MdJG Jovenan – Dead men sail silent
Jovenan
((Shuttlepod Don Pedro, Turkana IV Deadzone Debris Field))
When Jovena had supervised the installation of the shield generator, she hadn’t expected to be crammed in the ancient, miniscule and overall pathetic shuttlepod herself. And certainly not with five other people, all of whom were massive compared to her. The new shield generator and its heavily modified power source with necessary – only the absolutely necessary – safety equipment took bulk of the space that remained besides the passengers. If Jovenan wasn’t so pissed off, she would have been claustrophobic; this was no way for an Edo to travel.
Stennes: =/\= Shuttlepod occupants, this is the Commonwealth Interstellar Cruiser Desdemona. You are wanted on charges of treason, seditious conspiracy, and aiding and abetting the enemy. Surrender to our custody or we will take action to apprehend you. You have thirty seconds. =/\=
Jovenan rolled her eyes. The call was fake, of course, to lure the Shint into their scheme, but it was so fake she couldn’t believe it would work. The Divine Fleet wouldn’t have bothered with taking known traitors alive. Nor would the Shints. “Prisoner” was a word found only in the Commonwealth lexicon.
Dakora: We’re a go for Phase 3. ::His brow furrowed.:: Looks like they’re taking the bait. Anything on the scopes?
Jovenan observed as the piloting trio checked the sensor readings on the front seats. She had no idea why they would put these people in charge of getting them safely to the Shint vessel. She was probably the only one who could even remotely operate sensors efficiently, but she was needed more with the shield generator, otherwise she would have had to do everything herself. What business did a shrink have by the sensor console anyway?
Savel: It appears they have deployed a wing of fighters. They are holding in a defensive posture around the cruiser. For the moment. Have they powered up weapons, Lieutenant Sato?
Sato: Standard armament. They're all armed to the teeth, but holding. They want to make sure we're as easy a target as we look before they strike. It's what we'd expect from them.
Dakora: Expected, but not encouraging.::He raised his voice to call to the rest of the group.:: Strap in, we’re about to take some heat…
The warning was directed to her and her “companions” in the back of the pod. The boys had taken the wheel and the shotgun seats, while her, the furball and the weird-head alien had the duty to keep the front seat guys from killing them. Typical.
The pilot made a lazy evasive manoeuvre – hopefully deliberately bad, or their journey would be pointless – while they prepared for the hit to come. Jovenan clasped her chair and tensed her abs, hoping to remain seated while the Desdemona would execute their Commonwealth patented plan that had only a die roll of a chance to kill them in the process.
Thevn: ::under her breath:: Don’t be it, don’t be it…
What were those aliens so worried about?
Lux: ::to Jovenan:: Starting the power relay procedure. It's over to you.
Dakora: Here it comes…
And there it came. As the railgun shot nearly overwhelmed the small shuttlepod’s standard shields, the massive shock whisked Jovenan first to the right, forcing her to let go of the seat to which she had anchored herself. Directly after the surge ahead, the vibration passed the equilibrium, and the pod rocked backwards, throwing Jovenan off the chair and to the floor. Jovenan cursed the Desdemona tactical person, whoever invented this plan, the Interstellar Fleet and the entire Universe; they had all done this in purpose. For a while, she wondered if she had suffered brain damage, but then realised the whistling sound didn’t come from inside her head.
Dakora: Patch kits, now!
Thevn: Aye aye.
Lux: On it!
The furball and the head alien nearly jumped to fix the leak the railgun had caused, while Jovenan slowly rose from the floor. The shield generator, by the controls of which Jovenan had been seated, was the only part of the pod that still had any power given its own source.
Dakora: Need those Prismic-Shields masking our life signs in ::He checked his wrist chrono:: 45 seconds. That’s when we would’ve died from decompression.
Jovenan: We’ll appear dead by then! ::mumbling:: And will be, if this continues…
She started counting slowly down from 45 as she initiated the modified generator. It had been on stand-by until now – not off, but not active either – so the railgun wouldn’t damage it and the Shint wouldn’t spot their unusual double shields. And even now, not all of its capabilities were needed. They only needed to mask their lifesigns and the energy leakage from the generator’s energy source. Making the entire pod disappear from the prismic scanners would have alerted the Shints.
Dakora: Do we have a visual on the Cruiser?
Savel: Yes would be considered an understated fact by most Humans, Major.
Jovenan turned her face a little to see the two junior officers patching the hull leakage, while the boys at the front were glaring at the big ship out of the window. Typical.
Sato: It's coming up fast. Too damn fast, sir.
Dakora: ::Muttering under his breath.:: Dust me…
Thevn: Give it time. I’m sure they’ll indulge you shortly.
Savel: We may have an additional issue. ::pointing out of the porthole that he was now floating nearby:: The Shint seem to have dispatched their fighters to check on our craft.
Sato: I count three of them. Two flanking and one lead. ::muttering:: like the one wouldn't have been enough?
Dakora: Response?
Jovenan didn’t know what was worrying the guys so much, having been stuck to the back with the two other officers and the shield generator. There was more than a baker’s dozen of seconds left in her countdown as the shield generator slowly came alive and the elf alien came to the door to inspect their work.
Savel: We may need to hasten our simulated demise. Otherwise our deaths will not be the ruse we have intended.
oO You’re not my boss, kid. Oo
Jovenan: Will do!
Savel: Have the kits been successful?
Thevn: They’re successful in the terms that we won’t suffocate, but structural integrity is shoddy at best. Those fighters would be able to tear right through us, even without the reality weapons.
Lux: The conductive armor is holding up well ::more to Jovenan:: It's pulling the excess power from the shields, just not fast enough.
Jovenan redirected as much excess to the batteries as she could without interrupting the initiation sequence. Masking their lifesigns would be unnecessary if they had all cooked.
Sato: Lead fighter is about 1000 kilometers off now. That's well within sensor range.
The offworlders had been rude, they had been cocky, they had been reckless, but now she could sense an aura of tenseness among them. Maybe there was even a sliver of fear mixed in there as well. Jovenan had never been this close to a Shint vessel before. She wondered if she should share in the crew’s dread as well.
Without thinking too much, she activated the shield device as soon as it gained sufficient status. Sufficient wasn’t the optimal, but hopefully the Shints were equally competent as the Commonwealth people. Anyone distracted enough would interpret the half a second of fading in the lifesigns as them dying of the suffocation or burns or plasma leakage or whatever instead of the immediate implosion the impression of which Jovenan had sought to implement.
Sato: ::to Jovenan:: Come on, blondie. Tell me you've killed us.
The shield generator was humming happily as it engulfed the pod in bubble that selectively bent the outgoing emissions while keeping the incoming on the right direction. Despite lacklustre planning from the Commonwealth’s part, the device under her care had saved their skins! She adopted a bit of smug smile to her face as she responded to the shrink.
Jovenan: Lifesigns and energy leakage are blocked. We’re as good as lifeless rocks to them!
Any: Response
Thevn: Well, that’s a comfort.
The shield generator continued to remain stable. As Jovenan redirected the extra energy from the cascade prevention strips to the batteries – both in order to minimize their energy signature further and to charge the energy storages in case they really wanted to take the portable generator unit with them – she wondered how close it had been. Death, that is. Commonwealth people died constantly, that was a fact, neither sad nor joyful, just a fact. But she had no special armour that protected her any more than the people she had around her, and those poor saps were certainly not protagonists even in their own lives.
Lux: What are you doing?
Jovenan stopped her premature self-pity and turned to see what the weird-head alien was doing under the communications console. She better not be trying to turn the thing back online, that would definitely alarm the Shint of their survival. But you never know with these aliens. Any one of them might be a Shint sympathiser.
Any: Response
Thevn: The receiving communications array doesn’t require power to work. It’s passively reading ambient signals, even now. So, if I tap into it manually with my tricorder… ::grunts as she disembowels the communications console:: We have a low-power version of a listening device.
Lux: :: impressed:: You're full of surprises.
The furball joined the weird-head alien, assisting her in working with the console.
Lux: Here I'll divert this cabling, we don't need astro navigational sensors either..
Jovenan: Just don’t activate any of the active scans or emit any more energy readouts than the shield power source. Calibrating the generator to hide your tumbling around will take longer than it takes for the Shint to notice.
Any: Response
The oddball alien adjusted her tricorder and…
Shint #1: =/\=- on approach =/\=
The voice got a reaction from everyone. Jovenan, to whom the entire situation was still remote and unreal, felt cold shivers travel down her spine. She had heard Shint voices in recordings before, of course, and seen images and holographic representations of the Shints before during her training. Still, she had never been face-to-face with one, nor heard one speak live. Sure, there was still a communications device between them, but this was unfiltered and direct from their mouth. She didn’t expect this reaction from herself.
Thevn: Got you.
Any: Response
Jovenan: That’s it? Can’t we hear any more of them?
Any: Response?
Thevn: ::crawling out:: The nebula isn’t working with us. If outgoing Shint transmissions are made within 160 km of us, we’ll be able to hear them though. ::sees what she missed:: Oh...
Oh? OH!? What oh!?
Any: Response
With the boys hogging the viewports and the oddball alien in the communications, Jovenan had little to no ways to see or hear what was happening outside. She had to entirely rely on them to inform the others of their current status. Besides them, her only channel to the outside world was the steadily humming shield generator, and it was useless in keeping her up to date. She felt powerless, just sitting there almost without any control of the situation whatsoever.
Jovenan: Are they yours, or theirs?
Any: Response
The shield generator was stable. Right now, it was the only thing keeping them alive. If it failed or if they touched it, the changes would be obvious to the Shint fighters and the ship. As much as she would have wanted to turn it up for extra protection, their best option right now was to let it be and pretend they were no threat.
Jovenan: We could, but it would just alarm the Shints. ::shakes head:: There’s nothing we should do about it. Let the Desdemona take care of it.
Any: Response
Jovenan pulled her sidearm out and checked its charge. It was in full power, just as they had left with. The personal shield armlet was inert, but Jovenan opted not to tinker with it right now, when even the small variations could theoretically reveal their ruse. Weapons training was part of her Academy training, but it had always been holographic, never living targets. Holographs shot back, but it never hurt. Hopefully her teammates would deal with shooting the Shints and taking the fire.
She wondered what Shint rifle shot felt like. And if Commonwealth guns hurt the Shint.
There was just one thing they needed to do before they could put the question into experimental stage: to get in. If getting shot by your friends and drifting across the space to the enemy ship was difficult, the part of the plan where they boarded the Shint vessel was absolutely bonkers.
Dakora: Response
Any: Response
Jovenan: Preparing the shields, but don’t expect wonders!
Any: Response
TAG/TBC
----
Mediator JG Jovenan
Science officer (secondment)
CIC Desdemona
E239911J11