Snakes and ladders
Posted on Sat Dec 7th, 2024 @ 11:17am by Commander Alex Flynn & Captain Rovak & Lieutenant Rune Thul & Doctor Intharia T'Zor & Lieutenant Commander Atna & The Commander & Ensign Abra Akzhouri & Dalek Muul & SubLieutenant Attania Viren
Edited on on Sat Dec 7th, 2024 @ 6:29pm
1,601 words; about a 8 minute read
Mission:
DownTime [1]
Location: USS Excalibur, Bridge
Timeline: 1455 - MD02 (After 'Incarnations')
"Please assume your positions." The Commander told the crew as they returned to the bridge from the strange, impossible room he had led them to. "I will be releasing control of the ship to you once we are in position to intercept the Dalek. We will be returning to the moment after it breached the shuttlebay and escaped. The ship as it is will be replacing the ship as it was in the original spacetime flow. Nothing aboard will change, but we can't go back any further at the risk of duplicating the Dalek." The walls sealed back up, and the bridge was just as everyone expected.
"Mr Thul, please take tactical. Ms Atna, science. Ms Akzhouri, you have the helm. Everyone else, find a way to be useful." Alex told them.
"Aye ma'am." Atna responded, moving to the station as instructed. She realised that for the first time in her life, she was grateful for the duotronic operations courses at the academy. She activated the systems with an encouraging series of hums and pings. Intharia on the other hand had barely learned LCARS, duotronics were completely beyond her. She sat at a station she thought might have been communications, and looked around in vain for some kind of seatbelt.
Duplicating the Dalek would be utter cataclysmic to all they knew and loved. After the Commander said they were going after the Dalek, it snapped Rune out of the maelstrom of emotions as he followed Commander Flynn's orders. "Aye," he replied as some life returned to his being.
He sat at the navigator station next to helm as that was where weapons control happened to be. The old duotronics LCARS took a few moments to get a handle on as he began using the console. Rune felt that he'd probably not make it back then if he retained memories of the future, he chuckled as he linked in the sensors to Akzhouri's station and gave the pilot the control over the course plotting.
He prepared the weapons target lock sequence for when the Dalek comes into range. "Weapons ready." Rune announced.
"Ready when you are, Commander." Alex said, assuming he could hear from his impossible position.
"Okay. Here we go." The Commander's voice came from all directions, and suddenly there was a series of strange noises, most prominently what sounded like a sort of rhythmic grinding, and twinkling sounds that were reminiscent of the bridge's ambient beeps. The viewscreen came alive to show the undersea perspective they would expect, but it seemed to be fading into something else. Suddenly, they were well beyond the moon. They were well beyond the gas giant, it occupied the majority of the viewscreen. The grinding and twinkling sounds had faded.
According to the chronometers, it was 1440 again, fifteen minutes in the past. They had just travelled in time and space.
"Ms Atna, I want all our sensors locked on that Dalek." Alex instructed.
"I am detecting an object breaking through the moon's atmosphere. It is the Dalek. All instruments tracking. It appears to be moving directly towards Deep Space 13." Atna explained, leaning in to behold the contents of the in-built viewer in the console.
"Ms Akzhouri, intercept course." Alex told the helmswoman.
"Aye, ma'am." Abra responded, but then she looked at her console. "We're already there, ma'am. Object approaching at .3 of lightspeed."
"Mr Thul, lock target and fire phasers." Alex ordered.
Since this was Time Lord technology, it was very quickly capable of scanning the Dalek in moments, and weapons locked on just as fast. Rune grinned with growing revenge and hit the fire button that launched a full spread of torpedoes and two full powered phaser beams at the Dalek. "Die!" He called out as he watched the beams lance out and the projectiles flew beside the beams as flashing beacons of the collective pain and anger of the away team.
The Dalek screamed into the void as it detected the fire coming towards it. A flurry of shots from it's gunstick detonated each of the torpedoes before they could get close, but the cyan beams from the phaser banks impacted its shields with force it couldn't match, eliminating its momentum and sending it spinning out of control.
It took all of Alex's control not to call out in celebration as she saw the phasers swat the Dalek, even if there wasn't any visible damage. "Lock a tractor beam on it. We're not letting this bastard squirm away."
"Tractor locked. It's holding." Ensign Akhzouri announced even though they were all watching it on the screen. The blue field of gravitons had ensnared the struggling Dalek, its sections rotated and the lights on its head flashed, it seemed even more agitated than it had been previously.
"Commander, what's this last remaining weapon you mentioned?" Alex called out, assuming he could hear her.
"It's a torpedo that uses temporal energy in its detonation. It's loaded in forward tube two." The Commander explained as the sounds of console operation in the background suggested he was organising it.
Alex considered the information for a moment. It had already shot down one spread of torpedoes. "Akzhouri, angle the ship for best possible phaser coverage relative to forward torpedoes." Flynn ordered.
"Aye, ma'am, adjusting. Done." Ensign Akzhouri said, making the minor adjustment to their alignment.
"Mr Thul, set upper phaser banks to pulse fire, proximity charge. Set lower banks to sustained fire with minimum power yield. Once both sets have hit the target, fire the torpedo in tube two." Alex said. "We're not going to give it a chance to take this one out." She really wanted a cigarette.
"Commander, it may be possible that the phaser beam may interfere with the tractor beam." Rune replied, checking his console for the answers, but sensors were getting some odd disruptions from the Dalek.
"Viren, let us know if we're going to lose anything from simultaneous use." Flynn ordered the Romulan Engineer who had found her way to the bridge operations terminal, and looked like she knew what she was doing. Viren affirmed the order.
A moment later, Rune programmed the upper phaser banks and rigged the torpedo to fire along with the ventral phaser bank for continuous fire. "Ready to fire, Commander. Though perhaps we could alter the tractor beam to pull apart the Dalek, considering the amount of power this vessel has we could do this." He offered interested to see what was inside the Dalek.
"Burn out the phaser banks if you have to, otherwise lower the power. They just need to keep it distracted. I'm not going to give it a chance to hurt anyone else, we'll have plenty of time to study its insides when it's in pieces. Fire." Alex ordered.
If he was admitting the truth, Rune wanted to use the tractor beam to pull it apart but called out. "Aye." He hit the fire button and began adjusting the beam's settings as it lanced out to impact the Dalek. He was glad he couldn't hear it like they did back inside the shuttlebay.
Alex watched keenly as the barrage of weapons fire left the Excalibur. She didn't know what they would do if this didn't work.
The tractor beam held as the phaser blasts impacted the Dalek, it screamed silently and began firing its weapon in all directions, but no shot was on target for the temporal torpedo, which struck home with a vivid gold explosion. The detonation was enough to break the tractor beam, but when the flare of the explosion subsided, it was obvious that it had done it's job.
Perhaps a quarter of the outer casing remained, the front and top had all been stripped away to constituent atoms. At the centre of what remained, a hideous mutant with a single glaring eye squirmed, obviously wounded, its festering bodily fluids leaking out weightlessly into space. It was a tentacled, misshapen cephalopod-looking creature. Before any further orders to be given in its regard, the spheres that remained on the outside of the shell detached, and moved into position around the remains. A field of crackling energy formed between them, and the Dalek vanished, consumed by the light it generated.
"That was its self-destruct. It knew it was finished. It's over." The Commander's voice told the crew on the bridge.
"Good! Riddance to galactic trash." Rune said with so much venom in his tone. "That's for our families."
Atna had been monitoring the creature within the outer shell from the science station, from what she could see the Commander's assertion was correct, nothing of it remained. To her mind this was a positive. From what she'd learned from the scans, it was perhaps the most heinously genetically altered creature she'd ever seen. A perversion of biological life.
"Thank the goddess." Intharia said, relaxing now that she was sure she wouldn't have to try and use the console she sat at.
"Bloody good work everyone." Alex said, still feeling a quiet anxiety that somehow it wasn't over. She didn't express it.
The beep of an incoming hail filled the bridge, and the voice of Commander Rovak was heard. "This is Deep Space 13 to unidentified vessel in the space around the fifth planet. Please identify yourself."
"Commander this is Lieutenant Commander Flynn aboard the USS Excalibur. We've got a bit to brief you on." Alex said with deliberate understatement.
"I look forward to it Commander. I will instruct the deck crew to expect you." Rovak told them, somewhat confused by the sight of an original Constitution-class, he expected they had a great deal to report.
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