@Decon Chamber:
The Ghost Mishhuvurthyar had more than dozen-dozen powerful tentacled limbs and Miyoko was already in reach of most of them. When her weapon came up, her opponent batted it aside, ruining its aim and spelling the destruction of innocent shower tiles.
As cracked debris from the defunct tiles flew around, the creature attacked on, battering Miyoko's Daisy with flail-like hits that not only carried a lot of strength behind them but also wrapped around the armor in an undesirable embrace. The power armor of course absorbed most of the bludgeoning, but the jolts did not help Miyoko maintain even the semblance of a defensive posture.
Added to that was the squirming of the three painful lumps in her body, whom unfurled their small tentacles to scrabble for purchase, firing off Miyoko's nerves with liquid pain in their vicinity.
Even worse, some of the tentacles had wrapped around her helmet and with a heaving wrench, the broke the helmet's seal and got it off her head. Miyoko saw the rubbery coils discard her helmet, her head likely being next. Behind her, the crouched Kotori's hand had drifted to her longer blade and seemed on the verge of of making a draw-cut to free Miyoko.
Then came Ayumu's attqack, which burst against the Ghost Mishhuvurthyar, tearing a angry shriek from its undermaw as the stink of roasted meat wafted in the chamber, the base of its leftmost tentacles left sizzling by the NSP's shot. The heat of the area burst felt almost unendurable to the nearby Miyoko, whom squeezed her eyes close from the temperature. The concussive blast of the heavy-mode attack sent Kotori crashing back into her shower stall's wall, her own attack ruined.
The Ghost Mishhuvurthyar cast a resentful look at Ayumu with half its eyes and the dark beast turned around, using Miyoko as cover. If Ayumu dared another such attack, with Miyoko's exposed head in the vicinity, she would kill the science officer in the process.
@Bridge:
Hinoto and the Ghost Mishhuvurthyar stared each other down. The nekovalkyrja was about to attack when the creature surprised her by speaking.
"WHITE IRIS. THE MISTRESS BIDS YOU GREETING."
Hinoto stopped just shy of attacking, narrowing her eyes. The mishhuvurthyar had answered one of her suspicions. "You came specifically for me, not the Taisa."
"YOU ARE THE DAGGER AT THE BREAST OF THE MISTRESS. THE GUIDING VOICE TO THE HAUNTED VALKYRIE AND HER GROUP. IF YOU DIE, ALL FALTER AND FAIL JUST AS SURELY AS IF THE SIGNALER WOULD FALL. YOU FOILED THE MISTRESS ONCE; I AM NOT TO ALLOW YOU TO DO SO AGAIN!"
"Enough with the theatrics!-" Hinoto threw her dagger at the mishhu's eyes and dashed forward at the mishhuvurthyar's front. The creature was quick to reply as after a brief snort of annoyance at the largely ineffective thrown weapon with coils of whipping tentacles sent her way, tentacles that hammered the air right in front of Hinoto as a forcefield barrier fizzled to life. Hinoto dropped, kicking her feet ahead to send her into a slide under the forcefield barrier, under the Ghost Mishhuvurthyar's tentacle, and slipped off the edge of the bridge's upper tier...
Right under the ventral side of the Ghost Mishhuvurthyar's shell, the open, teeth-filled, sphincter undermaw greeting her with its fetid breath while curtains of tentacles surrounded her on all side.
It was a bad place to be, but it was exactly where Hinoto wanted to be. She gathered her limbs, balling up, and used gravity manipulation to make the her mishhuvurthyar enemy her center of gravity, She dropped in a crouch on its underside and with a high-pitched yeowl, plunged her right arm deep into the mouth cavity of the beast.
She squeezed the trigger, and the semi-automatic weapon discharged repeatedly, roasting through tender flesh and beyond, as Hinoto had angled her weapon to eventually reach the upper frontal portion of the Ghost Mishhuvurthyar's shell, right between the eyes where its brain rested.
The upper-front of the exoskeleton soon exploded in a shower of bone and gore and the creature's weight soon crashed down, its shelled body and mass of tentacles balancing on the upper and lower tiers of the bridge.
The white-haired sprite squeezed her way out from between the tentacles and stood up, pausing a moment to blow at the smoking muzzle of her gun before holstering it.
Hinoto lost no time in returning to her console. She didn't even take the time to wipe off her slimy hand before her fingers again tapped over volumetric displays.
Miyoko was in a bad situation, but there was little Hinoto could do for her. The Ghost Mishhu already was in melee, and besides the shower stalls had no nearby internal field generators.
The defense line was near collapse, and that Hinoto could help with: the two weapon pods set up as artillery mounts were charged and ready...
@Defense Line:
Masako's two mini-missiles rushed in and took out the shielding of the first battlepod, the bazooka them hammering into the cyclopic eye on its front.
It as not the killing blow Masako hoped, as the smoking battlepod survived, but it ruined the effectiveness of its next attack as it tried to rain down a hail of suppressive fire over the recovering defenders.
Which was when the artillery mounts behind came to life, and bright energy beams lanced out from the weapon pods, one engulfing the already-damaged battlepod and turning it to a smoking wreck that crashed into the midst of zombies and yelling thralls before it exploded, killing even more. The second beam struck against the still intact shield of the other battlepod and depleted it.
The surviving pod continued on the attack, firing its railguns in an attempt to keep the defenders at bay the other remaining half of its missile packs - yet unused - snapped open to launch another volley of mini-missiles.
While the rockets roared to life, there was another clamor as Mara explosively erupted out from debris, making a prodigious leap out and answering with her own volley of flare countermeasures that widely spread around the ceiling, drawing the majority of the battlepod's homing payload off-course.
Mara's power armor landed from its jump in a crash through the leading zombies, battering them aside with sheer weight and momentum.
Miharu's avatar wasted in time and pushed offensively ahead, drive back the nearby zombies with explosive volley's from her forearm cannons.
@Nao:
Using her Daisy's enhanced strength Nao moved weighty girders and warped structural struts out of her way, and finally managed to step into the miraculously intact starboard wingpod of the main hull.
Of course, 'intact' was a bit of an overstatement. It meant that the place could still be called a room, with most of the hardware components recognizable instead of being crunched or twisted beyond recognition like the rest of the main hull. Nao had worked in that very section not even an hour ago, squeezing into a nearby maintenance passage to verify an anti-matter containment pod magnetic seal and she knew: the room was a wreck.
A wreck her eldest sister Mara hoped could be salvageable and of some use.
"I'll check the fusion reactor," Suzume proposed, making sense: with power lines from
Hoshi severed, the fusion reactor - if still functional - would be able to power anything else still functioning in here. "You'll look up the gravimetric engine and the aether generator?"
@black Knights:
After six successive battering hits, Asher and Kyou punched through the door, sending its flying back into many shredded pieces of something that looked like steel-gray cartilage and bone.
The passage ahead was an upward 30-degree slope that ended 15 meters away into a T-intersection, each sides of the intersections again slopping up.
No signs of counter-attack so far.
