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

Miyoko sighed in relief as the damaged sensors were automatically rerouted- stumbling over the unfamiliar task of scanning ships had left her feeling like enough of a burden, and losing half of her sensors probably wouldn't help. After directing the sensors to begin gathering more information on the damaged Yui and the ongoing battle in the asteroid field, she pulled up another communications window to Masako.

She nodded a quick greeting and, a bit too busy for a formal request, briefly stated, "Some of the main hull's sensors were damaged in that blast- Ketsurui-Taii would like them repaired."

Kotori swallowed hard. The Kinkou Irims and the Cancer group had been reduced to 4 vessels each. The Gemini group had 7 scouts to match the remaining 4 Yui-4 recon destroyers.

The Miharu and the crippled Yui were 17.3 AU's away from Tsuyosa's star, just outside the asteroid field. The fierce fighting between the Kinkou Yuis and the Mishhuvurthyar scoutships had carried 2.2 AUs inside the asteroid field.

The asteroids themselves were unfortunately mobile enough to prevent the use of a high FTL jump to get directly to the scene. They also contributed cut down the range advantage the Miharu had significantly - they have to get within at least light-second to be able to use their secondary anti-ship weapons effectively.

Still, it won't be too long before those Yui destroyers lose; outnumbered, outmaneuvered and outgunned as they are. The Taii's lips pressed together grimly.

"Navigation, take us into the field," Kotori ordered. "Go as fast as you dare and close within 300 000 kilometers of the Gemini group; if we don't get there soon, our destroyers are as good as dead."

Nyton began to track the enemy ships with the secondary weapons and feed their movement data to the tactical station. Even if they were out of range they would be ready to fire an immediate barrage at the enemy once the opportunity arose.

Masako was unharmed by the resulting clash between explosion and shield, having floated off the deck using anti-gravity in an effort to continue her work. But it was several times more difficult as she figured out synchronizing four CFS units was a feat of pure skill, which it seems like one of the others had trouble with. Which in turn was frustrating the poor warrant officer to no end as she constantly had to calibrate her CFS unit to reduce the destabilization issue.

In the aftermath of the violent shaking, Masako frowned as she left her station to look back into the engineering section. "Mina! Daijobou?" she called out in Japanese as she looked at the others with concern.

Kotori said:

"Navigation, take us into the field," Kotori ordered. "Go as fast as you dare and close within 300,000 kilometers of the Gemini group; if we don't get there soon, our destroyers are as good as dead."

Click to expand...

"Hai, Taii-san," Yukari said, angling the ship into a lazy bank that put them on a course with the asteroid field. The other vessels appeared to be in the thick of it, so the relatively slow FTL jump she would make was not going to help get through the rocks. But ... they were farther "down" than "up" the belt. Yukari pushed the nose down farther and hit the throttle; in just a few seconds they were below the portion of the asteroid belt where the Mishhu ships were. They were still about 0.2 AU away.

" ... Chiharu-sama, protect us here ... " Yukari ensured she had some small measure of shielding power left, then pushed into the asteroid belt at 0.2 c. She immediately blessed the Miharu for her handling, as she was able to dodge larger rocks with twirls and quick banks, but the smaller ones she had to let the weapon pods destroy, which was fine with her. She tried to keep the rollbar in mind as she took a hard dive below an asteroid, then floated along its surface until she reached the other side.

She pulled the ship to port immediately thereafter, as another asteroid was coming close; it cracked into the one they'd just gone along, a magnificent shower of pebbles and stones flying into space. Not that Yukari could notice that; she noticed instead the gaping black scar along the surfaces of several of the rocks. Aether beams? Transphasic?

They were within 10,000,000 kilometers of the enemy in less than three minutes, but Yukari could not get there any faster by herself. She took a deep breath and kept going, nearly plowing through a fairly large rock before a weapon pod blasted it. She could feel, as she went along, one of the wing units just barely scrape a smaller asteroid as they went by; she was getting too reckless. The weapon pods were practically along the hull now as she came within 5,000,000 km in another minute or so; she could see the beams clearly trading fire; there appeared to be the smallest of gaps as she came within 4,000,000 km.

"Claymere-Juni, an opening!" she shouted as the belly of one of the scoutships presented itself.

Nyton's eyes and reflexes were already keyed in to watch for any openings and opportunities, not to mention the odd asteroid that was more than too close for comfort. The tactical feed let him know that the target they had fired upon was one of the newer ships that possessed the phasing abilities seen at Taiie and he scanned to determine whether the target was solid or not. With Yukari's signal there could be no hesitation or delay as he quickly followed through and opened up with three particle cannons trained in on the target. "Firing!" came Nyton's announcement. He tried to time it so that the blast would hit something and not just pass thought, not to mention pass through and hit a friendly ship either.

The Miharu's particle cannons fired at Nyton's command, but the mishhuvurthyar scout he had targeted got out of the line of fire long before the shots could ever reach it. It hadn't even needed to dodge.

"Nyton, how can you expect a beam weapon that goes at the speed of light to hit something at this distance?" came Kotori's rebuke. "Wait until we are at least 0.002 AU away before expecting accuracy out of the main gun in pulse mode, the particle cannons and the weapon pods. Navigation, keep closing in."

As ship began to shake Leutre rapidly lost his balance and fell to the deck. He grit his teeth and fought down waves of nausea, a condition that was only made worse by his increasing headache. As he climbed to his hands and knees, all thoughts of gyroscopic stabilization was lost as he silently prayed to his patron goddess in hopes that he wouldn't vomit inside his own helmet.

When the shaking had finally subsided he collapsed back down to the deck and rest there for a moment as he waited for his sickness to subside. 'I guess my head is still a bit sensitive after that incident.'

"Mina! Daijobou?" she called out in Japanese as she looked at the others with concern.

Click to expand...

Leutre's eyes snapped open as he recalled the task at hand. As he scrambled to stand up he called out, "Lady Luck must have a sense of humor because I'm still here." He giggled to himself, feeling somewhat lightheaded after the intense sickness had passed. "I, uhh, was incapacitated for a bit, so I'm a bit behind on this unit's stabilization. How are things on your end?"

Masako sighed in relief as she heard news from Leutre. "It would be going off without a hitch," she began before looking over at the Nepleslian. "Unfortunately, the drives need to be calibrated properly together or it throws them off." she explained. "Do you need assistance on your end?" she asked with no accusations nor ill will. In fact, she sounded eager to help anyway she could.

"Sorry, got a little jumpy there, dammit." Nyton said, embarrassed. He quickly recovered and began to reset the weapons. Can't imagine why that happened. Shit, I really screwed that one up. Now they know we're approaching. Hell, maybe they'll get a little worried about us and let up on the others. Bad and good at the same time I suppose. he thought as he monitored the weapon pods progress at being restored.

Another of the Kinkou Yui-4s had its icon turn gray on the tactical display. It was now 3 against 7.

Kotori gritted her teeth. "Yukari, spike through!"

"Shimatta!" Yukari shouted back angrily, her own emotions boiling over some. She kicked the throttle instead, scrapped one asteroid in a long arc and made it within 300,000 km in just a few seconds. "In range!"

"Operations, keep track of Gemini 1 through 7. We don't know anything about th-" Kotori braced herself as the ship rocked. "-those small scouts. Yukari, ideally, we need to keep around 150 000 kilometers to have good chances of hitting with direct-fire weapons. See to that." Kotori's sleep-tangled hair stirred as she turned to the tactical station. "Nyton, pick your targets and fire at will."

In a bit of a snarling grin, Yukari replied, "Ryoukaishimashita!" Rolling away from another asteroid, the Chui slipped in a little closer -- and saw the ship phase through a small asteroid as if it were not there. The arrogance of such technology made her angry; such lazy piloting was dishonorable!

"Roger that, Taii!" Nyton said and he began to go on the offensive. The weapons had been reconfigured so that two transphasic beam weapon pods worked in tandem to provide a serious blanket of fire at enemy targets while the rest were committed to defense against asteroids and projectiles. Particle cannons were set to fire at the enemy in three's. The main cannon had been reverted back to pulse mode and Nyton was tracking with it while aware of energy conservation given the recharge time it took should he miss. With the data being fed from the remaining sensors he tried to again time his shots so that he could catch the enemy ships right around the time they came out of a phased state. He began to open fire with bursts from the particle cannons and the aether cannon towards targets that were in the middle of an attack on the Yui's to try and catch them when they were solid.

"Miyoko, see if you can find a way to disrupt their phasing ability. There has to be some way to jam it or maybe even overload their system from overuse." Nyton quickly said as he assaulted.

"Erm, well... Yes." Leutre said hesitantly as he lowered his eyes in embarrassment. "I could use a little help. Please. Just having trouble with this part here." He motioned to monitoring panel and stepped aside. "I studied the technical manual, really I did. I just can't seem to remember it very well. I guess the bump to my head knocked loose a few more nuts and bolts than I thought."

A warship's weapon console wasn't exactly familiar territory to Nyton, but the Nepleslian was still fairly well versed in weapon use. After all, many of the things that applied to power armors could apply to starships - just with different instrumentation and manner of applying what resources one had at their disposal.

More to the point: Nyton was not a bad shot. Aside from a few difficulties in ascertaining the scope of larger starship battles, he had been doing fine so far.

So it was rather disconcerting that he had failed to land a single hit on any of the seven enemy ships after a few moments went by. It wasn't just a matter of hitting them when he felt they might emerge from their phased state, but also just plain nailing them - the buggers were about as swift as some tiny fish in an aquarium that just didn't want to get caught!

After one of the remaining Yui-4s' underbelly exploded - making it 'dead int he water', the Geminis split, keeping 2 of their numbers on the remaining combat worthy Yui-class destroyers while the five others circled around the Miharu and began attacking with their rapid firing ventral positron cannons.

Miyoko nodded silently, ordering the Miharu's sensors to focus on the scouts before she started browsing the IES database for any information that could be used to disrupt the phasing.

"Better make it quick. They're starting to swarm us." Nyton said as he set the weapon pods on defense to try and keep the ships busy. "They shouldn't be able to shoot us if they stay phased. I remember that much from Taiie." The weapon pod pairs were using their transphasic beams in a rapid fire sequence to create a curtain of fire and prevent the ships from attacking while Nyton tried to pin down the ones that did attack with the main and particle cannons. He looked for an 'attack pattern' or a means where he could expect the SMX ships attack and try to beat them to the draw by holding back a little fire to right at the onset of attack. Unfortunately this could have a negative affect on their shields if he didn't shoot fast enough.

Sadly, Nyton's defensive precautions didn't do much else but slow down the incoming attacks of the Geminis. The Miharu was just one ship with 36 weapon pods and a smattering of extra weapons: even the Yui-4s - when they had been more numerous - had offered more of a challenge to weave and dodge around with their 56 older weapon pods.

Dozens of positron bolts began striking the Miharu. Fortunately, it appeared that the Miharu's shields actually worked - the tunneling cannon was not effortlessly shearing through. Unfortunately, the shield output wasn't quite enough to hold off the whole attack, so, the SMX scouts hits caused zesuaium armor plates to flake away here and there much like the feathers coming off a molting bird. The ship condition monitor besides Mizuho began to show, on a small 3-dimensional display similar to the ones the power armors had, regions going in the yellows and orange.

"Operation, can't you-ungh!" Kotori grabbed on her console to steady herself as the ship shook - she had never taken the time to strap herself with the safety harness. "Can't you get a good reading on those and tell me there's a way we can beat them?"

They're doing more damage than two destroyers and the battleship!