USS Repulse
Vanguard class Battleship NCC-89901
Main Bridge
In Orbit above Mars
─•~:~•─
Rain watched the green orb of plasma shoot out like Hell's Fury into what was left of Avalon and kept her eyes glued to the screen as the little battlecruiser, which had become something of a second home to her, exploded in a massive fireball of blue and green light.
The Engine broke.
She dropped to her knees, and with all of her fear, all of her anger, all of her hate and all of her sorrow, Rain cried out like a lost little girl.
"Zelina!"
She dry-heaved into the deck plate, barely able to keep her breathing under control.
Avalon was gone. Zelina was dead.
And for all her power, and all her strength, there was nothing Rain could do.
Micheal Tovey was shocked too, but he tried to keep a calm mind and looked to his XO, James Morris, "Morris, quickly! Escape pods or transporter signatures?"
Morris hit his consoles rapidly but could only shake his head.
Tovey pounded his seat in frustration, "Damn it!"
He quickly hit the inter-ship comm's switch, "Vanguard, Repulse. Confirm Avalon lost with all hands. No escape pods."
"Confirmed, Repulse. Standby, Vanguard out," was all that Jackie Fishier's voice could answer back.
Micheal had seen some of the worst battles that Starfleet had fought in the Dominion War and had been aboard Formidable as the Kinshya pounded on his old carrier. It was a rare occasion that he lost his nerve, but the Borg Diamond was now added to those rare such occasions.
Quinn too was unnerved. Putting aside the fact the man had never seen action in space before, Tovey noted that even his hundreds of years of experience as a joined Trill couldn't prepare him for this event, and his fear was naked in his voice, "My god. What, what do we do now?"
Below his Loft, Rain stood back up, and turned to look at him with a face of white fury, and she spoke with that same cold fury next, "Move us forward and attack. Now."
Tovey ignored her and instead looked at his XO, "Morris. What is the course and speed of the Borg ship?"
Morris answered back quickly, not looking up from his console, "Heading 1-1-1 Mark 0-2-9. Direct course for Earth. Speed is one-third impulse. I'll estimate she crosses the asteroid belt in twenty-six minutes at present speed, Earth orbit in forty-two minutes, mark."
"Then we have half an hour to come up with a new plan," Tovey said aloud.
Rain began walking towards the Loft and raised her voice, "Your plan is this, Captain! Move this ship and send that fucking monstrosity to Hell, or I'll kill everyone on this deck starting with you and do it myself!"
Quinn was on his feet, ignoring the reality of the situation, "Major Kaimeao, you will not speak to a superior officer with that tone of voice! Now stand down and-"
Rain cut him off with the sound of the charging handle on her XR-118 slamming into place. She aimed the rifle at a precise spot just below the Vice Admiral's chair and fired a single round into the deck plate, sending Quinn sprawling for cover and Tovey onto his feet.
"Major! What the hell are you doing?!"
Rain turned and aimed directly at Tovey's heart. Before she could squeeze her trigger, Gunnery Sargent Mike Bagsley of the Force Recon "Secret Squirrels" ran behind Rain and wrapped his armoured arms around his Major, forcing her to lower her rifle.
"Rain! Fucking stop, this isn't going to help anyone!" Mike shouted at her, trying desperately to restrain her.
He had a foot of height and almost eighty pounds of strength on Rain, but it was taking all his strength to keep her under control.
Rain broke out of his grasp, let her rifle hang loosely across her TAV-covered chest, and with both hands reached behind and seized Mike by his helmet.
Weight and height aside, she threw him up in the air and over her shoulders, slamming his full weight of Force Recon Molotok Armour hard into the deck plate of Repulse. She then kicked his helmet clean off his head, put her left foot across his now exposed throat, and brought the barrel of her rifle inches from his face.
"Don't. Touch. Me." Rain hissed at him.
A part of her mind noted that his baby blue eyes were shocked at the rifle, but she had trained him well enough not to shake, and she was almost proud of Gunny Bagsley.
"Rain, listen to me," Mike said, quietly but without panic, "I know what Avalon meant to you, and I know what Captain Bakay meant to you as well. But she's dead. You need to accept that."
Rain didn't move, but tears erupted from her eyes, and her voice was cracking and less angry, "I... I loved her..."
"Look at the little guy right now," Mike said, pointing at PFC Mr. Pingu, hanging at his usual place on her holster, "You think he wants to lose you too because you went in half-cocked and pissed off? You trained us better than that. I'm just asking you to take a deep breath, and stop, for just one second. We'll pay these bastards back for Avalon, but let's do it so that we can actually win, alright?"
Exactly one second went by, which to Rain's mind that had the ability to pause, rewind, and analyze a moment in time with perfect detail, felt like eternity.
She took a deep breath and engaged the safety catch on her rifle before hauling Mike back to his armoured feet, a show of strength that he found shocking. "Alright Gunny," she said, calmer this time "Let's win"
The Engine came back to life, and her fear, anger, hate, and sorrow died in her mind. Rain looked around the bridge and noted that many Starfleet Fishies had drawn phasers and were aiming at her, likely the result of her firing a shot at Vice Admiral Quinn.
She ignored it, and instead pushed away the young Bolian manning a sensor console.
She sat down and hit the buttons with an inhuman speed while linking her wrist-comm via QC to Virnas and Mark. She needed them to check her thinking process as she drafted the first of ten attack plans in her genetically enhanced mind, "Vir, Mark. Open packet 27843 on port 1189. I need you to double-check this analysis."
Quinn at last rose up and asked, "What the hell is she doing now?"
Bagsley smirked back, "She's getting ready to win, sir."
"Packet is open, I have the feed," Vir replied in perfectly Borg-like precision.
Beside him, Mark sat and looked over the feed. Work Mode was drowning out the screaming and panic in the CIC at the moment, as he applied hyper-focus to his task at hand.
Behind him, a few brave Fishies were contemplating drawing their phasers and shooting the Liberated Romulan sitting at one of the consoles.
One man tried but found himself greeted by the butt end of a Marine from 5 Guards Rifles, the standing force of bootnecks assigned to protect Starfleet HQ who had joined their General in the CIC.
Some of the braver Fishies pulled anyway, but they weren't as fast as the Sharkies.
Loud clanks of charging handles slamming home in rifles drowned out the shouting, and Twenty Bootnecks held eighty Fishies at bay with aimed rifles, warning the little Fishies that anyone who tried to take a shot at Overlord would be shot in turn.
Mark quickly pointed at his screen to get Vir's attention, "Hey, see that? Right in the secondary EM band? There's a fluctuation in her subspace grid, it's like point 9% but it's there!"
Vir nodded back, "Yes. Result of a phaser striking a tertiary EPS generator on the outer hull at time reference 11172. 2.76% fluctuation in subspace grid 9A216. As an estimate, the generator reacted to Nadion particle displacement."
Mark snapped his fingers, "Nadions! That's it. Okay, Rain, test my thinking. Nadion Particle concentration at 335 PPM, hitting a subspace grid generating 8.6 newtons of force at 32 meters from the hull, what happens?"
"8.9," Vir corrected.
"At 8.9 Newtons, assuming 335PPM, the grid is displaced out to sixty-five meters. If your burst continues for 48 seconds, the grid is smashed entirely," Rain's voice replied, quickly confirming Mark's first suggestion with her own plan #3 and Virnas' plan #4481
"You will need to account for 32.87 ° Doppler shift, along with photon decay at 421PPM, Excellent General Sir," Vir added quickly.
"Yeah, that's covered in setting three. Okay, we all agree here?" Mark asked.
"Yes," Vir and Rain answered simultaneously.
Mark quickly hit another switch and raised Vanguard, "Auntie Lynna, listen up. I want Jack on the gunner's table right now. You and Repulse are gonna park yourself above Titan and lock your main batteries onto that thing. Feed this exact firing solution into the table and open up exactly when I tell you to! Rain, do the same thing on my favourite Blue Wave Girl."
"You're sure about this Mark? Avalon pumped everything she had into that thing and barely scratched her," Alynna's voice asked.
"Yeah, I'm pretty fucking sure. I just had a Borg Drone and an Augment double-check my math. It'll work perfectly,"
"General Castle, I find this plan premature. Repulse's computer says that even with this firing solution, it won't be enough to destroy that diamond," Quinn added from Repulse, annoying Mark.
"Quinn, two things. Number one, shut the fuck up!" Mark screamed into his console.
"Number two, no shit it won't destroy that, even if you shoot your guns dry at her. But if you follow that exact firing solution I just sent, it'll be enough to get her shields and her subspace grid down. Then you've got seventy-four thousand Marines sitting in either cargo bay that can blow her up from the inside, assuming you can get your transporters going fast enough."
"What about the rest of our task force?" Quinn asked again.
"Reserves. Auntie Lynna, you send them to Venus and hold them there until I call for them. Try to beam up as many civies as you can from Earth. If this plan doesn't work, we have to save as many as we can," Mark answered.
"Commander Task Force acknowledges order, Overlord 1-9, ETA to firing position, fifteen minutes," Auntie Lynna replied quickly.
Mark had several options for a response at that point. A poem, a quote, or some inspiring words of meaning.
But Work-Mode overrode his logical thinking, so he instead fell back to his instincts and his vulgarity before closing the channel, "You send these fucking cyber-zombies straight to Hell, Auntie Lynna. That's an order! Overlord out."
Fifteen Minutes. Enough to handle that other problem, Mark thought to himself.
"Vir, you're in charge here," he said, before turning to the rest of the CIC, "Five Tribe, anyone pisses Vir off, shoot that son of a bitch!"
"Aye Sir!" Five Tribe of 5 Guards Rifles responded to their General as he left the CIC. Vir took over the centre seat and opened his QC link to his friend, Kitty.
"We have ten minutes, my artificially intelligent friend. Accessing research problem #44765. Do you think Bose or Sennheiser amplifiers would be better suited for Elite Miko when we add the Queen's interplexing beacon to her DJ table?" he asked.
Kitty appeared in front of him and smiled, "Bose, all the way."
