U.S.S. Corsair - NX-011979
Nebula II Prototype
“Sic Parvis Magna”
(Greatness From Small Beginnings)
“Fate, Fortune & Fire – Part II”
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The Nakadia system; a ruined planetary graveyard filled with the remains of shattered planets and cosmic corpses trapped within a dying star’s gravity. It was a place that had seen cataclysm before. The system’s star had gone Nova sending out a shockwave of destruction eons ago. The remnants of one of natures most violent and powerful events still persisted untouched by the passage of time. Hell had once touched this place. And now, eons later, the gates that had spawned such destruction were thrust open once again.
The dark reaper that had claimed planetary souls had returned however this time it had a hunger for the living. Several had fallen victim to hell’s harbinger. The crew of the Corsair had lost several of their own in the fight and still more would follow in the hours to come. With each passing minute the boundary that separated the world of the living from that of the eternally damned grew closer as the two realities intersected. The destructive contact and its effects would tempt the holiest of angles and empower the darkest of demons.
Blood had been spilled. NeoDyne had baited the waters. And now, with the waters red with the blood of those lost the sharks were beginning to gather. They circled their pray, waiting, watching for the perfect moment to strike. Strike they would. For one shark was hungry. His hunger at last knew no limits. All he could think about was sinking his teeth into the flesh of his mortal enemy and tearing them apart, one agonizing piece at a time.
The captain of the Corsair, his ship battered, his crew harmed, now craved revenge against an entity responsible for countless lives. His vision clouded by years of repressed anger and rage, Captain Taverain Ramius now had a taste for NeoDyne blood. Despite his dedication to duty and honor his rage had transcended reason and logic. His ship, nearly destroyed by NeoDyne subterfuge, demanded revenge as did he himself. His soul cried out for retribution and in this one instant of time he was unable to deny the fires that had burned within him for so very long.
Having devised a method to defeat the NeoDyne deflector system turned weapon, Captain Ramius was determined to exact some small measure of vengeance against his sworn enemy – the mega defense and medical research corporation known as NeoDyne. Having plotted an intercept course, the USS Corsair, her weapons armed and ready, bore down on the research station with speed. Only moments remained before her weapons came to bear on the station. The Corsair’s sacrifices demanded action and Ramius would ensure justice was served this day one way or another…
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[ Meanwhile – NeoDyne Research Facility ]
“I…DON’T KNOW”, Simms shouted from his station in response to the operation officer’s incessant questions. “I don’t know how they are moving against it!”
“STOP THEM”, the ops officer screamed. “Divert all power to the deflector beam!”
“I’ve reinforced the beam back to 85 percent capacity! It isn’t stopping them! I don’t understand!”
“SIMMS you idiot! Stop that starship! You have to stop it!”
“I…I CANT”, the nervous engineer shouted back.
All eyes suddenly faced the viewer as the Federation Heavy Cruiser loomed ever closer. Wounded, but undaunted, the starship charged the station with ferocious speed its silent approach on the station’s screen enthralling yet foreboding. Like a lion preparing to pounce on its prey; all the station personnel could do was watch as their momentary advantage disappeared like a puff of smoke into a brisk wind.
“SIMMS”, the ops officer screeched as the starship bore down upon them, “DO SOMETHING!”
The operations officer turned only to find the chief engineer’s chair empty. The occupant had abandoned his post. At this sudden revelation the station’s fate now appeared sealed. It had neither the weapons nor the defenses to hold off the full arsenal of a Starfleet heavy cruiser.
It was at that moment that panic gripped the operations center. Dozens of NeoDyne employees, not bound by the tenants of duty or military oaths, abandoned their stations and posts and fled in fear. Chaos reigned as the nerve center of the station quickly became a throbbing mass of personnel attempting to escape. At first the operations officer attempted to restore order, but he was quickly drowned out as voices, shouts, and screams filled the air with desperate urgency. With the only exit massively overloaded the operations officer could do nothing but stare at the viewscreen which displayed the incoming starship. The officer took a nervous breath and swallowed as the vessel closed the gap and entered weapons range.
Running to the tactical console the officer attempted to target the starship, but the phasers and disruptors were offline. The energy required to maintain the deflection beam and the shields was too great to charge the weapons at the same time. Despite the station’s high capacity generators there was not enough power available. Cursing the station and its systems, the officer hurled explicative’s at the console as he was forced to disengage the now useless deflector beam. Rerouting power to the shields, he boosted them to their maximum output. It was then his eye caught a system that had been overlooked. With the command center now virtually empty with the exception of only a handful of loyal employees still manning their stations, the officer simply hovered over the tactical panel and waited as the starship moved in to exact its retribution.
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[USS Corsair]
Officers coughed and choked as they carried on with their duties their eyes and throats raw from the lingering haze of burned wiring and equipment. A medical team treated the wounds of a downed bridge officer. Exposed wiring and cable snapped and crackled with life hanging from above or coiled like snakes on the blackened and soot covered carpet of the bridge. Despite their damaged stations, foul air, debris, and the cries of fellow crewmen injured in the line of duty – the bridge crew of the Corsair continued onward as did her captain.
Captain Ramius sat sprawled in his chair gripping its armrests his knuckles white from his harsh grasp. His uniform torn, a long laceration ran down his chest staining the fabric around it a dark red. His face, much like the rest of the crew’s was covered in sweat, grime, and soot. Despite his injuries the captain remained silent having refused treatment. He didn’t move and it seemed for a time that he wasn’t even breathing. His cold gaze simply remained locked on the NeoDyne station that filled the viewscreen.
First officer Novada, managing repair and medical responses, noticed Ramius’s silence, but was too engaged to immediately speak with the CO. With the bridge in disarray and severe hull damage to the Corsair’s outer saucer section she had her hands full ensuring proper attention was focused on repairs and the wounded.
Suddenly the viewscreen erupted in a flash of red as the station turned its limited arsenal against the Corsair in a vain attempt to stop its advance.
“Large scale energy emission from the station captain”, the battered operations officer shouted from his station. The ops officer suddenly turned to look at the captain his face filled with fear as Lt. Redstone at tactical yelled out an identification of the energy signature.
“INCOMING PLASMA TORPEDO!”
Ramius shouted at his chief engineer. “CAN WE TAKE IT KUSINAGI?”
“Problematic sir. I suppose we will find out”, was the engineer’s truthful but uncertain response.
“Tactical – lock all phasers onto the center of the torpedo and FIRE!”
All eyes were on the viewscreen as a pulsing mass of orange and red energy sped toward the Corsair. Phasers lit up the screen as they tore into the expanding plasma cloud attempting to blunt its impact.
“Ten Thousand Kilometers and closing fast”, the helmsman said as the ship shook and alarms sounded. Ramius returned to his chair bracing himself for the worst. “EMERGENCY REVERSE”, he shouted his body dropping into his command seat. He opened his mouth to order the shields reinforced, but given the terrible beating they had already sustained he knew such an order would be futile. Ramius was again helpless as the viewscreen filled with a deadly cloud of pulsating energetic plasma.
Those NeoDyne bastards had lured them in. Now they might succeed due to his insistence on closing in for an attack against his better judgment. His emotions, raw and exposed, had trumped his reason and now it seemed he would pay a price for the lapse. He sat motionless as the ship lurched backwards accelerating at maximum speed from the incoming cloud. If he somehow survived this he vowed not to make the same mistake again. He had to put the mission and the lives of his crew ahead of his own personal vendettas no matter how close they were to being realized. Endangering his life was his own choice, but endangering the lives of others; he could not blindly do so again assuming he was given the opporunity. He had neither the authority nor the right to ask such things of this crew who had already suffered far more under his command than they otherwise should.
“Twenty seconds to impact”, the helmsman shouted from his station.
“Can we move any faster”, Ramius quickly asked.
“Sublight engines at maximum. Warp drive is not responding. It doesn’t look like we can outrun it sir!”
[ To Be Continued … ]
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Captain Taverain Ramius
Commanding Officer, USS Corsair
Commander Alanis Novada
Executive Officer
Commander Sai Kusinagi
Chief Engineer
Lieutenant Alex RedStone
Chief Tactical Officer
Walter Simms
Neodyne Engineer
(all around coward)
