SD24160413 - Backpost- Death of the Perseus

Posted on Tue Mar 5th, 2019 @ 11:41pm by Lieutenant Commander Halcyon Attixx

2,140 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: The Sincerest Form of Flattery
Location: USS Perseus - Star System 1A3G4H
Timeline: About Three Years Ago

OOC- This is a backpost of a rather quite important part of Halcyon's history! :D It'll help people understand him a bit more!

ON:

"Oh, they're there, Skipper." Lieutenant Halcyon Attixx assured his commanding officer, Commander Brianna Hancock as he pored over the sensor data, then painted a circle on the screen, "If you look right there, you'll see there's a power bleed consistent with a warp core in serious need of maintenance."

"If you're sure, Hal, you aren't wrong all that often." Brianna shook her head. Hunting pirates may not be the most glorious activity that she and her ship, USS Perseus, could have been assigned, but it was one that the older Intrepid-class starships excelled at. With enough firepower to take on the ships typical pirates owned, the speed to run them down and a crew that wanted to succeed at it? The right mix.

"If I'm wrong, Skipper, I'll buy the beers at the next station." Halcyon laughed.

"Hey, Boss, there ain't nothin' there!" The officer at the helm, Lieutenant Tara Jikanassi, pronounced, "Free beer for all!" That was met with a resounding laugh from the entire bridge crew. "We're all set to run this sonuvabitch down." As she became more serious about this hunt.

Brianna pointed and painted three spots on the large asteroid, "Kerri, I want low yield torpedoes right there, just break the rock up and flush 'em."

Lieutenant Kerri MacKinnon nodded and set up the shots and sent the torpedoes off. They exploded on the surface and the asteroid blew apart and a starship accelerated hard away from it. "Arrooooooo!" Kerri howled as Perseus went into pursuit even without orders. In response to the hunting cry, the little beagle that sat on a high-chair next to her bayed her own hunting cry and Kerri ruffled her ears. "Thatta girl Artemis, you tell 'em!"

Brianna laughed and pointed out the viewscreen, "Onwards, Tara, Hal, open a channel." She waited for maybe a second, "Unidentified vessel, heave to and prepare to be boarded pursuant to Regulation Six-Twenty-One, Subsection C, all vessels in Federation territory are required to heave to at the command of a Starfleet vessel."

They waited for several seconds while waiting for a response and Halcyon nodded, "No response, Skipper, their shields are up and weapons seem to be charging." Something flashed on the corner, "I've got confirmed engine emissions, well partials. The one that's obviously her own belongs to the USS Nagata, an Akira-class destroyed in the Battle of Cardassia. She was abandoned as unrepairable and all survivors and remains were removed and she was left to drift. The other nacelle is showing emissions from another Akira, the Beaumont, lost in one of the various battles. I think it took them a while to put her back together."

"And we know that the pirates are taking broken ships and putting 'em together." Brianna agreed, "Tara, go get 'em!"

Tara Jikanassi was one of the better starship pilots that any of them had known, and bared her teeth as she set the pursuit course straight into the asteroid belt, "Gimme a bit more to the forward shield, Hally, we might take a bit more rock there if I need to cut things a bit close."

"Roge-O." Halycon agreed, "One-twenty to forward shields, evening out the rest." His eyes kept on his scanners, then narrowed, "Skipper, I'm getting some funny readings in here..."

"Pirate vessel, I am authorized to accept your surrender to let you live. If you keep fleeing the area, we will open fire." Brianna waved to Kerri, then frowned when the other ship opened fire, "Not much fire coming in. What is it, Kerr?"

"Three strips functioning and only one torpedo tube is firing. Good enough to kill freighters and some lighter ships with their armor, but we've got 'em outgunned." The pirate ship weaved around some of the smaller asteroids, followed by Perseus. then squeezed between a couple of spinning larger asteroids that Tara accelerated to get around. "Engaging now." The first shots from Perseus lanced out towards the fleeing vessel.

Then it happened. The 'funny' readings Hal had detected finally revealed themselves when a couple dozen mid-sized asteroids detonated, spraying rock at Perseus from all directions.

"Shit!" It came from three voices, Halcyon, Kerri and Brianna all simultaneously. "Punching more power to forward shields."

"Targeting larger rocks, Hal, boost deflector power, I can't kill them all!" Kerri barked

"Engage tractors, shred the mid-sized rocks." Brianna sang out.

The sensor picture was clear to Halcyon and even as his fingers flashed out to do everything requested, he knew that it would do all but no good. There were too many, coming too fast from too many directions. Even as Commander Hancock recognized the same thing and her hand reached for the comm panel, Hal's reached his all-hands button first, "All hands, brace for impact, I repeat, all hands, brace for impact!"

The first rocks impacted the frontal shields which held up for nearly the first dozen before collapsing. The next hundred hit the hull, which held up for a while before the armor finally gave way and asteroids began to dance inside the ship. Tara, the words finally sinking in as the shock frames deployed around the seated officers, looked up, "Wait, wha-"

Her words were cut off as a melted lump of metal that used to be the core of an asteroid took off her head and bounced through the science station, shredding the two officers there and spraying shrapnel from the console across the bridge, eliciting a scream from Kerri as she was perforated and the scream turned into a gurgling sob even as the lump smashed out of the corridor and opening it to vacuum. The shriek of escaping air lasted for a second and a half before the emergency forcefields snapped into place.

A surge of bile rammed up Halcyon's throat as he automatically transferred helm control to his own station, then swiped the mist of blood off the console. "Shields at twenty percent, major damage to, oh hell, half the ship. We've got decks open to space, left nacelle is reported as just gone!"

Behind him, Commander Brianna Hancock was gripping the arms of her chair, shocked into immobility and unable to wipe her face clean from the remains of Lieutenant Jikanassi's brains, barely able to hear Lieutenant MacKinnon's sobs get softer and softer. "Get us out of here, Halcyon, fastest way out of the belt."

Halcyon was fighting just to get the wildly gyrating Perseus under control and finally did and looked at the sensor readout to find just that path when the second set of asteroids detonated. There were fewer of them this time, but closer in proximity and tightly clustered. He shunted as much power as he could to the forward shields, bringing them up to about sixty percent.

This time, Brianna's hand did reach the all-hands comm first, "All hands, abandon ship, repeat, abandon ship!" Her fingers didn't move from the button as she then screamed at Halcyon, "Pull up, PULL UP!"

The Operations officer slid his fingers upwards as fast as he could go and the shattered Intrepid-class vessel began to respond just as the second round of impacts slammed into the hull. The deck heaved violently and Halcyon's shock frame snapped from the deck and slammed him into the helm's console and a bright flash before darkness overwhelmed him.

Consciousness game back in fits and starts and Hal was vaguely aware of being dragged rather than carried, arms crossed over his chest on... Something.. Something warm. He groaned as his head decided that it wanted to explode and a face looked over his for half a second, blocking the intolerably bright soft red light emergency lighting.

"Hal?" Brianna's face was worried and panicked as the deck lurched again, "Good, you're awake, stay there, I've got you. The Bridge pods are down, but the Marine boat bay is still intact and I'm getting you there, they're holding the shuttle for us." Her face disappeared and the motion began again. He began to reach out to her, but she looked back and verbally slapped it away, "Keep a hold of Artemis, dammit, we're not going to lose her, too!" He brought his arm back around the warm lump, feeling the whimper from the beagle rather than hearing it.

Another pair of feet came pounding down the hall and a green-uniformed male didn't even pause as he picked up Halcyon by his... Leg? "Lieutenant Bahati's compliments, ma'am, but he can't hold the boat much longer and he wants you to, and I quote, 'Move your ass, Captain.'" With the two people holding him, movement was faster and it was only another minute before they basically bolted through the boat bay doors and were greeted by one of the most beautiful sights Brianna had ever seen.

In the middle of the bay, already hovering six inches off the ground, a combat shuttle was waiting, ramp down and four marines standing guard over the craft, an officer pacing back and forth seemingly without a care in the world, dressed in the combat uniform of a Marine, cap on his head with the single silver bar of a First Lieutenant. The forcefield on the bay flickered as the view outside rotated rapidly and he saw the Captain and her party come into view. He snapped an order and two of the marines slung their rifles and ran towards them as the ship lurched again. One of the bulkheads bulged, then broke as a rock the size of a refrigerator barreled through and splattered one of the two into the other wall. The Lieutenant all but rolled his eyes and made a swirling finger in the air motion and the other two guards hustled their way into the shuttle as the other Marine took over from the Captain.

"Lieutenant Bahati." The Captain greeted the imperturbed Marine.

"Captain, if you'd be so kind as to board the shuttle, we're the last taxi off the ship. The other three shuttles are conducting SAR operations already and I'd like to get out there before we become some of the people they're looking for?" The Lieutenant was perfectly calm, as if he did this twice on Mondays and again every other day of the week.

Even as they were talking, everyone else had boarded the shuttle and the ramp raised as the last two officers slipped aboard and the Lieutenant pressed the button to close the hatch and opened the comm to the cockpit, "Warrant Officer, we're clear to leave."

"Roger that, sir." The clipped voice said even as the shuttle accelerated out of the failing forcefield.

Lieutenant Ahmed Bahati looked over one of the readouts, "Our shuttles report thirty-seven personnel recovered so far, another thirty or so escape pods still awaiting recovery. Readings show Perseus's warp bottle is fluctuating, she's going to blow shortly, ma'am."

Commander Hancock crowded in on the small display as well, "The pirate's coming back... Warrant? How long until they get back to us?"

"Six minutes, ma'am."

"Time to recover everyone, Lieutenant?"

"Nine minutes. They'll be in weapons range in four."

The pit of Halcyon's stomach fell out as he realized the implications of what his commanding officer was going to have to decide. Get everyone left from Perseus killed or captured, or abandon most of those thirty or more personnel to the tender mercies of pirates.

The anguish was clear on Brianna's face as she paused, knowing the choice she HAD to make was going to most likely kill her career, not like it would survive this debacle in any case, she'd be lucky to just be beached, not kicked out of the Fleet itself, but at least some... She took a deep breath, "Continue rescue operations for three minutes, pick up anyone you can."

The Lieutenant nodded and keyed the message into the system for the other shuttles, "And may Allah have mercy on their souls..." He finished the thoughts.

The Marine medic finally made his way to Halcyon, "Lieutenant, you're going to be fine, once they regrow your leg, you'll never know it was missing." He smiled and applied a patch to his forearm, "Trust me, been there, seen that." He patted Halcyon on the shoulder and moved over to check out the Captain.

Halcyon exhaled deeply, something in the patch was definitely a sedative and he fought to remain conscious, focusing on the dog that still remained on his chest, whimpering softly, petting her softly, slowly, slower, slower... And then darkness.

OFF:

Lieutenant Halcyon Attixx
Chief Operations Officer
USS Perseus

Commander Brianna Hancock
CO
USS Perseus

Lieutenant Tara Jikanassi
Chief Flight Officer
USS Perseus

Lieutenant Kerri MacKinnon
Chief Tactical Officer
USS Perseus

First Lieutenant Ahmed Bahati
Marine CO
USS Perseus

 

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