Marcus Adcobravatus, Captain of the 8th Company of the Shogun's Angel Guard and Retainer of the Asanawa Clan, sped down the corridor of the Devoran Concordat, making use of his wings in combination with his legs to move at speeds many times that which the normal human was capable of, as he had been taught long ago in the guard academy - siutated on Arkon, the ancient planet of the Angels. Momentarily, he blocked out the irregular footsteps of his comrades following behind him, moving in the same away, in order to allow his acute sense of hearing to come into play. He could hear military boots pounding the steel floor of the deck above as the vessel's commander furiously attempted to orchestrate the crewmen into a cohesive response force, but those Devorans would soon be too far behind the Angels to do any good. A plethora of other sounds soon drowned out that of the crewmen on the deck above him; the discharge of heavy weaponry firing, the gentle hum of electricity conduits, the ship's commander screaming orders down the ship's intercom - the sounds of a ship at war. Suddenly, the Captain's keen eyes picked out movement far ahead down the corridor - a door opening. Several Devoran crewmen, armed and armoured with proper boarding equipment, burst out of the doorway and into the corridor. It was not hard to see that they were not trained as marines, for they failed to establish a base of fire at the doorway before their charge. Captain Adcobravatus lifted his assault rifle, bringing it to bear on the crewmens' leader, easily distinguished from his different-coloured body armour, and almost nonchalantly fired a burst of three shots at the alien's face. The Angel's eyes picked out every detail of the impact. The first bullet slammed into the creature's visor, stopped dead by the durable material, but causing it to fracture in several places. The subsequent two bullets smashed clean through the visor, burying themselves in the Devoran's face in an explosion of brightly-coloured gore. The Captain heard gunfire form behind him, as three other members of his squad opened fire with their own weapons. Three more Devorans fell, either dead, wounded or merely knocked down, it did not matter. With a fierce battle cry, the squad's seargent threw back his outstretched golden wings and leapt forward, propelling himself twenty metres down the corridor with immense speed, bringing his sword in a vicious horizontal slash straight through the chest of another Devoran, killing him outright, before flooring the last standing crewman with a powerful spinning kick and running him through on the deckplates with a downward strike of the sword's razor sharp point. If any of the three crewmen hit by assault rifle fire were alive, they wisely decided to remain on the ground. Sergeant Comelius sheathed his sword - a finely-made Clan katana - and glanced further down the corridor before turning to the Captain and nodding. The Captain ejected the now nearly-spent magasine from his assault rifle and slammed a replacement home, pulling on the latch to lock the new ammunition in place as he bellowed orders to the squad.
"Keep moving! Reload as you go, keep an eye out for gun batteries batteries or ammunition stores!" And, with that, he hefted his wings, proppelling himself forward down the corridor. The others followed. The sergeant dropped behind breifly as, having forced the sliding door through which the armed crewmen had attacked open with the blade of his sword, he took a satchel charge from the strap around his shoulder and briefly set the timer before throwing it inside, then bounding on after the rest of the squad. Two seconds later a massive explosion ripped through the unseen room, followed closely by a larger still secondary explosion - the room must have been an armoury of sorts. The immense force of the two detonations blew out a section of the corridor's wall on either side of the door, sending pieces of jagged metal shrapnel clattering across the deck. Marcus let the muzzle of his assault rifle fall as he pressed his left hand against the radio set resting in his ear, but kept hold of the pistol grip with his right hand. Keeping his eyes open, hespoke into the microphone built into his helmet. "This is Captain Adcobravatus, my squad and I are continuing down the corridor, we are encountering sporadic light resistance. The enemy continues to be too incohesive to pose a serious threat. How far are we from the engine room?" He released pressure from the button on the radio headset, awaiting the response from the
Yudachi's sensor officers. It was not long in coming.
"Continue along the present corridor for around two hundred metres, sir. You will find a four-way intersection with a door on your left leading to a heavy fusion battery. The Shingen orders that you disable it. Once down, continue down the corridor ahead of you as you exit the battery. The only door on this corridor is halfway down it, leading left to the engine rooms. You should meet the other squads along the way. The Commander orders you to cripple the engines. Apart from a few with which to breach exit points, use all of your remaining satchel charges, give yourselves enough time to get out; Engineering and Tactical both anticipate a large secondary explosion from the engines." Hisses of static occasionally disrupted the human woman's instructions as the masses of radiation released from energy weapons fire striking the
Yudachi's shields interfered with the coms signal, but Adcobravatus understood most of it at any rate. The message continued.
"Be advised that the ship is taking damage and that we can no longer maintain full power to the sensors; information in the future may be sketchy. Good luck, Yudachi
out." The Captain nodded to himself. He could see the intersection that the sensors officer had spoke of looming up ahead. Indeed, a heavy blast door led off to the left, indicating that the room beyond was one deemed to be at risk from weapons fire. Marcus turned, still moving rapidly with the run-jumping technique, to face his squad of 19 other Angels, following close behind him.
"Juventus, Kiryk, blow through the blast door at the intersection up ahead. The rest of you, storm through the doorway as soon as it's open and clear out the inside. As soon as we are done, leave the battery and follow me. Vindicis, you will set another charge to destroy the battery, then follow after us." He halted on his last word, stopping either metres short of the heavy blast door, before nodding at privates Juventus and Kiryk. Both of the soldiers obligingly bounded forward, landing lightly on either side of the doorway, before setting one satchel charge each down next to it. Both primed the timer, before jumping back to the opposite side of the doorway. Seconds later, a brilliant flash of white light, and a gaping hole twice the width of the doorway replaced the thick steel barrier. Sensing that close quarters combat was imminent, Adcobravatus let his assault rifle hang loose from its strap, unsheathed his sword and, holding it high above his head, roared the signal. "Attack! Leave not one of them alive!
For the Shogun!" He leapt forward, his jump carrying him clean through the jagged makeshift doorway, through the billowing smoke and dust and into the battery, hearing his comrades take up the cry behind him, before following their Captain through the sight-obscuring swarm. The Captain could not see the enemy, for the dust and smoke were thick in the air within the battery as well as without, but he could hear the Devorans coughing and wretching in the unclean air. He rounded on the nearest source of the noise, bringing his sword down vertically, rewarded by a scream and the dull thud of something heavy hitting the floor. Pausing briefly from the combat, he blinked three times in quick succession. His helmet, detecting the motion, activated the infra-red mode of his visor. Instantly, the room was thrown into a mix of unwordly colours. He could see the barrel of the heavy fusion cannon outside of the ship, glowing a brilliant white with the tremendous heat generated by prolonged firing, but more importantly he could see the shapes of the gunners and technicians - ten of them remaining, two of them dead on the floor. Shouting their own personal battle cries, the Angels of his squad engaged the remaining enemies, having followed their Captain's example of the infra-red imaging. The Angels outnumbered the Devorans two to one, and ir practically would have been a frgone victory had there been one Angel against all ten of them, dazed and blind as they were. One of them, the one who had been further from the blast, was drawing a weapon of some kind. With all of the other Devorans already locked in futile conmbat with the other Angels, Adcobravatus saw no harm in earning himself a few style points. Bringing his katana back over his shoulder, holding it right handed, the Captain threw the weapon forward, point first, at the pistol-bearing enemy. The sword ran him straight through, pinning him to the wall behind. The Devoran died instantly. Adcobravatus paced over to the wall and pulled his sword from it, flcking his wrist to clear the blase of the blood covering it. He turned on his heel, and when his gaze came to rest on the room behind him, the remaining gunners were dead. He nodded, before leaping forward out through the doorway. The squad knew its orders already. The Captain sheathed his sword, before once more bringing up his assault rifle, and began once more to leap and stride down the corridor. He could see more Angels up ahead, and two more Angels from his own company moving down the corridor on his left. The technicians in the engine room had now been given ample time to prepare, but nonetheless, they didn't have a chance...
---
Just as Dr Roshuan pulled the medical mask down over his nose and mouth, the sliding door to the medical bay of the
Yudachi opened. A pair of medic-qualified crewmen rushed through it, pushing one of their fallen comrades in front of them on a stretcher-trolley. Greiner watched with satisfaction as a doctor immediately appeared beside the wounded man, quickly identifying the cause of the wound and helping the two other crewmen lift the stretched, with the casualty still lying on it, up off the trolley and onto the flat gunmetal slab that served both as a ward bed and an operating table. The
Yudachi's advanced medical hospital provided more room to treat the wounded than did most warships, but space was still tight. The ship's Chief Medical Officer placed a presicion surgery headset on his head above the mask and quickly tapped a few buttons on the number keypad on the visor's side, entering the code to activate the headset. Immediately, the visor descended over his eyes, its transparency flawless. The vital signs of the unfortunate crewwoman lying on the operating table in front of him flickered into life before his eyes a moment later, fed to the headset by the various scanning equipment contained within the table. He paused briefly before nodding to the junior surgeon and nurse standing opposite the casualty, dressed in a similar fashion to himself, before finally pulling on a pair of mint green sterilised plastic gloves. Finally, he picked up a laser scalpel. In his mind, he ran over the account of the injury given by the two medics. The girl - she was young, he realised, no older than twenty - was an ensign, her post being junior technician. She had been in charge of maintaining the lateral sensor array on the forward hull section. The array had been hit by a blast of radiation released from Devoran weapons fire hitting the front shield arc, so the two medics had told them, and several of the tertiary mainframes had blown out. The luckless junior technician had been caught by a large piece of shrapnel that had torn straight through her right kidney. She was bleeding badly, and had lost consciousness before arrival at the medical bay. Although Roshuan had not told the two medics at the time, he had serious doubts that she would survive. Many of the medic-qualified crewmen knew little of surgery; they were trained to be able to stop a casualty from dying for long enough to speed them to the medbay and to the trained proffessional doctors, little more. They had indeed applied anti-bleeding salve, but the flow was still welling up from somewhere. Roshuan had immediately recognised that there was still shrapnel in there somewhere, still working its way further into her flesh with every slightest movement, still preventing the halt of the bleeding. He had given her priority and, weary of standing by while others performed his calling of earlier years, had elected to perform the surgery himself. Now to begin...
"Enable X-ray imaging," He said, flatly and with the minimum number of words. Time was of the essence. The nurse complied silently, reaching down with her right hand to press down on the touchscreen of a small computer console set into the bed at its foot. Immediately, the bed, the gunmetal deck beneath it, the woman, everything faded rapidly to a dull near-darkness, then, suddenly, from its midsts came the technician's skeleton, every bone picked out in brilliant white relief, supremely detailed. He bent forward, peering toward the abdomen. Sure enough, he could see three metal fragments embedded in the flesh between her kidneys. One was fair-sized, and looked jagged, it was likely the cause of the problem. Needless to say the other two had been moved anyway. Suddenly, a dull rumbling from the far-off ship's bow. Another weapons impact. The lights dimmed momentarily before flickering back to full intensity again, but the master surgeon barely even noticed; he was too preoccupied with watching the piece of jagged metal burrow further into the vital flesh around it. The medical bay was equipped with shock dampeners, but even the slightest touch could be critical. He had to get the shrapnel out as soon as possible. He looked up at the junior surgeon. He could see nothing, as there was no X-ray source positioned behind the man, but nonetheless Roshuan was confident that he wouldn't have moved.
"I am about to make the primary insicion. Brace it in position as soon as it is open." With this said, the surgeon set to work immediately, pressing his thumb down on the side button of the laser scalpel to activate it, before looking up again, this time at the nurse. "X-ray off." He said, again briefly, and in a few moments it was indeed off. He blinked twice, and with a gentle whirr of electornics the headset magnified the point just beneath the scalpel to two times normal size. Offering up a silent prayer to whatever divine entities might be watching the ultimately insignificent procedings down in the field hospital of the
Yudachi, Greiner Roshuan made the insicion, the scalpel cutting through the skin effortlessly. Roshuan had performed surgery with metal implements before - all Clan military surgeons were required to be able to, for in some situations, such as total loss of power, they were the only things that could be used - and once more he praised the inventor of the laser scalpel. It not only cauterised the flesh around the insicion as it was made, preventing extra blood loss through necessary cuts, but also did not require sterilising. With the initial cut made, he released pressure from the button, and the brilliant flame of the laser flickered and died. Immediately, the junior surgeon had the magnetic clamps in place, forcing the flesh around the cut open. Greiner nodded in approval before continueing. He had already identified the position of the three pieces of shrapnel, and with his extensive experience of treating shrapnel wounds - the most common, even on starships - he knew the anatomy of the body almost off by heart. Bypassing the healthy kidney, he delved into the flesh beyond - the wound still held open by the clamps. After what seemed like hours more of cutting through the body, layer by layer and piece by piece, he was finally rewarded by the glimmer of metal, stained as it was by blood. "Bullet-remover." He said, again keeping talk to the minimum. The nurse, efficient as trained, immediately procured the powerful electromagnets designed for the removal of bullets or other metal items from wounds. Greiner took the magnet - it was small, no bigger than a pen - and inserted it down into the excavation shaft of sorts that he had created, turning it on where it neared the shrapnel. With a gentle hum of flowing electricity, the magnet flared into life. Immediately, the shrapnel dislodged from its precarious position and attached itself to the surface of the magnet. The surgeon lifted the magnet, still activated, up and out of the open wound, before deactivating it over a small, white ceramic bowl. The piece of shrapnel fell into it, clattering to a halt. At this moment the sliding doors to the medical bay again burst open, and through them was wheeled another casualty, this one screaming at the top of his lungs, his chest a torn and twisted mass of bleeding flesh. Roshuan did not allow himself to be distracted by it, but instead picked up the laser scalpel again, checked his patient's vital signs briefly, and once again leapt into the breach, searching for the other two pieces of shrapnel.
---
Outside, the clash of cruiser and concordat continued. The
Yudachi was outgunned, but as yet its shields had managed to protect the ship and its crew from the tremendous firepower of the mighty Devoran guns. The two ships were engaged in a traditional toe-to-toe duel, with the
Yudachi attempting to use its superior manouevrability to maximum effect, circling around the Concordat rather than simply pummelling it from a stationary position. The Battlestar contented itself to pnderously turn after the smaller and more nimble vessel, firing as it went. Most of its weapons were hitting their mark, but every now and again a shot would go wide, coursing off into the depths of space beyond. Neither vessel was firing its main guns, rather a steady, continuous stream of light Devoran weapons fire, glowing brightly in the void with the energy they contained, flowed from the larger vessel to throw themselves against the front shield arc of the
Yudachi. The main guns of both vessels were between shots - reloading, recharging; the effect was ultimately the same, down time. Time for the crew of both ships to anticipated the next hit, to prepare for it, to dread it. Technicians working frantically to try and keep their rapidly overheating systems in order while the gunners made adjustments to their aim, trying to hit that critical spot identified and wired to them by the sensor operators. Engineers locked deep in the bowels of the ships' engines furiously attempt to squeeze those few kilowatts of extra power out of the generators to strengthen the shields. Sensors operators rooted through the incoming data, looking for damage, looking for loss of system capability, reporting their findings to their officers. A warship at war was a hive of activity, almost a living entity, with the crewmen rushing about within its veins and arteries and organs performing their various, pre-defined functions. And, as with everything in nature, war at space was a case of survivial of the fittest. The ship whose crew functioned according to its pre-set tasks survived. A ship whose crew functioned innefficiently, who did not perform their tasks properly, died, and its crew with it.
The Clan Asanawa ships were ready to begin another exchange of primary gun fire first; there was no warning for the Devorans, other than in a biref energy spike visible on the sensors, then a flash of brilliant light signalling the initial weapons discharge. Immediately, two brilliant red ion beams lance out from the two long, raised firing tubes running along the attack cruiser's topside, searing through the empty darkness toward the enemy ship, seemingly unstoppable, before being halted by the invisible protective sphere of the Devoran vessel's shields. Where struck by the ion beam, the shields flare a brilliant red-white colour, briefly rendering them visible, describing a shining hemisphere of thunder, fire and light. This brilliant display of pyrotechnics throws the battlestar into sharp relief, the various protrusions sticking up from the topside of its hull lighting up, with long, pitch black shadows thrown out across the gunmetal armour plating behind them. Presently, the
Yudachi's mighty Particle Array was also fully charged. The massive cannon, positioned on the cruiser's underside, running down its centre, flashed silently into life, throwing out the radiant white beam of deadly energy that surged forward, through the gap between the still dimly-illuminated ion beam tracers, before also smashing against the Concordat's shields. The effect is different to that of the ion beams. Rather than an energy "spider's web" formed by the ion beams striking the shields, the Particle Array created a single, intense, sudden and short-lived flash of light and radiation, thrown outwards from the point of impact toward the stars with yearning arms, only to die once more within seconds. Eight seconds after the
Yudachi's ion cannons had opened up, the Devoran shields are once more invisible; unseen, but still there. The Concordat has weathered out another round of fire from the undergunned cruiser, and soon its own cannons would come into play...
---
No Dachi watched all of this via the viewscreens, the images once again fed through to the bridge by the mindless camera drones circling the cruiser - two had been lost already, their circuits incinerated by the intense streams of radiation released by the clash of weapon energy upon shield energy. He sighed wearily, peering at another viewscreen showing a wireframe schematic of the
Yudachi. The wires were white - standing out on the black background, but here and there were patches of the diagram where the wires were showing red, with these patches having dark, crimson epicentres. The schematic was showing the stress being experienced by the ship's superstructure frame. The red wires denoted damage; hull integrity was falling, and in several places integrity was approaching critical, particularly on the bow topside of the vessel. He began to run through the ship's capabilities, scratching some of them from the 'functionality certain' list to the 'functionality uncertain' list. That list was, from his point of view, a list of inoperable systems. He could not plan according to a potentially unresponsive system being in a useable state, and so the only option was to plan according to the system being useless. Luckily, judging from the position of the structural weak points according to the diagram, none of the systems were out,
per se, as of yet. However, his intuition wasn't good enough. He rose from his command chair, walking to the front of the circle of raised deck plating on which the seat stood, before turning to face the Sensor Officer, seated as she was in front and to the right of the low-lying podium.
"Sensors, damage and systems functionality report." He said, before once more afixing his gaze to the viewscreen, watching the lumbering shape of the Devoran Concordat, anticipating the glow of charging weapons, the flash of light and energy that could score true and annihalate the
Yudachi completely...
"Front shield arcs are down to 70% across the board, sir, the lateral sensor array is down 10% in strength. The Master Engineer reports that we have lost 5% power to the shields and 5% power to the engines." The Sensor Officer replied, giving the report cleanly and efficiently, the way it should be done. No Dachi turned his head to face her again before nodding.
"Very well. Concentrate our remaining sensor power on the dogfight to give our fighters ample guidance, and on the Concordat's interior. I don't want any of the Guards getting lost in there." He said, not waiting for a response, before pacing back over to the command chair and slumping back into it, hammering out a quick sequence of control imputs on the right armrest's number pad. He began speaking immediately.
"Engineering, I want those shields operating at full power. Take energy away from the engines if you must; we're going nowhere fast at present. Keep the engines charged, though, I want us able to make a quick getaway if our shield strength drops much further." He ordered, speaking to nothing in particular, but rather confident that the microphones concealed at various points in the chair's upholstery would pick the commands up. Sure enough...
"Aye My Lord, forwarding power from the engines to the shields. I'll be sure to keep a good head of steam pent up in the drives." No Dachi wasn't exactly sure of how his ship's engineers would manage to achieve the latter, but he was fully confident they would be able to if the Chief Engineer said they could; No Dachi had repeatedly shown himself to be at best poor and at worse abysmal and physics, but the engineers were all intimately aware of how
their part of the ship - the engines and the generators and the fuel lines and the gigantic air pumps that formed the basis of the life support machine - worked. The shields and sensors were both taken care of, untill the next energy salvo hit home at least, and so No Dachi turned next to the Master Gunner, standing stiffly behind his console, his fingertips at the controls of some of the most powerful weapons ever to have existed. No Dachi turned back to the viewscreen, briefly, trying to think of possible ways around the problem of the Concordat's tremendous shield strength - a problem compounded by the ship's shield regeneration capabiulity - but found none. The
Yudachi's best bet was still to try and keep the crew of the Concordat centred as far as possible on their battle with it, in order to prevent them from getting organised and locking-down the Angel Guards currently blasting their way toward the engine room.
"Master Gunner, concentrate all of our firepower on that front shield arc. Order all batteries to fire as fast as is humanely possible - the more damage we do to that beast, the more they concentrate on us and the less they concentrate on their little...ah, internal difficulties..." He said, before trailing off, absorbed by the merry dance of the fighters on screen, visible only as flickering silver specks swirling and circling eachother, with the occasional brightly coloured spark of weapon energy jumping between them. As he watched, an explosion, seeming miniscule due to the distance between them, winked briefly into life before fading out again...he blinked, suddenly, realising that he'd yet again allowed his mind to wander, before turning again to the Sensor Officer. "Give me a report on the progress of the dogfight out there - I want to know the enemy fighter contingent's strength-" He said, before pausing and turning to the Coms Officer, "Coms, get Commander Yoritomo on the line and ask them the same question; I daresay he's been keeping better track of it all than us."
"At once, sir, it will take a moment to gather the data..." Said the Sensor Officer.
"Aye, sir." Replied the Coms Officer, already hammering the message to the
Hatsuhara into his console. No Dachi, meanwhile, waited for the results of the scan. He did not have to wait long.
"Sir," Began the Sensor Officer, looking up from her console, "we have lost four fighters at a loss of eight pilots. Sensors indicate that the strength of the enemy fighter contingent has been reduced to between twenty and twenty-five percent." No Dachi nodded, before turning expectantly to the Coms Officer. Within two seconds, the man looked up from his own console, ready to report.
"My Lord, the
Hatsuhara's sensor screens show the enemy fighter contingent to be at twenty-four percent of its original strength. They confirm the loss of four of our own fighters. The
Hatsuhara's Flight Controller informs me that the Wing Leaders report an advantageous position over the enemy." Again, No Dachi nodded, time to act.
"Coms, relay the following orders to the
Hatsuhara: half of our remaining fighters are to break engagement with the enemy strike craft immediately and commence fusion bombing of the Concordat's front shield arc. The other half are to destroy the remaining enemy fighter force before joining their comrades. End orders, transmit that immediately. Sensors, watch the inside of that ship carefully and as soon as you see the Angels get into the engine room, inform me. Coms, as soon as we get told of the engines' imminent destruction, order the fighters to cease bombing. Master Gunner, order all batteries to cease fire at the same instant."
"Aye My Lord." Replied the Sensors Officer.
"Yes sir." Acknowledged the Coms Officer in turn.
"Aye, Commander, sir." Came the Master Gunner's reply. No Dachi nodded, before finally looking forward to the Helmsman.
"Helm, keep us circling the Concordat. The moment Sensors gives that report, you are to pull us back and away from the Concordat. You all saw what happened to those ships in the middle that strayed too close to their quarries and got caught in the blast. Now I'm hoping the Concordat's reactors won't go critical on us, but there's always the chance they will. Regardless, go back in after a few minutes to pick the Angels up."
"Yes sir, I'll take us out the moment it happens." Said the Helmsman, keeping his eyes on his controls like any good pilot would. No Dachi nodded before continuing his watch of the viewscreen, continuing to watch the Concordat's heavy guns...
---
Re-posted in full for LH's benefit. It's only 5,000 words long, but then I'll bide my time before bowing head to the likes of Inspectre in order to see if he can
consistently manage posts of that calibre...
