TRIBUNAL Part 6 - Operatic Space Battle

Posted on Sun Jun 16th, 2019 @ 3:57pm by Captain Enalia Telvan & Lieutenant Mona Gonadie & Petty Officer 2nd Class Ila Dedjoy & Emergency Medical Hologram (Adam Power) Mk X & Ahreva Malana & Death & Az'Prel & Maica III 47 & Kodria Mizu & Hera & Baroness 2nd Class Schwein von Alcott & Baroness 3rd Class Sarika & Commander Rita Paris & Lieutenant Commander Thex sh'Zoarhi & Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox & Lieutenant Commander Sonak & Lieutenant Asa Dael & Lieutenant Samuel Clemens XV & Lieutenant JG Rena Pacci & Ensign Varnok Jahal & Ensign Fiona O'Dell & Ensign Briaar Gavarus & Petty Officer 2nd Class 'Big Ethel' Jablonski & Jaeih Dox-t'Aan
Edited on on Sun Jun 16th, 2019 @ 4:08pm

Mission: Fractured Fairy Tales
Location: Engstrom Nebula
Timeline: 2396 - Tribunal Part 6

Continued from Tribunal - Ballroom Blitz...

The Tribunal Trial had ended mere moments before and now the crew of the USS Hera were now underway with the Miranda class Manticore as backup and support. On the bridge of both ships, the crews were confident that they could tackle any surprise that Arenara had waiting for them, yet knowing that the flight plan that she had taken out of the system directly into the Engstrom nebula would put them at a bit of a disadvantage.

For one, the stealth system would be unusable due to the isogenic particles. On top of that, the same particles would destabilize warp fields so they'd be limited to about warp 2.3. That meant no torpedoes or type nine probes either since they relied on warp fields to carry them to their targets. Most ships wouldn't even have reliable shields either, but the Hera and Manticore were outfitted with the standard Starfleet grid array that had been in use since the systems were invented, so they would be strained, but okay as long as they weren't rammed.

Everyone on the bridge seemed confident, yet inside Enalia was nervous. She knew exactly why her mother had chosen this nebula. She loved ramming tactics and she was bound to have some other ship or ally in there waiting for them. She just hoped that they had enough edge on her to win out in the end.

"Steady as she goes," Enalia ordered, as they followed the plasma trail heading deeper into the nebula towards a rogue planetoid. "She's bound to have left a trap for us so let's be ready for it when we see it."

"Aye, Captain." Lieutenant Mnhei'sahe Dox replied from her station at the helm of the massive, Nebula-class starship. Her white dress uniform still stained with blood from the combat with the mercenaries that ended only minutes before, but none of it hers for a change. "Course and speed steady."

"All systems are looking good. I've activated the anti-boarding procedures as well, Captain." Thex said from her engineering station. The Andorian had stored the Armor of Achilles down in the armory, though she had kept the bracelets with her. Just in case.

In the Intel Pod, Clemens was finishing up details on two projects that he'd proposed to the command staff during pre-Tribunal meetings. The first, a plan to use the cargo transporters, set to a low resolution for speed-beaming of dense materials, to beam common nickel-iron asteroid chunks directly into the path of enemy vessels as they attempted maneuvers without shielding (due to the nebula's composition), had gone off without a hitch, as the materials were easy to procure along the way with tractors, and stored in the vast empty that was the rough cargo storage areas of the Hera. He'd set up a command and control system to network all unused cargo transporters (including those on the non-deployed shuttles) together, to further enhance the speed and accuracy for launching the kinetic speed bumps, coordinated through the Ops station as though it were a standard torpedo launch system.

The other Dirty Trick, also outlined to and approved by command, was in-place, and ready to invoke as a non-lethal anti-boarding measure, designed to reduce risk to the defending crew. It also wasn't conventional, which, hopefully, would make countering it on the fly quite difficult.

For his own part, he'd run his systems through thorough diagnostics and kept a topped-off charge on his storage cells, in preparation.

At the science station, Sonak addressed the command dais.

''Captain, I have a tactical recommendation. Torpedoes may not be effectively fired, but they can be deployed as mines on a predetermined flight pattern we could lure them in. Either on target or because the enemy spots them and neutralize them, they would also act as flares for our targeting sensors. Even in a sensor hampering nebula like this one, we would detect them while giving them a false target to shoot at.''

"They don't call him a genius because of the way he brushes his teeth," Rita Paris wisecracked from the tactical station as her fingers danced across the control panel. "I've plotted the course, sending the navigation pattern to you now, Lieutenant. If we drop a proximity mine every time we change course that should do the trick. I need to have the course tight beamed to the Manticore so they can stay with us and avoid the mines, Miss Pacci. In fact, open a secure tight-beam channel with them."

"Yellow alert, Captain?" the fulsome first officer suggested.

Which was when an explosion rocked the Hera, destabilizing the inertial dampeners and hurling everyone to starboard as the great ship shuddered and groaned.

"Red alert. Reduce speed to half impulse. Full power to sensors." Enalia had a good idea what hit them. Her mother was keen on using mines as well at times and though they still had her on the far ranges of sensors, this would slow them drastically. "Let me guess, she laid out some welcoming presents with sensor scattering in them?"

"Velocity slowed, Captain," Dox replied from the helm.

"We've struck a proximity mine amid ships, Captain. Damage reports coming in from decks 13 through 17 including hull breaches, casualty reports incoming," Paris reported once she'd gotten back up off the floor.

''There is a way to detect those cloaked mines... and them as well, without being traced back through our active sensors.'' announced the Vulcan. ''Although sensors are distorted within the particles of a nebula, those same particles themselves will be disturbed by the presence and movement of any mass; like a mine... or a ship. If we focus our sensors on those particles, we will see such hidden objects as dark spots within displaced stellar dust; much like we would see underwater rocks disturbing waterflow. Tractor beams should then be able to sweep the mines... and our weapon systems to lock on target.''

Enalia took a moment to figure out what Sonak was saying in simpler terms since science wasn't her strong suit, tapping at her chair's console for a moment as she did so. "So you're saying... The mines and enemy are where the nebula isn't? And that you can track them by particle wave motion inside the nebula? Excellent thinking, Mr Sonak. Reconfigure the sensors however you need to."

Then one of her favorite thoughts hit the spotted captain and she grinned just slightly at her inside joke. They were a Nebula inside a nebula tracking nebula gasses.

That was when something else hit them. Not a mine, but something green flared on their shields and rocked the ship to port. They had been shot with a plasma torpedo from a shuttlecraft!

Just then a tight beam comm signal came in from the Bloody Rose, taunting the Hera.

"Why Enalia, my darling daughter! Come to huff and puff about the law, or perhaps your brand new conveniently discovered morality?" The voice on the other end of the transmission taunted in a voice of honeyed venom. "Or perhaps you've come to bring the evil queen to justice? You'll have to do better than that, my willful little girl. I've mined the nebula, but I know where they are and I can stay here quite cozily while you cheat in a duel of honor, bringing back up and an entire Starfleet vessel. You never could play by the rules... got your sister and father killed that way, as I recall..."

At that, the Manticore was rocked by an explosion as she struck a mine, which was far more devastating for the older and smaller starship than it would have been for the Hera.

Now she was making it personal. Enalia definitely blamed herself for the death of her father, since he tried to protect her during her kidnapping when she was on her maiden mission. The Syndicate had slaughtered him like livestock before her, and she still had nightmares about it. With these memories came the realization that her mother had been working with the Syndicate even back then… and and thus was likely behind her kidnapping, as well as her father's murder.

As for her sister, she was definitely responsible there. She had cleared her and her crew to assist the Commodore on a covert mission that was supposed to just be a discussion with a possible target which had ended poorly, resulting in everyone but the Commodore dying and being eaten by large demonic dogs.

At first Enalia was stunned and numb, then another feeling began building, bubbling up and blowing to the surface before she even knew it was there, her face red with frustration and anger as she screamed with anger. "ARENARA! I will have your head! You will ROT in a Federation penal colony for the rest of your days! Do you hear me?"

“Oh, are we on a first name basis now?” The voice was that of a parent scolding a naughty child as the matriarch of the Artan family pumped up the verbal venom level to unbalance her opponent- another favored tactic of Queen Artan. “Reallllllly Enalia, you are such a child, throwing a tantrum now that you’ve found out how the world really works. Did you think privateering and claiming the spoils of slavers paid for everything and kept the family afloat all these years? Naïve little girl. This fleet has run on subtleties and nuances and deals you never knew about because you were either too stupid to understand or too stubborn to accept.”

“So here we are, dueling in the nebula, in a classic climax of good versus evil in your mind, I suppose, where you keep so desperately trying to overcompensate for your failings by painting yourself as the hero- just like your father,” she added to twist the knife a bit. “When this is all over and I have to show the Starfleet doctors how you were always chemically unbalanced and how you manufactured all of this evidence against me, it will be such a sad end to your dismal Starfleet career… at best, a footnote in history while the Artan Family Fleet will sail on from this, to bigger and better things”

“After all, it’ll be easier once you’re dead…”

“Incoming plasma bomb, hard to port evasive Miss Dox!” Paris called from tactical.

"Aye, Commander!" Using the far more delicate manual controls at the helm, Dox leaned hard into the stick and the Hera responded in kind, tilting deftly on its center axis to avoid the plasma bomb without hitting any of the surrounding mines. As she did, the starship shuddered from the shockwave of the bomb's explosion. Far enough away to do no damage, but still be felt.

When he heard the queen's taunt, Sonak instantly recalibrated his sensors and looked intently before turning towards the command chair.

''Pride is every warrior's weakness. Captain, I have located a motionless mass suggesting a starship, four point seven million kilometers aft, bearing 180 mark 34. If she mined the entire nebula as she boasts, then we could send rapid phaser bursts in a conical pattern in this direction. This should detonate a significant number of them towards and near her position... and open a direct path for us to reach her while her shields are overwhelmed and her sensors blinded by the detonations... and her anger.''

"Make it so, Mr Sonak. But be wary of traps as you do so." Enalia was seething and struggling to get herself to calm back down. Knowing full well how deep her mother's betrayals had gone was like being repeatedly stabbed in the back and as much as she wanted to kill the woman herself, she knew if she did that, she would be stooping to her level and she'd be no better than her at that point.

Already the proposed telemetry was coming in from Sonak at the science station, and Paris aligned and measured the energy output for the appropriate response from the phasers. It would take considerable phaser energy to be sufficient to rattle the mines on such a wide firing arc, but Sonak had already run the calculations for the power output required to be effective. Thus all the Starfleet siren had to do was monitor the power flow and firing arcs, while insuring that helm control did not overshoot their cleared area.

“Point four impulse power, Miss Dox, on the revised heading I am sending… now.” The forward phasers lanced out, clearing a space before them in the nebula even as the Hera’s shields were rocked by a distant mine explosion. “Let’s take this slow and easy so they don’t realize we can do this at twice the speed, Miss Dox.”

Allowing herself the slightest of smirks, Dox replied from the helm. "Aye, Commander." While the instances were limited, the red-headed Romulan pilot greatly enjoyed working with Rita Paris from her tactical station. The two had a developed through simulation training a solid rhythm more in tune with Paris' own era where Tactical and Navigation were one station that was next to the helm. "Point four on the revised heading."

Leaning into the Captain, Paris muttered, in a voice low enough that only the Captain and the more sensitive ears on the bridge might hear. ”Two can play at this game, Captain, and the facts are on your side. Perhaps it’s time for you to goad her into making an angry mistake, ma’am? After all, she thinks she’s going to walk away from all of this smelling like a rose, and she doesn’t even realize she’s finished…”

Enalia took a few deep breaths to finish calming herself, before nodding and hitting the comms again, a grin on her face and her voice modulated to match her mother's. "Mother DEAREST, who do you think gave me this brain? I've fooled Starfleet for these many years. Do you really think I wouldn't have plans to eventually take you down? Just like you took down grandmother? I've met great-grandmother Enalia Artan, my namesake... I traveled in time to do it. I'm the one that destroyed Selen six, and gave her the details so she could build the family fortune that you squandered and had to rebuild with your slutty little deals with the Syndicate."

"And my independent wealth? More time travel shenanigans. I had six coins sold back then, invested it all, then had the coins land back in my possession a few months ago. I now have enough latinum to buy half a dozen more fortresses, each more lavish than the last and each with a personal fleet larger than the Artan family combined."

"Really, Enalia. Your grandiose-" the queen began, but Captain Telvan was having no more of it. Her mother's lips were moving, but smack talk was less effective when your opponent could be put on mute. Enalia continued, uninterrupted.

"Do you know what that makes you to me?"

"Absolutely nothing."

"You have been less than a blip on my sensors for most of my life now. The one time you forced your way back into my it? This time? I'm afraid you're going to regret that choice. You could have stayed a petty criminal, but no. You had to piss me off. Demand my genetic code to make a 'better' offspring... that was rude. Demanding it was your mistake. Because then you started giving me a reason to take a good hard look at you. Once I started looking, there were all sorts of sloppy secrets you've been hiding."

"I honestly would have left you alone, live and let live. But no. You had to reach past your little corner of the sector and try to be more than the waterflea that you are." Enalia was breathing heavily now, having gotten a lot of pent up emotion out and in the open.

"Oh, and if Starfleet releases any of your seized assets, they will be returned to the Queen of the Artan family... Which will no longer be you..." Enalia added just to add insult to injury.

"Verified," called Paris from tactical. Modern texting between stations and multiple communications channels open at once on broad and easy to read screens really had been a challenge for the gal from the 2260's to adapt to, but she had persevered, and it was glorious. The entire bridge, Main Engineering, the Intel Pod, whatever information they could possibly wish to know to man the starship was at their fingertips. Which made communicating in moments like this, under audio silence, open comms to the opponent.

CDRPARIS: Am I reading the projected size of that mass we're coming up on, Mr. Sonak? Slow to point two and give me a scanner pass at an orbital distance around that mass, Miss Dox.

LTDOX: Velocity at point two on revised heading, account for mine placement. In scanning range now.

LTSONAK: Affirmative; mass and volume of particle displacement decisively suggesting enemy starship location..

LTDAEL: Sickbay is treating 48 injured persons, have suffered 5 fatalities and 3 individuals that will perish soon. One of them was an officer with our adversary, and has advised the bombs we are bypassing are programmed to follow at a distance, and upon destruction of the Bloody Rose will convene upon us and detonate a gamma radiation enhanced explosion. Recommend helm take measures to avoid.

LTSONAK: Recommendation; activate all tractor beams on inverse polarity with auto-connection to tactical sensors and link to extended navigational screen to maximum range. Should act as an effective repulsor field for mine-sized objects. Computing program to implement procedure following.

CDRPARIS: I'll mine our wake with proximity warheads to help out, and we can collect any survivors after the battle. Why is that planetoid venting plasma to space?

CDRPARIS: Something tells me this is a decoy or a trap. Stay alert, folks.

Out in the gaseous swirling clouds of the nebula, green and blue gouts of plasma fire spurted forth as hints of red electric shocks could be seen through the distortion on the viewscreen. As the USS Hera drew near to the mass ahead of them it became clear that this was no ship, but a space born creature that had been collared by Arenara with agonizer tech. Resembling the old mythological Tarrasque, it had the shell of a turtle, tail of a scorpion, legs of a great space bear, and the head and mane of the old spacefaring lion-whales of old. The red and black spiked agonizer collar on it did little to imply a sense of control over it.

In short, this was straight from an old kaiju movie.

And it was pissed off.

With the Hera in its sights and several mines exploding in its plasma breath, it launched itself towards the nebula class vessel in an attempt to dig its claws into the tasty looking oyster-hull.

"Helm, full reverse, rear phaser emitters online for minesweeping..." Paris started setting the orders in motion to keep the ship at a safe distance from the cosmic legendary beast that somehow was and yet was not so much of a surprise to her. Thus was life in the 25th century. As the tactical sensors started lighting up with warnings, she noticed a significant buildup of specific plasma energies around the creature's mouth.

"What is it doing, it is going to launch a conical breath weapon of plasma at us..." Paris muttered before her eyes grew wide and she bellowed a command. "DOX! Evasive maneuvers, warp hop, now!

The Hera was already pulling itself backwards at full impulse along the path it had approached upon when Rita Paris's order was shouted out across the bridge. Running her hands across the helm controls deftly, Dox glanced at her tactical readouts to make the most rapid, manual warp course she had ever call in her head as a pilot. "AYE! Brace yourselves!"

The red-headed Romulan pilot tilted the Hera's nose down as the mighty starship quickly stopped pulling backwards. A warp hop would be tremendously dangerous in the nebula, but the maneuver was something of a specialty of the almost peerless pilot, and Rita Paris knew it. Dox let out the slightest of breaths as she shoved the manual throttle controls forward and the glowing, purple nacelles of the ship flared to life.

In the exact instant the creature let loose it's conical breath weapon in a manner rather precisely as Paris had predicted, a spewing array of green/blue plasma fire that at it's base could have easily consumed Starbase One. In that instant, the Hera all but vanished from that location in space in a streak of light and color. In it's wake was the plasma belch, whose length and breadth was now of sufficient size to be measured on the AU scale, flailed about with the spray of plasma in frustration. Which in turn was now causing a plasma storm in the area that would take years to dissipate.

As the space they had formerly just occupied was torched, the fragile and unstable warp field that had just propelled the starship away, also pulled the swirling energies of the nebula and the surrounding mines in on itself, crushed inwards in the warp field to cause a rather spectacular exit from warp for the starship.

To be continued in Tribunal - Charges of Tarrasque Abuse