Lt. Cmdr. Kirsty Carpenter - Fool Me Twice

[Justin Partridge]

((Bridge, Deck 3, U.S.S. Ronin, Outside the J-0922A System.))

An alert from the depths of Stellar Cartography and Chief Alieth's people brought the after image Kirsty thought she had seen into a starker focus. With the gleam of the still dissipating s-wave and the buzz of new ion trails and her lances of plasma and photons, breaking apart the buzzing fighter-frames as they danced and pivoted through her field(s) of vision. For some reason the image of fresh snow on clear cut ice. The rose-gold burnishing of the s-wave and true strikes against the fighters like the last rays of dusk, prefacing a long winter's night. 

She glanced down once more, hardly blinking or stilling her hands from the dance of defense they were currently giving in concert on the haptics below her. Shields were still holding well above accepted parameters but there was something...strange about the fight. There was no fire in it from the other side. No aggressive forward momentum like the other engagements had been. Huge, swinging examples of their superiority and might over the puny Starfleet "oppressors". 

Kirsty didn't feel much oppressed at the moment. She felt like...well, there was no love in these punches. Only the motions of a brawl. One at which she was still handedly keeping from breaking out into something more demanding. 

But her Captain's voice kept her from any further attempts at poetry as his baritone cut mightily through the din of a Bridge in combat.  

Niac:  Very well Mr. O'Connor but you're on the hook to send the Khitomer flowers and chocolates tomorrow.  Maneuver at your discretion.  Chief Tucker, use the cover we get from the Khitomer to redeploy your repair teams.  Commander Carpenter, load torpedo bays and set for proximity detonation, fire across the fighters flight path.  If we shake them up badly enough you should be able to score a hit with the phasers.  

O’Connor: Roses and bon-bons it is, sir.

Tucker:  ::looking down at his console and then back up at the captain:: Teams deployed, I’ll get you an estimated time as soon as I get one. They’re assessing the rear shields as we speak. 

Carpenter: Less than 50% of enemy combatants remain in flight, Captain. And it looks like...::she confirmed what the scopes had read to her a second earlier:: yep, at least one wing is turning about. To retreat, I would reckon...

The energy and tension of the Bridge deflated momentarily. Enough for Kirsty to finally clock that Quentin Beck had joined them. A medical tri in one hand and what looked like a refillable hypo in his his hardware hand. He would get to her in due time, right now she was on mop up duty, still marveling at how...just how bone dead stupid their tactics had been from the start. It was like they were just throwing these fighters at them just to do it. 

She wondered if the quick loss of the two support cruisers had scuttled some of their original attack plan, but if that was the case, just where the hell were the reinforcements? Why just this one platform and the two mid-sized battleships? And now, according to some of the readouts from Chief Alieth's people, the fighter-forms were unmanned. Drones droning through a pisspoor attack plan and getting swatted down by the crossfire of the two starships.

It stank to Kirsty. It stank like hell. But she continued to do her job. There was little else she could do in the meantime. 

Niac:  Doctor Beck, what's the status of our people?  

Doctor Beck carefully set away his tricorder and indicated to the hypo with a grace Kirsty had seen before in other officers she respected deeply. 

Beck: Inoculations are underway as we speak. We've split the medical team into groups and they're going deck by deck to get everyone.

Nodding, The Captain pointed pointedly toward the Main Viewer, holding Beck's gaze politely as he did so. 

Niac:  Well done Doctor.  Advise your people to work fast, I'm certain the Alliance has more to throw at us.  Mr. O'Connor, while Commander Carpenter picks off the stragglers from that fighter wing I want you to bring us into formation with the Khitomer and standby to make a highspeed run into the system.  Chief Tucker, we need those aft shields re-enforced or we could end getting the ships aft shot off...

Kirsty dared a sliver of a look up across the top of her console alcove at the unexpected sound. The Captain had a smile breaking across his burly face. Kirsty arched an eyebrow sharply.   

Niac:  Belay that...looks like Lt. Alieth's team has a little present for us.  Take a look at the shield modulations she's sending up and get them implemented as soon as you can.  I'll take any measure of protection against another s-wave attack that I can get.  Commander Carpenter, any luck raising the Khitomer? 

O’Connor: Holding on course adjustment. 

Tucker:  ::looking to Carpenter:: I’m rerouting some power from non-essential systems. This should give you a bit of the boost in trying to get the Khitomer on the horn.

She nodded gratefully toward Marty, but was still met with the scattered noise of chaff and static, though this time the squeak of another voice on the other end would escape through the snowstorm of noise. 

Carpenter: Thanks, Marty, but it looks like the s-wave is still fuzzin' through our point-to-point communications. I'll keep ahead on. 

Beck: RESPONSE

Karrod Niac shook his head and Kirsty Carpenter allowed herself a quick 3 seconds of shame at not having the answer he wanted. But once those 3 seconds were over, she refocused herself powerfully on the tasks in front of her. Not some mythical answer that she would and could never have been able to give in the first place.

She didn't understand the first thing about the s-wave and the grainular details of how it mucked up with systems. That wasn't her job to know. It was her job to protect.  But thankfully, the people whose job it was TO know these things, namely her favorite Vulcan Alieth and her wildly talented staff, had already helped her to do so. By giving them an all new shield modulation that was currently surging through the already rising output bar she had set up in TAC. 

Niac:  Keep trying.  If you can get a data channel open to them send across the modifications Lt. Cmdr. Alieth's team has come up with.  The Khitomer is going to need that protection.

O’Connor: They know we’re behind them at least. We’re able to stay in relative synch.

Tucker: We get any closer to them, and we will have to invite them to dinner. 

oO Closer...Oo... 

Another tumbler fell open in Kirsty's mind. The comment The Captain had made about flashing a light out the porthole. Ancient semaphore. But she didn't have the wire-to-wire connections that were critical to those old school systems.  

What she DID have, however, was a short band radio wave transceiver. An old-school system of their own that had been made redundant almost 200 years ago. But one that hadn't been refitted from their old girl, thanks to the need for more clandestine communication set ups during wartime. If she could grab the short-wave signal, she would be able to filter it through into main Comms. Maybe even get it on the Main Viewer with a visual contact if they stayed this close in proximity to one another. 

Kirsty now just hoped like hell the Kitty was similarly graced with this until now useless technology. She got to work, all but jerking her side terminal haptics up and searching around for the noticeably older system switches. 

Carpenter: Mighta found a workaround for Comms, boss. Hang'a sec...

Beck: RESPONSE

Another heavy silence settled across the Bridge, broken only with the occasional sound of Beck's inoculations through the working Bridge crew. That was until Captain Niac spoke into the compartment the very same thing that had been biting at Kirsty's mind and spine even as she continued to rewire the old comm console into life once more. One of the very few technical things she COULD do.   

Niac:  Where the hell are they?  They've had months to reinforce this system and their defenses are nothing compared to what we saw in the Olidra system.

O’Connor: Does seem pretty unusual and a touch eerie. If they aren’t here. Where the hell are they?

Tucker: ::muttering:: I’ve got a bad feeling about this…

She stood from her "work space", setting the moldering terminal aside for a second to report.

 

Carpenter: INTEL said this was to be the staging area. Commander McKenna over on the Kitty even verified with her own sources outside The Black Tower. They all said they were movin' and here's where they were gonna do it from. 

Even as she said the words, she wasn't sure she bought them. Her and McKenna had seen the same information, Kirsty herself had even seen her vet some of those sources in front of her. Sources that...didn't look much official, if you catch our meaning here. It had been one of Captain Faraday's oldest lessons in intelligence gathering and recon. If you wanted to know what the criminals were doing, you asked a criminal. 

But even with all this in mind, she still got that deathly familiar taste in the back of her throat. The one she had right before a certain white-dwarf star had exploded and introduced them to floating boxes of gore; along with the hellish creations that had filled them. 

Beck: RESPONSE

Karrod stalked towards the helm, leaning forward hard on the terminal bank. Gazing deeply into the Main Viewer where the last of the fighter-forms died an ignoble and almost parodic defeat, thanks to the automative attack pattern Kirsty had programmed into the phaser array.

Niac:  No capital ships.  Not a single dreadnought or leviathan.  Even if we caught them by surprise we should see larger vessels mobilizing by now, trying to respond to us.  Unless....

Something seemed to grip Captain Niac by his heart. His face suddenly turned inward so Kirsty could see the ashen white that had replaced his usually ruddy and healthy looking spotted skin. Kirsty felt her own breath catching. Did he feel it too? 

Niac:  =/\= Bridge to Stellar Cartography.  Lt. Cmdr. Alieth, break off your observations on the target system and launch a new series of probes aft...are there any ion trails or other signs of vessels departing the system in the last day?  =/\=

Alieth:  =/\=  Confirmed, there are ion trails suggesting that at least a dozen large spacecraft departed the system approximately twenty hours ago. The trails are quite degraded, so I cannot be sure of the presence or not of smaller ships in the group. =/\=

Niac:  =/\= Can you project their course? =/\=

oO Of course she can, Oo she thought darkly, realizing all-too-late (oO Again and again you FAIL, you idiot girl. Oo) what the answer would be. 

Alieth:  =/\=  There is a 78.578% chance that the Flotilla is heading towards sector Alpha 113. =/\=

Captain Niac seemed to boil with the news, but he kept eerily silent. So silence in fact, Kirsty was about to ask Beck to take a look at him, but before she could give into that impulse The Captain broke back into directed action. 

Niac:  =/\= Understood, Commander.  Refine your projections as much as you can, try to give us an approximate force composition based on the size of the signature. Bridge out. =/\=

The Captain mopped his brow with his broad, still steady hand for a moment as the whole of the Bridge crew internalized what they had just learned. Kirsty had no idea how it was for the rest of them, but for her, rage and shame roiled inside her like a poorly made stew. Again, AGAIN they had been made a fool of. And at the potential cost of hundreds of lives. 

Niac:  Mr. O'Connor, break off from the system and set a course for DS33.  Commander Carpenter, I don't care if you have to shine a flashlight out a viewport, I need communications with Captain Shayne right now.  Chief Tucker, have your teams prepare to conduct emergency repairs while the ship is at warp.  

O'Connor: Laid in. Just need to break away from behind Khitomer and angle off before we go to warp.

The ship lolled carefully, bringing them out of formation with their second, coming to a quiet stop, hanging across the debris filled star system

Tucker: ::he hit the ship wide comm button:: =/\=Attention all repair teams, prepare to perform repairs at warp.=/\=

 Finally, and with a sharp snap-hiss through the dusty speaker, voices started to filter through. Before it could disappear, Kirsty eased the signal into the main Comms buffer and the connection was made complete.

Carpenter: Captain Shayne, sir. Bringing him on screen. 

Beck: RESPONSE

After much ado, the sound and visual of the Kitty's Bridge finally clicked through the din of the Main Viewer. The usually emotive and boyish face of Captain Shayne was replaced with one of worry as other somewhat familiar faces worked just as hard and as well as the souls on the Ronin did at his back. 

Niac: =/\= Captain Shayne...I believe we've been suckered. =/\=

Shayne: =/\= Response =/\=

((OOC: I'm cutting this one here so's I don't step on my former CO's always amahzing dialogue. Y'all are the best.))

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TAG/TBC

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Lieutenant Commander

Kirsty L. Carpenter

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Chief of Security & Tactical

Starfleet SAR

(Marine Rank: Major)

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U.S.S. RONIN

NCC-34523

ID: E239512QC0

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F.N.S. Contributor