Suitable for 8 to 10 players (Part I of II)

Posted on Mon Jan 1, 2018 @ 3:21am by Captain Maritza Soran & Commander Caleb Ryan & Commander Amia Telamon M.D. & Lieutenant Commander Krang Darkmoon & Lieutenant Liam Reynolds & Lieutenant Annora Tessaro & Lieutenant Alanna Wells & Lieutenant JG Andrus Grax & Lieutenant Si'Lar Trellis

1,990 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Victory Conditions
Location: OPS Conference Room
Timeline: MD 01 1300

[ON]

"Thank you for hosting us, Commander." Admiral T'Vel walked to the far end of the long conference table. Two more Starfleet officers trailed behind, Commander Janus and Captain Hayashi. The Vulcan glanced out at the stars beyond. Outside, six large ships hung in space surrounding a seventh. There were two Nebula class, a Galaxy, an Akira, and two Intrepids, and in the centre was the USS Svikari. The Prometheus class was smaller and sleeker than its escort, like a knife surrounded by clubs.

T'Vel sat down in the high backed chair at the head of the table. "I appreciate it’s not easy to organize these things at such short notice, doubly so when you are new in a role. My yeomen will aid you as much as you need."

"Thank you, ma'am," Soran replied, choosing the seat to the admiral's right as Janus and Hayashi moved to the left. "I'm confident my staff can rise to the occasion. They're all highly experienced." Most of them more than me, she added to herself.

"Their files are all very encouraging," T'Vel assured her. "I look forward to meeting them."

"They won't be long, ma'am. I requested them to report at thirteen hundred hours sharp." Soran looked back towards the doors. The first of them had forty seconds to come through those doors, by her estimation, forty seconds to earn a bonus point by not making her look like a complete idiot in front of the admiral.

Alanna Wells walked into the room and nodded in greeting to those already in attendance. She took a seat at the table and pulled out her padd to take notes.

Liam walked into the meeting back in teal uniform. It felt strange, but it was where he was meant to be, back counselling again. "Ma’am," he greeted Soran before taking a seat next to Alanna. "Lieutenant." He smiled at her, getting his own padd out and ready.

"Hello," Alanna replied with a pleasant smile.

Lieutenant Si'Lar Trellis entered the room and took a seat.

She didn't know what the meeting was going to be about, but was pretty sure it was connected with the extra starships that had recently arrived at the station. Entering the briefing room, Annora acknowledged the others already present before taking a seat.

Amia came into the meeting room, puffing slightly from the effort of hurrying. She passed the replicator and ordered some cold water, which she quickly took to her seat at the table. She acknowledged the CO and the unknown senior officers present with a respectful nod of her head and smiled gently in a more familiar acknowledgement of the locals, as her known colleagues might be dubbed in the presence of so many strangers who were yet to be introduced and understood.

She sat down, lining up her padd in anticipation of what was about to unfold, and looked around, taking in all the faces, familiar and unfamiliar, as she sipped quietly at her glass, composing herself and waiting for the CO to speak.

Caleb strode into the conference room, his long stride quickly taking him to his place at the table. He gave a nod to the others and looked curiously at the superior officers. No one yet knew why the extra ships were docked at the station.

Andrus Grax followed closely behind Commander Ryan. By his count, he only had a few seconds to be considered on time, but he wasn't going to appear rushed. He nodded respectfully in Soran's direction as he took a seat at the far end of the briefing room table.

Annora smiled in greeting at the intel officer as he took a seat opposite of her at the end of the table. With the increased tension on the station, the two departments were working together more than they normally did.

Krang Darkmoon walked into the conference room, and much to his dismay took immediate notice that he was among the last to arrive. He took the seat assigned to him and marveled at the sight beyond the viewport of the seven massive starships.

"Thank you for coming," Maritza said. "May I introduce Vice Admiral T'Vel of Starfleet Security. Admiral, my senior staff." Soran went round the table indicating each one.

T'Vel got to her feet. "Thank you, Commander." She looked at each of the faces before her. "For the last five years, Starfleet has been working on developing new defensive and offensive options in the face of increasing aggression from a number of powers. Several options are now ready for live testing, and we are here to conduct a series of exercises to complete those tests."

She touched a finger to her padd, and the conference room screen displayed the image of a Prometheus class. "Meet Svikari. Essentially, she's a new generation Prometheus, but we've modified shields and weapons accordingly. Over the next few days we'll be testing first the shields, and then the weapons, individually, and finish with a full battle simulation, Svikari against several of her escort.

"Her shields have been adapted to a two stage design. There is a traditional overall sheath arrangement, but this has been de-powered, and power diverted to the new system. We recognized that space battles happen in standard spacetime, and most often one to one with other ships of the line. As such, the new shields operate by adapting a warp field to project shields further out from the ship in the form of a wall that is not only impossible for standard weapons to penetrate, but by being further out from the ship, a hit to them results in no impact jolts or other collateral damage. Shields can be angled to deflect attacks.”

There was no such thing as impossible to penetrate, Alanna thought. There was just can't be penetrated yet. And what did she mean by messing with the warp field when not at warp? Wouldn't that compromise the warp core? It would definitely eat up far too much power. Warp fields were not impenetrable by standard weapons, either.

"Her weapon complement is a single entity quantum field projection system that catapults two high energy proton streams at an enemy vessel inside an area of warped space. Where the protons collide, it triggers a brief and localized gravitational collapse." T'Vel looked around to see if there were any questions so far.

"A gravitational collapse?" Grax quoted Admiral T'Vel's words back to her carefully. "I might be misunderstanding you, Admiral," he continued, "but are you saying it pulls the enemy vessel in on itself?"

"Forced implosion? Is that something the two Geneva Conventions allow? Wouldn't it distort... well, everything...?" Her mind silently added ‘time’, but then dismissed itself as being silly.

"Creating a gravitational field will not only affect the ship targeted, but all the ships in close proximity, including the ship using it. It could also lead to tears in space or micro black holes," Alanna said. "Where has this been tested before now?"

The new weapon system certainly sounded impressive, but Annora had yet to meet a weapon that didn't have some sort of drawback or weakness.

"It's my understanding that the Geneva Convention of 2155 dealt primarily with biological weapons. In which case, it doesn't sound like they would apply to this weapon system."

She had been at West Point when they were signed, but remembered hearing chatter about the various talks that led to the Coalition of Planets.

"Why test this system here, on the edge of Federation space? Wouldn't it be more secure closer to the center?"

The admiral regarded the assembled officers with an air of satisfaction. "You are correct, Lieutenant. The Geneva Protocols are solely against biological weapons. And this is not a biological weapon." The Vulcan turned from Annora to Alanna. "The gravitational collapse only lasts a few milliseconds, and our tests have shown only damages areas between a hundred and and a thousand cubic meters. Think of it as a very small, very short lived, black hole."

"That's all it takes to damage space," Alanna countered. "Ma'am, I'm sorry, but this sounds far too dangerous. Messing with warp fields and micro black holes is only going to lead to damage to the fabric of space itself and could cause temporal anomalies, as well as spatial ones."

"We are having an academic discussion while a Cardassian fleet slowly builds itself at our very doorstep," Lieutenant Trellis chimed in. Normally, he would sit and patiently listen to the information that was being provided by the Command Staff. However, he saw that this current debate was leading nowhere.

"If this gives us an advantage over the Cardassian, or any other hostile fleet, then we should see to its immediately deployment," he said to the assembled staff.

Krang could hold his tongue no longer.

"Sincere apologies, sirs, if one is speaking out of school, but would not this sort of weapon platform cause the exact type of damage that the Federation was warned about by the Hekaran scientist in 2370? At that time, the Federation counsel so fully believed them that all space faring super powers agreed to maintain a limit of Warp 5 when the situation was not deemed emergency. These sorts of implosions, as you call them, would not only be grievously inhumane, but in all likelihood would do immeasurable damage to surrounding space. One does not intended to, as they say, put too fine a point on it, but aren't these weapons, by their very definition, wanton savagery?"

Liam pressed his finger to his temple. He was not a science man, so it was difficult to understand a lot of what was being discussed. He did contribute one thing though in response to the newcomers comments. "I suppose it depends on how and for what purpose the powers to be intend to use such weapons once testing has been done."

The admiral looked at the officers. There was an air to her regard, a whiff of satisfaction and approval.

"Your caution is valid. But this is not completely new technology. Indeed, the Romulans use related technology to power their warp drives," T'Vel acknowledged,

Janus, the Human with commander's pips on his collar, spoke up. "In both modelling and field tests, the event is too brief to cause damage to the elasticity of space-time. The consuming of the mass of the target vessel is what mitigates that risk. However, one of the reasons for these tests are to verify those tests in practice. Your brief, Lieutenant, will be to monitor the impact on space-time during the exercises and ensure that any instabilities are fully measured."

"There is no such thing as too brief," Alanna said. "And the Romulans use a quantum singularity, not a black hole. Subsuming the target will not mitigate the damage, it will amplify it." She gave Commander Janus an intense stare. "I will be monitoring very closely, but I do not think the testing will go as you expect, sir. I think it will be a catastrophic failure because someone has failed to take the science of black holes into account. The mass has to go somewhere. Even if the target is destroyed, the mass does not go away, it just changes form. To put it in simple terms, it's like trying to put out a fire by using gasoline. You're feeding it. It will grow bigger."

To be Continued

Admiral T'Vel
Flag Officer
USS Venture
[NPC Soran]

Captain Tetsuru Hayashi
Commanding Office
USS Svikari
[NPC Soran]

Commander Wladislaw Janus
Yeoman to Admiral T'Vel
USS Venture
[NPC Soran]

Commander Maritza Soran
Commanding Officer

Lieutenant Si'Lar Trellis
Security Officer

Lieutenant Alanna Wells
Chief Science Officer

Lieutenant (jg) Annora Tessaro
Assistant Chief Security Officer

Commander Caleb Ryan
Chief of Security/Tactical

Lieutenant Liam Reynolds
Chief Counselor

Cmdr Amia Telamon
Chief Medical Officer

Lieutenant (j.g.) Andrus Grax
Senior Intelligence Officer

 

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