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

"Masumi!" Junko called out on reflex. Her hands clenched, almost snapping the casing she was hanging from. That first knee-jerk thought was to leap right off and snatch the darker Neko out of harms way. Only, she wasn't sure the rest could maneuver the core without her.

She had her place, unfortunately, and others were counting her to know that place.

"Bringing this thing around. Not sure I'll be able to snag Masumi-Hei. Is anyone in position?"

A hard vernier burn to bring the core around. Had to bring it out of the fighters area of attack. Link up with the Eucharis, and keep close to those pinpoint defense guns. Hopefully, Masumi would be out of the line of fire this way.

Open Space

Hit, Masumi free-floated for a moment as pain entered her system and her knees pressed towards her core. She held herself in something close to a fetal position, then in something akin to rage, she flipped and fired at the now-distant fighter with her right-arm's pulse cannon, clutching her left arm close to her chest. She could feel the hemosynthetic interior of her armor pulsing onto her wounds, doing little in the way of healing the major damage done.

Thrusters engaged, she moved steadily towards the Mindy nearest to her that had what she needed.

"I'm going to go into your butt..." she murmured to them, unable to say the word pack.

She took out two things from his butt pack and moved away from them. She let the core shield her, thrusting with it as it was moved by her teammates. She applied the dressings on the major wounds with one shaking left hand and a steady right one. Then, she took the molecure tape and applied it over the titanium alloy chassis and Yarvex chain mail layers that were exposed. It wouldn't stick to the Zesuaium, but stuck to those. Her AIES began flashing different signals to her at the point in which she was done with her patching. She gripped loose cables on the core with her right hand after she had finished, watching the melee around her for just a moment before closing her eyes and leaning her helmet against the core.

PA Bay

Following the helpful pointer on her HUD Mehitabel mapped out the diagram to what she was seeing in the gloom of the emergency-lit armor bay. Probing likely places with restrained speed, the focused clerk tried not to watch how close they were drawing to the floating infantry team. Popping another plate, she stuck her head into the conduit to check the main leads towards the starboard door/forcefield controls. Having made sure the breakers were off first the clerk wracked her brain for the elements of damage control, even if the simulator in the arsenal basement seemed awful far away.

Instead of an orderly, if tight and filled with cabling, maintenance conduit she found an absolute ruin. A shard of torn plating stuck out like a knife towards her suit's faceplate causing Belle to gasp in surprise. It didn't last long. Steadying herself with wings she quickly assessed the damage.... It didn't look like the conduit was open to space, at least not directly, although the indicators on her helmet showed a weaker atmosphere. That was good news.

On the other wing, the whole space looked trashed. Consulting the diagram she turned her light over the whole space light flashing over the damage again. There wasn't any scorching, that was good. Pushing on the upthrust bit of conduit, Belle grunted a little. It might be possible to jury rig a patch.... Dragging the repair kit closer to hand she drew out the torch after a bit of grasping, carefully turning it on and applying it to the bent metal. Cutting away the jagged chunks and pushing them down out of the way finally gave her a good view of the power cabling. It had been cut fairly clean, thankfully, something well within her ability to repair!

Even as the molecular tape came back out a quiet prayer of thanksgiving to the Creator for his generosity. Eyes open again, Mehitabel grabbed two loose ends of cable and dragged them closer together, able to hear through the suit's external pickups the brackets further down straining a little. Close enough, she decided, wing pressing down against one conduit to free a hand to operate the tape dispenser. No doubt Howard-hei or Cherry-heisho would have something to say later about fixing things by just wrapping them in a whole bunch of molecular tape but that was later.

She did just that, hastily jamming the dispenser and torch back into the repair kit. Scrambling across the deck before both feet were fully under her, her mic went live despite the fearful panting. Or perhaps it was just adrenaline. "I've got something rigged, Cherry! It may not last more then a couple minutes," she cautioned, skidding to a halt beside the heavy bay shutter's local control panel. Telltales pulse slightly as the power fluctuates and Mehitabel strained it further; bringing the force field up took a second as power surged irregularly from the damaged power plant and the shaky patch job on the line. It seemed to take though, enough for her to hit the door open.

"Away Team," she was surprised that her voice was back to even, modulated tones. She brought the slung pulse carbine around and into her hands, wrapping one arm through a handy strap, "Power Armor Bay door facing you should be open. I can give you covering fire but I don't have AIES or any fire control other then naked eye."

???
It happened so fast there was really no way for Candon to make sense of the situation. The image of space formed an endless blur of black. His CFS was reporting no operation, giving the man a clue. His HUD displayed his trajectory and then it made sense. He was moving away from the team and rotating on two axis. His AIES began using the thruster wings in pulses to begin correcting himself.


Kuvexian Station Wreckage, Space

As his rotation began to slow his view of the situation came into focus. The station was destroyed but so was most of the mainframe. His frustration could be expressed later, at the moment they were still needing extraction. His wings lit up with aether momentarily to change his trajectory back towards the squad.
He drew the saber rifles from his back and released them, letting them float ahead of his chest as he connected the power cables from his forearms to their batteries before reclaiming them.

A target lock warning sounded as Candon drifted back toward the group. He twisted hard to adjust his course, narrowly dodging a spray of aether bolts from a passing fighter as he fired off two subspace detonating mini-missiles from his leg pods. Candon's gravity manipulating system stabilized his roll as he came about to face the rear of the fighter, he primed his saber-rifles. The fighter banked hard to avoid the missiles but Candon had anticipated as much and cued the missiles to do similar in advance.

The missiles detonation was only visible by the flash and ripple across the top of the fighter's shields. As the holes appeared in the enemy's shield Candon fired a beam from each rifle into the cockpit, but with the speed the fighter had already been carrying it would be impossible for him to tell the status of the enemy pilot as the distance increased.

Open Space

A shard of super-heated shrapnel the size of a car door flew past Tsuguka's face plate so quickly, that she wasn't even sure if the rest of the team detected it. Probably part of the station, now silently immolating itself a few thousand miles to their port side. Sensory acuity wasn't the problem. It seemed they were all getting tired and distracted, dwindling in effectiveness the longer they trudged it out in the open like this.

She saw the Eucharis shoot past, and Masumi's lack of protective covering fire land her with serious injuries, too. It made her feel more than a little powerless, even as soldier's hands worked on autopilot, still continuously thudding out grenade rounds into the sea of mini-missiles surrounding them. Incendiary rounds made weird spinning torus without external air sources, snapping away just seconds after detonation. Tsuguka was surprised they even worked at all, but had run out of frag ammo in that last burst. No choice now.

"Calidus-Hei, isn't it?" A deep tone met the Elysian's ears, crackling through damaged antenna. Tsuguka couldn't even see the Eucharis due to being behind the large ball of severed computer equipment, but trusted her instruments to carry them home true. "Second rack on the right, rear wall. Taharial-Hei's MCAS should still be there. More filled out, but the same height. Think you can handle it?..."

Masumi lying wounded on the front of the metal sphere was playing on their mind, but there wasn't exactly much they could do except for rely on instruments for that, too. The data feed said she wasn't dead, at least. Everybody was occupied with either killing missiles or pushing the computer. Sending somebody to help would be irresponsible for the team as a whole.

"Are you grievously wounded, Santo-hei?" A gravely tone wasn't quite comforting, but it was there. "Mind sending me your camera feed? I cannot see the Eucharis from here."

A flare of carnage just off their starboard side. Candon had pulverized a fighter's cockpit, which continued off into the distance. But how many more were out there?...

Four rounds left, before it was time to switch to concussion grenades. Those ones almost definitely needed oxygen to work.

Shiho really can't do anything else but push right now:

Stuck on the other side of the pilfered computer wad, pushing blindly, Shiho continued doing exactly what she'd been doing ever since teleporting out: Pushing. Firing off her countermeasures, and pushing some more. It was just one long mad dash to the ship at this point, and Shiho could only grow more increasingly bitter that she had to risk her life to do something that could be done by a mindless machine at this point.

<<Space>>

Junko blinked at the injured Neko's response over comms. Part of her rationalized that maybe sudden blood loss was affecting her somewhat. Or maybe she just misheard because of that damaged prong. Either way, her response came after a moments silence.

"I need an adult?"

She adjusted the course just a little. Minor swerve out of the way of what appeared to be a fighters attack pattern. A gap now existed, courtesy of Suites just blasting one out of the sky. Eucharis waypoint ahead of her, station to one side and the fleet on the other.

Just one more push.

Open Space

Freyja's mind was so occupied with defending the team from missiles she almost missed the Eucharis flying past them. It took her a minute to figure out what happened. Somehow Masumi had also taken a few hits. She must have taken a hit from aether cannon fire. That wasn't good. They didn't have enough firepower as it was, and now they were down a woman. Freyja hoped the science girl was okay.

The missiles seemed to be slowing down now as the Kuvexians were running out of ammunition. She was starting to have to dodge aether fire instead. That was why she completely missed the incoming shrapnel. A large chunk of shrapnel narrowly missed her, but the small debris cloud behind it did not. She unwittingly dodged directly into it.

Freyja gasped and then cried out in pain as numerous small shards slammed into her. Most didn't breach her armor. Unfortunately, a handful of shards pierced her abdomen. She looked down to see small drops of blood leaking out of tiny holes in her armor. Her eyes widened in surprise. "M-my blood.." She whispered softly. It frightened her to see her own blood. She didn't let that stop her from protecting the team for long. What she did take the time to do was hook her ABSR up to her Mindy.

A few seconds later she was darting around again, although now she was sticking closer to the rest of the squad. "This is Yuuki-hei. I got hit with some.. shrapnel. Five small pieces got through my armor.. it hurts pretty bad, but I should.. should be okay." AIES kept warning her to plug the leak, but she didn't have time to slow down. With the amount of missiles decreasing, she was able to take a few shots at the fighters. She took her last scalar grenade and tossed it at a group of them.

PA Bay

Mehitabel moved in to follow Tsuguka's instructions. It wasn't hard; the suit was right where she was told it would be after all. Sizing up the medic's armor she found that it would indeed at least fit her. What, exactly, she could do with it was another matter. They had gone through what had charitably been termed 'familiarization' with the MCAS Paladin armor during basic training. It had consisted of looking it over curiously then watching one of the Arsenal's few duty stationed infantry troopers put a MINDY set through the paces.

"That depends Toyoe-hei, what do you need me to do?" she asked, temporarily abandoning her rifle to step awkwardly back into the armor body.

<<Space>>

Their was a crack as Junko snapped the railing she had been using as a handhold. That shouldn't affect her like it did. It was selfish, and unprofessional and stupid of her. Especially after Masumi took a hit just as bad, if not worse.

But damnit, she was young and as in love as she'd ever been.

"Freyja-Hei, adjust speed and come about. We'll trade places. Shiho-Hei, can you take over lead thrusters?"

She angled her head over for a better view of Freyja's Mindy. The punctures looked small, but stellar distances were far even by Neko vision standards. Damnit, they'd be on top of the Eucharis in seconds. Would it even matter?

Shouldn't she have said something anyways?

Open Space

"Not your commander, so I have no authority over you." Tsuguka's response to Mehitabel was far too calm given the situation, but a multitude of grizzly details were churning behind that tone. "But, if I was a Kuvexian, I'd hit the ship whist the back doors are hanging open. Mini-missiles could follow us inside, even if they don't do it on purpose... A basic space suit is insufficient for this sort of situation."

The fact that Taharial's MCAS typically had a gauss cannon pre-mounted would probably help with their current missile situation, too, but the Joto Hei was too busy not dying at the moment to check qualifications. Just generally, a PA gun sitting in the armor bay was better than nothing.

Suddenly, a small shudder as Junko panicked over something, and Tsuguka belatedly realized that it was because Freyja's vital signs were now in trouble. With the station still exploding behind them, it seemed like patches of empty space all around them could simply decide to fill with super-accelerated metal fragments at any moment.

"Eucharis actual, we have wounded here." A snippy comment. Difficult to decide who in the team was still mentally sound at this point. Difficult to decide between who needed medical attention and who needed ammo. "Freyja-Hei and Masumi-Hei. Prepare to receive them."

Armor diagnostic systems gave a quick report. Time to make some tough calls.

"Masumi-Hei, if you still cannot move, please teleport back home." Technically wasn't in charge of her either, but Candon was in his classic obsessive dogfighting mindset again. "It won't do us any good for you to bleed out."

"Junko-Hei, please cover Freyja and get some eyes on her injuries." At least some of them had to stay in fire support, and the blue neko had been their most effective. Made her feel guilty, but Tsuguka didn't see any other way around leaving her in the field for now. "Inertia will carry the payload. Don't worry about us."

"Shiho-Hei... Well, you've got all the ammo between us now. Please cover me." It was true. In a vacuum, the concussion grenades turned out to be like throwing pebbles. Recoil had long since driven her hands numb anyway. Tsuguka wasn't exactly sure how she was even still in one piece, if she was really honest. "Sorry for being demanding, but this is the home stretch. I'd consider it a personal favor if I don't get blown to bits over this stupid ball of silicon."

Shiho shoots:

The bulkiest neko in the skies gave a little grunt of affirmation to Tsuguka, shifting her position on the server ball and rolling so that she lay flat on her back. The wings of her armor splayed out to continue thrusting backwards as she leveled her grenade launcher, ripping out the ammo belt for her own useless concussion grenades and extending the belt for her fragmentation rounds from her butt pack. Firing off the absolute last of her countermeasures, and blasting off her remaining two mini-missiles, she finished slamming a grenade into her chamber.

"This is so stupid..." She could be heard muttering, tweaking the interface with her launcher in conjunction with her AIES to trigger the grenades to fragment at the point where the enemy's missiles would have to converge in order to reach a flat trajectory to keep up with the speeding payload.

The rattling of the recoil of her launcher pounded through Shiho's suit, thankfully giving just a tiny extra bit of thrust to the server ball at this point. Shredded metal pounded space, as she filled the air with a cloud of shrapnel moving at such speeds that even the tiniest speck of it could do significant damage. Relying more on sheer brute force of numbers to do her work rather than finesse, Shiho just... Did what little she could, given the circumstances: Squeeze a trigger, and keep her suit accelerating.

PA Bay

"Copy," she responded in a distracted fashion as the armor closed in around her. The sensation of pinching around her wings didn't last long, though the restricted feeling of having her wings encased left the clerk with a sense of unease. That enemy fire might come through with the team hadn't even occurred to her, making the protection of Tahriel's armor even more welcome then just standing around like a moron for a missile to rip her apart.

The AIES came up, immediately coming alive with a whole smorgasbord of warning notices as the threat receiver processed how deep of a mess they were in. Mehitabel had never been more grateful for the high level of automation available from the Star Army's weapon systems. It showed both of the arm-mounted pulse cannons powered up, although it seemed that one leg mount was fitted with a countermeasure missile pod. Her gait was wobbly, like an infant taking their first steps, as she returned to the door. Computers were something she could at least manage, tying herself into the squad network, "One more countermeasure pod Toyoe-hei."

For her part, Belle lifted her arms as she manipulated the Elysian compatible interface, letting the forearm weapons track the missiles as best the AIES could handle, switching around trying to track ones that were coming close the team's blind spots. Letting autofire do its thing didn't exactly have the same effect a trained trooper working in concert with their weapon system would; it was purely computer guidance that shot pulse fire around the approaching team. Her shots might even have destroyed some of the incoming fire, although she wasn't sure.

Space

Intent on completing the mission, Masumi listened to the infantry Neko's words but did not teleport. Everything she knew told her not to comply if she wanted to remain alive. Instead, she engaged thrusters and watched her sensors as they told her to dodge, bobbing up and down meekly. Her head was slightly limp and her left hand hung at her side while her right directed pulse cannons at incoming fire.

Masumi made her way to the Eucharis and her leg caught against the bottom of the entrance to the power armor bay before she realized she was close to being inside. She thrusted up and away from where her leg had caught and entered.

YSS Eucharis

Once in, she pressed forward, to the medical center just past the power armor bay. She fell forward as she entered, before she was able to look around it. She found herself staring at the ground after her palms had pressed into it, catching her fall. She then tried to use her thrusters to pick herself back up, but felt an even more terrible pain than the many she was already coping with run through her body as she did.

"I need ass-" she said before pausing to breathe in, then continued to say, "I need assistance." A moment later, after another breath, she said, "Oshiro in the med center... calling for assistance."

YSS Eucharis

"Away team, this is Eucharis Actual. Return to the Eucharis at once," Hanako ordered. She needed to be able to raise the ship's shields again, but she did not want to trap her crew members outside.

Meanwhile, the Kuvexian fighters were making desperate last-ditch effort to damage the Eucharis. One of them managed to fire an unguided missile into the armor bay just before the ship's guns blew it up. It hit one of the armor racks and exploded, briefly filling the bay with a bubble of orange fire. The aftermath left the bay full of floating debris with no lights and no internal gravity. Belle was pushed by the explosion out of the ship and found herself tumbling head over heels in space with the Eucharis growing increasingly distant.

Another fighter went full Kamikaze into the Eucharis' cargo bay area, blowing a meter-wide hole in the ship's underside.

YSS Eucharis - Medical Lab

The medical lab's lights turned on automatically as Oshiro stumbled in. The white room was clean and pristine just like Taharial had left it, with various beds in the main area, work areas in the back covered by curtains, and some containment cells on the back wall. To the right were a number of synth repair tubes and to the left were refrigerators and overstocked shelves of medical supplies. But the room was silent and completely devoid of people. The ship shuddered as things impacted it but the sounds were muffled and distant in the medical lab.

Mango and Lime, the cooks, arrived in response to her call with their AMES suits on their bodies with the helmets hanging from their belts. They helped Oshiro get out of her power armor and got her onto an Autonomous Triage Unit, which activated and started asking her a bunch of medical questions while its robotic tools were checking out her injuries. Meanwhile Mango rummaged through a trauma kit and then a standard medical kit. She eventually came up with a healing blood injector and injected some replacement blood into Oshiro's side. A second robotic table took the detachable patient platform and brought Oshiro over to a surgical unit that injected Oshiro with some local painkillers and a mild sedative and then started pulling out shrapnel. It didn't take long, and soon she was being sprayed with cellular spray and told by the table to get some rest.

Dunkin' on the Eucharis, or Shiho shouts "ORRRAAAA":

As the Eucharis drew closer, Shiho's vision started to flood with flashing lights: Proximity warnings, your destination reached, all sorts of stuff. All that pushing? Finally paid off. Shiho released the trigger of her grenade launcher, the thing pulling along behind her by the ammunition belt alone as she planted two hands on the giant server ball. A quick assessment of the thing's size, and looking the mainframe over to work out exactly which parts were the central computer, and what was just huge chunks of the massively over-engineered power feeds to the thing.

Little grunts of effort came as Shiho crawled along the chunk of mainframe, engines firing with precision as she adjusted the angle and facing of the pilfered 'puter. Just as the armor bay's feathered occupant was blasted out, the payload rushed past in a blur of wrecked metal. Shiho giving a deep guttural nonsense shout within her own helmet as she hefted every ounce of strength to propel the thing she'd nearly died for too many times in the last... What? Ten minutes, tops?

The Eucharis' armor bay found itself with a server plunging deeply into the ship, scrapes of metal on metal; the whip of power cables, and crash of floor panels against the Eucharis' deck. Shiho would wish she could say nothing but net here, but she had the problem of not knowing what basketball was.

"Ishii to Eucharis Actual. Payload is on board..." Shiho groaned, landing with an inaudible clang on the scraped up deck of the armor bay. Sprawled on her back.

Suddenly in Open Space

Mehitabel had been feeling sort of uncomfortable with the armor's setting; the Anthedon organic lining was sized for the, frankly, larger and shaplier Chason-hei. That had been merely a passing inconvenience before her entire world started to flip around. It felt at first like turbulence, followed by the helmet's faceplate polarizing to occlude the violent flare of blinding light that pulsed briefly behind her, washing unfelt heat from vaporizing atmosphere over her. Debris punched into the hardened ceramic shell shortly before she realized that the scene swimming in front of her was the armor team pushing the salvaged computer core into the bay.

A shout of delight faltered on her lips as they swam farther apart. She was falling. Spinning, really, spinning out into the cold void of space bumping around in the ill-fitting armor that felt like it was banging the hell out of her knees. As if by instinct she stuck out her wings to catch her, the Elysian basic senses functioning much better then her extremely limited knowledge of the suit's controls. Watching Eucharis recede her only reaction was a strangled gasp of fear.

Space, Eucharis' port side

This was it, the home stretch. Well, for the Infantry team, anyway. Candon fired precise beams from his Saber-rifles to help dissuade any would be attacking fighters and as a result he still had a way to go but fortunately his long-range support wasn't needed anymore as Tsuguka's team fully entered Eucharis' anti-fighter coverage. It was time to go home.
He began decelerating as he spooled his teleporter.
15...14…13…12…

HotelKilo said:

Suddenly in Open Space


Mehitabel had been feeling sort of uncomfortable with the armor's setting; the Anthedon organic lining was sized for the, frankly, larger and shaplier Chason-hei. That had been merely a passing inconvenience before her entire world started to flip around. It felt at first like turbulence, followed by the helmet's faceplate polarizing to occlude the violent flare of blinding light that pulsed briefly behind her, washing unfelt heat from vaporizing atmosphere over her. Debris punched into the hardened ceramic shell shortly before she realized that the scene swimming in front of her was the armor team pushing the salvaged computer core into the bay.


A shout of delight faltered on her lips as they swam farther apart. She was falling. Spinning, really, spinning out into the cold void of space bumping around in the ill-fitting armor that felt like it was banging the hell out of her knees. As if by instinct she stuck out her wings to catch her, the Elysian basic senses functioning much better then her extremely limited knowledge of the suit's controls. Watching Eucharis recede her only reaction was a strangled gasp of fear.

Click to expand...

11…10…
"Damn," Candon muttered as he watched a PA get launched into space. The 'scope' window on his HUD zoomed in on the winged figure as she careened without the slightest hint of control.
7…6…
"Eucharis, Eucharis, man overboard, starboard wing. Candyman is moving to intercept. Over," He called as he changed his destination and accounted for the orientation of his carried velocity, which he tried to match.
3…2…
A fighter locked onto her and opened the cover of its mini-missile pod.
1…
Candon spun 180 degrees. He had one shot.


Space, Eucharis' starboard side
With a flash Candon blinked into existance in a meter in front of Mehitabel and fired, naturally letting the computer do the aiming. A beam of condensed aether followed each stream of the freshly launched missiles through the exact spot in the shields they'd only just passed through, igniting them like high explosive firecrackers in a chain of erupting fireballs straight back into the respective wing-mounted launchers, a chain reaction made possible only by the sheer density of the desperate pilot's overkill salvo.
The moral of the story; be more conservative.

With his previous trajectory reoriented. To keep him 'falling' after Calidius, Candon returned the ASBRs to their mounts and accelerated to position the tumbling ally before him. While spinning on all three axis he couldn’t just grab her, he'd injure them both.

Teal blue lights emanated from the matte black M2-4 as Candon powered up his photonics array and reached out his hands to direct his thoughts. He'd never done anything like this before and would need his gestures to help him focus his mind.

What started as solid holigraphical dust became a flurry like that of a blizzard, engulfing the MCAS in teal. With gently hand motions he began slowly correcting her spin until she was down to only a flat spin on a single axis. The lights on the Mindy began to dim as the already limited power supply diminished further.

"Good enough," he muttered as he shut down the photonics array and fired his self-powered aether wings, the only sourse of propulsion he could realistically use if he intended to teleport back to Eucharis which by now was pretty far behind them.

The closest part of her body 'up for grabs' was her head, due to her rotation grabbing her helmet was not an option. Candon's right wing began firing in small pulses until he too had the same rotation. He knew Taharial's silhouette was considerably different from Mehitabel's and without retuning the whole rig and swapping breastplates the odds of having sufficient impact damping was infinitesimally small. An explosion was traumatic enough, she was definitely injured and since she wasn't a Neko any careless use of force on his part could effectively break her ribs in this case.

Carefully he reached out and gripped the collar of her breastplate and gently pulled himself 'up' and reoriented himself to be facing her in a manner that gravity would qualify as standing face to face. His opaque helmet turned clear for her to see his face as his AIES opened a voice channel.
"I got you," he assured in a calm manner that was unlike him, "Let's go home."

His teleporter began charging again for the last time, pulling it's power from a dead battery and weak reactor. With the addition of the heavy paladin core module his teleporter would struggle.
15…14…13
To ease it's burden Candon ejected the countermeasure pods on his legs, ASBRs on his back and tossed his empty handguns to the void.
9…8…7…
He ejected his aether wings.
6…5…4…
Reaching behind Mehitabel he unclipped the burnt butt pack from her MCAS. They were as light as possible. A final calculation of Eucharis' trajectory and velocity was compared to their own to determine the destination of the jump and Candon pulled Mehitabel into a tight embrace.
"Eucharis, armor bay, coming in hot!" Was his last transmission.
3…2…1…

Space, Eucharis starboard side,

The two flashed into the space ahead of the ship on a collision course with where the PA Bay would soon be. Candon's HUD was gone, with the exception of rangefinder. His armor was dead stick, no power besides his helmet's reserve battery. Using his own ability to manipulate gravity he kept them aligned with the vector his AIES had plotted before he jumped.

Fear was ever present as he clang to the woman he was trying to save. Without telemetry it felt like they were standing still with a tiny gunship looming in the distance. The math was right and numbers never lie, or so he kept telling himself as he checked the range of the apparently stationary ship again.. and again... and again. It was definitely moving.

As the distance between them closed Eucharis steadily grew larger and larger. Candon stressed his gravity organ to speed up in Eucharis' vector. They were going to make it but… Candon rotated so he would hit the floor first.


YSS Eucharis, PA Bay

The two dropped to the bent, twisted floor as the ship's gravity caught them. They slid roughly, halting as they collided with the wall, but Candon felt nothing past his helmet's contact with said wall. Just ringing in his ears and a blurry, M2-2D helmet pressed against his.

Open Space

Life had certainly been rather short and disappointing. As Eucharis, or at least the large grey and red blur she thought was Eucharis, shrank further into the distance it whirled in and out of view. Her ears were filled with a constant hollow ringing and her vision was hopelessly unfocused. "Should have used a safety line," Belle murmured. It wasn't over yet, as the visible incoming fire warning blinked on her flickering HUD. Whatever had blown her from the power armor bay, probably one of the missiles Toyoe-hei had warned her about, had also crushed the missile pod on her leg against the door frame on the way out. No way to protect herself. She closed her eyes.

Rizzo said:

"I got you," he assured in a calm manner that was unlike him, "Let's go home."

Click to expand...

Her breathing was audible over the hot mic; close up her fair, tan face had a ashen cast highlighted in the limited light with dark streaks of blood. She let out a sigh as Candon's arms wrapped around her.

Rizzo said:

As the distance between them closed Eucharis steadily grew larger and larger. Candon stressed his gravity organ to speed up in Eucharis' vector. They were going to make it but… Candon rotated so he would hit the floor first.

Click to expand...

It was hard her to sense the teleport, other then a slight tugging feeling. Her body wasn't exactly welcoming new sensory input at the moment, causing her to swallow back a sick feeling. Thanks to the intel specialist's careful handling she didn't feel much worse but whatever his plan was...

Rizzo said:

YSS Eucharis, PA Bay

The two dropped to the bent, twisted floor as the ship's gravity caught them. They slid roughly, halting as they collided with the wall, but Candon felt nothing past his helmet's contact with said wall. Just ringing in his ears and a blurry, M2-2D helmet pressed against his.

Click to expand...

Reentry didn't feel much worse then exiting had, although there were a few more broken somethings and a lot of bruises that got a good shaking around as Mehitabel skidded across the deck in Suites' grasp. Her head hurt. Her legs hurt. She felt pretty confident that her savior wasn't any better off after fighting an entire running engagement before scooping her out of space. A thank you seemed in order, or at least an apology, but instead the dizzy Elysian just heard their helmets clunk together.

<<SPACE>>

Approach was too close, too fast, to do anything about the fighter that swooped perilously close. Junko clambered around and pushed her thrusters to full, slowing the acceleration of the core. Flames and debris licked past, and she realized something had hit the Eucharis. Open hangar beneath her, like hungry jaws.

"Brace!"

<<Eucharis, PA Bay>>

They skid across the bay floor, an errant tool clanging off her armor in the zero grav. Junko came loose, rolling into it and sending sparks up from the friction. The neko clambered to her feet, pulling up Shiho as she circled around the core. No gouges, holes or tears she could see.

"Eucharis-Actual, the core is aboard. Confirming away team status."

Stepped out of the way of Candon's risky teleportation scheme. Got to the edge of the bay door, the manual control blinking red. Needed to get everyone aboard, even if she had to pull them in. She gazed into the black, armor systems lighting up positions.

Gauss cannons swung up, looking for Kuvexian fighters. If they came hunting, she'd shoot them down. "Tsuguka-Hei? Astridr-Hei? Freyja-Chan?"