***
The shift to Red Alert was quick and smooth. Unsurprising, given the crew had been a single stage below that for almost an hour. Still, as she watched every section of the ship on the ops board quickly turn green in readiness, Priss felt a familiar sense of pride in her crew. Be it Klingon, Romulan, Hirogen or Borg, her crew never hesitated to give it their all.
Now it just remained to be seen if their efforts, and her plans, were enough to carry the day. "Time to target?" she asked.
"We drop from warp in thirty seconds," Smith confirmed, voice flat, the tension in his body language clear even through his encounter suit.
Tapping her commbadge, Priss made one other final check. "Chief, how're we looking?"
"Tommy's boys have the package all ready to go," Rossum replied cheerfully. "Just say when and we'll kick it over the edge."
Suppressing a chuckle at her engineers familiar attitude to any high risk situation, Priss glanced at her exec. "Well then, let's begin, shall we?" Thryiss nodded, her own smile slightly eager, as was often the case when the Andorian went up against threats with a bit of actual menace. While it was hardly on the level of something like a Klingons blood rage, one couldn't deny its existence, and there had been the occasional critic from the less military minded elements of Starfleet that saw it as a problem, should she ever become a starship captain.
Priss was not one of those critics, and in fact would be the first to admit that she often experienced a similar 'flaw' herself. Properly harnessed, it helped he put B'vat in the ground, it helped drive the Devidians back to their dimension, and it might just help her take down the Hirogen now.
Right on schedule, the Jeff Wayne dropped out of Warp, the ship sitting alone in the empty void of space. There was a long moment of silence as the approaching Hirogen realized that their opponent had been the first to drop back to relativistic speeds, and Priss idly wondered if they were even now revising their own planned target location.
After nearly a minute though, there were three flashes of light, directly in front of and a good distance away from the Jeff Wayne, and the target vessels appeared with the usual optical illusion of deceleration. They weren’t much to look at, being flat, boxy slabs of rust-colored monotanium alloy, the smaller frigate mounting its nacelles in long wings, the other two keeping them simply mounted on pylons. Yet, as they powered up their impulse engines and began to approach, there was indeed something menacing about them. Aggressive, relentless. Still, she’d taken on worse. “Engage as instructed,” Priss ordered.
Impulse engines powering up, the Jeff Wayne charged directly at the Hirogen, actually causing some surprise. They’d faced Starfleet before, and they’d found that in those hunts, their prey had tried to maintain their distance, firing heavy broadsides from long range and using unconventional techniques like tachyon beams and artificial gravity wells to hamper the enemy. Despite their experience in battle, the Hirogen were used to thinking of starships as simple, standard designs, conforming to a template their hidden automated shipyards produced as needed. For them, there was consistency to their Prey. Equipment and technology would be only a minor factor, it was the skill that presented the true challenge.
Krans pack had faced cruisers that, while refitted with modern Starfleet technology, were hulls suffering from the wear and tear of almost a century of service. He had based all his expectations of his current opponent off those unfortunate souls. But today, he was facing a modern, state of the art escort, built with combat as its primary duty. And tactical doctrine for escorts was very different from cruisers and science vessels.
A standard phaser array fired first, the orange beam washing over the shields of one of the Hunter Escorts, catching the Hirogen off guard again. They'd been expecting the frigate to be targeted first. It made sense, both from the Hirogen perspective of the Hunt, and the simple logic of eliminating the weakest target. Their confusion didn't stop the Hirogen from opening up with their own beam arrays, the bright blue of tetryon particle streams doing their best to disrupt and collapse the Jeff Waynes shields.
Then the Jeff Wayne gave the Hirogen a demonstration in just what met Starfleets definition of an escort. Twin forward mounted phaser cannons opened fire, throwing out several packets of nadion particles every second, and the Hirogen ship didn’t have time to evade before taking the salvo directly on its bow shields. Those shields flared and warped under the barrage, which only got worse as the Jeff Wayne closed in, before they gave way completely, exposing the hull to the beating those cannons and beam array were unleashing, ripping large chunks out of the monotanium armor.
That beating got worse as the Federation escort, its own shields weakened by the Hirogen fire but still holding, launched a pair of high-yield photon torpedoes at the exposed ship. Both shots were on-target, slamming into and detonating right against their targets hull.
Eyes widening, Priss watched as the Hunter Escorts entire forward section vanished in a matter/anti-matter collision. She’d passed up the easy target of the frigate in order to catch the Hirogen off-guard and force them to break formation, but even pushing her weapons output to their limits like she just had, she’d never expected to manage a mission kill so quickly... Then, even as the light from the first explosion faded, secondary explosions began consuming the remaining three-fifths of the ship, and she was suddenly reminded of her Academy Tactics Instructors warnings about victory hiding the potential for defeat. “Evasive!” she ordered.
Cursing loudly and creatively, Smith threw the ship onto a drastically different heading, pushing the impulse engines to a hundred and forty percent and even using the emergency maneuvering thrusters to help alter their heading. Despite this, he kept one eye on the two intact Hirogen ships, confirming that they were doing much the same thing, the need to put some distance between them and their dying packmate achieving Captain Hanagawa’s goal of breaking their formation. Unfortunately, they were moving away from the coming explosion, while the Jeff Wayne was still getting worryingly close-
What was left of the Hunter Escort was vaporised as its warp core failed explosively, the shock wave racing outwards to slam against the other ships in the fight. The Hirogen ships were knocked around, but they were far enough away their shields managed to handle the impact with minimal disruption. The Jeff Wayne wasn’t quite so lucky, the shock wave tearing at the port shields, almost knocking them down completely, and throwing around any crew unprepared for the impact.
As the deck stopped shaking, Priss released her deathgrip on her chair arms and leaned forward. “Well, that mostly worked,” she commented with a wry smile. “Status?”
“Forward shields at thirty percent, port shields at ten percent, both recharging,” Thryiss reported. “Some minor injuries reported.”
Nodding, Priss studied the tactical plot. The Seeker Frigate seemed to taking its time to come back around, its captain clearly displaying some caution after what happened to its larger companion. The remaining Hunter Escort was coming about much faster, it’s captain clearly recognizing that the Jeff Wayne just took a serious blow despite its initial success, and the Orion woman winced very slightly. It’d take time to get the shields and forward weapons ready for another sweeping pass, which meant... “Helm, adjust heading sixty-five by twenty. Give that escort a few broadsides.”
“Aye Captain,” Smith replied, entering commands, and Priss checked a display panel on her arm. In all the excitement, Rossums team assigned to the hanger hadn’t had time to deploy their surprise. Still, there should be another opportunity-
“Torpedo launch,” Siesye said suddenly, leaning in closer to his console. “Two torpedoes from Target Beta, eighteen seconds to impact.” The ship shuddered slightly as the Escort fired its Tetyron Beam arrays again, one beam going wide but the other doing its best to burn away the starboard shields. Priss spared a moment to glance at where Lieutenant Moral was trying to trick the torpedoes into going off-target, then sat back and waited. No need for orders yet.
***
Gripping the railing of his command podium hard enough stress marks began to appear in the metal, Kran glared at the image of the Jeff Wayne. In the space of only a few minutes, that ship had defied all his expectations of this Hunt. The Crippling Blade, a ship with a Hunting legend that reached back generations, destroyed so quickly, so completely...
Even if the Federation ship had been caught by the edge of his packmates destruction, it had done more damage than anything else his pack had experienced since arriving in this Quadrant. More than that, the speed with which it had achieved it had taken his earlier confidence and destroyed it in front of his Beta, and even worse, in front of his crew. After an injury like this, Hakket would pounce on the sign of weakness sooner rather than later, and the crew might just follow him. For him, this was no longer just about a worthy Hunt and a fine trophy. If he wanted to maintain his status as Alpha, and his life, he had to kill the Jeff Wayne, and do it properly.
Impacts from the Jeff Waynes phaser arrays rocked the ship slightly, but the shields were easily holding them back for now. Kran ignored them, his attention on the transphasic torpedoes closing in on their target. One of them drastically changed course suddenly, chasing a target only it could see, and the Hirogen snarled in frustration. However, the other torpedo ignored Starfleets attempts to distract it and kept going, passing through the ships shields with only a minor delay, then slammed into the ship itself, exploding against the starboard saucer section with sheer kinetic force and tearing away armor plating.
For a moment, Kran bared his teeth in satisfaction, but then he scowled again, as he saw a reminder of the difference between hunting a civilian ship and a military one. Despite a nasty scar and a brief trail of debris and gases, the Jeff Wayne was hardly damaged. “Signal the Silent Watcher,” he ordered his comm officer. “Have them come about and engage with torpedo salvos on the forward sections. Irath,” he continued, his brother turning towards him. “I want a heavy tetryon salvo at their nacelles, followed by the subnucleonic emitter.” The younger Hirogen smirked as he grasped his brothers intentions. “Hamstring them.”
Behind Kran, Hakket turned to consider his Alpha for a moment. The plan had potential, wearing down the shields and crippling the Prey’s ability to maneuver. It was one of the oldest Hirogen tactics, simply because it was so effective. But resorting to it so quickly, with barely any testing the Prey... This Hanagawa was better than they had expected of a Starfleet officer. Or perhaps Kran was showing his age. Perhaps it was simply overconfidence and carelessness that had him let the Jeff Wayne make its charge, throwing its admittedly impressive firepower into the teeth of the Crippling Blade...
He considered that possibility, even as he studied Krans back armor, and the poisoned blade he had hidden in his own armors wrist bracer. Perhaps his time as Alpha was closer than he’d expected.
***
The starboard shield strength continued to drop as tetryon beams washed over them, and Priss ordered another course change to keep both ships on the same side of the ship, even as the Seeker Frigate tried to dart over them and get at the still-weaker port shields. Then the Hunter Escort fired another weapon, a thinner, barely visible beam that managed to penetrate the shields and run along the starboard nacelle. It did no physical damage to the ship, but it still made its presence known as the nacelles power levels dropped, and the Impulse Engines began to weaken as well.
“Okay, what was that?” Priss asked as they began to slow and the Hirogen closed in.
“Subnucleonic beam array,” Siysye reported. “We’re losing power to the engines.”
“Maximum speed is three quarters Impulse and dropping,” Smith added, throwing in an evasive maneuver that sent the Hunter Escorts latest beam salvo passing under them. “I’m not going to be able to keep our distance for long Skipper,” he added as he sent a phaser salvo back in reply, this one hitting on target.
“Noted,” Priss said, tapping her comm badge. “Chief?”
“In answer to the question you’re about to ask, I’m already on it. About a minute to restore full impulse,” Chief Rossum replied.
Scowling, Priss looked at the tactical plot, then the status display on her chair arm, and nodded. “Mister Smith, execute Delta-Nine, target the frigate!”
Pulling into a tight turn, the Jeff Wayne caught the frigate by surprise, as its attempts to maneuver around brought it directly into their opponents forward firing arc. Both the forward phaser and the cannons opened fire, albeit at a slower rate than the barrage that had torn the Crippling Blade apart. It was enough to almost completely collapse the frigates shields, and the ship lost its nerve and pulled up and away, managing to shake off the torpedoes that had been following in behind the phaser salvo. In return, they launched two Tetryon torpedoes that tore chunks of bow armor apart, but didn’t penetrate deep enough to do serious damage. Swinging around, the Jeff Wayne stuck on the frigates tail for a short while, pounding at its aft shields for as long as they dared. The frigates aft shields dropped before theirs, and the Starfleet ship sent a pair of torpedoes towards its impulse engines before breaking off.
Banking hard to port, the frigate deployed countermeasures, but failed to lure the torpedoes off course before they detonated, destroying one of the ships nacelle wings. The ship spun, briefly out of control, but the Jeff Wayne couldn’t take advantage of the situation as the Hirogen flagship closed in, beam arrays chewing at her shields. In the middle of this excitement however, both enemy ships failed to notice the Federation ships hanger bay opening and an engineering team kicking something small and heavily stealthed out to drift in the debris.
***
The shift to Red Alert was quick and smooth. Unsurprising, given the crew had been a single stage below that for almost an hour. Still, as she watched every section of the ship on the ops board quickly turn green in readiness, Priss felt a familiar sense of pride in her crew. Be it Klingon, Romulan, Hirogen or Borg, her crew never hesitated to give it their all.
Now it just remained to be seen if their efforts, and her plans, were enough to carry the day. "Time to target?" she asked.
"We drop from warp in thirty seconds," Smith confirmed, voice flat, the tension in his body language clear even through his encounter suit.
Tapping her commbadge, Priss made one other final check. "Chief, how're we looking?"
"Tommy's boys have the package all ready to go," Rossum replied cheerfully. "Just say when and we'll kick it over the edge."
Suppressing a chuckle at her engineers familiar attitude to any high risk situation, Priss glanced at her exec. "Well then, let's begin, shall we?" Thryiss nodded, her own smile slightly eager, as was often the case when the Andorian went up against threats with a bit of actual menace. While it was hardly on the level of something like a Klingons blood rage, one couldn't deny its existence, and there had been the occasional critic from the less military minded elements of Starfleet that saw it as a problem, should she ever become a starship captain.
Priss was not one of those critics, and in fact would be the first to admit that she often experienced a similar 'flaw' herself. Properly harnessed, it helped he put B'vat in the ground, it helped drive the Devidians back to their dimension, and it might just help her take down the Hirogen now.
Right on schedule, the Jeff Wayne dropped out of Warp, the ship sitting alone in the empty void of space. There was a long moment of silence as the approaching Hirogen realized that their opponent had been the first to drop back to relativistic speeds, and Priss idly wondered if they were even now revising their own planned target location.
After nearly a minute though, there were three flashes of light, directly in front of and a good distance away from the Jeff Wayne, and the target vessels appeared with the usual optical illusion of deceleration. They weren’t much to look at, being flat, boxy slabs of rust-colored monotanium alloy, the smaller frigate mounting its nacelles in long wings, the other two keeping them simply mounted on pylons. Yet, as they powered up their impulse engines and began to approach, there was indeed something menacing about them. Aggressive, relentless. Still, she’d taken on worse. “Engage as instructed,” Priss ordered.
Impulse engines powering up, the Jeff Wayne charged directly at the Hirogen, actually causing some surprise. They’d faced Starfleet before, and they’d found that in those hunts, their prey had tried to maintain their distance, firing heavy broadsides from long range and using unconventional techniques like tachyon beams and artificial gravity wells to hamper the enemy. Despite their experience in battle, the Hirogen were used to thinking of starships as simple, standard designs, conforming to a template their hidden automated shipyards produced as needed. For them, there was consistency to their Prey. Equipment and technology would be only a minor factor, it was the skill that presented the true challenge.
Krans pack had faced cruisers that, while refitted with modern Starfleet technology, were hulls suffering from the wear and tear of almost a century of service. He had based all his expectations of his current opponent off those unfortunate souls. But today, he was facing a modern, state of the art escort, built with combat as its primary duty. And tactical doctrine for escorts was very different from cruisers and science vessels.
A standard phaser array fired first, the orange beam washing over the shields of one of the Hunter Escorts, catching the Hirogen off guard again. They'd been expecting the frigate to be targeted first. It made sense, both from the Hirogen perspective of the Hunt, and the simple logic of eliminating the weakest target. Their confusion didn't stop the Hirogen from opening up with their own beam arrays, the bright blue of tetryon particle streams doing their best to disrupt and collapse the Jeff Waynes shields.
Then the Jeff Wayne gave the Hirogen a demonstration in just what met Starfleets definition of an escort. Twin forward mounted phaser cannons opened fire, throwing out several packets of nadion particles every second, and the Hirogen ship didn’t have time to evade before taking the salvo directly on its bow shields. Those shields flared and warped under the barrage, which only got worse as the Jeff Wayne closed in, before they gave way completely, exposing the hull to the beating those cannons and beam array were unleashing, ripping large chunks out of the monotanium armor.
That beating got worse as the Federation escort, its own shields weakened by the Hirogen fire but still holding, launched a pair of high-yield photon torpedoes at the exposed ship. Both shots were on-target, slamming into and detonating right against their targets hull.
Eyes widening, Priss watched as the Hunter Escorts entire forward section vanished in a matter/anti-matter collision. She’d passed up the easy target of the frigate in order to catch the Hirogen off-guard and force them to break formation, but even pushing her weapons output to their limits like she just had, she’d never expected to manage a mission kill so quickly... Then, even as the light from the first explosion faded, secondary explosions began consuming the remaining three-fifths of the ship, and she was suddenly reminded of her Academy Tactics Instructors warnings about victory hiding the potential for defeat. “Evasive!” she ordered.
Cursing loudly and creatively, Smith threw the ship onto a drastically different heading, pushing the impulse engines to a hundred and forty percent and even using the emergency maneuvering thrusters to help alter their heading. Despite this, he kept one eye on the two intact Hirogen ships, confirming that they were doing much the same thing, the need to put some distance between them and their dying packmate achieving Captain Hanagawa’s goal of breaking their formation. Unfortunately, they were moving away from the coming explosion, while the Jeff Wayne was still getting worryingly close-
What was left of the Hunter Escort was vaporised as its warp core failed explosively, the shock wave racing outwards to slam against the other ships in the fight. The Hirogen ships were knocked around, but they were far enough away their shields managed to handle the impact with minimal disruption. The Jeff Wayne wasn’t quite so lucky, the shock wave tearing at the port shields, almost knocking them down completely, and throwing around any crew unprepared for the impact.
As the deck stopped shaking, Priss released her deathgrip on her chair arms and leaned forward. “Well, that mostly worked,” she commented with a wry smile. “Status?”
“Forward shields at thirty percent, port shields at ten percent, both recharging,” Thryiss reported. “Some minor injuries reported.”
Nodding, Priss studied the tactical plot. The Seeker Frigate seemed to taking its time to come back around, its captain clearly displaying some caution after what happened to its larger companion. The remaining Hunter Escort was coming about much faster, it’s captain clearly recognizing that the Jeff Wayne just took a serious blow despite its initial success, and the Orion woman winced very slightly. It’d take time to get the shields and forward weapons ready for another sweeping pass, which meant... “Helm, adjust heading sixty-five by twenty. Give that escort a few broadsides.”
“Aye Captain,” Smith replied, entering commands, and Priss checked a display panel on her arm. In all the excitement, Rossums team assigned to the hanger hadn’t had time to deploy their surprise. Still, there should be another opportunity-
“Torpedo launch,” Siesye said suddenly, leaning in closer to his console. “Two torpedoes from Target Beta, eighteen seconds to impact.” The ship shuddered slightly as the Escort fired its Tetyron Beam arrays again, one beam going wide but the other doing its best to burn away the starboard shields. Priss spared a moment to glance at where Lieutenant Moral was trying to trick the torpedoes into going off-target, then sat back and waited. No need for orders yet.
***
Gripping the railing of his command podium hard enough stress marks began to appear in the metal, Kran glared at the image of the Jeff Wayne. In the space of only a few minutes, that ship had defied all his expectations of this Hunt. The Crippling Blade, a ship with a Hunting legend that reached back generations, destroyed so quickly, so completely...
Even if the Federation ship had been caught by the edge of his packmates destruction, it had done more damage than anything else his pack had experienced since arriving in this Quadrant. More than that, the speed with which it had achieved it had taken his earlier confidence and destroyed it in front of his Beta, and even worse, in front of his crew. After an injury like this, Hakket would pounce on the sign of weakness sooner rather than later, and the crew might just follow him. For him, this was no longer just about a worthy Hunt and a fine trophy. If he wanted to maintain his status as Alpha, and his life, he had to kill the Jeff Wayne, and do it properly.
Impacts from the Jeff Waynes phaser arrays rocked the ship slightly, but the shields were easily holding them back for now. Kran ignored them, his attention on the transphasic torpedoes closing in on their target. One of them drastically changed course suddenly, chasing a target only it could see, and the Hirogen snarled in frustration. However, the other torpedo ignored Starfleets attempts to distract it and kept going, passing through the ships shields with only a minor delay, then slammed into the ship itself, exploding against the starboard saucer section with sheer kinetic force and tearing away armor plating.
For a moment, Kran bared his teeth in satisfaction, but then he scowled again, as he saw a reminder of the difference between hunting a civilian ship and a military one. Despite a nasty scar and a brief trail of debris and gases, the Jeff Wayne was hardly damaged. “Signal the Silent Watcher,” he ordered his comm officer. “Have them come about and engage with torpedo salvos on the forward sections. Irath,” he continued, his brother turning towards him. “I want a heavy tetryon salvo at their nacelles, followed by the subnucleonic emitter.” The younger Hirogen smirked as he grasped his brothers intentions. “Hamstring them.”
Behind Kran, Hakket turned to consider his Alpha for a moment. The plan had potential, wearing down the shields and crippling the Prey’s ability to maneuver. It was one of the oldest Hirogen tactics, simply because it was so effective. But resorting to it so quickly, with barely any testing the Prey... This Hanagawa was better than they had expected of a Starfleet officer. Or perhaps Kran was showing his age. Perhaps it was simply overconfidence and carelessness that had him let the Jeff Wayne make its charge, throwing its admittedly impressive firepower into the teeth of the Crippling Blade...
He considered that possibility, even as he studied Krans back armor, and the poisoned blade he had hidden in his own armors wrist bracer. Perhaps his time as Alpha was closer than he’d expected.
***
The starboard shield strength continued to drop as tetryon beams washed over them, and Priss ordered another course change to keep both ships on the same side of the ship, even as the Seeker Frigate tried to dart over them and get at the still-weaker port shields. Then the Hunter Escort fired another weapon, a thinner, barely visible beam that managed to penetrate the shields and run along the starboard nacelle. It did no physical damage to the ship, but it still made its presence known as the nacelles power levels dropped, and the Impulse Engines began to weaken as well.
“Okay, what was that?” Priss asked as they began to slow and the Hirogen closed in.
“Subnucleonic beam array,” Siysye reported. “We’re losing power to the engines.”
“Maximum speed is three quarters Impulse and dropping,” Smith added, throwing in an evasive maneuver that sent the Hunter Escorts latest beam salvo passing under them. “I’m not going to be able to keep our distance for long Skipper,” he added as he sent a phaser salvo back in reply, this one hitting on target.
“Noted,” Priss said, tapping her comm badge. “Chief?”
“In answer to the question you’re about to ask, I’m already on it. About a minute to restore full impulse,” Chief Rossum replied.
Scowling, Priss looked at the tactical plot, then the status display on her chair arm, and nodded. “Mister Smith, execute Delta-Nine, target the frigate!”
Pulling into a tight turn, the Jeff Wayne caught the frigate by surprise, as its attempts to maneuver around brought it directly into their opponents forward firing arc. Both the forward phaser and the cannons opened fire, albeit at a slower rate than the barrage that had torn the Crippling Blade apart. It was enough to almost completely collapse the frigates shields, and the ship lost its nerve and pulled up and away, managing to shake off the torpedoes that had been following in behind the phaser salvo. In return, they launched two Tetryon torpedoes that tore chunks of bow armor apart, but didn’t penetrate deep enough to do serious damage. Swinging around, the Jeff Wayne stuck on the frigates tail for a short while, pounding at its aft shields for as long as they dared. The frigates aft shields dropped before theirs, and the Starfleet ship sent a pair of torpedoes towards its impulse engines before breaking off.
Banking hard to port, the frigate deployed countermeasures, but failed to lure the torpedoes off course before they detonated, destroying one of the ships nacelle wings. The ship spun, briefly out of control, but the Jeff Wayne couldn’t take advantage of the situation as the Hirogen flagship closed in, beam arrays chewing at her shields. In the middle of this excitement however, both enemy ships failed to notice the Federation ships hanger bay opening and an engineering team kicking something small and heavily stealthed out to drift in the debris.
***