RP: 21st Fighter Sq [Mission 6.0] Mists and Mysteries

Kenshin breathed a sigh of relief seeing that Elisto had managed to catch the sphere. Once that worry was past, the pilot turned his rifle back towards the enemy tank and added his weapons fire to that of Kayo and Akemi, aiming for the vehicles treads in the hopes of rendering it immobile.

The tanks tread even with their armor were soon destroyed and the tank shut down. Smoke poured out of the crewless cockpit and multiple holes in the vehicle.

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As Silic looked through the damaged doorway, and could see a hallway that lead further into the installation. The hallway had two doors on either side. Down at the end of it, he could see a orange glow coming from a room that his barrel projectile flew into and knocked the door down.

"Okay now I can talk." Anne said and finally smiled. The nervousness finally left and she was finally feeling comfortable enough. Here in the fighter she knew more or less what to do. On the ground with the rifle she was just useless.

"Elisto-san I will open the cockpit for you," she told him as she flew down just few meters above the land. "Put it behind my seat, at least we will get it into air-tight space." Meanwhile she hooked on her medical screen and checked everyone's vitals. That was faster, then just asking anyway. She especially checked for Silic's vitals.

Yaeko was continuing to get frustrated.

"Okay, the tank is down. All squad members, form up on me. Anne, stay in your fighter because I'm going to need you there. And, while you're at it, why don't you open up the door to the complex for me."

Yaeko moved out into the middle of the area where the rest of the squadron could see her. Meanwhile, she actively scanned to see if there were any hostiles left on the outside of the complex.

Elisto sighed and gave a nod when the tank was taken out, then used his suit to get up onto the fighter where he placed the sphere behind the seat. "Just becareful it doesn't shatter please," he told Anne before hoping back down onto the ground. "Hoshi! You're with me, time to investigate what the smoke is," with that he shouldered his weapon and took off flying toward the smoke, and hoped it wasn't more trouble for them to deal with.

When sphere was safely cradled behind Anne's seat she gave Elisto a nod and closed the cockpit. She sealed it and slowly aimed the nose of the Teisatsu at the front gate.

"Roger that Hunter." She said and targeted the doors. "Silic if you can hear me, I will be using cannons to blast through the doors in five seconds. Get away from them! 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Firing!" She tried to warn Silic who was somewhere inside the facility and then fired at the doors. If one salvo would not be enough, she was prepared to fire another one.

Silic looked around the hallway from the door. This wasn't right. He'd been in a room with over two dozen (perhaps slightly exaggerated) armed and angry neko. There were maybe five bodies in the other room, and just where the hell was everybody.

Then were was a loud boom and a rumble from behind him.

"Screw that!" he thought and made a dash for the opposite door. This was probably some sort of trap, but an exploding barrel couldn't set it off then a panicking Nepleslian might stand a chance.

After waiting for Anne to start firing upon the base entrance and begin the attempt to blow open the way inside, Kenshin abandoned his place of cover and moved to join Yaeko in the clearing in front of the Tachibana base entrance -- per the neko's instructions after the tanks demise.

"Let's hope Tinman's still alive and kicking." the young pilot murmured to Yaeko as he waited for further instructions and the way inside to become clear.

Lynn grimaced and quickly went after Elisto. She wished he would stop ordering her about, but she couldn't say no to a good suggestion from her wingman.

"Hai!"

The fighter's Aether cannons reduced the door to slag in one volley. They also did a fairly good job of tearing through the debris that had been blocking the entrance. They also shattered the floor of the passage and sent them flying down the hall.

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Elisto's trajectory took him over the side of the hill and afforded him with a view of the source of the smoke. He saw the source of the fire, a vehicle of a type that he had only seen it in reports. It appeared to be an NMX Prisoner Handling Vehicle. There was movement in several of the prisoner handling compartments.

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Silic's charge down the hallway was remarkably uneventful. He charged towards and through the doors with the glow. Once in the room it appeared to be some sort of a generator room. The orange glow was coming from what appeared to be a reactor, several of the panels of the reactor were glowing. Next to the reactor was a control console, with multiple flashing displays. Above them a pipe was venting steam into the chamber.

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Akemi and Kayo joined up with Yaeko to await further orders.

As Elisto approuched the location of the smoke, he ran a scan of the area for hostiles. At first, he didn't notice the movement around the vehicle or in the cages, not until he landed on the ground and pulled his rifle out to survey the area. "My god..." he muttered when he saw the cages and the occupants inside.

This reminded him a bit of his time on the force, raiding slaver transports and finding captive people inside, men, women, children, it didn't matter to a slaver. But here? He wondered what these people were doing in cages.

He slowly approuched one cage, examining it for any signs of booby traps. "Hoshi?" he voice still calm and collected, though there was a bit of surprise in it. "What do you make of this?" he continued to scan the area, looking for traps.

Silic dived into the room and slid on his belly dramatically, looking for something to kill. The show went unwatched by any, save a very angry looking nuclear reactor of some kind in front of him.

Silic stared at and then got up and turned to run. He made it a few steps before he stopped.

"The others." he whispered to himself.

Suddenly he was turning around running for the control console, he stood over it and looked for any obvious way to turn the whole thing off. Or perhaps just to stop bits glowing.

"Guys?" he called over the radio, the rock around him made radio contact sketchy at best, but he had to try. "Guys, I don't know if you can hear this, but run! Run now! I'm not sure if I can stop this thing from blowing the place sky high!"

Anne did not like this one bit. What was Silic doing there, why was he telling them to go away. Was there some kind of bomb? Maybe he was hurt? Maybe enemy surrounded him. Whatever the way, Anne did not plan to leave him. She flew closer to he ground and opened the cockpit again.

"Someone else should take the fighter! I am not a good pilot." She said, climbed out of the cockpit grabbing her plasma rifle and jumping out. She did not have booster pack, that was not going to stop her. Silic was in trouble or he was doing something that was putting him in trouble.

Anne was not really thinking very rationally when she jumped out of the plane and started sprinting towards the gate she blown up, just a moment ago. She jumped through the smoldering hole and kept running trying to find Silics IFF signal.

"God damn it!" Yaeko yelled. Not only had she just watched Anne sprint into the complex, but her IFF was telling her that Elisto had just spotted NMX in the area. Downloading his sensor data, she tried to make sense of what was happening. She had squad members disobeying her orders, multiple threats, no assistance, and she had no idea how she was going to fix it. On one hand, the NMX presence was the immediate threat. On the other hand, she refused to leave two squad members to fend for themselves. Shaking her head, she made a decision and put on her helmet so she could call up to higher.

"Numa-Taii, Munkata-Kohosei. We have spotted and NMX presence in the area. Several cages with captives and an NMX prisoner transport. We have two squad members that have taken it upon themselves to enter the complex despite orders. Under my authority I am changing our mission and the Diamonds will deal with the NMX presence before continuing with the complex. Munkata out."

Looking around, she linked back into the squadron's comm channel and spoke up. "Diamonds, our priority is now the NMX presence. The two in the complex are on their own. Move towards the prisoner area and establish full 360 security. I don't want anyone approaching that area without me knowing. Elisto, update."

Each of the cells that Elisto could see help a single nude occupant. All oof which sported an assortment of bruises, lascerations and burns. Each cell seemed to hold a representativ of a different species. When he placed his hand upon the cell a voice came from the speakers above.

"Foolish minions of the failed regime. You shall now bear witness to the power of the Tachibana. We liberated this vehicle from the NMX with its precious cargo of various members of the sector. We have even added an NMX tomthe list of subject. Behold."

At that point a silver vapor was released into the cell before Elisto, and when it came into contact with the skin on the Nepleslian woman in front of him the efect was both immediate and gruesome. Her skin shredded away where the mist touched and more of it seemed to come from the shredded skin. The effect was extremely painful as the look of agony on the prisoners face showed. More and more of the prisoners body was consumed be the silver matter, she was literally being eaten alive from the skin inward. In less than a minute the bones on her hands could be seen. Elisto estimated that she would be dead in 5 minutes. But it would not be a clean death.

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Silic when he got closer could read the displays. Warning... Core tempurature approaching dnger levels. on another Warning cooling system pressure failure. Emergency backup not,responding. Five minutes before reactor overload.

There was chaos and destruction behind the doors and not much else. If there was an enemy, Anne could not see him. There was some destroyed drones and fire everywhere. She also could not see Silic, neither she got a ping on his IFF. THere was no other option, Silic had to be deeper inside. Anne took a deep breather and kept running.

Elisto was damned glad he had a very strong constitution, otherwise he'd be sick to his stomach though then again he was having a slight issue containing his anger.

"..." he shook his head in disgust at the methods that the Tachibana were willing to go to. Even if they are our enemies, they don't deserve this kind of a death..

After watching for a few more moments, he responded to Yaeko's message.


Running his calculations, he didn't like what he was coming up with. It would be a very painful death, and there was little he could do, except perhaps just shot her to put her out of her misery. It might seem odd, to others, that he'd show sympathy for a people who were actively trying to kill his own - but he'd seen much death in his lifetime, seen the methods people would often go to to get information or just to torture, and he'd learned long ago that you should never stoop to the level of your enemies. And right here, right now, he was witnessing the Tachibana being no different than the NMX; in fact, worse.

But he continued to run his estimates, in an effort to figure out the plague, if that's what it truly was.

He also sent an encrypted message to Konpeki.


While he waited for a response, he began to think of methods to purge the plague if it got out.

Yaeko only got through a few seconds of Elisto's video before her stomach started to turn. Flipping the video off, she paused midway to his location. "Scrapyard, terminate." She lowered herself to the ground and knelt, throwing up an hand-signal for those behind her to stop.

Thinking out loud, she chimmed into the squad comm. "It doesn't seem like there is much we can do for the prisoners, because attempting to help them will only cause a painful death. Scrapyard, disable the vehicle so that they have no means of escape. Then I want the rest of the Diamonds to meet me by the complex entrance. We're assaulting the complex in exactly 90 seconds. Stick to the original plan. Assault and Demo will take the lead, Support will deal with any prisoners left behind. Our new secondary mission is to retrieve our squad mates alive."

Elisto had a feeling she'd authorize it, but he just wanted to make certain that it was on record. He looked at the Neko in the cell, anyone near him might think he was showing no emotions, but with his helmet on it was impossible to notice the scowl and angry expression on his face.

He shouldered his rifle, and pulled his pistol out of it's holster and took aim at the Neko's head. As he observed, he realized that what he was witnessing was the Tachibana's going down the same path as the NMX, doing practically the same thing and acting no different.

Taking in a few breaths, and steadied his aim.

Konpeki sent a shot reply. "Do not damage the cell or you will unleash the b
Plague. The is a small panel on the bottom right side of the cell. Open the panel and you will see a red button. That will incinerate the cell."