[snip]

When the phase pistol shots rang out they took the soldiers initially targeted by surprise. Dropping them unconscious. Three of the five were down and out. The remaining two snapped to cover behind some rubble nearby and opened fire in bursts in the landing party’s direction. Bullets pinged off the cars they were hiding behind. The leader of the former five was heard cursing in their alien tongue before the English was picked up. “..Must be ESM North Republic forces! Only they would have energy weapons!” she was heard saying.

El let slip a curse in Mandarin that related to boils in various unfortunate places as she had missed the leader. Energy pumped to a pile of rubble wouldn’t do much, though at a kill setting it might heat it up enough. Or they could set the weapon to overload and use it as a grenade. “Isaac, what can we do with these to get to them?” she asked in a frustrated hiss. If anyone would know he would know.

Not really able to easily fire, at least until they run out of ammo, El positioned herself behind what she thought was the engine block for better cover and pulled out her scanner. This was so going not well, she thought, and turned her attention to the area around them. A firefight was not a soundless thing and it might attract others - namely that large machine they heard earlier. This sounded like local forces. If they thought we were the enemy and radioed over. Not good .. well, they could always beam out and take the women with them and they could get care and find out what was going on if things went poorly.

• El

So far no sign of radio contact was evident, scans didn’t pick up any big targets within spitting distance of them, though an APC sized target was down the street on the other side of the buildings about a 1/2 a mile off.

”..Could be civies got their hands on a supply cache?” The other was heard to say over the firefight that was breaking out. Meanwhile Roger was presumably still standing in the open while the two women were still bleeding out.

GM CockRoach

As the weapons fire rang out, Roger covered his head with his hands, staying in place as to not get accidentally hit. He looked over to the women who were on the ground near him bleeding. Scooting his body closer to the nearest woman, he whispered to her. “I can help you,” as he reached his hands to her wound and applied pressure to try and stop the bleeding.

-Roger Ferguson, CSO

OOC: Which woman were you helping the young one or older one?

Roger’s efforts for the one woman were successful, the main bleeding point now that he could see it was not too bad as it had seemed, with stopping the worst of it the woman assuming she got medical attention would survive.

“So, the North has energy weapons and the south doesn’t. I wonder if we can use that to our advantage.” Lt. Sanks thought out loud still working on the alien language and trying to translate it to the broken English spoken by these people.

Lt. Sanks, Linguist

Just as Sanks would think this he would overhear more conversation between the two surviving South forces. “..Must be one of their elite units, same as ours..” one of them commented as another pinging of bullets came there way. Echoed by, “..Alert the APC unit, get them to come reinforce us..”

GM CockRoach

“Oh no you don’t,” El said, pursing her lips and setting a scan for the frequency they were using. “Trying to isolate their frequency to block it,” she murmured loud enough for the couple around her to hear. They were not going to out engineer her and she did not want another unit coming down on them. These two were annoying enough. She winced at the sound of the rounds that, while a waste, could be cover for one of them trying to get away. That might come ‘after’ they found they weren’t getting through. But first things first .. find their frequency and set her scanner to try to block it.

• El, Eng

Rachel leaned out from her cover and shot at the two remaining soldiers “Roger, use any cloth you have and pack the wound” She called out to the Scientist, she couldn’t risk running across the field until the other two soldiers were taken care of.”

Dr. Grey - CMO

El’s eyes flickered to where the doctor was. She thought that was an invitation for the soldiers to hit an easy target - aka Roger. While it wouldn’t be hard for them to strafe the prone man and the women too El hoped they wouldn’t. In the meantime, they just reminded them that Roger was there. “Isaac, Roger might be the next target. One of them is using their comms. I’m trying to block it but if the other pops up to shoot take it out,” she whispered

• El, Eng

Twin beams of phase pistol fire struck the two as they came out of cover, both dropped unconscious to the group over the ruins of the hover-cars they had been behind.

Meanwhile El’s efforts to block the radio had succeeded.....partly so, she picked up a return call on her comm unit. =/\= APC-32J to patrol squad, what was that? You were coming in all buzzed. =/\= A male voice questioned.

GM CockRoach