Revealing the Objectives
Posted on Thu Mar 28th, 2013 @ 9:30pm by Captain Liarra Von & Commander Brian Ratchford & Lieutenant Commander Sean O'Connell & Lieutenant Commander Le Austin & Major Alexandria Somers & Lieutenant Commander Melissa Daniels M.D.
Mission:
Reindeer Games
Location: Observation Lounge, USS Carthage
Timeline: One hour following "Carthage Departure"
Most of the senior staff meandered into the conference room shortly before the start of the meeting. John arrived after everybody else, but before the captain. Carrying a cup of steaming liquid, he casually made his way to his chair and sat down, taking a drag from the mug as he did.
Liarra entered the observation lounge shortly after the rest of her senior staff. After handing a PADD to each of them, she took a seat at the end of the table. “I know there has been some debate and suggestions from each of you regarding our assignment. To make sure that Commander Ratchford and the Jackal team didn’t get any word about our plans, I withheld that information from each of you. I know none of you would have shared anything, but I didn’t want to take a chance of giving them an unfair advantage. Now that we are in deep space, and we have cut off communications with the outside world, I’ll let you in on our mission.”
“We have been given three tasks by Starfleet to complete: a convoy raid, a system capture, and a snatch and grab. Ratchford knows of these objectives, but he does not know specifics. He only knows that they exist, but does not know when we will attempt the raids or where the raids will take place. I’ve selected the snatch and grab mission first. That one will be a little more time critical. For this one, we’re heading to Garus IV. There we will be kidnapping a Federation scientist named Michael Montell. He should be located in his lab at the Garrus research facility. Once we arrive, Mr. O’Connell and Ms. Griffiths will beam down to the facility, locate Montell, and bring him back to the ship. Any questions so far?”
After her arrival and replicating a steaming mug of Raktajino coffee Naomi was sitting down when the Carthage's commander walked in and began the briefing.
"Do we know what the layout defenses are and who we will be going up against? I take it weapons will be set for stun?" Griffiths asked.
"No need, captain. I believe Garus IV is still in my sector as Head of Security so we can just hail the base I can hand over my security credentials and say Griffiths and I are there for an inspection grab the scientist and beam back. As far as I know I still have half the sector under my responsibility security wise till Admiral de Boer really takes over."
Nodding sagely "Gotcha"
"Once our new strategic operations officer arrives, your duties will revert to primarily the station. For now though, that may work. I don't know if they have been notified of your role in the mission. Let's give it a shot, and if that doesn't work, we'll try Plan B." Liarra changed her attention to Griffiths. "Of course phasers will be on stun. Remember, this is just a game. The scientist that we are capturing is in on the exercise. He expects to be a target, but he doesn't know when. The only issue will be if the station security knows we're coming. I would assume at least the commanding officer knows."
Liarra continued her briefing. “I’m a little more open on how we handle the remaining tasks. The system capture will not require us to actually attack the system, but will involve a discharge of weapons. For these trials, both of our ships have been fitted with simulated weaponry so that we can fire on each other. These simulated weapons have been calibrated differently so that they each have a distinct pattern. Phasers fired by us will be registered as being fired by us, while phasers fired by the Jackal will distinctly belong to them. This will come into play in the system capture. Twelve special buoys have been placed throughout the Telmok system. Six of these buoys are neutral, and the other six are already marked in Federation blue. To ‘capture’ the system, we must find and fire on all twelve buoys and turn them red before the Jackal can fire on them and make them blue. It does make it harder on us because we have to change them all over, whereas the Jackal only has to turn the neutral buoys and any we capture over to their side. However, they don’t know when we are to attack, and they can’t start converting buoys until we do. Of course, since we are attacking a system, they will be notified as soon as we open fire, and will already know where their buoys are located. It should be a challenge.”
“The final prepared task is the convoy raid. This one is very straight forward. There is dummy convoy running on a set path throughout the exercise zone. We merely have to inflict enough simulated damage to destroy them before Starfleet can do enough damage to use to make us retreat. Their route is shown on the those PADDs,” the captain said, gesturing to the PADDs she handed out before sitting down. “Are we all clear on the objectives so far?”
"I have an idea for the twelve buoys Captain, *pause* we could put an insertion team onto the ground to disrupt any outgoing communications and use that as a Diversionary tactic, while the ship targets the buoys, but only after the ground assault has started. Also we have shuttles, I know engineering can adjust their Phaser banks to the same state as the Carthages so we can increase the chance of turning more buoys in a shorter amount of time. *pause* Say we have Six shuttles, three will join the ship in attacking the buoys, while the other three fly cover and attack the Jackal when she arrives, this will be a small surprise to the Jackal Commander and he would need to deal with the pest problem at the same time he is dealing with the main problem. *pause* while the space battle is going on, the ground team would finish up disabling the ground based Comms and return via their troop shuttle to the Carthage, if all goes well we should gain a signifigant lead. But this tactic using the shuttles will buy us say two hours maximum of being ahead of the Jackal, by then the Commander of that ship would have truly adjusted to the tactics, then it will be a case of duke it out or retreat" She said.
After a breather she continued on with the other "as for the Convoy raid, it would be best to attack from their rear, disable the freighters, then the escort by targeting engines and shields. And as we are the bad guys we would then go about destroying the freighters first then doing the same to the escorts, then we hightail it out of the area" She said and paused "Also Captain why you assigning me on a ground mission I thought you asked me on the Carthage as a mission Advisor only, I took this as being not assigned to any mission?" She asked.
"I like the idea of using an insertion team to jam communications, but I'm afraid that we don't have a good way to get them there other than transporter or shuttle, and either way they will have already detected us and sent word to the Jackal. I'm also afraid that the shuttles will be of little use in combat. They are not designed for fighting, and the Jackal would not have any trouble. They wouldn't even be slowed down. I know that ship too well. The shuttles might be useful in spreading out to look for the buoys, but we may also be able to accomplish that with probes." She thought for a moment before addressing her other concern. "As for your purpose on this mission, I did bring you along as a consultant. However, that was before I knew the details of our objectives. I felt that you would be well suited for a ground mission as that is your area of expertise. If you don't want to go with Commander O'Connell, I can assign someone else..."
Looking at Von "I have no issues Commander its just very few surprise me that is all, but I am good to go, just as well we have good doctors as some of the enemy may end up with non-fatal injuries, as we are taking part as the bad guys, it has to be as real as possible, otherwise this training will be of no benefit, I can behave as real hostile terrorists would behave" Naomi said with a small smile.
Melissa spoke. "Do I have to be one of the bad guys?" She said with a smile. "I could be some doctor your holding hostage, because all medical girls are good girls."
"I'm sure the enemy has doctors as well, Doctor. I'm not sure there is a need for you to be a hostage. For the most part, our objectives are already determined. As to Starfleet personnel suffering non-fatal injuries, I would prefer that we avoid any unnecessary fighting. We may be playing the bad guys, but this is a readiness exercise. Phasers set to stun, but only fire if you have to, and try to avoid any hand-to-hand fighting. I don't want to put anyone in the infirmary and risk them being understaffed in the event of a real emergency."
Austin piped in, "Commander... I have an idea regarding the buoys. I'll need to look more closely at the specs for the phaser modifications, but if my theories are right, we might to reverse the polarity on the tachyon emitter to do sort of a... burst fire. If I can get the tachyon emission to mimic the frequency of the modified phasers we'd get at least a good... I'd say sixty kilometer blast radius that would simultaneously convert any buoys it contacted. If they're positioned around a planetary mass, that could really make a difference. We could track the bursts by including a charged particle that we could scan for and look for any items that match the specifications of the buoys." He offered. "If we configure a couple of shuttles to do the same thing, we could cover _a lot_ of ground at once and possibly be done before the Jackal has time to react."
"That's definitely worth a shot. See what you can do with that," Liarra answered her engineer.
John simply nodded his understanding of everything so far.
Satisfied that there were no further questions, Liarra leaned forward in her chair and clasped her hands in front of her. “There are two more missions that Ratchford is not aware of, both of my design. I’ve already cleared them with Starfleet. The first is another raid on the Starfleet salvage yard. We already know that the Sojourners use discarded ships that have been heavily modified. We are to beam beacons aboard three of the derelict ships, essentially tagging them with our ownership. The other is to raid the shipyards at Ordon III and download plans for newer starships. We’ll have to do that with another away team, though it may be difficult for the Carthage to get within transporter range. For that mission, we may be sending in a team via shuttle. Most likely that team will include Mr. Exeter piloting the shuttle, and Mr. Le to download the remaining information. Commander O’Connell, I’ll have you lead the mission.
“After this first mission, we’ll be open to tackle the remaining four in any order we feel is best. Our goal is to complete as many of these objectives as possible. Are there any questions or comments?”
"Our cruising speed is better than the Jackal's," Exeter said, after only a brief silence between the room occupants. "Even though they have a better maximum speed, we might be able to push our engines enough to get a head start on an objective if we choose one on the opposite side of the zone to the last. Give us some extra time?"
"Good point, Lieutenant. We'll take that into consideration. For now, Liuetenant Le will work on the shuttles. Commander O'Connell and Captain Griffiths, prepare to kidnap our scientist. As for the rest of you, you're dismissed."
Commander Liarra Von
Commanding Officer
USS Carthage
Lt. Commander Sean O'Connell
Chief Tactical Officer/Executive Officer
USS Carthage
Lt. Commander Melissa Daniels, MD
Chief Medical Officer
USS Carthage
Captain Naomi Griffiths
Mission Advisor
USS Carthage
Lieutenant Le Austin
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Carthage
Lieutenant JG John Exeter [NPC - Ratchford]
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Carthage
