RP: NSS Acadia [Mission 3.5]: Back into the Frying Pan

Sean paused after his first burst of shots, checking his aim. Giving his computer a moment to calculate the best point for him to fire at, he opened fire again. No point in using my BOLTs and ARROWs yet, not with all of us hitting it at once. I'll save them for when they're a few more targets for us to spread fire around to.

"I saw them too, Brand, but I'm not sure I trust that image, keep yourself safe," the Nepleslian placed an armoured finger over his door's access panel, "alright, Sitkeas, breach in three- two- one- ...go". The Malevolent-9 Aggressor deftly slid through the doorway with only the tromp of it's plated boots to give away the incursion. Both plasma chainguns and the armorsuit's AMP were ready to fire at anything remotely like a Mishhu combatant, the marine inside silently hoped his trigger-finger wouldn't slip if a human, specifically a Nepleslian, managed to get in the guns' sights.

"That's it for now," Henry told his three shield drones that'd taken a hit for Kel, as he let them float back towards him to recharge. He still had plenty of shield drones to spare, "Protection incoming."

Instead of defending one person, he decided to deploy a wall using four drones to provide blanket protection. The marines could still shoot through their side of the wall, but fire from the other side would be hindered or stopped completely. This took a few moments to deploy as Henry remained behind cover.
He had a pair of mortars on his, but he was going to save those for a much more deadly situation.

"Victor, is Kel safe?" He queried over radio, "We can't afford to lose anybody now."

When the door opened Avel slid into the room, her gun pointing in every direction as she searched for targets. After a few seconds she lowered her HPAR. "Area-HOLD THAT THOUGHT!" The second she had started speaking the door to her left opened and out stepped a Ripper. It looked at Avel just in time to have a dozen high explosive HPAR rounds pierce it's shields and blow it nearly in half.

Avel wasted no time rushing to the door in a kneeling position and checking the corridor for additional hostiles. "Area clear. For real this time"

With no vernier thrusters, the airborne Ripper could only eat everything that the Marines decided to to throw at it. Combined assorted rifle fire from Sean (HPAR), Viktor (LPA) and Vel Steyr (RAPTOR) brought the Mishhu's shields down to zlitch. Without an all-range interception system the Pod also had no defence against P3C Santhis's finishing AOP and BOLTs, flying debris from the resulting explosion even found its way to the private's armored feet.

The Green-Striped Ripper decided to take the three or four HPAR coins that actually managed to travel the distance across the operation area. The death of three of their forward elements and this attack on their leader finally provoked five other Ripper pods to emerge from hiding. The one that popped out right next to the leader sprayed combined Aether/Scalar beams to handily knock out all of Alex's DARTs while its leader retreated to an even more rearward position to observe the Acadia squad without being harassed further.

The remainder advanced into the field. Two of them jumped into two craters along the same axis as Charlie Crater, the other two on opposite sides opposite Bravo and Delta. None of them except the interceptor Ripper and the squid leader were visible at this point. It would be easier to say that from the marine's perspective, Bravo is on the left field, Charile the middle and Delta the right. The current distance between the two opposing groups was extreme.

In the meantime chatter on the Marine comms were slowly building up, the fifth and sixth defence line are reporting enemy skirmishers and aerial drones are seeing gatherings of pods at key points both inside and outside the city, the Mishus were about to launch their final attacks soon.

"Time is short!" The Master Chief barked. "Paedra stay up there and provide supporting fire and intel. Harrison, use your discretion. Talbain I need you to take mid field, I can't hold ground in this suit." He then stood up and pointed forward. "Everyone! Move up as close as possible and hold them down with P/Ps so the PALs can finish them off."

Not to make his orders sound hollow, the MC boosted forward heading to the next cover. "ADVANCE!"

Except to Brand and Anselm, Avel seemed to have fired into thin air. The locker room was devoid of Rippers both alive or dead, in fact, it seems to be devoid of anything at all except lockers.

Damn that beast was tough. And far. "Henry I will go first and try to flank them. I will run to first crater then stop and cover you." said Alex to her crater mate and jumped out. She ran diagonaly to the next crater that would be in foxtrot line if there would be a foxtrot line of craters ifn first place. She jumped into a cover and quickly emerged back with her HPAR raised to provide cover for Henry would it be needed.

"Moving Chief!" Talbain shouted over the squad line as he started his thrusters. While flying through the air towards his new position he let fly on the squids with his AMP watching them to see how they moved under fire. Upon hitting the ground in his new hole his vision blurred from the impact sloshing his concussed brain.
"In Position" he muttered with all the enthusiasm of a hangover.

"Roger that," replied Phaedra as the squad entered the power plant. She saw Alex and Talbain move to new positions and she covered them with her MPR to the best of her ability.

With a commanding view of the power plant and the craters surrounding it, she could easily spot the Mishhu as they moved from crater to crater. She aimed and fired at one of the Mishhu that was nearby Alex to give her a chance to relocate.

"Won't be able to take them down easily in one shot."

Phaedra ejected the spent casing and lined up her crosshair onto the torso of another Ripper. Then something suddenly occurred to her.

"Wait a minute...why is that Ripper retreating?" she thought. Phaedra brought her crosshair over to the Ripper that was withdrawing. The Ripper seemed to stay out of combat, more like it was observing the fighting. And the other Rippers seemed to react to it differently. Phaedra wasn't sure if these new Mishhu were intelligent enough to have the concept of "officers," but she sure had a gut feeling about it. She loaded an IFF round into her MPR and aimed at the oddball Ripper.

"Harrison, I'm marking a possible HVT with a TRACER. Firing now," she said over the comm.

Phaedra fired the IFF transponder round at the ground just infront of the Ripper. She then leapt to her feet and ran across the moonscape to a different crater. She jumped into the crater and peeked over the rim at the target to see the results.

Sean nodded, and moved forward a bit. He held his fire for now, feeling it wasn't worth wasting any of his ammunition at this kind of range, not with the numbers left. He paused to stagger himself from Alex, then moved up after her, making sure to keep his HPAR trained on the left crater the Rippers had headed for. "We might want to pick on crater to go for at a time, so we can concentrate fire. Then put the shield drones between us and the other group. Divide and conquer, and all that fun stuff."

"Sitkeas, hold your fire!" Anselm stormed over to the newbie like a cloud front rolling in over the coast, illuminating its core with aerial lightning surges, "Nepleslians check their targets before firing at shadows, this is the Corp, not some raggedy bunch of gung-ho heroes, am I clear?"

The Aggressor turned its head to observe Ezra's position, "Brand, do you have any way of communicating with... superiors or perhaps anyone left in the plant? We really need to figure out what's going on in here or everyone outside is going to get cut down while I let us pussyfoot through friendly territory."

Gritting his teeth, the marine threw stealth to the birds and mentally activated all three of the Aggressor's monoeyes and its Noisemaker, essentially calling every Ripper that could hear him with a nice loud crash of directed particles and electromagnetic/radio white noise. Anselm brought the AMP up to the firing position again and swept his suit's monoeyes down the hall. "I forget again, why aren't we outside gunning down Mishhu we can see?" the Albino grumbled.

Avel spun around to face Anselm, her helmet hiding the expression of fury that was on her face. "Are you retarded!? I just shot a Ripper!" She yelled, gesturing to the smoking corpse on the floor with her hand. "And yet you somehow have the nerve to..." She looked back at the door that had opened only to discover that the Mishhu she had shot was nowhere to be seen. "Um, where did the smoking corpse go?" After a few seconds of thinking her brain came up with only one possible conclusion and she didn't like what she saw. "Um Anselm? Why don't you take the lead from now on. I'm not.. Feeling so good right now."

Stepping aside to give him access to the hallway Avel continued. "As for your other question. I'm here to do the same thing I did with the downed Sunburn; Rig it to explode and vaporize a few million Mishhu once we're out of the blast radius. The explosion will also cover our escape, allowing us to fight again another day."

Keladrian looked at the smoldering debris and Mishhu remains at his feet in disgust. "Stay the fuck down." He spat.

"Everyone! Move up as close as possible and hold them down with P/Ps so the PALs can finish them off."

"Roger that!" Kel said in response. He went to the far right of the crater, holding his fire and staying in cover. "Hey, why don't we try to keep 'em clumped together? Force them in tight, then let the PAL's do all the dirty work. I'm sure the guys with the big guns'll like it." Keladrian radioed his idea to the squad. "I'm thinking we can get into a crescent-shape formation, and push the squids into a corner. Keep 'em pinned down, then BOOM."

"Brand, do you have any way of communicating with... superiors or perhaps anyone left in the plant? We really need to figure out what's going on in here or everyone outside is going to get cut down while I let us pussyfoot through friendly territory."

Click to expand...

"What the hell is Hoss shooting at," Ezra asked as it fired off HPAR rounds. Turning back to the security consoles, he gave them another glance. His eyes wandered back towards the monitors, but he quickly averted his gaze back to the consoles. Potential survivors or no, he couldn't afford to lose perspective of the larger goal.

He punched up the internal public address system and was quite relieved to find it working. "Hey Aggie, the plant's address system is up and running if you want to say anything. As for my superiors... my squad got slaughtered by the squids before you two got here and garrison command's either dead or gone."

"Someone fire a TRACER to the one at the back," Henry said as he stayed in his crater, and begun to arm the mortars on his shoulder, "I've got a trench-busting mortar here, it'll decimate just about anything if someone says the word."

He then made a verbal backspace, "'Course, these Rippers seem to be of finer build than the ones we fought earlier. Must be using well tempered Zesuaium alloys and various strengthening composites with a layer of Yarvex, possibly with..."
He then paused again mid sentence, considering that it was not only incomprehensible technobabble, but demoralising, "Wait, that went somewhere horrible." He swallowed a lump in his throat, shook his head and stayed with his head down and his shield wall up to protect the others. He was wondering why it hadn't been shot at yet.

"Addendum," Hopefully this was his final amendment, "Just shoot the bloody basterds 'till they stop moving," He stayed where he was with his LPA in hand, taking pot shots at the closest Ripper.

Anselm patched his comm to the PA, sparing a glance down the hall before making the announcement, "This is Anselm Wyatt of the NSS Acadia, anyone still alive report your status and clear out, this rock is getting evacuated".

Waiting for a reply, the Aggressor regarded the unarmored marine, "the lady in the hostile is Private Sitkeas, you can refer to me as Anselm".

Phaedra's MPR transponder whizzed over everyone's head at many times the speed of sound to bury itself slightly to the front of the Leader Ripper. It stayed put and didn't mind the blinking stick sticking out of the ground.

The two Rippers in the center crater emerged and broke into a run, the other two on their flanks following suit but slightly behind. As soon as the first pair saw the Master Chief at the front of the Marines they opened up with their Gauss Rifles and forearm weaponry.

At this range Fian's autododge system kicked in. Using Monoeye data from the squadnet, his AIR-R jerked five feet to the left, evading both Gauss shots. About ten or so aether beams hit his shields out of the few hundreds the Mishhus unleased, but this was enough to drop it to ziltch. Fian quickly dropped himself into the nearest crater and then returned fire on the closest of the leading pair with his rifle.

"Take them down one at a time, concentrate fire on my target!"

Coincidentally this was also Henry's target. Even before the Vel Steyr's rounds even left his barrel, the enigmatic Techie/Sniper put a few good bursts into the Ripper Vanguard. At max shields the Squid pod simply shrugged off the attack, but it was a start.

Sean nodded, dropping to one knee before firing. It may be less mobile, but he would bet a lot that he would miss his targets much less that way, and with as many targets as were available to the enemy, he doubted he'd be taking too much fire. He then opened fire on the Ripper that Val Steyr had targeted, firing in short, quick four round bursts into the Ripper's chest.

Keladrian hopped over the lip of the crater he had been in and boosted to another one. From here he had a better line-of-sight on the Master Chiefs target. He acquired a target-lock from his SAVTECH, and then unleashed an AOP round. The mini-torpedo (High explosive mini-torpedo, to be exact) flew through the air toward the MC's designated Mishhu.

Talbain gritted his teeth and lit up his thrusters. Bounding forward he Targeted all his systems except the PAL on the pod the Chief designated as next to die. "Chief we should start up the noisemakers. Hopefully separate them from any higher command. Or at least stop that observer from calling in support."