No Gods, Nor Masters

Accommodating Part 1

Richard had had a hard time processing just how much of a mess things had gotten. Ranging from the fact that they were facing a possible new enemy force that was supposedly gonna back up the Imperials. He and his team buckled up for the aircraft's landing back at FOB Kingdom, while Tyuule, Delilah and theirs watched them process the matter at hand. Richard had also told his squad and, he assumed, Halsey and/or the Chief had briefed everyone back at the FOB.

Radio traffic, however, continued to be mostly about the equipment discovered on the Mages, which now included a flashbang grenade, an M5 Frag and at least one gun with half a magazine worth of ammunition in it. That made Richard think that the bastards had scavenged some ancient crashed ship of theirs for weapons and just found what hadn't rusted good to use.

Descending onto the flight deck, the group saw that the newer equipment was beginning to arrive ahead of schedule. Several Heron dropships descended from orbit and onto the runway of their own newly-built airfield. The first thing they saw coming out of them were newly-built and upgraded Grizzly Main Battle Tanks. Up-armored, bigger and more dangerous brothers of the venerable M808 Scorpions, the Grizzlies were armed with twin-linked 120mm Smoothbore cannons in an up-armored turret, two 50cal MGs mounted just above it in CROWS-style automated turrets and a pair of missile launchers for air defense.

On the rugged hull of the up-armored Grizzly resided the smoke launchers that fired specialized concealment items, including stuff that somehow managed to disrupt thermal imaging scanners. The company rolled off the transport vessels and onto the deck, lining up, followed by the crews dismounting onto the tarmac for inspection. A UNSC Captain of the Army ran said inspection, while engineers gave once-overs to the war machines.

Behind them, about a brigade's worth of Plasma-based self-propelled artillery. The standard-issue UNSC Rhinos rolled off the transport vehicles, made to order and beautiful in their own right, not to mention designed to spread hot plasma across a wide area. Behind this brigade of tanks, however, were also multi-launch rocket systems dubbed by the UNSC, 'the Black Organs', due to the color of their own Titanium-A3 battle plate reinforcements, which were placed over the box-like launch system on the flatbed and on the angled crew cabin. It was a six-wheeler vehicle.

Add to that logistics vehicles designed to carry the ammunition and spare parts of these vehicles rolling off the next transport in the line of Herons and the final added treats bag:A Heron with a wider and taller troop bay opening up to reveal the manned combat mechs of the UNSC. Double-jointed, armored, shielded and carrying a vast array of specialized sensors, as well as a gatling gun on the left arm and a quad-missile launcher on the right, the Mantis walkers marched onto the deck, their feet thundering against the concrete.

Richard grinned, while Stavrov brought her arms to her chest, crossed them and stated, "Well, big mama just gave us some help. Doubt the Imps are gonna last a day when the shit kicks off... AKA when they decide to fuck around and find out by pulling another attack like the one on Ratiarius," words which garnered a few muted hoo'rahs from the Marines of the squad.

The group then watched their wounded being carted away while more aircraft departed for the UN FOB on Alnus, presumably to pick up the civilians. Halsey must've called ahead, seeing as the Engineer Corps was out, too, building housing near the rear of the airfield, pressed against the mountainside as to keep those civilian refugees safe behind the multitude of layers of defenses the base was putting up.

Speaking of said defenses, the Marines also noticed M95 and M97 LANCE missile turrets being put up on the place's battlements, alongside SCYTHE AAA gun batteries and other various defensive pieces. Behind the walls was also the newly-built series of supply pads and fusion reactors that the UNSC was using to power the ever-growing military outpost and the expanding Kingdom of the Warrior Bunnies.