RP: NSS Acadia Mission 5: Quick Save

One of the fun things about AIR's are their amazing ability to be the most artistic of all PA's. The drop, therefore, was nothing to the sleek silver suit, and the only real issue Chad had on the mind was trying to recover control of his armor after being released from the Neko's clutches. At the best, she was more than kind enough to at least turn on his thrusters before completely dropping the gun on Chad's life.

He was about 50 ft from the ground when he knew he had control of his suit again, and thrusted just in time to clip over the top of corn tassels.

Is there such a thing as an actual smooth running landing drop in this fucking military? After his last ordeal in Funky City, he was running on a 100% bad starts to missions.

He circled the new LZ as the rest of the PA's hit the ground. When Harm finally spoke up, he landed rather rapidly next to her and fairly close. He drew the LSP with his left hand and his RAPTOR with his right, trying to look as cool as he possibly could.

He opened up a channel directly to Harm and Rui so they both could hear what he had to say.

"You have got to be fucking kidding!" He walked even closer to Harm and motioned to her with the LSP. "If you hadn't turned on my thrusters I would have been a pile of Nepleslian goo and Durandium! And if you hadn't remoted me, I would be much less pissy at this moment."

He paused from his rant, took a look at the smoldering towers and answered Harm's original question. "Chad Skwigleff is here, though barely no thanks to you." Continued looking at the Prison, and lifted his RAPTOR so it was shouldered, while holding the LSP at his side.

Order up mother fuckers.

Sean snorted as he touched down, feeling like a jaded veteran with how immature some of the newest guys sounded. He was getting used to most of the fights he got into being messed up somehow, so it only made sense that his flights would be too. He stood up out of the crouch he'd gone to reflexively, since it didn't seem like they were under fire yet, and dusted himself off. He shouldered his HPAR, and looked around. "Masson, good to go. We moving out now, or are we gonna keep complaining?"

So the shuttle fell apart; big deal. P1C Viktor Kingston wasn't in a mood to be bothered by such occurrences- and if you added this to all the other times things went wrong, this was nothing but work as usual. He set his jaw and prepared for freefall. It was as exhilarating as ever, adding more fuel to the fury-fire building in him.

Kingston came crushing down amidst the corn a little too fast- and on purpose. There was an expected strain at the hard landing, but it was nothing even remotely close to an injury, and his foot was feeling fine; he couldn't even tell it had ever been broken. Regardless, the landing looked impressive, and intimidating to anyone unfamiliar with Power Armors. After a heavy sigh, Viktor spoke. "Kingston, here." He was tempted to berate the new guys for bitching, but that wasn't his job, and Viktor figured Harm would cook up a far more entertaining method of threatening the childish babbling out of them.

All of existence slowed and raced as the shuttle came apart. Peeled back at the seams as forces pushed against the hull and expanded upon even the smallest imperfection. Welds came apart, rivets and bolts broke, and what seemed to be the pilot was blown by as the protective cocoon was unwrapped, revealing the world below him. Rushing right at him. No, he was falling at it! The thrusters on Matt's Hostile flared moments before impact, lessening the blow as he slid to a stop before hanging there while still leaning back to counter the landing forces. Needless to say, he fell backwards onto his rear. Matt admitted he still needed to work on that. Not too far away, Kingston performed a much more impressive touchdown.

Time. Time was all he needed to do what he needed to do. He needed time to grow, which was something he didn't have yet, so his less than impressive landing didn't bother him too much. As he collected himself and glanced at the two flaming furrows his feet had left in the ground, he sounded off.

"Witt, here. Standing by."

"Motherf-" Anselm yelped as the shuttle came apart around him as his team spread out like dandelion seeds among the falling wreckage, the barrel assembly slipping out of his grip. Pausing to consider diving after it, the Precipice decided it had better slow the suit's descent itself, performing a textbook deceleration that had Anselm's Aggressor touching down like a feather while burning away the nearby crops with the thruster wash.

"Finding my barrel," the marine responded to Harm's request, calling up his Savtech's resources to replay image of the fall to make an educated guess of where the BULLDOG's barrel landed. A few seconds later the heavy PA stomped into the corn, bent over not a dozen yards from its landing site, and held up the armored canister protecting the contact rails from dirt and grime. Ducking its massive bulk down, the Aggressor busied itself with securing the barrel to its receiver before turning to face the NMX troops and laying down a stitch of WHITE shells, anything that missed impaled the ground barely a yard away from the target zone, Anselm's firing computer keeping the shells from straying too close to a zone full of potential, very squishy, unarmored friendlies.

"That's better."

"What the Hell!?!" Naomi demanded to nobody specific as the shuttle began shaking violently.

Further protest was cut short as the shuttle began to pitch wildly and lose altitude, in an uncontrolled descent. The young Marine's mind only barely registered the smoke filling the compartment, before the shuttle hit something, presumably ground, and bounced. Marines lurched wildly in the compartment, flying against one another, the bulkheads and any kind of material within reach. It seemed like they bounced around for a long time before coming to a stop, though Naomi knew it couldn't have been much more than a minute or two since they were hit.

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"Damn it."

Naomi's first impression upon waking was the dizzying sensation of pain brought on by the impact. Even wearing the Hostile armor, she was not immune to the shock force.

Lifting herself up from the wreckage, she felt a numbness in her left leg in response to the sudden motion, and knew she was injured. If she did not have a break on her hands, then it was a fracture, or something as irritating. Thankfully, the leg would still take her weight.

Thank the Creator for PA suits...

"Who's still alive?"

Naomi perked up at that. Well, at least she wasn't alone. Checking out her kit before speaking, she replied.

"This is Scroggins. I'm here. My HPAR's still working, too."

Looking back at the wreck she spotted the Marine who had spoken to her before (Cedric).

"Hey, you!" she called. "What're you doin'?"

As the shuttles departed, Phaedra donned her helmet and sealed it her armor's neck ring. Which was not a moment too soon as the shuttle she was in suddenly broke apart from the NMX fire coming from the surface.

"You've got to be kidding!" thought Phaedra as she suddenly found herself free-falling towards the planet surface. She flipped the MPR around and gripped it firmly in her armored gauntlets and then deployed the NIGHT's wings. A black pair of wings unfolded from the backpack and all of armor's thrusters activated to slow Phaedra's descent. Due to the light weight of the NIGHT as compared to a HOSTILE or AGGRESSOR, Phaedra brought her descent to a halt relatively quickly. After hovering for a moment to note the location of the other shuttle and her comrades, Phaedra boosted downward to continue her descent towards the surface.

After descending nearly one-hundred feet, Phaedra angled her legs downward and activated her thrusters to slow to a hover again. The sleek black angelic form of the NIGHT descended to the ground until the thrusters cut out and Phaedra fell the last ten feet; she landed heavily in a crouch, creating a small crater in the soft earth of the cornfield. She rose to her feet, her multipulse rifle at the ready.

"Volkov reporting," she informed Harm, as much as she hated reporting to the cat.

Lucas fidgeted with his armor, making sure for the fifth time that his armor was good and sealed. Crammed into the flying metal coffin like so many power armored sardines, he felt uneasy to say the least; he'd feel better once his feet were on the ground and he could actually move. Feeling the shuttle suddenly lurch upon being hit sent a chill through Lucas' body, and he immediately grabbed hold of anything bolted to the ship and braced himself.

I will not die here, were his last thoughts as he grit his teeth before the shuttles impact with the ground brought darkness down on his world.

____________________________________________________________

The world grew lighter again, hazy and unfocused in the young marine's eyes. Lifting himself up, Lucas recognized the protesting groans in the servos of his suit, and dull pain from all over his body. He thought someone might have slammed against him in the crash, and winced at the realization; he was going to have bruises for a week, he was sure.

But he was alive.

He picked his way out of the twisted hull of the downed shuttle, shaking off the rest of his daze and taking up position near Naomi.

“ALRIGHT, who’s still alive?”

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"Vanguard here, in one piece," he said almost automatically. He checked his armor over, making sure he wasn't missing anything. Satisfied, he took up a firing position with his HPAR and scanned for targets.

Cedric turned back to Naomi.

"I'm going to check to see if the crew made it." Cedric replied, turning away once again, "Secure the perimeter for me, will 'ya?" He asked.

Cedric made his way back in to the wreckage at around the same time that Lucas was climbing out. He didn't say anything to the man: he figured that Naomi and he would just secure the area with Naomi. Meanwhile Cedric would do as he had said and then come back out to group up with the other two. Moving towards the cockpit amongst the debris, Cedric peered inside, and grimaced. Yeah...it had been a stupid idea. Cedric shook his head and moved to leave the wreckage once again.

"Well, that was a dumb idea." Cedric muttered to himself.

He opened up a channel to Naomi and Lucas as he readied his assault rifle.

"So, shouldn't we get moving?" Cedric asked.

He didn't like the idea of being caught out in the field if the Mishu decided to come attack the crash site.

As the air cracked from a mass driver's shots, Matteo took cover in the tall field. Instinctively, he already made to find out who was firing and where it was heading. He glanced at his HPAR and made sure it was good to go. The armored hands gripped the weapon carefully but firmly. "Hey! Are you blind firing, or can you confirm contacts Anselm?" he called out to the other marine. His eyes, hidden behind the stylized skull helmet, looked about the group of scattered Marines.

"And who's in charge? Did they make it?" Matteo asked nobody in particular. Another mass driver round boomed out and punctuated his sentence.

"Well I'll be damned," Henry radioed to nobody in particular as the shuttle began to fall to earth in a fireball, "Is it just me, or does every vehicle we find ourselves in get junked at the least convenient moment?"

After the shuttle turned itself into a fifty piece puzzle upon impact with the ground and the engineer turned leader made contact with the ground, Henry couldn't help but wonder why the armours he and his colleagues were wearing were tougher than the shuttle, to which, Henry made a mental note to wrench whoever made that glaring design oversight. However, he had more pressing matters to attend to.

He picked himself up from amongst the dragnet and kept low, upon getting reports of gunfire. He opened a communications line to Ran and Harm, "Morris reporting, I'm still alive."

He then made a quick order to his colleagues, as his tactical mind got into gear and went into overdrive, "Everyone, stick together and give 'em hell - they'll come looking for us to finish us off individually - let's not give 'em the satisfaction!"

Those speech lessons he'd been taking in his spare time really paid for themselves.

"Hey! Are you blind firing, or can you confirm contacts Anselm?" he called out to the other marine. His eyes, hidden behind the stylized skull helmet, looked about the group of scattered Marines.

"And who's in charge? Did they make it?" Matteo asked nobody in particular. Another mass driver round boomed out and punctuated his sentence.

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Anselm let off another stitch of thunderous RFMD fire at the enemy infantry as he forwarded his visuals and targeting data to Matteo, "F-O-F says I can fire at them so I'm firing at them; I think Ran gave Morris command, listen to the man, he knows what needs doing."

Henry then made a quick order to his colleagues, as his tactical mind got into gear and went into overdrive, "Everyone, stick together and give 'em hell - they'll come looking for us to finish us off individually - let's not give 'em the satisfaction!"

Click to expand...

"Aye, Sir!" Anselm acknowledged heartily, laying down more suppressive fire with his weapon.

Standing in the middle of the chaos occurring inside the prison camp itself, there was a single female clad in the NMX’s Type 31a light body armor looking upwards at the fighter craft that were circling overhead. Around her hips was an officer’s sword and pistol while around where she was standing were ID-Sol Clones. These soldiers were taking cover behind tanks and buildings, firing upwards at the attack craft while lasers searched for targets unopposed. Every few moments an ID-Sol would shine brightly as they were engulfed in an intense, blinding, light, for a fraction of a second before bursting into flames, their grenades and ammunition rapidly cooking off and sending bits of red hot metal flying as they crumpled into a small heap of burning flesh. A few others who were unlocking enough to be standing near the outer fences ended up cut in two by anti-tank rounds being fired from a nepleslian power armor, the non-explosive rounds instantly amputating body parts and leaving the bodies to twitch in pain on the ground.

The woman would then look out over the Corn Fields, spotting the burning remains of the two Nepleslian shuttles as well as the occasional muzzle flashes of weapons being fired. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what the Nepleslians were after and where they were.

“Ground Unit: Take a few of our prisoners and line them up facing the cornfields. Load up on flamers and anti-armor weapons first.

Shredders, I need you to draw their air support away. Keep harassing until they follow you. I need an additional shredder to fly low and pick off their armors.

Someone find out how far away my reinforcements are and get me an all frequency broadcast that the Neps can hear.”

In moments shredder gunboats would move in closer to the Nepleslian fighters circling overhead, unleashing another massive barrage of missiles that forced the group to turn away, putting as much distance between the missiles and themselves as possible so their laser systems would have time to shoot them down. The shredders then followed in pursuit.

With air support gone a trio of Type 32 Mishhuvurthyar were free to walk out of the lab structure, lifting off and floating over to the prisoner pens. They would effortlessly float over the fences holding the Nepleslians in and start picking up the men and women who weren’t fast enough to get away. Some ended up tied or glued down to their Mishhu’s shells while others were dropped outside the pen. The NMX ID-Sol soldier would hurry over, each eager to have their own human shield.

A third shredder gunboat would then make an appearance, flying over the Nepleslian Marines at supersonic speeds while releasing hundreds of small napalm bomblets. Once it was a few miles out it would then turn around and descend, extending its landing wheels and flying only a few inches above the ground, its energy shield crushing corn stalks as the dull brown hull of this shredder approached the marines. As it snuck towards the Marines only the upper turret and a single fin were visible above the corn stalks as the napalm bomblets began to reach their targets, setting large swaths of the cornfield on fire and rapidly rising the temperature. Though the power armors would protect the Marines, their shields would have to adjust to begin absorbing the heat, putting additional strain on their systems.

“Nepleslians. Your transports have been destroyed and your rescue ships have already been disabled in orbit. IF you surrender you will be allowed to live, persist and be destroyed.”

---

“Sorry guys, GreenHorn got you all shot down. Hope everyone is alright!” Came a friendly voice from up above, who’s transmission was quickly broken up by unintelligible yelling as the two pilots began arguing over who’s fault it was, the one remote-flying the shuttles or the one who was supposed to shoot down the missiles. Another voice would then chime in just for a moment, “Got a slight problem here, will be back A-S-A-P!”

Harm would waste no time looking for her rifle, it had undoubtedly landed somewhere but there was no time to begin a search. She would rip off the spare EMP pistol that had been glued to her armor earlier and start making short, rocket assisted, hops towards the prison camp’s outer fences.

“Everyone move into the prison camp. That includes you Sommerville, The marines have power armor and if they can’t get out of a downed shuttle on their own they aren’t much use to us.” Harm was already moving forward before responding to Chad.

“Stay close and move fast, next person to complain about not getting enough sleep gets Drunkies job as body shield.”


Ahead of the marines was the prison camp, a decent distance of clear hill before the first outer fence. Most of the NMX soldiers were in disarray, firing into the air or taking cover behind burnt out tanks. Only seven were paying attention to the marines themselves. Three had gone prone, lying down behind the fence so they could take shots with their rifles. Another was in a guard tower, though the tower itself was on fire it still had a searchlight and heavy machinegun that was spraying tracer rounds into the cornfield. Two more were lying prone under the hulk of a tank while the last soldier was simply running across the space between the two outer fences, firing from the hip as he looked for something to get behind.

Anselm grimaced as the bomblets turned his surroundings into a firestorm, locking up his fire control. Making a high jump out of the flames and smoke, the Aggressor's monoeyes began sweeping for any incoming signals, the long-duration high-jump precluding an active sweep that might turn Anselm into a tasty target. The main camera on the Aggressor's helmet auto-zoomed on the gunboat flattening a trail of corn, the ruse highly visible from Anselm's vantage, the Precipice did a quick bit of guesswork and labeled the small ship-class vehicle an unsuitable target.

Making the tough choice, Anselm looked around for juicier prey, spotting what looked like Mishhu floating over a sea of green contacts, pulsing green spots on their bodies indicating confirmed friendlies that his heavy weapon would refuse to target.

"Squad Leader; got a bird's eye view of the situation, heavy infantry have captured friendly objectives, gunship approaching through extremely low cover, cannot engage either target, repeat cannot engage; request allocation of anti-ship munitions to the following target coordinates," the Aggressor's comm advertised its location, sending the communique and target coordinates to all of the Acadia's marines on an encrypted channel. As he fell back to the earth, Anselm fired on the only viable targets he had, the clone infantry, using more of his heavy WHITE rounds until the Armorsuit's plasma chainguns were in range to hose down the hostile zone with fewer compunctions about friendly fire, accidental or otherwise.

"YEE-HAW," the Aggressor's loudspeakers bellowed as the multi-ton machine made its landing, thruster wash knocking an unscathed enemy clone to the ground with a few minor burns for the trouble. "Quick question," the towering machine asked, pointing its chainguns at the infantryman, "am I scarier than your fake masters? If so, I suggest you join our side and live a few seconds longer, perhaps more if the Fates allow."

Sean went to a knee, steadying his aim as best he could. He then proceeded to burst shots with his HPAR back towards the guard tower, trying to take the machine gunner down, since he guessed that target was the most threatening to them. "Sean, engaging the gunner in the tower. Shouldn't be any problems there."

Using his reflexes, Makari maneuvered around the higher concentrations of napalm bomb-lets; dodging and jumping over a few in pursuit of Harm. He spotted the guard tower as Sean called out his targets so Makari looked around for some others that he could call dibs on.

As soon as Viktor Kingston heard, "Shredder," he knew they had a lot of trouble on their hands. Though he moved with the group, he moved slower, trying to get a solid bead on the gunship without monoeyes lest he become public enemy number one. "Aggressors, fire on that Shredder! Blue shells if you have them, reds if you don't." He fired two EMP rockets aiming just below the fin and compensating for movement according to his SAVTECH. Kingston was prepared to empty the four red shells remaining in the coming moments, and hoped desperately that someone else realized just how much trouble this thing really was.

As soon as Anselm called it, Matt came out of cover and started firing his HPAR. The rifle's muzzle flickered white at each burst of fire like a strobe light, illuminating the ashen skull helmet and monoeye. The Marine did his best to mop up what the Bulldog rounds missed, firing fast but precise bursts at moving hostiles. 'One down. Two. Thr - &%@#.' Matt eased his finger off the trigger as unarmed individuals were shoved and pushed until they were in his line of fire; some of the objectives were standing right in front of him.

A warning popped up on his HUD, and he glanced up, briefly spotting the craft as it unleashed its payload on the vulnerable marines. He didn't need to read its analysis though, already knew what it was; nobody could mistake that distinctive silhouette! Despite the prisoners out, some others were still firing and advancing at what opportunities they could get. Private Matteo advanced through the firestorm to avoid getting caught as the craft came around, keeping up with the others. Matt pulsed his Push Pull Plating as some incindiary bomblets came too close.

The explosives were punted away from him by the push, and impacted against the parapet with a fiery boom. "Aww crap, I missed!" This world was loud, noisy and not subtle in the slightest in comparison to his old home and business, but he could get used to this.

To whomever it may concern, go and, uh, hmm, Henry was thinking of a comeback in response to the customary NMX gloating, but decided to save it for a more appropriate moment. His current train of thought had sidelined for a moment as the metaphorical freight train full of bullets and guns went full steam ahead.

Furthermore, an open broadcast to every Nepleslian armour in the area didn't lend itself to security. Henry had an idea that he'd keep in mind for later as he triangulated the coordinates of the broadcast and kept them backed up for later.

"Anslem," He was very quick to tell to the ablino marine, "I'm heading towards your position. There's a mortar in here with their infantry's names on it," With a little bit of reverse-engineering and computer smarts, he was able to get a video feed of what Anslem was looking at, and consequentially get an idea of how many clones were assaulting the marines. Henry always knew not to underestimate the slow, grinding power of dumb enemies in huge numbers.

He let out a trio of shield drones to keep himself covered, but realised swiftly that he'd need more as a napalm bomb sailed towards his position and an alert flashed on his hud, he let out one extra drone and hit the deck a few seconds before the impact.

After the smoke cleared and the smell of NMX victory lingered in the air, Henry was lying behind wall of his own make. He smiled as he survived the power of the explosion, and he rushed towards Anslem with a mortar primed, but he just had to aim it properly.

"I'll need a marker of to fire these properly," Henry radioed before realising that his mortar might do better up above against the Shredder, however, he had to size up the situation before firing this thing, and awaited further input to act on.

"You leave that fucking guard tower to me!" Came a shout behind Henry, accompanied by a very spirited fist on his armor's left shoulder. The Chief's VOID took a knee next to Morris, scratched and burnt in a few places thanks to the group's remarkable tendency to get shot down in any transport they found themselves in, as well as the NMX's decision to use napalm bombs. "Get your people out of this fucking fire and into that prison camp. Tell 'em to not fuckin' spray and pray; accurate shots."

At that, the Chief was interrupted by Kingston's request for fire support on the Shredder. Not being in an Aggressor himself, Ran opted to gain a lock onto the Shredder, and fired a single TRACER and DART from either missle-pods on the sides of his calves at it. "There's your fuckin' marker!"