Bridging The Gap

Posted on Sun Jun 15th, 2014 @ 1:02pm by Lieutenant Commander Horatio Hawke & Captain Tim Williams & Commander Gaius Ra-Xialii

Episode: Orphans
Location: Hawke's Quarters, Various
Timeline: MD09, 0347 Hours

"Red Alert, All hands to battle stations, Attention, All hands to battle stations! Lieutenant Hawke to the bridge!" The internal ship communications blared, just as the ship shook with a massive tremor. Smoke had started to fill the modest and spartan room. A flash lit the room for a moment, as light filtered through the gap in the door, the door buckled slightly. There was heat coming from the door.

Operating on a kind of autopilot, Hawke half fell, half staggered from his bunk. Wait! Was that his bunk? He let the confused thought slip away, lost in the cacophony of noise as he grabbed the fresh uniform hanging from a hook near the door and started to dress and run. I have to get to the bridge, he said to himself.

Hawke entered the corridor, two officers lay face down on the deck. The fire had spread along one direction of the corridor, impeding movement. The other corridors were mostly clear, but there was what felt like wind heading down the second. The straightest course to the bridge was straight ahead.

He ran straight down the corridor toward the bridge, throwing his tunic on as he went and tapping his commbadge. “Medical team to deck three, section four. Two wounded, condition unknown!” There was no time for him to render assistance, but that didn’t mean he had to leave them to die.

The deck shuddered beneath his boots as he approached the turbolift stop and he almost stumbled into the doors, which parted just as he arrived. “Bridge!” he shouted.

The turbolift jolted upwards as it raced to the bridge, the internal lights flickered twice as the ship was hit. The doors opened and Hawke was almost thrown out onto the bridge.

The scene that met him was graphic, the Captain and the XO were both slumped over, burns covering most of their upper bodies. Flames flickered from exploded consoles, and a beam had fallen pinning a nurse on the ground.

Almost the entire staff was injured in some way, only three were still conscious, a tactical officer, a helm officer and one from the science department. He was the ranking officer. The Efrosian Ensign from the tactical station raced up to the Lieutenant.

"Sir, we are under attack from a Jem'hadar cruiser! We have sustained heavy damage. Your orders sir?!" Ensign Ra-Xialli exclaimed.

By this time, Hawke was aware that he was participating in a simulation; the bridge looked nothing like the bridge of the Highlander. But he also knew this would have something to do with his Bridge Command testing. He was being assessed on everything he did and now was not the time for hesitation.

“Return to your station,” he ordered the ensign as he moved to the centre of the bridge, opting to stand rather than remove the captain’s lifeless body. He turned back to Tactical, holding his hands behind his back as he asked, “What’s the status of our shields, hull, weapons?” He needed to know what he had at his disposal before he could effectively defend the ship.

"Shields are at thirty percent," the tactical officer said, wiping the grime that had been caused by the mix of soot and sweat on his forehead. "Hull breaches on decks four, five, nine, ten and fifteen; emergency forcefields are in place and holding. They took out our phasers with their first shot. Torpedoes are online, but automated targeting is not."

"Divert any auxiliary power to the shields," Hawke ordered and turned forward to look at the helmsman. “Status of our impulse engines? Warp drive?”

"Warp drive is offline," the helmsman answered, his head moving from side to side as he studied all of the relevant readouts his console was giving him. "The damage to our systems is stopping us from establishing a stable warp field. Impulse drive is operational at seventy percent power."

Hawke stepped forward and looked over the helmsman's shoulder to get an idea of the spatial situation. The Jem'Hadar cruiser was at a range of 2,400,000km and opening, but her course suggested that she was coming around for another pass. He had a little time.

He turned back to Tactical, "What shape are the Jem'Hadar in? Tell me we scored some hits."

"Minimal damage," the Ensign answered. "They caught us by surprise. When they took out our phasers, we fired a salvo of torpedoes at them, but most were deflected by their shields."

Not what I wanted to hear.

He needed to keep some distance between them and the Jem'Hadar and do something to try and level the playing field. If he had warp drive, he would abandon the field and live to fight another day, but he didn't have that luxury. He needed to buy time for the engineers to repair the warp drive.

"Helm!" he called, turning to the front of the bridge. "Give me all the impulse you've got and point our tail to that cruiser."

The helmsman hesitated, but soon went about his work when Hawke shot him a stern look that brokered no argument. That done, he looked up at the ceiling and spoke to the comm, "Hawke to Engineering. I'm going to buy us some time, but you need to get that warp drive running ASAP. What's the ETA?"

"At least an hour Lieutenant!" the voice called over the comm. channel. "The primary EPS relays were overloaded! We're working on replacing them now!"

"Faster if possible, Chief," he replied then turned back to tactical, orders flowing quickly now. "Ensign, prepare a full spread of torpedoes." He looked across to the science station and the only other bridge officer alive, a Vulcan female. "Ensign, I want you to assist Mr Ra-Xialli with targeting."

The science officer nodded silently, before getting up to join the ensign at the tactical console, standing at the displays on the wall behind the tactical officer.

"Slowly, but surely, that cruiser is going to gain on us and they have us outgunned," he said to the team; it was time to let them in on the plan. "As soon as they're in weapons range, I'm going to order all stop. They'll overshoot us and that's when I need you to hit their impulse engines with as many torpedoes as you can get away."

"Without phasers sir, we'd have to get some really lucky shots to get past their shields," Ra-Xialii said, pausing his actions on the console before him as he spoke, pointing out the hole in the lieutenant's plan.

Hawke shook his head, "It's not perfect and it's going to be bloody hard, I know, but if we can take out their engines, that gives us a chance to get away at impulse until the chief gets our warp drive back online. Focus your shots. The first few will be stopped by their shields, but they'll also weaken them enough in that section to allow the last couple of torpedoes through. It'll only take one direct hit to take out their impulse engines."

He looked each of them over, seeing the uncertainty in their eyes. This was their only chance, though. His eyes settled on Ra-Xialii. "You don't need to destroy a Jem'Hadar cruiser today, guys, just take out its engines. Can you do that for me?"

The bridge officers all looked at each other silently, until Ra-Xialii answered for them. "Yes, sir," he said, quietly but with confidence, turning his attentions back to his console.

Hawke smiled and tapped his fist on edge of the tactical console. “Excellent,” he said. “Let’s make it so.”

He returned to stand just behind the helmsman and saw that the Jem’Hadar cruiser had completed its turn and was now on an intercept course once again. They were now almost 2.7 million kilometres away, but with their significant speed advantage it wouldn’t take long for them to close to weapons range. About 37 seconds, according to the tactical situation frame on the helm console.

It was a long, long thirty-seven seconds and Horatio felt his mouth dry up as adrenaline pumped through his veins. It was a simulation, but damn it was tense. He stood with his hand on the vacant chair at ops and did everything he could to project an air of calm about him. His eyes watched the oncoming Jem’Hadar cruiser on the viewscreen, almost silently goading them to do their worst.

As the countdown reached ten seconds, he turned back to look at the two ensigns at tactical. He gave them a reassuring nod of his head and said, “Get ready guys. Make it count.”

The two ensigns glanced at each other as they turned back to their consoles. The lieutenant's order wasn't going to be easy, considering that they would have to try to work together to manually target a ship moving at a vast difference to their own speed - a difference that would soon increase drastically - and a target that was presently behind them, at that.

He steeled himself, keeping his back straight and tightening his grip on the back of the vacant chair. As the count reached one he issued the order. “All stop,” he delivered the order with an even tone and quickly followed that with, “Torpedoes, fire at will!”

The torpedoes fired from the two forward launchers in rapid succession. A quarter of them were clean misses, and many more were deflected by the Jem'Hadar shields, but enough exploded upon impact to create temporary gaps in the shielding, which the number of torpedoes being fired made sure that enough got through to hit the back of the ship itself. The force of the explosions knocked the ship forward, its bow falling below the stern as it started a slow roll - its impulse engines now effectively disabled.

Hawke gave a subtle pump of his fist as he saw the report on the viewscreen, the Jem'Hadar cruiser listing forward, her engines gone.

But the job wasn't done yet. "Helm," he said, "reverse course, maximum available impulse. Put some distance between us and that thing and keep growing it."

"Aye sir," the officer at the helm said, the relief evident in their voice as they tapped at the controls on the console. On the viewscreen, the Jem'Hadar ship quickly disappeared as the stars rolled to one side before stabilising as the ship began moving on its new heading."

"Engineering," he said to the comm as he walked back to the centre of the bridge, "I've just bought you some more time. See if you can get me warp drive in less than an hour."

There was no response over the comm. Instead, all of the officers around Hawke vanished with a slight fizz, except the ensign at tactical. With a visible ripple caused by the holographic technology, the ensign's appearance changed; the uniform was altered from gold to crimson, and two extra pips appeared on the collar. The ensign - whose expression had changed to one of complete, stern calm - suddenly appeared visibly older, as the holographic affects altering the individual's face disappeared. The sparks and smoke still pouring out of damaged systems also immediately ceased, leaving the holographic bridge in silence.

"An interesting manoeuvre," Commander Ra-Xialii said, moving around the tactical console to approach the centre of the bridge, his tone carrying none of the interest that his comment would otherwise indicate. "How did you know that the torpedoes would get through the Jem'Hadar shields? The vessel may have been undamaged, in which case the ship would be a 'sitting duck', as the saying goes."

Hawke caught his breath and relaxed his shoulders as the simulation ended around him. He grinned as the tactical ensign morphed into the older and wiser XO. "To be honest, Commander," he said with a shrug, "I didn't know that it would work." He paused, noting the XO's subtle reaction. "But we were effectively sitting ducks anyway. With no warp drive and impulse damaged, we couldn't run away; that ship would have run us down. So, I decided to bring on the inevitable on my terms, not theirs. I seized the initiative with whatever I had at my disposal. It was a fifty-fifty shot, especially with manual targeting, but it was worth the risk."

The commander nodded, mulling the lieutenant's answer over. After a long pause, he simply said, "I will inform you of my assessment of your performance shortly. Computer, exit." As the arch appeared, replacing the bridge viewscreen, he strolled towards it and out into the corridors of the ship.

Hawke watched him go and fought to keep his jaw from dropping. What was that? he wondered, watching the space left by the XO as he disappeared from the holodeck. He decided not to dwell on it; all would be revealed in time. He should just keep doing what he was doing, keep studying and making sure he gave it everything he had, and he would do just fine.

Maybe ...