• If you were supposed to get an email from the forum but didn't (e.g. to verify your account for registration), email Wes at stararmy@gmail.com or talk to me on Discord for help. Sometimes the server hits our limit of emails we can send per hour.
  • Get in our Discord chat! Discord.gg/stararmy

RP: YSS Miharu Mission 1 "REAR GUARD", Day 5

"... If I didn't know you better, I would have taken that disturbing little spiel as a sign that you were too disoriented to put together a sentence that made any sense," Miyoko drew back from her inspection of Leutre's head and looked him in the eyes, a slightly exasperated expression on her face, "but I happen to know that you're just always like that."

She paused for a moment, skeptically. Finally, she conceded, "Okay, I'll take your word for it. Still, I'd like for you to try avoiding situations where you might get another blow to your head for a few weeks." The way that she stressed 'like' made it clear that she didn't expect that Leutre would actually follow her suggestion. "And if you do experience any headaches or dizziness, let me know."
 
Takuma nodded. "If when you say target, you mean the bridge crew, then the only real important member in my opinion would be the Taii. The MEGAMI would have all the navigation data, transmissions, and other data we need, assuming it doesn't purge its own database before we get to it."

He sighed after thinking about that possibility. "Maybe it would be in our best interest to take another officer, say navigation. What do you think?"
 
"First of all, Kimura-Hei, the commander of the enemy vessel wouldn't necessarily be a Taii. In fact, I don't believe the Black Spiral use the same rank system as we do unless they're trying to infiltrate," the warrant officer explained before looking up at him.

"But you are right, after the commander, it would be best to capture the navigator alive. The only problem is the other bridge crew, if there is any more, will get in the way very quickly after the surprise wears off." Masako explained as they entered the wardroom.

"The kitchen should be there," she pointed as she went off-topic for that one sentence before going back to business.

"I was thinking we each take a side of the bridge and sweep it clean of enemies," she went on explaining. "We will use stun on all of them using SMGs so we won't have to worry about picking and choosing targets. I want them out of commission before we lose our sense of surprise on them."
 
"Well, I don't think what they call themselves is important at the moment." Takuma said, shrugging. "About the plan anyway, I do believe it makes the most sense out of any of our other options. Once we teleport in, they would be stunned at the random appearance of our two power armors. By the time they could pull out guns or call for help, we should be able to neutralize them with little to no opposition."

"Of course, there should be some priority to it. For one, the officer in charge of communications should be taken out relatively fast, because he could send an alert to the rest of the ship the fastest. The commander may also have fast access to ship-wide communications. The others would more then likely be focused on their stations, so they would be in the middle of weapon checks and procedures based on their stations. They would have the hardest time calling for help over a ship-wide channel." Takuma sighed and added, "We also may not have the luxury or figuring out who is who in that short time. More likely then not, we will just have to pick targets and take them out."

On the topic of worst case scenarios, he started to think of what they could possible have in store for intruders on the bridge. "We should also we wary of any automated weaponry. I do not know the odds of them having any, but if they have any guns that the MEGAMI could control on the bridge, it wouldn't hesitate due to surprise like the rest of the crew would."

Sarcastically, he added, "Maybe if we are lucky enough, we can go up to the leader and ask him what kind of system they use for ranks before we shoot them."
 
"Yes, starting with the Commander and Communications Specialist, we will stun them all," Masako replied as she included Takuma's addition. "Though I don't believe the sarcasm was necessary," she began with a mild twitch of her ears. "We will have to be wary of automatic defenses...though I don't believe they would go through all the trouble setting up automatic defenses in the method you are expecting. These people don't seem to believe they are capable of being boarded," she said as she entered the kitchen.

"Oh! Freeman-Heisho must have been here," she commented as she trotted up to the buffet of sandwiches the blonde Yamataian had left for the crew. Only, she almost bumped into Ichigo and Nimura as they began to pick there own lunch out. "Oh, gomen," she apologized to the sprites quickly as she stepped back to allow them to pick out their sandwiches in peace. Turning back to Takuma, the raven-haired neko allowed her cheeks to turn a slight pink in embarassment as she lightly coughed into her fist.

"Anyway, I could be wrong...after all, I've never faced the Black Spiral before...only the Mishu. But from previous briefings, they seem quite arrogant in their methods. It leads me to believe that they could be quite arrogant to think they are capable of defending their own ship without such automatic defenses. But there is another possibility that we should be wary about. The possible presense of a Mishu/Neko hybrid or a Type One Mishu can't be ruled out. If either one of these are on the bridge, we may have to change our priorities to killing them as fast as possible."
 
After picking up their lunches, Ichigo and Nimura walked away to join Mara and Hinoto whom were seated at the larger table to the port side of the wardroom. There was a brief exchange of words between the four (or rather three, Nimura didn't utter a word at all) and seated themselves before starting to eat.

<center>* * *</center>

Yukari, stuck in the bridge and at first thinking she was overworked, found the situation to be not so bad as it really seemed. Part of the innovations on the NH-29 included a much more streamlined operating system and that helped cope with all the multitasking she was handling.

SPINE, namely, was useful for not having to manually type everything and handle most of the tasks with the C-IES with... after-thoughts. That was rather convenient - convenient enough so that when Yukari got used to it that she could pay more attention to what Kotori had actually been working on.

Some of the material had actually been about studying yamataian law. Kotori had never really come around to getting her officer training, which meant she had to get everything she needed piecemeal. Yukari knew all that laready though; more interesting were the simulations themselves.

One set of simulations were based on the data gathered on the giant SMX flagship while they had been escaping Taiie. On one hand there was an evaluation of the amount of damage the big ship could absorb and how much punishment it could deliver to select targets, from Nozomi scouts to Chiharu flagships - either singles or multiples.

Anything not capital-class got chewed up very quickly, especially to the FTL nullifying field that impeded the KFY vessels' capability to make the super-luminal jumps to get away from harm. The Yuumi battleships could soak in some punishment, but apparently were totally outgunned. The Irims and Arashis fared better in terms of how much firepower they could deliver (especially the positron cannons on the Irims, which ignored the SMX flagship's starbase-grade shielding) but they did not have the staying power of the Yuumi.

The only ship that really seemed to fare better was the Chiharu since it had the shielding and weapons to stand its ground for a time and manage to hit back with its positron weapons, though that was only a short lived advantage since the SMX vessel's weaponry could still cut it to ribbons fairly quickly. So many of the Chiharu's weapons bounced off the giant vessel's shields that much of its offensive potential was spoiled.

Another simulation had KFY vessels go kamikaze on the larger mishhuvurthyar behemoth... but that only met with limited success. The big ship was apparently made of something like pure zesuaium underneath the many-quilled exterior. That made it extremely, unreasonably tough... though Kotori added the note that once it sustained heavy damage, the very advantages of zesuaium would force it for weeks, if not months, of drydock repairs to recover.

Another simulation seemed slightly whimsical: how many Chiharu flagships could sneak up in system and hide within the 54 moons of Tsuyosa III, and how detectable they would be if they remained in CFS stealth/silent running. CFS stealth was risky, but afforded complete concealment as long as one put up with the complete blindness too.

Another simulation focused on actually testing on what could crack the defenses on Melisson's big black vessel. Most torpedoes didn't seem to do squat to the shield since it took the yield of over 10 of them hitting at once to overwhelm the SMX flagship's shields. On the other hand, the Subspace Detonator AS-7 torpedo could still bring the shields and engines of the spiked monstrosity down just as it did to any other Star Army vessel... to which Kotori noted "That's what Melisson gets for copying us". The downside was that the Mishhu ship had enough scalar arrays to take down any other torpedoes that was fired on it while the CFS (and in turn the torpedoes going toward it) was down.

Another simulation seemed more up Yukari's alley, especially due to Kotori's note of "Can you do this Yuka?" The simulation took the Miharu as a model and pitted it against the Mishhu flagship with emphasis being to avoid the thousands of aetheric shots fired at it.

The simulation outlined several things: firstly, the mishhu ship had so many weapons all around it that only having one target facing it wasted a lot of its damage potential - that's why it had a tendency to do barrel rolls when facing single targets that required more firepower like Akina no Iori. Not only did this allow it to spread the damage it sustained from one source, but it allowed it to fire all its weapons on one facing while the others charged up for when the firing arc cycling would allow them to fire again.

According to the simulation, each quill took 15 seconds to charge. Kotori noted "Stick to one side of it, and it has much less opportunity to fire on you while you can concentrate damage on one specific area".

Then came with evading the beams proper. The quills fired beams which were limited to the speed of light. To a ship able to move at 0.8c, dodging their linear path if there was a certain distance wasn't much of a problem, especially with WARMS. The closer the distance, though, the less the time to reaction was. To increase the odds of hitting a single target that did evasive maneuvers with a system like WARMS, the black flagship had a tendency to fire its weapons in random and wide-spaced fan-like patterns, instead of concentrating its attacks to chew a tough target apart. The trick then became for a navigator to be able to navigate through the intricate lattice of several thousands deadly beams; dodging unscathed was harder, but sustaining only one hit versus several hundreds (or thousands) was significantly less deadly to a small vessel that wasn't a STL sitting duck.

Adding to the difficulty, however, were the hyperspace torpedoes, which could be fired anytime the interdiction field wasn't up and destroy the Miharu in one or two hits. WARMS would provide a one to three second warning about the launch before the torpedo would instantly cross the distance, which meant that the torpedoes had to be dodged in priority, despite the beam pattern that the navigator would have to be dodging at the time.

The Miharu's weapons actually fared better than Melisson's flagship under 2 AU. The main gun in line mode was accurate and, with time, could possibly bore through the shield. The AS-5 torpedoes would function fairly well within an interdiction field and the AS-7 would have little problem in the other case. Cracking the protective layer remained one of the main obstacles, along with the limited power reverses of the Miharu and the limited reaction time the crew would have to react to any change of tactics on the part of Melisson.

<center>* * *</center>

In the medlab, Kotori did a relatively good job of seeming to ignore the conversation between Leutre and Miyoko, apparently self-absorbed in absently stroking her black hair while looking to the side.

Though she tried to seem unobstrusive, those neko ears probably picked up everything in the whole medlab, from Leutre's whispers to the hum of the ST backup reading device.
 
The Jôtô Hei gave a low whistle. "I've never actually seen a Mishhu in person before, let alone a hybrid. Something tells me I don't want to meet them." He stood their thinking about it for a second. Shuddering, Takuma shook his head and got back on task.

"How much firepower would it take to defeat a Neko/Mishhu hybrid? I believe we could take on a few Type 1 Mishhu, but not many. I do not know enough about the Mishhu to know about how much of a beating a hybrid can take."

The Yamataian glanced over at the buffet of sandwiches. Seizing the opportunity of an empty line, he quickly stepped over, picked out an especially good looking sandwich, and jumped back into the conversation.
 
One wire, two wire, red wire, orange wire, Hoo ha, yeah!

Tom had finished tying a major sector of the wire matrix.

"SUPER EASY BABY," he shouted with a thumbs up to nobody in particular. "YEAHHHHHH!"

Now it was time to test the strength of the wires he had just repaired. He walked up to the nearby control console and input commands into the system to send small test pulses of energy through the fold system. If all things turned out well, it would mark a major breakthrough in the repair process.
 
Things seemed to check out. That connection was as good as new. All that remained was tedious, but relatively minor stuff.

"Please forgive me, Freeman-Heisho. I really do not mean to be so difficult." Miharu apologized to him, seeing that he was alone and talking to himself anyways.
 
Masako frowned as he grabbed a plate and began to pick out several sandwiches varying from tuna to turkey and a few other meat and vegetable combinations. "Honestly....all I've really faced have been Pods...en masse," she replied with a sigh. "I haven't had the displeasure of facing a Mishhu/Neko hybrid yet...and I hope I never have to." she said, remember the first briefing she had on the Miharu and the long explaination of how the Mishhu and hybrids were created by PNUgen, the very same organization that had created her. It felt like a betrayal between child and parent for the young neko, the very people who created her had created her enemy.

"Anyway," she began again after a moment of brooding. "If worse come to worse, just stay behind me and concentrate on the neko crew," she said as she began heading out to the wardroom. "I'll take care of any Mishhu or hybrids on the bridge, ok?" she finished with a gentle and friendly smile before leaving the kitchen and looking around. Spotting the group of sprites taking a break to eat, the young neko walked over to them and took the nearest empty seat with a cute, friendly smile to the four sprite. "Itadakimasu," she said politely before taking a sandwich and taking small bites.
 
Nyton began to waken from the ST process shortly after it was complete. He shook the sleep from his eyes and sat up. His memory backup began to update him to whatever he missed while unconcious. "Very well then, I suppose Kotori-Taii is next then." he said before he stood up.
 
Kotori discarded the lock of hair she had been stroking back behind her shoulder as she stood up and walked across the lab. She stopped in front of the Nepleslian, pale as a porcelain doll, and craned her head up to look at the man whom towered 9 inches over her.

"You will stay with your Nepleslian body, I take it," she said once her golden eyes met his.

<center>* * *</center>

Mara turned to Masako: "Hello Juni. I'll get to outfitting the suits right after I'm done with the meal."

Hinoto frowned at Mara. "Mara, hush. We aren't supposed to talk while we are eating."

Mara turned to her white-haired counterpart. "Talking while chewing is bad. Not talking during meals is samurai stuff."

"Maybe Hinoto wants to be a samurai?" Ichigo suggested.

"Ketsurui Samurai are born. You can't just become one," Hinoto pointed out.

Mara nodded along. "Yeah, Hinoto's not aiming to be a samurai. She's going to be a comfort girl."

Hinoto blinked. "I'm a sprite for starship operations - not some comfort girl."

"Not yet," Mara corrected.

Hinoto pouted at Mara. "Baka."

"Why a comfort girl?" Ichigo asked, not seeing why Mara had brought it up.

Mara pointed Hinoto. "She went to the Chui and kissed her on the lips, and after that asked her if she felt more energetic and then lead her in the baths so she could-"

"I was being nice!" Hinoto retorted. "Besides, you're in no position to talk, Sigurd-lover."

Mara was struck dumb for a moment. Nimura grabbed her tray and raised it as a shield when Mara loudly protested, "I don't love the custodian!"
 
"Lady Luck willing I won't get myself killed until at least next week. Your concern is ever so touching, though." Leutre reached out and playfully ruffled Saito's hair, grinning all the while. "I really want to take you home if I ever make it back in one piece, it's nice having a real doctor aboard. My own Da would probably say something like, 'By the Nine Circles of Hell, it's just a concussion. Take your stims and painkillers like a big boy, then get back in that maintenance shaft!' or, 'Damn it, Leu, just get the field surgery kit and stop bleeding all over the console. We'll have the doctor sew them on proper when we get back to station tomorrow.'

A hint of nostalgia became apparent into his smile. "Through nations and wonders a spacer may roam, be it ever so humble his ship is still home."
 
Miyoko almost slapped Leutre as her ruffled her hair. Almost. The gesture just felt so condescending to her--the fact that Leutre had 13 inches over her, making her look like a child in comparison, didn't help. And the way he just kept brushing off her attempts to help him with... with folksy anecdotes and poetry, she told herself. At this rate, she expected that he'd lose a leg by the end of the week and refuse to let her look at it on the grounds that his da once repaired an entire flaming ship with only a pipe wrench shortly after being decapitated.

He wasn't taking her seriously, that was it. He wasn't taking anything seriously, and never had, that she'd seen. While she found the trait to be endearing--or, at least, amusing--when off-duty, when he carried that attitude into her lab, it could become a pain in the butt to deal with him. She didn't want to imagine what it would be like being his superior officer.

Flatly, she said, "Just doing my job, Veressis-hei," before turning toward her superiors. For the time being, she was silent, giving Nyton the opportunity to answer Kotori's question.
 
Nyton looked down (he couldn't help but to look down) and gazed back into Kotori's eyes. He studied her face and paid special attention to her eyes. He searched for anything that she might have meant behind the flat simple tone to her statement: Disappointment. Confusion. Derision. Inquiry. Contempt. Anything he could use to determine her opinion of his decision.

"For the time being Kotori-sama. Should I die then I have no problems with being revived in a Yamataian body. I simply ask that every effort to preserve my life in this body be made, even if I must use extensive cybernetics to survive. It is simply my way of life. Given enough replacement I may even be able to surpass the abilities of an ID-SOL." Nyton replied as a simple matter of fact. He declined to show any sort of emotion behind the reply. His long winded discussion of philosophy with the Miharu was still fresh in his mind and now safely recorded within the ST device. He would continue the discussion if need be.

Nyton studied Kotori because her reaction to his decision could affect his very choice to follow her, not to mention his continued service in the Empire.
 
"Then best that you do not come to harm in the first place," The nekovalkyrja replied before moving around Nyton to sit on the cushions he had rested on moments before. "The restriction order is going to prevent me from being able to promote you, though."
 
Miyoko quietly moved into position next to the backup table. "When you're ready, Ketsurui-taii." She didn't dare begin until Kotori signalled the end of her conversation with Nyton.
 
Kotori swung her legs around and reclined properly against the cushions so Miyoko would be able to position the ST device's reader correctly though her eyes still fixed Nyton, expecting a reply.
 
Nyton watched Kotori as she reclined for the ST. She seemed to expect some sort of reply from him. His position was not an easy one to be in and neither was hers it would seem. He calmly held his hands behind his back and nodded. "I understand Kotori-sama. There is only so much you can do at the moment." he replied. The statement was simple but like still waters, it hid a deeper meaning underneath. However he hoped what was said and not said had been understood.
 
Kotori looked to Nyton a moment longer, frowning lightly as she considered his words before she set her head down correctly on the headrest. She took a breath and then nodded to Miyoko. "I am ready."
 
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn more…