RP: SNV Gam'trosha [Prologue] The Gathering, and Launch?

Bridge

Def'leor started tracking the inbound object, the computer quickly showing its trajectory.

"This is damn peculiar ma'am. The fast mover has no energy signature, its moving fast too fast to be normal spatial object. Its also moving against the planets tidal forces... wait.." She paused as the sensors detected a brief flare of energy and the objects trajectory shifted.

"Ma'am, fast mover appears to be a small asteroid, dimensions read out at approximately 17×11×5 km. Composition unknown at present but with the RADAR image, it is most likely a metallic core. At its current velocity if it impacts the results would be catastrophic. But as large as it is, I do not believe we can destroy all of it before it hits the atmosphere."

Bridge

"We may not be able to destroy it, but we might be able to chip away at it enough to possibly blunt its damage," she said and turned toward her chair and sat down. She looked at the scanner results and rubbed her chin, "see if you can boost power to our sensors, try and figure out what the composition is."

She then looked up from the results and tapped her chin, she then noticed that there was a message coming in from the flagship and played it.

~Laious here to all ships, looks like we found what it was the first fleet discovered. No idea why the scouts never reported in though, or what destroyed the sensor outpost, we can only assume this hunk of rock is responsible. Trajectory sets it on a collission course with Levia, we must ensure it doesn't reach the planet at all costs. All ships are weapons free!~

"You heard her, give me shipwide and bring the ship up to combat stations," ordered Sa'kira as she began to work on getting the ships weapons online.

Outside

The fleet which had been moving at a slow pace suddenly speed, Shu'ron fighters that had been riding alongside their larger warships suddenly sped on ahead to meet the asteriod before the warships had.

Erm'olai continued his assessment while the Marine spoke to him. He didn't even bother looking away from his screen to speak to her. "The mainframe was down most of the time while in dock, except for the usual tests and installation procedures. It would not have recorded anyone here. Data on dock workers would be located on the shipyards database, which I should be able to access from here with proper authorization and permissions." the Laibe explained in a manner of a teacher to young student.

He paused as his assessment confirmed no faults in the actual storage architecture. Moving to a completed diagnosis of the mainframe memory and cores, the Laibe noted the results for the memory and nodded. It had just been a fault due to the sudden shutdown, nothing totally serious. In fact, most of the core faults were similar to the fault in the memory. Well, except for one particular core. Frowning as he double-checked the data, his tail flicked to the left in annoyance. One core was not just reporting a fault. In fact, it had stopped reporting all together.

"Continue with your sweep please," he stated before returning to the lockbox to grab a kit once more. Moving back to the mainframe, the Laibe began to open it up. While he may not be able to repair that core while it was operational, he could at least diagnose the faulty core while the system was running. For all he knew, the damn thing was probably loose or burned out.

Def'leor switched the Ship mistress to shipwide, while she hit the Action Stations alarm. Klaxons sounded through out the ship with blaring efficiency, except in areas where the speakers were improperly mounted and they klaxons emitted a painful squeal.

"Ship wide channel open ma'am" She said looking over her shoulder at Sa'kira.

Gam'trosha Engineering Bay

As Quin'trema suggested Keri'cruen shifted himself through the Engineering bay towards the lower set of containment modules. After a few brief moments gliding through the bay, he caught hold of the first containment module. The large cylindrical device thrumming with mechanical activity thrust up out of the deck, resting beside the transparent barrier that separated the main Lunebaren reactor from the rest of the engineering bay.

Keri's hands drifted over the device as he visually inspected the unit. A cursory examination revealed no flaws. After pressing a few controls on one of the control panels a portion of the exterior surface retracted -- allowing a glimpse into the devices interior.

"Unit 05 appears to be intact and fully operational. Moving onto the next one, Quin." Keri announced, shifting his weight an propelling himself the short distance to the next containment module. He repeated the inspection process as he had for the first, though this time things were different.

"Srisa," Keri'cruen swore quietly under his breath. "Quin we have a problem here -- the superconductor loops within the sealed unit of this module are completely faulty.... I mean... look! This rings got cavitation scars I could fit my fist inside! The whole unit's going to need to be completely replaced.... and we'll have to do without until we can get a new one shipped to the Gam'trosha."

Keri'cruen sighed, and rubbed the bridge of his nose as he clenched his eyes shut -- thinking. "We're going to have to bypass it entirely and rely on the others or else risk blowing the reactor. Damn it... that'll cut down reactor output by at least 12.5 percent in the meantime." Beginning work, Keri'cruen let loose a long stream of curses directed at whoever was responsible for installing the dangerously sub-standard hardware.

Mainframe

In this case, it was just burned out.

Bridge

Klaxons blarred all across the ship, warning the crew that something was up and that they needed to get to their combat stations. Blast shutters began to close shut, sealing the bridge and engineering from the rest of the ship.

"All crew, this is your Shipmistress speaking," spoke Sa'kira as she began to transmite an image of the object - the asteriod that had breached their defenses - to the entire crew. "What many of us were hoping was just a pirate or terrorist ship, has turned out to be an asteriod. We don't know yet how it got by our sensors. Current trajectories show that it's headed straight for Levia, if it impacts the surface, there's no telling how much damage it'll do the planet. Our mission now is to try and chip away at it, in hopes that between our ship and the rest of the fleet we'll be able to destroy it before it gets to the planet - failing that - at the very least blunt the amount of damage it'll due to the planet itself. I want my marines in the infirmary, we don't have a medic right now, so grab any med-kits you find. I want one marine on the bridge, and one in Engineering."

She stopped for a moment to send an authorization code to permet Shar, Erm'olai, and Tite'Yanus access through the blastdoors. "We don't know what is going to happen in the next few minutes, so be prepared for anything."

Sa'kira sighed and cut the line, then looked at the display. "Def, the ACI should be fully active now, bring it online so you'll be able to see not only the ship but everything around us. I'll need you to perform some pretty tricky flying, think you can do it?" If Def turned around, she'd notice Sa'kira smiling.

Engineering

"Crap!" scowled Quin as she stared down at her terminal. "First that and now this," she began to type away on her keyboard. "Guess we'll have to contend with that later then, monitor shields and weapons, I'll keep an eye on engines."

"See if you can free up power from unused areas of the ship, the cabins, recreational lounge, cafeteria, those are good areas to start," suggested Quin.

Bridge

"Tricky flying is my specialty ma'am. May I suggest that in addition to trying to reduce the size of the object, we might see about altering its trajectory. A nudge or two and we might have it hit in the wilderness to mitigate the damage." Def replied as she brought up the ACI. She looked at the object, Well one bit of luck its not rotating... which is definitely another sign of unnatural.

Tite'Yanus perked his head up as he heard the klaxons and the message from their shipmistress. Right into the thick of things. Might not be a bad thing, but definitely not a good thing. Accessing the comm that was attached to his My'leke module, he connected himself to Shar's comm.

"As we discussed before, I think it would be best if you took the bridge. I have heavy weaponry strapped to my back and I would doubt our U'Cet would be happy about me blowing holes in her bridge equipment."

Assuming that she wouldn't argue this one with him, he took off towards the medical bay and gathered as many med packs as he could hold in the spare pockets on his module before sprinting off towards the engineering bay.

Shar gave laibe a nod and left the mainframe, when she was done scanning. She continued along the deck 3, just as she was finishing she heard the alarm. She sighed and listened to the message from Ship-mistress. She then started running toward med-bay.

"Fine, I will head to the bridge then. Though I doubt asteroid will be boarding the ship Tit." She replied to Tite'Yanus and chuckled. She quickly took medikit in med-bay and hurried for to Deck two. After visit in armory, where she took Seta'sis Sword and hurried off to Bridge.

She did not say a word when she entered, she just moved next to the entrance and stood guard. She though now was not time to interrupt Ship-mistress in her work.

Gam'trosha Engineering Bay

"Right." Keri responded succinctly to Quin. He thrust himself across the bay, back towards the main console he had been situated at earlier. Catching hold of one of the edge, he swung himself around and placed himself adeptly back in front of the holographic projections and displays.

Whilst his white-furred fingers nimbly tapped against the power distribution controls and redirected energy flow throughout the ship, the young engineer again spoke to his companion. "Re-directing power from non-essential and auxiliaries-- we've got an 11.3% surplus in the ship's shield capacitor's so far -- I'll see what else I can scrounge up to keep our weapon batteries firing."

Engineering Bay

Tite'Yanus came sprinting into the bay on all fours, fully equipped in his heavy weaponry gear. Once he was there he scooped the medical kits out of a pocket built into his Module and dumped them on the ground. He then took up a defensive position near the medkits where he could easily tend to the wounded and combat any intruders.

"This is Tite'Yanus, I've got the entrance covered and medkits on site!" He called out to the engineers, also making sure his comm relayed the message the bridge.

Bridge

Sa'kira only partially acknowledged Shar's entry onto the bridge, her mind more onto the matter at hand. She was studying the holographic display of the asteroid and noticing an alarming detail, "this rock isn't spinning," she muttered and walked up behind Def's chair.

"Ok, here's the plan. Most of our ships are going to be swarming this thing all over, but I want to put us in a good position where we can focus our fire without needing to maneuver our vessel around much. What I need you to do, is push our engines as hard as you can, if you have to redline them - do it, it'll be worth it considering the alternative if we don't."

She waited a little, then continued. "With the engines at full burn, get us ahead of that asteroid, you’ll need to calculate its speed though to do that. Once we are ahead of it, cut engines, and turn the ship around eighty degree's to port so that our main guns are pointed at it. We'll use inertia to keep us moving forward, it'll allow our forward guns to be able to fire continuously while I man the turret and start taking shots at it. You'll need to keep us aligned though, and be mindful of the stresses that'll be put on the hull. We have some free power, so just let Engineering know where you need power most."

Then she looked back at the screen and folded her arms over her chest. "We'll take damage from this stunt, but it's better than letting the asteroid hit the planet and kill who knows how many people... let's just hope the civilians have been evacuated to the shelters, but if the asteroid hits the city, that isn't going to matter at all."

Sa'kira stood there for a moment. "However, that's just my plan, if you have a better idea, I'm all ears," she said, as her ears perked up a bit and tail began to swing back and forth, curiously wondering if her aviator had an idea that might actually be better than her own. After all, her idea was crazy.

The Laibe didn't even give Shar notice as she left the Mainframe Room. Instead, the black-furred individual fumed over the burnt out core that was in HIS system. It was yet another thing to do added to his list. He had no problem doing his job, but when others failures gave him even more work to do --- it made him livid.

But he couldn't replace the core at that point. The System was up, it was operational, and it would stay operational until they hit a shipyard or a dock. So Erm'olai decided to seal the mainframe and hope nothing else goes wrong.

Keeping his tool kit out of the storage bin, Erm'olai wanted to check the database for the dockworkers who had been operating in the area around the mainframe. Considering the relative newness of the vessel, he believed there was enough bandwidth in the system to devote a small bit of transmissions to checking with the shipyards database. However, the main question was could the shipyard have enough to handle the load?

He was about to find out. Initiating his search, Erm'olai used his vessel's name and the dock assignment as keywords in his search for the dockworker roster.

Bridge
With the mainframe operational for the moment, Def'leor pulled up the sensor data for the object and initiated a deeper scan of the target.

Once the holographic image of the asteroid appeared, she started swiveling it around looking at it its surface and such.

"Mistress... you said you wanted tricky. I recommend we redeploy the forces...." she waved her hand at the display. " If all the ships fire at random at the object. this is what will happen." The image showed the asteroid breaking it a myriad of chunks of varying size and shape. If we allow that the fleet somehow pulverized half or even two thirds, the remaining chunks will be devastating.. my suggestion is that we reposition the ships with ours in front of the object. We have all of them fire their weapons in a precise line along the central axis of the asteroid. We split it much the way a gem cutter does. Then once split we have the warships launch their missiles into the fissure between the two sections. We use the shock wave of the warheads to push the chunks apart. And continue for several volleys. We do this far enough out, and the delta-v will be sufficient that the pieces will miss the planet."

Bridge

Sa'kira stood there in thought, considering Def's plan, after about a minute or two she nodded. "Concentrating the fire would work better with more ships than just our little one, and besides," as she said this she checked their ships inventory, and let out a series of curses in Tinacen. "We have no missiles, and no torpedos, wonderful.... so we'll be reliant on the others to hit their spots."

Then, she sent a copy of Def's plan to the NSV-Laious, expecting a communique but instead just getting a text message back. "The flagship is only dedicating a few ships to this plan," Sa'kira sounded disappointed at this, she had hoped to get more, but then she figured command must not not want to take a risk from an 'inexperienced' ship. "We have fourth and fifth squads along with the ninth who have been tasked with following our lead. The ninth has full missile load out, but the fourth and fifth," her voice trailed off as she double checked something, "do not, they only half half a compliment."

"You'll need to coordinate with the three squads so they'll know what to do," Sa'kira said as she floated back over to her chair and strapped herself in, then brought the turrets online, along with the Gunnery Control Interface, so she could physically control one of the turrets herself.

Bridge

Def heard the Ship Mistress' orders and felt her head swim for a moment. For a fleeting moment she thought perhaps something was wrong with the gravity controls. However, she realized she was holding her breath. Surely that can not be right. A lowly C'Baruce wouldn't be giving orders to other ships. She took a breath, and then another. She considered briefly asking the Ship Mistress for confirmation. Instead she started plotting an intercept trajectory for the Gam'trosha, one plotted she sent the ship surging forward on it.

She took a moment to add the other squads to the data on her IDT. Then opened a channel to the other ships. "Gam'trosha to Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth squads. Prepare to receive transmitted flight paths and target coordinates. We need to break the asteroid into two large pieces rather than pummeling it into thousands. Once all ships have reached their firing points, commence continuous full power bombardment with all weapons at the predetermined coordinates. All missiles are to be held for second phase.

Once we have fractured the asteroid along its central axis, missile firing will commence. Missile bombardment will be conducted in waves. First volley should be set to detonate at specified coordinates. After that wave, additional volleys will be set for proximity detonation. We are going to use the blast wave to push the chunks away from each other and onto a new trajectory to clear the planet.

Initial Transmission commencing in five seconds. Data updates will be sent directly by computer after that. 5.... 4.... 3.... 2.... 1.... transmitting." she said punching the transmit command.

Bridge

Def would notice the squadron's ackoledging her message and the transmissions. "They got the data," commented Sa'kira as her station became bathed in a holographic field, she was now seeing through one of the turrets and had control of it.

She spun the turret around a bit, to ensure it was functioning properly and gave a nod.

~NSV-Esene of the Fourth, are you sure we should be holding back our missiles?~ the voice sounding very nervous and unsure.

Sa'kira's eyes narrowed as she heard the question and sighed. "You heard what my aviator said, hold your missiles until the second phase. Under 'no' circomstance should you use them before hand, wait until you get the signal from the ship," she said in an authoritive tone.

Whoever had spoken from the Esene, didn't respond and instead the channel closed. "Must be a green Shipaster..." she assumed.

~This is Yui'nae of the Second Defense Squadron, don't mind having some fighters help you out?~ the message came from a group of thirty two Sho'run starfighter.

Outside

The battlefield was becoming crowded, as more ships arrived on the scene. With only three squads assigned to the Gam'trosha, the remaining ones were swarming the asteriod and pummeling it with fire. If anyone had nukes, they weren't using them right now.

Behind the Gam'trosha, the fourth, fifth and ninth squadrons each comprised of five She'tan'ora class vessels along with their fighter escorts moved into formation.

Engineering

The lights dimmed for a moment, before lighting back up, with the bay still bathed in a the red emergency alert lights. The reactor brightened slightly, before also dimming, but the energy field that coursed around it was also fadding in and out, indicating that something else was going on.

Then, suddenly an alert went off, indicating a fire had broken out somewhere in the Engineering Bay.

Shar frowned as she listened. Pilot girls plan sounded really good. What he leader of Neshaten forces wanted to do was breaking asteroid in small asteroid, which was really no change. Pilot of the Gam'trosha wanted it to break in two parts for it to miss planet. That was good planet. Shat could not wait much longer.

"Ma'am get me few nukes and good pilot and I will bloody land on that asteroid and break it in half myself!" She said out loud to shipmistress.

Bridge

Def'leor pushed the Gam'trosha forward as hard as the engines would handle, once she matched the asteroids velocity she flipped the ship and using the lateral thrusters to push the ship sideways into the optimum firing position.

She monitored the progress of the other ships in the attack they were likewise reaching their designated firing positions.

"Ma'am we are in position, we can lock weapons and commence our attack." she called out and then signaled engineering. "Engineering transfer primary engine power to weapon systems and maintain maximum power to the weapons until further notice."

Def returned to her IDT and entered the parameters of the fighter squadron. She looked to see where they could be deployed for optimum effectiveness. "Second Defense Squadron, transmitting your firing positions and target coordinates now. Glad to have the extra fire power. Commence firing once you reach your positions." She said as she transmitted the data to them.