RP: YSS Eucharis [Mission 26] Flaming Arrows (YE 38)

Kuvexian Station
Computer Core Corridor

Masumi looked up from her leader pack to give a terse nod to her commanding officer and put it back on her chest and grabbed her weapon. She moved with Tsugaka and held her weapon ready as she turned her back to Freyja Yuuki to cover her while the Neko cut through the door to the computer room. She looked over her shoulder every few seconds to see the progress Frejya was making. The metal warped and contorted under the power of the aether saber and soon there was a section cut out of the middle of it.

"Nicely done," she transmitted to the Neko and soon, they were able to be inside the computer room.

A plethora of what appeared to be servers filled the middle expanse of the room, from which several monitors and computers were connected to that fanned out around the central servers. The largest monitor gleamed a low, dull gold while black writing streamed across the screen.

"Not my language of choice," Masumi said to herself as she began operating it. The Kuvexian language was interspersed with bits and pieces of what she had learned from Star Army Science linguistics training back on Yamatai. She began to scroll through their data, not with ease, but not with too much discomfort. She took out several large chunks of code and saved the progress, only to see the lights dim a moment before several monitors's gleam blipped off. She knew she was working with the right tools when that happened.

The broadcast frequency that the Eucharis was using was being blasted by a Kuvexian communications array that Masumi found, but could only decipher so much of. Using a clever, but intuitive, bit of re-programming, she found she was changing the jamming to the Kuvexian frequency, rather than the Eucharis'.

<<Computer Core Corridor>>

"Speak up if you need a second blade." Junko nodded to Freyja. Then she took position by the doorway, gauss cannons swinging back over her shoulders. With Neko strength, she could keep the SMG ready almost like a pistol. She kept the aether saber in her off hand, not ignited just yet.

She had no idea what the practical battery life was on the weapon. Not to mention how the former owner had or had not used it yet. With a Yamatai-made one she could at least link it to the arm mounts for indefinite power, but she didn't want to try jamming a power feed right on the field. Such were the downsides of on site procurement in foreign high tech weapons.

Every so often, she'd look back to check Freyja's progress. Or maybe she was just checking on Freyja, period. By the third time, she stepped farther out into the hall. More able to respond, less liable to be distracted.

Kuvexian Station
Computer Core

Thankful for the newfound assistance, Tsuguka dove inside the room and immediately searched for potential hostiles. In this particular case, any engineers seeking to interface with the mainframe, and thus delete the data, was included on that list. Still, she half expected to find Candon already inside, and the absence of either of these two quantities was disturbing to her.

Peeking around the corners of the strange alien consoles and seeking to absorb the first impacts in Junko or Freyja's wake, it almost seemed like an anticlimax not to be walking into a storm of enemy fire. The only thing in it's place was the offbeat flickering of a hundred brass-hewn server modules.

"Masumi-Hei, can you tell me which of these lines are modems linking to outside computers?" A communication channel between all four of them. This would need to be a team effort. "We need to prevent outside access until we can confirm the Eucharis is back in range. Cutting those cables manually may still be the most effective way."

Kuvexian Station, Computer Room

Candon's drones followed the team into the computer room as they entered. Candon entered the room last, cloaked in case of combat. Her order to burn the door seemed unnecessary to him, as he would simply teleport to the other side, but true to his word he left her to issue orders.

He spoke directly to Masumi and Tsuguka via laser, "I've spent many years on space stations, there should be a mainframe somewhere. These are just sub systems and terminals. A Mainframe will require massive cooling power, try tracking coolant pipes."

Kuvexian Station
Computer Room

"You're both right, I'm getting nothing from this. At least I can guide us through it faster when we find what we're really looking for," Masumi offered quickly. Masumi looked around, then pointed out the modems running from the servers behind the monitors and down through a central circular hole made just big enough for them.

She said as she looked back at the blue-skinned Neko, Freyja,and said, "I think you know what to do! Splice it and dice it like you did the door!"

As for coolant pipes, Masumi had to use her ultra wide band RADAR and imaging arrays to search the entire room and found the copper piping indicative of cooling power running from the exterior into the walls of the room and leading down. She looked to Suites-heisho and nodded to him as she teleported out of the room. She was down, below the computer room, into the mainframe. She had fifteen seconds to gather that this was not a place to be without backup. Her thrusters moved her around the room with ease, avoiding enemy fire, as her LASR shot out round after round, hitting a few armored Kuvexians and technicians, before her teleportation module had charged again and she was back into the room above, where her team was, still.

"You may want to come down here," she said, readying her Mindy to teleport back down with the rest of her team when they, too, were ready. "The coolant pipes lead down there and hook up to a central computer system mainframe, from what I gathered. But there's more than a few enemy Kuvexians and technicians working to do what I can only assume is destroy information. We need to get down there, fast."

Kuvexian Station
Computer Room

Tsuguka simply waited for Masumi to return for a moment, bracing against the bubble of expanding air caused by the woman teleporting around in atmosphere. Seeing as Candon had suddenly appeared at their backs, she just let the two of them scout things out before rallying her own charges. That was literally the arrangement they had planned in advance, after all.

"Call me animalistic, but I only like teleporting where I can see. An escape route is never an unfounded precaution." It was more self-referential than haughty. She knew that Candon loved to jump head-first into the fray, and wasn't about to belittle him for it... But keeping her own team alive was a priority in this particular situation. Folding her grenade launcher away, the red neko broke out her energy saber once more. A spare hand fetched a dinky Zen Arms SMG pistol from her cargo pouch, jolting back the receiver in the process. "Okay. I'm going to cut through the floor. Team, please utilize precision weapons only, this is the prize that we came here for."

In one swift motion, she scorched a large box section out of the relatively thin metal floor, dumped a full half of her countermeasure charges down into it, and then leapt downwards into the sparking nebula of anarchy. Enemy fire immediately glanced and corroded her armored frame, but there was just enough speed and discord to make their aim ineffective. A sideways dive behind some server banks was accompanied by a spray of her tiny pistol, evidently hitting something fleshy as it arced through the blinding cloud. The rusty smell of blood filled her nose as her helmet clattered loudly against the floor, buffed by an explosion she hadn't quite expected.

Tsuguka Toyoe rolled, then slashed blindly with her saber, cutting the barrel free from a shady aggressor she could barely even see. This was where the combat got medieval. If the Kuvexians had any sort of sense, they would order their armored troopers to swap to melee weapons also. Her armor flashed and converted to the same shade as the smoke, a glammering shadow that would be difficult to parry accurately.

Her loud speakers now booming, the gynoid valkyrie let out a tremendous screech, throwing her shield around so violently that it appeared to break the enemies' sword-wielding wrist. Adrenaline, it seemed, had pushed this all past a simple plan of action, and briefly woken up that terrifying monster that her designers had sought so diligently to restrain.

Chaos was achieved, as planned, however. The floored enemy wasn't maintaining his bodily functions, let alone a worthwhile threat to her person.

It was time to clean house.

Kuvexian Station - Computer Room

Suddenly the screens of the computer room began showing a little icon of a scroll being fed through a shredder and a progress bar at 5 percent and climbing.

Meanwhile, new attackers in chrome gold power armor began to pour into the computer area from lift shafts coming down from the barracks sections of the stations. In a few minutes, there would be hundreds of them. They were advancing in waves with their glowing orange energy shields in front of them, constantly firing aether weapons as cover fire. The Kuvexian forces would reach the computer room in only a few moments so this was the team's last chance to complete the mission.

YSS Eucharis - Bridge

Suddenly subspace communications with the away team were back online, so Hanako gave them a call.

"Eucharis away team, this is Eucharis actual, request status report, how copy? Over," she transmitted.

<<Computer Room>>

Junko's grip tightened as a new wave of power armor arrived. Then another, and another behind them. A cold feeling seeped into her gut, into her bones. This was not a holding action she was long term prepared for.

"Tsuguka-Hei, we have hostiles. Waves of power armor, solid wall." She opened fire, leaning out from cover as far as she dared. A little quiver in her voice, small but present.

"Copy, Eucharis-Actual." She replied mechanically, on automatic. Let Tsu take it from that point.

Junko scanned the corridor for outstanding tactical opportunities between aether shots and gauss blasts. She didn't have to kill them all, though that would be ideal. All she had to do was keep them away long enough for the team to complete the objective. Probably had plenty of spare ordinance from the first groups nearby cadavers.

That said, a solid initial idea would have been to fire Gauss rounds into the floor. It would, at least, disrupt their advance when it quite literally fell apart beneath them, right?

Kuvexian Station, Computer Room

The situation had reached its breaking point. There were far too many attackers to counter now and every second had a great cost. As the Aether blasts came Candon, still cloaked, crouched behind a pillar. His awareness encompassed the entire situation as seen from each one of the team. With the mainframe identified and Tsuguka engaged in combat Candon broke his rule, telepathically putting the last ditch plan into each person's mind.

A place to stand by the mainframe was given to each soldier. Candon accessed the LSP on Masumi's back and synchronized each armor's teleporter to jump to the same destination, that being the farthest they could teleport, 100 kilometers into space.

As this silent plan was delivered to the team his 25 drones returned fire, zipping around the room from cover to cover as they dodged enemy ordinance to the best of their abilities.

Kuvexian Station
Computer Room

She spoke out quickly and clearly, "Eucharis, this is Oshiro! I need pickup for the Mindy drone and Kuvexian technician at the bottom of the station! Without their retrieval we don't have mission objective!"

With positions planned by Suites, Masumi found her way to hers while returning enemy fire. Her Mindy's conditions report showed different sections moving from light green to green to even yellow in some parts of the armor like her left leg and arm. She reloaded a 100 round armor piercing magazine into the LASR efficiently and with ease while her active camouflage sensors gave her a view of the room while she moved about it, and then as she held position where Suites had specified.

"I'm here for you, Suites-heisho! This plan is going to work," Masumi said for all to hear.

YSS Eucharis - Bridge

Wes said:

YSS Eucharis - Bridge

"I am skeptical about that plan," Hanako replied to Sigurd. "I think the homing devices use subspace anyway. "The obvious solution is that the armor team will have to deactivate the station's jamming device. The station may have a large amount of defenders, but the teleportation ability of the new Mindy 4 should allow them to run circles around them. As long as they keep moving, the enemy is going to have a hard time building up on them."

Click to expand...

Of course it's obvious, but without a way to tell them so there's nothing I can do about it. Or anyone else aboard this ship, for that matter. Sigurd thought frustrated. He did, of course, not say that out loud. Instead he replied: "Understood, Ma'am. I'll see what I can do."
And so he did. Unfortunately, with the damages the ship had sustained he wasn't able to apply his morse code approach, since he couldn't get enough power to the comm array. He was still pondering on the problem when...

Wes said:

YSS Eucharis - Bridge

Suddenly subspace communications with the away team were back online, so Hanako gave them a call.

"Eucharis away team, this is Eucharis actual, request status report, how copy? Over," she transmitted.

Click to expand...

Looks like someone on the other side managed to put two and two together.

YSS Eucharis Bridge

Mehitabel pressed her balled fists hard against the armrests; hearing word from the boarding party reassured her that things hadn't totally fallen apart. Yet. A glance at the damage reports and repair statuses, worried her again. Their maneuverability was compromised as badly as the Eucharis' fighting ability.

Inspired a little by her minor repair job, she unbuckled the seat restraints and slipped out the back towards the main passageway. It wasn't hard to see that there was work to be done helping the ship's engineers. As she headed down the corridor at a quick walk, Mehitabel keyed up her intercom, "Howard-hei, Calidius-hei, is there anything I can do to lend a hand?"

Eucharis - Bridge

Natsumi settled back in her chair, now that the FTL jump had been initiated, she had a moment to breath and really survey the damage to the ship. It was not good, she saw, but not as bad as it could have been and there was hopefully some time to effect repairs before they needed to go back in and get the landing party.

Computer Room

Freyja followed into the room, ending up standing beside Junko. The approaching waves of Kuvexians made her blood run cold. "If it comes to it hit them with this Junko-chan." She said aloud and pulled a scalar grenade from her waist, tossing it to Junko. "If we survive this, I.. am going to kiss you so much. So don't die!" This message she sent to Junko telepathically, along with her fear and the warm feeling in her chest when she thought of Junko.

She followed Tsuguka into the firefight on the next floor down, looking for targets with her Pulse Cannon and ABSR. After she received Suites-heisho's orders she distracted the enemy with a cloud of her 9 remaining NSBs and hustled to her assigned spot, taking a hit in the leg. Freyja stumbled and her armor flashed an orange warning light on the virtual depiction of her right leg. The plan had to work. They had no other options at this point.

Computer Room:

For her part Shiho fell back to the computer room, providing covering fire the whole way. Grenades tearing through the increasingly numerous defenders. It was when she heard the order from Tsuguka to switch to precision weaponry that she paused for a moment... The hulking Neko wasn't really armed with anything of the sort. At the very least, she did a quick switch around from her grenade launcher to her scattergun.

Where was the backup? She'd argued for it, stating that this exact situation would happen without it at that meeting. Seemed it wasn't coming, and they were taking on the entire base in this small a number. Oh well, keep fighting. That's your day at the office, Shiho.

As Tsuguka shot down through the floor to get on top of her enemies, Shiho peered down the hole after her to get a target. Letting the shieldbearer take the first few shots, Shiho rocketed down into the melee and landed an accelerated drop-kick to the neck of an enemy power armor. From there it was just a matter of killing pretty much anything shinier than a blue-clad Yamataian, and not screwing up whatever was going on with the computer.

Following her squad leader's example, she waded into the melee. Using her suit's engines to close the distance, she kept mobile; no walking or running, she used small bursts of speed to slide or launch herself around. For now she settled on moving from one target to the next, toppling them before finishing them off at point blank with her scattergun. The odd burst of light from her volumetrics seemed to multiply her own presence near constantly, using decoys to draw fire away from herself as she moved and keep the number of shots piercing her heavy shielding to scorch and gouge at her armor down to a minimum.

She fought her way to the designated spot, figuring that she'd either stand there and die or else something other than that would happen.

<<Computer Room>>

Junko wasn't sure of Suites' plan, if only because running seemed a degree too close to outright failure. Either case, the rest of them would need a second to fall back. Right now, she was in the best position to give them that second. This line would hold as long as it needed to be held.

Freyja coming over with a scalar grenade couldn't have been timed better. Her private message, sent only to Junko, stopped short any thoughts about using it properly. This warm feeling, it felt so much like her own she was surprised it was being transmitted. She could only watch Freyja depart, stunned, before trying to open her mouth to speak.

And then a shot grazed just close enough and smacked the side of her helmet. A piece of the left prong went flying right off. Now she had no problem speaking, though it was mainly angry cat noises. Stupid, stupid, locking up like that in a combat zone.

Once she was sure everyone was safely toward their marker, Junko took the scalar grenade. Gave it a good toss right for the middle of their ranks, where it'd do the most damage. Then she flew, her TAPs like flaming wings as she rushed for her waypoint.

"How are we going to stop them from scrubbing the data?" She asked, noticing the progress bar on the screen. If the data went, this mission would be a complete failure. That idea wounded her more than actually being shot.

Kuvexian Station, Computer Room

Candon's brain burned from the mass of information he'd processed and while he was sure something in it was thoroughly cooked it wasn't exactly unexpected, he'd done it before and he was confident he'd do it again.

As the team mobilized the teleportation drive of each armor began to spool. With tactics and strategy pushed aside it was time for him to act as well. His volumetric system cloaked once more and he was invisible worn the exception of the ABSR in each of his hands. Stepping out of cover he opened up with everything he had. Saber-rifles pulsed with rapid aether and scalar pulses, his forearm cannons thumped steadily and his drones began firing as quickly as possible in a pattern that screamed of suppressive fire yet flew with the unreal accuracy only a computer possesses.

He moved in quick, premeditated steps as he dodged incoming aether blasts. The burning in his brain increased like an Overclocked processor as he figuratively red lined his senses.

The barrel of each ABSR scalar rifle glowed red hot as the batteries died. Candon slammed them onto his back mounts and cross drew his pistols which he emptied quickly and returned to his waist holsters.

Being out of ammo and low on power was bad but by now his, and everyone else's, teleporter was charged... and they were gone.

Kuvexian Station, Computer Room

"Why did you think I was so obsessed with cutting the modem lines?" A pale shade appeared before Junko, at first only visible as the timid icon of Tsuguka's FOF device. The access routes they were making on the other neko's armor suggested they worried about the soldier's condition, but they didn't say anything about it out loud. Perhaps it was the way the santo-hei had flinched for a moment. "It's too late now. That isn't what our team was trained for in the first place."

Junko's well placed scalar grenade gave her a great opportunity to plaster the enemy flow with concussion grenades, as even the Kuvexians in the rear were now bogged down by their disabled brothers. The feeling of that small victory was limited, through.

Sustained close combat had completely battered the exterior of their armor, and holding their ground was no longer viable at all. Ever since that close-range aether rifle explosion, her shield had a hole the size of a fist in it. Moreover, the red soldier followed Candon's orders because they were orders.

Backing up with their weapon constantly firing now, Tsuguka's minds eye was too concerned with making sure her team had reunited in all of the chaos to respond directly to the Eucharis' message. Even if the Shosho was a genius hacker, it wasn't going to do them much good now. Why the Kuvexians hadn't severed their own communications to prevent a potential virus outbreak was anyone's guess.

Still blocking the doorway and firing so rapidly that it made her hands numb, the interior of the ship was suddenly replaced by the nothingness of space once more.

Whatever appeared before them during the next fifteen seconds, Tsuguka just prayed to the Empress that it did not have a gold hull.

YSS Eucharis - Bridge

Hanako remained seated in the slightly-smoky bridge and listened for a response to her request for a status report, but only heard Junko say "copy," followed by Oshiro asking for a pickup for a captive. Subspace communications were still a little spotty because of the station's shields were up, which prevented Hanako from easily getting a video feed from the away team, and Hanako furrowed her brow as the thought crossed her mind that perhaps Tsuguka had just been wiped out by the station's defenders, which was entirely possible. The whole operation had been dependent on surprise and quickess, and enough time had past that surprise was mostly gone.

"Natsumi, prepare to space-fold back to the station and join the attack fleet," Hanako ordered.

The line beeped as Hanako keyed her mic again, indicating a secure connection."Eucharis away team, this is Eucharis actual. Please give me a status report. Did you get the data yet? The fleet is about to arrive, over." Another chirp.

Space

In a flurry of shimmering teal, the Star Army First Expeditionary Fleet arrived and began firing on the station and the ships that were defending it. Beams of aether sliced back and forth as the carnage began. The away team was almost immediately caught in a crossfire of Kuvexian and Star Army starfighters.

Open Space

~"Eucharis actual, this is the away team. Reading you five."~ A beleaguered exhalation was finally transmitted back. Rapid point-to-point jumps were always disorientating, so Tsuguka had to work quickly to shake her head through it, and grasp the condition of the team. That, and the weird ball of mangled computer parts that was now floating freely in between them. ~"Moderate damage sustained, but there are no casualties, Shosho. Cutting off computer access proved inviable as enemies amassed, so we were forced to bail out with as much of the system as we could physically teleport."~

~"Cannot detect your current position. Sending you our current positional data. May be forced to relocate again if the enemy gets here first, over."~

Tsuguka then just shrugged, checked her ammo count, and then gazed outwards at the distant glimmering sparks that waited to pounce upon them. If they were forced to jump again, this could get a lot worse before it got better...

"Everybody in one piece internally?... Junko-Hei, do you even read me? Your suit is missing an ear..."