Futuristic In The Wake of Empire

[SpazTheButcher]

Ray began cursing to himself like a sailor who got a bad pot. He picked up one boot and no crabs. Shit, Ishval is better than this backwater hellhole. At least you could dune surf there. There's not one good break on this whole damned rock, Ray thought to himself. He took a deep breath to calm himself. He looked at all of his options, and knew all the way he was fucked. The question was how fucked did he want to be. After all, Ray knew any man could be a mine sweeper. Once. And he knew he could be an anti-aircraft station. Once. According to his crude and morally binding calculations, combined with his ego and "Die a hero" mentality, Ray began barking orders through the mic while simultaneously readying his exo skeleton.

"Upper floor teams rally with ground units. If we split up they will be able to divide us easier, and the ground teams will need all the help they can get. What we'll do is create a real sighting of a real threat. On my mark, I'll open fire and Doc'll detonate the EMP. The M41A2 works off an internal system that was specifically designed to work in post-EMP environment. I can operate independently, and drop the dropship. From there, they'll be watching me over their entrances, and you can slip in." He gripped his Pulse Rifle tightly. His hands were sweaty, and they never got sweaty. He then whispered to himself, "Let's get busy."

Ray took a deep breath, and he then aimed his M41A2 at the nearest escort, lining up his sight with the weak VTOL rotors. He let the gun rip, its normally loud sound obscured by the suppressor, and dumped half of his 60 round magazine into the rotors closest to the drop ship, and the other half into the next escort's.

"Mark."

 

[Paarthurnax]

Corvei trembled a bit at the mention of power. The thought itself drove the Scielto to fleeting images of sheer energy bursting from them, eviscerating everything that stood in their way of their goals. They couldn’t help themselves at the thought – they’d spent what felt like an eternity of loneliness aboard that damned Arkradian ship daydreaming of something just like that. This was their chance to really shine for their companions – to prove their value and assert their strength. It was almost overwhelming, this gnawing, hungering feeling and burning desire for a release that had awoken when they’d killed all those Arkradian soldiers. While it wasn’t total destructive force, Corvei had found it helpful to ease their mind and this constant hunger by focusing their ethereal energy into more supportive power. They envied the finesse in which many other etherealists could wield their power - while they wove magic efficiently through ebbs and flows, Corvei knew their own power was more like a floodgate. A shield that strong was very much within their capabilities, though draining, and Corvei felt pleased that they’d be able to show off their newest ethereal ventures for the benefit of their allies.


The mention of additional drones worried them, however. The shield would be taxing, they knew that, but additional firepower on their part might bring them to the brink of overload. They’d have to trust in their teammates to do the necessary work lest they become a dead weight – quite literally. They’d began a slow amble to meet up with the others when Ray let bullets fly, and at that moment Corvei threw all caution to the wind, racing to try to catch up with the others while also starting to let their floodgates opened as they gathered a sizeable pool of ethereal energy. They felt the slightest of mechanical clicks at the back of their head, signaling that one of their biomechanical implants had detected this surge – it would be aggressively monitoring their qillatu generation in order to shut them down as soon as possible should they overdraw from the Abzu. If you asked Corvei, they’d say that the menagerie of implants were unnerving – for the Scielto they felt unnatural, like a menacing presence watching over their shoulder at all times. They remembered their family had been very anti-implant, being old fashioned so to speak, believing that a species to attuned to the Abzu should be able to monitor and control themselves when it came to drawing up their power. Chuckling a bit to themselves, they supposed their family would be aghast if they saw Corvei now, riddled with spidery, unnatural looking metallic implants that were now on red alert, their wires snaking into Corvei’s translucent flesh into the biomass below. They weren't their choice, but now they were their reality, and Corvei had long accepted that.


“I’m on my way to meet you guys on the lower level, I’m preparing energy for a shield, I should have no issues protecting everyone. I trust you’ll do the same for me.”

 

[ChasmOfOrganicMatter]

There was no more time to sneak and plan. The first shots had been fired and immediately, the base awoke. First at the sign of the fake distress call as soldiers began moving about, more and more moving to the top of the structure and a few exiting the base's front entrance. Their attention had been diverted as they began to prepare for VTOL pickup.

High explosive armor piercing rounds slammed into the VTOL's rotors in a storm of firepower that turned its once reinforced armor into an angry, smoldering wound. The vehicle jerked and spun, backup power sources and internal repair mechanisms working overtime to stabilize the furious, uncontrolled spin. The hefty craft began to dip as it came dangerously close to crashing, barely able to hold itself up as it flew over the ground team, hovering awkwardly above the dam base. Another storm of rounds, this time into an armored drone, rattling its body as it shuddered and shook. This time however the automaton held, armor cracked along its sides and lower hull but like a hungry shark searching for its prey.

As this happened, Kzarycon took out a pair of needle-like injectors and passed them to Corvei.

"Shield. Now. Bioethereal booster packs. Stick them in after. You'll feel the burn less."

Before the drone escort's scanners could sweep the buildings and find Ray, the EMP bomb flew through the air, tossed by the massive vrexul. It caught the eye of a few soldiers watching from behind their crew-served grenade launchers, the rest scanning the buildings for any sign of whoever had fired. Before the gunners could realize it was not a piece of fallen debris from their airborne allies, the detonation charge was sent.

The bomb itself did not make much noise beyond a loud crack. Everyone however would feel the rush of electronics-disrupting energy sweep through the entire area, like an invisible wind that went through their armor and skin, sending computers, HUD's, weapon systems, hidden scanners, and almost everything else into haywire madness.

Most importantly, all the airborne threats were practically neutralized.

The drones were hit first, jerking and crackling. Cyclopean camera-eyes flashed and sparked, weapon systems locked onto nonexistent targets, and the very signals that needed to be sent to their engines vanished. One fell to the ground, crashing into the mud as sparks and sub-munition detonations erupted, causing a few guard's standing by one of the lower floor entrances to take cover from the storms of shrapnel. Another dipped away, swerving as its wings smashed through shattered windows and bars, tearing off the limb before slamming into and detonating against the side of the dam, causing some of the soldiers up above to duck. The third managed to crash into the top floor of a building opposite of Ray's position, sputtering as it struggled to reboot itself, anti-grav thrusters kicking with all the effectiveness of a half-choked fish on land.

The dropship crashed down onto the top of the damn, flames erupting as sub-explosions peppered its side, momentarily swamping the centre of the dam in flames. Soldiers scattered off to the side as two out of the seven heavy weapons they had set up were taken out by the impact and the blast. More than a few of the base's personnel were crushed or annihilated as survivors of the attack began attempting to pick up the wounded and scattered, abandoning their defences for now to try and make sense of the carnage.

The enormous celaderaka however had vanished from sight.

Just as this happened, a series of distant thuds sounded out and a whistling could be heard. Not songlike but piercing and eerie, metallic and cold. Metal rain fell, exploding against the front of the dam and the muddy ground, throwing up massive blast-columns of smoke, mud, and sun-bright blast. Soldiers scattered, struggling with the weight of their mangled, bleeding comrades before high explosive mortar rounds tore them into chunks from sheer blast force alone, shrapnel flying fast enough to slice straight through the gun platforms and the reinforced armor of squad leaders. Missiles soon followed in their wake, curving through the air and uninterrupted by any Close In Weapon Systems that would normally intercept their flight that the built in shield generators could not catch. More explosions, larger than their payloads would suggest. They targeted the hidden turrets along the back of the dam and along columns at the frontal top, annihilated by those who had studied this dam for long.

A roar of angry motors and the sounds of loud, scuttling steps. Armored anti-grav transports, modified older generation amphibious APC's with boosted engines, assault walkers with spider-like legs and long pod like bodies simply striding through the flooded waters, all of which now converged towards the dam. A ramshackle mess of retrofitted military technology and exotic foreign weaponry and vehicles from long since blacklisted League companies absorbed into the Carnazir's dominion. In a matter of minutes, they had covered the ground that the Damnation's Hunger team had done, troops rapidly dismounting in a mess of grey-black camo patterns and blacked out powered armor - corpo-mercenaries and hardened guerillas alike. Wading through the murky water to the muddy shore, firing automatic weaponry and void-tinged energy weaponry, laying down a hellish barrage of fire as the beleaguered Arkradaian defenders struggled to return a fraction of the same.

By that point, the ground floor Damnation's Hunger team had dived into the watery tunnel.

---

With their cameras fed a steady feed of false information from Whisper's loops, nobody noticed the mismatched team of commandos slowly rising to the surface of a built in lower bay, normally used for drones and amphibious vehicles to exit. Now with the base under attack, all personnel had fled to the armories to prepare themselves or the engineering and information-processing chambers, attempting to reactivate any defences they could.

The actual bay was large enough they could see see small patrol boats and a few small APC's sitting in a small holding pen built into the raised ground. It seemed these were capable of a similar kind of aquatic travel as their own biomech transport that had brought them here, even if relatively less advanced. Raised platforms over the water were connected to metallic ones that rose up and down on small exposed elevators. A few ladders extended to the water and a small ramp that seemed to be for a few wheeled drones could be sighted. Cameras in corners of the room swept around but made no sign as they passed over the team.

It was clear for now. Kzarycon crept up the ramp, sweeping left and right not just with his hefty rifle but multiple tubular twin-barreled appendage-weapons emerging across his sides and shoulders.

He motioned for the others to get up to his position as he aimed towards one of the doors. His own various bioelectrical sensors were picking up frantic movement around him, wild electrical signals as the lights in the base flickered on and off, and something that felt like an ethereal power source. Not like that of the drone they disposed of. That imitated life; this exuded some sort of vulgar, toxic power that he could feel through the walls.

"We probably won't be able to get a digital map until the systems are completely rebooted. In the meantime, we're going to need to try and find wherever it is they're keeping Invonarahon. That's probably where it's going to be the most well guarded and we all know who was probably sent to do just that."

Extending a spindly, auxiliary limb, he opened the nearby door and something hopped off of his body. It looked almost like a fist sized cricket, clinging its oil black form to the wall as it peered around the corner. Ducking down and shifting his large body, Kzarycon swung around to find a long hallway and a group of soldiers running across an intersecting path. Multiple smaller windowed rooms could be seen along with multiple staircases leadning upwards. Nobody had seen them just yet and he motioned for the team to move up.

There was a veritable stampede of footsteps on the floor above, shouting in multiple alien languages, and the clattering of gear and equipment. One way or the other, they likely weren't getting to Invonarahon's holding cell without getting spotted.

That's when they spotted something. A celaderaka, a squad leader - not the one that might be a blackguard prospect but the leader of the squad they had been attached to. The ether-tech rifle wasn't collapsed and he was shouting in the tongue of his people, a few squadmates rushing out of whatever rooms they had been holed up in, nodding as they loaded their guns.

They were pointing upwards at one of the stairways and through the chaos and confusion, the vrexul made out some of what they were saying. His celaderakan wasn't perfect but what he could make out made his armor tense. The cricket like creature scuttled over closer, picking up their speech as it hid behind a trash receptacle and the vrexul made a low, quiet scraping with his mouthparts.

"VIP is being moved right now, I repeat, VIP is being moved!" Kzarycon spoke over the team's coms. "Floor right above ours, they've got a whole squad guarding him. Everyone, get ready to assault."

As the cricket-drone skittered back towards him, the vrexul caused it to skitter up the stairs, feeding its optical information to the rest of the team's shared data feed. A group of soldiers, species unknown, were moving through a fairly wide room. The door to the left of the chamber had just opened and based on the armor they were packing, these weren't just grunts. Others ran past them elsewhere to the base but these ones were very set on wherever it is they were headed; metallic semi-powered armor, weapons that seemed to glow with some sort of power, blacked out visors and moving in disciplined, precise motions.

Spoiler: Layout of room

NOTE: DH team enters from the camera perspective from up the stairs, enemy team on the left.

"We all go all in on hitting the upper floor squad. If we're lucky we can take the escort out before the ones downstairs converge on us." That was all he said before he half crouched, moved up, peering his rifle just past the mouth of the stairs, motioning for the others to take whatever positions they could get and get ready to fire.