[FTL RP, WE'RE BACK, REBOOTED!] The Rogue Cadets

[stylesrj]

I know it's been a while there NEmergix but are you talking to Eden or Jake? Sometimes I forget if people are willing to stay onboard a ship full of crazy cannibals when there are saner ships in the fleet one can flee to and help out

"If we go into that nebula, we'd do more harm and make ourselves an easy target" Eden explained to the young former slave "I'm not sure if you're familiar with how space works, but if our thrusters and engines are clogged up with nebula gas, we'd keep travelling in the same direction we came in and thus any old targeting computer will be able to lock on."
Lux then added over the comms "Also, these sensors wouldn't be able to get a good reading on any enemy ships unless we're right on top of them; all the Slugs have to do is get us properly scared and we'd wipe ourselves out, shooting at the first shape we'd see on the sensors. Your plan to blow them all up could probably destroy the nebula..."
Just like in that episode when Captain Awesome encountered the dreaded Slug pirate, Captain Knight, she thought to herself, he made an entire Federation battlegroup destroy themselves with only a single scout ship... then Captain Awesome destroyed it by taking out the life support and no one could fix it.

[JakeCollins]

Jake Collins sprinted to the piloting chair as soon as the alarms went off. He was running past the sensors station when suddenly the Sensor Room's doors exploded in his face. The eruption of light and sound sent him crashing to the ground, unconscious.

When he awoke, he all sounds were distant over the dull but constant ringing in his ears. He waited on the floor for his vision to stabilize, before rising to his feet, legs quaking. His numb fingers unstrapped a handheld scanner from his uniform. He flipped it open and took a scan of the embers in the Sensor room. Chemical traces were strewn all over the place. Someone had teleported a bomb in while the Mature was docked - and thus while their Shields were down.

The ringing in his ears slowly turned to a throbbing pulse. Jake managed to regain most of his motor control and continued jogging to the piloting station. "Sarah.... Report!" He gasped.

Sarah's image appeared before him. "You've been out for about ten minutes. I couldn't get you out of their because the holo-emmiters in that corridor were fried. A Slug fleet has attacked. They blew up some crates of nebula gas, and are launching ionic energy into the cloud. They've created their own ion storm!"

"Are the shields holding?"

"No... the attack occurred before the Purple Shield went online. The ions are preventing a shield bubble from being created. They're also screwing with our engines."

A series of low blasts rocked the ship.

"They've opened fire!" With that, Sarah disappeared. Jake continued onward, and finally made it to the piloting chair, where Sediment was waiting for him. As he leapt into the chair, a small wave of nausea momentarily passed over him. He shook it off - he couldn't deal with a concussion right now. The medbay would fix him up later. Sure enough, engines were barely online.

Jake opened fire on the shadows in the gas... the ones that were shooting at him. He got on the now-staticy radio. "This is Jake Collins! Go to full impulse! This cloud is dense... it can't be that big. Let's get outta here!"

Jake fired the bow thrusters and the ship flew vertically upwards away from the scene.

[4n4rch1st]

But the ion storm was doing something else...
A function in the Mature was activating due to the high amouts of power in the storm. A function that had only been used once before. Slowly, but surely, the temporal drive began to charge...

The coordinates had not been reset, so the ship was due to travel back to the point in time the mature first appeared.

[stylesrj]

I don't think the Fed/Mantis war was a 400-year long conflict or happened 400 years ago... seriously that's way too long for two FTL-capable civilisations to be waging war for. Everything would be so badly destroyed both factions would be in the Stone Age.
Remember, Lux's favourite show Captain Awesome is based off her grandfather's exploits during the war and he "disappeared" just before the Federation/Rebel conflict. At least that's how I see the timeline. The Rebellion started a few years or decades after the war ended.

[4n4rch1st]

Fair enough.
I've changed it so that the coordinates will warp it back to the point where the mature appeared in the past. So not very long ago but still in the past

[BrenTenkage]

Bren swore a bit as he fired his barrage of crystal shots, prefering to keep his railgun on standby, too many shots of that and he burns out his power.

"Hard to see it, damn it should we retreat Boss?" he called out to Jake

[JakeCollins]

But the ion storm was doing something else...
A function in the Mature was activating due to the high amouts of power in the storm. A function that had only been used once before. Slowly, but surely, the temporal drive began to charge...

The coordinates had not been reset, so the ship was due to travel another 400 years into the past.

Into the thick of the Fed-Mantis war

/the Robin was from 80 years ago. That was the heat of the Fed war.

Also I thought about using the Temporal Drive in this situation.

Jake had no idea what system was powering up, and why. He read the label on the console, and quickly realized that this system was the Mature's temporal drive. "Sarah!!! Shut that goddamn system off!" Jake shouted. Sarah heard Jake's request through the ships' internal microphones. She didn't have time to materialize her avatar, and quickly worked from within the computer to deactivate the system. She connected her voice output to the comms system.

"Jake... the temporal coils have already gathered too much ionic energy! If I'm going to do this, I need a place to divert all this energy!" She shouted.

"How much energy are we talking about?" Jake screamed as more shots bombarded the ship from the gloomy fog.

"Um... a couple thousand FTL Jumps..." Sarah said meekly, barely audible over the sounds of laser fire.

A ground... It's like a normal electrical circuit... she needs a ground connection to discard the energy... Jake thought.

"If we don't do this soon, we'll reach max Input... and either jump into the past or explode. Your choice!"

Jake's next sentence was interrupted by a console sparking behind him, and shaking his chair violently. "Time for a third option! REVERSE!!!" Jake fired all aft thrusters and they flew backwards. They sped blindly through the fog.

"Sarah! Prepare to divert all ionic energy into the aft hull!"

"That will tear the ship to shreds! It's a closed circuit!"

"Not closed for long! Divert on my mark!"

A few seconds later, there was an unfathomably loud crashing sound from from all around him. The ship shook violently, and the hull screeched from stress. They had crashed into the now-abandoned station!

"Divert!" Jake croaked as soon as the impact occured.

An electrical zapping sound resounded through the interior of the ship. As soon as he heard the zap, Jake activated impulse engines at full power, away from the station. The timing was perfect. Jake had crashed into the hull of the station and diverted all ionic energy from the temporal drive into the station. The energy flowed from the Mature's hull to that of the stations. By speeding away as soon as he touched the hull, he sustained minimal damage to the Mature's aft section.

"That was some serious flying, Captain!" Sarah shouted with joy.

"Shut down the ionic receptors immediately! I NEVER want that happening again!"

[4n4rch1st]

All the energy convulsing through the station caused the nebula dispenser to run in reverse, sucking in nebula and putting it back into the tanks. But because the tanks were ruptured, the gas just got sucked in again, creating a torus of ionised nebula gasses, effectively making a station sized reactor. A large bolt of condensed energy hit the Mature, bypassing the ion coils and directly charging the temporal drive again.

[NEmergix]

Nicholas looked surprised .
"You don't know how a slug engine works ? What ? I worked on thoese god damn engine for years ! Ya just need to set the xenon-ion liquid to a ratio of 70 ish !I knonw any classic core can't output that energy at a time , but it works ! Kinda !"
My character worked on both a slug shipyard and some slug ships all his life , he know how they work !

[Jumbocarrot0]

Sediment stared blankly at the flashing lights. "Time travel? Ok no one told me about this." He was knocked over when the Mature crashed. The signals stopped and was told they weren't going anywhere. "Ok, now we can..." Then the Mature was struck with bolts of electricity and the signals started again. "Oh Fortuna is not on our side." Fortuna is the roman god of luck, I figured rockmen would use a similar belief system for Gods. Sediment quickly got back up and yelled at the wall, trying to talk to Sarah. "Hey, if you can do that again that'll be great. And if not, I'ld rather we end up back in time then be blown up! At least we might be able to get back."

Man 4n4rch1st, your really forcing the time travel here. And Jake, he changed it so we would travel to when the mature appeared in the past.