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

Power Armour Bay

Noting the others already had their armours on, and little discussion was taking place, Tan strolled over to her own Mindy and donned it casually. She'd been through the same drills as everyone else, but efficiency wasn't the tone that the others had set for her.

Although relying on sound waves the way she did limited the resolution of what she could perceive, as a cosmetologist and a former SAINT agent, Tan was quite aware of where others were looking, and where they were not, just from their body language. There were many clues to many mysteries, here. It wasn't something she wanted to reflect on, right now.

Possibly more interesting than whatever was going on between her fellow crewmembers was the target of this mission, or how the officers were approaching it. But, she was quite glad she didn't need to know about either, nor were the details any of her business. So long as she was in the Star Army as a combat medic, it seemed wisest to relish the chance to not think about anything and just follow procedure.

No one was staring at her for wearing her everyday uniform, and she sought not to attract attention, regardless. Before closing up the suit, she turned off her glasses and propped them up on top of her head, keeping her eyes shut. The glasses were mostly redundant with her helmet's systems, and not easy to operate with only voice commands.

She didn't say anything else once her suit was sealed, instead she took a step away from the rack and kept an ear out for more word on the briefing she'd been told about. With her suit on, even with sound being reported from outside, it was nigh-on impossible to build a clear sonar image. She may as well have been underwater. Still, she'd been more blind than this for a long time, and even just going by memory, she wasn't about to trip around the PA bay. There was no need to open her eyes, just yet.

Power Armor Bay

raz said:

Power Armor Bay

"Most of us are ready, Taii," Saiga said to Natsumi from behind his Mindy's smooth armored face. It was easier to be direct with her like this, almost as easy as addressing her over comms, and he regarded her now with less concern. "I'd expected you to give whatever briefing is required, but if you'd like me to I will certainly oblige. But barring any last-second additions to the team, we are ready to launch on your order. Whether we have a pre-mission conference is your choice, Taii."

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The snowy haired XO nodded. "Please carry on with your briefing" she said. She had no intention of interfering with Saiga's dissemination of information to the away team. She was, after all, late to the party. She stood beside him, holding her Mindy helmet in her arms and paid close attention as the SAINT officer gave his briefing to the crowded power armor bay.

Power Armor Bay

"Straightaway, Taii," Saiga affirmed with a salute to Natsumi. He honestly hadn't expected to conduct the briefing—he'd only announced one would happen because of standard procedure—but did not hesitate when given the order to do so. It'd be a waste of time to move everyone a few feet to the briefing room; he'd give it here. And so, on his direction, the jawline sections on his armor's helmet slid a few inches to each side, its mouth guard down, and its forehead plate back to reveal his face so that he could address the away team less impersonally.

"Alright, listen up!" roared the Chusa, making sure his voice was full and loud to catch everyone's attention. "We've seen a lot of space trash out here in the wastes, but today something noteworthy has crossed our path."

Saiga put his left palm forward and his Mindy began glowing teal from underneath the armor on its neck and between slits on the sides of its torso. Simultaneously, the suit started projecting a volumetric image of the mechanical sphere they were supposed to go investigate. He interfaced with the MEGAMI via his Mindy and had her dim the armor bay's lights. The hologram spun clockwise two meters in front of him and formed a centerpiece for the assembled crew.

"It's roughly 3,500 klicks in diameter and appears to have sustained massive damage to both its surface and interior structure," he explained. "Probably some kind of space station, obviously, likely housing a superweapon or a massive propulsion system. We've got habitation centers and docking bays down there, too, plus whatever remains of the large-scale computer network that ran the place. Sensors haven't been able to ascertain its age or civilization of origin—it may or may not be Kuvexian—though we do know that the damage it sustained happened more than a century ago.

"We've been tasked by Ketsurui-shosho to insert and find out more information. Odds are this station will prove to hold the utmost strategic importance for the Star Army."

The SAINT officer added more detail to the volumetric image spinning between them. Dozens of scavenging spaceships now buzzed about in the "space" around it, relayed in real-time. More features were included on the holographic station's surface as well.

"The small craft picking apart this mechano-hulk haven't changed their behavior on account of our presence yet, so it's likely they're some sort of unmanned drone craft," he continued. The projection zoomed in so that the dead machines on the surface could be seen in greater detail. "Several thousand deactivated combat robots remain on the outer hull and are variously damaged themselves. It is unknown whether more are inside," Saiga explained. "And that's all I can tell you for now."

He let the volumetric expand back out and kept it open for five or six more seconds before turning it off and raising the lights again. If anyone wanted to study the data further they could access the it via their AIES.

"Yamashiro-taii is in charge of this away mission," he added as a formality, looking over to Natsumi beside him as he took a step back. "If you have anything else, Taii."

Power Armor Bay

"Thank you, Chusa" Natsumi replied with a nod. "I just want to stress that we have no idea what to expect when we go down there. This artificial planetoid is in a state of partial dismantle, so we do not know what contrition the areas will be investigating are in, but expect there to be many environmental hazards in addition to any hostiles we may encounter. I know I don't have to tell you all to be careful and watch each other's backs"

"So I will just say good luck to us all. We have a lot of ground to cover and may not have a lot of time. There is a good possibility that the Kuvexians are on their way here already or may be soon" she said and looked at everyone gathered, her red eyes lingering for a moment on the Gartagan, Bronzi, who had recently joined the ship's company. She had yet to meet the newcomer, something she would have to rectify soon. She did give him a warm smile before she finished.

"Okay, let's get going. Move out!" she said, then put on her helmet, sealing it to the rest of her Mindy 2.

Bridge

Ramiro listened in on Saiga's briefing through the comms system, leaning back in his chair as he did so. Once it was finished Ramiro closed down his station and relocated to the science station. He stood and leaned over the terminal as he manually skimmed through the recent scans.

"Robots, but no organic corpses," he muttered softly to himself. "That computer core though," his muttering trailed off as he punched in a few calculations. The tone of his muttering perked up a bit. "That thing could put out several thousand googolbytes, at least." Noticing that the scans were only directed at the structure he leaned further towards the station and put both hands to the keypad as he pulled the list of scavenger ships picked up by the scanners.

"Charisma, can you get me some scans of these scavengers? Get weapons and energy readings, then lifeforms for each one. Start with the ones closest the the away team's expected trajectory to the superstation, and then work your way back from there."

As he said this he manually input a command for the system to make an alert if any of the scavengers began moving towards the away team, or materially deviated from their current behavior.

"You're the best, as always!" Ramiro called out to Charisma as he rotated to the mission operations station. Sitting down, he dug around for a headset. He found one buried in the back of a small storage panel. Stupid switch to SPINE, he thought to himself. Nobody keeps the manual tools around. Ramiro began opening 3D maps of the space between the station and the ship and populating it with the current locations of the scavengers. He then set the computer to monitor and track the positions of the away team, and to populate those locations to his map. On a second screen, he loaded the vitals of the away team and the systems information from their power armors.

Ramiro opened a comms channel to Saiga's armor, and included Natsumi in as well. "Chusa, Valencia-Juni. I'm getting some intel to confirm your report on the scavengers. I'll update you and the Taii once the scans are complete. I'm taking over at mission ops, so you'll have me as a dedicated point on the bridge. Over."

Power Armor Bay

"The suit is self-sealing, but... Well, I wouldn't get out of it. Not out there, Nito Hei Hasegawa." Tsuguka responded to Junko with a small acknowledging glance. "I've been thinking they should make a bodysuit that doubles as a space suit for years..."

A moment of thought, correlating the subject matter with the fact Tsuguka was currently bare bones inside her armor herself. She put both hands on the smaller mindy's shoulders, but being as they were at full arms length, it was difficult to tell if that was supposed to be reassuring or not.

"Corpse recovery missions. Three in a row. Before that, nobody wore body suits here... That was back when I was a Santo Hei." Creaking plates clunked together, the red Neko's added armor protesting over such a unnatural stance for the frame. "Don't worry. If a robot planet turns out to have an experience like that on it, hygiene will be the least of our worries."

Joking?... Tormenting?...

"Oh... Nito Hei Hasegawa, one more thing?... Please keep an eye on Tan Ann Pan for me. Let her use your audio receptors too, if she wants it. This is a hell of a first mission for them to step into."

/////

The briefing went smoothly enough. Tsuguka wasn't an intelligence analyst and thus didn't have anything to add, but still gave the schematics a once over...

"...Okay, people. Let's keep this on the straight and narrow. You find something spooky, just send me or Itto Heisho Candon the camera feed." Zeal, though? She had that. "Long live the Empress!"

YSS Eucharis, PA Bay

Candon donned his helmet as the team began to mobilize, taking a second as usual to close his eyes and open his mind wide. With so many other allied PA's and the ship the data stream was simply too thick to just start processing, he filtered out the unnecessary and duplicate data and focused on just what was relevant. Before long the picture came clearly into focus and he could see with clarity through the eyes of his armor.

He then sent a telepathic invitation to Masumi to have unrestricted access to his leader support pack and a request to have the same access to her support bits.

Power Armor Bay

Junko wondered sometimes about Tsuguka's swing between professionally cold and warm camaraderie. The teasing-slash-taunting was her way of friendly ribbing, only she couldn't quite switch between her two modes of being. Tsuguka was defined by her role as a soldier in an age where that was more than a role, it was an identity, stuck by it, it seemed to her. With some dread, she wondered how much of her own future she saw in the red woman.

"Just so long as you don't forget about yourself, ma'am." Junko said, a factual sort of pointed that might have been just a bit learned.

She turned her helmeted head to look at the Pan in question. She hadn't had exactly much interaction with them so far. Hopefully, that wasn't going to be a problem. Though that probably jinxed her to other problems, now she'd thought of it.

////

Once the First Officer was done, Junko moved toward the end of the bay. Brought her ASBR up to a ready position and looked back. Made a count off her HUDs status markers, checking if everyone was ready and sealed tight. Anyone lagging behind, she'd march over and button them up if she had to.

Breathing got a little difficult in hard vacuum, after all.

Power Armour Bay

Tan Ann Pan stood quietly, she hadn't gotten into the habit of conversing with the other crew except as her duties demanded, inside the medical bay, except for a bit of small talk with her roommate, Tsuguka. With her eyes still shut, she saluted late, and toward nothing, at first, but she opened her eyes long enough to catch a glimpse across the bay while turning to pick up the Ke-M2-W2909 Accelerated Plasma Rifle which was her chosen armament for this, and probably most other missions.

Her Mindy was equipped with a barrier shield, energy cloak, backup capacitor, and countermeasure pods, on the basis the ship's only medic needed to stay in one piece, and she wasn't much of a weapons, fire control, or artillery expert, anyway. She felt reasonably confident that if she needed more than one hand weapon, the outcome would come down more to luck than her personal choice, and as a result, had chosen not to burden herself with one.

Power Armour Bay

The confused Neko furrowed her brow. She couldn't come up with a proper answer to Tsuguka's question. Her thought processes were so foreign to Freyja they might as well be different species. Obviously, she was a little distracted by Junko's return, but she felt fine otherwise. Maybe her belly felt a little bigger and her breasts were a bit sore, sure. That didn't mean she wasn't ready for another mission yet.

She noticed Tsuguka's nudity and considered following suit. The question Junko posed changed her mind. Instead, she walked over to her Mindy and changed into her bodysuit. It was a little snug in a few areas. She looked around the room to see who was coming, surprised to see Natsumi. "Floo-I mean, Natsu-taii! Glad to have you with us." Freyja said, giving her a quick salute. She saw Masumi and realized she had forgotten Saiga and Tsuguka and acknowledged them with a slight bow.

Freyja turned back to her armor and quickly inspected it. She swapped her Shoulder Capacitor for a Gauss Rifle and she had opted to switch out her NSB launcher for a General Equipment Pack filled with various explosives and some remote detonators. In addition to that Her training with Jax-san the last few months had paid off, she was ready to blow some stuff up. She saw that Wazu and a Gartagen were also here, working on a hulking monstrosity.

The realization she was the only one not ready struck her with enough force to make her cheeks turn dark blue. Once her inspection was done she hurriedly climbed into her armor, put on her helmet, and assumed her position beside Junko. Luckily she was just in time for Saiga's briefing.

She perked up when she heard that there were thousands of robots. "Chusa, if we get the opportunity, could we salvage one of the robots? I would like to study one of them. It's a bit of a hobby, and I don't know too much, but this would be a good chance for me to learn." Freyja asked once the officers were finished.

She moved into position beside Junko and readied her ABSR. While she waited for everyone to ready themselves for launch, she examined the schematics for structural weaknesses. Hopefully, this would turn out better than the last mission and they wouldn't have to leave anyone behind.

Power Armor Bay

Oshiro Masumi, getting information and a request from Candon, nodded in his direction and opened her support bits' accessibility up to the Ittô Heisho. She tested her access to his LSP and got a full range of information from it, then sent a message to him.

"Just as we practiced," she telepathically said to him.

The pre-mission checks done, the scientist, again, regained her stance with feet shoulder-width apart and fists balled over her thighs. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her shoulders went up as she did, then lowered as she breathed out.

She was ready.

Power Armor Bay

Victory appeared in the doorway of the bay, and looked at the crowded bunch of soldiers suited up in Mindy armor and other armor suits. She was dressed in a set of green utility coveralls. "Taii Natsumi, would you like me to pilot the shuttle to the surface?" she asked.

Power Armor Bay

Everyone was already suited up, and there Wazu was holding up the whole operation. He'd toss his duffel back up into the back seat of Bronzi's Heirophant.

Unfortunitly, fully upright, the suit could reach nearly 5 and a half meters tall! Which was a bit more than Wazu could do on his own without a neko helping him.

"UH... Bronzi... a little help here?"

Bronzi's analysis of the Hierophant showed some modifications had been made. Sura had been at work on it, so the thrust system had been modified, the power core was still the cold fusion that came stock with the suit. The redundant computer had indeed been replaced, however the civilian computer though superior to the old intuitive one...wasnt a military grade system, the scanning devices on the machine would be limited. All in all a lot of work still needed to be done, but it would hold. Gartagen engineering may not have been the most technologically advanced, but it certainly was reliable.

Three years on Yamatai sending his kid to school and doing odd jobs meant that Bronzi had seen enough Yamataian nudity to not even care any more. Wazu would not even see the brute's eyes drift to anybody's private parts. Then a snowy haired neko smiled at him. She had kind eyes and the face of inexperience. She was the XO. Bronzi returned her warm gesture with a nod, and a small smile back. Then rare moment of kindness Bronzi experience vanished>

"UH... Bronzi... a little help here?"

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"Huh. Uh yah. Sure." Bronzi said sounding distracted. The Exo suits arm wrapped its fingers around Wazu's waist and picked him up, then brought him to the top hatch of the suit. Wazu was picked up and then brought over the top hatch gently, the hand would then stiffen so Wazu could easily climb over the fingers and into the Technician's chair. Bronzi then closed up the center armor of the Hierophant. Once inside Wazu would find a comfortable chair, with some holographic screens and a control panel for him to manipulate the scanners, gun, and even pilot the suit if Bronzi was incapacitated. Sura left a sticky note that read "Computer sucks, can do remote up link for data transfer and processing. "

Power Armor Bay

"I've got no problems with such initiative," Saiga replied in response to Freyja's question about salvaging alien equipment for study. His helmet had closed back up by now and he spoke over comms. "So unless Yamashiro-taii or someone else stops you, have at it. Just make sure to follow proper procedures and isolate the Eucharis from any biological or technological contaminants."

Having already checked over his armor's loadout before the briefing, the SAINT officer hadn't much to do but wait for Natsumi to decide whether they'd take the Raccoon shuttle down or simply fly in a standard armor formation. That the Gartagen's walking tank was coming with them suggested the former, though. The thing might be slow and cumbersome compared to Yamataian technology, but it looked tough enough, so seemed like the perfect place for Wazu and Bronzi to be.

"Ah, Hasegawa-hei," Saiga prompted to the recently returned Neko, remembering that he should tell her something vital. "Hope you're up for scouting duty—your record indicated it would be the best fit to your personality and skill set, so you're the tip of the spear. It's a shame you weren't here for training with the others, but you'll need to reintegrate into the team at some point and there's no time like the present.

"Try to keep up," he added with a smile on his voice. "Or rather: try to make us keep up."

Power Armor Bay

Masumi wasn't all too interested in finding out who would be piloting the shuttle, she simply moved towards it and got into the Raccoon through the rear door, sitting up front close to the cockpit. She did not look back to see who followed, but she anxiously wondered if anybody but her would take enough of an initiative to get the group going. Perhaps it was because she didn't see the bigger picture like Chusa Nicholas Saiga or Nitô Heisho Tsuguka Toyoe did. Or, perhaps it was the fact that she had spent an accumulation of weeks total spent on shore leave and in the months since departure from Yamatai preparing for the moments to come, whether that be formal training of the SOFT 408 team or the training she did in virtual reality.

She closed her eyes and she felt weightless, as if in space. She went through the motions of recognizing the fighter, dodging aether fire, and saving the Kuvexian computer core with Candon and the rest of the crew. It was therapeutic for her to relive it now.

Power Armor Bay

Junko suppressed a small laugh at Freyja. Not the kind you had at someones expense. Between all of them, she seemed the most emotive, the most together of the Eucharis fireteam and the odd Orochi cat pile. Funny enough, motherhood didn't seem all that surprising when she looked at it that way.

Didn't quite stop the grin as she returned back to her side, though. Idea was, in the armor, Freyja was just another squaddie to her. She'd fight to protect her like anyone else, but she could not put her above Tsuguka or Pan. But it was little things that wormed in, and she was finding it hard to protest.

////

Junko snapped to when Saiga called on her to attention. She might not have trained with the SOFT tactics, but she'd kept in practice. Rest would be falling back in old patterns, being the sharp knife to Tsuguka's heavy hand and Freyja's fluid response. Quietly, she made sure to link her sensor feeds to Candon, Saiga, Tsuguka and Natsumi for future recon work.

"Just don't trip on any of the bodies behind me." Junko bantered back.

Power Armor Bay

"Yes, please pilot the shuttle" Natsumi replied to Victory. She liked the idea of hiding what they were deploying with the shuttle.

"Everyone, to the shuttle. Let's go" she said and started off. Out of habit she contacted Charisma,, asking the Megami to warm up the shuttle, realizing after she did that Victory would have already done that.

Hierophant

It took Wazu a moment to climb the last few feet into the mecha and get situated. His leg still wasn't great, but he wasn't letting that slow him down.

Between the space avalible in the technician's chair, and the amount of the space being taken up by Wazu's stuff, there wasn't much space for the man himself. Wazu would end up unzipping the bag, taking out his datapads, his heavily multiplexed quantum modem, and roll of tape, afixing some of the gear between his legs, others ontop of the screens, and then going through the process of linking his own equipment with the mecha.

"You there Vier? I am in a lot of trouble if you are not."

There was a short bit of text that flickered across the screen of the mecha, and then some familiar loading screens.

"Good, load combat macros, set everything to safe for now."

Wazu had a lot of time in Hierophants. When he was working with the Gartagen Union a few years back he had been responsible for running and reoutfiting an entire unit of them. There wasn't even any additional work needed to make his stuff compatible with Bronzi's own mecha. While he couldn't compare to the Nekos in the group when it came to quickly aiming and firing accurately, he was quite capable of telling the Heirophant's electronics exactly what to do.

While his stuff was getting situated on the computer, he started to change into his voidwalker suit, sliding his pants and shirt off while struggling to find enough room to get the suit pulled on.

"This sticky note..." Wazu said, pausing for a moment as he slid part of the space suit over his head, "... is not your handwriting. Sura seems to be advancing quickly.

... Also! We should be figuring out how to get to the center of this place."

There was a soft blip as the loading finished, and the software linked up to the group's communication system. Wazu would press a button on the Hierophant's console to open up a general channel,

"Do we have a landing site picked out yet? I think the interesting stuff will be on the inside. We may want to try looking for an access point inside one of those large craters."

Raccoon Shuttle

Tan found it strange to armour up, file into the shuttle, and wait, but it did make her glad she hadn't hurried to put her suit on, and she supposed it was unavoidable if they hadn't known Bronzi's arrival with his enormous armour suit would complicate things.

If she'd been asked any other day, she would never have thought 'awkward' and 'embarrassed' would be the first things to come to come to mind if asked how she felt while preparing to deploy for her first real space mission. Then again, on any other day, she wouldn't be prepared to answer at all, and even now, she still didn't really know what words to use to describe how she felt--those were just the easy ones. The sweat on her forehead told a different story.

Fortunately, being unaware of how anxious she felt ensured she wouldn't feel anxious about feeling anxious; and any lack of self-awareness helped avoid performance anxiety. Stressed as she was, she was still in a good mood, even if she wasn't aware of that, either. So, she smiled faintly and waited in place next to her teammates, eyes shut and heart pounding, not consciously worried about anything deeper than the disorderly start things had gotten off to.