RP: YSS Eucharis [Mission 23.1] A Distant Threat (YE 37)

Eucharis Wardroom

Aikiko hearing the announcement from Hanako, she put away the glass and grabbed her manual. She moved down to the P.A. Bay.

P.A. Bay

Aikiko geared up in a Mindy. Seeing a new set of Manipulator arms et. She quickly mounted them to the Mindy along with her load out of weapons and gear. She debated to herself as she accessed the ship's MEGAMI to find the exact location of Suites. Finding out that Suite's had a prisoner, She grabbed a set of restraining devices, just incase it was needed.

~~ She must really hate me to forget about me.~~ Aikiko sighed softly as she went about getting ready. ~~ I could go AWOL and go help Suites ~~ Eyeing one of the teleporter attachments. She hoped Samuel hadn't become one of Taharial's experiments. She gave a soft giggle at that.

Rixxikor Village

Umeshu was still in the mix on the ground with the Rixxikor BBQ monitoring the evolving conversations going on with the locals when she picked up the emergency beacon being transmitted on all frequencies from their Operative's Mindy on her communicator, originating somewhere on the surface of Higaflan. A flash of concern went across her wisteria colored face, as she then radioed in to her fellow operator at the helm of the Telemachus V circling overhead. "Hashimoto-shoi to Yamashiro-shoi, did you pick up a medevac beacon active planetside? I think Suites-hei is in danger and needs backup. Take the team aboard and get him out of there... we have things under control at the village, so you have permission to disengage as air support. Hayakushite."

Shuttle

"Yeah, I heard it loud and clear" Natsumi replied to Umeshu as she made some adjustments to her controls. "Have to pick up a couple extra people from the ship as per the Shosho's orders, then will be on the way there ASAP" Natsumi continued as she rolled the shuttle out of it's orbit and beelined for the Eucharis.

She glanced back into the passenger compartment at the people she already had aboard there. "Change in plans" She said to Stark and Murikumi. "Suites-Hei is in trouble. We have orders to pick up a couple more soldiers and get him out of whatever bind he is in. Hang on tight while I dock us" As she closed in on the ship's shuttle bay she opened a channel to the needed personnel.

"This is Shoi Kohosei Yamashiro to Jax-Hei and Darkfire-Hei, Telemachus V will be docking in the shuttle bay in twenty seconds. I will be dusting off thirty seconds after that to emergency evac Suites-Hei, be aboard the shuttle before I lift off, or I will leave you behind" she ordered over the channel to the two of them and maneuvered the shuttle into the Eucharis' awaiting shuttle bay. As she came into land, she already had the main hatch opening to allow the needed people to board immediately.

Shuttle

Mitsuko sighed to herself as the machine guns and rockets began firing shortly after they landed. She didn't seem very surprised, not that anyone else did either. She was resigned to this sort of reaction, and their role in the negotiations that she did not expect to go well. She was a bit surprised to see Stark return to the shuttle so quickly, riding along with them as the shuttle circled the small village.

Sitting up straight as the small craft veered back towards the Eucharis, she nodded at their new orders. "Oh my. I hope he's okay. Did he run into more Rixxikor? What should we be prepared for?" She had little to do besides wait in her seat for the others to join them, going over the possibilities in her head as she tried to prepare as best she could for their new rescue mission.

Engineering

Jax was still lost in thought when he heard his name announced over the intercom. Confused, he looked around hurriedly, unsure of why. Fortunately, his FAR updated him.

"Dude, get moving! You're going on a rescue mission!" She shouted. Jax, for a moment, was a little shocked. But the realization dawned on him that he was needed, and so he shook his head and took off, out of the engineering department.

PA Bay

Jax raced into the PA bay as if he were being chased by death himself, and immediately began scanning for his Mindy.

"Aw, come on!" he whined when he discovered that no, his suit hadn't survived the space battle. Thankfully, it seemed that they had been lent some spares. With practiced ease, albeit a little shaky from nerves, Jax slipped into one of the sets of armor, then slid his helmet on.

"Looking good, handsome." the FAR chirped from a position just above his right shoulder.

"Oh, shut up." he grumbled. He did a quick systems check to ensure he wouldn't spontaneously blow up, and once satisfied, began to hurriedly outfit himself.

'Combat engineer,' Jax thought. 'Objectives are to facilitate movement of allies through obstacle clearance, and to slow advance of enemies through obstacle creation.'

With this in mind, Jax reached for a general equipment pack for the dorsal, and a gauss cannon for his right shoulder. For the equipment pack, Jax tossed five plastic explosives, and a remote detonator. In training, one of the more experienced guys had explained that "you could never have enough bombs", and Jax wholeheartedly agreed.

Jax placed a weapon mount on his other shoulder, so that he could use both hands if needed, and then attached Offensive Augmentation Pods to the legs. Hey, while he was here, he might as well load this thing out while he had time!

While retrieving his standard issue rifle, Jax received Natsumi's message, and cursed under his breath.

"Hey, what's good?" he said hurriedly to Aikiko as he rushed past, rifle on his shoulder. Without giving her time to respond, he left the PA bay and headed for the shuttle bay.

Shuttle Bay

Jax slowed himself upon entering the shuttle bay, intent on not looking like an FNG who was in a rush. So of course, when he came into view of the shuttle, he tripped.

"I'm good!" he called and quickly picked himself off the floor. He double timed it up the ramp and into the hold.

"Hi, I'm Jax," he chuckled nervously, scratching the back of his helmet and attempting to dispel the awkwardness. "I'm gonna be your engineer today."

Rixxikor Village

Wes said:

"I...I freaking love alcohol!" Rixx Jixa stared at the bottle for a moment. He gingerly took it and then slowly brought it to his drooling mouth, and the tiny arms on his mouth opened the cork. Rixx Jixa then began to chug the wine for several seconds. "It's nice! What were you saying?? Oh! Well, we came in our colonization ships and some other ships that gave us a ride. The blue-skins from the Kingdom."

Click to expand...

"Blue-Skins? Whom do you mean? Can you describe them?", Sigurd asked while his mind did some estimates about the numbers. It didn't take him long to come to the conclusion, that it would take a hell of a lot of ships to transport all the Rixxikor that seemed to inhabit Higaflan right now. And somehow that seemed unlikely to him, so he began to suspect that most of the insectoids did not come from offworld.
"How old are you actually, Rixx?", Sigurd asked therefore.

Rixxikor Village

"Well, the Blue-skins are the people of the Kingdom. They are like you. Military types who wear uniforms and carry guns. You should find Tixx. He would know more because he is older. I am only six months old. But Rixxikor are very fast learners and even faster at multiplying," Rixx Jixa explained, holding up a freshly-created egg for emphasis. He then turned to wander off and bury the egg with a hamburger next to it.

P.A. Bay

Aikiko glanced at Jax as he entered and grabbed weapons and explosives. Just as she was getting ready to respond, off he went. She shrugged and went back to her chore of outfitting her Mindy. She hoped he knew about handling explosives.

She returned to straightening out the P.A. Bay once her new Mindy was ready. What could be recycled through the fabricator she put in carts and secured them along the walls out of the way once they was full.

Medical

Akane sat up, opening her eyes. Looking around, she felt off. "What's going on?" she asked, unsure if anyone could answer.

Stretching her fingers and arms told her that she was physically fine. Still, she wasn't sure what was going on. She remembered hitting her head, but everything after that didn't make sense.

Walking through a painting and trying to put it all together, managing colors without a brush. Taharial's voice was there, but Akane couldn't remember what the Butcher said.

"I'm out of it," Akane said so she could hear her own voice and know she was awake and capable.

Shuttle

"Welcome aboard Jax-Hei" Natsumi greeted the engineer and checked the shuttle's chronometer, frowning. Time was up. "Darkfire-Hei, there is no more time to wait shuttle Telemachus V departing." she sent over wireless, then to the others. "Dusting off, everyone hang on!"

With that, Natsumi sealed the shuttle's hatches, kicked the anti-grav back on, lifting the small craft off the deck and jetted out of the shuttle bay. Once clear of the mothership, she kicked the engines in and locked onto the evac beacon, pouring on the engine power, driving the shuttle for Suites Hei as fast as possible.

"Suites, we are inbound to evacuate you, be there in 2 minutes" she signaled him.

Forest
Candon tried to listen to the message but couldn't focus with the pilot whining about torture and nonsense. He threw him down, drew his SMG and fired a single stun round into his chest.
“Quiet, you. I'm on the phone.”

‘Just 2 minutes?… Of course, Eucharis is in motion now. ’
“Shuttle, the foliage is too dense here. Head for the crashed fighter. I'll meet you there. Over.”
Candon returned his weapon to its mount and through the limp pilot over his shoulder. Heat from the reactor was now pouring through the lining of his armor. Minor burns on his back would show the outline of the reactor casing. Regardless of the pain he knew he had to where the armor if he was going to keep control of the pilot. As the temperature rose the computer slowly began injecting painkillers into its wearer to help ward off what would be unbearable pain.

Using his plasma weapon on the whole cutting mode he cut an opening in the leafy canopy for him to fly through. He took to the sky once more, rocketing his way to the crash site where he would retrieve his drones with their Intel on the fighter.

Shuttle

Mitsuko winced as Jax fell right on his face, but at least his armor would be more than enough to protect his body from a simple stumble. His pride, however, might be a bit bruised. "Secure yourself for the trip, Howard-Hei. You'll be first out, since the rest of us were not permitted to wear armor on our diplomatic mission." She didn't have much more information for him as they took off, looking towards Natsumi, their pilot, as the shuttle rushed towards the crew member in need.

Shuttle

Tony had moved up to the cockpit and sat down in the co-pilot seat to help Natsumi when the change of orders came. Quietly she worked the secondary controls and helped bring up a good coarse to get them to the emergency. Tony's rifle sat beside the seat ready for her when they reached the new location. "Nats As soon as we touch down I'll hit the deck and cover the team... But I would suggest you be ready to pull this crate out if it gets hot.. This thing has no weapons and we don't need another rescue situation." she looked over and winked at the White haired neko.

Shuttle

Jax winced a little inside his Mindy at that bit of news from Mitsuko. He knew bringing the suit was a bad idea!

"Roger that." he muttered from his seat, checking his rifle...

...God, it felt so bad-ass to be able to say that for real.

Forest

The alien pilot didn't have much ability to evade the stun shot, being a captive audience at Candon's whim. It silenced his curses well, the only sound was a dull exhaling of air as he was slung over the shoulder of the overheating Mindy. With the rescue squad on the way, hopefully Candon could get the prisoner and himself to the rescue shuttle without becoming a human torch in the processs.

Approaching crash site
Because he was carrying be captured pilot Candon couldn't reach the astounding speeds he valued in the Mindy power armor as the rushing air would harm his prisoner. As the crashed fighter came into sight so did his returning drones. Candon knew it was time to part ways with his Mindy. He could feel it in his back, the suit lining had dried out long ago in the amount of painkillers he'd been injected with were causing his peripheral vision to blur, a condition that would only worsen the longer he remain in his armor.

The drones began updating all of the data they had collected to his armor's AIES which he immediately copied directly into his digital brain.

As he prepared to land it finally happened:
Candon didn't even read the big red letters that now filled his HUD. He didn't need a computer to tell him what happens when an aether reactor overloads. Containment failure was just a nicer way of saying that there's an aether bomb on your back. Fortunately he'd had time to figure out what he needed to do on the short flight, though no one can really be prepared for what is almost always a death sentence.

He made a quick pass over the crash site to drop the pilot, SMG, and alien pistol from 4.5 meters high, enough of a fall to badly injure already wounded pilot while leaving him alive. He then made a mad dash for the sky, climbing at a 60 degree angle.

At 200 meters of the ground he rolled the armor to face the sky and throttled down momentarily as the chest split open . Using his own ability to fly he launched himself from the suit and began tumbling downward. Before bailing out he telepathically instructed his AIES to continue the climb at greatest possible speed it could reach.

After several large doses of powerful pain meds from his armor's life support system Candon was helpless against the disorienting effects of tumbling to the ground. He managed to land flat on his back, disappearing in a patch of very tall grass 3/4 of a klick from the crashed fighter. Despite not receiving power from the armor since the grenade incident the helmet's internal battery still had enough juice to run the camera long enough to show the armor's final moments.

Against a serene background shined a brilliant flash, blinding to an unshielded eye. Blinding even to the helmet's cameras. The last thing Candon saw before the massive shockwave silenced everything, leaving him to face empty blackness.

Shuttle

Natsumi hunched over her controls as she piloted the shuttle towards Suites' location, urging the shuttle on faster with every fiber of her being. She nodded in response to Tony, her crimson eyes darting between her sensors display, systems readout and the forward view port. She was about to say something to the Nepleslian woman sitting beside her when the sensors pinged for her attention, displaying data on a sudden energy surge, explosion, momentary spike in heat and radiation, then nothing, all in the vicinity of their destination.

The IFF Beacon for Suites' power armor winked out. A low string of curses she had learned from her former roommate issued from the snowy white haired pilot. "I think Suites Hei's power armor just exploded" she reported. "Ten seconds, prepare to deploy for search and rescue operation!" she commanded and swept the shuttle in on their planned meeting point.

"Scanning for life signs" she added and dropped altitude, bringing them down over the ground and crash site. As soon as they were at a safe height she opened the shuttle's hatch. "Jax Hei, deploy!"

Shuttle

Mitsuko didn't receive any further information, but there was a fair chance Natsumi had no more to give. She could hear the two in the cockpit chatting, before the pilot shared the latest reading with the rest of them. "Oh dear. That doesn't sound like the work of the Rixxikor." En masse they could disable a PA, as she'd seen before, but she doubted they could fully destroy a Mindy without making enough of a disturbance to alert everyone on the planet.

She nodded to Jax as Natsumi gave him his orders, holding still to allow the Mindy to exit, likely followed by Stark. Mitsuko planned to move into the cockpit to assist Natsumi with scanning and searching, if she was allowed.

Shuttle

Jax nodded and stood, feeling a little nervous. He didn't really know why, though, because he was strapped inside what was essentially a man/tank hybrid and armed to the teeth. That, and the pilot Suites had captured probably wasn't feeling too well after the massive explosion and what-not. But there was still that small amount of uncertainty...

But now was not the time. As Jax stepped to the door, he silently prayed he wouldn't find a bloody splatter in the place of the intelligence specialist. At the edge of the ramp, he peered down at the grasslands that seemed miles below him. He gulped a little, trying to judge the distance. Was it survivable?!

'No! Don't you wimp out now! There's a man, probably dead or dying, down there!' Jax thought furiously. It was like riding the big roller coaster at the amusement park: Don't think, just do. So, without giving himself more time to dwell on the danger, Jax stepped off the ramp. It was at that moment, Jax knew, that he had messed up.

Crash Site

"Crap! Crap! Crap! Crap! Whydidithinkthiswasagoodidea?!" Jax yelped in utter terror as he screamed towards the ground, arms flailing to try and position himself to where he would land on his feet. Just when he was about to expect a hard impact, he subconsciously activated his thrusters to slow his descent. The thrusters deactivated just a few feet from the ground, and Jax yelped as he felt himself tumble forward, as if to land on his face again. But he was ready this time, and reached out his right hand to catch himself, which allowed him to end his jump in a very awesome-looking pose, with one hand on the ground, and the other stretched out behind him.

"Feh, nailed it! Now walk away like a bawss!" Jax chuckled with a very satisfied grin, his heart still pounding. To say the least, he was very glad that there had been no comm link to the ship when he'd jumped, so no one aboard had heard anything from that whole conundrum. As far as they were concerned, he'd known exactly what he was doing. And that they definitely hadn't chosen the worst man possible for forward observation.

Jax stood up, and then pulled his rifle from the shoulder mount.

"Itto Hei Suites?!" he called. Damn. Was he supposed to put the rank after the name?! Or was he supposed to... ah, nevermind, he'd take the lecture later. Jax raised the weapon and began slowly creeping towards the crash site, sweeping this way and that.

"I'm opening a channel to the shuttle." his FAR, who'd jumped down with him, announced.

"You guys see anything up there?" he asked the crew aboard the shuttle as he continued moving forward, heart pounding, ready for any sort of surprise. He heard a weak groan just a little bit ahead, and moved towards the source of the noise. Hidden in the grass, sprawled out awkwardly, was the pilot, who looked like a, well, whatever the hell that was.

"Sweet!" he hissed excitedly upon finding the alien pistol, which he stowed in his pack. He wasn't very aware of the rules regarding war trophies, but he would study this little piece later, if he could. Take it apart, see how it worked, that sort of thing.

Then, Jax found the SMG, which he stowed on his shoulder. Even if the user was dead, they should still make an effort to retrieve the gear.

"Found the pilot," Jax announced through the comms and stood back up to continue his search. He stepped past the fighter, and silently basked in awe. They needed to take this, too, somehow. It was an engineer's dream to get to explore an alien craft for the first time. "He's all sorts of screwed up, but alive. Anyone got eyes on Suites?"

'Or what's left of 'em?' Jax thought darkly.

Shuttle

"No sign yet, Jax-Hei. I'm going to lift back off and sweep the area for Suites" Natsumi replied and glanced at Tony. She had the shuttle hovering at a mere five feet above the ground now. "Deploy and provide cover for Jax and the pilot" she said to the soldier. "I don't trust the bug not to show up and complicate things" she added.

That order given, she glanced back at the aft compartment. "Murikumi, I'm going to need another set of eyes up here. I think it's safe to leave the machine gun for a bit" she called back, ready to climb back up to a search altitude as soon as Tony was out.