Emergence - Part 5

Posted on Fri May 29, 2015 @ 11:41pm by Captain Isha t'Vaurek & Commander Caden Aldrex & Lieutenant Commander Steven Wyman & Commander Caleb Ryan & Commander Amia Telamon M.D. & Lieutenant Saria Rex & Captain Tam "Demon" Haican & Lieutenant Kyle "Loki" Carter & Sebina Haican & Captain Maritza Soran

1,730 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Eye of the Beholder
Location: Various
Timeline: MD 3/1530

[Command Level Operations]

"Two more ships report ready to depart," one of the traffic controllers said from his console.

Cade Aldrex nodded. "Clearance granted. Open the subspace field to let them leave." Then turning his attention back to the senior officers he asked, "What's on the external sensor readings?"

Soran was seeing, but not sure she was believing. "There's a planet. And...and a sun?" She turned to look at the captain and her XO, wondering if they saw it too or if it was another one of her hallucinations. Then her panel screamed an alert and she looked pack. "Asteroids!"

Proximity alarms blared everywhere as the viewing screens were filled with a field of rocks from tiny pebbles to city sized chunks of stone and metal ore, all of them rushing towards the station at thousands of kilometers an hour.

Kyle heard Commander Soran's revelation over the open comm channel and turned his field of gaze from the safe evacuation of the civilian transports and looked back to the anomaly and the debris coming out of it. "Loki to DS5, can you get a weapons lock on the asteroids?" He had already laid a course in for a strafing run of the asteroids. If he could break them up they wouldn't pose a threat to the station if they were small enough.

"Hold those departures!" Aldrex ordered. He winced as he felt some of the initial blows against the station's thick alloy hull. "CAG, if you think it's safe for your people then we could use a hand."

Soran looked over to the Chief Engineer. "Mr. Wyman? Can we fire? Clear their path?"

The station shook again and dropped towards the planet they were now over.

In command and utterly powerless, Isha grabbed the rail as the station fell. Evacuation was no longer an option.

Her fingers circled the cool metal, meeting with the slippery sweat of her palm. "Air group, Engineering, Tactical, do what you can to blast a path through this storm through the boats that are out there, and away from us. In this hail all who are still on DS5 are trapped."

A planet they had figured. A star had certainly been a possibility. But an asteroid field? That was just overkill. "I can't say I'm enjoying this installment of ‘Improv at the Apollo.’ Of course, we wouldn't have to worry about these asteroids if some moron hadn't burned out the main deflector!"

Steve let that statement hang in the air as he tried to pull another rabbit out of his hat. "Drawing from emergency reserves...trying to shore up the shields. Tactical, I can give the phasers everything the fusion reactor has left. Make your shots count!"

“It’s hard to get a lock,” Caleb reported. “Too close to that sun, the radiation is overwhelming the sensors. Can you clean that up? CAG, we may be firing blind! I can shoot at the big shadows, but I can’t guarantee you won’t take friendly fire!” Caleb switched over to manual targeting. It would be slower, but until the sensors were cleaned up, it was safer. He picked the largest shadow and fired, the phaser beams lancing out, carving into the hard rock. “Tricobalt devices would work better for the big ones,” he said. “We can use torpedoes if we get the sensors clear.”

"Hold your fire if you're not sure of your target, Mister Ryan," the XO ordered. "There are still several ships out there full of evacuees. We don't want to hit one by accident. Use the tractor beams to repulse anything big that looks like it's about to hit us. Somebody work on getting a firing solution for a tricobalt device. Low yield until we're sure it works."

"Anybody not on civi escort duty line up on me, 'V' pattern formation," Kyle called over the comm strictly to his pilots, but Ops could still hear the comm chatter. A mix of Valkyries and Razors formed a nine fighter element. "Strafing runs on the asteroids. If we can break them up into smaller pieces they won't cause too much damage to the station. On my mark. Three...two...one...MARK!" The small group moved forward sending a barrage of phaser fire into the asteroids.


[Bravo Leader]

Tam looked at his fighter's split chronometer, located on the lower right quadrant of his forward control panel. It showed both the current time on the station and the time of where he had just left. The traveling display was programable, depending on what the local time was. According to the two chronometers, he had left the prison nearly seven hours previous, however, local station time showed that barely thirty minutes had elapsed in the same span of time. It was one of the things that wore many pilots out during missions, the differing time zones.

He knew that he could only push his engines for a couple more hours, before he'd be forced to shut down and allow them to cool down. To push them farther would start to risk a catastrophic engine failure, which, at his current speed, would turn him into a temporary flash of light and energy, before he could react.


[Command Level Operations]

In Operations, Caleb frowned as he listened to his desk ensign and then looked over at Isha. He motioned a waiting relief officer over and stepped away from his station to behind the Romulan woman.

“Captain,” Caleb spoke softly, “my security team has your daughters on the Promenade,” he told her. “What would you like done with them?”

Isha's agate gaze flicked to the Security Chief. "My daughters." Who had Eviess teamed up with? Either way, they shouldn't be on their own on the Promenade at a time like this. They should be in the schoolroom and under the care of the teacher.

For the first time Isha felt her heart rate rise. The solar system blazing into life before their eyes and its clarion escort of asteroids was nothing to her. She couldn't lose another child, not now she had lost Rh'Vaurek.

Isha pulled herself back half way through her first step towards the turbolift. "I-- Organize a site to site transport to my ready room."

Isha turned on her heel, "You have Ops, Commander," she said to Aldrex.

Caleb nodded, struggling back to the Tactical station through the violent motions of the station.

"Aye, Captain," Aldrex replied, watching her go with a slightly bewildered look on his face. He had been occupied with something else and hadn't caught the exchange between her and Ryan. He couldn't imagine what would make the captain leave her post at a time like this, but he had to put it aside for now.

An excited voice cut in over subspace. "Chrome one-one-four. A Capellan merchant ship just got hammered by an asteroid. I'm turning in to render assistance."

"Watch yourself. I'm going with you. One-one-zero, turning in."

"Prowler two-one-three, I just blasted one that was headed for the ventral sensor array, but it looks like there's some damage down there. Sorry."

"This is Thunderbolt Lead. I just got hit by a fast one. Sensors didn't see it coming. Somebody check underneath me for damage."

Aldrex reopened the channel to the fighters. "CAG, you heard the Captain. Take the evacuating ships through the asteroid field and get them into open space. But leave one fighter behind for us. A volunteer." He glanced at the others around him. "Status report. Can we get out of this planet's gravity well?"

Martiza looked over her shoulder. "If we can get power, the best route I can offer puts us in the path of an asteroid. It’s only going to clip us. Everything below Deck 14 will survive. All we need is power."

"Snake-Eyes, take the rest of the wing and guide the civilian convoy to safety," Kyle ordered the squadron leader after hearing the XO's commands. Kyle headed back and placed himself between the incoming asteroids and the station. "Loki to Ops, I'll cover you the best I can, but with the amount of rocks out here I can't promise the paint won't get scratched a bit." He was zigging and zagging in between the incoming debris, avoiding the smaller pieces and trying to break up the larger ones. If they could keep it to a few dents and scratches they'd get off easy.


[Oak Squadron]

"Oak Lead copies!" Munroe acknowledged and began issuing orders to his squadron and the rest of the pilots who had managed to launch. They rounded up the ships and escape modules, herding them along as quickly as possible out of the path of the incoming storm of rocks.

Munroe knew they weren't all going to make it, the slower ships and especially the escape modules were going to get shredded if they didn't get out of the way in time. Something had to be done. Hauling on his stick he banked his craft over, turned one hundred and eighty degrees to face the back towards the station and the rapidly closing shower of meteors and rocks.

"Three-Twenty Seven listen up!" he called on the main wing channel. "This is Oak Lead. Anyone who's got any ordinance on board form up on me! I don't care what you're carrying, but line it out to my starboard"

There were a smattering of acknowledgements and a number of Valkyries, Broadswords, and Razors peeled out and came to join him. The tumbling mass of asteroids and meteors bore down on the stationary fighters.

"Alright, stand by to unload every warhead you've got on my mark!" Munroe instructed. Looking to his right he saw there weren't going to be enough fighters, but that didn't mean they didn't try. "We're going to send back a wave of torpedoes into that lot and hopefully break it up enough to reduce the damage to the ships behind us. Get your warheads hot and stand by!"

To be continued...

Lt. Cmdr. Maritza Soran
Chief Strategic Operations Officer

Cpt. Tam "Demon" Haican
Bravo Assault Wing Commander

Lt. Cmdr. Steve Wyman
Chief Engineering Officer

Lt. Cmdr. Caden Aldrex
Executive Officer

Lt. Kyle "Loki" Carter
CAG

Lt. Cmdr. Caleb Ryan
Chief Security/Tactical Officer

Ltjg. Snake Eyes Munroe
Oak Squadron Leader

Captain Isha t'Vaurek

 

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