Muv-Luv Alternative Quest 11: The Return

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Foss laughed. You concentrated on maintaining level flight just above the North Sea as the clock ticked down on your estimated time to landfall. Heavy artillery on the beaches and some older battleships that were further out to sea were both raining down punishment on the BETA far beyond your current range, projected shell impacts landing far inland. You needed to clear Bremerhaven simply because of what it was right next to – the massive natural harbor of Wilhelmshaven. Even if the BETA didn’t know just how desperately the invasion forces in the north needed a good place to offload the heavier elements, they sure were fighting like they did. God knew how many men had died the other times you’d been here.
Bremerhaven had been the site of raids over the past decades to cull BETA numbers, and it had been here that you’d experienced your true baptism of fire. Twenty men and women, Marines you’d trained with and shipped over here with, and at least half of the squad also hard ass veterans of fighting across the globe, hadn’t made it back. You still remembered it. Laserjagd and other Euro TSF’s caught refueling before they’d pull out when another wave started in on their location. You were the only squad available at Heligoland at the time, the rest further south around Amsterdam. So, fresh faced and new blood, you and Shultz had joined in the counter attack to buy time for the rest of the forces to withdraw. A squadron against a tidal wave.

It had been midnight, or close to, a moonless night, cloudy overhead and rainy too. The only real light was from tracer rounds which crisscrossed the killing fields where you were nearly overrun time and time again. In the end, each wave broke against your squadron but took a chunk of it with it, and at the end, just you and Shultz’s Avengers were left standing when the all clear to retreat was given. The replacements came in, promotions were given, medals, the whole shebang, but when more and more of those replacements died over the following months, somehow you and Shultz stayed alive. Bremerhaven had nearly killed the 115th Marine Squadron several times over, but somehow by the skin of your teeth you’d made it out.

And now you were headed back. Again. Boy, you had a chip on your shoulder now.

Crossing the beach line and following the river, you headed towards where the firing was thickest, the main BETA wave the defenders were pushing back, your escorts in the 308th breaking off to deal with their own objective towards the south-west. Landfall was made seconds later, and it was time to engage the first column.

>[ ] Charge up rail guns, this is a good time to put them to use
>[ ] Open with a conventional barrage on the front element

>>1333153
>>[ ] Charge up rail guns, this is a good time to put them to use
Wee back with the usual suspects now?

>>1333171
We are.

>>1333176
yay time for commissar bullying.

>>1333153
>>1333152
>Why the fuck then, did you feel like you were flying into some kind of deathtrap?
Trusting our gut instincts here.
>[ ] Charge up rail guns, this is a good time to put them to use

>>1333171
>>1333251
Alright, writing up reply then.

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Scattered radio messages Foss was picking up reminded you a lot of that night not so long ago, very little in your environment or situation distracting you from this thought. But this time you have something different in play. Not just your experience, not just the railguns, not only a burning desire to make the Avenger live up to its name. This time, you’re not alone, as a squad of Typhoon’s performing laserjagd smashing into the column you’re about to engage.

“Open up.” Schultz barks over the radio, and you’re more than happy to oblige. There’s a slow hum that grows into a whine as 10 sets of Avengers power up their respective armament, a pair towards the rear piggybacking off radar designation from the Typhoons to send the Harpoons they’re carrying towards their destinations. Moments later, a pair of missiles from each of them scream over your head as they’re launched towards their illuminated targets, and then you pull the trigger on your own weaponry. While at this range a conventional shell would still be effective from your 120’s, you have a better option, especially for the Destroyers that in reality are the primary threat facing your entire squad. Each member of the squad in the first flight - Shultz, Silver-4, Silver-5 and yourself – has illuminated a pair of destroyers for their railguns to target, and simultaneously all of you fire. Hypersonic slugs of depleted uranium covered in a conducting sheath of iron ignite the atmosphere in their wake, leaving trails of fire as they smash into their targets. The Destroyers practically cease to exist, the projectiles causing a cavitation in the soft flesh behind the hard-frontal shell so intense that it rips them into little more than bloody mist, the projectiles continuing on for at least a good kilometer after the impact, ripping into the massive column and helping thin the numbers further as more Harpoons are launched out towards the Forts the other squads are designating.

Within 2 seconds, you’ve recharged enough for a second volley, and the second flight has unleashed their own shots in synch with your own recharge. More alien blood paints the north German soil as the alternating fire tears apart the leading edge of the division of BETA, slowing the advance of the oncoming wave by a noticeable degree with every single volley. But it’s nowhere near enough to stop the tide of alien forms on its own.

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Once they get within 3 kilometers, your 120mm cannons start barking, HE shells lobbed over the tattered forward line of Destroyers exploding just behind them. Tanks and Grapplers begin to be visible in the horde ahead, many missing limbs from a combination of ricochets from the earlier railgun fire, and the constant rain of shelling from both you and your squad. You plant the feet of your Avenger firmly in the soil as you preemptively brace for the oncoming wave, spooling up the 36mm cannons as you start picking targets.

A kilometer and a half out, the 36mm shells start being fired. The surviving Destroyers are few and far between, and you absentmindedly send a few APFSDS 120mm darts at its direction, the giant beast collapsing to the ground as its comrades’ swarm over and around its body. Your 36mm cannons rip Grapplers and Tanks to shreds as gunfire overwhelms every other sound from the outside, Foss painting and assigning you priority targets for your heavier weaponry. You’re winning, for now, but you still have a bad feeling.

>[ ] Ask Foss for a SitRep

>[ ] Shrug it off, keep killing

>>1333408
>>[ ] Ask Foss for a SitRep
NEWTYPE SENSES TINGLING

anyone else? I know there's at least one other anon here.

>>1333408
>>[ ] Ask Foss for a SitRep

>>1333415
>>1333515
Working on reply then.

[URGE TO BULLY ANJE RISING]

Hey, Foss, what’s going on around us?” You ask, trying to seem like you’re not nervous as fuck having to fight here again. You don’t here a reply for a good minute or so, meter by meter the BETA getting closer despite the sheer weight of fire being thrown down on them.

“Well, it looks like the push inland around Wilhelmshaven is succeeding, thanks to the Poles and Brits. As for Hamburg, very little. Germans seem to be doing fine though. As for us…” he pauses again, the minutes creeping by while he did his magical RIO bullshit. At around 750 meters you start letting the occasional burst of .50 caliber machine gun fire sweep up the tanks as they try and close the gap between your squadron and their formation. Not that it’s doing it them much good, as several Avengers are letting some canister shot rip through the clustered sections of the BETA’s line, killing dozens of smaller forms with each barking report. Ammo levels are holding steady, despite the sheer weight of fire you keep putting off. The Avenger can carry an absolute fuck ton of firepower, and it was around now that you felt especially thankful of that fact – and the lack of need to pause firing to reload. The bits and pieces of bodies left on the field are obstructing the movement of BETA that keep flooding for the front, as everyone simply sweeps the area with automatic fire.

Your RIO finally chimed in after about five minutes. “Not as good around here, they’re thicker here than I’d guessed. A few divisions in our area, but at least two or three corps worth further in. They’re really trying to smash us back into the sea.”

It takes a few seconds for what he’s said to sink in. “Hold on, two or three corps? That’s easily a million BETA in front of us!”

“Yeah, and we’re going to fucking grind them into dust, because that’s what we do.” He sounded a lot grimmer than he usually did about this. “And once we’ve thinned these guys enough, well…”

“Well what.”

“Open country.”

>[ ] “Open country? The fuck do you mean?”
>[ ] “Jesus. Hopefully the Jutland forces can swing down to help us.”
>[ ] “Any chatter about Hamburg?”

>>1333579
>>[ ] “Open country? The fuck do you mean?”

>>1333579
>>[ ] “Open country? The fuck do you mean?”

>>1333590
>>1333595
Alright, writing.

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>[X] “Open country? The fuck do you mean?”

“Open country? The fuck do you mean? There is no “open country” when it comes to the BETA. Just no man’s land.” You punctuate your point by smashing open another throng of Tank and Grappler class BETA at about 700 yards out. While the crowd is certainly thinning, the dust on the horizon tells a different story.

“By open country I mean open country Fischer.” Foss said. “No forces, no nothing, just area for us to start pushing into. Nothing fucking there. As soon as we break through this pack, there might be no stopping us from getting to Berlin if we’re lucky – might being the key thing here. No signals on anything further in for at least fifty, sixty clicks so I’m just guessing it’s empty most of the way to the hives.”

“That kind of open country. I don’t think we’ll be that lucky or push our luck that far.” Fifty caliber tracers rip apart a Tank attempting to leap towards the formation, bloody gibs falling into no man’s land as you’ve swapped to nearly exclusively using canister shot to start mopping up what was left of this column of BETA. Schultz flashes another waypoint onto the screen as you leave the stragglers for the ground pounders to deal with.

“Please, we’ll be smoking cigars after clearing the Budapest Hive by Christmas.”

Jump units firing off, you make the aerial dash a good five or six kilometers to the next killzone, taking the occasional 36mm cannon shot at the BETA stragglers you fly over. Nothing much left now to shoot at. That was probably a division or half of BETA exterminated by yourselves and the Typhoons you saw out of the corner of your eye going deeper into BETA territory. The next large column of BETA was being engaged already as you rolled up towards the side, naval guns taking potshots from miles off shore, and MLRS rockets carving bloody chunks out of the ocean of aliens. This wasn’t really even a pitched fight, this was a bloody slaughter especially as your squadron started turning on the threat.
A fort about 5 or 6 clicks away ceased to exist as you hit it with a salvo of railgun fire.

>[ ] He’s being optimistic.
>[ ] He might be right.
>[ ] He’s a fucking retard.

>>1333736
Hm.
He's our RIO, so his intelligence is already in question..
>[ ] He might be right.

>>1333736
>[ ] He’s being optimistic.

hm, two players, two different choices, maybe go with something like 'He's being optimistic, but maybe he's not wrong', or something?

>>1333736
>>[ ] He’s being optimistic.

If you don't want to wait for a tiebreaker, RC, you can just go ahead and switch my vote to He's being optimistic.

>>1333802
>>1333801
Welp

>>1333741
>>1333775
>>1333801
Tiebroken. Writing up response.

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Last post for the night. It’s been a little slow but I felt the need to run for a little while anyway.
>[X] He’s being optimistic

If your time with Foss has taught you anything, it’s that the man has a tendency to assume the best outcome is not only possible, but very probable. This isn’t to say he’s blind to the possibility of things not turning out well, but if anything he’s optimistic.

The pattern of engagement continues throughout the day as you push further and further inland, occasionally needing to fall back for a quick reload of ammunition in the field, before you turn back and head into the fray. Hour after hour you keep killing and killing, until there’s a slight break in the action, the faster and fresher TSF’s ordered forwards to exploit the breakthrough Foss said would be coming while you and the rest of the teams who were part of the sledgehammer started flying home.

There were a lot less TSF’s in the air than you’d have liked to see, the 308th missing a few pilots as they flew with you back over the Helgoland Blight before diverting back towards Dover. But you’d made it, and made it without losing a man this time around. Maybe Foss was too optimistic, but you didn’t see this push ending until the Elbe was reached and the Jutland approach secured. Now it all depended on the offensive down South to see if you’d be able to hold whatever you had seized here.

It might be pretty painful to hold, but you’d do your best. Hopefully, that would be enough.

Good thread, RC, needed more Anje bullying, but you know that's what I like :P