RP: YSS Eucharis [Mission 14.2] The Battle of Yamatai

The NMX on the beach were being mowed down, but one of the vehicles opened up with its turret at Helen, hitting her in the torso (not critically).

The Eucharis slammed into the water about 100 meters from the shore in a long slide before finally settling into the water and sinking until most of the ship was submerged.

Inside the ship, foamy salt water rushed into the maintenance tunnels from the stern, putting out fires but shorting the exposed power systems.

Hanako had the shuttles land on top of the steaming gunship once it lay still and called it over the radio. "Everyone okay?"

Hakujou stood in Akemi's way. "Doctor's orders. You are staying put." She said, pointing at the soldier. "No way am I letting you out with injuries like that. Now sit down and let me fix you."

"All right ma'am." Akemi did as she was told without protest despite desperately wanting to join the others and find some way to help them.

Inside Eucharis

Takeyu braced himself as he felt the ship slam into the water, consoles spurted and sparked and he held on tight before the ship came to a stop.

He waited a few breaths before he went to key in the code to shut the reactor down. "Valencia-Heisho, you still there? I'm bringing the reactor offline to prevent damage, get out of the ship quickly!" he said calmly as his eyes darted from one display to another, slowly monitoring the shutdown sequence in stages.

A grunt could be heard coming from the Bridge of the ship. It sounded like it was meant to be some form of speech, but some force was keeping the person from speaking clearly. On the bridge, a very dirty Ramiro could be seen wearing a torn AMES, the helmet lying on the ground. Ramiro was still restrained to what remained of his station, his head slumped back over the chair and his hands hung fairly limp, although they swayed slightly. His eyes were wide open and he breathed heavily. With clear difficulty he undid his restraints and proceeded out the nearest opening that led up and away from the water.

Ramiro emerged from what used to be the window of the wardroom. With much difficulty he shakily lifted himself from the ship and then collapsed face up onto the hull of the ship. He lay there for a few moments, panting, before he rolled onto his stomach, crawled to the end of the ship, and vomited over the edge into the water.

"Next time we fight the greatest battle of our generation, remind me not to eat beforehand."

Inside the Eucharis

Takeyu's hands continued to work on the shutdown, when the last stage was reached he quickly rechecked the seal on his helmet then dashed out of the Engineering bay.

Before he had left he memorized the damaged areas of the ship and saw a hole up through the galley, he headed straight there. Ascending the passageway quickly before noticing the windows of the wardroom were gone, blown out either by the battle or by the impact with the water.

He squeezed on through and looked around only to notice the shuttle nearby, when he looked and saw Ramiro he beamed with satisfaction, knowing his fellow soldier was fine.

"Naycesen-Juni here, just exited the ship. Valencia-Heisho appears fine as well," said Takeyu as he got up and quickly walked over to his fellow soldier and knelt down beside him.

"Move it people, we have personnel on the hull and hostiles on the beach. We need to engage the NMX, and get our folks into the shuttle for either medical assessment or suiting up into their power armor if they are able." Sune called out as he opened the rear door of the T7 and stepped out.

Once he cleared the shuttle he activated his Ke-M2-W2905 and fired a three round volley at the NMX vehicle to draw its fire as he took off.

The NMX buggy and remaining troops made a rush toward the woodline while a pair battle pods swooped in from above and strafed the shuttles sitting on top of the Eucharis.

"I implore you to please let me go after you are finished administering to me ma'am. I barely managed to do anything before being injured and I want to prove myself." Akemi gave Hakujou a pleading look.

Takeyu gave Ramiro a pat on the back and shielded him briefly from the strafe, then headed to the shuttle where he found his armor inside. He got in, running a brief systems check before stepping out from the back of the shuttle and looking up around before locking onto one of the battlepods and unleashing a series of missiles from his pod.

He then whipped up his rifle and began to track for targets.

Ramiro shakily stood himself up. After taking a few moments to regain his balance he shook his entire body back and forth a few times before coming to a halt. "Uhf, I'll be fine, no worries." He jogged over to the shuttle and picked out an empty armor, preferable with lots of shield modules. He hopped in, did a quick startup, and then walked out of the shuttle, ready for combat.

Nathaniel’s Hikael droped towards the ground like a massive lump of metal. He had kept the unit on some sort of silent running by turning off most of the nonessential systems. By doing this he made himself look like a lifeless Power armor instead of an active one. He hoped that the enemy would be too busy, to notice him appearing from the sky.

Alarms suddenly rang inside the armor as several enemy signatures where detected, along with several missile launches. Immediately the armor overwrote the silent running setting and caused everything to become active again. Nathaniel knew his cover had been blown, and he knew that this was the same as setting off a small explosive in a library. Everybody, friendly or otherwise would notice him.

Nathaniel quickly designated the two enemy battle pods as secondary targets, due to the missiles flying towards them. He changed his dive angle towards the beach where the targeting computer designated several NMX infantry targets.

Within moments the computer had the targets locked Nathaniel checked once more for possible friendlies and gave permission to fire five missiles. After five missiles departed from the left pod he quickly descended towards the wood line. There was no way he was letting these NMX get away from the fighting.

There were many reasons why Helen clung to old things, sentiment, a certain charm about having a unique bit of kit that was still viable, but mainly... they just don't build them like they used to. When impacted by the NMX weapons fire, Helen herself was jostled and shaken within the Kylie, her body was slammed around within the soothing confines of the interior insert, though she retained her composure as she allowed her Kylie to free-fall into the water, providing the illusion that she may have been killed, or was incapacitated.

Once Helen had splashed down, she analyzed the damage to her unit, it was largely superficial, if seared armor plates could be called superficial. As for her body, there were some minor internal ruptures, though, they had already begun to heal. There was no time to coddle her injuries though, as Helen monitored the situation above the water. Battle pods had begun to make attack runs on the ship, and she was likely one of the few which were armed properly to deal with such a threat.

Moving beneath the waves, Helen used the shuttle sensors to spot for her and her armor, as she aimed her aether Gatling, and a forearm projector upward, and began to fire off streams of aether fire at the battle pods. With a few seconds of fire unleashed, she went about changing position beneath the waves, moving beneath the Eucharis, so she could hopefully avoid a reprisal before she would pop back out and continue to engage the enemy.

With Ramero and Takeyu out of hazard, Sune turned his attention towards the threat from above. He flew over and hovered above the Eucharis and had his AIES go into auto-dodge mode. Meanwhile he trained his gauss cannon at the lead battle pod and fired it with a follow-up from the forearm weapon in beam mode. We are too exposed on the top of the hull. We need some place more defensible or more of the crew out here to help. he thought.

Not wanting to stay put or disobey orders Akemi decided to telepathically state her plea to Hanako. "I hate to bother you or act insubordinate Shôshô, but Ittô Juni Hakujou refuses to allow me to leave her care because I have been injured, even though I believe I still can and wish to be of help fighting the enemy. I request permission to disregard her order and join the others. I am far more hurt by the damage done to my pride as a fledgling soldier of the empire and one given the privilege to serve under you by sitting idle while others fight than by the wounds that have been inflicted upon my body. I am terribly sorry if you do not approve of my conduct, but I desperately desire to be of use." The young neko started to worry greatly about what response she might receive. She dreaded the thought of displeasing a superior.

"If you can fight, you should fight," Hanako told Akemi.

As the battle pods came around again, strafing the shuttles again, the combined fire of the armored crew members was able to penetrate to shields of the lead one and it trailed smoke and slammed into the water behind the Eucharis. The other went kamikaze and headed straight for the T7, flying into the back of the shuttle and exploding. The interior was now an inferno and Hanako was flung by the blast and ended up in the water near Helen.

The NMX Nathaniel found were a sorry sight, made up of unarmored neko girls and a single confused looking Ripper. However, the actual Mishhu in the Battle Buggy still had its guns blazing and hit Nathaniel in the arm leaving his armor blackened and some of his arm burned inside.

"Yes ma'am," Akemi replied. "I contacted our commander just now and she has given me permission to go out and fight. I am sorry for going over your head, but I believe my being here right now is a waste of your and my time." With that said she quickly exited the shuttle and looked for the T7. Upon finding the burning wreck she shot into it and scrambled to find and put on a suit of power armor. As soon as she was fully suited up, she flew her Mindy out of the craft and onto the beach and began scanning the area for enemies. Spotting the group Nathaniel was dealing with, she headed towards it and fired her two forearm weapons in submachine gun mode at the Ripper. While doing so she moved around from side to side a great deal because she knew neither her unequipped armor nor her injured body could afford to take any serious hits.

Beach

Reika was feeling more than a little peeved over the fact that the NMX had run the Eucharis aground and that she had been able to do little to prevent it. The Neko removed the AMES she had worn whilst attempting to aid in damage control aboard the ship -- replacing it with the Daisy power armor she had brought with her aboard one of the shuttles as most of the crew had abandoned ship.

Moving away from the shuttles due to the battlepod kamikaze run, Reika joined Nathaniel and Akemi in combat with the NMX ground forces. Kneeling in the sand she made sure her LASR rifle MK. II was switched to anti-armor mode, before holding it in a steady aim towards the NMX battle buggy that had opened fire on the Elysian -- taking into account the vehicles driving direction, velocity, distance and the muzzle velocity of her gun's projectiles as she reoriented her aim.

Pulling back the trigger Reika unleashed several short three-round bursts. Pausing briefly between each burst of fire to check her aim before firing again.

"It is hardly a good time for a swim, Shosho." Helen transmitted, as she moved closer to Hanako, using her own gravity manipulation capabilities, to avoid heating the water with the CFS system of her Kylie. "We need to implement a strategy to get out of this, the topside of the hull is a deathtrap, right now, the ship is about as useful as a beached whale. We need to get it airborne if it will be of any use to us, even then, I have strong doubts. My AIES shows most of the crew in PA, we have options at this point, we can abandon the ship and move to a defensible position, we can leave this area and head to the nearest friendlies and rejoin the battle, or we can use some form of concealment to provide cover for a decisive strike against the NMX forces on the beach."

As Helen gave her advice, she evaluated the situation as best she could. Certainly the beach was going to be a do-able task, something which she was sure was just a matter of coordinated firepower to handle. However, there were likely still ships in the sky, which saw the Eucharis go down, and where the Eucharis went, so did a high value target which was worth devoting the few seconds to send a torpedo after. "Shosho, I strongly suggest a choice in favor of mobility. We can't stay here, remaining near the ship is painting a target on our asses, ma'am."

Ramiro took off to find himself whatever cover he possibly could. Once in a fairly defensive position he took aim with his forearm weapon and fired upon any battle pods that came near. He also made sure that, while he fired his weapon with one forearm, he had the other ready to use the forearm shield to deflect any incoming fire.