Preparing To Intervene

Posted on Wed Jul 31st, 2024 @ 3:12am by Captain Calypso Skyie & Lieutenant Commander Alexander Espersen & Lieutenant Mark Valleroy & Captain Natalya Markova

Mission: Doing What We Do Best

"Captain's Log: We're on our way to the planet of Tial to return home the young heiress and her bodyguard. This should be an interesting interaction with another new race, no matter how much they look like us. A society as different from us as a stone age-"

=/\= "Captain Skyie to the bridge. We're receiving a distress call from a freighter identifying themselves as Dashian, stating they're under attack and are in danger of being boarded. We can get there in... One hour Forty minutes at maximum warp."=/\=

"Change course to intercept. Reply to the Dashians that help is on the way. Maximum warp, Exec, Security and Marines to the conference room." She glanced to the side as the comm ended, "And we'll get YOU updated soon. End Captain's Log."

Cally was as good as her own word, but took her own sweet time getting to the conference room because there really was no rush, they had a hundred minutes to get everything ready to go.

The First Officer had been in engineering, solving a problem with the senior engineering team (such as it was), when the call came in. As he had further to go, he put Jade in charge, told her to keep him informed, and found his way to the turbolift.

It stopped to pick up someone else along the way.

Nat stepped into the turbolift, finding the XO already there. The doors closed, and it continued on its way. "XO, Marines, and Security to the Conference room." The Marine quoted. "For what's meant to be a diplomatic drop-off, as I understand it. Something must have gone FUBAR."

“Well put,” Alexander replied. “But it can’t be that urgent if we’re discussing it in the conference room first. It means we can think things through.”

Mark had been in the security offices, reviewing both recent events and several crew transfers when he got the call from the captain to report to the conference room. He suspected that the planned trip to drop off Tessa di'Orion and her bodyguard on their homeworld had just hit a detour. Getting up, he headed to the conference room, and arrived at the same time as the others.

Entering the conference room, Nat made for the Replicator. She tapped in a few commands, and a thermos of coffee appeared. If the crap was about to hit the fan, she needed caffiene. Taking her seat, the Marine gave a nod to Vallroy. "Lieutenant."

"Good morning gentlemen!" Calypso said as she walked in the conference room, "Oh and Lady too," She added as an aside for Natalya, "Just want to make this relatively quick, so here's what's going on: We just received a distress call from the Dashian freighter 'Zendein', she's a mid-sized ship and her specifications are in the system. She's under attack from an unidentified ship and we're apparently the closest ship to them, or at least I don't know of any others." She slid into her chair and let it spin around the whole rotation, "We're a bit more than an hour and a half away, so I wanted to talk to you guys to have a rescue coordinated. We can assume it's a pirate attack, since there isn't much in the way of civilizations out here, it's more just a transit area."

The word 'pirate' caused Nat's eye to twitch, and her grip on the thermos to tighten. "Is this a regular supply routing? Or is someone wanting us to be the nearest ship?" If it was just pirates being pirates... Nat was sure they could handle it. If someone was trying to specifically target them... that changed the ball game.

“Our best maps don’t include details on trade routes,” Alexander answered. “But the way Dashian law works, I don’t expect there to be much in the way of smuggling or other illegal shipping. I think we need to assume a normal shipping route unless we get evidence to the contrary.”

"Any report on what the ship's cargo might be?" Mark asked. "It might help to know if it's anything that we should be mindful going into, just in case that it might be, say, something that could go 'boom' under the wrong circumstances."

"To answer your questions in order: Yes, Yes, No." Cally said cheerfully, "It isn't a scheduled run from what they were saying, but it's the 'standard' routing from where they were coming from to where they're going. No Dashian Fleet units are in the immediate area, more around six to eight hours out and it's a destroyer, so they're quite happy we're responding to the call. We didn't get a manifest of what they're carrying, but they're going from an agrarian world to an industrial one, so odds are they aren't carrying high explosives. We're going to stage an intervention on them, with a simultaneous boarding of both the freighter and whatever the attackers are using to hijack them. We DO have the layout of the freighter, so Mark, Nat, you two get to fight over who wants which."

Nat looked across at the Lieutenant. "Securing a freighter and guarding a merchant crew isn't strictly in our wheel-house." She began. "Amphibious assault -" the term was still in use, despite the lack of water "-on an enemy vessel is what the Marines were for. Unless you have objections."

“Makes sense to me,” interjected Alexander. “Marines assaulting the pirates, Security on defense of the freighter.”

"I don't see any problems with it," Mark said. "Any idea of what the freighter crew's uniforms look like, if they have uniforms? I'd rather not have any friendly fire incidents."

"Their distress signal didn't indicate who was attacking, but I think it's safe to assume that they aren't Dashian." Cally gave a partial shrug, "But they are definitely civilian and likely don't have uniforms per se. Hopefully we'll get more of a look-see when we arrive, but until then let's err on the side of caution when you board the freighter."

“We shouldn’t presume too much about our opponents,” Alexander suggested. “We don’t know their stockpile of small arms, or the capabilities of their ship. And military experience or not, a civilian with a quantum torpedo is about as dangerous as a well trained soldier with quantum torpedo. Maybe more so.”

"Because at least you know what the trained solider is going to do with that torpedo. A civilian will do damned all whatever with it." Calypso agreed wholeheartedly, "As far as I'm aware, the Dashian freighters are unarmed in general, aside from some minor weapons to handle asteroids and space-critters, though not the size of that one."

The Captain looked at all three of the officers, "We're going to arrive going in hot. I intend to disable the non-freighter's engines and primary weapons, then we move in to control the situation. Nat, Mark, get your officers and troops ready to deploy, let's make this as easy as possible."

The plan seemed solid to the First Officer. "I'll brief the other departments. Let's get this done."

"Ooh-rah." Nat answered, lifting her coffee. "I'll prep the troops."

"All right then, let's be about it." Cally stood from her chair, "Cavalry to the rescue!"

Nat picked up her coffee thermos as she rose to her feet. She had a squad to brief.

Mark got up. He had some time to study the schematics of the freighter to determine good beam-in points for the security details.