Chapter 14
Chapter 13
Stardate 57231
The Bridge doors whooshed open behind Kitty. She was in the command chair, currently in command of the ship as Officer of the Watch. Kitty stood as Captain Picard escorted Majestrix Lilandra onto the operational “brain” of the Sovereign-class starship. She was escorted by General D’Lar, and several of his senior officers, and of course by her Imperial Guards... including Gladiator.
“And this, of course, is the Bridge,” Picard said as he waived his crew back to their stations when they tried to stand respectfully. “As you can see, it serves as the cee-three center of the ship... command, communication and control. Almost every function on the ship can be controlled from here in an emergency situation, as a backup to their main control centers. For instance, propulsion is usually controlled from the engineering decks, but there is a secondary engineering station here on the port side of the bridge. And in an emergency, there is an auxiliary bridge that can perform all the same functions as the main bridge, including remote access to all ships functions.”
“It seems like quite a handful, Captain,” commented D’Lar. “I would assume that much information coming to a single location like this would result in informational overload.”
“It can for an inexperienced command crew,” admitted Picard. “But our departmental heads are highly experienced and only feed us the information we need. We also filter most of the information though the Tactical and Ops stations for an additional layer of protection. In fact, Tactical and Operations officers on Starfleet vessels are considered part of the command track. In essence, an officer doing either job is essentially making constant command decisions about what information we need and what to handle themselves all the time, which is good command training. But you are quite right, informational overload can be a problem. Contrary to what most people might believe, running a starship is not simply a matter of reading a few screens, pressing a few buttons and making the ship go. A starship crew has to be a solid team, or the system begins to break down.”
“Indeed, Captain. It would seem that our experiences are similar in this regard,” D’Lar said. “Knowing what information is important and what isn’t is almost always the toughest command decision to make for any command-level officer during an emergency. Your Starfleet’s methods for solving some of those problems is elegant and effective.”
“Thank you, General,” Picard returned. “And speaking of Tactical officers, how goes it, Commander Pryde?”
She smiled, standing to offer him the Command chair. He declined and she sat again. “Fair to middling, Captain. I’ve been having the aux-weapons teams running manual fire drills. I’m not satisfied yet with their numbers... but I will be,” she finished with a determined expression.
“How far off are the numbers?”
“Only a couple of percentage points, but I think they can do better. I think it's just that they haven’t had a manual test in a while. They’re fine when they use the auto systems, but I want to make sure that we can still fight if the auto-fire system knocks every weapon we have out of the loop.”
Picard was startled. “It would take massive damage for all our weapons to be knocked out of central control at once. If the damage were that severe...”
“...fighting would be the least of our troubles,” Kitty finished for him. “I know that. But all the same, I want each weapon's crew to be able to act independently of the computer systems. You never know when there might be some sort of cascading damage that takes out all, or even a large portion of our weapons control. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I want that level of efficiency in local control.”
Picard nodded in agreement. “I certainly can’t fault you for it. And it's your department to run as you see fit. Make it so. Anything else I need to know about?”
“Nothing that can’t wait,” she replied. “Commander Data asked me to remind you about the poetry recital he had planned for tomorrow evening. And Dr. Crusher is expecting you for dinner at eighteen-thirty hours.”
“Thank you, Commander. As you were. Well, Your Majesty, General D’Lar, that covers pretty much everything.” Picard concluded.
“Thank you so much, Captain, for the tour,” Lilandra responded. “I can see now why Enterprise is said to be the best ship in Starfleet. She is as much a product of her commander’s work as her builders. And I am very impressed, Captain.
“Captain, we would very much like to invite you aboard the Starjammer for a tour, if you are feeling up to it,” invited D’Lar.
“Indeed, General, I would be most honored.”
“Excellent, then. If you’d like, we can begin the tour right away.”
**********
Kitty sat in the command chair on the main bridge. Captain Picard had beamed over to the Starjammer an hour earlier, and was being escorted on a tour of the Majestrix’s personal vessel. Enterprise was in orbit over Chandilar, and most of the command crew was off duty. Kitty was still Officer of the Watch, and she was doing double duty as Tactical Officer. The tactical station was slaved over to the control board on the command chair. The command chair’s control board wouldn’t allow as much control as the main control board would, but it allowed her to monitor her station from the command chair... and just coincidentally allowed her to sit while still manning her tactical board.
Not that there was generally a lot for a tactical officer to do while in a parking orbit above a friendly planet. Kitty had used the time to get caught up on some of her paperwork. Like all department heads, the Starfleet Tactical Officer saw more than her share of paperwork. She was responsible for everything from personnel efficiency reports, to equipment readiness updates, to maintenance schedules, to training drill reports. It was often commented that Starfleet vessels actually ran on paperwork rather than anti-matter.
It was only a slight exaggeration.
Kitty was just completing the latest in the large pile of electronic reports awaiting her attention on her PADD, when the tactical board beeped for her attention.
She looked over to her left, to where she had slaved the tactical station to be monitored. The automatic external scan she had set up had picked up a minor anomaly. It looked like a small ionic burst to the port aft of the ship. It was gone now, but the computer had identified the ionic burst not more than thirty seconds before. It was a short burst, and not very powerful, but the computer had flagged it for her attention anyway.
She adjusted her scanners to search the area, but she couldn’t find anything but empty space.
There are any number of perfectly normal spatial events that could cause ionic microbursts of that type. Kitty set her scanner to scan for the most usual ones, but her scan came up empty.
It was probably nothing... but it never hurt to be sure.
She opened a comm channel. “Enterprise to Chandilar Control.”
“This is Chandilar Control,” came the immediate reply. “How can we help you, Enterprise?”
“This is Commander Pryde,” she identified herself. “We just picked up a minor ionic burst off our aft starboard, range about fifty thousand klicks. Do you have anything operating in that area?”
“Negative, Enterprise. Our scans show no ships in your area, and as you know, that entire orbital section is restricted space. We’re double-checking our scan data now, but we’re not showing any authorized or unauthorized traffic in your area.”
“Any idea what might cause an ionic microburst of that type?” she inquired.
“Nothing outside the obvious,” came the reply from the earnest voice. “And I will assume you ran scans for the usual anomalies.”
“Yep. No dice.”
“Well, I’m afraid that we can’t help you, Commander. If you’d like, I’ll file a report to my commander and continue scanning the area for you."
“Yes, I’d appreciate that,” she approved. “And thank you for your help.”
“My pleasure, Commander,” the voice signed off, closing the channel.
That should have been the end of the issue. There was nothing in the area that could be construed as a threat. But Kitty hadn’t survived as long as she did by letting little mysteries like this one pass without investigation. If there was nothing out there, there shouldn’t have been an ionic microburst. So, what had caused it?
She stood up and walked back to the tactical station. She tried to increase the gain on her scanners, and tried several different frequencies. The scanners continued to tell her there was nothing out there. But something was raising the hackles on her neck.
“Bridge to Stellar Cartography,” she called out.
“Stellar Cartography, Lieutenant Ryan here,” came the response from the comm.
“Mr. Ryan, this is Commander Pryde.”
“What can I do for you, Commander?”
She quickly explained what she had seen. “What I’d like from you is to borrow one of your high sensitivity sensors.”
“Let me see what’s available, Commander,” Ryan responded. After a moment he continued. “Most of our equipment has been tasked to star mapping by the Captain, Ma’am, but I do have one unit open. Sierra Romeo Two-Four.” Kitty knew that he meant ‘Short-Range Sensor Unit 24.' “She’s a high-res, high-power unit with a lot of different frequencies. She’s a Sierra Romeo, a short-range unit, so she’s not much good for star charting. But she should do just fine for you. Just one catch, though. Any live unit you scan with Sierra Romeo Twenty-Four is going to know they’ve been scanned. That’s why we only use her for short-range scans of stellar anomalies. She’s not stealthy enough for most tactical work, and not long range enough for cartography. She’s more of a specialty unit, you might say.” He sounded quite proud of his scanning equipment.
Kitty smiled at Ryan’s mode of speech... it reminded her of herself as a kid, so attached to her computers that she saw them as her 'friends.' “Mr. Ryan, did I just hear you call your sensor ‘she’?”
“Um... yes, Ma’am... sorry, Ma’am,” came the embarrassed response. “It’s sort of an occupational hazard for scan techs like me. We spend so much time with these babies... uh, these scanners, that we sort of... um, start thinking of them as people.”
“Mr. Ryan, don’t apologize,” she said. “I didn’t mean to criticize. But I do think that you need to get out a little more, and spend some time with actual people, not machines. That’s just a suggestion, not an order.”
“Yes, Ma’am. Thank you, Ma’am,” Ryan stammered.
“Alright. Slave Sierra Romeo Twenty-Four to my tactical station, and I’ll take over from there. Thanks for your help, Lieutenant,” she said.
“You’re welcome, Ma’am. Twenty-Four should be slaved over to tactical now.”
“Got it. Thanks again. Bridge out.” She closed the comm channel.
She began setting up a scan and search program, searching the area grid by grid. A full search on multiple wavelengths would require a few minutes.
She completed her program, double checked it and fed it into her computer. Then she executed the program.
She was picking up more ionic interference now; the scanner was much more sensitive than her regular scanning gear. She searched the area of highest ionic concentration.
There, aft and starboard of them was a cloaked ship --- with Shi’ar cloaking technology. And at a range of only thirty thousand kilometers, less than point-blank range for Shi’ar weapons. As soon as her scan discovered the cloaked ship, the unidentified ship began decloaking.
Kitty’s hand slammed down on the GQ alarm. Another hand slammed down on the deflector shield activator, the only thing that could possibly protect them from enemy fire while in a parking orbit.
Klaxons blared loudly. “General quarters,” Kitty’s voice sounded over the ship’s speakers. “General quarters. Enemy ship decloaking. This is not a drill. All hands to battle stations.”
Shields, even on a ship that is as well prepared as Enterprise always is, take time to cycle up to full power. With the ship in parking orbit, and the warp drive offline, the time it took for deflector shields to cycle up was even longer, drawing as they did from reserve power. In parking orbit, the ship’s only protection was its particle deflectors and radiation shielding; not enough to protect them from enemy fire. The capacitors of the ship did their heroic best to cycle enough power through the shields to form a protective barrier, but it was not enough.
Energy cannons from the unidentified ship fired at point-blank range. Thousands of joules of energy slammed into the ship at the speed of light. The half-formed deflector shields managed to turn the energy beams slightly, but they could not stop them.
Still, turning the beams that little bit is all that saved Enterprise.
Instead of tearing directly through the ship’s anti-matter injector, the enemy blast was turned slightly so that it destroyed most of the main engineering deck, and the thirty-two people who were working there. But the automatic safety measures worked, and the injector went into shutdown mode, saving the ship. Barely.
Another blast slammed into the starboard nacelle. Thankfully, there were no people there, but the blast slammed through the entire unit, leaving it open to space.
A third blast slammed into the main saucer section, but by now the shields were just beginning to cycle up to full power. Somehow none of the damage suffered so far had taken the shields offline. The third blast was mostly turned back by full-power shields. Mostly, but not completely.
All over the ship, the cries of wounded and the tear of plastic and metal could be heard. There were hull breaches all over the ship, and crewmen aboard the under-manned ship began patching what leaks they could. Blast doors slammed into place all over the ship, trapping people in various compartments, and some of those people were on the wrong side of the blast doors. Few of those would survive long enough to reach the emergency vac-gear that was placed all over the ship for hull breach emergencies. But a few did manage to reach the emergency masks.
Kitty cursed as she fought to bring her damaged weapons systems online. Phasers were inoperable because they ran through the warp drive system, which was now effectively offline. She concentrated on her quantum torpedoes as she yelled orders to her bridge crew.
“Helm! Reaction thruster, full power starboard, skew turn! Get the impulse drive up. We need to maneuver.”
She managed to get one of her launchers online. “Helm, roll ship forty degrees starboard, nose down twelve degrees. I need to get my launcher in play."
“Aye, Ma’am. Forty starboard, nose down twelve.”
The ship was working on only reaction thrusters, the small thrusters that allow a ship to hold its parked position in orbit when its main drives were down. They were not designed to move a ship at all, much less with any kind of speed, only hold it in place. But without any other drive systems working, they were left with no other options.
Except one.
She jumped over the handrail and landed next to the command chair. Sitting down, she quickly overrode engineering. Then she vented the port nacelle’s plasma. The thrust caused by the venting plasma brought the ship around more quickly than by reaction thrusters alone.
The ship came around, and as her weapon came to bear, she fired a full load of quantum torpedoes.
They missed.
The enemy ship, with its warp drive now fully online, had moved out of the line of fire.
It headed off toward the parked form of Starjammer. The unsuspecting ship that just happened to currently have the Shi’ar Empress and the Enterprise’s Captain aboard.
Kitty quickly opened a hailing frequency. “Enterprise to Stajammer. Enemy ship approaching. Take defensive action.”
There was no response, and by that time it was too late. The unidentified ship attacked with speed and ferocity, and Kitty and her crew were helpless to do anything but watch.
They watched as the enemy vessel blew apart the helpless ship’s propulsion systems, and then as they beat its overmatched weapons into helplessness. Last came the shields. There were tense moments after that, in which there seemed to be no action at all. Then the enemy ship pulled away, leaving the hulking, broken wreck of the Starjammer in its wake as it had the Enterprise.
Soon the enemy ship was out of range.
“Damage report,” Kitty ordered. “I want a full status report and a damage report as soon as possible. C’mon, people, we have a job to do.”
Her words seemed to bring her crew out of their dazed state. They began doing their jobs again, putting the horror of what they had just seen behind them. There would be time for anger and grief and mourning later. Right now, it was time to save their crewmates and their ship.
“Hull breaches on decks 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10,” came the response from Lieutenant Burns at the Ops station. “Blast doors are down, but there were people trapped in the breached sections. General damage to most decks. We’re down to emergency power; the warp injectors went into shutdown after the first blast. Environmental reports both plants are up and running, but that the hull breaches are affecting environmental efficiency. We’re down to twenty percent shielding. Our offensive capability is limited. Phasers are offline with the warp drive. The automatic photon torpedo loaders are badly damaged. We have limited quantum torpedoes from two launchers, but one has to be handled in local control. Impulse drive was slightly damaged, but if we can get power back, we can probably reach point six cee.”
“Sickbay to Bridge,” the comm sounded.
“Pryde here,” she responded.
“Commander, we’ve got wounded all over the ship, and too few sick bay attendants to get them all.”
“Understood, but we’re a little shorthanded now,” she replied. “We were a skeleton crew before the attack. Now... we’re severely understaffed, and most of our people are already working damage control and search and rescue. There’s not much we can do from here.”
“Understood,” came the frustrated voice of the on-duty doctor. “We’ll do what we can.”
“Thank, you. I know you will. Bridge clear. Bridge to Engineering.”
“LaForge here, Commander.”
Kitty’s face lit up. “Geordi, what are you doing here? I thought you were planet-side.”
“I was,” he responded, “but I needed to get some rest. I beamed up about a half hour ago. All things considered I wish I’d stayed downside. I think the Captain’s gonna be angry that you broke his ship,” he concluded grimly.
“Tell me about it. Unfortunately, we’re not the only victims... the Starjammer was attacked too, and the Captain was aboard her when it happened. I need a repair update.”
“Main engineering is completely down, but I’m in auxiliary. I can get the warp core up and running in a few minutes, but the drive itself is gone. We’ll need to completely replace the starboard warp nacelle. But with the core back online, I can give you phasers, and some better shields. For the photon torpedoes, the launchers themselves are fine. It’s the feeders that are offline. The feeder rails were bent out of shape. We’re going to have to cut them away and weld new rails in place. That’s at least a three-hour job by the book, but I think I can do it in two. I’ve got crews out repairing the worst of the hull breaches, but structural integrity’s going to be mighty iffy until I can do some bracing work. Impulse drive should be available in the next ten minutes, but I can only give about point five or point six cee.”
“Do we have transporters?” she inquired.
“Don’t see why not,” the engineer answered after a moment. “The power lines to the transporters don’t seem to have been cut, and the units themselves check out as fine on my board. I’ll send a tech to double check them as soon as I can.”
“Good, because I need to contact Commander Riker and start getting our people back aboard as quickly as possible.”