YE 45.4
YSS Resurgence - Bridge
As the second fleet materialized in the combat zone, the bridge was a hive of activity. Aoba watched over the scene with a steely determination. "We're receiving confirmation that our reinforcements have engaged the enemy, sir," Gabriela reported. "Second Fleet is pushing them back. It seems our distraction is working."
"That's excellent news, Gabriela," Aoba said. "Let's be careful not to underestimate them. He then turned his gaze towards Kawa Euikoshi. "How are those probes coming along?"
Euikoshi, focused on her console, didn't look up as she replied. "Final calibration is underway, Captain. We should be ready to launch within minutes."
As the crew worked, Aoba found his thoughts turning to the YSS Wakaba and the strange anomaly that had sent them on this mission. As much as he was relieved by the arrival of the Second Fleet, he couldn't help but worry about what they would find. The stakes were high, and time was not on their side.
"Prepare to take us back into the system as soon as those probes are ready," he ordered, his gaze fixed on the tactical display. "We're going to find that ship and get to the bottom of this. Battle stations!"
As the call to battlestations rung throughout the ship, Koyama appeared on the bridge taking her station."The Taisho quite literally pulled out all the stops..." she murmured. "Point-Defense systems are opening up on the enemy... multiple swarms of battlepods in coming."
Thoughout the Ship
"All hands, battle stations, set REDCON 1," Kalena's voice came over the intercom, sending the crew into action. "Prepare for action against the Mishhuvurthyar."
After taking a minute to return equipment to the nearest hospitality closet, Okimi proceeded to her damage control station, still feeling a little sluggish after the recent nightmare-filled nights of poor quality sleep she had been experiencing since the Mishhuvurthyar boarding incident several days earlier.
Yuri had just got over her giggling at her interaction with her aunt Sanda, when she'd gotten the alarm. "time to work!" She couldn't believe how long it took her, but now she was focused. Yuri took off running to the medical bay. "Sempai, i am here, and ready for duty, Ma'am!" Yuri hoped to find some way to help Okimi though.
Armor Bay
Yoshiro heard the alarm and started to get into his armor. "All right infantry! You heard the lady. Show up and suit up!" He shouted
Thad was ready this time to slap some Mish around like a hockey puck. He completed putting on his war paint as he walked into the armor bay. "Time to bring the purge to these egg laying little fu..." Before he could finish his armor sealed around him.
Cassie rushed into the armor bay in her exercise uniform, quickly stripping it off to reveal her gray fur. She crawled backwards into her Mindy power armor like a professional diver going into a swimming pool, having done it many times before.
Sanda had been in her quarters, hanging upside down from the top bunk. She had been cleaning her sidearms. As soon as the alarms sounded she quickly put the weapons back together and booked it to the Armory to suit up.
Mineko, too, was in the armor bay this time. She had felt like she could have done more during the boarding of the Resurgence by the Mishhuvurthyar and so she was pulling off her jacket and loading her bodysuit-clad legs into her Mindy.
Yayoi was silent as she prepared her armor for attack. Like a few, she prepared weapons that were effective against Mishuu. The Ranger found herself interested and somewhat giddy at the notion of fighting an old enemy again. This time with prepared weapons.
Space
The mighty Second Fleet pushed into the system despite the massive interference there that clouded sensors and communications. As they did, they found there were significantly more Mishhuvurthyar forces than expected, and instead of trying to get away from the Star Army fleets, they were focusing on causing taking as many ships with them as they could.
Mishhuvurthyar were not typical enemies, they had an intense hate for Yamatai to the point they would almost universally fight to the death just to do more harm. Thousands of fighter craft launched from both sides, causing the area to be swarmed with messy dogfights and blossoms of missiles moving in packs. The murky space of the system was filled with explosions, lightning flashes, and violence.
The Resurgence pushed in, using the battleships of the Second Fleet as cover, and began to systematically target all of the tachyon-emitting anomalies with specialized probes. As a wave of Mishhuvurthyar battle pods closed on the Resurgence, the anti-fighter quad turrets came to life and spewed fire out at them.
Armor Bay
"Power armor teams are cleared to deploy to provide cover against enemy small craft and power armor," the bridge called down to the bay.
"Time for some target practice, I guess," Cassie said, putting her helmet on and heading over to the bay doors. "Let's try not to let anything in here this time, okay?"
"Roger that." Yoshiro said. "Come you apes! You want to live forever!" He said as he flew out to lead the charge.
Thad tossed his weapon over his shoulder. "No better time to die than today." He said with a smile as his weapon charged.
As Cassie opened the armor bay door a NMX-style battlepod flew by, strafing the doorway and blasted a few holes in the floor, but didn't hit any of the armor team members. "I don't think they're friendly," Cassie wisecracked in a complaining voice. "Maybe they need therapy."
The verbiage from the men in her team was unsettling to Mineko, but Cassie's quip did the opposite and settled the bookish analyst. She hefted her aether beam saber rifle and looked to Sanda. "Got a battle buddy?"
Sanda had her rifle up and ready. She was debating staying behind in case the ship was boarded again when Mineko spoke. "I usually pair with Yayoi, but I'm sure she won't mind sharing today. Will you Hermana?" Sanda asked her fellow Ranger in a teasing tone.
Yayoi made her final checks before she stepped forward to either death or victory. She glanced over to Mineko as she asked a obvious question. "i wont mind at all"
A mini missile sailed past Yayoi's head and exploded on a power armor storage rack with a loud boom, sending a wave of smoke through the armor bay.
"Gotcha!" Mineko said chipperly, looking between the two rangers.To everyone else, she said over comms, "Front to rear! We need to get going and close the armor bay door!"
As the mini missile sailed over head, anyone else might have messed their pants, but she was cool as ice. note to self, send these guys the bill for that
"Target pods. Search and destroy!" Yoshiro said
"I can to remain here to prep reloads and in case of boarders," armorer Norita offered, as this was her usual role. "If anyone needs missiles, please call me."
"I got point then." Sanda said to her roommates. As she flew out the door, she called to Norita. "If we do get boarded, let us know and we can teleport back to aid. No sense making the same mistake as last time."
Thad jumped out the armor bay door. Even though he was in space this did not stop him from using a dodge roll. The most effective way to avoid any and all damage. He sent off a few round towards the closest pod that was flying by.
Yayoi charged out of the Resurgence as she readied herself for battle.
As they flew out the door they were met by the terrifying sight of a burning battleship in front of the Resurgence, completely overwhelmed by endless hordes of Mishhuvurthyar forces and completely adrift as its crew struggled to defend. The Mishhuvurthyar were really bringing their wrath onto the Star Army.
With the power armor team vacating the bay, Okimi entered shortly thereafter to begin initial assessment of the damage caused by the errant missile.
Bridge
Trowa watched as a Sharie-Class Battleship was overwhelmed by a horde of Mishhu. His face was hard set as he thought of the missing Wakaba. If they had been anywhere near here, their chances of survival were not great.
"Probe search 25% complete," Euikoshi announced. "I've had to reroute some to avoid being intercepted by the enemy. The Mishhuvurthyar are even shooting escape pods out there."
"Some of their ordinance is getting through our point defense screen," Koyama reported, her display alerting her to the detonation in the armor bay. While this went on, her jaw clenched at the sight of one of the mighty Sharie-class Battleships being overrun.
"Reminds me of Glimmergold." Trowa commented as he pulled up an overview of the battle, looking for some opening that they could exploit.
"I was the Chief Engineer aboard the YSS Tokyo during Glimmergold," Koyama's response accompanied by a little chill as she recalled the battle. Even something like a dreadnought was not impervious to nearly being bludgeoned to death. It had taken weeks just to get the mighty ship space worthy again all while trying to recover survivors and revive them via backups.
"Its the hardest and bloodiest fights that get the most recognition." Trowa agreed. "This fight is shaping up to be another such one."
The first officer watched as the Resurgences' cannons scratched another battlepod off its list of hostiles. "Comparatively... this is small from what I've been told about the first war. Billions of soldiers. Millions of ships. Per fleet." she emphasized the latter. As she spoke to Trowa, helped manage the weapons and continued to assist in delegating tasks about the ship.
Space
Yoshiro fought hard against the NMX pods and remembered their cruel actions against his family. "For the glory of the Empire and its people, but for that, I go forth to battle!" He said to himself as he fired missiles at several pods after launching
"Checking the Resurgence for any Mishhuvurthyar boarding actions!" Mineko said, scanning with her AIES as she flew around the massive gunship. Her weapon was more ready to fire at battlepods flying at her from the sky than anything attached to the hull, though.
Sanda flew cover behind Mineko once they were out in space. She had duel Gause cannons going from her back. Although the tattooed Nep had been trained for this, this type of space combat was probably her least favorite. She much preferred getting in close in a fight.
Yayoi followed along as she too covered Mineko, as she set her Aetheric pulse cannons to fire upon her opponents.
The nimble battle pods were small than traditional starfighters which made them nimble and hard to hit. This was because they were piloted only by an enslaved, disembodied brain and were otherwise all engines and guns. There were so many of them. As the armor team appeared they became targets. Survival quickly came a matter of spotting the ones swooping in for a strike and shooting before they did, and of doing the Mindy's dodge-dancing to get out of the way. They didn't give the armor aether wings for nothing!
As Mineko checked she did spot a suspicious shuttle trying to reach the Resurgence. It was a Star Army design but there was a Mishhuvurthyar riding it like a horse.
"Enemy incoming!" Mineko said to Sanda and Yayoi, pinging the ranger's visuals. She herself was trying to identify the craft and sent a communication to the shuttle itself, hoping that whoever was manning it was alive and able to reply back and help the situation.
Sanda looked around to where Mineko was indicating. "Copy!" Sanda took aim with her range weapons, but she hesitated a moment. Were there friendlies aboard? She couldn't effort to wait though as the shuttle presented too great a threat. She fired.
"copy that!" Yayoi said then took note of Sanda's taking aim, so chose to allow her to do so.
"We are evacuati..." the shuttle began but the transmission was suddenly filled with screams and the shuttle went out of control, then exploded, with its Mishhuvurthyar rider flinging itself towards Resurgence and engaging thermoptic stealth camouflage.
It was unfortunate, but Yayoi knew that it had to be done, thus she didn't admonish Sanda for her actions.
Sanda cursed, "Thunder to Res! Beware of camouflaged Mishhu!" Sanda warned.
Armor Bay
As Okimi entered the armor bay, she saw that the situation was worse than she had thought. The mini missile had torn a gash in the storage racks, sending shards of metal flying. But the most immediate problem was the fire. Flames were rapidly consuming what was left of the storage racks, fueled by the oxygen in the atmosphere. They were also producing thick black smoke that was quickly filling the bay. Norita was trying to put it out with an extinguisher but needed a hand.
Okimi knew that fire in space could be especially dangerous. In a zero-gravity environment, flames could spread in all directions, not just upwards. And smoke, without a natural updraft to carry it away, could choke out oxygen in an enclosed space very quickly.
After surveying the situation, it didn't take long for Okimi's decision making process to come to the obvious conclusion. She quickly rushed over to the armorer. "Norita-hei! Recommend we switch to internal oxygen, open the bay door and dump the atmosphere to kill the fire and evacuate the smoke."
"Sounds good! Doing that now!" Norita said, heading to the controls for the atmosphere-containment forcefield. In short order, she yelled, "Hang on to something!" and switched it off, causing the smoky air to rush out into space. The fire was out almost right away.
Okimi braced herself, using her inertial control systems to press herself against one of the walls, and started a nine minute countdown in her mind. Once the rush of air ceased and the uncomfortable sensation of a hard vacuum crept across her body, Okimi utilized that same control to push herself towards the damaged storage racks to take a closer inspection of the damage.
"Norita-hei, I would appreciate your assistance assessing the damage." Hopefully, they would be able to prevent a new fire starting once the air was pumped back in. "You're the expert with these systems, so please identify any damage that will cause the atmosphere to reignite when the Bay is pressurized."
Bridge
Aoba watched the battle unfold on the viewscreen. The scene was chaos, pure and simple. Their Second Fleet was putting up a valiant fight, but the Mishhuvurthyar were relentless. And they were shooting down escape pods. He felt a surge of anger at that. There was no honor in killing defenseless people.
As he listened to Euikoshi's update, he took a deep breath and steeled himself. This was it. They had to find the YSS Wakaba, and fast. If the missing ship had been anywhere near this system, it was looking less and less likely that they would find any survivors.
"Keep the probes moving, Euikoshi," he said. "We have to find that ship. Keep us updated on their progress."
"What is our progress with the probes, Heisho?" Trowa asked.
"50%" Euikoshi said, her fingers dancing on her science station. "We're using a process of elimination..." she explained. "Once we find the right one we should be able to put the ship through it."
"Great work. Keep working at it." Trowa encouraged. He wasn't sure how much longer the Res could go without becoming a prime target.
"Sir? I think we've garnered some attention, one of the Mishhvurthyar ships have broken off from their engagement with the Second. Escort-class." Koyama warned while swiping at the screen, "Multiple battlepod launches and their weapons are hot!"
"Kalena, get a firing solution and prep the main cannon," Aoba ordered. "We'll sink them!"
"We'll have to flip and point the bow at them to do that sir," Koyama announced, forwarding him the information. The NMX vessel was hugging their stern." The ship lurched as the Escort pummeled the aft shields with a volley of fire from its secondary batteries.
"Retasking a portion of our point defense network to try and keep them off our back."
Space
The space around the Resurgence was a deadly dance of Mishhuvurthyar battle pods and Star Army Mindy power armors. Yoshiro felt a fierce sense of satisfaction as he saw his missile hit a pod and it exploded into a ball of fire. This was for Yamatai, for his family, and for all those who had suffered at the hands of the Mishhuvurthyar.
As Yoshiro saw his missiles hit a pod, he shouted in happiness. "Take that you mutated eight legged wannabe bastard!" He said with a grin.
From the corner of his eye Yoshiro saw a huge puff of smoke come out of the Resurgence as the ship's armor bay lost containment and spewed its atmosphere into the void.
Yoshiro called the Resurgence. "Yoshiro to Resurgence, emergency Armor bay has lost containment repeat, Armor Bay has lost containment!" He shouted in to his comms.
The two rangers and analyst had scouted a shuttle before it disappeared with it, hurtling towards the Resurgence. Mineko knew that the shuttle's thermoptic camouflage would work less well under closer scrutiny, so propelled herself forward towards the trajectory she had seen the shuttle going. All the while, her eyes were scanning every inch of the Resurgence's hull and the battle in space beyond for any change or faint translucent distortion
As she searched for its silhouette, Mineko caught the Mishhuvurthyar entering the armor bay where the forcefield was offline! It was visible for a moment in outlined in the smoke cloud that had emerged.
"Teleport back to the Res!" Sanda yelled as she did just that. She was not about to let the same thing happen again as what happened before.
Yoshiro teleported back to the Resurgence and saw the damage. "Damn!" He said and started working on removing debris so he could help anyone who was hurt.
"got it!" Yayoi said as she activated her own teleports to return to the armor bay.
With Cassie and Thad still unaccounted for within the confines and relative safety of the Armor Bay, the pair were afforded a view of their pursuer. The fleshy-pink colored destroyer was of a scale similar to the Resurgence, its hangar bays open, the sickly orange lighting giving off 'floaters'. Which if they paid attention to their suits' AIES appeared to be a small swarm of battlepods. A mixture of the standard frontliners and some of their heavier, missile carrying counterparts.
But it seemed the bridge crew of the Resurgence caught wind of this as a few of their anti-mecha cannons began to spray the area in a bid to create a no fly zone. The NMX vessel's counter-fire coming in the form of a barrage from its secondaries causing the SAoY ship's CFS to flare and distort providing a spectacular light show.
Armor Bay
Inside the armor bay, sparks flew and wisps of smoke drifted from the smouldering armor storage racks as in the airless room. In flashes of light, Yoshiro and Sanda appeared, momentarily stunning Norita who covered her eyes. "What do you need?" she asked, expecting to have to fetch mini missiles or ammo from the armory.
As Sanda reappeared inside the Armor Bay she began hunting. She was in her element now, hunting. Her rifle was up and she slowly scanned the surrounding area. Her gaze was particularly for the areas where she would have hid had she been the one infiltrating.
Yayoi appeared behind Sanda, and like her, Yayoi scanned the area for the Mishuu. "a squid was spotted entering here, we need to look.
The Mishhuvurthyar boarder slipped into the shuttlebay across the hall and began to board one of the shuttles. It quickly set about its work, programming the shuttle to try to go at maximum speed directly into the Resurgence's interior compartments, hoping to hit engineering. It lifted up off the floor of the bay and pointed itself upwards, scraping the ceiling.
Yayoi got a instinctual gut feeling that she should go to the shuttle bay. "oh shit! red alert! one of them got into a shuttle!" Yayoi ran towards the shuttle as she also sent a message or something so the internal shields could activate. Like Sanda, she too attempted to carefully disable the shuttle.
Sanda followed Yayoi into the shuttle bay. The Nepleslian born Ranger began taking careful shots at the Mishhu. She didn't want to damage the interior of the ship.
Aetheric fire filled the shuttle bay as the shuttle's engines ignited, sending the shuttle careening around the bay's ceiling like a balloon that had slipped its knot, except teal plasma was streaming out the back.
Yoshiro went to the shuttle bay just in time to see the shuttle going a bit out of control. "Holy shi..." was all he had been able to get before a piece of shuttle debris knocked him out cold.
"crap" Yayoi uttered as she watched this helplessly. but made sure she didnt get hit armor or no armor.
The SAINT analyst's eyes fell on the fallen comarade knocked out by the whipping shuttle and knew they wouldn't be able . "Do either of you have a capacitor? We have to teleport aboard that shuttle before it rips the ship in two!" Mineko said.
Sanda moved out of the way of the plasma jets but kept her eyes trained on the Mishhu. She was not going to let anything destract her from her prey. She just need a way onboad. She heard the analyst suggestion. It would be a tough jump, moving around like that. But time was against them. "I do. Let's..." She started to say but then...
Suddenly Sakuko's shuttle came to life and slammed into the captured shuttle, pushing it out into space. An angry war cry came over the radio in the cargo specialist's voice.
Bridge
As the beleaguered YSS Resurgence fired, it was greeted by fiery explosion as the escort ship it hit was punched by a stream of white hot aether directly in the nose (great shot, Kalena!) and the beam penetrated through the enemy ship from front to back, crumpling its hull like a beer can before it exploded into shards of red hot debris.
"There! That one has a stable wormhole!" Euikoshi suddenly shouted.
"Recall all armors and make best speed to that wormhole, Gabriela! It's time to find the Wakaba!" Aoba ordered. The Resurgence turned and prepared to haul ass across this deathtrap of a star system.
Trowa looked over the data Euikoshi sent. "Confirmed, stable wormhole, Sir."
"Emergency recall order sent! Course set!" Gabriela said.
"Execute!" Aoba pointed at the wormhole.
= = =
OOC: JP by Wes, Charaa, Cowboy, Ame, Yoshiro Tanaka, iaincarter, Miko, Soresu
