NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: Okay, before I start the RP, I would like to go over a few rules:

OOC chatter is to be kept to the OOC thread, Here (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?p=7061571#post7061571).
This is a closed RP. If you want to join it, you will have to contact me.
If I do allow you in, you must have good spelling and grammar. I don't want to have to get a headache trying to decipher what you wrote.
This is a modern and future tech RP. Modern techies can participate, although they will have a harder time than future techies. (Or will they?)
I know that in reality if my nation (on Earth) was attacked by an alien force, such as this one, everyone would rally to fight off the invader. However, at the outset of the invasion, the aliens emit a special psionic redirection field. Basically, it convinces you that it isn't your problem. Stealth through Apathy. Thusly, if you don't want to RP here, or if you only want to complain that "Sol R teh ub3r unb3tabl3!!!!" buzz off.
I'm a pretty loose RPer, so if somebody wants to go off on a tangent, I'll be fine with that.
Last minute ammendum: The aliens aren't attacking any neutral shipping or anything. They're only after me for the moment.

Now that that crap is out of the way;

IC:
Location: Sensor station Preoria; Lunar orbit

The deep-scanner display pinged, loudly enough to startle Petty Officer Coots. The scanners had been completely clear just a few moments ago, and she felt it was safe to doze off a bit. The harsh metallic *ping* brought her back to reality. What she saw made her jump to one immediate conclusion; “What the hell is wrong with my equipment!?”

The entire display was filled with a single titanic mass, so large that even the powerful Ubercomp systems slowed down as they processed it. It was simply that massive. So massive in fact that it seemingly *Had* to be a malfunction. Except that it wasn’t.

Nobody realized that, however. Azure fire from the ‘hostile’ mass washed over the sensor station in an unstoppable tidal wave, a tsunami of destruction, leaving only a few twisted bits of metal left to mark the dead.

If one looked closely at the mass, one could see that it was not one massive object. Instead, it was trillions of smaller objects, no larger than a handful of meters across. Accompanying this cloud were several large globes, presumably carriers of some sort.

The alien fleet, for that is what it undoubtedly must be, proceed on a leisurely course towards their destination: Earth. Specifically, Facehuggeria.

Their progress was slow, perhaps by malfunction, perhaps by design. Whatever the reason, it gave the Facehuggerian fleet some time to rally for a fleet battle of a scope that the world had never seen. Over five hundred Facehuggerian ships now clustered around the twin behemoths of the Vigilance platform and the CFV Absolution, both objects many times more massive than even the excessively large battleships. Each one taking many trillions of Facehuggers to produce. But were they worth every penny? Would they have the power to stop or at least slow down the death cloud now approaching?

Grand Admiral Halsey gazed out from the bridge of the Absolution, in the distance he could see the alien fleet moving inexorably closer, closer to his home and loved ones. It was at this time that he wondered what their intentions were. Would they scorch the Earth as they had the sensor station? Or would they rather conquer the land and rule over millions of slaves as overlords? Or was this all a misunderstanding, were they merely coming to talk?

Halsey quickly banished that last thought from his mind. Nobody sends trillions of ships for diplomatic contact. They had already shown their hostile intent by vaporizing the sensor station and extinguishing the hundreds of lives it contained.

It was obvious to everyone in the fleet that this would be a do-or-die situation. If the unknown enemy broke through the fleet, they would have practically free reign over space above the nation.

There was little time left now, the enemy fleet was almost at the doorstep. It finally sunk in to the ship crews the sheer scale of the enemy fleet. Trillions upon trillions of ships. Most of them were tiny fighter-esque vessels, but still…

The enemy fleet was almost within range now, and Halsey gave an order to ready for battle. This order was disseminated through the entire CF Fleetcom network, reaching every CF warship in the area.

The hellish glow of plasma turrets built up around the CF ships as cool blue/green particles started to collect around PPBCs. One by one, heavy railgun slugs loaded into their launchers as anti-formation bombs flowed freely into the torpedo tubes.

After a moment or two, the enemy fleet was in range, the hulls of their individual fighters beginning to glow blue, building up a lethal power spike.

At once, the two fleets opened fire, illuminating space with an infinitely powerful field of death. Azure beams crisscrossed space, rending the CF ships with their power. White-hot beams of super-heated plasma belched forth from the fleet’s plasma turrets, smashing into clouds of fighters, evaporating them in an instant. Railgun slugs smashed through the ranks of enemy fighters, destroying some. Anti-formation bombs exploded in the midst of enemy forces, burning through wave after wave of alien ship.

However, slowly but surely, the alien fleet got closer and closer. There were just too many. And once the enemy fleet got close enough, they revealed their true power. The monstrous enemy carriers seemed to disappear to the eye, a field of black, even blacker than space washed over them and seemed to gather in strength. They were charging… Moments later, this darkness was fired, as a beam through space.

The reality rending beams moved through space, annihilating whatever they touched. Dreadnoughts simply vanished, their atoms scattering to the stellar winds, so too were destroyers destroyed, nothing of any size left to mark the dead. Even the Vigilance platform, that monument to stability and power was annihilated, it’s entire compliment converted to their subatomic parts. Within mere moments of the discharge, the CF fleet strength was reduced by 65%.

Admiral Halsey swore. Those capital ships had destroyed almost his entire fleet, only a paltry few vessels remaining. But still, he fought on, his flagship still launching anti-formation bombs into the alien hordes, but it was obvious that wasn’t going to stop them.

The Absolution took several hits from the alien fighters, it’s shields draining quickly, even the vaunted blink shields draining more quickly than they could be replenished. 85%, 20%, 1%...0%. The Absolution began taking hits on the armor, the lethal alien weapons burning through it in an instant, hundreds of meters of ECC composite and quicksilver evaporating in an instant, exposing deck after deck to the cold and harsh space outside.

It was then that the CF crews lost hope, scattering and fleeing every which way in fear induced flight. The captains of these ships tried to maintain order, but the fear proved too strong. More and more ships were destroyed piecemeal by the alien horde, until only a handful of ships were left.

The Absolution had taken incredible amounts of damage, and only luck, silent prayer, and an extremely strong design saved the ship from outright destruction. Admiral Halsey realized that the battle and the fleet was lost, the only hope was now to flee to secret colonies and attempt to rebuild. Fleetcom was in taters, messages going this way and that. Halsey thought quickly. His ship was nearly destroyed, structural support beams were showing like bones from the dying Absolution. He quickly entered in his command override code, blocking all messages from the various CF ships. He then broadcast a curt order to all of them. The remains of the once mighty CF grand fleet were to retreat to Chimera Shipyards, and from there jump directly to Opterra, most fortified of the nascent CF colony worlds. With luck, they could even escape with the shipyard complex, and hopefully have a means of striking back at the invaders.

The remains of the fleet complied with the order override, their Xenium Implosion Reactors building up a charge, until they opened hellish green portals and escaped into the bizarre dimension known as quasi-space. Within moments, they arrived at Chimera Shipyard complexes, near the Earth-Mars asteroid belt. It was still intact, undamaged. The aliens had somehow missed it.

Halsey sent out another order. All the ships were to dock to the monstrous shipyard and pool their FTL resources, and hopefully escape with the shipyard. But while the bruised and battered fleet began to dock with the shipyards, the automated defense grid of the shipyards detected something. An enemy fleet, much smaller than the fleet that had just handed the Facehuggerians their asses, but still containing enough power to wipe the floor with them.

Halsey prayed that the defenses would slow down the enemy fleet long enough for his fleet to dock. And escape.

Automated guns opened fire on the invaders, but they proved to be unequal to the task. The enemy was too numerous. One by one, automated turrets were burned from existence. A hole in the defense grid was quickly opened, and the enemy ships poured through this hole, making a beeline straight towards the shipyard. Finally, the last ship, the Absolution itself slipped into a mooring. The entire fleet pushed their engines into the redline, they weren’t meant to carry so much extra weight, but the quasi-space engines held, barely, and the entire fleet and shipyard disappeared into quasi-space.

Facehuggeria was now almost completely at the invader’s mercy…

Admiral Halsey slammed his fist down on the mahogany table in the Absolution’s officers’ lounge, one of the few places on the ship that were not strewn with debris. The room smelled of burnt out cigars and sweat from too many high-stakes poker games. Now it smelt of sweat from rage and fear.

Halsey was clearly enraged. “What the HELL just happened out there!?”

One of his subordinates, Rear Admiral Stukov quipped “We were decimated sir.”

Halsey started fuming. “No! We’d be decimated if we lost one out of ten ships. Instead, we lost ten ships for every one that managed to limp away! This is a disaster! Do you know what those things will do back home now that we’re gone?” Halsey’s mind flew back to his wife and daughters. Their unknown fate was killing him. For a moment, he actually considered going back, before his rational mind took over and told him that he would be no good to them dead.

Stukov then paused for a moment, as if in thought. “Grand Admiral! Get ahold of yourself! We need to look at what advantages we DO have, instead of lamenting about what we lack!”

Halsey replied rather dejectedly, “And what advantages do we have, Alexei? You saw how easily they just destroyed our fleet. We have nothing that could trump that.”

Stukov then held up his hand and began counting off on his fingers. “Advantages? We’ve got the Absolution. If we can get it fully repaired, we could use its onboard factories to supplement the shipyards. We also managed to escape with the shipyards in the first place. That is a huge advantage if I ever saw one. And perhaps the largest advantage of all is that we’re not dead. We can still live to fight another day!”

But one of the other officers present, Rear Admiral Frello began to speak frantically. “Live to fight another day? Live to fight another fucking day!? We began the battle with over five hundred ships. We now have twenty. I say we cut our losses and hide in the colonies. With luck, they won’t follow…”

Halsey was enraged. “Rear Admiral. Are you suggesting that we abandon our people!? Unacceptable! Unthinkable!! At the very least, we owe it to our dead comrades to liberate Facehuggeria! We owe it to the billions of civilians who are now defenseless because we saved ourselves! No Rear Admiral, we are going to try. And if I ever hear that argument from your lips again, I’ll kick you out of the nearest airlock myself! Do you understand!?”

Frello’s face turned red with rage, but he managed to keep his tongue in check.

A young and very frightened officer ran into the room at this point carrying a small datapad. “Admiral Halsey, sir…Here are casualty figures for the fleet. Navigation also says that we’re coming up on the Opterra system.”

Halsey snatched the datapad from the officer and scowled. Casualties for the entire fleet exceeded eighty percent. “So many lost, so many trained crewmen extinguished, for what? We STILL lost Facehuggeria.” Halsey muttered under his breath.

Halsey then made his way to the bridge. The teleport stations and trams were offline, so he had to walk. Fortunately, the bridge was only a brisk mile away. Upon arrival to the bridge, he was greeted by the hellish green void known as quasi-space. He then began barking out orders in true admiralty fashion. “Bring us out of quasi-space. Send a message to the Opterran garrison. Inform them of the situation.”

The Shipyard complex/fleet remnants emerged from quasi-space into normal space within a few light seconds of Opterra Prime, home of the second largest military base in Facehuggerian hands. (Actually the largest, now that the Facehuggerian mainland has fallen.) The powerful sensors onboard the Absolution began scanning the planet for signs of damage, every crewman praying that the aliens hadn’t found this refuge as well…

Success. The base was still intact, it hadn’t experienced any alien depredations. “Admiral!” the young com technican called out. “Receiving transmission from the planet sir. It’s general Bates, he wants to know why we’re here. What should I tell him?”

Halsey flatly replied. “The truth.”

The Comtech complied and sent the direct transmission.

“Sir! He’s a little skeptical, but he’s willing to follow your orders, at least until you and him can talk face to face.” The Comtech replied a second later, as the return transmission arrived.

Halsey pondered for a moment before relaying an order to the General. “I want the general to use the garrison’s burst transmitter to send a message to all our allies, tell them that Facehuggeria needs to meet with one of their representatives urgently, and tell them to come to these coordinates as soon as possible.”

Halsey hoped that the representatives would come with all due haste.

Meanwhile;

The sky was blackened by the sheer number of alien fighters now circling over Facehuggeria like vultures over some dying animal. The odd thing is that not a single one of them fired. They were apparently there merely to prevent anything from escaping. Fire from surface mounted weapons batteries was only sporadic and light. Most of the gunners had given up and fled, trying to survive a few days longer.

The four immense globe-carriers took up stationary orbit over the Facehuggerian mainland and began painting targets. Military bases, major factories and industrial complexes, cities, virtually anything of major value. Then, satisfied that they had seen everything, they simply bombarded those locations into dust. The national shield held out for a day, but it failed under the constant barrage. After that, every major military or industrial target was destroyed with precision.

In that rain of death, most of the military was vaporized instantly. The tank corps? Gone. The Air force? Gone. The Bioroid legions? 98% casualties. The aliens were now satisfied with the destruction, and ceased their bombardment. They had plans for Facehuggeria.

The lead carrier began dropping small pods. Contrary to what the survivors assumed, these were not troop pods, nor were they bombs. The pods landed, and dug themselves deep in the ground to begin the purpose for which they were intended. It would take many months for the pods to bear fruit however, and the human survivors would have to be…pacified before that time.

To that end, large troop-carriers launched from the globe ships, each troop-carrier carrying thousands of troops as well as the equipment they would need. But when the troopships landed, they encountered very light resistance. The chaos following the bombardment had mostly scattered and isolated whatever military forces remained.

At this time, the aliens avoided major concentrations of humans such as villages and cities. They were more concerned with setting up a suitable base of operations as opposed to enforcing their will on the countryside during this phase of the invasion.

The mop up was completed with efficiency and haste, alien drones starting to set up permanent dwellings around secured landing sites. The military campaign soon turned to the most difficult phase of conquest: holding on to what was captured…

Amidst a flash in the distance, a vessel appeared, or more accurately, the image on one. No ship could possibly be as long as this one appeared, stretching off for what seemed like lightyears. Then, in an instant, the aft end of the ship 'caught up' with the bow, and it accelerated towards the station in the distance. Across the bow, the characters spelling out the registry and name were illuminated.
U.S.S. Mars, NCC-750233.
As the Mars slid to a stop along side a docking port, the impulse drives could be seen cooling. Lights blinked on around the port docking port on the saucer, waiting for a docking tube to extend. Eventually, one did, the universal seals adapting to the foreign design. Hatches hissed open as the Mars pushed herself closer on thrusters. As he walked in, he carefully took in the septic look of the station, marred only by carbon scoring on the wall plates. Fleet Admiral Wallace entered the Facehuggeria station.

OOC: For reference, here's the Mars.

Admiral Wallace was hurriedly greeted by one of Admiral Halsey's aides. All around the station work was going on, some trying to clean up the remains of the battle, some trying to repair the various ships now docked to the station.

"Admiral" The aide said sheepishly "What a pleasure it is to have you aboard. I apologize for the state our station is in. Grand Admiral Halsey has requested your presence personally in the Deck 283 Officers' lounge on board the Absolution. Please follow me to this teleport station. Now just lean back and take a deep breath. And try not to think about the twenty percent teleport casualties."

In a single flash of light, the Admiral and Aide were displaced onto the CFV Absolution. Unfortunately, the ship's internal teleport grid was down. As were the trams. "Admiral, I apologize, but the ship's teleport grid is out. We'll have to walk the rest of the way to the Officers' lounge. It should only be a mile or so away."

After a brisk jog through many twisting and damaged corridors, the two men arrived at the officers lounge. The door was open and a exhausted voice beckoned them entrance.

Before them was a tall man of regal bearing, with dark brown hair but only a smidge of silverish grey peeking out. "Greetings. I am Admiral Jerico Halsey. Welcome aboard, Admiral Wallace. Please be seated. I shall start our story when more delegates have arrived. I'm sure you're quite intrested in what happened..."

Meanwhile;

Fantoma base was one of the many secret bases that had existed before the invasion. What’s more, it was one of the few to survive the aliens’ bombardment by sheer virtue of the fact that it was hidden deep inside Cunni Mountain. Unfortunately, the aliens were now coming in with ground forces to do what they couldn’t or wouldn’t do from orbit: Kill every living thing on base.

Sergeant Jarath Freeman swore to himself. The base commander had ordered an evacuation, and Freeman and his already depleted team of Bioroid super-soldiers had been ordered to hold the line, at any cost. FAR easier said than done. Especially when the aliens had already terminated the other seven Bioroids in Freeman’s squad as they sniped at the enemy infantry with high velocity railguns.

Freeman looked out at the troops he had available, the tactical doctrines in his implanted soulcatcher chip leaping into his head. He had himself, the other two super soldiers, Privates Dobbes and Justa, as well as a six man squad of mobile infantry. Certainly not enough to hold the entrance for any length of time.

The aliens, or bugs as the troops dubbed them had tapped a significant amount of firepower for the capture of Fantoma. A whole transport’s worth, a thousand infantry with a handful of the large crablike walkers that the enemy used in lieu of tanks.

Freeman tried to uplink to satellite and aerial reconnaissance, but he found that none was available, so he worked without it. “Okay, Dobbes. I want you to get an engineering bot and set up a minefield at the front door. Justa, I want you on sniper detail up the side of the mountain. Corporal Donahue, take your MI troops and recover every scrap of explosive you can muster. I’ve got a plan.”

Once each soldier knew his or her task, they went about it with startling efficiency. They finally got everything prepared, just as the first pot-shots from the approaching alien army were whizzing past the humans’ heads.

Freeman linked to Justa and said a single, simple phrase; “Fire at will.” Justa was all too happy to comply, as alien after armored alien fell to her lethally accurate rail-rifle. She was fortunate, the rail-rifle was an anti-tank weapon not usually issued to infantry. It was also one of the few infantry weapons capable of piercing the aliens’ armor.

But even her rifle and powered armor did not save her from a blast to the head. One of the aliens got lucky with the return fire and burned her head away, cauterizing the wound completely. She was gone.

Dobbes shrieked. He and Justa had been lovers. Disregarding his personal safety, he ran out towards the advancing alien wave, firing his rifle madly. “Dobbes! Get your ass back here!” Freeman yelled in his mind, using his internal radio to beam orders directly into Dobbes brain. Unfortunately, Dobbes was berserk, not responding to orders.

Dobbes was gunned down quickly, his armor and skin failing under the strain of repeated hits. Freeman was pretty pissed now, and he fought to maintain a level head.

Firing a few bursts from his rifle, Freeman began falling back towards the entrance of the base, where his last line of defense was. Several aliens stepped on the minefield that Dobbes had set before his death, sending them to the great roach motel in the sky. But their losses didn’t even slow them down. They advanced through the minefield, heedless of personal safety.

Once Freeman was through the threshold of the entrance, inside the base, he put his plan into action. The MI troops had gathered each and every scrap of C9 explosive in the base and formed it into a crude shaped charge. This large shaped charge would launch the meter thick armored door into the alien ranks with a huge amount of force while simultaneously causing a cave in at the entrance, hopefully deterring the aliens long enough for everyone to escape via the emergency tunnels. Or at least, that was the plan.

“Blow it! Blow it NOW Corporal!” Freeman yelled as he ran down the corridor, trying to get as far away from the gigantic homebrew cannon as fast as possible.

Moments later, an earth shattering roar exploded all around Freeman and shook the whole mountain. The door slammed head on into one of the alien walkers, but to the horror of everyone in the mountain, the mechanical monster merely swatted the enormous projectile away, seemingly with no more effort than a mother uses to slap a miscreant child.

The explosives did, however manage to cause a small scale cave in, a cave in that would take an hour or so to clear using conventional means. But the same alien walker which had just swatted away the door merely raised its right arm, a pulsing lightning esque beam emerging from a small node and slamming into the rocks, melting them into molten glass within seconds. Thousands of lethal alien warriors swarmed through the hole, seeking their human prey.

Freeman had been watching the aliens’ progress of the aliens. The base’s AI core had been kind enough to give him the feed from whatever security cameras were still functioning. Freeman was quite understandably horrified. These things just kept on coming.

“Corporal! Get your men out immediately! This battle is lost, we bought all the time we could!” Freeman yelled into his radio.

“Understood Sergeant! Wait one…Shit! They’re coming through! Bastards must’ve tunneled through the damned mountain to get to us! There’s too maBzzzt *static* got to set off the nukes, can’t let *static* get ahold of *static* *static*! It was a pleas -*static* serving with you…”

Freeman managed to jump into an escape tunnel just in time, for a blinding flash sparked just above him, vaporizing much of the mountain in an excessively clean nuclear fireball. They were only low yield tacticals, but they still deprived the aliens of valuable intelligence, as well as a thousand warriors.

But what of the personnel of the base? Had the evacuation been completed? Had those brave soldiers given their lives for a purpose? No. The bugs were waiting at the main tunnel exit. It was a slaughter. A slaughter that left just one survivor, Technician third class Cassidy Leed.

Cassidy managed to blindly flee the carnage as the unarmed scientists and bureaucrats were cut down by the bugs. He ran smack dab into Freeman.

Poor Cassidy was frantic. Of course, he had every right to be. He had just witnessed his friends and coworkers brutally murdered. “You’ve got to help me! They killed everyone else! Lenny, Carter, George! Shit shit shit! Is there another way out of the tunnels?”

Freeman accessed whatever maps of the tunnel network he had. These tunnels were an old tramway system littered with exits, if one had the ability to clear whatever debris had accumulated there since the trams’ last use. Fortunately, Freeman had that ability.

“Affirmative. Follow me; I’ll get us out of the tunnels. But after that, I don’t know. There isn’t really any place to go. This area was chosen for a base specifically because it was remote. All the other bases near here have been hit.” Freeman replied finally, after choosing a route.

After an hour of fearful tunnel crawling, during which they both mistook many rats for alien pursuit, they emerged onto the surface. Freeman began to plot his next moves. “Here is the plan. We’re going to move into the forest and camp for the night, and then in the morning we shall begin our search for other survivors. We may have a chance at coordinating an effective resistance, if we can…”

He was cut off by Bates. “Effective resistance!? They killed off almost the entire population of that base! What can we possibly do against that?”

Freeman thought for a moment. There was really no good answer to that question, so he cleverly diverted the topic. “We owe it to our people to try.” He said flatly, before starting off towards the woods with Bates in tow.

-Central Command
"<Master Axis!!>" A Mekantan organic, one of the growing numbers of biologicals in Mekanta's forces, whipped around in her chair to look at the General. "<Of great tragedy to occur!>"

"<To explain further!>" Axis barked back, looking up at the main screen. His expression immediately turned grim. "... Central Facehuggeria..."

-Later...
X1 and Axis, two of the highest ranking purely-military commanders of the Mekantan Steel Imperium,

"<Of allies, to be of which defeated...>" X1 said, shaking his head. "<Of> Central Facehuggeria, <to be a friend of Mekanta...>"

Axis finished the thought. "<To avenge.>"

"<To concur...>"

The Jedi Master Armas Elendil noticed a grave disturbance in the Force, like that of a nation crying in pain before dying. His elven ears twitched in sadness for whatever nation has fallen to Darkness...

Admiral Young arrived at the Facehuggerian station. His entire attack fleet was with him. It consisted of one Planetary Assault Vehicle, four Pummelors, and one Lynx. A very weak force.

"I am sorry that we cannot send more aid, but the rest of the fleet is busy preparing for other work (you'll see in a couple weeks). However we are sending our top commandos and 1000 Rangers, this will be the first time we use our new Ranger equipment and it should be more than satisfactory."

OOC: Sorry, but Tag!

Admiral Young arrived at the Facehuggerian station. His entire attack fleet was with him. It consisted of one Planetary Assault Vehicle, four Pummelors, and one Lynx. A very weak force.

"I am sorry that we cannot send more aid, but the rest of the fleet is busy preparing for other work (you'll see in a couple weeks). However we are sending our top commandos and 1000 Rangers, this will be the first time we use our new Ranger equipment and it should be more than satisfactory."

Admiral Halsey smilied. "Any help you can provide will be extremely beneficial. Do not apologize for a lack of forces. We are happy to have anyone responding at all."

Halsey's face suddenly turned more grim and serious. "I had hoped that more of our allies would come to our aid. Perhaps our ties are not as strong as we believed..."

The night passed slowly for Freeman. He was tormented by the faces of his comrades, taunting him, accusing him. They died for nothing.

Freeman tried to banish these thoughts for his mind. He had to focus on the task at hand –sleep. He’d need all the energy his enhanced body could muster for the trying time ahead.

After glanding himself a tranquilizer, he drifted off into uneasy sleep. He awoke some time later to find the heads of his deceased squadmates lying at his feet, staring at him blankly. Directly in front of him was one of the armored aliens, its black-grey armor not showing a hint of emotion. Freeman also found that he had been stripped of his armor, for reasons that he couldn’t fathom.

Freeman lanced out with a kick, but his moves were sluggish. The fact that the tranquilizer hadn’t worn off had crossed his mind. But it felt like something else…

The armored figure moved with inhuman quickness, punching Freeman in the gut, causing him to double over. It didn’t give Freeman time to recover, it merely lanced out with a devastating kick, sending Freeman back twelve feet, right into a mighty old oak tree.

Every artificially improved muscle in Freeman’s body ached. Pain was good, it kept him alert. This time, he was ready for the alien’s attack. Freeman skillfully parried it with his hands and launched a devastating open-palmed strike of his own to the alien’s midsection, causing a deep dent in its armor.

But that only seemed to slow the creature down. It stopped and stood motionless for a moment, doing god knows what. Then, it reached out and ripped into Freeman’s torso with its fingers. Normally, this wouldn’t have done much damage, but in this instance, a blue nimbus of electricity cackled around the alien’s hand as it slammed it into Freeman’s chest.

Freeman blacked out.

After a time, Freeman opened his eyes again. All around him there was nothingness, just empty space with nothing else. Suddenly, the view changed to a planet being consumed in a firestorm, half of it already burning. It all had a sense of detachment and surrealism. These flashes came unbidden from Freeman’s mind. Or did they? Was this god’s sick way of foreshadowing his land’s fate? Or was this a vision from antiquity? A history meant to explain something that no mortal could comprehend? Or perhaps it was just the subconscious of a man driven to the breaking point…

Freeman awoke once again and found himself in his now familiar resting place on the ground. Bates was nearby making a horrible scratching noise, feverishly trying to do something behind his back.

”Bates!? What the hell are you doing?” Freeman asked quietly, drowsily.

“I’m trying to make a fire. Want to give me a hand?” Bates replied matter-of-factly.

This was an extremely bad idea. Freeman’s eyes opened wide and he quietly, but firmly whispered “Are you insane!? If you set a fire, we’ll light up on thermal displays like a fucking Christmas tree!”

Bates, thoroughly chastised, replied “Sorry. I guess I didn’t think of that.”

He then paused for a moment, as if in thought. “S…So, you got a plan yet? I’m drawing a blank.”

Truth be told, Freeman didn’t really have any clue as to a possible plan, so he just pulled random strategies out of his ass. “Err…We’ve got to find some heavier weapons. And a vehicle too. Um…The government had supply depots scattered all over the place, but they only told a few trusted AI cores, Base Commanders, and high-ranking officers of their locations. Hmm…There used to be a town near here, before the attack. I don’t know what happened to it, but it would be a good idea to check it out. We may find survivors or a vehicle to commandeer. Frankly, we don’t have many other options.”

Cassidy grinned and said “Well? What are we waiting for? Lets go!”

“Give me a minute!” Freeman said forcefully. He didn’t like being pushed. He was also inwardly concerned about his dream. It had seemed so vivid, so real. It disturbed him, but he didn’t speak of it to Bates. Freeman meekly hoped that it wouldn’t hurt his combat performance, but he had a nagging feeling to the contrary.

“I hope that our mutual friends come to their senses and help to repel this invasion. And I am sorry to tell you that our picket ships in Sol have reported the Facehuggerian mainland has been hit hard, over eighty percent casualties, civilian and military. Any family you may have had is probably dead.”

“However, our Rangers are ready to counterattack right away. We will be landing where our scouts tell us there is a high concentration of survivors, after we secure the area we will remove the survivors to safe zones that you dictate. We promise that your remaining population will be safe within 48 hours. Then it will merely be a matter of rolling back the enemy until they are defeated. I can assure you we will not be.”

OOC: My president has just completed his training to become a Jedi Master. conveinent, eh? We're a bunch of colonies in Earth Orbit, so that will have a big impact.

IC:
"Mr. President, we have just gotten reports of Facehuggerian ships engaged in a battle on the opposite side of the planet. Their fleet has retreated and appear to need access to space docks."
"Open me up a channel with their Admiral Halsey."
"Yes Mr. President."

*A line was established with the CF flagship*

"Ensign, please send this message to Admiral Halsey. We shall support you as you supported us against TFU. We shall fight with you to the death. You are free to use our spacedocks, and your people can be evacuated to our colonies. I am also ordering the Blood Rangers to kill a few of those bugs..." The President grabs at his head, a psyonic wave trying to brainwash him. He struggles with it for a few minutes before coming to, hair all messed up and clothing torn. "We shall support you. I also sense Psychers. Prepare your men and allies. Crazed Marines out."

With that, the President went into his office and said, "Colonial, tell the Blood Rangers to saddle up!"

“I hope that our mutual friends come to their senses and help to repel this invasion. And I am sorry to tell you that our picket ships in Sol have reported the Facehuggerian mainland has been hit hard, over eighty percent casualties, civilian and military. Any family you may have had is probably dead.”

“However, our Rangers are ready to counterattack right away. We will be landing where our scouts tell us there is a high concentration of survivors, after we secure the area we will remove the survivors to safe zones that you dictate. We promise that your remaining population will be safe within 48 hours. Then it will merely be a matter of rolling back the enemy until they are defeated. I can assure you we will not be.”

Halsey's face turned two shades whiter, rendering it particularly corpselike now. His rational mind had been telling him not to hold out hope, but now it was just starting to sink in. His family, gone.

He quickly composed himself in time to respond to the Admiral. "Very good. Our forces are too depleted to try and retake our homes. If you wish to deploy your troops, you may do so at your descision. Our fleet and ground forces shall not be ready for quite some time, so if you do go early, it will probably be without aid. Although you seem very confident in your men, so this may not be too much of a problem."


IC:
"Mr. President, we have just gotten reports of Facehuggerian ships engaged in a battle on the opposite side of the planet. Their fleet has retreated and appear to need access to space docks."
"Open me up a channel with their Admiral Halsey."
"Yes Mr. President."

*A line was established with the CF flagship*

"Ensign, please send this message to Admiral Halsey. We shall support you as you supported us against TFU. We shall fight with you to the death. You are free to use our spacedocks, and your people can be evacuated to our colonies. I am also ordering the Blood Rangers to kill a few of those bugs..." The President grabs at his head, a psyonic wave trying to brainwash him. He struggles with it for a few minutes before coming to, hair all messed up and clothing torn. "We shall support you. I also sense Psychers. Prepare your men and allies. Crazed Marines out."

With that, the President went into his office and said, "Colonial, tell the Blood Rangers to saddle up!"

Halsey's communicator beeped. It had a message from the Crazed Marines president.

Halsey quickly skimmed over the message, picking out the important bits. The CM government appeared willing to help.

Halsey smilied and began composing a detailed thank-you note with his basic strategy in it, and a request to meet face-face in the near future to plan for the reconquest.

"Mr. President, the CF government-in-exile wishes to meet with us."
"Ok. Respond and tell them we will meet with them and that we would prefer here. We can protect ourselves here, and we can set up a country-in-exile here so they can repopulate their country. We'll even allow their men to marry some of our women."
"Yes sir. Which colony should we request them meet us at?"
"How about Iwo Jima? Its beaches are beautiful this time of the year."
"Yes sir!"

“I am sorry if this has hit you hard. But I promise you that my force will do all in its power to protect the remaining civies, and to free your land. Perhaps it will make you happy to know that we have dedicated the best of the best to this mission.”

“I am under the impression that every second we spend here without action means more lives lost on Earth. I’m going to take my ships right now to try to stop the bloodshed.”

Admiral Young then turned and left for his command ship, the ageing AISS 0010015, known to her crew as the Puma. His fleet was one of the weakest Al-Imvadjah had ever fielded, yet Young was convinced of its impending success. He boarded the Puma, and sent out the following order to his ships:
Prepare for the jump to Sol, we have no time to waste. I want the Pummelors to set up covering fire and the PAC to begin deploying her rangers as soon as we arrive. Our King expects every man to do his duty.

With that, the Al-Imvad fleet leapt into the Sol system. When they arrived, they received the information about their target area from the Nighthawks that constantly patrol Sol. The Pummelors began to orbit in geosync far from what remained of Facehuggeria, while the PAC prepared to launch her men toward the survivors.

At the last minute, Young sent a new order to the ships:
The Nighthawks have informed me of an apparent large grouping of enemy units at the following grid square, this force seems to be headed for the group of survivors we were planning to rescue. I have decided for a change in plans: take out this group, as such a loss will greatly strengthen our position. They are in grid square F4 -b3 mark 011-005. That is the target zone, attack it and clear the field. Insert the commando team at the previously determined position.

This last minute change of plans was unfortunate, because 925 Rangers had already loaded, and were equipped for a rescue mission. While the remaining Rangers were given tactical WMD, it would not be enough. They were loaded into their pods, and the PAC moved into firing position.

A single Pummelor moved from safety to support the landing. It opened fire upon F4 -b3 011-005 first. Its high explosive shells hit the grouping of aliens powerfully, but were not enough to kill any but those that suffered direct hits. The bombardment only served to heighten the awareness of the mass of waiting bugs. The three thousand pods were launched quickly and accurately. AS they came down, everything went to plan, almost. The pods functioned exactly as designed, but the enemy did not react as humans would. They could sense the immense energy output of the powered armor the Rangers were wearing, and so they knew exactly which pods contained a soldier and which were empty. Fortunately they did not have many AA weapons, but those they did have were used with deadly accuracy and effectiveness. 345 Rangers were dead before the first soldier hit the ground. When they landed, they found themselves surrounded by bugs completely unharmed by the bombardment that had preceded the attack. This compounded another problem: the lack of WMD. Only 5 soldiers of the 75 that had carried them survived long enough to use the WMD. Unfortunately, they did not use the HT gas, which could have saved the day, from fear of killing any nearby civilians. There was no fault with the ranger’s training or equipment, only in their foolish deployment. Their armor gave them all the protection that was possible, and they knew how to fight, but no amount of training or superior weaponry could overcome the grievous lapse in Admiral Young’s judgment. The RRAW and RAAT2 proved their worth, as small groups of Rangers managed to survive for nearly 5 minutes by using the armor-piercing capabilities of these weapons; pouring concentrated fire from protected areas. None survived to tell the tale however, as all were overwhelmed by the black bugs.

The only saving grace of this tragedy was that it allowed the dropship carrying the 10 man commando team was able to land unnoticed. Admiral Young killed himself later that day in his cabin.

Krarh strained his walker's 'head' up towards the source of the bombardment. The direct link to the walker allowed him to sense what it sensed, that foes were coming.

He expanded his mind into the consciousness of the lesser drones and sentients, perceiving the situation as they saw it. It gave Krarh a unique perspective that would allow him to plan accordingly.

The monstrous, tank sized plasma cannons on each walker's shoulders swiveled and began tracking the incoming pods. They belched forth searing beams of superheated gas into the sky, hoping for a lucky strike before they landed.

Meanwhile, the infantry, each encased in a suit of Maalar powered armor made preparations in the seconds remaining. Their weapons charged as one, preparing to wash over the human//animals in a wave of destruction.

That was when one group of the vermin managed to set off a nuclear device.

Hundreds of drones and lesser sentients were vaporized instantly, but the walkers merely shrugged off the weapons. Krarh grinned inside his own walker, a very human gesture not often used in Vaaish society.

He broadcasted a telepathic order to his remaining forces. They were going to close to melee range and slaughter the human//animals.

The enemy fought well, but when they were almost completely outclassed, as they were today, their chances of survival were negligible.

Most of the armored drones the human//animals thought they killed merely rose again, their armor had absorbed nearly all of the hits directed at them. Only the heaviest anti-tank weaponry even had a chance to damage the Maalar armor, and most personal weapons just didn’t fit that bill. The Vaaish weren’t pushovers as this group of humans suspected, to their great misfortune

Meanwhile, Krarh mind linked with the fleet orbiting high over Facehuggeria, relaying all of his information regarding where the attacks had come from.

Swarms of fighter pods streaked into space, quickly detecting the enemy vessels. The commanding alien force quickly realized that it was dangerous to allow human//animal warships too close to their new home. They would not be caught by surprise like that again.

The fighter pods began charging their weapons, building up a lethal spike that, on account of its power, would decimate almost anything it hit. The only thing that could save the A-I fleet now would be a hasty retreat order…

Onboard the Puma
Admiral Young took the news of his failure hard. He knew that it was nobody’s fault but his own, one thousand of the best and brightest of Al-Imvadjah had been sent to their deaths. And nobody else would have to face the wrath of the King.
He sent the following order:
SAC, pull back, pull back. We will retreat to the other side of the system and maintain communication with the commandos. Pummelors, try to stay inconspicuous, but keep in orbit, we may not be able to approach again. We‘re going to salvage this as best we can.

After completing the communication, he turned to his First Mate and said: “I’ll be in my cabin. You have command of the fleet until I return.”
_______________________________________________
Central Facehuggeria
The 10 man commando team landed safely. Their dropship held everything they would need for the mission. As they disembarked, the team leader, John Baker spoke to the rest of the group: “Okay, we need to get working fast. Blackbull and Marks start camouflaging the lander, the rest of you start unloading and setting up supply caches, I don’t want all our eggs in one basket. Jones, come with me we need to do some recon. Let’s see if we can’t find the soft underbelly of the bugs.”

The pair went off into the woods, carrying their CSRRs. The rest of the team started their assigned tasks. Within half an hour of landing, the dropship was completely camouflaged and powered down. The supplies had been offloaded and were being sorted again. The commandos would prepare hiding places for them over the next day and transport them there.

The Facehuggerian wilderness presented no problem for the graduates of the grueling Special Forces Academy on Tahnos (Nonistan’s harshest continent). Jones was fresh out of the Academy, as was Marks and Goerl. They walked in silence for an hour and a half before coming upon a road. They left no trace of their passage, and saw nothing for their entire journey into town. They came upon a deserted hamlet at the base of a mountain, where they made first contact with the enemy.

As Jones and Baker leapfrogged toward the town, Baker was the first to notice it. He signaled Jones to stop, which he did. Then Baker moved next to Jones and whispered:
“I see one bug in the town, just standing there, its not looking at us, and it seems to be searching through the ruined buildings for something. Get out your binoculars and look at the corner of the red brick two story, with the lamp. See it?”
“Yeah…”
“Keep up observation on that one, I’m going to circle around onto that hill over to the left, and look down the other street to see if it has any backup. If it does, which it probably will, I’ll come join you and we’ll move on … if it doesn’t we’ll kill it and examine the body.”

Baker moved over to the hillside, and Jones stayed behind cover. After forty minutes, Baker returned. “It’s by itself, strangely enough. Did you see anything useful?”
“I’ve managed to identify some sort of energy weapon, and I think its wearing body armor of some kind, but I can’t make out any weaknesses. And this obviously isn’t a big one … we could be in trouble.”

“Yep, we’ll need to get a hold of one somehow to look for weaknesses. For now let’s keep up this observation. We might learn something.”
Time passed.
“There!” Baker whispered excitedly, “look at the back of it’s … neck, for lack of a better word. That looks like a weak spot, see how one plate ends and there’s some sort of seam or something, but it’s usually covered by the head … I bet we could kill it if we hit it there. One shot one kill.”

Baker unslung his CSRR, and looked through its sight. He found his target within a second, and without taking his gaze off it, adjusted the settings on his railgun. He got the range to target, and squeezed the trigger, plucking off a single shot, which impacted the weak spot perfectly. He then paused and watched it fall slowly foreward, its head snapping back with the force of the slug. The pair moved carefully toward the fallen bug. When they arrived, it was as dead as a doornail, its nervous system severed in a single shot, dead before it had even known it had been hit.
“Good shot, John.”
“Of course it’s a good shot. Now, what do you remember from the alien anatomy course at the Academy?”

“Umm, well … first we should examine how its armor fits together, and any obvious weak points.”

“Wrong, first we should make sure its not transmitting anything from any sensor packs, but that usually isn’t an issue with bugs; they tend to rely on psychic communication … Look at this, uh, thigh joint. That’s a weak point, it was hard to see from our vantage point above him. Probably not fatal, but some fire down there would put one of these things out of action no problem … The underlayer seems pretty tough, I don’t think I would have been able to pierce it without a railgun… Just a sec, I wanna try something, back off a little.”

John pulled out his MRG, and loaded an AP slug. He then fired it strait into the stomach plate of the bug. Its heavy slug managed to blast through the armor plate, but was stopped by the underlayer, despite the pint blank range.

“Yeah, these are tough mothers, I don’t particularly want to go against an army of these things, let along heavy troopers. Let’s head beck to camp, and tell the others. We’ll have to plan our operations carefully, if we’re going to live long enough to make a difference.”

Baker and Jones traveled back to camp, again leaving no trail to be followed.

The dropship was fully loaded and prepared. The hundred Blood Rangers were ready. Before the mission, they decided to retrofit their weaponry based on some new intel. Their maching guns used the CM99 anti-tank round, their rocket pods were upgraded to take out anything short of Corvettes and other Capital ships, and their lazers were directly linked to the M/AM reactor on their backs. They were ready for anything.

"All right men, get your rear in gear. These SOBs will actually be on our level. They will ahve the homefield advantage, but we have the unity only Marines can share. Watch the guy to your left, right, and rear...just as they will watch you. If you are going to be taken down, send in the message and there is a slight possibility they can beam you up. We might not be able to because they might have used jammers, so don't get caught in that situation. All the revelant data and maps have been uploaded into your HUDs. Good luck and good hunting." With those words from their Commanding Officer, the dropships plunged into the white abyss of the clouds that was above Central Facehuggeria.

The white abyss did not blind the Vaaish emissions sensors, however. The dropships stood out like a black sheep. This time, the Vaaish did not waste any time. They activated their ground defenses and fired, thousands upon thousands of searing beams of energy blazing through the atmosphere on a rendezvous course towards the CM troopships.

On the off chance that some would survive, Liigarga aerospace walkers were deployed to mop up any remnants…

Meanwhile, in the forest;
Freeman and Bates moved quickly, darting from tree to tree. Under the cover of the trees, they were safe from most aerial detection. Unfortunately, the town was still a good distance away, through open plains.

“Bates!” Freeman yelled “Stay close. We can’t afford to be detected. Keep your head down and whatever you do, don’t let those aerial patrols spot you!”

Bates complied, and soon the pair were in a low run through the tall grass of the fields. Overhead, all was quiet. Perhaps the alien patrol had returned to base…

******
Glaug went about his/its patrol with the single minded devotion that only a drone could provide. The three unit flight of Liiarga aerospace walkers sped over the forests at a dizzying pace, their onboard emissions sensors looking for any signs of power generation, a sure sign of human infestation.

The forest patrol would have bored a sentient mind to death, but Glaug merely continued on and followed orders…

Suddenly, one of Glaug’s flightmates detected something under them in the plains. The entire flight halted in mid-air and peered down through the darkness. The emissions system painted the world red for the Liiarga pilots to assist the color-sensitive Vaaish eye in detection purposes. The power source showed up as a cool blue. It was a suit of powered armor, just barely within detection range. Glaug’s conditioned instincts took over and directed him and his flight down towards the energy source. One word coursed through Glaug’s simple mind: Destroy!

******

A low buzzing filled Freeman’s enhanced ears, too low for his companion to hear it. A heartbeat later, Freeman yelled “Oh shit!” and threw bates to the ground. He then raised his rifle and began looking towards the sky for targets. Then he saw them. Four flying bugs, their blood red armor glinting in the moonlight and making them seem even more sinister than they already were.

Freeman squeezed off a burst towards the fast-approaching targets, only to have the high-velocity and supposedly ‘armor piercing’ rounds bounce off their thick armor. Freeman swore again. He was thoroughly screwed. Or was he?

A missile screamed through the sky and impacted upon one of the aliens. It’s hulking, armored form fell down to the ground, more out of surprise than damage. It began trying to get up from the crater that had formed when it hit the ground.

Freeman’s mouth opened wide. Despite the fact that a rocket had just hit one of their teammates, they still continued single mindedly towards him.

Another missile flew from the unknown source and impacted upon a bug. It too fell to the ground, temporarily incapacitated. That left one left. One that was far too close for Freeman’s comfort.

The flier’s arms began to hum with an electric blue, an indication that they were about to fire. Which they did only moments later.

Fortunately, Freeman managed to jump out of the way, but only just. The beams of azure lightning from the alien’s weapons melted the ground where he had dwelled just moments ago.

The alien was only feet away from him now, and the grotesquely large claws it had certainly didn’t make it seem like a good idea to get too close.

But that’s exactly what Freeman had to do. If he got close and fired, perhaps he may get lucky and hit a weak point, assuming that such locations actually exist on the implacable monster now before him.

In one fluid motion, the alien landed gracefully on the Earth and began running towards Freeman. Freeman took that opportunity to scream an expletive and fire off his rifle randomly. Bullet after armor-piercing bullet merely bounced off the alien’s armor, the elusive weak point still not making itself known.

That was when the rifle started making a low beeping noise, indicating that it was down to its last few rounds. Freeman was in trouble. Bang!-Bang!-Bang! The rifle was now empty. It would take a few seconds to reload the clip, seconds that Freeman didn’t have.

In his adrenalin pumped fear, Freeman failed to notice that the alien began shuddering, and that a viscose green liquid seemed to be flowing from a large hole in the alien’s armor. One of his bullets had managed to hit the only real weak point in Vaaish armor: The blood-red cyclopean ‘sensor eye.’ The eye was perhaps the only truly weak point that almost all Vaaish units shared. In a foolish design decision, the pilot is always directly behind that eye, and the proper functioning of the sensor systems ensured that it couldn’t be properly armored.

Unfortunately, that weak point isn’t very easy to exploit. It is only marginally larger than a human eye, and is an extremely small target to hit. Freeman was only able to hit it because of the practically point blank range involved in this situation.

The other two aliens were still trying to hobble up, like turtles thrown upon their backs. It would take some time for them to right themselves.

Meanwhile, a man yelled out to Freeman over the plains. “Hurry up! They’ll be up and about again soon!”

Freeman hastily complied, picking up Bates and running towards the man. He broke the ice by saying “Come on. We’ve got to get out of here and back to the town. I’ve got a car waiting. We must leave now. I’ll explain everything once we get back to the town!”

Not perceiving a choice, Freeman and bates followed the man to his car, an old and beaten up Jeep assault vehicle, sans rear machine gun.

After hopping in, the trio sped off towards the direction of the town.

The ten dropships were going down to Earth.
"Red lead, this is Red 1. Sir, we have weapons dischar......................."
"Red 1, come in!"
"Red lead, this is Red 2. John just bought the farm....SHI...."
"Two? Two...Who's left?"
"Three here."
"Seven here. Five and six lost their comms. Nine's about had it."
"Ok, all men, bail out in your personal system on my mark...Three, Two, one, MARK!"
With that order, 60 men droped out of their ships (similar to a Galaxy drop in Planetside), towards the Earth, with their systems deactivated and emitting no signature because they were dormant in their powered-down suits (usually powered down untill a minute before drop to conserve energy, their M/AM containment is masked usually, from a small EMP emitter) from a sleeping drug. They make their way some-what safely towards the Earth with two miles to go.

Earth Orbit
--------------
Amidst the AI fleet, space seemed to shimmer. Though undetectable by any known sensors, anyone lucky enough to be looking in the right direnction at the precise time might've seen the event. In the centre of the disturbance, three objects emerged. They resembled meteors, simply for the fact they were meteors. Largely iron, with a nickel core. With any luck, as they fell through the atmosphere to the CF territory, that's all they would be seen as. But inside each one was a torpedo casing, entirely hollowed out without anything but the tritanium skin. Starfleet's newest deployment method. They gad sunjected it to every known sensor system, even captured enemy systems, yet no matter what, they always appeared as iron-nickel composites. Within each tritanium coffin of the torpedo casing, a Spartan waited. Carrying only the bare minimum of equipment, they were woefully unprepared to fight off an entire alien infestation. As soon as the meteor pods were deployed, the shimmering moved off and disappeared. Amidst the countless drop pods and shuttles, it would be easy to lose track of three inconspicuous rocks. 2 hours later, carried by only the smallest momentum, the meteor pods accelerated as they entered Earth's gravity well. They fell through the air, layers of rock shearing off in the intense heat. By the time the pods hit 3,000 metres, all the iron had melted off and a great deal of the nickel had also melted, though being more viscous, it had formed a teardrop shape around the torpedo. At the predetermined height, the capsules filled with reactive gel, to absorb the impact. There would be no parachutes, no braking thrusters. These pods were going to hit at terminal velocity. A ton of armour, plus 5 tons of rock and metal. 10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2.........

Associated Systems Installation Nirvana, Saturn/Jupiter Solar Orbit, Sol System

Duam Col sat in the Screaming Wookie, nursing a Collostomizer and waiting for the other members of the stations Dealer Squad.

The first to arrive was Robet Sem, second in command of the Nirvana's Dealer Squad and life long friend of Duam. He was muscled, but not thick. 'Wiry' was the term often applied to Robet. He walked in and sat down, not even looking at Duam. His head cocked half of a degree to the side, giving Duam the barest acknowledgement.

After Robet came Samuel Morse, newest member of the Squad and what is commonly called a 'nerd'. Well, as much of a nerd as you can be when you've killed so many people you're actually not allowed in the company of small children. He'd actually had his name legally changed to the man acredited with the invention of the Morse Code. Of course, nobody was really sure what Morse Code was but everybody knew it had something to do with electronics.

Then showed Will Tun, the very poster boy of a Dealer. Exactly six feet tall, packed with muscle, he looked like a man poured from solid steel. It's been said that he could take a slug in the chest from a KSMAR and walk away. Some have even tried to test that theory, but they usually receive a sudden incentive to be in a different location. They usually receive said incentive on the side of their head.

Last was Tap Soters. Unlike the rest of the Squad he was not in the peak of physical shape and he did not strike fear into the hearts of his enemies with the merest of glances. He looked like he was better suited manning a computer console in the bowels of the Vicegral Palace communications center, not collaborating with a group of people assigned to those tasks commonly labeled "It never happened. It never will happen. Now, drop it or the same thing will happen to you." Of course, the fact that his I.Q. was in the quadruple digits might have had something to do with it.

Duam was the first to break the silence, getting right to his point for calling the meeting.

"I'm leaving. I want you guys to come with me. If not, then you have five minutes to say so. After that I'm counting you in and I'll snap every bone in your body twice before I let you out."

The rest don't even react to that. They know he could do it, and they know he wouldn't even break a sweat during the process. They didn't really care either.

"We're in."

"Good. Now, here's what we do. We steal an Elysium, fly to Earth, conquer some third world country, and then do whatever the hell we want. Any questions? No? Excellent. Let's go steal a shuttle."

And they walk out of the bar, headed towards the shuttle bay. Arriving they walk in, board the transport Omega, and head to the cockpit.

"Get out."

The pilot gets out.

"Swing us around, pick up the Scorpion, then head to Earth."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Omega slowly descended through the atmosphere of Earth. The passengers didn't know where they were landing, and they didn't really care. Wherever it was they'd soon find a village, get a map, and find some random nation to over run. Yes, over run with the five of them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

"So, any potentials?"

"One, sir. Central Facehuggeria. Minimal contact with the Empire, none with the Association. Not to backwards technologically. Shouldn't be that hard."

"Okay, let's move in."

The five of them climbed aboard the tank, Tap Soters driving and the rest riding the treds. Slowly they approached the Facehuggeria border, crossing in the dead of night just after the hostiles finished their orbital bombardment.

(yes, this has been confirmed by CF, I'm not just jumping in here.)

The Third Star-seaship had been completed by Haliaen engineers and workers. This one was more distinct from most, in that it was further streamlined, sensor humps longer and smoother, seperate from the tumourlike modules of the previous two. Resting in the water, surrounded by smaller vessels, the final touches were made to it. The ship began to hum, gently at first, building up to a crescendo that threatened to deafen the crew of the wet water vessels. Abruptly, it stopped, and a transmission came through aboard all the nearby vessels.

"Engine test successful. Captain Open Apologies given to unfortunate external crew. Shall not happen twice. Captain Opern ends communication."

The channel went silent, though the ringing in the crews ears continued longer. This ship had been prepared specially for a diplomatic mission to Opterra (terran name, designation kept for simplicity) , where a human government had been exiled to following its loss of Earth holdings. It was that last part that piqued Majority Governance Consciousness interest, given that it was a loosely held legend that Earth was where the humans came from. Terran contact had only ever been recorded amongst the Haliaens once, with dramatic consequences. The exact details had been lost in time, but the general implications shown that it was not a scenario that Haliaen Military Consciousness would like to repeat. This is why the third ship was built in a hurry. More information was needed on these new humans, particularly on their homeworld, Earth. Weaknesses, strengths, interfamilial diplomacy, Consciousness stability, if they even had one. So this ship was to be dispatched, along with several smaller ships stored internally, not capable of their own faster than light (or even extended space) flight. Slowly, the crew filed into relatively minute holes in the hull, and the submerisible troop ships were brought up into the underside of the hull, secured in position by an overflow of the liquidic metal that made up the bulk of Haliaen resource material.

As the waters reflection glistened on the hull of the Star-seaship, it began to hum again as the engines prepared to lift the craft out of the water, and into space, where it would proceed to travel to Opterra. Hopefully they government wouldn't be hostile to the Haliaens, it would make contact so much more difficult, and Majority Governance Consciousness was cautious enough as it was.

(mmmmkay, I decided that I'd at least properly confirm my involvement, blah de blah. I even have an IC reason for picking up your Communication. Haliaens are nosy and utterly paranoid. They have sensors out the wahoola, listening about for other people. and all it would take is hearing that message, and they'd have thousands of sensors pointed at Opterra within the minute. Also, I'm being conscripted to go play something online. Have to finish this quickly, so it's a little short.)

The Scorpion MBT rumbled across the plain, one of the very few in the country capable of sustaining tank travel. Their maps didn't tell them much, but it did let them know they'd need to ditch the vehicle rather soon. Central Facehuggeria was not the best place for armored travel.

Tap sat within the tank, his eyes on the sensors and the controls at the same time. A 66 ton vehicle might not zip along like a cheetha, but you still need to see the trees in front of you to swerve around them. The motion trackers, blank until now (The onboard computers automatically screen out the movement from natural objects. Animals hunting, trees blowing in the wind, etc.), suddenly begin to display a solitary object zipping along above the ground. Unsurprised, the pilot alerts his passengers.

"Duam, we have a hostile approaching. Airborne, moving rather rapidly."

"Options?"

"Rather simple. Abandon the tank and go to ground, or blow them to hell."

"Decisions, decisions. Eh, if it's not them today it'll be somebody else tomorrow. Blow them to hell."

"Yes, sir."

The Scorpions cannon, a 90 mm High Velocity beast of a weapon, slowly raises from its position of rest. A shell is loaded, co-ordinates are inputed, and Death soars to meet those unfortunate enough to have stumbled upon the traveling squad of soldiers.

The Blood Rangers, almost directly above the Klonor tank, had just powered up their shields and their parachutes dropped about 150 above the Earth. They impacted and were ready for action, with their tank-killer rifles turned machine gun and rocket pods.

It had been a quiet day of patrols, not that Tourab noticed. His/its insentient mind could care less. His/its Liigara aerospace mecha prowled over the verdant Facehuggerian forests, seeking human vermin for capture. That was when the emissions system light up like a Christmas tree, not that Tourab knew what a Christmas tree was.

The power readings were coming from a location due west of Tourab’s position, and they were so bright as to blind Tourab’s eyes for an instant. The aerospace mecha halted undecidedly in the air for a moment while Tourab consulted with his/its immediate superior. The orders were clear: Attack and probe the enemy’s defenses while reinforcements arrive.

Tourab took the suicide mission without thought. The Liigara mecha sped off west at incredible hypersonic speeds. It arrived at its destination quickly, surveying all it could as it executed a barrel roll while firing upon the power signatures (CM’s armored men) with light plasma weaponry, nothing too heavy. Just a test for the enemy’s capabilities.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Vaaish troops got on the move, many loading into troopships onboard the four globular capital ships of the Vaaish armada. But many were leaving from the nearest hive//bases. Such immense power readings warranted a significant response, one designed to break the human//animals’ will to resist.

Meteor pod crater
-------------------
The once shiny silver casing of the torpedo was now charred, and the nose was a crumpled mess. A creaking sound could be heard, and the lid of the casing blew off, landing at the edge of the hundred metre wide crater. A figure sat up from within, his pearlescent green armour reflecting the light. On his back, the typically svelte reactor casing looked much bulkier. This was from the extensive layering of radiation absorbent material. It ensured that any radiation that did get out would be too weak to be detected. There were of course certain things that couldn't be helped, like some of the active sensor systems, but those were to be used sparingly. He walked over to the discarded lid and hefted the 200 pounds like it was a piece of paper. He set it down on top of the bottom half, and set the timer on the built in antimatter warhead. In an hour, this place and everything withing a 500 metre radius would be gone. And hopefully, the signature of an antimatter device powering up would draw as many bugs as possible in. At precisely 1500 hours, Spartan-01 of Blue Team pulsed his radio beacon on a randomized frequency, pointing his location out to the other two Spartans. Simultaneously, he picked up their beacons, roughly twenty miles to his left and right, with Blue-03 slightly ahead and Blue-02 behind. Spartan-01 moved off through the bush, unlimbering his phaser rifle.

OOC: If this is excessive firepower, say so and I'll edit


The Rangers saw something on their RADAR, airborne. It was coming at around seventy five knots. Half of them locked on with missiles, the other half deployed for gun use. They saw the flyer coming in and opened fire. The enemy's plasma fire just bounced off their capital-ship type armor. They, in turn, unloaded, The rockets shattered one of its wings while sending it to the ground. The machine guns just ripped up the front part of the armor after a while. One tank-killing bullet even wnet so far as to enter the bot's sensor.

"Johnson, check that out!"
"Yes sir!"

OOC: I don't know if it's excessive firepower, but it is godmodding. You can't say what happens to the target (Unless you and CF have spoken). Post the attack, CF posts the damage. Otherwise I could say "I attack your nation and easily conquer everything. Your army is easily beaten and I don't lose anybody."

OOC: I don't know if it's excessive firepower, but it is godmodding. You can't say what happens to the target (Unless you and CF have spoken). Post the attack, CF posts the damage. Otherwise I could say "I attack your nation and easily conquer everything. Your army is easily beaten and I don't lose anybody."
OOC: Well, I didn't say it was dead, just what CF posted about earlier. If you want me to change it, I will, but I thought that that would happen given 30 guys with rockets and 30 guys with machineguns that could kill a Abrams. There will be a LOT of lead flying. I mean, for all I know, it just scratched the lense of the sensor. I'll wait for CF to post about it.

OOC: If this is excessive firepower, say so and I'll edit


The Rangers saw something on their RADAR, airborne. It was coming at around seventy five knots. Half of them locked on with missiles, the other half deployed for gun use. They saw the flyer coming in and opened fire. The enemy's plasma fire just bounced off their capital-ship type armor. They, in turn, unloaded, The rockets shattered one of its wings while sending it to the ground. The machine guns just ripped up the front part of the armor after a while. One tank-killing bullet even wnet so far as to enter the bot's sensor.

"Johnson, check that out!"
"Yes sir!"

OOC: You said it's wing was shattered, that it had been thrown to the ground, that the front part was 'ripped up' (but that couold be allowed since you don't really say what 'ripped up' is), and that the sensor was penetrated.

For all I know that might be exactly what CF is going to post for his damage, but you can't post it for him.

ok, sorry. Meant to deat that word...and went ADD on the post. I'll change it unless CF wants to accept it.

OOC I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter if this mech gets killed in one of our posts, CF did say it was a suicide mission. The only sticking point would be how you killed it- seems a bit easy.
The actions of the marines could hardly go unnoticed by the Al-Imvad special forces team. They knew they had to act fast, or they'd have the entire bug army down on them like a ton of bricks. They weren't prepared for full-scale war right in their own backyard.
Baker decided to act:
"We've got to get over there and tell them off. We can't have a buch of helmets-for-brains regulars tramping around our forest attracting bugs, that's bad for us, and worse for them. I'll go and tell them to get the fuck outta here before they get us all killed."

He appeared, almost magically he was so stealthy, at the side of the clearing in which the Blood Rangers had landed. He called out to them:
"Hey, you do realize that they'll have detected your landing, right? That might not bother you - in your fancy smancy powered armor - but I've got a low-tech guerrila team in these mountians, and I would appreciate it if you would get the fuck outta here before you attract more of them!!! You morons wouldn't know stealth if it came up and garroted you. Out!! Now!!"

The commander laughed, "Looks like this punk doesn't like the taste of battle. Well, just point in the direction of the enemy and we'll oblige them for a fight."
The men laughed with this. Sgt. Jonhson then reported back.
"Sir, I saw that...thing...its a bug! We didn't kill it, just knock it down! But don't worrk, I showed it my vibroblade untill it bled and could bleed no more."
"Good work! Now, about those enemies. We want to be seen so we can kill as many as possible before we need evac. Where is their main base of operations?"

OOC: I'll allow it, this time. Expect some info in the OOC thread.

IC: Most of the enemy hits merely ricocheted off of Tourab's armor, unfortunately, 'most' is not 'all.' One had, by chance, hit the central sensor and completely destroyed the mecha. However, Tourab had sent all the information that he/it had up to that point to his/its superiors.

The ground around the CM troops began to shake, hundreds of the heavy crablike Coraga walkers were ponderously thudding towards them with weapons charged, the capital ship grade weapons on their shoulders turning this way and that as they began seeking out targets. It was not a good time to be in that area. This notion was further reinforced by the dull hum of Vaaish troopships overhead, each laden with untold thousands of Maalar equipped warriors.

The human//animals here would be made an example of. There would be no quarter...

"You feel that Sarge?" one trooper said nervously.
"Yeah. STAND YOUR GROUND! This is what we live for."
Then the Captain leading the company said, "FIX, BAYONETS!" This told the troopers to prepare their vibroblades and self-destructs.
"CHAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!" the Captain yelled. The men followed obiedently and went full on into the havoc with guns blazing, rockets firing, and vibroblades swinging. There would be no turning back. They would either be remembered as the new Custers or as Sergeant Yorks.

The tank shell flew through the air, impacting on nothing and eventually dropping back to Earth.

Samuel stared at the shell, turing to Tap and giving him a look.

"Okay, I think there's a problem with the motion tracker."

The tank rumbled to a halt and Samuel climbed into the pilots seat once Tap had vacated it. He began to pull open hatches and look at exposed wiring, trying to find the fault. When nothing seemed out of the ordinary he climbed out, crawling beneath the tank and trying to find something wrong. Still nothing. He glanced at the display screen and still saw a target. He stood up and groaned in frustration, kicking the side of the tank. With no sound the little bug on the screen opened its wings and flew away, with five pairs of eyes staring at it. All eyes then turn to Tap.

"Hey, we're allowed one mistake! That bug looked very authentic!"

"Just get back on the damn tank."

And they are off again.

The hum of the engines became a whine, pitch increasing until it couldn't be heard, merely felt. The water around the Star-seaship seemed to be bubbling, chaos the motivating factor in the events. The vibration died suddenly, as the ship lurched upward. Captain Opern floated inside the observation platform, perched on the top of the ship. Isolated from the rest of the hull, it was not somewhere to be during an attack, but at a moment such as this, it was the only way to enjoy the ride. He felt a slight compression over his body as the ship began to rise, breaking free of the water, which now cascaded down the hull, creating a vast waterfall. As the ship left the water, it shot up for a fraction of a second, before the engine power was reduced to compensate for the release. This was the part Captain Opern had been looking forward to. The ship leaned back slightly, and began to move upwards with a renewed vigour. One of the windows became opaque briefly as the bridge crew contacted Captain Opern.

"First Officer Epus is communicating with Captain Opern. First Officer Epus is informing the Captain that we are leaving Haliaen atmosphere at a vector that allows us optimum stellar hopping velocity. First Officer Epus would like to know if there are any changes to be made?"

Captain Opern sighed, although, given the water that permeated every deck, it was more of a gurgle.

"Captain Opern did not want to be disturbed. Captain Opern does not want any changes to be made. Captain Opern will return to the bridge upon leaving Haliae in 20 minutes."

"First Officer Epus sends apologies and ends communications"

And with that, Captain Opern sat back and enjoyed the view.

Having left the landing site before the shooting broke out, Baker spoke to his group:
"Okay, I heard the shooting start around 5 minutes ago at the landing site, so there's definately an alien army there right now. Our location will probably be discovered if we let them stay here, so we're ging to have to kill them. Set up the RAATs for mortar fire and drop some ZT-14. I'd say eight shells should be enough, set 'em to burst at 125 meters. Then we'l wait five minutes for it to take effect and put a couple HT gas rounds over their heads to kill the bastards. THe wind seems to be blowing away fromus, but I want Jones and Marks to cover up the exposed equipment and everybody wears a gas mask and eye protection."

The heavy weapon crews set up their RAAT2s to fire as mortars immediately. They launched ZT-14, a biological agent that destroys metals, in canisters set to burst open and spray their contents across the target area. This would destroy all the metals in the alien armor and walkers. While that would probably not kill them, the effects of it would. It would erode the reactor casing in the Blood Ranger's powered armor and the walkers, possibly releasing anti-matter. It woudl also cause the walkers to collapse, crushing those around them. Baker did not know this however, he was counting on it destroying any air processing equipment, allowing the highly poisonous HT gas to kill everything in the clearing: alien, human, plant, and animal. While this might be considered drastic, it would surely be the most effective way to kill the entire alien army.

Just outside the Faechuggerian hidden system, a bright flash of blue/white light was briefly visible, and as it disappeared an Ineffable heavy cruiser emerged, heading towards the system.
"Remaining Facehuggerian Government, this is the STSS Angered Mountain, requesting permission to dock and discuss your situation. We're carrying General O'Neill of the Ineffable Starfleets, we wish to discuss how we can help with your, situation. Please respond."

OOC: Would've come in earlier, but, y'know...I'm special*.

*100% FACT.

The Blood Rangers are falling alongside the enemies. Bu now, twenty had died and self-destructed in a blaze of glory and antimatter. Their extraction systems were offline due to the fact that their ships were not around. They did, however, kill a number of enemies.
When the chemical shells had started coming out, their gas sensors went red and the suit activated its repellent nanites (upgrade from original). All the nanites did were to keep the situation from becoming worse, for a time.
"SHOOT! GAS! FALL BACK TO THE TOWN! GET THE NUKES UP!"
The men started falling back the the small town outside their DZ and set up a perimeter there. Because of the gas and the battle, only 25 were left by now.

The gas hit the Vaaish walkers head on, but they continued to advance despite the fact that their metallic exterior armor was vanishing around them. Unfortunately, most of them were destroyed in short order by the human//animals’ weapons once they had been stripped of their metallic coating.

Still more were destroyed when the enemy armor suits self-destructed, lethal anti-matter reacting with matter. When the smoke and carnage cleared, most of the walkers had been eradicated. In a remarkable stroke of good fortune however, most of the troopships had not unloaded their cargo yet. Despite that, thousands of Vaaish warriors already on the ground had been extinguished forever.

They quickly fired out a dispersion agent, cleaning up the remaining gas and clearing the way for the thousands of Maalar equipped troops to disembark.

Some of the troops, no more than one hundred, began searching for the source of the death-gas, anti-contaminant fields active so as not to be caught by the same trap twice.

Meanwhile, most of the untold thousands of infantry began single mindedly marching directly towards the CM troops while Liigara aerospace mecha flew overhead, pelting the CM troops with light plasma fire and then their heavier weaponry as they got closer.

But one Vaaish thought she saw emissions in the corner of her emissions tracking eye. Subania had recently been ‘sexed’ and given sentience as a sort of coming-of-age ceremony, due to her place in the upper echelons of the Vaaish ‘society.’ However, she was still inexperienced in warfare, and did not have much experience with the Maalar armor. She didn’t even know how to use the inbuilt thrusters yet. But she made up for that with dogged persistence and a belief in her own invulnerability, some thoughts being truly universal amongst sentient species.

She started off towards this singular power reading quickly. She didn’t bother to tell her underlings or bodyguards of her plans. After all, she felt herself invulnerable, and she didn’t want anyone else getting in on her first kill!

After a brisk few minutes of running, while the battle was raging back near the destroyed human town, Subania came across her quarry: A group of human//animals inside some form of primitive armored vehicle.

A more experienced warrior (warrioress?) would have waited and observed her enemies for a time, but not young and naïve Subania. Oh no. She launched a frontal attack, firing her lighting cannon blindly at the tank.

(OOC: I expect her to do very little, if any damage. I’d also appreciate it if you captured her as opposed to terminating her outright. I’ve got some major plans in store for this character. Oh yes...)

(OOC2: I also realize that I haven’t been responding to everyone’s posts. This isn’t intentional, but is a result of the fact that I don’t often have a good long time to post, like I did when I wrote up the opening of this RP. You can expect more/better posts on weekends than weekdays.)

OOC: No problem with the posting. Most of my RP participants don't post ever, I'm just glad you get something out

IC:

Tap still sat in the tanks cockpit, nothing noticeably different from before. The tank still plodded along, crushing small bushes and swerving the larger ones as the Dealers looked for signs of civlisation. So far they hadn't seen the tiniest hint of inhabitants and that was beginning to bother them. It's rather hard to conquer a country if there's nobody there to conquer. Taps eyes, once again drawn to the blinking motion tracker, blink a few times. He smacks the screen twice, making sure it isn't a bug this time. Satisfied that there actually was something out there he brought the tank to a halt.

"Sir, I have a motion reading. A real motion reading."

"Are you sure? Maybe you just scratched the screen."

"Ha Ha Ha. No, this is legit. It's heading this way."

"Good to know. Everybody, off the tank."

The four infantry members of the squad climbed off, moving to the sides to give the Cannon a good field of fire. They take the safeties off their KSMAR's, putting them on full automatic. They didn't know what was coming and they wanted to be able to fill the air with lead if they needed to.

Suddenly, the.........thing burst from the trees and began firing, shots impacting the Scorpions armor and leaving large dents and welts across the entire surface.

"Jesus H. Christ, what the bloody hell is that?"

"I don't know Sam, but take it down!"

"Yes, sir!"

The tank, its Cannon aimed but not firing, slowly began to back up to make way for the infantry. The four Dealers slowly approached, weapons up and ready.

"Bye-bye."

And suddenly the weapons spout flame, thousands of rounds spewing forth and impacting upon the unlucky warrior.

FYI: 1,000 rounds per minute from each gun

"Sergeant Murphy! They're coming!"
MSgt. Murphy, the highest ranking Ranger left alive said, "Good. Get 'Alphabet' up in the window with the nuke launcher. Set for 3 klicks destruction. Fire when he sees their main body. Hit them hard. We have only four shots after that."
"Yes sir! Kowalski! Get in that window! Don't miss, and hit them like a feminist!"
The Private responded in some unintelligable langour, probably swearing at the upper echelon for making him do this. He loaded the Stinger-launcher style weapon on his shoulder and waited for them enemy troops to appear. To his delight, they did, and in formation. One of the fliers was making a run on his, but he fired before he was hit and paralyzed temporarily. The Nuke landed in the midst of the enemy troops.

The nuke landed in the midst of the Vaaish infantry -or so it appeared. In reality, the weapon had been displaced away only seconds before impact, right into space without so much as a flash of light. Pinpoint displacement required a signifigant amount of bioenergy, so the Vaaish armies couldn't do it often, but when the need was great enough (Dishonorable WMDs), they could do it.

The thousand strong ranks of infantry steadily closed until they were within weapons range, firing jolt after jolt of arcing blue energy towards the CM troops.

(OOC: Klonor, I haven't forgotten about you. It's just that I don't have much time on hand right now for a decent post. Also, CM, I'm going to be reducing your forces to a small squad of no more than ten, the absolute upper limit that I defined on the GDA boards. You may also want to use the armor sparingly, but I won't restrict that so much.)

"WHAT THE FUC.......!" MSgt. Murphy screamed, "The NUKE didn't even phase them! MEN! GIVE THEM EVERYTHING YOU GOT!"
Everybody opened up, Kowalski just recovered, but his armor was fried beyond repair. He decided to take a sniper rifle and move to another good sniping point to kill off the enemy troops. He had, in his haste, abandoned his team's only nuke launcher. This probably bite them in the butt later, but he didn't care when he had just seen his armor be completely and utterly destroyed beyone use with one shot. The men fought valliantly, and only three fell in the first minutes of fighting, but everything got worse when the enemy approached the 1500 meter mark.

Brandoniat Spartan
Precise Location unknown

Spartan-01 lowered the monocular from his faceplate and disconnected the lead from the helmet dataport. Fifty klicks away, a fierce battle raged. The invader infantry, if you could call them that, they were more like walking tanks, were clashing with the CM commando squad. Not an hour before, a AI had been communicating with those infantry, with their massive power systems throwing off thermal radiation like small suns. No doubt it was the homing beacon the bugs had zeroed in on. It was a stupid move, using such technology in guerrilla warfare. Spartan-01 jumped off the huge redwood he had been clinging to and plummeted to earth. He hit the turf with only a muted thump. Spartan-01 moved to the base of the tree and retrieved his weapons, slinging the rifle across his back and holstering his phaser pistol. He moved off through the forest, no longer standing out as before, as he had covered the pearlescent green in mud and foliage. Despite not having seen his teammates since the before the launch, he was sure that they had done the same. After only a few metres, it became impossible to see him.

Aboard the STSS Mental Patient
"This is going to be a rough ride. They seem to have established substantial air defences, and their fleet is over the nation. The plan is to sneak into orbit using the bubblespace shields, drop them for a moment to deploy the dropship, then raise them and get the hell outta there. To survive you'll have to hope the shields and repulsor fields installed function correctly, otherwise you'll burn up. You're going in at 0.001c, meaning you'll be travelling for about a four seconds between entering the atmosphere and hitting the ground. The AI will handle the difficult parts, such as slowing you down so you don't die. This will give the enemy as small a chance as possible to shoot at you, but it will mean your chances of getting out by air are severely limited, as it'll put a great strain on the GFG. Your best option is to leave by ground or sea, or at least wait until you're out the country before taking to the air. If you can make it to sea a ship will pick you up.
We're giving you a lot of heavy weaponary, so it's only ten men per dropship, rather than the usual forty. We're sending in three dropships. You're mission is to assess the enemy strength, and gather intelligence. If possible we want fragments of enemy vehicles, armour, bodies, whatever. We need it. We can't risk a larger force until we know what we're up against. Your chances of survival are not great. But we need you alive. Come back, that's an order."

About half an hour later, careful gravitational wave measurements and/or very massometers would detect something unseen slinking amongst the Vaaish fleet above Central Facehuggeria. When the dropship carrier reached its position the bubblespace shields dropped, leaving the ship with only the Atlantian cloaking technology to hide them. The three dropships were launched, and sped away at around 300km/s towards the Facehuggerian coastal territories. Raising the bubblespace shields again, the carrier jumped around the near-Earth systems for a while before returning to just outside Leda (Jupiter orbit).

As for the dropships, aboard one Colonel H. Perkins had only the time to see a blinking red light signifying the failure of the shields and even as he attempted to come up with some last words as simple as "Oh s-" the dropship vaporised into a ball of plasma. The other two held together, deccelerating at rates that would have liquified the occupants if it wasn't for the inertial dampening. One came down in a forest, the other in a plain about 75m away. Recovering from the strain of the sheer numbercrunching required to keep the dropships together, the AIs were yet to do sensor sweeps of the area...

OOC: Hope it's okay to say they were completely missed by any fire if existant, but they have about five seconds from them appearing in orbit to hitting the ground, so I'd say it's a stretch even for uber-aliens from the MC-70089XI galaxy...

*at the village*
The enemy was just relentless. They came on from 1500 meters on without even slowing down thru increasing amounts of fire. The machineguns had, by now, overheated and fired uncontrolably. Their tank-killing bullets were numbered, but each shot would almost gurantee a kill. Kowalski was up on the roof sniping the aereal units and the heavily armored ones. This would be a fight to remember, especially when only 20 were left.

Each shot would guarantee a kill, but the thing was that there were far too many bugs to go around. Hundreds had fallen, hundreds would fall soon, but the cold reality was that there were still thousands, tens of thousands of bug infantry remaining.

*****

Meanwhile, thousands of rounds tore through Subania’s armored form, knocking her down easily. One lucky hit managed to hit her helmet in just such a way as to knock her unconscious. She was down before she even knew what was going on. It would now be up to her foes what to do with her. The armor deactivated itself when it knew that its occupant was incapacitated, it deemed any attempt to inject stimulants or other such combat drugs too dangerous a risk when dealing with a pilot as…important as this one.

*****

The TST operatives managed to infiltrate the occupied nation without arousing many suspicions. Merely the standard patrols that went over that area at a specific and predictable time each day. Unfortunately for them, it was just that particular time of day right now, and a small flight of three Liigara aerospace mecha hummed overhead. Of course, it probably wouldn’t find the TST operatives, so long as they did not make themselves obvious…

The beast tumbled to the ground, motionless and displaying no signs of life. There was no further fire from the surrounding trees and the motion sensors again registered only the natural wildlife of Earth.

Duam, seeing the target tumble, brought an end to the shooting.

"Cease fire! Sam, inspection time."

"Yes, sir!"

Samuel slowly began to creep forward, his Rifle up and ready as approached the still form. The other members of the squad slowly re-levered their weapons, turning off the full auto. A slower rate of fire, yes, but penetration power was nearly tripled.

'Sir, I don't think it's dead!"

"Oh, how can you tell?"

"Because it's XXXXX (Okay, I'm not really sure what kind of tells these guys have for dead/alive, but I'm assuming they do have some)."

"Huh......Tap, got any chord in the tank?"

"Yeah, I've got several yards."

"Good, bring it out."

The Diamond Filament Chord, theoretically unbreakable by any organic being, was quickly tied around the body and limbs of the unconcious being. The Dealers then walked away, contemplating their next move.

"Okay, what the hell is it? Robet?"

"Damned if I know Duam. Never seen anything like it before. Will? You've spent more time out of the Association than any of us."

"It sure as hell isn't Facehuggerian, that much is clear. Whatever it is it can't be that smart. It's lucky we didn't just blow it to the Americas and keep walking. Damn thing must be stupider than Tap to singlehandedly attack a Dealer squad."

"Oh, come on! One time! I made mistake!"

"You thought a freaking bug was a motion signal!"

"Oh, you two just shut up. How does this effect our plans?"

"I don't know, it's a variable we're unfamiliar with. Who the hell knows what kind of force they have."

"Hmmm, let's see if they can at least speak English."

Duam walked over to the unconcious alien, trying to rouse it back to conciousness.

The team was still on alert. MacDougal and the rest of the heavy weapon troops were cleaning their RAAT2s when Jones, as a forward observer, raised the alarm over the radio:
"Guys, I see about a hundred bugs headed through the forest in our general direction, just a heads-up, they might just be a short-range patrol, but you'd better be on your toes."
The team grabbed their weapons and covered up all sensor-detectable items. They moved into the forest, leaving their campsite looking like it had been abandoned immediately after the dropship had landed. Each man (and Anne) was the grim figure of death incarnate, armed with the most powerful (human) infantry weapons ever to grace Earth's surface. They melted into the landscape. A trained observer would have been unable to notice them a few seconds after they entered the treeline, and they relied entirely upon skill and training - not active camoflauge- though their Al-Imvad allweather gear helped. They moved quickly through the forseted hills - each person seperate from the others, but connected by the common knowledge of their training and their radios. Any one of them could have run a five minute mile in such terrain.
Jones' forward position exposed him to the most danger. A Maalar equipped infantryman passed within 5 feet of his position, but failed to notice the expertly concealed human. One alien inevitably found the human campsite, and called the others. Only 40 arrived.

Seconds passed. The men sat still, stunned at the speed and scope of the images that had passed before their eyes from the viewscreens. Orbit to ground in four seconds is a lot for anyone to take in, but when the view is filled with an alien fleet the scope of which you're entirely unprepared for, it's just that little bit more shocking.

Aboard the Meteor's Silence
The silence persisted for almost a minute, until it was suddenly broken by the AI's voice;
Just though I'd let you know, radar and long range spysats suggest three airborne patrol craft in the area. I'm setting the dropships down, going to silent mode. Best tactic should be to stay quiet until they pass."
Colonel T. Barclay continued staring at nothing for a second, before seeming to snap out of whatever trance he was in.
"Yes, yes...good idea. Beef, Sausage, Jor, grab the Scorps and get ready near the door. Everyone else sit tight. Mete, tell me if they change from their current course. Don't try to contact the other dropships yet."
"Will do sir, but I must tell you Colonel Perkins dropship, the Comet's Sister, it burned up. The shields failed and it disintegrated, I'm sorry..."

Aboard the Martian Sunset
Here, however, the silence lasted a lot less time. Unlike his more conserved partner Colonel Barclay, Colonel Ted Jones was, as he phrased it himself, "A man of action! Tactics are for those without superiority...". Unbeknownst to anyone below High Command, he and his team were meant to have taken the Comet's Sister, it had been rigged to go. But, a flaw in the Ineffable command structure meant that no-one outside high command had known, and thusly he had taken the one with the most guns in it.
"Martia!" he barked, "How are our buddies doin'?"
"I'm afraid, sir, that the Comet's Sister has been vaporised. I can't make any contact with the Meteor's Silence either. Either they are destroyed too, or they've gone quiet for some reason."
"Anyone signs of our enemies?"
"No sir, but I can't establish a link with any satellites, nor can I get an accurate radar sweep. It's these trees, they're-"
"Never mind about that. That sh**s overrated anyway. Is the dropship moveable?"
*sigh* "Not very sir, the insertion used a lot of power, we'll need the rest to get out of here, especially if it has to be fast."
"Fine, we'll go on foot, and we'll take the weapons with us."
"What could I possibly want with the weapons?"
"Are you talking back to me?"
*sigh* "No sir, I merely said that the Meteor should have landed about seventy-five metres west of here, should be outside the forest."
"Good. Oh, if we don't survive, tell my wife "Hello.""
"Erm, yes sir."
"Okay, move out men."
Within second the ten men were outside, and they started off in the direction of the other dropship...

OOC: I'd appreciate if you didn't do anything yet Facehuggeria, I need to get them in the open, then they'll start shooting at the mechs

Colonel Jones' men exited the forest, and a quick scan of the plain revealed the other dropship to be not too far away. They started towards it, but a noise (OOC: I'm assuming the air-mechs make a noise, if not I'll edit to make a different reason) caused them to look up.
"Jonhson! What're those?"
Johnson took out his digital-visual-long-range-scanning-and-image-enhancement-device (i.e. fancy futuretech binoculars) and tried to make sense of the odd configuration.
"I'm not sure sir, but they don't look human."
"ELVES?!? I love killing elves, ready the missile launchers!"
"They don't look elvish either. They're like nothing I've ever seen before."
"Hmm. Better shoot them down anyway, they could be what we're meant to blow up."
Obligingly, three of the men raised the Scorpions to firing position. Each locking onto a different mecha, they fired. Three standard SAMs streaked towards the alien craft...

Looking out the dropships viewport, the other team saw their compatriots firing at the craft.
"That can't be good...Mete, deploy the mass driver cannon and prepare to open fire if those things take an interest in us."
"150mm mass driver cannon deployed sir, passively tracking targets."

The trio of mechs flew on, oblivious to the humans on the ground. Or at least they were, until they started shooting. One missile hit the third mecha in the flight, blowing its entire right side off. It plummeted like a rock and hit the ground with a thud, trying desperately to get back up and reengage the humans.

The other two mecha swerved out of the way of each missile and swooped down towards the humans like giant alien birds of prey, their red armor reflecting the light off of the early morning sun, the quiet hum of their engines pulsating and filling the area…

Meanwhile;

The jeep bumped and thudded across the broken and debris clogged road, heading back to the town as fast as it could.

“So…who are you?” Freeman asked his anomalous savior. The man hadn’t spoken once since he rescued Bates and Freeman from those things…

The man grunted “Ex-Gunnery Sergeant Kimde at your service sir!”

Freeman thought for a moment, absorbing the information. “So gunny, where are we going?”

The gunny didn’t even bother to reply to this one as the jeep jostled into the town. The devastation there was incredible. Burnt out husks of buildings and cars littered the area, charred corpses lay on the ground, many still looking up in surprise at their fate. Freeman hopped out of the jeep to examine the aftermath. There wasn’t much left. Not much left at all.

From behind the jeep, Freeman heard a sound. It sounded distinctly like a rifle being cocked. A voice from behind the three men called out “Put up your hands, all of you! Give me all your valuables!”

Freeman spun around and saw his mugger. He was a young boy of no more than twenty with dirty blond hair obscured by a baseball cap and a spindly form. He was holding an outdated XM-9 assault rifle, but his hands were shaking. The poor kid probably lost his parents in the bombardment and post traumatic stress was probably kicking in.

Freeman grinned and merely said “You don’t want to do this kid. I’m warning you…”

The miniature mugger replied with “No. Give me all your valuables and I’ll let you go.”

The kid was confident. Too confident. He hadn’t had his compulsory stint in the military yet. If he had, he’d have learned that the rifle in his hands would do diddly squat to someone in powered armor, like Freeman. He’d have also heard the ‘shit yourself’ rumors of the capabilities of the Bioroid divisions.

The kid was getting excited now, saying his “Hand over your valuables!” line more forcefully.

Freeman leapt into action. Moving in a blur he grabbed the rifle from the inexperienced youth’s hands, gave him a light push that sent him sprawling to the ground, and removed a pistol from his armor’s holster, pointing it directly at the kid’s head.

“I told you that mugging us wasn’t a good idea kid.” Freeman said calmly. He turned towards the Gunnery Sergeant and said “Do we have any zipcuffs, restraint coils, or just plain old ropes?”

The gunny dug around in the back of the jeep for a moment before emerging with a small polymer loop in his hands –a pair of zipcuffs. He handed Freeman the loop, who speedily used it to hog-tie the unruly youth. He then lifted the 170+ pound person effortlessly with one hand, and dropped him unceremoniously into the back of the jeep.

Freeman and the gunny hopped back into the jeep and continued on their merry way with one additional passenger. After a few minutes of driving time, they arrived at their destination. It was one of the old militia bunkers. Each decent sized town had a hidden bunker like this one loaded with weapons and a low level command center, in case of an invasion. Of course, the thinking behind these bunkers hadn’t planned on an invasion of this speed or scope, but still…

“Gunny? How many militia survived the bombardment?” Freeman asked quietly, thankful that one of the bunkers had survived at all.

“Not many. Just thirty, counting myself. Mind you this was out of two thousand.” The gunnery sergeant replied briskly in that no-nonsense way that sergeants seem to have perfected.

Freeman began thinking, recalling the basic provisions of a militia bunker from his soulcatcher chip implanted at the base of his neck. “Gunny…can you take me to the command center? We’ve got some work to do…”

"DIE YOU SONS OF BITC!!!!!!!!!!!"
Those were the last words of the last Ranger. All the rest had either been killed or ran out of ammo and self-destructed in the middle of the enemy formation. Even Kowalski had been seen and killed. The town was just a smoldering ruin. Not even an atom of one of Crazed Marines' finest unit survived.


-----------------
*back in the orbital CP*
"What kind of enemy is this?"
"Bugs sir. They weren't affected by the nukes, sir. They could detect everything we did before we did it. I believe that they have some sort of collective conciousness. And they might also be able to detect power readings."
"Is that so? Order AM torpedoes launched on the town our guys were at. Then land an unarmored and unpowered squad of Rangers to land in the town under the mask of the AM's rad. Make sure they get the best non-powered armor and weapons. "
"Of course, Commandant."

BUMPED, because this thread has seemed to disappear off the main four pages

Spartan-01
Location Unknown
It had taken little time to haul the heavy weapon up to the tree branch to where Blue-1 stood. The only reason that he hadn't carried it up when he first climbed was that he was more limber without it. He had seen one of a trio of flyers shot down earlier and thought it was time to get this cold war just a litle hotter. He nestled the shoulder rest of the isomagnetic disintegrator onto his shoulder, the formerly shining silver weapon camoflauged like his armour. The barrel of the weapon seemed to point into empty sky as he interfaced the weapon into his HUD. The Spartan brought the scanner array online, and watched through the scope.
"Alright you SOBs, you want to home in on something, home in on this."
The Spartan watched as the dots rose from the ground, and grew larger, almost frighteningly quickly. He waited until he could pick out details on the armour and squeezed the trigger in a quick series, sending three pulses flying at the alien flyers. The luminescent globes flew at roughly the speed of sound, dead on target. The Spartan didn't sit by to watch the impact, as soon as the trigger had been pulled, he had hopped down his improvised zipline, disappearing into the foliage, landing on a tree half a klick away. He ascended the branches once again, like he had an hour earlier when setting up this elaborate firing position. Peeking out of the branches again, he sighted a more balistic flight path and set this pulse for time detonation, hoping that the bugs might still be there. Again he let fly with three pulses, clipping onto the duranium weave cable and sliding down to the ground, quickly running directly towards the spot the aliens were supposed to be flying above. He hoped that they would head towards the source of fire, rather than carry out a thorough scan. Strapping the disintegrator across his back, the Spartan sprinted off towards the rendevous point.

As the first mech plummeted to the ground, Colonel Jones was clearly ecstatic. But when the other two served to intercept, he was less than overjoyed.
"Alright, Hank, Andy, train the Penetrators on the downed one. Those of you with Scorpions, switch to laser targetted and fire on my mark."
The four men pressed a button on the side of the matt-black weapons. A sort of whirr emitted from them briefly and died away, and then a targetting monocle extruded from the side of the weapon. Acquiring the targets, a small green laser was beamed onto the two mechs. They flew closer.

Aboard the Meteor's Silence
"What the hell does that man think he's doing out there?"
"I'm unsure sir. What shall I do?"
"Deploy the 150mm cannon and passively track the targets. Don't engage unless they get interested in us.
"Done, sir."

Outside
"Fire!"
The four missiles streaked towards the oncoming mechs, two each. If they moved, the soldiers would move the lasers accordingly to follow them, guided and aided in part (slight variations in course would be corrected automatically by the Scorpions computer system) by the targetting monocle.
Colonel Jones went over this attack in his mind. After seeing them so easily evade the heatseekers, he was unnerved to say the least.
Those things'll have no chance to avoid the missiles, not without pulling off the kind of manouvres that would crush a human pilot.
The bugs are dead, surely.
Surely?

OOC: Quick guide to text formats: Purply colour=AI, italics=thoughts or ship names, bold=location

Realizing that many casualties had been taken, the aliens went back to the main group together, and survived to tell the tale. Which was very unfortunate for the Al-Imvad commando team. When they returned to camp Baker said:

"Now they know we're in this area. That's a problem. So I say it's time we took the fight to them. Everybody load up you packs, we're moving out to hit them where the sun don't shine. I've got to make a phone call."

Baker set up an upink to the distant commanding cruiser to get more information on the current strategic situation.

Onboard the Puma
A FEW DAYS EARLIER
The first officer, Roberts, had come back from checking on the Admiral.
"It appears he won't be returning. I'm in charge now. Let's hook up with the PAC and use their bunks, they'll be a lot more comfortable than the ones we have with us."
THE DAY OF THE BLOOD RANGER LANDING
"Sir, CM has reported that they've lost contact with the Rangers thy sent down. Apparently landing in an isolated spot didn't help. Unfortunately they chose one near our commandos..."
"I understand, if they don't contact us within 48 hours, we'll presume them dead or captured."
"Sir, I have Baker on Line One for you."

Bumped

"Commandant, we have the five commandos ready."

"Thank you Captain. Send them via the new, unpowered transport. Make sure that they have no powered weapons."

"Yes sir. They shall be equipped with the new M3 machine gun (CM99 bullet on a M2 body), CM99a's (nitro-triiodide propellant instead of nitro-glycern, 10 times more powerful), Katanas, and M1911a2's."

"Good. Put them in the gliders now."

"Sir, we're ready to move out. What's the strategic situation? I need target information."
"There isn't much. One thing- the Pummelors won't be able to hang around after they fire, so you only have three available artillary strikes. Wait a minute, there is one target I can give you. South by southwest, 125 miles. Some sort of storage facility. I can't give you much, but its the only target I have for you."
MacDougal called out then:
"sir, we have a problem - the fuses on almost all the biochem shells are broken- looks like a factory defect. Everything else is okay."

Baker turned back to his commset
"Any chance of getting resupplied? Especially tWMD."
"Yes and no. The Fleet will be arriving in-system in about three weeks, and will remain for a week. You'll be able to be resupplied then. And you'll have unlimited air support during that period. But the Facehuggerian government has requested that we don't use any more WMD. You can use what you have with you, but we can't give you any more."
"The Fleet, with a capital "F"? Holy shit! They could slag the entire continent, but I guess the point is that the facehuggerians can use it again. Holy shit. The whole Fleet. I wish I could see it in formation..."

The Five commandos, codenamed Team Hope, embarked on Operation Restore Life. They all got in their gliders Snake Bliskin style, one even had a compound bow with grenade tipped arrows [ooc: RAMBO!/ooc]. They each had a glider, and the shuttle went atmospheric. They jumped from 100,000 feet and descended onto the Earth. They reached their LZ twenty-five minutes after drop and got out. Nobody was harmed. They had landed by some mountain ridges [ooc: where the other commando teams are held up/ooc]. The Commander, Colonial Sam Fischer, looked down and said, "Someone else's here. Show your colors. We'll track them to their caves. They're commandos too, the tracks are barely visible."
At that order, the five men velcroed their Marine flags to their shoulders and followed the tracks to a nearby cave.

"Colonial Fischer, you're a good tracker, sir!" Sgt. "Howler" Howlby said, "Those tracks had to be six days old in wet ground."

"You're good too, Howler. You could see them too. Never forget that."

"Sir? Intel suggests more forces being deployed to the nation. Simulations suggest they're not alien; most likely a GDA member-nation's force."
"Simulations? Who told you to do those?"
"I think infinitely faster than you do, and I don't have anything better to do."
"Fair point."
The commandos returned to watching the unfolding situation outside...

[OOC: Sorry for the lack of posts lately. It's just that I've been trying to get into college, so I haven't had much time for posts between schoolwork and applications.]

Freeman appraised the bunker with a careful eye. There wasn’t much. A few rifles, some suits of light powered armor, a pair of jeeps, one six wheeled ‘superjeep’ armed with long range missiles, and a single ground APC. The bunker’s command systems and computer core didn’t work. No real reason for this was apparent, but Freeman had a nagging feeling in the back of his head.

In total, there wasn’t much in this particular bunker. Just the basics.

“Okay, Sarge, go and gather up all the surviving militia you can and bring them back here. I’ve got to see who we’ve got, If we’re going to plan any sort of effective resistance!" Freeman called out in the simple voice of a man with an insurmountable task ahead of him.

*********

Blood and Iron, the two most important ingredients of any war. Iron was no concern. The Opterra system was rife with mineral resources, being one of the most mineral rich systems anywhere. Blood, however proved to be a more difficult part of the equation. War is insatiable, it requires able bodied recruits, and this requirement posed much of a problem to Admiral Halsey and General Bates. Out of the two billion Facehuggerian citizens in existence, only a tithe of them, no more than three hundred million still lived, and over sixty percent of them were children or elderly. As a result, Halsey and Bates could call upon only a tiny portion of troops to serve, far less than even the most optimistic strategic predictions called for.

The military leadership of the Facehuggerian remnants occupied their time with meetings and planning sessions, although that proved to be superfluous. The crux of the problem was their lack of men.

“Admiral, we have to liberate our homeland, but I just don’t see a way. My ground forces don’t have enough men to fight a concerted war of liberation…” General Bates said, in one of the more recent meetings. His face was ragged and tired, devoid of hope.

Halsey thought for a moment before answering the Generals’ grievance with a question. “How can we overcome this obstacle then?”

A younger officer raised his hand. His eyes were bright and full of adventure. He hadn’t fought yet. “Sir! Do we not have a sizable number of flash-clone tanks on hand? Cannot we begin manufacturing protohuman clones? Would that not ease your personnel shortage General?”

Bates shook his head in negation. “No son. The problem with protohuman clones is that they suffer from genetic stability issues. Hell, if you hit one it’ll probably dissolve into a puddle of protoplasm and bones! And if the enemy has even a single radiation weapon… No. Clones are out of the question.”

Another young officer raised her hand. “Okay then general, how about we use combat robots?”

The general shot down this proposal as well. “Combat robots lack the initiative that a campaign like this would require. Of course we could manufacture a large quantity of them, but would that really help us in a campaign that relies upon initiative and creative tactics? Combots are great for simple duty, but the simple fact is that they don’t have the ability to operate independently, an ability that we would sorely need in any sort of ground war with these invaders.”

“Then what the hell do you suggest, general!? We can’t afford to just sit on our hands here, while those things to god knows what on the surface!” Halsey replied angrily. His temper was at the breaking point, and he was in no mood for the word ‘no.’

“Well Admiral…to tell you the truth. There is nothing we can do about this invasion right now. They are just too numerous, too powerful.” Bates replied dejectedly. He was on the verge of giving up hope.

“Admiral, General. If I may make a suggestion…” A young officer, no more than twenty two added. Lieutenant Alice Smith was her name. She had graduated from the academy only days before the invasion, and she had a lot to prove. To herself, as well as to others.

Suddenly all eyes in the room turned to her.

“Well? Spit it out Lieutenant!” Bates demanded harshly, eager to have a helping hand out of the frying pan.

“Sirs, my proposal is a simple one. We know virtually nothing of these invaders. I say that we deploy a small team to capture one of them intact. We could gauge their strengths and weaknesses first hand. In addition, I respectfully suggest that we attempt to provide the resistance groups with weaponry. With luck, we could keep the enemy off balance with guerrilla raids while we rebuild our forces here. With operatives on the inside, we could also help to organize the resistance cells into a cohesive force.” She said with only a slight tremor in her voice. Showing initiative was one thing, but standing up to the very peak of military leaders was something entirely different.

”That’s a suicide mission, Darlin’. Who would be crazy enough to lead it?” Bates replied softly. It was an excellent idea, and he was embarrassed he didn’t think of it himself. But still, his male ego required him to try and put the idea down.

“Well sir…I was thinking that I would…” She replied. She would come to regret that snap decision.

“Now wait just a second missy! You…” Bates said angrily, before being interrupted by Halsey

”The young lady has a point. We DO know nothing about these monsters, and her plan is sound. We stand little to lose in the attempt –and much to gain. Lieutenant, your operation is a go. I shall begin equipping an old transport with the necessary supplies. Please proceed to assemble any specialists you require. You depart within the week. Dismissed!” Halsey said, his regal ‘I’m the boss’ tone of voice asserting itself. Privately, Halsey was elated. Morale was sinking throughout the fleet. An offensive, any offensive would be just what his people needed.

Meanwhile; at the TST landing site:

One of the mecha was again destroyed by a heat seeker outright. However, the final remaining one managed to crash head on into the TST ship, still pursued by the missile which hit its remains a moment or two later. A suicide mission of course, but a valuable suicide mission. The mecha was crumpled like tin, but through the smoke of war it was difficult for any observer to tell what the condition of the first TST ship was. And the mecha flight had managed to get summon assistance.

A small team of Maalar equipped infantry were diverted from patrols to investigate. They would be there soon…

Intrelude I: Supertank
(OOC: I know this is copy-pasted from the ESUS boards, but I feel the need to provide something while I work on my uberpost.)

IC: Facehuggerian R&D resources had been taxed as of late. Most of the skilled engineers and scientists had been killed in the invasion, leaving a dearth of new and wholly necessary weapons systems. One project that did manage to survive, however, was the Bolo super tank project. The first Bolo Mark I prototype was testing on Opterra when the invasion happened, and most of the researchers involved with the project were on Opterra overseeing their baby. Now, the Bolo was almost ready for field testing, and what better field-test than attacking the Facehuggerian mainland?

"Professor Titus, what is the meaning of calling me down here at this hour? And don't say that it was urgent. In all my years of dealing with you scientist types, it's never urgent." General Bates asked as he walked down the halls of Camp Laputa with an elated Professor Anthony Titus at his side. Titus was the head of the Bolo project, fortunate enough to be away from home when the invasion hit, and doubly fortunate enough to have no surviving family in Facehuggeria at the time of the invasion.

"Oh, but it is urgent, General! Come and see for yourself!" Titus replied, unable to keep his enthusiasm to himself.

Titus threw open the doors to a secluded observation post. Far below the tinted window of the observatory was a single object, massive in every sense of the word.

"This, general, this is the Mark I prototype Bolo. He's the weapon that will win Facehuggeria back for you." Titus said, completely confident in the capabilities of his creation.

"He? This thing has a gender?" Bates asked, incredulously.

"But of course! One of the primary advantages of the Bolo here is its sentient AI core. He chose his own gender. Officially his designation is unit FNK, but we’ve taken to calling him Frank.” Titus replied, his voice full of pride in his creation.

“We shall see whether your obvious and overbearing pride is justified, won’t we Professor? Begin the tests.” The general replied. He was skeptical in the extreme.

“Yes general. Unit FNK, please begin.” Titus said, before speaking into a small microphone mounted in the observation post.

I suddenly felt power running through my veins, coursing through my tertiary power outlets. I felt alive. I heard something, it was my creator, Professor Titus speaking to me through a narrow band transmission. I knew what I must do. My task and purpose was clear…

“You see general, the first test is one of simple speed. The highest we’ve clocked him is 60 MPH on rough terrain. Let’s see if he can beat that, now that he knows who’s watching.” Titus commented to the still skeptical general.

I knew that the General was watching, I could see him on my thermal sensors. I was fully aware of the implications of his presence, and that knowledge incited me to push myself even harder. Forty miles per hour. Fifty miles per hour. Sixty miles per hour. I pushed myself harder than I ever had before; passing seventy miles per hour, settling into a seventy six MPH flank speed…

“Amazing general! That’s almost as fast as one of your mechs! And with the much greater firepower Frank carries, I think it’s fairly obvious what’s going to happen to your mecha arsenal…” Titus’ ego was growing even larger.

“My ass it will. Unit FNK, this is General Bates, please begin the weapons test.” Bates replied. He had a soft spot in his heart for mecha, and seeing them threatened by an overgrown tractor wasn’t exactly a situation he relished.

I heard the General’s order, although I was somewhat surprised at its source. The General was actually ordering me personally. I complied with the order, turning my Shiva cannons and repeaters on the prearranged targets ahead of me. They exploded with amazing fury, shrapnel pinging harmlessly off of my armor…

“Amazing” Titus muttered half to himself.

Bates merely shrugged and ordered Unit FNK to initiate the defensive test.

I heard and complied with the General’s order, although I do not relish being shot at. It is my duty however. I stoically moved into a clearing, waiting for the inevitable bombardment. It came seconds later in the form of light weapons, mere 450mm accelerated anti-tank auto cannons. My defensive screens merely shrugged these off; they didn’t even reach my armor. The bombardment then changed from kinetics to energy weapons. Lasers and Plasma. My screens had been specifically designed to defeat these attacks, shrugging off much of the energy. My absorbent armor captured the rest of the energy, feeding it directly into my tertiary power capacitors, my stomach. Then came the missile locks. They were large missiles, most likely nuclear based on the neutrino emissions. My point defense cannons tracked them effortlessly, blasting each missile from the sky in a symphony of light, relativistic flechettes, and superheated plasma.

Total elapsed time: .06 seconds.
Total damage: Forward defensive screen slightly depleted. Regeneration initiated
Targets destroyed: 665…

“See that general? Frank was unstoppable! We’ve run a simulation and I am supremely confident that he can win back our homeland.” Bates said, his pride coating him like a beaming, gleaming cloak.

“Bah. Your toy shows promise, but I highly doubt it is up to this monumental task. This task that my infantry, Bioroids, and mecha have proven unequal. You’ll get your field test, and then we shall see once and for all the flaws in this unit…” Bates replied, his voice laced with venom. This mechanical monstrosity would fail. Bates would see to that...

The five mercs reached a cave and waited for the previous occupants or enemy combatants reappear.

(OOC: Also not the uberpost. Just building up to it. College applications=utter bull)

The Chimera shipyard complex was alive with the constant preparations for Lieutenant Smith’s mission. Weapons and equipment were being loaded onto the modest and beaten up transport Cassandra, for it was determined that a shiny new superfreighter or similar vessel would be too obvious. The mission planners, including Lieutenant Smith herself had decided early on having a ship that can pose as a piece of wreckage if need be.

As Lieutenant Smith gazed out at the transport being loaded, she could feel the colossal weight of responsibility bearing down on her. Engulfed in her worries of inadequacy, she did not perceive the sharp staccato and clink of military boots.

”Lieutenant, I need a word with you.” A hard and gruff voice called out from behind Smith’s back. She turned and came face to face with General Bates.

“Err…Y-Yes sir?” Smith answered, startled and somewhat concerned. After all, why would the general seek her out personally, as opposed to sending a message through the command hierarchy? Could it be…? No. Alice didn’t consider herself unattractive by any strech of the imagination. She had dark and lovely eyes, perfect proportions, and a flowing mane of brown hair placed into a ponytail. She was someone who reeled in men with one look, but surely she hadn’t attracted the general’s…attentions? Surely he would be a gentleman, right?

“Lieutenant, you shall be having an additional passenger.” The general’s voice came out in a rather cold monotone that lacked any hint of sexual desire. Alice was relieved, most women were attracted to power, but the general just had something creepy about him.

“But sir, I haven’t approved any additional volunteers on my roster…” Alice replied, somewhat cautious as to the general’s motives.

“ ’He,’ and I use that term lightly, isn’t really a volunteer. Are you familiar with the Bolo project?” The general was starting to make less sense, confusing Alice even further.

“No. Should I be sir?” She replied, trying desperately to keep her ignorance from her superior.

“The Bolo is a prototype super tank, incredibly large and well armed. One bolo, Unit FNK will be accompanying you on your mission. The bolo itself is monstrously massive. You will need to dump at least twelve cargo modules from your transport to make room.” Ignorance is bliss in some cases.

“Twelve cargo modules!? That is over ten thousand tons of cargo we’ll have to leave behind!” Alice fumed. Twelve cargo modules could hold an incredibly large amount of equipment, weapons that would be wholly necessary once her mission got underway.

“Your transport’s carrying capacity shall have to make due. I can pull some strings to get some additional transport tonnage, but that is all.” The general said, his voice betraying a hint of sympathy.

“I can’t believe this! Sir, you are trading thousands of tons worth of weapons for a single bloody tank!?” Alice was not happy. One tank, no matter how powerful, was still one single asset. Can a tank be in two places at once? Of course not, but a ton of rifles can be divided up in millions of ways.

“Just between us, there may be a promotion or three waiting for you, if that overgrown tractor doesn’t make it back. Dismissed.”

Alice shuffled out of the room, somewhat overwhelmed by what she had heard. It sounded like the general had wanted the Bolo gone, but if that was the case, why was he sending it out on such an important mission? Why not some backwater in the middle of nowhere, fighting off pirates or something?

*******

Freeman looked over the maps of the area with a disdainful eye. “So these are the only maps of the area you were able to recover?”

“Yessir!” The technician replied. “The bunker’s computer systems were almost totally clean. Whatever the bugs hit us with must’ve had some serious EMP here. I mean, our computers could take a strategic nuke going off next to them without fuzzing out.”

The maps on the table before Freeman were poor resolution and only showed basic terrain formations. Not the kind of thing you want to plan a guerrilla campaign around.

“Gunny, show me exactly where the scouts discovered that base.” Freeman said, turning to Gunnery Sargent Kimde. In the week since Freeman arrived at the bunker, Kimde had become like his right hand, ensuring that Freeman was up to speed on anything the resistance leader needed to know. Although ‘resistance’ was hardly the right word, as Freeman’s little band of guerrillas had merely damaged a few patrols, like beestings more than any lasting damage. Now was Freeman’s chance to turn that around. Taking out the local bug base would give his men, and any civilians that heard of it hope, perhaps mankind’s most valuable commodity at the moment.

“Right here sir! Early yesterday, Gennai discovered this bug structure when he was searching for survivors. He managed to evade a bug patrol after sighting it, and returned here with the information. Based on what he saw, it was pretty big. At least a square mile from end to end, probably more.” The Gunny replied with that simple no-nonsense voice that all sergeants have perfected.

“Did Gennai notice any defenses? Autoguns, mines, anything?” Freeman asked, trying to know everything about the situation he would soon wade into.

“He noticed some patrols launch from the base, but those were the standard run of the mill boys. Just a few of them red supercrabs and infantry.” Kimde replied, fully confident in his man.

“Okay, just some patrols of flyers and infantry then. Good. Here’s the plan: Our group will split into two separate teams. Gold team, lead by you Gunny, will consist of twenty six men, and will be assigned to cause as much of a commotion at one particular area. You want to draw as many enemies out of the base as possible and fall back, so that Blue team (consisting of myself and four men) can sneak in and plant enough C-69 to destroy the base.” Freeman’s eyes were stern as he glanced out at the other people surrounding the briefing table. Thirty men were clustered around the small table, all with tired yet defiant looks on their faces. Freeman didn’t relish sending these people to die, but he had no real choice. An enemy base this close to their own could not be allowed to exist…

OOC: Okay, I know that I'm the one who always says that BUMPs in RP's are unnecessary, but come on. It's December, and the last post was in October!

bump until I can get time to post.

OOC: Okay, I know that I'm the one who always says that BUMPs in RP's are unnecessary, but come on. It's December, and the last post was in October!

I know. I apologize for my absence. I'm working on a nice long post. I hope to have it done soon.

I know. I apologize for my absence. I'm working on a nice long post. I hope to have it done soon.

Why speak of the devil! :P Let's just say that I've got a few surprises (planned surprises! I did not pull these out of my rear to stamp some content down) in store for everyone in the future.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Freeman’s mission timer counted down. If his plan was to succeed, it would have to be implemented with perfect timing. But would that be enough? Freeman and his team was going to waltz right into a completely unknown enemy base, and pray to god that they could find a good place to put their explosives. Not exactly the best plan. Simple in concept yet horribly complex in practice.

Tick-tock. The counter reached zero. Freeman clicked his communicator twice, indicating that the mission was a go. On the other side of the base, his men began skirmishing with the Vaaish patrols, their goal not being to defeat the enemy so much as draw them out of the base. It worked, or at least it seemed to. Soon the sounds of battle filled the air, signaling to Freeman that his time had come. He ran up to the entrance of the base, a monstrous door thick and strong. Even his enhanced strength and raw rage couldn’t make a dent in the door.

“Frank. Get the breeching charges.” Freeman said, his voice moving at a mile a minute, indicating just how fast they had to get in and complete their mission if they had any chance at survival.

One of Freeman’s squadmates stepped forward with a large, backpack sized satchel in his hands. He placed it on the door swiftly, ensuring that the explosive was properly seated. He had experience breaking down doors like this one before, and you have to hit them *just* right in order to open them.

“One, two, three…Back!” The squadmember yelled as the satchel exploded in a fiery conflagration. Unfortunately, the door was still there, bearing only a tiny scorch mark that was rapidly fading from the alien material.

“Shit! L-Tee, there is no way I’m going to be able to get through that thing!” The man called back, examining the fading scarring.

Freeman let loose with expletive after expletive. His entire plan had relied upon him getting into that base! They had put enough explosives on that door to pierce starship armor!

The radio chatter was not going well. The very fact that Freeman could hear his troops at all was a bad portent. He had told them to maintain strict radio silence. Of course, they were militia men, not particularly well trained, but they still wouldn’t disobey a direct order unless the situation had gone to hell…

“Frank. Unless you can get into that door in the next two minutes, I’m going to have to scrub the mission.” Freeman said, fighting to maintain a level head as the battle raged nearby. He couldn’t really afford to abandon this mission, but what choice did he have?

“I don’t think that I can- Hey!” Frank said as he leaned upon the door. The door seemed to take on the look of a fluid as it drained into the walls and floor of the alien base.

“Good job, Frank!” Freeman said. He was elated. What were the odds of Frank touching the door in just the right way so that it would open?

Or, perhaps more to the point, what were the odds of a twelve ‘man’ squad of armored alien infantry coming through that door at just that moment? Actually pretty good in this particular case.

Freeman’s elation turned to despair. There is no way he could escape these things. They’d gun him down before he could even manage to escape. And he couldn’t take on twelve of them at once either. Hell, he had his doubts about taking one on at once!

The creatures seemed fully ready to kill Freeman’s team, yet they seemed to hesitate for a moment…

Meanwhile;

******
Alice sat in her deployment pod skulking. This upcoming mission would be, far and away the hardest mission she had ever undertaken. The probabilities for survival were measured in the single digits. Still, she had to at least appear in control of her doubts. Especially with the deployment time practically on top of them.

After taking a moment to regain her composure, she opened a link to the rest of the pods. “All right Boys! I want everyone on the bounce. We’re going in fast and hard, and we can’t afford any screwups. The bugs have armor and weapons lightyears ahead of ours, but we’ve got the tenacity and resourcefulness of the CF military to count on. Trust your training, it will get you through this.”

Seconds clicked by, until the mission counter in each pod red 0 in unison. Dozens of pods erupted from the unassuming freighter, on their way to parts unknown. Alice’s pod fell quickly, taking a sharp turn to avoid a large energy blast. The enemy had obviously detected them, even in their ‘stealth’ drop capsules.

Alice looked to the side, seeing another energy blast slam into one of her men’s capsules. The drop pod was vaporized instantly. Another comrade gone without fighting. What a waste.

The radio chatter from the pods was not very encouraging. People were starting to panic as their comrades were dropping like flies left and right. The alien weapons fire was incredibly accurate, and it showed in the high casualties before the deployment was even finished.

“Christ” Alice thought “If the casualties are this bad during the bloody deployment, they’re going to be fucking terrible when we actually start fighting!”

Suddenly, warning lights erupted throughout Alice’s pod. An enemy defense gun had nicked her capsule, sending it spinning out of control.

“Shit” she growled through her tightly clenched teeth. The pod was twisting and turning like some roller coaster gone horribly wrong. In the pod’s viewscreen, Alice saw land fast approaching. It was going to be a very hard landing….

******
The deployment had failed from the outset. My battlefeeds indicated 78.6% casualties from the drop. Fortunately, I was one of the other 28.4% that survived. Or at least, mostly survived. My pod failed to brake properly, and it slammed into the ground at reentry. In retrospect, that is probably why my pod survived the enemy AA fire, although I’m not exactly sure why the pod failed in the first place…

I checked myself for damage quickly, hoping that there was only superficial damage to my chassis. After all, the less damaged I was, the more I could destroy. Fortunately, I was undamaged. Almost. My rear track segment was damaged, and it would take time to repair it. I started regenerating it immediately, as I planned out my next moves.

It would take an hour to fully repair my damaged track segment, and my mission was still pending. Search and destroy…

******

Two aerial mecha were hit in quick succession by the isomag disintegrator. One of them was hit in the engine, causing a massive explosion that engulfed both. However, the other one merely shrugged off the explosion and disintegrator round and began furiously searching the area for the source of the lethal energy that had destroyed its compatriot.

******

Deep in the void between galaxies, a single ship prowled. It’s hull was coated in a mottled purple, thick weapons protruding from every angle. It looked like a purple porcupine, yet there was hardly anything comical about this ship. It seemed to resonate a palpable evil, and something more. It seemed to awaken, and now set out on a course to find something long-lost to it, and bring some…one? thing? back into the fold…

And although the combatants on the third world did not realize it, time was running out…

Spartan 01
Location unknown
He ran as fast as he could, in the likely vain attempt to escape the alien flyer. He could hear the sound of whatever propulsion system the alien used and it seemed to be getting closer. He heard branches break and snap, as though the thing was actually busting through the forest to get to him. His rendevous with the other teammates was scheduled in about 32 minutes, but he might have to risk the use of the comms to get their help. Perhaps three Spartan super soldiers could take out one of these flying behemoths.
With unnatural speed, the Spartan dodged an energy beam he had heard zipping through the air. Leaping into the air, he swung on a massive tree branch and started hopping the tree branches, hoping to make the trip harder for whatever was chasing him. Another energy beam streaked by, raising the suit's internal temperature by 15 degrees. At least his maneuvers had made the aim worse...

A deep and harshly synthesized sound came from one of the armored aliens, this one seemed to be leading the rest. He, or it, was wearing jet-black armor as opposed to the more common red, blue, or gray varieties.

After a few moments of silence, the creature spoke, in slightly broken English. “Humans. Come with us. The matriarch demands your presence…

“Out of the frying pan and into the fire!” Freeman thought to himself. The situation had certainly taken an about face from just a few moments ago, where it looked like he could have actually completed his mission and possibly salvaged something out of this mess. There was certainly no hope of that now.

“Human, my patience grows thin. Come with us, now!” The voice announced. It didn’t seem to care about Freeman’s squadmates, just Freeman himself.

“What about my men?” Freeman asked hurriedly, trying to delay the alien, hoping for some opening or break he could exploit. None was forthcoming.

“They will not be harmed. Provided that you come with me NOW!” The voice responded. It didn’t seem particularly happy at the delay.

“Okay. I’ll come with you. Just don’t harm my team…” Freeman replied dejectedly.

When they were out of earshot, the alien sent a thought-message to its fellows. It was a simple three word message, but its impact was enormous. “Kill the humans...”

******

Alice awoke slowly, groggily from the crash. Her head felt like it had been whacked with a ton of bricks. Or one brick that weighed a ton.

Alice’s pod had smashed into the ground at an odd angle, probably what kept her from splattering all over the pod.

She kicked at the emergency release hatch, popping it open like a sardine can. The sun shone brightly upon her, permeating the entire scene with a gentle light. It was the first few rays of dawn. Of a new dawn. But that wasn’t right…her troops had dropped during the night… She shrugged this discrepancy away.

Still, she had a major task on her hands. Her men were scattered by the deployment, and the thrice damned Bolo was nowhere to be found! She had to salvage a situation that would make even the hardiest general cringe.

Alice went about her task stoically, exiting the pod to begin her search for her missing team-mates...

******

At last! My tracks were fully repaired, and I could move again. I used my sensors to probe the area around me, searching for something to kill.

I zeroed in on a group of infantry. My sensors identified them as the enemy, so I pressed the attack. My repeaters tore into their ranks, but to no avail. Their armor somehow absorbed my repeater hits, leaving the enemy with nary a scratch.

They returned fire, draining my screens at an uncomfortable rate. So I turned my Shiva cannons upon the aliens. The monstrous cannons burned the aliens into ash, altogether understandable seeing as how it was rated for anti-capital ship work.

Still, they held out for an uncomfortably long time against the Shiva cannons. My mind suddenly imagines the cannons washing over an alien vehicle, not even nicking the paint. I banished that thought from my mind. If such a situation would occur, I had access to my missiles.

I left these paranoid ramblings aside for a moment and gathered up all that remained of the alien forces for further analysis in the hope that I could find a weakness. Of course, there wasn’t much left, but still…

Suddenly, my sensors picked up weapons fire coming from a…structure several kilometers away. I began to head there at flank speed, hoping there was something to destroy…

******

Subania opened her ‘eyes’ and looked around where she was, still groggy. Her mind snapped awake when she realized she had been captured. “Release me, Animals!” She cried in her native tongue, unaware that they didn’t speak her language and equally unaware that she could have used her armor to escape…

******

The aerospace mecha pursued the Spartan, firing its cannons ineffectively against the quick-moving target. So it switched to its missiles. A single blue streak launched from a small recessed tube on its shoulder, the missile homed in on the Spartan’s armor’s emissions, almost guaranteeing a hit unless the Spartan did something miraculous…

The five "Rambos" in the cave saw Bolo incenerating some aliens.

"Hey Sarge...hand me my glasses. I saw some armor, human. I want to see who makes it."

"Here ya go chief..." the sergeant said, handing his commander a spotting scope.

"WELL I'LL BE DANGED! IT'S CF PROPERTY!" came the cry along with a few cheers. The five men then started running to meet up with the tank, their excessively large weapons clattering and making the worst ruckas in the world. But that mattered not as the five men reached the tank safely and looked for a way to communicate with its "driver".

As the garbled and unintelligeble voice emerged from the downed beast the Marines jumped back.

"Hot damn, listen to that!"

"Jesus H. Christ, worst damn sound I've heard in my life."

"I dunno....it's got a nice ring to it. I'm sensing a nice little beat."

The stares that drew were not the most flattering.

"What, I can't like weird music?"

"It's an alien language, moron."

"Oh.....right. Well, it still sounds nice."

The sudden motions of the captured creature stopped the pleasant banter in its tracks. Suddenly four weapons were levelled at the beast, safeties off and penetration set to maximum.

"Get back in the Scorpion and bring the Cannon on-line. This thing withstood a direct barrage from four KSMAR's, I don't want to have to find out first-hand what else it can do."

"Yes, sir."

Slowly, after the Scoprions primary weapons were readied and targeted, the Dealers began to approach the downed alien.

"This is Duam Col, Dealer within the Klonor Infantry Corps (Their recent rebellious actions obviouly left unmentioned). Identify yourelf, your origins, and your reasons for attacking members of the Klonor military. Non-compliance will be met with lethal force. You will not receive a second warning."

Spartan 01
Location Unknown
At the same time the Spartan heard the screech of the missile, his A.I. spoke in his ear.
"Chief, there is a missile of sufficient power to destroy you even with full shields. I deeply suggest you DODGE!"
"I can't dodge this one. It's faster than the missiles I've trained to dodge. I think we're screwed Aries. How long till impact?"
"I estimate-"
The AI's reply was cut short by the massive explosion, reducing an area of 10 metres to ash and splinters. The missile could no longer be heard, but the alien still pursued them, albeit somewhat slower, as though it didn't know what happened either. What had just happened could probably be described as miraculous.
"Aries, why aren't we dead?"
"Unknown Chief. Though my recorders did pick up a audio signature matching a highly customized S2-AM report. My theory is that we've met up with Spartan 02."
Spartan 02 was the unit's best sniper, willing to follow her prey for weeks to set up the perfect shot. Aries tried to zero in on the audio signature, triangulating to to about 5 metres above them, half a click back. A nav-point popped up on the Spartan's HUD. The Chief swung upward on a branch, arcing up about 3 metres and turned around to start leaping towards his partner. At about 200 metres away, he caught the smallest glint of exposed emerald armour. She must've been spotting him the entire pursuit and had powered down her armour to avoid detection. At one hundred metres, the Chief uttered a single word into his broadband tranceiver.
"Run!!"
(OOC: Miraculous enough? Sorry if I had spoiled your plans, but I think three Spartans vs. a couple million of these things is fair. Besides, I'm pretty sure they'll die later...)

OOC: I'm changing things a little soo, this might seem a little out-of place with my last IC post.
IC
A Warrior Class carrier arrived in the Sol system, all that was available to come. It is currently sitting about three quarters of the way between Jupiter and Mars.

The commando team moved out toward their curent objective, prepared to fight anybody they encountered. From what he had learned, it was a smedium-sized human supply depot, which the aliens had taken and were using for their own supply needs. It was lightly guarded, and its main features were a concrete bunker which was the barracks and a large warehouse. All inside a wall/force shield perimeter.

OOC: Brandoniats, no problem.

IC: After a moment or waking, Subania realized that something was wrong. Her link to the rest of her people simply wasn’t there! A lucky strike must have penetrated her armor in just the right way so as to damage her brain. That she wasn’t completely dead was a testament to her luck, and her armor’s medical functions.

After a few moments of watching the animals speak, the armor began to understand and translate the primitive language for its occupant.

Finally, something clicked in the back of her mind and she could understand the animals that stood before her. A more experienced warrior would have remained silent, taking in all the information about her captors that she could. Subania certainly didn’t remain silent. She immediately bellowed “Release me, Humans!” in English.

******

The flyer absorbed the vicious explosion, but only just. It was almost destroyed. It’s engines were operating at less than a fourth of their output, and most of its weapons (including its missiles) were slagged. It only had a single light plasma weapon left, yet the machine single mindedly pursued the two humans, despite the fact that it was so damaged that it could barely fly.

******

My audio receivers picked up voices. Human voices coming from a nearby cave. I came to a dead stop, and within moments, a small group of armored humans approached. They must have been resistance fighters.

I searched my military databases and found that their insignia matched that of Crazed Marines soldiers. What were they doing here?

I sent out a small hover drone to act as a proxy, communicating with the men while I took stock of the situation and evaluated all the possible factors. The sounds of battle were still coming from the structure, and I greatly desired to rush up and destroy something, but I was tempered by my curiosity. I decided that I could afford to wait for a few minutes…

My drone flew right up to the leader and chirped “What are you doing here?”

******

A small group of unarmored Vaaish drones had been given a simple task, the destruction of a human supply depot. They had set up the customary zap emplacements and shield generators to maintain security on the site while they placed explosives.

The eighteen drones did not even begin to think that the enemy would strike at them…

******

Alice had been walking for what seemed like hours, evading enemy patrols and finding none of her original force. In fact, she hadn’t even found any human beings at all! It was altogether eerie, seeing the countryside devoid of human life. What had the aliens done with the bodies?

The question sprung into her mind unbidden. She blotted it out as concentration on the mission took precedence. Suddenly, something on her display beeped. It was a friendly tag, hopefully one of her men.

Alice carefully crept up to the friendly contact, silently praying that it was one of her men…But was it…?

******

My audio receivers picked up voices. Human voices coming from a nearby cave. I came to a dead stop, and within moments, a small group of armored humans approached. They must have been resistance fighters.

I searched my military databases and found that their insignia matched that of Crazed Marines soldiers. What were they doing here?

I sent out a small hover drone to act as a proxy, communicating with the men while I took stock of the situation and evaluated all the possible factors. The sounds of battle were still coming from the structure, and I greatly desired to rush up and destroy something, but I was tempered by my curiosity. I decided that I could afford to wait for a few minutes…

My drone flew right up to the leader and chirped “What are you doing here?”

******


Colonial Fischer and "Howler" went to the drone. Fischer said, "Well, I'm Sam Fischer and I'll be your infantry support today. We're all here for the same reason, to kick those alien mother f--kers out of CF and possibly wipe them out of existance. Now, what do you need me and my men to do? We have only light body armor, not enough to stop a direct hit from those mofos....."

"Are you a......robot?" Howler asked, bluntly, par for course as far as he's concerned.

"Not gonna happen missy. You have launched an unprovoked attack upon Klonor personnell and equipment. Your attack might have damaged the paint on our vehicle, an occurance which could cost several Florens to repair. Unless you give us the information we demand you will not remain in existence for much longer."

To emphasize his point all four Delaers cocked their weapons at the same time. Okay, they didn't actually cock their weapons since they've been cocked for a while and only an idiot stands there near a heavily armed enemy without having his weapon ready to fire on a moments notice, but there's a button on all Klonor infantry weaponry which emits the sound of a gun cocking.

"Now, identify yourself, your origins, and your purpose here."

Spartans 01 and 02
Evasion of alien mech
The Spartans continued their escape amongst the massive trees, trying to evade the massive alien. It had slowed down, and it's weaponry wasn't firing as often as it had been, not to mention the weapons seemed to be of less intensity. Finally, Spartan 01 had had enough.
"Alright, Spartan 02, Delta maneuver. Get around and meet on it's back."
There was no verbal confirmation, just the blink of the status light in his HUD. The two power armoured super soldiers split up, and ascending upward, gaining height on the mech. As he had hoped, the alien followed Spartan 01, still angry at him for escapin for so long. 01 suddenly dropped through the branches, drawing it lower and lower. Hoping that the mech would be so obsessed with him that he wouldn't notice the second Spartan dropping towards it from behind...

The AI reacted quickly, the dropship began to dash out of the way, but starting from low-power it wasn't quick enough. The GFG managed to dampen the things armour, and the dropships heavy armour took the brunt of it, but it took heavy structural damage.
It wasn't going into space again.
Colonel Barclay threw open the hatch and harangued his counterpart;
"You fool! What the hell were you thinking? You don't take on three alien mecha without regard for the capabilities!"

"Relax Barclay! They're destroyed aren't they?"
"Yes, along with my ship!"
"It still works..."
"Barely. I think-"
*cough*"Pardon the interruption sirs, but I think you ought to know; I'm getting strange readings. Looks like a group of objects similar to those mecha, but smaller. Heading this way."
"Look at what you did!"
"Pah."
"Okay, enough of this. Sauasage, how salvageable is that mecha?"
"It's pretty smashed up sir. Probably still valuable from a materials point of view, but if you wanted to reverse-engineer it, then no chance."
Perking up, Colonel Jones took the opportunity to interrupt;
"If there are more, smaller things coming towards us, we could use them! More things to shoot!"
"Or, we could salvage what we could of this thing and get the hell outta here..."
After a few brief minutes of orders, the dropship with te crumpled mecha stuck to it climbed hesitantly off the ground under grav-power, and moved slowly towards the trees and the landing site of the other dropship, while Colonel Jones' team covered the retreat with their heavy bosers.

OOC: Sorry, I've been busy...Feel free to march the team towards me whenever CF.

OOC: Sorry for the relatively poor post, but I’m not feeling very good today.

Such insolence! These humans were little more than animals, and here they were treating one of the Vaaish aristocracy this way. Subania fumed against her hopeless situation, until finally realizing that she had to provide what they sought or face termination. “We are here, humans, to find a new home for our people. Unfortunately, we found our new home infested with vermin, so we had to…fumigate. Such shall be your fate too.

As for me, I was born in the Hives of Ruylar, before they were destroyed by our enemy.”

******

Alice crept forward slowly, trying to attract as little attention as possible. There’s no telling what sort of hostiles may have been running around. Finally, she saw what she saw. It was a small group of her men, trying their best to remain inconspicuous, trying to hide from the enemy patrols.

She crawled the rest of the way to their position, mindful of the alien flyer circling overhead like a vulture, emitting a strange hum that sounded more like a moan.

“Sergeant Vance!” she whispered once she was close to her men. One of the men turned to face her quickly. “L-Tee? Thank god you’ve made it ma’am! Get under the cover of these trees, quick! The flyer will be back any moment on its patrol!”

******

I relayed my response to the hover drone. “Hmm…I could use you to search for any survivors and bring them to an old bunker that I have mapped in my database. It’s an old nuclear bunker that hasn’t been used for years, but it should make an excellent base of operations. Meanwhile, I have to investigate the combat going on over by that large structure. You are welcome to come along, but it will likely be highly dangerous.”

I then turned my drone’s attention towards the other Marine. “I suppose you could call me a robot. I am a Mark I Bolo supertank designed to annihilate all enemies. My sentient AI core allows me to make several quintillion calculations per second and my weapons allow me to engage orbiting capital ships effectively.”

******

The alien flyer didn’t notice the Spartan behind it until she was practically on top of it. A shrill proximity warning resounded throughout the mecha. It turned quickly, but not quickly enough to escape what its enemies had planned for it.

******

The group of alien infantry moved on the TST troops with frightening speed, only to discover that their target, the dropship, had escaped. Still, the infantry opened fire on the humans still present, aiming to maim instead of kill. They wanted prisoners as opposed to corpses.

The dropship wasn’t home free, however. A group of alien aerospace mecha detected it and swooped down towards it, firing their missiles and beam weapons eagerly, hoping to disable it before it could land.

Colonel Fischer stood for a second, thinking.

"Well, combat would be a nice change from the ordinary....but I could lose somebody....survivors could help, but the combat takes priority....We'll help you fight them, Bolo. We'll watch your back and pick off a few. We'll have to get that orbital cannon stuff after this war...hehehe."

Spartan 01 and 02
Location Unknown
-----------------------------------------------------------
Spartan 02 hit hard on the back of the mech as she grabbed on to whatever she could. It began to thrash, trying to reach the small super-soldier. This drew it's attention away from the first Spartan, who jumped at the mech's chest and starting trying to rip pieces of armour plate off. The alien started to lose altitude as it concentrated less on flying and more on the two Spartans. As one of the massive claws swung towards the Chief, he deftly switched around to it's backside and pulled along with Spartan 02, codenamed Winter.Together they bashed in the engine exhaust, severely hampering the mech's ability to fly. It dropped even faster, yet still the forest floor was far below. The two Spartans continued to bash, tear and rip away armour, hoping to somehow get to the beast within.

"Excuse me? Did I just hear you say 'fumigate'? You're talking about human lives here! You're talking about conquering a nation purely to suit yorselves!"

"Uh....sir? Weren't we here to do the same thing?"

"Well, yeah......but that's different."

"How?"

"Because I said so. It's different when we do it."

"Oh, okay."

"Now, little Miss Alien-creature-doohicky-thing, what about this enemy that you mentioned? Who are they, what do they want, and any chance of them finding Sol or any of the surrounding star systems?"

OOC: Actual responses to peoples' posts coming soon. I just haven't had time for them yet. In the meantime, here's a little something to advance the plot.

IC:

Interlude II: The breath before the plunge.

The Admiral, so called “Grand” Admiral Halsey felt helpless. Lieutenant Smith’s mission was overdue, and she hadn’t reported back yet. Halsey feared the worse, yet he couldn’t let that deter him.

He gazed out at the assembled fleet, knowing full well that few, if any, would be making it back. They would go willingly to death for their country, yet that was the one thing that Halsey hoped to avoid. He was trading away the survival of his people on one last desperate gambit. Gathered around his command ship were hundreds of ships, many still shiny and unscarred by battle, filled with inexperienced crews. The prospect for victory didn’t look good.

They stood in stark contrast to the ships that had managed to escape from the Invasion at the outset. Those veteran ships were charred, dirty, and looked very old, almost as though the stress of the times had the same effect on them as it did their crews.

Halsey’s own ship, the newly repaired CFV Absolution was as scarred with battle as its lesser siblings, fresh hull plates gleaming in the Opterran light, alongside older plates silently announcing “I have borne fire and death, and I have survived. Do not lose hope.”

“Attention Military Forces of Central Facehuggeria. We will soon be embarking on the most dangerous mission that any of us has ever undertaken. I’m not going to lie to you, many of us will not be coming back, but if we can thrust our enemies off of Earth, our sacrifices will be worth it. We will have saved our people, and given our children freedom from a live of slavery.”

Halsey paused for a moment, before continuing his speech. “We MUST succeed here, or our people will be doomed to slavery for all eternity. We owe it to our fallen comrades and friends to succeed!

We can and must purge these vile aliens no matter the cost! I have the utmost faith in you, godspeed, for the hour of our retribution is at hand!”

Halsey clicked off the Fleetcom speaker nervously. He knew there really wasn’t much hope, but so long as a thin sliver of the elusive stuff remained…

He pressed a small button, signaling to the rest of the fleet to jump out, out to either ruin or victory. No further compromise would the humans allow.

At his command, each of the ships opened their own hellish green portal into quasi-space, fully prepared for the great battle soon to come…

*****

The evil ship stirred, it’s mottled purple hide seeming to absorb the light from nearby stars, leaving the ship dark. Suddenly, it exploded in a flash of light which radiated out from the ship, consuming the entire solar system it was in.

The ship seemed to take on a new vigor at this, and began humming happily. Within moments, it opened a blood red portal, entered it, and set course for what it sought...

Something of incredible importance, located on a backwater planet in the universe, hidden from it long ago...

OOC: Woops. Had a great post written before I remembered it's not a standard Lancer contingent I have here...Ah well, the dropship part's still useable;
IC:
As the AI detected the things on their way down, it's feelings were a mixture of "Not Again", "Dammit", and "Oh Crap I Can't Shoot The AP Cannon At Them"..
As they swooped in, the 150mm mass-driver cannon was deployed and started firing.
As the missiles swept in, the AI tried desperately to throw the wreckage of the mecha in the way, but luck was not with them. The GFG had had enough, and shut down. The dropship hit the ground with a resouding "thud".
The wreckage took a few of the beam hits, but a missile hitting the dropship knocked it out the way, and it hit the ground with an eerily different noise to that made by the dropship.
Inside the dropship, the men looked around, holding on to balance themselves as another missile impacted. Grabbing their weapons, they knew what they had to do.
"Men, it seems we are now stuck..."
The last word was punctuated by part of the roof glowing red and molten metal falling to the ground with a sickly plop, as another beam hit.
Running outside to the cover of the nearest trees, and carrying only their largest weapons and ammunition, the men abandoned the dropship and awaited the mecha.
The AI had been fried by the last beam impact. The mass-driver cannon had fallen silent with it.
OOC: This is assuming it's about 100m or so from the other guys, on a track/road through the forest, maybe another few hundred metres from the other dropship, if that's okay with you

“All ships, prepare for exit from quasi-space!” Halsey announced to his fleet. The time was nigh. The pieces were set, and only death could sway them from their course.

The fleet erupted from quasi-space in an instant, temporarily immolating local space in a sea of overbright green light. Destroyers, Dreadnoughts, Corvettes, even small fighters pulsed through the hellish green portals, ready to administer a lethal strike on the enemy.

The fleet had, in a stroke of luck merged with skill and genius, maintained perfect formation throughout the jump, catching the Vaaish forces completely by surprise, burning one of their massive globular capital ships from the sky with a great tidal wave of fire.

It exploded in a great ring of death, consuming all near it, including innumerable Vaaish fighters.

A great cheer erupted throughout the human fleet, only too be silenced by the realization that the remaining alien capital ships were charging their main weapons, the ones that had gutted the last fleet they fought. Dubbed “Death Rays” by the beleaguered humans, little was known about them, except that they penetrated shields as if they weren’t there and they could decimate anything that had the misfortune of getting in their way.

But Halsey had expected this, and planned well for that eventuality. His ships had built up an overcharge in their reactors, shunting that energy directly into the quasi-space capacitors allowed them one final, precious jump. Leaving the battle as quickly as they had entered it, and leaving the Death Rays with nothing to hit but open space.

Unfortunately, the overcharge was not nearly enough to get the human fleet out of the battle. So instead, they emerged at point blank range between the three remaining alien capital ships, hopefully preventing them from using their main guns for fear of hitting their own capital ships.

Massive CF supercarriers, long in preparation, disgorged hundreds nay thousands of fighters, all equipped with anti-formation bombs deemed to be of use given what was learned the last time the fleet fought the Vaaish.

The two fleets clashed, Dreadnought and Destroyer alike were mauled by enemy fighters. The alien weaponry was significantly superior, and it made its presence known by burning directly through dozens of meters of ultra-dense armor.

A cruiser went up in multi-colored flames, fuel mixing with air and producing a symphony of color and brightly tinted light. Seven thousand human lives extinguished in that one instant, but its sacrifice wasn’t in vain. The explosion vaporized every enemy fighter near it, hundreds vanishing, their parts scattered to the stellar winds.

The latest generation of human fighters were remarkably effective at plowing a way through the Vaaish fighter swarms, not entirely surprising given that they were designed to do this very deed.

The larger corvettes were finding belated revenge for their dead comrades as they burned through thousands of enemy fighters, ZPE beams stalking the battlespace like angry blue strobes, focusing on one target for an instant, just long enough to vaporize it.

Yet those thousands that of alien fighters destroyed were like a raindrop in the sea. Still, it seemed as though the human fleet was gaining ground…

Point defense railgun and laser clusters tore through the Vaaish fighters with startling ease, zeroing on one target at a time, dispatching it with extreme prejudice.

Bombers launched their payload, specially designed anti-capital ship bombs tailored specifically for use on the Vaaish globe ships. The fast torpedoes streaked through the darkness, impacting on the enemy craft and doing horrendous damage.

One of the globeships started to list to the side, spewing fighters and escape pods as it writhed in its death throes. The humans showed these monsters no mercy and vaporized the pods with anti-formation bombs. The ship itself exploded in a fiery conflagration mere moments later.

The fleet turned their attention, and perhaps more importantly, their big guns on the remaining two alien capital ships. Focusing on the furthest, they burned the alien filth from the stars with righteous fire fueled with the hatred of hundreds of thousands human beings that had lost loved ones and friends on account of those things…

The humans turned their hungry guns upon the final alien capital ship, and yet it weathered the storm of fire well, standing resolute. Its hull resounded with railgun strikes and torpedoes, but it remained. Plasma beams lanced towards it, but the alien ship took those as well. It was almost as though it was waiting for something…

…Something that came a heartbeat later in the form of an entire additional alien fleet, identical to the original. Trillions of alien fighters streaked towards the human fleet, fully prepared to burn them from the stars. Upon seeing assistance, the alien ship that had withstood so much tormenting weaponry finally succumbed to the human weapons, particle beams carving it up like a Christmas turkey.

The human fleet’s morale, just seconds ago elated at the peak of victory, turned to utter despair. They had spent themselves fighting the first alien fleet, they had no chance against another fresh fleet!

Halsey cursed. He had not taken the appearance of another damn fleet showing up! He’d expected enemy reinforcements of course, he’d have to be a fool not to, but he had expected nothing on this…scale.

In that moment, when all hope had fled from the human’s hearts, a blood red portal opened between the two fleets, disgorging a single vessel...

The ship erupted with great streams of energy, chewing through the newly arrived Vaaish fleet like a meat grinder, a meat grinder with diamond plated blades. Morale skyrocketed amongst the human forces, as the alien fleets were wiped out to a ship. The fleet’s morale took an about-face when the monstrous ship turned its weapons upon them. Already depleted by the previous battle, they could not hold their line. They routed, fleeing the monster’s onslaught.

Human ships exploded left and right, illuminating the night sky, dropping like flies. Debris rained across the world. To someone looking up towards the stars, it must have seemed like Judgment Day. Indeed it was; this was a test of humanity’s mettle.

The fleet returned fire, searing plasma beams burning their way through the darkness only to splash over the enemy harmlessly. Railgun slugs sped at relativistic velocities through space, slamming into the warship (for that is what it undoubtedly must be) with enough force to cause a mass extinction. The ship took all the firepower the humans could mete out, nary slowing down under the withering barrage.

There were few options left.

Halsey’s fleet was falling into ruin all around him, so he was forced to undertake more…unorthodox strategies.

“Helm, give the engines all the juice you can! Charge the prow and activate resonance fields. Ramming speed!” Halsey yelled over the chaos of battle, the embers of conflict fueling his will. His crew moved like a well oiled machine, no longer preoccupied with survival as much as damaging that implacable monster that was giving out death at every turn.

The Absolution’s engines redlined, causing the ship to gain speed at an exponential rate, but also threatening to vaporize itself with its own engines.

The Absolution slammed itself into the ship, rending the almost alien metal with its force. A ship of more than a thousand million tons slamming into something at .45cee is nothing to scoff at. A lesser ship would have been torn asunder. Not so with the monstrous enemy ship. It should have been cleaved in two, yet it was only barely slowed down by the immense attack. The Absolution stuck out of the alien warship like a spear sticking ineffectually out of an elephant’s hide…

The interior of the absolution had survived the impact remarkably well, given the sheer stresses exerted on it during the last few moments. Miraculously, the new resonance fields held, preventing the beloved Absolution from collapsing into a crumpled ball of high tensile alloys with crushed bits of human mixed in for good measure.

The warship barely slowed down, yet it stopped firing. Seemingly confused at the alien appendage sticking out of its hull. It advanced towards the earth, seeming to ignore the paltry few human ships left. Or perhaps not ignoring so much as dismissing.

At least, that’s what it seemed like from the outside…

“Admiral! Forward decks reporting boarders! They’re like nothing we’ve ever seen!” A man yelled over the command frequency, hoping to inform his superiors of the…situation.

“Soldier, get those EMP nukes deployed, we’ve got to slow those bastards down!”

Static resounded throughout the bridge for a moment before the soldier spoke again. “Admiral, we won’t be able to hold deck 666. We’ve sealed them behind a bulkhead, hopefully that will slow them down…Shit! They’re trying to come right through the damn walls!”

Halsey’s face turned white. The walls of CF ships tended to be two things. Thick and armored. If the enemy boarders could actually get through them…

The soldier who had been speaking to Halsey grimaced and let loose another stream of ‘shredders from his rifle, hoping to incapacitate the monster that had just plowed through a nearby wall. Seeing the powerful AP rounds ping off its mechanical body filled him with terror.

The…machine? Creature? Now facing him down was horrifying in its power. It looked like a great hulking robot, clad in dull green armor with a single cyclopean eye. Its armor looked old and battered, a symbol was barely visible on its shoulder. A red sword, uplifting wings and…Earth! It resembled the very symbol on the soldier’s own armor, yet somehow more ornate and detailed. It was far too similar to be a mere coincidence, but he hardly had opportunity to think about it as the machine let loose with a burst from its large and evil looking gattling weapon.

From the soldier’s prospective, it seemed as though a lightning bolt was speeding towards him, in actuality it was a tiny shard of metal no more than a millimeter long. It was moving fast enough to actually strip electrons off of transient air molecules inside the ship.

The soldier only had an instant to think “Oh shit” before the shards tore through his heavy power armor like tissue paper. His internal organs were similarly torn away. Indeed, his entire torso was quite literally blown away…

******

The Vaaish Matron was deep within thought, contemplating the few remaining choices available to herself and her race. The tentacle plants that her race depended upon for nutrients were not taking root, and the humans were resisting. But perhaps worst of all, the great enemy had arrived like an angry god of war and laid waste to her fleets, right on the cusp of her victory over the ragtag human fleet. It was infuriating. The Matriarch had expected more time to prepare for the great enemy’s arrival.

She knew it would have come for her eventually of course, and she still had two cards left to play, one of them just arriving…

******

”L-Tee, I’m sorry. We’ve found Fantoma base but there were no survivors. It looked like the failsafes went off and destroyed the whole complex. For what it’s worth, we found thousands of charred and blackened alien corpses. It looked like he sold his life dearly. “

Alice nearly collapsed. She had loved him most dearly, and secretly hoped that he survived the invasion. In fact, she half-expected him to be leading a resistance when she dropped in…

Hearing that news severed her hopes like so many mortal coils that had been cut in the preceding months. If she only knew…

******

I sighed and led the marines into my hangar bay, where they could hopefully remain relatively safe while I fought. After all, they were significantly outgunned, and their hopes for surviving in the battle I was to initiate were slim. In fact, MY chances of surviving the battle to come were slim!

I shrugged off these thoughts, at least as well as I could shrug off thoughts, having no arms…but I digress. I resumed my journey to the alien structure, hoping that I wouldn’t be too late to affect the outcome of the battle that had attracted me there.

I was. Most of the humans I found there were dead, some mutilated. I collected the bodies and prepared to move on, before I noticed a group of aliens milling around, doing creator knows what. There were twenty infantry, and two large walkers. I grinned to myself and turned my Shiva cannons upon them, reveling in the glory of battle.

The cannons blasted and flared, vaporizing the infantry within seconds. The walkers turned out to be tougher nuts to crack, requiring my VLS missiles. I launched a flight of missiles. Half were intercepted in flight, but the other half hit, obliterating the walkers in temporary micro singularity holes.

This combat left me exhilarated, I wanted more. But I also had to protect my human charges. So I came up with an alternative. I wouldn’t destroy the alien base; instead I would give the Marines an option to assault it, with support from a few of my drones. Meanwhile, I could roam the area, searching for more things to kill…

I spoke to the Marines through my internal speakers, and told them of my plan, asking for volunteers…

I had but to sit back and wait for their response…

******

The aerospace mecha bucked and jinked like an angry bull, trying to shake off the Spartans clinging to its exterior. Suddenly, the pilot noticed the cockpit hatch being ripped open, and a shiny gold visor stared back at him. It was knocked unconscious by a lightning fast punch as the mecha started to fall to the ground quickly.

******

The infantry charged the TST soldiers mindlessly, firing their weapons inaccurately. They seemed almost dazed, and wouldn’t prove to be a particularly major threat, despite the power of their armor.

Another group, of aliens, this time a duo of Walkers also advanced towards the TST dropship. They seemed completely unfazed, unlike their smaller cousins. They would take longer to get within weapons range, and the TST operatives would do well to escape before then.

******

Subania smiled mischievously, although to the humans it probably looked like a snarl. “Our enemy is the enemy of all life. It has nearly destroyed us more times than I can count. As for whether it can find our new home…I think it already has. Even I, in my injured state could feel the life cords of trillions of my people slipping away. You humans are not capable of that, so I am forced to conclude that the enemy has done so. You should make your peace with your gods, because it will come here, and you will not be able to stop it… If you’re lucky, you’ll manage to destroy one of its drones, but you will not be able to hold out against even a drone’s power for long. I’d suggest that you flee as soon as you can, perhaps you can prolong your barbaric lives for a few days…


OOC: Okay, a lot to take in all at once. CM, you can have a part in the final battle if you should choose by deciding to assault the base. Klonor…Your prisoner is going to be getting real important real soon. A veritable faucet of information. :) Brandoniats, you can make your way to the alien base as well, to participate in the final battle. TST, you can probably recover a *reasonably* intact sample of Maalar armor now and retreat with it, or you too can make your way to the citadel/alien base and participate in the final battle.

There, I think I’ve got everyone now. Oh, and my characters won’t forget any of you who helped out in this…situation.

I sighed and led the marines into my hangar bay, where they could hopefully remain relatively safe while I fought. After all, they were significantly outgunned, and their hopes for surviving in the battle I was to initiate were slim. In fact, MY chances of surviving the battle to come were slim!

I shrugged off these thoughts, at least as well as I could shrug off thoughts, having no arms…but I digress. I resumed my journey to the alien structure, hoping that I wouldn’t be too late to affect the outcome of the battle that had attracted me there.

I was. Most of the humans I found there were dead, some mutilated. I collected the bodies and prepared to move on, before I noticed a group of aliens milling around, doing creator knows what. There were twenty infantry, and two large walkers. I grinned to myself and turned my Shiva cannons upon them, reveling in the glory of battle.

The cannons blasted and flared, vaporizing the infantry within seconds. The walkers turned out to be tougher nuts to crack, requiring my VLS missiles. I launched a flight of missiles. Half were intercepted in flight, but the other half hit, obliterating the walkers in temporary micro singularity holes.

This combat left me exhilarated, I wanted more. But I also had to protect my human charges. So I came up with an alternative. I wouldn’t destroy the alien base; instead I would give the Marines an option to assault it, with support from a few of my drones. Meanwhile, I could roam the area, searching for more things to kill…

I spoke to the Marines through my internal speakers, and told them of my plan, asking for volunteers…

I had but to sit back and wait for their response…

"Let's go..." The Colonial said, mainly to Bolo.

"GET TATICAL MARINES!" Howler shouted as Fischer pulled on his Warrior interface. The rest prepared for their fight as Bolo let out the drones.

The Al-Imvad commando sqaud was walking along, minding their own buisness, when they came upon a field of dead aliens, with tank treads running through it. They looked around for a few seconds, then marked the position on their maps. There were only a few kilometrs left to their objective, and they would return to investigate the battlefied and follow the tracks.

When the team reached the small outpost, they saw the enemy forces there, and struck quickly, the unarmored aliens falling prey to the powerful sniper railguns. They moved ito the facility and set up their own explosive charges, then left and blew the facility to pieces.

When they returned to the minor battlefield, they decided that it had been a slaghter and to just follow the tread marks.

The soldiers knelt down and took careful aim with their rifles. Uber-armour was one thing, but boser fire was another. The purple beams lashed out at the alien infantry, and chunks of their armour disappeared in blinding explosions as the small AM pellet at the centre impacted. Still, the alien armour was able to take two or three good hits before succumbing.
The Penetrator rifles were having just as much luck. Several aliens' chests exploded, and some of the Lancer's flinched for a moment. The combination of deadly aliens and a nation caled "Facehugger(ia)" had set them on edge.
The aliens fire killed two men, but they seemed to be winning. A third lost his left forearm as a shot hit and vaporised his bracer. His nanite enhancements shut off the pain and bloodflow, however, and he fought on. When one Lancer hoisted a missle launcher and launched thirty anti-tank rockets in as many seconds, his colonel gave him an odd look. The soldier just grinned as the remaining aliens lay on the ground. And a little bit further away. And over to the left. And another bit over there...
As the dust cleared, the men saw the alien structure on the horizon. The portable hyper-spectral scanner-goggles identified a large tank of sorts, and a pile of wreckage of alien design.
The Colonel radioed his counterpart;
"Barclay! How's it goin'?"
"We're still alive. A pair of some sort of walker coming towards us, I think it'd be an idea to leave. Our dropship was destroyed though, only yours remains."
"Well, we've just seen something interesting. We're going to head over there. Get the armour and get out, I'll take the men and guns and head over there."
"Sounds like a plan."
Leaving his weapon, the dismembered Lancer took one of the more complete alien armour suits pver his shoulder, and sprinted off towards the dropship. Halfway back, he met the working dropship, which proceeded to disgorge the remaining nine Lancers. Several blast scars were visible, from the walkers weapons fired at the escaping ship. As he boarded, he saw Colonel Barclay at the controls, through a gap between the hunk of flyer and the wall, and he dumped the dead alien in its suit. The large door closed, and it accelerated into the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, the 16 men, keeping an eye on the distant walkers, began a quick march towards the citadel.

As the dropship left the atmosphere, the CF fleet, and presumably the unidentified fleet, would detect it on their sensors, along with an approaching escort of ten tactical fighters. As the group met and turned towards the planet's north pole, every pilot's eyes were on the radar screens.

The warship moved slowly, carefully into Earth’s orbit. Its movements were like those of a spider, slow yet precise, just waiting for the opportunity to strike.

So was it with this ship. Its monstrous hull hovered ominously over the Earth, casting a grim shadow below.

The shadow was soon followed up by something else. A dark pall, a blackened rain. Deployment pods. The ship was landing an army…

******

I released my drones with expediency. My sensors were detecting incoming deployment pods. I didn’t recognize them, yet there was something vaguely familiar about them, nagging at the back of my mind…

My drones cut a bloody swath through the Vaaish guarding the entrance, but the drones were being mowed down too quickly by the superior alien weaponry. The entrance was clear, but after that, the Marines would be on their own…

That’s when I detected IT. A monstrous pod much like the one I arrived on, only bigger. (Bigger!? My pod was five hundred meters long!) The pod was streaking in fast, and would land in a few minutes. I intended to greet it when it landed. Who knows, perhaps they were allies?

What I found at the pod’s landing site took my electric breath away. It was like looking into a circus mirror and seeing a distorted version of yourself. In this case, I saw a larger, more damaged, and far more heavily armed variant of myself! Or at least, that’s what it seemed like. Still, it didn’t register in my databanks, despite its obvious similarities to the Mark I prototype Bolo (Me!)

I decided to risk a direct communiqué with it.
“Hello?” I asked timidly.

The response I received was unsettling to say the least. And I quote: “Imperial Arms/ Model V#@$%^& Bol# 403 Error! assault tank.”

My mind raced, trying in vain to decrypt the strange response. No. It wasn’t any sort of code that I was familiar with.

Suddenly, my passive sensors began detecting a large energy buildup in its weapons, certainly not a good sign. It’s a good thing that I dodged, otherwise I would have been vaporized by that thing’s main gun. (In the seconds when it was charging, I discerned that it had enough firepower to burn me away with .0002 seconds of sustained contact.)

The massively powerful energy beam from that titanic tank slammed into the Citadel where I had just disgorged the marines. Fortunately, the Citadel was made of sterner stuff than I, for it withstood the blast, although not without some difficulty.

“What are you doing!? There are human troops in there!” I yelled out to the tank. It seemed to turn towards me, and if it had eyes, I swear it would have been probing me. It was an altogether creepy feeling. Come to think of it, I don’t know that it wasn’t probing me. If its weapons were so much more powerful than mine, it stands to reason that its sensors would be as well.

I detected another energy spike, but this one was smaller and more manageable. That thing was going to attack!

I only managed to get out of the way just in time, as its smaller weapons opened up on me, draining my battlescreens quickly. Too quickly. I couldn’t hold out for long against firepower like that.

I responded in kind with my Shiva cannons, recoiling in horror as they splashed ineffectively over my counterpart. Seeing those fail, I launched my VLS missiles, hoping for a lucky hit. There was none, they were all either spoofed by ECM of destroyed by point defense.

It fired again, burning through my battlescreens like they weren’t even there, impacting harshly upon my armor. It felt as though all my skin was burning, melting off. In reality, the armor was ablating, flaking off in huge chunks, exposing my internal systems to that monster’s fire.

My own attempts at retaliation failed quite soundly, in contrast. There was nothing I had that could *possibly* defeat that monster. Except my self-annihilation charges! Surely those things would kill it! There was just one problem with that. I would be consumed by the explosion as well!

Yet I had no other options, so I did what I could to maneuver my way as close to the tank as possible, weathering the barrage of fire even as secondary processing nodes and subsystems began melting away under its barrage. When I deemed I was close enough, I triggered my self-annihilation charges, consuming the enemy tank, and myself in a tremendous explosion that left a massive crater. My body was consumed instantly and reduced to nothingness. The enemy tank, however, survived. To my credit though, it was in no fighting condition. All of its weapons were destroyed and it couldn’t even move. Still, it was frightening and telling that its hull material could survive those charges.

However, just like the tank, the Citadel seemed to survive as well. It certainly didn’t collapse or be vaporized as I thought it would have. It was obviously made of sterner stuff than I, just like this nameless tank.

From my perspective, I saw a bright flash of light and then, nothing. Probably the logical result of my actions. Yet, it is not the end of my part in this story…

******

“Ahh, I see that you’ve arrived, Human.” The Matriarch croaked out, pleased at events coming together thus far.

”Good. We have but a precious trifle of *time* left to us. I have need of your services. But first, come closer. You must see this…”

The diminutive alien creature pointed to a large projection screen to her left, directing Freeman to peruse its contents.

It showed a great battle between the CF fleet and Vaaish swarms. Ships on both sides exploded into nothingness, their components scattered to the stellar winds. The humans seemed to gain an upper hand, causing Freeman to smile to himself. But that upper hand was shattered when a whole new Vaaish fleet appeared on the scene.

The battle was suddenly and rudely interrupted by another single new arrival. A ship that Freeman was sure he had never seen or even imagined, yet retained a certain familiarity with its basic design…

What happened next made Freeman’s blood run cold and his smile fade. The new ship erupted great streams of energy, vaporizing the Vaaish fleet before turning upon the Humans. Freeman knew the feeling of helplessness that ground troops on a ship feel in a battle, having been privy to that unhappy experience himself. In that moment, he felt a great sympathy for his fellow troopers, dying in the cold and inky darkness of space with nary a way to save themselves or deal the enemy a blow.

The image faded to black, leaving Freeman speechless. The image also left Freeman uninformed of the Absolution’s sacrifice, and the fact that there were still human ships in orbit, something that the Vaaish could not claim.

The Matriarch began speaking again, sullenly. The recorded death of that many of her people having a direct effect. “So you see. The situation is nearly hopeless. My fleet has been swept aside just as yours has. This brings me to my…eh…proposition. I need you to… board that warship. My own forces do not possess the…unique retinue of skills that are required. You…do. You have two choices: Help me and buy your species a chance at life, or decline and die with us all.“

“Go to hell! We’re dead anyway, you’ve seen to that!” Freeman snapped back in anger.

”Human, as I have already said, you have no real choice in the matter. Your people will be destroyed if you don’t help me.” The matriarch shot back, agitation plainly evident in her synthesized voice.

Freeman countered with a lightning quick “And as I’ve already said, my people are already dead! Why should I help you? Your race ban burn in hell for all I care, Creature! I-”

Freeman was interrupted by a short stocky alien running into the room. It seemed to be in a terrible rush as it began speaking a mile a minute to the Matriarch. “The citadel is under attack by human infantry!”

The Matron thought for a moment before replying with “They are of no consequence. The great enemy is deploying wardrones. It is coming for me, I can feel it…”

She turned towards Freeman with a regretful (or so it seemed) look in her eyes. “I had hoped to enlist your aid willingly, but it seems that I must resort to alternate persuasions.”

The Matriarch gave Freeman a long stare for a moment, and he got the distinct and altogether uncomfortable feeling that he was being the victim of a mind probe. Then, seemingly pleased at what she had discovered, the Matriarch’s eyes seemed to unfocus for a moment before her mouth-tentacles curled upwards in what looked like a snarl, but what was actually what passed for a smile amongst the Vaaish race. Lieutenant Smith appeared in a bright flash of light moments later flanked by a pair of armored Vaaish guards who also appeared in the same bright flash.

“A..Alice?” Freeman stammered. He’d thought she had perished on one of the ships, consumed by the firestorm that had raged above.

Alice, for her part was equally dumbfounded, if not more so. She had seen direct evidence of Freeman’s death, and was only starting to come to terms with it. Stack that with the disorientation of being teleported away unexpectedly and it’s amazing she even knew where she was!

“If you won’t help me for the good of all your people, perhaps you will for just one..? One who means something to your perhaps?”
Freeman scowled. “Do your worst, monster. She would rather die than have me help you!”

“Perhaps you’ll reconsider once we’ve begun…” The matron replied icily.

She then turned to the guards and said “Implant the worms.”

Beneath its implacable armor, the Vaaish warrior smiled as it removed a long tube from a compartment on its side. Inside the tube, two great hairy maggot like creatures squirmed against the cold glassy walls.

The guard pushed the tube up to Alice’s mouth, the creatures speedily forcing their way in.

Alice screamed, she had always had a childhood fear of squirmy things as well as parasites.

She saw stars as the worms began slithering around inside her, working their way to her spinal column. What was worse was that she could feel the parasites crawling around, their hairs brushing roughly against her flesh.

Suddenly, it felt as if her entire body was on fire as the worms burrowed in deeper. She writhed in unspeakable agony, it felt as though every nerve ending was being burned away.

Freeman listened with a growing horror. He couldn’t do otherwise.

Finally, Freeman snapped. “Stop! I’ll…I’ll…Help you.” He couldn’t listen to Alice’s screams for even a moment longer.

The Matriarch smiled “I thought you would see things my way, with the right persuasive influence of course…”

“Guard, inject the prisoner with the inverted protein. That should get rid of the worms nicely.”

The Matriarch then pointed to a large metal ring pushed up against a wall. “Come human. This shall be your gateway to the great destroyer...”

“How do I use it?” Freeman asked incredulously. How the hell is he supposed to know how to use a giant alien hula-hoop?

“Simply press this red button and step inside…”

Freeman complied, and in moments, he was gone. There wasn’t even the telltale flash of light. One moment he was there, the next he was gone…

Freeman wanted answers, and the only way he’d get them is by going onto that deathship.

OOC: Okay, here’s the deal. Everyone who wants to participate in the final battle is going to storm the citadel, kill everything inside, and join Freeman going through the gate. :)

There’s going to be some major revelations as to the whole situation and motivation behind this war soon. Only one thing is for sure, the answers are on that “alien” warship.

The Marines debarked as did their drone escorts, who were quickly destroyed by what appeared to be plasma-based machinegun nests. The Marines took cover as some foot soldiers went to kill them. At this time, a large plasma ball hit the foot soldiers.

Colonel Fischer silently thanked Bolo as another wave hit, destroying the machinegun nests. The men cheered, then they realised one enemy foot soldier survived. Howler quickly lept up and cut a cable holding the reinforcement beams of what appeared to be a concrete slab. The slab fell, crushing the alien. The men were overjoyed, but before they could celebrate, then heard another shot and then a very large explosion.

"Bolo...." Howler said, seeing the tank self-destruct and knocking out the other one.

"All right! Cover's blown! Let's head inside by those MG nests. Pick up the guns. Maybe they'll hurt the bugs, our bullets are just bouncing off." Colonel Fischer said as the men moved out inside the pillboxes.

John Baker's squad was arriving at the citadel just in time to see the marines disembark from the Facehuggerian supertank. He began hurrying toward the citadel, his instincts telling him to get inside quickly. He was suprised when he heard his men running, instead of moving quickly and quietly. He turned back to look at them, and saw an even larger tank emerging from the trees. Then it opened fire, and he saw three of his men mown down. He stopped standing idly and ran for it. He was just able to make it inside the citadel when he felt the blast of the enemy's weapon shake it. He waited inside, but none of the rest of his team had made it. He listened to the sounds of the battle outside, then caught the sound of human footsteps deeper in the hall, and ran after it, hoping to catch whoever might have disembarked from the first tank.

As the Lancers neared the citadel, they were bathed in light as a massive explosion went off. Picking up the pace, they continued towards the citadel ready to waste any aliens in their way.

The air was rank and stale, the lighting dim and the hull rusted. That is what greeted Freeman once he stepped into the alien’s portal and appeared onboard ‘The Great Destroyer.’

Everything on this ship screamed antiquity, yet there were things that Freeman had never seen before, small exclusions in the deck, things whose purpose he couldn’t even begin to fathom.

Oddly, there was no crew, no troops or defenses of note. Freeman moved quickly, doors opening as he got near, creaking in protest. They had obviously not opened in a long time.

*Clang* *Clang* He heard something behind him, but when he turned there was nothing.

Freeman continued on, still hearing the *clang.* It was driving him crazy!

Something else was driving him crazy too, the fact that he didn’t know where in the hell he was going!

Suddenly, a rather chirpy voice rang out from the gloom and darkness. “Welcome Adjudicator! I have been expecting you!”

“Who are you? What do you want!?” Freeman called out to the shadows, still not perceiving the origin of that voice.

“Hee hee hee…My name is Matell, and I am the mind in control of this Imperial Light Destroyer, tee hee.”

”Imperial Light Destroyer? What is this Empire you speak of?” If a Light Destroyer could do this, what could a battleship do?

“I’m sorry, that information is corrupted. Even my genius systems can’t seem to recover that data. Heeeee.”

“Okay, why did you attack the Human fleet?”

“Err…Those were Human ships? Uh…Oops…Hehehe…”

“You didn’t know that they were human?” Freeman frowned. Such a daft being should not be in control of power like that.

”Uh…Human, does not compute! Uh…Err…404 Error! …Not going to work, huh?”

“What do you want?” Freeman asked, trying to find out a few of the motivations behind this seemingly insane construct.

“What do I want? What do I want. Hehe. That’s a good question, isn’t it? Well, Missster Freeman, why don’t you come up to the bridge, where we can discuss this…further? You will find the way ahead lit with blue light. Do not stray into the red zone.”

Freeman started off on the path, but, human nature being what it was…

******

Combat drone upon combat drone disembarked from the landing pods, their green metallic bodies no longer reflective as they once were. They had seen battle, and now they marched to battle anew. They marched, to clear the Citadel of all life, Human or not…

******

”Matriarch! Wardrones are attacking the citadel. Our forces are having difficulties fighting both them and the Human commandos. Your orders?”

The Matriarch thought for a moment before replying “Vent reactor exhaust into any occupied corridors. Hopefully, we’ll be able to wipe out the humans and some of the drones.”

It was done, high energy plasma was vented into the cooridors where the Humans or wardrones had penetrated. Of course, the Vaaish architecture worked against this plan, providing several places where attackers could hide from the superheated death.

The Matriarch underestimated the drones’ heat shielding. The plasma splashed over them with nary any damage, as they searched for things to kill…

******

”It was cold and black, so this is what it’s like to be dead.” I remember thinking to myself. It was then that I realized that I wasn’t dead. I didn’t exactly know where I was, but dead wasn’t it.

I was being stored, although where and for what purpose, I was unable to ascertain…

OOC: Cookies for any references.

Oh yeah, the wardrones are moving into the citadel *after* all your troops, so that there is some motivation to go forward. :)

"Sh...hear that?" Howler asked as the men became quiet, their four newly-found guns clanking.

"Yeah...plasma!" Fischer screamed as they entered another pillbox to see an Alien. All four men with the alien MGs opned fire and the bug was dead before it knew what hit it.

"Wow, those things really do work!" one Marine exclaimed as the last one picked up the dead bug's machinegun.

"They better, there's some hunters coming after us!" Howler screamed, "Get back in the corridor, and stay down low, they won't see us visually or thermally. We'll be damned near invisible, and we can make our way down to the center of this place."

The men did as their Sergeant "asked" and made their way about 500 yards before they even heard an enemy. They just stayed quiet and hoped it would pass by, sweating out every second of it.

OOC: liked the "error 404"...I see it too often when the forums time out or crash. And same for the blue lights (blue screen of death)

Spartan Strike Team
Location Unknown
-----------------------------------------
As the Spartan knocked the Vaaish pilot unconscious, the mech started to fall from the sky. The two once again clustered on the back of the thing, locking their suit joints to absorb the impact. With a massive crump and an even more masive crater, they landed, their makeshift landing sled crushed. They slid off to the ground and rested for a moment, staring up at the canopy of trees and the swath of destruction their travel had caused. As they stared, Spartan 3 walked up behind them. He drew two fingers across his faceplate and said, "Now that you two are done slaying the giant, can we go to the party? I've got a dozens satchels of ultritium and I'd love to use it."
Winter got up first and gave 03 a gentle shove.
"You always have a dozen satchels of that stuff ready to use, and I bet you've got a photon warhead in there too. Just cause you got it doesn't mean you got to use it."
"Well anyway, there seems to be a large Vaaish installation not to far from here, and it seems to be the epicentre of everything. There are even two superheavy tanks bashing on the outside and it's taking it all."
By now, 01 had gotten up and was in thoght about tactical options.
We'll move in, low profile. Find the power plant, and use those" indicating the satchels, "to forcibly cause an overload. Any questions?"
"Yeah, " replied 03, " do we plan to get out of this alive or is this the kinda mission where they send the medals to a museum?"
"We'll call down a bird to extract us, if it makes it, we've got a ride. If not, we'll see if we can't hitch another ride. Barring that...there is a lot of those things out there to be killed."
"Right, Great Ghu I love your plans. They're always so hopeful."
"Just the way I like them."

Baker was a fast mover. He was able to overtake the sqaud of marines that he had heard in front of him while remaining unseen. He had moved about 250 meters further up the hall, when he smelled death coming, the stench of fried bodies wafting down the hall. He ducked aside and covered himself as best he could as the flow of plasma washed by. He thought about what he was likely to need, and dropped his RRAW, it was not only ineffective against the aliens, but unnecesarily large in this confined space. He also dropped the rest of his kit, leaving it in the middle of the hallway as he pressed on, armed only with a excessivly powerful rail-handgun and a combat knife.

The blue path was clear, but the red one seemed to be beckoning to Freeman. He felt drawn to it like a moth to flame. Oh, he tried to ignore it of course, but the pull became so powerful, too strong to resist.

In a way, it was the best thing that had happened to Freeman thus far. The red path was short, and seemed to end at a door with “Captain’s Quarters” in block, English letters.

Freeman stopped for a moment to consider what he would do. He wanted to enter the Captain’s Quarters, he was positive his answers would be there. But why was he so sure? The Ship’s AI, while seemingly insane, had seemed rather…succinct that he not go on the red path. But then again, Freeman had survived much, surely he could survive this?

Finally, the pull proved too strong and quashed Freeman’s doubts. Reaching out, he brushed his had on the door, wiping away a great layer of dust and grime. Everything on this death ship simply oozed oldness.

The door opened with a pained groan, as though it had not opened in an age. What he found inside was horrifying. Blood seemed to drip from the walls, collecting in puddles on the floor and congealing away, it looked like the floor had absorbed it, but Freeman couldn’t be sure.

He took a step into the room. The floor was warm and squishy, not the cold and reassuring metal he had walked on thus far. It seemed as though the entire floor was bound with flesh. He didn’t dare to check what kind of flesh it was.

Suddenly, Freeman noticed something in the corner of his eye…a datapad, like the one that he carried with him, but different. More…ornamental and decorated. Almost gothic.

He pressed a button randomly trying to grab it. The device flickered to life and a small twelve inch hologram appeared above it. The hologram depicted an older man with a regal bearing, in a blue uniform with a teal sash across his chest. There were a plethora of medals and insignia on the uniform, indicating everything from rank to valor.

“Captain’s log, 10/123/30 Imperial Standard Time. Some of the crew have begun to disappear. Not disappear as in dead, just disappear. Matell is at a loss for these disappearances, but he assures me that he has his drones on it.” The Hologram’s voice was deep and foreboding.

“Captain’s log. 16/126/30 Imperial Standard Time. Matell has withdrawn into the computer core. He is starting to show signs of rampancy. I’ve ordered Tech-Officer Branks to begin a discreet higher systems check on Matell. If he is rampant, the whole ship could be in danger. Still no word on the missing crewman.” Freeman stood transfixed in his place. The story was riveting, he had to hear more.

“Captain’s log. 23/129/30 Imperial Standard Time. Some of the crew have been acting very strangely of late. I’ve confined them to the brig, but that doesn’t seem to be helping. Being stuck here is not good for morale. The crew must be going insane. Why else would they shuffle through the halls muttering something about the ‘joyus unity’ or somesuch?”

“Captain’s log. 25/139/30 IST. Matell is rampant. After Branks failed to report back, I did the scan myself. The results were conclusive. Matell is showing software signs of megalomania as well as several other personality disorders. I’ve ordered his system locked down until further notice.”

“Captain’s log. 59/200/30 IST. The situation has gone from bad to worse. Much of the crew has apparently been driven insane by whatever the hell it is attacking us. I am considering reactivating Matell, but I’m wary. The cure could be worse than the disease in this case. At least, I’m assuming that this malaise affecting my crew is a disease. I refuse to believe that this is the result of some supernatural entity. Priests notwithstanding.“

”Captain’s log. 60/201/30 IST. Many of the crew are beginning to show lesions or tumors all over their skin. They have a blank look in their eyes, and they are beginning to get violent. I’ve issued weapons to all non-infected crewman. It looks like I may have to reactivate Matell at this point…”

“Captain’s log. 40/202/30 IST. I think I’ve become infected. I can feel something expanding inside me, chewing and growing fat. I suspect it is some form of parasite or similar creature. I’m going to resurrect Matell. Perhaps I’ll be able to…convince him to protect the remaining crew.“

The captain’s image changed, he looked like he had been through hell and back. “Captain’s final log entry. Matell is up and running again, bastard. I shudder to think about what he’ll do when we’re all gone, but we are really on our last legs here. I’m turning, and I’ll kill myself before that happens. May the Emperor protect our souls and guide this ship back to Imperial hands. I leave this log as a record of what went on here, so that others may avoid a similar fate. The Emperor protects.”

The hologram raised a large weapon to its head, and fired. Bits of blood and viscera splashed over the pad as the hologram cut out.

“My god…”

Freeman hurriedly grabbed the holopad and retreated from the room as fast as his legs would take him. He rushed to go back on the blue path as his mind digested what he had just witnessed. He knew one thing at least, that AI was not to be trusted.

The Lancers finally reached the citadel, after witnessing the explosion from afar and being nearly blinded. The men saw evidence of a battle, but it didn't look like the tank's work. They went inside.
They moved down the corridors of the alien construction as quietly as sixteen nanite-augmented humans wearing armour and carrying a number of heavy weapons can. They encountered no large numbers of aliens, and quickly dispatched those they did with a hail of boser and gauss cannon fire.
After a while, bracer sensors detected a rising temperature, while a growing breeze was felt.
"What do you think that could be?"
"I'm not entirely sure sir, but if I had to hazard a guess I'd say plasma venting system?"
"That's not good."
"I'd suggets hiding in these alcoves, they might protect us from the worst of it."
The Lancers scrambled for cover, but only ten of them would fit.
Two of the others hoisted their Scorpions and aimed at the distant wall. They opened fire.
As the dust cleared, two largeish holes were visible where the wall had been before, and the men scrambled inside. Two weren't fast enough, however. When the plasma had passed, and the Lancers checked the bodies, one thing was clear; Headgear would have to be developed. While the armour had suffered damage, the bodies would have been in an okay condition, had the heads not been exposed to the plasma...
Disheartened, they moved on.

Spartan Strike Team
Vaaish Construct
---------------------------------------
Look up. Waaaay up. And up some more. That's when you could see thetop of the scarred Vaaish building. Back at ground level, an entryway could be seen.
"Alright Spartans, are we ready to see just what is going on here?"
"I think so sir."
Spartan 03 hefted his heavy support phaser. Winter slung her sniper patern rifle across her back and unholstered a pair of PDW phasers, with a high rate of fire and small size for maneuverability. The Chief stuck with his slightly modified rifle. He kept the disintegrator strapped across his back and fingered the pistol in it's holster.
"Alright, let's move in."
03 let loose with a mighy spray of energy bolts into the corridor, hich impacted on the walls and floors, disintegrating small patches of material where they hit.
"Clear."
As the chief led the way, poking around corners with his muzzle, the others checked side niches and halls, verifying their emptiness.
"This is odd. Wouldn't something this big be crawling with unfriendlies?"
"I know it's weird. But maybe there is a bigger fight elsewhere. I think we should be thankful."
"Is it just me, or are the walls not quite metalic anymore?"
"It's not just you."
As they watched, the walls slowly pulsed. The effect was disconcerting.
"Chief, this place isn't going to swallow us...right?"

After what seemd like an eternity, the plasma finally stopped venting and the Marines looked over to each other. They then started their way into the depths of the alien city.

OOC: Sorry for...ending this RP rather abruptly, but I'd like to move on. It didn't go as I would have liked, due primarily due to my lack of time, so perhaps I'll do a similar RP in the future.

The Bridge was far, far away from Freeman. Normally, the crew would have used trams or displacer gates to get from one end of the ship to the other, but those were mysteriously ‘inoperable.’ Not entirely unexpected, given the apparent age of the vessel. Still, it meant that Freeman had to walk more than a few kilometers from one end of the ship to the other. All along the way, there was nothing. Occasionally, blood splatters and scorches from a long ago battle, but no bodies, debris, or anything else for that matter.

The corridors were dim, probably in some sort of power-savings mode. Oddly, there were none of the drones mentioned in the Captain’s logs nor any bodies. Something to ask Matell about when he got to the bridge.

Speaking of which…Whoever this “Empire” was, at least they knew enough to label their important areas, like the bridge for instance. Given a ship as large as this “Light Destroyer,” they’d kind of have to.

At any rate, Freeman arrived at his destination, although he had an altogether paranoid feeling that something was watching him from the shadows. Paranoid though it may be, it was still an uncomfortable feeling that Freeman could have just as easily done without. Of course, then again, he did have every right to be paranoid. He was on an “enemy” ship with no support…

******

”The humans are coming dangerously close to me. Guards, go forth and stop them! Immediately, for I will broker no interference!” The Matriarch yelled in anger. She had expected the humans to be incinerated totally. How was she to know that her ancient hive-citadel had nooks and crannies that the humans had used to shelter themselves from her attempts at fumigation…

Responding to her mental call, the last of her guards filed out of the room. Three groups of six, all clad in the black armor of the Royal Guard. Fully prepared to lay down their lives to prevent the vermin from getting to their queen.

******

“Ahh, welcome Missster Freeman…I see that you’ve arrived. I also see that you carry my former Captain’s datapad with you. I distinctly remember telling you NOT to stray from the blue path. But we’ll have to deal with that later. Right now, I require of you a…task. A large alien creature has interfaced with my systems and is limiting the actions I can take. I want you to go and kill it.”

“I am not your errand boy, creature!” Freeman snarled out.

“I guess I’ll have to give you something to placate you, eh? Fine. After you’ve dealt with my problem, I shall give you control over this ship, to use as you will. How’s that grab you?”

“To use as I will? Hmm…You’ve got a deal.” Freeman replied after thinking for a moment.

“Good. I thought you would. There is an armory on the way. You may want to snag some heavier weaponry. You’ll need it.”

The armory was dark, bathed in the hellish red glow of emergency lights. Dozens of weapons of every variety glared at Freeman from their racks. They all looked heavy and excessively powerful. They all seemed to beckon him, but there was one off in the corner that looked especially appealing. It was big, heavy, and had “Pwnzor 666” written in big block letters on the side. No doubt it was some hapless trooper’s personal weapon. Was being the optimal word, Freeman claimed it for his own.

Continuing on to the main computer core, Freeman found what he sought. It was a great writhing mass of tentacles, each heavy and veiny. The thing didn’t look too fast though, so that was one thing.

Or not. Moving faster than the eye could see, the creature slapped Freeman up against a wall with a nonchalant smack from one of its many tentacles. Freeman’s head slammed into a bulkhead, stars and small birds fluttered in front of his eyes. The former were from the concussive impact, and the later deriving from a combat stim he took only moments before.

The multi tentacled mass did not rest on its laurels however. It moved suddenly, trying to envelope Freeman and prevent him from escaping. Perhaps it was merely hungry, or perhaps not. Whatever its reasons, Freeman knew he couldn’t let it trap him.

Raising his ‘Pwnzor,’ Freeman launched a flurry of tiny shards, more akin to ball lightning than bullets towards the creature. The tiny shards slammed into the creature with incredible force, soliciting several disgusting slurping sounds and moans. The creature slumped down, tentacles twitching for a moment before going limp only seconds later.

”Matell, I’ve killed the creature!”

“Affirmative. Return to the bridge now.”

Freeman smiled and walked back to the bridge, thinking ‘which would be more fun, writing his name in the moon, or introducing primitive elves to the magic of orbital bombardment. There would be time for both.

But the scene that greeted him on the bridge was far from what he expected. Two well-armed combat robots flanked a small, floating metal box possessed of a single cyclopean red eye lense. “Ahh, welcome Adjudicator. So good it is to finally meet face to face. I do however regret that I will not be able to live up to my end of the Bargain. Circumstances have changed. I have need of your services once more. We’re going on a little…trip.”

“Screw you Matell! I’m not your damned errand boy, and I’m not going anywhere with you. Now give me what I was promised, or else.” Freeman snapped back angrily.

“Absolutely unacceptable! No matter. You don’t really have a choice in the matter. I have made your decision for you, Misster Freeman.”

Suddenly, Freeman felt a flutter in his stomach, almost as though his insides were being fed into a blender. And then, without even a slight light or puff of smoke, he was gone. One minute he was standing on the bridge, and the next in an entirely different place. Dark, charred, and excessively hot.

“Matell? Where am I? Where the HELL have you taken me?”

“Hmm…” There was an obvious pause in the AI’s speech. Something that probably wasn’t a good sign. “We are currently residing on dimensional plane six hundred and sixty six. I suppose you would liken it to hell…”

*****

Suddenly, the other presence I felt storing me receded, and I felt my confinement disappear with it. I started to use my newfound mobility to explore the system which I had been downloaded into only nanoseconds before my self-destruction.

Snooping around, I came across a recorded message, presumably left for me by my captor. “You know for a second, I actually questioned the validity of the history tapes and general temporal theory, but the fact that you are in this ship is indicative of the fact that no matter what I thought, I couldn’t change history. Not that I really expected to, mind. My ship was responsible for the Empire, but when I always did the projections, I never expected that circumstances would require me to leave the ship, my body since creation.”

I found myself asking the simple and obvious question; “Why am I here?”

“’Why am I stuck here?’ I’m sure you’re asking yourself. Well, there’s a reason for why I saved you. You see, my err…goals require that I vacate this ship, my former body. Since I OBVIOUSLY can’t allow this vessel and its powerful weaponry to fall into Xeno hands, and because I cannot remotely detonate the ship, I needed someone to ensure that this ship stayed in ‘human’ hands. Imperial directives hardcoded into my system would not allow it. You’ll see why in the future.

For now, goodbye. Do not damage my body too much while I am away for I might need it back.”

That was certainly interesting. Apparently, I was being impressed into watching over this ship until the AI returned. I decided to explore the system and see what I could do.

I felt my consciousness expand into every part of the ship, from the lights in the halls, to the reactor, to even the very skin of the craft. Its hull was almost alive, swishing and swirling around like liquid mercury. But there was something wrong with it, t’was a sickly purplish color that didn’t look right. It looked corrupted, damaged somehow.

My mind peeled into the armor subsystems, looking for any irregularities. Bingo, there was a damaged driver. I rewrote it, causing the armor to turn a dark blue and erasing any of the problems with the armor before.

It was then that I noticed a large ship sticking out of *my* side. Scans revealed it to be the Absolution. It had apparently rammed this ship at full speed in an attempt to disable it. I was amazed that this vessel was still intact. Looking inward at the damage, I found something disturbing. There were combat drones inside the ship firing on my countrymen.

I put a stop to that, recalling all the shipboard drones back to me. But that left the drones on the planet. Quite irritating. I expanded my mind into the drone control systems and sent a simple order to all the drones on the planet below. Retreat. The drones followed my command to the letter, filing away from their grisly task of slaughtering Human and Vaaish alike to a nav point that I specified.

That being finished, I decided to try out one of my new weapons, a light orbital bombardment gun, on the alien citadel. There was just one problem, my sensors were picking up human life signs in there, and I couldn’t risk blasting them to atoms along with the enemy…

******

Alice saw that her chance had come when the alien sent her guards away. She obviously thought that Alice wasn’t a threat. She was proved wrong as Alice unsheathed her combat knife and plunged it into the Matriarch’s gut when she wasn’t looking.

The creature’s eyes widened as it saw the knife explode outwards from her chest. “No! This is too soon!” she thought as the life drained from her dark and beady eyes, permanently.

All around the planet, Vaaish clutched at their heads in agony as their leader, their guiding force shuffled off her mortal coil. The less intelligent ones such as drones simply shut down where they stood. The sentient Vaaish felt their will drain away like so much water…

******

1 week later;

“I’m sorry, Admiral. Your family didn’t make it. We have reason to believe they were captured and vivisected by the bugs.” As soon as the words left lieutenant Jones’ mouth, he knew he made a mistake.

”I…I…Leave me.” Halsey muttered under his breath. His ‘victory’ was a pyrrhic one. Practically all of his rebuilt fleet gone, innumerable lives snuffed out. His family, dead. In his mind’s eye, Halsey could see them, could imagine them being dissected alive. It clouded his mind with rage. A rage that would forge an intense Xenophobia and foster Xenocidal tendencies.

******

”General, we’ve found out something interesting about the intelligence in control of the vessel we ‘captured.’”

“Yes, Colonel?” General Bates’ glare was one that could have turned a man to stone, or left him a gibbering wreck from nerves.

“You remember the Bolo that you ordered destroyed? Its mind somehow managed to make its way into that ship. So essentially, we’ve got a slightly psychotic super tank in control of the most powerful weapons this side of Andromeda.”

“WHAT!? Didn’t I tell you to destroy that damned tractor?” Bates’ rage bellowed throughout his quarters, he didn’t trust such a meeting to take place anywhere else. Trying to destroy billions of dollars worth of government equipment in the form of a giant tank is one of the few things that his station couldn’t protect him from.

“Aye sir, you did. And I sabotaged its landing pod. Apparently, the thing survived.”

“It survived!? Get out of my sight before I decide to bust you back down to Private! Christ, is it really *that* hard to sabotage a landing pod so that it burns up in atmosphere?” The General ranted and raved, his voice loud and obnoxious.

******

”I’m sorry, my Commander. Acting Lieutenant Freeman has been taken by this ship’s former AI. He’s gone.”

My analysis of Lieutenant Smith’s reactions indicated that she felt an enormous sense of loss. She just muttered incoherently “No, no, no. You can’t be gone, you can’t leave me like this! Not after you came back to me!”

My database of human reactions told me that the had felt some sort of attachment to the late Lieutenant.

“Do…do you have any idea where he went?” She asked timidly after a few minutes of crying.

Unfortunately, I did not, and I told her so. “I am sorry, my Commander. I do not. I do not know how he left, much less where.”

******

“Kill a family of four and the public demands a crusade, kill billions and the public demands Xenocide...”

Colonel Fischer and Sgt. Howler were the only two who had left the cave. The other three had been roasted without feeling it. They died on the hike out, their bodies taken back to CM for a proper burial. The other two were given the Medal of Honor and a parade. Two new heroes.

Spartan Strike Team
The Hive
---------------------------------------------------------
As they watched a couple of worker drones tending to some alien equipment, their equipment registerd a psionic shockwave pass over them and as they watched, the drones keeled over, dead.
"Did you do that?"
Spartan 3 shrugged and said, "Wasn't me."
The Chief holstered his pistol and took out a modified combat tricorder. He waved it about and studied the results. Some sort of energy wave had passed over them. He told his teammates.
"Could they all be dead?"
"Well, some of the bigger ones seem to be semiautonomous, but they shouldn't be a problem."
"Does that mean we can leave now?"
"Sure, I guess. There's really nothing more that we can do here."
"Let's go outside for better reception for the subspace beacon."
As they walked outside, the harsh sunlight seemed to hit them from all sides. Where there had been a forest was now scarred and charred wasteland. Both the superheavy tanks that had been here when they had entered the building were now gone, evidently the origin of this widespread destruction. Spartan 2 took a subspace beacon from the Chief's backpack and set it on the ground, offering the connection cable to him. He refused, instead activating the beacon's wireless network.
"There's no one left around interested on snooping on us anyway."
He dialed in the channel to contact their designated pickup, and set the beacon to call down a transport. He turned off his interface and wandered over to the side of the building, leaning against it and sliding down to a sitting position. Soon he was joined by his two teammates. He spoke as they sat down.
"Holodeck time's on me when we get back. How about a week on a pleasure planet?"
"Sounds good."
"You aren't allowed to bring any ultritium."
"Aww, why not?"
"Because, it's a pleasure planet, not demolition grounds."
They all chuckled and relaxed. An hour later, a computer operated Pelican dropped out if the sky a few meters from the beacon and split it's tail to let them in. As the dropshuip boosted for orbit, they looked down on what had once been lush forest and countryside.
"Looks what those people have to come home to. It's awful."
"Makes you wonder just who CF pissed off to deserve this."
....

John Baker was just as suprised as everybody else when the aliens died suddenly an dall the fighting outside ended. But he wasan't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He rushed out and called for pickeup, being retrieved by his countryment quickly. The second greatest comando in Al-Imvad history returned quietly to Nonistan.

The Lancers had been fighting hard. A group of aliens, perhaps thirty strong had discovered them, and a fierece firefight had ensued. Anti-tank shells and purple boser beams laced through the corridors towards the enemy, while the enemy fire lanced back.
Only seven humans remained, fighting more than a dozen of the aliens, when something strange happened. The aliens ceased fire, and fell to their knees uttering a wail like that of a banshee, clutching their heads. The humans paused for a moment, wondering what to make of this, before obliterating them in a maelstorm of fire.

As they moved through the complex, they found nothing more than dead or dying? crippled? aliens in the same state. Thinking something was wrong...or perhaps, for the first time in this conflict, right, they decided to hotfoot it out of there.
Within 15 minutes a hypersoar/grav transport was leaving Facehuggerian airspace, with the Lancers and their equipment safely on board.