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

While the Diamonds waited for the Heitan to complete its Fold, a T7 Raccoon shuttle was brought up into the launch bay.

"Rescue-One to Fighting Diamonds, Kimura-Nitô Heisho piloting. We are ready to launch on your orders." A male voice said over the comm system.

"Solitaire to Rescue-One, Roger that. You are to launch 60 seconds after we do, and maintain that interval while we attempt to locate the Youkai. If we find her, we'll provide air cover for you folks." Atsui replied, as she double checked her flight systems.

"Roger that Solitaire, hold position for 60 seconds then follow and hold." Kimura replied.

At that moment, the lights in the launch bay switched from normal to red.

"Okay Diamonds, that's our one minute warning. Standby. Heitan will be jumping to the next drop point 15 minutes after we launch to deploy the next group." Atsui called out.

A minute later the carrier dropped out from hyperspace, and the swirling field of energy before the launch bay doors was replaced with normal space.

"Search Team-1, cleared to launch" came over the comm from the Flight Control for the carrier.

"All Diamonds, launch and form on my position, loose formation." Atsui said, as she throttled up and shot her Kawarime out of the launch bay. She streaked across the forward section of the Heitan and executed a 60 degree course change to port.

"Hoshi, get me a bearing on our search area, and distance to the planet. ASAP, clock is running."

Nobutora waited for his position in the launch sequence to come up and then throttled up slowly, bringing his Teisatsu out of the launch bay with low acceleration. Catching the Chui on sensors, he cut his main thrusters, reorienting on her course before bringing the power back up. He contemplated activating his stealth systems, but decided that there was little point if the squadron was going to be in formation and even less of a point if they were going to use active sensors.

Casting that thought aside, he turned his attention to his scan plot. So far the only contacts on his passives were the Heitan and other friendlies; no distress beacons or transmissions popped up right away. He worked on the scan settings for a moment, preparing a sweep pattern and priorities for when he could bring the more powerful sensors online. Finished and his fighter almost in position relative to the Chui, he hit the key to transmit on the squadron freq. “Flight lead, this is 0101. In space and entering formation as fragged. Request permission to go active with sensors, over.” Waiting for a response, he looked for the new XO's IFF tag on the sensor plot; he was anxious for his wingman and the rest of the squadron to get on station so they could start the search.

Yaeko tried to calm herself down as lights started flashin red everywhere. In anticipation of leaving fold, she hooked herself into the SPINE system and began liftoff procedures about ten seconds before they actually left hyperspace fold. Once the Heitan exited she hovered the Kawarime above the ground until they were given the go. "0041, launching!" Yaeko shot the ship forward and casually positioned herself diagonally from Solitaire. "Hold on tight Tin Man!"

"We're twenty minutes away from the planet, a little less for the center of the search area." Lynn said. "There are no contacts on sensors."

She began adjusting the system. Routing more power from the weapons to the engines and sensors, she thought she would be able to increase the performance of the fighter. Atsui would notice that throttle sensitivity went up, and acceleration was just slightly faster than normal.

Tin Man gulped tightly, and gripped the back of Yaeko's chair with one hand, tense as they took off and flew out into the void. “Will do!” he replied, wishing desperately he could squeeze his eyes shut, but his body refusing to listen to him over survival instinct. “Guh, I hate space!” he cried as they flew out of the hangar.

Ira waited patiently for his launch turn and casually announced his launch “This is the XO, launching.” Ira lifted off and shot out into open space right behind the rest of the squadron. He then seamlessly fell into formation right next to Nobutora’s craft.

Ira heard Noburota’s request and responded in support of the man. “Solitaire, Sage and I would like permission to head out in advance of the rest of the squadron, if there are any surprises waiting, his ship will detect it and we will call it in bug out.”

Ira had the plan worked out. He would fly around evasively while Nobutora went silent, if any enemy craft remained, Ira planned on leading them back to the squadron for a little ambush of their own. Provided Solitaire gave the go ahead. If not he would remain in formation with the others.

Atsui considered Ira's suggestion, as she looked at the information that Lynn had supplied.

"Bugging out is not an option Shoi. Our orders are retrieve the data, and rescue any survivors if possible. Otherwise the lives lost are for nothing." Atsui replied.

"You and Sage are cleared to take point and proceed to a point 1 light minute ahead and the squadron will form up on my wing. We will follow you in. Call out if you get any reading of the Youkai or hostiles."

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Meanwhile somewhere in the system, Konpeki woke up to pain, the last thing she remembered was the Youkai coming out of fold, and the XO sounding collision alert. She had just climbed out of a maintenance conduit after making repairs. What the hell happened? Her head and left shoulder throbbing from hitting the corridor wall, she stood up with effort.

The corridor was a shambles, parts of the ceiling had been blown out by some sort of explosion. The corridor was not in this state when she had climbed out of the conduit. Konpeki walked up to the ship's intercom and tried to activate it. After entering several call sequences, all she got was static.

Okay need to see who is still alive, and assess the ship's condition.... the ship is quiet. None of the subharmonics of the main systems operating are present. So we are on auxiliary power, best make my way to the bridge to see what I can learn there. After that need to download the sensor logs to a portable system. she thought.

"Lead, 0043, Angel on your wing." Saori called out as she slid her fighter into formation following launch. Satisfied that the instrument panel wasn't telling her some post-launch catastrophe was about to happen, she was happy enough to stick to the group and play her part.

Nobutora dialed the frag tasking instructions into his auto-pilot but let his fingers hover over the execution key for a moment. “Flight lead, 0101. Solid copy; moving to hold station zero decimal one light minutes ahead of formation.” He switched his transmission over to his wingman for a moment. “I’m throttling up, Shoi. Engaging stealth systems and active sensors now.”

He finally hit the execution key and the main thrusters burst to life, the impulse throwing his fighter ahead of the formation. At the same time, he called up his previously stored scan patterns and engaged all of his active systems, even while bringing limited stealth functions online. With his Teisatsu now radiating like a light show, the stealth systems would be of strictly limited utility, but at least it would make getting a targeting lock on him harder. Besides, the fold-space arrival of the Heitan was hardly a stealthy event; any half-way competent hostile would already have him pegged with a passive sensor lock.

Sparing a glance at his position plot, which showed the friendly squadron IFF tags falling behind, he turned his full focus on the scan displays. He drew in a deep breath and let it out impatiently. “Come on…”

Fighter four-one simply flew with the rest of the gaggle of fighters, floating out to the side of, and slightly behind Solitaire in the flight lead. Inside Silic stared up at the starry canopy, the void both terrifying, and beautiful, he suddenly remembered that with Ira having gone ahead he and Yaeko had no wingman. Who had that black-panel been partnered with? He couldn't remember.

“Four-Three to Lead, requesting new wingman assignment, over.” transmitted Silic to the rest of the flight, the idea of not having someone cover your back in a fight was only slightly less scary than being lost in dead space. Silently Silic sweated, and controlled his breathing “How'd I ever end up doing this?” he murmured to himself as he watched the two scouts shoot ahead.

Solitaire watched as Ira and Nobutora moved away from the rest of the squadron.

Atsui briefly considered smacking her forehead, but the AFS helmet would have made it impossible.

"Tin-man, Saber in 0045 is Wingman to you and Munkata-Hei. It was posted on the squadron board, but I guess in the chaos of our changing mission you did not get to see it." Atsui replied.

"OKay Diamonds, lets spread out a bit, for the time being maintain 5k interval between each other until our point finds anything." She sent across the comm channel.

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As Nobutora began his scans it became readily apparent that there had been some traffic in this system. The Sensors shows at least six different ion trails heading towards the planet. It would take a detailed scan to identify the type of engines responsible.

“Yes ma'am, forgive me for using old mission data.” came Tin-Man's voice over the radio, sounding rather strained with embarrassment. Yaeko and Silic's fighter began boosting gently sideways, slowly receding into a dot in the distance, inertia keeping it in line with the others.

Inside the cockpit Silic changed to the internal com-channel “Twenty minutes to kill.” he thought for a few seconds “I wonder if these things can play Aethersperm?” he said to himself getting to work in-between watching his sensors, and look over his shoulder as far as the tight shoulder straps would let him.

Nobutora's eyes narrowed to slits as he peered at the sensor take. The data was rough, though the computer had already set about trying to refine it. He quickly canceled the running sweep pattern and focused all of his equipment on the six ion trails; his wingman would just have to cover him if some hostiles chose just that moment to attack. Flagging the telemetry, he sent a copy of his data to the Shoi and the Chui before jumping on the squadron net. “All units, this is 0101. Be advised, I have solid readings on six, I say again six, separate trace contacts. Refining my scans now and will keep you appraised. Out.” Finished, he set about fine-tuning the computer's identification efforts.

Ira had actually fanned out based on the assumption that the stealth technology Nobutora’s fighter was currently using would not be compromised. He gave the fighter some space in order to mask the fact that it was present. He kept pace but continued watching Nobutora’s back.

The information was relayed to Ira’s fighter informing him of the six enemy traces. Ira looked it over and replied “The Scan’s look accurate.” He said to the Chui. “We will stay the course until the rest of the squadron catches up.”

“Reducing speed.” He said to Nobutora. Ira cut his speed, but the fighter continued to move forward as he was acting like his own fighter had not detected the enemy formations.

Nobutora stared grimly at the results of the scan data analysis. The confirmation of a single Nozomi-class ship’s ion trail was, of course, helpful but the failure to get any sort of ID on the other five signatures was disappointing. He considered running them through the database again, but it would have been a wasted effort. These were new, or at least unrecorded, signatures and he made sure to flag them in the reference database for future attention. Getting back to the task at hand, he repurposed the sensors and the analysis software to attempt to calculate vectors from the residual traces.

While the systems were working, he pulled up the scan data again and added tags to each ion trail and then sent them back out across the squadron net along with his analysis results. “All units, 0101. Be advised: confirmation of one Nozomi-class ion trail, temporarily designated Alpha-One. Presumably friendly, possibly missing ship YSS Youkai. Break.” He paused for a moment, in case there was urgent message traffic. “Contacts designated Bravo-One through -Five are unknown, I repeat unknown and unlisted in the emissions database. Possibly hostile. Out.”

Listening to Nobutora, Silic snorted quietly inside his helmet “So much for black-panels knowing everything, I guess SAINT's not as omnipotent as they thought they were.” Not that he would say it to the man's face, it was the colours he wore, not the man he was.

At Nobutora's report of 5 unknown ion trails Atsui was understandably concerned. "Okay Diamonds, you heard the news. Stay sharp." She sent to the squadron. Then over the fighter's internal comm, "Hoshi, keep a sharp eye on tactical. Anything decides to show up I want a firing solution ASAP." she said to her EWO.

Atsui glanced at her instruments, and watched as the Heitan and its escorts jumped to the next drop point. Damn, we're on our own for now. "Hoshi, send an FTL message to the Heitan advising them of our status, and Yamamoto-Heisho's readings."

The Squadron continued on its vector towards the planet. The trail for the Nozomi seemed to take it towards the southern hemisphere of the planet. And it did not appear that the other trails were pursuing it.

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Ten minutes later....

As Ira and Nobutora's fighters closed to thirty light-seconds from the planet, their sensors on both started pinging, as an object suddenly appeared. Almost immediately their tactical systems showed that the object was conducting an active scan, meaning that Ira's fighter was being painted as a target.

The ship did not conform to any known configuration, and was marked as such by the IFF system. A radio signal then followed the appearance of the ship.

"We claim this world for gathering. Withdraw. Continue to advance at your own peril. " came across the comm system.

Yaeko giggled at Silic's comment about the intel officer. "Or as much as they let other people think, right?" See continued on, keeping an eye out. After a couple minutes she glanced down at her radar and, noticing that she couldn't even see the two scouts, extended the range. Yaeko, once again, continued her leisurely flying until she noticed and unidentified blip on her radar, which a quick computers check told her had only been there for about 20 seconds. "Woah, where the..." She punched in some quick commands and the blip on her radar turned yellow, indicating that it was set as neutral and had the ability to be targeted and labeled hostile. "Hold on to your hat Silic"

Ira sat in his seat rather calmly as his warning klaxons pinged letting him know his fighters was being targeted. He let out a soft sigh and then called back in to Atsui. “Solitaire, I am being targeted but an unknown enemy vassal at 29 light seconds out, initiating evasive maneuvers.”

Ira began maneuvering away from Nobutora, but took care not to abandon his wingman completely. “Sage, what do we have going on?” Ira said over the squadron channel.

On board the Youkai, Konpeki had made her way to the bridge. The science scanner she acquired along the way told her there were four life signs not including herself. Two she had pass along the way, the ship's medic was tending on of the engineers. The other two were just ahead on the bridge.

The door mechanism to the bridge was inoperative, but using some supplies from a damage control locker, and a piece of metal as a pry bar she was able to force the door open, so that she could get onto the bridge. Good thing the blast shutter was damaged or I never would have gotten in here. she checked the two crew members, injured but their injuries did not appear to be life threatening at the moment.

She made her way to the comm station. It was obvious that the ship was not going to be making its rendezvous, so she needed to activate the ship's beacon to signal their location. She composed a brief message and sent it by radio only, it would broadcast every thirty seconds until a response came in. Konpeki refused to use subspace as that would only ensure that the NMX could find the ship faster.

YSS Youkai to any SAoY vessel. Ship heavily damaged and crashed on unknown planet. Five surviors, three requiring medical attention. Eika-Ittô Heisho

Click to expand...

After hitting the transmit, she returned to the other crew members and started doing a more thorough examination of their medical condition.

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Meanwhile above the planet the unknown vessel continued scanning, but Ira's sensors were showing a possible target solution being made on his fighter.

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"0044 and 0101, hole position. Repeat hold position, do not close. We do not need to start a battle if we can avoid it. All other fighters, close up and stand ready to respond if the unknown goes hostile." Atsui sent over the squadron channel.

She then switched her comm system to the frequency used by the unknown. "Unidentified vessel. This is Atsui Numa-Chui of the Star Army of Yamatai. We have no interest in this planet or your gathering. We are here on a search and rescue mission. Do not interfere."

At that moment the beacon Konpeki had programmed transmitted.