YSS Yukika II Season One, Episode One: Barotrauma

YSS Yukika II NS-X5-1212
TX-01 VII Orbit


"Captain, more SMX fighters and drones are inbound from bases on the moonlets." Yukika Futaba announced from the guest station, expression as icy calm as the ice-white bangs above it. It was somewhat redundant, as the information was being displayed both visually and distributed through wireless neural interface to everyone and their battlestations. She shifted her new Type 33A body, enhanced now with experimental cybernetics derived from the Consort body she'd been testing, sideways in the seat to address the Captain seated somewhat behind her. "I am devoting significant system resources to point defense via the plasma projection and combined field systems in between helm using them for maneuver assist. It is not currently a problem, but the compounding effects of additional target-threat factors may eventually begin to impact other services."

Outside, the Yukika II spun and wound through ring-system debris, micro-moonlets, and giant ice crystals like orbital icebergs littering the battlespace as swarms of Mishhuvurthyar attackers and missiles followed suit and defense platforms fired upon them from afar. The front shields glowed and crackled with a steady stream of micro impacts. Inside, the little lags and lapses in inertial dampeners and control that gave tactile feedback to a maneuvering crew began to add up to a stormy sea rollick; so many changes so quickly tossed the crew like a windy day past the breakers.

Below, the roiling atmosphere of the supergiant TX-01 VII swirled in wicked gyres shot through with flashes of lightning the diameter of small planets. Somewhere down below those great storms, in the churning slush of metallic hydrogen and helium was what the orbital defenses didn't want the Star Army to find. In those lightless, wine dark depths was their target. Alerts of the impacts of Mishhuvurthyar weaponry on their shields was traded for the destruction of the fighters that launched it, but the exchanges were growing far too frequent to break even much longer.

"We're a scout-destroyer, not a battleship. Ops, send a report to the fleet on the forces here, then helm take us under," Tachiko ordered, grim and resolute with a set jaw and narrowed eyes. It was a decision only in timing. Unexpectedly heavy resistance and violent weather rendered vanity any attempt to glean further intelligence. "All hands prepare for atmospheric insertion and submersion!"

The data stream was logged and compiled as it came through the console well before the order came to send in the report. It came in two flavors. One was their initial scouting report of the planet. The second was the hostiles that were now chasing them down. Understandably, the latter report was a lot more concise and generalized in the interest of time. A more accurate report need to wait as their ship was more than likely going to be overrun the longer they stayed engaged in combat.

With the press of the final button, the reports were sent. "Data transmitted!" he announced before refocusing on to other duties and bracing himself. There was no telling what they'll be diving headfirst into. This was an enemy planet now, and who knows how long they've been here and how deeply rooted they were.

Relatively, he was no stranger to such operations. But that was on foot. It was much easier to have a small squad infiltrate military installations. A ship infiltrating a planet? Well, perhaps it wasn't as far fetched, granted the enemy didn't already have planet-wide sensor arrays. But even then, there's always a way to overcome those sensors, just needed to use the right trick. Tricks he wished he learned.

Lorrheim Expeditionary Strike Group​

Lead Ship : YSS Lorrheim III
Command: Shôshô Motoyoshi-Ieyasu Taro

There was little secret about the Lorrheim Expeditionary Strike Group being one of the most veteran and well trained arms of the Fifth Expeditionary Fleet. It was only minutes before Taro and his group arrived following the report made by Savage-Shoi. With the five Takumi-Class Expeditionary Command Cruisers lined up with the YSS Lorrheim III leading the way, them and their escorts formed a wall-like formation along the projected path of the Yukika II. The group's two Sharie-Class Battleships were the final additions to the formation. Missiles exploded along the leading edge of the Lorrheim's CFS bubble, stopping their accelerated path toward the YSS Yukika II.

"My Motoyoshi no Suzuran. I am here," Taro sent in a private transmission to Tachiko. Power Armors swarmed from the newly arrived ships dividing into two groups; the first formed a cloud-like formation around the ships of the Strike Group, while the others organized into squadrons and descended toward the militarized moonlets with weapons blazing. The rest of the strike group vessels sent standard greetings to the Yukika II as they descended toward the gaseous/liquid abyss. With the Strike Group there in formation, hopefully it would take enough of the heat for the Yukika II to reach their intended waypoint without serious damage.

As usual, the YSS Lorrheim III fires its Aether Shock Cannon first, an aetheric cascade streaked across the darkness and slammed into the ventral-stern section of a SMX Neithorngom-Class Battleship that was mobilizing near one of the moonlets. It was the opening shot of an aether hellstorm that would go both ways.

YSS Yukika II , Medbay.

Kishikibe Taiga rocked slightly to one side as she looked up at a flickering light as something jostled from either a near miss or force connecting to the ships shields as the Nozomi-class scout danced about in ways she could not see or even if she could, track, beyond her normal sphere of senses. Sitting in a fist-sized beanbag on a fold out examination surface she uncrossed and then crossed her legs again to be more comfortable as she let the sensation of combat wash over her in the ways only someone her size could as every subtle sound and feeling felt amplified as though in a stadium of amphitheater.

It was the worst; Waiting for something to happen. Either the ship would crack open like an egg and spill her into space, wounded beyond her capacity to triage would flood as damage control teams emptied entire decks after a hull breach, or nothing at all would happen and she would have held off her pre-GC bathroom run for nothing as she went over her surroundings.

"Carmine?" Taiga vocalized as she called out, not seeing the android from her seat as she rose up and hovered slightly to gain some elevation to look around her little (comparatively) domain and how thankfully empty it was.

"Carm?" She asked again, putting one hand on her hip and another to her brow in the universal searching look for the young caretaker as she landed on one of the ST pods and sent an updated read-report to the MEGAMI Futaba of the medbays status and availability to receive wounded as she watched a detail stride past her doors in the purple-gold ostentatious halls off to one station or another and awaited any orders or requests sent her way.

YSS Yukika II NS-X5-1212
Engineering Spaces

Cytari settled into chaos management as she focused on the task at hand, to keep things working. Well working and in one piece, as much as possible. She still was not used to their new first officer, this mission might give her more to form an opinion off of. Rae looked to Cytari when she heard the all hands call, they knew what to do. Without a word they spun into action, making any changes to systems that might need preparation, keeping an eye on status for others. Uehara was on call, any scenario such as the one they had found themselves in necessitated all hand on deck. So Uehara had been woken to keep an eye on her area of responsibility. Koko kept an eye on the status of her relevant systems as everything unfolded. Obara was fulfilling his duties as armorer, getting things prepped just in case they'd need it.

All of Cytari's people reported back that they were ready. "Captain, Engineering. Engineering stands ready," Cytari called over comms to the Captain to let her know that Engineering Department was ready to go. Cytari braced herself, the others followed suit. Last thing anyone needed in that space was crew pancake.

YSS Yukika II NS-X5-1212

Bridge

Like a waking dream, Tsuguka's inner eyes observed the roiling sapphire currents of the gas giant seeping up from below, speckling the gleaming sphere of her shields with a fuzzy green haze. It felt like ice on her hull, a wash of unclean vapour- Taxing her focus in realspace, by sending goosebumps down their sides, and a blanketing, uncomfortable, tingling drag upon the psycho-skin of her control-surfaces-come-fingers-and-toes...

"We... We have contacted the upper ionosphere, Shosho." A tense, sulking grimace. "Radiation... acceptable limits..."

Having two physical sensations overlapped on top of each other, that sent her stomach into a tailspin for a moment- Wincing, the vulpine cherry miko strained into their cross-legged pose of meditation even more strongly.

She was supposed to be an inanimate object right now. A blessed and obedient component, or possibly mere affection, of the ship. The spirit, the guiding hand, the one who translates the crew's noble instructions into actions- The lapse in inhumanity was simply unacceptable.

The mere vapour of the blue sphere became actual clouds now, as density increased, and the cutting stimulation only became more intense. Far from the serene trance of normal operations, Tae's back was bolt upright, and her emerald-amber eyes blazing intensely, unblinkingly forward...

"...No... N-No enemy activity currently in visual..."

That was bad. Because they were definitely down there.

Medical Bay

"My honourable Shoi..." Something like a sock puppet version of the miko blended into Taiga's vision, starting out as tiny pixel-dots, before forming into a low poly caricature. Because the doctor was rather palm sized herself, this deformed cat-thing appeared about the size of a thimble, with fluffy hair three times that long. "For the purposes of maintaining apex exterior vessel sensitivity, would it be possible to administer numbing drugs to the Shoi Kohosei operator Tae Tsuguka?... Functional body autonomy is not necessary at this time."

Medical Bay/Lab

Yingzi sat at her station, ready to be useful. Since there was no immediate need for her at the moment since it wasn't her shift, she decided to busy herself with the latest information she could find about the Mishhu very changing biology and news about their virus. Compared to her usual pathological work which she normally found interesting, she was absolutely horrified (as she is with most things related to the those freaks) at the details of the MHV.

It just always made her want to wipe them out indiscriminately and yank the brains out of thralls/Nekos to extract information rather than even attempt to talk to them. Yingzi was normally a caring, bubbly person; but she didn't see any of them as people. She couldn't shake the feeling there was something nodding happily at this transition in her personality.

YSS Yukika II
Bridge

Yuki focused on her task. The more she thought about doing her job, the less she had to think about the sight of the planet they were streaking toward. She wasn't lead navigator at the moment, which left her as backup, but she was far from idle. While Kitamura took care of the immediate course, she did her best to feed Lorrheim III and her sisters their projected course. It wouldn't do for Yukika II to stray into their firing lanes, after all.

She also had the task of trying to figure out where to go once they got.... well, wherever they were going. Obviously an exfiltration route was always a must to keep updated, and she was itching to send off some meteorological drones; some of the planet's storms were so, so much bigger than she'd expected. While the ship could plow through them, she rather suspected she'd be happier simply going around if at all possible. Absently she noted their rate of descent into the planet's atmosphere, and sent a quick message to Engineering, to let them know how much time they had before they were no longer in the nice, neat vacuum of space and had to reconfigure Yukika II's systems for a planetary environment.

Space was infinitely preferable to the planet. She'd spent more time in space than planet bound in her short life, but she'd never really minded solid ground under her feet and one or two or more suns in a sky which was usually, but not always, blue. This planet, though... it was unsettling, in a way she couldn't explain yet couldn't dismiss as just the usual combat mission nerves, racketing up just as slowly and steadily as the g-forces as they sank into the planet's gravity well.

She had a job to do, though, and that job didn't care if she was nervous or not. Thus, she kept a watchful eye over Kitamura, ready to step in at a moment's notice if she must, her mind drinking in the sensor data, considering the subtle changes in temperature and pressure outside the bow wave the ship created as it entered the atmosphere, compressing hydrogen and creating heat and light. Bound to attract attention, not that a stealthy approach had ever really been an option, but.... She straightened a bit against the rocking of the ship, then began examining the storm data more closely. It wouldn't be pleasant at all, but there was the chance of using the storms to conceal themselves... or at least make it harder for the Mishhuvurthyar to attack.