RP: The Fringe [Chapter 2.0] - Salvage

Concordia Veil - Cockpit

Amelia felt the ship lurch and shake from whatever had hit them, and for a brief moment the thought that they had been destroyed. When that didn't happen a second later, she looked at the displays, only to see that the shields were still up. 'It's nothing, for now,' the astrogator thought in a flash once she glanced at one of the displays. "We're fine, keep going!" she exclaimed, dobule checking the same displays on one side to see if there had actually been any damage while she shut off the collision alarms in the other.

Concordia Veil - Cockpit

Shrie did not waste time, quickly she closed the doors to the cockpit. If they get damaged, outside the cockpit, she did not want the decompression to get them. She still had no EVA suit and it was almost impossible there would be one on the ship. The tall woman then turned to the center console. She could see weapon control being transferred there. She could see four laser turrets, that would be mainly good againt power armours, small crafts and most than anything as point defense. But two plasma cannons that were up front, those were another story. They were almost twice as powerful. Important also was that all six weapons could fire up front, which all together could be quite a punch. Well nothing compared to military vessel, but goo enough against Vampire. Well in theory. The Vampire still out-guinned Jinsoku, but Veil was well armed fro what it was. For example the superconductor turrets were not very dangerous to space ships. Most dangerous was of course the positron cannon, especially with its insane arc of fire. Still Vampire had to face them if they wanted to shoot them.

"Ready," Shrie said, watching her sensors and tracking targets. "Debris not stop them, their guns too poweful. Need a big chunk of ship for that. We can take them, but safer to not fight."

Concordia Veil - Cockpit

"We're not going head to head with that thing," Oreza retorted as the ship screamed along the hull, but they were running out of room. They couldn't keep circling the wreck indefinitely; it wasn't big enough, and if it were him that was in the Vampire's place, he would eventually consider just shooting through the wreck rather than around it. Looking up, he spied the massive asteroid nearby. "We need to get over there," he thought out loud. "If we can hop between asteroids, we might have a chance of either losing them or keeping them off our backs until the cavalry arrives." However, there was still the matter of Six Four and the other survivor. His intense frown deepened. "Get Six Four on the horn and tell her to try to make her way to the shuttle you came in on. It should still be adrift around where we left it." If they could draw the Vampire off, it would give the other two a fair chance to get away from the wreck and hide until they were safe.

They ran along the hull until they had nearly circled the entire thing once again, and the Vampire was nowhere to be seen. The scanners flickered and buzzed with interference, and after a second that seemed to stretch on forever, the contact showed up again. The Vampire was giving chase through the debris field.

Searing bolts of energy lit up the blackness around them, and the bluish haze of the Veil's shield systems shimmered and wavered as it absorbed a hit and then failed. More alarms blared, and the small freighter lurched to one side. Gauges on Amelia's console registered a direct hit to the top of the starboard cargo bay, although it showed no drop in pressure. The hull was, thankfully, still intact, although it wasn't clear for how long.

Oreza gritted his teeth as he struggled to keep control of the ship, still unknowingly aided by Crash, hidden away in the computer systems. "Damn it, get those guns on that thing!" he roared back to Shrie. He knew that they had little hope of destroying it, but they needed every distraction they could get to stay alive long enough to evade them.

Cockpit - Concordia Veil

'Shit', Amelia instantly thought once she had seen the shields go down. They had been hit for sure then, but thankfully the shields held."Six-Four, we left a shuttle behind, try to use it to get out of there if you can," she said on the radio before turning back to the displays, "setting up approach vectors." Her tone was surprisingly calm, it was hurried, for sure, but there was no trace of panic on her voice. The astrogator set up another trajectory for the Veil, once again trying to keep the wreck between them and the Vampire to give it as much time as she could for them to reach the asteroid.

Derelict

Six Four dodged another laser blast as Amelia's message came though. "Understood." Six Four messaged back before glancing back at its charge in tow and also the assailants, then an idea hit the free spacer well more of an observation. Judging from Dylan's physiology as well as the facial structure that it could see behind his visitor the Doctor realized that it was towing around a Yamataian, or to be specific a Minkan.

Dipping behind an exterior vent on the ship Six Four whipped out data pad and typed a quick message.



Flashing it into his helmet Six Four picked the Minkan up by the collar and heaved him towards the shuttle that the veil had left behind. After tossing him the freespacer made a bolt towards another set of cover that it could hide behind on the ship to figure out its own way up towards the shuttle.

Shrie did not need to be told that. The four laser turrets, already turned back and aimed at the Vampire. Of course depending on the current flight arc 95% of time, only two of the small turrets could be fired. Both lasers were not very powerful, really only good against PA and fighters, but they still did some damage. Still before doing damage, they had to get rid the Vampire of its shielding. Shrie hoped that although it would not do much damage, debris could put strain on the shields, confuse it for attacks. She aimed one turret at piece of junk in Vampire's flight path and fired at as it was passing by, hoping the bits and pieces of scrap hitting it, would weaken the shields enough for her seconds shot, which aimed at Vampire's positron cannon. Take out its fangs.

Concordia Veil - Cockpit

Amelia's fingers were a blur as they dashed here and there between the volumetric displays around her as if they were a part of her. Between the two Nepleslians a three-dimensional, transluscent representation of the tumbling wreck appeared, complete with the debris cloud. Red and yellow dots appeared, displaying the respective positions of the Vampire and the Veil, and rapidly a blue line sprouted from the yellow dot, wrapping quickly around the tumbling wreck, weaving in and out of floating chunks of obliterated starship.

Shrie's shots blasted through space, the first one pulverizing one of the bigger chunks of debris into dozens of smaller ones which spun wildly in all directions, many of which tumbled harmlessly away from the attacking patrol ship. The Vampire weaved suddenly to the side, evading two of the bigger chunks entirely and plowing through the smaller ones. Tiny halos of blue light burst in sparkling patterns as the ship's shields knocked them away like insects, but its evasive maneuvers failed to avoid one rather large, jagged looking piece of hull. It impacted against the shields with a much more spectacular flash of blue light which shimmered in a ripple effect that enveloped the entire Vampire for a brief moment, just as the Lorath's second shot lanced across space and struck its mark. The brilliant flash would have temporarily blinded anyone looking directly at it, but from Shrie's perspective, she had to settle for a holographic image confirming a hit.

The Vampire did not relent, however, nor did it show any outward signs of damage. Its shields shrugged off the shot as it were nothing. If Shrie's plan was to succeed, she knew that she would have to keep pummelling them with debris without mercy for a good while, more than long enough for Oreza to make a mistake, or their attackers to squeeze off another shot at them.

The little freighter continued to scream through the wreckage, weaving far closer to the erratic distribution of metal chunks that what would make any of its occupants comfortable.


Concordia Veil - Cabin 1

Thunk.

"Oof...!"

A mess of swirlling colors and blurry images were all that Sienna could see for a moment before the dull ache started to throb in the back of her head. Blinking slowly, she reached up and laid her palm on her forehead, feeling her hair stuck to her skin and over her eyes. Another sudden lurch tossed her backwards again, and she managed to steady herself just as she realized that she was lying halfway off of her bunk, her hips and legs sprawled sideways across the mattress, and her shoulders and the back of her head awkwardly lying on the floor.

A grin spread across her face. She knew that something wasn't right about her precarious position, but at the moment, she couldn't for the life of her think of what it was. In fact, she found the situation kind of funny.

There was another bang and sudden jerk, and her backside was thrown over her head, flipping her fully off of the bed, and she came to rest face-down on the floor. As soon as she landed, she started to chuckle, then laugh. Gingerly she tested her arms, pushing her chest off of the floor and brushed the damp hair off of her face. "Ohh, ho-ho, whoopsie!" she tittered drunkenly as she shakily struggled to her feet, using the corner post of her bunk as support.


Derelict - Outer Hull

Dylan's eyes went wide as he realized what the Freespacer was about to do, and didn't have time to respond before he found himself hurled into space.

The skull-faced, imposing spacesuited figures before them looked up as one of their targets appeared to utterly drop all semblance of concern for its partner's well-being. The one in the rear swung his pistol up and squeezed off a few more energy bolts at the flying Minkan, before jumping off of the hull himself to give chase. The other turned its attention back to Six Four, who had seized the opportunity to duck behind a section of peeled-up hull plating, and started to clomp towards her, its pistol levelled at its quarry. Two more bolts of energy struck the metal plating, forcing Six Four to hold her position under cover.

Dylan's terror slowly gave way to the realization that he had the advantage, and activated his gravitational manipulation, suddenly altering his course to provide his pursuer with a moving, jinking target. Away from the hull, he could easily outmaneuver the slaver in the spacesuit, and force him to either abandon the pursuit or exhaust his maneuvering thrusters' fuel.

The Cockpit

Shrie frowned. Her little plan worked, but it did not work enough. She needed to shower the Vampire with a lot more then that. Shrie's hands danced on the console, aiming the laser turrets as fast as possible at chunks of debris that were rought in the way of the enemy ship, blasting them to pieces so bits of it would fly into Vampire's way. It was a best she could do at the moment. The tall Fyunnen wished that her neural interface would not be taken out, when they kicked her out of LSDF. If she could link with the console mentally, this would have been a lot easier. Manual control just did not have enough accuracy, that the sharpshooter could get out of the system if she had linked with the system with her brain.

Outer hull

Six Four quickly estimated its potential escape routes, the shooters were making its life very difficult at the moment. If it had its saw in functioning order it could attempt to fight back but with it being heavily dulled by the piping it was little to no use. Suddenly it had an idea as it watched the veil blast some debris.

"Can you shoot at this ones assailants?" Six Four radioed to the ship before taking a quick peak over the piece of broken ship to see if it could make another dash for cover.

Concordia Veil - Cockpit

Thrumming whirs and clanks rumbled through the hull as the Veil's turrets fine-tuned their orientation according to Shrie's commands, on top of the banging, groaning, and screeching of the ship tearing through the debris field, desperately trying to shake off their assailant. The Vampire never let the freighter open the gap between them, matching most of its maneuvers and evading all but the tiniest bits of debris, through which is simply rammed, allowing its shielding to either bat the m away or vaporize them entirely.

G-forces continued to yank the crew every which way, faster than the dampers could adjust themselves to compensate, and the ship pitched down hard and rolled as Oreza curled them around the other end of the spinning derelict once again. The readouts on the Vampire in front of Amelia registered a power spike in their reactor - it appeared that it was biding its time while it charged its main cannon. It was tough to tell on the fly, given how many variables could be in play, but if their attacker continued to keep up with them and elected not to fire its secondary weapons...

Another brilliant blue arc of energy ripped through space, grazing the dorsal shields just enough to bring back that bright shimmer and set off an overload alarm. The last shot had missed the hull, but the shield generator was dust.


Derelict - Outer Hull

Six Four remained behind the only bit of cover nearby as energy bolts continued to impact against the peeled-up hull plating, leaving marks that were starting to become visible on the opposite side as the metal started to superheat and glow red. The Freespacer knew it would only be mere seconds before the skull-faced, black-suited attacker was upon her. She glanced up in time to see the Veil dip below the "horizon" of the hull, but knew that it would only be seconds as well before they reappeared on the other side. It was a matter of which would arrive first.

Concordia Veil - Cockpit

"Shields down!" Amelia exclaimed, the affliction on her voice noticeable as she reached around and flipped off the switch so that the alarm could stop blaring. That was it, one more shot from the Vampire and the Veil was as good as dead, the funny thing was that she knew she should feel scared about it but that somehow didn't happen. Once the astrogator realized that, she felt strangely at ease instead, there was simply nothing more she could do from her station to help the situation in any way, so all she could was only hope that the Concordia made it behind the asteroid in time before the next shot from the hostile craft.

"They follow," Shrie said. Watching as the Vampire matched their path. She turned her head to Oreza. "Fly close to things. They follow, we go close to things, they do too. I can shoot things then and put theirs shields away." She tried to explained what she wanted in limited vocabulary she possessed. Then she turned back to her console and worked the turrets. She had another plan forming in her head, but Veil had to crush enemy's shields first.

Concordia Veil - Cockpit

A Yamataigo-accented voice came over the speakers. "ISS Concordia Veil, F7-1024, this is YSS Kasagi, NG-S12-23, of the Star Army of Yamatai's Second Fleet. We have received your distress call and we are currently en route to your location from the Nataria system with an ETA of about twelve minutes. We request an update on your situation, over." Apparently the distress call had made it, but there no ships available in the nearby systems, so it would be a short while before the military could arrive to assist. It was like the old expression: when seconds count, police are only minutes away!

Derelict Outside or surface... whatever the place is....

Six Four new that its options were getting shorter by the moment, perhaps it could play dead it thought as it took a quick peek around the cover it was using. Seeing that that would be useless, as much like the plate that it was using it formulated an idea. De-magnetizing its boots Six Four shifted so that its feet were on the piece of broken hull and gave a solid push. As it jettisoned itself towards the gash in the ship it hoped that its pursuer wasn't that good of an aim, or a least took enough time for it to slip back down into the maze of the ship below.

Concordia Veil - Cockpit

"I can't get much closer to them than I already am!" Oreza shouted, his jaw clenching and wincing with every near miss as he weaved the ship in and out of the space junk. Part of him was impressed that he was flying as well as he was after all these years, but another part of him wondered if someone, or something, else was helping him.

Another volley from the Veil's turrets peppered the debris around the pursuing Vampire, sending hundreds of hull fragments blasting in all directions. Shrie's recalculations were much more accurate this time, and the Vampire was showered with a much denser mass of hull fragments, hammering against its shields in brilliant blue flashes. Amelia's console displayed a dip in the Vampire's shield signature; the last volley had in fact weakened it, though not by enough to celebrate just yet.

The pursuing vessel plowed through the onslaught and kept up with the slower freighter, although the crew was granted another small reprieve just as it emerged from the aftershocks of Shrie's last shots: the ship's pilot overcorrected in trying to evade the incoming fire, and weaved too close to the derelict. It narrowly avoided a collision, but on the rebound it slammed headfirst into a larger chunk of debris. The chunk exploded violently against its shields, causing the ship to react by veering hurriedly out of the debris cloud to nurse its wounds.

It didn't leave, however, and Amelia saw no signs of it powering its weapons down or releasing its locks. Instead, the scanner showed it circling overhead like a carrion bird, just outside of the cloud, reassessing how it would next attack its prey.


Derelict - Outside the Hull - Opposite the Firefight

As Six Four kicked off of the bent-up hull and flew rapidly towards the gash, the skull-faced slaver continued to focus its fire on the Freespacer's former hiding place as he advanced. By the time he reached it and leveled his gun over the top of it, his target was long gone. Looking up, he spotted the medic just as she slipped inside the ship once again, and resumed his pursuit.

Derelict, back inside

"This one gets out but, they pull it back in..." Six Four said to itself as it zipped back into the place it just was several minutes before. Luckly it knew where to go as it bounded from ledge to ledge making its way to the dark interior below. Dipping back into where it found Dylan Six Four found a place to hide, as well as something it could use as a weapon in hopes to ambush its attacker if it came to close.

Cockpit - Concordia Veil

"This is the Concordia Veil, under attack by a hostile ship. We don't have twelve minutes!" Amelia replied back on the comms, . Help was on the way, but not fast enough for her to be sure there wouldn't be much left of them by the time they arrived; life sure seemed to be very ironic when it came to things like that. That didn't mean she wouldn't keep trying, though. Turning her attention back to the sensors, she noticed the Vampire taking some distance from them after the second salvo, "He's breaking off for now, keep going!" She said to Oreza.

Concordia Veil - Cockpit

The nimble little freighter continued to hug as dangerously close to the derelict as Oreza dared get, hoping to seize the momentary break they seemed to have been granted and put some more obstacles between them. On Amelia's scope, however, the Vampire never moved far from directly overhead, staying outside the debris cloud, maneuvering laterally and only pitching away to give itself the occasional burst of speed that only its main engines could provide. Another energy spike registered on their attacker's power signature, and the holographic representation of the Vampire showed dozens of small turrets unfolding from the ship's hull.

Then, it seemed, the Vampire took a page from Shrie's book, and began to unleash an indiscriminate barrage of weapons fire around the Veil, keeping pace with them as they weaved around the derelict hull. Spectacular explosions lit up around them as the hundreds of hull fragments were hit by the hailstorm, causing their entire field of view to burst into blinding white light repeatedly. Were it not for the sensors and Crash aiding them, Oreza would have surely crashed headlong into a chunk of debris eventually, unprotected by the Veil's shields.

Everyone in the cockpit was suddenly thrown to one side as a deafening BOOM resonated through the ship, and the spacecraft lurched downward to the port side as if a giant fist had suddenly hammered down on top of it. A piece of shattered debris had impacted the hull, and although the armor had prevented a breach, the port dorsal turret was destroyed.


Derelict - Medbay

Six Four found herself in total darkness again, and coupled with the silence of space left only with the sounds of breathing inside of her helmet, her environment was enough to terrify most anyone. The Freespacer managed to find a short length of piping, cut when she had opened the door to free Dylan and no doubt shaken free by the explosions and impacts outside, before she secured a hiding spot in the containment cell in the corner. Several tense moments passed.

Just as it seemed that her pursuer had given up the chase, a beam of light swept across the room from the doorway and vanished just as quickly, and then it was back again. It moved steadily, obviously attached to the skull-faced slaver's suit, following his movements as it investigated the hallway.

Concordia Veil - Cockpit

"We're hit! Turret number two is down!" Amelia exclaimed, quickly cutting the power to the turret that had been busted and directing it to the engines, then checked for any breaches on the hull, and was relieved to find none. The astrogator swept aside the holographic display of the vampire and brought up one of the derelict, which they were flying uncomfortably close to as she saw the bits of the hull fly past below them, to check how close they were to put some solid cover between the freighter and the Vampire.

Derelict

Six Four hunkered down in its corner, watching as the beam of light drew closer and closer. Readying the pipe to strike when its target came close. Luckily with the lack of sound in the vacuum of the approaching slaver couldn't hear its breathing or the sounds of its metallic fingers drumming on the metal pipe.