Franky was a pretty ballsy guy he liked to think so at least. Always the first to do a crazy stunt, the first to pick a fight, the first to try a new drink or a new food.
Which was why he had volunteered for the special weapons unit of the Coalition. He was ballsy but he wasn't stupid, no way was he volunteering for NOD.
Still, he had volunteered and here he was now.
The Red Zone was in front of him, the alien scum was dead and dying and in his hands was a portable sonic cannon.
It was a beast and it was sexy to the extreme.
It was an underslung weapon, meaning that he held it with both hands around his hips as opposed to his shoulder. The muzzle would be aligned with his helmet on a moving reticle and all he needed to do to activate it was to activate a switch on the side of its handle.
Franky therefore, was going to be having a very good time of it. The bloody aliens were right in front of him and he was covered in so much armoured plating that he might as well be called the Steel Man. All of it ablative as well, so if they got some Tiberium on it, the layer would fall off and he would be safe.
None of that giant plates of steel shit that would turn into one giant hunk of Tiberium shit.
Franky knew what he was doing to maximise what he got out of his ballsiness, none of that getting himself killed for no reason crap.
He strode forward, lugging the sonic cannon that was by his side. The targets were right in front of him, or at least that was what he thought. How was he supposed to know if they were or they weren't? The orders had come for him to advance up the line but that meant nothing when there wasn't even a bloody line to begin with.
The NOD boys had hammered in what looked like a giant missile that destroyed half of the aliens, sure. But that didn't answer the questions as to what the hell was happening with the rest of it. Smoke was in the air and he couldn't see shit.
It was a damned good thing that the sonic cannon didn't require a chargeup time or he would be dead if something came out of the smoke.
Franky kept moving, no point dawdling, he didn't want to get himself killed because some asshole thought it would be a good idea to fuck him over after all. He wasn't going to fall for that shit.
There.
He could see what looked like a giant fucking walking bug thing coming out of the shadows. Aiming the cannon so that the reticule on his HUD matched with it, he pulled the trigger. There was nothing, but the little vibrations in the handle told him that it was working which was good enough. If it didn't work it wasn't like he knew what he needed to do to fix it.
The shadow of the thing didn't do anything… oh right.
Franky forgot that shadows were projections of things, woops. Sweeping through in an arc in front of him, Franky grinned when he caught the damned thing and it started to shudder. A few more seconds and it was down, dead probably.
He didn't know exactly how these things worked, but they apparently destroyed the Tiberium inside of the things which kind of killed them as well.
Franky kept pushing up, the pack sonic cannon was a strange beasty, the Tiberium that it destroyed was then harnessed to make power, a little ridiculous when it came down to it, but then again who was he to judge?
Sweeping the cannon side to side, Franky kept going, moving according to the way the map on his HUD was indicating. Something about there being a waypoint there or something.
Franky finally got out of the damned smoke and he was finally able to see what the fuck it was he was meant to be shooting at. Sure it didn't hurt friendlies, but that didn't mean that he was happy just waving around a giant little wand like an idiot.
Now that he got over the whole "am holding giant inaudible speaker" thing, it was nowhere near as impressive as he had thought it would be originally.
But… it was what he had and he was going to be making the most of it apparently.
Walking forward, he spotted the masses of the Scrin and he grinned as they tried to hide behind their shields. You could tell since the light reflected off them in little ripples which looked strange as hell, like mid-air water.
Too bad for the aliens it didn't quite work as they expected on sound and light. Cause you know, blocking physical stuff is fine and dandy but when you can't block sound… well, daddy has a present for you!
Holding the trigger down as he walked forward, Franky grinned as they did the wiggle that he had seen in the shadows, each of the buggers shivering violently before they just stopped working and fell to the ground. In broad daylight, it looked a little fucked up, but hey, they were aliens, who cared.
It worked even better on the little flying metal stabby things that flew out of the little beehive things on the ground. Just a sweep over and they would just fall out of the sky and die. Assuming they were alive at all, seriously, flying razors? Who thought that would be a good idea?
As for Franky, he was feeling like a king as he just swept the sonic cannon from side to side and watched as it crippled and destroyed the numerous Scrin that were trying to form a defensive line. The smoke had obscured his approach and now he was close enough to screw them over. Maybe if they had tried firing artillery into the smoke it wouldn't be like this.
Crazy. Didn't they know that was standard practice when it came to things like this? What if you wanted to stay alive?
Franky didn't know what was going through the heads of the aliens, but he knew that he was still alive because of it.
Grinning he walked further into their lines, others of his unit by his side. Better to kick alien asses together than to do it alone.
Franky waddled forward, the sonic cannon didn't work so well when he had to do something as intensive as this. Ass waddling forward.
It wasn't quite working out as he thought it would, trying to walk forward was a pain, walking sideways was a pain. Walking at all was a pain. Just… what the fuck was with all this mud? Where had it come from? This was the bloody middle east for fucks sake.
Sure his suit was able to offset some of this by providing energy and the like, but it wasn't as if it was going to stop him sinking into the ground with every single bloody step.
He glared at the sky, the bloody aliens were coming in from above and they quite definitely not friendly.
Heaving out a sigh, Franky angled the cannon upwards and pulled the trigger, making sure to give it some hefty lead. The speed of sound after all, was much slower than the speed of bullets or the speed of anything else remotely useful at range.
The sonic waves reverberated toward the sky, the incoming ships having no knowledge of what was happening and Franky was holding his breath.
If they were going to do the smart thing and engage at range, he would be able to destroy them, sure. But he was going to die before them, their plasma was significantly faster than his sound waves that was for sure. But they would be dead and he would be giving them the middle finger… like a boss.
Luckily these ones were coming in closer for some reason with the intention of doing this personally, which naturally meant that he was able to sit and watch as… as they were disabled and fell right towards him since of course that was how his day was going to go.
Franky let out a groan as he dived to the ground and made a show of covering his head, the damned aliens were crashing right onto his position and if he was unlucky, he wasn't going to be making it out of this.
He couldn't even through away the cannon, it was attached to his exo-suit, which naturally meant that he was unable to run the fuck away as he should have been doing when something of that size was bearing down on his head
As the sky turned dark, Franky closed his eyes and prayed.
Lucas of the experimental weapons division was moving along, his own man portable laser weapon, laser cannon for short held in his hands. The aliens were coming from the front and he had to get to cover before they started shooting.
The laser cannon had a cycle time that was going to see him dead if he just stayed where he was. The aliens on the other hand, did not have such problems and were going to hammer him with as many damned plasma shots as they could, while their little razor sharp drones went in to gut him.
Thankfully they weren't able to penetrate his armour, but if the pain in his sides was any indication, the plating was not going to be holding up for very long.
It was just too damned bad that General Aleksandr thought it would be a good idea for his experimental troopers to be going in with a wide variety of different weapons and all individually. He would have preferred it if they were part of a group or something. You know… someone to draw the fire. Regardless, it wasn't happening and he was going to need to make the best of it.
Which meant keeping his head down and hoping to all hell that whatever was coming next wasn't going to put a hole in his head.
Sliding down to crouch next to what looked like a piece of cover, likely a destroyed ship or something, Lucas considered his options.
He could see a flight of Scrin craft dropping down on what his HUD told him was Franky, the idiot. Didn't he know you could detach the cannons by hitting the quick release?
If he was lucky Lucas would see him after this and they could share a drink maybe. If he wasn't, then Lucas wasn't going to be holding his breath. He needed to get the hell out of here as well.
The massive hover tanks that the Scrin were using came into range, they were firing a beam weapon of some kind, which naturally meant that they were going to be the height of bullshit in his humble opinion. There wasn't much you could do when someone was shooting a beam weapon at you, they moved too damned fast.
Lucas sighted as the reticle indicated he should, the laser had a reticulating ball mount that meant he was able to fire at an angle and still be able to hit the target… while also keeping himself hidden from view, something that was usually considered important since dying was a generally terrible thing to suffer from.
Setting the cannon out behind of his cover, Lucas sighted and stared. Well, that was certainly something else.
He grinned at the sight of what looked to be friendly Razorbacks flying overhead and tearing apart the enemy ground units. It had to be a razorback, what else was invisible and dropped lasers as if they were water?
The entire Scrin armoured push was wiped out and Lucas was now free to advance.
Just a few stragglers here and there, nothing that could be put down with a laser here and there.
Eyes closed for a brief moment, Lucas pulled the trigger. He had heard the lasers weren't really that bad, but he didn't want to take the chance of becoming blind later in life. He was shooting lasers that could punch their way through what was effectively inches of plate armour, that was a ridiculous amount of energy to pack into a weapon. Some of that spilling out and getting into his eyes would be a bad idea… if he survived.
He marched up and considered that maybe things could have been better if he hadn't gone and volunteered for what he assumed as likely the most dangerous unit in the bloody army.