RP: SNV Gam'trosha [Prologue] The Gathering, and Launch?

Gam'trosha Engineering Bay

"What now?!" Keri'cruen exclaimed as the lighting in the engineering bay began to flicker and the energy field around the ship's main reactor started to fade as its integrity wavered. Keri's jaw dropped open as the energy readings displayed by the ships power distribution display began to wildly fluctuate and a warning message indicated that a power surge within the bay was imminent.

"Quin, there's about to--" the young engineer's voice was prematurely cut-off as a power conduit towards the back of the bay suddenly exploded into flames. Whilst most of the conduit remained intact, the sudden detonation sent several fragments of metal flying in all directions. Keri'cruen took cover behind the computer console to avoid being injured.

"Bloody... Srisa..." Keri muttered darkly to himself, before peaking his head out from behind the computer terminal. "Everyone all right?" The conduit fragments were bounding about the bays interior, unhampered by gravities pull.

Grabbing a nearby fire suppressor, Keri'cruen manipulated himself in close to the fractured conduit and sprayed the suppressant foam over the small flame -- fortunately, working in zero-g meant that fire was less of a threat as it quickly consumed all available oxygen and smothered itself with its own carbon dioxide -- within moments the fire was dead, though the power conduit was completely fried.

Def'leor said:

"Engineering transfer primary engine power to weapon systems and maintain maximum power to the weapons until further notice."

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"You've got to be kidding me..." Keri'cruen complained aloud to no-one in particular. "More power to the weapons from the engines? Fine, I can do that. Quin, give me a hand and let's see if we can't find the cause of these bloody power spikes before the damn Lunebaren reactor destabilizes and we all die horribly..." The silver-haired engineer withdrew back towards the control terminal, shunting power from the ships drives and bolstering the Gam'trosha's weapon reserves. He then turned his attention to the computers log files, trying to back-trace the source of the sudden power surge and find its cause.

Quin shielded herself from the blast, though thanks largely to the zero-g, most of the debris didn't get to far from the detonation. She looked up and watched Keri do his job and quickly got to routing power around the destroyed conduit, and syphoning it through another one.

"There's gotta be a cause somewhere in the system," she tapped her lower chin thoughtfully for a moment. "Run a diagnostic on all of our systems," she ordered as she turned her attention to monitoring the ships power, she'd leave the diagnostics to Keri.

Bridge

The shipmaster grinned at Shar's comment. "If we had the nukes onboard, that would probably be a viable plan, of course I could never authorize it, not with you going alone that is."

When Sa'kira heard that they were in position, she was about to give the order to fire, when an alert came across about the fire in engineering. "C'bar, fire weapons!" she shouted before addressing the concerns related to Engineering.

"Bridge to Engineering, what just happened?" she ordered.

Outside

The fighters swarmed up behind the ships, taking up a position just behind them in order to avoid the brunt of the stresses that the asteriod was no doubt putting on the ships. Thier weapons fired the moment they were in position, though their missiles remained silent for now.

Bridge

Def'leor watched as the indicators on her console flickered and the power systems fluxed. Weapons still showed power so she activated the weapons she could control. Her concern now was how long would the power hold for them. She could do nothing but continue firing at the points designated and wait to hear what engineering was doing about the power situation.

Four beams lanced outward from the Gam'trosha's two anti-starship cannons, striking harshly against the asteriod and cutting a slight gorge into the rock. More strikes from the Gam'trosha's sister ships, along with those from the three assigned squadrons scored several more hits but it would still take more before the asteriod would break up. These shots were joined by those of the ships turrets, which unleashed a torrent of plasma fire onto the asteriod.

The fighters that joined in also owned up, but their laser cannons were doing little to score marks, but this changed after the fighters began to concentrate their fire on spot and slowly creeping those shots along.

All around, other ships swarmed the asteriod, firing their own cannons. However, as the fight progressed, two She'tan'ora class vessels suddenly exploded out of no where.

Engineering

Quin continued to monitor the ships systems, while Keri addressed Sa'kira's question and related details on what had just happened and that they were looking into it.

As the ship continued it's assault, another She'tan'ora exploded just off the Gam'trosha's portside, showering the shield with molten debris. The portside shields flared orange, and an alert indicator on Def's console warned that the port shields were down to twenty one percent.

Just then, the ship was rocked violently when an explosion ripped through the cargohold. Rattling everyone onboard, in gravity enviroments, unsecured items came crashing to the deck. In Engineering, the reactor flared up several times before an automated safety system engaged to stabalize the energy crystal.

Systems onbaord began to shut down, first turret control went offline followed by the ships communications system which suffered a minor fault but was enough to shut it down to prevent further damage to it. Next came the shields, which flared violently once more due to the explosion being dangerously near the shield generator. The only things that hadn't been affected, where the engines, forward weapons systems, and sensors.

On the bridge, sparks came showering out of terminals, feedback from the explosion caused several relays on the ship to overload and shut down, while a few actually burned out.

Bridge

Not strapped into her chair, Sa'kira found her head banging the back of her seat from the explosion. She was seeing stars for a few moments, before shaking her head, the bridge was now bathed in a darker red warning light. A maintenance panel that was located just a few feet behind Def was blown off, as fire rushed through it momentally before dying back down into the hold.

When Sa'kira saw the flames, she turned toward Shar. "C'bar! Grab a fire-extinguisher and deal with that fire now!" ordered the Shipmaster.

"Def'leor-C'bar, what the hell just hit us?!" shouted Sa'kira as she tried to access her terminal only to get a no response in return.

Engineering

A fire broke out from the lower maintenance conduit, the panel had been blown off and sent careening through the air where it sliced into the bulkhead just five feet from Tite'Yanus's head.. Quin was busy trying to stabalize the reactor, when she saw the fire she looked over at Tite'Yanus. "C'bar Tite'Yanus, I can't take care of that fire, myself and Keri need to keep the reactor under control, take care of that fire prompto! And inspect the maintenance corridor for the source of that explosion!" she ordered.

Keri looked up from his terminal, all busy and running several routines to keep the power flowing and routing it around damaged systems.

Mainframe

Because Erm'olai was located in a secured area of the ship, he didn't have to worry about a fire breaking out, but he would hear something creaking although until he accessed the ships mainframe, he wouldn't knwo the full extent of the damage yet. His data-mining however had gone silent, obviously the connection between the ship and the shipyard had died.

Tite'Yanus nodded and pushed against a nearby bulkhead, floating off towards the nearest damage control station that he could find. Once there, he found a fire extinguisher that would be compatible with his module and carefully attached it. Once he was ready, he gave another push and floated off towards the fire and began dousing it with the extinguisher, making sure to fire in short bursts at the base of the fire.

Once he had the fire successfully extinguished he deposited the used extinguisher off to the side and began searching for the source of the explosion.

Bridge

Def'leor hands fought to keep the Gam'trosha in position. "Drisa..." she swore as myriad systems fluctuated and many died. She had the IDT playback the past few minutes to see what happened.

"Ship Mistress, the first shockwave was caused by a She’tanora exploding in close proximity to our position. There was no indication of any weapon fire directed at her...." she paused to look at the ship's status board.

"Ma'am... we have lost communications with the fleet, shields are down as well. We have maneuvering, forward weapons and sensors. Whatever that second explosion was ma'am it was internal. There was nothing near that part of the ship outside the ship."

She looked at the fire behind, but with the damage it was imperative that she stay at her console. The problem was being cut off from the others.

Def entered a series of commands into the sensor controls. Programming the LADAR to allow her to pulse the system in an attempt to communicate. It was crude and but she could transmit old broadcast code. The code was a required course for Ship Aviators, but usually it was transmitted via radio. She sent a status message and hoped that the other ships would detect and decipher it.

NSV Gam'trosha to other attack group.
Ship has sustained damage to comm, shields and other secondary system. Still have maneuvering, sensors and fire control.
Maintain firing pattern.
Prepare missiles for launch.

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As explosion rocked the ship, Shar was sent against the wall. She hit it hard and ended up on the ground. She gritted her teeth with pain. "Ouch," she said and went up on her feet again. She had worse in past. After inspection of her surrounding she could clearly see panel that was on fire and at the same time she was ordered to put it out.

"Yeah, yeah I know!" She said, her tail moving constantly. She was angry and annoyed, being pretty much useless up to this time. "You know," she said as she grabbed extinguisher and moved towards the flame. "I am pretty much useless here ma'am." She said and aimed the nozzle at flames, starting to spray the flames.

Engineering

As Tite'Yanus searched the conduit, he'd notice a large hole in one of the sides but there was too much debris to really see what had actually caused the hole, but he would hear electrical discharges going on somewhere beyond.

Bridge

"I don't like that," said Sa'kira worriedly as her terminal came back online and began to display the ship in a holographic fashion, showing the ships underside cargo-hold in red with a breach.

She examined the damage, rotating the holographic figure but sighed. "Ok, C'bar Shar," she spoke then opened up a video-link to Tite'Yanus. "C'bar Tite'Yanus, I need you two to investigate the cargo-hold, we just had an explosion and according to C'bar Def'leor it didn't come from outside. Make sure you have your helmets on and sealed, before entering the bay as it's now in vacuum."

After giving the order she rubbed her chin before sending another order to their other engineer. "C'bar Erm'olai, I need you to start repairs on our communications, shields, and turret control, I need both of those systems back online, but communications and shields have priority."

"C'bar Def'leor, try and keep the ship stable as much as you can, also keep an eye on our engines," ordered Sa'kira as she stared at the viewscreen.

Outside

The fleet responded to Def'leor's command as they began to position themselves for a missile run, the fighters peeled back off, some of them suffering shield damage from the two warships that blown up just seconds earlier.

Gam'trosha Engineering Bay

Keri'cruen was nearly pulling his fur out in frustration due to the strain of having to keep up with the fluctuating power levels and juggle energy between failing systems. Every time one system seemed stabilized, another was sent spiraling onto the verge of critical collapse.

The young kit's eyes kept darting towards a holographic display showing the in-progress diagnotic that was running in the background of his power redistribution efforts -- its intended purpose was to try and trace the ultimate source of these anomalous system disruptions. If they couldn't pinpoint an exact cause for the malfuctions soon and counter-act it, the ship liable to tear itself apart.

Bridge

"Yes ma'am." Def replied to the Ship Mistress. She monitored the instrumentation as she continued to make minor corrections to compensate for the yawl the explosion put on the Gam'trosha. She modified her IDT setting so that in addition to monitoring the progress on splitting the rock, it showed the engine status.

"She's definitely a bit sluggish ma'am. We lost a number of maneuvering thrusters between the two explosions so I'm having to use the main engines and vector the thrust to compensate." she said aloud. Although she was still doing a calculation of how fast the Gam'Trosha needed to accelerate to avoid the asteroid once they split it. Her numbers were not promising. The main engines while operating were fluxing and definitely not operating at max performance.

Engineering Bay

"Hey, engineering people, I've got something over here!" Tite'Yanus called out to the engineers. He poked his head into the conduit hole, trying to get a better idea of what was going on.

The young Laibe had been working on optimizing processing speeds, in an effort to work around the burnt-out core, when the shaking began. Curious, and a bit perturbed, the midnight-furred Engineer checked on his data-mining progress to find --- nothing. No progress, no connection, nothing working on his task.

Fuming, Erm'olai began to check the ship's systems. Quite a few systems seemed to be down according to the mainframe --- including extra-ship communications. It was also at that point that he received the call from the Shipmaster.

Sa'kira said:

"C'bar Erm'olai, I need you to start repairs on our communications, shields, and turret control, I need both of those systems back online, but communications and shields have priority."

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"Affirmative," he transmitted before turning back to the mainframe. First thing he needed to do was find where the issue was with those systems. Where they external or internal? Was it hardware or software? The anything along those lines were easily detectable by using the mainframe. Signals that don't return from a piece of hardware could mean a hardware issue. A software issue could be detected via a diagnostic scan of the program files.

So, Erm'olai did both. Maybe if he could solve which were software and which were hardware, he wouldn't have to run all over the ship trying to fix everything.

"Aye, aye ma'am!" Shar responded and as soon as fire was put out, she was on the run. Moving one floor down she was already calling Tite'Yanus.

"Yo Tit, bosslady says we should check the cargo hold. Get yourself a suit and link up with me at cargo-bay doors!" She called and herself went into armoury to get a pressure suits. Vacuum her lungs were not friends after all, as soon she suited up, she sprinted to the meeting spot.

Engineering

"Keri! Can you take care of that please?" asked Quin'trema as she floated over to another station, she saw that Keri's actions were having a positive effect on the ship, the power was equalizing and she could see that the reactor was starting to settle down but her main concerns were the three systems that she couldn't access right now.

Mainframe

As the mainframe did its work, two holographic diagnostic windows appeared beside him relaying the status of the scans. The left would show a hardware scan, with the mainframe testing the various components to ensure that they were running properly. While right frame was running a software scan, to ensure that the software wasn't corrupted.

After about a minute, the left window changed to show a scan progress on the communications system. The first one detailed that there was trouble contacting the system, that there was a hardware failure somewhere within that would need to be addressed locally.

However, the right window showed a software fault with the turret control systems, detailing that there was in the turrets targetting systems. He'd have to diagnosis the virus before he could be certain what it was.

The shield systems were still being scanned.

Bridge

"See if you can communicate with the other ships, I wanna know if anyone else is having these issues," ordered Sa'kira as she lifted off her command chair and floated up behind Def.

Bridge

"I've been trying to communicate. I have been using the LADAR to send simple early code. But I am not sure if they are actually receiving what I said or simply following our earlier instructions. I will queue up a new message." Def replied. She quickly typed up a message and fed it into the LADAR for pulse transmission.

Gam'trosha to Asteroid attack group. Have any of you experienced malfunctions or possible sabotage? Reply via LADAR.

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"Here goes ma'am." She said as she keyed up the transmission to repeat multiple times before stopping.

Engineering

Tite shook his head a little before pulling it out of the maintenance conduit and pushing himself towards the exit of the engineering area. Once he was through the pressure lock, he jogged over to the armory.

Armory

Once Tite'Yanus arrived at the armory, he moved to one side and slipped the end of his tail into a data terminal. Moments later, mechanized arms began detaching his My'leke module. Once the module and all of its attachments were safely away, he slid his tail into the terminal once more and the mechanical arms began helping him into a pressure suit. Once he was satisfied that everything was attached properly, he began jogging his way over to the Cargo Bay.

Gam'trosha Engineering Bay

"Right... right." Keri'cruen said, frowning as the ships energy readings seemed to finally revert to a more stable configuration. He was loath to leave the console when he felt the systems could suddenly go once more out of whack, but they wouldn't even have a console if things in engineering kept on exploding.

Shifting his weight, Keri'cruen glided over to the maintenance conduit that Tite'yanus had just vacated. He drew himself inside carefully so as to avoid the sharp protrusions and metallic fragments caused by the recent explosion. His blue-green eyes -- slightly obscured by his glasses -- were fixated upon the hole within the interior of the conduit. Inside the dark shattered recess the young kit's ears twitched as they focused upon an errant noise -- the sharp crackling of electrical discharges.

Engineering Conduit

Mixed in with the electrical noise that Keri could hear, there was another noise he could vaguely make out, something that was blowing, like air circuiting very rapidly - except there shouldn't be any air circuiting in the area. He'd have to carefully move aside the tangles wires and pull back some of the blown out metal before he could get a better view of what of making the additional noise.

Corridor outside Cargohold

When Shar and Tite got to the corridor just outside of the cargohold, they'd notice that the blast door that would've sealed the bay was on the ground laying flat. The backside, the side that would've been facing the cargohold, was completely blackened.

There was a control panel beside the door, with the words:

Automated Containment Procedures Engaged, please activate secondary containment field before entering cargohold: WARNING! Hull Breach Detected Beyond This Door! Please ensure pressure suits or armored body suits are sealed from vacuum before entering!

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Mainframe

As the status progress continued, the display showing the status of shield generator suddenly went offline - an error message appeared with the words:

Warning, Anonmaly detected: unable to continue local diagnostic of shield generator.

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This was followed not even a second later by a new message, except, it was a message that was corrupt:

XBSOJOH! Vobvuipsjafe Bddftt efufdufe jo Tijfme Hfofsbups Sppn!

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Gam'trosha Engineering Bay - Conduit

Keri's ears pricked again as he caught another sound, akin to that of air rushing and not unlike that of a windy, planet-bound breeze. The young kit frowned as that sound didn't belong anywhere near the engineering bay -- the life-support systems and ventilation shafts weren't located anywhere near this section. He briefly considered it might be a breach, though thought that less than likely due to the distance from the ships outer hull.

As he came to a stop beside the ruined gap in the conduit, the kit gently pushed aside the larger metallic fragments and peered down into the recess -- he could barely see a thing even with his natural night vision due to the mess of ruined wires and errant power leads obscuring his sight. At he reached in to pull some of the wires out of the way, he felt the odd sensation of his fur standing up and pulled back sharply as an bluish bolt of electricity discharged in the mess below him.

"Yaaah!" He screamed, heart racing in his chest due to shock. He looked at his gloved hands, now partially hidden by the indistinct white spots that blurred his vision. Forcing himself to calm down and steeling his resolve, he waited until after the next discharge to pull the offending electrical cable free and end the hazardous electrical surges -- the gloves of the ABS beneath his uniform hopefully providing a measure of protection.

Once the damaged cable was free and disconnected, Keri'cruen peered into the recess once more and set about pulling free other damaged cables and wires whilst seeking any other signs of damage, as well as the source of the unusual sound.