[center][h2][color=#FF7800]Boraro[/color] - D'Urville Island[/h2][/center][hr]“...and you shouldn’t have to worry about it too much, I’ve seen it get run over by an MRAP. You’ll break the launcher before the FCS module.” The bespectacled boffin finished, notably more relaxed now that Ebrima had put his helmet on. Before that, he kept staring at his pale face and Ebrima had to bite his tongue to stop himself from laughing, aware he had that effect on some people and not about to grow tired of it anytime soon. The tube attached on top of the scope indeed looked sturdy, the Cameroonian merc giving it a good whack with his fist to verify the claim. To his credit, the engineer just winced without any protests. Loading a magazine of frags into the M25, Ebrima had to admit it was a useful gizmo: The grenade’s flight path was projected on his HUD as a white line, ending in two translucent, concentric spheres indicating the kill radii of pressure and shrapnel, updating in real time to reflect the airburst settings. Shouldering the launcher, he picked out a target, sending a round down the valley and obliterating two dummies behind a low wall with an echoing, rumbling boom.

…that wasn’t the grenade…

Turning to face North, the trio of men watched in various levels of disbelief as a cloud of dust and smoke rose above the hill. Soon after, the roar of jet engines cut through the wind and rain. Alright, let’s unpack this: An explosion in the base’s general area and a fast mover. Ebrima wasn’t officially on the active roster yet, so he didn’t have access to the squad’s comms and the two eggheads busied themselves explaining the toys to him and neglected to monitor the radio in their Discovery parked a few dozen paces away. Ebrima tried the link to the squad’s leader he’d been given, but that line was dead. Hopefully just the line, not its other participant. The first piece of useful information came from the Land Rover’s radio, a looping message for the staff to evacuate. [color=#FF7800]”Do you know where the evacuation point is?”[/color] He asked.
“Yeah.” The first engineer nodded, his skin tone now closer to Ebrima’s than a minute ago.
[color=#FF7800][i]’Good, because I don’t.[/i]’[/color] He thought as he threw out the remaining blank mags from his pouches and replaced them with live ones from the Land Rover’s trunk, [color=#FF7800]”Then go. Keep your lights off and don’t stop until you’re there.”[/color] He handed his spare NODs to the engineer, leaving it to him to figure out how to use them without a helmet to mount them onto. They had duct tape in the car, they’d manage.
“And where are you going?!” The other boffin asked.
Ebrima simply pointed in the explosion’s direction before taking off.

Running with an exosuit was a strange sensation: Faster than ordinarily possible, with less than half the effort. With a long gun and a grenade launcher on his back. It allowed him to reach the top of the hill and get a good view of ‘the house’ just in time for the second JDAM strike. Those fuckers just destroyed his model collection… Deep breath. Fuck it, violence is the only language these people would understand. Ebrima started running again, downhill actually being harder than up to avoid busting his ass, more sounds becoming clear as he got closer. Gunfire, explosions… helicopters? He didn’t have much time to ponder what on Earth was happening as he came upon an eight man infantry team bearing markings he didn’t recognize as friendly. But why were they marked as friendly on his HUD? Safely hidden from view by foliage, he turned his attention to the suit’s controls on his left arm, navigating through a couple menus to confirm the suit was still set to training mode. Disabling it with an annoyed grunt, the green tags over the infantrymen turned red. Unloading the M25, he swapped from frags to thermobaric shells, firing one at each end of the staggered column while picking up speed, their blast areas overlapping in the middle. He didn’t have to stop to mop up.

Approaching the base from the direction of support personnel housing, there wasn’t much going on. Good, that likely meant that the support staff had evacuated already, less people to worry about. Now just follow the gunfire-

[b]BANG![/b]

…or an explosion not fifty meters away, that works too. With the Origin in his hands, he cleared the fence around the compound in a single jump pack-assisted bound, hitting the ground running. Yeah, he could get used to this. Rounding a corner, he was somewhat surprised to see [i]the backs[/i] of two infantrymen and one exo operative, the latter turning to face him as he spoke. “The bitch went that way! Ramirez, take the rest of the squad and follow, I’ll circle-”

The exosuited man’s commands were cut short by a series of seven impacts against his armor. Ebrima didn’t have high hopes of the flechettes making a dent in the exosuit, having not had the time to swap magazines, but it ought to keep him off balance long enough to deal with the rest. The infantryman farthest away was brought down by two shots, the tiny steel darts tearing flesh and snapping bone wherever they found a piece of him not sufficiently protected. The other infantryman reacted quickly, actually having fired before realizing he found himself between a rock and a hard place. Two sections of chest armor turned yellow on Ebrima’s HUD, warning him that there’d be bruises tomorrow, and although he definitely felt it even without that, at that point there was no stopping the charging Cameroonian’s momentum. The infantryman got squished between the wall and Ebrima with a wet crunch, probably the sternum, and got finished with a kick to the head as he slid down the wall, the exosuit making quick work of the helmet and the head inside it.

He’d already been raising his weapon partway through the kick, just in time to hit the enemy exo picking himself up. It gave him enough time to drop the shotgun and draw his knife - well, on involuntary long-term loan from the Nepali government - and charge. The other guy refused to go gentle into that good night, using his exosuit to stand up and kick in the same stroke, a knee to the damaged plates definitely felt, in turn allowing the Artemis exo to draw his own knife. His combat knife may have been about half the size of Ebrima’s kukri, but what mattered wasn’t the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. He clearly knew what he was doing, his first strike aimed at Ebrima’s throat to feint followed up by an upwards thrust to the armpit, trying to get at the brachial artery. With a puff of his jump pack, Ebrima got his arm clear and his knee into the Artemis exo’s chin, hacking halfway through his right wrist on the way down and finishing the job with a draw cut. The sounds the exo operative made as his hand was held in place by nothing but the exosuit were not pleasant, but fortunately only lasted as long as it took Ebrima to load a magazine of slugs to put the bastard out of his misery.

Reasoning that following the Raven operative directly was a good way to get shot, Ebrima took a page from the dead exo’s book, vaulting the fence and taking a wide arc around the forest, following the chatter of a lone machine gun until he spotted a figure. A tartan-patterned exosuit, that could’ve only been one person. [color=#FF7800]”Queen! Friendly, eight o’clock.”[/color] he called out, standing out in the open between two trees with his weapon pointed down to look as unthreatening as possible. [color=#FF7800]”I would appreciate full team comms. Couldn’t raise you.”[/color] He said, pointing to his ear. He’d love to say he was fashionably late to the fight, but he was just late. At least now that he found the team leader of all people, he could stop running around like a headless chicken.