RP: 4th Fleet (NSN) [Mission 5.4] Briefing II

"Roger, I am off then!" Lisa said cheerfully and went on her merry way. She walked through the ship, thinking of what to do if there were no generators of any kind. She already got an idea, but it would need some time and spare parts. Though technically it was pretty simple, as most stuff that was created in her head. With help of her Mindware and Drei, Lisa located the quartermaster.

"Good day sir!" She said as soon as she located the person. "Simmon, P3C, Morris's minutemen. We will need extra shield drones on our next assignments. And I have a special request. We need some transportable generators we could use to recharge them. Is there anything like that on the ship?"

"Squad leaders, I'm not really in the best shape to go around to everyone and we don't have enough time for it anyway. Here's a list of promotions, awards and cash bonuses being awarded. And any punishment details for failure to perform in combat."



Leon transmitted the data from his datajockey. "Morris, Drei tells me that your new man, Isolov, has an AI on his datajockey. Speak to him and determine if it is a threat to security. Drei and the Savtech security AI are tempted to wipe it out right now. Otherwise, his electronic skills could be an asset."

"They aren't in fighting, sir," Hardman spoke up, "My man, Butch, says he fights like he never went through Boot Camp. Very girly style of fighting, according to him. No offense, Sergeant Volkov."

Leon looked at the new ID-SOL squad leader, wondering how to take the man's sudden remark. "Thank you, Sergeant," he injected curtly, cutting the conversation right there.

"Right, troops. I know we're all tired and a little banged up. But the Old Man wants us doing our part. He seems rather fed up with Grand Admiral Coast's jokes about how he'll give us a call if he needs a casino raided. Questions?"

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The ship's quartermaster raised an eyebrow. He didn't need to check what he had to answer. "No, we don't have any portable generators. We're on a warship. We've got lots of back up generators installed. This isn't an assault ship. And why are you asking me for shield drones when the ship's armorers who are responsible for supplying your gear? I'm responsible for the crew's needs, not the Marines'."

He was a burly Nepleslian man, a Lieutenant with a name tag that read "Molina." His face was one of confusion. He had never expected to have to deal with Marines who came looking for more gear. The Marines had a separate supply chain from the Navy.

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Laura Romero wandered between the newbies, grabbing each one and glaring at them in the eyes before moving on.

"You, Corporal Spikey-hair, got any problems I should know about? Cancer? Erectile dysfunction? Idiocy?" she asked him bluntly.

Talbain paused from running the diagnostics in his armor to look at Romero. She seemed to be another that did their job with a terrible sense of humor. "No medical problems Romero. And I plan to keep it that way. Anything else you need for this screening?" He wasn't quite sure if this was what he could expect from the medic all the time or it they just liked the supposedly witty comment from time to time but he was probably going to find out. Returning to the readouts on his HUD he continued going over the the systems until either the next question or for Romero to move on to whoever else needed her attention.

"Cool. Byee!" Laura said, moving right along to Francis. She looked up at him then down to his feet. Cybernetics littered him like a dirty street. There was no symmetry in her opinion. It was clear that the quality of the cybernetics varied. Like a jumble of parts scrapped together by a dumb street shop rather than a specialist.

"Okay, Oily-hair, besides the obvious missing bits, any medical conditions I should know about? Depression? Bed-wetting? Constipation? Stupidity?" Laura asked him.

Francis looked at Laura indifferently, but not really surprised by her frankness and scathing sense of humor. From wha the had seen of her already, Francis came to believe this behavior to be the norm.

"Nope, no issues," he replied. Half-muttering to himself Francis added, "Let's see if I can keep it that way." He waited to see if Laura had any more questions before he returned to his preparations.

"You gotta ask the squiddies for that one," Laura said moving onto the next of the newbies.

She really didn't want to do this one. Laura really really didn't want to look at the weird similarities between herself and this new woman. She would never admit it but with so many striking physical similarities, Laura felt threatened. Bernhard had told her that he couldn't dig up any information on Laura's genetic material except that it had come from a number of sources before being put together per Admiral Wazu's orders.

But this Ice Plainsview, with her hair and eyes... could she have been one of the sources? Laura was scared to find out. It threatened her fragile existence as an individual. Yes, she had been a custom made clone for Admiral Wazu but she really didn't want to know about her past.

"Right, flatty. What's your list of complaints? Angina? High cholesterol? Menopause?" Laura asked in the same tone she had asked all the others. Insulting yet detached.

Lisa blinked few times and they slapped her forehead. "Oh sorry boss, I was at navy in past. Still got in mind to ask quartermaster for stuff. Anyway thanks for the help anyway!" She said, give the man quick salute and scuffled off to find armourers. Which she did with help from Drei.

"Hello sir," she said to first armourer. "I am from Morris's Minutemen. We are going to to need extra shield drones for next mission. I am also going to need ultra-compact fusion generator and some spare parts from VOID I need to pick myself. I am going to build mobile recharge station fro those drones."

Henry looked over the accolades and scorn for his squad, and he shrugged at the cash bonus. He already had so much money from his accumulated campaigns and his lack of pissing it away entirely on booze that he didn't know what to do with it. Whatever he did spend went to tuition courses or idle do-it-yourself engineering projects, which nobody seemed to mind as long as he cleaned up after himself.

"Chief, Isolov and Griffin have so far proven to be wastes of oxygen at this point. I had to push them into an Armourer earlier." He was doting on their inactivity and lack of initiative. "If Isolov's inactivity is due to his battery operated - girlfriend," he paused to chuckle at such a sorry sentinment, it was usually the other way around.

"I'll see to it that she gets a boot if she truly is trouble. As for Griffin, he's so far proving to be excellent coffin stuffing by virtue of having the discipline of a brick, and I dare say the initiative of one too." He sighed. "Unless they get their shit together within the next half hour, they're going in naked - that's a promise."

-

With that said to the Chief, Henry went off in search of P3C Sergei Isolov. It didn't take him long to track down the fresh meat - they always had such clean shoes. "Well well." Henry grinned as he circled the soldier. "The Chief tells me you have some issues pertaining a girlfriend whose name ends in dot-A.I."

He tilted his head upwards at the new Soldier, ignoring that he was an ID-SOL. He then continued: "Now give me some reasons as to why I shouldn't wipe it, space it, or wipe and space it. Tick tock, new boots."

His voice had the casualty of experience and nonchalance behind it to seem truly intimidating - because it was within his power and skills to do all of what he said.

"I am told that she is a byproduct of your technical skills, and those would be worth talking about right now if you had some common sense." He gave the P3C a lead.

Ice could tell that Romero was a little edgy around her, and the short marine instinctively bristled a little instinctively. It took a second for her to visibly relax, telling herself that no one was going to start shit while there was an officer in the room. Besides, she was a medic. They weren't supposed to start shit, right?

"I'm pregnant with Robert Davis' secret lovechild. Better call the whole thing off." Ice said deadpan, meeting the Corporal's eyes with a slight smirk. After a second, she added more seriously: "No complaints, let's get this rolling."

((Yeah these two are going bye bye))

Henry was watching Isolov as he waited for a response. He then spotted something, he was fiddling with something in his pocket. Henry was quick to reach in and grab his wrist. In doing so, he said, aloud: "Whatever you're fiddling with had better not be your dick, Isolov." He then pulled out the BEL AI, and it appeared to be asking the user whether it wanted to shut down. "Its worse than your dick, its your battery-operated girlfriend!"

"Hey! Who the fuck are you?" BEL asked upon Henry pulling it out and swiping 'no' to shutting it down and doing a very quick check examination of the datapad. "Put me down, fuzz faced fucker!"

"Certainly." Henry then did something a little more practical, he opened the back cover of the datapad, and pulled out the battery. He then found the memory card inside the Datapad, pulled it out and deposited it into his pocket. "Poor choice of words from her, wouldn't you agree?"

He then passed Isolov the datapad and battery and snapped his fingers at a passing marine to get his attention.

Henry then made a very particular series of hand signals. Point at passing marine, nod head upwards, point to Isolov, shake head to left, point thumb to side twice, make two fingers and tap them against shoulders thrice and then tap side of head whilst shaking head and sticking out tongue.

Translated: "Hey you, take this newbie to the Captain, he has been stupid." He then started typing out a datapad message for Captain Ironside: With that sorted out and Isolov being dragged to the mast, Henry had to give out his promotions to get the bitter taste of someone else's stupidity out of his mouth...

-

"Ladies, gentlemen, good news." He announced when he reunited himself with the a portion of the Minutemen. "Private Raikowski. You and Simmons have both been promoted to Private Second Class. Good work." He gave the dependable marines a smile before looking over to Sawyer, "Aubrey, you have been promoted to Private, First Class. The brass figured you deserve a better life insurance policy."

And then his smile faded as his attention went to Vornov. "You, on the other hand, are in shit - you know what you did - you didn't control your fire and people died you fucking inbreed." The scowl on his face and the tension on his features were smouldering with barely contained rage, "Report to Captain Ironside for evaluation, now."

"Right - carry on!" He told the rest of his tream as he watched Vornov march to the mast for judgement. He then went off in search of the First Armourer to strip and shelf the three power armours assigned for Vornov, Isolov and Griffin - hopefully putting them into more capable hands.

While he was processing those requests, he spotted Lisa and gave her a nod of acknowledgement. As far as he could remember, she was after something to facilitate her drones related idea. It was an excellent idea on paper, but if she couldn't get a place to put the charging drones it was doomed. If need be, he could put a good word in for her.

While the thought of the AMP made her squirm a little bit, she had to be realistic. If she was on perimeter defense the lack of accuracy at long ranges was going to be a liability out there. If she were going inside, it wouldn't be a problem. But...

She finally settled on bringing the Kegbuster. Being able to take out clusters or remove the enemy's cover, if any, would be a far more useful asset in the squad. Even with the heavy equipment, she kept in mind she'd need to be quick on her toes since having such a big gun would likely make her a target.

With that selected and as the PA was outfitted, she reached under her uniform and started to bind her chest closer. PA's tended to pinch a little if she didn't. (A curse, to be sure)

Sawyer went and started fitting out his old standby Aggressor, hopefully the same one he'd worn on Tange as well as on System 87I it had seen him through the worst of times and he hoped the armorers had been successful at repairing it. If so he'd start fitting it out with an AOP for his primary weapon system with an AMP for backup. He'd load a standard setup of 2 cartridges of red rounds, 2 of green, and 2 of blue. Not to mention the standard 5000 round drum for his AMP, he saw no point in restraining the amount of ammunition he took with him considering the fact that they were hitting a major NMX world in a conventional assault and not trying to perform a stealth mission. He made sure that his shoulder plasma chainguns were tracking smoothly and set to seeing that his cybernetic leg was still capable of fitting into the leg area of the armor. With that all taken care of he sent a message to Henry

Corporal, I'm prepped and ready to roll. Signed, Aubrey

Click to expand...

. Looking over at Claire getting ready to get into her armor he was somewhat bemused by her binding her chest. Must be a pain trying to get into armor if you have to do that every single time he thought to himself and said "I'm all set, anybody need help getting their gear ready or set up?"

While Henry was getting the three newbie's armours decommissioned, he spotted one of his Minutemen, the new one - Claire Winters getting herself a Kegbuster. It showed up while he was examining the crew's loadouts. He nodded at the monitor in quiet approval. "Good choice." He noted under his breath. It made Henry feel a little better that some people in his newly-formed Minutemen were able to put two brain cells together and think properly. Then he got a message from Aubrey and made a quick reply to that too: Henry himself was going to elect to use his favourite VOID - without any frills, and an assortment of tactically oriented grenades rather than completely loading up on high explosives. Of the twenty grenades, four would be Scalar Pulses, four would be EMP, four would be Armour Piercers and the other eight would be High Explosives.

The left calf had TRACERS, the right calf had BOLTS. Within the Guided Assault Fusion Mortars, he have four of the sixteen mortars be EMP mortars, for utility purposes. He'd also have an observation probe floating nearby him when he was out on duty.

As Claire finished up she assigned the ammo loadout, making she she had plenty of the needed colors to last the whole operation. She noticed the beep on her pad and smiled at it. Looked like not everyone shared the commander's opinion, at least. She decided to reply with a light tease, as was her way.

Stan, for his part, had plumped for an Aggressor. Mulling over the potential load-outs, he found himself stuck between the AS4GS and the Bulldog. On the one hand, the AS4GS could be rather useful in the potentially confined spaces the squad would find themselves in, being a shotgun. On the other, if there was a possibility of prisoners or slaves being in the vicinity, he could end up hitting one of them if he wasn't careful. Admittedly, the Bulldog would be similarly bad news if he was too trigger happy, but its' behaviour might be more predictable than the AS4GS.

Unfortunately, he couldn't decide between them. Running a hand through his hair, he said to nobody in particular, "Hey, should I go for the Bulldog or the AS4GS...?"

If the boarding action taught him anything is that if he had the chance to bring extra firepower for close quarters he might as well do it, and the marine didn't change much of his loadout compared to the last mission either.

The marine opted for the same flexibility in the last loadout, with one of the Hostile's minimissiles rack equipped with DARTs and the other with ARROWS, as well as selecting both the HPAR and the AS4GS. He had considered bringing in BOLTs with him but since the mission would be underground he was sure using these would cause him to be buried alive.

Francis considered all of the weapons he could equip himself with. He decided to bring more with him than what he would probably need, but better safe than sorry. Francis went with the HPAR as his main with the AS4GS as backup. He hads the LSP-01 as his sidearm and the LPA-02 for his shoulders. He had a Vibrosaw Knife on his left chest plate, an ARROW mini-missle launcher on the right calf hardpoint, and a BOLT launcher on the left calf hardpoint. The BOLT probably wasn't the safest while in a mine, but if there were heavily armored NMX or mecha, the extra firepower could definitely help. Francis also put extra ammo for the LSP-01 on the skirt armor.

Content with his loadout, he went around inspecting and calibrating his Hostile, properly adjusting it so that it would perform well in the heavy gravity. Francis wanted to make sure that every last thing was running as well as it could, because he was counting on his PA to work while he was planetside.

Sawyer would also select two full racks of BOLT minimissiles. No kill like overkill in my opinion since we're on the outside and nobody cares if I tear up the terrain. "Corporal, update on loadout, I'm adding two racks of BOLTs to my inventory.

If anyone were to pay attention to Zyv they might notice the slight upwards tilt of his mouth at the news of his new rank; pay rise! True the added responsibilities of his new job somewhat offset the fact but it was still nice.

Dismissed he went to finish his gear check. Though tempted by the abilities of the other types of armour the marine chose the safe bet of a hostile as it was the only armour he could say he knew how to use properly, or something resembling “properly” anyway.

Loading a rack of DARTs and BOLTs each he chose the light plasma auto cannon (LPA) as his primary armament. That done and it was basically get as much ammunition and medical equipment on it as he could and wait.

"All hands, this is the Captain speaking. Thirty minutes until planetary assault. I repeat, thirty minutes until planetary assault."

Across the Dauntless, Captain Ironside's voice boomed sternly. It added a spring to everyone step and a sense of urgency to the sailors and Marines. The only ones who seemed unbothered by the announcement were Holmes and his crew of ex-mercenaries who were helping sailors to load one of the shuttles.

Sergeant Rochester, however, seemed to be in his usual grouchy mood as he marched three more Marines up to Phaedra and Henry. "Morris, these two were slotted for Hawkins' squad. They're yours now." He indicated with his thumb to Privates Noone and Blake before marching Private Daniels over to the most dangerous woman in 4th Fleet.

"Volkov, Private Daniels was supposed to join Hawkins. Unless you want me to carry out that assignment and bung him out the airlock, he's all yours."

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Laura looked at Ice for a moment, dragging out her analysis of the woman's reaction. Sarcasm, honesty. Better than the previous two knuckleheads. Laura laughed aloud, unable to stop it as she realized that it was the exact same kind of response she would have given to the question. Inside, she was also worried about the growing similarity but... that would have to wait.

When the medic collected herself, she told the smaller woman, "Right, you have a better sense of humor than the last two dimwits I spoke to. Carry on."

Laura went to find her VOID.

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The chief armorer looked at Lisa. "Sure, we have extra shield drones. They have enough battery charge to last a couple hours, assuming you don't take heavy fire. But we don't have any portable power generators. Here, we just plug them into the ship's power cores. Down there, they charge from your armor's fusion plants. You're going to have to find and rig something else down there."