The Illusive Enemy

Posted on Sun Nov 5, 2017 @ 11:58am by Fleet Captain Rhea Kennit & Lieutenant Penelope Naroot & Lieutenant Nicole Anderson & Senior Chief Petty Officer Samantha Summers

2,701 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Dīvide et Impera ~ Chapter One: Sending Out An S.O.S
Timeline: 0800 hours, Three days after the battle drills

After weeks of round-the-clock shifts trying to clean up the computer and the ship from the repair crews, Penny was looking forward to finishing her last morning shift. Night shift had been pretty quiet, and she did enjoy her time in the center seat, but she was ready to jump back on the helm and then take a night off to sit back and write to Thomas, and watch one of the movies he'd suggested.

She glanced up as the turbolift doors opened, nodding as the Captain and First Officer exited together. She tried not to smile at why they were so well-timed. Their status had become the ship's worst kept secret, but if it kept the Captain more mellow, everyone was in general agreement that it was fine and dandy with them.

Penny skipped down to the helm and took her seat, refreshing the helm and ops boards quickly. As the rest of the morning shift came on, she turned around. "Ship operating as optimally as it can, Captain. No reported issues from Sickbay, nor Engineering, and we're still on course for--" she paused as her boards chirped for attention. She turned around and read over it. "Captain," she said, "we're receiving a general distress call. Ship identifies itself as the SS Caroline. Under attack by unknown assailant, engines damaged, medical attention required. Message repeats." She looked at the Captain expectantly.

Mouthful of apple, the expressions on the Captains face was decidedly one best described as annoyed, mixed with a hint of resigned Well shit. Once she’d swallowed that bite of apple from her breakfast, Kennit said “Plot their location and distance from us, and pull up what data we have on S.S. Caroline, I want both on the view screen.”

Penny's fingers flew as the viewscreen filled with a schematic of the ship, statistical information and a picture of its handsome, if slightly unkempt-looking, Captain. "S.S. Caroline," she said, "Captained by a human named Jonathan Hunter, listed as a non-aligned trading freighter. Source of signal is by the edge of Federation Space, approximately twenty-seven-point-four minutes away at standard maximum warp."

The Captain nodded as she listened to Penny’s report, her attention on the image of the freighters captain and its specifications on the screen. “Always some hot-shot know it all civilian..” she muttered before saying clearly, “Set course to intercept, maximum warp. Try and reach the Caroline, advise them we are responding with our ETA. Instruct them to attempt to alter course to meet us. If they are running toward us as we run toward them, we can reduce intercept time and maybe reach them in time to do something of benefit..”

"Yes Ma'am!" Penny said, taking the ship out of warp long enough to make a hard left, then kicking it to maximum as they shot off to the rescue. Her right hand was plotting out the obstacles in their way, and her left hand was informing Engineering of their power needs, and sending out the reply to the S.O.S. "Caroline acknowledges and is angling towards us. ETA in twenty-two-point-one minutes."

“Lt. Owens,” the Captain said next, swiveling in her seat to turn toward the Strategic Operations console. “Get in touch with Sickbay. Advise Dr, Anderson that we have received a distress call from a civilian merchant vessel and are responding. She should prep for casualties and be ready to offer medical assistance when we arrive.”

"Aye Captain," she said, tapping her combadge. "Owens to Sickbay, we are responding to a distress call. One injured, human, eta twenty-two minutes."

"Understood. Anderson out," Nicole replied.

That accomplished, the Captain said “Bring up long range sensors and tell me what you see. I want know what we are heading into.”

Penny split the viewscreen in half as she brought up the sensor readings. Her brow furrowed and she tried again. "Picking up the cargo ship, and weapons fire. Ship is heading in our general direction but it looks like they're being corralled pretty hard. Sensors aren't picking up the other ship. It could be masked."

Summer's Quarters

Commander Summers hit her com badge. " Summers to Bridge, request permission to get up there..."


Sickbay

"Owens to Sickbay, we are responding to a distress call. One injured, human, eta twenty-two minutes."

Nicole stood up quickly and grabbed her bag. "Understood. Anderson out," Nicole replied, walking out of her office. "Casualties incoming," she said. "Beds one and two cleared and prepped, and instruments out. Fifteen minutes."

She tapped her combadge. "Anderson to bridge. Sickbay will be ready, just tell us where to be."

Bridge

The current ETA to arrival and rendezvous with the stricken freighter was 11 minutes. After a glance at the data display, Kennit said “Continue to scan as we close in. Pay extra attention to heat variances and gravitational eddies in the local gas and dust in this area. We may not be able to directly get a read on that hostile but we should be able to pick up trace evidence of where he’s moving.”

"Aye Captain," Penny said. "tuning sensors."

"Anderson to bridge. Sickbay will be ready, just tell us where to be."

As the Doctor’s hail came in from Sickbay, the Captain responded without missing a beat. “Sickbay, Bridge. As soon as I know more we’ll pass the word down. Current ETA to arrival with the civilian ship is,” she paused to check, “8 minutes, 21 seconds.”

Professor Phillips had been teaching temporal mechanics for fifteen years when Nicole took his class, and he began their first class with his favorite question: How long is a minute? Everyone put in their answers. Some were scientific, some were philosophic. His answer was always the same: it depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on.

The eight minutes it took to reach the ship was excruciatingly long. Nicole finally went to the bridge to see for herself what was going on. They'd just dropped out of warp in time to see two quantum torpedoes strike the cargo ship, but where they were launched from, she couldn't tell. "Did they flee?"

"Unknown," Owens said from tactical. "Sensors aren't picking up a second ship, but someone's firing."

"No distortions found," Penny said. "Spatial gasses being displaced by the cargo ship are making it hard to lock onto anything else."

“Let’s get their attention..” the Captain said. “Red alert! Shields up! Set tactical firing solution zebra-tango seven. Set sensor reading for the Caroline as non-hostile and fire.”

The ordered firing solution would send am array of six quantum torpedoes in a search pattern which would send the torpedos sweeping out in a seemingly random flight pattern. The civilian freighter would be ignored, as would the Victory however any other target detected would be locked onto and attacked. At the same time, the ship’s phasers would sweep the region around them. If the phasers struck their cloaked quarry, the torpedos would immediately shift course and move in.

"Aye, Captain. Torpedoes away," Owens said, plying her board as the Red Alert klaxons began. A moment later pinpricks of light shot out from the ship as the torpedoes began searching for their targets. The phasers raked out around the cargo ship like searchlights, trying to find their quarry.

Several moments went by, but no explosion. Instead, "Captain," Owens said, "the cargo ship is hailing."

At the same time, the call from Summers came over the comm. Kennit glanced at Alec, her expression clearly conveying her desire that he respond to Summers’ request.

Catching Rhea's look, Alec gave a silent nod of acknowledgement. Tapping his combadge, "Hunter to Summers, permission granted to come to the bridge...but stay out of the way." He added. He still wasn't sure how he felt about Summers. His feelings were a mixed bag. Yes, she had saved Rhea from an assassin, for which he was extremely grateful but she had also tried to destroy the ship. He would just take dealing with her day by day.

Aloud, the Captain said “Put them onscreen.”

The screen changed to show an unshaven, dirt-covered human sitting in a pilot's chair, shaking as the ship rocked. "Whoever you are, if you're trying to kill me too, you missed the fun part."

Kennit’s first thought was that if he smelled even half as bad as he appeared... he was staying on his own ship.

Answering without thinking about it really, she said in a tone best described as ‘bored’. “If I was trying to kill you, you’d be dead. I am Captain Kennit, Commanding Officer of the USS Victory. We detected your distress call and witnessed the last round of fire launched at your ship. As your attacker is evidently a coward hiding behind a cloak, I am merely attempting to get his attention on me, rather than your ship. “

The man's head snapped up in surprise. "Starfleet? Hot shit! What are you guys doing out here? John Hunter, pleased to meet you. Sorry for my appearance, but I'm being shot at." He stopped and ducked suddenly as a panel blew out, then sat back up and grabbed his controls. "No idea who it is, just suddenly found myself being fired upon. I can't figure out where they're positioned, but hey, feel free to shoot at them all you want. In fact, you can--"

His voice was cut off, and his face disappeared as the channel suddenly went spotty.

"Captain," Penny said, both hands working furiously, "someone's cutting into the frequency. I can't quite pinpoint the signal, but they're strong enough that it's coming from a ship nearby."

The screen cleared and the human was gone, replaced with a green, scarred, sneering face. "You missed," he said.

Kennit rose to her feet, her entire being..everything about her suddenly changed. With one hand, not visible on the viewscreen she pointed sharply at Naroot, indicating that she should track the transmission now! Her eyes on the viewscreen, she gave a little shrug of her shoulders. “So I see..” she responded, her voice cold and emotionless. “Love the scar Razom.. it improves your looks.”

Razom Hetaz, former second in command of the Orion Cartel - at one time considered a threat to the Orion Syndicate, until unknown assailants had removed him from power. Rumor had it that Hetaz had been killed by the Federation, though no body had been identified. Whatever the cause, his sudden disappearance had shaken the power structure of the Orion pirate cartels and for the time being at least, stabilized the volatile collection of criminal systems.

Razom grinned again. "I'm sure you wish you'd left me with more. But once again, you've failed to take me off the board, while I've killed....how many of yours? I've lost count after all this time."

“You learned to count..I’m so proud of you..” Kennit replied in a mocking tone. “What’s next for you Razom? Pulling your balls out of you slave girls clutches long enough to stop hiding behind cloaks and challenge your adversaries like a big boy..since we both know you’ll never be a man.”

"Next, I intend to take this man's cargo, and then I'll get around to you," he said, then looked around the bridge. "I don't see your usual shadow. Where's that mate of yours? At least then you had what looked like a man by your side. He chuckled at the look in her eye.

All the while, as she was speaking the Captain was intently studying the side display on the split screen where the sensor data was scrolling past in real time, accompanied by an algorithm which was rapidly comparing the past sensor data recorded of weapons fire detected as they’d approached, along with current readings including the transmission being tracked with every passing moment. Standing at Lt. Naroot’s shoulder, she tapped Penny lightly and then, with one hand not revealing anything to the viewscreen pickup she flashed a set of numbers using her fingers to pass the coordinates over ..telling her bridge officer where to target their quantum torpedoes..

And then flashed a thumbs up..

In other words..

FIRE!

Penny quickly overrode tactical and slaved the controls to her Ops panel. She hit the button and watched as the torpedoes shot out.

One after another, four blazing balls of energy streaked out and away from the Victory to light up the dark of space. Three found no target, but the fourth struck the cloaked vessel - briefly lighting up space with a massive explosion against the hidden starship’s shields and instantly and unnecessarily for her crew were already in motion, the Captain snapped out “There! All weapons FIRE!”

Razom's smile faltered slightly, but didn't entirely disappear as his ship shook. "You will regret that," he said, before cutting the channel.

Owens' hands were moving over the tactical board like a spider across a web as she let loose the ship's armaments. A phaser strike seemed to hit a set of shields that were surrounding nothing but starlit sky. The stars shifted and moved and suddenly their weapons were passing through space again. "Captain, hostile is gone. Still not showing on sensors. We definitely got a couple hits, though. Suggest we--"

Her words were interrupted by the ship tipping up as if it had been cuffed on the chin, driving the deck up into everyone's knees.

"Quantum torpedoes! Direct hit, point-blank range!" Owens shouted as alarms blared. "Shields down to 72%! They were right under us to shoot from that angle!"

The channel reopened and Razom was laughing. "A love-tap to return the favor," he said. "May you die as brutally as your former mate."

Alec shifted his gaze to Rhea as Razom made his biting remark. He saw no noticeable change in her outward demeanor but he knew the comment stung. He would inquiry later in private to how she was coping.

To Owens he barked, "Evasive pattern Hunter, Beta, 417."

‘Stung’ wasn’t the word. There were no words, in any language which would have described the emotions in her heart at that moment..

The perk of having a three-tiered ship was that all three sections were armed, and at that moment, all armaments were active. Owens fired everything from the bottom section, and it wasn't long until the phasers and a torpedo connected with their invisible attacker's shields again, several shots connecting this time.

Razom's laugh cut as the channel closed once more. There was a crackle of the invisible ship's shields, then, suddenly, a massive fireball appeared under the ship, only to be immediately snuffed out by the vacuum of space, debris flying and colliding with the Victory's shields. After a minute of no further provocation, she dared speak. "Target appears to be destroyed," Owens said. "No further energy readings."

"Beam the pilot to Transporter Room 2," Nicole said, heading for the turbolift. "Medical team to Transporter Room 2," she said as the doors closed.

"Keep scanning the area. We don't want any surprises." Alec told Owens.

"Aye Sir," Owens said.

“Number One. You have the conn..” Kennit said in a voice utterly empty of any emotion at all. She turned, crossing the bridge and going straight to the turbo lift.

"Aye Captain." Alec replied crisply as he moved to the center seat. He caught the complete and utter lack of emotion in Rhea's voice. It sounded...... dead. Not even the Borg sounded like Rhea did at this particular moment.

The turbo lift opened as S.C.P.O. Summers walked out onto the Bridge, coming face to face with the Captain whom was heading towards it. Summers' eyes seemed to flare up for a second, then she spoke. " Summers reporting ..Captain. " Summers could feel the eyes on her, and she felt her face flush a slight green.

Kennit nodded curtly as she passed the Romulan officer, not speaking as she was confident that Alec would handle Summers’ arrival and see that she was put to work.

~ To be continued...

 

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