Going Hunting

Posted on 26 Oct 2026 @ 1:11am by Lieutenant Commander Jonathan Carter & Ensign Aurilia Moretti & Commander Terry Walsh & Lieutenant JG Mako & Ensign Peris

1,533 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Acceleration

The briefing room aboard the USS Yorktown hummed with low conversation and the faint vibration of a starship running at full readiness. The overhead holo‑projector flickered to life, casting a rotating wireframe of a dense asteroid cluster—jagged, irregular, and packed tight enough to make capital‑ship maneuvering suicidal.

Commander Rourke, Yorktown’s tactical chief, stepped forward.

“Alright, Black Knights, settle in. We’ve got a situation.”

The room quieted. Lieutenant Commander Jonathan ‘Jax’ Carter stood near the front, arms folded, helmet tucked under one arm, the emblem of the 325th Black Knights—a stylized knight in a starfield—glinting on his flight jacket.

Rourke tapped the console. The holo zoomed in on a cluster of asteroids riddled with tunnels and metallic signatures.

“Three weeks now, someone’s been hitting our convoys along the Perseus Spur. Not smash‑and‑grab piracy—this is organized. They’re stripping cargo clean, leaving crews alive, and vanishing before response ships arrive. We finally tracked the stolen supplies to this.”

The holo highlighted dozens of heat signatures tucked into the rock.

“A pirate depot. Big one. They’ve carved out hangars, storage caverns, even shielded pockets. Yorktown can’t get close enough to deploy marines—too much debris, too many blind angles. A cruiser in there would be a coffin.”

Rourke turned toward Jax.

“That’s where your people come in.”

Jax nodded once, expression sharpening. “Valkyries were built for this kind of mess. What’s the objective?”

“Penetrate the field, locate the main depot, disable their shield generators, and clear the way for Yorktown’s strike teams. Expect automated turrets, repurposed mining drones, and at least one wing of stolen fighters. These pirates aren’t amateurs.”

The holo shifted again—now showing the sleek silhouette of a Valkyrie‑Class strike fighter, wings swept, engines flared, hardpoints loaded for close‑quarters combat.

Rourke continued, “You’ll launch in two waves. Jax, you’re leading Alpha. Beta follows five minutes behind to reinforce or extract depending on how ugly things get.”

A murmur rippled through the pilots—anticipation, tension, the familiar edge before a dangerous run.

Jax stepped forward, voice steady.

“Black Knights, gear up. This isn’t a patrol—this is a knife fight in a rock garden. We fly tight, we fly smart, and we don’t give these pirates a chance to scatter. Helmets on, comms hot, and check your collision‑avoidance twice.”

He glanced at the rotating asteroid cluster, its shadows hiding threats and opportunities alike and back at the squadron. "I want you with me, Lieutenant Mako as my wingman. Ensign Peris, you and your wing take point." He passed orders along to each of the team and then looked at all of them again. "Questions?"

Mako made eye contact with Carter and, nodded, all serious, when the order started with him. He sat up straighter in his chair too instead of the somewhat lazy lounge he'd been in. He stood up to ask his question, unsure if that's how they did it here, but it was how things were done back on SB-119. “Do we have any intel on the fighter types? If they're using their own ships against us, I want to know what they can actually do before I start making friends with them.”

"It'll likely be a assorted collection of shuttles, fighters, maybe something as big as a Defiant class, but I wouldn't expect more," John said. "What we should expect is for them to have traps and sensors set up in advance and in the field itself on top of what we suspect."

Aurilia nodded. "Do we know for certain that it's pirates and not desperate colonists like Mellon was?" she asked.

"That was a touchy situation from start to finish, but these are confirmed pirates," John said.

"What do we know about the field itself?" Peris asked, not bothering to raise her hand. In her experience, asteroid fields were often magnetic cesspools, ready to confuse sensors (if not completely blinding them).

“Primarily nickel‑iron bodies with pockets of cobalt and trace thorium. Enough metallic density to scatter long‑range sensors, but not enough to fully blind short‑range arrays.” John stated as he looked over the PADD in his hand. “Localized magnetic eddies throughout the cluster. They drift unpredictably, so your nav‑computers will be fighting them the whole way in. Low‑level particle radiation from micro‑fractures. Not dangerous to hulls, but it’ll create false positives on thermal scans. The entire field is in a slow rotational tumble. Nothing dramatic, but enough to make the rocks behave like they’re alive.”

The combination of tricky flying through magnetic eddies, scanner interference, and having to rely on instincts as much as instruments was exactly the kind of flying that made Mako sit up straight with eagerness. He wished he'd had time to pull up flight logs and get a feel for Carter's style ahead of now, but he was going to do his best. "Do we expect that they're concentrated here at their base," Mako nodded at the projections. "Or are their any signs they might have backup lurking just out of range? We're planning on two waves, they could come up with that too."

"They may have picket ships. Small. Fast. Running low‑power profiles. Could be scouts, could be early‑warning drones, could be stolen civilian skiffs with sensor suites duct‑taped to the hull," John said. "We just don't know when it comes to pirates. They could have a benefactor who supplies them with Defiant class ships and are just waiting for bigger prey. No plan survives contact with the enemy."

Mako's grin lingered as he glanced back at the display, studying the asteroid field again. "If they've got scouts hiding out there, they'll probably know we're coming before we know they're there. I see why you're wanting two waves -- first the distraction, and then from another approach a better chance to slip through." He looked back toward Carter. "Wish I could pretend that this was all my idea later."

He dropped back into his chair, looking considerably more awake than he had at the start of the briefing. The prospect of flying a Valkyrie through an asteroid field against a group of pirates was exactly the sort of assignment he'd been hoping for, a chance to do something, to move on. He picked up his PADD and started making a few notes, actually paying attention to the details of the field rather than simply waiting for the briefing to end.

"Is there any other questions?" John asked, making a mental note to keep an eye on Mako.

“I have one,” Ensign Peris said, raising a finger into the air. “What is the contingency plan should things go south?”

"We pull back and regroup around Golden Eagle," John said, referring to the ship's code name.

Terry appeared in the doorway almost unnoticed, one shoulder resting against the frame as he listened to the discussion for a few moments.

"Nickel-iron, cobalt, and trace thorium," he repeated, almost to himself. His eyes shifted toward the display showing the asteroid field. "So, theoretically…" He paused, considering it. "What happens if we put a phaser into one of those things with that composition?"

He glanced around the room.

"Because I'm thinking there's a pretty big difference between making a hole in an asteroid and vaporizing the iron, nickel, and cobalt into a cloud of hot metallic particles that would muck up the sensors and targeting systems. Make sure your aim is tight and true."

Jonathan looked around in surprise at hearing the unexpected voice and unorthodox suggestion that he had made. "You’d trigger a chain of thermal, magnetic, and radiative effects that briefly turn that asteroid into a localized hazard zone. Not a detonation — but absolutely not inert."

"Exactly," said Terry. "Which is why your aim needs to be tight and on target. If you miss a pirate ship and hit one of those, everyone is in for a world of hurt."

"Any chance of the pirates shooting the asteroids themselves?" Peris then asked. "How much do we want to bet that they're willing to risk their haven and loot for a chance to stall or stop Starfleet?"

"We doubt they'd sacrifice their own base," John said. "However if it does happen, regroup and begin to get stragglers."

"We might consider a runabout or two nearby," Peris said, gesturing to a couple of lesser dense areas on the map. "Asteroid fields are notoriously saturated with electromagnetic radiation which can interfere with transporter signals. Having a path for emergency beamouts or ejected pilots would be a good safety measure."

"Not a bad idea," said Terry. "I've been stuck floating in space in an emergency beam out or ejection before." He looked at Commander Rourke, "If they have them to spare."

Rourke nodded. "That can be arranged. We'll be standing by to pick up survivors as well."

Survivors sounded ominous to Aurilia, but it was better than picking up corpses.

"Any more questions?" John asked. When none were forth coming, he gave a nod. "Then let's head out!"

RSS Feed