Blood and Mercy

[McNeo]

One of his first missions as a member of the Katana wing was the total annihilation of any assets belonging to enemies of the state. One very high profile member of this group was Juno Kietan. Incidentally, she also possessed a large portion of the assets that needed to be eliminated.

Since it was a mission early in his Katana wing career, Hajime Kitao had some green pilots on his wing. Honestly, he wasn't expecting any significant action, even in the tau's. The identification being broadcasted was easy to see, and the name "Katana" usually signalled the enemy forces to retreat before things got really bloody for them.

The patrol path was an achingly long one. From Battleship Nagumo in Kyushu to the front in Tau 31, doubling back to Tau 23 and completing the circuit back at the Nagumo using a newly discovered jump hole.

The first jump to Tau 29 went without incidence, all was calm and the regular patrols were cleaning a few Outcast raiders that had decided it was a good time to attack. It was these kinds of attacks that gave those in the Shogunate reason to obliterate the suspected smuggling routes in the taus.

In Tau 31, there were many clashes between battlegroups of Kusari and Bretonia. Ships were ablaze everywhere, cannons blinking in the distance signifying a burst of energy. Missiles penetrated hulls and torpedo's skewered and split the smaller capital ships. Parts were everywhere. Seemed almost like a scrapyard of military forces... a new Yanagi gas cloud...

Of course, that was all usual. The wing engaged some enemy capital ships and managed to retreat unhurt once they were down. The war was not the priority of the patrol, and they needed to complete their trip. Communications chatter was muted, the occassional short conversation taking place.

Once in Tau 23, the scanners blinked to life. They showed, oddly, a Bretonian liner in the vacinity. Warranting further investigation, the Katana bombers closed in for a pass. Following standard proceedure, the ship was identified...

The Unseelie eh...? Seems to be one of the targets. Open fire!
Hai!

At first, the ship did not respond to the supernova's and plasma bursts.

Obviously the captain is asleep! Keep up the fire!

Soon though, it came about and the guns lit up like a fireworks display. Tachyon beams lit illumated space and the bombers of the attacking Kusari. Kitao fired his antimatter cannon again into the ship, but it dodged it narrowly. The shockwave of antimatter, not obeying the limitations of physics, left a large scorchmarks along the left side of the ship. In dodging the blast, the liner managed to collide with a rock. As Kitao and the men under his temporary command came around for another pass, they found themselves facing the front of the ship.

Time appeared to slow as the main batteries of the liner began to fire. The pilot to Kitao's left, a pilot just out of flight school, was taken completely by surprise and hesitated a moment too long, while his ship was ripped to pieces. Kitao could only spare his craft a glance, and pressed his tractor beam activation control. However, the catamaran was still intact, signalled by the failure of the tractorbeam to activate.

Break off! Come around from the sides!

As Kitao and his remaining wingman completed their turn, they saw their comrade's ship plough into the liner. The collision caused an explosion and a subsequent violent change in direction of the liner. Its orientation management systems were struggling to deal with the change in momentum.

Neither his wingman nor Kitao himself were armed with a train cruise distruptor. It was unfortunately the job of the deceased second wingman to distrupt enemy vessels as they tried to flee. Both surviving members of the patrol gritted their teeth at the loss of their wingman and resumed their frequent supernova strikes on the liner.

The pilot of the hostile liner made an improbably move and managed to completely reverse the direction of the ship in seconds by using an asteroid as a pivot. As the bombers tried to reverse their direction, the liner managed to gain a small lead and headed to a gravitational anomaly... a jump hole.

These weren't used a lot by any branch of the KNF due to their unpredictability and dangerousness, but before long, the liner managed to jump through.

Fire through the hole!

Two supernova's entered the anomaly, and the Katana bombers arrived on the other side, in Tau 29, just in time to see them land. This time they caught the engines of the fleeing ship, and it completely disintegrated. For a moment, the naked core of the engine room was visible, plasma conduits and antimatter regulators exposed. Then it all went up in a ball of light.

Both remaining bomber pilots recoiled from the explosion...

The bombers returned home to the Nagumo and filed their reports, but also requested that the wreckage be sweeped for survivors. When the results came back, no survivors had been found...