RP: YSS Miharu Mission 4: The Fame and the Fury

Yuzuki sighed, silently mourning the loss of Nimura. Even if having her peculiar sibling off doing something else eased her of the awkward feeling of being stared straight to the bone, the fact that Nimura had not found the couplings in her short search meant that, probably, they did not exist. And now she was losing Kyou, too.

Yuzuki ran through her options. There were not many of them. Everybody was stuck doing something, and her skeleton-crew had just been more or less stolen by the brass. A nervous tic reminded Yuzuki that her hand was still in her hair. She worked it out and let it fall to her waist. They weren't getting anything done this way. The Juni wouldn't be happy.

"Go ahead and just set the capacitor back down, then," the beleagured Heisho found herself saying, "You're dismissed, Gunshin-Hei."

Instinctively, Nyton had already begun walking towards the ship's main passage way. As Nyton walked he quickly brought up a small map that displayed the locations of everyone already busily searching. "Miharu, highlight any locations on the ship that you cannot monitor. If there is a blindspot I want it checked out physically."

Miharu revealed to Nyton that most areas with limited surveillance were the maintenance crawlways. Some could be accessed from the damage control rooms, but those entries Miharu could monitor. The main deck and upper deck also had crawlways - for example, the communication array was reached from crawlways that circled around the sensor dome - but most had an entry where Miharu could monitor passage.

"My internal awareness are substancially better than they were back in YE 28," the ship's AI commented. "I wouldn't be as effective creating internal forcefields otherwise. Still, it didn't prevent me from missing that phasing Black Mishhuvurthyar back in Tsuyosa. I might also miss a very careful nekovalkyrja under thermoptic camouflage, but then I'd have noticed entries into the passageway made by invisible people and raised an alarm.

"Of course, inside jobs, hacking and such could've been done to blind me..." Miharu added. "But then, it'd mean their hacking prowess would be much better than you-know-who's administrative priviledges."

Yagen said:

Miyoko said:

Kimura-hei, how's the search going? I might have a few items of interest to add to our list of keywords...

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"Nothing groundbreaking, I'd say," Takuma responded. His voice had a hint of frustration behind it with a happy tone plastered on top in a makeshift disguise. "Mainly information we already know and a couple mismatches. What are your new ideas to search for? I'll get the computer running on them so it'll be ready by the time you get here."

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I'd like anything we can get on the Daughters of Eve fleet logistics, Miyoko responded as she pushed herself away from the wall and walked into the wardroom. She stretched as she did, relishing the ability to do so before she went back to sitting down for hours.

Particularly anything relating to the Blue Rift Expanse site. 'Blue Rift' would be a good search key to start with. If that fails, try 'fleet.' We'll probably get a lot of garbage results searching for any generic terminology like that, but it might be unavoidable. I want to get as clear a picture of what we're up against as I can. If that means sifting through ten thousand records of toilet paper shipments, so be it.

"That would be very unlikely if 'she' is involved. Alright we should be able to rule out any hacking. We'll narrow down our sweep to those areas which you cannot monitor." Nyton said, thinking a bit as he began to slow down.

"Kurohoshi-Juni, we'll coordinate the closest detail members to those passageways. As soon as we finish checking those areas then we'll release everyone back to their original duties."

"I'll try and filter out the results that mention toilet paper," Takuma said with a small laugh. "Unless you believe they mentioned toilet paper in every document to ward us away as a security measure."

Takuma uncluttered his screen of fruitless windows and garbage information and started clean with a search for "Blue Rift."

"On it," Masako replied as she opened up her communicator. "Nakamura-hei," she spoke through it to the enlisted man. "There are some maintenance crawlways that can be accessed from the damage control rooms and crawlways on the main deck and upper deck, please send the nearest security personnel towards them. Miharu will assist your team in locating entryways if there is difficulty finding them."

"Hai." the Hei answered through his own communicator, sending a message to Tsuya and Nimura. "Please search through the maintenance crawlspaces on your levels as well, if you don't know the entrances, Miharu will tell you where they are, Yamada-Hei."

with that, Kai closed the locker he had been inspecting, before locating the nearest crawlspace entrance and opening it and shining his flashlight around as far as he could, wondering if he should get in and start crawling about. He asked Masako to that effect.

"Kurohoshi-Juni, do you need us to get into the crawlspaces to search them, or is just a look from the entrance satisfactory?"

"Have them physically roam the crawlspace. Have them report their status in five minutes in case it takes some time to inspect the crawlspace. Since he won't be on Miharu's sensors there will be no other way to know his status." Nyton interjected as he listened to the conversation.

Thank you. Once the query has started, you can take a break if you'd like. I'll be down shortly, and I get the feeling we're going to be at this for a long time.

Once Miyoko had finished her communication with Takuma, she retreated to her room and flopped down on her back on the bed. Her mind was entirely too full for more work just yet. She had to puzzle out just how she was actually feeling before she could start putting her brain back to use.

For a few moments, she just stared at the ceiling, then finally blindly reached out to flip her data recorder unit on. "I probably can't go into any details on what I'm working on thanks to security concerns. If we get to the point where anybody unwelcome is reading this, I'll probably be rather thoroughly dead, but that's how things work. So, if you're me accessing these memories after I've died, I have to inform you that it ironically means I won. Trust me, if we had lost this next one, you wouldn't be around."

Miyoko paused for a moment. Things like verb tenses got confusing when speaking to somebody in the future about their past which was her own future. "Anyway, things I can talk about freely, hm. I need to complete a psychological profile of Ashitaka, but that may have to wait until this whole thing is over. I'd feel a little petty worrying about it right now." Miyoko willfully ignored that her entire war with Sanjuro was petty for the moment. "It also turns out that intelligence work isn't as boring as I'd expected. It's a bit like science, I suppose: find the pieces and figure out how they fit together. It might be worth taking some training toward it if I ever get the chance."

"Bought dessert for everybody and couldn't even pass it out before I was shanghai'd for work. For all I know, it's still rotting in the kitchen or all got eaten by Mara. Had tea with Kurohoshi-juni and we got embarrassingly sentimental, but it was a nice break from things. I should get her a birthday present this year. Us family-less neko have to stick together. I was taken along to help interview new recruits... what exactly that means, I'm not sure." Miyoko let out a yawn as she thought of what else to add, but came up with nothing. For the moment, she'd unloaded everything on her future self.

"Anyway, I've procrastinated enough. If you're future-me and not some assassin picking through my articles over my dead body, have a drink to celebrate winning. ... and if you're the assassin thing, well, fuck you. No, seriously." With that, Miyoko flipped the recording function of the unit off and pushed herself to her feet with a grunt. It took a few minutes to straighten her uniform up again--and make sure that she had her pistol with her, given the circumstances--and then she headed out to return to her datacore-combing duties.

"Hai, Nakamura-hei," Tsuya responded before breaking the connection once again. Since she didn't know, exactly, where the maintenance crawlspaces were, she pinged Miharu, and the ship highlighted an overlay of the crawlspace network on the neko's vision - luckily without any snide comments. There was an entrance nearby, so Tsuya crawled into it, sans flashlight, since her neko eyes were able to see in enough spectra that the darkness wasn't an issue.

She crawled around in there for a good while, making sure that there were no intruders. There weren't, and eventually she found her way back out where she had started, slightly more covered in dust. She sat against the wall and scowled a bit as she contacted Kai again. "No intruders in the main deck crawlspace, Nakamura-hei."

The next words seemed to weight heavily on Kotori: "Given our communication silence and how we will be more than 100 light years from Yamatai, it is doubtful any escape pod we will launch can expect a rescue. Considering that, you've my permission to reuse the space they occupy to extend our power production capabilities."

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Tom contemplated the Taisa's words in a long, silent moment. The way she was speaking, it seemed to be a forgone conclusion that they would either win or die.

The engineer didn't really know what to think about this, as his eyes took in the porcelain-skinned Taisa before him. She seemed more distant in that moment, as if the logic of her suggestion was a slab of cement on a wall which locked her away.

"Taisa, if I may offer a compromise, we have three sets of escape pods, located on each level of the Miharu. Am I to use all of them? Perhaps we could save a room for the evacuation of ST pods? I mean, even if it takes 1000 years, it's not like we'd know any different when we were retrieved."

Miharu initiated a search with the keywords "Blue Rift".

After a little while, the ship's AI told Takuma. "I'm getting a ridiculous amounts of hits just for the word 'Blue'. I'm refining the search, but it will take awhile longer."

* * *

"Yes, do keep the Soul Savior pod. Besides, it's installed in a different area than the rest of the other escape pods." Kotori agreed. "However, I do want you to replace the rest."

She explained: "The Blue Rift Expanse at its center is more than ten light years away from any charted star - stars which might not even have habitable worlds. Even if we would use some to survive Miharu's destruction, we'd only postpone our deaths: the escape pods were never made to survive prolonged exposure in the hazardous circumstances of that region. We likely would not even survive cryogenic stasis."

"Considering that, I'd rather work on increasing the odds that this situation not happen at all."

"Maybe we should add the word 'expanse' to the search and only return those results that hold all three words. Like you mentioned with blue, the other words are not very specific either and will trigger too much data for us to go through."

On Miyoko's suggestion and hint that they may be stuck in this room for a lot longer, Takuma decided to take a short walk around the ship.

"Please tell me if you find anything interesting Miharu. That'll probably be my queue to come back."

"It's pronounced 'cue', Takuma. 'Cue'." Miharu glibly corrected before adding: "I'll send you a notice as soon as I find something pertinent for you, yes."

With Takuma heading away from the datacore and Miyoko heading toward it, it was no surprise that the two encountered each other in the hallway. Miyoko nodded acknowledgment to him. "The search is running?"

"Your skills in auditory perception scare me sometimes..." Takuma said vacantly, his head turning in slight confusion. "I'll keep that in mind..."

Bumping into Miyoko turned his head back to a normal direction and made his mind focus more. "Yeah, the next search has started so I'm moving around a bit waiting for it to finish. How'd the officers' meeting go? You seem a little... tired, I guess?"

Tom's smile was tinged with melancholy.

"Yeah, I agree with the assessment."

He bowed to the Taisa, his wishful thinking and smile vanishing when he stood prone again.

"We will be ready to depart in a few hours, after I repair the fold system and we rewire the capacitors to use fewer cells. While in transit, I will give our technicians some resting time so that they may recouperate for the bigger tasks at hand... many of them haven't stopped working since our battle at Bowhordia. When we reach Ether, I will eject and destroy the escape pods and begin the necessary modifications you have ordered to Miharu, as well as have your armors built. Is there anything else, Taisa?"

Kotori's face scrunched up with a frown. She looked ambivalent. "I wish I didn't have to make that concession. Maybe we can store them in the free bay? No: I'm already having you put new Daisy armors there. Recycle them? No: those are too big to fit in the ship to be put in the Fabrication chambers. I-"

Kotori finally puffed in exasperation. "Yes, Tom. Scrapping them will be fine. When the time comes to do that, we'll even have Nyton show you how to work with Miharu's tactical console and use the pods for target practice."

"Keep Suzuka-Shosa appraised of your progress." The Taisa nodded. "You may go."

"Enter the crawlspaces, just a cursory glance does nothing," Masako replied to Kai. "Miharu can't 'see' anything in there, so we need to use our eyes. Report when everyone has searched the crawlspaces, Kurohoshi out."

Placing her communicator back upon her belt, the young Warrant Officer brought up the information Nyton had sent her before the meeting and began to look through it. Much of the organization seemed close to what she had been thinking on her own.

Of course, the inclusion of the Ship's Tactical Officer as Wing Commander seemed a bit iffy to her. Nyton was her superior, so she understood including him in the chain of command for the Armor Wing. However, she believed he would be on the ship more than on the ground/in space with the wing. Then again, Nyton did go onto Bowhordia's surface while she stayed to protect the Miharu, so it was probably proper he be included as a combatant anyway.

She dared not bring up her opinions on the organization yet. That could come after the security sweep had been completed and the pilots updated on matters.