Robotech: Pyrrhic Wardance-
A Sentinals-MOSPEADA Serial
By SithKnight-Galen
Chapter Eight: Shaken, Not Stirred
SK-G: Alrighty, now that we have seen Darmouth and the crew rescue Angie, let's find out what was going on back with the main crew back at Ground-Zero.
A/N: Standard disclaimers, so if you wish to sue, you win the same thing that the Imperial Japanese Army got when they invaded Vietnam in 1940...a half-decade of pain and frustration..not to mention a very persistant and nasty case of jungle rot that just would not quit....and then there was the Viet Cong and Ho Chi Minh to deal as well.....
A/N 2: Sorry this took a bit of time. As I am having to type this on the local community college computers during free spells between training sessions, I think I am doing pretty good. I do want to apologize about the un-expected hiatus, however. I do hope that every one had a wonderful holiday season!
A/N 3: Cool, another new reviewer. Thank you for your comments, TouchedByDarkness. I hope that i can throw a bit more originality into the characters as they develop within the story as I try to put things on paper, or screen in this case, instead of just in my head. GPPR, thank you once more for your many thoughts and words...it is what helps keep me going!
On with the story! :
-----Roll those Intro Credits and Cue that Macross Intro Music----
The Defender rocked backwards on it's heels as it's pilot fought to keep the Mecha upright. The latest salvo of plasma fire from the Invid strafers had almost knocked the Robotech Mecha completely out of the fight with their last pass, but now was it's turn to return the favor. Voorhees allowed the targetting recticules to center on both of the "tail-end-Charlies" in the formation and as the circlets flipped from green to amber, she squeezed down forcibly on both firing stubs, sending out six steady streams of light energy into the two hapless Invid. Both Armored Scouts seemed to hover in mid-air momentarily before they both expanded outwards in billowing plumes of flame and debries. Before the rest of the formation could even respond, the Anti-Aircraft Destroid continued to pour death upon them with sweeping arcs that engulfed the entire flight, sending each one of them to rapidly join their two destroyed brethren. Even as the remains of the Invid dive-bomber formation finished pelting off of the armor of the valiant REF Mecha, it's pilot was already looking for more game to snipe from the sky.
"Okay, just how many more of these flying slugs are we going to have to swat from the sky anyways?" Sylvia asked to no one in particular ver the Tac-Net. She popped her visor for a moment to wipe the sweat from her eyes with one gloved hand even as she spied all of the sporadically massed movement along the perimeter.
"Who only knows, S.F. They seemeed to want to only test us at the moment." came back the reply over the net. Voorhees grumbled at the cryptic reply from her team leader, but she knew that he was right. She was about to click back in and retort back when all of the sudden her proximity sensors started to blare in her ears, causing her to wince involuntarily.
"Silver, ge tout of there, Now! You got heavy movers inbound!" First Lieutenant Tribanuiski, Voorhees' , unit commander suddenly bellowed over the Tac-Net. She Voorhees frantically looked onto her scanners, trying to find the bogies that her CO obviously had seen closing on her position.
"I don't see anything on the ground!"
"They are closing on you, Walker 03. Fall back now!"
"Dammit, I don't see anyth......AGGHHHH!," Sylvia screamed as she was thrown against her console forcibly, and then yanked back into ther cushioned chair once more by the five point harness that kept her strapped into her chair. This time, her Mecha could not keep upright amd she found herself falling forward with no way to stop it. She was glad now that Knupf had moved his infantry squad out and away from unit when the Invid had made their initial push. Unfortunately, they probably would have been able to be the eyes and ears that she needed in order for her to have seen whatever the hell it was that was trying to beat it's way thru her Destroid and into her. It sounded like it or they were doing a pretty good job at it, too. She was still soemwhat dazed and inverted when she was startled by the sound of her comm-unit coming back on.
"Hang on Silver!"
She wanted to answer with one of her trademark snappy re-torts, but what came out was, "Ughhrrr...r-r-right...."
Sergeant Melvin McClellan brought his Tomahawk over the rise of the hill just in time to see the pair of Shock Troopers rise from the ground and topple Voorhees' stranded Defender. Responding almost by instinct, he began to pour particle beam blasts into the righthand mecha while rapidly closing the distance to the second one. he got about half-way to his teammate when another pair of Shock Troopers suddenly blew themselves out of the ground just in front of the surprised Destroid jockey. McClellan side-stepped one of the newcomers and then raised his arm to block one of the massively powerful fist/claws from the other Invid. Before the Shock Trooper could make a second swipe, however, it suddenly keeled over, spewing green nutrient from it's suddenly ruptured sensor eye. Not bothering to see who was playing guardian angle for him at the moment, the veteran pilot turned and vaporized the other Invid with a quick series of shots from his prticle beam cannon.
'Smoke off, ya flaming harridans,' the man thought as he pushed his Mecha forward, stomping his way towards his fallen comrade once more. As he moved forward, he noticed about half a dozen cyclones break cover and swarm the one remaining Invid, and one of the little armoured juggernauts paused in his striding long enough to give him a thumbs-up before sprinting to re-join his comrades. That cheeky bugger was probably the one who took out that other "Lobster." Seeing that the ground pounders had the same object that he did, he decided to cover their advance, taking note that another one of the unit's Destroids was moving into another overwatch position on the other side of him.
'Good to see that all of that bloody training that the Major insisted we work on in simulation and live-fire exercises is actually paying off now that the crap literally is blowing all over the bloody fan. Silver was right, though. Just what in the hell are these guys up to. If they were to really put their hearts into it, they could've wiped us out completely at anytime, but they just keeping sending in more of these heart-hearted assault waves that are doing nothing more than wearing down our patience and our bloody supplies. Why don't these stupid sods get off their duffs and either pound us back to the Age of the Clans or just give it up already!'
Stomping over, Melvin sees what he can do to help out the ground pounders that were now surrounding Sylvia's Defender like it was a recently discovered pirate's treasure.
After the pounding on the back, or in this case, top of her Mecha had stopped, Sylvia looked around for a few moments trying to fight down the rising sense of panic that she was feeling was threatening to overwhelm her. She began to try to get her machine to restart, but it decided that it was going to be stubborn on her again. She had noticed that this seemed to happen everytime that she was not quite up-right and had to deal with the damned machine kicking out on her. Her frustration nearly got the best of her and she was about the kick the board after the sixth start up attempt just to stop the bloody machine from mocking her when she suddenly felt herself being pivoted backwards and upwards.
'What the...? What's going on now?...hmm, maybe I can get it going now...'
Hitting the start-up sequence one more time, Sylvia was pleasently surprised to see that all of her major systems came back online, although more than one was not reading in the green at the moment. At the same time that the all too familiar glow of her consoles lit up the cockpit, her comm unit came to life in her helmet's mike once more.
"Silver....Sylvia, can you hear me? It's me, Mel. Comon, lass, pick up the horn and give me a holla..Sylie-girl?"
"Yeah,... yeah, I hear you," Voorhees replied, trying to shake that odd feeling of vertigo and claustraphobia from her body. There was a sudden hoarseness in her voice that she couldn't quite shake off, but at least she could say that she was still alive.
"So how bad does it look? My systems say that I am good to go, but not everything is running completely up to par."
Melvin took a look at the damage that the Invid had done to his partner's Destroid and had to wince. While it wasn't too comprimising, it wasn't all that pretty either. Most of the rear armor had been shredded, as if by an apple corer, and the left missile launcher's feed tube could be seen from even where he was at. She could still fight, but she was now very much exposed.
"Well, let me put it this way, you could stay out here, but you take another really good hit, and well, let's just say that it won't be that pretty."
At that point, one of the Cyclone Riders spoke up as well, jumping onto the Tac-Net. Melvin thought that it was probably the one that was still hanging onto the Destroid and was checking things out with a diagnostics kit in his hands.
"No offense, ma'am, but I gotta agree with the Sergeant's assessment. It looks pretty rough on the back end there. From the looks of it, while you are still operational, without getting ya back to the bays, you might end up doing mor eharm to yourself than you would any hostiles. Your reactor is still holding up fine, but your gyro is cracked, and it looks like half of the coolant lines for the laser capacitators are severed. You might be lucky to get another two, maybe three salvoes out of the missiles before they probably overload as well."
'Great, just great.' Voorhees thought as she saw what the combat engineer was informing her of as the diagnostics systems began reporting back their results. "Alright, Fitz, thanks for the heads-up. I guess I am out of this fight for a bit."
"Gotcha, Eltee. We'll cover the front for a bit more. Keep the homefires warm for us, lass."
The Power Armor pilot nods and then switches frequancies. He says something to the others below, and one of the others jumps onto the other shoulder of the wounded robot. The one with the Sniper rifle salutes to the one who had given the diagnostics and then the other four swarm up and around Mel's mecha, setting up something of a defensive perimeter around their big brother while the Defender limped back to the Horizont and it's bunkers, which was currently the force recon company's field headquarters. Sergeant McClellan smirked as he watched the GroPos watch his back as he and SFC Baxter watched their friend and teammate make it back to base for much needed repairs. Melvin's smile disappeared as the Phalanx missile boat further down the line suddenly exploded like a pinata in a cascade of exploding mutions and expanding armor plating. The hapless trio of armored infantry that were near it were thrown about like rag dolls by the fireball and before any of them could recover, were all pounced upon by over a score of new Invid Armored Scouts being backed up by close to fifty of those damned Hellcats. Melvin and the other Destroids converged their firepower knocking down at least half of the Invid untis before they even realized what was happening. The remaining Invid mecha, however, did not waste time in trying to decide wich target was the biggest threat as they decided enmasse to scatter and attempt to take out all of the invaders with a suicide charge.
'Madre dios, where are they al coming from? Don't they realize that they are just throwing their lives away, or do they even care at this point?,' Staff Sergeant Hector Diaz thought morbidly as he lined up yet another target as he beagn to dish out once more the deadly business in which he was a master at. It seemed that for every hostile that he took down, there were two more to replace it, and they just kept coming. What was really aggrevating him and all of the other human combatants was that there was just enough of them to tax the defense lines that had been set up without completely breaking them. Diaz tried to push the thoughts ou tof his mind to focus on yet another target, providing support fire for his teammates and the massive Tomahawk that was throwing out a devestating hail of return fire at the oncoming horde. Not even bothering to glance at the other members of his fire team, Diaz, or "Deadpool" as he was known by as the other members of his combat unit, just continued to put deadly accurate rounds into each one of the oncoming Invid as they rushed towards him. As the sniper rifle ran empty, Deadpool re-slung the sniper rifle and re-activated his arm mounted beam pistol, switching it to fully automatic and adding his own firepower to that of his teammates and the larger units that they were providing support for.
"Keep it up! They are going to break any moment now!," Senior Lieutenant Marquis Tribanuiski yelled over the main Tac-Net to the Armored Infantry and their support Destroids as they pushed back the second wave of Invid that were pushing forward and trying to break through the REF defenders' lines. He manuvuered his own Destroid, a newer style Spartan Urban defense armed with an Alpha's GU-XX 35mm autocannon in his robot's hands and a pair of high powered shoulder laser cannons, into a more defensive positon as he began to drill another group of oncoming Invid that were threatening to overrun the position that he and the squad of Cyclone riders were assigned to hold. They had been at this constantly for close to 6 hours now, and the lieutenant was beginning to wonder just how much longer they were going to have to keep doing this before they were either going to be pulling back, the Invid would run out of troops to throw at them, or would finally get serious and wipe them all out with overwhelming force.
The Spartan's acquired hand cannon clattered out round after round into the oncoming troops as they advanced, however, the combined hail of balaistics and energy fire seemed to do little to deter the kamikaze aliens from all but trying to roll over the human defenders. Tribanuiski continued to sweep his guns over the oncoming tide, trying to take out or do as much damage as he could to the tide that was about to crash into him and his men. His autocannon ran out just as the surviving Invid were close enough to go hand to hand. The first shock trooper that crashed into the 14 meter tall Mecha was similiarly knocked backwards, it's head and crew compartment crushed by the impromptu club that the human mecha was wielding. The second Invid that came rushing in met the same fate and also collapsed to the ground before the first had even stopped bouncing. Number three took a solid kick to the chest area knocking it back, and the fourth was blown out of the air at point-blank range by the twin shoulder-mounted laser cannons. The next trio had just taken to the air when they suddenly disappeared, replaced by three expanding clouds of raining shrapnel. Marquis looked about for a moment with both visuals and sensors, and the sight that he saw made him yelp for joy.
The pair of LEGIOS assault craft spun out of their respective strafing runs and pulled back up to gain some altitude. Lindsey smirked as she watched the results of his handiwork. Ensign Nabiki Ishitaga's Diamondback Four flew alongside and was matching his own bird move for matching move. The two of them, along with their Beta components had been selected to provide CAP for the infantry for this sortie, and so far, it seemed as if they were pushing the thrice-damned slugs back yet again. The two combination planes seperated from their abreast flight as soon as they had reached the optimal dive altitude and hunted for more packs of Invid mecha and inorganics to wipe into the next lifetime. As she looked around, Neiquiest spotted a cluster of Invid that were coming in low to the ground, attempting to re-enforce their own beleagured breathren. That was something that she knew she couldn't allow, and it seemed like the other pilots agreed with her.
"Firebrand, permission to light up their lives?," Ishitaga's sing-song voice came over the tac-net. The other woman was also a very good pilot, but she occasionally went overboard on the ordanance department when it came to ground combat missions. Lindey only had to think about for a second before she gave her permission. The other LEGIOS gave a flap of its wings and then dove straight into the middle of the column of unsuspecting Invid. The co-joined pair of mecha opened up on the column as they came diving out of the sun like a super-sized bird of prey, vaporizing half a dozen mecha before the rest could even react, which for most of them meant going to evasives as they tried to identify this new threat. Diamondback Four dived down to the deck in search of her prey and shot down another half dozen scouts before they could get out of her way. Lindsey decided that Nabiki and her partner had had enough solo fun and decided to go ahead and bring her own ship down to play. That was when it all went horribly wrong.
Ensign Ishitaga was flying Nap of the Earth and had just got another flight of fleeing scouts in her sights when the ground around her seemed to explode upward in about a dozen gysers of rock and dust. From the brief cloud of obscurity came a dozen Royal Enforcers, their plasma cannons already glowing from full charges as they took aim and opened up upon the helplessly trapped fighter-bomber. The Beta pilot, a new man named Neubauer tried to push the thrusters into overdrive to escape the plasma charged that the two pilots found themselves in and wa sonly partially successful. The numerous deadly discs of energy connected with the Beta portion of the LEGIOS, causing to crumple in on itself before it's proto-culture enhanced nuclear powerplant was ruptured, causing the mecha to go critical and then quickly be consumed in it's own resulting fireball. Diamondback 4 Alpha was quickly engulfed in the resulting flamewave, and it looked as if it too was completely consumed in it's mate's fiery demise. The Invid nearby couldn't escape the expanding cloud of deadly explosives as the Beta's onboard reflex torpedoes exploded as one, increasing the magnitude of the explosion by quite a bit.
Lindsey could only watch helplessly as another pair of her squadron mates were killed, this time by a suicidally effective Invid ambush. Ishitaga's scream still echoing in her ears after the other's mecha had ceased to exist and her anguished scream was cut off aburptly. Linquiest accellerated to flank speed and blew past the few surviving enemy mecha, destroying each one of them with a few flights of deadly short-range missiles as she blew past them. Lindsey, however, was not really paying them much attention as she tried to fight down the tears and the wellspring of emotions that were threatening to overwhelm her. Nabiki had been a good friend of hers, and like Angelina, had been one of her bridesmaids at her wedding the year before. Now, both of them were goine and within twenty-four hours, too. She had just felt the first stinging tear making it through her shut eyes when suddenly her wingman and the love of her life broke thru her thoughts as well as the dreadful silence of her cockpit.
"Hey, hon, I gotta question for ya?" Steven asked in a somewhat quietly curious voice. He had been pre-occupied with controlling the majority fo the two ships weaponry to allow his other half to contentrate on the flying. They had mutually discovered at some point along their partnership that this arrangement actually worked out pretty good for the two of them. "Umm, do the Invid have anyways to pick up transponder signals from downed pilots?"
His question snapped Lindsey back to the present and her brow furrowed as she looked at her husband on the the Tac-Net's visual display on her center console.
"Not that I am aware of, at least not with the rank and file Invid anyways. Why?"
"Well, I think I saw a chute pop from Nabiki's bird, and I am now getting a Tansponder beacon, but that is it." There was a pause for a few moments as Steven continued to scan his monitors across the board trying to make a definite confirmation. At the same time, Lindsey swung their plan around to see if there was anything that she could spot visually by flying over the area one more time.
"That doesn't look good. I read at least a dozen hostiles trying to close in on her position."
"Yeah, I see it to, I am going to begin another attack run on them."
"Right," Steven replied back as his brow furrowed slightly in concentration. "Hmm, maybe we should call some of those walking behemoths below us to earn their keep and support us."
"What don't think that we can't handle this ourselves?" his wife shot back over the comm-line.
"It's not exactly that. While I am not the first person who wants to go ask help from ground pounders, right now we could use any and all of the help that we can get. besides, if nothing else, we can always think of it as payback for us having to wax those convoys for them."
"Well, you do have a point. Gimme just a minute here." Lindsey then switched frequancies. "Diamondback two to Ironwalker Lead."
A armored man in his late twenties or early thrities popped onto the screen. He smiled at her, but there was more than a hint of weariness in his eyes and at the corners of his mouth.
"Tribanuiski here. What can I do ya for, Diamondback 2?"
"We just had a pilot shot down and we need a ground assisted EVAC."
"Alright. Gimme the co-ordinates and we will see what we are capable of doing to help you in that endeavour. An eye for an eye and all of that."
"Here they go, we are going to be staying in the area anyways, so just home in on us."
"Got it. Well, here we go!"
With a smile and a nod, the Destroid officer clicked off and Lindsey turned her own attention back to the task at hand. She finally saw what appeared to be the ejection capsule from the Alpha section as well as just over a dozen of those freakishly human-like hunter-killer Hellcats that the Invid seemed to enjoy deploying in such numbers. The pilot brought her own mecha down, pushing her throttle to just below sonic speed as her targetting recticules began to fill up with targets in the rich enviornment that she had just provided for herself. However, knocking down obstacles wasn't her job this go round, so she let her partner have his brand of fun as she flew about the perimeter. The inorganics themselves were not too hard to destroy, once they were actually hit that is. However, out and out destroying them wasn't the immediate goal of the two Niequietsts at the moment. Hammering the first of them back with a combination of short range armor-peircing missiles and autocannon fire from the Beta's belly-mounted gun, the LEGIOS forced the Hellcat pack to either stay on course to the escape pod and die or scatter and possibly continue to function for a bit longer. Most of them quickly chose the second option; the slower ones weren't given any time to re-consider.
Just as the LEGIOS completed it's initial strafing run and Lindsey began to ease up on the throttle to pull them about for another run, Steven detected multiple ground vibrations and was about to shout out a warning when the ground belwo them once more exploded into geysers of rock and dusts as the Invid attempted to spring their trap once more. This time, however, the humans were ready for this particular trap, having seens it's devestating effects once before. Steven unloaded a slavo of aft firing missiles even as Lindsey took over manual control of the Alpha's autocannon system and pot-shotted the two lead royal enforcers in front of her right out of the sky before they could even complete their jump in the air, much less set up any return fire. LIndsey then spun the fighter on it's axis as she punched over to Gerwalk mode with the leg boosters thrown fully in front at full burn to completely arrest the ship's forward momentum, further throwing off the Invid's aim. Steven took advantage of this momentarily lull in being hammered to drop three more of the Enforcers with a dozen well placed plasma missiles from the main missile launchers. Lindsey quickly scanned the sky for the remaining Invid, spotting four of them immediately. Even as she looked, Steven took the opportunity to dispose of two more of them with a pair of long burst from the belly gun as they floated into the killzone. At this point the Invid tried to return fire. The two Enforcers tried to trap shoot the LEGIOS but the pilot was too skillful, and she was able to sweep and dive and then pivot in between the two sets of blistering concentrated energy fire, re-configuring back to jet mode for more speed and manuvuerability. As lindsey concentrated on evading the last two Enforcers, Steven set himself up to take the sweet shot on each of the Enforcers, dropping six missiles at each one just as they passed right into the optimum firing zone. Both Invid mecha pilots were so intent on shooting down the veritech that they failed to notice the incoming return fire until it was too late. One mecha was engulfed instantly by missiles detonation, and the other tried to futilily put it's energy shield up to block the incoming missiles. The shield was able to stop the initial impact of the six plasma missiles, but as the shield itself quickly overload, it could do nothing for the hapless pilot when the kinetic and liquid flame washed over it, sending it the way of it's wingmates.
Lindsey completed her Immelmann and had just leveled off when something seemed to swat at the plane from behind hard enough to rock her in her crash couch. The flight Lieutenant looked up and behind just in time to see another Royal Red Enforcer setting them up for another pass as the last of his plasma bolts slammed into the connection section between the Alpha and beta components. It seemed to pause for a moment, and time slowed down as Lindsey watched the Invid's plasma cannon start to glow white as it re-aligned the weapon just enough to aim directly into the cockpit...and at her. Then, just before it could fire, a beam of bluish-white light suddenly blew out of it's chest, and after wobbling for a moment, if fell to the earth below, leaking smoke and green nutrients in it's wake. The woman let out a breath that she wasn't even aware that she was holding as she looked down below her to see a pair of Tomahawk destroids, one with it's PBC arm still smoking from the shot that it had taken. Along side them were a dozen armored cyclone riders, who were already surrounding the crash pod and getting the pilot out and to safety.
"Doesn't look like he did to much more than scratch the paint and blow a few avionics, hun," Steven's voice came thru the mike suddenly, jolting Lindsey back to the here and now.
"Good. That means that we can stick around and provide CAP."
"Yeah, for the moment. We are kinda running a bit low on ammo, and Baelanos wants us to switch up with the next flight. Said he had something else in mind that he wants to try as soon as these attacks taper off completely."
"Right. Why do I get the feeling that we are not really going to like what he has in store next?" Lindsey queried as she watched the rescue team began to pull back quickly to the command bunker, the Destroid twins walking backwards covering their retreat. "Looks like they are done, so let's head back to the ranch."
"No complaints there, dear."
"Didn't think you would have any."
With that, the red and white LEGIOS rolled and followed the ground units back into the perimeter and yet another hard earned break before the next wave struck.
----Fade to Black as Closing Theme Kicks in-----
SithKnight-Galen's parting words: And thus, another fun installment out of my head and onto your screens for your viewing enjoyment. Please let me know what you people think of what I am writing. Feedback, both positive and negative are always apprecieated. Sorry if this chapter seems a bit muddle, but most firefights and battles have a tendancy to get jumbled like this when it is being told and seen from multiple points of view. I hope that it can still be followed, however. And tune in next chapter when we see what happens when Team Darmouth make it back to home base.
Again, this goes out to everyone on the DYRL Fan-fiction list, but especially GP PR, LisaV, KnightTemplar, CiceroPhelps, and Carla Fox. I also want to dedicate this chapter to that mecha-junkie, YaoiYaoiYeah. I really hope that this is living up to everyone's expectations so far.