Mothership

Template:FlagIconBlitzpferd
Template:FlagIconBuio
Template:FlagIconCarrier Prime
Template:FlagIconIntersect Thunderbolt
Template:FlagIconIvan
Template:FlagIconMammoth
Template:FlagIconMecoptera
Template:FlagIconSilver Knight
Template:FlagIconTurtle

The long-awaited follow up to Unity. The final mission to destroy the Vannai for good.

## Summary

The pilots are pilled into a rocket and launched from Ayers Rock, Australia. The plan is to ride the rocket into the alien mothership, set up us the bomb and ride it back out. There will be no backup or alternate route of escape.

After a successful launch and several hours of travel through space, the rocket eventually reaches the Mothership and crashes straight through the giant ship's hull. With no deaths on impact, the team deploys out of the rocket, coming out into a corridor. Finding no enemies waiting for them, Silver Knight makes a speech while Tommy and Ryman and everyone else with so much as a hawkeye scan furiously for absolutely anything exploitable.

Ryman is able to connect with the alien network through an unsecured port, but can't make heads or tails of the alien symbols. All of the scanning brings up nothing of interest, though a small, dog-sized hatch in the wall along the corridor is noticed. Basilius connects to Tommy's command network and tries to contact AC back on Earth, but either the distance is too great or there is some other kind of interference prevent a clear message to get through.

Carrier Prime starts to sluggishly roll down the hall. The rest of the team follows the ball while Ryman mostly focuses on trying to decipher the alien text, learning only that there are certain entrances to be taken to get to "something" and that using collapsible is verboten. Following Tommy, members of the team start to express anxiety at the fact that the Vannai have not yet sent anything to repel their boarders. Tommy suddenly stops moving and shouts at everyone to stop. Having just broken free of a control hack, he orders everyone to move to the left room and for Ryman to keep working through the open network node he found. As soon as he shouts this, the small door along the wall noticed earlier opens, and small drones start swarming into the room one after the other.

Falcon starts firing at the drones as they enter the corridor, while Tommy wrestles with the Vannai hacking, successfully managing to lock out whatever system was attacking him. As the other pilots start attacking the drones, Tommy joins with Ryman to work at the network. White Falcon swiches the focus of his fire from the drones to the hatch they are coming from, and while they deploy point barriers to block most of his attacks, one shot makes it through and fuses the hatch shut, while the other pilots quickly destroy loads of the drones that made it though. Carrier Prime is able to use its Magnetic Emitter to catch many of them and smash them into a ball.

Michael decides to help by firing his suit's main guns at the corridor's interior wall. As soon as Mammoth blows another hole in the wall, the drones stop and a siren rings down the corridor. The drones switch their attention from the intruders to the new hole in the wall instead, and something large approaches from around a bend in the corridor.

Basilius and Intersect Thunderbolt both rush ahead to pummel whatever it is heading for the boarding team before it reaches them, both of them swinging into some kind of tank and getting some kind of dark blue gel all over their suits. Tommy uses his Magnetic Emitter to scan the target and determines its a thin-skinned tank with some kind of spray nozzle. The tank rolls over to the hole Mammoth created and sprays the blue gel over it, while the remaining drones not caught up in the ball or already destroyed start to disassemble each other.

Tommy gives up on the network node and hacks the giant tank drone instead to turn it off, while Intersect Thunderbolt's pilot wastes time continuing to tear into its hull and coat more of the suit in the blue gel. Ryman attaches the one point barrier-using drone that he'd gained control of during his hacking to Blitzpferd's face. Editi observes that the drones are behaving similar to an immunity system in a biological organism. She concludes that the drones encountered so far are the equivalent to platelets in blood, and that they should avoid destroying any more unless they cause the ship to deploy "white blood cell" drones designed to actually repel them. Some quick hacking shuts the drone down, but the gel that had already been sprayed begins to harden and combine with the parts from the disassembled drones, repairing the hole in the wall Mammoth's cannon created. The gel starts to harden on Intersect Thunderbolt as well, but the suit is able to simply break through it and keep moving.

The boarders make it past the bend in the corridor and reach a door. On the other side of the door is what appears to be a portal to a city of some kind, except really small, as if from a great distance. Some of the pilots start trying to scan the portal, but BIS detects a very large object moving from the other end of the corridor towards the group. Basilius decides to stop waiting around and steps through the portal. Blitzpferd , not wanting him to have gone alone, decides to follow after him. Light Tim and Intersect Thunderbolt follow after her. Ivan decides to lay a wire mesh wall in the corridor to slow down whatever is coming towards them. Ryman reactivates the repair tank drone and orders it to start fortifying it with the blue gel from the other side. Eventually the whole group moves through.

Those who went through the portal notice that those on the other side appear hundreds of times larger, and that the portal not only lead to a city, but what appeared to be an entire country somehow inside the ship, in a pocket dimension. Tommy starts scanning \*absolutely everything\* and collecting as much data on his surroundings as possible. The last of the boarding suits step through the portal just as a huge serpent blows through the barrier they had set up and keeps on going down the corridor. In the city ahead, the group spots a figure emerge from one of the buildings, followed by two drones and holding a tablet. As soon as it sees the boarders it screams and runs away. Taking the scream as a signal, more drones swarm out of the buildings before the team and start attacking the boarders. Mammoth is hit by ice, Silver Knight is hit by sound cannons, Carrier Prime gets hit by fire, Intersect Thunderbolt gets blasted by ion cannons and shuts down temporarily, and Blitzpferd gets scratched at by vibroblades. Ivan is able to hit the fleeing alien with sticky webbing and stop it from running off any further, but gets attention from all of the above kinds of drones for his contribution.

As the boarding team fights off the drones, Tommy quickly rolls ahead and retrieves the bundled up alien, taking it into his suit's hull and putting it in a glass faraday cage. Intersect Thunderbolt recovers from its power drain and destroys the last of the small drones. The team is then alerted to larger drones approaching from farther away, with much more powerful weapons. Blitzpferd doesn't hesitate to run straight into the larger drones as their weapons charge. Unfortunately, she misses her attacks and succeeds in gaining the giant drones' attention instead. Undissuaded , Amano continues her thus far solo attack on the giant drones. Silver Knight and Intersect Thunderbolt both rush in to help her. Ryman warns Blitzpferd that she's going to get herself killed with her reckless behavior before going off in search of the objective while the more combat-oriented suits deal with the drones, to which Amano boldly laughs and continues to attack with a pile-driver headbutt. Unfortunately, the strength of the giant drones is not to be underestimated, and her suit starts to take damage as they fire on her. Silver Knight and Intersect Thunderbolt are both able to deal just enough damage to the drone to draw its attention off of the Lightning Steed, luckily. Basilius is able to support with ranged attacks, being surprisingly semi-successful with his shooting save for the scorpion shot which misses the drone and destroys part of the skyline instead. He decides to switch to punching it. Ryman and Tommy both try and hack into the drone while fortifying up to prepare for its weapon's discharge, but there seems to be some kind of formidable EW defense in place within it, as they are unsuccessful.

The drone's starlight breaker fires, targeting Carrier Prime and Mecoptera. Neither suit being suited for sudden dexterous movements, they both fail to avoid the incoming beam. Luckily Mecoptera is spared from the attack by Carrier Prime's point barrier. Blitzpferd's headbutt hits the drone's foot, bringing its attention back to her and earning a foot stomp. Basilius is able run up into punching distance and starts hitting the drone's legs, destroying a couple of them.

Ryman is able to gain control of the drone's main cannon, but the drone is able to hack him as well in the process, and the two are deadlocked in counterhacking one another. Silver Knight and Intersect Thunderbolt are able to deal a large amount of damage to the drone from the inside. Bas is able to interject in Blitzpferd's melee and punch aside one of the drone's feet as its about to come down on the centaur.

Essentially dead, the drone begins to topple, and Ryman is able to regain control of his suit. However, the pilots finishing the drone off receive warning of a hail of rockets coming from above them.

Turtle meanwhile continues on his own route, searching throughout the city for an energy source. He is able to locate another portal similar to the one the team entered to get into the city, guarded by 2 Vannai and their drones.

Blitzperd, and Basilius are able to doge the rain of rockets. Intersect Thunderbolt punches its way out of the legged drone's hull, only to fly upwards straight into a rocket, knocking it out of the sky and setting it on fire. More rockets follow as the suit hits the ground, dealing a large amount of damage. Silver Knight also flies upwards at the aerial drone, successfully dodging the rockets, activating his super mode and taking the drone on in melee. Blitzpferd and Basilius join Silver Knight in the air while Intersect Thunderbolt tries to put itself out. Basilius gets some shots off on the drone that Silver Knight is engaging while Blitzpferd engages another big drone solo with her pile bunkers and Ryman begins a fresh wave of hacking attempts, successfully delaying the firing of their starlight breakers.

Basilius continues to assault the flying drone, bashing off rocket batteries and dodging swipes from its claws, while Silver Knight works on slashing away at its wings until it becomes unable to maintain flight, slowly starting to fall. Intersect Thunderbolt takes to the air again and rushes to back up Blitzpferd, running through another rocket to land on the drone and start tearing off its armor. Blitzpferd gets a solid hit on the big drone she is attacking and knocks the cannon it was charging off course, but a wave of rockets crashes over her, totaling her suit.

With two large drones crippled and another under duress, the drones back sections open up, revealing Magnetic Field Emitters. The drones begin to combine into a form resembling the Gattai encountered during Operation Metal Fury, and fire all of their remaining secondaries to cover their combination sequence.

Buio, who had thus far been struggling with repairing his suit's throat-mounted missile launcher, prepares to meet the drone gattai with an El Blanco Array. Intersect Thunderbolt opts to grab the fallen Blitzpferd and retreat, funneling the pilot's berserker nanite boost into dodging missiles and lasers and rushing back to Buio and Ryman's position. Ryman is able to hack the superdrone and is partially successfully in interfering with some of its weapon systems. Buio flies up to begin charging his EBA, only to get smacked down back to the ground by the superdrone. Basilius is able to dodge the sporadic fire and continued to wail on the superdrone where he can, knocking out secondary weapon ports.

The superdrone finally fires its main weapon; a large laser cannon that splits into a huge number of homing beams. Determined to get his shot off, Buio forgoes dodging to fire his EBA. The EBA lives up to its reputation by dealing a tremendous amount of damage to the superdrone and blasting away its head section, but in return gets pummeled by lasers and autocannons, taking crippling damage in turn.

Silver Knight takes the opportunity to rush in and rejoin Basilius, slashing through a section of armor and destroying several secondary turrets. Intersect Thunderbolt manages to dodge all of the incoming fire and finally makes it back to deliver Blitzpferd to Ryman.

Ryman battles the superdrone digitally, interfering with its power systems as much as possible, accidentally winding up supercharging it. The drone uses all this extra power to launch a new attack, activating its combined MFEs in an attempt to pull the AC team towards itself. Buio, Ryman, Basilius and Carrier Prime wind up getting caught in the magnetic field. Buio decides at this point he needs to bail. Buio's suit coughs up another missile, and the avatar drone carrying his cyberbrain leaves the suit's cockpit and climbs onto it before giving it the command to fire at the exit portal on the other side of the dome. The superdrone takes a huge swipe at the collected pilots with one of its legs. Basilius is able to parry the strike and deflect a great deal of the damage in exchange of his suit's arm disintegrating, but the blow is still enough to destroy Buio's now vacant suit and damaging Mecoptera and Carrier Prime.

This appears to have been the superdrone's last hail mary, however, as it stops in midair and starts emitting steam. Silver Knight takes this as an opportunity to continue the attack, opting to enter the superdrone though the hole Buio's EBA blew through it. SK is able to cut his way into the superdrone's combined core while Intersect Thunderbolt resumes attacking from the outside, using its flamethrowers to weaken and melt its armor. Basilius joins him and is able to break off the drone's arm at the weakened point. Carrier Prime is able to recover Buio's avatar drone and even repair his totaled suit into partially working order.

Inside the superdrone, Silver Knight notices that the core is now starting to glow intensely. Mammoth arrives and takes some potshots at the superdrone with his cannons, as does Basilius. Ryman, having given up on hacking any more on account of just making everything worse, opts instead to fire off his own starlight breaker at one of the superdrone's reactors. The starlight breaker supercharges the reactor instead, with everyone getting clear warnings that the superdrone is about to explode.