The Adventures of Bloodstrype ch2) Ground and Pound
#2 of The Adventures of Bloodstrype
The Adventures of Bloodstrype ch2) Ground and Pound
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*BOOM* I land on my knees after bouncing off the ceiling. "Bridge, what was that?" I call thru my armor's comm. circuit.
"Sir, the base has finally responded to your hails, with a missile. Shields are holding, but that may have scorched the paint." That would be Daisha. Cheeky little fennec.
"Alright, you can make them repaint it, AFTER you disable their weapons. Repeat, DISABLE, intell thinks that the humans have prisoners in this region and as this is the only base we've found so far, well you do the math."
As I walk into the ready room, I secure my helmet and bring up my HUD. Looking around I see six others dressed in a similar manner to me. There slight differences though due to their various specialties, but all are heavily armored and ready to fight.
"Alright, we've all been over the intell reports so we know what we're looking for. Any issues?"
M'raak raises her hand in a typical cheeky manner, "Yeah, boss, I got one. Who's buying the beer when we get back?"
"You are, if you keep that up, cheeky panther. Ok, any REAL issues? No? Ok we jump in five."
We make our way to the jump room and check seal on our armor. Arriving at the jump room, I have my armor AI open the bay doors as we all attach boot and wrist thrusters. We all take three running steps, leap out into open space, and activate the thruster packs. We quickly cross the terminator onto the night side of the moon, our course designed to keep us below the bases triple-A horizon for as long as possible. As we come back over the daylight side of the moon, I start to feel the slight pull of the upper atmosphere. My AI gives a warning and as one we fire our thrusters against our motion, flare and drop into the atmosphere. We then streamline as the upper reaches of the atmosphere heat to glowing and at this moment we appear as a pack of seven shooting stars. I watch my altimeter and as we pass 15 km we flare again and go from ballistic meteors to armored skydivers in a matter of seconds. We stay flared until we are at 2km, at which time we fire thrusters and approach the facility under power.
Landing outside the facility, we are met by light resistance, which is quickly dispatched. I order M'Raak to send out scout drones to cover the rest of the building as I have Spark (the squad AI) hack the base security net and override all automated systems. We then performed a building-by-building sweep looking for anything that would lead us to the prisoners.
As we approach the final building, we start encountering stronger resistance. I feel something slam into my armor and look down to see a large caliber flechette embedded a half an inch into my right chest plate. "Everyone down! They got a sniper!" As I activate my thrusters and boost for cover I feel another round glance off my shoulder plate. Damn this guy is way too good. "Spark, trace those rounds. Stonepaw, counter-snipe."
A bright silver fennec shaped blur that my HUD identifies as crystalfur flies across my vision. "Boss, we've got trouble. A full division of armor coming out of a hidden hanger that wasn't on the base schematics."
I consult my HUD and swear loudly. We just walked into a trap.
"That's a new one," Solarflare, a pantheress, my heavy weapons expert, and oft-time bed partner, purrs at me.
"Can it, Flare. Ok, people. Stone, stay on that sniper. Everyone else, heavy weapons on those tanks. Flare, get your big guns trained around." As I draw my katana and activate my thrusters I see Flare open up with her shoulder mounted plasma cannon and wrist rockets devastating the first rank, but they just keep coming. Suddenly I'm amongst the tanks and I activate my sword causing the edge of the blade to glow plasma blue. Then 5 of us are bouncing around slicing barrels and tracks, attaching grenades, blasting holes in armor, and generally causing mayhem while Flare systematically destroying them from afar.
The fray ended so suddenly it took me a few moments to realize it, then I heard Stone calling that the sniper was down and there was something odd about him. I made my way over to where the sniper was and Stone was right. The sniper was part machine. Not just a cyborg, it was like he, or maybe I should say it, was PART of the sniper platform. No wonder he was so fast. An automatic sentry with an organic brain. Sick.
Making our way into the building, we all draw short-range weapons. I draw a pair of knives, Stone draws a pistol, others draw various weapons from swords to SMGs; Flare draws a full auto plasma shotgun. We all pause and look at her. "What? It's the smallest gun I have."
"Didn't I order you to get a smaller close in weapon?" I ask her.
"Ye-e-e-s, but you didn't order me to bring it along."
"It was implied. But, we're in a rush so just bring it next time. We want this place intact and there may be some of our own here so watch your cone of fire."
"Yes, sir"
We cleared the front rooms fairly quickly and moved into what we hoped would be the holding area. As we moved into the inner rooms, we found only a few guards and a staircase down. Following the stairs we found a holding area and almost 80 POWs most of them from the Queens Pride, a royal navy ship that was destroyed 2 months ago.
We broke the cells and as we escorted the prisoners topside I called for pickup. Bringing these prisoners aboard was gonna make things crowded but my ship was the fastest way to get them all home safely.
By the time we got all the personnel topside, the transport shuttle was touching down and the medical team was jumping out to secure the worst of the injuries. We packed in and boosted for the ship. I ordered a high speed run back to our capitol world of Scorpio and headed for my quarters.
End of log