This story isn't really ready for a full-fledged start, but the first chapter was easy enough. Got up at 4 am and had to write. Hope this is palatable...
Settling In
CHAPTER ONE
Outside the Goesa’vaina Starsystem,
February 23, 2274,
RIS Ce’vash
Commander Virinia was beginning to feel the hunter’s exhilaration as her vessel closed in for the kill. She had been stalking her prey for two hours now, not the longest of hunts, but one made all the sweeter when she thought of just who it was she was bringing down. Before her pristine Gallant Wing-Class Warbird, and sitting next to helpless in space, the USS Endeavour was centered in her bridge viewscreen. The huge, lumbering grey-white human ship drifted ahead on what little motive power was left to her, still trailing behind traces of drive plasma and atmosphere from within her rent hull. Her once smooth and cylindrically shaped engineering hull was warped, bloated and ruptured from within from what the Klingons had done to her two days prior. Her slotted, shell shaped hangerbay doors were twisted and torn outward, the decks within blackened and pitted. Her nacelles were dark, unpowered.
Captain Sharp was about as helpless as he had ever been.
This did not lessen the thrill of the hunt for the young Romulan commander, though. Sharp was still a cunning adversary. The chance to rid the Star Empire of his menace was not one to be passed up or taken lightly. You hunted him as though he was a viable threat, or you did not hunt him at all. Those who had attempted to take him and his ship down presumptuously had paid with their lives.
The Ce’vash closed with her prey, who as yet remained blissfully unaware as she licked her wounds. Endeavour seemed to think she was safe all alone out here, with plenty of breathing room between her and the fleet she’d fled from. Sharp’s sensors continued on their standard deep scanning routine, scouring the area for any vessel closing in. He had thus to get an emission return from the Ce’vash’s cloaking screen, however.
“Weapons officer, range to target?” Virinia asked, unable to fully avoid whispering the inquiry. It was an age-old habit of the service. It added to the sense that one was sneaking quietly up on an adversary.
“Twenty-thousand ven, Commander.”
“Speed still dead-slow, Commander.” The steersman chimed in as well.
Virinia’s second in command, Subcommander Iia Prynn, approached and stood silently next to her. Virinia found the officer’s proximity comforting, even if the woman was Tal’Shiar. Iia was caught up in the moment herself. The hunting and stalking. The thrust of the blade into the prey’s throat… It had an unmistakable allure that one couldn’t deny after having a taste. Her hazel eyes danced with a hidden fire and brought a smile to the commander’s full lips.
“Weapon status?”
Again, Lieutenant Joved answered, never having to look his screens over to know what they said. He could almost feel the details they would be telling him. “Main and secondary torpedoes charged to full. Main weapon set to enveloping warhead. Disruptors primed at full power. Targeting locked manually. My target is their stardrive hull and fuel center.”
“We approach from seven points off her right wing, Commander,” Iia stated, her eye turning to Virinia in a measuring manner. “And range grows short. Are we ready to attack?”
“We attack.” Virinia assured her, stepping forward and past the circular main controls station that took up most of the bridge’s central core. “Set final targeting resolutions and fire on my command. Drop the cloak!”
The shrill cloaking alarm called out as crimson tracers flashed along the bulkheads. Virinia’s heart began to pound and the singing in her ears grew loud. But something had just changed…
At the second beat of the alarm, Joved turned half out of his seat to look upon her. There was puzzlement, bordering on fear in his face. “The target raises shields!”
Virinia looked back to the viewer, just in time to see the battered cruiser dip her starboard side and whirl upon her. The blinding flash of weapons fire lashed out and the entire bridge lurched backward. Virinia tumbled past the helm station, slamming headlong into the forward viewer like some grotesque snow angel and remaining there as terrible forces assailed her ship. The thunder and cacophony of direct phaser and torpedo hits thudded in her head, as though they specifically assaulted her.
Where had she gone wrong?
USS Endeavour.
“Energy surge! Bearing 150 mark 031! Five thousand kilometers!”
Captain Sharp snapped his head away from the starboard-side science station where Commander Jeremy made his report and locked eyes on the pilots conning his ship. “HET now! Bring her around! Fire Mister Ford!”
As the cruiser labored to complete the High Energy Turn, the stars on forward main viewer spiraled round to show the image of the quickly coalescing Romulan warship as she dropped her invisibility screen. She was of the wide, saucer hulled Gallant Wing-Class light cruiser, presently more than a match for the crippled starship Endeavour. The Warbird shimmered and became solid like a ghost in an old movie, her weapons ports aglow in fiery red and green.
At navigations, Ford’s fingers descended on the final targeting controls and pressed down on the Mode 1 key. Endeavour shook with the reverberations of launching photon torpedoes and the scrawing noise of the entire forward phaser array filled the darkened bridge. Light-spiked images of roiling torpedoes and brilliant, alternating pulses of phaser energy shot out at the nearly solidified vessel. They struck the Romulan hard, rolling her down on her bow and spinning her half a turn to port as her hull buckled and blew apart under Starfleet’s tender caress. The green glow in her nacelle vents dimmed under the attack, and atmosphere began to boil out from within the raptor painted craft. Another trio of photons shattered the Wing’s left warp engine, scattering sparkling debris all about.
Ford lashed out with another, single burst of phaser fire, this time specifically targeted for the warbird’s engineering decks. The emitters of the lower saucer bank spat fire like an ancient set of twin machineguns. The beams chewed into the armor of the lower hull, ruining the ostentatious paint job the Romulans had spent so much time refining.
“We got her, Captain!” Jeremy reported the obvious with satisfaction from his post. This was what they had been planning for the last hour. The enemy had been detected on the passive particle spectrometer system well outside of weapons range and was determined to be a cloaked contact closing in. Rather than tipping the warship off by immediately raising shields, Sharp had elected to play dead. Lure the Romulan or Klingon in and then bushwhack them as they became visible. The ship’s XO looked toward the engineering console opposite of his station. “Status of tactical systems?”
The young brunette manning the console looked over the spread of yellow-lit graphics before her. Endeavour was holding on by her fingernails now. “Shields remain at full power, but phaser reserves have fallen to below ten percent. Photon torpedo arming mechanisms still operating at fifty-percent efficiency.”
“Hold fire to recharge, Mister Ford.” Sharp called to the eager navigator. “Helm back us off from the Warbird. One quarter impulse.”
“Aye, sir.” The Andorian lieutenant replied from Ford’s left. The spinning Romulan on the forward view began to immediately shrink as Endeavour put distance between her and danger.
“Status enemy ship?” Sharp directed at Jeremy. The XO spun his chair to the sensor controls and began to scour the Gallant Wing for details.
“Severe damage to their port warp nacelle with severed plasma flow. Multiple hull breaches, including in the engineering sections. Their warp power is fluctuating. Their shield power is interrupted near their impulse manifolds and I believe they are attempting repair. Their weapons remain armed, but their plasma torpedoes are losing their charge. They still have full disruptors, but they may not be able to recharge them.”
“Miss Lania,” the captain turned his white chair round to face the comm station. The Vulcan lieutenant there glanced back at her CO, one hand poised over her controls and the other on the command microphone in her ear. “Put me on.”
The overhead speakers thumped with the open comm line and Lania nodded back. Sharp centered his gaze on the viewscreen. “Romulan vessel, this is Captain Sharp of the USS Endeavour. We’ve made nearly full repair of our systems since your earlier attack and are quite capable of defending ourselves. If you do not withdraw, we will be forced to destroy your ship. Respond.”
Endeavour was hardly in the shape to back up such claims. Should the Rihansu wish to continue the battle, it would turn grueling and bloody. Both ships were nearly in as bad a shape as the other. The casualties on both sides would be sickening. Hopefully the enemy commander agreed with that sentiment and would not press the issue.
No response came to the captain’s hail. The only reaction was the Warbird rotating away from Endeavour and powering ahead on impulse engines. With another wave of shimmering energy, the bird faded like a mirage. Sharp held his breath for a moment and glanced at the science console. Jeremy intently watched his scopes for any hint of the Romulan’s actions. “She’s headed away, Captain. Her plasma trail is really easy to track…”
“Coarse?”
“Goesa’vaina system. She’s going home.”
Sharp looked back to the viewer and forced his back to relax. His nagging sixth sense told him this was not over. “Watch her, Number One. I don’t think we’re getting off as lucky as it seems.”
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Just kind of a quicky fight to show I hadn't forgotten about Sharp, nor do I believe the Empires would just let him get away. I'm hoping to correlate some effort with La'ra on this on for a good show down that we've concidered for some years now...
Topic: Settling In (Read 6165 times)