Ender presents...
==[A Vandread Fanfiction Series]==

   In space, no one can hear you scream.
   Unless of course, you scream within the confines of an airtight ship.
   And you scream very loudly.
   Into the intercom system.
   In that case, everyone can hear you quite well. 
   "Will someone PLEASE do something about this crazy girl?!?" Hibiki screamed into the comm, his breath sounding heavy after the exertion of having to run the length and breadth of seemingly every passage and corridor of the Nirvana. The reason for this early morning exercise was a certain red - haired girl... The same one who came around the corner just as he finished speaking.
   "There you are! Uchuujin-san!" cried Dita, waving her arms enthusiastically. 
   "Ack!" Hibiki cried out, before turning and summoning a last bit of speed from his tired limbs to propel himself away from the red-head, and another of her shouted "uchuujin-sans". Hibiki Tokai was the pilot of one of the most deadly fighting machines known to mankind. He had battled and defeated a host of Earth's automated battle craft, come up with tactics and maneuvers which brought about the destruction of one of Earth's monstrous motherships...
   And yet... for the life of him, Hibiki Tokai could think of no way to escape the red-headed girl who still cheerfully called him 'Mr. Alien'. 
   He was about to seek refuge inside his precious 'partner' when the alarms started ringing. 
   Given his predicament,  it was understandable that he responded with joy instead of chagrin to the blaring sound which warned of impending enemy attack. Since the defeat of one of their motherships, the Earth's forces seemed to have become almost pathetically weak, easily repulsed by one Vandread or another. The boy expected today's attack to be no more than a pleasant distraction from Dita's constant badgering.
   It was at about this point that a massive explosion knocked him off his feet. He would soon discover how wrong he was...

==[VANDREAD]==

Vandread: MAROONED
Chapter One: Grounded
Disclaimer: While I own this fic, Gonzo owns Vandread. And here's to the hope that they make use of that ownership for a long time to come...
Timeline: This series takes place in-between the ending of the First Stage and the start of the Second Stage. 

==[VANDREAD]==

   "Wha - what do you mean we can't launch?"
   Instead of the deserted corridor he had expected to see, Hibiki found himself amidst a horde of Engineers led by Parfet herself, who were running various tools and instruments across a portion of the Nirvana's corridor which was completely crumpled in upon itself. The blast had damaged a good portion of this sector of the ship, and in so doing it had caused a collapse of the hull that rendered the entrance to the Bangatta hangar - where the Bangattas and the three modified Dreads were stored - completely inaccessible. It was to this tableau that Parfet pointed to in answer to Hibiki's question.
   "There's no way we're going to cut through this any time soon," the Chief Engineer of the Nirvana explained, not only to Hibiki, but to Dita, Meia and Jura who had also gathered around her. "Because of the risk of an explosion, we can't use the more high powered tools, and using these low level cutters, it will probably take another half an hour at least to bore a big enough hole for you guys to squeeze through - assuming there's anything left of the hangar."
   "You can't mean - that my partner's lost in space somewhere?" Hibiki exclaimed.
   "My beautiful dread!" moaned Jura in return.
   Parfet shook her head. "I don't think it made quite that much damage, but we won't be sure till we restore some energy to this sector."
   Hibiki was about to ask how long that would take when he felt a firm tug on his arm. He turned to see Meia giving the other three a serious look. "Let's go." She said, before taking off down the corridor at a fast trot.
   "Wait a minute!" Hibiki complained. "Where the hell are you going? The hangar's over this way!"
   "We won't be able to get to them with the debris in the way," she called over her shoulder. "So we might as well find some other means to be useful."
   Muttering under his breath, Hibiki turned to follow the blue haired girl, Jura and Dita keeping pace beside him.
   "Damnit," Hibiki cursed. "How the hell did this happen? How'd they get past our shields? Our radar?"
   "Some new weapon perhaps," Meia responded, cool as always, as they ran towards the Bridge. "We know how quickly they adapt - the weakness they've been showing so far made us too complacent. We should have been ready for this," the Dread Leader concluded, her tone towards the end managing to express the fact that she felt some personal accountability for that failure.
   Dita seemed to sense this as well. "Leader, you can't blame us - we all needed a break after the battle with the Big Ship."
   Jura nodded. "We can only push ourselves so far Meia..."
   "And that's exactly what the enemy was counting on," the blue haired girl replied, just as they emerged at their destination.
   The Bridge was in utter chaos. BC was shouting orders left and right, orders which the Bridge crew were struggling to comply with. The Boss remained intently focused on the tactical maps on the monitor, but occasionally spoke out to tweak an order here and there. What surprised Hibiki and the others was the presence of Duero on the Bridge. The male Doctor was crouched before a prone form stretched out on the floor of the Birdge, and when they saw who exactly he was treating, the reason for the pandemonium at the control center of the Nirvana became evident.
   The form lying unconscious before Duero was that of Bart.
   "What's going on?" Hibiki asked as he raced towards the two men. "What's he doing out here?"
   "We don't know," Duero said, his voice as calm and emotionless as if he had merely announced the state of the weather. "We believe that because of the symbiotic link formed between Bart and the Nirvana, one of the blasts from the enemy caused a negative feedback loop which knocked him unconscious, and the Pexis released him soon after."
   "What the hell are they shooting at us anyway?" Hibiki asked. "How were they able to penetrate our shields."
   "They're using a new weapon *piyoro*," the boy looked down to see Piyoro-kun bobbing up and down next to Duero's feet. "It goes through our shields *pyoro*"
  As Meia, Dita and Jura reached Hibiki's position, BC took over the explanation, in between issuing commands to the crew. "Parfet says that they're using some sort of beam that is ordinarily harmless, but which is transmuted into a powerful laser when it encounters our shield. We were only able to prevent taking more of a beating by lowering our shields, but that gave their conventional weapons a chance to do their damage."
   "And by then," Ezra added, from her position at the comm station. "Bart-chan was already unconscious." 
   "Is Mr. Navigator going to be ok?" Dita asked in concern.
   Duero nodded, then turned back to the blond young man, who was beginning to stir. "See?" Duero said. "He's starting to come around..."
   Meia had a worried look on her face. "Why haven't the other Dreads launched? Barnette should be able to lead them..."
   This time it was the Boss who answered. "The first wave of attacks also managed to disable the Register - the bastards got us good this time."
   "Gasco-san and the others..." Dita began, but the Boss merely smiled in return.
   "They're alright - just unable to fit the Dreads with any armament," Magno only smiled wider when she saw how relieved Dita - and the others, including Hibiki - became after her reassurance. "Why do you look so worried? It would take more than a few explosions to bring down Gascogne."
   "In the meantime though, we're defenseless," Meia noted.
   "More than that though," Jura added. "If he's not in the cockpit, then exactly who is steering the ship right now?"
   Almost as if on cue, the Nirvana began to list downwards and to the right, as a different alarm added its distinctive blare to the cacophony of warnings within the ship. "The gravity from the nearby planet is drawing us closer to the surface - our boosters do not have sufficient power to break free without Bart at the helm,"  Celtic reported, her face peeking out from beneath her bear suit. 
   Magno gritted her teeth. "Now this seems nostalgic... Why is it that we always end up being caught between a rock and a hard place?"
   "Well, at least we don't have to worry about an Earth mothership this time around..." Ezra said hopefully.
   As more explosions rocked the ship, the Boss sighed. "That's what is known as 'cold comfort'..."
   "We've got to do something!" Hibiki exclaimed. The planet was looming closer and closer as the Nirvana accelerated towards it, pulled inexorably by the force of its gravity. "There's got to be something we can do!"
   "We could send out the Deriki - but to what end?" Magno answered. "It would be useless against that many enemies..."
   Hibiki fell silent then, and turned with the others to watch in silence as they tumbled towards the unknown planet. It was a watery orb for the most part, with large stretches of land that alternated between extensive mountain ranges and patches of green that seemed to indicate it was teeming with dense plant-life. Initial analysis had confirmed the existence of vegetative life forms - though whether or not there were any animals or people down there was still unknown, seeing as they had had little time to do anything but a perfunctory scan before the Earth forces had arrived. 
   "Jura doesn't like the looks of this..." the blond haired girl stated, before shivering with distaste. "It doesn't look like a particularly hospitable place."
"If it's a choice between that and the enemy, I'd rather have the planet *pyoro*" Piyoro replied. With a worried look at the swarming enemy cubes. 
    "That's because robots don't have long, luxurious hair like Jura," the girl snorted.
   Before the navi-robot could reply however, a groan from the front of the bridge called their attention back to Bart. The ship's de facto pilot was groggily attempting to sit up, one hand going to his head.
   "Ouch, ouch, OUCH!" he moaned. "What hit me?"
   "We'll have time to explain later," BC cut in before anyone could respond. "What we need to do now is break free from the planet's gravity pulls us into its atmosphere."
   Bart blanched. "You want me to get back in there? After what I just went through?"
   "Why not take refuge within the atmosphere, like we did last time?" Meia asked.
   The silver-haired Sub-Commander shook her head. "It would be too dangerous - we can't put up our shields because of the enemies new weapon, and without them the pressure from atmospheric re-entry might tear the ship apart."
   "Sub-commander!" Belvedere interrupted. The blond bridge girl had an intense look on her face. "The enemies seem to have regrouped around a larger ship, one of unknown type."
   The crew members of the Nirvana turned to stare at the view screen. True enough the remaining cubes were now moving in fixed orbits around a roughly pyramid-shaped object, around the size of four of the smaller cube-types. The new enemy ship seemed to glow with an inner light, and as they watched, several coil like 'appendages' detached themselves from the main body of the pyramid and latched on to the cubes, one for each.
   "There seems to be some sort of energy fluctuation around the enemy formation," Amarone added from her position on the opposite side of the Bridge. "Something is definitely going on..." 
   The pyramid was glowing more intensely now, and soon the light began to suffuse the encircling cube-type enemy ships as well. For a moment the cube-types stopped all movement... And then they began to circle the pyramid, slowly at first, but with increasing speed, until the pyramid was obscured by several dozen rings of light.
   "Wha - what the hell?" Hibiki whispered.
   "Energy build-up accelerating exponentially! Readings are going off the scale! " Belvedere reported, the rising pitch of her voice betraying her rising panic. She turned to the others with wide eyes. "At this rate, it's going to- "
   "Bart!" BC shouted, but the blonde haired helmsman was already jumping into the circle of Pexis which would transport him to his station. Within seconds the Nirvana's headlong rush towards the planet slowed, stopped, then slowly began to reverse. The ship began to pull away from the grip of the planet's gravity, and Bart let out a joyful whoop.
   "We're out of here! Time to do what I do best!"
   It was at that point that the enemy formation began to move -  straight towards the Nirvana.
   "Bart!" Magno shouted. "Get us out of range!"
   "I can't!" Bart screamed. "The planet's still slowing me down!"
   "All power to shields!" the Sub-Commander ordered as the enemy rapidly closed the distance to the Nirvana. As it neared, Hibiki and the others could see the massive amount of energy which was building up within the orbits of the enemy cubes - it had reached the point where some of the cubes, unable to bear the energy that was being fed into their metallic frames, were beginning to come apart at the seams, light pouring out from within like sunlight breaching an overcast sky. What was to happen next soon became clear to all who were watching. The enemy ships were at a critical point - they were going to explode, and take the Nirvana with them.
   It wasn't just a mass of enemies in formation - it was a Single.Huge.Bomb.
   "Brace for impact!" BC shouted, just as the enemy reached the Nirvana's shields - and exploded.
   The shockwave was incredible, and the men and women of the Nirvana found themselves careening through the air as the ship was buffeted by the wave of force unleashed by the explosion. Hibiki grit his teeth as his head slammed against a bulkhead, his vision swimming briefly as the impact jarred his brain. He managed a painless but ungraceful landing as the ships gravity reasserted himself, but he was aware that the ship was still being propelled away from the explosion - and towards the waiting planet.
   The others were picking themselves up from where they had been flung by the explosion, Meia and Dita moving quickly to help the Boss, who had been jarred lose from the command chair and hurled a good three meters away. 
   "I'm getting too old for this," Magno muttered as she let the two girls help her back to her seat, while the Bridge crew checked the status of the Nirvana.
   "The Nirvana has been caught by the planet's gravity, currently accelerating towards the atmosphere," Celtic reported, being the first to recover from her fall since she was cushioned to an extent by her bear suit. "Estimated time before planetary entry, two minutes."
   "Hey, Blondie!" Magno called out as she settled back into her chair. "Shake a leg!"
   An image of an exasperated Bart appeared on screen. "Hey! I'm trying here!"
   Moments later another window opened and the others caught a glimpse of a dishelved Parfet. "It's not Bart's fault... We took some damage from the blast and the engines don't have enough power to fight both the force of the explosion and the pull of gravity."
   "See?" Bart said, as his window displaced that of the Nirvana's Chief Engineer. "It's her fault not mine!"
   "Hey!"
   Ignoring Bart, BC turned to look at Ezra. "What's the status of our shields?"
   The pregnant woman sighed and shook her head. "They took quite a beating... We can get them back up to around sixty percent of full power - at most - by the time we breach the atmosphere... But no more than that."
   The silver haired woman turned towards Magno. "That's still below the safety level."
   The older woman nodded grimly. "Looks like we're in for a rough ride," she said, then thumbed open the comm channel. "Everyone! We're going to be making a little unexpected detour. Better strap yourselves to a seat in the next minute or so - and make sure the wounded are taken care of." The old woman paused a moment, before adding: "Just sit tight  - pirates like us don't die easily!"
   A few ragged cheers could be heard over the comm as the remaining crew members on the Bridge found something to hold on to.
   "Since when are _we_ pirates?" Hibiki muttered as an aside to Duero, but it was Piyoro-kun who answered.
   "Since you began stuffing yourself with food from their larders *piyoro*"
   "Shut up!" he hissed, then surveyed the scene around him. He saw instantly that steps had been taken to protect the most vulnerable of the crew. Dita and Jura were clinging to Ezra's console, flanking her and her unborn child on both sides, while BC and Meia each had one hand gripping a handhold, and another one protectively wrapped around the Boss' shoulders.
   "Twenty seconds to impact," Belvedere announced.
   "Nineteen..."
   "Bart, get out of there!" BC barked. "Your body might not survive even if the ship does."
   "Fourteen..."
   "Thirteen..."
   Bart emerged, his clothes almost magically appearing around him. "Oh thank you Sub-Commander!" he said, his eyes misty with tears of relief. "I thought you'd forgotten about me..."
   "Ten..."
   "Just be ready to get back in the moment the pressure equalizes - we'll need you to steer us to a fitting crash site."
   "Eight..."
   Bart paled, then gulped.
   "Seven..."
   "Six..."
   "Uchuujin-san!" Dita cried out. "Please be careful!"
   "Four..."
   "You girls just make sure you don't get hurt!" Hibiki replied with a fierce grin. "Don't worry about us men!"
   Meia shook her head. "This is no time to get cocky!"
   "Two..."
   "One..."
   "Who are you calling - "
   "Impa - "
    - and then the world went black. 

==[End of Chapter One]==