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

Yaeko coasted towards the target, nervous about the damage to their fighter. When the squadron reached the separation point she radioed in. "Diamonds, this is Hunter. We've reached our objective point and are to turn back to the Heitan. Let's turn around, form back up for our return path, and fighter speeds to full." Yaeko closed her eyes, hoping for a miracle as she attempted to turn the fighter, but to no avail. "Damn it! Tin Man, we need some steering back or we're sitting ducks. I don't want to think of the possibilities if we got stuck in the fire line of one of those gunboats."

Elisto glanced upward at the sky, hearing the distant rumbling of thunder gave him cause for worry. Glancing down at his computer, he saw the flashing red square on the left wing, indicating damage to the wind.

"Scan data is still not fully giving me everything... there has to be something.." he said and shunted all of his power away from weapons and into his sensor suite. "Something....hmmm"

“Pahence ish eh veetuue.” Silic mouthed around the primitive wire in his mouth he'd created using the aluminium film and a roll of tape he'd discovered in the emergency kit. In his prosthetic hand was an emergency lighter that he was using the melt the end of the wire as if he was smoking some strange pipe, getting ready to solder it to the circuit board.

::Lucky Hand ::

Errowyn heard the com call from the lead gunboat, glancing over her shoulder at the Captain as he held up three fingers to her.

She pushed the throttle to full power and weaved amonmgst the other gunboats to get to her slot of being number three in the bombing run

"We've lost the fighter's protection." murmered the gunner making her smirk softly

Errowyn looked envious at the fighters heading back towards safety as she flew towards the station at maxed thrust

The lead ship continued to close to get to optimum firing range. Elisto and Anne's Teisatsu sensors showed another of the anomalous ion trails, then an object phased into existence and exploded with a brilliant flash. The blast radius engulfed the lead gunboat and the second. When the blast faded the Gazelle was still moving but its hull was scorched, the port side cannon was gone, and its plasma drives were smoking. The Lightning fared about the same. Both ships were losing speed.

----------------------------------------------------

Meanwhile the rest of the squadron was headed towards the Heitan, and their engines were blazing to take them back to the aid of their ship. Except for the 0048; which was still moving along based on its inertia, in a slow tumble and well past the turn around point. Much further and they would be in range of the station cannons.

An explosion? A mine?! Elisto watched the distance as the bright flash faded from existance. "Anne-hei, tell me you got the data," he asked over his communications line as his own sensor suite was now flooded with sensor data from the explosion and what had just appeared out of space.

The data that scrolled was coming in clear, but he knew he would have to wait until later before he could really decyper all of it, but what he did do was simple.

"Honcho! That explosion came from a mine, I can't be certain yet without analyzing the sensor data, but it looks to be either a cloaked or phased mine! Those gunboats are flying into a mine field!" Elisto said as he reported the initial scan reports to the Honcho.

Clever bastards... He thought as he noticed someone missing from their group, it took him a moment before he realized who it was that was missing. He chimed the comm. line and glanced in the direction of the station.

"Yaeko-hei?! Vas-Hei?! Do either of you hear me?!" Concern laced his voice as he cut his engines and spun his fighter around one hundred and eighty, ready to ignite the engines and move in to help.

::Lucky Hand ::

Errowyn blinked at the time of the flash, quickly checked her gunboat out, as she wasn't blinded by the flash from detentonation of whatever it was that exploded.

She checked tactical, seeing one of the fighters still on the same vector of travel passed the turn around point for the fighters. She was torn between, rescuing her fighter teammates or continue the mission.

As she caught up with the two lead gunboats and past them.

“Oi, Spookeh, buggeh ooph. Eh'm buseh.” replied Silic, still distracted by his makeshift solder job Finally the glowing metal settled into the circuit board and a small snap of sparks signaling that it was if not working then at least doing something, insulated by its layer of tape.

Silic ditched the lighter and flipped the cover of his console to face him to work on trying to recover the small fighters systems. “Yaeko, I hope you're working as hard as me, because I'm sweating spinal fluid here.” he said quietly, a minefield that atomised gunships was definitely not a place he wanted to be.

Yaeko continued to try to turn, but to no avail. The explosion just to the side of her was enough to be felt from their little fighter. She was shocked when she saw the lead gunboats were severely damaged. "Shit, they're starting to shoot." When the comm call came in her jaw dropped. "FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!! Silic, we're flying into a mine field, I need some god damned steering NOW!" She jammed her steering to the right, but it was no good.

Yaeko quickly began work on bypassing what her current communications setup allowed. She tried her best to work her way into the comm of whatever gunboat in front. "For once, it helps to be communications specialist instead of a pilot." Within a few seconds she had bypassed her way into the communications of all of the gunboats. She flipped on her comm and began talking in a very urgent manner. "All gunboats, this is the XO of the 21st fighters. Scans show that you're flying into a minefield, stop all ships immediately! Repeat, you're flying into a minefield!

"Back off squadron back off!" Ira called out as he came to the same conclusion that his XO had."

All hell was breaking loose and things appeared to be getting out of control. They had already taken losses and things just seemed to be getting worse. "Elisto, give me a more detailed scan on that gun boat, did the mine kill it or are they still alive?" Ira called out. "All fighters I want a situation report right now."

While inertia was carrying his figher backwards toward the Heitan, Elisto was quickly going through the sensor data, trying to find some means of detecting this new threat - but he was working with limited resources and limited time and he already knew that he wouldn't be able to find the answer in time before either another gunboat was hit or before they managed to finish thier misison.

"Not enough power, not enough time," he scowled as he scanned through the data. Everything was there, explosion radius, what the explosion was comprised of and the detonation power behind it and although he was getting details on mineral compositions in the area of the first explosion, all of it returned specifics on the gunboats own hull and not on the mines themselves. Either the explosion completely incinerated the debris, which I wouldn't be surprised, or I'm just not close enough.

I hope we'll have time to salvage the area, I wanna look at those gunboats and the damage they've sustained to see just how powerful the explosion was, sensor data can only tell me so much - visually seeing the damage pattern can tell much more, he thought as his fingers danced effortlessly across one of the key panels.

Errowyn glanced at her gunboat commander to see what he wanted to do as she kept her course steady towards their target, upon hearing the radio call about the minefield.

Elisto and Anne

The sensors of the Teisatsu showed that the explosion was aetheric in nature. It also showed that the mine in question detonated some 50,000 miles away, and that the Hayai were caught in the blast radius. It also showed that the effective damage radius appeared to be about 100,000 miles.

Ira's missile streaked past the point at which the first mine went off and continued.

0048
Continued to drift into along, but the efforts of Silic's rewiring brought the control systems back online. For how long was uncertain but at least now they were not dead in the water.

Lucky Hand
"Message received 0048. We are stopping." the gunboat commander replied. He then turned to Errowyn, "Hard stop, full reverse thrust from the vectors. Fire full salvo from the forward tubes, then rotate the ship and let them have the aft while we get the hell out of here."


Across the channels the following message came
"Gazelle... crackle... hiss... heavly damage.... casualties... unable to receive... damage from possible mine... all gunboats... hiss... fire all torpedoes and reverse... crackle repeat... hiss fire ... torpedoes and reverse course......." came from the lead ship of the gunboats.

The Hayai initiated breaking using their vectoring aether drives brilliant blue flares lighting up along their sides.

As they were returning to Heitan something hopped on Anne's sensor. It was on end of one of the ion trails and then it exploded heavily. Elisto called up her but she did not reply right away as she was analyzing her data. "This Anne! I think I got phase transition. It looks like phase mines and they are nasty. They can damage a lot in radius of some 100,000 miles."

She then started working again. She analyted data she got before mine phazed back in to regular worl. She though there must be some chance of mine giving away some patter before and after phasing out. She compared both readings but it will take her computer to give it a while. "Hunter this is Anne. I would like to return to gunboats. I think my wavefront module would let me blind its targeting systems. Please let me try it!" Anne said and slowed down so she could return to gunboats quickly.

She was scared but she knew that those gunboats would be obliteretad in that minefield. It was worth a try and risk her only life instead of trying ot fly through field of death.

Once controls were up again Yaeko pulled hard on the controls and the ship started banking to the left. "Woohooo! Silic, you got it!" She began flying back to the squadron, engines full and blaring. When Anne radioed in to return to the minefield Yaeko shook her head, but was glad it wasn't her decision. "Loverboy, this one's your call. As of right now I believe it's too dangerous to attempt such an action, but if you allow it then so will I."

Elisto shook his head when he heard Anne's message, although he liked how the girl wanted to help out, he didn't feel it was safe for her to go alone. "Anne-hei, going alone would be to dangerous, we don't even know if our wave-fronts will effect those mines."

He shook his head, he knew that girl was just trying to be helpful, but all of his data right now was telling him that there were phase mines and the explosion radius - it naturally wasn't telling him everything he needed. "If you're going, you'll need a second Taisatsu to cover your back. Two jamming fields active will be more than enough, but that's only if the Honcho authorizes this." Glancing back at his wingmen, he hadn't heard a single word from the pilot and could only wonder if Emiyu was just knee-deep in his thoughts right now.

His fighter was, after all, still aimed in the direction of the gunboats.

Anne knew what Elisto meant. She though of that too, but she decided against asking Elisto to fly with her. "I know about that fact Spook. But then we would riks both our squadrons Teisatsu. You have also missile in your wing and one Teisatsu should stay to cover others." She commed back to Elisto. It was now up to Ramirez how they play it. Part of her wished that he won't allow it, but part wanted to make sure Wavefront works and help finish the mission.

Errowyn hit the braking forward thrusters hard as she fired off the torpedoes at the station from extreme range. Firing all forward four torpedoes.

Once they was on her way, whipped the gunship around 180 degrees and the nlet loose the rear torpedoe compliment at the station at the same distance. Then she saw where Yaeko's kawarime was heading back to safety. Hit the after burners of the gunboat, heading back to base ship. As far as she knew she had gotten the closest to the station and fired off her full compliment of high yeild torpedoes. She had the spetacular view of the other gunboats firing their torpedoes as she headed back towards the safety of the base ship.

She heard her gunboat commander radio the base ship and gunboat leader that they had gotten off their full load of 8 torpedoes within two thousand klick within extreme range.

As she pulled even to the two wounded gunboats, she seeing them heading back in the same direction her gunboat was going.

As the fighter squadron's were heading away from the area. Their tacitcal systems showed the torpedoes streaked towards their objectives, some were taken out by AA weaponry, but a good number struck true.

Meanwhile the Gunboats were heading back for the Heitan at their best speed to regroup with the first attack group. However the damaged Gazelle and Lightning were lagging behind and falling further.

"Honcho, Tamahagane-Hei here. Doesn't feel right leaving those last two alone. Permission to fall back and provide cover for them?" Akemi requested.

Kenshin slowly circled his fighter around the reversing gunboat he had been escorting prior to the Honcho's instruction to fall back away from the enemy minefield's perimeter. He was waiting for further instructions from Ira in regards to Akemi's suggestion that someone redirect themselves to protecting the crippled gunboats that had fallen victim to one of the NMX phase mines. Before Ira could reply, the Yamataian pilot spoke over the squadron communications channel in order to lend his support to his Neko wingman's statement.

"Akemi-Hei's right, sir. Those Hayai are wide open to attack now -- we need to give them some kind of cover before the NMX decide to move in and finish them off."