Tough Little Ship (Part 3 of 3)

Posted on 13 Jul 2012 @ 7:49pm by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Captain Jonathan Holliday & Lieutenant Commander Chauncey Remington III (KIA) & Lieutenant Commander Dea Mialin & Lieutenant JG Kestra Orexil & Lieutenant Commander Pola Ni Dhuinn M.D. & Lieutenant JG Delainey Carlisle & Lieutenant Commander Evelyn Coleman & Lieutenant Theron Rhodes & Lieutenant Aria Rice & Lieutenant Kiri Cho & Commander Andreus Kohl & Commander Scarlet Blake & Command Master Chief Markum Quinn & Lieutenant Lilou Zaren & Chief Petty Officer Lucalin Mrina Ph.D. & Ensign Im'er Mor'an & Chief Warrant Officer 2 Arthur Willis & EMH Mark X-C "Shirley" & Rachel Hardaway Ph.D. & Anthony Hardaway Ph.D. & Justice Abernathy Ph.D. (MIA) & Eric Anderson & Emma Kennedy (MIA) & Captain (HoD) K'nara of the House of Torath (KIA) & Lieutenant JG Brayden White Ph.D.

3,605 words; about a 18 minute read

Mission: Episode 01 - Project Sienna
Location: USS Galileo - Bridge, Various
Timeline: MD 07 - 2155 hrs

Previously...

Still having the bridge to cover, Pola addressed the computer once again, "How many injuries and to what degree on the bridge computer?"

"Unknown - internal sensors are offline on decks 1 and 2. Damage to secondary data subprocessors must be repaired before accurate readings can be obtained. Based on previous information repors there are no life threatening injuries currently reported on the Bridge."

Rubbing her hand across her forehead, Pola made an executive decision based on the information she had at hand. The bridge would be full of senior officers all trained in basic first aid so they would be able to treat minor injuries. If there was no life threatening injuries then the injured needing attention from a Doctor would be able to get here on their own. When she weighted everything up, including her lack of manpower it was obvious it would be time wasted sending anyone to the bridge right now. Set on that knowledge, she headed towards the injured pouring in, metaphorically rolling up her sleeves as she prepared to get busy.

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

Engineering

Weightlessness was not Theron's favorite thing, even with all the simulated and practical training. It definately was not practical when tossed about the large expanse of Engineering. He collided with ships frame about 3 meters off the deck and held on. He knew the gravity would compensate. He just did not want to be compensated wroughly to the deck. From his position it was easier to climb to the upper deck than down.

Quinn held onto the MSD as gravity ceased in Main Engineering. He noticed the starboard nacelle was going offline. "Someone get gravity back on-line! I'm going up to the starboard nacelle."

Willis pushed himself against the bulkhead and floated over to a group of smoking conduits. "I need a new neural gel pack and some ODN cord. I may be able to reroute power from the batteries to the artificial gravity servo."

Quinn began his trek into the jefferies tubes and his ascent into the strut that held the starboard nacelle.


Bridge

On the bridge, Lirha was tossed forward by the sudden intense jolt, and despite her strong grip on the chair's supports, she quickly found herself sprawled over the side of it with one hand holding onto her console for dear life. Overhead power nodes on the ceiling burst into sparks which rained down on the center stations, accompanied by plumes of electrical smoke. The foul smell of charred wiring and melted plastics seeped into her nostrils, and Lirha slowly rightened herself in her chair as she glanced around the bridge.

The console right beside Eve ruptured; spewing fire, sparks and smoke. Evelyn collapsed on the floor, the force of the impact knocking not just her but her chair as well over. She covered her face as the sparks and debris fell on her. As the ship stopped shaking, she pushed herself up off the floor and tried to get her station back in working order.

As the bridge shook, Lilou's head snapped forward onto the console edge. It hurt, but she wasn't bleeding and she could still see, so she let it go, using the pain to focus her again. Grumbling to herself, she crawled past peoples' feet, pried an already loose panel off the Intelligence officer's console and shoved her head inside amidst the sparks. Moments later, she'd crawled completely inside, wedging herself past wires and cables and yanking the power routing the neighboring, fiery console from the inside. The console went dead. She dragged the cable back, jury-rigged a reroute, and rerouted the power to the secondary console. About a minute later, she hauled herself bodily back out, slapped the side of the Intelligence console hard, and the lights came back on. "Stupid overloads. Need to rewire the whole goddamn ship; install some freakin' surge protectors, something..." she mumbled to herself, surveying the rest of the damage. She could feel a bruise beginning to shape on her temple and ignored it as she stood up and stalked back to the engineering console. "Right nacelle took a direct hit, Captain," she reported, scowling. The console was a mess, the readings flickering in and out of legibility. "We're going to lose the Warp field in about two minutes at this rate; the left nacelle can't navigate like this for long. Better drop to impulse before we blow a gasket, I think, yeah?" she barely finished her sentence before she tapped her combadge, =^=Chief? The right nacelle's down. We've got to drop to impulse before we overload. I've lost system reads on the Core and decks five through eight. What's going on down there?=^=

=^=Quinn to Peers. I'm ascending the starboard strut and making my way to the starboard nacelle's control room. I may be able to restore power manually if I can get my ass up there fast enough. Willis is working on restoring gravity as well. We are going to reroute our battery power to the shields too. Anyone want a cheeseburger while I'm out?=^= Quinn coughed uncontrollably as he began to breathe in the acrid ozone that was from the last attack. The strut and nacelle had significant damage dealt to it. He had to fix it, no matter the cost.

"Aft shields are down, Captain," Kestra reported, slapping out the sparks that were trying to ignite her uniform. "We've still got basic deflectors on the rest of the ship, we could redistribute those, but... Another solid hit will take us out completely."

To add to the rest of the damage already reported, John had the unenviable task of relaying the reports that were coming into his console as well. Ops and Engineering between them seemed to be keeping on top of most of the damaged systems, but they were still there nonetheless. Shouting out across the noise, John called out to his captain.

"It gets worse! We've lost gravity plating on deck 8, EPS relays overloaded on decks 5 and 6, backups are not responding!"

"Set up emergency forcefields, send damage control teams!" Lirha yelled back, her dark hair disheveled from the violent shaking as dark locks stuck to her sweaty forehead.

"Yes ma'am!" John called back. "Forcefields are in place and holding! Mister Remington, concentrate your teams on the power relays, we need them back sooner rather than later!"

Remington was just pushing himself up off the floor when he heard his name. "Aye, captain." Feeling dizzy, he let his eyes drift over the auxiliary console he was using when his ops console blew out. It passed through his mind that the Galileo would take a lot of resources to fix. He smiled grimly at that; it was silly to worry about such things now, he wasn't on a starbase anymore, but those sorts of thoughts never abandoned him completely. "Power is down in several sections," he said, "Some life support systems are damaged." A small yellow light blinked to tell him the replicators in the mess hall were without power, and he even noticed that, but didn't think the Captain would care to know.

With the loss of it's power distribution conduits, the nacelle was unable to produce the required energy for the warp field, which quickly destabilized. With a flash, Galileo exited warp against her will and listed slightly on her side as the ship's automated flight control computers attempted to adjust course and compensate for the sudden loss of velocity and warp power.

Dea had tried to brace herself but it hadn't been totally successful. One way or another she'd scrambled to find a way back into her chair. Quckly doing her best to stabilize Galileo's flight path. "Impulse engines engaged," Mialin reported checking her data as she did so.

"Nicely done Lieutenant, maintain course and best possible speed" John acknowledged, glad that the ship was no longer being thrown around like a leaf caught in a breeze back on Earth. Steadying himself in his chair, John realised that they were most certainly not out of the woods yet.

It did not take very long for the Na'vi to follow in close pursuit, and another bright flash in space signified the arrival of the enemy Bird of Prey. Traveling swiftly like a green dart through space, the Klingon vessel dropped out of warp and came about, aiming her disruptors at Galileo in preparation for an attack run. The second cloaked Bird of Prey followed suit mere seconds later, and decloaked to ready their weapons as they assumed attack formation.

"We've still got options, Captain," Kestra said. "Coleman has access to a distress beacon, and we figured out how to intercept their emergency communications lines. If we release a radioactive signature with a wide enough dispersal, we can silence their communications and send our own messages along it. At the least it would give us a little extra time."

Lirha swiveled in her chair as she turned back towards the operations console, in agreement with the security chief's assessment. If they could get out a distress call and alert any nearby ships for assistance, their chances of survival would be drastically improved. "Can you disrupt their communications?" she asked her second officer, wanting to confirm before she committed the ship's power resources.

Eve turned to the Captain, "When I found myself in situations like these, I'd reconfigure the main deflector dish to emit a high powered tachyon pulse which you could then modulate to carry a short message like "help" and send it towards the federation space. The only downside to that is it would probably burn out the deflector. So I'd suggest using the Auxiliary Deflector instead of the main dish."

With a simple nod in reply, the captain gave permission to initiate the deflector dish configurations.

"That might work," Remington said, "but we'll need to have a klingon ship in line with the deflector dish." He glanced towards the science station. "Once we're about, I'll need a carrier wave that matches the jamming frequency ready ASAP."

Clinging to her console for dear life Kiri had kept doing her best to scan space with ever more limited resources. As soon as she heard anyone mention tachyon she diverted her focus, turning as Commander Remington started to speak. Her voice hardly one of a confident Starfleet officer she trembled, "I can do that, sir." Turning back she brought up all the communications data, it took only a few seconds to track down the right carrier. Just as she sent the data to the other two consoles it surged. As a crackling finger of energy licked up her left arm Kiri pulled away by reflex, falling over herself. Clumped in a ball for a few seconds she whimpered, already her fingers blistered and her arm started to swell with burn welts. Mind ablaze and tears running down her face, she staggered back up, cradling her arm. Getting back to her station she tried to push herself out of her body. It didn't matter how much she hurt, she had to do her job.

Still with each button press with her left hand send jolts of pain that made her wince. A strangled voice almost choked itself as she tried to make herself heard, "Sir, with the command prefix it," A gasp pulled the air out of her, "It can be broadcast by the probes around the Starbase." In her subconscious it made sense, her concious felt like it was a blurry mess at best right now. It was only a short way to the Starbase, once the signal reached there the probes could retransmit the signal, four matching signals would greatly help the message cut through the interference.

"In the meantime we're sitting ducks here Captain!" John called out across the sparking console and fizzling overhead powerlines, wiping the debris and shards away from his console to at least let him see the readouts in front of him.

"Helm, evasive pattern beta 3, bring us about so our forward shields are facing the pursuing Bird of Prey"

John was bored of being on the back foot now, in fact he had advocated at least trying to fight back since this fight had started and now was finding that it was almost certainly a losing battle. With their aft shields depleted, they needed to get into a stronger position.
A Nova-class was capable of recharging her shields but only if they could be taken offline for the required 45 second cycle, and buying that time with the Klingons bearing down on them was going to be an interesting one.

"Miss Orexil I'm bored of being fired at, time to fight back. Target the pursuing vessel with Quantum Torpedoes, full spread and fire when ready!"

Kestra looked to the Captain, then nodded, beginning the initiation sequence for the torpedoes. She sent three wide to cut down the ship's exit routes and aimed the rest directly towards the ship's engines and navigation panels, then pressed 'go'. "Torpedoes launched, sir."

From his console, John could see the torpedo launch, watching on the monitor as the small blips freed themselves from Galileo and streaked out towards the target. The Bird of Prey managed to use it's superior maneouverability to avoid at least two of the torpedoes, but the remaining few still managed to find their target with shocking accuracy, pummelling the Klingon's shields.

Spread in attack formation, the two Birds of Prey were caught off guard as the tiny science vessel swiftly came about. With sequential cerulean flares from each of her forward launchers, a salvo of high-yield quantum torpedoes screamed through space, locked on to the lead vessel. The IKS Na'vi quickly initiated swift evasive maneuvers, causing two of the torpedoes to lose their target lock. Fortunately, as the Na'vi changed course, the unsuspecting trailing warship streaked at full impulse right into the path of the remaining three torpedoes. The first torpedo slammed into the Klingon ship's forward shields, detonating within the outer layer and collapsing it with a bright flash. The second and third torpedoes flared as they passed through the weakened shields, and tore violently into the middle of the ship. Protected by their hard casing, the warheads penetrated deep into the ship's armor before detonating. The explosions tore apart the green duranium hull with a bright orange flash, spewing debris, hull plating, and Klingon crew members into space. Large, secondary explosions erupted throughout the ship and shattered the weakened space frame, then finally the Bird of Prey's torpedo magazine detonated and blew off the entire ship's primary hull. A final, critical explosion erupted from the engineering section and encompassed the entire ship, flinging twisted and flaming debris into space.

Kestra felt it before the sensors told her what had happened. By trying to avoid the disabling of their ship, they'd lined themselves up to die horribly. Thirty souls snuffed out, panicked and screaming, in fire and the vacuum of space. She flattened her hands on the console, furious that they'd been driven to this point, and waited the ten seconds for the explosion to register on her equipment. "One down, sir. The Na'vi is still closing in, disruptors still engaged."

"Lucky shot!" Will called out over his shoulder, giving Kestra a smirk. "Science, I need that carrier wave now."

"Lucky shot or not, that's one less set of guns aiming at us - one down one to go!" John called out, punching the air in satisfaction as he watched the burning hulk of the Bird of Prey disappearing into the blackness of space. It seemed that the Starfleet engineers had known exactly what they were doing equipping even a science vessel with Quantum torpedoes, so much so that the Klingons, whose ship designs had not really changed for decades, were caught completely off guard by the surprising firepower that a "mere" science vessel possessed.

Kestra didn't feel lucky, but she didn't raise any objections. Not now. She kept her eyes pinned to the scanners and prayed silently for the souls of the lost.

Remington has his eyes fixed on the readout that blinked trajectories at him. When the deflector dish was alligned, he activated the communicaiton pulse. "The jamming frequency faltered," Remington announced, "the signal got through but there's no way to tell if it reached the starbase."


Port Nacelle

Markum made his way to the access door that lead into the nacelle's control room. The gauges on his side of the airlock doors read a radiation reading of four hundred-twenty. Markum looked for an EVS suit in the locker. As he opened the locker the two EVS suits were scorched and unusable. "Shit." sighed Markum as he realized what his only other option was. It was a lethal dose of rads, if exposed for a long period of time. At the most, he didn't expect to be in there for too long. Maybe a minute, two tops. Just long enough to get the nacelle's power supply back.

As he entered through the second airlock, he was disgusted at what he saw. The three engineers assigned to this post were all but vaporized. He looked up and saw a gaping hole, with the occasional flickering of reassurance that he hull breach was sealed with a force-field. Or they could of been sucked out when the roof ripped open. Quinn went to the relay master switch and noticed it was on, but not receiving any power from the coils. Quinn looked through the transparent steel window on the door that lead directly into the nacelle itself. The Space Matrix Coil Receptor was damaged, and leaking coolant. No wonder the nacelle couldn't support warp.

=^=Quinn to Skipper. I'm in the starboard nacelle's control room. Everyone up here is gone. The Space Matrix Coil Receptor is blowing off coolant from a cracked seal. I'm going into the nacelle's shell and repair it. Your cheeseburger order may have to wait. Quinn out. =^= Quinn grabbed the repair kit and took a deep breath. He thought of Tarish as he entered into the toxic area that housed the guts of the nacelle. Imzadi, this is the only way to save you, and the ship. I love you. He made it to the SMC receptor and started working on restoring Warp power. Everything started to become dark, and started spinning. The plasma torch made quick work of the cracked seal and soon the gauge turned....An unbelievable pain shot through his right arm..no feeling in arm...vomiting..Tarish...Kes...Warp..pow.....He attempted to tap his combadge, but his arm wouldn't...his arm...gone.....BLACKNESS........

Lilou scowled at the console, ducking down and opening the panel. She doubted there was anything she could do from this end to fix the system reads. =^=Willis, any news down in the bowels? I can't get a read up here from any systems below deck five.=^= Her voice sounded tinny, echoing off the inside of the console as she mucked about with the ODN cables.

Willis answered back. =^=Dhiwef is up in the starboard nacelle, trying to get power back. Gravity is back on deck six.=^=

Grumbling under her breath again, she crawled back out. No reason in the wiring for the feed to be mucked up, which meant the problem was elsewhere in the line. And she wasn't sure there was a hand to spare to go seek it out. Not at the present, what with the ship being fired on and all. She tugged at her ear thoughtfully, cycling through the available power sources and ship systems one by one. One small blip made her pause, head tilting curiously. Some kind of radiation signature getting peeled off by the air recyclers. "I'm seeing a radiation leak, vent five A, deck three. Shutting down vent ports in the sector," she reported as she did so. =^=Chief, we've got radiation coming through the access shaft to the nacelle's control room. Vents and access are locked down. Let me know when you're on your way out and I'll open 'em up for you.=^=


Bridge

With the distress call sent out, Lirha turned her attention back towards the engagement. One Klingon warship had been destroyed, much to her relief, yet the Na'vi was closing hard and in optimal firing position. The captain's heart beat rapidly as the heat of combat sent adrenaline pumping through her body. A quick glance down at her console revealed the Bird of Prey entering weapons range, and Lirha called out several commands in preparation. "Reinforce forward shields!" she ordered.

Kestra did as she was told, pulling energy from the battered aft shields to route into the forward as they flew towards it. "Forward shields reinforced, sir," she reported. "They're firing on us, disruptors again. We can't take much more of this, Captain."

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

All Player Characters
All Positions
USS Galileo

LTJG Brayden White
Counselor
USS Galileo
NPC'd by Kestra Orexil

EMH Mark-X
Emergency Medical Officer
USS Galileo
NPC'd by John Holliday

Rachel Hardaway, Ph.D.
Lead Scientist
Project Sienna
NPC'd by Tarishiana Barel

Anthony Hardaway, Ph.D.
Lead Scientist
Project Sienna
NPC'd by Chauncey Remington III

Justice Abernathy Ph.D.
Scientist
Project Sienna
NPC'd by Lilou Peers

Eric Anderson
Scientist
Project Sienna
NPC'd by Pola Ni Dhuinn

Emma Kennedy
Dr. Hardaway's Secretary
Project Sienna
NPC'd by Pola Ni Dhuinn

CAPT K'Nara
Commanding Officer
IKS Na'vi
NPC'd by Kiri Cho

RSS Feed