[snip]

“Yes sir,” Sadie muttered, quivering slightly while madly typing and scanning and trying various simulations to see if anything might work to close the rifts. “If we fired a tachyon stream, what would that do?” she wondered quietly to herself, trying it out in a simulation.

The simulation showed that on its own just the tachyon beam would only increase their problems, which wouldnt be a good thing. Maybe running a simulation doing the same with an anti-tachyon beam would be a possible lead?

Noticing that was not a good idea, the science officer quickly switched out for an anti-tachyon beam in her simulation, seeing if that was a good solution.

Chris was already tapping away at his console, routing power from minor, currently unneeded systems in order to help facilitate the recharge of their shields. It didn’t matter how minor the system to him, any additional power could be the difference between life and death. “Shields holding steady so far Captain; No damage to the hull plating .. though I would recommend not taking any more hits like that.” Nothing had penetrated the shields yet so far, but the several engineering teams were on standby, waiting to repair any damage. He ensured that Tactical had a bit more power than required for the weapons in case they were needed. He paused his routing, allowing the power to slowly start charging as he flexed his hand for a moment to stop it from the slight shake it developed from the attack.

On the tactical readouts the Merrimack’s movements had gotten 8 of the smaller craft to break off, avoiding the returning barrage of the Ark Angel, the smaller ships soon sped up outpacing the larger Starfleet ship, moving in to engage the Merrimack which at just over 80,000km engaged the ships. Their own phaser fire and torpedoes struck out, lancing along one of the ships sending it into a tail spin, while another burst of fire and torpedoes damaged but didn’t destroy another trio.

Tiglath, was watching the smaller ships break off. He hoped to keep them closer together, quickly modified the phaser array’s to fire short bursts. He hoped that by fire shorter, faster bursts at the ships, especially if he aimed for the ships near the edge of their formation, would keep them closer together, which would allow torpedoes to destroy more of them with less shots.

Behind the Ark Angel the larger 800m long mushroom like organic ship ballooned open again at the front launching a barrage of organic like ‘thorns’ again at the Ark Angel. Phaser fire when sent out would take care of 12 of the incoming objects, but another 8 still broke through and struck the length and breadth of the aft shielding knocking it down to 72%.

As Chris began to reroute power he would get an alert by a damage control team on deck 42 that engineering maintenance lab 3 had been sealed off due to a minor hull breach, no reports came in of loss of life thankfully, but NE Ber’cal one of the Romulan refugees that had been serving on the Ark Angel for almost 3 years now was being taken to Sickbay for plasma burns.

Almost as if just reading aloud just to keep the Captain informed of the status he continues to route power to the different positions to their shields depending on their orientation to their enemy. “Minor damage on Deck 42, damage control are already on site. Aft shields holding steady at 72%.” He looked up toward Lt. (jg) Tiglath, “Tactical, how’s your power? Do the phaser array’s require any more?”

“I think we are ok, I’m trying to modify the phasers to fire faster, shorter bursts, I’m trying to force these small fighters closer together. Can you help?” He asked with out looking up from his console. He was working as fast as he could to try and prevent the fighters from spreading out.

OOC: Sorry for my late reply D: Don’t mean to use it as an excuse, but work is literally driving me to wits end.

OOC: I feel your pain :P Job hunting is the same boat for me plus doing volunteer work stuff!!

Chris took a second to glance and assess the current way things were going from an engineering perspective. Shields were still okay for now, minor damage, core systems protected, emergency protocols still in place and, but not active. The ship was holding together, she could spare a bit of energy. “Transferring some from auxiliary. Should shorten the time to charge the arrays for what you need.”

While tactical was busy firing weapons, reports also came in of enemy boarding parties on various decks phasing in by some kind of quantum fissure rather then transporters. Lastly, the smaller enemy ships remaining strafed through the Ark Angel’s dorsal quarter under the saucer bringing down those shields from 100% to 92%.

”..Helm bring us to 017 Mark 229. On my mark -40 degrees Z axis! Tactical arm a burst of quatum torpedoes from the forward tube with full phaser fire…” She said, as the ship began to move she snapped “..Helm mark!” She said.

“Ready Captain.” He armed the torpedoes and put them on a floating lock, until the order to fire is given.

The Ark Angel slightly lurched like a heavy whale to port and then down on an angle, throwing off the smaller enemy ship’s attack pattern, the larger ship even bigger and ungainly then the Ark Angel, shot past exposing its rear sections to the Ark Angel as the ship came back to a forward motion. “..Tactical fire!” she ordered.

Tiglath quickly adjusted to targeting computer and fired.

“Lt. Sadie, figure out how to close those fissures! Lt. Trainor! Scan the ship, find the Serpents and activate the fire suppression foam in those areas. Lock down the security bulkheads and then flood the compartments with Halon 1301. Security! Have all teams engage thermal imaging! It’s about to get really foggy where they are at.” Cochrane said as the Ark Angel banked and launched it’s own barrage at the rear section of the Serpent’s main ship.

“Scanning the ship now, Captain!” Lieutenant Trainor called out. The OPS officer had been coordinating re routing power to the various systems with the CE, and had switched his attention over to scanning for the aliens. He was about to pin point a few locations via the fire fights occurring around the ship, but the Lieutenant would have to rely on internal sensors to find those not engaged with the crew.

As the XO’s orders happened Trainor was thankfully easily enough able to locate the current boarding parties. The first group was near Arboretum 3 while the second was manual launch controls for the fore/aft torpedo launchers handling the red matter modified torpedoes. Could it be the Serpents knew or could detect the threat the Red Matter presented? Though why they were near Arboretum 3 was anyone’s guess!

The XO’s further orders for the fire suppression system also began, the effect was quite immediate the emergency coolant foams washing over the more larger snake like Serpents had them slow to almost a crawl, while the more half humanoid/snake like ones seemed a bit more sluggish in their movements.

Meanwhile on tactical the Merrimack and joined the fight in ernest currently breaking into an evasive pattern fighting several of the smaller ships. Their shields after some exchanges were down to roughly 68% with minor bleed through to their Rodium armor plating along the hull, which for now at least was handling the impacts. In turn the larger mushroom like Serpent ship 10,000km now ahead the Ark Angel had banked slowly to port exposing its port side as it came about. Suddenly several ‘slits’ along its side opened hued a blue-green tone launching a rapid burst of 12 spherical bursts at the Ark Angel.

Drudoc’s eyes seemed to take this in and she gripped her captain’s chair snapping out. “..Temporal shields NOW! Helm emergency evasive to starboard!!” it seems Trainor’s temporal shield charging modifications with engineering earlier to switch from normal to temporal would be put to the test as the deadly devices raced in....

“Pulling up temporal shielding now, Captain!” The OPS Officer called out. He was hoping to see a serpent or two in action, but knew he fared better away from the coolant foam.

Sadie finished her analysis, grasping onto her chair as the ship rocked. “Captain, I think I might be near a solution!” she exclaimed.

No sooner had she spoke then Sadie’s report came back, an anti-taychon pulse from the main deflector on a broad spectrum band would likely have a high chance of countering whatever was emitting the dimensional portal.

Chris was going full throttle keeping everything balanced as the comm at his station chirped in:

=/\= NE Jameson to Chief Emmitt. W-we’re down here in the torpedo room sir.. Deck 36. NLt Pavarnick says we’ve been boarded? T-there’s only 4 of us here sir .. please send help! =/\=

His concern for the Engineers immediately stopped him in his tracks for a moment. They needed a security team, they weren’t trained for anything like this. He replied to the Engineers, if anything to keep them calm and focused. They should be in Torpedo room one .. The second room was a bit of a distance away, but who knows how many of the serpents just boarded? He hit the comm button.

=/\= Ensign this is the Chief. Use the override and change the settings for the torpedo room to use all of Torpedo room 1’s torpedoes first! You’ll need to pull the panel off the loading sequencer to get access to it. We might have a delay in the firing sequence, but we can’t let any of those torpedoes get damaged. I’ll alert Tactical and Security. Help is on the way guys, stay safe. =/\=

He remotely started to enter some of the system for Torpedo room two and started the lockdown procedure as well. It would stall whoever tried to access it, but at least it would provide some time for Security to get down there to hopefully secure the area.

As he was scrambling across his panel trying to keep everything going and secure the torpedo control center and the second room he mentioned aloud. “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news Tiglath .. but we’re about to have a delay in our torpedo firing sequence here soon. Should be about .. a second or two after initiation. Damnit ..” The switch to the temporal shielding took a portion of their power that he ensured the normal shields would maintain a consistent charge away that he had anticipated on keeping for the reserves. A switch back would take another portion of it as well. It couldn’t be helped, better to run a bit low on power than to be dead, he’d have to find a way to compensate for it. As long as the warp reactor was working he’d have power. “We have to use all the torpedoes in torpedo room one first.” He spoke up a bit louder to get the Captain’s attention, “Captain. I’m getting reports from Engineering on Deck 36. I think during the switch in shielding they managed to get a transport in. We’ve been boarded. Unknown number of assailants.”

Tiglath thought quickly. “Try taking power from the aft phaser array.” He suggested then looked at the captain. “Sir, permission to take a security team down.”

”..Get moving lieutenant…” Drudoc said, as the ark Angel banked hard, and just in time the temporal shields came online again a split second before the temporal torpedo impacts. The ship shuddered and shields were reduced further to 62% but they were still in temporal sync with this time period and reality....plus existing so that was good!

On screen too the Merrimack meanwhile was banking to a z-axis aiming for an out of system warp jump, drifting from a forced ejection of their shuttle bay was one of their XO’s subspace bombs he had concocted. Drudoc seeing this spoke up, “..Helm emergency warp out of the system now!” Then as NE Vills took over the tactical station she added, “..Fire Red Matter torpedoes full spread to detonate on that bomb!” She said.

With that final command given the ship lept to warp as on sensors a massive shockwave was picked up with the system, the subspace interference masking any outcome of the coupled weapon’s impacts together.

GM CockRoach