Thread the Needle (Part 4 of 7)

Posted on 25 Mar 2017 @ 6:57pm by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Commander Aren Ban & Lieutenant Min Zhao & Lieutenant Amaranai Franklin & 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
Edited on on 25 Mar 2017 @ 7:03pm

2,996 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Episode 14 - Statecraft
Location: IKS DuJa'Q, Beta Tauri System
Timeline: MD 06 - 0519 hrs

Previously, on Thread the Needle (Part 3)...

"See Lieutenant Galan, told you at some stage they would need us." Martin said as he was leaving the Armoury. =^=On my way General Saalm.=^= he responded on his way to the nearest ramp. Easier to go up one deck by the ramps and along the neck than wait for a turbo lift for a single deck transfer.

=^=On my way.=^= Min remarked, closing her combadge. ~Time to make some money~ she thought to herself. The time on the planetoid had been one of what felt like busy work, spinning her wheels with no real way to get home to her family. After this misadventure, she planned to request re-assignment to Earth. Close to family, close to her daughter.

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

Deck 3, Command Hull - Bridge

At the outer edge of the Beta Tauri system, a bright flash signaled the arrival of IKS DuJa'Q. The large battlecruiser's green nacelles flared only briefly before shimmering back under cloak and concealing the entirety of the vessel from visual sensors. Less than ten seconds afterwards, a second bright flash burst into the system, this one belonging to the gray-hulled Akira-class starship that was in pursuit. On the bridge, the sense of urgency was palpable and it was only a matter of seconds before Lirha's next set of orders was issued.

"Set course for the periapsis, maximum impulse!" the general ordered. She knew it would only be a matter of time before the Starfleet vessel was on top of them.

This time Miraj didn't bother with the course plot, just checked her current bearing and turned the helm manually, aiming for the precise point of entry, moving to full impulse at the same time, and then began to contemplate their intended escape manoeuvre, to make sure it was ready when the time came. A couple of quick calculations made her pause. "Ma'am, when you say high speed slingshot, just how fast do you want to go?"

The Orion general ran a quick series of calculations through her head with the assistance of her chair's armrest terminal. Navigational competence and course plotting methodology had been drilled into her from her first years at the Academy, and she also had advanced knowledge of orbital mechanics to assist in her computations. "I estimate we'll have to achieve at least warp 9.1 at the IP of our maneuver...which should accelerate us to at least nine-point-five on our escape course." Just to be sure, however, she wanted a second set of eyes on it. "Commander Ban, can you confirm?" she asked. Any mistakes in such a precise maneuver -- even by a mere meter -- would be fatal and either send them careening into one of the stars or shred them apart due to the gravitation sheer.

S'anara was highly impressed with the Orion's strategy and willingness to take such a risk. From her console she pulled up the structural integrity grid system and began diverting some unessential power to the field grid.

Miraj checked her instruments, and then the viewscreen, trying not to do something so unprofessional as bounce in her seat with excitement. High speed warp solar slingshot. She'd been itching to do one of those since the time her father told her how Admiral Kirk had saved the earth by using one to travel in time. Though this time round they would have to stay where they were, at least as far as the fourth dimension went.

Aren ran his own mental calculations, taking just a moment before nodding. "That will work, though we will need to be at and beginning to accelerate past warp 9.1 the moment we hit the IP, we will only have a few millisecond leeway to get it right." Aren said, knowing that they didn't have much time. He turn his attention to Ensign Derani. "Helm, we need to need to enter the IP at precisely the area where the gravitational eddies are constant. Right...there," he said as we walked over to her console, highlighting the area, "we have to enter there, otherwise the gravitational sheer will....well...we have to enter there." He said nodding to Ensign Derani giving her a look of confidence in her abilities at the helm.

"Or we end up crushed to mush by the gravitational pull of the alpha star, or turned to crispy bits by the radiation from the beta." Miraj said happily. She was well aware of the dangers of pulling stupid manoeuvres around binary stars, she just didn't fear them, not when she was in control. "Don't worry sir. We'll slide in right on target, no trouble."

Mimi tensed a little, going as close to a star as they were planning to was very risky. She kept her eyes on her console watching the sensor inputs on what the Sentinel was doing.

Lirha was satisfied with the refinement to her calculations and adjusted one of the parameters in her console to confirm and lock in the projection. At full impulse, it would only be a matter of minutes before they reached the inner portion of the star system, and with the preparations made, the task was now to focus on evading the Akira-class in pursuit. Almost right on queue, the Operations console chirped to indicate another incoming hail.

"The Sentinel is hailing again." Mimi called out after the ops console beeped.

"Unknown vessel, this is Captain Matis of the Federation starship Sentinel," came the familiar voice once again, although this time with more urgency. "You are in violation of Federation territory and we are tracking your position. Decloak your vessel immediately or we will use force!"

"General," Amaranai spoke up. "Sentinel will be within weapons range in ten seconds."

She was calm. There was no need to worry or stress. Yes, it was a stressful situation, but her own stress would only make things worse. Right now, she had to focus.

The general knew that with the anti-proton leak sealed, the risk of detection should have been minimal. But without having discharged the excess particles that had built up, any competent ship crew could scan the nearby vicinity for their residual traces and DuJa'Q would light up like a blimp on a starless night. "Prepare to slow to combat impulse and decloak," Lirha ordered. She reached up to the top of her breast and tapped the commbadge attached to her sash. "Bridge to engineering and deflector bay, are you ready to discharge the anti-protons?"

T'Lin had put everyone to work. It was makeshift in the extreme but hopefully everything would work. She was fairly confident that the calculations indicated high probability of success. She checked that everyone was ready, the containment field would not last long being as jury rigged as it was

Martin and the team that were in deflector control had been getting ready for it since his arrival there. =^=As ready as we can be, Ma'am.=^=

Min had been there right on the heels of the rest of the team so was already preparing the discharge control as the crew prepared the hardware. She nodded her agreement with Martin as he cleared the com line.

Varro briefly took in the wind of motions around him. He had his task. Fraiser was taking care of anti-proton burst commands and he was aligning the deflector. He entered the commands and with the help of a Klingon entered the override commands. He looked over at T'Lin. "We're done on my end." He turned to Fraiser for confirmation that she was done too.

"Done here, I can't promise it will hold forever but it will hold for now" Fraiser gave the nod.

=^=General, T'Lin here. We are ready, but containment of the anti-protons will not last long. We must dissipate them as soon as possible.=^=

"Acknowledged. We will only get one chance at this," Lirha replied with a sense of urgency. "We will maneuver into position and you must aim for their primary deflector dish."

Martin felt the fleet crew's disappointment at needing to avoid the fleet crew's that were out there looking for them. He was listening to the comms within the vessel, he didn't like being the man that had to ready an attack on federation vessels.

Min was poised at the deflector controls. The sequence that would drain the deflector of the built up particles just needed the General's orders and she would trigger the release.

Amaranai was watching her sensors, keeping an eye on the Sentinel and anything it did. And then it did something.

"General!" not panicked, just alert. "The Sentinel is firing photon torpedoes in our direction."

From atop the Akira-class' rollbar, the starship's burst fire launchers suddenly flared bright red and sent a salvo of six photon torpedoes toward the IKS DuJa'Q. The projectiles screamed through the void of space in a spread pattern with twisting and streaking persimmon glows. Each one was independently targeted and configured with a modified high-energy burst warhead in order to expose any cloaked vessel within its detonation radius.

"We have incoming! Six contacts. Coming fast."

"Helm, evasive maneuvers!" Lirha called out, "Come about and set a direct course to intercept Sentinel." What Lirha didn't specify out loud was that such a trajectory would be a direct collision course with the Starfleet vessel. "Engage!"

Miraj's hands were a blur, throwing the helm around and over to try and throw off the incoming missiles whilst trying to stay on course for a ram. The ageing battlecruiser had willing, but was showing her age, and she could feel the tiny hesitations at responding to her touch. And it wasn't easy to dodge something you were essentially running straight at. She rolled out of the way of one missile coming straight for the K't'inga's bulbous head, and then made the old ship rear up so another could pass harmlessly under its neck, closing the distance on the Starfleet vessel.

"Come on!" Miraj muttered angrily at the old Klingon vessel. "Is that the best you can do?" She dropped one side, raised the other so the ship zipped up on a vertical plane, presenting a smaller profile to the hunting torpedoes. "Move faster, you crusty bugger!" The little display showed the torpedoes turning about. She wondered if she could pull up fast enough for them to latch onto the Sentinel instead. but DuJa'Q probably wasn't that fast and Starfleet torpedoes probably weren't that dumb.

Despite the Klingon vessel's evasive pattern, the photon torpedoes reached their pre-assigned targeting parameters and detonated on all sides of DuJa'Q's vicinity. Each of them let loose a cluster of highly-charged EM bursts which compromised the vessel's cloak, causing the K't'inga-class' hull to suddenly shimmer and sparkle when it was bombarded with the charged energy particles. Their stealth had now been fully compromised and their presence revealed, much as Lirha had unfortunately predicted.

Red lights flashed on the engineering display console, "we're losing the cloak!" S'anara shouted.

"Drop cloak and divert all shield power to the forward grid. Stay on course," Lirha ordered. She was now tapping away furiously at her chair's console in order to input the correct Starfleet frequencies that Mimi had provided to her just moments ago. Using the DuJa'Q subspace transceiver and her own admiralty command codes, she managed to tap into Sentinel's computer mainframe and began to search for the Akira-class' shield modulation frequency. Her specialty at the Academy and for much of her Starfleet career had been in Operations, specifically communications, and it took her less than ten seconds to find the data she required.

Amaranai heard the command. She knew that the Sentinel knew where they were. She knew that they had targeted them and that they had comprimised the cloak. What she didn't know or understand was the reasoning behind the ship charging forward against the Sentinel. But she was not going to disobey orders. She pressed a few buttons and the lighting changed from red to standard.

"The cloak is down," she said.

After a moment of pressing a few more buttons, she added, "All power to forward shield array."

The pilot's brow arches went up and out in surprise. The Sentinel was only a couple of million kilometres away. They'd be on top of them in just a few minutes at this speed. If the evasion was a heartbeat too slow then every soul on both ships would be star dust. "Course holding."

Lirha tapped her commbadge to relay the shield frequency modulation to her personnel in the primary deflector bay. "Bridge to deflector room, configure your pulse to penetrate a shield modulation of 284.7 MHz." She looked back to Franklin at the tactical console and gave her a nod to configure their primary weapons to penetrate the same frequency.

=^=Yes 274.8MHz. Set and ready to fire. Ma'am.=^= Martin said without smiling.

Min was watching over her consoles and noticed a discrepancy in the frequency Caine had input for the shield modulation. There was no time to interject so Min quickly adjusted the frequency to 284.7 MHz as requested by Saalm.

Initially, Amaranai was not certain about what was going on until the general mentioned changing the weapon frequency and Amaranai understood. She swiped her fingers across her panel until the weapons had been modulated.

"The weapons have been modulated to the new frequency, general," she offered.

IKS DuJaQ rapidly closed on the Starfleet vessel. Going head-to-head with a larger and more heavily-armed opponent was normally suicide, but Lirha had calculated the risks and knew both vessel's strengths and weaknesses. She also knew their secretive advantage would come into player as soon as they could get within range. Staying at standoff distance against an Akira-class torpedo boat was assured suicide.

"General," Amaranai spoke. "The Sentinel has phaser lock and is preparing to fire."

USS Sentinel's large dorsal phaser array emitters began to glow bright yellow. A series of four emitter points on opposite sides of the semi-circle strip began to converge as they followed their track, then they suddenly lashed out at DuJa'Q with intense phased energy. Two lengthy phaser bursts impacted the battlecruiser's forward shields and cast a bright glow of neon green and orange against the K't'inga-class' forward hull. A consecutive followup burst of phaser fire struck the same points on the shield grid but did not penetrate.

Lirha watched through the main viewscreen as phaser fire pelted her vessel's shields. The bridge rocked from the impact which forced her to grip her chair's armrests tightly. They continued to close the distance, and Sentinel's silver hull grew quickly in size as they approached.

Amaranai held fast to her station with the impact and then checked her screens.

"Shields holding at sixty percent."

"Stay on course!" Lirha said loudly as the Klingon ship was once again rocked by a wave of phaser fire. She looked down at her tactical display and kept her eyes locked on the time-to-intercept calculations that scrolled on the monitor in realtime.

Suddenly, a bright flash of glowing red flares could be seen in the distance which rapidly grew in size as they approached DuJa'Q. Photon torpedoes.

Aren slapped a button on the secondary tactical console. "All Hands, brace for impact"

The four torpedoes slammed into the Klingon ship's forward shields with immense force, detonating their warheads against the deflector grid and collapsing it despite the power reinforcements. The vessel's shield grid overloaded and sent surges of cascading energy throughout the primary and secondary hull.

On the bridge, the impact sent a terrible jolt throughout the vessel that almost tossed Lirha from her chair. Several aft consoles and overhead power relays ruptured which sent sparks and debris flying across the bridge. Flames lipped at the oxygenated atmosphere and the stench of burnt electrical conduits quickly filled the air.

The impact of the photo torpedoes was more than the shields could handle. The force was enough to cause Amaranai to fall against her panel, though she braced herself enough to not hit her head. Even through the steam and haze, Amaranai could still see her console.

"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.

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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