RP: 21st Fighter Sq [Mission 4.0] - Breaking the Dam

"PA are more maneuverable than we are, be careful sir." Lynn said from her backseat.

The battle was unfolding, and she found that there was less and less that an EWO could do in all the chaos other than manage the fighter's systems.

As Elisto maneuvered his fighter, avoiding enemy fire from the Rippers, he kept his eye on the station. "Looking into it now!" he shouted over the comm. line, his mind more focused on avoiding being hit. He stopped transmitting for a moment as he glanced at the sensor data that was pouring in.

Several aetheric shots flew by him, making him a tad nervous as he shouted. "Hey hey watch where you're firing! Spooky here has a firework in his wing and doesn't want to end up as a mini-display!" he rolled his fighter and released some more shouts, but kept his vecture toward the station, avoiding the dogfights as he was ordered to.

:: Lucky Hand ; Gunboat ::

Errowyn tapped into the coms of both the fighters of the 21st and the Gunboat wing. She held her positions wanting to bring the gunboats to full power and go charging in with gunblazing. But she restrained herself and became more familiar with the gunboat quirks and manuever capibility. waiting for the command to begin the bombing run on the NMX Space platform, the last line of defence for the system. Then it would be the ground troops to begin clearing out the rest from the planets.

Errowyn hated doing bombing runs as you had to stay on course, like a train on it's tracks. A big dumb moving target with a deadly payload and this took nerves of steel. She wrinkled her nose as her ears flattened, eyes narrowing.

Flashback

"...can't be wobbling all over the sky dodging every bolt of energy coming towards you or the flak of exploding ordanance around you. That is why gunboats are bigger to carry more shielding and crew. Each of them has a job to do and expecting you to do your job in riding the wire right to the target with the payload to be delievered...."

She still had gotten low marks, barely passing attack/bombing runs cause she would jerk her ship all over the sky to avoid the incoming fire towards her ship as it streaked towards the target. Her payload hitting the target, but not dead center where it would do the most damage.

She could feel the Icy tough of death upon the back of her neck, wanting to scream. Was she a coward and flinch, depriving the ship the most accurate strike possible for maxuim damage. She was no coward when it was just her and her fighter against all weird odds.

Time seamed to expand, seconds turn into minutes as minutes turned into hours into eternity. She was watching the squadron increase to battle speed, one less in their formation. Finding the gunship abit boring and wanting to be out in the mix, ship vrs ship. Now she had passengers aboard depending on each other skills to get the job done as a team.

Errowyn sighed feeling the age old adreneline begin to flow once more, making her purrrrr turn into a low growl that could mean anything, softly. She kept her gunboat on it true assigned course for this engagement, then it would hopefully, be back to the big carrier ship

Lynn system status board was lighting up like a years end firework. Multiple threats from multiple vectors. There was enough targeting signals coming from the mecha but the majority of it was directed towards the larger craft. Though 0036 had at least two target locks on it. She would also notice an increase in activity in the Ke-T8-E3103 Computer Array, there was a massive spike in attempts to access the system.

The Hayai started firing their anti-armor cannons at the approaching Rippers. Several of the also commenced firing their Ke-E1-W3200's at the Rippers. When they hit the Ripper was destroyed, but there were so many of them it did not seem to make a difference.

Akemi watched Kenshin's maneuver and did her best to follow the erratic pattern. Kenshin's shots savagely tore through several of the limbs, exploding the legs when the missile magazine was hit.

She was about to fire when her threatcon showed incoming missiles from her starboard side. She juked hard and kicked in a burst of extra speed while activating the star fire. Her maneuver put her out of position to safely engage Kenshin's Ripper, but she could see the armor firing its anti-matter cannon. The shot struck his Kawarime's shields and while the shields held they were reduced to less than 50 percent.

Ira's cluster of fighters was making good on the shots. A Ripper caught by all four cannons on the Kawarime was a dead Ripper. But the Rippers were nimble and there were lots of them. The success of the group meant that more of the Rippers started to see them as a threat to be neutralized.

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Lucky Hand
The view screen of the Lucky Hand showed a computer simulated image with the swarm of Rippers ominously closing on the lead group of ships, which they were part of. The Kawarime were shown as blue dots with their identifiers next to them.



"130 Seconds to firing position. Target coordinated received and firing solutions calculated. Opening torpedo doors. Fire control set for rapid four shot volley on your command Captain." called the weapons officer.

"Fire at will Errowyn-Hei, guns are at your control."

Yaeko banked to the side and aimed at one of the Rippers. Firing her main cannons, she aimed as well as she could towards the head of the armor. Once she got too close she flew past it and swung around for another pass. "Heads up Diamonds, gunboats are in range, we're almost there." She flipped to the ship's close comm as she glanced behind her. "Tin Man, what's going on back there? I haven't heard from you since the bombers popped up."

"Stations still doing what it was doing when I scanned it initally, enemy ships are forming up into a defensive line, FTL jamming is still online and communications are active... 'lots' of chatter." Elisto let lose a missile that screamed toward a ripper then placed more power into his jamming.

He still kept his vector though, his target lock on the FTL emitters as he kept an eye on the gunboats. "So many damned Rippers, there has 'got' to be a way to thin their numbers," he glanced around, to him, it felt like they had just kicked over a bee-hive.

::Lucky Hand::

"Fire at will Errowyn-Hei, guns are at your control."

Errowyn gave a soft "miaow" of acknowledgement as she focused on making the run. Coming into range of the target to be destroyed, She wanted to help her fellow squadron mates of the 21td. But unfortunately, she was now part of the gunboat teams.

She let loose a blaze of cannon fire, mind working fast through the SPINE interface, sending well aimed shots at the Rippers that were getting to close to the Kawarimes as she increased the speed of the Gunboat aiming at the Station Closing the distance, gritting her teeth as the Gunboat shiels flared from enemy fire. "Fly the Wire, kitten," She muttered to herself as she kept the Gunboat rock steady for the torpedo launch. Mentally counting down the longest minute and ten seconds of her life.

"Need more power to the shielding!" uncertain if she screamed that out or spoke loudly or used the telepathic mind to mind contact. Wanting so badly to start manuevering the gunboat to lessen the impacts from the incoming weapons fire of the NMX.

“Working hard at hardly working.” Silic replied simply as 48's countermeasure pod took a few passing potshots at the Ripper Yaeko had just jet-washed. “With those two Tessies scanning and jamming everything their data is getting feed straight to you. Nice to catch a break for once.”

0048

Silic's EWO station started acting like a disco, he had multiple warnings of system malfunctions. Also his computer array was showing warning signs, something was attempting to hack into the Kawarime's paired ICPs. The Ripper that Yaeko flew over was pursuing the fighter and was staying directly beneath it as it closed.

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Lucky Hand

"Increasing power to shields, don't forget to use the vectored thrust feature of the engines to help avoid enemy fire, or they'll be nothing left of us when we reach the firing point." called out the Engineer.

::Lucky Hand ::

That was music to her ears upon hearing that as she began to manuever like she was possessed, causing the shields to become transparent as shot at her gunboat began to miss from her manueverings while closing in on the station.

Catching sight of the Ripper that was under Yaeko and Silac's Kawarime, she sent a burst of cannon fire at it, praying that the pilot doesn't jerk the fighter into the path of the deadly barrage of cannon fire from her gunboat's cannon.

Anne tried to make few potshots at few ripper as they were attacking. She did not know if she hit anything though and she was not even sure her two cannons would be enough to take them out in simple fly-through like this. But she tried and that counts. One thing she was not happy about. She couldn ot focus enough on her sensorts and had to start piloting again. She really wished she had pilot and could be EWO in this Tessie. She could focus on her scanning happily.

On her HUD she could now see that Silics hear-beat went up. Not by much verily but skilled doctor as her noticed. She checked her scans only to notice that Ripper was right behind Hunter's fighter. Since Ken, her lead dissappeared Anne decided that she might as well move to cover Hunter's Kawarime. "Moving to cover you Hunter!" Anne commed over.

She tried to maneuver behind Yaeko's machine and to the side. She then turned her ship on Ripper and startede firing her cannons. This way she made sure not to hit Yaeko. At least Anne thought so.

The combined assault on the Ripper from the Gunboat, and Anne caused it to explode in close proximity to the Kawarime. The nearness of the explosion and the destructive energies, caused some of Silic's screens to blink for a second as the safeties engaged. Silic saw the tell tale of smoke come out of one of the side consoles.

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Around the be leagued advance group, a large teal bubble started to appear. A moment later the bubble erupted and the 2XF Flag Ship appeared in normal space. As soon as it did, hundreds of “Asura” and “Kirin” engaged the Rippers. "Ikeda Chiyo-Taisa to all Heitan attack craft. Compliments of the Taisho, we will take care of these enemy mecha, proceed to objective, then return to the Heitan. We have additional forces joining shortly."

Yaeko saw the Ripper on her six, but there was nothing she could do without severely risking herself. Before she even had time to call out for help she could see the friendly gunfire raining down towards the Ripper. "Thanks Anne, I owe yo...!" She was cut short as the Ripper exploded, jolting the ship around. "Shit, that was close."

Yaeko attempted to bank towards the side, but the controls seemed slow to respond. She began running a systems check, but it seemed to be taking longer to scan the systems than it normally would. "Silic, we got a problem! I think that exploded knocked out something kinda important." She turned as well as she could back towards the gunboat to defend it, but the movement was very sloppy. "Diamonds, back to the gunships. We've got about a minute to go, let's keep them alive so they can light up some squiddies like a bunch of fireworks."

Elisto just gave a nod as he turned around and began to fly back toward the gunboats. When he spotted a Ripper ahead of him he dove in behind and began to fire off a serie of Aetheric Shots to rack the enemy pilot and take him out, all while still paying attention to the ion trails behind him now. EVA suits, Mines... small drones.. what... what could the be..?

Silic swore quickly at the puffs of smoke appearing from behind the console, fanning away the smoke. “Thanks for saying so!” Silic to Yaeko's statement of the obvious, sounding distracted as he rifled under his seat through his emergency kit.

“What is the point of an emergency kit when none of this is actually useful in an emergency!?” Silic vented, voice frustrated. Finally, he found what he needed. “Shovel!” He stuck into the console casing, levering it open with his new tool. With a crack and a pop it buckled and gave way, exposing the wires and screens underneath for Silic's own form of diagnostics.

“Yup! Classic case of bollocks'd up!” he said as he spotted the fire, more rifling under the seat commenced. “Water? Not on electronics. Aluminium? No. Aha! Bandanna!” he exclaimed, bringing out the repurposed piece of cloth and patting out the small fire, trusting his suits insulation. At last he got stuck in.

::Lucky Hand ::

Errowyn continued on her way tyowards the objectives along with the rest of the gunboats, waiting for the lead gunboat to begin it's attack on the target and listening to the gunboat commander for their specific target.

She watched the tactical display as the 21st formed up on the gunboats for the final minutes before they was forced to head back. She was in her element, working the controls of a ship.

"Don't mention it Hunter! We are team!" Anne responded adn made sure to check for enemies in close distance. She now played a role on Hunter's second, since her lead dissapeared. It was big mistake but she really could not tell where he was. But she just chose new one. She just wanted to survive and make well sure to monitor live sings of whole squadron.

Kenshin redirected his fighter towards the nearest gunboat, trying to get away from the Rippers and assume an escort formation now that the Star Army reinforcements had arrived and were taking the task of destroying the NMX power armor away from the 21st Squadron.

The young yamataian pilot ducked and weaved his craft around combatants as he attempted to maneuver out of the path of stray weapons fire from both allies and enemies alike, before taking his desired position next to one of the Hayai.

Elisto banked hard, avoiding one Ripper while spraying another with Aether. He headed straight for one of the gunboats and glanced casually over his shoulder to spot three other Rippers that quickly faded behind him.

"Esh, they just won't let up," he pulled on the stick and flew upward a bit then leveled out toward the gunboat. "Emiyu?! What's your status?" he requested.

The attack groups approached the point at which the fighters were to break off and make their way back to the Heitan. The final leg for the Hayai Gunboats was ahead of them.

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The source of the combustion in the console was peculiar. It seemed that several high-voltage components overheated, melted their insulation and then caused the brief fire. Fortunately, the damaged circuits could be easily bypassed.

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Lucky Hand

"All ships form on Gazelle. We are point, go to maximum speed." Came across the communications as the lead Gunboat surged forward towards the stations.