Thread the Needle (Part 5 of 7)

Posted on 25 Mar 2017 @ 7:13pm by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Commander Aren Ban & Commander Allyndra illm Warraquim & Lieutenant Amaranai Franklin & Lieutenant JG Stephanie Fraiser (KIA) & Commander Marisa Wyatt & Ensign Miraj Derani & Ensign Mimi & Senior Chief Petty Officer Martin Caine (KIA) & Ambassador Soral Varro & Sub-commander S'anara Valdran & Petty Officer 1st Class T'Lin & Petra Varelli Ph.D.
Edited on on 25 Mar 2017 @ 7:14pm

2,153 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 14 - Statecraft
Location: IKS DuJa'Q, Beta Tauri System
Timeline: MD 06 - 0521 hrs

Previously, on Thread the Needle (Part 4)...

"Shields are gone, general!" she said.

"Hull breaches on Deck 4 and 5!" S'anara shouted.

Miraj was glad she didn't understand all the readings going off around them. The head on collision hadn't been good. The helm seemed to be as responsive as it got, so had suffered no direct damage, and despite the force of the blasts, they hadn't been knocked off course by more than a fraction, it took nothing to pull them back in line. Please move! she prayed, urging the Starfleet vessel to move. It didn't. "Collision in twelve seconds!" she shouted out to the admiral Please tell me to move! she added.

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

Deck 6, Command Hull - Navigational Sensor Array Bay

Martin heard the pop from the deflector control panel, he made his way over to Stephanie and knowing unless they had done enough to severely damage the Sentinel It maybe the last thing he did he held her in his arms and sent to JJ, *Mumma and dadda love you.*

Steph held him back tightly even as she looked at him in surprise as she felt JJ mentally with them and shook her head knowing it wasn't safe or supposed to be possible at her age. JJ sent them a feeling of *love/scared/safety/want parents*

The only thing that kept Martin rooted to the spot was the fact he had a job to do. So he did the only thing he could and sent love and comfort to his daughter. "Remind me to hug that girl tight if we get out of this." He said rhetorically because he would need no reminding.


Deck 6, Engineering Hull - Main Engineering

The ship shook and shuddered and Allyndra could only curse under her breath just how much she would be needed some place else then trying to do mechanical surgery on the ship. The fact that the 'patient' tossed and turned did not help the fact. T'Lin was typical Vulcan in her stoic way.

"OUCH! Lepo!" Allyndra exclaimed as she got a shock and burns on her fingers.

"An expression of the vocal nature is not necessary, doctor. The bridge will requiring we are ready with the modifications."

"Is that so? How about all the hurt individuals that this pounding....." the ship shook again and Allyndra yelped again as she got another shock and burn.

"If we are successful doctor," T'Lin continued working with calmness, "the patients will be there to treat, if not, I think you will be out of a job."

"Ambassador Varro," T'Lin turned her attention. "I believe we are ready to hook the containment to the deflector circuits. There maybe some sparks."

As the ship shook Varro was tossed about slamming into the wall. He winced at the pain in his side. Getting up he manned the controls and did a rudimentary patch job where he could having to manually do a few code inputs. He looked about as he worked and his heart stopped at a crumpled form not too far from him.

He hurried over and gently turned her over. "Eviess?"

Groggy but okay she stirred. "I'm okay. Just got knocked out. Are you..."

"Fine." He said. He heard T'Lin's call.

Varro who'd felt more shaken then a martini and just as bruised as a dropped apple gave a nod and once assured that Eviess was okay and tending to the wounded he headed over to T'lin. "I am ready."

"Excellent, the connections of blue to red, green to yellow and then magenta to purple should be sufficient." T'Lin replied in her dry way.

Varro gave a nod. He wiped the sweat off his brow and connected the red, then green, then yellow. He had to steady his hands before making the final connections. He hated engineering work but he could and would do his best.


Deck 3, Command Hull - Bridge

Combat situations always had a strange effect on Lirha. She'd never been one to easily succumb to anxiety or fear, but instead felt a strange sensation of heightened sensory that bordered on arousal. She knew it was a product of her species' reaction to stress, but it was nevertheless a unique sensation every time she experienced it. Time seemed to slow while the Akira-class grew in size on the large viewscreen. Seconds turned into milliseconds and Lirha's situational awareness took careful note of everything happening around her. The time had come to execute her plan before the DuJa'Q took anymore critical damage.

"Deflector room," she said loudly into the comm, "Activate the pulse now!" she ordered just as another burst of phaser fire tore into one of the Klingon starship's nacelle pylons. "Ensign," she then called out to Miraj over the loudness of sparking consoles and venting atmospheric conduits, "evasive maneuvers, negative elevation! Stay on course!" Lirha hoped to use the vessel's maneuvering thrusters to pass on the underside of the Starfleet ship, employ their anti-proton beam, and then bring their aft weapons to bear on the Sentinel's impulse engines when they passed behind it.

Martin was sitting at the console and tapped the final few touch sensitive buttons the made the anti-proton beam to streak away from the Duja'Q toward the fleet ship. He felt bad but if he was to get out of it alive he needed to fire. "Damn I hated that. Give me a Klingon to shoot at fine but we're shooting at friends now."

Miraj sent the ageing warrior ship into what was effectively a flip, the mass of the ship pivoting around the forward bulb, the aft sliding down, leaving the font end pointing at the target and only pulling the front down to clear under the Starfleet vessel at the last minute. From here they had a clear shot at the Akira-class' vulnerable keel.

From the front of the bulbous command module where DuJa'Q's primary deflector array was located, a brief surge of anti-protons caused the emitter to begin glowing with intensity. When the charged particles reached their distribution tolerance, a continuous, bright cobalt blue beam lashed out and swiftly penetrated Sentinel's forward shields. The anti-proton discharge struck the Akira-class' large deflector array and overloaded it, sending cascades of charged lightning fizzling across the large dish.

The beam finished its job as the aft end of the K't'inga came back up. For a moment they lay beneath the belly of the Sentinel's, parallel to it, and the young pilot let the nose whip around to continue on course, coming back to the original line, and giving the sternchasers their full field of fire should their victim still be capable of doing anything.

IKS DuJa'Q barely scraped beneath USS Sentinel's ventral shields untouched and accelerated free on towards the heavy cruiser's six-o-clock. It took only a few seconds for the Federation captain to figure out what was going on and order a course change, but it was a second too late. Now situated aft of the Starfleet vessel, the Klingon battlecruiser had a clear line of fire to its target.

"Target their impulse manifolds with aft disruptors. Fire!" Lirha shouted. She gripped the edges of her armrest with green knuckled-fingers and watched the tactical display with hyper-focused eyes.

Amaranai changed the targeting computer to bring up the aft disruptors. She quickly aligned them to the requested target and pressed the fire control. She watched as the disruptor beams laced through the shields of the Sentinel and hit the impulse engine housing of the ship.

"Direct hit, general," she said. "Their impulse engines should drop to half or less."

If this was going to be how they outran the Sentinel, they were going to have to take advantage fast.

"Fire again!" Lirha commanded with urgency. She wasn't satisfied with partial damage that could be repaired in a short time or bypassed with the use of auxiliary drive coolants. And they had, at best, one more salvo to fire before the Sentinel's shields adjusted to their weapons frequency.

Amaranai took aim again and let loose another shot at the intended target. Again, it was a direct hit.

DuJa'Q's two aft weapon arrays unleashed a concentrated stream of neon green disruptor particles into the impulse exhaust housings. While not as effective as phasers against energy shields, disruptors had the advantage of being lethal against a starship's exposed hull. Disruptors by their very nature broke apart the atomic bonds of particles they came in contact with, and the Klingon ship's final salvo blasted silver hull fragments brilliantly into space and crippled the Akira-class. The Starfleet ship listed slightly to starboard for a short moment before its RCS thrusters were able to compensate for the loss of impulse control.

"Another direct hit, general," Amaranai said. "Their impulse engines have been taken offline."

"Have they suffered any casualties?" Lirha asked after hearing the battle damage report. She'd hoped that by using precision disruptor targeting instead of photon torpedoes, they could minimize any collateral damage and not injure any of the Starfleet crew.

S'anara accessed the sensor array and proceeded to scan the Starfleet vessel. "Looks like minor casualties...no signs of any fatalities."

The news from the Romulan sub-commander was a huge relief to Lirha. She'd just committed treason by firing on another Starfleet vessel and didn't want to add murder to that charge. Whatever became of her if they managed to survive their mission and return to the Federation, she'd come to peace with many days ago...but she wasn't quite ready to be executed for crimes against the state.

"And their sensors?" the Orion asked, wondering if their plan had worked as they'd hoped.

"Their sensor away took heavy damage, it's offline." the Romulan replied.

Lirha realized her entire body had been sitting upright almost completely stiff in the command chair throughout the encounter. She forced herself to take a calming breath and relax her muscles which allowed her to lean back into the seat and into a more comfortable position. Her mind continued to race, however, with all the duties she'd become accustomed to as a commanding officer.

"What's our status? Damage report and crew casualties?" she inquired.

Mimi checked the readouts on the Ops console. "We have lost one shield generator, the rest are recharging, ruptures in several EPS conduits on deck 3, 4 and 5, small hull breaches on the same decks. Medical reports 10 casualties, no deaths though."

"Very well," Saalm acknowledged. "Deploy repair teams and have our doctors see to their wounds," she ordered.

"Understood." Mimi replied although she had already dispatched repair teams as soon as the ship started taking damage.

The task at hand was now to continue their mission as planned. Perhaps the easiest part of the assignment had been accomplished -- defeating a Starfleet vessel that'd managed to track their position. The pending maneuver through the binary stars seemed like climbing Mount Rek'Chohv'i in comparison.

Lirha diverted her thoughts to the next phase of their plan. "Return to our original course at full impulse," she instructed. Her ship was in good shape but would need some fine tuning to be able to make it through the gravitational well intact.

Miraj brought the DuJa'Q up in a graceful loop, until they were pointing back towards the tiny window of space that marked safe passage between the binary stars, and accelerated lazily towards the starting point for the sling shot.

The minutes slowly counted down to their arrival at the slingshot maneuver's IP. The Orion general kept a close eye on their progress through the star system, and when they were thirty seconds out, she began final preparations. The twin binary stars now shone large and brilliantly through the main viewscreen, casting the bridge in blue and melon hues.

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

GEN Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
IKS DuJa'Q

Ensign Miraj Derani
Chief Flight Control Officer
IKS DuJa'Q

SCPO Martin Caine
Chief of the Boat (CoB)
IKS DuJa'Q

Ambassador Soral Varro
Chief Diplomatic Officer
IKS DuJa'Q

Lt. JG Eelim Galan
Security/Tactical Officer
IKS DuJa'Q
[PNPC Varro]

Petty Officer Eviess
Medical Officer
IKS DuJa'Q
[PNPC Varro]

Cmdr Allyndra illm Warraquim
Chief Medical and Second Officer
IKS Duja'Q

Lieutenant JG Marisa Sandoval
Counselor
IKS Duja'Q

Petra Varelli
Forensic Anthropologist
IKS Duja'Q
[PNPC Sandoval]

Lieutenant JG Amaranai Franklin
Assistant Chief Security / Tactical
IKS Duja'Q

Commander Aren Ban
Executive Officer
IKS Duja'Q

ENS Mimi
Operations Officer
IKS DuJa'Q

LT Min Zhao
Operations Officer
IKS DuJa'Q

LTJG Stephanie Fraiser
Chief Research Officer
IKS DuJa'Q

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