RP: 188604 [Star Wasp] 7: The Hate Machine

Necromancer: Bridge

The Necromancer stayed in it position while the others went dirtside. The ship was a flurry of activity, with crews repairing damage and others trying to keep the ship afloat in the ECM soup they found themselves in. As Aashi brought the Pumpkin Eater above his ship. Since the ECM was causing an issue with wireless transmission, Werner signaled with his position lights that he was going to attach an umbilical line to her ship. This way he could top off her tanks and their comms would be crystal clear.

Werner smiled as he heard her voice come through crystal clear. "I'm okay Aashi. More worried about you. You were close to the fight. Everything okay on your end?" He asked.

Underground Complex

"Employing them?" Truffleclub made a weird tone. Arccos was already paying children for minor work on 188604, not totally immoral considering there were a lot of people in poverty otherwise. But that didn't mean the large automata felt like capitalism was something they were willing to help capitalists with. "Not part of my crew. But Cloudee will ask them."

No time for sticking around talking now. Getting further into the facility would require attention from a spacer, and the codebreaker was the squishier of the two.

Hundreds of tons of concrete were not exactly what star fighter shields were designed to work against, and the sparking strain was obvious from the moment it made contact. Fortunately Alex's Gekido was nimble enough to break through most of the broken chunks, and Truffleclub was fast to bring them assistance now. Overall it seemed surprisingly stable, perhaps because anything that was going to collapse already had done, years ago.

Meager light strips were active on the other side. Rails were not charged, but the dust had been disturbed by dozens of tank tracks recently. No reaction to Hazel's missiles, but who knew what laid beyond the next few blind corners.

Underground Complex

Hazel would start reducing power to her shields, slowly backing them off to see if she could dislodge her fighter from the tunnel without it collapsing, not wanting to take any risks...

... Uso on the other hand, bounded through the opening, "EV-ry --e keep up!" She shouted on the all hands channel, "AL-- TA-KE PO-NT!"

It wasn't easy to make out what she was saying through all of the spacer ECM, even with Vier doing her best to adjust for the interference. However her plan seemed fairly straight forward. She would run at top speed, making large, powered, leaps, staying towards the center of the hallway, and only slowing down so that she could peek her datapad's camera around the corner from its perch on the end of her rifle. Assuming Alex hadn't gone infront of her yet, and the path was clear, she would keep heading towards the Sytelligence room.

Underground Complex

"Thanks buddy," Akemi replied. He then followed after Uso likewise moving about quickly and evasively, zigzagging and making sure not to get close to her. At all times he kept his weapon at the ready and his eyes peeled. Given how strange, diverse and creative their enemies could be he was on guard for anything. He wouldn't be surprised if something shot out from the walls, ground or ceiling.

Underground Complex

Moving ahead, Alex kept his eyes on his sensors, for what they were worth with all of the interference. He deployed the twin guns built into the right hand of his mecha, ready to fire on anything resembling an enemy.

Very Underground and Very Complex

Nothing much lurked in the first alcove Uso and Akemi encountered, except for a doorway which lead somewhere distant and off the map. The second opening was closed with heavy shutters, requiring some kind of Freespacer mindware interface to connect with.

The tunnels were utterly different from the surface. Fresh red rock untainted by nuclear fallout, lit by newly implemented light strips and chrome-metal piping. Upon entering, the mood immediately became more foreboding, however, with the light sources deactivating and the distant buzz of antenna sources now becoming a background din all around them. They were stepping into the center of a hornet's nest.

Infra red beams sprung out in the dark. One faced out of the next large opening on the left, just about enough to fit a junk-tank down the branching tunnel. The second one was streaking directly from the center of the T-junction at the top of the complex, going all the way down a huge straight section, before hitting the corner straight ahead of them. Nekovalkyrja eyes could pick them up, as well as Alex's machine, but what was sitting on the other end was a mystery.

Truffleclub hung back and kept guard at the rear, slightly worried about Arccos' progress. The fact that their sensor suite was a bit inferior for combat in a pitch black environment probably didn't help.

Very underground, such wow.

Seeing the beams, Alex held up his mecha's hand to indicate that the others should be careful. Searching his surroundings, Alex found a sheet of metal, and after heating it slightly with his lasers, he poked the sheet out just far enough to trip the infrared sensor.

It's an underground complex, Alex Hart

Corgan took a deep breath and jumped through the "portal". He didn't feel any abnormal sensations like he had expected when he passed through. It was just like walking through a doorway. After doing a quick 360 to check out his surroundings Corgan bounded after Uso. The Nepleslian decided he would make sure the rear was covered, just in case the enemy tried to surprise them. As soon as he hit the darkness, he switched his eyes to night vision mode. Once they cleared every room, he would stop momentarily to look back for any unwanted guests. Then Alex motioned to stop. Corgan looked around, didn't see anything. Maybe the mech saw something he couldn't. When he got that mindware he needed to upgrade to multi-spectrum eyes. Might even get a full cybernetic arm, not just the forearm.

Underground Stuff

Figuring their presence was obviously already detected Akemi sent a camera drone down each tunnel projecting an image of what was directly behind them as camouflage to snap pictures and return with what they saw while he made sure to stay far away from Corgan and Uso and behind Alex's mecha for cover in case of a sudden attack. He naturally made sure to make the drones avoid contact with any lasers if they moved even though he doubted there was any point. While he did this he decided to continue chatting with Truffleclub.

"I'll see about helping you with whatever you're doing with or without kids," the male Neko said looking in the synthetic intelligence's direction. "Send any kids that could use help to me. Go ahead and send any Spacers that'd be willing to spend time with a Neko to me too. I'd love to befriend as many of you as I can."

No time for puns guys

Arccos, we're getting bogged down here and if we spend too much time dealing with these traps we're going to get crunched by those tanks. Anything you can do to speed this along?
-Uso

Click to expand...

Uso had to start poking her datapad with her armored fingers, doing her best to send an ungarbleable text message to their spacer friends while Alex made his trap disarm rolls. They were losing momentum, and Uso was expecting the situation to go very bad very quickly.

Then she saw Akemi's drones fly by.

"Damnit, I should have paid closer attention to the backpack mods for this armor...."

Pac Man With Discarding Sabots

Alex didn't have time to extend his arm all the way out before a hypervelocity uranium slug punched half of the metal sheet into non-existence, the targeting laser moving to intercept the glowing object. The wall opposite was pulverized, sending bits of rock and dust bouncing in all directions with a deafening blastwave. It didn't stop there, actually reorienting towards the other side of the wall, and knocking a large chunk out of the corner just beside his robot's knee.

Distantly, large metallic shells could be heard pinging around. No motor or tread noises. It was just sitting and waiting.

Akemi's drones seemed to go largely ignored, on the other hand. Maybe it was because they didn't create that much heat. Upon returning, they found the small fabrication rooms directly left and right of the tunnel ahead to be empty of any enemies, at least at the moment. The route which lead directly into the syntelligence complex was blocked by a large metal shutter not unlike the one from before.

More importantly, the tunnel directly ahead of them, currently still being pummeled by anti-tank rounds, was hiding something very big and nasty in the cloud of cannon exhaust fumes. It had four track-legs and extremely heavy forward armor. A bright red camera was glinting from the left side, whilst most of the right-hand chassis was taken up by an imposing tank gun. It was beige-brown colored and really quite angry looking. Not a field conversion at all, this thing was clearly custom built.

"These are first spacers Cloudee meet since Arccos." Truffleclub could only remark back to Akemi, grimly. The chaos going on just in front of them didn't seem to phase the automata much, at least. "I am sorry Nekokemi. I not good with planning, is. I just see the thing and I want to do the thing, understanding?... Childrun are helping because they doing what they doing. Maybe also thinking same. I do not know. But... peace for them... would be nice, is?"

Set blasters to stun

Alex peeked around the corner after the burst of fire ceased. Firing with his head mounted laser, he was aiming for the treads and guns of the vehicle him front of him, trying to disable it rather then kill or destroy.

Mew Mew Mew

"Awww! I love you calling me Nekokemi!" Nekokemi exclaimed. "I understand." He then turned to Uso and transmitted the visuals he'd collected to her and Alex. "Here's what I got. Sure would be cool if we could take whatever that giant thing firing up ahead is. Maybe we can talk to it." The last part was meant as a joke. Then again Akemi was interested in what personality it would have if it did have one.

Underground Complex

Uso quickly fired a shot at the other side of the hallway, hoping that the blast and shower of hot rock would be enough to split the attention of the tank while Alex poked his head out to shoot.

"We can just bring the tunnel down on this side. No need to fight if we don't have to." Uso said.

"I'm trying something since they already know where we are," Akemi said. Just taking quick shots at the tank or trying to trap or slow it down was boring.

"Hey tank people!" he called out to the darkness without exposing his body. "Can we talk? What are your names? What's it like being a tank or whatever you are?" The Neko was extremely tempted to say his name in case they could respect his honesty but he decided to hold off on that for now. Hopefully Arccos would look at least a little favorably on his effort to peacefully engage Freespacers after she was forced to resort to violence.

Trap Door Junker

The confusion caused by all of the extra rubble flying around did indeed cause the machine's simple tracking system to misalign, but even Alex's Gekido head laser scoring a direct hit did nothing but glance off the superbly armored frame. The entire body was a distinctly wedge-like shape, making the attacks against the front completely ineffective. Turns out that designing something specifically for ground operations had certain advantages.

No response to Akemi's peace offering. Perhaps all of the gunfire was too loud, or maybe it didn't even have audio receptors.

One action it did take was ejecting an empty shell, and then make a loud clunking noise as the autoloader mechanism thudded around inside it. Loading a different type of ammunition, perhaps?...

Seeing that his laser was doing no good, Alex activated the inbuilt guns in the mecha's right hand and raked the celing of the tunnel above the tank with the 12.7 mm shells, hoping to cause some debris to fall and incapacitate the autonomous enemy. Ducking back behind the corner, he pulled out his plasma cannon and took a moment to center the tank in his sights before firing three shots, at the cannon of the tank and each of the treads respectively.

Akemi was somewhat disappointed there was no discernibly positive response. Part of him hoped it was only taking time to communicate back and it'd shoot out something friendly instead of something more suitable for killing them. "How about we not shoot at this whatever it is? It isn't hurting us yet. Maybe it's doing whatever it's doing now for a reason other than wanting to kill us."

The Neko sent out a drone to each tank or the tank and whatever machine the giant thing specifically was. They were camouflaged as before and were made to communicate his questions through text projected in holograms once they got close enough to possibly effectively take evasive maneuvers against the main guns. While the one assigned to the giant thing did that it was also ordered to try to see what the back of the monster machine looked like. Akemi tried using his radio to send the same questions.

The Neko was definitely determined to make a giant talking tank friend.

Blowing Things Up In Enclosed Spaces 101

The first storm of large-caliber rounds exploded in a shower of massive stones upon impacting with the ceiling, but the splash damage didn't seem to mean much against the enemies' hulking form. Akemi's drone managed to get behind the machine for just a moment, observing what looked like a large nuclear reactor and some armored vents, before promptly being crushed in the rain of cascading boulders.

Would the semi-sentient tank have listening to reasoning if it wasn't also being shot at? Too late to find out now.

Barrel shuddering as it popped out with a large cylinder instead of another typical shell, Alex soon found a camera-guided missile not just flying towards him, but counter-steering in order to give it room to make it around the corner. Given that the cyborg pilot had taken to firing an anti-starship plasma cannon at the exact same time, the enclosed space between the two of them became an intense firestorm of light and fire.

The shockwave alone would have been enough to shred any human being standing near, so it was probably for the best that Uso, Akemi and Corgan were considerably further back around the corner.

Darkness once more. Somewhere in the frenzy of violence, the enemy tank had gone silent and fallen into a heap. On the other hand, Alex's plasma cannon was arcing power dangerously out of the rear casing, barrel melted and malformed by the close-range detonation. Warning lights weren't exactly necessary to tell him that firing it again would be a pretty stupid idea.

"I-Is my tank friend dead?" Akemi asked with a tone of delicate apprehension, staying right where he was behind Alex just in case. In fact he had moved even farther back than he had been before the explosion.