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 Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 4:23 pm
He transforms to fighter mode and heads toward the base. He felt good that he was doing something that he dreamed about. He flew about for a few minutes before arriving at HQ.
After that he lands his VF-1 and taxis to the hangar. He goes to the locker room and switches out of his flight suit and sits in the ready room for a minute before heading out.
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Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 9:47 pm
Nida had managed to get out into the main bay - had even secreted herself under a catwalk and was inching along beneath it, clinging desperately to the rods supporting the metal grating - when the main lights went out. Cold blue auxiliary illumination seeped out from far overhead. Nida was suddenly reminded that she was terribly far underwater... should a major structural point fail, the entire complex would crush like an aluminum can on a redneck's forehead.
The speakers rang out with screeches, gnarls, rasps. Nida recognized it as the gutter language Alternida had developed for her new-gen Extremis breeds. Not as elegant as Nida's own click and grunt system, but certainly broader in scope. And it suited Alternida's redskin form nicely.
At any rate, Nida's gig was up, and she knew that playing the waiting game would wind up getting her axed. She took advantage of the change in lighting and sped along beneath the catwalk as best she could, tentacles snaking up to plant on the crennelated surface of the grate above, natural limbs using the support rods as a horizontal ladder. She felt like a kid misusing the monkey bars. All in all, between her occasional gasps and the clangs she was making - not to mention her complete disregard for stealth - she was surprised to make it across in one piece. At the other side, she felt along the edge for the clutch of 55-gallon barrels she'd seen before the lights went. She managed to pull herself up onto the third-story ledge without incident, using the barrels as cover.
When she dared a peek, she saw that she hadn't made it after all. A veritable sea of tentacles greeted her. Mostly rex raptors, a few straight rexes, and two aerophysalises hovering above, rifles at the ready. A small swarm of copulii mingled between them all. Every single creature had at least one sensory organ package directed at her barrels. She was made.
And behind them all, a large silhouette, maybe twelve feet tall. Looked like a colossus at first: a vaguely pyramidal heap, with shadowy, knotty protrusions here and there, and an overall irregular outline. But unlike the tentacle monster in question, this figure had two huge arms, each easily as big around as the barrels behind which she cowered. She couldn't tell what sort of configuration the arms had, but they didn't end in a grasping claw structure, and to her mind that smacked of the possible presence of Nida-killing ranged weapons instead. She figured each arm could hold two manpack PPCs, easy, if they were as efficient as Tanasha's MP's squad weapons.
A voice arose from the mound as she sized it up. It spoke in a clear, gorgeous baritone; as Nida's eyes adjusted to the light, she saw that its owner was not quite so beautiful as his voice. A fat little humanoid creature sat in the chest-mounted cockpit of what Nida now saw to be a heavy mini-mech. Was it human? Perhaps, though the piloting paraphernalia made analysis difficult. As for the mecha, what Nida had taken to be a pyramid shape was actually a broad wedge, sort of a Play-Doh Marauder chassis with only the barest armor covering its internal structure. It wasn't bristling with weapons; the manipulating pincers were merely retracted, protecting them from the AP flamer mount bracketing each arm. The bloody thing was even operated by hydraulic action rather than myomer! Unless it had some hidden punch, Nida could basically dismiss it as a threat.
The voice came, in some language Nida didn't know, and then the speakers mounted on the mecha's shoulder actuators belched forth that inglorious squall which served as a pseudo-language for the monsters. A translation, most likely; simple voice-recognition software or somesuch. He was giving them orders. Sure enough, the monsters responded; they organized into a reverse phalanx formation, echelons spreading to flank Nida's position, aerophysalises going high. No wonder his pincers were retracted; the monsters were forming a pincer for him.
Nida couldn't just sit still. Not when a new fire was lighting under her. These creatures - these copies - were derivatives of her efforts, of her babies, born of long labor and love. They had been stolen by someone who called herself Mother. Who used them as cannon fodder, as disposable pilots, as guard dogs. Alternida was no Mother. Alternida was a consumer, and the Extremises in her control were like that Ziploc tupperware s**t. Useful, reusable, but ultimately destined for the trash when you forget to clean out the fridge for a while and things start growing on your lasagna. And now some fat a*****e in a tin suit was ordering them around? Bullshit. This was her game, and she intended to prove it.
The young woman was on top of the stack of barrels with a single vault of her tentacles. Her ASDF jacket, knotted about her waist by the arms, flowed behind her; her corded arms and shoulders reflected the bugzapper glare of the backup lights in a thin sheen of perspiration. Green eyes reflected a dull silver in the irises. She spoke, too, and her voice was gorgeous as well, and terrible. Clicks and grunts, yes, and gnarls; whatever came by instinct. She figured inflection and tone were most important. Tentacle monsters were emotional beings by nature, influenced by the moods of those around them. It was a result of millenia of symbiotic existence between copulii and colossii. They kept out of each others' way, took care of each other, and benefited greatly. It was a trait which survived down to the most goal-bred rex raptor.
I am Mother. I am your leader, your progenitor, your warlord, your womb, your holt. I am original. The one over there is secondary, contemptible, beneath you, unintelligent, unworthy, deceiving. He is other. I am the one who labored for you and your brothers. I gave birth to you in iron wombs, I bled for you. I alone carry your genes within me. Not even your false mother can claim this. (Unless, by wild coincidence, her natural tentacleness matched the genotype of the Extremis series. Nida considered it unlikely.) You will, therefore, stand aside. To confront me is to die uselessly. Mother has business with that one over there. Interfere and be eviscerated.
By and large, the concepts she screamed at them in incoherent noises did not make it across the language barrier. However, Nida had heretofore been unaware of a very important aspect of tentacle monster life: empathic psychoimpression. None of the engineered variants had it, but the two primary species did, and the whole place was teeming with copulii. Some were impressed by Nida's thought-phrases. Most were cowed by her flaring Mother-aura, an indefinable, invisible, but tangible field surrounding her which suddenly seemed to spring into being. It gave her presence. The right to command. Alternida had this aura as well. Contrary to Nida's belief, her counterpart did indeed love her creations. Perhaps the two merely had differing concepts of love. But Alternida was not here to exercise her dominion, and the copulii advised their brothers to stand down. Once the lead elements complied, the rest followed suit. The black sea of shining bullet heads and snapping tentacles parted. Nida felt like she should be holding a staff.
Stupidly, all she had done was provide a completely clear line of sight between herself and Gon, the weapons-engineer pilot of the minimecha.
The flamers were a tad too distant to be truly effective; Nida dodged the streams of jellied petroleum with relative ease. It was the two SRM tubes hidden on the flanks of the machine which caught her off guard. ******** popped the left one off at less than thirty meters' range; idiot was lucky that the warhead wasn't designed to arm for another ten meters, or it would have blown them all to kingdom come when it plowed into Nida's right shoulder. Well, if it had gone off, at least, her pulverized joint would be the last of her worries. Now it was merely the least; the impact knocked her right back on her a**, of course, and landed her smack in a puddle of flaming goo. Good thing she skidded long enough to go flying off the ledge, or she would have just lay there, breathless, being consumed by flame.
^Defend Mother!^ called a color-concept from within the midst of the monsters. A lone copulus clambered aboard a rex's lumpy back.
Gon tried to fire the flamers, but the nozzles were already bent and warped by rex raptor attack by the time he had shaken the first wave loose; the two arms exploded, spreading goo all over the cockpit. He didn't have to worry about burning to death, however. The aerophysalises managed to fire through the heat-weakened plexiglass and rip his fat body in half.
Nida, meanwhile, did a fine job of bouncing off things on her way to the ground level.
And that was when the blue-black hole in reality opened up to let red-skinned Alternida prowl off Limbo and back to her home base.
((12 hours IC remaining.))
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Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 9:25 pm
((Sheesh. You folks are l4m3rz for not posting s**t. You make me feel like I'm writing some sort of Mary Sue fanfic here. razz Let me just whip through this s**t so we can get back to the killing, hrm? Since I assume what you really want is enemy action. twisted The next post after this one will be more inclusive for you guys, I promise.))
"Khhn, sxxraxsah kchnai!"
That would be Alternida, of course, screeching at her lead engineer, unaware of his very recent demise eight meters above. She was familiar with the particular aroma of missile propellant, however, and had a feeling that Gon had felt it necessary to lead his monstrous contingent in that horrendous exoskeleton contraption of his. Hannah had warned her against allowing the two SRM tubes, and now she knew that the advice was wise indeed. From what she could tell, however, there wasn't water pouring in anywhere, and the building wasn't imploding, so all was good. For the moment.
Now, Alternida had ripped directly to the mecha bay rather than to the decompression elevator because she could. Her body was built to adjust to the atmosphere difference on the fly, and given normal stress levels, she wouldn't have anything to worry about. Now, however, her blood was searing through her system. The redskin form was quite efficent in relaxed circumstances (she could almost dip into suspended animation if she so desired), but it was a terribly inefficient battle machine. Norepinephrine sparked a series of fight-or-fight-harder involuntary preparations, most of which required an enormous oxy-nitro draw. The air in the mecha bay oxy-helium, not terribly different; however, the helium was at a much higher concentration than nitrogen would be at a surface atmosphere, in part as an effort to maintain pressure integrity. Even slightly less oxygen was a hit to her capabilities. Not to mention the disorientation which came naturally after the three-dimensional equation that opened a rip to or from Limbo. Tesseracts, like shrooms, expand the mind and leave it blinking when it contracts once again.
All these things saved Nida's life; had Alternida been in good form when she saw the unconscious and burning ASDF officer, there would be one less Type II floating around. Instead, the redskin's slow grasp of the situation gave enough time for the automatic fire suppression to kick in. The mecha and ammo bays got high-pressure foam baths; the rest of the enormous area got good ol' dihydrogen monoxide applied from sprinklers at various strategic locations. The jellied petroleum flamer goo diluted and ran, carried along on rivulets of water. Nida was effectively put out by the time she came to, ten seconds later. (She nearly had an eye put out by the sprinkler right overhead. High pressure.) Her right shoulder was gravel, and her legs below the knee were a gnarled mass of smoldering tissue, but she was alive, and she still had five perfectly capable limbs. She scrambled to a spider-like position: body hanging suspended from her tentacles, angled about 45 degrees forward (chest half-down, I guess); the tentacles arched upward from her back, then down to the ground, planted about her like a quadruped mecha's legs.
Alternida saw the motion, instinctively reared, tentacles snapping to position in front of her and arms out at the ready like a Marauder's lobster-claw PPC jackets. Her blue palm-frond hair dangled about her head, obscuring the silvery reflections of her retinas. Here on the floor, the auxiliary lights were dim indeed. Motion was a more important sense than pure vision, but reflected light was an easy point upon which to focus, too.
Right as both prepared to charge, a huge spang of ferrocrete shards accompanied the loud, flat cough of a handheld firearm. Both heads turned to see Hannah, dressed in mecha-pilot cooling vest and little else, dual-wielding machine pistols. Some cheap generic-market brand or other. Possibly even Glock. The single shot had obviously been an overdramatic warning.
"You two want to stop it right there, hrm? Nida, stand down for medical restraint. Now. And Nida, feel free to discipline me later, but I am not letting your overreactive a** turn this base into Bedlam when the situation is already resolved. Gon is dead, the tentacle monsters are settled down, the base is intact, the sprinklers should be shutting down any moment."
Both women stood unrelenting, but neither made a move until a pair of rex raptors crawled down the wall with a gurney, accompanied by four manipulii... and a copulus. One which looked absolutely identical to all its ilk in the station. But Nida knew it anyway.
"Fluffy," she sighed, and allowed herself to be bandaged and strapped down. Alternida stalked off, Hannah in tow, to the war room, barking out a directive to the remaining monsters to clean up the mess.
-------
"This little incident aside," Alternida sighed, "we're still go for the operation. We've got thirteen hours our time, give or take, before we have to start mounting up. By the time we rip in, it'll have been about twelve hours local. The time should be 0400 on a 2400 by 60 scale. That's assuming we don't hit an eddy. I have a feeling they're going to be watching for the rip bloom, though, so I don't want to give us any slack time." She sat across from Hannah at the end of the long conference table - there were only four chairs anyway, despite the twelve-chair length - with an overhead projector at hand. She was bald again, of course, having spent the past three minutes shifting, and wore only a bathrobe.
Hannah flipped through the plastic overhead projector sheets; the battle plan was drawn in thick Sharpie in various overlaid stages. "So wait - my unit's not going in? I thought we were going to be a flank reserve."
Alternida shook her head. "s**t, girl, you don't even have enough time for decompression. Besides, I have a feeling we may need someone around the house other than the watchdogs. There's something gitchy in the back of my head. That's really why I wanted to meet with you - I need your input on the new battleplan. I sort of half-assed it in the airlock coming in, and I scribbled it while I hoofed it across Limbo."
"Well, for one thing, you're gonna need to take the full-on Officer's pod rather than the Marauder. You'll need the extra weight and jumping capability, even if you're sacrificing damage." Hannah jotted down some numbers. "Here's the damage curve compared to the lethality curve - and I'm not even doing point buy. I'm just accounting for the internal cockpit of the pod rather than the windowed forward cockpit of the mech."
And so the conversation went, for about two hours, until finally they ordered each other to get some rest. Alternida even took the time to thank Hannah for her interference and to assure her that there would be no recriminations.
Neither had the energy to check in on Nida. Thus, neither knew of the rumble about to hit the west side: the copulii and rexes on Nida's side versus the rex raptors and the like on Alternida's side. A philosophical and etiological war had commenced with the arrival of the latter Mother figure. It was one thing when Nida was chilling in her cell and not interacting with the inhuman populace, but two Mothers asserting their presence at the same time? Unfeasible. Resolution was imminent, and promised to be bloody. Perhaps it was for the best that Nida was medicated into submission, or things would be coming to a head a lot quicker.
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Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 9:22 pm
((s**t Sau, what do you want me to post??, altough Ill like to enter shooting into the the Nida's base Im completely clueless to where is it xd , so Im the "counter-attack" position right now))
*Griffin Finally arrived to the HQ, after a perefect landing, her fighter was taked to the hangar, she felt tired, but yet not sleepy, so she decided to work out a while, after changing clothes to a tigh sport pants, a top and her ASDF logo sport cap, she started a long walk, that ended on the Gym, after some hand-combat practice with some of the guards and MPs in break (wich have a nice time looking at Griffin's well toned body), she headed towards her room, after tne normal routine of getting clothes and uniform, she takes a nice and refreshing bath ((time passed up to this point, 4 hrs since she landed)), she was thinking on having a meeting with the squad, but probably they were tired after the last skirmish, after all they recently arrived to the HQ, so she decided to chck something else, the indentity of the attacked*
*She headed to Tanasha's office and knocks the door, waiting for response*
Commander?, Captain Griffin ma'am, I need to speak with you
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Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 9:57 pm
((Damn, you folks don't even drink coffee at the mess hall or anything while your side doesn't have anything to shoot at? Gimme a break. razz Okay - you want some fun, you can have it.)) ((I've only specified the nature of nine of the mecha in the ground force; feel free to make your own insertions for the remaining eleven. They can be BT or Macross/Robotech, so long as they're loaded for bear. 3nodding )) All radio communication was heavily encrypted, tightbeamed, and conducted in the growly monstrous tongue. Even so, Alternida's standing orders were that, unless the lees hit the high-speed air redistribution device, radio silence was to be maintained except to acknowledge orders. Even motion was to be at a minimum; reactors were going to be held at barely above standby until power demands spiked (read: the velocity of the aforementioned s**t was on terminal heading with the aforementioned fan). The loadout of the twenty mecha was therefore ammo-heavy. The four Marauders were autocannon variants, relying on only a standard large laser and a pair of old-fashioned mediums for backup. Likewise the four Raider Xs, each in their most AC-weighted configuration. The rest of the mecha were a mix, mostly mediums, a light or a heavy here and there. And, of course, Alternida's own Officer's Battlepod. No air cover. Considering they were coming in underwater, that wasn't unusual. The clutch of twenty mecha and ten tracked tanks sat on Limbo, mecha ringed around the armor assets. Well, to say that they sat on Limbo was a misnomer; in actuality, they rested on the dorsal surface of the enormous rails of Type I's orbital rail platform. The entire platform hung suspended in the vacuous sky of the plane, tinted orange by the sheet fire of Gehenna above. It was really nothing more than a huge cylinder, about the length of the ASDF-0, from which sprouted two giant booms at a 120-degree angle from each other, which in turn were counterweighted by the equally long ammo magazine and attitude jet system. The whole affair was fairly automatic, operated remotely under normal circumstances. Today, a crew chamber had been added at a null-impact position on the platform's hull. How the whole affair maintained its position in the sky not a mile above Limbo's undulant surface is a boring matter of counterbalance between coterminous planes; suffice to say that it was in bidirectional freefall, and the mecha pilots were growing a bit restless about their prospects of staying on the platform rather than misstepping off into a deadly fall. Besides, time was growing nigh. ||Xrasxh,|| came Alternida's signal. ||Shnai xriax inchaxa xo.|| She withdrew into herself and twisted her brain out of focus, solving the equation locked in her mnemonic pathways. At the same time, she added a secondary proof which only worked in the strange math available within the nonspace of a rip; this widened and stabilized the opening, creating a billowing black two-dimensional cloud just above the platform. It was impossible to see through to the other side. Just blue-black infinity. One by one, the mecha leaped, falling upward toward Gehenna. One by one, they fell up into the rip, escaping to Gaia's waters two kilometers out to sea. Alternida, however, did not follow. Instead, she removed a variable from the equation, closing the rip. Now she solved it again, this time opening the rip lengthwise beside the platform. At Type I's command, the platform fell sideways into the distortion. Alternida hovered on the pod's jets until the last vestige of the boom had slipped through the gap. Then she herself entered, and the rip closed behind her. ------- The very living second that the platform was in Gaiaspace, all jets came on to immediately blast into geostationary orbit. The math had been pure and true; the ASDF-0 was only seven kilometers away, assuming that all the triangulation data was correct. The techs onboard the crew chamber wasted no time in aligning themselves for the first series of shots. ||Golden,|| came Type I's transmission. ||We'll handle it from here.|| ||Ixaxa.|| And Alternida opened a much smaller rip. She was only up here to confirm the success of the transport; now she had a unit to lead. So it was that she had already left by the time the lightning show started. The first stroke was the capacitor discharge of the rail platform as Gauss forces dragged solid nickel-ferrous slugs the size of tanks down the first barrel. Three fired in relatively rapid succession, as fast as the assembly could recharge. If the ASDF's sensors hadn't registered their arrival, the monitor would certainly know them by their not-so-warning shots. The second stroke of lightning, however, came from neither the Gaian armed forces nor the Ascendancy. Equidistant from both the ASDF-0 and the rail platform (almost certainly by some fluke rather than by design), a green shower of sparks spawned in Heisenbergian fashion and arced out in a spray of afterimages, eventually defining an enormous ellipsoid. Had to be at least twice as large as the ASDF's monitor, perhaps more. And through this rip dropped a hideously ugly vessel, obviously cobbled together from more than one source, fairly bristling with weapons ports. Their hail was on the broadcast frequency, unencrypted and boosted.
The request began repeating in another language even as the ship righted itself on some axis indifferent to that of the planet or even the solar system in general. Which, incidentally, gave it a broadside view of both the ASDF-0 and the rail platform.
-------
The mecha were already on their aqueous march toward the Gaian coastline - at an oblique angle to the outpost some might recognize from the old recruitment thread - when their leader ripped in some two hundred meters ahead. She graciously waited on their arrival at her position.
When they got within a kilometer and a half of the tideline, the Ixachtl transmission arrived, distorted slightly by its trip through the ********>|| screamed Alternida. One of the few words which she could say in her transformed state.
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Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 10:48 pm
Between the rip and the burn, the ASDF's sensor grid had little trouble spotting the rail platform's arrival. By the time it fired, the monitor's weapons systems were tracking it, and weapons were diverted to antiballistic duties.
Tanasha was walking back from grabbing a snack when the attack came, and when word came in through her radio she took-off towards the fighterbay to prep for her mission. When the MPs in the security core relayed the message to her, she sent a response which was then boosted and broadcast to both craft with ample power to insure that no amplification would be required.
<Attention Ixachtl Confederacy and unidentified craft. You have entered the Gaian AeroSpace Defense Force interdiction zone. Engaging in combat within this interdiction zone will be considered an act of war, and the craft responsible will be destroyed with extreme prejudice. Power down your weapons and take your conflict away from Gaian space. This is your only warning.>
Tanasha had suited up, strapped the chromatic glitterdust cannon to her back, and was climbing into the emptied bay of a medium AS bomber as MP Lagrange climbed into the cockpit.
Are you ready?
Just a second... There.
*Lagrange flicked some switches and pushed or pulled whatever sticks he deemed necessary.*
Are you sure you want to leave with a battle going on overhead? Their craft significantly dwarfs the zero
This is not a mission I can delegate, and this may well be the only chance to attempt to retrieve Captain Nida. I trust the capabilities of the hands in which I leave the ASDF.
*Lagrange checked his flight clearance and started down the runway.*
And whose hands would those be?
Divide the workload, of course - William? You have most tactical experience, take care of the orbital conflict. Discretionary force, you know the codes.
Aff. Good luck.
Lagrange, standard solo terms.
Aff.
...And off they went to the outpost nearest the ground rip, where the bomber would nearly land to let Tanasha off
[OOC]Arrogant capital ships on her turf (So to speak) trying to give her orders really pisses Tanasha off. So do people bringing in irrelevent grudges and offering 'compensation' for minor damages, which is to say that they'll nuke the planet and hand-off three mechs to 'make it even' for the three that happened to be in the now-missing town.[/OOC]
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Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2006 9:08 pm
*Griffin hears the alarm, while knocking on Tanasha's office, she just couldn't believe it, but nevertheless it was true, she started running donw the corridor in direction towards the airstrip while removing her tie from her neck* GOD DAMM IT!! *she screamed and everyone near could hear that*, GIVE ME A F"$·%& BREAK! *she finally removes the tie and takes her comunicator*
Control:
*Radio-retransmision of Tanasha warning*
*Griffin runs faster, she arrives at the hangar and Goddess was ready and armed to the Teeth, while she enter into the locker rooms and chances clothes fighters take off, Griffin leaves the rooms and climbs the ladder as fast as she can, she is then take to the nearest and empty airstrip*
Control
*Griffin takes off with a powerful blast of fire, the VAF-9 Goddess runs trough the strip leaving a trail of heat behind, finally it leaves the ground and Griffin reunites with her flight*
((Obviusly my wings is more than 5 fighters, with a variety of type of VF, but Im too busy right now to organize the whole thing, for now Ill only use VF 1J and Super VF-1J, with the exception of my XO VF wich is the 1S variant, wich doesnt has any major change over the rest just the cuadruple head laser))
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Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 12:17 am
"Roger that ASDF Base, Blue Roses Out." The Blue Roses, now led by Cameron, had all been sitting in their Ready-5 room when the call came. "Alright Roses, we're at code red. I don't think we'll be needed, cuz you know... those OBLs are all pointed -downward-, but we gotta be ready anyways. Call in the loadouts, and get ready to launch."
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Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 12:28 am
Dr. Akimoto was sitting at his desk, hands clasped under his chin when the klaxons began sounding. "Sensei! Code red. It's about that broadcast we heard!"
"And our pilots?"
"Airin-chan called in. She said they're on their way."
Dr. Akimoto nodded. "When they get here, assign Eileen to Vector Mars, and Sparrow to Vector Luna."
"Hai, sensei!"
"Let me know the moment we have another pilot cleared through the red tape. They can't perform the necessary field tests without Vector Sol."
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Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 9:11 am
[OOC]It's worth saying that there isn't a heck of a lot of red tape at the ASDF. The upper ranks have put a lot of work in getting rid of all kinds of bloat and slowdown.
That is to say that if something is stuck in red tape, it's usually flypaper.[/OOC]
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Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 3:56 pm
((OOC: The red tape is likely on the GNG R&D side then.))
While the Blue Roses turned in their loadout requests high up in space (almost all universally selecting the biggest-bang loadouts they could after having seen the capital ship), down on Gaia, Eileen and Sparrow arrived at the Project Aquarion complex. Eileen tapped a wall panel once they got to the Ready-5 locker room. Three chutes, marked Luna, Sol, and Mars were set in the far wall. "...ano, we're here." She began undressing quickly, and reached for her Aquarion flight suit.
"un.." Eileen responded in the japanese affirmative, then without another glance hopped into the chute marked for Mars. She rode the tube down to the cockpit of the blue and white Vector, and landed lightly in the seat. Grasping the controls, she called out in a far clearer voice than she had been displaying outside, "Vector Mars! Launch!" And with that she was catapulted into the awaiting sky.
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Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 7:53 pm
Ascendancy Orbital Rail Platform
GaiaspaceInside the crew cabin, chaos ensued. "s**t, s**t!" Type I screamed. "Fire the cigarettes railguns! Target the Ixachtl ship!" A technician - Type III, this one, fangs and all - hurriedly began burning attitude thrusters. Two more directed her with halting, hesitant on-the-fly verbal course corrections.' "And give me some ******** music or something," Type I snapped, almost hyperventilating. A non-Nida crewmember who looked more like a Grey than anything else spoke up. "What do you want, sir?" Type I mulled it over. "What's the top CD in the stack?" "Sevendust. A mix CD. It's the one with the glitchy copy of 'Enemy'." Several of the crew recoiled at the memory. "Pick a track," Type I waved. "Why aren't we shooting at the ship? Shoot at the ship!" The Grey flipped through a menu on zir monitor. "'Home'? Is 'Home' ******** that," a Type III called. "This situation calls for something with a vaguely desperate edge." Type I yanked at her hair. "Does it have ******** 'Denial' on it? 'Cause that's what you're all in! Denial about the <******** Ixachtl ship on the ******** plane viewscreen!" Said ship had powered up its heavy naval lasers. Apparently, they had blown all their diplomacy in one go. The first bank emptied into the kilometers between the Frankenship and the rail platform, burning up the Heisenbergian particle soup and pouring megajoules of energy into the platform's armored core. Molten ceramet flowed off into space, instantly cooling into alien patterns. Four silvery slugs replied, with two passing the ship's defensive laser system. They both crashed into the mooring of a boxy anti-fighter missile bank, sending secondary explosions throughout the small bay. And now, perhaps in response to its first wound, or maybe because it sensed the ASDF insects swarming up from the planet's surface, hundreds of speck-like small fighter craft burst from the Ixachtl ship. Mostly Battlepods, with several Officer's pods and even a few cobbled-together Quadrono - these latter more like the "Stinger" variant than the original armor proper. Even a few aerofighters, like the venerable Lucifer. ------- Ground Strike Force
Gaian Waters||SSxraskhS?!|| Alternida screeched, having switched over to the orbital platform's frequency. A Type III responded. ||We're engaging, but we're prepared for emergency evac if we're targeted. Be advised.|| Sevendust? Alternida mused. Myself, I would have picked something a little less desperate. Some Taproot, perhaps, or even Mindless.She switched back to her unit's frequency. At her order, the phalanx halted. She needed a few seconds to get a handle on the situation. Finally, reluctantly, she opened the channel again and gave another order. Without question or hesitation, each of her fellow pilots powered down its mecha's weapon systems, leaving the motive, sensor, and life support intact. The Raider Xs neutralized their ECM suites. Three minutes later, Alternida had finished the moderately painful reduction to her more properly humanoid form. She turned her radio to the ASDF in-house broadcast frequency - while Nida's mecha had burned out plenty of its information upon capture, the open frequency was hardly secret anyway; Alternida had tagged it in all her mecha's comm systems.
The orbital platform beeped in her ear. ||You know, they could still be bad guys, even if this fracas pretty much proves they're not Ixachtl.||
||We can sort that out after we're all finished shooting,|| Alternida replied. ||You assholes worry about your own fight.||
-------
Infirmary
Extremis Rock Ascendancy Station
Things were not looking wonderful for Hannah at the moment.
She had foolishly stopped in to check on her captive, only to be flung into a corner by a renegade rex. The lines had been drawn, and battle was ensuing. Even Alternida's absence couldn't stem the tide of war now.
Hannah could see Nida in the opposite corner, crouched behind her overturned cot. She had fashioned a shank out of a pill bottle, a chunk of wadded gauze, and a long sliver of shattered glass from God knew where. There was black blood on it. That didn't mean much; Hannah had a feeling she was the only creature with red blood in the room.
And betwixt the twain of them was a morass of limbs and jaws and bullet heads. The lone aerophysalis which had attempted to interfere was slowly deflating as it hung from the open door; its rifle had been smashed in the melee.
"Nida!" shouted Hannah.
"Hannah!" shouted Nida.
And then some numbskull rex raptor decided to try to use an oxygen tank as a battering ram. The valve blew, and the tank flew like a missile into the cot. The crumpling might have been the cot itself, or perhaps Nida's legs, or maybe it was the two or three monsters the tank took out on its inexorable path toward the bulkhead. It all just happened so fast.
Understandably, Nida was mad. She still had four motive limbs left, and the tentacles were arguably better built for the job anyway. It must have been the adrenaline which prompted her to drop her cover and begin stalking around the room, rending and strangling enemy Extremises.
Hannah watched, hoping for a chance to escape.
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Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 8:32 pm
A few moments passed before the response came back, relayed through so many systems (just by way of where Tanasha was at the moment) that it's worthy of note, before being tightbeamed to Nida.
<Aff, but I would rather not risk lives and damage against a dreadnaught by openly meeting. Our ECM will "fail", and your vehicles and ship will rip out before our system can "recover". Should their craft not withdraw within two hours, we will eliminate it. In two and a half hours, you will return to this spot without mecha. You may be accompanied and armed if you so choose. While I would prefer it if you returned with my second in command, I will allow you the illusion of it strengthening your bargaining position. These terms are acceptable, quiaff?>
The AS bomber flew slow and low over the outpost as Tanasha was jettisoned from the bay, burning jumpjets on the way down in an odd display of 'random' fire coming from nowhere. She walked over to the nearest anti-magic pod and readied some detcord in case AlterNida accepted.
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Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 8:49 pm
Alternida did some quick calculations. That would actually give her about four hours on Limbo, or possibly even three hours on the Rock, depending on how she went about forming the equation. There were only so many tweaks to the Y-axis variables one could make, but it would be within parameters. And Alternida always liked a deal where she gained a time advantage. The Destroid to her right indicated that the tightbeam's origin was triangulated, but could not be locked. Plus, the MADscan was a bit screwy. Sensor interference, or sensor jamming?
And back on her own unit's channel: ||You heard the lady. Be prepared to enter a rip. Xxasxxrax, give me full tags on the unit so I can calculate this properly.||
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Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 9:16 pm
Tanasha pressed some plastique into one end of the detcord, and moved around to the opposite side. While Tanasha wasn't in any danger, mimetics and scorch marks don't play nice together and so she took cover. Taking a moment to aim, she pegged the tail with a short burst from her microlaser, the MPs in the comm center taking the node down in case the damage wasn't enough.
Meanwhile, the base, the various outposts, the ASDF-0, and the orbital platforms all recieved a held command sequence, and prepped to face and open fire on the Ixachtl on que.
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