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

"Dearest Cavaliers! Did you miss us? Green Squadron is inbound for ground attack runs! Green Six and Eight will be chaperones for this evening. We need laser-painted targets, that IFF we're seeing isn't something our missiles can lock onto. We are four minutes out so get those targets painted! Green Six out."

"Roger that, Green Six, glad to have you back," replied Phaedra, ejecting the spent casing from the breech of her MPR.

"Sarge: I have Greer running laser designation for my squad and the rest of Beta, except for our hackers, are providing covering fire!"

"Good work, Staff Sergeant." She then switched back to the squad channel.

"Alpha, hold your position; friendly airstrike inbound. Samuel, use your laser designator and paint a target on the Rippers. Hold it steady! Laura, keep those shield drones up as best you can. The rest of you, pick a target and concentrate your fire. Short controlled bursts; do not spray your fire wildly."

Phaedra displaced her position again, thankful that the weak gravity allowed her to remain aloft for a much longer period. With the MPR tight against her shoulder, she aimed at a Ripper that had just fired a bright aether beam and then pulled the trigger, sending an EMP round straight for the Ripper's faceplate. She quickly ejected the spent casing and advanced a new round into the chamber. She aimed and fired again at the same Ripper, sending another EMP round at the gap between the Ripper's head and neckring. Phaedra then dropped the empty magazine from the rifle and slammed a fresh one into place.

The Aggressor pitched backwards under fire and smacked into the ground; Samuel felt the blood drain from his face as he watched. Swallowing hard, he turned back to the enemy as somebody pulled apart the squad's firing style. Burst fire, not spray fire - that was the one of the hardest parts of training, trying to unlearn the disorganized street tactics Dad had taught him, and it all went away in a single panic.

Don't panic, he kept telling himself, despite having every reason to. They still had a bunch more Rippers to take down, two were aiming for him, his shields were barely keeping up... Planting his feet, he took a deep breath, then let loose a couple short bursts at his pursuers. A nervous laugh burst forth, half in fear and half from adrenaline. "C'mon, you back there, get up, I've gotta take a couple of you squids down before I go!"

After falling to the ground Sawyer delivered a glare to the part of the screen that showed the new guy who had hidden behind him and drawn so much fire from the other rippers. He slowly struggled to get his Aggressor back to its feet. Once he did he looked at the line of rippers and loaded a green round into the chamber of his AOP, taking careful aim at the ripper that he and laura had been engaging he fired that one shot accompanied by a massive volley from his shoulder mounted plasma chainguns targeted at the same area so as to keep the ripper from trying to move to evade.

Lisa was keeping to her shield waiting for her mortars to reload. Fiffteen more rouns in each mortart. That was enough so she could keep firing. Then Rita landed behind her. "Sure there is enough space here pirate-lady." Lisa responede to her. She then got tracking signal from Phaedra's tracking round.

Lisa grinned under hel helmet and locked on the signal. She faced its way and let Mortard align on it. "Two hot potatoes coming right up!" Lisa said and fired both mortars as soon as they were locked on the signal. Shortly after Matteo landed behind Rita. "Oi it is getting little crowdy here. Also sarge, there I set up those shields of beta-team. Try using them!" She commed to others.

Marines beginning to cluster up even more, the NMX fire became even more concentrated. Gauss rounds, mini-missiles, aether beams, and positron beams fell upon Lisa's VOID and her shields drones. Five Rippers which had been tracking Matteo, Rita or Lisa had focused their attack on Lisa.

The first rounds exploded brilliantly on the shield wall in spectacular colors and flashes of light. Then the shield drones overloaded.

With fireworks now striking her VOID's shields, Lisa's mortar rounds were fired off prematurely. The first fell short, causing the ground to shake and more dust to be thrown up between the two lines of Power Armor.

Lisa's second mortar struck the top of the NMX facility, causing a spectacular explosion. Simultaneously, Lisa's shields failed and her armor took a gauss round to the abdomen. The armor plating had absorbed most of the force and deflected the round but it still felt to Lisa like someone had hit her stomach with a sledgehammer.

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None of the Rippers Alrik could see had a distinguishing mark. They were all piloted by brain-slaves. So he stayed behind the shield.

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Laura suffered similar to Lisa. As she was righting herself, more NMX ordinance struck her armor, taking out her shields. More mini-missiles flew and struck her back, destroying the two mortars and knocking Laura unconscious.

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Bernhard blinked as he skid left and right using his thrusters. What was the man talking about?! Neppies? He made a note to check that Marine's mental health records.

His HUD beeped that he had a lock on a damaged Ripper and he fired a volley of six BOLTs at it. Then he heard Green Squadron inbound, the Staff Sergeant's order to paint a target and brought his LPA up. A quick scan showed a group of five Rippers attacking Lisa. It was as good a target as any.

"Yes, Staff Sergeant. Painting target!" He kept quiet about his name and being called Bernie. That pet name of Laura's was beginning to get annoying.

He lined up the autocannon and pressed the trigger. The invisible laser now marked the middle Ripper. However, Bernhard knew that he couldn't stay still so he took to the skies and continued his erratic movements. Which was lucky since aether beams were flashing past him thicker than the kitchen knives Laura threw at him when she was mad at something. However, it meant that his beam was dancing a bit but thanks to his armor's systems, not enough to break the lock.

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Victor's laser targeting was spot on and steady since he was above the battleground. But because he was staying stationary, Victor was also an easy target for the NMX. Gauss rounds struck his shields, knocking his Hostile about and breaking the lock.

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Cedric's shots mostly flew true save for the last round. His first slug blew off the Ripper's head, the next two gouged large holes in its chest. Before the fourth round hit, the Ripper had exploded from a power core overload.

Thanks to his movements, the NMX did not fire on him. They had chosen to go after the more stationary targets like VOIDs.

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Phaedra's first round missed as the Ripper moved forwards to get a better shot at a Marine. The round's impact did not go unnoticed by the NMX behind her target.

Just as Phaedra fired her second round, a stream of positron lances flared up around her. Her shields took two hits, dropping to 50%.

That second round slammed into the Ripper's right arm, tearing it right off and destroying its aether rifle.

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Samuel's plasma fire proved effective, striking the Ripper Phaedra had damaged. His fire destroyed both of its shoulder mounted weaponry.

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Sawyer's GREEN round vaporized the Ripper he had targeted and damaged the shields of another next to it.

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"Green Six here. We see one laser lock. Be there soon. Keep your heads down."

All Lisa could do was opening her eyes wide in surprise. That and saying "Fuck," very loud. She got hit badly and both her shells missed. Her shield were drown and barrier was out. She ended up on the ground feeling as if she was punech into belly by an Id-Sol.

She lied there for few second breathing heavily and wishing to be somewhere else. In the cockpit of a fighter for example. How could the shield fail? She though before rolling to side. "Pirate, Mattoe let's scatter!" She said seeing as the shield was down. She send recall order to her the three drained bots and boosted to neares cover. "This Simmons, I am okay. I got hit badly, but my armour is still operational and I am nto injured. Mortar is reloading." She reported while retreating into neares cover.

Alrik became frustrated at the lack of distinguishing marks of the enemies Rippers, but he failed to remember the fact that they were brain-slaves. His tactics had come to a bust as of now, he was not the most impressive marine that anybody he had ever seen, not even one of his shots grazed an enemy. He was flailing around the battlefield like a headless chicken. "Fuck," he thought to himself as he started to see the marine's began to cluster up, with that he would attempt to dash to another nearby shield, preferably unoccupied and stay behind the shield.

As soon as he reached the shield, he would attempt to go to his knee and aim for a damaged Ripper, while using the shield as cover. When he found one, or if unable to find a damaged one, he would look for the nearest ripper and shoot in three round bursts at the target. Attempting to maximize his accuracy and shots.

"SCATTER! Get to the shields and draw them in between! Rita yelled aloud, without thinking, a plan that seemed obvious and had just come to her in the heat of battle. She had been firing concentrated bursts of HPAR fire at one of the Rippers until the shield protecting her and Lisa let up. When it did, she shot a burst of fire at the ground and forced the particulate dust of the exploded coin shot up into the air with her PPG, creating a smokescreen. She ran across to the next shield to her right, and once there, pointed to one of the Rippers so that the rest of her squad could see it. "Focus on that one!" She said into the comm. before firing at its center-mass in full auto, with the HPAR braced against the solid shield.

Lisa made it cover behind another of her triangular shield walls. Purple and white beams flashed next Lisa, creating a dazzling sparkle against the shield. The three drones which had made up the downed shield wall did not respond. Their systems were still in the process of rebooting from the power overload.

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The ground behind Alrik exploded as a gauss round hit where he had just been. A second round exploded violently against the shield wall he had just gotten behind. Luckily for him, Laura's damaged VOID was still transmitting its shield drone instructions.

He returned fire at the Ripper which was targeting him. The first burst took out the Ripper's shields. Alrik's second burst tore off chunks of the Zesuaium leg armor, destroyed the right hip missile launcher and causing the Ripper to stagger backwards.

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Rita slid in behind another triangular shield Lisa had thrown up. In front of her, the swirling dust cloud hid them from the Ripper's optics but not their sensors. NMX mini-missiles exploded against the shield and to Rita's side, shaking the ground behind her. Shrapnel pinged off her armor, momentarily creating a loud racket inside her suit.

Her HPAR bursts impacted against the Ripper's shields but did it little harm.

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Above, six FA4s locked onto Bernhard's targeting. "Eight, let's open up the ball." Green Six and Eight sent commands to the four automated FA4s to fire their missiles and begin a strafing run. Seconds later, Green Six and Eight added their missiles to the barrage but remained high above, circling the battlefield.

Eighteen missiles of varying types sped towards the group of five Rippers attacking Lisa and Rita. Ten seconds after their launch, the missiles reached their target.

All the combatants, Nepleslian and NMX, were shaken by the impact of so many heavy explosive ordinance. Even Bernhard, slightly above the battlefield, was doing his best to stabilize his suit with his thrusters lest he be sent tumbling into space.

Thirty seconds later, the first flight of FA4s made their low-level strafing run. Lasers slashed at the recovering Rippers, blowing two apart. The second flight took out another three.

There were only a total of five Rippers left facing the Nepleslian Marines.

Matteo's rifle barked immediately after he broke up the grouping; right now, it was a straight up fight with nothing in between them. In these situations there wasn't much to do other than focus fire on one at a time. Otherwise, it was a slugfest! As the ammo drum dropped from his rifle, Matteo saw it first before he heard, then felt it.

A bright flash of light. The shockwave and following sound.

He gritted his teeth as he was nearly knocked off his feet; two tons of marine wasn't going to topple over that easily! Matteo quickly fished out another drum and slammed it home before picking what looked like the weakest out of the remaining bunch and delivering aimed burst after aimed burst from a kneeling position.

"Like Rita said guys, just pop them one at a time." he spoke casually.

Rita once again silently moaned about the Hostile's performance, this time citing to herself a lack of high-powered ECM, which was essential in a battle like this one. Rita drew her plasma lance off her back and switched her HPAR to her other arm once again, using the targeting computer to ensure her shots would land while firing both from the hip, and continued blasting the same Ripper.

She wasn't going to let up, even going so far as to fire her pulse lasers at it to break down its shields. However, Rita conserved the BOLTs, which she had a feeling would be indispensable later. It was almost impossible to miss with a targeting suite combined with their close quarters. In case any of the Rippers started to focus on her, she braced herself to blast off from the ground and go into evasive maneuvers at a moment's notice.

Sawyer shifted his position to cover Laura while she was downed, loading a red round into the chamber of his AOP, he carefully took aim and fired at the ripper whose shields he'd crippled following up with a massive volley from his shoulder mounted plasma chainguns.

Lisa checked the situation from behind her shelter. THe airstrike was amazing. She sighed look at the fireworks. I should be up there, she thought. But seh were not and she sure did not want to waste time when there was enemy to fight and her comrades were being shot at. "I don't know about you people, but I am buying those pilots a beer." She said and laughed.

There were only five rippers left and she still had a lot of ammo in her LPA. She saw Matteo firing at one and decided that concentrated fire was a good idea. She stepped from behind the cover and targeted the RIpper with her LPA and both Gattling Laser Cannons. When she got a locked she fired sendind barrage of deadliness against the ripper ready to step back should enemy put attention back to her.

"Next bunch of Marines that cluster up; I'm shooting them myself!" Cedric barked over the comms.

Still taking a knee, Cedric took the moment of reprieve provided by the airstrike to reload. He could feel the ground rumbling with the deadly barrage of air-to-ground fire from the fighter/bombers overhead. Once that was done, he did a quick survey of his surroundings, and took stock of what was going on. Laura was down halfway across the Marine firing line from him, only five enemies were left to engage, most of the shields were still up, and the other Marines were doing a fine job of engaging the targets in front of them. That meant that Cedric had a relatively clear opportunity to get to the unconcsious female medic.

"Greer, good job on that laser designation!" He commended Beta squad's medic, before rising to stand, "All right Beta: focus fire on individual targets, and aim carefully. Give me covering fire while I go for Laura."

With that, he used a tactic similar to Rita's earlier method, and blasted a long stretch of ground to kick up dust and minerals in to the air. Then, moving quickly on the side of the dust wall opposite the Rippers, he headed for the unconcscious medic as quickly as possible.

Alric watched as the Ripper stumbled back from his burst firing, a spark of success rose up in his heart as he finally was able to do some damage to the enemy. Suddenly, he felt the shock wave from the barrage of missiles and laser fire on the enemy in front of him. The rapid pull and tug shook him hard, he had to hold himself in his kneeling position with a hand on the ground and his plasma rifle grounded. A sickening feeling spawned in his stomach, he thought he was going to vomit inside the Hostile. He reacted fast and started to force down the vomit with several large gasps of air and a constant swallowing motion in his throat. He was not going to throw up on his first combat assignment.

As soon as the dust settled and the light show ceased, Alrik would pull himself back to his kneeling position. Forcing himself over to the right side of the shield, and proceed to aim for the remaining Rippers in action. If the damaged one he hit was still in motion, he would continue to aim for that one, particularly at the exposed points on his armor that he had previously hit with the same accuracy and burst shots.

Samuel took a quick inventory of the battlefield: the Marines were holding, as far as he could tell, but weren't making any progress. He was scanning the skies every so often, trying to pick out the incoming fire support, and wished he had a targeting pointer. Anything to make up for the screwups he had caused so far.

Like an answer to a prayer, contacts showed up on his radar, big ones, in the air. More and more smaller ones showed up as the fighters uncorked missile after missile, all streaking towards the NMX lines, followed up by countless laser beams, cutting across the ground. Debris and dust pinged harmlessly off his shield; a shockwave slapped through it, nearly knocking him down. He crouched down, holding against the vicious storm, madly cackling with each explosion's thump. Those painkillers were great stuff.

As the dust settled, Samuel pushed back to his feet, finding that there were a lot less Rippers still around. A lot less: now, it looked like the Marines outnumbered them. With a smile, he moved a bit closer and sprayed another burst at the nearest Ripper.

A few moments ago...

Surprised that the Rippers had managed to target her, Phaedra descended to the ground and folded up her armor's wings. She advanced to the firing line as Lisa delivered her deadly payload, the explosion making the ground shudder and the blast knocking Phaedra to one knee. Green Squadron came in shortly thereafter, strafing the Rippers and taking out several more.

As the dust cleared, Phaedra saw that there were only five more Rippers left. She changed her comm channel to include both squads.

"Alpha! Beta! Squash those Squids, Cavaliers! Concentrate your fire and take them out!" bellowed Phaedra, standing side by side with Alpha and pointing for effect. She raised her MPR and aimed at the nearest Ripper, targeting its faceplate and firing an EMP round to damage its shield. She then turned and knelt to check Laura's status, folding the MPR and returning it to its place on the small of her back.

The back of Laura's armor was heavily damaged and Phaedra checked to ensure the VOID's seals were intact. She saw that Cedric had also managed to make his way over to Laura's position and she waved him over.

"Staff Sergeant, give me a hand," said Phaedra, squatting to turn Laura's VOID onto it's back.

"Private Greer, get over here on the double!"

If getting blasted by Gauss rounds wasn't bad enough, the force coming from the ordinance was even worse. Still Victor forced his Hostile to take flight again, as the shields on the ground had the nasty habit of getting cluttered as it were. It was amazing that the shuttle ride would find stiff competition in making Victor feel dizzy. He audibly growled as he made sure that he would have to repay the remaining Rippers for the shock he had just received.

Considering the conflicting results between him and the other marine whom had attempted to paint their targets Victor was able to make note of the fact that movement was the name of the game. And as it were he needed to improve in that area apparently. Taking a quick count of the remaining squids below, Victor did have ample opportunity to attempt to remedy that. Besides their orders were to finish them after all. Using his thrusters to charge forward, Victor would make cuts left and right at random intervals. Taking the occasional increase and decrease in height. It made for an odd flight pattern, but hopefully it would keep him safe.

Still performance was an issue as was actually engaging the enemy while moving about. Victor took aim at the Ripper that Rita had been firing upon. Although aim would be a stretch of the word as even with the targeting systems it still felt more like point shooting than anything else. When he felt comfortable, Victor would fire off controlled pairs towards the Ripper while moving. He'd continue firing of sets of shots at every feasible moment hoping that the number of Squids would soon be reduced to one with at least two Hostiles gunning for it.

Matteo's fire blew into the Ripper, toppling it. For a moment, it seemed that Matteo had gotten another kill. However, the Ripper slowly rose back up, refusing to die just yet.

In anger, the Ripper fire its only working weapon, a forearm aether cannon at Matteo. However, none of its shots hit or came close to Matteo.

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It was, in fact, Rita who would get the kill. Her own moneyshots and plasma lances hit the badly damaged Ripper, causing it to explode.

No fire was returned from the remaining Rippers as it seemed that the NMX were still trying to recover their senses from the FA4s' attack runs.

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Lisa and Sawyer's combined fire took down another Ripper. Their fire mangled the Ripper's body apart, spreading mechanical debris around its vicinity.

"We heard that! I'll take a Kennewes Sling, my partner will have a pint of lager, Six's controller will take a glass of whiskey, and Six wants a Raspberry Fruitail. We'll be sending those ships back to re-arm but our own craft will still be here. Call us if you need another run," Lisa's HUD identified the female speaker as Green Eight. She spoke with an accent very similar to Sawyer's.

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The three Rippers were beginning to fire back but sporadically and without much accuracy. Cedric's dust cloud hid his movements visually but at least one still had sensors working as aether beams burst through the dust around Cedric as he moved. The Ripper tracking him did not seem to have the best aim as only one beam actually scored against his shield.

Cedric reached Laura's still armor and knelt beside her.

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Alrik's armor injected him with a drug to calm his nerves and reduce adrenaline levels. Its systems had sensed the young man's increasing levels of adrenaline and decided that he had exceeded the safety parameters.

His shots were well placed, striking a Ripper and destroying its leg. The NMX armor fell to the ground and struggled to right itself.

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The plasma from Samuel's autocannon finally did some damage. His spray of plasma destroyed the shoulder mounted weaponry of a Ripper.

It, in turn, fired back with its aether forearm cannons, knocking out Samuel's shields and melting part of the armor plating around his legs.

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Phaedra's check assured her that Laura's armor's integrity was intact, however, the mini-missiles had mangled up all the equipment on she carried, including the medical kit.

With little effort due to their near weightlessness, Phaedra and Cedric were able to turn the medic onto her back.

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"Yes, Sergeant," Bernhard said, activating his thrusters and ignoring the battle below. He wondered when Laura had taken a hit bad enough to get past her shields.

He landed ten meters from the group and immediately remembered the Staff Sergeant's threat. Bernhard did not know the man well enough to tell if that was a threat he would carry out. But Bernhard was a Marine medic, the son of two doctors, and his sense of duty demanded he brave friendly fire to treat a wounded friend.

Moments later, he was beside the two NCOs and pulling out his medical equipment. "Staff Sergeant, you can shoot me later. Also, I suggest one of you leave. If the NMX have another wave about to come out shooting, the squad's leadership is bunched up here."

Bernhard connected the MedTech datascreen to Laura's armor and began running diagnostics using the armor's own systems. She was alive, that much was clear from the beginning. But the information seemed to take forever to download and Bernhard kept willing it to go faster.

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Victor's shots were numerous but not the most accurate as he had not spent the time to use his armor's targeting system properly. The majority of rounds struck around the crippled Ripper but a few did strike the NMX armor. Enough to kill it.

"Don't worry about me shooting you, Private." Cedric replied, "We need at least one medic alive and conscious."

He glanced around, then looked to the Marine medic beside him now.

"Let me know if she's okay. The woman deserves a round on me after this hell-hole." With that, Cedric rose, and left the cluster of Marines (after all, Private Greer had an excellent point).

Quickly heading away from the injured and unconscious Laura, Cedric took cover behind one of the barriers that the VOIDs had set up. Crouching down, he took stock of the situation, and knew he didn't need to do much to "control the situation" since the Marines in the fight were doing an excellent job of giving it to the enemy; full force. However, he noticed two of the remaining rippers that took priority in his mind. One was on the ground, missing a leg, and struggling to get up. The other was still standing, but looked as if it had been reduced to just it's Aether cannon. After all, it was now only firing one weapon at them. So Cedric took aim at the one standing, engaging Samuel (not that Cedric could tell which Marine was specifically fighting it from his position). Four TC slugs were sent it's way.

The one without a leg and struggling to get up recieved a similar treatment, with four slugs of it's very own being lovingly sent rocketing towards the thing from the dual barrels of Cedric's shotgun.

Cedric quickly ducked back behind his shield and reloaded the shotgun, keying the radio to Bernhard, "When Laura wakes up, tell her that is she needs a weapon then she can get my shotgun." He offered.

After all, knowing Laura, she was probably willing to take on a Ripper in hand-to-hand if she didn't have a weapon on her.