Bushwacked!

Posted on Sat Sep 5th, 2020 @ 5:52pm by Lieutenant JG Kevin Lance & Captain Mystery Ellis & Lieutenant Commander Feyd Relor & Lieutenant Brooks Balrog & Commander Jamie O'Connell & Lieutenant Ares Curillo & Ensign Lucas Miles

Mission: Distress Call
Location: USS Independence and Freighter Olympia
Timeline: Current

::ON::

[Freighter Olympia - Bridge]

Six figures in alien armor with equally strange weapons pointed at Captain Reynolds and the Independence away team, stepped onto the bridge of the Olympia from a glowing ring that had suddenly materialized in the bulkhead.

Lt Curillo had been working in the engine room and specifically the subspace power couplers. They had been turned on but had burned out oddly enough. Unaware of the events that was taking place on the bridge.

"Captain Reynolds I thought we had an understanding; if you cooperated with us then we wouldn't turn you into space dust" demanded the head alien.

"I..I did what you asked to get the Federation here" stammered the Captain.

Meanwhile Jamie turned and faked a cough which gave him a chance to hit his Comm Badge so that those on the Freighter and on the Independence could hear exactly what was going on.

"Then why did we pickup a transmission of you ordering the parts to get the ship running again; were we not clear on the consequences?" asked the alien.

"That would be my fault. I'm the one to order the...." Jamie was cut off.

"We weren't talking to you human!!" the alien shouted as he struck Jamie in the mouth with the end of his weapon.

After the numbness left Jamie's mouth "Sir striking a Star Fleet Officer can be considered an act of war!"

"Act of war, act of war" the alien screamed "After we helped the USS Voyager develop slipstream travel, they turned on us and many of our people died. So don't talk to me about war. The Federation is going to pay for what they have done!"

Feyd's initial reaction to the act of aggression was to reach for his phaser, but when he saw the aliens raise their weapons toward him, he instead grabbed his medical tricorder. "I'm a doctor." He said, and started scanning Jamie. "You have a minor laceration." He said, producing a dermal regenerator, to which the aliens did not respond kindly.

"Do you want to die, doctor?" One of them asked, stepping closer.

Feyd got a dangerous look in his eye for a split second, but acquiesced. "I do not." He said, backing away from O'Connell.

"Do anything like that again and you'll be the first one I kill."

Feyd nodded meekly.

[Captain’s Mess]

Crewman Thomas Jefferson hummed to himself as he put the finishing touches on the Captain’s lunch, a braised fowl he had personally hunted during their latest shore leave on Risa. He was about to bring it to her when something on the bridge comms caught his attention. He had arranged to have bridge comms piped into his mess so he could be aware of the ship’s goings on. How he did it, or what protocols were being violated by doing so was anyone’s guess.

‘Do you want to die, doctor?’

Thomas heaved a weary sigh and headed out of the Captain’s Mess.

[Engine Room]

Meanwhile Lt. Curillo and Lt. Balrog had been listening to what was going on from the Engine Room. They just turned and looked at each other.

" If my hypothesis is correct if we fire up these sub space field coils we can distort their transporter. We need to get up to that bridge and help Lt O'Connell." replied Ares.

"So you're telling me that we need to go to the Bridge where the bad guys are?" Balrog said with the trepidation dripping off of his tongue. ::gulp!:: "I don't want to die... they're going to kill us... I know they are!" Lt. Curillo just looked at him. After a few moments Balrog calmed down when he had thought how Lt. O'Connell had helped him on Star Base 945; so he figured that he needed to return the favor. "Alright, let's go then; man I hate away missions!" he muttered

[Bridge]

On the bridge of the freighter, one of the aliens, "There were six members of your away team! Where are the other three?"

The Federation officers remained mute. The alien was about to strike Jamie again when he hesitated, then turned and hit the freighter Captain instead. "Where are they!" the alien screamed.

Raising his hands to ward off any additional blows, the captain quickly said, "Two went to check the engine room, the other is wandering around the ship I think."

[Cabins]

Finding nothing more to do on the Bridge, Lucas had sought permission to go scan the quarters of the freighter for what may have happened to the rest of the crew of the freighter. Captain Reynolds did not seem particularly forthcoming about that, which was odd considering he seemed cavalier about other information.

Lucas had his phaser drawn and tricorder scanning the living quarters and unsurprisingly found no indication of life. What he did find though were that the quarters were disheveled, almost like there had been some sort of struggle. In one of the cabins, he saw a scorched bulkhead indicating some sort of energy weapon had been fired.

However, there were no bodies. Nor were there any blood trails.

He was about to report in his finding when his combadge went off with the conversation on the Bridge that quickly revealed to him that they had alien visitors that had taken his crew members on the Bridge hostage. Judging from the conversation, it appeared they were not aware that Lieutenants Curillo and Barlog were in the Engine room.

Lucas immediately started heading for the Engine room. He would rendezvouz with Curillo and Balrog and hopefully they can sort out, with the help of the Independence, how to repel these alien visitors and save their comrades...

" Balrog do you have a phaser?" Ares asked his peer.

"You want me to use a phaser?" which was more of a rhetorical question coming from Balrog. "Yes I have a phaser."

" We may need to blast our way out of here." Ares replied.

"Are you sure?"


[USS Independence]

The expected impact that Kevin had braced against did not come. Quizzically, he checked the tactical plot. The missiles had impacted on the shields but did not explode? Then his eyes went wide at the system warnings scrolling on his damage control monitor. A good two-thirds of the ship's systems had been damaged, no disintegrated. The damage control computer wasn't receiving any feedback from those systems. But the environmental warning systems that remained had not been triggered. How could the ship be holding atmosphere if 2/3 of it was missing?

"Tactical to Engineering," he called over the ship's communicator.

"Engineering; this is Ensign T'Sol Lieutenant, can I help you" was his reply.

"Damage Control Computer is showing that we have lost two-thirds of the ship," Kevin explained, "but the environment is intact. What are you showing?"

"Let me check Lieutenant" T'Sol's hands danced over the control panel like an accomplished piano player "The ship's hull is intact but it would appear that it is bathed in an unknown form of radiation. This is causing two thirds of the ship to be out of phase with the remaining part of the ship. If we were to try and move we would literally tare the ship apart. Logically we need to neutralize the effects of the radiation in order to move the ship... we are literally stuck in space at the moment."

"No impulse?" Kevin asked in disbelief, "Not even thrusters?"

"Impulse or thrusters would have little effect in moving the ship at this point. Any more power applied to the ship's engines would tare the ship apart. Our only course of action is to neutralize the effects of the radiation if you want to free the ship" T'Sol answered sounding very sure of himself.

The Vulcan could be maddening. Sometimes, he droned on about the most useless information. Now, he was as inscrutable as the Oracle at Delphi! Kevin forced himself to speak calmly, "Any thoughts on how we do that?"

"Actually I've been giving the situation some mathematical probabilities. Speaking from an Engineering standpoint, if we were to expel 7.8 cubic meters of plasma through the port nacelles it would slowly surround the ship which would neutralize the effects of the radiation. The only drawback would be, by my calculations, that it would take between 1.5 to 1.75 hours before the ship was fully back in phase and free to move." was T'Sol's expert findings.

Kevin grimaced. 2 hours? In their current conduct, they would be lucky if they lasted 2 minutes in combat.

"What are your orders, ma'am?" Kevin asked the Captain.

There was no response.

"Captain," Kevin repeated more insistently, "what are your orders?"

"Get the shields up. I want a full damage report yesterday," Mystery demanded. Operations call up the freighter's bridge stations. We can use the our system here to further disable the freighter. I'm not going to stand by and have my officers killed. I'm not going to wait two hours on repairs to this ship. Find a way to get us back into phase and find that alien ship. When you have the bridge console of the freighter ready use our console to control the freighter."

"Aye, ma'am," Kevin replied. With the starboard side shield emitters out of phase, he would have to extend the shields from the port side. This would make the shields more defused than usual. They wouldn't protect against a determine attack, something the Captain would know, but there was little else that could done. As Kevin programmed instructions into the ship's computer he could see the Operations Officer intently working to break into the freighter's command console.

"Engineering to Captain Ellis," T'Sol's voice came across the Captain's comm badge, "I've been considering our current situation and have come up with a better solution to expel the needed plasma."

T'Sol continued "We could deploy a shuttle craft to skirt the effected part of the ship and deploy the plasma directly from the shuttle's nacelles, this would take some precise piloting, which would greatly reduce the time that it would take to break the ship free by 75%. With the Captains permission I would like to pilot the shuttle myself; this would be the logical choice since I'm more familiar with the ship's construction than a normal pilot would be."

"Permission granted, keep sensors trained, should the aliens take this as bait and attempt to fire on us have a torpedo ready and fire," Mystery said

"Aye Captain, I'll be at the ready should the Freighter decide to fire on either one of us. T'Sol out."

"Captain," the communication officer called out, "We are being hailed."

::OFF::