Bridge Team: USS Hera

Posted on Wed Oct 24th, 2018 @ 2:36pm by Captain Enalia Telvan & Petty Officer 2nd Class Ila Dedjoy & Lieutenant Delilah Dauntless & Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox

Mission: Hera v Hera
Location: USS Hera Bridge

The mission timer on the viewscreen was steadily counting down as everyone prepared for the coming mission. Enalia wasn't the only one tense as the timer reached zero. Everyone was already at battlestations so all that was needed was the final order to be given.

Hitting the alert switch, she sent the Hera into red alert, dimming the overhead lights and activating the red warning lights. "Engage mission. Launch both runabouts. Send Jurot down now. Dox, take us in."

"Aye, Captain." Lieutenant Junior Grade Melanie Dox replied. The young pilot ran her hands across the helm controls of the massive vessel and the engines responded, bringing the Hera to life. This was Dox's first mission as the Hera's pilot and she pursed her lips anxiously in preparation for what she knew was about to begin.

As the pair of runabouts zipped past the Hera, the gravid vessel moved after them. "Deactivate stealth plating and make us the biggest target in the system. Bring the Metaphasic shields online. Ready all weapons and warm up the tractors." Enalia gave a few last orders before they entered the asteroid field surrounding the system and engaged the outer defenses.

Lieutenant Dauntless' dainty brown fingers danced across the dark reflective surface of her console. "Stealth plating: deactivated," announced the diminutive operations chief. A wary glace at the dedicated displays on her console confirmed the successful shunt of power from the stealth plating towards the Hera's shield and beam emitters assemblies. "Metaphasic shields: at 100%... Tractor beams: online & standing-by... Subspace signature at five-zero-seven, Captain. That ought to grab their attention."

"Excellent. Now we just need to..." Enalia's next thought was cut off by the flashing of the silver and gold weapons fire from the sixty meter long chariot that came racing towards them, completely ignoring the pair of runabouts. "Return fire. Evasives as you please." Enalia was eager to see what Dox would come up with while in the outer asteroid fields against a smaller, much more agile ship. She also needed to get a feel for how she flew so she could integrate her own tricks, which was tricky to do in the middle of combat.

"Aye, Captain." Dox responded with a focused, unemotional tone. The chariot closed in on the Hera as she glanced down to her helm display controls to see that they were rapidly approaching a cluster of mid sized asteroids directly ahead and below the ship and the young pilot saw an opportunity.

"Giving you their belly, tactical!" Dox exclaimed with just a touch more energy in her voice as she slammed the controls down hard. Powerful thrusters kicked in hard and there was a slight groan on the hull as the massive Nebula Class Starship shot immediately down with her nose dipping at high speed just below the oncoming asteroid cluster. The maneuver forced the approaching chariot to pull up sharply to avoid the asteroids that were now suddenly between the two vessels and arc over the top of the Hera's path.

The Ensign at tactical was sharp and hit the tractors just in time to give the biggest asteroid a shove right into the chariot, smashing into its shields and sending it spinning into another asteroid. It didn't destroy it, but it did bounce it around enough so it was easy for the follow up torpedo spread to smash through the severely weakened shields and turn it into glowing debris.

"That's one chariot down, one left, Ma'am," Reported Ensign Yorn at Tactical. "Two more inbound. ETA one minute"

"Good job," Enalia called out as the next one came in on a frontal attack vector. Tactical fired phasers but with the maneuvering of the Chariot, couldn't get a clean shot. "Dox, ever play chicken?"

"Yes I have." Dox replied with a slightly elevated tone that expressed not cockiness but a slight display of assuredness. Having learned to fly on smuggling ships that ran between Romulan and Klingon space, such maneuvering was second nature to the young pilot. Dox pulled the manual helm controls back and the nose of the Hera raised to meet the rapidly oncoming chariot. "Course laid in, awaiting orders, Captain."

"Ensign Yorn? Drag a nice asteroid behind us. Lieutenant Dox, keep us right on course but make sure we blink first." Enalia leaned forward in the central chair, grinning. She knew that these Amazonians piloting these Chariots were all about honor and victory. They weren't expecting tricks or anything like that. They were used to honorable combat and putting down men and trying to liberate women or some such.

Yorn piped up from tactical. "I have a nice ship sized asteroid in our shadow, Captain. And... matched to our velocity... It's free." Phaser fire still lanced from the bow of the Hera, but now it seemed to box the Chariot in so it didn't maneuver much at all.

"That's right... watch us. You've got us." Dox muttered under her breath lightly as the two ships raced towards each other. "Brace yourselves!" She exclaimed as she leaned hard into the Hera's controls as the massive vessel turned rapidly to it's side and proceeded to perform a tight barrel roll around the oncoming chariot, the tops of the two ships barely clearing each other.

Even with inertial dampeners on maximum the g-forces inside the Hera slammed her crew hard back into their seats as the ships shields flared up... Scraping across the attacking chariots shields. The Hera rumbled slightly as it cleared the chariot and returned to its former attitude with its opponent in its wake... Nose to nose with Ensign Yorn's surprise.

The wake of the explosion behind the Hera was enough to rattle the entire ship but the shields held and were surprisingly still at full strength. "Shields still at ninety eight percent. Next Chariot pair ETA thirty seconds." Ensign Yorn reported.

Enalia leaned back in her chair and relaxed for now. "Drop the stealth mines here and loop back around at about half impulse. Dauntless, what's the status of the away teams? Have they landed yet?"

Ensign Yorn triggered the deployment of the several dozen mines that had been prepared in the third hangar bay and set them to activate as soon as the Hera was far enough away.

"Captain, runabouts are still four minutes from landing," announced Delilah Dauntless.

"Trajectory and speed as ordered, Captain." Dox brought the ship around and dropped her speed.

"Back to combat speed. Take us behind that big asteroid. Lieutenant Dauntless, vent some plasma from our starboard nacelle to make it look like we're wounded and trying to run." Enalia had another trick up her sleeve. "Not enough to ignite though. Just enough to let them know where we are. Also ready a decoy probe and the stealth plating. As soon as we're out of view, we're going to pull a vanishing act on them."

"Aye, Captain." Dox replied as she entered the Captains instructions into the helm.

Delilah's brow furrowed in concentration as she accessed the necessary subsystems. "Prepping decoy probe now... stealth plating on standby..." With a few deft strokes of her fingers, the probe had been programmed to mimic the subspace signature that the Hera had used to get the enemy's attention. "Decoy ready, Captain."

As soon as the Hera was out of sight, Enalia sprung her trap. "Activate stealth plating and launch that decoy. Dive down below them so we have a clear shot at their bellies. Ready on the weapons for Alpha strike Telvan Three. Now is where the fun begins."

The operations console told the tale as the Hera's metaphasic shields powered down, and their energy was re-routed into the stealth plating that armored the Nebula-class vessel's outer hull. "Shield's are down & stealth plating is up," announced Dauntless in her eerie, child-like voice. In the same breath, a soft warbling sound from the young lieutenant's console signaled the probe's successful launch. "Decoy is away," Delilah confirmed.

All the while, Dox put the Hera into a dive, hugging close to the asteroid so as to use it's gravity to whip the Nebula Class Starship tightly beneath the asteroid and shoot her out the other side. "We're inside the asteroid's gravitational field, which should obscue our impulse signature enough so they shouldn't see us coming, Captain. Clearing in three..."

Enalia was about to remind Dauntless that they didn't need to lower shields to engage the stealth plating, but then she remembered that the metaphasic shields lit up the ship like a christmas tree no matter what. She'd have to commend the woman later in private. For now they'd have to rely on the regular shields and hope they didn't get off a lucky shot while stealthed.

Checking her own sensor feed on her command chair, Enalia waited for just the right moment to spring the trap.

The two new Chariots entered the minefield, not seeing the stealthed mines, and soon found themselves dealing with quite a few hidden explosives that stripped them of almost all their shields. That didn't deter them from chasing the Hera at top speed though. As soon as they passed behind the asteroid and saw that it was a decoy and not the hera, they tried to break off pursuit, but it was too late.

"Lieutenant Dox, if you would please take it from here. Ensign Yorn, as soon as you have a firing solution for both targets, fire at will." Enalia grinned as her trap came together perfectly.

In an instant, the Hera crested the leading edge of the asteroid above and behind the damaged chariots, arcing upside down like a massive whale breaching the ocean. Of course, with artificial gravity and no UP in the void of space, upside-down was a relative term.

"They're all yours, Ensign Yorn."

"Firing now," the young ensign replied as they hit the weapons. phaser fire lanced out from both the upper and lower saucer and from both engine pylons and from two points on the pod repeatedly as well as six quantum torpedoes from the main launcher and a dozen from the pod launchers.

Moments later all that weapons fire hit the two chariots and without much in the way of shields to protect them, they were like tissue paper in a tornado against that salvo of fire. The Hera flew between the twin blazes unscathed, the two enemies never having fired a shot.

"Excellent job, everyone. Any more system patrols on sensors?" Enalia asked, relaxing in her chair for now.

Ensign Yorn scanned the system for tactical threats and found none near them. "I'm not picking up anything, Captain."

Enalia grinned and tapped at her console to bring up the ship status. "Then for now let's standby and wait for word from the teams. Lieutenant Dox, please find us a nice hiding place for now. Lieutenant Dauntless, good job on the switch from metaphasic shields to normal shields when we went stealth. That was a wise move."

"Aye, Captain." Dox replied, looking over the instruments of the panel in front of her for a moment. "I've got a medium sized asteroid with a significant gravitational field at 118-mark-357. if we bring her into a low orbit along the southern pole region and reduce power, it should help us mask us from their sensors for a bit."

"Make it so." Enalia didn't like the waiting part, but this was where they were now. They just had to wait and see how the away teams went. As for Dox, if she had been any less of a pilot, their part of the mission wouldn't have gone as smoothly so she was very pleased with the woman's performance. She'd definitely have to consider Rita's recommendations.

"Aye, Captain." Dox replied sternly, moving the U.S.S. Hera into it's hiding place. The bridge was now eerily quiet with the pitch of battle replaced by the tension of waiting.

--------------

Almost an hour passed with no word from either landing party. They still had sensor feeds from the runabouts and telemetry on the away teams, but they hadn't checked in yet. Nerves were starting to fray on the bridge as they sat in hiding.

That's when an alarm went off at tactical. Ensign Yorn almost jumped out of his skin as he tapped up the readouts. "Captain, I have... Nothing? No... It's a Chariot... but it's not the same design. It looks like it's disguised as an asteroid and I think it's scavenging the debris of the ones we destroyed. I'm reading some pretty bad damage to it, as well. Life signs are... I think they're Merosian."

"Could it be the locals?" Enalia muttered. "Keep a close scan of them. I want to know where they came from and how they got here. I'd like to know who we're dealing with before we try to make contact."

Some time passed as the odd Chariot scavenged the debris fields that the USS Hera had made of the two pair of Hera's Chariots. Once they broke off and headed home, Enalia gave the order to follow them discreetly.

Keeping their distance, the Hera seemed to be completely invisible to the ship thanks to the stealth plating as they wound their way through the outer asteroid field towards a large planetoid. As they approached, a docking bay door opened long enough to let the strange Chariot inside before resealing.

"And there we have our answer." Enalia said as the scan data started coming in. "Two point seven million life signs... All Merosian. Looks like quite the colony. Open hailing frequencies, tightbeam at just the colony so we don't alert Hera's forces."

After a couple computer chirrups, there was a voice response. "Meroset Gamma Control, go ahead."

Enalia stood and straightened her uniform before replying. "I am Captain Enalia Telvan of the Federation Starship USS Hera. may I speak with the person in charge?"

There was a pregnant pause and the sound of shuffling and muffled whispering before another voice came on. "Standby." Then another pause. "Who did you say you were again?"

"My name is Captain Enalia Telvan of the starship USS Hera. We're with the United Federation of Planets." enalia spoke slower this time, just in case the UT was being difficult.

"Standby," was again the response, but this time, the comm line was cut.

Sitting back down, Enalia wasn't sure if this was a good sign or not.

This time the wait was a bit longer, but worth it as they hailed her. The signal came in with video feed this time so she had it put on the viewscreen.

"Greetings," Enalia started, smiling as she did so. "I am Captain Enalia Telvan of the..."

The young woman on the screen seemed a bit agitated, but otherwise collected. "You're Starfolk? We've been hoping you'd arrive soon. Sorry, I'm Administrator Tal'da'mira. I'm in charge of this colony, Meroset Gamma. There are still nine others, but your coming was foretold in our prophecies when the alien, Hera, claimed to be a goddess, tore down our civilization with her army, and took over our homeworld. We've been doing our best to survive on the colonies, but it hasn't been easy. We tried to face her, but she took our ships and upgraded them. We've been no match for her." She looked pleading as she spoke. "You will help us... Won't you?"

"Actually... We're already doing so." Enalia grinned brightly. This was looking to be a lot more convenient than she thought it would be. "Once we secure Hera and her temple, can you mobilize local security?"

The administrator grinned widely as she heard this news. She had been born to hear this news. "Thank you, Captain. For many, this will be a chance to set foot on their home for the first time in their lives. We owe this to you."