Combat Drills, Part 3

Posted on Thu Jul 31st, 2025 @ 1:48pm 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 & Captain Philip Rothschild
Edited on on Thu Oct 9th, 2025 @ 7:50pm

1,535 words; about a 8 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

"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.”

And now the continuation...

The Starstation McCall was a modest base. Surrounded by a fleet of Klingons that managed to slip past the border while the Ark Royal had been distracted. The stations shields looked on the verge of collapse, its small garrison force of one outdated Anton Class Destroyer was putting up a losing fight, one it wouldn’t win without support.

True to the Captain's statement, Valerie hesitated only so long as to make note of where her targets were. Specifically, targets in a particular portion of her arc. The counter on her board showed her how many photon torpedoes she still had available and the number had been decreased by a massive amount, given her shuttle stunt. But they were there to be used, weren't they? Six spat out in a double salvo, three each targeted on a pair of smaller ships on the flank they were going to be going around. Phasers spat their own fire out first in advance and then in support of those projectiles, impacting shields and one of the smaller birds of prey broke in half as the third torpedo of that salvo penetrated both shields and armor. The second reeled away and Valerie changed targets, chalking that one up as a mission kill if not an outright.

After a few moments of phaser and torpedo fire, the lights on the bridge shifted. The simulation was over. "Well done," T'Kal told the crew. "XO, work with department heads for an after-action report. Identify strengths and weaknesses."

"Aye, ma'am." Valerie began to arrange the records of the simulation, exhaling deeply.

'Finally. It's over.' Renata thought and yawned. She then noticed a blink on her console. "Sir, sensors detect another ship." she spoke up. "No weapons armed. They appear to be friendly."

The image on the screen now showed the approaching friendly. A Miranda-class ship adorned with the name USS Stalwart.

"We are being hailed." Jin-Ah reported.

"On screen," the Captain replied.

A middle-aged man with a receding hairline of light-brown hair and sharp eyes looked at them through the screen, his eyes boring through as if he were actually looking through the screen. In front of him were two Andorians at the helm and navigation chair, and behind him, a human woman sitting at the Master Situations Station, and a Tellarite man at the tactical station.

"Greetings, Captain," Philip Rothschild said, smiling politely at T'kal. "I trust we find you well?"

“Captain,” T’Kal replied with a polite nod. “We are well, having just concluded a shakedown combat drill. What can we do for you?”

"Well, your unconditional surrender would be acceptable," he said, smirking. "We've been sent to participate with you in a joint exercise; a little tactical tap-dance, if you will, to assist your shakedown."

She raised an eyebrow. “We were not notified. But we accept. Your challenge, or your surrender, as the case may be.” She looked around at her bridge crew. “Reset for inter-ship war games. Phasers at 1% power. Load dummy torpedoes. Set shields to interpret damage and relay appropriately.” She looked to the doctor, standing near the turbolift. “Doctor, prepare to receive simulated casualties.” Her eyes went back to the viewscreen. “Twenty seconds until start…mark.”

She abruptly cut the comms signal. “Mr. McEntyre, the Captain of the Stalwart will very likely attempt to launch a boarding party. Watch for gaps in shields and prepare to react to attackers. Phasers on stun, obviously.”

"Aye, Aye Sir. I'll prepare them a warm welcome" Clay nods as he turns to head off the bridge to prepare his men for the simulated boarding parties.

Valerie smirked at the Captain, "Definitely better than a simulation, going up against a real, thinking crew. We got this."

The twenty seconds ran down and the lights on the bridge shifted. The war game had begun. “Mr. Sung, dive dive dive, full impulse and z-axis negative as much as possible. Tactical, fire at will, try to prioritize their torpedo launchers and heavy phaser cannons.”

This time she was just following orders, but knew she had full initiative on the weapons. Eighteen phaser banks mounted in turrets, she designated two of them to keep up a constant barrage of the hull over the torpedo launchers. Let Stalwart try to launch torpedoes when there was at least a fifty-fifty chance of a close interception that could do damage to their own hull. The rest she set to stutter shots across the entire hull of Stalwart, in a pattern that would take several seconds to play out, but would converge briefly over the port phaser cannons for three seconds in three.. two...

The phaser fire punched through the Stalwart's shields in one spot, enough to singe the port phaser cannon.

The Stalwart immediately angled hard, turning their weakened shields away from the Ark Royal, but not pulling back, twisting around and dipping under the other ship to keep out of line of most of its phasers. It fired back quickly, spreading the phaser fire across the shields, working to blind the sensors of the bigger ship while it changed course again to avoid being tracked.

"Captain; the Stalwart has just transmitted the rules of engagement." Jin-Ah piped up. "Forwarding them to you now."

The Captain looked at the miniature console on her armrest, and what she saw caused her to audibly sigh.

The viewscreen and most of the screens on the bridge flickered. "What the hell?" David said, just before his maps vanished. All the screens were suddenly replaced with the words, "ngaDHa'ghach wa'DIch" before going dark. The lights on the bridge dimmed and the ship slowed.

"Navigation is down. I can't see anything!" David said, hitting his board in frustration as the ship shook from phaser fire, the low-power shots still having an affect as they struck the hull directly.

The screens all then went blank for about ten seconds as the Klingon disappeared. Then lines upon lines of Starfleet codes began to appear as if being typed out from somewhere.

[Main Engineering]

Karane was hard at work at the computer control console, typing furiously directly into the main frame. "You're not getting into my systems that easily!" She protested as she wrote lines of engineering code to counter an obvious worm in their systems. "Take a little bit of Karane!"

[Bridge]

The code continued to type out across the screen, accompanied now by a tiny chibi-style image of Karane shooting a Klingon with a tiny phaser. Obviously the Chief Engineer had a sense of humour.

Eventually the code on the screen disappeared. One by one system after system came back online, starting with the viewscreen, followed by the lights and primary systems. "Captain. My little anti-virus has isolated the worm that's in our system. I'm working on purging it from the computer banks now. I have people working on restoring engine power, approximately two minutes until engines restart." Karane's voice called out.

[Deck 10]

As the shields went down, Four Starfleet Security officers, dressed in Klingon garb and carrying phaser pistols on low stun, They immediately began moving down the corridor, shooting everyone they came across and directing them to "stay dead" as they made their way towards Main Engineering..

[Deck 4]

A second team beamed onto Deck 4 in the Operations sector, moving around the corridor quickly, heading for the Life Support Controls and the phaser turrets, taking down several crewmen.

[Stalwart Bridge]

"Boarding parties deployed," Regina Rothschild said from the MSS.

"Excellent," Phillip said, beaming at his wife. "Well done on that little package."

"Teach them not to just open a message from the enemy," she chuckled.

"Their shields are coming back up," Lieutenant Groon said from the tactical station. "Thirty seconds ahead of our estimates."

"Which is why we had the second wave be ready early," Rothschild said, sitting back. "Send out the new shuttles."

Groon sent the message and a moment later said, "shuttles away." Two shuttles emerged on each side of the ship, heading towards the Ark Royal, spreading out equally around the ship. A moment later, their phasers lanced out. The beams weren't nearly strong enough to do damage to the shields, but their erratic pattern and wide dispersal began causing feedback, overloading and blinding the Ark Royal's sensors, leaving the Stalwart able to move stealthily for its next attack.


To be continued...

 

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