Durgama Takeover

Lieutenant Miranda Grimmsdottir had, at first, been eager to be given her first command. The opportunity had come a little sooner than anticipated, courtesy of the Combined Army forces that had launched an assault on Raveneye only days prior. Ever since, every square inch of the station was consumed by the flames of non-stop battle. The perpetual warfare, day and night, tooth and nail, high in orbit above Durgama struck Nadya as the closest thing to Valhalla that she would be likely to see in her lifetime. Judging by the casualty rates incurred by the alien onslaught, it was would be a small miracle if the officer left the station aboard a shuttle rather than the arms of a Valkyrie.

Still, the blood and soul of a warrior propelled the young officer onward into the thickest fighting on the Raveneye. That was why, when Major Pyotr had asked for volunteers to lead a lighting raid against the freshly-repelled Morat Aggression Forces, Nadya had been the first to raise her hand. The mission was simple enough, a smash-and-grab on an enemy forward operating position on the portside railgun fire control station. Of particular interest, besides the satisfaction of repelling a quite literal invasive species, this position was confirmed to house a Morat Tactical Uplink Beacon. To disable this piece of comms would disrupt the enemy logical network in the area, and if captured intact could be an invaluable piece of intel.

Tactical control had advised that Morat presence in the area was believed to be light, with only a token recon element on the lookout for trouble. Within a minute of first contact with the enemy, Nadya had decided that she was going to kick TacCon’s ass if she ever made it back to HQ alive. A staccato of gunshots sent the Ariadnans diving to cover, hunkering in place while the SAS forward observers worked out just what the hell was going on.

“Viper, this is Banshee. Looks like we’ve got a Tarlock fireteam in overwatch. Counting one….no, fuckin hell, make that two Yaogat marksmen. Count three Kaitok units, all looking out. Standing by for an opening to engage. Over.”

Nadya could taste bile rise in her throat at the report – she had brought a shotgun to a sniper fight, and her options to close the gap were limited. While the plan had been to advance under smoke before launching a devastating surprise attack, it became clear that an entirely new plan was needed. As if by instinct, she immediately snapped her tactical console open and began to frantically plot her options. In her ear, a comms channel crackled to life, and Major Beria began to speak.

“Urgent update, be aware that O12 monitoring data indicates you have-”

A string of explosions rang out across the battery, and a moment later the building she was perched atop began to violently shake, sending her twirling backwards and crashing to the deck. Seconds later a series of loud stomps began to echo as the explosions grew louder and louder, a deadly crescendo that was coming directly her way. With a start, she realized that she no longer heard the Major’s voice on comms. A quick check of her kit revealed an earbud attached to a thin black wire, dangling in the middle of her chest. She thumbed the piece back in with one hand, crawling to the edge of her cover with the other.

“Repeat again, you have armor approaching your position, be alert. A Raicho-class TAG has entered your AO. Do you copy?” As the Major’s words came to Nadya’s ears, the massive bulk of the alien war machine came bounding into sight, a gigantic machine gun firing indiscriminately at her men. No – not indiscriminately, she realized, but ranging in. She opened her mouth to shout a warning – but it was too late. With uncanny grace for a lumbering behemoth, the Raicho suddenly snapped the machine gun from it’s hip and into a firing position, loosing a burst of tightly-groups shots. Across the battlefield, a USAriadnan in an unmarked combat uniform caught two shots to the back, blood erupting from his mangled body. In front of him, a heavy shield thudded to the ground.

“Command, Viper,” Nadya barked in return, “are you fucking kidding me? We’re completely pinned down, we need support!”

“Acknowledged, Viper. Enemy force escalation has cleared you for immediate air support. Designate mission critical targets and hang tight, the cavalry is coming.”

With a nervous sigh, she signed off and hunkered down. Mere meters away, the Raicho continued it’s thunderous advance, loosing burst after burst at a nearby Polaris unit that was scrambling for cover. A sudden blast rocked the TAG backwards a pace as a Rokot peppered it with salvos of shotgun fire. The soldier was trapped, her concealed position directly in the path of the Morat assailant. Opting for valor over sense, the heroic Rokot sprayed the Raicho with blast after blast of shotgun fire, hoping against hope that she could inflict some damage, or at least buy her comrades the time they needed for reinforcements. Despite the valiant efforts, each attack merely pinged off the thick armor of her target, and the Raicho continued its deadly attack. After what seemed like a small eternity, the assailant was finally able to connect with the Polaris it was aiming for, a pair of machine gun hits punching clean through the beast’s armor and knocking it out. With an almost contemptuous ease, the Morat TAG fired a single shot at the Rokot that had been harassing it – a clean hit. She went down instantly, crumpling to a heap. Nadya made a mental note to put this lunatic up for commendation later, if anyone got home from this disaster alive.

“Viper, this is Equipe Mirage-5, arriving on station and bringing the heat” announced a new female voice over the comms channel in a thick Merovingian accent, her tone calm and professional. Looking up to the sky, or whatever counted for it in an orbital station, Nadya could make out the shape of two rapidly-approaching blurs. The cavalry had arrived. Sergeant Duroc, a hulking dog-warrior, made his approach first – gracefully swooping around in a wide arc that brought him directly behind the enemy sniper nest. With a mighty roar the soldier clawed his parachute harness off his massive body, and immediately took to a bounding leap at his prey. The Morats, to their professional credit, responded with almost instinctive quickness. A Kaitok warrior bristling with chain rifles pirouetted with a grace unbecoming of his bulky power armor and immediately loosed a burst of hot chain at their new attacker, catching Duroc at the apex of his mighty leap towards the marksmen. The pair of Yaogat, in turn, quickly spun in place and fired a volley of pistol rounds that all landed on target, peppering Duroc with small-caliber rounds.
None of it was enough to stop him from pulling the triggers on his pair of chain rifles, firey arcs of hot metal enveloping the two Yaogat in a cloud of molten chain. The two Yaogat, and Sergeant Duroc, collapsed in a bloody heap atop the building. While the entire exchange had only lasted moments, the air support had done what was promised – it cleared the way for the rest of the attack force to proceed.
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Margot was next, her lithe figure cutting through the air like a guided projectile. The daring Merovingian landed in a graceful roll directly behind the Raicho, who had just begun to withdraw from its attack run to rally before another push. From Margot’s position, it was almost impossible to miss. Swinging her AP rifle into her shoulder, she fired a burst of Tesium ammunition into the back of the enemy war machine. One shot struck true, puncturing the TAG’s rear armor and severing a hydraulic cable, sending purple fluid spraying across the deck. The Raicho turned to face its attacker, swinging its HMG in a wide arc of return fire that went wide. Margot continued her attack, the two combatants blasting directly at one another without a shred of cover to be found for either member. Her gun was quicker, though, and another two shots connected with the TAG and penetrated its armor. With a lurching limp, the enemy war machine staggered to a knee and powered down – a clean kill.

Margot allowed herself a brief moment of satisfaction before returning to the mission at hand, bounding forward to acquire a new target. Peeking around a barricade, she found it. A Morat officer, who met the description of a certain Kornak Gazarot, the commander of the assault on the Raveneye Starboard Battery just a day earlier. Wasn’t he supposed to be KIA? Deciding to worry about that later, Margot and Kornak traded tense bouts of gunfire with one another, both scoring hits that bounced off their thick suits of armor. Margot bounded forward and launched herself into an aerial dive, dodging Kornak’s fearsome Mk12 fire while pulling the trigger of her underbarrel shotgun – both shots striking home and downing the Morat officer on the spot. Continuing her advance, she raced towards an unused armored fighting vehicle while she prepared for another attack. Along her way, she took a moment to loose one final volley of rifle fire, catching a lone Daturazi in the back, killing him, and disabling an Ikadron-pattern combat remote that had emerged from somewhere nearby.
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The enemy continued their advance, the Morat troopers proving their rock-solid professionalism under fire despite the loss of their command and armor support in just a few moments. The remaining Kaitok warriors, eager for blood, charged forward towards the Kosmoflot position. A pair of Kaitok advanced forward, a third keeping close guard of the Beacon. The two attackers stomped forward, exchanging bursts of fire with a hidden Rokot before falling back to cover.

Springing from their concealed positions, the SAS leapt into action. The pair split up, each charging a Kaitok and attempting to affix D-charges to the beetle-like heavy infantry before them. While one found her mark, she was cut down by reactive fire before withdrawing back to cover. Her partner, vaulting past a barricade and planting an explosive on his prey, was flabbergasted to see the charge completely fail to damage the target. The momentary pause, though only a fraction of a second long, was enough for the Kaitok. A long, wicked blade swooped through the air and connected with the SAS,
opening a large gash across the Ariadnan’s chest and downing him.

The Kaitok’s victory was short-lived. From the distance, the howling roar of a Polaris Bearpode could be heard, closing fast. The white-furred beast, frothing with fury, was making a mad dash for the remaining alien. Shrugging off heavy pistol and chain rifle fire in droves, the Bearpode drove itself onward in utter contempt of its mounting injuries. With a final charge, the bear-warrior brought his trenchhammer over his head with both hands, and brought it crashing down with inhuman fury. Both duelists, grievously injured, fell together in a heap.

Finally, thankfully, the Morats had had enough. With a mere fraction of both forces clinging bitterly to life, the Combined soldiers made a hasty retreat from their former position, taking the beacon with them. In a final act of defiance, the cockpit of the Raicho hissed open, a slender Morat female with a long braid hopped out of her disabled war machine. The pilot sprinted directly at Margot, her twin assault pistols firing wildly at the woman that had destroyed her precious vehicle. Margot, in a split-second decision, fired a single blast of her shotgun at the new threat. Both assailants hit their marks, leaving both women sprawled on the floor in mutually-assured destruction.

All in all, the battle had been a mild success. While Lt Grimmsdottir and her forces had failed to capture the enemy Beacon, they had succeeded in driving the Morat menace from their positions. A pyrhhic victory, but a victory nonetheless.

OOC: I will format pictures to fit the battle report later, I can’t figure out how to do it in-line from mobile