Chapter 34: Fearsome Stand
Agent Robinson is preparing to strike at the Aldecaldos base of operations with an armored assault with their pride of Militech MT-5 main battle tank leading the way. "This is a big distraction. We need to capture Lucy, that is our goal. Once that is done, we will leave. We need to keep our strength here. The Wraiths and Red Tide are big factions here, we need to keep our cards close," Robinson said.
"Yes madam, prepare for a full assault. Capture Lucy she is the top priority," the tank commander said as they confronted the nomads in a big battle.
Elsewhere V can see something in the distance via a drone to see a big force is coming their way. "Seems like Militech is bringing out the big guns on us," V said to see several vehicles like unmodified Basilisks, armored transports, and the MT-5 leading the charge with gunships as backup.
"Time to defend this place. Lucy is who they are after," Panam said as V turned his drone into attack mode to begin pounding them with missile strikes and hails of bullets to tear into their ranks.
"Shit seems like the nomad rats know we are coming," the tank commander said as his tank opened fire with its HMG turret to take out the drone but had several vehicles being destroyed or disabled. "No matter, keep moving. The girl is the target, kill anyone who gets in your way," the tank commander ordered.
Rebecca puts on her yellow armored jacket to prepare for the strike team trying to capture Lucy. "Lucy, keep your eyes open. Stay close to the HQ, it's littered with guns and missile pods," Rebecca said to cock her shotgun to brace for the assault.
Cortez grabs a custom Ajax assault rifle with a tactical stock attached to the buffer tube, 60-round casket magazines filled with 6.5mm rounds, a hybrid sight, and a special suppressor to deafen its noise and increase range.
"Mitch, you in the tank?" Panam asked on the radio.
"Yep, I am Panam. We are going to engage the armored forces. The Hellhounds will use their missile pods to take out the light armor while we deal with the Main Battle Tank. I fought these things in the Unification War. They are nasty," Mitch said.
"Yeah, the FSA has Basilisks while NUSA was using MT-5 along with the older models," V said.
"Mitch can handle this. It's going to be tough though," Panam said.
"Indeed, I know how to deal with these metal beasts. Keep watch over the rear and make sure to wipe out those Militech bastards," Mitch said as V put on a stealth suit able to optical camo to wield his Longshot bolt action rifle.
"Good luck choom, we are going to need it," V said as Panam got her Nekomata tech sniper rifle.
"Going to need to defend the mortar sites and keep them safe to shell the Militech positions," Panam said.
"Preem, let's move," V said as they went off to defend the base and Lucy. "Dakota, is the power armor ready yet?" he asked.
"It has enough power to go for about a few hours," Dakota said as she was preparing for the assault.
"Good, once there is an opening. I am going to use it," V said as he checked his rifle to see gunships and AVs coming in trying to land troops into the fortified town making it very dangerous for anyone to come in by air. Missiles, bullets, and mortar strikes take out aircraft sending them crashing onto the ground.
"Keep moving," the commander said not caring about his troops getting killed. Some managed to get into the town but they fought against great force. Cortez is pumping rounds into a Militech soldier with his Ajax to fill her up with bullets.
Yuri is on top of a roof to use his Kyubi to put rounds into the heads of the troopers. "Some of those guys managed to get inside. Sweep and kill," Yuri tosses a Gash grenade to let the laser beams slice into the enemy soldiers.
Panam is popping heads with her sniper rifle to toss a frag grenade to blast apart a group of enemies. "This is a pain in the ass," Panam said.
V is clocked to use his suppressed sniper to take out enemy troops. Despite V losing his vast amount of tolerance to Cyberware. His experiences and adaptability allow him to remake himself into a great nomad sniper along with using tech like drones and special suits to gain against his opponents.
"I know, it's pretty nova right now," V said dryly.
"Seems like this is a bit sloppy but these commanders are not promoted by merit but corporate ass-kissing," Panam said.
Stella sees a group of soldiers spread electric shocks to zap and get nailed in the heads with a D5 Sidewinder smart assault rifle. "Gee, they keep coming. Lucy, are you okay?" Stella asked as Lucy was within the HQ guarded by battle-hardened nomad fighters wielding Defender machine guns to kill out a bunch of troopers.
"I am fine, we are holding up," Lucy hacks a turret on the building to pepper explosive rounds into a crowd of troopers. "Rebecca, what about you?" Lucy asked on the radio.
Rebecca is firing shots from her Love revolver to pop the soldiers in the head to drop them in the desert. "This is nuts, Like a real battlefield, this is way above what we did before as Edgerunners," Rebecca said as Lucy nodded her head in agreement to hack a trooper to make them burn to death.
"Yep, it's on another level. Militech is relentlessly, trying to capture me," Lucy said,
"I am not going to let them take you away from us," Rebecca said punching a Militech trooper to send him flying a wall to burst apart violently on impact becoming a pile of gore.
She sees an enemy heavy trooper wielding an HMG trying to shoot her. She rushes at him with him dodging the trail of bullets to slam her fist into the heavy to stun him and go up his chest to twist his neck instantly killing him.
Two Mayhem gunships were bombed out of the sky to crash into the desert sands. They all noticed the Militech was trying to bomb them to kingdom come making sure not to kill Lucy by accident or suffer the wraith of her Corpo overloads or worse the President's anger.
Mitch and others went into the desert to engage with the enemy armor. They are using their homing missiles to rain down death onto the armored units reducing them into fiery heaps.
The Militech Basilisks were no match to the Nomad Basilisks. The Militech soldiers were surprised that they had done modifications to the Basilisks making them way stronger than before.
"Gee, those two tanks are punching about their weight class," the tank commander said as he opened fire to use the railgun to destroy one of the Hellhounds turning it into a burning wreck. A couple more Hellhounds were destroyed by autocannon fire turning them into fiery piles.
"We can outmaneuver the tank. Strafe and hit it with 25mm and homing missiles," Mitch ordered as his tank partner was on the second seat.
"You got it," he said as the two nomad tanks were using their better agility to avoid the shots from the tank's railgun. They were firing their twin 25mm autocannons to pepper the MBT unable to do real damage.
"These rats think they can punch through this tank's hull with those peashooters," the commander is being cocky with Mitching what he is doing. He fires several 25mm rounds into the tank not to damage it but to disable its other offensive systems.
"Sir, our weapons are getting destroyed," the gunner said as the 25mm autocannon was knocked out.
"What!?" the tank commander is shocked as the ATGM pod is destroyed as well by the volley of fire from the Nomad Basilisks. They fired a wave of homing missiles but the MT-5 managed to block half of the missiles with its APS. The explosives strike the target to score hits reducing its hull strength by 75 percent.
"Preem work, we need to keep hitting them until that beast is destroyed," Mitch said as the two hover tanks used their speed to avoid getting hit by the railgun,
The two remaining Hellhounds were pounding away at the hover tanks to reduce them to scrap metal. They roll away to dodge the incoming railgun shots from the MBT.
"Take out its treads," Mitch ordered as the two hover tanks trained their twin autocannons to strike at the left side peppering it with explosive fire to heavily damage the left treads making it much slower.
"Shit, they are cleaver than I thought," the tank commander said getting slammed with homing missiles with half getting through to crash into the MBT.
"Hull strength at 50%," the computer said.
"V, how are you guys doing over there?" he called.
"Holding our own but they are relentless. I am heading for the power armor. Clean up the tin soldiers here," V said using his cloaking suit to sneak towards the War Commando to see it behind the tent.
Cortez and Rebecca are blasting and killing soldiers with rapid success but they see the Jumpers showing up boost jumping away. "Gee, not these guys again," Rebecca said as they were going after Lucy again. "No, you don't," Rebecca dashing forward with Cortez chasing behind her.
Cortez hacks enemy drones to make them attack their guys while making them into makeshift bombs to blow up groups of Militech soldiers. He raises his Ajax and fires several bursts to slice into the enemy soldiers to cover Rebecca.
Stella and Yuri fire onto Jumpers with Stella using her hacks to disable the exosuits to make them vulnerable to getting hit by her smart rounds. Yuri tosses EMP grenades to disable their jumping and dashing abilities to nail them in their heads.
"Lucy, watch out," Panem said firing a big 14.5 round into a Jumper's chest to see it tear out a chuck of flesh from their broken body.
Lucy is unleashing a bunch of quickhacks to disable their linear frames to fire the turret to rip into their bodies.
"Get away from her," Rebecca is rushing at them taking in all the bullets at her. Her skin weave and armored jacket are tanking the shots with her using her scoped revolver and EMP grenades to quickly take them out.
She tackles a Jumper to bash her fists into her skull to turn it into red mash. She takes the Jumper's body and tosses it into a group of Jumpers to crush them on impact. "Kill her," the Jumpers launch bullets and mini rockets.
Rebecca activates her Berserk mode with her body able to take several heavy shots and mini rockets able to shrug off the hits. She leaps onto the ground to unleash a large shockwave to kill over 10 Jumpers in gory style.
One of the Jumpers got close trying to grab onto Lucy but Rebecca drew Guts to fire a slug to pop the Jumper's head like a ballon. Brain matter and blood got on Lucy as Rebecca turned off her Berserk state.
"Thanks, Rebecca. That was close," Lucy said as Cortez and Rebecca got Lucy inside the building to protect her.
"No problem, these Jumpers are annoying," Rebecca said as they held down the HQ building.
V managed to reach the War Commando to press the button to unlock the hatch to slip inside into the 8-foot-tall power-armored suit. V links up with a link cable on his wrist to begin connecting with the suit. "Systems online," the War Commando roars to life to begin matching V's movements.
"Impressive," V grabs onto the Tempest HCR to walk out of the tent to aim his weapon to begin shooting huge bullets to tear into the Jumpers. He pulls out the wrist monoblade to slice a Jumper in half in mid-air splitting her down the middle.
"The fuck, they have Power Armor here," the soldier said as all the Jumpers are dead, and now V uses missiles and heavy bullets to tear up the remaining soldiers in the town. He stomps onto the ground to unleash waves of flames to burn away the enemies.
"They have a War Commando, since when," the tank commander said as the MT-5 got hit by missile strikes again being the only vehicle left.
"Hull strength 15 percent, escape is recommended," the computer said.
"Damn it, they can't have this machine to make them stronger," the tank commander said as he presses a self-destruct to make his tank blow up making it unusable to the enemy killing himself and his crew in the blast.
The fight is over and Militech's task force was destroyed with the nomads suffering some losses as well. Losing 3 out of the 5 Hellhounds in the armored battle on the desert sands.
"Gee, it's over guys. They are all dead," Panam said as everyone was glad it was over and began taking in their wounded and dead to begin sweeping up the broken gear and bodies everywhere.
"V, you were rocking that suit well," Rebecca said as V looked pretty cool out there.
"Thanks, I can at least use this to keep the base secured or go on the offensive against the groups here," V said.
"Hey, some of these vehicles can be used. One of the Basilisks is still working. Lucky us, it has a Railgun on it," Mitch said.
"One hell of a find there. Anyway else?' Panem asked.
"Some Hellhounds were knocked out but still usable. We can take what we can," Mitch said as they have a new Basilisk with railgun and 4 Hellhounds to add to their vehicle pool.
"V, how was the suit?' Dakota asked.
"Preem work, it's crazy," V gets out of the hatch to hop onto the sands.
"Good, we are going to need it to protect the base from future attacks," Dakota said.
Rebecca checks on Lucy. "Are you okay?" she asked.
"Yeah, but the others got hurt because of me," Lucy said as Rebecca tapped her on the forehead. "What was that for?' Lucy questioned her.
"Did you forget? We are doing this because you are one of us. We will help you out no matter what. That is what family does," Rebecca said.
"Family, you are right. I am sorry about it," Lucy said as Rebecca patted her on the shoulder.
"Don't worry about it. Besides we kicked some major ass, and we managed to win a fight with Militech," Rebecca feeling psyched about this.
"Yeah, the Aldecaldos seem used to fighting Militech," Lucy said as their defensive setup was well-designed.
"Cortez mentioned how they have been fighting Militech when they were in the badlands of Night City," Rebecca said.
"Makes sense, we need to gather up and clean up the place," Lucy said as they began to rebuild their defenses and clear out the dead. Taking weapons, ammo, and vehicles to add to their inventory.
Elsewhere Agent Robinson is shocked by how well the nomads managed to hold off their assault with a lot of her resources or even taken by the nomads. "Shit, they are more resourceful than I thought," she said as she held back her forces to keep her base secure. "Oh well, we need to keep watch and make our move when it suits us," she thought to keep watch over the factions within the region.