Trifecta
Posted on 27 Feb 2021 @ 8:23pm by Admiral Zavareh Sepandiyar & Captain Corvus DeHavilland & Captain Lachlan Callum
Edited on on 14 Mar 2021 @ 10:19pm
Mission:
M1 - Emergence
Location: Obsidian Command Space
Timeline: Immediately Following A Walk Among the Stars
2281 words - 4.6 OF Standard Post Measure
The transporter beam resolved in her chest. All around her the deep dark of the void had been replaced by bright artificial light. Before she could even register what was happening, Eindorf had thrown himself forward, his weapon up and ready to fire. But he didn’t. That seemed odd to her as her brain tried to process where they are, realizing that the transporter pad was familiar. The bulkheads were familiar. Her heartbeat quickened in her chest as she looked around Eindorf to see a trio of Starfleet Officers at a transporter panel with their hands up. Behind them, assembled in the room was the rest of their away EVA team. As they stood there in their standoff, two more people appeared on the transporter pad. Corvus looked back from behind Eindorf to see Grimly and Parveaux, the latter of which immediately fell to the deck.
Eindorf lowered the weapon as Corvus hobbled around him, nearly falling and leaning hard into him to support her weight. “Where are we?!” She asked quickly, waving the medical team forward that looked poised to move but were afraid to with Eindorf ready to shoot.
“USS Theseus,” the Chief Petty Officer at the station said, lowering his hands. “Prometheus class.”
“I need to get to the bridge,” Corvus declared, bracing on Eindorf. “Get me to the bridge, Sergeant.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he nodded, waving to the door. “You? Show us the way?”
“I’ll take you there,” a Crewman at the station nodded, hurrying over at the Chief’s insistence.
Eindorf stopped at the door to ditch his heavy weapon and his helmet, taking Corvus’ too and then followed the Crewman as fast as he could support Corvus on his left side. It wasn’t a long trek. Soon they were stepping through the rear bridge door and onto the main bridge of the Prometheus class vessel. It was a familiar sight to Corvus; she’d served for the better part of eight years on the Poseidon. Things looked familiar, but strangely different somehow. Clearly this variant of Prometheus was newer and more advanced.
The bridge was awash in blue light, like it was a submarine of the 20th century running ‘dark’. An older man sat in the center chair, perched on the arm and glaring at the forward glass. He perked up suddenly to see them approaching. Eindorf led them to the railing and Corvus braced herself there.
“I’m Captain DeHavilland, of Obsidian Command,” she declared quickly. “Thank you… for helping us.”
“Captain Callum, welcome to the Theseus,” he replied in a low, rumbly Scottish burr.
“Wh-where are the other segments?” She asked urgently, looking to the forward glass at the tip of the station looming into view. They weren’t moving too fast, which surprised her. Why weren’t they steaming into the engagement. Even alone, the primary hull packed one hell of a wallop.
He tapped something on his opposite armrest and a view of the station came up on the far right of the glass showing three green blips of where the other sections were. “We’ll attack shortly. Draw them off the Vesta’s,” he declared, pointing to the secondary conn station. “Have a seat, Captain. We could use another hand.”
Corvus turned and eagerly made her way that way, bracing on the railing and then quickly hobbling over to the secondary conn station. She dropped into the chair heavily and pulled forward to a very familiar console. Corvus reached for the activation switch just as the CoNN Officer was, and smirked. “Did eight years on the Poseidon,” she winked, “Hope I can remember my way.”
“Cheers for that,” the sandy-haired blonde replied in a clipped British accent.
DeHavilland turned her attention forward, unable to help the smile creeping over her face. She might not have been able to do much from the station but now, now she literally had a fighting chance.
“Secondary and Tertiary hulls are reporting ready, Captain,” one of the Officer’s at the back of the bridge declared.
Callum sat up in his chair, perched on the edge now and took a steadying breath. “Attack pattern Prometheus-Gamma-Seven. Execute!”
The Lieutenant Commander at the CoNN station executed the command quickly and the segment surged forward in answer, breaking away from the hull of the station and rotating on its center axis to face the engagement. Corvus tapped into the comm’s array and at her biddance a holographic representation of the other two sections appeared on either side of the main glass.
“Thank you, Captain,” Callum nodded.
The secondary hull fired a trio of torpedoes, the tertiary let loose a volley of phaser fire and their segment fired its own volley of torpedoes as they rapidly closed the distance between the station and the engagement. The glass came alive with red target blips turning away from the larger forms of the Vestas and closing the distance to their three segments. The fighter segments broke away too, using the new vessels as cover to regroup and surge out again.
“Defensive pattern Prometheus-Theta-three,” Callum ordered, “Draw them up into the engagement zone.”
Corvus did her part, but was shaking her head as she did. The maneuver didn’t make sense. They weren’t utilizing the larger Vesta’s as support. They had attacked the Birds of Prey and Warbirds head on and now were steaming away from the larger support vessels, out of range of their phasers into the open space ‘above’ them. Even three heavily armored parts weren’t going to be able to hold them back, and they were putting the Vesta’s in danger. By turning to chase and give support, they exposed themselves. She turned, intending to say something to Callum, but he barked out another order, cutting her off.
“Bridge to Engineering,” he called out.
“Go ahead, skip,” a woman called back.
“Now’s the time,” he ordered.
“Yes, sir. Faking overload of the port impulse engine now. I can give you forty-five seconds before I have to shut it down or we lose it altogether.”
“Understood, Tahmina. Brightwood, make your maneuver. Sell it,” he ordered.
“Jolly good,” Brightwood winked at DeHavilland slyly.
The CoNN officer put the ship into a starboard listing spin, and Corvus could see on the readings that the port impulse engine was venting into open space. To anyone watching it would look like they had them on the ropes and that they were having trouble controlling their vessel. The only question Corvus had was: why. Why were they trying to draw more of the vessel off the Vesta’s and over to them. Sure, it might give the larger ships a chance to catch their breath and regroup fighters. Maybe even deploy more if it had been too dangerous to get them out, but it was risking all three hulls of the Theseus to do it.
Covus’ terminal came alive with an alert of some sort and she turned her attention away from whatever madness Callum had concocted to see what it was. He jaw slacked, “Callum!” She called out, “I’m picking up a massive subspace anomaly bearing two-four-eight mark nine-zero. Right on top of us!” She said, turning back to look at him fearfully.
“How long until it resolves?” Callum asked.
That took her by even more surprise and turned back to her station, “Twelve seconds.”
“All sections. Standby for orders!” Callum declared, clutching the arms of his chair as if bracing for impact.
Two ancient warbirds were closing in on them, closing the distance between them with startling speed. Brightwood was juking their attacks as best he could, still selling the damage to their port engines but pointing almost exactly at where her readings were saying the subspace anomaly was going to resolve. Corvus wasn’t sure why they were heading towards it, terrified that a singularity was going to form and that the whole lot of them were going to be sucked back into the void whence the station had come eighteen months ago.
“Captain, are you su-.”
“How long, Captain?” Callum cut her off.
“Four seconds,” she shook her head, realizing that it was too late now. Whatever the subspace rupture that followed this signal turned out to be, they weren’t going to be able to avoid it. She just hoped that their more advanced ship would survive better than their enemies. The subspace distortion resolved with a flash of white light and almost instantly more than a dozen lances of crimson light shot forward from it, like some great porcupine expelling its quills into the darkness.
A vessel emerged from the subspace distortion, its hull glowing slightly with the expended energy. It was a massive vessel that dwarfed even the large Vesta’s fighting to get back into the engagement from below, and it wasn’t alone. Two smaller vessels sped out of the baffles of the massive ship, hiding between its low slung nacelles. Corvus’ jaw fell open again. It was a ship she recognized the profile of, but she’d never seen one in the flesh. There was no mistaking the predatory form of the Ascension-class Starship and the only one she knew of anywhere near this sector was the Alexander.
As if answering her unspoken thoughts, the main glass flashed green identifying the USS Alexander as well as the Texas and Ardeshir rushing out from its baffles. A moment later two more flashes resolved and the glass again registered more new vessels, the USS Mississippi, Praetorian and DeGrasse.
“Battle-synch engaged,” an officer at the rear of the bridge declared. Several holograms came to life just below the main glass of various officer’s in their command chairs, save one older man standing on his feet clearly commanding the room.
“I have the Fleet,” Admiral Sepandiyar declared calmly, “Attack pattern zeta-omicron-four,” he ordered. “Alexander will form center.”
Corvus watched in disbelief as it all unfolded before her, a well-crafted and executed maneuver to draw their enemy away from the Caelian and Exeter so they would break like water over rocks when the Alexander et all steamed in, hiding the smaller vessels in their baffles to share their slipstream. It was a crafty and very dangerous maneuver but it got them all there and into the fight. A fight there was no way they weren’t winning now. Just the Ascension-class alone was more than they could handle. Add the other five ships, including another Vesta, a Defiant and a Galaxy-class vessel and this battle was over. It was just a matter of executing the maneuvers.
She sat back in the aux chair, looking over at Brightwood who grinned back at her, “I believe that’s match.”
Brightwood was right, the six new vessels easily cleared the engagement. The vessels that survived were listing in space. Two had surrendered and the rest were either clouds of dust or so damaged that they were of no concern anymore. The battle was over almost as quickly as it had begun.
“Fitzgerald, Dansby, Parnell, create a patrol perimeter,” Sepandiyar ordered.
Three of the Captain holo’s, two men and a woman, all nodded. She watched on the glass as the large Galaxy class and the sleek, low-profile vessel of a class she’d never seen broke away from the Fleet. The new Vesta followed a moment later.
“Hawthorne, Stanton, close patrol on the station. Markus, give me full spread of sensor pods into the nearby system. All bands. If it moves, I want to be aware of it.”
“Aye, Admiral,” a gray-haired man nodded.
“Aye, Admiral,” a gray-haired, bearded man chimed in as well. The Luna-class and the Defiant broke away as well.
“Admiral, I have twenty-one of the station’s crew aboard, her Captain included,” Callum chimed in now, drawing the Admiral’s gaze to him.
“You have Captain DeHavilland?”
“Aye, Admiral. Plucked them off the hull - they were EVA.”
“Captain DeHavilland?”
Corvus stood up, expecting that the holo-presence would pick her up. The holo of Admiral Sepandiyar turned towards her, “Sir,” she nodded. “We were trying to get to Medical. The Marines are in Engineering fighting off a boarding party. They sabotaged power somehow just as we were bringing things online. This was absolutely pre-planned, and there is no doubt we have operators on the station that made this happen.
Sepandiyar turned to his left, “Commander Drake, tell Colonel Rutland to ready his Marines,” he ordered to someone she couldn’t see. He turned back to her and gave a steely nod, “Beam aboard the Alexander. Once she’s aboard, Callum, form up with the patrol perimeter.”
“Aye, sir,” Callum nodded firmly.
DeHavilland got up, steadying herself on the terminal and purposely killing the holo-feed before hobbling quickly to the railing and hurrying along it. Eindorf hustled over and took her arm over his shoulder again and they headed towards the door back to the transporter room, but she stopped him just as they reached Callum’s chair. She grabbed his shoulder firmly, “Thank you, Captain,” she declared emphatically. “When this all cleaned up, there’s a big bottle of whatever it is you like to drink waiting for you in my ready room,” she declared.
“Looking forward to it,” he smiled back.
Corvus squeezed once more and then headed towards the door and finally, begrudgingly, admitting to herself that Declan had been right to send her Eindorf. Without him, she would not have made it.
