Combat Drills, Part 2

Posted on Thu Jul 31st, 2025 @ 1:47pm by Captain T’Kal & Lieutenant Commander David Erickson & Lieutenant Commander Valerie Novis & Lieutenant Commander Clay McEntyre & Lieutenant Karane Inda & Lieutenant CASTIEL 'Cas' Johnson MD & Lieutenant JG Renata Novotná
Edited on on Thu Oct 9th, 2025 @ 7:50pm

1,367 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: ARYL 1X02: Simulated Pressure
Location: Deep Space
Timeline: Stardate 8957.3 (28 July 2290, 19:00)

Last time on Star Trek: Ark Royal

One Klingon down, two more to go, but sensors were already trilling once more with the tones of incoming torpedoes, multiple this time. 3, 4 heading for the Ark Royal. Another sensor contact, heavier than a K’Tinga. A Klingon Command Cruiser.

Communication also would pick up a distress signal.

"Something's coming through the static..." Jin-Ah reported. "It's a distress signal of some kind..."

T’Kal cocked an eyebrow. Was this part of the simulation? She looked to her security chief and saw something in his eyes. This was part of it. “On main speaker.”

And now the continuation...


The speakers crackle, subspace static before a voice cut through.

“Priority: Under Attack. StarStation McCall calling any Starfleet Vessel! Klingons Massing on Station Perimeter. Taken Heavy Damage! Any ships in range, please respond?”

Something flashed through Valerie’s eyes as she took in the distress call and reassigned her firepower to the other two K’tingas, apparently ignoring the command cruiser for the moment, reaching out with one hand to scroll down a list of sorts. “Navigation, calculate response time to Starstation McCall from our present location.” Her voice had lost all amusement, instead becoming terse and clipped. “Flight control, have your ground crews simulate loading Cargo package Charlie-Sixteen onto the shuttles. Prepare four shuttles for launch and remote control once they have been loaded.” Her eyes flicked over the loadout she’d ordered: Each shuttle would be holding their maximum load of 12 photon torpedoes, almost half the total available on the entire ship.

"Aye, Sir," David said. He tracked the three ships, anticipating their next move while he began plotting a way to outflank them and get to the station. The shortest route was a line, but a straight line meant an easy target. It also meant the enemy would see them coming a lightyear away. His eyes darted over his charts and turned them only slightly off course through a nebula. With a little extra speed, they wouldn't lose time, and would have some element of surprise in their approach. He also plotted a route through the asteroid field itself until they were out of range of the Klingons, then heading straight at the station. He also offered a roundabout course that took slightly longer, but would come in from a random vector the Klingons wouldn't anticipate. He looked at all three and scrapped two, opting for the nebulae option. "Warn engineering we're going to be asking a lot of the engines," he said.

With a look at the course headings that David sent to her and Jin-Woo, Valerie compared them to their current location and spoke even as she refined her targeting to a weak spot on the hull structure of the K'Tinga, "Departure point will be past these ships. We are not going to leave them to come in behind us."

"Understood. One up-and-over coming up," David said, plotting a corkscrew course first directly at the Klingons, then looping around to put them past the ships before they could be targeted, sending it back to the Commander.

Nearly as soon as the report that the shuttles were loaded came in, Valerie locked in her target solutions, "Helm, come to course 335 mark 1, point us straight towards that command cruiser." She waited for a few moments, "Drop the shuttles behind us like a string of pearls, one hundred meters apart, have them follow our course." The instructions kept the bulk of Ark Royal between all of the Klingons and the shuttles, in fact, they would likely not even realize that they had been launched. "On my mark after launch, veer hard to port, then send shuttles to warp on direct course in sequence a half second after we begin our maneuver."

As the simulated shuttles launched, Valerie armed their cargos of torpedoes and set them to detonate at contact. "Helm... Mark." She herself hit the execute signal to the shuttles before intensifying her fire on the juncture of the second K'Tinga where the neck met the primary hull, firing a quartet of torpedoes from her own launchers in two pairs. Meanwhile, the shuttles went to warp and barely missed the engineering hull of Ark Royal, but they crossed the distance between themselves and the command cruiser in bare moments, the first impacting the shields and vanishing in a roil of plasma that the second flew into. This one too impacted the shields and destructed, but overloaded them and forced a shutdown. The next two shuttles hit the hull of the command cruiser and detonated, the remaining mass of the command cruiser flickering as it spun away.

The assault on the second K'Tinga went similarly, the focused strikes overwhelming the shields in the localized area, the torpedoes finally taking it down and allowing the phasers to boil away the armor connecting the front of the ship to the wings, the neck flaring with fire as the atmosphere combusted and it snapped off, the threat index reducing to zero on her screen as Valerie changed targets once more to the last K'Tinga.

"Bingo!" Renata smiled as she watched the second K'Tinga get smacked. "We're good." she nodded and looked at Valerie, then turned her attention back to the sensor readings.

“A fascinating strategy, Commander,” T’Kal observed from the command chair. “Most impressive. When we are finished, I want you and Mr. Sung to ensure we can implement it.”

"We'd better order extra shuttles," David quipped. "We're not done."

It was a tense moment, then another, the Klingon command cruiser listing, spinning before they recover, bearing down on Ark Royal fast. Torpedoes firing, two, three, four, heading right for Ark Royal with the blaring of the bridge proximity alarms.

"Roll, seventy degrees per second, full rotation, yaw sixty degrees to port, engines full after course change." Valerie snapped, then as it didn't happen within the fraction of a second, "Now!"

Jin-Woo struggled to keep up with the commands. This kind of stunt flying was usually reserved only for smaller craft, and bigger starships weren't designed to handle the strain.

David held on as the ship banked hard and winced in sympathy. Moving like a mouse when you're an elephant was no easy task. He worked to give them an angle to roll with but it was getting tight.

As the ship spun, taking the torpedo impacts in four different places on the shields to spread out the potential damage, the bow of the ship also turned towards the last K'Tinga, "Reinforce forward shields." Ark Royal's fire stopped as she manually targeted all of the forward phaser arrays and selected two torpedo launchers of her own, then did her best to flatten the firing key and the coordinated fire spat out right at the command deck of the K'tinga that she was now approaching head-on.

The Command Cruiser imploded with a furious fireball, a bright light of warp explosion that filled the bridge with a blinding light.

Karane's voice erupted suddenly out of the helm console, clearly directed at the pilot. "Hey! Easy with the fancy flying! You're putting stress on the nacelle pylons! In case you forgot! We need those!" she scolded.

"Then tell Commander Novis to back off on the stunt flying!" Jin-Woo responded. All he was doing was following orders, and Jin-Woo would make sure the Engineer's ire got directed at the right person.

"The frame can handle an additional twenty degrees per second." Valerie snapped back, eyes flashing over the course that David had sent her and sending it on to Jin-Woo, "Engage that course, best speed. What is our ETA to Starstation McCall? Also, what is the Starstation's complement? I want to drop out of warp in close to the station and begin to evacuate the station by transporter while we evade enemy fire."

The Captain was impressed with how smoothly this was going, and how well her XO and tactical chief had taken charge. She decided to intervene, looking at the console on her armrest. “Ninety seconds to Starstation McCall.” An abbreviated jump for the plot of their exercise. “Weapons free upon arrival.”

To be continued...

 

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