U.S.S. Coronado, NCC-97901

/||\ ---------------------------------------------
/ || \ UCIP Starfleet Command, Fifth Fleet
/ || \ U.S.S. Coronado, NCC-97901
.-/ || \-. Fleet Captain Tebrun Lora Kor, Commanding
./ || \. ---------------------------------------------
.-_-. || .-_-. Simulation Teaser
.-_ \||/ _-. -[ SD 240111.05 ]-

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Jia Ron Drull had read the information that Reorsan visitors had compiled on
the people of his planet, Taer'Mori. He found it amusing. "Whimsical"
seemed to be the number one description, followed by notations about how
moral the Taer were, and how they seemed to be just a little condescending.
If the humanoids only knew, Drull thought, chuckling.

Drull knew his people in reality, and the adjectives he would have used
would be "disinterested," "aloof," and perhaps "flighty." After all, of the
thousands of Taer, the most that had shown any interest in the humanoids at
any given time was exactly... three. The remainder of the Taer couldn't
care less about humanoids.

Jia Ron Drull didn't need the advice of Fornan Sjon Dejat to know that the
humanoids would have found this vaguely insulting, but it was true enough.
The humanoids would have been even more insulted had they known that the
word "Ron" was Drull's title, and meant "novice." Even of the three Taer
that knew or cared about humanoids, Drull was far and away the most
interested. Had other Taer known about his interest, they would have
thought it childish. Who cared about a species that had such a limited
understanding of time, space, and matter? Certainly not the vast majority
of the Taer.

Most of the time, in fact, sightings of multiple Taer on humanoid worlds
were simply multiple manifestations of Jia Ron Drull, wearing different
faces. Drull wouldn't have bothered, except that the ability to be in many
dozen locations at once would have been unnerving to the humanoids. The
fact that Drull cared what humanoids thought would have been regarded by
other Taer as even more childish... had they cared about anything except
their own mindlives, which they did not. The novices were mostly left to
their own devices.

In Drull's case, he found the humanoids fascinating, and studied them every
chance he got. Of course, this combined with Drull's multiple
manifestations meant that the humanoids "studying the Taer" were actually
basing their conclusions on a sample of one. Drull couldn't help it -- he
found this amusing in the extreme. At least they thought of him as moral.

However, this particular night, Drull had an even more interesting set of
visitors to look in on. For the Taer, there was no past or future in the
mindlife... only the ever-present, ever-changing NOW. There were no
locations in the mindlife, either: only the HERE. As Jia Ron Drull
stretched out his senses, they touched different HEREs and NOWs swirling
around these new arrivals until he found them. Each HERE and NOW touched
his mind as a brief burst of conversation and thought, soon swept away and
replaced by another. A human of 20th century Earth would have been reminded
of a man dialing through radio stations looking for just the right one...

"...looks like the Apori killed nine of them before we even saw them. That
means there were 20 of them total, operating in groups of five. The Apori
got 18 of them, eight in Pitstop itself, one in Reor, the others on the run.
Starfleet got one -- thanks to Gryphon -- and sir... two got away."

"...going to be out of action for months, Captain. Minimum three, probably
more like four or five. You've got a 50 meter hole where the beam went in,
a 20 meter hole where it came out. It took out your Bridge, your main
torpedo launcher, 25 meters of your biometric data transfer node, 100 meters
of your main power transfer conduit... I'm not even sure yet if we can
rebuild some of these things. All that said, you were damn lucky. I've
seen ships in better shape where nobody came out of them alive..."

"...the number of Apori down there has to be seen to be believed. Millions
of those little Apori. Millions! And tens of thousands of the bigger ones.
All of them scrambling around the surface right now, setting up shop. I
can't tell you how they packed them into those ships, except maybe their
transporter stasis techniques are ten... a hundred times better than ours.
They certainly have the energy for it..."

"...84 injured between the running gunfight and the beam strike itself, not
counting those killed. I'm going to try to keep fatalities under 50, but
don't hold me to that. We lost a lot of Marines in particular. The beam
ripped right through one of the barracks. Damn it, this isn't how I wanted
to get this job..."

"...read somewhere that only 15% of human communication is carried on the
words we say. The rest is how you say them, body language, facial
expressions, words chosen... even deliberate errors inserted for ironic or
humorous effect. I could tell you 'I like your house' one way and mean it,
say the exact same words another way and make it clear I think it's
something fit only for a dog to live in. The Apori language isn't like that
at all. It's entirely digital, and 100% of the meaning is carried on the
words. That's the good news; probably makes for much easier understanding.
The bad news is that it takes them 10 times as long to communicate, to
*send* all the contextual information. Yelling 'fire!' is a five-minute
conversation for them..."

"...One thing is for sure: the Pfhor were masking the full capabilities of
their weapons and accuracy, same as we would have in their place. They've
been playing us like suckers. I saw Coro get nailed with my own eyes and
she was *flying*... and yet that destroyer speared her like it was skeet
shooting..."

"...tell Blackrazor to drop whatever she's doing and get out to Boratis
quick to brief Aldur. He's probably going to want a ride back, so warn
them!"

"...when it became clear that weapons fire wasn't going to do any damn good,
Henes did something very ballsy. He ordered his warp cores and antimatter
bottles ejected and nacelles jettisoned, and delivered the whole package
right into the Pfhor ship's docking bay. It rained debris on the planet for
three hours! But Gryphon ain't going anywhere for a while; may as well be
another starbase up there..."

"...captured 14 of their inactive strike craft for transport back to Reorsa.
I heard the last guy who boarded one came back without some vital body
parts, though, so you can get someone else for that part..."

"...so far as we can tell, the field generator captures every bit of
sunlight striking Pitstop 3 and either reflects it right back into orbit...
or makes it available to launch as enormous energy flares. Being hit by it
is probably a bit like being inside the star's corona. Ironically, a
Starfleet ship could survive it pretty easily with metaphasic shields
engaged. Of course, the Pfhor don't use shields... so it essentially makes
the Apori invincible to the Pfhor within the system itself..."

"...inner city is wrecked. We've got at least 8,000 more dead just there,
thousands more injured. We need all the medical personnel you can spare!
Also, engineers for the power stations -- they killed one of them, just blew
it all to hell. They either didn't see or didn't go after the spaceport, so
that's intact..."

"...be damned if I can figure out what those Apori starfish were doing...
and look at this! All three of them are definitely slightly out of phase --
maybe inserted into subspace, just a little. I wonder why?"

"...transporters weren't working through their hull. I tried to beam over a
tricobalt charge and almost got it reflected back. Anybody we had tried to
beam over there would have come back inside out. Don't know how they manage
that without shields, but I do know one thing: those hulls were partially
biological. Damn things were healing themselves!"

"...Rising Star hath been badly wounded, m'Lord, but 'tis not mortal. The
foe did swarm him with thy craven fightercraft, denying his divine right to
glory in self-defense, but..."

"...based on what those Ensigns from Coro reported, I think we'd have better
luck with a telepathic diplomatic party. Ullians, Betazoids, Dekorans. No
Vulcans: can't use 'em. I felt what they were saying as strongly as
anybody, and even I can tell the Apori are strongly -- almost rabidly --
emotional..."

"...thinking about moving Pearl and Crystal Palace to the Artemis system.
The idea of keeping our main repair facilities in a location known to the
Pfhor makes me damned nervous. Of course, maybe the Apori are willing to
defend them..."

"...seen this kind of language structure with essentially insect races
before, and I don't think this translates as 'the one'... I think it
translates as 'God' or 'the divine'."

"...everyone we can spare, with all the medical supplies, plus the refined
ore. Tell Reor that we're going to need a ship, though: a big one! We can
hardly send this stuff out on a patrol craft..."

"...this is Federation starship Renegade, calling the Apori... please
respond. Federation starship Renegade-- Captain, it's no use. They're not
answering. But... I don't know, this is going to sound silly, but they
might be busy. I'm reading 14,000 in this group alone, and everyone one of
them is moving, some of them at more than 90 kph..."

"...WAKE THE DREAMERS 80132, 80133, 80134... STARFIRE IS BRIGHTEST IN THE
ARC OF PEACE... LOOK FOR THE SIGNS OF THE ANCIENT ONES... ASCENDED TO THE
FUTURE..."

||Ah!||, Drull thought to himself, and focused in. Even he could only pick
up bits and pieces of the Apori language from ten thousand speakers -- such
fascinating clues into their personality! -- and for the next four days, Jia
Ron Drull's body laid on the surface of Taer'Mori, the faintest hint of a
smile on his face as he listened to a new race far away.

================

Parts of U.S.S. Coronado still burned two days later. Power simply couldn't
be spared for the fire-fighting systems, so places where the fires raged out
of control -- such as the forward torpedo magazines -- were simply allowed
to burn themselves out until they reached the forcefields, ran out of fuel,
or both. Some fires, though, found ample fuel to still be burning 48 hours
after Death touched Coronado.

U.S.S. Schweitzer arrived and took charge of the Coro wounded, many of whom
had been first picked up by the Apori. Commander Jania Shiid, commanding
Schweitzer and herself an M.D., arrived on Coro and almost immediately
started beaming the badly wounded to her own ship. Ensign Thompson, who
until the arrival of the medical frigate had spent the 24 hours following
the battle working himself nearly to death, apparently couldn't decide if he
was happy for the help or insulted that someone thought he needed it.
However, he couldn't much argue -- Sickbay was very close to the damage
radius and two of the medlabs were in danger of collapse. After seeing to
it that his patients were safe aboard Schweitzer, he commandeered a set of
guest quarters and fell into a deep sleep. When he woke, there was still
work to do.

Coronado herself was of course unable to make the trip to Reor mandated by
her orders. As a matter of fact, as soon as Lt. Commander Oswald escaped
her own "cell" -- her word -- on Schweitzer and made it back to Coronado,
she had declared that the frigate wouldn't move another meter under her own
power without major repairs. Farley's temporary actions had saved the ship,
but that didn't mean that Coronado was holding together. The frequent power
disruptions kept threatening to shut down the remaining power transfer
conduits to the saucer, and if that happened, Coro's own mass would break
the frigate in half. Oswald soon had the engineering teams working around
the clock to see to it that this didn't happen. In the process, she slowly
started working herself ragged.

Crystal Palace and Pearl returned to the Pitstop system, along with their
support ships. Odyssey, which was able to move under her own power, also
returned, but found herself tied to Coro, which couldn't. As a result,
instead of the frigate moving to dock with the Mobile Repair Facility, Pearl
maneuvered to enclose the frigate. Odyssey docked outside the space frame.
Two back-breaking days of work later, the MRF took over the job of powering
the structural integrity fields holding the saucer to the secondary hull,
and Coro's warp core died with a sigh. Only the impulse reactors and
batteries were allowed to remain powered, mostly to provide interior
lighting and heat for the secondary hull. The saucer was allowed to
completely shut down after power had been provided for Savant. The
remaining fires and hotspots survived only minutes after that as the
forcefields were shut down, allowing the vacuum of space to suffocate the
last fires and cool the hot spots.

In groups of 10 and 20 and 50, the unwounded officers, Marines, and crew of
U.S.S. Coronado made their way to Reorsa. Most were carried there by
Vanguard or Vladivostok. Others rode the three surviving Wraiths or Coro's
four surviving Spectres. The Captain borrowed a workbee from Pearl and used
it to recover Kelaka, then docked her to Pearl long enough to pre-flight the
runabout-sized craft. He then piloted Kelaka to Reorsa himself with a
select group aboard.

The two days after the docking of Coronado to Pearl passed in a rush of
debriefings and story-tellings and reunions, of tales of who had lived, and
who had died... and how. Oswald, Thompson, and many in the engineering
teams left Pitstop only under protest.

And when Coronado's officers and a portion of her crew again gathered, it
was on November 5th, 2401, on a hillside overlooking the still-smoking city
of Churchill Downs. They gathered to say goodbye to Lieutenant Ungtae Brie.

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Crew Roster:
Commanding Officer: FCapt. Tebrun Lora Kor (Jester)
Executive Officer: Cmdr. William Daren (Daren)
Marine Commandant: Col. Jeremy Ironside (Fraser)
Command Liaison Interface: Cmdr. Savant (Savant)
Chief of Operations: Cmdr. Olme Tlaloco (Tlaloco)
Chief Tactical Officer: LCdr. Sieven Drexler (Garstini)
Assistant Tactical: Lt. Kyle Marcy (Marcy)
Assistant Tactical: Ens. Alex Goncalves IX (Alexandre)
Chief Flight Operations: Ens. Ananda Wilk (Baralu)
Intelligence Officer: Lt. Kariasa Ma'Aru (Kari)
Chief Science Officer: Lt. JG Kathleen Hammond (Kath)
Wing Leader: Maj. Thomas Wayne (Masters)
Wing Leader: 2Lt. Jacob Prescot (Shadow-FjP)
Chief Engineer: LCdr. Zunite Oswald (Sonya)
Assistant Engineer: Lt. Jack C. Farley (CCC)
Assistant Engineer: Lt. Aramis Skylooker (Skylooker)
Acting Chief Medical: Lt. Ungtae Brie (Aggie)
Assistant Medical: Ens. Jason Thompson (Thompson)

On Extended Leave of Absense:
None!

Positions Available:
Assistant Tactical Officer

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Ross Glenn aka Jester
Fleet Captain Tebrun Lora Kor, U.S.S. Coronado, NCC-97901
http://www.jestertrek.com/coro2400/