Chapter Seventeen - The Tip of The Lance
ISS Voyager
Cavit's wounded ship came to another juncture in the subspace corridor network. They had been going deeper and deeper into the unmapped routes, forced away from charted lanes by converging ISC and Dominion Forces. They were, in essence lost in space with virtually no idea where these tunnels would lead to.
"Steady Mr. Tuvok. Make this separation just as cleanly as the last one and we'll be down to one tag along." Scott told his Chief Tactical officer.
"Coming up on the transfer point." Harry Kim said stonily from his post.
"Now Mr. Tuvok." Cavit ordered.
"Launching EW drone now, aye Sir." The Vulcan's unflappably calm voice replied. The drone brought its impulse engines online as it cleared the launch tube and swung away from Voyager, taking one branch of the corridor while it's mother ship took the other. To an outside observer, it looked like the Imperial Intrepid class underwent mitosis, both visually and on sensors, with both giving of exactly the same readings. Behind them, the slowly gaining ISC Destroyers were forced to split, one following the near perfect mimic, the other remaining with their true quarry. Although the ISC's edge in speed was slight, it was undeniably there. It was pure luck that kept the initial waves of pursuers from following them. They had spoofed first one, then another of the Battlecruisers away using EW drones sent down branches of the corridor network. The last one had nearly been in phaser range when the corridor branched yet again. With an usual portion of luck, the ISC ship had followed the EW drone instead of Voyager, leaving the Imperial vessel temporarily alone in its flight. All to soon though, new pursuers were detected coming down nearly every adjoining branch of the network. The few that picked up and followed Cavit's trail had also been fooled into tracking drones, and Voyager's seemingly blessed state continued. The latest ships to have picked up their trail had just been divided. It was now time to conquer.
"Wait till they are out of com range of their friend, then blow them out of the stars."
Time seemed to slow as everyone waited till they could attack without worry of the Destroyer's compatriot finding out about it immediately. After a seeming eternity, it was time. Voyager cut her drives and swung around through the vertical, letting inertia maintain her foreword velocity. Although she would eventually loose her original vector's velocity due to the interaction of the subspace corridor, the maneuvers allowed her to bring her most powerful weapons arch to bear on her pursuer. The range began to drop sharply, and a message drone spat out of the ISC ship's aft tube. It was truly fortunate that this particular design had no PPD as part of its weapons load out, lest Cavit's crippled command would have been disabled far short of her own effective attack range.
This ISC ship was a fire support ship, a long range archer that helped bring down wounded capital ships or hunted lesser vessels at a distance. But although its target was wounded, her combat capability was only lessened slightly. Even if it was an ISC Destroyer, and even against a crippled Imperial Heavy Cruiser, a Destroyer/Heavy Cruiser battle still favored the Heavy Cruiser by a wide margin. Plasma warheads had a higher yield than their quantum brethren, but their range was shorter, allowing Cavit to score first. Steady streams of blue white spheroids spat from the twin foreword launchers mounted in Voyager's secondary hull, crossing the angry void to ravage the ISC's shields. The Concordium Destroyer closed to its own torpedo range and both ships opened up on each other. Plasma and quantum torpedoes flashed through the swirling vortex of the corridor, flaring and dieing against shields. The distance fell to energy weapons range and the true disparity between the combatants became clear. Whereas the ISC ship had heavy, long ranged torpedo volleys, it sacrificed phaser capacity to get it. In an energy range knife fight, it was hopelessly outclassed by the heavy phaser arrays its Imperial opponent carried. Heavy Plasma strikes were followed up by phasers, but they only brought Voyager's shields down and began hammering at her armored carapace. Cavit, on the other hand, rained overpowering phaser strikes down on the smaller enemy, punching through their shields almost at will, turning the Destroyer's outer hull into a white hot mass of molten alloy. A brace of quantums and a stiletto of phaser energy finally found the small ships warp core, shattering the remnants of the Destroyer, sending them pin wheeling apart trailing plasma flame.
"Good shot Mr. Tuvok."
"Naturally Captain."
"Mr. Paris, get us going again. Mr. Kim, get coordinate damage control teams. I want our latest damage totally repaired before we meet up with another ISC or Dominion patrol."
"Captain, sensors show that the corridor ahead of us is becoming clogged with debris. There are a lot of starship pieces out there, and they're old." Tom Parris said from his station. The main viewer showed the tale as well.
"Gods, there was a war fought in here." Cavit murmured as Tom began to thread his way through the remnants of starships.
"Designs and materials are from an as yet undocumented set of species." Tuvok supplied.
"Sir, we are coming up on another junction. One leads out of the network and into normal space, the other continues on." Kim said.
"Ok, we need to put down somewhere and make repairs. Since we have no pursuers to see us, this looks like the best time we have. Gives us a chance to find out just where we are as well. Make for the terminus Mr. Paris."
Voyager emerged from the subspace corridor network near a star system.
"There is a planet in this system that should hide us from sensors while we make repairs Captain." Harry told his commander. "It looks like the planet underwent a very limited orbital bombardment a few thousand years ago, just enough to destroy all the major cities and infrastructure and wreck the biosphere. The surface is still largely intact, with little to no glassing or penetration to the planets mantle." Lt. Kim smiled slightly as he continued. "Best of all, there are high concentrations of scanner scattering radiation present in its upper atmosphere. They should be sufficient to nearly completely mask our presence."
"That's the best news I have heard in a while. Launch the last EW drone on a course for the nearest termini. If our luck holds, it will draw off any pursuers that followed our trail here. Mr. Paris, reconfigure for atmospheric flight and take us down to a suitable landing site, preferably inside what was once a city."
Cavit set his command down near the center of what had once been a bustling metropolis. Although it paled next to the giant man made forests of alloy that were the major cities of Imperial Core worlds, it was still an impressive city even if it was only abandoned, poisoned ruins. The repairs went on for days, with the massive hull breach in Voyager's foreword saucer becoming largely patched and various other assorted wounds healed thanks to her engineering crew's ministrations. It was on the fourth day that faint readings were detected. They came not from space, as was expected, but from the very ground beneath Voyager herself.
"Would you look at that." the security officer assigned to the team that was searching out the anomalous power source murmured. Before him and the rest of the team stretched row after row of stasis pods, each housing an individual of a previously unknown alien species. In an adjoining room, there was a series of antiquated Frigates. Though their technology was several thousand years out of date, it was still close to a current day pirate's armament. It was a true testament to this species that it had the foresight to attempt to preserve itself even as its homeworld was destroyed from orbit.
"Captain," The squad leader commed, "the power source appears to be a geothermal core tap, it's powering a series of stasis pods, each containing an alien. Preliminary analysis of their equipment indicates that they are the same race that built most of the debris we found in the nearby subspace corridors.
"If their vessels were indeed engaging in combat inside the corridor network, they must have knowledge of their routes. I recommend that we revive one of the aliens to question him for this information Captain. It is possible that he may know a way back to plotted corridor lanes that we do not." Tuvok interjected. Cavit mulled over the recommendation for a few seconds, then spoke.
"Do it Lieutenant."
ISS Valley Forge, Two weeks later
Preparations had advanced with relative ease, far more easily than Ulysses had dared hope that is. After a few carefully selected examples had been made, the other hard cases and their followers had fallen more or less in line. True there was still more corporal punishment being doled out than he would like in an ideal universe, Starbase 200 was far from that ideal. Too many of these officers and enlisted personnel only knew how to behave under the crawling pain of an agonizer, never being taught another way. Ulysses wasn't naïve enough to believe that most of them would ever learn otherwise.
The civilians on Lilith were exactly the opposite. They were skeptical at first, for after a seemingly unending series of obviously worthless officers that had been foisted upon them, they had every right to be jaded. But officers and enlisted from the Valley Forge Battlegroup made the rounds at local bars, eateries and holosuites, and they did much to further Ulysses image. For unlike your normal bunch of sailors on leave, they were far more courteous and generally pleasant to be around. Not that they didn't raise their fair share of ruckus once they got inebriated on the local brand of home brew, but taken on the whole they were far better than what Lilithians were used to. This, combined with the perplexed reverence the officers and enlisted personnel all seemed to hold their CO with finally convinced the civilians, and word spread like wild fire. Upon learning that responsible and just leadership had fallen into their laps for the first time in many years, they held a planet wide celebration. The citizens went out of their way to accommodate any changes that "Skipper" Vanguard chose to make.
The Fleet units in Lilith orbit, while powerful on paper, had experienced a considerable degradation of the combat skills thanks to Command sponsored inactivity. They were just now coming up to a level that Ulysses liked, but still had room for improvement. The most important thing was that many of their commanders had begun copying Ulysses command style where applicable. They weren't stupid, for they knew that giving their crews freer reign than was normal wasn't a paying proposition for all circumstances, but they were trying as much as possible.
They Nightingale shipyards had been whipped into shape by the combined energies of Chief Engineer Heidberg and P'tel. All pending repairs had been cleared in record time with no degradation in work quality. Refit schedules were drawn up, with the oldest ships placed at the head of the line to receive upgrades to make them combat effective. While still a powerful Fleet, 7895th Fleet had been raided fairly heavily after the end of the Borg/Imperial war. Her heavy forces were close to full strength, namely a mixture of mostly first batch Wraiths that survived the Imperial/Borg war with a handful of new Wraith (R)'s as squadron flagships. Her lighter screening elements were another story, being most often under strength and of older designs largely removed from frontline service. Using his recently gained powers, Ulysses ordered a series of special upgrades to be started to some of the oldest vessels in his improving fleet. The old Excelsiors were receiving some of the most significant upgrades, allowing the venerable designs to compete with modern designs that will likely be arrayed against them.
Ulysses wasn't sure what was driving him to temper his new fleet into a weapon with such force. All he knew was that he had a bad feeling that had been growing since he had arrived at Prescott's Star. Something big was in the works, something bad. And he had a sinking suspicion that it would land in his lap.
Eden City, Lilith
No, no, NO!!!! All of my plans are in ruins and all because of one sniveling solid!
Unity Operative 11J was not a happy changeling. Of all the unforeseen obstacles to his plan, the one he had never expected was having a competent leader step foreword and assume command of the Sector. The Galactic Unity would attack soon, and many of his assigned objectives had yet to be realized. If anything, his initial success had turned to ashes, because this young upstart had forged them in the few short weeks he had been in command, into a dangerous foe, one preparing for trouble instead of causing it. Instead of inept and incompetent leadership, it now had relatively inexperienced commanders but ones that were learning how to do their jobs right.
Ground side security had been tightened considerably, and he no longer had access to restricted areas thanks to the renewed anti-changeling detection methods. Passwords could be obtained, medical scans passed thanks to his mastery of mimicry, but DNA analysis of samples removed from his body, namely blood, was not so easily forged. True he could store a solids blood and release it into the waiting hypo as required, but keeping it fresh was something else. Scans would be able to tell if the blood was fresh or not, and if it came up false all would be lost. There was one mission he could yet achieve, although his likelihood of survival afterward was practically nil. It was unfortunate but not unexpected. His blow would allow the Galactic Unity to more easily assume dominion over this sector. The solids would be taught the proper respect for their superiors. In the hiding shroud of a shadow filled alleyway, the changeling switched personas, assuming the identity of a Starbase 2000 crewman.
ISS Voyager
Cavit's wounded ship came to another juncture in the subspace corridor network. They had been going deeper and deeper into the unmapped routes, forced away from charted lanes by converging ISC and Dominion Forces. They were, in essence lost in space with virtually no idea where these tunnels would lead to.
"Steady Mr. Tuvok. Make this separation just as cleanly as the last one and we'll be down to one tag along." Scott told his Chief Tactical officer.
"Coming up on the transfer point." Harry Kim said stonily from his post.
"Now Mr. Tuvok." Cavit ordered.
"Launching EW drone now, aye Sir." The Vulcan's unflappably calm voice replied. The drone brought its impulse engines online as it cleared the launch tube and swung away from Voyager, taking one branch of the corridor while it's mother ship took the other. To an outside observer, it looked like the Imperial Intrepid class underwent mitosis, both visually and on sensors, with both giving of exactly the same readings. Behind them, the slowly gaining ISC Destroyers were forced to split, one following the near perfect mimic, the other remaining with their true quarry. Although the ISC's edge in speed was slight, it was undeniably there. It was pure luck that kept the initial waves of pursuers from following them. They had spoofed first one, then another of the Battlecruisers away using EW drones sent down branches of the corridor network. The last one had nearly been in phaser range when the corridor branched yet again. With an usual portion of luck, the ISC ship had followed the EW drone instead of Voyager, leaving the Imperial vessel temporarily alone in its flight. All to soon though, new pursuers were detected coming down nearly every adjoining branch of the network. The few that picked up and followed Cavit's trail had also been fooled into tracking drones, and Voyager's seemingly blessed state continued. The latest ships to have picked up their trail had just been divided. It was now time to conquer.
"Wait till they are out of com range of their friend, then blow them out of the stars."
Time seemed to slow as everyone waited till they could attack without worry of the Destroyer's compatriot finding out about it immediately. After a seeming eternity, it was time. Voyager cut her drives and swung around through the vertical, letting inertia maintain her foreword velocity. Although she would eventually loose her original vector's velocity due to the interaction of the subspace corridor, the maneuvers allowed her to bring her most powerful weapons arch to bear on her pursuer. The range began to drop sharply, and a message drone spat out of the ISC ship's aft tube. It was truly fortunate that this particular design had no PPD as part of its weapons load out, lest Cavit's crippled command would have been disabled far short of her own effective attack range.
This ISC ship was a fire support ship, a long range archer that helped bring down wounded capital ships or hunted lesser vessels at a distance. But although its target was wounded, her combat capability was only lessened slightly. Even if it was an ISC Destroyer, and even against a crippled Imperial Heavy Cruiser, a Destroyer/Heavy Cruiser battle still favored the Heavy Cruiser by a wide margin. Plasma warheads had a higher yield than their quantum brethren, but their range was shorter, allowing Cavit to score first. Steady streams of blue white spheroids spat from the twin foreword launchers mounted in Voyager's secondary hull, crossing the angry void to ravage the ISC's shields. The Concordium Destroyer closed to its own torpedo range and both ships opened up on each other. Plasma and quantum torpedoes flashed through the swirling vortex of the corridor, flaring and dieing against shields. The distance fell to energy weapons range and the true disparity between the combatants became clear. Whereas the ISC ship had heavy, long ranged torpedo volleys, it sacrificed phaser capacity to get it. In an energy range knife fight, it was hopelessly outclassed by the heavy phaser arrays its Imperial opponent carried. Heavy Plasma strikes were followed up by phasers, but they only brought Voyager's shields down and began hammering at her armored carapace. Cavit, on the other hand, rained overpowering phaser strikes down on the smaller enemy, punching through their shields almost at will, turning the Destroyer's outer hull into a white hot mass of molten alloy. A brace of quantums and a stiletto of phaser energy finally found the small ships warp core, shattering the remnants of the Destroyer, sending them pin wheeling apart trailing plasma flame.
"Good shot Mr. Tuvok."
"Naturally Captain."
"Mr. Paris, get us going again. Mr. Kim, get coordinate damage control teams. I want our latest damage totally repaired before we meet up with another ISC or Dominion patrol."
"Captain, sensors show that the corridor ahead of us is becoming clogged with debris. There are a lot of starship pieces out there, and they're old." Tom Parris said from his station. The main viewer showed the tale as well.
"Gods, there was a war fought in here." Cavit murmured as Tom began to thread his way through the remnants of starships.
"Designs and materials are from an as yet undocumented set of species." Tuvok supplied.
"Sir, we are coming up on another junction. One leads out of the network and into normal space, the other continues on." Kim said.
"Ok, we need to put down somewhere and make repairs. Since we have no pursuers to see us, this looks like the best time we have. Gives us a chance to find out just where we are as well. Make for the terminus Mr. Paris."
Voyager emerged from the subspace corridor network near a star system.
"There is a planet in this system that should hide us from sensors while we make repairs Captain." Harry told his commander. "It looks like the planet underwent a very limited orbital bombardment a few thousand years ago, just enough to destroy all the major cities and infrastructure and wreck the biosphere. The surface is still largely intact, with little to no glassing or penetration to the planets mantle." Lt. Kim smiled slightly as he continued. "Best of all, there are high concentrations of scanner scattering radiation present in its upper atmosphere. They should be sufficient to nearly completely mask our presence."
"That's the best news I have heard in a while. Launch the last EW drone on a course for the nearest termini. If our luck holds, it will draw off any pursuers that followed our trail here. Mr. Paris, reconfigure for atmospheric flight and take us down to a suitable landing site, preferably inside what was once a city."
Cavit set his command down near the center of what had once been a bustling metropolis. Although it paled next to the giant man made forests of alloy that were the major cities of Imperial Core worlds, it was still an impressive city even if it was only abandoned, poisoned ruins. The repairs went on for days, with the massive hull breach in Voyager's foreword saucer becoming largely patched and various other assorted wounds healed thanks to her engineering crew's ministrations. It was on the fourth day that faint readings were detected. They came not from space, as was expected, but from the very ground beneath Voyager herself.
"Would you look at that." the security officer assigned to the team that was searching out the anomalous power source murmured. Before him and the rest of the team stretched row after row of stasis pods, each housing an individual of a previously unknown alien species. In an adjoining room, there was a series of antiquated Frigates. Though their technology was several thousand years out of date, it was still close to a current day pirate's armament. It was a true testament to this species that it had the foresight to attempt to preserve itself even as its homeworld was destroyed from orbit.
"Captain," The squad leader commed, "the power source appears to be a geothermal core tap, it's powering a series of stasis pods, each containing an alien. Preliminary analysis of their equipment indicates that they are the same race that built most of the debris we found in the nearby subspace corridors.
"If their vessels were indeed engaging in combat inside the corridor network, they must have knowledge of their routes. I recommend that we revive one of the aliens to question him for this information Captain. It is possible that he may know a way back to plotted corridor lanes that we do not." Tuvok interjected. Cavit mulled over the recommendation for a few seconds, then spoke.
"Do it Lieutenant."
ISS Valley Forge, Two weeks later
Preparations had advanced with relative ease, far more easily than Ulysses had dared hope that is. After a few carefully selected examples had been made, the other hard cases and their followers had fallen more or less in line. True there was still more corporal punishment being doled out than he would like in an ideal universe, Starbase 200 was far from that ideal. Too many of these officers and enlisted personnel only knew how to behave under the crawling pain of an agonizer, never being taught another way. Ulysses wasn't naïve enough to believe that most of them would ever learn otherwise.
The civilians on Lilith were exactly the opposite. They were skeptical at first, for after a seemingly unending series of obviously worthless officers that had been foisted upon them, they had every right to be jaded. But officers and enlisted from the Valley Forge Battlegroup made the rounds at local bars, eateries and holosuites, and they did much to further Ulysses image. For unlike your normal bunch of sailors on leave, they were far more courteous and generally pleasant to be around. Not that they didn't raise their fair share of ruckus once they got inebriated on the local brand of home brew, but taken on the whole they were far better than what Lilithians were used to. This, combined with the perplexed reverence the officers and enlisted personnel all seemed to hold their CO with finally convinced the civilians, and word spread like wild fire. Upon learning that responsible and just leadership had fallen into their laps for the first time in many years, they held a planet wide celebration. The citizens went out of their way to accommodate any changes that "Skipper" Vanguard chose to make.
The Fleet units in Lilith orbit, while powerful on paper, had experienced a considerable degradation of the combat skills thanks to Command sponsored inactivity. They were just now coming up to a level that Ulysses liked, but still had room for improvement. The most important thing was that many of their commanders had begun copying Ulysses command style where applicable. They weren't stupid, for they knew that giving their crews freer reign than was normal wasn't a paying proposition for all circumstances, but they were trying as much as possible.
They Nightingale shipyards had been whipped into shape by the combined energies of Chief Engineer Heidberg and P'tel. All pending repairs had been cleared in record time with no degradation in work quality. Refit schedules were drawn up, with the oldest ships placed at the head of the line to receive upgrades to make them combat effective. While still a powerful Fleet, 7895th Fleet had been raided fairly heavily after the end of the Borg/Imperial war. Her heavy forces were close to full strength, namely a mixture of mostly first batch Wraiths that survived the Imperial/Borg war with a handful of new Wraith (R)'s as squadron flagships. Her lighter screening elements were another story, being most often under strength and of older designs largely removed from frontline service. Using his recently gained powers, Ulysses ordered a series of special upgrades to be started to some of the oldest vessels in his improving fleet. The old Excelsiors were receiving some of the most significant upgrades, allowing the venerable designs to compete with modern designs that will likely be arrayed against them.
Ulysses wasn't sure what was driving him to temper his new fleet into a weapon with such force. All he knew was that he had a bad feeling that had been growing since he had arrived at Prescott's Star. Something big was in the works, something bad. And he had a sinking suspicion that it would land in his lap.
Eden City, Lilith
No, no, NO!!!! All of my plans are in ruins and all because of one sniveling solid!
Unity Operative 11J was not a happy changeling. Of all the unforeseen obstacles to his plan, the one he had never expected was having a competent leader step foreword and assume command of the Sector. The Galactic Unity would attack soon, and many of his assigned objectives had yet to be realized. If anything, his initial success had turned to ashes, because this young upstart had forged them in the few short weeks he had been in command, into a dangerous foe, one preparing for trouble instead of causing it. Instead of inept and incompetent leadership, it now had relatively inexperienced commanders but ones that were learning how to do their jobs right.
Ground side security had been tightened considerably, and he no longer had access to restricted areas thanks to the renewed anti-changeling detection methods. Passwords could be obtained, medical scans passed thanks to his mastery of mimicry, but DNA analysis of samples removed from his body, namely blood, was not so easily forged. True he could store a solids blood and release it into the waiting hypo as required, but keeping it fresh was something else. Scans would be able to tell if the blood was fresh or not, and if it came up false all would be lost. There was one mission he could yet achieve, although his likelihood of survival afterward was practically nil. It was unfortunate but not unexpected. His blow would allow the Galactic Unity to more easily assume dominion over this sector. The solids would be taught the proper respect for their superiors. In the hiding shroud of a shadow filled alleyway, the changeling switched personas, assuming the identity of a Starbase 2000 crewman.