Battle Vectors

[Captain Halloway 0]

Captain Thomas Halloway looked across the main room of his cabin aboard the Yorktown, noticing the displaced objects within. With the temporary loss of gravity this deck had experienced, the battle vectors had redistributed his personal effects, then sent them crashing to the floor when life support was reasserted.

 

A few fallen trinkets were not a serious concern. He was not a man who placed much emphasis on acquiring wealth or things, at least not items in which he would invest any meaningful value. If he was, he'd never have let Drankum continue to loan out his tab on the station. Thomas Halloway was a man who recognized, who embraced, the transitory nature of his mortal life and the universe around him.

 

That was not to say he didn't strive for some sense of permanence. He rested his hand, the one not held in a sling, on the mahogany lid of the Steinway which had remained firmly mounted to the deck. The starship Yorktown, this Sovereign-class version, had been his home for the last ten years. He'd commanded it since its launch during the first year of the Dominion War. They'd been through a lot together.

 

But it was just a ship.

 

As he'd been reminded from the first attack by the 8742 ships, it was the crew that mattered most. He'd lost eighteen crewmen, mostly engineers. In this second engagement, there had been more than four hundred injuries, some critical. Given the damage to the ship, the miracle was that none of his crew had been killed in that round. The Lakota hadn't been so lucky. The hand resting on the piano balled into a fist.

 

A workpod drifted outside, past the viewports of his room. Yorktown had taken a beating; he'd surveyed the damage himself. A large gash had been torn in the secondary hull, which had bled out their deuterium stores and spilled out cargo. The exposed decks ran like a jagged wound – not unlike the damage the Scorpiad had caused a year earlier at the Battle of the Wormhole. Triangular life pod bays, empty since his order to evacuate several burning decks, dotted the saucer section like pox scars. Inside, he knew whole sections had been gutted by fire, others blasted by explosive decompression.

 

He walked toward the window, kneeling to gather navigational memorabilia strewn in his path. One by one, he placed a sextant, marine chronometer, and an ancient GPS receiver inside his sling. He smiled, pleased to see his compass had not shattered. And where were they going now?

 

Given the length of repairs, Starfleet had chosen to move their damaged ships to more secure locations within Federation space, rather than overwhelm the facilities at Sky Harbor. The Atlas-class tugs USS Hercules and USS Sampson were already enroute to Aegis, having been granted passage by the Cardassian government. According to his orders, Yorktown was bound for extended drydock at Starbase 405. The fate of his crew was less certain.

 

He lifted himself to the couch, a dull ache reminding him of the collarbone Dr. Kelley had knitted back together with her protoplaser. Beyond the transparent aluminum, Cardassian ships held position at Sky Harbor beside Romulan warbirds and the small, oddly-bulbous contraption from the First Federation. Although diplomatic channels were filled with expressed outrage at the proximity of the "Fluidic Battle" to their homeworld, the Cardassians had actually stepped up – without them, the starship Ajax would have been been lost, probably taking a large portion of Aegis with it. In all, it was a different border than the one his earlier version of the Yorktown had patrolled with the likes of Jellicho and Maxwell.

 

He wondered how the station would fare in the changing political environment, given the loss of her captain. Halloway frowned, wondering how only the lifepod containing Muon Quark had not been recovered. The Romulan engineer they'd rescued said he'd seen her evacuate the bridge of Pandora's Box. Had the Ferengi captain gone down with the ship anyway?

 

It was another mystery, not unlike the reason why 8742 had reappeared in such a belligerent manner. They'd shunned all attempts at communication during the battle. And where had their surviving ships fled to?

 

He didn't have a viable command from which to find those answers. He reached out to straighten one of the silver medals that hung from a mounted display near the couch, musing that the currents were once again moving him away from this region. It had been Yorktown that had appeared to take him away from Aegis the first time. Battered as she was, it was a vector she was taking him again.

Edited June 18, 2008 by Captain Halloway