RP: 21st Fighter Sq [Mission 1.0] Christening of Blood

Shooting a glare at Silic and Shin that said "I'll flay you later," Hachirou approached the front of the briefing room.

"Early Contact protocol are as follows:" Hachirou began,

"First, the discovered have the right to safety -- fire only if fired upon.
Second, we must try to communicate with it in its own language, barring that, we must exchange words to attempt translation.
Third, we must recognize their right to denial of early contact and all negotiations.
Fourth, and last for all that matters, is their right to sovereignty over their own lands. They are the only ones who can say we can land on any ship, platform, or planet that they control."

"To sum it all up: If they're hostile, run or fight, if they're not, try to talk to them, and don't force them to do anything." He ended with a smile.

Hachirou inclined his head toward Shin, "If it's NMX, shoot it out of the sky."

At Shin's question Yaeko poked her head up. This was something she actually knew a lot about. "With all do respect sir. The targeting computers on any Yamataian combat ships will automatically classify any ships based on faction. They will pull up as orange, yellow or green on radar. Orange is hostile faction and the computer will automatically target these crafts, unless ordered otherwise at which point they'll probably turn yellow. Anything yellow is neutral and has the ability to be targeted, which you should never do without orders. Green will be allies and it's impossible to target an ally unless you override the computer manually, at which point you will no longer register as an ally to friendly crafts. Then, of course, there are the random others: red is a missile and the ship will automatically fire at these, blue is a VIP, royalty, diplomat, and any other important people you can think of and your craft will automatically fire at anything firing at the VIP."

Yaeko paused for a couple seconds after her long radar rant. "Sorry, I specialize in communications so I had to learn a couple things about radar back on the Illustrious."

Silic looked over at Yaeko, surprised at her knowledge. His brow furrowed above his glasses as he took a look at the long haired nekovalkrja. Eventually he said nothing, looked away and began trying to look suitably downcast to appease the Shoi while his mind quietly ticked away.

"Well, now along with the Radar your Flight Suits do just about the same thing." Hayashi said, "I expect you all to familiarize yourself with the equipment, just like Binky here."

Tsukino Ren nodded "Thank you" She said to Yaeko and Haichiro with a polite bow. She looked around the briefing room, to see if anyone else had important questions that she could learn from by listening to. She was out of things to ask.

She quietly, while listening, started mentally relaxing, her posture loosening, her smile spreading from the prim controlled and blank face that she had asked questions and listened to the main briefing with. It was spreading into a looser, faster grin, and her ears were begging to twitch rhythmically with excitement as they swiveled to every new sound. she began to fidget slightly, not the fidgeting of someone who was bored, or impatient, but the fidgeting of someone with a vast well of energy that they were no longer controlling carefully.

In her own way, she was preparing for the excitement to come. She was eager and proud to even carry out a routine patrol. To most people the words 'routine patrol' and 'excitement' did not belong in the same sentence. Ren was young, and inexperienced, and to her this was novel and interesting, something real and tangible after all of her training. This was her chance to prove that she was worthy of serving Yamatai.

NMX Commander Blatgroflp could sense victory within his grasp. So far his group had progressed without any hindrance. He ordered the battlepods to be prepared. He wanted two main groups. The first group was to use their burst FTL upon dropping out of stealth to shoot behind the enemy vessels and search the planet. The other group would engage the Yamatai warships in preparation for the ships to attack.

On board the Heitan Chinen-Santô Hei grew increasingly concerned even if the officer on watch was not. The approaching vessels were almost to the .1AU and Hiromi the ship's AI was still unable to contact them. She adjusted her scanners and noticed a strange blurring behind the two blips. Hiromi, sound General Quarters, and advise the Captain he is needed on the bridge. Something is not right. she sent telepathically. The GQ klaxon started sounding, followed by Hiromi's voice advising all personnel to report to the combat stations.

Keiji looked up from his computer screen when the klaxons sounded, he then turned towards Chinen. "You better have a darn good explanation Santô Hei," he growled.

Just then the inbound traffic vanished and the a group of eight NMX warships appeared just outside of weapon range and closing. "Battlestations, all units, Scramble the fighters, this is not a drill." Came Odell, Gils voice as he entered the bridge.

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Atsui having retrieved her helmet walked back into the doorway of the briefing room. She caught Hachirou's reference to Ren as Binky. Seems as fitting a Call-sign for the moment. she thought. High above she heard a series of thunder like booms. Looking up she say a number of contrails streaking downward. "What the hell, everyone hit the deck." she yelled diving for the floor.

A series of detonations shook the ground, and the shockwave pushed the CRDM several meters across the ground. The lighting in the briefing room flickered several times, but stayed on as everything in the room was tossed into disarray.

From the speakers in the briefing room came an excited voice, "Attention all personnel, We are under attack by NMX forces. Repeat NMX forces are attack...." the transmission stopped in midsentence.

"Really? Like we needed an announcement of that fact." Atsui said getting up to her feet. "Okay Diamonds, looks like our Patrol has just been canceled. Get your gear and haul ass for your fighters." She snatched her helmet and started running avoiding the craters in the tarmac.

Yoshi seeing Atsui grabbed his equipment and pursued her. The sound of an approaching projectile caused him to dive flat. The projectile exploded a safe distance away but the air rained down dirt.

As Atsui dashed near the fighter, leaped and used her natural Yamataian anti-gravity to get into her fighter quicker. She dropped into the seat and started a quick start. Across the tactical channel she saw the following flash message

From Shotou Defense said:

We have two groups of targets. First group is attacking Fort Shotou. The second group of enemy vessels is on a trajectory towards Ryou.

Click to expand...

"Fuck, the civilians..." she swore to herself. "Attention All Diamonds, the NMX bastards are heading for the civilian installation of Ryou. There are 10,000 defenseless people over there. Once in your fighter scramble with VTOL launch and take a course NNW to Ryou. Keep your altitude 100 meters or less. Form up on me for intercept." she sent telepathically to the squadron.

As Yoshi scrambled up the ladder and dropped himself into the rear seat Atsui finished the fighter power up, and started closing the cockpit.

A second too slow to get low, Silic was thrown off his feet by the sudden movement. He smacked painfully into a row of chairs and bounced off, landing hard on the floor, unable to move half-stunned. His vision blurred someone grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet even as he staggered sideways a step or two.

He half scrambled, half staggered towards the door and out onto the tarmac, too concussed to pay much attention to whatever was happening around him. He spotted the fighter with the 39 on the tail and ran towards it, staggering as something hit him in the calf. Adrenaline pushing him the rest of the way he reached the fighter, hauled himself up the side and scrabbled into the cockpit, shoving on the flight helmet he'd left resting on the seat earlier.

As he booted up the electronics systems he shook his head to try and clear it, although he still felt a painful ringing in his ears. Cupping half his face in pain “EWO ready!” he shouted, not sure if the pilot was inside yet.

Yaeko gripped her arm rests as everything around her started shaking. Her seat fell over and she fell on her face. After taking a couple seconds to recover she got up and bolted towards her fighter, grabbing a bag with her equipment. She started putting things on as she followed Silic to their fighter. She jumped into the cockpit in front of him, hooked herself into the SPINE system, and started up the fighter. "0039, Munkata/Vas, ready to launch." Yaeko closed up the cockpit and prepared the Kawarime to lift off.

Hachirou was quick to his feet after the first few explosions. He rushed through the Battlepod attacks, avoiding being hit while making his best time to the Kawarime He and Lynn shared.

He boarded it, after a scramble into his new flight suit. Lynn was already in the backseat by the time he stepped in.

"We ready?" He asked.

"Pre-Flight check shows green." Lynn said, oddly calm in all the chaos.

"Good. This is Raikou and Hoshi ready for take off. DIAMONDS! GET READY FOR SOME ACTION. WATCH YOUR SIX, AND COVER YOUR WINGMAN!"

Ren was wholly unprepared when the missles hit the deck, and she made a graceful arc through the air. Her puplis slammed open, rapidly dilating as her sympathetic nervous system kicked in and her para-sympathetic nervous system shut down. She went loose mid-air and hit the deck limply, reducing her injuries by not straining against it.

Reducing her injuries in theory. In practice she managed to face plant into one of the chairs in the briefing room, blackening her eye. She felt a tugging on her pacifier on a string, and then the string snapped. She grabbed the pacifier as she tumbled across the floor after impact, then she shoved it between her teeth, grasping it tightly. "Owww" she whined around the pacifier.

Shin seemed to be better prepared for the attack, trained muscles of a martial artist reacting with the breakneck reflexes of a pilot to bolt him onto his feet. Seeing that airborne Ren, he reacted before he could think it through, leaping after the neko and attempting to catch her, but she managed land head first, going through a chair before hitting the floor. Leaping over chairs and more chairs(Did I mention chairs?), Shin rushed to Ren, not bothering to ask her before helping her up, his right hand checking her pulse while the other felt her head, making sure she wasn't bleeding. "You're okay!" Shin's focus changed again, grabbing her wrist loosely, and smiling at her, his eagerness hiding desperate urgency to get into the air.

"Come with me, if you want to live."

"Yessir" she said around her pacifier, after he helped her up. She wasn't bleeding, though she was bruised. She took his hand as he took her wrist, and followed quickly after him. She wasn't as strong or as quick as he was though, but she did her best to keep up.

Shin stopped running, not wanting to drag the poor girl along. Well, he could do that, but.. "I'm sorry about this!" The pilot blurts out as he abruptly lifts Ren off her feet, carrying his EWO bridal style, and dashed towards V8X2 32-0040.

Ren smiled softly, pushing herself against Shin's chest as he carried her towards V8X2 32-0040. "Thanks" she murmered softly around the pacifier tightly clutched between her teeth.

 Shin let Ren down as they approached the fighter, the canopy by a stroke of luck already open. Not even breaking his stride, he used the ladder to jump up onto the fighter, reaching back to give Ren a hand up onto the fighter.

Ren took the hand and clambored into the fighter, then leapt into her seat and began the pre-flight launch procedure in a much expediated way, chewing and sucking on her pacifier energetically as she got the ship ready for launch. "Launch!" She shouted to Shin as she finished the expediated pre-flight check

 "Alright!" Shin shouted energetically as he jumped into the Kawarime's cockpit, his blood temperature apparently having risen by 55,000%, the fighter's cockpit closing behind him as he activated the fighter, the speedy thing quickly rising into the air before going to forward thrust.

"They're going after Ryou, right?" The yamataian smiled, running a hand along his black hair, pushing his vermilion bangs out of his face, as his smile grew wider, teeth visible. "Alright! This is Ryusei, I'm going to go ahead and start the party now!"

Atsui lifted her fighter and as soon as she had it rotated in the right direction kicked in the engines accelerating. What part of form up on me does Ryusei not understand. she thought. Her fighter streaked across the countryside following the contour of the ground. At flying at 100 meters was a challenge, one to get her blood pumping and adrenaline surging.

"Negative Ryusei do not engage. Form up on me. We are outnumbered four to one, flying in there solo is suicide." she sent with a bit of a growl in her voice.

"Diamonds stay with your wingman at all times and keep your head about you. We do not have time for hot-dogging or showboating. We will intercept the NMX bastards halfway to Ryou. Keep your fighter at 100 meters off the deck, the enemy's radar will not be able to pick us up out of the ground clutter. Once we get to the intercept area, we will all pick our target and come at them from underneath at ballistic velocity for maximum surprise and effect. EWO's make sure your systems are ready, we are going to need them to survive this." She sent over the radio.

"Yhee ma'am" Ren responded over the com system, plugging herself into the SPINE interface system. "Master Shin, we should slow down" She reported "In combat it has been demonstrated that when a squadron of soldiers defend the neighboring craft and are defended by their neighboring craft total amount of damage dealt to the opponent is much higher then when they attempt to cut swaths of destruction into the field." Ren said, twitching gently with energy "I would like to kill the NMX as much as you do, Master Shin, but we should follow our orders in order to increase our effectiveness" She switched the fighter into stealth mode as she spoke, following orders and reducing the power of the Turbo Ather Propulsion.

her little speech said she carefully brought up the passive sensor scan results, fretting as she watched the massive swarm of red dots get closer and closer to the civilians. Then she got an idea, and started a free-search of communication bands with the Ke-T8-E3104 Communications Array. She was looking for any rythmic transmitions that might be coded data/voice transmissions by the opponent.

Yaeko lifted the fighter off the ground and piloted out of the ship. After taking a moment to get a handle of the ship she piloted into a poor formation behind the Chui. "Kohosei, i need my wing covered." Yaeko started getting nervous and worried as they sped towards their target. "Silic, I should warn you, I'm not really a pilot, and I've never been very good at piloting."

Hachirou VTOLed off the ground until he was about 70 Meters off the deck, and then accelerated to catch up with Atsui, climbing until he leveled off at one-hundred meters.

"This is Raikou, I've assumed my position in formation. Squadron, sound off once you're in the air and in position. When Solitaire gives the word, lock your targets and open fire. And ONLY when Solitaire gives the word. I will flay any and all of you alive if you disobey orders. Understood?!" Hachirou growled over the Squadron's frequency.

Off the Band, he turned his attention to Lynn. "Ready the countermeasures, and keep a steady read on the rest of the squadron. Let me know if any of them breaks formation to attack."

Lynn nodded, already pulling those options up on her end. "Hai, Hayashi-Shoi."

Behind Yaeko, Silic looked up from his screen, his brain wasn't designed to recieve telepathic messages, but the message came through anyway. “I'm not much of an EWO.” he replied, using the closed comm “Just don't get us killed and I'll absolve you of any inexperience.” he half-heartedly reassured her, in all probability failing miserably. He turned back to his screens, if anything he could try to keep the pilot from needing to worry about missiles, ignoring the dull pain in his lower leg.

Shin was already chafing under these orders, holding the control stick to his fighter as he listened to his superior officers attempting to tell him to try and be stealthy with Aether. Making his decision, the pilot grunted as he broke formation, raising altitude and heading on a more direct intercept course."The damn squids already see us. Its stupid to try to fight them now using stealth! Better to distract them before they can get to Ryou!".

"Ren! Full power to the Turbo Aether, We don't have the time to try to be stealthy! Get ready for a high speed intercept!"

Ren took down the signals that were bouncing between the enemy ships, noting them as computer to computer communication. She gave all of the other fighters the channel list that the foe was using for communication and disseminated the data between them, then set up a program that would detect the firing of the first shot by any allied fighter, and would respond to it by causing all of the fighters to broadcast a powerful jamming signal. This would add the confusion of suddenly cut communications to the confusion of the first shot being fired for the foe... Then shin tried to gun the craft

Since Ren had already slipped the fighter into stealth mode, Shin's gunning had... absolutely no effect. The turbo aether engines do not run when in the fighter is in stealth mode.

"Ma... Master.. Sh... SHIN! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" She asked looking panicked at her pilot "The ship is in stealth mode! You could damage it trying to engage the aether engines while in stealth mode!" Due to her naivety she didn't understand that Shin was deliberately disobeying orders, and so she was quite confused by this. "Why are you trying to aether boost? The sensors don't detect anything..." she rambled confusedly

Shin grunted impatiently, desperately wanting to move forward, intercept the NMX Battlepods before they could get to Ryou, and not piss away precious time by going in low and stealthed. To him, all this seemed to be was a waste of time trying to be overcautious, needlessly putting innocent civilians in danger.

"Ren! We don't have time to sit back and try to be stealthy! It'll take us too damn long to get to them going like this, and they'll have started attacking the civilians by the time we get there! Please, Ren, you're my co-pilot, so work with me here so that we can save lives."

Yaeko watched as one of the friendly fighters broke formation. Shit! He's doing it again. Yaeko patched into her comm. "Shin you son of a bitch! Get your arrogant ass back in formation! I swear to god if you pull more of your heroism shit again! Ren, listen to me, I've seen him do this before and he will get both of you killed if you don't find a way to override his controls and get that fighter back under stealth." Yaeko started freaking as she decided she'd go to the top. "Chui, through my work with Shin I had to force myself to learn how to remotely override a fighter and will do so if you need."

"This is Raikou. Standby, Munkata-Hei. Take Solitaire's wing. I'll go after Ryuusei. Do NOT break radio silence again until Solitaire gives the word."

Solitaire, I will join Shin-Hei. If he goes in alone he will die. We'll be a good distraction anyway. See you on the ground, and good hunting. Raikou out.

Click to expand...

Hachirou sent the encrypted message to Atsui, and broke formation, racing after Shin. He also barked an order at Lynn to shut the stealth protocols off. There was no point to it anymore -- but maybe... just maybe, the rest of the squadron could still sneak ahead and intercept the Pods for the desired surprise effect.

Damn it all! You idiot, you may have ruined our chances of a surprise attack. You've endangered everyone. I will hurt you when this is over. Hachirou thought as Lynn shut down the stealth programs, allowing him to surge forward.

"Ryuusei! I have your wing. We'll have words when we're back down on the ground, but for now, don't get shot down." He growled over a closed frequency to his eager young counterpart. I want you for myself.

The Battle Pods had already noticed the pair approaching, and scrambled six of their number to engage.

"Heads up! Inbound contacts. BINKY. Cover your damn pilot, I don't see an active countermeasure program running!"

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Kail Tarrim stirred from where she had lain unconcious for the past few minutes. "What...?" The former drill instructor mumbled.

After a fashion, she made her way quickly to her fighter and took off, desperate to catch up with the others. Akechi-Hei was... supposed... to be in the back. But her head was foggy, and she couldn't tell. He could have been.

"How long was I out?" She asked, just in case. Better not to seem like she wasn't aware of him.