Clusterfrag

Stat1C5hade sweeps an ethereal hand across his plane of view, emanating a million tiny slivers of light. The scanners squirm like subterranean creatures, culling the ether for a signal. A brilliant point of light undulates as they refract from it's luminescent body, waves of light crashing around it like a digital sandbar. Bingo.

The binary worm crackles--pulsating like the flashpoint of an arc welder--as it slowly breaks through the protective code at the valence of the node.
A jet of white-hot exhaust flares out of the boosters as the gunship swings around, cannons swiveling into position.

A hot prickle of fear courses over the 5hade's body as the firewall reacts to his probing. He's been discovered, and worse, traced. Shockingly, his first thought isn't about his helpless meat slumped against the humming utility box, but the rest of the team surrounding it.

<Get to cover, now! Go! Go!>

The 5hade continues hacking furiously, the seconds on his mental survival clock draining away more rapidly than water through a sieve.

Panic washes over Max's face as the call of distress comes out over the team's comm. His first reaction is to look in frantic search of answers at Val, but the decker is still inside and his body, as always, looks eerily dead. The elf turns back to the gunship, venturing a peek around the corner of the comm tower support structure and clutches his weapon, ineffectual as it would be, tightly in his grip. This day keeps getting better and better.

Adams leaps from cover and dashes behind another vent, exposing his position briefly to draw the gunship's attention away from the slumped decker. His heart pounds in his chest as he slumps against the low ferrocrete block, keeping it between himself and the gunship.

Bits of the roof top melt away, accompanied by the deafening, repeating thunderclap of the autocannons discharging.

[ Max = 52 ]
[ Autocannon A = 48 ]
[ Autocannon B = 47 ]
[ Val = 44 ]
[ Sinjin = 40 ]
[ Doc = 32 ]
[ Tyros = 30 ]
[ Gunship Primary = 17 ]

Max hunkers down behind cover, trying only to weather the storm until he can think of some course of action that doesn't result in the deaths of he and his friends.

(( Delay action for now. ))

The auto-cannon sings a song of wanton entropy as it lays waste to the rooftop.
{{ 1P DAMAGE! }}

Doc dives as a shell explodes the plasteel next to him. He tucks into a roll, wincing as a handful of red-hot shrapnel penetrates his armor.

Doc doesn't have time to reflect on his flesh wound; he's up and running as the auto-cannon remains focused on him. A slug tears through the arachno-fiber weave on his arm.

Max keeps his head low as a flurry of heavy artillery punctuates the air above his head, dissolving a heating coil in the process.

Max rises from his position and fires hastily at the gunship, looking to blow a hole in something essential.

(( Gunship Primary, BF on first shot, SA on second. ))

{{ 3P DAMAGE! }}

Max's burst manages to penetrate the massive armor plates covering the side of the gunship.
His second shot ricochets away.

Stat1C re-doubles his efforts, dumping every available flop of processing power into the worm; which burns with violet light.
The gyrating tendrils pierce the veil protecting the node and Val's avatar flickers as he subscribes a basic user node.

Adams is torn. The dropship is all but unassailable with their weapons, and would make an excellent prize if it could be captured undamaged.

"Keep the weapons off Val!" He shouts.

(( Delaying action for now ))

Tyros runs over to Val's limp form and picks him up, carrying him under one arm behind the concrete base of the comm tower. Continuing to move, he maneuvers both of them so as to maintain the concrete block as cover between them as the gunship flies around.

The gunship's VTOL engines roar to life and the aircraft careens to the corner of the roof, exposing the team's cover.

[ Max = 52 ]
[ Autocannon A = 48 ]
[ Autocannon B = 47 ]
[ Val = 44 ]
[ Sinjin = 40 ]
[ Doc = 32 ]
[ Tyros = 30 ]
[ Gunship Primary = 17 ]

(( Using delayed action ))

Adams tracks the gunship across the sky, and vaults over the ferrocrete block, placing it once again between him and the aircraft.

Max dives to a position that once again places a barrier between his person and the aerial harbinger of death looming over the whole team.

Max covers his head as a shower of debris rains down on him, accompanied by the thunderous barrage of the autocannon.

Sinjin rolls from his cover and flattens against the roof as tracer fire strafes across it.

Stat1C5hade careens through the node, his passage creating swirls and eddies of digital code as he smashes recklessly through the node's sculpting. He glimpes through the vortex of reforming data the matrix persona of the pilot, rather uncreatively displayed as a humanoid in a flight suit and fighter's helmet strapped into a large bucket seat. The digital world flickers and slows to a near-crawl as the 5hade activates the hot-sim toggle on his sim module. (( Free action. )) He peers at the persona intently as he targets it with his Analyze program in an attempt to glean the pilot's Access ID.

(( Simple action, delay further action. ))

(( Back from travels, just caught up. Frag we're in a tight spot!! Really wish id bought smoke grenades that were thermal...using delayed action))

In a vain hope to conceal their movements as the team scrambles about the rooftop, Sinjin pops the pin on a smoke grenade and drops it to the ground in the center of the group. Immediately the small metal canister begins spewing thick clouds of high density white smoke, most of which is blown in all directions by the powerful wash of the gunships vertical thrusters. Knowing the ships arsenal is undoubtedly equipped with a military-spec sensory array and automated targeting systems, he hopes the futile effort will, at best, buy Val an extra second before the battery zero's in again.

((Next action :Full Defense))

Doc looks at the heat exchange vents lining the roof.

Of course, you idiot, he thinks.

He takes aim first at the vent he is hiding near, and fires a wide sweeping burst, popping three new holes in the structure. He then takes aim at one near Val, and repeats the process.

He checks the scene in thermal, satisfied with the extra thermal blooms now dotting the rooftop.

Aim through that, assholes.

Tyros's hides himself and Val completely behind cover and waits to reposition themselves as necessary to keep it between them and the gunship (delay action).

Sinjin's grenade bounces and then begins to spin in place like a top, propelled by the inky substance being jettisoned. The adept catches a dawning realization Doc's face before the two are separated by a wall of smoke.

Several reports sound from Doc's battle rifle, and the smoke wavers as heat from the environmental system begins to waft upwards, out of the building.

Somewhere on the other side of the smoke-screen, the team can hear vector engines belching out short, stabilizing flares. The sound of a sliding door and modulated voices follow shortly.

A Legion squad materializes through the wall of smoke, having exited the gunship, which continues to circle the rooftop.

[ Max = 52 ]
[ Autocannon A = 48 ]
[ Autocannon B = 47 ]
[ Val = 44 ]
[ Tyros = 30 ]

[ Max = 48 ]
[ Sinjin = 48 ]
[ Legion Rifleman A = 45 ]
[ Val = 44 ]
[ Legion Adept = 44 ]
[ Legion Rifleman B = 44 ]
[ Doc = 42 ]
[ Autocannon A = 41 ]
[ Autocannon B = 41 ]
[ Legion Heavy = 35 ]
[ Legion Hermetic = 33 ]
[ Tyros = 30 ]
[ Gunship Primary = 27 ]

(( omg someone's dying in Canada ))

(( Max is delaying action. ))

The autocannons continue to blast on Firestarter's flank.
Doc stumbles as a shell detonates a cooling apparatus next to him, blossoming it like a metallic lotus. The Phalanx suit stiffens in response to the grazing hit.

(( Max on full defense. ))
Max swivels, pulling his new shotgun up to bear. He finds himself looking directly into an autcannon barrel through a space in the smoke. The elf turns and dives for cover, wincing at the kinetic energy of the massive round passing by.

Val's vision fills with rotating ciphers and branching algorithms as the cryptanalysis begins.

(( Tyros' turn before the Legion troops join the party. ))