RP: NSS Acadia [Mission 4]: Heads of the Beast

This was what the Greenhorn marine was afraid of. Everything had gone perfect for him up until this point. From the destruction of three Rippers with a single move, therefore saving the senate building, to the flying over the City to save a gravely wounded comrade. His endurance was wearing and the fatal newby mistake had been made.

Although, there may be time to rectify his stupidity.

Chad moved as soon as the Ripper changed course. His thrusters flared with the intesity used only for long distance flight. And with them he took to the hole which the Ripper had previously sprung. He pushed his suit to the very limit to reach the building for cover. He left little time for the Ripper to aim and reastablish itself to prepare for the Sunburn that was reving its chainguns.

Though the effects of the Ripper's attack were mitigated by Chad's evasive maneuvers, several gauss rounds still found their way through the left shoulder of the Marine's armor.

The Ripper would have pursued Chad, if it weren't now dealing with a wall of Penetrator missiles sent it's way by a very angry Sunburn. All of its weapons were now busy with locking on, and destroying as many Penetrator missiles as it could.

Unfortunately for the Ripper, stopping a hail of bullets from the chaingun on a Sunburn would be one task it was not up to. Rocked by several 30mm fired from the Sunburn, the Ripper would soon meet it's end to several missed Penetrators, the unguided missiles ending the hulking armor in a brilliant explosion.

Henry clung to the building as the brilliant explosion shook the foundations and made him drop his weapon. He regained his composure steadily, realising that the Ripper had finally carked it, brilliantly. The building had an aftershock, and Henry figured it best to start evacuating the premises, with Sam in tow.

"Excellent work," Henry was remarkably deadpan about the whole affair as he made his way down the steps, occasionally having to make a jump across a gap, "Remind me to buy you a drink or two," Henry told the pilots of the Gunship via radio, "Now touch down, and let's get our asses out of here."

He then realised that his Medevac was tardy, and he gave them another call, "Medevac, what is your ETA?" He questioned as he looked at the sky impatiently, "We have many wounded men down here."
He tapped his foot as he looked at the time on his helmet's HUD and decided to take a swig from that flask of brandy he kept on his person.

Anselm rushed to a window as the Ripper remerged and watched with both glee and disappointment as it was neutralised by the orbiting Sunburn, "Dammit, I wanted to do that-"

The marine spun as the threat was removed from the squad's concern and watched Henry Morris checked in on the arrival of the medevac vehicle that was desperatly needed by the squad's wounded.

"It's not here yet?!" he growled, storming out of the building to ensure that Chief Rui and the other casualties were still hanging onto life.

"Mayhew?!" the voice everyone in the squad quickly got used to hearing was that of a mountain tumbling down on itself, completely unconcerned if anyone objected to suffering its volume, "Mayhew, tell me we don't need another body bag!"

The Chief slowly crawled out of the lapse of unconsciousness that he was suffering from, helped along by what was a combination of explosions and the shouting of Marines.

The entire left side of his face was a strange combination of being numb, with a hint of a stinging sensation. Like the feeling of pinching your foot hard when it was asleep. Ran reached up to his face, an act that seemed like it took minutes rather than seconds, and looked at the pieces of debris and blood that left their trail on his gloved hand.

What really roused him, however, was the loud shouting of Anselm. Letting himself drop his head and left hand back onto the mall floor, the Chief manged to grumble out a "Anselm, what the fuck?", before shoving his hand into one of his pockets to produce a cigarette and lighter.

The Chief gingerly lit up and smoked a cigarette. A piece of cloth caught in between his middle and pointer finger caught his eye, and looking forward, the Chief saw the headless corpse belonging to one of the Marines he tried to save.

Clenching his right molars on the filter of his cigarette, the Chief stood up, fighting a wave of disorientation that hit him. Seeing Alex on the way up, the Chief tried to not look the Medic in the eye.

Keeping his peripheral on the dead Marine so as to not attract attention to what was bothering him, the Chief let out a single strand of smoke, before asking Alex "Mayhew, what the fuck happened?"

Alex just finished sealing a leg wound on one marine. He had hole in his thigh and by the blood coming out artery was cut. "Bugger!" shouted Alex. "You there come here and help me damn it!" she shouted at neares marine. Young man came not realy sure what to do.

Alex quickly caught his hand, "come here and hold this." She let him follow his hand into leg wound and catch artery. "Now hold!" she said and took out tweezers to took out a sharp piece of stone who did the damage. Some stone probably got hit by gauss shot and it rocketed it into this poor fellows leg.

Marine helping her looked pale. Well he had his fingers in the leg of other marine. Other marine on the other hand lookes like he was in lot of pain. Well he had other man fingers in his leg. With projectile out Alex took out her hypolathe and started working on the wound. She wanted stone out, so nanobots can focus on artery. With that she applied compression bandage and moved on.

Checking her hypolathe did not make her happy. "Bloody hell. Morrison-sir, get that medevac here quickly. I treated everyone the best I could, but I my hypolathe is almost empty and I will work as best as I can even after it gets empty but my supplies are limited and there a lot of wounded. Bloody ripper!" She sweared at the end of long radio communication. Darn she hates Jacks guts but other medic would sure be handy around here now.

She then heard Anselm in the radio. "We will need a lots of body bags chalk," she replied with angry voice. "But like I already said few times, chief should be okay!" Anselm did not get time to reply to her since chief sat up and said "Anselm, shut the fuck up and get after that fucking Ripper."

Alex was rather suprised that he is even conscious. With all serious wounds treated she moved to the chief who already stood up. "Ripper is done for, Sunburn had put that sod down. You should have seen it, it was rather splendid work. But you should at least sit down now sir. I am sure you have a concussion sir and walking won't do you much good."

Anselm confiscated the cigarettes from a group of marines that had sat down once the Mishhu armor detonated, putting the lit embers of one cig out on his cybernetic, he place the partially spent smoke back in its packaging and tossed it at the man who'd pulled them out, "stay on guard dammit, there could be more and we don't need the whole squad wiped out because you thought the fight was over, take your tea party when we get back home."

The albino glanced back at the smoldering wreckage of the Ripper, as if he expected it to get up, but only the cracking and pinging of heated composites answered his silent query before the marine addressed his Chief.

"Squid's quiet, Chief-" a short scream from one of the wounded interrupted the former joint leadership of the squad as Alexandra did her best to patch up casualties so they wouldn't be dead before the surgeon could get their needles in them, "wounded aren't, maybe medevac was waiting till the Ripper was neutralised before trying to come in..." he craned his head up to the ruin-shrouded skyline, hoping that was the case, "or they have someone more important to rush to the docs..."

Viktor took this moment to chime in, the joy of watching the Ripper blow up first-hand subsiding.

"I'd say the only people more important than us are the Senators, and if they aren't already out of here something really went wrong." Then he remembered the other squads that had been assigned to the push on the station.

"Sir, if I may, I'd like to take Morris and Volkov to see how the assault on the station fared. We'll radio if things still need doing." Perhaps he was getting a little carried away, but before the Chief had even formulated a response, he called Volkov- who was standing just a few feet away- and Morris- who was still making his journey back to ground-level- to him; the former by word of mouth and the latter via radio.

Phaedra sighed in relief when she saw the Ripper obliterated by the Sunburn. She dropped the empty Panzerfaust tube onto the ground and gripped her assault rifle in her right hand. She headed through the shattered building nearby to regroup with the rest of the squad. She noticed that Chief Ran was in much better condition then when she saw him a few moments ago, and she was relieved that their leader was well. The screams of the wounded nearby announced Mayhew's presence as she treated the injured. Phaedra wiped her face with the back of her left hand, only to grimace when she realized she had just smeared her fellow marine's blood across her face. A frantic minute later she had managed to remove most of the blood from her face; but her armor and fatigues still remained damp.

"Sir, if I may, I'd like to take Morris and Volkov to see how the assault on the station fare," stated Viktor. "We'll radio if things still need doing."

Phaedra nodded when Viktor glanced in her direction. She ejected the spent magazine from her GSAR, slammed another into place, and racked the action.

An almost evil giggle came from El as she watched the pretty explosions. She nearly didn't catch Henry's message over the comm. "You're welcome for the show, but why do I need to touch down? The Sunburn can't carry any troops."

She was trying really really hard not to add a couple more rounds into the rubble of where the Ripper was. It would be too much fun for the military officers or whatever though, not to mention wasteful and blah blah blah. Oh well.

"Roger that. We're going to send the rest of the squad in, anyway. We gotta get down to where the Senators are. Morris, radio Skwigleff and tell him to provide escort for us, and line up a few Vipers to pick up the senators and the rest of us."

The Chief noticed his shotgun wasn't anywhere, and deciding to keep an aggressive posture until his squad was in the clear, pulled out his RPB and walked towards the station, as the rest of the Marine platoon gathered themselves up and followed suit.

With the Chief's green light, Kingston nodded, accepting the fact that they were more vanguard than reconnaissance. When his chosen pair were ready, he led them in, and held point until they came upon the closest free-thinking Nepleslian and requested a sit-rep. This he had Morris relay to the Chief seeing as how he seemed to have been given the position of chief of communications in the squad.

Henry nodded to himself, after finally getting down to the ground floor with his equipment and Sam in tow. He'd calmed down a little and sighed a sigh of relief.
"Understood," He said as he opened another encrypted line, this time back to the ship.

"Acadia, this is the Squad," Henry's enunciation was getting more confident, "We're going to need five VTOL Vipers down here to pick up the Senators and ourselves, ay-sap."
He kept the line up in wait for a response, but focused his attention to the line he'd opened with Chad earlier, switching over to it and imparting the Chief's orders.

"Skwigleff, you're the only man packing an iron backside," His voice was surprisingly chipper and upbeat, given the situation, "Follow the Chief and assist his squad. He'll give you the details when you're there."
With that, he sent a blip to his radar of the Chief's position.

He then remembered something urgent and got himself back to the Acadia's communication channel.
"By the way, where the fuck are those Medevacs?"

"Roger that, Morris", this was Chad's first actual sentence since having to flee into the void in the building's outer wall. He assesed himself as he jumped onto the street, checking out the scorch lined hole in his shoulder where the Guass had penatrated. It was small and had really done no damage other than knock him over and slow down his radar. But there was nothing of any substance that would keep him permanently damaged.

But he had a job to do and couldn't really gape all day at his near death experience with the now shredded ripper. So he followed Morris's orders and moved on toward the rest of the squad, moving all with a smile on his face.

It didn't take long before he saw the first of his squad. It was the Chief, who appeared to look even more pissed off than usual

A voice crackled over the channel Morris opened up with the Acadia, seemingly oozing a sense of un-urgency, despite the current situation.

"Be advised, Vipers are inbound to your location. Medevacs are en route."

The sound of rotor blades mixed in with engines filled the air a few minutes later, as four Vipers touched down in the street, with their Sunburn escorts orbiting the site to provide security for the medevac force.

One of the pilots from the Vipers jumped out of the cockpit, hurrying over to Ran, shielding his eyes from the dust being kicked up by the engines. Finally making his way past the lines of Marines who were carrying the wounded onto the Vipers, the pilot tapped Ran on the shoulder.

"We've got too many fucking wounded here to fly you guys over to the Senate building, Chief! We're gonna have to pick you guys up over there and have you all walk there or some shit." Was all the pilot could offer before running back to his Viper.

"Skwigleff," The Chief acknowledged Chad, while lighting up yet another cigarette, seemingly not bothered by the several heavy gunships in the immediate vicinity, or the fact that they would not be used to transport his squad.

"We're going to take the monorail in that station" the Chief gestured towards the mauled mall "and ride it to the Senate Building. We need you to keep up and cover us from any attack." Without offering a single "Can you do it?"-esque motivational talk, the Chief shouted for the squad to follow him to the train station.

Alex helped get injured onto the medevacs. That was the last thing she could do for them. Now it was on the medical staff of nearest Mobile Hospital. She just wished they will all be okay. There was only so much she and other medics could do for them.

She then got back and followed Chief with her SMG ready in her hands. "I still think you should have go with the medevac sir," she grumbled as she took his side and was checking around for any posibble remainder of zombies. With that she walked for the train.

"Kickass, we get to ride a train!" Anselm whooped, helping a few tired comrades load redundant gear and ammo into a passenger car before climbing aboard himself and grabbing a seat and dozing off for a few minutes before Chief Ran or another superior chewed him out.

Chad watched as the chief walked off, lighting a cigarette as he went. The cigarette kinda pissed Chad off more than anything. I could deffinately use one of those. But that wasn't the only thing. Sure, he was the fastest, but why the hell couldn't he ride in the train? He was tired and he had been through a lot today. Oh well, he thought, I'll make sure that I can enjoy myself when we get our asses back.

So he sauntered off to the monorail in tow, and got into position next to the station......

The Nepleslian Monorail system was old but sturdy, dating back to the days before the empire when the streets were more often filled with gunfire than not. The first two cars were parked on the station, doors open and crew non-existent, having fled once the gunfire had started.

The front car of the train had a driver’s seat, a single lever, a digital display on the dashboard showing their location relative to the other monorail stations, and a single break peddle tucked inside of an armored door that had been left wide open by the escaping engineer. Forward and side facing windows were covered in make shift cage armor, along with numerous armored plates bolted onto the sides. Meanwhile in the passenger cars caged windows and thin armor were present along with rows of seats facing inward.

Naturally to get the train going someone would have to fill the roll of the train’s captain.

Viktor was already aboard and waiting for the rest of them. More than once he shouted, "All aboard!" simply because he couldn't resist. Aside from helping a few wounded into the train and loading a few pieces of equipment, Viktor was idle. In spite of this, he didn't take a seat until the Chief arrived.

**Edited.