Fruna Ruica, Deck 1, Shipping Reception
The cargo elevator was being watched intently as it came down. The aggressors had scrambled to grab everything they could get their hands on, including machine guns and anti armour weapons because they had no clue what to expect from what sounded like a boarding party.
No anti tank weapon could've allayed their fears when they saw a purple jacket and a crackling hand standing behind boxes with some sort of scrap weapon in hand. And then there were two mechs, and some strange woman standing between one of the mechs and Luca. Unseen to the pirates at first was the snow white build of Aiesu hiding behind Seiren's LEAF, and Melissa with her rifle resting on a box labelled 'FUN'.
"I heard there's a party going on in this ship," Luca said, getting the attention of the, he started counting, twelve pirates who had set up barricades and were hiding behind boxes. "You crashed it. That's really, really bad behaviour."
Of note, the symbols on the pirate's armour resembled a circle with an arrow pointing downwards from the top, and a chevron in the middle. Luca didn't recognise the symbol immediately, so they must've been a newer pirate outfit of some sort. Under their helmets they mumbled incredulously, and their Squad leader yelled "ATTAAACK!"
Luca sighed. So much for the talky way. As he yelled, Echelon hit the floor down on the service elevator and waited.
Seiren saw two men behind a barricade with assault rifles and a grenade. They exchanged glances and started opening fire at the LEAF. Bullets bounced against the hull as a pin was pulled, a fragmentation grenade thrown at and bouncing off of the transparent durandium window and landing between him and the barricade the pirates were hiding behind. Aiesu could be heard yelping as Seiren was a wall against gunfire.
Cass could see two men standing on stacks of boxes, similarly armed to the ones assailing Seiren but when they saw Cass' mech, they laid down and tried to figure out how to take them on instead of just gunning for them. Cass wasn't close enough to Luca or the others to make a grenade count with splash damage.
♫
Machinae Supremacy - Fan Va Coolt ♫
A soldier carrying a medical satchel and standing close to a door off to Seiren's right spotted Rebeka. She didn't seem to be a combatant, instead watching the chaos of combat unfold aloofly, but their presence was unsettling them and they lined up a shot at her head and fired.
She tilted her head out of the way and let it brush through her hair, the bullet hitting the back of Cass' LEAF with a clunk. Rebeka's gaze settled obstenly on the medic, eyes narrowing.
Between you and me, you know he's dead one way or the other now!
"That was a very, very poor idea." Luca chuckled as he raised his Battery Railgun and fired down the hallway at the man carrying a light machine gun. A white streak was visible in the air for some time after the two rounds struck the heavy soldier in the chest and his ballistic chestplate begun to melt with battery acid, fraying and dissolving the fabric containing his armour. Still, they soldiered on with their armour sullied and slowly being dissolved and hailing bullets down into Luca's cover and at Cass' side.
"Sniper," Rebeka indicated quietly, tapping Luca on the shoulder to get his attention with her long arm, just like Seiren had taught her to. Luca saw someone at an elevated position in an improvised sniping nest, with marksman's rifle. Rebeka meanwhile kept her gaze at that medic.
Luca ducked behind cover to avoid their line of fire. "Well spotted." He thanked Rebeka. That, however was what the Sniper wanted, responding by making a gesture to send a fireteam to charge him. He leaned out of cover and looked at who was coming for him. "Cass, look out! Rocket launcher!" From cover, he fired a blast from the Railgun at the man with the assault rifle, who was in the middle of lining up a shot at him.
Luca shot first. It becomes remarkably difficult to line up a shot when you have a molten hot, acidic battery lodged in your neck. Blood couldn't even fountain out of it properly because the heat of the battery had cauterised it and the acid was simply chewing his neck away.
Just then the service elevator opened and suddenly there were six people ready to join the fray. "P4RTY T1M3!" Echelon's Mimicom yelled as she started hip firing her IAW at the flanks and back of the advancing team, bullets striking body armour and downing a man carrying a vibro sabre. The soldier with the shotgun advanced ahead, moving towards a barricade while the rocket launcher wielding man turned around.
"Whoa whoa, that's AP, not HE! Don't shoot!" The Sniper berated the Rocket man as he rolled onto his side to narrow his profile to the new attackers. It would have been a very bad idea to fire that thing at an elevator - they wanted the ship intact. A pirate soldier watching the service elevator started firing at it, and Echelon charged forward, unwilling to stick around for long and to show the Sniper some face to face man fighting.
Upon reflection, these guys seemed to be less smash-and-grab pirates and more like a private military company that'd gone rogue. It was the way they moved, communicated and designated pirates.
"Tango, tango!"
"Lost sight on Target A-1."
"Targets spotted, elevator!"
"Spread out!"
"Frag out on B-2!" A grenade sailed towards Cass. To these 'pirates', she was Bravo Two.
Though, to Luca, they still died the same. Any pretense of professionalism died when, well, the person died.
Speaking of dying. The man who'd been struck with a pair of molten hot batteries suddenly found a 7.62 piece of lead in their head, tumbling to the ground with the sound of a falling bookshelf and dropping his light machine gun. "See ya!" Melissa cackled as she disappeared behind her boxes to cycle another round.
Fruna Ruica, Hotel Space, Deck 4
Zeta had ended up a little lower in the ship than she'd thought, looking left and right, she spotted rows of doors, a plush red carpet beneath her feet with a tasteful pattern woven into it, and soft warm light sconces on the wall to illuminate it. It felt very homely and intimate. However, Zeta saw doors ajar and scattered belongings on the floor, swept off to one side by the pirates as they ferried people out.
Save for the belongings on the floor, it felt like just the sort of hotel you'd want to shack up in if you were planning to get intimate. Zeta could see a corridor stretching left and right to either side of her, leading to more hotel rooms. She saw a sign just above her head that told her she'd entered through an emergency airlock.
Looking to her left, past a T-junction and past more rows of hotel rooms, she could see a sign that said "Kikyo Erotic Lifestyle Convention ~Upstairs This Way~'. One of the doors on the way there was open, and the sound of a struggle could be heard, followed by several sets of bones breaking simultaneously and a breathless yell for help followed by someone else sighing dejectedly.
"This is the worst cruise ever..." a man's voice could be heard, but the accent was distinctly serpentine.
Fruna Ruica, Main Convention Floor, Deck 3
Mr. Lizard Man heard the sounds of gunfire over the radios and started stomping, gatling shotgun and all stomp away, leaving the guests to be presided over by more mercenary pirates with a final command, "Watch them. If they make a sssound, ssshoot them all. I cannot have thessse intrudersss ssspoil my prizesss!"
To Red and Tamamo, the biggest threat was out of the room. Some of the convention goers enjoyed a sigh of relief themselves. Maybe there was a shot at freedom here.
"I can hear gunfire..." One of the mercenaries said.
"Zulu-1, What sort of enemy are we looking at?" Another radioed with his fingers to his ear, addressing someone designated Zulu-1. They waited for a response, and Tamamo could see the eyes bulge out of their sunglasses when he heard the reply. "You must be joking."
"Who is it?" Another merc asked.
They looked left and right and whispered, faint as could be. "It's Captain Phoenix."
One of the immediate responses from a colleague was an incredulous "Fuck off."
When the other mercenaries overheard it, a murmur of fear went through their ranks that told Red that there was still fear and possibly common sense in these people. The only time he'd seen or heard of Captain Phoenix on the job was on the cans of energy drink had to stock a fridge with.
Surely, someone from a can of energy drink didn't just leap out to show these guys the meaning of pain like he does on the advertisements.
Right?
