Star Trek Hunter
Episode 7: The Great Mushroom
Scene 12: Battle for Pillo
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7.12
Battle for Pillo
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2nd Lt. Gaia Gamor was keeping up with all the reports of medical beamouts, but she was not tempted in the least to step away from the captain's chair. Instead, she strapped herself in and found herself ordering the rest of the bridge crew to do the same. She was not surprised when Guth called her from one of the interceptor bays.
"Bridge, this is Interceptor 1 requesting permission to launch…"
"I was just about to ask you to do that. Launch both interceptors," Gamor replied. "Maintain close formation."
Almost at that moment, Navigator Johanna Imex, who had requested permission to staff the bridge tactical station on arriving, reported, "Ships entering the system at high warp. At least two." She was already raising the Hunter's shields as Lt. Gamor gave the order.
"Shields up, weapons hot, bring us about to face them. Interceptors, take wing positions forward and keep their torpedoes off of us. All hands - brace for combat!"
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A***A
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In Porte Abello, Ensign Tolon Reeves gave his squad the order to separate out the unconscious nausicaans and bind them. Nausicaans were tough and resilient and even though the majority of them had been hit by Mlady's phasers set on heavy stun at close range, several of them were starting to come around. But none of them had sufficient fight to put up a struggle against Tolon's tactical squad and they were swiftly contained.
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A***A
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As everyone else left the courtroom, Justice Minerva Irons found herself relaxing back into the mushroom from which she had delivered her ruling. She had a feeling that things weren't going well for anyone else, but there was little she could do about it at the moment. Her mind was beckoned elsewhere. In her vision she was swept off to a small town on a rather drab planet where people wearing drab clothing were going about the business of farming.
Irons wasn't sure where this particular agricultural backwater was, but she could easily identify the fly in the bucolic ointment. A large, well-dressed man was entering a small, but unusual building. Neither his clothing nor the building had anything to do with farming. She hadn't seen his face, but his clothing and gait were very familiar. So was the clothing and manner of the farmers and farms around him.
Even the rugged, forbidding landscape was oddly familiar to Irons. These farms had been blasted out of this landscape long ago. The few places where land could possibly be cleared for farming clearly limited the population of this settlement. From the condition of the buildings, the village looked old, but well cared for.
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A***A
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Three nausicaan heavy cruisers appeared out of warp in close formation and immediately began firing on the Hunter. The Hunter would have been quickly destroyed had it not been for the interceptors using their phaser cannon to prevent the large number of photon torpedoes from getting through.
Nausicaan heavy cruisers were very rarely seen - three of them together represented probably half of the capital ships of the Nausicaan Collective - which claimed to speak for roughly half of the nausicaans in the sector and was the only large nausicaan organization - more of a syndicate than a government.
Any one of these cruisers would have outclassed the Hunter even with the heavily armed tactical unit attached. With half its weaponry away on a mission to Vulcan, the Hunter was hopelessly outgunned. Gamor was both putting up a fight and simultaneously hailing these vessels in an attempt to surrender. No one was answering.
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Then the tactical unit appeared out of high warp directly in between two of the heavy cruisers - with less than 30 meters between the tactical unit and the two cruisers on either side. In that moment the tactical unit pivoted 90 degrees, bringing its forward torpedo tube to point directly at one cruiser and the aft tube to point at the other. Torpedoes launched simultaneously at point blank range from each tube, but did not activate – they drifted toward the two cruisers.
The tactical unit moved forward at high speed. It nosed down, barely diving under one of the cruisers as the torpedoes drifted, unpowered, at launch speed into the deflector screens of the two vessels. On contacting the cruisers' deflector screens, both torpedoes exploded simultaneously, overwhelming the emitters of both vessels and causing a feedback loop between the shielding systems that whipped both ships like a gigantic bandsaw, ripping open the hull plating and causing secondary explosions on each ship.
As these secondary explosions on the two now disabled cruisers multiplied out of control, the tactical unit focused its main phaser cannon at the third cruiser's deflector dish, heating the shield directly in front of the dish. This remaining nausicaan heavy cruiser focused its fire on the tactical unit, only to find that its small target was moving too erratically to be predicted. In spite of these crazy, weaving and spinning maneuvers, the pilot of the tactical unit managed to keep the small vessel's prow pointed precisely at the cruiser's main deflector dish. Four torpedoes launched from the tactical unit's aft tube, away from the cruiser.
These four torpedoes each took different trajectories, each sweeping around on individual arcs to head toward the nausicaan cruiser from different directions - directly toward the cruiser's deflector dish. The cruiser was only able to destroy one torpedo with its forward disruptors before the other three torpedoes arrived simultaneously, just as the tactical unit disengaged its main forward phaser.
The torpedoes punched through a hole the phaser had opened in the nausicaan cruiser's deflector screens. The first torpedo overwhelmed the deflector, taking down the protective screen. The second destroyed the deflector dish, causing secondary explosions. The third buried itself deep in the cruiser's hull before exploding, ripping the ship to pieces with multiple, simultaneous secondary explosions.
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Lt. Gamor was still hailing the other two cruisers as they drifted apart, offering to take on survivors. It quickly became evident there would be no survivors as explosions continued inside both ships, gutting their hulls and leaving them floating, burnt out, empty hulks. Only shards remained of the third cruiser.
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"Hunter platform, this is the tactical unit, Kenneth Dolphin commanding," came the transmission.
"Tactical unit, this is the Hunter, Gaia Gamor commanding," Lt. Gamor responded. "Boy am I glad to see you, boss…"
Dolphin's voice came back over the system. "Request permission to dock, Lieutenant."
"Permission granted, sir," Gamor replied. "I take it your mission was a success?"
"That would be an affirmative. We are carrying three crew members and three katras. Each katra is now located squarely where it should be."
"Tactical unit, this is Interceptor 1," came Guth's voice. "Sir, I have never seen flying like that. Or shooting."
"Ensign T'Lon did the shooting, Mr. Guth," Dolphin responded. "As for the flying - let's hope I never have to do anything like that again - at least for a while. I'll see all of you on board. When I get there can someone please explain to me why I just had to blow up half of the Nausicaan Collective's main fleet?"
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7.12