YSS Kaiyo II
Deck 1 - Science Lab
Earlier
Indira Vaikar, Ivuori Iroma and Science Officer Santo Hei, was in love. The
Kaiyo II's science lab and fabricators seemed able to accomplish nearly anything she set her mind to. Power armors? Sure. Torpedoes? Why not! Even better, the diagrams for many of these things were available for review and modification. The universe brimmed with possibilities.
What it did
not brim with was adequate time to remain awake. She could only 'dose' herself for so many days before she
had to sleep. That, too, was typically chemically-induced. Her symbionts would produce the right balance of chemicals to knock her out cold. At a specified time, they would release the chemicals to counter
those chemicals and she would wake up from her near-coma, recharged and ready to go. It was her normal way of things.
What was
not her normal way of doing things was to be awoken by klaxons and warning lights. Stirring, muscles not
quite ready for movement, she haphazardly slid out of the chair she'd passed out in. On the way down, she dragged enough datapads with her to make a thorough mess. Her face was cold against the floor, her eyes barely open, as she struggled to get her senses together enough to give the mental commands that would rebalance her internal chemistry enough to let her process what was going on.
"... deck two and deck five. Crew on two and above, protect areas forward of the dojo as an organized unit immediately. Zero gravity passageways are shut off deck by deck ..."
She groaned inwardly, peeling her face off of the floor and wiping a bit of drool away. '
We've been boarded?! How?' Indira got to her feet. Awareness surged back into place at last. The alarms, the message, the noise of distant blast shutters slamming closed. She pursed her lips.
'Does the captain really expect me to go down there, guns blazing?'
'It's..what the message said,' she considered. If hostiles were on the ship, there was no use in arguing. She looked longingly at one of the datapads on the floor, a copy of '
Transformational Relativity and Continuum Distortion Propulsion'. It looked back at her, accusingly.
"I'm sorry, book-san," she said as she gathered up the datapads and placed them back on the table. "I'll read you more later."
The diminutive Iroma moved on, slipping into her AMES and gathering up her gear - a science kit, personal firearm, and so on. The last thing the crew needed was a
bystander. They needed a Science Officer. One who could solve this problem.
YSS Kaiyo II
Deck 2 - Dojo and Adjacent Corridors
Now
Academically, the alien invaders were all very interesting. Power armor of unusual design, new and unusual biologies, and so forth. They would all be great subjects to study if they would just
stop moving. To that end, she and a handful of others were doing their level best to repel the Kuvexians and their grunts with whatever small arms they'd managed to pull together.
Indira had all the right training for the situation. She had
not enjoyed the training while she was taking it - physical efforts took time away from reading and experimenting, let alone the strain on her body. As Kuvexian blasts streaked past her, she mentally thanked her drill instructor. She watched the other crew members nearby, waiting for the right time, and then returned fire with the rest of them. Against power armor, she knew her small gun could do very little - but they didn't expect to win, really. They needed to keep the enemies distracted enough that they weren't able to get into MEGAMI and life support.
For a while, Indira lived in a haze of shouted orders and practiced drills. There was little time to think when you were being shot at. Which was a problem, really - thinking was the main thing she did.
Why she was here in the first place. As the realization set in, she looked at her hands, at the gun, and shook her head.
'Not efficient, Indira. There must be a better way than this.'
As if on cue, her vision began to light up with instructions. A few pioneering crew members had decided to flood the deck and vent it all at once. She wasn't sure it was a
good idea
, but it was better than anything she'd come up with so far. She needed to fix that. When the plan was complete, the power armors would surely still be here. A readout told her that other members of the crew would soon have their own power armors, but by then it might be too late.
'Then what? Back to the basics, Indira - why are they here?' She winced as a blast came much too close, but stayed focused.
'In terms of technology, the Kuvexians appear equivalent to the Star Army in most respects. The MEGAMI would be a prize, however, as would the rest of the ship - but they probably want military intel. Otherwise they would have destroyed the ship instead of going through all this hassle.'
She willed a handful of schematics onto her visor, skimming through them. Then, she called up standard procedures for when a ship had been compromised. The enemy would likely know those procedures at this point.
A proposal was sent over the ship's network containing the basic outline of her plan.
From: Science Officer Indira Vaikar
To: Taiyou Hoshi, MEGAMI "Boss", Teien Eden, Alastair Belmont
Subject: Unwelcome Guests
Three Files Attached.
As she ducked into the dojo, blast doors slamming heavily behind her, she saw the affirmative response from the Captain and Boss. Once she caught her breath, she turned to face the others who had gathered there.
"We need to blow up the ship," she said, in a voice a bit more authoritative and cool than her rank normally warranted. "Not
all the way, of course. If we bring the aether generators into an overcharged, near-critical state, we should be able to convince the Kuvexians that we would rather destroy the ship than let them have what they want."
Indira paused, letting that sink in. "We also need to keep them from calling our bluff."
She waved a hand, calling up projections to outline the ship's layout and general crew positions. "In other words, we need them to feel like they've won
enough that they can retreat and feel victorious. I'm not sure what we have that we can safely give away, but it needs to appear worthwhile. We'll have a short window of opportunity after the flood to make this work."
Indira didn't wait to get confirmation of her plan -
of course they would all see the merit in it. So, she moved on to finding and messaging an engineer on the ship who could oversee the risky process of
nearly blowing up the ship.
To: Engineer Kikios Leka
Message: Leka-san, please assist Boss in bringing the reactors into a near-critical state. It needs to appear that the ship is ready to self-destruct. I fear this may damage some sub-systems; if so, I apologize in advance. Attached are my projections on acceptable power curves, timelines, and general expectations. I hope they're helpful.
Three Files Attached.
