RP [Strays] SLUG WAR

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

Mustering Field

The big-slug pulled away slightly from the line of mechs as Joanna and Yamog layed into it, their lasers finding some purchase right up until several macromissiles from Charlotte streamed past and flew right at the slug.

And then cut too early and hit the ground in its path.

"Dud!" Chips shouted at the missiles when they didnt explode, his own origin-made heavy laser punching dead center into the slugs head but only making it wince as it surged forwards at them and back towards Joanna at the front. Showing yet again considerable speed for its size it dug to hind legs into the mud and pushed to launch itself only mere moments after the macromissiles it dragged itself over detonated by the Fairys signal.

Not doing outstanding noticeable damage the slugs legs collapsed out from under it as it scrambled back up and then shifted all its weight over to favor one side as an ugly yellow wound large enough to drive a car into flared with exposed flesh from which chunks of flesh fell. it reared its back up as it did and that was all that was needed as a streak of fire hit it from behind just bellow a large sphincter. Sticking in like the point of a thumbtack the lance held briefly.

And then the tip began to drill. Threaded and sharp, three legs expanded to hold it in place while the drill spun at insane speed and drilled from the angle up and into the slugs backside. Despite only lasting a few second the slug thrashed wildly and even onto its side and began to roll over until the drill was nearly embedded entirely into the slugs anus.

And then, it detonated. Propelling the head, explosive charges, and enough shrapnel to kill a small church precession. The drill head exploded inwards the slug and sent a cone of angry shrapnel for several feet into the monster and created a cavity the sized of a beachball where it detonated. Connecting to the damage from Charlottes missile attack nearly the entire back third of the slug exploded like a popped waterballon and it simple stopped in its tracks, laying on its side as a mouth large enough to take a bite out of any of their mechs flopped open and it moved no more.

"Holy-moly!" Chips shouted. A second heavy laser beam hit the slug but confirming it dead when it didnt so much as twitch. "Did Piggly-Wiggly just blow the back out of that bug?!" He began a mixture of some kind of avian caw mixed with laughter at the result.

"Good job, Chips. But the fight isnt over yet." The Commander fairy announced in all of their comms.

"Clotho, Where are ye?" Chips asked.

"I'm folded under the wall that melted. There is another body being assembled for me at the base but if I disconnect now I wont be able to issue orders until my new body is ready." She answered, the childlike voice of the fairy sounded rather annoyed of having the melted-wax of the wall it had become essentially fold in ontop of her. Unlike any of the wall defenders, the saving grace was she had likely not been burned to death from the intense heat the wall had absorbed that had likely burned to death several thousand armsmen.

"Go ahead, we can mop up from here!" Chips laughed again.

"The bug you just killed isnt even the largest I'm seeing from some of our drones ahead of the city, Chips. And now we have no wall. One of the biggest is at least twice again larger than the one you just killed and is the size of a megashuttle and now we're short a nuke. Prepare to pull back to the base, we'll consolodate and then move for the palace and hold up behind its walls until I can get Lachesis to swing by and send a shuttle to pick us up. The bugs will be too bust rampaging in the city to reach us by then."

There was a dead silence broken only by the sound of screaming and dying men.

"Kinda wanna see the big bug..." Chips mumbled over the radio unanswered before he chimed back in, "We still got the big plan!" He shouted with the tone of somebody who just remembered something important.

"You'll only have one shot. If you fail you will be outside the walls and-" Clotho started before being interupted.

"Never tell me the odds! Stays, over the wall! We got a bigger bug to kill! Peter," Chips grin could be heard in his tone as he called out Prigs current name he assumed. "Stick with us, you're one of mine till this is over!" He shouted as his highwayman strode forwards, the kick of one of its legs sending a slug and two men flying several meters as he strode through the mass of bodies both alive and not as some manged to get out of his way until there was just bugs who couldnt get purchase while his mech was moving. When he reached the wall his mech stepped down on it only for the foot of the machine to sink several feet in the soft crab splooge and its wax-like state as the mech stomped through it and was with a few strides on the other side and back on the ground.

No Mutants Land

The other side of the wall was intense. With less slugs than expected the main hazard was how intimidatingly bring it was from the concentrated coating of star paint for seemingly miles as if the ground had been turned into reflective metal with the bright sun overhead. It was somwhat muted in any of the strays visors and masks.

There were less slugs as they could see. With a several-mile long gap between those on one side of where the nuke had gone off and the distant shimmers of forms distorted by the radiation on the other. And yet one distorted dark shape looked as though the size of a sports theater but was still several miles distant.

"Oh... Yeah I see what she means... If you're with me get ready, I dont care about the smaller ones, leave those for the local ones. Who wants to kill the big one?"

 

[Anno nano]

Charlotte watched with bated breath as she watched the trio of missiles arc over the hordes of bugs between her and the big bug, before the engines cut out and sent them sliding along the ground before coming to a stop right in it's path. "Nice shot Artemis!" The kitsune mutant went to high five her long suffering fairy AI... and promptly smushed the nanomachines making up her representation hologram against the wall of the cockpit. To be fair to her, the energetic mutant was about to apologise, that is before the explosion of all three huge missiles going off at the same time shook the cockpit and had the black haired woman bouncing up and down in her chair in giddy glee. "HAHAHA TAKE THAT YOU UGLY BUG!" She was so distracted in-fact that Artemis ended up having to take control of the LGL turret to avoid them being minced by some of the smaller bugs.

That huge explosion, causing the bug to rear up and be put in prime position for a drill up the ass, truly it was almost enough to bring Charlotte to tears. However there was more bug guts to spill and she was a professional after all, of some sorts at least. "We off to go kill the big bug then boss? Count me in." She radioed in response to Chips's message, the fox girl pushed the control stick forward, jump jets flickered on to launch the scout mech over the melting wall of crab stuff rather than having to climb over it. She waited for the others to make it over the wall, taking a few pot shots at some of the smaller ones whenever they wandered into range.

 

[Hollander]

Prig didn’t see a single moment of the results of the team’s tactics against the big bug. The muzzle flash had been bright, even with the automatic digital dimming of his Lancer’s display screens, and the recoil he’d failed to brace for had pitched his machine onto its back. He’d have been flung out of his seat if he hadn’t been strapped in, but the same couldn’t be said for the contents of the cleaning bucket he’d been holding down with his foot; the now-cold water splashed all over him, and the cockpit quickly started getting that lovely wet-dog smell. Planted on its back, Prig’s mech was sinking several feet into the bug-sludge and mucky soil, and hosts of still-living beasts that he hadn’t crushed were swarming around and over him.

“Holy-moly!” Chips was shouting over the comms. ‘Holy-Moly’ was probably someone else’s name being mis-remembered by the goofy birdman. "Did Piggly-Wiggly just blow the back out of that bug?!” Well… that sounded like success. Prig tuned out the rest as he kicked his Lancer’s legs in the air, to see if he could turn it on its side and get it standing again. The wingless chicken had no arms, so it was all he could think of to do until… “Jump-jets.” came the dour, uninterested reminder of Gunk, his Fairy AI. “Oh. Yeah, please do that.” With a lurching surge (or maybe a surging lurch?), the jumpjets flared to life, boiling the surrounding swamp under Prig as their thrust lifted him to a standing position. Thankfully, Gunk handled the Jump-Jettery digitally, and in a few moments, she would have reason to do so again.

Charlotte (though Prig had no idea who was who) had launched her four-legged Mean Machine up onto the wall; apparently somewhere in all the Chips and Clotho chatter, that had been the order. As Prig’s Lancer took flight, and as a damp sponge detached from the ceiling of his cockpit and plopped in his lap, scaring the daylights out of him, his peripheral vision caught the scene of the big bug’s revolting corpse. That had been some damned good teamwork!

On the wall, Prig joined Charlotte in laying down cover fire for their colleagues, his weaponry lashed out at the crawling monstrosities. The tri-barrel of the Hyper Laser spun with wicked rapidity, unleashing a near-constant stream of noxiously white-azure deathlights. With Gunk’s help, he angled the beams a safe distance away from the other mechs below, trying to clear their paths of the larger bugs out there. The Macro Laser mounted on the other side of his Lancer only popped in from time to time to snipe the littler guys, who could still be a problem from time to time.

Prig took a moment to eyeball the quadrupedal mech next to him. The thing was loaded for bear as far as he could tell, with a weaponized turret attachment on the top, and a pair of what looked like short-range guns on the forward facing mounts. There was something written in yellow on the largest flat surface on the Mean Machine, a phrase, and though bug guts were covering up some of the letters, he could make it out. ‘Long Way Home’. You’ve got that right. he thought to himself.

With Gunk’s help, Prig keyed up a transmission the other mech pilots joining them on the wall, including Charlotte. “Hey, I’m Prig.” he said, trying to sound casual while soaking wet with a sponge in his lap and an accidentally-opened soap bottle releasing bubbles into his cockpit. He hoped his interior cameras weren’t transmitting. “Anybody got ideas for this… even bigger one? I doubt the same trick is going to work here.”

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Even after the giant bug was exploded from the inside, Yamog was still enthralled in the rage of battle, personally running down and ripping apart any creature of a medium size she could physically catch. It was only when the targets began to thin out appreciably did room for sentient thoughts slip back in again, and the red haze drained away from them.

Following Mr.Chip's new directions sluggishly, the pathfinder was clearly taking extreme measures both to billow out the heat build up, and allow it's nanite swarms to recharge.

What the azure mutant found as the layers of adrenaline peeled back was... A gleaming hellscape?

A horizon of rolling hills stained reflective emerald green, complete with shredded trees, quaint little stone walls and imploded cottages.

Words crept in over the radio, refocusing their attentions to a moving form in the distance- Just the stick-figure underside shadow of a blurry mountain. It was like somebody was messing with reality's graphics settings, and turned the bloom all the way up, as a joke.

Who was even talking? An unfamiliar voice. And some kind of static-y, sloshing sound...

<"...Can't shoot it from orbit?..."> Yamog tiredly responded, over the open team coms. <"...Guess the paint is messing with the space guys too, huh...">

 

[club24]

Emma had her mech stood by the others, checking over her starpaint reserves and emptying backup supplies into primary tanks, the drone swarm launched earlier no longer needed was recalled to the hives mounted on her machine to be checked over and recharged if necessary. With the first obstacle dealt with in a well deserved fashion, the Delsaurian couldn't help but feel a little pride and satisfaction at being a part of the team that took on such a monster, with a faint smirk curling up the corners of her scaly mouth.

"Emma, starpaint reserves are still moderate, though I'll be assuming control of finer aim and target acquisition from now on to ensure we don't waste any. Drones are being recharged and we still have plenty of energy cells for the Macro Laser canons. Anything I'm missing?" The fairy known as Onyx enquired while looking at the dino gal housed within the beat-up Fire Ant mech.

The former digger tapped her chin thoughtfully for a moment, keeping an eye on what the others were up to. "Anyone else know if there was starpaint reserves in this base, wall, place? Or if someone here has some they'd be willing to share I'd be mighty appreciative." The dino gal spoke over the comms before the info came through about an even bigger bug out there. Without waiting for an answer Emma shook her head and grit her teeth, sending her mech forwards to back-up the others as they prepared to throw themselves into more danger.

"Good t' meet ya Prig, call me Emma, and I'm not really the ideas type, but if you need anything from me I got half my tank'o starpaint, a bunch of pissed off drones, and tons'a laser ammo."

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Yamog, still woozy-headed, kind of just half-understood what Emma was asking, and looked around the disfigured landscape bleakly.

Without really thinking it through, they summoned another giant claw made of nanites, and almost went to scoop a giant half-dried pile of the star paint goop off of the floor, but stopped themselves, realising that would probably kill all of the nanties for good. She felt kind of sorry for them.

<"...What do you need it for, love-lizard?"> A whispy voice eminated back over the radio, still completely out of breath. <"What's yur plan?">

 

[StrikeWyvernX02S]

"Phew...." The rabbit breathes a sigh of relief once the oversized slug that they have been collectively trying to take down was finally defeated in a rather spectacular fashion as its rear was blown off from within. Though celebration is short as news of more incoming slugs, especially more of the larger ones, spread across the squad. Joanna is worried about her safety since her customized Dynamiteon is missing its canopy.

She reluctantly fires up the mech's custom boosters and brings it over the wall to meet up with the others. They are currently firing shots at any slug that passes by within their range. "Even more huh? it already took everything we had to take down just one of those big slugs..." Ilayd says with a noticeable tone of worry and hopelessness.

Joanna looks over to the horizon ahead, she feels the gentle breeze touch her face through the exposed cockpit as the light reflects off the coat of Starpaint spread across the landscape and makes it shine as if it's painted with chrome.

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

No Mans Land.

"Hrm." A consterned grunt came over the net as the Highwaymans heavy laser fired at a bug several hundred meters out, missing it for the most part.

"Hrngggg" A bit louder this time like the sound of a constipated mutated birdman if anyone had ever heard one.

"Yeah... Nope... Got nothin!" Chips digressed as the line of mechs stared at the concerningly large form even as far away in miles as it was and some time away from them. "Clo, how long would it take to make another nuke?" He asked over the radio, a nearby wasp drone landing on chips cockpit to glare down at him as it gnashed its bladed mandibles.

"From the ship in system about a couple hours." She answered back on the radio, the commander drones body still stuck under clsoe to five hundred degrees of crab excitement made soft and maleable. There was the click and static of chips mic turning on to speak before she cut him off to continue.

"My sisters vessel is currently seventeen hours flight time at her maximum speed. This is not to say for the orbital station and how it would delay her."


"Hrm." Chips responded again, but this time contemplatively followed by a long pause.

"That gives me an idea!" He declared the backround sound over the radio of him hitting something with a soft thud in excitement. "Get Shani on the line she's gonna love this."

Outlands - Four Miles Outside Rogersville

There was a much smaller amount of dead bugs outside the city where the nuke had landed and either evicerated of blown them away leaving a mostly uneventful stroll when the mechs arrived close to ten minutes later as chips, filling the radio with a never-ending spree of chuckles, guffaws, and mischievous snickering led them from the rallying field and due-north as in his words; "They can handle it, dont worry" towards the chaos of the thousands of armsmen still scrambling and dying from those bugs the mechs did not kill off.

Some, close to a few hundred had even ridden out and were slowly catching up as at least a companies worth of some kind of professional looking heady cavalry rode a few miles out and towards them, their white lances gleaming in the radiation even from that distance. Others yet had moved from the wall as well after the mechs had flattened enough of it to move across as they traveled. Some stray armsmen on foot trying to arrange themselves in a formation on the breach that, through their much more advanced optics any of them could see was failing as they rubbed at their eyes or looked to be squinting from the intense glow from the star paint.

And then there was the irregulars. At least nine uncovered wagons loaded with men and women with various pointed instruments pulled by crabs all emblazoned on the backs of their shells with a single large scarlet eye while a lone crab-rider scuttled alongside in the form of the strange nobleman who seemed to run Yamogs fanclub, waving about a spunk sword in multiple directions and in all likelyhood from his posture and gesticulations giving some kind of rousing speech to his soon to be super-cancer ridden compatriots.

None of those groups were anywhere close yet, however. Likely twenty or minutes out while the nearest bugs were casually dispatched with secondary fire they were so scarce. All eyes, however, were on the Big Bug; Much larger than even predicted it was slowly being transfixed into a portfolio as drones flew about it. Much larger than any of them could have guessed the bug was at least a hundred meters long from it's massive jutting maw full of a blender-spiral of teeth the size of any of the mutants bodies, all the way to the nearly ungainly bulk of its body and abdomen that dragged under and behind it like a depressing and terrifying deflated balloon that, even as the drones recorded it had a disgusting, wet looking oval of milky white and yellow plop out of it to lay behind while several dark forms moved within the disgusting egg sack that, from the shadows inside of it likely had dozens of new slugs in it.

The queen as the marker over it on their HUDs now read for all of them and a much smaller one on Joannas helmet and mask was making a slow pace about five or six miles out with only the top half of its back dragging along beyond some hills as large as as it remained just out of sight an indicator of its size.

"So," Chips began, marking a large red arrow icon on a paticular spot several hundred meters ahead of them. "Soon as it reaches there we gotta hold the big slugger there as long as we can till Shani shows up with the plow. Dun wanna spoil the surprise but if it works we're definitely getting our it in the highlights reel of the quarter in review after we get back! "

With that, His highwayman strode forwards and past the marker as it fired another heavy laser at a cluster of bugs.

Over the hilltops several miles away a leg over thirty meters long crested as a head the size of a small building began to pull itself up...

 

[Anno nano]

“I’m Charlotte, nice shot on that big bastard!” Charlotte grinned and nodded over to the mech that had just joined her on the ridge in response, before realising it’s not like they’d be able to see her do it. She scrunched her face up in a moment of immense concentration as she tried to figure out a solution to their little… Or rather, quite big, problem. “Ya think we can drop something big and heavy on it or somethin’? Maybe autopilot a shuttle loaded with bombs right into it? Don’t think we’re killing it with what we have right now.”

Still, thankfully Chips was there to do the thinking for the not particularly tactically minded mutant. “Roger that!” She responded, before jetting off the ridgeline down to follow the larger highwayman. “How long we gotta hold it exactly boss? Dunno if that thing'll stop for any of us” She asked, blowing apart a bug with a shot from the turret mounted LGL as she did so. So far it was relatively easy going, but that big bastard in the distance was only looking bigger by the second as she advanced.

 

[Hollander]

Prig heard the praise over comms, and he remained thrilled that there wasn't a video feed to show his water-soaked wolf-face grinning stupidly at Charlotte's compliment. It'd be even worse if there was an olfactory comms too; wet-dog in a cramped cockpit wasn't always a pleasant 'stank' for most species.

Chips had expressed some kind of plan, and Prig, being as fresh as a daisy to this whole thing, understood less than a quarter of what the goal was. Luckily there was a big red arrow brought on his map which made things a lot easier to understand.

The wolf followed Charlotte's lead, angling his Lancer and popping off his jumpjets in her wake. As he was moving, just using the Hyper Laser and sending a wild barrage into the enemy seemed like the smartest move; targeted fire with the Macro laser probably wouldn't go anywhere terribly useful.

 

[StrikeWyvernX02S]

"That size is insane! how are we even going to penetrate its flesh?!" Ilayd blurted out while Joanna is wide-eyed at the data of the Queen that she just received, both in surprise and shock. But that moment won't last long as the two hear Chip's orders to hold the Queen once it reaches a certain point. As soon as Chips finishes his sentence, Joanna notices his Highwayman advance forward, with Charlotte jetting behind him, and soon Chips just zipping along them.

Joanna's modified Dynamiteon dashes ahead just behind them, popping shots at any slug that get within range with the appropriate weapon for that range. Her eyes soon wander off to the large slug that is approaching them from a distance as the wind blows at her face through the open canopy, it won't be long until they make contact with it.

 

[Commissar Farzi]

Luk attempted to swing his mech around-at least as much as someone of his limited intelligence could anyways-jerking the control stick to the side as Wayfinder triggered what was left of his Dynamiteon's missiles into the smaller bugs around them-it was an attempt to expend anything that could potentially go boom; why she'd let that tech talk her into installing this big plasma cannon-overheated the mech like crazy. Watching as the giant bug began to crest the hill-she began to run the calculations needed to keep her pilot alive.

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

NML

"The shuttle? Yeah that's the plan!" Chips shouted over the radio, said shuttle several kilometers away outside the city and around the wall but the recent forray there enough to jog any of their memories of the makesfit plow the strays had been trying to affix to it made out of its own outer hull and to joanna especially from her salvaging the work they had been doing to get the ship and its thrusters back on line.

Back online without a computer core...

The ship would essentially be flying on manual and flat on the ground scraping and tearing at its hull. It didn't take a genius level mutant to know that if it hit too uneven terrain the ship would likely cartwheel and kill whoever was on board.

Shani's at the ship.

Chips words from almost an hour before rang to some as the picture of the mad mutant at the helm making the stakes all the more precarious.

The bugs were close as evident of the Highwayman still being well in range of a lot of small slugs, but the big one was at least thrice out of range and at its size hard to determine its speed. They would have to keep it well within the goal-line to have any chance of the ship being able to hit it. Too far past it or too far away and the ship, almost certainly unable to turn to any effective degree, would just zip off past it and break up once it hit some of the hills a few kilometers out.

It would be a tough fight, but not unwinnable with the addition of some mutant zeal and a liberal application of ordinance and firepower!

Pushed back or outright killed from the nuke and superheated star paint there were hardly any slugs yet, but just short of the ground being covered in a carpet of various off-shade colors of six-legged slugs was now closing at incredible speed and, in mere moments, would be on the mechs as well for the first hurdle but this time without the fodder of a few thousand armsmen in front of them to take the beasts attention.

They had at most themselves, several lances worth of heavy cavalry still kicking up dirt to catch up and were now making a wide arc to the side to do something cavalry did, and several wagons and crab riders still a time away. With batteries at roughly 60% across the board for most weapons the real fight was about to begin.

And to top it all off, looking as though the normal bugs size compared to the mechs, there was now at least seven of the big-but-not-that-big-bugs of which they had already killed pulling at the heels of the biggest bug on the planet thus far.

"Man, Wish we had a nuke!" Chips cried out, with no tone of irony as the first wave of small slugs (still the size of a horse!) focussed in on the mechs and charged to meet them.

 

[Anno nano]

"If only huh?..." Charlotte sighed in response, a nuke would definitely solve a lot of their problems, but for now though... "I'm straight outta my big missiles so don't think I can do another bug flippin' trick." She paused to fire off one of the smaller but still quite substantial cluster missiles off the rack on top of her mech into a group of the smaller bugs. "Can run distraction duty though, if anyone's got a bright idea to actually kill the big bastards?"

With that, Charlotte started on her own movement to arc off to the side of their main concentration of mechs, not as far out as the cav, but enough to build a bit of distance. With a loud bark of gunfire she started liberally applying the quartet of close range weapons on her mech to the smaller bugs trying to swarm towards their group, to hopefully free the big guns to go after those bigger overgrown slugs.

 

[club24]

<"I'm down to half a tank is all, plan hasn't changed for me, still just gonna spray em all and stomp on what's left!"> Emma replied to Yamog while continuing to follow along with the group, she couldn't even pretend to keep up tactically right now but it hardly mattered when she could shoot in any direction and hit something.

Pulling her Fire Ant up alongside Charlotte the Delsaurian started indiscriminately firing her macro-laser at whichever bugs happened to be nearest at a given time to assist with the attrition efforts.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Mind swimming, but too demented and euphoric after their bout of pseudo-religious frenzy to experience good, honest human despair... Yamog closed their eye for a moment, just to focus on the kree kree kree~ of the approaching bugs, over the prevailing clang-clong of her comrade's mechanical footsteps...

It wasn't like it was really possible to make a tactical prediction of the situation, given that Mr.Chips' flair for the dramatic really stopped any plans or explanations. There was just a turbulent frenzy of pain and gunfire, until the action was over, really.

But that didn't mean the spider couldn't entertain a daydream or two.

"Hurm, think it's like a mothership, where blowing up the big one will make all the little ones die, Miss Charlofox?" Yamog spoke with a pervasive calm, apart from the occasional 'oof' when her mech strode into a small bump or shell hole, and shook even more wildly in it's stride. "Guess we really could have done with some of those science magicians, huh..."

There was a thundercrack as the last of her pathfinder's 4 medium missile pods struck an oversized bug in the face at near point blank, though she was too busy dodging and speeding off to record if the impact actually killed it. That left her with just the three devil's doorbell rockets remaining, plus the eight macro lasers.

"Maybe if we follow the ship, we can make it to the big beastie?... Punch a hole in the carapace and... Like, you know, climb on down inside?..." Okay, it had evolved to video game logic now. But to be fair, they had to do something drastic. "Roger Chips Sir... Pierogi Doggleton... an' the honourable mister Luk... You think your beam guns could even cut into something like that?..."

 

[Hollander]

Charlotte had put out the request for ideas, but despite his best efforts to shake some thoughts out of his brain, Prig was coming up blank. She'd offered to run 'distraction duty', and that was a fine idea...

Through his screens, he tried to get a look at this newest mech, which his Fairy identified as a 'Fire Ant'. His furry face had screwed up into a frown, thinking the mech wasn't quite ant-like. It was bipedal, upright, and it had a couple of fat green tanks on the ba-.... "Ahhh. Got it. Kind of a pyro thing. Okay, cool." he said aloud, and not over the comms system, as far as he could be sure. Maybe those tanks could be thrown, blown up from a distance? It'd leave them without their primary weapon but... If it 'won the day', did it matter?

The scary whack-job mech joined them, then, and a creepy voice spoke out over the comms. Figuring himself to be... Pierogi Doggleton? He keyed up his comms to reply.

"This mech's gun can drill a pretty good hole. Maybe..." He looked to the green tanks on the back of the Fire Ant once again, and because he had no arms on his mech, he tried to 'gesture' with one of his feet. "If those... tanks detach on your Fire Ant? If they do, I could make a hole in one of those bugs. We get a tank into it, somehow, shoot the tank, boom? That might open the bug up big enough for one or more of us to get inside and wreck some guts."

 

[Commissar Farzi]

Luk blinked having heard his name and given a response of 'Dunno...', and Wayfinder sighed. "We've got a plasma shotgun and hyper lasers-worse case scenario we can always do what we did to that merc we fought-jump on it and then let loose with both our guns." While she enjoyed working with Luk-and she could usually guide him with food provided he didn't try to eat the joystick; again-his limited intelligence did leave something to be desired.

Still, he was considerably easier to work with than her last pilot...they'd spent a week scrubbing him out of his mech.

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

"Tanks?" Chips demanded, the shilhouette of him in his cockpit straining to look behind and to the side as his masked face pressed to the transparent durrandium, looking in Luks direction.

"Well crack my beak! Ye right on that one, Pokie! Aint nothing ever expecting to be set on fire so it's gotta work! After all, how do you evolve to not be on fire if you cant survive it enough to get that evolutionary perk stuff?" Chips howled, the sound of a slap of some kind in the audio despite the fact they couldn't see him slap his knee.

"How much we-" He started again and the paused.

"Snacks says we ain't got enough to light it up real good and without something to catch on it might not stay alight. An' I don't think these locals have a fuel pump anywhere near... Fuel..." Chips murmured the last part to himself into a prolonged moment of silence before continuing.


"It's gonna be a stretch. Even over what we already got but I need two of ye, maybe more, to go divert to the ship. King fuck-nuts ship we just about pulled half the hull of of but here's the important part; It was a fuel tanker. Rogers been using that to fuel his ship all this time to keep the power on for the distress signal we picked up for this job.

Also for the water heater for the shower, and the viewing screen if the metadata for all the Yearning For Yui episodes view counts are accurate. But it's gotta have a few thousand gallons left. The plan was to keep the big bug in one place and then ram it and turn on the transponder and hope the big laser in orbit will shoot it down this way but we never turned it on to see if that would work anyhow.

Go to the ship and tell Shani the plans changed. Kick whatever tap they got in that thing and send her our way blazin. If that don't light up the big bugger we can always just let it into town and set that on fire! Some of us can hold here in the meantime and try to hold em down~"

Chips fired his heavy laser at several kilometers distance, the beam would have otherwise considered missing were it not for the massive target that seemingly didn't notice as Yamogs question was answered after he fired his heavies weapon.

"Said the thing can break starship hull..." Chips cursed over the comms as he followed up her other suggestion of trying to do something reckless that they might have seen on a recent movie on the flight to the system about giant fictional ice worms and the scantily clad heroine who surfed atop them.

Outside of his mech, The speakers on Chips highwayman kicked to life as his Fairy chose a song she claimed was random yet was at least the 17th most played song she had in her library.

As it stomped forwards heavily, a slug popped underfoot and another was kicked off by the momentum as the Highwaymans three hyper lasers kicked on in unison and started flash-boiling and then popping bugs before it.

Over the comms followed a series of squawks, caws, and whoops.

"Get a move on, strays!"

 

[Anno nano]

"Charlo..fox?" Charlotte let out a short laugh at the rather strange nickname, as she kept up with her firing at anything close enough to bother their small group that her weapons could deal with to let the bigger guns focus on the bigger bugs. The ideas over the radio ranged from sensible but difficult to well, terrifying; Artemis almost broke concentration on her work keeping the LGL turret stable at the mention of going inside that huge thing! So it was a great relief to the fairy that Chips brought up an alternate plan that didn't involve doing invasive surgery with a mech.

"W...we're in one of the faster mechs in the lance so I think we should go and report the new plan!" Artemis suggested, absolutely NOT because it would mean they got to leave the frontline and turn back to do whatever needed to be done to turn that rust bucket into a bomb. No, this was entirely a calculation based on the max speed of the various mechs over uneven terrain... Well, it helped that it was true as well of course, considering the squat scout mech was designed to go fast. "Ya hear that? Reckon this ol' girl can get back to Shani pretty quick so i'll go, think maybe Joanna should join me?" After all it didn't take a tactical genius, and Charlotte definitely wasn't one, to work out that if a couple of people would go back; it'd make the most sense for Joanna to be one of them, considering the state of her mech.