/||\ ------------------------------------------------
/ || \ UCIP Starfleet Command, Eighth Fleet
/ || \ U.S.S. Coronado, NCC-97901
.-/ || \-. Rear Admiral Tebrun Lora Kor, Commanding (OOC)
./ || \. ------------------------------------------------
.-_-. || .-_-. Simulation Teaser
-_ \||/ _-. -[ SD 240207.15 ]-
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/ Simulation Teaser |
/ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ
Admiral Charles Theron and Vice Admiral Brian Aldur watched the
activity in the system they had code-named "Honeycutt." Over their
shoulders, Rear Admiral Todd Marshall also watched, somewhat
pensively. The three men stood in the CIC of U.S.S. Vanguard, as
the staff officers manning the facility added a quiet whisper of
their conversation to the low hum of the holographic generators.
The lights were dimmed to minimum intensity to increase the contrast
of the display.
"That's a lot of ships," Marshall said. His voice was a mix of awe
and worry. Honeycutt was indeed very strongly defended -- perhaps
the most strongly defended system in this part of Pfhor space. The
intelligence officers aboard couldn't decide if Honeycutt was a
repair facility, shore leave location, or shipyard (or possibly all
three) but well over one hundred Pfhor ships were in and around the
system, many of them immobilized and under repair or construction by
enormous docking frames which surrounded the vessels.
Aldur actually smirked. "You're just not thinking forth-
dimensionally!" he declared in a somewhat sarcastic voice, parroting
one of the movies from the previous night's Vanguard movie night.
"By the time we get there, most of those ships won't be there."
Aldur had found Marshall's choice of movies the previous night
ironic in the extreme. Given Marshall's sense of humor, Aldur
assumed he was supposed to.
"We're kind of throwing Lora Kor to the wolves, though," Theron
said, indicating the nearby Pearce system.
"Tebrun knows what's at stake," Aldur said. "He'll give us the time
we need, and to spare, knowing him."
Theron nodded, watching the Pfhor ships on patrol in Honeycutt. "Do
you really think they'll move to defend Pearce?"
"Two of the hated Katana frigates in the same place, where the
Hegemony can destroy them?" Marshall asked. "They'll probably throw
everything they have in the area into destroying Coro, Renegade, and
Churchill," he said.
Aldur smiled then, and the smile wasn't friendly. "Exactly," he
said. "This Grand Admiral is a brilliant strategist, but he's also
arrogant in the extreme. He won't believe we could mount two
attacks at once, and so he won't see the feint until it is too
late... and by that time, we'll have fallen on Honeycutt like a
lightning bolt."
----------------
=/.= Two hours later =/.=
"Sabre to Cavalry! The cat is out of the bag!"
Tebrun Lora Kor's final scheduled transmission from Pearce touched
the ansible of a single ship flying through the void near the
Honeycutt system. Elongated and with four spreading wings, the ship
was the Loktai Judicator Toran's Justice. Partially nested, the
ship seemed a translucent jewel, blue and gold flickering in the
dark night of deep space.
Toran's Justice was not detected by a group of fifteen Pfhor
destroyers that rifted out of the Honeycutt system, bound for
Pearce. The departure of that group of fifteen and two other
groups of similar size had left a mere ten destroyers in patrol of
the Honeycutt system.
These ships were not alone in the system for long.
Suddenly, all around Toran's Justice, gold lightning bolts flickered
through space, revealing that the Judicator was not alone. In a
wash of Cerenkov radiation and delta rays, in groups of six and
seven, more than 80 ships came out of the nesting mesh spread by
'Justice. Two dozen of these ships were Loktai automated fleet
carriers. The carriers began launching dozens of small strike
fighters, more than one hundred per ship. These drones screamed
ahead of the carriers and fell on the ten Pfhor destroyers remaining
in the system, swarming them. Two dozen more Loktai cruisers and
scouts came out of the mesh around their carriers.
Behind and around them, the mesh unfolded further to reveal the bulk
of Task Force 85, U.S.S. Vanguard, C.W. King Lan DuLac, and U.S.S.
Thunderchild in the lead. Around the three larger ships, dozens of
other Starfleet, Apori, Boratis, Camelynian, and Reorsan ships were
revealed.
Every ship the Defenders could field that wasn't in "Pearce" entered
the "Honeycutt" system that day, no matter her state of repair. The
ten Pfhor destroyers in residence lasted less than 45 seconds. Then
the Task Force fell on the shipyards, repair yards and the ships
under repair there, and the two nearby planets. The ansibles aboard
the Defender ships didn't bother with attack orders; those had been
transmitted twenty minutes prior based on real-time scans from two
Taer Kamis near the system.
The ansibles merely transmitted the thousand-year-old bugle call
that on Earth, translated to "Charge!"
----------------
=/.= ...and six minutes after that... =/.=
Tebrun Lora Kor had to hold on to his seat to keep from falling out
of it. Coronado bucked like an angry bull as more than a dozen
Pfhor destroyers rained destruction all around the frigate from
behind and a dozen more approached from ahead. All Coro could do
was try to keep the Hegemony from snuffing out her life; attacking
the destroyers would have been an impossibility. The ship was
moving too violently and too recklessly to accurately target false
matter torpedoes.
Renegade and Churchill weren't much better off. Churchill had the
advantage of a cloaking device, which made her much harder to track,
but she couldn't mount an effective attack any more than her two
more modern sisters. It was all the three small ships could do to
keep the Pfhor from destroying them.
And yet, through all of it, the noise, the shaking, the turbulence
of the battle, Tebrun Lora Kor smiled like a content Buddha. "Six
minutes," he said.
Pearce and Honeycutt were 19 light-years apart. A Starfleet
subspace transmission would take sixteen minutes to cross the
distance. However, it was known that Pfhor communications were much
faster than the Starfleet standard... faster before the ansible,
that was. Presumably, the panicked distress calls from Honeycutt
had been transmitted six minutes before, and yet the destroyers
continued attacking Coronado, Renegade, and Churchill... they
therefore had not gotten the news.
"CIC from Bridge!" Captain Daren yelled over the comm. "Commodore,
we absolutely have to get out of here! We're not going to stay
lucky forever!"
"No, Captain!" Lora Kor yelled back. "We stay here! The rest of
the Task Force is attacking a nearby system and as long as the Pfhor
are attacking US, they're not going after THEM! We've got to give
the rest of the Task Force as much time as we can! Every minute...
every second... they have in that system could be the difference
between victory and defeat for the Defenders! We! Stay! Here!"
\_________________________________________________________________________
\ End Simulation Teaser |
ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ
Defenders Task Group 85.3, "Whitestone" Staff:
Commanding, TG 85.3: Commo. Tebrun Lora Kor (Jester)
S-1, Group Adjutant: LCdr. Sieven Drexler (Brad)
S-2, Group Intelligence: LCdr. Kariasa Ma'Aru (Kari)
S-3, Group Logistics: Cmdr. Savant (Savant)
U.S.S. Coronado Crew Roster:
Commanding Officer: Capt. William Daren (Daren)
Executive Officer: Cmdr. Darek Smith (Aggie)
Marine Commandant: Col. Jeremy Ironside (Fraser)
Chief of Operations: Cmdr. Olme Tlaloco (rev)
Chief Tactical Officer: Lt. Kyle Marcy (Marcy)
Chief Flight Operations: Lt. JG Ananda Wilk (Baralu)
Chief Science Officer: Lt. Kathleen Hammond (Kath)
Company Commander: MCpt. Jacob Prescot (Shadow-FjP)
Flight Leader: 2Lt. Andrew Stylus (JadeFalcon)
Chief Engineer: Cmdr. Zunite Oswald (Sonya)
Assistant Engineer: LCdr. Jack C. Farley (CCC)
Assistant Engineer: Lt. Aramis Skylooker (LewisSharp)
Chief Medical Officer: Lt. (JG) Jason Vogel (Thompson)
Systems Specialist: Lt. Caring-Thoughts (Alffred)
Civilian: Alados ha-Soron (McC)
On Extended Leave of Absence:
None!
Positions Available:
Assistant Tactical: (---)
Flight Leader: (---)
------
Jester
Commodore Tebrun Lora Kor
Rear Admiral Selectee
Commanding, Defenders Task Group 85.3, "Whitestone"
embarked on U.S.S. Coronado, NCC-97901
http://www.jestertrek.com/coro2400/