Hurry Up and Wait

Posted on Wed Sep 8th, 2021 @ 12:53am by Lieutenant Irynya & Captain Björn Kodak & Lieutenant Sharrina Blackstone & Maje Jaha Veeth & Lieutenant Chaali
Edited on on Mon Sep 13th, 2021 @ 4:22pm

Mission: The Place of Skulls
Location: Bridge
Timeline: Mission Day 16 at 1225

[Bridge]
[MD18: 1225 Hours]>

With the away team on the surface below -- including Lieutenant Pell, whom t'Nai had belatedly tapped for her team -- the Bridge was mostly quiet, save the usual background buzz of bleeps, bloops, and chirps. From Kodak's center seat, he could see Chaali monitoring the Sojo's power distribution grid and Irynya occasionally making course corrections to keep their orbit of the asteroid synchronous. Blackstone, for her part, seemed to be engaged in her console behind the Chameloid, keeping an eye on sensors for any reaction to the away team from the mining complex on the surface. It was, all in all, a lull in the storm of activity since they'd arrived.

"I've never been good at quietly waiting," Kodak suddenly spoke up, admitting this with an air of vulnerability. "Anyone else good at the whole 'hurry up and wait' thing? If so, I'd love to hear your secret," the Captain softly chuckled. Slowly kicking one ankle up to rest on the opposite knee, Kodak sat back further in his chair, eyes locked on the viewscreen. Presently, the viewer showed the lifeless complex where, even now, t'Nai and her team were busy exploring. How he wished he was with them.

"Don't ever let them make you Captain unless you're sure," Kodak smirked, "you're ready to sit on your hands during these kinds of missions." He presented an air of good humor but, if anyone could see his eyes from their position, they could tell his smile did not reach them.

Ensign T’Prynn’s right eyebrow lifted only slightly as her delicate hands moved over the science console as she too monitored the away team. Her pointy ears twitched behind her cold black hair to her captain’s words and inquiry. “Captain, I do not believe that silence is a prerequisite for waiting. I have never understood the notion of waiting quietly. One can do a great deal of waiting even in the absence of silence.” She lifted her eyes and peered at the Chameloid, her head tilted, “Patience is however arguably a prerequisite for leaders in your position. Yet even patience has less to do with silence and a great deal more to do with attitude. Generally, I find your attitude most agreeable,” she said matter of factly. “In my experience, our patience will often achieve more than our force. Sitting on one’s hands might very well be a prudent strategy,” she concluded. Her voice was certain yet almost quiet.

From her station, Irynya giggled, tapping a quick adjustment into their orbit before turning around the face the Captain and Ensign T'Prynn. Her right arm looped over the back of her seat while her left came to rest on the corner. "I could take us on a grand tour of the asteroid's other side for all of two minutes if you'd like?" she remarked with a laugh--entirely kidding, but having no real alternative suggestions. Waiting had never been her forte either.

Chaali wryly smiled. "General Order 15 strikes again..." her voice matching her wryness, the pale azure of her eyes dancing with bemusement at the stuck flag officer. "The days of Kirk and Georgiou are way, way behind us." She slyly smiled again, almost seductive, "Is there something wrong with your chair, Captain?"

"General Order 15 just says I need an armed escort," Kodak smirked back to Chaali. "I'm sure I could have rustled up someone to have my back with a phaser. But the point does stand," the Captain chuckled lightly. "The chair is fine. It's just...well, those Captains back in the day really had it made, didn't they?" has rasped wryly, mischief in his eyes. The Chameloid turned then to T'Prynn, "You may be right about prudency. Is 'prudency' a word? I feel like it should be," his smile was warm. "But yes, better to stay out of the fracas until I'm truly needed down there. Besides," he turned then to Irynya, "how else would I see the other side of the asteroid? I'm sure it's full of fascinating rock and ice formations..."

Kodak was known for cracking jokes when things got serious. It was his way of relieving some of the pressure borne of being the Captain. And, it seemed, he was on a bit of a roll with his wisecracking. At least until Lieutenant t'Nai's voice came over the comm, informing the Bridge that the Away Team had made it to the central core room and had reactivated power. It seemed life support was coming back in response, with other mining systems being re-energized as well. t'Nai mentioned that they would be studying the databanks below and would prepare for Kodak to beam down once they were absolutely sure everything was safe. They'd been about to close the channel when the blaring of alarms spewed over the comms and the channel cut suddenly out.

"Lieutenant?" Kodak said quickly, tapping his combadge as he tried to get the woman back. "Lieutenant, this is the Bridge. Status report," he ordered, though no reply came. "Damnit. What's happening down there?" the Captain asked, standing to switch his gaze between his people expectantly.

The blare of the foreign klaxon ringing over the comm and then cutting, suddenly, short set goosebumps up Iry's arms. It's just a hiccough. They're fine. They know what they're doing. They'll fix it and then they'll get back in touch. The words were a mantra in her head, ringing through in a steady stream as she tapped rapid commands into her console. A chirp from the console caught her attention, alerting her to a change in the asteroid's position. She moved rapid fingers over controls, adjusting to the motion.

"The asteriod has begun to turn, sir," she shot over her shoulder, bringing up reports and details as she went. "It looks like thrusters on the surface are moving it. It's a repeating pattern. Maybe to restore gravity?" She frowned at her console, more calculated changes going into the controls to keep them in the right location.

T'Prynn had momentarily considered if 'prudency' was in fact a word, she had finally reached the conclusion that it was not; though she knew only the Vulcan language and could not be certain. She was not entirely sure how the universal translator worked, it was one of the Starfleet marvels that still puzzled her. One that she hadn't yet gotten the opportunity to investigate. Something always more pressing seemed to pop up—like now, the rang of alarms broke her concentration. She carefully read the sensory logs and made quick analysis, "Sir, I am reading a disturbance off our bow, just slightly beyond our five-thousand kilometre scanning radius. I cannot be certain; but, there appears to be several unified craft. The unidentified objects are small, there are several, all busily moving toward the Sojourner..." She eyed the tactical station and wondered if they had seen the configuration before.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Chaali's console had squealed a number of alarms, drawing her concerned attention. "There is a massive power source at the center of that asteroid. It's powering up," she shifted across her panel with fingers falling over a different section. "Multiple power transfer beams to surface installations... and sustained power signature through several core to surface conduits." Her console squealed a proximity alert, "Multiple targets detected in motion on the surface. They look like some kind of mining automation... drones."

Sharrina heard the other reports, but she was more focused on her panel. She had also seen the drones that the others detected, and she had watched them as they drew nearer. Cursing softly in Klingon, she adjusted her scan, then reported. "The small drones have stopped their work and are heading our way,." Her crisp voice cut across the bridge easily, though she had not raised it. "Larger drones from other asteroids are joining them." Her eyes narrowed as she got a better look at T'Prynn's 'unidentified craft'. "Those unidentified craft now appear to be large mining drones, Sir," she added after a moment of scrutiny. "They are all on a direct course for us."

As she finished that, she saw the drones, all of them that had reached the Sojo pushing at the shields. Currently, the shields were holding them, but--

Another colorful epithet in Klingon, and she looked up at the captain. "Their shield frequencies are modulating, Sir. I believe they are trying to find the frequency of our shields." Moments later, her eyes widened slightly, the only outward sign of any emotional response to what she was watching. Her father's teachings were coming in handy just now, cool under pressure. The tone of her voice as she delivered the next report held an urgency, but not fear or panic. "They've found the frequency! Several have breached our shields!"

His officers offered a flurry of updates. Surfing the stream of information, Kodak been about to order a re-modulation of the shields when two verdant clouds of energized particles sparked into being near the viewscreen. The glowing motes of energy resolved themselves into twin drones, both about the size of basketballs and chromed in thick, shiny metal plating. Each drone was pointed at the front -- armed with some kind of tipped mining laser -- while their bodies tapered in the rear. Both hovered in place several feet off the ground, initiating scanning beams that crisscrossed across the Bridge and its inhabitants. The beams moved through and past Irynya, Chaali, Blackstone, and T'Prynn, then stopped once they encompassed the Captain and shut down.

"Warning," the computer intoned. "Hostile intruders detected," sounded through the ship as Red Alert automatically triggered, shifting the lights of the Bridge to match.

One of the drones gathered a miasma of glowing crimson energy at its forward tip, firing a sizzling beam of energy that hit the young ensign manning the Engineering console. He was lifted off his feet by the beam, which hurled him back to smash against the console embedded into the wall. His skin was left horrendously burned and the smell of charred flesh and ozone acridly filled the air. Having eliminated the first of the detected threats, the drone swiveled in mid-air, turning towards T'Prynn at the Science station. Red fire built up in its maw before unleashing.

T’Prynn eyed the device for a moment, her eyebrow lifted and head cocked. She had witnessed what had happened to her comrade and without hesitation she dropped to the deck. She carefully curled her legs under her and braced herself on the underside of her console. She heard the laser initiate and she hoped someone would disrupt, before it inevitably sliced through the console which now sheltered her. T’Pyrnn had no phaser and could not rightfully remember when the last time was when she held one. She weighed all her options, duck and cover was the only logical choice.

The second drone did not immediately fire, choosing instead to use its thrusters to shoot across the Bridge, assuming a position very near to Kodak. The Chameloid leapt forward to escape, tumbling to come up to the right of Irynya's flight control console. "Irynya, down!" he howled as the drone finally fired, it's thin red ray slicing the air between itself and the conn officer. The beam hit the console rather than Irynya or Kodak, the heat and pressure shattering the glass and causing shards to explode out towards both officers.

The heat and shattering of the console seemed to happen slowly and all at once. Kodak's warning had come just in time for Irynya to dive from her seat, but she hadn't gotten far, curling inward on the floor with arms thrown hastily over her head and neck. The rain of glass pattered down on and around her most sliding from her back to the floor, but some hit home, slicing and embedding with needle-like precision. As the slow motion of the moment rushed forward to return to real time she pulled her arms down, pushing off with her hands and rushing toward the wrapped side of the station back and to her side.

At the first sign of trouble- a screaming Ensign flying across the Bridge and smelling like an overdone meat roast, Chaali had spun toward her controls and had started to throw up containment fields to protect certain areas of the ships- and hopefully slow the progress of the intruder drones. As the second of the machines hissed with thrusters across the control center and took a shit at Irynya, Chaali ducked and went for the compartment in her console. She tapped,, it beeped and she pulled out the phaser within.

Chaali swiveled up, her cerulean finger pumping the setting well past ten. She fired on the drone.

T’Pyrnn could hear sounds and the various smells were almost unbearable to her sensitive nose. She did not rightfully know what was happening beyond her console; but, she hoped the crew was fairing well. “There appears to be a 1.32 second delay between targeting and discharge. A 2.36 second turn rate of 90 degrees,” she added. She recalled her earlier assessment of the first fallen officer, “Death does not seem immediate upon first impact,” she looked down at her combadge, “If anyone out there wanted to try to badge them, I could likely beam them off the bridge from my console before being shot..?” She wasn’t sure anyone could hear her quiet voice through the ring of alarms, as she pulled her knees closer. She looked down at her palm as a stinging pain captured her attention, drops of green blood pooled, some debris must have cut her hand earlier.

Irynya ducked out from behind the console where she was hiding, seeing the drones otherwise engaged, she made a dash for the back of the bridge and an auxiliary console. Ducking down as she arrived, she took a breath, gritting her teeth where small gashes across her arms and back stung with her movement. She could feel the sleeve of her uniform sticking to her right arm where the small gashes bled. Glancing around her, she bobbed up again, tapping rapidly to bring up the navigational controls before ducking back down. From where she sat she eyed the console, stretching to tap in a course correction that would, hopefully, move them closer to orbital alignment with the asteroid.

Sharrina had not wasted time. Her console was not the most immediate concern, so she had abandoned it in favor of protecting her crew. The drone attacking the captain and the helm officer was too far away for her to reach it efficiently, but the one that had tried to shoot T'Prynn was close enough. She leapt over her console, unsheathing her long boot knives as she did, landing near the drone and bringing the blades across and down. They did not destroy the drone, but they did manage to do minor damage and knock it off balance. That would not last long though, so she needed another tactic.

It was then that she heard T'Prynn's quiet voice and grinned. Tackling the drone, and making sure to keep its maw facing away from her, she removed her comm pin and stuck it onto the back of the drone. She then rolled away, preparing to go after the second drone. "This one's marked, T'Prynn!" she called to the Vulcan as the drone powered its weapon up once more to fire at her.

The first drone had been targeted by Chaali. The red-orange blast from her phaser caught the drone in mid-air, overpowering its defense system and sending the machinery clunking to the floor, lifeless and smoking. With Irynya now at the rear of the Bridge, Kodak ran to the Bolian instead, crouching aside her console. "Nice shot! I'm going to make for a phaser of my own while that thing," he pointed to the second drone, which was advancing on Blackstone, "is distracted. Cover me," he ordered before rolling forward, reaching the Captain's chair and plucking a phaser out of its side compartment.

Chaali's nod was grim and affirmative. She raised her phaser and fired at the second of the drones- it swayed at the last moment and Chaali's beam left a blackened hex on the bulkhead.

Meanwhile, the second drone -- now bedecked with a combadge courtesy of Blackstone -- had continued to advance, turning to fire at the half-Klingon woman. Powering up its laser, the drone let loose, the console behind Sharrina exploding with her directly in front of it. The blast wasn't nearly enough to knock her out or kill but pieces of shrapnel absolutely flared outward, on target to embed themselves in Blackstone's skin. The drone charged another shot, this time turning towards Chaali, who'd downed its compatriot.

Chaali redirected her aim but the thing moved fast...

T'Pyrnn leaped from her console when her comrade gave the signal. Her digits made quick work and before long the drone had vanished. She looked toward the viewscreen and watched the drone transport back and forth a few meters just off the bow, it appeared stuck in a transporter pattern. Before it was able to lock on to the ship or shields it was transported again. T'Pyrnn was not sure how advanced the device was, and advised against keeping it stored in the transporter's buffers. She worried more of them would show up and took her place again, ducked below her console. "Are there any more of those things out there?" T'Pyrnn wondered if they should scan the one they had locked on to, they might be able to find a uniqueness and beam them all off the ship.

Sharrina had managed to dodge the beam, but the console exploding was not something she could dodge. The shards were going in too many directions. As some of the shards struck, she growled softly, casting her gaze over the bridge to see if any more of those things transported in. She would need to let the doctor deal with the shrapnel, but when this was over. She could feel the damage and knew that it was not enough to stop her, not yet. "No new ones yet," she answered T'Prynn's question. Moving toward the downed one, she poked it with her boot, needing to be sure that it was not going to pop back up and start shooting again.

T'Pyrnn slowly rose from the science console. "Can I get a phaser?" She called to no one in particular, as her hands moved over her console; which surprising was still in working condition. She stood there, briefly not sure what to do, she felt a little helpless. Her display showed numerous calls to the bridge to ask for help and request status updates.

Kodak rose, too. Like Chaali, he'd raised his phaser in hopes of catching the second drone with a blast from the weapon. But thanks to the quick thinking of T'Prynn and Blackstone, the drone in question was now transporter-cycling off the fore of the ship, no longer endangering them. "Nasty little bastards," he rasped, moving over to the downed form of the engineer who'd been hit. "Are you alright, Ensign?" he asked, helping the man up to his feet.

A cursory look over the man showed some burns that needed medical attention. However, beyond that, the Ensign seemed OK. "We don't know what's going on out there yet. Better stay here for now," Kodak ordered, "until we can get you to Sickbay safely. In the meantime, I'll look for a medkit. Find you something for the pain?" With a nod, he moved away, looking over to Blackstone as he did. "What's our status? Are these things overrunning our ship?" To Irynya -- who was now using an auxiliary science station as a back-up helm -- he said, "Still in orbit of the asteroid, Lieutenant? What about those larger drones?" It was then that he turned to Chaali, "I'm almost afraid to ask but...what's the status of communications?"

As Kodak waited for his officers to do what they did best, he found both a phaser -- which he tossed to T'Prynn -- and an emergency medkit in a storage compartment under the auxiliary engineering console. He moved back over to the injured crewman, recalling his basic first aid training from the Academy and subsequent recertification courses. He found the ampule of pain relieving drugs and injected the young man with a hypospray. The burns were far too bad to be treated with a dermal regenerator. "We'll get you to Sickbay as soon as we can," he promised.

At Kodak's question, Sharrina turned from the downed drone and looked at him. The next moment, she shoved the knives back into her boot sheaths and moved back to her console. Unfortunately, it had been the console behind her when the drone had fired. Growling softly, she appropriated one of the auxiliary stations, reconfiguring it to her Tactical protocols. A few moments to run an internal scan, she growled again. "I'm detecting them on pretty much every deck, Sir." She frowned down at her board as it provided more information. "And while I have this configured for Tactical, not medical or science, but it seems to indicate that all life signs are still active." Her eyes came up from the console to lock on his. "My best guess would be that they are attempting only to disable." A theory which seemed to be borne out by the fact that once the Ensign was damaged and down, the drone had ignored him... for as long as it remained active anyway.

From her repurposed science station Irynya had been rapidly adjusting their course, making minute changes to keep them in line with the asteroid despite the bevvy of drones that had been en route to their location. As Sharrina gave her update, Irynya swore lightly under her breath, muscles stinging where they tightened across her shoulders as she moved to quickly confirm what she was seeing.

"We have large mining drones within our shields now, sir," she reported. Anyone who didn't know her well wouldn't detect it, but there was a slight quaver to her voice. They appear to be attempting to attach to the hull, perhaps to cut through. "I'm can try to roll us before they get ahold," she remarked, "but I have to take us out of orbit to do it and we'll need to drop the shields for a moment to get rid of the ones inside."

Chaali had returned to her console, standing over it. "We have the long range antennae," she reported, "But intership communications are offline. We have damage to the main computer core," she looked up, her blue skin cast purple by the alert lighting. Her console flickered with a systems failure and then pulsed on. "Before the core went down, we were getting reports of casualties and internal bulkhead damage across the ship." She scanned the data-only reports, "Impulse control... navigational control... Main Engineering... the shuttlebay all reported encounters before the system went down."

T'Prynn gave a nod of thanks to the captain as she caught the phaser and positioned it on her hip. If she came face to face with another of those things she wanted to at least fire back. She looked toward the drone she had held with her transporter trick, she was actually surprised it worked. The changing of location was just enough to confuse its targeting sensors, so it couldn't just beam aboard again. Then a somewhat radical idea crossed her logical mind, "Wait..." She cocked her head and recalled what she had said the captain before all of this began... "Captain... Do you remember what I said? ...Our patience will often achieve more than our force... What if that is the answer we have been searching for? Lieutenant Blackstone theorized that they are attempting only to disable. A theory which seemed supported by the fact that once the Ensign was down, the drone had ignored him. We could fight, we could roll the ship; but, what if we could make the ship appear already disabled? What if could 'disable' the crew? What would happen?"

Two courses of action: either try to roll and escape the larger drones -- while fighting the others inside -- or attempt to play dead, hoping the drones would be fooled. Either way, Kodak had a feeling the pesky craft weren't going to give up easily. But for now at least, the Captain decided to try a little guile in lieu of direct action. "Let's test your theory, T'Prynn. Alright, shut everything down but life support. That includes the shields...they're doing us no good anyway," Kodak lamented. "Let's see if playing dead might get these things to move on. If the larger ones fly us by, prepare to power weapons in order to take them out."

"Hurry up and wait...part two," Kodak sighed.


=/\= A joint-post by... =/\=

Captain Björn Kodak
Commanding Officer

and

Lieutenant Emni t'Nai
Acting First Officer

and

Lieutenant JG Chaali
Chief Operations Officer

and

Lieutenant JG Irynya
Acting Chief Flight Control Officer

and

Lieutenant Sharrina Blackstone
Assistant Chief Tactical and Security

and

Lieutenant T'Prynn
Science Officer