Joe was woken up by the alert over the intercom; he knew this mission wasn't really intended for him, so he wasn't in a hurry for getting up.
Sleep however, was not an option anymore, he knew, that if he tried, his brain would wind up attempting to figure out what it was about and just keep him awake. He had planned to arrive at the meeting exactly 0500, but due to his tiredness he arrived at the door of the briefing room a littlebit late. He swung open the doors.
"You're late. You're not going on this operation either. Unless you won't have it any other way?", Sophia rattled off as soon as she noticed Verona enter the room. She was turning the projector off.
"I was thinking about maybe being in the CIC during the OP, to maybe give some advice or analysis?"
"Hmm... Fair enough. Not a bad idea, by any stretch.
"Thank you"
"Go train CQC or something in the sim-pods until combat starts, I'll get Matt to tell you when.", Sophia paused. "...Really, do an exciting simulation. That's an order."
"Ok."
Seeing that he got what he wanted, Joe did as he was ordered, and went to the simulation room.
"Joe Verona?", the Neural Engineer noticed his arrival. "#3's already tuned to you."
"Correct. I was...Thank you." As the engineer continued talking, Joe interrupted his sentence, and entered pod #3. He plugged in, as the inside of the pod resembled a cockpit, it was his first real simulation using hardware connected to the plug, even though that hardware was used to simulate NC hardware.
As Sophia suggested, he chose a medium to weak CQC enemy NC for the first simulation, baby steps.
The simulator selected a random enemy that fit Joe's criteria, and it materialized before his eyes on the other side of the virtual 'arena'. IFF read it as 'Standard Denver-Vegas Mook'. It was a bulky, simple bipedal of the mid-weight category, featuring an NC sized shotgun and an SMG.
It quickly started combat by closing the distance between it and Verona, revealing its' back-mounted rifle, using it to shoot off some covering fire.
Joe responded by unleashing Swarm's missile-swarm, directly aimed at his enemy. He also boosted towards his enemy, using Swarm's 'feet' as brakes by sliding over the ground. He prepared the railgun for fire, although he tried to conceal the railgun itself. The exhaust fumes of the missiles might also act as a little cover, if they didn't dissapate too quickly.
The generic, entry-level NC dodged as soon as the missiles were fired, but couldn't cover enough ground to go unscathed. Its' right-arm exploded, and it lost its' balance. It took a moment to regain it, before resuming its' now faster charge.
Joe attempted to still follow the missile's trail, as to not easily be locked onto, if the enemy had some such mechanism, he also continued his charge, but accelerated as much as he could, flying a short distance above the ground. As he got close enough, that a miss with a hip-fire of his railgun was unlikely, he quickly uncovered and fired it. He was confident, that the enemy's weapons couldn't do enough damage to disable the railgun or his NC while he approached at this speed.
The nameless NC fired its remaining weapons, its shoulder-slung cannon and its submachine gun, at the Swarms' legs. The heavier armor of the Swarm offered too much resistance for its attacks to be worthwhile, and the railgun blast in retaliation finished off the low-level NC. Its corpse, now with a large hole where its cockpit was, landed roughly face-first into the virtual sand before dematerializing.
Verona recieved a prompt. 'Continue simulation?'
'[yes] no' Joe's selection was clear.
On the opposite side of where the Swarm was, a Red-Star NC took shape. Similar to a samurai, it had a pair of two swords, one smaller then the other. Its' head had a large, singular horn, which soon divided into two antennae. Joe's emulated targeting computer then began malfunctioning. The NC, meanwhile, began maneuvering.
Joe fired the missiles, again, this time aiming the laser manually, as best as he could. He also attempted to take off into safety from close quarter combat at the same time. He obviously couldn't perform both tasks to perfection simultaniously.
The Samurai like NC simply boosted and jumped over the horde of missiles, doing a 180 in the air to keep its' eyes on the volley of munitions. When they began turning, its' height increased as its' torso revealed a compartment. Blasts of presumably plasma or some other particle were seen, exiting from the NC and going on to destroy a good portion of the rockets before it turned back towards the Swarm and began a proper close-range fight.
Joe used the time his enemy was facing away from him, to prepare his railgun. At point blank, even a manual shot was pretty much a guaranteed hit, with almost guaranteed damage, likely even lethal damage. Joe hovered at about the height the samurai like Nc had jumped before, awaiting its next move.
The generic Red-Star NC boosted towards the Swarm, its blades began glowing red-hot and vibrated in place intensely, it attacked with its' proper 'Katana' first. As the enemy moved in closer and started to jump at him again, Joe fired the railgun at it, after taking a little time to aim beforehand, directly after seeing it continuing to move in on him. Even if its armor was strong enough to negate ANY damage from the railgun, the momentum would definetly drive both NCs apart, hopefully giving Joe enough time for the next volley of missiles, or to prepare another railgun shot, or to even ascend further, depending on his choice. A miss would of course be the worst possible outcome in this situation.
The NC's head was blasted off by the railgun shot, the force making it spin and fly under and right past the Swarm. It regained control shortly thereafter, and proceeded to stab the Swarm in the back with both of its' swords, slicing off the Swarms' arms when it pulled them away.
"Have you ever seen a jet engine explode due to physical trauma? The turbine blades go all over the place at very high speeds, and they are razor sharp." Joe mumbled into some virtual comms channel, not really expecting a response. Having lost both arms also meant a loss of the railgun, the probably most effective tool against this particular NC he had. Thus, he boosted upwards as fast as he could, firing his missiles back down when he could. He spread them out by spinning, like he did before in some missions, so the enemy wouldn't be able to take them out in one shot, or dodge them easily.
The NC followed suit, gaining quite quickly, and firing its torso-mounted plasma cannon all the while. One of the Swarms' fuel tanks, located in its right leg, exploded when it was hit by the NC's plasma gun.
Considering Joe's missiles had pretty much no realistic hit-chance, unless at point-blank, and his only other weapon, the railgun, being gone, Joe decided to bet all on one card. He turned around and charged the enemy directly, overriding his jetpack's safety, to overload its turbines. He wanted to ram the samurai with much force, regardless of the damage on his end, preferably with his back, where the jetpack was located. If he missed, that would also not be too bad, as he could simply charge again, and again, and again, and again, until his jetpack exploded due to the centrifugal force on the turbine-blades.
Joe saw no other option.
The 'Samurai's' A.I, not expecting that to happen, was slammed by the massive weight of the Swarm. The two NC's hit the ground after a futile struggle by the Samurai to get seperated. When the Swarm got back up, it could see its' test target was nothing but a small crater and a debris field, which was promptly deleted.
Joe looked at the damage report. The impact had caused the turbines to break, although the blades didn't really do too much damage outside of Swarm's internals; a few blades had pierced his cockpit, if this hadn't been a simulation, he would likely be either dead or had taken some irrepearable damage to his body. Joe decided to pause the simulation, to not only get his virtual NC fully repaired, but to also request a review of his actions from the engineer, even if that engineer was unqualified to do so, in which case he'd later request someone idling in CIC to do so too.
"I'm sorry, what?", he could hear the Neural Engineer asking from outside the pod.
"What would you have done different in fight 2, if you were in my position, assuming you had my knowledge of the NC and how to pilot it?" Joe asked.
"...Well, I would still do an improvised ramming, but really? You would've turned into a slushi, if this wasn't a simulation."
"Exactly why I asked. Do I value my own life enough, if I would do this in a real scenario?" Joe left the pod, he had enough simulation for the week, the enemies just couldn't really be surprised by one's equipment.
"...Should you really be asking me this?"
"Probably not, but you are also providing an 'outside view' on the situation, without too many tactics and such involved."
"Well, yeah. You don't need to be suicidal, I suppose?"
"I guess so. So giving up at that point would be the better option, I guess, unless the enemy doesn't accept it. Thank you." Joe left the simulation room behind, heading for the CIC, even though Sophia hadn't called him yet.
