Dashed Upon The Reef
Posted on Sat Jan 13th, 2018 @ 4:24am by Captain Remas McDonald & Lieutenant Commander Shadi Zatra
2,801 words; about a 14 minute read
Mission:
S1:2: Rubicon
Location: USS Traveller, Multiple Decks.
Timeline: MD 14, 11.30AM
“Four bells and all's well.”
It was an easy thing to say, but days like this one made it easy for Remas to utter the words. Two weeks out from their arrival point, and the stars if Messier 4 beckoned. They were still lights years from the periphery, but the view screen was already filled with the massive conglomeration of stars. Quite a view from the captain's chair.
One of those stars would be a new home for civilisation, and others would be home to new cultures. Maybe out here beyond the edge of the Milky Way, those as of yet undiscovered people might have found a way to coexist peacefully.
Unlike the growing list of minor complaints beginnings to arise from Engineering. Not a one about the engines, or the myriad of ship systems. They were going to become a discussion point soon enough but for now, they were minor things. Unlike the major thing of their prisoner, and the potentially volatile nature of what swarmed in his blood.
And then there was the surprise awakening of Lieutenant Commander Walton-
The Traveller shuddered for a moment, the spaceframe bucking ever so slightly. And then all was as it should have been. The air recycler’s hummed, the light remained steadfastly on: like nothing had happened.
Remas opened his mouth to speak once more, and the ship didn’t so much as shudder as violently shake. The shaking did not slow nor recede as it had before, but steadily grow.
“Mr. Beck!” Remas barked at the helmsman.
“Warp field is shimmying! I’m having to fight to keep us at warp,” Beck reported calmly, his hands flying across the control. The moment after his words were spoken the view screen flashed with coloured, followed by the dopplering whine of the warp drive spinning down. “Warp field’s collapsed! The barge and freighters have dropped from warp also, and are drifting along with us.”
“Signal the freighters to set RCS to station keeping, Mr. Shepard comm the SS Acheron and tell the colonists to await further instructions.” Remas leaned back in his chair. He pressed a button on the armrest of his chair. “Captain to all department heads, check in.”
He looked over his shoulder at the new chief of ops, Ensign Shadi Zatra.
“I hope you have a reason why we just fell out of warp fifteen light years from our destination?”
"Starved if I know, Captain." Shadi ran her claws over the console, all four hearts aflutter. This was her first time manning an entire shift on the bridge, and so far it was pure famine. "Requesting an update from Engineering now."
A light blipped on the other side of her console, reminding her of the automated systems diagnostic. "Well spill my milk! Internal sensors indicate a failure in the warp plasma conduits." Shadi looked up at Remas with a sigh of relief at successfully diagnosing the problem. "Both nacelles are offline, sir."
"My teams are already investigating," Arivek said as he stepped out of the turbolift. "No need to fret."
"But... the computer!" Shadi pointed a shaky claw at the readout. "It says we're at risk for critical damage to EPS distribution... even a warp core breach! What are you doing up here, Lieutenant Zhuri?!"
"First rule to engine problems, disconnect the different systems from each other," Arivek said, turning to the large MSD at the back of the Bridge. "It's to avoid a cascading failure."
"Which we are avoiding correct?" Remas asked archly, his eyes flicking to Shadi. "Keep a weather eye on the sensors. I'm of a mind bad luck comes in three's."
Arivek waved his hand for Remas to leave him alone.
"Yes, sssir. The external sensors have finished their sweep, and..." Shadi hiccuped while the data propagated onto her console. "Captain! There's a large inert vessel of unknown design approximately 20 thousand kilometres away at bearing 195 mark-nine." As she ran it against the Traveller's current vector position, she hopped up and down in angsty excitement. "Goddess, that means it's dead ahead!"
That the Traveller was currently adrift with a speed comparable to quarter impulse at most seemed lost on the Saurian.
"That close? As good as hitting a bull's eye out here, put it on the main screen if you can," Remas asked. For a moment the view screen only showed the dusting of stars that was Messier 4, but with a flicker, it shifted to a wide expanse of dark with only a handful of star's marring the background.
And then some of the stars winked out.
The vessel was gigantic, dwarfing the Traveller by ten fold or more. Comparable in dry weight to the fearsome Borg Cube, the dark silhouette of the ship was that was a stretched spindle with two stocky pods attached at the spindles widest point. As the silent bridge crew watched the pod's flickered with an eerie violet light, that seemed to discharge out into space like lightning that faded into fractal shadows.
"That thing has to be as long as a Stardock..." Mister Beck breathed silently.
"Miss Zatra, scan the vessel. Chief Arvek, whats the diagnosis on my engines? Do I have impulse power or are we flying only on RCS?" Remas asked, eyes never leaving the screen before tapping the button for the comm on his chair. "Commander Watson and Chief Reynolds to the Bridge immediately."
[Reynolds Residence]
Vic hurriedly threw on his uniform jacket as he was thrown to the floor amid his lunch time nap. "Commander Watson and Chief Reynolds to the Bridge immediately." he sighed, trouble was afoot. "On my way sir." he replied as he holstered his trusty phaser Delilah and ran out of his quarters toward the bridge.
[Bridge]
"I'm not willing to bring the Impulse Engines up to full power just yet," Arivek said, one hand on his hip as the other slowly rubbed against his chin. He stared at the large MSD panel, his eyes flicking back and forth as he saw the ship's systems responding, one-by-one, to his team's repair work.
"No present life readings from the vessel," Shadi reported. "Wait--would those be life readings or power readings? I suppose it doesn't matter..."
"Deep breaths Miss Zatra, life needs heat and air. Can't have those without power as far as I'm aware," Remas commented, before standing and walking to the helm station. "Can you plot me a course to that thing, bringing us at it from the rear away from those discharges?"
"I can, but given I have only RCS thrusters to play with we'll be flying tea kettle all the way there. Won't be a fast transit say...hour? Two if you want me to keep the thrusters from exceeding their maximum tolerances," Mr Beck reported.
"As fine a course of action as I could hope for," Remas nodded his assent. With a rumble the Traveller's course began to shift, using its speeding drift to augment its course into an intercept trajectory.
"Two hours," Remas remarked to the rest of the bridge. "I would like a few answers to our many questions by that time. Such as why we cannot go to warp or access the EPS power grid? Given we have no answers we cannot assume the wreck is the blame, for all we know it ran afoul of the same phenomena that's caught us. And that does not bode well for us. Any questions?"
Shadi shook her head but said nothing. She had stepped in her own vomit enough times during her first bridge shift, thank you very much.
Vic exited the turbo lift in a hurry and nodded to the security officer at tactical as he stepped into his place. His hands flew over the console as he punched in his command codes and authorizations needed to bring weapons to standby without actually bringing them online. "Weapons on standby and shields at 95% sir." He paused, "Should be full strength shortly." he glanced at the chief engineers toiling away then back to the view screen and whatever it was they were facing down.
"Phaser arrays only, keep the main cannons stowed until we see hostile intent, if any," Remas instructed. "We've all read the First Contact briefing, no hostile action unless in defence. To that end Miss Zatra keep your eyes peeled."
Time crawled as the Traveller slowly drifted through space, her attendant freighters staying behind. Before them, the massive hulk loomed ever larger, lit sporadically by the ominous flashes of violet energy. As they drew nearer more details became apparent. The hull of the ship was clad in a thick layer of ice, in some places smooth and in others jagged and torn open from high-speed impacts. The ice shell was pocked with metallic shutters across its surface, some ripped open to reveal mysterious intestinal machines whose purpose could only be guessed at.
"Hold us at one thousand kilometere Mr Beck," Remas informed, head tilting as though to try and see the ship in a different light. "Ari now would be a good time to tell us we have main power. The reserves can't run the shields at full bore forever. Not unless we want to turn some of the light bulbs off."
"We don't always get what we want, Captain," came the blue man's sarcastic answer.
Shadi got anxious again. "Captain, the sensors are picking up something on that thing, but I don't know what they're saying... can we get a Science officer over here?!"
"Just breath Shadi," Remas said again, feeling a little more like a guidance councilor at an Acamdey Field Assignment. He looked back at Victor. "You have the same sensor data, tell me what you're seeing."
"Aye sir." Vic pulled up the relevant data, "Tactical analysis of the ship as well as regular sensor readouts indicate that the front of the ship is devoid of weapon emplacements, at least ones we recognize. The rear of the ship , on the tip of that spindle looking thing, is covered in some sort of device that I can only guess would be weapons. If they are weapons, it's something I've never seen before. The hull is made of an unknown alloy that the computer can't identify until we get closer which I wouldn't recommend for obvious reasons. I'm not sure our weapons could scratch that thing should it come to it."
"A ship with rear-facing weapons is made for running," Remas mused aloud. As he spoke the massives engines discharged again, the fractal patterns of lightning dancing out into smaller and smaller veins like the claws of a demon.
The lightning hid the first firing.
One of the weapon emplacements along the rear of the Hulk had opened like a flower, allowing a long metallic barrel to slide out. The first shot had gone wide, thrown off as much by age as interference from the engines. Error checking routines in the weapon corrected for the bias and charged its coils once more.
And fired.
"MIss Zatra can you give me a more detailed scan of the forward-"
The view screen turned a hellish bright white. The Traveller bucked downwards and to port, beginning a tumble as red alert klaxons blared. So powerful was the strike Remas was thrown from his chair, along with a few others.
"Warning, warning. Decompression alert for deck five. Warning, warning. Decompression alert for deck five." The computer began to drone, nearly drowned out by the groaning wail of the Traveller's space frame resonating from the impact.
"Mr Beck, evade!!" Remas grunted, getting off the floor. "Anyone, what the hell was that!"
Vic peeled himself off the console, a torrent of blood streaming from his badly bruised forehead where it met with the edge of the console before him 'damnit' he thought as he wiped some blood off the console and began entering commands. "Some kind of projectile weapon sir. Shields are down and we have a hull breach on.." he paused as he blinked a few times to clear the blurry vision "Deck 5, Section 15B: Science Lab 1. Emergency force fields are holding. We can't take another shot like that sir nor can we sit idly by, weapons are hot request permission to return fire with extreme prejudice sir."
"We'd never take down enough of them, not even if we had the Traveller's original weapons pod," Remas said, leaning over the back of the helmsman's chair. "Push the thrusters as hard as you can, get us into the shadow of the nose of that ship!"
"Yes Sir!" the bald man at the helm snapped, his fingers playing over the controls like a concert pianist, making the Traveller move to his will and whim. With a flick of a hand the Starfleet explorer weaved through a third salvo, pulling around the milky white trail left in the weapons wake.
"Ari, Shadi, tell me my ship's not about to fall apart on me."
A Bajoran man in blue, roughly in his mid-twenties, finally managed to get onto the bridge from the jefferies tube hatch, and he headed for the science station. After the explosion in the labs, his superior and several others were badly injured, leaving the department with at least 6 fewer crewmembers. On a ship this size, the department might as well have a skeleton crew.
"I'm giving you what I can," Arivek said. A fist balled as the other hand furiously tapped at the large MSD display. "I can give you 50% more on the engines but I'll be taking the science labs offline."
A few more moments passed and Arivek's voice called out again. "I've cut power to all crew quarters, the brig, deflector control, shuttle bays and the entire hospitality suite. Should give us full impulse and half-power on the tactical systems, at least for now." He looked over his shoulder to the Captain, "But that's all I can give you."
"Its more than-" Remas was cut off as the Traveller rolled, the inertial compensators lagging as the gee forces pulled at them for a second. A second ghostly tail of light narrowly skimmed between the bridge and sensor pod as the weapons third shot nearly took them out of the game.
And then nothing.
For a long moment, the Traveller's command deck was silent save for the dull bleating of caution alarms and pounding of hearts. There was no sound of crushing metal or the sharp ear popping shriek of escaping air. On the main view screen, the hull of the alien vessel stretched away from them like a gently curving plain of glistening ice and dull brass.
"We're in the shadow of the guns," Beck replied form the helm, shoulders slumping as he released some tension. "Or at least I hope we are. Figure we'd know if I was wrong by now."
Remas patted the helmsman on the shoulder and turned to look back at the bridge crew. He nodded to Mr Lutko.
"Find out what's happening with the main's power. Why by the Maker Of Way's can't we use the Anti Matter reactor?" he said, nodding at Ari. "I'm sure Ari has some theories. Rub your heads together and make us a flame to see our way clear of this. And before you go stating the obvious, you have a team running damage control. We need power Ari."
He then looked past them to the rest of the bridge crew.
"Victor, keep a weather eye on the scanners just in case there's one of those gun's playing doggo out here. We didn't see active weapons until they fired at us, so I'm assuming any warnings we'll get will be short-lived. If you can try and think of any defense to that monster gun, even a short lived one." his eyes tracked to Shadi. "Miss Zatra, I want as comprehensive a scan of the alien ship as we can make. You have my permission to launch a recon drone to speed up the work and scout out the far side of the Hulk. I do not mind if its a one way trip for the little robot."
He tugged on the hem of his uniform jacket.
"One hour people. Then we'll meet in the Map Room to discuss our options. If you need me I'll be assisting Dr Kal and her team on Deck 5. Any questions?"
Bridge duty was a new experience for Shadi, but system analyses and troubleshooting were not. "No, sssir. I've summoned a relief officer. See you in an hour."
Vic's head was pounding but he figured there were people in way worse shape than he was, "No sir, I'll get on it."
Arivek just turned and walked towards the turbolift without saying a word.
Remas just shook his head slightly.
"Two weeks of smooth sailing is too costly for my blood."
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