Chapter 1: THE ATTACK
===========================
Several weeks after "Beyond What The Eye Can See" ended Orbiting the moon of Kagome's world Approx. 11 : 48 pm
The unshielded Columbia rocked from the impact. The lights on the bridge flickered and went to a red hue.
"Red alert! Battle stations! Damage report! Ensign Hall, what the hell hit us?!" The last thing Captain Ramon expected during a survey of a planet, inhabited by a pre-warp culture, was an attack. I shouldn't have put him on the spot like that. Poor kid. Ensign Gregory Hall was the last person who should have been on the bridge now. He was only here because the Academy required juniors to have two months of active duty before graduation, and Hall happened to be training for a position as an ops officer. Basically, he made sure the ship was working and if there was a problem it was his job to report it.
"Damage report coming in. Warp drive is offline; hull breaches on decks 34 through 37. Engineering has been sealed off. Sensors are damaged near the deflector. Shields are up, but the deflector took damage. 12 casualties reported so far. The breached section has been sealed off. Life support also took damage. We are running on reserve power. Damn. They knew right where to hit us."
"Do we have phasers?"
"Yes, sir. But... sir? There's nothing to shoot at."
"How is that possible?"
"Well..."Hall swallowed. "at the academy, we had to study the situation on Minos; the Arsenal of Freedom thing. Uhhhh... The Enterprise was attacked by a cloaked drone while orbiting the planet. Maybe the Arsenal followed us out here. Divide and conquer."
"Out here? I don't think a dead race can travel, let alone follow us all the way out to the middle of nowhere. How did Captain Picard get out of that fix?"
"Commander La Forge was acting captain at the time. He... I can't remember what he did... he did something that revealed the cloaked probe... it wasn't a tachyon grid, though..."
"The La Forge maneuver, perhaps?" Sark offered. "Commander La Forge took the Enterprise into the planet's atmosphere ––" BOOM! (another hit)
"–– the atmospheric displacement revealed the probe when it followed them."
"That's it!" Hall exclaimed. How typical. He had the idea when the captain needed it most, only to have it taken away from him by someone who just happened to be there.
"Helm, best speed into the planet's atmosphere, and watch out for satellites. Let's see what happens. Sark, look for atmospheric disturbances, and target any relentlessly."
"Captain, there is the risk of being detected by the satellites. We could potentially violate the Prime Directive."
(The Prime Directive is a statue, or law, that prohibits all contact with a less advanced race or species. This is because technology is like magic to those who do not understand it. Starfleet personnel are required to obey this rule at all costs.)
"Blast 'em." He didn't wait for Sark's response. They knew each other well enough to realize that the captain's present tone of voice meant that he wasn't listening to objections. Any objections. Ensign hall almost felt sorry for the poor satellites that were about to be fried by Columbia's phaser banks. Almost. Starfleet training and the war with the Borg had taught him to place his life above any inanimate object, and the lives of the crew above his own. Not because he was sitting on the lowest rung of the ladder of command, but because he was part of the crew, and each crewmember who pulled his own load made it that much easier for everyone else. Selflessness was a virtue in Starfleet. He still had the sad memories, remembering the USS Morningstar at starbase 312. The transporter officer of that ship, and one of his closest friends, had died there while he was beaming the crew of the dying ship onto the Enterprise so they could escape death, or worse, at the hands of the Borg at the beginning of the first war; then, after his transfer, he remembered watching the Third Fleet's annihilation from the bridge of the USS Alleghany as the crippled ship limped into orbit around a secluded planet in Borg space. Funny how the Enterprise tended to show up to save the day. Maybe I can request transfer to the Enterprise! Then the day would be saved before the catastrophe happened and anyone got killed!
On the viewscreen, the moon moved off-screen to one side and the planet rotated peacefully beyond, its terminator almost facing the Columbia and its night-side lit with scattered city lights. Then it slowly widened across the viewscreen, growing ever bigger, its artificial satellites steadily appearing and some of them exploding under Sark's relentless barrage. the ship dipped and dove toward the planet.
Several weeks after "Beyond What The Eye Can See" ended Orbiting the moon of Kagome's world Approx. 11 : 48 pm
The unshielded Columbia rocked from the impact. The lights on the bridge flickered and went to a red hue.
"Red alert! Battle stations! Damage report! Ensign Hall, what the hell hit us?!" The last thing Captain Ramon expected during a survey of a planet, inhabited by a pre-warp culture, was an attack. I shouldn't have put him on the spot like that. Poor kid. Ensign Gregory Hall was the last person who should have been on the bridge now. He was only here because the Academy required juniors to have two months of active duty before graduation, and Hall happened to be training for a position as an ops officer. Basically, he made sure the ship was working and if there was a problem it was his job to report it.
"Damage report coming in. Warp drive is offline; hull breaches on decks 34 through 37. Engineering has been sealed off. Sensors are damaged near the deflector. Shields are up, but the deflector took damage. 12 casualties reported so far. The breached section has been sealed off. Life support also took damage. We are running on reserve power. Damn. They knew right where to hit us."
"Do we have phasers?"
"Yes, sir. But... sir? There's nothing to shoot at."
"How is that possible?"
"Well..."Hall swallowed. "at the academy, we had to study the situation on Minos; the Arsenal of Freedom thing. Uhhhh... The Enterprise was attacked by a cloaked drone while orbiting the planet. Maybe the Arsenal followed us out here. Divide and conquer."
"Out here? I don't think a dead race can travel, let alone follow us all the way out to the middle of nowhere. How did Captain Picard get out of that fix?"
"Commander La Forge was acting captain at the time. He... I can't remember what he did... he did something that revealed the cloaked probe... it wasn't a tachyon grid, though..."
"The La Forge maneuver, perhaps?" Sark offered. "Commander La Forge took the Enterprise into the planet's atmosphere ––" BOOM! (another hit)
"–– the atmospheric displacement revealed the probe when it followed them."
"That's it!" Hall exclaimed. How typical. He had the idea when the captain needed it most, only to have it taken away from him by someone who just happened to be there.
"Helm, best speed into the planet's atmosphere, and watch out for satellites. Let's see what happens. Sark, look for atmospheric disturbances, and target any relentlessly."
"Captain, there is the risk of being detected by the satellites. We could potentially violate the Prime Directive."
(The Prime Directive is a statue, or law, that prohibits all contact with a less advanced race or species. This is because technology is like magic to those who do not understand it. Starfleet personnel are required to obey this rule at all costs.)
"Blast 'em." He didn't wait for Sark's response. They knew each other well enough to realize that the captain's present tone of voice meant that he wasn't listening to objections. Any objections. Ensign hall almost felt sorry for the poor satellites that were about to be fried by Columbia's phaser banks. Almost. Starfleet training and the war with the Borg had taught him to place his life above any inanimate object, and the lives of the crew above his own. Not because he was sitting on the lowest rung of the ladder of command, but because he was part of the crew, and each crewmember who pulled his own load made it that much easier for everyone else. Selflessness was a virtue in Starfleet. He still had the sad memories, remembering the USS Morningstar at starbase 312. The transporter officer of that ship, and one of his closest friends, had died there while he was beaming the crew of the dying ship onto the Enterprise so they could escape death, or worse, at the hands of the Borg at the beginning of the first war; then, after his transfer, he remembered watching the Third Fleet's annihilation from the bridge of the USS Alleghany as the crippled ship limped into orbit around a secluded planet in Borg space. Funny how the Enterprise tended to show up to save the day. Maybe I can request transfer to the Enterprise! Then the day would be saved before the catastrophe happened and anyone got killed!
On the viewscreen, the moon moved off-screen to one side and the planet rotated peacefully beyond, its terminator almost facing the Columbia and its night-side lit with scattered city lights. Then it slowly widened across the viewscreen, growing ever bigger, its artificial satellites steadily appearing and some of them exploding under Sark's relentless barrage. the ship dipped and dove toward the planet.