Transformers: Alone and Unafraid

[LadyTevar]

"I think I know of him," Shimmer replied, frowning slightly. "If it's the same one, he didn't seem the type to attack when he didn't have an advantage, and preferred to be close and personal when fighting."

The small FemBot started to jog down the corridor. "Either way, we need to add some speed. They've had time to set up even more ambushes while we were cornered, and we have to..." she trailed off, seeing the wreck Cavalier had made of those that had tried to stop his solo advance. "There's one group down," she added wryly as she kept moving forward, her sensors fully active, expecting another attack at any time. Maybe, just maybe she could give a nano's notice this time....

[Cynical Cat]

The enemy was in retreat and vulnerable, but they had weapons that could hurt Cybertronians, at least one Cybertronian in their ranks, and more comrades on the ship. They would not remain broken forever. Now was a window of opportunity, to kill them with little risk of loss before they rallied and counter attacked with the aid of additional forces. Breaking the enemy always lead to a slaughter. That's why the iron resolve to hold the line that 'bots such as Grindstone and Ironhide possessed was so valuable.

It was apparent to Deathstrike that despite ages of long warfare, this basic fact was not grasped by the Autobots with him. It had not escaped him that he was the only one energetically killing the enemy. Pathetic. Breakout was right to have placed him in command. None of these Autobots could even manage to run a boarding operation properly.

His fusion cannon roared again. "Shimmer, odds are that there is at least one panicky fool out there. See if you can intercept any useful comms data while you are permitting the enemy to escape and attack us again." He checked his internal map and projections to where the bridge lay. He had no intention of getting badly dragged of course while he killed his way to the command center.

[LadyTevar]

Shimmer heard Deathstrike's order loud and clear. "Acknowledged."

The Greater Decepticon Empire used several communication frequencies, and most had been broken by this point. Shimmer had only to scan frequencies to see if the minions were still using the old codes, or if the new encryption encountered by the Exploration Force was being used internally as well as between ships.

If it was a new encryption, Shimmer would not have time to decode it.

[frigidmagi]

The Cybertronians stalked down the corridor, metal feet clanking on the metal deck. Shimmer worked as she moved. The Decepticons had been overconfident and arrogant on this front, using standard encryption methods that would get fleet admirals shot out of his main guns on the League Front. Shimmer found the communications flooded with damage reports, mayday calls and ships making the final jumps out of the system. The remainder of the GDE fleet had fought it's way through the League fleet to a position where it could active FTL.

Cavalier and Grindstone reached the end of the corridor to find it blocked off with heavy blastdoors. They were thick, black metal doors massive even by Cybertronians standards.

The enemy had to have set up a cross-deck gravitational field for their trap to work, and in those conditions, Blastcap too could play the deck collapsing game. If her analysis was right, the upper deck would collapse under the front ranks of the enemy above, and atop the front ranks of the enemy below. Her troops would be fine if they had held position as ordered, and the fallen deck would provide Blastcap some cover. If her analysis was wrong, the charges would at least fill the room with a hail of metal splinters and work havoc among the enemy.

Once all the discs had attached themselves to something, Blascap folded herself back to her vehicle form, her guns barely pausing their suppressive fire. She could not move, but it would double her armour by halving her surface area. "Fire in the hole!" Blastcap warned over the comms as she hit the detonator.

The explosion rocked the deck under Blastcap as secondary detonations shook the ship, cooking off energy cells and venting plasma tearing apart bulkheads and decks brutally. The split second of heat, light and steam was like a preview of hell. Blastcap emerged from this singed and shaken but mostly unharmed. The heavy weapons company did not, nor did the 3 decks above and below, Blastcap was at the ledge of a massive hole inside the ship... The resell value had certainly dropped.


Meanwhile Shunt and Farshot saw the staggering remains of the GDE battleline lunge into FTL.

[rhoenix]

Meanwhile Shunt and Farshot saw the staggering remains of the GDE battleline lunge into FTL.

Farshot dropped off his engine throughput, using his maneuvering thrusters to slow himself down as his sensors fully illustrated the scene of the GDE enemy fleet, ripped into tatters by the efforts of the Alliance forces, leaping desperately into FTL to avoid the same fate as their brethren.

"Nice work, Shunt," Farshot said as he recorded the sight for future reference. Had he been in robot form, he would have smiled.

Farshot opened a tight-beam direct comm line to Deathstrike. "Remainder of enemy fleet has successfully escaped into FTL. Orders, Commander?"

[SirNitram]

Shunt pulled off an entirely unnecessary barrelroll. "Shunt to Deathstryke actual. Enemy fleet in retreat. Repeat, enemy fleet now in full retreat. Requesting permission to RTB." He couldn't keep the grin and enthusiasm out of his vocoder.

[Dark Silver]

Grindstone stood there for a moment. He was unmoving, his optics fixed on the door, examining it.

There was a possibility of blasting through it....but that ran the risk of damaging the bridge on the otherside of the door..he and Cavalier could possibly cut through with their swords.....but that would give the GDE troops on the otherside plenty of time to react.

"Shimmer," he rumbled after a astrosecond, "Can you slice the door?"

[Cynical Cat]

"Farshot and Shunt, assist in boarding actions or return to base as supply and maintenance needs dictate," said Deathstrike over coms. Out loud he said something very different. "Negative on the slice.

Grindstone was going soft. Too much time around Autobots. Command center security doors were far from easy to hack. Not necessarily beyond Shimmer's skills, but it was probably beyond Shimmer's ability to handle in the desired time frame. Which was very, very short.

He brought his fusion cannon to bear on the door. A soft whineand a dull glow from inside the barrel indicated the containment capacitors were charging to maximum capacity. "Everyone stand clear from the door!" Power built to maximum. With everyone clear, he opened fire.

[rhoenix]

Farshot spun around to face the still-occupied ship, where most of the rest of his team were still engaged within. He did not like close-quarters combat, where his full freedom of movement was very restricted - but on the other hand, the job was still unfinished. The remaining messes needed to be cleaned up.

"Acknowledged, Commander - en route to your location to assist with ship capture," Farshot sent via tight-beam comm to Deathstrike. Almost simultaneously, he sent a message to Shunt. "Alright Shunt, I've taken a few hits, but I can still fight properly for a while longer. Return to base if you need to - I'm going to help take the ship."

With that, his three engines lit to full power, showing a dark bluish glow as his assault craft form sped quickly toward the ship where the rest of his team were still within.

[LadyTevar]

"Primus, Deathstrike! Are you insane?!" Shimmer exclaimed as she ducked and covered, fully expecting Deathstrike's full-power shot to go through the blastdoor and out the front of the ship. The only thing worst would be if the blast door had a shield that would reflect it back

[Dark Silver]

Grindstone turned to reply to Deathstryke belaying of the slice, when the sight of the fusion cannon lifted and charging met his optics.

Grindstone was far from soft, and when he saw Deathstryke's intent, he moved away from the line of fire, and did his best to shield the much smaller Shimmer. He just hoped Deathstryke's decision didn't bite them in the exhaust port.

[General Havoc]

"Oh Pits..."

For once, Cavalier wasn't complaining, just a general exclamation, natural for those in close proximity to heavy ordinance. Blast doors like this were designed to take a tremendous battering, and had Deathstrike not opened fire, Cavalier's next suggestion would be to use his own artillery to blow them down. In this one case, the risk of over-penetration was justified, at least in Cavalier's opinion, as the Decepticons were exceptionally unlikely to have staffed their command center with unwilling slaves, and disabling it would lead to the surrender of the ship post-haste. Besides, he doubted seriously that Deathstrike's cannon, mighty as it was, had the firepower to burn through a heavy blast door, cross the entire bridge, and punch through the hull of the ship.

Even his own guns were unlikely to be able to do that.

He stepped back from the blast, but only a pace or so, unfurling his shield and crouching down behind it, bracing himself against whatever blowback the shot resulted in, the better to follow it up by charging into the bridge.

[Lys]

The explosion rocked the deck under Blastcap as secondary detonations shook the ship, cooking off energy cells and venting plasma tearing apart bulkheads and decks brutally. The split second of heat, light and steam was like a preview of hell. Blastcap emerged from this singed and shaken but mostly unharmed. The heavy weapons company did not, nor did the 3 decks above and below, Blastcap was at the ledge of a massive hole inside the ship... The resell value had certainly dropped.

"Casualty report!" was Blastcap's first thought and words at the cataclysm she had wrought. Her men were on the deck directly above, had been warned to take cover, and were wearing powered armour. They should be mostly fine, but she had to know. As her body unfolded itself into her android form, she considered what had occurred. It was certainly far more boom that she had wanted or planned for, even accounting for the usual secondary detonations when a heavy weapons company went up. They must have deployed right atop a fuel cell stack instead of shunting power from a nearby one, and shipboard fuel cells were orders of magnitude more massive than the usual portable ones deployed in the field. Evidently their shipboard operations training had been lacking, but it was hardly the time to be lecturing the enemy on proper procedure.

She contacted her other units through the comms, "This is Blastcap. I have taken out two Meckhan companies, but now there is a six deck tall chasm between my platoon and the ship's command section. Captain Hekar, your unit should be near a damage control station. I need you to access it and disable the gravity to this section."

[frigidmagi]

Deathstrike's fusion cannon tore the blast doors apart and flash fried most of the bridge crew. It roared across the bridge and melted the opposing bulk head. It however did not punch through the ship. The bridge of a GDE ship is buried deeply within the ship's interior. Shimmer looked into a bridge that was... mostly on fire and now part of a hallway out to the fore of the ship.

"Casualty report!" was Blastcap's first thought and words at the cataclysm she had wrought.

"Boss, we lost about half a squad when the explosion went up, minor injuries otherwise. We're getting some bridging equipment. Do you need aide? Over." Came the reply.

[rhoenix]

The energy signature within the ship was very familiar - there weren't very many fusion weapons, even among the Cybertronians. And Deathstrike's particular kind had been modified from stock to fit his frame and needs, therefore having a rather distinctive energetic signature that jumped out at one who was familiar with them.

Farshot knew that if Deathstrike was loosing his fusion cannon within the ship, then they were likely either pressed for time, or pressed for space. Deciding to make haste, Farshot fired four shells from his Nova cannon, each aimed at the large ship's shuttle doors, and each shell a high-explosive type. He aimed with the shells to simultaneously detonate at specific points of the doors, with the objective of simply smashing the hangar doors inward. If it worked, he'd be able to storm through the ship starting from the hangar bay, and find the others relatively quickly.

"Making approach now, I'll try to make entry in the main hangar bay," Farshot sent via tight-beam comm to Deathstrike, even as he watched his four shells approaching the ship's hangar bay doors at high speed.

[LadyTevar]

As autonomous robots, Cybertronians make a lot of metallic, mechanical noises while moving -- it's simply their nature. Some Cybertronians can identify a particular unit by these noises, while other noises are simply too common not to recognize when audible.

The faint clank of a face-palm is one of these.

"We can mark this ship as mission-killed," Shimmer muttered to Grindstone, looking at the flaming remains of the ship's controls and scanning for any trace of survivors. "I think that was a piece of the AI that just flew by. It would have been nice to have downloaded the database ... we could have not only learned their new codes, but also discovered what orders the Fleet Commander was following." Sarcasm was probably not going to make anything better, but yelling at Deathstrike was just as useless as the Bridge controls now.

[SirNitram]

Shunt flew in behind Farshot, just beyond his engine wash. The Decepticon transformed mid-flight, and landed on his feet in the hangar. Both rotary null rays were underslung on his forearms, and he held them out and swept for enemies.

[General Havoc]

Cavalier was less concerned with the might-have beens. As soon as Deathstrike's cannon blew the door (and most of the bridge) down he marched inside, sword and shield held ready for whatever he might find within. If any Decepticons had survived the explosion (and most Decepticons were perfectly capable of that), he would deal them something they wouldn't walk away from.

[Cynical Cat]

Deathstrike strode onto the ruins of the bridge, fusion cannon poised to finish any ambushers or enemies playing possum. He had erred in using that much firepower against the blast door, but such things happened in combat. "Negative Shimmer. The bridge consoles are a loss, but they're just interface tools. The main AI is likely to have survived. Redundancies are also likely. Ship systems and superstructure are mostly intact. As for command codes, we have options."

He switched channels. "Farshot, enemy warrior Feral is loose somewhere on this ship. He will attempt to either hide or escape. His capture is a high priority. Unleash your drone swarm and find him."

[rhoenix]

Farshot's response was immediate, once he heard Deathstrike's reply. He fired two more shells, these aimed at the ship itself - one fore, and one aft. Each shell streaked toward the ship, but immediately before they struck the ship, both exploded into a fine, silvery mist - unnaturally spreading outward onto the hull of the ship, and rapidly disappearing into the damaged hull.

"Smartfog deployed, fore and aft. Requesting datadump on Feral, Commander - the more information I have about my target, the faster I can locate him," Farshot sent as a tight-beam comm to Deathstrike. His assault craft form roared toward the hangar bay doors for a few more moments before transforming almost liquidly into his robot form, forearm cannons fully deployed as he continued to fly toward the hangar bay.

[Cynical Cat]

"Data incoming," said Deathstrike as he fired off a quick data packet.

[Lys]

"Boss, we lost about half a squad when the explosion went up, minor injuries otherwise. We're getting some bridging equipment. Do you need aide? Over." Came the reply.

Half a squad... unfortunate, but acceptable. The reply from Captain Hekar was rather less so. Blastcap would have wondered who by Primus would build a capital ship without decentralized damage control stations, but the answer was obvious. A totalitarian dictatorship that couldn't trust its own crewmen because its tyranny was built on paranoia and fear, and its empire rested on the backs of countless slaves. It was a rare the instance when such cruelty-borne inefficiency was to the GDE's advantage, but here was one of them. No matter, for it would avail them not.

"Continue bridging operation, I'll be along shortly," Blastcap said as she walked along the edge of the precipice over to the wall on the side of the corridor. Her three hands grabbed like vices on the jagged edges of the ruptured decks, and she began to climb up to join her platoon.

[rhoenix]

"Data incoming," said Deathstrike as he fired off a quick data packet.

With the datadump provided, Farshot rapidly began crafting filters for the massive influx of sensor data beginning to stream in. "Search parameters narrowed considerably - I'll let you know the moment I spot something," he said, as he neared the hangar bay.

[LadyTevar]

Shimmer rolled her eyes at Grindstone, and followed Deathstrike into the destroyed bridge. "The command interfaces would also have allowed us to bring the ship back under its own power," she pointed out to Deathstrike as she searched for any functional computers. "Command codes can be extracted, but it helps if the AI is intact." Due to Cavalier, she did not mention that codes could also be extracted from prisoners. Let Deathstrike be the villain for mentioning that process. There were times where Autobots were too sensitive.

"What should we do about the remaining defenders of the ship, Deathstrike?"

[Cynical Cat]

"The AI is likely intact and there will be multiple datalines from here to it," replied Deathstrike. "I am quite aware that things would be easier if the bridge controls were intact, but we are quite capable of maneuvering the ship from engineering. This," he said, sweeping his hand to indicate the wreckage, "is a convenience. We do not hold back or risk lives to make the aftermath more convenient. We fight hard and we win and then we clean up the mess. Our allies have a shipyard that encircles a planet. Refitting the command center is well within our capabilities."

"As for the crew, all those who surrender will be treated leniently. Those that resist will be burned out until they are dead or have surrendered."