- CHAPTER 18 -
- Former Borg System A875 34B9 -
-The attack had gone nearly as planned. The Enemy vessel was now all but dead, its aft end splintered and broken, the rest of the ship spinning out of control. It had died even more easily than the first Enemies had, just as had been predicted. The picket ship prepared to fire again and eliminate the threat to the Race. After that was done, it would proceed through the now reactivated warp point to report to higher authorities back in familiar, friendly space. -
- ISS Athena, Enroute to Former Borg System A875 34B9 -
Fleet Admiral T'var sat calmly in the command chair of the massive Bastion class starship. Build after the Borg/Imperial war, it was among the largest space going structures known. There were only four such vessels in the entire Empire, one in the Terra Defense Fleet, one in the Vulcan Defense Fleet, one in Section 31's Black Fleet and the Athena. The Athena was, other than Section's Bastion class, the only ship of the class in offensive use. The other two never left Sol and Vulcan respectively except for minor training hops to nearby systems. They were the pinnacle of Imperial ship design.
The Bastion class resembled a giant arrowhead more than anything else. She was 8,050 m long down the centerline and 6,100 m tall amidships. Quad Quantum Slipstream drive nacelles were mounted inline with the hull, under layers of ablative armor. Six enormous Quantum Slipstream Cores were placed throughout the ship's seemingly endless interior. The latest generation of ablative armor generators studded her monolithic hull. Shields so strong that they could normally only be found defending a planet were mounted on her flanks. A massive oval main deflector array was mounted in a recess along the lower portion of her angled hull. The Athena was the latest of the Bastion class, and as such she incorporated design improvements learned from actual usage of her sister ships. In order to improve responsiveness to helm and maneuvering, the Athena was the first of her class to incorporate a Borg STL drive system. The older vessels had used a standard impulse and RCS thruster arrangement that was clumsy and imprecise when compared to the Borg system, but that was scheduled to be replaced during their next scheduled refit. In the meantime, it meant that the Athena was both the baddest and best protected ship in the Terran Empire. She lacked the massive impulse engines that had been basically the one kink in the armor of her predecessors, but with the new Borg drive, it was eliminated. Due to the nature of Borg design, it was also a considerably tougher system to destroy because the drive was dispersed throughout the entire vessel. The space where the impulse engines and their fusion generators had sat was covered over with armor and devoted to increased fighter bays and extra weapons bunkerage.
Bastion's fairly bristled with weaponry, with multiple gunports and phaser arrays littering the outer hull. 20 Quantum torpedo turrets similar to those first developed for the Sovereign class were arranged around her vaguely triangular hull for maximum coverage yet also maximum foreword firepower. Three Heavy torpedo launchers hid behind massive blast doors, two in the foreword hull, one to the rear. 100 Phalanx torpedo launchers were scattered evenly across the hull to provide anti fighter and anti destroyer capability without tying up the main weapons batteries. 30 Type XV Phasers wreathed the ship in massive, segmented arcs that guarantied phaser array survivability yet provided the most continuous coverage and firepower. 25 Quad Pulse Phaser Cannons mounted in ball turrets were scattered across the mountain of alloy and synthetics as well. Most were facing forward, but many were aligned to cover the other angles of attack as well. Four foreword facing Type II Phaser Lances and two rear facing ones rounded out the Bastion class' formidable arsenal. The Type II Phaser Lance was an improvement of the Type I's basic design. New gravity lensing technology had allowed for the Phaser Lance to target slightly off bore from their extremely narrow field of fire, widening it to a 10 degree cone instead of the Type I's 3 degree one. It also was able to fire a more powerful beam than the Type I's, and its rate of fire was also increased over the older version.
Admiral T'var sat nestled in the middle of all that power, silently contemplating just what she would find when she arrived at A875 34B9. The revised orders had said that only an Aegean class Fleet Support Destroyer was left as a rear guard in the system. It was her captain that had reported Chriton's actions to Starfleet Command, and his quick actions made it possible that something might yet be salvaged from this mission.
"Admiral, we are approaching the coordinates for the rendezvous." Athena's ops officer said.
"Alright, orders to the fleet. Drop out of slipstream and assume formation Delta Nine."
"Aye sir."
The almost subsonic hum of the slipstream drive dropped in pitch rapidly, then cut out completely. The holo display changed from the nebulous blue tunnel of slip drive to the spark filled ebony of normal space. The fleet dropped out just in time to see a mysterious alien vessel open fire on the ISS Hopolite. The entire aft end of the Imperial ship was sheared away by the force of the attack and the tiny Aegean went spinning off out of control. T'var jumped to her feet.
"Red alert! All hands to battle stations! Deploy the armor, set power to combat usage! Target that vessel and fire as you bear!"
The massive Imperial monitor activated its ablative armor generators and within two seconds the carapace was fully in place. The massive doors covering the heavy torpedo tubes rolled aside as the shuttle sized warheads began to come online. Athena's com officer dished out orders to the rest of the fleet without having to be directly told. As Athena went to general quarters and armed weapons, the rest of the fleet was following her lead. The attacking alien vessel hadn't been moving very fast to begin with, and as it closed with its stricken prey to deliver the death blow it slowed further still. If 2nd Fleet's approach vector had been just a few more degrees off in any direction, stray shots that didn't hit the spindle shaped craft would most likely hit the Hopolite. Fortunately for the crippled Aegean class, 2nd Fleet had come in at just the right angle so that their fire would pass harmlessly by it.
Nearly as one, the massed vessels of 2nd Fleet opened up on the alien vessel as the enemies own weapon powered up for the final shot. T'var had been in large fleet engagements before, but she never tired of seeing the raw fury a massed fleet could pour out on those that deserved it. Near the front of the wall shaped formation of capital ships and their escorts, space grew star bright as over 1000 vessels opened fire. 2nd Fleet's order of battle was one Bastion class Monitor, five Wraith class Super Dreadnoughts, 40 Sovereign class Battleships, 45 Galaxy class Battle Cruisers, 60 Prometheus class Heavy Cruisers, 55 Akira class Heavy Cruisers, 50 Nebula (Weapons Pod) class Heavy Cruisers, 75 Steam Runner class Cruisers, 80 Intrepid class Cruisers, 200 Saber class Destroyers, 300 Defiant class Destroyers, 250 Nova class Destroyers, 10 Nebula (AWAC) class Heavy Cruisers, and 20 Aegean Class Escort Destroyers. Every one of these ships opened fire on a lone target. The result was massive overkill.
The long ranged Assault Phasers struck first and the spindle shaped craft writhed in the crossed fire of close to 100 beams of concentrated energy. There was little left for the follow on phaser, PPC and torpedo strikes to do other than scatter the expanding cloud of plasma that was a hostile alien vessel farther apart. With the enemy obliterated, the Athena moved closer to the out of control Aegean class and grabbed her with a tractor beam.
"Order the SWAC's to scan for other alien ships in the area. Try and hail the Aegean class and get a situation report from them.
- ISS Hopolite, That same time -
The spin was becoming tiresome. Ulysses stomach was beginning to beg for death as a means of escaping the constant torture it was now undergoing. Suddenly the ship was rocked slowing their spin slightly and Ulysses closed his eyes tight waiting to see if death would be quick and painless, long and painful, or some combination of the two. After a few seconds more, the ship lurched to a stop. After nearly being thrown from his chair, but suffering no other ill effects, Ulysses slowly opened one eye to look around the bridge. Seeing everything much the same as it had been at the start of the demented carnival ride, he opened his other eye and waited a beat for his protesting stomach to subside. Emergency lighting was still on, but the control consoles and monitors around the bridge were flickering intermittently. The stench of fried electronics and smoke filled the bridge from the blown out science station.
"Report!"
"Hard to tell sir, main power is off line and bridge control systems are intermittent at best." P'tel said from the left side of the bridge. "Weapons are offline, shields are gone, internal coms are non operational. Main computer seems to be offline. Life-support is running on emergency backup. Anything more I can't tell you, the system's just to scrambled." P'tel said with a slight frown, but in typical Vulcan style, none of her emotions clouded her face or voice. Even though he couldn't read her mind, Ulysses knew what she was thinking. It was the same thing he was. What was the damned cold hearted ba$tard out there waiting for?
"Mr. Eton, see if you can make it to main engineering. Once you get there, send someone back here with a damage report." Suddenly there was the whine of a transporter and everyone pulled their phasers and pointed them at the materializing beings. Everyone was shocked when the beings turned out to be Starfleet medics and security personnel. A middle aged medic turned towards where Ulysses stood.
"You folks need some assistance?" The Medic said in a lazy drawl.
"Where did you come from?!" Ulysses demanded. The medic rolled his eyes as if that should be obvious to anyone with more brain capacity than lichen.
"Second Fleet, where else?"
"Second Fleet? But you aren't due here for another three hours." P'tel said. She and everybody else on the bridge still had their phasers leveled at the newcomers. The medic shrugged.
"Change in the schedule I suppose. I'm just a medic. They don't tell me nothin and I don't wanna know nothin. Safer that way." With Section spies always snooping around that was the Lords honest truth. Ulysses was still mulling what the supposed medic had said when suddenly a virtually emotionless feminine voice came over the com system.
"Is there a problem Mr. Orlando?"
"Not really Commodore, just that these here folks don't think we are whom we say we are."
For the first time, emotion colored the disembodied voice. "Oh for the love of. Put the CO on." P'tel glanced at Ulysses and raised an eyebrow. He merely shrugged and responded to the Captain's demands.
"This is Captain Ulysses Vanguard of the ISS Hopolite, to whom am I speaking?"
"You're speaking to the third in command of this entire damned fleet, now you shut your mouth, stow your weapons and let my teams do their job. Understood?" It may have been phrased as a request, but there was the undeniable steel of command under it. The tense knot of muscle that had bunched at the base of Ulysses neck eased as he began to believe that the voice on the other end of the com really was from 2nd Fleet. Either that or it was the most imaginative and twisted bunch of pirates ever encountered. He holstered his phaser and stood at parade rest. Following his lead, the other bridge officers did the same.
"Understood ma'am. And might I add that I am damn glad to hear your voice!"
- Former Borg System A875 34B9 -
-The attack had gone nearly as planned. The Enemy vessel was now all but dead, its aft end splintered and broken, the rest of the ship spinning out of control. It had died even more easily than the first Enemies had, just as had been predicted. The picket ship prepared to fire again and eliminate the threat to the Race. After that was done, it would proceed through the now reactivated warp point to report to higher authorities back in familiar, friendly space. -
- ISS Athena, Enroute to Former Borg System A875 34B9 -
Fleet Admiral T'var sat calmly in the command chair of the massive Bastion class starship. Build after the Borg/Imperial war, it was among the largest space going structures known. There were only four such vessels in the entire Empire, one in the Terra Defense Fleet, one in the Vulcan Defense Fleet, one in Section 31's Black Fleet and the Athena. The Athena was, other than Section's Bastion class, the only ship of the class in offensive use. The other two never left Sol and Vulcan respectively except for minor training hops to nearby systems. They were the pinnacle of Imperial ship design.
The Bastion class resembled a giant arrowhead more than anything else. She was 8,050 m long down the centerline and 6,100 m tall amidships. Quad Quantum Slipstream drive nacelles were mounted inline with the hull, under layers of ablative armor. Six enormous Quantum Slipstream Cores were placed throughout the ship's seemingly endless interior. The latest generation of ablative armor generators studded her monolithic hull. Shields so strong that they could normally only be found defending a planet were mounted on her flanks. A massive oval main deflector array was mounted in a recess along the lower portion of her angled hull. The Athena was the latest of the Bastion class, and as such she incorporated design improvements learned from actual usage of her sister ships. In order to improve responsiveness to helm and maneuvering, the Athena was the first of her class to incorporate a Borg STL drive system. The older vessels had used a standard impulse and RCS thruster arrangement that was clumsy and imprecise when compared to the Borg system, but that was scheduled to be replaced during their next scheduled refit. In the meantime, it meant that the Athena was both the baddest and best protected ship in the Terran Empire. She lacked the massive impulse engines that had been basically the one kink in the armor of her predecessors, but with the new Borg drive, it was eliminated. Due to the nature of Borg design, it was also a considerably tougher system to destroy because the drive was dispersed throughout the entire vessel. The space where the impulse engines and their fusion generators had sat was covered over with armor and devoted to increased fighter bays and extra weapons bunkerage.
Bastion's fairly bristled with weaponry, with multiple gunports and phaser arrays littering the outer hull. 20 Quantum torpedo turrets similar to those first developed for the Sovereign class were arranged around her vaguely triangular hull for maximum coverage yet also maximum foreword firepower. Three Heavy torpedo launchers hid behind massive blast doors, two in the foreword hull, one to the rear. 100 Phalanx torpedo launchers were scattered evenly across the hull to provide anti fighter and anti destroyer capability without tying up the main weapons batteries. 30 Type XV Phasers wreathed the ship in massive, segmented arcs that guarantied phaser array survivability yet provided the most continuous coverage and firepower. 25 Quad Pulse Phaser Cannons mounted in ball turrets were scattered across the mountain of alloy and synthetics as well. Most were facing forward, but many were aligned to cover the other angles of attack as well. Four foreword facing Type II Phaser Lances and two rear facing ones rounded out the Bastion class' formidable arsenal. The Type II Phaser Lance was an improvement of the Type I's basic design. New gravity lensing technology had allowed for the Phaser Lance to target slightly off bore from their extremely narrow field of fire, widening it to a 10 degree cone instead of the Type I's 3 degree one. It also was able to fire a more powerful beam than the Type I's, and its rate of fire was also increased over the older version.
Admiral T'var sat nestled in the middle of all that power, silently contemplating just what she would find when she arrived at A875 34B9. The revised orders had said that only an Aegean class Fleet Support Destroyer was left as a rear guard in the system. It was her captain that had reported Chriton's actions to Starfleet Command, and his quick actions made it possible that something might yet be salvaged from this mission.
"Admiral, we are approaching the coordinates for the rendezvous." Athena's ops officer said.
"Alright, orders to the fleet. Drop out of slipstream and assume formation Delta Nine."
"Aye sir."
The almost subsonic hum of the slipstream drive dropped in pitch rapidly, then cut out completely. The holo display changed from the nebulous blue tunnel of slip drive to the spark filled ebony of normal space. The fleet dropped out just in time to see a mysterious alien vessel open fire on the ISS Hopolite. The entire aft end of the Imperial ship was sheared away by the force of the attack and the tiny Aegean went spinning off out of control. T'var jumped to her feet.
"Red alert! All hands to battle stations! Deploy the armor, set power to combat usage! Target that vessel and fire as you bear!"
The massive Imperial monitor activated its ablative armor generators and within two seconds the carapace was fully in place. The massive doors covering the heavy torpedo tubes rolled aside as the shuttle sized warheads began to come online. Athena's com officer dished out orders to the rest of the fleet without having to be directly told. As Athena went to general quarters and armed weapons, the rest of the fleet was following her lead. The attacking alien vessel hadn't been moving very fast to begin with, and as it closed with its stricken prey to deliver the death blow it slowed further still. If 2nd Fleet's approach vector had been just a few more degrees off in any direction, stray shots that didn't hit the spindle shaped craft would most likely hit the Hopolite. Fortunately for the crippled Aegean class, 2nd Fleet had come in at just the right angle so that their fire would pass harmlessly by it.
Nearly as one, the massed vessels of 2nd Fleet opened up on the alien vessel as the enemies own weapon powered up for the final shot. T'var had been in large fleet engagements before, but she never tired of seeing the raw fury a massed fleet could pour out on those that deserved it. Near the front of the wall shaped formation of capital ships and their escorts, space grew star bright as over 1000 vessels opened fire. 2nd Fleet's order of battle was one Bastion class Monitor, five Wraith class Super Dreadnoughts, 40 Sovereign class Battleships, 45 Galaxy class Battle Cruisers, 60 Prometheus class Heavy Cruisers, 55 Akira class Heavy Cruisers, 50 Nebula (Weapons Pod) class Heavy Cruisers, 75 Steam Runner class Cruisers, 80 Intrepid class Cruisers, 200 Saber class Destroyers, 300 Defiant class Destroyers, 250 Nova class Destroyers, 10 Nebula (AWAC) class Heavy Cruisers, and 20 Aegean Class Escort Destroyers. Every one of these ships opened fire on a lone target. The result was massive overkill.
The long ranged Assault Phasers struck first and the spindle shaped craft writhed in the crossed fire of close to 100 beams of concentrated energy. There was little left for the follow on phaser, PPC and torpedo strikes to do other than scatter the expanding cloud of plasma that was a hostile alien vessel farther apart. With the enemy obliterated, the Athena moved closer to the out of control Aegean class and grabbed her with a tractor beam.
"Order the SWAC's to scan for other alien ships in the area. Try and hail the Aegean class and get a situation report from them.
- ISS Hopolite, That same time -
The spin was becoming tiresome. Ulysses stomach was beginning to beg for death as a means of escaping the constant torture it was now undergoing. Suddenly the ship was rocked slowing their spin slightly and Ulysses closed his eyes tight waiting to see if death would be quick and painless, long and painful, or some combination of the two. After a few seconds more, the ship lurched to a stop. After nearly being thrown from his chair, but suffering no other ill effects, Ulysses slowly opened one eye to look around the bridge. Seeing everything much the same as it had been at the start of the demented carnival ride, he opened his other eye and waited a beat for his protesting stomach to subside. Emergency lighting was still on, but the control consoles and monitors around the bridge were flickering intermittently. The stench of fried electronics and smoke filled the bridge from the blown out science station.
"Report!"
"Hard to tell sir, main power is off line and bridge control systems are intermittent at best." P'tel said from the left side of the bridge. "Weapons are offline, shields are gone, internal coms are non operational. Main computer seems to be offline. Life-support is running on emergency backup. Anything more I can't tell you, the system's just to scrambled." P'tel said with a slight frown, but in typical Vulcan style, none of her emotions clouded her face or voice. Even though he couldn't read her mind, Ulysses knew what she was thinking. It was the same thing he was. What was the damned cold hearted ba$tard out there waiting for?
"Mr. Eton, see if you can make it to main engineering. Once you get there, send someone back here with a damage report." Suddenly there was the whine of a transporter and everyone pulled their phasers and pointed them at the materializing beings. Everyone was shocked when the beings turned out to be Starfleet medics and security personnel. A middle aged medic turned towards where Ulysses stood.
"You folks need some assistance?" The Medic said in a lazy drawl.
"Where did you come from?!" Ulysses demanded. The medic rolled his eyes as if that should be obvious to anyone with more brain capacity than lichen.
"Second Fleet, where else?"
"Second Fleet? But you aren't due here for another three hours." P'tel said. She and everybody else on the bridge still had their phasers leveled at the newcomers. The medic shrugged.
"Change in the schedule I suppose. I'm just a medic. They don't tell me nothin and I don't wanna know nothin. Safer that way." With Section spies always snooping around that was the Lords honest truth. Ulysses was still mulling what the supposed medic had said when suddenly a virtually emotionless feminine voice came over the com system.
"Is there a problem Mr. Orlando?"
"Not really Commodore, just that these here folks don't think we are whom we say we are."
For the first time, emotion colored the disembodied voice. "Oh for the love of. Put the CO on." P'tel glanced at Ulysses and raised an eyebrow. He merely shrugged and responded to the Captain's demands.
"This is Captain Ulysses Vanguard of the ISS Hopolite, to whom am I speaking?"
"You're speaking to the third in command of this entire damned fleet, now you shut your mouth, stow your weapons and let my teams do their job. Understood?" It may have been phrased as a request, but there was the undeniable steel of command under it. The tense knot of muscle that had bunched at the base of Ulysses neck eased as he began to believe that the voice on the other end of the com really was from 2nd Fleet. Either that or it was the most imaginative and twisted bunch of pirates ever encountered. He holstered his phaser and stood at parade rest. Following his lead, the other bridge officers did the same.
"Understood ma'am. And might I add that I am damn glad to hear your voice!"