Episode 04: Simulcast | Chapter 06 "No Cosmic Justice""Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. "- Martin Luther King, Jr.
[ Lt Cmdr. Miles Renard | Lone Wolves Squadron | Wolf-01 ] Attn: All (Esp. Lone/Grey/White Wolves, the Allegiant crew and Covington)With his Mk III Valkyrie running on just one of its quantite cores, Miles Renard wasn't too optimistic about the odds he faced, even if he wasn't facing them alone.
The two modded shuttles that had escorted the
Sabine to Vector 01's shuttle bay pulled up on either side of him, and he turned his helmet to see the modifications up close - a patchwork arsenal strapped to the once inferior crafts. Seeing through the glass of their cockpits, the lit interiors revealed that the pilots wore Tactical CONN exosuits from 2377, and he realised that they were wolves too - Grey Wolves in sheep's clothing. They had, no doubt, lost their Valkyries during the
Resolve's voyage back to Federation space. He met their eyes through the visors of their helmets, and he inclined his head to them both, each in turn. Then he patched the Lone Wolves' squadron channel to them.
"Iron-Fox, Wolf Leader," he said by means of introduction, "Nice rides. Now, let's make sure your crew gets on the
Theurgy, and we'll be leaving as soon as possible. We just need to get a message sent, and our teams back from the starbas-."
The
Orcus opened fire against Vector 02, not too far off in the distance, and the garish purple light from the brutal bombardment made Miles narrow his slitted eyes. The effect was not the expected, since when the light faded between each pulse phaser bolt, it seemed the energy was saturating the Vector's shield. To what end, Miles did not know yet. What he did see, however, was the SCO of the Grey Wolves arriving - alone - from tangling with the Defiant-class USS Chester.
"There you are," he said on the same channel, one which Lieutenant Havenborn had been patched into before the two modded shuttles were, so he would have heard him speaking with them too. His gaze strayed from the last remaining Mk II fighter from the
Resolve to the interceptors that were coming in his wake - like a vanguard for the straggling USS Chester. From above, an element of two new fighters from the
Orcus was coming for them as well, only too far away to engage just yet. They were, truly, the last line of defence for Vector 01 and the
Resolve, and at that moment, before the storm, it was clear just how poor the odds were. "Now... We might be strangers, but let's do this for a common cause."
Survival of their own. Perhaps even retribution for their wolven brothers and sisters.
"With me!" he called as the first interceptors came upon them, "Delta-2 manoeuvre, leading into Beta-4 and Omega-1 for that Defiant-class.Engage!"
Here goes nothing, Miles thought as he throttled whatever juice he had left out of his damaged engine - venting plasma as he shot off towards the approaching swarm. He saw on his sensors that Vector 01 set a course towards the
Orcus behind their backs, and he had no idea what Captain Ives was up to with engaging the Vesta-class carrier while the wreckage of the
Resolve was still docked with Thea's saucer section. The USS Chester broke off to engage Vector 03. It was hard to tell, but he thought Vector 02 had lost its shields from the
Orcus' bombardment. He spotted the
Allegiant in the fray as well, assailed by five interceptors. There was no way he could help her, but... what was that?
Something just launched from the
Theurgy's Fighter Assault Bay on Vector 02, and from what little he could see of it, it had an eerily familiar silhouette (https://uss-theurgy.com/w/index.php?title=AC-507_Mk_I_Reaver).
No, it can't be...
OOC: Edit: Updated the second to last paragraph to reflect events in Chapter 07: Cost of Truth.
The writers who's characters were not directly addressed in this post but who writes fighter pilots will be getting a PM too. The attack patterns mentioned above can be found here (https://uss-theurgy.com/w/index.php?title=Command,_Tactical_%26_CONN#Attack_Patterns).
This Chapter will contain the scenes between the fighter pilots of the Theurgy, Resolve and Orcus as well as the Allegiant. Moreover, the scenes for the Boarding Teams will be finished here. Please try to limit comm traffic outside the fighter squadrons or the boarding teams so that it won't complicate things in Chapter 07 (I would need to coordinate across Chapters, which can be messy). Exceptions can certainly be made though. Stay tuned for the next half of the starter!
[ SCPO Calvin Reagar | Boarding Team 01 | Communication Tower ] Attn: Wenn Cinn & CO
Behind the sliding doors that led the lowest level of Starbase 84's communication towers, Wenn Cinn's grenade went off, and Cal Reagar could hear the screams of the fallen. With his teeth bared, both in pain from his wound and in bitter determination, he did as they had drilled a hundred times on the holodeck. Only this time, it was the real deal - the pain reminding him every moment.
With a fear-defiant cry, he ran through the doors and into the aftermath of the blast. Narrowed eyes along the sights of his TR-120, he picked out five bodies on the floor, and then saw movements in the back of the large room. He saw two right away, having managed to find cover from the grenade, and he opened fire. He got one square in the neck, making him topple backwards. He had been unarmed, but not the other one.
Feeling his hair singe from the guard's phaser, Cal got behind the duty station next to the entrance, and he knew he had to alert his team. The anti-nadion field did not reach that far into the room, and the team was right on his heels. "Replicator!" he called, indicating where they should look, but as he saw them thundering inside, he saw another guard with a phaser emerging from another cover. "Three O'clock!"
If it only had been two officers that hadn't been hit by the stun grenade, but there were more of them, emerging from behind covers all across the room. And those who tried to fire within the anti-nadion cloud might have been stunned at first when their emitters didn't create a beam, but as soon as they did, they tried to overpower them with fists instead. By the point Cal got to his feet and struck one down with the butt of his rifle, he counted seven Starfleet personnel still standing, not all of them security, and the number wasn't too off from simulations since it was a large starbase.
Yet if they only managed to get through open area with its duty stations and listening booths, the main communication console was just beyond the next corridor, on the far side of the room...
In the midst of the ensuing shooting and fighting, O'Connell's voice was heard from Wenn Cinn's combadge. [O'Connell to boarding teams! We're in! If you got any requests I'd make 'em now, while there's still someone in th' primary reactor room that's on your side!]
OOC: This is the team's final fight, so go crazy and have fun! Just try to spread the fun around and don't hog all the take-downs for yourselves. Try to have the team work together as one unit, as if they have drilled this area a lot of times on the holodeck. One post each, and then we move on to the main communication console beyond a door on the far side of the area.
Suggested PO (feel free to post ahead of others): 1) Ravenholm 2) Cardamone 3) Isley 4) Wenn Cinn
Posts to come for the other two boarding teams! :)
[ Theurgy "Thea" NX-79854 | Boarding Team 02 | Primary Reactor Control Room ] Attn: Doc M. & Brutus
[Boarding parties,] Thea heard Commander Carrigan Trent say from O'Connell's station by the main reactor, [space superiority is... hotly contested so you are directed to expedite your mission and extraction.]
"Dagnabbit! Fergit whut ah said Luff! We need the transporters! Git th' transporters back on line raight now!" O'Connell told the Tellarite, who scrambled to rectify how he'd redirected power from the station's transporter systems. The last security guard had been stunned by Cam and Rivard, so Thea set her pace towards the main consoles before the reactor. Before the guards had beamed in, Cam had not had the time to deactivate the starbase's shields or weapons, bypassing the security systems not being so easy for the Andorian, much less so when fired upon. Perhaps O'Connell would be quicker to power down the tower in the recreational dome called the Executive Offices Complex, and with it, the central command center. Then again, the starbase did have an auxillary reactor.
"I will assist you," said Thea as she closed the distance towards Luff and O'Connell, but before she got there, the doors were breached on the second level, and Thea raised her TR-120 in one hand to take aim - eyes along the sights while she walked. She saw the Bolian woman on their team shield her eyes against the blast when the doors finally gave in, and Thea dealt rapid suppression fire into the gaping maw to the corridor. She saw movements in the smoke, guards attempting to pour through the opening, but she held them off long enough for Keyah to get her Accipiter up and charged. Once she fired, both the smoke and the guards cleared from the opening to the corridor. The concussion in the air was felt throughout the reactor control room, but even Keyah remained on her feet this time.
"I will attempt to deactivate the shields and the tactical systems," said Thea when she got to a station, and resequenced her abdomen to bare her mobile emitter, and for the second time, she connected it to the starbase with her datacord. She began to shred her way through the security systems in place while turning back towards the breached door - taking aim once more. Multitasking came easy to the A.I., so while she hacked her way into the defence systems, she also defended the team together with Keyah. Any guards that came into view was quickly dealt with.
"We will not be able to beam back aboard any of my vectors while I have my shields up," Thea reminded Luff and O'Connell both. "Therefore I do suggest the base's transporters remain offline, and that we report when the base's shields are deactivated."
As if emphasising her point, another security detail beamed into the reactor control room when Luff got the transporters online again, and Thea quickly shifted her aim to them - leaving the doorway to Keyah. There were six of them, too many for her to take out before they returned fire, so two more in the boarding team fell to the floor - fate uncertain.
OOC: The staff at the auxillary reactor is trying to wrest control away from O'Connell, Luff and Thea. Brutus, this is your cue to have Komial beamed to the primary reactor before Luff cuts the transporters again. Doc M., if you post first, you can have O'Connell cut the power to the EOC tower, and that would make the room dark for Komial, Brutus, in your post, and the auxiliary reactor might give her and Mackenzie emergency lighting. Oh, and I forgot to add O'Connell's message to the other boarding teams in my previous post, so I am adding it now.
Another post to come! :)
[ ThanIda zh'Wann | Boarding Team 03 | EOC Top Floor Lounge ] Attn: SummerDawn & Doc M.
"You are too late," rasped the Romulan in a damaged voice, "the galactic war has already begun."
In the wake of those words, all that could be heard was the laboured breathing of the Romulan, and the minute movements from Sel and Zaraq at Ida's side. Even though the dead ringer of Isley in the brown, threadbare cloak lowered his weapon, Ida did not - sights still on the centre of his figure. She'd seen how fast he was, and would not take any chances. The fact that he looked like Isley did not help easing the tension in the lounge either. Quite the opposite. It just could not be that they had the same kind of blood in their veins, could it?
"Who are you?" she said quietly, antennae angled towards him like twin adders.
"I'm neither enemy nor friend," he rasped, standing perfectly still - eyes unmoving, "I used to wear your uniform, but now, I just fight for what I believe in - walking a righteous path."
Ida didn't know Romulans spoke in riddles, but it might just be this one. Either way, it annoyed her. "What did you mean?" she pressed, having just as little patience as she had time, "Why would the war have begun already?"
The Romulan looked at her, as if he could see right through her eyes, and then he looked at Sel. "Interesting," he said quietly, his scarred forehead creasing in a frown behind the tresses of his burgundy hair. For a moment, it appeared as if he had tuned out, looking at something not present in the room. The pause even made Ida glance towards Sel and Zaraq. Then, as if returning to the present, the Romulan spoke anew. "My name is Drauc T'Laus, and for the last couple of hours, I have worked with the Starfleet crew of the Resolve. With them, I uncovered the truth about Captain Ian Hawthorne - the Commanding Officer of this station. I have come here to end his life, and prevent him from doing more damage than he has already done."
Ida clenched her jaw, her worst fears for Ensign Henshaw being confirmed. I've made a mistake.
Aloud, she snapped. "We don't have time for this. What has he done? Speak plainly!"
Drauc paused, as if he could sense her hidden distress about the Yeoman. "My apologies. He has collaborated with my people, and provided them with coordinates for the Federation's hidden weapon depots and research facilities along the entire length of the RNZ. The raids have already begun, and in doing so, he has made one faction of my former Empire wroth with the Federation, since they think Starfleet is arming Donatra's rebel fleet with Federation technology. It is, without a doubt, a means to bring the war across the Neutral Zone, intentional or not."
The Romulan's words made a cold shiver run up Ida's spine. "He is Aidoann."
"So you have heard of him?" said Drauc with a frown of his own.
"We fought and pried the name from the Romulans who raided one of those facilities. The Black Opal."
"I see," said Drauc, tilting his head a bit, "so I reckon you are not collaborators with my people, as everyone says you are. Then I would surmise we have a common goal, though I suppose you would rather try to bring Hawthorne to justice."
"No," said Ida, finally lowering her weapon a little, "we will try to remove an alien parasite that has taken over his mind. There might be hope for him yet." She chose not to tell him they just didn't know how to do it.
[O'Connell to boarding teams! We're in! If you got any requests I'd make 'em now, while there's still someone in th' primary reactor room that's on your side!] The message from Ida's combadge prompted them to continue the mission, lest they'd be too late. Ida took a deep breath and tapped her badge to reply even as she began to move towards the Romulan, waving with her rifle for Sel and Zaraq to follow.
"This is zh'Wann," she said, walking past Drauc T'Laus and towards where Henshaw had gone, "there are only three of us left, and we are going to take the command center by force. Shut down internal sensors and communications in the EOC tower, and get those shields down so that we can get out of here as soon as Wenn sends the damnable simulcast. There are transporter inhibitors both here and in the communication towers, so cut the power for them as well. zh'Wann out."
Pausing, a cursory thought devoted to the plight of the second boarding team, she looked over her shoulder at Drauc and then to Zaraq. The Klingon shrugged, evidently not seeing any harm in the Romulan helping them. Then she looked at Sel, seeing if she had any reservations. Her own were strictly personal, completely biased, and all Isley's fault.
OOC: SummerDawn, you're up! Doc M., here you have Ida's reply to O'Connell above. Another post coming up here with Ian Hawthorne. :)
[ Captain Ian Hawthorne | EOC Command Center | Starbase 84 ] Attn: Nolan & Brutus
[No Captain Hawthorne, you will not be sending me anything. In pursuant to Starfleet Regulation One Nine One, I am here by taking tactical command of this situation and I have instructed my officers to ignore any data coming in from an outside source. I am familiar with the officers aboard the Theurgy and considering what happened the last time that ship came into contact with any Federation starship, I refuse to allow them access to any form of wireless data sent in the open.]
Hearing the voice of Slayton as he replied, Ian Hawthorne quelled the urge to chuckle at the ignorant skin-puppet. So arrogant, believing he was in control of the situation, whereas he was merely dancing to his kin's tune. Cattle like Slayton, who believed themselves holy crusaders for a constructed ideal, they were the ones most predictable of the mewling flesh all around them. They were like children's toys, which could only go one way unless you nudged them into a new direction.
"Have at them," Ian merely said, "and let's hope they won't succeed doing what they did to Task Force Archeron again. Hawthorne out."
He turned from the viewscreen, saw the internal sensors screen and the readings there before he tapped his combadge. "Hawthorne to Dotnhil. Reinforcements have arrived, and the Chester has managed to manually release her docking clamps, joining the battle outside, but it would seem none of the boarding teams are dealt with. Your top priority is the primary reactor room. Stop them from lowering our shields at any cost. Hawthorne out."
Of course Ian knew what he was doing, feeding the Trill's guilt and leading her on with her failures, pushing her further and further, until she would do anything he asked just to redeem herself in his eyes. Like Slayton, she was also a predictable glove of flesh, only far more appetising. He had come to enjoy her well enough, but as disposable as she were, Ian wouldn't give it a second thought if she perished in the crossfire. Just like Trish, she was - after all - just a plaything to discard as he saw fit.
[Lieutenant Junior Grade Selnak to Ops. Captain Hawthorne, there is a boarding party here in the EOC. One of of the insurgents is a woman claiming to be your daughter, a Cameron Henshaw. She wishes to speak directly with you about a seize-fire, while the boarding team remains where they are. If you don't, the boarders threaten to push on and seize the command center. What are your orders?]
Cam, here? thought Ian, intrigued about the development. The daughter of the host, of his, was a tantalising morsel of woman - the biological daughter of a long lost friend. As his adoptive daughter, he remembered how he had done his utmost to try and provide for her, and even patched things up with Trish to ensure that she and Lisa both could have all the opportunities in the universe to become what they wanted to be - to do what they wanted most. Now, she was just another one of the cattle, meaning nothing to him. Even if she'd been his real daughter, he would defile her if given the opportunity, and dispose of the body like he'd done with Trish.
Wearing a frown he knew looked thoughtful, Ian eventually nodded to one of the present security officers, letting the man answer the call. "The Captain will see her, but make sure she is unarmed. Keep the boarding party locked down. Do not let them through under any circumstances. Reinforcements are on the way to your position. Ops out."
Oh, it was not sentimentality that made him wish to see Cam again, and he already knew what she would say - unaware as she was that the very person she'd try to warn was the cause for her plight.
"Tell Selnak to remove her combadge as well. I do not want her beamed back on that ship again," he said, turning back to see the capital ships moving into battle outside his base. Why play Kal-toh when one could instigate and orchestrate a real war? Indeed, why play with toys when one might pit real starships against each other and watch them fight to the bitter end?
OOC: Brutus, here is the communication from Hawthorne again, and Nolan, here is where you post with Cameron next. :)
[ MCPO William Robert O'Connell (https://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2014/219/f/7/oconnel_row_01_by_auctor_lucan-d7u6n2x.png) | Boarding Team Two | Primary Reactor Control | Level 14 | Starbase 84 ]
"I will attempt to deactivate the shields and the tactical systems," Thea announced as she reached a console near Luff and O'Connell. Out of Billy Bob's peripheral vision, he could see the heavenly hologram expose the mobile emitter hidden in her abdomen and connect it to the console with a datacord. It was distracting to see a woman with what appeared to be an umbilical cord connected to the console while she turned and fired her TR-120 at the doorway on the level above them, so he tried to concentrate on the task at hand.
"Thanks Thea I need the help," Cam muttered from his console some three meters away. "Someone in the auxiliary reactor room is fighting us."
Speaking of fighting, sounds of gunfire could be heard on the level above. From his vantage point on the deck below Billy Bob couldn't see his teammates up there, but as long as the sounds of an Accipiter could be heard, Keyah and Rivard were holding the door. Rivard had climbed the ladder to join Keyah and she needed the backup.
"We will not be able to beam back aboard any of my vectors while I have my shields up," Thea reminded them. "Therefore I do suggest the base's transporters remain offline, and that we report when the base's shields are deactivated."
"Don't you worry yore purty li'l head none darlin'," O'Connell purred. "When Ah tol' Luff we needed th' transporters back online Ah meant thet he should jest git one transporter back online, one thet only we could use an' the base people kain't use knowhow! It's not lahk he jest reactivated all th' transporters so base security cud use 'em. Ain't thet raight Luff?" The master chief's face fell when he looked at the Tellarite. Chief Warrant Officer Gimli Luff's countenance was hideous at rest but he look on his face at this moment told a story, and unfortunately it was a combination of a horror story and a comedy of errors.
"What?" the Tellarite boomed. "I thought we were going to pull out immediately! I restored power to all the transporters! This console isn't exactly a Vulcan chronometer!"
But the others weren't listening. Their attention was fixed on the six glowing silhouettes appearing to the right of the main reactor wielding phaser rifles. O'Connell, Thea and Cam turned and fired their weapons at them, but the group scattered and rolled to the floor, firing their weapons in the group's direction as they did so. O'Connell and the others were forced to drop to the deck and scramble for cover to avoid getting hit. A lucky shot struck knocked Luff out of his chair. It must have been a coordinated attack, because the sounds of combat upstairs suddenly intensified.
"Rivard's been hit!" Keyah's voice reported as the gunmen reached cover and took up positions facing them. "It got through his SAFTI gear, he's out cold!"
"Dagnabbit woman, could we beam through the Theurgy's shields by using the sensor windows?" Billy Bob asked Thea as he used his TR-120 rifle to lay down some covering fire. "Th' Theurgy uses a high-energy sensor system, which cycles every five an' a half minutes if Ah remember correctly, with a window of a fiftieth of a second," he added before firing again at the security team. "Ah know th' timing is a mite tricky but if anybody could time it raight it's you!"
"That isn't going to help us if we can't get the station's shield's to drop!" Cam barked as he shot a slender pipe over the bulky machinery one of the enemy was hiding behind. What appeared to be scalding hot steam but was in reality subzero temperature shot down at him, causing him to roll out from cover where O'Connell could stun him.
"Then you two really gotta bring down those shields," O'Connell grunted. Raising his head over the machinery they had been using for cover, (and completely forgetting that he had a tricorder attached to his SAFTI gear), O'Connell surveyed the area downstairs. Two of their assailants were down; the others had taken up firing positions behind pipes, coolant tanks, the matter/antimatter reaction core and a rib of the bulkhead.
[This is zh'Wann,] a familiar feminine voice replied. [There are only three of us left, and we are going to take the command center by force. Shut down internal sensors and communications in the EOC tower, and get those shields down so that we can get out of here as soon as Wenn sends the damnable simulcast. There are transporter inhibitors both here and in the communication towers, so cut the power for them as well. zh'Wann out.]
"Aye-aye Ma'am!" O'Connell acknowledged bitterly as he turned to operate the controls, leaving Thea and Cam to keep the new security detail in check. "There we go!" he announced as he ducked back down when the opposition sent some phaser beams his way, "the sensors and communications should be out, but fur raight now the doors still work!" he added as Cam and Thea gave him the covering fire he needed to rise to his knees and reach awkwardly across the console again. "Shuttin' down th' transporter inhibitors raight now. O'Connell out!" he shouted when a phaser beam missed him by centimeters.
Instinctively, he detonated one of the anti-nadion grenades at ground zero. That was a mistake. It may have been a harmless gas grenade, but it was still a grenade. When it detonated it lifted the master chief up by his scrotum and dropped him down on the portly and reeling form of Gimli Luff. Tapping the activation stud on his SAFTI gear, O'Connell once more rose to his knees so he could cut power to the station's transporters again. They didn't need them. If Thea was going to pull off the beam-through-your own shields trick, she would probably have to coordinate it with Kowalski or one of the other transporter operators aboard the Theurgy. Unfortunately, even if it worked, it was probably going to be one of those procedures where only one person could beam back at a time, and knowing Billy's luck, he'd probably be the last one to beam back. "Ah'm gonna deactivate th' station's transporters! We don't need 'em knowhow! Dang it, Luff why'd yuh have t' git hit?"
OOC: Leaving some wiggle room so a PC can use the station's transporter to beam in or for a guard to shoot Billy's console, forcing him to scramble for another one if the plot demands the station keeps its transporters going.
(https://orig14.deviantart.net/4f48/f/2013/039/7/4/mccoy__love_is_in_the_air_by_schematization-d5ua7zo.gif)
[Selena Ravenholm | Boarding Team 01 | Communication Tower]
Selena had to fight the urge to roll her eyes at Reagar's cry, this wasn't a holo-novel. But still, he was quite successful in pulling the attention of the entire room towards himself, giving the rest of the team a chance to get out of the turbolift as well. Regaining her phaser pistol, she fired off a few snap-shots in the directions Reagar called out as she hustled to the nearest console. She didn't hit anything (or if she did they were just winged and she missed it), but since she was just trying to keep the guards' heads down it wasn't a big deal. One of the guards got lucky though, almost as soon as she was out of the door a beam singed Reagar's hair and nearly clipped her neck.
That was all the encouragement Selena needed, quickly sliding into position behind a console. Down on her rear, she kept her legs tucked in front of her, taking up an odd sitting position that had the console to her right side. This made it nearly impossible to fire for effect, at least for normal people, and Selena was not normal. Bringing up the pistol's POV view once again, she simply stuck the weapon over the top and used it as a periscope, snapping off a shot whenever she saw an opportunity.
That was when the brave ones starting to rush the team. Probably figuring that their numbers would let them overpower the invaders, some of the officers in yellow came in fast. The first went for Reagar and got a rifle butt in the chin for his trouble. His partner, a Denobulan woman tried to take his spot but either missed Selena there or didn't think of her as a threat. That was a costly mistake. Jabbing her cybernetic leg out with full force, the Denobulan took the impact in the back of her knee, collapsing it with a sickening crunch. Before she could even hit the deck Selena was up on her feet in a crouch and caught her by the uniform jacket. Using her foot as an anchor the two women spun around and the fin-faced woman went flying into the wall like a doll.
Impressive a move it may have been, it did cost Selena in the end. Before she could rotate back under cover someone scored a solid hit to her chest. Thankfully the SAFTI net was still online at the moment, but it was too much for it. Components overloaded and blew out, showering her front with sparks and glowing embers. Cursing up a storm, she rethought her plans. Gazing up at the ceiling she could see plenty of hand-holds up there. "Think you can keep their heads down for a few moments?" she asked her compatriots.
[ Tessa May Lance (https://fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2014/219/0/d/tessa_row_01_by_auctor_lucan-d7u6mx6.png) | Wolf 07 | Outer space | Within phaser range of Starbase 84 ]
Try as she might, Tessa couldn't lose the Chester. The Defiant class escort that had followed her out of Starbase 84's main docking bay seemed intent on staying on her tail, despite all of her attempts to shake it. And the Chester wasn't her only problem. Everywhere she flew it seemed that the station's Knight interceptors were there to greet her even though the swarms of them finally seemed to be thinning. Fortunately, the Chester seemed to have acquired its own problems in the form of three Mark II Valkyries that had decided to engage her. Okay, two. There were two Mark II Valkyries engaging her. One of them had been destroyed, but Tessa wouldn't let that bother her. The pilots from the Resolve had managed to get the Chester off her six so she could rendezvous with Ghost at Vector Three, and that was what mattered.
Ahead of her, Tessa could see two Knight interceptors flying in close formation. They fired photon torpedoes at her and she countered by firing an ECM micro torpedo full of shrapnel and debris with her Valk's transponder signature and sensor reading in order to confuse the torpedoes and give them a false lock. They two Knights ahead of her responded by launching ECM pods of their own to prevent her from shooting back at them.
That was okay, she wasn't going to need a lock, for she wasn't going to fire any torpedoes at all. Rather than avoid the two fighters she flew right at them and fired her tetryon pulse phase cannon when she was close enough to see them with her naked eyes. They responded by firing their twin dual cannons that used an ammunition replicator to create 30 mm Osmiridum shells. The shells were ineffective against Tessa's shields but her tetryon pulse phase cannon was effective against theirs. A single hit on primary firing mode and a second hit on secondary firing mode was all she needed to take down one of the fighter's shields and cause malfunctions that essentially took it out of the fight.
"Woo hoo!" Tessa cheered as her Valkyrie and the two Knights missed each other by meters as they played a deadly game of 'chicken'. "You'd be proud of me, Iron Fox! I managed to take out that Knight without killing him!"
Behind her, the malfunctioning fighter swerved out of control into his wingman and exploded against his shields. The second fighter was mostly intact with a broken wing and its shields down and was spinning out of control, but that didn't matter for it had ejected its canopy, turning it into an escape pod that shattered like an egg when the USS Chester accidentally hit it while following Tessa to the Theurgy's stardrive section.
"Gawd DAMN IT!!!" Tessa shrieked in frustration. How come things never worked out for anyone anymore? Oh well, at least the Chester was still fighting two Valkyries...
No, that wasn't right. It was fighting one. There was only ONE Valkyrie engaging the Chester right now. The second one had gone kamikaze and rammed into the escort and taken the Chester's shields down to a fraction of where they had been earlier.
And there was Vector Three, AKA 'the stallion', looking awfully long and skinny without the rest of the Theurgy. Ghost's Valkyrie was on Tessa's scope; Rawley was still spaceborne. Tessa turned her fighter around to face the Chester just as it fired at the third section of the fugitive carrier. V3's hull shuddered under the impact of the torpedoes, but its shields remained intact. Only now did Tessa realize her conceit. The Chester hadn't been chasing her. It hadn't even been following her. What it had been doing was the same thing that Tessa had been doing: making a beeline for the third section of the Theurgy taking the most direct path available.
It was time to stop running. Tessa turned her Valkyrie and screamed her battle cry as she fired her tetryon pulse phase cannon to bring down the Chester's shields so Ghost, the Valkyrie from the Resolve or the stallion could deliver the knockout blow.
(https://orig01.deviantart.net/f46f/f/2012/291/3/1/star_trek__mccoy__screw_up_by_schematization-d5i7rl2.gif)
[ CWO1 Sten "Papa Bear" Covington | Open Space | Reaver-class fighter Cinsaj ]
The Chief of the Deck knew this was a bad idea. He was qualified to fly shuttles in combat situations. He was even qualified to take fighters through operational test flights. But he was not a combat pilot. Yet, there he was in the cockpit of a fighter no one alive was even remotely checked out on, about to engage in active combat operations. But when necessity calls, there was only one thing to do and that was to grin, bear it, and do what needed doing. And that was what he did when he advised he was going to launch, and he certainly did not feel very good about it when the flight deck ran beneath him and he went from the well-lit cavern of the hangar deck and into the black.
But first, he had to make sure he wasn't going to get blown out of space by his own people, and he ensured his transponder was locked into the Theurgy's battle net, and he joined the tactical comm channel as he opened up the engines. "Sweet fuck!" he swore as he saw his velocity climb. He had never seen an acceleration curve like this on anything larger than a torpedo, and he mused at the amazingly efficient inertial dampeners that prevented him from being crushed by punishing g-forces. But once he collected himself, he called out. "This is Papa Bear in a non-standard fighter. Don't shoot me."
He was about to ask for directions and something to shoot at, but he caught something. Allegiant had a handful of Knight-class interceptors on her tail, and he wasted no time in picking them as a target. Besides, they were mostly coming his way. There was no maneuvering, not clever tactics. He simply drove right for them with the throttle open as wide as it would go, and he designated the targets. The system was amazingly intuitive and he needed to do very little, and as soon as he entered range, he simply hit the firing control and bursts of phaser-fire lashed out from the Reaver. And all he had to do was to fly the course of green boxes the computer had projected, and his weapons fired autonomously at each of the interceptors as he did his first pass, and by the time he blew past the pursuit, two were expanding balls of wreckage, with the cockpit pods ejected, two had been driven off, limping back towards the Starbase in some form of evasive pattern, and the last one was simply spinning away towards deep space, without power to propulsion and atmosphere venting from the cockpit.
And only then did he call out again. "Iron Fox, this is Papa Bear. Point me towards something."
[ Nathanal Isley | Boarding Team 01 | Communication Tower ] Attn: Boarding Team 01, Auctor Lucan
Nathan was really starting to question his choice to be placed into Security. The more people he watched run into their hallway and get fired upon the more he was starting to think that they didn't really have any room for career advancement. Looking down at his gold undershirt for a moment he had to wonder if their was any chance he could get a word thrown in and maybe get himself some red. Bridge crew and command almost never died on away missions.
These thoughts were compounded as streaks of phaser fire seemed to travel closer to his head then he would have liked. Taking shelter for a moment he breathed trying to think about how best to not get stunned. Seeing Selena's plan of attack he had to admit that she seemed to be a rather powerful and agile fighter. He winced when she was struck by phazer fire and watched her drop for a moment wondering if she was dead.
Thankfully she wasn't, and he could focus on the continued might of starbase security. He had to admit that open area did give them a bit of cover, and with the seven personnel they were facing off with, well more like five after Selena's attack he had to admit that the odds were starting to be in their favor.
Still he wanted to clear a bit more of a path to the corridor they wanted to reach as they were being charged in. Keeping the enemy's head down was a bit of a difficult request, but, he remembered the drills from the dominion wars, and quickly set his rifle to a wide dispersal. Considering he had already jacked it to the highest setting this was a bit more then the rashes and burns that had been reported during most sensor sweep drills, it was dispersed too much to kill (unfortunately) but it would probably hurt a lot.
"Phaser sweep!" Standing out of cover he pressed fire and held onto his weapon as the head gave a larger burst field. At close range it would have been like a shot gun, but anyone farther off the dispersal had a problem with drop off not being nearly as effective, still it made a few put their heads down.
[ Chris "Husker" Slayton & Lieutenant Talidenai zh'Idenna | Lone Wolf 04 and White Wolf 01 | Space around Vector 2 | USS Theurgy ] Attention: Warp-fighter related
Husker sat in his cockpit, looking across the short gulf at the fighter that contained his fellow pilot and one time former lover and tried to ignore every sense that was screaming at him to do his duty to protect the elements of the Theurgy under his protection and made damn sure to ignore the glowing red targeting recital in his field of vision.
"I'm serious Tali, I need to know what side your on because after the past few weeks things have royally gone from kosher to hell in a hand basket." Chris said in a firm voice.
A moment later a smaller screen appeared in Chris' view and those beautiful eyes of his former lover appeared in front of him with a look of utter concern in them.
<Christopher, why did you betray Vasser and the others on the Harbinger to join Ives' crusade against our own people?> she asked in a very trouble tone.
"I didn't betray anyone, Tali. A few weeks after you left, Vasser took the ship and escaped the Federation and at first everything was fine before we started loosing people left and right." Chris explained, praying that she wouldn't ask for more specific things.
<Not what I asked, I asked why *YOU* did.> came back her still troubled reply.
"Because it was my duty to back Phantos, he was my mentor and commanding officer...and my friend." Chris said as he tried to ignore the stories that he had heard about those last hours of his friend. "But he is dead as is Vasser, T'Rena, and the rest of our people with the small exception of a couple."
In her own fighter, Tali had to blink hard to accept this but she knew Chris and could tell when he was hiding something but unlike other people when Tali could tell that they were hiding things-it was almost like he was hiding things to keep from her being hurt.
<Then tell me why did you join up with Ives' and her crusade. Why did you betray everyone including your family!?> Tali shot back at him without adding the additional "And us?" to it.
Chris bit back a what he was going to say because he didn't want it to be something more painful when his senses started to tingle just a little bit as he could almost feel what was happening and very quickly he adjusted his position so that he could face another one of the Orcus' fighters that had just appeared.
"Hello, Sniper."
The mini-screen split and Sniper's pale red eyes appeared next to her lover's.
<It is very..agreeable to see you again, Christopher. But Tali asked you a question I believe and I myself wish an answer as well.> came her slightly breathy accented voice.
"I joined them because the charges are false, there is something wrong with the Federation command and Ives has proof of it." Chris said, trying to keep himself composed as he spoke to the two of them.
<Wait, proof of what?> Tali asked, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly.
"There is a conspiracy, Tali, and it's bigger then the one that Doomsday told us about from Kirk's day. Look, if we were really working with the Romulans then were is our back up..seriously??" Chris said as he took a hand off of his flight stick to gesture at the space around them. "Think about it, the fighter element alone should hint that if we were being supported by our new Romulan masters then we'd have newer fighters correct?"
It was T'Zantha spoke up with <His logic is sound, they are using a combination of fighters of the Valkyrie make and I have yet to see one Scorpion class flyer anywhere among them so far.>
Chris nodded slowly, "Look, I'm not asking for much but I wouldn't be backing Ives if there wasn't a damn good reason but I can honestly say that you two are supporting the wrong side and I need you two to trust me if you ever did before.."
//////////////////////////////////
Tali shifted her muted her channel to Chris as she could feel her heart going out to him, but something had been nagging at her since the moment that her fighter first hit the Black.
<Tali, I know that look. What is it?> T'Zantha's voice asked as she flicked her eyes up to meet the gaze of her lover.
"Question, if the Theurgy was really supporting the star empire then why is there no sign of imperial forces? Furthermore why not just take the Theurgy and reassign her crew to an older warbird?"
The albino vulcan's eyes narrowed in thought for a moment before replying with <Counter Question, why have their biggest prize in technology and equipment be the sole ship attacking a station of this size?>
Tali slowly nodded her head as she could feel her antenna move in a certain way against her scalp but before she could reply, Sniper continued with <Fact, he is a Slayton and a Slayton does his duty to the Federation..no matter the cost to one's self.>
Tali blinked as she looked into T'Zantha's eyes and saw the unspoken words there to which she could only respond with a nod.
/////////////////////////////
Husker could hear a pinging in his left audio pickup at which point he opened up a sub-channel and he could see Morrigan's helmet appear on his screen. <Husker, do you require assistance as I have the enemy wing commander in my sights.> she asked in a very serious tone.
"No, I know her and the only thing that you'll do is piss her and Sniper off." Chris said as his eyes flicked back to the fighter to his right. "Besides, I think.."
Whatever Chris was going to say next was suddenly and brutally cut off by one of the station's Knight-class Interceptors roaring down with two of his fellow pilots and savagely blasting Husker's Valkyrie with his weapons at which point one thing became very obvious.
His fighter's shields didn't strobe but instead the actual fighter it's self took the full heat of the attack as the hostile fighters roared past.
Both Terror and Sniper noticed this and they reacted in a heartbeat with an uncharacteristic snarl coming from one of them as they took off after the interceptors.
///////////////////////////////////////////
<This is Jazz to Orcus elements, swinging around for another pass on the mark. Thank you for luring him into a trap. Tally one!!> came the joyus tone of the fighter that had gotten the most hits onto Husker's valk.
A red targeting marker appeared in Terror's line of sight followed by the Zhen pressing down on the firing stud as she lit up the back of Jazz's fighter with phaser fire.
<White Wolf One, what are you doing?!> came Jazz's voice through the channel.
Terror couldn't find the space in her throat from all of the rage she was feeling as she just kept up her weapons fire until the weapons found their marks and simply tore the interceptor apart and she knew that his wingman in turn was turned into so much wreckage as well by Sniper's own more surgical handiwork before the two fighters made their way back over to where Husker was.
Hanging in the space between them was another Valkyrie from the Theurgy. <My wingman is rattled but alive, why did you turn on your fellows?> an accented female voice asked as her helmeted visage appeared on the screen.
"His shields were down."
<Indeed they were..foolish on his part.> the other pilot intoned.
Tali shook her head, "No he did it as a sign of honesty. He was telling us about why he switched sides and..." Tali started to say as she bit back her concern when another screen appeared next to the other pilot's and she saw Chris' eyes looking back her. "Are you alright?"
<Yes..I only did what I could think of..> he started to say but then he winced.
"I understand, Husker. Just rest for a moment." Tali said before she switched settings and opened up a channel to two specific pilots. "Dragon, Stormraven. This is Terror, remember that talk that we had a while back..well it's caught up to Sniper and myself so follow what you feel is right."
Tali then shifted her channels back to the two pilots in front of her. "Husker, I need your SCO's channel..and your trust."
Husker simply nodded and then it appeared at which point the andorian had a moment of complete concern as if she was doing the right thing for a brief moment before tapping the connect. "This is Terror to Lone Wolf Leader, requesting callback and identify, over."
[ Krystal "Meony" Tancredi | Tribble Squadron | Fuzzy Flayer ] Attn: All (Esp. Lone/Grey/White Wolves, the Allegiant crew and Covington) (https://orig01.deviantart.net/7fd3/f/2015/168/0/9/krystal_row_01_by_auctor_lucan-d8xn7ih.png)
After Tancredi and Kimberley Phillips a.k.a. Goshawk completed their escort of the
Sabine and its valuable cargo of a handsome half-Klingon and lots of useful information including the secret of Chut'Luth, and after Tancredi's mini heart attack when the
Sabine altered course to save K'Ren and recover her pod, followed by the redhead privately yelling expletives that would make someone from the Q Continuum blush, the remaining members of Tribble Squadron wheeled around, to head back into the fray.
:: That is one fine ship, :: said Phillips privately to Tancredi, and the Texas born girl smiled.
"Roger that, Goshawk," said Tancredi, "whadaya figger them fellas'll take us pair o' tribbles after all this is done?"
:: You kidding? :: Phillips sounded incredulous, :: They'd kill to have us on their crew! ::
"Hahah! Yeah, that they would." Tancredi and her wingmate positioned their shuttles to flank a Valkyrie Mk III which appeared to be from the
Theurgy, which was guarding the saucer section...or was it triangle section of the
Theurgy and what was left of the
Resolve, home to Tancredi and Phillips. For the moment, they appeared to be allies in this crazy Starfleet VS Starfleet match, and with the fighter looking as banged up as it was, Tancredi figured having two hulking shuttles playing linebackers wouldn't hurt. Besides, Tancredi and Goshawk still had payloads of shuttle-grade torpedoes handy.
In the brief respite, both the redhead and her wingmate briefly redirected power to shield recharge and minor auto-repairs. The pilot of the Valkyrie was studying them the same way they were studying him. They both returned his silent nod of salutation.
::
Iron-Fox, Wolf Leader, said the pilot, to which Phillips and Tancredi uttered a quick return greeting of :: Hey. :: and "Howdy!" respectively, before he continued, ::
Nice rides. Now, let's make sure your crew gets on the Theurgy, and we'll be leaving as soon as possible. We just need to get a message sent, and our teams back from the starbas- ::
Iron-Fox just won points in Tancredi's head when he expressed care for her family. That just made him her new number one friend on the
Theurgy, and Phillips probably felt the same way, but they both also just learnt a great deal about what the crew of the other ship were up to. They had teams on the starbase? And they were sending a message? Well that made sense; Starbase 84 had some powerful communications systems, it was a wonder they hadn't used some kind of electronic package to mess with their systems. Then again the
Resolve and its shuttles and fighters had some pretty sophisticated and souped up electronic countermeasures of their own.
That was when Tancredi instinctively shielded her eyes with an arm even as she shouted, "Red alert!" The computer automatically kicked all systems back to battle readiness, and once her helmet's visor and the cockpit's viewport screened out the excess lighting, she was furiously keying in commands and finally pulled out the manual steering yoke.
::
There you are, :: said Iron-Fox, and Tancredi realized that Havenborn was stumbling back to them. Two Valkyries, a Mk III and Mk II respectively, and two heavily modified Type-8 shuttles (affectionately called shootles) were all that stood against a starbase, some freaky new Federation starship, and a Defiant-class warship. That wasn't counting
their fighter complements, which was starting to make everything look like a severely one-sided battle, ::
Now...We might be strangers, but let's do this for a common cause. ::
"You point, we punch!" said Tancredi hastily before Phillips added in, :: Roger that! ::
::
With me! :: said Iron-Fox, and Tancredi tensed her grip on the steering yoke, when she saw the interceptors gunning for them right on Havenborn's tail.
"Oh, you motherfuckers picked the wrong Wolf!" said Tancredi, her anger rising at seeing her friend being endangered. All the rage returned. The sheer unbridled hatred, the desire to end those bastards right where they were. If she were a Q...
::
Delta-2 manoeuvre, leading into Beta-4 and Omega-1 for that Defiant-class. Engage! :: said Iron-Fox, who promptly throttled into action.
"Fuck, those are some tricky moves!" said Tancredi privately to Phillips, "Does 'e think we fly lahk him or 'avenborn?!? Boy Ah sure 'ope they 'aven't changed Omega-1 too much, or dis is gonna be tricky."
:: Roger that, :: said Phillips, :: Let's kick tail! ::
"
YEEEE-HOOO!" Tancredi throttled her shuttle forward before "dropping" and seemingly spiralling out of control and then coming up from the bottom, firing her autoblasters and turret fully into the thick of the interceptors, her eyes watchful on the scanners for new threats or incoming allies, few though they were. Parts of the
Theurgy was moving to engage the carrier cruiser of the Uncle
Chester, and that ship, which was either an extra-large shuttle or a micro cruiser, was lending a hand, but having interceptor trouble.
That was when Tancredi noticed a funky ship exiting one of the
Theurgy's bodies, and she forgot to tune out her communicator, so everyone heard her ask, "What da fuck is dat?!?"
::
This is Papa Bear in a non-standard fighter. Don't shoot me. :: said the pilot of the ship, as if answering the redhead's question.
"Papa Bear, eh?" said Tancredi on the tactical channel for the squadron, "Ah lahk 'im already!"
She liked him even more when she saw his badass weirdo of a ship eliminate the fighters haranguing the other big shuttle/cruiser/whatever and then he coolly said, ::
Iron Fox, this is Papa Bear. Point me towards something. ::
"Sweet mother o'God!" said Tancredi even as Phillips said on the channel, :: Holy crap! ::
"Were ya savin' th'best fer the last?!?" Tancredi had to ask, "'coz dat fella is dis side o' ass-kicker!"
[ Lt Cmdr. Miles Renard | Lone Wolves Squadron | Wolf-01 ] Attn: All (Esp. Lone/Grey/White Wolves, the Allegiant crew and Covington)
At the point where Renard launched into the Delta-2 manoeuvre, where he overshot Havenborn's approaching trajectory and then continued to climb, he had to silence his computer's warnings about his engines. He growled and tapped a couple of commands mid-approach to overclock the remaining half of his tandem engine, then pushed it from his mind, just as he pushed his thumbs down on his pulse phasers - spewing orange bolts down unto the interceptors that were chasing the Grey Wolves' SCO.
Little did he have time to think of how Papa Bear had seen the seriousness of their situation and joined the fight, but he did pick up on the reactions from the Grey Wolves when seeing a Reaver for the first time. He had acknowledged Covington when he'd appeared, and did so again when he effectively destroyed three Knights and sent the last two running in a single pass. Whereas the Grey Wolves were ecstatic, Renard knew he had to help his friend. The old COD was out of his water, even if he was piloting a killer machine from the future.
"Long story... Meony, was it? Salvo, you're clear!" he said, slitted eyes darting between his HUDs and the moving targets he fired upon - clearing the pursuers behind Lieutenant Havenborn together with the modded shuttles. When they were gone, Havenborn would be able to join the manoeuvre, which had just slipped seamlessly into the Beta-4 phase. He'd just seen the message from Theurgy Tactical. "This is Wolf Leader. New orders, Vector 01 has gone after the USS Orcus, charging us to protect Vector 02, which has lost its shields completely and need a stronger line of defence. Grey Wolves, whatever you are flying, abort Omega-1 and defend Vector 02. I repeat, abort Omega-1 and set course for Vector 02."
He was talking very fast, and even managed to tap in the coordinates, but then he had to complete the Beta-4 climb and veer of to starboard, firing continuous phaser fire into a squadron of interceptors that has meant to give chase to Vector 01. As he hammered his cannon fire into the flank and ventral shields of the passing squadron, he answered Covington. "Papa Bear, this is Iron Fox. Pursue the USS Chester and empty Cinsaj's entire arsenal into its aft shields. Don't stop firing until those engines are gone. Goldeneye and Ghost are there to cover you. Ladies, you heard me."
Since Vector 03's hull was not completely unshielded, Vector 02 had to be the priority in number of fighters, and from what he had seen from the weapons tests that the Reaver named Cinsaj had preformed, he was confident about his orders to Papa Bear. More confident than he was about his engines lasting through the battle, at least. Moreover, if the message was sent, he wanted as many fighters as possible close to the Fighter Assault Bay on Vector 02 so that the Theurgy could jump to warp immediately.
With the Omega-1 raid on the Chester aborted, and Papa Bear going after the Defiant-class ship instead, Miles broke off towards Vector 02 and the four Lone Wolves present there. "I am reading twenty contacts from the Orcus, and forty-two more from Starbase 84 - the survivors of three squadro-. Hold..." he had to say, seeing how after Husker sustained heavy fire, two of the strange, new fighters from the USS Orcus opened fire and destroyed his two assailants. "You saw that too, didn't you? Line Abreast Formation, circling Vector 02, but... hold fire against Orcus fighter elements until fired upon."
He he had no idea what was going on, so in the seconds where he led Salvo, Meony and Goshawk towards Vector 02, he keyed up the sensor readings on the new fighters, apparently named AC-477 Mk I Valravn. As he dealt a few potshots against interceptors that got in his way, Renard could also see the callsigns of the Valravn fighters on the sensors, added by the pilots themselves. While the ones who had fired against Husker's attackers were not familiar, he did see another name he hadn't seen in years. Angel? From the Kusanagi?
"Morrigan, Husker, sitrep? Razor and Outrider, you all have bandits on your six. I am counting six interceptors, the rest inbound." Not sure what to make of it all, he made a second call. "Razor, when able, please confirm Orcus fighter contact designated Angel. Verify if you can."
[This is Terror to Lone Wolf Leader, requesting callback and identify, over.] It came from one of the two fighters that had defended Husker, and Miles saw it was marked as Wolf-01 as well, just like Salvo's and his own fighter were. It was the third alpha present from the three packs. When he answered, Miles patched his communication system to all the present Valravn fighters too - making his word a recorded message they could chose whether or not to respond to.
"This is Lieutenant Commander Miles Renard of the Lone Wolves, and with me is also Lieutenant Havenborn from the Resolve. We will defend ourselves, but the Theurgy is not here for anything else than to send a message from Starbase 84, where we'll set the record straight, and tell everyone who the real enemy is. We are not defectors, with no affiliation to either of the splintered Romulan factions. It is Starfleet Command that has been taken over by alien parasites, who seek to seed discord in the Federation, destabilising the fleet. The truth will be known today."
At that moment, in the far distance, the USS Orcus was disabled by Vector 01 of the Theurgy, the sensor spike showing the Resolve's warp core detonation against the Vesta-class carrier's shields and the severe destruction it meant. Captain Ives had removed the threat of Slayton's shield-overloading pulse phasers. Hopefully, the Valravn wolves would heed him regardless what just happened to their base ship.
This was when the last remaining swarm of interceptors arrived - the six already present followed by the last thirty-six. They were the survivors from the station's last three squadrons, and they came for the unshielded Vector. Miles had no more time to talk - the orbital defence line to be held. Slitted eyes narrowing, he opened fire.
[ Ryuan Sel | Boarding Team 03 | EOC Top Floor Lounge ] Attn: Auctor Lucan
The firefight had been short, intense, and now the path before them lay clear. Clear except for this enigma standing before them, a Romulan. Ryuan had no idea who this man was, his allegiances, his creed. All she knew was that he'd just mowed down the remaining guards with a skill rarely seen, and started to speak of a war, of Hawthorne being the traitor, confirming her fears. And yet even now he spoke in riddles, adding pieces to the puzzle like little drops, clarifying and yet confusing the situation further.
She listened to the exchange between Ida & Drauc, listening, trying to see if the man was telling the truth, the real truth, his understanding of the truth, or a fabrication to stall them. He seemed sincere yet Sel had her misgivings, her distrusts. She was still scanning the entrances as she looked at Drauc, studying the man. Communications came in from the other team, orders given right back and they were again left in relative silence. She caught Ida's gaze, noting the question in her eyes.
"We don't have much choice Lieutenant. We take that control centre and rescue Henshaw. If we can capture Hawthorne, we do. If not, our Romulan friend can do the honor." She looked to Zaraq and then back to Ida. "And we have little time. By now the staff inside the EOC know we've eliminated their guards, and will be requesting more." She looked to Drauc, "It seems we fight for the same cause."
((OOC: My apologies for such a terse and late reply. Been insane at work and isn't going to calm down for another few weeks at least.))
[ Sar-unga Neleo | Boarding Team 01 | Communications Tower ]
Where Isely felt regret, Sar-unga felt exhilaration. People appear from hiding spots like little surprised, their bodies collapse in an unconscious heap on the ground. It was like a game of whack-a-mole, except much more involved, and the moles whacked back. Her job was to run in and wreck shit, and she loved every second. Career advancement could bite her tail.
As she ran into the room, her teammates became a blur. She already knew what to do, take cover and return fire, and she could generally predict where they were and where her teammates were going. Selena was hiding out, probably cooking up something smart up in that robo-head of hers. She had a knack for things like that. Reagar was...screaming? Well, now's not the time to judge his war cry. Isely prepared a phaser sweep--Ravenholm mentioned keeping heads down.
As soon as his sweep ended, the Asurian shot up from her cover and began hers. Between the two of them, there wasn't a break. No, it would not clear a room like she would like, but Sar-unga was a huge fan of Ravenholm's ideas. Her tail quivered to think of what mischief lay ahead of them.
[ Lt Thomas Ravon | Hybrid Wolf cockpit | Vector 02 ] Attn: Lone/Grey/White Wolves, the Allegiant crew and Covington
The situation around Vector 02 had become somewhat problematic as the Orcus had released it's fighters to them. Yet the worst part was that the Orcus managed to drain the shields of vector 02 in a matter of seconds. It meant that Razor had to improvise and he looked over at Outrider "Outrider, you have three incoming fighters on your si-" before Ravon's message was complete the knight class interceptors had performed a inescapable execution against Outrider. The Valkyrie spun out of control as both nacelles were hit, leaking plasma into space. Seconds later it ignited and what remained was an incinerated outline of what once was a Valkyrie. "Fuck!" he grunted as he made his own bird spin around and flew head on against the assailants. The combined phaser power of the Reaver and Valkyrie simply shredded through the fuselages and caused for various explosions next to Vector 02.
With more fighter incoming Razor heard Miles' voice over the channel before he saw the outline of a Reaver speed away of his vector. The first reaction of Thomas was to lock on to it and unload, until he realized that nobody else but Covington was flying it. "Cheeky..." he murmured to himself as the Reaver got the orders to harass the Chester. It made Thomas smile at least a little as he could still appreciate the design of a Reaver fighter.
"Razor, when able, please confirm Orcus fighter contact designated Angel. Verify if you can."
Razor looked at his scanners as he frowned and confirmed "I see her Iron, will verify." he answered before he looked at the scanners. He opened up a channel to Stormraven as he pointed his atrocity towards main bulk of the forty-two incoming fighters from SB 84. "Angel this is Razor... I repeat this is Razor. Confirm former attendance from Red Viper squad. Come on Garcia, let me hear that raspy voice." he called out to her.
They'd be upon him soon and he charged up the Mk I Transphasic Compression Phaser Cannon. Reaver tech at it's finest though it remained to be seen how effective it would be on a non fully commissioned Reaver. As the weapon powered up, the engines started to stutter and Thomas had to fight to keep his bird in a straight line once more. Alarms went off once more as usual and he rolled his eyes before he locked the weapon to the center of the formation. "Peekaboo..." he smirked before he opened fire. The Transphasic Cannon spiked and caused for a major malfunction on his support systems and for a solid two second his engines just cut out. The shot however was concentrated and delivered to where it was pointed at. The damage and onslaught of it was tremendous as the shot managed to take out at least three of the knight class fighters and severely damaged another two, which made them fly uncontrollably. For Ravon however the kickback had its consequences as his fighter nearly slammed into the hull of vector 02. He managed to restore power just in time before scraping the paintjob of the ship and managed to steer back to open space.
[Dev "Dragon" Okhala| Wolf-05 | USS ORCUS "White Wolves Squadron] attn: pretty much all
"Fives squad, line up with me, straight edge," Dev ordered, her voice tight and clipped as her wing made its rounds. The Theurgy and her fighters were putting up a ridiculous effort, and her weapons were more than sufficient against the Orcus.
"Dragon, we've got a problem." It was Vinnie's voice, calm despite the burning flames that seemed to engulf all of space in front of the starbase. The Orcus was under heavy fire and Dev's quick eyes noted the damage.
"I see it, Fury."
Then Tali's voice broke in, and Dev listened clearly to her flight leader's words. She was still flying, but moving away from the battle.
"Fives, fall back to 101, line abreast." With that, Dev angled off, dodging sprites of debris, and other craft jockeying around. Her eyes burned with a sudden intensity as she saw their enemy holding off firing on the Orcus. It gave her a small measure of comfort.
"Dragon, Theurgy is requesting surrender terms from 101."
"They won't break radio silence." Dev's lips pursed, her face a hard line of creases that could have blended with her flight suit. "Fives, interdict on 101."
"Wolf-05, Wolf-6."
"Copy."
"Dragon, what about the mission?"
"Popper should have friendlies incoming. We'll fall back to interdiction."
Dev's mind was racing, with Tali's last message, and Theurgy holding fire. Clearly there was more going on than they were being told. It stank of black ops and secrets, both of which Dev hated. Secrets had nearly destroyed her father.
Tal Shiar.
"What's that, D?" Vinnie's voice was in her ear.
"Scan for Romulan signals in the area, including Tal Shiar frequencies."
"Tal Shiar? Dragon, this isn't..."
"Just do it." Dev snapped out. "If Theurgy is supported by Romulans then they might be signaling for back up."
Her flight elements were not in a pattern around the damaged Orcus, pursuing and diverting Theurgy attacks to the best of their ability. Just as the battle raged outside, Dev's mind raced with thoughts. She had picked up rumors of an agent in the midst of Starfleet, someone feeding false information, and none of it added up.
She flipped a switch to the flight leader's channel, a private line, pilot to pilot. "Terror, Dragon. I need to know about someone called Aidoaan. I need to know."
Dev knew certain rumors from Starfleet Intelligence and other contacts she had developed. This piece of data could make up her mind one way or the other.
[ LT Daniel Havenborn | Cockpit | AC-307 Mark-II Valkyrie "Grey Wolf-01"] Attn: DocReno, Auctor Lucan, anyone I missed
With the remaining fighters off his tail and having caught up to the remains of his squadron, Daniel cycled through his weapons list, all of his ordnance was gone, he was down to just phaser cannons now. "You holding up okay Knight?" He said to his RIO. "All good here Salvo, just looking forward to getting outta this cockpit." Knight said in response. Hearing the new orders to begin a series of maneuvers Daniel pushed the engines to full throttle and began to go through them, however as he was about to finish up the maneuvers he got the abort order from Commander Renard. "Omega-1 aborted, moving to support." Daniel said over the squadron channel. As they got closer to Vector 02 he saw the mass of fighters coming towards them, the way they were formed up would only make it harder for them to miss.
Seeing the Orcus fighters open fire on the interceptors was kind of a shock but he was glad to have some more potential allies, he hoped that they'd become allies anyway, they needed all the help they could get at the moment. He saw the Husker's fighter being chased by the interceptors and decided to help out. "Salvo to Husker, adjust your course by thirty degrees and continue forwards at maximum thrust." Daniel said as he matched the course correction himself, he was on a direct course with Husker but if he'd done his math right, and he liked to believe that he did, their fighters would only come within a few inches of each other, this would help him surprise the interceptors, if only a little.
As his fighter got closer he could hear the collision alarm in his fighter begin to sound, Daniel rechecked his math and it still checked out so he shut the alarm off and continued on course, another five hundred meters...three hundred meters...one hundred meters... He watched as Husker flew over his cockpit, had he been able to open his cockpit he could've reached out and touched the outer hull of the other fighter. There, his targeting sensors locked onto the first interceptor, he fired a full blast with his pulse phasers, watching as its shields flickered and then failed, he kept firing until the ship was destroyed, he locked onto the second interceptor and repeated the process.
When the second interceptor was destroyed he knew he wasn't going to get a chance at the third, at least not from this angle. He thrust past them and made an Immelman turn maneuver, now that he was behind them he targeted the closest interceptor and fired until its shield flickered and the ship was destroyed, he locked onto the fourth interceptor as another one broke formation to get behind Daniel's fighter. He'd have to worry about that one later. "Knight, watch that interceptor, let me know when it's in weapons range." He said as he began firing on the fourth interceptor. "Got it Salvo, it'll have weapons lock in thirty seconds." Knight said in response. Thirty seconds was more than enough time for him to take out the remaining two interceptors.
The fourth interceptor's shields flickered then failed and he scored direct hits on its warp engines, the detonation blinded his sensors for a moment but he recovered and locked onto the fifth interceptor, he followed the same pattern as before, though this one had learned a bit and was trying to evade his shots. "Ten seconds to weapons range." Knight said. Daniel kept at it and soon enough the interceptor's shield failed. "Incoming torpedo!" Knight said as Daniel watched them on his tactical display, he just had a brilliant idea, he just needed to adjust his course a little. He dodged the torpedo and got the lock back onto the fifth interceptor, he fired all of his phasers and watched as the interceptor exploded into a ball of dust. One more to go. "And now to try something I've always wanted to do." He said out loud. "Salvo, no; this is not a time for the Havenborn Special!" Came Knight's response. "It'll work, trust me." Daniel said, he seriously hoped that it would work, he'd only done it in simulations and hadn't had a lot of success with it, but it was better than nothing right now.
He slowed his fighter down letting the interceptor get a clear targeting lock on him. He could feel Knight's anticipation; the two of them had worked on this maneuver for hours at a time on their journey home so they both knew what they needed to do. "Targeting lock, incoming torpedo!" Knight said as he tried to calm himself. Daniel thrust the engine output to maximum. "Knight, take weapons offline and divert power from the phaser arrays into the engines and the pulse phasers into the shields." He said as he watched his display screen show the changes in the power allotment. "Engine output increased by ten percent, we can't sustain this for long." Knight said as Daniel brought the fighter around, the torpedo gaining on him as he maneuvered. He could see the energy levels dropping as he pushed his engines, another few meters. "Interceptor is directly in front of us, he's locking on." Knight said. Daniel grit his teeth, another couple hundred meters... "Interceptor has a lock!" Knight said. "Keep it together Knight, we can do this." Daniel said in response, as the interceptor tried to maneuver away but Daniel matched each maneuver as the torpedo closed in. "Fifteen seconds to impact." Knight said.
"Transfer all power to shields and engines." Daniel said and he watched as the energy transfer, another five percent. Daniel supposed that's the best he could hope for, he watched as he closed distance with the interceptor, it switched from its torpedo launchers to its phasers and Daniel could feel the phaser impacts against Valkyrie's shields, he watched as they began to drop, ninety-six percent, eighty-one percent, sixty-three percent... Daniel watched as his fighter came within inches of hitting the interceptor and suddenly the target lock tone was gone and he relaxed for a moment. Then there was an explosion behind his fighter as the torpedo slammed into the interceptor. He watched as his shields depleted another twenty-six percent as they absorbed the explosion. "Shields at thirty-seven percent and holding." Knight said. "Transfer power from the phaser arrays from engines to shields but transfer power back to the pulse phasers." Daniel said as he set course back to formation with the other fighters before the rest of the interceptors caught up to them. "We've got shields back up to sixty-seven percent." Knight said.
[Komial Dotnhil (https://uss-theurgy.com/w/index.php?title=Komial_Dotnihl) | Starbase 84 | Security Center]Atten: Mac, Hawthorne(https://orig02.deviantart.net/2783/f/2015/236/d/0/komial_by_auctor_lucan-d9703fm.png)
She processed Mac's words - it never crossed her mind that he was having issues with her state. Mac was a handsome man, but she was the Captains woman and - or was she?? Though she didn't get a chance to comment, her eyebrows shot up high on her forehead at the new found knowledge. Trish was here. The Ex. Mother of one of his two children. Children she'd looked forward to meeting at some point. If she were going to be a part of the Captains private life...
Doubt reared its ugly head.
Why didn't he tell me? she asked herself. When had the former Mrs. Hawthorne beamed aboard? Before their dalliance in the quarters? Was her appearing....did he profess love for her in response to Trish? Or did she beam in after? Was part of his anger because his ex was here? Or was there something more at play. Was Trish making a move?
I need to find out what happened to Trish Hawthor--The captains voice, and the captains orders rang out into the office, robbing Komial of her ability to think, stealing away her concerns of her Ian's ex wife and her own horrible ordeal and refocusing her on the task at hand. "Aye, Captain," was all she replied. What else could she do? Turning to Mac, she swallowed and drew on strength from the man that might not actually be in his being to lend. But she perceived it in her own xo, whether he did or not,and that was enough.
"Thank you," she said quietly. She would not bring it up again. Her face shifted - the horror of the past few minutes, and the shame at letting her captain and lover down, vanished behind the cold, professional mask that was Komial Dotnihl, Lt. and Chief of Security of Starbase 84. "You hard the Captain," She told Mac as she swept past him and into the primary Security center like the winter wind, harsh and cold, her voice carrying out. "I want screens up displaying all the known boarding parties. Get me a transporter room dedicated to us, now." She took in the room, the controlled bustle what was her people at work. She drew satisfaction from what she saw. The captain might not be pleased yet, but her men and woman would do the job.
"Anderson. Vibro, Himmenez. Cavani. R'z't'vey. Tolchek. You six with me," she pointed, one after another, summoning the security officers from their stations and gesturing to the armory locker. "Load up. We're going for," She swept her eyes over the monitors, "Primary reactor control. No. Scratch that," a cold grin formed on her face, "Tell the transporter room to beam us into the Chief Engineers office. No nee to drop us into the line of fire right away. Oh, remotely suppress the rooms lights" Then, turning to Mac, she continued, coming closer, the two of them moving to stay against one of the secondary console stations.
"Stay here. Coordinate. I know you're itching to get out there to, but your Analytical mind is the reason you're my Assistant. You see the big picture and draw the conclusions. You're a hell of a shot, but right now, I need the best set of eyes on the station itself. That's you." She clapped his shoulder. Her praise wasn't false, it wasn't said simply in gratitude for what he had done moments before. It was sincere. "And..." her voice dropped lower. She didn't want the rest of the staff to hear. "See if you can find the captains ex-wife. If Ives has her, we need to know so that I- that Captain Hawthorne can be prepared for the hostage ploy."
With that said she turned back to her team, and took a fresh phaser rifle from the cabinet. She ran it through a quick diagnostic and was satisfied with what she saw. As more junior people moved in to take up the slack, she turned to her people. "Take them down hard, and fast. The whole security of the station depends on this." and hit her combadge. "Dotnhil to transporter room. Seven to beam to Chief Engineers office, Deck 14. Energize." She braced herself, phaser locked into position as the beams caught the team -
[ Komial Dotnhil (https://uss-theurgy.com/w/index.php?title=Komial_Dotnihl) | Starbase 84 | Primary Reactor Control | Level 14 ]Atten: O'Connell, Thea-and deposited them in the dimly lit room. It was at tight fit but they spread out swiftly. Komial took pride in her people, the way they had indeed suppressed the automated lights per her orders, the professional way they took up cover fire positions and prepped to breach the room outside. She could hear the last vestiges of a fire fight - other men and women trying to breach in. Well, they would just see about that. Raising her hand, she began the countdown. Five. Four. Three. Two.
At One, she jerked her hand forward and two of her team - Cavani, the striking, curvy blond ensign, and R'z't'vey, the long legged veteran non com Rigillian with his greying hair swept back away from his cranial ridge, burst through the door. They saw, across the way, an Bollian covering the other main entrance to the room. He had just let out a burst of fire with some kind of non-phased energy rail-gun. They had seen images of this in use from the Security Center and the duo knew the kind of threat such a weapon represented. Without a word, the two braced themselves on the railing before them, and began to lay in a series of cover fire, pinning the blue skinned, hairless individual, who had to duck under the far security railing to avoid being taken out.
That gave her team to the time to spread out and pop up and over. They had found the boarding party below. It was clear to her people and the CSec that the team was trying to take control through the consoles. Her angle was off, but she could see a cord running up into the far panel, the one guarded by two of the
Theurgy traitors.
Vibro and Anderson opened fire even as Komial cried out. "This is Lt. Dothnil, Chief of Security. Consider yourselves under arrest for acts of terrorism against the Federation -" necessities out of the way, she lined up a shot and let out a burst of bolts. While some of her people had targeted the woman standing by the console - and their bursts
shimmered through her body! - Komial's aim was true. Two stun bolts slammed into the Andorian at the far console, next to the shimmering woman, picking him up and slinging him over the controls to crash down to the floor, unconscious. The poor man got a shower of sparks as another bolt took out the nearer of the two consoles.
[Wenn Cinn | Communication Tower | Starbase 84] Attn: Kaligos, Auctor Lucan, chXinya, FollowTomorrow, Anyone else
The doors parted and the team unleashed hell. Wenn Cinn held back, using the time to call his compatriots in the Reactor Room.
"Wenn to O'Connell." He called, pressing the combadge on his chest. The sound of fire echoed as Cinn moved through the door, finding cover behind a nearby console. Each of the boarding team were making their respective moves and despite the initial trouble they had, this section of the plan seemed to be working well. "We've made it to target. Keep the lights on and the consoles working. We should be just..." Cinn paused, hearing the shout from Isley. "...Let me call you back."
Without a chance to stop him, Isley's blast fired across the room. What in the Prophet's name was he thinking? He could have easily hit one of his colleagues. The most troubling thing was when Cinn saw how on the nearby wall, the paint had puckered and blistered from the intense power of the Phaser fire. It was obvious that the half Romulan had used a setting too high for the parameters of this mission. Swallowing down the bitter taste in his mouth. Cinn managed to bark out the three words he needed to.
"Isley, Stand Down!"
It was then that Ravenholm kicked into action.
[ Lone Wolves Squadron | Wolves 07 & 09 | Goldeneye & Ghost ] Joint-post by Doc M. & Auctor Lucan
It was time to stop running. Tessa turned her Valkyrie and screamed her battle cry as she fired her tetryon pulse phase cannon to bring down the Chester's shields...
...and Rawley knew the mind of her sister wolf like the back of her hand, already anticipating what she had to do. They had fought for months against all kinds of odds, and while they might be polar opposites in personality, and despite their doubts about themselves or their squad leader, neither would deter them when charged with the defense of Vector 03. No one understood how they could fly together when meeting them in person, but their track record spoke for itself. It could be the last time, and be that as it may, Rawley was the last person to be sentimental about it.
Her battle cry echoed Tessa's, and while the bright tetryon energy still shone brightly, Rawley shot past her sister wolf with her pulse phaser cannons ablaze - hammering into the dispersing shield section on the Defiant-class Chester. Her rapid bolts pounded past the residual shield energy and into plated hull, tearing it open for as long as she could before she had to break away - rolling out on the starboard side. Evidently, it got the Chester's attention, since it changed its course and gave chase. As small and limber as it might be for a capital ship, Rawley's Valkyrie was faster, and had already changed course anew. During her arched ascent, Rawley deployed her own tetryon pulse cannon - her hands cramping around her flight stick to maintain her fighter's curved trajectory.
"She's yours!" she barked through clenched teeth to Goldeneye, who wasn't in the Chester's sights. When she said it, she had completed the curve and got the Defiant-class ship's dorsal side in her sights, and she jammed her thumb down to fire her cannon - her tetryon pulse dispersing the projected shield for Tessa and making a hole for her to target.
"I got 'er Ghost!" Tessa chirped as she fired her micro torpedoes. "We'll alternate taking down her shields and firing for effect! Ah!" she squeaked as the Defiant class fired its phasers to ward them off. Tessa broke off before her shields were overloaded, appearing to spin out of control but managing to get back on the escort's tail. She released chaff just in time to confuse two photon torpedoes fired from the Chester aft and dipped down to its ventral side. The Theurgy's Third stardrive vector known as the stallion managed to hit the Chester's shields with a phaser beam, but all this did was cause the escort to fire more torpedoes in the stallion's direction. "We've got to hold it off!"
Rawley swore bitterly in her English accent and took the opportunity she had to target the torpedoes heading for the stallion. She had the right positioning for it, but her tetryon canon was big and not so nimble in targeting, so the heavy pulse only caught up with two of the three photon torpedoes - destroying them before they hit the shields. "Copy that, Goldie," she snapped belatedly. The reason why Goldie was her Flight Leader was that Rawley was entirely a creature of instinct, not good enough in communicating or planning ahead. Mid-combat, Tessa could funnel her in the right direction, focusing her where she normally got by with bold luck and sheer lack of self-preservation. She lived to dance with death, but Goldie made her function in a squadron.
Now, however, there were only the two of them left in their Flight, and their dancing partner was a true beast to take on by themselves. They had managed to temporarily disable one of the Chester's forward phaser cannons but other than that its shields seemed to have taken more damage than its hull. Tessa wondered, could the two of them really hold it off? Perhaps the final Valkyrie from the Resolve could back them up...
[This is Wolf Leader. New orders, Vector 01 has gone after the USS Orcus, charging us to protect Vector 02, which has lost its shields completely and need a stronger line of defence. Grey Wolves, whatever you are flying, abort Omega-1 and defend Vector 02. I repeat, abort Omega-1 and set course for Vector 02.]
"What?" Tessa squeaked. "No-no-no-no-no!" she stammered, not realizing her communications system was still on as Rawley lay burst fire unto the shield section Tessa just hit with her tetryon cannon. "We need all the help we can get--"
[Papa Bear, this is Iron Fox. Pursue the USS Chester and empty Cinsaj's entire arsenal into its aft shields. Don't stop firing until those engines are gone. Goldeneye and Ghost are there to cover you. Ladies, you heard me.]
"Acknowledged, Iron Fox," Tessa replied in a surprisingly professional manner as she and Rawley dodged and pummeled at the Chester to keep it from being able to fire a continuous stream of torpedoes at the stallion. Maybe they could keep it off balance until Papa Bear arrived with the fighter from the future...
"I'm no fucking 'lady'," growled Ghost, doing an Omega-3 manoeuvre that had her fighter dive to starboard, executing a long S-turn as it did, all the while charging her tetryon cannon. "And what the hell is Papa Bear doing out here?" She had fucked the COD during Lohlunat , and while she was not sentimental, she did not want him to die either. Rawely finished her run firing into the Chester's port shields, right across its phaser cannons on that side. She took a glancing hit of pulse phaser energy before she got away.
Papa Bear? Did Iron Fox say Papa Bear? He was an avionics engineer, not a pilot! Tessa hoped that the modified Reaver was user friendly beyond belief or their beloved deck chief might be throwing away his life for nothing! There was no time to wait for Papa Bear; with this many enemies in the black he might not make it! It was time to press the attack on the Chester like there was no tomorrow!
When the Chester turned to deal with Rawley, Tessa was able to fire at its weakened port shield, damaging and rendering the portside phaser cannos inoperative. That was enough to make the escort ignore the stallion and concentrate its fire on the pesky Valkyries. Tessa was overcome when the Chester turned and gave her an onslaught of torpedoes.
"Ah!" Tessa screamed as she armed all of her remaining ordinance and roared forward, her damaged fighter on a collision course with the escort. She managed to activate her fighter's emergency transport system just seconds before her Valkyrie hit the Chester and exploded in a dramatic fireball.
(https://orig04.deviantart.net/7183/f/2009/122/6/a/star_trek_team_rand_unframed_by_schematization.gif)
[PO2 Sithick | Allegiant | Bridge ] Attn: EAC, Auctor
The tactical console wasn't beyond salvaging, but it wasn't operating at the best capacity either. Thick cracks in the transparent screen and static meant that any command entered in was delayed. What made things more difficult to read out was the fact that the giant lizard sitting in the chair wasn't an officer. Wasn't bridge crew, and only had a little training in actually using anything that was on the bridge. He could repair the console but using it?
He hadn't done that outside of a few simulations he had taken part in.
Still he kept his eyes on the read out. Seeing the new vessel some oddly designed fighter that Sithick would have loved to get his claws on actually. That thing looked like it had been salvaged and put together puzzle style. But it clearly had some kick to it as it had taken down three of the in coming fighters and forced the last two to break off their persuit. Sithick let out a loud sigh of relief. "Interzeptors breaking pursuit, we are clear from enemy fire.. for ze moment."
His muscles were still tense not at all used to the feeling of negative gravity. He had to admit that some part of him was enjoying that. It was a bit of a gloating victory actually in that he had been able to restore power to the ship's shields. He was focused on trying to get the tactical station as close to perfect as possible setting it to a simpler display used mostly by cadets, and even going so far as to change the language display from English to Orion, the second closest thing he had to a native tongue.
With the display changed up he actually was able to take in and understand more of the controls then he had with the english overlay. Looking back at the battlefield readout, and seeing what was happening with the theurgy and the resolve their view screen only caught the edge of the explosion.
It was Morwen who actually explained what had just happened. "The resolve ejected it's warp core as a projectile towards the Orcus. It seems to have been a direct hit."
Looking over the somewhat broken tactical read out Sithick had to admit that he would not have wanted to be on the Orcus right now. They had taken a direct hit from an antimater mater explosion. From what he could see part of the Orcus was melted, he shivered slightly at the thought. He had seen enough ships detonate in his time. The resolve was falling apart, powerless and broken their was probably nothing holding it's stability together. Closing his eyes for a second he had to admit that he wasn't a fan of this conflict Federation ships destroying each other was not something to celebrate even if they were trying to route out a horrific enemy the cost would be a little too high.
Sithick closed his eyes to re-orient himself for the task that he was supposed to be focusing on. He was mostly focused on covering fire. Making sure that their path to the Star base stayed clear of enemy bodies. Trying to conserve what he could of their weapon stock he mostly just used the phaser fire to make that happen.
When they got close enough to activate the scan, Lieutenant Junior Grade, Morwen Angharad from her consol was actually the one to initiate the scan to try and find the boarding teams. Checking on their progress. "We have the scan going commander."
[ Command Center | EOC Tower | Starbase 84 ] Joint-post by Nolan & Auctor Lucan
Lieutenant Junior Grade Selnak had walked Cameron away from the boarding party, leaving Ida, Zaraq and Ryuan. The corridor to the command center had been a pretty long one. Cam estimated it to be at least fifteen meters before she'd reach the heavy blast doors that could ensure a safe lockdown. Cameron looked to her left and right, the few men that accompanied them, walking beside her with their assault rifles aimed downwards. Selnak came to a stop at the doors of the command center and turned around to face Cam. His eyes looking straight into hers as he snatched the combadge off her uniform. By doing so, his hand brushed over her breast for a second. "Captain's orders," the Vulcan mentioned dryly before the doors opened and they entered.
Inside, the activity was quite impressive, much like how Cameron would imagine the situation being aboard the main bridge on the Theurgy. It seemed to be like a beehive with various stations working at full capacity with orders and statuses being sent and received while some of the men and women relayed their orders to their direct superiors. Cameron took a few seconds to take in the sight before her eyes went over to the viewscreen. The massive battle developing before her just as the Theurgy delivered a devastating blow upon a ship unknown to her - looking like a Vesta-class variation before it was demolished. Cameron's breath hitched for a second and she placed her hand before her lips, the size and magnitude of the battle being delivered before her eyes in full now.
It reminded her, however, why she was there, what her objective was and who she desperately needed to see. She started to move again as Selnak didn't want to linger much longer than needed before seeing his base commander and direct superior. He walked Cameron past the various stations before bringing her to the ebony colored man who looked at the viewscreen, seemingly cold and calculated.
"Thank you, Lieutenant," Cameron offered with a slight nod to the Vulcan before she stepped forward, the guards besides her raising their weapons as they meant to make sure she wasn't up to anything tricky. "Dad... Stop this madness... Please, we need to have a cease-fire and talk. I have information that needs to be sent to everyone out there and to you personally. Please, just hear me out..."
Hearing Cam behind him, Ian refrained from smiling, instead turning around slowly with his face expressionless - as if carved in stone. "How Cammie?" he said, as he always did, his voice grave. "Whatever has gotten into you? How can you willingly partake in this Captain's madness? Do you see what this traitor just did? Look! Hundreds of Starfleet officers dead!" His open hand thrust towards the wreckage of the USS Orcus, and his stern brow was furrowed in incomprehension. "How do you expect there to be any kind of cease-fire now? Is Lisa also willingly following Captain Ives' orders? What the hell did the shapeshifter say to you two?"
Seeing the face of Hawthorne made Cam's heard jump a little. Her eyes locked on his as she heard his familiar voice, the name he always called her being used to stress the seriousness of the matter. Cameron's eyes slowly followed his hands as she saw the Orcus laid to waste next to Vector 01.
"Dad..." Cameron started as she looked away from the Orcus and looked into his eyes once more "You haven't been through what we've endured. The losses we've suffered, the odds we've faced that weighed against us. We've been hunted down like animals, not even as Starfleet personnel. We've fought off formidable foes that solely aimed to wipe us out, not even take us captive." she tried to reason with the man, which she knew would ask more questions.
"Yes we're guilty of the loss of Starfleet lives, yet all we did was out of self-preservation. Dad, I've come here alone to speak to you. I don't want to lose any more lives than we already have. Hail Ives, call for a cease-fire. You'll see that he'll accept. Let us send our message of truth and we'll surrender," she pleaded. She deliberately didn't mention a word of Lisa. The timing of it wouldn't be right now. It would only frustrate her adoptive father ever more, make his sense to hear her out vanish.
Hearing what Cameron said confirmed what Ian had guessed; the reason why they had come. The Theurgy wanted to expose his kin. It was interesting, since there were benefits and disadvantages to allowing it. In the long run, however, the outcome was unpredictable, and it would weaken his own position - the truth about his new nature being exposed a risk he was not too keen on indulging. "A 'message of truth'?"
"Yes, we have living proof aboard the ship that Starfleet has been infiltrated, we even have technologies of those that hunted us down. Things that came through temporal rifts! It was a cold reminder to us why we're doing this. If they keep sending things at us, we're doing something right." she said calmly, hoping rational facts would have affect on him.
Frowning, Ian shook his head, acting confounded. "What are you talking about? What proof? Are you saying you have one of these 'infiltrators' from the future aboard the Theurgy?" he asked, but he had to give orders so he stepped away from Cameron, addressing his personnel. "Is the Orcus within transporter range? Monitor their evacuation, and if needed be, lower the shields so that we can beam aboard the people that can't make it to their escape pods. Alert the Infirmary and deploy triage teams to the transporter rooms. Keep trying to disable all three of the Theurgy's vectors before they destroy the Chester as well, and establish space superiority with the remaining interceptors. Is Salazar still alive? Who is in command over the 23rd?"
Cameron paused for a second as Hawthorne handed out his orders, used to not interrupt the man even from when Lisa and she were children. Yet this was urgent, it held lives in the balance as Cameron spoke up "Ian, forget about the Theurgy, it's these infiltrators that are responsible for everything!" she said as she took a step forward and tugged at his uniform to make him face her "They...." she paused for a second and looked in his eyes. "They're responsible for what happened to Lisa." she said, her voice not a bit softer now as she wanted to make a scene on the command center. They all had the right to know what these beasts had done.
"It's what rallied me even more to fight this crusade." she continued. "These monsters need to be held accountable for their acts. Their warmongering and their accountability to the loss of innocent lives. Please, help us in that. You know that Trish would want justice for her daughter as well."
Ian guessed he was supposed to be surprised, but he was not. After all, why send the adoptive daughter when Ives could have sent the host's real one?
Nevertheless, Ian knew he was supposed to act taken by the news, if nothing else for sake of appearances in front of his command staff. So, he let his eyes widen, and slowly turned the host's head back towards Cammie. "You mean, she's dead?" he asked quietly, the whisper overriding the chaos of shouting of the present staff. A couple of them were demanding his attention, but he let himself continue to stare at Cammie. Idly, he wondered what it would be like to break the delicate bone structure of her face.
"What 'monsters' are you talking about?" he said, his tone a little louder, "Who's responsible for Lisa being dead?"
The explosions on the background were rather intense as Cameron looked over Ian's shoulder before she chewed on her lip. I'm talking about the people sent to hunt us down for trying to spread the truth. "Your admiralty, that is infiltrated entirely, and is moving you around like pawns on a game board. Dad please, I beg of you... Lisa believed in this cause, she was as innocent as could be... For her, stop this mindless fighting, I beg of you," she whispered as she maintained eye contact, her eyes watery as she fought back the tears. The moment she dreaded so much happened in an instant, without too much time to prepare either party for it.
Ian worked his jaw, disbelief mixing with grief and horror in his countenance. "No... You don't know what has happened here. I will not order a cease-fire unless I know more," snapped Ian and stalked off, acting deeply affected by what she'd said, "and frankly, Captain Ives has not only killed in self-defence out there. Someone from your crew hacked our systems and sealed the docking bay doors on this station, making a third of our Air Group smash against them, all dead. Its only the surviving fighter pilots out there, desperately trying to defend us. Sweet Cammie, can't you see? Ives even had help from Captain Kendrick on the USS Resolve, who's fighters are fighting alongside yours!"
Cameron shook her head in disbelief, there seemed to be enough evidence to her adoptive father to disagree on her point of view. Frankly, she could understand why if a third of their fighter group had been decimated. "What was the alternative dad? Look at it from our point of view. Should we just warp in, get decimated before even getting the chance to explain ourselves? Look me in the eye and tell me that you wouldn't blow us to smithereens if you had been given the full power of this station. We'd be slaughtered. This was the only way..." she retorted, pausing for breath.
"As for Kendrick, we have never met him before, I have no idea why they are fighting alongside us, though I can imagine that their ruined ship might have something to do with it. They could just be looking for a safe place. Truly, if you want to save lives now, call the fighters back. Let me send a message to Ives to indicate that we've reached a ceasefire and stop every hostility. Trust needs to come from both ways... Else I wouldn't even be here," she said as she stepped closer, within reach of her adoptive father, resting her hand on his chest. "Please, dad... We need to mourn our losses, not increase them."
Ian stood his ground, but did not back away. "Kendrick freed a Romulan from our Brig, and one of his crew detonated a bomb on this base. It can't be a coincidence that it happened by the time the Theurgy arrived - clearly a diversion. There is more to this than Ives is telling you. Starfleet Command has evidence that your Captain have been feeding classified coordinates to the Romulans, allowing for them to raid weapon facilities all along the RNZ. I get reports every day about another facility being emptied and all the officers killed."
Cameron shook her head "Starfleet Command are the enemy!"
"What?" said Ian, doing his best to act surprised, even though he wanted to twist her neck for uttering the words.
"Please, listen to yourself! I'm the Ives' Yeoman, and I get every piece of intel before he does, I screen everything! We had no idea about Kendrick or his actions prior to our arrival. We know nothing about the damage done to this station, for all we know..." she paused at the thought that Kendrick and his crew might be infiltrated as well. Perhaps their goal was to destroy the starbase in order to prevent their message from being sent.
She quickly regained her composure as she sighed. "Dad... the facilities that are raided... All the officers aren't dead. The officers from Black Opal, they are alive and working alongside us. We saved them from the Romulans! They're on the ship! Call for a cease-fire and ask to see them, ask for a sit down! Don't believe this bullcrap intel they are feeding you through corrupted channels! See it with your own eyes! Stop being used like a pawn!" she shouted out now, her composure lost a little as she tried to shout some sense into her father, knowing it was her final attempt to do so.
Ian realised that plausibly, he should yield some ground to her given what she's said. How could he stall it? How could he bring this around without...
"Captain!" shouted his Chief of Operations, "Someone has shut down communications and internal sensors. We are blind and we can't reach anyone on the base!"
Behind his shocked features, Ian smiled, wondering just who had removed the means to contact Ives, and why. Nonetheless, he was grateful for the chance, and left Cameron behind to speak with the officer.
The news of communications being down came at the worst timing. Cameron was now stuck, unable to do anything more but stay by her father's side as the only chance for a ceasefire now seemed more distant than ever.
[Selena Ravenholm | Boarding Team 01 | Communication Tower]
Cinn may not have agreed with Isley and Sar-unga's actions but it was exactly the distraction that Selena was looking for. In the split second it took for the two to swap positions she leapt straight up, cybernetic legs giving her far more lift than any human leg could. Grabbing some sort of protruding items mounted to the ceiling she swung her legs up and out of the second phaser sweep, wedging them between another set of something. Using her feet as a new anchor Selena simply flipped around to grab a light fixture. Smiling from the exhilaration, the floor below was a blur as the woman somersaulted along the ceiling like a gymnast.
On the fourth flip, holding onto what was probably an onmi-directional microphone for the comm system, instead of going for the next foothold, the cyborg used her momentum to land a powerful drop-kick right into the chest of a Kasheeta male, knocking the saurian right off of his feet and probably crushing some of his ribs in the impact. Using the reddish lizard as a cushion for her own landing Selena was the first to recover, planting her hands behind her and quickly flipping up into a handstand and spinning around with her legs out. Clocking an attractive Deltan square in the jaw hard enough to snap her head around with her foot, that left just two others standing, one on both sides of her.
Regaining her footing, Selena sent the command to open up the leg compartment that held her pistol, jumping backwards with her full strength while grabbing the weapon. Slamming into the guard that was trying to shoot her in the back, the security guard ended up smushed against the wall and was finished off with an elbow to the nose. Almost at the same time a single stun blast from the pistol dropped the final guard, his own phaser clattering to the deck before its owner slumped on top of it.
Silent at last, Selena ignored the pile of bodies they left in their wake. "Come on, we're almost out of time." she said, nodding towards the door the team needed to get through.
[ MCPO William Robert O'Connell (https://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2014/219/f/7/oconnel_row_01_by_auctor_lucan-d7u6n2x.png) | Boarding Team Two | Primary Reactor Control | Level 14 | Starbase 84 ]
"Ah'm gonna deactivate th' station's transporters!" Billy Bob shouted over the din of phaser fire. "We don't need 'em knowhow! Dang it, Luff why'd yuh have t' git hit?" Once he had shut down the station's transporters, he dropped to the deck as one of the base's security shot at him. He tapped his combadge and rolled his body in order to turn around and point his TR-120 at the enemy. "O'Connell to Theurgy, beam up Boarding Team Two! Beam us up immediately yah hear? Beam us up yesterday, toot sweet!" he hollered as he managed to hit one of the men shooting at him, Thea, and Cam.
[Acknowledged,] replied Petty Officer Tenchi Koizumi's voice. [We'll beam you aboard as soon as we're able.]
"We're in luck," Senior Chief Petty Officer Verguy Cam called from his console. "There's a great big hole in their shields! With any luck the Theurgy can transport us out through there!" he shouted as he turned to shoot at the security men in the chamber. "Did you shut down the station's transporters?"
"What yuh talkin' about?" O'Connell shouted back as he fired his weapon. "Are you plumb loco? Your knife is so dull it couldn't cut butter! Uh course I shut down the station's transporters! Ain't nobody's a gonna come up behind us!"
As soon as he said that the door to the Chief Engineers' office on the deck above hissed open and out came six more security specialists led by a carrot topped officer whose short slender frame made her hard to hit. They were up on the level above and from their vantage point could they had a splendid view of the chamber below, making O'Connell, Thea, and Cam easy targets.
"Dagnabbit," O'Connell muttered as he raced for the stairs. One of the security men who had beamed in earlier had been using the spiral staircase for cover and was surprised by Billy Bob's charge. A lucky shot from Billy sent a non-lethal shock via magnetic pulse through his body allowing O'Connell to reach the stairs. "Keyah's alone up there!" the master chief grumbled. "Why don't things ever run smooth?" He was now below the new arrivals, who apparently hadn't noticed him yet.
"This is Lt. Dothnil, Chief of Security, a feminine voice called out from above. "Consider yourselves under arrest for acts of terrorism against the Federation -" Whatever she was going to say next was drowned by the sound of phaser fire as both Thea and Cam got hit. Thea was alright, but the Andorian was spun around and slammed against the console so hard that Billy Bob thought he could feel the impact. As a console near the comatose Cam was hit and erupted in a shower of sparks, O'Connell hoped the Andorian's SAFTI gear was working or Cam was deader than a can of corned beef.
(https://orig12.deviantart.net/b657/f/2009/127/0/f/star_trek_team_redshirt_by_schematization.gif)
[ Lt Cmdr. Leon Marquez (https://uss-theurgy.com/w/index.php?title=Leon_Marquez) | Security Center | Holding Cell | Starbase 84 ] Attn: All (https://orig04.deviantart.net/194c/f/2017/058/f/e/marquez_by_auctor_lucan-db0js8q.png)
Marquez had been frustrated by the debriefing. The explosion from earlier had rattled the
Resolve's XO, whose tone was suddenly one of preoccupation and concern as he had answered his debriefers.
"We didn't violate any treaty regulations, Commander. We were just trying to get home under General Orders. You might as well trial half of the Enterprise's collective captains for what we did. So can we just get on with it?"
That exchange seemed like an eternity ago. Armageddon itself could have been raging outside, and the USS Resolve's XO could have been out of the loop until his combadge was returned to him.
"What is 'Theurgy' to you?" The Security debriefer asked. Marquez wondered if someone had involved spiritual release, or referring to the Rogue vessel USS Theurgy. "It's an ancient art of spiritual evocation, if I can recall. The Aztecs practiced forms of it over the centuries. To me, it's doesn't mean much. If you mean the ship, The News Service mentioned a rogue Federation warship, but then again, they called "Project Eagle" a hoax. I don't know anything about them, aside from what I've read lately. Theurgy itself means more to me personally than the name of a rogue crew." The ways of the world never permitted fair and unbiased truth in the media since Jaresh-Inyo anyway, in Marquez's point of view.
Marquez reflexively trained his ear to listen in on the distance, but was reminded by the debriefing officer "There are still more questions."
"I've got one, for a change: Where's the head on this deck? I have my rights, you know." By now, Marquez was genuinely annoyed, and showed that he wasn't in a cooperative mood at this particular moment by folding his arms and remaining silent. The men in the shadows murmored, even the interrogator was recalled.
All Marquez heard was a door open, and he was restrained by two security officers as the Resolve XO was blinded by an opaque black bag blinded the Resolve's XO, who bellowed a taunt as he attempted to fight himself loose, leaping from his seat enough to bicycle-kick one security officer along the temple, though he would only know the effect of his success when he woke up in a holding cell, coming to consciousness with at least one cracked rib, most likely a revenge kick for his own. From Marquez's point of view, the world existed in hues of red and spots. He tasted blood, and summoned up all his instincts to wake up. During moments of seeing black, he subliminally thought about ever seeing Cloi, Earth, or even another blade of grass ever again. Grass. The scent, the memory of earth flooded his senses. Muscle memory. It was an internal reserve of strength coming back to him. He was now glad he saved his strength during that-- how long ago had it been? Briefing. Explosion... Coming slowly out of the shock after what must have been a few moments, Marquez assumed he was being watched and scrutinized by some inept jailor. At least he hoped the jailor was inept.
The explosion, the indifference of the debrief team. The dots. Connect the dots. Find more. Get answers. This wasn't a WWII Holonovel, and these men weren't Gestapo henchmen, but they were certainly acting like ones. Marquez shifted his weight about, hoping his hidden pocket wasn't discovered... it wasn't. Marquez sighed internally. All he had to do was pull the pin and tackle someone at its point of impact, and he was out of this bird cage. The image of an eagle ready to pounce, Leon Marquez took the posture of a martial artist and began to heel kick the forcefield. Sooner or later someone would come in and beat him.
Feigning outrage, Marquez yelled primally "LET ME OUT!!!" He panted, "NOW!!!" He cursed a stream of Spanish insults that echoed his shouts in English, before ultimately charging into the forcefield, bouncing off it and apparently hitting his head and twitched involuntarily. Though the injury was mild, his reflexes were convincing enough to get the alert of a security officer, who charged in frantically, lowering the forcefield to enter. Before he could even check his heartrate, Marquez sprung to life.
In an unexpected move, he kicked out the kneecap of the guard, stranding his crumpled body in front of the forcefield emitters, the bio safety protocols preventhing the field from reemerging, harming the jailor. Meanwhile, Marquez jammed the stunner into the jailor's wrist. In under three seconds, Marquez rolled away from this security man, snagged his combadge and pocketed his baton and made sure he was properly subdued.
It was a close shave, Marquez only hoped no one looked twice at him in the chaos of the battle. Unaware of the map layout, he timed his route through the Security Center and wound up in a private study. Closing himself in, marquez fiddled with the combadge he'd secured.
[ Lt Cmdr. Leon Marquez (https://uss-theurgy.com/w/index.php?title=Leon_Marquez) | Security Center | Komial's Office | Starbase 84 ] Attn: All (https://orig04.deviantart.net/194c/f/2017/058/f/e/marquez_by_auctor_lucan-db0js8q.png)
To no avail, he had just managed to prepare some sort of message in a bottle, when he overheard something in the next room.
MARQUEZ TO RESOLVE. COME IN RESOLVE. URGEN..."Half light, half light!" came a woman's voice. From his hiding spot, Marquez was privately glad his night vision was still sharp, but the door soon opened as the female occupant granted them entry. Marquez remained hidden.
"Lt. Hi'Jak happened. Him and some bit-" Marquez didn't move as he heard the woman give her report. He prayed no one here could hear his breathing-- or smell him, even if one would have to have been an augment to do so from this distance, from here, he had a convenient view of what ensued.
"A civilian accomplice, the pilot for the vessel Sabine...she helped Hi'Jak escape. We couldn't bring the ship down before it started unleashing micro torpedoes in the shuttle bay. Those they didn't outright kill were spaced as a result....except me. My...." Gods, this was embarrassing, and she hissed as the suture began its work,
"my uniform got snagged. It was all that saved me. Kept me in the bay long enough before it...well." she didn't say it,
"The doors slammed shut and the atmosphere returned. I was all that was left. Triox, please."Unable to shut his eyes, but also unwilling to see any Trill spots after losing Cloi, Marquez enjoyed what he saw for what it was, any man's fantasy: A beautiful, naked woman. He jokingly hoped his 'phaser' give him away. As it was, he still wondered when someone would notice a missing jailor's security club. Or the officer in general. If it was, this Security chief would search the entire floor, possibly even this one. Marquez continued to hide his breathing. He was glad to have practiced techniques like these from the 'Our Man...' Series of spy novels. Sneaking around simulated guards was one thing. Unwittingly spying on the station security chief and seeing spots was its own challenge-reward.
No Time for love, Striker, listen up. The lights wouldn't last, and neither would the show, so Marquez got himself out of there while the lights were still dim and the clothes were still off. He hid through the rafters over the CSO's office and listened in.
"We believe we have one boarding party in the building, previously moving towards the command center at the top floor, but they have been halted at the lounge. Reinforcements are on the way there already. We have also one team that hijacked a turbolift and ascended to the communication towers. The transporter inhibitors are still online, so we are sending staff up there in pursuit. Lastly, I am afraid that a third team has seized the reactor control room, and the only thing stopping them from powering down shields, communications, everything is that we are beaming more forces into the area - not letting them do anything unopposed. Our staff at the auxillary reactor is trying to wrest system controls back to their stations as we speak. It is only a matter of time until the doors are breached and the twenty guards outside will pour into the room, and they won't be able to do anything further. The duty stations are too exposed, with nowhere for them to hide."I've got to get ahold of these people, whoever they are. Marquez was through with any official story bullshit at this point, so his ears were as attentive as his eyes had been.
"I got a report that the Captain's ex-wife docked with the station today, so when the Theurgy arrived, I wanted to pinpoint where she was, since I figured that she could be made a hostage. But the guards that were supposed to find her can't, and internal sensors won't pinpoint her anywhere on the station either. It might be that Captain Ives already has her..."Maybe she knew something. Marquez thought. Ives and the
Theurgy probably knew something. Then came Hawthorne's voice:
[Reinforcements have arrived, and the Chester has managed to manually release her docking clams, joining the battle outside, but it would seem none of the boarding teams are dealt with. Your top priority is the primary reactor room. Stop them from lowering our shields at any cost. Hawthorne out.]The Trill named Komial had soon left, along with her closest officer. Coming out from his hiding place, Marquez made his way to the next section of the Security Center, peering in on the chaotic scene below. Only now did someone ask about the missing security guard. Striker halted in his tracks, produced the stunner he'd smuggled in and hotwired his commlink using a low setting at the corner of the stunner's rectangular tip. A microspark was all it took to avoid detection.
[Security to Mitch, come in. Mitch, respond.][Smythe here. I'll locate him.] Marquez recognized this voice and smirked.
No you won't. It was the same guard he must've sent to sickbay earlier when he was first arrested. Time to strike back.
[Okay, Smythe, carry on.] Marquez arrived in the section just outside of the lift, and upon hearing the chime, made his move.
"Excuse me? Marquez stood in front of officer Smythe before the lift even opened, and immediately headbutted and stunned the guard, then moved into the lift, ready to combat anyone else in there, friend or foe. Luckily, Smythe was alone and the lift closed behind them. Marquez secured Smythe's rifle and sent the lift on its way to the Command Center.
"You never did tell me where the head was. How about we ask your Captain?" Marquez made sure the man who he'd incapacitated twice now was knocked out, taking a particular point of stopping just short of 'excessive force', per the regulations. Which were now the last thing on his mind as he set the nearby viewscreen to get up to speed on what he'd missed and was shocked by what he saw, particularly when the
Resolve herself was devastated and summarily rescued by the so-called 'rogue' Starship
Theurgy.
Marquez set his phaser rifle setting to stun at compression fire; he wanted to take aim before each shot. And Marquez hoped to take particular aim on the shot meant for the man who ordered the USS
Resolve fired upon, no matter what regulations Striker had to break: He knew once he opened that door, he'd be stepping into a new world of trouble... so he took cover, Rifle ready to open fire on Starbase personnel, and one Base Captain in particular.
Striker Marquez's normally gravelly voice now had a vengeful purr to it. "I'm going to carve 'resolve' into that man's skull for this treachery." Marquez placed Smythe in a position appearing to have been blindsided. Marquez hid in the corner, ready to use Smythe as a human shield if he had to.
[ ThanIda zh'Wann | Boarding Team 03 | EOC Top Floor Lounge ] Attn: 1) SummerDawn, 2) Nolan & 3) Striker N7
Ensign Ryuan Sel spoke the truth when she said they could ill afford dismissing the Romulan's aid if they were going to attempt capturing Hawthorne. So, as soon as as O'Connell verified that communications and internal sensors were down - barely heard over the sounds of the fire-fight in the reactor room - Ida inclined her head to Drauc T'Laus, despite her misgivings about his eerie resemblance to Isley. "Fine, you cover our six, and we make contact first. Zaraq, Sel, you two have either flank as we move in. If Hawthorne is 'Aidoaan', then Henshaw has failed. Her father might not himself any more, and we need to get those shields down, so cutting communications now only prevented them from calling for reinforcements. With the sensors down, they won't know we're coming either. Move out."
Taking point, her rifle at the ready, Ida could not help but consider the definite possibility that Hawthorne was like Acreth. Why else had he invited war upon the Federation? Based on what she'd read about the base's Commanding Officer, he his track record was impeccable, and did not fit the profile of a traitor in any way. It led her to believe that he was, indeed, one of their true enemies, and the upcoming fight in the command center might not fall in their favour. Perhaps, if they managed to neutralise all other opposition, then they might be able to bring him down together.
"I have fought these things before," she murmured to her small team as they closed in on the next intersection, moving forth with her legs bent - centre of gravity low, "Be ready for anything, and don't take any chances, not when it comes to his kind. Fast, strong, and merciless. Their abilities are not bound to this existence alone. The laws of physics doesn't seem to bind them as they do us. First chance you get, take him out. Zaraq, the effect of our TR-120s are untested when it comes to these things. Sel, T'Laus, set your phasers to maximum stun, but know that it will take at least ten beams to subdue him. "
Reaching the intersection, Ida looked back to her team. Did she see movements back in the lounge? They had no time to investigate. Better move on. Before she rounded the corner, she made sure they were all focused. "We close the last distance now and go in fast. Be ready in three, two, one, let's go!"
Then, Ida rushed down the corridor at a brisk pace. One uniformed officer came in their way, and was down on the floor one shot later. A second one almost had time to raise his voice before Ida drove the butt of her rifle into his face. Ten meters to go. This, except for Drauc, they had trained for in the simulators on the Theurgy. Rounding the next corner, the double doors to the command center fell into sight, along with four guards posted outside. Zaraq was the first to take out two of them, and Ida couldn't say if it was Sel or Drauc who sent the third into the wall behind his back, but she knew she caught the fourth one in the side of his chest, making him spin before he went down. Without pause they reached the doors, and they had expected them to be sealed. It seemed O'Connell must have managed to override the mechanism, however, because as soon as Ida approached, the doors slid open for them.
No, it had not been them, but a tall Vulcan - Selnak, who had brought Henshaw to her father - and the Lieuteant's dispassionate mien didn't betray any surprise before he raised his rifle.
Sheer instinct on Ida's side let her kick the muzzle of the weapon aside - the beam scourging a line across the wall in the corridor. Completing the spinning kick, Ida bared her teeth and struck the Vulcan across the head with her elbow, just in order to get him out of her way. She counted on Sel, Drauc or T'Laus to handle the Vulcan in her wake, because she was already moving into the Command Center - the dim Red Alert lights making all the LCARS displays in the area the first thing she saw. Next, she saw movements, officers getting out of their seats, alarmed. She saw two go for their phasers - posted security guards responding to her teams entry - and the took out one of them. She had to dive behind a duty station to escape the second one, swearing over the fact that she had been halted. Forgetting their training, some screamed, and people were running to to vacate the area from the other levels.
Yet from Ida's vantage point where she hid, she could see them on the lower level. Cameron Henshaw and Ian Hawthorne, father and daughter reunited. They were on the far side of the command center, standing next to each other in front of the main viewscreen. With all the running people, she had no clear shot. "Henshaw!" she screamed over the din of the ensuing fight, "He's one of them!"
As she said it, she made eye-contact with the Captain.
At first, it seemed like the thing debated whether to act, gauging the threat of their presence. It decided they were too few, and the quick smile she got from the parasite was just like Acreth's. It vanished quickly, as if it had never been there. But Ida had seen it.
"Protect the Captain!" shouted someone, and the Command Center descended into complete chaos.
OOC: I imagine the area to look like this: https://johneaves.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/cc-b.jpg?w=1400&h= (Concept Art by John Eaves. I imagine Cam and Hawthorne to be by the Starfleet emblem on the floor of the lower level.) SummerDawn, you are next. Go crazy and feel free to NPC Drauc and Zaraq both to your advantage of you want to. Nolan, you follow with Cam's reaction and actions. Striker N7, Marquez has overheard the dialogue between Ida, Sel and Drauc in the lounge, as well as what Ida said about Hawthorne's abilities. That way, your character is up to speed with the main plotline with the parasites, and joins the fray in a decisive moment after Nolan's post.
[ CWO1 Sten "Papa Bear" Covington | Open Space | Reaver-class fighter Cinsaj ]
"On it, Boss," replied Sten after he was given his orders. Of course, that was not proper communications protocol when out in the black. He knew it. Iron Fox knew it. Every damn pilot on the net knew it. What the Chief of the Deck had said was the exact thing he would have once given his directives on the flight deck. Because, let's face it, he might be qualified to take a fighter for a ferry flight, or run it though operational testing, but he was not a fighter pilot; he was a technician, a damn good one. Hell, he'd personally written the last few iterations of flight deck procedure manuals and his methodology was one that had been copied for the Knight and Valravn project maintenance manuals. But he was not a combat pilot, regardless of the fact he knew intimately what the birds on his deck could do and how they did it.
So perhaps a slightly lax communications discipline was probably something that would be excused in the immediate.
Locking the Chester's after aspect into Cinsaj's tactical computer, he once again let it do the hard work to give him firing solutions and a flight path. A flight path that was taking him directly into the teeth of her fire. But the controls were intuitive, and the threat detection on this bird were so good that he could literally fly between bursts of phaserfire, and whenever a torpedo cam his way, the mass drivers on his back would track and engage on their own, given that the computer did recommend setting them to point-defence mode during his approach.
When he reached the Chester, there must have been mere meters between their shield bubbles, and he took the Reaver into the kind of turn he'd performed before, but with a much tighter radius. He had an inkling she was a nimble little ship, but not to that extent. It would seem that having a human pilot instead of a computer construct could exact a little bit more performance out of it...
But then, he was behind the Defiant-class ship, and he followed his orders. His tetryon cannons fired several times, and once his sensors read that the shields were down, he cut loose with the transphasic torpedoes on his hardpoints. They were powerful weapons, and they certainly packed a serious punch, but they were nowhere near what had come back with Voyager. It would seem that Admiral Janeway had made a point that no ordnance could be recovered, if only as an attempt to keep violations of the Temporal Prime Directive to a minimum, so even coming from the future, they did not approach the yield that had been recorded by Voyager. But the effect on Chester's unshielded hull was... sobering.
Covington knew the torpedo casings had been hardened and the nose was actually a duranium alloy penetrator. The torpedoes themselves were a dual-mode device, with the option to set for surface detonation, or delayed blast. Granted, there was only so much the nosecone could do, but it did allow the torpedoes to bury themselves, if shallowly, into Chester's warp nacelles and impulse engines, and mere microseconds later, they detonated. It was a good thing for everyone on board that the engine components of a Defiant-class ships tended to be heavily armoured even on their inner face, and that there were plenty of blast-hardened hatches along the maintenance crawlspaces. Not to mention the emergency cut-off valves along the power runs and plasma conduits. Because, with a series of detonations like miniature supernovas, the heavily armed ship's propulsion systems were turned to craters.
"Iron Fox, Papa Bear. Chester's dead in the water."
[ Lt. JG Alessia Garcia | White Wolves Squadron | Wolf-09 ] Attn: Lone/Grey/White Wolves
[Angel this is Razor... I repeat this is Razor. Confirm former attendance from Red Viper squad. Come on Garcia, let me hear that raspy voice.]
Hearing that voice again was strange feeling to Garcia, never having thought to consider Razor a 'hostile'. At first, she did not know how to respond, not entirely sure she'd heard it right. Yet despite all the commotion around her, and having to deal orders to her Flight, she soon came to acknowledge Thomas Ravon.
"This is Angel, confirmed." What was she supposed to say? She had her orders, didn't she? "Care to tell me what the hell is going on out here?"
Then, as if things were not complicated enough, she saw with her own two eyes how Terror and Sniper both opened fire against the interceptors of Starbase 84, all to protect their friend and lover from the USS Harbinger. What was she supposed to do now? She had no facts, only past allegiances that muddled the waters. Two of her pilots were deeply concerned on a private line, asking for orders and what to do about Terror and Sniper. The Orcus was targeted and nigh destroyed, leaving them nowhere to land except Starbase 84. Were they even welcome after what their SCO had just done? Dragon had fallen back to protect the Orcus while evacuation procedures were underway, and Stormraven was of similar mind.
Then, the other voice from the past spoke up on her channel.
"This is Lieutenant Commander Miles Renard of the Lone Wolves, and with me is also Lieutenant Havenborn from the Resolve. We will defend ourselves, but the Theurgy is not here for anything else than to send a message from Starbase 84, where we'll set the record straight, and tell everyone who the real enemy is. We are not defectors, with no affiliation to either of the splintered Romulan factions. It is Starfleet Command that has been taken over by alien parasites, who seek to seed discord in the Federation, destabilising the fleet. The truth will be known today."
That... certainly didn't make things any more simple. Nor the fact that even the USS Chester was disabled through a joint effort between Theurgy fighter crafts. She'd once defended that Defiant-class ship, in a skirmish that seemed so long ago. The comm chatter in her ears were of all possible reactions. The voice of the Vulpinian SCO sounded like Miles, that was certain, just as much as Razor had seemed himself. Both were people she had trusted, and despite how conflicted she felt, she could more and more understand her new SCO's actions when it came to defending the one named Husker. Still, what was she supposed to do?
"Angel to Terror," she grated, circling Vector 02 without engaging anything with her Flight. "We have lost our base ship, and I have two fighter pilots in my Flight who wish to respond in kind, I am not certain I can make them stand down. I mean, we are just a newly formed squadron of test pilots from all over Tac CONN, and I cannot vouch for anyone's loyalty this early on. That being said..."
What was she doing? It seemed so right at the same time as it defied all her Starfleet Officer training. She took a deep breath. "That being said... I will stand with you if you lend your aid to Renard and his fighers. If what he says is true, it makes more sense than anything else I have heard about the Theurgy these past months. Neither Iron Fox nor Razor would willingly defect to the Romulans. If they are being framed, it makes the most sense to me. If you confirm... I will see who else from my Flight stands with us. I leave no guarantees at this point."
What am I doing? She didn't tell her Flight yet, not entirely sure if she should either, at the risk of them opening fire...
OOC: As per our General Rules, I just took over playing Garcia temporarily because of lacking positing activity from Dam025. This scene as been locked up for everyone for far too long, so now it is finally DocReno's turn to post with Terror and Sniper. Dev asked Terror about Adioaan, and that question can be passed on to Miles Renard, who has a preliminary answer to it, and enough to make Dev make the same choice Garcia just did. Looking forward to your post, DocReno, and I will be replying with Renard post-haste to expedite this scene.
[ Primary Reactor Control | Level 14 | Starbase 84 ] Joint-Post by Brutus, Doc M. & Auctor Lucan
Regardles the status of the Transporters on Starbase 84 - being switched off and on depending on the immediate needs of the boarding team - Thea had her task set for herself. She meant to power down weapon systems and shields, and preserve her Vectors and the fighters defending her from the base's barrages of torpedoes and phaser beams. While she slipped past security systems in her processor's background tasks, her aiming software was handling how she fired her TR-120 against any guards that appeared through the destroyed doors. Keyah was of great assistance, and she scheduled a task to compliment her for her efforts during the mission.
Then, another security detail appeared on the terrace above. Even if her emotion ship made her feel fright, eyes wide, Thea whipped her head around and realigned her sights against the new threat, spinning on her heels and opening fire in the wake of the red-haired organic's words. She fired twice, aim true, and one of them guards she hit toppled over the railing, the other one slammed into the wall on the second level. The answer was quick and merciless, her Andorian crewmember going down hard from the counter strike; the firing squad around the Chief of Security smiting her and the computer consoles from on high. Her rifle took a direct hit. She had almost breached through to and accessed the base's defensive network, but she could not linger at the risk of her emitter taking a direct hit. If it was, the base's shields would never come down, and all three boarding teams lost. Dropping her weapon, grabbing the top of the duty station, she vaulted over it and took cover behind its frame - at least her emitter being covered from phaser fire.
Unfortunately, her data-cord unplugged itself from the console in her movement, and she lost her access completely. "Damn it," she swore, uncharacteristically.
Her people went down, and a snarl formed onto Komial's beautiful features. How dare those traitorous bastards she thought, and never mind that they were fighting for their lives, just as Komial was fighting for the lives of everyone on the station. But those weapons they were using ..."Spread out and take cover. Suppressing fire 3..2...1." She popped up over the safety rail again and let out a spread of bursts, not really aiming, just to keep the intruders off guard, giving her people time to get to new positions.
Feet pounded across the deck plates as her men and women sprung forth in both directions, moving to attempt to encircle the invaders. Turn the lower deck into a shooting gallery. Fish in a barrel, that was the old Terran saying, Komial thought to herself as one of her phaser pulses struck a station, sending out a new shard of sparks down on the crew of the Theurgy.
In the meantime Master Chief William Robert O'Connell crept up the narrow column of spiral stairs pausing only when he got to the top to peer up at the walkway above before he exposed himself. He crouched in order to get as close to the upper deck as he could while plucking a grenade from the prototype webgear he was wearing that could also power a short lived personal force field. He tapped his combadge. "Keyah, warp concussion bubble."
Down below, her duty station pelted with phaser fire and yet her emitter still hidden by it, Thea had reached out and grabbed a hold of SCPO Verguy Cam's wrist, and pulled his lifeless body into her cover without effort - her fine-turned force-fields dragging the Andorian across the floor plating. She seized his TR-120, knowing she'd need it, and then ripped the back-side of the duty station open - the cover over the maintenance access clattering against the floor. In short order, she had plugged her 'umbilical cord', but there was no power routed to the software any more. She did not pause in regret, regardless much the emotion chip made her feel it, and quickly decided to re-purpose the energy-pack of Verguy's rifle to become a power source for the station. Defenseless, she was ripping out the guts of the back of the station even as sustained phaser fire rippled through her projection.
Keyah (https://uss-theurgy.com/w/images/8/8a/457_hayek-salma.png) swore under her breath, counting, softly, while the Accipiter wound up its warp field generator. The damn thing was glitchy as all get out, harder to control then a Klingon targ in heat. And just never, ever ask how the Bolian knew the details there. That was one shore leave she never wanted to remember. Her blue fingers danced across the side of the gun, wincing as she heard the rain of pulse phaser fire. Narrowing her eyes, she saw a leggy blond security officer being trailed by an alien, both armed to the teeth, head to get around and entrap Thea. The warp field generator made a small, soft sound - it had finally peeked.
"Not today. Not on my watch!" Keyah declared, popping up and letting her rip. The field coalesced for less than 2.75 standard seconds, barely visible. It lashed out, seeming to pop from one point to the next, and burst between the two security guards. The alien was slammed backwards, into the bulkhead, then slumping down. But Ensign Cavanni went tits over very impressive ass, getting caught from behind. She flew up and over the railing, crashing down to the reactor room one floor below with a sickening crack, followed by a ragged scream. Not only had she lost her weapon in the fall - but the drop had caused her to land on her leg, which had buckled under the pressure of the concussive burst, and snapped like a twig. The stunning blonde stared down at the white bone poking out through her trousers, before the pain and shock overtook her, and she too passed out.
Seconds later a roughly spherical object that was slightly smaller than a baseball soared up from the stairs and exploded in a blinding flash a deafening boom, and an obscuring cloud of smoke. But this was wasn't merely a flashbang grenade of centuries past, it dispersed a cloud of antinadion gas that interfered with the hyper accelerated particles in a phaser beam. With luck, combined with the personal force field in his SAFTI (https://uss-theurgy.com/w/index.php?title=SAFTI_Gear) gear, O'Connell would be able to survive a few direct hits.
But he wasn't going to let them score a direct hit. Using the cloud of antinadion gas and the flashbang style explosion for cover, the master chief rolled up from the narrow spiral of stairs below to shoot two security specialists who were still on their feet. They went down under the incapacitating magnetic shock the adhesive shot fired from O'Connell's TR-120 (https://uss-theurgy.com/w/index.php?title=TR-120) rifle and would be unable to walk or control their bowel movements for hours. "You alright Keyah?" Billy Bob asked as he squatted next to an unconscious carrot topped Trill who was crouched against the meter high wall separating the walkway from the drop to the deck below. But she wasn't unconscious. She wasn't even playing possum! The glare, noise, and mist that the antinadion grenade produced could not only conceal O'Connell, it had hidden the officer in charge of the base's security even at point blank range! Before he knew it, Billy Bob was in for the fight of his life!
[Lieutenant Talidenai zh'Idenna/Wolf-01/Space around Vector-02 of USS
Theurgy]
ATTN: All space born units
Terror forced red hot tears out of the corners of her eyes as she hovered in space around Husker's fighter for a moment as she thought on what the Lone Wolf's SCO had just said and following the series of events, the Zhen simply sat there and pondered the current situation.
<Hey El-Tee..a slip for your thoughts?> came the voice of her RIO before the bajoran's face appeared on the closed-circuit channel between their spots in the fighter.
"Yes, what is it Shocker?" Terror asked simply.
<Asked around and so far I know that Sniper, Bear, Vapor, Bacon, Angel, Talon, Stormfang and Sycthe are backing you. No word on Dragon and her RIO.> Shocker said in a respectable tone from the other side of the fighter.
Suddenly Dragon's face appeared before her eyes and said <Terror, Dragon. I need to know about someone called Aidoaan. I need to know.>
"I don't know, Dragon, but I am going to shift you over to this Iron Fox as apparently he has more information then Captain Slayton or high command was willing to share with us flyers." Terror said simply before tying in Iron Fox to Dragon's communication's line.
It was at that point Terror could only give a small smile as she heard what Shocker had said.
Suddenly Stormraven's voice piped in with <"Angel to Terror, We have lost our base ship, and I have two fighter pilots in my Flight who wish to respond in kind, I am not certain I can make them stand down. I mean, we are just a newly formed squadron of test pilots from all over Tac CONN, and I cannot vouch for anyone's loyalty this early on. That being said..>
Terror was about to reply to the human's statement but before she could suddenly Angel's face was replaced by that of Lieutenant Junior Grade Amator Barcor, Callsign "Metalhead", who's eyes where narrowed very dangerously.
<Lieutenant, I am taking command of the squadron and ordering an attack on the traitors as per the
Captain's orders.> Metalhead said in a very harsh tone before he opened up their channel to a squadron wide one. <This is Lieutenant Barcor, I am taking command of squadron. Any White Wolf that refuses to follow the orders of the
proper command which is
Captain Slayton will be counted as a traitor and fired upon. End of discussion.>
Metalhead's fighter then quickly started to target one of the remaining birds from the
Resolve when Sniper's very calm voice came through the channels like a hot, dry, Vulcan breeze in the Forge;
<You have made your second mistake, Metalhead.>
Terror couldn't help but smile as she opened up a sub channel to Shocker. "I need you to confirm what you said to me in the next twenty seconds, Shocker."
The Zhen then shifted a squadron assignment file and filtered out the data that Shocker quickly sent to her before shunting it into a flash packet. "Terror to Iron Fox, I am sending you the elements of my squadron that are supporting elements from
Theurgy and
Resolve. Please ID them as friendly and all others save for the one marked as White Wolf Zero Oh Five as possible friendly while the rest..mark as hostile."
/////////////////////////////////////
[Ensign Chris Slayton/Lone Wolf Zero Four/Space around Vector 02]
ATTN: All space born units.
Husker attempted to do the best that he could follow what Salvo needed him to do but the damage that the interceptor's had done to his bird was making it slightly more sluggish then normal but he was still getting it done none the less.
<Perhaps, Husker, it would be easier if you got out and pushed?> came familiar voice in his right ear.
"I missed you too, t'hy'la." Husker replied softly to his fellow pilot, using a word that was once shared rather regularly between the two of them.
<While it may not be the best of times to discuss such things..but you have been miss Christopher.> Sniper said finally, breaking her usual formal rules for while on duty as her helmeted visage appeared on the screen.
"I missed you too but I just hope that Eun doesn't kill me for the work that she's going to have to put into my bird after this fight." Husker replied as he finished the maneuver that the
Resolve's SCO had asked him to perform.
The albino Vulcan's red eyes glittered like twin rubies with a hint of apparent mischief as she said <The way that you said this person's name makes one wonder, Christopher.>
Husker blinked hard as he suddenly jinxed some enemy fire and was able to return it in kind before he turned his gaze partially to the vulcan. "You are going right for a smack bottom, Sniper."
If she could, Husker could've sworn that he saw Sniper smile as she simply stated <Promises, Promises Husker. Perhaps I need to see if this..Eun was it..see if she would be willing to do such a thing then?>
Before Husker could even think of a way to respond, the battle was rejoined.
////////////////////////////////////////
[Lieutenant Talidenai zh'Idenna/Wolf-01/Space around Vector-02 of USS
Theurgy]
ATTN: All space born units
Terror's eyes narrowed darkly as she watched as Metalhead's "squadron" suddenly pick up speed for an attack vector at which point she simply growled "These are my wolves, Metalhead...
Mine!"
Terror then opened up the throttle big time as her prototype fighter flared to life and she let loose with her twin forward phaser arrays which sliced hard into the other fighter's shields but unlike the others, while she had been talking and trying to figure out what to do-she had also been quickly making small adjustments to her bird's weapons.
When she was first approached by Captain Slayton, he gave her the specs for the next line of fighters and asked for her opinion on them within twenty four hours of studying the technical data and as she did so, she was able to gain a certain understanding for the fighter from a technical standpoint-she understood why the prototype run had been equipped with phaser arrays rather then pulse phasers, why their hulls have been designed along this strange format, etc.
She also knew that each one of them had a specific shield frequency issue within five hundred to five hundred sixty megehertz that was breachable as the right counter field wavelength...
A moment later her twin lances of phaser energy quickly sliced through the primary field stabilizers for his power distribution network and his fighter suddenly and abruptly went dark save for his life support and as she tied in her communications with his exo-suit's, she felt her eyes go very cold and her tone colder as she simply growled again with;
"
My pack!"
Terror then shifted "her" squadron into a support position. "Alright my wolves, let's get to work."
Jaya Thorne (https://orig05.deviantart.net/12e0/f/2016/300/a/4/imgpsh_fullsize_by_auctor_lucan-damefg0.png) | USS Allegiant Bridge | Open Space] Attn: Open Space Fighter Elements, Theurgy Bridge
"Interzeptors breaking pursuit, we are clear from enemy fire.. for ze moment."
The help came from seemingly nowhere. Within seconds, all five of the Allegiant's pursuers were gone and Jaya was clear to make her Starbase approach. How many times did that make? Three? Four? She had begun to lose count. And once again, she owed her salvation to a different person. While she appreciated not dying today (now at least four times over), she wasn't looking forward to the amount of repayment that would be required. She ought to have made a list, or at least taken names. Although all she had to go on were callsigns: Resolve Tactical (whoever that was), Sithick (the Assassin) and now this Papa Bear. Was she forgetting anyone? No other names popped into mind, but at that moment the edge of the viewscreen erupted in what could only be a massive explosion.
It was Morwen who actually explained what had just happened. "The resolve ejected it's warp core as a projectile towards the Orcus. It seems to have been a direct hit."
The resulting detonation and collapse of part of the enemy starship was sobering and Jaya took a moment of silence for them. Enemy or not, the amount of lives they had just lost must be staggering. She would not want to be responsible for something like that. Not in a million years. A handful of deaths from enemies that she was actively engaging? She could live with that on her conscience. But that... the tragic loss of life just to attempt to turn the tide in a battle? She never wanted to have to make that decision, let alone be the one who had to notify the next of kin.
But a moment's reflection was all the time Jaya had for the Orcus. She needed to focus on flying, the thing she did best, and get them close enough to get scans on the boarding parties. With Sithick manning the weapons array, Jaya was able to concentrate on her piloting skills alone. She didn't need the shield pulse anymore, especially not with how damaged they already were. So she was able to input her destination and plot a course with minimal adjustments needed. Now that her tail was free from hostiles, she hardly needed to pull any defensive maneuvers either. It was smooth sailing for the Allegiant, despite the raging battle going on.
When they got close enough to activate the scan, Lieutenant Junior Grade, Morwen Angharad from her consol was actually the one to initiate the scan to try and find the boarding teams. Checking on their progress. "We have the scan going commander."
Jaya tapped her console and produced the most direct route back to the Theurgy. They would have to wait until the scan finished, of course, and even then they might need to keep in range so that they could monitor the boarding parties. Once they were cleared to go, however, she'd need to get them out quick. There were thirty-some interceptors out there and she didn't need the unwanted attention.
[Wenn Cinn | Communication Tower | Starbase 84] Attn: Auctor Lucan, Kaligos, Follow Tomorrow, chXinya, Anyone else
Ravenholm's acrobatics caused Cinn to pause, temporarily forgetting his place. In that exact moment, he marvelled at her flexibility, imagining uses for that inhumane limberness. If you were to ask him later, the Bajoran would, of course, grumble before speaking of the usefulness that that pliability would have on future missions; but as he stared, it wasn't the mission at hand to what he thought.
As she came to her landing, Cinn regained his senses and returned to the problem at hand. In this case, Nathaniel Isley. With the last guard dispatched, there was no issue with Cinn closing the gap to the newest additional to Security. He looked down to the rifle in Isley's hands, the lights giving away his deeds.
"Just what do you think..." He started, before sighing. Time and place, Cinn reminded himself "This is a stun only operation, Isley. Reset your weapon and we'll discuss this later." The disappointment and aggravation was palpable from his words. Without much more to say, Cinn turned, beckoning Reagar and Cardamone over.
"This is our hold point. Ravenholm and I will continue and get our message out. Cardamone, Isley, Reagar. Your job is to hold this location. Keep any security off our backs until we're done here." With the orders given, Wenn Cinn nodded to his Senior Petty Officer. "Cal, you're in charge. Watch our new recruit, it seems the fallen wolf can't work out which power setting is appropriate to the mission at hand."
Joining his cyborg compatriot, Cinn pushed forward into the final location for the mission. The Communications control centre was a high vaulted octagonal room. Equally spaced consoles lay around the edges, circling a section of lowered floor in which stood a central circular control console. Directly opposite the entrance was a viewscreen, which provided a method for the technicians to visually check signal quality of any outgoing or incoming message they wished.
Cinn scoped the room within seconds. Inside two technicians worked, checking the feeds, stuck on monitor and maintenance duty. Despite the action that had happened in the next room, they were seemingly caught surprised by the big, black Bajoran.
"Down on the ground!" He called. "Resist and we will be forced to fire." Then, he nodded to Ravenholm. It was time to send the message.
[ Lt Cmdr. Miles Renard | Lone Wolves Squadron | Wolf-01 ] Attn: All (Esp. Lone/Grey/White Wolves, the Allegiant crew and Covington)
The remaining interceptors still harried all three Vectors of the Theurgy, only posing a slightly lesser threat with their diminishing numbers. Yet they were a considerable threat to Iron Fox and his motley squadron of new allies and strangers mixed with the Lone Wolves he'd originally led into battle. While they did not have the manoeuvrability for the current kind of engagement, their the aptitude of their firepower couldn't be denied. Those heavy pulse phaser cannons were deadly to Miles' fighter crafts.
At first, as he fought back against the Knight-class opposition, Miles was not certain his message to the Valravn squadron had gotten through, but then, a written message appeared on on of his HUDs, a query about 'Aidoaan', and as he dipped and rolled in evasive manoeuvres together with the modded Type-8 shuttles, the unique crafts of Havenborn, Razor and Papa Bear, along with the remaining Wolves flying Mk III Valkyries like him, he brought to mind what little he remembered from the Black Opal and what he knew for a fact. He reckoned it to be some kind of challenge to his claim, and he could but answer as truthfully as he could, and as thoroughly as possible given the present circumstances. There was no way in hell he could type the reply, so he spoke anew to the whole squadron of Valravn fighters.
"As far as we know, the individual with that codename is the one that have been feeding coordinates to Federation weapon facilities along the RNZ to the Romulans, likely Donatra's rebels. We know because Captain Ives forced the Captain of a Romulan warbird to divulge the name of their contact when we defended the Black Opal facility from their raid." Speaking quickly, Miles' slitted eyes darted between readings on his controls, "To the best of our knowledge, Aidoaan is seeding a war between the Praetor and the Federation, since she will not take kindly to find Starfleet weaponry in the possession of the Rebels. We can but assume the person with that codename is one of the alien usurpers too... another piece that fits the puzzle."
There was a pause, before he received a data package and a call from Terror, the SCO of the squadron of Valravn fighters. The list was short, but Miles would take any ally he could get, both surprised and pleased to find that they had new allies among the White Wolves from the Orcus.
Allies:
Wolf 01: Terror & Shocker
Wolf 02: Sniper & Bear
Wolf 07: Vapor & Bacon
Wolf 09: Angel & Talon
Wolf 10: Stormfang & Sycthe
Unknown:
Wolf 05: Dragon & Furry
Five allies, possibly six, and Miles quickly distributed the signatures of the fighters to his present allies, the rest of the Valravn fighters remaining red and hostile in his tactical read-out. He just hoped he could trust the information from the SCO. He also tapped the new allies into the squadron channel. "Iron Fox to White Wolves... your choice to stand by your SCO today, to believe in her and to have faith in the truth - however difficult it might be for you - it will be remembered, and to the very best of my ability, I will try t-"
His gratitude was interrupted by a hailstorm of pulse phaser energy. "Incoming!"
The interceptors had formed up against them, led by a craft designated as Deadline on his HUD. It seemed damaged, but it was still operating. It seemed the CAG was still alive. There were twenty of them, approaching in a double-tiered echelon formation. They had opened fire as one, raining heavy pulse phaser fire from on high as they swept down against Vector 02 and its defenders. The losses were immediate. Fasha was caught in the middle of the first barrage, and as skilled as she was, there was no escape in time. Her remaining shields wore down in the onslaught, and Miles hoped to see the sensor reading of an ETS beam-out. There was none, and the Valkyrie disintegrated. Morrigan...
The Type-8 shuttle designated Goshawk tried to strafe out of the assault, but her craft was too slow, and it was eaten up from the aft - chewed to pieces by a wall of raining fire. It seemed the hostile Valravn fighters were moving in a coordinated pattern with the interceptors too, communication obviously established between the one designated Metalhead and the CAG of Starbase 84.
"By elements, fire at will! Defend the Vector at all cost!" Miles knew his engines would not hold out much longer. Keying up his double micro torpedo launchers, he opened fire - a constant stream of ordinance meeting the deadly formation. "Havenborn, you are with me! I go to port, covering your advance. Bite off their head! I need those Tovarek drones to act decoy Mk III:s and distract the hostile White Wolves, now!"
[ SCPO Calvin Reagar | Boarding Team 01 | Communication Tower ] Attn: Wenn Cinn & CO
Hearing his orders, Reagar nodded to Wenn Cinn and scanned the room - trying to see how to best use the lobby to his advantage. He glanced a moment longer at Isley, deciding that he wanted him in his field of vision. Reinforcements were due any moment, and there really wasn't time for anything fancy.
"Cardamone, you are on the left facing the entrance. Find cover there. Isley, same right side. I'll be centre and in the back, picking off those you guys miss. Set to it, and hold the god damn line, else we'll not get that fucking message out, okay? Wenn and Ravenholm has no means to defend themselves back there, so get your shit together. This is bloody it..."
Cal turned away to get to his cover, but no more had he turned his back when he heard the sliding doors open, and the shuffle of running feet. Curling his upper lip, he knew what had just happened, and he rounded on the reinforcements with his TR-120 coughing projectiles in their faces. Lances of phaser beams pierced the air around him from the running security guards, and he screamed in defiance of the inevitable. He managed to take out three of them with his rifle, somehow avoiding taking a hit. He struck a fourth one down with his rifle, and a fifth one with the return swing. The sixth one collided with him, but Cal had his hand in his face, and pushed him down into the floor head-first. The seventh grabbed his uniform and tried to haul him off his feet, but Cal spun around and sent him off his balance.
It was the eight that shot him in the back, twice, and then the lobby went dark for Reagar - lost in oblivion.
[Dev "Dragon" Okhala| Wolf-05 | USS ORCUS "White Wolves Squadron] attn: Auctor, DocReno, other pilots
Dev took in the information with remarkable speed, even as the White Wolves squad faced a crisis of leadership.
"Dragon, Vapor. What the blazes is going on?"
Dev maneuvered her fighter to allow her element to stay on her wing. Interdiction formation was messy under the best of circumstances, and this mission was rapidly falling apart before her eyes. Never mind her own mental wrestling match.
"Keep covering Orcus' evac."
"What about Terror?"
"I'm sorting that out. For now, protect our crew, then fall back to the base"
Dev was working to try and preserve lives, but this mission was a sham. She clicked her comm to Vinnie.
"You pick up any Rom signals?"
"Negative, D. It's pretty calm. What do you think that means?"
"That we're not being told the truth. You're going to have to trust me."
"Always, D. Always."
Dev never knew were the unconditional acceptance that her RIO placed in her came from, but she welcomed it. The rest of her element were more formal, as each pilot was working to prove themselves on the new fighters. She didn't risk verbal chatter, and just sent a text based message to her target.
"Iron-Fox, this White Wolf 05. Need debrief on topic 'Aidoaan'"
Dev steered her fighter around the Orcus again, pulling up in the mist of sparking plasma and gutted debris. As the information she requested was relayed across her HUD, her mind started sifting the pieces. She waited shadow games and manipulated wars.
"Vinnie, we're being played fools."
"D, Slayton wouldn't..."
"No, he wouldn't, but Starfleet Command might. The Romulans are being pushed towards a war-we have to stop it."
"What?!" Vinnie's voice hit a shocked tone."
"I can beam you out. But the Romulans are moving, something I suspected for a while. If Starfleet won't protect the Federation, then I'll have to find out how to do it."
"You're talking nonsense, D. Starfleet wouldn't want a war."
"That's what I need to find out."
Silence for a moment, as they made they're next orbit around the Orcus.
"We'll find out then." Vinnie's voice sounded uncertain, and Dev knew that in a quiet moment, he would have some very stern words for her.
"Dragon to Beta Flight. I'm pursuing Terror. Continue interdiction and coordinate with Metalhead."
"Dragon, Vapor. That's not our orders."
"Roger that, Vapor. I have intelligence regarding Terror that must be secured."
"Dragon, bad call. Could get splashed. Let me raise Metalhead."
"Negative. My call. You protect the evac."
With that, Dev ended the signal, and brought up Terror's tag. With her in sight, she pushed the fighter forward, sending a text message again to Terror.
"With you."
[ Cmdr. Jared "Deadline" Salazar | CAG 23rd TacCONN Air Group | Knight-class Interceptor Cockpit ] Attn: All
The plasma burns down his side and right thigh hurt so much he had been hyperventilating, but by the time he had rerouted power and got his impulse drive back online, Jared Salazar had grown numb to it - the pain channeled into bitter rage against the traitors of the Federation.
"Fire!" he had called, and as one, the survivors he'd gathered from the 23rd had rained hellfire down upon the unshielded Vector and its defenders. He'd plotted the formation and angle of approach to best benefit the speed of their Knight-class vessels, quick as they were albeit slow to turn. The velocity of their first pass put strain on them because of their curved trajectory, but their firing options were plentiful. Twenty interceptors in a double echelon formation smote the traitors from on high, and Salazar's dark eyes were lit by the muzzle flares of their heavy pulse phaser cannons.
A Theurgy fighter was caught in the middle of it, his formation eradicating the one designated 'Morrigan' in a matter of seconds. Then, one of the Resolve's ridiculous shuttles didn't manage to get away, and it looked like a shoe box catching fire and crumbling to the solar winds. The Theurgy's middle hull was breached, though and resilient as it might have been. Without shields, Salazar saw personnel and air being vented into the fray of battle, shrapnel cutting bodies apart or pulse phasers evaporating them.
[Metalhead to Deadline,] came the call from one of the Orcus fighters, [I have taken command of the White Wolves. I am dead in the water, but I'm using my exosuit to coordinate them. They will come in on your six, dealing with whatever is left. Be aware, sending tactical update on Theurgy defectors in my squadron, our former SCO among them. They are Ives sympathisers and hostiles.]
"Acknowledged, Metalhead," said Salazar, spreading the news with a tap on his controls, making the 23rd aware of the new number of contacts. "Ratch, Poker Face, Mouse and Headcount, you target Valravn fighters 01, 02 and 07 on your second pass. Card, Eagle, Gypsy and Fury, you take 09 and 10. Code, Jester, Mayhem and Spitfire, you go for the remaining Mk III Valkyries around the Vector. Looks like there's only two left, and you can handle that last shuttle too, can't you? Virus, Sandman, Frostbite and Panzar, you take care of that cobbled together nightmare that can barely fly. Mad Dog, Monk and Quickdraw, you are with me... We will join the White Wolves heading for Vector 03 and deal with the two remaining fighters there."
White Wolves 11 and 12 from the Orcus - designated Wraith and Blizzard - were both bearing down on the black, strange fighter and the remaining Mk III Valkyrie that accompanied Vector 03 of the Theurgy, and Jared meant to strip it entirely of its defences. "Salazar to Starbase 84 actual, I need concentrated fire upon the bottom section of the Theurgy, over," he said, frowning when there was no reply, "Captain Hawthorne, are you there? We need a continued torpedo fire against the Theurgy."
Yet there was no answer from the starbase, as if communication had been cut.
Worse, and hard to tell through the jamming field permating the scene of battle, but it seeemed that there were suddenly fifteen new Mk III Valkyries in the battle, and Salazar had no idea when they'd launched. Mierda! Where did they come from?
Before Salazar even reached Vector 03, he saw a Mk III on his six, along with the last Mk II from the Resolve...
OOC: The fifteen new Mk III contacts are Tovarek-class FTR Drones with faked signatures, launched before the Orcus was disabled and now implmemented in the battle proper. Link: uss-theurgy.com/w/index.php?title=Mk_I_Tovarek-class_FTR_Drone (https://uss-theurgy.com/w/index.php?title=Mk_I_Tovarek-class_FTR_Drone). Salazar and Metalhead are both unaware Dragon has defected too, granting a perfect opportunity to strike back when least expected. If you all read the orders Salazar has made, you will see interceptor opposition split up by four and going for your characters. Also, read my Miles Renard post. For example, Havenborn was cued to chase after Salazar, as seen above too.
Loose Battle PO: 1) Triage 2) Nolan 3) Havenborn 4) DocReno 5) Even Angels Cry 6) Burningtransformation 7) CanadianVet and Rawley JP
[Sar-unga Neleo | Communication Tower | Starbase 84]
Neleo's orders were to keep security off their backs. She could do that easily, she thought, and in order to prove it she took her phaser to the nearest hostile face, and with a satisfying wa-PAK, she knocked the poor gal clean out. That would bruise horribly in a few hours. The next of her victims wasn't even fully on his feet when she fired directly at his chest. A third victim got a kick to the family jewels so harsh, so crushing, that she may have ended his ability to start a family.
She was on a roll. A violent, wild roll that involved bashing in the faces of anybody unfortunate enough to come close as she barreled her way down the room. She was a terror of nature, a being of power, a force to be reckoned with. Nobody could touch her.
She was aware Isley had switched the setting on his phaser. Really, she understood the urge. She understood very well, she thought, as she fired into some poor Vulcan's face. But she was not the commanding officer here, and neither was he. There was a good reason Cinn told them what to do, and it was because he was the officer most fit to lead this group. If Isley was a good soldier, he would recognize Cinn's merits and tone it back. There was absolutely no need to kill, she thought, as the butt of her phaser went across some poor young woman's temples, only to quickly align back in her arms the right way so she could fire in rapid succession at a grouping of security officers attempting to take cover. No need to be so violent.
[ Ryuan Sel | Boarding Team 03 | EOC Top Floor Lounge ] Attn: 1) Nolan & 2) Striker N7, 3) Auctor Lucan
Ryuann nodded her understanding. "There will be others infested as well Lieutenant. No infection goes this deep without spreading. We must be prepared to cut deep and remove it, even if that means the death of fellow officers." With that she quickly set her phaser carbine to Max stun and prepared to follow Ida into the command center. The run down the hall was quick, they had little time to effect their plan and Sel wasn't about to reason with the guards. She watched Ida take down one guard, her rifle up as she dropped another guarding the entrance to the starbase command center. The doors opened as the Vulcan Selnak turned, rifle raised.
The fight was brief as Ida dispatched the Vulcan, the Andorians were one of the few races with the strength and speed to match the Vulcan's and Ida used it to good effect on the man. As the team entered the upper level entrance, Ryuan motioned for Zaraq to take one side entrance as she moved to take the other. The upper platforms on either edge left little for cover but with the door frame for cover, Ryuan was protected enough. The command center erupted in chaos as guards attempted to return fire, only to be taken down by Ryuann and Zaraq with well placed fire. A few managed to place shots close to Sel and while she didn't have time to think what setting they were using, she doubted it was anything less then heavy stun.
OOC: Gonna give folks a chance to add some before I dive in again.
[ Ens. Krystal "Meony" Tancredi | Tribble Squadron | Fuzzy Flayer ] Attn: All (Esp. Lone/Grey/White Wolves, the Allegiant crew and Sten Covington) (https://orig01.deviantart.net/7fd3/f/2015/168/0/9/krystal_row_01_by_auctor_lucan-d8xn7ih.png)
"Pull up, pull up!" Cried Tancredi, coaxing her lumbering war shuttle with the steering yoke, resisting the urge to use both hands as many people often see in media entertainment. Such an action might very well cause her to lose the apparatus. As it was, the shuttle's manoeuvring thrusters were suffering response time issues and functionality. Between the modifications and the sustained damage in this battle thus far, Tancredi knew that
Fuzzy Flayer was operating solely on the miracles of Randall's magic touch and lots and lots of prayer. "Guess this is it, sweetie," said Tancredi, patting the dashboard of her ship affectionately, "Ah'm gonna need everything ya got!"
::
Meony! :: said Goshawk, ::
Too many! I can't...! I DON'T WANT TO DIE!!! ::
Tancredi's head whipped around to look out her side screens and she watched in speechless horror as the last of Tribble Squadron vanished in a cloud of brilliant orange, gold and debris, her friend amongst them. "
KIIIIIIIIM!!!" Her friend's last words and frightened plea forever etched in her mind, and the cut off scream as she died spurring her on. Tancredi's fury rekindled, and she slapped every emergency override on her shuttle, intending to push the craft to its own explosive end, but not before she took down every last Federation bastard that was labelled in red on her HUD.
The interceptors from the Starbase were far from finished, and their counterassault had taken down another
Theurgy fighter, and now Goshawk. It felt utterly unfair, and unbelievable, even as they gained a few new allies from surprising places, but it still couldn't compare to the enemies arrayed against them. Now most people who knew tiny Krystal "Meony" Tancredi personally would all agree on one thing: The girl was more instinct than thought. She would punch a face sooner than consider a diplomatic alternative to prevent unwanted escalations. She was rage and fury, not calm and collected. It both served and undermined her all her life. But for once, the girl drew into herself even as she juked her shuttlecraft into a spiral and dive, dodging the pulse phaser cannons.
Realistically, there was no way she could take them all on, and as fearless as she was of death, as much as she welcomed it, she doubted others felt the same as she did. She wanted her family to survive this after she was gone, but between the loss of the
Resolve and the countless lives lost on all sides, it was all up to chance, and that was something Tancredi was not willing to take with their lives on the line. She did the only thing she could. She was the last of Tribble Squadron, the last flying fighter shuttle, last, last, last. Always the last of her kind, so to speak. The girl
was starting to think she was a pariah of some sort.
Keying in a few commands, Tancredi had her automated weapon turret swivelled around to fire above and behind her as she turned about to present her rear to the swarm of enemies, while giving chase to Havenborn and Renard, carefully picking at enemies ahead, clearing their path for them, and scattering enemies from behind. They were dangerous adversaries with their impressive pulse cannons, but God help them if they thought they could weather an assault from
her tetryon turret.
"Computer, cut engines on mah mark, let 'er drift, but keep manoeuvring thrusters online." said Tancredi, "Now!"
The computer did as instructed, bypassing safety protocols thanks to her emergency override, and she spun around even as the shuttle continued drifting at the same speeds, now flying backwards, while she faced the interceptors, and she cut loose with her own pulse cannons, the tetryon turret picking targets at random, and she fired two proton torpedoes to make the interceptor pilots rethink their life choices for a moment. As she was executing her dangerous gambit, the girl noticed on her HUD that the hostile CAG, Deadline, was flying a damaged craft. In that instant, all the deaths of her friends and family, the pain of her losses, she channelled into that pilot and that craft. Blaming him or her for everything that's happened, Tancredi
might have gotten a little carried away with shooting at it with almost everything she had, save for her torpedoes, still holding those in reserve.
But the girl definitely made clear her hatred for Deadline.
She was also increasing her threat value, drawing attention to herself with her actions. Both good and bad. Good, because that meant her new allies had more breathing space, and Havenborn too. Bad, because the
Fuzzy Flayer just about had it. As many hits as she had been scoring on the interceptors, even managing to blow a hole through a few, just as many hits had been scored on her ship, and shuttle's shielding was faltering. Continuing to drift a while, she presented her ship's underbelly to the enemies, also giving them a fresh layer of shielding to cover Renard and Havenborn as they continued their own flights. The instruction to protect Vector 02 still held, so she eventually brought her engines back online and lumbered over to drive away foolhardy interceptors and whatever other hostile fighters remained, ignoring all the red lights and klaxon alarms going off, warning her of multiple system failures and a few hull breaches.
The ship was now having to consider her action requests before complying.
[ Lt Cmdr. Jennifer Dewitt | USS Allegiant | Upper Deck | Bridge ] Attn: 1) Sithick 2) Jaya Thorne
With gravity off, tresses of red haired danced before Jennifer's green eyes - teeth clenched together as the first readings came through on the whereabouts of the three boarding teams. Time was precious, their seconds keeping the Allegiant in the vicinity of the the Starbase short before they'd have to pull away, but the holes in the base's shields did give them something - the signals of the Theurgy's personnel on the base fluctuating on the display that Morwen showed on the side of the viewscreen. The science officer looked pale.
"Commander! We'll have a whole fleet of starships here in a minute!"
"Allegiant to Theurgy tactical," said Jennifer, voice tight as she spoke to Trent on the main bridge, "all boarding teams appear to be in their assigned areas, only diminished in numbers. Four team members have reached the comm tower. Three of the second team are in the reactor room, and four in Ops. Attempting to contact them no-"
There was no phaser beam from the starbase that hit them, despite how close they were flying, but four more interceptors had given chase - the pulse phasers of the lead one connecting with their aft shields. All loose objects in the bridge was cast about when they were hit, new sparks of liquid fire emanating from the bulkheads, drifting weightlessly. Dewitt swore, denying the fear that crept through her that she was about to die along with her people from the Black Opal, and tried to find some way to deal with the situation.
[Inertial Dampeners are offline.] It was Thea's voice, the A.I.'s voice files installed on the Allegiant as well. [Communication system offline. Warning. Plasma levels dropping. Structural integrity breach on Deck 02. Shields at 21 %.]
"Sithick, get those fires out, and fix the comm system!" ordered Jennifer, typing into the controls in her armrest, typing a message that she hoped would get through to the teams, leaving it to send as soon as the systems allowed. It simply read 'Hurry. Fleet here already. Retreat imminent.' Her eyes then snapped to the back of Thorne's head. "Fire at will! Use the aft phasers and take us through that debris field ahead! Morwen, keep an eye on the ETA for the reinforcements!"
"Y-Yes, ma'am. ETA forty seconds!"
"Goddammit..." Another barrage from the interceptors shook them before they reached the debris field, the hits made all the worse since inertial dampeners were gone, and Thea spoke anew into the weightless atmosphere of the bridge.
[Warning. Hull breach on Deck 02. Warp Core area depressurised. Shields at 10 %]
Felr... No... Their engineers had just been spaced, the but the core was still online. Jennifer's eyes were wide. We're going to die...
[Nathaniel Isley | Communication Tower | Starbase 84] Attn: Boarding Team 01 + Auctor Lucan,
Being told to stand down as he was figured out made Isley huff. Now was not however the time to start a fight with his superior officer, but it seemed foolish to not act out in this moment. They were literally fighting for their lives. While Isley wanted to be petulant, he couldn't very well pick a fight with Wenn, win said argument and walk out of here with his life.
So for the moment at least he toned down the power settings on his rifle. while it had been fun to swing it around like a flame thrower he had a narrow position to fill at this point, and he wanted to keep his fire as concentrated as possible. Reagar's words were very much true in this moment, if he panic'd or acted out then he would be dead. This was the end of it the big moment.
And despite taking his flank as it had been assigned to him by Reagar he had to watch as he was gunned down. It was a moment he hadn't honestly expected. If anyone was supposed to die from this campaign he was pretty sure he had tried to make himself a bigger target.
It also silently proved every point Isley wanted to yell at Cinn, why did they have to tone down their fire power if they were never going to be given that same courtesy, their lives were all in danger at this point. Isley was returning fire whenever he saw an opening his weapon on the proper setting. At the same time Neleo broke her cover and went on a rampage that was honestly terrifying to behold.
Taking Reagar's rifle from the ground Isley quickly set the battery pack to overheat. There was some joke here about how he was messing with the man's settings after properly adjusting his own, or maybe a witty one liner about how he wasn't going to need this thing anymore, but honestly Nathan had just watched one of the men on his team die. He was getting pretty tired of getting people killed.
Taking a stand up from his cover he had his own gun to keep suppressing fire, as he nestled his rifle under his arm and fired using one hand. The other held the barrel of the rifle which was now a timed explosive. which he threw down the hall as hard as his years of muscle building would allow. Watching as it smacked into the wall at the far end of the hall and bounced down a corner to a rather confused looking security team.
Nathan opened his mouth for a one liner, but just kind of sighed as he watched the dead mans rifle explode against the enemy force. "Nope I got nothing."
~~~
[Po2 Sithick | USS Allegiant | Upper Deck | Bridge ] Atten: Auctor Lucan & EAC
Just like that the engineering crew was down to all of two people. The thought was more then a little horrific. He had worked along side the two cadets for years, and now one was in the sickbay hopefully not paralyzed for the rest of his life, and the other was spaced. What was more the bridge was in tatters. Sithick had seen worse of course. During his time as a slave he had seen his fair share of ships that had exploded, and even served on one of them. The fact that they had just lost the warp core area was bad, but in all honesty not the worst thing that could have happened.
Now at least many of the external parts of the warp core would be unable to overheat. Something that may actually buy them a few moments down the line. He was also sure that they were down to maybe the last of the engineering team they had started with.
Him.
Which meant Sithick had to somehow keep this ship afloat. With little of everything he could work with. Getting out of the tactical chair he pushed himself albeit not so gracefully towards the plasma fires and the communication controls. Without the automatic fire suppression system online he had to find a work around to shutting off the plasma feed. Since he couldn't deprive the stuff of oxygen he had to deprive of it of other fuels. For a moment he looked around the room knowing that even with his scales this was going to hurt. Just floating close to the fire made his entire body wince, but he could see which components were feeding that fire.
Finding the components was rather easy, finding a way to get to them without completely destroy himself was another matter entirely. Still he was able to find a work around, and after a moment of hesitation that honestly he couldn't afford he reached past the fires found the component that was malfunctioning and ripped it out of the console.
His hand burned. and his skin welted under the heat, deep rashes and burns going about him. If he were human his hand would be completely lost. As it was his skin was burned to a dark black, cracks in his scales dripping with a thick green blood. He could heal, but it would take a few days with a dermal re-generator.
With the fires out, Sithick could get to work on the comm unit. His yellow eyes and remaining claw focusing on the task at hand instead of worrying about things like medical treatment or the pain. He was a Gorn, he was resilient and he would not die here. "I can get a back up comm line up, and ready to broadcazt. We have shorter range, but we can reach the closest Theurgy and her fighters. After zat they will have to relay."
[ Lt. Thomas Ravon | Hybrid Wolf cockpit | Vector 02 ] Attn: Lone/Grey/White Wolves, the Allegiant crew and Covington
"This is Angel, confirmed." What was she supposed to say? She had her orders, didn't she? "Care to tell me what the hell is going on out here?" Thomas felt somewhat surprised to hear the voice of Angel as he cursed softly in his mind. "Well I'm late to this party myself... All I can tell you is we're fighting for our own survival here, trying to prove to the universe that there's a major conspiracy. I don't know much of the details on the how and what." he had to admit "I only know that we've been hunted by futuristic foes, my ship being the living proof of that."
Razor had only just turned his bird around once more as he witnessed his failure to defend his vector. In hindsight, there was little he could do against the double formed echelon the 23rd had formed up. Morrigan stood no chance as the barrage of heavy pulse phasers ripped through her bird and tore a hole in Vector 02. His eyes never closed as he witnessed the carnage, his hand tightening around the flight stick as his engines were steadily regaining power after his use of the Transphasic Compression Phaser Cannon. He chewed on his lip as he wanted to drive his fighter right through the formation, yet that moment had passed now and the HUD showed new problems.
"By elements, fire at will! Defend the Vector at all cost!" was the order he received from Renard.
'With pleasure...' he thought as he rushed his nightmare over to the damaged part of Theurgy's exposed hull. The fighters seemed to split up, counting four targets heading his way he marked them for target acquisition. Flying head on once more, he placed full power to his front shield section as his weapon acquired the first two fighters heading towards him. Their phasers firing away at his ship, trickling down the shields bit by bit, yet never having enough firepower to slice through. [Shields at 32%] came the garbled voice of his ship and Thomas narrowed his eyes when the signal came that his weapons were in optimal firing range. "Wrong move..." he said with a low cold voice as he opened fire, the diverse armament opening up on the two fighters, shredding their shields away before their ships exploded. As he soared past the incinerated wreckage he got the warning signal that the other two fighters locked on to his six, opening fire instantly.
The shield power on his aft section was diminished in no time as he transferred powers yet it didn't stop them from getting a few hits on his ship. Systems fried and sparked inside his cockpit as he lured the two fighters away from the Vector and into open space. His power rerouting to the engines as his plan was to outrun them. Yet suddenly he was met by two things he had never seen before. The Tovarek-class FTR Drones screeched nearly past his hull and engaged the targets chasing him. Their phasers opening up as the pilots giving chase now realized these weren't Mk III fighters at all. The two drones seemingly worked in sync as they unleashed their payload, firing their single payload photon torpedo towards a single target. The first fighter managed to dodge the torpedo yet the second one got caught by the blast radius from the first torpedo, leaving him open for a direct hit by the second torpedo.
Thomas took this distraction for what it was and used his thrusters to flip his fighter around, which took more effort than expected. Instead of facing head on his final assailant he got on an angle that provided him to chase his target. Stalking it now with his phasers, he pursued the target before dispatching of it finally, playing with the fighter like a cat with it's meal. The final fighter being stripped of components shot by shot.
[ Outside the Command Center | EOC Tower | Starbase 84 ] Joint-Post by Striker N7 & Auctor Lucan
After he had heard the discussion between the Romulan named Drauc and the three members of the Theurgy's crew, the Resolve's XO had been through sneaking around. His rifle, an Type-III EVA variant, had been as ready for a fight as its wielder, and Marquez held his fire until he approached the battlefront, keeping out of sight in case anyone on rear guard detail spotted him.
Marquez had double-checked his Type-3 EVA phaser rifle's settings, and knew how to made sure the rifle was at max stun.
It was one thing for changelings to infiltrate, assassinate and compromise Alpha Quadrant Security, but parasites instigating a cross-faction war was an inconceivable concept after the bloodbath of the last one. Not on my watch, you son of a bitch.
As the Lieutenant named ThanIda zh'Wann had led the team from the Theurgy into the Command Center, Drauc T'Laus had accompanied them - joining their sprint into the very heart of the base. A Romulan, a Bajoran and a Klingon led by an Andorian, Drauc had observed idly as she used his phaser rifle to sudue the opposition in their path, all of them meaning to save a human ignorant of her father's corrupt nature. Allegedly, a father corrupted in more ways than to conspire with my people.
Drauc did not know what to think of the claim that Hawthorne was possessed by another entity, but he could respect the wish to spare him, should that be the case. It was the righteous thing to do, after all. Then again, the greater import lay in preventing the murder his offspring, and the destruction of the starships out there - fighting for survival against all odds. He owed Capatin Kendrick his loyalty, and he would stop the base's commander at any cost. If that entailed killing an innocent host to a parasite, then so be it, as long as an all-out war between his people and the Federation could be prevented. Having absorbed the thoughts and convictions of the three Theurgy crewmembers ahead of him, he believed he knew what was at stake.
Hearing movements behind him, Drauc rounded on the person that was following them - his threadbare cloak billowing out as he pivoted on his feet and raised his weapon. Ida, Sel and Zaraq had just gone into the command center, but Drauc now faced another human - eyes along the sights and a calloused finger ready to squeeze the trigger. The way the human spread his hands gave Drauc pause, and he rasped three words through his teeth. "Who are you?"
Marquez at once put his arms up and phaser rifle aside, but his identifiable gravelly voice quipped in a calm, professional tone.
"Friendly. Hold fire, Rihhansu, I'm not with the Starbase crew. Commander Marquez" He'd shake hands later, a nod would do for now, positioning his rifle aside in a good faith gesture towards their common enemy, still at least ready to dodge or swing the rifle if it came to it. With his offhand, he briefly gestured to his vessel's uniform patch on his jacket.
"'Tenant Commander Marquez, XO of the USS Resolve, I'm in line to blast the parasite out of Ian Hawthorne's skull. Where. Is. He?" Marquez concisely explained before clenching his own jaw and mirrored the Romulan's tone in his own voice, shifting his eyes to the battle but keeping a trained view on the Romulan. There may have been a moment of trust, but in case there wasn't, Striker Marquez was keeping his guard up. "Call me Striker."
Hearing what the human said, Drauc could verify the truthfulness of his claim easily enough - images of the Resolve's voyage seeping into his mind. If Kendrick's Executive Officer wished to lend a hand, Drauc could respect that. He lowered his rifle and inclined his head. "Then we are late," he rasped, and tuned to enter the command center - to follow the three crewmembers of the Theurgy. "Objectives are to take out the Captain, lower the shields, and power down the tactical systems. Moving in."
Said and done, Drauc closed the distance and stepped through the doors to Ops, and as he entered the chaos beyond the sliding doors, he quickly surveyed the battlefield. He saw Sel and Zaraq covering the flanks, and Ida being pinned down behind a duty station on the raised walkway directly ahead. He could see security officers firing from cover below, and made his decision. He never paused his step, instead beginning to run out along the walkway to the Captain's chair. He heard cries from the guards below, and beams of phaser energy pierced through his brown cloak while he ran. He bared his teeth, the instincts of battle animating his surgically scared face, and ran faster - gaining momentum.
Following the Romulan into the Ops center, Striker's assault rifle made a satisfying 'chirp' as it took aim and the scope took aim on the closest target to the projected path the Romulan indicated, firing carefully timed and consistently-accurate torso stun bolts. During the chaos, Striker was able to avoid hitting any consoles as he advanced In a circular approach, taking a vantage point he could soon vacate if he had to get a better shot to give his new accomplice a better covering fire arc. "Just like Soccer." Marquez sneered in anticipation.
From her cover, Ida had seen Drauc appear, having wondered what kept the Romulan. She saw him starting to move out along the walkway, but when she saw someone following him, her immediate response was to neutralise him. Yet the human with the red collared uniform immediately began to fire at the security guards in the area, so Ida stayed her finger at the trigger of her rifle, antennae rising in surprise. Someone from the Resolve? Dismissing the pinkskin as a threat, she looked back towards Drauc, and saw him running all the way to the lip of the walkway, and leaping from it. It would take him directly down to the lower level and where Hawthorne and Henshaw were at.
Marquez took a flanking route, past the Andorian and Bajoran from the Theurgy, taking care not to 'overkill' his fellow Starfleet personnel in the hopes they could be eventually healed; nor did Striker hit any consoles during his timed shots-- covering his newfound allies was now his top priority once he saw Drac prepare to rear up and leap into the air. Before Marquez could make a joke about Romulans being a warbird at everything, her found his next shots in time it took to see who would impede the Romulan's landing. Even if it only took the wind out of the guards, it would disrupt their aim before they could get a good lock on 'Mr. Warbird' in time to kill Marquez's tentatively-only ticket out of this place.
Three phaser-armed personnel were down before they knew who hit them, and others around the command center's perimeter were also hit at least once before Marquez continued to corral the first targets he'd hit. Silently, however, Striker cursed himself. If there were any cameras around seeing him open fire on Starfleet personnel with such efficiency, he would have blown the Security feed motherboards himself.
"Push forward!" called Ida to Zaraq and Sel, getting a nod from the Klingon and seeing him run down the stairs on the right side, and then accompanied Sel down the left flight of stairs - following the human that had covered Drauc's bold leap from the upper level. A teal-collared officer from the starbase came close and tried to wrest her weapon out of her hands, but Ida quickly discouraged him by striking him across the face with said rifle, and made him topple over the railing of the stairs.
The introduction of another armed and unknown element, with objectives their own, only added to Sel's concern about the overall outcome of the mission. Unawares of the fight raging in space, of the Resolve switching sides to join the Theurgy, all Sel could go on was Drauc's trust in the new human, her trust in Drauc still uncertain. Gritting her teeth, Sel knew the tactical situation had just changed. Ida's order to charge galvanized Sel into action and, rifle raised, she advanced down the left stairs, following Ida, shooting at targets of opportunity, any armed personnel she saw. The officer Ida wrestled briefly with barely registered in Sel's mind, though the sickening crunch a few seconds later when the officer landed head first with a sickening crunch as their neck broke on impact.
Sel didn't have time as a officer came at her from an odd angle, apparently one stationed beneath the platform. She put a shot into the man, the heavy stun barely registering with him as he advanced on her. "Shit," she muttered to herself, knowing the guard was infested, no human could absorb a phaser hit like that and shrug it off like nothing happened. She managed to dial up her phaser to kill and get a second shot before the man reached her. That had more of an effect but it didn't stop him.
And then he was upon her, trying to wrest her gun from her hand. Sel had trained for close in fights and used the butt of her rifle to good effect, bloodying the man's face with a well timed strike to his nose. That should've subdued any human, or at least forced them to break off but the man didn't stop. Sel couldn't let go of the rifle, knew if she did she was as good as dead, so went on the offensive, using every last shred of training to fight off and force back this infested demon of a man. She managed to force the fight to the railing of the central pit and the ledge gave Sel the final advantage she needed.
Battering the man with a few final strikes, she knocked him over the edge into the pit. Those crucial seconds as he fell, easily recovering as he landed, gave Sel the time she needed to place several more well aimed shots into the man. Even on kill he needed two more shots before he dropped to his knees, still alive but only for the creature inside him. One final shot to the man's head and he dropped to the ground dead. Scanning the room, she saw that few targets remained, the few being unarmed uniforms and civilians to scared to move.
The situation now contained, Sel moved towards the Captain, which gave her a good view of the likely avenues of assault. She knew it would be only a matter of time before reinforcements arrived so whatever they were going to do now, they had to do fast.
At the front of the area, Drauc had landed and rolled with his momentum, colliding with a security guard that had tried to defend Captain Hawthorne. A swift strike to the nerve-cluster at the base of his neck made him fall limp to the floor, and Drauc got back on his feet - rifle pointed towards the traitor...
Yet Captain Hawthorne had a human shield, an arm wrapped tightly around the neck of his daughter, and the cold muzzle of a hand phaser pressed hard into her temple. Drauc stayed his shot, glaring at Base Commander through the tresses of his hair. No father would do such a thing to his offspring. It seemed the Andorian was correct. In fact, he did not need the assurances from the Theurgy's crew, because as he faced Hawthorne, Drauc sensed the oily, twisted nature of the bald man's mind. The malign, chaotic maelstrom of his thoughts were bent upon sickening acts he meant do upon those who opposed him, the host's daughter included. Nightmarish images flashed in Drauc's mind, where the parasite meant to rape their bodies in openings torn open by fingers and teeth alone. Drauc had seen a lot on the battlefields of his life... but nothing compared to the imagination of the alien entity inside Hawthorne. It make him sick.
"Computer, two to beam to Shuttle Bay 5-C," said Hawthorne after tapping his combadge, grinning at the Romulan across his daughter's shoulder.
[Transporter Systems are offline,] came the answer, which made the grin on his host's face die.
[ Cameron Henshaw | Command Center | EOC Tower | Starbase 84 ] Attn: Sel, Striker, Ida, Drauc, Hawthorne
The chaos that erupted came like a tidal wave as Cameron's final request for a ceasefire had crumbled to dust with communications dropping offline. All she could do was watch and hope the Theurgy and Resolve crew would make it out alive as the battle raged on brutally and without the intend to save lives on either sides. Cameron just stood there powerless and without much choice. Yet all of that changed when someone shouted to protect the captain.
The sound of phasers being discharged and the firefight that ensued was nothing more than chaotic. Various persons falling down by the well placed shots of the Theurgy boarding squad, yet Cameron saw another figure moving quickly across the upper platform towards her. She turned to face Hawthorne, he seemingly looked unimpressed and even had that vacant smile on his face. A smile she had seen before with Acreth... Her heart skipped a beat but before she could act, or do anything, she saw Hawthorne look at her, the perversion glowing in his eyes before he grabbed her and used her as a shield. Her eyes widened and the air being limited by the strong arm of her adoptive father. "D-Da... Ian!" she managed to bring out as she struggled, as best as she could yet against the strength of the parasite controlled man, she never stood a chance.
"St- Stop it! she screamed frantically as her eyes turned moist, tears forming due to the pressure forming up. Although the fact that she was betrayed by her own adoptive parents hurting her just as much. She tried to elbow the man in his stomach or stomp him on the feet or legs. Yet it was futile "Ple- Please... Let me... Go... Surrender..." she pleaded as she knew the alternative as he kept her coiled up like this. She saw the group taking positions as they surrounded him. "Don't shoot him." was the last thing she could bring out "Please!" she mouthed as she kept struggling.
Despite the obvious evidence by Hawthorne's actions, Cameron couldn't come to peace with the idea her father was infected. Much less so with the idea that there was no known cure yet to rid him of the usurper inside him. The thought of the atrocities he committed or of what he had planned flashed to the back of her mind as she simply couldn't hate the man. This man, who had given her most of her values and earned her respect. Yet also, a man she had come to love as a father.
The tears rolled down her cheeks as she knew in that moment the end was near.
Of her life or his...
Following Cinn into the Communications Control Center, Selena was in full business mode now. After her little display most people would be smiling, or cheerful, or some other signs of cockiness, but now wasn't the time for that. She'd stood by silently while Cinn chewed Isley out, simply returning her pistol to its compartment. Once they'd entered the CCC, she stayed by the Bajoran's side until he gave the signal. Nodding back, the cyborg simply walked down to the lower floor, completely disregarding the two technicians who were busy holding the floor down. It only took a moment to find the specific console on the center circle that she needed, as well as the port to plug into.
Quickly retrieving her ODN cable and attaching it to the transceiver in the back of her neck, Selena sat down and set her TR-120 down next to her, propping it up against the console. "I'm going in, time will be different for me while I'm connected but it could easily take a while by your reckoning. Do not let them shoot me while I'm in the system, it wouldn't end well. Steeling herself for the biggest job of her life up to his point, Selena pushed the cable into place, closed her eyes, and let the signal wash over her.
Opening her eyes after just a moment, Selena Ravenholm once again found herself in a typical Starfleet office building, but unlike the one in the turbolift, this one was far from open. Instead of the open desk layout, she was in a hallway with doors every few meters. Many were labeled, but a few were not, and some had guards in front of them. They were almost ghost-like, more wireframe with a transparent skin of a single color and some digital tracing for cosmetic purposes. The guards were all red, every so often a yellow or blue sprite would emerge from a room and jump to another, PADDs held in hand or shoved into armpits. Sometimes both. This was the heart of Starbase 84's control system, and Selena was in her element. Moving deftly down the corridor, the guards seldom did anything, a few would glance in her direction but since she did nothing to them or their charge they did nothing in return. Those weren't the security programs to worry about, the roaming ones were. Odd that there weren't any, but then communications wasn't the most secure of systems in Federation thinking, if this was tactical there would be a guard every 5 meters most likely.
Selena scanned each sign as she passed them: multiple sets of internal communication local sub-processors, universal translator data files, communications logs... Selena stopped at that one. There was no guard in front for some reason, maybe these are the unclassified logs? A quick glance down both directions showed that security still hadn't caught on to her snooping, so Selena walked in, curious as to what was there. A truly massive vault was on the other side of the door, PADDs lined up on shelves like an ancient book library. An opaque forcefield blocked off the back section, a red security sprite sitting at a desk in front of it. Completely nonchalant, she walked right up to him and put her hand on the desk, lines of code already snaking from her fingertips to the red sprite. It started to turn towards the intruder, but the moment the code reached it it flickered and resumed its blank vigil, completely ignoring Selena.
With a smile, she stepped through the forcefield like it wasn't even there. Just as packed as the open archive behind her, this section was labeled with the names of the station's senior staff. Grabbing one at random, the PADD showed some random letter home from the station's chief science officer. Another was more like what she wanted, an internal memo from the chief of security about contingencies in case of a Romulan invasion. What else could be squirreled away in here? Only one way to find out. One quick command started a massive download, this was a gold mine that Selena could not pass up. Her implants couldn't hold everything of course, but what she could take was bound to have something of use.
Returning to the hallway, Selena resumed her search, time was growing short, it'd been several seconds since she'd plugged in. Nothing had changed outside, her little incursion into the archive went unnoticed, at least for now. The signs on the doors started to relate more to the Simulcast system, so she had to be getting close. And then, there it was: Emergency Fleet Simulcast Override System. Flanked by a guard sprite, the door was just like all of the others, rather odd for a keystone system, but then the Federation was all about standardization when it came to their computer designs.
"Restricted." the security sprite droned when Selena approached, throwing a ghostly arm in her path. "Oh, but I have authorization, see?" She touched the sprite's arm like it was a lover's, code transferring in a flash. The guard removed his arm and stood at attention. "Access granted, you may proceed." With a nod and a smile, Selena walked through the door only to be confronted with what amounted to a large cubicle and a single sprite sitting at a desk.
"You need to activate the Emergency Fleet Simulcast Override System." Selena tells the sprite, leaning on the desk and starting her download.
"Activation requires command-level authorization or satisfaction of key indicators. Neither have been met." The sprite doesn't even look at Selena.
"The station is under attack by suspected Romulan agents, both external and internal. That's exactly what the system was meant to warn the rest of the Federation about."
"Two subverted Federations starships do not meet the criteria of a concerted Romulan attack." the sprite continues to drone on with the same monotone voice. "This station's defenses are more than capable of dealing with such situations."
Selena rolls her eyes. "But what if it's just the beginning, a diversionary first strike meant to pull resources away from the main target?"
"Then the main target will trigger its own EFSOS." The monotone voice was starting to drive Selena mad, and the speed at which she needed to move wasn't helping her mood.
"What if they can't? With Fleet resources diverted here the other Starbases are more vulnerable, especially to a sneak attack from a cloaked fleet. It's not without reason that a station could be disabled before its warning system could be triggered." Her download finished, Selena prepared to break into the Simulcast's control program and seize control. It wasn't what she wanted to do, it would leave her fingerprints all over it, but there was no time to continue arguing. Before she could start though, the sprite started to flicker, decision processes running all along it's projected skin.
"The simulated scenario has merit, 58% of run simulations do show failure of engagement of the EFSOS. I will alert the station commander, recommend manual engagement." The sprite flickered again, and again, and again. Knowing there was no time to prevent it or wait for Hawthorne's response, the hacker nearly panicked, and started to beat on the firewall. It was a critical system though, well protected with some of the best defense software in existence. On top of that, it would only be a matter of time before the defenses triggered the general computer security systems, guard sprites would be coming through that door any moment now.
Something happened though, something Selena was not expecting. The sprite's flickering stopped and it looked up at its visitor. "The commander is not responding to input, sensors show a hostile party in his presence. Proposed scenario is showing a greater probability of occurrence. Engaging Emergency Fleet Simulcast Override System."
Selena opened her eyes and quickly unplugged herself from the round console in front of her. She could hear the phaser fire on the other side of the door, but it didn't matter any more. Turning to Cinn she had to fight the urge to give him a hug then and there.
"It's done."
Jaya Thorne (https://orig05.deviantart.net/12e0/f/2016/300/a/4/imgpsh_fullsize_by_auctor_lucan-damefg0.png) | USS Allegiant Bridge | Open Space] Attn: Open Space Fighter Elements, Theurgy Bridge
"Commander! We'll have a whole fleet of starships here in a minute!" Morwen's complexion paled as she spoke.
"Allegiant to Theurgy tactical," said Jennifer, voice tight as she spoke to Trent on the main bridge, "all boarding teams appear to be in their assigned areas, only diminished in numbers. Four team members have reached the comm tower. Three of the second team are in the reactor room, and four in Ops. Attempting to contact them no-"
Jaya lurched against the cross-body restraints on her seat. Her body had finally begun to cope with the artificial gravity being off when she was suddenly and violently shoved forward as their pursuer's phasers impacted with their aft shields. The impact had felt like whiplash, if whiplash lasted for thirty seconds or so and took place in slow-motion. Jaya's head, arms and legs all jolted forward in an eerie, lifeless way before jerking back to their original positions. It took her several seconds to register what had happened, and several more to force her arms to stop floating around, move down to the console and get to work. Thankfully, hers was still functioning, unlike almost every other console or panel on the bridge. And at least her hair had been in a ponytail so it wasn't going everywhere like Dewitt's was.
'Where did they come from?! We were clear!' She'd been keeping a close eye on their position and hadn't received any proximity alerts for enemy elements before the phasers destroyed their aft shields. Now she had 4 Knights on her tail, and she had no idea how they got there, unless.. Of course. It was something she had done numerous times, at least one of which was in this very battle. Sensors weren't perfect and a good pilot knew where the holes were. It took some fancy flying and an off-guard foe, but with the right timing you could dive down and come up hard on someone's tail before they even knew you were there. 'Stupid. I should have kept a better eye on our ass!'
[Inertial Dampeners are offline.] It was Thea's voice, the A.I.'s voice files installed on the Allegiant as well. [Communication system offline. Warning. Plasma levels dropping. Structural integrity breach on Deck 02. Shields at 21 %.]
Jaya's hands rushed over the console, but she wasn't as fast as she would have been if the gravity was on. It was a constant struggle to force her arms down so her fingers could touch the screen an input the commands she needed. She pulled up a damage report just as Thea gave her assessment of the situation. Before the CONN Officer could relay any information, Dewitt was on top of it and barking out orders.
"Sithick, get those fires out, and fix the comm system!" ordered Jennifer, typing into the controls in her armrest, typing a message that she hoped would get through to the teams, leaving it to send as soon as the systems allowed. It simply read 'Hurry. Fleet here already. Retreat imminent.' Her eyes then snapped to the back of Thorne's head. "Fire at will! Use the aft phasers and take us through that debris field ahead! Morwen, keep an eye on the ETA for the reinforcements!"
"Y-Yes, ma'am. ETA forty seconds!" Morwen's complexion hadn't gotten any better.
Jaya quickly punched in a course through the debris field despite the warnings on her console not to do so. She would fly it manually if she had to, as long as they got away from their pursuers. "Got it, Commander! Entering the debris field in thirty seconds!" Jaya made a run for the floating bits of blown up ships and other crap that had collected on the battlefield. With any luck, she'd make it before they got hit again and all the debris would make them harder to target.
"Goddammit..." Another barrage from the interceptors shook them before they reached the debris field, the hits made all the worse since inertial dampeners were gone, and Thea spoke anew into the weightless atmosphere of the bridge.
[Warning. Hull breach on Deck 02. Warp Core area depressurised. Shields at 10 %]
Time slowed down for Jaya in that instant, as she realized that this was it. They were fighting a losing battle in a hopeless war and fleeing from an enemy who had them dead to rights. They wouldn't make it. Jaya lifted her brown eyes from her console and glanced at her fellow crewmates. She had lived with these people for three years on the Black Opal. Apart from the Gorn, she'd even grown to trust most of them. Hell, she'd slept with most of them, again, aside from Sithick.
Her eyes fell on the Gorn, who was in the middle of burning the scales off of his arm in some futile attempt to get the comm system back up. She glanced over at Morwen next. The poor girl was white with fear and looked to be trembling, but maybe that was just the affect of the artificial gravity being off. Finally, Jaya turned to look at Dewitt herself. The headstrong, charming, passionate commanding officer of both this Manta-class ship and the Black Opal spacestation was uncharacteristically panicked. Dewitt's eyes seemed focused on the viewscreen, but it was almost as though she was looking at something beyond it. 'She thinks we're going to die..'
All her memories, good and bad, came flooding back to Jaya in that moment. If she died here today, she could honestly say she had lived an OK life. There were things she'd done that she regretted now, and things she'd never get to do, but all in all, it was a good life. She found herself staring at the viewscreen: a field of debris stretched as far as the eye could see, and here and there were little ships hanging in the blackness of space. Sometimes they moved, sometimes they didn't, and they all just hung there, floating like the toys on her nightstand.
"..told you I'd spend the rest of my life trying to make you proud, dad.." The words were a mere whisper compared to the blaring klaxons and red alert warnings that Thea kept repeating. 'This isn't how he'd want you to go. He'd want you to fight. Make a way. Punch a path. Get home safe.' The thoughts came unbidden to the brunette, but they were far from unwelcome. She was wrong; a death like this wouldn't make her father proud. No, she had to find a way out and get back to the Theurgy. She had to get back home.
"I can get a back up comm line up, and ready to broadcazt. We have shorter range, but we can reach the closest Theurgy and her fighters. After zat they will have to relay." It was Sithick who spoke and brought Jaya back to the here and now.
Determination pierced Jaya's defeated countenance and her eyes seemed to burn with renewed vigor. 'Everyone else might have resigned us to die out here but not me. And not Sithick either!' She glanced at the Gorn and gave a curt nod with a hint of a smile. If Dewitt and Morwen were going to freeze up in a panic, then it would have to be Jaya and Sithick who got them out of this mess. "Good work Sithick! I can wind us through the debris and get us close enough to send the message with orders to relay it. With any luck, all this shit will fuck up their targeting and slow them down so I can get a clean shot at those motherfuckers. We're not gonna die out here, goddammit!"
Despite the debris that she was flying into, Jaya diverted all shield power to her aft section as she dove her craft into the field of broken ships and space junk. That meant she had to manually avoid getting hit by anything as she flew into it, but Jaya had proven herself thus far to be excellent at piloting by hand. She then brought up a rear display onto her console and set a phaser-lock on the lead interceptor. She dodged the bits and pieces of garbage as she flew further into the field, waiting for her pursuers to follow. And to her delight, they did. And they were slowing down.
Jaya grinned as her phaser-lock gave her the green light and she opened fire. In an instant, the lead interceptor was lit up like a Christmas tree as Jaya shot blast after blast with her aft phasers and her aft micro canon. Each hit either detonated a piece of debris or impacted on the interceptor's forward shields. But the barrage coming from the Allegiant proved incredibly effective against the Knight-class interceptor and after several seconds of continual fire, it exploded in glorious fashion. "YES!!"
The second interceptor swung into position to give chase to the Allegiant, and even managed to fire a few shots before Jaya gained the target. She wove around the debris field, avoiding fire from the rear and collisions from the front. There were still 3 ships on their tail, and despite their insistence on shooting her down, she planned to outmaneuver them and unleash the fury of hell on all of them.
As she opened fire on the next closest interceptor, the Allegiant took a hit from it's phasers. Instead of shooting her pursuer, the jolt from the hit made Jaya shoot several large pieces of an exploded fighter, hurling them at the Knight behind her. The chunks smashed into the Knight-class ship, damaging some of their systems just as a slew of her micro-torpedoes slammed into it. The interceptor dropped out of pursuit and Jaya realized that they must have sustained damage to their propulsion and warp systems, rendering them unable to move. Another victory for the Allegiant!
The final two fighters were similarly stopped: one was destroyed and the other was rendered immobile by Jaya's onslaught of weapons fire combined with her piloting skills. Both made shots at the Allegiant and Jaya knew the shields had to be all but gone. As they cleared the debris field and Jaya restored shields to the entire ship (instead of just the aft section), Thea chimed in a warning.
[Warning. Shields at 4%]
4% was better than 0%, and with their opposition now gone and the field clear, Jaya could focus on getting them out of there. She had her sensors scan open space for the closest friendly element. There. Vector 3. She could make it. She hoped Sithick was ready.
"Sithick, tell me you'll have comms ready in a minute, because that's about all the time we have. We're gonna make a flyby pass, drop the message and get the hell out of dodge and back to the Theurgy!" With what little shields they had, it was Jaya's last Hail Mary at surviving, but she was confident it would work.
OOC: I'm coming for you, Covington & Rawley! :)
[ LT Daniel Havenborn | Cockpit | AC-307 Mark-II Valkyrie "Grey Wolf-01"] Attn: Auctor, White/Grey/Lone Wolves
Once Daniel had rejoined the formation he received a data packet containing new information, at least four of the new prototype fighters, designated as Valravn Mark-I, had defected to their side. Behind him Knight spoke up. "Salvo, we've got micro-fractures along the hull, I don't think we'll be able to pull another Havenborn Special or anything else that requires us to push the engines beyond standard operating limits again. At least not until we can land and get repairs." He said. "That's okay; I think I just used up a lifetime of luck with that one maneuver." Daniel said in response as he watched his pulse phaser power return to normal levels.
When he was given the order to take out the interceptor with the designation of Deadline, he could only smile. "With pleasure Iron Fox." He said as he throttled forward his eyes set upon the damaged but operational interceptor. Deadline's Air Group had accounted for ninety percent of his squadrons' decimation and Daniel would make sure that Deadline would regret his decision to stand against them today and Daniel would even get a little vengeance for his lost pilots. "Knight, transfer power back to the forward phaser arrays, I want to hit him with everything we can." Daniel said as Knight acknowledged him and a moment later he watched his shield percentage drop from sixty-seven percent down to forty-eight percent. "Forty-eight percent is all we've got Daniel." Knight stated. "We'll have to make it count then Uriah." Daniel replied.
As he maneuvered his fighter around, he locked onto the enemy interceptor and opened fire with both his pulse phasers and forward phaser array, he watched as his shots were absorbed by what remained of his enemy's shields and then suddenly he saw the shields flicker and die. His target however returned fire and he watched as the burst from the heavy pulse phasers brought his own shields down by eighteen percent. "Shields down to thirty percent." Knight said as he tried to find whatever power he could put into the shields. Both of them were wearing their helmets and relying on their suits for life support right now since power from that was being used for both shields and weapons.
Daniel brought his fighter around and quickly regained his target lock on Deadline. "Burn in hell asshole." Daniel said as he opened fire with his forward weapons systems. The Valkyrie Mark-II's pulse phasers and phaser arrays ripped into the unshielded craft, Daniel angled his port phaser array and cut across the cockpit of the interceptor and he watched as it decompressed as his starboard phaser array ignited the warp core and the interceptor was destroyed in a ball of plasma. He let himself have a moment before turning his fighter towards the other enemy interceptors. "Knight transfer power from the forward phaser arrays back into the shields." Daniel said as Knight acknowledged him. "Salvo to Iron Fox, the head is cut off." He said as he rejoined his new wingmate in defending Vector 02.
[LT JG Alessia Garcia, Callsign "Angel" (https://uss-theurgy.com/w/images/thumb/9/9b/Alessia-Garcia-04.png/250px-Alessia-Garcia-04.png) | Cockpit | ACC-477 Mark I Valravn Flight Leader "White Wolf 09" | Vector 02] Attn: Vector 02, White/Grey/Lone Wolves, anyone else
<This is Lieutenant Barcor, I am taking command of squadron. Any White Wolf that refuses to follow the orders of the proper command which is Captain Slayton will be counted as a traitor and fired upon. End of discussion.>
For better or for worse, Angel had made her choice to stand with Razor and Iron Fox. They were more than friends to her, they were like family and seeing them again had to be a blessing. She knew she was defying her Captain's orders and directly going against her Starfleet Officer's Code, but it felt like the right decision in her heart. She knew there would be repercussions, but she hadn't expected Metalhead to pull rank and take charge so quickly. Nor had she anticipated just how protective Terror would be of their pack.
Moments after Angel relayed her message of camaraderie, she watched her SCO rip into Metalhead's Valravn with a concentrated blast from the twin phaser arrays. She immediately looked at her readings just in time to see Metalhead's signal go dark, save for his life support and comm systems. He wasn't dead, but he was adrift and unable to pursue or retaliate. She was grateful to be on Terror's side and not standing against her. And then, a message came through.
"As far as we know, the individual with that code name is the one that have been feeding coordinates to Federation weapon facilities along the RNZ to the Romulans, likely Donatra's rebels. We know because Captain Ives forced the Captain of a Romulan warbird to divulge the name of their contact when we defended the Black Opal facility from their raid." Speaking quickly, Miles' slitted eyes darted between readings on his controls, "To the best of our knowledge, Aidoaan is seeding a war between the Praetor and the Federation, since she will not take kindly to find Starfleet weaponry in the possession of the Rebels. We can but assume the person with that codename is one of the alien usurpers too... another piece that fits the puzzle."
If this was the truth behind all the Starfleet lies, Angel understood why it might be covered up. Without physical evidence, it would be hard to prove that an uninterested third party was trying to incite a war between two groups who didn't much care for each other. As far as she knew, the peace with the Romulan Star Empire was uneasy at best, so any step seemingly out of line could initiate a conflict. The Dominion War was still so fresh in her mind and the last thing she wanted was another War. That's part of why she had joined Starfleet in the first place: to prevent what happened to her family from happening to anyone else.
Another message came through from the same familiar voice from her past, along with a new packet of friendly targets. Angel input the friendlies and marked everyone else as hostile, including a few of her White Wolves Pack.
"Iron Fox to White Wolves... your choice to stand by your SCO today, to believe in her and to have faith in the truth - however difficult it might be for you - it will be remembered, and to the very best of my ability, I will try t-"
The phaser fire was suddenly everywhere at once as nearly twenty Interceptors closed in on their position in Vector 02. Angel's evasive maneuvers got them through the worst of it with little damage to their shields, but her fighter was fresh and she hadn't been in the battle as long as some of her new allies. One of them took a barrage of hits and exploded into a brilliant orange ball of light while another was too slow to strafe away and suffered the consequences. Her former pack-mates were flying with the Interceptors and raining fire upon her new allies as well.
"By elements, fire at will! Defend the Vector at all cost!
Angel didn't need Iron Fox to tell her what to do; she was already on it and firing upon the nearest Interceptors to her. Her phaser emitters rippled against Interceptor shields, weakening several of them as they flew by. They had made their surprise run, now it was her turn. "Talon, we're chasing down the enemy. Keep 'em busy."
Angel pressed her fighter and gave chase to the Interceptors as they made their pass. She noticed that they were slow to turn and seemed to struggle with holding their formation, then suddenly they broke apart into groups of four. As they split off to pursue separate targets, she focused on the four headed her way. "Target those Knights and disable them! Now!"
"As you say, Angel!" Talon complied with surprising enthusiasm to Angel's request and together, the Human Flight Leader and Andorian Intercept Officer charged the incoming Interceptors with their phaser emitters clearing a path. The orange energy bursts lit up the darkness and hammered the shields on the lead Interceptor as Angel continued her head-on trajectory. "Angel's away, Talon!" At the last second before diving under the pack, She let loose her ordinance in spectacular fashion. Four micro torpedoes and 2 photon torpedoes launched from each wing, as well as one hell-hound cluster bomb. Together, they streaked across the minimal distance to her targets, leaving an angel-wing pattern in their wake with White Wolf 09 at it's center, and impacted three of the four Interceptors.
The lead Knight took the worst of it, with the hell-hound bomb demolishing his shields only seconds before most of the torpedoes impacted upon his craft. He exploded in a glorious fireball, spewing debris across his wing mates and into open space. The other torpedoes smashed against the remaining fighters, some with already weakened shields, and Angel banked right to give chase. But Angel hadn't noticed that the Interceptors had banked left and opened fire on her Valravn as she came about. Their phasers did minimal damage to her shields in small doses, but they had already learned that lesson and their heavy pulse phaser canons were recharged and ready to go.
"Angel, three fighters incoming, heavy phaser fire!" Talon brought up the targets and marked them for another round with their wolf's type VIII phase emitters. But the Andorian only got in a few shots before they were hit with a coordinated heavy pulse phaser canon strike from the three Knights. Angel dove and dodged what she could, but their heavy canon shots were brutal. The hits she took brought her shields down to 80% and slowed her down enough to let the Interceptors swing around behind her.
"Angel to Stormfang, do me a favor and get these guys off me!" Angel was now playing a deadly game of mouse and cat with the remaining three Knights. One of them seemed to have most of it's shields in tact, but the other two were definitely worse for wear. If they could just get a few more good shots, they'd only have one fighter to deal with instead of three!
OOC: This is the effect that Alessia was going for. I know it is created with flares and the vortexes around their wake, but it's not listed that her Valravn has flares (would they even work in space?!) and I didn't think it would work with her ECM pod, so I thought I could attempt to create something vaguely similar with phaser fire and torpedoes :) Did I mention it's called the "Angel Wing Flare Pattern"? Cuz that's awesome!
(https://www.apacheclips.com/boards/vbtube/upload/thumb/262_81346.jpg)
[ Chris "Husker" Slayton & Lieutenant Talidenai zh'Idenna | Lone Wolf 04 and White Wolf 01 | Space around Vector 2 | USS Theurgy ] Attention: Warp-fighter related
And like that Morrigan was gone.
Husker blinked hard against his disbelief that it took a savage salvo of several of the interceptors to take out such a fighter like Fasha..
Husker gripped his controls tightly before he started to input a number of commands, bypassing what he could where he could and slowly but surely the amber lit systems shifted over to green.
<Christopher, are you alright?> came Tali's quiet question as her helmeted visage appeared on a mini-screen inside of his visor.
"No frak it, those damn interceptors are acting more like a gang of fucking thugs like those found on Turkana IV!" he growled hotly as he double checked his offensive and defensive systems before making a few more minor tweaks. "I'm done..."
<Husker, do you know of a pilot called Goldeneye?> came Sniper's own voice.
This drew Husker up short as a cold lump slowly started to fill his stomach suddenly for some reason. "Yes..why?"
<I do not wish to be the bearer of bad news..> Sniper started to say.
"Then don't, but right now I'm in dire need of doing some hunting..are you two with me?" he growled hotly, his eyes already starting the systems lock ons of the interceptors as he saw how they were starting to make a sweep.
<Of course, lead the way.> Sniper replied and he could almost her a predatory smile in her collected Vulcan tones.
Terror on the other hand was starting to issue orders to the remains of her "Pack". "Vapor, I want you and Stormfang to play nice with the Iron and Gray Wolves, make sure to cover your respective backs."
<Aye Lieutenant, we've got this.> came the purring voice of Stormfang through the channel.
Terror smiled and then quickly looked at the tactical plot of the area. "Sniper, can you be a dear and see if you can't explain to our rather crude hosts why you have that particular callsign?"
There was a moment of silence but Tali could hear the formation of the cruel math that her lover would need to which Sniper simply replyed with <Of course, my dear. Have fun hunting with Husker now.>
Sniper moved her fighter out as Husker started his own movement with Terror close at hand.
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[Lt. JG Cameron "Witch King" Ward/ White Wolf 13 & Flight Leader] ATTN: Krystal and all other fighter elements.
Most people said that Cameron Ward was a very pragmatic man even for a pilot and this was a simple fact as he had gone through a long life before even becoming a member of the Tactical CONN that landed him here..in this fight of all things.
<Witch King, Strider. Most of our unit is divided..where do we stand?> came the voice of Wolf-14, Esa "Strider" Ojanpera.
Cameron studied the battle before him, he had kept his flight back while the majority of the fighting was going on to ensure that none of the hostiles came close to the evacuation of their carrier since it was crippled but he had heard the words of both his overall commanding officer and then this... Iron Fox.
"Why would Terror abandon her post, Strider. She seemed like she had a very sensible head on her shoulders." Cameron stated firmly.
<Good question, perhaps Aria might know something?> Strider offered up.
Cameron blinked a couple times before slowly nodding, "Agreed..and you have been rather quiet back there, old friend."
Witch King's RIO and an officer that he had served with for the last few years didn't say anything at first but eventually the Shen simply stated <I agree with the Iron Fox.>
Cameron blinked once before bringing up the dark eyed Shen's visage on his own screen. "Why is that?"
<As the master once said, "Shoot once but straight."> was her only reply.
Cameron was about to reply when he spotted a strange looking shuttle doing some very incredible feats of action when he noticed a couple of elements of intercepters backed by an element of the Wolves that had stayed under Metalhead's "command".
Cameron noticed that the shuttle may not have been able to see the incoming triple threat and made a decision in a heart beat.
"Strider, have your element follow me in. Shnigami, stay on my six." Cameron said as he throtltled up his fighter to maximum and sighted his targeting system squarely onto the soon to be hostile fighters that was coming up behind the strange little shuttle.
Fourth Flight of the White Wolves roared in a diamond formation towards the strange little shuttle but instead of flying exactly towards it, White Wolf-13 flew up and over it, it's weapons systems slashing through the unexpecting hostile fighters and destroying two of them in quick order before splashing one of Metalhead's "Pack" while the rest of his flight took out the other interceptors in quick order.
"This is White Wolf Thirteen, Callsign Witch King to shuttle Fuzzy Flyer. Are you alright, pilot?" Cameron asked in a respectful tone, trying not to sound confused saying the name "Fuzzy Flyer", as he swung his fighter's weapons systems onto another interceptor and quickly splashed it before damaging one of the hostile White Wolves' with another shot.
<Hehe..it's just like Betazed all over again.> came the voice of Catscratch, White Wolf Sixteen with just a hint of glee.
<I think that you and I remember Betezed in vastly different ways, Chatrine.> Strider's voice came back as he quickly threw his own fighter into a quick stopping motion that allowed one of the hostile Wolves to be splashed by Shinigami's fighter as Strider took out the interceptor that was trying to get a torpedo lock on him.
<Umm..large body count, tons of senseless violence, and we're fighting huge odds?> Catscratch simply pointed out.
Strider didn't have a comeback for that one.
"Enough talk, we have a job to do." Cameron said as he waited for the shuttle's pilot to reply. "Aria, send word to the Iron-Fox and Terror that we're with them but whatever proof that they have to support their actions today had best be pretty damn good."
<Roger that, King.> was Aria's only reply as Cameron's RIO did just as she was instructed to do.
////////////////////////////////////////////
[ Lt. JG T'Zantha "Sniper"/White Wolf Zero-Two/Orbit around Vector Zero-Two, USS Theurgy]ATTN: Warp Fighter Elements
If Sniper was disappointed about not being on her lover's wing, the albino vulcan didn't show it even though she was considered to be an outcast amongst her own people due to her "condition", she was still a vulcan..a daughter of Surak.
<What is the plan, Sniper?> came the reverbating voice of her RIO in Ensign Freedom Running-Moon as he sat in the back of their Valravn.
"I am to shown them why I am known as Sniper, Bear." Sniper said in a perfectly calm voice as she brought her fighter's M-142 RF Mass Drivers online and slowly re-wrapped her slender yet powerful fingers around her controls as she slowly started to track a number of hostile craft that was starting to surround the area.
<Yes..but why are we not moving though?> Bear asked.
"Shush now, Bear..working." was Sniper's only reply as she signed her weapons system onto White Wolf Twelve as it started to enter the standard bombing run on a capital ship and waited until her scanner glowed amber before pulling the trigger.
In the span of a nano-second, twin lances from her Type VIII Phaser Arrays lashed out and took out both of of the standard issue photon torpedoes that Blizzard had just launched for her bombing run and Sniper then did a quick bit of mental math and then adjusted her aim twenty degrees from what she had remembered of Blizzard's habits and switched over to her mass drivers.
Sure enough, Blizzard obliged her and then the Andorian's fighter suddenly found its self stitched hard with several rounds of thirty milimeter Osmiridium shells punching through his weaker dorsal shields which granted him a six point two second window of utter shock before his fighter flew apart into a large fireball with only his RIO being able to eject.
"White Wolf Zero Two, Sniper, to Theurgy. Scan the area next to me and please beam the transponder signal of the Rear Intercept Officer of White Wolf Twelve into a secure location." Sniper said calmly as she selected her next target and then repeated the process.
<Sniper, how did you know that he was going to do that?> Bear asked as he went about his duties on the fighter.
"Simple, Blizzard always have her fighter equipped with a standard issue torpedo launcher." she said simply as an intercepter found it's way into a fireball.
<Hm, interesting. I wonder what people would say about you then in that manner?>
Sniper gave the question exactly two seconds thought before letting loose with two micro-torpedoes before simply replying with "I talk too much, Bear."
////////////////////////////////////
[ Chris "Husker" Slayton & Lieutenant Talidenai zh'Idenna | Lone Wolf 04 and White Wolf 01 | Space around Vector 2 | USS Theurgy ] Attention: Warp-fighter related
Terror wondered why for the upteeth time why she was Husker's wingman and not the other way around but as the two of them, the outdated Valkyrie and the prototype Valravn, roared around Theurgy's Vector, quickly taking out hostile after hostile to their new tender she quickly found herself idely wondering what had changed in Husker over the past several months to make him like this.
Not that she minded, she enjoyed changed as much as the next woman but there was a hardness now to him.
"You keep going at this rate, lover, you'll be an ace after this fight for certain." Terror said with a certain amount of pride in her voice as she watched another interceptor disappear in a ball of flame.
<That's a word that I never thought I'd hear from your lips again, Terror..even after our last conversation made it perfectly clear.> Husker said over a private channel.
Terror winced outwardly at that memory as she in turn splashed another hostile fighter herself and then double checked her own craft's status. "To be honest I thought that we were doing the right thing, Husker. I didn't know that the original offer to sign onto the project behind these new fighters and the assignment as SCO came from your eldest brother..I just thought that you had settled in nicely as Phanatos' wingman."
Husker was quiet for a couple of minutes before he said anything and what he said chilled her to the bone.
<Aside from myself and maybe a few others, the Harbinger is gone.>
"Wh..what happened? I mean she was an Akira class carrier for fuck's sake!" Terror asked as she allowed her moment of confusion for a couple of hostile interceptors to almost redline her shields before her and Husker performed a manuever that was practically second nature to them.
The moment that the two Knight series interceptors started to hit Terror's shields hard, Husker quickly spun his bird over her fighter, using his underside shields to absorb the rest of the impact which in turn gave her enough time to collect her wits and roar out from under him.
Once the tail section of her fighter was out from under the nose of his plane, Husker abruptly tilted his fighter up and opened up with all of his phaser based weapons and tore the first interceptor into hundreds of thousands of tiny shards in the night.
The other interceptor had a rather pissed off Zhen catching him center mass of the fighter with twin micro-torpedoes which split the hostile craft in two before simply going poof into nothingness.
<If we survive this then I'll give you the whole story, Terror. But remember how you couldn't stand being in the same section as T'Rena?> Husker calmly replied.
"Yeah.." Terror asked cautiously.
<I found out why> was his only response before his side of the channel lapsed into silence.
[Dev "Dragon" Okhala | White Wolf 05 |Space around the USS Orcus, enroute to the Vector] ATTN: Doc, EAC, and other pilots
It was a turning in to a full scale melee, with the pandemonium to match. Streaks of plasma provided an eerie glow to the inside of Dev's fighter, as she cut an intense swath through the confused fighters. Some of the White Wolves had formed upon behind their squad leader, which impressed her to no end. Their squad was still working on prototype fighters, meaning combat camaraderie was unusual. But, pilots would be pilots.
[Dragon, we're getting a lot of cross chatter here.] It was Scylla, a-pilot who had proven herself quite well. [Angel is following Terror, against orders.]
"We have evidence that a war is being instigated between the Romulans and the Federation. Follow your conscience, but we're defending a greater threat."
There was silence as the pilots in her element considered their options. Dev was already aware that Starfleet would brand her a traitor and her fate would be shared with the rest of Theurgy's crew. She was already resigned to this, yet her duty to the truth couldn't be denied.
She flipped her fighter upside, relative to the Starbase targeting elements from the base. "Fury, you best get me the best engine lock you can. These are good pilots-be precise and get them out of the fight."
"Copy that, Dragon."
Dev checked her readout, and was impressed-her element was following in diamond formation, spearheading a drive towards the Vector to clear away starbase fighters.
[ Command Center | EOC Tower | Starbase 84 ] Joint-Post by Nolan, SummerDawn, Striker N7 & Auctor Lucan
Even as the fighting still raged in the the Command Center, with Zaraq roaring as he threw an officer into the duty stations lining his side of the area, the situation before the viewscreen had reached an impasse. Drauc did not have a clear shot with his phaser rifle since Captain Hawthorne was using his daughter as a human shield, and the young woman was pleading that Drauc and the others wouldn't shoot Hawthorne. The only tactical advantage on the battlefield was that the transporters were deactivated, and the traitor could not escape. His upper lip curled, Drauc tried to edge sideways, keeping the traitor on his toes.
Meanwhile, ThanIda zh'Wann was pushing her way forth, shooting and striking down the Starfleet officers that tried to oppose her. Ensign Sel was also making progress, seemingly having encountered quite an adversary since he needed to be shot several times, but Ida did not see just how much damage the officer could sustain since he fell into the lower level. Even as Ida dispatched officers that tried to overwhelm her, she could track Zaraq's advance on the other side of the center by the sounds he made as he subdued any officers that dared get in his way. The human with the red collared uniform - could he be from the Resolve since he knew Drauc? - was also getting closer to the front of the area, and eventually, they would reach the Henshaw and Ian Hawthorne. With eyes and antennae, Ida saw the impasse where Drauc had his rifle pointed at the base's Commanding Officer, and she wasted no time in trying to do something about it.
She swayed to the side to avoid an officer that dashed towards her, and drove her rifle into his back. Another one tried to seize her rifle, but she twisted it upwards and caught him under his chin, the rising strike causing him to land a couple of feet away. Two more came from her blind side, but her antennae spotted them, so she whipped her rifle around and stunned them both - the projectiles catching them in the throat and chest respectively. She managed to get a few more steps towards Hawthorne, Henshaw and Drauc before a fifth officer appeared from behind a throng of running Science officers, with her hand phaser raised towards Ida. Activating her SAFTI-gear before the beam hit her, Ida fired back. Only she couldn't. She was out of ammo. It was the disadvantage of the TR-120s, using adhesive projectiles instead of energy. It forced her to bolt towards the woman instead, earning two more beams against the protective force field projected around her while she crossed the distance, but when she reached the shooter, she spun and kicked out her legs underneath her. A second kick to her head subdued her.
Only then, earning a moment of respite, did Ida have the time to tear a grenade from the SAFTI-gear's utility belt, and she tossed it high with a short fuse - making the anti-nadion flash erupt above the area where Hawthorne was at. She knew she had just rendered Drauc's, Sel's, the enigmatic red-collared officer's and Hawthorne's phaser weapons inoperable, along with all the rest of the opposing security detail's... but it mitigated the danger to Henshaw. Hopefully Zaraq had some ammo left in his TR-120 rifle...
Lieutenant Leon "Striker" Marquez had taken the aft position when he'd entered the Center, but preferred to fight upfront if he had the upper hand, which he had, noting the Romulan had taken overwatch as Marquez used the recommended stun setting against the remaining personnel that The SAFTI-clad strike team had missed or not completely subdued. Soon, none of the remaining opposition would so much as twitch.
Striker saw the well-trained Andorian produce a grenade and shielded his eyes during its detonation. Then he strategically approached Captain Hawthorne and his hostage. He had seen the effect it had on the weapons of the security detail, deduced its nature, so with phase rifle little more than a blunt instrument for the moment, he slung and strapped it in the offchance it could be a bludgeoning weapon. Striker faced the Captain and his hostage with arms in a nonthreatening posture; he cringed, he had a younger sister about that girl's age. "Stay Calm, Ensign." Marquez calmly assured her, but kept his distance and his focus on her captor.
"Captain Hawthorne, my name is Striker Marquez, Resolve's XO. I know that you and your command have been compromised per Regulation 6-1-9, and that you can still come out of this alive. But please, release the hostage. If you cooperate and communicate, I give you my word you will not be harmed." Marquez remembered what he heard during his escape from security. "Where is your Wife, Captain? If there's any human in you left, maybe we can negotiat-" The Lieutenant Commander was interrupted by an inhuman voice.
Across Henshaw's shoulder, Ian answered the Resolve's First Officer. When he spoke, his voice was in flux, and could not fit into their current reality - tearing at the very fabric of existence. "I raped her, and then I killed her," he said, aiming for shock, and taking pleasure in saying the words right next to Cammie's ear. "She did not die well." While the flash from the grenade had blinded him momentarily, Ian remained calm, perversely amused but the development. He had yet to truly test the abilities of his host's body when it was unrestrained by pain, fatigue or doubt, endowed with the strength of his kin.
The flash still caused for little dots in the vision of Henshaw as Hawthorne kept her perfectly in place. She looked at the man called Marquez before she looked at Drauc and Ida, they could see the glint of fear in her eyes as she realized that she was in a bad if not worst case position. She knew Hawthorne, her adoptive father was part of the very same conspiracy she tried to warn him about. The idea only confirmed as he spoke of Trish. Cameron's eyes widened as she heard what the perverted creature had done to the wife of Ian, a mother she loved once. "You're an animal!" she grunted under the strain of his powerful arm.
Cameron knew that the man she once knew would no longer exist, perhaps a small shred of him left in the body that was now fully under control by the parasite. "Ian, please... Fight it..." she murmured, trying to encourage the host to make a move. It was the only thing she could hope for as she knew she was only being used as leverage to the gathered away team. Who'd know what the parasite would do to her if left unchecked. A faith of her adoptive mother most likely to happen if not worse.
A final move of Cameron was to use her elbows and stomp with her feet against respectively his stomach and shins. Yet it didn't have any effect as his grasp around her neck become suffocating now. She had to gasp for air as time became critical for her survival. Dead or alive, Hawthorne would probably keep use of her as a functioning meatshield.
Appearing from the right side of the Command Center, Zaraq came running straight towards the human father and daughter. The exiled Klingon barrelled straight towards them, knowing he had no clear shot with his TR-120, but he could create such an opportunity. He just needed to separate the two. Of course, Captain Hawthorne saw him, and upon realising what the Klingon meant to do, he squeezed the trigger of his hand phaser. He would have vaporised his daughter's head in that moment, had it not been for the anti-nadion particles in the air. It was all the time Zaraq needed before he had closed the distance, and rammed straight into Henshaw and Hawthorne, sending them both off their feet.
Zaraq had ended it all right there... had not Hawthorne torn the rifle away from the Klingon in the commotion.
Sel reached the Captain first, and while her phaser rifle was useless, she brought it down hard upon the muzzle of the TR-120 - Hawthorne's shot going into the floor. Then, Ida came in hard from the flank, trying to strike the possessed officer across the head with her depleted rifle. Ian dodged the sideways attack, struck Sel across the face and kicked Zaraq in the head as he tried to get up. Then he took aim against Ida, only to have his rifle struck by Drauc, who just reached him with a savage kick to the black human's forearm. Sel lay motionless on the floor, but Ida swung her rifle again, and broke the TR-120 in Hawthorne's hand.
Marquez waited his turn to attack, letting the security specialists take their first shots while he waited for his opportunity. Acting with a renewed indignation for the events of the day, Marquez timed his first kick to Hawthorne's spinal cord when he had a clear shot, whiplashing the Captain. Then, Marquez followed up with the full force of a right-cross punch to the face, upon the first somewhat effective kick had gotten Hawthorne's attention. Brought down on his knees, a gash across his temple from where Marquez had split skin with knuckle, Hawthorne rounded on the puny human with his face twisted in a grimace a human could never make. Striker sneered and followed up with a left uppercut to the freakishly-resilient Captain's chin, only missing when he swayed back - leaving himself open to a strike against the edge of his ribcage, and his heart.
Hawthorne meant to split skin and cartilage with the blade of his hand, and yank out the heart of the Resolve's First Officer. Ida stepped in right then, and blocked the deadly attack from Hawthorne - kicking the arm wide off target. The counter was immediate, delivered with a snarl, a kick from the possessed human to her abdomen that made her fall over. Almsot as an afterthought, Ian dealt Marquez a backhand strike, and then turned back to Ida with his bionic fist raised. Drauc appeared then, and dealt Hawthorne a brutal overhead strike across the head with his phaser rifle, saving Ida from having her life ended by the possessed Captain.
Zaraq having tackled her and her father, Henshaw had escaped from the grip. She gasped for air and coughed a little, getting up on her knees as she tried to get the much needed oxygen into her lungs. In the meantime, Zaraq had recovered from the attacks he'd sustained and launched another strike on Hawthorne, roaring as he landed a kick right in his abdomen. Hawthorne remained standing, however, and the Klingon got pushed off balance by the possessed captain. Cameron could see Drauc coming for another strike with his rifle, yet in the corner of her eyes, Henshaw saw the looming danger on the viewscreen.
Task Force Archeron had arrived in force, dropping out of warp, and the first deployment orders seemed to be given. The starships moved in position around the Theurgy. The viewscreen was covered with the amount of ships warping in and the situation reaching a critical point. "Guys, we'll have to get moving soon!" she tried to warn the rest, yet her voice was hoarse and lacking in power to carry over the fighting parties.
When Ida raised her eyes, climbing back on her feet, she did not just see the viewscreen. In front of the display loomed the sillouette of Hawthorne, yanking Drauc's rifle out of his hands and sending him rolling across the floor as he did so. Hardly missing a step, he stepped up to Zaraq with the rifle in hand, and brought it straight down into the Klingon's head. The sound of the thick skull breaking like a melon against the floor hit Ida's antennae, and she saw his lifeless limbs twitching.
Right then, Ida couldn't help but notice the dire development, since with both Sel and Ensign Henshaw not back on their feet, they were down to three fighting the dreadful Captain. Nevertheless, she struggled to get back on her feet, fighting down the fear that they would all die at the hands of the base's Commanding Officer before they could beam out of there.
"I already had the Resolve destroyed," said Hawthorne with rueful excitement and turned towards Leon Marquez, bloodied rifle in hand. The eldritch timbre of his voice echoed beyond the fabric of their mortal existence. "And while Admiral Sankolov will finish what I started... I will enjoy eating its First Officer's face while his heart still beats in his chest..." Then, the creature that used to be Ian Hawthorne leaped against Marquez, his speed and strength no longer bound by the laws of physics in their universe.
- FIN
[ Boarding Team 02 | Primary Reactor Control Room | Starbase 84 ] Joint Post by Auctor Lucan, Brutus, & Doc. M
The detonation of an anti-nadion flash grenade on the upper level made the rain of phaser beams stop, and Thea could continue working on patching into the destroyed duty station. She used the power cell from the TR-120 rifle to power up the system, and plugged herself into the tactical systems of the starbase by using her own emitter to replace the broken interface. Once she had her emitter connected with its cable, she rose from her hiding place. She did so just in time to see a security officer coming at her, swinging his useless phaser rifle like a melee weapon.
The heavy strike passed right through her projection, since she had switched off the forcefields of her photonic body, but before the unbalanced guard could get his bearings, she reactivated them and dealt him an efficient overhand strike across the head. He crumbled to the plating underneath her feet without a sound, and Thea raised her brown eyes to see what happened on the second level, meanwhile her software was delving further past the security protocols of the base's systems.
Komial had dropped and taken cover the second the grenade popped up into sight. She'd clenched up, squeezed her hands over her ears and screwed up her eyes as the blast went off. Surprised that she wasn't blown off the edge of the platform, she shook her head and grabbed her phaser in time to see someone from the raiding party right in front of her face. Well, fate rarely handed her a gift on a silver platter such as that, so who was she to pass up the chance?
With trained efficiency, the Trill Lieutenant snapped her rifle up to her shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The emitter gave a spritz - and nothing else. She squeezed again, and then realized what the grenade must have done. "For fuck’s sake," she swore and reversed the grip fast as you please, swinging the phaser rifle into the man's leg.
The skintight force field O’Connell’s SAFTI gear provided made her attacks completely ineffective; blocking the kinetic energy of a purely physical melee attack used up far less power from the rig’s sarium krellide cells than a shot from a particle beam weapon such as a phaser. “Now you jest hold on Ma’am, try t’ calm down now,” he purred condescendingly once he discovered that she couldn’t really harm him. “Now you jest give me thet phaser ‘fore yuh hurt yerself,” he continued as he used the buttstock of his T-120 rifle in order to force the phaser rifle out of Komial’s hands. “We’re not the bad guys here an’ if yah… Whut the?”
Whatever O’Connell was going to say was lost when a phaser beam hit him and sent him flying into Komial, sending them both tumbling across the deck. Thankfully the force field provided by his SAFTI gear held. When he stood up he was hit by a second shot that weakened his force field down to the point of uselessness. The shots were coming from the door that Keyah was guarding. The Bolian had cover and was keeping her head down before trading shots with the forces trying to get in, but O’Connell was completely exposed! Keeping his head down, he detonated another anti-nadion flashbang and bowled Komial over as he fled to the far side of the wide catwalk. That side of the upper deck didn’t overlook a drop of one floor to the deck below. He was now on the opposite side, the side closest to the main reactor that stretched downward over a third of a kilometer. As his SAFTI gear gave off a chime that it was out of power, he quickly detonated his last anti-nadion grenade... and managed to temporary blind and deafen himself.
Below, Thea turned her head and saw how more security guards poured through the doors that Keyah had been guarding before they had company from the back area of the reactor room. Without any means to fire at them, Keyah was left vulnerable, and there was no anti-nadion particles in the air around that side of the large area. Thea couldn't run there to help her either, connected as she was to the back of the destroyed duty station. With the digital alacrity of her thoughts, she knew that all she could do was to pick up the plate she had torn off the back of the station and throw it up against the new guards.
The sheet of metal was airborne within the second, and hit the ones just through the breached doorway. The heavy piece of metal clattered into the phaser rifles in the hands of the guards, and made them topple backwards - some of them even cut by the edge of the sheet. By then, Keyah had managed to turn around with her heavy weapon, charged another concussion blast, and sent the rest of the guards tumbling back into the corridor.
Pissed did not even begin to describe Komial's state of mind just then. One thing after another, all damned day long. She scrambled back to her feet, spat out a wad of blood and tried not to trip on her ill-fitting pants. She was going to strangle that 'aw shucks' son of a bitch with her bare hands if she had to. She heard more than saw metal crashing into the guards at the opposite door, but she had bigger fish to fry just then. And fry was exactly what she was going to do, as she leapt after O'Connell.
O’Connell’s vision returned just in time to see the fiery redhead tackle him. He had been crouched down low but staggered to his feet just in time to get hit by forty nine kilos (108 pounds) of irate Trill. The momentum knocked them both over the railing and O’Connell found himself dangling over the side holding on to the wrist of a struggling girl who a moment ago had done her best to kill him. A strap on his SAFTI gear had somehow got caught in a gap in the railing and was the only thing keeping them from falling to their doom below.
With alarm fed to her by her emotion chip, Thea saw how Keyah's recharging time made far too many security guards get a foothold inside the reactor room. She must have realised it herself too, switching over to her tetryon stun setting when she appeared next behind her cover, blanketing the door area with wide dispersal energy. It was effective, but it was not the kind of rapid fire solution she needed. Helplessly, Thea still connected to the console, she saw how two guards managed to flank her position, and took her out. She fell down hard into the floor of the lower level.
"No..." she said, seeing the remaining guards begin to shout at her and take aim against her unarmed projection. She raised her hands in surrender, trying to buy time while she got through the last protective measures of the base's tactical systems. She turned her head to see how both O'Connell and the last security officer from the team that had beamed in hung from the railing over the deep reactor pit. It was a matter of seconds until she got through and could beam all three teams back aboard herself.
O’Connell couldn’t worry about Thea’s predicament at the moment because the lives of him and the little Trill were hanging by a thread, or more accurately, a strap. “Now hang on there, Ma’am!” O’Connell instructed. “Grab my hand, you jess grab my hand there, an’ maybe you kin climb up mah body without knockin’ us loose. Hey, you with me? OW!”
They called it cognitive dissonance - in layman's terms, holding onto a belief despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary (or holding two conflicting beliefs). It was brief, but for just a moment Komial was completely unaware of the shift in position, from being up on the platform, fighting the intruding bastard that kept dropping flashbangs everywhere, and to then be dangling in his grasp, hanging over certain doom. The stunning Trill fully believed she had the older man at her mercy, that the upper hand was with her, and if she could just disable him, everything would be fine. She punched him, once, hard, before realizing what was going on and letting out a startled yelp. She failed, fear gripping her for a moment, as the artificial gravity tugged at her. She was back in the shuttle bay, all over again, the fires roaring around, the screams of her people lost in the rush of venting atmosphere, her legs dangling behind her –
“Now hold on there!” Billy Bob warned her. “Get a grip there Lieutenant. Iffin yore not careful, yer a gonna kill us both! Snap out of it Ma’am or we’re both goners!”
Komial forced herself to focus. The Chief of Security wouldn't go out like this. She couldn't let Ian down. Her body swung under the redneck’s - a term she'd picked up in a bar - pulling on him, adding friction to the strap of the gear he wore. Back and forth, feeling her own hand slipping from his grasp. Snarling, she swung until she was able to get enough momentum to launch herself upward, gripping onto the gearframe itself, pulling her weight from the invader to the gear itself, a - for the moment - slightly more reliable perch.
"You -" she puffed - "treacherous bastard - are under arrest."
O’Connell laughed out loud. “Who I’m loyal too is a mite irrelevant now Ma’am, ain’t it?” he drawled as they hung over the fatal drop like an ornament on a Christmas tree. “Now t’ mah way of thinkin’ we gotta work together. Lessin’ we cooperate both of us are gonna drop a long ways. I’ll help yuh up, an' you kin decide whut happens afterwards. Whatever you decide, no point both o’ us dyin’. I jest hope yer guards don’t end up killin’ us ‘fore you git t’ safety.”
In the meantime the guards were still shouting at Thea, but she only had eyes for O'Connell's plight on upper level. When both he and the security guard vanished from view, Thea assumed the worst. The guards had seen the cord connecting her to the computer at that point, and wanted her to disconnect lest they'd open fire. She could not comply to that, and as she looked back... the energy beams speared her projection from all angles.
As the energy discharges that went through her made her projection shimmer and waver, she thought her emitter was hit too, but she did not have a nervous system, so she could not say. All she could do was to duck behind the damaged console and curl up, making herself as small as possible while the security detail shot at her. She pressed her digital eyes shut as if it might ward her somehow. She needed only a second more....
...then she was through. Quickly, she powered down Starbase 84's entire defensive system, disabling any phasers or torpedo launchers from firing at her or her fighter elements in the battle outside the base. She got an indication that the Simulcast had been sent, and given the development out there, the orders were clear. Beam out.
Thea wasted no time, alerting the transporter personnel, and aided in locking on to all the Theurgy personnel she could. All the while, she was pelted by energy weapons fire. Then, she was gone.
One by one the entire boarding party were beaming out, despite the fact that most of them were prone and unconscious. O’Connell was ignorant of what was transpiring until the last second.
“Now don’t worry, Ah got yuh!” Billy Bob assured the little Trill as he helped Komial climb up his SAFTI-gear. “Everything’s gonna be… Damnation! Ah’m beamin’ out!” he exclaimed as his body was covered in a shower of sparks. “Quick! Grab mah…”
There was a shimmering of light, sparkling and serene, there, and then gone, taking the invaders with it. But not Komial, who held on by a thin grasp of a stuck piece of equipment. She bit her lip and snarled in fury, screaming out, "You thrice damned son of a bitch!" Rage washed over her, fueling her as she reached up, grabbing for the railing. There was a moment, brief, of disbelief, followed by a sudden sinking sensation in her stomach as it tried to rise up in her chest. It felt like floating, until she noticed the rushing of wind in her hair and her perspective shifting.
At first she had been facing up, seeing the rail receding drastically, but something buffeted her, causing her to flip end over end. Inertia took a hold, and she screamed, as realization dawned on her. She was falling, falling down the long shaft of the starbase. This couldn't be! The safety protocol would engage, beam her out. She would be all right she would be whisked away and then she could go after the bastard that did this. Just another few seconds for the star ba--
Her head impacted the side of a power conduit at a frightening speed. Were anyone there to hear it, the crunching, wet splat that followed the impact would give lie to any false hope of survival. The body - for it was a body now - bounced off the metal casing, tumbling back towards the core of the shaft, continuing its fall for quite some time, before landing in a broken, mauled heap at the bottom of the corridor. The emergency transporters - designed to fire off in such an instance and beam a potential victim back to safety - never engaged.
They had been overridden by the Theurgy's boarding party - incidentally, of course - when they shut down the transporter systems on the base.
- FIN
[ Papa Bear & Ghost | AC-507 Reaver & AC-409 Valkyrie Fighters | Protecting Vector 03 ] Joint-Post by CanadianVet & Auctor Lucan
Seeing the Reaver in battle once more was an eerie reminder about the engagements Evelyn "Ghost" Rawley had fought against the Calamity and its fighter elements. The triangular silhouette and the heavy armament with its unique firing options, with the open fuselage and the armoured cockpit made a shiver climb her spine where she sat in her Valkyrie - seeing how Papa Bear disabled the Defiant-class USS Chester with the last one of its kind. It helped very little that Rawley had been the one that stole it from the Calamity down on Theta Eridani IV, flown it herself in defence of the Theurgy's ascent, because for the whole week that Covington had spent repairing it in one of the maintenance bays, Rawley had not been too keen to walk in there. It was not like her, but for all the losses they'd suffered in the mutiny and at the hands of the Calamity, her brother being the worst for her, she did not like to see it again.
"This is Ghost to Papa Bear, well done, old man!" she said, not letting the grizzled Chief know how intimidating a sight it had been to see the Chester become disabled by the transphasic torpedoes. Goldie had beamed out before she let her Valkyrie's detonating warp core diminish the ship's shields, or at least that what her sensors said and she really hoped they weren't wrong. So when those torpedoes from a nightmarish future hit their mark, the small Federation warship hadn't stood a chance. "But you know what? Revenge is bloody sweet. Now, I bet you can't fly that thing while singing Mary Mack. Come on now, follow my lead!"
Following Vector 03's trajectory, leading Covington along, Rawley sang on their private channel - firing at interceptors that got close.
"There's a nice wee lass and her name is Mary Mack
Make no mistake, she's the miss I'm going to take
There's a lot of either chaps ... that would get up on her track?
But I'm thinking they'll have to get up early..."
Sten was no fighter pilot. He never once pretended to be one, didn't even envy them the freedom they had taking those high-performance spacecraft out into the black for more than the maintenance and testing runs he was usually left with. Hell, the closest he had ever been to being personally involved in combat while in an auxiliary craft, before today, was being on a shuttlecraft getting in and out of a hotly contested LZ, and he hadn't even been flying, he was the fellow in charge of groundside traffic control! But now, he was taking a ship that hadn't been invented yet and he had just taken out a Defiant-class ship, with a little help from Rawley to soften up its shields first. And now that he was pulling away and finding places to make himself useful (well, more like letting the fighter's computers do the tactical thinking and him staying within the suggested flight profile, with his weapons set to auto-fire as much as possible), he heard that invitation on a private channel. "Oh you've got to be kidding me," he muttered to himself before keying responding. "Why the fuck not, Ghost? Not like it'll be my first bad idea of the fucking day," he grumbled back. Because, well, at this point there was little he could do. So he joined her in song.
"Mary Mack's father is making Mary Mack marry me
My father is making me marry Mary Mack
And I'm going to marry Mary to get married and take care of me
We'll all be making merry when I marry Mary Mack"
Rawley laughed, releasing her last micro torpedoes against a fighter element of interceptors that tried to engage with them. She had no illusions that they might survive any more, even if some of the Orcus' fighters had decided to side with them because of old allegiances between pilots among the wolves. When the first one detonated, she began the next verse.
"This wee lass she has a lot of brass
She has a lot of gas, her father thinks I'm class
An I'd be a silly ass to let the matter pass
For her father thinks she suits me fairly."
That woman, she was fucking ad-libbing while flying in combat? Covington had long known fighter pilots were a breed of Starfleet officers apart. But he'd only grasped they were all a little nuts to some degree on an intellectual level for he'd never experienced it on his own, especially since he was only plugged in to their comms when a bird needed to come in to land for any reason at all. But now, he found himself with a lot more respect for their particular set of skills, and the fact they must be clinically insane. And still, he listened to her singing.
"Now Mary and her man.... and awful lot together
In fact you never see the ... or the man without the other
And the fellows often wonder if it's Mary or her mother
Or the ... of them together that I'm.... Gah! Fuck it."
And that was when a nightmare dropped out of warp. A whole pile of starships, radiating identities that filled his tactical display. Task Force Archeron. There was no way they could stand up to this. But as they arrived, more unknown icons flashed onto his display and were quickly marked as friendlies. Strange ships, circular, and oddly maneuverable despite that kind of unusual geometry. And if he'd time to think, he would recognize them as the kind popularized in the early twentieth century. But what he knew is that things were going to shit.
But then, the recall order came from the Bridge, and all Sten could do was press the 'acknowledge' button on his console, and fly back through the storm of fire that was everywhere now. So all he could do was hold on tight, and hope his shields would hold as he followed the prompts for a combat landing in the fighter bay.
The Allegiant had just reached Vector 03, where she might dock underneath its pointed front section, when Rawley saw what Papa Bear did. She fell silent too - the might of Task Force Archeron filling her viewscreen.
"Papa Bear?" she said quietly, "if we make it through this, and your old ass is still in one piece, I'll see you on the holodeck again. Deal?"
- FIN
[ Deacon | Guest Quarters to Shuttlebay | Starbase 84 ]
Deacon paced uneasily about his quarters. For all their so-called amenities, he found the simple suite of rooms far too confining and growing ever more so by the minute. Explosions thundered against the hull of the starbase and shuddered through the vast interior like a raging storm on the plains back home. But at home, he had shelter, he had control, he had purpose, family, a life...
He stopped, his breath coming quickly, almost panting, his hearts beating heavily in his chest, the cold panic at the pit of his stomach. Another explosion. The bulkhead nearby creaked. To human ears, such a noise would have gone wholly unnoticed, but his senses were hyper compensating, and what they missed, his mind was eager to ad lib. While he'd maintained his stoic and unbothered facade for the humans, alone, he knew that his nerves were spent and frayed.
"Calm yourself," he said, as if giving voice to his willpower might somehow give it strength as well.
He trained his golden eyes towards the implacable black screen behind which sat the computer that tied his room to the remainder of the station. All he had to do was open his mouth and ask what was going on. And yet his senses were already telling him enough. Would the unfeeling words of some lifeless device make him feel any better?
He stared at the black screen and his own reflection in its surface. Another explosion, another groan like the cry of some metal leviathan. The lights flickered -- only a moment -- but Deacon could see the look in his reflection, the golden eyes seeking reassurance. He'd seen such looks many times in the aftermath of countless outpost raids... and now that look haunted his own features.
The guards that normally stood sentinel outside his quarters had been called away to deal with some emergency on another deck. They had been polite enough to ask him to stay in his quarters, but not insightful enough to lock the door, and Deacon was, quite frankly, done with this cage. If he could not trust the humans to act on his warnings and could not trust them to have a care for his safety and well-being, then the time had come for a new strategy -- one that first involved extracating himself from this rattling deathtrap of a station before it imploded on him.
Stepping out into the corridor, he found it completely devoid of activity despite the obvious chaos that assailed the exterior. He started walking with a determined pace, relying on his memory of the station layout from his regularly escorted excursions. Under the circumstances, he'd have preferred a weapon of some sort, but he was a "guest" and humans had forbade the kzinti anything more than peacekeeping gear for the last three centuries as punishment for the wars. Luckily for him, what the kzinti were denied, they practiced to become... Deacon was anything but defenseless.
Still, a phaser would have been nice.
The corridors turned and branched and wandered off in a dozen directions, all looking more or less the same. To the untrained or uninitiated, it would be quite overwhelming to navigate the halls under such circumstances, but Deacon was observant. The Black Priests had instilled that lesson in him from an early age. While the rest of his kind might rush in uninformed and unprepared, the Black Priests watched and learned. This was how they had maintained their position for so long -- who could opposed those who saw everything from the shadows? Even the Patriarchy dared not speak against the Black Priests.
The fur on the back of his neck bristled with pride at this train of thought, a cocky smirk playing at the side of his mouth, until the realization again hit that he stood on a Federation starbase having turned against his people, the Patriarchy, the Black Priests... his grandfather. And why? For some tiny fragment of humanity that he'd been unable to cast aside?
While his thoughts betrayed him, his memory did not as his steady pace and long stride brought him to the shuttlebay he had spied only two days prior. The guards had done their best to steer him away from what they no doubt considered a secure area. He spent the rest of that sojourn touring the arboretum... again. But not today.
The door slid open with a woosh. Clearly the shuttlebay wasn't half as secure as they thought. But who was he to tell them how to do their jobs? He entered what appeared to be a ferry station of sorts, likely intended to bring personnel into the guest wing when they otherwise could not or would not use the transporters. All the better for him. Transporter rooms had tighter security -- he'd seen that as well. And besides, where would he transport to? No, he needed a ship. Everything else would come after.