For I Have Loved the Stars Too Fondly To Be Fearful Of The Night

Posted on Fri Jan 11th, 2019 @ 9:21am by Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox & Commander Rita Paris

Mission: Section 31-B
Location: USS Hera, Deck 11, Holodeck 3
Timeline: 2396, following Starship Troopers

Sitting atop a half recreated, San Francisco mountain top, Commander Rita Paris and Lieutenant Mnhei'sahe "Melanie" Dox had paused for a brief rest after hiking up the rock face in the EVA armor they were wearing.

In the simulated sunshine, Paris's golden plated armor glistened like something out of mythology. By her side, Dox sat, looking over the artificial Vista in similar, though crimson colored, plates.

Looking back at Rita, Dox smiled sincerely and with a somewhat unfamiliar confidence in the moment. "So, what's next?"

"Target practice. Time for you top see what these things we've been lugging up a mountain can do." As the Commander stood, even in the power-assisted spacesuit she was wearing, Rita Paris' hand instinctively went to smooth out her skirt when she stood up. Reaching over her shoulder, she grasped the large heavy weapon and released it from her back. Readjusting her grip to hold the pistol grip, Paris showcased the weapon like a salesgirl at an arms convention.

"The TR-116C2 model C was designed for more efficient operation against Borg and similar targets, using a magazine filled with dense replicator matter to feed a micro-replication system. This creates a string of 2.2mm tritanium bullets and varied ammunition types as needed. The normal capacity of the replicator matter magazine is 80-120 rounds depending on settings. Normal ball point, hollow point, incendiary, delayed tracer rounds, and marker rounds are the most commonly programmed ammunition types."

"Only single fire and three round burst are enabled," Paris continued, reading off the sales pitch on her HUD. "The gyrostatic stabilization system can be unreliable during high rates of fire, but is fairly consistent in keeping all 3 rounds on target as long as the operator waits for it to resync between cycles. The main unit is powered by the same dual regenerative power supply used in the standard issue proton rifle. Along with this, it uses the targeting microcomputer from the same rifle. Because of the power supply, it still functions in environments that normal phasers are useless in, and has greater effectiveness against energy shielded targets. A transporter module and exographic targeting system can be attached for stealth sniper missions, but is not part of the normal loadout. Clearly these are not the normal loadout. Questions?"

Tugging with her left arm on the shoulder strap of her weapon, the stock and handle snapped free of her back and rotated quickly forward into her waiting right hand for a much quicker deploy then her first, fumbling attempt. "I think I have the basics. At least technically."

Holding the TR-116C2 horizontally in front of her, Dox pointed with her thumb to a small control panel just above the handle. "Is this the controls for switching firing modes? Annnd what kind of kickback should I be expecting? Based on the firing stance you took earlier, I'm guessing a lot."

"Nope. Recoilless, unless you are throwing out something big from the grenade launcher. The key thing to remember with all of these various ammunitions- which you can also voice program, so you just call out your desired ammo like Judge Dredd. The key is ammunition application. Okay, computer, give us some angry slobbering dog-like things from wherever, about a meter in length each, none too fast, ascending the hill below us. Safety protocols on." As the holodeck complied, a gloopy gathering of tentacled beings that looked like tumbleweeds made out of roiling tentacles and slime appeared on the slope.

Taking a mental note, the young part-Romulan pilot reminded herself to look up what a 'Judge Dredd' was later.

"Sulamids? Okay, fair." Rita actually identified and, apparently was not threatened by, the hentai monsters. "So, we want to stop their advance non-lethally or discourage them? Rubber bullets. This is the 'middle of the warzone rioting peasants option. Hollow points and incendiaries at the rock face would discourage them without harming them maybe, but tricky because of ricochets and shrapnel. Tracer rounds are really more so you can hit a moving target like aircraft. Marker rounds are to paint something to the sensors so that we can target for artillery support, which could be a runabout or the Hera herself. Ever seen the phasers from the ship strike the planet?"

Dox paused for a second at Paris' last question before answering. "I've... not from the Hera, but yeah, I've seen it. That could be an ideal situation, but I have to imagine it's not always a feasible option if we're, say, not outside." Bringing the subject back to the threat at hand, Dox brought the handle of her weapon up towards her chest, keeping the barrels facing down and away from herself, Commander Paris and the oncoming threat.

"Discouragement would be ideal. They're moving slow enough that we can certainly start with that and ramp up as needed to non lethal rounds and beyond only if absolutely necessary." Dox continued. "Rubber projectiles to start?"

"Fire at will. Burst fire or single shots, are you thinking?" Paris was still casually holding her own weapon pointing downrange one-handed as the moment.

Keeping her eyes on the advancing simulated Sulamids, Dox called out her answer so as to load the proper ammunition and firing setting as Paris had told her. "Rubber projectiles, single shots." Then the crimson armored officer glanced back at her gilded Commander to confirm her readiness, raised her weapon to aim and fired once.

The first shot hit the ground, low in front of the rapidly quickening creature. Dox squinted, reminding herself to not try and compensate for the recoil that wasn't there as she pulled the trigger a second time, hitting her intended target.

"All right Miss Dox, we're getting older and they're getting closer. Single shot is still as fast as you can pull the trigger, and rubber doesn't take up much density." With that said Paris raised her rifle and pumped three rounds in rapid succession into three of the tentacled horrors in what passed for center mass. "Nice and quick- mark your target, fire, move on, watch your perimeter. Smartly now, Lieutenant!"

"Aye." Dox replied without taking her attention off of the creatures, adjusted her firing settings and followed Paris' lead, opening fire on her targets with increasing success as they moved.

"Good, now we're making progress. Computer, please keep them coming in waves, increase the sulamid's movement by 50% and now, Lieutenant, we have a ridgeline here, let's use it. Move and fire, we're going to try flanking first, southwest heading 213, firing as we move," Paris called out the orders calmly, not barking them like a sergeant, but explaining to step up the exercise as if she were instructing flying lessons to a new pilot learning to bank.

As both officers were pilots, it was a mutually understood language and without really having to think about it, Dox began moving on the heading instructed, maintaining a consistent fire while monitoring her ammunition supply projected on her heads up display as the number very slowly reduced with each pull of the trigger.

Watching the situation develop, Paris was pleased- as with all things, Dox caught on quickly, and she was firing with more confidence now. “Firing line, take a knee and give me an autospray to discourage a charge. No recoil so just point and shoot, but get a feel for how far you can sweep with burst fire.”

The golden girl of the Hera stopped firing, so that the hotshot pilot would get a better feel for how the automatic fire option performed in the field. With rubber bullets they weren’t making a bloody mess of the sentient slimy tumbleweeds pursuing them, which would definitely be more conducive to the young Romulan learning how to handle the weapon without squeamishness.

"Aye," Dox said flatly, following the instructions now with the most basic of verbal responses, Dox was purely focused on the task at hand. Even before attending Starfleet academy, she was raised, trained and, to a degree, conditioned to respond to orders quickly and dispassionately. A learned skill that made her cool under pressure at the helm of a ship and was serving her well with a weapon in her hand.

Dropping quickly to one knee, Dox locked the butt of the weapon into place as Rita had showcased earlier, switched the setting to rapid fire, and began to lay down a sweeping line of fire. As Rita had pointed out, the rubber ammunition took up precious little matter from the weapons supply, but Dox kept a watchful eye on the readouts as she fired.

As for her targets, multiple impacts from the bursts definitely took their toll. Some rounds went to the second and third ranks and some shots were wasted, but the aerospace ace was definitely getting a feel for the spacing and use of autofire in this capacity. Watching for a moment, Paris patted the portly pilot on the shoulder.

The instant Dox felt the pat, she pulled her finger off of the trigger and pulled the butt of the weapon up while tilting the barrel down towards the rock face they both stood upon.

“Well done, Miss Dox. All right, would you like to get a feel for the rest of the ammunition?” the commander inquired, wanting to satisfy any curiosity her pupil might have in regard to the weapon. “Recoilless means that the hardest-hitting rounds feel the same coming out as rubber bullets, even the alloy ‘god rounds’ Lieutenant Commander sh’Zoarhi programmed into some of the models, which affect those specialty life forms that are immune to phaser fire and seem to penetrate the forcefields that some of them naturally generate, such as the Minotaurs and such.”

With the initial moment past, Dox let out a deep breath and felt a rush of tension release from her shoulders. "Uh... Yeah. Wow." Then she turned towards Paris. "Yes, please."

That earned a chuckle from the first officer. “Yeah, it’s pretty impressive, I’ll freely admit. Since you’re still on autoburst, try the tracer rounds option. Computer, please pause the sulamid horde and let’s change the time of day to a 23:00 night sky, clear weather, winds from the west at 25-30 kph. Give me some large drone targets moving at 40 KPH at a range of 30 meters” As she spoke the command, the computer obliged and the holodeck conditions changed to night time on Earth, stars filling the sky and a aerial drones blinking as they circled past them.

There was no need to order the junior officer to action, Paris felt, as she knew what to do.

In an instant, Dox felt almost fully in her element as this style of targeting and firing was remarkably similar to ship to ship combat, something she had been training for and enganging in, since she was 10.

Flatly, she said "Tracer rounds" to the weapons computer as the ammunition program adjusted. She brought the barrel up and began following the first drone with her eyes. No more than a second after raising the weapon, she squeezed the trigger lightly, firing just ahead of the drones flight path as a small cluster of flaring projectiles raced through the sky to hit their target.

Following suit, Dox began stepping to the side to match up with the motion of the drones as she squeezed off more rounds, pegging each drone in sequence, until all had been hit. Not every round hit it's target immediately, but she had not had to fire more than twice to hit them all.

“Very well done, Miss Dox!” the commander clapped slowly, an odd sound with her hands clad in the armored gauntlets made of high impact polymers. “Feel free to test any of the other rounds you’d like to test- fire at will.”

Allowing herself an ever so slightly smile, the normally anxious pilot was legitimately excited at the point. Calling up the full available menu of ammunition available and deciding to cycle through in order. Pausing, Dox tilted her head back slightly and spoke. "Need something to shoot at, I suppose."

"Computer, please set up a new sequence of firing targets. Standard targeting program options, varying speeds and numbers of targets, scattered attack formations. Begin on my mark, thank you." Dox took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then said flatly, "Mark."

Instantly, a group of very large Tiberian bats shimmered into existence to the left of Dox, scattering in the air. Raising her weapon away from Commander Paris, Dox called out to the weapon for the hollow point ammunition and began firing. Unlike the drones, the bats flew erraticly and we're much more difficult to predict or hit, but the rapid fire setting compensated and one by one the targets were taken down.

As each wave of targets was eliminated, a new grouping would appear. Some land based, running at Dox at high speed. Some flying. Others bounding off the rock face towards the Romulan officer. With each new attack, Dox called out a different option from the menu trying her best to choose the most ideal ammunition, each with varying degrees of success.

Midway through the assaults, Dox ejected the empty ammunition cartridge which fell to the ground lightly. As a Klingon Targ began cresting the edge of the rock face, running towards the duo, she reached around to grab the extra ammunition cartridge and tugged it free of the electromagnetic connection.

But forgetting that the ammunition was, in fact, the heaviest aspect of the weapon due to the density of the matter load it contained to replicate rounds, the overzealous young officer fumbled the cartridge, almost dropping it.

As the Targ got closer, Dox began to panic as she tried to get the ammo into place in time. As the cartridge clicked in, the simulated beast leapt inside the range of Dox's weapon, bowling her over to slobber and snarl atop her armored chest.

"Safety protocols are on, Lieutenant. He can't hurt you, just inconvenience you." Paris stepped in with a long stride and with practiced ease punted the targ off the crimson clad cosmonaut. Between Paris' runner's legs and the power assist combined with her 'took my time setting it up' placement, the Klingon pet/foodsource/predator flew a good two meters to northeast. Whereupon the golden armor roared with a human cry amplified and directed. The targ ran off with it's tail between it's legs. "Playing on the easy level. Those ammo packs are heavy- I fumbled it the first time I pulled it out of the weapon."

Offering a hand up, Paris called out to the night sky, "Computer, cease hostilities. I assume that was all self-explanatory, Miss Dox? The various round types and their practical application?"

"Thank you." Taking Rita's hand, Dox was pulled back to her feet, the only injuries to her pride. Standing stable again, the embarrassed officer pushed past her own tendency to beat herself up to simply answer the Commanders questions. "Yes, Commander, it was. It's extremely intuitive."

"Right? Even the safety is where you'd thing it would be and works the way you would expect it to. And the heads-up in these visors is a little disorienting at first, but once you get the hang of it they coordinate quite handily with the weapon. We are some dangerous explorers."

"Okay, let's review the grenade options, shall we?" the gold-clad commander hefted her weapon then shifted it to her left hand. Plucking the antique phaser from her hip by releasing the magnet holding it, the old school officer gestured with her her old school phaser. "I prefer to use my phaser for any actual fighting, because it is non-lethal and versatile if I need lethality to the landscape or lifeforms. But not everything is vulnerable to a phaser. Which is where the mobile artillery option becomes handy."

"The MACO modified TR-116-C2 carries an 18mm barrel that can be used for more specialized grenade ammunition. Standard preprogrammed munitions are rubber, micro-airburst, smoke grenade,tear gas, flash-bang and low yield plasma grenade. This reduces a magazine's rounds to 6-12 depending on the munition produced. But you heard me right- a stun round for something like a mugatu... or a plasma grenade." Paris looked solemn. "It's a court of last resort, but there is very little matter that can survive contact with plasma in a 4 meter radius burst."

"That's both... impressive and honestly... frightening." Dox replied, processing not just the technical information but the gravity of how Commander Paris presented it. "From the section reports that I've read from just the last couple of missions, it's... distressing how often this level of armament seems to be necessary."

The young Romulan pilot looked at the powerful weapon in her hands for a moment, thinking about it more deeply than before and sighed lightly. "Sorry... Please continue."

"No, no, you're on the right track, Lieutenant. We are... I am an explorer, Miss Dox. I joined Starfleet to seek out strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and to boldly go. This is the Hera, a Starfleet Intel ship that follows a woman whose penchant for trouble puts mine to shame. We're the ones called in when the explorers who came in peace are dead on the floor. They send us when the diplomatic delegation were all petrified. If it's bad, they send us."

"This is a hell of a weapon, and these armored shells are less spacesuit and more trooper armor." Snapping down the visor and sealing the systems, Paris spoke through the comms, lending her voice a slight mechanical quality. "I'm an explorer, but sometimes I'm called upon to be a soldier. Maybelline, load plasma grenade."

Following Paris' lead, Dox sealed the systems of her own suit in anticipation of what was next.

Turning to point at the face of the mountain, Rita Paris fired the grenade with a 'phoont!'. When it struck the mountainside it explodes into a coruscating sphere of plasma that generated a mild shockwave radiating outward from it. When the explosion subsided, there was now a hemispherical hollow in the mountain they could see clearly, the surface rough and pitted. Watching it smolder for a few seconds, Paris turned to lock eyes with Mnhei'sahe Dox.

"The key is that sometimes you have to shoot a few people to get people to listen to you. I'm a fan of a phaser on stun or a kick in the privates to convince someone to be reasonable. But in this universe... on these missions... that's not always an option. So you look for your opportunities to offer mercy when you can, and when you can't, you do what you have to do. It's called 'cowboy diplomacy'- peace negotiations work better when you've got a gun trained on the other party."

The concept of 'doing what you have to do' wasn't a new one to the young woman raised on a smuggling ship that ran back and forth across the Neutral Zone, but it never seemed to make the idea any easier to stomach. She held the weapon up, looking at it and taking in just how powerful it really was.

Then, her eyebrows knitted as her head tilted slightly. "Maybelline, Commander?"

"There are many like it, but this one is mine. Kidding- I didn't name the weapon. As sentimental as I am, I also have a tendency to lose things. This is not my phaser from 2268. This is not the armor I wore in the Battle of Hera's Planet. This is not a firearm I have held before- it's a hologram. Besides, I always thought it was creepy to name a gun." Paris rolled her eyes and slung the rifle over her shoulder, where is snapped onto her back with magnetic precision.

"I just prefer a safeword. I don't want to be discussing what I might do and have my ammunition cycling, so I added an attention-getter. The ship's computer responds if you just call out 'computer', but it responds based on conversational patterns- it doesn't ask you what you want just because you said the word. The weapon isn't that sophisticated, so a word I cannot imagine saying on a battlefield other than intentionally was Maybelline," Parish shrugged a bit sheepishly. "An ancient cosmetics brand of my people that's still around, and I'm definitely not giving beauty tips on the battlefield. I don't have to tell it to load I suppose, but I prefer for my orders to be orders, not just nouns."

"Hmm, that makes sense. Thanks." Dox replied with a light smile. She had gotten into the habit of making mental notes whenever her shipmates dropped names or references that went over her head to look them up later. It seemed to work better for the Romulan girl raised in space, who never even tried to absorb Earth's pop culture, rather then constantly having to ask and feel like an idiot for not knowing what flying monkeys or Judge Dredd were. But in the case of 'Maybeline', asking seemed prudent at the moment.

Taking note of Paris having stowed her weapon, Dox raised hers in a position, barrel up and away, to either be used or stowed itself. "Are we back on the move, Commander?"

"Well, we blew the time limit on getting up the mountain in an hour a while back, but giving you the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the TR-116C2 was much more important. Besides, in the lower climb you showed you had the coordination with the suit down. You want to switch back to daytime and get up there?" Paris chucked a thumb up toward the mountaintop, a shadow barely visible in the night-time conditions. "Even in these power assisted armor suits, it would be a challenge with no climbing gear."

Looking up at the faint shadow of a mountain, Dox tilted her head slightly. "I'm not against a little more challenge." She replied, calling up the HUD displays various menus and using the scanning equipment to overlay a 3-D wireframe of the mountain into her visor. "With all the data this helmet is gathering, what else do we have that could compensate for the lack of light? It's not like we would be able to just turn the sun back on in an actual mission."

“Check your visor… we have the scanning capabilities of a tricorder built into these suits, and imaging resources that make us more sharp-eyed in the dark than we are in broad daylight with the naked eye. We can certainly accommodate a night-time mountain climb. Plus I did schedule you for training for the whole day. So… Per aspera ad astra, Mnhei'sahe Dox?”

Pausing with a quirky tilt to her head, Dox froze on the Latin phrase. "Uh... I need to brush up on my Latin." The crimson clad young Lieutenant scrunched her face as she thought.

"Something... 'to the starts with... difficulty'?" She turned back towards Rita Paris, asking. "If that's even kind of close, then yes." She smiled.

“Starfleet Academy motto, Miss Dox, and you are quite correct in your translation,” Paris explained, which might have been a rebuke, but not in the tone in which she delivered the statement. The feisty first officer knew Dox hadn’t had the best Academy experience, and lacked the pride in the institution that Rita carried. Something Rita Paris had resolved to work on as part of her long-term plan, because when she arrived at her own moment in time to instruct, she’d be damned if she would like a kid like Melanie Dox walk out with an education marred by bullying and spite. As she couldn’t change the past, as always, Rita focused on the present as she built toward the future.

“C’mon…” Paris looked up to the mountaintop and set her jaw, then turned back to Dox with a smile. “As the lady said, ‘I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night’. Let’s climb up so we can get a good view, and as a reward, we can enjoy the view of the stars, as seen from where we all started this trek through the stars.”