RP: 4th Fleet (NSN) [Mission 4.1] In Before the Close

"Shit," was all Lisa said as she dogded to the side. Gauss round grazed her as the one before it made her shields go down. She wondered what kind of rounds they use since, her shield were on full power just before. She asle knew that she could not use her mortar inside, which was only thing that coudl take care of these things easily. She stood up again, staying behind the wall set up by her shield drones.

She aimed her LPA at the neares Ripper. Plasma shoudl be able to hurt anything, she though as she fired.

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Alexandra was not surprised by other Daisies showing up. First pair was almost down, she knocked out one, but the her comrades did not manage to shoot the other. That eneded up with her shields down from grenade fire and from suppresion laid down by newcoming daisies. She hoped other will take care of the new daisies, she still had to take care of the one with grenade launcher.

Her armour was damaged, but not too much so she raised her AS4GS and started unleashing one tungsten shell after anohter into nearby Daisy, while trying to move into some cover.

Cedric's demolition tool fired a bright red beam at the Ripper he was engaging but it was swift enough to side-step. Instead of burning away the power armor's chest, Cedric only managed to destroy its left arm below the elbow.

Before the old Marine could switch to a less cumbersome weapon, the Ripper was upon him. The two armors toppled over, the Ripper atop Cedric's Aggressor. He looked down to see the silvery blue Zesuaium blade buried in his armor's chest and thought he could guttural laughter from the Ripper. Cedric could also feel a slight tension in his lungs, as though it hurt to breath in one of them. But for the most part, he felt numb and only knew that his armor was pumping him with more painkilling drugs than Laura Romero experimented with.

A moment later, it turned from an indistinct laughter to a loud roar as Phaedra's VBCS buried itself in the leg joint. The chain knife belched to life and its teeth ground away at servos and wires, causing the Ripper to lose functionality in its left leg.

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Rita's maneuver, like Cedric's, was partially successful. She had gone so far as to tear off the Ripper's right arm. However, just as she had that, the Ripper slammed into her and propelled her down the hall until they both slammed into Lisa's shield wall. She had dropped the Ripper's arm in the confusion. So Rita did what any Marine would do, pull out her VBCS and shove it into the Ripper's guts. The Ripper obliged in kind, its remaining Zesuaium blade buried deep in her stomach and the 50mm shoulder cannon pointed at her face.

Rita had only a few moments, seeing the external mount on the back loading a fresh round into the chamber.

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Lisa's plasma rounds splattered against Rita's shields, causing them collapse, and the Ripper atop her. The new fire drew its attention for a moment.

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Bernhard ceased fire, unable to fire with so many friendlies in the melee. Instead, he glanced at the medical reports for both Cedric and Rita. Neither was particularly pretty but worse could have happened. Both were still alive, for now.

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The tungsten shells caused ripples against the Daisy's armor before one shell broke through and exploded against the chest armor. This caused the Daisy to stagger and fall backwards, though it quickly recovered and began firing back.

A second Daisy from the rear, armed with a 50mm shoulder-mounted gauss cannon fired it at Samuel, knocking him to the ground.

Henry was momentarily stunned by the initial attack from behind, and he realised that his personal shields had been compromised - and it was likely that if he took another beating, it would be his last. First thing was first, he'd turn around and blast the Daisy responsible for shooting him in the back.

He decided to double up and use two weapons at once, with his HPAR and Shoulder-Mounted grenade launcher firing two high-explosive rounds into the Daisy that shot him. He relied on the suit's aiming suite to keep his aim steady with both weapons. Then he had to assist Sam, and opened a similar barrage upon Sam's attacker.

Sam was only a rookie, and probably rattled as hell, and Henry made a mental note to find somewhere to let his shields recuperate after the fight.

Watching the Ripper deftly avoid his stream of demolition-death, Cedric had tried in vain to return the tool to it's original place, the Ripper was on top of him -- literally. He fell to the ground and landed with force that would have broken the bones of anybody behind the duo. As he looked down mere moments after the impact: he felt the burning in his chest as clearly as he could see it. He imagined that if the brain-slave inside the armor had a face, that it would have been painted with a huge grin, and laughing with what it thought was it's victory. Unfortunately for the brain-slave within it didn't have a face, limiting it's possibilities on a night at the bar, and Cedric was old and salty enough to know that he could fight dirty. So with one hand, he retrieved his own knife. Holding it blade down, his mind pumped on drugs, for some reason his mind flashed back to Boot Camp, and the training manuels.

". . . However, the use of this weapon against the more advanced alloys and armors of most technologically advanced foes is only recommended as a last measure of defense, when all other options have been expended."

Click to expand...

With those words oddly playing at the back of his mind: he drove his blade for the gap between the neck-guard, and the face-plate of the offending Ripper that was laying on top of him.

Samuel ended up flat on his face, his monoeye against the metallic floors of the ventilation shaft or wherever they were, desperately trying to catch his breath. His veins chilled with a fresh injection of painkillers, dulling the feeling that his back had been blown to pieces. Miraculously, he still wasn't leaking, and all the systems still seemed to be working (besides everything that had already been broken, like his shields, his sensors, various armor plates - nothing important).

Flipping over on his back, he snatched up his AS4GS and let fly a spray of tungsten at his foe, another Daisy, one that had snuck up behind them while they were busy up front. Ingenious strategy, really, the bastards. He never did care for those Yamataian cat people anyway, especially when they were shooting railgun death at him. For good measure, he fired another burst at the armor's face from his shoulder lasers as he pulled up to a crouch, trying to keep up with the vet next to him. That guy had probably taken a dozen bazooka shots to the face in his time, and he sure wasn't complaining about it.

Matteo swore.

In the blink of an eye, everything had gone straight to hell. As the Rippers advanced, Matteo was hard pressed to get a clear shot from within the elevator, and his aim was only made worse as they literally got right on top of everyone. He had to act - but if he kicked the bucket, how in hell were they going to extract the data? The marine silently watched tem them struggling as he attempted to draw a clear bead but failed, their fight getting more and more desperate and bloody with each passing moment. "Oh screw it."

It wasn't that he was scared, oh no, he'd been in worse. It was just that he'd never had others rely on him. Right now, at this very moment, he was the weak heel of this operation - he was supposed to keep himself safe, right? If he was supposed to just stand by safe and sound while the others died, were the Marines really for him?

With sound and thunder, Matteo exited the elevator and cleared the gap between him and Cedric with a booster jump - an invisible sledgehammer was sent at the Ripper from his PPG as he opened up with the HPAR.

He hoped this was the right choice.

Phaedra was just about disable the rest of the Ripper's limbs when out of the corner of her vision she saw Matteo rocketing toward her and Cedric's location. Without thinking Phaedra immediately rolled to one side to get clear, and that was when she saw Rita's current predicament. The Ripper's blade was buried in her midsection, and the Ripper's cannon was right on Rita's faceplate.

Phaedra leapt to her feet and brought her VBCS to bear against the 50mm cannon's mount in an attempt to remove the weapon. She then leapt on top of the Ripper and reached to grab the top of its head. She pushed the head down as hard as she could and jammed the whirling blades of her VBCS down into the back of the Ripper's exposed neck.

"Oops," Lisa said as she noticed soem of her shots hit Rita. She was now unsure what ot od. WHoe situation was a chaos. She could not shoot at anything and her mortars would kill everyone. She already set up much uneeded shield wall, that was probably taking more space and was in way then it was helping. Lisa recalled the drones and prepped herslef to go and help Rita but sarge was faster. Phaedra flew by and attacked the RIpper and Matheo did the same with the other one. There was nothing for Lisa to do really so she just helod her file tight and covered everyone else, ready to help wehere needed.

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Alexandra quickly jumped into alcove discarding her shotgun as the tube was empty. She took her HPAR and leaned out to spray the surviving neko from the first pair that attacked them.

"Well hell, so now they're gettin' way too damned close for my personal comfort." Sawyer muttered as he worked to get to an angle where a round from his AOP wouldn't kill one of his squadmates at the same time it killed a ripper. "Hell with this" he muttered as he activated his monoeye and locked onto the one that got pushed back by Matteo and fired a single green round into its side and also a short volley of plasma chaingun fire from his shoulders.

The first Daisy to Henry's front went down as his fire struck home. Though it looked intact, the fallen Daisy did not move. His second attack on the rear-ward Daisy resulted in a brilliant display of fireworks as his rounds impacted, first on the Daisy's shields, then on its armor. Henry was also rewarded by the squeals of terror from its occupant. Though the Daisy was standing, both arms were now covering its face.

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Cedric's blade revved to life and as he drove it true, the teeth began grinding away at the Ripper's external armor. But before any true damage could be done, Matteo was at his side and the Ripper knocked back several meters. The Zesuaium blade was no longer in Cedric's chest but now the wound was open to vacuum.

Seconds later, as the Ripper scrambled to right itself, Sawyer's antimatter round detonated. The force of the blast knocked Matteo over and left the Ripper as several pieces of junk. However, its blast radius had also taken out Matteo's shields and vaporized much of the room.

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Phaedra's knife lodged itself in the shoulder cannon and as she tried to withdraw it, the damaged Ripper rounded on her. It withdrew its blade from Rita and backhanded Phaedra away.

This allowed Rita, who still had her short sword in the Ripper's gut, to drive the vibro-sword upwards and destroy the Ripper.

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Bernhard moved towards Cedric, scanning the room for more hostiles and his HPAR up. "Missed your heart by five centimeters, Staff Sergeant. Broken ribs, fractured collarbone. Serious but not yet life threatening." He spoke extremely matter-of-factly as though he was noting how fast paint was drying. The globules of blood seeping from the wound into the vacuum nor the extremely blue colored skin that Bernhard could see beneath the armor fazed him. His parent's surgery had been fairly bloody even before the Street War so one man's bleeding was nothing new.

However, without the TEK kit that Laura had been carrying, Bernhard found himself missing the equipment needed to patch the armor. Thinking quickly, he pulled out the NCS Hypolathe and used it to cut off a piece of armor from the Aggressor's left shoulder plate. Bernhard placed the piece of armor over the wound and looked to Matteo and Lisa. "Who's got a welding tool? I need one before we lose the Staff Sergeant to exposure."

It wouldn't have been unfair to say that the only thing keeping Cedric going at that moment was an animal-level instinct to survive. At no point did any tactical reasoning enter his mind for what he was doing. If he were to look back on it, he would be able to say that the reason he had proceeded to saw the Ripper's face off was to kill the brain-slave within. In his lung-stabbed, broken-boned, bleeding, pinned-by-a-Ripper state -- he just wanted the thing as dead as possible. He didn't care about the blade deep in his lung, or anything like that. As he was just starting to make progress towards this goal, he found himself suddenly free from the ripper -- and in an intense and burning pain as the interior of one of his lungs was suddenly exposed (in a particularly violent fashion) to the outside world. He just about wanted to scream but the absolute agony locked his jaw.

As Bernhard came up and start prattling off the damage, Cedric could say nothing, and instead just rolled his head in pain as he watched the medic remove a portion of a shoulder plate to cover the hole in his armor, which led to the hole in his chest.

Lisa hurriedly stomped to Bernard. He needed something that could weld, and she had fussion cutter. Not the proper tool, but if she was to lower it's power setting its plasma blade would not be that long and should in theory be used to weld. In theory.

"Bernie, I have idea. We might try to use my CFC." She said to him as she knelt by him and Cedric. "It might be a wee bit dangerous but I do not see another options. Until we find welder in this mess." She said and looked around. THis was a manufacture for amours, there should be welder somewhere. Somewhere.

"AAAAGH!" Rita screamed, as she felt something penetrate her armor. A sudden rush of adrenaline hit her as her animal fight or flight instincts kicked in, and her thoughts melted away like mush. All semblance of analytical thinking was replaced with raw instinct, and she desperately forced her melee weapon into her attacker. As the Ripper fell back, its sole occupant torn to shreds by the whirling sawblade of the VBCS shortsword, its blade slid out from the Hostile. Rita looked down and put a finger inside the "wound." She had felt nothing. The blade had penetrated the armor's stomach, but Rita was small compared to the full mass of the hostile, and it had narrowly missed her by a very small margin. "I'm alive?" She asked herself quietly, looking around in disbelief. "Halle-fucking-lujah!"

The moment the Ripper was blown away from Cedric, the Hostile thruster-dashed after it, swinging wide and to it's left. Matteo's HPAR shook with recoil as he fired at it on the move before - he was suddenly knocked clear off his feet despite easily weighing 2 tons and was sent flying into the racks of half complete armors. As the dust settled, Matteo's voice could be heard, "We're all clear now, right? That f*ing hurt."

Out from the rubble of the building and pile of power armor parts, a Hostile emerged with the lower half of a Daisy over it's head. He reached up and tossed away the 'hat' and quickly took in the room. "Sorry, no wielder or other on my part." he explained to the medic. Matteo then gestured to Sawyer with a lazy hand.

"Do me a favor and warn me next time, right? No need for me to wake up all groggy with some Neko's powered panties on my head, you know what I'm saying?"

"Sorry, 'twas the only thing Ah could come up wit' at the tahm" Sawyer replied with his drawl somewhat thicker than usual. "Sorry I ain't got no welder here" he said as he slung his AOP back over his back and pulled his AMP out for use in suppression fire.

Alexandra's target spasmed as high velocity rounds hit and penetrated. A short, high pitched scream of agony was swiftly cut off. When the Marine ceased firing, the damaged power armor lay still as smoke and blood oozed from its bullet holes.

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"Do it," Bernhard said holding the plating over the hole for Lisa. He decided to let this mention of Laura's pet name for him slip since they were in a critical situation. Such was not a good time for menial quips.

When Rita mentioned that she was alive and unharmed, Bernhard's head snapped up. His medical readings clearly showed she was grievously wounded as well. "Stenton, confirm status!"

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As the Cavaliers recovered, two dozen Nepleslian Power Armors entered the large room. They were wearing NSMC colors and held weapons at the ready. "Contacts!" a woman in a leading Hostile shouted, pointing her HPAR at the Cavaliers.

"Stand down, Watson!" another Marine, male, ordered.

"Damn, beaten to the objective," a third lamented.

"Quiet, Black," a man in a VOID snapped, "Sergeant Volkov, Admiral's order: continue the mission. Leave your wounded here and get to your objective. My squad will secure this area. Sergeant Holmes' unit will proceed below. Staff Sergeant Hawkins' unit will secure the outer perimeter. All other squads have either been wiped out or evacuated."

Phaedra's HUD tagged the speaker as Sergeant Edward Rochester, Roche's Renegades, NSMC.

The other two Sergeants obeyed and Marines began fanning out. One of them headed towards the terminal Matteo had accessed previously and reported, "Controls overriden. All aboard the NMX Express!"

"Irregulars, on me!" the Hostile tagged as Sergeant Holmes yelled, entering the elevator used by the NMX. Five Marines followed him.

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In Orbit

"Captain Ironside, signal Second Cruiser Squadron to enter the System. I'm having a bad feeling," Admiral Valken said as he re-entered Dauntless' bridge. "I trust nothing that might jeopardize the mission?" the fiery-haired Captain asked with concern.

"Same feeling I had at Kennewes right before a Reds battleship ambushed my convoy. Three DD4s are no match for a Conquest," the Admiral said quietly with a distant look on his face.

With the Daisy covering her face, Samuel saw his chance. Throwing caution to the wind, he shoved it against the wall with his push-pulls, then jammed his shotgun against its collar, just above the (exquisitely sculpted) chest plates. "Better luck next time," he muttered with a grim smile, blasting tungsten plasma into the PA. The burns on his ankles stung as his armor took up the recoil.

He wasn't always like this, he didn't think he was sadistic or anything, but hey, just a couple minutes ago she had sent a few thousand newtons of Gauss cannon at him. That would've put a damper on the relationship. Hopping off of the stricken Neko, he checked down the shaft from whence it came, hoping that it would be the last, and that it would lead to the way out. Any more of these tight passages, and he'd have claustrophobia.

Henry checked his ammo supply for a moment before looking at the pleading nekovalkyrja. For some reason, he was reminded of the Acadia debacle with Harm and Wazu in cahoots. He watched Samuel cut the Nekovalkyrja down to size and slam it against the walls and eventually blew it away.

He looked down at the nekovalkyrja. If it decided to get back up, Henry would simply cut her back down here she stood. However, watching this petty revenge was hollow, Henry did not feel any joy or pride in watching Samuel. It was just business, and the neko was simply unfortunate enough to run afoul of them on a bad day.

Alexandra still aimed at her opponent. Neko in Daisy was down, but that did not mean that it was dead. Alexandra slowly crouched and picked up her shotung, putting it on her back before moving out of her cover to check the Daisy. Blood was leaking from holes caused by her rifle, but Alex knew that opponent was neko and that she might recuperate even from wound like this. Alex aimed at the helmet, right where the base of Nekos nose should be. She fired single shot to finish it out. At least it won't suffer.

She then walked to the neko she knock-outed before. She was lying on the ground without motion. Alex kicked its rifle aways checking for other sorts of weaponry. She noticed something on its forearms.

"Henry be so kind, and cut its guns off." She said to her comrade in arms. She then opened her comms to Phaedra. "Wolf, this is P1C Mayhew. We encountered enemy, but we dealt with them. No one is injured on our side, my armour is slightly damaged. We also have two prisoners. I request orders."

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Lisa meanwhile took a deep breath. She was sure she could weld that metal on Cedrics armour, but welding with plasma was mighty dangerous. Especially cine Sarge's flesh was not really far.

"Okay I am carrying welder with me from now on," Lisa said as she took another breath. "Hold it tigh Bernie and you be sure not to squirm Sarge, the heat will probably hurt a lot. Okay here goes nothing, cannot be much harder then park a cruiser in a station." She said and giggles.

Lisa was confident in her mechanical skills. SHe was welding back on her dad's ship when she was kid already. This can't be that much harder. Stream of plasma or regular welder? Not big difference there. Or at least she hoped so.

Phaedra was momentarily dazed after being backhanded by the Ripper, and as she regained her senses, she saw Rita dispatch her foe.

"Status Report!" she said over the comm.

She saw Bernhard and Lisa move to Cedric's side in order to aid him anyway they could, and Rita rose to her feet, seemingly unhurt despite the hole in her armor's midsection.

Phaedra strode over to Cedric's side when a large group of armors entered the room. After seeing the NSMC markings on their armors, she relaxed considerably and returned the sidearm she had drawn back to its holster.

"Sergeant Volkov, Admiral's order: continue the mission. Leave your wounded here and get to your objective. My squad will secure this area. Sergeant Holmes' unit will proceed below. Staff Sergeant Hawkins' unit will secure the outer perimeter. All other squads have either been wiped out or evacuated," said the man identified as Sergeant Rochester.

"Affirmative," said Phaedra over the comm. "Thank you for the assistance." But part of Phaedra was not quite as thankful as she sounded. She admitted that she was pleased that more reinforcements had arrived, but part of her was frustrated that they had gotten bogged down fighting the two Rippers. She then pushed the thoughts aside and focused on the mission at hand; her pride had no place here.

"Lisa, Bernhard, let Rochester's medic finish treating Cedric. We have a mission to finish. Cavaliers! Into the elevator!"

She made a point of leaning over Cedric to look down at his faceplate.

"Stay alive damn you! We will be right back." Then Phaedra heard Alex over the comm.

"Wolf, this is P1C Mayhew. We encountered enemy, but we dealt with them. No one is injured on our side, my armour is slightly damaged. We also have two prisoners. I request orders."

"Bind the prisioners and continue to the objective, Private. We are on route now," said Phaedra, stepping into the elevator for the second time.