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

"Maybe it has something to do with the weap-" Nyton held on as the ship was shaken. "-with the weapons on their ship. Try to scan that with the remaining sensors." he suggested before he resumed their defense. Nyton was no physicist so he had no idea what the principles behind the phasing were. For now all he could do was keep their opponents phased so that they couldn't attack. The transphasic weapon pods had the fastest firing rate so they had the best chance to maintain a constant stream at their opponents. He tried to add the other pods fire to fill in the gaps between shots. "They can't be that good enough to dodge everything I throw at them."

Were it not for the earlier torpedo detonation which had taken nearly half of the Miharu's weapon pods, Nyton might have had an easier time of it fending off the scouts. With the escort's arsenal spread out to fend off the five SMX scouts, Nyton just didn't seem to be able to lay down a consistent barrage - at least not with the delay their shots took at 300 000 kilometers.

Yukari wasn't having much of an easier time either. With the main sensors down, she had lost the use of WARMS.

The Miharu was tough and its shields were saving it from being quickly ripped to pieces. The Mishhuvurthyar scoutships apparently also didn't have the luxury of accurately targeting specific spots on the experimental yamataian vessel - Nyton's shooting was good for at least that. However, it didn't stop the increasing number of scars from appearing all over the ship, some deep enough to reach the second layer of the ship's armor.

A few more good hits at some specific places and the hull would breach.

"Nyton, don't bother with t-the main gun! It's on a fixed forward mount and won't hit them anytime soon." The Taii was busy at her own console, trying to gather what information she could about the way the ships moved. While Miyoko was on sensors, Kotori was actually trying to gather more information over the visual spectrum.

A notice came up over Yukari's console. One of the Yui-4s was hailing them.

Yukari was struggling to dodge shots she could not see, while also dodging asteroids she could sometimes see. She was not doing well, and it was her fault. She wanted to just fire a torpedo in the general direction of the ships and blow everything away, but that would destroy the crew and the Yui as well --

"Nani?" she said, the uncomfortable shaking nearly tossing her from her seat. She belted a portion of her harness on as she responded to the hail.

"Yui-4, what is it?" Yukari said in Japanese. She peeled behind an asteroid, only to be shot at anyway. She hauled the vessel downward, back to where the asteroids were thicker.

The audio reply came slightly garbled, "Those ships-" There was the sound of something smashing itself apart in the background. "can't phase for more than 19 seconds! We suspect they don't have shielding either, so all they have to protect them is a zanarium/durandium alloyed hull."

"We saw how weak the armor was back at Taiie. Chui, do you think you can bring us in a little closer to them? Hell, ram into them if you have to! I don't have enough weapon pods to barrage them effectively at our range." Nyton said. He was tired of being outmaneuvered by these scouts and with the limited resources at hand he was spread thin as it was. With the announcement of the nineteen second time limit he assigned one transphasic weapon pod to follow each of the five ships around the Miharu's hull. Any other type of weapon pod he had left he set it to assist the single transphasic to fire in the area of the ship so that it would have less of a wide area to maneuver. Since there were five targets he added one particle cannon (with an adjusting radius protocol so that if one loses the target another unoccupied one would pick it up and the previous shoot at a different one) to the ensemble to try and also create the blanket. If they were quick enough they could maybe exaust the phasing with their rapid weapon fire. Nyton then switched the main cannon to beam mode in the hopes that if a ship roamed in front of them and he could keep the beam steady enough it would outlast their phasing.

Kotori frowned, piecing a few things together as she saw what her two senior officers were up to. 19 seconds was an enormous amount of time while the the midst of a fight. Still, they had something to go on now.

The black-haired nekovalkyrja commander was about to talk, but a violent shake of the ship almost threw her facefirst into her console and nearly made her bite through her own tongue. One positron cannon had hit on the Miharu's 'tail', hitting much closer to where the bridge was.

"Nevermind the ramming! We'll focus on using the main gun instead." Kotori declared, feeling that their main gun was probably their best chance out of their current predictament. "Return weapon pods to the ship. Bring us about and target Gemini 5. Tactical, I want you to keep firing the main gun and not let up until its destroyed. Navigation, I want you to keep our nose toward Gemini 5, no matter what."

Gemini 5 was one of the SMX scouts fighting the Yuis. Kotori was hoping that if they could scrape that one off the Yui's back, their odds would improve a bit. Seeing that the beam mode had no delay to target, could be fire continuously and accurately... Kotori was hoping that with Nyton's and Yukari's effort combined they could focus on destroying each ships individually.

19 seconds? A lifetime! Yukari thought sourly, briefly acknowledging the message before having to grasp onto her chair to avoid being thrown out of it. She finally put on her seat's harness, growling as she used what little sensor array she had to find Gemini 5 and point straight at it. She tamped the throttle just a little bit, enough to give her more maneuverability at low speeds. She was not going to fail!

"Targeting Gemini 5." Nyton said as he tried to compensate for not hitting the Yui. Nyton had begun returning the weapon pods as he aimed. Once he achieved lock he knew they were about to use a tactic he thought would only work if they were lucky. "Firing main cannon." he reported and got ready to focus the beam on the target for all he was worth.

Masako smiled over at Leutre before jogging over to where he was. "Ok, I'll give you a quick explaination, since all three of us should be doing this correctly in order to get this working." she explained as she stood beside the Nepleslian and pointed at the monitor.

"You see, these sixteen numbers are the field compatibility factors for the CFS units. To calibrate the CFS units efficiently, all the compatibility factors must accurately..." she began before fading off as she saw the holowindows around the monitor. "Um...Veressis-Hei, did you notice the windows around your head while you were working?" she asked as she tapped the window to highlight the calibration procedure and magnify it for Leutre. "This should help more than me explaining it," she replied with a weak smile. "I may have the knowledge necessary for being a Technical Sentry, but I'm not good at teaching it," she said.

Frowning, she then looked over at the enlisted man. "Please, skim that section in the window if you stumble a bit. I'll look over your shoulder and help you when I can, this way...you'll learn, ne?"

Firing on a vessel which had been preoccupied with fighting another ship had mixed blessings. The advantage was that when Nyton began firing, the other ship had already been phased - they wouldn't need to wait as long for to to be forced to reappear.

The disadvantage was that the five other vessels on the Miharu's back, without the weapon pods, only had the particle cannon turrets to watch for as they risked coming closer and firing more accurate shots from their ventral positron cannon toward areas of the Miharu's hull which had already been softened up.

As Yukari pursued the other ship Nyton was painting with the Miharu's main cannon at about 80 000 kilometers, the other scouts hounded the Miharu close, between 20 000 to 35 000 kilometers - getting bold as their 'death from a thousands papercut' tactic seemed to be proving once again a success.

"Tactical, actively try grabbing the scouts with all our graviton beams." Kotori ordered. "Navigation, try expanding our combined field and use it as an antenna to send out an interphase inversion pulse - then fire through them all with projected energy beams."

Leutre tried to listen to Masako, but found himself distracted by the protesting of his stomach as the ship continued to shake from the blows of SMX scouts. "I'll do my best. What else is there to do, neh?" He smiled weakly as he fought down his nausea. Masako was being quite patient with him, which was more than he could say for most people he'd met in the Star Army. For that he felt he owed her his best attempt, and then some.

Taking a deep breath and trying to clear his mind of his motion sickness, he began to diligently work away at the consoles. His eyes flickered back and forth between consoles as he worked, taking up so much of his concentration that his nausea was pushed to the back of his mind. 'Maybe this whole thing about trying instead of relying purely on Lady Luck isn't so bad after all.'

Yukari did as she was told. Recalling Kotori's previous orders, she kept herself in a straight line, but also projected out the CFS using most of the Miharu's systems. She recalled how to take out a Ghost Mishhuvurthyar from her intelligence training, in a brief flash of intelligence; she slowed to let the ships get within the field, as close as she could afford to let them, and then set the inverted pulse off. It was a risk Kotori wanted to take, Yukari realized, so she took it.

She slowed down, just a little, to let the Mishhu ships get even closer to them, to make it easier for Nyton to do his job. She was ready to fire projected energy beams using the Hoshi's CFS systems.

As Nyton focused the beam on Gemini 5 he reached over with his free hand and began to work the controls for the graviton beams. "Roger that Taii. Targeting pursuers." he said. Once he had the targets locked he opened 'fire' with the beams. "Graviton beams have been activated." Nyton reported.

One consequence of expanding the Combined Field had been to put the Mishhuvurthyar scouts inside the Miharu's protective shield bubble... which meant the experimental escort was naked before the attakcs of its opponents.

Several shots rained of the vessel, some severely crumpling through the armor while others dealt even more arm. One positron blast destroyed the Miharu's ventral port particle cannon turret; another smashed against the side of the Hoshi's nose and ruined the escape pod within; some savaged over the port side of the rollbar, crippling a good third of the variable weapon pod launchers as their scorched fabrication modules were exposed to space; yet another struck the Matter Collection System assembly in front of the Miharu's starboard wing egine section; and finally a tunneling bolt crashed through the crew cabin right next to Nyton's quarters, filling the room with flames before the internal forcefields went on, preventing the anything in the room from being sucked out (though most of the furnishings were charred by that point and of little value anyways).

Retribution came by the way of Yukari's prepared beam attacks. Almost a dozen white lances shot away from the combined field surrounding the Miharu's tail section, spearing each of the enemy vessels through at least once or twice.

For a moment, they were frozen within the grasp of the Nyton-controlled graviton beams... and the next they blossomed into explosions. A bare second later, the Miharu's main gun sliced through the suddenly unphased Gemini 5... promply turning that vessel too into so much wreckage.

"Nyton, grab some of the bigger pieces of debris from those ships and haul them in the port bay - I want to give Saito-Hei the chance to analyze them. Yukari, turn the Miharu toward Gemini 2 so we can finish him off with our main gun too."

Gemini 2, whom had contently been picking away at its Yui, suddenly found itself alone against three relatively pissed Star Army vessels. The scout did an about turn and its gravimetric engines flared as it accelerated away, not even taking the care of weaving around the asteroid and simply using its phasing ability to get through a cluster of them.

No sooner had it suddenly elude their grasp that Gemini 2 promptly had its label turn gray - one of the Kinkou Irim, done with destroying the Xianthrafruglu gunships, had used its transposition cannon over the vicinity of the fleeing scout, destroying it and many of the surrounding asteroids.

Kotori blinked at the display and leaned back againsrt her chair. "Nevermind, just get that wreckage."

There were no more enemy ships on sensors.

"Roger that, Taii." Nyton said and launched the hull regenerative pods from the remaining launchers while he targeted some of the larger pieces of wreckage. The threat of enemy attack was still present so he continued to keep an eye out for anymore hostile ships. As he towed pieces in he scanned them as best he could with the functional sensors against any dangerous emissions such as radiation or hostile lifeforms that may have somehow survived. Once the scans returned negative he towed the wreckage into the port multi-function bay but kept a shield around the pieces in case he missed anything or there were any unfrozen toxic fluids that would leak onto the floor.

Once the doors had closed Nyton turned to Kotori. "Wreckage has been secured. Hull regeneration pods have been launched to assist with repairs. Ship status is fairly critical. We have lost ventral port particle cannon, a third of our weapon pod launchers, one of the crew quarters, and the foreward escape pod on the Hoshi. Matter Collection System has been damaged as has much of our armor. No sign of any hostile reinforcements yet." he reported dryly.

"Status is critical?" Kotori sounded amused - from her tone of voice, she didn't appear to agree. "Thank you. You may stand down alert status - give the people in the subdeck some impression of safety; they've deserved it."

The Taii looked over to Yukari. "We will leave what remains of the Kinkou carrier group to tend for their own. Yukari, please bring us about and head for the scrapped Yui recon destroyer we came across earlier right by the rim of the asteroid field."

Kotori glanced back to Nyton. "Claymere-Juni, I want you to assemble an M6 armor team to send over to that ship. You are to look for any survivors still aboard and see if we could salvage their store of AS-5a torpedoes." The neko made stroke over her hair only to find it in disarray, and noticed she was still dressed in her yukata with nothing underneath! I commanded my first starship battle in a bathrobe! I'd probably make Rufus proud. She resisted the urge to eyeroll. "I, well... believe you should take Kurohoshi-Juni, Saito-hei and Veressis-hei along with you."

"I would ask that you let me talk to Veressis-hei before he climbs into his armor... he was fading in and out of lucidity the last time I saw him. I'm sure you can see how giving a disoriented man an armor suit might be a bad idea." After checking her console again to make sure that the MEGAMI was taking charge of sealing off all of the breached areas, Miyoko turned ship operations over to it for the time being and rose to her feet.

"Of course," Kotori returned with a nod to the science specialist. "Veressis-hei happens to likely be the best pick out of our five technicians for this sort of salvage job. I'd rather keep the others working on the Miharu." She looked over at Nyton a moment, recalling the note he had sent her the evening before and then gave them a quick nod indicating they could dismiss.

Mizuho stared silently, teeth nudging delicately against her lips. She needed to better understand Miharu's systems, this much was rather certain. That said, she had hoped oh so fervently that, when Kotori had chosen to dive into combat, no miracle cure would come. It would have been silence, the silence one doesn't awaken from.

"That was well-played, Kotori." Her voice betrayed none of the utter disappointment heavy on her mind. Instead, she rose slowly, brushed herself off, straightened her hair, and gave a slightly distant smile. "If you'll excuse me, I need to finish reading the inner workings of the Miharu, and then go back to pondering every possible way one could be killed by a squid..."

She waited... actually waited for Kotori to offer a response.

Yukari only nodded and turned the ship toward the crippled Yui. She decided, somewhere during the battle, that it was better to keep her mind clear and execute Kotori's orders rather than fight them internally. She was not a pilot, she was Navigation, and it was something more than just being a pilot in combat, which she also had not done before -- not like this.

She did not sigh as she slowly came close to the Yui, the holes in its armor not bothering her as much now that she was trying not to think. A brief call came across from the Yui 4 they had managed to save -- it was a Neko giving a brief word of thanks -- but Yukari did not acknowledge it, instead passing it on to Kotori as a text panel in front of her in a low corner.

Had we done things Claymere-Juni or I had thought of, we would be dead, would we not? Yukari wanted to be sure of that, but in the end, she could only be sure that if she had been in command, no one would have been saved. Instead the ship was moderately damaged and they had preserved hundreds of lives. The feeling somehow was not resonating with her as she thought it would have.

The ship came to orbit about one kilometer away from the downed Yui. Yukari did not peel herself from her seat, instead going over monitors and practicing doing things with her hands. Her SPINE had become slightly unsettling.