RP: YSS Eucharis [Mission 11.3] Back Into Chaos

Engineering

Kumiko looked up momentarily from her containment work, and responded to Sune. "This is Endoh-Heisho, Takeda-Heisho is moving out to start repairs on the CFS systems now, I'm running damage control as best I can until then. No real estimate on time yet."

Jamming Station

Yaichiro deployed his own NSDs...however, instead of deploying all six, he just deployed four. His tactic was to make it so that he deployed them in three sets of two...every time a third of the energy in the NSDs was expended, he'd swap out two for a fresh pair and recharge them in their holders...thereby allowing himself to field four indefinitely, regardless of if the CFS was up or not.

"I've got 4 NSDs out, cycling them in pairs, but I'm thinking of deploying them rearward just in case they try to sneak up behind us once we get further in -- we have plenty of NSDs up front at the moment...too many more may make us all the more obvious. Thoughts, Klein-Shosa?"

Helen was being very specific in her orders to the team, and since Hanako had left her in charge, it meant he had to get consent for every little idea he had...annoying to him, but necessary. At least he was answering to someone better at PA combat than he was.

Engineering

Junko looked up from the damage control station, giving a nod of thanks to Endoh before resuming her packing. Finished, she slung a portable repair kit over her shoulder, now stuffed with other damage control equipment, and made her way up to the catwalk and to the port maintenance conduit loop hatch.

She set down the pack and triggered the conduit's hatch release before opening a comm link to the Bridge. “Bridge, this is Takeda. I'm requesting the port-side maintenance conduit blast shutters be unlocked.”

Bridge

"Jalen-Chui here, releasing the locks on the port conduits as requested. Work as quickly as possible, we have no idea how long the ships escorting us will refrain from firing." Sune replied as he entered the necessary commands.

He then sent a command via Charisma to Victory and Mango

Victory and Mango Hei, report to the Cargo bay and effect damage control and repair ASAP.

Click to expand...

He turned to Hanako, "Ma'am, with your permission, I would like to vent the atmosphere to attempt to flush out the worst of the radioactivity."

Jamming Station

The initial group of blackcoats were now dead.

An alarm went off throughout the station.

Ahead of them were a number of locked doorways and off to either side they'd find crew cabins.

- - -

Eucharis Bridge

"Good idea, but I do not think it will be necessary. Radiation levels seem to be dropping off rapidly now," Hanako told Sune. "Hopefully we can stay out of combat for the moment. I am worried that the Lorath do not intend to destroy the station but rather to capture it. I would rather see it destroyed. Hopefully our fleet will arrive soon to ensure that."

LSDF Trishka - YSS Eucharis

"Yamataian vessel, do you require aid with your repairs?" Asked the Lorath commander once again, her tone quite neutral, but on the other end of the comm-line she was losing her patience for the lack of a response, even if it were a polite decline to her offer. It also seemed quite obvious that the Yamataians were up to something, but she was not about to shoot them without proof.

Jamming Station

Watching the carnage through the deployed NSD units, Helen found that the corridor was clear enough to her satisfaction. That was when she opened the door fully, and motioned the Elysian infantryman through. Once the squad was in motion down the corridor, she took note of the crew quarters which they were passing... leaving them uncleared could possibly leave them with a threat from behind. For her though, it was a simple matter of what to do.

"Papadopoulos, continue onward, Yaichiro, Takeyu with us, Kiko and Harris, visual confirmation on the rooms being cleared. Take out any survivors." Helen ordered simply as she walked past the crew quarters, raising both aether-projector equipped arms, and firing through the doors of each room they passed before deploying one of her own NSD units into each room to clear out any survivors of the wash of aether and heat. That left the task of actually looking into the rooms to confirm that they were cleared to the two covering the rear.

"Yaichiro, what kind of internal defenses should we expect to encounter, if any?" Helen asked as she recalled her NSDs after they finished their respective sweeps, she then sent them out ahead of the group, as she used them to peek around the next corridor intersection to check for any incoming company.

Jamming Station

Takeyu nodded lightly with his weapon raised and glanced from side to side as his drones continued to scan the corridors for hostiles. Only those guys were encountered, he thought suspiciously to himself as he followed behind Helen.

Eucharis Bridge

Sune looked at his sensors and found that the radiation levels were in fact diminishing. "A by product of the weapons fire no doubt... what..." he noticed an energy beam being directed at the ship. A quick check with Charisma showed that they were receiving a laser communication.

"Ma'am, the Lorath ship appears to be attempting to communicate with us over laser." He informed her as he pulled up the incoming message, and played it over the bridge speakers.

"...There were originally no defenses nor crew in this area. In its original form this was a largely automated facility which was guarded and serviced by assigned ships. Cheaper to produce, minimal loss of life if it had to be destroyed. The modifications in this area are extremely extensive. Full blown refit...still, there were more than enough sensors to detect all the Aether you just fired into the area. They'll probably converge on this position very shortly."

Yaichiro looked to Helen's PA, and felt...disgust at her actions. She used deadly force so easily, even on potentially unarmed soldiers. However, where would they put prisoners even if she didn't?

"If there are any unarmed survivors in the future like this, perhaps we should consider stunning them and melting the locks on their doors instead of indiscriminately liquidating them. War with these specific people hasn't been declared just yet, and the Empire has certain laws we need to uphold. There will definitely be people behind us as we move regardless of how many people are killed along this particular path. We'll just have to cover our rear." He worded it as a recommendation, but his voice had a slightly cold edge to it...he did not approve of this SAINT-style whole sale slaughter and was getting tired of letting the lower ranked officer have free reign.

“Aye aye, sir. I'll report in once I have a better idea of the damage.”

As the comm link closed, Junko shoved the pack into the conduit and crawled in after it. She pushed it ahead of her, soon reaching the junction with the pylon conduit. Making the turn, she continued her forward progress. Soon, evidence of the brief engagement became obvious within the conduits. Pockets of vapor drifted through the narrow space as some lights blinked on and off, trying to compensate for local power loss throughout areas of the pylon.

Finally reaching the end of the conduit, she triggered a final hatch release and wedged herself into the cramp CFS generator space. The damage here was monstrously clear, if from nothing else than the multiple hull breaches where entire hull panels appeared to have been blown away. The main generator lay inactive and most of the distortion coils were sitting idle. A few were even appeared to be smoking, the ablating material being sucked out of the breaches.

Junko quickly opened the pack and pulled out the laptop before plugging it into a local data port. She let the diagnostic software run while triggering her suit comm.

“Bridge, Takeda. I'm in the CFS space now and the damage looks quite extensive, but I won't have a specific timeline to repair until the diagnostic scan completes. If I had to guess I'd say it will be a while before I can get full functionality back.”

Eucharis Bridge

Blast, we need to restore the CFS if we are going to have a chance in any sort of hostility. thought Sune.

Turning to Hanako he said, "Taisa, Takeda-Heisho is assessing the condition of the port side CFS. Her initial prognosis is not promising though ma'am. Perhaps we could try reinitializing the starboard CFS and configure it to extend over the port side. But that would greatly reduce the effectiveness, I estimate it would give us at most 25% of shield strength if we can keep it stable."

"Jamming" Station
Kiko frowned but obeyed, looking into each room for survivors with her drones' visual sensors, and those on her Mindy's body when she could. At least this time Helen hadn't required her to kill the survivors. She could still tell herself that she hadn't killed any civilians herself.

While waiting for the diagnostic scan to complete on the laptop, Junko moved ahead with some basic preparations. The crowded space was mostly decompressed by this point, but she fished around for some material to patch the breaches with. She found a few suitable panels and augmented those with some she pulled out of the pylon conduit. Layering them in position, she applied some of the sealant she had brought along in the pack and finished it off with a dose of molecure tape from the CASTER. It was no armor; indeed, the hasty patches would offer little protection at all, save from loose matter in space wandering into the interior of the compartment. But true hull repairs would have to wait until they could get the fabrication units to make replacement armor.

That done, she looked around at the machinery, trying to see how she would approach the mess. A few cables and power relays were obviously ruined, either still smoking or blackened from power surges. She ripped the most obvious out and set them in a loose coil in the corner. Then she went around and started removing access panels. She couldn't tell what units were going to need what repairs yet, but she wasn't going to waste time fiddling with latches and coverings when she did know.

Done with the obvious work for the moment, she moved back over to the laptop and watched the scan progress.

YSS Eucharis

"We do not require assistance. We need the jamming to end," Hanako replied to the Lorath. She could see from internal diagnostics Junko and Yaichiro were doing an excellent job so far.

Meanwhile, the rest of the First Expeditionary Fleet showed up in the outskirts of the system and opened a laser channel to Eucharis to get information on the situation.

Jamming Station

It was eerily silent. The enemies were waiting. Meanwhile, some sort of field that disrupted phasing came online.

Jamming Station

Michael frowned as he did what he was told, his eyes open as he cautiously moved down the corridor. The order to kill everyone wholesale was...

It was...

The Elysian's eyes narrowed even more, Michael remembering what happened to his birth parents, and the endless cycle of hate that seemed to swirl throughout the Kikyo Sector. This entire thing screamed wrong, evil to him.

Opening a private communication channel, he sent a simple text message to the people in the squad he knew he could trust: Kiko, and Yaichiro.

"Jamming" station
Kiko's reply comes by encrypted telepathy sent to Michael and Yaichiro, her 'tone' purged of all emotion. "I agree, but we can't go against orders. Perhaps we should offer our recommendations to Klein-Shosa?"

Jamming Station

With the corridor cleared, and still quite a distance away from the central portion of the station, Helen weighed the amount of time which had passed in relation to their current progression. They were moving slow, dreadfully slow in her eyes, and she felt disgusted by it. It was just like most of the reports she had read, and it was just like being back on that planet... the Eucharis' crew moved slow, and she had a feeling why, but that feeling became moot as she noticed a change in sensor readings.

"Halt." Helen spoke simply as she held her fist up beside her head in a traditional 'stop moving' gesture. "They know we're here, and we're moving so slowly. We need to pick up the pace and move decisively. Especially because my sensors have detected an anti-phasing field. Papadopoulos' rifle is now next to useless, and that was our main method of being 'careful' in this venture. Tighten the formation, and let's move, double time." Helen spoke, before her Kylie began to hover off of the deck. As her Kylie hovered, the CFS output increased, and would likely incinerate anything that was a soft target. It was a flagrant method of ensuring that they would not be bogged down by mere infantry. "Papadopoulos, move out, Yaichiro, tell Papadopoulos where to go, turn by turn, your best guesses as to the fastest route to a location where we can at least gather information as to the station's function, and how we could shut it down." With the orders given, Helen and her Kylie hovered and would take off along the corridor's path as soon as Papadopoulos would start moving.

Jamming Station

This was leaving a bad taste in Takeyu's mouth, he didn't agree with killing possible innocents - even if those innocents were part of the enemy faction they were fighting.

Granted, he knew that if they were in a combat zone that they could still pose a threat but he still couldn't agree to it, not unless he saw them readily aiming a weapon toward him or his squadmates. The Chui has already showed me that not all NMX kill on sight, that one neko we ran into on that station for example did 'not' open fire on us, though I honestly wanted to kill her when I saw what she was doing, but she cooperated.. he mentally sighed at that.

A small curse left his lips as he looked through his drones as they checked each and every room that Helen had fired into, searching for possible hostiles. This was the side of war he did not like, the side of war he could never approve of, slaughtering of innocent lives.

Yet, as he thought about it, didn't the NMX themselves not care? one of the things he also remembered about the previous mission that he had joined the Chui in was them finding several civilians getting ready to be slaughtered and processed into food. His expression shifted into one of weary and disgust.

However, deep down inside he was asking himself one question: How does it make us look any better killing their own innocent people, when they kill ours? Doesn't it make us look just as evil as them? Is it truly justice? he shook his head in an effort to clear his thoughts. He knew he had his orders and he would follow them to the letter as a soldier of the Yamatai Star Empire.

Though his duty as a soldier also meant that he had to keep an eye on his fellow squadmates, and he would make doubly sure of that in Helens case.

He song the creed in his mind, remembering it well, he had memorized it back in basic and could sing it in his sleep. Mowing down a bunch of non-combatents... command wouldn't look favorably on that, and worse yet it would make the Taisa look bad, yet if we allowed that wouldn't we be negligent in our duties? he shook his head and kept looking forward.

Helen's stop order however halted his thoughts and returned him to the mission, he raised his rifle higher now and with a new sense of determination kept his eyes on the corridor. He then sent a new order to his drones, which flew off ahead of the team to search for hostiles. He had one drone lag behind, just in case the lead drone got taken out.

"Sending drones ahead, one drone is going to lag behind a bit in the event ther other is taken out," he sent via encrypted telepathy to the squad. His tone showed serious and straight forward.

Jamming Station

Mikael was extremely more quiet then his usual self. Watching the general abandonment of general laws of warfare by Helen was quickly angering himself. If he even remotely considered it, the powers that be would space him immediately.

He clinched his fist as he moved into the tighter formation as ordered, his weapon in his other other hand pointed towards the floor. He would grandly now down any combatant in the most gruesome way possible, but non-combatants were a different story.

A steadily blinking dot in the corner of the diagnostics screen indicated the initial scan had completed. Junko browsed through the fault reports, noting locations and magnitudes mentally before moving away from the laptop and toward the machinery. The main generator was the first and easiest to attend to. She reached into the already opened access panel and pulled out the components the scan had indicated: the primary signal modulator and an internal amplifying waveguide. Without the first the generator couldn't propagate the pulsed energy at the right frequency and without the second the pulses wouldn't reach a high-enough energy state to transfer to the distortion coils.

Fortunately, being such critical components, the units were plug-and-play rather than individually pieced together elements and a store of a few of the most critical components was available in one of the many panel-covered nooks in the pylon. It only took her a few moments to find the right packages and soon she was back in the CFS space, sliding the new units into place.

She next turned her attention to the distortion coils. The individual coil unit was too complex to actually repair in place; indeed replacements would almost certainly have to be newly built. However, peering into their innards offered Junko a clue as to whether the individual units were shot or if the fault readings were simply part of the cascading failure across the CFS. To her surprise, her inspection revealed only a few – three, in fact - of the units were actually bad.

Turning to the laptop for a moment, she pulled up the standard engineering screens and found the Fabrication Bay queue. She quickly added the three coil units and a dozen conduit cables to the list before opening a comm link to Engineering. “Endoh-Heisho, it's Takeda. I've added several components to the fabrication queue. I'd appreciate if you could make sure they get top priority.”

Finished, she started back on the coil units, pulling the good cables from bad units in an attempt to get at least partial functionality back up. It took more than a little splicing and jury-rigging, but she soon had a rough work around, the new power flow circuit cutting out the bad units. From the laptop, she ran several compatibility tests on the individual components, waiting until everything returned green before initiating a complete circuit test. To her amazement, it appeared to work; she had no clue of the fault tolerances her make-shift system had, but at the least it would allow for minimum field generation.

Very happy all around, she signaled the bridge. “Bridge, Takeda. I've managed to restore some functionality to the port projector. I can't give you a maximum power figure; suffice it to say that anything even approaching full power will likely cause a catastrophic failure, but it's something.”