That's No Moon...

Posted on Wed Jul 20th, 2016 @ 4:46am by Captain Charybdis MacGregor & Commander Fiona McCray & Lieutenant Commander Selune
Edited on on Wed Jul 20th, 2016 @ 4:47am

0 words; about a 1 minute read

Mission: Taking Chances
Location: USS Bonne Chance, Deck One, the Bridge
Timeline: 2265

The console became a blur of action as Selune desperately tried to shift the suddenly sluggish feeling starship out of the line of fire, fighting back the sudden panic welling in the back of her mind as she worked to determine the best solution to minimizing the already inevitable damage. Not on my first day, damn it all, she cursed as multiple warnings flared.

The impact rocked the ship, rattling the artificial gravity and hurling everyone first to the left, then to the right before she settled. "Damage report!" Lieutenant Charybdis called as she made certain that Lieutenant Fiona McCray was all right- she who'd had the presence of mind to maintain a deathgrip on something solid- before the voluptuous Vulcanoid vaulted over the railing to land deftly on her rounded rear in the captain's chair.

Superstition be damned; she was in command and they were under attack.

"They targeted our weapons systems ma'am, took out phasers and forward torpedo launchers, aft launchers offline, shields holding but they're wobbly. Injuries on decks six, ten, eleven seventeen... they knew right where to hit us ma'am!" reported Ensign Rondborstig from the comm.

"Helm, get us some distance, bring us about two one seven mark seven two, full impulse. Let's give them a moving target, Lieutenant Selune... show 'em what you've got. Full evasive maneuvers. Fiona..."

The engineer was already halfway across the bridge and picking up speed " On it!" she barked back over her shoulder then began snapping orders over her communicator to engineering. She didn't bother with the lift- she headed straight for the access ladders and began descending to her domain with the agility of a spider monkey.

"Dodging asteroids is much easier in a shuttle," Selune muttered, ignoring the soft chimes of collision alerts and casting her eyes across the various readouts on her console as the Bonne Chance cleared an asteroid larger than her last assignment. "They've begun to move," she called out distractedly, "multiple surface thrusters firing up, as well as several ion maneuvering thrusters... it's a pretty crude conglomeration effort but they'll be gaining on us fairly soon if we don't do something about it."

Scrambling back to the science station Charybdis nudged her relief, whom Ensign Rondborstig had called to the bridge out of the way to regard and study the scans, and it verified what her helmsman had told her from sheer experience. The mobile asteroid carrier was indeed building up speed, and it would be gaining on them in short order. She left Ensign Sato covering her station and returned to the duty that awaited her, suddenly wishing it were not hers to bear- but it was, and she would face it.

In the big chair, Charybdis was thinking at a rapid pace. The Nausicaans were gaining on them... which was good in the fact that they could not launch fighters against the Bonne Chance. However, they were gaining despite the nimble Caitan helmsman's best efforts, and the damage control reports were not encouraging. Snapping the comm panel on the right armrest she hit the direct line to Engineering. "Lieutenant McCray, can you give me any weapons control at all?"

Fiona tossed aside the hand held fire extinguisher she'd been using and pitched her voice to carry over the klaxons and chaos. "Negative, lass... they knew just where tae hit us. We've got nothin in tha phasers an if we attempt to fire the photons with the tubes damaged we'll blow ourselves oop!" She sounded disgusted.

"Jaysus, it's a mess down here... step away for a bite of lunch an all hell breaks loose. Tha shields have issues too, we're barely keepin the debris off of our hull."

While her mind raced Charybdis watched the viewscreen, seeing the millions of micrometeors gently nudging aside as the deflector screen pulsed them out of the way, the standard that made starship travel possible. She could use those paths to track spacecraft flight paths even when the energy trails had faded, but there was something about them... so thick and dense out here that they rendered her scanners almost useless, but the seed of an idea was trying to grow in her fertile mind if she could just stay calm and focus.

Even if Fiona could get the photon torpedo launchers online they would still need to get one right into the flight deck to do any appreciable damage to the Nausicaan asteroid carrier, and their shields were likely concentrated there, overlapping from a half dozen scavenged shield generators. They had been attacked unprovoked, but Captain O'Conner would still want proof to confirm his theory that they were working for the Syndicate, she realized. Step one- define the enemy, fulfill the secondary mission parameters and stall for time. She steepled her fingers in front of her lips, then called over her shoulder.

"Ensign, open hailing frequencies. Inform the Nausicaan carrier that we wish to negotiate terms of surrender."

There was a strangled curse from engineering. "Bugger thet!" the red head made her opinion known over the still open com.

Only years of training kept Selune from joining the rest of the bridge crew in staring mouth agape at the distinctive woman so easily declaring their surrender, and even then only barely. A pin drop could have been heard on the bridge, then after a palpable pause Ensign Rondborstig complied. "Aye ma'am... I have the Nausicaan Admiral Thog online... he is prepared to hear your terms."

"Thank you, Ensign. Put him onscreen," Charybdis said, then she stood and put on her best stone-faced Vulcan impression. Here's hoping I'm as good an actress as I think I am, because everyone knows Vulcans don't lie...

The image onscreen was that of a remarkably ugly individual, even by Nausicaan standards. He was heavily scarred, with grey wiry hair protruding in patches from his head wherever the skin was not shiny, apparently from burns. He sat in what appeared to be a rather padded overstuffed lounge chair which he had decorated with various throws and tapestries to make it appear to be grand, and at his feet were two green-skinned scantily clad Orion... Kolari, she reminded herself... slave girls who were clutching his legs protectively.

"I will not deal with a female... where is your captain?" he bellowed through the universal translator. Charybdis stiffened a bit, folded her hands behind her to pin her shoulders back which of course stuck her chest out a bit, turned slightly in profile then raised her chin towards the screen.

"The Captain is dead, as is the executive officer. I am Lieutenant Charybdis, acting commander." She let it go at that... and sure enough, she was rewarded.

"A Vulcan... I've never had a Vulcan before." Admiral Thog paused as one of the slave girls whispered something to him from behind her hand, then she giggled as he laughed... a rather unpleasant gurgling sound. "So the real officers are gone and it is just you, eh little girl? And you have no weapons to fight with and you cannot outrun us, so you are doing the logical thing and negotiating surrender. Smart... I'd always heard Vulcans were smart. Smart enough to live, maybe."

"If I surrender the ship to you, what will be the disposition of the crew?" she asked dispassionately. "What of the wounded?"

Even Selune managed to find the time for an incredulous stare directed at the commanding officer this time. After all, she was fairly sure she already knew exactly what her disposition would be when they surrendered.

Fiona worked furiously, listening to the hail from Char to the enemy while she did what she did best....fix things. Her orders had become hand signals and quiet words. She'd closed the send from Engineering but superstition had her on silent running anyway. Bless her big green heart, she was stalling for time, trying to buy Fiona as many precious seconds as she could without them getting shot at, and she was lying like a braggart in the pub on a Saturday night. She winced as an asteroid bounced off of the deflectors, and then her eyes widened.

Deflectors... if it could push it could pull. She grabbed her padd and tapped furiously, then sent the old-fashioned text to Char's padd even as she was grabbing a tool box and diving into the accessway that lead to the deflector shield housing.

The Nausicaan Admiral was having a great laugh at the situation. "You are in no condition to dictate terms to me, Vulcan! I will have you and your vessel soon enough, and then perhaps my fleet will grow, hmm? As for your crew... those that survive will be sold into slavery on the auction blocks of the Syndicate."

The second officer raised an eyebrow. "So you admit that you work for the Orion Syndicate?"

Admiral Thog bellowed laughter, even as his slave girls hissed at him. "Of course! What do you care? They are about to become your masters as well, Vulcan... though I may keep you as a prize, a spoil of victory for myself..." he said, some sort of tentacular protrusion snaking its way out of his mouth to stroke the mandibles covering his oral cavity.

"I... see. May I have a moment to prepare the crew?"

"You should stop running if you are serious about surrendering..." he replied as she cut the transmission.

"That should buy us a little time," she said as she sat down in the command chair and flipped the switch to engineering. "Charybdis to Engineering... Miss McCray, I've an idea..."

It wasn't the chief who responded. "Jones here...Chief is in the shield housing," he said abruptly as Char's PADD chirped at her.

The message read - rocks....we can throw rocks. the deflector's polarity can be reversed if we pull enough debris in then we can revert to deflection and amp it up - we'll have to reroute things but it's possible. keep him talking.

Charybdis smiled... somehow the Engineer was on the same page, and she was already working on it. We get out of this alive I am putting you in for a commendation, you tiny devil in short pants she thought to herself as she hopped out of the command chair and stepped to the deflector controls, running the calculations in her head as she went.

Frequency 97.8763 MHZ on main deflector, I will amp the field and maintain control from here once you are ready to flip the polarity. Can you maintain shields to keep our rear safe and roll them on my signal? she sent over the PDD back to Fiona.

There was a pause then a simple one word response. Yes

Down in the tubes it would have been a bit claustrophobic for a larger person, but Fiona had plenty of room to maneuver. She lay half off a beam and stretched to reach the switches, then a hiss escaped her as she received a mild shock from them. The shift would be subtle to cause the debris began to pull closer to the ship... then it would be up to the shields, and the helm.

Sweat rolled down the tiny redhead's nose and she silently thanked the absent Captain for allowing her modified uniform. She could feel the heat through her trousers- without them she would have been gathering some scorches.

Charybdis moved to the helm station and put her hand on Selune's shoulder. "I know that it has been an exceptional first day Lieutenant, but you have done an outstanding job so far. Now I am going to ask you to perform a maneuver that to my knowledge has never been performed with a Constitution class starship before, but I have confidence in your ability."

"Well... as long as one of us has confidence what could go wrong?" she replied, glancing up at the view screen as it veered and pitched under and around the ever present rocks that would have normally simply bounced off the advanced shields of a class I heavy cruiser. "I guess if there was ever a time for crazy plans this would be it," she murmured half to herself.

"Well, it beats surrendering all to hell," the blue-clad Lieutenant said with a grin. This was most definitely not any sort of Vulcan Selune had ever met before... she wasn't sure if she liked this version more or less, but she might not get that much time to make a choice.

"What I need for you to do is reverse our flight direction... we are going to fly her backwards through this asteroid field while the deflector starts grabbing everything we pass and pulling it along. Because we are going to use it to bombard that asteroid carrier and save the ship... but in order to do that you are going to have to fly her close enough to some of these bigger ones to bring them along, and you are going to have to do it at full impulse, and then at the last minute we are going to have to flip out of the way and let velocity handle the rest."

"Now, Chief Engineer McCray is going to make sure the rear shields hold up," Charybdis certainly hoped so, at least. "...so you have a small margin for error. But we have to act now, before they close within weapons range. You can do this Lieutenant Selune... right?" The Vulcan officer peered into the feline eyes, the4 violet eyes searching for the spirit of the generations of pilots who had come before her who had invented maneuvers like this and lived to tell the tale as she transferred additional sensor control to Selune's panel to enable her to navigate via the stellar graviton detectors.

Hell of a first day on the job, kitty she thought to herself.

Selune returned Charybdis' searching look with a blank stare as she ran it through in her mind. Join starfleet they said, see the galaxy they said. Get ordered by crazy Vulcans to fly backwards through an asteroid field while getting chased by creepy alien slavers with next to no shields. I am REALLY going to have to reread that brochure because I do NOT remember this being included in basic travelogue...

"Lieutenant, Admiral Thog is hailing us. He says if we do not come to a full stop he will blow us from the stars."

The curvaceous commander looked down at the feline helmsman and raised an eyebrow inquiringly.

The moment was here, do or die, and Selune knew which one she didn't want, that was for sure. She nodded and gulped, then positioned her hands on the controls waiting for the signal.

Charybdis toggled the comm switch to the engine room on her way past the command chair to her station to better manage the deflector controls. "Fiona, now!"

The engineer grimaced and threw her entire weight against the toggles, then wedged herself against the wall and pounded the recalcitrant controls with her feet. "DO IT YE BLUDDY..." her shout was lost in the scream from the shields and engines. The whole ship protested the sudden change with a deep cavitating shudder.

But the mighty vessel rolled over in place and reversed her orientation without changing direction, flying backwards through the asteroid field like a bumblebee in a rainstorm as the deflectors suddenly became a great gravitic dragnet, tugging at every object nearby and bringing it hurling on a collision course with the Bonne Chance.

Switches flipped and numbers punched in as Charybdis recalculated and revised the fields from the science station, causing the deflector's power to be weaker than normal but broadcast over a much wider area. They had never been designed for this, but Fiona was supporting her efforts in Engineering, keeping power flowing steadily to the system even while preventing it from burning out doing something it was never designed to do. Given the situation she may as well give the bridge crew their due, she reasoned and called for "Viewscreen, forward view."



The bridge crew could see the larger asteroids beginning to tumble along as they were caught up in their wake, rocketing along even as millions of smaller meteoroids caught the light and seemed to make the debris field sparkle as it grew larger and larger, accelerating faster by the moment. Beyond the avalanche they were building could be seen the ominous asteroid carrier of the Nausicaans, steadily gaining on them.

 

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