"I remember it like it was yesterday. The 1st Genyosha and Ryuken-Ichi Corps had won a major victory on Ursa Prime over the numerically superior Sakkras. Celebrations were going off all over the Confederation, but we knew better. We knew that the war was far from over. Admirals Keele and Xeraux had stepped up their campaign against the Sakkran Fleets with an all-out assault on the Mrrshan systems of Guardias and Vox. Admiral Ruzhyo, meanwhile was moving to meet with another allied fleet to begin an assault on the Cygni Sector. It seemed that we had the Jaaq'tah on the run, but there was still much to be done on our side of the table. An assault on a Sakkran transport ship carrying reinforcements to the moon Centares IV orbiting Vox III was just another operation the high brass wanted done. We didn't ask questions, we simply did our jobs..."
- Lieutenant Commander Xero Hokusha
A Bulrathi strike cruiser was huge by Human proportions, but then again, so were the Bulrathi. The Bulrathi were basically highly intelligent bears - and they were certainly formidable in combat. The smallest Bulrathi Xero Hokusha had ever seen was eight feet tall and his thumb probably had the circumfrence of Xero's waist. He'd seen the ferocity of the Bulrathi in combat on Ursa Prime and he was glad he was on their side.
Xero reclined back in his seat, which was more like a bed for him considering the immense size of it. At least he'd get to relax before he'd have to storm a @#%$ lizard ship. Just as Xero was starting to get comfortable and nod off, he caught the movement of a slender human female officer entering the deck flanked by muscular brute.
"Alicia, Ashton," said Xero, diverting his wandering attentions towards his comrades. "What's up?"
"That's Commander Clark to you, Lieutenant," said Alicia sharply. Alicia Clark was the new commander of the NDI's elite Orion Team; the first female to ever be placed in such a position. Already, she was defensive, knowing that most of the men underneath her command would resent her position over them. To some, she was just a pretty face the Commander-in-Chief put in a high position -- probably in exchange for some 'favors.' While none were actually bold enough to express this opinion, it was almost common consensus.
Ashton DeGaulle was her second-in-command and had been passed over for the command job but promoted over Xero -- who had seniority over both officers. One would think that Xero would be pretty resentful, but when one put it all in perspective, Xero really failed to give a damn.
"We're approaching the jump point to the Vox system shortly so I suggest that you suit up, Xero," said Ashton, his rigid military stance making him look like he literally had a stick up his rear. Xero wanted to laugh, but then again, that's what happened to you when you were originally from the ATAC. In the Special Forces, things weren't so strict and you had a lot of leeway in your everyday operations.
"Eh....very well," said Xero, standing up from his position and jumping down from the 'chair.' He walked past his superior officers and headed towards the locker room assigned to the Human operatives on the cruiser.
"Y'know, Lucy, after this war is all finished, we should really hook up, 'cause y'know, we just put our lives on the line. Sort of after World War II, y'know? The baby boom? Except I really don't want any kids, but we can still do the damn thang, you know what I'm sayin'?" said Xero half-joking, half-seriously.
Lieutenant Lucia Amariles glanced over to Xero with an annoyed stare and shook her head. "You never give up, do you?"
"Well, no, that's not in the job description," said Xero, a coy grin creeping across his face. "But seriously though, I've been trying to get you to go on a date with me for the past two years and no dice. What's the deal?"
"I told you; I don't date co-workers," said Lucy, checking her pulse rifle for a final time before slinging it over her shoulder. The rifle normally weighed in excess of 30 pounds, but with the added strength of the power armor, she wielded the weapon like it was lightweight.
"We're not co-workers; we're comrades. We depend on each other for survival daily," said Xero, deciding to forego the CR-13 pulse rifle in favor of his trusty saber and hyper-velocity disc launcher. "I thought we had something special, Lucy."
"We do, Xero - just not like that. Besides, you're not all that cute anyway," replied Lucy, taking a little jab at Xero.
"...that's cold, girl. Just...hurt my emotional," said Xero, pretending to be hurt by Lucy's comments.
"Would you knock it off already, Xero?" said Lieutenant Satoshi Maenaka, holstering twin Predator sidearms. "We've got a job to do."
"You know, if you learned to live a little on your off-time, Satoshi, you wouldn't be so uptight," said Xero in response, crossing his arms over his armored chest.
"You don't take anything seriously," said Satoshi, simply removing himself from the room before he got into a verbal confrontation with Xero.
Xero glanced back to Lucy. "He's kidding, right? I'm the most serious son-of-a-bitch around here."
"Well, at least you're good at your job despite all of it," said Lucy, heading towards the door.
"Whatever," said Xero, following after his partner.
"We have multiple sensor contacts, sir - there's the target warship and her escorts," said the radar-intercept officer onboard the Alkari Warbird-class Destroyer, Skylord.
The sleek Alkari destroyer was moving under protection of its high-end stealth systems and was flanked by six smaller frigates that were armed to the teeth with high-powered plasma cannons.
"Where is the position of the Bulrathi strike cruiser?" asked the Alkari ship captain.
"She's in position sir, hiding in the EMS wake of an asteroid, she's waiting on our signal."
"Very well, commence attack."
The Sakkran transport and her escorts were alerted the minute the Skylord and her escorts turned on their active sensors, but to tell the truth, they had been caught completely by surprise. Three enemy frigates were totally wiped out as plasma beams sliced through the warships like a hot knife through butter. The Skylord suddenly unleashed a devastating volley of proton torpedoes, which took down another enemy destroyer. While the remaining enemy transports began to move into position to counterstrike, the Bulrathi strike cruiser suddenly came to life. Sub-light engines quickly accelerated the ship as she appeared on the convoy's flank, Firestorm cannons blazing to keep away any enemy vessel who would try to shoot at her. As the suppressive fire was being laid down, the cruiser quickly maneuvered itself onto a collission course with the enemy transport.
"Impact in 75 seconds!" said Commander Alicia Clark, holding the CR-13 pulse rifle in her right hand while holding onto the support rail with her left. Xero, Lucy, Ashton, and Satoshi were also standing in their ready positions. They could feel the ship shake as enemy point-defense weapons crashed into her deflector shields, but with their full power concentrated forward, it was going to be hard to penetrate. In any case, the rugged Bulrathi strike cruisers were especially designed to ram enemy ships - which meant they could take a tremendous amount of punishment already.
As the cruiser plowed into the starboard side of the transport, the members of the Orion Team held on as tightly as they could to maintain their own balance. They could hear the shredding of enemy armor to the specially designed prow and once all forward motion ceased, the prow opened up, revealing the inside of the mangled starship to the special forces team.
"Let's move!" said Ashton, immediately moving forward and setting himself as the pointman. He swept the area with his armor's sensors and then turned back to his teammates, motioning with his left hand 'all clear.'
Alicia moved forward next behind Ashton, followed by Xero and Lucy, and then Satoshi, who was acting as the rear guard. They could hear the Sakkran sirens going off indicating a major hull brech and yells in the Sakkran language that they couldn't understand.
For the next three minutes, they moved swiftly through the narrow coordioors, coming across no enemy resistance. That swiftly changed less than half a minute later as a squad of Sakkran marines appeared and began firing fiery discs of plasma from their rifles.
"I've got point, cover me!" said Xero, darting forward and literally running upon the walls as he reached for his trusty beam saber. As the violet flare of particles illuminated the darkened cooridoor, Xero quickly dispatched the four serpentine marines in a matter of seconds, his directional pulse sensors sweeping the cooridoor ahead of them for additional targets. Just as he was about to give the all clear signal, he suddenly felt a near painful ping in his head. Acting on sheer instinct alone, he did a combat roll forward and turned around just as two plasma blasts ripped down from the ceiling right where he was standing. Six other Sakkran marines dropped down from the deck began firing. Xero maneuvered out of the way of a barrage of plasma discs and blocked several others with his saber.
"Damnit!" said Alicia, dropping to a knee and placing three well-placed pulse rifle shots into the Sakkran marine's head, watching him drop as if his legs had been taken out from underneath him. Ashton and Lucy were laying down a good line of suppressive fire while Satoshi moved forward under their cover fire. Satoshi drew both Predators and began firing as he charged. The high-velocity sabot rounds chewed through two Sakkran marines quickly, sending them to the ground - not dead, but certainly on their way.
"We've got to end this quickly, take cover!" said Xero, launching an explosive disc grenade from his wrist launcher that exploded directly in front of the marines that were firing at him. The ensuing blast knocked Xero a good 15 feet backwards and filled the entire cooridoor with debris. As the smoke cleared, the rest of the team moved forward, their deflector shields protecting them from the flying shrapnel. The Sakkran marines were not so lucky.
"Where's the objective?!" asked Satoshi, reloading his guns.
"Deck Three. We're on deck eight, which means we're gonna have to go down," said Alicia, looking at the tactical display on the interior of her helmet.
"More like blast our way down," said Ashton.
"I'm on it!" said Lucy, removing two discs from her utility belt and placing one on the ground and the other 20 feet away from the other one. After calibrating the explosion yield, she motioned for her teammates to haul ass. The other members of the team ran to the opposite ends of the cooridoor as the timers on the disc explosives began to count down. The first thing they saw was a dramatic electromagnetic shearing effect followed by a thunderous plasma detonation that was directed downward. While the debris was still in the air, the Orion Team moved forward, utilizing their sophisticated sensors to see through the smoke.
"The descent is nearly 60 meters down, so use your thrusters to cushion your fall!!" said Alicia, leaping into the massive holes blasted by Lucy's explosives. Ashton and Satoshi followed her down one hole while Xero and Lucy took the other.
"I'm detecting no lifeforms!" said Xero, landing on the ground and brandishing his saber with both hands. His sensors swept the entire EM spectrum but found nothing, but he didn't trust it initially.
Lucy looked around until she found the exact cooridoor she was looking for. "There it is! It leads to the primary space fold cluster!"
"Alicia, we've found it!" said Xero over the comm-link, moving cautiously towards the desired destination alongside Lucy.
"what's your position?"
"We're about....75 meters to your left!"
"Alright, we're co--"
The comm-link was suddenly filled with sounds of gunfire. Xero clenched his teeth and started running towards Alicia's position alongside Lucy. "We're coming to you instead!"
Time seemed to move in slow motion as Alicia Clark strafed across the deck as fast as her power armor augmented legs could move her. Plasma discs moved past her so close that she could literally feel the millions of degrees of heat they radiated. She activated her rifle's 40mm grenade launcher and began to fire wildly at her attackers, the sounds of rapid explosions filling her ears. Ashton and Satoshi were taking cover behind a fallen bulkhead and laying down a line of suppressive fire so that Alicia could move to safety.
"Jesus, how many of them are there?!" said Ashton, reloading the E-clip to his pulse rifle.
"20....30, who knows?!" said Satoshi.
Alicia eventually made it to the position of cover, but now the enemy was getting bold and was actually starting to advance upon their position.
"@#%$, here they come!" said Ashton, rising up and firing his rifle in full-auto mode, trying to get as many as he could.
Seconds later, multiple red beams cut across the room and six Sakkran marines quickly fell to their deaths in pieces. Just as the enemy's attention focused to the newcomer, explosive charges went off and cut down another dozen enemy attackers.
"The calvary has arrived," said Lucy, plunging her armor's forearm-mounted vibro-blade into the chest of a charging marine and kicking him away.
Xero cut two more marines down to size before the others began to retreat to regroup their own position. They'd be back and next time the numbers would be three times that of the first.
"We've got to hurry! Get to that space fold cluster and take her out!" said Alicia, not wasting anytime and heading towards the position already found by Lucy and Xero. This time, the road to victory seemed more like the road to perdition as enemy marines began to flood the third deck and they were intent on taking out the Nerimian team at all costs.
"You guys go ahead, I'll handle this!" said Xero, a serious look coming on his face for the first time. "Go!"
Alicia started to protest but Ashton put a hand on her shoulder. "C'mon! Xero knows what he's doing!"
As the rest of the Orion Team made a mad dash for the fold cluster, Xero stood his ground, an omnious red glow starting to surround his body as enemy fire was starting to concentrate on him. As time passed, the plasma discs that were flying his way started to reflect off the psi-field generated by his powered armor suit. A piercing sound began to fill up the entire deck as psionic energy began to radiate outwards from Xero's body.
"C'mon....you....BASTARDS!!!" screamed Xero, the endless barrages from plasma discs suddenly slowing down to a crawl. Xero suddenly shot forward like a bullet, coming upon an enemy Sakkran marine and splitting him down the middle with his beam saber. His periphreal vision caught another group of marines coming up on his right and without thinking, he turned and fired a disc grenade from his arm, the explosion catching his opponents point blank with a fragmentation explosion. He moved seamlessly from one action to another, slicing through a Sakkra's arm with one blow and swiftly spinning around to remove the head of another marine.
An entire Sakkran platoon was reduced to a bloody mass of body parts in less than a minute and there were more willing to lose their lives to Xero's blade.
"You have no idea who you are @#%$ with!" said Xero, rushing directly into the middle of his enemies, quickly dissapearing into the mass of enemy soliders.
The sound of Sakkran soliders dropping like flies outside was even more rattling than the random explosions and rapid plasma rifle fire. Despite all of that, Lucy Amariles was working feverishly to finish the explosive charge that would destroy the ship's space fold cluster.
"How far along are we, Lucy?" said Alicia, standing guard to the cluster's entrance.
"...30 minutes tops!" said Lucy, doing the final calibrations for the explosive charge. A half minute seemed like half an hour, but as quickly as she could, it was over. "Done! We have 5 minutes!"
"Alright, let's move! Leading the charge!" said Ashton, coming out the door with his pulse rifle firing rapid energy pulses. Satoshi rushed out the door past Ashton searching for targets but he couldn't find anything. The entire deck was cleared, bodies of Sakkran soliders literally piled four or five high.
"...what the hell...." said Alicia, looking around at the carnage. "Xero?!"
Xero stood in the center of it all, red bolts of electromagnetic energy surging along his armor as he was breathing heavily. As the blade on his saber faded, Xero dropped to his knees, chuckling somewhat. "Let's get the hell out of here...."
"Jesus Xero, don't you think you overdid it?" asked Lucy, running over to her partner and helping him to his feet.
"Maybe just a little...." said Xero weakly. The amount of energy expent here was a direct result of him increasing his metabolism to the point that he nearly used up all of his internal energy stores -- to the point that his body had begun to feed upon his own muscle mass.
"This is Orion Team, the explosive charge is set, we are ready for extraction!" said Alicia over the communications network.
We were told the mission was to destroy the enemy transport, which seemed utterly pointless to me, especially since we lost several allied warships for no reason. I later found out that transport had a captured Mrrshan Admiral onboard and that Special Operations Group Delta was sent in to retrieve him while we drew the majority of the enemy fire. By us destroying the warship, we made it seem as if the Mrrshan Admiral was killed even though Delta Team extracted him. Personally, I felt insulted that we were used as a diversionary measure while Delta Team got kudos for saving the Admiral. Maybe it's just my ego talking...
"War is a fundamental part of man's existence; it is the benchmark by which we define our history and culture. Peace, while an admirable ideal, goes against everything we as a people stand for. War may indeed be hell, but for some of us, it may very well be the only path to heaven...â€
- Lieutenant Commander Xero Hokusha
A Bulrathi strike cruiser was huge by Human proportions, but then again, so were the Bulrathi. The Bulrathi were basically highly intelligent bears - and they were certainly formidable in combat. The smallest Bulrathi Xero Hokusha had ever seen was eight feet tall and his thumb probably had the circumfrence of Xero's waist. He'd seen the ferocity of the Bulrathi in combat on Ursa Prime and he was glad he was on their side.
Xero reclined back in his seat, which was more like a bed for him considering the immense size of it. At least he'd get to relax before he'd have to storm a @#%$ lizard ship. Just as Xero was starting to get comfortable and nod off, he caught the movement of a slender human female officer entering the deck flanked by muscular brute.
"Alicia, Ashton," said Xero, diverting his wandering attentions towards his comrades. "What's up?"
"That's Commander Clark to you, Lieutenant," said Alicia sharply. Alicia Clark was the new commander of the NDI's elite Orion Team; the first female to ever be placed in such a position. Already, she was defensive, knowing that most of the men underneath her command would resent her position over them. To some, she was just a pretty face the Commander-in-Chief put in a high position -- probably in exchange for some 'favors.' While none were actually bold enough to express this opinion, it was almost common consensus.
Ashton DeGaulle was her second-in-command and had been passed over for the command job but promoted over Xero -- who had seniority over both officers. One would think that Xero would be pretty resentful, but when one put it all in perspective, Xero really failed to give a damn.
"We're approaching the jump point to the Vox system shortly so I suggest that you suit up, Xero," said Ashton, his rigid military stance making him look like he literally had a stick up his rear. Xero wanted to laugh, but then again, that's what happened to you when you were originally from the ATAC. In the Special Forces, things weren't so strict and you had a lot of leeway in your everyday operations.
"Eh....very well," said Xero, standing up from his position and jumping down from the 'chair.' He walked past his superior officers and headed towards the locker room assigned to the Human operatives on the cruiser.
"Y'know, Lucy, after this war is all finished, we should really hook up, 'cause y'know, we just put our lives on the line. Sort of after World War II, y'know? The baby boom? Except I really don't want any kids, but we can still do the damn thang, you know what I'm sayin'?" said Xero half-joking, half-seriously.
Lieutenant Lucia Amariles glanced over to Xero with an annoyed stare and shook her head. "You never give up, do you?"
"Well, no, that's not in the job description," said Xero, a coy grin creeping across his face. "But seriously though, I've been trying to get you to go on a date with me for the past two years and no dice. What's the deal?"
"I told you; I don't date co-workers," said Lucy, checking her pulse rifle for a final time before slinging it over her shoulder. The rifle normally weighed in excess of 30 pounds, but with the added strength of the power armor, she wielded the weapon like it was lightweight.
"We're not co-workers; we're comrades. We depend on each other for survival daily," said Xero, deciding to forego the CR-13 pulse rifle in favor of his trusty saber and hyper-velocity disc launcher. "I thought we had something special, Lucy."
"We do, Xero - just not like that. Besides, you're not all that cute anyway," replied Lucy, taking a little jab at Xero.
"...that's cold, girl. Just...hurt my emotional," said Xero, pretending to be hurt by Lucy's comments.
"Would you knock it off already, Xero?" said Lieutenant Satoshi Maenaka, holstering twin Predator sidearms. "We've got a job to do."
"You know, if you learned to live a little on your off-time, Satoshi, you wouldn't be so uptight," said Xero in response, crossing his arms over his armored chest.
"You don't take anything seriously," said Satoshi, simply removing himself from the room before he got into a verbal confrontation with Xero.
Xero glanced back to Lucy. "He's kidding, right? I'm the most serious son-of-a-bitch around here."
"Well, at least you're good at your job despite all of it," said Lucy, heading towards the door.
"Whatever," said Xero, following after his partner.
"We have multiple sensor contacts, sir - there's the target warship and her escorts," said the radar-intercept officer onboard the Alkari Warbird-class Destroyer, Skylord.
The sleek Alkari destroyer was moving under protection of its high-end stealth systems and was flanked by six smaller frigates that were armed to the teeth with high-powered plasma cannons.
"Where is the position of the Bulrathi strike cruiser?" asked the Alkari ship captain.
"She's in position sir, hiding in the EMS wake of an asteroid, she's waiting on our signal."
"Very well, commence attack."
The Sakkran transport and her escorts were alerted the minute the Skylord and her escorts turned on their active sensors, but to tell the truth, they had been caught completely by surprise. Three enemy frigates were totally wiped out as plasma beams sliced through the warships like a hot knife through butter. The Skylord suddenly unleashed a devastating volley of proton torpedoes, which took down another enemy destroyer. While the remaining enemy transports began to move into position to counterstrike, the Bulrathi strike cruiser suddenly came to life. Sub-light engines quickly accelerated the ship as she appeared on the convoy's flank, Firestorm cannons blazing to keep away any enemy vessel who would try to shoot at her. As the suppressive fire was being laid down, the cruiser quickly maneuvered itself onto a collission course with the enemy transport.
"Impact in 75 seconds!" said Commander Alicia Clark, holding the CR-13 pulse rifle in her right hand while holding onto the support rail with her left. Xero, Lucy, Ashton, and Satoshi were also standing in their ready positions. They could feel the ship shake as enemy point-defense weapons crashed into her deflector shields, but with their full power concentrated forward, it was going to be hard to penetrate. In any case, the rugged Bulrathi strike cruisers were especially designed to ram enemy ships - which meant they could take a tremendous amount of punishment already.
As the cruiser plowed into the starboard side of the transport, the members of the Orion Team held on as tightly as they could to maintain their own balance. They could hear the shredding of enemy armor to the specially designed prow and once all forward motion ceased, the prow opened up, revealing the inside of the mangled starship to the special forces team.
"Let's move!" said Ashton, immediately moving forward and setting himself as the pointman. He swept the area with his armor's sensors and then turned back to his teammates, motioning with his left hand 'all clear.'
Alicia moved forward next behind Ashton, followed by Xero and Lucy, and then Satoshi, who was acting as the rear guard. They could hear the Sakkran sirens going off indicating a major hull brech and yells in the Sakkran language that they couldn't understand.
For the next three minutes, they moved swiftly through the narrow coordioors, coming across no enemy resistance. That swiftly changed less than half a minute later as a squad of Sakkran marines appeared and began firing fiery discs of plasma from their rifles.
"I've got point, cover me!" said Xero, darting forward and literally running upon the walls as he reached for his trusty beam saber. As the violet flare of particles illuminated the darkened cooridoor, Xero quickly dispatched the four serpentine marines in a matter of seconds, his directional pulse sensors sweeping the cooridoor ahead of them for additional targets. Just as he was about to give the all clear signal, he suddenly felt a near painful ping in his head. Acting on sheer instinct alone, he did a combat roll forward and turned around just as two plasma blasts ripped down from the ceiling right where he was standing. Six other Sakkran marines dropped down from the deck began firing. Xero maneuvered out of the way of a barrage of plasma discs and blocked several others with his saber.
"Damnit!" said Alicia, dropping to a knee and placing three well-placed pulse rifle shots into the Sakkran marine's head, watching him drop as if his legs had been taken out from underneath him. Ashton and Lucy were laying down a good line of suppressive fire while Satoshi moved forward under their cover fire. Satoshi drew both Predators and began firing as he charged. The high-velocity sabot rounds chewed through two Sakkran marines quickly, sending them to the ground - not dead, but certainly on their way.
"We've got to end this quickly, take cover!" said Xero, launching an explosive disc grenade from his wrist launcher that exploded directly in front of the marines that were firing at him. The ensuing blast knocked Xero a good 15 feet backwards and filled the entire cooridoor with debris. As the smoke cleared, the rest of the team moved forward, their deflector shields protecting them from the flying shrapnel. The Sakkran marines were not so lucky.
"Where's the objective?!" asked Satoshi, reloading his guns.
"Deck Three. We're on deck eight, which means we're gonna have to go down," said Alicia, looking at the tactical display on the interior of her helmet.
"More like blast our way down," said Ashton.
"I'm on it!" said Lucy, removing two discs from her utility belt and placing one on the ground and the other 20 feet away from the other one. After calibrating the explosion yield, she motioned for her teammates to haul ass. The other members of the team ran to the opposite ends of the cooridoor as the timers on the disc explosives began to count down. The first thing they saw was a dramatic electromagnetic shearing effect followed by a thunderous plasma detonation that was directed downward. While the debris was still in the air, the Orion Team moved forward, utilizing their sophisticated sensors to see through the smoke.
"The descent is nearly 60 meters down, so use your thrusters to cushion your fall!!" said Alicia, leaping into the massive holes blasted by Lucy's explosives. Ashton and Satoshi followed her down one hole while Xero and Lucy took the other.
"I'm detecting no lifeforms!" said Xero, landing on the ground and brandishing his saber with both hands. His sensors swept the entire EM spectrum but found nothing, but he didn't trust it initially.
Lucy looked around until she found the exact cooridoor she was looking for. "There it is! It leads to the primary space fold cluster!"
"Alicia, we've found it!" said Xero over the comm-link, moving cautiously towards the desired destination alongside Lucy.
"what's your position?"
"We're about....75 meters to your left!"
"Alright, we're co--"
The comm-link was suddenly filled with sounds of gunfire. Xero clenched his teeth and started running towards Alicia's position alongside Lucy. "We're coming to you instead!"
Time seemed to move in slow motion as Alicia Clark strafed across the deck as fast as her power armor augmented legs could move her. Plasma discs moved past her so close that she could literally feel the millions of degrees of heat they radiated. She activated her rifle's 40mm grenade launcher and began to fire wildly at her attackers, the sounds of rapid explosions filling her ears. Ashton and Satoshi were taking cover behind a fallen bulkhead and laying down a line of suppressive fire so that Alicia could move to safety.
"Jesus, how many of them are there?!" said Ashton, reloading the E-clip to his pulse rifle.
"20....30, who knows?!" said Satoshi.
Alicia eventually made it to the position of cover, but now the enemy was getting bold and was actually starting to advance upon their position.
"@#%$, here they come!" said Ashton, rising up and firing his rifle in full-auto mode, trying to get as many as he could.
Seconds later, multiple red beams cut across the room and six Sakkran marines quickly fell to their deaths in pieces. Just as the enemy's attention focused to the newcomer, explosive charges went off and cut down another dozen enemy attackers.
"The calvary has arrived," said Lucy, plunging her armor's forearm-mounted vibro-blade into the chest of a charging marine and kicking him away.
Xero cut two more marines down to size before the others began to retreat to regroup their own position. They'd be back and next time the numbers would be three times that of the first.
"We've got to hurry! Get to that space fold cluster and take her out!" said Alicia, not wasting anytime and heading towards the position already found by Lucy and Xero. This time, the road to victory seemed more like the road to perdition as enemy marines began to flood the third deck and they were intent on taking out the Nerimian team at all costs.
"You guys go ahead, I'll handle this!" said Xero, a serious look coming on his face for the first time. "Go!"
Alicia started to protest but Ashton put a hand on her shoulder. "C'mon! Xero knows what he's doing!"
As the rest of the Orion Team made a mad dash for the fold cluster, Xero stood his ground, an omnious red glow starting to surround his body as enemy fire was starting to concentrate on him. As time passed, the plasma discs that were flying his way started to reflect off the psi-field generated by his powered armor suit. A piercing sound began to fill up the entire deck as psionic energy began to radiate outwards from Xero's body.
"C'mon....you....BASTARDS!!!" screamed Xero, the endless barrages from plasma discs suddenly slowing down to a crawl. Xero suddenly shot forward like a bullet, coming upon an enemy Sakkran marine and splitting him down the middle with his beam saber. His periphreal vision caught another group of marines coming up on his right and without thinking, he turned and fired a disc grenade from his arm, the explosion catching his opponents point blank with a fragmentation explosion. He moved seamlessly from one action to another, slicing through a Sakkra's arm with one blow and swiftly spinning around to remove the head of another marine.
An entire Sakkran platoon was reduced to a bloody mass of body parts in less than a minute and there were more willing to lose their lives to Xero's blade.
"You have no idea who you are @#%$ with!" said Xero, rushing directly into the middle of his enemies, quickly dissapearing into the mass of enemy soliders.
The sound of Sakkran soliders dropping like flies outside was even more rattling than the random explosions and rapid plasma rifle fire. Despite all of that, Lucy Amariles was working feverishly to finish the explosive charge that would destroy the ship's space fold cluster.
"How far along are we, Lucy?" said Alicia, standing guard to the cluster's entrance.
"...30 minutes tops!" said Lucy, doing the final calibrations for the explosive charge. A half minute seemed like half an hour, but as quickly as she could, it was over. "Done! We have 5 minutes!"
"Alright, let's move! Leading the charge!" said Ashton, coming out the door with his pulse rifle firing rapid energy pulses. Satoshi rushed out the door past Ashton searching for targets but he couldn't find anything. The entire deck was cleared, bodies of Sakkran soliders literally piled four or five high.
"...what the hell...." said Alicia, looking around at the carnage. "Xero?!"
Xero stood in the center of it all, red bolts of electromagnetic energy surging along his armor as he was breathing heavily. As the blade on his saber faded, Xero dropped to his knees, chuckling somewhat. "Let's get the hell out of here...."
"Jesus Xero, don't you think you overdid it?" asked Lucy, running over to her partner and helping him to his feet.
"Maybe just a little...." said Xero weakly. The amount of energy expent here was a direct result of him increasing his metabolism to the point that he nearly used up all of his internal energy stores -- to the point that his body had begun to feed upon his own muscle mass.
"This is Orion Team, the explosive charge is set, we are ready for extraction!" said Alicia over the communications network.
We were told the mission was to destroy the enemy transport, which seemed utterly pointless to me, especially since we lost several allied warships for no reason. I later found out that transport had a captured Mrrshan Admiral onboard and that Special Operations Group Delta was sent in to retrieve him while we drew the majority of the enemy fire. By us destroying the warship, we made it seem as if the Mrrshan Admiral was killed even though Delta Team extracted him. Personally, I felt insulted that we were used as a diversionary measure while Delta Team got kudos for saving the Admiral. Maybe it's just my ego talking...
"War is a fundamental part of man's existence; it is the benchmark by which we define our history and culture. Peace, while an admirable ideal, goes against everything we as a people stand for. War may indeed be hell, but for some of us, it may very well be the only path to heaven...â€
