Out of the Sun

Posted on Thu May 27, 2021 @ 2:53pm by Lieutenant JG Maximillian Schott & Lieutenant Sibyl Danzer

Mission: Episode 4: Infiltration
Location: Artemis Shuttle - U.S.S. Eagle
1459 words - 2.9 OF Standard Post Measure

Max was sitting in the pilot's chair, hands over the controls, gently swiveling his chair back and forth as he navigated the shuttle through a small, one star, three planet, system. He addressed the new tactical lead in the co-pilot's chair, "I'm just saying, I don't think a Cardassian cargo vessel saying they seem to have lost propulsion is high level enough to warrant having to call back to the Eagle."

"I've sent a bulletin to the Eagle on our change of course. It's just the better part of caution. There's not enough information in the signal to indicate if it's just engine trouble. You have to assume the worst."

Max nodded, "That's fair. Sounds like splitting the difference between going it alone and calling them to pick us up."

As they approached the Cardassian freighter, Sibyl couldn't help but remember her own upbringing on a freighter. They tended to be elongated space trucks for all of the practical reasons of making the runs worth taking. This one wasn't as well shielded as the military Groumall class. It had a gradual wedge form, narrowest at the head. "The long hauler, there it is. I'm reading six Cardassian life signs. Hailing... no response. Their communications are out. Give us a view of their the ventral side."

Max moved over the controls and dove under the Cardassians. Leaning forward to look up at the undercarriage of the freighter, "What are we looking for?"

"Just checking the subspace antennae." Sibyl explained as Max moved them underneath. The set of antenna and covered dishes that would have made up the communications array was toasted, with a gorge down the center. Sibyl's hackles went up immediately. "Whoa. Well. That explains why they can't return our hails. Damage also visible on the under side of the port nacelle. Raising shields."

Max moved his gaze to the sensors. It seemed they were alone in the system with the freighter, with no evidence of whoever or whatever had caused the damage. He habitually looked outside as well, giving the Mk. I Eyeball a try, "Any evidence of what caused the damage?"

"Yeah, I've got an idea..." Sibyl said as she ran the sensor data. "The hull has a temporal distortion signature surrounding the damage. It looks like tachyon weapons. Tzenkethi calling card, in my opinion—"

Alarms started going off. Max swiped to clear them, and noticed their sensors were suddenly picking up two more vessels approaching.

"We've got vessels emerging from the star's corona. Two Tzenkethi raiders," Boelcke would be proud of their tactics, but Max didn't have time to think about that.

The comm system came alive, "Starfleet vessel, this is Tahdid Ter Vel-C of the Tzenkethi Coalition. Cut your engines, drop your shields, and prepare to be boarded." The two vessels fired at them to emphasize their point.

Max immediately redirected the shuttle up on the vertical plane, "I'm going to try to disrupt their approach by getting creative here, let me know if you need me to head a specific direction. I'm putting us between them and the Cardassians."

"Weapons online." Sibyl was sweating it. They didn't have the muscle to take both raiders *and* play defense. She leaned on the Comm. "Stand down, Tahdid Ter. We are prepared to defend."

The Tzenkethi responded with the leader aiming a point off their bow and accelerating. His wing lined up in the slot position behind him, taking the same tack.

"They're setting up to strafe us. Tzenkethi MO is to keep their nose on us with their momentum in a different direction. I'm going to see if I can get us out of their line. Can you try to disable their maneuvering so they can't keep their noses at us?"

"On it, targeting the Engine manifolds." She was unwilling to give up the advantage while she still had a window on their weaker forward shields as Max was swinging the shuttle. Considering the Tzenkethi opened with such unfriendly demands and aggressive posture, Sibyl answered them with a salvo of first shots as they came into range, splitting an alternating pattern of phaser bursts between them both and lighting up their shields.

Tachyon and phaser bursts crossed in the space between the ships, lighting up the dark. The Tzenkethi were swinging their noses around matching Max's maneuvers. He was shaken at the controls by another blast, "Shields at eighty-seven percent."

He realized his positioning mistake when he managed to dodge some of the bursts and they struck the freighter behind them. If he wasn't ready to block every burst with their shuttle, he should move away from the freighter, since clearly the shuttle was the priority target to the Tzenkethi.

"Hold on," Max arced the shuttle up out of the line of fire and away from the freighter. The raiders kept their line and just swung their noses following their movements.

Gunning through the Tzenkethi shielding while trying to stay out of their forward gun range meant punching them in their sides, where the shields were strongest. Sibyl was running a rapid fire pattern to try not to over heat the phaser coils but splitting the fire up meant she wasn't making a big enough dent in either of them, and by the time she did they diverted shield to cover their engines again. It was like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom. Meanwhile they were taking fire.

Max tried to think of another way to drop behind the raiders, but the pair, combined with their maneuverability and strategy, was making it very difficult. Another full tachyon burst hit their shields, "Shields at fifty percent. I'm going to show them our port quarter." Max twisted the shuttle and tried to put their stronger shields in the direction of the assault.

The Tzenkethi had passed their location now, and Max saw them fire up their engines. Unfortunately, they used the opportunity to split apart and he saw them set up new lines. He tried to calculate their new approaches with the HUD, but the HUD blinked out as they were struck with more fire.

"I lost targeting computers, dammit." She hit the control board as it switched to manual.

"Shields at thirty--" a burst interrupted Max, "twenty percent. We've got a rupture in the manifold. I'm losing maneuverability." Steam and smoke started filling the shuttle from the rear of the cabin. Max spun to the damage control panel and tried to lock down the rupture.

Sibyl sat back, sighed and gave a dark chuckle. This was pretty much a lost cause at this point and she might as well watch the fireworks.

Outside the shuttle, the two Tzenkethi ships were sliding toward them, one above to the right, one level and to the left, they released another burst of fire.

Max looked out of the shuttle and saw the bursts cut through the shields and impact their hull, exploding. As the explosion expanded, it slowed down and then froze.

"Program terminated. Shuttle destroyed," the computer chimed cheerfully.

Max brushed his hair back, "Well, that didn't go great."

"That's why we run these things. so I'd say it did it's job." Sibyl sat back, thinking. "Let's run it again. I think I spread our fire too thin. Should have picked one of them and made an example of him. Keep us right in front of their guns in good old do-si-do circle dance. Our shields full forward would outlast theirs. I should have picked one, hit them head on in the nose. Then it would just be a matter of hoping the other one called it off. Chances are though, they'd have got past us and strafed the freighter out of spite on the way out of the system. They write these unwinnable, you know." She pursed her lips and got a twinkle in her eye. "Let's try something stupid and do a tractor lock on the second one as we punch the first. The phaser coils will get the chance to cool for thirty seconds, we'd have a second to reconfigure shields and we can keep them off the freighter just long enough. If we're real clever, and I know we are, we can probably get the physics to work out to whip and release the second into the first."

"Stupid ideas can be fun," Max stretched his arms behind him, interlocked his fingers, and raised them, stretching his shoulders and cracking his back. He flexed his head one way, then the other, "Alright: Computer, restart program, same variables."

"Program re-initializing."

Max was sitting in the pilot's chair, hands over the controls, gently swiveling his chair back and forth as he navigated the shuttle through a small, one star, three planet, system.