RP: 5th XF [Yugumo Mission 1] Day 1: Perdition's Flames

Caine turned to Tesuro, back in his "Reaper" mode, a state he'd been in at Murf but this was different. The only real difference was that he looked a lot more serious, the casual grin gone replaced with a hard determination. "Keep your eyes on those ships and alert us immediately to any changes, those destroyers can be a major pain in the butt." he said. "If that battleship is as crippled as we're assuming it'll go down with relative ease. It's those escorts that concern me, they have just as nasty weapons, also keep alert for any of their friends coming out of stealth or joining them. They did that a lot at Murf." he said, sounding like he was angry. The feeling that Caine was somewhat after revenge for his friends was prevalent around him.

Tesuro listened intently and clearly to Caine's words. Stealth units--he hadn't thought of that. He keyed in some commands into his terminal, ensuring that any new units aside from those from the Yugumo would be automatically noted, alerting him. He reported back to Caine within moments.

"Yes, Chui--understood. Should any SMX ships appear stealthed within our area, the Shosa will be immediately notified! All new units will be brought up onto the bridge's main screen to avoid any surprise attacks!"

Roken's smile widened a little at the sight of the enemy that was in front of them, Looks like I get to put this fighter to the test. Roken looked around at the other fighters in the formation, he knew he had no experience piloting a V4 or any type of fighter whatsoever so he would have to be extremely cautious when Sarri-san gave the order to attack if she would. "Looks like they decided to show up and greet us,â€

As the nebula's wispy tendrils finally wrenched free from her fighter, the gravity of their situation hit home like a thunderbolt. The enemy...thankfully spotted ahead of time by the Hyuga's sensors. That alone would give the Yugumo time to prepare. Kishou's hands tightened, white knuckle around her console. Barred fangs, a slight hiss escaped her mouth and echoed across the communicator.

In a flash, all systems went to full. Outright speed was sacrificed as the shields came online, the weapons went to hot...her vision focussed towards her prey. Her AIES confirmed the Yugumo's assessment of their data. Heavily damaged...weak and wounded they were limping through space. If the Captain was really keen, the gunship escorts could destroy all three in a single flash. But that wasn't going to happen here – the Mishu's destruction would be a mite slower and more painful.

"Roken-san, please don't joke...sorry, we've only just met but I feel I have to say this. Lieutenant, as much as I would love nothing more than to dive headfirst into battle...â€

Five-thousand Frasworstch poured from the battleship forming two massive swarms, one which hung close to their mother-ship and another which began their runs towards the Yugumo-their first obstruction was two of the Sylph Wings, within moments the engagement opened in a barrage of fire from the Sylph assault drones. Around a thousand enemy pods breached past the first two wings and engaged Delta Wing at Yugumo's perimeter. Another group of a hundred broke off swarming the group of Hyuga fighters.

Striker Arrays to Auto-fire .Kiyoko ordered Creighton to have the Yugumo's deadly anti-mecha weapons under AI control. Kiyoko ordered Akira "Analyze the enemies' current attack vectors and send to Tactical.â€

Caine growled as the ship shuddered from the wound to the ship, the red sections were a cause for alert. He noticed they were after the generators in the attempt to put them adrift until they could repair it. "Grr. Damn we need to avoid those." He mused to himself. "Watch out for the effects of the Aether Shock Cannons." He said, he knew those tears in time/space could cause problems if they got caught in them.

"Retreat is not an option!" Camellia said as the swarm came at them, as her fighter's shields raised and the weapons went hot. It's been too long, but she was returning to the zone. Camellia, using a panoramic sensor setting, gains a target lock number of one hundred pods scrambling to engange. Lacking a SPINE interface, Camellia manually ingaged the Fire control system for the turrented gun.

"Do or die time." She said calmly over the intership comm.

"Strikers going hot. Communications, inform all wings to stick clear of their targeting paths." Creighton announced as his right hand slide across his console, keying up the Positron Striker Arrays. "Yugumo, you have them. Clear a path for our armors."

Quickly switching back to his targeting interface Creighton watched, as the Sakura escorts engaged at will. Trying to focus on the larger vessels amongst the mass of SMX pods, Creighton's face tensed up. In his interfaced vision, the small detonations of pods and torpedoes strained his sight and mind.

Then the larger explosion of the first Ghullfrashirv flooded his mind. Gritting his teeth tightly, Creighton forced his eyes to refocus and doubled his efforts on the Alpha Ghullfrashirv. His corneas dilated as he and the Yugumo adjusted the targeting line.

The ship shuddered, Kiyoko ordered Creighton, "Return fire, Get that Heavy Cannon online!â€

Click to expand...

Xanatos tried to hold onto something as the Yûgumo shuddered twice. The enemy was indeed numerous... and ferocious. He heard Creighton's orders and plotted a course that would give him the best firing angles possible. Although Xanatos didn't like the idea of getting closer to that behemoth of a battleship, he knew that it was important to do so. He initiated the finished course.

"Okiedokie, you got it Lieutenant.â€

It was one thing to remain calm when facing a few enemies that were hundreds of thousands of kilometers away in space, but Kiyoe soon found out that it was quite another to remain calm when it was thousands of enemies rocketing toward her. The massive blasts being exchanged between the battleships didn't do much for her nerves, either.

Okay. Okay. Just calm down and get ready for them, or things are going to get worse, fast. After taking another deep breath to steady herself, she shakily said, "Okay, AIES-er, whatever you are. Rake turret fire around the direction I'm going until we pass the enemy group and dogfighting begins. After that, fire it wherever you want." She was hoping the fire might help distract or destroy some of the enemies in her path. "And, um, when they get in range, launch the missiles. All of them. On proximity detonation." There was no sense in aiming them individually when facing 5000 identical opponents, after all...

Her orders issued, the Yamataian took one last calming breath and, choosing one unlucky battle pod at random, began the arduous task of picking the pests off one by one.

"Any messages to pass forward to the fighters, Shosa?" Ichiro asked, passing along information from other ships to the correct screens.

Roken just nodded at the response, she was right this was a bad time to be joking but that's just how he is so he decided to keep his jokes to himself.

There are so many of them, Roken though. For a moment, Roken's thoughts went back to the moment when he faced the two destroyers with the crew of the Goban and there capture. "I won't fall this time,â€

Caine watched the hell breaking loose around the ship before noticing the two Hyuga fighters starting what seemed to be a kamikaze run. "Dammit! They're going to use the short range weaponry. Those idiots should be using their Aether Cannons instead of the missiles!" Caine growled and sent out a communication to them himself. "DON'T RUSH THEM YOU FOOLS! DO YOU HAVE A FUCKING DEATHWISH OUT THERE?!" He practically shouted at Roken and Kiyoe over the comm. "FIGHT AS A DAMN TEAM OUT THERE, THERE ISN'T ANY GLORY IN DYING WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE TO!" Caine snarled at them.

He turned to Marks on Tactical and spoke to him in an icy tone of voice with a razor's edge to it. "Why haven't we launched the Variable pods? Do it." He ordered and monitored the status of the battle.

The Katsukawa's aft section detonated, sending debris drifting across the battlefield from the first of the Quintessent torpedoes-the second plowed into her delivering its load of parasites onto the ship, in all essence the ship was lost and Commander Taii Yoshida Katsumi knew it, having been thrown from her command chair pulled herself up into tactical station, pushing the dead Chui off its panel. She engaged the SPINE-and sent her ship into a spiral-and initiated an overload in its generators sending it smashing into the Alpha Ghullfrashirv dorsal section. The Ghullfrashirv attempted to avoid, buts already failing drives offered them no avoidance of the incoming Sakura. Just as the Katsukawa exploded the shots fired from the Yugumo by Creighton slammed into the Destroyer, the heavy SPEC and the barrage of medium SPEC hit their mark and the Destroy ripped apart, catching nearly half of the Whifgurflumik that the battleship had launched. Leaving only seven hundred and fifty on the field.

Yugumo said to Akira, "Thank you Santo Hei. Target Dispatched."

Under Xanatos's maneuvering the Yugumo began its encroachment on the battleship; Kiyoko transferred temporary control over to herself and put the Yugumo into a spin along its axis, her own Variable Pods taking out another round of Quintessent torpedoes dispatched by the Battleship.

One more second Yugumo Kiyoko coached the AI, who readied the Beam Rakers. Yugumo spiraled down across the Battleship's lateral to beneath its starboard ventral and opened fire, the raker beams carving across the belly of the Battleship. The Battleship shuddered as it took on more damaged, but let loose with six of its medium SPECs- the cannon's converged their shots on the Yugumo tearing across her starboard stabilizer blade. The Yugumo rumbled and shook at is made another FTL jump just as the Battleship opened fire with one of its heavy SPECs, missing the Yugumo.


Mindy M2's poured from Yugumo's multipurpose bays, the remaining of her Sylph M4 Wings joining them, refreshing the wings already in the field. Likewise the Blrakkrashiverinth launched its remaining wing of Frasworstch into the field, and began to turn away from the field, trying to restore power to its fold drives.

Kiyoko watched the tactical...Oh no you don't.

"Tesuro...Dirj, get those scanners searching for some way to cripple that behemoth.â€

Caine still seemed to seeth as he sat back in the chair and began sending out orders to the remaining sylph wings. Ordering the 5th wing to stay and reinforce the defenses and the 6th wing to go stealth and begin attacking the battleship. He also made sure to remind them to try to stay out of the Yugumo's firing vectors while focusing their fire in the areas displayed through the AIES. Caine was pointing out to focus fire on the wounded areas and the ship's CFS systems if they could get to them, if not start firing into it's pod launching bays to deal damage directly to the insides of the ship. Sorry Kiyoko, please forgive my outburst. Memories ya know. he said to the Shosa mentally.

The sounds of a space battle were an eerie thing. On the one hand so silent, only the noise of your own craft reverberating through your ears; shudders and jerks as you got hit, rumbled boomings as your own weapons fired. But outside your pocket universe was nothing but silence, perforated by more pocket universes and microcosms. Thousands of them – big and small – flitting around. Fighting for their lives.

But on the other hand, it was a deafening chaos. Her head filled with the radio chatter of friend and foe alike. Garbled transmissions. Alien languages. The screams of the dying. This was war and everything seemed so natural. Her blood raced, Kishou's thoughts meshing seamlessly with the computer of her craft. She tore backwards as the reinforcements drew closer.

Glittering streaks of destruction dissipated harmlessly in front of her as the Hyuga jumped almost 100,000 miles out of range in less than an instant. Again, her aether weapons flashed through space and into the horde. Kishou licked her lips and reversed direction: diving down, sacrificing her useless shields for raw, unbridled speed. Now, which one of you bastards is the leader...

The missile covers snapped open.

Arcing underneath the blazing enemies she jumped left and right at random – speeding up and slowing down in millisecond intervals. Twenty different targets showed a lock. The missiles fired at near the speed of light; her skin rippling as she banked away. Dancing with death...the force stabilizer was having trouble keeping up. She tried to breath amid the maneouvers, shuddering with adrenaline.

And sparing only a moment to check the status of her team...

Dirj's eyes blinked rapidly as he tried to absorb all the data streaming in from his display. Red blurs of varying size swept across it as the four small blips that were the Hyuga fighters began flashing, presumeably firing their weapons. This was confirmed when many of the nearest red blips vanished from his screen.

The blue ovals around the Yugumo and her escorts began to slowly fade to green, and then yellow, as the CFS was drained of energy. Suddenly, two white blips screamed forth from one of the enemy capital ships. Dirj tried to track them with the scanners, but it was too late. They converged on one of the Sakura's, whose oval immediately went bright red. Dirj watched in horror as it sped off to meet its fate against the hull of the remaining Mishnu Destroyer.

His ears then pricked up at hearing the voice of Motoyoshi-Shosa. Dirj looked backwards, halfway over his shoulder, hearing the Shosa's command. Did she say... cripple? This is insane. Looking back to his display, Dirj positioned the scanners directly onto the large red blur, working to focus it as much as possible, and searching it desperately for any obvious targets.

Suddenly, Yugumo came to life on the volumetric projecter next to his control panel. "Try this one." she said, pointing to another of the numerous buttons. The one she indicated lit up from behind. Dirj stared at it a moment, and then pressed it. Instantly, the display began indicating various points on the ship's hull, indicating weapons, power sources, and various other sub-systems. A single, very bright point illuminated near the center of the vessel. The main generators.

"There!" Dirj turned his chair to face the main screen and pointed upward at the spot. "Those are the generators." He turned back to his controls, and then froze. He zoomed out a bit on the display, quickly looking over the entire battlecruiser.

"No, wait!" he suddenly called out. "Target here." he adjusted the display to show a large expanse of hull area, almost vacant of any subsystems. He explained: "The hull is thick here, but it's far away from any vital systems, especially from the generators. So, why protect it? It's got to be the main bulk of the crew workstations. The Bridge is probably in there, too! It's away from the generators to keep out the radiation!"