Re: Mission 5: Amaya's Gate
@Amaya's Gate:
Shrouded from sight thanks to their thermoptic stealth, the Black Knights - with Kyou in the lead - hovered down the vertical shaft and made their entry into the utility corridor leading to the next power reactor room.
They inched cautiously forward with no incident until they arrived at the threshold of the room holding the monitoring equipment watching over the operation of the heavily shielded Matter/Anti-Matter reactor. The blast shutter so they had no impediment to going in.
It was much like the two other rooms Kurohoshi and Nakamura teams had visited before. It looked deserted of any hostiles and had the odd addition of two wide maintenance console set up over the main walkway through that looked like it would provide idea cover for any attacker that would come down from the next utility corridor which lead back to the ring's main access corridor.
Aside from the rumbling of the shielded machinery, nothing else seemed to stir.
* * *
@Miharu:
Miharu broke into an unsteady charge after the Dokueki, leaving her rear quarter bared to her attackers. Despite Yukari's erratic maneuvering, there was too much concentrated fire coming from behind for her to keep track of, so she selectively decided to only pay attention to the 0.6c positron discharges, which could do the ship the worst harm.
After all, as long as the regenerative shields worked 'as designed', the Sakuras could pour concentrated mobile weapon fire at them for minutes and nothing would get through.
Out of the 8 positron shots, only one struck Miharu in the rear, the anti-matter projectile landing heavily over Hoshi's ventral armor. The hit - very close to the bridge - caused a brief but very violent quake for the three bridge operators. Luckily, the armor was marred yellow on the displays and not breached thanks to the ship's regenerative shielding. The energized armor also blunted the positive energy interference Hoshi's electronics would have had normally suffered.
The ninety-or-so mobile pods raked Miharu's rear with polaron beams, but just like Yukari had counted on, those didn't leave a scratch. Through SPINE, she felt the regenerative shielding efficiently cycle through redundant generators, making sure their protection was not depleted under the onslaught.
All four Sakura attackers ended up in Miharu's aft quadrant, which allowed all six turreted particle cannons to be at Nyton's disposal. Unfortunately, at the breakneck speed of Yukari's erratic maneuvers, none of the turrets managed to land a hit, though they forced all four enemy ships to dip and weave around evasively as well.
The four gunships ended up in a closer formation. The Tamamo, Otoroshi and Oiwa stabilized their flight in order to fire another volley of their positron railguns, 40 000 kilometers behind Miharu and closing. The Koyryu, though, hurriedly veered off to the side and did not attack.
In the meantime, Dokueki seemed to lose interest in the fighter-bomber it pursued - it was just an oddity to it - and made a 180-degree spin to face Miharu before firing its twin railguns after its pursuer. The gunship's poise, straight toward them and advancing their way, could provide as good a firing solution as he would get with the main gun if Yukari could point their nose at it and keep the ship stable long enough for him to fire.
The Ryusei II outdistanced its former-pursuer and was now only 10 light seconds from the Gate, with the Urikos swooping its way to escort it.
* * *
@Miharu's Sensor Dome:
The white-haired sprite seemed to be taking the presence of the blasted, shattered corpse in stride. "I wanted to dispose of it, but the Taii said he needed it for later."
Hinoto then turned and pointed to the port crawlway hatch. "Freeman-Juni, this is the nearest access to the damage we took. Be careful: it must be boiling hot in there."
"I am fine," Hinoto briefly tossed Nyton's way. Hoshi obliged the Nepleslian by relaying her reply into a text window.