Bring the Rain
Posted on 26 Jul 2016 @ 4:13am by Captain Harvey Geisler & Commander Thiago Teixeira & Commander Terry Walsh & Lieutenant Jonathan Kilmartin & Lieutenant Commander Camila Di Pasquale & Lieutenant Commander Joey Geisler & Lieutenant JG Felix Langston & Lieutenant JG Catherine Cooper & Ensign Xavier Hernandez
5,473 words; about a 27 minute read
Mission:
Risky Business
Location: Various
Timeline: MD 6 || 1100 hours
===[Space]===
It had been an interesting morning what with the early wake up call and ensuing confusion. But they had managed to get the Flight Deck back in some semblance of order and the injured crewman taken care of. There was the one death, however, but that was to be dealt with later. Right now, he had to be extra vigilant as they were down two of the four fighters due to damages. When he exited the Deck, the rest of the maintenance crews had been trying to piece together the other two fighters.
Now, he was making his way to the front of the ship, well, quite a ways in front of it actually, for their patrol. He had adjusted the rotation schedule to account for all of the confusion. He settled in to position and waited on his wingman, Archer. Terry watched the swirling clouds of nebula gas and admired the different colors for a moment. It was still pretty, even with not having sensors and shields and a number of other issues. As he was visually scanning the area ahead, to the port, and slightly below him, he thought he saw a glimpse of a grey hull amidst the colorful, swirling gases. Terry shook his head for a moment and refocused his eyes.
Not willing to run the risk and in keeping with the order of radio silence and minimal communication, he opened his comm to the Flight. “Archer, you have the Flight. Alpha Flight...,” he paused a moment. His next statement would convey the caution and urgency that he wanted. “...standby, weapons ready. Rocco out.” With that, he slowly piloted his Valkyrie in the direction he had seen the patch of grey. Terry’s gut feeling was back. It was this same gut feeling he had right before Mark died and he had learned then to trust it. He came to a dead stop and waited. Out of the gases came a slow moving Intrepid class ship. Terry saw by the registry number that it was the USS Chimera. She looked like she was on patrol and hadn’t even noticed him. But then...lack of sensors.
“Crap!” he yelled. “Rocco to Black Hawk! I have visual confirmation of the USS Chimera!” Normally he would have transmitted coordinates, but what good would that have done with no reference points and sensors? “Rocco to Alpha Flight! Weapons hot! Weapons hot! Maintain formation and engage on my command!”
Archer was reluctant to let her lead go off but followed orders and held position with the others...that is until the call went out. "Archer acknowledged!" her hands flew across her weapons board with a speed born of muscle memory and experience. Her adrenaline surged as she checked to make sure the others were holding position..."Your death comes..." She muttered, a sort of battle mantra as everything came into sharp focus.
Galahad took up his position as well, his face grim and weapons ready.
As Rocco flew off into the great unknown, Alpha Seven moved up into tight formation with Galahad, waggling his wings in greeting. Moments later, Rocco's call came over the commlink and Discord bumped his weapons into the hot position. He could feel it starting, the old creep from his toes to his head and adrenaline pumped into his body, just like every hooligan scrum or Klingon brawl. The fight for survival. Softly, he began to sing to himself.
"... I curse the name, the one behind it all..."
===[Bridge]===
Harvey had just exited the Ready Room when he heard Terry's voice over the comm. A huge part of him was relieved that they'd finally found their target. Another part released a flood of anxiety into his emotions for he knew how many ways this could go down.
Snapping his fingers at the Tactical station and not looking at all who was manning it, Harvey ordered, "Red Alert. Battlestations. Scramble fighters. Get me the camera feed from Alpha One."
Camila immediately issued an all hands to Security personnel and then tapped her combadge. =^=Di Pasquale to Corwin. Report to Transporter Room Three on the double. Lieutenant Cooper, report to Transporter Room Three on the double.=^= While only the Chimera had been spotted by the Black Knights, that wasn't to say that the Cochrane wasn't lurking nearby.
Harvey squinted at the viewscreen. If the Chimera had spotted them, she sure wasn't acting like it. "Alpha One, Actual. Standby. Do you see Cochrane or the Valdore?" If they weren't around, maybe the Chimera could lead them to their real target.
===[Elsewhere]===
It's go time, Joey thought to herself as she took a deep, calming breath. Who was she kidding? Her nerves had her on edge, but when a caged tiger was nervous, wasn't that when they were at their most dangerous? She quickly did a check on her gear before putting the exographic targeting sensor into place and powered it on. This wasn't a training exercise anymore. This was the real deal, and she was ready for it. =^=Acknowledged, Chief.=^= Corwin said. With a phaser in hand, already set to stun on widebeam, she made her way to Transporter Room Three.
=/\="Cooper, here acknowledged." She grabbed her gear and took off at a run, stopping to secure it to herself while in the turbolift. And the oddest phrases popped into her head as she tried to breath deep and maintain focus, something a pilot friend of hers said once, "I walk through the valley of the shadow of death and I will fear no evil because I am the baddest in the valley.". Cooper gave a mental laugh about that it seemed a bit pompous but does do wonders for settling ones mind, just had to be careful about 'getting proud' as her hand to hand instructor liked to say.
===[Space]===
Terry activated the camera installed in the nose of his fighter when the Captain gave the 'Actual' order. "Negative, Sir. No sign of the Cochrane or the Valdore." He continued his visual scans while moving his fighter so it could keep a camera eye on the Chimera.
Bravo Three's Andorian pilot, callsign Ant-man, had come to the Flight Deck earlier to review the logs from the prior shift. He became the first pilot to leave the hangar the moment klaxons sounded. Just after he flew his bird around the backside of the Black Hawk, his antennae twitched. He wanted to push the feeling off to anxiety, after all, he'd never taken on a Federation craft before.
It was the shadow that overtook his cockpit that worried him. Ant-man looked up to see the underbelly of another Intrepid-class Starship. "Alpha One, Bravo Three!" he began to call out. His warning was too late. Ant-man watched helplessly as the ventral phaser bank on the primary hull discharged and near point blank range, striking the edge of the Black Hawk's starboard shafts that led back to the weapons pod and nacelle pylons. Thankfully, the beam just grazed the edge, but the hull breach that resulted didn't see it as a friendly gesture, nor to the two bodies that were sucked out into the nebula.
At least there was no need to find the USS Cochrane...
=/\= "Alpha One, Actual," =/\= cried Harvey's voice over the comm channel. =/\= "Engage the Chimera. Bring her towards us." =/\=
“Understood,” replied Terry. Grim determination took over. “Rocco to Black Knights, engage the Chimera! Bravo, manual targeting on their Engineering section. Charlie, hit their weapons systems. Alpha, let’s shake up the Bridge. Engage!” With that, the Black Knights sallied forth, lances at the ready.
Over the communications array, Bravo Flight's leader confirmed his orders. "Rocco, Sunbeam. Wilco."
As Alpha Flight approached the Bridge, Terry hit his comm, “Archer, you and I take ‘em at the forward. The rest of you, multiple attack vectors.”
Archer's replying grim grin was in her voice, "Understood" she replied over the comms. She locked on his side like glue as they screamed toward, dodged a bolt of energy that lit up its section of space to a blinding brightness, "Damn Rocco felt the ugly on that one..." She said swinging back into position, "Getting a manual lock ready to fire on your mark..." She said. Simultaneously flying in 3D space manually while also trying to shoot at the same targets, also manually was not an easy thing but like the rest of the pilots Archer was in her element as the Flight shot toward their targets like arrows from a bow.
"Weapon free, Archer. Light 'em up!" Terry flew in close and jinked port to strafe the side of the Bridge. He looped back around fired a couple of torpedoes at the top, watching them land squarely on the hull. Being small, maneuverable, and able to get in close was payday for a fighter. Once back out in front, he saw another beam of energy fly past him as it almost clipped his wing. "If they actually manage to hit one of us without shields we're done for, Archer. Try to dodge them as best as you can."
"On Fire Boss, you too eh I don't want to break a new Squadron CO in..." Archer replied and matched Rocco move for move, she shifted more than once to dodge incoming fire but she didn't let up. what Rocco hit, she hit. Hoping that their joint fire would have some decent effect. Archer had rely on her helmet's light shields to protect her eyes as bright, white beams of instant death flew close but luck was still with the agile little fighters.
Terry laughed into his comm. "You got it, Archer!" He, Archer, and the rest of Alpha Flight were hammering the Chimera's bridge for all they were worth. Granted, a fighter's phasers and photon torpedoes weren't as powerful as those of a starship, but they could pinpoint their attacks and inflict enough damage to cause problems. Especially as Alpha Flight continued to unload on the bridge.
"Discord where do you want to hit 'em" Asked Galahad, his eyes peeled for threats as they moved.
"Chief said the bridge, so let's bring him their head." The whole wing followed Archer's sashay around the phaser fire. Dzhossen sat up straight in his seat and craned his neck to see the Cochran fire on the Blackhawk, hoping vaguely that there was a home to go to when all this was done. "We're going to get tore up out here Galahad, we need to get close, then dump our torpedoes on their heads. Let's get inside their targeting array, low and slow."
Galahad grinned, the big Bajoran was pleased, "I like how you think Discord, Low and slow aye. Our weapons locked like they were wed." He said checking his weapons systems and edging at the right angle to support his fire and him but not be too close in case they needed to shift but good.
"Wed huh?" Discord giggled as he and his lead shot in close to the enemy vessel. "How about you start with buying me a drink first?"
Galahad laughed as he dodged another beam. "We survive this, drinks are on me...."
The target closed at thousands of kilometers per second and Discord steeled his nerves before pulling up hard and cutting his throttle at the last possible second. The inertia dampeners struggled against the forces at work, sounding an alarm in the cockpit that blared out of sync with the proximity alerts going off as Discord slipped beneath Galahad's craft. Green feathered the edges of his vision and Discord could feel a painful throbbing where he had struck his head earlier that day.
The trick was to skirt the phaser banks until they had a clear shot at the enemy bridge. Feathering the throttle, the Vulcan found the sweet spot that allowed him to cling the the Intrepid-class ship without getting run over. Discord had plenty of time. Phaser fire erupted around him but he trusted in Galahad's course and did his best to ignore the heavy fire that was too clumsy to aim at him appropriately. There was a moment of clarity as the shot crystallized and Discord fired one, two, three torpedoes into the bridge Chimera.
Galahad was right where he was supposed be and the moment Discord fired he added his own to the shots. It was difficult work the constant and severe shifting had the internal dampeners screaming but they held even if they weren't happy about it. He hoped they didn't get lucky with their random phaser fire as they continued their bloody work.
As close as the two pilots were, there was almost no chance of missing and less time to watch the fire works. Discord throttled up his machine and clung to Galahad as they tried to make their escape.
Galahad's craft's engines redlined as he forced it to spin and dance trying to dodge phaser fire, "You got some brass ones you know that Discord!" He said approvingly then his tone changed, "Watch out their changing their firing pattern, apparently random stabs in the dark isn't helping so they're trying different random stabs..." He joked as death continued to fly around them.
Beneath the Intrepid class vessel and out of the firing range of most of her weapons arcs, Bravo Flight were mounting up for the first wave of their assault upon the Engineering section of their target. Sunbeam at the lead, his wingman beside him and the rest of the flight behind, pilots were soon in position. "Bravo Flight, Sunbeam. Target weapons arrays, shield generators and other important systems along the engineering section. Weapons free." the leader called.
Within seconds, the crowd of vessels broke off in different directions and began unleashing volley after volley of weapons fire upon the enemy vessel. Whether it was phasers or torpedoes, the weapons hit their mark as the craft flew in a seemingly random pattern until they were in formation once more.
===[Deck Six]===
Cadet Quinn Mackie was on Deck Six. Today he was assigned to Computer Control and had just taken a second to use the head, only to be rudely interrupted by the roar of the klaxons. He quickly finished his business and was about to escape into the corridor when he felt an unusual vibration in the deck plates.
=/\= "Damage Control Teams to Decks Three and Four." =/\= came an almost instantaneous reaction.
This is it, Quinn thought, adjusting his trousers as he bolted into the corridor to head back to his station. This was the moment every single one of the five-hundred-plus souls aboard the ship had been waiting impatiently for the last six days. At least, Quinn had felt impatient. He figured everyone else was too.
As he turned a corner, he heard an oddly familiar sound, something he wasn't expecting at all to hear today. Short, finely tuned whistles of discharge. Quinn shook his head. He was probably imagining things. He turned another corner and froze dead in his tracks. Of all of the times to perform maintenance on the computer and rerouting half the power on the deck so they could do so. If only they'd left it alone so that the emergency forcefields would function. That was by far the stupidest decision he'd made so far aboard this ship.
The door to Computer Control was open, and Quinn immediately found his shipmates sprawled on the floor. It can't be! he screamed aloud. His eyes quickly snapped upwards as his hand slapped his combadge. "Intruders! Deck Six!" Quinn immediately whirled towards the junction from whence he came. He'd been spotted, but the sudden appearance of hot energy in his shoulder boldly declared he wasn't fast enough.
Darkness quickly overtook him, enabling him to feel no pain as his head bounced off a corridor brace before his body slumped to the floor.
===[Bridge]===
Camila had been on the bridge with her eyes on the Chimera as it seemed to blindly go on its way through the nebula with no idea it was being stalked by the Black Knights and Black Hawk as if it didn't have a care in the quadrant. She had brought the weapons online and fully charged, the torpedo bays loaded and had a strong desire to raise shields which they didn't have. An unexpected shudder ran through the ship and the sound of damage control teams being ordered nearly merged with the sound of a young male voice declaring intruders on deck six. Of course I wasn' t the only one with a plan to board a ship she mentally muttered as she slapped her combadge even as she looked at the location of the report and was thankful that internal sensors were working. =^=Security Team Four to Deck Six! Intruders in Computer Control!=^=
After she had dispatched the team, Camila brought up the external starboard cameras and muttered at the sight of the Cochrane poised to begin chewing into the Black Hawk's weapon's pod and nacelle. The little Valkyrie was in her way for a moment before she switched views and discharged a volley of phaser fire at the Intrepid class ship in the hopes of giving them a little to think about while giving time for the Valkyrie pilot time to do something effective.
"Helm!" Harvey called out, moving to his chair while grimacing at the alarms. He did not get to see Camila's shots damage the Cochrane from the view that he had. "Get us out of here. Defense Manuever Gamma Three!" He hoped the transporter chief would send Lieutenant Cooper over before they got too far away.
Felix stiffened in his chair when he heard the order. "Gamma Three, aye, sir!" he shouted back. A feeling like ice water ran through his veins as he swept his hands over the console. The controls responded effortlessly to his touch; the ship rose and banked to the port side. You want some of this? he thought, You're gonna have to work for it. His hands moved to the console again and quickly entered another command. At the apex of the climb, the ship dove steeply. The Black Hawk certainly lived up to her reputation and namesake as she nimbly moved through the nebula.
"Dorsal hull integrity at ninety percent!" shouted the ensign at Ops, forced to maintain the station until the Chief of Operations or his Deputy came to relieve him. "Emergency forcefields are barely holding. We're taking on nebula gas, and it's starting to interfere with the emitters."
"Set up multiple forcefields down that deck!" Harvey ordered, knowing the last thing they needed was to lose whole decks to the nebula. "Evacuate all outer compartments! Helm, bring us towards Chimera so we can make a transport. Tactical, see if you can target the Cochrane's weapon systems."
Camila brought the phaser arrays to bear on the Cochrane and began to unleash a deadly barrage with only one out of three bursts missing the Intrepid class ship. One shot went wide of her target, but a minor adjustment resulted in a direct hit of the phaser bank that they had been using to fire on the Black Hawk's weapons pod and nacelle. She was rewarded with a view of the explosion and quickly brought the phasers to new targets as she fired repeatedly, scoring hit after hit on the vessel at nearly point blank range.
An alert on her station demanded her attention and she saw that the protocols she and Lieutenant Cooper had put in place was demanding her attention. She grunted and then blinked; it demanded her authorization before it went into effect? She had had Cooper put them in place herself...then she remembered that she had never finalized them with her own authorization. Her fingers quickly entered her authorization codes in and over the red alert klaxons, the Security intruder protocols initiated and the new system came online.
Following the Captain's orders for force fields, Camila switched to the Tactical control system and wished she had an Assistant Chief to handle that, bringing up force fields on the deck that had been breached after the internal sensors indicated the areas had been evacuated.
All right, Felix thought, let's get a little closer. As he entered the coordinates, the Black Hawk glided ever closer to the Chimera. His eyes strained for visibility as he maneuvered, deftly avoiding most of the oncoming fire and giving the fighters room to do their thing. "Give 'em hell," he said softly as he saw them fly past.
===[Deck Six]===
Security Team Four, comprised of an Ensign, two enlisted personnel, a female Vulcan and a male human, and a rather bulky Bolian male crewman thundered down the corridor of deck six as they headed for Computer Control upon getting the message from the Chief. The Ensign drew his phaser and barked orders for the others to do the same as he set the weapon to heavy stun. They rounded the corner at a run and saw a young man laying on the floor and the Ensign immediately dove for the nearest alcove while the Vulcan and human took up defensive positions. The Bolian didn't stop but did drop down into a combat crouch-walk and began to advance, his phaser swinging from left to right as he looked for the intruders.
A glimpse of a leg presented itself and the Bolian hoped it wasn't one of their people as he fired the Type II phaser twice, the weapon small in his large hands and he wished that he had a Type III phaser rifle which could at least serve as a club if he ran out of energy for it. He was rewarded with the satisfying thud as the body attached to the leg hit the deck, but his reward came in the form of a phaser blast which knocked him backwards into the bulkhead.
The Vulcan female had been watching the Bolian and noted how illogical it was for the man to charge ahead as if his bulk would protect him from an energy weapon and then let her brown eyes move ahead. She saw the intruder go down from her angle and calmly raised her phaser while she waited for the intruder's partner or partners to show themselves. She was not disappointed as one popped around the junction and fired a shot at the Bolian, sending him into what she assumed was either unconsciousness or death. There was no time to check and she calmly depressed the firing stud of the phaser and watched the second intruder fall.
A third intruder, wearing an armband (like the rest of his team), that served as both as a transport inhibitor, remained out of view, and rather than draw his phaser, he quickly tried to finish his work, which was leaving an isolinear chip in the Black Hawk’s computer core. His job was not to overthrow the Black Hawk, for that would be quickly quelled. A computer virus that would open up the computer to external control… that would be much easier for the Chimera and Cochrane to handle.
When the Security protocols came online, albeit belatedly, a force field came up around the intruder and the system began to seal off access to outside intrusion into the areas that required the Chief of Security, Executive Officer or Commanding Officer to reinstate.
The third intruder, his collar visibly showing the rank of ensign, looked up as the forcefield was raised. The console was shut off immediately, but it didn't matter. His work was done. He looked up at the Vulcan, smiled sheepishly and raised his hands in an act of surrender.
The Ensign moved in and requested the forcefield be taken down after making sure the Ensign behind it didn't have a phaser in his hand, and that his own phaser was set on Setting Three. When it came down, he gestured for the man to get up. "What have you done here?" He demanded of the boarder.
"Securing the safety of the Federation against you Consortium scum," he replied. His tone was not so much as stern as it was defiant.
"Consortium? You're the one's who are Consortium!" the Black Hawk Security Ensign said. "We've chased you all the way here from Unity, you board us and then have the nerve to call us Consortium? Who is your Captain?"
The intruder was understandably confused, but then again, they'd been warned that the Black Hawk's crew could be manipulative. "Ensign Kyson Schmidt. Operations Officer, USS Cochrane. Serial Number Sigma Two Three Alpha Seven Tango Tango Eight Four Nine."
"Come on, Ensign Schmidt," the Security Ensign said as he motioned with his Type II phaser while the rest of his team took care of the other two unconscious boarders. "It's time to pay a visit to the Brig since you can't answer a simple question. You're probably just following orders you're too dumb to question."
Meanwhile the Vulcan female Security officer found a cadet laying against the bulkhead of the corridor. "We have more injured," she called as she check him carefully for wounds other than than phaser burn on his uniform.
===[Deck 16]===
A second team of five individuals beamed on board the Black Hawk. Their target was Engineering, which was the deck above. The team had wanted to be closer, but with the nebula involved, transports were only possible with extreme close range, but even then there was no guarantee that a person wouldn't materialize within a bulkhead. Hopefully with all of the chaos the other team and the two ships outside the bulkheads would generate, getting to Engineering and taking control of it would be easy.
Samantha was in the Tactical office and she heard the sound of a Transporter, she knew she needed a phaser but the nearest locker was further along the deck. She creeper to the door, opened a panel to withdraw an emergency door opening device and gently pulled the door ever so slightly. She saw a phaser blast shine along the walls......they were down there.....but which way we're they going? How far were they from the deck weapons locker? Samantha thought and she did make a note to herself that as a tactical officer, she should have something in her room.....even a personal phaser.
"Dammit!" hissed the team leader, a Bajoran lieutenant. His team of three just became a team of two when the Deltan ensign stunned a nearby crewman who happened to see the intruders. Though the crewman didn't have time to sound a report, forcefields had immediately erected themselves around the ensign, trapping her until Black Hawk's security arrived.
"Go!" cried the ensign in a deep, Amazon-like voice. She'd carried two phasers, so she pulled out the other and set it for stun, planning to use it on herself before she could spill what they'd been planning. Her lack of talking would give the rest of her team more time, as would the forcefields that would hopefully keep local security from intercepting the rest of the intruders. With that, she turned and began to fire at the forcefield emitters. She had no hope of escape, but she had every hope at being a distraction. At least she knew she wouldn't be beamed away thanks to the inhibiting armband that she wore.
Ensign Xavier Hernandez handed out the last of the phaser rifles to the Security personnel in his area and took up two for himself. He checked the power cells and strapped one to his back by the sling and cradled the other in his right arm before he headed for Deck Sixteen where the second boarding party had been reported.
===[Bridge]===
The ensign manning Ops was visibly stressed. What had sidetracked Commander Bast and Ensign Sisserk? The Black Hawk took damage from another strike from the Cochrane that was doing its absolute best to stay close to the Black Hawk. "Hull breach, Deck Seven!" he called out. "The Cochrane has lost the ventral array on her engineering hull, but she's still coming."
Suddenly, his console flickered for a moment, just before the ship shuddered from another blast. "Impact recorded on Deck Five. No breach."
Harvey held on to his chair, wondering if that reduced damage was by design or if they were starting to get out of phaser range. He wished Cooper had done her task by now. Obviously, she was being held up by something. "What about the Chimera?"
"The fighters have inflicted damage!" came the report from the forward Flight Operations station, manned by a Petty Officer. "She's still fully operational."
"Are we in range?" Harvey asked, turning to Camila.
Camila guestimated the distance to the Chimera using the responses from the Black Knights and other factors before she looked over her shoulder. "We're in transporter range, Sir," she said before she looked back and launched a photon torpedo at the port nacelle and clipped it before it exploded and did just enough damage to send the Cochrane off it's attack run on the Black Hawk. She continued to strafe with the phasers and prayed that Corwin and Cooper would be able to disable the enemy ships soon.
The viewscreen remained on a forward view, so Harvey was unable to see how effective Lieutenant Di Pasquale's firing at the Cochrane was doing. "Get her over there," he said to Ops.
Without waiting for confirmation, Harvey rose from his chair to stand on his bridge. "Remember everyone, we're not here to destroy. Just disable. Helm, let's change gears. Get an attack pattern on the Cochrane and execute." From what he could see, the fighters had the Chimera's hands' full. Keeping the Black Hawk in her range would only be deadly to those twenty fighters. The 'Hawk should be able to handle the Cochrane on its own.
"Aye, sir," Felix said as his hands moved to execute Attack Pattern Delta-3. He saw the Cochrane climbing relative to their position and maneuvered the Black Hawk on an intercept course so that Camila could unleash hell on the enemy ship's ventral side.
"Miss Di Pasquale, concentrate on their phaser arrays," Harvey barked as the viewscreen flickered. Just after it did, Harvey saw the helm controls flicker as well. The ship hadn't shuddered from an impact, so who knew what could be happening. "Mister Teixeira, give Ops a hand. Keep the damage control teams moving. And find out why we're having fluctuations!"
Camila fired a sustained phaser burst at the Cochrane's phaser arrays and was pleased to see that despite the growing distance between the Consortium-controlled ship, she scored two direct hits on the phaser array and rendered it useless. "We need to get on the starboard side, we can disable them even more," she called out while she ordered the photon torpedo tubes to be reloaded.
Felix blinked as the helm console flickered. "What the..." he muttered as he slapped the topside of the console. The console returned to normal. Felix's pulse quickened. It's gonna be really hard to fly this thing without a console, he thought. He overheard Camila's comment and set up for another attack run. He punched up the command for Attack Pattern Sierra-4, waiting for the captain's order to execute it.
Now standing next to Ensign Mallory at Ops, Thiago worked to relieve the young officer of some of the rigor of the situation. "You're doing well," he quietly told Mallory, wanting to reassure him. "I'll handle damage control," he continued. Mallory nodded and Teixeira turned around to the Mission Ops panel and began prioritizing damage control efforts. Engineering was capable of doing this themselves, but, in situations like this, it was often easier to get a more holistic view of the issues and address them in that manner.
Harvey's eyes remained fixed on the viewscreen. He could see the Chimera being peppered by the Squadron. Thankfully their weapons were not powerful enough on an individual basis to breach the hull. Once they started concentrating their attacks, like some of the fighters had, hull breaches were guaranteed. Individual blasts alone would disrupt internal systems, and that's what the Black Hawk needed. Hopefully, this would all be over soon.
~To Be Continued~
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