Well, we made it into Hall of Fame. I didn't expect that at all. Thanks, guys.
Now how to celebrate this event? Hmm, how about we skip jungle and winter tests and instead take out Santa Claus as a team? That fat jolly old man is dangerous. His super science, global hyper effective spy network, and massive production facilities are not only a major threat to various forces, but also very lucrative opportunity for the Company.
Fall back and open up with everything, Launch grenades and the pike missile,
fire in an arc with all weapons except the particle cannon, fire to where the bots were last seen
gun drones fly up and over to try and keep track of their movements
particle cannon drones go left and right of me respectively.
stick to cover
mortar drones launch all.
Drones fly up and launch loads of grenades into the cloud. Smokes, frags, concussions and white phosphorus, mini missiles, loads of bullets into the area hoping something sticks. Your dick gun opens up as does the light machine gun in your functional arm and spit out bullets like it's end of the days. Few bullets whiz past you right back, but those are few and you are already out of the way so no damage done.
Mere second later those five lizard lions sprint out of the cloud, directly away from you. Why they are escaping instead of pressing assault, you can probably never know, but it gives you opportunity to put pair of pike missiles on them. Pair of missiles launch and two gun drones drop out to paint targets. Believe it or not, but they stop on their tracks to shoot the missiles and your drones with their bigger autocannons. Single shot from each, and each bullet hits mark perfectly. Missiles explode in midair, one drone is destryed and it falls down on road east of them. Second drone stops transmitting data and accepting commands. It simply hovers there. Ah, scratch that. Second volley drops it too. Fuck.
From out of nowhere your cannon drones take glancing hit to reactors. Hadn't you moved them those would have been direct hits and probaby ruined them.
The group keeps running north onto four lane main road and into buildings on other side using the hole in wall your missed cannon shot apparently caused. And in south very close to you is four terrorists shouting "Allah acbar". You turn around and give them taste of hot metal seed from your crotch gun. At least something dies with that gun...
Henry squad, aka DEAFsquad:
Out, out, out, disengage!
We need to regroup and relay the data to the others. Also they have working ears.
The cloak emits a faint IR signature when moving. A flaw in the design? Convection trail? Something to keep an eye out for.
Those mini-drones are a nuisance. We should destroy them whenever we can do so without stopping.
Just.. not too thoroughly. I'd still like to recover one.
Gunther squad:
New threat... those weapons are possibly worse than the plasma cannons. I've had quite enough of those cannons, however.
The others are under attack. New threat or no, we need to support them before it's too late.
We could split fire. A burst of HATAKs against each of the cannon drones, and a SA arrow at the new threat sniper. Then drop smoke and move.
Both Teams fighting retreat. Run and gun people. Meet up and then continue Running and Gunning. If a drone is shot down in front of the squads grab it and keep running.
Squad Henry & DEAF: You turn around tail between legs and retreat back the way you came. Bullets poke your rear and top armor, explosions all around throw shrapnel and some burning material around, but nothing actually dangerous threatens you. Few myomer strands break from your external armor, but that's basically nothing to worry about. But all this fire is very... unfocused. Not aimed properly. You presume this means your TOC grenades work wonderfully. While you are pelted by fragments Henry is actually only one with any real capacity to fire back. Autocannons shouldn't be used in motion and Alex's hands are what they are. SPU isn't much of use here, so Henry fires in blindly.
A second later you all run out of the cloud and visually confirm nobody is damaged. Some of that burning stuff is stuck on armor plates, producing white smoke. It doesn't pose any threat in terms of damage, but it will leave a trail of smoke to follow. Which is not good, because the enemy has drones on sky to keep watch with. You could get back into the and hide there, hoping the enemy goes past and misses you. But the major problem with that plan is that in the TOC cloud you would be completely blind in addition of being deaf while the enemy outside of the cloud has full freedom to observe, prepare and fire as soon as anything comes out. So it's better keep running even if it means the enemy can freely take potshots on you from skies. At least you can see now.
And clearly your enemy too can see you. Two small fires soar up to sky from where it was. Mini missiles. Two drones appear on the sky on sides of TOC cloud, both aiming a marker laser on you. That won't do, no sir! Four targets and five extremely precise shooters report on duty! You doubt drones are armored, so HATAK shouldn't be necessary. Alex and supports stop for a moment long enough to aim one target each with autocannon where as Henry turns around, takes out both revolvers and aims both drones. You know, just in case. Cannons fire and missiles explode on sky. APBC seems to be enough for those. One drone, which Alex aimed with APSA rounds goes down. The other one doesn't seem to mind about the APBC round at all. It simply hovers there as if nothing is wrong. Huh, so they are armored? Autocannon APSA seems enough to take it down, so second volley aimed to its most vulnerable parts (rotors) drops it too. Time to continue running, no need to wait for bigger weapons to fire.
The problem with this city is that there's no cover from someone who has invisible flying heavy weapons. No trees, all buildings in entire block share load bearing walls. Roof tops are even worse. Only real cover from prying eyes is inside, but that comes with severy cost of mobility. Yeah, that's acceptable cost. You run north straight over the big road and into building whose southern wall was apparently exploded into smithereens couple of seconds ago. Actually when you give it a moment of attention you can see fading horizontal line of superhot air right along your path. Apparently your enemy has three highly destructive energy weapons. Two on sky and one with enemy itself.
You make it inside, put at least two walls between you and enemy, and behead pair of unfortunate civilians who happened be inside.
Group 2, watchers: Heavy gun fire starts right away where team 1 is causing mayhem. Some are your autocannons, but most belong to machine gun category. Explosions. Fell fuck. Assaults line up shots at last known location of the most dangerous drones. You don't know if you hit anything, but better to not make dangerous assumptions. Gunther aims at the sniper with bow and wonders if he should use ultrasonic or subsonic setting. Enemy appears to be a human, but that unusual heat signature is mildly worrying. Perhaps you should err on side of caution and use ultrasonic? But then again those weapons, energy source and number of members in cooperative group should taken fairly large amount of development time. Maybe it's just basic IR cloaking technology. Well, subsonic setting it is. Gunther fires at exactly same time as autocannons do and drops TOC on his feets, timing is important to ensure maximum effect. Before his line of sight is blocked by the grenade and he have to turn follow assaults, he witnesses rather interesting sight regarding his SA arrow. It suddently stops in midair, a meter before the man's face, and then falls directly down. So much for a stealth kill...
You drop down from the elevated platform and from hatch into downstars. Roof behind you plinks as many tiny things hit where you were standing a moment ago. A scatter shot? Hopefully it's not that corrosive stuff. You three run through the building to outside where the steaming pile of mutant corpses still await you and stick close to northern side of road where the sniper cannot see you. This road, which group 1 went away, leads west and north. Next intersection before the riverbed has road down to south and has quaranteed safety against the sniper. Sure, it takes you to the road which was used that ex column of cars and into firing line of one of those ambient people, but it will be faster way to reach group 1.
Squad 1: continue cleaning up this mess as stealthily as possible. Keep a eye out for any signs of what caused it, too.
Clone 4: Lets try something different. Lets try to use our nano-factory ability to produce a gray goo bomb of sorts for the harmonium launcher, and fire it at a cluster of trucks. If the nanites aerosolize or act as animate shrapnel, the collateral from the attack should be far larger than normal. Don't forget to replenish nanites by consuming excess matter nearby!
Artillery: Regroup and follow behind Squad 1 to act as recon/bombardment on targets in shelter designated by squad 1.
It's Confundium Harmonizer launcher, not harmonium launcher.
Clone 4: As you are building that cluster fucker shot, an arrow suddenly stops a meter away from your face before falling down on to ground. Props for CH shield catching that! You don't see who fired it, but you can most definitely see where it came from. A pillowing cloud of gray dust blooms on roof of the building where half of the military group from west escaped into. There's no way they would have made it up so fast, and you are pretty sure nobody in any modern military forces seriously uses bow and arrows anymore. And considering the road on its northern side is littered with slashed mutant corpses this can mean only one thing: you got supersoldier right there! Right under your eyes and you didn't even notice before it decided to assassinate you with an arrow. Perfect time to test the cluster shot!
You shed your reprogrammed precious meshanite nanites into a bullet form as quickly as you possibly can and fire it into the rapidly expanding cloud. You can only hope you hit it. Scatter shot significantly increases your changes but results remains to be seen. Though even if you did hit it, there's no way to know results. Target would be reduced to dust anyway. Bloody dust, if it is still organic.
This concrete doesn't make very good replacement material for used up nanites, but there's enough useable material to make up what was lost.
Squad 1: Military hiding in buildings in west are shooting randomly roughly at clone 0's direction. They clearly don't know where you are, but do their damnest to fix situation. Zero keeps taking free shots every time a head pops out of cover, most of laser beams hitting, killing at least 10 of them. They learn fast enough that's not the right way and stop trying. Zero is left for waiting their next move.
Clones one and two work out with mutants inside. It's a gruesome work, lasering your way through walls and mutants who are eating still live civilians. Together with laser wielding hunter killers you finish all active mutants in the area.
Two artillery drones killers hunters spies group of eight soldiers on the road with dead mutants and lasers them down. If you aren't entire wrong, there still should be few left, unless they were eaten by your goo bullets from first attack.
One swarm and flyer in southwest by the helicopter observes fight between soldiers and a group of mutants. Soldiers steadily mow the group down, but few makes it close enough to kill couple of them before being finished from point blank distance. Second flyer discovers a standardish quadcopter drone floating lazily little bit south of the building complex clones 1 and 2 are clearing.
Heavy firefight bursts out in southwest; grenade explosions, machine gun fire, heavy large caliber guns shooting, was that a fire trail of a small missile? It got it all. Interesting development, you would say.
Welp I've been spotted. Might as well keep shooting at them. Try to work myself so the other combatants are in range of the Terrorizer. Try not to get shot.
They are not shooting back at least. Something is a bit odd about them. You move downstairs, out into roads and onto rooftop of buildings other side. Four more grenades are launched at them as well as short bursts from mahine gun. You order zombies follow your example and add their measly firepower into yours. Your combined fire takes out half of them and then they are inside Terrorizer range. It doesn't seem to change their behaviour that much, really.
As you walk closer over roofs you are starting to see them better. Scaled humanoids, long bloody claws and and teeths, otherwise unarmed. Spikes piercing their clothes, which appear to be very same type as all other civilians. Only real change in their behaviour compared to earlier is that they now eagerly stop to eat insane civilians who are literally throwing themselves into their mouths. Freaky sight that. But you have already seen cannibalism here, even autocannibalism, so not much news in terms of freaky department.
Heavy firefight breaks out in far west. Lots of ordnance is being spent over there.
Hmm. Grab my separated body parts and hold them together, smear some of that jelly on them. Maybe that'll speed up this whole healing process.
Your body can regenerate 25 kilograms in a day under optimal conditions, which this is not. That would mean about a kilogram in hour. Since you are not in your nutrient slurry bath and are missing large portion of your digestive track, your recovery rate will be very slow. Your bones may have already mended, but most likely into all wrong angles. Recovering your missing guts would require trip downstairs. Legs are nowhere to be found. Partially charred stumps indicate they mave have been turned into ash, so no luck there either.
You use all the jelly anyway, mostly on your guts. It's nowhere enough to help in any significant manner, but there's no reason not to use it up.
Well shit, that's awful all around.
So, Recon South and Sniper South are just about the only members of my collective left?
Hmm.
Recon South: Time for a use of my powers that may not have been considered much: teleport the group away to the closest safe location. It'll either work or they'll die anyhow.
Sniper South: Murder that bird with extreme prejudice. Bitchass bird, meet long-range sniper rifle!
Sniper Origin/Trapper: If Sniper South's bullet doesn't kill the bird thing, teleport the fucker into space. Keep an eye out, see if we can spot the shooter. If any of me do, obviously kill it.
One Lone Drone: Keep observing; come back to close by me. Look out for any incoming supersoldiers or traps or what-have-you.
No shit. Truly from the worst end.
Sniper South: First shot goes through its wings without causing any damage and second misses it completely. Fuckity fucker. With that he's out of ammo. While reloading the bird dodges hell out of the line of sight.
Sniper Origin: No dice with sniper rifle, so next is psychic powers. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the one way trip to the Moon! We hope you enjoy lack of the air and die slowly! Unfortunately no sight of the shooter. The fucker is hiding very well. Definitely an assassing or sniper type.
Sky high drone comes closer. It's long way down. At least you discover location of the opposing terror psychic in his exoskeleton and his posse of three soldiers. They are walking on rooftops little west of their last known location and firing at things.
Recon South: Closest safe location you can see is with Sniper Origin. You try to form your body as small cylinder as is possible while being eaten alive, which is not easy, I tell you. Cylinder is one of the most energy efficient forms to teleport, but this cylinder is right up to the maximum size you are capable moving. Teleporting one into safety with couple of monster heads and claws attached is very tiring. Teleporting the second drains every last bit of the mental juice, and leaves you in half conscious state, where no thoughts run in your head(s) and you just slump down like a wet rag. Perhaps it's better like this. At least you don't have ability to focus on fact of the third recon body is dying from blood loss and is being literally ripped apart by many hungry mouths.
The holodrone that dazzled the group of four is getting shot by a sniper rifle close by. Both shots miss, but a moments later the holodrone stops transmitting. You can't hear it falling anywhere nor did you hear third shot either.
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Topic: Roll to create a supersoldier! Bloody air resistance (Read 139207 times)