RP: YSS Eucharis [Mission 22] Echoes of the Past

Volcano / Artifact Compound

Aikiko grabbed Taharial with her manipulator arms and tucked her up close to her in front a bit none to gently. She began to float off the air tilting forward to protect Taharial from the falling debri as the volcano shook apart sending clouds of dust and debri into the air. She rose high enough to escape building up debri while making sure Taharial remained safe and tucked under her.

Once everything settled down and finding a safe place to land on the island, Aikiko landed, loosening her hold on the medic. "Apologyze for the discomfort. Figured you wouldn't mind a bit of suffering to live." Ran a scan over Taharial's AIMES to make sure it was still intacted and had no damage to it. "That was interesting,"

Splorfin 14, Artifact corridor

The bugs came with perfect timing as the volcano began to shake violently. It's no wonder they began evacuating.
"Go on, I got this," he yelled, barely over the sound of the mountain. With the shaking around him there was no way to get a clear shot with a more linear weapon. The cover on his missile pod flipped open with the targeting reticule on his HUD changing, even though he had no intention of using the computer targeting. He would fly it by laser comms using his SPINE. Two missiles flew forth towards the ground as the bugs came into range then curved up in at sharp angle into the ceiling, collapsing it and slowing the crystalline tripods.

The missile pod closed as he turned to run but several bugs were there too. He was cornered with no way out but forward...

Primitive Polygon said:

"...Most of all." The green-armored form turned to Dirjon next, and raised an informative finger. "Remember that the Daisy shield was not designed to be used as a surf board."

Click to expand...

Hmm... Right.
He quickly detached his shield and magnetically locked into it. He kicked his thrusters up to 7% with the initial blast launching him foreword and on top of the bugs as he rocketed down the hall surfing on the blue shelled creatures until he passed the swarm, where his anti grav system kept him only centimeters off the ground. The hall came to a 90 degree bend spelling disaster if he continued forward. He fell backward and boosted his thrusters as he pointed the board where to go and hoped of the best. The result was him turning the first 70 degrees, the next 10 degrees was compensated for by the zesuium shield as he went riding up the wall, and the final 10 degrees traveled through his legs and further damaged his already injured back. With the steely taste of adrenaline in his mouth and his team just ahead he clamped the shield back onto his left arm and cranked up his thrusters to 50%, cooking a pursuing bug that had leapt at him.
The walls blurred past him as he accelerated to ludicrous speeds for such confined quarters until he was back with his team, who was already taking off.

He slid to a stop in the center of the pit and took to flight, his thrusters redlining at 110%. Then the alien gun fired and the same EMP that dropped Aikiko shut down his armor. He continued traveling upwards for a moment but even on this moon gravity's laws applied. His systems reengaged at the last moment before he crashed, slowing him slightly. His legs hit first followed by his rear, back, and head in a thud that echoed in the pit. He couldn't move, the armor was recalibrating as hoards of those bug things came flooding in.

They began approaching slowly, encircling the previously surfing assailant.
RECALIBRATION:22%
More and more filled the room tapping and clicking as they surveyed the inexplicably immobile terror.
RECALIBRATION:43%
With reinforced masses they cautiously approached, clicking and whistling.
RECALIBRATION:67%
A brave bug jabbed at the zesuium shied before climbing onto Dirjon's armor.
RECALIBRATION:89%
As others began crawling onto his metal body as the first bug came to his helmet visor, staring inside, teeth gnashing. It raised one of the razor sharp legs to drive through the visor.

The edge of the zesuium shield collided with the bugs crystal skin as the thrusters roared to life, lurching the unit upwards and frying the local bugs. He rocketed towards the mouth of the volcano but stopped as reason caught up with him. The alien anti-ship gun fired again, the EM field playing games with his HUD. He resume his escape, never happier to see daylight.

Volcano / Artifact Compound

Taharial held the leg as she looked down the corridor and the whole volcano shock and broke, when Aikiko grabbed her she had never been happier and relished the discomfort because it meant she was alive. When Aikiko put her down she turned and smiled then gave the girl a massive hug "thank you Aikiko, i owe you a lot now" she looked down and then back up "i will repay you sometime", she looked around "at least i didn't drop this" she lifted up the leg and span it around her fingers then the leg twitches and she grabbed it hard "hmm seems it had enough it our company" she keeps hold of it "we need to get back to the Eucharis".

Splorfin 14, Artifact corridor

It was utter chaos. Broken shards of rock and natural metals splintered from the ground all around them, the corridors visibly twisting and contorting as if the entire volcano was suddenly made of a light sponge cake. The dust clouds contained large, hard particles which clattered against Tsuguka's visor and sandblasted her armor all over. A horrifying grinding noise surrounded them, backed up by a crescendo of incessant screeching and clicking from their inhuman foe. They were everywhere.

The armored nekovalkyrja tried to stay close to Dirjon and Tankyusha, but it was impossible to keep tabs. The smaller enemies poured out of the cracks before them like a liquid. Larger ones moved like large clumps within that mass, as if somehow formed from the melding of the smaller ones. It was getting hard to see the tunnel walls, never mind which direction constituted as the way out.

A roar of weapons fire, so loud it fried Tsuguka's exterior microphones... and apparently everything else. She was still standing, but she couldn't move. The armor suddenly felt like she was carrying an entire bus on her back. It must have been the arcing electromagnetic waves, there was no other explanation.

Dirjon was near; She could see him now, because the same wave apparently caused him to collapse, and she could see the dust cloud. The crystal things. They still poured towards them, a river of scuttling blue blades.

An arcane growl... Not from the bugs, but from the red lynx herself. All of the spite built up in her stomach, and made a weight so heavy that it solidified her footing. If she had known this was going to happen, she would have left an empty daisy running on the Eucharis, and telepathically routed her control AI to that. This entire affair had just been a complete mess. If that was her fault or not, she didn't know. But she'd be damned if she let herself be responsible for her team's deaths.

There was another big one coming in close. Her armor reactivated just a little before Dirjon's. Tsuguka unthinkingly moved in to distract it, unable to yell out as her close communication systems were still all sorts of molten. The next few seconds were a blur. Gnawing teeth and claws from a hundred opponents. The red lynx moved her armor so fast it felt like it might pull her bones out of their sockets. The massive thing was already in a state of frenzy, and took to smashing the floor around her readily. It was like fighting the mountain itself.

Slash. Stab. A swinging parry with the shield. The body moved automatically, the muscles remembering their training before Tsuguka could even visualize it. She felt disconnected, a passenger in her own form. Just slightly faster than the enemy, but not by much. Each blow she deflected was akin to a lightning strike, and her muscles blazed to even more painful levels. The flurry ended with a howling joust of her own, a stabbing motion so fast and so perfect that it penetrated deep into the creature's red 'eye'. Her shield continued to wedge it's twitching jaws open length-ways, slowly deforming under the power of it's death-throws... She didn't have to retrieve it. Well, mostly because it was then that she noticed her left forearm wasn't connected to her elbow anymore.

Tsuguka backed off, confused. It didn't hurt. Nothing felt real anymore. The adrenaline was like fire in her blood. There was no room to think.

Tankyusha. Was that Tankyusha? She quickly folded her blade back in and grabbed him from behind. The android's tiny anti-grav unit would never make it out of here fast enough. Maybe her Daisy wouldn't either. The nekovalkyrja just aimed for the light and gunned for it, squeezing onto him as tightly as one hand could manage.

Red daylight. Amber waves. Still no room to think. The Eucharis. Where was the Eucharis?...

Volcano Exterior

Outside, the rain was pouring down in sheets and buckets, and the light levels had dropped significantly. Suddenly, streaks of bright light slammed into the mountainside, creating a large shockwave and sending a massive cloud of dust, smoke, and debris into the air. The Eucharis was strafing the side of the facility. In the distance, the Eucharis could be seen zipping across a break in the cloudy sky surrounded by a halo of glowing blue where its shields were pushing on the atmosphere. Glowing yellow sprays of AA guns peppered the space around it. Then it vanished into the storm again.

"Tsuguka, Eucharis. Report situation," Hanako's voice came over the subspace radio.

Above the volcano

"...Giant weapon... unknown source...." Tsuguka stopped for a minute and coughed heavily. The line was filled with burst of static as the digital component of her mind struggled to keep itself together. The voice was like a ghost. "Tankyusha-Hei... Dir...Jon... Ikky.... T-Taharial.... We're... We're all out. In the open."

The Eucharis' physical movements were like a blur. It was the best Tsuguka could do to close her eyes and act on instruments. The cold, virtual numbers didn't flinch as her mind strayed. With the feeling of creeping illness and cold sweat quickly overtaking everything, her legs ached in between flashes of numbness. The suit was doing it's job and sealing off the injury, but that didn't mean her body knew how to deal with it.

"...Cannot... Cannot identify enemies, but we have a sample. Heading back as soon as possible." A haggard continuation. Somehow, reflexes alone kept her away from the swarming ariel enemies, but passing out was becoming a real danger. Toyoe read her own condition like a textbook, and could see the numbers dropping. "Eucharis. Are you... Are you in a condition to open the power arm... armor bay doors?... We've... I've... sustained some damage."

Medea II

Mitsuko yelped in surprise as the shuttle was jolted along with the Eucharis, bouncing her around in her chair, sloshing fizzy orange water everywhere. Thankfully she'd been seated and strapped in as she prepared to undock from the larger vessel. The Neko was still jerked around, pushed back into her seat as the ship she was still attached to took off. "Oh dear. Oh...oh...?" She had no idea what was going on outside, only that the Eucharis was ready to leave. Fast. Normally she wouldn't have minded that at all.

The captain had likely missed her message in the commotion, and obviously had more important things to deal with right now. There was no way she was going to disengage from the ship if they were taking fire. Or firing themselves, which became obvious a few moments later. Murakami simply made sure the shuttle was ready to move. If the seal began to fail, she would be there to immediately maneuver the shuttle safely away from the Eucharis, following its movements instead of interfering with them and becoming an uncontrollable obstacle.

Artifact Exterior

Tankyusha dangled loosely in the red neko's grasp, his jacket bunched up around his neck and his arms sticking out at an odd angle. He didn't have much control over it, of course. He hadn't chosen to be in this predicament. But he was glad he was - Tsuguka's quick action and Dirjon's defense of him before were the most likely reasons that he was still 'alive' and kicking. The crystal shard protruding from his chest didn't really count. One of the smaller constructs - bugs, the team had taken to calling them - had been very disappointed with that particular wound.

The science officer didn't need his training or his vast catalogs of data to tell him that Tsuguka's health was fading. He also knew that if she fell unconscious that it was a long way down from here and his tiny anti-grav belt wouldn't cut it. Somewhere, there was a bright side in all this. The discovery of a new civilization should have been a good day. The current situation suggested otherwise.

At least the Eucharis was keeping the fighters at bay. Getting to watch her in action had been a pleasure so far. The torrent of dart-like fighters, most no more than 3 meters long, swarmed around it like angry locusts. The AA guns did their work, striking them down in masses. Many of them took more than one hit and more seemed to keep pouring out of the artifact. Their relatively small beam weapons didn't amount to much individually, but their numbers made them more than just pests.

The artifact itself was fully revealed by the Eucharis' strafing attacks. The mass of it was relatively unscathed so far, a testament to the durability of whatever it was made out of. One of its three adjustable spires fired another technicolor blast of energy at the attacking star ship, the sound of it like a heavy metal guitar slide. It left the air in its wake charged with electricity and the storm reacted, kicking up more wind and lightning around the escaping away team.

Maintaintainance Conduit. En Route to Engineering.

"GAH! Son of a!" the violent rocking of the ship was made magnitudes worse by the small space Kale found himself crammed into. The rocking had sent him bouncing off of the conduit walls an he was now sporting more ten a few bruises. The engineer had been heading towards the engineering section when the storm had hit. With little warning Kale had been unable to brace himself leading to his current predicament.


Engineering

Kale tumbled out of the maintainance conduit into the engineering bay. He grabbed the catwalk railing and steadied himself, the noise along with the random, violent motion of the ship was severely disorientating and it took him a minute to get his bearings. He was on the upper level of the engineering deck, unfortunately this was not where he wanted to be. The parts and toolkit lockers (meant for quick access in the case of an engineering emergency) which contained the equipment and parts he needed for his repair job were on the lower deck, close to the main passageway.

On unsteady legs Kale pulled himself along the catwalks railing and down the ladder to the lower deck.

'Oh great... There are no railings down here'

He lurched forwards grabbing onto the side of one of the lockers to prevent himself from falling over.

'What the hell are they doing out there.' he thought to himself. The motion of the ship had beome much more controlled though no less chaotic. 'Aww hell. Did we just take off? With the starboard thruster partially disabled I just know there are going be problems.'

"Bridge! This is Namach-Hei. The starboard engine is partially disabled. Its going to take a few minutes to get back there to disable the maintainance lockdown, I repeat the starboard engine is partially disabled!"

Cursing loundly to himself Kale quickly hooked the equipment he needed to his belt and pocketed replacements for the burnt out components. This done he made a dash for the conduit. He needed to at least cancel the maintainance lockdown if not fix this properly before the fact that the Eucharis was not fully manouverable came back to bite them.

'This is gonna hurt' he sighed as he dived back into the confined space.

Splorfin 14, Out of the frying pan

Tsuguka was fading fast. Losing limbs tends to have that effect on a person. Dirjon grabbed her armor by the thruster pack and with an override code temporarily took control of her flight systems, all three landing behind a big rock.

"Aikiko, get the medic over here!" He shouted over the radio as a few lasers from the fighters struck close by, "Eucharis, Ulvson here. I'm moving up to take out the gun. Gunner, confirm my IFF is friendly."

With his rifle in hand his thrusters accelerated him once more into the fray headed to the lightning gun, flying low.

Island / Artifact -shore

Aikiko looked at where Tsuguka was at and there was no way for her to take the Medic to her while in flight. "Have Tsuguka fall back to my position." She gave the coordinates to where she and the Medic was at. "And for that is all holy and sacred! Turn off your locator beacons! They are blind and can not locate you when you're not transmitting it. That is what they are using to zero in on you guys."

Whether or not she would be believed. So far, the crytaline creatures hadn't even shown interest in Aikiko and Taharial. Aikiko wanted to blast the "Leg" as it twitched in Taharial's grip. She cold see having it for future study.

"They'll probaly get stupid and have me carry you to Tugs to do an ariel fixed while becoming a target ourselves." Aikiko spoke on private channel to Taharial. Watching to see if they would bring Tugs to her or her having to go get Tugs. "I may have to leave you here to get Tugs."

Island / Artifact -shore

Taharial looked up from the leg and changed to private chat with Aikiko "this is where i wish i could use my wings, it would help a lot", she searched her med supplies "okay, if you don't mind i will put this out and ask you to help me with tugs, as you call her". Taharial smiled a bit at the neko and looked around "hmm if it is too serious we may be only able to hold back the bleeding till we are on the Eucharis".

Taharial looked at the leg then back at the neko in front of her "well as i said, i owe you my life Aikiko and i take that seriously" she looks down "if you need anything i will help, the only time this will be paid back is when i save your life". Taharial was worried about tugs condition, if it was something that couldn't be done without the med bay they would have to wait till they could get back on the Eucharis.

Splorfin 14, Surface Shoreline

The green-armored Nekovalkyrja allowed Dirjon to control her systems, but only as a temporary reprieve. When they set down behind an outcropping of large boulders, Tsuguka looked dead on her feet... But she was still on her feet, breathing heavily down the audio line, agitatedly making curse words under her breath whilst she struggled not to look at the empty space were her loading arm should have been. The shock was wearing off, and the pain was catching up now.

"DIRJON. I'M NOT DEAD YET." Out of nowhere came a yell that was agitated in the extreme, a voice overflowing with frustration and rage. There was nothing quite like the feeling of intense focus and sheer willpower that her tone brought to his ears. It could have been because of the immense stress, but Tsuguka seemed to greet the concept of her being an object of pity with the kind of spite most people reserved for their worst enemies. "You... You... will listen to my orders, as the Shosho has assigned me to give... I don't need a medic. I need you to cover me as I retreat back to the Eucharis with Tankyusha. It's not worth the three of us dying... We... We don't even know if you can harm that thing!"

The red lynx wanted nothing more than to keep fighting herself, it was true, but she'd settle for bombing the hell out of this useless rock from orbit. If they were going to come out on top after this encounter, it had to be on their own terms. Bleeding themselves dry out here, against superior fortifications and numbers, was foolish. And there was no way that the medic could do much in this poisonous atmosphere, with all the alien interceptors around, anyway. Her mind might have been swimming, but her obsessively efficient nature could still see the forest through the trees. Her deeply ingrained, psychopathically strong sense of loyalty wasn't going to let the avoidable death of a single team member be on her head, not ever. Even if she bled out, she intended to do it standing up.

When the armored hand grasped her android companion again, it was rough and heavy. Half trying to lift him up by the torso, and half inadvertently using him for support. "I'm sending you a systems remote access code..." The red neko did as such as she spoke. "U-use it to control my power armor... You can do that, right?..." No time to wait for an answer. The enemy was circling. She lifted off again with him in her grip. Hopefully, if worst came to worst, the machine-person could pull it off, and at least one of them would survive.

"Akiashiro-Hei. Keep going. Get back to the ship. Taharial is more important to the crew in general." She sounded more than a little pissed off still, even with the supportive advice. In the end, it was perfectly possible that it was that utter refusal to acknowledge defeat was the thing that was even keeping Tsuguka awake in the first place. "I'm sorry, but... W-We... We have to keep the IFFs on so that the Eucharis even knows where we are... It's... a catch twenty-two..."

Splorfin 14, Enroute to Lightning Gun Emplacement

Dirjon flew swiftly over the ground. He hadn't packed nearly enough ammo to do any good for the team. He also knew Eucharis couldn't afford to stop for the team to be picked up as the emplacement would devastate the ship. Despite the risk involved, Dirjon knew that if that gun didn't stop firing everyone would suffer. With 18 missiles, 16 grenade rounds, and 51 plasma shots he was determined to at least disable the weapon.

Primitive Polygon said:

"You... You... will listen to my orders, as the Shosho has assigned me to give... I don't need a medic. I need you to cover me as I retreat back to the Eucharis with Tankyusha. It's not worth the three of us dying... We... We don't even know if you can harm that thing!" She yelled via radio.

Click to expand...

"It's not worth the three of us," he yelled back, "Just me."

Aikiko's observation gave him an idea. He immediately boosted power to his signal transmitter. No sooner had the adjustment been made was a small swarm of fighters on his tail. Not the most ideal form of cover but it caught most of the fighter's attention.

In the near distance he saw a slight glowing from the base of the mighty weapon shine through his cracked visor and blurry HUD... The same blurry HUD he saw when it disabled him the first time. The gun had Eucharis targeted and was charging.
It's directed lightning... Electricity finds its way to the ground... It can be redirected!

With his shield every control surface on the armor he made a short, steep climb putting him right in front of its emitter as it fired. The shot bolted forth striking the second pursuing craft, exploding it and chaining the rest as it dispersed the majority of its energy and made a rapid course to the ground below. The other fighter was batted to the ground by his shield. Then the spire began tracking him.
Oh shi- wait, the idea hit him like a hammer as he rapidly evaded I front of the next spire and acquired its tracking. They wouldn't fire without a solution and he was to small to shoot off the hip.
He completed the circle by getting the thirds tracking.

With a final flash of his thrusters he stopped himself in the center of them all, centered and level between all three of them.
Let's do this...

As the energy was fired he directed his thrusters and gravity downward in a rapid decent.

Splorfin 14, Artifact Exterior

Tankyusha watched the battle, doing his best to contribute to the duo's flying efforts. He didn't have the heart to take over Tsuguka's suit just yet. Instead, he found another way to be useful: friend-foe identification. Aikiko's message had given him the idea. Across the battlefield, HUDs began identifying the flying, crystalline darts as Locusts and the larger ground types as Scarabs. The team's nickname for the enemy and their tomb-like origin made the names as good a fit as any in his mind.

***

Unfortunately for Aikiko and Taharial, they weren't so fortunate as to be left entirely alone. While they did seem to be left alone more than the others after they disabled their locators, their foes were about to prove themselves to be perfectly capable of finding them visually.

Part of the Locust swarm broke off and darted towards them, lasers flaring. Their erratic movements made it difficult to get a precise fix on how many there were, but their HUDs said six. If the single Scarab in the facility had been hard to kill - how would they manage six of the three meter long Locusts?

***

The spires, each hundreds of meters tall, had a hard time tracking Dirjon up close. They were plenty deadly - even being near the discharge was enough energy to fry one of their suits - but they were slow to track. When they did fire, the piercing siren of energy being released from their lengths was deafening. However, rather than the massive beam they'd all been expecting, there was.. nothing. It seemed for a moment that they may have misfired or cancelled each other out. The sudden magnetic surge that rocked the island disagreed with the notion. The entire facility seemed to light up from the inside, giving the Minkan technician a very clear view of what was going on beneath him.

The very bottom of the shaft opened like a camera's iris before him, revealing a set of spindly arms. Collectively, they held what looked like a crystalline bullet, encased in a partial metal sheathe. In slow motion, the arms released the 'bullet' and left it hovering mid air. The electromagnetic surge became even stronger.

Tankyusha, not so far away as to be unaffected, grabbed his head as best as he could. It felt like the world was being torn asunder around him. His sensors were going into emergency shutdown, trying to prevent the EMP from frying his 'brain' entirely. Even quantum computers could only handle so much.

It was fortunate, then, that it had held out this long. Despite the noise, the pain, the awkward sensation of being toted around by a red-skinned amazon, his quantum computer brain was still operational. And the data it had been collecting this entire time led to one startling conclusion:

This is a resupply outpost. And then, more startling, The shaft is the barrel of a mass driver.

The metal rings, the electromagnetic discharges, and the strange, perfectly linear shaft all connected in his mind at once. If you had to get supplies, fuel, cargo, anything into space, it was an economical solution as long as you had the energy. The artifact seemed to have that in spades. He felt a sense of satisfaction at the conclusion, as though he'd unlocked a piece of the puzzle. He hoped he and Dirjon could have a discussion on the merits of such a device back on the ship.

Dirjon.

He overrode the emergency shutoffs on his systems. He'd last seen the technician streaking off towards the artifact; likely for some new stunt not unlike his entry onto the scene not so long before. Tankyusha ramped up the power of his bangle to max to cut through the interference. "Dir-" static "-get out of there!-" static "-ss driver!''

The bulky communications device around his wrist hissed and popped. He felt the sensation in his right hand fade away, then lost control of it entirely. He hoped the man got his message - there wouldn't be a second one.

Splorfin 14, Surface Shoreline

It took a direct radar reading of the Eucharis for Tsuguka to realize her mistake. The defensive fields were operating on full power, and there was nothing the away team could really do to get inside without disengaging from combat first. The power armor team couldn't break orbit alone. Even taking into account the diminished mass, they had less than half the thrust required to make escape velocity.

More chaos. Tsuguka avoided foes as best she could whilst entirely unarmed. Talking. Her companion was saying something about a mass driver. If that was really true, the Eucharis could be fired upon, even if they moved to the other side of the moon entirely for retrieval. The situation just kept on disintegrating all around them, and her body longed for the embrace of sleep. She cursed Dirjon's attempt at heroism, even if that was partially because she didn't see the reason in him throwing himself to the wolves so pointlessly. The electromagnetic waves would certainly disable his suit again from that range, even if the giant weapon missed...

Electromagnetic waves.

"Di---on---" The rasping, heated voice whispered into Dirjon's ear, twisted by the static into a faint echo of an angry ghost. "Use--- the----."

"---should sti---"

"---tion missile avoidance pods! --are electromagn!---"

Splorfin 14, Enemy Gun Emplacement

The massive weapons discharged. Dirjon should've know the designers wouldn't be so stupid as to not have built in a failsafe.

His gut got that feeling again as the circular door opened beneath him to reveal what any Nepleslian man could easily recognize as a bullet or slug. It was only then that it made sense to him. This whole structure was a huge mass driver easily large enough to propel this slug through the Eucharis twice.

The distortion of the magnetic field intensified to a disabling level and ripped the PA helplessly onto the metallic casing of the 100+ ton projectile. At this point even the subspace radio wasn't much more than mere static but the message was clear. He needed to get out of there.

The armor was useless as it couldn't move itself with all systems completely unresponsive. There he hung, useless and in need of rescue. But how could anyone save him from this? If anyone came close they'd be stuck right next to him. If he stayed for the ride the slug would accelerate so fast he'd be nothing more than soup in his own boots. Because of his recklessness there would be no good solution. He had put himself, the team, and everyone on the ship in danger and he knew it. If only the weight of his guilt could effect the slug, maybe he'd be able to make it drop.

Then he remembered hearing the word 'countermeasure' through the static.
Even with his visibility impaired, due to having his face pressed up against the slug, he could barely make out that the door to what he believed was a magazine was still open. He had his chance and he was not going to fail his crew this time.

With no electronic control and great effort he brought his hands to the countermeasure pods in a last ditch effort to take out the installation. He pried the cover open on each and pulled the manual triggers letting every sort of countermeasure mini-missile fly.

Eucharis, Starboard Wing

Battered and bruised from the violent motion of the ship but still on his knees Kale rushed to finish repairs to the damaged circuit. Whatever biological matter had been there before had either gone flying out of the open casing during the ship's maneuvering, or was fused to the surface of the damaged components.

Kale braced himself against the wall using his inertial control to pin himself in a relatively stable position. It hurt his shoulder somewhat but unless he did so there was no hope in hell he could solder in the new components without damaging something else. A sudden change in direction caused one of the capacitors to slip from his grip and go flying across the small space disappearing into the shadows near the floor. Cursing, he tood another from his tool belt. Situational stress was causing the young engineer to sweat, the liquid matting his hair and dripping down his face.

With as much finesse as he could manage Kale finished attaching the last surface mounted components to the board before powering down the soldering iron. He closed the casing of the now repaired unit. Five seconds later saw him barreling down the conduit as fast as he could manage towards the console where he had left his portable computer.


"Namach-Hei to Bridge. Starboard nacelle fully functional, It's ready for use Shosho."

Duty done he disconnected the computer pad from the console and closed the access panel. With a sigh he braced himself against the walls of the conduit and prepared to wait out the storm.

Splorfin 14, Surface Shoreline

Taharial couldn't make out what people were saying but could tell that Tsuguka wasn't coming any time soon, she was making Taharial annoyed she gets on private comes with Tsuguka but it kept cutting out "LISTEN ........... YOU .................., COME HERE ................ CAN .......... YOU OR I ............. WITH YOUR OWN..........., DO I ........... CLEAR?". Taharial was breathing heavily after it, she had never raised her voice before she normally just stayed calm or done breathing excises but all that has happened just made her, she gripped onto the leg harder than she needed to and it seemed not to like it as it twitched a lot.

Taharial noticed the fighters and looked at the leg the quickly went on private with Aikiko "we need ........... the leg" she pointed at it then the squadron of fighters "leg .......... here" she looked around and got worried, she thought these creatures had no sight so it most be the leg 'calling' the others to it location.

Splorfin 14, Surface Shoreline

Aikiko glanced at the leg in Taharial's hand, then to the Darts, "I hate to say it. But you're going have to get rid of it. Or find some way to kill that leg. Try dunking it in water. I'll try to draw them off from you and bring back Tugs and the others."

Aikiko moved away from Taharial, "Try finding what frequency it tramsmitting on and try to jam it. If you can't kill it." She fired a few shots from her gun to draw the Darts attention to her as she began to draw the Darts off from Taharial.