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

Viktor smiled that Phaedra turned out to be a reasonable woman, and it was evident in his voice. "No harm done, Phaedra." He wasn't usually one to use first names, but she'd set the precedent so he figured they were on well enough terms. "And agreed. If we don't adapt, we will die. The Misshu have proved that maxim on more than one occasion. I was merely trying to focus on the mission as a whole and the needs of the entire group. Order or no order, Harrison and Henry needed our support sooner rather than later. Perhaps we can consider this a... learning experience, for the both of us." He had almost used the phrase "bonding experience," but how awkward would that sound?

He shook the thoughts free of his mind and focused on continuing to keep the Misshu pinned or incapacitated via bursts of fire. At one point a rather large Misshu marched into view. "Phaedra, I've got a-" Boom!- went the gun and down went the Misshu. "Nevermind."

Kingston slung the LBR onto a back hardpoint and grasped the grip of the portable mortar launcher. He stared down the sight until three Misshus made themselves known and fired the EMP round. It was followed several seconds later by a standard explosive round. Each time, dust on the rooftop was stirred into the air and was carried off by the force of the backlash and wind (that was more than likely man-made with all the aerial units and constant explosions).

"Get you a target?" the Aggressor pilot asked incredulously, peeking his wounded arm out of cover so the monoeye on his shoulder could have a look forward.

"Alright, newbie, have a ball and don't get killed," the marine replied, activating the monoeye and tagging a group of Rippers and dismounted Mishhu that had decided the Nepleslians' waning return fire from this approach meant a lack of defenders.

Victor let another clip fall to his feet as he stood within the doorway of the building in which he had taken cover. Reaching down for another clip of tungsten rounds, Victor slammed home what was now his last six tungsten rounds: taking aim for the nearest Mishu and firing off two quick rounds. The scum-bag dropped like a rock.

"I'm starting to run low!" Victor called, looking down to his spare ammo: whittled down to two high-explosive clips for his main weapon.

Victor scanned the area around him briefly before moving up to take cover in an alley before taking aim once more firing on the first Ripper he saw. He had two shots of tungsten left and then he was down to his high-explosive rounds.

"Get you a target?"

"Haha, thanks Anselm." The newbie replied. He fixed his AOP to his shoulder, preparing to fire. Keladrian popped out of cover, and before the Mishhu could notice, launched two high-explosive rounds into the group of squid soldiers. The explosions were 2 seconds apart, and when the dust cleared, the Mishhu were no more.

"Alright, I'm moving to a better location." Keladrian said, to no one in particular. He looked twice before crossing the street, and then boosted to a store-front with a wide view of the street.

Talbain hit the dirt in the trench moving. His last trip above the top of the ridge had drawn more fire than he had expected. Leaving him with the shield drones he had been assigned retreating back to their Void for recharging and his shields with a good deal of damage. "Talbain here, No permanent damage, Amp at 4500 rounds and dropping, 360 Bolts." He called out hurriedly into the common channel while moving towards Harrison's position. Attempting to use the drone network he had been linked into had lost too many eyes in the sky to be of use anymore. Spotting the Albino's Aggressor missing an arm He had to give him a hard time. "You trying to get yourself a new arm to put some new scars on Anselm?"

"Morris reporting, I'm fine," He said as he looked for more targets, watching the flanks, not noticing anything, "Not too sure about most of the Mishhu we've crushed together, though... hold on,"

Henry noticed that Harrison was being ambushed by a particularly bastey Ripper, and decided to assist his PLA fire with his LPA. He also set up a drone wall to keep the bastard confined, with Harrison finishing it off.
"Sorry sir, where was I?" Henry continued his train of thought, "As long as I've got power, I've got ammo."

He then realised that Victor Adair was having some trouble, and pinpointed his position. He boost-jumped near his position on the buildings, and kept an eye on two things at once, keeping an eye out for Harrison, and the other eye for Victor.

Anselm redeployed further down the street with several other Green PAs as Keladrian's AOP cleared away a wave of Mishhu, setting up behind more stacks of rubble overlooking a wide six-way intersection with sparse cover.

"You'd think my father had a harem the way you ladies fuss over a little scratch," the Albino shot back at his fellow ID-SOL.

Anselm hefted his AMP into a sturdy block of rubble almost as thick as the Aggressor he piloted, steadying the weapon with his stump as another flock of squids came into view. Hot plasma and munitions from the rest of the fire team tore up the few dismounted Mishhu in front of the Rippers before they could even reach the open intersection. Three of the brainslave armor pilots seemed to have more brains than the average squid and took cover instead of storming into open ground, supporting their more aggressive brothers lest the assault become bogged down by the entrenched Nepleslians; several gauss rounds burried themselves in Anselm's cover, one slug penetrating the thick ceramic debris and tearing the Aggressor's left monoeye to shreds.

"Anybody have any tungsten rockets?" Victor asked, looking at what little ammo remained for his primary weapon.

He only had ten high-explosive rockets left.

After that it was down to his secondary firearm and other weapons of the kind...and Victor wasn't looking forward to trying to face a Ripper in close-quarters combat with nothing but a knife to defend himself with. However, Victor was reassured when he heard the sound of one of his fellow Marines landing on the roof above his head.

""Where the hell is our evac?" Victor asked "I thought we were supposed to get pulled out of here, not just penned in and killed." Victor said.

"Curb that shit, Adair. We've got the high ground, and we're doing a fine job of holding the line which is more than was expected. Just wait for the word, and if you need ammo, try to scavenge. There are plenty of corpses around." Kingston realized he was sounding a bit haughty now, but he really just didn't want to hear that sort of talk when things were going just fine, Anselm's absent limb not withstanding. "Just a little longer now..."

Or so he hoped.

"Appreciate the save, Morris." Harrison grunted, laying out another volley and canvassing the street in front of the building with balls of blue fire.

He had dropped another volley when answering fire finally pinpointed his position and clattered into the ground in front of him, throwing up dirt and dust from the roof and punching fist-sized holes in the aerials and satellite dishes on the roof. The ex-merc shifted his position a little bit to attempt a move, but bullets from the Mishhu gauss rifles whined around his head the instant his dome-shaped helmet popped into view. Quickly retracting into his hiding place, Harrison laid down on the rooftop and slowly crawled towards the ledge. He called up the rest of the little group gathered around on his COMM and scowled as he sent his message.

"Guys, this is Harrison. I'm pinned down on a rooftop with Mishhu forces closing in." The mercenary looked up at the roof for any distinguishing features, and scowled, finding very few. "I'm on the building with all the aerials and satellite dishes on it. Red walls. Out."

Sean hadn't gone far as of yet, so he ducked down a nearby alley, moving back that way. "Masson here, I'll be there in a few seconds if all goes well." Popping out of his alley, he lit up a Ripper which had been at point blank, putting 7 or 8 rounds into it. "Slight resistance, but nothing that will slow me all that much." He boosted his way up top of a nearby building to see if he could see the targets from his current location yet, since he was only a block or two away, but they were low enough that he didn't have a clear enough line of sight. "Harrison, I'll be coming in over the top of the blue building a little bit further towards them to you. When I do, be ready to pop up, because I plan on giving them one hell of a distraction."

Kingston was liking the way this plan would turn out. "Harrison, Masson, I'm to your relative right. Let me know when you're going to do your little dance because I've got some heavy ordnance to send their way." He limited his fire so as to keep the aggro on him limited, biding his time until things got interesting.

Thanks god those first orders were changed. Alex would eat her hand out of boredom on so mining area. She is a marine and she wants to be in battle. Not that has some hero complex or anything, she know there is a good chance she will die, but she was trained for combat. What good would she do somewhere else? That was her logic.

She got herself on Rok'Veru and was hauled of on land in the last of transports. Someone shouted on her to go and grab a PA and get to combat. She also had to find Chief Rui. She quickly ran to one of Hostiles readied for combat. She just quickly checked if it wasn't personalised by someone but it didn't seemed that way. She hopped in started preparation.

Hostile was perfect for her. She didn't want to stand out too much and Hostiles HPAR was perfect for her. When she logged on to the computer and was greeted by ai first then she checked her ammo and systems. All were green. She opened and closed pods with mini-missiles to check if there was not a problem. She had Arrows in left calf and Darts in right. Just perfect. Okay she tried taking out a knife on her chest and there were no problem there either. She ran off to the quartermaster and got a field medical kit from him. She was a medic after all.

She than logged on to The Combat Savtech computer and scanned friendlies. She let armor put a way point to the Chief Ruis PA and let be that way. She then logged on communication channel of Ruis squad and got on her way. Sounding from them the battle was pretty thick.

Alex ran to the nearest medical transport who just unloaded wounded and was ready to come back. She hitchhiked them and got on board. It was a rocky fly, enemy fired just everywhere but by sheer luck pilot got through it and landed. Alex jumped off and seen wounded marine around. Many had torn off limbs and large wounds. Alex considered staying and helping them out, but she had to get to Chief Rui.

She started getting her way through city and she opened up private channel to Chief Rui. "Here is private third class Alex Mayhew. Reporting for duty and requesting orders. I am packed up and ready to shoot some squids." She said. "I should also mention that I am a medic though."

Dull-sounding alarms went off in the Chief's ears, signaling that his shields had taken a terrible beating when he rushed out of cover to find new cover. Several rounds fired from a Ripper had nearly depleted his shields, which had forced him to pretty much let all of his missiles loose on the fly so as to suppress whatever was firing at him.

Ducking behind an overturned truck, the Chief stood up slightly and fired a few bursts at a pair of Rippers that were being distracted by the Marines in his squad; not enough to kill them outright, but enough to soften them up some more for his squad to take advantage of.

The overturned truck started jumping, as several 40mm rounds impacted hard on it, causing the Chief to slide down into one of the irrigation ditches, and move back closer to his squad's position. On the way, Alex's comm channel opened. "Alright, stay there and help out until I can scrounge up someone to escort you here."

"Volkov, I need you to escort the newbie to the squad's position. Make sure you try and scrounge up some ammunition on the way." The Chief then walked up the slope opposite to the Mishhu forces and got a fix on where Harrison's position was. "Kingston, mark Harrison's position with a TRACER. I'm gonna see if I can call in some gunships. Be ready to extract him once their gun runs are over."

Under her helmet Alex was smiling. She was finally here, eager to do her job. "Alright, stay there and help out until I can scrounge up someone to escort you here." Siad Chief Rui over the comm. Alex wasn't exactly happy about that. She was confident that she could get there without baby-sitter. But order is an order.

She crouched by a corner of building looking for any danger and taking cover. She wasn't the really in thick of it, so there wasn't much to shoot anyway.

This being his first battle, Victor was acceptably nervous about the proposition of exposing himself to scavange dead Marines for ammo. Besides that he didn't like the idea, however neccesary it was, of searching the body of a fellow Marine. However by the time Victor was being forced to click in his final set of high-explosive rockets he knew that he had no choice but to face that disheartening music.

Victor quickly scanned the ground outside the building in which he had taken cover. If he could he would get somebody with more rockets but if he couldn't then he would start looking for some other weapon with plenty of ammo.

Thankfully Victor didn't need to resort to that option when he saw a Marine in armor like his own laying on his side in front of another building across the street from him.

The man was obviously dead considering the fact that his still helmeted head was resting several feet away from it's body. Victor didn't care about that though, because on that suit he could see two more high-explosive reloads and one more tungsten reload.

"Somebody cover me, I'm gonna have to move out in the open!" Victor called in to his radio.

"Sir." Kingston turned toward Harrison, opened the calf rack of TRACERs and propelled a single mini-missile to the rooftop upon which the FIRE1 stood. "Done, Chief." He then returned to his minimalistic support fire, but was soon interrupted by some heavy fire and fell back. When he tried to take another shot, he was again repelled by excessive fire. His shields were sitting at 60%.

After downing a couple of Ripper armors via well-placed shots to the Brain-slave cavity, Trey got up for another one of his moves. The moment the Sniper got up, however, something very not fun happened.

Several lances of Aether beams impacted his shields, blowing them down to nothing in short order, and then came a hail of Gauss fire. Trey used his PPP as a sort of Force-shield but the sheer power of the Gauss rounds ripped the unit off of his shoulder and forearm, the stress too much for the mounts of the plating, but it stopped the rounds from killing him. The unit, however, decided to explode, throwing him towards his left, where more Aether fire was coming from, and they lanced straight through the left shoulder of his armor, blowing it off in another fantastical explosion. Now on his back and in trouble, Trey realized he would be unable to use his rifle now, and was therefore next to useless.

The Yamataian-bodied Nepleslian managed to flip himself over, and then began slowly crawling toward the opposite side of the building, where he would drop off, landing with a heavy thunk as his armor's useless shoulder barely held its arms up. Trey had to use mostly his own strength augmented by what little nanomuscle remained just to carry the heavy rifle he had been using. It was only down to about 750 rounds, and was therefore still extremely useful, If only he could get an armor that could fire it. "Chief! Know anywhere that have some extra armors? I'm kinda bad off right now!" he called over the comms.

"Volkov, I need you to escort the newbie to the squad's position. Make sure you try and scrounge up some ammunition on the way," ordered the chief over the comm.

"Sir," said Phaedra, noticing the new arrival appearing on her HUD. She jumped down from her perch and began heading through the streets towards the dot marked Mayhew.

"Well, damn, this isn't good," Anselm remarked to himself as the AMP's barrel cracked under the stress of constant fire, the edges of the thin line beginning to glow orange with heat when the marine noticed the damage. Discarding the weapon, the Aggressor pulled the HPAR stowed on its back, launching several molten coins into the face of an overeager Ripper whom had decided to dtorm the open ground between it and the Nepleslians stalwartly defending their line.

Its shields having been almost completely dropped by the streams of covering fire keeping most of the Mishhu line holding their position, the Ripper's faceplate caved under the liquid metal burst. The brainslave pilot clawed at the seeping metal roasting its flesh to no avail and the armor fell to the ground, writhing for a moment as its pilot died in agony.