Duct tape doubles

Posted on Sun Apr 5th, 2015 @ 7:38pm by Langar Tarn & Jan Valentine & Walter Jones & Charlotte Ashcroft & Bruce Air (PNPC)

2,093 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Session 7: Changes
Location: Warden; Warden's Shuttles & Rhino Ship

[ON]

[Shuttle bay]

Langar strapped himself into the co-pilots seat of the Warden's shuttle and prepped the weapons systems, while Tape-Bruce ran through the pre-flight checklist 

Langar glanced out of the windscreen and could see Lotte and Tape-Jan getting aboard the Peregrine shuttle.

 "Right, system check complete, engines spooling up, you familiarizing yourself with the targeting system?" T-Jan said, interfacing with the onboard computers.

"Yep, standard Cardassian type, should be able to handle this ok" He agreed, then Langar activated the comm system

=*= Langar to Bridge. We're ready to launch as soon as you catch up to those thieving bastards! =*=  

He turned back to Tape-Bruce "You do know we wouldn't have to be doing this, if you'd just shot out the cargo bay door control, instead of throwing crates around, right?" Langar grinned widely "Just sayin....."

Bruce glanced at him with a questioning look, "Throwing Crates? Nah, I think you must have me confused with someone else. Inertial Dampeners. Inertial Dampeners? Do we need Inertial Dampeners? Oh, it seems Jan has locked them on. Hmm, figures."

There was a shudder as the Warden fired up it's engines and began moving away from the docking pylon.


[Bridge]

"Alright bring everything up for an emergency burn as soon as we are undocked." He was glad they weren't ripping a chunk of the ship out again.

"Undocking complete, bringing the weapons array online." Jan said.

Giving him a sideways look Tape-Lottie smirked. "Splash and dash, just like the old times, eh?"

"Just like old times? Maybe" Looking at the crew on the bridge, not sure if they were like old times or new times.

"Well with your double running rampant around anything is possible."

[Shuttle bay]

Bruce flipped the Comms, "So remind me, We are chasing after a group of heavily armed gun merchants in a set of tiny shuttles and an antique trade whip. What is the plan again? We fly close and threaten to rust at them unless they hand over the guns?"

"Well with two Bruces we should be a somewhat adequate flying team, though I can't recall the last time the shuttle was serviced." T-Jan said.

"Gonna be a short trip then" Langar replied

Walt's voice came over the comm. "Don't worry, we are going to light them up with the Wardens main guns, you guys are there for the precision work, we'll razzle dazzle them, you're their to pick up the pieces."

"Precision work? Us?" Langar grinned "Well lets get at 'em!"

"Ready to launch, open the bay doors." T-Jan said.

Bruce was keeping the Impulse drives warm, "On your word, Captain."

The hangar doors slid apart, and a force field flared into life, letting ships in and out while maintaining atmosphere.
T-jan revved up the engines on the foxhound, and launched out of the bay.

"We're off, you got a bearing on that ship yet?" T-Jan said.

Jones looked at the screen in front of him. "Bearing Zero Nine Four Mark Five, get us out there, we've got a ship to catch.

"Hard Right, aye sir!" Bruce called as the old crate spun lazily towards their prey.

=Rhino ships=

The captain and crew of the merchants had retreated, liking their wounds, and generally being disagreeable about the entire situation and promised delivery then turned and burned as fast as possible to leave. Fearing their own imprisonment at the hands of the stations constables.

"Captain! In-coming, three ships, a freighter and two fast attack crafts!"

"Defensive maneuvers. Spin up the shields! Status of the weapons!" The Captain barked roughly.

"Sir! Just a spiral wave cannon! This ship wasn't intended to fight!" One of the helmsman yelled back.

"Fine, get some of the boys out there in suits and hand cannons. Blow them out of the sky with the small arms! There is enough down in the hold to take on anyone. Especially the evaporator!" The Captain scowled at his crew.

"Aye sir" A handful of the Rhino's and smaller creatures ran off the deck in a thunder to grab weapons and space suits to combat the on coming threat.

==Warden and others==

T-Walt looked over engineering, admiring the ship. His ship, from his recollection she was still sitting in impound, waiting to be sprung after the whole incident that led him to hide it.

"How we looking?" Walt said to no one in particular, still holding the air of command even if he didn't feel like it.


==Rhino Ship==

The crew of the trade ship had climbed out onto the hull of the vessel, aiming small arms, rockets, hand torpedoes, and grenades at the three ships heading towards them.

"Don't fire until you can see the plasma exhaust!" one of them yelled over the comms as he hefted what looked like a large pipe onto his shoulder and aimed at the on coming lead shuttle.


== Other ships ==

T-Bruce grinned. The Palov Gambit was a sign of extreme desperation, and almost never worked. Hand held armaments simply didn't have the sort of power required to take down a shielded craft, even a decrepit shuttle like this. The response was taught in second year at the Academy.

He put the ship into a corkscrew approach, meaning he was rolling the facing shield to disperse the energy of the weapons and minimize his profile. Then he put himself into an approach vector to minimize the number of beads that could lock onto him till he was in close.

Then came his own favourite part; a gravity assist low pass without shields. When you got it right the gravity of your shuttle's pass would be enough to pull crewmen off the hull of their ship. Of course Bruce was known for his low flying skills and there was a good chance that more of the Rinos would be pushed of by direct contact with the Shuttle's hull.

"WooHoo!" he screamed as the stabilizers fought madly against the gravity pull of the shuttle. Langar got the briefest of impressions of terrified faces trying to leap aside as the shuttle passed. Ignoring the view he tapped the weapon controls got a solid lock and slammed a couple of bursts into the freighter's hull, aiming for two of the external shield generators.

"Starfleet Alpha Squadron!"

Langar raised an eyebrow at that comment "Easy there Ace, not having flashbacks are you?"

T-Bruce just grinned. He loved low and close flying.

As they finally broke away he left a trail of floating Rhinos all scrambling desperately as their ship sped away and left them. The few remaining on the Hull were now faced with shooting at the retreating madman, the approaching second shuttle, the giant freighter, or getting back below decks.

Langar was flicking through the weapon targeting sensors looking for a suitable target on the Rhino's ship "Got one!" He called and sent a copy to T-Bruce's navigation screen "Port side, just aft of that stabilizer. There's a maintenance hatchway leading to their main power-bus, get me a micro-torpedo shot on that! We get that and we can knock half their systems out!"

T-Bruce flipped the RCS thrust and the shuttle spun, the IDF lagging enough for Langer's stomach to offer to step outside with the Rinos.

"I see it," T-Bruce acknowledged. "I'll need to come down their fire line to get a shot. These old torps don't target like Photons. You handle the weapons, I'll handle the drive."


==Warden==

Bruce brought the Warden up behind.

"You want to grab those guys floating?" he asked the CO. "A few bargaining chips might help. We can probably get them with the transporter, or I can try a gravity net with the Nav deflector... That might get messy if I get it wrong though."

"Yeah, might as well. Why don't we try and grab them and port them right into cargo four. That is secureish." He rigged up the transporter and individually targeted them. "Tape Walt and Jan, see if you can rig up some kind of force field around cargo four."

"You got it, should take a couple minutes" Jan said.

"Keep the main ship as close as you can to us." A wave blaster round spiraled into the Warden, rocking her back and forth.

"Bruce, see what you can do about that if you would. Last I need is to spend some creds on a new paint job."

Bruce didn't answer, but nodded. He was trying hard to keep the ship from drifting broadside. It was hard to maneuver the old freighter in a way that didn't present their bridge as a target.

== Other ships ==

While T-Bruce flew the shuttle, Langer pulled up the forward launcher controls. He selected a low-yield warhead, just enough to punch through the hatchway and disable the power systems without tearing the ship apart. He loaded it and got ready to take the shot.

The shuttle jinked and bucked as Bruce avoided the flack coming from the Rhino vessel "You can hold it a steady whenever you're ready, y'know" Langar said as he struggled to get the antiquated targeting software to lock onto the hatchway.

"You handle the weapons, I'll handle the drive," T-Bruce repeated. The gunners were good, and if he had tried this against a more modern and well maintained vessel he would have probably not made it.

He switched all power to forward shields and straightened his approach vector, "Take your shot. Shields won't last long."

"Got it! Torpedo away!" The weapon roared out of the tube and dived directly towards the maintenance hatch. Bruce pulled the shuttle hard about switching power to rear field generators just as the forward shields began to fail.

After six seconds of flight the old fashioned warhead torpedo slammed into the hatch. The cone shaped head mushroomed on impact weakening the hull plate so that a split millisecond later the sharp point of the weapon's warhead sabot punched straight through the hatch cover, flew across the small compartment and exploded as it ploughed into a bank of power system compensators.

Almost instantaneously whole sections of the ship's systems blacked out, including life support, artificial gravity, navigation and helm controls, shields, weapons and all primary lighting.

A second later the whole compartment was engulfed in a massive electrical fire that was kept burning by a ruptured atmospheric duct despite the hole in the hatchway.

The ship kept going, but slowly yawned off course and began a slow lazy ungainly tumble as it lost steerage and control.

Langar sat back in his chair "That should take them a while to fix," he said smugly, "Probably long enough for us to go get our cargo back"

T-Bruce glanced at him, "You do remember that the cargo was theirs to start with. They were supposed to be paying us to transport it? I think this might hurt our chance of a bonus."

"Actually they were paying US to transport it. Then you and your clone buddies turned up to hijack it..." Langar reminded Bruce, staring pointedly at the strip of duct take on his chest.

"Warden to shuttles, how are you doing out there?" Walt's voice crackled over the comm. "We going to be able to grab the stuff we need?"

"Aye, sir," T-Bruce replied. "Precision hit to power systems. Unless the cargo is perishable, she should be fine."


==Warden==

"Looks like we are getting a hail, bring it up on the screen." The old captain grinned, proud of himself and the job they had done.

A large grizzled Rhino appeared on the screen. "Alright, alright, call off the dogs. The cargo is yours." Docking port is open to receive.

"Thank you, it has been a pleasure doing business with you." Walt flicked off the screen and then contacted the two shuttles.

"Alright, they've given up. Good job. Get over there and get the cargo. If they put a fight, shoot them ok?"

=A= Roger that. Jan, you grab the gear. Langar and I will sit out here as bodyguard in case some of the crew didn't get the memo about giving up.=A=

"Work's for me" Langar reloaded the torpedo launcher and activated a target lock on the disabled ship, making sure it was in Active status and the Rhino crew would hear the warning tone on their Bridge just to remind them.

To be continued...

 

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