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Fortune Favors...

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Lieutenant_Q:
Apologies for the delay on the start of book 3, writing this first part was very tedious... but I hope you all enjoy it.  :)

14 June 2014
16:20 Zulu

"Battlestations!"

A red hue filled the room as the primary lights turned off to divert its power to more important systems. Various low power red lights scattered around ops filled the room with their glow. "Positive Shield, now."

Eight half meter thick slabs of reinforced titanium slid up their rails to settle in on top of the viewport glass that surrounded the upper walk around Ops. The slabs blocked out the last of the ambient light from the Sun.

"Rail guns powering up, capacitors charging. Batteries set to hot standby. Auxiliary Power available. All reactors at combat status." Carl dropped the accent for anything important, he almost sounded normal.

"Enemy contact, bearing 147, mark 14. Vector 111 stroke 5. Range 2500 kilometers and closing. Velocity 120 m/s. Acceleration, 1.5 gees."  Roger settled in at tactical.

James wanted to be seated there, but knew that he had another job to be doing, "Do you have a lock?"

"Affirmative, sir. They're out of plasma range, but slugs can still reach out and touch them.”

“Then reach out and touch them. Lieutenant.”

He smiled, “Aye sir, Firing.”  James watched the main table as the projections of the shells flew through space towards the enemy ship.  The projection continued past the ship. “One hit and a miss, sir.”

James nodded, “Fire as they bear, Lieutenant, Target the ship's engines.”

Roger nodded, “Aye sir, targeting engines.”

“Analysis, Sam?”

Sam opened a window on the main table, “Ship appears to have six rail guns, two smaller caliber guns mounted forward.  The bulk of her fire power is in the two guns on either side.”

Two more shells flew out of the station and towards the oncoming ship, James noted that both of them stuck this time, “An interesting distribution of fire power.”

Carl shook his head, “They probably can't power all six guns at the same time anyways.”

James nodded his head in a concession of point, “It also has the advantage of being able to pummel us constantly, and once we've shot up one side, they can simply do a half-roll and give us a fresh side.”

Sam shrugged, “She can also simply orbit us, it looks like that's her plan to begin with.  It'll be interesting to see what kind of range she has on her guns.”  As she spoke two puffs of smoke blew out from the ship's forward guns, the window on the table that showed the enemy ship was briefly obscured as one of the slugs whizzed by the external camera.

Ammanda noted the impacts, “Direct hits, no damage.”

James frowned, “Keep an eye on them, I want to know if they want to try to board us.”

Sam's demeanor changed to a slight panic, “They do also apparently have two ship-to-ship missile ports, if they have any Nuclear Weapons, they could one shot us.”

James put his hand on her shoulder, “They want us in one piece, just hope that they aren't opposed to us being around if they can't have us.”

Ammanda noted two more impacts, “Still no damage sir, her forward guns do not seem capable of cracking our armor.”

James looked at her, “We're trading slugs at long range, it also doesn't mean that her broadside guns can't hurt us.”

Roger flashed a thumbs up from Tactical, “They're entering Plasma range in twenty seconds.”

James smiled, “Switch to Plasma now.  This might be a rude shock for them.”

“Switching, ten seconds to Plasma range.”

“They're still coming in at an oblique angle.”  Sam updated the analysis screen to indicate where Roger had hit them.  “I see some slight buckling around one of the impact points.

“Roger, see if you can hit that spot again.”

“Aye, sir.”  Roger entered a command, “Firing Plasma.”

Two bright orange bolts flew towards the ship, James tracked their path on his monitor, and watched the bolts ripple around the impact point when they struck the target.  Armor plating exploded off the ship where it hit.  “I think that got their attention.”

Sam nodded, “Indeed, they are adjusting their course, coming straight for us now, range now 1500 kilometers.”

Ammanda noted two more impacts, “But their forward guns are still ineffective.  Wait, that last one shattered a window on Promenade sub-deck 2.  Unit two-one-four is exposed to vacuum.  Apparently, the window shield didn't completely seal.”

James turned to her, “Was anyone in there?”

She shook her head, “Negative, I've already got a damage control team heading there to seal the breach.”

Two more explosions rocked the enemy ship, and she banked hard away.  Sam was the first to notice, “They're now at one thousand kilometers, they're turning to broadside us!”

Two puffs of smoke flew out from the ship's broadside guns, and while they didn't feel the impact, those shells more than made their presence known, in the form of alarms ringing out from Engineering.  “We've lost reactor one!  Power Line is severed, and the core went into emergency shutdown!”

James spun around, “Radiation?”

Carl nodded, “We're OK.  The containment housing is holding it all in.”

“How are you doing Roger?”

He shrugged, “Fine for now, but I'm starting to use the batteries.”

“He's exposed his engines to us, let em have it.”

Three bolts of energy leaped from the guns, striking the ship in her in the delicate engine area, the explosions tore holes in the side of the ship.  It immediately lurched towards them as her port engine went dead.  After she righted herself again, she responded with another broadside salvo.

“There goes the other reactor!”  Carl shouted.

"Hull Breach! Promenade, section 3!  We're venting atmosphere!”  Ammanda furiously tried to issue orders to her damage control teams.

James looked towards tactical, "Weapons status?"

"Two railguns out, Railgun 4 is operating in low power mode."

Carl stood up from his station, "Both Reactors are offline, auxiliary power is down to 20% and our batteries are almost depleted. We're done."

James nodded and frowned, "Alright." He raised his voice over the wailing sirens, "Computer, End Program."

Grim Reaper:
Lol, that last line is rather a disappointment from a surprise perspective.  But since the rest is so good I forgive you  ;)

Captain Adam:
.

Lieutenant_Q:
hmm... didn't think of that one.  Had I known that was the last line of These are the Voyages, I certainly would have written just a bit differently.  The thing was, when I read that B&B considered TatV a "Valentine" to the fans, I knew immediately that I wasn't going to like it, and refused to watch it, any part of it.  I read "The Good That Men Do" and was almost tempted to watch it just because of the way that Andy Mangels and Micheal Martin re-wrote the episode.  But I still didn't.  More to come very very soon.

Lieutenant_Q:
James looked around Ops as the lights went back to normal.  The sirens stopped going off and the windows re-opened.  Outside, the freighter hovered just above the windows, it too, was resetting it's computer systems to bring it back to normal operations.  “Well, let's have the rundown, what happened, why, and how do we address it?”

Sam spoke up first, “What happened, was that Micheal started targeting unfinished sections of the station.”  She pointed to a pair of spots on the station core, “He hit us here, and here, and severed both of our reactors with just a couple of well placed shots.”

Carl shrugged, and readopted his accent, “It might justa do well t' armor dose parts anywa.”

Roger raised his hand, “Question, while I liked the explosions on the freighter's hull, it made it easier to see where I hit once they got into plasma range, is that what we're expecting, or was that just added?”

Sam nodded, “It's what we're expecting.  The armor isn't exploding, nor is the Plasma making the armor explode.  What the Plasma is doing is super-heating gasses trapped just beneath the armor layer.  We've gone over simulations, and even done lab experiments, unless the armor plating is more than meter thick, or made of a titanium composite that is very cost-prohibitive to manufacture in bulk, it will not be able to withstand the force of those gasses expanding.  Plus the Plasma is also melting away some of the armor to begin with, further weakening the armor's integrity before the explosion.”

Roger nodded, “We need more Capacitor Capacity.  After the connection to the mains were cut, I only had enough power for 2 shots.  Auxiliary power is only enough to power life-support, it provides no combat advantage, and the batteries were depleted far too fast.”

“Sir, we can't armor the entire conduit.”  Ammanda called out, “Specifically we can't armor where the reactor housing meets the station core, any damage to armor in that area could prevent a clean ejection.  I'm afraid that's going to be a weakness until we finish that part of the station.”

“A third reactor woulda kepd us in tha fight longer.”

“Long enough to be victorious?”

James smiled as he moved to the side, and let his people run the conversation, Sam's last question was a good one, of all the people, she had been working the hardest on this simulation and scenario.  Probably in an attempt to make up for what she had already done, to them, and to him.  When he read her report to him after her mia culpa, he was furious that he had allowed her to take advantage of him like that.

“One or two more salvos would have been all I needed to knock them out.”

It had taken some time for him to get over that personal betrayal, she had spent a week in the cargo bay, and he made a point to avoid her, until Yasamin, the stow away from the same time, had bluntly asked him why he was avoiding Sam.  Her grasp of the English language was crude at that point, and couldn't pick up the subtleties of the spoken language, but she had picked up on something that no one else had.  Every night, after everyone had gone to bed, Yasamin would wander the grav deck, reading, speaking.  She had said it was easier for her to learn when fewer people were around.  Two straight nights, she had walked past his cabin, only to find Sam seated outside of it.  She had quickly gotten up and headed to her own cabin as soon as she noticed Yasamin.

“So a third reactor, or reinforce the power conduits?”

Yasamin had quickly decided that this was more interesting than her reading, and James had noticed something later that day when he spotted Yasamin studying an access panel just a few meters down the corridor from his quarters.  He had taken to Yasamin the way a father would to an adopted child, so when she asked what was behind that panel, he opened it up for her and let her take a look around.  After she was done poking her head around inside it, she had “danked” him and scurried off.  What he didn't realize at the time was that she had plans to return only moments later.

“Why deya think we cant do bof, Mandy?  I kin make tha plating, an Mikey kin bring up a new reactor.”

Yasamin had climbed into the access panel, and worked her way down the cramped ventilation ducting.  There she waited, with just her PDA for company.  It was several hours before he had returned for the night.  Not ten minutes later, Sam had walked up to his door, reached for the buzzer, but stopped, just shy of the button.  Her fingers trembled as she had backed away from the call button, and she slipped to the floor, gently sobbing. She sat there for almost a half hour, she did everything she could to keep the sobbing as silent as possible.  Then she got up, wiped away her eyes, and walked out of Yasamin's sight.  That next morning, Yasamin relayed the story to James, and it had encouraged James to try to squeeze his frame through the air vent.

“Iron plating wouldn't be very useful against a Plasma attack.”

When the same thing had happened that night, he dwelled on that for the entire evening.  Her report has said that the personal interaction was not part of her orders, it was a suggestion, and only if she had felt comfortable with it.  In truth, she wrote, she felt very comfortable with it, and had from the very beginning, but the book on fraternization was drilled into her, and it was only after she had been given permission, that she had actually felt like she could act on it.  James hadn't known how much he had believed that, and truth be told, he still wasn't sure now.

“Not everyone is going to be throwing Plasma around, Ammanda.  The Plasma has to be kept stable, too much motion and it goes inert.  This station is the only place in the Solar System that can use the Plasma.”

In an attempt to get some kind of direction on it, the next night he waited at the threshold, listening for her foot steps.  He had almost given up for the night when he had gone fifteen minutes without hearing a footstep.  But then he heard her sobbing, and a part of his heart cracked, he opened the door and invited her in.  It was a long sleepless night for the both of them as they wandered around his cabin, talking.  They had agreed to a once a week meeting, where they would talk.  Asking questions, answering questions.  Often times they were the same questions, just reworded differently.  If they were both satisfied with the talk, they would embrace, and bid each other good night.  It had become a bit of a ritual for them, one that they would continue tonight.

“Sam is right, but that doesn't mean that we can't plan for a time when they do find a way to keep it stable even on a ship.”  James brought himself back into the conversation, “See if you can strip armor from less vital areas and apply it to the conduits.  And then look for a way to protect the vulnerable spots without encumbering them.  Maybe a way to stop the shots short.  I'll see about switching up our transport schedule and getting a third reactor up here.”  He spared a stare at Sam, “Or maybe Sam can get that Fusion Reactor working, and we won't have to worry about it anymore.  Patch me through to Micheal.”

Micheal's voice boomed through the overhead speakers, “Sorry about kicking your ass Captain.  But it was awfully close.”

James nodded, “It was indeed.  Anything on your end that you noticed?

“Your power systems are extremely vulnerable.  And your guns are exposed.  I had plenty of things to shoot at, and not enough slugs to throw at you.”

James frowned, not liking one bit that piece of news, “Anything else?”

“Not as important, but your docking arms look pretty brittle too.  Not that an enemy would gain anything by hitting your docking arms, except making it cost more to repair the station afterward.”

James glanced over to Ammanda, “Do you think it would be worth armoring the docking arms?”

Ammanda nodded, “We have a lot of money in those arms, all the security systems, they also can serve as escape vehicles if necessary.”

James sighed, “Alright, looks like I have a report to write to our investors, see if they are willing to spring for some more armor plating.”

Sam looked at him, “Will they?”

James shook his head, “Probably not, we'll have to wait until we get a revenue stream inbound before they'll do it.”

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