Star Trek: The Quadratic War

[Josh]

"I concur with Captain Kadon," Shirazi said.

[frigidmagi]

Kadon didn't waste time. "I propose leading the Gilgamesh and the Meh'Ta to deal with the Borg advance party. We will destroy them, or failing that, lead them off while maintaining distance from the rest of the task force. All three vessels have cloaking devices and we can lead them out of the Badlands and evade them."

"Agreed. Good Hunting." Captain Anderson said.

[rhoenix]

Captain Solheim casually watched the reactions and words of Captain Shirazi, even as he replied to Captain Kadon over the viewscreen. "Agreed," he replied simply, with a nod. He knew that this was a trial by fire for both the Gilgamesh and the Meh'ta both, though in different ways.

Once Captain Anderson had given his authorization, Captain Solheim looked for a moment at the silhouette of Captain Kadon aboard the Riskadh's bridge, and the only slightly more brightly-lit bridge of the Meh'ta from his viewscreen.

He was struck for just a single, time-stretching moment about his position. Ten years ago, he was the dagger in the dark whose ethics were greyscale at best. Five years ago, he had begun to truly contemplate what it meant to change from one who wielded the dagger in the dark, and one who led with a raised sword in the light. In that moment, he knew full well that his experience as a Captain was far less than most gathered here - but on the other hand, he had learned much in a few short years about what it meant to hold the lives of others in his hands, working constantly to keep them well.

Now, he Captained a powerful destroyer, staffed with those who knew precisely what they were doing. Now, he was a smaller part of a much larger fleet, and now, that fleet meant something more than simply a gathering of harried allies joining by necessity.

Now, that entire fleet was in danger, and he had discovered that old shadowed dagger had never left his belt after all, having found its sheath next to his defender's blade.

Now, that dagger in the dark would become claws and fangs, hunting with a pack, seeking to turn predator into prey.

Captain Solheim spoke calmly, and matter of factly, but there was a glint of something in his eyes as he spoke. "What do you need from us, Captan Kadon?"

[Josh]

Shirazi nodded, his demeanor relaxed. "Acknowledged."

Now it was time to get to work. He'd trained this crew hard, and his people had trained their own sections harder- M'Lara, Cratel, Hantle and the others were top-notch. He'd given them some edge in skirmishes and raids, primarily finding targets that couldn't shoot back, or shoot back that hard.

Now they were running with the big ships. He had no doubt that the crew would come through for any vaguely reasonable demands.

Now it was on him not to fuck it all up.

He looked to Kadon's portion of the screen. "Your orders, captain?"

[Cynical Cat]

"We deploy as a squadron to intercept the Borg spheres by moving along their last known vector, altering course as data from our sensors and the probe net indicates. We engage and destroy the Borg if possible or lead them off away from the task force if they are too strong. Riskadh engages directly, Gilgamesh supports with its rail gun and then attack runs if practical, and the Meh' Ta strikes as opportunity indicates."

[Josh]

"Understood," Shirazi said. He gave the other captains a polite nod before the screen cleared. As soon as the tactical monitor came back up, he leaned forward to observe it.

On the one hand, Kadon had just given him the most pragmatic orders based on the capabilities of the Meh'Ta, which was the very definition of a light fleet element, and an unproven one at that which realistically shouldn't be expected to make much difference in the conflict.

On the other hand, Kadon had also essentially given him a hunting license once the shooting started, a mandate to do as much damage as he could squeeze out of his vessel within the limits of sensible tactics and fleet coordination.

I think I'm going to like working with this one, he mused.

The status board was clustered greens, except the perpetual yellow of the worn main engines. The crew was reasonably well-rested and coming off a virtual feast. This was as good a situation as they could possibly expect to have in this day and age. His lips quirked in a small smile.

"Lee, maintain formation. Yhrea, keep lieutenant M'Lara apprised of tactical scans on the spheres and keep updating the projected target locations. We've got two to three shots, we'll need to pick them carefully."

"And the Hunt and Pull?" Yhrea asked.

"We're keeping that up our sleeves if things go south."

[Marcao]

Alpha Quadrant,
IRW S'harien, Bridge

The meeting was remarkably brief but time in of itself did not mean that it was not productive. Captain Kadon presented a plan that was viable and touched upon most of the concerns of the task force. When Captain Anderson gave his blessing he found that he had no immediate objections that he could think of. The men and women of the task force were seasoned veterans. They understood that the primary goal was to buy time for the salvage of the Saehir with the secondary objective being destroying the Borg if possible. While a few spheres would not be missed when the Borg assault reached Bajor, two spheres could do a lot of harm to the scattered survivors of the quadrant. He took a breath and held it savoring it before he spoke.

"I concur with Kadon and Anderson. May your efforts be frutiful." The Romulans did not believe in luck.

[LadyTevar]

As the 'hunting party' cleared screen and started to pull out in formation, Eoife remained online with Capt Anderson. "Your orders, sir?" she asked coolly, expecting to be told to continue riding herd on the former Orion ships. The shuffling of crews to make as many as possible warp-worthy was still ongoing, and the hostility between slavers and formerly enslaved was still high.

[rhoenix]

"We deploy as a squadron to intercept the Borg spheres by moving along their last known vector, altering course as data from our sensors and the probe net indicates. We engage and destroy the Borg if possible or lead them off away from the task force if they are too strong. Riskadh engages directly, Gilgamesh supports with its rail gun and then attack runs if practical, and the Meh' Ta strikes as opportunity indicates."

Captain Solheim nodded once. "Acknowledged. The Gilgamesh stands ready."

[General Havoc]

It was half an hour before the Riskadh picked up the first signs of Borg.

It was not the sorts of signs that anyone was likely expecting, a whole series of diffuse signals, weak, even when accounting for the Badlands' effects. Within five minutes, the Riskadh detected a dozen different signals at least, though the interference was such that they faded in and out at damnable rates. Too small to be cubes, even with the interference, the signals seemed masked somehow, not a cloak but something... else.

And then the task force got close enough to the first signal to determine what was going on.

The object, for that was what it had to be called, was small, smaller than an Exterminator, smaller even than a runabout, a tiny, oblong object, borg tech without question, but not the proud warship spitting fire that most on board the allied vessels had no doubt hoped to see. Indeed, in some ways it was something considerably more dangerous.

It was a Borg probe. And no sooner did it detect the Riskadh, Gilgamesh, and Meh'ta emerging from the local plasma storms, than it began an active broadcast back towards the edge of the Badlands.

[Cynical Cat]

"Disruptors!" Kadon ordered in battle language. "Action!"

[General Havoc]

One did not become wealthy betting against Klingons in contests of accuracy with any weapon, and the very first volley did not explode the probe so much as sublimate it into vapor. Yet the damage, such as it was, was already done. The transmission, encoded Borg-gibberish, was en-route to whatever was intended to pick it up. And the other probes that Riskadh could detect, at least a dozen in number, winked in and out of sensor range as they fanned out throughout the badlands.

[Josh]

"Well that was not good," Gleck said. His hands few across the board in a futile attempt to jam the outbound transmissions. "Not a prayer, captain, the signal can't be stopped."

"Lee, plot intercept on the nearest probe. Get me the Riskadh," Shirazi said. When the icon popped up on the screen indicating an open channel, he spoke. "Permission to hunt the probes, captain? Right now they know we have three ships, I'd suggest we attempt to limit their knowledge to that."

[rhoenix]

The instant that the rather indirectly insidious Borg ships appeared, and the Riskadh's cannons began to fire, the Gilgamesh had begun to attack.

"We can't jam the signals, Captain," Swift reported with a frown. "The best we can do is shut them down, and blind them as fast as possible."

"Destroy the probes as fast as you two can, starting with the ones closest to our formation or going in the direction of the rest of the fleet," Captain Solheim ordered, sending the Gilgamesh's telemetry of the situation to the Riskhadh and the Meh'ta, as well as his intent. "If we occupy their attention here, as long as we can stall the Borg as long as possible, the others will get the chance to escape."

Between Swift's piloting skills and Lieutenant Adranis' fire control skills, the bridge crew of the Gilgamesh sought to vaporize every flickering Borg contact that appeared within their sensors, starting with the ones closest to their position, or those probes on a trajectory that might carry them closer to the rest of the fleet.

[Josh]

Battle lighting rendered the engine room into a hellishly surreal environment. Kolar strode through a cloud of steam that issued from a ground level pipe and threw the lever on the primary coolant regulator. "We are at flank speed!" he said. "The battle will commence soon."

Tolbert wrestled a cheater onto the secondary intermix valve and tested the fit. "Wish we had some idea of what was going on!" she shouted over the roar of the engine.

"Blood and glory!" Kolar bellowed.

The hull rattled with the first bursts of fire from the secondary batteries. With surprising agility Kolar leapt to the top of the flux chamber to grab the hand wheel for the ionic depositioner. He spun the wheel with one hand while clutching the suspended pipes above him with the other. Fog roiled around him as the indicator lights flickered from green to yellow, then dimmed back to green. "Meh'Taaaaaaaaaaa!" he roared as the ship banked harder than the intertial compensators could entirely handle, only his grip on the overhead keeping him from being flung across the room. "Do it!" he ordered Tolbert.

She flung her entire weight against the cheater, opening the valve. The engines roared lustily as the Meh'Ta continued her hunt.

[Cynical Cat]

"Signal the Gilgamesh and the Meh'Ta to hunt the probes," Kadon ordered, "if they haven't begun so already." The Klingon captain studied the tactical display for a moment. "It seems the Borg have some idea on how to play Clouded klin zha, but we shall deceive them regarding the location of our Fencer and our goal. By sending probes instead of ships they have given us time and time is what we need."

Like Federation and Romulan vessels, the Riskadh carried small craft but in the nature of the small craft there was considerable divergence. The Federation carried shuttle pods, shuttle craft, and runabouts; but the Riskadh's small craft were of a slightly different nature. "Dispatch four gunships to return to the task force," Kadon commanded.. "Then send the following orders."

It was unlikely that they would manage to intercept all the probes heading in the direction of the task force. Kadon was certainly not willing to trust it to luck, but there were other alternatives. A Vor'cha class crusier had a respectable small craft compliment and at that could include stray Federation fighters as well as its own gunships. "The Spector is to launch her fighters and establish a perimeter around the main task force. The fighters and our gunships are to prevent any Borg sensor probes from getting close enough to detect the task force. Flight control operations are to be run by the Spector."

The Akira's small craft compliment was higher than a Vor'cha's, the Federation starship being designed to be a mid sized battlecruiser/carrier hybrid, but that would only cause the deception to unravel if they saw most or all of the fighters. If they saw merely some of the small craft, say just the patrol vessels that destroyed their probes, it would hold. Of course the Borg might guess that other craft were involved, but they weren't prone to being creative and in any event, they wouldn't know for sure. Sensor data was one thing, interpreting it was another.

"The Humbolt will continue to manage the sensor network and the Empryean will manage comms and coordination of sensor data. The Gilgamesh is to move aggressively towards the Borg point of entry into the Badlands and kill probes."

[Josh]

Fighting, at any level from hand to hand to the titans of interstellar warfare, was all about energy. The fighter who best used their energy for maneuver and effectively delivered their energy to target tended to have the advantage.

Jason Lee was a virtuoso for utilizing the energy of a craft in maneuver, and in his hands the already-nimble scout could virtually dance. Where a less competent helmsman might compensate for errant vector by hamfisting control via the main thrusters, Lee could use every movement to conserve or improve their energy profile, maintaining velocity through a series of punishing turns and twists. It was as if whatever synaptic wiring missing that prevented him from conceiving of empathy with his fellow sentients was somehow transferred into a calculation matrix that let him input every slight activity of the ship's engines and thrusters and produce an equation of maneuver at a higher order than other mere mortals. The frame of the Meh'Ta creaked, the whir of the wings lowering into attack position ringing loud in the nearly-silent bridge.

"Target in five seconds," Lee announced, his hands flying over his console in an intricate pattern.

"Locked," M'Lara announced. A few heartbeats later. "Engaging target."

Green fire spat from the secondary batteries in a continuous stream. M'Lara wasn't taking any chances.

"The Klingon is ordering the Spector to launch fighters," Gleck reported.

"Good thinking," Shirazi said.

"And he's ordering the Gilgamesh to move toward the point of entry and engage the probes."

That wasn't so good. Shirazi was sure the Gilgamesh was a fine vessel and well-commanded, but he doubted the captain and crew had anywhere near his experience with the local environment.

"Engage the next target in sequence," he ordered.

Optimal orders or not, this was no time or place to debate the situation. The Gilgamesh would do its job, and his ship would do its job as well. G-force bleeding through the compensators shoved him sideways in his seat as Lee guided the ship through a graceful pirouette toward the next probe.

[LadyTevar]

USS Spector
Battle Bridge

"Message from the Riskadh," Giles announced, and at Eiofe's nod the junoir officer read off Capt. Kadon's instructions. Eoife winced a little, as the Peregrines shields and sensors would be badly effected by the storm. It was why she had not launched them in the earlier battle. "Confirm orders, launch all wings. Ask the Klingon gunship to take position on the perimeter, and extend our ships out and around them."

Already on alert, it took less than four minutes to empty the Spector's hanger. As the fighters formed up on their wingmen, Kirk gave them their orders. "Ghost and Shadow, set up perimeter at the Riskadh's last position, widest spread. I don't want a probe getting by you. Keep the Klingon gunships within range, back them up if they ask. Wraith, set up relay at sensor max. If Ghost and Shadow let one slip, I want it dead before it reaches your position. Understood?"

There was a chorus of acknowledgements from her pilots before their engines flared and they scattered to their positions. "Giles, keep a tightbeam to the Empryean. If they have info, I want it fast. Serin, keep an eye on the weather, I do NOT want a bird lost to this storm." Another chorus of aye, and Kirk was left to sit in her seat, looking out over the blurry static-filled holoview of the plasma storm around them. She wondered if The Kirk went on so many Away Missions because he did not like being the one sitting still while others risked themselves.

[Josh]

"Fighters inbound on target, recommend diversion to target nine-seven-echo," M'Lara said.

"Do it," Shirazi said. He braced himself as Lee rolled the Meh'Ta into a hard bank. With the chaos inflicted on the sensors by the Badlands, it was impossible to tell if they would get all the probes that were vectored on the task force. The status light on the engine flickered briefly and he thumbed the control. "Engineering, status report?"

"We have it under control!" Tolbert yelled over the cacophony of sounds. A sizzling sound accompanied by the gargling hoot of a klaxon followed her words.

Hantle had said that the job of keeping the engines running at full-tilt typically required three crew members, but they didn't have the personnel to spare and his first team was back at the tender. Still, Kolar had been working these sort of engines for several decades and Tolbert was a born spacer. They would have to do.

"Keep up the good work," he said. "Conn out."

Somehow he doubted that was the sort of exchange any of the great captains had. He glanced at the status monitor to see how the other ships were doing with their hunts.

***

Meru tapped her fingers on the examination table next to her. All her equipment was stowed against the prospect of usage, but realistically she knew that in most circumstances she wouldn't have the opportunity to do any work because any serious damage would more likely result in the complete destruction of the ship.

Sergeant Cratel stood near the doorway in armor, disruptor rifle riding across his chest on a harness in living representation of the other potential circumstance. The Marines were stationed throughout the key points of the ship, a last line of defense against being boarded and assimilated.

"So, sergeant," she said as the ship rocked once more.

Cratel braced himself on the door frame. "Sir?" he asked.

Meru smiled. "I don't have a rank of any sort, sergeant. The closest I was to any sort of service was the Maquis. You don't have to bother with the formality."

"Understood, doctor."

She threw up her hands. "I give up."

He didn't answer, his head turning from her. She knew that if he hadn't had his visor down his eyes would be roaming, never settling on any spot for more than a few seconds. When Cratel's eyes actually settled and focused on something, it was usually a bad sign for whatever was on the other end of the burning glare.

"I hate the waiting," she said, making another stab at conversation.

"Part of the job."

"Well, yes. But I've never had a job that I didn't despise some part of." The ship's weapons discharged again as she waited for a reply that never came.

Next time give me the Tellarite or the addict, she thought wearily.

[rhoenix]

Reading the encrypted orders from Captain Kadon, Captain Solheim nodded to himself. "Slight change of plans - the Riskadh and Meh'ta will cover ground here, leaving us as the spearpoint - we're to follow the probes' origin path, killing them as we go."

"Establishing tight-beam link with the Riskadh now, Captain," Lieutenant Adranis reported. "The Gilgamesh stands ready for hunting posture with our Badlands protocols; all departments report readiness."

"Good," Captain Solheim nodded, steepling his fingers together in front of his face as he did. "Then let us become the ghost that haunts the Badlands. Engage full Badlands hunting posture."

The plasma eddies of the Badlands immediately altered how they flowed around the Gilgamesh. The ship's deflector array finished its reconfiguration, and those plasma streams now flowed much more smoothly around the ship, keeping the wake created due to movement or displacement at a minimum. The ship's emissions seemed to quiet; in reality, they simply began to match the range of energies to be found within the area.

The sensors of the Gilgamesh kept constant watch on the plasma flows, synchronized with the ship's deflector array to modulate as needed, striking the proper balance between keeping the ship protected from the plasma it hid within, while also disturbing the surrounding plasma in only the most subtle fashion possible.

Within seconds, the Gilgamesh seemed to melt into the surrounding plasma field, even as it began to move forward, tracking the probes' origin point even as it hunted the closest probe along its course.

(EDIT: removed assumption that the passive sneaking shenanigans worked, as per GM)

[General Havoc]

Three ships fanned out to attack the Borg probes, striking out at half-glimpsed dots on a sensor map, popping in and out of existence as the eddies of the Badlands rose and fell around them. The ships flew off, engaging targets on sensors or spotted for an instant on visual, blasting probe after probe into nonexistence, occasionally firing into something that was not there at all. All told, the ships disposed of nearly a dozen probes before anything went even the slightest wrong.

But oh boy, did it ever go wrong.

All at once, two ships, small ones, frigate-size and sleek, emerged from the middle of a Plasma tongue, not a full-on ship-devouring vortex, but still a bath of plasma that ships that size should not have been willing to risk, one that turned sensor performance into a wholly theoretical concept. Sweeping out towards their target, one they had selected before, they chose to attack not the Klingon battlecruiser, secure in its potent strength and powerful defenses, nor the Federation Destroyer, a beast of known power and danger. Their target was a Klingon Bird-of-Prey, alone and friendless in a hostile sky, with systems over a hundred years old and sensors even less effective than the other two Allied vessels. And mere moments after they darted from their protective cover, the two Exterminators opened fire with powerful polaron beams and a volley of plasma torpedoes, clearly intending to eviscerate the Bird-of-Prey in one pass and vanish before help could possibly arrive.

[Josh]

"HOLY SHIT!"

"Gleck!" M'Lara yelled. "Shut up!"

Lee's entire body was arcing as his fingers flew across the controls, as if each lean or lunge would give the ship an extra ounce of momentum. "Can't... dodge everything forever," he said.

Shirazi clenched the armrests of his chair. "Initiate phase cloak."

Yhrea flipped open the squirrel cage over the switch, then mashed the button down. On the tactical screen, the volley of torpedoes were closing to impact

Everything

got

strange

[General Havoc]

Powerful polaron beams lanced into the shields of the antiquated Bird of Prey, staggering them despite the retrofits, as the ship bucked and twisted in efforts to avoid more. But it was the torpedoes that were the real threat, as each Exterminator launched a trio of them, sufficient to crush the Klingon ship like an egg. Yet before they could do any such thing, the Bird of Prey simply disappeared.

That much wasn't tremendously abnormal of course, for Birds of Prey made a habit of doing such things on occasion, for instance when multiple high-yield torpedoes were inbound on a target locked course. What was abnormal was that all six torpedoes, several of which had been bare seconds away from impact, missed entirely, passing harmlessly through the space the target should have occupied, and flying off into the Badlands. The borg ships could only assume that the Bird of Prey had cloaked and then ducked off in a wildly different tangent, and immediately began turning wildly, sweeping the immediate area with powerful tachyon waves, projected in cones from their main deflectors, sufficiently concentrated to overload a cloaking device and force the ship back into the light.

Unfortunately, the Borg had no way of knowing that the ship they were searching was not twisting off in some ulterior tangent, but already behind them, indeed one of the Exterminators had unwittingly flown right through it. With no reason to suspect anything but a standard Klingon cloaking device, their search took them past and away from their quarry, as both ships relentlessly beat at the surrounding space with their tachyon emitters, hoping to flush the Klingons out before the more powerful allied vessels identified nearby could return to engage them, unaware that their target had already eluded them.

[Josh]

The strange thing about a phase cloak was that in normal usage it was so utterly mundane. There was no dramatic sense of transition, no marker that delineated the transition from one form of reality to another. A button was pressed, and the ship was simply in otherspace, with nothing more to herald the change than the simple announcement that the device had been engaged.

This was in normal usage. Three things were different in this instance.

For the first, the ship was in the Badlands, a very dense portion of space filled with transient particles and waveforms. The first notice that most of the crew had of the transition was the sudden influx of material held at bay by the ship's deflectors, now rushing in to fill the sudden vacuum of its exit.

For the bridge crew, the transition was made all the more dramatic by the 'impact' of the first torpedo, an eye-searing blaze of light that flashed through the space that had previously been occupied by solid material, a shot that had it impacted would have effectively decapitated the craft in a single stroke, before the other torpedoes flashing through had finished the job of properly atomizing it.

"Holy shit?" Gleck ventured.

Shirazi had unconsciously pushed himself back in his seat as the torpedo flashed through his legs. He looked down at the floor.

"Holy shit," he agreed.

"Oh shit!" Lee yelled, pointing as the third difference arrived.

***

The onrushing Exterminator clipped the Meh'Ta, the top portion of its structure sailing directly through the craft. In the medbay, Meru and Cratel watched in horror as the unmistakeable wall of Borg technology bore down on them. Meru threw up her hands against the onrushing mass, while Cratel began a pointless motion of lifting his rifle in a final act of aggression. The Borg craft passed through them in the blink of an eye, leaving them staring confused toward the aft section.

Cratel lifted his visor, his jaw hanging in awe.

"What. The. Fuck?"

***

Fortunately for both vessels, the glancing collision did not cause the Meh'Ta to intersect the path of the Exterminator's primary reactor. Such a collision would have almost certainly disrupted the phase field, resulting in a spontaneous return to primary space that would have ended rather explosively. However, as the primary reactor passed beneath the Meh'Ta the energy field caused the aft of the Meh'Ta to ripple like a wave. In the engine room, Kolar and Tolbert looked at each other in puzzlement.

"Okay," Tolbert looked at the floor. "That was weird."

***

It was impossible to say who laughed first, but once it started it was contagious. The bridge crew roared in adrenaline-soaked hilarity, and every time it seemed to die down a fresh giggle would set off another eruption. Shirazi tried to keep it down, but was caught up in the moment as a guffaw burst from him. Finally he looked over at M'Lara scowling at the lot of them and composed himself, then cleared his throat.

"Settle down, people. We're alive and we've got work to do."

"Captain! Captain!" tr'Valdran broke in on the emergency comm. "Are we in phase cloak? We're in phase cloak! Why didn't you tell me we were going to engage the phase cloak?"

"Calm down," Shirazi said. "We were forced to engage the device by tactical necessity."

"But... but... we can't disengage it here! We're trapped in phase cloak until we can exit the Badlands!"

Shirazi looked at the whisps of vaporous plasma curling through the air around them. "Yes. I see what you mean."

"I hope it will stay functioning long enough for us to leave!"

"See that it does," Shirazi replied. "Conn out. Status report!"

[Josh]

"All boards clear."

Scant moments had passed. Shirazi had notified the crew that indeed they were in phase cloak and the strange vortices whorling through the ship were not a new part of the routine. Now it was time to get back in the mix.

"Acknowledged. Computer, release authorization, Shirazi Tactical 74. Lee, plot me an intersect course along the bow of target Seven-Tango-Six as per parameters of Tac-Seven-Four."

Lee studied the display for a moment, then nodded. "Yes captain."

"Are we going to consult the technician about this?" Yhrea asked.

"He'll probably just say no," Shirazi said. "Engine room! We're going to need maximum operational warp. Pour on the coal!"

"Pouring it on, captain!" Kolar shouted.

"Right," Shirazi said. "M'Lara, send the arming signal to aft torpedoes, prepare aft magazine emergency dump."

Not the ideal testing method, but now was as good at time as any.

Time to de-clutter the local spaceways a bit.

"Lee, initiate."

The shadow of the Meh'Ta turned and accelerated once more, this time bearing on the Borg frigates.