A few seconds after Raisa had finished stretching, shots were fired and the first part of the battle for the fortress began. She had been ordered to deal with the six-legged machine's group and she had just finished transitioning into combat mode from stealth mode, which took about five to seven minutes, when the reinforcement tanks came rolling over the hills in an almost cinematic fashion. Moving out of her cover, Raisa checked her ammunition. She had more than enough rounds for her rifle, but she only had two more missiles left; one per wrist. She would need to choose her next target carefully. While they certainly could penetrate the armor of the tank, thanks to her choosing High Velocity missiles, it would be a waste to use them on the tanks. Instead, the point defense guns would be better targets...
MISSILE WARNING!
Suddenly, she was torn away from her thoughts by the sound of her GEAR's systems indicating that she had missiles inbound towards her. A corner of her view was changed to show her external cameras tracking the missiles. Give or take, at least eight were headed towards her. No problem, she would just deploy flares...
WARNING: SHOULDER DAMAGE: HEAVY BURNS!
Raisa cried out in pain as a burning pain erupted on her shoulders. Instinctively, she gripped her shoulders and she realized what had happened when she felt the distinct shapes of the shoulder-mounted ammo storage units. An old design problem that had been around since the days of the Fulcrum yet had never been resolved; the storage units blocked the flare and chaff launchers. This had catastrophic effects when the pilot had to fire flares or chaff. Raisa had completely forgotten about this. To begin with, she hadn't expected to face missiles in the mission based on the briefing, explaining why she had decided to use the storage units instead of something like minature CIWS, which she would definitely had used if she had known about the missile attacks beforehand. She gritted her teeth in response to the simulated pain she had received from the burns on the GEAR's shoulders. However, she still had the missiles to deal with.
Theoretically, she could force-jettison the shoulder units and then deploy chaff to mask her position, but she doubted she would have enough time to achieve such an action. Instead, she would need to do something in next few seconds or face annihilation and become the first loss for the Roughriders. Looking at her external feed with slightly teary eyes, she then looked around her and an idea hatched in her head. Without much time to think about whether it would work or not, she brought it into action without simulating the potential possibilities in her head. With a sharp command, she unlocked her rifle from its mount and brought it into her left-hand, rather than her right one as it was designed for and threw it to the ground next to her. Then, she threw her GEAR onto its back. With a thump, the Flanker's back hit the ground hard and Raisa gasped as the shock knocked the wind out of her. Not letting the new pain in her chest and back get to her, she launched her remaining missiles into the air and detonated them when they were high enough, destroying two of the eight missiles.
ABDOMINAL DAMAGE: IMPACT. REAR ABDOMINAL ARMOR AT FIFTY PERCENT DAMAGE!
Not resting for a moment and ignoring the damage indication, she grabbed her thirty-millimeter rifle with her left hand and positioning the butt on her left shoulder and using the ground as a support, she brought the rifle up with one arm towards the sky and did the same with her right hand's wrist mounted machine gun, aiming both at the remaining missiles. Raisa fired both at the missiles, which acted much like a CIWS, letting the bullets hit the missiles and destroy them, which was highly effective, but had one major problem, which Raisa hadn't had the time to predict...
The bullets fired were only simulator bullets, incapable of making actual damage. The shells ejected by her rifle were a different story.
HEAVY ABDOMINAL DAMAGE: BURNS. FRONTAL ABDOMINAL ARMOR AT EIGHTY PERCENT DAMAGE!
Raisa screamed out in pain once again as the shells ejected from the right side of the rifle fell onto her GEAR's chest, making deep burns in the armor. As earnest and frank as ever, her GEAR translated these burns and the pain that ensued to Raisa's own suit and thus her body. The missiles each went out with individual pop's like fireworks as they were shot down and she was safe for the moment. However, Raisa wasn't free of the pain caused by the hot shells. Gasping from the simulated pain, she let her arms fall to the ground and she gingerly looked at her GEAR's chest. It was deeply burned, leaving only the final and lightest layer of armor intact. Despite it not being her own true body, she still winced at the sight, mostly due to the pain. In reality, her suit was only playing a trick on her nerves to make her fell as if she was actually burned. An idea originally meant to give pilot's a closer bond with their GEAR, Raisa gave a curt opinion of it.
She hated it.
Her shoulders still burned from the flares, her back was still aching from the impact on the ground and now her chest felt like absolute hell. Still, after a moment of regaining herself, she weakly spoke to her GEAR. "Structural damage report." A chime confirmed her voice command and her GEAR's system gave her an image of the damage. Her shoulder armor was, of course, in the red zone, as was her frontal abdominal armor and her rear abdominal armor was colored yellow, but the structure of her GEAR was still in nearly perfect condition and save for the pair of chest mounted external cameras, all systems were fine. In short, she could continue the fight. With a deep breath, Raisa brought the GEAR up off the ground and picked up the rifle again and locked back onto her back. After recovering a few magazines from her shoulder ammo units and clipping them to her legs, then loading the surplus missiles into the wrist launchers, Raisa jettisoned the storage units. The smoldering flares fell with them to the ground, bringing a bit of smoke and Raisa felt some of the sting from the burns leave her shoulders.
Recovering her rifle from her back, she ejected the empty magazine and loaded a new one. She then verified how much ammo she now had. Three full thirty millimeter magazines, a half-empty fifteen millimeter and two missiles, plus blade... It wasn't great, but it would have to be enough, as she could only carry two magazines on her legs. Raisa cleared her throat and she attempted to sound strong despite the pain as she spoke over comms. "Biryukova here. I've sustained considerable shoulder and abdominal armor damage from the missile attack and I've had to jettison my shoulder ammo storage units, leaving me with only three more magazines for my rifle. Chaff launchers are inoperable. I can still continue the fight, though. Orders, Colonel?"
Rhona W