The Tide Turns

Posted on Oct 24, 2016 @ 10:56pm by Captain Michael Turlogh Kane

Mission: Fortress: Earth

"THE TIDE TURNS"

(Continued from "Guns And Ships")

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Captain's log, supplemental - the Battle of Earth has reached a critical stage. With the fight hanging in the balance, the fleet's right flank is threatened by the Monarch's destruction...

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Location: USS Phoenix, heavily engaged
Stardate: 2.161024.1900
Scene: Bridge


Michael Turlogh Kane anxiously awaited a reply from the flagship, even as the fight continued all around the Phoenix. As the USS Monarch burned up the Earth's atmosphere, the disjointed remnants of her battlegroup were forming into their own haphazard squadrons and acting independently. The situation was very fluid - with the Aegis satellites now working together under some sort of dynamic defence program, they were giving the fleet a pasting. Kane didn't know how many starships had been lost, but earlier projected estimates of the battle being over within minutes were obviously completely wrong.

The Phoenix herself had taken some heavy body blows, but she was still well in the fight. Her violet shield bubble flinched with every crashing impact, but the shields were holding. Her offensive weapons systems were fully online and spitting fusillades from every phaser array, torpedo tube, and plasma cannon. Nothing had impacted on her hull to test out her thick ablative armour.

As the seconds ticked by with nothing but a 'standby' order from the flagship, Kane decided to act. He didn't envy Admiral Marxx his job in directing the battle - there must have been thousands of ever-updating permutations to consider - but sitting still was not going to help the collective cause. With around twenty satellites still giving heavy resistance, now fused together into seven 'super-satellites', the fleet had to keep moving and acting even while awaiting orders.

"Conn, bring us about, full impulse!" he snapped. "Present our bow to the nearest target. Tactical - fire at will!"

"Coming about to heading two-six-five!" called Russ. On the main viewer, the planet dipped away and then reappeared, alarmingly gigantic. The eastern coastline of North America was in view in the far distance, the early evening sunset blazing a transparent orange curtain over that part of the world. The solar terminator had moved on over the course of the past few hours - now Europe was shrouded in darkness, while Asia was waking to a new dawn.

The Orion-class frigate USS Arcadia fell into line beside the Phoenix, with the Poseidon-class cruiser USS Ares right behind her. It was an impressive sight on the main viewer - three starships moving together, beginning an attack run against the enormous satellite ahead.

A rainbow nexus of energy flickered all around the target. Other starships were swarming around it like a cloud of flies around spoiled food, and colourful energy arcs flashed like lightning between them. There was no way to tell how the wider battle was progressing, and not enough time to analyse it even if there was, but there was work to be done right here, right now.


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Location: Space
Scene: The battle


The Phoenix, Ares, and Arcadia speed forward, angling together in a tight formation. As one, they unleash their fury - orange phaser lances and white-hot quantum torpedoes scream across the void of space to crash into their target. The green shield bubble of the super-satellite absorbs the hits as best it can, but is overloaded by the combined firepower of the three starships. Amidst several secondary explosions along its superstructure, the super-satellite's shield generator is destroyed.

In the background, the Earth waits to see who wins the fight.

The satellite's riposte is not unexpected, but it is devastating. Dozens of torpedoes are disgorged from it, belching forth in a spray of destruction, while sharp cutter beams and burning phaser lances stab at anything within range.

The USS Arcadia is cut to pieces by the withering hail of ordnance. Its sky-blue shield bubble collapses almost immediately and its saucer is torn to pieces. An instant later it detonates in a massive fireball as the shockwave overloads its warp reactor.

The USS Ares takes several heavy hits along its bow, shattering its deflector dish and obliterating its bridge. She sags crazily to starboard, creasing the Earth's atmosphere, nacelles flaring as she tries to pull out of the planet's gravity well.

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Location: USS Phoenix, as before
Scene: Bridge


The main viewer was full of death. Death from the deadly weapons deployed by the super-satellite, death from the destruction of the USS Arcadia, and death from the crippling of the Ares. Kane gripped the arms of his seat as the satellite's weapons veered through space, homing in on the Phoenix's forward shields, but he knew it was going to be bad when they hit. "Brace! Brace!" he bellowed over the din of the red alert klaxons. "Emergency power to shields!"

The impact slammed the Phoenix like a knockout punch. Kane was hurled from the centre seat, landing heavily on the floor. His head bounced off the deck plate and his throughts sputtered like a guttering candle. The bridge lights went out and the klaxons were cut off - for a terrible moment, the entire bridge was plunged into silent darkness. When they came back on, they were muted and dim - battery power had automatically activated, which meant a power loss and a failure of the main computer.

Kane looked up through blurred vision, and almost lost his mind in terror. The whole front section of the bridge was no longer there - less than six feet from his face, the void of space yawned open. Planet Earth, the starfield, the space battle - all were there in the background, but they were terrifyingly present right up in his face. His mind refused to process it. The whole forward section of the bridge had been destroyed, laid open like a shrapnel wound of rent tritanium and jagged debris, and was open to space. He screamed aloud in sheer terror. A moment later, he realised that a forcefield had activated, sealing the remaining bridge from exposure to the vaccum. That was the only thing that had kept the bridge personnel safe from being sucked out to their deaths.

Except that not all of them were behind the forcefield. Through the murky haze, Kane realised with horror that the Flight Control station had been destroyed. The stump of it sat immobile, riveted to the deck, fizzing useless pricks of fire that were snuffed out by the airless void as soon as the little sparks were born. Russ BaShen was gone with it - Kane saw him floating away from the shattered bridge, body jerking spasmodically as he flailed his limbs, eyes wild with utter terror as he tried to take great gulps of the air that was not there, subdermal tissue already beginning to swell like a balloon as the water in his cells vapourised. As Kane watched helplessly, Russ ceased his stuggling, eyes rolling backward up into his skull as he fell unconscious for the last time.

Russ BaShen was dead. The imperative asserted itself, and Kane let out a shudder, getting back to his knees. As he did so, he saw Lieutenant Byte also trapped outside the forcefield. The android was clinging to the broken remains of the bridge port bulkhead. One side of its face was shorn of the bioplast composite it wore as skin, revealing part of the shining duranium skull beneath. The android was looking around itself in some confusion - it had obviously realised it was trapped.

Kane staggered to his feet. "Damage report! Bridge to Engineering! Damage report!" he yelled, but nobody answered him. He looked to Tactical, and saw Silsby lying insensate on the deck. "Computer, damage report!"
No response. Arm over arm, Kane made his way to Silsby as Byte watched him from beyond the forcefield, still clinging on to the bulkhead. Whatever had happened must have been a direct hit, bad enough to knock out the main computer and cripple internal communications. Now, the Phoenix was adrift, seemingly just outside the planet's gravity well, but for a moment, Kane froze in fear - why had the super-satellite not finished them off? Why had it not continued to fire on the Phoenix and blow it to pieces?

He slapped Silsby on the face, bringing him round. Helping him to his feet, the two of them moved with one purpose toward the bridge access tunnel. Kane turned to Byte who was still watching them. "Hang on, Lieutenant!" he called, knowing that the android couldn't hear him but might be able to read his lips. "As soon as we restore power, we'll drop the forcefield and you can climb back aboard!"

Silsby wrenched the hatch to the access tunnel open, crawling inside. Giving a final nod to Byte, Kane joined him, climbing on to the interior ladder and following the dazed Silsby down.

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Location: USS Century, near-Earth orbit
Scene: Bridge


Dexter Juraj Marxx was trying not to worry, but worry was a thing that was forcing itself on him. The increasing numbers of starships lost every minute was bad enough, but the spiralling casualty figures were worms that were squirming in his head. It made it hard to concentrate, to stay detached and keep the tactical objectives in mind - the All-Father knew that, if it came down to it, if it really came down to the wire, then he'd order the fleet to retreat if defeat was inevitable.

But defeat was not inevitable. The strike team had made planetfall. The Aegis satellites were also taking losses - over a dozen at last count - and although those small victories were bought and paid for by the lives of Starfleet personnel across the fleet, the fight was still winnable.

The USS Imperial's battlegroup was performing well. They were reporting three super-satellites destroyed in the last hour, and although casualties among the battlegroup's destroyers and escorts were heavy, the left flank was holding firm. Dex gave another silent prayer of thanks to the All-Father that the Zhukov was still active - the Ambassador-class was such an ageing design now that she was unlikely to be thrown into the fray unless the situation was dire. Rather, the Zhukov was likely being used as a support or rescue ship, which ought to keep Siobhan out of immediate danger.

"Admiral," reported Cassidy at Ops, "the Phoenix has been hit." He gestured to the viewscreen - one of the super-satellites was wreaking havoc along the fleet's right flank. It was the one that had already taken out the Monarch, and those precious lost seconds of confusion in the wake of her destruction had allowed the soulless thing to get in amongst the Monarch's battlegroup and do some serious damage. On the viewer, the super-satellite was turning away from the stricken Phoenix, concentrating its fire on a cadre of destroyers that were swarming it. The heavily-damaged USS Ares was slowly pulling out of the Earth's atmosphere, a trail of smoking drive plasma churning in its wake, but the Phoenix was obviously badly hit - there were scattered scorch marks over the gunmetal gray of her saucer section, her nacelles were dark, and there were no lights visible through any of her viewing ports. She looked dead and gone, adrift in space.

Dex's heart sank. He hadn't seen what happened, but if the Phoenix was out of the fight, the fleet's job just became a hell of a lot harder. Worse, it meant that the Century would now have to move forward to support the threatened right flank - not that he was afraid of taking the ship into combat, but without both the Monarch and the Phoenix, the difficulty of fleet co-ordination was also about to double.

There was nothing for it. Although the Century had been shorn of most of her firepower during her refit last year, the right flank was in critical danger, and that superseded all concerns. Dex gestured to Ensign Chopra at the conn. "Battlestations. Order the remnants of the Monarch's battlegroup to break off and rally to us. Move the Century forward, full impulse."

Chopra nodded gravely, and Dex steeled himself as the vista in the main viewer started to move and come closer. Now, he thought, we will see if this old warrior's mettle is alive or dead.

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Location: USS Phoenix, dead in the water
Scene: Deck 35, drive section - Main Engineering


It had taken Kane and Silsby almost half an hour to make it down to Engineering, down through fifty decks blocked by self-sealing forcefields and barred by bulkheads. They were both sweating heavily from their exertions, palms raw from sliding down steel ladders.

There was no power anywhere on the ship, which made Kane worry. No power meant no life support, meant no environment control, meant that everyone aboard the Phoenix would freeze or suffocate to death within a scant couple of hours.

Kane tried to ignore the pain in his aching muscles and the raw burning in his palms. Ugly red welts were forming across his fingers as he shoved an access hatch off the wall, and they finally emerged onto the upper engineering deck.

The first thing that hit them was the noise. Through the gloom came the sounds of dozens of voices, all yelling in confusion and fear. There were survivors, then. Kane and Silsby stepped out into the corridor near Engineering's power distribution controls. There were two Human engineers at the console - they had pulled off panels and were feverishly working on physically cutting through a series of fibre-optic wires and removing ODN chips.

"What's happening, Crewman?" asked Kane.

When they heard his voice, the engineers - two men - jumped to their feet. "Captain Kane!" one of them blurted out.

His partner, more able to think quickly, snapped to attention. "Sir, we're cutting power to this station."

"Why?" Kane frowned. "We need to restore the ship's primary systems, not cut them off!"

His partner moved to the lip of the railing and gestured downward. Engineering was a three-storey open-plan deck with several elevators and access ladders scattered around to help with moving up and down to the different levels. The open plan of the area was necessary to accommodate the enormous housing of the warp core, which was now cold and inert, its violet heartbeat stilled.

Kane followed the man's gesture, and his jaw dropped in fear. There were several dead bodies lying on the deck plate around the dilithium chamber, all horribly charred from the enormous plasma inferno burning from the plasma control centre beside it. The yelling and shouting was drifting up from that scene, as dozens of engineers vainly tried to prevent the green-flamed plasma fire from spreading by erecting temporary forcefields around it from portable generators, but they were being driven back by the fury of the green flames.

"My God..." Silsby breathed beside him.

"The fire started in the dilithium chamber, but it's gotten inside the power distribution network, Captain," explained the engineer to Kane. "It's racing throughout the entire ODN relay system, fusing critical systems along the way."

"Get back to work!" Kane barked at him, breaking into a run for the nearest access ladder. He started clambering downward, fear seizing his heart with a chill. He was no engineer, but he knew that a plasma fire in a confined space like a starship was one of the most dangerous emergency situations a crew could face. The fire suppression systems must have been knocked offline too, but if that fire got into the antimatter storage pods, or into the intermix chamber - well, it didn't bear thinking about.

Several voices raised in alarm when they recognised him clambering down the ladder. At the base, he was met by Johnathan Maynell, Chaucer, and Asta Elgin. All of them were blackened and sweating from almost an hour of battling the blaze.

"Captain!" exclaimed Maynell. With Jake on the Earth's surface, Maynell was the acting chief engineer. Jake wouldn't have given him the job if he wasn't capable, but Kane found himself wishing that Jake was here to issue directions personally.

"Report, Mister Maynell!" yelled Kane over the hubbub. He glanced past them, grimly counting a dozen charred corpses being roasted and eaten by the plasma fire. Asta Elgin and Chauncer looked on worriedly.
"It was that last hit, sir!" yelled back Maynell. " There was a partial failure of the main computer, and there was an enormous power spike in the plasma control coils! The spike fused the safeties and ignited the plasma! When we detected the energy build-up, we tried shunting power into the ODN network, but the goddam plasma flamed up just as we opened the valves! The entire plasma control network is compromised - we lost an entire damage control team when it exploded!"

Kane set his jaw. The green flames were growing bigger, charring everything around them. They were probably putting out a hell of a lot of radiation, too. They'd all need shots if they survived. "Give it to me straight, Mister Maynell!" he shouted. "What's the worst-case scenario?"

Maynell shook his head. "The fire's already in the power distribution network. Power is to a plasma fire what oxygen is to a combustion fire - the plasma goes where it can find raw power, and can spread through a distribution network very quickly. To safeguard our network, we've taken it offline, but several systems are already crippled. There's no way of knowing what systems are non-functional until we put the fire out and get the computer back online again." He looked serious. "Captain, it may be time to abandon the ship before the fire gets near the antimatter. If that happens..." His voice trailed off, his meaning clear.

"Estimated time until the plasma irradiates the antimatter?"

"We think less than a half-hour, sir!"

Kane shook his head. That was not enough time to evacuate over eight hundred people from the Phoenix. Even if they started right now, hundreds would die when the ship exploded. He glanced at Chaucer and Asta. "Do you both concur?"

Chaucer touched his vox. [[No.]]

"Explain, Ensign!" shouted Kane over the din, but the Gorn shrugged helplessly.

Asta explained for him. "We've got enough temporary forcefields in place for that half-hour, like Mister Maynell says, sir, but Ensign Chaucer suggests - " She paused.

"Talk to me, Ensign Elgin!" roared Kane at her.

"Sir!" she shouted. "Ensign Chaucer suggests using the power distribution network to suck the fire to another part of the ship, and then vent the atmosphere from that part of the ship, sir!"

Kane thought frantically. "Is that possible?"

Maynell nodded, but his face was grim. "Yes, Captain."

"So what's the fucking problem? Do it and put out the fire!"

Maynell and Asta looked at each other. "Sir," said Maynell firmly, "every deck on this ship is occupied, and with the main computer down, we have no way of knowing who is where. We can activate junction boxes throughout the power network, giving the fire a trail of power to follow. We can lead it through the ship like that to a place of our choosing, but if we just pick a random deck and blow out its atmosphere, we'll be killing dozens more people!"

Kane stared at him. "You can take out the main bridge, Ensign."

"Captain, this is not - "

"Mister Maynell," said Kane firmly, "there is no-one left alive on the main bridge. We took a direct hit." He thought of Byte for a moment, clinging to the shattered exterior bulkhead, and hoped the android was still in one piece.

It took a moment for Kane's meaning to sink in, but when it did, Maynell moved to action. "Alright people, let's break out the schematics! I want a map of every power node between here and the main bridge - if we're going to lead the plasma through this ship's guts, then let's be sure exactly where we're going!"

Kane beckoned to Silsby. "I'm going to the battle bridge. We'll assume command and control from there - we also may need to separate the ship. Get communications and life support back up as soon as you can, understood?"

Maynell nodded. The battle was on to save the Phoenix.

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Location: USS Century, near-Earth orbit
Scene: Bridge

Dexter Marxx watched as the super-satellites started to move again, seemingly of their own accord, but he knew that they weren't doing so. Whatever combat programmes had been installed into their software, it was dynamic enough to let him know that those things didn't move without some sort of a purpose.

Their realignment had saved the Phoenix from certain destruction, however. Crippled by the enormous firepower of her target, the dreadnought would have been easy prey for the super-satellite that had tried to destroy. Another hit or two on a critical part of the hull or on one of the nacelles would have seen her destroyed with all hands, but now the super-satellite was moving away. Slowly, painfully slowly, it turned on its axis and lumbered across the Earth's artmosphere, thrusters firing as it headed inexorably towards a new location.

The day had worn on, and the planet had turned beneath them. When the battle had begun, the Imperial's battlegroup was over the Asian night sky, but now the vast swathe of central Africa was the backdrop for its struggle against the super-satellites orbiting that part of the world. Similarly, the shattered group of ships following the USS Monarch had begun their attack over the Atlantic Ocean, but were now high over the western seaboard of North America.

Dex moved to Lieutenant Cassidy's shoulder. The Ops officer was looking tired now, as were they all, but as the Century moved into the fray, everyone had found their second wind. "Have the Monarch's remnants acknowledged their new orders, Lieutenant?"

Cassidy nodded. "Yes, Admiral. Rallying to the Century now. Several starships report they are still heavily engaged and cannot easily withdraw."

Dex nodded. "Anything else?"

"All starships still heavily engaged. USS Coridan reports heavy damage to her ventral superstructure, but she's still viable. USS Iron Duke reports a kill over the Suez Canal. USS Walker's been crippled - she's not answering comms and appears dead in the water. The leader of Red Squadron is requesting permission for his starfighters to make direct torpedo runs against a new target over Tunisia. He thinks he's identified a weak spot in the super-satellite's exhaust trench."

"Tell him to make a complete nuisance of himself," nodded Dex. Was it his imagination, or was the battle turning in favour of Starfleet?

As if on cue, a series of warning chimes erupted from Cassidy's station. The Texan's fingers moved rapidly. "New sensor contacts, Admiral! Eight starships, bearing zero-nine-five, coming in fast!"

Dex frowned. "What? Identify!"

Cassidy baulked. "I can't, sir! They're running without transponders - sensors can't identify!"

"On screen!" Dex's heart was in his mouth. Who were these new arrivals? Certainly nobody that he could think of - all loyal starships within range of Earth were under the Starfleet banner. Intelligence reports also indicated that no Neo-Essentialist starships were in range of the Terran system, but could that analysis have been wrong? Were these incoming starships the vanguard of an attack in the rear? If so, the battle was as good as lost.

The main viewer winked, panning around to show eight new starships dropping out of warp, the starfield around them solidifying as they decelerated. In the background hung the planet Mars, a red bauble on black velvet.
The starships swept forward, and the main viewer followed them. Dex squinted, trying to see their outline, and he recognised that three of them were Scarab-class starships. Not alien, then. He gestured to Ensign Gavok at Tactical. "Open a channel! Order those starships to identify themselves!"

The Tellarite did as he was bid, but even as Dex watched on the main viewer, the arriving fleet lashed straight into the battle, attacking the super-satellites with fury. Two Comet-class transport ships moved in their wake, picking up floating escape pods from downed starships. Dex's heart leaped. They were friendly!

"Message coming in," reported Gavok.

The screen winked again, like a knowing eye preceding good news. The brown face of a Terran Captain appeared, black hair framing brown eyes. Behind him lay the bridge of a starship that seemed more advanced than anything Dex had seen in his life. Behind the man, other officers worked at various stations, all of them wearing a variant of the Starfleet uniform. {{This is Captain Erik Morningstar of the starship Anubis,}} the man said. {{We've been dispatched here by Admiral Charles Koniki to assist you. We're standing by for your orders, Admiral Marxx.}}

Koniki! The name rang a bell - Dex remembered him as a former head of Starfleet Intelligence who had retired and dropped out of sight a decade ago. A thousand questions formed in his head - who these people were, how they knew what was happening - but there was no time to ask them now. Dex sent a heartfelt prayer of thanks to the All-Father. "Welcome to Earth, Captain Morningstar! There's plenty of work to be done - there is a super-satellite at co-ordinates one-one-six, moving towards Sao Paulo! Engage and destroy!"

The mysterious Captain Morningstar nodded. {{Acknowledged.}}

The screen winked off, and Dex felt a surge of elation as the three Scarab-class cruisers turned to their task. Surely the tide was turning!

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Location: USS Phoenix
Scene: Deck 3, drive section - battle bridge


Kane watched as Virgil Silsby hauled off the access panel and stepped onto the Phoenix's battle bridge. During their climb, local communications had been restored - not all decks were capable of reporting in, but several officers were already moving through the ship's access tunnels to report for duty on the battle bridge.

The plasma was moving through the ship too, fire through its veins, working its way up through the decks towards the main bridge. Led by the activation of junction boxes along less critical routes, the plasma contained enough raw energy to completely obliterate the bridge when it unleashed itself. The plan was that, in the instant it did so, the containment forcefield would be dropped and the plasma expelled into space.

Kane motioned Silsby to take his place at the Tactical station, while he fired up the Ops console. It had been a long time since he had used an Ops station, and he felt rusty. "Kane to Engineering. We're ready on the battle bridge."

[[Standby, Captain. Battle bridge power restoration in three, two, one - ]]

The lights whooshed on, washing over everything like a cleansing tide. The LCARS displays flared into life, and the sensor data began to stream to the Ops console. Life support was back on the lower decks, and spotty throughout the rest of the drive section, but it was still non-functional in the saucer. That wasn't good news - it had been almost an hour since it had been taken offline. Anyone trapped in the saucer section - likely hundreds of people - would be starting to feel the effects of hypoxia and hypothermia soon.

Kane thought about opening a channel to Byte, in order to warn the android of what was coming, but the vaccuum of space would make communication impossible. He glanced at Silsby while the younger man got his displays set up. "Kane to Engineering. Based on your projected readings, how much of a surface area is likely to be destroyed once the plasma is expelled onto the main bridge?"

There was a pause, and it was Asta Elgin who answered. [[Elgin here, Captain. The plasma will overload existing forcefields almost instantaenously - we'll forcibly vent the remaining bridge atmosphere at the same time. Once the forcefields are down, it will be several seconds before it dissipates. Destruction of deck one of the saucer will be total, sir.]]

Kane's heart sank. Byte, trapped on an exterior bulkhead, was an impressive construction, but he could not stand up to the wild fury of a plasma fire. He would be incinerated in the ensuing explosion, would die in fire and nothingness, sacrificed for the greater good of giving the ship a chance at survival. There may have been others like him, but Lieutenant Byte was such an amazing life-form that his loss would be that much more tragic.

[[Maynell to Kane. Plasma detonation in ten seconds. Requesting final authorisation.]]

Kane closed his eyes. The last time he had seen him, Byte had been clinging on to that exterior bulkhead desperately, fighting with all his strength to stay alive so that help could come. Except now there would be no help - there would only be a rush of terrible, all-consuming heat before his life would be extinguished, and it would be Kane who had given the order to kill him.

It was happening again. People he was just growing to love were dying. Kane steeled himself, knowing what he was saying. "Authorisation is given, Mister Maynell."

As the countdown ticked away down through the last few seconds, he kept that image of Byte in his mind's eye, recalling the android's childlike innocence and wonder, and Kane realised that now, in the last moments of his life, that he had been referring to Byte by a gender.

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Location: USS Phoenix, exterior
Scene: Main Bridge


The green fire erupted from every workstation, every connection exploding as the raw, surging power leaped free from its confines. The rear bridge stations shattered, sending shards of their screens everywhere. The Tactical station exploded, lifting the command chairs out of their rivets blowing them out into space, while the walls and deck plating were incinerated by the ravenous flames. The shockwave blasted everything that wasn't nailed down, slamming it into the flickering blue forcefield - overloaded, the forcefield collapsed and the green explosion, no longer contained, mushroomed into a bilious cloud of destruction that completely obliterated the main bridge of the Phoenix, consuming the observation lounge and captain's ready room along with it.

Immediately in its wake, the vaccuum rushed in, snuffing out any combustion before it could flare up. With no more power to feed on, the plasma consumed itself like a snake eating its own tail. It swirled like a confused thought, faded away like a memory, and finally died in silence. When it was gone, there was only a shattered hole at the top of the ship, a clean, cauterised wound, excised and disinfected.

An instant later, the violet nacelles flared into life, churning with nascent power, and the ship's running lights activated, illuminating her registration on the saucer's ventral side - NX-5199 USS Phoenix. Life returned to the mighty dreadnought, lights appearing once again all up and down her decks.

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Location: USS Phoenix, interior
Scene: Main Engineering


The engineers were cheering, clasping each other closely. The plasma fire was gone, sucked up through the ship as if by a centrifugal fan and expelled into nothingness. Power had flooded back to the engineering deck, and everywhere there was cheering and congratulations.

Johnathan Maynell beamed with happiness and embraced Asta Elgin in his joy. Several engineers crowded around Chaucer, slapping the Gorn with delight even as the lizardine stood there like an obelisk, mouth open in his species' approximation of a smile. They had done it - they'd saved the ship.

But the elation soon faded and was replaced with sorrow when it was realised that the bodies of their shipmates, killed in the initial explosion, needed to be taken care of. Reverently, blankets were brought out to cover the scorched faces of the dead, to give them peace and anonymity, and one by one, they, who had given their lives in service to others, were gently lifted and carried to a place where they could lie in state.

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Scene: Deck 3, drive section - battle bridge


Michael Turlogh Kane listened to the cheers of the Engineering crew on the comms as power flooded back to all departments of the ship. No other major system was down. To the rear of the battle bridge, access hatches opened as other officers reported for duty - Ensign Pierrepoint at conn, Ensign Rr'llk on Ops - and the deck reports began to come through. Miraculously, there were no other casualties on the ship - some bumps and bruises, a few broken bones, but nobody else had lost their lives.

"Message from the Century," reported Silsby. "Admiral Marxx is notifying us of the arrival of reinforcement starships and asks our status."

"We're still operational," said Kane fiercely. "The Phoenix is not out of this fight."

{{Captain,}} said Rr'llk at Ops, {{sensors detect Lieutenant Byte adrift in space a kilometre off our bow.}} Like Chaucer, the insectoid Kaferian communicated through the use of an external universal translator that sat on his ventral exo-skeleton, approximately where a Human's chest would be. When he clicked his mandibles in his own form of speech, the external translator spoke out his words in a pleasant voice that sounded perennially happy. Even when Rr'llk was feeling glum or said something sarcastic, the translator's voice spoke it out in warm, friendly tones, often completely misconstruing the meaning behind Rr'llk's words to comic effect. It had not happened yet, but Kane was waiting for the day when Rr'llk was on duty in an emergency situation. Listening to the Kaferian's translator warmly and happily reporting catastrophic damage to some deck section or reeling off a casualty list would be a surreal moment, much like how today had transpired. Now, Rr'llk's happy dulcet tones seemed perfect to break the news that Byte was not dead.

The main viewer activated, showing the scene. Sure enough, the android was floating in space near the ship. As Kane watched, Byte began waving his arms frantically, gesturing to himself and pointing back to the ship. Kane realised that the android must have propelled himself off the ship's hull just as the plasma burst onto the bridge, launching himself away from the explosion and saving himself from destruction. Capable of surviving in a vaccuum, he must have been drifting for the last several minutes, waiting to be seen.

"Beam Mister Byte back aboard the ship," he said, heart swelling.

The fight was not over. The Phoenix was bruised and battered, but she was not defeated. There was still a battle to win.

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NRPG: Russ BaShen is dead and the Phoenix has been narrowly saved, although has taken heavy damage. By activating his doomsday clock in Shawn's post, Edgerton inadvertently saved the Phoenix from destruction! (I hope this post formatted properly - not having much look between Firefox and Hotmail lately)

Shawn - pick three of your engineers to feed the insatiable grimdark. They have been killed in the plasma fire. Advise me of the names of the doomed.

Anubis crew - welcome! See that super-satellite threatening Sao Paolo's forty million people? Also, feel free to invent other starships and situations as you see fit.

If any of you care about the lives of NPCs, you may be upset to know that, as well as the three engineers, Damage Control Team #4 are all dead. Mourn them if you like. They are:

Petty Officer Dimitri Kodov (Human Male)
Crewman Zinovy Bochorov (Human Male)
Crewman Ch'chch (Kaferian Female)
Crewman Jana Kaiser (Human Female)
Crewman Abdul-Alim Nazari (Human Male)
Crewman Lelica Zelaya (Human Female)
Crewman Chunlus (Tellarite Male)
Crewman Lujan Rodriguez (Human Male)
Crewman Fullan Iwo (Bajoran Female)
Crewman Naomi Cox (Human Female)


Jerome McKee
the Soul of Captain Michael Turlogh Kane
Commanding Officer
USS PHOENIX


"He speaks an infinite deal of nothing!"
- Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", Act 1, Scene 1.117
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