"Visitors"

[FredM 0]

"Visitors"

Stardate 0406.29

Captain Fred Michaels

 

 

It normally took no more than seven seconds for a starship to raise it's shields. In most cases, the event would take substantially less. Regretfully, neither of this facts had mattered much. Although the console on the bridge had physically been touched, launching a series of computer subroutines who then automatically diverted power to the dormant shield generators aboard the ship, the computer with it's microsecond processing time had been too slow. Before the generators had enough power to envelop the Reaent in an energy barrier, one of Kroells' vanishing objects "the size of a torpedo" had exploded three yards under the Reaent's saucer section.

 

While not a direct impact, it had been enough to cause numerous microfractures in the area around the starboard areas on Deck 4. The shockwave from the exploding device had been enough to actually move the Reaent forward slightly, bringing the ship from dead stop to 2kps for several seconds. Only after the explosion had the shield generator's siphoned enough energy to create an energy barrier around the Ambassador Class ship. In the meantime, the Reaent continued to detect small objects entering sensor range...who then promptly concealed themselves from the view of everyone except their controller.

 

When the two torpedoes decloaked upon hitting the shields above the main cargo bay and just rear of the bridge, the ship again had forward momentum for a brief period of time. Regretfully, these impacts caused secondary explosions within the Reaent itself...which sent numerous members of the crew into a state of unconsciousness as EPS relays gave way. They had not yet completed their adjustment to the ship's tactical alert, a process that would have only taken another six seconds to do. As a result, the Reaent's bridge now sat with large system status display behind tactical on fire. The Ensign at tactical himself was now sitting in a pool of blood near the engineering station on the bridge, his blood leaving a trial back to his former post.

 

By the time Michaels' had ordered a course to be set, any course in fact, another two torpedoes had just vanished from the ship's sensors. Given their timing, it would be no more than ten seconds before they would slam into the Ambassador Class ship's shields and be forced to prematurely detonate their deadly contents. It took slightly longer than that due to the fact the Reaent had started a rapid acceleration out of the scrap yard. The course had actually narrowly avoided a collision between the lifeless Hawking and the fleeing Reaent, with only fifty yards separating the shields near the ship's deflector from hitting the upper starboard warp nacelle of the Hawking.

 

The movement had indeed delayed the impact, but not prevented it. Shortly after this narrow collision, the Reaent had been jolted forward...the laws of physics trying to push the ship in a downward course. Unknown to anyone at the time, but the rear shuttlebay of the engineering section was now sealed...the doors fused closed by the heat of the torpedo impact. None of that mattered now and wouldn't in the immediate future. Another console on the bridge was pressed, and a series of computer code that would fill the entire system if laid end to end was put in motion. Five seconds later, another three torpedoes just vanishing, the Reaent left the Saurian system at Warp 6.

 

The torpedoes they had left behind came to an immediate halt, sensing their target was no longer present. They would remain dormant until their controller stated otherwise, something he was likely to do once the finer details of what had just happened became known. It had been a tactical mistake which had probably saved the Reaent's ability to depart the system safely. While the ship could indeed take a pounding for regular weaponry, cloaking torpedo type devices with payloads almost twice the size of a quantum torpedo was not exactly "standard" issue.

 

Again, for the moment, none of it mattered nor was any of it really known. All that anyone could comprehend was this: Captain Fred Michaels had just abandoned a team in a scrap yard aboard a seemingly dead starship with three catastrophically powerful torpedoes cloaked in the area...perhaps heading straight for them.

 

It was clear that whoever had been responsible for the theft of the U.S.S. Olympic had learned the Reaent was on their trail. It seemed they didn't like visitors