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Star Trek: Odyssey

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So taking a little longer than I'd like, but I'm still working on it!
 
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Ep 2; Act 5
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    • Act 5:​



    "Get me full reactor output. Cease all supply transfers and retract all gantries. Anyone who's not onboard will have to get picked up by the light shuttle," I ordered as I took my chair. System diagnostics scrolled past on the in-set display.

    "Mister Clay, I'm afraid you're going to have to strap in and ride this one out with us. Don't worry though, we'll get you back in one piece." I said without looking to the man who still hadn't moved from the spot he'd been standing in when we'd first seen the Klingon ship.

    "Torpedos inbound!" Janein yelled and I felt my stomach drop.

    "Point defense system is online and tracking inbound projectiles—system is firing!" Serine yelled from his console as the deck rumbled under my chair.

    Rotary auto-cannons mounted port and starboard on the dorsal hull were spraying streams of tracer fire at the spots of light that were the inbound torpedoes. The torpedo targeted by the port side emplacement exploded in place, while the torpedo targeted by the other emplacement lost pitch control and veered sharply upwards back towards orbit.

    "And First Officer Serine gets free drinks later. Okay, Janein get us off the ground now. Serine, signal the armory to swap the impact fusing on the fusion warheads with inertia fusing and fire chaff rounds from the vertical launchers to cover our ascent!"

    The display on my armrest showed the rear angle as half a dozen hatches flapped open to release a ripple of countermeasure rockets into the sky. The emergency chemical thrusters mounted under the nacelles ignited with a white hot glow.

    A moment later I felt the forward thrusters light and the ship pulled up and away from the dry dock as the dock workers and the stranded members of my own crew ran for cover. My mouth felt dry, fingers stiff, pulse starting to quicken.

    "Serine are those weapons improvements ready?"

    "Ready but untested, captain."

    I rubbed the base of my horn and shook my head, "You never know until you try. Target their weapons and fire!"

    The deck shook under me as the forward cannon array started to pound out a steady rhythm of fire, each shot leaving a stream of plasma behind it as it set the air on fire. The first half dozen rounds splashed against their shields just as our torpedoes did, but finally one round manged to skip through during a shield refresh and an explosion ripped across the side of the Klingon ship's hull.

    We weren't so helpless after all.

    "Captain, the enemy ship is moving away, shall I lay in a pursuit course?" Janein asked me, though the question itself was a sort of permission, I supposed.

    "No, let them leave. Hold station keeping over the settlement and send the heavy shuttles down--"

    "Captain! Long range sensors are tracking multiple inbound contacts matching the configuration of that Klingon ship. Between three and seven ships, at this range the sensors can't be any more specific, but at their closing speed we will have company in less than one minute. They dropped out of warp right on top of us," Janein yelled from her station suddenly.

    "That's not an accident." I mused as I watched one of our heavy shuttles depart from the main shuttle bay on the rear view monitor. I glanced over at Clayton and frowned. "I don't suppose that you have surface to orbit defenses you were waiting for the right moment to reveal?"

    "We do not." He said quickly and with a tone of voice that, were he one of us, would have meant that he earnestly desired he was wrong.

    Just as well not to rely on someone else to act as a shield for us.

    "Serine, signal blue protocol. Janein, emergency ascent, skip the pre-orbit checklist and put us on the roof. Cancel all pending launches and seal the shuttle bay. Clayton, you can lift a hundred kilos right? You're with me!" I ordered, and, as I pulled my jacket zipper to the top the deck was already pitching with the ship's movements.

    It was a time for all business and so it was time to look the part.

    The bootsteps along my heel as I rounded the command pedestal for the turbolift signaled clearly that Clayton Clay was a man who wasn't going to question a captain on her own ship. As long as that respect held out--

    "What is blue protocol?" he asked as he followed me into the lift.

    I was already in the process of punching in our destination when I looked up, "we're leaving people behind. Blue protocol is a predefined set of procedures and processes for handling that; without going too deep into it, the ship is going to drop supplies and signal my crew that we're leaving. They know what to do."

    "And as for me?" he asked as the lift dropped us towards the engineering hull at double speed. The narrowing of his eyes told me he noticed.

    "I'm afraid your tour is going to go on a little longer than we intended, Yard Master."

    "It was beginning to look that way," he admitted, "how can I help?"

    The plan was still forming in my head, but I had a decent enough of an idea of the shape of it. The grin that split my mouth must have shown all my teeth, "How would you feel about joining me in sick bay for some practical engineering?"

    "Cautiously intrigued."



    xxx​


    "On screen." Halae ordered as she rose to her feet. Her feet, they were still attached, somehow. If she'd had her way she'd never have been put through the transporter. Since she had, it was worth seeing why.

    The wait was agonizingly slow. Only a few moments but those moments held within them a small eternity, in which she felt her heart do at least seven backflips, or at least she'd swear under oath that it seemed that way.

    The side of LO-1 was blown out into space across at least thirty decks and even after half day it had been since the blast atmosphere and other fluids were still venting into space. That was to say nothing of the cloud of debris that now shared orbit with the station.

    "What are we looking at?" She asked as she took a step closer to the screen and wrapped her hands around the railing.

    A younger male officer who she hadn't cared to learn the name of answered back. "Sensors are picking up radioactive decay consistent with a low yield fission device. Given the damage to the structure of the station… it is consistent with a blast from within the station."

    "That settles it then," Jerrin muttered against the side of the hand propping his head up. "Protocol Zero?"



    xxx​



    The atmosphere on the bridge was tense as the starship clawed for altitude. Janein wiped sweat from her brow as her hands danced across the controls. Disruptor bolts flashed past the viewscreen as she twisted the Odyssey through rolls and turns that a ship of her size should never be doing.

    But needs must when the devil drives.

    "Impulse output is down five percent, I'm compensating with auxiliary thrusters. Thirty seconds till we clear atmosphere." Janein announced calmly as the deck shook from another disrupter impact. The hull plating was holding, but that was only for the moment.

    "Bridge to Main Engineering, Quinn, this is Serine, I need warp speed in thirty seconds. Can I count on it?"

    "The reactor is running at one hundred and five percent. Warp speed is available in factors up to seven point three, Commander." Quinn responded, his soft voice echoed from the bridge speakers.

    Serine punched a series of commands into his weapons console and a moment later a ripple of missiles departed from the secondary hull on his aft viewer. "Hull plating is down to fifty percent. What's our navigation status?"

    "We've cleared the ionosphere, I'm bringing the nacelles online." Janein announced as the buffeting finally settled down, the ship no longer under any significant atmospheric drag.

    "Finally, some good news. Janein, lay in a course for sector 001 and engage at warp seven!" Serine ordered with his right hand extended towards the viewscreen, his fingers locked forward.

    "Aye, Commander!" Janein responded as she brought the ship around on its new heading as the warp nacelles charged with their high pitched whine. The saucer swung gracefully around as the ship re-oriented itself, the Klingon ships briefly filled the viewscreen...

    With the sound of a whip crack echoing through the ship, Odyssey jumped to warp.


    xxx​


    "That was piercing." Clayton commented from my side as I lead him towards sick bay. I spared a glance over my left shoulder to catch him rubbing his ear.

    "I take it the ships you are familiar with are somewhat quieter when they transition to warp?" I asked him as I turned back towards our direction of travel, and our destination; a door some twenty meters distant, though slightly more than that in actuality due to the curvature of passageway.

    "Much." he answered flatly, then added after a pause, "So what exactly are we going to be 'practically' engineering?"

    "Well," I started to answer as I pulled my cap off as I approached the door to sickbay, "We have a... well, some kind of liberated cybernetic humanoid, Eliza called it--"

    "You have a Borg."

    "We have a broken Borg."

    "You have a broken Borg." he repeated back to me. "I'm not an engineer, or a doctor."

    I pressed a finger to my chin and offered a smile, "Right, but you can lift a hundred kilograms, right?"

    The door next to my swished open and Leryl glared at the two of us for a moment before stepping back and holding his arm out, "By all means, do come in. Or continue congregating in the hallway, given that look you've got in your eye I think that might be the safer option."

    "Oh Doctor, you worry too much."
     
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    • Human-like species finds crashed Federation starship, builds one of their own and the infrastructure to match. adventure ensues
     
    Oh man, what a pleasant surprise to see this back! Great chapter, I'm hyped for a Klingon v Deiva throwdown!
     
    Jackie said:
    "Torpedos inbound!" Janein yelled and I felt my stomach drop.

    "Point defense system is online and tracking inbound projectiles—system is firing!" Serine yelled from his console as the deck rumbled under my chair.

    Rotary auto-cannons mounted port and starboard on the dorsal hull were spraying streams of tracer fire at the spots of light that were the inbound torpedoes. The torpedo targeted by the port side emplacement exploded in place, while the torpedo targeted by the other emplacement lost pitch control and veered sharply upwards back towards orbit.
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    Quinn: "HAHA CIWS GO BRRRR"

    Having seen the future developments in Discovery if the Daeva ever make it to Earth they'd be big goddamned heroes for inventing a warp drive that doesn't use dilithium.
     
    Ep 2; Act 6
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    • Act 6:​


    "Bringing the inducer charge up to forty micro amps, Leryl, are you seeing any increase in synaptic activity?" I asked as the dull hum of the inducer coil rose in pitch along with the increase in power... along with a flickering of the lights in the room. The conversion efficiency wasn't exactly the best, especially with the wide aperture of the--

    "Maybe, I don't know. Mister Clay's baseline looks nothing like what I'm seeing from our Borg friend, but that could be normal for this situation. I don't have the necessary knowledge of human anatomy to know if Mister Clay's readings are typical either, and this is to say nothing of our Borg friend's implants." Leryl ranted at me in the professional yet agitated tone I was so used to. Never once did his hands stop moving as he continued to work over the patient, despite his professed lack of knowledge.

    I didn't put Leryl on my crew for what he knew, I selected him for his ability to adapt to situations just like this one we found ourselves coccyx-deep in.

    "I'm not seeing any degradation of the neural pathways or neural interface units. I'm increasing the charge. If I can match the pulse variance of the--" was all I got out before our patient snapped bolt upright on the table, turned his head to me, and stabbed me directly in the carotid artery with some kind of tubule.

    "Oh shit!"

    I snapped my eyes over to Clayton Clay at his exclamation. He couldn't possibly have known where I was hit so how could he possibly—I felt like I'd been struck directly in the diaphragm, I couldn't draw air into my lungs, felt the room spinning…

    And as soon as it had begun, it had ended. I took a greedy lung-full of air as I found Leryl by my side, administering a coagulant to my neck, no doubt. Not… Not that there was much blood? That was quite odd.

    I ran my hand up the side of my neck and found… a socket? Some kind of mechanical attachment on my neck, right where I'd been struck. So that was how it was done; I understood why people were so afraid of them.

    But as violent as the process had been, it had stopped almost instantly. Was that his decision, or did it take more than one dosage of whatever he'd injected me with?

    My eyes were drawn back to the Borg, who hadn't moved since he'd struck me. His eyes were open but it didn't look like there was anything behind them. At least, not until there was. His movements were slow and robotic as he stood from the table and looked towards me.

    And then his strings were cut, but instead of falling to the deck he relaxed into a more organic, fluid posture. His eyes looked to my face, my forehead, and then to the rank insignia on my lapel. "Captain, there was a girl with me in the shuttle--"

    I raised my left hand while my right was still pressed to my neck, "Eliza is fine, she was more worried about you, but we've been keeping her busy. Now that you're awake I'm sure we all have lots of questions, but I'm going to go first with this one: what is this, and is it going to get worse?" I asked as I removed my hand from the metallic object embedded in my neck. "Mister Clay seemed quite alarmed, and I must admit a bit of nervous apprehension on my part as well."

    'Am I going to turn into a robot' but in more diplomatic language, right?

    The Borg looked as alarmed as Clayton had sounded, but only for a moment before his look of fear turned into one instead of confusion. "I've never seen it stop like that before."

    "Is that good?" I asked him

    "Well, it's not bad," he answered back.

    I nodded my head and stared at him for a moment while Leryl and Clayton remained silent. Big help that they were. After what was entirely too long of a silence I finally extended my right hand. "Captain Orchai of the starship Odyssey."

    He took my hand in a firm, warm grip. I definitely had to look up to meet his gaze but that seemed to be a recurring theme. He had what would have been a beard had it not been burned off in the shuttle attack, and aside from the mechanical bits protruding from his face, he was actually quite--

    "Commander Abraham Dalton, First Officer, U.S.S. Baton Rouge."

    "Oh."




    xxx

    ​

    I strolled back onto the bridge with my jacket unzipped and a bandage covering the fresh new Borg implant on my neck. My hat had been lost in sickbay somewhere, but that didn't matter. Despite the physical assault, we'd found starfleet, after a fashion.

    Our Borg guest, Commander Dalton, left the turbolift behind me, and then quickly past me. I found myself feeling a bit insulted but the look of awe on his face betrayed the real reason for his rudeness; he was blown away.

    "Fewer crew than I would have expected but otherwise... man, this really does look like a starfleet vessel. A little dated--"

    Serine cut off Dalton with a wave of his hand and a raising of his voice, "Captain, we have resumed our original heading at warp factor seven. Quinn reports endurance at six days at our current speed. I see that we also have a guest on the bridge."

    I gestured towards my first officer and looked towards Dalton, "This is Commander Serine, my Number One. Serine, this is Commander Dalton from the Federation starship Baton Rouge."

    And like a click of the knuckles, the room's temperature had risen in an instant, with excitement almost visibly boiling off of Janein. Serine maintained his composure far better, but even his frown softened in a way that reminded me of isolation training.

    And that brought a smirk to my face.

    "I believe that Commander Dalton is eager to get back to his ship Janein, if you wouldn't mind lending him your console so that he can input the coordinates into our navigation log..." I asked as I gestured towards the helm/comm station.

    He took the seat wordlessly, no doubt wanting to see how our interactions would play out. I couldn't blame him for that, to a Human I was certain we were weird, hands and horns all.

    Dalton was a head taller than me and a hair shorter than Serine. Different in demeanor and build than the Yardmaster, I found myself wondering just how varied the Human species was. After a few moments of hesitation, his hands danced across the console with a smooth elegance that I had to admit more than a small measure of jealousy of.

    "Captain, I have to admit that your ship looks like you've pulled it directly out of a Starfleet museum. If you hadn't told me you built it I would have thought we had," The ex-Borg commented as he stood from the console and turned towards me. "I think this may be the least alien first contact in the last hundred years."

    "I suppose it never occurred to us to come up with our own aesthetic, but then we're not always the most creative people," I admitted, "but I'm afraid we'll have to continue this conversation at another time. While our ship may look familiar, I'm afraid our defensive measures are a little below your standard, and we're being trailed by the same Klingons that were chasing you."

    His face shifted a little, in a way that betrayed just a hint of apprehension before he buried that feeling again. Professional, but then as a first officer he must have had plenty of experience with bad news. "How far below our standard?"

    Serine looked to me and I nodded my assent. "Go ahead, Serine."

    My first officer nodded and turned to our guest, "We have full firing coverage with no blind spots, though the highest density of fire is around our forward and aft quarters. We're currently using kinetic artillery, as well as variable yield fission torpedos and guided missiles. As we do not have the energy generation capacity for phasers or shields, we're restricted to polarized hull plating as a defensive measure at this time."

    Dalton's mouth opened slightly, and this time he didn't seem to notice or correct himself. "Your ship doesn't appear damaged. What is preventing energy transmission between the warp reactor and your shield emitters?"

    Serine looked like he was planning to answer when I raised my hand instead. I'd built the ship, hadn't I? "We're not using a power system that you would be familiar with. There were a few places we had to fill in the blanks but the long and short of it is that we had no access to dilithium or any suitable substitutes so--"

    "So antimatter was off the table. Makes sense, what are you using if not antimatter to match the energy density?" He asked, and with the question I had to wonder if he had come up through the engineering corps as well, if Starfleet still did things that way.

    "We didn't," I answered plainly, "We couldn't manage the same energy density so we just had to find ways around it. We're running the whole ship off of a fusion plant."

    "You're running at warp factor, uh..." Dalton trailed off as he cast a glance towards my helm officer.

    "Seven." Janein answered quickly, if a little too cheerfully. Oh, to be aberrant.

    "Thank you," he answered to her before he turned back to me, "You're running at warp factor seven on a fusion reactor?"

    Well, I supposed we weren't too behind after all. I allowed myself a little smirk and a laugh, "I'll make you a deal. Promise to get this implant out of my neck when we get you back to your ship and I'll have my chief engineer give you a guided tour of our warp engine."

    Dalton laughed, and he was definitely handsome under those implants, "Alright Captain, I think we've got a deal."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • It'll be interesting to see how they interact with the Federation proper. Perhaps the Federation will be flattered by the imitation?
     
    Interesting that Daevan(?) biology seems to be resistant to Borg nanites. Based off the mention of sea legs, something tells me that they come from a rather arid planet.

    I will say it's odd that Eliza, even if she's still a kid, would be freaked by Orchai having horns. Considering how secular the Federation is, would she even know what a devil is? And even if she did, would horns really be the most unnerving thing she's seen in an alien species?
     
    Thuktun F said:
    I will say it's odd that Eliza, even if she's still a kid, would be freaked by Orchai having horns. Considering how secular the Federation is, would she even know what a devil is? And even if she did, would horns really be the most unnerving thing she's seen in an alien species?
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    Federation policy and mainstream culture might be secular but there's nothing to say that every individual Federation citizen has to be, even on Earth.
     
    Thuktun F said:
    Interesting that Daevan(?) biology seems to be resistant to Borg nanites. Based off the mention of sea legs, something tells me that they come from a rather arid planet.

    I will say it's odd that Eliza, even if she's still a kid, would be freaked by Orchai having horns. Considering how secular the Federation is, would she even know what a devil is? And even if she did, would horns really be the most unnerving thing she's seen in an alien species?
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    ;)
     
    Arguably this is both an abject failure of the purpose of the prime directive, in that the planet has pretty much replaced whatever their culture may have been with the Federation's, but also a success in that they've had access to Federation technology for a century and haven't been reduced to a smoking crater and another example of why the prime directive.

    I'm sort of intrigued by biologically different; are they one of the races (not species, as cross-breeds are possible) created by the precursors (with something like "We apologize for the inconvenience" embedded in their DNA), or something significantly more Other?

    I'm wondering if something about Our Hero just screams 'devil', in addition to the cute little horns. It sounds like they look like humans, or betazoid or trill, just... horny, which, while clearly not human doesn't necessarily mean devil.

    I wonder if they're telepathic, perhaps?

    What happened to the crew of the crashed starship, I wonder? It could be something like the dragons from Dragon Mango, where they pick up traits from what they eat...
     
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