RP: YSS Eucharis [Mission 27, Part 3] Expanding Horizons II (YE 39)

Metal Dungeon

Frixxaqz looked at the Star Army team in disgust as they aggressively pointed guns at him. "No Rixxikor want to activate defense robots, bitch. Defense robots are not ancient. They intruders, like the Yamatai. They kill many. Their leader must be close. I must keep moving," the insectoid said. He began to move away from the away team.

Meanwhile, any team member who was visible was basically getting looted or about to be looted by increasingly large crowds of Rixxikor who were starting to get really handsy with their butt packs, rummaging in them for ration packs. There were over 20 of the Rixxikor in the immediate area now, several of whom had already taken a shit on the floor in front of the armor team while Frixxaqz was talking.

"Providesss usss!" "Food please!" "Gives us the nutrients!" the crowd insisted.

Gungeon Surprise

The gathering Rixxikor seemed anything but threatened by the Yamataian team's presence. But as the aliens crowded around them in the cramped metal dungeon, pawing for snacks without regard for their own safety—despite Natsumi's order, it now seemed impossible to point a gun anywhere other than at a Rixx—Saiga felt more and more threatened by them.

Using his shield, the SAINT officer shoved a group of them away as gently as was possible considering the situation. He knew they'd come too close when he heard their long, gnarly claws scratching against his armor's plating. Didn't they shoot acid, too? Saiga wasn't talking the chance to find out.

"Hey, back off, shitass!" he called over his suit's external speakers, doing his best to sound what he expected the Rixxikor would find diplomatic. Through his years meeting with foreign cultures, Saiga had learned that imitation often brought more to a conversation than flattery. But he did worry that "shitass" might be a little too literal right now. Would "twat" or "you ignorant slut" have been better? No matter.

With the Rixx around him dispersed for a moment and his back literally against a wall, Saiga secured his SMG onto his armor and quickly reached into his survival pack. He pulled out the first fistful of what he thought was food. Two Type 38 Field Rations and one reversible poncho folded to a similar size came up in-hand. The Rixx would probably enjoy the hot dogs and fries more than the tuna salad with kanpan, but the Chusa would miss the latter far more—it was so rare to pull a ration pack you actually liked!

"Get big and follow your boss, nerds!" Saiga ordered, tossing the three little packages he'd pulled from his butt pack. They sailed over the Rixxikor immediately in front of him and into the crowd. He was a little worried that feeding them would give them the energy to be more threatening, but the increasingly close proximity of their feces worried him more right now. "I haven't got anything else to eat, so get moving!"

Metal Dungeon

Candon spoke out hurriedly to the away members, "We need to talk this out as a group. I recommend we retreat and go over the plan together and decide on a course of action. Not as one, but as a unified team."

He didn't want to deal with these Rixx any more than Saiga or Masumi did, who had stowed her scanner and had one hand on her butt pack and another on her rifle, which was lowered but her grip on it remained firm.

Outside

"Should one of us be inside in case an attack starts?" Wazu asked, watching as Bronzi started enthusiastically attaching random parts from the bot to the hull of his mech.

Wazu was being a bit more cautious, and was looking at the guts of the machine more closely as Bronzi started tearing through it bit by bit. Instead of taking pieces randomly, Wazu would take what looked the most 'central' and remove it from the machine using his tool kit, before wrapping the whole thing in a layer of caster tape. The gooey bits on the inside certainly suggested that there was some amount of nano-machine based something on the inside.

A channel would be opened up to Jax,

"Hey Jax, any chance you could have a force-field nested isolation box fabricated and ready for us when we return? We have some samples we would like to keep isolated."

Bronzi huffed. But he could see as Wazu examined he broken robot more the brain man was getting worried. Bronzi had attached about seven of the bots to the Heirophant. "Ight. I'll get back in." The Gartagen said as he hopped back over and went back into the Heirophant. "Ghost ride ya whip." He snarked as the machines closed up around him.

Sura called back over the radio to Wazu and her Dad. "My analysis of the material is coming it. It isn't the same as that megastructure. Those machines aren't associated with the construct." She said in a warning tone. It took time, but Sura couldn't say what the machines were made of just yet. Only they were not native to the construct.

Fabrication

Okay, so, several strange things had happened in short succession.

First, a bunch of Rixxikor showed up. Jax was still going through possible calculations as to how they had shat on the outside of the airlock, when they started begging for food and trying to pick the away-team's pockets like street-people in Funky City.

Second, Tsuguka had cursed. Like, actually cursed! Like, angry-type cursing!

Third, they'd learned that the robots were not native. That was just splendid. Now, on top of the Kuvexians, there was the potential threat of another highly-advanced civilization deciding to kill them.

Fourth, Jax was quite surprised to find that, yes, he had no conceivable clue what those robots were made of.

Despite all that, there was a silver lining:

He would now call the "crab-bot" a "Vanguard", which sounded way cooler.

His tail flicked.

"Good observation," he said to Sura. "Hey, Bronzi, if you could bring some of that tech back to us for study, that'd be greeeeaaat..."

Step One: Use the new name enough that everyone would use it out of unconscious habit.

Step Two: Start new trend. Everyone begins using the new name, and it even gets listed in official Star Army literature, with a footnote that recognizes him as the one who came up with it.

Step Three: Profit.

Metal Dungeon

The machines were not native to this artificial world either, they had their own leader, possibly nearby. Natsumi was recording everything, preparing a transmission to the ship. She nodded as the bug man began to move away. Drawing her own ration packs from her pack, she tossed most of them to the group to clear them away from her Mindy, but handed one to Frixxaqz.

"Thank you, Frixxaqz. I hope if we ever meet again it is on such peaceful terms. I will not hold up you or your people any longer."

With that Natsumi backed away. "Let's pull back as they go, everyone outside," she said on the private team channel and backed away, making for the airlock but keeping her eyes on the collection of Rixxikor. " The machines are as much visitors as all of us" she said over the channel, pulling the Eucharis into the comm line as well. "With a possibility that they have more active units in the area. We have to assume they are a separate and very hostile force. I want some way of detecting them so we don't run into an ambush. Did any of the nodal bits we have deployed get a scan on the one we took down, any sort of energy signature from its power source we can tune our sensors onto?" she asked the team as a whole.

Dungeon

"Watch the hands for explosives. I think Tsuguka-Heisho mentioned they don't mind suicide tactics." Junko said over the team comm.

She didn't push back so much as she used her raised elbows to block them from getting too close. Didn't like this at all. At this rate, the bugs could just drown them by weight of their numerous bodies. Eyes on a swivel, looking for anything that looked like a detonator.

Normally, her go to method of getting personal space would have involved a plasma saber. But the Taii seemed more concerned about some galactic parasites than her own away team. Which limited her options considerably. Kami, if this REMF didn't get someone killed she'd throw a fucking party.

So, getting one of said bugs out from behind her, she grabbed her ration pack and threw it for the far end of the room.

"Go on, get! Look, that guys got a head start! Kick his ass!" She barked, hoping to incite them to focus all their attention on the treat and competition for it.

"Ma'am, we need to go before these Rixx drown us in bodies. If the Eucharis scans are accurate, the computer core is still functioning. If theirs anything of value on this wreck, it'll be there." She proposed. It was a better tack, she figured, than wandering aimlessly.

Moved back with the Taii's orders. Hoped they weren't leaving already. They'd just gotten started, and aside from the shuttle, they were fresh as daisies.

"Negative on my end, ma'am. Used them for map data." She reported.

Dungeon

Freyja took an involuntary step back as the Rixxkor approached. She felt like they were surrounding her, and she knew they could spray acid. Their disgusting hands groping at her was the final indignity. Natsumi's orders echoed in her ears. Retreat? From this scum? She thought incredulously.

They had failed the last mission. Three months of nothing exciting she could tolerate. Disgusting, immature creatures forcing her to retreat sure as hell felt like a failure. What if the Rixxikor followed them to the Eucharis? What would they do to Fumiko? An image of Frixxaqz with Fumiko's bloody legs dangling out of his mouth came into her head. Fear, anger, and disgust washed over her.

The Rixx couldn't be allowed to get back to the ship, they couldn't be allowed to uncover the secrets of this construct, and they couldn't be forgiven for the disgusting display of their true nature. They have to die, she decided. Natsumi didn't understand the threat for some reason, but she could sense the mood of the team. The lead Rixxikor backed away, which seemed to her to suggest he was moving away from the blast radius of a suicide attack.

She activated her ABSR's saber mode and swung wide, slicing two advancing Rixxikor in half. Her gauss cannon picked targets and opened fire on the crowd of vermin.

Dungeon

Junko turned like an owl on a turntable, weapon ready.

In an instant, she parsed the situation as best she could: Freyja, surrounded, weapons hot and firing. Didn't know why she did, but it didn't matter. Meeting the Rixxikor was a powder keg, and if she wasn't fast enough they could lose someone. She refused to lose anyone on her squad, especially Freyja.

In that instant, she identified the closest available threat. Assuming the Rixx were hostile and going to fight back, she opened fire with her ASBR. Didn't need gauss to punch through them, didn't want to get close to that crowd just yet. Trim it down, get Freyja to safety.

Metal Dungeon

Things were going well. The rixxikor were heading off, they were withdrawing to review their situation. Then it all went to hell. She saw it in slow motion, Freyja's aether saber igniting, slicing two of the rixxikor in half, then her gauss cannon opened up, sending rounds into the alien crowd. A crowd that had just been after food, not violence, food and now they were being murdered for it. Sure they were rude, messy and usually violent, but these specific rixxikor had done nothing to threaten them, had done nothing to warrant death. Then Junko joined in, not that it surprised her at the back of her mind. She felt sick to her stomach.

"STOP! HOLD YOUR FIRE!" she bellowed over both her armor's external speakers and the squadron channel. "DO NOT FIRE!"

"Saiga, control them, now!" she blasted over wireless to Saiga

At the same moment, she re-accessed the private channel to the Heirophant, "Mr. Bronzi, Mr. Wazu, I need you both in here NOW to help me regain control. You're both field commissioned into the SAOY. Get in here now!"

As she spoke out loud and sent her wireless messages, Natsumi spun around, taking note of Freyja and Junko's lines of fire, where their shots were going and where in the mass of rixxkor they were going, one of the lines of firer was tracing right for Frixxaqz, the one who had been willing to talk peacefully and give her information.

"No!" She yelled and stepped to the side, then felt the rounds strike her Mindy, chewing through the armor, into the suit's interior and into her torso. She screamed as she felt the friendly fired shots, that would have killed Frixxaqz, walk up through her torso, chest and right arm. Then she crumpled backwards onto the hard metal ground.

Bronzi heard the radio call and responded "Aye Taii-sama."

"Ay bro time to roll." Bronzi said as the Heirophant advanced on him and grabbed him. Wazu was shoved head first into Heirophant. "Sorreh that sounded important."

The heirophant engaged its new thrusters and Bronzi had he map up. The Heirophant tumbled, and flipped as it flew, but Bronzi soon had it in the larger entry hole.

"Guess dey ran into da shit."

The comms channel was still open, and Bronzi like Wazu could do nothing but listen to what was happening. "Tha piss is goin on in there."

"Uh Taii-Sama we're in comin. Wats yer sitrep?"

Dungeon-ous Doom

By the time Natsumi's call to cease fire had blasted out through the commotion of battle, Saiga had already bull-rushed past her and felled one Rixxikor with his shield alone. Sticky orange insectoid blood now adorned the pure white armor plates of his Mindy 4. When Freyja had first initiated her assault, the SAINT chusa didn't think to second guess her—if she was attacking the Rixx, there must have been a damn good reason for it—so he'd reacted with the appropriate amount of force and moved to fell those hostiles immediately threatening their commander, Yamashiro Natsumi. Plus, Natsu-chan's stern demeanor, perfect curves, and Saiga's attraction to those helped him vacate any hesitation he would have normally felt in staying his hand.

His plasma saber was drawn, too, and had already plunged straight through another Rixx's chest cavity. When Natsumi's message to regain control of the team echoed inside his sealed helmet, Saiga's head craned over and pointed straight at the Taii while his armored visage blankly regarded hers for a long moment. The leading edge of his shield was grounded to the deck over one Rixxikor's spindly throat, and the man knelt poised over his prey with his plasma sword extended upward and into another still-blinking alien's torso.

"H-hai, Yamashiro-taii," Saiga stammered, deactivating his plasma saber and standing as he moved back to cover the First Officer's body from any attacks that might come. The Rixxikor that Saiga had attacked with his sword simply blinked a few more times and then collapsed, succumbing to its injuries. The Chusa didn't understand why their attack on the Rixxikor was being halted—the alien menace must have done something to provoke it—but he nonetheless obeyed.

"Hold your fire!" Saiga bellowed to the team. "Form up beside me!"

Metal Dungeon

Natsumi was on her back, her world was burning white hot pain in her abdomen and arm from where she had been shot. She coughed, feeling and tasting the warm coppery hemosynth in her mouth. Whatever was going on in the world outside her now was of little concern anymore as she fought off the waves of pain that washed over her and threatened to overwhelm her. Distantly, she could hear Bronzi's question, as if being spoken from across a great void.

"S-shot..." she managed, though even saying that one word hurt incredibly bad, sending white hot lances of pain through her body and making her hiss and writhe in agony. Her vision was blurring and already her hands and feet were starting to feel cold. She was shot in the front. She had been facing her own people when she had been hit, not the rizxxikor. "F-friendly f-f-fire..." she managed and collapsed, unable to speak any more, just her gasps for breath enough to wrack her body with pain.

The Heirophant flew in at maximum speed via a loading bay entrance to the station that had been located by the Eucharis. Set down and began stomping up to the scene. The limbs of the dead robots taped to its frame rattled and shook with each titanic step. He could see dead Rixxihor all over the place. Natsumi spoke over the radio.

Bronzi dealt with the banter prior. But this was a bit to take in. Friendly fire. Bronzi snorted over the loud speaker. "What in the blue foc happened!?" He growled. The heirophant marched forward to the broken form of the CO.

"No I know what tha foc happened! Don't take no rokkit genius man ya figger dat out." He said still over the PA comm. He added to it addressing Saiga "why that foc ain't ya stompin their guts out?! Too busy shootin yer CO?"

Bronzi scooped Natsumi up into the massive hand of his mecha. The medi bot was immediately dispatched. But there wasn't much it could do. She needed to be brough back to the ship, or else she'd be waking up in Hemosynth tube.

"I'm takin her back to tha ship. She commissioned meh. Before ya opened her up Chusa-Bo."

Bronzi gritted his teeth so hard he felt his mouth full with blood- his fangs cutting his gums. Bronzi then began walking out the way he came. "Taii-Sama, were gettin you outta hea. Missions ova fer ya."

Dungeon

"Check your line of fire! The Taii just jumped in front of that!" Junko called out. Frustration climbed in her throat like a phsyical thing. "Fucks sake, is she trying to get killed?!"

She could have pulled Freyja back, tried to skew her fire. No, she jumped in the way of gauss rounds of all things? At least her helmet footage would show the shots weren't intentional. Even the REMF hadn't earned that yet.

Bronzi arrive faster than she expected, which was good. His Hierophant could block damage while the rest of the team fell back. "He is stomping bugs, in case you haven't looked down. Natsu-Taii just dove in front of us like a crazy woman. Get her topside where we can get a shuttle pickup and don't wait on our account!"

Wether she fired on now hostile bugs or not, she had to get this under control.

First step was physically pulling Freyja free. With Saiga going in sword and board, it gave her enough cover to do so. "Too many for a knife fight. We shoud fall back and use range to wittle down anything that charges us!"

She'd form up with Saiga, shooting anything trying to get close and thinning out what he had to deal with. If he did move back, she'd keep pace and make sure he was getting out. If he didn't, she'd draw plasma saber in her off hand to prepare for close combat.

"Eucharis-Actual! Where is that second shuttle? Taii is wounded and needs immediate medical care!"

Metal Dungeon

"The Yamatai always murder, the Yamatai cannot be trusted," Frixxaqz spat as he ducked into a side passage behind the hatch he'd originally come out. "Evacuate this section!" he yelled to the remaining Rixxikor, of which there were not that many. Before he slipped away into the dark, twisting techno-crevices, he angrily chucked some sort of device into the hall, which began emitting a flashing light. "Bitches."

"This is Eucharis actual. Abort mission, all crew return to the ship," Hanako ordered over the radio.

"Agh!"

Wazu ended up getting slam dunked into the top of the heirophant. By the time he was able to figure out what was going on they were all already knee deep in dead Rixx.

The cannon on top of the heirophant was set to automatically fire back at anything shooting directly at them, or any fast moving projectile on a patch to collide... among dozens of other if-then statements controlling its behavior.

But there was still room for a human operator.

Wazu checked the area using the external sensors. Flashy grenade looking thing could be anything... and who puts strobe lights on a bomb? There were plenty of questions to ask there for sure, but rather than getting too deep into that Wazu had the turret spray the device with high frequency EMP to try and disable it.

He then drew a line on his datapad's map, the turret on top firing off the loaded ap round at nothing before switching over to the smoke ammunition, the turret's cannon quickly chewing through 40 of its available smoke rounds to setup a thick black wall to block line of sight towards the group in preparation for the retreat,

"Ok Bronzi, let us get her to the surface. The Eucharis can cover is from there or swoop in low for a pickup."

Inside the Metal Moon

With Natsumi having passed out from her injuries, the burden of command fell to Saiga. Not that there was much for him to do now that Hanako had ordered them to retreat back to the Eucharis. The veteran SAINT officer probably should have had combat control all along, considering his experience and how the mission had turned out, but was never one to argue about those matters in the middle of an engagement. In any case, Frixxaqz's quick exit and parting gift meant he had to act fast.

"Out! Now!" Saiga bellowed over comms, watching the Rixxikor's blinking toy scatter across the deck. "Freyja, get Yamashiro-taii and make sure she gets aboard the Eucharis in one piece!"

Friendly fire? How did that happen?

He hadn't seen whose weapons fire hit Natsumi, and didn't even understand how it was possible given everyone's positioning, but Freyja was the most likely candidate. So he'd given her a task so she could keep her mind focused should she come to the same conclusion. They didn't need a Neko freaking out because she thought she'd killed her ship's first officer.

"Heirophant!" he said next, addressing the idiot who kept running his mouth at the big mechs' helm."You're out last. Our armors are faster and we do not need you plugging up our exit!" Saiga couldn't see how the machine had managed to get in through the same corridor that only minutes before was deemed too small to accommodate it, but concerns over physics and the laws of reality weren't a top priority now. "Plus, you'll be able to better withstand any farewell attacks that might come. That thing you've got is the perfect rearguard if nothing else."

Saiga was moving toward the airlock by now, propelled by his Mindy's glowing teal wings. He expected the others were following suit with all due haste. Everyone other than Natsumi seemed to be alive and accounted for when he checked his AIES.

"Let's move!" he encouraged as they hustled. "Stay sharp, we can't afford another casualty!"

Metal Dungeon

Natsumi was half way between consciousness and the void. Her hemosynth poured over the fingers of the heirophant, from the holes blown in the torso and arm of her Mindy 2. She could hear the other members of the away team talking in the background, through the haze of pain that was her world now. She opened her eyes again, looking up at the mechanical form that loomed over her.

"M-make sure e-everyone gets out s-safe, S-saiga" she said to the away team via wireless. "I-I'll be fine" she knew that was a lie, she knew she was dying. "T-the heirophant will get me out the alternate r-rout"

"G-get me out of here" she managed to say out-loud through pain gritted teeth to Bronzi and Wazu.