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

"Damn, look at that mess." Kajiim commented on the havok below, finally gathering himself. Suddenly he felt his suit rumble and the scream of thrusters fly by, Kajiim turned around asking, "what was that?!"

Jack wasn't scared as they plummeted to the ground. He was...something else entirely. Something was deep down in his gut that mixed fear, excitement, and the pure adrenaline that was rushing through his veins almost as fast as the speed he was falling (metaphorically speaking, of course). With Jack's positioning he couldn't see the shuttle as it came rocketing towards them...that was until he was spun sixty degrees...and flung so far from the team that he was barely close enough to make out the details of the front of their armor as he fell.

He could barely see them, and now when he touched down he would just have to hope that he wasn't so far off target that he couldn't catch up with them or that he wasn't smack-dab in the middle of a swarm of enemies.

"Son of a bitch!" Jack yelled in rage.

Talbain sat strapped into his seat in the shuttle with all his normal side arms. The only things that looked different than normal were the Muur chest piece he was wearing and the Zen Arms Type 1 Rifle he had setting barrels down in front of him. Leaning forward as far as he could to see where Anselm was at, the ID-SOL waved to get his attention before shouting at him "HEY ANSELM, I HEARD THEY'RE GOING TO MAKE ONE OF THE MULTIPURPOSE ROOMS JUST FOR FIXING YOU IF YOU NEED MORE THAN A FIRST AID KIT WHEN WE GET BACK!." He kept watching to see what the Albino's reaction would be.

Having been slightly disappointed with the job that the Reps were doing, he retreated back to his bunk to wait out the slipspace jump. As he did so, he contemplated what he'd bring to the fight. He didn't have much, and he'd likely have to pick something else up.

Once the ship resumed a regular speed, however, he donned his Styrling Muur armour over his fatigues, his custom-made rifle with eighty bullets, and his Styrling Dart, with four magazines of ammo and a suppressor fitted to it.
He also took the time to strap his datapad to his back and plug it into his helmet, so he could utilise the datapad's abilities to their best without using his hands.

As he headed towards the hangar to get his ticket out, he stopped by the armoury to arm himself with some grenades. He took two NAM EMP Grenades, a Subspace Particle Grenade, and a pair of Scalar Pulse grenades. He forked out a total of 235 DA for all of them. He strapped them to his belt, on his right side.

He didn't see the need for frag grenades, assuming that the others would have picked them up on the way in. With that thought in mind, he boarded the shuttle heading down to the ground.

"Ready and accounted for," He said, with his unorthodox rifle cradled.

"Sit tight Jack, we'll rendevouz once we touch down." Kajiim reassured his comrade as he watched him veer far off course. "Chad, Lucas. How're the two of you holding up?" Kajiim said checking in on the rest of the squad.

During the pause between status reports Kajiim noticed that the trigger for his "squishy, crunchy, painful death preventing rockets" went missing. And with that.... "Shiiiiit." was the only thing Kajiim hissed under his breath, as he scanned the sky for the life saving device.

It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Kajiim's little camera was not up for the job, and even if it did see it (it was actually at least half a kilometer above the P3C and rising, as it had a smaller terminal velocity), there was no way he could get it back. He could be dashed on the ground like a can of sardines in tomato sauce fired out of a railgun and into a wall if a solution could not be found, and quick.

With grim realization that the trigger was lost to the heavens above, Kajiim rolled his armor belly down and expanded his arms and legs even fingers, his weapons strapped to his back. Kajiim tried to cause as much drag as possible to slow his descent even if by seconds just to formulate how he would survive this. . .

Just when Viktor Kingston thought he was going to have a genuinely worthwhile political discussion with his squad, the whole ship went to Hell with one utterly benign and off-handed remark by a Senator- ironic, really.

In the scramble for the hangar he realized it might have been a good idea to grab his personal firearm before taking off. Too late now. He strapped on some Muur armor, slung a CQW shotgun around his hips and a Styrling Longbolt over his right shoulder. He would later realize it was a bolt-action weapon and regret his haste.

"OH FOR THE LOVE OF DAVIS'S BEARD, HIT THE DECK! Kingston couldn't help but chuckle as he more than gladly obliged the command. Back on his feet, he snagged a quartet of grenades before hurtling into the shuttle and strapping in beside Anselm.

At Talbain's remark he actually laughed aloud. It was so true. Thinking about it, though, he was probably due for a good beating himself. He'd come clean through all of his previous encounters which seemed quite miraculous when he looked at his teammates: roughly half were partially artificial. A grim thought, but easily washed away by the sight of Sean Masson seated across from him.

"You still owe me a rematch, Masson!" he called over the rumble of the shuttle.

Anselm grinned like a maniac, leaning a few inches forward to get his voice across the roaring interior of the shuttle, "I WAS THINKING ABOUT GETTING A FULL-BODY REPLACEMENT, THEN I WON'T HAVE TO BE STUCK WITH THIS TINY BODY ANYMORE." Sitting back, the marine checked that all his ammo was secure and primed the action on his Styrling Dart before engaging the saftey. One last check over the saftey pins on the grenades strapped across his chest and the albino seemed to relax, whistling a tune under the engine's roar.

Grimacing at the noise, Anselm actually sung the words, displaying a fine, if drowned-out, timbre to his normally growling voice.

"We'll sing a song, a soldier's song,
With cheering rousing chorus,
As round our blazing fires we throng,
The starry heavens o'er us;
Impatient for the coming fight,
And as we wait the morning's light,
Here in the silence of the night,
We'll chant a soldier's song.

"Soldiers are we, whose lives are pledged to Eiru's land;
Some have come from a land beyond the wave.
Sworn to be free, No more our ancient sire land
Shall shelter the despot or the slave.
Tonight we man the Bearna Baol
In Eiru's cause, come woe or weal
'Mid cannons' roar and rifles peal,
We'll chant a soldier's song.

"In valley green, on towering crag,
Our fathers fought before us,
And conquered 'neath the same old flag
That's proudly floating o'er us.
We're children of a fighting race,
That never yet has known disgrace,
And as we march, the foe to face,
We'll chant a soldier's song.

"Soldiers are we, whose lives are pledged to Ireland;
Some have come from a land beyond the wave.
Sworn to be free, No more our ancient sire land
Shall shelter the despot or the slave.
Tonight we man the Bearna Baol
In Erin's cause, come woe or weal
'Mid cannons' roar and rifles peal,
We'll chant a soldier's song.

"Sons of the Gael! Men of the Pale!
The long watched day is breaking;
The serried ranks of Inisfail
Shall set the Tyrant quaking.
Our camp fires now are burning low;
See in the east a silv'ry glow,
Out yonder waits the Saxon foe,
So chant a soldier's song."

The Chief simply clicked his tongue and shook his head at the mentioning of a possible Shocktrooper in the city, the idea of his squad of unarmored Marines happening upon one sitting rather badly in his stomach. Holding the datapad now, the Chief sent the information regarding their landing zone to the datapads of the rest of the Marines, displaying multiple approach paths.

"Listen up," The Chief finally stood up to talk in the shuttle, hooking his shotgun onto his armor. "Expect heavy resistance within the city. We got us some infected citizens. Make sure you don't spare any bullets on 'em. I don't care if it's a wagon filled with babies; if they're infected, light them up. And make sure all of your weapons are loaded." The Chief took his own advice and pulled the bolt back on his shotgun, chambering a round.

"It's a city, so I want everyone covering every fucking window, door, hole in the wall, whatever. We're gonna work our way to the senate building, and when we come under fire, we need to fucking fight through it. We can't afford to get pinned down."

At that, the Chief stood by the shuttle door, ready to run out when they would land. "Everyone piles out of here as fast as possible. We don't need this bird wasting time on slowpokes who don't hustle out. And one more thing, there's been reports of Shocktroopers in this area, so keep those rockets at the ready."

The Chief pounded on the door leading to the cockpit of the shuttle, wasting no time in screaming at the pilot. "When the fuck are we landing this thing?!"

"Keep your dick in your pants. We'll get there when we get there, unless you want a premature ejection a couple hundred feet up," came the voice of the pilot over the intercom. There was the faint sound of music playing in the background as she spoke.

El, the pilot, wasn't pleased about having to work with some idiotic jarheads, but it wasn't as if she had a choice at the moment. Her eyes scanned the ground, picking out a decent landing spot.

As the shuttle lowered into a basketball court, the voice spoke again to the marines in the back. "I'm getting you guys as close to the senate as possible without getting swarmed by those freak zombie whatever things."

The shuttle lurched slightly as it touched down and the doors unlocked. "Have fun boys."

Kajiim pulled some of the NAM reps on the comm to help guide him through the process of hot wiring the rockets seeing it as the best solution. "Ok, so what do I do next?" he asked the reps as calmly as he could. After fumbling through the wires doing exactly what the Reps said, Kajiim finally held the two wires needed to ignite the boosters. Waiting for the time to turn the boosters on.

Nearest to the Shuttle's now unlocked door, Anselm almost kicked it open.

"Pile out, Marines!" he exclaimed, hopping down to the courtyard a couple feet below, HPAR at the ready and scanning for targets. The marine moved quickly for cover and kept a nervous overwatch while the rest of the squad disembarked.

Chad had landed with little difficulty. He touched down in a realitively barren square that was located about 400 yards off where the shuttle was going to drop off the unarmored marines. It looked like a fairly easy jog to where he needed to be.

He took a step forward and then realized he wasn't entirely alone. Coming out of several areas, were a large quantity of Nepleslian civilians. Only instead of the cowaring away from the fight, they simply started trotting toward Chad armed with every thing from shotguns to lead pipes, and they didn't look like they wanted to help Chad in any way. These were olbviously the dreaded Parasite Zombies.

As the first couple of zombies got within range of Chad, he fired his STAR in semi-auto at the ones equiped with any ranged weapons. The high powered rifle easily pelted through the unarmored bodies of the late civilians, although the amount of Chads advasaries didn't seem to decrease. Chad turned toward the drop ship and, while creating a slim path with his rifle, started off to the rendevous point.

Sean grasped his 'Porcupine', quickly checking to make sure the belt was fed in correctly, as well as making sure it was set to semi-auto. No point in accidentally wasting ammo on low armor targets after all. He put his thumb on the safety, but held off on flicking it off for when they actually hit the ground, safety first and all.

Tall apartment complexes would greet the Marines as they exited the shuttle, looming over them in the same way funeral guests would look down into a casket. From every window came the threat of fire pouring down onto their position.

Is that fucking music I hear her listening to? Was the Chief's only thought when he stepped out of the shuttle behind Anselm, immediately grabbing him by the collar and pointing him to the building to the east of the court, where he would cover the road coming in from the east. Seeing other squads cover all avenues of approach, the Chief stood up and waved his squad over to the indicated building on their maps.

"I need everyone out of this fucking shuttle and out of this court! We don't have any fucking cover here!" A pair of Sunburns flew by overhead and headed away from the Marines. As soon as they passed the first row of complexes around the court, the Marines could hear their cannons sounding off, suggesting that there were hostiles either very close by or closing in.

Gunfire could be heard off in the distance, the source impossible to determine whether or not it came from police, military, civilians, or infected. The random taxi would come swerving out from a corner and would race past the court in an attempt to flee the area.

"Hoo-ah, Chief," Anselm acknowledged, sprinting several meters to the corner despite the weight of his gear. The marine hit the corner roughly, dropping to a kneel before returning the heavy anti-armor rifle to a proper firing position, ready to put a coin through anything that looked remotely like a hostile combatant.

'Is my gun loaded?' Fian absent-mindedly racked the charging handle of his Assault Rifle and then with Master Chief reflexes caught the cartridge that was ejected. 'Huh, guess it is. Jeez, you're not in a PA anymore, keep track of your own ammo!' He then followed the heavily armed and thundering Anselm Wyatt out of the shuttle and then took up positions next to his longtime subordinate, except this time he wasn't calling the shots. He was standing upright as so the ID-SOL wouldn't block his field of vision.

"Contact, Chief!" Fian trained his weapon on the taxi warily, his finger wasn't in the trigger guard, but it could be easily remedied in less than half a second if necessary.

MEANWHILE

"HIT IT!" The Rep leader shouted into her microphone a hundred kilometers away in the safety of the NSS Acadia. The distance between the greenhorns and the ground is an uncomfortable thousandth of that. Lucas's point of landing (the term landing zone would imply that someone had the ability to pick where to land) was in a small open area next to a few dumpsters, which shouldn't be a problem. Kajiim's on the other hand was through the roof (thanks to the delayed ignition of his boosters)of an above-ground three level concrete carpark. It wouldn't break his bones, but it would certainly hurt like hell.

All this was happening in the alley behind Chad, the few Zombies that 'attacked' him were still freshly infected and clumsy, they wobbled, they fell, but they did not fire back. About 100 meters away on Chad's left was the Rendezvous Point, but the road that led there was choked with cars held back by a concrete roadblock. There was no way the three greenhorns could push or jump over the roadblock while under the weight of their suits.

Surprisingly Hayden would be the one who lands closest to the Rendezvous Point. The point being the long pavement infront of the Senate. Behind the pavement were the steps leading up to the Senate, the sides were flanked by carefully manicured lawns now pocketed with holes and the dead. On the lawn itself were about twelve lightly armed security forces huddled behind to layers of metal barricade whilst pinned down by a staggering volume of suppressing fire from about the fifty Zombies slowly making their way up from the main street infront of the pavement. Hayden would land about ten feet from the metal barricade, right in the middle of the crossfire.

Jack felt his speed begin to drop as the rockets attached to his suit kicked in to power. For a moment after having clicked the detonator, when there was less than a half second of a pause between hitting the detonator and the rockets actually firing, Jack's heart had skipped a beat as he thought for sure that he would end up pulverized on the ground. It seemed like the reps thankfully knew what they were doing because it wasn't long before Jack lost enough speed that as he lost altitude he could see at least some detail of where he was landing.

"Oh fuck meeeeee!" Jack made impact hard.

Chunks of cement flew up around him from the force of his impact. Jack groaned as he watched the fire going every-which-way around him in a violent exchange between the small security detachment crouching behind a metal barricade at his back and what must have been at least forty or more hostile contacts to his front. Jack shouldered his Panzerfaust, wasting no time in 'suppressing' the enemy contacts: firing the Panzerfaust at the center of the infected group ahead of him.

After he had expended that shot he instantly dropped it to the ground, backpedaling as he drew his 12 gauge shotgun, and opening fire on the zombies while hoping all the while that the security forces behind him would aim well enough to not hit him in the back.

Kajiim touched the wires all while praying, "Please don't die, please don't die, please don't die..." Seeing that he was gonna bust through the roof he braced for impact. After finally stopping on the bottom floor Kajiim placed his hand on the wall in front of him, causing the structure to collapse, without wasting time he got out from underneath of it. "1st floor, hell." he commented stepping away from the rubble and out into the warzone, he couldn't feel the pain with all the adrenaline pumping through him. He paused to gather his bearings look for his squad and drop the rockets. Spotting Lucas across the street from him he made his way over there, grabbing his shotgun from his back, "Hey buddy, you alive?" Kajiim asked him, scanning the area for targets.

Sean followed the others out of the shuttle, keeping his Porcupine close at hand. He took up a position on the other side of Anselm from the MC, keeping his gun trained in the general direction of the sound of gunfire. "Anyone have a guess as to exactly how far away we are? We might want to get running if that gunfire is where we're going."

Talbain spent the last part of the shuttle ride getting the Type 1 ready to go wading out of the shuttle. Falling in line after the first people to go rushing out of the shuttle he started hoofing it over towards where everyone was rallying to until Chief Vel Steyr called out contact. Bracing his weapon and pointing towards the vehicle he waited for one of the Chiefs to give the word to light it up.