Rogue Meledy: Attack on Barabdos

“Uhhh… Captain, I’m noticing a drop in our radar coverage at two o’clock high…”
“Has your hardware got a bug or something? I’m not finding- oh, wait, no, there it goes…”
“It’s… moving as well? That’s impossible, if it’s just a gap in scanning from-”
“Oh shit. We’re being attacked by particle-driven mobile suits again!”
“What?! But they were just here-” a pink lance of energy tore through the distant clouds, connecting with one of the black Aries at the shoulder and taking its arm clean off, smoke emitting from the adjacent engine.
“See, what did I tell you?! All units break, take evasive action immediately!” The flight type mobile suits scattered in different directions, blue jets shooting out of their engines as they hit their afterburners.

“Bad shot! Bad shot!” Penny exclaimed, waggling her fins excitedly. Kale Armistad shot the machine a dirty look – evidently it was still sore from being out in the rain.
“I have to agree with the robot,” Deacon Gerard noted bluntly. “Maybe you should go back to that hospital, with the nice and busty nurses and all…”
“Oh, quiet,” Kale muttered, re-aligning his sighting device. “That was just a practice shot…” The Dynames’ GN rifle cracked again, and this time Kale was rewarded with a distant explosion as an Aries was totaled by a direct hit to the torso. “See, what’d I tell you?”
“That was sloppy! You’re sloppy, Kale!” Penny exclaimed, eliciting Kale to swat the rotund machine and causing it to spin in its socket like a gyroscope.
“Er… is he always henpecked so badly by that round thing?” Hermes Mauser inquired, looking on from his Exia.
“Not always,” Deacon remarked. Kale just sighed as he lined up another shot.

“Goddamn, what range! There’s nothing we can do against that kind of weapon!”
“Maybe not, but the base sure can! Fall back at once and transmit a firing solution to the source of that shot! Quickly!” the two remaining Aries somersaulted and fled at maximum speed, quickly disappearing from even the Dynames’ powerful optics.

“Well, I think that went pretty good,” Kale noted.
“Right, but there’ll be missiles coming in any minute. We need to keep moving,” Hermes said, familiar with the layout of the base from Federation intelligence reports.
“You worry too much,” Deacon grinned as a relatively large GN Field bubbled into existence around all three mobile suits. The Double-Oh’s eyes glowed brightly as the particles emitted around it, bathing the trio in a green hue. “Just stay close and it’ll be a non-problem.”
“Roger,” Hermes remarked, settling into his chair and gripping the controls tightly.
“Well then, Deacon, I guess that makes you the ‘leader’ on this one, doesn’t it,” Kale said, offering the Double-Oh a pat. “At your leisure…”

Elsewhere, two familiar accomplices were at work making their own entry. Scarth Maheart’s Geo-GOOhN tunneled as quickly as its large claws allowed, but was making extremely slow progress. Below him, Junius Lethe’s golden Alvaaron followed close behind. Due to the Alvaaron’s precipitous wingspan, Scarth was having to dig a very wide tunnel, which was significantly impeding progress.
“What’s so fantastically important that we just have to get inside this place, anyway?” Scarth said, a bit irritated at the sluggish pace they were making.
“Just keep digging,” Junius muttered. “It’s very important, trust me on that one.”
“I’m just saying, the last time we tried this…” Scarth began.
“This time will be different!” Junius exclaimed. “What about that big impassioned appeal you made? Have some faith.”
“If you say so…” Scarth replied. A few moments later the Geo-GOOhN came to an abrupt halt, the Alvaaron nearly bumping into it. “Here we are. Use your beam saber and go thirty meters to your left, then straight up.”
“How reliable is that sub-surface radar of yours, anyway…?”
“VERY reliable. Hurry up or we won’t make it on time,” Scarth concluded, beginning to dig much more rapidly now that it was only the Geo-GOOhN having to be accommodated for. The smaller tunnel seemed to almost immediately begin crumbling behind him.
“I hope…” Junius remarked, igniting a beam saber and jamming it into the rock and dirt wall to his left.”

“Contact with enemy particle-drive mobile suits has been confirmed! All personnel report to your stations at once! Rocket artillery will be outgoing shortly, assume all protective measures immediately!” the base PA system sounded, Barbados’ Leo complement assuming their defensive positions along the thick perimeter wall. Just as last time, the gigantic box missile launchers began rising out of the ground on their heavy pedestals, alarm klaxons and warning lights blazing to announce their elevation. Massive plumes of smoke began bellowing forth as the great spears lurched outwards towards the mysterious aggressors.

“Ah, hell… here come the rockets…” Kale remarked, seeing the pinpoints of approaching light through the Dynames’ high-resolution optics.
“Nothing to be concerned about,” Deacon said confidently. “Hermes, you ready?”
“I am,” the Federation pilot replied.
“And you, Suenaka?” Deacon inquired.
“Very much so,” the rather aristocratic voice came back. Shuu Suenaka cracked his knuckles, going through a few stretches. His thick-skinned Kowloon Gundam was actually firmly attached to the lower body of Hermes’ Exia, being unable to fly on its own for a protracted period of time. Nevertheless, this strategy would be functional enough assuming Hermes didn’t have to go through any very difficult maneuvers.
“Good. Alright, Kale, get ready, this is going to move very fast,” Deacon said, testing his GN Drives for good output.
“Just the way it should be,” Kale grinned.
“Live fast, die young! You’re going to die, Kale!” Penny squawked.
“I’m going to throw you in the ocean!” Kale exclaimed, a bit exasperated with how unsupportive the bird-shaped robot was being.
“Here they come!” Deacon and Hermes said almost simultaneously as the incoming rockets seemed to blossom into hundreds of tiny corkscrewing micromissiles.

“Bingo! Direct hit to the area of radar coverage degradation! Saturation is… 99.4%!” the base’s fire control officer exclaimed, clenching her fists in success.
“Good,” the base’s commander, Major Stedman, nodded, tugging on the edges of his mustache, “EWO, how’s our coverage looking?”
“It is… oh,” the early warning officer frowned. “Um… no change, sir. We’re still suffering particle-induced coverage loss at the same location.”
“What? That’s impossible, the area’s been totally sanitized,” the major said, furrowing his eyebrows.
“Wait… the degradation is moving! It’s an intercept course!” the EWO announced.
“That’s not… damn! Plot a course and keep firing! We have a lot of rockets and God willing we’re going to use them all!” Stedman yelled. “I don’t want a fly to survive anywhere near that area!” The heavy rocket batteries began vomiting out yet more of their payload, the giant white missiles streaking forth in salvos of ten at a time, each launcher putting another one out on the tail of the first.

“Well, they’re certainly making a good show,” Shuu noted, watching the streams of missiles sailing overhead towards Deacon and Kale.
“Right, and not at us,” Hermes replied. “As long as we stay below their position, it’ll look like we’re the same source of interference. Alliance radar is pretty two-dimensional when it comes to that sort of thing.”
“Hm,” Shuu remarked, “You seem to have everything under control… just make sure we get to the island intact and everything will go smoothly.”
“That’s the plan. Hold on!” Hermes said, the Exia tearing across the surface of the ocean at a very low altitude, Kowloon hanging on tightly below. Above the two of them, Deacon and Kale were rapidly approaching the base as well, Dynames sticking close to Double-Oh as Deacon expertly avoided many of the incoming missiles and letting the rest harmlessly dissipate off his GN Field. He wasn’t aware of any method the Alliance artillery would have of breaking through his barrier, but that many rockets could easily push them away from the base on sheer kinetic impact alone.
“How’s the distance?” Deacon asked of his longtime compatriot, slamming into his restraints as he avoided a seeming cloud of micromissiles.
“Just get me a little closer…” Kale answered, setting his rangefinder and firing program to their maximum distance selections. Both of them were rocked as another volley of missiles collided with the Double-Oh’s barrier, the two briefly ending up as a tangled pile of Gundam before extricating themselves and resuming the move forward.
“You’d better be taking these shots as fast as I know you can, or I’ll be rooming with you back at that sick bay,” Deacon said, finger resting tentatively on the GN Field’s activation button.
“Relax, it’s me,” Kale smirked. “Everything will go just swimmingly.”

Junius was greeted by a virtual wall of dirt, rock, then water rushing towards him as he made a final upwards stab with his beam saber. The tunnel quickly flooded, allowing the Alvaaron to pull itself clear and into the shallow ocean water. He quickly checked the charts he and Scarth had drawn up earlier, and seemed to be on target for a short dash to the island. He exhaled deeply, steadying himself, then slammed the throttle to full.
“Here’s hoping to no more torpedoes…” he said quietly, the golden machine breaking the surface of the water with the tropical island dead ahead. Meanwhile, Scarth continued grimly tunneling his way towards the base, encountering familiar soil from his hasty retreat earlier. Hopefully this time he wouldn’t be emerging into a quiet base with Leos training their weapons on his position…

“Hell…! Major, there’s another radar disruption!” the early warning officer exclaimed, recoiling in horror from his station.
“What?! Where is it?!” Stedman demanded, leaning forward in surprise.
“It’s… oh, shit, it’s right on the damn beach!” he said.
“The ones out to sea were decoys…?” Stedman blanched.
“-en one! Repeat, it’s the golden one again!” a Leo pilot crackled over the radio. “He’s coming from the north!”
“Damn!!” Stedman slammed his fist against the armrest of his chair. “We’ve been flanked!” The command center’s external feeds suddenly went to snow for a moment, returning seconds later as giant heaps of a heavy rocket battery rained down around the base like confetti.
“The number six rocket launcher has sustained a direct hit! Source is the degradation approaching from the south!” the early warning officer reported.

“One…” Kale said, bringing his reticule down on another one of the enormous rocket batteries. The Dynames shook as its rifle discharged, and a second giant explosion obscured the magnified vision. “Two!” He re-adjusted slightly, looking to a third one.
“Hold it there!” Deacon demanded, bringing up the Double-Oh’s GN Field again as yet more missiles rained down around it, buffeting both machines about. “Get your shot lined up and get ready to snipe that next one…”
“Far ahead of you,” Kale said in response, already centering his target.
“This is reckless! This is reckless!” Penny fumed. “You’ll screw up!” Kale scowled but didn’t reply, finger resting ever so lightly on the trigger. Deacon’s GN Field disappeared a few moments after the last micromissiles had expended their warheads, and with a pink flash another rocket battery went up in flames. Kale moved to his fourth bullseye when his reticule was suddenly illuminated by laser discharges. “Huh.”
“Hermes and Shuu made it,” Deacon remarked.
“Yeah,” Kale confirmed. “Let’s not leave them hanging…”

Lasers tore up the jungle as Hermes and Shuu flew across the canopy. Knowing he’d be hit sooner rather than later due to the bulk of the Kowloon hanging off him, Hermes began a “Plan B”.
“We’re going to get potted before we make it to the wall,” Hermes said. “I’m going to throw you to it! Make sure you land right!”
“Simple, but should be effective…” Shuu remarked, assuming a crouching stance and preparing to activate the Trace System. Exia grabbed Kowloon’s arm and pulled it up to shoulder level, wound up, and hurled the mobile fighter through the air like an oversized ball, GN Drive spewing a torrent of particles to make the swing. Shuu’s Gundam sailed through the air, igniting its beam cloth and dismounting a Leo from its position on the wall as he landed. “Good throw.”
“Thanks,” Hermes said, suddenly yelping as a laser connected with Exia’s frame and burned a hole right through it, leaving black scoring on the sides. “Damn lasers…!” The GN blade snapped into place as he quickly gained altitude, avoiding the blasts of mines exploding below him as the lasers set them off. He removed the barrels of one turret as he descended over the wall, crashing to the ground inside, back-to-back with Shuu.
“Seems we’ve breached the perimeter,” Shuu commented.
“Yeah, it does,” Hermes replied. The yellow sensors of the Leos glared at them, muzzles of beam rifles pointing in their direction. One wielding a pair of pistols opened fire, and the others followed suit, sending a torrent of yellow bursts towards the two. Both Gundams leapt into the air as the pavement exploded below them, rushing towards their targets as another heavy missile launcher blew apart from an incoming pink beam.

The Barbados’ fortress was arranged in a roughly octagonal pattern, with the command center and hangar complex arrayed out in a central structure that peeked up above the perimeter walls. While Shuu and Hermes had landed on the southern half, Junius was rapidly approaching from the northern half, the soulless white lines of the laser batteries bouncing off his GN Field and flying into the sky. The burning heavy rocket batteries caught his attention the moment he sailed over the beach.
“Did someone beat us here…?” Junius remarked, spiraling and rolling as lasers scored through the verdant jungle below him. “All the better for me, in any case,” he noted – it would be easier to get at the base’s computers that way. The Alvaaron’s folded wings protected his approach, and he successfully crossed the perimeter with fair particle reserves left. He was immediately perplexed, though, from the total lack of mobile suits… the laser turrets began rotating to face him, and Junius quickly dropped his GN Field to fire off several quick shots, blowing through the closest turrets. The remainder finished traversing and opened fire on him, one scoring a hit against the Alvaaron before he was able to bring the field back up. Junius scoffed and dropped to the base concourse, slamming himself against the back of the wall where the parapet turrets wouldn’t be able to reach him. He checked his timepiece – less than a minute later cracks began running through the pavement. “Right on time…” Junius quickly boosted over to that location and deployed his GN Field, shielding Scarth’s emerging Geo-GOOhN from the turrets.
“That’s a much better sight,” the bearded League pilot noted, pulling his fish-shaped mobile armor out of the ground.
“Isn’t it? Get ready to fry those guns,” Junius said quickly, lining up a turret with each of his beam rifles. The turrets were waiting too – evidently they’d figured out the trick of his GN Field.
“Kind of a…” Scarth began, searching for the right expression, “…Mexican standoff?”
“Yeah,” Junius said quickly. “We just need to be faster on the draw!” The Alvaaron’s GN Field disappeared and both of its beam rifles discharged, likewise Scarth unloaded his maser cannons – the turrets on the wall went up in flames, but not before holing both of the invaders through. “Damn…”
“It’s not fatal, you?” Scarth said, looking over the damage readout.
“I’ll live,” Junius replied, bringing up a schematic. “We’re on the wrong side of the base… the mobile suit gates are on the other side.”
“Well then,” Scarth simply said, gesturing with the Geo-GOOhN’s claw for Junius to lead the way.

Two more gigantic blasts announced the destruction of the last heavy rocket batteries. Hermes shot down a falling piece of debris before parrying a beam saber attack from a Leo with a quickly drawn sword of his own. Behind him, Shuu was apparently dancing around the pair of Leos that were attempting to chop him up as well, his Gundam rolling and dodging expertly.
“These guys are amateurs…” Shuu remarked nonchalantly, kicking a Leo’s legs out from under it and crushing its head with his Gundam’s fist. Suddenly the Kowloon’s arm was taken clear off its body – the other Leo had obviously gotten frustrated trying to land a saber on the mobile fighter and had drawn a beam pistol from its shield, delivering a point-blank shot to Shuu’s back that he’d barely avoiding going through his torso. Shuu frowned in disgust at his carelessness and disarmed the mobile suit with his cloth, yanking it towards him and delivering a spinning kick that smashed it into the wall. “Most of them, anyway…”
“It’s not the Leos I’m worried about…!” Hermes gritted his teeth, ducking under another attack and deflecting an incoming laser blast with his GN Sword. Flying up above the wall would expose him to Kale’s sniping, but staying on the ground here was making him an easy target for the laser emplacements. He ran a Leo through with the blade, producing a knife with his free hand and impaling another’s head, visor shards raining to the ground like hail. Two parallel beads of light caught his eye – a turret had him perfectly lined up and was about to fire, and with the Leo stuck on his sword, he wouldn’t be dodging this one. The lethal turret was suddenly skewered by a pink blast.
“Hope you didn’t break too much of a sweat,” Kale remarked, a cocky grin on his face.
“Took your time…” Hermes frowned. The renegades were certainly effective in their work, but they lacked the punctuality of a government agent like him.
“All the better to enjoy the results,” Kale replied smugly, picking off the remaining emplacements along the wall with Dynames powerful rifle. “That’s that… okay, Deacon, ball’s in your court.”
“I was hoping you’d say that…” Deacon grinned. The GN Field around the Double-Oh collapsed as he yanked the prodigious buster sword off his back, flying towards the top of the base’s central structure as Hermes and Shuu finished off the remaining Leos.

“All our defensive emplacements have been destroyed or disabled! We’re sitting naked here,” the fire control officer exclaimed, serious concern pervading her voice.
“No response from any of our Leos either! They’ve all been taken out…” said the early warning officer.
“Damn particle machines…!” Stedman growled through bared teeth, his gloved fists tight as possible. “They’re not taking this base without a fight!”
“Sir, we’ve got practically nothing left to fight with!” the early warning officer pleaded.
“Bullshit we don’t!” Stedman replied in anger. “We’ll set off the rocket magazines! That’ll flatten the entire fortress at once! Let’s see their precious mobile suits survive that!”
“That’s suicide!” the fire control officer said in disbelief.
“It’s our duty!” Stedman replied bluntly between furrowed brows. “Have the rocket crews set demolition charges and open all the bulkheads! They will NOT take this base!”
“Sir, you’re- SHIT!” the early warning officer cursed as the blue and white Gundam streaked towards their position, its huge blade at the ready and about to cleave the entire top of the building off. Suddenly, a black blur slammed into the machine checking it out of the air.
“Major, you need to evacuate the base!” the Aries pilot demanded over the radio. “We’ll cover the escape! Get everybody out, hurry!” The black mobile suit saluted, then dove out of view. Stedman looked shocked.
“…well, what are you waiting for!” he demanded when he regained control of himself. “Have them plant those bombs, then we’re getting out of here!”

“Who does this guy think he is?!” Deacon muttered, extracting the Double-Oh from the mobile suit-shaped dent in the base’s wall.
“Scrap, that’s who,” Kale muttered, lining up Dynames’ rifle with the Aries’ back.
“Oh no you don’t, good buddy,” Deacon said, cutting him off. “This guy wants to dance, I’ll give him a dance!” The Double-Oh surged into the air, GN Drives blasting a torrent of particles out behind it. The marauding Aries boosted straight into the air, chainrifle blaring as shell casings tumbled to the ground below. Deacon was undeterred, the bullets riddling his mobile suit but doing little to its particle-infused armor protection, and the Double-Oh quickly closed the gap. Deacon brought the buster sword down on the flight mobile suit, but it quickly evaded laterally, tossing its useless chainrifle as a barrage of missiles loosed from its wings. “Just hold still…!” Deacon said, exasperated, his Gundam absorbing the warheads and charging through. With an upward sweep he severed the Aries’ wing, taking the missile launcher with it. The remaining missiles exploded violently, obscuring both machines.
“You alright?” Kale asked from below, obviously concerned.
“Everything is under control!” Deacon said sharply. Suddenly a pair of giant jet intakes filled his screen as the Aries checked him again. “Not this time…!” he growled, twisting at the waist and allowing the black mobile suit to skid across his Gundam’s upper body, jamming the buster sword into its back and running it through. “Gotcha,” he remarked coolly.
“Wrong…” a Aries pilot replied, their close proximity allowing Deacon’s communications system to pick up the Aries’ radio. Before he had a chance to blink, the mortally wounded Aries had yanked one of his own GN swords off his hip and jammed it into the GN Drive on his shoulder. With the sudden loss of half the Gundam’s output, it drooped noticeably on that side. Deacon was flabbergasted that a relative mook could have pulled such a maneuver on him.
“You miserable little…!” he growled, yanking the buster sword clear and tearing a huge chunk of the Aries’ torso apart in the process. The mobile suit’s jets ignited at full afterburn, spiraling the two out of the air in a twisting corkscrew. “What the… let go, dammit!”
“Long live the Alliance!” he heard over the radio, barely able to see over the voluminous smoke pouring from the ruined Aries that the two of them were about to collide with the top of the fortress’ structure.
“Oh, hell…!” Kale exclaimed as he saw a tangled heap of mobile suits collide with the top of the command center, a huge blast going off and blowing the top of the structure open from the inside, the windows blasting outward and walls warping like a rotten fruit. Hermes and Shuu looked on in surprise.

“Wait, wait, hold it,” Scarth said, blocking the Alvaaron with a claw. A huge explosion rocked the central structure, and bits of debris began raining down around them.
“What?” Junius said, eager to get inside. At the rate things were going, whomever else was sacking the place was going to wreck it up before he could get at where he wanted to go.
“Acoustic signature… there’s a bunch of mobile suits right around the corner,” Scarth said, eyes scanning over the display from his subsurface radar.
“Where the mobile suit dock is,” Junius muttered. “Alright, no more pussy-footing around. I’m ending this right now. When I give the signal, make a break for the mobile suit dock.”
“Sure, but… what’s the signal?” Scarth asked. A ball of crackling yellow GN particles began building up between the Alvaaron’s forward-folded wings. “Oh,” Scarth said, answering his own question. Junius’ Alvaaron skidded around the corner, throwing up a cascade of sparks as a several mysterious-looking mobile suits abruptly turned to face him. The ball collapsed and an enormous blast shot forth from the Alvaaron, immediately obscuring all of the machines and blowing a hole through the far perimeter wall. A red-hot channel of molten tarmac had formed in the pavement in front of Junius’ machine, exploding hardware throwing up a giant cloud of smoke along that entire axis of the base.
“That’s the signal!” Junius exclaimed, bolting for the mobile suit dock. Scarth sighed and followed, stepping over a trashed Leo.
“Were those Alliance suits…?” he asked. Junius didn’t reply, his goal close at hand. The hardened dock door was chopped off by a beam saber, and the Alvaaron darted inside, Scarth’s Geo-GOOhN following close behind and bringing up the rear.

“…Christ, what just happened?” Hermes said groggily, clutching his head. The Exia’s monitors were flooded with warning messages.
“Someone with a BIG gun just shot us…” Kale replied in a somewhat pained tone.
“Massive damage! Massive damage!” Penny proclaimed. “You screwed up, Kale!” The robot had a nearly jovial tone. With an instant at his disposal, Kale had brought the Dynames’ shields up in front of him, absorbing some of the blast and preventing Shuu and Hermes from being evaporated by the beam. The Dynames was in bad shape, though, and he was sure he was bleeding somewhere.
“It seems we owe you a debt of gratitude for that quick deflection,” Shuu remarked, the Kowloon’s armor partially slagged but the interior systems still functional. All three Gundams had been rather violently ejected from the base, the fast-moving particles from the beam blast having punched a hole in the wall behind them before the kinetic force melted Dynames’ shields and hurled the trio through the newly-created sally port. Fortunately nobody landed on a mine.
“God damn,” Deacon’s voice crackled over the radio, static indicating his communications were pretty badly futzed as well. “Didn’t see that coming…”
“Me neither,” Kale added. “You alright?”
“Nothing fatal. You?”
“About the same.”
“Wonderful.”
“Where are you?” Kale inquired.
“Uh… somewhere inside the command center, I think. The monitors are just showing black…” Deacon muttered. “I guess the cameras are shot…. you?”
“Outside the base,” Kale replied matter-of-factly.
“…what?” Deacon asked in a confused tone.
“It’s complicated,” Hermes interjected. Shuu just sighed at the entire situation. Above them, the lone remaining Aries hovered in the air as a pair of tilt-rotors took off from the wrecked base’s central structure. The two aircraft began heading to the northeast, the Aries remaining behind for a few moments longer to salute the fallen installation before turning to follow.

Inside the central compound, Junius disembarked from the kneeling Alvaaron, cocking a submachine gun and heading towards a personnel entry chamber that led to the IT chambers below the command center.
“Ah, finally…” he remarked to nobody in particular, examining the electronic lock on the door.
“You sure you want to dismount already?” Scarth asked, the Geo-GOOhN’s mono-eye illuminating the deserted, cavernous hangar like a spotlight. “It’s awfully quiet here… where is everyone?”
“Doesn’t matter. What I’m looking for is right here…” Junius said, beginning to futz with the panel.
“Alright then… I’m going to secure those missile magazines you spoke about, people might still be hiding down there,” Scarth said, the Geo-GOOhN stepping onto a cargo elevator. Junius didn’t reply, focusing intently on hacking the door’s combination. “…right, well, I’ll see you later then,” Scarth said, descending the elevator. The platform began lowering into the shaft, a heavy grating closing over the top to prevent people or machines from falling. It seemed to descend forever, though Scarth’s timepiece told him it was only about two minutes. The thing eventually came to a halt, a double-layer blast door opening automatically at the bottom. Scarth’s Geo-GOOhN walked inside the darkened and cavernous chamber, again scanning the perimeter of it using his mono-eye. Giant metal trusses climbed towards the ceiling, each festooned with the great rockets the base had been firing until recently. Scarth whistled – there were enough of those redwood-sized ballistics to last a lifetime.
“Hum… good thing those can’t do anything about someone approaching from underground…” he commented, considering with exactly how much distaste he’d have for getting attacked by such a potent weapon. Moments later, his eyes caught sight of something far less admirable. “Oh, come ON,” he exclaimed, the Geo-GOOhN bounding towards the trusswork. A yellow block was affixed rather hastily to the side of one of the missiles. Scarth zoomed his scanner in to maximum and regarded the thing. It was a plastic explosive. In sudden horror, he quickly began looking around the room, finding several more of the things on each missile magazine. “Boje moi…,” he cursed. Delicately reaching out with the Geo-GOOhN’s pincer he squished the block and yanked it clear of the missile. It didn’t go off – the Alliance had been kind enough to not rig them up with pressure-sensitive detonators. Scarth rammed the mobile armor’s claw into the floor of the basement, tearing a gash in the concrete and shaking the explosive clear and into the hole. The Geo-GOOhN vaulted towards the next magazine, retrieved the explosive, then did the same to the next one over. Scarth was sweating profusely as he worked, not knowing how much time he had before the devices went off. Plucking the bombs off with the Geo-GOOhN’s claws was like picking up a pin while wearing mittens, but the veteran League officer persisted, eventually retrieving all the offending yellow blocks, resulting in a veritable pile at the bottom of the hole.
“Need to contain it…” Scarth grumbled, looking around the room. Failing to locate anything sufficient, he returned to the elevator and proceeded to yank the blast door clear off its hinges, returning to the hole and slamming the thick metal plate down. Scarth’s timing was almost perfect – even as the door was hitting the pavement, the plastic explosives went off. The plate contained the blast – mostly, anyway, as the force of impact sent Scarth’s mobile armor flying into the now-open elevator shaft, severely battering the Geo-GOOhN’s frame. Nevertheless, he was successful – the missiles didn’t go off. “Huy… dirty bastards…” he groaned, panting from the mental exertion and observing his mobile armor’s claws were totally flattened from the door crashing into them.
“What was that?” Junius asked over the radio. “Did you find someone?”
“No,” Scarth replied, reaching for a canteen. “Just doing some housecleaning…”

OUTCOME: Rogue Medley seizes Barbados
Dynames: 4 days damage, 15 VP, 713,750 cr, gains ownership of Barbados
Exia: 3 days damage, 13 VP
00: 3 days damage, 13 VP, 713,750 cr
Kowloon: 4 days damage, 13 VP, 713,750 cr
Alvaaron: 2 days damage, 11 VP, 713,750 cr
Geo-GOOhN: 3 days damage, 11 VP
Barbados: Command Center, Wall, 4 Missile Launchers damaged; Heavy Missile Launchers, Antiaircraft Laser Cannons, 10 Missile Launchers destroyed; 8 Leos, 2 Aries destroyed