RP: YSS Miharu Mission 1 "REAR GUARD", Day 4

Chigusa arrived at the engine room, and rushed over to Masako. "What needs doing? I was told to come here and assist you."

She looked to Nyton briefly, as if to say "Am I harming your post?" then back at her instruments. "We should not have been detected yet, but we will be as soon as I make the jump. Please be ready."

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Nyton followed Kotori's orders and set the main canon on pulse mode for a rapid fire effect. The torpedo tubes were loaded up and he programmed a fire pattern to send out the SDM and AM torpedoes in sequence with the SDM set to strike the battleship two seconds before the the AM torpedo. With one hand he charged up the Particle Canons and set up a quick firing pattern with three to provide auxiliary fire for the main gun while the other three to cover them should any ships suddenly get in the way. Simultaneously with the other hand he deployed the weapon pods and established their configuration. Fifteen Transphasic Beam pods were set up for anti-projectile defense while another fifteen Transplanar Phased Pulse were set up to counterstrike and lay down a heavy fire barrage while the last six were Scalar Electrogravitic Pulse pods to augment their defenses against enemy mecha or missles. The weapons pods were then deployed in a hex shaped pattern fairly distanced so as not to get bunched up and to cover more ground.

The ship made a sharp flip upside-down. Yukari then hit the throttle.

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No sooner had Nyton completed this then the jump occurred. "Weapons ready!"

Kotori held her breath as the tactical display showed the Blrakkrashiverinth finally line up with the Miharu. "Now!"

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With everything lined up Nyton locked on and opened fire with the torpedoes targeted at the SMX battleship. The Subspace Detonator and Anti-Matter torpedoes were launched. "Torpedoes away and on direct bearing for Aries 1.!" Nyton said loudly and began to reload with two more AM torpedoes facing rearward. While he reloaded he monitored the progress of the torpedoes but did not let the two destroyers from Taurus group escape his notice. After the torpedo reload sequence was initiated he began to train the weapons to counter Taurus 1 and 2 from both here and their intended jump location. Nyton's hand had a grip on the fire control for the main canon and was ready for the follow up attack on the ship's flank. "Ready for the second strike!"

Masako looked over at Chigusa and pointed over towards the fold drive. "Our main priority is getting the fold drive operational," the warrant officer replied as the sprites seemed to be working on it already. "It's not going to be a quick fix either, but it's the only system that needs repairing right now. If combat causes any damage to critical systems, our priority might change, but the fold drive is our main concern," the nearly pupil-less eyes of Masako scanned over the pink-haired enlisted once before motioning to a Damage Control Room.

"Please suit up in an AMES quickly, no telling if will get breached and vent our atmosphere." Masako ordered as she walked over to the fold drive and frowned. "Ichigo, please begin fabrication of the parts necessary to repair our fold drive...if we can't do that, we might as well try to jury-rig it. We must at least get it ready for when the Taii wants to fold," she ordered as she went over to the main engineering panel and picked up her helmet.

Masako seemed to be acting more like a warrant officer, at least...in her opinion now. But she still only had her knowledge in maintenance and repair to lead the way, not the experience in it Tom had. Hopefully, with the input from the rest of the personnel in engineering, they could get it done.

Nyton said:

"Torpedoes away and on direct bearing for Aries 1!"

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Yukari did not hesitate, the ship receiving her commands through her SPINE as it leaped again the moment the torpedoes were away. It zipped to a halt about nine million kilometers away from the battleship.

The ship was angled to provide the smallest target possible for Aries 1, but the destroyers had a much better target. She had to watch and wait, ready to fly them out of there as needed.

Designed to go at the speed of 17 532c, it was only a formality to track down the first AS-7 SDM warhead. The torpedo got into close proximity to its target and detonated, releasing an anti-wormhole/anti-shield field which deprived the Mishhuvurthyar battleship of its protective barrier, or folding capabilities and cut away a large part of its engine power.

The miniature CDD system of the second AS-7 was hindered by this field enough to dramatically slow down, but since Aries 1 was a sitting duck by then, it had no trouble covering the last couple of million miles to finally connect into part of the large green vessel's open maw. A brilliant white explosion spread over the vessel, ruining much of its now exposed hull armor.

Yukari received a warning courtesy of WARMS that Aries 1 was bringing to bear almost a hundred medium tunneling positron cannons on the Miharu. It also quickly confirmed eighteen positive target locks coming from the two destroyers: they were about to launch their quintessent hyperspace torpedoes.

Timing, it seemed, would be everything.

As WARMS notified her of the cannons aiming their way, the torpedo locks were going to be far more troublesome. And they were much faster than any shots coming from Aries 1.

Yukari took a small breath, then moved.

"Engaging CFS stealth system! We are going blind!" The sensors went dead, but Yukari's memory had clearly imprinted upon it the positions the ships had been in. Right then, Taurus 1 and 2 were screaming that they had lost their target locks, but Aries 1 had a rough estimate of where the ship had been, which was enough for a volley.

Yukari wished she had enough time to relay her plan to Nyton, but she was still moving. Hitting the throttle again, she made a short, curved jump, one that kept them about 10 million kilometers away from the center of the spherical SDM explosion. If her jump calculations were correct, they would end up above the three vessels.

Her mind ticked the second or so the Miharu needed to make the jump, then let the ship fall out, pulling a similar drifting maneuver compared to the one she had used near the Iori. "Dropping stealth!"

The sensor screens and monitors flared to life again, showing that Yukari had been off in her calculations by about 900 kilometers -- close enough for this work, she grunted mentally. However, Nyton's shots were lined up, and Taurus 1 and 2 were now frustrated into reacquiring their torpedo locks and maneuvering themselves into place.

Dull in the starlight, the battleship's dorsal side was in full view for Nyton to fire his rearward torpedoes. As soon as he did that, she would fire the engines and drift again, spinning the ship to allow him to fire the aether cannon.

After suiting up in an AMES, Chigusa went to work.

And now comes the part where I wish I'd been trained in this... Analyzing stellar phenomena had been right up Miyoko's alley- evaluating enemy ships, not so much. Still, it wasn't too much of a battle for her to get a sensor feed on it and run a basic analysis of the target past MEGAMI, both of which she quietly routed over to tactical.

Leutre sat up in bed and wiped a some drool from his chin with his gloved hand. 'Where am I? My quarters... I remember something about... Mara, Miyoko, and capacitor cells. What the fuck is that about? Was all that stuff a dream?' He glanced down and noticed he was still wearing a complete AMES, minus his helmet. He also felt his head throbbing painfully. 'An AMES? Maybe it wasn't all a dream. Or maybe I just did something stupid while drunk again. The last time I had a headache this bad was from a hangover.'

He rolled out of bed and carefully climbed to his feet, still feeling quite groggy. Slowly shuffling his feet, he made his way out of his room and down the passageway towards the wardroom. 'I hope the Taii won't lash out at me for being asleep during-- What the hell is that?' He covered his eyes as a torpedo launched and a bright flash filled the room.

"Damn it, MEGAMI, what the fuck is going on?"

"The ship is currently engaged against two SMX destroyers and a battleship," MEGAMI dryly answered Leutre.

Mara, whom was suddenly there running up the stairs, noticed Leutre. "Veressis-Hei! Are you okay?"

The data from Miyoko's sensor feed was noted and Nyton began to figure on where Aries 1 had suffered the most damage and how to press the advantage. Unfortunately there was no chance to fire the main gun when Yukari made a quick announcement.

"Engaging CFS stealth system! We are going blind!"

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Nyton braced for the maneuvers and while they were moving he used his memory file to estimate the enemy ship's positions when they came out of the maneuver. He kept one hand on the main gun's fire control but at the same time monitored the other systems to make any adjustments as necessary.

"Dropping stealth!"

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The sensors had returned to life and showed Nyton their position. Taurus 1 and 2 were offset and attempted to relock but the side of the battleship was exposed and vulnerable to their torpedoes. Perfect chance. Let's see them shrug this off. Nyton thought and he targeted one of the weakened sections of armor before he released both AM torpedoes set to strike the target simultaneously this time. "Second volley of torpedoes away!" he announced. He tracked the torpedoes progress and stayed alert for anymore maneuvers by Yukari this time. While no orders for torpedo configurations had been given Nyton prepped the torpedo tubes with an AM and SDM for versatility, this time facing forward but refrained from reloading in case a change had to be made.

Both AS-7s arrowed toward the Blrakkrashiverinth, slowed down enough by the expanding (and fading) anti-wormhole field so that Nyton could have, this time, the time to track their progress... and see them explode prematurely as the SMX battleship took them out with its scalar arrays.

Then, the diarhea-green warship's shields and engines came back online; suddenly pitting the Miharu against one very angry Aries 1 and its Taurus cronies.

Kotori's eyes widened a bit: when the Blrakkrashiverinth's shields had been down, it had been the perfect opportunity to lay waste to it with repeated shots from the main gun. Now, that opportunity was ruined and they suddenly faced very bad odds.

"Hold your fire! Navigation, go in CFS-stealth, make an FTL jump 10 AUs away and go into silent running," the Taii ordered, obviously thinking it was better that the experimental escort disengaged before it took on more than it could chew.

Leutre nodded "My dear, I have Lady Luck on my side, which makes me effectively unkillable. She loves her scoundrels, the Lady does. Though my head feels like the inside of an anti-matter reactor. And I can't exactly remember what..." He paused as he watched another bright flash through the Wardroom windows. Turning back to Mara, he recalled his attempts to fix the capacitor with Mara. "Oh fuck, that reminds me, did we ever get that capacitor trouble sorted out? I should probably get down to engineering and help Tom finish fixing that bank before all hell breaks loose..."

Mara flinched a moment from the bright flash and quickly began counting things off her fingers as she tried to explain the situation to Leutre as quickly as possible. "The mishhu lay waste to Taiie and we had to escape. CFS and capacitors work, sort of, but our fold drive was screwed once we dropped out of hyperspace. We're now in a neighboring system defending the evacuees' ships - their fold system circuitry isn't working, same as us... so they're kind of stranded here at the mercy of Mishhu pursuers." The sprite brought her hands down. "I'm sure they'll be relieved if you come down and help out."

Nyton felt anger at the torpedoes being intercepted but he refused to show it and instead steeled himself for another approach. Damn it, of all the luck. We HAD them. he mentally cursed. He held his fire and focused on the ship's operation.

Yukari did not hesitate, though she cursed herself for not realizing the mistake sooner. The ship went blind again as the Miharu made another curved jump, this one about 10 AU away from the three vessels pursuing it. After finishing the jump she then cut propulsion all together and let the ship glide slowly through space while stealthed.

She looked to Miyoko. "Can you activate our RDD sensory array? I must be able to see something if I am to dodge any weapons that come our way."

Miyoko nodded, but hesitated after navigating the console's display to the appropriate screen and turned back to Yukari. "I apologize, but do you want them in active or passive mode? I'm not familiar with their combat applications."

"Passive. Just a brief RDD peek out will suffice," Kotori quickly answered back to the science specialist. After all, it wasn't like they needed to find a hidden, cloaked enemy: they knew where the three SMX ships were. "I'd like to know what was happening elsewhere in the system before we jumped away. Sensors should have been monitoring the rest of the battle. Can you check back on the logs back when they were active?"

Mizuho had intended to make it to the bridge when the alarms went off.

She really had.

But ah, the best laid plans of mice, you know. She had lost her way. And, of course, by the time she realized she had gone the wrong way, there had been some amount of jumping (she could feel it through the lurch in her stomach), and some amount of firing (some instinct she dared not place), and she realized despairingly she was missing the conflict. It was about then that she had asked Miharu for directions. And, shortly thereafter, had dashed her way to the bridge, bowing slightly and murmuring a brief appology.

"...can I... see the situation...?"

Teeth met lips, viciously.

Miyoko took several seconds to acquaint herself with the recordings and new sensor readings. Giving a full description would take longer than the Miharu's direct involvement in combat had been- better to keep things brief, then. "The battleship and destroyers have interdiction fields online and are probing the system with active sensors, but we're not a very big target this far away. All three are damaged but operational, though the battleship may have lost use of its positron cannon. The Kinkou group has engaged the Cancer and Gemini groups. Cancer has lost 5 vessels, Gemini is at full strength, the Taiie survivors have lost 2 Odoris and an Irim, and the Kinkou group has lost 3 Irims and 5 Yuis, with another Yui crippled. The Gemini group is using the asteroid field as cover for hit-and-run swarm attacks on the carrier group's pursuing Yuis, but the Taiie survivors are on a heading suggesting that they plan to hide there, as well."