NX-07 Buran Alpha Mission thread

[stitch626]

Shravak was helping sort through the debris of the Andorian ship. When he had first entered the room, he was shocked at the number of small pieces. Then he noticed the non-Andorian debris.
"At least they didn't go down without a fight." He thought out loud.

It was now three hours later, and they had made little progress. The only thing they had discovered is that the attacking vessel's weapons used a slow nadion effect. Lieutenant Commander Fulton was still talking with T'Varaan. Shravak could tell that the Vulcan knew something, but was not about to ask. He didn't trust Vulcans. Until Maddox got anything from the damaged data module, Shravak felt that no progress would be made at all. There was just too much damage.

Looking around, Shravak noticed a small etching on a piece of debris. It appeared to be part of the bridge. Shravak could barely make it out; Sha'leyan. The rest was melted. But this was all he needed.

He walked over to where Fulton and T'Varaan were talking and waited for a moment. "Sir, may I interrupt."
Fulton turned to him. "What is it, Lieutenant?"
"I've discovered something about the ship." Showing Fulton the small piece of metal, he continued, "She was the Sha'leyan, a Kumari class cruiser, commanded by Sh'nahren. I believe this may assist our communications officer if he can access the data module."
"Alright, take it too him. He's probably in the mess hall." Fulton said. As Shravak walked away, Fulton asked, "How do you know who commanded it? This just has the ships name."
Shravak turned. "Because sir, that was my previous assignment."
Shravak continued to the mess hall, while Fulton continued his discussion with T'Varaan.

[Sonic Glitch]

Lieutenant Federov was mapping a cargo bay on E-Deck as a possible location for the ships new "Pub." The bay in question was connected to a climate-controllable bay where various drinks could be stored. He figured there was room for about thirty people at a time, with 10 of them at the bar, 20 at various tables and chairs, with a dartboard and maybe a pooltable or too. He wasn't sure where he'd get something for pool tables but he was sure he'd find something. The crew seemed to respond to the idea with enthusiasm and he was thinking about asking for donations. On his way out he passed the MACO weapon-testing range. He saw the MACO first sargeant in the room inspecting the weapons. An idea had been bothering him for some time so he decided to ask the first sargeant. Oh boy he thought How does one address a first sargeant? Does one call them First Sargent as one would call a Lieutenant Lieutenant? He decided to start with "Sargeant Monroe, may I speak with you." just to be safe.
"Of course Lieutenant, how can I help?" came the easy reply which carried none of the usual contempt that other MACOS Federov had worked with seemed to have for fleet security forces.
"Sargeant, what with the apparent Romulan threat, I feel my security staff is woefully undertrained. My men are excellent marksmens, and are ok with tactics involving pairs or trios but under-prepared for anything approaching squad level size. I wanted to know if you or your CO would be able to perhaps train my men in basic infantry squad tactics. Nothing too fancy you understand...unless you think they can handle it?"
"Ah, of course I understand sir. And yes, I think we'd be able to handle a few new recruits." Monroe replied with an understanding smile, "If you want I can draw up a training regimen and send it to you for review before starting?"
"Ah, thank you sargeant that would be very nice indeed. With that I will let you return to your inspection."
"Thank You sir. I'll let you know as soon as I have something."
"Very well." Federov exited the chamber and headed to his quarters thinking That was refreshing and beginning to re-examine his opinions of the MACOS.

[Monroe]

After his examination of the weapons First Sergeant Monroe sat down to work up a training program. This was good since he needed to keep himself active and a lot of the rest of the MACO squad was incapacitated due to their fearless leader. Sitting down at his computer terminal in his quarters he began to draft a series of weekly training programs that would work in 8 man firing squads using heavy weapons, assault rifles and carbines, and he wanted to see if there were any in the security team with experience in sniping.

The next day he stopped by Federov's quarters to hand him the data disk with the information, "Should have everything we need on it to get started, sir." He told Federov as the offier answered the door.

"Ah good, I'll pass it to my men so we can get started."

Monroe nodded, "I was thinking every friday we'll have a training day. I'll try to personally lead it whenever possible so that your men can have children in the future."

Federov snorted, "That's a good idea, take care First Sergeant."

"Will do sir." Monroe snapped to attention and saluted, then left once it was returned in kind.

[Reliant121]

The Vulcan ship D'kan dropped from warp precisely 15.765 km from the Buran, the sleek glowing figure dancing in between the stellar fragments that had not been recovered. Shuttle pods swooped around each of the vessels, searching for anything more notable to be picked up.

"Vulcan ship hailing," Maddox said.

"On screen," Chinatsu replied, straightening herself out and standing up. The image of an aging Vulcan man appeared. She guessed he must have been...170? 175 maybe?

"I'm captain Iwasake Chinatsu of the Buran," She said smiling.

"I am Commander S'apen of the D'Kan. We are here to answer a distress call from an Andorian ship. May I presume that the wreckage is of that ship?"

"That is correct. We've recovered some fragments and have managed to determine that the weapons signature uses...." She said looking at the weapons officer. Who mouthed SLOW NADION EFFECT. "a Slow nadion effect."

"Either Romulans or Klingons. We will scout ahead the area, and try to determine any warp signatures. Good luck Captain."

"And to you commander."

With that the D'kan cut channels and left the area.

[Mikey]

Harvey became thoughtful at Shravak's comment until T'Varaan interrupted his reverie. "Of course," she said, "Klingons also use disruptor weapons, as they are called."

"Klingons... hold that thought," Harvey said and rushed out of the room. A few minutes later he returned, somewhat flushed and breathless, and said, "The UESPA has records from an encounter the NX-01 had with a damaged Klingon vessel. I checked the database; their metallurgy doesn't seem to be based on the same technology. We've got Romulan handiwork here."

"They seem to have dealt easily enough with the Andorian cruiser," remarked T'Varaan.

Fulton frowned and said, "I don't think it was that easy. The blues took a fair bit of wreckage off of the Romulan ship." He walked over to the intercom and paged Shravak.

"We're working on the data module, sir," Shravak replied.

"Get everything you can," said Harvey. "We need all the information we can get. Do we have complete records on Andorian weaponry?"

"Er... I believe so, sir, but we don't have the same tech-"

"I know, I know," Fulton cut him off. "But I'll be damned if I don't figure out every and any edge we can get against these bastards." He cut the intercom and said to T'Varaan, "See if you can find out specifically how the Romulan material was affected. I'll be in engineering, trying to see if I can do it even better with directed plasma."

[Reliant121]

T'Varaan stared down the microscope at the small fragment of metal she had taken with her to the science station on the bridge. Scrutinizing the metal, even at this level, was definately a painstaking job. But she had to look for anything that may have affected the material Adversely. Anything at all. And so far there was very little.

And then, there was a small fissure in the surface. The metallurgy had been manipulated in such away, that the particle bonding had literally began falling apart. The metal was almost disintigrating. She ran a spectral analysis to try and determine what exactly had made this effect. What turned up was quite conclusive.

High Frequency concentrations of nadion particles forced the bondings to slowly seperate. Each sustained burst forced the metal to weaken a little. Andorian weapons, by default were set on a high frequency, higher than most races. Even the vulcan's didn't venture into the frequency ranges that the Andorians did. This could be the breakthrough they needed.

She collected her data and sent a message to Engineer fulton And Tactical officer Federov.

Now. She needed to see the chef about some of his rumoured 'hybrid' cuisine.

[Teaos]

Maddox had the module he had been working on and the information he had extracted from it in a carry bag as he went to go find the captain.

He has only been able to extract a few bits of of corrupted data from the burnt out unit. It had apparently come from a computer in the engineering department and thus had mainly generic ship information.

Maddox had however managed to extract a few bits of information from the ships internal sensors from when the ship came under attack.

Arriving at the captains ready room Maddox entered.

"You have some information on the Andorian ship?" The captain asked in place of a greeting.

"Yes sir, judging from some of the information I found in this computer unit the battle seemed to last no longer than two minutes. As you can see from this read out I put together there was massive power spikes here, here, and here" Maddox said point out the point on the read out.

"You think that's weapons fire?" The captain asked.

"Well I'm no engineer but that's what I'm thinking" Maddox replied.

"Hmmm, I'll see what our engineers make of this, thank you lieutenant" The captain said dismissing the communications officer.

[Reliant121]

"Bridge to commander T'Varaan." Came the signal over the internal comms. system. She walked over and activated the panel.
"T'Varaan here."
"I would suggest you come to the bridge. The D'kan's transmitting a distress signal."
"Acknowledged."

T'Varaan reached the bridge to the face of the Vulcan commander. He was dripping with blood from a wound on his cheek, spewing forth the green liquid. Most of his bridge staff were either dead or dying, save one; struggling to keep the weapons and helm in check. Fire was leaking from a exploded manifold at the rear of the bridge, and most of the panels were dead.

"This is the Vulcan cruiser D'kan to any vessel. We are under attack by Romulan aggressors, we need immediate assistance." He said. A klaxon sounded, along with computer generated speech.

"Their structural integrity field is failing," T'varaan commented.

"Sub-commander, switch to external monitors. Track the attacking ships," The commander said. The image changed to reveal one sleek green vessel, sweeping into an attack run. It fired off several disruptor bolts, before pulling off. As the camera tracked, it was covered in a shimmering energy field..and disappeared.
The same shimmering light appeared just off the stern, revealing a second vessel of similar design. She opened fire blasting along the hull and eventually disabling the comms. system. The message went dead.

"Red alert, battlestations. Helm, get a fix on that signal and get us there maximum warp." the captain ordered

"Aye mam, warp 4.9. Engaging," Diego answered.

"Push it up to warp 5."

Diego turned in protest.
"The engines havent been tested that fast!"

"Just do it!" She opened channel to engineering. "Engineering...give me everything you have on warp engines. We're pushing her as far as she'll go."

[Mikey]

"Acknowledged," sighed Harvey in response to the captain's demand for maximum warp. "Darwin - make sure the injectors don't freeze up, and watch the matrix alignment. Shravak - you're with me. What do you know about overcoming the electromagnetic opposition to light-nucleus fusion?"

"Sir?" responded the Andorian, a little confused.

"Great," said Harvey dryly. "I'll take the torps, then, and you'll work on the plasma cannon. We need the most energetic plasma we can get - see if you can superheat it with some overpressure in the generation phase."

"I know what plasma is, sir."

"Well, I don't know what they teach you people! If you know what to do, why aren't you doing it?" Shravak tuned and rushed off while Harvey grabbed a toolkit and headed for the magazine. On the way, he passed a pair of MACOs and began thinking of the scatter gun he had built - then, about the electromagnets in the loaders, and finally about using the loader contacts to boost the eV's in the warheads to get the energy into the thermonuclear range.

"Captain," he said into an intercom panel, "I think I have a way to boost our weapon effectiveness against the Romulans."

"Excellent," replied Chinatsu. "What, exactly, are you installing?"

"Nothing new," Harvey answered. "The yields will be the same, but they should work better against Romulan materials. Lt. Shravak is converting the plasma cannons, and I'll rig some torpedoes. I'm sending specs to Lt. Federov - the torps will require about a half-second longer launch sequence."

"You have an hour."

Harvey hefted his toolbox. "I can do five, maybe six." He entered the magazine and began to work.

[Sonic Glitch]

The message containing the revamped weapons pods reached Federov just as he was returing to his quarters for relaxation. He had just looked in on his men being trained by the MACO first sargeant, regrettibly his schedule was such that he could not join them today but he planned to next week. When he had received the specs he called in one of his minions as he liked to refer to his staff to look them over with him.

"Ricky, you supervised the installation of the plasma cannons. Do you think they can handle the thermal stress."
"I'm not entirely sure chief. They look good on paper, but those cannons were manufactured to very tight tolerances. We run the risk of catastrophic results..."replied ensign Ricky.
"Catastrophic meaing "they blow up"?"
"....pretty much sir."
"Alright thanks ensign. The torpedoe modifications look good though yes?" At Ricky's nod he continued,"alright, I'll bring our concerns to our esteemed chief engineer. Return to whatever you were doing. Good night Ensgin."
"Goodnight sir."
As the eager ensign left, Federov keyed the intercom to engineering
"This is Fulton. Please don't tell me you're calling for more speed out of my engines."
Federov bit back a grin as he recalled hearing talk of the engineers opinion on the officers who continually requested more speed, "No sir, this is Lieutenant Federov. I had some questons on your weapons modifications."
"What?"
"Do I understand correctly: you wish to increase the thermal energy level of the plasma?"
"Yes"
"We can't guarantee that the canons can take the strain."
"Would you relax? Don't get your girdle in a knot, they can take it."
"Regardless Commander, those cannons were designed for very tight specifications. If we energize the plasma further we run the risk of explosion in the prefire chamber."
"They can take it lieutenant. You can trust me, I'm an engineer."
"Uh-huh..." said Federov as he bit back another small smile, "I approve of the idea Commander, I'm just not sure about the execution."
"How's about you worry about finding targets for the cannons to shoot at and I worry about making sure they do more then scratch the paint?" replied Fulton as he commed off.
Filip chuckled slightly as he leaned back in his chair and chuckled slightly after the engineer signed off. Most people found Harvey's manner disquieting in the slightest, near insubordinate in the extreme, but he found it refreshing. There were very few people left who were comfortable stating their mind regardless of the situation. It was nice to work with someone who practiced that habit....and always interesting, and often entertaining.

[stitch626]

In engineering, Darwin was running from panel to panel. With the ship at warp 5, the entire engineering staff was working hard to keep the engines together. So far, there had been two small fires and one burnt out panel. One crewman had to be sent to sickbay for severe burns.

"Its only been 30 minutes, and we're already falling apart." Darwin muttered.
One of the other Ensigns got his attention. "Sir, we have a red light on one of the injectors. Its overheating."
Darwin thought quickly, going over the procedure manuals in his head. "Umm, increase... increase the coolant flow, try to keep the temp down."
Being in charge of engineering was difficult for Darwin, even when nothing was going on.
Darwin looked at the warp core display panel. Several indicators were flashing, and a few were even red. So many things needed to be monitored and repaired.
"Great time for our Chief to modify the weapons. Hope he doesn't mind the mess." Darwin thought. "Why do they even call it a warp 5 engine if we can't safely maintain warp 5? I wonder if Shravak is as busy as we are..."

Another panel exploded, sending sparks across the deck.
"Sparky, keep an eye on the core." Darwin shouted as he grabbed a tool kit. Muttering to himself, he ran over to the panel. "Next time, Shravak can be in charge."

[Teaos]

It was the waiting that he couldn't stand.

At least during battle he would probably be to busy to be scared, but now, flying towards an aliens vessel of unknown power and probable hostile intentions his nerves were shoot.

Maddox stood at his station at bridge occasionally checking comms and a few other systems, but after the forth time of verifying that everything was working he settled for just trying to get his hands to stop shaking.

Resting his hand on the edge of his consol he dropped his chin to his chest and took several deep breaths.

Looking up again he saw the captain look him oddly, all Maddox could do was nod back before meaninglessly tapping a few button at his station.

The whole ship had a nervous energy to it, the engineers were trying to squeeze every bit of juice they could out of the engines, the weapons were being prepped and everyone seemed focused on the mission ahead.

Focusing on the green light that indicated all systems functional Maddox wished what ever was coming would be quick.

[Reliant121]

"Dropping from warp now," Diego reported as the ship spewed forth from Faster than light.

Before her lay the crippled and twisted wreck of the Vulcan ship. The ring nacelle had been blown clean apart, a huge tear in the upper section, breaking the circle. The engineering pod set in the centre of the ring bore signs of heavy weapons fire, several breaches and a leakage of plasma coolant. Along the hull were pot hole like breaches, standing as testament to the destructive output of the Romulan vessels.

"High level scans of the area," Chinatsu ordered. She knew damn well what the capabilities of the Romulan vessels were. And she knew they were out there. Somewhere.

"Energy spike....two romulan vessels have appeared, one of the stern, one off the bow!"

She could see it. a sleek falcon of war, bearing weapons a plenty.

"They are locking on!"

"Tactical....fire at will," Chinatsu said camly.

"Aye, mam."

[Monroe]

"Let's go maggots!" Monroe yelled as he grabbed a metal bat and bagged it against the metal table that the MACOS used for eating. The battle klaxon had begun to wail but he was going to make sure everyone was moving as fast as they could. His CO was elsewhere on the ship performing whatever it is that she did during her time away from the men so it was up to him.

Rushing with them to the armory the Starfleet officer let them inside where they quickly began to prepare themselves to face off against a possible invasion. "Romulans use slave species don't be surprised if we run into some nasty looking things." He yelled to the others as they quickly began to get dressed. "They also have transporter technology far beyond ours so keep a look out we might be boarded and not even know it until the first causalties."

The men of his squad acknowledged him as his CO came sprinting down the quarter to get dressed herself. Monroe gave her an icy look, although perfectly friendly off duty when the fighting began he expected everything to follow a serious by the book tone.

[Aaron]

Trellek eyed the tactical display on his chair and played with his beard. The Baal Solock had been trailing the human vessel for several days now, Trellek sensing an oppurtunity to sell them either his stock of booze or his "services", which ever they desired. Now it seemed that they had run into a spot of trouble with the Romulans. Ordering his helmsman to bring them into the fray, he turned to his gunner, a large Orion male he had picked up a few years ago.

"Mork, target the closest Romulan ship. And this time try not to hit the friendly"

A grunt was Mork's only vocal response as he began punching commands into his console.

Seconds later a particle cannon began opening up on the Romulans, followed by a torpedo. A torpedo which looked oddly off course.

"MORK! YOU IDIOT! That's going to hit the human ship!" Trellek shouted and proceeded to throw a heavy liquor bottle in Morks direction.

The torpedo flew on to it's designated target, striking near the armoury, causing a conduit to rupture and start spewing a dangerous amount of sparks at Bastet, as she ran to join her troops. Igniting what little clothes she had on.

Trellek watched the torpedo impact the human ship and cursed. "There goes our chance for an easy sale, say goodbye to your share Mork."

"Now this time try to hit a Romulan!"