(Alt 2402): Russell/ihr Gaan "Life Goes On" Part 2
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“Life Goes On” Part 2
Captain Josephine Russell
Commanding Officer
Lieutenant Commander Viollika ihr Gaan
Chief Medical Officer
U.S.S. Gemini, N.C.C. 74676
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<Bridge- U.S.S. Gemini>
Captain’s Log: Supplemental. In an effort to make ourselves faster, we’ve transferred some three hundred and thirty refugees to the Gemini. We left the Mutara Nebula late, but the gambit seemed to work, at least through the first leg of our trip. Unfortunately one of the ships in the convoy just lost warp power… drawing an uninvited guest.
“Are we sure it wasn’t a sensor shadow?” Jo asked with a hint of anxious uncertainty. Paranoia, particularly these days, was a reality to contend with, even among her own crew. Get shot at enough times by enough people, and everyone you came across started looking like a threat.
“I… I…” the young Ensign, because an Intrepid class ship at this point barely warranted an officer at tactical, was almost paralyzed by self-doubt. But then she managed to stutter out the answer. “No ma’am, it was definitely another starship. Diagnostics show all sensors are operating within normal parameters. It was half a light year out… well within sensor range. It just…vanished.”
“Nothing ‘just vanishes’ Ensign.” Her retort wasn’t cruel or even laced with anger or disappointment. Jo made her own fair share of mistakes, particularly when she was young, and knew the value of mentoring rather than berating junior officers. “Reinitialize tactical sensors, then make an active sweep. One light year’s range in all directions.”
“Captain…” Jo’s Executive Officer leaned in. “If we ping away with active sensor sweeps, they’re definitely going to see us if they haven’t already.”
The Ensign at tactical gave her report. “Confirmed! Unidentified starship at three-three-zero mark one-four. A quarter of a light year out and closing fast!”
“What type?” Jo demanded.
“Tactical profile matches a Nasicaan Raider. I’m detecting a mix of particle weapons… disruptor cannons and anti-proton beams. At least two torpedo launchers… parts of their hull are sensor reflective.”
Jo’s espionage senses were tingling. This was the classic finger print of a Nausicaan mercenary. But mercenaries worked for pay… so was this guy just trying his luck in hopes of fencing some prisoners and gear or was he contracted to hunt this convoy down? And if the latter…
“Fuck.” She murmured under her breath. “We need to fight.”
“With three-hundred civilians on board?!” Jo’s XO went damn near apoplectic.
“Well what other choice do we have?!”
“We’re being hailed by the Potemkin!” Ops interrupted.
Damnit another fucking distraction! “Onscreen. Captain Bachan, there’s a Nausicaan raider…”
“I know Captain.” Bachan’s tone was… unnatural. Unnaturally calm, cool, collected, even… far too much so for a Captain involved in a surprise tactical situation.
His response was confusing. The Potemkin never initiated an active scan, she would’ve known. “How could you…”
“Please Captain.” Bachan dropped his metaphorical mask. “Think of your crew. Of the innocents aboard you ship. Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.”
Her heart sank into the pit of her stomach, the floor of which likewise dropped off a cliff. Every jaw on the bridge practically clanked in unison against the deck. Jo struggled to suck in a breath through clenched teeth, an effort complicated by the kind of seething anger that could only result from betrayal. Her knuckles ran white and her fingers dug into the ends of her chair’s armrests. “You… FUCKING…”
He didn’t need a dramatic moment. “Stand down, lower your shields, and prepare to be boarded, Captain. If you comply, I promise that you and your crew will be spared the death penalty…”
Jo stood up. Shoulders back, posture so straight that Alaric would’ve been impressed, and glared at the screen with a contempt so icy that even deep space caught a chill. “You can take this ship over my cold, dead, body.”
“I really wish it didn’t come to that, Captain.” Bachan sat back in his chair. “You have quite the record, and the Gemini is a good ship. But it can be arranged.”
“All power to shields and weapons!” Jo’s mouth nearly foamed as she broke her glare only long enough to shout orders to her crew. When her eyes returned, the ice had turned fire. “I will see you in HELL, Bachan.”
The traitor disappeared. The fighting began.
The Potemkin started things off with a barrage worthy of the name. A quartet of quantum torpedoes and a pair of Type X phaser blasts shot forward, aimed at Gemini’s starboard warp nacelle. Gemini shuddered under the assault, its shields flaring brightly with impacts. Tactically, Gemini would be hard-pressed to deal with just the Potemkin. But that Nausicaan Raider was about to enter the fray as well… and two on one where Gemini was also shackled to two unarmed Oberth class vessels too bulky to exploit any maneuverability advantage and too slow to run sent alarm bells ringing in her head.
Jo knew immediately this was not her fight. But she had to try. “Target their sensors. Maximum yield on all weapons, and fire at will! Helm, keep us with the convoy!”
A trio if photons, and a quartet of phaser lances hammered the bow of the Potemkin right back. Gemini might have been the smaller dog, but she just proved her teeth were plenty sharp. The response came quickly and struck with brutality. Another pair of phaser blasts, another pair of quantum torpedo hits, followed by the speedy Nausicaan landing a pair of anti-proton blasts right behind the bridge.
The deck shuddered. Sparks flew. Conduits ruptured and plasma turned steam started spewing over the Master Situation Display. “Aft primary sensor array off-line, switching to secondary fire control!” The tactical officer frantically struck at her console.
“We can’t win this!” The XO grabbed Jo by her elbow. “Captain, we have to withdraw!”
“There are 500 people on each of those ships!” Jo thundered back. “Bring us around, full flank speed. Starboard weapons array target the Nausicaan’s engines. Port weapons hammer the Potemkin’s nacelles. They can’t kill us if they can’t catch us!”
Gemini unleashed it’s full fury. Every phaser array at maximum power, every torpedo launcher at its maximum rate of fire, and every photon at its maximum yield. Much to the credit of the young woman at tactical, almost every shot was a direct hit, and the one or two that weren’t were still glancing blows. The Intrepid class justly won a reputation for durability and ruggedness, but the enemy was putting that reputation to the test. Another quartet of quantums, full broadsides from 11 different particle weapons and a plasma torpedo strike that found purchase against the port hull.
The plasma torpedo strike rocked Gemini from bow to stern in that distinct way that experienced hands immediately recognized as hull compromising. Reports flooded in…
“Shields down to twenty percent!”
“Hull breach, decks four and five, sections Alpha four through seven!”
“Main power off-line, auxiliary power down to eighty percent capacity!”
“Damage control teams responding!”
And ringing distinctly among the pandemonium “my Jo, my Jo! We have mass casualties! Petty Officer Churich has passed!”
Her mind swirled. As it did more phaser blasts criss-crossed, and more torpedoes were exchanged. Showers of sparks erupted from practically every console. A warm, wet feeling caressed the side of her neck and exploratory fingers found blood from her ear. Her eyes followed it, followed it to a pair of bodies now lying motionless on the bridge floor. One officer scanning them, others taking their vacated stations.
The ringing subsided, the swirling cleared, she heard the voices, differently now given the injury, but heard them nonetheless. She could think again.
“Another hit like that Captain and we won’t be going to warp at all!” Her Engineer clamored.
Her XO was direct in the way that only a 6’ New Yorker who’d seen his fair share of streetfights could be. “For FUCK’S SAKE JOSEPHINE, we need to run! NOW!”
And damned if he wasn’t right. Tears welled in her eyes as she forced herself to confront the truth. There was no way they were no permutations in which Gemini somehow outfought both attackers with enough left in her tank to keep pace with the convoy and evade every other predator lurking out there eager to pounce. She had fallen back on old tendencies… old Jo had blinded her to the wisdom won over years. She forced herself to calm down, forced herself to work the problem. The solution was clear.
“Hail the convoy. Order them to scatter! Give them the path to Vulcan and let them know we’ll buy them what time we can. Wish them luck.” On the verge of crying, Josephine Russell sucked in a deep breath and ignored the irritation that came with soot and acrid smoke. “Transfer phaser power to warp engines. Do we still have our tri-cobalt warheads?”
Tri-cobalt warheads was kind of an oxymoron, which is why her XO looked perplexed for a second. A modernized nuclear weapon that operated on a three part fusion-fission-fusion process, they offered immense destructive capability… but practically zero effect on shielded targets. They were principally used in demolitions or truly massive scale deep space mining, not starship combat. “Captain, unless you have a way through their shields, a tri-cobalt warhead isn’t going to destroy them.”
“I don’t need to destroy them.” She closed her eyes and focused. “I need to blind them. Set the warheads to explode ten kilometers off their bows. Helm, I need you to maneuver us ahead of our attackers. The moment our torpedoes explode, we need to be at warp. Understand?”
“Perfectly, ma’am!” The helmsman plotted a new course. “Helm ready!”
“Torpedoes ready.” The suddenly confident tactical officer added.
“I think we’re as ready as we’re going to be, considering the damage.” Her XO looked over. “May fortune carry us home.”
Jo nodded, watching the two enemy ships join in formation for a final assault run. “Now!”
Both sides exchanged fire once more. The last of Gemini’s shields collapsed under withering fire and explosions cut through her hull in multiple places. Her phasers lashed out in retribution, finding a weak point in the Nausicaan’s shields and shearing open the housing for its starboard nacelle.
“Modified torpedoes away!” The young Ensign struggled to shout over the din of battle.
The torpedoes launched. The warheads exploded. They had the desired effect, irradiating the space between the convoy and its attackers and ionizing the area with enough interference that the Potemkin and their hired help would be blind until they cleared the interference, reinitialized their sensor systems, and reprogrammed the appropriate subroutines to account for lingering effects… a process that would take hours. And in the interim, neither the Potemkin nor the Nausicaans would know where anyone went.
Jo bellowed. “Warp, now!”
Gemini’s battered nacelles stood up despite the punishment they’d endured. The warp engines kicked in. The occasionally speckled void of space streaked by.
It wasn’t pretty. The inertial dampeners were among the damaged systems and were ill disposed to yet more sudden stress. Jo, and everyone around her, held on for dear life as their ship lurched into Warp from a relative standstill and despite heavy damage. Gemini itself groaned in protest of the effort. The shrill cry of tritanium-duranium alloy plates being pulled at and occasionally pried from their securings echoed throughout the upper decks.
The bumpy ride was nerve-racking but short lived. The Operations officer wordlessly rerouted power from tactical systems to the structural integrity field and damaged inertial dampeners, quelling the protest quite a bit.
“We’re clear!” Was the first, excited report from the Ensign at tactical.
“How badly are we hurt?” Jo, breathing heavier than she realized, glanced towards the Engineering station. The replacement officer there gave it direct. “Not good, but could be worse. Shields are off-line. Hull breach on decks four and five, microfractures forming around its periphery but damage control teams are responding. We have fluctuations in the electro-magnetic constrictors lining the port nacelle, but it’s operating for now. Main power is still off line, but auxiliary power generation is holding. The SIF and inertial dampeners are under strain, so I’d avoid excessive maneuvering for now.”
“Sickbay is reporting three dead, forty-one wounded.” The Operations officer added. “The convoy continued on course to Vulcan.”
“At current speed we could catch up with them in thirty minutes.” The Helmsman added.
“At our current speed every ship in Federation territory is going to know where we are.” Her XO sighed. “We’d be leading the dogs to the foxes.”
“Ugh, that metaphor.” Jo felt a pang at the thought. “But you’re right. We need to go to ground. I need options for dispersing our warp trail. In the meantime let’s head for the nearest unpopulated system so we can lick our wounds. Keep tabs on the convoy for as long as you can without giving us away.”