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RP: YSS Eucharis [Mission 6] A Closer Inspection

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OK....now Konoka knew what the tuna's ears was going on. Still, the situation had her the most worried she'd ever been in her short life. However, this brought out the zen in her and not the panic. She'd gathered up a medical kit and some usual necessities, gotten ready, and headed to the Golden Apple.


In usual situations, Konoka would fret about the crew being hurt. However, now her worries were bigger: Why where they going to Nataria? What bioweapon would she and Sune have to handle? What ill boding had she sensed at dinner? And by the way....Why the fish was she last to know?! Well, she was there. She was ready. She had orders. When it came to fixing up disaster, for Konoka, there was no time like the present.
 
"I got it as well Valencia-Hei." Nika replied, already preparing the reply but Ramiro beat her to it. She watched and listened as the other Starship Operator continued exchanging information with the 'other' on the planet.

Lilly said:
"Bridge, Kurusu. Standing by."
Click to expand...

"This is Bridge... Roger that Kurusu-Chusa." Nika acknowledged as she ran through the channels again for any other responses.
 
The Taii rolled up her sleeve for the injection without complaining. She had a lot more on her mind now than she had the urge to deal with, since the report of the change in plans did find its way around to her through the ship's computer. The realization hit her like a brick, and even if it didn't sober her mentally, it halted most of her thought process and focused it on the present situation. She had been in charge of the ground team.

And now she wasn't.

Well, that was the end of it, really. There wasn't anything else she could do against a superior officer unless the Taisa was willing to go along with it. If the Chusa wanted the strike team, then she'd take the strike team. Sure. Why not disregard the Operations specialist? Bitterly, the Taii thought to herself; I got sent out here to be run around like this?

And then there was the medic hovering around her now, testing her.

"You may not believe me," the Taii said simply and quietly, without looking at him, "but I am sincerely sorry for what happened on the bridge."

She stood up and rolled her sleeve down when he was finished.

Calmly, the Taii walked over to one of the medicine cabinets and, sorting through it, found one of the pills that the Chusa had mentioned. She read the label carefully, then counted out two or three for later. Once she had replaced the bottle, Shizu took a couple of hair bands out of her pocket and began to deal with her hair. It was annoying her.

Taisa, she sent while she was working, 'I do not think it is wise to leave the ship unattended like this. The Chusa has assigned the current bridge crew to Bravo team. I respectfully request that this team stay shipboard and only be deployed in the case of an emergency. We can't leave the Eucharis unattended like this. The Taisho has called a state of readiness and we can not devote our entire ship's compliment to a distress signal."
 
"On our last operation," Hanako told Hamada, "bravo team was the emergency backup for Alpha, in case something went wrong. They were not expected to leave the ship otherwise. I think Chusa Misaki meant the same for this. At this point I think the shuttle is first come first serve. That is not the way it should be but in the interest of speed I want that shuttle launched in the next sixty seconds. We will disentangle this...cluster later. Now make it happen."

The Taisa turned to Ramiro, "I said South Gate, not the Samurai Sector. I want a two-leg course from here through the South Gate where the Fourth Fleet is, and then directly to Nataria."
 
The Taii closed her eyes.

Where did she want to be?

On the ship, or in the team she had designated, taking orders from the old XO? As smart as she was, Shizu was gradually finding that she had questions of pride to deal with. At the same time, the ship was going to be in desperate need of crew. The Chusa had selected several people who could not be seperated from the ship.

There was a medic already reported there. There was Blueberry, the sensor expert, who would be taking the electronics suite. And there had to be at least a few of the people she had assigned, reporting. Finishing off the last hair tie, making sure that it was acceptably secure - she always had a little trouble with comfort, in the Mindy, because of it - she gave a nod to Sune.

"You're still part of my team," she said, "I'll leave the decision to you. Miyazawa-hei is apparently already there, and if you go, there will be no medical personnel aboard this ship. If you still want to come, it is your decision."

Then she turned, the door opened, and she was gone.

By running, she made it to the armor bay ahead of most others. She stopped in the doorway, looking over Pineapple and Takeda. Without waiting for them to greet her or give any sort of recognition to her rank, she moved over to the lockers and began to disrobe as quickly as she could.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked once she noticed neither of the other two were moving to do the same, "Get in one of those things, you're going down with us. Not you, Pineapple-Juni. You're driving. We're making the Golden Apple and going down. Hurry up."
 
Sune replied to Hamada's apology in a nearly monotone voice his thoughts elsewhere. "Apology accepted Hamada-Taii. I will understand if you would rather have Miyazawa-Hei go done to the surface with you." He walked over to his desk, a few key strokes later the procedure proposal he was working on was deleted.

Sune could see now that his earlier judgement about his position was superfluous aboard the Eucharis was more true than ever. When I spoke with the Taisa about a reassignment at the interview, it was because it seemed redundant to have two medics with such a small crew. Now I am seeing that on this ship being a medic is rather redundant period. My position is redundant, no not my position I am, and my inputs are either ignored or misinterpreted. Probably best to just stick to my assigned duties.

Sune realized that it was ironic, he got his dream assignment, and it was turning out to be anything abut what he could have hoped. I still have a report to write and submit to the Taisa. Regulations require it, but with my track record with the Taisa... I do not know how she will react to it."

He recalled the Chusa's request to be given the status of the crew. "Charisma, please pass the following information to Kurusu-Chusa.
Status of crew members
So far only the following members have been scanned and confirmed clear of any biological hazard.
Karusu-Chusa
Hamada-Taii
Yamamoto-Heisho
Jalen-Hei
Miyazawa-Hei
Himeya-Hei
Takeda-Hei

The remaining 8 crew members are untested."
 
Pineapple nodded, glad to leave the armor bay to go back to the shuttle bay where she belonged. Taking a seat next to Blueberry in the shuttle cockpit, she waited for others to board the shuttle. "Soup sandwich," she commented to Blueberry. "They had be prepping Mindy armors."

Blueberry closed the cockpit door and nodded a little. "It is taking longer than normal. I think the officers need to have a unified roster and stick to it next time. The two First Officers are tripping over each other, and the medics are not helping."

Together they stared at the interior of the rounded shuttle bay doors, wondering when they'd get to decompress the bay.
 
Blissfully unaware of more complications, Misaki only waited on the medic she had remembered to suit up. Once she was ready, she would take whomever she had and launch. They needed to be done. "Taii Hamada, I want the team moving with the Golden Apple." Misaki sent, hoping it would give her something to focus on. "Golden Apple, you have Miyazawa-hei, launch. AMES are advisable." Remembering one of her preferred attachments, the Chusa pressed a teleportation pack to her dorsal hard point, and lifted from the bay floor, skittering towards the aft of the vessel. In truth, she could just teleport to a cover point near the distress call, but that would mean no support for the shuttle and they only had three units left after the one she attached.

I feel like I'm waiting for another battle, and another, and another...but if I move, the great sea will swallow me up. Misaki had cried when the war had ended. At first she didn't know why. The same digging feeling had returned just as a different flavor. All her sisters could be dying, was she doing enough?

"Sune-hei, Kurusu-Chusa. Thank you. Please see to the others as you are able."

The blue-haired officer was annoyed they weren't on the ground already. She had hoped the Taii's momentum with the team had follow through but it seemed to be stalling. They didn't have time for it. Every minute we spend here could be lives we waste. The veteran gunboat officer anxiously thought, biting the inside of her lip, she waited as the others scrambled for their suits, holding ready.

There was probably going to be hell to pay later. The scan shouldn't have been a production. Minutes they didn't have could be deadly on an assignment like theirs. In a way, they were fortunate it was only a distress call, and not something more troublesome. Attributing it to inexperience, and the way things had been left, the XO had understood why things had turned out that way. Plenty of time for it later if we survive the first battle. Grim? It was her rationalization for the time being. The odd, almost perverse sense of excitement the NH-27 felt brought her back to the task in front of them.

"All suited MINDY are clear to launch." The staggered reentry formation Misaki sent to the team had the Golden Apple in mind. With the electronics suite present there would be a chance for other scans, at least.

There could be time for bruised egos later. If it was an ambush, the figure inside the pronged armor that glided into space to meet up with what she assumed would be a prompt shuttle launch would meet it. That was that. "Bridge, Kurusu. We're going as soon as the shuttle is out."
 
"Belay her last!" the Taii said forcefully, stepping into the shuttle, followed by the engineer. Shizu, fully geared up in the Mindy armor except for the helmet, which she was holding beneath her arm, was flushed and looked more than a little frustrated. While not apparently wrathful to the point of actually yelling, the look she gave the Chusa could have cut stone, gray eyes glittering like the edges of knives. "You really planned to depressurize this compartment and open that door with only yourself, a medic, and two operators on-board?"

The Taii looked up into the forward comparment, the pilot's section, and let out an exausted breath. It was manned. Good. She turned back to the Chusa. "What were you going to do when you hit the ground? Just let the rest of the armored crew fly down there like meteorites? We're deploying together, out of this very shuttle, Chusa-san. If you have some sort of problem with the plan that we had originally, or with the orders that we were given originally, you can take it up with the Taisa after this mission is over with."

There.

She'd said it.

A little part of her was elated.

Turning back to the shuttle door, she checked to see that nobody else was behind her. Then she sealed it. Mentally she took a head-count. The cook would have to stay on-board ship - no great loss there. She had just been picked because the Taii felt that more firepower would have been warrented. The Chusa could provide that, now.

Finally, she sat down in the seat across from the Chusa.

"Welcome aboard, Chusa-san," she said, suddenly perfectly and eerily calm, "I am pleased to have you along, and I am looking forward to working with you. We will begin the briefing, once we are out of the shuttle bay."

Gradually, the realization of what she was doing would hit her and she would come down out of her fairly drunken cloud and go pale over the things she had just said, and implied, but for right now things were all right, and under control again. Everyone was here. The mission could be done.

"Bridge, this is the Golden Apple," she said, a little louder than she had to, "Requesting permission to depressurize the shuttle bay, and deploy!"
 
In moments, the bay was emptied of air, the doors opened, and the shuttle launched, bumping the passengers around a little as Pineapple piloted the small craft into the planet's toxic atmosphere.

"3XF Kylie, this is Eucharis shuttle Golden Apple, we are approaching your position," Blueberry sent, scanning the area of the crashed freighter as they drew closer.
 
As the Golden Apple drew closer, a Black winged power armor flew up from behind the downed freighter. Its gravitic signature and energy distortion shielding now appeared quite visible to the nearby scanners; The Black power armor was quite close not to have been detected before.

While it shared a passing resemblance, a Kylie 1c it was not. It was larger and lacked some of the litheness of the Yamataian armor.

The Black Armor hung in the air above the freighter, facing the approaching T4 shuttle.
 
"Deploy your team, Taii. I'm sending a message and going to have a word. This will give you enough time in distraction to pile out. This is either a trap, or one very strange situation." With that, Misaki sent the armor a transmission. The junior officer should have been happy enough with the task. Especially with the 1H acting as a decoy. The rash of anger directed at her made her take a mental note to talk to Sune later. Maybe it was more than being a little tipsy, as she had previously thought?


Waiting a three count, Misaki nodded, and teleported outside of the shuttle, between it, and the strange armour. She added questions to hopefully keep the stranded individual engaged, if it was one. If not, she was actively scanning the design, in combat readiness. "Is there anyone else to rescue? Does your suit have trans-atmo' capability?"
 
The Taii nodded, then secured her helmet, strangely relieved.

While she didn't want the Chusa going off alone, and certainly didn't appreciate that Misaki's suggestion was phrased as an order, Shizu was nevertheless satisfied, if somewhat bitter, with the reclaimation of her responsiblities.

Standing up in the shuttle as the Chusa disappeared, she barked; "Helmets on. Scatter once you're out the door, but do not open fire. Keep a look out for other armors, or shuttlecraft, in the atmosphere. Blueberry-Juni, keep this area under sensor surveilance. Pineapple-Juni, once the strike team is deployed, take a high altitude, establish communications with the bridge, and standby for orders."

Moving over to the door, the Taii looked back at the team she had fought so hard to command. Well, if she was going out - and by this time she was fairly convinced her stay here would be very very short - at least it could be put in her record that she'd actually done something worthwhile, while aboard.

She tripped the shuttle door operation switch.

It unsealed and dropped down. Gas rushed into the compartment in a thin, yellow haze. It curled against the divider between the pilot's house and the rest of the shuttle's inhabitants, quickly giving the impression of some sort of sick creeping fog. The world outside was very similar, with shapes on the ground - giant, mushroom like things - outlined dimly against what looked like a perpetual sandstorm.

The Taii looked back.

"Go!"
 
Blueberry managed to slip out of the cockpit just in time to seal the door, keeping Pineapple from being rushed by the gas. When the rear door opened, the Juni followed Hamada out into the nasty atmosphere.

- - -

Meanwhile, on the bridge, Hanako asked "Who has which weapons?" As soon as this rescue was over, they'd be on their way to what would probably be a very large battle.

"Nika, prepare to deploy the other orbital survey platform. We will make a very brief stop at HX-2 to leave it, since we would not want to carry it into battle anyway."

To Misaki and Hamada, she texted:

Preliminary Breakdown of First Officer Duties

Hamada: Intelligence, Mission Operations, Away Teams, duty rosters

Misaki: Communications with other ships, crew command, damage control coordination
Click to expand...
 
With the Golden Apple off to the planetside, Nika had to fill in on Blueberry's position, closely monitoring the sensors. As the shuttle reached the site of the signal's origin, the sensor feedback caught the neko's interest and worry. However, Hanako suddenly called out from behind,

"Eeep! Ano... Taisa, I've the control of the weapons!" The neko squeaked in surprise as she reflipped open the weapons windows, "I shall get the orbital survey platform prepared." With that she continued to process the information the sensors picked up.

"Taisa! Sensors picked up the following from the power armour below!" Nika opened the screen for Hanako to review.


"Something is not right about that power armour..."
 
At first, Junko had been confused. She had gone from prepping systems in engineering to pre-flighting armor, all quite within the bounds of what she expected. But then the armor started getting busy and, most shockingly, she had been ordered to suit up. It wasn’t until she had sat down inside the Golden Apple that she stopped being confused and started getting annoyed. Sure, she had been trained in the operation of power armor and in infantry tactics, but she was by specialization and inclination an engineer; a briefing would have been nice, but even a slight heads up would have done the trick. Watching the interaction of the others in the shuttle, however, quickly showed that the situation was at least as confused as she was. Indeed, the whole operation seemed to be a complete… mess. So, both out of a sense of fairness to the officers who were trying to get things sorted out and so that she didn’t say something, albeit accurate, that was altogether inappropriate for a Nito Hei to point out, Junko kept her mouth shut and instead stepped through the now open hatch, weapon at the ready.
 
"Chusa..." a man's voice came over a crackly intercom signal.
The suddenly appearing Mindy seemed to catch the Black armor off guard; as Kurusu's Mindy appeared between it and the T4, the black armor reared back defensively, keeping distance between the two, but still facing the Mindy.
"Yarani, Third Expeditionary..." the agitated man hastily barked into the intercom.
 
"First Expeditionary. We're going to take you out of here, soldier. Is there anyone else we need to get first?" Misaki expected some sort of reaction to her popping in front of the unit. She didn't take any steps to stop him from reacting to it.

Another track of her mind sent back a message to Hanako. Confirmed. I can happily do that. Made contact with the subject, do we have any serial number on file for a 'Yarani' in the 3rd XF that passed by this area?

She sent him a ping from their systems, to confirm the authenticity of their unit. The gaseous haze of the world would have been enough to rattle plenty of people, and the person must have been there for quite some time. "I repeat, can you exit the atmosphere, or will you need a ride in our shuttle? We've got very little time to get you out of here, Yarani."

The weapons load out of the armor was somewhat impressive, given the conditions, but the XO's mind simply worked around it to gather a tactical expectation in case someone made him too jumpy.
 
"No," Hanako sent back, "But I did have a Tasuku Yatani under me when I was captain of the YSS Sakura, who transferred to the YSS Goban, a freighter in the Third Expeditionary Fleet."
 
Once the Taii was gone Sune picked up the PMS-1 and entered his code into it, the scanner nanomachines injected by Miyazawa-Hei were still functioning. He directed them to examine his shoulder. The scan confirmed what he expected, there was some muscle tearing and a few of the tendons were strained, but nothing that his body would not heal in a short period.

Perhaps I should contact Ketsurui-Taisa for permission to resume checking the crew. No, for now I will remain here until the away team returns. After all if there are survivors below from a crash there was every chance that they would need medical attention. Best I be here ready to receive casualties. Hopefully if there are any they will not be from our crew.
 
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