We're Either Going In...Or Not

Posted on Thu Aug 21st, 2025 @ 8:16pm by Captain Björn Kodak & Lieutenant JG Sheldon Parsons & Lieutenant Commander Emni t'Nai & Lieutenant Axod Qo & Lieutenant Bailey Good & Lieutenant JG Asmar Veshun

Mission: Seven Souls
Location: Multiple Locations
Timeline: Mission Day 1 at 2005

[Bridge]
[USS Sojourner]
[MD 1: 2005 Hours]

It had only been two hours.

Two hours since the Kordra-Lisrit had slid out of their nebular trap and attacked the Sojo without warning. Two hours since seven of their own—seven—had been torn from the Sojourner in a flyby attack, without time to react. Two hours since the Kazon had taken their prisoners for who-knew-what-aims. Two hours since Andrew had been taken from him.

Captain Kodak stood just behind the helm, his gaze fixed on the forward screen. Stars streamed past in taut, endless lines as the Sojourner cut through subspace at high warp. But his thoughts were behind them…on the moment he’d realized Andrew was among those missing. On the moment the other names had tumbled from Ensign Nevek’s lips, too. On the breath he’d taken and not been able to release since.

He couldn’t afford to dwell. Not now. Now with the possibility of catching up with the Kordra-Lisrit ahead of them. But the ache of it all throbbed just beneath the surface, sharp as static, constant as the ship’s heartbeat under his boots.

“Signal’s holding,” Ensign Samla murmured from Ops. “They’re definitely in there,” came the Bajoran’s assurance.

It had taken a miracle—or rather, two sharp officers and one long-shot guess. Parsons and Good had identified a faint telemetry echo embedded in the comm logs from Kaldri’s stolen shuttle. Just a glimmer of its interface scraping against the Kordra-Lisrit’s systems, barely enough to parse and recognize as something usable. Too weak to trace alone but, when paired with the warp signature they’d been able to shop around with nearby ships, it’d been enough to triangulate a position.

It’d all come together barely twenty minutes ago. But now they had a heading, which meant they had a chance. Kodak exhaled slowly, arms folded across his chest. “Report.”

“Long-range scans are active,” came Samla’s additive reply. “We’re approaching the outer band of the nebula now. Radiation spikes increasing, but signal telemetry’s stable for the moment. I can’t tell you exactly where in there they are,” her nose ridges wrinkled with consternation, “but they’re definitely in there somewhere.”

A visual was still out of reach—the nebula scrambled everything in a hundred unpredictable ways—but they knew the Kordra-Lisrit was hiding somewhere deep in the thick, uncharted mess of particles and storms lying ahead. And while the Sojo herself wasn’t equipped to survive in that that dense, corrosive cauldron of star-stuff, Kaldri’s shuttle was. Subrek had outfitted his shuttles with the same energy-resistant hull coating the Kordra-Lisrit had, borne from the phaser-bending dust of Shaddam IVa they’d once encountered.

Kodak’s jaw tightened. “Keep us steady, Mr. Veshun,” he said, sparing the probationary helm officer a glance. “The moment we come out of warp,” his voice was steady, “we’ll launch the shuttle. Make sure the team’s ready down there,” he added, tossing the comment over his shoulder to Ensign Nevek at Tactical. As the Andorian relayed the message, Kodak envisioned Parsons, Good, and Marwol making their final preparations.

He knew the trio was anxious to launch…to dive down into the muck, get close enough to pinpoint the Kordra-Lisrit’s actual position, and—hopefully—get aboard to pull their people out. That Noah had managed to send a signal meant there was a probability the escapees had broken free and just needed a ride home. But they wouldn’t know for sure until someone made it onto that ship.

Kodak glanced back at t’Nai and Qo, who sat flanking the command chair he now returned to. As he settled into the seat, he found himself quietly grateful for his two better angels. They’d helped him rediscover the calm, steely reserve he needed to see this through—despite the chaos the Chameloid had been reeling from inside.

“Won’t be long now,” Kodak muttered to them. Or at least, that was what he hoped.

Emni leaned back in her seat. The movement was, in its own right, forced even though she worked hard for it to seem casual. In reality she wanted to lean forward in her seat--as if doing so could make the ship go faster or in a straighter, more certain line. She wanted to get up and pace. To peer over the shoulders of each person on the bridge. She wanted to work off the nervous energy she felt... the hope... for fear that giving it too much head, it would steamroll right over her if they didn't get them back. She was subconsciously aware that some of this nervous energy came from those around her. Though the situation certainly would have justified her tightest mental barriers, she felt as if she needed her empathic sense more. It was as if she were scenting the air for danger--the crack of someone's resolve or the bubbling up of fear. None of these things happened, of course, but so many of these things lingered just below the surface for their crew and she didn't want to chance missing something important.

"Do you think Kaldri will be with our folks?" She asked the Captain. They'd discussed the Kazon woman for whom they'd granted asylum from Subrek. While they all agreed that she should still receive their help in many ways she was a wild card. What would she do after being recaptured? What wouldn't she?

"I hope so," Kodak rasped in response. He'd come to respect the Kaldri a great deal. And while she did not relent in referring to him as a "Starfleet Warlord" rather than a captain, he did not wish her the experience she was no doubt having at Subrek's hands right now.

Axod wasn't accustomed to sitting on the Bridge of the Sojourner. The third chair, usually an informal seat of trust, was typically reserved for those whose presence a Captain deemed useful in the moment. Counselors were rarely among them. More often than not, their work was done in quiet rooms, not under the hum of consoles and the gaze of stars.

Still, he had accepted the honour and took the seat without protest. Now he sat, trying to find a position that didn’t make him feel exposed. He shifted slightly, one leg crossing then uncrossing again. There was no true comfort to be found, but maybe that was the point. This wasn't a place for ease.His hands folded in his lap, fingers loosely laced. His gaze stayed forward, neutral but alert, taking in the viewscreen as the senior staff discussed updates and assessments. His ears, though, were tuned to the conversation around him. Every cadence. Every hesitation. Every unspoken tension threaded between words. This wasn’t his usual arena but he was here now, and he knew how to listen.

To say that Veshun was only 'half-listening' to the conversations happening around him would have been a stretch. Whatever curiosity he might have had for their discussion was overtaken by his concern for their mission (and missing shipmates). With the exception of instructions from the captain (and the occasional, relevant updates from operations), his attention was entirely on the readouts before him.

...and a good thing, too. What they were attempting was hard enough, even under the best of circumstances. Though he had run similar scenarios in training, and dealt with a few nebular situations aboard the Nath'qu, none of it quite measured up to what they were facing here. He made another adjustment to the navigational sensors (to compensate for interference from the nebula) and kept his eye on their intended target.

"Coming up on the coordinates, captain," he reported over his shoulder.

"Bring us out of warp," Kodak nodded, eyes half on Veshun and half on the viewscreen.

As the helm officer's fingers danced across his display, the starlines on the viewer snapped into stillness as the Sojourner dropped from warp, space folding around them into its more familiar quiet. Ahead loomed the nebula, vast and incredible volatile. Bands of gold and bruised violet twisted through its swirling core like smoke under pressure. Already, the outer edge rippled with enough interference to stir the inertial dampeners, the deck pitching underfoot as navigational systems worked to counteract the drift. Kodak felt the ship adjust, slight but undeniable: a reminder of the damage they’d take if they ventured further inside.

"What I wouldn't give for a coating of that dust," the Captain rasped then, golden eyes now fully on the nebula and peering as deeply into it as they could. His gaze narrowed, trying to pierce the fierce eddies and swirls of star stuff to no avail, frustration infusing his tone.

Somewhere in there, Subrek and his ship were waiting. To be so close and yet impotent in the face of navigating the nebula irritated Kodak to no end. Hull infused with energy-dissipating dust from Shaddam IVa, the Kordra-Lisrit was able to survive chaotic currents that would rip the Sojourner apart. There hadn't been time to visit Shaddam for a coating of their own, and so Kaldri's shuttle--sitting on the deck down in Shuttle Bay 2 where Parsons, Good, and medical support staff had been prepping it for launch--was now their only hope (how Kodak hated that phrase) in piercing the nebula to find the Kazon ship and get their people back.

The ship had continued to move forward as Kodak lamented their situation. With a sudden lurch, the deck pitched in the face of a snaking eddy that swiped at the Sojourner like a cosmic backhand across the face. The Captain’s eyes never left the screen even as he worked to regain his seat and steady himself in the chair. Around him, others were doing the same, trying to anticipate the next deck-shift and brace themselves for it.

"Helm, steady us as best you can," the Captain ordered. He knew this was no small ask. The briefing en-route had made it clear that in order to stay close enough for sensors and comms, the Sojo would be facing some fairly mighty forces: forces that would make staying even-keeled a real-time battle in and of itself. For the briefest moment, Kodak wished it was Irynya at the helm. Not because Veshun was not skilled: he wouldn't have requested him for the Sojo if he wasn't. But more so because Iry was normally a trusted island on a chaotic bridge and her presence was sorely missed. To say nothing of the fact that she might be bloody and bruised from Kazon torture right now...or worse.

"Aye, sir," Veshun replied, bracing himself against the helm console as another wave broke over the ship. He knew there was no way he was going to be able to keep them totally steady in all this. Conventional wisdom would have been to turn Sojourner into the waves and adjust the shield harmonics, but that only worked if they were coming from one direction. Instead, they were getting hit from port, then starboard, then from underneath, then starboard again. Even with computer assistance, it was taking everything he had just to hold position. An adjustment to the inertial dampeners, a few quick bursts from the thrusters, and Veshun would just manage to smooth things out a little...before the wave fronts shifted again, and he was back to square one.

From behind Kodak, the steady cadence of bridge reports continued—tactical updates, sensor adjustments, confirmation of the signal they’d triangulated earlier. Kodak caught just enough of the conversation to stay informed, but his attention was already shifting forward toward what came next. Somewhere in that churning soup of radiation and charged dust was the Kordra-Lisrit. Somewhere in there were seven missing crew. Somewhere in there was Andrew. His jaw clenched. He didn’t need the readouts and reports to confirm what he already knew: they were as close as they could safely get.

He turned, just slightly, and gave a subtle nod toward Commander t’Nai, seated beside him. There was no ceremony in it, just the quiet authority of a ship’s captain handing the moment to his trusted XO. She would know what to do: signal the launch team, green-light the shuttle’s departure. And she would do it in her own voice, in her own way: the way he'd come to depend on so deeply over the last several months. She would likely feel the softening waves of relief in his emotional landscape at sharing some of the command weight with her in this moment. He trusted her to get the shuttle team out and on task without delay.

The exchange of emotions that tumbled across the arms of their seats along with the Captain's nod was complicated, to say the least. But the strong, steady, beat of confidence that underpinned it... no... trust... calmed the XO more than anything else could have in that moment and Emni did not hesitate to set into motion the chain of checks and confirmations that sent the shuttle out of its safe berth and into the maelstrom of the nebula before them.

A few taps to the controls by her seat and words spoken firmly and confidently into her commbadge and the shuttle was off, the crew around the bridge monitoring her progress as the vessel carried the three officers out from the relative safety of the Sojourner and into the uncertainty that laced their mission.

"The shuttle is away, sir," she said, tone quiet, almost reverential, as she confirmed what Kodak would already know from the reports being called out from stations throughout the bridge. It was as much a formality for her to say as it was an almost superstitious play for things to go their way.

After his XO got the rescue effort rolling, Kodak exhaled through his nose and returned his gaze to the viewscreen. This was it. Their one shot. If the Kordra-Lisrit slipped deeper into the nebula—or if Subrek realized he’d been found by the Sojourner—this fragile thread might snap, and they’d lose all chance of getting their people back. His people. And Andrew. The thought made his throat tighten. What if they were already gone?

The fear tangled him up, warping the Chameloid's face into a grimace. Wrapped in the gnawing frustration of not being able to go in himself—of not being able to tear through the nebula, breach that ship, and tear Subrek apart with his own hands--Kodak felt himself falling into a kind of funk. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the arms of his chair, his posture taut with the strain of keeping himself together even as their carefully calculated plans began to unfold. The Captain, it seemed, needed some steadying himself, only he didn't have an internal helm officer to make helpful adjustments. But he did have a Counselor...

Kodak's golden gaze shifted to Axod then. If the man had any helpful words or sentiments to offer, now was apparently the time.

Despite their uneasy start, Axod allowed himself to meet the Captain’s gaze. Earlier, a flicker of mistrust between them threatened to widen into a chasm, but Ax refused to let it. He reached across the narrow space, he wrapped his hand firmly around the Chameloid’s forearm, grounding both of them in the contact. His voice dropped to a low, steady register.

“Breathe.” The Doosadarian drew in a slow breath through his nose, letting his chest rise deliberately, then held it in quiet stillness. After a long heartbeat, he released it in a measured exhale, the rhythm as much a command as it was an invitation. He nodded for Kodak to follow suit.

Kodak's eyes shifted to the hand on his forearm. He wasn't accustomed to random touch. Outside of Andrew and Debbie, the Chameloid rarely experienced physical connection to others, save maybe Emni now and then subtly touching an elbow or his hand to guide or calm him. Axod's attempt was much more direct than that, though. The grasp and demonstration of breathing through the moment was so much more direct. And yet the gentle encouragement in the Counselor's gaze brought Kodak back to himself and he did, indeed, let himself be coached through a breath.

The deliberate inhale-and-exhale cycle was calming in a way subconscious breathing was not. And with a nod to Qo, the Chameloid continued breathing as such--subtly, not performatively--as he rededicated himself to orchestrating their side of this situation. Orders continued to be coordinated across departments, ensuring that the Sojo remained a safe harbor for the Kazon shuttle to eventually return to, hopefully with their lost people found once again.

[Shuttlebay 2]
[USS Sojourner]
[MD 1: 2005 Hours]

The soft thud of a panel closing echoed through the shuttle bay as Parsons slid the final access hatch into place and gave it a solid thump with the heel of his hand. Kaldri’s shuttle—now prepped for entry into the uncharted nebula where the Kordra-Lisrit waited for them—rumbled faintly beneath his boots as power flowed evenly through its systems again. The shielding was holding, the engines were warm, and environmental controls were balanced enough to keep them from boiling or freezing the moment they launched.

He ducked slightly as he stepped back into the compact main cabin, eyes shifting about as he looked for Good and the nurse Marwol had sent down. The former, he knew, would be prepping the shuttle for flight. Well, he thought to himself, flight and combat, maybe. If the Kordra-Lisrit didn’t open their shuttle bay doors for Kaldri’s stolen little ship, they’d have to try to blast their way in with the shuttle’s weapons. As for the latter, he looked at the nurse forlornly. Sickbay was so busy with injuries and being down a head doctor meant a nurse was all that could be spared. Sheldon just hoped that whatever injuries their people on the Kazon ship had sustained wouldn't need more care than a nurse could provide.

“Shields are stable. Engines are hot. And weapons are back online,” Sheldon reported, setting a larger-than-normal engineering kit down along a portside bench. He’d had to pack an abundance of tools for the trip, not knowing what all he might need for their desperate flight. He just hoped he’d brought enough as he wiped his hands then on a rag he’d taken to carrying around, the deposited grease on the rag joining a sheer oil slick of the stuff already on its surface. The shuttle was, it seemed, filthy as hell on the inside.

“This thing is surprisingly well-built,” Sheldon commented, said surprise infusing into his voice. “And the dust-lattice shell paired with the shields should provide plenty of protection inside that nebula. You know,” he said, sliding down to sit at an auxiliary console and calling up a now-fully-translated engineering display, “we should think about going back to Shaddam IVa. Get enough of that dust to shellac onto the Sojo’s hull. Could be pretty helpful maybe?”

Bailey had re-entered the spartan, pig-iron hunk of a Kazon shuttle as Sheldon had begun the process of revving it to a loud facsimile of life. She tossed a set of tactical armor at both Parsons and their nurse colleague- both were matte black with Operations yellow. "I want both of you in these if we get boarded. Also." She held up Type II phasers. "Green means you're in the stun settings. Red means someone's going to have a bad day. Set them red. We don't have time or the space to guess if Kazons can take a stun setting." She pointed at the emitter, "That's the dangerous end. Point it at anything that you need to go down."

Bailey handed each a phaser and then fastened her's on her belt. "If we're boarded," she pointed at two silver cylinders behind each of their cockpit chairs,," One of you slap the controls on that," and she pointed what looked to be an LCARS-running tablet mounted to the shuttle's controls. "It'll erect a containment field to keep you two safe in the cockpit." At least for a bit. Bailey almost grimaced. "Parsons and I have worked to scramble the old prefix codes on this rust bucket, so this Subrek guy shouldn't be able to shut us down remotely right off. But it'd only accept Kazon characters for the reprogram, so if they start throwing codes at us, we're at a disadvantage."

"Its Daryx, right?" Bailey asked.

"That's me." The Denobulan’s voice carried the gentle cadence of warmth and good humor, and as he spoke, his already soft, rounded features pulled into a wide, almost impossibly cheerful smile. The kind only a Denobulan could manage. "At your service sir."

His eyes crinkled at the corners, and for a moment, it was as if the whole room brightened with the sheer sincerity of his expression. There was no ego behind the words, just an easy charm and a comfort with being exactly where he was.

Bailey shifted some. "Bailey Good, acting Chief of Security until we get Lieutenant Maritz back. Are you familiar with this model of sidearm?" She asked as she presented Daryx with his protection.

“No, but if you hum a few bars, I could fake it.” Daryx’s lips curved into an easy chuckle, the sound light and unhurried. He reached out, taking the weapon delicately between his pointer finger and thumb, holding it at arm’s length as though it were an oddly shaped piece of flatware. It dangled in his grasp, swinging slightly as he gave it an appraising glance, more amused than concerned, before flicking his eyes back to Good with a hint of playful mischief.

This did not sit well with Good. She looked at Parsons. Her dark eyes hardened at the Denobulan. She quickly combed her hair back behind her ear and closed the space between them. "Yeah. No..." Her voice contained itself into a carefully controlled anger. "What about this mission seems like a meet-cute to you, Nurse? You're about to have," Her eyes buried in his gaze. "Well, hopefully all seven of our very scared, very damaged people back. And you are the one that has to keep them alive long enough to get them back to Sickbay."

She glared at him and swung up gradually back to standing, "Now put your goddamn tactical vest on because that was an order, and hold that phaser like someone whose more competent than a spoiled kid who thinks this is a game." Bailey's eyes narrowed. Thoroughly unimpressed, she moved to assume her station. Very wounded, very traumatized people were about to- hopefully- make their escape here. They didn't deserve some inane response to their plight or trauma.

Parsons caught the armor Bailey tossed his way and stared at it for a beat longer than he meant to. The matte black plating—marked with just a slash of Starfleet yellow—was heavier than it looked. Or maybe that was just the weight of what they were about to walk into. He didn’t argue, though. With a resigned breath, he set it down across the bench beside his tool kit and began sliding his arms into the sleeves. The vest settled across his chest with a dull thunk. Then came the phaser. He took it without hesitation, checked the setting—red—and holstered it in the mag-lock clip on his thigh.

"Ready," he grimly reported to Good even as the woman engaged with Daryx.

"I'm sorry, sir," the Denobulan said, his tone softer now, stripped of the earlier bravado. He bent down to gather his gear, movements a little too quick, almost clumsy, before carefully holstering the weapon that had been handed to him. "I... I’m nervous," he admitted, the words halting and uneven. His eyes flicked away, a faint puff filling his cheeks, the weight of embarrassment settling over him.

As that conversation unfolded, Parsons nodded to the nurse before turning back to the auxiliary display he'd commandeered for his mission use. His fingers felt flighty and unsettled as he considered what was about to unfold. Normally the steady presences of Irynya and Noah--even if not directly in front of him but elsewhere on the ship, doing their duties--calmed him: shored up his confidence as he took steps into the unknown. And now, especially as acting Chief Engineer in the face of F'Rar's tragic death (he gulped at that), he needed that grounding more than ever. But Iry and Noah weren't on the shuttle with him. They weren't even on the Sojo. They were being tortured and who knew what else over on the Kazon ship they were about to fly off in search of. He realized in that he hated Subrek. Strong feelings about a man he'd never actually met...

Safety briefing over, Bailey dropped in to the chair that would be serving as her console for this sojourn. She eyed the exit, briefly itching to eliminate the suddenly chaotic element to a mission that had no margin for error. But Sickbay was overwhelmed as it was, the shuttle couldn't accommodate the LMH. She sighed, and studied the bulkhead. The shuttle had... primitive... weapons. And shields. But the shuttle had been built with, essentially, ablative armor. It was so damned thick. And clunky. It reminded Good of a museum piece of an early Earth-Romulan War era breaching pod- something rarely successfully used. Or maybe one of those old sub-impulse interceptors.

"Ready here." Deadpanned Bailey while she checked her own phaser again. With a shrill up-note the reader shifted from green, to red. "You're in the slot and on the steer, Parsons. You fly, I'll shoot if it comes to that." She paused and tucked her hair behind her ear. "You two took your rad pills, right?" She asked over her shoulder.

"Yes sir," Parsons nodded back in response, both to the pill confirmation and the order to do the flying. The tense back and forth between Not-Drummer and Mr. All Smiles had made him very uncomfortable but he understood Good's need to reassert control, set the stage for this mission, and ensure they were all ready to do whatever was going to be required of them.

“Aye!” Daryx replied, his tone cool but edged with a restrained energy. His face puffed a little, betraying the anticipation bubbling beneath his composed exterior. This was the kind of moment he’d pictured in countless idle daydreams, and now that it was here, he could feel his pulse quicken.

Her finger paused with a moment of irritation before she tapped in the last few codes. She double-tapped her commbadge to scramble and secure the life sign profiles being fed to Mission Operations. "Take us there, Mr. Parsons."

Parsons tried to ground himself in the feel of the auxiliary station's chair. It wasn’t designed for comfort and certainly not for elegance, but it was solid, and right now that would have to be enough. His hands moved quickly, booting up the last of the flight systems, syncing the engineering overlays with the retrofitted Starfleet interface they’d grafted onto the Kazon controls. It wasn’t pretty. None of this was. But it was functional, and functionality meant survival. His fingers hovered for just a beat over the main throttle, his eyes flicking to the viewscreen ahead as the shimmer of the shuttle bay’s forcefield danced across the widened viewport.

This wasn’t how he wanted to be doing this. It wasn’t even supposed to be him. But the Kazon shuttle had needed a full engineering retrofit to get through the nebula, and he’d overseen it personally. Now that they were launching, it made more sense for him to be at the controls than trying to bark guidance from the backseat while someone else wrestled with its quirks. It wasn’t just about pride, though his name was on every repair order from the last forty-eight hours. Rather, it was about control. Control in the face of the unknown. Control in the face of fear. Because as much as he tried to lock it down, to box it up behind checklists and plasma diagnostics and EPS readouts, Sheldon Parsons was afraid. Not of death, necessarily. That was always on the table in Starfleet. But afraid of what they’d find. Of what they wouldn’t find. The flickers of sensor echoes. The silence between comm bursts. The unspoken possibility that they were already too late.

But fear wouldn’t save their people. Engineering might.

“Systems stable. Launching now,” Sheldon said, his voice taut with the kind of tightness that came from holding back more than he was willing to admit. The shuttle slid forward with a growl, crossing the threshold of the Sojourner’s launch field. The moment they passed through the containment curtain, the ship was buffeted: not sharply, but enough to make every bolt and seam groan in their sockets. Parsons’ hands were already adjusting trim, compensating for the drag of the particulate matter slamming against the hull in quantum layers too fast and too hot to fully track. The inertial dampeners caught up a second later, stabilizing them just enough to give the illusion of calm. But it wasn’t calm. Not out here.

The nebula’s edge rose up like a wall of boiling bruises, sickly gold and iridescent violet curling into one another in an endless churn. Parsons banked into it with a precision born less of instinct and more of pure, practiced calculation. There were no soft corrections here, only exacting ones. Every adjustment was the result of an equation he’d already solved in his head, cross-referenced with the sensor ghost they’d found and the warp signature patterns still echoing from the Kordra-Lisrit’s last vector. A tremor ran through the deck plating as they passed through a denser patch of charged gas, the shields flaring briefly before equalizing. Parsons spared a glance to the console: still green. Still holding.

“Telemetry’s spiking,” he called out over his shoulder, not looking away from the forward screen. “Drift variance is within parameters. Matching vector to signal bleed from the last ping." He made one more micro-correction, then set the secondary diagnostic suite running in the background. The shuttle hummed like a beast under tension, its engines tuned for brute force, not grace. But they were inside now. Inside the nebula. Inside the only shot they had. And if Sheldon Parsons had to claw their missing crew back one conduit at a time, then so be it. But he was so, so thankful to have Good and Daryx along for this.

Bailey's features were illuminated by her screen. Inwardly she was trying to decide how best to reflate their eager and anxious Denobulan once they were home. They just couldn't afford any extra chaotic elements. But she pushed that aside for now. One crew later. Right now? Seven. "The Shivad is sending updated telemetry. I'm cross-referencing it with what we got from Batyfel and your... uh... what was it? Optimus signal?" Bailey looked only briefly back behind her shoulder.

"Parsons, alter your current course by 011 mark 357. It looks like... sensors are struggling. But..." She grit her teeth in a wince. "Whatever it is, it has mass. It's big. Its magnetosphere is extending almost a full AU from the source." She squinted. "I'm not science-y but my guess is, its some kind of large planet or protostar." She relaxed her fingers a moment. "The Kordra Lisrit might be using the magnetic field for camouflage. No reason why we can't do the same."

"I see it...I think," Sheldon replied, half-distracted by trying to sift through the soupy data readings. It was like trying to find a lone noodle in a whole pot of chicken broth. "Adjusting course. We'll need to--"

The shuttle was hit by a rather violent eddy at that point, which sent the small craft reeling. The feathery blush of nebular gasses shifting in hues from blue to violet and then angry red swam in the forward viewport. But after a few moments, Parsons was able to regain control of the little ship's vector and put them back on course. As he'd done so, though, there'd been a string of anxiously mumbled self-talk as Sheldon tried to verbally guide himself through the process step-by-step.

He was no Irynya. And he definitely was no Timmoz. For about the 100th time in the last 10 minutes alone, his heart ached deeply for lost friends he might never see again. But he had to hope. That was all he could do. Well, that and do his best to fly the hull-breaching shuttle in a straight line to the mass ahead of them. His fingers danced again on the console, about to enter another course correction when another eddy--this one lesser, thankfully--tried to send them spinning again.

"I have a rather...crazy idea," Parsons spoke up, licking his way-altogether-too-dry lips.

Buffeted by the wave, Bailey recovered and pulled an errant dark strand of hair that had swung and stuck to her lips. "All ears..."

"Every time one of those eddies hits the shields, it's like a hurricane-force wind hitting a boat sail. All that energy bashes against the surface area of the shields and throws us off course. But this shuttle is coated in that Shaddam dust that Doctor Xex and Ensign Ratthi discovered as having energy-bending and dissipating properties. What if...and hear me out," Parsons' tone held up a staying hand if not his actual body, "we lowered the shields and let the dust lattice help us cut through the energy out there?"

Bailey hesitated. What if he was wrong and this disable or destroyed the shuttle? It seemed like a bad time to take the chance. But if their shields were lighting up at every impact, that made their footprint that much bigger. Bailey figuratively flipped a coin in her head. He eyes closed. "OK, try it! Don't kill us!"

"No promises but...sure," Parsons said, all-together unconvincingly, "whatever you say."

With a few swift taps, he routed control from the shield grid to the auxiliary panel at his elbow and initiated the shutdown sequence. The shimmer of the protective field around the shuttle flickered, then faded completely. Instantly, the noise in the cabin shifted—less physical sound and more of a sensed difference, like pressure equalizing in the ears after a long dive. The next eddy that struck the shuttle didn’t hit like a blow. Instead, it curved around them, the particulate matter sliding off the hull as if it had lost interest, the energy dispersed along the dust lattice shell like a ripple in oil.

Sheldon exhaled without realizing he’d been holding his breath. The ride wasn’t smooth, exactly—this was still a Kazon ship barreling through a volatile nebula—but it was better. Far better. The buffeting that had tossed them like a kite in a thunderstorm had calmed into something closer to the slow churn of a deep ocean current. There was drift, yes, but it was manageable. Predictable. His hands steadied on the controls, coaxing the shuttle forward with a new confidence.

“It’s working,” he said quietly, not with triumph but with awe. “The dust is dissipating most of the charge. We’re slicing through it instead of being slammed by it. No wonder Subrek is so protective of that moon," Parsons remarked under his breath. Shaddam IVa's dust clearly provided the First Maje's vessels with the protection needed to safely use the nebula as their home base.

And speaking of, the gaseous clouds around them surged in color as they pressed deeper, the washes of gold and violet peeling away in streaks as if pulled apart by the shuttle’s passage. Sensor noise fell away in layers. Readings began to clarify. Parsons leaned in toward the display, heart skipping. There—tucked inside the dense curtain of storm matter—was a hard shape, angled and massive. He didn't even need the sensors to confirm the ship's identity. There, through the forward viewport, the Kazon warship sat amidst the storms like giant boulder unbothered by a hurricane.

The Kordra-Lisrit.

“Contact,” Parsons breathed. “We’ve got them. Bearing forty-seven mark two. Adjusting course.”

He threw the shuttle into a gentle curve, angling them toward the jagged silhouette emerging from the chaos. The closer they got, the more visible it became. And in response to their proximity, the shuttle's systems auto-pinged the Kordra-Lisrit to handshake a request to open shuttle bay doors. Parsons noted a return query from the Kazon ship, asking to confirm identity before they would allow the shuttle to fly inside the massive Tyrant-class vessel. But almost immediately after, the shuttle's control boards all went red. Subrek's people knew exactly which shuttle was on approach and, given the blast of disruptor fire that had just lanced out from the ship, they aimed not to let it dock.

"Barely missed that," Sheldon hissed, hands dancing across the controls. "Guessing we're gonna have to breach our way in after all. Putting us on a collision course," the engineer reported, looking over at Good. "Feel free to soften the bay doors with our weapons if you can. Cause um..." he gulped, eyes returning to the forward viewport, "we're either going in...or not. And that depends on how strong those doors are once we get there. Brace for impact."

TO BE CONTINUED...


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

Captain Björn Kodak
Commanding Officer

Lieutenant Commander Emni t'Nai
Executive Officer

Lieutenant Axod Qo
Ship's Counselor

Lieutenant JG Asmar Veshun
Flight Control Officer

Lieutenant Baily Good
Assistant Chief Security/Tactical Officer

Lieutenant JG Sheldon Parsons
Assistant Chief Engineer