To Kill a Planet Killer Attempt 2 - Quantum Torpedos

Posted on Tuesday 25 August 2020 @ 17:31 by Captain Melody Jones & Major Richard "Wolf" Johnson, Psy.D.

Mission: Race against the machine - Joint Mission with USS Andromeda
Location: Bridge USS Merlin, USS Andromeda, USS Europa
Timeline: MD9 1200
3620 words - 7.2 OF Standard Post Measure

ON:

Andromeda bridge

Jonathan watched as the other vessels assumed attack formation alongside the planet killer and the Crossroads vessels who had decided to join them.

He was just about about to issue the order when a K'Vort class bird of prey decloaked.

"Captain," Gwen called out, "We're being hailed, also sensors are picking up multiple unidentified vessels." Gwen tried to narrow down the information being thrown at her, "We're a little out of range for sensors to get a good read on them."

"Patch them through, this is Captain Jonathan Reynolds of the USS Andromeda. Are you here to aid us?"

The toothy face of a Ferengi appeared on the screen. "No Starfleet, we are here to protect and retrieve our acquisition. If you intend to take it, we'll destroy you."

"That's a weapon of mass destruction," Jon stated firmly. "First of all who in the universe sold you that and second. Who are you? Third - Why are you in a Klingon vessel?" he demanded. "And finally, there are three Federation star ships here on this mission to neutralise the planet killer not to mention numerous allies from the Agora Crossroads trying to defend their home. What makes you think you can take all of us down and actually command that thing?"

Jon was beginning to wonder if this was a practical joke.

With timing that bordered on the supernatural, the first officer walked on the bridge.

"That's my property," the Ferengi insisted, before his eyes fell onto a familiar brunette's face. "Ahh... Miss Fox... kindly tell that Starfleet that this weapon belongs to me."

Amelia did not know what the Ferengi was talking about for a moment, then suddenly it clicked. Her mirror universe counterpart had not only sold the Planet Killer to the Cetea, but to a group of Ferengi as well. She came and stood next to Jon and spoke to him a low voice "It looks like Mirror Fox sold this one Planet Killer multiple times. I wonder who else she sold it to. Torpedos are armed and ready Captain."

She then raised her voice. "I'm afraid you've mistaken me for someone else. Also, you've been scammed."

"A Ferengi does not get scammed," the Ferengi replied with a toothy grin. "This thing is ours. Rule of Acquisition 34...war is good for business.. and this thing will give us that."

"This 'thing' as you put it is an incredibly powerful and dangerous weapon that are you clearly are not in control of. Also, a group called the Cetea have made claim to it, and I doubt you want to cross them as well as the Klingons so I suggest you leave while you can. Also, remeber the 125th rule of Acquisition. "You can't make a deal if you're dead. Also the 109th rule. Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack."

Jon signaled to cut the audio for a moment as the ferengi's carried on quoting rules of acquisition to them.

Gwen happily hit mute, "Well...that button is a godsend."

"How many people do you think your evil twin has shafted with this planet killer?" he asked Amelia straight.

Amelia shrugged. "Who knows. She could sell water to a drowning man."

Jon grimaced feeling a long headache coming on. The viewscreen showed the Ferengi still talking.

"He doesn't shut up, does he," Aidan said from the back of the bridge, nodding towards the Ferengi, "is he really that stupid to think he can control that monster out there?"

"He's a Ferengi sir" Xu whispered to Datari from the adjacent science station. "Latinum outweighs sense!"

"Sir, the ships are within range. I'm receiving information from our sensors," Gwen scrolled over the data, "They're old starfleet. I wouldn't assume outdated though."

Jon nodded, "Keep an eye on them and reconnect ..... "

"Audio is back," Gwen said with a nod.

"Ferengi are these your friends or do we have someone else also with a claim?" he asked

"Ferengi have no friends, only business associates," the Ferengi snarled back, "they are trying to steal from us same as you!"

True was late getting to the bridge as she'd had a patient to look after. She glanced at Jon and the others and wondered what was going on but didn't ask out loud. Jon could pick up her confusion and would probably explain.

Stepping onto the bridge, Rose made her way to one of the auxiliary stations and remained silent, choosing to listen. This Ferengi could ruin everything.

Michael stifled a snort of disbelief at the Ferengi Captain's claim to the ownership of the planet killer. There was no way that the Ferengi had control of the PK.

USS Andromeda is hailed once more, a general broadcast going out to the other ships.

"Looks like we've got another communication coming in, Captain." Hawkins announced.

"You stay away from our property, you do not have claim of it! " a rather gravelly voice could be heard. "You move away from what is ours!"

"This is getting ridiculous," Jon said.

"Unknown vessel this is Captain Jonathan Reynolds of the USS Andromeda. The Klingon vessel is making similar claims. If this is either of yours its on route to destroy a federation star base and a world in federation space. That would be perceived as an act of war against the federation not to mention its could impact this region where the crossroads is and result in a heavy loss of life," Jonathan told him firmly.

"If either of you are the owners prove so now. Turn it off," he demanded. "Otherwise we will continue with our orders which is to stop it at all costs."

"A contract is a contract," the Ferengi answered, before cutting the connection.

USS Europa Bridge

Natasha was feeling on edge, this chase and following of the Planet Killer was increasingly getting on her nerves, what else could they do, though. She was someone who did like to have some action, a solution to a problem. Nat was starting to liken this to a Kobyashi Maneuver. She hated what could be deemed a no win situation. She tsked at herself for her line of thought, there were still possibilities that the PK could be stopped.

Her mulling over this situation was interrupted by communications.

"There is a general message coming in from an unknown ship."

"Let's hear it. " as she heard the rough sounding voice grate its way over the comms, Nat's mouth turned into a grim line. It sounded like this person was gunning for a fight.

His XO had beat him to the bridge. It wasn't like Vern to be late at all but he'd had a late night. No one would ever get him to admit about what he'd been doing though. "Status?"

"Looks like a stand off, at the moment, with claims for the ownership of the PK." Nat responded.

"Ownership of the . . ." Who the hell would want one of those things? They couldn't exactly be controlled, not in a way that was anywhere responsible nor complete." Vern sat down. He winced as he heard the chatter of conversation, technically backing on the signal so that Europa knew as well what was happening out there.

USS Merlin Bridge

From her position, the tactical officer reported. "Modifications to the torpedos are complete and all tubes are loaded and ready to fire."

Melody was stood in front of her chair. "Standby." Melody was studying the Ferengi and Cetea ships on the monitor in relation to the planet killer. Both were staking a claim and she got the impression both of them would not give up without a fight.

The Klingon vessel started to power up its weapons. "Back off Starfleet," the Ferengi DaiMon snapped, showing gnarly teeth in annoyance. "Or I'll fire!"

Jon looked at the ferengi in disbelief. "Really?

The Ferengi didn't respond, instead had his weapons systems fire up, ready to shoot.

"Shields up then," he said to the bridge. This day was just getting crazier and crazier. He had not wagered that the first fire fight they would be in would be ferengi's in a stolen Klingon bird of prey.

He signalled to cut the feed and turned round, "try target the area with the cloaking device in case they try to creative and attempt to disable weapons as quickly as you can so get on with what we need to do here," he ordered.

"Reynolds? RRRReynolds!" an image comes onto the viewscreen, that of a rather ugly male seemingly frothing at the mouth, spittle flying "You!! You!"he screamed out, in rage.

"I will have revenge for you killing my people! You and your..."An alien expletive" Federation. Denebian slime devil." And several other creative colorful metaphors spew out as well comparing Jon and the others lower than scum.

He screams out, "Attack!!" the image drops as the Cetea ships start to fire.

"Fire!" the DaiMon screeched, "target them all!"

"Europa can you concentrate fire with the Merlin on the Cetea and we will concentrate on the Ferengi," Jon communicated to the other two ships.

"Acknowledged Andromeda," Vern looked at his crew. "Well you heard the man, what are you waiting for. That's as big of an invitation as we're going to get to show them what we're made of."

Cetea ships

The main commander of the ragtag bunch of ships, R'ydon growled, pacing back and forth. There upon the Galaxy class ship USS Andromeda was his mortal enemy. Not only were the crew responsible for killing his freedom fighters, they were responsible for killing his beloved, Mindina.

She wanted to strike a deadly blow to the Federation, the ones whom had no respect for his people. She died in her efforts. He blamed it all on Captain Reynolds, his heart seethed with rage, he must strike at him! He was currently on an older version of a Tellarite Cruiser. His target, the USS Andromeda.

The ships that were part of the Cetea group, drew nearer, their type close enough to be picked up. One dropped out of cloaking, a Romulan K'Tinga class ship, the other two were a Miranda Class ship, and an Orion Scout ship.

To the K'Tinga he screamed out, "Launch fighters! Attack the Klingon ship and other ships!!"

The Miranda class ship headed towards the Merlin and the USS Europa the Orion Scout ship accompanying her, all firing.


USS Merlin

And battle was joined...

The bridge was bathed in red as the deck rocked from the multiple shield impacts. Melody braced herself to the back of her chair “Lock phasers on the closest ship and return fire!”

The tactile officer held onto his console “Their shields are holding and they’re firing again.”

“That’s a lot of firepower for a Miranda class ship. Evasive manoeuvres Gamma sequence!”

We could use some help here Melody thought to herself. “Launch all fighters. Tell them to fire at will.”

Wolf was sitting in his fighter along with the squadron. He had been asked to fill in for this mission as the fighter CO since there was no one assigned. When the word came down from the bridge Wolf jammed the throttle forward, "all birds launch!" he ordered and felt himself get pressed deep into his chair as the fighter was thrown from the bay.

Melody suddenly had a moment of inspiration. Maybe they hadn’t upgraded everything on that ship.

She called out to ops “Can you get a scan on that ship? Find out what it’s original Starfleet registry was?“

She replied “Ill try but they’ve done a good job on her and there is a lot of interference from the weapons fire. If we could get closer....”

Melody called out “Helm, takes us on a tight strafing run along their port quarter. Scrape shields if you have to.” She called back to tactical “Fire on any target of convenience.”

“The shield might not hold for long under such close fire Captain!” The tactical officer interjected.

“Let’s hope theirs won’t either! Hang on!”

The ship rocked again hard as they got closer.”

“Shield are down to seventy percent.”

From ops, the lieutenant called out “Sir i think I’ve got it. NCC 1876, USS Solent.”

Melody slapped her hand on her thigh. “Good work. See if you can find the data charts on her command codes in the archives. Helm, defensive pattern Kirk epsilon! Move us out of range”

The ship held yard to the left as one of the aft consoles shorted out on a shower of sparks.

Melody got out of her chair and came to stand by the tactical officer, starting to enter commands into the controls.

He watched her as she worked “I’m not sure I follow Captain.

She looked at him for a moment then continued working. “You really need to brush up on why things work on a starship. Each ship has it’s own combination code...”

“Ahhhh! The prefix code. We can use it to lower their shields.” He finished off

Melody smiled “Catching on fast there. Let’s hope they didn’t figure out how to change the code.” She raised her voice “Now would be a good time Lieutenant.” She called out to ops

“Got it Sir!”

Melody headed back to her chair. She made it as another fire round of fire made contact. “Standby. We get one shot at this. Target their engines and weapons. I want that ship disabled. Now!”

The ops officer worked her console and tactical reported “it worked! Their shield are dropping!”

“Fire!”

Red hot bolts of pure fire lanced out and struck the Cetea ship at various points, crippling it. The ship stopped foreign and started to drift. Suddenly it exploded in a huge fireball.

Melody turned to tactical. “What the hell happened?”

“Someone onboard overloaded their warp reactor.” The officer replied.

The deck shook again and Melody grabbed her chair. “We’ll deal with that later. We’re not out of the woods yet.”


Cetea ships

The five fighters that were launched were Two Adamant fighters, Two Jem'Hadar fighters and one Reman Scorpion. The two Jem'Hadar fighters turned their attention towards the USS Europa; the Adamants went to engage the Star Fleet fighters as well as the USS Merlin.

The remaining fighter ship, the Reman Scorpion, accompanied the Tellarite Cruiser, as she attacked the USS Andromeda firing shot after shot.

Beams of energy shot forth from Romulan K'Tinga class ship, lancing out hitting the K'Vort.

The Orion Scout ship wasn't attacking at the moment, it ceasing its attack as if to waiting for something.

Andromeda Bridge

"It seems I have someone out for my blood," Jon stated to Fox. "I think when we get back to 308 I want to see the full records on what those Cetea prisoners we stopped blowing the base up said. But for now, let's get out of this."

"Red alert," Jon ordered. There was 2 ships captained by an seemingly vengeful maniac now heading towards them

They lurched and sparks flew from somewhere.

"Report?" Jon stated but it seemed he didn't need it.

In front of him at the helm Lieutenant Mitchell slumped off his chair.

Jon was on his feet and checking his pulse. It was thready. "He needs sickbay. And I imagine Hes not going to be the only one. Who has piloting experience? And no Fox you're pregnant. You're not taking over the helm. Hawkins give me a hand to move Mitchell."

"I have some sir! Limited to shuttlecraft!" but without even thinking Xu was on her feet and rounding the bridge at pace. No matter if she had never piloted something as large as a Galaxy Class starship the principles would still be the same.

Hawkins's face paled seeing that Graham had been injured, he quickly complied with Jon's command, helping him get the helm officer out of anymore danger. "Hang in there, Graham." he whispered to his friend.

"The chairs yours," Jon ordered the Japanese woman. "Take the helm. Evasive pattern delta 5," he told her as he then ordered the transporter room to lock onto Mitchel and get him to sickbay.

"Bridge to engineering what's going on down there?"

Below, engineering, fought to take care of the damage that was done to the ship, scrambling to get the torpedo systems back online. "We're working on getting the torpedo system back online sir." was the answer. "Reroute the flow to another section!" was heard before communications was cut off.

=^=Andromeda to the Europa and Merlin. We have suffered a little damage. It's going to keep our torpedo's off line for a little while.=^=

Amelia studies her display. "Captain! I'm not sure how, but they've disabled her weapons array. Torpedo launchers are offline."

"I have a feeling your counterpart sold them far more than just a planet killer number one."

Amelia nodded "This does look like Mirror Fox told the Cetea tactical information about us and now it looks like one of the Cetea ships is on a collision course. If I didn't know better, I'd say they were playing chicken with us."

"Sheilds are still working," Jon pointed out. "There not going to do too much damage hopefully.

“Sir if I may” Rose said, stepping to to stand next to Gwen, “we could use our transporters to deploy our torpedoes like mines. If we set them to proximity detonate that should do the job”

"Yes get a couple of them close enough to try deter that ship deciding to play chicken with us," Jon nodded at Rose.

Giving a nod, Rose got to work with Gwen. “Set the detonation at 100 meters. We want them close, but not close enough to breach their hull” she said, programming the transport coordinates for each torpedo around 110 meters from the enemy ship so the could disarm them In time if needed.

After a few moments, the torpedoes began materialising between the two ships. As the Ferengi vessel advanced towards them, each torpedo it got close to detonated as programmed, doing progressively more damaged each time. Eventually, the progressive damage caused enough systems to fail onboard the vessel that it stated to slow, “I think they’ve got the message. Sensors are detection transporter signals onboard. I think they’re evacuating”

"Engineering ETA on getting the weapons array back on line?"

"About 5 minutes sir." came the response, in the background a person sputtered out, "5 minutes? Its going to take long-" the engineer who answered, interrupted the sputterer. "more working less talking." he barked out, to the captain he said, "Sorry captain, we'll do our best."


USS Europa

Natasha shielded her eyes when the Miranda class ship blew. She blinked clearing her eyes, looking out at the fight.

"Sir, we've got two Jem'Hadar fighters coming in hot" came from tactical

As two Terran scarab shaped ships darted in, beams of energy lancing out towards the hull of the Europa.

"Where did the Cetea manage to get hold of two of those ships?" Natasha exclaimed.

It was a good damn question but there wasn't time to think about it now. "Ask Andromeda if they can concentrate fire on those ships, I have an idea." Vern ordered loudly over the noise on the bridge.

"USS Andromeda, can you concentrate your fire on the ships!" Natasha communicated.

=/\= Fighter Dragon 1 =/\=

Wolf had broken away from the squadron with a flight [4 fighters] and was giving chase to the Jem'Hadar and Ceta fighters, "Demon, Rascal, break and get those bogies off Europa...Lioness, on my six, let's give the others something new to think about, all Dragons, weps free, fire at will!"

With that the Phoenix class fighters split up, two heading for Europa and two heading for the small group of incoming enemy fighters. Johnson pressed his throttle to full impulse again and aimed the nose of his fighter right at the centre of the enemy formation in a game of chicken. He narrowed his eyes and gritted his teeth, "computer, full power to fore shields," he ordered, "Lioness, arm torps and get in my wake, in ten seconds fire your torps," he ordered, taking a page from twentieth century indi car racing when a car would ride the draft of another car.

As his shields lit up with lances of yellow and green Wolf squinted against the bright flashes, in the HUD [heads up display) the ten second timer he had set hit zero. He pulled the flight stick back hard and jammed his foot deep into the right thruster peddle causing him to go up and left. The enemy fighters turned to follow, exposing their bellies to Lioness. Lioness fired two micro-torpedoes, causing one enemy fighter to explode in a bright display of green and yellow light and the rest to split off in other directions, scattering.

USS Merlin

The tactical officer reported to Melody. "Captain. We have a lock on the Planet Killer and a clear line of attack."

Melody nodded. "Now is as good a time as ever. Fire quantum torpedos!"

A full salvo of torpedos left the Merlin and went speeding toward the Planet Killer. They all stuck on target, but the enormous machine just shrugged them off, as if they were nothing.

"Direct hit! The Planet Killer seems unaffected!" Tactical reported.

Melody hit her armrest with her fist. "Damn!" She said quietly to herself.

The tactical officer now reported again, this time with some worry in his voice. "Captain! The Europa has laid in a direct course for the mouth of the Planet Killer!"

Melody turned to look at him. "What?"




To be Continued........