maskormenacelogs | GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR TOM

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GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR TOM

WHO: ImPorts that signed up HERE. If you didn't sign up in time and still want to participate, as long as you can assemble a team, you can hop on in!
WHERE: SPACE!
WHEN: February 20th.
WHAT: ImPorts are sent on a mission to take down hostile satellites. Want to plot with your fellow players? Please check out THIS THREAD.
WARNINGS: Possible swearing and violence; let us know if this should be updated.

Thanks to the newly constructed moon base, the stress of escaping Earth’s atmosphere and the trip to the moon is all cut down to a nice, maybe slightly nausea inducing, near instantaneous transport. Upon arrival teams are escorted into a debriefing room to receive their overall instructions and a the declassified version rundown of what is known so far. Given on the traditional holoprojection screen by a grizzled member of the US government- appropriately NASA this time around, though the medals on the woman’s jacket remind you just how many of the original astronauts were military personnel- the most salient points of the powerpoint presentation are these:

-At the end of this meeting, each team will be launched in a small shuttle from the moon to their positions. All teams will hold positions until all shuttles have been launched, then a unified strike will occur. Each team member will be given the needed jetpack, space suit, and basic weaponry needed for the job. Separate individuals will clean up after each encounter, salvaging whatever they can from the satellites.

- Each team will be given control over their respective shuttles; one member of the team may remain in the shuttle in order to keep control over the vessel and to give the team members necessary respite in the case of injury, but that is ultimately up to each team's discretion.

-There are believed to be between 15-25 additional satellites currently orbiting Earth. This number is thought to include several satellites that have been recently launched but not yet fully activated. Still, all satellites are to be approached as armed and dangerous. There is no evidence there is a standardized appearance to these satellites, the only way of knowing if one is a target is if it is not registered on the manifest you have been given.

-These satellites are programed to evade normal radar and other sensors, which is what lead to this in person fishing mission to begin with.

-The satellites are armed with both short and long range weapon capabilities- more importantly, these weapons can reach Earth. Once engaged it is critical to take out weapon capabilities, if not the satellite as a whole, as quickly as possible. The government believes that in order to overcome safeguards and properly aim, the satellites will require ten minutes from when first engaged to launch an attack on Earth. These weapons are primarily missile based, meaning a very brave (or dumb) individual can try to take out the missile itself once fired, but be careful. These weapons are strong enough to survive re-entering Earth’s atmosphere to hit a target. They’re not messing around. It is currently unknown how many missiles a satellite holds.

-In addition to the Earth-range missiles, the satellites also hold a number of shorter range weapons which can both be fired at teams and be used to blow up neighboring, registered satellites, as well as any passing space junk or rocks to serve as distraction/potentially damaging shrapnel. Remember, as the satellites cannot be detected through radar they may also attempt to hide in created debris.

-Based on reverse engineering done on the one satellite recovered, these satellites are running on a unique programing code. This coding is thought to grant them a very limited AI (close to the level of the roombas in your houses, in which they may have individual ‘quirks’ but are true and devoted to their very simple core programming). Those with extensive programming experience or innate advantages with technology (technopathy, etc.), will be able to pick out the odd ‘word’ or so that makes sense, but it is like trying to read a coded message without the cipher. Still, so long as the satellites are kept distracted to keep Earth from being too badly bombarded, teams working together may be able to at least break the ‘stand down’ command and get the satellites to come in without a fuss. Unfortunately, the government has no full surviving full lines of coding or phrases from the captured remains, meaning and code breaking will have to be done live in the field.

-All individuals here will be given access to the information gained from this mission. The fully extent of the information will depend on the type of recovery performed. Any individuals interested in participating in the analysis of gathered pieces are welcome to volunteer with the NASA representative during the Q&A session, though their acceptance may depend on performance in this first mission.

There is a brief question and answer period after this presentation- strictly for mission related items, no general philosophizing on the government will be asked for or indulged. Following this it’s a waiting game as the moon moves into position. Teams are welcome to plan, chat, or just enjoy the complimentary snack bar (before you ask, yes. It is all health food and Tang). Then, one by one, teams will be called for their launch until all units are in position.

America- no, the world- is counting on you, ImPorts. And watching. Don’t let them down.

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"How's it handling, Shinigami?"

Jacob's voice sounds a little tinny over the radio as he speaks into his space-suit's interior speakers. He and Ashley are in their shuttle's launch bay, preparing to go extravehicular and get up close and personal with their first target. Jacob has spent his prep time going through a methodical check of all his unfamiliar, bulky gear, paying special attention to his suit's seals, along with his jetpack and weapons.

"Should be coming up on the target any second now. Keep a sharp eye out for defenses. Remember, once we're out there, I'll focus on the Earthside ordnance, while Ashley tries to get into their systems."

The vehicle most suited to this mission, Duo thinks to himself with grim humor, is a mobile suit. That much was clear as soon as the mission briefing got under way. A mobile doll, really, would be best- the space Tauruses that OZ deployed to the colonies as a Trojan Horse to clear Alliance space-minefields, and clear the way for their peaceful invasion.

He gives a silent thanks to Lachesis for not bringing in anyone so foolish as to give life to those demons, just yet.

"Not the most archaic hunk of junk I've ever piloted, believe it or not," Duo voice comes through the other side, "It'll get the job done. Speakin' of archaic, how's those suits feeling?" He's sure to go through the motions of checking on the ship's equipment extra- get real familiar with his instruments- and cruise them in slowly towards the first satellite they were marked to engage.

"Coming in steady. Be ready to eject in about 90 seconds." Duo readies the ship's hold door. Not all that different from any ol' launch, was it? "...40 seconds... Be safe out there. Anything goes haywire and it's not Earth-bound, you get yourselves back here pronto. Roger?"

For the last several minutes, Ashley has been silent, her eyes unfocused, the green glow of the circuitry in her eyes ad skin looking even eerier than usual in her spacesuit.

"Copy that, but belay me getting into their systems: We need to go to plan B," she says abruptly, tight control audible in her voice because it's that or anger and self disgust, neither of which are particularly helpful for the mission. "If I could access those satellites, I'd be able to feel them by now. But all I'm picking up is everyone's helmet comms and the registered satellites."

Usually, on Earth, she's surrounded by so many networked devices that it's hard to believe her power's limited to only them until she wants to turn the lights off and has to physically use a light switch. The network in her mind only really quiets down when she visits the moon base. While she tries to avoid deliberately using it, she'd signed up for this mission thinking it would finally be of use.

What's the point of all that mental noise if she can't even help protect Earth with it?

She turns to Jacob, and though she keeps her comms set to the squad, this is mainly directed at him: "I'm sorry."

Jacob shakes his head at Ashley's apology. "Don't worry about it, Ash," he says. "We'll just blow them up the old-fashioned way."

The countdown has reached zero. The doors are opening. Jacob looks up at the blue glow of Earth above them as he prepares to launch himself into orbit. He puts up his barrier, a purple biotic field shimmering around him.

The mystery satellite is dead ahead of them, a spiky-looking construct vaguely reminiscent of a metal starfish with solar panels and antennae in place of arms.

"Suit's nominal. Launching now. Here we go..."

A silent puff of exhaust comes from his backpack, and he lifts out of the shuttle, into space.

"No luck, huh..." Duo glances down at his dash, to the computer he'd had set up at the ready, just in case, to start on his own Plan B. "Don't worry about it. I'll see if there's anything I can do, in the meantime. Speaking of the old-fashioned way." It'd been ages since he'd had to crack into an enemy satellite, but he hadn't spent all that time letting his mind go soft, either.

With the two attackers launched out and approaching the satellite, Duo's eyes are peeled to the screens and instruments in front of him, watching for the first indication- heat signatures, abnormal movements, anything- that the satellite had noticed their presence and engaged its weapons.

It didn't take long. "--Stay sharp, it's changing course. ...It's not running; prepare for incoming fire!" Taking the helm, Duo readied the ship for any evasive action necessary, the first volley of anti-imPort firepower headed their way.

In the back of Ashley's mind, she's still trying to digitally sense out what she can see in front of her and, frustratingly, coming up blank. She doesn't focus on this, however, occupied by getting the hell out of the line of fire. In a suit rated for space but not combat, with no kinetic barriers, she's feeling more vulnerable than she'd like to against an unknown AI; she thinks she can feel the heat and motion of its projectiles as she passes.

So she fires on the satellite's weaponry as soon as she's clear, adjusting her angle as she keeps moving rather than risk coming to a full stop and getting shot.

"Ten minutes," she says, a reminder of the government's estimate of how long the satellite will take to fire on Earth, and she mentally reaches out to her phone to set a countdown timer.

"We're on the clock, team. Let's get it done. Focus on the weapons!"

Jacob speaks over the radio, then grunts as a bolt of hot plasma fire splashes against his biotic barrier. Unlike Ashley, he does have the luxury of protection, and so he moves ahead of her to draw some of the satellite's formidable firepower.

He's not the only target, though. There's a flash of sparks off to the left as a blast of lasers shreds through a nearby civilian satellite, creating a cloud of razor-sharp shrapnel expanding in all directions. At the same time, a thin white trail of exhaust reaches out from a missile tube, pointing directly at the shuttle.

"Watch the debris! Shinigami, look sharp- you've got a missile tracking at one o' clock!"

This is getting hairy.

Hoo boy, Duo thinks. Debris and live ballistics- things were about to get fun. He hopes the armor on these things was at least decent.

"I'm on it. You two worry about disabling that laser cannon and getting to the missile pods; I'll keep this craft in one piece!" And with that, the shuttle's engines are thrown into gear. Time for some good old-fashioned evasive maneuvers.

The maneuverability on these craft was certainly well below anything Duo would ever hope to be piloting, but it certainly wasn't as bad as 'stuck in a mobile suit with no fuel and surrounded by enemies', and he'd lived through that just fine, huh? It's up to his instincts and quick calculations to predict where the path of the pieces of shrapnel are going to intersect him, setting course to prevent colliding with them while also predicting the path of the missile headed towards him. Luckily, he's able to kill two birds with one stone- or one missile with one chunk of former-satellite, as he tricks the missile into colliding with the path of a piece of shrapnel just ahead of the shuttle.

That's one down. "Think we can make it run outta firepower and stay in one piece?"

Edited (finishing sentences is a good idea) 2018-02-26 23:31 (UTC)

"You hoping we can stay in one shape, or the satellite?"

The latter is a secondary concern now that it's attacking them. Ashley retreats just enough to avoid the shrapnel, mindful of her suit, but it sparks an idea for her. She can't touch the enemy satellite - but she can reach the civilian ones.

"I'm gonna clear the field," she warns, a second before all the registered satellites in the surrounding area move. Reaching through the satellites' telemetry and taking control of their thrusters to get them out of the way is a calculated risk: The team's down to random space rocks and junk as cover, but that also limits what the satellite can use as both shrapnel and cover.

"Only one way to find out!"

Jacob boosts his jets, swooping in for a firing run with the weaponry he was provided along with the suit. Laserfire flickers along one side of the hostile platform, and the missile battery that had targeted the shuttle becomes a glowing lump of melted slag. As he pulls away, he sees the surrounding satellites beginning to reposition themselves. He understands what Ashley is trying to do, and immediately loves it.

"Great thinking, Ash!"

"Is both asking too much?" Duo answers half under his breath as he dodges another huge chunk of a solar panel from the destroyed satellite. Okay, he'd meant the team, he had his priorities!- and at the rate things were going, they might really have to tear these things apart in order to disable them.

Moving in order to allow Ashley to clear the field, Duo now has more open space to maneuver in, although less cover from the incoming missiles. He's trying to maintain a distance- with no weapons on the ship, there was no point in him engaging the satellite himself, but he wanted to be sure to stay close enough that if either of the crew got hurt, he could swoop in for them.

Plus, if that meant one less weapon fired at them, in those iffy suits, he'd do it. His skills, he was certain, were sufficient to dodge in this firefight. "Nice shot! That's about 50% of the weapon capability down, by my estimate. Still no luck on cracking anything with this satellite's code. It's... it's weird. It's not like anything I've seen before, in this world or mine."

"Great, the programming's as weird as the physical build," says Ashley, though she sounds a little distant. People monitoring the satellites on Earth must be very confused, as some of the satellites she's moved are starting to return to their programmed positions or courses - part of her attention is focused on either putting satellites back or making sure they stay where she wanted them.

So her aim as she fires on the hostile satellite is a little off. Instead of hitting more weaponry as she'd planned, she hits one of the solar panels, breaking it off from the main platform. She sighs.

"Less power for weapon systems, at least?"

"We'll take what we can get!" Jacob says as the solar panel flies free. He lines up another attack, and pulls the trigger at the same moment as another plasma blast strikes him dead-on. The offending gun turret explodes in a spray of red-hot metal, but at the cost of Jacob's biotic barrier popping like a soap bubble.

Jacob grunts as he maneuvers closer to the target. As he does, he notices movement on the platform's dorsal side- the end pointing at Earth. "Be advised, my shields are down," he says. It will be a few long seconds before he can put the barrier back up and resume soaking damage for the party. "And I'm seeing movement on the bottom of this thing- think it's prepping to launch at Earth. We need to wrap this up."

The moment Jacob reports his shields down, Duo's maneuvering the craft closer, ready to swoop in for him if there's unavoidable fire- or, if he was the last line of fire, be ready to use the ship as a last line of defense. It was a no-hesitation decision. That thing was trying to go live. "Got it. And got you, if needed. If we could just get in close enough to locate the thing's brain, could at least try to shut it down through force..." If that force was concussive and/or explosive, so be it.

He's still working on trying to crack through the thing's code remotely; but no matter what little progress he makes, nothing seems relevant. He frowns to himself. "There's not much I'm getting out of it. --Nothing English anyway. If any of this is a message, it's not anything I can understand. I'm not crying if we blow this thing to smithereens."

"Save it anyway," Ashley suggests, diving towards the satellite. As the fourth generation of her family to pick up a rifle and defend Earth, the words launch at Earth get her taking off to stop that launch from happening almost before she has a plan. "Someone else might be able to understand it."

Save it, she says, on her way to fire on the missile. The big looking missile, and she's well aware that firepower doesn't need to be big to do a lot of damage. She aims, breathes -

Remembers what happened last time and realizes where her focus is: Divided.

She relinquishes her hold on the civilian satellites, just long enough for a sustained burst of fire on a missile pod, before retreating again as the platform's other weapons start to train on her. The missile pod looks to be of sturdier stuff than the joint holding the solar panel, as it still holds despite the visible damage.

"Again!" she calls, reclaiming the civilian satellites.

"We can save the pieces. I'm going in!"

Jacob has taken up a position behind Ashley to follow through on her own attack run. He lines up his aim carefully. A few seconds after her fire scars the missile pod, his own lasers strike home on the weakened armour, piercing through to the warhead within-

He isn't expecting the fireball to be as big as it is. A gout of white-hot flame suddenly bursts out from the bottom of the enemy structure, turning it into a new rocket, the force of the blast pushing it further away from Earth as secondary explosions begin to rip it apart from the inside. Another solar panel flies off and cartwheels through space, passing closer to Jacob's head than he would prefer. He immediately reverses his thrusters.

"It's going to blow! Everyone, get clear!"

Duo can already see the dominoes falling as the satellite overloads, and he's swooping right in with cargo bay of the transport open for Jacob and Ashley to dive inside by the time it's about to go nuclear.

"Hurry, I'll get us out safe!"

The force of the explosion was a danger up close, but Duo's got thrusters firing to jet them out of the immediate vicinity, so that by the time the fireball is spreading out from where the attack satellite used to be, they're swinging around one of those civilian satellites for cover, using the force of the spreading explosion to ride out to safety ahead of any bits of it that might otherwise be thrown smashing into them.

And besides; if pieces of the satellite ended up lodged into the ship, he couldn't very well take them intact, could he? Duo heaves a sigh of relief as he watches the last of the heat signatures subside in the viewscreens.

"Congrats, y'made it out in one piece!" He grins to his cohorts, blasé now that they were out of the danger. "Looks like it's clean-up time. No worries; I know just what to look for."

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GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR TOM

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