Episode 1: In the Eye of the Maelstorm
~~Turn 1~~
USS Fortune shook as yet another blast of the plasma cannon ravaged its shields and the energy wave smashed against the polyneutrionium hull. The people on the bridge barely managed to keep sitting in their chairs. The starship was really unprepared for a sneak attack, not to even mention one performed by a S'Vadar-class Battlehawk
@Commanding Officer:
To think that all this began because of slight navigational error and the fact that Cytorians never bothered to mark the ALS-2048c system as their territory...
But now that's the least of the problems. The officers will need guidance in this situation, and the Damage Report already listed minor damage in some areas; the Battlestations got badly hit.
@Science Chief:
Science Chief could notice that the part of the computer network, namely the shield control unit, was being probed - the Cytorian officers must be attempting to disrupt the shields.
@Tactical Officer:
At the Battlestations, the main tactical console beeped loudly - the Cytorian Warhawk just launched four plasma torpedoes that will deal tremendous damage to the ship's front sections if no evasive actions will be taken.
Officers:
CO: On the Bridge
CMO: In the Sickbay, 10/10 Redshirts
TO: At the Battlestations, 10/10 Redshirts
SC: In the Science Lab, 10/10 Redshirts
CE: In the Main Engineering, 10/10 Redshirts
USS Fortune:
Bridge: fully operational
Battlestations: moderately damaged (-1):
Misaligned tertiary laser lensing system in port laser turret
Blown-up secondary combat thrusters' fuse panel
Melted-down secondary power relay in the targeting computer
Power fluctuations in third laser battery
Misaligned power conduit under the floor
Severed secondary laser amplification power cable
Sickbay: damaged:
Bio-monitor #16 not functional
Surgery arm jammed sideways
Lock on the fourth painkiller supply cabinet jammed
Science Lab: fully operational
Main Engineering: damaged:
Moderate coolant leak from tertiary cooling pipe
Cracked energy pylon #3 in the auxiliary control panel
And tell the Tactical Officer I want full evasive maneuvers! Use the Highlian Thrust technique, mastered by Corporal Shenanigan in the ReVectiod Wars!"
Tactical Officer gets +1 to his rolls for this turn.
Fire gibberish beams at random stuff in the sick bay in an effort to fix something the jammed surgery arm!
[Roll: 4 (+1 Sickbay, -2 Field: Engineering) = 3] The jammed surgery arm became more responsive to computer input, but it was still jammed. The repair has failed.
"Power the sidethrusters! Activate the free-borne equilibrium neutralizer, you lazy bastards! All gyro-pounders to full bore and get us the hell out of their tracking fields, now!"
[Roll: 2 (+1 CO bonus, +1 Battlestations, +1 Technobabble, -1 Damage) = 4] Due to the latency of malfunctioning computer unit somewhere on the ship, the tactical input was one second later than anticipated. The maneuver of course will be performed, but the thrusters might 'catch on' too late.
"Troubling. Crewman! Pulse the hadron field and loop the feedback conduits! Deny them entry at all costs!"
[Roll: 2 (+1 Science Lab, +1 Technobabble) = 4] The hadron matrix have been pulsed and the feedback were put in place, but it was evident that some of the enemy codes went through. Two of six shield inducers began flashing yellow on the master console, signalling they were just disabled and need some time to recharge. This will considerably lower shield strength for a brief moment.
Reroute the ultramonic gene flux through pylons four and two laterally, and psorgify the end contacts, stat!
[Roll: 5 (+1 Main Engineering, +1 Technobabble) = 6+] The rerouting and psorgifying allowed the problem to be bypassed and the pylon safely went offline. It now can sit inside the console and doesn't hamper the engineer's work until it gets replaced at nearest starbase.
Not only that, but the this power rerouting also improved energy flow to the shield inducers, which boosted the currently weakened set with some extra power.
~~Turn 2~~
The ship veered to the starboard and thrusters boosted in one large pulse.
It wasn't enough to allow the ship evade all the plasma torpedoes - two have missed, and two struck the shields near the bridge. Fortunately, extra boost of the energy absorbed the otherwise destructive energy. The ship was rocked and some crewmen lost balance, but no damage occured.
@Chief Medical Officer:
"This is teleporter room number four; we've got some plasma-burn victims taken to us from the battlestations, prepare for emergency teleportation." Just as the operator finished speaking, six people appeared on the med-beds with flash of light; their uniforms were charred and their skin burned into charcoal at several large spots. If they won't be treated soon, they shall die.
@Tactical Officer & Science Officer:
The warhawk's signal suddenly disappeared from both the tactical and subspace sensors at Battlestations and Science Lab; the enemy starship activated it's cloaking shields. This means that ship is almost impossible to locate, but also that its shields are down; the enemy might be recharging its weapons before another strike...
Officers:
CO: On the Bridge
CMO: In the Sickbay, 10/10 Redshirts
TO: At the Battlestations, 10/10 Redshirts
SC: In the Science Lab, 10/10 Redshirts
CE: In the Main Engineering, 10/10 Redshirts
USS Fortune:
Bridge: fully operational
Battlestations: moderately damaged (-1):
Misaligned tertiary laser lensing system in port laser turret
Blown-up secondary combat thrusters' fuse panel
Melted-down secondary power relay in the targeting computer
Power fluctuations in third laser battery
Misaligned power conduit under the floor
Severed secondary laser amplification power cable
Sickbay: damaged:
Bio-monitor #16 not functional
Surgery arm jammed sideways
Lock on the fourth painkiller supply cabinet jammed
Science Lab: fully operational
Main Engineering: damaged:
Moderate coolant leak from tertiary cooling pipe
"Trying to hide, eh? It's no use you twats, I don't need light to see! Quick, men! Fire off a high intensity omni-directional gamma burst and search for rebounds through the radon scanner! I want a lock on their location stat!
"Sir! We have the Science Officer on the line!"
"About friggin' time! Run it through the isotope spectrometer, they may have reengineered their visual abnormalizers to give a negative positive about their ship's location, otherwise!"
Science Officer Dermonster gets +1 to his rolls this turn!
Replace the burnt skin of the crewmembers with liquid exo-plasmoid matrices extracted from live blogumites to boost their midi-chlorian half-lifetitudeinalism.
[Roll: 1 (+1 Sickbay, +1 Technobabble) = 3] Unfortunately, the exo-plasmoid matrices reacted with leftover stains of plasmaricideochlorianoblontasium from the burns, and the bodies of the wounded began to melt down. Soon there was just a pile of acidic, half-liquid sludges and skeletons on the bed. Oops.
Turns out that one of the wounded was a Redshirt serving under Tactical Officer Nosten Nostovar. Double oops.
Hyper-charge the pneumatic launch strip, disengage the munitions airlock and dump a big steaming payload of MK-7 trans-directional tracking mines between us and the last-known location of the enemy ship!
[Roll: 3 (+1 Battlestations, +1 Technobabble, -1 Damage) = 4] With a gritty sound of friction of metal against metal, the mines were launched into the space. Soon, explosions filled the space as the enemy starship began to flicker for a moment, way to the galactic left from the last position, and as soon as the particle disturbance from explosions passed away, the ship was invisible again.
"Trying to hide, eh? It's no use you twats, I don't need light to see! Quick, men! Fire off a high intensity omni-directional gamma burst and search for rebounds through the radon scanner! I want a lock on their location stat!
[Roll: 2 (+1 Science Lab, +1 CO Bonus, +1 Technobabble) = 5] Using the radon scanner coupled with the isotope spectrometer allowed a detection of trail of spatial anti-neutrinos which propably came from the quasi-quarkian posimatrices of the enemy vessel. If the trail was any indication, it seemed that the Battlehawk was making a lengthy, arching approach from the starboard to under USS Fortune.
Re-infulctufy the broken pylon to create a di-nepulsoid inverse bubblespace field, which should di-lapse the enemy Kringoid Engines, collapsing their cloaking!
[Roll: 2 (+1 Main Engineering, +1 Technobabble) = 4] The di-lapsation only lasted for few seconds, during which the other vessel showed up on the tactical and science scanners for several seconds, and the trajectory of said Warhawk did correlate with the trail of anti-neutrinos. The enemy was indeed trying to get 'under' USS Fortune!
~~Turn 3~~
The enemy ship was still under cloak...
@Tactical Officer:
...but the Tactical Officer could easily see that the signature of anti-neutrinos was still making its way under the ship. It seems that the Cytorians were unaware of the sensor tracking their exhaust.
@Science Officer:
One of the power distribution console operators approached his officer.
"Commander Dermonster, sir, I believe that if we use the risky 3rd tachyonic configuration of polymetroid capacitors, we could bypass the Melted-down secondary power relay in the targeting computer and Misaligned power conduit under the floor in Battlestations and thus improve our chances against the sneaky Cytorians, but I believe that if something goes wrong, this might collapse the entire power network to our laser turrets and leave us unable to respond to attacks for a moment..."
@Chief Engineer:
Suddenly, one of the side damage control consoles shot some sparks and went dark. Must've been power burst or something... still, not a major loss.
Officers:
CO: On the Bridge
CMO: In the Sickbay, 10/10 Redshirts
TO: At the Battlestations, 9/10 Redshirts
SC: In the Science Lab, 10/10 Redshirts
CE: In the Main Engineering, 10/10 Redshirts
USS Fortune:
Bridge: fully operational
Battlestations: moderately damaged (-1):
Misaligned tertiary laser lensing system in port laser turret
Blown-up secondary combat thrusters' fuse panel
Melted-down secondary power relay in the targeting computer
Power fluctuations in third laser battery
Misaligned power conduit under the floor
Severed secondary laser amplification power cable
Sickbay: damaged:
Bio-monitor #16 not functional
Surgery arm jammed sideways
Lock on the fourth painkiller supply cabinet jammed
Science Lab: fully operational
Main Engineering: damaged:
Moderate coolant leak from tertiary cooling pipe
Damaged and disabled side damage control console #2