Secure In The Security

Posted on Mon Aug 8th, 2022 @ 3:41am by Lieutenant Mark Valleroy & Captain Calypso Skyie

Mission: Pirates! (Or Yo Ho Ho And A Bottle Of Yum)
Location: Security Office

Cally's uniform was open all the way, she was just feeling hot and flustered and the works. She'd never run a Q-ship before, never once tried to plan an ambush by using herself and her ship and her crew AS the bait. The potential for disaster was right there along with the potential for complete success. It was going to be tricky. And it was for the next morning, which made her a bit giddy and a bit nervous.

She finally came around the corner to her destination, her third of the day after having visited the engine room and a brief stop by the empty section where the Marines had been a week ago before they left the ship. After she'd betrayed them. Or at least had to keep the fiction of that. "Lieutenant Valleroy, I was hoping to find you here!" She grinned at the senior security officer on board, "I just wanted to go over our plans for tomorrow, for better or worse."

"Yes, I'm here physically, if not mentally," Mark said with a bit of a grin. "And yes, I suppose we'd better make sure that the plan is reviewed one last time. Once things get rolling, it would be a bad time to discover some stupid little flaw in the whole thing that we could have addressed if only we'd noticed it sooner. The best laid plans of mice and men, and all that..."

"Absolutely!" Cally agreed with him entirely, "Plan for the worst, hope for the best and let the dice fall somewhere in the middle! I mean, there are two worst case scenarios that I can see, the first being that they only send one or two of their smaller ships, hardly worth our trap to deal with just those... Or that they bring more than what we know they have and their extra ships are much more nasty and heavily armed than what we can handle."

"Then we will have to hope that they fall for the trap the way we planned it," Mark said. "Now, I have an idea or two myself, but let's go over what's already been considered first. No point in overthinking things if the original plan is a solid one."

"Right." Cally settled herself into a chair as she ran a hand over her face, "We arrive in system, ostensibly to ensure that our entire convoy is still in one piece and to perform long ranged scans towards the Dexic system to ensure that there aren't any nasty surprises around. The planet we'll be nearest was destroyed by tectonic instabilities, so it's broken up into massive chunks, to provide cover for ourselves." She waved her hands vaguely, "Suddenly, we're under the guns of three or four starships of various sizes, 'Captain' Espersen engages them in conversation when they demand our surrender, gets them talking while you and I are perusing the scans that he makes while he postures with his 'weapons' that are presumably fake. At the right moment, we, that means you and I and the bridge crew, dump the cargo pods, which will release tractor pods which will lock the Venture in place. Facing weapons will eliminate that threat while we engage Vanguard, the Intrepid, and attempt to disable it. The Miranda and Steamrunner can't outrun us and they can't outfight us in a straight up fight. If they surrender, we send prize crews, or we blow them out of space. We board the Intrepid and try to capture them, because that's where the pirate leaders should be."

"We'd have to strike quickly," Mark noted. "If they're all together and get any chance to regroup and coordinate a counteroffensive, we're done for. There's not much of a chance of being able to outgun several ships at once. There's also the idea that they may at some point attempt to beam over boarding parties, particularly when they're talking with Commander Espersen and think we're distracted. So we may want to look at either setting up transport inhibitors in the Chimera, at least in strategic locations, or setting up force fields to slow down any boarding parties. Unless, of course, getting boarded is a part of the plan or anything like that."

"I would very much like to not be boarded if we can at all prevent it." Cally said solemnly, "Not that I don't think your people couldn't handle a bunch of scallywags, but I tend to see boarding actions as a sign of losing the fight. Inhibitors it is, if they can get through the shields, including the force fields. We'll have all non-essential personnel in defensible locations, can you put a couple people with each of those groups, just in case?"

"That can be done," Mark said. "I'll also have some security placed in vital areas of the ship, just in case. These pirates have possession of several Starfleet vessels already, and while a couple of them are older ships, who knows what a particularly observant individual might have learned about our tech and other systems. Certain things have changed very much in just the past two decades alone, but other things haven't changed nearly as much as we sometimes like to think they have, so it never hurts to be prepared."

"No, it doesn't. I know they'll take this ship over my dead body, but I want my people protected." She looked thoughtful for a moment, "Where did you desire to be during the engagement? On the bridge with me, or preparing for boarding actions of either kind?"

"I'm thinking I should be on the bridge," Mark said. "I can coordinate better from there, and I don't want to say that I'm the best shot with the ship's phasers, but..."

"You're the best we have right now." Calypso stated definitively, "And we're going to need to make some good shots, first being eliminating a small craft before trying to disable an Intrepid's engines at least, do what we must to eliminate this particular threat."

Mark nodded. "Right. As I mentioned earlier, we'll have to strike quickly, as to catch them off-guard. Our best asset will most likely be the element of surprise, though one other thing we may have to our advantage is that their ships will probably not be fully up to specs. They've been away from Starfleet repair facilities and skilled Starfleet engineers who know how to keep the ships operational at full capacity. As part of our initial scans, we should keep an eye out for any particular areas of their ships that might look like they've seen better days, and then look at exploiting those weaknesses."

Cally clapped him on the shoulder, "And this is why I have a tactical officer like you, to keep an eye out for pilots like me!" She stated with a wide grin, "I'm going to trust you to target any potential weak points at your discretion. I'd like to capture at least one of those ships, but the preservation of Chimera and her crew is the highest priority. If the choice is to take too high a risk to capture one, or eliminating them? Target to destroy. We can hunt any remnants later if we have to."

"We pull this off, I think I can bag you more than one ship," Mark said. "Now, whether they choose to surrender at that point is up to them, but I suspect most will be happy to do so once we remove their ability to fight."

"I hope that's the case, Mark." She squeezed his shoulder gently, "See you in just a little bit."