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

Artan endured the shuttle ride silently, remaining in whatever station, or holding whatever handhold. Listening to the other bitch just made him roll his eyes. He was far too busy preparing himself for the event of war to whine about the ride there. "You're trained for this..." he mutters to himself off of the teams.

As the ride comes to an end, and the order to drop is given, Artan followed after the sergeant and everyone inbetween. Dropping out the back of the shuttle, thrusting to prevent damage to his armor and self. He spread out, keeping a few metres between him and everyone else as he moved to fall into the defensice formation. His HPAR held ready as he immediately began scanning his sector. "You're trained for this..." he reminded himself once more.

"Rodger that, Greer." Cedric shrugged, "It was just a compliment. You know what to do down there."

With that, the Staff Sergeant returned to his original silence. He felt the rocking of the shuttle and, initially, his mind flashed back to the NMX prison, and the nightmare of plummeting down in a flaming shuttle. Only his suit had saved him, with the impact turning the crew in to something resembling rasberry jam, and leaving few survivors in the end. However, it wasn't an incident that had left Cedric weak. No, instead it had strengthened him, and it would take more than a little pilot-induced turbulance to make Cedric accidentally repaint the interior of his Aggressor. Cedric simply refrained from commenting on the pilot's actions. Once they hit ground-side, the pilot would have had his fun. He knew he couldn't take on any Marines in a bar fight, so unless they were in a shuttle the blue-cap would probably leave them all alone. Speaking of, just as they arrived over the designated drop, Lisa wasted no time in deploying some of her shield drones, and reporting to him.

"Rodger that Lisa." Cedric said, moving to the door, "Give me three barrier shield. I want them moving with us as we move to regroup with the Sergeant."

With that said, Cedric released his own run-of-the-mill observation probe to hover just a few feet away from him. Moments later, he was the first out of his shuttle, falling to the ground, accelerating just before impact, and made a surprisingly graceful landing that ended with him in a crouch: shotgun raised to keep security for the rest of the squad as they came out of the shuttle. He opened the channel to his team.

"Beta: form up on me. Lisa, make sure those shields are up, and keep me updated on when you need to recharge drones for now. Everybody, fan out, keep your spacing, and let's move for Alpha." He ordered.

Moments later, Phaedra came over platoon-level comms, "We're deploying and heading for your location Sergeant. So far: everything seems a little quiet for my liking."

Oh well. If, or rather when the Squids hit them: they would be in for a treat. They' be fighting two squads of the best-trained, fiercest fighting individuals to grace Nepleslia's armed services, under the command of Sergeant Phaedra Volkov: the "Wolf" herself. Of course, past all that chest-bumping jargon that he would have been spouting out when he had been a lil' ol' P3C, he was a realist, and even in his confidence he could see that things could probably get FUBAR in a hurry.

When they came to a hover, Rita jumped out of the shuttle, grinning under her helmet. She didn't use thrusters to stabilize her fall, instead opting for the awesome spectacle of the hostile smashing feet first into the ground, forcing her to absorb the shock into her legs by bending at the knee, leaving a cloud of dust and a crater. Rita took point in front of Cedric, walking carefully with her legs lowered so she could spring into action at a moment's notice.

"It's way too fucking quiet out here. COME OUT, YOU SQUISHY BASTARDS! I'M GONNA PLASTER THE WALLS WITH YOUR GUTS! GET OUT HERE AND GIVE ME SOMETHING TO KILL!" Rita belted out her threats and taunts, hoping to draw the NMX out instead of walking right into an ambush.

Matteo edited the dropship somewhere in the middle of the group; being the hacker, he was now suddenly the VIP of the whole shindig. He figured that if he bit the dust, the rest of them were pretty much up a creek without a paddle. "Man, sorry for not being able to take the front lines with you guys. I gotta hang back and avoid the fighting." he griped. Though he knew war was perhaps the most insane and illogical thing to do, that didn't mean Matteo liked not fully being there for everyone else.

"Hey, Rita, even though we're not being shot at like in those classic old time movies as we come off the ships, you know they'll be shooting at us sooner or later right? What's up with the rush?"

As if in response to Rita's demand, the gates to the entrance opened and the NMX defenders came pouring out. The Marines' HUDs showed 18 Rippers of both types, all of them carrying aether rifles and hip missile pods, and looking menacing.

NMX gauss rounds thumped into the moon's surface sending a spray of dust and rock at the Marines. The dust cloud kicked up by the opening volley hid the discharge of NMX positron beams, aether beams and mini-missiles from the Marines.

No one escaped unscathed. Across the board, the Marines' shields were reduced to 75%. Luckily, the NMX had once again failed to concentrate fire on a single target and had just fired at the individual Marines.

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Laura's four shield drones had been taken out by the NMX and her own armor's shield were down by some.

"Sawyer, lock onto my TRACERs! We'll blast those squids to kingdom come!" Laura said, triggering her mini-missiles at the nearest group of Rippers. She brought both forearm plasma guns to bear on the nearest NMX and opened fire on it. The Ripper seemed to shrug of the initial hits.

The TRACER mini-missiles embedded themselves in the Rippers' armor but caused little damage. However, they were broadcasting and giving the Aggressor's an excellent target to lock onto.

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Bernhard took flight, jumping into the sky with his Hostile's thrusters. None of the Marines in his sub-unit seemed especially hurt by the attack. He could see Laura's tagged targets but they were farther away. Best to deal with the immediate threat.

He sighted and locked onto a Ripper. Time to test the new beam mode, he decided, dodging positron and aether beams with quick bursts of jet thrusts. The weapon discharged a sustained bright blue beam at the Ripper but its shields seemed to be absorbing the attack. Bernhard cursed as he switched to fully automatic fire.

Sawyer replied "Good idea' and locked onto one of the rippers and opened fire with all 4 of his plasma chainguns, filling the air with a massive volley of plasma rounds. He panned his fire between the rippers that Laura had marked out. If one dropped he'd shift his fire to the next.

Alric was one of the later jumps from Alpha squad, enough to witness the NMX pouring out from the facility and opening fire on their shields. Using his thrusters, he slowed down his impact as well, more in fear of hurting himself rather than the Hostile. As he descended to the ground, he opened fired on the NMX that were firing on their shields, with his Plasma Autocannon on full-auto, he sprayed it across the area.

Resting down on the ground, he continued his firing, this to focusing his attacks on single targets that were in clear enough view. His knees falling to the ground to give him a crouching position as he did so.

Artan blinked, the sudden rush of the rippers and the impact of their projectiles into his shield causing him to flinch. A moments hesitation, then he's sliding to a halt, his HPAR raised as he returns a single blind-fired shot, before he blinks. He shifts, aiming the push/pull device in the direction of the NMX, as he activates it. Using it to disperse the dust and particles blocking his view.

Should the device succeed in liberating his vision, Artan would draw a bead on the nearest of the rippers, immediately attempting to pummel it with rounds from his HPAR.

"Dammit," thought Phaedra when the NMX started firing on them.

"Alpha, Beta, advance and return fire! Take those Squids out!" barked Phaedra to both squads. She quickly switched the channel back to her squad.

"Romero, get us some more shield drones up! Everyone concentrate fire on the rightmost group of NMX until they are gone, then work your way to the left. Lets drop them quickly!"

Phaedra activated her armor's stealth field and then took to the air, hovering to take a shot at the Rippers. She zoomed in with her scope, found a Ripper that appeared to be without shields, and fired a round from her MPR at the Ripper's faceplate. She ejected the spent casing and fired at it again to make sure it went down.

Kurt had barely enough time to check the surrounding horizon before Rita started yelling, and the NMX returned fire. Sitting tight behind the initial group of Marines that exited the shuttle before him and shaking his head as his shields took a beating, Kurt immediately activated the NIGHT's Mass Mesher system and made his way to the extreme right of the Marine battle line, attempting to hide his movements from the enemy by using his fellow Marines as cover.

Not the most heroic thing to do, but the least they could do was divert attention away from the NMX. Passing by Stenton and holding out his left hand in a manner that indicated him being perplexed as to how she was able to draw the NMX out by shouting on the squad comms, Kurt continued to move along the rear of his squad, attempting to get into a better position.

The rest of the shuttle ride went by uneventfully. Unexpectedly, this even continued for a moment after they touched down. The NMX fortress loomed ahead of them, the barren, featureless land around it making it appear even bigger; Samuel couldn't stop staring at it even as the team divided into their squads and did some final preparations. He charged up his autocannon and followed along with the rest of the team.

Some moron in the other squad screamed a challenge to the Squids into her comm; all through it, Samuel cringed and tried to wish it away. Right on cue, base suddenly activated, and Squid armor stepped into view. Confound it all, he thought, tensing up and cursing the squaddie and the Squids simultaneously. The ground between them exploded, spraying thick gray clouds of debris into the air; right away, the Rippers opened fire, splattering against their shields. Volkov bellowed out her orders in response, and Samuel did his best to follow, scrambling forward a hundred meters or so. There was nothing left to do besides return fire, and he did the same, wildly spraying plasma at the Squiddie lines. He tried to rationalize his lack of accuracy by calling it suppressive fire.

The stealth suits vanished from view, and swarms of missiles scattered through the air. Out of the corner of his eye, one of the Ripper's heads exploded, taking two hits from some huge rifle. Samuel saw an opportunity and fired a couple salvos of BOLTs at the Squid next to it, while trying to hold a plasma beam on its chest. It fired back, and the aether bolts shook his shields. He sucked in air, trying not to panic as he screened a few steps to the right. "Side! Flank their side!" he shouted, not making a whole lot of sense, frantically calculating the new ranges and firing angles for the motion.

Alpha Squad

The Ripper that Laura and Sawyer had concentrated their fire buckled momentarily. It's left leg joint seemed to have become inoperable. But in defiance of the Nepleslian fire, it activated its thrusters and took to the air. It fired downwards, having a greater view of the battlefield, and an aether bolt dissipated its energy onto Sawyer's shields just as a near miss from a 50mm round sent Laura crashing to the ground.

"Yes, Sergeant!" Laura shouted as she released another group of four drones. Where they were supposed to go, who received priority, she didn't know. "Who am I shielding?"

This felt much like Tange, a clear objective and absolutely clear on who was the bad guy. Laura wanted to shift her fire right but the flying Ripper had to die. It had annoyed her and now it had to suffer her wrath.

Some idiot was deciding that he could go around ordering the squad over the radio. Whoever he was, Laura wished he'd shut up and stay calm. Sergeant Volkov had things in hand without them telling her what to do.

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Alrik's spray proved ineffectual. He had not concentrated on a single target, resulting in the individual plasma rounds doing relatively minor damage to several NMX Rippers. None of which seemed to realize they were being shot at as they moved around the battlefield to get a better target.

The NMX seemed to ignore him for a moment.

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Artan's move did clear some of the dust in front of him but it also kicked up more from the ground. His shots sailed blindly through the dust. Neither he nor any of the nearby Marines could tell if he'd hit anything.

Two gauss cannon rounds sailed through the dust cloud Artan had kicked up. Both missed Artan's Hostile narrowly but slammed into the ground behind him, unbalancing him. What he could not escape were the mini-missiles following. His shields dropped to 58%.

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The Ripper that Phaedra had shot was, indeed, without shields. Her first round seemed to hurt like a punch to the face. All it had done was shock the pilot. But the second round blew off its shoulder-mounted positron gun, preventing it from firing anymore of the deadly beams.

In response, the damaged Ripper and a comrade began firing random aether beams into the sky. They'd seen a Hostile in the distance take flight so maybe there was one here as well. Because they could not see Phaedra on their sensors, the NMX shots missed entirely.

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Samuel's BOLTs were right on target, even if his earlier shots were off the mark. The mini-missiles blew off the Ripper's leg and destroyed its gauss cannon, right forearm weapon and aether rifle, leaving almost useless. Its partner Ripper switched from firing at the sky to Samuel. Aether beams reduced his shields and a gauss round blew up the ground from under him, sending him toppling over himself.

Take 'em out, that was an easy enough order to follow. As fire erupted all around her Rana began to move into position as members of both squad undoubtedly began to space themselves out. There was no point in clustering for a nice grenade after all, and as she did so does mono eyes came to life. Each target on her monitor was quickly evaluated before she finally choose a Ripper that had taken the least amount of damage and was directly in their way.

As if suddenly coming to life the barrels on her Bulldog roused themselves with vigour as she locked on and pulled that ever so magical trigger. Red explosive bullets rapidly began to poor from her weapon in bursts of three as she slowly dragged her fire from target to target before advancing. "Can we demote her for doing that?" she grumbled to herself.

Cedric had been a bit caught off-guard by Rita's yelling.

It was unprofessional at best, and tactically dangerous at the worst.

He was just about to tell her, in professional NCO-speak, to shut the hell up, but before he got the chance the NMX answered to her challenge. Of course, it would have been unrealistic to think that they had actually been responding to Rita's threats. It was appropriate, however, and Cedric felt the bitter irony of it (as well as the impact of rounds that had taken down his shield) and grimaced a little. As the Reapers continued to open fire, Cedric took a knee, and looked around as his squad spread out to avoid getting clustered. He caught a glimpse of Private McNair moving behind the main body of Marines, most likely to find a better firing position for his sniper rifle. That was good. At least the Marine realized that the center of attention was no place for a NIGHT armor in a fight like this. It seemed like he had a good head on his shoulders.

However, Cedric had to focus.

"Beta!" He barked over the Beta-level comm-line, "You heard the Sergeant! Push forward and engage the enemy!" He continued shouting orders, "Lisa, spread out those three barriers and give me a fourth one: I want them spread out over the entire line to break up enemy fire! Our hackers need to stay to the rear of the fight! The rest of you, compensate and pick up your firing rates, but watch your shots! Kill shots only!"

With that said, he raised the altitude of his observation drone: hoping that it could aid the Marines in their fight, but not get notice by the Rippers since it was on the Marine side of the smoke wall. Then he took aim at a Reaper that he guessed probably didn't have shields (see, hoped), and fired a trio of tungsten carbide slugs at the target: one for the head and two for the center-mass. While not as effective against armor as the spread-shot, the slug was much more suited for longer ranges than the tungsten carbide plasma of the spread-shot.

Jokes aside, Victor didn't enjoy being sneaked upon. Nor was he anymore appreciative of this when his shields began to get rocked. In fact he was regretting not deploying observation probes, positive that they would have helped give him a heads up. But, that was neither here nor there. Now was the time to find his release.

He felt a slight groan come out as Sergeant Volkov decided on their plan of attack. It just didn't sound very smart for everyone to concentrate their fire on the rightmost group working their way to the left. Really, it just sounds like a request for their shields to be pushed to their limits. But, hey who was he to argue. He may have a passion when it came to these sorts of tasks, but she was the "Wolf," and that alone already commanded the respect needed to not question that order. Besides, thinking too hard on their plan of attack would take away from the fun that would be tearing these Squids apart.

As his Hostile charged forward to follow the latest set of orders, Victor could be heard visibly laughing with enjoyment on Alpha's channel. Soon he made use of the LPA's targeting system he aimed the weapon at the center of the group of Rippers in the rightmost cluster. Quickly switching to the LPA's full automatic mode he began to release shot after shot of what could only be described as the suppressive fire of a madman. He had considered making use of the beam mode instead, but they were already spread far too thin for that to sound viable.

"Now that's what I'm talking about!" Rita yelled as the NMX burst out of their base. She reared up her HPAR and shot up into the air with her thrusters, firing a barrage of BOLT missiles downward while jetting left and right to avoid oncoming fire. The targeting computer compensated for her movements and she fired a steady stream of ammo from the HPAR at the Ripper that had taken flight, making sure to keep an eye on fire coming from below.

When she'd hopefully finished it off (maybe with some help from Laura and Bernhard), she switched her HPAR to her left hand and pulled the plasma lance off of her back to hold it in the other, then fired in full-auto with both weapons at one of the Rippers she'd hit with her volley of missiles. Then, she used the push/pull device to force one of the shieldless Rippers into the air while dropping the plasma lance and letting it hang off the sling, then drawing the vibro-shortsword and pulling herself down towards it in an attempt to cut it apart.

"Yes, Sergeant! Who am I shielding?" said Laura.

"Spread out the drones across our line to soak up the incoming fire. Kill those Squids, Marines! Concentrate your fire!"

Phaedra took aim at the second Ripper that had attempted to fire at her and she zoomed in on the gap between the Ripper's head and neck ring. She exhaled a breath and then pulled the trigger, sending another sabot round hurtling towards her target. Phaedra yanked back on the breech to advance a new round into the chamber and then displaced to a new position; hovering in the air above Alpha as they advanced.

As soon as white aether fire lanced over them all, Matteo hit the ground and went prone. He kept quiet at first and didn't fire, but quickly realized something as soon as Phaedra nailed one - not all of them were the shielded variant. Matteo quickly followed up on Phaedra's shots on her first Ripper with a stream of fire from his HPAR. He briefly stopped in surprise though. "Damn, there goes Rita again." And then he started shooting again in hopes of finishing off the damaged Ripper.

"Hey, guys? Shouldn't we kill all the unshielded ones first? They're easy pickings, aren't they?" he asked in a curious tone.

Artan blinked as his shields were struck twice more, his eyes falling immediately to the gauge. He grit his teeth as he performed a short-thrust to the left, drawing a slight more distance from his fellow marines. As he draws to a halt, Artan moves to fall into a crouch, his HPAR rising. He draws a bead on the closest ripper within sight, drawing back on the imaginary trigger as he sent a spray of melted 'coins' at his chosen target's middle mass.

Lisa has to smile when Rita challenged NMX to attack them. It sounded reckless but it was also little funny. What was not funny was the mass of the Rippers that appeared. Marines started to jump out of the shuttle staff sergeant started barking orders on Lisa already. "Three barriers coming right up!" Lisa acknowledged her orders and sent 9 bots to do their jobs.

Barriers were smallest of the shields her drones could build up, but they used least bots and were more mobile. Thee triangles build up on the battlefield. One was in front of Cedric,one in front Matteo and third in front that Kalev girl. Barrier was not big enough for two marines to take cover behind it while standing next to each other, but they could stand behind each other. Also barriers were easier to move and could soak up armour fire from the Rippers easily for several minutes. Lisa set drones to move with their assigned targets.

Lisa smiled at job well done and stepped on ramp leading from the shuttle. "Pilot give me ten seconds!" She shouteed over loadspeaker to shuttle pilot. She needed to be on higher ground to aim properly. Both her mortars lowered on her shoulder. From mortar into bazook in few second. Lisa caught its handles so recoil won't rock her up. She then looked for tartet. Target would be few rippers that stood near each other, she wanted to damage as many as she could. "Boom motherfuckers," Lisa said, still speaking over loudspeaker as she fired both her mortar-bazookas at the RIppers. She then grabbed her LPA and jumped out of the shuttle finally, landing behind Matteo.

"Where do you want that fourth barrier sarge? Also just say the word and I can make a nice wall for you too!" Lisa commed to Cedric to give him options what she can do.