RP: YSS Eucharis [Mission 26] Flaming Arrows (YE 38)

[Ametheliana]

Kuvexian Station
Near Computer Core

Muttering to the drone telepathically to get back, Masumi pushed her hand into the black turfy floor of the office that she had found the Kuvexian technician in, and moved her body back. It was the same one as she was holed up in for the time being as she had spotted approaching enemy Kuvexian, armored and ready for action, thanks to one of her NSB Launchers.

While she waited, she counted the seconds she had estimated it would take them to get to her position and on the eighth second, she saw the first one in front of the doorway. She dispersed her pulse cannon five times from her forearm and didn't take a second to study the ground to see it sprawled there, but knew it would be, if their armor was anything like Mindy's. She looked at the orange shields glimmer and face downwards the Kuvexians in Mindy-like power armor aimed towards her, but before they even had time to eject enemy fire, she was ready. With both arms pointed at them, she dispersed ten rounds, five on each Kuvexian body, respectively. Then, finally, one more on each to throw the armor suits backwards, onto the ground.

Her own damage sensors showed colors that weren't green all of a sudden. Down to yellow on one leg and another shoulder bit. She used ultra band optical sensors to see the Kuvexians behind her down the hall with glittering power armor shields and menacing, overbearing presences, but she also saw something else, closer.

"Not a good time to come out here," she told the Mindy as it approached from out of the doorway and began blasting down the competition its own way.

"Nicely done," Masumi said and raised a fist to the Mindy. The Mindy looked at her blankly until Masumi nodded towards her hand and the Mindy bumped it. "Nicely done," Oshiro Masumi repeated. "There are only 200 personnel on this level and it's sill pretty early in the game, we should be able to- ah!" she and the Mindy both moved into the room with the technician quickly and without hesitation as they detected movement along the hallway.

She used her second NSB launcher to poke around the curving corner and offer her a view of the hallway Suites-heisho and the Mindy drone had come from. There was something small and dark in view of the launcher and Masumi pressed herself closer to the wall she was against, holding her LASR up and ready. The NSB launcher could shoot at the object quickly hovering towards it, but before it did, Masumi recognized it as a drone, sent from Star Army personnel. It surrounded her in a cloud of information from Suites.

"Oh, Suites-heisho, thank you!" she whispered and the Mindy drone turned its head to her, "You have his location? Good, well, it's going to take a coordinated effort to get us all out of this place, all of us," she said the latter half of her statement while looking at the Kuvexian.

She explained the plan to the Mindy very quickly and her quantum computer worked so hard that a little more heat than normal vented out of the slits on her legs.

A moment later, the Mindy drone began charging for teleportation to the closest and easiest place of escape that her memory of the volumetric image of the station Hanako had shown the crew remembered. As per Wazu's plan, the Mindy drone and Kuvexian went to the escape point at the bottom of the station to be picked up by one of the leftover ships monitoring the station.

"Let's go," she said quickly to the drone that hovered with her to Suites' location.

 

[HotelKilo]

YSS Eucharis Bridge

"Understood Sigurd-hei," Mehitabel looked up from peeling away the remains of solidified FOAM to actually inspect the scorched stretches of cable. Carefully probing through the lines with her gloves hands, she felt a rush of energy. There were quite a few wires to look through, honestly, some she had damaged while removing the now inert and rubbery fire extinguishing agent. Nimble fingers made it quick work, the scorched strands were at hand soon enough.

She pulled her multi-tool out of her belt and made sure to tug the cabling enough to gather slack on either side of the damaged stretch. In short order the wire was stripped, snipped, and bare for splicing. There didn't seem to be an alternative, so off came the gloves and lips were puckered. There was, as Sigurd-hei had promised, a tingle as her fingers touched bare metal, and it took a second try to actually make the first twists. Next came a few more determined twists with the pliers before she applied a hasty wrap of tape.

Gloves returned to hands and tool back to the belt, Belle stayed kneeling. "I have spliced it up, Sigurd-hei, but it might not have been enough..."

 

[Dumont]

Zoomy Boomy:

"Shiho-san, watch over Junko-hei for me. I have something to say to her when this is over."

The only thing Freyja got back from the message was a near indistinct mental grunt. One that at the very least sounded in the affirmative. At the very least, Shiho wasn't particularly known for being verbacious when it came to a firefight. She'd be looking to keep everyone safe, mainly by apparently being ordered to act as suppressive fire which made her the largest target. Whatever... If she died she wouldn't remember this when they make another. And there was supposed to be backup incoming from somewhere anyway.

As Tsuguka fired out the window, Shiho shot out the window. Moving as a motion of blue tinged with the light of her volumetrics glaring to life and disappearing into the jamming particles. What started as a motion of one hulking suit of power armor seemed to split into a full six, a firing of the suit's engines and a realignment of its own orientation of gravity had a half dozen Shiho's sliding along the walls above the enemy formation and trailing through the enemy's smokescreen.

What enemy fire was drawn to Tsuguka became Shiho's point of reference for where the enemy was located, and soon a line of Shiho's more forceful concussion grenades ripped through the enemy's advance. Sheer explosive force scattering enemy armor, and maybe pulping one or two unlucky enough to get caught in a burst of fire from above what cover they had. The Kuvexian particle mist jammed targeting, but they were also suspended in the air of the station, and blasted down the corridors by the concussive burst from Shiho's shots.

From there it was up to the armor team's gauss cannon wielders to take their shots as the air cleared up enough for targets to be painted... A burst of light popped into existence beside Tsuguka as Shiho retreated from her charge via teleportation, and just gave a little sideways glance to the shield wall. Then a little thumbs up as her shoulder mounted missile launcher unfolded and popped off two missiles to curve their firing arc and streak out the window at what targets she had managed to keep a bead on, causing a couple of neat boom-splats.

 

[Wes]

YSS Eucharis - Bridge

Eucharis sputtered as her FTL systems gasped for energy, as the combined field system had been entirely set on shields and not ready for propulsion. Every bit of available energy had been directed into the field system but it had taken a terrible beating and was unstable. The gunship dropped back to normal sublight speed a short distance from where it had started. An unsettling electrical buzz sounded throughout the ship for a moment. Warning notices popped up on Natsumi's screen, saying the field projection arrays were overheated and damaged, and they were not properly configuring themselves for FTL. A misalignment could send the ship into a wormhole or in the entirely wrong direction.

"Natsumi, try the hyperspace fold system if you can get enough energy to it," Hanako suggested. She tapped at her control panel, working on getting the most out of the ship. "In the old days I would be on the away team," the Shosho mentioned. "Really, I feel like I am the most qualified to deal with a large computer core like that. Being an admiral has a way of making you too valuable to risk. In essence you become trapped by safety." Hanako swung around and looked at Sigurd. "Look up the new stats on the Mindy 4 series and get a list of the communication systems they use. Maybe we can find at least one that will still work for us. It would be really useful to see how they are doing. Perhaps I could help identify the computer memory modules. In the meantime I will be looking for a way to contact our fleet. This plan is not going to work very well unless we can call the reinforcements."

YSS Eucharis - Power Armor Bay

Jax could hear Cherry's voice over his communicator, "Jax, Cherry here, I am in the mainspace and we have some serious power feedback issues here. Power levels are unstable and we overstressed a lot of the main power grid. The main aether reactor is operational but we need to dial it down some for safety. Also some sort of molten metal is coming out of the capacitor room but I haven't been able to look at it yet. I think there may be a fire there but the detection system may have been fried."

"Becker here," the other technician cut in, "Power systems is full of smoke and at least one of the capacitors is burning but don't want to put any water-based foam on it because I don't want to get electron-vaporized. I am trying to figure out the best way to vent this place but it's not near any airlocks."

Kuvexian Station - Near the computer core

Junko's shots hit well, damaging one of the enemy armors pretty badly and sending it tumbling. It looked like a kinetic kill had downed the armor even though the gauss round hadn't penetrated. Her skilled use of cover kept her from taking any serious hits in return.

The rest of the away team also did well in keeping the Kuvexian power armors occupied. The enemy Naval Infantry was well armed and armored, but the away team had been defensively prepared and taken down at least half of the initial wave of guards, breaking their momentum. The fight quickly devolved into a slugfest where most everyone was hiding behind something and peeking out to take potshots. Without the right distraction, movement could be suicide. But with the right covering fire, it would be able to keep the enemy's head down and allow for darting from cover to cover. This was the opening the team needed to take before the legions of soldiers from the station's military sections could arrive and swarm.

 

[Blizzard]

YSS Eucharis - PA Bay

Jax inhaled peace, then exhaled gut-boiling frustration. He pinched the bridge of his nose- er, faceplate- and began thinking of his next move in this hazardous game of speed chess that was a regular part of an engineer's day. Still, he could help but laugh at the fact that this still wasn't the worst emergency he'd faced so far.

"Okay, so I was thinking that we go ahead and cut the power to everything not essential to running and fighting. That should allow our power grid to heal up. If we're experiencing an electrical fire in power systems, shutting off the source will aid the firefighting a bunch. Becker, if we have any fire blankets, try and use one to smother the flames if they're not too huge."

Now, on to the other problem.

"Shosho, after we douse the fires, will we have enough time to attempt EVA to fix those CFS arrays?"

 

[ArsenicJohn]

Kuvexian Station - Near the computer core

Freyja started to poke her head out and a shot whizzed by her head. She quickly pulled her head back. "Not going to happen.. It's not going to happen again.." She muttered, thinking back to her first battle. Hurtling towards a NMX vessel with her original squad. Missiles came at her squad, and they didn't have time to dodge. She should have died with them, but somehow she survived. Never again.

"I'm going to deploy my NSBs for covering fire. When they start firing, move up and kick their teeth in." Freyja said to the squad with grim determination. She directed four nodal support bits to dislodge from her back. One flew around the corner to give her a view of the enemy position. Having found their targets the remaining three popped out of cover and opened fire, spreading out and moving toward the Kuvexians in a zigzag pattern. Freyja herself jumped out and opened fire with her Aetheric Pulse Cannon trying to pin the enemy down so the squad could move up. She also took a few shots with her ABSR as she ran towards cover.

 

[Mad_Stylus]

<<Kuvexian Station, Computer Core Corridor>>

Junko drew her SMG tight against her chest as she counted the heartbeats. First was Freyja deploying her bits, a cloud of metal and light. Then the moment it would take for the enemy to shift attention. As the first few shots trailed up, she struck.

"Kicking."

A loud pop and she teleported behind their defensive line. She opened fire immediately into unprepared backs, unaware soldiers. Aetheric projectiles spat and both Gauss tracked separate targets. Twin aetheric engine-wings kept her flitting fast and erratically, avoiding a clean shot.

They would be torn apart from all sides.

 

[Rizzo]

Kuvexian Station, Computer Room

Candon rounded the corner to see the ambush of Junko, a solid plan despite the risk of Friendly Fire.
The enemies had been focused on the team across the room, to them Junko would be the surprise.
How could they have even see him coming?

The trophies in each hand ignited with coherent beams of aether as he approached the soldier closest to him and drove them upwards into the bottom of his back. The man cried out audibly and became silent in the same moment. A quick flash of his left wing thruster accelerated him into range of another PA, it's gun trained on Junko. A flash of his right-wing thruster carried the black knight under the soldier's rifle. The armor seized in place as Candon passed, for the agent had sunk the entirety of his right hand aether saber into the the combatant's armpit, incinerating the occupant before short circuiting. The result, a very expensive shiny statue full of ash.

Candon would not see this, as he wasted no time.
Crouching low to avoid incoming fire from his team he drew the Aether saber-rifle from his right shoulder and started firing bursts of white hot aether in rapid fire succession at the remaining enemies.

Bouncing a laser transmission off of Junko's armor Candon relayed a telepathic message to Tsuguka,
'GET THEM TO THE COMPUTER!'

The message came with a way point and was also relayed to Masumi via a trail of drones he'd left like super coordinated, networked breadcrumbs.

 

[Gunsight1]

YSS Eucharis - Bridge

That.... wasn't supposed to happen.... Natsumi grumbled a popular Nepleslian curse quietly as her fingers danced over her controls and her SPINE link to the ship's computer confirmed that the CDD had indeed failed to jump them more than a few thousand kilometers from where they had only recently been. They had a few moments before the Kuvexian's would require them and get back into attack range and the snowy haired neko made the most of those moments, kicking the sub light drives to full throttle and swinging the gunship's nose around as she threw them into a series of evasive moves and clawed her way away from the enemy space station.

"Natsumi, try the hyperspace fold system if you can get enough energy to it,"

"Aye, skipper, attempting fold drive!" she answered Hanako's suggestion and began rerouting the power that she could from her bridge station, while opening a line to engineering, "Engineering, this is thew Exec, I need all available power shunted to the Fold Drive right away" she commanded and watched the drive's levels as it began to spool up under her commands.

As that was coming along, Natsumi spared a moment to check the sensors and see where their hostile friends where, they must have caught on by now...

 

[HotelKilo]

YSS Eucharis, Bridge

Standing still behind the active bridge crew, Belle breathed a sigh of relief as her hasty patch job evidently did the trick. As the Admiral handed out orders she considered the impropriety of interrupting a bridge crew in the middle of battle. The winged clerk swiftly retreated to her out of the way seat as she checked her own connection to CHARISMA. Ensuring that the main computer was backing up the bridge recorder could potentially be vitally important if the worst happened to them.

Her eyes stole up to the screen as Natsumi tried the helm, as if the clerk expected to spot the Kuvexians as they sneaked up on Eucharis.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Kuvexian Station, Computer Room Approach Corridor

A nod was returned to Shiho's thumbs up, appreciative of the soldier giving such an impressive storm of suppressing fire. The time to simply take a brisk look around was all the red nekovalkyrja needed.

Broken glass crunching underfoot, Tsuguka backed up from the window slightly to observe the condition of the team. It wasn't just the enemies' chaff which was sending all of their sensors to hell. At this point half of the walls were shredded by shrapnel, thick clouds of metallic dust glimmering under broken spot lights. Every time the Joto Hei ceased firing, it all retreated back in from the concussion wave and clattered noisily against her suit. Candon was yelling a completely contrasting objective into her earpiece. This was absolute chaos.

The enemy, however, was clearly stumbling around in this just as blindly. That would do nicely.

"We have broken their advance. Good work, team." A malevolent grunt caused by a shot which glanced the ceiling above her. Changing to incendiary grenades, her returning fire engulfed the target's secluded alcove with a sudden rolling inferno. "They are going to counter soon. We are moving to the computer core instead."

"Artillery, we're making a spearhead. Snipers, follow us, keep picking off those suits."

Tsuguka teleported out of existence the moment she finished talking, rematerialising behind the opening that she had set ablaze only moments before. Instead of just one aggressor to take on, she found two, and quickly found an alien laser rifle arcing directly towards her face.

Her shield parried the end of the barrel the moment that it fired, a cascade of lightning-strike muzzle flare ripping the reactive tiles from it's surface. A split second later the tiles exploded, pulverizing the enemies' weapon and blowing the man's arm completely off during the resulting catastrophic containment failure.

The already scorched second assailant was first buffed by the shockwave, and then kicked off of his feet by the enraged oni. Blades met in the middle just a split second later. With no form of energy shielding left in the battered cluster of metal suits, Tsuguka simply relied on her reinforced frame to occupy the desperately flailing defender until her teleporter had time to recharge.

From here, there were only a couple of more leaps to their destination, and knocking straight through the walls was not out of the question. They just had to keep the pace.

 

[Ametheliana]

Kuvexian Space Station
Computer Room Approach Corridor

There was no stopping for Masumi as she made her way to Suites's way point by following the drones.

"Oshiro Masumi to Eucharis," she began to say into her comms, "I sent a Mindy and- Eucharis, do you read?" Masumi asked. Silence as she saw shots being fired down the curving hallway. She ran forward, then sent an NSB launcher scout that came back to her with the scene unfolding. There was room behind an opening in the wall that was smoldering and charred where a Mindy-encased Neko had suddenly appeared. It wasn't where Suites was, but it was going to have to do for now.

"That's my target," she said as ~blip~ she was there with the Neko and said to Tsugaka, "While you're getting through, I'm taking cover and getting our comms with the ship back online!" Then she kicked down two desks and burrowed beneath them. She set up a number of drones to guard her, though she could hear and see anyone incoming easily.

Masumi looked to her leader support pack specifically designed for hacking and jamming, to be used to unjam in this instance. She began toying around with it in a particularly efficient way, expecting the next steps before they came and leaping over them to get even further along.

She sent out messages in conventional radio and subspace FTL radio and then reworked the system another time over and resent duplicate messages, asking, "Oshiro Masumi to Eucharis, do you read? Kuvexian personnel is ready to be picked up by the fleet at any time on the lower sector. Computer core has not been reached."

 

[Wes]

YSS Eucharis - Bridge

"I believe neither of us knows how long it would take to perform those repairs," Hanako replied to Jax. The turbo aether plasma drives worked perfectly, sending the ship racing away from the station, but also making the Eucharis somewhat of obvious bright spot in space.

Cherry replied from engineering. She sounded frustrated. "Negative, bridge! The power systems room has a fire right now and Becker is in there. If we charge the capacitors for the fold drive we could make it worse or even have an explosion in there. Look, the problem isn't making enough power, it is that it took so much power to keep the shields from collapsing that we fried the main power distribution system and it is weakened. With all due respect the power systems should be left to the engineers and the bridge should keep their hands off them! The good news is the fold system is fine and I will get you FTL as soon as I can. Over."

Meanwhile the flash of enemy ships leaving space folds appeared on the screen and a sizable Kuvexian Navy ships began firing on the Eucharis again. A message from the ship's WARMS warning system alerted Natsumi just in time to let her dodge the first barrage.

YSS Eucharis - Power Systems Room

Becker flipped on his AMES suit's lights but he still couldn't see hardly anything but a few inches of smoke in front of him. He crawled along the floor, feeling his way my memory to a manual circuit breaker control panel. "Charisma," he called out to the computer over the internal communications channel. "I am in front of a circuit breaker panel in the power systems room. I need to cut off the capacitors from any power input. I need you to list, in order, the switches on this panel, because I can't see the labels, and tell me which ones to pull."

"Of course," the computer's ever-calm voice replied. "Starting with the top left..."

Kuvexian Space Station

The last of the immediate group of defenders fell, leaving the team a moment of respite to get into the computer core.

 

[Rattenkind]

YSS Eucharis - Bridge

YSS Eucharis Bridge

"Understood Sigurd-hei," Mehitabel looked up from peeling away the remains of solidified FOAM to actually inspect the scorched stretches of cable. Carefully probing through the lines with her gloves hands, she felt a rush of energy. There were quite a few wires to look through, honestly, some she had damaged while removing the now inert and rubbery fire extinguishing agent. Nimble fingers made it quick work, the scorched strands were at hand soon enough.

She pulled her multi-tool out of her belt and made sure to tug the cabling enough to gather slack on either side of the damaged stretch. In short order the wire was stripped, snipped, and bare for splicing. There didn't seem to be an alternative, so off came the gloves and lips were puckered. There was, as Sigurd-hei had promised, a tingle as her fingers touched bare metal, and it took a second try to actually make the first twists. Next came a few more determined twists with the pliers before she applied a hasty wrap of tape.

Gloves returned to hands and tool back to the belt, Belle stayed kneeling. "I have spliced it up, Sigurd-hei, but it might not have been enough..."

"Seems to work for now. Thanks!" Sigurd replied. "Let's hope it stays that way." Because I won't be doing much at all if I don't have working displays.

Hanako swung around and looked at Sigurd. "Look up the new stats on the Mindy 4 series and get a list of the communication systems they use. Maybe we can find at least one that will still work for us. It would be really useful to see how they are doing. Perhaps I could help identify the computer memory modules. In the meantime I will be looking for a way to contact our fleet. This plan is not going to work very well unless we can call the reinforcements."

"Aye, ma'am", Sigurd confirmed. "Calling up Mindy-4 specs. Regarding our fleet, we should be able to get in contact once we get a few light seconds away from the station. I can't see their jammers being that strong at to much a distance."

Communicating with our guys inside the station will still be a bitch, though, he thought while he called up the Mindy-4 specs as announced.

The AIES of the Ke-M2-4 power armor is capable of communicating via:

• Radio

Even a Rixxikor could jam that.

• Laser

Sure. Would be so nice if the Kuvexians had built their station transparent.

• Subspace

Granted, the Rixxikor probably couldn't jam that. The Kuvexians, unfortunately, can.

• External audio

If we'd all be only figures in some sci-fi RPG, sure. In real life, however, there's no sound in space.

• Homing Device

Powerful. Can only transmit its coordinates, though, Sigurd thought resignedly. Then he frowned. It would be communication, though. Even if only binary.

He continued the thought a bit. On, off, on, off... one could do morse code with that. With that possibility in mind Sigurd called up the specs of the Mindy 4's homing devices and had to find that activating them while not in an emergency would be a pain in the arse for any poor fellow who'd have to do it as the power armors AIs tend to be a little dismissing when it came to overriding emergency protocols. On top of that it would leave him pretty helpless since the homing device would draw the power from pretty much everything that wasn't basic live support. That's what made it powerful, after all.

Unfortunately that was one way. The Eucharis would still have to make contact in the first place to explain how to do it from the away teams end. So Sigurd racked his brain on that issue for quite some time until he came up with nothing more than to basically use the same brute force approach the homing beacon would. If the Eucharis would try to communicate via subspace with the away team using enough power, the away team should be able to hear the attempt through the static if they listened closely enough. That, unfortunately, was a big "if" and it would still only be morse code. Which, of cause, meant it would take some time to get a message through and the messages sent might be containing errors. Still it was the best he could come up with unless the away team managed to stop the jamming from the inside.

So Sigurd spoke up: "Ma'am, I may have sort of a solution..."
Then he explained his plan.
When he finished he added a thought he got while he explained his plan: "The only other thing I can think of right now is to get closer than 250 kilometers and use your Neko's telepathic link, ma'am. I don't know if it would be jammed, but it might not be, because I don't think they know about it."

Staying inside 250 km for the amount of time Hanako would need to communicate with the away team would mean considerably slowing down to keep within the transmission range, thanks to Kepler's 3rd Law. But he didn't add that verbally since Hanako, being an admiral, would certainly be aware of that anyway.

Who the hell was Kepler, anyway?

 

[Mad_Stylus]

<<Computer Core Corridor>>

Junko stepped over the corpse of one of the Kuvexian armored soldiers. Her rifle was down, helmet scanning the hallway. So far she could tell, they were all thoroughly dead. She'd been told they had tech on the same tier as them, but seeing power armor like that put it into perspective.

She nudged a discarded aether saber with the toe of her boot. It was a better close range option than a bayonet, strictly speaking. A brief urge came over her to snatch it up, that she could make good use of it. Picking it up, she reflected it was surprisingly similar to the ones Tsuguka had requested, at least on the outside.

She marched to Tsuguka, her gauss cannons swiveling back behind her shoulders.

"Tsuguka-Hei. Hallway secure. Do we hold this position, or do we continue on the offensive?"

 

[Gunsight1]

YSS Eucharis - Bridge

No power for FTL for a while. Well, great. Natsumi grumbled silently as the word came from engineering. She wondered if Cherry understood the situation they were in at all?

The alert from WARMS came just in time as the first volley of enemy fire burned across space at the Eucharis. Natsumi threw the ship over into a evasive roll and a steep dive to throw off the enemy tracking. Less then two seconds into the dive, she snapped the gunship up onto its starboard wing, carving across space in ever more erratic and unpredictable maneuvers intended to keep the ship hard to target and even harder to land a shot on.

 

[Wes]

YSS Eucharis - Bridge

"I am skeptical about that plan," Hanako replied to Sigurd. "I think the homing devices use subspace anyway. "The obvious solution is that the armor team will have to deactivate the station's jamming device. The station may have a large amount of defenders, but the teleportation ability of the new Mindy 4 should allow them to run circles around them. As long as they keep moving, the enemy is going to have a hard time building up on them."

Just then Becker got on the intercom. "Hey everybody, Becker here! I disconnected all the bad capacitors so the good ones are ready to use again for the main cannon and the hyperspace drive!"

Shosho Hanako pointed forward at the main viewscreen. "Now, Natsumi!"

 

[Gunsight1]

YSS Eucharis - Bridge

Natsumi did not waste any time. As soon as Hanako gave the order she hauled the heavy gunship's nose over, pointing it towards deep space, the new exit vector she had programmed into navigation already after their first attempted jump out, and engaged the fold drive!

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Computer Core Corridor

Tsuguka readied her smoldering shield reflexively as the other armored figure came into view, not entirely convinced against it being an enemy trick at first. Took a few extra seconds to realize it was the new scientist, Masumi.

"If you are really dedicated to that, Santo-Hei, you should come with us." A stern voice, short on patience given the situation. "The computer core will almost definitely be connected to this facilities' communication equipment."

Seeing as only Junko Hasegawa had turned up to support her, the crimson neko could only infer that the infra-red communications with the rest of her team had failed for some reason. Not much they could do about it now. Time was running out.

"We have no choice but to proceed." An small look of approval was given towards the melee weapon now in the petite soldier's hand. At least they seemed to understand the dynamics at play here. That would have to do. A hand waved them forward, before Tsuguka quickly snapped her grenade launcher back into place from the shoulder mount, and began to march ahead. "Please come with me."

A series of concussion grenades battered the weighty bulkhead at the end of the corridor, popping the security sensors, but doing little to the armored door itself, except bend the frame inward. There were no hidden enemies, at least, but this situation would apparently either require Junko's shoulder cannons, or the rather less professional option of running over and hitting it with her sword...

 

[ArsenicJohn]

Computer Core Corridor

Freyja's heart was hammering in her chest. She had expected that gambit to fail but somehow it actually worked. She was a little shaken. Her nerves threatened to get the best of her, but she thought about Junko and the rest. Even Hanako needed her right now. Tsuguka would probably kick her tail and tell her to get moving. She took a deep breath and moved forward, looking down at the three NSBs that the Kuvexians had destroyed instead of her squad.

The sound of concussion grenades going off made her pick up the pace. She caught up to Junko as fast as she could. "Sorry about that, Tsuguka-hei. I'm better now." Her eyes moved to the science officer and then the armored door. "We need that door open? I can cut it open with my ABSR. Cover me, it might take a second." Freyja said.

She switched her ABSR to Saber mode and walked up to the door. "Okay, I can do this." The determined soldier declared. She stepped forward and started cutting a hole in the door big enough to walk through. The metal started melting instantly around the blade formed from focused aether energy.