Vortex (Part 1 of 3)

Posted on 24 Jun 2015 @ 1:50am by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Captain Jonathan Holliday & Commander Norvi Stace & Commander Allyndra illm Warraquim & Commander Andreus Kohl & Lieutenant JG Grayson Jones & Ensign K'os Beaumont & Lieutenant Benice Gyce Ph.D. & Lieutenant JG Manuel Lucero & Lieutenant JG Tinaro Cyi & Lieutenant Min Zhao & Lieutenant Jared Nicholas & Jynn & Lieutenant JG Drusilla McCarthy & Lieutenant Tuula Voutilainen M.D.

2,302 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 08 - NIMBUS
Location: USS Galileo - Various
Timeline: MD 02 - 1945 hrs

Previously, on Skirmishcide (Part 2)...

The simulated battle continued for close to twenty more minutes, eventually devolving into a chaotic furball of silver and green-hulled starships all jockeying for optimal firing position against each other. An elaborate light display of harmless phaser and disruptor fire brightened the dark cosmos and illuminated every starship in the vicinity, occasionally accented by a red photon torpedo volley or a cerulean quantum torpedo strike.

Once all the simulated torpedo ordinance had been exhausted and several starships had pulled out of the fight due to simulated catastrophic damage, both Lirha and Ja'taQ signaled their respective task groups to call an official cease fire to the exercises. The annual NIMBUS exercises had officially concluded, and now it was time to evaluate each side's performance before reporting back to the brass.

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

After the wargames had concluded less than two hours ago, Lirha had recalled all personnel to their respective starships which meant Galileo's crew was finally reunited aboard the tiny Nova-class. Normally such an occasion would warrant a celebration of some type, but instead the Orion rear admiral had business to conduct in the form of an official debriefing following the recent skirmish. It was time to evaluate and process the information the Starfleet crews had gathered, as well as briefly evaluate the performance of the different crews.

Lirha now stood in Galileo's large observation lounge, and the large windows gave a perfect view of the celestial bodies twinkling in the distance while the starship slowly cruised in formation alongside its Klingon and Federation counterparts. She turned back from the window to see her entire senior staff assembled, then cleared her throat to begin the debriefing.

"Welcome back. I must admit I am impressed with the initial data from our engagement with the KDF," she began while taking a quick glance down at the PADD clasped in her hand.

"I believe the official simulated count is four starships destroyed -- two Federation and two Klingon -- and three starships rendered crippled, two Federation and one Klingon. And...considering the new technology we were up against, that is a rather strong accomplishment. Captains and other senior staff, would you care to share your thoughts on your starship's and crew's performance?" The overhead lights in the observation lounge briefly flickered then corrected themselves, causing to glance upwards for a short moment before looking back at the assembled officers.

After returning her attention back to the room, Stace decided to take the mantle, having been assigned command of the ship they were currently debriefing on. It was an odd feeling for the Trill; to now take a step back from her command but to not return to her usual Chief Science Officer teal. She enjoyed it, but it wasn't without its emotional discomforts. She smiled widely, content that she and her crew had performed their best and was happy to report thus.

"The crew under my command were exemplary, Admiral." She then cut a glance to Captain Holliday to affirm her sentiment. "Only highlighting the ship's combative limitations in such a mission by their skills. We knew going in that next to an Akira and Sovereign, the humble Nova would need assistance when it came to defence. But I do think that the addition of the secondary deflector to our armament meant that our value in such an engagement was greatly increased." Stace then looked to her own First Officer, Allyndra, and then nodded for her to continue.

Allydnra caught the look from her erstwhile Captain. "An excellent job by everyone. We had initial success detecting the gravitational waves of the moving mass of the ships and in close proximity the new array was able to completely reveal and jam." She smiled but showed those sharp inner teeth. "I am sure the Klingons were much more surprised then we were. Their over confidence showed in their tactical setup and they had no response once their cloaks were no longer any good."

"The Chronos did as well as she could do weighed down almost entirely be Cadets of the greenest nature." Holliday replied, trying to make his abhorrance sound more like a report than a personal observation.

"That said - they quickly identified the difference between their intake manifolds and their plasma conduits. I will report back to Red Squad's instructors in due course."

He also made it his business to ensure he reviewed the crew complement of any starships he would be setting foot on for any length of time in the near future in case such an event as this decided to happen again.

"I think they learned a thing or two from this little simulation."

Seated at the table in his uniform of black, grey and teal, Andreus Kohl was also suffering from some manner of identify confusion. The last time he had gathered together with Galileo's senior staff, he had been serving as Chief Research Officer. As much as Stace had granted him leadership leeway with the science staff, he had been a Department Head in a department of one. Sitting here now, he had commanded a starship and had been named Chief Science Officer of a science-specialty starship. Such recognition was starting to take the edge off the vein of insecurity that had run through his career in Galileo's science department.

"Nautilus is one sturdy starship with strong bones to her. Although not cadets, her crew was inexperienced as well," Kohl said. He bit his lower lip to keep himself from adding, myself most of all, to his report. "We took a beating at the start and we were drifting by the end, but our phaser emitters never stopped flashing. We never stopped defending Galileo and the flagship. Even over the course of the war games, I saw great learnings from my senior staff. They're going to do the Nautilus proud on its next tour of duty."

"The Aventia was one of the first considered lost in action," T'Vanna reported, "I haven't really observed things as I was thrown into a command position somewhere halfway through, and I have no command experience. I felt...thrown in the deep end, and rather lost if you will. But with Lieutenant Wyatt injured in the attack, I had to take over. I'll admit, the destruction was probably on me as I have no idea how to run a ship."

Lirha piped up and gave her own assessment of her starship's efficiency. "For the most part, the crew of Atlas performed well. There were a few cases when orders were not relayed within the desired time frame, but such was to be expected while multi-tasking in a combat environment." The lights flickered again in the observation lounge and suddenly went offline bathing the room in a cloud of darkness for several moments before they came back online, prompting Lirha to frown and look over towards Stace.

Stace matched the admiral's frown of confusion and then with a blank expression shook her head in small, dismissive shakes. "No idea, Admiral, I'm sorry." the Trill stated unsolicited. "I promise I handed her back over in the same condition as I got her."

With a tap on her commbadge, the Orion summoned Main Engineering to inquire. "Saalm to Engineering...is everything alright over there? We seem to be experiencing power fluctuations in the observation lounge."

While happy to be back in Engineering, Grayson was less than thrilled it was partly due to technical complications. A cascading power relay fault in the new deflector was causing problems across the ship's power grid and so far Engineering was doing their best to keep up. Looking up at some unknown entity in the ceiling, the Chief Engineer responded, "Not just there Admiral. All over the ship. I have a team working on protecting the key systems, but there is a cascading power failure caused by the capacitors in the new deflector array. We are about to reboot affected systems. I do need to take the new deflector offline though until we get to the root of the problem."

The power failure didn't make a lot of sense to K'os and the other engineers and that compounded the problem. He continued his work of rebooting systems but it didn't seem to be making any difference. K'os looked up from his workstation and gave Jones a questing eyebrow. If they didn't isolate the problem soon, they would have a much bigger problem.

Holliday might not have been the ranking officer on the ship, but Galileo was still his command, and as such it was his duty to take command of the situation.

=^=Mr Grayson this is Holliday. Can you contain the problem or are we looking at something more serious?=^=

Grayson continued to tap away furiously at his main station in Engineering. At that moment, all ships systems he could possibly have access to were being routed through there, monitored and adjusted. "If we can get the situation locked down in the next few moments, we will be fine. Any longer than that and we are looking at blowing out the power grid next to the deflector. I'm using the holodeck again to channel excess power in this...situation there. Problem is, the ship was used to using so much power for so long. The deflector has decided it no longer needed the power stored up in it's capacitors and is giving it back to the ship in the wrong way. No one could have predicted this," he was still typing at a blistering speed, "the joys of new tech and the complications that goes with it. Beaumont," he nodded to his assistant, as if to suggest, 'whatever I am about to say, go do it'. "is shutting down the new deflector and restricting it's access to the power grid."

With a calm nod, K'os was already in the process of sending the relevant commands to shut the deflector down. Curiously, he was having trouble doing so. Either the dish wasn't responding, or the power surge was affecting the control signals he was trying to send. Either way, it seemed the situation was escalating quickly. Rather than focus on shutting the deflector down, he made a quick decision to make a few modifications to the system controls so they at least wouldn't be locked out by the power surges.

"Understood. Admiral, forgive me, but I feel this briefing will need to end earlier than planned." Holliday replied, turning to face his superior officer.

=^=All hands - yellow alert. Report to stations and await further instructions.=^=

Lirha's eyes went a bit wide at the sudden revelation of a yellow alert condition aboard the ship. Normally her place would have been on the bridge during such circumstances -- had she been the vessel's captain -- but as the mission advisor, her job was now to lend a hand wherever necessary.

Nodding to the rest of the assembled officers who were preparing to depart the room, she gave them a quick informative relay of her future actions. "I will be in main engineering," she said, before swiftly walking out through the door and across the hallways of deck 7 towards the ship's primary power control center.

Pushing his chair back from the table, Andreus Kohl made his way to his feet, and the next thing he knew, he was making his way to the Bridge. This would be his first time serving the Captain as Chief Science Officer. It was fortunate the yellow alert -the urgency- kept any thought of jitters from his mind. Kohl reminded himself of all the other times he had worked from the primary Science console. This time would be no different, he told himself.

"Security team Alpha-Two, this is Lieutenant Benice. Meet me and Admiral Saalm outside main engineering," Gyce spoke as she tapped her badge and looked respectfully to Holiday. "SOP states no flag officer goes into a potentially dangerous area without escort, Sir."

Holliday nodded to his security officer, protocol was protocol and in the event of an emergency he would want to be sure that he could remove the flag officer from the situation and if need be, the ship.

"Indeed. The Admiral is your first priority in the event this all goes south fast Lieutenant Benice. Get her and your team to safety however necessary - understood?"

"Phasers on stun, if she does something stupid, Sir," Gyce promised. Though she hoped it would not come to that. Gyce quickly left in pursuit of Admiral Saalm.

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

RADM Lirha Saalm
Mission Advisor
USS Galileo

CAPT Jonathan Holliday
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant j.g. T'Vanna Murray
CIO
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Manuel Lucero V
Asst. Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

Cadet SO Wintrow Paragon
Support craft pilot
USS Galileo
[PNPC T'Vanna]

Lieutenant JG Jynn
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant Commander Andreus Kohl
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Grayson Jones
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant Min Nicholas (ne Zhao)
Chief Operations Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Tuula Voutilainen
Medical Officer
USS Galileo

Lt. Jared Nicholas
Linguist
USSGalileo

Ens K'os Beaumont
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS Galileo

Crewman Apprentice Sigrid Thelin
Scientist's Mate
[ PNPC Beaumont ]
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Benice Gyce
Security Investigations Officer
USS Galileo

Commander Norvi Stace
First Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant JG Drusilla McCarthy
Chief Counsellor
USS Galileo

Lt Cmdr Allyndra illm Warraquim
Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

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