Posted by Vice Admiral CockRoach (GM) in Main Sim - Bridge
[snip]

The last (aka first) ship still hot on their tail 15 meters back dipped quickly below their underbelly and fired another round from their plasma cannon, this time focusing again on their deflector dish. The lances of fire struck home again along the under bellow around the array housing. More shudders went through the hsip and an aft console on the bridge flickered then sparked out from an overload. Polarization in the area was now down to 62% with moderate hull buckling and damage to the array’s secondary systems and alignment. The misalignments would take time to fix, if they had to go to warp though they would probably be capped at 1.8 or so at best.

This though seemed to be the last mobile ship’s plan as it completed its strike it began to put all power into their impulse reaction to get clear of the planet and system. Obviously abandoning their comrades to whatever fate was to befall them. Also on scans the third ship they had first disabled was showing engine damage to the point where soon their orbit would decay and they would burn up in the planet’s atmosphere. Life signs showed 18-20 humans on board plus the one to three signatures that might be the enslaved native humanoids in the shielded cargo hold.

The third ship meanwhile was also adrift but not near the planet’s orbit. It however, was mostly dead in the water and powerless, emergency life support was online but otherwise without power. 24 human life signs were picked up.

On the screen the first ship was quickly accelerating to get away, they could leave the second ship to its fate to burn up on reentry to go after the first ship, or save the second ship but let the first get away, they only had time for one of those choices.

GM CockRoach

Shortly a call came from Engineering in a thick Russian accent. =^= Ensign Gagarin to Bridge. Damage control parties are en route. We note sensor array damage from here. Estimated time for repair is coming. Power and engines are on line. =^=
- NE Gagarin, Eng

Marceau made a quick decision. “Laursen, go after the ship in the atmosphere. Security try to grapple them. They’ll all die if we don’t. They deserve a trial, not a terrible death.”

“Aye Sir,” Helena didn’t like the idea of letting the lead ship get away, but she liked the idea of letting those people die even less. Certainly not with any natives they were hiding on board. They were so close to being home to have them die in orbit was unconscionable. Sojourner banked and turned back towards the planet. Luckily the Lunar Rover class was designed to make atmospheric entry, even if it couldn’t land. “It’s going to be a bit bumpy trying to hook the grapple if that cargo ship starts bouncing around in the turbulence.” Sojourner was calm and steady, but she couldn’t do anything about the cargo ship. “Sliding into grappling range in 3… 2… 1.”

“Grace get a lock on their trajectory. We’ll report them to command. Conlon I want their transponder codes and any signals they try to send before they are out of range.”
“Noted,” Aiden replied, getting to work on the requested information. “I’ll do my best.”

“Already tracking,” Heather said spinning around in the chair to the backside of the science station and looking through the scope.

“Security prep a shuttle and prepare to board them. Grace tell Medical to prep to go with them. El, get someone on that hull breach on B and C Deck.”

~ Capt Renault

OOC: Technically the grapple can only handle 15 tons .. but .. inset technobabble (at least from the armory thread)

OOC: You are right lol but our smart engineer in the other thread as you said beat me to posting that need. I’m also assuming you angle the ship to use both grapplers to also help vs just the one on the bottom of the ship (see spec to get what i’m saying!)

=^= El to bridge. Try your grapple but be gentle on the cabling. I have reinforced the strength of the hull around the grapple’s foundation. I hope. =^=
- El, the Rebellious Engineer ..

Heather looked up from the scope long enough to tap the comm relay at her station. [O]Bridge to Sickbay. Medical team to the launch bay. Prepare to receive casualties.[O]

Cmdr. Grace - XO / CSO

Ensign Aiden Conlon Linguist/Comms Officer

With the ship angled port side on to the slowly falling ship, all four grapple lines (two per launcher!), shot out and latched onto the cargo ship in its decaying orbit. The initial pull was such that their helm officer would have to fight for control for a moment or so. But once things stabilized, and with the reinforcements from their engineering team (armory thread), the strain on the lines as they snail paced crawled back into a more stable orbit was well over 120% rated tolerances but it seems the lines had more leeway to give then their specifications were written, a good thing to note really. After a painful slow return to a stable orbit the want to be pirate/slaver cargo ship crew were back in a stable orbit. They were well and truly though disabled and given their damage no doubt hopefully wouldnt put up much of a fight once the security teams went over.

As they would prepare to do so, a crackled audio comm hail came in, =/\= zitch static —urrender, repeat we surrender, Sojourner. I told my parents this was a stupid idea......=/\= A tense younger sounding voice said.

Meanwhile the third ship a bit away and on emergency power was equally helpless, and ready to be pulled in for return to Earth.

OOC: Since I really need to wrap this up for a break I really need to take i’m gonna gloss over with a short time skip to finish this now. If anyone wants to side sim boarding and securing during my break feel free, basically both crews would give up without a fight and both cargo ships were pretty much junk without major repair work that couldnt be done in the field.

==3 Days Later==

It was three days later, during this time the Sojourner crew had subdued the want to be slaver/pirate cargo crews without problem. Both ships were pretty much beyond any repair or use further. The crew would find on the third ship they rescued from a fiery death in orbit 2 of the primitive alien creatures. One male and one female. Both were showing clear signs of unethical medical and scientific study by the small team on the ship. The younger members of the crew quickly were to plead guilty of the crimes their older members had done. Essentially 10 or so months back all three cargo ship’s senior staff and family members had indeed been using this system as a way point for R&R but during their last bout here they had discovered the primitive aliens and found they were quite handy for manual labor work. The senior members had quickly saw their use in less savory market connections they knew of and taken several for evaluation up to this ship. At the same time the first ship that had escaped discovered several alien ruins on the planet, they found ways to use its superior technology to mask electrical functions and operations or drain their use quickly this way they hoped to dissuade anyone else from taking their prime spot for workers, and they surmised future mining rights.

With this information in hand the Sojourner was able to find a small alien satellite structure on the first planet, and using the cooped signal able to shut it down for future study. They also were able to safely return the two alien members to their home on the surface. Because both cargo ships were disabled their eventual report back to Earth eventually gave them a delayed response that a Vulcan cruiser would be diverted to the system to tow both cargo vessels back to Earth as well as take possession of the crews. The Sojourner meanwhile was given orders to return to Earth as well for some repairs and resupply.

==2 Months Later==

After a return trip and brief layover around Luna, the Sojourner was eventually back up to specs. Startfleet engineering Corp took note of the failure of weapons systems, and of the alien parasite they had killed. A thorough scan of the ship and others in Sol was then undertaken were two cargo ships from other places had been found to be the origin point.

Finally the mix up of supply shipments that had netted them their half trained MACO service dog at first was pushed by the MACO Corp to return it. But eventually upon a brief visit they determined that the dog’s time aboard the Sojourner had likely ruined her worth to be trained more in depth for combative search and rescue roles, so they gave her up to the crew for safe keeping. But for future missions it seems Starfleet wanted to test the waters on assigning a squad of MACOs to the Sojourner hence for their next outing they would have a single officer with 7 non-coms assigned to the ship.

==End Sim==

OOC: sorry for the quick wrap up everyone but i REALLY need to take a break for a week or so without worrying about stf otherwise I risk burning out fully with stuff going on in my life right now and that doesnt help any of us. Hope you understand! As noted next sim we’ll have MACO’s onboard, if by chance we get any players who want to play such let me know, otherwise they’ll be NPC’s

GM CockRoach

Thanks muchly Rob!! I had cough thought there were MACO’s on board but guess they were security. My bad. I have two brief bios and MACO characters done up, more the non-coms at this time but have them.
-Gene