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RP: NSS Sledge Mama [NSS Sledge Mama] Ep. 2 - Forged

Bloody and unrelenting, the fight went on.

Fast, and with purpose, Sawyer began to raise his rifle high, just as the very carapace of the Mishhu closed in fast. The barrel of the weapon bounced away in these close quarters as its hard shell kept the weapon from being brought to bear. Powerful, limb breaking tendrils wrapped around the armored marine, one entwining his neck as he was lifted off the ground. Sawyer's augmented strength reached out to grasp at the enemy at first, but he soon found himself struggling to stay alive as an armored gauntlet fought to keep his head and spine from being pulled out of his body, the rifle kept uselessly pointed away. But out of nowhere, Lisa flew in like a rocket, smashing the creature off of him. She flew fast and hard, but lancing pain sliced across her skin as she smashed the creature into a bloody pulp splattered across one of the ship's walls like a bug. Reeling back, briefly dazed by the recoil of her own dash-attack, her Hostile was smeared in blood, its armor scratched in several places where its blades struck back in blind panic.

And below her left armpit, one blade had pierced the suit, forcing its way between plate and armored-weave to brush across her skin, parting it into red, weeping lips.

The hard, heavy, automatic fire of Aleksei's HPAR chewed through flesh and sinew, cutting across the ship's growths as he tried to shoot the Mishhu falling fast on him - it wasn't stupid, and dodged to his left as he tried to track it with his rifle, just barely evading the liquid hot fire. Tendrils were blasted and burned off in an instant, the creature giving off a bellow of rage. Short lived - it flew into the firing arc of his PPG, and the man fired! The air itself distorted into a concussive blast, the creature smashed back into a support column by an invisible hammer. It was only stunned for a heartbeat, the creature aggressively pouncing again - a heartbeat was enough. Aleksei's gun pumped molten metal lances through its carapace in an instant, punching clean through before its corpse fell to the ground like a massive weight. But the small victory aside, he was still cut off from the rest! Turning just in time, Lisa flew by him and smashed into a nearby column, leaving her isolated outside the group of Nepleslians on the left flank as they faced the reactor.

Two more rushed in at her!

At the same time, Richard - only a few meters behind Kevin - made to rush the Mishhu coming in at him and play chicken since his first PPG blast missed. Neither backed down - the two collided with each other in a mass of armor and tentacles and chitin before the marine's PPG activated, blasting the creature off the still charging marine. His rifle was aimed down and to the side from the shoulder ram however, and as he brought it back up, the Mishhu he faced down quickly darted away like a squid in the sea, skirting in and out of the Marine's line of site as it probed for weakness, provoking him to fire off poorly aimed shots wherever it could. But like Lisa, he was now too far out on the right flank of the group and facing outward, as another one charged him from his left! And the pain. The lancing pain - air hissed out of his suit's collar, a bony blade torn off the creature and shoved down through the power armor's bodysuit, raking his back

Inez, stunned and disorientated from being caught and dragged, barely managed to turn and face the onrushing Mishhu as she lay there on the ground. Making a stand, she whipped he rifle around - but too late! A massive pull yanked her away from the aliens, the marine skidding across the bloody flesh of the ship to come to a stop just a meter or two from Ylfa's feet. The woman had used her PPG to snatch Inez out of danger. But it wasn't over yet - the two monsters were coming for Inez still. "Cover me!" Snapping around, their squad leader fired a burst past Kevin, the two Mishhu in his path darting away. "Grab the reactor fuel cut-off! It's a metal hand-bar recessed into a cylinder you gotta rotate and pull out! We got three of them to get!" Ylfa yelled - just a few meters more beyond Kevin was the first they had to deal with, overgrown and slippery with flesh.

With all this going on, perhaps it never occurred to them that Fate would have to decide if Lisa and Richard were poisoned.
 
Richard found himself not fast enough on the draw and missed his chance to put one of these monsters down. He fired a few rounds off trying to chase the thing down in anger, but his lack of confidence in his shooting kept him from wasting too many bullets. It did not take long for him to feel the sharp pain in his collar and back. He wanted to pull it out, but he had to check to make sure it wouldn't do any damage. And before he could another Misshu came at him from the side. With his gun already at the ready he was much more quick to shoot than before, firing at the creature. He did not just charge in like last time however and activated his thrusters to move quickly out of the way and tried to get in a few more good shots. It did not occur to him at all that he might be poisoned that simply was just at the back of his mind as he tried to deal with the currently two monsters attacking him.
 
"FUCK!" Lisa screeched as she stumbled back on her feet. She felt the pain under her arm and activated medical systems in the her armour. Painkillers, stimulants, she needed it all. Her mind tried to focus on the battle and ignore the pain. Her monoeyes quickly showed her that there were another two Misshu rushing against her. Lisa knew, that it was too soon for her to get back into fight so she chose to use the easiest option. She let her computer aim at the two tentacly monsters and fired 2 bolt mini-missiles from each leg. She was too worried about damage massive explosion could cause here, otherwise she would use 5. If missiles would fail, Lisa charged PPG, ready to push the monsters away, should they somehow counter those missiles.
 
"I really hate the Hostile not having much in the way of true close quarters firepower" Sawyer muttered as he shifted to take aim at the next set of tentacled monstrosities and any other nearby opfor. If the way was clear he'd head for the first of the fuel cut offs. Going for cutting off the fuel before something went horribly wrong and took them all along with it.
 
Richard's thrusters flared to life, quickly moving the two tons of marine out of danger. At the same time, the heavy rifle in his armored hands bucked as he squeezed down on its trigger - tracers arced up from his gun as he quickly aimed its flashing muzzle. His stream of fire chased after the slippery alien as it darted about, the rounds sending sparks flying as they impacted against the metal and flesh of the ship before the trail of fire finally caught up, cutting the creature apart. Holes were punched clean through its carapace, burning it out as his feet landed from the thruster-jump. "Magnus! You're too far out!" Ylfa yelled, his itchy, stinging wounds becoming less and less painful as the seconds ticked by.

Right then, missiles streaked out of Lisa's pods - unlike rifle fire, their aim was flawless. Jumping out at them like a fiery arrow, the missiles collided with the Mishhuvurhyar. In an instant, a pair of new suns were born within the engineering compartment of the ship, the brilliant light burning all the flesh it could reach before the blast followed. The marines could feel the jarring, concussive force through their armor as the aliens backed off from the shock, alarms going off in the ship. Over her own pounding heartbeat, Lisa could hear her squad leader bark over the comms, "You too Simmons, you're hanging in the wind!" The other armored woman was already moving up towards the disconnect, but the tingling sensation gathering at her fingertips was irritating. "The reactor's shaken up! We got to hurry it up everyone! Double time it!"

As Sawyer's hands grasped the handle, the lights in the ship dimmed as one of the other squads already shut off one of the fuel lines. In his grasp, the reactor's thrum, it's beat wavering and unsteady, vibrated through his armor. When it came time to begin pulling up, the nanomuscles under the man's armor flexed as the flow of fuel could be felt coursing through the cutoff, the liquid tritium and deuterium slowly coming to a trickle. And the lights continued to dim. The marines gathered around in a defensive circle as their fire slacked off - the Mishhu themselves were ceasing their attack, for now. This meant that getting to the last one would be a breeze.

Nothing but a third as bright as it was before, Ylfa reloaded. "We're not done yet - and they're not either. Sort yourselves out, we're moving on that last one. Move it," she nearly hissed.

What was a twisted but vibrant forest of flesh became even darker and foreboding than it was before as their last lights slowly dimmed.
 
Richard heard Ylfa call out and looked up, realizing how far away he was finally. He started his way back over but had to stop as he felt the pressure from the explosion, but he soon continued his approach. He made sure to keep his weapon up ready to fire on anything that tried to attack him, h had enough ambushes as it was already, but he knew that second Misshu was hiding somewhere. Once he got reacquainted with his group he pulled the claw out of his shoulder and let his suit take care of any minor repairs. Hearing that there was still one more reactor to shut down, he sighed, but knowing how fast combat was now, he got his missiles ready so he could fire them at a moment's notice.
 
Staring at the riddled Mishu corpse, Aleksei turned to see the fighting was wrapping up in the compartment and his squad was regrouping to move on to the last reactor room. Quickly making his way to the rest of his team, he checked over his systems. A small grin worked it's way over his face as the Hostile armor showed green across the board. "Let's go give em a good ole fashioned ass kicking then, Sarge." spoke the P2C. "Then it's back to Mama for cigars and poker." added the ID-SOL as his face split into a larger grin.

The man was almost ignoring the loss of the lights in the area. He wasn't blind to the destruction caused by the explosives of the rockets. In his mind, it was a beautiful piece of art. Despite the fact it was mostly riddled flesh that the Mishu liked to use for their ship corridors.
 
"Fuck you," Lisa said to the that Misshu and grinned. She finally gathered her wits and went to do a bit of work, instruing her suits AI to engage and follow Sawyer should Lisa loose her consciousness. Then sergeants message came in so Lisa moved to regroup with the rest of the gang. "I got blown off a bit sarge, won't happen again. Got punished for it too."
 
That feeling when you had won - that warm, fuzzy warmth that seemed to spread outwards? They could all feel it.

Sh didn't care. Ylfa snorted with amusement, telling it to wait for its turn. "It's not over until the Fat Cat sings," she quickly replied, voice slightly hushed in the faint light. Motioning with her hand, its silhouette outlined on their displays for safety's sake, their Sergeant ordered them to close up as they made their way to the next and last shutoff for the dimming reactor. With everyone frosty, her sharp eyes quickly glanced at the squad's status lights. "That's funny - you guys are still walking, and they usually poison their blades. It's usually something to stop your heart, or something to make you guys screw each other's brains out if they're feeling an itch." Ylfa began to wonder aloud. The squad soon settled around the last unit, one of the other marines moving ahead to cut the fuel.

As the last cylinder was pulled out, the sound of heavy metal sliding over heavy metal echoing through the quiet engineering compartment, Ylfa took her time to read their vitals. "Huh. It really doesn't look like it's either." The woman honestly sounded a little surprised, but as the entire area finally went dark, red emergency lights came on, washing over everything there. In the crimson light, she came up to a few of the dead, hole riddled Mishhu corpses that lay strewn across the ground. When she knelt down by one, they soon heard disbelief. "This isn't right. Their shells are too smooth - they're juvies. Maybe few days old and rushed into getting up to size. Probably don't even have their balls yet." Her Hostile's monoeye quickly turned around to settle on not just Lisa and Richard, but a few others as well. "This is screwed up - you probably don't even know how badly - but you've all lucked out." Before she could say anything more, their Comms came to life as Lieutenant Gaston's voice boomed,

"LIEUTENANT DIADOTTR! The enemy locked down several of the corridors and slipped some past us, and they're definitely heading straight to the reactor. They want it bad, and they're probably bent on dragging us to hell with them! Hunker down until backup's arrived!" Standing tall, Ylfa gave out her own commanding barks.

"You heard the man - take positions! We got three doorways in, one some ways in front of each fuel valve, counting the one we blew to hell to get here. Get some good cover, I don't care how or what you use, and get ready to mow down anything hostile that comes in, crystal?" even if the situation wasn't crystal, one thing was.

There were no Fat Cats in Yamatai.
 
Richard paused at mention of poison and immediately began to run a scan on himself to make sure he wasn't poisoned. "Are you serious, poison? They can't just fight us out right?" He sounded rather panicked, after all the last thing he wanted to do was to drop dead because of some strange poison in his system. He could only wait until the scan was done however, that was his only way of being sure that he was clean, and that bothered him, if he wasn't wearing a helmet it would be easy to read on his face. He heard Ylfa mention the fact that they were juveniles which Richard did not really understand what that meant for them other than that they were young and inexperienced, he hoped that they were less likely to produce poison as well.

Soon Gaston's loud voice snapped him out of his panic, reminding him that he was still in a combat situation and did not have room to relax just yet. At Ylfa's orders he moved himself to location where he could see the door across from the second reactor. He ducked behind a wall and took a crouching position pointing his HPAR toward the currently closed door. He also took a moment to ready his missiles figuring they would be pretty effective if a swarm of Mishhu came through.
 
"Hey Rook, there is not right way to fight. If there was one, it would be to kill the enemy as fast and as effectively as possible. If we had some kind of super-gas that kills squids, we would use it too. Be just happy that the bloody poison did not work." Lisa said to Richard as she fell in with the rest of the group. She them moved to find best cover, preferably a console. She also activated a drone that came standard with all Hostiles and sent it up into the cables and hidden places. She did not want Misshu to sneak up on them from above again. "Simmons here, I took position and have a drone up at the roof. Those fuck won't drop on us second time, if I can help it."
 
Dia was rather harsh.

"No duh. How can you have space squids without poison and biotech and crap?" she shot at Gaston, just as his scan came up - no lethals were in the young marine. Cutting him a little slack though, Dia added, "And yeah. They can just fight us out too, on top of the poison by the way, so watch yourself and don't let them get close." When Lisa deployed her drone she simply gave the other woman a bland reply.

"Good Simmons. Five and Nine, toss out yours two. Cover the other passageways we didn't come through," she told another pair of marines. Like many of the people around them, they were from another squad, likely having been cut off or possibly survived their teammates. Possibly both. If a boarding action wasn't bloody for the attackers, the defenders just weren't doing it right. No excuses. Before they could do more than quickly dig in, a deep, bellowing roar could be heard, echoing through the ship and muffled by one of the blast doors. Whatever it was, the marines could easily tell it was big. Really big - a faint ripple ran through the thin metal paneling of the floor as it stomped towards them. It was a bad sign. A very, very bad sign. Gripping her own rifle, Dia had one thing to say.

"Crab type."

All hell broke loose as the creature suddenly burst through the blast doors, literally smashing aside the armored alloy and knocking it clean out of it's heavy frame with sheer, brute force. "SPREAD OUT!" Diadottr yelled, the monster coming straight for the dug in marines. Lit up by their muzzle flashes, the hulking mass came into full view - covered from head to claw in armor plates grafted onto it's already tough shell, the thing easily shrugged off the annoying stings that managed to pierce through it's energy barriers. "F*ing shields! Missile that bastard!" Pouncing across the gap between them all, the Mishhu Crab closed right up to the Marines - tentacles whipped out of plated ports, several of them snatching a trooper by the leg!

Like a ball and chain, all two tons of him was slammed - left, right, left - into the bulkheads before one of it's massive legs pinned the marine down, an autocannon turret on it's back popping up to quickly fire into the dazed man to start finishing him off.
 
One could not fight against monsters in brutal way, because monsters will always out-brutal you. So you had to fight in a brutal AND clever way. Missiles sure were great idea, especially when one knew what they were doing. Lisa saw the poor soldier being dragged on the ground by monster's tendrilds, and she would have none of that. While others would be just firing straight at the thing, Lisa though she could afford a second to aim. She had two missile launchers, which meanth she could pick two targets. So she aimed at both tentacle-ports on the monster and then fired full barrage of missiles. It would be nice to have ARROWS, but well order was to load BOLTS, so she fired them. If the tentacles will be gone, that trooper still has a chance.
 
Sawyer took aim at the Crab Type's legs and fired a volley of BOLTs, intending to overload its shields before following up with a series of bursts of HPAR fire at the leg joints. The goal was to either sever the legs or coat them in so much superheated metal it became difficult or impossible for the creature to continue moving. "We need to concentrate our fire on specific points, otherwise we're not going to be able to do anything to that monstrosity. HIT IT IN THE LEGS!" He shouted while shooting. "If we can keep it from moving then we have an advantage and can engage on our terms rather than having the thing be able to leap at us."
 
Richard had a moment of pause when the Crab Mishhu broke it's way into the area, he was expecting a small horde not a single brute of a creature. However once it began moving about and attacking Richard came to his senses and began firing on the beast. After a few burst from his HPAR even he could tell that the thing had a shield up. He readied his missiles hearing orders to fire and seeing other's fire off their missiles. He decided to take aim for one of the legs as well but instead of firing his missiles back to back, he set a third of a second delay on them and fired off a volley all for the same point for back to back impacts hoping to punch through eh shield.
 
Large, heavy shells bigger than a person's thumb hammered into the trapped soldier like a pair of machineguns as the turrret opened up, the shells exploding against the flickering defenses of it's victim.

Missiles streaked out from the rest of the marines, Lisa and Sawyer included. It's autocannon snapped around to swat down as many as it could before fiery blossoms bloomed over the hulking monster's form. Under this assault, the marine pinned under it's leg managed to shoot out from under it's grasp like a rocket. The smoke rapidly clearing in it's wake as the Armored Crab continued to close, the blasts could be seen stopping just inches away from it's body - even with the entire squad dumping most of their missiles into it! Even at Sawyer's bellow, the fire being dumped onto the large, sturdy forelegs instead, the only thing that got through was their HPAR fire. Powerful enough to penetrate through the shields' threshold, they still only hit with a quarter of their original punch against the armor plate underneath.

With their backs to the reactor, the monster was like a predator trying to root out rodents from their hiding spots. It's heavy mass leaping forward again, a leg was stabbed in between their cover as it swung for Sawer - it was by no means stupid, and could understand every helmet muffled word they said. Clawing, flailing the limb at the Marine, it managed to strike him across the chest with the tip, leaving behind a shallow gash across the man's dense plate. It was simultaneously suppressing the rest of the squad with it's autocannons, focusing on one marine after another to keep them down, Dia herself standing there to tank the hits before her shields dropped to half and ducking before it started pounding Lisa next. Richard's missiles, delayed for a moment, streaked in and hit it on the legs, but again splashed the shields!

A combat engineer managed to break off from the rest of the squad and get to the creature's flank. Behind cover, he hurriedly put down and reached into the pack he had with him. In his hands was a demolition charge used in groups to blast through hull! Its detonator linked to his suit, the man rounded his cover like a star pitcher - and was sent slamming into the support structure behind him as the Crab kicked him like the devil's mule, knocking him out cold.

"Shit!" Ylfa hissed over their comms, keeping her voice down to avoid being overheard through her helmet, "Someone get that det-block!"
 
"Well this is getting silly" Sawyer muttered and stepped a bit further back into cover and away from the beast's forelimb before flipping his HPAR to fully automatic, leaning into it to take as much recoil and shunt it down the armor into the floor, locked a reticule onto the upper portion of the foreleg where it bent to enter the creature's body and began firing massive aimed bursts of 10-15 rounds each. His plan was to slam every round into the same point to make use of the superheated metal's ability to reheat when hit by another round and to cake onto a target, with luck the massive amounts of heat being dumped into its limbs would start to melt through the outer shell and possibly even sever the limb.
 
Seeing his missiles do nothing even after impacting with the shield gave him a bit of worry, he didn't have anything with more punch than that nor did he have anything designed to take out shields. However the engineer made his move, though it failed there was now a demo-charge just sitting around. He heard the orders and made a dash for the charge. He was confident in his speed, but he wasn't stupid enough to run around in the open with monster crab right there, so he made sure to move from cover to cover until he got over to the charge. "Don't think throwing this is going to work unless you pin down those tentacles." He spoke into the comms as he sized up the situation.
 
The heavy rifle bucked against Sawyer's shoulder as the muzzle flashed in the darkness, lighting up the scene to a staccato tune. Even as his night-vision system compensated as best it could, the armored limb flailed out at him, shields flaring as fire was poured into the hulking creature's form. His own stream of fire shoved through the protective field with sheer, brute force like the rest, but splashed against the lightly plated joints. Sparks and fragments flew as the molten alloy chipped away at the thinner plates, the white hot fluid that didn't splatter off sticking fast and cooling to the joints, slowing the monster down. As he kept firing away, the hulking Crab screeched and reared up as a shot slipped in between the overlapping plates. Hopping back and baring its massive forelimbs like shields, it hid its weakspots from any frontal shots as tentacles simultaneously lashed out and dragged the man away with it!

With the dual autocannons shifting between the other marines and Lisa, the hail of thick, heavy shells ate away at their pieces of cover. The pressure off of her, Ylfa dashed. Leaping out of cover as her thrusters flared, she moved on the Crab's left flank, pincering it between herself and Richard. Bringing her own rifle to bear, hypersonic tracer fire streamed out at the Crab type's exposed ports as she shot from the hip. Being dragged on his back by the leg, Sawyer could see glimpses of what was happening from the muzzle flashes as he was torn free from the tentacles at the source; blood splashed across the room and tentacles writhed all around the man as the creature bellowed in rage. Rounding on the woman as she tried to dodge, it lashed out at her, its rear leg smashing against her with a shower of sparks as she was sent her flying into the dark. Thinking fast, Richard threw the demo-charge and triggered the small hull breaching device just as it struck and bounced. Blinding white light flooded the darkened engineering compartment as a small sun of plasma was released.

Black and char floated up to cloud the area as silence briefly fell, but even before anyone could move, a roar of rage pierced through the veil.

Nearly a dozen Mishhuvurthyar - unarmed - poured into the compartment, flittering in between the hanging flesh that covered every single surface. The large Crab type quickly scuttled away in the dark confusion as the immature juveniles flooded in, Ylfa's voice came to them over their comms, scratchy with static, "Get in formation or they'll pick you off!" she barked. With the Crab, they had to move or seek cover, but with these, they had to fight together or die alone. Seeing Sawyer out of position, two were already starting to bear down on him, with three coming after Richard. Once on the flank of the large enemy, he was now exposed! As the enemies closed in, another explosion smashed open one of the blast doors leading into the engineering compartment as fresh marines dove in.

Finding the interior covered from wall to wall in wet flesh, the lights out and monsters lurking in the shadows, the soldiers late to the fight found themselves diving into a nightmare fight for the dark heart of the ship itself.
 
Before the dust could settle gunfire from eight guns poured onto the enemies advancing on the Marines. Standing side by side they walked through the new hole as they dumped round after round onto the crowd of Mish.

At the right-center of the team of standard PAs was a orange-red Aggressor with black flames sporting an AS4GS Sergeant O'Neill.
"Cover that guy!" He shouted to the three on his right as he pointed toward Richard, "Let 'em have it!"
 
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