A Weasel

[Crash Calestorm 0]

The following log takes place on the fourth day of our five day TBS…

 

April 2, 2261 (Stardate 2261.94)

Federation Space, Harrington Sectors

Grid FA-9, The Widows Run

 

The grid area commonly known as the ‘Widows Run’ was named for The Queen, a hot shot female smuggler who had cut a swath of piracy and general shenanigans back in the 2130’s and 40’s. She’d swoop through the frontier sectors raiding both innocent and rival merchants alike.

 

The reign of The Queen stopped when she was blown out of the stars. The circumstances of her demise and who actually killed her varied, from the Klingons to the Romulans to a fledgling faction attached to the Orion Cartel, to a flea bitten pirate crew of upstarts, to the Andorians to a competing rival.

 

The legacy of the Widow remained and the grid functioned as a back door access for the Harrington sectors, used by modern day smugglers and pirates. Starbase Harrington maintained patrol runs as best they could with their contingent of starfighters as well as the assistance of the SS Ibn Daud*.

 

The USS Comanche Creek maintained station keeping just outside the access point. With the Tomcat and Hornet starfighters on patrol, the SAR* shuttles providing ASOS* and the ‘Creek blinging the sector with enough tracking, science, tactical and electronic warfare sensors and programs to freak out a Special Operations unit …a blue tick coonhound flea could sneeze anywhere in the grid and they’d pick the disturbance up, to borrow one of her daddy’s sayings.

 

What they had discovered was the wreckage of several ships. The preliminary scan information was still incoming and being processed, but the guesstimation from her bridge officers was that five ships had gotten involved in one hell of a dustup with three of them getting completely creamed. The only intact - and Crash was being real generous with that description because the ship was blown damn near halfway to Hell - piece was the aft cargo from a Weasel-Class courier boat.

 

Capable of carrying cargo or passengers and crewed by three to five, the ‘wild weasels’ had been damn popular for years among legitimate civilian contractors and smugglers alike. And if you knew your way around the intergalactic black market, weapons could easily be installed on a Weasel.

 

Captain Calestorm carefully maneuvered her Hornet among the floating wreckage as she Mark One Eyeballed* the devastation up close. The fighter responded well to the in-close maneuvers and she studied a charred piece of hull blown off from one of the other combatants.

 

Crash took regular opportunities to do personal flight runs as it was in her nature to be out in the Black and you could never take the fighter pilot out of the Captain. But she also made use of her jaunts out from the Sheep Barn to form a first-hand outlook on various missions or tactical options. Most of the time she was very playful on these flight runs, much to the consternation of anyone of sufficient pay grade. This sortie was different as she hadn’t buzzed the bridge. She hadn’t done her usual off the cuff maneuvers. She hadn’t playfully buzzed the fighter patrol. Even the officer on FOPS* duty had asked her obliquely if she was feeling alright. The Captain was feeling fine, sure, but was unsettled by these recent developments and had suspicions that this Widows Run throw down was only a glimpse at something bigger coming.

 

Nero had attacked the Federation two solar years ago and as a result Starfleet had green lit the First Threat Response Program to prevent such an attack from happening again. Were the Outer Rim pirates and smugglers finally making a move? Moving on Federation territory? Or was it just the changing situation among the Orion Cartel and its factions making these border hoppers bolder? Were the gangs – Cartel faction or independent - getting more ruthless? Were the independent smugglers having their own squabbles over territory and cargo runs?

 

Dammit. Damn, damn and damn.

 

Crash altered her position again and flipped Hornet 20 downward and out into an arc, coming back up on the other side of the cargo attachment pods. There was a designation number, but it was partially visible and likely altered several times over the years to avoid detection.

 

Mercenary, smuggler, pirate, it really didn’t matter as this fight had been nasty. With the fresh scoring and pock marks, the combatants had been lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree. But there were no bodies, no life pods, nothing. Why? Were any prisoners taken? Had there been any survivors?

 

These were lots of questions and no answers.

 

So, yeah, Crash Calestorm wasn’t exactly being her usual playful and maverick self today out on her flight run.

 

 

* SS Ibn Daud - Ptolemy-Class Tug attached to Starbase Harrington through the First Threat Response Program

* SAR/ASOS - Search and Rescue & Aero Support Operations Squadron

* M1E - To observe with the naked eye without the aid of electronic devices

* FOPS - Flight Operations