Missing Pt.4

Posted on Sat Jan 18th, 2020 @ 2:29am by Lieutenant Rianna Repatha Thibideaux & Commander Natan O'Donnaghue & Commander Curtis Thibideaux & Commander Daynah Ral & Lieutenant Day Smith & Ensign Lisa Creed & Ensign Ovo Nohan
Edited on on Sat Jan 18th, 2020 @ 12:23pm

2,071 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Missing!
Location: Theta Orlellius Star System
Timeline: MD03 1700 hrs

Valiant dropped from warp into space which was made hazy by wispy, illuminated particles filling the view screen as Valiant moved into the star system.

She’d made a fast transition from Star Base 80’s space lanes, even having to clear the docking bay where Valiant had been at rest.

Now she was back in her natural element.

Valiant’s sensor’s had been operating off of feeds to track the fast Miradorn ship and the crew was tense at stations, silence resounding in the ship as Captain O’Donnaghue sat grimly in the bridges command chair.

Daynah sat at her station and tuned out everyone and everything that was around her. She only had eyes for her sensors. She watched the Miradorn ship and silently egged the Valiant on to close the gap. "Intercept in five minutes and closing fast." She called from her station.

Natan came out of his train of thoughts. He got up and said, "Excellent. Get ready."

Rianna was watching her console and the engine output's very carefully. Ion storms and starships don't mix. They can mess a ships systems badly and the Valiant was susceptible to the hazards handed out by these storms. "Just don't get to close to that Ion storm properties. Don't wanna lose my lady, Valiant now", she said flatly. Rianna was thinking on how to ask for permission to help the captain remember what he saw that night. "Captain when you have a moment I wish to speak with you", she said clearly.

"Yes, Lieutenant, when I have time." Natan Walked up to the screen. "Show me the vessel." He was uncertain what his chief engineer wanted from him, this seemed hardly the time. They really needed to focus on the task at hand.

Day had gathered all the information she could find on the Miradorn from the moment the name was shared with them. She was eagerly awaiting coming into range of the vessel. There were some flaws in the design that they could take advantage of. They were closing in on the vessel, she felt her body get ready for the action ahead. "Ehm, sir, sorry to interrupt. But we're closing in faster than we should." It didn't add up with the specs she had pulled up for the vessel. Perhaps it was something scrambling their sensors, but it might also be something more.

"Hmm..." Nathan said in thought. "Suggestions," he called.

Curtis glanced at the repeaters available to him. The Valiant was already at Yellow Alert given the storms and following suspected kidnappers. Shields were up due to same reason. With all systems in the green he looked over at the Vaiiant's tactical officer and said, "Lieutenant Creed, charge phasers and load torpedoes bays. Try and get a tactical profile on her."

"Copy that sir," replied Lisa as she looked down at her console, she continued, "phasers fully charged and torpedoes are loaded both front and rear," as she knew that the ship would keep lock on the vessel that they were following, she hoped that this would not go pear-shaped.

Turning to Natan, he said "Captain, one way or another they're not up to any good on that ship. I suggest we open hailing frequencies and go in with a strong stance. Make them blink first. If they refuse to respond, we target their engines and weapons systems and prepare to board her. Helm can bring us into a tactical profile and we'll see if we can get them to talk."

Natan nodded and turned around to hear more suggestions from his crew before taking action.

"While I agree with the XO's idea, this ship is a bit off in that the specs are wrong. It is a true Miradorn ship but it isn't the same ship that the government says it is. It doesn't conform to the specs sent", Rianna said.

Daynah smirked "And when have you known a government to be truthful when revealing the capabilities of their vessels." She employed a sensor relay technique, one that would be similar to sonar. When that was completed she had a basic layout of the ship. "Aha you little bugger you thought you could hide." She exclaimed. "Lieutenant Repatha is not only correct, she is beyond correct. This is not the same ship, it looks like a duck, acts like a duck but it is not a duck. This ship was cobbled together and made to look like the original."

"Sir, could they have delibertly sent us the wrong specs?" asked Lisa as this was a possibility of the government as they didn't want the capabilities of the vessel being known to the federation and Starfleet.

"Commander Ral, could you transfer your data to my console?. I might be able give a better interpretation of what this ship might be," Rianna said.

Daynah did as requested. Perhaps the Engineer had a better insight into whatever the hell this was.

Curtis listened to the Valiant's officers working the problem and smiled. Despite the situation, he was proud of how they were working together and made a mental note to tell them that. Right now though, all of his attention was being diverted to working the Valiant's helm.

The course Smith had plotted for them was fairly fine tuned, but Curtis was overlaying that with the tactical feed he was getting from Creed and bringing the escort in on a bearing that presented minimum aspect to their quarry.

On the viewer, the 'E' shaped vessel grew larger in the view screen, tucked into orbit of a moon orbiting Theta Orlellius Four, the Jovian planet. "She has to know we're here, Captain," Curtis stated. "Tactical, keep a weather eye in case she has friends lurking about." Glancing around his readouts again, he remarked, "They have to know we're here."

The ships young bajoran helm cadet entered the bridge, with less than no idea what was going on. He just kind of watched.

Curtis stood up as the Cadet entered and gestured toward the helm, "Take the helm, Mr. Nohan. Try not to break the Valiant?"

Me...Flying? Uh..ok.Prophets help me. "Yes sir." He swallowed as he took the seat.

Natan was standing next to his command chair. He nodded to the cadet. It wasn't nice to pry in people's thoughts, but he accidently caught his first officer's last thought. He agreed with it. He had a great and wonderful crew. It made his command worthwhile. He turned to his first officer. "Commander Thibideax best option. I want the minimum of casuals." He trusted this crew to do this with precision.

"She hasn't communicated yet," Curtis stated, "So, we hail them. If they don't respond or act threateningly..." Curtis broke off as the sensor's auto-alerted to an aspect change in the target.

"Sirs, it seems that the time to talk may have past. Bogey has come hard about and is now in an attack posture. She is ready for a fight." Daynah called from her station.

As the Valiant moved closer, the kidnapper ship suddenly surged toward the Valiant, phaser fire washing from her weapon mounts.

Natan barely caught himself against the arm of the command couch, staring hard at the screen as he commanded. "Red Alert! Helm, Evasive. action. Tactical, target weapons and engines."

Caught flat footed, Curtis had sprawled to the deck and quickly regained his footing, moving to a bulkhead as he surveyed the bridge as phaser fire struck Defiant's shields and shook the Escort.

"Ok..evasive action. I can so do this!" Nohan said He typed commands into the console at a feverish pace. The small escorts executed a series of banking turns in an effort to avoid weapons fire.

The ship shook, hit by enemy fire. Nohan winced.

"Shields are holding at 92 per cent." Day reported, looking over the metrics coming in on her console. Some of the optimisations she had done were already providing useful in this situation. If given the choice she'd always avoid conflict, but the Valiant was the kind of vessel that was specifically made to be able to withstand a battering.

"Right Alaryc..." Daynah muttered more to herself than to anyone else, she never broke the habit of talking aloud to Ral. She then broke into a small amount of laughter. "That thing is armed to the teeth and shielded up the yin yang. What they forgot is how much power something like that can draw. If we can get some cover fire down, I can get a worker probe in there and overload their entire power network."

Looking at Tactical, Curtis half stepped half stumbled toward that station, "Lieutenant. What are you waiting for? Return fire! He saw the power surge readouts on the tactical station and saw the transporter telltales, and swore. "They're beaming her into space. Somebody catch her."

"Returning fire Sire," replied Lisa as the weapons console took its time to take the commands, Lisa was not happy as suddenly the beams shot out from underneiath the ship striking the ship, Lisa also sent commands to the transporter chief to beam the officer as she noticed Day rise from his chair.

Without so much as a word Day suddenly bolted away from her console. Sprinting off the bridge and towards the transporter room that was located right behind it. The person that was ejected into space only had a short time before the harsh cold of space would get to her. That was assuming she had exhaled before she was beamed out. She didn't want to think about that, she just needed to focus on getting them on board. The controls at the transporter pad gave her more accurate control over the process. Focus and accuracy was paramount in this situation. She took an immediate left to come to a halt at the transporter room controls. Her shoulder slammed into the on duty transporter specialist, bumping the poor enlisted man that was manning it aside.

As she skidded to a halt behind the controls, her hands were already flying over the controls. She picked up the faint biosignature out in space and was able to lock on to it. She energised, just to get her out of the cold of space, but rather than rematerialise her on the transporter pad she kept the biosignature in the pattern buffer for a moment longer and redirected the transport immediately to sickbay. She had no idea who it was that she just pulled in from space, but she knew that the person was now in sickbay, the best place for someone to be if they had just been jettisoned into space.

She slammed her comm-badge, =A= Lieutenant Day to Sickbay, I've transported someone over that was jettisoned into space moments ago. =A=

=A= Acknowledged Lieutenant. =A= The response was short and curt, they were probably too busy saving the Lieutenant Commander's life.

Day exhaled loudly and then turned to the transporter specialist, "My apologies, Petty Officer. As you were." She straightened her uniform and turned away towards the bridge, to rejoin the senior staff there.

Between one second and the next, the kidnapper ship was there shrugging off phaser fire from the Valiant.

Then it was gone.

Curtis rounded to look at the Captain only to see him heading for the hatch.

"Take over, Mr. Thibideaux," came the distracted command.

"Aye aye, Captain." Curtis responded to a now empty hatchway. Turning, he looked at the bridge officer's, "Track that ship. Helm, move us to an intercept course. Tactical, engineering put together an analysis of that ship. Now we're back into investigation mode." The lieutenant commander walked over to the command chair, sat down and began cycling through the confrontation on one of the monitors.

"The captain is very disturbed with the events that have transpired. Commander, permission to follow the captain and assist him?", Rianna said.

Curtis met the Valiant's engineer and nearly sighed but nodded and said, "Alright. See if you can do anything and get me an update when there is one?"

"Understood sir," and Rianna left the bridge and followed the captain.


As the bridge settled down and Valiant's officer's bent to their work, Curtis' eyes found the view screen and wondered who the ship had been and what was behind all of this...

He had the feeling they hadn't seen the last of them.

 

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