The Fortress Nuetralizer finally arrived to the site of the complex to find devastation. Blood, gibs, and bodies littered the smoked, scorched site but there was still heavy fire and the Fortress Nuetralizer began firing mercilessly at whatever was still around to fire back. The Mandalorians defense had been hit hard but it still wasn't over. But there was only so much good Ted himself could do at this point.
Letting the Fortress Nuetralizer take the reigns of hammering the Mandalorians. Ted signalled his team to follow him back into the Complex, where a large hole had been blown leading to the interior.
"Hey!" Ted yelled out to the giant Fortress Nuetralizer. "Guard the front. Kill anybody except EE that tries to enter!
The Fortress Nuetralizer, showing visible damage in it's chassis, gave a thumbs up and fired a blast from it's Disruptor Cannons at something in the distance. It unleashed a blast of its rail guns at a Basilisk, then the full might of its sonic cannon on a squad of Mandalorians trying to get inside.
It took Multiple Rocket and tank rounds but refused to go down, refused to stop firing, it's dog like mind bent on pleasing its creator by demolishing as many as it could...
Ted and his team ventured into the ruined, bloody interiors, past the bodies of both his fellow citizens and plenty of bodies from House Io as well as bodies of Sirens...but also a lot of Mandalorian bodies also.
The Conjoined was at his side as he journeyed deeper.
"Ted, I think you're an absolute natural..." The Conjoined complimented. "If you survive, I'll be sure to watch your career with
great interest..."
"Lady, I'm not sure why you would but a Witch watching me is nightmare fuel." Ted replied quietly. The shield generator... everything would be decided there...
He had reach it.
"Look at it this way, Ted. With a Brain Demon Cultist for a friend...who needs an enemy!?"
"Exactly my point." Ted replied, as the Fortress Nuetralizer provided covering fire for advancing EE forces, trying to draw as much aggro to itself as possible and give House Io's allies enough time to reinforce the interior.
Ted kept point, and fired his DC-15LE as soon as a Mandalorian appeared, keeping his finger on the trigger until he stopped moving.
"Why did they stop using these again?" Ted asked of his weapon as they encountered more heavy resistance.
"People just want that shiny new gun, even if there is a gun that does exactly what the shiny one does. I don't get it either..." The Conjoined confessed. "But it is fun to watch the enemy's chest explode regardless."
Ted ignored the latter opinion and focused on staying alive.
They suddenly came under fire fight, and the team was forced to duck behind cover, one of his soldiers, Richard, opening fire with the Magnetic Disruptor right along the rest of his survivors.
The Disruptor shots pierced the shields of a Mandalorian, breaking him and his gear down into a messy puddle as he died in pure agony.
More bolts, a thermal Detonator was thrown their way--deadly, in these confines--and The Conjoined barely managed to shut down it's Electronics with the Force and toss it away.
Ted kept firing in short controlled bursts, then charged up a shot on his rifle and fired, the heavy bolt slamming into a Mandalorian and knocking him down but not killing him.
A Force Breaker Grenade was tossed, and the Conjoined was not fast enough to catch or shut off its Electronics.
Everybody dived back as it went off. The Conjoined screamed, flesh shuddering and sloughing in a horrifying manner as she was temporarily cut off from the Force. Ted pulled back, grabbing her by the arm and dragging her to cover while the others kept firing with their Disruptors, now FAR more effective when there wasn't a lot of room for the enemy to dodge, the salvo of bolts hit two and broke them down.
"How do you like Class D,
Motherfethers?!" one of his other surviving team members said, downing Another.
Dozens and dozens of blaster shots started to get sprayed their way and they were forced to give up their position, retreating down an alternate route to the Generators. Ted was still dragging The Conjoined as he fired, the one armed Medical Nuetralizer Amanda providing cover with her Ion Relic Pistol, piercing the visor of one shooting at her and downing him when the lethal accelerated Ion particles went through the Mandalorians eye.
Ted pulled the trigger and there was a click. Empty, at last.
It had served him pretty well, done a lot of damage. Why had they stopped using them, again?
He whipped out his Disruptor and fired, the aggravating four second wait between shots making him fear for his life.
It was a lethal,
lethal weapon, this Magnetic Disruptor Carbine, but Yes felt it was best relegated to an Anti-Siege role. More defensive or support.
It was when he saw a fallen Assault Radiation Blaster that chit got intriguing.
He grabbed it, lamenting it's heavy nature, but it was much faster firing.
The deadly green bolts surged out of the rifle on Semi-Auto Mode, gradually chewing through strong shields (He had tried using that recharging Commando Pistol and it might as well have been gnat bites. Vendor Trash like the Commando Pistol is good for those NPC's like ten to fifteen XP, a piece, but your average Mandalorian's worth what, 500 to 700 at the very low end? If you're not using elite tier loot like a rail cannon or an automatic shotgun firing incendiary rounds or even a Sonic Disruptor by the time you encounter your first Mandalorian, you
deserve, do to you hear me,
deserve to be forced to reload an old save file when one of Star Wars answers to the Klingons reduces your HP to zero.
But if you don't have a Rail Cannon, at least have a grenade launcher. Even a simple single shot 40mm will do.
Ted's Radiation Blaster Bolts lanced towards the teams of Mandalorians, blasting apart cover, the way any cover his team had been blasted apart. They slammed into one Mandalorian, and burned through his shields rapidly, and completely contaminated his armor. Though his Beskar held against the attack, the armorweave did not. And even the Beskar had heated up enough against the impact point, burning him terribly.
Ted decided now was the time to use the 25mm grenade launcher. The one that had the 25mm radiation Grenade Rounds.
There were strict orders concerning these. Using the Radiation Grenades were to be done only when under overwhelming threat from massive numbers of enemies. They were lethal, but they would heavily contaminate the area they exploded in. They had not been given many for a reason. It was a "use only in desperation". An accident at one of the factories Xiphos controlled had left them with only the radioactive rounds to use.
Ted figured that this was a moment of desperation.
Ted pressed the second trigger...and a burst of static from the side of the grenade rifle had him cursing. It had been damaged.
Chit.
Ted ducked a cannon type bolt that brought down part of the ceiling behind them, still firing. 40 shots left.
The Disruptor Bolts turned another to beat slag while the Mandalorians were momentarily forced to take cover while Ted kept firing, even as the sparks from his grenade launcher continued. Amanda took aim at a Grenade on a belt.
The blast brought down the ceiling above her enemies, killing the Mandalorians.
Ted looked over at The Conjoined, who writhed on the ground, flesh still writhing with her. They seemed to have really done a number on her.
"Will she make it? Ted asked Amanda.
"We have to get that Force Breaker Crap out of her system...but this is not the place to do it..." Amanda said.
"We can't leave here..."
"We can if we wish to preserve the Generator. Everything rides on it." Amanda said.
Ted pulled out his canteen and poured the water all over the bubbling Witch,
"Your Canteens, open them, now!" Ted ordered.
The soldiers all opened their canteens and poured it, getting the residue off the Witch.
The Flesh eventually reset and The Conjoined stood up, humiliated.
"I'm going to
kill these Bastards..." she swore. Amanda injected the Witch with a number of anti toxins just in case.
"Ted...it's all or nothing now..." Richard told him.
Ted nodded in agreement. He pulled out his Comlink.
"This Citizen Forrest to all surviving Citizens: Hit Time, Hot Time, Hit Time."
The Code Phrase was sent out. All surviving Citizens were to converge on the Generator and kill any Mandalorians present as quickly and as aggressively as possible. The whole place was an abbatoir at this point. Ultranauts would start to join with them, and all the surviving Sirens did also, coming from multiple angles in the facility.
"How many Witches are left alive?" Ted asked.
"Me included? Three." The Conjoined answered...
"Time to trigger the Last Trap..." Ted said
The Cultist reached out to her Fellow Witches, the last two not quite near the Generator or Auxillary.
They made sacrifices if blood and the final giant magical booby trap was sprung, as surviving House Up Platoon members fired mercilessly at Mandalorians they encountered.
This trap was one designed to do one thing.
To slow the enemy.
It would induce a magical series of localized gravity swells near the enemy, which would hopefully cause their movements to become extremely slow, with only those who had great physical strength to move better than the others.
It had been estimated as highly likely that the Mandalorians would reach the interior. In the event the Generators were to be overrun, this last trap would be triggered, when they really had committed and got deep.
No House Citizen or their EE allies would be affected, but any Mandalorians were in severe danger now. Between the risen dead, the monsters in the portal, all the pissed off Ultranauts and House Citizens, and the Medical Nuetralizers, they had their work cut out for them.
Mandalorians began to slow down physically everywhere, finding it a struggle to keep moving. This moment of slowness was costly, and fatal, as the surviving platoon members the undead and the monsters calm converged in a ravenous swarm of teeth, claws, Ultranauts going full Hulkamania, and blasters, Mandalorians started dropping like flies, the sudden surge of vicious aggression and their own magically slowed movements resulting in a Blood Bath. Ted found himself fighting alongside Ultranauts, Mandalorian Zombies and his own kin in the surge, swarming over Mandalorian aggressors and chopping them down with his Citizen Energy Sword. Some managed to get shots off. But a lot were being shot to pieces or ripped apart., squads of Zombies and Citizens and Portal demons heading quickly to
Runi Kuryida
to try and butcher her, while others overpowered a bunch of Mandalorians like a swarm of piranhas. The members of House Io fight ferociously, and often to the death, for even a slowed Mandalorian us still a Mandalorian.
The Auxiliary Generator only shuddered and took a mild dent on a metal part but was otherwise unharmed by the rocket attack Kom'rk had used, and this allowed a number of House Io Citizens, Zombies and Ultranauts to advance frighteningly close to his squads position, engaging in violently combat with any Mandalorian near by in the shock assault, some Mandalorians getting gunned down or run through.
That's when Kom'rk got a surprise...
Floor Plates lifted up and a
Medical Nuetralizer firing from partial cover lifted up deadly DLT-20 Heavy repeating blaster and opened fire on his exposed position, two other House Citizens, still underneath the floor plating setting off the shaped Concussion Mines Kom'rk and his Squad had stepped over...
Hopefully the plating would muffke the beeps and let the ambush team catch at least a few of them, but even if it didn't, they were popping out of the floor plating themselves, firing their Radiation Blasters
Meanwhile, the platoon still guarding the main generators had spent up to their very last minutes setting up every trap possible. They manned shielded positions and behind sand bags, waiting for any hostiles. They had chosen weak, shaped mines, whose blast would go upward, to avoid any possibility of damaging the Generators.
Multiple squads began to converge on the location of
Sergeant Omen
and
Thonn Rokkal
, intent on intercepting them, and firing as soon as they spotted them...
Meanwhile...
The problem with dealing with a Nanite Assassin Droid, it turned out, was trapping them.
The energized Spider Silk from
Domina Prime
barely affected Lyssa, whose surface only supplied as it took in the dnergy, and no amount of clingwire could hold her, as her Nanites simply flowed past and over it, silvery, razor sharp bladed tendrils lashing out at both Mandalorian and whatever the hell the other creature was, even as her own arm blades extended and lashed out in a groin attack at
Kranak Vizsla
, the tendrils lashing out for his weapons, trying to ensnare them or damage them, her other arm blade lancing out to try and stab the spider creature through its eye...
Tyr Mereel
Morgan Keldau
Baron Reinhardt Ström
Kuben Woods
Ingrid L'lerim
Alessandra Io