Update CCIX: Lead from the Front
JB CCIX: Lead From The Front
Assaults on fortified positions was generally a Void Engineer or Ragnarok Command task. Even in the Ascension War, battles like this had been rare. High-security constructs were the next best thing to invulnerable. Taking one often took years of weakening them via infiltrated spies, isolating allies, cutting off escape routes. But there were a lot of old men and women here, in the ORIONs or in Ethical Compliance, who had done this before. And so they expected the first vehicles to be lost. That's why the first vehicles are expendable drones-NATO hardware rigged up with dumb robots and remote pilots. Rose is crammed into a Roland's passenger compartment with a trio of ORIONs-supersoldiers nearly as fast and tough as her, just much less efficiently designed.
"Fuck!" Henriette swears, when one of the robot tanks she's babysitting explodes. "Stupid Masses piece of shit." She remembers her place a moment later. "Contact, enemy railgun fire. Looks like it's firing through the buildings." The Rolands' VLS systems fire, and the ARCs launch smart missiles, targeting the estimated position of the tank. It won't stop it-but it'll force it to relocate.
"Dismount. Use the buildings as cover and move forward." Piero sends over the command channels. "Assume that the nearby buildings are occupied with hostiles." It's what a superintelligent planner would do, Piero knows. He'd have them loaded with whatever nasty, brutal creatures the Izanagi clone vats can create. One of the Rolands takes a hit and its fuel-cell engine detonates, but its soldiers have already dismounted and use the hulk as cover. They know that firing the railgun like that will put strain on its components, strain which will do a number on its self-repair systems. If it had been an Iteration X base, they would have been able to hook the tank up to the base reactors and reprogram its systems for active cooling. But Izanagi is run by Progenitors now, and the exhumans there are significantly less hardtech-minded than Iterators would be.
Rose counts the shots as she moves to disembark. Two shots. She runs the numbers she was given by Alex and Major Clarent. She thinks it'll have ten more.
The hatch opens and one moment, Rose is watching the video feeds from the Roland. The next, she is in a tumbling, airborne hulk, seeing the streets of Wako through a tumbling, ragged hole in the vehicle. One massive, muscular arm is still hanging from the handholds in front of her, missing the body it had been attached to. A high-end Iteration X multiped tank's weapon was an anti-vehicle tool of nearly apocalyptic power. She's pretty sure a direct hit will put her down, and even Piero might have trouble with one. His skin and bones were the next best thing to utterly impenetrable, but you could hurt him via blunt trauma. Eventually. An ORION was tough, like an armored vehicle, but this was the sort of weapon designed to kill them.
She realizes the dead ORION was the squad leader of this group even before the burning hulk of the Roland hits the ground, and an unfamiliar prompt blinks in front of her eyes.
[YOU HAVE COMMAND]
Rose knows that if she had been completed, she would be seeing the tactical data from the entire force, like Piero and Cross are receiving. But the supercomputers nestled around her spine are gone, salvaged for another project. But no matter. Reina didn't command forces with the use of 21st century networked combat systems. She didn't have them in the Spy's Demise, and she took charge then. The skills and memories of Reina-she doesn't have to be Reina to use them. All her life, she's defined herself, been defined as, a failure. A pet project of a Progenitor who was allowed to keep functioning so long as she wasn't entirely useless. Now she has something to define herself against. The enemy here-they've taken everything from her. But with that, they've unshackled her. Shown her their fear. And there's enough hemophage in her to know to capitalize on it.
Doses of combat drugs which would be lethal to humans run in her system. The symbiont armor she's wearing is part biologically-grown power armor, part life support, integrating directly into the wearer's cardiovascular system. She's aware from her programming, just how effective that second function can be. Wearers have survived the total destruction of their heart and lung or being cut in half at the waist. She's using it and its biocomputer to manage her combat drug load in conjunction with her implants and medical training, a constant litany of health risks she has to actively manage. She's smiling. No, she's grinning, the rictus grin of a combat stimulant overdose. She's glad she's wearing the armor helmet, because she wouldn't want Serafina to see her like this. Doesn't want Serafina to have to reconcile what she has to be with what she can be. To survive, to live in this world, she has to be many things to many people.
The prompt is Piero's work, Rose knows. Alex wouldn't have let her do this. He loves her like a sister, but he's too protective. And he has political considerations. But the ORIONs don't care who she is, not that much, and Piero doesn't consider the politics much. Even if he did, it's unlikely he would have cared. So now she's taking familiar reins again. Stepping into familiar shoes. But this time she doesn't have to pretend to be Reina, to be someone she's not. She lets go of the handholds, and dives out of the flipping, burning wreck the moment it hits the ground, bouncing in a scream of tortured metal. The other supersoldiers follow suit.
Nine more shots. Another tank goes up. Eight.
"It'd be really helpful if you could take out the AA before we get into line of sight." Henriette says to her. She's piloting one of the ARCs, carrying more troops and more weapons, ready to bring them into the fray.
Rose knows. Izanagi was designed to deal with Etherite warships or the occasional dragon. Damage Control's VTOL fleet is vulnerable. Not even with drone reinforcement. They'd need a Void Engineer warship to do something like that. She scans the burning wrecks and the nearby buildings, and gestures to her squad to follow her towards the nearest. It'll be easier to fight through the buildings rather than expose themselves to whatever weapons Izanagi's forces might have.
And then the environment turns into something akin to depictions of the Plagues of Egypt. Swarms of insects target Damage Control operatives, which would normally be completely irrelevant-not even a nuisance-but these insects are weaponized, exploding in splashes of armor-dissolving molecular acid, equipped with mandibles that drip venom and can saw through even hardened armor. Rose watches as a Damage Control operative is covered in them, and her comrade needs to use a hand flamer to burn them off. Swarms of cats and dogs and rats and other animals with weaponized biologies follow. Gnashing, reinforced teeth, swarm intelligences, chemical self-destructs. They're not extremely dangerous, but they force the deployment of flamethrowers and incendiary warheads, and they jam motion trackers and threat detectors-
Just in time for the rest of the defenses to kick in. Greenish pulses of plasma fire start to rain down from the nearby buildings, joined by the hammering of Masses-tech rifle and machinegun fire, and the occasional whomp of grenades or anti-tank rocket explosions. Most of the rocket and grenade explosions are in midair, intercepted by active defense systems. Rose ignores them and rushes out into the open, watching as several of the JSDF soldiers on the rooftop try to target her. She doesn't bother to dodge those, and the shots ping off the pseudo-chitin of the symbiont armor. Some of the windows and doors shatter, as things jump out to attack the forces. They look like Victors and Lauras and Bobs and other low to middle-end clones-but many of them have deformities or odd signatures. Some of them twist in agony as they go-flesh peeling away from hands as the finger bones fuse with each other into sharp blades, muscles swell as rapid-growth pseudoadrenaline gives them the power to cleave soldiers in half. But Damage Control has always expected horrific biological hells such as this, and they hold, returning fire in a disciplined fashion, moving with the vehicles or moving to clear the buildings.
She reaches the nearest building and charges through the door without slowing. There's a massive hulking figure taking cover in the corridor beyond, clad in powered armor and wielding bayoneted plasma rifles. It fires, and she drops the rifle she's holding and goes for the sword. The EM fast-deploy sheathe slaps the blade into her hands, and she turns her charge into a lunge, her arm flicking out in a single clean movement faster than the human eye can see. The plasma shot goes wide, slightly, blasting a hole into the wall next to the door. The entrance corridor is narrow enough that the blade cuts through the walls without slowing, and then cleanly through the modified Manton, as if the weapon was guiding itself.
"Clear!" He yells, as he cuts into one of the buildings. He's been engaging JSDF, mostly, which is fortunate because he's not some sort of genetically engineered murder-machine. None of his squad is, unlike the heavier Damage Control units. They have biomods, some of them quite superior to his, but like him they're all special ops commandos with an edge, not biological killing machines. So they have to worry about things like being devoured alive by insects or murdered by perfectly normal weapons, even through this sort of armor protection.
He kicks down a door, scans the room, and is immediately beset upon by an enraged Victor, its mouth frothing and eyes wide in some sort of chemical-induced berserker rage. The Victor is merely wearing one of the test subject jumpsuits, and he fires, but it doesn't even seem to notice the shot fired as it kicks him hard enough to make him lose his grip on the rifle and fly out the door. Despite the hard plating of his power armor, he feels the impact, even though it doesn't hurt.
Brakowski draws his sidearm and fires the X-5 on automatic, stitching the Victor with an entire magazine of micro-explosive ammunition. It goes down, but still twitches, and one of the DC commandos uses their big heavy rifles and blows its face off. "Thanks." he manages. "Fucking Victor hit like a truck." He sees glimpses of indirect-fire smart missiles-both theirs and the enemy's-leaving contrails through the sky as both sides fire blindly at each other's estimated positions. There's an explosion and a brief cheer on the tactical channels as one of the enemy defense guns goes down. Even though they're taking losses, they're giving as good as they've got.
"Some sort of shapeshifter-derived combat drugs, I think." One of the commandos volunteers. "Probably engineered to use it instead of adrenaline, since I don't see any drug injectors. They're throwing everything they have against us."
Brakowski nods. "They're desperate, but that doesn't make them harmless." He checks the tactical map, the progress of other groups through the buildings or the open. The vehicles are still getting pounded-less so now that the big tank railgun is in overheat-but they've gotten engaged with Izanagi's robot defense vehicles and started inflicting losses on those. At least they only have one multiped tank, but even one makes him suspicious. Both Donald and the Tyrants insisted that he join the assault, for the obvious reason that doing so would add more firepower and thus increase the chances of victory. But the Tyants also want to see what's going on there. It's obvious. And they probably want to know why a Progenitor facility, with already-formidable automated defenses, also has a high-end Iteration X tank that can shoot through walls with its heavy railgun.
It's a sensible precaution, Brakowski thinks, if you think you're going to end up facing some sort of human-sized WMD and an armored battalion bearing down on you full of power-armored super-commandos, some of whom are capable of beating a shapeshifter to death with its own arm, after ripping that arm from its socket, but why exactly would Izanagi have to do anything like that? He pushes those thoughts aside as he clears through the building. Most of the opposition has been test subjects or alien-like things-long, pink, naked things which look like greys who had gotten their growth spurts, snakelike EDE-human hybrids, and those animalistic brutes with bayonets and power armor-but quite often he encounters JSDF squads working alongside them, in black Technocracy tactical armor and using caseless HV rifles.
They die, human skill and human strength opposed with transhuman speed and transhuman skill, and he almost feels sorry for them. They're literally stuck in a hell they don't comprehend, sacrifices thrown into the meatgrinder because Izanagi is expending every asset they and their sympathizers have to hold off this assault. Fighting against an army led by a war god made flesh.
Assaults on fortified positions was generally a Void Engineer or Ragnarok Command task. Even in the Ascension War, battles like this had been rare. High-security constructs were the next best thing to invulnerable. Taking one often took years of weakening them via infiltrated spies, isolating allies, cutting off escape routes. But there were a lot of old men and women here, in the ORIONs or in Ethical Compliance, who had done this before. And so they expected the first vehicles to be lost. That's why the first vehicles are expendable drones-NATO hardware rigged up with dumb robots and remote pilots. Rose is crammed into a Roland's passenger compartment with a trio of ORIONs-supersoldiers nearly as fast and tough as her, just much less efficiently designed.
"Fuck!" Henriette swears, when one of the robot tanks she's babysitting explodes. "Stupid Masses piece of shit." She remembers her place a moment later. "Contact, enemy railgun fire. Looks like it's firing through the buildings." The Rolands' VLS systems fire, and the ARCs launch smart missiles, targeting the estimated position of the tank. It won't stop it-but it'll force it to relocate.
"Dismount. Use the buildings as cover and move forward." Piero sends over the command channels. "Assume that the nearby buildings are occupied with hostiles." It's what a superintelligent planner would do, Piero knows. He'd have them loaded with whatever nasty, brutal creatures the Izanagi clone vats can create. One of the Rolands takes a hit and its fuel-cell engine detonates, but its soldiers have already dismounted and use the hulk as cover. They know that firing the railgun like that will put strain on its components, strain which will do a number on its self-repair systems. If it had been an Iteration X base, they would have been able to hook the tank up to the base reactors and reprogram its systems for active cooling. But Izanagi is run by Progenitors now, and the exhumans there are significantly less hardtech-minded than Iterators would be.
Rose counts the shots as she moves to disembark. Two shots. She runs the numbers she was given by Alex and Major Clarent. She thinks it'll have ten more.
The hatch opens and one moment, Rose is watching the video feeds from the Roland. The next, she is in a tumbling, airborne hulk, seeing the streets of Wako through a tumbling, ragged hole in the vehicle. One massive, muscular arm is still hanging from the handholds in front of her, missing the body it had been attached to. A high-end Iteration X multiped tank's weapon was an anti-vehicle tool of nearly apocalyptic power. She's pretty sure a direct hit will put her down, and even Piero might have trouble with one. His skin and bones were the next best thing to utterly impenetrable, but you could hurt him via blunt trauma. Eventually. An ORION was tough, like an armored vehicle, but this was the sort of weapon designed to kill them.
She realizes the dead ORION was the squad leader of this group even before the burning hulk of the Roland hits the ground, and an unfamiliar prompt blinks in front of her eyes.
[YOU HAVE COMMAND]
Rose knows that if she had been completed, she would be seeing the tactical data from the entire force, like Piero and Cross are receiving. But the supercomputers nestled around her spine are gone, salvaged for another project. But no matter. Reina didn't command forces with the use of 21st century networked combat systems. She didn't have them in the Spy's Demise, and she took charge then. The skills and memories of Reina-she doesn't have to be Reina to use them. All her life, she's defined herself, been defined as, a failure. A pet project of a Progenitor who was allowed to keep functioning so long as she wasn't entirely useless. Now she has something to define herself against. The enemy here-they've taken everything from her. But with that, they've unshackled her. Shown her their fear. And there's enough hemophage in her to know to capitalize on it.
Doses of combat drugs which would be lethal to humans run in her system. The symbiont armor she's wearing is part biologically-grown power armor, part life support, integrating directly into the wearer's cardiovascular system. She's aware from her programming, just how effective that second function can be. Wearers have survived the total destruction of their heart and lung or being cut in half at the waist. She's using it and its biocomputer to manage her combat drug load in conjunction with her implants and medical training, a constant litany of health risks she has to actively manage. She's smiling. No, she's grinning, the rictus grin of a combat stimulant overdose. She's glad she's wearing the armor helmet, because she wouldn't want Serafina to see her like this. Doesn't want Serafina to have to reconcile what she has to be with what she can be. To survive, to live in this world, she has to be many things to many people.
The prompt is Piero's work, Rose knows. Alex wouldn't have let her do this. He loves her like a sister, but he's too protective. And he has political considerations. But the ORIONs don't care who she is, not that much, and Piero doesn't consider the politics much. Even if he did, it's unlikely he would have cared. So now she's taking familiar reins again. Stepping into familiar shoes. But this time she doesn't have to pretend to be Reina, to be someone she's not. She lets go of the handholds, and dives out of the flipping, burning wreck the moment it hits the ground, bouncing in a scream of tortured metal. The other supersoldiers follow suit.
Nine more shots. Another tank goes up. Eight.
"It'd be really helpful if you could take out the AA before we get into line of sight." Henriette says to her. She's piloting one of the ARCs, carrying more troops and more weapons, ready to bring them into the fray.
Rose knows. Izanagi was designed to deal with Etherite warships or the occasional dragon. Damage Control's VTOL fleet is vulnerable. Not even with drone reinforcement. They'd need a Void Engineer warship to do something like that. She scans the burning wrecks and the nearby buildings, and gestures to her squad to follow her towards the nearest. It'll be easier to fight through the buildings rather than expose themselves to whatever weapons Izanagi's forces might have.
And then the environment turns into something akin to depictions of the Plagues of Egypt. Swarms of insects target Damage Control operatives, which would normally be completely irrelevant-not even a nuisance-but these insects are weaponized, exploding in splashes of armor-dissolving molecular acid, equipped with mandibles that drip venom and can saw through even hardened armor. Rose watches as a Damage Control operative is covered in them, and her comrade needs to use a hand flamer to burn them off. Swarms of cats and dogs and rats and other animals with weaponized biologies follow. Gnashing, reinforced teeth, swarm intelligences, chemical self-destructs. They're not extremely dangerous, but they force the deployment of flamethrowers and incendiary warheads, and they jam motion trackers and threat detectors-
Just in time for the rest of the defenses to kick in. Greenish pulses of plasma fire start to rain down from the nearby buildings, joined by the hammering of Masses-tech rifle and machinegun fire, and the occasional whomp of grenades or anti-tank rocket explosions. Most of the rocket and grenade explosions are in midair, intercepted by active defense systems. Rose ignores them and rushes out into the open, watching as several of the JSDF soldiers on the rooftop try to target her. She doesn't bother to dodge those, and the shots ping off the pseudo-chitin of the symbiont armor. Some of the windows and doors shatter, as things jump out to attack the forces. They look like Victors and Lauras and Bobs and other low to middle-end clones-but many of them have deformities or odd signatures. Some of them twist in agony as they go-flesh peeling away from hands as the finger bones fuse with each other into sharp blades, muscles swell as rapid-growth pseudoadrenaline gives them the power to cleave soldiers in half. But Damage Control has always expected horrific biological hells such as this, and they hold, returning fire in a disciplined fashion, moving with the vehicles or moving to clear the buildings.
She reaches the nearest building and charges through the door without slowing. There's a massive hulking figure taking cover in the corridor beyond, clad in powered armor and wielding bayoneted plasma rifles. It fires, and she drops the rifle she's holding and goes for the sword. The EM fast-deploy sheathe slaps the blade into her hands, and she turns her charge into a lunge, her arm flicking out in a single clean movement faster than the human eye can see. The plasma shot goes wide, slightly, blasting a hole into the wall next to the door. The entrance corridor is narrow enough that the blade cuts through the walls without slowing, and then cleanly through the modified Manton, as if the weapon was guiding itself.
***
The last time Operative Jason Brakowski had been on a university campus, it had been years ago, at some no-name party school, wasting his life and his inheritance away. Now, he was on a university campus to waste his life in an entirely different way. He was advancing through a hellscape, leading a team of Damage Control constables who had been Japanese police SAT-their SWAT/commando equivalent-until a few weeks ago when Damage Control had basically mobilized everyone for this. They knew they wouldn't have quality on their side, so quantity had to do. The armored advance had gone to shit pretty much the moment they had encountered a cybertank with a heavy railgun capable of sniping them through walls, and their drone armada was busy engaging their robots, and losing. There wasn't much a robot Abrams could do against an Iteration X cybertank, even a low-end one. This sort of "military exercise" taking place in a first world country would be abnormal normally, but at least North Korea's threat had made it plausible.
"Clear!" He yells, as he cuts into one of the buildings. He's been engaging JSDF, mostly, which is fortunate because he's not some sort of genetically engineered murder-machine. None of his squad is, unlike the heavier Damage Control units. They have biomods, some of them quite superior to his, but like him they're all special ops commandos with an edge, not biological killing machines. So they have to worry about things like being devoured alive by insects or murdered by perfectly normal weapons, even through this sort of armor protection.
He kicks down a door, scans the room, and is immediately beset upon by an enraged Victor, its mouth frothing and eyes wide in some sort of chemical-induced berserker rage. The Victor is merely wearing one of the test subject jumpsuits, and he fires, but it doesn't even seem to notice the shot fired as it kicks him hard enough to make him lose his grip on the rifle and fly out the door. Despite the hard plating of his power armor, he feels the impact, even though it doesn't hurt.
Brakowski draws his sidearm and fires the X-5 on automatic, stitching the Victor with an entire magazine of micro-explosive ammunition. It goes down, but still twitches, and one of the DC commandos uses their big heavy rifles and blows its face off. "Thanks." he manages. "Fucking Victor hit like a truck." He sees glimpses of indirect-fire smart missiles-both theirs and the enemy's-leaving contrails through the sky as both sides fire blindly at each other's estimated positions. There's an explosion and a brief cheer on the tactical channels as one of the enemy defense guns goes down. Even though they're taking losses, they're giving as good as they've got.
"Some sort of shapeshifter-derived combat drugs, I think." One of the commandos volunteers. "Probably engineered to use it instead of adrenaline, since I don't see any drug injectors. They're throwing everything they have against us."
Brakowski nods. "They're desperate, but that doesn't make them harmless." He checks the tactical map, the progress of other groups through the buildings or the open. The vehicles are still getting pounded-less so now that the big tank railgun is in overheat-but they've gotten engaged with Izanagi's robot defense vehicles and started inflicting losses on those. At least they only have one multiped tank, but even one makes him suspicious. Both Donald and the Tyrants insisted that he join the assault, for the obvious reason that doing so would add more firepower and thus increase the chances of victory. But the Tyants also want to see what's going on there. It's obvious. And they probably want to know why a Progenitor facility, with already-formidable automated defenses, also has a high-end Iteration X tank that can shoot through walls with its heavy railgun.
It's a sensible precaution, Brakowski thinks, if you think you're going to end up facing some sort of human-sized WMD and an armored battalion bearing down on you full of power-armored super-commandos, some of whom are capable of beating a shapeshifter to death with its own arm, after ripping that arm from its socket, but why exactly would Izanagi have to do anything like that? He pushes those thoughts aside as he clears through the building. Most of the opposition has been test subjects or alien-like things-long, pink, naked things which look like greys who had gotten their growth spurts, snakelike EDE-human hybrids, and those animalistic brutes with bayonets and power armor-but quite often he encounters JSDF squads working alongside them, in black Technocracy tactical armor and using caseless HV rifles.
They die, human skill and human strength opposed with transhuman speed and transhuman skill, and he almost feels sorry for them. They're literally stuck in a hell they don't comprehend, sacrifices thrown into the meatgrinder because Izanagi is expending every asset they and their sympathizers have to hold off this assault. Fighting against an army led by a war god made flesh.
***
Piero leads the charge deliberately, knowing that he's drawing attention. He has to keep in mind the compromise between making himself too vulnerable to the enemy's heavy antimateriel railgun or whatever other weapons they might have, firing through walls. Another shot lances through a building, tearing through structural members, narrowly missing him. Steel and concrete warps and collapses, and the campus offices collapse into a hill of rubble. He runs towards it, and several of the Orions follow.
Good, Piero thinks. Even the enemy railgun will have difficulties firing through that. He notes with approval that the others have started scattering into the buildings, engaging hostiles as they go. Besides for the xenoforms his tactical implants are noting that the enemy is largely deploying test subjects and weaponized biology. If he was human and in unsealed armor, the plant pollen here would be entering his lungs and unfurling into tangles of microscopic blades, tearing apart aveoli and leaving him to drown to death in his own blood. The insects swarming are horrifying chimeras with the ability to bite through and dissolve metal and kill humans with a single sting. Occasionally, someone gets mauled by weaponized wildlife-a highly modified bear or big dog or something, equipped with preternatural speed and mono-edged claws and teeth and biochemical self-destructs. But he has integral protections against that, and everyone here is in sealed, self-repairing armor. The Orions have been doing their job, and although they've taken casualties, they are few and far between. Tearing test subjects and EDE hybrids limb from limb, with no need of weapons in close quarters save their inhuman strength and reinforced bones. The other Damage Control heavies he's deployed are similarly lethal-a demonstration of why you don't use disorganized, brainwashed test subjects or merely human soldiers against Damage Control's finest augmented warriors. He spends their lives and the lives of the less-augmented Damage Control commandos he has, giving them orders even as he fights himself, firing a heavy weapon from the hip, raking the rooftops with HV railgun shells or shoulder-fired mini-missiles. There can be no glory without sacrifice, no victory without paying in blood.
They'll have figured out the deception by now, realized that Cross's underground excursion was intended entirely as a distraction, and besides Cross himself, none of the heavies had been committed. Too late, though. That just leaves the problem of what they've put outside to counter the armored assault, the 'diversionary' assault that they believed it was, before they can take anything heavy they deployed underground and redeploy it topside. Which means that he has to take on a high-end Iteration X spidertank and its escorting vehicles, plus a veritable army of genetically enhanced supersoldiers.
But that was literally what he was made for. And it's not as if he doesn't have supersoldiers of his own, he notes.
"Here's our plan." Piero sends, and everyone moves as one.
Achilles Leads The Myrmidons:
Piero is leading the assault. Your forces are taking cover behind their burning vehicles or going through buildings, and pushing forward very, very slowly. To make it faster, he needs to stop the enemy from shooting back, which will involve taking out Izanagi's fixed defenses, and that goddamn spidertank. Your current 4 field mages are Rose, Henriette, Piero, and [SURPRISE!]. Who fits #4 is dependent on when you reveal the surprise mage and how you do so. It could be Kessler! It could be Cross. It could be Elsa. It could even be Yinzheng!
There's some possibility to swap them though. So. You're going to have to figure out how to push through a killing zone, murder a giant death robot, and do it before they can deploy an angry dragon and eat you. Your operation is going to do this by the expedient of:
[ ] Death from Above: While the enemy is distracted dealing with a ground force of light infantry which simply will not die, and a vehicular assault which dies plenty well but requires attention, the airmobile units are going to have a chance to engage enemy surface-to-air and hopefully pound that cybertank until it catches on fire and explodes. (Henriette).
Good, Piero thinks. Even the enemy railgun will have difficulties firing through that. He notes with approval that the others have started scattering into the buildings, engaging hostiles as they go. Besides for the xenoforms his tactical implants are noting that the enemy is largely deploying test subjects and weaponized biology. If he was human and in unsealed armor, the plant pollen here would be entering his lungs and unfurling into tangles of microscopic blades, tearing apart aveoli and leaving him to drown to death in his own blood. The insects swarming are horrifying chimeras with the ability to bite through and dissolve metal and kill humans with a single sting. Occasionally, someone gets mauled by weaponized wildlife-a highly modified bear or big dog or something, equipped with preternatural speed and mono-edged claws and teeth and biochemical self-destructs. But he has integral protections against that, and everyone here is in sealed, self-repairing armor. The Orions have been doing their job, and although they've taken casualties, they are few and far between. Tearing test subjects and EDE hybrids limb from limb, with no need of weapons in close quarters save their inhuman strength and reinforced bones. The other Damage Control heavies he's deployed are similarly lethal-a demonstration of why you don't use disorganized, brainwashed test subjects or merely human soldiers against Damage Control's finest augmented warriors. He spends their lives and the lives of the less-augmented Damage Control commandos he has, giving them orders even as he fights himself, firing a heavy weapon from the hip, raking the rooftops with HV railgun shells or shoulder-fired mini-missiles. There can be no glory without sacrifice, no victory without paying in blood.
They'll have figured out the deception by now, realized that Cross's underground excursion was intended entirely as a distraction, and besides Cross himself, none of the heavies had been committed. Too late, though. That just leaves the problem of what they've put outside to counter the armored assault, the 'diversionary' assault that they believed it was, before they can take anything heavy they deployed underground and redeploy it topside. Which means that he has to take on a high-end Iteration X spidertank and its escorting vehicles, plus a veritable army of genetically enhanced supersoldiers.
But that was literally what he was made for. And it's not as if he doesn't have supersoldiers of his own, he notes.
"Here's our plan." Piero sends, and everyone moves as one.
Achilles Leads The Myrmidons:
Piero is leading the assault. Your forces are taking cover behind their burning vehicles or going through buildings, and pushing forward very, very slowly. To make it faster, he needs to stop the enemy from shooting back, which will involve taking out Izanagi's fixed defenses, and that goddamn spidertank. Your current 4 field mages are Rose, Henriette, Piero, and [SURPRISE!]. Who fits #4 is dependent on when you reveal the surprise mage and how you do so. It could be Kessler! It could be Cross. It could be Elsa. It could even be Yinzheng!
There's some possibility to swap them though. So. You're going to have to figure out how to push through a killing zone, murder a giant death robot, and do it before they can deploy an angry dragon and eat you. Your operation is going to do this by the expedient of:
[ ] Death from Above: While the enemy is distracted dealing with a ground force of light infantry which simply will not die, and a vehicular assault which dies plenty well but requires attention, the airmobile units are going to have a chance to engage enemy surface-to-air and hopefully pound that cybertank until it catches on fire and explodes. (Henriette).
[ ] (Optional) One shot is all you need: Lots of things you can do with an ERASR and a cybertank. (Surprise mage is Jane Clarent).
[ ] The Family Which Slays Together: While Piero is bogged down in jamming and brutal combat, Rose is going to take the forces who are listening to her and infiltrate the perimeter so they can take down the defenses. Her mother will just have to deal with the fact that she isn't just an innocent young woman with a childish streak. And Rose will just have to deal with how this changes their relationship (Rose, +WP from Masochist, -WP from Charmer, optional fourth mage is Serafina).
[ ] The Gods Envy Us: When the enemy meets you with subtlety, use brute force. Sure, that's a Shock Corps saying, but Piero admires a lot about the Shock Corps. He and his sister will show these exhumans that no matter what they transform themselves into, at the core they are still men. And men can be broken. He has the forces to do a frontal assault, and he's going to use them. (Piero + Rose)
[ ] The Gods Envy Us: When the enemy meets you with subtlety, use brute force. Sure, that's a Shock Corps saying, but Piero admires a lot about the Shock Corps. He and his sister will show these exhumans that no matter what they transform themselves into, at the core they are still men. And men can be broken. He has the forces to do a frontal assault, and he's going to use them. (Piero + Rose)
[ ] (Optional) Gotterdamerung: RAGNAROK COMMAND ORBIT-TO-SURFACE COMBATANT DEPLOYMENT INITIATED. INERTIAL DAMPENING OFF. VELOCITY MAXIMUM. USER: MSGT. KESSLER, J. (Surprise Kessler!)
[ ] Cancerous Cells: As Donald Sykes watches the operation, he realizes that there is one possible wildcard here. Yinzheng Li. Whatever she's loyal to, it isn't Dr. Leon, and it isn't opposed to this operation. If he can get through to him-weaken her conditioning-talk her into understanding she's on the wrong side-it'll get rid of one asset of the enemy's and give them an asset. Maybe he's not capable of fighting on the frontlines-but sometimes the right word at the right time is far more dangerous than any amount of augmented biceps and high-caliber artillery (Surprise mage is Donald and maybe Yinzheng).