War Games

Posted on 29 May 2020 @ 4:06am by Captain Harvey Geisler & Commander Terry Walsh & Lieutenant Commander Joey Geisler & Lieutenant Commander Gemma Alexander & Lieutenant Commander Camila Di Pasquale & Lieutenant Commander Arjin Djinx & Lieutenant Dijaat Parker & Lieutenant JG Charles McCullen & Lieutenant JG Damian Akorem & Ensign Kelly Khan & Ensign Aurilia Moretti

5,935 words; about a 30 minute read

Mission: Sentience
Location: Bridge and Flight Deck
Timeline: MD 2 || 1600 hours

Harvey hovered over the Flight Operations station, reviewing the data coming up from the Flight Deck. Twenty-one Gryphon fighters registered as online and operating, as crews below prepared them for the upcoming war games. The Black Hawk was still just a few minutes away from their destination at Waypoint Two on the Flight Chief's course, and everyone seemed to be either calm or scrambling in preparation.

Arjin was scanning the enviroment the Helmsman had chosen in his itenerary. He liked the info that came back. The new scanners were definately something.He looked forward to see how they reacted when there would be more action and rapid movement all over.

Camila sat at the Tactical console going over the plans that she and Gemma had made, but she had plans of her own. She reconfigured the console to her liking and then began to put her plan in place to take out the fighters before they knew what hit them. "Security and Tactical are ready, Captain," she said as she sent a copy of her tactical solutions to his chair should he wish to peruse them.

Dijaat took up a seat at one of the vacant Engineering stations and established a direct link down into main engineering from where he was working. In the worst case he would have to return down there, but for now at least it seemed like his engineering staff were capable of handling things while he remained on the bridge. "Engineering is ready Captain," Came the Half Romulan officer's voice.

He turned around, "I've transferred much of the engineering controls into the console where I'm at and am monitoring systems from here." He concluded before turning back around and set to work running some basic diagnostic or another.

"Intel reports ready," Joey stated as she moved her fingers over her console.

Looking over the various readouts on his console he brought up the list of specific data he needed. "Power systems are running at 100 percent, backups all read ready. All sensors are running at peak efficiency, and the power drain issues with HASA appear to have been corrected." After three hours or work, as opposed to the one hour he thought it would take Damian thought to himself.

Terry tapped away at the console he was standing in front of. He'd been there in a temporary capacity a time or two, but this time was different. "Things are moving along pretty good. Looks like we're set."

"Helm ready," Charlie replied from the front of the bridge, half-surprised by the steady calm in his voice. His eyes locked on his display, fingers poised to take action as soon as they arrived at waypoint two. The plans he had made were challenging, but he knew he'd have no problems executing them, despite the whispering doubt in the back of his brain.


===[Flight Deck]===

Gemma watched 'The Dance' as she called it from the cockpit of her fighter. She'd done all she could do to prepare them and now it was time to stay out of their way even as she kept a weather eye out on the controlled chaos. Reports came back as more and more fighters finished their preflight checks and the squadron came fully online. Her gunner, a vulcan named Sulek, calmly went about his own preparations.

The day was finally here! Dhred danced across the flight deck with shuffling feet and threw his hands in the air. His faithful gunner, an unusual old bird but an eagle eye on target, was running pre-flight checks on the starfighter's port-side weapons array.

"Ixsåμ!" the Andorian shouted. "You ready to bust some chops?!"

Turning away from the ordnance, the tall, ostrich-like alien gave Dhred a fierce side eye. "Squaaaawk!"

"'Atta boy." Dhred clapped the lanky bird on his shoulderless back. He turned to the rest of his flight. "Bravo Flight! Sound off!"

"On your three Lovecraft." Ensign Baro Jolan aka Galahad called briefly poking his head out of his own craft as he went through his preflight checks. His gunner, a male Bolian named Lek, gave a wave before returning to his console."

His flight. His squad. His wingmen. A tear moistened the side of Dhred's eye, but he knuckled it away. "That is it, boys! Fly or die!"

Except it wasn't, yet nobody seemed to say that to Dhred's upraised fist.

Aurilia began her pre-flight check, her eyes darting over readouts and display information on her fighter and she nodded as she checked off each item on her combat PADD checklist. when she was done, she began to power it up and waited orders to depart.

Galahad shook his head at his wingleader and then pulled it back in to finish his pre-flight. In Gemma's cockpit she got notices as more pilots finished their pre-flights and their status changed to green.

After all lights turned green and Gemma did a final check she passed on they were ready and standing by.


===[Bridge]===

The Captain, from his unique vantage point, surveyed the bridge. His officers were indeed ready, almost antsy, to get these trials started. For the last day or so, it had been business as usual, and it had been quiet. He surmised that everyone was ready for a change of pace. Harvey returned to his seat at the center of the bridge. "All right, helm, let's drop out of warp."

Charlie cracked his knuckles, responding with an "aye sir" as he brought the warp engines down. Everything went smoothly, until it didn't and the ship jolted to an abrupt halt. He had to grab onto the console to avoid sliding over it.

Harvey latched onto his armrests immediately. The overhead lights began to flicker, and consoles began to flash on and off. Instantly, the computer reacted, sounding the red alert klaxon and filling the bridge with the dreadful sound. "Report!" he shouted.

Arjin had to brace himself after they had dropped out of warp. It seemed as if he was instantly transported into a carnival. Alas he was still on the bridge of the starship. And the flickering lights and red alert was not a good thing. He regained his posture and started scanning. He almost immediately had to advert his eyes from what he saw on the screen. "A plasma storm, Sir. We look to be surrounded by it."

"Shields up and holding, Sir," Camila called from her station as she double checked the readouts.

The lights continued to flicker under the plasma pressure, prompting the Captain to shout, "They won't be holding long at this rate. Someone compensate for that damn surge. Helm, get us out of this storm!"

"Internal dampers are maxed out, attempting to compensate," Damian called over. Sensors were all over the place, trying to find as much information they could about the storm. "I've rerouted as much power as I can to the dampers, they are all running at about 110%. That's the smoothest I can make it."

Dijaat was struggling to remain at his console as reports were flying all over the place into the console at such a high rate that he was barely able to keep up. His engineering personnel were struggling to keep up and he had honestly needed to be there and not up on the bridge. "Lieutenant Akorem I'll dump some power from the weapons into the shields... Don't put any more power into the dampers though otherwise we'll burn out the systems."

"There seems to be a route out of here heading baring 238 mark 4", Arjin helped.

"On it!" Charlie yelped, the calm confidence in his voice was gone now but his hands knew what to do. A blast of port forward thruster brought the bow of the ship around, buffeting against the raging storm around the ship. The impulse engines surged as he brought them up, driving the ship forward.

She tried to slip to port and he bit back a curse as he corrected with thrusters, then she was diving negative Z and he corrected again, his hands danced across the thruster controls as he kept her steady, driving through the storm towards the exit point, it was just like riding a wave board. A 9.5 million metric ton, 715 meter long wave board.

The edge of the storm was where the strongest currents were, whipping around the focal point like a giant spacial tornado and he was forced to angle the bow into them, using the force of the plasma on the shields like a sail to drive her outwards, and then she was free, ejected from the storm by the storm itself.

"We're free!" He reported somewhat unnecessarily as he steadied the ship on course, keeping her moving away from the maelstrom at a quarter impulse.

Harvey's hands lessened their grip on the armrests as the flickering subsided. With the ship now free of the storm, the shaking had stopped and was replaced an uneasy calm. "Status report!" he called out. "Mister Djinx... why didn't our sensors pick up that storm?"

"I am not sure captain.", Arjin said. "They should have. But they didn't." He replayed the recorded imagery again on his screen. "There seems to be a blip just before we came out of warp. Maybe some overload in the systems of some kind."

When the initial shaking started, Terry nearly fell backwards onto the little seat behind him. He instead grabbed the sides of the console and held on for dear life. When things had settled down a bit, he noticed that his console was still flashing. "Lieutenant Parker, damage report."

Dijaat couldn't make heads nor tails of the damage reports that were flashing across his screen, "Multiple hull breaches in the engineering section. There are power outages all over the ship as well," He turned and looked at the Exec and the Captain. "Our port nacelle is encased in highly charged particles I've had to remove matter/antimatter flow to that nacelle which means we don't have warp drive for the moment."

Dijaat had stood up, "I need to get down to main engineering I've done all that I can up here."

Harvey nodded to the Chief Engineer. It was obvious that the ship needed the attention first and foremost, and Harvey was disappointed that his ship hadn't held up very well following its major repair work. "Give me an assessment of how long we'll have to stay put before we can resume our course."

"If I do it right less than five minutes and another five to get the flow restored," Dijaat told him. "If something goes wrong it'll be a lot longer." He then boarded the turbolift and was gone.

As the engineer departed the bridge, Harvey gave new instructions. "Lieutenant Akorem, seal off those hull breaches and adjust structural integrity to compensate. Commander Walsh, go ahead and give the squadron the green light. Mister McCullen and Miss Di Pasquale, you'll have to run your plots taking this real damage into account. Let's get to it, people."

Terry nodded quickly and tapped his combadge. "Walsh to Alexander, deploy the squadron at once. Happy hunting. Walsh out." He input a few commands on his console to bring up an inset for the 325th. "I'm looking forward to this," he said. This was going to be different for Terr. He'd been accustomed to monitoring the squadron's progress from his own fighter in the fray. Now, he was monitoring it from his place on the Bridge. Seeing it from this angle would be a new learning experience for the old dog. Who says...

"Aye, Sir" Akorem replied. He began to close some of the hull breaches, physically where plating allowed it, and with force fields where he couldn't. The structural integrity fields were already maxed out, but a quick rerouting from some other systems could push the strength of the fields up by another twenty percent.

"Please do not diminish scanner power, Lieutenant. They might go offline if you do leaving us blind.", Arjin Stated.

Camila checked and rechecked the weapons status. "Torpedo bay two is reporting damage and one port phaser array is offline, Captain," She reported.

Harvey turned to face the Security Chief to his right. During the simulations, the phaser banks would only be firing at one-percent power as to not damage any of the spacecraft, and the torpedo launchers would have only been firing blanks. Still, the damage was concerning. "Coordinate with engineering to dispatch repair teams. Will the torpedo bay's damage hinder our trials?"

"It shouldn't given the fact that it's only blanks, but we'll still be down one," Camila said before she send the message to the Damage Control Teams in Engineering. "However, we won't have use of it for the time being. I can compensate for the phaser bank as long as we keep them off the port side too much."

"I'm sure that can be arranged," Harvey stated. "If anything, it gives a seasoned veteran a little more of a challenge in these trials we are about to begin."

The Security Chief couldn't help but glance at the very young man at the helm who looked even younger. "Seasoned veteran, Sir?" She asked as she looked back at the Captain.

"You're the Lieutenant Commander," the Captain quipped, offering a smile as he did. "McCullen can only fly so well around twenty-one small craft. You're the one that's got to shoot them down."

"I can only shoot what I can see and have the phasers and torpedoes for," Camila countered. "But I have a plan for that."

Charlie hadn't replied verbally to the captain's order, his head was bowed over his console as he recalculated mass, thruster outputs, power co-variants and flight paths in his head. The warp nacelle being out wouldn't affect his sublight plans, he figured, but any spikes of power would.


===[Flight Deck]===

Some few seconds later, a communication beep came through the Squadron Commander's fighter. =/\=Walsh to Alexander, deploy the squadron at once. Happy hunting. Walsh out.=/\=

With his ending of 'out' Gemma nodded once though no one could see her as no verbal reply was required.
=/\=Archer to Squadron, we have clearance. Time for the Knights to ride. =/\= She said satisfaction in her voice, always happy for a reason to get into space. With that she lead the way smoothly exiting the ship as her gunner double checked his systems, her Wingmen following her out.

Aurilia checked with Cypher, her wingman on the mission and the two fighters slipped gracefully out of the ship behind Archer and ran her combat simulation sweep. "Tango to Archer. Wings free."

"Acknowledged Tango, take your position and stand by." She said checking her own systems as she slide into her spot while other fighters continued to pour out of the Black Hawk. It was like watching bee's dance as they moved about the ship into the blackness of space, finding their assigned starting points.

Cypher slipped up on Aurilia's wing and gave a wing wave from his fighter before falling back into position. "Roger that, Archer," She said and her wingman confirmed as she maneuvered her fighter into the attack wing.

Once everyone had slid in their slots and related their readiness, Archer opened a com to the squadron, "Stay loose, this is gonna get rather hairy. Remember the goal." Then per the rules of engagement for this gave the order that would set off the training mission, "First waves away!". The order that would also send Tango and her team to dive in from another angle as part of that first wave. Shields up and 'weapons' hot she and her wingmen went for the Black Hawk at an oblique angle of their own.

Cypher and Tango split off from Archer and her wingman and came in from the exact opposite angle and readied their weapons and shields while calling up the battle plan of attack. "Mother Goose is in the hot zone, Archer!"

"Lead your ducks well, Mother" Archer replied her own squad swinging around.


===[Bridge]===

Terry watched as the icons representing the fighters took up their positions and then made the first move. "It's started," he said. "Let's see what these newcomers have in 'em."

"Hard to port!" Harvey called out. "Commander Di Pasquale, defensive fire. Scare them off."

Charlie, jammed his finger on the requisite button, wheeling the big ship around to port and pushing up the speed a hair to keep ahead of the lead fighters.


* * *

"Well they know we're here." She calmly stated on coms as sensors indicated the Black Hawks shields and weapons had come up. Her own shields up, Archer and her team flew toward their target as her eyes continued to skim the HUD. Her hands moved smoothly over her controls and the small fighter responded like a pilots dream as she made a slight adjustment on her approach. Watchful for enemy movement or fire, Archer and her wave got weapons locks on the ship and then, as she liked to call it, laid down the kitchen sink. "Here we go." She thought as the phaser fire and microtorpoes streaked toward the Black Hawk.

As Archer came into Camila's firing solution she had programmed in, the ombre haired woman smiled and painted Archer's wingman with the phasers but he slipped out from under it as low power phasers ripped through space millimeters away. She checked the sensors as the microtorpedoes came at the Black Hawk and laughed at the negligible effect and fired a burst of torpedoes at Archer.

Aurilia came in hot and fired a brace of microtorpedoes at the ventral phaser array while her wingman harried the point defense system with phaser fire before veering off.

"Woke the dragon now." Archer quipped as she deftly dodged the incoming torpedoes. Let it never be said that the Black Hawk lacked fire, noting the phaser fire close enough to light up her view. Her wave flew off to clear for the next one as the new data caused adjustments in their approach. Lovecraft and Galahad, each leading two other fighters, were already moving in for their attack run.


* *.*

Harvey shifted his weight in his chair while his gaze remained fixated upon the viewscreen. "Display tactical overlay on the viewscreen," he ordered so that he could see the squadron move around the vessel. "Mister Akorem, what's the damage report?"

Terry had been following the battle at his station. With a few quick hand movements, he had that same tactical overlay up front for all to see. "There you go, Captain. The Black Hawk is center as the large Starfleet indicator. The squadron indicators are smaller, but red for the purpose of the war games."

Damian brought up the various simulated damage reports on his console. "Shields at 94%, minor damage to the port nacelle. Damage control teams are responding."

"Let's keep the squadron on their toes," the Captain added after acknowledging Akorem's report. "Attack pattern Kappa zero-two-zero."

"Kappa zero-two-zero aye!" McCullen responded, stopping his starboard turn and bringing the Black Hawk around to port, swinging the bow past a wing of fighters and then pushing ahead, driving towards the flock to make them scatter.

Camila fired a spread of photon torpedoes as the Black Hawk jinked and twisted in space, the young helmsman helping her line up her shots. She unleashed a barrage of phaser shots across the front of the fighters formation and took delight in seeing them scatter.


* * *

Everyone scattered because of the heavy return fire, the teams of three reforming after dodging fire but a few could not and damage alarms went off, forcing a them to peel off into the 'peanut gallery' zone while the squadron reformed around their loss, buzzing around the Black Hawk like the armed and annoying little gnats they were and continued the assault.


* * *

Camila laughed when she saw the formation. "Enemy wouldn't protect their own like that," she muttered as she sent a brace of torpedoes to either side of the new defensive position and fired full phasers towards the middle.


* * *

Aurilia veered off and a second later, her warning went off, then a contact before her Gryphon registered fatal simulated damage and went dead in space. Cypher came on hot, weaving in and out of the fire coming his way and aimed for the bridge as he fired his last set of microtorpedoes.

Archer barely dodged an incoming torpedo and the gunner unwilling to blow this close to them simply made sure it was going into empty space before resetting his firing solution on the one part of the ship he could lock on to from this angle, one of the engine sections, letting loose. Archer checked her hud, "Let's defang this dragon." Archer went over comms, "Waves one and two focus on engines, waves three and four on weapons. Of course. Chance targets as possible are secondary." The remaining pilots reset themselves and went in again.

Cypher fell back since Aurilia was dead in space and took the opportunity to evaluate the situation before he slipped in behind Archer's wing as backup and began his attack run.


* * *

"Hard to port!" Harvey shouted, spotting the incoming torpedoes that had targeted the bridge. "All power to starboard shields!"

Charlie pumped all the power he had into the starboard fore and aft thrusters, bringing the big ship's starboard slip to a rapid halt and driving her away to port, the inertial dampeners whined as they struggled to keep up with the rapid change in movement and he couldn't help but grin. Damn, she can move!

Camila released a withering barrage of phaser fire from every array facing the fighters to take out the microtopedoes and returned two more spreads of photon torpedoes to the fighters. "Power diverted from aft on shields!"

Several buzzes sounded from the bridge's speakers, indicating that for all of the hard work that had gone into the ship's defense, the squadron had been able to score a few hits on the massive vessel. "Damage report!" Captain Geisler called out to his bridge crew.

"Aft shields are down to twenty-eight percent, Captain," Joey stated. "Aft phaser array is heavily damaged, and it appears the the fighters are attempting to take out port now."


* * *

Meanwhile, outside the great beast, Lieutenant Wayne and his wingman Ensign Boris were part of the wave attacking the weapons systems. "Come on Boris, we need to take out those weapons and it's not gonna be with a straight on shot at the exit points! Get your head in the game!" Wayne nosed his fighter down hard and to port as a phaser shot lanced by his cockpit. "Damn it, that was close."

"Careful," Boris called over the comm, his think accent rather apparent. "So, weapons power relays it is. Or the generators. Or both perhaps." He brought up some the generators and power relays on his HUD and overlaid it on the starship. "Hey Bats, there's a small cluster of power relays to your left. Take 'em out and see if we can't shut off some phasers, huh. I'll grab a generator." He maneuvered around and fired a volley of micro-torpedoes at the nearest generator point for the Black Hawk's weapons, followed by the biggest phaser shots he could get off.

"Roger that, Moose," said Bats. "I see the cluster and am engaging." Wayne fired off some pulse phaser shots followed by a couple of torpedoes and then some more phaser. When he and his wingman had completed that initial attack, they swung around and gave the whole thing another go.

* * *

Back on the Bridge, Terry looked at his console and shook his head as some more beeping and buzzing went off. "I don't whether to be proud of them or kick 'em in the teeth. But we've taken some damage to a cluster of weapons power relays and a generator on the ventral side of the saucer. How much damage, though, I can't tell."

"It looks like a few of the relays to the ventral phaser banks. Minor damage and the system is already rerouting to compensate. The generator is for one of the holodecks, and is inactive anyway." Damian replied.

"We need to force them to attack us from one angle only," Harvey observed. "Let's go to full impulse and get in front of them. Helm, adjust heading to zero-three-zero mark twelve. Tactical, as soon as the squadron is behind us, unleash everything you've got from the aft banks."

"Zero-three-zero mark twelve, full impulse aye." Charlie responded, watching his display and deciding to roll the ship to starboard, keeping the vulnerable dorsal section out of most of the fire.

Camila brought up a new tactical display to adjust for the loss of the ventral side and growled. The puny little fighters were like gnats and dodging and weaving through her firing solutions as well as taking out her phasers. As the Black Hawk rolled, she launched a full spread of every phaser bank and torpedo that she had and focused it on getting the fighters to go into her new plan.


* * *

The Black Hawk shot off through a gap in the fighters, a few shots that had been locked missed at the sudden movement. Gunner's moved to regain weapons locks as pilots, in their three man wings, moved to modify flight paths to give their gunners' that lock. Then alarms blared in remaining fighters as their world lit up with weapons fire from the Black Hawk. "Evade!" Barked Archer. A few had been unable to dodge the withering fire but the rest scattered like birds from a hunting dog.

Archer had a particularly stubborn torpedo locked on her exhaust. She did not have time to try to outrun it and it was getting closer. Her fingers flew she released her Electric Counter Measures, a microtorpedo full of decoy equipment to distract the torpedo then she executed a Beta-1-4-0. The torpedo locked on to the countermeasures as Archer took her craft through a few rapid and extreme maneuvers attempting to avoid other possible fun times, her eyes never leaving the HUD as she tracked multiple points of data.


* * *

Another set of buzzes echoed throughout the bridge. Without waiting to hear the damage report, Harvey called out, "Helm, swing us around, attack pattern Beta Three. Let's take out some of those fighters."

"Attack pattern Beta Three, coming to two-one-zero mark six." Charlie called out, he momentarily cut out the impulse engines, used the thrusters to swing the ship around and then hit full impulse. She juddered, the deck plates vibrating slightly as the engines arrested her backwards momentum, Charlie could feel the slight pull of minor G as the inertial dampeners compensated for the rapid deceleration. The Black Hawk stopped dead in space for a fraction of a second and then surged ahead, charging at the annoying little fighters.

Joey moved her fingers over the console in front of her. "They're deploying counter measure decoys. I think it's time to scramble their systems," she said as she accessed one of Intel's own counter measure programs of the ship. When that was complete, her gaze turned toward the Captain. "Permission to scramble some fighters, Sir?"

"Granted," Harvey confirmed, looking briefly over to his wife and gave her a nod.

With the Captain's permission, Joey turned her attention back down to her console. She executed the counter measure to scramble the fighters. Suddenly, their Heads Up displays and sensor readings showed the Black Hawk in different position from her previous one.


* * *

Cowboy blinked, "What the..." He muttered as the location of the Black Hawk jumped. He wasn't the only one. There was a collective sense of confusion as pilots and gunners alike attempted to adapt.

Aurilia checked her console, then her HUD, then looked out of her cockpit window. "I see it where it should be with my eyes, but my sensors tell me it isn't there," she said.


* * *

When the fighters got hit by Joey's countermeasures, Camila fired six barrages of torpedoes and all the phasers on the port side as the Black Hawk rolled and then another phalanx of torpedoes and phaser fire when it came up 'straight' again. "Bringing secondary backups online for shields!" she called out.

"Scans read a depressurazation of the shuttle bay on deck 13. Although no impact was reported there.", Arjin reported. "Besides that, the power relays to the ventral phasors are almost gone. One more hit and we will be without them. If they penetrate the aft shield, their most likely next target will be our engines."

Harvey blinked, his focus on the games broken by the Science Chief's announcement. "Wait. Did you just say that the shuttlebay depressurized?"

"Affirmatiive, Sir."

Almost at the same moment a message came from the Shuttlebay Deck. "Khan to Flight Control, Can you pressurize the shuttlebay?"

A perplexed look crossed Harvey's face, one which he immediately tossed at his First Officer, Commander Walsh. His eyes glanced back to the viewscreen as he considered what had happened. "All stop," he ordered, rising from his chair. "Commander Walsh, pause the trials. Commander Djinx, scan the ship for any more anomalies. Lieutenant Akorem, Lieutenant McCullen. repressurize the shuttlebay."

Terry caught the Captain's look and returned it with one of his own. Something was off. "Understood. Commander Walsh to the Black Knights, stand down immediately and hold positions. The trials are paused, Captain's orders."


* * *

"You heard the man. Pull back all fighters, go to station keeping formation. I say again, stand down, stand down, stand down." Archer repeated in the traditional three times. The nine fighters still able to fight pulled back, the other fighters, many whom had gotten hit in the last barrage from the Black Hawk, joining them. "Check systems and stand by for orders." Her body and mouth were on autopilot as she wondered what the hell happened to the shuttle bay, taking her position with the others.

Aurilia restarted her craft and joined the formation with Cypher going back on her wing.


* * *

Arjin engaged in a shipwide in depth scan. His eyebrows shot up as he realized the shuttle bay was not the only depressurized space. "Ahum, Captain. Operations Center on deck 13 also seems to be depressurized."

The Captain's concern level suddenly tripled. "Is there anything else?" he asked, approaching the science station.

"There's four personnel in the Zambezi in the shuttlebay," Camila reported.

"All stop aye," McCullen responded, bringing the Black Hawk to a gradual stop and at the same time, cycling through his controls to access shuttle bay systems. There was a moment of mental gear crunching as he switched from the intense focus of combat piloting to problem solving and then he had it. He saw the bay reading as depressurized and pushed the correct sequence to activate the pressurization systems, there was a momentary spike in pressure and then it fell back to nothing. He frowned, tried again, and got the same result.

"Captain. the automatic pressurization system isn't working, I've tried to re-pressurize the bay twice from here. I suggest sending an engineering team to manually re-pressurize the bay." He turned, looking at Akorem for a follow up, or a better idea.

The Captain looked back to his tactical officer, nodded, then looked back to Lieutenant McCullen. "Agreed, Lieutenant. Go ahead and head down there."

"Uh..." Charlie blinked once, he hadn't considered that as department head, he should probably go himself and deal with the problem, but it made sense when he thought about it. "... yes sir. I'm on my way." He quickly logged out and stood, letting a replacement slide into his seat and then turned for the turbolift and the shuttle bay. As he walked an idea popped in his head, he hoped it was a good one as he tapped his comm badge.

=/\= "McCullen to Khan, meet me on deck 13 outside the shuttlebay, I could use your help."

In the runabout, Kelly blinked in disbelief as she heard the Chief of Flight asking her to meet him outside of the shuttlebay. She was silent for a moment as possible answers flowed through her mind, most of them extremely rude before she tapped her combadge. =^=Gee, Sir, I would, really I would, but I'm one of the people trapped in the runabout in the shuttlebay.=^=

=/\= "Damn," Charlie frowned as he stepped into the turbolift, "sit tight, we'll get you out of there as soon as we can."

The Captain then tapped his combadge and moved over to the Operations station. "Geisler to Lieutenant Parker."

"Go ahead Captain?" Came Dijaat's voice through the communicator.

"Lieutenant, we need repair teams on Deck 13. Multiple areas have decompressed, including the shuttlebay. Automatic controls are not responding."

"Understood Captain. I'm dispatching a repair crew there now," Dijaat's voice could be heard answering the Captain's request. "Ensign take a team and bring EV -"... The rest of the message was cut off when communications went out.

"Lietuenant?" Harvey asked, frowning. He tapped his badge, only to hear a faint buzzing noise. "Comms are down, it seems," he remarked. "Mister Akorem, work on getting those comms back up."

"Aye, Sir. It looks like the communication system itself is online, but all communications are being routed through other command pathways." Damian replied to the Captain.

"Commander Walsh," Harvey turned to face his XO. "Recall the squadron. Let's get them into debriefing and let's have the maintenance teams check their craft. Let's make sure the problems are isolated to the ship itself."

Terry nodded. "On it," he said turning to his console. "Commander Walsh to the Black Knights, a Squadron recall has been initiated. The trials are finished. Return to base and prepare for debriefing. Walsh out." He immediately sent a priority order to the squadron's Flight Ops for them to begin level one maintenance checks and diagnostics.

Captain Geisler returned to his seat, but stood in front of it rather than sitting. "As for everyone else, secure your stations and departments. I want full status reports in an hour. We've just spent the last six months in drydock and I sure as hell don't want to go back there for a couple glitches."

"Understood, Captain," Camila said as she secured her terminal. Barely out of dock and the ship was already proving that it was still cursed, then tapped her combadge to contact Security for a status report and sitrep.

Joey resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. Things certainly took an unexpected turn. She made quick work of securing her station and rose to her feet. The Captain wanted reports in an hours time, and that meant reports from her people in Intel. With comms down, she excused herself from the bridge to get those reports in person.

Arjin acknowledged the order and quickly secured his station. He walked towards the Turbolift. He would have te co-ordinate with others from his office. Hopefully this would prove not to be too bad.

In the midst of the personnel shuffle, Harvey tugged at his uniform pullover and sat down in his chair. As he reflected on what had just transpired, he only found himself frustrated. His two years of command had proved to him that anything was possible, even the unexpected, at any moment throughout the day. He just wished he had more than one day out of spacedock before the strange and unusual returned to his radar.

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