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The Horseman's Banquet slid through space about 2 days away from earth. Her crew welcomed the calm sea of stars. As they lounged in the comfort of their ship, none of them bothered to think that even space could feel too quiet. Out in the vast cold empty of space, Samuel Riley's Rick Dom waited. He could see the Banquet in the distance, and felt like playing a bit. "Well, lets have a little fun." He said, kicking in the thrusters and making a screaming pass at the freighter, spraying ammunition in it's direction, but strangely not making a hit. Inside the Banquet, explosions from near-miss bazooka rounds rocked the small ship, and tracer shot mixed into it's shotgun shells made frightening bright red sprays across the view-screen. Emptying his bazooka, and out of rounds for the shotgun as well, Riley moved in close to the bridge of the ship, reaching down to his heat hawk as he watched the bridge crew shuddered in horror. He paused, chuckled, and raised the mobile suit's hand, extending the forefinger and making the shape of a gun as he found their frequency. "Bang!" He said, backing up and firing an extremely low power blast from his suit's scattering beam gun, serving only to blind his playthings while he blasted past them, leaving them to wonder just what would happen next. "That Bastard! He was just toying with us!" Mahara Villina slammed her fist on the armrest of the captain's chair, everyone on the bridge now more frightened of her than any number of mysterious Rick Doms. Samuel Riley: 5 VP Gained, Repairing 0+1 Mahara Villina: 4 VP Gained, No Damage "Course bearing 3.3. Plus/minus .02 degrees of lateral indeterminability. Particle scattering system, passive mode." Nadia flipped another switch, releasing another small stream of Minovsky particles. The particle reserves' overflow in passive mode was still sufficient to somewhat cloak the Mobile Suit, but the dispersal system didn't exert any gyroscopic disturbances. The MPSET continued along its course, and one of the tertiary monitors (small, but they displayed some useful information) embedded in a structural pylon read, "0.5g." Nadia wasn't far from the Lucifer's Fury, they were set to convene in less than 45 minutes. She zoomed in on the distant void, shimmering velvet and blurry stars a tell-tale sign of thick Minovsky particle clouds. All it meant was that Nadia couldn't see the Fury. She sighed. "Any minute now, any minute now." Lieutenant Foley drifted alongside the Duke, Kai Nanaki's Salamis; they were a new and welcome edition to the Damocles stringent. The GM Command had taken advantage of the Salamis's acceleration to reserve fuel for their ambush, and after riding along the battleship, he pondered on the physics of space travel; the way his MS now seemingly floated along with the cruising Salamis without using any thrust was a truly interesting thing, unless you took it for granted like so many Spacenoids might. A small, blue, reaching light grew from maneuvering motors arranged along the Salamis's sides, and it slowly turned 90 degrees while coasting along its course. The mega particle cannons quivered, testing their mobility and targeting systems. Lieutenant Foley noticed the turn and tried to radio the Duke, but odd bursts of radio static rose and fell, distorting any of his attempts to hail the ship. Finally, one of the MS's apogee motors burned low and gently, pushing the GM's hand against the bridge's armor. "Visual contact confirmed, Cap'n?" Lieutenant Foley inquired, already double-checking his combat systems. "We tried signaling you, but the Minovsky interference seems to be surprisingly severe along this vector. We didn't bother with visual communication; I thought the ship turning would be signal enough." Foley gave a waving salute with his fingers, obviously not for anyone's benefit but his own. He fired his GM's main thrusters and his acceleration quickly climbed, until the Duke seemed like it was slowly shrinking behind him. Ten seconds. A speck of dust seemed to grow to the size of a stone instantly out of that blurry horizon. (The other Zakus approached, Nadia, signaling they were beginning a counterassault.) Five seconds. Bursts of machine gun fire slipped past the GM Command, tracers streaking by like streetlights on the side of a highway. (The reinforcements boosted away from Nadia, escaping the breadth of the annoying GM's sight.) Three seconds. The GM let fire with its own weapon, a beam gun releasing Minovsky particle projectiles. (The other Zakus flanked the GM and prepared to fire.) One Second. The Zaku boosted along its lateral axis, strafing around the GM and seemingly dodging fire that wasn't there, or wasn't there yet...(Nadia maneuvered out of the Zakus' targeting line and let them take care of the rest. "Good luck!" She called over the radio, not knowing whether they could even hear her or not. She turned around to accelerate in the Fury's direction, hoping she had enough fuel to slow down after she got going.) Zero seconds. Foley shouted. "BOLLOCKS! Bollocks bollocks bollocks!" His manipulators wrapped around a beam saber as he dodged a stream of DU rounds, and kicked off a charging Zaku towards one of its companions. He drew the beam saber, and as if on command, a barrage of missiles screamed past, a fitting salute to the bisected Zaku's pilot. Dren frowned. His fleet was still feeling the hurt from the last assault they faced, and now the remainders had reinforced themselves and came to give support to the Lucifer's Fury. "We shall provide support for the ship, men. Continue your barrage. Woo." Nadia could finally see the Lucifer's Fury, and she tapped her fingers on the throttle, still not certain whether the MPSET could make the landing while running on fumes. It'll have to! She bit her lip as the Mobile Suit went in fast, an arrestor line snapping after stretching to breaking point to slow her. No one was hurt, except for the poor arrestor line. It died. "Continue to support Captain Beria," Dren repeated flatly, "or there will be no crazy after-parties from now on. And I mean it." Captain Nanaki, meanwhile, held strong, staggering his MPC fire to intercept as many of the hurtling missiles as possible. Explosions rapidly grew closer and closer, until an explosion rocked the Duke. The remainder of the missiles continued on past the ship. "Damn. Try signaling Lieutenant Foley," Captain Nanaki commanded a crewman, "it's time to pull back." Lieutenant Foley pulled his beam saber out of the last Zaku's head as he noticed the visual signal from the Duke. He sighed, and at the same time, the beam saber ran out of Minovsky particles, the blade shrinking and sputtering out without its cutting force. "Bloody hell, should've seen this coming." "Is Adelaide docked with the ship?" "Da, Kaptain." "And Zakus?" "They have not returned within visual range. No signal has been sent. They are not returning, Kaptain." "Even if they were alive, we have no need for men who cannot follow simple orders, do we?" "No, Kaptain, we do not." Nadia Adelaide: 5 VP gained, Repairing 3-1 Patrick Foley: 6 VP gained, Repairing 2 Kai Nanaki: 7 VP gained, No damage "Do A Barrel Roll!" "What?" "DO A BARREL ROLL!" "FINE!" Alex pulled on the controls and sent the Saberfish rolling to the left, just in time to miss a shot from Derek Carter's GM Guncannon, sending paint rounds splattering along the bottom of the Buster Ichi Go. Sentra brought the Saberfish II upright, and took a tight turn upwards, hugging the hull of the Salamis as it came up above the ship. Not wasting a moment he pulled up on the controls and flipped the fighter around and dove back down and in between the Sulafat and the Albireo. "Ha!" "Where'd that damn fighter go..." Derek looked around after watching the Saberfish II disappear around the side of the Salamis. He stared blankly for a second before actiating his thrusters and boosting over to try and line up a target. "Oh shi-!" As he peeked around the side he quickly pulled back on the controls to avoid a dive bombing Saberfish; watching it disappear on otherside of two other ships. "Son of a bitch, sit sti-" SPLAT!!! Before he could finish his sentence he got paint splattered all over his visual sensors, as a paint marker broke across his Guncannon's visor. "BOOM HEAD SHOT!" Nestled behind a turret on the Buster Ichi Go, Kreuz grinned as he began searching the immediate area for Alex Sentara. The scope registered several ball mobile suits but he found nothing. "Gotchya bitch!" From out of nowhere the area around him began exploding with paint rounds as the vulcans of the Saberfish pelted the Salamis kai as Alex zeroed in on his target. Not wanting to end the exercise on a bad note, Michael used the turret for leverage and pushed off, and out of the path of the vulcans, leveling his rifle at the oncoming fighter; who needed a scope anyways? "Sneaky bastard." He leveled the sniper rifle, and took aim, firing with out a solution and hoping for the best. His shot was on target, but Alex slowed down, banking to the right then sped into a barrel roll as he shot to Michael's left. The 'ace' pilot turned the nose down, and dove below the GM Sniper before pulling up on the controls just below his target; the suit climbed rapidly, spraying a steady fire of paint rounds as it spun in an upward spiral. Frantically trying to get a shot in, he let off several other rounds from his sniper rifle, first two missing, and second one deflected off the wing with out breaking. As he went to load another magazine, igniting his thrusters to get outta the way, Alex armed his missiles and nailed Kreuz's suit in the back with a big paint splat. "Game Over!" Alex Sentara: 5 VP Gained, Repairing 1 Derek Carter: 3 VP Gained, Repairing 1 Michael Kreuz: 3 VP Gained, Repairing 1 |