Gunslinger 2018/01/09(Tue)06:02 No. 857296 ID: 459819
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God dammit.

You are a cybernetic organism, and this is a stylistic representation of what is going on in your mind right now. Supposedly it has something to do with REM Atonia; that when your organic brain falls asleep it stops communicating with your bionics, like it does with your muscles. Considering that parts of your brain are bionic, this can get a bit problematic. As a workaround, your bionics attempt to initiate a handshake protocol with your organic brain, requesting specific information from your mind as a form of bridging. Most of your memory is stored digitally, so recalling things while desynchronised can be a bit like trying to put the fingers back on your hands, using only your feet.

The bionics send several short prompts and wait.

What is your name, your secret phobia, and what hobby did you enjoy as a child?

Greg, spiders, claymation

Melissa, cats and remote control model airplanes.

Gregumi, tickle torture, the thing where you put a potato in the car exhaust pipe and watch it shoot out except using your legs instead of a pipe.

Gunslinger 2018/01/09(Tue)09:07 No. 857333 ID: 459819
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Data unfurls before you.

You are Gregory Sandoval. You are originally human; from Flint, Michigan. When you were about four years old you and most of your home city were abducted en masse by the Visitors, an empire of extra-dimensional beings set on conquering Earth. Supposedly you and your town disappeared a full two years before the war officially started, and Visitor operations had been ongoing some time before that. There was some kind of language barrier issue that lead to Flint's reputation as "America's most violent city" being mistranslated to mean you were the strongest of your kind, and they wanted to see if humans would make fitting additions to the empire. Their home planet is called Golboria and they are formally known as Golborians. The memory chain continues like this for some time, like some kind of government sterilized expositional recap of your early life. You dismiss it with a thought and move to the next authentication link.

You are afraid of cats. Golborian wildlife is vastly different to Earth's, and whilst there are companion animals (somehow some Earth dogs made it across too), there is nothing really akin to a cat. The fact that nearly every aspect of their behaviour contradicts itself makes you distinctly uncomfortable. Someone once pointed out to you that humans are like that too, and you realized you don't particularly like them, either. Earth humans are very unlike Golborian humans. Earth humans are perpetual victims to their emotions, their petty urges and they're unsufferably proud without even realizing it. They try and tell you that's how humans are meant to be, and you're the result of living under the Kariket's facist regime, at which point you're too busy resisting the urge to punch them in the face to keep listening.
You realize your digital brain has completed this segment of authorization, and has been patiently waiting while your emotional cortex completes its little outburst. You control your anger and move on before you get too carried away.

When you were a child, you built countless gliders, simple aircraft and several remote-controlled aeroplanes. You were obsessed with flying. You talked to anyone from Flint who knew anything about aircraft back on Earth, and your mother used to tell you with a little bit of sadness in her voice that you would have made an excellent aerospace engineer. When you were in hospital, when the earth official, a stern-faced young man by the name of Carlson, first offered you the opportunity to join the enhancement project, you jokingly asked if they could make you fly. Carlson replied it was a standard part of the package without batting an eyelid. You also used to be extremely ticklish, but most of your original skin was burned off and the remainder has been... replaced.

Your mind blossoms like a digital flower as your bionic components begin exchanging data with your conscious mind again. Data unfurls around you, and several more prompts appear as your reactor, flight systems and weapons package synchronise. You now remember that for security reasons your bionics require very specific authentication to ensure they're actually still attached to your body and not being hacked by the Floater Collective for espionage. If authentication fails the parts go inert and the biomechanical components in your brain denature themselves in a very destructive chemical process. This 'security measure' also used to feature a small nuclear explosion.

You are a Class X6 cyborg.
The X prefix means you are Extensively Modified but still largely match a typical humanoid physique. Your arms and legs are fully mechanical, your endoskeleton is now a mass of mechanical actuators and composite materials among more traditional organic material. Your internal organs are heavily modified but still fulfil the same basic functions; you still need to eat, breathe and pass waste. Your threat level is categorized as 6. You are still superhumanly fast, strong, and exceptionally deadly in all forms of armed and unarmed combat. You can take a Garakton (Warrior) in a fight and win, unless they are very strong or very cunning. You are technically supposed to be threat class 9, but those functions are suppressed and are a matter of state secrecy. When the war was on, you would have been Class S9. You were able to reconfigure your body to meet a variety of mission profiles, and your weapon options were virtually limitless, up to and including human-adapted electrolaser technology (colloquially known as 'shock' weapons, standard firearm technology of Golboria) as well as several types of directed and undirected nuclear energy weapons.

You also had several systems that made you even more effective at a particular kind of combat.

Technically you can swap this upgrade package with the other ones, and you are unbelievably dangerous regardless, but generally speaking a cyborg soldier picked a particular role to excel in and stuck with it. What role did you specialize in?
1. Ranged Combat. This includes a full sensor package upgrade that makes you a demigod of sensory perception.
2. Close Combat. This includes further enhancements to your physique to increase your speed and agility, and also makes you look more athletic in general.
3. Directed Energy. You figured out how to make a kind of plasma cannon by venting raw nuclear energy from the reactor in your chest, as well as how to manipulate several other matter/energy interactions. This upgrade will be locked off at the beginning as it's heavily classified and possibly a war crime, but you may be able to unlock it again if the need arises.
4.__________________________________

4) Computer science. You are a master of electronic warfare. The perfect blend of man and machine, mostly machine.

3.
Now we're cooking with plasma!

4. Mid-range combat. You were the barrier between the CQC and the ranged support. Area-denial, machine guns and rapid fortification was your forte.

>>857342
Backing this

>>857342
Backed.

4. Chemical weapons. Golborian metabolic pathways are quite different than yours. Once scientists in the Russian Federation worked that out, it was only a matter of time before things... got messy.

>>857333
1, because sniping's a good job, mate.

1, because sensory perception doesn't just win fights, it ends them before they begin. Sun Tzu's teachings basically boil down to "he with the most information wins."

1

1, because those who are forewarned are forearmed.
I wonder if that saying confuses Warriors.

>>857342
Looks good

>>857342
I can get behind this.

>>857342
Wouldn't a smoothbore specialist be the midpoint between ranged and CQC?

I guess I can see a machine pistol class implant being used against a Skut horde, but not as a primary tactic.

4: grenadier! That's kind of like the mid range combat option with area denial, but with more explosions! who doesn't like explosions?

>>857730
>>857776
They both are, of course. I was just trying to be brief.

Gunslinger 2018/01/11(Thu)05:22 No. 857806 ID: 459819
File 151567696185.png - (968.17KB , 800x600 , EQTW4.png )

During training you demonstrated an aptitude for accurately laying down withering salvos of fire at all ranges. You were offered to join a fireteam as a 'gunner', essentially a machine gunner but with significantly more firepower than unmodified infantry. Typical loadout was a targeting computer module and a pair of XM312 compact machine guns chambered in the smaller .416 Barrett cartridge. The weapon was much lighter than traditional .50BMG machine guns, with a higher rate of fire, but was still capable of effectively downing Warriors. This turned out to be a winning combination that became a mainstay of cyborg forces throughout the war.

Your first operation, however, was a disaster.

One fire team was wiped out completely and your team consisted of yourself and what was left of your squad leader, whom you managed to drag back through the exit portal before the entire area was glassed by the reactors of the fallen going super-critical.

For your heroism you were promoted to Sergeant and immediately set about un-fucking your platoon.

As a Sergeant you had more choice in your loadout and modules. You assembled a mod package that suited your role as platoon leader, as well as filling the battlefield role that became colloquially known as the Heavy.

Due to the highly classified nature of your very existence, your missions were generally limited to strikes on Golborian targets that needed to be eliminated with extreme prejudice. As a Heavy you were expected to provide maximum firepower for your team whilst still being able to maintain pace with the CQC units. Generally you hung back a ways and provided ordinance via hardpoints on your shoulders, and moved to support anybody that hit heavier resistance, or intercept enemy counter-attacks. If you operation was a raid you'd opt for missiles, cannons and ECM, and provide close air support and dogfight with any Floaters trying to strafe your own units. If a protracted fight or very heavy resistance was expected, you'd bring deployable barricades, land mines and fusion grenades to suppliment your already significant armoury.

To fulfil this greatly varied role (as well as leading a fire team) you selected a Medium Power Sensor Package and Targetting Computer since that was the best that could fit inside armoured head enclosures. As a Sergeant you also received a Boosted Communications System and a Small Infowar System.

The Whip Sword, however, was a personal choice. A scattering of human culture made it through to Golboria during the abductions, such as a few video games, including Mortal Kombat II. While getting friendly with one of the engineers in charge of designing and maintaining your body, the subject of video games came up you jokingly mentioned you could probably throw a kyoketsu-shoge hard enough to embed into people, and yank them around like Scorpion. The engineer got a funny look in his eye and presented you with his prototype a week later. Apparently he was a fan of Takeda because you ended up with a pair of swords that extend into bladed whips. An unenhanced human would shred themselves, but your superior senses and reflexes let you become a whirlwind of death. The blades are sharp enough and strong enough to injure a Warrior, and with some practise you figured out how to 'throw' them. You may or may not have bellowed "COME HERE!" the first time you successfully hooked a Warrior in the ribcage with one. The government let you keep them after you retired.

The infowar package, however, almost landed you in a shit-mire of trouble.

Nobody really expected you to practise your hacking skills on friendly targets, let alone yourself. You managed to jailbreak a lot of your systems and learn a lot of extremely classified information.

Your body is an amalgamation of technology projects that were thrown together in a skunkworks to develop a possible victory scenario for the Human/Visitor war. When it became clear that Humanity wasn't in a position to win a conventional war, focus shifted to developing radical weapon technologies so brutal they'd force Golboria into an MAD ceasefire, or in the very least strike back so viciously a Golborian victory would be paid for dearly.

Your bionics are supplemented with cloned hybrid Human/Warrior tissues. Myomer bundles are stronger, but Warrior muscles still have an efficiency advantage so both are used in your arm and leg enhancements. Your torso and pelvis are 90% organic musculature. From a psychological perspective organic tissues were also necessary to maintain a sense of humanity. You yourself specifically requested your face and genitals remain intact; the hacked files revealed both were damaged beyond recovery by your graze with death, and were reconstructed while you were in a coma. Warrior culture would be deeply offended if they learned about your hybrid nature.

You also have a piece of a Floater's brain implanted in your head. The skunk works reverse-engineered Floater flight technology in fairly short order, but human pilots simply couldn't manage the instinctive level of control required and several pilots lost their lives. It was concluded that all but the most skilled pilots would inevitably have a fatal accident before they'd flown long enough to master the technique.

Once a proper method for communicating information in and out of an organic brain in digital format was developed, however, everything changed. Suddenly information could be salvaged from the remains of Floater brains, and their own flight skills were learned to be instinctive, and could be implanted on cybernetic brains. You don't know the name of the 'donor', but you know she was female, and sometimes you dream about flying from her perspective. You suspect the dreams may be an echo of damaged memories. The Floater Collective would not be greatly bothered by this questionable innovation, but Occulots would be horrified for numerous reasons. One big reason is because it resembles the practise of forcibly removing information from another's mind, which is a harsh taboo called mind ripping in Occulot culture.

Finally, you discovered you have an Occulot retina implaned where your sinus cavity used to be. You'd been told it was a function of your digital brain enhancements, effectively allowing you to guard your brain with anti-virus. The reality is that Occulot powers are still a mystery, and the only headway has been from studying their single eye. You underwent some psi ops training, and with concentration you can reflect an Occulot's mind-blasts back at them. You think you may be eventually be able to manifest powers yourself, as you've found you're capable of adding your own power to a mind blast before reflecting it back.

If the Kariket ever learned that humanity were capable of manifesting psychic powers without the aid of Oculot defectors, another war would break out almost immediately.

You realize you've been reviewing your data files as they streamed back in from your bionics. Approximately ten minutes have passed since you woke up.

To complete the handshake protocol, you must review a memory, as the easiest way to establish proper neural connection with your bionics is to remember having used them before. Memories associated with first encounters have some of the strongest subconscious data.
1. The first time you flew with your new body.
2. That first fateful combat mission.
3. The first time you encountered that Oculot BITCH you've come to call the Black Widow.
4. _________________________________

>>857806
3. It's totally Polyphema.

>>857806
>You assembled a mod package that suited your role as platoon leader, as well as filling the battlefield role that became colloquially known as the Heavy.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-QM1eTAwOYc

>You may or may not have bellowed "COME HERE!" the first time you successfully hooked a Warrior in the ribcage with one.
I thought the line was "GET OVER HERE!"?

>leg enhancements.
Your legs make you kinda look like a Skut.

>You yourself specifically requested your face and genitals remain intact; the hacked files revealed both were damaged beyond recovery by your graze with death, and were reconstructed while you were in a coma.
So now you've got a robo-dick? How does that feel?

>Finally, you discovered you have an Occulot retina implaned where your sinus cavity used to be.
Whatever you do, don't sneeze!

>Memory?
1. The first time you flew with your new body.

>>857813
You've met the Baroness, you've even called her a bitch once, but she is not your nemesis.

>>857814
>I thought the line was "GET OVER HERE!"?
It's kinda both. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qexdB9CUqIE

>So now you've got a robo-dick? How does that feel?
You have a fairly normal, organic, non-robo dick. By 'fairly normal' it was grown in a jar, it gets almost literally rock hard, and can't be injured by much less than a gunshot. 2/3 of those things are normal for Garakton.

3

>>857806
1.

3.

3.
I need dat intel

>>857806
1

>>857806
>3. The first time you encountered that Oculot BITCH you've come to call the Black Widow.
Is that a nemesis I sense?

1! Flying is the shit!

1.
Remember who you are.

333333333333

>>857806
3

3

>>857806
3

Gunslinger 2018/01/22(Mon)06:50 No. 860431 ID: 459819
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CURRENT LOADOUT
Medium size sensor package
Small Infowar system
Enhanced Comms
Whipswords
XM312 machine gun x2
Mk30-3 'kurz' 30x173mm autocannon (airburst & AP warheads)
Mk66 Mod 9 'Ladon' guided micro-missiles x6
GP-25 grenade launcher
VOG-25(n) variable-yield fusion grenades x14
Type-6 deployable barricade x2, Shock weapon resistant coating

TEAM MEMBERS
Cpl. Cotton: CQC/Demolitions
PFC. Riggs: Air Superiority/ECM
Cpl. Villetri: SDM/Medic
Pvt. Brady: Air Superiority

It was particularly dark on Earth that night. The sky was completely overcast, the clouds sitting thick and low. Even the unseen spectrum was unusually dark; telecomms were completely silent, no buzz of magnetism from electricity, just the occasional echo of active radar washing over you like the tide. It would have been unnerving if you hadn't encountered it before.
As if on cue, Cotton came up alongside you and beaded you. "You're worried we're too late," he said, "you know they have processes now, to hide themselves." You didn't reply.
You were cruising at about 10,000ft, sitting just below the cloud cover, about half an hour out from Boston. At around 9pm a massive portal had opened over Boston, stretching clear across the harbor. Golborian forces made landfall on the airport tarmac, immediately inflicting heavy casualties on the military forces stationed there. Reports came in that a sizable formation of Floaters had dropped out of the portal on the West side of the harbor, screaming across the city and laying waste to traffic on Routes 90 and 93, cutting off two major evacuation routes. A secondary portal opened over Franklin Park Zoo, and it quickly became clear this assault was aimed at encircling Boston and inflicting as many casualties as possible. After an airstrike on Logan International was intercepted by a Floater hunter-killer team, your unit was petitioned to strike the heart of the enemy formation while conventional forces worked to secure a perimeter and aid evacuation. Nuclear detonations were to be limited to Logan.
"Do not expect reinforcements," you said coldly to the team, "we are to assume Boston is overrun. Riggs will go active jamming if we're engaged, or I give the word. Priority target is the portal over the harbor. Rip out your reactor and throw it through the fucking thing if necessary. Data squawk put at least two thousand Opfor on the ground at Logan, including over five hundred Warriors. Floater contingent is unknown, however we know they have at least two bomber groups and a hunter-killer team. You've all got your assigned zones, we're sweeping south-west towards the Turnpike tunnel and -"
"INCOMING!" Riggs cuts you off, relaying her sensor feed to the team without another word.
Passive sensors picked up a Floater type exhaust emission, large single source. Scattered emissions painted returns off an eight meter projectile, highly streamlined. The missile was just over six kilometers out, incoming at Mach 3.6. A fraction of a second later it paints you with a targeting laser. You had maybe five seconds to react.

Airburst a grenade in its path and evade.

Climb kids, gogogo!

>>860439
This.

At those speeds, that thing will not be able to turn on a dime. Scramble and evade!

>>860431
Break, move beyond the clouds. Do not trigger flares, that'll put every floater in the region on you.

Can you target the missile in time with your autocannon?

Break and pop chaff to disrupt the laser lock. Hit the missile if you can with your autocannon. If you can't, order Riggs and Brady to engage the projectile with their specialized systems.

>>860575
>Do not trigger flares, that'll put every floater in the region on you. 

Bit late for that, don't you think?

>>860732
A guided missile achieving a lockon isn't the same thing as every pair of eyes and radar in the sky flicking onto the guy who just set off hundreds of flares at night.

>>860755
No but it does imply that at least someone knows perfectly well that you're there, and if that someone isn't a complete dumbass they'll have told someone before launching their own missile.

Gunslinger 2018/01/23(Tue)03:59 No. 860898 ID: 459819
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The five of you synch up. At maximum processing power you can each think approximately five times faster than a genius intellect or particularly gifted athlete. Direct communications via tight beam lasers mean you can also all coordinate a plan extremely quickly. The downside is that you can literally cook your brains inside your skulls if you do it too long, and attempting to compensate with cooling is just as harmful.
The core of the plan was for you to draw out the missile's engagement time so that your wingmates could blast it. The weight and sloppy aerodynamics of your gear limited your agility, and your speed was capped at just below the sound barrier (which you're already flying at). Riggs, meanwhile, has organs hardened against extreme G turns and can easily come hard around to engage. Brady wasn't quite as specialized; he's a newbie and running fairly light on gear, but he was becoming an excellent flyer under Riggs' guidance. You think you can dive hard and go supersonic; the boom will keep the missile's attention and give you another second or so, but it will hurt.
You proposed airbursting a fusion grenade; the EM and huge thermal bloom may confuse its targeting system for a critical few moments, or if you're very lucky might even get splashed by the blast. Brady and Cotton liked your idea. Riggs chimed in with the digital equivalent of a concerned Hmmm.
"Cut your thrust and come around as hard as you can in a split S," Riggs said, "I know you can take the Gs, and it'll either bleed speed trying to vector an intercept, or it'll overshoot. I'll follow through behind and be ready to pounce. The rest of you scatter in case this thing goes up messily."
"Alright Private, we'll play it your way," you replied, maybe putting a little too much emphasis on Riggs' rank; she frequently put forward her own ideas on tactical planning, but was never quite out of line. You made a mental note to apologize to her later.

About half a second had passed; just as you began to commence your roll, the missile suddenly cut thrust and began a rapid braking maneuver. You finally made contact with your own sensors as a massive cloud of vapor was thrown off by its turbulence. If the missile could react that quickly and vary its thrust, it might be capable of dodging Riggs and killing both of you.
You managed to think "Oh shit" before the laser painting you shifted spectrum slightly, and started pulsing. Your IFF lit up with a friendly contact.
"It's one of OURS?!" Cotton blurted out.
The missile identified itself as an AGM-190 multi-role cruise missile. It had been part of an airstrike on the forces South of Boston; its mothership had been shot down and it lost contact with the remaining Coalition forces. Operating autonomously, it had expended its sub-munitions engaging hostile forces on the ground. It had also expended its countermeasure munitions, killing four Floaters that had attempted to engage. At that remained was its main variable yield nuclear warhead, which required authorization and designation from a human to strike terrestrial targets.
While loitering around Boston operating only with passive sensors, it had, by pure coincidence, passed through your engine wakes in the scant seconds it took the energies to dissipate, and moved to engage potential targets of opportunity. A nuclear airburst to splash enemy fliers over ocean was considered acceptable parameters.
"Since when do we give missiles sensor packages as fancy as mine?" Riggs asked.
The missile reported it was the absolute pinnacle of Human missile technology, and stealth insertions were a core part of its mission profiles.

You have gained reinforcements!

"So, how do you wanna play this thing?" Cotton asked.

1. Go in hard and fast.
Hit Logan International Airport with the AGM-190 and smash the remaining forces with a sledgehammer surprise attack. Even at minimum yield the warhead will flatten most of the West side and start fires across the harbor. You are reasonably sure the majority of the Visitor force will be obliterated in one fell strike, though. They haven't had time to move far from their landing zones.
This could create a major stink, politically, but those seeking vengeance on the Visitors (yourself included) will take grim satisfaction with such a major blow against them.

2. Close that portal.
Try and sneak the missile through the portal and detonate it on the other side. The Oculot holding the portal open will be killed, and the invading forces will be cut off while Golboria scrambles to dial in another portal to Boston's location. You may even splash any reinforcements they're holding in reserve.
This will have major consequences. Part of the compact with the Oculot defectors is that no weapons of mass destruction are to be sent through portals. They hate the Kariket and his regime, but they all defected to get away from committing genocide.
You heard the Russian Federation snuck modified Novichok nerve agent through during an operation, and the results were... messy. The Baroness' wrath was equally messy; she personally murdered the two generals in charge of the operation, as well as over half the command staff. No charges were laid, as it was likely the victims would be revealed to be war criminals during a trial, and the Baroness made her point. Her position in charge of Oculot portal operations was cemented, and nobody was to test her terms.

3. Stick to the plan.
Go with your original plan, and keep the missile in reserve in case things become unsalvageable. A maximum yield detonation would wipe out most of central Boston and ensure nobody laid claim to the city, but it's also likely you wouldn't survive to stand trial for your actions anyway.

4. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________

>>860898
If you detonate the missile on this side of the portal, would the blast carry through and hit the Oc' on the other side?

>>860923
Short answer; no.

Long answer; portals are comprised of almost pure energy. Testing has determined that portals are a constantly shifting melange of gravitational anomalies, electromagnetic induction, and theoretically at least some dark matter. Whenever matter passes through a portal, the electron shells of every atom in its mass undergoes a shift in quantum state. The shift seems to be random (Earth's most powerful computers have yet to find any correlations in the data), and it is theorized that the beginning and end state don't matter, that it is the shift in state that is the mechanism of portal travel.

Energy itself more or less doesn't make it through the portal (again, there are seemingly random exceptions), but instead interacts with the portal itself. Smack one with enough energy and the portal will destabilize.

The problem is the required energy to close a portal scales exponentially with portal size, and there is an (again, random) tendency for the portal to explode violently when destabilized. The AGM's warhead at full power would probably do the trick, however the blast would destroy Boston in the process.

Stick with the plan for now, but if things start taking a turn for the worse "crash" the AGM through the portal in a way that "accidentally" makes the warhead detonate, or trigger because it's stuck in enemy territory or something.

Nuke Boston.

1. Belka strong!

Although My inner MacArthur says 1, we shouldn't start nuking allied cities. We should prove ourselves as a fighting force first; 3.

Well, you have fallback options. Stay the course though. 3.

>>860898
Definitely 3.
Slamming a nuke into an allied city is bad enough, but if the Visitors see us escalating like that, then who knows what might happen? Also, our bosses would REALLY not like it.
The nuke is a last resort "we're turbo fucked" weapon. Keep it that way.

>>860949
Option 1 sounds like our best bet, fighting several thousand Visitors all on our lonesome dosnt sound fun....

>>860949
Remove Osea

I'm leaning option 3. Nukes are not fun to play with.

>>860898
3, but set it on a deadmans-switch. If it doesn't get a transmission every X minutes, it moves in.

>>860898
Take command of the missile. Huck it through the portal. It's worth it.

3, but set it on a deadmans-switch. If it doesn't get a transmission every X minutes, it moves in.

Good on 3.

Gunslinger 2018/03/26(Mon)06:57 No. 875492 ID: 459819
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Your head swam with conflicting priorities as you disconnected from the synch, the immediate threat over. The fact the warhead was even loaded meant someone higher up was considering negative-sum solutions. A force this large could be a foothold for a larger front to make inroads towards the already besieged New York. A familiar rage began to rise. You crushed it with a squirt of mood stabilizer.
The missile offered its own tactical solution; airburst off the coast at medium altitude to attempt to limit the damage to Logan International.
You dismissed it with a thought. The easy answer was that you weren't really authorized to make that kind of call. Let the brass make the big decisions. No matter how desperate the situation, if you dropped that nuke there would be an investigation, and the only way you wouldn't see your friends in front of a tribunal was because you all died in battle. It was a tempting prospect, cathartic as it was, but maintaining secrecy of the cyborg project was top priority.

"So," Cotton broke you out of your mulling, "I think you were up to the part of the briefing where you explained how exactly five cyborgs are supposed to take on two battalions of Golborians?" You noticed Riggs was watching you with her sensor gimbal.
"Riggs," you said, not rising to Cotton's barb. You nodded towards the missile, "I want you and I in constant secure contact with that thing; I want a full icewall, dead man switch, the works. You have two minutes before I run an infowar drill. Don't disappoint me."
"Cotton, you're with the newbie. Riggs is up high with the missile providing telemetry and overwatch. Villetri, you're picking off Oculot officers, but stay within range of the other two."
"My range is vast." Villetri replied quietly.
"Most of the companies are your standard fare; three quarters Skut, a handful of Warriors, one or two Occs in command. We haven't seen many engagements at his scale so I'm not sure if they're just operating as autonomous units or whether the companies can coordinate." you continued the briefing.
"So where did we get 500 Warriors from?" Brady said.
"Good question. We've reason to believe two companies of the Kariket's Royal Legion are attached to this force. One hundred and fifty Warriors apiece, with proper armour, shock spears and mauls. They have radios and they will coordinate their movements. Their mauls are very dangerous, they don't bother with the projector array on the front, it just fires the core at you. And they can swing it hard enough to kill you with one good hit. Don't fuck about, you see them you call it in and either Cotton or I will hit them with a mini-nuke, I don't give a shit where they are."
"I'm not going to sugar coat it; this is going to be the hardest fight we've ever seen. There is a very real possibility that we are all going to die today, and this is the decisive hammer blow from the Golborians that seals humanity's fate."
"We get it, fate of the world, Earth's finest, all that jazz." Cotton cut you off.
"I'm fucking serious James," you replied angrily, "so drop the bravado, figure out where you're going to set your ordnance up and brief the others on how you want to funnel the enemy onto them. The moment we make contact with ground forces I'll start painting areas I want to erase with GPs, so you can't be winging this shit like you usually do. I want well defined kill boxes, we can't waste the heavy stuff on units that are already about to be fragged."
"Confirmed." Cotton replied. Anyone else would think the tone of his voice was indignant, but you could get away with cuffing your best friend about the ear without any lasting damage to his ego.

"Um, sir?" Riggs quietly said, "I know infowar isn't meant to be easy and it's all about preparing for the unexpected, but that was still kind of mean. I barely had an icewall up in time. How'd you like my recursion trap?"
"What are you talking about?" You replied, an electric chill running up your spine.
"You mean, that brute force data attack that was trying to expose cracks for a node worm wasn't you?"
"No."
"Oh..."

>>875492
We got hackers. Probably the Floaters. Keep the infowar going and carry out the plan. Stay frosty.

The timing could be a coincidence, or your comms could already be compromised. Better double check.

>>875492
We're being hacked. Go to data security mode. Prepare a digital counter-attack.

Well shit. Get someone on lookout, see if we can trace the attackers, or better yet, spot them. How, exactly, does infowar work?

Guests already? Blew the door too. Give them a proper greeting.

>>875492
Shit, dont know much about computer warfare but you should probably take whatever precausions that would work

>>875492
Shit. Deal with it.

>>875492
Handle it!

Well, keep up the good work Riggs. Gentlemen, you have your orders. Lets get to it.