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RP: YSS Artemis [YSS Artemis O1M0] Let the Rivalry Begin

Ghost Star Fortress [NK-X1-02] Docking Bay One
Nataria
YSS Artemis

Deck 6 - VR Chamber - Interior

Bjorn waited as he lifted his weapon, he was ready to fight, but his sensors were still messing up. He was both in and out of the stimulation but knew that he needed to focus and get the job done, he followed orders and prepared to shoot at any rangers that got in his sights, he was thankful for the display of the armour for this task as without it, he would be useless and blind in this test. He made sure that his weapon was ready for any rangers that appears as he scans the area around him.
 
Ghost Star Fortress [NK-X1-02] Docking Bay One
Nataria
YSS Artemis

Deck 6 - VR Chamber

Klaus watched as Menelik unleashed his barrage of missiles on the enemy. "Talk about missile massacre." he whispered. Receiving Setsuya's query, Klaus responded "Yeah, We weren't in the same class, so I don't know his speciality, but he'll have all the same Giretsu essentials: Hand-to-hand combat, wilderness survival, stealth and evasion, knowledge of almost all PA, mechs and vehicles the Army knows of." The raltian checked his data. So far so good.

"He'll probably try to gather intel first. Find out where our nodes are. Try to find holes in the defense to sneak in. But apart from that, I don't know. We were always told to vary our strategies and techniques." said Klaus, remembering his own training and a quote his trainer used to say. "'Overspecialize, and you breed in weakness. It's slow death.'"

"Sorry that I can't tell you more, Set-Heisho." the soldier caught himself before he could call out Setsuya's name, Klaus had to remind himself to adress her by her rank. He looked at the forest, where before was ominous darkness, now was was dark shapes of trees and foliages highlighted with the red glow of the fire left by Menelik's missiles.

'Like Fly phase all over again.'
 
Menelik groused to himself in Hanyadi as he was reprimanded- AGAIN- for showing initiative. That grousing had a few choice words in it that not many people on this ship would recognize or understand even if he were broadcasting. That went on for a few seconds, before Menelik calmed himself down and thought about the situation instead of letting his reflexes control things- leave the reflexes to handle the actual fighting, and let the brain get him to the fight.

That got him thinking about doctrine, what he could do, and the situation. The Rangers had the initiative for now, which would let them choose when and where to attack. The Cats he was with seemed fine with letting them come at them and engaging the unpowered infantry in a firefight. The rangers had to be in that direction, and would generally be relying on their own senses, maybe a few drones. And their mobility was limited to huffing it on foot, which would limit what they could carry.

In comparison, he thought about what his own training said to do in this situation, his competent mind digging up training manuals and harsh armor drills. to his recollection, Marine doctrine in this situation was simple: take the initiative from the enemy, then take the fight to them using vigor and grit. So he did that, instead. He just had to do a few things first.

"All Wolf points, this is Berhane- Prepare for active comms jamming, Sorry about this, Boss-heisho, but ah'll be takin' tha initiative from 'em!" One of the nice things about having a full suit of power armor was all the options it gave you. Too many options for Menelik to consciously control, but the Slayer had workarounds.

Set Black Veil AI Control. Electromagnetic and Subspace ECM to full power, activate on go code RADIATE. Cyberwarfare suite to AI control, set to Active Mode on go code RADIATE. Active Defense Suite, set to AI auto response; reserve IR Decoy and Smoke Grenade to manual, activate on go code RADIATE. The mental and subvocal commands to spool up the electronic warfare suite took about four seconds, but were worth it.

Set Shield Drones to auto-slave. Barrier shield mode, Drones 1-3 to shield the frontal arc. Drones 4-6, the right. The extra protection in the form of the Mistral's shield drones definitely helped too, for what he was planning.

It wasn't even a parcitularly smart or cunning plan. Actually the opposite, the kind of meatheaded plan one would expect from a Marine. Switching to a direct laser line to his subordinates, Menelik gave the subvocal go code before snapping out orders to them.

RADIATE.

Menelik's Slayer became a bright source of cacophonous noise to anyone who could see or hear in the parts of the electromagnetic spectrum across which it sent out jamming. Then it became a source of a similar noise, the monstrous roar of its engines spinning to life with enough power to lift the armorsuit a few inches off the ground. The single baleful monoeye on the helmet glowed, and traced left to right for a brief second before focusing forwards.

"Kol, Kenji; form on me, echelon left, 5 meter seperation. Keep up, and fire on anyone or anything that takes a pop shot on me." His orders were terse and straight to the point again, his aim obvious as the roar of the engines grew louder yet again, and the Slayer dashed forth into the simulated jungle, not directly at where he thought the rangers were, but intending to flank them on their right. And he did it at speed. Below its achievable ground speed of 130 clicks an hour, but 40 kilometers is still pretty fast when moving through a jungle. As the heavy armor moved out, followed on its left by a pair of Daisy's, the roar of the engines were replaced.

Replaced with the sounds of jazz being played so loudly that no-one would be able to not hear it.
 
The milisecond that Menelik told his suit to switch to AI control, that opened up the opportunity for Aten to split off a delta fork, a nonsapiant fragment of himself, off into Menelik's computer to help manage the jamming and everything else he had given the AI control of. Delta!Aten coordinated with Aten to give Menelik a commsline though the jamming by making the random noise also encode the communications. Aten was satisfied with their work. Delta!Aten flowed into the drones. Delta!Aten spoke to Menelik, "Aten Delta fork AI active. Any specific requirements for your drones?" The AI asked neutrally.
 
OCC "They have sown the wind; now let them reap the whirlwind"

IC
Ghost Star Fortress [NK-X1-02] Docking Bay One
Eric Nabeel
YSS Artemis
Deck 6 - VR Chamber

Eric had been waiting in utter silence wondering if his ploy was going to work. After the explosion that most likely knocked out elenor from the fight he couldn't but help wonder if he might be waiting for not. In these moments he then remembered a quote some one use to tell him in training,patience first and watch your faith rewarded. It was a odd quote but he was about to see it pay off.
He first heard the rumble of the jungle and the approaching armor. As he listened he tried to pick out from memory if it matched anything he could remember. Unable to figure out what it might be he instead focus on where it was most likely about to break from cover. As he stayed still during calm he saw the break in the cover.
Hoping all the ECM he placed would give him visual and sensor coverage he steady his aim. Leading his target abit with the launcher he knew he couldn't use any missile lock especially with his own ecm and what ever it had. As he saw the to him a unknown suit he took aim at the slayer.

The Calm for the ranger changed and his emotionless express changed. Pulling the trigger any observer would see a faint smile on his lips as he spoke softly in the wake of the missile launch. "Welcome to my hunting ground". As he tried to recover from the recall he attempted to fire again. Hoping either shot would connect he could only watch. Either luck or skill would decide if the ambush he set and the shots fire would connect. Eric could only stand and wait.
 
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Ghost Star Fortress [NK-X1-02] Docking Bay One
Nataria
YSS Artemis
Deck 6 - VR Chamber - Interior


Elenor was soon tracked as KIA as the missile barrage hammered her position. It was something that was expected. The conditions basically forced her to expose herself just to be able to see the situation to report it. Lucas would know that there was no actual munitions thrown, but the blasts and explosions were still guttural, and the BFT ping from Elenor's comm being completely disabled as she was turned into a casualty marker.

Of course, Menelik's brashness was quickly rewarded, or punished depending on how one viewed it. Due to all the jamming tech in play at that one spot, the missile fired by Eric was unable to get any kind of lock, so it flew blindly. But it still went 'live', so when it impacted a tree near the Nep, the explosion was quite intense. But the part that was the key factor in this, was something that didn't care about ECM, jammers, or anything of the sort. After all, a tree truck is either standing up, falling down, or on the ground. And this particular tree was in that second one.

The tree slammed into the Marine from behind, with the simulation computer calculating the size of the weight, it's composition, the inertia and the twist to it. Then it ran a basic examination of the armor the Nep was wearing, since it didn't have a full run-down in it's database about the armor. It did however, per the requirements of the exercise, have access to, and control of, the suits systems. Based on what it could determine, it triggered a system failure sequence stemming from the center of his back, and turning off the muscle systems to assist him from his back down. The reality is that the Slayer armor wouldn't have actually experienced such a failure, but since the computer was unable to determine that based on the data it had available, made a judgement call from what it could find.

This also meant that Menelik was now literally pinned under a tree.
 
Ghost Star Fortress [NK-X1-02] Docking Bay One
Eric Nabeel
YSS Artemis
Deck 6 - VR Chamber

Eric watched the missile stray and cursed as it tried to track instead of dumb fire like he tried. Rechecking the launcher he toggled the switch and looked at the explosion. Seeing the crash of the tree and the now pinned suit he let out a sigh of relief.

Speaking softly “Blessed it be for small miracles”. As he confirmed the launcher was set to dumb fire mode he debated on how to finish this. He could move up and engage with his rifle or fire a missile which if he missed or didn't knock out the suit would cause it to be free. The only hope was he had immobilized it. As he lined up his iron sight he adjusted and made sure it was ready. With his back blast clear he opened fire leaving him one more plasma round left. Still quiet “Sorry the simulation failed you but such is luck” he also hoped third time was the charm for him self.
 
Menelik would have exceedingly choice words to whoever had programmed the parameters of Nepleslian Power Armor into this training simulation. Probably relating to their incompetence, laziness, and how bad data in sims like this could get people killed. Yes, very choice words indeed, that could wait till later because despite the clear ability of his armor to lift the tree pinning him, the simulation didn't recognize that capability. This left Menelik in a very bad situation, but not one that would be lethal.

It would take just enough time to break free that the Slayer would've been taken out by the time he did, which meant defending himself was his first priority. The Slayer's own barrier shields focused themselves in the facing between him and Eric, and ahead of them both. At the same time, Menelik curtly told the Aten fork inhabiting his suit to "layer those shields in front awf me!", to get both triangular shield panes to block incoming fire while he freed himself.

That left getting himself free, which was the easy part. Or should be the easy part, given the strength of the Slayer. But, because Yamatai couldn't accept that a foreign design could be superior, he was left unable to simple lift the tree up off of him as he would normally do. This meant that he had to come up with a different solution.

Saw it off using one of the heat knives at his waist? No.

Shoot it off using his left arm plasma gun? No.

Instead of either of those options, Menelik punched his right arm into the virtual tree, the nerimium spike of the pilebunker pushing against the wood of the tree, even fully retracted. Designed to kill living creatures in power armor through pure kinetic force, especially nekovalkyrja in zesuaium armored PA, the full force of the Slayer's pilebunker was unleashed on that tree with a loud, metallic THUNK.

Hopefully, he hadn't been completely fucked over by the cats to the point that his weapons didn't have the punch they should.
 
Ghost Star Fortress [NK-X1-02] Docking Bay One
YSS Artemis
Deck 6 - VR Chamber

"Triangulation Complete." Aten announced to Sacre.

"Time for us to go hot." Sacre said to her flankers, Ioamai and Maradia, firing a airburst from her Gauss Cannon. The explosion went off at the same time that the Separa'Shan activated her teleporter. She appeared behind where Eric had fired from in a burst of light and sound that was almost a second explosion. Four support bits released, adding to the fire from her Scalar Machine Gun and Gauss cannon. The Combined field system allowing the bits to fire without using onboard power. Aten put targets on her heads up display, although she only had the chance to fire twice in the short time. Aten for thier part was analyzing the information from her sensors and nodal support bits. Calculating where the Rangers were based on the data he was getting and increasing everyone in the infantry platoon's battlefield awareness. She was only there for five seconds before Aten activated her and Ioamai's teleportation module.

Ioamai for her part fired from the trees down onto the Rangers, taking whatever target presented themselves. Aten had marked where Sacre and every Ranger they could locate was on her HUD, allowing the Elysian and the entire infantry contingent to fire without fear of friendly fire. She teleported at the same time as Sacre.

The two emerged from their teleport on the Flank of the Rangers, Iomai flinging a large grenade into their midst and Sacre launching more Airburst munitions as the pair took cover to allow Aten to assess the damage they did while hopefully pushing the Rangers towards the false flaw.

"Rearranging. Sanssinia and Lightbringer are currently causing a distraction." Delta!Aten said as the shields moved to block any incoming fire.
 
Ghost Star Fortress [NK-X1-02] Docking Bay One
YSS Artemis
Deck 6 - VR Chamber

Ryu wasn't particularly interested in engaging the heavy infantry. For one it wasn't particularly his mission, not to mention he didn't have the firepower to even put a dent into their armor. No, he was their only remaining eyes and ears for the most likely doomed Rangers. And so he would remain so. When he noticed movement, he got into as much cover as he could find that would mask his infrared signature and turned off whatever communication equipment that was not capable of directional burst communications (namely all but his own unidirectional telepathy).

His platoon lead as far as he knew was not capable of telepathy and Elenor was "dead", so Ryu defaulted to sending his brief report to Eric before they teleported in of what he was seeing.
 
Ghost Star Fortress [NK-X1-02] Docking Bay One
YSS Artemis
Deck 6 - VR Chamber

Bjorn focused on what was going on, he locked out his visuals, this was dangerous to do in a real fight, but he knew that without this he was little more than a piece of scenery for this fight. He was sure he had already proven to the others that this was the case as he goes to comms and was a little worried with what the team would say "I am sorry I didn't share this before, my sensors don't do that well in VR... I know I should have said before, but I am sorting it out."

He was with the others and moved into a proper formation with his team and added his firepower to the fight, using his hearing sensors to try and locate any of the rangers as his sense return to nominal fuctions without his vision of the fake area.
 
Ghost Star Fortress [NK-X1-02] Docking Bay One
Nataria
YSS Artemis
Deck 6 - VR Chamber - Interior


The Rangers never got close to the target. Sure, they'd gotten close to the encampment, but between the various factors stacked against them, they literally stood no chance of winning. Not unless the infantry had done something incredibly stupid. And while there had been some who broke up the line and rushed the Rangers head on, opening holes in the security ring, the Rangers just simply had no way to exploit them, not with the Infantry knowing the Rangers were there in the first place.

As the chamber adjusted the lighting to be equivalent to the ship's level at all areas, thus breaking the illusion of the environment being realisitic, it also started removing said environment. Not fast enough to cause injury from someone falling or tripping, but fast enough to match the raising light level. Soon the floor was a flat, level plain that was still 'dirt', but no longer 'jungle'. The ship's AI appeared in teh center, where the target had been. She was a tall woman, stern faced and proud of bearing. On the small of her back hung a quiver loaded with 2 dozen arrows. Slung over her shoulder was a long, large bow, that looked to have been carved from some creatures bone. Her attire would have been rather fitting for the jungle that used to be here, browns and green woodland clothes, a cloak hanging from her shoulders, clasped just below her neck.

"All Rikugun and Ranger units please gather around me, and separate into your respective groups." Callisto instructed, her voice and tone stern and commanding. "Your commanding officers and the ship's captain will be along presently, as well as those who's roles are vital to your operations as well to hear the final report of this exercise."
 
Sacre and Iomai got up from behind the cover they had taken. Sacre moved to where the AI had indicated and motioned for her team to form up around her. Aten reintegrated the fork that he had put into the other suit and made himself appear as ball of holographic light. The Nekovalkyrja of Black Wolf formed up around their leader. "I think we won." Sacre commented on the team's channel.
 
Ghost Star Fortress [NK-X1-02] Docking Bay One
Eric Nabeel
YSS Artemis
Deck 6 - VR Chamber

Eric signed as he got up from his position. Seeing the battle ended it confirmed everything he thought before the operation. Grabbing his Kit he had left on the ground he slowly made his way over to the designated area. Looking over to the rest of his group in the rangers "Well like I called it before set up right for failure at the start". Having a faint smile as he looked over to the rest "At least we got to fire our guns in anger right?".
 
Ghost Star Fortress [NK-X1-02] Docking Bay One
Nataria
YSS Artemis

Deck 6 - VR Chamber

Klaus joined with the rest of the Black Wolf squad near Sacre. "I think we won. Does that mean Rangers buy the first rounds?" he said in team channel. He felt like celebrating or,at least, start the high fives, but contained himself. The exercise had enforced in his mind, the roles of the Infantry and Rangers. Hammer and scalpel. Watching some of the Rangers he could see some of them were not happy. He could understand them. They had been in a fundamental disadvantage.

But Infantry had won. No soldier has ever looked a gift horse in the mouth and Klaus wasn't gonna be the first.
 
Ghost Star Fortress [NK-X1-02] Docking Bay One
Nataria
YSS Artemis

Deck 6 - VR Chamber

Ryu got up from his position once the exercise was declared over. He started to question if he should have risked moving quicker once he was getting closer to the objective. Considering his face was masked by his helmet, it was anyone's guess as to how he felt about the whole situation as he gathered with the rest of the Rangers.
 
Plotship Ending Theme​
Ghost Star Fortress [NK-X1-02] Docking Bay One
Nataria
YSS Artemis
Deck 6 - VR Chamber - Interior


As the Rangers and Rikugun formed up, the CO's and even the Captain came down. Everyone quickly quieted down and looked on.

"Alright. I hope you all got a very good understanding. Rangers already knew that this was most likely to be a Rikugun victory. They had the advantages of forewarning, the benefit of powered armor, and heavier weapons. They also didn't have to leave their position to win. Just keep the Rangers from doing so. Rikugun, this was mostly for your benefit. To help you understand why we have you here. The Rangers are extremely vulnerable to enemy power armor, or enemy forces in general if they're found out. This is because the Rangers are raiders, scouts. They are not up and up fighters like you." Chusa Fusami explained.

"This makes our mission that much more crucial. If the Rangers come up against something they cannot beat themselves, we're to drop in and support them in whatever fashion is needed. Too heavy a defense? We're the ram. They get found out and fucked up? We're the rescue. They need a really loud distract? Guess what? We're it." Shusa Niwa continued. "And the more you understand that, the better the being stuck on the ship waiting will be. Because you realize that we're not the primary force for this Operation. Dress down, and get yourselves sorted out in the bunks if you haven't already. The ship launches tonight at 22.00."

THREAD END
 
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