Star Trek: Theurgy

CH2: S [Day 2 | 2315 hrs] For all the blood-tainted stars...

January 22, 2025, 10:20:34 PM

[Ens. Talia “Shadow” Al-Ibrahim | Cockpit | Wolf-04, AC-409 Mk. III Valkyrie] Attn: @P.C. Haring @Stegro88 @rae @Pierce @Any and All Wolves
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Open war in the void.

For as long as sentient life existed, there had always been war; tribe against tribe, civilizations against barbarian hordes, whole species against other species. War was nothing new – only the weapons and shades of blood changed. Violence begat violence, escalating feuds to grudges and grudges to vendettas, until the minds of reasoned and reasonable beings soured with the insanity of blood-lust. Empires rose to spread themselves across the stars, sword in hand, even in an age of technological wonder where resources were rendered nearly infinite. In an age that should have made war obsolete, it still lingered on. Talia thought she knew war; she’d studied it, of course, like all of her peers at the Academy. All those great, awful battles of the past – in all their multitudes – that stained the history of mankind red: the genocides, the purges, the pogroms and geopolitical upheavals, the massacres and the atrocities. The devastation mankind unleashed upon itself as well, which practically doomed the Earth and the human race to a slow, inevitable extinction, if not for Zefram Cochrane and the intervention of the Vulcans.

Even the Dominion War, for all its horror and loss, had captivated and inspired her. She had poured over every battle-report, every memoir, every first-hand account; every tale of heroism and sacrifice back-lit by conjured imagery of vast fleets tearing into each other: The tactical genius of Sisko, the stalwart resolve of Martok. The undeniable courage of every Peregrine crew…she thought she knew war – was prepared for it – but seventeen minutes into the Battle of the Triangle had taught Shadow more of war than she’d ever imagined possible.

It was a physical assault on the senses, even within the confines of the cockpit: weapons fire flashed and flared without pause, explosions, detonations, blazing impacts across hulls and shields – were everywhere. There was a constant stream of voices in her ears; mission ops, fellow pilots, the awkward snarls of their Klingon allies – more than once they had all overlapped to the point of gibberish – until someone managed to clear the coms for a few moments, only for the cycle to repeat, over and over. Her ship bucked and shuddered with every hit, sending a tactile shiver into her body, bone deep; she was well past her normal point of physical endurance, forced to dip into wells of stamina she never truly realized were there. The smell of her own sweat and hot, adrenaline-fear soaked breath permeated her nostrils – easily ignored in the face of survival – but undeniably there.

It was madness made manifest; violence on a scale no one could truly understand unless they experienced it. Her eyes couldn’t track the engagement fast enough. Anahi, her ship’s on-board computer, fed targets to Shadow’s HUDs faster than the pilot could cognitively recognize, through the shared tactical uplink with the Ranger and her fellow Wolves. Data streamed from every direction she looked, seared into her vision; the behemoth D’Deridex class warbirds in their dozens hung like mythological monsters of the void, dwarfing everything to unleash streams of brilliant emerald energy. Around them, the Klingon attack groups splintered off into squadrons of B’rel attackers, flanked by Vor’cha cruisers. Flanking them, in unpredictable waves, the smaller, agile Romulan Mogai warbirds struck with ruthless abandon to cripple and pick off stragglers by the score. Throughout the entire sphere of conflict, fighter-craft from both sides cloaked and de-cloaked in random engagements; whole squadrons broke off on bombing runs, others paired up, dueled, disengaged or were destroyed.

“Allah, there’s so many,” Shadow breathed out in a grimace as she rolled hard, trying to stay with Goldeneye. A second later, a deft sweep of her left hand blanked her HUDs. “Track visual only, tactical data overlay only,” she grunted aloud to Anahi, then yanked the stick back hard to invert her turn. Target-lock alarms squealed as her rear shields lit up under fire, but held. A glance up and behind revealed three Stalkers on her six, wheeling around in aggressive pursuit. “Three on my six Goldie, lets move,” she warned, then focused on their objective: one of three D’Deridex leviathans that were currently unloading on the Helmet. “Anahi, target selections primary alpha through charlie. Highlight soft targets,” Talia ordered, then keyed into the joint-squadron channel while she maneuvered for a hard-torp lock, while the Helmet fired back with scarlet lances of energy at her attackers. A steady, shrill tone sounded in her ears as the lock shifted green; Talia thumbed the trigger, launching two full sized quantums an instant behind her wingmate – all four tracked ahead to the starboard upper wing of the giant warbird as the pair of Valkyrie’s pulled up and rolled out of their run.

“Wolves, Shadow – tally on the Helmet, she’s under heavy fire. Three and Four are engaged, anyone else in range to assist?” The stars spun beyond her canopy, lit with a myriad of shades of green and fire. Far off to port, beyond the battle-line of massive Romulan ships, the Ranger fought on, cutting her way through towards the Helmet, the void ablaze around her in a cloud of PDC fire. Talia watched her shields light up on nearly all sides, enduring an unbelievable amount of punishment.

Talia leveled out on Goldeneye's wing, as the pair made ready for another torp run, as the D'Deridex answered with a hammering burst of disruptor fire. The Helmet can't take much more of this, she thought, eyes hardened with resolve as she got tone. "Ready when you are, Goldie," she announced, just as half a dozen Klingon Phantoms de-cloaked in formation beside them.

["Qa'plah!"], a voice roared, or maybe all of them, as they joined their fire into the attack.

---

OOC: Okay folks, here we have the big battle at the end of the Episode. This thread is intended to be told from the POV of the Wolves/other pilots only, however, if you would like to jump in and NPC a Romulan/Klingon pilot to mix things up and/or add drama to the scene, I think that would be pretty cool and welcome. So, ALL Wolves are welcome, and ALL writers are welcome too, so long as you stick to our POV (as a bunch of idiots doing really stupid things at really high velocities). Have fun

Re: CH2: S [Day 2 | 2315 hrs] For all the blood-tainted stars...

Reply #1 – June 07, 2025, 02:40:57 PM

[ Dominic Winters | Wolf 10 | Local Space | U.S.S Theurgy ATTN: @Dumedion @rae @Pierce @Stegro88 @P.C. Haring - All Wolves.


Flying in this battle, evading incoming energy weapons, and engaging targets at varying ranges with the tools he had at his disposal. The Phaser emitters on his wings fired at pursuing individuals who got onto Dom’s tail or tried to do so. This battle felt like he was back in the Dominion War. Klingons and Federation on one side and a technologically superior enemy on the other. In this case, it was the Romulans, their cloaking technology was second to none and their disruptors were not a weapon to underestimate. There was so much going on in the battlefield that he had switched his comms to his current squadron and coordinated with Theurgy’s different sections, Ranger, and Helmet. Everything else was fed through to one of the side displays.

He maintained a chillingly calm demeanour in the chaos of this battle, for his culture as far as he understood a battle like this would bring great honour to the warriors who fought in it. For victory was most certainly not guaranteed, and within a moment, a life could be snuffed like a candle in the wind from a stray energy blast or by being the unexpected target of a foe getting the tactical edge over you. 

Having been seperated from his pack by a swarm of Stalkers, Dom weaved around the wreckage of a Mogai while trying to track his way back when he got the call from Shadow. “Wolves, Shadow – tally on the Helmet, she’s under heavy fire. Three and Four are engaged, anyone else in range to assist?”

“Wolf-04 this is Wolf-10 I read you. Coming in hot from Starboard side of Helmet. Target in sight.”

Came his quick response as he dove out from the remains of the Mogai and crested over the dorsal section of the Helmet. The shields were ablaze with energy discharges from the assaulting D’deredix Warbird as it got utterly hammered by the enemy. He had a quick think about such a ship and from old simulations that he and his old crew had done on a hypothetical of taking down something this large.

“Wolf-10 to all. I have an idea. Target the engineering bay along the ventral base of the head. Target data will be coming. I have two hounds, when I drop one and wreck the shields, lay in torpedoes. All we need is one good hit to disrupt the Singularity and watch a D’deridex suck itself. I’ll be danger close on the pull out, so watch the aim!”

He plunged his fighter into a tight dive down the front of the warbird, passing briefly through its Cone of Vulnerability and narrowly avoiding a blast of disruptor fire while his phaser emitters delivered some inaccurate blasts against the face of the craft. As soon as he cleared the nose, Dom swung Wolf-10 around and deployed the Cannon. Its particle laser painting the target and firing pulse-phaser blasts while his computer transmitted the targeting telemetry towards the others. As soon as he was in range, Dom initiated his pull up and dropped the Hellhound at the same location. A spectacular explosion rocked the shields of the D’deridex Warbird and now, it was in the hands of Shadow, Goldeneye and their Klingon Allies to punch a torpedo through the severely weakened shields and into their engineering section.

If done right, it should cause a cascade failure that would disrupt the stability of the microsingularity and cause the ship to implode or explode.

Re: CH2: S [Day 2 | 2315 hrs] For all the blood-tainted stars...

Reply #2 – June 16, 2025, 05:49:54 PM

[Romulan Strike Craft | Dogfight Near the Triangle ] Attn: All Involved in Fighter Combat @P.C. Haring  @Stegro88 @rae  @Pierce @Dumedion @Krajin 

The burning wreckage of what had once been a wingmate spiraled past her canopy, the green aurora of a ruptured singularity core still flickering violently as it trailed into the void. The pilot swore under her breath in the clipped, guttural Romulan dialect of her home province, fingers tightening on the controls as her strike craft dove hard beneath the dorsal arc of a Federation Valkyrie.

*How were they this good?*

She had fought Andorians in skirmishes along the shattered borders of the Velorum sector, danced against Klingon raiders testing the nerves of the divided Empire. But these Theurgy bastards flew like predators—coordinated, brutal, fast. And unlike her own half-panicked wingmates, the Federation pilots didn’t just react—they *hunted.*

Her sensor grid flared with another contact loss. A Mogai-class wing support had just vanished in a pulse of light. She grimaced, banking starboard, trying to shake the lock the human pilot had on her. Plasma bursts flicked past her cockpit, lighting the narrow space in pulses of orange and white. A momentary break in the crossfire let her breathe again.

"Maintain squadron formation!" she barked into the encrypted combat net, but there was no answer from her flight leader. Just static and screams.

And yet, through it all, her targeting systems were a mess. Her lock-on sequences refused to hold—*jamming? no, too precise*—as if the Starfleet fighters were dancing one heartbeat ahead of her every attempt to fix a torpedo track. Her fists slammed into the side of her console in frustration.

"This should not be happening. We *outnumber* them!" she hissed.

But then… something even stranger.

Her HUD pinged a contact ahead—a Romulan shuttlecraft, one of the newer Peregrine-pattern retrofits—but instead of banking into the expected defensive arc, it fired. *At another Romulan vessel.*

"What in the Elements…?"

Her eyes darted across the tactical feed. Two, no, *three* more strike-craft were peeling away from their defensive screen and engaging the tail end of the carrier wing. Green disruptor fire lanced across the void, hitting *Romulan hulls.* Was it a malfunction? Sabotage?

Or something darker.

*Have they turned on us? Who gave that order?*

Her confusion clouded the moment. A warp-sheer ripple narrowly missed her port nacelle as a passing fighter spun through the wreckage of a broken Valravn. Her focus snapped back.

And then—*yes.*

Her targeting grid flared emerald green. A lock. Clean, stable, undeniable. A Federation fighter—angled just right, its electronic countermeasures lagging half a second too long. Her weapons primed automatically.

"Target acquired," she whispered, a slow smile spreading across her lips. Her finger hovered over the trigger. “Time to even the score.”