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"Polarization." Alena mutterd to herself as she tried to catch on to what Matsumi was getting at. She wasn't stupid, but her formal schooling had been cut short by a alien invasion. As Menelik jumped onto the windshield, she grabbed the scanner that had been left behind. She knew basically how to operate it. It took her three quick tries to find something labled polarization. Then for a moment, instead of her gun, she leaned out pointing the scanner at the windshield.
As they rushed into the alley, Alena worked franticly to repolarize her gun from the information that the scanner gave her about the windshield. However, it took her a moment to realize that she couldn't. As they rapidly slowed, she used her tail as leverage against the forces of gravity. There was a moment with the two groups just looking at each outher.
Seeing an opportunity, she took it and slid up and out of the car. Curling her tail behind her, she lept across the growing gap to land on the hood. She flattened herself, making her contact patch as big as possible and tensing her scales for maximum traction. Then she put her gun through an open window and started shooting, trying to hit the driver first.
Menelik was done with this, grunting where he lay on the ground- the adrenaline washed over him by now and replaced with pain. Pain, regret, and the man cursing himself for even trying to get involved. Who the hell did he think he was, some kind of hero? This wasn't his fight, and it sure wasn't worth getting killed for a bunch of cats.
So he resolved something to himself, right then and there: to hell with helping the Yamataians fight the Kuvexians. This wasn't his war.
Slowly standing up to his feet, the first thing he managed to say was a large curse as he clutched at his ribs, gritting his teeth to work through the pain as he turned. Menelik scrambled up onto the car infront of him, the same one he had jumped from, and moved right back into the passenger side seat... and sat down. Dutifully, he buckled himself in and got ready to keep going.
For a second, he looked up where the third zephyr was, then looked at the... pile of the ID-Sol and Masumi, then back at the Separa. Then he shrugged and leaned back in his seat, cautiously looking up but not worrying too much about the Kuvexians above them.
"Iffin y'all dun mind it, I'd reckon tha one of y'all aught to take a shot at the one yonder up there when y'all got the time for it."
Rohan nodded to Matsuvo as he engaged an external hemosynth system on Rikun's armor. "Agreed."
As the process ran, the skin on his hands blistered and peeled away before the first few layers of skin were flicked away as though a pair of gloves, leaving clean sterility. "You, in the police armor. Recover the medical kit from my fireteam mate's corpse. Bring it here while I treat Suites. Then, you're going to open the release on this Mindy pilot's armor, and we're going to move." A look down to Candon and he took a knee in front of the man. "You're not going to like me much, sir. But I can't treat you, here."
CIWS fire continued to swat Kuvexian troops at an alarmingly slow rate as the shuttles swiftly dodged and danced through overlapping fields of fire. Yet to a keen eye it was almost as if the shots were passing through many of them. Regardless, shots traded until finally the guns of the YSS Ironhart went silent. The shuttles, space troops, and gunships vanished leaving small holographic projector drones in their place as the two heavily damaged cruisers noticeably shunted all power to propulsion and with neither form nor coordination changed their headings to flee the engagement. An experienced captain like Kaede would recognize this kind of panic anywhere. Even the enemy’s clever ruse wasn’t worth maintaining.
“Ironhart to Dawn Hammer, we have infiltrators in the ship! Get out of here, our reactors ar-“
The report was silenced by a quick, desperate cry cut short by a succession of fiery eruptions across the engines of the ship. Seeming to shine from within the hull peered a blinding neon pink glow, brilliant as a star and for a moment all was still, though this stillness was merely relative to what followed as the glow turned white.
With the flash of a thousands aether bombs the great battleship Ironhart erupted in a colossal aetheric explosion that enveloped the entirety of the conflict, swallowing the fleets whole. Dawn Hammer was rocked violently as the blast tore across the surface of its hull, leaving the ship disabled and its occupants in darkness.
Allies: 1 Sharie (disabled)
2 Chakis (disabled)
7 Fighter wings
2 bomber flights
Enemies: 2 cruisers
2 Fighter wings
YSS Dawn Hammer, Bridge
Haunting the bridge, the soft red glow of emergency lighting was illuminated the pitch black, even coffin-like bridge. The same kind of lighting that every crew feared. It was catastrophic failure incarnate as an LED strip that told ever single occupant of a spacefaring vessel that there wasn’t enough power available to even keep the lights on.
The reactor was offline, and its halt in power supply naturally resulted in the absence of functioning propulsion systems.
As the viewscreen flickered a low-res image from outside of the ship became visible in a frame by frame presentation of conflicting camera angles. Though the images told little of the world around them anyone could clearly see the breathtaking damage across the expanse of the warship’s vast bow. Armor was either missing or turned to slag along with anything formerly considered a weapon.
Internal comms had failed, yet the radio chatter of the surviving, scrambling crew now filled the airwaves between personal communicators. Many voices vied for attention, most saying a common word; ‘reactor’.
YSS Dawn Hammer, Engineering Service Corridors
BANG resonated down the halls as the robotic gunhund teleported into the tight corridor to the reactor control room.
“Good girl,” sang the steady, monotonous voice of a black painted Anthedon, it’s surface flawless and clean, the skeleton of an Elysian painted in crimson red, “three jumps is a big day. Go home, Kiba, I’ll finish here.”
Running his hand across the battered, blood covered nerimium and nanomuscle body of the PA equivalent dog he added an unnerving taunt over all local open channels within the ship as Kiba scampered off.
“Come greet The Reaper,” he commanded sickly, with a stone-like sure of command.
Every security team across the ship locked in on the transmission, yet few could respond and those who did wouldn’t survive. Like a tornado The Reaper left only a trail of destruction through the halls leading straight for the Reactor Control Room.
YSS Nishitama, Radiotown
With his head still spinning Candon only nodded to Matsuvo, “willco, brother.”
Before anyone could retrieve medical supplies an emergency transmission came loudly through Candon’s communicator.
“Sir! We need the Shoi immediately! The Ironhart is down and enemy cruisers are descending on the planet. We have to mobilize!”
“Dammit,” Candon swore as he pulled a stainless steel flash from his belt, “if we miss our window this won’t work.” Taking a long drink he replaced the cap and put the flask away. “I’ll survive Shoi, we got more important things to talk about, sir. I think I know the big guy we just met... Matsuvo, go commandeer the first police car that gets here we need to get back to the military sector ASAP.”
Turning to Rikun he could see that she was hurting. “Rikun, when we get there get yourself fixed up and take this ship home. Report in to SAINT as soon as possible,” he ordered as he forced himself to stand.
Planet Himiko, Hot Pursuit
Masumi gritted her teeth, eyes narrowed in frustration yet slightly blushing with embarrassment as Thad pressed uncomfortably over her chest.
“I swear you had better hit them or-“ Masumi’s threat nearly came, ending with an abrupt flinch.
The PDW fired for only a moment before completely turning off, holographic sight included. The battery had died.
Injured but alive infiltrators tried to roll up the windows as Alena sprang onto their roof but it was too late as the Separa’shan stuck the NSP in through the open window and fired. Unfortunately for all three involved Alena’s attempt to change her weapon settings had left it set to the heavy mode.
She pulled the trigger and it was over. The windshield spider cracked from corner to corner as the blast within sprayed bits of Kuvexian clear out of the other doors window.
As if hit by her own pistol’s stun bolt, the intense burst of static from the electro-gravitic blast left Alena’s hand numb and tingling up to her elbow where the electric shock jumped into the cars metal body in its search for ground while the contained blast left her ears ringing as noice bounced between the brick walls.
“Get off,” Masumi growled, not angrily but more scared than anything. Pressing her thumb into Thad’s flank provided more than enough reason to oblige. She could hardly pay attention to Menelik’s complaints as she learned her head against the steering wheel, breathing becoming slightly labored. From behind Thad could see the hole in the back of her seat. Charred flesh oozed blood over her shoulder blade as she stalled. In the distance air raid sirens filled the air with their wailing.
As much as Menelik might've wanted to sit back and not do anything stupid or daring again... he wasn't going to sit back and tell the woman with the injured shoulder to drive- what the hell was that idiot thinking, firing an energy weapon that close to someone's explosed flesh? Menelik quietly wondered at the man's idiocy as he looked around, quickly coming to a decision.
"For thuh love awf god, ya, whatevher yo-wr nuh-ame is!" He said, not having the time to be polite as he bodily began shifting into the driver's seat , pushing both Thaddeus and Masumi with his weight as he tried to slide on in.
"Git missus masumi in thuh back an git 'er some fuhrst aid awn that wound!" He continued, not quite barking orders but speaking in that clear, authoritative tone that normally meant he knew what he was doing. To be sure, Menelik knew what he was doing, he just wasn't sure that it'd work. But it was better to do something constructive immediately than deliberate.
"Alena!" He called back to the snakewoman, raising his voice so that she could hear him. "Git ready t' roll back into thuh car!"
Rikun would find herself lifted out of the wreck of her armor by the back of her uniform, the strong former Neko of a Rikugan officer shaking his head at the transmission. "Tell them we're en route and to mobilize the RSR. I need three fireteams to search any ships disabled, bring engineers to assist with repairs. The rest of us are going planetside."
Rohan wasn't sure of the deployment strategy yet, but he knew that it would be messy, and he'd come up with something on the fly. The Mindy pilot slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, he offered a hand to Candon. "Can you run? We need to move quickly."
Alena relaxed her scales and slid off of the car. She shook her hand, she had been pulling the trigger like she was on pulse mode and it hadn't. Her hand felt like it had been hit by a stun bolt. She knew that the feeling would wear off in about ten to fifteen minutes, but the pins and needles still hurt. She used her other hand to release the spent triple magazine and put in a new one as she slid back to the car. "I take it we don't have the time to recover their weapons." She said, sounding calm and switching the hand that she held the pistol in.
Thaddeaus was having the time of his life. He had a big gun in his hand and a comrade in arms. This quickly came to a crashing halt as he was jabbed in the flank by his hugging pillow. His eyes glazed over as he seen the hole in the seat followed by blood. He turned white as a ghost as he touched to confirm, blood, her blood. He wasted no time to get himself unwrapped from her upper body. He knew this wasn't good any would need to act fast. "Menelik, come take the wheel. I got a comrade to patch up." He yelled out pushing away from Masumi. A moment later and he had her picked up and being moved to the back seat of the car.
He reached into his pack and pulled out a first aid kid he always kept on his person. He had far too many times had to patch up friendlies so made a point to keep one handy. He chuckled for a moment thinking back to when he was assigned as a doctor. It would seem this title was going to be put to good use even if it was made up. "Try not to move around too much till I get a look at your wound." He said to her in a calm voice. He located the wound and ripped any clothes near it. He just hoped that it was not too bad a wound...
"Calm down and-" Araena Sutoikku's voice echoed through the minds of every telepathy-capable person on board, but it was cut off. On the bridge, Kaede curtly told her to stop giving orders.
"Silence yourselves and restore power immediately. Seal bulkheads with whatever means possible and available. Armor teams Two and Five, suit up and move to the reactor control room immediately. Team Three, guard the bridge. Teams One, Four, and Six are to sweep the ship immediately for hostiles." [/COLOR]Kaede's voice rang through the battleship over telepathy, linked between minds to boost the signal, the Minkan commanding the crew more directly than typical. This would normally have been his wife's job, but Elysian telepathy is much less secure than the wireless signals between digital minds. And security is exactly what they needed, if infiltrators were on board.
The Chakis, destabilized just like their escort, had started to drift apart, the formation breaking up. The debris field of shattered armor and machinery made it nearly impossible for the fighters and strike craft to return in a timely manner - and the lack of connected communication with their carriers meant they'd have to go through hell to get through it at that. The fleeing cruisers weren't escaping yet, as bombers with a heavy amount of escorting interceptors burned towards their position, out for blood.
Rikun's bearings came back to her just as she hauled out of her Mindy and onto the shoulder of someone. The disorientating motions and situation made things worse for her as she flailed a little. "Fuck put me down I'm fine!" She shouted as she fought against being carried. Her head still hurt like hell, but thankfully besides a rung bell and a bit of sway in her vision, she was fine. Eventually, she used her strength to break free and drifted down to the ground after a moment.
"Not happening, shit is sideways and I'm here to help. You need another body here on the ground. Besides, that's what this is for." Rikun tapped her head and already had begun trying to access the PANTHEON Network to get a connection to someone at SAINT. She was smart of course, using encryptions to get a secure channel, but she made sure to get a priority connection to whoever the hell she could.
YSS Dawn Hammer
Engineering Service Corridors (kind of near the reactor)
Hiroshiko continued with the fighting of fires. You know, the type that can be extremely dangerous within a confined space and suck up oxygen from the life support system. Yeah, those fires. But the worst was to come as the ship was plunged into darkness before the emergency lighting within the main corridors kicked on with their own batteries powering them.
"F*uuuuuuck!!!" Hiroshiko said largely too herself, quietly before she froze in her place hearing the voice on an open channel she was monitoring.
"Come greet The Reaper,”
Something about the tone and the level of confidence behind the weight of the words just tore cleanly into her will into move. Even curling up into a ball required an amount of will she wasn't getting at the moment.
She would have remained within that state of being for awhile if not for Kaede's voice coming in through the encrypted wireless of the standard Yamataian (nekos included) digital mind.
"Silence yourselves and restore power immediately."
The rest of Kaede's message largely was just committed to her digital memory as she wasn't paying attention to it. Hiroshiko managed to now recover enough to notice the other technicians had gone off to attend to other things, she was clearly left to her own fate.
She just as she turned around to start walking towards the reactor room, she saw it. In the red of the emergency lighting, she the menacing angel of death. She immediately dove towards an access hatch to the maintenance corridors and scrambled to open it to enter, voiceless.
She was absolutely scared of what could only be an hallucination. Sure the drill instructors always told her the dangers and the terrifying enemies of the Yamataian Empire that she could face. But she was a simple Starship Systems Technician with some side training with a Sensor Specialist from the Nataria Fleet Depot. Not an infantryman that had prepared themselves for all of this.
Well good thing her drill instructors had beaten the basics into her until they were muscle memory. Because school it out! Welcome to your first exam Miss Mizumitsu.
As the other people on the ground seemed to be regrouping, Matsuvo used the police radio to radio the police force and request a car. "This is Shinomori-Heisho. I'm outside of the remains of the Department Of Information building in radiotown. Myself and several others need transport to the military district as soon as possible, please send a car over to pick us up as soon as possible."
The situation was bad. The police forces were probably overloaded with requests at the moment, and probably wondering how someone had gotten ahold of one of there radios, but there was no time for him to explain the specifics to them. Just in case the military district was under attack, Matsuvo began to reload his weapons. Shotgun shells were loaded, and the action pumped so as to allow a little more ammo to be stored. The magazine was replaced in the sniper rifle, and the ammunition repacked. He racked the bolt on the sniper rifle and checked the safety on both weapons, just to be sure.
“Target sighted, light ‘em up!” came a shout from further down the hallway. Hiroshiko could hear it all from where she hid. Gunfire pounded through the tight corridor as the mighty hiss of aether beam sabers igniting filled the area. In a moment, shouts and screams joined the cacophony of a brutal battle in the halls, one that would seem to go on forever until finally it stopped.
Outside the service service hatch laid the burnt and severed remains of multiple security teams and engineering staff leading to the reactor control room, their blood smeared in patches along the walls. And in the midst of the smoke and bloody mist stood The Reaper gripping his aether beam scythe, it’s two beam sabers barely contained by their own magnetic fields as they cast the halls in a blinding pink light.
With an unstable pop the beams dispersed and the telescoping weapon shrunk to half into man tall length as the killer placed it into a holster on the middle of his back. With a quick look around to confirm his enemies dead he continued a steady march to the door of the reactor control room to find it sealed. The bloody hand danced across the keypad and with only a single attempt the door unlocked, scrolling open slowly under only its emergency power.
YSS Dawn Hammer, Reactor Control Room
Too slow, armored hands threw the doors open as the heavily altered Anthedon barged into a windowed room overlooking a colossal aether reactor, finding several engineers working hard to restart the reactor. The Reaper raised his arms and a pair of sub arms unfolded, each picking a different engineer and dropping them dead with a flurry of small aether bolts. An aged man standing in front the central control panel dropped to his knees and tried to hid beneath the console, only to be dragged out and dropped into the stations swivel chair.
“Stay,” the intruder commanded as he began manipulating the stations controls. With a violent bang the reactor abruptly started, launching service paneling and various attachments deeply embedded into the soft interior walls. In a few seconds the lighting throughout the ship was restored.
The engineer looked over the controls in horror, “bu- but, the coolant- you- at this output-“
“It’ll do exactly what the other one did,” the monotonous voice answered, “even your precious impervium can only do so much.”
Stepping around the console he stood before the cracked window, watching the pink glow build in intensity while the now free engineer had a choice. Run or reopen the coolant valves. The Reaper knew, as if all-seeing.
“You’re thinking, doctor, that maybe you can undo the changes. ‘Perhaps if I’m quiet, he won’t notice’ you might ask. I’ve done this many times. Some run, some resist. I won’t stop you from leaving. You might even reach an escape pod in time. Or maybe you’re more clever than the rest, or even faster? There’s a chance you could save the crew and win a medal...”
The older man stared at the controls harshly as he considered what he’d do, ultimately living up to the red shirt he wore. A quick hand dashed for the panel, an act of bravery over cowardice seen in starship engineers across the sector every day they set to work taming an infinite aetheric explosion to harvest its power. The spirit is willing...
The entire room erupted in a flash of quantum energy as the Elysian teleported away, leaving the room in ruins and shattering every reinforced window. The data feed to the reactor had been disrupted earlier by Kiba in and without an experienced reactor engineer to take the lead, Hiroshiko now found herself in the veteran engineer’s position, to run or fight in the best way a Red-shirt knew how...
YSS Nishitama, Radiotown
“Copy that, Shinomori-Heisho. We have Armored forces enroute to secure the area via shuttle. They’ll pick you up. ETA 2 minutes,” came the response of a young man over the police radio.
As Rikun objected Candon waited, honestly hoping it would work...
“I tried that,” he said after a moment, “I’m always trying that, we’re probably having our transmissions intercepted too- not that they’d know how to decrypt it, but still.” Candon thought for a moment, “look, we’re probably going to die here. This battle is already lost, just look at how it’s already going. This attack, the fleet engagement, these are nothing. You know what’s coming at us next. Actually, there’s more to it. I’ll explain on the way back... oh, and yes, Shoi, I can run but I’m hoping we’ll fly-“
The whine of a landing shuttle drowned out the last word as a raccoon shuttle flew low, dropping Daisy-clad troops. With the last soldier out the copilot waved the group inside.
With a gravity assisted leap Candon jumped inside, taking a seat by the open rear hatch.
Planet Himiko, Alleyway
Masumi made no protest to taking a backseat as the electrically induced stinging lingered in her brain. Had she any cybernetics it would have been crippling.
“The base.. is 5 klicks east.. watch the sky.. if the shooting starts break north,” she instructed between painful breaths, “and don’t worry about me, it’ll heal.” Indeed the bleeding had stopped as her veins and arteries sealed around the wound.
Managing to enter and close the access hatch, Hiroshiko take a couple moments to calm herself as she went over Kaede's message to the crew over as she assumed the fetus position. She hands rested on both sides of her helmet as sure heard the magnificent gunfire, the swings of the aether scythe, and the screams of pain as the security teams got slaughtered by the angel of death. Turns out it wasn't a hallucination after all.
"What are you doing Hiroshiko?" She began to think to herself. "Father wouldn't be wasting his time being scared, he would stand up and complete the mission!" She continued as she thought of the idealized version of Mikael Harris she had created for herself. Her mother looking up to him didn't exactly help matters either.
"I got to survive this... I need to survive this!" She thought as the main lights within the passageway came back online. There was a brief moment of hope until she realized there was no information coming in on the maintenance feed about the reactor. In fact, there was a distinct lack of anything regarding it and its subsystems save for readings from other systems she tapped into regarding the sensors earlier were starting to sense an overabundance of power.
Using her inertial control abilities to fly as fast as she could within the small space safely and exits though another access hatch outside of the central door of the engineering control tower. She pauses as she witnesses the aftermath of the the intruder's handy work: the patches and pools of blood all over the corridor, torn bodies, and the rip apart blast doors.
Engineering Bay
The dread she had partially suppressed was starting to make its return as she thought about the possibility of the dark angel still being within the room. But she closes her eyes and takes a leap of faith as she quickly makes her entry into the room.
Opening her eyes again, she is greeted with the she could only guess are the remains of the engineers struck down by him and destroyed consoles. But her eyes widen significantly as she hears and watches the aether reactor making noises she can only guess is not good.
So she starts saying a small prayer to whatever Goddess for all those that were slain and for whatever assistance she can even gather at this moment as she flies out the shattered windows of the tower and flies towards a functioning control console.
"Command! Santo Hei Mizumitsu in engineering bay, the aether reactor is in the process of overload. Everyone else is dead! I-I-I'm going to try to see if I can dump coolant into the core, but I am not a propulsion engineer! I-if it doesn't work, I do not know if these consoles will work to discharge the reactor, the control tower has been destroyed!" Hiroshiko says over the same encrypted wireless method Kaede had used before.
Though doing so broke every rule she was taught about chain of command at basic training. Considering the situation and herself being the only person remotely qualified being around, she was sure they would forgive her.
She took off her glove so she could let the bio-metric lock do its thing to realize she has authorization as a technician. She then methodically, but quickly went over the stream of data being thrown at her regarding the reactor, looking for the means to dump coolant into it. Talking all while doing this as both a means of calming her troubled mind and to give the information command most likely was unaware of.
Deep down mentally, she started to record a message to herself should the worse happen but the ships survives.
Since no one seemed keen on cooperating with the Shoi, including the neko who had just floated off his shoulder (Much to his releif), Rohan broke into a sprint and ripped the medical kit off the back of his fallen teammate. He was careful to be respectful, but he needed it more than she did. His gravity flared behind him, acting as a brake before the shuttle arrived, and he sprinted back, letting the waves of gravity carry him off his feet and into the shuttle.
"Heisho Suites, you're first." One of the injectors of hemosynth was quickly prepped, mixed with a dose of painkillers and stimulants designed to give a Neko jitters. "You appear to be the most severely injured of us. Please hold still."
The only good thing about this situation, Menelik figured, was that the base was close. The bad news was that he had basically two options here. As the Nepleslian worked, fiddling with the hovercar's settings and trying to disengage its safeties, he thought about the two ways to get this done.
There was the quicker way, the more reckless one. That path was the reason his other hand was pulling on the driver's restraints and making sure he was secure in his seat. It involved a mad dash just above rooftop level at the maximum speed. The kind of bad idea that the Kuvexians wouldn't expect because it was a bad, ballsy idea
The second was more conventional and 'cunning', if predictable. It was the one that, despite his reluctance to go with the first idea, one that he didn't want to do. Creeping along at ground level slowly was just even worse of an idea to him, given that it's what he reckoned the Kuvies would be trying to do.
Oh, fuck it.
"Alraahyt git y'allselves straypped in!" He started, loud enough so that the passengers could hear him. "Eend keep miss masumi in taahyt. Thuh ride's fixinn-ta git bumpy!" He told them, pushing the car into gear, fixing to go straight up and then east at max speed.
Kaede could already feel that there was something wrong, with the help of the SPINE system connecting his mind to the ship itself - the convenient Santo Hei's report only made his face darken with every confirmed detail. "Helm," he commanded verbally, "Adjust our course. The shockwave of the YSS Ironheart's reactor has destabilized our orbit." He held off on answering Mizumitsu for the moment as he was conentrating, mentally sweeping the ship for any other issues.
Externally, the Dawn Hammer's thrusters flared up, burning for a second; then the starboard auxiliary thruster sparked and died, triggering a cascade of nearly-identical failures that culminated every pilot's and captain's nightmare: A complete flameout, leaving them immobile as far as space battles would be concerned. On a ship the size of a Sharie, it could take nearly a minute to successfully reactivate the system... And that required the ship to not be half-crippled beforehand. So, Kaede made a snap decision. The poor Neko in charge of the ship's positioning suppressed a whimper, her elven ears flattening against her skull.
"Crew of the YSS Dawn Hammer. We are on an unstable orbit and our propulsion systems have been disabled," his voice called out through the ship's functioning emergency comms system. "Our likelihood of impact with Planet Himiko's surface is guaranteed. Prepare for impact by securing loose items in interior rooms." His voice was impervious to emotion, despite the imminent loss of his ship - along with it many of the people under his command, potentially his life and that of his lover... Not everybody would make it back. As the multiple Soul Savior Pods ejected themselves from the ship, quickly hiding in the debris field with their precious cargo contained within, Kaede finally adressed the lone engineer trying to tame a star: "If it is necessary, stop the reactor entirely by over-flooding it. We don't have the time to make use of energy here, all you can do is prevent us from leveling the planet during reentry." Okay, maybe it wasn't a pep talk, but it's better than saying she had no chance at all.
Araena held onto her husband's hand for a few moments, but soon enough she was strapping herself into her seat with a harness. "We'll survive... And give them hell," she claimed via telepathy, doing her best to comfort Kaede by appealing to his hardened, militaristic side. That's the only thing that would work here, anyways.
Arria, meanwhile, took the opportunity she had to fire volleys out towards the tactically-falling-back Kuvies, sapping the damaged power supply to make it clear that the Yamataian vessel wouldn't go down - literally - without giving its enemies hell.
Matsuvo took a gravity-assisted jump, like many of the others, into the back of the shuttle. Soon they would be back in the military district, where it would be possible to armor up, and obtain proper weaponry, hopefully enough to make the difference against any of the invaders who were attempting to do Nishimata harm. However, it would be incredibly difficult to form an effective response force without better knowledge of what was going on.
"Suites," He asked, "Care to explain to the rest of us what's going on? You seem to have at least some knowledge of the situation."
"If it is necessary, stop the reactor entirely by over-flooding it. We don't have the time to make use of energy here, all you can do is prevent us from leveling the planet during reentry."
Hiroshiko did not respond. The engineering console she was working with did not have the authorization to do anything she wanted to do. To make matters worse, none of the operations she could do from there would likely do anything.
There was a look of fear-laden determination behind the visor of her AMES. For the console did give her one bit of information that she did need, the location of the cooling system for the emergency shutdown of the system. It was their only hope since they could not discharge the core.
She floated her way quickly to the storage locker where the tool she needed to access the valve was located. She childishly thank whoever that it was not destroyed as she opened it and retrieved the tool. She finally beelined to the lower deck of the Engineering Bay where the coolant pipes and wires for the scalar cooling component are located.
"I can do this, I can do this, I can do this..." she repeated to herself over and over at a soft whisper. It was all she could do to keep her mind at ease enough to do what was needed to be done for the rest of the crew. Hearing that you are about to die in a completely new way was not helping her.
She looks around for a brief moment, looking for the valve in question and listening to the increasingly out of control reactor above her. Finding the bold letter stating "Emergency!" to make it stand out, she attaches the tool to the proper attachment point and starts using all the might she needs to crank the valve open to let the pressurized coolant to flow in.
There were a few other systems that might help if this does not do the trick, but that would wait as she makes her way to the first backup generator once the valve is fully open.
"Flooding the reactor, bringing backup generators up as I can," Hiroshiko says to Kaede, finally responding.
In the bridge a transmission began to play on the viewscreen. The face of Jinja Emi greeting the bridge crew.
“Kaede-Taisa, the is Jinja-Chujo. Your vessel is losing altitude and our tugs cannot reach you. We have another wave of ships incoming, they’re the bulk of the invasion force. We need your assets on the ground, and that includes the Dawn Hammer. We need you to land on the East side of Mt. Yamatai, North of the quarry, or as close to that location as possible without destroying the city. Can this be done?”
YSS Dawn Hammer, Reactor Control Room
The valve budged, by only slightly followed by a deafening whine as the immense pressure of the coolant forced its way past the valve gate. As it turned ever so slightly further the whining was replaced by the sound of liquid gushing into the coolant lines to the reactor. Steam began to rip from the gaps in the reactors disheveled paneling as the cryogenically stores fluids met the heat of a small star.
Cooling needs were being met for now and the monitor consoles reflected that. But now a new issue had begun to present itself. Without any high energy systems online the power being generated was becoming too much to store. Hidden within the noisy environment the crackling sound of electrical arcing had begun to join the chaos from the massive capacitors further down the way. It needed somewhere to go...
YSS Nishitama, Radiotown
Candon didn’t even flinch as the hemosynth mixture was injected. Having been in so much pain earlier the majority of pain receptors in his body had been switched off.
"Suites," Matsuvo asked as the shuttle took flight, "Care to explain to the rest of us what's going on? You seem to have at least some knowledge of the situation."
“I guess you deserve to know what blew you up,” Candon began with a shallow nod, “during the Second Mish’ War I wasn’t enlisted. My mother and I had connected with a group of former special forces and elite soldiers from around the sector that wanted to fight but were fed up with the rank and file bureaucracy of government. We simply called ourselves Patriots. The shit we pulled... we were effective. Our missions primarily involved killing as many squids as we possibly could. Within our group we had half a century’s worth of experience in everything from covert ops to direct action. We built our own weapons and armor from just what we had... we had a falling out and I haven’t seen but one survivor since, and she’s not exactly my friend.”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Candon took a moment to adjust to the powerful slew of chemicals he’d just received. “Anyway, the giant gun thing you just met is Rolland Barrow. I think he might’ve fought for the Reds at some point, but I don’t know. I have no idea what they’re doing here either, but if I had to guess I’d say they’re not doing it for money, it was never an interest for any of us. Regardless, they want me alive. Rolland caught me dead to rights but claimed he had no means to transport me, and you can bet they’ll try again. I’m not gonna force anybody to follow me back to Himiko. This is probably going to be the last ship off the planet so if you want out stay here, but if you want in, just know that we are probably going to die.”
Planet Himiko, Back on the Road
The hover car handled poorly the higher it went, a faint hissing sound could be heard from somewhere under the car. From behind it was obvious from the collection of scalar holes that the problem was related to scalar fire.
As they flew over the main road leading to the base mile the third car reappeared, parked sideways on the ground nearly a klick away as the two infiltrators fired from behind it, using it for cover.
“Menelik, 4 o’clock!” Masumi called at the driver, tucking low and grabbing the seat in front of her.
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