Gundam: Wrath of the Stars IC

[DoctorFaust]

Yuuki had begun her own charge towards the squad of Ragalian mobile suits, but Athrusa's sudden firing forces her to roll away, the g forces once again greying out her vision. She's able to shake it off more quickly this time, and recovers soon enough to have the presence of mind to clip the Shura's shotgun on to the back of its skirt to be able to grab the beam rifle. "Thanks! I guess." Yuuki broadcasts back. "Good luck."

The younger pilot takes a deep breath of her own, and flies on towards the destroyers. Up to this point in the mission, she hasn't been able to find it in her to fire a single shot, and now she's been entrusted with taking down fleet ships on her own.

Still, the mission is well past the point of no return for her, and so as she nears the enemy ships, she redoubles her grip on the controls of the Shura and opens the throttle even wider. Forgoing any sort of subtlety or sneakiness, Yuuki opts to simply plow forward towards the ships and, as soon as she's in range, flush the first of her many magazines of homing missiles at the underside of the destroyer.

Spoiler

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Forcefully attacking:(4d3-5)[2]

[Nova_Eclipse]

Spoiler: Advantage Created

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Athrusa's Diversion - Both destroyers are focused on the Nephilim, giving less priority to other targets.

Athrusa's taunting seems to work, as the flak turrets on both destroyers begin spewing tracers and beams at the winged Gundam. Their sensors must have registered the destruction of the suit wing, because they seem more focused on getting revenge on the Nephilim than trying to intercept the heavily armed Gundam that suddenly appears below them, firing missiles.

Spoiler: Defense

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Quickly trying to outmaneuver some of the missiles (4d3-7)[-1] Success With Style - Yuuki may reduce damage by one to create a boost, if you'd like.

Too late, the first destroyer catches the inbound suit on its sensors, and too late, the destroyer's thrusters flare as it tries, unsuccessfully, to avoid the first salvo. Explosions light across the entire underside of the enemy ship, but as the debris that spalls off clears, the Shura's sensors show that the damage the ship took was light. Still, something must have hit one of its I-field generators, because the field strength seems to have diminished somewhat. Not enough for the Vengeance's own beam shots to penetrate yet, but enough to at least provide a glimmer of hope. Better still, with a little fiddling with her targeting systems, Yuuki should be able to set her missiles to home on the generator's signal. Something to try for her next pass, perhaps. A bit of structural analysis pops up on her tactical display along with the signal strength info: the missiles, while not seeming to have caused a tremendous amount of damage, seem to have broken the cohesion of the ship's armor. Her next attack may be all the more devastating, provided she can strike one of the weakened areas.

Spoiler: Boost Created

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Compromised Armor Integrity - Destroyer 1

Athrusa, unfortunately, may not be feeling particularly hopeful, as both ships have focused their attention on her, and it will take their gunners a moment to refocus on Yuuki now that she's appeared and made sure she's a threat to them.

[Nova_Eclipse]

Spoiler: Destroyer Actions

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Both are forcefully attacking Athrusa this turn, so she'll have two defenses to make.
Destroyer 1 Attack: (4d3-5)[2]
Destroyer 2 Attack: (4d3-5)[2]
Hmmm...perhaps I should have put this in the OOC thread, but I think it's easier to follow here.

[Merilan]

Spoiler: Reaction

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Quickly defending:
Destroyer 1 (4d3-5)[2] - Tie
Destroyer 2 (4d3-5)[3] - Success

Athrusa's eyes widen a touch in the wake of the Shura's explosives; she was nearly in awe of what that mobile suit was just capable of -- it wasn't something she'd ever seen before. But it wasn't yet enough -- and there's a wince from Athrusa as she exclaims, "Keep it up, Yuuki, it's working! We need more physical payload on their I-field generators!"

She's struggling herself, as the cockpit starts to rock -- the Nephilim may be ancient, but there's something about its chassis that causes it to hold together even as their gunners open fire -- a solid round shell explodes on the surface of the Nephilim's shoulder armor, blowing away a small chunk of it and more critically throwing her off-balance. Fortunately, her speed was such that she could still hold together and avoid the second volley...

... up until the cockpit lights start to flicker, Athrusa's eyes widening further. Connection errors and other kinds of issues start to flare throughout her screen, and there's a wince as she struggles with her flightsticks. "Not now...!" she hisses. Even if the Gundanium armor had held, something more fragile had been possibly knocked loose underneath. She opens her panel computer to start diagnostics, even knowing her life could possibly be on the line.

Spoiler: Action

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To spice things up, I'm going to compel Heavily Damaged on myself to illustrate that the Nephilim's a patchwork machine right now, much like Athrusa herself is.

[Nova_Eclipse]

Spoiler: Action Outcome

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Compel Accepted - You gain a fate point!

Diagnostics take a moment, and a few of the connection errors go away in that time. When the damage report comes back, the news is...marginal, at best. The impact severed several connections in the suit's shoulders. Most of them can be rerouted, but suit's AI is having trouble discerning where the connections should be made. A simple fix for Athrusa, but one that will take precious seconds as she has to manually select each reroute. Once that's done, the real damage appears: the suit's right wing binder actuators are locked. Shell fragments are stuck in the joints. There's a chance Athrusa may be able to either knock them loose, or perform some other workaround that will give her the maneuverability she so desperately needs back, but if something isn't done, she may need to fall back to the asteroid field in order to avoid being destroyed.

Spoiler: Overcome Required

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Athrusa will need to roll to overcome Wing Damage. This action will take her turn for this round.

[Merilan]

Diagnostics take a moment, and a few of the connection errors go away in that time. When the damage report comes back, the news is...marginal, at best. The impact severed several connections in the suit's shoulders. Most of them can be rerouted, but suit's AI is having trouble discerning where the connections should be made. A simple fix for Athrusa, but one that will take precious seconds as she has to manually select each reroute. Once that's done, the real damage appears: the suit's right wing binder actuators are locked. Shell fragments are stuck in the joints. There's a chance Athrusa may be able to either knock them loose, or perform some other workaround that will give her the maneuverability she so desperately needs back, but if something isn't done, she may need to fall back to the asteroid field in order to avoid being destroyed.

Athrusa grimaces as her eyes keep flitting back and forth between the radar depicting the battle and her own problems; fortunately, her own heightened senses as a Ragalian, no matter how fake, helps her in keeping things in check. She grimaces further as she reworks the AI and overrides the connections to manual, and-- gawks at the wing binder reports. "You've got to be kidding me...!"

She bites her lip as she thinks rapidly, heart thumping -- she pedals by instinct to at least help her suit glide so that she's not a stationary target, but the destroyer crews are going to be noticing that her movements are slowing and becoming far more predictable.

"Reroute sub-power to the release mechanism, override the safety and unhinge the coupling..." she's ranting to herself as she works, more out of habit than anything else. Her plan is to essentially unbuckle the connection from the wing binder to the main suit -- which carries the risk of the wing just flying off into space on its own, but hopefully it'll give room for the debris to get loose.

Spoiler: Action

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Cleverly overcoming the problem. (4d3-7)[1]

[Nova_Eclipse]

Spoiler: Action Outcome

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Failure: Either the binder doesn't unjam, or it does, but the suit will take some form of damage. I'll add flavor once I know what you'd like to do.

[DoctorFaust]

"Goddamnit," Yuuki hisses. "Tell me when you get it fixed, Athrusa. I'm going in closer."

True to her word, Yuuki continues hurtling towards the destroyers, not letting up on the throttle at all until she's practically within the I-field. Then, and only then, does she open up with her gatling gun, sending a veritable hail of fire at the already mangled sections of armor around the destroyer's I-field generator.

Spoiler

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I'm invoking the boost for a +2, and Forcefully attacking.

[rol]4d3-3[/roll]

[Nova_Eclipse]

Athrusa's quick thinking manages to free the wing binder joint, but the release mechanism doesn't trigger gradually like it's supposed to, instead wrenching open, then snapping shut. Although she doesn't lose the wing, the improper motion manages to damage some of the control links. Unfortunately, these links can't be rerouted around, and it will force the suit to a lower thruster output to remain balanced. Although she hasn't lost any maneuverability, she has lost some of the Gundam's already limited speed capabilities. Even the Shura can now outpace her in straight line acceleration.

Spoiler: Major Consequence

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Imbalanced Thruster Output - The Nephilim's right wing binder's control links are damaged, allowing the suit greater thrust from its left wing than from its right. The suit's speed must be decreased to keep it controllable in flight.

The destroyer the Shura has focused on tries desperately to roll away from the mobile suit, its engines and thrusters flaring, but it is much larger and heavier, and doing so is only a temporary measure at best, meant to delay the suit until its flak turrets can be brought to bear against the Gundam, since its mobile suit escort is either occupied in the asteroid field or has been destroyed.

Spoiler: Defense

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Quickly defending: (4d3-7)[0]
Success with Style - You may reduce damage by 1 to create a boost. Doing so won't affect the outcome below.

The Shura's beam gatling rips through the destroyer's already weakened armor, destroying the I-field generator entirely. A massive explosion rips out from underneath the blister where the generator lies, and the ship rocks as the hull is breached in multiple locations. Several thrusters spit and then sputter out, and one of the ship's engines flares and then dies. Clearly, the Shura has managed to damage something more critical than just its shield generator. But obviously, not critical enough, as the ship's remaining flak turrets open fire on the Shura. It might be down, but it's not out of the fight yet. Its partner continues to fire on the Nephilim, hoping to take the damaged suit out completely.

Spoiler: Destroyer Actions

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Destroyer 1 Attack on the Shura: (4d3-5)[2]
Destroyer 2 Attack on the Nephilim: (4d3-5)[2]

[Merilan]

Athrusa hears that awful grinding noise and knows instinctively that it isn't a great thing-- but she has thrust now, and that's all that matters; the output's all messed up, but it's enough for her to haphazardly swerve out of the way. She's not in a great position, still, with little cover. "It'll do for now, Yuuki! Just keep the pressure on them!"

Spoiler: Reaction

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Athrusa has Heightened Awareness, which will help her against the Destroyer's fire even when her suit's been damaged! (4d3-3)[2]

And a good thing, too! That was a tie, so the Destroyer gets a boost against her next...

[Nova_Eclipse]

A beam bounces off of the cloak the Vengeance's engineers hastily fitted to the Nephilim, but none of the other shots connect, thankfully enough. The destroyer now has a better picture of the old suit's weaknesses, and as a result, will have a better solution once their weapons recharge.

Spoiler: Destroyer Boost

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Enhanced Firing Solution

Spoiler: OOC

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Will post an outcome for Yuuki once I know how she's forcefully defending.

[DoctorFaust]

Trusting to the armor of the Shura, Yuuki presses forward into the zone of fire and simply lets the flak rounds bounce off her mobile suit. The symphony of shrapnel is by no means reassuring, but she's stared at enough cross-sections of the stuff standing between her and space that she's sure nothing this light will get through them.

[Nova_Eclipse]

Several rounds bounce off the Shura's heavy plates, and a low-power beam spaks off harmlessly as well. The wounded destroyer may not be able to muster up the power to pierce the suit's heavy armor at this point, but a lucky shot might still do something, and if nothing else, perhaps it can worry the Shura's pilot enough to get her to back off.

Spoiler: Destroyer Boost

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Desperation Tactics

Spoiler: OOC

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It's now Athrusa's turn, for reference.

[Merilan]

Athrusa knew she couldn't be on the defensive forever -- the way she's off-balance, she knows the destroyer's got to be getting ideas on how to hit her more efficiently. The Nephilim's present arm raises that Daughtress' beam rifle and takes aim -- and fires off several snapshots as she starts to glide in an opposing direction to pincer them.

The I-field is still up -- her beam weapon is going to do nothing to the destroyer. But that's not her target -- her target's the hardpoints that by their nature would have to be extended past the field lest it interfere with their own beam fire.

Spoiler: Action

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Athrusa is attempting to Forcefully Overcome Enhanced Targeting Solution by attempting to inflict damage on their guns: (4d3-6)[1]

[Nova_Eclipse]

The destroyer's I-field holds against the beams, but its turrets may not be so lucky. It takes the enemy captain a moment to determine what Athrusa's trying to accomplish, before ordering the ship's I-field expanded, causing its turrets to go silent for a moment. It might not be much, but perhaps it will give Athrusa the room she needs to maneuver.

Spoiler: Defense

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Cleverly trying to deflect the shots: (4d3-8)[-1]

Unfortunately, the required break in firing breaks the destroyer's Enhanced Firing Solution, and better still, Athrusa manages to destroy a couple of the ship's flak cannons. Not enough to protect her from its inevitable counter-attack, but at least that counter-attack won't have the added punch a converged, focused salvo might. For the moment she can breathe a bit easier.

[DoctorFaust]

Pushing through the destroyer's field of fire, as nerve-wracking as it was, finally gives Yuuki a clear line of sight on the second ship. Not one to give up this late in the game, she flushes a second magazine of missiles at it, hoping to saturate the destroyer's defences.

Spoiler

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Forceful attack: (4d3-5)[2]

[Nova_Eclipse]

The second destroyer's commander seems to be focused on trying to handle the Nephilim, and as such, isn't really focused on the Shura. As such, the ship doesn't seem to mount a defense to the incoming missiles until it's almost too late, and even that is the wrong one, emergency evasive maneuvers, rather than any attempt to shoot some of the ordnance down.

Spoiler: Defense

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Quickly trying to dodge out of the way: (4d3-7)[1]

Their application of the wrong defense works to their detriment as the Shura's missiles detonate in swaths over the entire ship. The impacts don't seem to have done as much damage to this ship, however. Perhaps its armor is in a bit better shape than the first ship the Shura attacked. However, their day is about to get worse before it gets better.

A massive beam lances out from the Vengeance at the heavily damaged destroyer, intersecting the ship, before a massive explosion rips the hull in half and scatters debris everywhere. The Vengeance itself has made it to the middle of Zone B, and is slowly picking up speed. A moment later, a familiar voice comes over the comm.

"You two okay?" Captain Brighton's voice is worried, but if the Gundams look towards the carrier, they'll see the red suit streaking towards them. "I'm on my way now to help, hang in there!"

The remaining destroyer is going to have a hard time of it if this keeps up. They break off of their pursuit of the Nephilim, turning away from the Vengeance, before beginning to accelerate away. It will take them a turn to manage this maneuver, however, and their broadside will be exposed to the carrier while they do it. If Yuuki can manage to bring down the I-field in the next few moments, the Vengeance should be able to destroy the ship with little effort.

Spoiler: OOC

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It's now Athrusa's turn; maneuvering is the destroyer's action.

[Merilan]

Athrusa holds steady as she listens in to Captain Brighton's voice. "Y-yeah... had some balancer trouble, but I managed to enact field repairs... thanks, Captain."

She watches the destroyer turn, and a plan quickly formulates in her mind -- and she rushes the Nephilim up as she matches the angle her suit's faster at to its manuever. Her goal isn't the I-field as they might be starting to guess... it's their AMBAC thrusters, which they'll need to properly reposition in space. If she can take out some of the side verniers on the battleship, it'll seriously throw off its balance and, hopefully, leave it in a position where it's a sitting duck to the Vengeance.

And for this purpose -- she uses the machine cannons, which latch open and spray fire along the side of the craft as she draws near.

Spoiler: Action

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Quickly Attacking with the machine cannons! (4d3-5)[2]

[Nova_Eclipse]

The destroyer is unable to avoid the fire, and all it can do at this point is try and divert Athrusa from her primary targets through the use of its own flak turrets. However, there aren't many of them covering that area of the ship. It's apparent they're more just trying to scare her away than do real damage at this point.

Spoiler: Defense

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Flashily trying to scare Athrusa away: (4d3-6)[5]

The desperation in their tactics is evident, as the small number of turrets nonetheless manages to lay down an impressive field of fire that holds Athrusa at bay. The destroyer's captain is committed to retreat now, and he intends to make it a fighting one. Still, the near miss has redoubled his staff's efforts, and the destroyer's engines flare as they push the ship to its limit.

Spoiler: Boost

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Engines to 120%!

[DoctorFaust]

"You can't escape!"

The Shura drops the beam rifle taken from the Ragalian mecha and pulls out its shotgun. Streaking towards the destroyer, Yuuki opens up with both of her long guns, pouring laser fire at the retreating ship. As she flies, the chest armor of the Shura pops open, revealing a pair of miniaturised gatling guns that join their with the lasers, which are followed quickly in turn by the shoulder mounted cannons and vulcans.

Spoiler

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I'm going to spend a Fate point to invoke Brick Wall of Death and get a +2 to attack. This sort of concentrated overwhelming firepower is almost exactly what the suit was designed for, after all.

Forceful attack:(4d3-3)[5]

[Nova_Eclipse]

The destroyer tries desperately to roll while it's turning, to bring its I-field generator out of the Shura's line of fire, but they weren't expecting it to bring quite so much firepower at once to bear, and the maneuver may not be successful in doing so.

Spoiler: Defense

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Trying to Quickly maneuver: (4d3-6)[2]

Success with Style: You may reduce damage by one to gain a boost.

Unfortunately for the destroyer, the sudden maneuver isn't enough. The Shura's sheer firepower smashes through the ship's armor, destroying its I-field generator. A moment later, a red suit flashes past the Nephilim, and rains a hail of beam fire from its torso onto the destroyer, before it can mount any sort of counter-attack, destroying a number of its remaining turrets, before arcing back towards the asteroid field and the old, damaged suit.

"Good work, both of you, the Vengeance should be able to handle it from here. Time to clear out and rendezvous with the ship."

True to her word, there's an ominous glow coming from the bottom of the Vengeance. Those familiar with this class of carrier might know that the ship's hyper-megaparticle cannons are mounted there. It seems the Vengeance intends to end this battle with one final shot.

[Merilan]

There's a relieved little sigh as Athrusa watches the Sazabi charge past, blasting away at its turrets to accompany the Shura's awe-inspiring hail of destruction. "Thank you, Captain..." She drifts away as best as she's capable of, unwanting to be caught in the Vengeance's own hail of fire. "And good work, Yuuki...!"

[DoctorFaust]

The Shura spirals off from its attack run on the destroyer, getting well clear of the Vengeance's firing line. "You did most of the work, Athrusa. I just came in at the end and stole the big ones," Yuuki replies, forcing her voice to stay light. As she passes the damaged mecha, she snags it under the arms, her own more powerful thrusters carrying them both forward. "Now let's get back to the ship."

[Nova_Eclipse]

The Sazabi forms up with both the Shura and the Nephilim, its mono-eye shifting over to the two suits as they enter the asteroid field once more. As soon as they're out of the blast radius, the Vengeance fires, twin violet beams of power that lance straight through the enemy destroyer, shearing it into thirds an instant before it explodes violently, vaporizing most of its wreckage and leaving the carrier a clear path to exit the asteroid field.

"What's wrong with the Nephilim, Athrusa?" Captain Brighton's voice is concerned, but she seems undistracted by the fireworks show being put on by the ships.

[Merilan]

Athrusa listens in on the comms, blushing a little as Yuuki compliments her. "Yeah, let's go back..." Her eyes widen as she watches the power of the mega particle cannons just -erupt- straight through the asteroid field and consume the destroyers... wow...

"One of the wing binders jammed, I had to dislocate it to get it to move again-- I'd be moving in circles otherwise," Athrusa comments, her voice starting to get a bit haggard. Now that the immediate threat was gone, the adrenaline was starting to wear off, and her body's starting to feel less numb and more pained. It's probably not long before she needs to return to her medbay.

[DoctorFaust]

"Does your suit know how bad the damage was?" Yuuki asks. She increases the magnification on the Shura's viewport, looking down at the binder connections. "Depending on what got broken, we might be able to put a fix together before the next sortie."

[Nova_Eclipse]

"I see," Captain Brighton says, before Sazabi's optics change focus once more to the Vengeance, as they near the ship. "We can't linger here very long, and we're going to need to sortie again quickly, but the Nephilim needs repairs. I'll make sure there's a team waiting when you two land. Maybe they can rig something quickly. How's your ammo, Yuuki?"

[Merilan]

"I'm not a full time mechanic like you, Yuuki, but I'm used to running diagnostic reports so I can give the mechanics an idea of what's broken..." Athrusa replies. She looks towards the Vengeance again, and says, "I also grabbed a beam rifle from the enemy, since the Nephilim's low on usable weaponry... it'll give us more stuff to work with."

[DoctorFaust]

A few commands bring up a diagnostic readout of the Shura. "Um. I'm down to about half of my ship-killer missiles, but the smaller ones are all full. The guns are reading about half capacity."

The readout is quickly dismissed, and Yuuki returns her attention to the Nephilim. "I know my team had a few cases of mobile suit rated hydraulic and electrical cabling. If you're radioing ahead, you could probably get my Dad to help scare up supplies."

[Nova_Eclipse]

There's a short pause, before Captain Brighton comes back onto the comm.

"Good work, both of you. We're clear to land. Yuuki, I need you to stay on stand-by with me. The fuel teams are going to refuel us on the catapults while we clear the asteroid field. Everyone else is going to work on the Nephilim and try and get that binder fixed. Athrusa, you'll be pulled into the hangar for that; while you're waiting, the med team is going to check your status. We've only got a few minutes before we need to micro-jump to the system exit point. Our battle plan may change if we can't get the Nephilim repaired quickly, so I need both of you to be flexible, ok?"

The Vengeance looms large ahead; the Sazabi fires its thrusters, slowing as it arcs in towards a landing on one of the aft recovery decks. The other suits should start making their own landing preparations now.