Defensive Scenarios
Posted on 04 Oct 2020 @ 11:13am by Commander Calliope Zahn & Captain Corvus DeHavilland & Lieutenant Commander Neil Orzahn & Lieutenant Commander Godiva Kimberlye & Commander Thaddeus Zayne
Mission:
M1 - Emergence
Location: Command Center
Timeline: MD04 - 0900HRS
2881 words - 5.8 OF Standard Post Measure
It was a bit surreal being back at the big holo table in the Command and Control center of the Starbase. The last time Corvus had been here, she'd been overwhelmed by the sheer size and the weight of the command she was now responsible for. This time though, as she looked around at the officers gathered about the table she couldn't help but feel as if she was looking down on her own life as an observer; witnessing the first of many meetings like that this would define her command. Almost like witnessing the birth of child. Corvus repressed a smile as she manipulated the display on the honorable, wiping out the holographic projection of the interior of the starbase that had been there. The chit chat about the table ceased almost immediately and the collected officers all looked to her.
It was a bit of a difference from the plush chairs and long conference tables she'd cut her teeth on in the fleet up to this point. There were no chairs here, no replicators making coffee, no endless banter as they waited for everyone to show up and get comfortable. This was a meeting with purpose, and Corvus intended to keep that rhythm going no matter what. She glanced briefly to her first officer across the table from her, then Commander Zayne to her left and began.
"For those of you who don't know, this is Commander Zayne, the Starfleet Strat Ops Officer assigned to Camp Falkirk. He was part of the compliment that was aboard the Starbase when it entered the void eighteen months ago," she said, gesturing to the taller man on her left. "There's no one aboard that's more familiar with what happened here than he is. He's agreed to stay with us for one more week to make sure we've got every bit of information we'll need to get this station operational." Thaddeus simply nodded in reply as Corvus pressed on, "Just to be sure everyone knows who we are here," she continued, pointing directly across the table, "Commander Zahn, our First Officer."
Calliope gave a nod of acknowledgement to the introduction. "A pleasure."
She pointed now to the brown haired Lieutenant Commander at the right end of the holotable, "Lieutenant Commander Orzahn, Chief Tactical. Lieutenant Commander Kimberlye, Chief Intelligence Officer," she continued, pointing to the red-haired woman to Orzahn's left. Finally she pointed to the opposite end of the table from Orzahn, to the left of Zayne, "And Lieutenant Winslow, Chief of Security," she introduced. "They'll be plenty of time later for a more social introduction, for now we've got to get this station functional and get a better understanding of exactly how big of a pile we've waded into here," she outlined, "I've not asked Doctor Mazur, our Chief Medical Officer, Doctor Jordan our Chief Counselor or Lieutenant Commander Quinn to join us, but they round out the Senior Staff we have aboard. As this is meant to be a strategic meeting, I've left them with their more important tasks of getting their sections operational." Corvus looked between all of them watching her with rapt attention and felt momentarily overwhelmed by the weight of this all once more, and once more drew a breath to steel herself, "Commander Zahn, anything you'd like to add?"
"Only that I'm looking forward to looking back on this morass with fond memories of how we overcame it." Calliope set her padd down on the lip of the table. "And I'm honored to be here to see it through with each of you." She looked at her meeting agenda. Calliope was wont to go off in any direction when she talked, so she found that keeping her thoughts pre-organized always helped. And this was quite the list. "Let's begin with our current defensive capacity...."
Zayne spoke up first. While not the Tactical Officer, he'd certainly been here longer and had the lay of the land better than anyone else. "We've managed to reroute the power Engineering has alotted us to shields, which are holding at fifteen percent. We've also managed some for the outer ring phasers at about eight percent power. There's potential for more in a pinch if we can convince Engineering to give it," he explained, "A Host of enemy ships knocking on our door should do the trick," he added dryly.
Corvus nodded, having heard all this before, and gestured to Lieutenant Commander Orzahn, "Any changes in that you've seen since coming aboard?" she asked.
"Refurbishments are still underway. The command sectors shields should be done in the next day or two then they'll be moving to engineering. Once the Chief can get the power back up, the shields will be ready. I'm less concerned about offensive power then the shields mostly because we do have a few assets here at the moment that can pack a punch." Neil replied with a shrug, with the Caelian around as well as several other smaller ships bringing supplies he was confident the could do it. "Though I have some concerns about he power relays into the habitat sections defensive array."
"Work with Chief Quinn," Corvus suggested, "I'm not sure what he can do, but, we're going to all have to work together to get things functional," She explained, moving to change up the holoprojection. "Let's move on to the minor and major players in the area," she continued, "Hopefully we don't need shields and weapons, but if the last eighteen months was any indication we're going to have our hands full here," she began.
A large holographic map of this sector of space came into view on the projector, plotting the Loki system with a bright green circle at the edge of Federation space with what had been the Romulan Empire outlined in a green dotted line. The Hobus disaster area was represented off from that with a large circular blast area. In general, most Starfleet Officers and Federation civilians had a passing knowledge of the Federation's borders, and those of their nearest neighbors. Mostly because it didn't relate to them in every day situations so they had no need for detailed data. Given that the Romulans had been one of their most storied nemesis' and reluctant allies; their star Hobus going Supernova had turned the once storied empire into a race of refugees. Suddenly, everyone was being saturated by information on the Empire and what factions were splintering off now. Your passing eight year old in Denver could probably tell you where the borders were these days.
"In the broadest perspective, the loss of Obsidian Command eighteen months ago put this entire segment of space into a power vacuum," Corvus continued on, gesturing to the Romulan side of the map, "Romulan space continues to fracture with tin-pot dictators popping up like whack-a-mole, and within that chaos we have new players. Pirates, raiders, disillusioned factions. It's a powder keg. Obsidian Command had kept that at bay, but with it gone, they got comfortable not having a strong Starfleet presence here. I don't expect that they're going to let us rebuild that foundation without some sort of resistance," she sighed, "Starfleet's done their best to have a presence here, but we're off the beaten path. That's why OC was built here," she said. "The closest Starfleet facility of significance is Camp Falkirk, here," she said, pointing to the very tip top of the hologram. A small green anchor that said 'Falkirk'. They too were at the edge of the Federation border. "I've already asked Major General MacTaryn to send us what he could spare. Those Marines, and the USS Exeter should be on their way here in the next seven hours or so, barring no unforeseen difficulties on theirs or our part."
"The Exeter?" Zayne asked, cocking his head to the side slightly, "Captain Xoldun's boat?" he added, smirking as the Captain nodded in reply. "That's a significant asset in play," he explained. "Vesta-class vessels pack more than enough punch to assist in defending this station. If we can get the fighters aboard, and the Garrison vessels properly manned, we'll have at least a passing outer perimeter," he said, looking to Orzahn with a smirk.
"I believe the Typhoon is currently en route as well with the fighter complement, only four or five days away." Neil said with a nod. "Within two weeks I'd say we'll be able to fend for ourselves, but until then the support will definitely help."
"We've currently got the support of The Caelian, as well. As long as nothing pressing demands her elsewhere," Calliope mentioned. Two Vestas wasn't so shabby. "Her crew has a significant amount of experience in the area as well. Commander Kimberlye, what should we be anticipating, in your estimation?"
Pointing to the Romulan map, Godiva keyed into her own PaDD to bring some of her recent data. "Starfleet Intelligence has notes of a new warlord operating in this area, who seems to be funneling resources into the local pirate and raiding operations. Rumour is they're getting their own funding from the Breen, just to make things more fun. Where as before most local pirate operations seemed to be focused around hit and run tactics, we've seen an uptick in actually dedicated raids, and use of old, but retrofitted Romulan ships with intact cloaks." He keyed a few more commands into her PaDD, and an overlay of the fighter ranges showed up. "This is our AIO, which you can see has overlap with this region. Once we're fully active, they're not going to want us to have that control. If I had to guess, I would say that would be the first real issue we encounter. While yes, a Vesta is far more equipped than one, or even two or three of these raider ships, we aren't just dealing with Type-8 Klingon birds of prey, or Orion raider ships. Local intel suggests there are at least two D'Deridex class vessels in the attack fleets, and I'd be worried they will made a concerted push, and fighters and a single ship will only protect us for so long at those numbers."
"At those numbers? All together?" Calliope squinted a little as she absorbed the visuals and the account given and compared it against her own experience. "We don't usually see that many ships coordinating their actions at once. These pirates and raiders and warlords aren't known for being very agreeable between one another."
"I'm sure they can all agree that Starfleet having this strong a presence here is not in any of their best interests," Corvus chimed in, "Which is what concerns me. The enemy of my enemy is my friend," she sighed, looking between Zayne and her First Officer. "What are our options for support in the neighborhood. What Fleet assets do we have nearby?"
Still doubtful, Calliope crossed her arms. Collaboration between the disparate actors was a worst case scenario, but how likely was it really? Whatever the chance of it, the prospect had to be accounted for. She could tell Corvus was taking it quite seriously, anyway. Checking the information on ship movements from the records, Calliope adjusted the zoom to expand the range of the map, then added another overlay to the display showing the extended regional ship movements. "We won't see any heavy hitters or any in the carrier classes for over a week, if we can get them from their current missions. Pelelliu, Thebes and Pegasus were directed our way last week, shortly after the Station's recovery from the Void, and are only a few days out." A couple of weeks at warp for those distances used to sound fast, that was until the Vestas had set a new pace.
"Admiral Sepandiyar was clear that the Alexander and her exploration group were going into the Aurellian Belt and not expected to return anytime soon. So as much as having them around would help, we're going to have to do without. But this is Obsidian Command, the Joint Fleet Command is supposed to be based here, but I have no idea when we can expect to see the Excalibur or the Cosmos. They don't back the punch of the Alexander, but I'll take every little bit I can," Corvus sighed.
"Everything's going to depend on early detection and deterrence where possible," Zayne took the torch, turning everyone's attention to him. "They don't have to be Ascension class vessels, but having regular Starfleet vessels on patrol is going to keep the odds in our favor. And as long as we can see them coming, we can do our best to circle the wagons. That's going to be a whole lot easier now with the fighter wing on station."
"OH!" Exclaimed Godiva, as she scrolled through her PaDD. "I had an idea for that! We have these deep space sensors on the station that were left basically untouched after Obsidian Colony was pulled in. They're normally used for tracking asteroids and such, but we they so observe subspace. Our long-range sensors are damaged, but the processors for them are still could, we could likely tie the data from these into the sensor net, and use them as detection. They're not detailed enough to detect what kind of ship it is, but they will be able to at least act as an early warning system."
"Resourceful." Calliope rubbed her chin in thought. "Low resolution motion detection." She looked at Corvus. "Would it be helpful, or do you think it would cause a lot of jumping at shadows?"
"I'd rather jump at shadows than be completely caught by surprise," DeHavilland answered bluntly, "It'd at least give us the opportunity to point a nearby patrol or what long-range scanners we can divert power to that way, to clarify the signal," she added, looking across to Kimberlye, "How long will it take you to put this together? I can't spare any Engineering staff to help you. It'll have to be your own."
"If I had a full engineering team and the station was in good repair? An hour tops. Realistically, probably a day to get it all connected, and a few hours to make sure power is right," replied Kimberlye. "I can do it myself alone in that time, I am missing a lot of my tools for intelligence while the station is in this shape, I might as well be useful to the team."
"Good. Get it done," Corvus ordered, "Now, as far as support craft are concerned, we don't have much. We don't have a Flight Chief yet to get things in order and from what Commander Zahn and I have seen, the craft we do have is in desperate need of maintenance. Not that the docking bay is of much use at the moment," she added. "Unfortunately, it's not high on the priority pole, though it soon will be once power is restored,"
"Once the fighters get here they should be some help with that. The pilots are supposed to be able to do their own maintenance if need be. We can always second them to Engineering to get the support craft up and running again." Neil replied, "Should lessen the load on Engineering to get some extra craft up and free them for other repairs."
"The 7th should be arriving within the next few hours," Commander Zayne offered on that point, "They encountered a civilian under attack and stopped to assist. We sent the Wasp to assist but they're limping home on low warp. Once they get here we can discuss with the Air Group Commander about what he has to spare in terms of mechanics. If they didn't take too much damage in the battle, they may be short on work," he offered hopefully. Not just because he wanted the support craft functional but because he hoped that the fighters hadn't lost anyone or any fighters. Every one was going to be needed.
"That's a great idea," Corvus agreed. "I'd like the focus on the runabouts. They pack the most punch, so let's make sure they're ready. Commander Zahn, I'd like you to develop assignments for the runabout crews. I want each craft to be assigned a team that can deploy as needed. Same with the Wasp, and Hornet," she added. "Command said we'd be receiving one more garrison vessel - the Pathfinder - but I've not heard when it'll be arriving."
"Understood. The flight department is running evaluations of remaining craft. As far as manning them, we'll have more to work with from incoming Marine personnel. I'll make sure a standing roster of teams with flight quals are posted to runabouts as each becomes available, and I'll have a proposed crew list for your approval for the Wasp and Hornet within the hour, Captain." Calliope looked up from her notes at the faces around the table. She didn't see any more questions or input in their demeanor. "That's certainly enough to get us moving on preparedness. Keep us appraised if any fresh insight occurs to you. Thank you everyone. Dismissed."
