~\\_               
          \\\\_             
          `\\\\\            -----------------------------------------
           |\\\\\           Starfleet Command, Eighth Fleet (OOC)    
            \\\\\|__.-~~\   
         _--~         ~~/   Defenders Task Group 85.3, "Whitestone"  
       /~         _-~~~'    Embarked on U.S.S. Coronado, NCC-97901   
      ('-//////-//          Rear Admiral Tebrun Lora Kor, Commanding 
       ////// }}-)          -----------------------------------------
     /////~                 Simulation Report                        
  _///~                     Stardate 240209.02                       
 `                          
 _______________________________________________________________________ 
/ Simulation Teaser                                                     |
/ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ 

 Somewhere along the way, the nickname had stuck.  The official
 Whitestone Enterprises paperwork called the flight Banshee 1.1.  The
 Whitestone flyers called them "Banshee Elite."  It was both a
 compliment and a gentle reprimand.  While the Banshee Elite test
 pilots were respected, even possibly admired, the four were hard to
 like.

 All four of the Banshee Elite pilots had been in Starfleet, and none
 of them had been less than a Commander or Lieutenant Colonel when he
 or she had retired.  None of them had fewer than 25 combat kills,
 the "ace of aces."  For the oldest of them, those kills had come in
 the Dominion War.  The youngest had achieved his 25th through 29th
 during the F-K-R War.  All of them had at least two advanced
 degrees.  Three of them had been senior Wraith test pilots.  One had
 been a senior Spectre test pilot.  No matter their individual
 styles, the four together flew as a perfectly forged unit... no
 straying from the mission... no mistakes.

 All four had volunteered for the "Hypergate mission" when Kishrak
 had offered it without a second thought.  It possibly did not even
 occur to them that the mission might be a one-way trip.  It was
 quite possible it still hadn't occurred to them.

 Now the Banshee Elite flight ghosted through a large debris field in
 a system with a G4 star and a class M planet.  Both the planet and
 the space around it bustled with activity.  None of that activity
 transmitted Starfleet or even Federation ID codes, however.

 "Elite, confirm nesting," Swassanra said.  A Caitian, her callsign
 was "Sway."  She'd been the flight leader of Elite since it had been
 formed.  Though not the oldest of the four, she was acknowledged as
 the most natural leader, the most gifted in small unit tactics. 
 Whether she was the best pilot of the four was a question of
 infrequent but calm debate.  The other three admitted freely she was
 the most imaginative, the most willing to try something new and
 untested.  Sway was also the most personable of the group, their
 spokesperson.

 "Two," her wingman said, confirming it on his panel.  Also a Caitian,
 he was called "Claw," probably a reference to the fact he was
 Swassanra's "First-Claw," as close to a marriage relationship as
 Caitians got.  Nobody called him anything else.  No one, not even
 the non-Caitian Elites, knew his real name.  He was a ferocious
 flyer, tenacious and stubborn, but when he got out of the cockpit,
 he was the most relaxed of the four, the one most likely to relax
 and even to play.  Claw found the idea that husband and wife teams
 shouldn't fly in the same flight ridiculous, and retorted that he
 and Sway could anticipate each other's movements in the Hunt, so who
 was going to be a better companion to her in flight?

 "Three," the second-element lead said.  Andorian, tall, lanky, and
 hard, Soshra was both the oldest and had the highest kill record of
 the Elite.  She was far and away the least social member of the
 flight, generally keeping to herself.  In groups, she seemed
 enveloped in a cloud of darkness that no one could pierce and no one
 could explain.  Soshra shared the details of her life only with a
 very few.  Her flying style was perfect even compared to the other
 Elites, though she could also improvise a new tactic if it was
 needed with frightening speed.  Though her official callsign was
 "Ten," most of the Whitestone test pilots called her "Borg."  Soshra
 made no attempt to stop this and even seemed slightly pleased by it.

 "Four," Tanner Kile said.  Almost certainly the Elite's most
 intelligent member, Kile was also the youngest.  Only recently
 retired from the Starfleet Marine Corps, Tanner was human, the son
 of a Nobel and Z-Magnees Prize winning physicist.  He was good-
 looking, but didn't seem to realize it.  Blonde and tanned, he could
 have been a surfer in an earlier age.  He was also a brutally
 efficient pilot; he'd scored higher on reaction time tests than any
 non-enhanced human in the last two hundred years.  His callsign was
 "Slap," an obscure reference to 19th century slang on Earth,
 "slapping leather."  Kile was a fan of the American Old West, and
 claimed to have outshot both Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp on the
 holodeck.  Most believed him; he was inhumanly fast.

 "Twenty-eight thousand, four hundred humanoids on that planet," Claw
 reported then.  "Three hundred and eleven in the orbiting platform. 
 No subspace communications evident.  Looks like someone destroyed a
 transceiver in this system, too.  The remains are orbiting the star,
 just like the other one."  Banshee Elite had been in this system for
 about an hour, one of six Banshee flights sent to scout nearby
 systems after their passage through the hypergate.  This was the
 second system they'd discovered with evidence of humanoid activity. 
 The first had been a shredded piece of technology orbiting the star
 near the gate through which they had emerged.  Four subspace field
 coils had declared that piece of technology the remains of a
 transceiver array.  There hadn't been anything even approaching a
 lifesign there.

 This system was a lot busier, but the flight had been forced to
 approach carefully.

 "This debris field is U.S.S. Stirling," Kile added.  "Or was.  92%
 of her mass is here, and there wasn't another ship in the group that
 was even close to her size.  No lifeforms, obviously."  He paused,
 then a crackle of static that might have been Slap gulping, but
 probably wasn't.  "Molecular decay indicates she was destroyed by
 antiproton weapons," he added.

 "Very well," Sway said.  Her voice was cold over the comm.  "How
 long would it have taken Stirling to make it out this far from the
 gate?"  Then a snapped command.  "Elite, come about 180 mark 30,"
 she said.

 Banshee Elite complied instantly and in perfect formation.  "Two." 
 "Three."  "Four."  Once the maneuver was complete, Elite Four
 continued.

 "Two weeks at least, maybe three," Slap said.  "Doesn't much matter
 though, because based on the scan data, I'd say she was destroyed
 between one and four months ago.  The bigger pieces are still
 carrying a residual charge from Starfleet tractor beams.  They were
 here a while before Stirling was killed, and at least two ships
 survived whatever killed her," he said.

 "Even if they survived that, they're dead now," Borg said, voice
 cool.  "Or they've been forced to the planet."  Soshra's job on
 entering the system had been to catalog the activity happening in
 space around them.  "The smaller ships," she said, emphasizing
 'smaller,' "are two thousand meters long.  The big ones are at least
 twice that, eight times the volume of the little ones.  And they're
 all armed with anti-proton weapons."  She didn't add that anything
 that could slice Stirling into a thousand tiny pieces would have
 little trouble with the smaller ships in the disappeared Task Group
 5.4.  She didn't have to: her voice made her opinion clear.

 For a few minutes, there was silence.  Sway ordered another course
 change, and the only reply was a terse "Two."  "Three."  "Four." 
 Each of the Elite watched their nesting, the debris field, the
 system around them on their sensors, their thoughts their own.

 "We're at bingo," Claw reported then, voice calm and quiet.  "It's
 time to get back to the gate and report."  It took Sway a few
 moments to respond, but when she did, her voice was still cool.

 "Very well," she said.  "Elite, come about, 185 mark 320 galcent
 relative and engage engines on my mark."  The Banshees swung around,
 still unseen by the behemoths moving in and around the system.  When
 the little ships were pointed in the right direction, Sway called
 out the time.

 "Three.  Two.  One.  Mark."

 The flash was unseen in the nesting as the Banshees sliced through
 one layer of subspace into another without a ripple, and were gone.

\_______________________________________________________________________ 
\ End Simulation Teaser                                                 |
 ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ 

 Defenders Task Group 85.3, "Whitestone" Staff:
    Commanding, TG 85.3:       RADM 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)
    Raptors Squadron Leader:   Lt. Colonel Thomas Wayne  (Masters)
    Chief Tactical Officer:    Lt. Kyle Marcy            (Marcy)
    Assistant Tactical:        Ens. Tamarith             (Tamarith)
    Flight Operations:         Lt. Caring-Thoughts       (Alffred)
    Science Officer:           Lt. Kathleen Hammond      (Kath)
    Science Officer:           LCdr. Isamu Dyson         (Isamu)
    Company Commander:         MCpt. Jacob Prescot       (Shadow-FjP)
    Flight Leader:             1Lt. Andrew Stylus        (JadeFalcon)
    Flight Leader:             2Lt. Mikhail Petkovic     (Archyyt)
    Chief Engineer:            Cmdr. Zunite Oswald       (Sonya)
    Assistant Engineer:        LCdr. Jack C. Farley      (CCC)
    Chief Medical Officer:     Lt. (JG) Jason Vogel      (Thompson)
    Assistant Medical:         Lt. Lauren Dyson          (Natty)
    Civilian Liaison:          S'buuth                   (rev)

 On Extended Leave of Absence:
    Assistant Engineer:        Lt. Aramis Skylooker      (LewisSharp)

 Positions Available:
    None!

------
Jester

Rear Admiral Tebrun Lora Kor
Commanding, Defenders Task Group 85.3, "Whitestone"
embarked on U.S.S. Coronado, NCC-97901
http://www.jestertrek.com/coro2400/