Pursuit Course
Posted on Thu Mar 26th, 2015 @ 7:35am by Commander Jordan Gunning & Lieutenant Yzhara & Amelia Darby
Mission:
Sins of Lives Past
Location: Main Bridge [Deck 1, USS Montreal]
Timeline: After 'One of Our Own'
Gunning burst onto the bridge with Darby in tow and was pleased to see that the senior staff, with the exception of Drusus who had been temporarily given command of the Carthage, were already present.
He motioned toward two seats at one of the programmable consoles at which Darby and her shadow, Petty Officer Franklin Herbert, could take up residence. "Yzhara- get us underway. You should have priority clearance from the Dockmaster."
"I saw that, captain," Yzhara immediately replies. "Well, I didn't see it exactly, but you get the idea." As she snarked her pale fingers danced over her console, releasing docking clamps and moorings. "We're clear from airlocks and under our own power. Course laid in to space doors."
Gunning was still to take his seat but decided to address the elephant in the room. "Our guest purports to be an operative from Starfleet Intelligence and until such time as the Captain transmits her verification to us, she is being kept under the watchful eye of young Herbert here."
The Petty Officer offered a weak smile to the room.
"Lieutenant Gus Deakin- one of our own- has been kidnapped by someone seeking revenge for a sin he committed in a past life. We are not here to judge, we are here to bring the lieutenant back alive. Lieutenant Ishida, I want you to prepare a boarding plan for their vessel should we reach them prior to their destination. The schematics- what we have of them- should be arriving at your console momentarily."
A nod in his peripheral vision was enough to tell him that the Lieutenant understood his order.
"Yzhara, I want you to fly this thing apart if that's what we need to do to catch up. This bastard's taken one of ours and we're not going to let that pass. The coordinates of their final destination are on your CONN. Let's get to it."
The appropriate coordinates had popped up on the navigation controls. "Receiving them now, sir. We've cleared space doors, accelerating to full impulse." This close to the station ships were prohibited from going to full impulse. But with their new orders, Yzhara ignored that practice. Soon she was clear from the outer marker, and safe to engage warp speed. She didn't need confirmation from Gunning. She simply engaged full throttle, speeding as fast as they could muster to the Gaven system.
The Montreal didn’t quite fly apart, but she made incredible time getting to the Gaven system and the coordinates Darby, her identity now confirmed, supplied. When they dropped out of warp sensors showed a nearby planetoid with a small ship in orbit.
“That’s Telan’s ship,” Darby said as the viewscreen flickered to a close up view. “He calls it the Bitter Vengeance.”
Gunning rolled his eyes. "Very imaginative."
"I read no lifesigns." The duty science officer piped up.
"Anything on the planetoid, Ensign?" The Commander replied, surprised by her gumption- she had been almost completely silent the whole journey.
“Scans are useless, Commander,” Darby said. “The planetoid has very high concentrations of kelbonite. That’s why Telan picked it; can’t scan inside his base and can’t beam anybody out. But I’ve been in there, I know how to get us inside.”
"Elaborate."
Darby tapped away on her console and on the viewscreen a wireframe overlay slid over the planetoid's surface. After it was divided up into quadrants, a blinking green light appeared over a small crater. "This is the base's beam in site," Darby said, turning to face Gunning and gesturing toward the screen. "It's just below the surface and the minute traces of kelbonite won't interfere with a transporter beam. Telan has transport inhibitors covering the site that he can deactivate remotely to allow him and his crew to beam down. Yours truly set them up, so I happen to know the frequency and can shut them off from here."
"And you're sure that he won't have altered the frequency? The last thing we need's to beam down and rematerialise as gelatinous blobs of matter."
Darby shook her head and said, "I made sure I was the only one with the encryption key to the inhibitors' software. They'll be trying a long, long time before they crack it." She smiled, pleased with herself, but quickly continued when she saw nobody else seemed nearly as pleased. "Anyway, a long access corridor then slopes down deeper below the surface from the beam in site. There aren't any defences in the corridor, so you'll only have to worry about a crack shot Reman and a ruthless Romulan. The corridor leads to the main facility, which is basically five rooms supplied with power and atmosphere. That's where you'll find Deakin."
"Okay," Gunning said decisively, "Darby you're taking point. I want to make sure that our lack of familiarity doesn't count against us- we're on borrowed time here."
The intelligence officer screwed up her nose, but quickly stowed her disappointment. She had hoped to avoid any kind of reunion with that lot. She had a job to do, though, and she would do it. She stood up and looked her petty officer escort up and down. "Does that mean you're on point with me, Herb?"
"Looks that way." Petty Officer Herbert grunted.
Commander Jordan Gunning
Officer in Command, USS Montreal
Lieutenant Yzhara [NPC: Von]
Flight Operations Officer
Lieutenant Amelia Darby [NPC: Deakin]
Starfleet Intelligence Asset
