A Rift Between Us
Posted on 21 May 2023 @ 12:19am by Commander Calliope Zahn & Captain Corvus DeHavilland & Lieutenant JG Rhiannon Hokir & Chief Deputy Marshal: Ridge Steiner - FMS & Lieutenant JG Maxwell Tilmer
Edited on on 15 Oct 2023 @ 8:01pm
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Korin Space
Timeline: Immediately Following Musical Chairs
3975 words - 8 OF Standard Post Measure
Previously on: Obsidian Command: …“Captain, you’re not going to believe it! It’s the Demophon!” Saaba all but cheered.
The hologram of Captain Callum had long since faded when they entered the atmosphere, but as they ascended quickly, a new one appeared. The smirking face of Commander Brightwood aboard the Demophon.
Corvus all but stood up from her console to look at the holo, “Demophon, tell me you got everyone!?” DeHavilland demanded sharply.
“Aye, Captain. My lot, the five Marines that dropped, three extras we found, a castaway, and one dead Pyrryx,” Brightwood answered, oddly chipper for a man running from a world-sized hurricane with a Pyrryx somewhere on their tail.
“Understood. Set your course as follows,” she said, sending coordinates to his station that matched their flight path out of the planet. With Demophon located there was no need to linger about any longer. “Get aboard and get to the Bridge. I need a helm officer,” she ordered.
And now the continuation…
“Callum, we have everyone, time to get the hell out of here!” DeHavilland cried out, all but pleading with her counterpart to be on the way. She’d hastily abandoned her seat at the CoNN in favor of Commander Brightwood and resisted the urge to react to the sheer size of the tactical officer that had come and taken the Tactical station from the Ensign. But seeing Declan on the bridge, bleeding, broken and in the shreds of an EVA suit nearly sent her into fits. She was suddenly awash with emotions she wasn’t expecting, not the least of which was an overwhelming sense of gratitude to see him alive followed shortly by a stabbing guilt that she’d been the reason he’d gone down into it. If she’d been more decisive… no. No, now wasn’t the time for that thought. Corvus took the command seat on the bridge and Commander Zahn shifted over accordingly. All of this thankfully playing out in her head free from anyone else’s purview.
“Ensign,” Calliope gave Saaba a thankful nod as she took a sideline to the hulking figure replacing her at the console.
Saaba didn’t hide the fact she was staring. He was about four or five Saabas big. And bleeding from multiple wounds, not the least of which looked like a stab through his shoulder which didn’t seem to be slowing him down much.
Calliope wasn’t sure about the team change up at tactical at this stage. But the bridge crew was already such a mish mosh she wasn’t going to argue it. At least now they had someone on the helm who didn’t have a schism in his faith in the command team. Yet.
“Reconfiguring shield harmonics. Operations, I need additional power to weapons,” Lieutenant Tahriik declared and requested, looking over to the Operations officer.
“And reset the shield configuration to regular geometry as well, Mr. Haille,” Calliope stated as she shifted in her chair. They were out of the atmosphere and there was no need to spend shielding generation on additional planars when the standard bubble would do.
Louke was initiating the shift to weapons as Zahn gave her order. “Shields reconfigured, Commander,” he intoned, tapping the code and monitoring the change until he was certain everything was aligned. “Rerouting power difference to phaser banks.”
“Run like hell, Corvus,” the holographic form of Callum ordered. “We’re right behind you.”
“Mr. Brightwood, get us out of orbit.” Calliope directed. While they’d cleared the thick of the atmosphere, there was still the gravity of a planet to break out of.
“Jolly good, Captain,” he declared quickly, his normal chipper attitude gone despite his choice of language. Already he was plotting a course that took them farthest from the action with Theseus’s pieces and lined them up for a preferred warp trajectory out of the system and back towards Federation space.
Meanwhile Calliope watched the sensor display of the movements of the Theseus and enemy marks. There were three readouts of the Theseus, engaged with the Pyrryx. Calliope leaned away from the hologram and shielded her face behind a hand to mutter to Corvus. “Doesn’t look like he’s going to be right behind us, Captain.”
“We’ve far outlived our orders,” Corvus answered, leaning back but eyes forward. “We run like hell and hope Theseus is behind us,” she said, flicking her eyes over to her for a brief moment as if to convey the thoughts in her head - that she’d waffled enough this mission. That she’d been indecisive enough this mission and nearly cost them enough that in this, she wasn’t going to change her mind. He said run, they were running.
Calliope knew a well intentioned half-truth when she heard one. Callum wanted the Pathfinder clear whether or not he could pull off his part in evacuating the system. As she observed the faint glow of the last of the horizon of Korix falling beneath the view screen, she turned her head just enough to mark in her memory the faces of their alien guests observing from the back of the bridge beside the science station, before returning her attention to the tactical display. There was still the unaccounted for enemy ship that had fallen away under the storm, which they were quickly putting themselves at a distance from. Had the hurricane had its way with it? Nothing was on the scope yet. But the Pyrryx ship armour had already proven to confuse sensors. Probably made that plating out of the Kelbonite they were scraping Korinn for, after all….
Calliope sat up with a thought. “Mr. De La Fuente, can you use some kind of broad particle field in our wake, one that we could detect motion in if, say, there were something following with sensor scattering hull plating?”
“I could, Commander, but there’s no need… I just picked them up on sensors on the far si-,” De La Fuente started to answer, but was silenced by the sudden, brilliant explosion of the utility-like vessel that had accompanied the two fast moving attack ships. There was a collective cheer from the Theseus’ hologram. On the display off to the side, showing the engagement with Theseus they could see all three sections of ship turning hard to match Pathfinders course.
“We’re right behind you, Corvus,” Callum declared.
The second of the battle-like vessels had taken a significant brunt of the explosion from the utility vessel and was listing in space, but the one that had chased them into the planet had broken free of orbit on the far side and was tracking back towards them as fast it could muster. Corvus could almost feel the malice coming off that ship as it sped past the debris of its fallen compatriot, passed its listing intact friend without rendering aid, and made a straight line towards the Pathfinder and the disparate pieces of the Theseus
“Mr. Brightwood. Bend every sail we have. Get me as much speed as you can. We’ll wait for Theseus to catch up, reform and then we jump to warp.”
“Too, right, Captain,” Brightwood answered, “Deploying pocket handkerchiefs,” he quipped.
The pursuing vessel moved with inexorable purpose towards Pathfinder, firing its blistering energy beam at them that Brightwood expertly maneuvered around. The enemy ship wasn’t nearly as maneuverable as the Pathfinder but moreover seemed incapable of being agile in any sense. Corvus wasn’t sure if that was poor handling by the leadership on that vessel, or just poor design. Whatever it was, it was saving their bacon at the moment.
After another blistering beam that missed entirely, the vessel launched a quintet of glowing purple torpedoes that flashed across the open space towards them. Lieutenant Tahriik fired a single phaser lance at the leading torpedo and the explosion detonated other three, yet the explosion was massive, shaking the Pathfinder as the shields struggled to contain the splash damage. On the viewer, jagged energy ribbons moved rapidly from the site of the explosion in all directions, with the longest stretching towards the planet.
“Picking up Isolytic energy,” Louke’s voice only had a minor vibration as he pulled the screens up. It didn’t take long to increase. “Captain, the planetary exosphere is showing distinct signs of instability.” As he spoke, the image coalesced in all its ominous power, revealing the steadily developing subspace tear.
“Captain! I’m losing forward momentum,” Brightwood called out, quickly adjusting his power controls to try and compensate. But he was already at full power; they should have been moving at full impulse but instead they were losing velocity, and at the current rate, they’d be pulled backwards. “We’re being drawn back towards a subspace rupture!”
Behind them, the enemy vessel had slowed as well, unable to fight the growing gravity well any better than they were. Only now, it was firing its weapons at the subspace tear.
“No signs of stabilizing,” Louke gritted his teeth, “And at this rate, no capacity of self-sealing. At the current rate of widening, it’s going to reach capacity to split the planetary core in less than 10 minutes.”
“Bridge to Engineering—” Calliope called below through the comm.
“Quinn here.”
“Are you seeing this, Lance?”
“Indeed.” Lance responded from Main Engineering, where he stood with his right arm in a wrap. When the ship had entered all of the turbulence— quite foolishly flying into the hurricane!— he’d gotten the attention of the cowboy-turned-nurse, who suspended Lance’s treatment for his plasma burnt limb and cased his arm to release him back to his duty station. “I’ve been monitoring the bridge from here. I expect you are requesting my assistance with the growing subspace rift.” There was a lot of barking back and forth in the background as multiple engineering personnel were managing a power overload. “Particularly seeing as helm is about to entirely expend the impulse drive’s manifolds simply attempting to maintain position.”
Calliope watched the unfurling of the tear stretching along in space. “Will it work to launch a probe and detonate the miniature warp core in the rift?”
“That would be insufficient, by orders of magnitude.” Lance told her as if she were quite foolish in even asking. “In fact there’s a chance that such a token of an attempt would not only fail to seal it, but would pulse and render the rift wider when the flush fails to achieve closure with real-space.”
“Then one of the shuttle’s warp cores. We can autopilot the Acamas and—”
“Even worse, Commander!” Lance was shouting through the comm at his wife now, partly to be heard over a stembolt pressure release valve, but no less to stress the literal gravity of the situation. “If it’s not a full scale ship’s warp core detonation, you’ll only accelerate the rift! I advise that instead of ejecting the core, we engage our warp engine and make best speed now so that we can escape the subspace differential before we are beyond the point of no return in its graviton expulsion field.”
“Leave? But— Korix.” Calliope said, her mouth agape. Haille had said the rift was going to cut right through the world…
“We have a minute and twenty seconds before the subspace rift accrues a graviton well strength beyond maximum warp speed escape velocity. Captain!” Lance said emphatically, addressing Captain DeHavilland, whom he expected a more logical response from than Calliope. “We have only a single warp core and there is no telling how many times the Pyrryx can muck about with subspace. If we eject the core, it can be sealed this once but we will have no means left to us for vacating the system.” His warning was punctuated by a static whine and a pop in a conduit overhead in engineering. It was simple arithmetic. In Lance’s estimation, the planet was already damned and there was little sense going down with it.
“We can’t save them, Commander,” Louke shot Zahn a sympathetic glance. “Even if the Pathfinder could reach the surface before the split, we’d have no hope of getting to the community under water.” He didn’t add that they would all be dead before they even got the chance to leave.
“No.” Calliope didn’t like it. She refused to accept the consensus. “No. We spend the warp core.” She motioned broadly with her arms as punctuation. “Maybe they have another one of the subspace warheads. But maybe they don’t! And the Theseus is still here. We’re not out of this fight. Captain!” Calliope pleaded fiercely against all of the other advice. Even as she implored, the moan of the Structural Integrity Field declared its own fight to maintain against the push and pull of full impulse versus the draw of subspace battling it out in the bulkheads around them. The deck rocked and Calliope adjusted to stay standing. “The Korinn still have a chance. Right. Now.”
Corvus watched it all unfold in horror, the bottom of her stomach dropping out to somewhere in orbit behind them. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. The whole point of this was to save their lives and the lives of the Korin, not to make it worse. Not to put them in a place where she had to sacrifice everyone. She looked over at Calliope and somehow, the familiar face, despite everything else that had happened grounded her.
“Mr. Quinn, prepare to eject the core,” Corvus ordered.
“It is unwise, Captain.” Quinn restated.
“Lance!” Calliope shouted. “We need to eject the core! There’s no time!”
“Correct! There is no time to quibble while allowing emotion to cloud your calculations. It is senseless to sacrifice your ship and your crew. Engage the warpdrive and take the Pathfinder to safety, as is your duty and your original order, Captain.”
“Shhhhit,” Calliope hissed. Her bright bubble of hope that Lance might make a good officer in the field was burst. “We should have never brought him, Corvus.” The tail was trying to drive once more.
“I’m very aware of my duty as Captain of this ship, Commander,” Corvus fired back testily. “And of the oath I took as a Starfleet Officer. Eject the core. Now!” she ordered.
“I had hoped you would see reason. I cannot, in good conscience, endanger this vessel further than you already have.” Quinn refused once more.
Using his good left hand, Lance began to lock out bridge access to the core ejection protocols intending to force DeHavilland’s hand. But none of his access was working. He couldn’t even bring up the warp core control mechanisms.
Behind the chief engineer, Ensign Max Tilmer looked up from a secondary console where he had been working feverishly and, thankfully, unnoticed. It had worked. His computer engineering knowledge was one of his best skills and he wasn’t disappointed in his craftiness. The fake-out would last as long as Quinn didn’t actually figure out that Max had swapped the display GUI for a standby meant for diagnostic mode. Tilmer couldn’t *actually* lock out his senior. But he’d been considering what would be necessary to functionally do so since he’d returned to the Pathfinder and learned from Ensign Wiser what had happened to Jup. He had to be prepared to keep Commander Quinn from making another poor error in judgment.
“Calliope! Have you revoked my access?”
“No, Sir.” Ensign Tilmer’s voice cracked with stress. “It was me. Captain, this is Ensign Tilmer in engineering. I’ve prevented Commander Quinn from locking out bridge overrides. I’ve begun the sequence to eject the core.”
“Commander, you’re relieved,” Captain DeHavilland declared solemnly, but emphatically. “Ensign Tilmer, you have command of Engineering. Continue with ejection protocols,” she declared for all to hear. "Helm take us in towards the rift, Mister Tilmer standby to eject on my mark!" she declared for all to hear. Oddly, she felt a sense of calm in giving this order, as if the chaos around her had settled her in some way. A sense of calm she’d not felt yet in this mission. For the first time, she wasn’t doubting herself. This was the right call. It wasn’t the one she wanted to make, but it was the only one that made sense.
"Aye, Captain." Tilmer responded as Quinn turned around, a scathing look of betrayal on his face. But Ensign Tilmer didn't have the time to feel intimidated as he otherwise might have. He was too busy following orders and moving to pull the manual release levers with his fellows. The containment unit sealed off and alerts began to sound. The warp core was designed to eject, usually intended for cases of malfunction, when it might be necessary to get the rest of the ship clear of an antimatter meltdown… as such, the rest of the ten man engineering team knew the drill and pitched in accordingly.
“Aye, Captain,” Brightwood added from the CoNN station, turning the vessel into the gravity well rather than attempting any more meaningless flight away from it. The tear was moving closer to the planet, so the gravity well wasn’t quite as bad as it had been when it first formed but there was no mistaking that they were actively being drawn towards it. Captain DeHavilland or Ensign Tilmer was sending updating coordinates to his helm as to where they needed to be for max effect.
“The Pyrryx vessel is turning to engage us,” Tahriik declared, “Torpedoes are not an option, Captain. “Particle weaponry only.”
“Reinforce forward shields,” DeHavilland called out.
Captain DeHavilland was perched on the edge of her seat, leaning partially onto the left arm of the chair, her gaze split between the readings on the other arm of her chair and the forward display. It was a game of probabilities now, probabilities based on a guess. They really had no idea if the warp cores detonation would truly seal the rift, but it was the best chance they had. That was of course assuming the Pyrryx vessel didn’t obliterate them before they had the chance to eject the core. But, morbidly, she knew that their destruction would have just as much effect - potentially more.
All that mattered right now was saving that world. Making sure that the Korin down there had the chance to survive. It created the chance for Callum to make back it back to Federation space, and spread the word. The loss of a Starfleet vessel would hopefully be the catalyst that brought Starfleet here in force. She just wished that they’d answered her call. That the Admiral had received her message and had brought the Alexander to bear on this. They wouldn’t be in this situation if he had, and it took a lot for her not to feel a sense of abandonment and resentment that they hadn’t.
Coming back to the present she watched the enemy vessel filling her viewscreen. The Pyrryx vessel fired on them, taking their approach as some kind of game of chicken. They were far enough away from the Pathfinder and fighting against harder gravity shear, so they weren’t gaining.
“As evasive as you can be, Mr. Brightwood,” DeHavilland called out.
“Flopping in the mud, best I can, mum,” he replied quickly.
The Pathfinder was making clunky turns and jukes, but taking hits nonetheless. The fire didn’t seem as potent though, likely because they were spending all their ships energy on keeping it out of the subspace tear.
“Almost there, Commander,” DeHavilland called out, readjusting the calibration for the best location for the warp core detonation. Tilmer was feeding her the data from Engineering and she was constantly updating it. “Bridge to Tilmer. Launch on my mark!” She said, tapping her badge. “Standby….”
The Pyrryx fired another volley of particle weaponry, rocking the ship and nearly shaking them out of their seats.
“Shields at thirty-one percent!” Tahriik called out.
Either way, we’re sealing a rift, she thought to herself. The target area was approaching rapidly now and she sat up a little more rigidly in the seat. This may well be the last act of her life, and she wasn’t going to do it eyes closed. Corvus turned a brief look over at Commander Zahn, then took a deep breath and turned her eyes forward once more. “Mr. Tilmer…” she said, confirming that he was still waiting for his command. “Almost there… Prepare to eject”
Tilmer braced himself against the engineering panel as the ship bucked and jinked, his finger hovering over the control, waiting on his Captain.
The Pyrryx vessel turned to face them head on now. As if their skipper could see her, Corvus sat up all the taller and stared them down. “Mr Tilmer,” she declared, ready to give the order. “In… three… two…”
The Pyrryx vessel fired three more lances at the Pathfinder, the jagged green light becoming all too familiar to them. The vessel shook hard under the impacts of the weapons and Corvus was glad that Lieutenant Tahriik hadn’t bothered to tell her the shield percentage. She knew it was critical, if not hopeless. She steeled herself for it, and opened her mouth to order the core’s ejection, staring down the Pyrryx vessel.
“Helm, stay on course!” She called to the conn, interrupting her countdown “We’re not backing down!”
The enemy ship was upon them, whether it rammed them or fired on them they could not survive, she had to eject the core now.
“And ma-“ She began but before the word was finished a bright shaft of brilliant orange light tore across the viewscreen and impacted the Pyrryx ship. The beam ripped into the vessel and detonated it in an explosion of ethereal energy.
The Pathfinder heaved upwards, shuddering as the shockwave slammed into her. “Helm, evasive maneuvers!” Corvus cried as she was thrown back into the rear of her seat from the impact to the shields.
Brightwood turned hard to starboard, up and away from the explosion. Applying all the thrust the engines could manage. The ship juddered and then steadied as it settled into the turn.
“Report!” Corvus called out “Who hit the Pryxyx? Conn hard about! Get us back on course for the rift! Mister Tilmer standby we’re not done yet!”
“No need, the rift’s been sealed, Captain, I have helm control back. Full impulse, engaged!” Brightwood called out excitedly.
As the Pathfinder cleared the explosion, a second erupted in the near distance. The second Pyrryx vessel had been hit by another lance of orange light that seemed to come from nowhere above them. As Brightwood settled the helm, that nothing resolved from a shimmering cloak into the hulking form of an Odyssey class vessel. Corvus shot forward on her chair, perched on the edge.
“Lieutenant Tahriik?” She called out, her voice rising in pitch as she did.
“Clearly Federation, Captain. Odyssey class. I’m not picking up a transponder,” he declared. “And Starfleet vessels don’t have cloaks.”
She stared at the ship, very clearly in the space in front of them, and then looked back at Tahriik.
“Captain,” he said calmly. “We’re being hailed.”
