Your Side, My Side, and the Truth (Saber Flashback, Part 1)

Posted on Sat Oct 12th, 2024 @ 2:11pm by Chief Petty Officer Chip Lauder CPMV

3,770 words; about a 19 minute read

Mission: Boys of Summer
Location: USS Saber, Bridge
Timeline: 2388, T-Minus 3 hours to the attack on Sagan Prime

ON

Captain's Log, Stardate 65443, Lieutenant Commander Xaras reporting. We continue our patrols of the Sagan AO. With one more day on the border before we return to Deep Space 9 for crew rotations, I maintain a quiet confidence for a slow day and look forward to a well-earned rest on Risa.

"Computer, end log and save," The Bolian officer Xaras ordered the computer as he reviewed his reports for the morning from a PADD as he sat in the Saber's captain's chair. Sensors showed minimal activity, nothing worthy of his ship's attention. This was reflected by the skeleton staff for the morning, a small selection of crew manning the stations routinely.

"So, Risa, sir?" Chip called from the CONN station, the ship plotted on an auto-piloted general patrol route.

"Yes, I'm taking Stavros there," Xaras replied with a smile. "We still haven't decided what we'll do, but one needn't worry if Risa is the destination."

Chip nodded in agreement. "If I may, sir, can I recommend the passion baths at the T'Curry Resort. Stavros would enjoy it there; warm rock pools, delicious food and drink, also the masseuses have thirteen fingers on each hand. I know Stavros loves novelty,"

"Indeed he does," Xaras beamed. The blue man stopped for a second and thought about it, "Thirteen fingers you say?"

"Thirteen." Chip repeated with a nod. The Petty Officer turned his attention to Ensign Kilpatrick at tactical. "What about you, Ensign, any plans?"

"Cassandra is meeting us at DS9," The dark-haired Kilpatrick replied. His face soften somewhat when the next sentence came out of his mouth, "I finally get to see little Bonnie."

"It's been a long time coming, Ensign, that baby of yours must be... what? Three months old?" Xaras asked.

"Four, actually," Kilpatrick said with slight defeat. "Shame about our extended patrol."

"Well, after today, gentlemen, that won't be a problem." Xaras said with cheer.

"Here's to that," Chip smiled. It was followed by a whoop of approval by Kilpatrick and a laugh from Xaras. All that disappeared as alarms blared from the bridge consoles without warning. Chip spun his seat to face his console, his fingers dancing across the screens to get manual control of the vessel.

"Kilpatrick, report!" Xaras called.

The Ensign studied his readouts for a moment, a look of disbelief overtook him, "Captain, I'm getting over thirty contacts. All Breen."

"Shields up! Red alert!" Xaras called. He opened a shipwide channel, "All hands to battle stations. Breen contacts detected."

In moments, a wave of officers and crew appeared to fill the stations of the bridge. Xaras joined his XO, Lieutenant Stropp, at tactical. The pair interrogated the sensor readings with Ensign Kilpatrick's assistance as fellow Petty Officer Sype took the ops station alongside Lauder.

The Kreetassan Petty Officer unlocked their console and looked across to Chip, who was ready to fly into the path of the contacts or get the Saber the hell out of the way. Sype offered Chip a reassuring smile, throwing a jibe to keep the mood light, "What the hell have you got us into this time, Chip?"

"Me? Nothing we can't get out of," He laughed.

Amongst the personnel who had flooded the bridge was a command division Lieutenant. Jenna Reynolds seemed to flit about, hands behind her back, observing all the goings-on like she was someone important. She approached the Captain as the Bolian officer worked with his XO at tactical.

"Captain," She called.

"Lieutenant Reynolds, I'm sorry, not right now," Xaras responded, knowing the JAG officer would attempt to interfere in whatever response he co-ordinated on his bridge.

"I do remind you, Captain, I am an expert on the rules of engagement," Reynolds repled.

"Whoa!" Kilpatrick called. He double checked his readings as alarm grew in the CO and XO of the ship. "Captain, they've just doubled their speed. They'll be on top of us at any moment!"

Reynolds gave Xaras a stern look, expecting to be consulted. "Captain?"

"Helm," Xaras called, heading back to his command chair, "Get us out of here--"

Before the Bolian captain could give any further orders, the bridge shook like it had hit an asteroid. Standing officers were thrown to the ground, and the sitting ones were flung into consoles or tossed about in their seats like ragdolls. Chip was no different, having face planted into the black glass of his station. The Petty Officer overcame the ache in his face to bring the ship about, but it was too late.

"We're being fired upon!" Kilpatrick called, pulling himself back up to his station.

"It looks like your advice is no longer needed, Lieutenant. I recommend you get yourself somewhere safe and out of the way," Xaras recommended.

"Captain--"

"Crewman Bath," Xaras called, "Please see that Lieutenant Reynolds is escorted safely to her quarters."

"Aye," Bath replied, coming across the bridge. Reynolds didn't protest, instead, she complied with the direction and left with Bath.

"Kilpatrick, target anything you can get on your sensors. Fire at will!" Xaras ordered, helping Lieutenant Stropp back to his feet. "Sype, reroute power to shields!"

"Aye, sir!" Sype called.

"I've got a firing solution on five contacts, firing phasers!" Kilpatrick called. From the viewscreen, lances of glowing red phaser beams shot from the Saber's weapons arrays, piercing the shields of... something.

"Solid hits," Kilpatrick reported. "Preparing for another spread!"

"Just what the hell are we dealing with?" Xaras questioned as damage reports began to stream into the readouts on his armrests.

As Stropp used his command console to assist tactical with weapons targeting, the sensors had finally completed their analysis, "It looks like roughly thirty fighter craft."

"Thirty?" Xaras said in disbelief, knowing his ship wasn't capable of repelling that many threats.

"Fighters," Chip sighed, facilitating the ship's dance through space to line it up for another pass of weapon's fire, "They can't operate alone, they'll have a carrier or other larger ship supporting them."

Another volley of enemy weapons pounded the Saber's shields. The small vessel rocked violently once again, sparks and debris showering the crew of the vessel's bridge.

"Shields at thirty percent!" Sype reported.

"Dammit!" Xaris cursed under his breath. It was now or never. He wasn't losing his ship to a swarm of bees. Xaras' voice boomed as he gave his orders, smoke pooling around his boots, "On my mark; Sype, all power to forward shields. Kilpatrick, get a torpedo lock on whatever you can, full spread. Stropp, prepare another phaser barrage, concentrate on their shields and power systems. Lauder, bring us about, I want to look these bastards in the eye."

A flurry of activity amongst the officers lasted for only a moment as they prepared for their one shot at survival. Xaras knew this was the moment, Sype having oriented the viewscreen to show the fighter fleet bearing down on the Saber.

"Mark!" He called.

The tiny Saber Class vessel spun on a dyme. It's bow came to bear on the wave of fighters speeding toward them. A diagram of the ship's shield systems showed a strengthening of the forward shields. And a flash of light revealed the awesome might of the tiny vessel's weapons systems. Volleys of torpedo and phaser fire lashed out from the vessel like flaming whips, pummelling the attacking fleet.

Fighters drifted off course, losing power, others spun out of control and exploded, some colliding with friendly Breen vessels and destroying or damaging them too. Yet, the wave still approached.

"Five ships confirmed destroyed!" Sype called. "Thirteen damaged."

"We've only kicked the nest," Xaras muttered. "Maintain the assault!"

A moment later, a rush of vessels washed over the Sabre, their pulse disruptors and microtorpedoes dismantling the vessel's shields with ease. The bridge jolted and clanged again, the stress on the vessel's hull signified by the pained groans of twisting metal.

Another enemy volley of torpedoes came in, a blinding flash giving way to a spray of charred debris and girders falling from the ceiling. Chip looked behind him to see that the command chairs had been buried under metal. His eyes drifted to tactical, where Kilpatrick's shredded form lay dying beneath his console.

"I'm routing tactical to my station, Sype. Get what power you can to shields and structural integrity. Take it from life support if you have to." Lauder ordered.

"You got it!" Sype called.

Lauder brought the ship around for another pass, taking aim at a small squad of Breen fighters that looked like they were trying to get away. Phaser and torpedo fire crippled the fleeing ships, defenseless from the rear, leaving them a mass of twisted fire and metal.

The assault from the other fighters continued though. Lauder was having a harder time getting those ships within his firing arc. As he piloted the vessel to ensure the Breen's phaser fire would hit the structurally sound areas of the ship, he looked across to Sype, "Any chance of a damage report?"

"It's not looking good," The Kreetassan reported, though panic didn't enter their voice for a moment. "We've got hull breaches on decks two through ten, they've blown through most of our ablative armour. Our communications array has been destroyed, so have our stellar navigation systems. Casualty reports are spotty. Engineering reports three dead. Sickbay has twenty three wounded, eight dead."

Lauder swallowed the information and continued to press his assault. Having destroyed or disabled around half the fighter contingent, vessels continued to flee, though Lauder was determined to take down whatever else he could. As phasers and torpedoes began to be stretched to their range limits on the runaway vessels, things began to calm.

Lauder took a breath as the bridge lighting finally failed, now awash in red emergency lighting, acrid smoke and fumes filling his lungs as the Saber's hull twisted and strained, trying its very best to hold together.

"I can't see anything else on sensors," Lauder said.

"But we're adrift," Sype reported, frustration in their voice. "Warp power was out the window long ago. Impulse engines have just failed. Shields are gone. Structural integrity is down to thirty percent."

"Is there anything we do have?" Lauder asked, just as the helm and ops consoles blinked offline.

"Replicators are still online," Sype shrugged.

Lauder gave a pained nod and stood, leaning against his damaged console to support his aching body. He looked back to the crumpled form of the bridge. A charred, sorry, smoky mess.

Lauder tapped his combadge, its local communication functions sending out a message, "If you've got anyone to spare, we need a medical team on the bridge."

Now able to consider their situation, Lauder and Sype rushed to Kilpatrick. Sype waved their tricorder over the young, bloodied man, but it was only to confirm what they both knew. Nevertheless, Sype gave Lauder a dignified shake of the head. The Ensign was gone. It was a a process they repeated for a number of other colleagues who died at their posts.

"The Captain? Stropp?" Sype asked quietly.

The two Petty Officers made their way to the mass of metal that buried the two command officers. "Lifesigns?"

"I've got nothing," Sype replied.

"It's best we don't disturb this, then," Lauder said, "Some of these supports are structural, if we move them, we could damage the hull above us."

Sype nodded in agreement. Battered and bruised the Kreetassan Petty Officer let out a long breath, knowing hard times were ahead, whether they were to survive or not. "Where do we even start, Chip?"

Lauder thought on this for a moment. "We need to rally the crew somewhere safe. Do you have a schematic of the areas affected?"

Sype nodded, they loaded the data on their tricorder and showed it to Lauder. "This is from before internal sensors went offline."

Lauder reviewed the information and nodded, "Good. Okay, use the local network to push this through to every console, PADD, tricorder, Gameboy, whatever, that you can."

Lauder tapped his combadge as he searched for a Jefferies Tube access hatch, =/\= "Saber, this is Petty Officer Lauder speaking as... acting commanding officer. In a moment, all devices will receive a schematic of damage across the ship. Use this to safely get to sickbay. Petty Officer Sype and I will meet you there. Use local coms to signal for help, we'll try to get it to you. Stay calm. We'll get through this. Lauder out." =/\=

Sype followed Lauder to the access hatch. Pushing the map of the vessel's damage to all the devices, they followed him down the ladder and into the ducts of the ship. It almost felt as though they were ducking and weaving, climbing up and down, port and starboard to dodge the damage and areas exposed to space.

|USS Saber, Deck 3
|30 Minutes Later

Finally, the pair of Petty Officers found themselves out of the Jefferies Tubes and in a corridor. Fumbling in the pitch black, they found an equipment locker that provided them with a pair of wrist-mounted SIMs beacons.

Light beams bouncing away as they trudged towards their meeting point, Sype smirked as they looked across to Lauder. "Acting commanding officer, huh?"

"It sounded like the right thing to say at the time," Lauder said. "No doubt we'll get to sickbay and there will be someone who will take charge."

"You did well back there," Sype said. "If it wasn't for you, this ship probably would've been destroyed."

"Always a team effort," Lauder smiled.

A few minutes later, after joining up with a few small groups of survivors, Lauder and Sype entered the vessel's sickbay. It appeared to be one of the few places where power had remained online, and the area, while safest in an emergency due to its positioning, was still in a sorry state.

Amongst the damage were the medical staff and anyone who was on-hand to assist, performing triage and bandaging wounds for treatment later. Bodies were piled up in the corner, bloodied sheets covering the horrific sights beneath.

Orderlies and nurses rushed everywhere, there was whimperings of fear, cries of suffering and distress for the loss the vessel had suffered.

"Who's in charge here?" Lauder called over the hellish cacophony.

"I am... I think," A teal-uniformed nurse, a Corvallen named Platt responded, escorting an operations officer with a facial wound and burns all over his body to a biobed. The woman, already exhausted, handed the officer off to a colleague and asked them to begin a scan. She approached Lauder and Sype and wiped the beads of sweat from her face. "Doctor Singh is dead, Chief Nurse Ross as well. By our estimates ninety percent of the crew who is alive has gathered here."

Lauder nodded. "Any sort of a headcount?"

"About thirty in total," Platt replied.

"Any officers amongst them?" Sype asked.

"None," Platt replied. "The only officers and chiefs I've seen are under those sheets over there."

Lauder nodded solemnly. "Do you have a list of names?"

Nurse Platt retrieved a PADD, "This is a list of crew we've declared dead. The other is a roll call of everyone who has checked in."

"Okay," Lauder said, scanning it, "We can add the CO and XO to this list, as well as Kilpatrick and Ensign Porter, the science officer. They all died on the bridge."

"That leaves Chief T'Var," Sype said. "He'll be in engineering if he's still alive."

"Sorry to interrupt; I really need to get to my patient," Platt said.

"Of course, sorry to keep you from your work. Sype and I will head to engineering. We'll see if we can assist T'Var." Lauder said.

"Very well," Platt replied, noticing an orderly draping a sheet across yet another body as she went to tend to her next patient.

|Deck 6, Engineering
|12 Minutes Later

Another precarious route through damaged decks, breached sections and crushed conduits led Lauder and Sype to engineering, just one deck below sickbay. Vaulting over a blown-out piece of corridor panelling, Lauder and Sype entered the upper level of engineering.

The emergency flood lighting lit the area well, from above, the two Petty Officers could see where machinery had toppled and components had been damaged. The whole place looked like it had been involved in some sort of metallic landslide. Amongst the devastation, the warp core sat idle, its regular brilliant glow absent.

Lauder examined a nearby readout, "We're running on reserved power, however the conduits for this system had been damaged across the ship. It looks like there's no power in many areas at all."

"That explains the bridge," Sype mentioned. They looked down into the lower level of engineering, trying to see if anyone was caught up in the debris, "Can you see anyone down there?"

"Negative," Lauder replied. "Lets get down there. We need to find T'Var and get the core back online."

The pair made the short climb down to the second level of the compact engineering complex. Small pools of crimson blood pooled from out under piles of debris, telling a predictable story they had yet to find the end to. They continued their search, Sype's tricorder beeped unusually, "Lauder, seems there's unusual interference from the core. This thing is going crazy."

"That is likely due to the uncontrolled energy releases within the dilithium as it sits in the unaligned articulation frame," A cold voice said from behind.

Lauder spun on his heel, directing his SIMs beacon to the figure behind them. He illuminated a Vulcan, standing with a hyperspanner in hand, green blood dripping from a wound on his grubby face, "Chief T'Var,"

"Petty Officers," The Chief acknowledged, moving past them, "I will require assistance."

"Of course," Lauder replied. "Is anyone else in here?"

"Many of my technicians are either dead or in sickbay, Petty Officer," T'Var answered, "You and Petty Officer Sype's services will suffice."

"What can we do to help?" Sype asked.

"Given your expertise, Sype, I will need your assistance to realign the articulation frame. Lauder, you will be required to measure the alignment and bring the core online."

"Very well," Lauder said. "Once we've done that, we'll need to focus on returning power to--"

"As I recall, Petty Officer, I am the Chief Engineer of this vessel and of superior rate and experience to you. It would appear that in both instances, I would be within my rights to dictate the repair schedule and future direction of this vessel, if a superior officer does not come forward to take command. In which case, we will restore power to the communications arrays," The Vulcan Chief reminded the Petty Officer.

Lauder bristled inside after T'Var put him back in his place. Though he nodded and went to the control station as the Chief and Sype moved to the warp core. The pair of engineers worked away, removing the dilithium articulation frame, undertaking the necessary repairs.

In the meanwhile, Crewman Bath, another technician had found his way back to engineering. He joined Lauder at the console as the Petty Officer watched on.

"Petty Officer Lauder, I've just come from sickbay," Bath reported. "Nurse Platt said you could use my help."

"Yeah," Lauder nodded. "I want you to see if we'll be able to reinitialise the impulse propulsion systems once the warp core is back online. If not, I'd like to see if we can't do anything about shields--"

Eavesdropping on the conversation across the room, T'Var could only continue his work before he heard Lauder again trying to countermand his orders, "Crewman Bath, I require your assistance."

"Well," Bath shrugged. "Maybe not."

"Maybe not," Lauder nodded darkly. He watched as Bath and Sype were put to work by T'Var, who eventually had them reinstall the dilithium crystal assembly into the matter/antimatter system.

"Activate the core, Mister Lauder," T'Var called.

Lauder initialised the system. In no time at all, the core came to life, glowing and pulsing with energy once again. Chip checked his readouts, "Everything looks normal over here."

That was a lie. He noticed a defect.

"Good," T'Var nodded. "Sype and Bath, I would like you to work on the EPS systems. You will need to ensure power is reaching all areas of the ship now the warp reactor is back online."

"The toolkits are over here," Chip called.

"Sure! Come on, Bath," Sype muttered as they climbed over a mountain of rubble.

A moment later, there was an odd surge. A momentary uncomfortable static charge filled the air, and a pulse of energy lashed out from the core. An alarm blared as an explosion near T'Var knocked the Vulcan off his feet. The engineering section quaked, throwing Bath backwards as a pipe ruptured, spraying jets of white gas into the space.

Sype ran to Lauder, "What are we going to do?"

"We need to rescue T'Var and Bath," Lauder replied. "Stay here, attempt to slow the reaction, that should bring the core offline again."

"Got it. Be careful, Chip!" Sype shouted as Lauder ran toward the uncontrollably pulsing core.

Lauder looked between T'Var and Bath. The Vulcan Chief was unconscious, caught behind an arcing stream of electricity. Meanwhile, the young Bath clung to a pole, terror on his face.

"Bath, it's only liquid nitrogen," Lauder called. "You can run through!"

"No!" Bath cried.

"Chip!" Sype called over the discordant whine of the warp core, "Bath can run through! Get T'Var, you'll be able to interrupt the flow of energy by diverting the power flow on the console next to you!"

"Help me!" Bath screamed.

Sype was growing frustrated by Lauder's indecision, but a new alarm brought their attention to a new problem as she tried to shut the core down, "He can get himself out of there, Chip! Ah, damn! We've got thirty seconds before the core discharges. It'll kill both of them if you do nothing. Get T'Var now!"

Lauder looked between the Vulcan and the human and ran through the liquid nitrogen. He grabbed Bath, hearing Sype screaming at him from beyond the leak. Chip grabbed Bath by his coveralls and dragged him through the gaseous flow, pulling him through it.

"I can't shut down the core!" Sype cried. She knew T'Var couldn't be rescued. She ran to Chip and Bath and pushed them toward the exit, a countdown on the console showing only seconds before the discharge.

A blinding blue flash, followed by a deafening crack rang out from the engine room. The air felt white hot for a moment, then rapidly cooled. Lauder dusted off Bath as Sype pushed past them and rushed into the engine room. Near the core was T'Var's charred remains.

Sype swallowed hard as she looked back to Chip in disgust.

OFF

 

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