Dreams

Posted on Thu Oct 13, 2022 @ 2:25pm by Captain Toron Pax

Mission: NW 1: Dry-Docked, The Lighthouse
Location: Visiting Captain's Quarters SB364

The deck shuddered beneath his feet, the inertial dampeners fighting the wild and radical evasive manoeuvres Lieutenant Samuels was enacting as her fingers flew across the multicoloured LCARS. Another narrow miss from a plasma torpedo, the bright green streek still burned into the damaged main viewer, the stars wheeling crazily on the screen as the manoeuvres took them into a spin. It wasn’t enough, the deck fell out from under him, just for a moment and just an inch, the artificial gravity generators overwhelmed for a moment, another torpedo had struck them squarely on the ship dorsal surface. Even as he hit the deck, his knees taking the brunt of the impact he saw that the dorsal shields had failed for a moment; everything was failing at random moments just when it was needed the most. The view screen was next to useless, that last hit had blown out some fuses somewhere and it was blank, reflecting the reds of the emergency lights and the silhouettes of the crew.

Samuels turns in her chair… only it’s not Samuels anymore, its Danielson. Pax frowned, unsure what was happening, had he taken a blow to his head. He reached up and brushed his face and ran a hand over his bold head. Nothing there. He blinked at the smiling; kind face of an officer he would meet for decades was replaced by Samuels. Her pretty, freckled face grimed with soot, but her vivid cobalt eyes still burned with intensity. “One of those ships is giving us an opening” she said. Pax nodded giving her mission to make an attack run, he turned to tactical and for a moment saw the half Borg Johnny and his predecessor, Scott conferring. A passing cloud of smoak from a burning station crossed between him and them, when it passed Command Hunlee was there, already taking the que from Samuels; his own hands dancing over the station. This was one screwy vision.

The view screen flickered back to life in the final moments before the Potemkin unleased a barrage of fire power upon a badly damaged Cube. Their phasers briefly linking the two vessels together in a deadly dance of light. Dozens of beams struck out, the afterglow like that of a spider’s web. Each impact on the cube poured enough energy to destroy a city, each of the dozen torpedoes would annihilate whole sections of the kilometres wide cube. Still, it wouldn’t be enough.

Even as their weapons threatened to engulf the cube it returned fire. A devastating volley of torpedoes and emerald, green beams lanced out towards them. Samuels did her best to present their strongest flack, it wasn’t enough.
Pax watched with abject horror at the sheer amount of weapons fire coming their way, he watched as the shields on the ventral port side flashed, flared, and then collapsed with a pulse of electric blue energy. Then they hit the hull, his aging ship fought to protect the pressure cargo, her crew; but in the seconds before the collective impact throw him through the air, she saw Command Carter stagger onto the bridge. “Good” he thought knowing someone would be here to take over.

He came crashing down, rolling hard, and hitting the bulkhead. He lay there for a moment trying to take in the chaos around him. He heard Tenzim, which confused him, they had been fighting the Borg not the Tenzim. The two battles had been 20 years apart, two different crews. Same ship though. He blinked, his vision going red, he reached up and with a sharp intact of breath found the laceration across his right eye but whipped away the blood, so his vision was clear again.
Pax pulled himself up with the aid of a console, regaining his feet he saw that Bridge was different, no longer the one the ship had been birthed with but a newer, sleeker one. Around him he saw familiar faces, Carl, Johnny and at the helm the rather bedraggled Danielson. It was a different battle, instead of three immensely powerful Borg Cubes, there were uncountable tiny fighters fliting around the fleet or Starfleet ships. Space was filled with crimson beams from their allies firing at the small capable Tenzim fighters. Their own fighters and small escorts chasing groups of enemies, so fast and far away only their pulse weapons and the occasional explosion marks their positions!
The fighter was fluid, groups of ships moving together engaging the few large Tenzim cruisers while trying to avoid the nearest allied group who were doing the same. In the distance as was an electric blue swirling rift of spacetime, the entry point of the Tenzim incursion. The USS Thunderchild was trying to reach torpedo range to fire Tricobalt range.

The Potemkin moved in to support the Thunderchild, absorbing hit after hit from the tiny and annoying Tenzim fighters. Their upgraded systems registering the attacks as having done no damage. Their shields held, right up to the point a massive vessel swam in through the rift, the Po’s sensors went crazy as it detected an unprecedented power build up from the new ship. They were almost dead on, face to face with the new ship, the beam it fired must have been 20 meters across. Its passage towards the Potemkin took it through entire fighter squadrons, of both sides.
The Thunderchild was slammed up and over the beam as its shields tanked the colossal blow. The Potemkin’s shields took the brunt of the blow before they failed, the remainder of the energy beam impacted the dense hull armour and shorted out their systems, briefly shutting the ship down before back up and secondaries kicked online.
They had survived with minimal damage. Pax had ended up back on the deck, this time landing hard on his left shoulder, surely dislocated. Maybe broken!

Pax awoke with a start, he was in bed, not his bed but one aboard the station. He was covered in sweat with the sheet twisted and tangled so thoroughly that it was almost a minute before he could untangle himself. He quickly padded to the window, sure enough there was the Potemkin, snuggle cradled in the safe embrace of the station. Beaten but not broken and being repaired. His sigh of relief fogged the window. His forehead pressed to the window and his shoulders slumped.