[snip]

“That lightweight?” Glen replied. “Did he save two Galaxies… twice? Is his ship the centrepiece of a museum in the future?” Cross seemed to hit a raw nerve.

OOC: YA know it IS kinda funny how much glen and company have done vs canon crews lol get it together canon folks! :P

Jaris liked Lt. Malone’s theory. Jaris nodded approval at Lt Malone. “I support Lieutenant Malone’s idea Captain.”

“I wish it would work, Jaris!” Glen replied. “…but can we really use the Transporter as a rope? I’m not a scientist and I’ve never heard of such a thing… and I’ve no idea about how it might work. If we are being held by the Transporter, using the Tractor Beam is out of the question. The Tractor Beam would be too strong… And we can’t use then use the Transporter to beam the survivor away because it would already be in use. Your thoughts please? …And time is of the essence!”

Over the comm a weak cough and wheeze came through, =/\= zztich mack? You still there? =/\= Came the man’s voice again. Sounding more out of breathe and struggling then he had before, clearly the man was at a critical point of losing consciousness from the failing air supply. =/\= It’s....funny zitchzzz see my Uncle Barbie out—zzitch window heh....heh coughs* =/\= And evidently was starting to hallucinate to boot.

=/\= We’re still here, my friend! Just finalising our plan to get you out of there. Hang in there, please! =/\=

=/\= R…right ok, good to still zitch –ear you again Charles, I thought you zitch –ead though? Least is cough cough what your wife said the other zzzchtch –ay. Your voice is different then I .....recall. coughs wheeze*…=/\= Daniels wheezed and coughed obviously getting more muddled by the second.

On hearing the man Cross turned to the Captain ‘’If you don’t take action immediately you know we’re going to lose him.’’ At this point Cross knew her place was in sickbay ,the ship was about to go into uncharted waters and sickbay needed to be prepared.

“I’m fully appraised of the situation, Doctor,” Glen told her. Socrates and Aristotle developed a word to describe Glen’s behaviour here. They called it Akrasia: the state of acting against your better judgment, or when you do one thing even though you know you should do something else. “As you informed me earlier, leaving him to die is still an option on the table!”

“We cannot wait any longer,” Glen announced. “Our procrastination will get him killed if nothing else. Lt. Mullins, can you tell me this idea of using the Transporter as a rope will work? If not then we’ll try my slingshot idea - we’ll take in the Merrimack at high velocity, getting as close to the vessel as possible, and beaming out the survivor as we pass by. I’m banking on us having sufficient velocity to exit again afterwards. I’m a pilot not a scientist, and this is what I can understand.”

=/\= Astrid Murdock, please come to the Bridge immediately. =/\=

Cross was about to leave ‘’Captain didn’t you say you had the appropriate gear just like the one the Lt we saved had? ‘’ she did not wait for an answer ‘’ You can take the ship as far as it could go ,someone from the crew would be tied and exit .The first part would be easier as he or she would be moving in the same direction of the spinning whirlpool that in itself would aid the person to easily reach the guy inside the vessel, putting on the same gear he’ll be taken out, not an easy feat by no means cause now he would have to hold on for dear life as we’ll have to aid him out of the center of the whirlpool along with the man in the vessel’‘.

The CMO stopped long enough to take a deep breath ‘’Once the two of them are near enough that’s when the transporter can get hold of them ‘’.

“ETS emergency transporter suits?” Glen asked. “The problem is that I mentioned those before I knew that this guy was buried under a tonne of rubble. There isn’t time to move it off him and to put a suit on him, and in any case, I’m not sending anyone else over to their certain death, not even if they volunteered. No, I think we have time to beam him out as we pass close by, without needing any fancy tricks. No problems about beaming him through the Shields either, since they don’t work here and are currently offline. We have no power problems and we should get a strong lock on him without the need for any enhancements. …This is all just more procrastination!”

When the doors of the Turbolift opened for Doctor Cross, Lt. Astrid Murdock stepped out onto the Bridge.

“Good afternoon,” Astrid said to Miriam, “Excuse me!”

Astrid walked down to the Captain’s chair.

“Hello Captain, how can I help?” Astrid asked.

“Please help Lt. Pokorski, thank you,” Glen told her.

“Aye Sir!” she replied.

“Lt. Pokorski,” Captain Glen instructed the Navigator, “Work together with Lt. Murdock. Lay in a elliptical course that will take us around the edge of the whirlpool in the same direction that it turns. I want a trajectory with a parabolic path, so that the closest point is directly opposite that vessel, and with just enough velocity that we won’t get caught ourselves but should get ejected again. If I remember my Flight School coursework correctly, we need just the tiniest characteristic energy to achieve a minimum-energy escape trajectory. Insufficient energy and we’ll never escape from the central body. Too much and we’ll never get close enough to the vessel but shoot off on some hyperbolic course instead, and we can say goodbye to Daniel Cornwellis because we won’t get a second chance at this. Be ready on my mark!”

“Aye Sir!” said both Pokorski and Murdock together.

“I’ve made my decision.” Glen told the Bridge crew. Fancy tricks by jury-rigging Transporters as tethers were untried and uncertain. Orbital mechanics and astrodynamics was proven.

For Cross it seemed the Captain was gambling with jeopardizing the lives of the crew ,she simply shrugged her shoulders and finally left heading to sickbay.

Captain Glen could see that he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. Leadership was always a heavy weight to carry. No one could be prepared for every situation,
crisis, or circumstance that might befall a Captain in deep space. However, they had no time to reconfigure Transporter or tractor beams as tethers. By the time they had achieved that, Cornwellis would be dead.

He could see that Murdock and Pokorski had laid in the flight plan, so he gave his signal to begin the tricky manoeuvrer.

• Glen, CO

With the decision made the Merrimack shot forward, angling in on a tight curve to go with the flow of the whirlpool. Closing on full impulse the ship began to get buffetted more and more by the gravitic turbulence the closer they got. Getting to 150 meters some lighting plasma strikes arced along the hull from bow to stern. But their hull polarity kept them safe from the worse of it. Overall integrity was down to 87%.

With the ship closing fast they soon were within now 100 meters, attempts on a transporter lock were about 50/50 from this point. But as the chief engineer said the closer to the ship they got the higher the results. Pushing through a thick helium and hydrogen gas cloud they found micro sized remains of sucked in smaller bits of the Trudograd. Most got pushed aside by their deflector array, but a slightly large piece about the size of the nose of a shuttle hit on the forward bow to port along deck 3 near the inactive shield emitters 1-2. Minor damage was reported to the emitters but since they weren’t in use they had nothing to worry over and repairs would be easy enough to handle. As they cleared the cloud cover they were at the 75 meter mark. Chances had by this point risen to a solid 60-65%.

The turbulence and various forces of gravity on the ship were making every movement or motion like the whole ship was vibrating to a dangerous degree, stress along the outer hull on all decks was approaching 103% over normal tolerances. There was also some heavy creaking and groaning all over the ship no doubt of the flexing metals. Hull polarity was down to 71% but otherwise no issues yet arose. As they finished clearing the cloud bank, they could now make out the eye of the storm, the damaged disabled cargo ship was 40 meters off their port bow while they kept up their maneuvers through the inner/outer most areas beyond the ‘eye’. Scans confirmed at this distance that a rip in subspace had been made, a semi-stable wormhole in fact but with an opening on either end that was not much bigger then the damaged ship in question. The gravitic sucutation it was outputting was massive outside the core eye that the damaged ship was in. Groaning and creaking sounds echoed louder and even keeping a steady view on their work was getting hard. But as they began their slingshot pass to loop counter to their approach around the whirlpool at 30 meters they had as good a lock at 92% as they likely would get.

Once the order was given for transport there was a brief dimming of lights on the bridge and elsewhere as it engaged but then through shaking breath the chief reported. =/\= W..w....we got him c…captain! Un…unconscious but a....aa.a..alive! G…getting him tt....ttt....to sickbay now! =/\= Their transport complete the ship arc through the whirlpool now approaching the 1 to 12 o’clock mark in passing their acceleration was put much higher closing on .31c much MUCH faster then their normal .25 outputs. A sort of strained howling like sound was felt through the entire ship’s structure but as they finished their loop and break away that extra speed was what gave them the solid push to easily overcome the gravity effects present. Completing the maneuver in what felt like probably 30+ minutes of vibration as they came out of the loop and effects of the whirlpool they quickly slowed down to normal .25c or less. They were about 400 meters once under control from where they had been before still within The Honeypot on the opposite quarter from where they had originally entered. Exiting it would be easy now not more then a few minutes. Once clear it would be an even easier 15 minute warp back to DS K-5.

All in all as things calmed down, damage was overall quite light comparatively to most things the Merrimack crew had done in recent years. Shield emitters 1/2 would need an alignment maintenance and test done but that shouldn’t take much more then 20 minutes or so to do. From there a few hours of basic diagnostics to check power regulation and revert back to normal shield usage and they would be in tip top order for whatever was to come next.

5 Hours Later - Deep Space K-5

Now 5-hours later the Merrimack was once more safely back in her docking port at K-5. Daniels had survived his near brush with death, and while he would likely have to remain in recovery on the station for a few more days eventually he could be transported back to his home Risan colony. Further K-5 had brought in several survey ships to remap out The Honeypot to evaluate if it was still safe for mining gathering and if so where to lay marker buoys. This though was not of the Merrimack’s concern. With the loss too of the Trudograd, a fleet wide notice was given out to all ship Captains and crews reminding of the dangers of nebulas, even those appearing more ‘safe’ and ‘well used/explored’. Notes and refinements were made on procedures for all ships doing so to have hull polarity adjustments at hand for use, and to refine scanning packages to look for more explosive reactions like those that had taken out the Trudograd.

For their effort the Merrimack was hailed for their heroic rescue by Risan authorities and the entire crew were gifted a non-expiring ticket for up to 6 days and 5 nights with all expenses paid for on Risa or any of its colonies for R&R/Leave. Further Starfleet finally recognizing the need to rotate the Merrimack crew off their frontline stations granted the entire crew the next 8 weeks off ship assignments/leave to do as they wished.

==End sim!==

OOC: Note next sim will start about 2 months after this current sim in character time so feel free to rp what you all wish!

GM CockRoach