Fred
Retired Staff
Re: Mission 5: Amaya's Gate
@Amaya's Gate:
Asher and Kyou inched cautiously forward, while Kai moved ahead to get a closer look at the chamber from the vantage of the two oddly positioned monitoring consoles, trying to move around in a way which would have his armored boots make a minimum of noise.
Upon closer view, those consoles became even more of an oddity. No power seemed to be running through them and their digital displays were blank. They seemed solidly attached to the floor and yet the infrared signature they had was strangely neutral - more like ambient room temperature than irregular like the other powered consoles.
Suddenly, energy streaks flashed across the room. Quickly, Kai hunkered down (there was cover handy, after all) and repeated fire from eight different sources - apparently firing in pairs - swept above him. Those looked like attacks from NSP-type weapons, coming from the corridor ahead.
From the vantage of the other two, they noticed the flash of weapon discharges just out of the entry to the utility corridor ahead. Those flashes revealed the glassy outlines of four large mechanical tentacles with pincer-like ends as the points of origin. The tentacles came out from deeper within the corridor (they might even be long enough to originate from the main passageway).
* * *
@Miharu:
Errant positron bolts crossed the blackness of space. Spinning, tucking its wings back for more speed and a smaller profile, Miharu knifed through the positron hell, bearing down on Dokueki. Miyoko's effort to deflect shots proved easier than she had first thought - Yukari was already doing her damnable best to be a hard target, so most of what the incoming positron discharges needed to be dealt with on her end were deft deflections.
The Himiko-class' undernose main gun flashed four times, and four incandescent white bolts of power shot out to meet the Sakura gunship. The gunship - previously pursued by Miharu, had formerly reinforced its rear shields at the expense of the front and the quick attack allowed it no chance to rebalance them.
Each aether pulse, adjusted for better performance inside the expanse, ripped through the thin veneer of shielding to strike with 80% of their potency at the light gunship's hull: the first shattered appear the lower blade of its aether shock array, the second bore straight into the engineering section, the third in the middle of the starboard pylon and the fourth just under the starboard side of the armor bay.
In the next split second, the containment for the anti-matter of Dokueki's starboard positron cannon failed, and containment failure caused a bright explosion that shattered the pylon in its middle, tearing the starboard nacelle off the rest of the ship.
The containment failure was, however, dwarfed by another far more dramatic explosion as the stockpiled ammunition in Dokueki's armory - struck into on Nyton's fourth shot - cooked off. The light gunship's almond-shaped hull was blasted open like a firecracker over half its length.
Lacking Miharu's internal atmospheric retention fields and its comparmentalization/blast shutter arrangement being insufficient to account for such dramatic structural stresses and hull loss, explosive decompression soon claimed most of what was left of the Dokueki.
"Scratch one!" Miharu quipped triumphantly. The main gun's heat levels had risen, but if Nyton figured that if he gave it roughly 20 seconds to rest, he'd be able to use it again (in which time Miharu's energy reserves would likely rise high enough to allow him another four-pulse volley anyways).
Just before Miharu could arrow through the expanding mass of explosive gasses and debris of the doomed gunship, cobalt lighting crisscrossed the distance between it and the three pursuing gunships, four missing but two others striking solidly through the protection of the Oiwa's shields and ventral armor, just around the base of the lower blade of its aetheric shock array; it looked like a hit to the airlock compartment (if they were lucky, that would bleed out into the main passageway) and a hull breach right over the Oiwa's main sensor array.
The shots meant for the Koyryou unfortunately missed: the lead gunship had obviously anticipated the attack and been on the defensive.
Twin transphasic torpedos then followed just as Miharu plunged into the expanding fiery colored gasses. The twin projectiles exploded ahead of the three pursuing gunships. The Oiwa plunged heedlessly right into them, while the other two attempted to dodge them, though too late: even WARMS warnings could not help them avoid an attack that was - as far as torpedo ranged went - nearly point blank.
The gunships eventually flew out, shield bubble flickering: their ships had sustained significant damage, but had held under both transphasic explosions.
Miharu then emerged on the other side of the waning explosion, gasses briefly hugging to the hull like red streamers. Tamamo lingered back with the blinded Oiwa while Otoroshi charged after Miharu - though the latter did not risk a shot through the explosion (it likely caused some sensor complications). Koyryu, for her part, had her sublight engines go into overdrive and, going at 0.75c, she darted around the explosion like a pirahna to fire her positron cannons toward Miharu's dorsal shields.
On her sensor displays, Miyoko registered growing energy spikes: they had between 10 and 15 seconds before the aether shock arrays of the attacking Sakura gunships would be charged up and ready to fire again.
@Amaya's Gate:
Asher and Kyou inched cautiously forward, while Kai moved ahead to get a closer look at the chamber from the vantage of the two oddly positioned monitoring consoles, trying to move around in a way which would have his armored boots make a minimum of noise.
Upon closer view, those consoles became even more of an oddity. No power seemed to be running through them and their digital displays were blank. They seemed solidly attached to the floor and yet the infrared signature they had was strangely neutral - more like ambient room temperature than irregular like the other powered consoles.
Suddenly, energy streaks flashed across the room. Quickly, Kai hunkered down (there was cover handy, after all) and repeated fire from eight different sources - apparently firing in pairs - swept above him. Those looked like attacks from NSP-type weapons, coming from the corridor ahead.
From the vantage of the other two, they noticed the flash of weapon discharges just out of the entry to the utility corridor ahead. Those flashes revealed the glassy outlines of four large mechanical tentacles with pincer-like ends as the points of origin. The tentacles came out from deeper within the corridor (they might even be long enough to originate from the main passageway).
* * *
@Miharu:
Errant positron bolts crossed the blackness of space. Spinning, tucking its wings back for more speed and a smaller profile, Miharu knifed through the positron hell, bearing down on Dokueki. Miyoko's effort to deflect shots proved easier than she had first thought - Yukari was already doing her damnable best to be a hard target, so most of what the incoming positron discharges needed to be dealt with on her end were deft deflections.
The Himiko-class' undernose main gun flashed four times, and four incandescent white bolts of power shot out to meet the Sakura gunship. The gunship - previously pursued by Miharu, had formerly reinforced its rear shields at the expense of the front and the quick attack allowed it no chance to rebalance them.
Each aether pulse, adjusted for better performance inside the expanse, ripped through the thin veneer of shielding to strike with 80% of their potency at the light gunship's hull: the first shattered appear the lower blade of its aether shock array, the second bore straight into the engineering section, the third in the middle of the starboard pylon and the fourth just under the starboard side of the armor bay.
In the next split second, the containment for the anti-matter of Dokueki's starboard positron cannon failed, and containment failure caused a bright explosion that shattered the pylon in its middle, tearing the starboard nacelle off the rest of the ship.
The containment failure was, however, dwarfed by another far more dramatic explosion as the stockpiled ammunition in Dokueki's armory - struck into on Nyton's fourth shot - cooked off. The light gunship's almond-shaped hull was blasted open like a firecracker over half its length.
Lacking Miharu's internal atmospheric retention fields and its comparmentalization/blast shutter arrangement being insufficient to account for such dramatic structural stresses and hull loss, explosive decompression soon claimed most of what was left of the Dokueki.
"Scratch one!" Miharu quipped triumphantly. The main gun's heat levels had risen, but if Nyton figured that if he gave it roughly 20 seconds to rest, he'd be able to use it again (in which time Miharu's energy reserves would likely rise high enough to allow him another four-pulse volley anyways).
Just before Miharu could arrow through the expanding mass of explosive gasses and debris of the doomed gunship, cobalt lighting crisscrossed the distance between it and the three pursuing gunships, four missing but two others striking solidly through the protection of the Oiwa's shields and ventral armor, just around the base of the lower blade of its aetheric shock array; it looked like a hit to the airlock compartment (if they were lucky, that would bleed out into the main passageway) and a hull breach right over the Oiwa's main sensor array.
The shots meant for the Koyryou unfortunately missed: the lead gunship had obviously anticipated the attack and been on the defensive.
Twin transphasic torpedos then followed just as Miharu plunged into the expanding fiery colored gasses. The twin projectiles exploded ahead of the three pursuing gunships. The Oiwa plunged heedlessly right into them, while the other two attempted to dodge them, though too late: even WARMS warnings could not help them avoid an attack that was - as far as torpedo ranged went - nearly point blank.
The gunships eventually flew out, shield bubble flickering: their ships had sustained significant damage, but had held under both transphasic explosions.
Miharu then emerged on the other side of the waning explosion, gasses briefly hugging to the hull like red streamers. Tamamo lingered back with the blinded Oiwa while Otoroshi charged after Miharu - though the latter did not risk a shot through the explosion (it likely caused some sensor complications). Koyryu, for her part, had her sublight engines go into overdrive and, going at 0.75c, she darted around the explosion like a pirahna to fire her positron cannons toward Miharu's dorsal shields.
On her sensor displays, Miyoko registered growing energy spikes: they had between 10 and 15 seconds before the aether shock arrays of the attacking Sakura gunships would be charged up and ready to fire again.
