RP: Abwehrans [HMS Fearless Mission 1] Boldly Going....

Re: [Mission 1] Boldly Going....

Kappel's screen blipped again. "Sir, they've impacted against our shields. Assuming hostile-..."

He was cut short by a muffled explosion, heard as if from a great distance. The ship shook lightly.

"...explosion!" He shouted in an alarmed tone, slamming his hands on the monitor. "A small nuclear warhead detonated on our shields, about half a kiloton."

External cameras showed the scene to the bridge officers: The little robots were handling small, spherical items. One of them flung his sphere against the ship's hull with its tentacle-like robotic arms. The screen went white, slowly fading to red and black as another explosion, this time louder, echoed in the distance, rocking the ship.

"Another hit. Local shields... holding, 52%. Sir, we-"

But even before an order could be given, the robots stopped their attack, rotating suddenly left and right as if searching for something with their sensors, or as if confused, in a surprisingly lifelike gesture. Then, they turned around and departed.

"-huh. They gave up."

"I think I know why." Followed up Eva. "We're approaching the outer border of the sphere of interference projected by the moon. It's really powerful. Ma'am, once inside, we won't be able to send or receive any kind of message, and, probably, most of our sensors and nav instruments are going to become useless. Maybe shields, too." She warned.

Re: [Mission 1] Boldly Going....

Nevaraon jumped to his feet as the ship shuddered and the artificial gravity fluctuated quickly.

"What in the Universe is going on out there?" he said as he walked over to the nearest window.

Re: [Mission 1] Boldly Going....

Erna held onto her command chair as the explosions rocked her vessel. "Drone-style craft," she muttered. "Suicide attacks?" she mumbled as she began to order all weapons release. But just as sudden as the attacks had come, the drones began pulling back. "Well, at least we know that shields work like the designers claimed," she muttered before punching her own console.

"Engineering...is there anyway our shields will be affected by the jamming field ahead of us?"

"When the void comes to swallow us up!" Stabsfeldwebel Sascha Feierabend stated gruffly. "The projectors aren't the type to be affected by jamming. Sure, our navigation and sensors will be for charec dung, but we can always fly by sight the old fashioned way."

"Saying it like its easy," the helmsman muttered in annoyance as the HMS Fearless began entering the jamming field.

"Targeting systems will be a problem, ma'am." the Tactical Operator stated as he noted having a hard time working his weapons systems.

"Leutnant," the Captain stated as she punched up the Barracks.

***********************
"Ready two of your teams for weapons duty. The remaining team should be equipped for a ground-based operation and head towards the shuttle bay," Erna's voice came over the intercom of the Enlisted Barracks as the only Officer in the Barracks stood by it.

"Aye, it'll be done," the Marine CO gruffed as she turned towards her Marines. "Fire Teams One and Three...to the Gatlings." Leutnant Adalwolfa Hammerlin barked.

"Well...got to go," Jolenta stated as she closed her book and winked at the sniper before joining her fire team.

"Warrant Weiss!"

"Aye, Ma'am."

"Ready your team for ground duty. Head to the Armory and then to the Shuttle."

"You heard the Leutnant, newbies!!! Grab your helmets and lets be off!" he grunted with a grin as he hauled their Corpman up.

Re: [Mission 1] Boldly Going....

"HOAH!" Nevaraon shouted before pulling on his helmet and walked out with his team towards the Armory.

"You think we'll have something that'll need to be shot at? or do ya think we're just an ekshance pulic?" Nevaraon asked Weiss as they trudged down the hallway. Refering to what roughly translates to a abwehran escort for keeping important people safe, nortoriously reputed to often having to leave some of their own behind to die in protection of said important people.

***Tiny edit***

Re: [Mission 1] Boldly Going....

As the Fearless advanced towards the moon, the jamming field made itself manifest. Most of the monitors on the bridge slowly filled with garbage characters, noise, or, in the best case, merely annoying flickers.

As if it weren't enough, lights started to go on and off at random. The emergency lights activated automatically, fortunately. The intercom filled with static.

"Sensors are blind. Switching to manual."

Now the moon was near enough to be examined by sight. It was half-full, hanging with the gas giant in the background.

"Conducting a visual scan." Muttered Eva under her breath. "It's... odd. I can see few, large, square buildings, some low and squat, some extremely tall. Some hints of massive underground structures. There are six... cities? Four on the equator, equidistant, and one on each pole. I can barely see those on the dark hemisphere, there are no night lights whatsoever."

The image described by Eva appeared on most monitors on the bridge, with zoom windows on the most interesting features: vast, sprawling and confused citadels of gray prisms, vast strip-mining operations, massive airlocks apparently leading to underground artificial caves.

It doesn't really seem inhabited. Active, sure, but not inhabited, not in the conventional sense of the word at least. Except perhaps by an underground-dwelling race?

Re: [Mission 1] Boldly Going....

Erna looked at the visual with a frown. It didn't make any sense to her that their would be six city-like areas and not be populated. In fact, it was damn stupid in her opinion. The only reasons behind an abandoned moon would have been those drones, but the jamming field effectively kept them out. The only vessels that could enter now would be those under direct control of a crew...or possibly something only moon would hold.

"Find me a receiver on that moon. We'll try contacting them via Laser," she said as she rested her elbow upon the chair's armrest with her head upon her fist in a manner that seemed to make her more contemplative appearance wise. "After all, a direct line of sight transmission should break through this jamming more efficiently than boosting our other communication systems."

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"What in the void are you muttering about son?" the Warrant griped. "We're either killing or we're protecting. Most likely the Oberleutnant wants people down there to contact whoever is being deaf, blind, and stupid." he muttered as they entered the Shuttle Bay where a Technician seemed to be prepping the Schiffchen for launch.

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Nevaraon simply shrugged at Warrant Weiss. Then he double checked over his MDR-5-01R, but made sure to keep it unloaded till he was otherwise ordered. One could never be too careful.





(OOC: I guess we skipped going to the Armory.)

Re: [Mission 1] Boldly Going....

Kappel raised his eyes from the console. "There are... no laser comm receivers, sir. None I can find with our visual sensors, at least." Then, in a lower tone, more to himself: "...what the heck is wrong with these people?"

"Something is approaching!" Exclaimed Eva, suddenly, shifting the Fearless' visual sensors from the moon to a point in space.

The screens showed a large mass of metal. It wasn't a starship: simply a rough metallic sphere plummeting towards the moon.

The lump of metal flew past the Fearless and began to burn-up, entering the moon's atmosphere. Then, it hit a vast, desert zone of the planet with a large explosion, digging a small crater.

As the smoke dissolved, the Fearless' sensors could see that the sphere of metal had been hollow, and packed with small metallic cubes that had been scattered around.

A number of robotic creatures similar, but different, from the ones that had attacked the Fearless not long before crawled out of the nearest town and of numerous, semi-invisible underground passages, heading towards the impact point.

"I... don't know what this is supposed to mean, ma'am." Noted Eva.

"I just know that this planet is completely shut-out from outside communications. Either they want to be left alone, or they don't even know that someone could contact them. From what we have seen, their technology could well be pre-FTL, even if it seems like they have a very advanced grasp of robotics and engineering." Replied Kappel.

Re: [Mission 1] Boldly Going....

The Armorer stared at his fingertips, he had long returned to the ‘cave’ of an armory, that was the feel the room filled with weapons and armors felt to him. Drach didn’t want to stop working or receive the aid of trained medical personell, he’d not coddle himself with such a luxury, though the longer he worked the more and more apparent it seemed that soon his fingers would be worn entirely and the pain would only become unbearable. In his small break, he managed to do a bit of sketching and taking a couple notes out of several reference books.

The Armorer bandaged his hands more tightly, as he exited from the room, to find a crowd of soldiers with permission of the requisition of arms to flood by, essentially carrying the bewildered Armorer into the Armory. This made the Armorer irrational and edgy, he wanted to spit in the eye nof the next marine that pushed him, and break every tooth in their mouth for not showing him and the other Armorers some manners. The first wave left quickly, and good riddance to the bad lot, and soon more organized groups began to come, which gave Drach a bit to rest, damn pack of unruly hounds didn’t even bother filing out the proper papers or nothing. Drach like a few others of the Armory normally worked with earplugs on, due to the sound the tools made, the sound of metal clashing with metal, the Armory was generally a noisy area.

Drach grabbed a fellow enlisted soldier by the Shoulder “Hey, what the hell is going on? I finish up with a quota of Mass Drivers, and suddenly like a pack of mange-ridden curs, several Marines barge in and take everything!” The meek lad, unlike Drachenbaum, spoke briefly with him “A-an Encounter…we were ordered to arm ourselves…” He then pulled himself from Drachs’ grip and walked off. Drach grunted “Damn it all, Come on guys, let’s suit up and get on standby!” He would call to the other Armor Hounds, grabbing weapons of their own and got ready for further instructions.

[Eh, sorry for the delay Abwehran Gothar, I got caught up with my own interests... ^^;]

Re: [Mission 1] Boldly Going....

((OOC: No worries and sorry about the delay people.))

Erna sat in her command chair and nodded towards Eva before checking her tactical console as calls came from the weapons systems, notifying the bridge that they had been manned. Punching a button for the intercom, the Captain began," Doctor Hellmannsohn, would you join the Marines as Naval Representative?"

There was a short pause before an affirmative came back, causing the Oberleutnant to frown. I guess she's hesitant, she thought calmly as she turned to her Tactical Officer. "Keep me posted on the situation."

"Aye Ma'am."

**************************************

Warrant Weiss led his team onto the shuttle before he received a message from his Leutnant. "Space me," he muttered as he looked over at his team. "Seems like we're to wait for our Naval Representative," he called back as he grunted in annoyance.

"This is getting even more screwy than before...then again, they probably don't want us Marines shooting and killing a bunch of xenos."

Re: [Mission 1] Boldly Going....

Nevaraon looked up from his rifle with a grin on his face. "It's probably a good thing, cause we probably would. Still, it won't be as much fun." He sighed a huge mock sigh of disappointment.

Re: [Mission 1] Boldly Going....

"Perhaps we should be more concerned that these new arrivals don't kill us." Koenig stated the obvious, his voice somewhat distorted by the helmet he currently had on. He looked around the shuttle at the members of his team, particularly at Warrant Weiss.

"Is this how most encounters start out?"

Re: [Mission 1] Boldly Going....

Nevaraon laughed "If they tried then we'd have to show them some good old fashioned patriotism." refering to the common recruiter's slogan.

Re: [Mission 1] Boldly Going....

Warrant Weiss grunted his own affirmative as he started pulling out a smoke from his survival pouch. If he were to wait for a bunch of navy pukes....

"This is a no smoking area, Stabsfeldwebel," a feminine tone came from the direction of the Schiffchen entrance. Glancing over, he noted that the source had been from the ship's doctor...one Oberstabsfeldwebel Griselda Hellmannsohn. It was easy to recognize her compared to the rest of the ship. One reason was that she was one of those rare Hybrids that one wouldn't normally see in the military, it showed with her bright, yet non-glowing, blue eyes and the tanned skin one would normally find on a Surfacer. Another was that out of the entire ship's compliment of female personnel, she was the only one with 'birthing hips'.

"Ah, ma'am," he replied as he stood at attention, the bit of paper and herbs hanging from his mouth as he saluted. All, the Doctor did was return the salute before walking over and taking the smoke from his mouth.

"Besides, you'll kill yourself one day on those things if battle doesn't get you." she stated before heading towards the cockpit. "I'll be piloting us down as well as representing the Naval Portion of the Fearless." she informed the Marine detachment. "Meaning you are all under my command unless a combat situation evolves from this."

"Aye, Doctor," the other Warrant Officer responded as Griselda sat down in the pilot seat, powering up the systems as Günther closed the hatch. "Strap in kids, we're going on a field trip," he barked as he strapped himself in.

Re: [Mission 1] Boldly Going....

Nevaraon stiffled a laugh at the look on the disappointed Warrant's face, deciding that it might be better to not tick off the guy who was able to so easily beat him at a simple game of strength, let alone a fight. He hide his slight smirk by taking a huge notice of a near invisible speck of grease on his rifle.

Re: [Mission 1] Boldly Going....

A few moments later, the Schiffchen would launch from its mothership. Soaring through space as he began to head towards the moon's surface, specifically one of the large surface facilities. If the native inhabitants hadn't seen them by now, they would notice them very soon. Especially when something as armed as a military-grade Schiffchen landed on your doorstep with a fire team.

Soon, their Schiffchen was on the ground and its pilot walking into the back area. "Anyone without your helmet on better put it on now," the Warrant spoke as he shoved his helmet on and locked it in place.

Re: [Mission 1] Boldly Going....

Nevaraon was already locking his helmet into place as Warrant Weiss said something. He began looking around at the LZ. Since he hadn't been ordered into any sort of formation, he took the small liberty of walking aimlessly around the LZ looking at small things that caught his eye, but not letting his guard down and keeping his weapon at his side.

Re: [Mission 1] Boldly Going....

Koenig had locked his helmet during the flight, not wanting to be caught with his pants down (or, in this case, his helmet unlocked) when it was time to hustle out of the Schiffchen. His eyes caught Nevaraon walking around outside, seemingly looking at random things.

"Herr Maat, you may want to look to the horizon for any silhouettes." Koenig simply stated, cradling his rifle between his legs.

Re: [Mission 1] Boldly Going....

Nevaraon glanced over at Koenig. "Wouldn't do any good if they come up from the ground beneath it.

Re: [Mission 1] Boldly Going....

The scenery was... well, the best word to define it was "alien". Impressive, but it made no sense.

It was like a city, but it didn't have streets. The buildings were arranged seemingly at random.
There was no sign of life, save for those spider-like spherical robots scuttling about every now and then, but they were pretty rare as well.

And those weren't even buildings. No doors, no windows, plain and mostly featureless. Just four (sometimes three, sometimes five) featureless gray walls. Sometimes with round holes in them at a certain height, from which droids came and went like the entry of an anthill. They almost felt like bunkers.

And nothing else. Just randomly placed featureless buildings over the bare ground and droids scuttling about in the background, completely ignoring them. Some of them were carrying stuff. Metallic crates, pipe sections, rocks, pieces of damaged machinery with wires dangling.

A small group of two of those robots was very near to the landing point, less than fifty meters. They were, apparently, using built-in laser cutters to take apart a third one, laying on the ground, probably damaged. They were doing their job at what seemed like a leisurely pace, blissfully oblivious of anything that was going on around them.

On the opposite side of the craft, one of the smallest buildings, a triangular, squat bunker approximately five stories tall, had one of those entry/exit holes at about two meters above the ground, the only more or less approachable entry point in sight. It seemed like one of the least-used passageways. Droids still entered and exited from there, but far less often than the other passageways in other buildings (about one every four-six minutes)
It was just wide enough to allow someone to crawl through comfortably, but the inside appeared to be pitch dark.