Breaking point (FT, Semi-open)

[Septill]

((OOC: no 1 line posts (or similarly small) I reserve the right to /puntkickignorebomb if posts not up to snuff))

Septill Pirates, the very idea would send shivers down the spine of any freighter captain. The Septill were people born to space, with a greater sense of spacial recognition then any planet born person, and more natural talent in space flight then would seam possible. Thankfully they were on the run, as a people, never remaining in one area of space for too long. They also were continually low on supplies, stopping to mine gas giants and asteroid belts at random but never seaming to get enough.

However, occasionally a modified Septill cruiser and it's crew will show up on trade lanes destroying anything trying to pass them. Whether they were endorsed by the Septill government or independent was never sure, but in the end it doesn't really matter.

As such, the sleek black hull of the modified vanguard cruiser that drifted silently in orbit around a gas giant, which served as a popular cool down point among local traders, served as the embodiment of such fears. Unlike their clunky, slap-dash and oddly efficient counterparts in the regular Septill fleet, the pirate cruiser was encased in a specialized hull designed to scatter sensors. It was covered in a further sensor absorbent paint, had the most powerful ECMs that could be found on a Septill ship and every single hole in the hull for weapons, sensors, engines, either had a stealth hatch or curved smoothly into the opening, generating minimal sensor return. Three forward torpedo tubes, two rear tubes and dual gamma-ray laser battery made the ship a killer. Lighter armed then a standard of her class in the Fleet, but the torpedoes allowed immense flexibility and first hit ability, unseen in any other Septill ships.

Going on the second day of no contacts, the crew's patience was wearing thin. With only a single kill, and that being a small, empty, cargo ship, at this location the hold had only a small pile of usable metals and valuables. Every few kills at a certain location they would relocate, their worst fear was for a full naval patrol to appear on top of them. Even small convoys they could pick off a couple ships with torpedoes then go into hiding and return once the convoy moved to pick up scrap. Staying in one place too long, making a number of kills along a single trade lane would draw attention, making the chances of a patrol wandering through, looking for pirates, increase.

But the destruction of a single lone cargo ship, especially a small and empty one, wouldn't draw the attentions of the local government. At least, it shouldn't. But going on 48 hours in free fall, with minimal heating, water restrictions and energy discipline was breaking down crew moral. the commander had to make a choice, stay and risk a mutiny, or jump to another sector and hope to get lucky.

[Septill]

ninja bump

[Species and Cultures]

USS Nuvolari
Intrepid-II-Class Starship
Federation Borderlands, Trade-Route Charlie Six-Two

Patrolling the Trade Routes was perhaps the most boring assignment ever to be handed down to a Starfleet vessel. No one other than pirates ever attacked Trade ships as a first strike and if there was a war declared, the Trade routes would be shut down as a matter of course. And seeing as the Nuvolari was more than capable of chasing off any Pirate-operated vessel it came across, it meant that the patrols were very, very boring. So much so that as the USS Nuvolari cruised slowly along the trade route, much of the crew were sleeping, includeing the captain.

A low insessent beeping roused Captain Jessica Jones from her sleep. Finding herself staring at the ceiling of her quarters she scowled as she recognised the sound; her Combadge. She sighed as she swung her legs round and pulled herself up from the bed. Walking slowly across her quarters to the chair where her uniform's jacket had been discarded she stretched in an attempt to shake off the last vestige's of sleep. Reaching the Jacket, Jessica reached down and plucked the small device and tapped it once.

"This had better be good Commander" She said in a low, somewhat threatening voice, indicating that if it wasn't a good reason she was liable to kill the person who woke her.

"Sir, Starfleet Command reports that a Wilkonson Cargo vessel is overdue along our trade-route, and we just picked up Debris on Long range sensors"

Jessica sighed.

"Very well, go to yellow alert, I'll be right up"

*****************************************

Jessica arrived on the Bridge a short time later as the Nuvolari sped through Warp towards the Debris they had picked up. Travelling at yellow alert, the ships shields were raised, but her weapons were powered down. Soon enough they reached the location and dropped out of warp. The Warp Naccelles returning to their normal, sub-light position.

Cruising forward the Intrepid-II Class Starship quickly got about running scans to confirm the identity of the craft and whether it had been attacked, or suffered a malfunction.

Jessica accepted a cup of strong coffee from a young lieutenant with a smile.

It was going to be a long day.

[Septill]

"Contact," the sensors operator said suddenly, trying to operate the sensor console with one hand and stick his packet of coffee to a wall with the other. "Looks like... erk... looks like a navy ship. Passive sensors indicate spacial manipulation drive, defiantly has shields stronger then a standard cargo ship, but relatively small size."

"Can you see any signs that they aren't alone?" the commander asked, mentally running through his pre-combat checklist, making sure all his free-fall straps were secured and using his pad to send alerts to other parts of the ship. One by one the various stations reported in, turning his pad into a grid of green squares

"No detectable communications, but without going active I can't be sure."

"Good enough, a navy ship will fetch a good price. Get us an attack vector, minimal thrusters, they're going to have good sensors if it really is a navy ship. Load tubes one a two with EMP torpedoes, and put a frag in tube three, just to be safe."

"Plotting attack vector now," the ship's pilot, or at least, as close as the ship came to having a pilot came, said. "Firing secondary thrusters.... now... 40 seconds till optimum firing range."

"Tubes one and two loaded," the weapon's controller said, falling into the rhythm honed by tens of kills and hundreds of attempts, "Port gamma battery standing by."

The pitch black ship crept steadily towards it's prey, with only the occasional burst of cold chemical thrusters to give it away. The torpedo tube hatches would remain closed as long as possible, opening up mere seconds before firing. To the naked eye the only thing that would give away the ship was when it moved in front of a star, temporarily obscuring the pin-prick of light. The tiny acceleration from the thrusters was enough to notice on the command deck, if only just. The commander had to grab his pad to keep it from floating away, and other members grabbed at their various packets of drink to put them in places they knew from experience they wouldn't float off. The ship had inertial dampers, and even gravity generators, but with the fear of being detected, each and every unneeded system was shut down.

The torpedoes were built along similar lines, very simple, but very effective. A simple fusion engine powered the weapon allowing it to accelerate in excess of 50 gravities for around four minutes before it ran out of fuel. The warhead consisted of a single 5 kiloton nuclear bomb, properly shielded to prevent tell-tail radiation of course, surrounded by a series of energy redirection systems. The purpose of the weapon was simple, to generate a massive EMP, far more massive then a normal bomb of that size could generate, and direct it at the target ship. While not lethal, except to unshielded brain matter at close range, electronics, sensors, and any computer system in the path of the EMP would fry. Hard metal and shields would reduce the strength of the EMP, but the idea was to overwhelm the shielding with two torpedoes. Sure it was more of a gamble then hitting the target with a larger, if less controlled, nuke, but the more ship left over meant more scrap.

Once the course was plotted all there was to do was wait, this was always the hardest part, the commander thought. During the fight he could simply act without truly thinking about what was happening, it was much easier then having to wait and watch the timer ticking down while his heart thudded in his chest and adrenalin raced through his system.

[Species and Cultures]

USS Nuvolari
Intrepid-II-Class Starship
Trade-Route Charlie Six-Two

"Weapons signitures confirmed"

Jessica glanced up from her PADD, upon which she was reviewing the ships current crew manifest, and the personnel that she would need to make when they next returned to their home base, namely Starbase 65 at the end of the Trade Route, and serving all Starfleet operations in the sector. The confirmation of weapons wasn't a good thing, it meant that the Navigator-Class vessel had indeed been engaged and attacked by some sort of hostile vessel, most likely a pirate vessel given the circumstances. Now there was pirate activity in a Federation trade route, not a good thing, and would make this particular area very busy in the near future.

"Send an encrypted transmission to Starfleet Command and inform them that we've confirmed piracy in our sector" Jessica ordered grimly "Tranfer resources to the sensor array and increase scanning of the immediate area, particually for vessels under cloak or running quiet"

Lieutenant Ga'Tharan, the Andorian Security and Tactical officer on the rear right hand station nodded and quickly got about his work, warming up the communications array and sending the transmission. At the same time Lieutenant Taz, the Joined Trill Science officer got about ensuring that the Nuvolari's sensor suite was working at full capacity to detect anything nearby, not to mention further out. The Nuvolari hung in space near the debris from the Navigator, but with enough clearence to jump to emergency evasives if someone was stupid enough to try and jump a Starfleet vessel on increased alert.

Surely no one would be that foolish.

"Any idea exactly who the weapons belong to?" Jessica asked.

"Negative" Ga'Tharan replied "But i'll keep trying to match them to a known weapon system"

Jessica sighed sadly. Starfleet's mission had alway's been one of peaceful exploration, over the previous few decades Starfleet had faced numerous enemies and had changed, whilst Starfleet's ships were still at heart Explorers, they were increasingly milateristic, the Nuvolari was no different. The majority of the changes with the Intrepid-II class had been based around increasing the Intrepid Classes combat capabilities in light of the new enemies that the Federation was facing these days.

"Sir, I'm picking up a faint reading on sensors, it's getting closer" Ga'Tharan reported "It may be a sensor ghost"

"Let's not take that risk" Jessica ordered "Move us away, slowly but make it look like we're beginning a intensive search pattern, let's see if we can push whatever out theres hand"

"And if there is something there?"

"Put all weapons on Hot Stand-by, and instruct all personnel to stand-by for Battlesations"

[Septill]

"They're moving on what looks like a search pattern," the sensor operator reported, looking at the passive sensor read outs that anyone else would call a garbled mess of lines. "Also a slightly rise in thermal generation... in excess of their engines I mean. You'd think for a navy ship it would be more efficient then that."

"Or they're heating up weapons," the commander mused, doing his best to try and rest his chin on his hand in free fall. Glancing at the attack near the front of the command deck once again. With the change in target movement the clock had jumped up a couple times and was now ticking down again at about 60 seconds. "Assume they are, RAI, calculate probability of successful attack at optimum range."

"Of course commander," the ship board Restricted Artificial Intelligence responded calmly. This far from the fleet it wasn't possible for the Septill Consensus to have a presence aboard the ship. Instead the ship used the RAI for crunching calculations that would take a normal person with a calculator hours, even days, to complete. While extremely useful for such calculations, it wasn't nearly as good for providing advise as the true Septill Consensus, nor was it truly sentient. Certain restrictions were in place within its programing so that it would never seek to improve itself or grow like every other life form in the universe. It also was allowed more limited control over ship systems, while the occasional intervention in evasive maneuvers that its far superior reflexes were able to react to, unlike the human pilots, was acceptable. Anything more then that, that the Consensus could get away with, it wasn't allowed to.

"Assuming current acceleration of all passively detected objects remains constant," the RAI continued in it's almost unnervingly calm voice. Also unlike the consensus, and partly due to the restrictions place on it, RAIs had no emotions. As such they always seamed unnaturally calm, almost to a disinterested level. "and target is concordant with logged systems aboard Federation Intrepid Class ships, attack success probability with target combat ready at optimum range estimated 72%, variance of 8% based on crew reactions and skill. Attack success probability decreases by only 2% at current range."

"Cause if they know we're here, or at least suspect we are, surprise means little," the commander grumbled, wishing the consensus was here. With much more computing power, a massively larger index of knowledge, and a true level of creativity that the RAI couldn't duplicate it could actually provide suggestions rather then just crunching the numbers. "New tactic then, they're expecting a pirate ship, not a Septill pirate, prepare the ECMs, power the field nodes, charge gamma batteries. The moment a more targeted sensor pings us, full active on ECMs. Play every song we know, I don't want a single signal leaving that ship without being scrambled to hell and back."

While most stock Septill ships filled every otherwise unneeded space with fuel or mass storage, a significant portion of the Septill pirate cruiser's prow was filled with electronic warfare modules. The vast majority were built for jamming sensors, making the already difficult task of locking the stealth ship much harder. There were also some communication jammers, to prevent a target from crying for help.

Meanwhile, power flowed through the ship, bring dormant systems back to life from their cold state. Gamma ray laser batteries warmed up, aligning the hard lenses that would direct the beams of deadly radiation. The defense fields which would protect the ship began charging, while not forming a field yet, the charge building would be unmistakable to anyone who knew where to look. Dozens of other systems, including inertial dampeners woke from the multi-day long slumber, like only Septill systems, designed for extended periods of no use or care, could.

[Species and Cultures]

USS Nuvolari
Intrepid-II-Class Starship
Trade-Route Charlie Six-Two

"Vessel going hot!" Ga'Tharan reported.

"Red alert!" Jessica ordered "Fire at will"

The bridge lighting dimmed to allow more effective viewing of the LCARS consoles, klaxons sounded and lights flashed. There was very little scrambling to combat stations however as the vast majority of the ships crew were already at or near their stations. The Nuvolari's crew quickly got about ensuring that their ship was best set up for combat. Power was transferred from the regular sensors to dedicated tactical sensors, designed to punch through any electronic countermeasures, as well as getting accurate scans of the ship to find the best targets. Power was transferred from non-essential systems to the weapons and shielding systems.

Quickly coming about, the Nuvolari targeted the alien vessel and quickly opened fire. Two Phaser blasts fired from the dorsal Phaser array at the enemy vessel, followed up by a brace of Photon Torpedos. The Intrepid-II class starship bore down on the enemy vessel in question, firing off Phasers and the occasional torpedo. At the same time, a transmission was sent.

Pirate Vessel, this is the Federation Starship Nuvolari, surrender immediatly or you will be destroyed

[Septill]

"Incoming fire," the sensor operator said, his voice calm but defiantly much faster then moments ago.

Right on cue the defense field nodes sent energy surging into the space surrounding the ship. Both phaser blasts struck the field, their energy being absorbed and diverted, causing the field to glow a dark orange. With the inertial dampeners active the fusion drive was able to kick in to near full power almost immediately driving the ship away from the photon torpedoes. The ECMs also came active, pulsing diversions and trickery into the space surrounding the federation ship. Sensor ghosts would plague the ship, reporting tens of torpedo launches and dozens of incoming weapons fire of a number of different types.

"tubes one and two fire," the commander said, almost relieved that the battle had begun, and the waiting was over. "Note in the log that we were fired upon by a federation ship and responded in kind."

Hatches opened along the forward hull and twin torpedoes lept from their tubes, propelled by a pneumatic ram before their own fusion drives lit. Burning a hot as a star the torpedoes surged forward, intent on detonating their diverted energy nukes and covering the federation ship with hostile EMP pulses. Without any on board ECMs the torpedoes relied entirely upon the speed their fusion drives could manage and the electronic warfare being pumped out by the Septill cruiser.

"Commander," the RAI said suddenly, "I have noticed-"

"Not now RAI," the commander said, dismissing the AI, if it was the consensus he would of been more interested, but right now he was too busy to pay attention. The RAI stopped talking in it's typical uncaring manner. Perhaps it was that lack of interest which made him not respect the RAI, but now wasn't the time for it's musings.

[Species and Cultures]

USS Nuvolari
Intrepid-II-Class Starship
Trade-Route Charlie Six-Two

Dozerns of Phaser blasts fired from the Nuvolari as it fought against the Hostile vessel, with the number of sensor ghosts they were plauged with. With the relativly unlimited number of beams the ship could fire, they fired at every sensor ghost as it appeared. If they detected a confirmed hit, it would be followed up with a salvo of Photon Torpedos. The Nuvolari's shields flared as the enemy weapons struck them, but the Nuvolari's shields were state of the art and they did their job effectivly.

"SIr, we're being hailed by Commodore Robyn Sincialr of the USS Freedom" Ga'Tharan reported "It's fuzzy, but we're recieving the carrier"

"But her on screen" Jessica ordered.

"Captain, what is your status?" Sinclair asked as she appeared on the viewscreen.

"Investigating the loss of a Civilian vessel we detected what we though twas a sensor ghost, further invetigating indicated that a stealthed ship was in the area, when we detected it going hot, we raised opened fire" Jessica reported duitfully.

"Very well" Robyn replied as she fuzzed out of focus for a moment "I'm en-route with the Freedom, hold fast Captain, that's an order"

[Septill]

The ship's pilot had his hands full, even with the assistance of the RAI he was only just dodging the photon torpedoes. The occasional phaser strikes had caused the defense field to glow a healthy yellow, removing most of the stealth properties of the ship. Thankfully the ECMs were doing their job, the space around the federation ship was a maelstrom of phasers as they tried to chase down every sensor ghost. It also meant that their target wasn't moving all that much, and putting another two torpedoes on target would be easy.

Nut Cracker torpedoes, as they were lovingly referred to, were the other extreme from the EMP torpedoes. Instead of a small 5 kiloton fission warhead designed to generate a kilometer long cone of electronic denial, the Crackers contained a much larger 10 megaton fusion bomb. So large was the warhead, that the normal energy diversion systems that could be placed around it's smaller counterparts couldn't be used on the massive bomb. There was only enough room to channel the blast forward, not that it would help much. At the head of the warhead was a tank of liquid hydrogen, which would be atomized by the blast, and be thrown outwards, carrying with it the huge shock wave and immense amounts of heat the fusion bomb would generate. It was the only way to ensure that the bomb would cause maximum damage in space, where the lack of atmosphere normally wouldn't transfer the bomb's shock wave.

However, since the bomb was nearly unrestrained, it would also generate an EMP along with massive amounts of deadly radiation that would be unimpeded by the harsh lack of an environment in space. The commander didn't want his ship anywhere near the nut crackers when they went off, even though their maximum effective detonation range was under a kilometer, under a quarter of the distance the EMP torpedoes could do their effect at, he didn't want to be within 50 clicks of the things. They were easily the most devastating, if not most deadly, weapon the ship had. And the shattered, radioactive, scraps it left were better then nothing.

The first torpedo slid out of its tube, and through a hole in the defense field that was opened just for it. 10 seconds later, as it drifted through space, and the pirate cruiser accelerated away, its fusion drive ignited and it struck out towards the federation ship. Around this time a second nut cracker was launched from the cruiser's new position in it's on going evasive maneuvers. Another ten count and this torpedo also lit its engines and accelerated at a back breaking 50 gravities.

[Species and Cultures]

USS Nuvolari
Intrepid-II-Class Starship
Trade-Route Charlie Six-Two

The Nuvolari's shields flickered out as the EMP's effected them, allowing the EMP to make contact with the rest of the ship. For the most part however, very little damage was done. Being a Starfleet vessel, all ships systems were protected against such an attack, as were the Tricorders, PADDS and Phasers. Smaller stuff, particually Civilian stuff brough aboard the vessel, were however knocked out by the EMP. Within a few seconds the SHield Generators kicked back in and established the shield once again. At the same time the ships hull and abalative armour stood up well against the actual explosion before the shields falshed back up again.

"Re-modulate the shields, I don't want that to happen again!" Jessica ordered, slightly angry as she had had a Antique Music player from the 21st Century, an IPOD, or something or the sort, it still worked aftera ll these years, or rather it had worked, it had no doubt been knocked out by the EMP.

The Nuvolari came about and began another attack run on the enemy, carrying out the same pattern of targeting all sensor ghosts until contact was made and then concentrating all fire, includeing Phasers and Photon Torpedo's on that target. It made it more difficult to disable the vessel without destroying it, so it didn't look like Starfleet would be taking Prisoners. Not today anyway.

"Hail them" Jessica ordered.

"Open"

"THis is Captain Jessica Jones of the Federation Starship Nuvolari, you have comitted acts of Piracy against the United Federation of Species and Cultures, you are outgunned and I have additional vessels en-route, surrender or you will be destroyed"