THOMANPENZHORN11: IIRC, making a self-insert story is kinda against the FFN terms and conditions, sorry,
and yeah, I was kinda toying around with the idea of placing fleetgirls in a wide variety of rôles and ranks too, so who knows? You might get to see Iowa being a Rear Admiral (...or possibly Q. I'm no James Bond writor).
Also, tbh, if you push an asteroid fast enough and sling it through a Mass Relay, one could easily get more or less the same effects and results as an ISBM, but it's
(1: dependent on the relays
(and 2: a no-go according to the Citadel Conventions
however, also, one could stick a similar rock to an FTL drive and get the same results, but it'll also suffer from the same issues as the above. Minus the relays, if you're a good enough engineer.
OvertimePatrol: hey, we needed something for the plot to function.
I'd often think of the Mako as somewhat of a cross between a six-wheeled Stryker and a Ratel but with the turret of a Bradley since the canon rendition of the Mako makes no sense at all, I mean, where dafuq is the crew gonna fit
and just how are they going to disembark with that setup, since a rear exit is out of the question, not to mention the suspension
Taijing Ridge, Shanxi, July 23rd 2257 0314HRS local time
Fireteam Szurdok's members looked down at the advancing forces below them from their vantage point high above alongside three squads of Marines who had originally been attached to the orbiting battlegroup's marine detachments but ended up being unloaded on-planet before they were forced to retreat from the system (and ended up doing commerce raiding missions nonetheless). The Marines stared downrange through their SmartScopes just like Szurdok's special forces operatives did, using their sights as an alternative for binoculars or optics, while a pair of Leopard III main battle tanks trained their 75mm guns onto the enemy (hover)tanks, the vehicles in the enemy's vehicle pool that could bring to bear the most powerful firepower upon their oppoments and thus the ones posing to them the biggest threat. Three Mako infantry fighting vehicles, each bearing a passing resemblance to a Ratel deployed by the South Africans during the First Abyssal war over two centuries ago, trained upon the enemy infantry their 25mm autocannons while thirty-five rifles of various calibers were levelled at their oppoments' heads, all ready to have their safety locks thumbed down to fire and engage their oppoents at a moment's notice. The aliens marched forth down the ridge, completely oblivious to the well-camoflauged Alliance troopers about to rain hell onto their heads from above with their small arms from their well-camoflauged ambushcades, but to be fair, they can't see them, either, even if they tried, because humanity's tendency to overengineer stuff well past perfection even found a niche in camoflauging things with any bit of odds and ends that they could get their hands on. Which, for Fubuki, all the better.
"I have visual on the last bogie," Shigure called out over the COM as she peered downrange through the SmartScope of her SA43 battle rifle with said SmartScope being set to NVR mode. "Distance seventeen hundred meters, bearing two-seven-zero. We're ready to engage upon command."
"Time?"
"Three-fourteen. More fuckers are down the road, drones say, too—this is their scouting force, evidently. We'll have to get this done and over quick before their main force arrives, we've less than a dammed platoon down here, let alone a section. We'd be fucked if their main force arrives."
"Understood. Squad leaders, you know your positions," Fubuki ordered calmly into the COM, sounding very much unlike the jittery girl she was before this whole Shanxi campaign...which was only days ago, in retrospect. "Weapons free. Engage."
The squad leaders immediately relayed the order to their respective teams, which meant that thirty-five weapons suddenly became unlocked and their safeties thumbed off to allow them to be fired. The first shots rang out just as a few alien soldiers looked up towards where they heard the gunfire coming from, only to get their lives cut short via gory ends as Javelin's SRS85 lit up the night like a floodlamp with it's muzzle flash and trailing red-hot projectile while almost immediately afterwards shots of 7.62x40mm and 7.62x64mm fire from assault and battle rifles lit up the night, thirty-five bullets propelled to significantly above escape velocity sent downrange to end their lives in taking down some random unfortunate alien with them in a brutal, gory end. Those unlucky enough to be within the sights of an Alliance marine or one of Szurdok's marks-girls didn't even get a chance to scream, much less defend themselves as each and every alien sighted within the scopes of the Alliance marksmen took a clean headshot per each round fired, leaving thirty corpses tumbling towards the ground splattered in the gore of the other five as 14.5x115mm rounds shredded flesh and gore alike into a spray of bloody mist, splattering flesh, bones, and yellow alien blood all over the place. The ones who weren't as unlucky all scattered and scrambled for cover, but the three Mako IFVs got to them before they could, and their gunners weren't about to let them go, either. A hailstorm of 25mm light autocannon rounds rained relentlessly from above, each tracer shot packaging more than enough energy per impact to completely and utterly shred them all to bits, leaving nothing recognizable as formerly once being a living alien soldier. The hovertanks, unfazed by the barrage of light autocannon and small arms fire in no part thanks to them being much better armored and shielded by their less tough brethen who were falling to the shot by the dozens, trained their guns onto the IFVs in an attempt to at least relieve some of the pressure off the ambushers pummeling their infantry into oblivion, but humanity had another surprise in store for them, the Leopard III main battle tanks opening fire with their 75mm hyper-velocity smoothbores and sending eleven-pounder SAPHE rounds into the enemy formations at a blistering sixty rounds per minute, both tanks knocking two enemy hovertanks out of the fight before switching targets and eliminating another two a heartbeat later. Within four seconds, the enemy's armored support was gone, and the odds had shifted from six-to-one to two. The ambush so far had been a success, two-thirds of the enemy scouts had been taken out without taking even a single casualty.
Fubuki paused momentarily as the first of the enemy's return fire began to rain onto their ambushcade, blinking for a split second before switching targets and dropped another alien with her assault rifle while Shigure sent another one off to meet his gods early via a single 7.62x64mm round that left him to collapse to the ground in a crumpled heap with a hole the size of a fist left in his torso while Javelin's sniper rifle unceremoniously deleted another alien from existence in a spray of gore and blood, raining alien flesh all over the site of impact in a sickly shade of yellow. A marine took to a fireteam of aliens just as they were setting up what appeared to be a heavy machine gun emplacement (of sorts), dropping two with his battle rifle at once and sent the rest scrambling for cover before they could finish their work, while a 14.5x115mm round from an SRS85 sniper rifle courtesy of Javelin pierced the weapon's outer shell and gutted it's interior, for all intents and purposes taking it out of commission for good. Two shots of 7.62x64mm followed as Shigure finished off what was already nearly complete, leaving the enemy fireteam four crumpled bodies on the ground, finishing off the fleeing aliens easily enough. An alien marksman in the meantime managed to score a hit on one of the marines prone-firing his weapon from his ambushcade, but his shields held, and the poor extraterrestrials promptly got finished off via headshot from a battle rifle. Fubuki meanwhile sighted another alien within her SmartScope and squeezed the trigger, watching as the alien fell from a hole the size of a fist punched into his body. She might regret it later on, she might not, but as far as she was concerned they had attacked human ships in space as well as invading the colony world of Shanxi without neither warning nor provocation. Tht was grounds for war, and she knew it; the Abyssal wars of both 1983 and 2212 taught her and the rest of humanity well enough. She would therefore deal with those fuckers first and regret it later on, but right now, her and her friends' sole overriding objective would be to defend, preserve, and protect humanity, no matter what the cost. Failing that, themselves.
Javelin's sniper rifle thundered again as it delivered yet another alien to his gods early via a perfectly placed shot through the head, and Fubuki followed suit with her own rifle, dropping another extraterrestrial soldier dead with a headshot while Shigure eliminated another with her battle rifle. The aliens returned fire with their own small arms, but their accuracy was shit, and they failed miserably in even hitting them in the first place; one of the marines in fact noted the fact that he had been shot at, but his shields never registered anything and he shrugged it off, firing back and putting another extraterrestrial down. Fubuki sighted another alien within her SmartScope and put him down via clean headshot, watching as the alien collapsed to the ground, and Shigure followed suit with one of her own, bringing the number of dead extraterrestrials to twenty-two while Javelin's sniper rifle thundered again as it delivered yet another alien to his gods early via a perfectly placed shot through the head, and Fubuki followed suit with her own rifle, dropping another extraterrestrial soldier dead with a headshot while Shigure deleted another from existence with a hole the size of a fist punched in body armor with the projectile itself having pierced through shields all the way.
A shot pinged off Fubuki's shields as she dropped down behind cover to reload her weapon, sliding out the spent 60-round box magazine for her SA42 assault rifle and sliding a fresh one in before racking the bolt to chamber a fresh round, returning to the fight soon enough with an intermediate-caliber .300 Arisaka round chambered in the bullpup assault rifle's twenty-inch barrel and her sights on one random unfortunatee, three quick trigger pulls on semi-automatic sending a trio of headless corpses tumbling to the ground within seconds of each other while three more rounds half a second apart took out their buddies directly in front of them. Shigure meanwhile dispatched another extraterrestrial marksman with her battle rifle, delivering him to his gods early via a perfect torsoshot that left a fist-sized hole in his center, while Javelin's sniper rifle thundered again as it deleted yet another alien from existence via a perfect shot through the head, leaving nothing but gore and splattered brain matter to greet the next poor sap unfortunate enough to have stumbled onto the remains. Another alien marksman attempted to take Fubuki out by sneaking up on her, only to find himself with a fist-sized hole punched into his torso and collapsing to the ground in a crumpled heap, dead. His buddy wasn't quite as lucky, Shigure's battle rifle deleting him from existence via a clean shot through the head, and even as the enemy was being murdered relentlessly by the well-prepared and well-coordinated Alliance forces, the Leopards lit up the battlefields again with their 75mm guns switched to anti-personnel high-explosive shells propelled to well beyond escape velocity, exploding amongst the alien ranks and scattering their pieces all over the place. An eleven-pounder APHE round embedded itself a few meters into the ground before it's fuse detonated the explosive filler within amidst the chaos that was already unfolding across the ridge, only to add further to the mayhem as the filler kicked up a shockwave of dirt, rocks, and flechettes into the air to further augument it's raw concussive power, in effect turning any regular explosive round into an impromptu beehive shell and turning beehive shells into something even more disastrous to the enemy than what it already was. Several aliens were caught in the explosion and thrown around like ragdolls while several others got blown apart, their limbs and organs scattering everywhere and splattering yellow-colored alien blood all over the place, adding further to the chaos. One alien unfortunately found himself on the wrong side of Javelin's sniper rifle, his head disappearing in a cloud of gore and splattered brains while another unfortunate soul found himself meeting his gods early courtesy of Fubuki's SA42 assault rifle via a single round that left him on the ground with a fist-sized hole punched dead center, a spray of gore and flesh erupting from the point of impact.
"Their main force is organizing," Shigure called out over the COM as her HUD dinged with a notification and her electronic warfare suites tapped into the enemy's communications signals. "Three gunships, bearing three-five-two, ETA five minutes, six seconds. One full-strength mechanized battalion, heading two-zero-five, ETA fourteen minutes, six seconds. The tanks can deal with the gunships easily enough, but once their main ground force arrives we're gonna be fucked. We'll have to get ourselves outta here quick or else we risk getting ignited by the full wrath of those fuckers."
"Copy," Fubuki acknowledged as another shot dinged off her cover. "We'll evac in six minutes, tell the marines to get to the IFVs once the tanks deal with the gunships, we'll cover them and leave the place via riding shotgun on the track pods once we do."
"Roger." Shigure acknowledged as Fubuki popped out of cover long enough to delete another extraterrestrial from existence via a perfectly placed shot through the head, sending his corpse tumbling to the ground while Javelin's sniper rifle thundered again as it deleted another alien from existence via a perfect shot, leaving nothing but gore and splattered brain matter.
The alien troopers, pinned down from both sides of the ridge by their ambushers, returned fire to the best of their capability, but the firepower discrepancy was just too great to contend with, the marines and N7 being effectively aimbot-equipped soldiers with their neural uplinks and targeting assistance subroutines transferring the memory data needed to pull a Wyatt Earp every time they pulled the trigger enabling them to simply pick off hostiles almost at will, leaving corpses and mutilated body parts littering the place from tank shells and light autocannon fire, and small arms also didn't do anything much to help the situation. The Leopard III main battle tanks however were having the time of their life, sending eleven-pounder high-explosive anti-personnel HE shells into the alien formations and turning beehive shells into something even more disastrous to the enemy than what it already was, throwing alien soldiers around like ragdolls while blowing them apart, scattering their limbs and organs all over the ridge, splattering yellow-colored alien blood all over the place in the process. The IFVs also added to the chaos by hammering the enemy's formation with their light autocannons, sending 25mm high-explosive rounds tearing through flesh and gore alike and spraying alien blood all over the place, turning alien soldiers into little more than chopped meat under sustained autocannon fire while their snipers picked off what targets they could reach, the Leopards themselves also adding to the chaos by continuing to send eleven pounder HE shells into the enemy's ranks and turn beehive shells into something even more disastrous to the enemy than what it already was, scattering their pieces all over the ridge, splattering yellow-colored alien blood all over the place in the process.
The MBTs then rotated their turrets around to face the gunships directly, two 75mm/80 hyper-velocity smoothbore guns aimed directly at the hostiles as the fire control systems aligned the barrels onto the targets almost perfectly, leaving the tank commanders to do nothing but hit the 'fire' button to send both forward gunships off to a firey end while a second volley took out the second, the SAPHE rounds meant for dual-purpose use against infantry and armor would thus be capable of gutting and ripping through the lightly armored gunships like a hot knife through butter. Eleven-pounders at the ready, the main battle tanks-turned-anti-aircraft emplacements remained on high alert as the IFVs took over the job of pounding the infantry below for them, the tank commanders within keeping their eyes glued to the sights as the ranges dropped from fourteen kilometers to seven within the span of four minutes, and as all three close air support craft came into view of the tanks, they all opened fire in unison, two eleven-pounder shield-and-armor-piercing high-explosive shells sent downrange at some fourteen and a half kilometers a second, the sheer friction between the rounds and the atmosphere creating bright golden tracer streaks in the air as the rounds flew straight and true towards their destination, impacting their mark with the accuracy of a sniper.
Within a fraction of a second, the shells plowed their way through the cockpits of their unfortunate targets, peppering the pilots in shrapnel and spall from the impact and killing them in an instant before tearing into the fuel tanks directly behind them, the red-hot projectiles igniting the fuel within and causing the aircrafts to explode violently and spectacularly, sending burning wreckage crashing onto the ridgeside and lighting everything on fire in the process. Moments later, the third gunship didn't even get the chance to properly maneuver out of the way as the tanks reloaded their guns with their revolving-breech autoloaders, sending a third shell a second after the first shot into the remaining gunship and turned it into a flaming wreck minus the mass effect fields keeping it aloft mere moments prior, now nothing but a scrapper's next paycheck to spiral and careen towards the ground.
"Move it, move!" Fubuki shouted over the COM as soon as the last dropship spiralled from the sky in a tumbling, flaming wreck, popping two more shots off her rifle before stopping to reload. "I'll cover you, now get your collective asses outta here before shit hits the fan! Quick!"
"Copy!" responses buzzed over the battlecommunications network as the marines left their ambushcades and beelined for the Mitsubishi M217 Mako infantry fighting vehicles already preparing to pull back while the five-strong fireteam and the tanks kept on firing downrange to cover them, shots lighting up the night as a memo to the enemies below to keep their heads down. The first of the three IFVs started it's electrical engine and started off into the distance with all six of it's wheels on the terrain of Shanxi as the Japanese vehicles drove off the ambushcade on Chinese soil, it's motors propelling it along at a good sixty miles per hour, soon followed by the remaining two Makos as they also started their motors and drove off into the forest, the flora completely hiding them from sight unless their oppoments decided to play a game of 'napalm' and burned the forest down to ashes. No words were exchanged, for the others got the point clearly enough already, all five of Szurdok's members leapt onto the track pods of a Leopard, using their upper surfaces as impromptu seats as the tank reversed with it's four modular track pods allowing the tank to transverse backwards over rough, rugged terrain with as much ease as if it were aspalt; the other Leopard let off a final APHE shot into the enemy ranks before reversing out of sight, keeping it's gun trained on the enemy in case a pursuit force came after them at speed.
By the time the main force had arrived to assist the ambushees, their attackers had already vanished into the night, leaving naught but the shattered ranks of their victims for all to see.
Qinghai, Shanxi, July 23rd 0410HRS local time
Alliance Ground Corps, Shanxi garrison (501st Division), Qinghai Defense Fortification Line, Redoubt Wan Hai
"Seems like the intel about those fuckers giving us a night attack was correct, fellas," Sergeant Ito Tsubasa said as she peered downrange through a pair of night vision binoculars from her vantage point within one of the observation posts on Redoubt Wan Hai's command bunker, said redoubt being flanked on either side by rows of secondary bunkers and pillboxes just like a page taken straight out of the Japanese playbook at Iwo Jima. "Five thousand, probably ten thousand if we factor their additional units...I'm willing to bet that it's going to be fifteen."
"Fifteen-K?" Colonel André Prevloc asked as he found himself another vantage point from within his post inside the bunker, watching the live feed being projected onto his HUD as it was being transmitted from a drone that way flying within the defensive killzone of the anti-aircraft defenses. "Damn, that's a lot."
"Of course it's going to be a lot...an ambush team of Marines and N7 fucked up their scouting vanguard hard, as in, really hard, less than a few hours ago if we count things by our time, that must've pissed them off really hard. I'm counting at least one and a half, perhaps nearly twice the amount they threw at us during their first assault, they're hell bent on fucking us twice over it seems."
"Should we just fuck them twice over then? As a gift for trespassing within our borders in the first place."
"Yep, we're gonna do that...thrice over, even."
Prevlov smirked as he reached over to one of the radio operators within the bunker, who was busy trying to contact the artillery crews manning the batteries atop the redoubt along with the mortar teams who were currently manning their respective positions all over the fortifications, before keying into the comms channel: "Attention all artillery units, this is Colonel André Prevlov speaking...prepare to fire. Fire for effect. Weapons free."
The earthshattering report of the redoubt's heavy artillery followed a second later as the 100mm twin retracting turrets lifted themselves upwards to face the enemy and lined up their sights with their targets, all guns opening fire in unison to make light up the night with more than enough muzzle flashes to replicate a sunrise or a July 4th fireworks display as a deadly symphony of 75mm, 85mm, and 100mm reports echoed with more than enough force to shatter entire swathes of glass-panes, the orchestra of small arms and machine guns joining a heartbeat later as G&K's and H&W's worksmanship performed live, tracers lighting up the night sky like laser beams dropping aliens left and right, some falling to single accurate head or torsoshots that left them either headless or with holes the size of a fist punched into their bodies, while others became beehive flechette fodder, splattering their remains all over the place to create the perfect replication of scenes straight out of that random movie featuring the man with an axe, enough blood spilling onto the ground to stock up a hundred hospitals mixing in with the dirt of Shanxi to create sickly messes of yellow-colored mud. Tracers and muzzle flashes lit up the night sky as the guns all discharged their payloads with malicious intent, scores of aliens falling by the truckload, the ratio of which only seemed to increase by the minute due to the sheer volume of fire pout downrange by the defenders, but it was still far less nonetheless compared to the casualties faced during the first engagement at the maginot line over at Overage Hackenburg a few dozen kilometers away, in no part thanks to the fact that that the enemy at least had more than three brain-cells for once and ordered their forces to properly deploy in a properly mechanized force for once, which did lower their casualty ratios significantly. It was still little compared to an Alliance that was equipped for naught but total war against a peer-to-near-peer oppoment, Jackhammer anti-tank guided missiles impacting square on the roof of enemy tanks and/or hover-APCs, instantaneously turning them into naught but flaming wrecks, the tandem-charge HEAT warheads burning and boiling clean through the kinetic barriers and ablative armor alike before turning the insides of their unfortunate targets into giant ovens more than hot enough to melt themselves inside out, leaving their occupants to either slowly burn, melt, or boil to death or get killed instantly before they even knew what was going on. A 100mm APHE round meant for a group of infantry instead impacted itself square against the frontal armor of a strafing hovertank that unwittingly used itself as a metal shield for the group of infantry behind it and paid dearly for it as a result, the shot not being an armor-piercing shell meant that the tank could still maneuver and fight but the sheer size and velocity of the projectile meant that the shot simply crushed the kinetic barriers and frontal armor inwards more than enough to make the tank's front look like a crushed tin can. Another fell victim to a Jackhammer ATGM from the top, the tank's lack of hard-kill active protection systems, devices most likely considered obsolete after missiles either fell out of favor or became too advanced to properly intercept, more or less allowed the missile to continue unmolested and impact home onto it's target in a style no different from a Junkers Ju-87 Stuka doing a dive-bombing run in the Second World War. The tank's internals got torched in an instant, the outer armor melting and boiling off to the sheer heat from the plasma generated from the shaped charge while the now controlless flaming wreck came to careen into the ground like a hovercraft that just got it's engines destroyed.
A heart-beat later, it was the enemy's turn to open fire, the were after all armed to the teeth and had come to mean business. There was no turning back, the fight was no longer to one side, there's no turning back after one had been slapped in the face. The surviving infantry and vehicles let loose a hailstorm of fire into the Alliance ranks, hypervelocity micro-projectiles propelled by way of mass effect fields lighting up the night like a million fireworks being shot at once into the air, each and every shot thudding against armor plating, duraplast, the ground, or a fortification at random, whatever it may. Hypervelocity splinters of metal and escape velocity bullets exchanged paths at a frenzied rate as the former impacted to shields, armor, and duraplast to mixed effects while TBX-propelled bullets pierced through shields and armor alike within the enemy ranks, hostiles falling by the dozens as the Alliance Ground Corps took to them with their neural uplinks that enabled them to pull a Wyatt Earp every time they pulled the trigger, leaving dozens to fall with fist-sized holes punched into their torsos and stomachs while geysers of flesh and gore erupt from the points of impact. Burnt powder and muzzle flashes only added further to the cacophony as the field guns within their remote-controlled emplacements reloaded their barrels automatically and transversed around to engage targets at will, autoloaders shoving 75mm, 85mm, and 100mm rounds into the breeches as fast as they can safely do so and let the guns shove the shells downrange and straight into the enemy ranks, APHE sending scores of aliens off to meet their gods early via explosive, flechette-y ends with gore splattered all over the place making an unsightly mess for anyone who laid eyes onto the aftermath. A tank shot landed next to a duraplast pillbox and showered it in pellets from the anti-infantry payload, the crews inside ducking to avoid the pellets that entered through the firing slits but still taking the pellets that made it through the slits nonetheless, all five of them collapsing dead with their light machine guns falling silent as the pellets left sprays of red on the pillbox's interior, the pillbox falling silent and ceasing to effecively do it's job anymore. Until someone got to the pillbox via the network of tunnels and picked right up where left off the work of their fallen comrades, that is. The tank in question quickly got dispatched via a single anti-tank guided missile impacting down it's dorsal plating, the missile leaving the tank a flaming wreck that was sure to cook the crew within. Roast them, even.
"Command, Fire Control."
"Go, Fire Control."
"We have multiple enemy cruisers in orbit maneuvering into position for orbital fire support on Qinghai, they are well within our firing arc and range. Requesting permission to engage." the fire control officer said as the monitor on his console buried a kilometer and a half underground indicated that the MAC located in it's remote-controlled hardpoint was ready to fire at will.
"Permission granted, batteries release, engage CR-112 and CR-117." came Colonel Gromov's voice over the COM, he was placed in charge of the orbital defenses and would oversee the engagement of orbital targets during the span of this conflict. "Let's give them a warm welcome lads, last time they went smart and stayed out of the firing arcs of the guns as they landed their troops. Hand 'em their deserts."
"Roger, Colonel," he answered as he typed something on his console, sending an order to the gun above in it's hardpoint to open fire. "Batteries release, mount 2-0-0, two shots, engage CR-112 and CR-117."
"Confirm batteries release, mount 2-0-0, two shots, engage CR-112 and CR-117." the gunner replied as he confirmed the order, the turret transversing and elevating upwards until the target was locked-on, the magneto-plasma accelerator cannon primed, the firing arc was clear and the range was perfect.
"Shot in," another crewman reported as the shock of the gun firing rattled the base below.
"Shot out," someone else confirmed the shot.
Directly at the surface, within it's camouflaged and reinforced hardpoint, a single 200cm magneto-plasma accelerator cannon opened fire, propelling a single heavy-cruiser caliber projectile upwards at a good point eight-nine-seven of c, the shell travelling upwards through a dedicated mass-free 'tunnel' created by anti-gravity fields to allow it to fly up without fear of drag or shockwaves that would wreak complete and utter havoc amongst whatever lay on the planet's surface, crossing the distance within a fraction of a second and impacted straight and pure onto it's target. The unfortunate cruiser didn't even have the chance to even react to the energy spike that lit up it's sensors harder than a radiological alarm when the Alliance fleet lobbed nuclear weapons at it's bow and paid dearly for it as a result; the shell smashed right through the ship's kinetic barriers and armor alike, impacting square in the middle, the cruiser's forward section disappearing in a ball of light as a miniature supernova bloomed to life, the plasm jet spawned by the shot boiling it's way through decks, hull, and more decks before coming out the other end, the entire ship lurching upwards in no part thanks to Sir Issac Newton and his three laws of physics allowing the shell to transfer a good chunk of it's kinetic energy into the vessel, which soon buckled as the stresses overpowered the ship's vulnerable spaceframe, causing the entire ship to crack in half as the entire keel failed along the point of impact, leaving both halves on a decaying orbit to enter the atmosphere. The other cruiser targeted by another orbital gun also suffered the same fate, the 200cm cannon fired and the same result occurred, the two cruisers burning up on re-entry, their carcasses smashing into the earth and burning themselves a crater the size of a small town, the debris falling onto the ground and killing everyone and everything within a good kilometer and a half.
"Suck it, assholes." the fire control officer smiled as he watched the two ships burn up on re-entry and the debris rain onto the ground.
Fubuki ducked down yet again as another tank shell came too close for comfort, cursing as it kicked up yet another pillar of dirt that showered her and her comrade's faces within the trench that they were hiding in, Fubuki taking the brunt of it. Fireteam Szurdok had barely time to finish a cup of coffee before they got shuttled all the way over to the other side of Qinghai by the QR when the alarm began to blare, which effectively cut their much-needed sleep time to less than the quarter-hour of rest they found on the QR train on the way to Redoubt Wan Hai. One could guess how things worked out after that, Fubuki and the rest ended up as reinforcements for the redoubt alongside another battalion until a flying column could arrive to drive back the attackers. Without a chance to finish their coffee, even, of course.
She wasn't amused, to say the least.
"This is for cutting our nap time short, fuckers!" she shouted as her assault rifle downed yet another alien at a distance of seven hundred yards, her aimbot-level marksmanship making short work of the problem and sent the alien down with a shot placed perfectly between his four eyes. Another shot followed shortly after, dropping a dinobord-shaped alien wielding an oversized twin-barrelled coil-rifle that was probably meant for anti-material duty before he could fire. That thing looked like it could do some serious damage, confirmed or not, she was taking no chances. That thing might be a dual-barrelled Stanchion for all she knew.
The crack of a 7.62x64mm round going hypersonic indicated that her teammates were by no means idle, either. Shigure's battle rifle let off it's distinct crack as the unsuppressed twenty-one inch barrel let off it's projectile at some thirteen thousand meters a second, claiming another kill at a thousand yards out while Shepard's own battle rifle barked off a second, single shot on semi-automatic, claiming a kill at thirteen thousand meters out and left a corpse tumbling towards the ground with an entry wound punched neatly center mass and Javelin's SRS85 sniper rifle turned an enemy sniper into gore two and a half kilometers out, she then switched targets and engaged a second one four-point-fourteen kilometers away before he could realize the location of the enemy sniper, the 14.5x115mm round sent to thirteen and a half kilometers per second rendering him naught but a splatter of gore and flesh all over the place. Erin's assault rifle was also letting off individual shots off on semi-automatic, downing quite a few aliens before she could do a quick reload. One of the hostiles tried to gun her down with whatever seemed to be their equivalent to an assault rifle that everyone seemed to have one way or the other, but Erin's shields deftly tanked the blasts, laughing off the assault as if it were nails on an inox plate, Erin putting three rounds into her oppoment as soon as she was done with reloading her weapon before nailing another with one projectile. Another one tried to play it marksman and spear her from afar, but his marksmanship was fairly crap compared to Alliance standards, and he thus ate a single headshot that yet sent another corpse tumbling towards the ground, Erin's near-perfect marksmanship placing her sights squarely on and sending the resulting shot clean into the center of his face.
The distinct thump of an 85mm mortar firing signalled the end for yet another group of hostiles as an anti-personnel high-exposive round landed directly in the midst of their ranks, showering the place in flechettes and the accompaying gore, dismembered body parts and limbs sent into the air and raining onto the ground recreating a scene straight out of any splatter movie in real-life. Quite literally.
Fubuki momentarily ducked down to avoid a stream of mass accelerator rounds from a hover-APC that began to rain onto her position, chunks of duraplast and dirt sent flying into the air more or less a memo for her to keep her head down low lest she get hit by the shots, but she wasn't having any of that crap. Arming the underslung grenade launcher mounted on her assault rifle without even a second thought, she fiddled a bit with her SmartScope and jimmied it to lift it's targeting camera up by a meter and a half before poking it above her cover, aiming the rifle upwards at an oblique angle and zooming towards the troop compartment of the APC that was now open as it disembarked it's cargo of infantrymen, or to be more exact, where the troops would be expected to march out into once they walked out of the compartment. The aliens walked straight into her sights easily enough, those idiots, but Fubuki wasn't about to let them go away that easily...for she had already figured out how to deal with the fuckers, and that included a 40mm grenade being flung into the midst of their ranks, splattering their remains all over the sides of the APC as she slid her SmartScope back to normal before leaping out from behind her cover, her rifle held in her left hand while her right fixed a combat knife on the barrel to make it a bayonet, then switching grips and held the rifle back in her dominant grip. Within three seconds, more or less, she had moved out to face the direct rear of the APC, it's door halfway through to closing, but that was exactly what she needed.
She jumped on a parabolic trajectory and let her legs slip in through the closing door, casting a listless glance at the black stockings around her white-and-blue sērāfuku (because fuck the regulations, she was an N7 after all), thrusting a random slab of duraplast into the closing door to jam it open as she did so, before redirecting her attention towards the front of the APC, where there was what seemed to be two lockers and a closed door. Which would be, for all she knew, locked, since the aliens would have at least a few braincells to lock it, right? Right?
She also didn't put a foot to the door and her other to the lock; she wasn't a fucking idiot. Instead she kept her weapon pointed at the door before using her left hand to open one of the two lockers located right next to the door, or rather, what she thought was a locker. It wasn't.
"Fuck."
Hefting her rifle back to her shoulder, she left the panel, open right where it was, exposing a bunch of electrical wires and what seemed to be the batarian equivalent to a circuit breaker underneath...it took them all of the previous night to deal with the language barrier and crack it properly, advanced Alliance tech or not, there was only so much AIs and the latest advances in technology could do. Compiling all the data they had into a proper translation codex took the entire previous night, and even with the others from the linguistics team joining in to help, it still left her and the rest functioning for half a week on roughly or even less than two hours of sleep. And natrually, she wasn't amused, either. Fubuki wasn't known for her hot temper, in fact, it was very much the opposite, but her patience had it's limits, and if running for half a week on only two hours of sleep didn't get the job done, having hostiles shooting at her from all directions certainly did. Batarians, technically, they called themselves, but she couldn't care less, and to be honest, nobody else cared, either. As long as those bastards went down like ragdolls all right.
The APC rumbled along in a semicircle, apparently trying to get the fuck outta the place before Alliance anti-armor weapons could get to it and leave it a flaming, bruning wreck to mark the graves of it's occupants, but it's crew should've been more worried about the N7 right inside their troop compartment like a redneck playing stowaway. To be fair, there wasn't any security cameras or anything of the sort within the troop bay, either, if the reports from the Office of Army Intelligence after they dissected some vehicle wreckage were to be believed. Evidently, whoever given the task of designing this piece of dog crap never thought of his vehicle being boarded by a wayward special forces operative...lazy bums. At least she could just go waltzing in and do whatever the hell she wanted to do.
"Here goes nothing..."
She put a foot to the door and used her other one as a stand, it came open easily enough in no part thanks to both the door's crap quality and her own superhuman strength. Her rifle was slung over her shoulder for the sake of maneuverbility and compactness in fighting inside the cramped confines of an APC, but she didn't come in unarmed, either; she wasn't an idiot. Her right hand was already on her sidearm as the door flung open, the Götz & Krüger GK316 magnum caliber pistol already pointed at the alien to her right as the door flung open, or rather, in this case, taking a boot to the front so hard that it was literally torn off it's hinges and lock. The alien was done for before he could even do a thing, the closest he got to even actually defending himself would be to turn around and start to draw his pistol, only for his vision to be obsecured by the oblique angle that Fubuki's foot was presenting itself to him, filling his vision with a clear view of his assiliant's underwear for a split second before Fubuki turned him into fodder for a sidearm, leaving his brain and head splattered all over the place just as his companion shared the same fate, a single 9.5x40mm shield-and-armor-piercing high explosive projectie propelled to a little over three and a half kilometers a second completely and utterly exploding their heads like balloons and painting the surrounding interior in gore, alien gore, that is, from rounds capable of maiming a Commando or Brute.
Two seconds' worth of grunts and curses later, Fubuki shoved both headless corpses out into the troop bay like one would do to hurl out a pair of rotting headless chickens, before seating herself in the right-hand seat and taking a quick glance at the controls and displays around her, running a number of subroutines within her electronic warfare suite to hack into the APC's computer systems and sending a priority remote override command into it's mainframe, jimmying it into recognizing her as it's operator and giving her full administrator access. The controls lit up soon enough, the hacking subroutine having more than enough data on the enemy's programming language to effortlessly plow it's way through firewalls and security programming, completely rewriting top to bottom several programming matrixes while the subroutine was at it and left the vehicle completely in Fubuki's command, in no part thanks to the engineers making the quantum computer superconducting chips back at Enoshima Heavy Industries back when the corporation was making consumer laptops and navigation computers for spaceships. The language on the screens changed from batarian to Japanese easily enough, all within less than a second; Fubuki didn't even need to hot-link her electronic warfare suite to directly interface with and hack into the systems herself if she was prepared to do so (she did), the subroutine had made short work of it anyways.
"Damn, that's fast," she muttered, before sending ten fingers across the controls and resetting all the IFFs on the computers to Alliance frequencies while similarly tuning the computers to recognize all current friendlies to 'hostile' whilst at the same time copying as much data on the databanks into her onboard computers as possible, the ludicrous amount of processing power on her mainframe making short work of the task assigned within less than a second, and even installed a fire-control subroutine into the computers while she was at it and toggled it's new autoaiming feature, while a second subroutine told it to reverse course and simply beeline back all the way to Alliance lines where ONI's Nerd Brigade would most certainly be waiting to dismantle it from top to bottom. Pressing the button to lower the door with a ten-second delay for her to get outside before it closed again, she headed out of the cockpit, held her rifle at the ready, and waited for the perfect moment to jump out.
Three, two, one. Jump.
The APC continued on it's merry way even as Fubuki's rifle sighted a group of aliens unfortunate enough to be close to the hovertransport enough to be engaged and dropped them all in one fell swoop, four trigger pulls on semi-automatic coupled with her aimbot marksmanship meant that they were dead before they could even properly respond to their sudden attacker, Fubuki using the recoil from her rifle to slow down her fall slightly before landing on her boots, driving them feet first into the head of a hostile at random and crushed his skull in like a hazelnut beneath a triphammer, crushing his skull flat while the bayonet on her rifle was thrust into the lungs of another and left him to choke in his own blood, two more shots sending another pair of unfortunates off to the skies while their corpses collapsed with holes punched into their torsos with an 'oof'. The others had no time to worry about the fleetgirl who had just obliterated an entire squad of theirs, however, for the rogue APC's jury-rigged turret had begun to swivel around and engage their own kind with a hailstorm of mass accelerator fire. They died in droves, Fubuki merely watched with amusement as she casually reloaded her rifle with a fresh magazine, the APC having no trouble whatsoever in laying waste to it's own comrades and left a pile of corpses and burning wreckage in it's wake, the turret swivelling around every once in a while to lay waste to an emplacement here, a vehicle there, a squad of hostiles somewhere else.
It was complete pandemonium.
To be fair, it wasn't every other day that an APC would get a remote override subroutine jammed into it's computers and told to switch sides, either. While true, it also proved disastrous; the light mass accelerator mounted within the remote weapon system locking onto any IFF that it identified as 'hostile', which, ironically, was labeled as 'friendly' only moments prior. An entire squad went down almost at once to the resulting rain of metal splinters propelled to hypervelocity, and the squad behind them went down as well, completely caught off guard by the defecting APC that was now raining heavy-caliber autocannon fire onto them all. The APC reversed course abd beelined for Alliance lines with it's front pointed towards it's newfound enemies now that it had clearly demonstrated it's new allegiance, pointing the front, the section with the most armor towards the fire that would most certainly undoubtedly be let down at it. The others scrambled for cover as shots pinged off the ground and punctured kinetic barriers, some making it to safety while others died halfway through the act, even the crappy jury-rigged remote override program inputted into the system allowing it to track, engage, and headshot targets with near-aimbot levels of accuracy. Another squad went down as if to prove this, their corpses collapsing to the ground with impact craters punched into their armor and bodies and their internal organs liquefied or mulched from the g-forces subjected to them. The shots went around and nailed each and every thing the jury-rigged systems found most optimal to target, pointing the barrels at the open doors of APCs and raining shots into the disembarking troops as they began to exit their vehicles, leaving rows and piles of corpses to mark where they once stood as well as giving nearby vehicles new, fresh paintjobs of splattered gore and flesh. Shots pinged off the APC's sides now that it's intention to switch sides was made loud and clearly enough, but the jury-rigged programs running it simply optimized the kinetic barriers much better than it's original creators could. The mass accelerator spun around to face an open-topped hover-jeep of sorts and opened fire, killing outright both the driver and passenger and left the now pilotless vehicle to crash into another APC cleanly through the lowered ramp and straight up and into the troop compartment, engulfing both vehicles in flames as the compressed hydrogen tanks used to power them got punctured and the resulting leakage of pressurized hydrogen caught fire.
Shigure meanwhile dropped another alien, a 'turian' (or whatever the hell they were called, everyone just took to the nickname of 'dinobirds' for all she knew or cared), apparently, before switching targets and dropped a second one with a clean headshot. The ammunition counter on her HUD blinked red soon enough, for she had run clean out of ammunition on her battle rifle, but she didn't give it a second thought. Slinging the battle rifle back over her shoulder, she switched weapons for her shotgun—the same one, in fact, that Erin had used to propel anyone dumb enough to get in her way back during their raid on the enemy base—and flicked off the safety. Finding a group of aliens a little over two hundred yards away from where she was, she blinked, before leaping onto a ballistic course that led directly into the center of their formation, enemies already within her sights and fingers threading into the trigger guard as she did so. The aliens were completely oblivious to the fleetgirl that was about to jump down from above and promise them all a gory end as well as completely ruin their day, but Shigure wasn't about to warn them and give herself away, either. Her boots drove into and crushed flat the skull of the unlucky chap she chose to use as a landing pad in an instant while the barrel propelled another into the air as an eight-gauge shotshell was sent into the alien at closer than even point-blank range, while a rack of the pump and a pull of the trigger later sent two off to gory heaven and left a third to bleed his guts out. The remaining four, having been alerted to her presence now that her element of surprise was gone tried to bum-rush her and pin her down, but that plan was doomed from the start as the lead alien ate a payload of buckshot to the stomach and fell flat backwards with his entire center mass missing, while another two ate the butt end of the shotgun as Shigure swing it like a club, mashing each of their faces in as if they were garlic inside a mashing bowl. The fourth and final one got too close for Shigure to bring her weapon around and engage properly, but she was more than prepared enough for that sort of thing already, she simply drove her foot into the alien's stomach like a karate master and left him to collapse with his internal organs either mashed, liquefied, mulched, or perhaps all three. He was a 'krogan', apparently, but she didn't even as much as give him a second look, he looked almost like budget versions of the Commandoes or Brutes she had fought during the Second Abyssal War, even in person.
Fubuki squeezed another shot out of her assault rifle before dropping down and doing a quick roll across the battlefield after the next cartridge casing of her magazine ejected itself out of her bullpup assault rifle, getting herself behind the wreckage of a destroyed tank that was now naught but a mess of slagged, jagged metal that was burning it's own guts out from whatever flammable material that was still left within the confines of it's crew compartment, before chucking a grenade over the slagged mess of metal in the general direction of the enemy, dropping briefly to avoid the spray of hypersonic shrapnel from the blast before taking off running across a good hundred meters across open ground before her attackers could recover their bearings and pelt her position with hypersonic metal shavings and splinters at multi-digit kilometers a second. She got across easily enough, jumping into a ditch or foxhole feet first and got her assault rifle back in the fight and instantaneously and unceremoniously plucked two aliens out of the fight via headshots and left their bodies to collapse in two crumpled heaps on the ground. Two seconds later, two more shared the same fate, each unfortunatee taking a single hole of 7.62mm poked into their foreheads with the accuracy of a surgeon. She than dropped down to do a quick reload, removing the spent 60-round quadruple stack box magazine out of the magwell of her weapon, slid it back to where it belonged on her tac-vest and pulled out a fresh one, slamming it into the magazine well of the SA42 with a solid clack and gave it an H&K slap to slam the bolt home and chamber a fresh round. She then popped back up and laid waste to a trio of hostiles stupid enough to expose themselves to her, taking one headshot per alien and left three more corpses to mark where they once stood. A fourth followed suit, taken out by a clean headshot that left a neat hole on his forehead while another two joined him soon enough, Fubuki simply popping up for a split second and dropped both with headshots that left two more corpses to mark where they once were and send two souls off to gory heaven.
A single 7.62x64mm round flew overhead with a crack, the shield-and-armor-piercing high-explosive round sent at well above escape velocity destined to end it's life by sending off some random alien off to meet his gods early via a hole poked in the very center of his head, accompained by the thunderous boom of an SRS85 sniper rifle firing, sending a 14.5x115mm shiedld-and-armor-piercing high-explosive round at three-times-seven kilometers a second, the heavy-caliber bullet causing another alien to explode into a shower of gore and flesh as if somebody had wedged inside him a block of explosives and mashed the detonator despite his brutally strong appearance...welp, those rounds were meant to blow apart Commandoes and Brutes on a regular basis, and they were essentially the toughest ones in the pack the aliens were bringing to bear, only given a triple dose of steroids. Krogans...krabs...crabs...
Blame having to function for half a week on only two hours of sleep.
"You deal with the ones on the left and center!" Fubui shouted over the COM as she ducked and rolled to avoid getting hit by what seemed to be the enemy's version of a mortar shell that was sent in her direction, the enemy having clearly decided to make her mortar fodder by the look of things. Good thing she still got superhuman reflexes, however. "The fuckers on the right, I'll deal with them!"
Squeezing two shots at hostiles at random before rolling again to avoid yet another mortar shell, she quickly set herself up in a prone-firing stance and centered the mortar crews in her sights and letting off a trio of shots, dropping three and splattering the fourth in alien blood and gore. A heartbeat later saw the removal of another mortar crew from the fight as well as Shepard took a battle rifle to them, turians, batarians, krogans, or whoever the fuck they were falling to the shots like ragdolls whacked by a boxer. Javelin's sniper rifle caused another random alien to literally burst into a splatter of gore straight from an horror movie when the 14.5x115mm SAPHE round impacted him and caused him to, well, kind of...explode. Erin's assault went marksman-style and let two more 'batarians' leave the fight perpendicularly before they could bring to bear a heavy machine gun/light anti-aircraft autocannon on the fireteam, a combination of neural uplinks, SmartScopes, and fleetgirls being, well, fleetgirls wreaking complete, absolute havoc amongst the enemy ranks, scattered and sporadic fire being met and answered for in kind by stupidly accurate fire, each and every individual unlucky enough to get caught in SmartScopes getting headshotted or torsoshotted in short order. It was already a losing battle for them, but they couldn't just pull back even if they wanted—one of their APCs going rogue in the middle of their battle lines taught them that lesson the hard way. Boarding their APCs would make both them and vehicle alike open to attack, and the Alliance wasn't about to let the opportunity slide, either, if the hailstorm of fire from the Alliance ranks was of any indication.
An APC drove up and opened fire with it's light mass accelerator autocannon, raining metal shavings onto Szurdok Fireteam's position and forcing them to duck, evidently intent on picking up it's load of infantry and covering them as it did so. Fubuki was having none of it, however, and so was Shepard; shots of 7.62x40mm and 7.62x64mm making themselves known alongside their respective muzzle flashes in the darkness in response to the enemy's bluish tracers sent their way. Two out of twelve fell out of formation almost instantaneously, followed shortly after by the other four standing right beside them; leaving holes punched neatly in their corpses as they fell to the ground in crumpled heaps courtesy of the engineers at humanity's bullet and small arms factories. Shigure, in the meantime, having decided to go up close and personal now that she had run clean out of ammunition for her battle rifle, found herself on the buisness end of what seemed to be the enemy's equivalent to a shotgun and leapt sideways less than a hundreth of a second before her assilant pulled the trigger, sending a flakburst of metal shavings downrange that missed her by less than three inches. She was on the krogan within two seconds afterwards, however, despite the fact that her oppoment was larger than her by a meter on all dimensions, but she wasn't fazed by the size difference. Using the butt of her shotgun as a club just like how she would handle a Brute or Commando in close quarters, she bashed the krogan's front in, the butt end of the shotgun making a sickening crunch and left the krogan to deal with a mess of fractures to deal with, before swinging her left hand around in one swift karate chop and broke the krogan's neck in an instant and sent his corpse tumbling off half a dozen meters away. A trigger pull later propelled another krogan against the far wall of the ditch she was in as if he was a ragdoll, a chunk of flesh messily ripped out of his body marking where the shotshell had done it's job as if a giant had taken to him with a box cutter, krogan or no krogan. Eight-gauge shotgun beat anything that was short of a vehicle, after all, krogans included.
"Somebody get AT on these fuckers, now!" somebody shouted over the COM now that the fight had turned into an all-out rout for the enemy, an anti-tank guided missile flying out from an open sally port soon accompained by an entire brigade of mechanized infantry and armor arrived on the frontlines, a barrage of 75mm SAPHE shells making themselves known in an instant as thirty-six tons' worth of tank drove out into the open with it's guns lit up in a display of raw naught but destruction, sending downrange a hailstorm of 12.7x100mm tracer ammunition while the larger 75mm hyper-velocity smoothbores paused for a moment to allow their revolving breech autoloaders to load a fresh shell into the breech, the autoloaders getting the job done within a second in no part thanks to the engineers at Krupp & Wassau. A 75mm anti-personnel high-explosive shell got flung into the midst of the enemy ranks shortly after, followed with the resulting eruption of dirt, gore, limbs, and mutilated bodies, flechettes propelled to well past escape velocity whistling in the night like bees around an upturned hive. A trooper hefted his twin-barreled rocket launcher and popped off two ATGM-48 anti-tank guided missiles at an APC about to pull back after loading up on it's complement of dismounts, each missile carrying a tandem-charge 85mm HEAT warhead for penetrating shields and destroying armor. Neither were intercepted in no part thanks to the shoddy electronic warfare equipment it had coupled with a complete absence of hard-kill active protection systems in any shape or form, the first missile going clean through the kinetic barriers altogether and engulfed the interior in plasma jet, killing all ten occupants onboard (hopefully) while the second struck the fuel tanks and caused the APC to erupt in flames due forwards with anyone directly ahead of it too unlucky to survive the resulting flames. A nearby APC ate a 57mm round from a Mako that had one, causing the troops directly in front of it to get burned out alive to death when the punctured fuel tanks sent a tounge of flame in their direction, leaving them to be living torches to illuminate the night sky. The Mako simply continiued on without even a second glance to the chaos it was causing as it drove onwards and towards the enemy, the eight troopers within it's troop bay poking out of the gunports and lighting up the enemy from within the confines of their protective armor a rain of assault and battle rifle fire.
Even as another tank mass accelerator round impacted against the frontal armor of a Leopard III main battle tank that happened to be in the area as a mobile vanguard and shattered against it's frontal armor, the tank's Phalnax active protection systems were already locking onto what seemed to be the enemy's equivalent to an anti-tank guided missile that had been identified by the sensors and assigned targeting leads for the Phalnax laser batteries, three golden laser beams lacing out from the modules and meeted the missiles square in the nose each well before they could hit their targets, each laser beam boiling through the outer covers in an instant and frying the delicate guidance systems within. The beams simply sliced clean through them like a hot knife through butter, leaving all three missiles sliced either lengthwise, widthwise, or perhaps both. The tank answered the favor shortly afterwards as well, a single eleven-pounder beehive shell was sent careening into the midst of the offending attackers, sending all of them to meet their gods early via the most gory and grotesque way ever thought of by man as the round tore apart flesh and body, sending sprays and splatters of gore flying in all directions. The Leopard didn't stop there, obviously, for a 75mm shield-and-armor-piercing high-explosive shell nailed itself onto a hovertank as if it was a coffin, leaving the hovertank of sorts to careen into the ground as a flaming wreck. The resulting explosion annihilated both vehicles cleanly, leaving only the chassis of the jeep sticking out of the troop compartment of the APC to mark where they once were and the result of the collision, with it's hood and windshield lodged cleanly into the troop compartment and the seats melted to slag.
"Give 'em hell, give 'em their deserts!" Fubuki shouted over the COM as she jumped forwards by few hundred yards with a bayonet fixed on her rifle. Landing feet-first into a krogan that was unfortunate enough to have ran into her path, she thrust her bayonet into and clean through his chest cavity and left him to bleed his guts out, before squeezing two more shots and sent two more aliens off to meet their gods early courtesy of bullets poked into their heads. One of them happened to be a krogan, and he went down like any other alien, the 7.62x40mm shield-and-armor-piercing high explosive round punching a neat, clean hole in his forehead whilst blowing out chunks of brain matter and bone fragments out the backside and left him to fall flat onto the ground, dead, and Fubuki didn't even as much as give him a second glance. A third shot dropped another krogan before she swung her rifle around and plunged the bayonet into the throat of another, twisting it around before yanking it out and left him to choke in his own blood, before using her rifle as a club and smashed another krogan's brains in with the butt end of her rifle, the krogan's head caving inwards like a melon beneath a triphammer as if it was aluminum foil.
"Got it, firing!" Shepard replied over the COM as well as she replaced the magazine on her SA43 battle rifle and got right back in the action, two shots at once claiming two hostiles right off the bat while another nailed the driver off an open LAV and sent the driverless vehicle into an APC while a second shot pierced it's fuel tanks and a pump, sending a spray of leaking hydrogen all over the place just as both vehicles collided, the sparks thrown up by the collision of metal on kinetic barriers igniting the vaporizing fuel and triggering a flash conflagration of pure hydrogen over a few dozen meters cubic, the vehicle's movement spreading the fuel over a wide area as if to further the chaos.
Shigure meanwhile had found herself one of the enemy's weapons to work with—a nasty, angular weapon not unlike those of humanity and seemingly their equivalent to an assault rifle—and chose to fiddle with it, using the electronic warfare suite built into her as part of her many refits over the years to send a remote override subroutine into the weapon's computers and hack into it completely, the job done in seconds in no part thanks to the fairly crap cybersecurity measures and features present on it, and the crap computer quality only added to the problem. The rifle's counter popped up on her HUD soon enough, an outline of the weapon itself, followed by both a tempurature bar and a battery meter. Attached was a quick text document on how it worked, and Shigure gave it a quick skim before glancing at the tempurature bar and finding her answer easily enough as to why it was there. Something to do with it's tendency to overheat, perhaps.
She found a way to optimize it's performance easily enough, adding an accelerator coil-control program to the software to increase it's accuracy and firepower by 45% while simutaneously increasing it's power efficiency by 10%, running a quick self-check on the software to make sure she didn't fuck anything up before spooling it up and poking out of cover with her newfound weapon in hand. It had a thumbhole stock, surprisingly enough...well, if she could just duct-tape on a pistol grip if she had to, but she didn't need to, at the very least.
The first victim of her jury-rigged weapon, a 'turian' laying down suppressing fire to allow his buddies to escape, ate the metal splinter propelled to hypervelocity clean in the face, his kinetic barriers flaring up to stop the shot and succeeding at it, but Shigure was already laying down a second shot clean through his skull before he could properly react, leaving yet another corpse to tumble south a ways, half of his head missing in no part thanks to the metal splinter propelled to multi-digit kilometers a second. Another turian found himself marked for gory heaven soon afterwards as well, Shigure simply shifting aim and sent a metal splinter clean through his torso and blew out a nice, neat hole on the other side, his kinetic barriers flaring up to stop the shot but failing miserably at it and leaving him to collapse as well, dead. His companion soon followed suit, Shigure simply shifting aim slightly to the left and blew a neat, clean hole into his head, leaving yet another pair of corpses to mark where they once stood. Three more followed suit in short order as well, Shigure simply shifting aim and shifted her finger onto the trigger guard and sent a hail of metal shavings downrange, leaving three more corpses to mark where they once stood and painting the surroundings in alien gore and blood. A fourth followed suit soon afterwards as well, Shigure simply aiming for his chest and sent a metal splinter clean through his heart and lungs, leaving him to fall flat onto the ground with royal blue turian blood to pour out of his body.
Silence.
A pair of hands raised themselves over a ridge when the Alliance forces stopped firing after there was no more aliens in sight to shoot at (apparently) and nobody fired, allowing the hands to reveal themselves to belong to a turian, of sorts. Two more pairs of hands showed themselves as a pair of turians emerged from their hiding spots with their arms raised and hands in the air, moving slowly and deliberately as if to make it clear to the Alliance troops that they were not a threat. When there was no fire from the Alliance ranks as the humans held their fire either out of confusion or for the sake of the Geneva Conventions on Warfare, more showed themselves, hands raised to signal surrender, clear and simple. Erin got up from her position, and Fubuki, Shigure, Javelin, and Shepard also did the same, weapons at the ready but fingers remaining off trigger for the sake of safety. A brief discussion over the COM later, a group of Alliance Ground Corps troopers moved out with weapons at the ready as well, fingers off the triggers and the selectors still set to safe. After all, they weren't planning on violating the Geneva Conventions...yet.
Fubuki walked over towards the leading alien, their equivalent to an officer, extrapolated from the markings on his armor, a 'turian', by the looks of him. He seemed to be sporting scars on his face 'plates', presumably from previous battles, judging from the faint traces of white scar tissue that remained visible, along with a pair of facial markings painted in blue on his mandibles and cheekbones that seemed to resemble a series of long, curved lines stretching from the corners of his eyes to his mandibles, and a series of smaller, curved lines extending from the edges of his mouth. There was another one on his chin as well, Fubuki noticed, and he was sporting a visor across his left eye as well. Her rifle was trained on him, but fingers off trigger for obvious reasons. She had a job to do, after all.
"Are you surrendering?" she asked in batarian, the incomplete translation codexes meaning that her words might come out broken at best, but at least it was better than no translation codex at all. At least, it would be enough for her oppoment to understand what she was talking about.
"Yes," the turian replied in batarian as well, Fubuki blinking in surprise as she heard her oppoment reply in perfect batarian, albeit with a bit of an accent. Well, she supposed that they had translation codexes as well, but hers was incomplete and therefore unable to translate the language perfectly, apparently. "We are surrendering."
Fubuki took a quick glance at the other aliens behind the turian, all with their hands in the air and weapons laid down on the ground, before nodding. "Put down your weapons and helmets and hands in the air, we'll deal with you later. Don't try anything funny, you're officially prisoners of war within our territory now, try anything and we'll total you. All of you."
She then turned towards the rest of Szurdok Fireteam and the Alliance Ground Corps troopers behind her before continuing. "Form these guys into a line and march them back to base. I'll search the place a bit more for any intel we can find...hopefully we can get some sleep after this. My sleep schedule's fucked up enough already."
Codex entry — Humans — Alliance Ground/Marine Corps order of battle
The Alliance Ground Corps and Marine Corps were tasked with different roles on the strategic level, but both are similar enough in their tactical deployment to warrant a similar command structure for the sake of ease of communication and cooperation, as well as logistics. Both services are primarily intended to fight a war of maneuver against a numerically (and technologically) superior foe, meaning that they are highly mobile, flexible and agile units with relatively light armor and equipment, but compensate with numbers and firepower, relying on their vehicles, aircraft and artillery to support their infantry when necessary, although the Ground Corps is generally more reliant on fixed defenses when on the defensive, whereas the Marines rely more on direct fire from their heavier equipment. Both corps also make heavy use of modern weaponry to achieve maximum flexibility in engagements, including weapons such as rocket launchers, grenade launchers, light machine guns, precision anti-materiel rifles, etc.
The Ground Corps' main focus lies in garrisoning planets and orbital defense installations, protecting civilian populations in case of attack using the defense in depth strategy with maginot lines around cities and mobile reserve forces to function as reinforcements for sections under attack, whereas the Marines are tasked with expeditionary duties such as conducting amphibious landings, pacification operations and invasions of enemy territories, often working in conjunction with naval elements. Both services also possess armored units consisting of tanks and AFVs, ranging from light scout cars to heavy main battle tanks depending on the situation. Tanks are rarely deployed as independent formations in general due to logistical and tactical difficulties, instead acting as part of combined arms formations consisting of tanks, specialist vehicles, and IFVs. Artillery is usually employed in support roles to soften up enemy positions prior to advancing, usually with indirect fire weapons such as mortars, field howitzers and rocket artillery, whilst Ground Corps formations are often supported by fixed defenses, especially around Fortification Defense Lines. The Ground Corps also makes extensive use of improvised defenses and booby traps, particularly during defensive battles, often utilizing mines and remote detonated explosives to inflict casualties upon attacking enemy forces and delay them in the process. The Marine Corps, meanwhile, makes heavy use of naval gunfire support to supplement it's own artillery assets, often combining surface guns with fire missions launched by orbital assets, namely, carriers.
Fireteam: Fireteams consist of five troopers each, all of which are private first class in rank or higher as the Alliance does not use the rank of private within their rank structure. They are led by a lance coporal or coporal unless instructed and organized otherwise.
*Fireteams are the standard combat formation for all Special Forces troopers regardless of rank, however they may be organized into platoons and/or companies for better effect, especially in the case of HALOs or Rangers. N7 retain the fireteam deployment baseline unless the mission is of the utmost priority.
Squad: Two fireteams form a squad of ten each and are commanded by a sergeant or equivalent unless otherwise organized by command staff. Fireteams also deploy with one Mako IFV or equivalent, with two piloting the vehicle and the rest in the troop compartment to engage on foot or through the firing ports of the vehicle, unless otherwise specified (specialized/motorized units). Whether the CO of the squad commands it as the commander of the IFV or on foot, as well as the troops assigned to pilot the IFV (driver, commander) is at his discretion.
*The equivalent unit in field artillery/air defense units is 'battery'.
Platoon: Platoons typically consist of 25—50 troops depending on the situation, however they are not a fixed unit like the others, and the amount of troops in each vary depending on the situation. Some may have as little as 15—20 troops while others can have in excess of 80. They are typically commanded by Lieutenants unless the situation warrants otherwise.
Company: This is the level where specialist units are attached to detachments as opposed to the general-purpose IFV, unless the unit itself is a specialist unit. It is usually commanded by a Major unless the situation warrants otherwise.
*The exact composition of mixed combined arms units like this one varies depending on the situation, but the most common Marine Corps lineup is four mechanized units, two armored units, one field artillery unit, one air defense unit, one signal, and one support. The Ground Corps forgoes the air defense, signal, artillery, and support units, instead grouping them as motorized infantry who typically man the defenses on a colony's maginot line, which also has signalling, artillery, anti-aircraft, and support equipment.
Battalion: A battalion is composed out of ten companies to form one thousand troops fighting cohesively in a combined arms fighting unit or similar. They are also the largest unit deployed operationally on one location at any given time due to logistics and tactical constraints; they are also the base garrison unit for small colonies not large enough to warrant the construction of a maginot line for it's defense, as well as being the base deployment for shipborne marine detachments (on cruisers and larger ships). A Lieutenant Colonel, Colonel, or higher, is in command, unless the situation, as explained before, warrants otherwise.
Brigade: Similarly to platoons, there is no fixed amount of troops in a brigade, as it is a mixed 'flying column' operational unit often cobbled together from whatever units that are available for maximum flexibility in combat. Their commanders vary from time to time, however, as they are rarely formed unless as a seperate detachment for a larger army, often as a scouting force or a vanguard. They are often commanded by Brigader Generals, although they are the norm, not the rule.
Regiment: Ten battalions form a regiment under the command of a Major General, often as a detached section of an army that either functions as a vanguard against flanking forces or as a flanking force itself. They are composed out of 10,000 troops.
Division: This is the largest single unit to be deployed in any land warfare scenario and are often tasked with defending or attacking across entire fronts or defending large cities. They are also the base garrison unit for any Class 1 Fortress Colony world and above. They are composed out of 100,000 troops and are, in the case of the Marine Corps, assigned to a light or fleet carrier for planetary assault. They are commanded by Lieutenant Generals unless otherwise specified.
Army Group/Marine Group: There is no set amount of units to be assigned to a Marine/Army Group, as they are the primary unit scattered across entire galactic fronts (or fleets). Army Groups are tasked with the defense of entire system clusters and are thus scaled to the size of such, while Marine Groups are attached to an entire fleet at any given time. In any case, Army Groups are named for the cluster they are assigned to (e.g. Army Group Theta Lyrae) while Marine Groups are numbered after the fleet they are attached to (e.g. 7th Fleet/7th Marine Group). A General is the commanding officer, although in some rare cases it may be commanded by a Field Marshal.