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

Heitan Bridge

Atsui was monitoring the task force progress. The strike force lead by the Heitan was an impressive collection of ships, but woefully small compared to the enemy fleet numbers. Fortunately their task was not fully engage the fleet until the station was taken out and the rest of the 2XF forces arrived. It was only a few minutes the Taisho said. But those would be very long minutes...

The last of the ships were signalling ready and the fighters and gunboats were ready.

She picked up the handset at her station, dialed the fleet channel.

"Attention Task Force ships, prepare to fold to the target zone.
All Fighters and Gunships, flight controls should be set to station keeping on my mark.

Sixty seconds to initiate fold to enemy target. Count down commences in 3... 2... 1... Mark."

Elisto shook his head at the lack of response; it was rather concerning to him but he didn't mention anything about it and instead keyed his IFF transponder so the gunships knew he was a friendly.

He then glanced off to his side as his wingman. "Follow the assignment, and don't screw up like that again Elisto Tereane," he spoke to himself but had the comm. line closed so no one would hear.

"Zero-zero-five-nine, form up on me," he sent then added. "Once the fighting starts, stay close with it." He backed off a bit until he properly in position and then kept an eye on Emiyu.

Errowyn glanced at tactical and seeing the other fighters lighting themselves up with their IFF. She looked puzzled and did the same quickly. Just as Numi-Tsaii announcement came over the fleet channel about the fleet wide hyper fold and the countdown.

She hastly synched her fighter with the Heitan, on Numi's mark. With that out of the way and getting ready for the Jump into combat.

Ererowyn softly purrrs as she relaxes, going over the reminders and lessens learned. Both in training/testing and her two combat missions.

Silic turned to consult with Yaeko. “Spooky's playing the mule, should we let the blue-jay fly wid us?” He asked. Not one to leave a recruit out in the cold even if their survival chance was near suicidal by his odds, another wingman would be hard to cover but preferable to letting them fly alone.

A few seconds later his eyebrows furrowed in confusion “And who the hell is purring into the open channel?”

Errowyn reached out towards theradio controls, "Didn't know I was transmitting," switching to recieve only.

This would be a new experience for her as she never experienced or seen a fold happen outside of a bigger ship.

Once the Taii had marked for the countdown Yaeko pulled up a 60 second countdown timer for her to watch. "Diamonds, make sure that you are in position, if you're not where you need to be then you might get left behind."

Once Silic had made his comment Yaeko pulled up the Wing Assignments and flipped her comm to transmit only to Silic's. "It looks like the spook is assigned to Emiyu. Everyone should be paired up with someone else, so there's no need to cover a second. And speaking of which, keep an eye on Ricky while we're out there. If you see him doing anything stupid, please let me know."

Yaeko closed down any of the information that she had pulled up since they launched, not wanting to get distracted. Look at the countdown timer she chimmed back into the open comm. "T minus 15 seconds. Shields up everyone, and weapons ready! We don't know what's in store for us once we leave hyperspace fold."

While he waited for the jump; Elisto checked the status on the wavefront and likewise on his own sensor suite. He was making fine adjustments to the scanning routine, he had never seen an NMX actually cloak before but he wasn't about to take that chance and made certain the suite would alert him to any possible enemies.

Though, at the same time, he was also making extra sure that those fighters here along with the gunships were being pegged as friendlies to him. Keying their transponders made this job a lot easier to say the least.

I can use the onboard cloak to further screw with the enemy, but not while I have a wingman, so I'll save that only for when it's needed, he moved his hand across the dash panel and brought up a volumetric display of the current sensor readouts around them.

He saw the gunships along with their ready statuses, his squad and even the Heitan. Confidence was already growing in him, but he was quickly dampening it so that he wouldn't make a mistake. Casting his eyes away, he looked down at the video display within the panel itself, which was giving him a constant power read on the onboard generator along with the weapon systems and life support. He switched it over to monitoring strictly his onboard shields and sensor suite.

His desire was to use the wavefront as a cover shield, make his wingman much harder to target and even harder to lock on with locking weapons. At the same time, he was already devising a plan of action in his flight pattern, to take him close to each of his squadmates so that they would be briefly within his jamming field, potentially causing any NMX to lose their lock on them. Even if the loss was brief, he knew it would be enough to possibly annoy them.

Though this also means that us Tet's will be the primary target once the NMX realize 'we' are the ones jamming them, with that thought in mind, he set up a power transfer system, a small little program he could engage at a moments notice that would shunt power directly from his weapons system and to his engines, which would give him greater menuverability.

He knew that such programs already existed, and that a pilot could very easily just perform this feat without the need of a program, but Elisto always preferred to have a backup plan in the event something happened.

Relaxing slightly, he double checked his wingmans position and smiled, then closed his eyes and folded his arms over his chest while he awaited the fold.

Anne held tight on the Ken at his right. Now in this battle he is her direct superior. She will do her best to cover him and fight. Anne opened her medical scanner on HUD. As flight surgeon she could see hear rate of everyone and other information thanks to their Aerospace suits.

She saw that pilot in 0059 had her high rate go pretty up suddenly. That was Arinori-san, one of the greenhorns. Anne understood why this would happen, it was same for her too. But Anne had no time to be scared or worry too much. She had to do her job. And this was part of it. She opened comm line to Arinori-san and said, "Arinori-san calm down. It will be all right. Just follow your lead and fight with others." She said and smiled in the visual. She hoped this will help nervous neko.

She then moved from medical screen to her wavefront module and ran test on it. It seemed to work okay and she put it into stand-by mode. She planned to use it jamm any targeting system that could try to shoot down Ken or herself. Or any other ally nearby. She will also let it scan for amount of enemy communication. Jamming their comm could also cripple them.

Complying with the ping request form the gunships, Ken's IFF codes were transmitted with a quick little tap of a button on his instrument panel, he took the time to make sure his targeting systems were also correctly marking all his friendlies too. Ken kept his Kawarime fighter level as he flew in formation with the rest of the squad. In this quiet time of wait, he pulled something from one of the pockets in his flight-suit, it looked like a little plastic figure of a UOC Peacekeeper, a little beat up and worn, but still in one piece. Ken glanced down at it for a few seconds, finding himself lost in a memory...

• 'Where's my mommy?'
  'She's not here, I'm sorry...'
  'A-Are you the p-peacekeeper who saved me?'
  'Yeah... yeah that was me.'

"Damn it..." Ken whispered to himself as he felt his feeling flood back to him, comms turned off. "If only I could have saved her too," he sighed, regretting that day. "No more lives kiddo... I won't let them take anyone else," Ken said to the figure clutched in his gloved hand. He was determined to get back at the NMX, he wanted them to pay--- but most of all, he wanted them to go away, for good. The emotional pilot put away the action-figure and brought his attention back to the mission. He was here now, in Yamatai. He'd have his chance to get back at them here. They were jumping soon, he watched the seconds tick by on his HUD until the jump, his grip tightening on his flight controls.

Over the open channel the Jôtô Hei; Munkata called out to prepare for combat. Ken did just that, flicking the safety measures off his weapons and modules, confirming they were all green. His shields were already active as soon as he crossed into space, but he did one last cursory check on them. Everything looked good. "Roger that Hunter. Levine-hei is shields up and weapons hot," he chimed in, making sure to communicate his status. He arched his neck back looking over his shoulder down at Anne in her cockpit, making one last check to be sure she was okay. He offered her a friendly thumbs up and turned his attention forward, waiting for that jump and what was on the other side.

Errowyn settled in next to Ira's kawarime at the proper distance and position. She ran through the checklist again to make sure she missed nothing.

"“Hai, running hot and locked” She responded over open channel, still purring softly.

She mentally ran through the NMX ships recognization features in her mind and the stats for each of the ship that she could remember. She wiggled her ship as she ran through each of the manevuer thusters missing the front two as she didn't want to fall out of synch with the rest of squadron and gunships.

She evenly spread the power requirements to all of her systems and checking on the generators seeing they was running at optimun capibility.

Then she snugged down her safety straps abit tighter about her after she reached behind her to check the SPINE interface, seeing thatthey was aligned perfectly and connected properly. Then set about mentaly reviewing emergancy proceedures just incase she needed them.

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

Emiyu tilted the ship from side to side slightly, hopefully catching his attention with the small movement. She heard the flight surgeon Anne chime in about her heart rate. She mentally switched her comm from the open channel to Anne-Hei's frequency before she reploed " Thanks for that Anne-Hei. I'm just excited is all." she said before tuning in on the open frequency again to keep tabs on her lead.

She had disengaged all the weapon locks on her ship and had run tested the response on her vessel's counter measure module. She would be using that up rather quickly she imagined. So, she had been thinking about othere ways she could deal with incoming munitions. Fighters were rather straightforward, but it was the missles that worried her. She had as many flares as she could use, but her knockdown systems was limited. She would have to conserve as many rounds as she could.

She assumed that she would have to figure out what to do on her own. If she received instructions on what to do, then that would be fine. Otherwise, she would try and figure things out on her own. She peeked over at Ellisto-hei's Kawarime and smiled a bit before settling back in her seat and waiting for the battle to start.

"All right Diamonds, form up for escort duty, watch your wingman and stick with each other." Ira said. Ira fiddled with his controls and transmitted back to Atsui "Ma'am, this is Loverboy, 21st squadron is in positions, we are standing by for contact."

Anne finished up calbrating her wavefron module when actual movement outside caught her attention. It was her lead, her was gesticulating from inside his cockpit. Anne smiled as she saw raised thumb. She then raised both her hands and show him both of her thumbs, before quickyl taking the controls back into her firm grip.

She then raised Elisto-san on the comm. "Elisto-hei should there be need I think we must be ready to combine our wavefron modules. With cooperation we can cover more of the squadron at the same time." She said to him. Formation was already preparing fold and she hoped she prepared all she needed in time.

Heitan Bridge

Atsui sat in the command chair, watching the screen slowly turn green as the myriad of craft surrounding the Heitan and the task force signaled their status.

She picked up the handset and dialed the Squadron channel.
"Roger that Loverboy. Just keep loose we will be folding momentarily. Should be an interesting experience out there."

She switched her comm channel to the Fleetwide. "All Ships Go to Condition 1. Fold on my mark.... 3... 2... 1... Mark."

Thoughout the fleet the various warships were making the transition to Condition 1 from Condition 2, klaxons sounded and power was coming up to the weapon and defensive systems.

Around the 21st and the other craft around the Heitan the space began to twinkle and glow. At a distance of just under a kilometer from the carrier the teal glow that was unique to an imminent fold began forming a large sphere, one that encompassed all the fighters and gunboats plus the escorts.

When the bubble reached the critical field strength the Heitan and its compliment leaped into hyperspace. For the crews in the fighters, it was a disconcerting sensation. The fighter sensors said they were stationary, and that nothing existed beyond the fold bubble. However, visually they could see the universe shift to a mass of white spots before them, and another one behind. And every so often a spot would streak from the front cluster around the bubble and join those behind the ship.

Elisto glanced off to his side and gave an approving nod of the head then keyed his mic. "Good idea, if it comes to it, I'll coordinate our flight patterns with Levine-hei. Just remember to inform him of any idea's you have, he is your wing leader after all," he then glanced off to his left and was about to say more when he saw the space outside his fighter suddenly shift and change.

Silic groaned as the strains of the jump were felt. He'd never been built for flight crew, and his body was reminding him of it. He pressed his helmet to the back of Yaekos seat and squeezed his eyes shut.

Ira accelerated followed his orders, and relaxed as they began to initiate fold. "This is the first time I have ever done this." he said smiling. "I always did love a light show." He said to Lynn as he sat back and laced his fingers.

He then spoke up over the squadron channel. "Pretty awesome right?"

Ira had always been in the ship when fold was initiated, but he was never shy when presented with a new experience.

Murasaki Kenshin's hazel eyes scanned the holographic heads-up display being projected by his flight suit's helmet, checking his Kawarime fighter's system status and the external sensor readings for the umpteenth time since launch -- an action that was fairly useless at that moment. As far as the fighters sensor suite was concerned the universe ended at the edge of the fold bubble being projected by the Heitan's FTL drive.

Kenshin mouthed a silent prayer to whatever gods were listening, that nothing went wrong with the Heitan's FTL event, before the pilot turned his attention away from the status display and towards the fighters communications system, switching his comms frequency from the squadrons channel to his wingman's exclusive one.

"Hey Tamahagane, everything check out back there? I hope you're ready to play the role of torpedo interceptor for the Hayai -- they have no point-defense weapons or missile countermeasures whatsoever, so we'll need to keep an eye out for battlepods that ignore the fighter screen and head straight for our babies."

Though not normally very talkative, Kenshin wanted to make sure his wingman had his back. This was his first real mission... he didn't particularly feel like becoming a vapor cloud so early in his career.

Errowyn deftly kept her fighter steady and smiled at Ira's remark about the light show of the fleet going into a hyper jump fold. She felt her heart speed up a little asshe took in everything that was going on around her, She replied over coms with a simple "Miaow."

She knew time was getting short before really mixing it up with a determined enemy. She fidgeted in her seat, looking over her ship's data, making sure everything was okay and ready to go. She felt hyperactive and felt restrained by the confines of her ship around her.

Elisto kept his arms folded over his chest, not at all fazed by the effects of the fold. It was specticular looking though, and it always brought a source of comfort to him.

He glanced up toward the top of his canopy, then off to either side, catching sight of his wingmen for a brief moment before turning his attention back to the front of his cockpit. His hand flexed a few times and he brought it close to the stick, he was ready just in case things went to hell the moment they appeared.