RP: NSS Acadia [Mission 3]: Between Lambs and Wolves

Some distance north...

And then there was an explosion, followed by the sound of debris striking the streets, buildings, and anything or anyone that had not survived just ahead of Trent Howard. The explosion rent a fresh hole in the wall of a two-story strip mall. From this smoking gap tumbled a Nepleslian, falling head over heels to land face-first on a loving couple wrapped about each other in death's embrace. As he rose back on his own pair of legs, the first coherent words out of his mouth were, "Shit-gravy on ass-biscuits! About fuckin' broke my jerkin' hand!" He was grasping his left forearm with his right hand while the left hand he shook several times, as if pain were merely a parasite clinging to his wrist.

A second explosion rocked the strip mall and flung the dark-haired, 190 pound Nepleslian- he had to be at least thirty- over the hood of a car and onto the street. "Well fuck me sideways!" he grumbled. This man was a hardy fellow, and had seen his fair share of war "back in the day," so a couple explosions wouldn't be enough to keep him down. No, not this old dog. He stood up. This time, he didn't attempt to nurse his injured wrist nor his freshly earned bruise on his hip. He just winced and looked back at the strip mall, hoping none of those Mishus would come scrambling out; he'd used up the last of his armaments on that explosion; the second one had just been a bonus in his favor.

As he watched, he caught something humanoid out of the corner of his eye and turned to see Trent Howard, armed to the teeth, headed his direction. "Hey man! Can ya spare me a gun? Tryin' to get the hell outta here ain't easy without a few bullets. Oh, right." And then, as if everything wasn't going to shit, he offered his hand. "Name's Kenneth Darken."

Not Far Away...

"Shockwave detected."

Master Chief Jacques Didiers crouched behind a heating duct on the roof of a two-story shop, looking down the scope of his Zwiehander. He was carefully looking at the hole that had just been blown through the wall of a mall nearby, and from this distance he could see motion. Two figures- human figures, of indeterminate age and gender from such a distance- had converged in front of the hole.

Didiers removed his eye from the scope's lens and pushed himself into a crouch. "Two neutral combatants, human. Let's get out there and cover them."

"Negative, heat's up in that area." The spotter, cooped up in a large building behind Didiers, radioed.

"Wasn't our objective to rescue as many civilians as possible, though, Sergeant?" Didiers said, attempting to exert his rank power over the lower-ranked spotter.

"Yes, but that zone is a security risk. Let those two get blown up, we can't save everyone. Besides, that's a secondary objective." The spotter replied. At this point Didiers was becoming annoyed, an insubordination charge was in order for this Sergeant when Mambo came back to pick them up at the end of their sweep

"Well, you have the manpower to hold the district indefinitely," Didiers grunted, "I'm going to go get those two civvies." And on that sour note, the Chief disconnected his comm with the spotter, made his way off the roof, and made his way through the myriad streets of the city towards Trent and Kenneth.

To the east of their position, the Marines could see several rounds impact upon a smaller city, apparently an attempt by Mishhu ships in orbit to soften up whatever resistance they could before having their hands tied with Nepleslian ships above the planets surface. The bombardment of the city was followed by several Mishhu ground forces landing directly within the city, with the sounds of immediate gunfire signaling that there were still defenders left in the bombarded city.

Ran's communications channel suddenly erupted in a fit of hurried orders from different squad leaders as what seemed like a blizzard of Ripper powered armors broke through the clouds in front of their position, a seemingly endless flood of powered armor that did not stop even as the initial landing troops began their assault.

Despite the ferocity in which the Marines opened up their artillery on the advancing troops, the Mishhu had continued on through the fire, finally crashing on the front lines, limiting most of their assault to a single point on the Marine front lines. Already, there was half a Division-sized Mishhu force to threaten the Brigade-sized Nepleslian force defending the city.

"I want all our big guns trained on the center of the Mishhu force, don't fucking hit our guys on the front line with that artillery." The Chief watched out in the distance as a Hammerhead and an escort of two N-F/A 01s loitered on the very far edge of the Mishhu lines, with the Hammerhead launching a few salvos of Pufferfish Airbust Missiles, and the N-F/A 01s ripping apart a few Mishhu with their 30mm Cannons. One of the fighter escorts was immediately shot down, with the Hammerhead and its remaining escort retreating from the area, badly damaged.

"All sharpshooters, start picking targets. I want anything looking like it's leading something to have a giant fucking hole in it's head."

"Roger, arty away." Anselm grinned, hauling his BULLDOG upwards to point at the red marker emblazoned in the sky on his HUD, the spotting probe's evaluation of range and time to target glowing next to the blinking red circle and crosshair. Switching the fire mode to fully automatic, the encumbered Aggressor let off a long volley of RED and GREEN munitions down-range from his hidden position inside the trench. Each dull crack-WHUMPH of a canister being hurled out of the weapon at hypersonic velocities was accompanied inside the armor by a small beep and the HUD-displayed ammo counter ticking down twice a second.

Several dozen meters above the squad, the probe, acting as observer, did its best to track the UMD canisters flying all of three seconds to their target in the general center of the Mishhu formation, adjusting the size and position of the little red circle based on where the canisters fell. Anselm's Precipice Savtech watched through the little drone's sensors for any counter-battery fire from the enemy.

Talbain had been passing time making adjustments and tweaks to his armor. When Chief had given the heavy supporters the orders to start laying into the enemy he perked up for a moment before remembering that they would have to make their way through 2 other lines of marines before it would be his turn to join the fray. The ID-SOL let out a sigh of disappointment before getting onto the squads line. "How long do you think it will be before the squids work their way here?" He wasn't so much talking to anyone in particular as much as trying to keep his mind off the fact that there were marines fighting and he had to sit back and watch. Damn he felt useless.

"Marines are being re-directed from the inner city to the front lines. Good fucking thing that we got those civvies evacuated before the invasion started."

At that, four Vipers approached the city from a safe direction, dropping off a platoon of Aggressors that immediately started heading toward the front lines. "And by the looks of it, the first line is gonna fold real soon."

The last of the landing Mishhu in their sector had landed, and in all the Marines faced half a division's worth of Mishhu at the moment. "Air support is gonna be limited to the major cities on the planet.

It was not more than 20 minutes into the fight that the Marines on the front lines reported a Mishhu breakthrough, which crashed on the second line of defense the Marines held around the city. With the Marines from the initial front retreating to this second position, more Heavy PAs from the rear lines poured more fire onto the assaulting Misshu, while the remaining Marines who still held onto intact portions of the first line of defense either held their position or redirected themselves to the break in the line.

"Field Marshall said the idea was to not counter-attack." Ran noted that the Mishhu had made a slightly deep cut in the lines, with Marines positioned at the flanks of the Mishhu. The Chief sighed, regretting the fact that it was against orders to exploit this situation, watching the hole the Mishhu had created become wider and wider, but not necessarily deeper.

"Harrison, Talbain. What kind of toys are you packing?" The Chiefs attention was directed towards monitoring the lines ahead, as well as taking a few pot shots when the opportunity presented itself.

Anselm unloaded his last burst of munitions into the encroaching horde of Rippers, the feed sheath and ammo canister promptly discarding themselves. The marine quickly set about packing the unusable but expensive weapon against the Aggressor's backpack with a terse "I'm out," taking a few precious minutes longer since the task had to be done while remaining inside his armor's protective casing. That finished, the albino drew the long vibro-chainsword from its place at his hip and waited, watching the Mishhu lines barrel into the Nepleslian forces.

"I've got my PAL and my ARROW racks," Harrison deadpanned, "and not much else for dealing with opponents at range."

As he spoke, the marine adjusted his position on the roof and took aim at an approaching group of Mishhu. Keeping his head low on the rooftop, Harrison carefully measured out the distance and set the launch angle for his PAL. Then, with a carefully-timed execution, Harrison fired his PAL once, boosted backwards off the building and immediately headed for the next available rooftop.

"AMP and a full load of BOLTs Chief. Attention getting equipment." Talbain looked through his HUDs to make sure all the adjustments he had been making weren't causing any problems. "Wish this would hurry up. All this not attacking is getting on my nerves." The irritation of sitting around evident in his voice. "Hey Anselm. You should have carried yourself an extra ammo case out here. Looks like you would have had time to use it."

"Ready to go, sir," Henry said as he boosted and hopped towards Harrison's position whilst keeping a low profile. He remained in a low position, able to spot Harrison's position, he then noticed something materialising near the hefty Mercenary, namely, a Ripper that was decloaking in Harrison's blindspot from the next roof over.

Henry immediately sent out 3 barrier drones to form a shield behind Harrison as the Ripper fired a shot, which got absorbed by the barrier. Henry then jumped over to Harrison's rooftop and made the shield follow him whilst he pelted the Mishhu with his Light Plasma Autocannon.

"I've got your six," Henry radioed to Harrison as more shots from the Ripper started to drain the shield's power. Eventually, Henry was close enough to simply charge it. He made a shot for the head to disorient it, then charged wayward with the Condensed Fusion cutter. It was initially troublesome to cut through the arnour, but eventually it was sliced open, and Henry let a single shot from the LPA finish it off.

He let the shield drones back into his backpack to recharged, and boosted towards Harrison.
"I'll keep an eye out for flankers," Henry told him as he scanned the area with his monoeyes and begun to deploy an observation probe, letting the video feed be shared with Harrison, "You keep dealing with the front."

Once the Misshu were near enough to be cause for alarm, Kingston deployed his shield drones: a trio for the CO, a trio for Talbain, a trio for Anselm, and a trio for himself. With his long beam rifle he began taking shots from the rooftops, his tactical VOID's Savtech lining up the easy shots one after another. When the fleshy little bastards clumped up, he dropped a canister from the FGL. It became a rather routine process.

Demonblooded said:

"AMP and a full load of BOLTs Chief. Attention getting equipment." Talbain looked through his HUDs to make sure all the adjustments he had been making weren't causing any problems. "Wish this would hurry up. All this not attacking is getting on my nerves." The irritation of sitting around evident in his voice. "Hey Anselm. You should have carried yourself an extra ammo case out here. Looks like you would have had time to use it."

Click to expand...

Anselm laughed, "Probably could have, maybe even two, should have just taken the whole fuckin' gun rack, now it's just some BOLTs and a sword; oh well, they say hindsight is always 20/10 and filled with regrets."

The Albino's bird's-eye view of the battlefield dropped out as the airborne probe did its best impression of a pile of flaming debris.

"Shit, they're picking off probes now?"

"Appreciate the support, Henry." Harrison said, looking nervously at the Rippers. The merc couldn't believe he had allowed them to sneak up on him- it was disappointing he had let it happen at least, embarassing at most. The merc knelt down again, at the center of the roof, and looked out over the rooftops. Without a link to a scout drone, Harrison couldn't get an accurate shot in on anything outside of his current visual coverage, which admittedly wasn't very far.

Raising his PLA again and shifting a bit from his crouched position, he fired his first salvo of PLA rounds and watched as they made impact a few blocks away, watching a pair of Ripper armors get thrown into the air with a sense of grim satisfaction.

Anselm oriented Viktor's shield drones to cover his back as the marine slunk down the makeshift trench with a quick "-be right back." Once far enough away from the squad, the Aggressor booster-hopped up the bank of the canal, throwing active monoeyes across their exposed flank; blade, missiles, and plasma chaingun at the ready in case any Rippers tried to surprise him as well. The marine still bounced telemetry back to the squad in the event a squid did end up lopping his head off.

"That would certainly be an unfortunate pain in the neck." he murmured with a grin, making a second sweep of the area just in case he could catch something with a double-take. An outline super-imposed itself over the main display accompanied by a shrill warning tone, apparently one Mishhu was dumb enough to fall for the trick. The Albino lunged towards his quarry, knocking away a clumsy but powerful swing from its bladed arm "Lucky lucky, I won't catch him off-guard like that again, kill it!"

Plasma speared into the still-invisible Mishhu, splashing harmlessly across its chest as the thing uncloaked to reveal what looked like war paint across one arm. It heaved in what might have been a mock imitation of human laughter as Anselm's chainsword skidded jarringly against the mailed torso.

The Nepleslian armorsuit boosted back barely in time to catch the same arm against its shields instead of his arm or leg, the marine inside grimaced as his shields dropped almost a full quarter, mentally snapping the shield drones around to face the enemy power armor.

Several explosions rocked the ground in front of the Marines behind the current front lines, kicking up a ton of dust and dirt that would hide the view of the front line from Ran and the Marines around him. On the Marines' radar, it would show a mass of friendly units retreating, being pursued by a larger mass of enemy contacts.

Soon, several Hostiles and Aggressors burst from the dust storm, taking up position and providing suppressing fire for other Marines, the second line of defense now leapfrogging their way to the third line of defense. Right on their heels were the Mishhu, aggressively pursuing the retreating Marines. Not spending any time with maneuvering, the Mishhu kept pouring forward despite the casualties they were taking.

Rippers trampled over bullet-ridden Rippers, plowed through debris in their way and trampled any wounded Mishhu on the ground. They had to maintain their momentum, and any delay in their attack would only slow them down.

The rest of the retreating Marines took up positions amongst Ran's group as artillery and air support attempted to stunt the Mishhu advance. Whenever an element in the Mishhu attack hesitated, Marines would hammer that position in an effort to push the Mishhu back. Now there were more Marines packed in a heavier-defended line than the first two.

"Light those motherfuckers up!" Was all Ran screamed before heading towards Morris, his actions allowing him to narrowly dodge what looked like a rusty dumpster being thrown his way.

"Morris! I need you to take Harrison and a squad of Marines to reinforce that position." Ran pointed towards a portion of the first and second lines of defenses that had not broken on the Mishhu right flank, who were attempting to envelope the attacking Mishhu. "Those boys are gonna try and fix that fucking hole the squids broke in our lines. We'll hold 'em off here while you do that and we'll tighten the fuckin' noose around their necks, now go!"

"Moving!" Came Harrison's barked reply as the ex-mercenary jumped down off the roof and came to a soft, boost-assisted landing. As soon as his right foot was on the ground Harrison was already running, not wanting to be caught by the Mishhu. With the reinforcement position marked on his HUD, Harrison had no way to get lost (unless he got nuked on the way, of course).

The merc quickly arrived at the reinforcement position, immediately getting down behind an overturned delivery truck and raining a hail of PAL fire down on the advancint Mishhu columns.

{HYU-MAN-DAI} The Ripper mentally broadcast at his opponent, unnerving Anselm long enough to hack its bladed forearm into the Aggressor's shoulder as two shield drones fled back to their master, the third laying helplessly in two pieces several meters away from the two fighters. The Nepleslian Marine returned with a animal roar and a wild swing from the shrieking teeth of his vibro chainsword, missing its target by a wide margin. The axe-bladed forearm chopped down again, sparking off the Albino's poor excuse for a parry, the other deadly arm tucked to the Mishhu's side, unneeded.

"Fuck you, asshole," Anselm growled, boosting back to keep some distance between him, his opponent, and the horde of Rippers inexorably cutting him off from his squad as they mindlessly advanced; the Mishhu easily kept pace with a relentless one-armed melee despite the plasma bolts and BOLT missiles thrown its way by the harried armor pilot.

Shields, shields, shields: That's what it was all about. When two drones came floating back, he sent one to Talbain and the other to Chief Ran as they seemed the two in greatest need for extra protection.

By this point he had emptied almost half of his grenades, but there was still a rack of TRACERs and BOLTs each to be deployed. Now seemed like as good a time as any, especially if they were going to lighten the load on the newly reinforced third line. He shucked the cover off the TRACERs and launched a quarter rack toward the approaching Misshu frontline which was soon thereafter followed by a quarter rack of BOLTs.

Then it was duck & cover as the damn squids finally caught wind of his location. In the best crouch the VOID could manage, he edged his way to the lip of the roof and jumped across the small alley to the nearby structure. He then moved "forward" from his perspective to the next rooftop, and unleashed another volley of TRACERs and BOLTs at the enemy.

He wasn't taking much fire, he realized, and figured it might be best to just store and recharge the drones. But, as luck would have it, as soon as they docked, the corner of the building upon which he stood was torn up by gunfire, and the roof gave way. Viktor fell to the floor below which very nearly gave way. He managed to regain his feet amidst the rubble and use the newly formed alcove to take concealed shots at his enemies without the use of monoeyes. It wasn't perfect, but it kept his position hidden.

Something caught Kingston's eye then. A slow and purposefully-moving shape. Must be important, he thought, and drew a bead on the figure. He couldn't get a clean shot, though, not with all the grunt Misshuvurthyar moving between himself and the target. He finally broke his radio silence with, "Phaedra, I think I see a big head for your target practice. Here's what I've got." About two seconds was all it took to initiate and complete the data transfer. "Happy hunting out there."

"I'll transfer the drone's control to you, Harrison," Henry said as the drone took flight near Harrison enthusiastically, "It'll aid you more than me, allowing you to see where you aren't."
He was focusing on a building with his monoeyes, it was filling with the squiddy bastards. It was up to Henry to flush them out.

"Bear with me one moment, Harrison, there's a building full of Rippers nearby," He pointed to the offending structure a couple of buildings away, where many of the squids were attempting to hold the building down and use it as defence, "And I've recently felt the need to do this more than ever..."

He stood in a wide stance, and let his aim seek the least structurally sound part of the building. Once he found that the centre of the structure's roof was an ideal hit, he marked it with a TRACER and let out one of the Guided Assault Fusion Mortars. The sixteen guided rounds then came down on the building, raining destruction upon the structure and its surrounding area, where many of the other squids were congregating. Most of them were thankfully destroyed.

"Business booms," He quipped as he boosted to the fallen truck with his LPA handy, and let out six shield drones to further entrench their position. He was picking off individual Mishhu with ease, but he was seeking an opportunity to let out the other mortar he had and seal the squid's fate here.

It just had to be tactically viable, first.

Trey scrambled through the rubble of the city. He had made the sniper's mistake, and gotten tunnel vision, completely zoned into his little world of death from afar. But death had come too close, much too close, and Trey finally realized the rest of the marines had left. He probably looked dead anyway, lying so still, only firing when he had a clear shot. Still, the Yamataian-bodied Nepleslian tried to make his way toward where the fallback lines were, and join with the rest of the marines. How he hadn't been killed yet was a wonder, but he was out of ammunition in his HPAR, and new that using anything else would easily give away his position.

So he scrambled. Jumping through a large window into a building, he hid behind it and observed his surroundings. There was a dead man in here, the stain on the wall suggesting he had been knocked hard against it. a knocked over table nearby, and a large, shiny new rifle showed why. but he hadn't been killed by fire. The marine picked up the rifle and quickly examined it. There was a warning "Caution, only operate when within a Powered armor" and a manufacturer 'Origin Industries'. The weapon was extremely heavy. Trey supposed the man had figured that since he could pick the gun up to the table he could handle the recoil. Must be some recoil the blond thought, tapping the drum magazine and figuring it to be mostly full. He picked up the gun, figuring it was better than nothing, and was surprised to see a request to display the rifle's info on the HUD.

Might as well... Trey thought, accepting and seeing a status display he had 993 rounds left, and a scope that displayed on his HUD. "this will work nicely" The sniper mumbled, running farther into the building and out the other side, closer towards where he thought the marines were.

The building was then hit by enemy fire and collapsed in a heap. Trey hurried.