IBEX part 3

Posted on Wed 22nd May, 2024 @ 12:17am by Commander Geraldine "Geri" Severide
Edited on on Tue 4th Jun, 2024 @ 12:13am

2,073 words; about a 10 minute read

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

Previously… https://sb109.sim-station.net/index.php/sim/viewpost/2319

And now…

The fire was out in the aft decks now, and she saw the ejector system for manual shuttle launch was still online. She grabbed the baseball sized chain of orbs loaded with muons for nullifying strong force interactions and hauled them to the recently extinguished shuttle bay ejector. With no grace or sense of danger she loaded the charges into the shuttle ejector haphazardly. It took a few moments to arrange them as a dispersal charge.

Checking her readouts showed there was nothing improving on board, but shields were still holding thanks to a ridiculously overpowered emitter meant for the larger ships of the line. This was a problem for Dralir however, shields worked in two directions.

"Reggie! Drop the shields or these won't make it through." State of the art shields meant the computer, what remained of it, knew weapons from shuttles. It wouldn't recognize the self-destruct system as a torpedo that was meant to leave the ship, the explosive cluster would detonate inside their shield perimeter if they weren’t given a hole to move through. Her demand traveled over the ships processors to the computer core on the brink of overload.

“Reggie” was close to using a full half of his processing capability to simultaneously repel boarding Chalnoth, keep the ship intact, perform countermeasures, and preserve the lives of the crew. The non-fleet crews were holed up in the Wardrooms and armory down below engineering. He monitored them carefully but occasionally lost track when sensors failed or damage took them out. A few replicants of himself stood along the corridors for additional protection, so far none had made it close to the vault like armory they had taken refuge in. Of the nine Starfleet crew on board prior to the desperate retreat they were forced into only five remained alive on their panels. They formed a hardline to the ships core systems on each deck, Computer, Engines, Command Deck.

Reggie monitored the other two crew, civilian specialists along for a mission. The Cardassian and Ferengi Kolor and Grazia had been in the wardroom beside the armory as per protocol when boarded, so they were safe. Reggie could fight the Chalnoth well enough, his holo-matrix was set without safety protocols in mind. But seeing the crew losses made his efforts feel futile. Reggie was felling these warriors with precise blows, sharp edged force fields and energetic discharges, impossible strength and stamina granted by force fields tied to a ships reactor. The problem was the holo-emitters were slowly going off line to lack of power or being destroyed, he was losing ground to occupy.

Reggie would see boarding parties die without explanation to explosions or phaser fire and note them as likely the handiwork of the man known only as Duke. Makoto used stealth and silence so her tally was much harder to track. Merrick was guarding the wardroom/armory with Kolor and Grazia inside safely kept. Alan’s combadge showed him at the entrance to the Command bunker but he could not be raised. Interference prevented the sensors from scanning, and there simply wasn’t time to worry. Even Reggie was pushed to the limits of his multi tasking trying to coordinate the repair to vital systems.

The conversation with Dralir had ended with her loading the self destruct charges in engineering to an ejector pad for shuttles. She ordered Reggie to lower the shields, despite her confidence he noted that she needed help with some smug self satisfaction. A replicant was issued to her in Engineering to assist.

Reggie shimmered into being, a seventh of the capability and resources but damned useful to Dralir’s reckoning. It spoke at her plainly,

“Chief Dralir, the yield isn’t high enough to outright destroy any of them-“

Dralir didnt stop her work programming them to respond to a signal for detonation. “Yeah, stopping them is more important its the deterrent I’m after, we can try Core ejecting too-“

Reggie scoffed, “That would destroy us as well-“

“Well what’s your plan, then?” Dralir wasn’t listening to the nay sayer.

Reggie replied fast, “Damaging them all significantly might draw the others into a defensive pursuit, buying us more time. We must clear the boarding parties, I will activate the core breach charges in the event the Command Deck is compromised, which I can estimate in less than five minutes.”

Dralir swore she would never trust her life to holograms again and yelled, “You are as much a threat as they are. Fight them, not me. Go get them off the ship, then!”

“If you eject the core we will face certain death, I cannot fight them if they keep transporting over. Distance and speed are the only way we survive. Do not eject the core!”

“So how can you know you will fail in five minutes?”

Reggie futzed in sync with an explosion elsewhere on the ship. “They have discovered my replicants are linked to the holo emitters. I am losing my ability to project in parts of the ship entirely. So far, the confinement fields in the hologrid have prevented them from beaming anywhere in the upper hold, but I am losing ground. Approximately four minutes until I issue the self-destruct code. This can be used to buy more time, rather than wasted as a weapon.”

Dralir understood more completely, but still didn’t like it. “Ok then, we buy time. Suggestions?”

Reggie blinked to the console, minimal setting for visual broadcast meant it was glitched and fuzzy. “The deuterium pod should go first; spread the particulate matter to cascade the explosion along a wider front. The deterrents are not long lasting, but-“

She caught on. “And If they sit in a plasma fire, they’ll take tremendous damage. I love it, Reggie; you’re forgiven.”

The specter vanished, leaving Dralir to the task before her.

{A Deck Forward Deflector control}

Meanwhile, inside the Deflector control room finally, Captain Alexander Richardson was in the sleek modern suite of technology walled up in total security as the ship tore itself to pieces around them. There was a micro attenuation transceiver station hooked to the Deflector allowing for precisely manipulated signals. His attentions were on defeating their counter intrusion software.

“Dralir, power restored, I’m in Deflector Control, remote breaching. I've got the DOTS on repairs. Keep the engines running; carry out your plan for the deterrent.”

He saw her look up in alarm, wondering how he had followed her plan so well.

With power restored, he was able to command from this secondary nerve center. He observed the hasty science in between frantic bouts of computer coding for himself attempting to even their odds more. They were at warp, but damage to their engines resulted in a leak that kept them from going any faster, and with structural integrity fields failing, they were now steadily slowing to prevent frost searing apart. Weapons systems were power hungry and currently deprived or disabled. Transporters were also offline due to system damage, and shields were regenerating only to be popped seconds later from another shot. That the ship held so well under this level of assault spoke highly of her build, but this looked like the end.

He sent the mission log and black box, firing the drone with all the data towards whatever was the closest starbase. The readout confirmed an Intelligence asset could assist at SB109. At least someone would hear their story, and the intelligence they had collected would be put to use. So elegized, now his only hope for offense was to use the ship's long-range communications to remote command one of the pursuing vessels, turning the tides on this ugly affair.

For the last few minutes his work so far had kept their computers chasing phantoms, and using a superior infiltration program was working; their shots missed, torpedoes lost guidance. In moments he would try to detonate the torpedoes in their racks. The prize would be to take over one of the vessels firing systems and start a fight between them as their little tugboat escaped. He had disabled the fighter of the Orions by simply deleting their friend or foe registry.

On his internal feed he saw the Armory doors open, Kolor and Grazia were joining the fight, much to his surprise. There was a mote of reserve power left, which he shunted to the IDF and field emitters at the armory to give them a chance. He also hit the orange button near his left eye to open comms,

“Crew of the IBEX, we have a fighting chance. Fall back to hard points; weather the storm. Plan A got us here, B and C will carry us out. This isn't it, folks, keep your dinner dates for the month.”

Alex returned to his attentions, finding he had a way to access their gravity controls. Smiling just a bit, he increased their internal gravity to maximum.

{IBEX - Armory}

Kolor hated the cold dark room he found himself in. His career in the Obsidian Order had put him in situations of terror and hopelessness before, but this was a helpless kind of despair. He had only a handphaser and this tiny ship to keep him alive, while a dozen Chalnoth were howling at the far end of the hallway. They were trying to overpower the holo-warrior Reggie had issued and winning an inch for every two deaths they endured.

All of this was of course in addition to the ex-agent's former employer seeking his head on a silver platter. He called to his good friend Grazia, a female Ferengi in similar peril to his own. Despite the enormous gulf in their cultures, they were good together, they had found out, and she was at his back as they fired at the howling juggernauts.

“We need to lock the armory door, we are getting pinned down!” Grazia said nothing, as was her tendency, and fired an overcharged plasma bolt from her prized Klingon shoulder-fired “siege breaker.” She had procured several weapons for the Ibex over her years on board, and she darted inside to get a different one as she had used the last round on the two Chalnoth now spread evenly over half the corridor.

Whenever a Chalnoth would break past the lightning-fast and impossibly strong Reggie replicant, Kolor would bring him down with a sustained steady shot. Grazia would claim a few here and there; she seemed to know how to use every weapon in their racks like she was trained for it. Chalnoth could shrug off a short blast even faster than a blood-crazed Klingon, so it took a steady beam to bring them down without explosive force.

Just on the other side of the door, Merrick clutched his leg inside the armory. He had taken fire during the opening boarding action. The medical pack had stabilized it, but he worried the leg was not salvageable. Currently he was inside the blast doors trying to get a long-range, one-way transporter pad to operate under power from a phaser rifle. There had to be some way of rallying here to go on the offensive and reclaim their ship. The Ferengi was tearing through the bins trying to find something strong enough to work but not damage the ship when a battery pack for a portable replicator spilled out.

The salvation it heralded rallied his spirits, “Grazia! Hand that to me!”

She looked at where he was pointing and didn’t ask why, but handed the wounded man what he asked for. She grabbed a long metal and wood tube and started sliding large rounds into the chamber hold. Some more Chalnoth were about to die, he thought to himself, and grinned despite the loss of life. When the power pack showed yellow, he saw enough power for one person and a few extra kilograms.

With the pad working, he could transport over to one of the vessels if their shields were down. The armory was well stocked, and he looked over with dismay at the charges he had to choose from. None of them in the range of strong enough and small enough could be detonated remotely, timers were too risky with modern deterrents; they could be detected or removed in seconds.

The realization was sudden and merciless. He would have to go with it.

-TBC

 

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