IBEX part 2

Posted on Wed 22nd May, 2024 @ 12:13am by Commander Geraldine "Geri" Severide

1,806 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: O' the Cardiff Rose
Location: The Triangle
Timeline: MD10

Previously… https://sb109.sim-station.net/index.php/sim/viewpost/2318

And now…

The same voice speaking to Alex came to her, Reggie spoke swiftly as Dralir could listen and comprehend much faster than most, “The additive into the fuel supplies had to be added during refueling. These three were fully armed and fueled yesterday at a request from one of their chieftains, and not on their normal schedule for this morning.”

She chuckled a bit, ”Some officer in their ranks pushing to leave first thing huh, just our luck.”

“Your orders on shaking our pursuers?”

“Where’s Alex?!” She questioned the sky still, knowing he was listening despite no physical presence. She worked frantically, knowing her duty was to be in charge if the captain wasn’t here, so it fell to her station to maintain systems and keep the ship on its bat out of hell velocity to escape.

“The Captain is in deflector control, Command is in your hands Dralir.”

”Then I Command we activate the phase cloak and turn to fire…”

”We are only sustaining high warp thanks to the impulse Impeller. If we drop from warp we will not regain our present speed.”

”But if we can disable those ships then-“

The disembodied voice echoed from the console speaker, “The Mandate outlines that we cannot slow down.”

He said the bad word, and it made her hair raise. The mandate of their mission was utter secrecy. She knew Reggie would activate the self-destruct if any of the systems became compromised, if there was a chance of intelligence loss. The hologram was fighting most of the boarders across the ship, so the decision was up to the moment his holo-emitters lost power or were destroyed. Loss of control meant cyanide capsules for everyone.

“Reggie, I just lost aft quarter internal sensors, feed me visual.”

She hated the tension, her usual methods for a thrill were far more relaxing. Reggie piped in a visual feed, the holo-emitters which gave him form serving as cameras as well. She could see the Computer Core already at critical, and routed precious power from engines to keep it stable and cool. The life support systems on these older Saladin class tugs were resilient and used the heat of the engines as a steam engine of sorts. Despite her attempt to balance, the loss of power in their warp systems so suddenly began causing shorts and several breaker panels to explode. The breakers were not restored so the duraglass shattered.

Her Denobulan ancestry was resistant to heat, but the shrapnel nearly took her eye and gashed her left biceps deeply. Unphased, Dralir knew she needed to get into engineering, everything in the secured Command Deck seemed to be falling around her ears. The large oval space was a subset of the larger deck, a tortoise shell around the nerve center cracking under the onslaught. A gout of plasma ejecta nearly got her in the face as she powered the panel to access the corridors just outside.

Plasma fire poured into the split seam of the door, Reggie had the presence of mind to force it closed, he yelled to her from behind, “You are not safer anywhere else! Keep the engines running!” Reggie had manifested for a split second, the generic olive hued humanoid snapped and disappeared.

“Like hell Reggie, this is an oven, let me out!” She tried to get the aft access open but it was deadlocked as well.

She was stuck, momentarily, in the main holo-deck. Outside the Command Deck Dais, was a large open air hologrid designed for training, interrogation, surgery, anything they needed could be materialized. Without power, it was just a dark grid with spectral shifts lights radiating from behind. He imagination supplied the imagery above and below her of the parts of the ship open to space. The thinning air was being consumed by the fires that raged in their outer hull, life support unable to compensate. She had to get those fires out, but the Bots were also at work thankfully towards the goal. The classic DOT style robots upgraded with Vertimotor Exo systems were their saving grace yet again. Without them repair was all manual processes, and all hands were repelling boarders.

"Reggie. How much more of the hull integrity can we lose without compromising warp speed? Could we-" she stopped to reroute a small portion of power to the deck’s life support as the smoke was getting thick above her. There was no reply, so she did the estimations herself. Ejecting the core and secondary Deuterium tanks would require many hull panels released, but the explosion she had planned would be enormous. However, they’d lose warp almost instantly, fall to normal speeds and be destroyed.

She spoke loudly knowing he was listening, "The self-destruct charge has a built in warp deterrent, right? What if we sent that at them?" Such an act was strictly against protocol, but as it stood their ship would be thoroughly destroyed anyway. If Reggie really wanted to poison pill everyone the reactor going critical was more than enough to vaporize the ship.

Reggie disagreed, “Negative, we cannot leave a trace of evidence, if we are caught I am mandated to ensure the Federation is not implicated in our mission.” A voice issued from the console. If Reggie couldn’t afford a replicant here than it meant he had all seven out at once. No wonder the Computer Core was freaking out.

”Our core is overloading, the charge is a redundancy Reggie we can escape right, isnt that the ideal?

“They have the means of overtaking us before a core breach could take effect. Prisoners will be taken.”

”We can just blast the damn thing ourselves!”

”If we held Engineering currently, I’d consider it but we are in a contested control. I must maintain an agency to self-destruct.”

The triangle ships were in a triangle formation. The lack of subtlety was not lost on her. The lead ship had the right to the kill, likely because it had the highest ranking captain or some means of deciding who the top amongst them was. With any luck the antimatter implosion would take out this main ship and those flanking. Without anyone in charge or giving orders, the other ships would move right into the after effect warp deterrent field and be disabled, giving them one chance to escape.

"I am going to go rig it to fire as a clustered satchel charge… the M/AMA reactor will suffice plenty if we need to be atomized, but this might actually work." she said, not awaiting confirmation. "Dropping life support to minimal requirements, cutting IDF-“

Reggies face appeared on her console, “Lieutenant Commander! You are ordered-“

“Enough Reggie, I’m following your orders remember, keep going, do whatever it takes to escape etc? So manifest and stop me or focus on your task at hand.”

Dralir was not much of a commander. It had never been her goal to sit in the seat, it was all “action in the moment” which was not her forte`. She got a life-support belt from the emergency hatch and activated it, a personal shield bubbled into being around her and suddenly the world felt a little more safe. The only other way out announced itself, the emergency hatch to Engineering. If it was occupied she’d simply need to reclaim it and get to work on their plan.

"I'll be below." She stated in a loud voice, walking from the dais to the rear of the room pulling the hatch open.

Suddenly what felt like another ship crashing straight into them nearly sent her flying. Internal dampening barely kept her from flying to the roof. The deck moved beneath her feet as internal inertial dampeners failed and only her hand hold on the safety railing kept her from hitting the vaulted ceilings. The Command dais in the middle of the deck where she had spent the last ten minutes had two more panels explode without their breakers in place, unable to contain the energies at play. With the reduced IDF fields unable to contain the heat and debris, it occurred to her she would have been a goner had she remained there.

The keening wail of the super structure came right after the aftershocks rattling he whole body. Such an impact told her they must have taken a bare hull strike. Shields were failing, they being boarded… time was running out.

She dropped down into engineering, the small emergency access meant for times exactly like this. The small square room contained the access way for their solo nacelle, nestled into the underbelly of the flying saucer of a ship. Running to the ventral access, she knew exactly where the charges were, wiring them had been a part of her engineering tour to learn the ship some years back. A plan formed in her brain as she looked at the master systems display.

“Alan?!” She called for the Engineer, but in times like this Engineering was a bunker to itself. The only access was from the bridge above it seemed. She was on her own.

Red on the displays highlighted the extent of their most recent impact. A direct hit on their aft launchers, shuttle bay, impulse engines. The fire that raged in their shuttle bay was hot enough to spread to other decks above and below, compromising the whole three deck cutter. Wasting no time, she ejected the shuttle pod out of the bay along with its contents into oblivion. That shuttlepod was a relic from when the ship was commissioned a century ago, a junk car to keep locals from looking too hard. The Raven was their tactical shuttle, but it was now trapped in the partially collapsed shuttle bay.

Fortunately there were no violent blowing forces anymore, and no fires since the level was depressurized. Her scans also showed two of the boarding party had been pulled into space. There were more in the deck here with her however and she had to take the time to find them. Tension in her shoulders burned as she held her phaser up at every corner.

A whistle sound alerted Dralir to look over her shoulder, she saw Duke, the grizzled old man giving her a thumbs up. Checking her scanner it looked totally clear. She didnt even detect Duke though so her faith in the scanner wasn’t high. Turning to look back for a grateful wave the man had disappeared entirely. Feeling more safe now, she turned a corner to the main gallery and saw three Chalnoth bodies brutalized on the ground. They had lost to a stealthily placed knife each. A chill went down her spine at the though of Duke moving silently and dispatching so effectively.

-TBC-

 

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