An act of sabotage aboard the USS Sally Ride turned a routine transwarp jump into a disastrous plunge to the far side of Klingon space. The ship was crippled and her captain put in a coma, and the remaining crew had to escape to Federation space, pursued by a mysterious flotilla of heavily modified warships and compromised by continuing acts of sabotage. Shortly after the last surviving KDF spy was finally identified and apprehended, the ship finally reached the border, finding it heavily fortified with patrols seeking to block their escape. Will the crew of the Sally Ride survive to warn Starfleet of the plot to turn the Federation's own transwarp network against it?Once the Sally Ride's
strategy was set, the bridge crew was briefed and the plan set into motion. Ensign Benton brought the ship up to warp and launched the sensor burst probes and log buoys, then made for the planned border crossing point. Commander Seven reported that the probes successfully transmitted their overload signals, sowing confusion among the standard KDF patrols and scattering them across the border.
Without long-range communications aboard the ship, it was impossible to tell whether Starfleet detected the signal bursts.
Everything was going according to plan until there was a sudden explosive impact -- the KDF had sown the border with cloaked mines, likely appropriated from the Romulans. Benton had to drop out of warp and switch on the
warp shunt to raise shields. The mines' detonations were sure to give away the Sally Ride's position, and without warp speed, she would be unable to escape any KDF ships that came to investigate; but without shields she would be destroyed almost immediately.
Indeed, it quickly became apparent that the modified scavenger ships had detected the initial explosion and were pursuing. Sthyr and Seven devised a plan: use a tachyon beam to reveal mines ahead of the ship, hack them, and lob them at the pursuing ship with the rear tractor beam. The trick worked, but unfortunately, the scavenger ships were fitted with extremely advanced graviton manipulation tech: they simply latched onto the mine with a tractor beam and ripped it apart well out of range.
Worse, the scavenger ship finally caught up and began to batter the Sally Ride with disruptor fire. Benton took evasive action and Eris 8, at tactical, had to split phasers between defending the ship and clearing mines. Seven bought some breathing room by using the ship's few remaining astrometric probes to fire sensor bursts that would blind the pursuing craft for a few seconds, but there was still no way for the Sally Ride to hold out for any appreciable amount of time.
Worse, just as Starfleet reinforcements finally appeared on long range scanners, the enemy ship latched onto the Sally Ride with its overpowered tractor beams. With rescue in sight, the ship was trapped, its hull buckling.
Seven fired the last of his sensor-jamming probes, blinding the enemy ship for just a few seconds. Sthyr ejected one of the ship's few remaining antimatter pods while the aggressors couldn't see what was happening. Benton fired on the pod, detonating it: the resulting explosion scattered the beam just enough for the Sally Ride to break free, darting away through the arriving formation of Starfleet ships into the safety of Federation space.
At which point a new voice crackled over the comm: Captain Walker, from sickbay, groggily demanding that somebody explain to her what the hell was going on.
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OOC Notes:What an amazing conclusion to our first arc!
For next week, we're doing something a little special. We'll be having a ceremony aboard the fleet starbase, handing out promotions and recognition to the characters who populated our first story. In order to decide who gets what, I'll be wanting reports from anybody who participated. These can take the form of a full-on writeup commending people in character for admirable things they did, but I definitely want everyone to submit to me a ranked list of who you think were the most awesome characters/roleplayers. (Please send the list over a private channel so we don't hurt anybody's feelings.) There's no limit to how many people you can "vote for," but they do have to be ranked from best to least most best.
I'll go over the results and use them to hand out promotions and permanent crew positions, which will be announced in character at next week's ceremony. To assist you in this, I'm attaching a short list of characters and what they did. I'm having to compile this list from whatever logs I have saved, so if I missed anything you worked on (or, god forbid, your character entirely), let me know and I'll fix things right up!
- Benton (me): pilot. cured Captain Walker by turning the ship so fast she was knocked out of bed.
- Eris 8 (karmaFACTORY): borg science officer. assisted with apprehending Stacy
- Eurrsk Ruk (Eurrsk): operated sensors during first event
- Kelsan (vondrakelsan): counselor. offered psychological advice in locating and capturing undercover spy
- Kiera (Medart): ops officer. worked on phaser repairs.
- Liem (GreenGazer): engineer. restored warp coils in the immediate aftermath of the transwarp incident
- Lindstrom (Bren): doctor. treated Captain Walker and instituted medical scans to search for KDF spy.
- Orenn (nthoctave): acting captain. final command decisions at all events. worked on warp shunt to restore shields after system incursion
- Orondei (jonb39): sensors officer. assisted with system incursion, then helped analyze logs to determine the purpose of the modified ships
- Seven of Eleven (MrIzzy): borg science officer. repaired sensors and boosted secondary deflector. noted and analyzed saboteurs' use of borg technology
- Sthyr (gettorix): engineer. helped develop and execute escape plan. also played Stacy, an undercover KDF spy, for much of the arc.
- S'Talon/Two of Five (JimmyJames11): S'Talon took brief command in the first event. Two helped develop escape plan.
- Yenzoc (SiranNataan): xenobiologist. noted biological origins of some of the technology on the KDF scavenger ships and devised their use in cutting through ship hulls.
