Nerrone's Rangers IC

Now, throughout the entire battle, Quark had been in the area, helping team A, and 'Cuna keeping watch of the ship and looking out for injured. Then there had been the gunshots and people and things from the ship, that's when 'Cuna decided that team A could survive without her for a bit, informing team A she'd be investing, but Quark stayed with the team, knowing he could help with hacking.
So 'Cuna took up the job of going into the ship. It was still in relatively the same condition, still a bit of rubble here and there though. After about a minute, 'Cuna tapped into the sensors and found exactly where the person was. It was a relatively easy to find place, behind a few boxes. The man appeared to be in a relatively bad position, and after a quick scan, 'Cuna determined he had 3 bone fractures. She opened the medical pack, put a condition scanner onto him, which would also serve as a tracking devise, and used some medical stimulant in a little syringe to wake him.
"Hello? What happened here?" 'Cuna asked as the man began regaining consciousness.

Celdryc went and rejoined the group. When he was there he asked the group:"Did anyone else notice something fall out of the sky earlier?"

The main foyer was not overtly large, but neither was it in any way small. Almost everything was attached to the walls. Everything that wasn't was pushed up against them, some expensive looking chairs and tables, to name a few. Directly to Flank's left was the reception desk, with the terminal sitting fat and lazy on its varnished wooden surface.

The effort put into decorating the interior was directly proportional to that put into designing the formerly beautiful square. The floor was a polished marble mosaic, and the white, vaulted ceiling was ribbed with intricate designs. It occurred to Flank that Sapphire Point might have been an art gallery before a defence tower.

Along the walls to his left and right were several doors, and at the far end of the room, five elevator doors stared blankly back at Flank. Other than that, the foyer seemed empty.

((@Delta: I apologise if you don't want me doing this.))

Rhak turned to Celdryc.
"No. Actually I was busy fighting the giant mech."
He had actually seen a shadow fall from the tower, but wasn't on the mood. They needed to act fast, now when the element of suprise had been lost.
"We need a new strategy. I advise that we split. I will take two with we making it a trio. We can dub it, 'Support Team'."
Rhak adressed to Kwa and Dagon.
"I will try to give support parallel to both Strike Team and Hacker Team. We will keep in contact through radio. Either way, I'm going solo."
Rhak unsecured the rifle Flank had given him.

Kwa frowned and replied to Rhak, "I do not advise dividing our efforts at this point: we may well need the full force of the group to push through to the security booth on the first floor. Until we reach it, we do not have a complete idea what we are up against. I suggest we remain as one unit until more is known about the threat we face."


Dagon, meanwhile, had heard 'Cuna, and quickly joined her on top of the Lacuna's hull, where Grey lay slumped awkwardly, a recently used pistol in one hand.

"Poor blighter looks like he had one helluva time getting down here," he said, inspecting the new arrival, "Reckon he ejected from one of Frerraro's defence fighters? Doesn't look like the uniform, but..." Dagon trailed off, and instead attempted to raise Grey from unconsciousness, clicking his fingers by what he presumed to be the alien's ears and lifting one of Grey's eyelids.

"Hey... can you hear me?" He raised his voice slightly.


At this moment, Flank's survey of the foyer from the main doorway was suddenly interrupted. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom within and he began to perceive further details, a flash of bright yellow light flew past his shoulder, accompanied by the distinct sound of a blaster discharge from within the building.

The bolt continued its flight past Rhak, and embedded itself some meters away in the outer wall of the compound.

"Not again!" groaned Bor as he drew his weapons again. He fired a round in the general direction of the building, in the hopes of drawing additional enemy fire.

"Suit Restart process initiating, please stand by."

Grey slowly woke up, taking a good look of his surroundings, he seemed to be looking at a garden of some sort, but it was burning, covered in pock marks, and hydraulic fluid. The sun was slowly setting, but he could see a cruiser that shot him down continue to decimate the city. He just hoped it wouldn't get any ideas and go after Sapphire point. He tried to move himself around, but was met with horrific pain.

"Movement is not reccomended, bone fractures detected in the left leg, right shoulder, and left hand." His suit said in a monotone voice.

Grey swore. He was left handed, which would complicate things in the long run. His medical suite could mend flesh, clot and fill deep wounds, and mend simple bone breaks, but not serious fractures like these.

He suddenly became aware of the two figures over him. One of them had his hand on him the entire time. He wondered how he managed to ignore that.

"Hey... can you hear me?" One of them said, he appeared to be more hardened than the one next to him. He decided if things got hairy, he would shoot him first.

"Yeah, I read you loud and clear. Name's Grey, how can I help you on this fine day?"

The other one spoke up.

"What happened to you?"

Grey smiled and winced in pain.

"Long story, maybe if you get me off of this thing and back to somewhere more comfortable, we can talk."

"Aah, dammit!" Flank swore, before running around the desk and dropping behind it. After a moment's thought, he reached up and pulled the terminal off the desk.

He hadn't been looking at the source of the blast when it had rudely decided to shoot at him, but nevertheless he poked his cannon over the varnished mahogany and fired a red plasma bolt in retaliation, hoping that it would do something to make the day easier. However, it was dark, and the bright yellow bolt left a colour streak right across his two technological viewpoints. He could barely see a thing.

"God damn it!" he fumed, loosing another bolt, "I wish I had a night scope!"

Bianca could barely see her way in the darkness but unlike Flank, she remained calm. Even though Bianca cannot see where the rest of Hacker Team are she can still hear them. Bianca addressed to them: "This might be easier if one of us had torches or something to see where we are. Has anyone got at least on them?"

----------------

Chalen hummed along to one of his faveourite songs as his Strike Team hurried on to their desnated goal.

Delta wrote:

Kwa frowned and replied to Rhak, "I do not advise dividing our efforts at this point: we may well need the full force of the group to push through to the security booth on the first floor. Until we reach it, we do not have a complete idea what we are up against. I suggest we remain as one unit until more is known about the threat we face."

At this moment, Flank's survey of the foyer from the main doorway was suddenly interrupted. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom within and he began to perceive further details, a flash of bright yellow light flew past his shoulder, accompanied by the distinct sound of a blaster discharge from within the building.

The bolt continued its flight past Rhak, and embedded itself some meters away in the outer wall of the compound.

"Noted." Rhak answered towards Kwa before jerking back, as the bolt flew right next to him. He looked back towards the entrance and back to Kwa.
"You might have a point there."

'Cuna got the boxes off with some help, and began readying some medical supplies. "I hope we can fix you up quickly, but for now, I'd like to ask one question. How did you end up on our ship?" 'Cuna asked, getting out the bandages.

----------------

Quark had been amazed at the Saphire Point at first, and still was. Too bad now he couldn't see anything at all. He heard Bianca, and said "I don't have a torch, or any lighted supplies on me. My devises can only be as bright as an LED, and that won't help us here. Plus we're kind of in danger of being killed now." Quark sighed. "I never seem to get break from this stuff." Quark said, trying to figure out his surroundings, "It's always exploding or being shot at or attacked or crashing on this team." After another attack in the dark, Quark smiled. "One of the reasons I found this job better than any other."

When their assailant didn't seem to notice Bor's attack, Bor fired again in the hopes of getting his/her/its attention.

((Sorry, wasn't sure what else to post. We can't let NR die!))

((And the NR continues to go as fast as a stalled car))

The bolt he fired could be heard smacking into the far wall of the foyer, so Flank decided to give the terminal he held a try. He pushed the power button down for a second, after which he was greeted by a cheerful sounding BLIP, and the terminal's welcome display flickered into existence on its smooth, shiny screen. Three options made themselves visible before Flank: LogOn, ShutDown, and LockDown.

He was by no means an experienced technician, but he knew that ShutDown and LockDown would be counter-productive options. He selected LogOn and was soon presented with the intimidating password display. Lacking any knowledge on what the password actually was, Flank started entering variations of words he deemed likely to be the correct password: Sapphirepoint, SFSapphire, Sferraro, Zirthinnite...

((Agree with potato. This goes to slow.))
The mysterious assailant, seemed to be a master of hide and seek, as Rhak could not notice him or her.
He gripped the rifle Flank had given him and aimed down through the entrance.

Kwa stood outside to the open doorway leading into Sapphire Point, her back pressed against the wall to one side of the entrance, and spoke into her comlink:

"What's the situation in there?"


After his fourth attempt to guess the password, Flank's nascent hacking career was abruptly cut short as the terminal registered his repeated failures and put itself into standby mode, telling him to "Contact an administrator for further assistance." Fortunately, it seemed there was one right there in the foyer to help, if by 'administrator' one meant 'automated gun turret' and by 'help' one meant 'cause lethal blaster wounds'. A flash of yellow light momentarily lit the room as the gun battery, set somewhere in the far reaches of the ceiling, let off a powerful energy blast towards the reception desk, where the Rangers currently inside the building had gathered.


Outside, Dagon helped 'Cuna with getting Grey aboard the ship. "You reckon we have any meds left?" He asked as they entered the living area.

When they were all seated, he turned to Grey: "You never did tell us how you ended up on the roof."

Rhak finally glimpzed the turret. He hated those things.
He fired a burst towards it and ran to the other side of the entrance.
"We got a bl*sted turret!"
He flinched as a yellow light flashed through the entrance.
"We should've taken the roof!"
He said towards Kwa as he checked if the rifle could take his clips. It couldn't.

With an oath, Flank threw the terminal onto the ground. An instant later, the bolt fired from the turret made contact with the desk. As a result, the was a resounding CRASH as the desk exploded into a shower of wood chips.
"Jesus!"
The unarmoured skin on Flank that faced the former desk was riddled with seemingly infinite splinters, giving part of his body the appearance of an Echidna. If his skin was any less dense it might have started bleeding again. With a new, unobstructed view of the assailant, he fired another bolt while preparing to get up.

"You never did tell us how you ended up on the roof"

Grey froze, he didn't trust these people enough to give them the full truth, if he told them he was trying to steal their ship and leave them for dead, they would most likely kill him. He didn't want that, considering all the hoops he just had to jump through. He looked around, Cuna and Dagon were patiently waiting for his response, they seemed unarmed, but so was he. Hand to hand combat would most likely result in him getting an unpleasant beatdown.

If only he held on to his pistols...

He had to make something up, or they'd most likely begin to get suspicious. He could say the details were fuzzy due to a concussion, he probably did have one, but it wouldn't get them off his back for long. He would have to make something up, and fast.

"I was hired by the Santa Ferraro government to try and infiltrate the ship that is razing the place and sabotage it so their defense force could have enough time to stage a counterattack, I was with a squad of about seven other Mercs, our orders were to destroy their weapons system, but the engines and bridge were secondary objectives. We were riding in on small, single-man ships in an attempt to minimize casualties if they decided to open fire."

He paused, they seemed to be buying it. He was just about ready to shut his mouth, but he remembered he needed to explain how he ended up here.

"Sadly, the ship I was on was one of the first to go down when the ship open fired, and I had to abandon ship and make an emergency landing on the roof of your ship. I have low-power jump jets that I used to soften the impact, but you can obviously see that I made a pretty hard landing."

He stopped talking, and leaned back and took a deep breath. Grey hoped they bought his story, but he was eager to change the subject. He leaned up and gave the duo a concerned look.

"Now, I've been hearing the sounds of a heavy fire fight for quite some time now outside, do you mind telling me what you're up too?"

Dagon was more than happy to get the pleasantries out of the way and focus on more immediately important matters:

"You've landed outside Sapphire Point," he told Grey, "Looks like someone's up there making sure no-one can bring the city's orbital defenses to bear against that strike cruiser, so we were contacted by—"

"Oh Spode shutupshutupshutupshutup!" Governor Dier's voice almost shrieked into his ear.

"...uh, we were contacted to bring them back online toot sweet."

Kwa was next to break into the conversation over the comms: "Things are heating up inside the tower. Did you give the order to move in?"

"No. You?"

There was a pause on the line, in which Kwa did a very effective job of conveying her irritation through the medium of silence: "...Alright, everyone move in. We want to push through to the security booth on the first floor if we can."


In the dimly lit foyer, the gun turret swiveled in its cradle and locked onto Flank, tracking his movements for a moment before letting loose another high-powered shot, aiming to take out the already-wounded Ravis, or at least catch him in the blast's area of effect.

Though he had not yet acquired his target, Bor decided that disabling the turret was his highest priority right now. He leaned into the doorway and fired three rounds from his Plasma launchers.

Through his cannon's scope Flank could see the turret taking aim at him, and he knew that he wouldn't be able to dodge the blast.
I need cover, he thought, something to take the blast...
His chest lens focused on the terminal. Bingo.

As fast as he could, he heaved the bulky computer off the ground and brought up to obstruct the turret's view of his upper body — for that was where he hoped the turret was aiming — but before he could regain a strong stance, the computer exploded.

The bolt from the turret shattered the entire helpless piece of technology and caused super-heated shards of glass, plastic, metal and computer chips to burst outward onto Flank's chest. The impact sent him sprawling onto the ground. He rolled over three times from the inertia and then lay still.

Rhak ran inside, as good as he could with a hurt leg. He shot burst towards the turret.
At the same time he screamed towards Quark.
"Find the security booth, I'll draw its fire!"
Rhak noticed the body of Flank lying admist broken desks. He ran towards the Ravis, grabbing the heavy body and pulling it behind, what looked like, a sturdy desk.
He popped out at regular intervals, shooting at the turret. Untill the familiar sound of an empty clip hit him.
Cursing Rhak went down and searched the Ravis for reserve clips for the rifle.
If he just could've contacted Aleon, and bought that new equipment.

While Flank lay unconscious, Rhak managed to open his cannon's clip, spilling just over a dozen more plasma bolts. They would have to be hand loaded into the clip before it was loaded back into the rifle.

In Flank's mind, a battle raged.

You have to get up. If you lie there you'll die.

It would be so easy to just rest.

You have to keep living! So much to be done!

The galaxy is cruel and harsh. Let it all go.

You can keep going! Just get up!

Just let it go. Rest.

Rest.

Quark had survived most of the craziness, witnessed people fall, and even help a little. It was terrifying, with all the lasers, plasma, and all. When he heard Rhak, he immediately turned and ran. He looked for the security booth with intensity, his mind struggling to focus with all the firing going on around him. Before finding the booth, he witnessed Flank, unconscious, on the floor. Quark really hoped Flank was only sleeping. Most fire had been drawn away from him, enough for him to locate the Security booth. He yelled, with a stressed voice, back to Rhak. "I'm at the Security booth! Now what!?" Quark realized how bad it was that he had no idea what to do next. If we get out of this, my mind is going to need a full day of sleep and another of meditation to be able to focus again.

"Quark!" shouted Bor, who had taken cover behind the booth. "See if you can access that turret's control interface. Shut it down!"