ic Incursion: Troopers

[Brown Dynamite]

While running from the mole slug Roulette fired on the nearest Antibody he could find.  His angle of fire was perfect... If he had managed to have been three steps forward when he fired.  His legs and head couldn't keep up with his eyes when it came to calculating the firing angles.  Not adjusting for this left him missing.  And badly at that.

The optic blast reflected off the cybernetic traces in the gorge walls.  Harmlessly sailing by any and every Antibody in sight.  But providing an interesting spectacle of light and flash.  "Good thing I'm not being paid by the body."  He dismissed the even under his breath barely considering it a setback.  If he failed to wipe out a group of Antibodies...well they'd all seen what the Terran could do.

[Raveled]

Corona kept up the bombardment, aiming away from where the Terran was clubbing and smashing and tossing antibodies with wild, frankly frightening displays of strength. However many she exploded, though, there always seemed to be more of the monsters. It didn't slow her down for a moment; instead she pushed herself to move faster and fire more detonating spheres of energy into the Communion lines. She encouraged the soldiers behind her, too. "Keep movin' yer feet," she radioed back. "Keep up the fire an' don't stop movin'!"

[Fox]

Eclipse put her blaster away and drew her sword in one smooth motion - and whatever that sword was made of, it had held up a lot better than the travel-worn scabbard. Its metal shone like it was new, curved form engraved with what looked like a stylized, alien bird. And like a bird, Eclipse dove into the melee, blade slashing and parrying an abundance of targets.

But, like a bird, she might perhaps have been better-off at a distance: while her presence gave them something to think about, her enemies were too many and too much of her time was spent on defense to really do much damage. She spared a glance back, eyeing the distance between that...thing...and her troops, not to mention everyone else's. Not for the first time, she wished for air support...or the opportunity to take cover and engage from range. 

Edited April 27, 2015 by Fox

[Electra]

"Go, go, go!" Wander called, looping back once to round up her squad and make sure they were all moving forward, roughly together. "We're gaining ground, that monster thing isn't very fast, just keep going and it'll never catch us!" she encouraged. In moments, though, the next wave of Antibodies was bearing down, standing between them and their goal, between them and safety outside the gorge. Without a scream, without a yell, Wander melted back into the fray, her passage marked by the shrieks of dying antibodies and a rapidly growing swath of empty space with no enemies in it. She'd targeted the biggest ones first, the ones that seemed like they might be the leaders, leaving the rest of the wave confused, separated, and far less effective. "Guns now!" Wander encouraged. "Take them out before they regroup!" She raced up the nearest wall, out of the troops' line of enthusiastic fire. 

[Gizmo]

The Coalition troopers didn't need any encouragement, filling the spaces in the air not filled by flying rubble and flashing claws with superheated laser fire. Under the direction of their leaders the fire teams of Roulette's squad managed to make up for their commander's accuracy with focused bursts of fire that kept the left wall clear of antibodies, Bleed sparing a moment to give the Zultasian bounty hunter a smug smirk. Eclipse's team focused their attention on the right side of the gorge, the staccato of rifle bolts interspersed with booming explosions that tore new chunks out of the computronium wall, while Corona's team were kept more than occupied by the waves of antibodies rushing down the center of the crevice. Even keeping the Communion drones off-balance and pushing forward to their target, however, they were slowly becoming surrounded, as Wander's team realized, forced to scatter and reground in the face of a new surge of antibodies appearing over the lip of the gorge all at once. Meanwhile the gargantuan mole-slug behind them showed no signs of slowing down, completely cutting off the path backward and making retreat or stalling tactics impossible.

[Brown Dynamite]

Roulette took aim at the already battered group of Antibodies.  Ricocheting another optic blast through the group while pushing forward.  Multiple bodies bent and broke under the force of the beam.  And yet the rest of the Antibodies remained unperturbed.  Some even crawling over the bodies of the fallen, pushing forward. The Antibodies were nothing if not persistent.  

Roulette had to wonder what the endgame of their chase was.  There were certainly going to be more Antibodies in the city.  And no guarantee that the creature would stop following them.  The only tactical viability of the pursuit would be hoping to no longer be flanked from  every possible direction.  Which would be fine if other people were in danger, not the Zultasian himself.

[Raveled]

Corona pulled away and swung back, looking for the proper place to start her next bombardment. The Antibodies seemed to have realized what she was doing, though, since a few seemed to melt into each other and form large, silver-flesh cannons. They started filling the skies with energy bolts; the Lor did her best to dodge and return fire, but her shots impacted harmlessly either on the lip of the canyon or on the mole-slug behind them. She was forced to drop to the ground, taking a place at the head of the rushing troops. She started charging alongside them, pushing her own energy from her hands to her muscles and fists. In a moment she was caught up in the fervor of the troops, and was adding her own wordless scream to their battlecry.

[Fox]

Eclipse was liking this less and less; with a glance back at the mole-slug, she uttered a choice Alarian phrase that darn near turned the air black and planted her feet, parrying one last swipe before grabbing her blaster with her free hand and laying down some impressive fire for its small size.

"Keep pushing!" she shouted, a seemingly endless stream of plasma bolts snaking and hissing through the air - near friendly targets, but never at friendly targets, the gun or its wielder bearing an almost prescient sense of aim and the flow of battle. "Keep an eye on your flanks! And heck, if we can get in there maybe we can make our giant, ground-eating guest do some of our work for us!"

[Electra]

Wander had no more words for her troops, trusting them to keep moving forward and shooting on their own without any input from her. She was too busy to talk, anyway. When she'd gotten a little ways ahead of the group in her last near-frenzied attack, it had allowed a regiment of antibodies to form up around her, nearly swallowing her with their sheer numbers as they began to press in on her. That was a terrible mistake on their part. With cold ferocity in her eyes, Wander went into action, kicking, punching, ripping and destroying. She moved far faster than a normal Terran could and not a movement was wasted. Every step brought another enemy death, every movement of arm or hand was another fallen antibody. Wander tore her way methodically through the Antibody lines, her path as clearly visible as a combine harvester clearing a field of wheat. 

[Gizmo]

"Flarkin' A," the big, green trooper who'd given Erin grief on the transport crowed as he headed up a wedge formation of the Terran's squad, the somewhat less gung-ho Ekna Veiu and the older Broan female who'd never mentioned her name close behind him. The squad sprinted into the pathway Wander had carved from mangled antibodies  and widened it behind her, showering any of the drones that attempted to skitter over the mounds of their fallen brethren with concentrated burst of laserfire.

Corona and Roulette's squads weren't far behind, the organized firing squads of the latter focusing of the stream of silver bodies crawling on too-long limbs down the edges of the canyon while the former group recovered from their flank very nearly being overrun. "How many of these Pit dammed things can there be?!" the Lor with the cybernetic eyes groused as he helped his canid comrade to his feet and pulled them both along in a hurried jog.

Nearby, Jilinson-08 paused from directing his team long enough to observe in a reasonable tone, "Well, presumably the enemy converted the entire population of the--" He was interrupted as cybernetic hydraulics propelled an antibody further than anyone was expecting in a leap right for him, only to stop short as a well-timed shot from the injured canid took its mutilated head clean off. The drone continued to twitch on the glossy, green ground and the soldiers were left to remember exactly what they were gunning down in the scores.

In front of the Coalition troops the canyon began to widen enough for them to see it opening up into the settlement-turned-communication relay. The cityscape was now dominated by a spire of computronium, the target they were fighting so hard to reach. Between them and it, however, was the thickest formation of antibodies yet, the every worker and artist and child of the city co-opted into a nightmare army of tortured flesh and alloy. They put some distance between themselves and the massive mole-slug's rending mouths but they wouldn't be able to punch through this group quite so easily as the faster, more fragile drones they'd fought so far.

[Brown Dynamite]

"You've got to be frakkin with me."  Roulette loudly exclaimed.  He knew there would be more Antibodies.  But, knowing wasn't the same thing as seeing.  The former denizens of the city were well within sight.  All intending to try and rip them apart.  It was a big problem.  One that needed dealing with.

Can't get tunnel vision.  Deal with the small stuff first.  Before they could even consider dealing with the Antibodies blocking their way.  Roulette knew they had to contend with what remained of the Antibodies at their sides.  The Zultasian began firing with reckless abandon.  Blast after blast hitting Antibody after antibody.  The communion troops were sent flying.  Pushed back, slowed, and damaged they continued to converge on the Coalition.

Not letting a little thing like mangled anatomy deter them from their purpose.  It was simply exhausting.

[Raveled]

Corona charged forward at the head of the soldiers, her own battlecry lost amid a hundred throats all screaming in a dozen languages. She plunged into the thickest part of the mass of antibodies, her cosmically-enhanced muscles tearing apart cyborgs and tossing them back towards the colossal mole-creature. There was always another antibody in front of her, though, another metal-and-meat monster to be punched through. She refused to let herself feel tired, though, she pushed herself forward into another rank of enemies.

[Fox]

"Aw, for...."

Eclipse clenched her teeth, tightened her grip on sword and blaster, and became a dervish: a spinning, deadly engine of steel and plasma that cut a path through their enemy...but there were just too many. "Clean up this lot and hit the next from range!" she shouted, impaling an antibody in front of her, then pushing it off her sword with one boot so she could turn and impale the one trying to catch her from behind. "Anything you've got that'll take out chunks of 'em before we close to range, use it!"

[Electra]

Wander looked up from combat as her last opponent fell, wiping the blood from her face so she could stare for a second at the massed army ahead of them. Thousands of antibodies waiting, standing between them and their goal. She studied the layout, waiting for the next advance, but then turned to see all of her comrades concentrated on the hopelessly disrupted, wounded and floundering crowd of antibodies still nearby. "What the hell?" she demanded, waving one blood-soaked arm. "Eyes front, people, we've got work to do! Keep moving, we're nearly there!" There were so many of them, she thought with vague wonder, a shocking number of them. They'd cut her people to bits if they got any closer, to say nothing of the worm behind them and bearing down fast. 

She spared a quick glance behind her to her squad, confirming that they were doing all right thus far, and then raced forward again, this time with an eerie banshee shriek much different from her earlier silent fighting. "That's right, look at me! I'm gonna kill every one of you f*****s!" Her leap carried her into the front ranks of the enemy like a cue ball on the break, sending a ripple that carried far and wide, and then she was fighting. Everything else slipped away then, her plan to draw attention, the goal of the communications array, none of that was important now. She was fighting for her life, fighting for people behind her that she'd promised to protect. It was hard to remember in the moment exactly who those people were, there were so many that she'd tried to protect and failed. If she stopped fighting, even for a moment, this could be one more failure, and that was unacceptable. She wasn't going to live through that again. 

[Gizmo]

The troopers formed up behind the front line formed by their commanders and poured steady fire into the unrelenting tide of antibodies clawing their way forward with harsh, electronic screeches. "There's no way we have the firepower to chew through a whole city's worth of these monsters," Ron-Digo grunted over the pounding of laser discharge, focusing low while beside him the Grue Jy'mm aimed high.

Splattered with silvery ichor and struggling to see out of one eye, Ekna Veiu the farmboy turned soldier felt oddly calm, keeping track of Wander's rampage more by the rent limbs tossed over the tops of the horde's heads as she dipped in and out of view. "If you were planning on living forever I think you may have gotten on the wrong ship," he called dryly, voice cracking in spite of him. Clearing his throat with a rough cough he raised his voice and shouted to his squad, "You gonna let the commander do all the work, you roo'tch spawn?! Fight like Terrans! Ter-RAH!" His guttural shout echoed by the rest of the troopers the bony young man led the charge forward in a wedge formation, taking the fight right to the antibodies and impossibly pushing them backward.

For a moment, at least. Ultimately it was a battle of dozens against thousands and Ekna saw a Lor from Roulette's squad stumble and fall under the claws of an antibody rebuilt with cybernetics into something larger than a Broan, then saw lean, canid trooper from Corona's squad empty a full powerpack into the skull of a drone that have sunk jagged teeth into his calf. The wedge began to falter and the green teenager knew with a strange certainty that he was living his final moments. With a sureness of motion that surprised him dully he picked up the Lor's rifle and mashed the triggers of both on his weapons, screaming at the top of his lungs. It seemed like the thing to do.

"Pull!"

Over his head a trio of small, fist sized objects flew only to be struck precisely with three bolts of laser fire and explode into the enemy mass, tossing antibodies back in their shockwave and sending loosened bits of computronium raining down. Behind Ekna the combat engineer named Jacia readied another trio of half-disassembled grenades, mouth full of stripped wiring as she made a last minute tweak. Beside her Bleed shouted again. "Pull!" Jacia tossed the new batch of grenades overhand and the elf-like bounty hunter picked them off again, detonating them at exactly the right moment for maximum impact. The explosives had been meant for the comm tower but as Eclipse's second in command Jacia had made the executive decision that they materiel wouldn't do them much good if they all died in the canyon first.

With the antibodies reeling Grunt and his firing squad sprinted forward, the stocky fighter giving Ekna a feral looking smirk as they joined him at the tip of the wedge, working their way toward the channel Wander had carved for them. Not far behind the canid - Ekna resolved to learn his name if they actually made it through this - was using what had recently been a spindly antibody limb as a makeshift crutch and doing an admirable job of keeping pace with the others. He paused and looked over his shoulder, however, as the sound of glassy computronium cracking and smashing against itself came from behind them. The titanic mole-slug had caught up to them and was reducing the pathway behind them to rubble and slurry more quickly than they were pushing through the antibodies. "Argh, kark karkin' everything!" the canid snarled before redoubling his pace forward, beating an antibody back with his crutch before unloading three bolts into its neck.

[Brown Dynamite]

Roulette moved forward genuinely impressed by the efforts of the troops on the ground.  For the first time considering the fact that they may have what it takes to survive this suicide mission.  The odds were less overwhelming.  And the Communion was so badly torn apart that they were practically just an eyesore at this point.

An eyesore that he wanted absolutely no part in leaving lying around.  Last thing they needed was someone's legs being creepily grabbed on the way out.  A consideration that should probably wait until they dealt with the Giant Mole-Slug.  Luckily, they had a monster with some sort of metallic club on their side.

So Roulette set it upon himself to clear what remained of the Antibodies.   His blasts sent horde after horde flying back.  Tearing off metallic limbs and once again establishing that life over limb was not a consideration a machine ever need established.  Amazingly they still showed signs of life.   Oh, just frakking die you karking kreetak of bolts.  It didn't matter whether he blasted at the large group of Antibodies or the smaller one on their flank.  They still survived.  

Frankly it was a little ridiculous.  Annoyed he called out to the others.  "Someone take the squads and finish the job.  We'll be at this all solar cycle at this pace.  Don't need everyone to stick around."

[Raveled]

Corona smashed into the crowd of antibodies, their metal fingers either failing to find purchase or being ripped from their owners when her superpowered muscles ripped her arms free. She was unstoppable, moving with rage and golden power. The Lor found herself alone for a moment and looked around, breathing heavily and taking a hard look around. She was untouched by the silver-and-meat horrors around her, but she looked back and saw that the merely mortal soldiers were starting to run into close combat with the anitbodies, and they were starting to take some hits. She looked down the canyon, seeing Wander's wild, furious fight with the antibodies at the mouth of the canyon; she felt a deep, instinctive pull to go in that direction and continue venting her rage. But to do that would be to abandon the soldiers under her command, and she couldn't do that.

Corona took flight briefly, skimming over the crowd of antibodies and landing between the Communion's troops and the Lor force. She grabbed a handy antibody and swung it in a wide circle, knocking a number of antibodies down; with a few seconds of breathing room, she glanced at the engineer jury-rigging the explosives. "Give me what you've got," she shouted, and either something in her expression or the instinct to follow orders made the Lor hand off the rest of the partially-dissembled explosives. Corona punched a hole in the squirming antibody she was holding and stuffed the explosives inside; then she picked the largest concentration of the creatures she could find and tossed the monster in amongst its own kind.

She waved the troopers down and the advance paused for a moment, as a massive explosion took place in the middle of the antibody formation. Computronium and scorched metal rained down, and Corona summoned her power to her. Her helmet folded back and she blazed gold and red, looking determined and undaunted. "Come on, all you grunts," she shouted. "Forward for the Republic! Forward for your Khanate! Forward for the chance to breath free! Forward to glory and death and liberty!"

[Fox]

"Heh. Forward for screw these guys!" Eclipse shouted, grinning. No sooner had her blaster beeped to her that it had another volley ready than she settled back into a firing stance, sweeping a series of crosshairs that only she could see onto the remaining antibody brigade. "They haven't stopped us yet, and they aren't gonna stop us now!"

Her gun spat plasma, each bolt sizzling straight for a target - and after a shaky start where the enemy shifted position, each bolt landing where it should. "Awesome squad - see if you can't slow the big guy down! Keep at range, don't lose ground, but try to buy everyone a little more time!"

[Electra]

Wander fought, and fought, and fought, and finally there came a lull in the fight where no new enemies were immediately presenting themselves. She wiped her face with an equally filthy sleeve and stared around her like someone waking from a dream, only to find she'd fought her way around nearly back to where her squad was fighting. They were doing well, and had taken out everything close to them, leaving the remaining mass of antibodies to attempt to regroup. A strange whistling, shrieking roar caught her attention and she looked back to see the mole-slug-antibody monster coming up rapidly behind them. They were winning the fight, but it was taking too much time. 

"Squad Four!" she called out, getting their attention momentarily. "I'm really proud of all of you! You're great fighters and you're helping to save the universe. I hope you all live to enjoy it. Now there's no time to lose! Keep moving forward, follow Corona and Eclipse, and don't you dare look back!" 

With that she was gone, dropping into a crouch for a moment, then springing into the air as though rocket propelled, only to catch hold of Redbird's handles at the last moment as the Night Cycle swooped overhead. She looped around the handlebars to change her direction and momentum, then shot straight for what might possibly be the mole-slug's head, her bat held in front of her like a jousting pole. At the last second she changed her attitude and dropped feet-first on its crown, smashing it ferociously with blows nearly too fast to see. 

[Gizmo]

The mole-slug let out a disturbingly high pitched shriek for its side under Wander's battering, two of its mouths clamping shut in uneven walls of yellowed teeth while the rest gnashed violently. There wasn't anything on its front end that the human warrior recognized as eyes but whatever sensory organs it was using seemed to be befuddled temporarily as the mountain of lumpy flesh riddled with invasive cybernetics threw itself against the walls of the canyon, causing the ground to shudder.

Meanwhile the Coalition troopers continued to force their way toward the communication relay only to find the antibodies quickly adapting to their tactics. Jacia lobbed another makeshift grenade overhead only for a cyborg to leap into the air and tackle the explosive, sacrificing itself in a shower of desiccated meat and oil to mitigate the blast. Jilinson-08's firing team had the best luck, the Lor clone reaming composed even as he shoved the butt of his rifles down a drone's gaping mouth with a gut churning crunch.

[Brown Dynamite]

Roulette rollled his eyes at the patriotic battlecry.  He wasn't even sure if there was a  Khanate left to try and rally troops behind at this point.  It wasn't a stable government beforehand.  And well...everyone had heard rumors of what happened a few days ago.  That's why it was easier to work with those motivated by money and not notions like justice or governing planetary bodies.

Roulette had very few opportunities to cut back and really let loose with his optic blasts.  Few situations called for the sort of artillery you'd find aboard a Lor battleship.  This was one of those situations.  There was a delay when it came to firing his optic blast at full potency compared to his regular shots.  One that made it easier to predict its path for the target.  

So Roulette purposely missed.  A beam of pure destructive force sailing wide and hitting the rubble and slurry behind the massive creature.  There was enough computronium, however, for the shot to reflect.  Using the missed shot to lure the creature off guard, the Zultasian bounty hunter banked the shot to hit the Mole Slug from behind.

The Loud screech of the Mole-Slug's frightening visage confirmed his shot flew true.  Unfortunately, the damage had not torn the creature apart.  He wasn't sure it did much more than anger it.  Making the battering the Terran had committed all the more impressive.  "Keep going troops!"  Kicking his boot against the ground.  Smiling with a bit of self deprecation  "Always take the easy job, Turk.  When will you learn?"

[Raveled]

Corona forced herself forward, glowing brighter and hotter as the force pushed closer to their goal. She fought mercilessly, not holding anything back. Antibodies were ripped apart, thrown into their fellows and used to plow a path, or simply tossed high and out of the canyon. She was unstoppable, scattering the anitbodies; as the soldiers passed they were able to deal with the twitching remains by quick headshots. With such quick collaboration, the path was opened to the communication tower. The Lor paused, looking at the goal stretching up before them. She half-wondered at it, wondered why her muscles weren't screaming and her lungs weren't burning. Mostly, though, she could only see the end of the mission in sight.

She turned and raised a clenched fist, pumping power into it until it shone like a flare. "Everyone, we need to get inta' the tower! Save some of th' explosives for th' tower, or we're gonna be shootin' it for a long damn time!"

[Fox]

Eclipse spun in place the moment the last antibody hit the ground, thumbing something on her blaster as she sized up the Terran's frankly terrifying hit on the Mole-Slug. "You heard them!" she shouted at the squads, tail lashing in the air behind her as she took a knee and brought her firearm to bear. "We'll slow or stop this thing now that the rest are gone - get to that building! If you've got stuff that goes 'boom', start looking for a place to set 'em up - otherwise, take stock, get a good look at it! When we get in there, we want to know everything about it!"

"See, in my day, we'd have used you instead of killing you," Eclipse muttered, apparently to the enemy; unheard over the sounds of battle, her eyes made a soft whirring noise as they zoomed in and started scanning across the mole-slug's body. "These big melees...never know what to do with 'em. But fine, we want to take you down for good? Everything's got a weak point."

She took careful, professional aim, let out a breath, and squeezed the trigger only twice - but each bolt flew, unerringly, into tender spots on the creature's hide. "If we can't kill it soon, at least try to lure it into the building!" she shouted, hoping that the Terran was a little less of a berserker than she appeared. "Make it work for us!"

Edited June 2, 2015 by Fox

[Electra]

"That's too dangerous!" Wander yelled back, shaking some of the mole-slug goo off her silver bat. "It eats people, and it's got like five mouths! We can't be sure of controlling it!  All of you, get going and get that array blown up! I've got this!" As if to prove it, she leapt from the mole-slug's topmost head and skidded down the slick column of its back, driving her bat into one of its smaller heads with a series of punishing blows that were nearly too fast for the eye to follow. The creature shrieked again, thrashing about as ichor spewed from the damaged head, but Wander hung on with the skill of a trained acrobat. "I'll catch up with you!" 

[Gizmo]

As if in agreement with Wander's assessment the mole-slug's mountain of flesh lurched forward, propelled by some unseen method to crash into the canyon walls. The ground in front of it split violently, computronium splintering and spraying in all directions as Roulette and Eclipse's footing abruptly became dangerously uncertain. The side of the fissure broke free with a deafening crack and slid downward in a glossy green avalanche. The chunks of cyberformed planet swept over the aggravating bounty hunter, knocking him off of his feet and carrying him several meters away, leaving him half buried and struggling to breathe let alone to move.