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

"Dreamchaser is ready for launch," She spoke softly and clearly on open coms to let everyone know she was up and running. She slid her ship into the launch position and running final checks on her V8-1a.

Everything changing quickly it was getting hard to know who was with whom anymore. She kept quiet, letting the powers that be that was running this show, time to sort things out. Maybe they knew.

She grew reflective as it was getting closer to launch time. She was breifed on the NMX. It would be a tough encounter as they would have just as highly skilled pilots as the Yamato Fleet had. Whispering softly, "stay loose and watch your six."

Errowyn relaxed as she felt the vibrations of her Kawarime and listened to the harmonics for that one thing that may signal something was out of balance.

Yaeko got a surprised look on her face as she heard her name. "Oh...well I...I'll do my best!" She flipped her comm off, waiting for her nerves to calm down a bit, and leaned back towards Silic. "I hope he doesn't expect me to thank him later." As her nervousness started to go away she checked the ships around her to see if everyone was ready and flipped back in to the comm channel. "We have a green light from 0044, 0048, 0049, 0053, 0059, and 0073. 0079 is in launch position, waiting for a ready signal. 0057 has not yet moved to launch position."

Ira chimed in right after Yaeko spoke to Silic “Don’t think this is a reward for the other night. I chose you because you are the right kind of crazy for the job. Keep everybody alive, and do not die.” Ira said with out showing any emotion in his voice.

Ira did a weapons check, and began spooling up his fighter’s drives. “Hoshi, what is the status on redundant systems?” He said as he fiddled with his instruments. “Weapons systems are green…and ugh..” Ira then slapped his helmet with his right hand. “Lousy HUD!” He snarled as he smacked his helmet again. “Okay got it..advanced technology my ass.”

As the Heitan traveled to the staging area, the massive doors that enclosed the launch bays began to open. A few minutes later the Heitan and the other ships from Task Force 2X-TF-O01 emerged into normal space.

Atsui was seated on the bridge of the Heitan when the ship dropped out of FTL. This experience was not entirely unfamiliar to her, she had been trained and even assigned her own command once before. But part of her could not help but feel that the circumstances that put her on the bridge was an omen of things to come.

"Operations I want a sensor scan ASAP." she said looking across the room.

"Ma'am, Hiromi reports no sign of enemy vessels in the immediate area." the Yamataian male replied.

"Give the order to launch the fighters and gunships. Commence recharging of the hyperdrive." She called out.

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Across the squadron comm channel, "Attention: This is Alpha Launch Control to Fighting Diamonds, you cleared to launch to rendezvous point with Gunboat Squadron 2X-A01. Good luck."

Yaeko rolled her eyes towards Ira's fighter. "Sounds more like an apology for your un-gentleman like conduct against an innocent little girl." Once the she saw the doors to the Launch Bay opening she buckled down the strap on her helmet. "Thurston-Hei, you better hurry up and get in launch position, or there will be a boot from the Taii waiting to go up your ass when you return. Anne, you still haven't signaled ready, so I'm hoping you just forgot to."

When the blue, shimmering light faded away on the outside of the ship Yaeko leaned back toward Silic. "Prep all the systems, we're gonna be launching soon. And it looks like now you get to fly with somebody that's crazy and has power." Once the word came down from the bridge she dialed back into the comm channel. "Alright, we're a go. Shields and systems up. Now let's get out there and whoop E.T.'s ass!"

Yaeko lifted the ship off of the floor of the Launch Bay and retracted the landing gear. She waited until she saw another ship do the same before accelerating out of the Launch Bay doors and banking towards the rendezvous point.

Anne was brought up from her chain of thought when Yaeko talked to her. She was scolded right at the beginning of the mission. If her ears wouldn't be flattened by her helmet they would just show up how she felt. She felt down, but there was not time to feel like that. It was time to keep herself together and do her best.

"Sorry Madam it won't happend again. I am ready." She responded and signaled ready. She then lifted her Teisatsu from the ground and retracted landing gear ready for her turn. She will also have to get to her lead once she lifts off.

Errowyn slapped her visor down, activating the HUD, Her fighter hiccuped, forcing her to do a complete restart up from internal power as she watched the other fighters leave in their turn. She growled as she slapped switches and using direct link through the interface of SPINE.

I am so gonna kick my maintenance crew's collective butts all over the friggen hanger bay when I return! Errown thought as she focused on getting the hard to start Kawarime going again. Watching the last of them leave the flight deck for open space.

"Alright lets do this diamonds." Ira kicked on his fighter's thrusters, and n a second the nimble craft was out of the launch bay and was hogging space. Ira checked the squadron status screen and saw Errowyn was having a few issues.

"Dreamchaser(Errowyns translated last name), is everything okay? Looks like your fighter stalled."

"Yes, ma'am. Sorry ma'am." Ricky was glad nobody could see how red with embaressment his face was, "It won't happen again, ma'am."

In his rush to make sure that he had been ready to launch, the rookie had made the mistake of forgettingting to tell the others when he was ready for launch. Now that they undoubtedly knew he was, he went over his controls one last time. Across the board, everything was green, and at the moment Ricky was hopeful, yet nervous. He didn't want anything to go wrong before the mission had a chance to start (though that was already the case, it seemed), and yet he also had a hope that this mission was going to go smoothly. It was simple, right? Just play baby-sitter for some gunships and make sure that they got to have some fun blowing up a bunch of useless squids.

Ricky watched as Yaeko lifted her ship from the deck and he followed suit mere moments later to make sure that he would be able to stick close to the woman he was supposed to be wingman to.

He watched as others began to take off and shot off a few moments after one of the others. Once he was out in space, he took up a position behind Yaeko, and to her right as they flew.

"Ma'am, this is Ricky." He said, his head on a swivel to scan their environment, "I'm on your six."

Errowyn just had her Kawarime rebooted and up and running, when her coms came alive, this time directed at her.

"Dreamchaser, is everything okay? Looks like your fighter stalled."

"Meorrow!" softly over opens comms, "Been having troubles with this Kawarime, scine it became my assigned fighter from the Yamato. I am coming!" Errowyn replied as she powered up her aether engines to get going. Hoping that she could make it out and in position before the YSS Heitan made it's jump back into hyperspace fold.

She hit the thrusters, gaining speeds to do a roll out from the ship through the launch egress from the fighter bays into space, retracting her landing struts into the fuselage. "Just cleared the ship and moving into position." Bringing her Kawarime into her assigned slot on portside of Ira, silently cursing her run in with those bandits that were after the Akagane. "I should be fine, Honcho." Using Ira's callsign.

Thinking to herself, This kawarime is probaly smarter than I am! working the controls and running another checks on the systems which would show nothing wrong with the ship.

Elisto brought his engine up to full and his lifted lifted off the ground. The two rear landing structs moved into the housing, along with the forward struct, which moved up into the hull of his fighter and locked into place.

Glancing from side to side he hit the throttle, fire belched, the sides of the hanger bay flew past him before everything was filled with the starry backdrop of space. He spun the fighter around for a moment, testing to make sure everything was working properly like it should.

"0049 has cleared the ship, moving into position." He brought his fighter around and began moving toward the position, keeping in mind to be next to the Honcho due to being his assigned wingman. He moved his eye out toward Errowyns fighter, he then pegged it on his HUD as something to keep an eye on.

He made a quick check on the Wavefront generator, for what he felt with the hundredth time already, it's systems came back all green and ready to be used to cause chaos and mayhem for the NMX.

As the 21st was moving to its designated holding position, a stream of Hayai-Gunboats could be seen coming out from under the carrier. The gunboats then started breaking into groups with one of them moving into position directly behind the 21st.

"Gunboat X2-275 Taii David Fritsch to Diamond leader. Squadron 2X-A01 forming up on your six."

The Gunboats were forming up in a staggered pattern designed to give the best firing arcs for the them.

Silic grunted in response to Yaeko's comments, launch had always been the worst time for the EWO and as he watched the rookies floundering before they had even started flying he wasn't exactly filled with confidence. The continuing mistakes even forming up were enough to make Silic close his eyes and breath in deeply, annoyed as he focused on his screen and avoided looking at the blackness outside.

Silic reflected that with this group of recruits in the mix he might finally lose his reputation of ill-discipline and ineptitude. Not entirely unearned. One of the recruits hadn't even reported for the mornings briefing.

“So much for the bit about charging late-comers. Why did I even bother waking up.” he thought to himself.

Instead of voicing his malcontent he simply ragged on one of the unfortunate rookies. “Oi, new guy.” he sent to Ricky “Don't wander off after anything, battlepods love to catch a fighter alone. Wonder why we lost so many rookies last time? Stay close and you'll be okay.” Silic hated making promises he had no power to keep, but controlled confidence kept people alive just as much as fear did.

He looked over at the continuing confusion in the formation then is eyes rolled away, part of him couldn't believe he was about to help out a spook but it was the uniform not the man. He sighed and radioed to Elisto “Spooky, check your HUD for your wingman assignment.” he said flatly then closed the connection.

He kept an eye on the gunboats forming up behind them, they at least seemed to have two neurons to rub together between them. “I don't envy those poor bastards.” Silic muttered to himself as he thought about the type of firepower the gunboats would be facing.

Ken's Kawarime fighter was next on the launch line, he taxied the machine over in-front of the durandium alloy blast shield in the launch bay and locked in his breaks. Ken flicked some last systems online for flight control, taking a second to reduce the Ke-V8-V3100 artificial gravity. It was just something he's always done, preferring to feel the Gs. He was just more accustomed to it, having learned to fly in more retro shuttles and planes back on his home world. All of these modern piloting convinces were still something he was getting used to. "Copy that flight control, zero-zero-seven-three finalizing launch sequence,"

Ken then began to push on his throttle as he flared up his engines, feeling the rumble of the powerhouse shake the seat. He slowly kept increasing the power until his levels reached appropriate amount, "Levine-hei launching!" he reported in as he disengaged the break and suddenly rocketed out of the shielding on the bay. The feel of the thrust was a welcome sensation to the pilot, glad to be back in the air so to speak.

Ken levelled out and reduced his speed so that his wing-mate could form up on him. "Don't worry too much about before, just keep your shoulders loose and your eyes sharp," his voice came out soft and reassuring as he talked on a closed com line to Anne. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure she was flying okay, and then sped up to fall into formation with the rest of the squad. As they fell in on the wing, Ken took a chance to get a good look at their friendlies. "One last thing," he said to Anne, "if things get hot out here, keep an eye not only on enemy fire, but the stuff that comes out of those gunships behind us, you don't want to get caught in a stray blast." He smiled into the video feed and then brought his eyes forward, scanning what he could see. Knowing all too well that sometimes the best scanner you had--- was yourself.

Elisto blinked and rubbed the back of his helmet, then sent a reply off to Vas. "I was told by the Honcho to fly wingman for him, soo..." he brought up the wind assignments on his HUD and sure enough he was listed as a lead while Arinori Emiyu was listed as his wingman.

This was confusing to him; but not by much though as he pressed his back against his seat. He stored the message from the Honcho, in case anyone complained later, then he sent off a message to the Honcho. "Honcho? We seem to have a conflict in wing assignments," he glanced out of his cockpit and toward Ira's fighter.

He banked up it but stayed a safe distance away. "You've ordered me to be your wingman, yet according to the assignments, Yumeoibito-hei is supposed to be wingman for you."

Elisto left it at that, though it bothered him that this wasn't picked up before hand. He personally did not care either way if he was a wingman to Ira, or if Arinori was his wingman, all he cared about was killing NMX and making certain the rest of the flight got back safe and sound - but like anything else - orders were orders and the wing assignments had to have been drawn up the Taii or someone else in the chain of command.

The Gunboats were assuming their final positions, and around the Heitan other squadrons of fighters and gunboats were making the same preparations.

"Gunboat X2-275 Squadron Leader to Fighting Diamonds. Request all Fighter pilots ping their transponder so we can lock them into our IFF system. After all we don't need to get someone caught in our crossfire."

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On the bridge the Heitan, Atsui watched the display tracking the placement of each unit. It was with a sense of pride that she noted that the 21st was ahead of other units.

She looked at the status of the other ships, and the Heitan's fold system charging. So far everything was going well. But then this was the easy part, it was when they came out that this was going to turn hairy.

Silic raised an eyebrow and then tapped a few keys to send the lead gunship an IFF signature, ignoring Elistos reply. You could only lead a horse to water. The black-panel could do what he liked as far as Silic knew or cared, at least as long as it didn't affect him.

Emiyu took a deep breath, clearing her mind as her fighter started to move into place" Zero-zero-five-nine, in position." she said, angling her fighter. The engines flared as the entire craft rumbled with power. Emiyu's heart rate rose as she felt the craft move forward, her engines at full power

" Launching!"

Emiyu's fighter shot forward down the ramp, clearing the blast shield and moving into the vaccum of space. She giggled to herself as she banked upwards to formation, to the right and slightly behind her leader. The craft moved as easily as if she were walking across the deck

"Ellisto-Hei. I'm in position."

Emiyu pinged her signature to the gunships so she wouldn't get caught up in the fire from the gunships. She was a bit more nervous then she had expected, but she wasn't going to get worked up over nothing...she wasn't in combat..not yet anyway.

Errowyn was all nerves and on edge from her hiccup from her Kawarime V8 -1a. Shewas deeply invovled in going through her ship's electronics, missing the request for the IFF transponder ping from the Lead Gunship Commander. She absentmindedly radar tagged all the gunships that was forming up behind the 21st.

"That's good," She muttered as she checked her targeting system HUD on her helmet visor.

Moving on to the next system in line to be checked. She was gonna chase down the cause of the hiccup in her fighter. She activated her counter measure systems, jamming on all multiple frequencies in rapid sequence. Some of it bleeding over into the communications channels.

She scowled and ran through the counter-measures again abit slower to find the malfunction that caused the hiccup, or was it a hiccup or deliberate attempt to compromise her fighter's systems.

It was finally Annes time to launch. She fired up her enginge to gave them enough power and moved on the launch-line. "Zero-zero-Seven-nine launching." She reported and left safety of Heitan. In matter of seconds she was surrounded by space. Beautiful and deadly at the same time. Now only for a short while it was only her and the stars and she loved that moment. But she had job to do.

Her scanner was telling her that her lead was keeping behind to let her catch on. She flew to him and got into formation on his right. "I have you back sir." She commed to Ken when she got there. "And thank you for advice. I will keep an eye on both enemies and frindlies." She added and smiled. She then sit tight on him trying to keep formation.