RP: YSS Aeon [Mission 2.1] Squids Come Calling

“You're right, of course,” said Eun-Kyung, stifling the urge to wipe her brow – impossible, obviously, with the AMES helmet still secured. “I just don’t want a secondary blow-out before we get there.” Pausing to square up the last patch and make the final welds, she stepped back, listening for any last traces of the high-pitched squeal of pressure loss. “Well, that should be it. Throw the last of the tape on and we’ll do a quick pressure check.” Anxious to get on with more pressing tasks, she radioed ahead to Hisa. “Usaga-Hei, standby to run a pressure check.”

Nashoba said:

Haruhi's laptop queried the damaged gun system and displayed.

System Analysis Complete
Control System - Operational
Signal Lines - Inoperative
Cooling System - Losing pressure
Firing System - Armed
Firing Port - blocked
Containment system - non-responsive
Containment field - decreasing

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Kyoka peered over Haruhi's shoulder to see the screen of the laptop and tried to put two-and-two together.

" 'm guessing that some major wires were fried." She muttered, searching her own data for where a panel hiding the main circuits might be. All the while, she glided about the room, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

With the gash properly patched the shrill whistle of venting air stopped. Hisa looked at the system indicators.

"Shoi, pressure is holding constant. We should be able to re-pressurize this section manually. Then I can bring the environmental systems online." Hisa said.

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The work space around the positron cannon was a maze of twisted and torn metal. Razor sharp shards from the damaged hull pierced many of the weapon components. The wire bundle carrying the control lines was slashed and twisted showing 100 small wires looking like a flower blossom.

The maintenance panels for the weapon system were identified and several of them had holes where shrapnel had entered them. From one of the panels a dull oscillating glow could be seen.

"Found half the problem, and it doesn't look good. Slashed wires and holes in panels all over the place." She notified the Juni, gesturing to the wire bundle. "At least we know why this place isn't connecting to the bridge."

Eun-Kyung came to a stop behind the main displays and set her Repair Kit on the deck. “Excellent!” she said jubilantly, clapping the engineer on her shoulder. “Let’s get this finished and you out of here. Just let us know what we need to do.” Turning around to look for Asine, she turned her audio sensor’s gain back to full normal levels, now that the insufferable whistling was gone. “We did good, Im’inao-hei. Pressure holding steady. Report back here so we can get the compartment pressurized up again.”

Haruhi's initial instinct was to close the laptop and act like she hadn't seen anything, but it was only a fleeting feeling, it wouldn't change the reality of the situation after all. Tsubei's discovery of the cable-flower didn't in the correct direction of improving the dilemma either.

"But apart from all that, you know, everything's fine," she offhanded to both the wounded machinery and her subordinate. "Let's break open the maintenance panels here, see if we can't get a bit 'a luck for once." Her eyes landed on the one with the oscillating glow, the vacillating motion a natural attention draw. "Ones with suspicious green glows first, of course."

She drew the first wedge-ended instrument that came to hand from the repair kit she had brought, and set about to get the maintenance panel to reveal any secrets it contained.

The maintenance panel came of relatively easily, with the pry bar. Inside there were a number of connectors, buttons and switches. The green glow was coming from a display, that was alternating what it was displaying.

Warning Primary Power Interrupted.
Warning Weapon Core Containtment Failing.
Weapon Core Containment: 78%

Click to expand...

Beneath the screen with the message another smaller screen showed the weapon system with the damaged components highlighted in red.

The screens would then blank and then display

Automatic Core Ejection System Failure.
Manual Core Ejection Required.

Click to expand...

The lower screen showed the procedure. It showed the location of four levers that had to be pulled. The first two were to arm the release mechanism and could be pulled independently, but the last two to actually eject had to be pulled at the same time to successfully eject the weapon core.

Carrying what was left of the materials with him , Asi followed. "Go right ahead, everything should be clear in there." He smiled slightly, and said "Much nicer without that whistling, isn't it?"

"That's not good. At least it's going down slowly." Kyoka mumbled, reading the diagram to find out where the levers were.

"So want me to pull down those first two?" The Neko asked, peering around the cannon to locate said levers.

Haruhi questioned the logic behind a design that required two separate levers to be pulled in unison during emergency situations but quickly shook her head to focus on the immediate.

"Do so. I'll set up on the further of the last two and handle the timing for the pull."

Kyoka nodded and approached the two untimed levers, pulling each one down as she came across them. Once the deed was finished, she remarked "So what happens to the charged shell when we pull all the levers? Does it get ejected into space or what?". The Neko proceeded to get ready to pull down her side of the 'unison' levers.

" 'Somewhere were it won't explode and kill us all', which is good enough for me at this stage." Haruhi brushed aside some metal shards and grabbed hold of her lever, then set up a telepathic link to Tsubei for the countdown.

"Right, let's rock. From five; 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... go."

Barely staring to regain consciousness after collapsing on the floor near Usaga-hei at the Damage Control Panel, Kame over-heard Usaga-hei talking about something she couldn't tell what. Wearily she attempted to stand but collapse on the floor again. Instead she crawled with her arms over to Usaga-hei and used all her might to push her self up till she came up to her Itto's waist. Hearing only word 'atmosphere' and still a little light head from the earlier blood loss, "Reporting for duty Itto. Got the hull repaired? ... Ok, I'll send the drone to re-pressurize the hull and reprogram engineering so it can be run remotely from the medical bay."

With new orders the drone, who had been sitting their starring at the neko's after installing the sensor, floated itself up and preceded to restore atmosphere to the hull by flipping one at a time the four switches along the catwalk.

Winching at the compound fracture, Kame then worked to do what she last said. She rapidly to pull up displaying and common procedures around various points in engineering as well as commands that would allow the drones to serve as the eyes, ears, and arms of both the Shoi and Usaga-hei. Finished with reprogramming a now remotely operational engineering. She sighed then collapsed into Itto Usaga's arms.

When Haruhi and Kyoka pulled the second set of levers, a series of locking mechanisms released. A fraction of a second later, pneumatic armatures pushed entire central core of the cannon, containing the power cells and the containment, out of the cannon with a massive plume of inert out-gassing. Once clear of the cannon casing a second plume of gas was ejected and the module started moving away from the Aeon.

The module tumbled freely away and soon vanished as it pass through the ships hyperspace field and dropped harmlessly into empty space. When the containment finally collapsed the gunship was more than a lightyear beyond the blast radius.

The maintenance drones having completed their assign task of shoring up the internal bracing of the pylons headed off to perform other repairs.

When the cannon had finished shunting and venting Haruhi moved back to the readout from earlier and ensured that the core had indeed been ejected, and not some other not so meltdown-prone assembly. Satisfied that it had indeed been the correct component, the Juni connected to the bridge to to update them on the crisis averted.

"Bridge, Haruhi. Positron cannon core successfully ejected; got any other rogue weapons down here you want purged?"

Katae picked up the intercom, "Negative Juni, all critical issues have been resolved. You and the other members of the damage control teams can stand down. We'll let the repair teams on the Kyoten take care of the repairs. You and your teams can do with some rest."

A moment later the 7th Squadron dropped back into normal space. "Yamamoo-Hei, signal the squadron to jump for Yamatai, and take us home." she said to Trowa.

Trowa breathed a sigh of relief. "Aye, aye Ma'am. Gladly." Throwing a few switches Trowa contacted the rest of the squadron. "7th Squadron this is the Aeon. Sending you the cordonets to Yamatai. Acknowledge and prepare for jump." After entering the cordonets into the Aeon's computer Trowa sagged in his seat a little with exhaustion. Feels like I've been out here for months.

Kame still laid unconscious collapsed into Usaga-hei arms. She was thinking of how she wanted to throw a pillow at a certain science officer who had been conveniently missing when they need her most. She was also mumbling how they would need to talk to the science officer about installing those new blast doors and to make sure the crew better understood how reactors and antimatter. What would happen if their had been more serious complications?, she dream as she pummeled the mysterious face with pillows. Ironically, she had not even met the science officer yet.

In the mean time a lone drone beeped at the pair and began a routine of patrol around engineering too look the coolent lines and any potential problems. Soon after two other drones rolled in and beeped at the Usaga to salute a "reporting in", and then split off to do their respective jobs. Before she slip back out of consciousness, Kame had programed one of the drones just to monitor the power systems an reactor. The other had been program to just look over the hyperdrive one.

“Belay that!” began Eun-Kyung as the junior engineer began working on the console, but Kame passed out before she could tell whether her orders had been received or not. Stepping forward quickly, she eased the younger engineer to the deck. “Don’t worry about that, Usaga-Hei,” she said while stepping over to key commands into the console beside Hisa. “We’ll leave engineering running normally. I’ll handle things from the bridge. You and your colleague need to heal and rest up.” Finished returning the operating protocols to default, she pulled up a new screen to check on how to repressurize the compartment, but found that it was already done. She glanced down at the unconscious Hei on the deck; Kame’s bots must have done the job well because the Mainspace and the zero-g corridor were both back at standard pressure.

She reached down to help Hisa up from her chair, putting the neko’s arm over her shoulder. “Im’inao-Hei, help O’Kutsuu-Hei up,” she said, turning to face Asine as she pinged the Bridge with her AMES comm. “Bridge, XO. Requesting blast shutters in the zero-g corridor be unlocked. The hull is patched, pressure is back to standard, and I want to get the engineers to medical soonest. Over.”

Asi nodded in consent, and knelt down next to O'Kutsuu-Hei. "Okay, here we go." He got his arm under the nearest shoulder and picked her up, doing his best to lift without jarring his new passenger. "Let me know as soon as I can head through, and I'll get going."