his head. Had anyone turned the lights on they would not only know that the object being thrown was a gun, but also where the offending object came from. Either way, all other attention would have been brought to Hicks' predicament: the sound of a gun being forcefully thrown to the floor and several sick crunching noises were the only indicators of the trouble the Marine was in.

What light entered into the room through the door would reveal the faint silhouette of Hicks being held up into the air by -someone- behind him, as well as his leg below his kneecap dangling limp, held onto the rest of him by what remained of his armor. Whatever was behind him had disarmed him and attempted to remove his leg, and now it was behind him, holding him up by the neck and pointing a Stryling Shot 12 straight at Silver. The only sound indicating Hicks being alive would be several gurgling noises, what sounded like him struggling to breathe.

Closer inspection by the Marines would reveal Hicks' lower jaw torn off, and said closer inspection constituted the attacker throwing Hicks through the doorway at the Marines there, causing a live grenade to roll out of Hicks' exposed throat from the impact of his body on the floor. Once Hicks was airborne, the assailant immediately opened fire on Silver and darted further back into the room, kicking and throwing everything he could find on the way at the Marines in the room.

By the time Lilly had the door of the XO's room open, Anselm was driving his chainsaw through the massive head of the space squid. As he and Viktor executed the mind slaves, Lilly turned away in shock. She recognized them from Golding Station; she closed her eyes as she heard the decapitated corpse of a girl she'd known as Haley Memnov crumble to the ground. She stood in the shadow of the doorway, drawing unconscious connections between Viktor, Anselm, Misshu, and the dead.

Her brain finally incapable of holding together the emotional rifts, she blacked out. Her consciousness slipped away, and in its place came an unfeeling entity that was both coldly calculating and childlike in its simplicity. Over the squad com, a coarse voice that lacked any semblance of Lilly's personality muttered, "Computer Core." It was less of a communication to the others than a personal verbalization of her singular and immediate objective.

Beneath her armor, her pupils contracted into small pinholes, uncharacteristically leaving the rest of her eyes a piercing amber color. She thrust her PA forward, edging it out of the XO's room and into the hallway, picking up speed as her armor scraped incongruously against the walls and ceiling of the hallway that led to the computer core, dodging around several marines and their hostages as they dove aside. Her 'plan' didn't extend to what she planned to do once she reached the computer core. If she had considered it, the next step would probably involve her lance being hurled through the ship's brain.

Njordr's monoeyes tracked backwards, reading the Albino's comrade's sudden activity, the Aggressor's head quickly followed as the marine inside took interest as well. "Vik, is there something going on we don't know about?" He asked the VOID pilot, loping after the mysterious Lilly. Anselm silently hoped his new squadmate hadn't developed a fancy new psychosis that he'd have to deal with.

'Oh well,' he thought, maniac grin returning to his features as he debated his choice of armament 'maybe we'll get to blow some shit up.'

Talbain watched Lilly's Lancer and Anselm's Aggressor start down the hall towards the back of the ship from the room he had posted his team in to wait out whatever bridge action the power armors would stir up. Looking out the hallway after noticing that Viktor hadn't followed the others yet. "Gary, come with me. We're following the armors." Then he pointed to the other two men that had made up his breaching team. "You two see if the Void operator needs any assistance." As soon as he was out in the hallway he fell immediately into the rhythm of scanning his area and listening for movement that wasn't boots on steel or people talking. He didn't know why the boarding had not been declared successful yet but he'd prefer to hear the cycle of a weapon loading instead of just hearing the discharge and hoping it wasn't pointed at him.