[h2][color=lightblue]Queen[/color][/h2][h2][color=#FF7800]Boaro[/color][/h2]

A collab with [@Starlance]

[h2]Rangitoto ki te Tonga / D'Urville Island
South Island, Aotearoa / New Zealand[/h2]

[center][h1]Toa![/h1][/center]

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The sound of the Cameroonian creeping in was an oddly reassuring one, considering she’d forgotten to even make an introduction. Then again, when new operatives rotated in and out, and rejoined the team then left, it was sometimes difficult to keep track. Ebrima was a wise head, a capable soldier that she was glad to have on side- Skye lowering her MG3 at the sight of him, the Scottish exo-clad operative a parallel to him.

Skye looked a little different to the other medium, his exo a cutting edge unit and shinier, hers a little more bashed, open, and more than anything, Skye’s face left open by her helmet with her tactical specs, MNVGs and comms framing her dirtied red hair and face- the navy shirt and jeans a weird combo outside of the frame of the exo’s relatively comprehensive plates. Skye should have gone for a faceplate really, but the tactical glasses and chops of the helmet she wore did most of the protecting work, as well as naturally benefitting peripheral. The damage she’d done to the team on her flank was appreciated, given she was getting surrounded rather quickly, and a face like his was never forgotten and never not appreciated when he could do what he did. A capable medium after her own heart, well, in killing people, that was.

Seeing him come over, Skye nodded in reply and nonchalantly walked over, bringing her PDA off her arm and without a reply, tapping a command into it, and tapping it against his chest, near where his own comms link would be, syncing it in quickly and clean.
“Now you can hear me. Good to have you, Boraro. Picked a time and a half to join me. Appreciate you taking that lot out..” She replied, looking keenly into his eyes, dry as you can imagine the Scot would be, her stern look turning to a wry smile, appreciating it, the look saying more than words as she peered at his visored face, barely able to see the operative behind them. She backed away, checking her own MG3 over, and the environment over, hearing the sound of booming come into sound, not of the enemy F18 Hornets, but of the F35 itself. Now the fight was on level. The submarine had gone up, the pier on the flank was clear, but the bastards were still coming up. It was a headfuck of a scene, but then again, when the war came home, it was getting a reply.

“Sit rep isn’t good. There is way more than I can even begin to explain right now, but Artemis is after us, and they are coming thick and thin. We’ve got a good chance to make a run for it back over the ridge through the woods. Sounds like if Chaos is airborne, we have a chance at not getting strafed or lit up. And my comms aren’t on lead…again, lots of factors..” Skye replied, the ardent Scot holding a certain kind of hold in her voice, one that cracked a little and clearly looked like she’d dealt with a lifetime’s worth of mindfuckery in the last twenty four hours. Even killing people as an operative for a living didn’t really compare. Her red hair, freckled face and all around well-looking demeanor couldn’t hide the weariness and prying away at her self, and she was glad he was here to help, because they’d need any advantage they could get, and he’d have the energy.

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Friendly air was always good, he had been wondering where an F-35 came from all of a sudden and knowing it was on his side was the first bit of good news in the last 15 or so minutes. [color=#FF7800]”C’est la vie.”[/color] He shrugged at the bad sitrep. It sometimes came at you like that. [color=#FF7800]”If it’s just us, we can likely make it easy. That land rover will be a more visible target. But what if Chaos needs a hand?”[/color] He gestured vaguely to the sky. If that Lightning was the only asset covering their retreat, nobody was covering it and retrieving a downed pilot in the Artemis soup didn’t sound like it mixed with living to tell about it too well.

The last comment did warrant a raised eyebrow. [color=#FF7800]”Cliffnotes, then?”[/color] Abrupt leadership change was something that ranked pretty high on the list of things he wanted to know about, [color=#FF7800]”Who took over?”[/color]

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Skye nodded as she pointed up at the Lightning, blasting past and with the sound of Chaos in Skye’s and Ebrima’s ears being rather….excited, yes, that would say a lot.
“Her. Oh, and riiiight….in a nutshell, there’s an evil clone of me that’s a crazy bitch, and I mean, she’s fucking mental. Like worse than me. And her blood has a tracker in it. Mine likely doesn’t, so her insurance policy is caving us in and well, trying to fucking kill us. Can you see what I mean?” Skye retorted dryly, looking around the corner of the concrete structure, keeping an eye on Freya and Tiny Nord, absolutely laying down all manner of shit down below, from the energy-based smacks of the AEW to Tiny Nord’s usual blasting apart with his fifty. And speaking of, they had their route out. With the prototype VTOL destroyed, the team evacuated, the two were now the last remaining hares. Now or never really, as Skye took a last moment to chat, knowing they’d need to get a move on.

“I’ll lead us ground based folk. But the link to Oracle, the drones, the lot, goes to her. She’s a smart lass. She’ll be right. Anyway, we have our bits to do. You good on ammo, munitions? Exo feeling nice?” Skye retorted, knowing Ebrima would want to skin her alive for her mannerisms, but then again, the Scot was beyond being particularly easy on the truth. To Sophie maybe, not right now when shite was getting real, albeit the last part, well, she checked in a little, twitching her NVGs back down, the quad-optical device covering her weary eyes back up as she switched to the thermal, before flicking back up, readied and prepared.
"Chaos, got Boraro on the line. He's with me, we're moving out to the exfil."
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For a small moment, he wondered that maybe, just maybe, he should’ve shut up and done his time. Clones and blood trackers were something he’d have to learn to live with. [color=#FF7800]”Good for now, but conserve thermobarics. Get them clear and run?”[/color] He asked, taking two seconds to count remaining magazines, colored tape around their bases denoting different loads making it easy. [color=#FF7800]”After you.”[/color] He gestured to the furball, shouldering his shotgun. [i]Really[/i] should’ve brought the rifle to the training outing.

Having Chaos in charge of the big picture brought yet another unwelcome input into the ‘what if…?’ scenario of the Lightning getting into trouble, though with a handful of Raven operatives being the only ones remaining in the fight and no support on the way, that was where she was most useful.

[color=lightblue]Skye nodded, beauty before age, or something like that she reasoned, taking point, heading out of the support site and up the hill, following the sinewing gravel track out of the exposed sheep-roaming fields on the lead up to the beach and up into the forested chunk, the comms messy and more going on than she could imagine. While the two Heavies would retreat one way, Skye and Ebrima had the other route to take, the Scot keeping her wits about her, and yet for a brief moment, the two pacing nicely on the track. The forest kept them out of view for the most part, and they had some reprieve, some moment to get a breath back, and at least take it in.
“Yeah, we’ll get them clear. You’re on the network now, so should be able to see where they are in your display. Two heavies together make one hell of a team, Tiny Nord and Frigga, if they ring a bell. I’d not be too worried, except for the fact that Frigga right now is running on an absolute cocktail of drugs. Trust me, that shit would send most people to the moon, stimulants. Once she crashes out after this, she’s gonna be like a fucking tranquilised elephant. You know how hard it is to move seven foot of a giant like that?” Skye retorted with that classic Scots charm, filling in Ebrima in, knowing full well the Cameroonian probably had little context, little idea and less belief in what the fuck was happening. That would come later- but could at the least punctuate something.

“Alright. Hold a sec.” Skye called in the comms quiet, as the sound of another MRAP,  an ex-British Army Cougar of all things could be heard, the vehicle cutting the two teams into halves, given past this bit of the forested track, they’d be on the slope down to the beach, and where a fishing boat come emergency extract would sit. A risky option, but they just needed to buy time to fend off any more waves of Artemis from sky, and with the Lightning in hand and the combined firepower of the team, they’d probably stand some chance of crossing the Cook Strait and heading for Wellington. Skye had to wonder, they had a hell of a surplus from somewhere. But they had some exquisite buying power, and well, that got them some very interesting connections indeed, and people to maintain. After all, mercenary groups were more common in the contemporary security sphere, and if they had the dollar, they could get their hands on more than just a few Hiluxes and M4s, they could kit themselves out with the latest and greatest. The soldiers were well trained, likely ex-US Armed Forces, NATO and others- not all Russian or Chinese mercs, but a multi-cultural force of paid troops.

A group of soldiers clambered out, a couple exo-equipped in shiny looking suits a grade down from Skye and Ebrima’s, but no less capable, three more in the front as someone stayed on the mounted gun and drivers seat.
“Okay, that might be handy. Saves us a drive to the airfield if we can secure the MRAP, and we may even be able to scoop up Frigga and Nord, if it works out. Question is though ... .who you having?” Skye called to him, knowing that whilst they were being hunted, sometimes, it was good to have the advantage the other way around. In the foliage and in the dirt next to the road’s ridgeline type, she felt not like Frodo, but like someone else in the Fellowship in this part of The Shire….sorry, New Zealand. The dark rainy evening made things trickier for the Artemis mercenaries to spot them, so Skye knew herself holding was not a bad call. She looked on, before looking back at his face, holding her crouch and checking the German-made chainsaw of an LMG one more time, her explosive nature matching hers. Skye was a force on her own- with Sam, Freya and the others, she’d adapted her game plan to be the all-running team mum, bouncing between the two- but with a dedicated exo-carrying operative like Ebrima, she knew things could go much further. Someone matching her pace, aggression, fire. Quite a charm. [/color]

Ebrima indeed did not have the context for the situation, but what he did have was experience with drugged up combatants. Sicarios whose most protective piece of equipment were cargo shorts shrugging off jacketed rounds like BBs was bad enough by itself. Just the thought of someone that strung up in a heavy suit… oh boy. If he detested drugs among the enemy ranks, they didn’t get a pass on the other side of the barricade either though. People he had to trust doing who knew what to their bodies, for an impressive short term gain, maybe, but at what long term cost? That was of course assuming the giants even followed the laws of human biology.

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And Skye nodded on that, moving around the rear and checking her MG3 over, and knowing she’d have to get in close. A batch of them were sweeping out, and Skye had her eyes on an exo and one of the men at the back.
“That works. I’ll try not to cover you in shrapnel either. All you, Boraro.” Skye responded, following the sunken part below the road, and ready facing the two troops at the back, the female merc in her exo considerably more fucking ugly than her counterpart next to him. Well, it’d be over quick. Exoskeletons were good, but this thing was a racket- the team locking the road down yet paradoxically, making their own trap. She noted the gun was active, so any fire would need to be quick, to then get inside the MRAP and evict the guy. And well, that was that. She unloaded her fire onto the two, and whilst the other exo managed to get a few shots off, from half-prone with an LMG that she could fire on the move, well, it was fairly easy how that went down. With a roar, Skye went from prone to upright, and moved around the other side and onto the next two, using the exo to leap hard upwards, and play her part.
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Skye was onto something though. The MRAP, initially an obstacle, might have been a blessing in disguise. He withdrew his hand from the M25. The vehicle should handle shrapnel just fine, but why tempt fate? As long as Artemis didn’t look too closely. [color=#FF7800]”Divide and conquer?”[/color] He gestured for Skye to go around back, himself taking the vehicle’s front as long as they minded each others’ position. Friendly fire was not on the menu today.

He set out through the undergrowth, waiting for the MG to play the part of the starting gun. First order of business was the mounted gun. As its operator instinctively turned it backward to see what the machine gun fire was about, that was all the opening he needed to cross the bit of open space between him and the Cougar. The first couple of shots struck the driver, probably giving the Artemis mercs a nasty surprise. That sinking feeling that you were in a vice, pressure on two sides and hardly a way out. Now in the gun’s dead angle, he could finish the wounded one with impunity before the big show. The exosuits they used meant the grenades he had were out of the question, as much as he would’ve loved to chuck a smoke int the truck and let the guy stew, the situation called for something faster. With the two others now turning to him, he he flung the left passenger door open, something that took some effort usually made trivially easy by the exosuit, and unceremoniously emptied the rest of the magazine across the passenger seats, reasoning the turret operator had to be disabled, not necessarily dead. But that left him facing the two with an empty weapon.

[color=lightblue]Skye came back down on the other side of the bank, rolling out and blasting one of the men without the exo with her MG3 as she came back down off the part above the sunken road with just a satisfying drop, then slamming into the other like a sack of potatoes, punching the man hard in the head with a satisfying twack. She looked up like a rabbit in the literal headlights of the MRAP, exhaling hard, the MG3’s barrel cooking hot from the moment to moment, as she nodded to him silently, taking a breath back and walking with an intent back towards the MRAP. The Cougar was a 6x6 variant, an odd one to have somehow driven onto the island, but was clearly one of the more tooled variants that Artemis was trying to use.

“We make a team. Even held a door for me. Alright. Keep the wheel. I’ll get on the weapon. Looks like we have room on the back for the two to clamber into so we can make a pickup, albeit like a sandwich. Mind you, that’s like loading a tonne….we’ll see how we get on.” Skye retorted, dragging out the dead driver outside, and the gunner too whilst at it, manning an RCWS platform, a remote weapons station with an old-school M2 .50 hooked up to it. She shut the door in, the exo-clad form of Skye very cramped in the seat yet able to network into the device, using the joystick and haptic of her exo’s PDA in sync. The Scot would normally drive, but in this instance, knew the Cameroonian had his talent in that.[/color]

He expected he’d need to argue about not sitting in half a dead merc. [color=#FF7800]”Minor teething problems.”[/color] He allowed himself a rare moment of levity in such a situation as he swapped out the magazine, having been about to use the door as a shield. Maybe now that he was working for rich people with R&D, he could inquire about 30 round drums that [i]worked[/i]. Not even an hour on the job and he was already making a shopping list. [color=#FF7800]”Let the team know we’re coming under enemy colors.”[/color] That wasn’t an accident he wanted to be a part of.

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“Aye, I’ll agree on that. Smells bloody horrible here. Don’t want to add to that. Alright, all yours.” Skye called back, and with that, knew that Ebrima would be taking them down the road going back to the fire- the outline of Freya and Oliver soon to be seen, as she checked comms one more time.
“Frigga, Nord, we’re coming to you now in a commandeered MRAP. I’ll pop the door and lay fire out with the MG but you need to get the fuck in, stat.” Skye called, checking the area with the RCWS turret, the sound of gunfire calming down indeed suggesting that they’d at least held a wave for the moment being. It was a rare drop away, but there could be plenty more, and it sounded like Sam’s team had fought through hell to get to the exfil. Now they’d just have to join....no time to put the stereo on, but if there was anything playing, it sounded like Supremacy by Muse. Brooding, dark, deep. The way the Scot liked her rock music. 

With gunfire coming in, Skye turned the turret and tried to pick up the angle, clapping a few troops further down the bare green hill, the plasma coating the retreat but giving Skye the chance to paste everyone else. The .50 barked, clapping out shell casings onto roof, as Skye kept up the fire till it could no more, the heavies closer, and closer.
"Hold here, I've got this." Skye called, leaping out, giving a wave, seeing the scorched look on Freya and the battering of Tiny Nord. They'd taken some hits alright, but thrown it back.
"Alright, get the fuck in!" Skye called, the twin doors at the back open, and able to fit the two inside the tight space, as with it, Skye banged the stock of the MG3 into the side of the wall, indicating once they were in, they were gone. She clambered back into the gunner's seat once more and started firing out rounds, lacing another buggy down the bottom, a few 40mm grenades blasting the hill around them too as she hoped this was it. They'd need to get to the runway and the boat there, and get going from that.[/color]