RP: YSS Miharu Mission 3: The sound of machina

The face staring back at Yukari was eeriely a reflection of how Yukari remembered she had once been... that pale skin, the horn jutting from the forehead - all bespoking of a NH-17T nekovalkyrja. But the hair was long, straight and blue; the eyes the red of an NH special weapon; the face was Eve's.

The eyes of 'Eve', the Koyryu's captain, narrowed threateningly. "Imperial vessels: disarm and power down. Surrender, or you shall be destroyed."

Kotori, right besides Yukari, shot the displayed visage of their opponent an incredulous, wide-eyed look.

* * *

The Sakura gunships were seconds away from acquiring a valid firing solution. Aboard Hoshi, Hinoto gave a little wince at Yukari's order and answered with a "Hai!" before she cut Hoshi's gravimetric engines, leaving the slighter vessel to the mercy of Miharu's graviton beams.

The transmission with the Koyryu's captain she put up on the main screen for Nyton's benefit. When the sprite looked up at the visage of their opponent, her ears wilted and she whined: "Again?!"

Yukari's blood became icy crystals. Memories ... horrible pains in her head, fellow Neko bombarding her, stabbing her mind again and again, her arms strapped down so she could not fight back, all the while being screamed at, "RESPOND! RESPOND! RESPOND!"

A memory of Tom in the snow cut through. She smiled at the NH-17T. Her eyes came back into focus, gazing back at the red orbs instead of the shining horn. How long had her mind wandered?

"Koyryu commander," Yukari said, as she guided Hoshi right where it needed to be. The ships started to meld. All power was absent from Miharu's capacitors. There were no shields to stop the Sakura units from destroying them.

Seconds!

"Do you enjoy koto music? If I were to surrender, I would like to play for your crew."

"Black Knights, MARK!"

Masako had been preparing for a series of torpedoes to be her signal to launch. She had been completely unprepared for the transmission from Yukari. It took a moment of thought to realize the AIES was beeping at her. Miharu and Hoshi were nearly docked and escape was eminent.

"Black Knights! Switch teleportation target to Multi-Bay 2 on Miharu," she sent the encrypted transmission quickly as she quickly pulled up the backlog on coordinates and set them. "Teleport as soon as you have them," she ordered and waited. She wouldn't be the first to teleport.

As the Knight Team began winking out of existence one by one, Masako's eyes narrowed on what was to be her target just a moment ago. "Why do I have the feeling I just got lucky," she mumbled to herself as she saw Knight 3 disappear from view. With the last of her team gone, Masako sent the command and soon found herself back upon the Miharu.

The Knights were in. Hoshi locked into Miharu, and the Sekkou was prepared.

"Another time," Yukari said to the unamused 17T before her, tapping out coordinates while sending a simple self-destruct code to the probes and mines in the asteroid field. "Good night."

Yukari activated the fold.

The Sakura gunships were 5 light seconds away and closing - almost on top of them. A bad predictament, seeing Miharu's empty weapon battery, Sekkou being manned by junior personnel and Hoshi having paperthin armor.

Especially considering the ire flashing in Eve's eyes. "Why you-"

She was interrupted by a subordinate offscreen. "They're folding!"

"Interdiction fields to maximum!" Eve hollered. "All ships fire!" Koyryu, Tamamo and Otoroshi had the twin daggerblades of their aether shock array already aimed at Miharu and their main weapons discharged. Their interdiction fields deployed, struggling to collapse the bubble two other vessels had previously raised to insure an open escape route for Miharu.

It would take only three seconds for them to reach their target, Miharu, which was relatively immobile with her shields just getting back up. The only thing Miharu's crew and the rescued Sekkou could depend on was the gamble Kotori had fallen back to: the 'emergency hyperspace fold jump'.

The maneuver had for a goal to quicken the onset of an hyperspace fold jump, in Miharu's case to shunt all capacitor power into their fold system and then effect a jump, saving minutes of charge time. Unfortunately, it was a very demanding and hazardous maneuver for the hardware involved. Seeing the experimental nature of the ship and prior mishaps, it almost would look like Kotori was begging for a malfunction to happen at a critical juncture.

But Tom had worked hard on Miharu, pulling many grueling hours restoring the fold drive system to be able to be more resilient and dependable under duress; and many more hours making sure that the power transferring capabilities of the vessel's capacitors could be something that was not just theory, but practice.

It was not so much a gamble as faith in Tom's work. Faith Miharu rewarded as she and Sekkou's silhouette flashed and misted away before killing energy discharges sheared through space where they had hovered the second before.

CONTINUED IN MISSION 3: AFTERMATH