RP: YSS Eucharis [Mission 7.1] At War - Battle of Nataria

[Wes]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

Hanako had a plan. "As much as I would like to destroy that ship pulling up, remember there are two of them and one of us, and we have to be around to pick up the away team...so give us a push by rapidly decompressing the cargo bay and the port side airlock and keep the volumetric illusion that is around us in its fixed place while we drift out of the way of the boarders and the debris. They can send invaders into the hologram if they like, but we will be stepping into the vacuum while we stay on silent running. It should buy us a few minutes. Hiding is not the difficult part, nor is escaping--the critical moment will be retrieving the shuttle, since it will give us away," she told Misaki, Nika, and Ramiro. "Those on the ship should focus on figuring out the bugs while those in the away team need to focus on getting that key card."

 

[Scribbles]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

Back on the Irim...

Tasuku nodded to the Mindy clad officer, "Understood Taii"

He quickly discarded his shield and the remaining wing on his back plunged the lit aether saber through the nearby tunnel shutter, the shutter was cut through much faster than the ones blocking the main passage, in only a few seconds Tasuku had forced the aether saber around most of the entrance, then a hard punch and he was through the first barrier.

It was a tight squeeze for him but he managed to crawl through at a decent pace despite armors bulk, technicians had always needed to move fast in the tunnels, not doing so could mean loosing your ship and life. Reaching the next blast shutter in the tunnel he plunged the saber through with a determined "Hiyaa!"

 

[Gabriel]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

Ramiro sighed with disappointment, but he knew she was right. "This is very true, although I wish it weren't." He pulled up the controls for the ships compression and then centered in on the areas that the Taisa had specified. "Taisa, should I have someone confirm that all supplies in the cargo bay and port side bay are strapped down. And should those areas be clear when decompression happens?"

 

[Nashoba]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

Sune looked at the maintenance conduit with a sense of doubt. Definitely seems like a bad idea tactically to me. That conduit is so narrow there will be no way to manuever in there. Reluctantly Sune followed Tasuku into the conduit. His movement was slow as he had to ensure that he did not damage anything trying to crawl in his Mindy.

 

[Miyako]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

"Ramiro-Hei. Standby to initiate, SOP has everything locked down and current conditions report the same. No one is present inside." She let a warning volumetric screen pop inside the bay a moment, but the sensors were quite clear no one was inside after ten seconds.

That had given her enough time to make the adjustments possible on the Electronic Warfare Suite for the burst. It wasn't the first time she'd blown a bay out to maneuver, though programming the system to respond in time to the input from helm so there wouldn't be any 'missing seams' to contend with. And..final variable. Set.

Had they met up with some sort of problem on the away mission? Was it right to let mostly rookies on the task that was so important? That was for debriefing to worry about, but she wasn't sure the energy she had at that moment would wait for it. The urge to battle being suppressed just reminded her of other things. Training taught her to focus it, but what of when the battle ended?

"Blow it." The XO ordered, and let her program run. She had even made it so the debris the action would bring them in contact with would appear unchanged. Time was still running out for them. We have to change that.

 

[Sean_ODuibher]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

Junko, having waited some time for a response, pulled back out of the access tunnel and collected herself back in the maintenance conduit. “Well… I’m moving further along down the line. Takeda out,” she said, closing the intercom connection. She was a little surprised Blueberry had not replied; granted, she had not had a great deal of time to interact with the Itto Juni, but she had always thought the warrant was rather cool and collected, certainly not the sort to knowingly ignore the duty of a post. Though, Junko admitted to herself, the most likely thing was that the distraction of the contamination alert was causing the holdup. It hadn’t had much of an effect on her: she was already wearing an AMES and the maintenance conduits didn’t have any blast shutters in them to impede her progress. For the moment, there was little else to do but hope her recommendations had been heard and to continue on down the conduit.

As she crawled further along the pylon the temperature did not seem to be abating, but rather was growing at a greater rate than before. She paused for a moment to check a status display on her suit. The temperature in the conduit had now increased to a quite concerning eighty degrees centigrade. Her own internal temperature too had increased, a whole half a degree, even with the suit working at maximum to maintain equilibrium. It was clear now that the coolant leak was critical, if not dangerous to the whole ship. Starting up again, she crawled around a short dogleg in the conduit before stopping dead in her tracks again. The air before her was a pearly mix of gaseous coolant liquid and oily lubricant, it’s source a quite visible stream shooting forth from a tiny, ragged opening in an exposed coolant pipe. The force of the burst had clearly blown off the panel covering the pipe; indeed, judging from the fragments littering the conduit ahead, it had been ejected with sufficient violence to shatter both it and the panel it had impacted.

Things suddenly became very clear to Junko. Without a second thought, she dumped the repair kit pack and began tearing paneling from the sides of the conduit until she found the object of her search: the coolant pipe and an emergency shut off valve. The valve’s display showed, as she expected, almost no flow of coolant through it. The shutoff she needed was on the far side of the burst, but the combination of the high pressure and high temperature of the ejecta from the pipe would easily cut through the AMES and into her. Gathering up the pack again, she opened an intercom channel to both the bridge and engineering; she would brook no interference from the contamination issue this time. “Bridge and Engineering, this is Takeda. I need an emergency shut down of the,” she checked the labeling on the coolant pipe, “primary coolant recycling system for the port shield generator. I am also requesting confirmation that the primary power shunt to the generator is offline and power has been rerouted through an alternate path. To make it clear, the situation is deteriorating here: if we let the generator continue to draw power without flow regulation, we will be looking at far greater damage than a slagged solenoid and burst pipe.”

 

[howlam]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

Nika did a quick check of the shield generator status. Right now the shields were off, but the generator was still running at minimal power in case there's a urgent need to power back up to withstand any life threatening objects.

"Takeda-Hei and Engineering, this is Bridge. I will shut down the generator from my side, however, the risk of getting shot down will be very high. Engineering, please confirm with Takeda-Hei on the status at your side once Charisma did what she need to do. Also... Takeda-Hei... be careful."

 

[Nashoba]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

Sune continued to crawl behind Tasuku the feeling that this approach was wrong nagging at him, "Yarani-Hei, Hamada Taii, the blast shutters are standard on Star Army ships. According to the rules posted on the Eucharis, the blast shutters can only be opened by the ship captain or the computer. So we will not be able to open them from Engineering. But, if we can make it to Engineering via the conduits, which is five decks above us. Perhaps we should use this route to get to the bridge/computer and open them from there rather than trying to slice through all the blast shutters?"

 

[Gabriel]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

Ramiro waited cautiously, finger over the button to decompress. Once he was given the order he immediately slammed his finger down on the button. He then started flipping through the scanner reports to make sure everything went as planned. From what he could tell he hadn't done anything wrong, but then again even the slightest gap in decompression could end up rotating the ship rather than moving it.

 

[Nashoba]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

Sune continued to follow Takusu, and was finding ways to safely increase his speed. Did not think I would be doing this when I got up this morning. he thought. He also noticed how Takusa was cutting the maintenance hatches out. While moving through the conduit he took a second or two to familiarize himself with what he could recognize by the stencilling. Must be a translation book somewhere, to decipher these designations. Perhaps when we return to the Eucharis I will look it up. Never know when i will find myself in another set of conduits. Which was probably a good thing, as Sune seriously doubted if he would have fit through otherwise.

 

[Scribbles]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

"Either way we have to get through this barrier at least..." Tasuku said back to Sune as he cut easily into the third blast shutter they'd encountered. "Then... either a straight shot over to engineering, or we move up." Though a little fuzzy in his memory Tasuku was able to mostly decipher the tunnel designations.

Why can't the medics just stay in the medbay where they belong. Tasuku thought to himself with an exasperated sigh, he wasn't fond of doctors, being a medic was close enough. Probably back there thinking up some new medical torture to put me through... Tasuku briefly thought as he rounded the corner of the cut.

 

[Gallant]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

On the Irim...

The Taii winced, slightly.

"Very well," she returned over the communications link, "Proceed at your discretion."

She stepped back from the door she had been working on. It was the third door in line, and they had four more to go, if they kept at it like this. Was it worth it? Probably not. She turned her attention to the hatch that seperated the passageway from this level and checked the battery level on her saber.

It wasn't good. Probably, they wouldn't have made it the whole way anyway. Better, this way.


Out in space...

It watched the holographic representation of the Eucharis and the Nadeshiko speed off into the distance with something akin to a feeling of regret.

Some of the crew were wondering what to do. So It simply gave a little shrug.

'Set A Course,' it ordered, turning away from the bridge display, 'To Rejoin The Fleet, And Report That We Have Left The Area. They May Fire When Ready.'

The pool of blood beneath Its bare feet felt a little dry. Mentally, It caused several of Its crew near the slave pens to begin the process of bringing up a new slave for the crew on the bridge to toy with. It understood the need to dominate others, to assert Its will over Its command, but It did not understand cruelty, as such.

It lashed out at one of them, out of mild curiousity. The kreening sound that the crewmember made was only unpleasant to Its ears, though. There was no satisfaction in the act. It smelled fear. It smelled hatred. They hated It, Because they couldn't touch It - just the things that looked like It.

But It could touch them. Oh, yes, It could.

For a brief moment, It thought that It sensed a small feeling of triumph, coming from somewhere out in space. And It paused, expectantly.

But the feeling passed quickly when the slave was dragged into the bridge area, and It was exposed to all of the complex emotions of a thing which has lost all hope for survival. The slave had been captured, some few weeks back, and had probably lost itself somewhere in the darkness of the pens. When the slave looked up and saw It, It felt a sudden pang of confusion coming from the nekovalkyrja. It listened to the mouthed, desperate language that It knew were pleas for mercy.

It passed the slave by, closing Its mental eyes as the desperate screams began behind It.

And It ignored them.

 

[Sean_ODuibher]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

“Thanks, Bridge,” said Junko as she unpacked the laptop from the repair kit pack and connected to the local diagnostic network. “However, simply shutting down the generator isn’t enough. The coolant system still has enough residual heat and pressure to prevent me from accessing the manual shut off. If you could disable the coolant recycling pumps, I could patch the damage in the pipe.” She paused, watching numbers shift on the display as the generator spun down from standby. “I can manually disconnect the primary power shunt to the generator once the coolant system is shut down, but if you want me to also manually make the connections to reroute power to the generator through alternate routes…” A sub-systems diagram for the port pylon flashed up over the status indicators; she unconsciously pursed her lips as she traced a finger along possible circuits. As she had suggested to Engineering before, the port positron cannon’s secondary power feed seemed to be the best candidate for rerouting, but the process of crawling to the different locations, unlocking power runs, adding temporary bridging spans, and locking in the new power flow patterns by hand would take a substantial amount of time. “I can’t guarantee I can have power restored to the generator anytime soon if you want me to do it by hand. If you can manage it through Charisma, there ought to be only one,” she checked the diagrams again, “yes, only one physical connection I will need to make.”

 

[Wes]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

"Junko, Hanako," Taisa Hanako replied. "I will deactivate everything in the port pylon. Work fast because that means a loss in shielding. Also, remember the anti-matter generators will still be idling on battery power in standby mode so the anti-matter is contained. It is not necessary to restore power output from that generator...our fusion generators in engineering are running the ship right now. I am cutting off coolant flow to the port pylon's power lines. All the equipment should be either scalar cooled or offline so you should be alright to make the repairs. Hanako out."

The golden-eyed captain then called Miyazawa directly. "Do you have the bug sample yet? I need an analysis now."

 

[Konoka Miyazawa]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

Konoka breathed wearily, nervously. If anyone could go mentally insane from compassionately worrying about others, by fish, it'd be Konoka. She blinked, then stared. Her zen face was on, but fading.

"Taisa, I have the analaysis ready....it doesn't look good."

 

[Sean_ODuibher]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

“Aye, ma’am,” replied Junko as the communication ended. She stared ahead for a moment, shaking herself out from having straightened automatically when the Taisa came on the net. Quickly stowing the laptop back in the pack and moving forward past the dogleg, she triggered her helmet lamp to pierce through the now still fog in the conduit. As a precaution, she passed the burst pipe initially, pulling panels until she found the emergency cut-off valve upstream from the hole. With the flow now manually secured as well, she moved into examine the damage. The pressure had, unsurprisingly, forced through the relative weak point of a seam, where a new stretch of piping had been attached. The hole was tiny, and the amount of Molecure tape she wrapped around the pipe from the CASTER seemed superficially excessive, but she really didn’t want to risk another burst from the now even weaker seam.

Finished, she secured the CASTER and moved on, pausing to open the valve back up. The fog of ejecta lessened after a few moments of forward movement, so Junko switched her helmet lamp off again. Just as the ambient temperature of conduits began to decrease, she reached the generator itself. Part of the device extended slightly into the conduit; she pulled away the surrounding panels as she jacked the laptop into a data port on the exposed surface. The status from Charisma showed that the new power flow path had been updated; Junko ducked into the narrow cavity alongside the generator that contained the connectors for the power unit. The requirement for her to physically change the connection was purely for security’s sake; it wouldn’t do for the couplings to accidentally start feeding twice as much power as the generator was designed to handle. It was a simple matter of rotating the linking cuff, pulling back the safety latch, and letting the power run rest in the convenient slip below the coupling; then the process was reversed to attach the back-up run. In total, Junko was satisfied that the whole setup was properly secured and, when she had wriggled back out of the cavity and glanced at the laptop, it was clear that the diagnostic indicators agreed.

She had almost activated the intercom to call for the system to be restarted when a mild fit of engineering paranoia came over her. Keying in the parameters, she set the generator’s internal diagnostics to take a quick peek around. There were no obvious errors, no flashing red indicators on the laptop’s screen; but what attracted her eye and disturbed her far more than any superficial damage could was the reading of absolute normalcy from the temperature sensors. Even with everything in the pylon shut down, the residual heat in the monitoring probes should have registered. Pulling away paneling to expose another cavity, she slipped in and rapidly typed in the codes to open a small hatch on the side of the generator. There was too little space to both work in the cavity and have her head in position to see into the hatch; instead, she worked by feel and memory alone. Fortunately, her training had been quite thorough and a moment later she pulled back, a circuit board in her grasp. Taking a casual look at it, noting the short circuit from the melted probe leads, she tossed it aside. Back in the conduit, she turned over onto her back and pulled away a panel above her, marked with the tiny stenciling indicated a component locker. After a few seconds of sifting through the part tags she found the correct replacement and a moment later had it back in place and the hatch shut once again.

Idly wringing her hands as she studied her handiwork, Junko allowed herself a brief moment of deep professional satisfaction. It was, perhaps, a bit premature as the shield generator wasn’t back up and running again, and so she brought back up the system diagram and opened the intercom. “Bridge, Takeda. I’ve completed repairs and I’m requesting an emergency restart of the coolant circulation system. It would be best to bring the shield generator up more slowly. And if someone could standby with the emergency shutoff, I would appreciate it; I’d rather not be incinerated accidentally down here.”

 

[Konoka Miyazawa]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

Konoka blinked, bowing as if wanting to apologize for giving bad news. Eyes lowered, Konoka said: "T-t-This parasite...."

"I've found that this thing has the DNA of a standard Mishhu brain slave.
It's truly much smaller, but very dangerous. Holy fish..y'see... the thing....it feeds on silicon. We must alert the engineers immediately: It eats eletronical devices! I've found it has no discernable telepathic signature. Oh my Yamatai....It appears that the test sample is reproducing. It's growing, and fates above only know how much damage it's already caused. No word on if it's harmful to organic lifeforms...best to be safe."


Barely lifting one eye upward, she muttered zenly, "I'll help however I can...Taisa, it must be contained!"


This was it. She had to remain perfectly calm. She couldn't freak. Others could. Not Konoka. She had to remain cool as a cucumber. Someone had to. She was worried out of her mind, but her face had to be calm. What was her optimism? Ah yes....She'd got an analysis before everything was eaten. Ah...good news...perhaps. Well, she'd remain calm. Helpful. That was it. Whatever, she wouldn't freak. Except...was it too late?

Silently, that favorite phrase of Konoka's came to mind: Fate wills will come.

 

[howlam]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

Nika listened closely to both Junko's and Konoka's reports respectively, "Junko is fine, and Konoka report was of great concern and discovery." She thought to herself as she accessed the shield generator controls.

"Takeda-Hei, this is Bridge." The neko paused, "Acknowledged that repairs were done and the emergency restart of the coolant circulation system to be start up." With that, she pressed the activation button and watched as Charisma restarted the system, carefully note for any changes in the pressure, which fortunately there was none, "Power now re-routing to shield generator as suggested amount... emergency shutoff on standby." Nika replied as she started to distribute power to the shield generators in small progression, "Takeda-Hei, in the meantime, do look around in your immediate area for any bug-like creature."

 

[Nashoba]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

"Well Yarani-Hei I will leave it up to you to determine the most expediant path to the bridge it is your area of speciality. Just remember time is critical." He thought about reminding him that the Eucharis could only avoid the enemy for so long, and they had to prevent the Mishhu from obtaining these ships. But did not bother. The Hei in the black armor was aware of that already.

How long could the Taisa avoid the Mishhu and keep the Eucharis operational? he thought.

With nothing to do but wait for Tasuku to cut each panel and follow him, Sune turned his mind to the question of the insect. He knew the Irim was supposed to have been sealed prior to their departure. The ships had been sealed so if the bugs had been left on board during the mothballing they would have died.

If the Mishhu had some how gotten on the ship, they would not have done that just to leave a few bugs and go away. They would have pounced on the away team as soon they arrived. So there had to be another explanation. The only thing to enter the Irim recently was their shuttle, and those in their power armor. Logically speaking the bug must have someone crossed with them, most likely in the shuttle. But where did they come from? How did they get onboard the Eucharis? And what risk did they represent?

 

[Gabriel]

Re: [Mission 7.1] Universe at War - Battle of Nataria

Ramiro listened to everything that was going on in the bridge. He started making mental notes of things that were important and when Konoka gave the news he sat up in his seat. He spun the seat around to face the Taisa as he though carefully. "Taisa if they breed and feed on silicon that means they could be in our bridge equipment. And since we're already in our environmental suits wouldn't we just be able to find some kind of poison to spray the ship with.