I haven't kept track of number of dead and insane civilians, but I'm pretty sure those combined are over 3500 already. Map is largely black and red now. Care to take guess who have caused most civilian deaths by their actions so far?
Fire two mortars into the rubble then fall back south as fast as I can while remaining stealthed,
keep particle cannon drones close to me, if I get shot quickly fire the particle cannons into the source of the fire.
Keep the two machine gun drones with out ammo behind to watch the area which I just blew the fuck up.
Once torwards the siuth side of the city hunker down and send out any remaining unarmed drones to hide in the surrounding buildings and will keep look out for hostiles.
Drones with ammo remaining stay close by and cloaked for now unless a super soldiers is detected, at which point open fire.
I actually forgot to add note that your left arm was disabled by the arrow and let you run amok without problems. That's rectified now and will properly make difference.
You kneel down and place your particle cannon on ground so you can actually operate the mortar. Figuring correct angle from this close is not easiest task, but you think you got it. Of course keeping the angle and loading round into mortar with only one hand is a quite juggle, one you never actually get to finish. You are so focused on the zone of destruction that you do not even notice when you get shot on from east.
Something strikes right into your particle cannon, pierces it dealing enough damage to render it inoperable and embeds itself deep in your right shin armor. Two more bullets strikes you on your exposed right side and by some miracle straight into the only weak spot; the thin line separating your frontal armor plate from back piece. One pierces through enough to make contact with the reactor case cracking it. A bunch of warnings pop up in your vision and blare into your digital ears, each telling short tale of crack in neutrino shield container and warning about possible neutrino shield leak. Warnings recommend shutting down damaged reactor and getting it fixed real damn quickly.
All your drones turn and focus on east where the bullets (and the arrow that's now stuck in your leg (and in destroyed particle cannon)) came only to see three mecha-lion-dinosaurs running east and disappearing into all concealing cloud developing ahead and behind them, completely hiding them from all of your sensors. You make quick estimate of their predicted path and fire both cannon drones at there but you are no longer certain if particle cannons actually have any effect on them. Seeing how they completely survived your last onslaught, sneaked around and ambushed you when you though you were safe. Not only that, but it appears they also have capacity to detect you even when cloaked. That, or the cloack is not as perfect as it looks like. Maybe they have sonar too?
Anyway, you are feeling the disadvantage now. Better retreat now and restart offense from better position, otherwise you may end up playing their game and that's worst thing to do in battlefield. You disconnect power cables to the destroyed particle cannon and leave it behind as you escape south. You only take three steps before to bended metal bands keeping your prosthetic in place breaks in your right leg. Apparently that damned arrow damaged it enough. You stumble, but stay up and in motion, and hobble south as fast as you can. It was good decision, because drone radars detect another of those total concealment clouds appearing in midst of the rubble where you were shooting earlier.
You hobble quickly south into their old concealment cloud there, take hard turn and take cover in some random building in there, leaving drones keeping eye on things and debating among yourselves who's to blame. Let's recap the situation:
Enemy: mecha-lion-dino
Demonstrated capabilities:
* Anti-stealth system: Extremely likely.
* Probability of sonar usage: Very high.
* Aimbot: Confirmed.
* Counter intelligence: Can produce clouds of material providing total concealment. It may hinder their detection systems, but better not make any dangerous assumptions here.
* Defense: Unpenetrable, as far as you can tell.
* Smarts: In this single exchange of fire they outsmarted you twice. First they lured you following them and then they circled around and ambushed you from side. They also seem to prefer shooting you over your drones, which is oldest strategy in the books; take out the commander and the army will be left into disarray.
* Weapons: Capable of damaging your armor plating and even fully piercing it at weakest points. They have already produced a weak point into middle of your chest, where one of your brains is located. Another shot into those may go through. They even have armor piercing super sonic arrows for gods sake! Evidently they dealt far more damage to you than you dealt to them.
Talking about arrows, you pull out the arrow stuck in your leg with some difficulty and inspect it and the damage. The arrow head is two thin triangle blades intersecting each other and has remains of some sort of casing. It's nowadays very hard for you to make realistic estimates of weight so you can't really say anything other than it's light. The dent it made into your armor is considerable and, after scraping heavier but soft material out of it, you can easily see the spot where those blades cut into your armor, a cross shaped cut in middle of the dent. Had it any more momentum, if would have cut through and let it's apparent payload inside. Traditional armor piercing effect in form of an arrow.
So in conclusion: you are pretty screwed. You need different strategy against them. You also need to get new hydrogen tanks for your cannon drones. The damaged ones in your drop container may have intact ones. And you need to fix your legs. Again.
Yes. Hide. One by one you drag your bodies down the hatch and inside, blisfully uninterrupted. Down there, in total darkness, your mind slowly reels back into operational world and you regain enough mental fortitude to have an actual thoughts instead of broken survival instincts. Thoughs such as fuck I'm tired, this sucks balls and those two are dying.
Indeed, your recon bodies are bleeding seriously enough to be physically unable to think. Effectively reducing you into three. Not that it makes much difference in your current state.
More thunder in distance.
Decided I'd try and do a thing.
I, as Henry Reingeist, the scientist and engineer masquerading as a soldier, am going to attempt a bit of improvised self-restoration.
I know how the cooling lanes inside my lungs are structured, I have schematics for every single radiator vane and shutoff valve in my memory. I have near-perfect control of my internal functions, as far as the circumstances allow. Can I devise a way to flush some of the reserve coolant (water) from the storage tanks into the lungs? It will evaporate/boil off, providing a temporary cooling boost and maybe clearing some of the dust out, at the expense of reducing overall heat capacity of the coolant system.
((This is an action rather than a question, because Henry squad aren't going to be doing much else I'd imagine, so I can take direct control.))
Henry squad:
...
...
Need to shed heat.
Need time.
Need backup.
Gunther squad:
This is bad. They're done for if we don't engage the soldier. Pretty sure that's him in the dust. His optical cloak needs work.
That weapon system from before was pretty destructive. Can we lure this guy into the sniper's line of fire? An arrow into his gut should get his attention.
Then we'd smoke up the street and make it look like we're going towards the corrosion-cannon people. Double back and get Henry out.
((The option to sort-of-simulate round two works. We can write epic stories that happened during it later. 
))
Gunther squad engage the cloaked enemy then use the TOC grenades to bait it to the bullet stopping corrosion people. Then save Henry squad.
Henry squad attempt cooling and when the suppressing fire stops attempt to get out of the dust
Henry squad: The cooling system operates on autonomic principle, but accepts overriding commands as a backup feature. Your lungs do not possess flood valves, but theoretically you could shut valves everywhere else and overpressurize system around lung radiators. However your cooling system is sturdy thing, it won't break from simple overpressure. If anything, coolant pipes may burst somewhere else along the body just as likely. In worst case pipes break near the coolant storage which would mean leaking it all over your insides and that, as you can imagine, will cause whole host of other problems in addition of rapid overheating. But it is worth of trying. If it works, cool, if not... well, not so cool. Pun intented.
There's certain visual element in case of success too; imagine a dead looking creature standing up on shaking legs, hot mist pouring out from its open mouth. An universal sign of "you are about to get your ass kicked". It could be scary sight if done properly. However experiments with potential to backfire are not fit for current situation. Maybe when you are not actively being chased by a invisible entity capable of destroying you with its invisible flying cannons.
Gunther squad: It appears the enemy may be crouching seeing how the horizonal invisible protrusion lowers to ground level and the entire invisible area becomes less tall and more wide. The plan is simple. Burst out, assaults throw already primed TOCs in both ways, all shoot HATAKs and run towards tetris people, but actually get back inside the moment TOC cloud covers you. Importance of timing cannot be overstated, you have very brief window of action between being detected and being shielded by TOC. As soon as the enemy retaliates, Henry's squad should burst out under the rubble and drop one TOC to cover their escape. You wait for a moment before springing into action.
All three of you spring out, Ben and Carl throwing already smoking TOC grenades and Gunther drawing HATAK arrow. Shape and orientation of the horizonal long thing indicates it's a weapon, a big weapon, so it is probably a good idea to take it out. To reduce enemy's firepower. Gunther takes care of that while Ben and Carl fire roughly at the center of its mass. Without stopping to watch results that you may not see anyway you all turn and run east into the cloud and make sharp turn back to north and dive into different building there and not a moment too late; enemy fires again its ear destroying weapon into ground behind you. Shockwave does its usual thing on your ears, blasts wooden front door into splinters and probably kills few civilians who were near by. But otherwise you three are fine.
Henry's squad takes the hint, pushes rubble out of the way slipping out of their external armor and drops TOC to cover their escape. Both squads work their way through buildings next to a garden by the canal by cutting holes into walls with their hyperalloy swords. Regrouping there you take inventory and stock of the situation:
Two units almost certainly dead. Henry's squad lost their outer armor and half of their auxialiry cameras underneath. Henry lost two quivers into rubble, it seems, and has his arrow capacity cut in half. Everybody is deaf, which means losing your only way of detecting the enemy. Granted, there's two situational ways to detect it and possibly its drones; the extremely weak heat signature and the way how its cloaking field affects entire area around it. Latter is very unreliable and works only in areas with high air particle count. Former requires paying extremely close attention on IR bandwitch now that you can hear it coming. Changes are you won't see it coming next time. Damage it has taken is unknown. So far you have been using only HATAK rounds, but the enemy appears to be still fully operational, or feinting it. You may have take out one of its major weapons, but that is uncertain too. You shouldn't really plan around it.
So far "hit and run tactics" have not been very effective, but nothing better comes into mind at the moment.
To answer the question of the crazies:
Yes, yes, and I don't use Windows (I use Fedora Linux)
Head towards the dust pillar.
Maybe they have built in hate towards Linux because they all just run towards you screaming incoherently. Sufficiently threatening display, you decide and spray bullets on their faces. When they are all dead, your machine gun and assault rifles of the zombies click in vain signaling empty clips. Good time to reload.
You get down on the road and wander to west. It's kinda funny actually, where others leave trail of death and destruction, you leave trail of utter and complete insanity.
You keep jogging to west, ignoring thunder and some very large caliber weapon firing in there at halfwa point. Right now you are paying more attention to your suprisingly silent neighbourhood. Screams and songs of insanity are left behind and replaced by silence of death. There's bloody footprints everywhere, occasional torn off and partially eaten limbs discarded into deeper shadows.
Here the road opens wider crossroads of five different road meeting. Widest leads to north dividing into multiple lanes, two leads to east, northernmost being the one you arrived from, one goes to south-southwest towards what appears to be an ongoing big fire. Last road, your target, takes you to west, possibly passing south of another big fire. And towards rising cloud of hot air and concrete dust. Also possibly towards your imminent death.
Um...look at the stars. Maybe try and figure out where we are? Also, don't die.
Still on northern hemisphere. Without knowing exact time of day, you would say somewhere between China and Spain.
You won't die as long as nobody comes to kill you. And as long as your body won't use your brain as source of nutrients.
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Topic: Roll to create a supersoldier! Bloody air resistance (Read 131630 times)