RP: Cirrus Station [Episode 5] A Unique Encounter

Deciding to throw his two cents worth in, Lance spoke up, "We can't all fit into the vents, and with the station's systems in a state of flux like they are, it'd be difficult at best to pull off successful guerilla tactics of the hit and run variety..." he paused, thinking quickly, "But... we're in the weapons lab... and with the admin's ego, she's bound to have at least a few high explosives laying around... and if we could booby-trap them and then lure the combat space hookers after us and... well, their armor might be good... but I doubt it's good enough to suvive a major concussive force, and shrapnal, AND whatever else we might be able to rig up." he threw out, making a good bit up as he went along.

Deacon smiled softly and turned to look at Lance.

"Do you really think that Administrator Montreal would have anything, anywhere on this station, that would damage her beautiful creation? As for there not being enough room, you think there will be enough room to pull of any sort of booby trapping of them? if they are allowed to remain a unit ,we will lose. They outgun us, out armor us, and frankly, out training us. We are the most rag tag band of security there could be. Most of the security force you have been paired with, have only the minimum of combat training. They are engineers, technicians, and tinkerers, not warriors. But as I said to Master Kokuten, I will follow his orders, even if I do not think this is a battle we will win."

Lance raised an eyebrow in response, "Well, there's corners around which we can place the traps, and I figure anybody that has a cannon that can hurl asteroids at ships is bound to have something explosive, whether it's designed as a weapon or is just a batch of chemicals." he paused, sighing slightly.

"I doubt that they'll be to quick to split up as long as they're on our tails..." he paused, thinking again, "We could combine our ideas. Try to split them up and seperate them, and then have them trigger traps of some sort as they pursue us, blasting the individuals in hit and run style... As you said, we're not exactly an elite group of warriors, but we've got the techinical know-how to turn the station and its parts into weapons of their own accord." Lance countered, looking towards Kokuten for what their commanding officer believed they should do.

"With you I agree with the dog guy, what the hell are we doing running away?" started up Jen whose anger was beating down her fear Come on girl think, in survival training weapons were not everything right? "We have a group of kickass people if we can put our mind to it I bet, and on the top of my head there are a couple of things we could do. Sir I'll apologize later for being out of line later but escape isn't the only thing we could be doing."

"Seriously Sir, if we could just somehow put the minds of these engineers to use we could come up with something makeshift to beat them with. We can also count on those bitches thinking we have the crappy stuff. I have heard a couple of interesting stories about this Squad, and how they managed to fight of some Neko savages without so much breaking a sweat!"

Her fists were balled up in her anger, tiered of this group that had just marched on a few Uniques and simply wiped them out suddenly become cowards. "Just because we don't hold the bigger gun doesn't mean we are shit, we can do this, I'm sure of it. We just haven't stopped panicking long enough to see what is around us, and use it to our advantage."

Jen looked around for any way for an advantage, but the best she could draw up was to move some boxes for cover. This wasn't the wilderness so her ability to process a viable weapon was out, so all she could come up with would be tacticle advantages.

She heard Lance gave his suggestion and gave him a side thumbs, "Like what he said."

Kokuten stood for a moment after hearing all the explanations from his squad members. He reflected on their suggestions for a moment.

"Well, you do all remember that this is a 'hot lab'? This part of the station is 'designed' for damage. That means that there is a chance of us finding a weapon that, though is not designed for our use, may be designed for more destructive uses." Kokuten chuckled for a moment, actually finding his recent revelation rather funny. "I mean, really, these are the people who helped in the creation of the 'Cassefin Cannon'."

"As for an ambush? Well, if the Uniques poke around the Observation Room, they'll surmise that 'someone' in there has killed there own. Judging by their organization, I'll put my money that they'll be coming this way by the time they finish their investigation; Seeing as this is the only other way from that room." Kokuten explained quickly, his hands moving to the words. "I can understand the the idea for such hit-and-run tactics, but unless we have the proper tools or space, we're sailing without a sail."

Scarlet was out of breath. Noboru's objections had fallen on death ears again, and funnily enough, the commandeered piece of scaffolding was softer than the wall plating. She had only succeeded in bending her weapon by now.

"...Dammit!... What the hell did... you make this doorframe out of!?..." She huffed in annoyance, moving her arm to lob the pole across the room, but halting at the last moment so that it just looked like she was trying to perform a magic trick of some odd flavour.

At this point she regretted loosing her HHG more than ever. She was just plain out of ideas, to boot. She didn't even want to think how close the enemy must be by now… Hell, most of all, she regretted not having a Type Three coordinator around to lay the situation out for her. It had crossed her mind to listen to Fetch when he demanded it before, but the guy had admitted he wasn‘t a combatant himself.

Soon enough she simply stumbled sideways back to the familiar Yamataian, with an aura of failure. The black plume of hair totally obscured her face whilst she gazed into the floor. "...Door... won't break... thought we could slow 'em...... Tell me what to do... Mr. Noboru, please..."

Tweak stayed near the back of the group, pretty much as she had the entire time so far. Her helmet visor was up now, letting everyone see her face after hiding behind it for so long. Not that it made any difference or anything.

The neko-everyone-but-Kokuten-thought-was-a-Freespacer kept looking back at the table that blocked the door to the stairwell. As Scarlet beat on the laboratory blast doors in front of the squad, Tweak sighed. They needed time to get away. She knew she was the most likely to survive a fight with the Uniques, even with sub-par gear, if she was able to do half of the things the pictures hovering in front of her eyes said she could do and as fast as the voice in her head said she could do them. She could feel the capability lurking there...

The conversation about guerrilla tactics filtered through her thoughts. More ideas, more plans appeared.

"A bottleneck. That's the stairwell," she said suddenly. "These plama things burn hot, for how long? And what's their pressure limit? Do they use magnetic containment fields? If we take a couple of them and somehow set their containment to compress the plasma, it will over-pressurize and explode...we can set them to ignite, drop them down the stairwell, then rig a couple more in the doorway to overpressure when the table is removed or at a manual trigger, that can at least slow them down." She looked over at Scarlet. "If she's trying to get at the locking mechanisms, we can also try focusing the plasma into a tighter beam to cut through the paneling to get at the controls, can't we? Does someone have an extra-strong power conduit in their cybernetics?" Her gaze started losing focus as her idea formed. "We can jury-rig either the coupler on the canister or the muzzle of the rifle to attach to the conduit and use the conduit's smaller size to constrict the plasma flow, I'm sure there's a way to increase the magnetic containment for at least a short time..." She blinked and looked around. "...right?" she finished weakly, suddenly nervous.

"Tell you what to do?" Noboru sighed, placing a hand on Scarlet's shoulder in a comforting gesture. "If you want my honest answer, I have absolutely no idea; I've never been involved in station combat of this magnitude."

Looking straight at the distraught Type Two, he got a sudden look of determination. "But I'll be damned if we fail this mission. I won't let it happen. Oh, and by the way, those bulkhead doors are solid Nerimium. If you were, you know, still wondering." He smiled a bit at his half-joke.

"Guys, girls, hairy aliens, we're in the labs BUILT for explosive shit. When shit gets real, this is the place to be! If we throw ourselves at them here, they'll tear us apart." Stovaa took a breath to calm down and gather himself. Dissent amongst the team already? To make it worse, it was almost certainly a suicidal plan.

"They're pretty near us, you know." He glanced at the table blocking the stairs. "And whereas I think myself and Deacon could kill one or maybe two in hand to hand, we'd suffer casualties from the return fire. And I'm sure Kokuten doesn't want his first shift to end in dead people..."

The labs here were no doubt as full of dangerous devices as his last apartment was full of porn and empty bottles of booze. Fighting the Uniques with the weapons that the Team already had was not an option he wanted to consider.

"I respect the fact that you may have more experience on this station, but surely the tools and materials in the labs would make an ambush inside there more plausible. Here, they'd be expecting something."

Stovaa drew himself up to his full height and offered everyone a scowl.
"In any case, right or wrong, Kokuten has given us orders. Let's not disobey him now, we'll give him a chance. Right?"

It was, of course, not a question he expected an answer to. To punctuate his statement, he grabbed a nearby chair and threw it forcefully towards the stairwell, arcing over the table and bouncing gleefully down the stairs.

"Let's move, before they realise we don't have infinite chairs."

As Cyril's leg became untangled from the cords below the vent, he would find himself landing against the hard metal frame on top of the Vinross Yu-Cranker transport. The four Uniques continued to fire at him until he fell out of sight, concealed by the freighter's girth. "Ladder, in the back," one of the Uniques said, motioning to a small set of bars near the rear of the transport's large rear cargo module. Three of them started towards it, while the other stayed at the side of the vessel, her weapon trained carefully over the rim of the ship.

Cyril, once he shook off the shock from the fall, would find his options very limited. The top surface of the freighters hull was barren, with very little to work with. A few large docking couplings rested in a straight pattern across the spine of the ship, but other than that there were no doors, hatches or entrances of any kind.

---

The newly opened door that the remainder of Squad 35 had been mulling about led deeper into the weapon testing facility. The first thing they would see through the bulkhead was a long, common hallway. The power shortage had apparently also taken its toll on this part of the station as well, as the once-white hallway was now bathed in a light red glow from silent, flashing emergency light fixtures.

The hallway visibly led to yet another dead end, a large closed bulkhead cutting them off from what would've been a four-way junction. On either side of the hall near the closed bulkhead, however, were two doors that were already open. Holographic displays above the doors would quickly give away the contents of each of the rooms; the sign above the left door simply read "Assembly Wing 23", while the sign on the right said "Development Lab Wing 23". Both of the rooms were emitting sounds which echoed down the quiet hallway; voices and the sound of mechanisms and machinery.

Beyond what the CSS squad could see, there were two more rooms closed off to them by nonfunctional doors.

For those observant enough, there were grates similar to the ones Squad 35 used earlier in the Observation Room. These vents led to more maintenance tunnels, compartmentalized to only serving this particular wing of the Armament Assessment and Development laboratories. A single long maintenance tunnel also connected to this wing's docking bay, where the Uniques continued to advance further into the station.

As Dick hurried ahead of the others, he stopped and glanced up at the Development Lab Wing 23 sign. "This is one of my labs, dedicated to plasma dynamics. I should have some equipment in here..."

---

While Squad 35 desperately continued to find their bearings, the Uniques at the elevator had caught up to their comrade who was quickly scaling the circular staircase. However, at the top she would only find a crude barricade of tables, chairs and other miscellaneous items, compliments of Stovaa. Captain Bell, who was at the flank of the four scaling the stairs, shouted her orders up to the Unique taking point. "Well? Break it down! They can't have gone far, not with the lockdown in progress!"

Nodding, the Unique began to oblige her commanding officer, forcefully testing the barrier with a few sharp hits with the butt of her simple assault rifle. The makeshift nature of the barricade made it very shaky...but given the position the Unique was in, still an obstacle to get by none the less. However, it wouldn't be long before the Uniques would be past it.

Scarlet's mechanical knowledge was best described as 'coincidental'. Another bizarre combination of glances from her made it clear she had no idea what the stringy green-haired woman was technobabbling about, and indeed had only a fleeting idea of what Nerimium was... but she did at least recognise the reinforced strength in Norobu's words, and seemed to sap off it in momentary lack of her own. The immediate response was a playful dig to his chest, after which she looked with renewed vigour over to the development lab's corridor and replied with a sombre but hopeful tone.

"You're right... Just gotta keep going... we can still make them hurt."

Her own lack of independence annoyed her, it was true. But to have someone with similar sentiments at her back... for now, that was close enough.

Scarlet moved briskly but cautiously after Kokuten, hunkered down with her spear and subconsciously slowing a little to make sure her self-appointed proxy conscience stayed in verbal range behind her.

"Well then, Administrator," Noboru hustled up alongside Vanderhuge with Scarlet in tow, "It looks like someone's going to have to do a little vent crawling to get inside that development lab and open it up from the inside. I volunteer."

Keziah breathed again, and sat back in the vent. The suppressive fire had stopped, for now, which could mean one of two things.

Either the girls had picked up and gone with the rest of the squad out of the hangar. Or they switched tactics.

Or three. They were reloading.

She frowned, and looked over the lip of the vent, doing her best to stay hidden--which was pretty easy since most of the vents were heavily shadowed as far as her one eye could see. That was when she saw the three going around the ship to get a better shot at Cyril. She gnawed on her lip, before making a hissing sound to try and draw his attention.

When he looked up, she'd give him quick, sharp hand-signals. Three. Encircle your position. Find cover.

Find cover? Where? Those xasers would go through anything, except the transport itself. And what could she do from up here, anyway? Her rifle was useless, and it wasn't like there was anything at all in the vents that could be used as a real weapon.

Except the cable. She grabbed it again, and pulled it up into the vent with her. It was long, definitely, but not long enough to reach the ship and rescue Cyril. Strong, too, and flexible. She bundled up as much as she could before taking another peek over the edge.

The drop wasn't really fatal. She could fall onto the transport no problem, since it was almost right underneath her. But what then? Get shot, like Cyril? The girls weren't going to take prisoners, she was certain about that.

I can't just leave him there to die.

She knocked her head against the side of the vent. What could she even do?

Jen turned around as she heard the Uniques coming she muttered, "Guess we go in then." However, as Jen approached the door, she stopped to ask, "Sir, I know I may sound suicide a little, but I request to cover the door." The female marine gave a smirk and stated, "Don't worry though, when I get overwhelmed I'll run all the way back, I don't plan on dieing just to slow them down a little."

"I respect your courage, Jen," Kokuten smiled through his visor, "but to do that alone would indeed be suicide. We've little idea how this armor responds to their gunfire. Stovaa, you stay here at the cover of the door way with Jen. The both of you need to open fire on the Uniques the first chance you get to warn us. Though, when you get those first rounds off, you need to run, as soon and as quickly as you can. You may slow them down, but it's best that we know when to round up our scavenging."

He turned to Administrator Vanderhuge, "Alright sir, we're following you."

Jen gave a large grin, "Sir, I was top of my class at long distance, and if I wasn't was probably because I didn't want to," spoke Jen confidently, after giving a salute, she took up a position out of the way of everyone but using the corner of the entrance as cover.

Cyril caught Keziah's hand gestures and cut off a curse. Of course the bitches couldn't just write him off as a casualty. No, they had to go and be professional. And now they were going to try and add him to the heap of slaughtered Cirrus crew on the deck below. And then once they'd perforated him to a suitable degree, they'd try their hand at getting Kaz too. Well that wasn't just kosher.

He looked around for ideas of where to move next. The top of the freighter, docking clamps not withstanding, went in for the same psudo-Yammie aesthetic that the Unique's armor had. What Cyril would have given for the Nermian derived stuff that he usually worked with. External access to the engines should be standard on a civvie ship, damnit. It wasn't like there was a whole lot of extra space in the ass end of these things anyway! Well bitching wasn't going to change anything, and access across the top was right out.

But down the hull from the bit of cowling that he was hiding behind, Cyril recognized just the very top of a familiar chunk of machinery on the side of the ship proper. Standardized docking equipment was a blessing for him right now, and that looked like the main access hatch to the freighter. And main access meant that there might be something he knew how to work with here. In theory anyway. Given his general luck so far, they'd have probably done something to the standard control runs, so getting in might be a challenge. But it was better then getting shot.

Cyril hissed back at Keziah for her to listen. An idea was beginning to take proper form in his mind now, and it might just work out. Gesturing quickly himself in the same hand signals, Cyril passed his reply back to Kaz. Roger contacts. Attempting to move up. Entrance, starboard mid. Covered?

Will give cover fire. Three mags left. Hurry!

Keziah snapped off the last few signals, and hunkered down on her stomach, leaning herself out far enough to aim her rifle down towards where the Uniques would be heading up the ship. She wedged her rifle into position, keeping her eye on the third girl watching the whole circus from the sidelines. This was really, really bad.

What I wouldn't give for a proper rifle right about now...

She just hoped that the shadows in the vent were enough to hide her. Of course, that'd all go out the window once she started firing. All she could hope for was that the Uniques still thought she was dangerous.

"Okay captain, shoot then run, gotcha. Just make sure you don't bust a cap in either my or Jen's ass, it'd put the subsequent victory party on a downer if I was picking shrapnel out of myself." Stovaa checked his rifle and knelt down just past the door to the corridor that connected the labs and the landing with the stairs on.

"Top of your class at long distance, eh? Well, let's hope you came top of the class at miracles too, because we'll need one to blow the heads off these slags..."

Sensing she was being completely ignored, Tweak turned to whoever was close to her. "Can I have your plasma canisters?" she asked, still a bit timid, but with an edge of determination and annoyance in her voice. As she said this, Tweak removed the canister from her own Variable Weapon.