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

Underground Complex

"Well unless I have antimatter missiles in my weapon to punch through that door to the control room I'm following these Spacers," Akemi replied to Alex as he followed Truffleclub, Corgan and Arccos' bots. "Even if I did I could just use them on the entrance they use and whatever is inside."

Rear Elevator Shaft:

As Arccos observed the back door through the Codebreaker's eyes, she took in all the evidence and realized... She had no idea what any of this meant. She was a technical specialist not an elevator engineer. And so, rather than stop and try and work the thing out, she just opted to destroy it so it wasn't useful to anyone. She could get by without an elevator, thank you very much.

"Uso, you realize those suits of armor are so radiation proof that I used them to clear out the Lament's reactor, right?" Arccos' voice came flatly over the comms, "You shouldn't just let Akemi undress you like that. Especially since there's no atmo here..."

The Codespeaker pulled its weapon. One of those Sizi plasma revolvers. The sound of gunfire in the elevator sounding out as the cables, and built-on brakes on the cargo elevator were blasted through with streaks of plasma. As the whole thing creaked under the Codetalker, it pulled back its white robes at the waist to reveal some sort of cable spool. Firing a sturdy line and anchor into the wall of the shaft as its actual functionality plunged down to some deep sub-basement level.

"Disable the other elevator, then come up this shaft. I'll open the door." Arccos' voice crackled over again, as the Codetalker scaled the interior shaft. Its own armor didn't seem to have propulsion built in, but it had some sort of repulsor lift as the machine could certainly leap very high. Scrambling up to the next large-scale door and jacking in. Forcing the door once more...

Inner Circle; South East Entrance

There wasn't a button for Corgan to operate the lift. Truffleclub could tell just by looking at it that the thing was mindware operated, which meant the large automata was also powerless in working with it. As Arccos' drone body leapt up the walls, the machine at least had the presence of mind to pick up the Nepleslian before flying upwards after it, through.

Side eyes regarded Akemi. They were supposed to be able to fly, too, if the polymyths were true. Truffleclub couldn't help but think they still looked a little too squishy and organic for that.

Placing the soldier-friend carefully on the ledge surrounding the door the codebreaker was now hacking, the orange behemoth took a moment to look around with unease. Was that... Another infrared laser, heading straight upwards from below?...

No, it was above! A wedge-shaped crab tank was driving directly down the metal strip on the wall, using some kind of magnetic field sparking out of it's track pods!

In turn, Arccos successfully cracked the door code, only to find a metal crab the size of a family car on the other side. This one was a repaired maintenance drone, but still had a huge set of mechanical pincers.

Sparks flew as both arms immediately attempted to smash the small intruder between them, but were blocked by the formidable palms of the spindily automata's large mushroom-headed friend. It was a stale mate in terms of strength. Truffleclub was frozen, unable to finish the job...

Inner Circle; North West Entrance

A new infra red beam was detected, as well as movement noise from the giant elevator shaft. Slowly but steadily, the angle was increasing, getting closer to being able to fire down the corridor Alex currently occupied. Only explanation was that the damn thing was somehow stuck to the bottom of the approaching elevator car.

All around them, it seemed, the horde of surface forces that were seen retreating below ground were finally making their way to descend upon the intruders. And, this time, the plucky treasure hunters had no battleship scale weapons to help them...

Backseat Mecha

"I KNOW THAT I GOT EXPLODED MORE THAN I WAS EXPECTING!" Uso shouted, ".... Damnit Alex can she even hear me? GO BREAK THE ELEVATOR ALREADY! TANKS A-COMING!"

"I don't want to kill you Spacers but you aren't giving us a choice!" Akemi cried as he gripped his Zesuaium katana with two hands intending to take two overhead swings at the car sized spider thing Truffleclub was occupied with, starting with its head, then its pincers. There was no way he was risking using his special Spacer gun at close range. Regardless of the result he would then take a test shot of his mystery missile launcher at the metal critter above them if it wasn't already neutralized. He figured Corgan and Alex could deal with the other threat coming from below.

Arccos finally does something western-y:

Seeing the drone's ambush come to pass, the Codetalker took a half-step back. Making its stance secure, before reaching down to its holster and snapping the plasma revolver quick-draw style from its resting place, nanomuscle inserts in its suit speeding the draw to a lightning pace. Luckily these things had more than one charge per round in the gun. One flash of burning orange light was unloaded point blank, before it brought up its other hand, holding the trigger and fanning the hammer. Four, five, six rounds blasting into the crab monster held in place by Truffleclub.

Straight up, eye to eye revolver-shooting. At last Arccos had done something sheriff-y.

Giant Robot

"I don't know." Alex said, "I just think about talking to someone and it connects a voice channel."

Alex headed over to the elevator while pinging the mecha's computer with a query. After getting an answer he switched the on-board radio to broadcast any voices from inside the cockpit.

"There you go. You should be able to talk to everyone now."

As Alex neared the elevator shaft, he checked to ensure that his head mounted laser was still operational before severing the cable inside.

Crab Tunnel South East

Akemi's attempts to sword slash the thick armor of the giant crab's pincers was moderately successful, cutting deep enough gouges in the Durandium plate to create sparks. It was Arccos' drone body that was really in a good position to counter-attack through, directly in front of the mecha-beast's four camera eyes. Closing a little blast shutter did little to fend off the point blank barrage, and the thing soon collapsed in a smoking heap, having a hole blasted directly into it's inner workings.

The other, larger tank, however, was not quite so vulnerable during all this. Pressing the first button on Akemi's mystery launcher caused something like a jam jar filled with silver liquid to burst outwards, smashing against the enemy and coating it in glossy polymer, but not actually seeming to do any permanent damage. It didn't even slow down.

Using the time that the boy neko had took to aim, it fired right back, sending a large camera-guided missile streaking downwards towards the four of them.

Truffleclub automatically did what Uso's volleyball lessons had trained them to do, and jolted outwards in order to swat the offending explosive aside. The tail end fractured and exploded violently, sending the actual warhead spiraling down into the depths before finally hitting the bottom of the shaft with a resounding boom.

Straight away, the tank ejected the empty shell, rattling downwards after the rest of the projectile. They were preparing another.

The shield-headed automata stood fast and prepared to repeat the process, only... Lighter? Yes. Sans their right forearm. Even the fuel section of the anti-ship missile had been enough to vaporize it.

"...I am feeling we should progress inwards more rapidly, Ar-cuss..." A uniquely brisky speaking tone from the machine. "...I am feeling it is dangerous to defending this, is...."

Crab Tunnel North West

Alex managed to cut the cable quite easily, causing the emergency breaks on the lift above to thump to a halt. The enemy tank stuck to it wasn't having any of this of course, and fired an anti-tank round down onto his position. Fortunately for his Gekido, they were still at a high enough angle to merely knock out a chunk of concrete above his head. They may not have been the most intelligent robo tanks in the world, but without a distraction, one-on-one, it was clear these things could still do potentially fatal damage.

Now the only question remained was, how safe it was to leave it up there?... If it could grapple onto the bottom of something like that, could the spider-tank still climb down and get them, all by itself?...

"Aaaaah! Don't bully Truffleclub!" Akemi yelled. Being able to fly he moved a good distance away from his buddies horizontally so Cloudy and Arccos' Codetalker wouldn't be such appetizing targets. At the same time he kept his distance from the spiders. While he moved he tried to fire off a shot at each of the mechanical menaces before they locked onto him. He really hoped they wouldn't shoot his missiles right out of the air with something so he tried to wait for moments when that seemed less likely to happen. His default strategy for another missile coming his way was to hide behind Alex's mecha. That and try to shoot the enemy's projectile with his NSP on heavy mode if his Neko reflexes seemed to be up to the task. Despite his first shot seemingly doing nothing of value Akemi wasn't going to give up on his custom weapon. Surely he just had to keep firing until something good came out.

Mecha, Backseat

"Uso, you have received a message from a Marcus Rodia."

"VIER IS NOW REALLY THE TIME!?" Uso would have been far more upset if it weren't for her attention being diverted to the mecha-spider that was trying to tear apart their own robot.

"No time like the present." Came the rather level headed response.

"Fine, display the message for me... Alex, either find a way to collapse this tunnel area or back off and let Hazel do it with an anti-ship missile."

The message itself would display in text on a nearby screen, allowing Uso to formulate a response.

"Hi there! We're certainly interested, especially if you can start growing or producing this stuff locally. We have a population that we are trying to develop and the only real food source we have is an Akemi's."

The sound of heavy concrete smashing against the bottom of the elevator shaft could be heard echoing even through the hull of the mecha.

"Naturally we would be happy to talk compensation for helping employ locals and setting up an operation planetside. Maybe we can arrange some time to meet in person?... Vier send that message and show Alex how to get back over to where Arccos is!"

Mecha

Alex took stock of the situation. The only weapons he had left that would do the job were his missiles. Stepping back from the shaft, Alex set the missiles to a 30 second timer, before launching a salvo of two and sending them flying up above the tank. When they detonated, a large amount of rubble rained down on it, hopefully enough to dislodge it and block up the tunnel as well.

White Lament

Getting a little bored of just sitting around Ace finally turned his comms back on. "Hey Uso need any help? I could come over and provide some covering fire if you want. Not much else though you didn't give me permission to use power armor."

Ace thinks, therefor he portals:

"Just go through the portal." Arccos' voice resounded around Ace's position on the White Lament, speaking over the PA system. Six spider-like Junker drones sliding out of side panels in the walls. One jumping on the other until they resembled two stacks of hockey pucks with legs, and tottering ahead through the open Leyline portal in the guts of the White Lament.

"No one told you to stay behind."

Onward!

The Codetalker unit, under Arccos' control turned to look back at the explosion for a moment. A small curse going over the drone controller's comms as it swung out the chambers of its revolver, spent casings clattering to the floor of the room as it drew a quickloader and advanced into the Syntelligence Complex, replenishing its ability to fire.

"Truffleclub, we'll fix you up once we get back to the Mothership. Get you a new arm." Arccos' voice sounding flat once again. "And Koga, you're going to need to get out of that elevator shaft on my mark."

Down in the railway corridor, the junkers moved at speed to catch up with the rest of the crew. A mad, scrambling mass of limbs and mechanical tentacles chirping little radio signals against one another in short bursts. As they reached the freight elevator the Codetalker had used to get deeper into the complex, the stacks of Junkers leaned forward at an angle close to making them topple before the top two of each stack used the magnetic arrays on their sturdy mechanical legs to fling themselves forward into the freight elevator shaft; hitting the metal plating on the walls that the tanks used and latching there with the same magnets. Pathless Journey Buzzpack software suite: Junkerpult maneuver.

"Mark." Arccos' voice grumbled, audibly uncomfortable with the idea of telling Akemi to avoid being shot. Although still only giving him a split second to dodge. The junkers clinging to the inside of the shaft firing heavy anti-tank rounds from their inbuilt multi-use gauss drivers. The same kind of weapon she'd used to shoot Akemi that day on the beach, just loaded with something less constructive. Akemi was given just long enough for a Neko to dodge, any lesser being would probably have been shredded by then.

Crab Tunnel South East (Arccos/Akemi/Corgan/Truffleclub)

Akemi's green plastic jam bazooka continued to spurt out strange effects depending on which of the four buttons were pressed. The first trigger fired the projectiles, and the next two lit up the microwave antenna for some reason. Some kind of wide and narrow projection system?... It was pure chance that one of these beams accidentally crossed paths with the chrome-hued liquid now stuck to one of the tanks, activating the process that turned it into a fireball of chain-reacting plastic explosive.

Armour scorched and eye piece blackened, it did little to penetrate the actual armor of the tank; But it did melt the pins holding the monster's track links together, causing the whole shambling creature to become unstuck from the wall and plummet into the dark pit below.

The fourth button played an 8-bit victory jingle.

Truffleclub didn't really seem to be in pain, but made a point of standing in front of Arccos' automata doll to defend against any more newcomers descending down the tunnel. They didn't have to wait long. The clanking noise of enemy tracks made it difficult to tell how many more were even approaching.

Then, the real battle started. The codebreaker's junkers had enough room to stand two-by-two on the metal wall plate, and could fire much more rapidly, but the junk-tanks that began firing down at them were much larger and heavily armored, slower to reload. Three white lament spiders fell before an enemy was finally disabled in turn.

Understandably, it was not a very good idea to be standing in the middle of that right now.

Crab Tunnel North West (Uso/Alex)

Hitting the walls around the enemy tank didn't seem to do much to the actual tank; The shrapnel just fell downwards. What it did do was break the emergency breaks on the elevator the monster was attached to, causing the whole hunk of metal to come tumbling down with an planet-rumbling impact.

Only problem was, there were more descending down from above it, now that the way was clear again. Perhaps trying to fight an entire factory planet worth of giant enemy crabs on foot wasn't the greatest idea after all.

White Lament

"Alright!!!" Ace jumped through the portal and rolled bringing the finagle to bear and checked his surroundings. "Where is everyone and who needs help?"

Chasing Arccos' Backside

"Yaaaay! My gun 's not useless!" Akemi cheered as he watched his foe plummet into the abyss. When Arccos mentioned him needing to move he immediately began getting ready to leave as he rightly didn't trust her to be careful with his wellbeing. Thankfully he was a pretty agile mewser so he had no problem dealing with the Sheriff cutting things super close. Before she gave her signal he tried to rapid jam zap at least one more enemy arachnid tank so the Lament's robo bros didn't have such a tough time even if they were simply being left to die. "Thank you spider buddies!" he yelled.

As he and the others moved on he sent a camouflaged drone out ahead of them to give Arccos' Codetalker a little more safety. Whatever it saw and passed to him he sent to her and who and whatever else was with them.

Crab Tunnel North West

"Alex, time to collapse this whole thing. Back off and use your cannons to cave in the tunnel leading in from the elevator. We need to seal off this area before we're overrun."

Southeast Crab Tunnel

Corgan was stunned by how quickly things had turned to shit. He quickly lined up a shot at the "head" of one of the tanks and fired, hoping to finally be useful on this insane mission. The place was crowded but he could still see the crab tanks over the smaller junkers.It really highlighted Corgan's need for armor scale weapons, not the crappy guns he had access to. Maybe he would keep this Finagle. He really hoped Truffleclub would be okay, but there really wasn't time to worry.

Crab Tunnel North West
Alex jetted backward in his craft, creating distance sufficient enough to let him open fire with missiles and guns onto the ceiling. The combination of missiles and automatic, high calibre rounds was enough to cause the ceiling to collapse, blocking off the tunnel.
After that task was accomplished, he began to proceed toward the rest of the group.

Portal Room

Despite the distant rumblings of a major gunbattle going on, the room Ace entered was still pretty much untouched. Nobody had bothered exploring or clearing the human-sized passages straight ahead of him, but the rail massive tunnel to his left showed all the signs of a rolling battle, not least a crashed train stuck in a partially caved in exit tunnel. Sounded like all of the action was going on inside the two giant freight elevators, judging from the map the team stole.

Crab Tunnel North West

Alex's missiles caused a giant slide of dust and massive rocks, filling up the adjoining passage. It made one wonder how much more of a beating it was even safe to give this place... Only two routes clear for him and Uso now. Either right into the blue-glowing heart of the complex, or back the way they came.

Crab Tunnel South East

Corgan's deft accuracy allowed the rail rifle to smash the camera-eye of the closest enemy junk tank, an act which no doubt gave the Lament junkers the chance they needed to focus their own fire upon it's tracks. Unfortunately smashing one off the wall just gave the one above it a clear line of fire, which it used to barf up a shotgun-type shell which smashed up several of the friendly junker's legs in return. Akemi's rapid fire had a bit less of an effect perhaps because it was detonating in mid-air now, and not actually smothering the target.

With all other points of entry now blocked, it was no surprise that the enemies were getting all the more intense. The blue glow ahead said that the invaders were close to the central control complex, and there were no more enemies coming from that direction...