Frontier Skies, Mission One: Surprise Skirmish

Hearing back that Specter 4 thanked him for getting rid of the two hostiles on their tail. He moves upward into the arc taking him up over the battlefield. Then moves arcing over some more and then sees a hostile gold fighter start to make a beeline toward the large fighter with the done atop it. " Crap Harpy you have a hostile coming in fast at you 7 I'll try to take them out but watch for incoming. " Flipping his fighter around to more or less glide along his former path, but turn to face the fighter threatening Harpy. His autocannons start to bark once more as he fires at them from a distance. now wishing he had some missiles instead of the gun pods. He looks at the fighter just as he lands a few shots and it peeled away, but it was smoking, but not in pieces. "I got them to break off Harpy, but it might come back."

Rolling his fighter back toward the pair that he was targeting, seeing them getting blown up by wingmates he kicks up the speed once more arching upward and looking at the space before them way past the hostile fighters trying to spot a flagship or a base that was in the distance. ~come on, come on, where is your home!!!~

"Six, your clear now." There was a cold smile to his face as watched to shots from the autocannons attached to his Mozu perforated the fuselage of the enemy fighter following his wingwoman. "Follow my lead, Pepper." He watched on his HUD as Specter Six slipped in behind Menelaos. "We are going hunting." With that Specter Five and Six slipped in behind a pair of bogeys. So far the Specters had kept their casualties to a minimum, which could change at any time.

"On my count, Pepper." There was the lock tone over his headset. "Fire now." A missile from each of their missile pods going for their intended targets. "Juke to the left, I'll take the right, Six." He juked to the right as their targets erupted into an explosion. "Pepper, you have lead, I'll watch your six. This is Copperhead to all friendlies, Pepper and I are available to assist." Menelaos was scanning both out his cockpit and through the HUD.

"Call out for assistance." Menelaos said as he perforated the fuselage of another enemy.

The octopus had encountered a lull during the fight, and in their report Minas would say it was because of the ECM making the enemy easy pickings- In actuality, her tactics heavily relied on tiring other pilots out, and she'd swapped to clearly inferior targets for a while, in order to regain stamina. The red-eyed snake was sweating in their cockpit, closing their eyes and relying on direct neural link input only, in order to preserve as much brain power as possible.

Something crude and rectangular with four wing guns tried to strafe her, but made sloppy work of it. She throttled on and off in a rapid fashion, erratically jolting her tiny starlight arrow in a way the primitive alien craft simply couldn't track accurately, ending up with her crabbing on a sideways trajectory as she simply dumped another missile in his path, maybe two hundred feet away.

Popped like a piñata. Not really impressive. Just some second rate Kuvie merc junk...

More vectors, spiralling, advancing, flashing in her mind- Something approached- friendly- Specter 17- being tailed?...

Ah yes. He was talking about it on the coms. She didn't hear it at first, because she was still waiting for the rest of the blood to return to her head.

Eyes opened. The skin on the arrowhead shimmered, as it's flightpath twisted and coiled.

"...Sasquatch... Guess you are part of my wing, huh?... Feel like bringing him here?..." A whisper with a distantly sombre, dreary, and macabre sort of quality. "...Won't see me with my engines off... Yeah, if you high-G upwards, just right... I'll knock one out and we can really... wake him up, huh?..."

The snake sounded dopey because her concentration was elsewhere. The sensors peered out, electric signals tingling through the basking hull of the fighter, as if it were her own skin.

That distant little pair of sparks, Minas felt like she could reach out and touch them... But throttling up now would spook their prey, and give the whole game way...

Just needed to be a little closer...

Argyle had stayed in the mix, providing cover fire and trying to keep the others in the flight safe. There were plenty of targets and he didn't need to go running out on his own again for the moment being. His bit of chaos sowing was wrapped for the moment.

His awareness expanded and data poured in. Where to go to provide the most help?

The Nagamaki was starting to draw unwanted attention. That made sense, but others had gone to cover.

117 - "Sasquatch", he had learned - had put out a call for help. As he prepared to intercept its tail, the dreamy tone of Octopus came over the comm.

He drummed his fingers a moment, risking a brief delay to finish assessing the field. Mind made up, he throttled up in the direction of 117 and its tail.

When he was near enough, he fired a stream of projectiles in its direction. Not enough to destroy it, or even fully shake it off, but enough to force it into evasive maneuvers that didn't impede its forward progress. It would take missiles to take out the craft from this range and he didn't have to waste them. Job done, he trusted Sasquatch to stay healthy - and Octopus to finish it off.

His Sparrowhawk went into a lazy roll as he moved towards his next target, like a shark responding to the smell of blood in the water. Blood - in the metaphorical sense - is what he'd found, after all. The field was full of enemy fighters that had been tagged or wounded, but not finished off. Leaking emissions of all types, they were easy enough to spot.

None of them seemed to be limping back home yet, which he found concerning.

Wounded or not, their guns still work.

He pushed his thrust to full, distantly aware of his 'real' body getting shoved back into the seat. Missiles were rechecked, ammo was reloaded. It was time to cull the herd and reduce the stray fire the others in his flight had to deal with. He hoped the shepherds showed up to play.

Mere moments before, the initial savagery and surprise of the motley force of pirates' ambush successfully gained them an upper hand, albeit ever so briefly, the quality, in both training and equipment of the Yamataians halted that momentum and began to reverse it. There was really nothing fielded in the inventory of the opportunistic predators' fleet, not even among the ones fortunate enough to have cutting-edge Kuvexian ships, let alone the ramshackle antiques the bulk of them piloted, that could match the agility of the Star Army's brand new Mozu fighters, or the sheer, raw speed and ensuing time dilation of the Nepleslian interceptors, or the electronic support of the Nagamaki, or the versatility of the Sparrowhawk. As the wave began to break in the other direction, crashing over the former attackers to render them on the defensive, the pirate squadrons were now generally on the run, fighting from the back foot.

The Octopus's subterfuge was successful, and the target drifted by the lurking ship unawares, in turn falling victim to the very same ploy that they themselves had used to set the snare that had tripped the 52nd Squadron. However, the sparse, large debris orbiting languidly around in the XR-8 primary's outermost orbits seemed to have spawned them from the void. None of them broke or ran, despite the odds seemingly decidedly shifting against their favor and towards the Specters', losses mounting and unable to answer.



Specter One Has Ejected.


The white hot plasma of an Ikigai escape pod shifted red as it streaked out into the black of the deep system at a significantly relativistic speed, to the relative safety of the void many light seconds away from the snarled melée around the ambush point, and only moments before the commander's Mozu exploded in a blue-white flash of overloading Aether generator. In the Specters' cockpits, the targeting and communications multipliers wrought by the Nagamaki's efforts dissolved into noise, followed by, for the tensest of moments, a complete scrambling of targeting, navigation, and communications across all of the Specters and their allies. During that blackout, a bright red, laughing, humanoid skull taunted before being subsumed by the restoration of partial, albeit reduced function.

Streaking across the sensors, faster even than the Nepleslian Shashka, maneuvering like a Mozu, and seemingly larger than the Nagamaki. The indistinct, shining trail of light tore through the rallied formation, unleashing streaks of deadly light in its wake. The two Sabres went dark, listing into one another and colliding before spinning off in opposite directions, then it made a run against the Nagamaki, perforating the radome. As the new player on the battlefield wheeled about for a second strafing run, it was revealed to be like no craft yet seen in the battle. It was sleek and matte and its six nacelles expelled missiles from their sides as the enigmatic newcomer spiraled on the approach.

Warwolf Two, Warwolf Three Offline.

Sasquatch was saved, he had a team behind him to help him at his beck and call, even their support had told him that they could offer help should they line up the shot, but the Sparrowhawk was quick as he adjusted his flight path. Soon he spun and cranked the yoke forward as he dived down the tag team of the Sparrowhawk and the Octopus destroyed the tail as he gave a chuckle. "Thanks you two...when we make it back to the ship...I will buy you both a drink and the best food in the galley. Now let's catch back up to Specter On..." He was cut off as he looked up and through his canopy where he could locate the commander...the ship exploded, and a fucking second later there was a loss of all systems all around before a laughing red skull was seen on the HUD's of all that came out. "Son of a bitch, what the hell is this, Hey Octopus...Did Specter One eject? I do not give a damn if you are having to be seen, we're all obviously in deep shit if you got the same little trolling message I got." He said as he grit his teeth, the next moment there were two more large explosions as Warwolf two and three were blinked out of existence.

He then winced as his system was back up to at least 80% functionality. He went out on the comms to all the friendly ships in the area as he looked out and caught a glimpse of the sleek ship that just took them all by surprise. "Dammit...Octopus Coconut...let me know if Specter One is lost... afterward give us some support to our electronics, another shock like that will not end well. Specter's form up, they will be coming back in with the momentum they undoubtedly just gained, let's fucking turn it around. Copperhead, Sparrowhawk, Pepper, and Warwolf...we need to catch that big bastard that is coming around in that gunship. We are just koi in a pond the longer that thing is out here, we will sort out whatever the fuck it WAS later when we can review whatever footage and data we gather..." He said, his tone was angry, but his orders were clear as he assumed command.


He stopped speaking as he was already working on repairing his electronics, he could not give a reboot at the current time, but he needed access to his remaining armaments as he tried to lock on to the sleek big bastard that was lining up for another strafing run. Behind it, the mixing pot of ships that were lit up like candles earlier were just normal reds now in the limited radar scope. "If there is ONE of us that is locked on...use your damn flares...I would rather rely on our eyes to fight these fuckers than rely on blinded computers." He finished saying as his propulsion was pushed up, he was going to act as the spear...even if it meant he was the 117th clone to not make it through combat...at least this time he was not to be the first to die in a cockpit that barely supported his frame...

"Get into debris field... We should... Or even... behind the planet. That thing... will have to slow down." Minas tried to track the flare of the enemy's thrusters visually, whilst dropping chaff and pulling hard upwards- Whilst the brain was occupied with piloting commands, her hands manually rebooted her command console. The snake automatically assumed it was her own equipment at fault, before the real situation- and Sasquatch's own panic- caught up with them. "Saw Specter one jump ship... not where pod went... think the raydome on... henhouse got hit..."

Hit the yaw thrusters and spun their fighter around, standing on end whilst it opened up with the main boosters again, like a ballerina dancing around lethal streaks of orange and blue.

Deft work, but it took concentration- And the snake couldn't spare the attention to build an effective plan of counter-attack whilst doing it. Couldn't even get a good vector on it before it just rocketed back past them once more.

How were they supposed to construct an ambush whilst it was just dominating the situation like this?

"The curses... is it?... Too damn fast... Something spacer?..." A grunt, smashing their creaking Mozu back into a sudden deceleration. "Warwolf One, you have any mines?"

Not actively being cold. Didn't have time to realise that their comrades were down.

"How about you, Argyle?"

Nashoba Sector
System XR-8 Outer Asteroid Belt
YE45.3.10

Akaris was still fourty thousand kilometres out from the initial ambush site when his mozu registered the loss of Specter One and the rapid departure of the Isekai escape pod. His sensors were having issues identifying the new arrival in the field, which became flat out impossible with the resulting backwash of electronic signals and counter-signals that momentarily overloaded the CIES system of his mozu. Having completely lost track of the enemy unit, as soon as his sensor feed stabilised, Akaris considered his squadron's disposition and made a judgement call.

"This is Specter 4. Entering full CFS stealth mode to ambush tango." With his allies informed of his intentions, the Norian pilot rapidly configured his mozu's integrated CFS array so that the shield bubble would fully contain his ship within it. Now rendered invisible to everything without a RDD sensor, which was high level Star Army technology, Akaris turned his full attention to the data feed from his CIES system and sensor packages.

Feeling secure in his own small dimensional space, the Norian was therefore understandably taken fully by surprise when the sensory scream of a target lock bled immediately with the alarms from his mozu's computer system as the CFS field collapsed under enemy fire. Akaris barely had the chance to register the six nacelles of the enemy craft before his mozu shook and bucked beneath him as a line of weapon impacts stitched his fighter from nose to tail. Between one heartbeat and the next, the enemy craft was gone from his sensors once more, but the young pilot was too preoccupied with working through the flood of warning messages and system diagnostics to follow it any further.

Fortunately, although battered, it appeared as if Akaris had gotten lucky and only suffered light damage. His mind sped up to full processing speed as he worked with the mozu's computers to review the previous seconds and Akaris quickly came to a chilling conclusion. "This is Specter 4. All Specter's be aware that enemy was able to target and disable full CFS stealth field with no warning. Minor damage sustained. Moving to re-join formation now." He was careful to ensure his concise report to the rest of the squadron contained no trace of the intense disquiet he felt at the enemy ship's capabilities. Something very wrong was going on out here and he couldn't help but feel like the enemy was toying with the Specters.

Argyle had been coasting, somewhat lazily, through the battle after his last stunt, taking shots here and there but mostly running cover. There was no reason for their squadron to have any casualties during what was becoming a mop up exercise.

"Thanks you two...when we make it back to the ship...I will buy you both a drink and the best food in the galley. Now let's catch back up to Specter On..."

Click to expand...

Argyle mentally tapped his comms open. "Sounds good. And call me Blackjack - if we're picking names, the -"

The electronic attack hit him and the others in his squadron. It blindsided him.

HIs mind was directly connected to the Sparrowhawk (the Haitaka, as the Star Army variant was called), connected so deeply that he was the fighter, suborning parts of its control systems and replacing them with himself. When the scramble hit, it was like he had gone blind and deaf. His vision shrank to only what the fighter itself knew, its systems were out of his reach. For an agonizing moment, his consciousness drifted in a dark, silent void that made space seem lively.

Argyle was spared from the hack affecting him directly. Layers of firewalls and virtualized instances of "himself" separated him from the systems, usually an afterthought for an Operator and suddenly very, very important. A dozen ephemeral Argyles died in that moment, but his true self was fine. Waiting. Testing.

When the Haitaka's systems recovered, he was there once again. A sensation of vertigo washed over him as an unfamiliar uncertainty of his position and heading arrived. Before, he had known exactly where he was and where he was going. Quickly, he compared what he knew against what the Haitaka knew, excluding where he wasn't until he knew where he was, and in what direction. Tentatively, carefully he reached his senses beyond the bounds of local space to try and grasp the situation on the battlefield.

What he found were missiles. He sent the Haitaka into a wild spin and dumped chaff, urging the PPS to spike anything that got too close. Many of the missiles were too close, having closed the distance while he recovered surprisingly fast.

It had only been a second since the hack had hit, but it might as well have been an eternity. Messages piled in from TacCom and his squad mates.

Specter One Has Ejected.

Click to expand...

What?!

we need to catch that big bastard that is coming around in that gunship

Click to expand...

There were no gunships -

henhouse got hit...

Click to expand...

All Specter's be aware that enemy was able to target and disable full CFS stealth field with no warning.

Click to expand...

A dozen and more messages begged for his attention. He filtered through them, down to only the ones for the squadmates he'd engaged with thus far, as he finished evading the last of the missiles. His ship had taken a beating from the proximity of the missiles detonating and would need new paint at the very minimum. She was still operational, for now.

"How about you, Argyle?"

Click to expand...

He collected himself, urging his mind back to a logical pattern. Statistics showed that levity after a moment of intense panic or trauma, if well executed, could lead to improved camaraderie and reduced stress.

"I don't run mines, sorry Octopus. I'll add a few to the shopping list."

The mystery of why the pirates hadn't fled seemed to be answered. Whether through faith or fear, they had been waiting for the arrival of this new ally. Allies? It matched nothing he knew, but he'd expected that. He wished for more sensor data, something to help build a tactical plan. Is the Nagamaki safe?

Too many questions, still not enough answers. Operators were inquisitive by design, had to be for their role as the central control unit of whatever fighter, frame, or ship they were controlling, but that nature wasn't helpful right now. He pushed it down, forced himself to work with less-than-full data.

This is why you're here. Into the unknown.

For now, he agreed with Octopus. The squadron needed to get to safety until they knew more.

"Specters, seconding Octopus' opinion to find cover. Avoid engaging Bandit 1 until we have a plan," his voice was cool and collected, carefully modulated.

"Sasquatch, you sound hungry - think you can come up with something?" His words were quick and decisive. Argyle wasn't sure who was next in the chain of command, but the squadron needed to be on the same page. Sasquatch seemed as likely as anyone; if nothing else, he wanted what Argyle wanted. Payback.

For now, though, he began to move to act on his own words. His fighter was a sharp streak heading, once more, towards the local asteroids and debris and seeking out cover.

He flicked his comms over to direct communication. "Nagamaki, are you out there? Do we have eyes on Actual? Are we at risk of another system spike? We lost the bubble pretty hard."

Throwing themselves at an enemy that had just proven itself superior went contrary to his goal of avoiding further casualties, no matter how much he wanted to test his mettle. He spun up a subprocess dedicated to cataloguing Bandit 1's capabilities for when he had a chance to strike back.

The Nagamaki rocked, suddenly, its shields somehow pierced before Coconut or Hazelnut could do anything about it, and since Hazelnut was in the middle of compiling a new Scrambling signal and the associated descrambler packet for her allies, she was taken a bit by surprise, not just because the enemy appeared out of literally nowhere. Multiple layered systems on the craft reported back damages, and nothing vital seemed to have been hit, the radome itself notwithstanding. Every system on the Nagamaki had at least one replacement, and the offline systems were circumvented and back running faster than the duo needed to worry about it.

Even the shields were back up, though their capacity was somewhat diminished for the moment, and they would take time to fully regenerate. "Seems like Deflectors five and six have shut down, pending restart. three and four are finalizing resetting. One and two have held," Coconut ran through the shield status as she maneuvered her big fighter to avoid the missiles. Having multiple systems running in parallel meant that only the outermost layer had been affected by the EW attack that had gone out, and the ex-PA pilot was already trying to go a bit on the offensive. The three turrets and her mini-missiles worked in tandem to knock out the enemy missiles heading toward them, so that Coconut could focus on 'flying'.

With everything going on, Hazelnut worked at double pace re-establishing 'normal' for the team they were supporting, and before she could really respond verbally to everyone, she had begin setting their connections back up so the big fighter's sensors could spread to and through everyone, the battlefield network a priority in helping keep everyone alive. "We're good here, a little toasty but okay, I'm trying to push sensors back through to everyone; we've got eyes on the big bogey, I'm sending our buddies to Specter 1's last known. I've got the DESTINY working on a way to track that thing, but it won't be instant. Aside from that, anyone who hasn't given me a ping on comms please do so ASAP!"

As Hazelnut spoke, she directed the two Spade drones (Which had defaulted to autonomous mode) and sent them after their leader, not directly to her, but positioning themselves so that they could block any enemies trying to go after the pod as a target of opportunity, and still close enough that they could be ordered to usefully expend the last munitions that they each held.

For Coconut's part during this time, she had re-routed her shields to face mostly forward, lining up with the twirling, multi-nacelled enemy and opening fire with the heavy lasers built into the wing pylons, while launching a pair of anti-fighter missiles at it, before making a juking maneuver to throw off an easy attack and blasting in a different direction, heading toward where more of the 52nd's fighters were, the ship appearing to tumble as it changed direction while also moving in a different direction at the same time, and then igniting its Aetherburners, the large fighter suddenly shooting off nearly as quickly as the smaller, lighter Mozu could.

As a final 'Eff you!' to the enemy, a few more mini-missiles and a hail of fire from the two rearward turrets dissuaded potential pursuit, now that bandit 1 no longer had their element of surprise.

Warwolf squad's flight lead felt her controls loosen up as the enemy's counter-EWAR attack hit, sloppy tolerances flitting through the DNI connection to the Shashka's sensor array (and furthermore, the tight net that Harpy 2 was struggling to keep a hold on) making the pilot have to use her neck muscles more, leaning against her seat's harness as the Shashka's backseater ai tried desperately to purge and reboot critical subsystems.

The twins, Spectre 1, those bolts of plasma, the resulting explosions... how did it all happen so fast.

"Warwolves two and three, report damage!" Midas commanded, vitals climbing as fear crept into her voice. Those deep rumbles from the Nepleslian Commander had been cool, calm and collected until now, but this was more of a roar that made her voice raise a few octaves.

"Warwolf 2, main thrusters are cooked but I think I can limp back, waiting on~"

"No, I can recover!" Warwolf 3 barked, fighting against his frame's tumbles and rolls, firing his vernier thrusters and gravitic drive, slowing the spiral with each rotation but unable to stop spinning back into the bogey's sights. The back of his sabre was a warped, half-melted mess, the thruster units left unrecognizable as important parts of them span away into the void.

"Your frame is toast, 3, punch it."

"NO, I CAN STILL~" Warwolf 3 began complaining, far too many warnings blaring even through his suit's mic.

"HUGINN, YOU FUCK, JUST EJECT ALREADY! CSONGOR!"

With a mic-popping roar of defeat Warwolf 3 finally ejected, Sabre imploding in a flare of plasma as the pod jettisoned up and away from the splashed frame, both twins making their way back towards the line of friendlies they'd launched from.

"You two, I..." Warwolf 1 mumbled, shaking her head back into the game as her AI returned as much functionality as it could, the Shashka digging its tendrils right back into her DNI as the flight lead's body relaxed back into her seat.

"Warwolf 1, no mines but I've got two racks of proximity minimissiles left, I'm going to try gliding through the asteroid belt and broadsiding his nose when he finishes circling back around," Warwolf 1 warned, flicking her airframe 180° and flaring her afterburners, diving into the asteroid belt the enemies had been birthing from. The afterburners cut and Midas began using her vernier thrusters and gravitic drive to make micro adjustments to dodge rocks without bleeding off too much forward momentum, AI calculating the best wide-angle approach based on glimpses of the massive bogey's erratic movements as her frame's green paint darkened and mottled to match its environment.

Nashoba Sector
System XR-8 Outer Asteroid Belt
YE45.3.10

Blinks in his immersion as he sees that Specter one has ejected then Warwolf two and three are offline "What the hell??" he looks at his screens as they are affected but not as much as the rest of the wing as he was running dark. "Crap" He moves to try and restart his eccm and ecm systems "Get out of my fighter you stupid skull!" Since he was in immersion mode it was like there was a giant red skull right before him. Then it cleared away as Yujin gritted his teeth hearing the reports from the rest of his wing, the leader Spector one having ejected and also hearing that the ECM bird was damaged. "Oh hell no you didn't!" he muttered.

Since Yujin's Mozu was several km above the plane of the battle he searches for the new enemy. Seeing the sleek fighter slicing through his wingmate he moves to set in a direction and starts moving that way, then turns to face in the direction of that large fighter and lines up the nose of his mozu to that large enemy craft. "Come on come on, THERE!!" both Autocannons bark out a long burst of fire, and unleash two streams of missiles from the mini launchers. Then kicks on the Mozu's CFS to give his fighter a burst of speed, in the direction that he was going, then shifts it forward in the direction he was facing as he starts to tear ass away from where he was just firing from moving about to try and take up another spot. Hoping his fighter's ecm, and stealth systems were back on despite whatever it was that hit him before.

"Specter wing, and Henhouse, Spector 18 still dark trying to get hits on the gunship. Somehow being dark saved me from the brunt of whatever hit us. Recommend eccm systems on to try and reduce another hit like before, Spector 18 out"

Hearing that Specter 4 was just hit while in CFS stealth, and wonders if the current ships that were not dark are already marked and he was in the clear as he was dark since the opening moments of the fight. There was something bugging him, he felt like there was something tailing him. Spilling around and firing a burst of autocannons fire in a cone behind him, hitting the CFS 90 degrees from his current flight path and firing ventral thrusters pushing his craft to the left and upwards, then quickly changed to going right to throw off anyone tailing him. Then blasts off in the new direction 180 from the direction he was going. Then turns to look once more for that 6 nacelle bastard once more.

Hearing the request for a ping Yujin pinged briefly "Spector 18 reporting in, still dark and one the move hunting the bastard that got Spector one." Doing another juke to the right 90 degrees CFS burst, and then blasts away once more skirting around the edge of the battle and avoiding the asteroid field for the moment.

"Specters and Warwolves, this is Specter 5, I still have a full pod of minimissiles. 6 and I are heading for for one of the larger asteroids for cover. Willing to act as a distraction for the rest of the squad if needed. Ships a bit heated, but I am otherwise undamaged." He slipped his comms to the channel he shared with Specter 6. "You heard em, Pepper. We are heading for the asteroids to regroup, whoever that is that hit us, hit us hard."

"Copperhead, we may not get out of this." The worry was evident in 6's voice.

"We'll make it, Pepper, you still owe me a drink after that last sim." He wasn't sure if they would survive this surprise, but he knew they had to somehow. "Follow my lead, Pepper." He began juking and spiraling as he made his way to the limited safety of one of the larger asteroids, it was evident that whoever this was, they were able to severely mess with the ECM of the Mozus, Nagamaki and Sparrowhawks. He scanned his HUD to ensure that Specter 6 was following his lead.

He heard the thought that this could be something new from the Freespacers, but he doubted that. From the information he had, the spacers used lots of drones and so far none of those had appeared, but he couldn't be sure. All he knew was that this ship was wholely unknown, unless there was information unavailable to group.

Switching back to the squadron wide comms. "Does anyone have any information about this adversary?"

The Asteroid Field

With their ace on the scene, the pirates turned the fight back to a slugfest. It was up to the squadron to react and reform professionally and quickly, as their training and talents demanded of them as military pilots. By any estimates, they were still going to have to hold out until their reinforcements arrived. Projections of letting them route them during a retreat were more bleak than staying and fighting. Control of the sector was already apparently hotly contested. Or were they just picking on what they thought was easy prey?

Questions for later.

The lead fighter slipped into another run and managed to rattle Blackjack, and landed a solid hit on Specter 5, but left his ship in operable condition though it soon had a timer on how useful it was going to be of about maybe a half an hour before it had to be forced into standby or go dead. Hot death sliced through the space in what was becoming a fuzzball.

Bandit 1 didn't take the bait outright, but sent a vanguard chasing the others to the asteroid, in a small group of about four. With Specter 18 aiding the ECM battle, the lost communication and direction from their leader was lessened, if he could manage not to be painted.

The Teisenjou

"We're closing in, but we are still maintaining sweeps for a possible support vessel or fleet." The operations officer barked from her place.

"Continue to close, accelerate, I don't care if they see the burn, it will give our people breathing room if they have to break or adjust." The relief ships were already ahead of the massive ship and their home, coming to back them up. "Try to ping the nagamaki with them." Miskai ordered, deciding that even if they were painted in this unknown situation they would be better as a disruption at the very least, and could route what they had even if what they currently could ascertain was the enemy force was larger. She was confident in the crew.

"Specter 18, report. We are en route at best speed." The ship sent securely to the support fighter, and while she preferred a tightbeam there was no chance of hitting them if they were anywhere except exactly where they were supposed to be.

Miu tapped her fingers anxiously from where she was on her side of the command deck, "I thought we would get at least a survey in before something like this happened."

Nashoba Sector
System XR-8 Outer Asteroid Belt
YE45.3.10

Asteroid Field

With the phenomenal technology packed into his Mozu fighter, even when shot up by the enemy, it hadn't taken more than a few seconds for Akaris to be carried cross the intervening space until he was approaching the asteroid field once more. The norian had a feeling that his luck might not hold out so well a second time so the pilot had tried to come in at an oblique angle, above the ecliptic plane of the asteroid belt. He was really hoping to be able to avoid flying straight into the renewed slugfest.

Spotting the chasing quartet of pirate ships, it didn't take Akaris' hyperactive brain to calculate the likeliest scenario - that a couple of the squadron's hotshot pilots had headed deeper into the field, trusting that the superior Mozu would have a field advantage under the more treacherous flight conditions that the pirates would not be able to match. It was sound thinking, but it wouldn't hurt to attempt to improve the odds of a successful ambush. Hearing Specter 5 requesting information over the squadron's channel, Akaris was quick to respond.

"Specters, tally four bandits pushing into the asteroid field. Bandit One still in play, over." Not convinced that the elite unit would allow him to seek the relative safety of the asteroid belt, Akaris made the decision to attempt to keep the enemy distracted. Selecting his W3200 Targeting Modules, Akaris waited for the opportunity to line up the laser guiding beams on whichever pirate ships he could. The more of them he could tag, the easier the rest of the squadron would find it to burn them down. The norian also decided to keep an eye out for Bandit One. Perhaps if he got close enough to the enemy, Akaris could latch on to him with the mozu's graviton beam projector array. With his mozu acting like an old-fashioned anchor maybe they would get the chance to end the battle.

Hearing the coms Yujin grunts some then a new message comes in
"Specter 18, report. We are en route at best speed"
It took a little for the message to come in after being decoded keying a return message back

• YSS Teisenjou.... Spector 18 reporting
• Spector one ejected, rescue pod unknown status
• Spectators nine, twelve, thirteen destroyed
• Warwolf Two, and Three destroyed
• Nagamaki is damaged but functional
• Spector 5 is damaged but functional
• Enemy ECM is active, able to hit craft in CFS Stealth
• Craft seems to be a mix of random factions, types, and skill level

Finishing his report hoping that he got everything, then adds in "Been operating in dark since the opening and have not been hit, may have somehow tagged craft to track them. "

Yujin then sent via tight beam toward the Nagamaki "Henhouse, Just received commutation from Mothership, they are on the way best speed. Should we try to fall back toward their direction?"

Yujin holds the position for tight beam communications with the Nagamaki for a response before pulling away and zooms away 45 degrees upward and backward before spinning around 245 degrees port and putting on full acceleration as he feels the sudden g-force as the craft shoots away. "Damn it where is it where is it?" Yujin scans the space around them for that Enemy ace that is tearing them a new one.