PLOT - JDL| Com Ivanova, CMDR Dahe'el, CAPT Neyes, CMDR Neyes, Ael'Riov Tr'Bak - "Flight of the Valkyries pt III"

Posted on 241511.23 @ 6:45pm by Commodore Rochelle Ivanova

As the Romulans swept by, the cloud of plasma and torpedoes that pressed into Vindicator's shields was massive. Like a swarm unmatched in size by anything the could have hoped to defend against, the storm crashed against the behemoth. The Commodore and the others on the bridge were tossed like ragdolls as Vindicator buckled under the brutal attack, her shields only able to deflect the very first of the onslaught. The failure of the shields was punctuated with a firestorm of green burning into the aft armor and hull of the Vindicator.

Landon was thrown back as the helm ignited in an outward blast toward the front of the bridge. A support beam moaned and dislodged as sparks and fire flashed across the bridge amidst the deep, explosive roar of destruction. One of the officers screamed as they were flung wide over the aft consoles, the deck bucking and pulling out from under them.

As quickly as the strike occurred, however, it was silenced. Alarms blared, fires burned, and smoke filled the room as the bridge crew of the Vindicator picked themselves up off the ground. The viewscreen flickered with the dim and broken lighting, showing the attacking fleet moving ahead of them.

"They're passing us, tracking on Enterprise!" The voice rose again.

Rochelle could only watch as the ships cruised past, nearly clipping the massive Vindicator with their cocky high speed maneuvers. Like a pack of wild dogs, they had only one thing in mind and the Vindicator obviously wasn't it. Tr'Bak was leveling his own field and she could hear the Vindicator's impulse engines struggling beneath the constant barrage of fire they were relatively helpless to defend again. "Give the Mogais everything we have. Concentrate on cutting the head off the snake!" She ordered, casting her eyes towards Landon.

"There's an overload building in the impulse driver fusion coil assembly. It fried our weapons arrays." Almar reported.

Mere heartbeats later, the Vindicator's engines would finally fail, leaving to coast to a stop without her thrusters and Rochelle felt her heart sink. They were simply prolonging the inevitable.

"Damnit!" Neyes yelled. "Impulse engines are gone!"

"Enterprise is breaking off! Six vessels in hot pursuit!" Someone shouted, and Rochelle didn't bother to try and identify the voice. The Odyssey was nothing more than a fading memory, battered and broken, she'd done the right thing by sounding the retreat while under constant pressure of the Romulan dog-ships constantly nipping at her proverbial heels - and Vindicator was once more left in the dark to face her own enemies.

Enemies that quickly came about to finish what had been started.

Neyes wiped blood from his forehead as he moved to another operational station, he pulled at a tear in his uniform which revealed a small burn. He quickly found sight of Rochelle who was moving well enough. The console resisted his efforts to pull up the damage report as he tapped the shattered glass on the screen. A series of warning icons and daunting numbers came up in flashing red and white. An entire deck was uninhabitable, and two crew-members were vented into space when eighteen sections across three decks were exposed to vacuum. He cursed quietly, trying to vet some of the more tactically relevant information to Ivanova.

Neyes began the list: "Hull breaches on decks twelve, nine and a big once stretching seven through four. Engines are a lost cause... Warp cores are all offline. There are structural micro-fractures across every deck. Emergency power is at 23 percent and the aft shields are destroyed. Most of the armor plating is gone."

Prying herself off a console, Rochelle cradled her left wrist against her diaphragm and waited for the throbbing within the joint to subside or be dulled by the adrenaline pounding in her veins. She could feel the deck plates creaking unsteadily beneath the pressure of her feather weight, hear the ship struggling to maintain itself, and the air had become hot, heavy, and pregnant with the promise of their demise. Landon didn't need to say it, she simply knew that life support would be the next thing to fail with the power threshold having fallen so low.

Swallowing her pride, Rochelle straightened to her full height and toed debris away from her path back towards the command chair. Something in her knee, however, refused to allow her leg to straighten the entire way it was meant to - another frustration.

"Captain, we're being hailed."

"Of course we are... On screen." She hissed, wincing as she lowered herself back into her seat.

Smoke filled the screen, colored by the flashing lights of an injured bridge. Tr'Bak wasn't his usual smiling self, even if his hair was miraculously and meticulously in place. If anything, the man appeared relieved to see the singed, soot smudged face of the little human Commodore. "You're dead in space, Commodore. No shields, no weapons, no impulse engines... No nothing." He began in a tired drawl, "Your life support is failing," the Romulan quickly noted, gesturing to an off screen monitor he was using, "and you? You just look a wreck. Is that blood on your lip?" His tongue tutted as his head shook slowly from side to side. "Surrender yourself and the remainder of your crew will be allowed to abandon ship. Refuse? And you leave me no choice but to finish you off. You have..." Tr'Bak sat back deeply into his chair and tapped his chin in thought, "five minutes to reach me with your decision, Rochelle."

She was shaking. Trembling, really, and even though the jewel encrusted evening gown she wore offered little by way of protection against the elements, it wasn’t that which set her skin to crawling and her body quaking, but rather the benevolent uprising of fear. While it wasn’t an emotion that the great Commodore Rochelle Ivanova often felt, it came to set upon her psyche during a chance wrinkle in time in which her entire world threatened to rupture and burn to cinders. Yes… She was most definitely afraid. It was a cold sensation that rippled deep in the pit of her belly before birthing itself, spreading like ice water through every vein, artery, and capillary in a violent search for her rapidly beating heart. All the while it seemed to laugh at the very way it caused each and every last one of her nerve endings to balk and shy away from such an alien stimuli, resenting the very texture of such a vehement reaction to the pariah that was war. She’d been bred for this. Born for this. Had never been bested at this… And yet there she sat, bleeding and shaken, staring a madman in the eyes as he, like a Fury, held her life string in his capricious hands and threatened to cut it short with a pair of golden sheers.

Taking a breath to answer him, Rochelle was quickly met by her screen snapping away from the Romulan's gloating visage and returning to the smug view of two Mogai resting just off the Vindicator's bow. The sound of her ship's hull groaning loudly over the screech of klaxons quickly reminded her that time was of the essence. "Turn off that God damned noise." She growled, tired of the alarm's constant and consistent reminder of the ship's injuries.

Her eyes closed briefly as her mind raced and her injured fingers pressed the nearest button she could find. Looking at Landon wasn't an option. "All hands, this is Commodore Rochelle Ivanova. Abandon ship, all hands abandon ship. This is not a drill. I repeat this is not a drill, proceed to the escape pods and abandon ship. Nearest enemy territory is planet Apsha, nearest friendly territory is Cold Station Theta, set navigational coordinates to two-eight-seven, mark four." For a moment there was silence as she sunk her teeth into her lower lip and shook her head, "Godspeed."

Neyes watched the three other officers help an injured off the bridge, a place normally staffed with more than a dozen ranking officers. It was a moment he had dreaded when he was Captain of the ship, now that it was Rochelle it was even worse. He moved over to her, pushing a fallen conduit away. The bridge was in shambles, and even if she wasn't about to pop like firecracker, it would take months if not more to repair the ship after this. Time wasn't on their side though, as the Romulans were readying to finish them off.

"Let's go, Commodore." Landon said, his voice bordering on an attempt at some kind of order. He knew what was coming.

"You were given an order, Captain," Rochelle's voice was hollow and dark as it sounded from somewhere deep in her chest, "As the commanding officer of this vessel, it's my obligation to see to it that all crew members depart before I even consider it." Finaly her eyes flashed up to meet his, silently begging him not to force the issue. Tr'Bak had struck a bargain, one far too tempting to resist once given the other options. "Take Commander Dahe'el and assist with the evacuation and see to it that you both are on one of those pods."

The rage surged within him as she spoke. He fought the desire to feel betrayed, because he knew she was right, but it was just like her to die needlessly at the off-chance it would mean more time for her crew to escape. His throat seized up as she addressed him with refined commanding presence. She was doing exactly what they both understood she would in this circumstance, and it made his blood boil anyway.

"Rochelle, please. We can mask the pod's signature and escape. I have plenty of tricks. Almar can find the crew. Don't do this... please don't do this."

Hearing him beg for her to reconsider tugged deeply and soundly at her already wounded heart. It sent pin pricks of heat across the tip of her nose and the depths of her eyes, threatening to betray her authority with the presence of tears. Instead she shook her head, "You will do as you're ordered."

Neyes gritted his teeth. "The hell I will. You're getting off this ship if I have to spend the rest of my life in a Federation prison for dragging you out."

An alarm sounded on a nearby console and they both were too preoccupied to mind it.

Collecting her legs beneath her, Rochelle rose in spite of the gripe and protest her wounded knee rose. Standing chest to chest with Landon, it was clear as day that she was hardly a physical match to fight him should he have chosen to follow through with his threat, but like the Vindicator had valiantly squared off against the Mogai, she'd be ready to give it her best shot if it meant protecting the integrity of the rest of the lives she held responsibility for. "Ael'Riov Tr'Bak gave me five minutes to make up my mind concerning his offer. I've done that. You and Almar need to go, Landon. I gave you both a direct order and I expect you to follow it."

"You're coming with us, Rochelle, you know we won't leave without you." Almar stated, eyeing the console with the alarm.

Landon was about to make good on his threat and save his family from the self-righteous dictations of the all-noble Starfleet doctrine Rochelle currently found herself mired in, when an alarm came over the broken computer.

Warning. Impulse reactor at critical containment threshold. Warning. Containment failure imminent.

Almar was at the ops console in a flash. "It's a cascade failure. The impulse reactor is about to overload, it'll blow a huge chunk out of our ship!"

Neyes went to grab for Rochelle, but it was too late. The damaged computer system didn't have the resources to give them the warning they'd have needed to get safely away. With a deafening pop and subsequent explosion, the impulse drive lost containment, releasing the energy of the fusion reactor to the surrounding hull. A cascade of secondary explosion ripped through the EPS network, tearing into the meat of Vindicator. From the Romulan ship, it probably looked like the Vindicator was finally finished. Fiery plumes of explosive energy turned out the shredded hull plating, sending debris and metal flying outward into space. Atmosphere vented from more decompressed sections of the ship as the power network overloaded, popping holes in every section of the ship.

A discharge of plasma arced through the bridge and struck between Landon and Rochelle, sending him flying backward, and collapsing the interior hull above them. Panels and conduits tumbled down over the Commodore as she instinctively shielded herself.

It was futile, if ever an act could be. While the worst of the sparks and burning hot debris bounced off her arms, the shock of the explosion and the heaviest of the falling pieces sent the diminutive Commodore crash to the deck beneath the burden. Unable to truly brace herself, and caught up in the momentum and drive of the explosion, she was treated to a few careless moments of complete and total weightlessness where time slowed down and she was able to see both Almar and Landon struggling against the same harrowing forces of physics she'd been ensnared by - until, like a rag doll, she hit the deck and her head rebounded off the sharp, twisted steel at the base of a console. There was a roar, a sickening and vicious roar that bellowed in her ears, something she'd later come to realize wasn't the sound of a secondary explosion but rather her own blood rushing to the point of a skull fracture as the world caved in around her and darkness curled its fingers over her senses, beckoning her to the wasteland of unconsciousness. Before long, she was buried alive by ceiling panels and shrapnel of all shapes, weights, and sizes.

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TO BE CONTINUED...
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Commodore Rochelle Ivanova
Commanding Officer
USS VINDICATOR, NCC 78213-E

Commander Almar Dahe'el
Executive Officer
USS VINDICATOR, NCC 78213-E

Captain Landon Neyes
Civilian Liaison
USS VINDICATOR, NCC 78213-E

Commander Tristan Neyes
Chief Counselor
USS VINDICATOR, NCC 78213-E

Ael'Riov Vrith tr'Bak
Commander, 3rd Tal Shiar Task Force
Romulan Star Empire