Asteroid Blues

The sounds of live were starting to return to strip, they were muted and subdued but they were there. A trickle of water from a kitchen sink, the hum of some unseen appliance and whispers through walls.

Through it all a procession of the men and women who bought some peace back to this den of vipers.
Myongsun walked beside Hsien Yu-Wen as they made there way back to the docking bay they had forced their way into a few days ago.

The fighting had been almost continuous for the first 36 hours as the members of the Ikari company would not heed any message calling for them to withdraw out of the immediate area around the bar.

Killing those nutters was about as close to guilt free as killing could be, but it still felt like a waste born from misinformation and misdirection by those old guard of the Japanese aristocracy.

They were not dead in the streets, or floating frozen in vacuum of space. They had left that roll to ex-Yu-Jing peoples and that was always going to be a tragedy.

After that the attacks grew less frequent and there troops were less well equipped than intelligence reports had indicated.

With the area mostly secure teams of I.S.S investigations had gotten underway. Various lines of interest had bore fruit and a picture of the unfolding CA plot was starting to emerge.

One thing that was clear, was the fact that the CA were benefiting from the chaos and the divided response of the sphere.

A second issue was the depth of human involvement in whatever the CA were shipping out from Novyy Bangkok. Many leads lead to shady trading companies and smuggling rings. People who at best were so blinded by profits they did not think to ask questions or check cargo. At worst they were stupid enough to sell out their own existence.

It was one of these leads that ended with an Ikari company pilot and in turn to the plans Ikari had to attack Jiyuan while Yu-Jing forces were occupied here.

Myongsun was one of three teams heading back to the mine to coordinate defences and keep Yu-Wen safe. The last thing the forces needed was to lose their command at this crucial time.

As they approached the hanger the three dropships were surrounded by a swarm of engineers doing the final checks before launch.
Yu-Wen lead a personal guard on to the central ship while Myongsun and his counter part lead their teams onto the flanking vessels.

Once inside his unit set about strapping in. It was going to be a short trip, just a few minutes so much of the team was mot very diligent in following procedure to the letter.

Myongsun made sure everyone clipped in but did not push past that. Going on a power trip over small things can seriously damage ones respect.

Less than 15 minutes later and the ships powered up and moved out. Myongsun patched into the pilot's coms.

His team had started joking with each other. Myongsun tuned back into their jokes as the focus moved on to those members of the unit they had lost over the past few days.

Myongsun knew, like everyone else, that the smile his own face was at war with the look in his eyes that could not close to the pain inside.
It was an important ritual to follow to keep PTSD at bay and to stop the horrors of war overwhelm the good you were fighting for. This would hold them over until the drinks and emotions could flow at the bar.

“Dragon 3 is down” Myongsun snapped back to the pilot’s coms. He opened up the flight cams.

“Dragon 2 do you have a visual? What the fuck was that Dragon 1 over.”
“Dragon 1. We have no visual of the enemy but 3 is going down. Dragon 2 over. ”

Myongsun patched into the flight cams to see the dropship dive, heavenly damaged towards the asteroid’s surface.

As it fell the crew compartment detached before the engines blew.

He looked back at his unit. They could not have heard anything but they were still edgy from battle and picked up on his facial expression. The all stared at him. He just nodded and hands moved quickly to tighten straps and check their neighbor's.

“Dragon 1. We have a signature. It is Ariadnain but it doesn’t look li....”

the blast had to be in the ship to have been heard by everyone. The doors to their compartment slammed shut and fire burst towards them before being sucked out of the destroyed cockpit.

Hands gripped seats, helmets went on and suppressed fear filled everyone.
Whatever had created that blue green fire it was definitely not Ariadnain. Myongsun had seen it before. Back in the skirmishers in the Paradiso jungles. The CA were playing their hand.

“Brace yourselves, impact in 83 seconds.”

It was all smoke and darkness when Myongsun remembered he was a person.
Head heavy, he watched as light came back to his eyes. It made him feel sick was it swayed back and forth above him.

A few more moments and he was sure the light was moving and not himself. He shut his eyes tight until they hurt. When he peeled his eyelids back he was laying on the floor strapped to his chair.

Above, a number of his unit were struggling to free themselves. The light was the torch that was hooked into a Celestial guard's belt and was bouncing around in the 0-G as he worked on a fellows jammed seat belt.

Myongsun unstrapped himself. Kneeling before standing and checking pulses and getting his guys back on their feet.

When all was said and done, he had lost 14 in the crash.

The pod was badly damaged but something else was working to prevent him reaching command via the coms.

As he was debating staying put or making a move and proceeding on foot he called over to the window where movement could be seen in the darkness. His hacker chimed in.
“We're broadcasting a signal! it’s a CA” we are telling any fucking rescue that we are fucking CA.”

This was getting desperate. Seemed there was no choice. He briefed his remaining troops on the plan before cracking open the pod and rushing to take positions against the unknown enemy.

As his troops moved out, Myongsun took a moment to look around and stumbled on a strange device. It was clearly CA. It must be a beacon of some sort. He put his boot to it as the first reports came across the coms system.

There was a massive mistake made during this game. My opponent had mixed up the MRL ammo with ML ammo so i was being shot with speculative explosive and AP shots 5+ times a turn so my decisions were poor during my second turn as I was in a bind I should not have been in.

The Wu-Ming and the Weibing both fired on movement on the west flank of the battle field as smoke expanded but could not confirm a kill.

Things went quiet again until a second target burst a corner at the same time a grenade wounded the Kuang-Shi controller.

The REM and the HI went to work and managed to take the threat down, but knew a second was waiting. Turned out it was a dog warrior.

The only assumption Myongsun could make was that they had picked up the CA beckon and believed they were alien hunting.

Myongsun turned on his mike to send the Wu-Ming in, but before he got more than a few words in static assaulted his ears as the ground shook.
Through the Wu-Ming helmet cameras he watched as rockets flew in at their position.

One of the Wu-Ming ducked back into cover but the other was clearly on his back because all Myongsun could see through his cam was stars in the dark.

Myongsun sent the Ruishi forward to deal with remaining dog warrior while the Sophotec checked to see if she could get the Wu-Ming back on his feet.

The wait was tense. But not more rockets came until the downed Wu-Ming was back in the team. Myongsun gave the go ahead to attack.

The recovered Wu-Ming was the first to act and exchanged mutiple rounds with a Kazak link led by a Frontovik.

A few near misses on either side built up to the Frontovik vanishing in a burning blast of heat.

With the path clear, the second Wu-Ming with rocket launcher span round a corner and fired on the remaining Dog Warrior and covering it in fire.
Myongsun watched with interest as through the fire he go to see the transformation from man to beast for the first time.

The Wu-Ming did not hesitate to fire another volley but the dog vanished in smoke and fire.

A kuang-shi ran up into the smoke to flush him out, but the dog shrugged off the chain rifle blast.

The Ruishi final arrived and fired 3 bursts that wounded but did not kill.

The dog warrior burst forward at the Kuang-Shi firing his chain rifles and catching the Ruishi in the blast. Both were killed, but the Kuang-Shi managed to fell the beast before he died.

A calm fell for a few moments until the Weibing reported a flashing light screwing with it's sensors.

Myongsun barked “Spread out. MRL in bound.” Sending his troops diving for cover seconds before the REM exploded into bits. This was no normal MRL, this was something new (this is were the incorrect ammo started)

The first Wu-Ming was lucky to have made it out alive. But had to keep dodging shots as they rained down on the Yu-Jing position.
The Kanren who had taken a forward position was struck leaving nothing but a stain on the ground .

In the face of this new threat Myongsun decided he had to send the Wu-Ming forward to take down the Missiles.

(with the MRL firing AP-EXP ammo I thought one hit would most likely KO my link or any other target it fired at. If my opponent used guided it would be 3 shots hitting on 17s. I would not have done such a high risk move if the ammo had been correct.
Plus i needed to occupy zones)

The Wu-Ming team and their Zhanying handler dashed forward making quick work of an Irmandinho before uncovering a Strelok.

A Wu-Ming with SMG engaged at close range and landed two shots on the camo trooper but the hits seemed to do little to slow him. It took 3 more attempts to take him down but not before two Wu-Ming were to badly injured to continue.

The Sophotec managed to get one back on its feet before the team was caught in the open after their advance had been staled.

Myongsun could only watch in shame as the team he had sent forward was hit over and over again till there was nothing left of the team.

a Strelok landed the crippling blow on the last member of the Wu-Ming team left standing.

As Myongsun withdrew into the darkness he tried to go over the events of the past few hours. The planned attack by Ikari, CA working to turn different nations against each other. these were not unrelated events and the Jiyuan mine was in greater danger than the YU-Jing command first expected.

glancing at his suits controls, be saw they had about 12 hours until they were out of oxygen. the distant lights of the mine were clearly to far the reach on foot in this environment and their communications were down.

It was unlikely they would get out of this one alive.