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"18 hours till contact with the Falmel sir. Enemy fleet will reach firing velocity in 40 minutes." The crew of the Admiral Hipper was nervous. They'd lost most of their forces, and this far into EF territory there wasn't much around to resupply them. "Can we outrun them?" Anton asked, looking at the viewscreen. Five Salamis class ships, one heavily modified, were bearing down on their position, the damaged remains of the Nasr fleet attempting to make a break for Zeon controlled Earth Orbit. "We can sir, the Hipper is much faster than a Salamis class ship, but both the Vindicator and the Prinz Eugen are reporting massive engine damage." came the response. Anton nodded, thought for a few moments, and then looked at his communications officer. "Open a channel to the fleet." After a secure communications link was brought up to the rest of the Vereschagin fleet, Anton stood up on his bridge, laying out his plan. "We've lost enough good men in this operation already. What crewmen we can get aboard the Admiral Tipper we will do so, and then it will break away for Odessa. The Vindicator and Prinz Eugen will stay behind to slow the enemy approach. Anybody who wants to volunteer to fight off the enemy is welcome to stay, for death and glory." The first hand to be raised was that of John Church. Many people followed by cheering their responses, pilots and gunnery crewmembers alike. The spirit of Zeon was with them, and with any luck it would carry them the day. At that moment Carver floated into the bridge of the Admiral Hipper, saluting Vereschagin. "Requesting permission to transfer my Rick Dom to the vindicator sir." Anton turned and saluted back. "Negative Darius. You're my best pilot, I need you here on the Hipper in case of emergency." Darius looked about to protest for a moment, but then tightened his salute. "Sir! Understood sir!" ~ The Swordfish was out ahead of the other ships, the eight sub-engines tacked onto the back of the Fuji class ship proving their worth. Captain Malendez was eager to take the front, and show the Nasr fleet that he wasn't the "vulture" they had made him out to be. Anyone Cherish associated with seemed to earn a bad reputation, but that was for good reason really. "Gentlemen, lets get our pilots suited up, they seem to be onto us." Melendez ordered, putting on the helmet to his space suit. Arcaile responded, the ships on an open comm with each other. "Don't slow down, anybody. We're going to break straight through them and tear them apart! This is for all the good men that died yesterday!" Arcaile felt himself half wishing that reporter bitch was around to hear that sort of a line. "Maintain vigilance!" added Melendez, and then quickly turned off the comm, looking at his crew. "Where the hell is she?" Cherish Woods was on board the Valley Forge, and for christs sake, who wouldn't be? Her right hand slipped down the deckhands vigorously loosened skirt, the two pulling together closer in their embrace. The deckhand, a very petite blonde, let out a sigh as Cherish began to explore, the redhead taking her free hand to pull her lovers head back by the hair, giving her a sharp, but not too sharp, bite on the neck. Just then, Woods cellphone rang for the seventh time. The seventh. Cherish sighed and pushed the girl away, scarcely even looking at her as she zipped up her shirt. Stupid Zeon, they ruined everything. Dani and David were side by side, floating through space ahead of the fleet. Despite boths willingness to harass each other, they'd become good friends at this point. The GM Juggler, fully armed and armored to the teeth, made Davids GM E look a little sad in comparison, but both were good pilots, ready to prove themselves. "You going to let me down, Princess?" Renault asked, checking his equipment. He'd brought a sizable number of grenades for this engagement. Couldn't take out ships without a lot of grenades. "Of course gimpy. I'm always ready for anything the MAF can throw at me." said Dani, a little overconfidant. He'd been practicing, and despite a few bad headaches and a lot of painkillers, he'd finally gotten the grip of the Jugglers psycommu system. Taking his hands off the Jugglers controls, he concentrated, the two ball bits detaching from their sponsons and moving out to his right and left. About five minutes after that, Nolan launched from the Swordfish, looking at flight after flight of Saberfish as they clustered around the Fuji class ship. Thirty one fighters. A huge number, most deployed from the slower Charon, with Cherish in her brand new Saberfish II leading the charge. It wasn't much of an improvement, slightly smaller but with the same thruster intake, and a re-done armament designed to fight mobile suits instead of battleships. Nolans GM Light Armor put it to shame, and the man whistled softly to himself as he pushed his thrusters to the max, jetting forward at a speed that even Dani's GM Juggler wouldn't be able to match. "Have the balls deployed to protect the fleet. They have a lot of veteran pilots and we don't know how many mobile suits they have left." Altecha Chan said, surveying the battlefield from the Valley Forge. He had been reassigned, this new assignment was a little... Interesting, but he wanted to prove his girls could do the job. "I want Candice's unit to stay in the back as well. Have her babysit Melendez if he wants to be first so bad." Arcaile responded. Candice voiced her understanding, her GM E boosting forward from the fleet and landing on the deck of the Swordfish. Candice wasn't too much of a fighter, although she would when she had to. She liked fleet defense a little better than pushing ahead. Cherish Woods, Ro's polar opposite, decided she absolutely had to beat Nolan to the chase. Pushing his throttle to 100%, the Saberfish II rocketed ahead of the rest of the units. "Cherish, get the hell back here, you're going to run out of fuel!" Melendez came in on the comm, angry as ever. Woods looked up at the huge external fuel-cells mounted on top of her fighter and laughed. "Man, I didn't realise this fight was going to last THAT long." ~ The defenses of the Prinz Eugen and the Vindicator were a little ragtag. John Church was leading the defense from the Vindicators Komusai capsule, the ships controls wired into the Komusai's display. They wouldn't be able to aim quite as well, but at least the skeleton crew could all fit inside the capsule, since Church's heavily damaged mobile suit had been hastily moved to the Hipper. They had eleven Zakus, including Bertholds lightly damaged Zaku Kai and the single remaining Zaku II HMT. Ryu was also defending the retreat line in the Val Varo, which had been given some hasty repairs, and despite quite a few holes had all its systems functioning. The Prinz Eugen had only a skeleton bridge crew left. It was severely damaged, and was not expected to make it out of the battle. Stopping their engine burn, the two battleships started to turn around, mobile suits boosting towards each other on both sides. Just before the battle began a hail of missiles shot forward from the EF fleet, largely missing their targets. However, with such a pre-set trajectory on the part of the Zeon ships, it wouldn't be long before the Salamis class ships corrected their barrage. The mobile suits on both sides connected in a quick, and bloody fray. Beam fire from Nolan, as well as a hail of 90mm shells from the 7 GM E's took down four Zakus almost instantly. The enemy MS, despite their veteran and well trained pilots, had difficulty tagging the high mobility Federal suits. Berthold pushed one of the Swordfish's GMs into a bad position and finished it off with his machinegun mounted grenade, and Ryu scored a good hit with the Val Varo's MPC, frying another unit. David found the Zaku II HMT, encircling it as both pilots scored some superficial damage on each other with their rifles. As Renaults clip emptied, he paused for a moment, looking to reload his ammunition, and the R1 Zaku moved in for the kill. Reaching behind the GM E's shield, Renaults unit tossed a primed grenade at the Zaku, the resulting explosion destroying the MS-06. Nolan had a bit of bad luck. He destroyed a second Zaku with his light beam rifle, but found himself quickly running out of rounds. Unable to conserve quite so heavily against the trained Zeon pilots, he ran out of ammo just as one Zaku II flew past him, cutting off his suits leg with its heat hawk. This lone bogey broke through the Federal MS defense, taking out a pair of Saberfish with its machinegun as it zipped past, just as a missile destroyed one of its arms. Coming up on the bridge of the Swordfish, it ignored AA fire as the pilot attempted to ram the ship, but it was summarily destroyed, Candice's beam saber struck through the cockpit. Danyan quickly found the most dangerous adversary in the group, and decided to take him on. Ryu's Val Varo swerved to one side, dodging fire from the Jugglers beam gun, and countered with AA beam fire and a spread of missiles. Dani dodged expertly, sixth sense telling him where the beams would be just before they landed. He came up on the underside of the Val Varos hull when it dropped a pair of red blobs, which opened up on either side of the Juggler and started frying it with an intense electrical charge, the additional armor of the GM doing nothing to block the attack. Dani struggled, attempting to move his mobile suit as warning lights started popping up all over his display. Ryu swerved the red mobile armor around in a tight spin, his beak-mounted MPC opening to deliver the finishing shot. But as it did four mega particle streams came out of nowhere, ball bits destroying the leaders and freeing Jhouti from the electric prison. The GM aimed its beam gun at the Val Varo, Ryu firing quickly and then swerving to one side. Left! Danyan didn't even pull the trigger, the Juggler strafing to dodge the particle cannon as it aimed, carefully moving the beam gun to where the Val Varo was about to be. Dani fired, the beam rifle shooting straight through the Val Varo's reactor, it and Ryu going up in a monstrous explosion. "All ships, fire!" ordered captain Malendez, the Swordfish launching its barrage seconds before the rest of the fleet. The Vindicator and Prinz Eugen responded in kind, a sea of missiles and particle beams lighting up the sky. The Prinz Eugen was struck several blows, exploding in a ball of pink gas, while the Vindicator lost its other engine. In return, the Horatio took several shots from the Vindicators MPCs, but was not out of the fight, and the Valley Forge took some frontal damage from the Prinz Eugens remaining missile launcher. "Launch the Komusai, we're dead the next chance they get to fire." Church exclaimed, giving the signal to his weapons officer. Two missiles ejected from the Vindicators anti-ship missile bays, bursting into a cloud of sparkling orange particles as the Komusai shot out from the ships front, turned around and blasted away. Nolan and Dani both attempted to tag it as it escaped, but their beams dissipated harmlessly as they went through the orange cloud. A few seconds later the cloud dispersed, a broadside from the Nasr Fleet causing the Vindicator to explode outright. Stulinger caught up to the Komusai quickly, his Zaku Kai grabbing on to the thing as it sped away. Only one member of the EFSF hadn't assisted in destroying the two ships, Chief Petty Officer Cherish Woods completely ignoring the fray as she blasted straight for the Admiral Hipper. She dodged a few machinegun shells by the now trailing Komusai, and launched off a pair of missiles, the warheads destroying the impromptu minefield created by the Hippers minelayer Zaku. A small barrage of 40mm shells pushed the Zaku II E out of her path as she kept her throttle at full, going on almost a suicide course for the enemy battleship. "Come on come on come on..." Woods mumbled to herself. She launched her sole anti-ship missile just as the first of her external fuel tanks broke off, the warhead screaming straight for the Hippers engines. It would have hit too, had it not been destroyed by a 360mm shell from Carvers Rick Dom. A second bazooka shell forced Cherish to pan left, the small fighter and the damaged mobile suit circling around each other for a moment. Cherish wasn't quite used to the way her new fighter was handling, but the missing arm and thruster damage on Carvers Rick Dom, combined with Woods desire to burn as much fuel as possible as fast as possible, allowed her to break from Carvers sights after a few seconds, coming back onto the Hipper just long enough to target it with the rest of her missiles. Anton had the one remaining turret on the Hipper fire in kind, Cherish pulling up ever so slightly as she let forth her barrage. Ten missiles connected with the engine section of the Tivvay, as its MPCs warped and buckled the rear armor of the Saberfish II. Unfortunately for Cherish, her new missiles seemed to do less than adequete damage to the Tivvays engine array. "I guess they are smaller warheads. Stupid engineers." sighed Cherish. Now damaged and unable to maintain her persuit, she turned her fighter around, rocketing back towards the Swordfish. Danyan Jhouti: 4 days damage, 11 VP gained, 1 NT gained Arcaile Nasr: No damage, 12 VP gained Altecha Chan: lightly damaged, 12 VP gained Cherish Woods: 3 days damage, 11 VP gained, Attacker specialization gained David Renault: 2 days damage, 12 VP gained Candice Ro: No damage, 12 VP gained Nolan Harkin: 3 days damage, 12 VP gained Anton Vereschagin: No damage, 10/2 VP gained Darius Carver: Damage nulled, 9/2 VP gained Berthold Stulinger: Damage nulled, 10/2 VP gained Ryu Hazuki: Dead 7 days, 9/2 VP gained John Church: No damage, 9/2 VP gained |