On Our Way to Rescue the Princess - Part 2

To add insult to injury, several flying triangles circled above us like carrion birds.  Armored Gliders. Great.

Undaunted, Cpl. Amoroso contacted the Schenectady and requested air support.  I knew the ETA for the birds was going to take a while, but I began to give up hope when the gliders landed and the pilots started to make their move on our position.

As if on cue, our LAMPREs screamed in from above, strafing the enemy positions.  The Black Guard was taken by surprise by this turn of events and they did what any red blooded man would do: They screamed like little girls and fled with their tail between their legs.

The battle won, our C.O. called for a Regroup.  We needed it.  We lost three hours total for the call.  Two hours for the rearming process (sending our spent weapons to the Schenectady and waiting for new ones) and another hour for new Marine drop-offs and a final weapons check before advancing.

Amoroso was relieved by Cpl. Chrissy “The Actress” Zizo to be the CO.  Attached to her by the hip was Pvt. Art Bjorlykke aka “Insurance Man”.  The Fuckups were reinstated to full strength with two Marines that were easy on the eyes.  Pvt. Patty Ann Breme aka “Shay Shay” and Pvt. Carol Ann “Kitty” Holbrook.  Shay Shay was a bit of klutz, but her main claim to fame was that she healed faster than a lizard regenerating its tail.  Kitty I steered clear of, not because she scared me.  Okay, I take that back.  She does scare me a little.  Why?  Well… Despite the fact that she’s a crack shot, almost as good as Deadeye, she’s little free and frivolous with gun safety.  She was cleaning an assault rifle, unaware that she had it pointed in my direction, and I almost took one in the shin when it discharged.

The CO’s waving impatiently at me.  Time to go.

Location: Planetary Defense Batteries
Time: T-9 hours

Intel said that there was a Docking Bay a couple of clicks past the Bone Yard.  Let me tell you, Intel doesn’t know dick.  I don’t know what they were smoking, but when we reached the location of said Docking Bay, we were greeted with something entirely different. A firebase.  More importantly, a planetary defense battery. Aw, fuck. 

A cold pit of fear knotted up in my stomach as I watched the batteries began to track an unseen target above us.  Duck hunting, they weren’t.

Guarding the automated batteries were a bunch of security robots.  If they caught wind of us, they’d scream for help.  Luckily, the CO was having none of that.  She fired an energy missile at the netlink, thereby severing the battery’s tracking capability as well as wiping out the enemy’s comms.  Kitty followed up with a photon missile, sending the clunkers to the Bone Yard.

With the threat eliminated, we packed up and headed towards the Citadel once more.  As we marched on, we all noticed a column of dark smoke reaching for the orange skies.  Curious, the CO directed us to it.  What we found at the end of this “rainbow” wasn’t a pot of gold, but a full on revolt of the populace against the Guard.

Location: REVOLUTION!
Time: T-8 hours

The city we entered had seen better days, smoke hung in the air like dreary curtains, and every once in a while an artillery shell would rock a building into rubble.  The Guard were not playing around.  Neither were we.

We made contact with a contingent of rebels that were holding off a Guard counterattack and bolstered their defenses.  We came at the most opportune time, they were running low on everything.  Cpl. Zizo quickly formulated a tactical plan to deal with another strike by the Guard.  What she didn’t count on was a platoon of floating gun jeeps to break away from the main force to try and punch through another rebel held position east of us.  If the jeeps got through, we were in big trouble.

Then my CO did something… rather reckless.  She drew her cutlass, bolted from our line, and moved to cut off the jeep column!  Our squads’ collective mouths were hanging open to catch flies as we watched in a mixture of horror and amazement as our dear CO tried to hold up the jeeps all by her lonesome. 

Breaking out of the stupor, Insurance Man loaded up “Mongo”, our heavy walker, with smart rounds and Shay Shay jumped into the saddle and plodded after her.  It was tense watching the jeep turrets slowly train themselves on our CO, while Shay Shay desperately tried to close.  The lead jeep’s guns began to glow and at that point we thought we were going to have to scoop up Cpl. Zizo with a vacuum cleaner.

Then, Mongo’s cannons tore a ragged line of fire through one of the lead jeep’s a-g units and terminated at the cockpit.  Before the jeep flipped over on itself, we were given the surreal view of jeep’s pilot and gunner’s insides pasting itself all over the interior, like a tomato exploding in a microwave.  The remaining jeeps were log jammed behind the downed leader and had a hard time maneuvering to get a good shot at Shay Shay.

Shay Shay pressed her advantage, and the trigger, to lay down enough destruction that the few jeeps remaining broke and headed back to the main group.  Zizo ran to Mongo, whooping like an excited four year old, and grabbed onto a service handle on Mongo’s leg.  She rode back the entire way on Mongo’s foot pad, cheering until her throat was raw.

Shortly after routing the jeeps, the Guard force was surrounded and crushed by the rebels.  While partying with the rebels after their hard won victory, we heard that our little uprising had spread like wildfire.  In response, Viceroy Yamaguchi sent his forces all over Hell’s half acre to maintain order.  That suited our CO just fine.  With the Guard stretched to the limit, we would have an easier time making it to the Citadel. 

Enough of this crap, I see that Shay Shay’s got a little group of bobbleheaded fanboys surrounding her.  Annnnd, Cpl. Amoroso’s alone.  I wonder if she’s in the mood for some company.

Location: Ion Storm
Time: T-8 hours

The rebels were gracious enough to lend us a guide.  The plan was that the guide would get us to the nearby interstellar mall, so we could loot that puppy but good.  Unfortunately, the guide was far more interested in trying to get into Shay Shay’s pants.  It took a kindly elbow strike from Amoroso to the guide’s head to get him to pay attention to his surroundings.  When he came to, we pointed out that, hey, there’s a really BIG FUCKING ION STORM heading our way and could he please point out some shelter for us to hole up in while we rode out the storm?

Naturally, he agreed.

But of course our luck in avoiding the Guard continued not to hold.  We were travelling downhill to a small cave for shelter, when Kitty noticed below us a small group of laser riflemen heading to the same cave.  They hadn’t noticed us at all, with the storm disrupting communications and visibility.  As an added bonus, we knew that they were going to have a time dealing with us, since their energy weapons were going to be on the fritz due to the storm’s peculiar properties.   Zizo realized that there was a ridge up ahead that overhung the path the Guardsmen were taking and that was a perfect place for an ambush.  She ordered Shay Shay to mount up in our LW-32 scout walker and told her to use it to cut off the Guard’s retreat. 

What bothered me was Cpl. Zizo never made it apparent in what way, or how, we were going to ambush the riflemen.  Let me say that there’s a fine line between reckless courage and downright stupidity.  In the last battle, our CO displayed the qualities of the former.  When I saw her put on a pair of mailed gauntlets and crouched on the overhand, I knew she veered to the latter category.

Before any of us could say anything, she vanished over the lip.  Her fall was broken by her two booted stomp onto the crown of a Guardsman’s head, snapping it like a dry twig.  The soldiers were caught with their pants down and had little time to react before Zizo was pounding the snot out of the lot of them.  Some of them tried to take a shot at her, but were flummoxed in their attempts to kill her by their weapons misfiring. Pvt. Bjorlykke grimaced as Zizo threw a lunge punch into a Guardsman’s armored codpiece, sundering it and by all indications making him a genetic dead end.  Panicked, the few Guard still standing retreated back the way they came only to be cut down by our walker’s Gatling gun.

For once, it felt good not to be on the losing end of things.