Topic: Endeavour #1  (Read 11880 times)

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Offline Captain Sharp

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Endeavour #1
« on: January 02, 2013, 06:50:46 pm »
As promised, more Trek. This takes place about 4 years after Cleo #3. Still taking liberties with canon (ie: red shirts existing about 5 or 6 years too early, etc...) and Stardates are up to whomever's guess (though I'm sure Andy has a formula or can link me one  :angel: ).

I could babble on and give a bigger preview, but...blah.

Read and enjoy. Typos and bad grammar and all.


‘The Lost’

Chapter One
2260 AD


Captain’s Log, Stardate: 1038.6

USS Endeavour has reached the Alpha Majoris Star Cluster. Tensions along the Klingon border remain low and it seems as if our projected mission to explore the Beta Ursae sectors might proceed without interruption for some time.
Or influx of new officers from Starbase 12 are settling in and our new equipment is checking out. Our new science officer has convinced me to alter our heading a few degrees to explore her theory about the loss of the USS Trafalgar, the first starship to venture into this sector.


Captain Sharp stood up at the head of the briefing room to welcome the new science officer as she stepped through the door. The young lieutenant commander was half a head shorter than the six-foot-one captain. Her hair was long and dark, worn just past her shoulders with half its mass in a beehive at the back. She had sparkling brown eyes.

“Lieutenant Commander Andreavich, welcome to the crew.” Sharp said to her. He’d met her when she’d come aboard, of course, but she’d been so busy setting astrological equipment the last three shifts that few had seen more than a glimpse of her. He made an expansive gesture to the now standing body of ship’s personnel around the table.

A tall and slim man was first to step forth to shake her hand. He wore a beard that, combined with rather long hair, made him look like a modern image of Jesus. The captain introduced him.

“This is our exec, Commander Daniel Jeremy. You’ll mostly see him at the helm.”

“Hey.” The XO greeted her.

Sharp gestured to the next in line down the table, a short and broad shouldered Tellarite with light gray fur. “That’s Lieutenant Commander Bornet, chief engineer. We call him Engines.”

“Not terribly original, I know.” The Tellarite mumbled. He didn’t shake her hand.

Beside Bornet was an Andorian male of average height and good build. He had stern eyes and a bald shaved pate, that made his blue skin and antennae all the more prominent against his red duty tunic.

“That’s our gunnery officer and navigator, Lieutenant Thylis Sehr. He doesn’t speak much unless he has to.”

Thylis grinned like a wolf before giving her hand a quick shake and sitting down. Sharp pointed to the next man. He was an impressively large human specimen, with muscles so pronounced the science officer wondered if he’d taken steroids at some time in his life. His broad face was set with an eternally jovial expression.

“The big man there is Lieutenant Alfred Jackson, our chief of security.”

“I don’t suppose a man that big even needs a phaser.” Andreavich commented. Her voice was a strong one, barely accented with a Slavic-sounding accent.

“His presence generally calms things down before the need for phasers.” Sharp agreed. He pointed to the slight, female Vulcan opposite the security chief.

“You’ve already met Lieutenant Lania, our communications officer.”

Both ladies nodded. Finally, the introductions came to the officer sitting closest to the computer station. Wearing a contrasting blue tunic, the green skinned alien smiled and leaned forth to shake the science officer’s hand.

“That would be Doctor Ken of Axanar. We call him Kenny. He wears the hat of ship’s chief medical officer.”

‘Kenny’ smiled even bigger and nodded. The captain motioned to a seat opposite of the executive officer and they all retook their places. The captain looked about at all of them.

“You’ll have noted that we have changed heading. Our new science officer will give us our mission briefing and also tell us why.”

“Alpha Majoris 613,” The Lieutenant Commander began her briefing, centering an image of the local star chart on the viewer in the table’s center. Each of the division officers glued their eyes to the screen. “The first solar body in the cluster, roughly 20.73 light years from the Talos star group. This system possesses a G Type, Main Sequence Star with seven bodies in the typical orbital patterns. Long-range scans suggest one possible Class M world. We will be the first ship to probe this area since the Enterprise explored the Talos group seven years ago.”

Andreavich paused for a moment. All about the angled table, the crew was each likely pondering what Captain Pike could have encountered on Talos to compel him to declare the system off-limits. What was more, Starfleet had emplaced the most severe penalty for breaching that quarantine.

“The year previous to Enterprise’s mission to Talos, USS Trafalgar entered this sector on a standard astrometric mapping mission.” The science officer put up an image of the Trafalgar, a starship a generation older than their own Constitution-Class ship. “Trafalgar managed to map three systems in the main cluster and sent back regular reports to Command. Nothing seemed untoward and no problems were expected. Two weeks into her mission, however, the Trafalgar stopped reporting in. A scout ship was sent to search for her, but no contact was ever made along her expected heading. She was declared missing and presumed destroyed six months later.”

Captain Sharp drew his officer’s attention.

“And then there was her signal?”

Andreavich nodded.

“At about the same time the Trafalgar went missing, Starbase 12 picked up signal scatter on its wide-angle subspace array. It took Starfleet more than five years to realize that this signal anomaly was an attempt at a directed radio signal. The transmission bled across half the spectrum and only when a young and impressive comm officer began piecing it together on her own time did it become clear that it was a starship’s distress call.”

Andreavich nodded to the communications officer. Lieutenant Lania tapped a waiting key and played them a static-filled, garbled transmission.

“…--algar…” What came next for a long while was unintelligible garble and waves of static, then the familiar note of the Red Alert siren. “Encountered a--…--…field. We are…--…able to escap--… To any ship…”

Commander Andreavich looked at each of her fellow officers as the recording ended. Captain Sharp looked unmoved, but expectant. The ship’s XO frowned and sat with his arms crossed over his slim chest. The engineer grumbled and scratched the fur of his left cheek. None of them were looking forward to hunting for the missing ship, lest they themselves run afoul of whatever took her down.

Sharp spoke again.

“When Starfleet catalogued the distress signal three years ago, they listed it as coming from an area of space corresponding to the Trafalgar’s last known course of 131 mark 27 Galactic. However, Miss Andreavich has theorized that their conclusions were wrong. Why is that, science officer?”

“I don’t think the officer in charge even thought to check it out, Captain. But when I checked the recorded HF signal tapes, the strength values didn’t correspond to a signal that would have been picked up along that vector. My own research points to a point of origin closer to the system ahead.”

The captain gave a glance to his officers.

“Which is why we’ve altered course. I intend that we will search the system ahead and the surrounding area as we do our general survey. We’ll conduct ourselves as though on a search and rescue mission. If we can find the Trafalgar, we may even find survivors.”

“I can’t see a ship’s crew surviving eight years without putting down on a planet somewhere.” Commander Jeremy commented.

“I agree. But stranger things have happened. We won’t know until we get there. We will proceed with caution. Keep alert for spatial anomalies and unidentified contacts. I don’t want whatever got the Trafalgar to get us too.”

“And if we find nothing?” Asked the gunnery officer.

“Then we conduct a standard general survey of the starsystem and go on with our mission.”

This brought business-like nods from all gathered. Sharp stood up once more and Andreavich shut down the central viewer.

“Dismissed, people.”

As the officers filed out of the compartment, the captain signaled for his science officer to remain. When the last man filed out and the hatch closed, he looked at her seriously.

“I believe in diligent officers, Miss Andreavich, but I think you had a motive in researching all of this.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Mind telling me what that was?”

The young woman swallowed. She wondered how he’d respond to what she was about to tell him.

“My brother served aboard the Trafalgar, sir. I’m hoping we can find him…or at least his ship.”

Sharp’s face lit with realization. His wide eyes were understanding.

“I see, Commander. You realize that there isn’t much chance of even finding that ship.”

“Yes, Captain. But I owe it to him to try.”

“Alright, I see. Carry on then, Commander. I’ll see you on the bridge.”
"Jayne?"

"Yeah?"

"You wanna tell me why there's a statue of you here lookin' like I owe him something?"

"Wishin' I could, Captain. "

Offline Lieutenant_Q

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Re: Endeavour #1
« Reply #1 on: January 02, 2013, 07:00:53 pm »
hmm... change up of the crew, and I see they finally got the Connie they were hoping for.  :)

I guess the poor Cleo fell apart after the Tellarite bonding agent tore it open? ;)  Silly Tellarites... procedures are there for a reason..
"Your mighty GDI forces have been emasculated, and you yourself are a killer of children.  Now of course it's not true.  But the world only believes what the media tells them to believe.  And I tell the media what to believe, its really quite simple." - Kane (Joe Kucan) Command & Conquer Tiberium Dawn (1995)

Offline Grim Reaper

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Re: Endeavour #1
« Reply #2 on: January 03, 2013, 02:03:05 am »
Nice, a mystery already! I wonder what you came up with....
Snickers@DND: If there is one straight answer in that bent little head of yours, you'd better start spillin' it pretty damn quick, or I'm gonna take a large, blunt object, roughly the size of Kallae AND his hat and shove it lengthwise up a crevice of your being so seldomly cleaned that even the denizens of the nine hells would not touch it with a 10-feet rusty pole

Offline Captain Sharp

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Re: Endeavour #1
« Reply #3 on: January 05, 2013, 04:18:54 pm »
hmm... change up of the crew, and I see they finally got the Connie they were hoping for.  :)

I guess the poor Cleo fell apart after the Tellarite bonding agent tore it open? ;)  Silly Tellarites... procedures are there for a reason..

Yup, they got 'em a Connie. Endeavour was my ship from the old RPGs me and Larry used to play. So Sharp always eventually gets his.

I plan to do more with the Cleo in the future, when the urge hits me. Said urges are unpredictable. Some of the Cleo's final story is told in various Endeavour stories, which y'all will see as they're posted.

And yes sir, Grim, we got ourselves a mystery. I wanted to start this series much like TOS started. The ship isn't totally new, though far newer than the Cleo, and the crew isn't TNG-new to one another. This first story takes place after the ship has been out there for a short while already, with a new science officer rounding out her crew. It helped with not having to introduce everyone more than I did in the briefing. Hope it didn't seem jarring, after reading the Cleo series.

Anyway, how bout some more?

Chapter Two


“Slowing to impulse, Captain.”

“Ahead one-quarter, Number One.” Captain Sharp responded. He had been looking over his comm officer’s shoulder as she monitored the sector’s communications traffic. “Pre-approach scan, science officer. Let’s do this by the numbers.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.” Commander Andreavich brought up her sensor arrays and set to work. The ship had come out of warp speed well outside of the star system so that they could cautiously scan every bit of it as they approached. “Designating Section One, beginning scan.”

The captain left Miss Lania to her duties and stepped down to his command chair. As he leaned back into the seat’s high back, the ship’s new senior yeoman appeared with coffee and the daily division report.

Sharp paused to look at the new face. She was tall, leggy and stunning. Her long blonde hair was tied up in an elaborate hive with several locks left loose for show. She had curves that threatened to tear her duty dress and a smile that said she knew it. The captain knew she was older than the typical yeoman, but she hardly showed it. There was something familiar about her too.

“Name, yeoman?”

“Senior Chief Yeoman Kathy Leison, sir.”

“Have I seen you somewhere before?”

“Maybe, sir. I was a Budweiser model before joining Starfleet.”

Several of the male hands turned around in their seats to stare.

“That will be all, gentlemen.” Sharp corrected them. He gave the report a look, signed it and handed it back. “Thank you, Yeoman.”

The yeoman smiled and left the bridge. Sharp’s officers went back to their duties quickly, though perhaps begrudgingly so.

“Negative readings Section One. Scanning Section Two.” Andreavich called out.

Chief Engineer Bornet clomped onto the bridge and made directly for the command chair’s side. He trusted his men well enough not to have to check over the bridge panel each time he came to the command center.

“Have we found the thing that’s going to kill us yet?”

Sharp didn’t spare the engineer a glance.

“Not yet, Engines.”

“Too bad. I was hoping we’d have already found it so I could start figuring out how to fix it. I might want to turn in early tonight.”

“Engineer, you make it sound like we blindly stumble around looking for pitfalls to jump into.”

“Don’t we?”

Sharp let the jibe hang on empty air. As captain, he limited his banter with the officers. This never deterred the chief, though.

“Section Two, still negative. Scanning Section Three.” The science officer chimed again.

At navigations, Lieutenant Sehr’s antennae shot up stiffly.
 
“Energy readings, Captain!”

“Where away, Mister Sehr?”

“Directly ahead, 001 mark 003. I’m fixing the nav array on it.”

“Deflectors only show a planetary body up ahead,” The XO followed. “Distance two point three AU’s.”

“I have it now.” Commander Andreavich reported. “Subspace reading, origin indeterminate. A widely dispersed field of influence… Captain, our sensors are having difficulty detailing what kind of subspace energy this is.”

“Our sensor emissions are returning at one-half strength.” Sehr added.

“What effect is this energy reading having on the area around it?” Asked Sharp.

“There is a definite energy bleed from the planet’s upper atmosphere,” the science officer replied. “No effect on light rays or local radiation.”

“Could this have had something to do with the Trafalgar?”

Bornet answered before any of the other officers could.

“It would have definitely got their attention…just like us.”

His last words hung on the air for a bit. Sharp took his meaning.

“Prepare a probe. We’ll launch it into the anomaly from here. Helmsman, all stop.”

“All stop, aye, sir.”

“Probe ready, sir.” Sehr said.

“Launch probe.”

As the probe fired off, rattling the ship just a bit, Sharp turned his chair toward the science station.

“Miss Andreavich, scan the area around the anomaly for debris, disaster markers and life pods.”

“Scanning now.”

“The subspace reading is fluctuating, Captain.” The gunnery officer said suddenly. His voice was elevated, betraying anxiety. “I think the thing’s reacting to our probe.”

“Reacting, Mister Sehr?”

“The field strength is increasing in waves, the closer the probe gets.”

The exec spoke next.

“Probe making contact with—“

Endeavour shook gently, side to side. Sharp glanced about with controlled alarm. “That was a gravity shift.”

“Confirmed, Captain. Now getting gravity readings from the anomaly.”

“Yup…” Bornet growled, turning to head for the engine console aft.

“Helm, back us off from that thing. Nice and smooth.”

“Engines back one-third, aye.” Jeremy responded. The ship responded instantly.
 
“Do we have a visual on the anomaly?”

Sehr answered his captain by resetting the viewer to an image of the gas giant spinning slowly before them. The planet spun slowly on it tilted axis, a swirl of brown and white storms marking it’s countenance. In polar orbit, a thin white haze marred its tranquil image.

“Magnify.”

The white-ish swirl became a close-up, hazy soup in the viewer’s center. And it was growing. Thin tendrils seemed to be reaching out for the retreating Endeavour, despite her distance.

“Anything from the probe, Mister Sehr?”

“Negative, Captain. Contact severed.”

“Is that thing closing with us?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All back full.”

Commander Jeremy tapped in the throttle commands. Aft of the bridge, the engines roared back to life. “All back full, aye, aye, sir!”

“Reaction from the cloud is growing stronger!” Came from the science officer. “Distance closing!”

Sharp unconsciously gripped the armrests of his command chair. He sat stiffly, but did not otherwise betray his anxiety. “Speed?”

“Passing three-quarter impulse power. Still increasing.”

“Cloud closing to three hundred million kilometers. Its speed is increasing.” Sehr added.

Something told Captain Sharp that he didn’t want this thing contacting his vessel. He sat forth in the conn.

“Helm, bring us about. Increase to warp two!”

Jeremy didn’t respond. His hands flew over the console and the ship spun about. The warp drive moaned to life and the image on the fore viewer began to mottle with the formation of an active warp field.

“No, wait!”

That last came from engineer Bornet. And it came too late to be of any use. Endeavour shuddered violently and heaved to one side. Lights failed across the bridge, leaving only the emergency flashers and the alert siren blaring to the company of frightened screams of the officers.
"Jayne?"

"Yeah?"

"You wanna tell me why there's a statue of you here lookin' like I owe him something?"

"Wishin' I could, Captain. "

Offline Grim Reaper

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Re: Endeavour #1
« Reply #4 on: January 08, 2013, 02:04:31 am »
An octopus planet? WTF? And why did engines try to stop going to warp? GIMME MORE Guv!
Snickers@DND: If there is one straight answer in that bent little head of yours, you'd better start spillin' it pretty damn quick, or I'm gonna take a large, blunt object, roughly the size of Kallae AND his hat and shove it lengthwise up a crevice of your being so seldomly cleaned that even the denizens of the nine hells would not touch it with a 10-feet rusty pole

Offline Captain Sharp

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Re: Endeavour #1
« Reply #5 on: January 08, 2013, 09:23:18 pm »
GIMME MORE Guv!

And so I shall!

Just to mess with Larry and give him heartburn, I will now post this story at an accellerated rate. He is co-authoring #6 with me, and has been stalled on it for more than a year, much as Larries often do. I've even finished #7 and started on #8 in the meantime. Will Larry and Rog be able to finish #6, or will we crash and burn?

Let's find out.

Chapter Three


Captain Sharp pushed himself out of the command chair and used it to steady himself as he headed for the railing next to the engineering station. There, Engineer Bornet was restoring main functions. It took him but a few seconds to get the bridge lighting back up.

“Report, engineer.”

“Some kind of subspace backlash. Accompanied by a hefty gravity wave. It knocked out a few fuses. Nothing major. Got some power drain, but we’re above 98%. Engines online and nominal.”

Sharp looked then to the communications station.

“Lania, injuries.”

“Sickbay reports only a few falls among their own staff.” The Vulcan reported. “No one has reported to sickbay for treatment from any other department.”

The captain’s eyes went to Commander Andreavich next.

“Science officer, what just happened?”

Andreavich shook her head. She was still going over her instruments, comparing readings and running scans. “I’m not sure, Captain. The anomaly seemed to draw energy from our warp field as we engaged. The field encompassed us…and now I’m getting null readings on most of my—“

“Captain!”

With Commander Jeremy’s sharp exclamation, the captain looked his way. He instantly saw the same thing his XO and helmsman saw. The main viewer was a sea of white. The same hazy white field that had comprised the anomaly above the gas giant.

“Science officer, report!”

Andreavich shook her head once more.

“I don’t know, Captain. Most of our sensor emissions aren’t making it back to their receptors. It’s like we’re surrounded by a dampening field of incredible strength.”

Bornet turned from his own station.

“I second that, Captain. It’s affecting my systems too. We have a definite energy drain here. Main power reserves have faded a full percent since we encountered that field.”

“Can you stabilize energy reserves?”

“For a while, Captain. I think it’s affecting antimatter stability, too.”

The proximity alarm atop the flight control console began to go off, it’s light flashing in time with its ‘boop’ing call. Lieutenant Sehr gave the captain a look.

“Deflectors have a faint contact with an object, sir. Directly ahead.”

Sharp stepped up to resume his command chair.

“Shields?”

Sehr tapped in the commands.

“Shields up, sir. I’m reading sixty percent capability.”

“Visual on object?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Any idea on the size of this field?”

It was impossible to gauge the size of the area that enveloped Endeavour by sight alone. It seemed indefinite, going on perhaps forever.

“Negative, Captain.” Sehr answered.

Sharp glanced back to the comm officer.

“Lieutenant Lania, are we still in contact with the nearest Starfleet repeater station?”

“Negative, Captain. I am no longer in contact with any subspace transmitter.”

“Attempt to pierce the field with an emergency signal. Inform Starfleet of our situation.”

“Aye, Captain. However, I do not believe our signal will exit this field.”

“Do it anyway, Lieutenant. Science officer, report.”

Commander Andreavich looked back with frustration on her smooth face. “This field acts exactly like a cohesive dampening field. I have used every single high-density scanner aboard to analyze its properties, but every single energy transmission from us is simply swallowed up. I’ve targeted an array in the saucer section with a scanner mounted in the stardrive to get an accurate reading on signal degradation. It is extreme. I don’t believe our sensor emissions survive beyond seventy thousand kilometers of the ship. It’s doubtful our communications get much further than one million. Whatever this field is, it drinks most forms of energy like a sponge.”

“Captain,” called Mister Jeremy, “Deflector contact on screen now.”

All hands looked forth as the viewer centered on a solid object before them. The image magnified and enhanced into a craft with a small saucer and a large bridge section, with its engineering hull built down the centerline of the main hull. At the front of the saucer/engine hull stood its deflector dish and small warp drive nacelles flanked its slim stardrive section.

They had just found the USS Trafalgar.

“Trafalgar!” Exclaimed Commander Andreavich. She almost stood up from the science console, her hands gripping her slim skirt.

“Confirmed,” Sehr called off, studying his readings with intent. “USS Trafalgar, NCC-1044. I detect no obvious signs of damage. No energy readings. No active subspace fields that we can detect. No heat signatures.”

“No lights on, either.” Sharp added as he looked the sleek looking craft over. The ship looked completely dead.
 
Commander Andreavich forced herself to calm down. She smoothed out her dress and sat back fully in her seat. With jerky movements, she got her hands moving about her instruments.

“We may not be picking up emissions from them because of the nullification field, Captain. I will try to determine another means of scanning that ship.”

“Well, now we know what happened to them!” Mister Bornet called out in mock-merriment. “We can all rest easy tonight!”

“Engineer, I’d appreciate your next statement being something useful.” The Captain shot back at him without looking. “Miss Lania, try to hail them.”

“Aye, Captain.” The comm station chimed with the sound of an open subspace line. “USS Trafalgar, this is the USS Endeavour, please respond.”

The XO glanced to his partner at navigations.

“Thylis, center one of your viewers on their windows. Watch for any sign of movement.”

“Aye, sir.”

“USS Trafalgar, this is USS Endeavour, please respond, over.”

“Science, are we getting any passive readings from this cloud that we’re in,” the captain asked. “It’s got to be putting out something we can register.”

The commander turned her seat about to thoroughly look over her passive array. “I have a steady subspace field modulation reading. I may be able to build a field model from its input.”

“Start working on that. Mister Bornet, do you have a theory about what will happen when we fire up the engines.”

“I think this thing’ll eat whatever we put into it. We fire up the warp drive and we’re going to waste a bunch of energy. There’s not enough real space out there for the coils to grab onto anyway.”

“What about the impulse drive?”

“Not sure what affect they’ll have.”

Sharp tried to look centered and composed as he focussed on the viewer. “Helm, plot us an escape course out of here in whatever direction you think best. Ahead full impulse power.”

“Ahead full, aye, aye, sir.”

Commander Jeremy manually fed input to the flight controls before him and keyed up the throttle. The drives activated, and immediately the Trafalgar seemed to spin down and away from the Endeavour. Jeremy tensed and Sehr looked at him with alarm. The ship’s gravity field shifted, making the crew lean to the right.

“Impulse thrust vectoring is unstable, Captain! I have no helm control!”

“Fight it, Mister Jeremy! Get us out of here!”

The Trafalgar passed by erratically, closer this time. The XO fought his controls, shoulders tightening up from the strain. Mister Sehr plied his own hands about his controls in an attempt to assist.
 
Trafalgar passed by again, this time in the opposite direction, far closer than before.

“I have no control, Captain!” Jeremy shouted out again. “This thing is sucking us closer to the Trafalgar!”

“All stop, helm!”

Bringing the ship to a halt was no easy task either. It took both the pilots to slow the huge ship and steady her stance. The engines groaned with the effort, then finally quieted entirely.

“That took a lot out of us, Captain.” Said the chief engineer then. “Power reserves dipped down to 89% during that little display. I’m fighting it with the main reactor, but I’m not going to be able to keep it up forever. Our antimatter is neutralizing.”

Sharp snapped a look at his engineer. Bornet didn’t want to look his commander in the eye, and kept his own face pointed at his readouts. His screens were filled with tiny, flashing warning lights.

“Captain, no response from the Trafalgar on any frequency. We are well within science officer Andreavich’s estimate of communications range.”

The science officer looked a bit stricken when she glanced at the communications chief. Sharp caught the look and noted that Andreavich tied to cover it up quickly by burying herself back in her work.

“We need answers, people.” He said to them all. “Engineer Bornet, work with Miss Andreavich on that field model and try to figure us a way out of here. Mister Sehr, work on the shields and see if you can get us some more protection. Number One, get me a figure on the power drain and rate of antimatter nullification. We need to know how much time we’re dealing with. Let’s figure this out, people.”



With time of the essence, Commanders Andreavich and Bornet moved their research to the advanced field analysis computers in engineering. They had mapped the field’s readings as well as the few operable sensors on the bridge had been able and now came the task of extrapolating a useful model from the information.

“I think it’s an inverted field that loops back on itself across this spectrum.”

Bornet glowered as he watched the human woman work the digital image to match her theory. “I don’t know about all that. If it functioned like that, it wouldn’t be able to hold us here. There’s a gravimetric component we’re missing.”

“We’re not detecting a gravity field.”

“We’re not detecting a lot of things. The only sensors we have going are the standard passive ones. I don’t think the graviton detector would work in this field.”

The sounds of boots clomping up the metal stair to the engineering office drew both their attention. At the threshold of the control office, Assistant Engineer Imura halted with a data pad in her hand. She had doffed her radiation suit’s top and tied it about her waist to let a sweat soaked tank show.

“What is it, Lieutenant?” Bornet growled her way.

“I have the antimatter degeneration figures the XO wanted. I thought you might want to hear ‘em too.”

“And?”

“Deactivation rate is 9.7, sir.”

“Damn.” Bornet looked down to the computer screen before them, totally somber. “Carry on, Kami. Get those figures to the XO.”

“Aye, sir.”

The science officer watched the Japanese officer go, then looked to the engineer with worry. “What does that mean, chief?”

“It means we need to hurry. We have a matter of hours.” Bornet squinted, tapping keys. “I want to try a simulation, assuming a gravity field in play. Let’s see what we can come up with.”
"Jayne?"

"Yeah?"

"You wanna tell me why there's a statue of you here lookin' like I owe him something?"

"Wishin' I could, Captain. "

Offline Grim Reaper

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Re: Endeavour #1
« Reply #6 on: January 09, 2013, 01:38:48 am »
What is it? A natural phenomena or an alien device? And I'd try to see if I could find anything on the Trafalgar to see if they had more intel. Though you would need some kind of battery...

Anyways, as always a very entertaining read, lots of dialogue with enough small details that allows for painting a picture in your head. And Larry is a great guy, but we need to stop him from carousing with his crew and drinking that much Blood Wine so he writes more ;)
Snickers@DND: If there is one straight answer in that bent little head of yours, you'd better start spillin' it pretty damn quick, or I'm gonna take a large, blunt object, roughly the size of Kallae AND his hat and shove it lengthwise up a crevice of your being so seldomly cleaned that even the denizens of the nine hells would not touch it with a 10-feet rusty pole

Offline Commander La'ra

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Re: Endeavour #1
« Reply #7 on: January 09, 2013, 10:37:25 pm »
Larry and give him heartburn, I will now post this story at an accellerated rate.

Damn you!
"Dialogue from a play, Hamlet to Horatio: 'There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' Dialogue from a play written long before men took to the sky. There are more things in heaven and earth, and in the sky, than perhaps can be dreamt of. And somewhere in between heaven, the sky, the earth, lies the Twilight Zone."
                                                                 ---------Rod Serling, The Last Flight

Offline Captain Sharp

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Re: Endeavour #1
« Reply #8 on: January 25, 2013, 06:37:08 pm »
Whoops! Totally forgot about my accelerated rate of posting...

My bad!


Chapter Four


Captain Sharp played the serene commanding officer, his hands steepled before him as his officers laid out the specifics on the briefing table’s tri-screen viewer.

“We think there’s a gravity mechanic in effect here.” The science officer was saying as she displayed the field model. On the trio of screens, a tiny U.S.S. Endeavour stood before a hazy cloud and the image of a planet. “It matches what we’ve seen when we engage the engines and would also explain why the cloud reacted so drastically when we engaged the warp drive.”

Hazy lines on the screens reached out from the planet’s gravity field and latched onto the warp field of the Endeavour as she tried to shoot away to safety.

“You’re model suggests that we might have made it away had we not engaged the warp engines.” He commented.

“There’s no way we could have known that, Captain.” Andreavich replied. “It may have lost its hold on us before contact or it may have drawn from us what energy it needed to reach us anyway. Our model isn’t likely 100% accurate.”

“Is it accurate enough to get us out of this?” Asked the exec. His arms were crossed and his expression doubtful.

Bornet looked resolute.

“It’s accurate in every way that matters, Number One. And even better, it suggests a way out.”

“Oh?”

The engineer tapped a waiting key on his own small interface. It showed the anomaly field oscillating away, with Endeavour trapped within. A flashing dot appeared in the center of the field and exploded. The energy pattern created by the detonation disrupted the field patterns of the cloud long enough for the Endeavour to engage her impulse drive and fly out.

“I believe that an explosion of eighty-eight megatons will be sufficient to disrupt the field for twelve seconds, long enough for us to engage full impulse and fly ourselves to safety.”

“Eighty-eight megatons.” Sharp looked back to the engineer doubtfully. “The maximum yield of a photon torpedo is nowhere near that, engineer. How do we reach that in a single blast?”

Bornet looked grim.

“Well, that’s the trick. Even our torpedoes would be ineffective, even if we somehow rigged all of them together and detonated them all at once. Explosions in space dissipate too quickly in vacuum to create the disruption we need. The photonic burst they create isn’t going to matter either, since that doesn’t affect gravity fields. What we need is a matter-packed vessel in which to set off the explosion. Something with enough material to make up for the vacuum of space.”

Commander Andreavich looked sick.

“What we need is a ship.”

Captain Sharp let his hands descend to the tabletop as he looked at her. “The Trafalgar.”

“Yes, sir. If she retains at least half her fuel load, she’ll do.”

“But if her antimatter’s deactivated…” Doctor Ken said, his voice trailing off as though he’d just picked out a new problem.

The XO smiled at the CMO.

“Even deactivated, it’s still condensed deuterium. Hardcore hydrogen.”

“Oh.” Doctor Kenny looked significantly relieved. “Yeah, okay. I knew that.”

“What time frame are we looking at here, Number One?”

The XO replaced the graphics on the tri-viewer with a simple fuel consumption figure. “With the power drain and the rate our antimatter is deactivating, we have six hours, seventeen minutes till we lose the main engines. With that, we lose 94% shield capacity, which will accelerate the drain. Ten hours later, the reserves will be depleted and we lose life support. Then it’s just a matter of how long the emergency systems hold out.”

“So, we have just over six hour to break free of here. Our options seem clear.” The captain looked at each of his officers. They looked back to him, resolute and trusting. “We’ll have to destroy the Trafalgar to break free from here. Let’s get back to the bridge.”

As the officers filed out the hatch, Commander Andreavich made sure she got to hold up the captain. Sharp had been expecting it.

“Captain, can’t we send a search party over to the Trafalgar? There could still be—“

“Science officer, they had the same six hour or less deadline we have now. It’s been eight years since then. Do you think there’s any chance there’s a living being on that ship?”

“They could have rigged up some kind of oxygen regenerator from their chemical stores—“

“How long has any human survived without gravity? Without power, a gravity field breaks down after twenty-seven hours. I’m sorry, Commander, but there’s no way.”

Two tears broke lose of the science officer’s big brown eyes. She blinked them away, looked to the deck in sorrow. She knew all these answers for herself. Emotion had a way of shielding a person from blatant facts, though.
Jon Sharp touched the woman’s small shoulder and looked meaningfully into her eyes. She shared the look for a time, but couldn’t maintain eye contact without tears welling up.

“Come on, science officer. We have a crew to save. Your brother’s going to make a final sacrifice for us.”

Andreavich chewed her lip as she followed her commander out into the corridor. From some other CO, that last comment might have sounded callous or brazenly stupid. From Sharp, it seemed to give her brother’s death a deeper meaning.

“Who is your brother?” He asked as they made for the turbolift.

“Lieutenant Commander Marcus Andreavich, Chief Engineer aboard Trafalgar.”

“Did he keep track of your Starfleet career?”

“He convinced me to join, sir.”

“I’ll bet he was proud.”

“Yes, sir.”





The Red Alert siren sounded as Sharp sat down in the command chair once again. Commander Jeremy was bringing the Endeavour’s bow around to face the drifting Trafalgar once again while Mister Sehr activated the ship’s weapons. Science officer Andreavich sat down at her station and buried her face in the main scanner hood.

“Target acquired, Captain.” Jeremy said.

“Phasers ready, sir.” Said Sehr.

“Lock phasers on Trafalgar’s primary deuterium tankage.”

“Locked.”

“Ready on escape course, Number One.”

“Ready, Captain.”

It felt like passing a death sentence as Sharp sat there, anticipating the order to fire. He watched the motionless seeming ship as it sat in the center of his viewscreen. He watched those dead windows, looking for any brief hint of motion, proving that maybe Commander Andreavich had been right. The human penchant for survival was an amazing thing.
 
But such a feat under these circumstances was impossible. He set his face into a stony mask.

“Fire.”

The main phasers squalled out their defiant shout. Twin red beams shot out, aimed directly for the upper casing of the Trafalgar’s engineering hull.

They never made it.

The beams faded and faded as they went, till they completely dissipated from view. They didn’t so much as tap the target ship’s hull.

Sehr slapped the top of his console in aggravation.

“Negative contact!”

“Increase phaser power.” The captain ordered.

“That was maximum, sir.”

“Boost it.”

Sehr did as he was told. Behind them at engineering, Bornet was silently cursing as he sighed. Sharp ignored him.

“Ready.”

“Fire.”

Again, the phasers shouted, louder than before. The crimson blasts were more brilliant, blinding. They lashed out further than before. Still, the target remained untouched.

“Negative, Captain.” Jeremy reported.

“Arm photon torpedoes!”

Sehr shut down the phaser systems and rerouted the power to the torpedo launchers. The gunnery systems before him chimed and called out their readiness.

“Ready on photon torpedoes.”

“Fire!”

Endeavour jolted with the launch of a single missile. The sparkling red shot leapt forth and raced toward the far off vessel. The spiking energy arcs flowing about the weapon’s containment field dimmed, its entire glow growing dull. The weapon fizzled and died little more than halfway to the Trafalgar.

“Torpedoes wouldn’t have worked at all.” Jeremy said from the helm as they all stared at the hazy white field where the photon torpedo died.

The bridge was beginning to feel like a tomb, waiting to be closed.

“Can we get closer?” Sharp asked.

“The navigational deflector shows us to be 27,320 kilometers from target.” Lieutenant Sehr told him. “Our best shot only made it to about ten-thousand. If were close in the distance and manage to destroy the Trafalgar, the explosion could damage Endeavour or even throw us off course.”

“We may have to chance it.” Said Commander Jeremy.

“There’s another option.” Sharp looked to his gunnery chief. “Mister Sehr, report to the photon magazine. Move one of the Mark III’s to the cargo transporter room. We’ll beam it over there.”

Sehr nodded and headed immediately for the turbolift.

Commander Jeremy turned around in his chair to speak with his CO.

“You’re thinking the confinement beam might stay together long enough to get the torpedo to the Trafalgar?”

“The only other option is to go over there and rig an explosion manually, Number One.”

There was the sound of something like a gasp from the science station that drew the XO’s attention. Commander Andreavich instantly turned to obscure her face from prying eyes, but it was too late. The XO looked back to Sharp.

“Something I need to know, Captain?”

“Her brother was chief engineer of the Trafalgar.”

“Ah…and here we are working like hell to blow her up.”

The intercom let out a whistle.

“Cargo Bay Three to Bridge. Ready to deliver package.”

Sharp pointed Jeremy back to his flight controls and sat up straight.

“Standby, Mister Sehr. Engineer, drop shields.”

Bornet grumbled but flipped two switches.

“Shields down.”

“Energize!”

All eyes locked onto the Trafalgar, waiting for her to erupt into flaming glory. Jeremy’s hands poised over the throttle controls. For a long moment, nothing happened. The officers took an agonized breath and looked back and forth between themselves. Nothing.

“Cargo Three to Bridge. Transporter controls indicate the annular confinement beam destabilized during transport. Package never made it, sir.”

“Roger that, Mister Sehr. Return to the bridge.”

“So,” Bornet said, turning from his console after restoring the shields. “Now what?”

“What’s left, Engines?”

“The reserves are down to 52%. That cuts survival time down to five hours, twenty-three minutes. Like I said: Now what?”

The captain stood up, shoulders square.

“Now we take a shuttle over there and do it ourselves, engineer. Get down to the hanger deck and ready a Type F shuttle for launch. Mister Jeremy, you have the conn. If we’re not successful, Number One, you might formulate a plan to detonate the ship’s antimatter pods to hurl the ship free. Do whatever you have to to save the ship.”

“We’ll do what we have to, Captain.”

As Sharp headed to the lift, Commander Andreavich made quickly for the helm to speak quietly with the exec. “You’re going to let the captain go over there? Without an argument?”

Jeremy eyed the main viewer obstinately, chin jutting forth.

“Yup.”

Sharp halted before the lift hatch.

“Commander Andreavich, you’re with us. I think I owe you a look over there. If you want to come.”

Andreavich drew herself up, eyes thankful.

“Aye, sir, I do.”
"Jayne?"

"Yeah?"

"You wanna tell me why there's a statue of you here lookin' like I owe him something?"

"Wishin' I could, Captain. "

Offline Grim Reaper

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Re: Endeavour #1
« Reply #9 on: January 26, 2013, 04:18:43 am »
I knew it would not be that easy, but I'm really curious now what they will encounter there... Just one nit: why is sharp for her that believable? Though you get some ideas after, it still seems a bit forced to me. You tell us itis so thus it it's so, that's not what I'm used to from you.
Snickers@DND: If there is one straight answer in that bent little head of yours, you'd better start spillin' it pretty damn quick, or I'm gonna take a large, blunt object, roughly the size of Kallae AND his hat and shove it lengthwise up a crevice of your being so seldomly cleaned that even the denizens of the nine hells would not touch it with a 10-feet rusty pole

Offline Captain Sharp

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Re: Endeavour #1
« Reply #10 on: January 28, 2013, 05:21:34 pm »
Afraid I have no defense for your nit, sir. I was writing said dialogue, decided it sounded contrived, and hung a lamp shade on it.

 :D

--Guv
"Jayne?"

"Yeah?"

"You wanna tell me why there's a statue of you here lookin' like I owe him something?"

"Wishin' I could, Captain. "

Offline Grim Reaper

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Re: Endeavour #1
« Reply #11 on: January 29, 2013, 01:02:56 am »
No worries, you can make it up by adding more chapters soon  ;-)
Snickers@DND: If there is one straight answer in that bent little head of yours, you'd better start spillin' it pretty damn quick, or I'm gonna take a large, blunt object, roughly the size of Kallae AND his hat and shove it lengthwise up a crevice of your being so seldomly cleaned that even the denizens of the nine hells would not touch it with a 10-feet rusty pole

Offline Captain Sharp

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Re: Endeavour #1
« Reply #12 on: January 31, 2013, 09:06:03 pm »
I feel ya. Request accepted.

Chapter Five


Dressed in heavy EVA suits, Captain Sharp and Commander Andreavich approached the shuttle Eagle, which sat in the center of the flight deck. Commander Bornet was at the ship’s fantail, rigging up a projector to the ship’s umbilical connection port.

“What’s that for, engineer?”

“It’s for powering that derelict over there. I don’t want to carry a portable generator for the sole purposes of opening up every damn hatch.”

“We can pry them open.” Sharp countered.

“Not if they’re dead-locked, and we don’t know what all’s happened over there. Beside that, we’ll get along a lot faster if we can restore gravity. And a portable generator isn’t going to do that.”

“Very well, engineer. Let’s get on board.”

Sharp led the way through the side hatch of the boxy looking auxiliary craft. The ship, meant to carry seven personnel plus moderate equipment, looked quite empty with only them within it. Bornet sat his equipment pack down and stood in the aft compartment to put on his own EVA suit. Sharp handed the small pack he carried to the science officer and directed her to one of the crew chairs as he took the helm. He sat his helmet in the copilot seat and keyed the comm panel.

“Shuttle Eagle to Bridge. Ship is ready for launch. Preflight check is go.”

“Roger that, Shuttle Eagle. Hanger deck control clears you for launch. Prepare to depressurize.”

Sharp closed the outer hatch and triggered the elevator control to turn the ship toward the massive clamshell bay doors. Flashing alarm panels lit on either side of the door, warning of imminent depressurization. Moments later, as the air was removed, the twin doors parted and began to reel into the bulkheads port and starboard. White nothing stared back in at them.

“You are clear to launch.”

Sharp powered the little ship ahead on maneuvering jets alone. She flew straight and true, passing gracefully past the doors and into the hazy void beyond. Having learned from Jeremy’s experience an hour before, the captain avoided use of the impulse drive and relied only on the tiny booster jets mounted all over the hull to pilot the shuttle. It was slow going, but they made their turn and passed over the upper hull of Endeavour, on their way to the Trafalgar.

Sharp watched as they passed over the unblemished, white hull of his starship. She looked peaceful sitting there below them, as though she weren’t fighting for her life and lives of the men and women aboard her. Once the Endeavour passed from sight, Sharp turned his attention to the smaller, less fortunate ship ahead.

“If I remember the design,” he said as much to himself as anyone else, “The Jutland-Class starship has a ventral docking port near to the fantail marked by red tracing.”

Still stuffing himself into his pressure suit, Bornet cast his eyes to the growing, white vessel pictured in the trio of fore viewports.

“According to the contractor’s notes, Trafalgar and Midway both had those ports moved further forward due to a slightly different frame assembly they use. It’ll be closer to the antimatter fill ports.”

The ship in question had grown to enormous proportions. She was only half Endeavour’s size, but still over 200 meters in length. Sharp dipped the shuttle beneath Trafalgar’s bow and deflector dish and followed the lines of her integrated engineering section. He slowed the shuttle and craned to look up.

“Alright, I have it. Get ready on that umbilical projector.”

Mister Bornet sat down at the copilot station and worked the computer for a moment. “Projector aligned.”

“I’m not getting any response from the docking mechanism on their end. I’m deploying the soft dock.”

Sharp rolled the shuttle over, so that her bottom aligned with Trafalgar’s. A buzzing sound emanated from the deck as the dock extended. It thumped once it made contact, and immediately filled with air.

“We have a stable seal. I’m reading power reserves at 92%. That gives us what, engineer?”

Bornet squinted.

“Powering local gravity to the engineering section and connecting hatchways… forty-two minutes.”

“Then there isn’t time to waste.”

Sharp grabbed up his helmet and headed to the center of the passenger compartment. He bent and triggered the deck hatch, opening the airlock. The long black tunnel ended with a naked, frosty portion of Trafalgar’s outer hull.

“Engines, kill the shuttle’s gravity. That’ll give us a few more minutes and make this easier.”

“Aye.”

Sharp and his people instantly drifted off the floor of the small ship. Unlike a full-size starship, there was no ‘spin-down’ time for its gravity generator. Sharp inverted, putting on his helmet, and pushed his way down the docking tube.
The tunnel was claustrophobic and ill-lit. Sharp was pretty wide-shouldered and found himself bumping into the soft material of the soft dock often. Luckily, it wasn’t a long trip. He reached the Trafalgar’s hatch and grabbed hold of the handrail beside it to steady himself.

“I’m in.” He reported over the helmet-comm.

“Powering the servo.”

The control panel next to the airlock hatch lit up. Sharp tapped in a universal code and triggered open the hatch. There was a slight whoosh as the pressure equalized. Liter drifted past in the dim spill of light coming from the shuttle interior. The captain turned on his helmet light and pushed through the entryway.

The Trafalgar was a frigid tomb. No bodies abounded in this lower maintenance section. The captain righted himself with the deck and engaged his magnetic boots, clomping down on the floor. The sound was hollow within his helmet.

“I’m in. No bodies. Just some flotsam. Just looks like she was left in a scrap yard.”

“There should be a life support access panel one deck up from you. Forward is the antimatter storage core.” Bornet told him.

Sharp unsnapped his tricorder from his equipment belt and activated it. He gave the antimatter section a quick scan. He was amazed at the high degree of interference at even such a short range.

“The antimatter core is inert. Just raw hydrogen. We should plant a secondary charge here and synchronize the timer on our way back out.”

“We’ll catch that last. The antimatter core is designed to be easier to reach for maintenance.”

“I can take care of that.” Commander Andreavich offered. “I should have some function here anyway.”

“Actually, I was figuring to send you to the deuterium core.”

Sharp reattached his tricorder and headed for the tri-access ladder in the compartment’s corner. After a few slow steps, he killed the gravity boots and glided the rest of the way to the ladderway.

“Why me?” The science officer was asking.

“Because you’re a lot slimmer than either Bornet or I am, Commander. And there’s no direct access to deuterium tankage on this ship without dismantling the hull.”

“Then why don’t we just set charges on the hull?”

“The only thing we have on board that will breach the armor casing around the fuel tanks is a photon torpedo. And I’m pretty confident that it would be inert before we got far enough away to detonate it.”

“Oh.”

“I’m heading up to deck eleven now.” Sharp told them as he boosted up the ladder way. “Science officer, come ahead on over. Bornet, you follow when I have gravity and hatch control restored.”

The next deck gave Sharp his first glimpse of death aboard the ship. A body drifted slowly past him, clad in a pressure suit just like his own. The engineer had tried in vain to cling to life for a few extra hours by donning an environment suit. Had the man had some kind of plan, Jon wondered, or had he been hoping for an unlikely rescue? Either way, he’d been unsuccessful. His face was shriveled and stretched over his facial bones. Thankfully, his eyes were closed.

Sharp stood back a bit as the corpse twirled by.

The environmental override station he sought stood alongside a subsystems compartment down the corridor from the captain. With a gentle push that way, he reached it and grabbed a tight hold of the blue-trimmed casing. His lights showed on the console. A power indicator showed the current of energy being bussed here from the shuttle. With a few keystrokes he was able to route that power to the necessary systems.

Light flooded the compartment. A dull droning sounded from somewhere aft as the gravity generator spun up. The Trafalgar engineer dropped unceremoniously to the deck with a frozen crunch. Sharp was glad the man had his suit on.

“Gravity established. I’m activating engineering doorway control.” Sharp told his people.

Commander Andreavich was now at the aft end of the corridor, her feet firmly planted on the deck before the crumpled engineer’s body. She was looking down at the lumpy form with revulsion, but no fear.

“Do we have air?”

“No. I’ll flood the deuterium monitoring compartment once we get there, but there’s no need to waste the power anywhere else.”

The science officer nodded within her helmet and knelt beside the body on the floor. She gently rolled it over and frowned at the face behind the visor.

“Your brother, Commander?”

“No, sir. It’s Eugene Tiroll. Antimatter specialist. Looks like he just fell asleep.”

“That’s about the scope of it.”

Grunting with displeasure, Commander Bornet pulled his bulk up the tri-access ladder and planted feet on the deck beside the science officer. He looked down at the kneeling woman and rendered an expression that was as much revulsion as dark humor.

“Feeling a bit macabre, aren’t you science officer?”

Andreavich shot him a dirty glance and stood up rapidly. The motion carried her off the deck just a bit.

“Gravity’s still spongy.” Sharp observed. “Let’s make our way on up to Main Engineering. We’ve got thirty-eight minutes left.”



Commander Jeremy sat in the command chair and marveled at how calm he felt in its confines. The chair was a forbidding, masculine looking thing, and looked anything but comfortable. When the captain sat in it, it looked dwarfed in comparison, but Daniel always figured it was his rank that accomplished that feat.

But sitting in it now, the executive officer felt as though every life-threatening problem was working toward its eventual resolution. Failure didn’t feel like an option.

“Reserve power status.” He requested.

Lieutenant Imura was the officer at engineering just then.

“Forty-three percent, Commander.”

“Is the drain is accelerating as projected?”

“Aye, sir.”

“Lieutenant Lania, any communication from the boarding party?”

“Negative, Number One.”

“Would we pick it up if there were?”

“Only if they route their transmissions through the shuttlecraft’s comm system, sir.”

A hint of motion caught the XO’s attention. He turned and squinted at something he couldn’t quite make out on the main viewer.

“What the…”

“Sir?” Asked Mister Sehr.

“Thylis…magnify viewer image, lower right quad. 50% enhancement.”

The gunnery officer reset the visual settings, enhancing that section of hazy cloud. A dark object was drifting across the image in a straight line.

“Magnify that.”

Sehr enhanced the image again. A long, cylindrical device was now slowly traversing their screen. It had Starfleet markings and bore the name USS Endeavour/NCC-1895.

“That’s our probe. The one we launched before we got pulled in...” Jeremy said. The thing’s navigational beacon was off. He blinked as his mind pondered that. Starfleet probes had reinforced, high capacity batteries…

“Engineer Imura, project this field’s power draining capacity and tell me how long a Starfleet Type IV probe should be able to last in here.”

Kami turned and began to run the figures on a small screen.

“Projections state twenty-seven hours, eighteen minutes, forty seconds.”

“Then why is that probe already dead?”

“It’s been… just over an hour since we launched it…” Mister Sehr said.

The assistant engineer turned to the XO. Trepidation had taken hold of her. “Sir, the boarding party is using the shuttle’s power system to operate systems aboard the Trafalgar. If the shuttle’s affected the same way…”

That confirmed Jeremy’s fears.

“Lania! Hail the Captain!”

***


There ya go! Am I forgiven for my choice to blatantly ignore my earlier failing?  :angel:
"Jayne?"

"Yeah?"

"You wanna tell me why there's a statue of you here lookin' like I owe him something?"

"Wishin' I could, Captain. "

Offline Grim Reaper

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Re: Endeavour #1
« Reply #13 on: February 09, 2013, 02:15:22 pm »
If you can forgive me for getting caught up in my pesky offline life. And just because I'm not 100% getting it: are both starships now linked our is it the shuttle that provides power?
Snickers@DND: If there is one straight answer in that bent little head of yours, you'd better start spillin' it pretty damn quick, or I'm gonna take a large, blunt object, roughly the size of Kallae AND his hat and shove it lengthwise up a crevice of your being so seldomly cleaned that even the denizens of the nine hells would not touch it with a 10-feet rusty pole

Offline Captain Sharp

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Re: Endeavour #1
« Reply #14 on: February 09, 2013, 07:55:17 pm »
The shuttle. Bornet attached a device tothe shuttle's fantail that transfers power to the Trafalgar locally.
"Jayne?"

"Yeah?"

"You wanna tell me why there's a statue of you here lookin' like I owe him something?"

"Wishin' I could, Captain. "

Offline Grim Reaper

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Re: Endeavour #1
« Reply #15 on: February 10, 2013, 02:33:34 am »
Thx guv, i was not sure so it's best to ask. Back to the story itself: even though they have been trained, known already that they would encounter it on the ship, i really expect the hopelessness and death they encounter will result in quite some traumas. And really press home they are living in a really small tin can.
Snickers@DND: If there is one straight answer in that bent little head of yours, you'd better start spillin' it pretty damn quick, or I'm gonna take a large, blunt object, roughly the size of Kallae AND his hat and shove it lengthwise up a crevice of your being so seldomly cleaned that even the denizens of the nine hells would not touch it with a 10-feet rusty pole

Offline Captain Sharp

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Re: Endeavour #1
« Reply #16 on: February 11, 2013, 06:13:35 pm »
Hope you're not giving me too much credit there, man.

 ;)

--guv
"Jayne?"

"Yeah?"

"You wanna tell me why there's a statue of you here lookin' like I owe him something?"

"Wishin' I could, Captain. "

Offline Grim Reaper

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Re: Endeavour #1
« Reply #17 on: February 12, 2013, 10:58:51 am »
Hope you're not giving me too much credit there, man.

 ;)

--guv

:D you've yet to drop the ball! ;):P
Snickers@DND: If there is one straight answer in that bent little head of yours, you'd better start spillin' it pretty damn quick, or I'm gonna take a large, blunt object, roughly the size of Kallae AND his hat and shove it lengthwise up a crevice of your being so seldomly cleaned that even the denizens of the nine hells would not touch it with a 10-feet rusty pole

Offline Captain Sharp

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Re: Endeavour #1
« Reply #18 on: February 14, 2013, 12:47:08 am »
There's a BALL?!!! Holy sh*t, I've been playing this game ALL WRONG!!!

How bout another Chapter?


Chapter Six


Captain Sharp couldn’t help but count seconds as he watched Commander Andreavich approach the corpse lying on the deck. He realized this was part of the reason behind his bringing her to the Trafalgar, to help her find closure. But the urgency of their ticking clock stood him on his proverbial toes. Time didn’t slow out of sympathy.

Andreavich all but crumpled next to her brother’s body. He lay face up, arms and legs akimbo where he’d crumpled. His frozen flesh had split and cracked open, but the mess was minimal. He still wore a bottle-fueled breath mask. Oxygen bottles lay all over the engine room amid several red shirted bodies.

The science officer’s hands were shaking when she reached down to the body before her. She couldn’t quite bear to touch him. Her gloved hands shook like leaves, hovering just inches above.

Engineer Bornet circled around in front of his CO and pantomimed their lack of time through his faceplate. Sharp was slightly amazed the Tellarite didn’t just key on the comm and blurt it out. He nodded his understanding to him and pointed toward the fore maintenance hatch. Bornet nodded and headed that way.

Jon didn’t want to interrupt this. Andreavich’s helmet shook slightly. He knew there would be tears streaming down her cheeks. He approached gingerly and knelt down beside her.

“Ursula…”

The science officer started at hearing his voice through her helmet speakers. When she looked at him, she tried in vain to wipe the tears from her eyes. She succeeded only in whacking her face shield. He saw her laugh, despite her sorrow, before she triggered her own comm.

“I’m sorry, Captain.” She told him. “I know we don’t have time for this.”

“It’s alright, Commander. It’s why you’re here.”

“I just…I just…thought he’d be alive somehow…you know?”

Sharp nodded.

“I just had to see him for myself to accept it.”

“I’d take him with us if we—“

“No, Captain! No… Marc always wanted to go down with his ship. He just thought he’d have made it to captain first.” The commander stood up with Sharp. “No, it’s better this way.”

“Jave’s already headed to the deuterium monitoring station.”

The two left the body lying where they’d found it. Andreavich paused for a second, halfway to the fore hatch, and spared her brother’s remains a final glance. She gave him only a quick look, and followed her captain to their destination.

They found Commander Bornet in the cramped monitoring room panning his tricorder about the equipment within. He’d already removed the access hatch panel leading into the ship’s structure.

“I can’t get a reading on the deuterium tank.” The engineer told them. “There’s no reason to think it’s in any condition other than the standard cellular op mode.”

Sharp keyed his communicator.

“Then we have to open all the valves.”

“Why?” Asked the science officer.

“Every Starfleet ship’s matter tank is built with armored cells that divide the deuterium into smaller units.”

“So one photon torpedo doesn’t set off the whole mix.”

“That’s the theory, anyway.” Bornet offered. “One shot in the right spot blow that theory to bits…along with your ship.”

Sharp was now at the emergency life support panel to the right.

“I’m patching power to the emergency O2 generator on this deck and shunting the output to this compartment. It won’t operate for long, but should do alright to fill the areas we’re in.”

There was a hiss inside the small space that they could hear through their suits. Bornet checked his armband indicators for air quality. He cracked the seal on his helmet.

“Okay, we’re good.” He took and experimental breath to be sure. “Smells like rust, but good enough.”

Sharp and Andreavich followed suit, depositing their helmets on the control console. Sharp pointed the science officer toward the open hatchway.

“In there?”

“That’s the way, Commander.”

Ursula halted at the open panel and looked in without confidence.

“It’s dark.”

Bornet opened up his equipment case and took out a flashlight. He strapped it to the science officer’s wrist. Then he withdrew three small cylinders with control boxes on their sides.

“Spatial charges. You know how to work them?”

“Yes, they still teach basic tactical at the Academy.”

“I’m surprised, no more than you know about deuterium tanks.”

“Jave,” The captain uttered in a warning tone. “Set the charges beside the three main fuel outlet taps. They’re the huge pipes you’ll come across on the bottom side of the tank. They should have either red or yellow warning tape on them.”

“You’ll be below the tank when you get in there.” Bornet took over. “The tail end of it starts just five meters past this bulkhead. The hard part is going to be squeezing through the structural framework to get to the outlets. It wasn’t intended to be reached easy. Be careful.”

Ursula nodded and swallowed, looking back down the long, dark hole. She could just make out the first of those structural beams from where she crouched.

“Twenty-two minutes, Commander.” Sharp told her.

“What happens if it takes me longer than twenty-two minutes?” She said, climbing headfirst into the access hatch.

“Then things get harder for us. About five minutes before that, I’ll head back and kill the power transfer from the shuttle. We lose gravity and doorway control.”

“I thought the gravity would take a while to spin down.”

“I activated the auxiliary generator, Commander. And it’s only running at 25% to save power. We’ll lose gravity just as quick as the shuttle did.”

“Great. Remind me why I volunteered for this?”




“Still no response from the captain’s team, Number One.” Lieutenant Lania’s voice called across the bridge.

Commander Jeremy repressed the urge to curse and mostly succeeded. His curse came out as a mumbled grumble where he stood hunkered over the assistant engineer’s shoulder.

“What about their battery system?”

“If the power drain is happening even two-thirds as fast as it did with the probe,” Imura said, “Then the battery’s already flat, sir. All they have is what’s left in the plasma coil.”

“Is there any auxiliary system that will remain operable for them to siphon power to the thrusters?”

“No, sir. There’s not that much redundancy on that small of a ship…and those systems would probably be dead even if there were.”

“What about the tractor beam?”

“Not from this distance, sir. The field wouldn’t remain cohesive—“

“I’ll get us closer.”

“Our last attempt at flight in this field—“

“I said I’ll get us closer!”

Lieutenant Imura turned to face the XO fully.

“How will you know the captain and his team are even back on the shuttle?”

“He’ll let us know, Lieutenant. Keep working on it.”

Jeremy turned and headed back for the command chair. His illusion of perfect control had faded. The conn no longer seemed the perfect pedestal from which to look down on supreme order. They had a problem against which they could devise no solution. He sat with a thud and glared at the Trafalgar’s image before them. That ship seemed to be looking back at him, telling him ‘I told you not to follow me…’

“Lieutenant Lania. Try to boost your gain through the main deflector dish…”

“The issue is likely with their receivers within this dampening field, sir. It is only 2.331% likely that boosting our transmission power will have any affect on their receptive ability.”

“Just do it, Comm.”

“Tying transceiver through navigational deflector, aye, sir.”

Commander Jeremy glared at the main screen, willing the little shuttle to suddenly come to life and come about on her return trip with captain and crew aboard. Nothing so fortunate happened. He could almost imagine the tiny spark of energy from their ship sputtering and fading away.




Commander Andreavich could see why Bornet had wanted gravity for this operation. With so little light within these shadowy confines, the sense of gravity at least told her which way was down. Pipes, conduits and structural members criss-crossed at irregular-seeming intervals, forcing her to squeeze past things constantly and climb and push her way over and through every obstacle. She got hung up time and time again on her damnable equipment belt.

She knew that discarding her pressure suit with such an untenable life support system providing oxygen would be a bad idea. Without her helmet, she still had the emergency breath mask built into the generator at her back. But her suit’s bulk and its many protuberances were causing her no end of trouble.

At least her light was working well. She’d feared what the dampening field might do to its battery after a few minutes. But the beam of light issuing from her forearm was steady and brilliant.

She came to the second deuterium tap.

“I’ve found the second one!” She said into her suit communicator.

“Roger that.” Replied the captain’s voice. She could barely see the light coming from the engineering compartment from here. It rebounded off her surroundings like a surreal kind of forest.

Ursula rolled onto her back and reached up to plant the charge. On its back-piece was a strong adhesive Starfleet swore would stick to anything, even most wet surfaces. So far, she hadn’t proven them wrong. The explosive cylinder stuck to the flat, red underbelly of the hydrogen tank and stayed there. She activated the radio detonator and proceeded on her way.

“Second charge planted…” She pulled herself through another tangle of duranium allow tangled with electrical cables, “Proceeding forward.”

Ursula felt a sickening lurch in her stomach. She didn’t know why, but fear hit her in a wave when a dizzying feeling took her and left her teetering on the metal strut she sat balanced atop of. Her hands gripped the girder beneath her and she tried to steady herself. She felt like she was moving.

It got slightly darker around Andreavich then. She looked about, trying to figure out what light source had failed. Her flashlight was working fine. She reached up to key her communicator again, realizing that the lights from the engine compartment had just died.

The science officer’s sudden movement sent her toppling off the girder she’d been perched on. But she didn’t fall down…she flew sideways.
 
Her head caught another beam, filling her vision with stars. A conduit grabbed her and tried to turn her round. She had no sense of direction and tumbled.

“Captain!”

A support beam flashed by beside her and she snapped a hand out for it. Her aim was off. Her stomach seized when her forearm light shattered against the metal strut, leaving her in pitch darkness.

“Commander Andreavich, report!” Her comm blared from the tiny secondary speaker in her collar piece.

“I…I hit my head, Captain.”

“Are you alright?”

“My light’s broken! I can’t see!”

“Calm down, Commander.” Sharp ordered her. Easy for him to say. She found herself taking a long, deep breath despite herself, though. “You’re not lost.”

“I can’t see, sir. What happened?”

“Power failure from the shuttle. Something’s off in our estimates.”

“Will we be able to get back?”

“I don’t know, yet, Commander. I’m about to send Engineer Bornet back to pry open all the hatchways and check on the shuttle. Either way, we proceed with the mission.”

“But I can’t see—“

“We’ll figure that out in a second, science officer. But right now, get out your breath mask, get that on.”

“Aye.”

Ursula felt about in the right hand equipment pouch on her belt. She found the mask and slipped it about her face. After clipping it to the emergency air tap on her suit’s front panel, she turned up the gain on her comm’s microphone.

“Can you still hear me, Captain?”

“I got you, Commander. Bornet’s heading out. You breathing?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Alright. Did you pack your hand communicator in your gear?”

“No, sir.” She couldn’t help but sound plaintive in her answer.

“Alright, no real need to in a helmet.” Sharp paused. She could just make out the sounds of Bornet forcing the door in the monitoring compartment aft of her. “Okay, do you have a sonic spanner in your gear?”

“Yes!”

“Get that out.”

Andreavich bit the fingertips of her left-hand glove and removed it, tucking it into the collar of her suit. With her bare hand, she felt around in the large pouch on that side.

“Got it…I think.”

“Feel the switches. Does it have a work light?”

The first switch she tapped turned on the spanner function. The device whined loudly, filling the space around her with noise. She nearly dropped it in surprise. She quickly killed that function and felt around for another button.

She found what she needed on its butt.

A tiny beam of blessed light shone out into the claustrophobic tangle of alien landscape. The deuterium tank bottom had gotten below her.

“I got it, sir!”

“Good. Keep your line open, and proceed slowly. We’re not under as much of a time constraint now, it seems.”

With a renewed sense of confidence, Miss Andreavich pushed forth into the mass of unintelligible starship systems, hunting for that last fuel line.





“That’s it, Number One.” Lieutenant Sehr reported from the navigation’s station. “Shuttle’s power core is dead.”

Commander Jeremy looked closely at the main viewer. The tiny spark he’d been able to see at this distance was gone. Did that mean their power system had failed, or had they perhaps turned it off? Either way, he had to plan for the worst and the best.

“We need to stand by. If they shut down the power transfer themselves, then they could return our way any time. If they can’t, then we need to expect detonation at any time. Helm, be ready on an escape course just as soon as she goes.”

The dark haired Asian kid sitting in the XO’s seat nodded.

“Aye, sir.”

Despite the young officer’s Japanese appearance, he almost sounded like he had an Arkansan accent. Part of Daniel found that ironic. The rest of him dismissed it and kept him staring at the shuttle on the main viewer.

The XO contemplated sending a second shuttlecraft. However, by the time he got the second craft underway, the Trafalgar could go up in a ball of flames. He would then have lost two teams. No…he had to sit and wait. Damn it all…




Lieutenant Commander Bornet pried open yet another hatch, which led into an empty turboshaft. He grimaced at the dark tunnel before him but was thankfully that he at least wouldn’t have to climb down the way. He stepped out and let himself drift to the ladder.

With a few quick flicks of his wrists, the Tellarite managed to make it to the bottom of the elevator system and the final hatch he’d have to pry open. He inserted his hand pry bar and gave it a push.

Once through the door, he floated down the way and down a stair to the bottom of the ship. From there, it was a short drift to the airlock leading to the shuttle. What he found within the craft was not to his liking.
 
Bornet soon keyed on his comm.

“Bornet to Captain.”

“Go ahead, Engines.”

“We’re dead in the water here, Captain. All power systems dead.”

“The battery?”

Jave bobbed over to the copilot seat and checked the indicators.

“Everything’s flat-lined.”

“Very well, engineer. What are our options?”

Bornet looked about the shuttle. His eyes locked onto the flip out locker box next to the hatch. He pushed off from the pilot station to halt there. Using his pry bar, he forced the little cubby open.

“We’ve still got phaser pistols, sir. I might be able to squeeze power out of them… rig a converter or something.”

“Do what you can, Mister Bornet. Sharp out.”

Bornet withdrew two of the pistols. Their battery packs showed them to retain only half their charges. He growled in his helmet.

“We are so screwed.”
"Jayne?"

"Yeah?"

"You wanna tell me why there's a statue of you here lookin' like I owe him something?"

"Wishin' I could, Captain. "

Offline Grim Reaper

  • The 4th Horseman, the Lord of Death
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Re: Endeavour #1
« Reply #19 on: February 18, 2013, 07:38:44 am »
LoL, indeed they are very much screwed. On the plus side they might need one or two for the typical star trek engineer pulls win out of their asses fix of the episode ;)

I'm continuing to enjoy your writing guv, and I am still looking forward to new posts. (Even though R/L is keeping me quite busy). I also liked the encounter with her brother, I could see it happening like this, together with the dialog. And nice detail with the helmet, fits really well.
Snickers@DND: If there is one straight answer in that bent little head of yours, you'd better start spillin' it pretty damn quick, or I'm gonna take a large, blunt object, roughly the size of Kallae AND his hat and shove it lengthwise up a crevice of your being so seldomly cleaned that even the denizens of the nine hells would not touch it with a 10-feet rusty pole