RP: 21st Fighter Sq [Mission 2.0] Rescue with a side order of Calamari

“Gotcha, ya bastard.” Silic murmured to himself as he spotted the tell-tale plume of dust from the missiles appear. He turned to Yaeko “Break right!” he ordered, the computer sending out multiple flares as a distraction, lighting up the tail of the craft even in daylight. From the current results the missiles appeared to be heat-seeking, but Silic was taking no chances, two rounds of chaff joined the general chaos of counter-measures out the back. Scanning would have to wait until after they weren't dodging for their lives.

Nobutora quickly killed his active scans and main thrusters, coasting toward the enemies while riding his stealth systems at their maximum. He hoped that between his firing, disappearing, and his wingman's presence they would be seriously confused in terms of contact resolution. Confusion was good; this situation appeared to be shaping up into a turning fight, and keeping your opponents off-balance was key to coming out of a dogfight alive. At any rate, he slowly turned his fighter to line up with the closest battlepod.

“41, I'm tracking the nearest bandit,” he said over the dedicated wingman-to-wingman frequency. While he waited for his chosen prey to enter a no-escape targeting solution, he set about running a new ECM program, targeting the enemy missiles in flight. The jamming of the battlepods' sensors themselves would decrease slightly, but the tradeoff ought to stymie the inbound missiles' guidance packages. The new jamming sequence up and running, he turned his attention back to his targeting plot. He nodded once as the cannon targeting system sounded the tone of a lock and then triggered a burst of pulses, announcing “Guns, guns,” over his communicator as he brought his thrusters and active sensors back online.

Hearing Silic, Yaeko immediately banked right, finding herself heading straight for the missiles. "Shit! I think you meant left!" Yaeko quickly targeted the truck and fired several missiles of her own before banking back into a u-turn and heading away from the missiles. "Chaff, chaff, chaff! Get that thing away from me!"

The battlepod that Ira was targeting exploded in a satisfactory manner. One of the other pods that Nobutora had damaged, decided to make a move for Ira while he was firing at the other. Unfortunately for it, that took it right into Nobutora's line of fire, and the battlepod exploded into a pyrotechnic display.

Saber meanwhile found herself dealing with a pair of battlepods that were converging on her position with cannons blazing. Her shields were taking a pummeling, despite her attempts to evade.

Angel had a battlepod locked onto her six, and it launched four missiles in her direction.

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In the air above the surface of the planet, Yaeko watched briefly as her missiles streaked towards the offending vehicle, but lost sight of it as she executed a deperate evasive maneuver. One of the missiles had streaked past the Kawarime distracted by Silic's flares, as their fighter was turning, the second missile detonated close enough that the fighter's shields dropped 10%.

Kail maintained her position, while watching Yaeko and Silic engage ground forces. "Rescue one, move your asses, in case you haven't noticed 0041 is taking ground to air fire." she growled into the comm.

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Konpeki and the other surviving members of the Youkai were waiting near the airlock. Once the hatch opened, the wounded and the healthy moved as one towards the waiting shuttle. Konpeki keeping the data module securely held against her chest. She looked up at the fighters providing air support and noted the sound of explosions not to far off.

"That's everyone from the crew. The destruct sequence has been set." she told the rescue team.

The pilot of Rescue One needed no further urging, and even as the shuttle doors were still closing, the T7 was lifting and accelerating.

"Good shot." Ira said to Nobutora as he stabilized his formation. "Saved my ass."

"This is the best dance party I have ever been to." Ira said over the squadron channel. "Keep it up, the squids are breaking." He said as he got a target lock and fired two missiles at an approaching battle pod.

"Nobutora." Ira said over the wingman to wingman channel. "Saber is in trouble, care to divert with me?"

As the rear ramp of the shuttle closed Yeako and Silic's fighter roared overhead, contrails leaving white lines in the sky. Inside the cockpit, “It's a heat seeker!” Silic replied, who was constantly changing from looking over his shoulder behind them, turning to us console and back again trying desperately to reacquire the missile launcher.

“Negative, Four-One,” replied Nobutora, watching his scan plot. “I'm diverting to assist Angel. Call if you need me. Out.” He opened up his thrusters, building velocity on his new vector toward Kuwashima's fighter, and changed to the squadron wide frequency. “Flight lead, Zero-One. Be advised: element has splashed two bandits and is splitting from current engagement. Four-One and Zero-One going buster to support Four-Five and Four-Three respectively. Out.”

Focusing in on the scan data around Angel, Nobutora frowned. His squadron-mate didn't appear to be effectively evading and four missiles fired from a stern aspect were about as certain a no-escape shoot as was possible to make. Passing turn-over for a zero-zero intercept of Angel, Nobutora choose to continue on under power, trading loiter time for a quicker arrival. Already he was focusing his EW systems forward, trying to stymie the closing missiles before they could splash Saori. “Zero-One defending. Four-Three, standby for a maximum performance turn on my mark, over.”

"Copy that zero-one" Ira said not arguing. Two pilots were in trouble, and required assistance. This was the logical choice. Nobutora called out what they were doing to command and that was good enough.

Ira's craft broke formation with Nobutora's, and maxed out the speed. Ira was wasting no time getting to Sabre, and had not intention of. "Zero-one, you get into the shit you high tail it, all the heroes I know are dead."

Ira found Saber taking a beating, and immediately began getting a missile lock on both pods. "Fox Six." Ira called out over the coms. "Saber, shake, shake." He hissed as he closed in behind his missiles, and opened up with aether cannon on one of the pods.

Ira hope Saber was not to badly rattled so that she(or he) could get out maneuver the other pod.

"Command, what is the status on that evac?" Ira said over the squadron channel.

“Solid copy, Four-One,” replied Nobutora idly as he locked up the last few parts of his engagement plan. Satisfied, he hit the key that set the new EW program to run automatically and settled back for a few seconds before hearing the targeting lock tone he had been waiting for. Squeezing the firing stud, he loosed two missiles from his launching pod. “Fox-three, fox-three. Two away,” he announced. His following maneuvers were going to be taxing and distracting, so setting the two missiles to active would let him fire-and-forget.

There were only a few more second after his launch before his flight path intersected the the space between Angel and the missiles on her six. As he did, he slewed his Teisatsu, presenting his rear thrusters to the direct front of two of the missiles as he flared his output. At the same time, his ECM pod automatically began lighting up his fighter as a big inviting target and all of his active targeting, search, and navigation scan systems lit up. Between the IR signature, active emissions, and ECM signal ghosts, he had essentially turned himself into a huge decoy. All of this took only seconds and then he was off, haring away on an altered vector, trying to suck at least two of the missiles onto his trail.

That still left two missiles targeting his fellow pilot and every passing second increased the danger. He opened up his communicator, addressing Saori. “Zero-One defending, two missiles. Four-Three, I've taken two of your missiles; break now, now, now and extend.”

Out of the corner of her Yaeko saw the shuttle lifting up. Without a second thought she pulled up as hard as she could until she was moving vertically at full speed. She figured the missile either had to run out of has, freeze/stop working at the high altitude, or be ineffective in space since it's programming is meant for situations with gravity.

Silic was roughly forced back in his seat as Yeako pulled the fighter up, he grunted in surprise as he tried to grasp his console, and his cheeks began attempting to force their way to his ears. The slim Nepleslian was much less resilient than his pilot, and unprepared for the sudden spike in g-force, the edge of his eyesight slowly began dimming red. Residue from his stomachs previous misfortune began spattering back into his face again. He tried to warn Yaeko, but the shout came out more as “Hrrug! Gurdarg!” than any sensible words.

"The shuttle is lifting off!" Lynn told Atsui with a smile.

"When it comes out of the atmosphere, would you like me to tell the Squadron to form up around it?"

The shuttle continued its ballistic flight path to achieve escape velocity.

The missiles fired at Yaeko and Silic fell behind as they could not match the speed of the fighter at maximum. In slightly more than a minute the skies above the craft began turning black as they entered the upper atmosphere. Another minute would see them reaching orbit.


Atsui watched the sensors and executed a rapid position shift to avoid a pair of missiles. "Yeah, once they are clear of the atmosphere, have the squadron assume a picket formation around the shuttle. Although if the Heitan and her escorts do not get here soon, this will all be for naught." she answered Lynn.

Yaeko kept a steady, vertical trajectory as she saw the blue of the atmosphere begin to fade. Finally, she shot out of the atmosphere, doing a visual for the shuttle. She quickly checked her radar banked to the side and slowed to a stop near a location that she assumed the shuttle would pass. "0041 to shuttle and Solitaire, missiles avoided, we will rendezvous with rescue in a few moments." She switched her mic off and looked behind her. "You alright back there Tin Man?"

Silic let out a small gurgle in reply, helmet lulling side to side for a few seconds before he suddenly sprang back to reality. “What?” he asked, looking around in confusion “Since when were we- oh.” he stopped as he suddenly got the picture, if not quite his sense. “I ever tell you I hate space?”

"Yes ma'am." Lynn said, settling deeper into her seat as she fired off countermeasures. "You might want to put some distance between us and them, they're trying to get on our tail. Firing countermeasures."

The Chui was dancing a fine line with the missiles, and as time went on Lynn became even more worried.

I hope that shuttle gets out of the atmosphere, She shot another pair of countermeasures. Soon.

Atsui continued to hammer at any battlepod she could. Finding a target was not a problem as there were plenty of them. Rather getting a firing solution without getting hit was the challenge. A battlepod strafed the side of her Kawarime, the shields dipped lower and the hull of the fighter took the brunt, of the force. Some of the secondary systems were flashing warnings.

"The blasted squids are as thick as a swarm of blood flies." she said as she opened fire with her guns.

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Sabre after the rescue by her squadron mates formed up with the group, her fighter trailing smoke and plasma a testimony to the damage it had taken.

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Rescue One cleared the upper atmosphere and switched to STL engines. "Rescue One to Fighting Diamonds, we have the package. Please advise." the pilot sent.

"Nope!" Yaeko replied to Silic with a smile. When she saw the shuttle exited the atmosphere Yaeko flew towards it before getting into position just ahead of it. "Diamonds, 0041 will provide some cover fire for you guys until you can reach the shuttle." She then started locking on to random enemy targets firing missiles at them. She decided to avoid using lasers since, with her luck, she would hit a friendly.

Lynn did her best to give the shields more juice without taking power from any vital systems within the Kawarime. This meant rediverting the energy going through the Engines to the shields, making Solitaire's fighter slightly more ungainly than it was before.

She continually fired countermeasures and fiddled with the power, to keep the Chui and herself alive and in one piece.

"Rescue One, this is Hoshi -- You need to head straight for the Heitan at best possible speed." Lynn said on the Chui's behalf.

Atsui was far too focused on keeping the Kawarime alive, and Lynn doubted she would mind her Co-Pilot speaking her orders. "21st Squadron, this is Hoshi, you need to assume formation around Rescue One and escort her to the Heitan."

Ira formed up on Sabre's six and acted as an escort. He would tail her all the way beck to regroup with the rest of the squadron.