RP: YSS Imperator [YSS Imperator] Mission Two: Going In Deep

Forward sections

Momoya saw the cross passage. It would take them right in front of the enemy, where they were currently slowed by a closed blast door. It would not give them any room to set up an ambush, but at this point they had few options to intercept the enemy before they reached the main weapon array.

"This passage. Now! Go go go go go!" she commanded and cut down the passage, her wing pack carrying her Sylph on. "They'll be right on us within moments, so we have to hit them as hard as we can. Mow them all down, no quarter!"

With that said, the armored mini neko jetted into the other main passage, followed by her troops, her rifle at the ready. She quickly arrayed her team in the most defendable positions she could.

"As soon as they start burning through, weapons free!"

Space

Imperator's volume of fire slammed into the dying carrier, the beam from the superheavies' first barrel eating into the L'Kor carrier's hull with immense strength followed near instantaneously by the last barrel as the crippled carrier submitted to its defeat. The missiles streaked through the holes already present as the beams ceased, rumbling detonations shattering the interior of the carrier before fire began to burn more and more.

The power armors and fighters streaking towards the Imperator were getting cut down by the point-defense batteries and Imperator's own fighters from Delta Squadron which had completed their own scramble. The CAG cued her radio just as the cannon fire from Ayane's fighter detonated the shuttle in front of her before it had gotten to much closer.

"Alright, the shuttles are starting to get picked apart by the point-defense, focus on the fighters!"

As she finished talking, she looked out the left side of her fighter at the carrier as she made a pass. Something didn't look right about the carrier. Yes, it was disabled, but getting hammered like this was going to lead to something going up like the battleships below.

Bridge

Kaede saw it too through his SPINE as his instincts, that carrier was going to go up in a ball of angry fire. The Taisa looked over to the helm and barked orders, "Engines ahead flank! Get us away from the carrier before it blows!"

The pilot quickly tapped her console and piloted through SPINE, igniting the battleship's massive engines at full military power. While the dampeners kept anyone from feeling the sudden jolt and rush of speed, anyone who could see the outside or something to reference would see that they were getting out of there, along with any other ship that could.

The Captain looked to the XO for a moment before squinting, "Step everything up, let's finish this."

Port Side Residential Deck 36

With one boarding team defeated, and the SAINT team moving towards the bows to catch up with the forward team, the Neko NCO began investigating the bodies of the dead L'Kor. The armored ones had nothing obviously wrong with them, but she stopped once she stopped looking over one of the unarmored ones. her face went absolutely white before she stepped back afraid as she spread a wide telepathic message,

"T-This is Deck 36, be advised, the unarmored L'Kor are suiciders. They are wrapped in explosives."

It had been a miracle that none of the L'Kor suiciders in the residential block had been touched off, probably due to the insane accuracy of the shots.

Bow Access Sector Alpha-Three, Deck 36

As soon as the Mini-Neko clad in Sylph had stopped talking, there was the evident sound of burning plasma torches. The L'Kor had figured out how to burn the electronics and locks in the doors to speed themselves up. It didn't matter though, as the Marines already began firing at the door. As the NCO's telepathic message went out and was heard, the same type of suiciders began rushing towards the Marines in a dead sprint.

They only had a few seconds to react.

Armory

The marine that had led the kitchen crew and servers to the armory to grab weapons piped up as he opened the door, "Let's go see what we can do, they just stopped the aft most team. There is only one team left but let's make sure that there are no more that made it in." He walked out into the hall and beckoned everyone to follow.

"Alright chef, take the kitchen staff and clear down the hall with half my marines while whoever is the highest ranking server comes with me and the remainder and we'll clear up the hall."

Bridge

Hoshi pushed her hands into her console, both manually clicking the keys and interfacing with the ship. She breathed in sharply as she heard they were suiciders and relayed the information to the rest of the crew.

"Repeat," Hoshi said quickly, "abolish the suicider's chances of attaining their objectives!"

To the captain, she turned and said, "Permission to leave the bridge and protect the bow of the ship, Sir?! Our teams are chasing them down where I could head them off!"

Bridge

Kaede looked sternly at the XO, "Denied. There is already a marine team in front of them, actively engaging them. As far as I know our SAINT team is hot on their trails, no need to gum up their advance. I need you on the bridge anyway, keep watch on their status." The Captain turned his gaze to his sensor's operator, "How many ships still around the carrier?"

The sensor's operator swallowed a moment before stating flatly, "Three ships are in projected blast, one is embedded into its hull the other two are stricken and won't be fast enough."

The Taisa frowned before looking at his communications operator, "Inform the fighters to keep in formation with us and do not stray near the carrier!" The communications operator nodded before relaying the message.

Space

As Ayane arced her fighter past the detonating shuttle, she looked towards the nearby carrier, noticing the danger that the Imperator's proximity to the exploding carrier presented. It seemed like the captain had noticed too, as she suddenly saw the Sharie-class battleship accelerate out of the range of the detonating carrier.

Ayane followed suit, firing her fighter's turbo aether plasma drives at nearly full power. As she accelerated, a L'Kor fighter crossed her HUD, struggling to keep up with the battleship as the pilot attempted to deliver their potentially destructive payload to the Imperator.

The Hayabusa angled it's heavy cannons along the path of the hostile craft's arc, and fired a lethal volley of cannon fire at the craft.

Bow Access Sector Alpha-Three, Deck 36

With the volume of fire being put out by the Star Army Marines, as well as the slightly behind message, their accuracy was absolutely perfect. The L'Kor power armors that were hit began to stagger while the berserkers charged the marine line. Shot after shot went into their heads after they had received the bomb message, and their bodies landed roughly at about the same position before the L'Kor power armors became the focus again.

One after the other they fell, until it was only two standing and using the remains of the bulkhead doors as cover. The power armor that seemed to be the boarding leader due to his off color screeched in an angry tongue before leaning out and firing a powerful beam from his Aether rifle. It seemed to have terrible accuracy if it was aimed at the marines, but in that instant they knew that the marines were not the target. It was the line of berserker corpses, and the bombs that were laced in them.

With a bright flash of bright Aetherial light, four medium strength bombs touched off in the pile of corpses and detonated.

Space

The Imperator's port side detonated in the form of an white flash that created a large rupture in the top of the port bow-pylon a couple hundred meters behind the bow most gun turrets and about the same distance in front of the main superstructure. As soon as the light disappeared, the hole detonated again in more conventional methods, though smaller as the power lines and conduits blew up. Fire were evident and visible from space as bulkheads again attempted to close off the breach.

Ayane had fired on her target, and raked it enough to have it spiral out of control but not detonate. It was visibly disabled and out of possible control as it spun around it's vertical axis and off of its course. The remaining L'Kor fighters seemed to be breaking off and attempting to make runs at the other ships, but were either cut down or detonated on their own accord.

A handful flew in a very slow formation trailing the Imperator with their weapons and shields powered down. It seemed even the L'Kor had some sort of humanity and thoughts of surrendering, albeit few.

Bridge

Kaede sat up ramrod straight as he gripped his chair when the battleship shook from the detonations. He gritted his teeth as he looked to Araena and nearly screamed, "Damage report!" before observing what he could of the fleet through his SPINE. The helm continued on her course, though was visibly terrified for a moment before looking uncomfortable, and this was mirrored by the majority of the bridge crew.

Medical Lab

After a few minutes, and the KAMI taking account of the losses to the marine detachment, the doctors began their work on bringing back the dead. Their first job was to generate new bodies for the newly deceased, and all three tubes were emptied and refilled with Hemosynthetic Fluid. As the tubes seeded the Nekovalkyrja Blood with three codes for three of the marines, a few bodies began to form. While the left and right tubes were normal sized, the center was creating a smaller body.

After more time, and full body construction, the doctors assigned the backups to their designated bodies and began running final checks on their statuses while preparing for the small chance of an abnormality. With all three tubes showing green and healthy, the excess fluid was drained from the tubes, the freshly cloned Neko were dried, and the tubes opened to allow the cloned to walk out of the tubes by their own accord with the head physician observing.

YSS Imperator
Bridge

The Elysian shouted angrily in the instinct of an engineer when her ship started to explode. Large detonation in bow Alpha-three, centered around deck thirty-six! The... Surprisingly pain-filled message was sent directly into the CO's mind via telepathy, while the chief engineer tasted her own blood and continued, The detonation removed the security team, but the aether shock array is seemingly unscathed. Disabling all systems to the segment now... Damn it, that hurt! Trying to handle her bitten tongue, Serphine was a bit slow on the draw for returning to her own thoughts, accidentally letting Kaede catch another sentence beforehand. She tightened her lips and her jawbone clenched a little to dull the pain a little as her slender fingers slammed into the keypad, depowering the sparking electronics and shutting off the air flow systems, the last fires extinguishing after but moments while the echoed light of broken cables faded away. The silver-haired Elysian had a several technician teams redirected to nearby systems, in the event that some possibly unseen damage had breached into a critical device-such as one of the turrets somehow, or even the aether array itself.

YSS Imperator
Bridge
Tactical Station

Ayane was focused in her task, resetting the weapons as they sped away from the dying carrier, the thought of the enemy boarders making it as far as the bridge not being entertained for the few moment's the Neko had time to think; though even these few rousing thoughts were occupied with making sure their retreat from the stricken L'Kor ship didn't mean they were rendered defenseless. She trusted in the fighter pilots and Infantry currently fighting both within and out the Imperator, but it was a cold fact she trusted more in the artificial logic and cold metal than the people around her. At least when she was sitting in this chair. It was a wonder that Nekovalkryja used to have six fingers instead of ten, but it gave Ayane a reason to respect her "predecessors".

Though their current angle limited the Weapons Operator's options, only able to bring about a mere twenty-percent of their full capabilities. It was enough though, as there was still four super-heavies and twenty out of the one hundred point-defense guns capable of covering them, and of course there was also Avatar. With what little threat from the L'Kor space force extinguished to a manageable point, Ayane closed her eyes and exhaled, taking stock of all the munitions they had just expended and, to a limited extent as per her role as Weapons Operator, the damage sustained to her charge's weapons.

There was still the matter of the enemy having boarded their ship, but she was quite confident it would work out alright. If nothing else, she still had an AMES suit on and an NSP capable of punching a hole clean through their skulls.

Space

Ayane fired another volley of cannon fire at the out of control L'Kor fighter, before she maneuvered her fighter out of the craft's pursuit curve.

As she broke formation with the Imperator, Ayane's radar showed a group of fighters with weapons and shields powered down. Sweeping the Hayabusa in a reverse arc, Ayane primed an aether torpedo to fire at the group of fighters.

"Heartbreak One, orders on surrendering fighters?"

Bridge

Hoshi's mouth opened a little as she felt the shock of the hit and turned around to look over the console and leaned back in her seat, crossing her legs. She closed her mouth and began running diagnostics and looked over the bridge crew's faces before tensing her own. She quickly began to unload information from the damage reports to Kaede and asked KAMI for numbers on the injured and dead.

Space

"Negative Avatar Four, they are surrendering."

The CAG's fighter lifted up off Ayane's port side, the faint glimpse of Ume's silhouette looking at Ayane from her Hayabusa's cockpit. The HUDs of their fighters began to grow colder and colder from the heat of battle, soon the only visible enemies were the trailing flight of L'Kor fighters now moving slowly out of line under the watch of another Yamataian squadron marked friendly, callsign 'Grabacr.'

Ume's voice crackled over the communications net again, "Avatar Squadron, regroup on my position in Vic formation."

Shortly ahead of the gathering Avatars, the Imperator slowly began to calm. The massive engines slowly beginning to glow dimmer as the ship came to a slow cruise amongst the ships of the Third Division.

Bridge

Kaede frowned, "That's the second boarding team, there are no others. Return to Condition Two until further notice and secure from battle stations."

The Taisa seemed to be twitching slightly, annoyed. He was looking through his SPINE at the ship as his eyes settled on Hoshi. He gave a slight growl before speaking in a rough tone, "This is why I hate being in these broken-ass warzones without amassed forces. Take this as a lesson, if you have to fight you fight with the numbers and weapons on your side."

He gave only a minute before standing up, his barked orders rough and heated. "Engineer, write up a full report on the damages. I want to know what is broken and whether the hull can be repaired with what we have or whether we need to take the long march home to lick our wounds. I'll be in my office. Hoshi! You have the bridge."

Kaede was not happy his ship got a large hole put in it.

YSS Imperator
Bridge
Tactical Station

Ayane exhaled, a long and wistful breath that seemed to have been held in for a while, pulling off the AME's helmet; the interior hissing all around as she was subject to a forced re-entry from a secure, localized pocket of recycled air to properly circulated, filtered, recycled air. Sweat had caused mats of black hair to cling to her cheeks and forehead, casting a sheen across her face as the console lit up her features more fully. With the helmet off she only just now realized how loud the Captain's voice was, causing her to jump slightly, but this was quickly replaced with a dutiful sucking in of air as her hands busied themselves with pulling up the status reports of their weapons systems. And in a moment of weakness, as her eyes drifted over towards the view outside of space, she felt her heart twitch and shudder with a brief pang of cold.

Ayane ..

A thought, a whisper as her mouth silently formed the words but didn't dare speak out loud, as if afraid the utterance would cause the screen separating the bridge and silence of space would crackle and break. Despite what had been said and done between them, she was glad she was okay. All of this took place in a split second, though the moment felt longer, as ruby-red eyes drifted back down towards the console screens. The smile, as small and quickly as it came, had, just as fast, become replaced with a neutral frown. The Weapons Operator, nostalgia over, busied herself by preparing a weapons report for the XO.

Bridge

Hoshi stood and called out, "Reports are to be sent within the hour!" She looked to the engineer and then to weapons ops. "I want the captain to know everything you know and think about this mission!"

She sat back down and hooked into SPINE once more.

"Come on KAMI... Are you okay?" Hoshi thought to the ship and began a conversation with the KAMI on board the Imperator.

Space

"Copy that, Fukugumi-Taii", Ayane replied as she powered down her Hayabusa's weapon systems. Once all weapon systems were powered down, Ayane shifted her fighter next to Ume's, taking her CAG's left wing in the formation.

As Ayane took in her surroundings, she realized that the battle had died down. With many of the L'Kor surrendering as the Yamataian victory became apparent, it seemed that the L'Kor valued their lives after all.