Ballard Go BOOM!!!

Posted on 13 Sep 2010 @ 11:20am by Captain Antonio Vazquez & Captain Reva Madhava & Commodore Da`nal of the House of Varal

1,519 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: M6: Blood of the Innocent
Location: USS Achilles - Saucer Section - Tactical Ops
Timeline: MD: 2, 1745

ON:

Lieutenant Jg Mark Brown entered the room with PADDs in hand. They needed to get to work deciding how to destroy the Ballard. He noticed a man standing near the back of the room and approached him. "You Lieutenant Vazquez?"

Antonio turned around, slightly raising a brow, "Yes, I am."

Jessica looked at the Lt "Lt Jessica Cole, I'm the Achille's Chief Engineering Officer."

Brown turned his gaze from Vazquez to the woman who'd spoken. "Hello, ma'am. I'm Lieutenant Brown from Ops. I'm here to help you destroy the saucer."

Antonio half smiled; to him it wasn't that much of a complicated matter to begin with. And he felt with Brown's help, along with the engineer's, preparations would be done very quickly.

Reva entered the room. After her brief, possibly ill-advised sassing of Lieutenant Commander Phoenix-Patil, she'd headed back to the Science Lab and collected some of the debris she and Meru had picked up on the Ballard. Now, she was bringing it to Vazquez for his analysis; the evidence was in a box she carried. On top of the box sat a PADD. "Lieutenant Vazquez," she stopped and looked at the others, "Oh, I haven't met either of you. I'm Reva Madhava, Science... biologist and chemist, actually."

Brown raised an eyebrow. "That's odd...why have you been assigned to this team?"

Smirking, Reva answered, "If you figure that out, let me know, Lieutenant."

He chuckled. "So, uhm....what's the best way to blow up this heap?" Brown said to everyone present.

Antonio smiled at them both and then turned towards the tactical console behind him, "By assisting her secondary auto-destruct", he stated, and then reached over to a panel display at the end of the console, and tapped on a few keys. A horizontal image of a Galaxy class starship came up onto the gridded display screen, turning vertical as he tapped again. In final, red dotted lines formed to showcase the damage done to the Ballard's hull.

He glanced back with a raised eyebrow at Reva, "Is that box for me, Ensign?"

"It is, but it'll wait till you're done with the," she waved one hand at the display, "Destruction of the Ballard's saucer."

"Okay", He nodded, smiling inwardly as he gazed at her, "Then I suggest while you are here, watch and learn. Any questions or suggestions, shoot them out." He looked back to the screen, "As you know...", and then over at Jessica and Brown, "...on a Galaxy class starship, the activation of the primary auto-destruct sequence is initiated from Main Engineering, 'involving' the shutting down of antimatter containment, 'plus' an overload of the warp core. In cases where the the ship is in separated flight mode, there is a secondary method.." he tapped another command, blue lights appeared scattered on the image's saucer section, "... matter/antimatter demolition charges spread throughout her hull."

Jessica took careful note of the placement of the charges as she nodded. Wincing she saw one was close to one of the swiss cheese holes and said "I'm surprised it hasn't set off a chain reaction before now ... or is it in an inert state?"

"Inert", he replied, and then indicated to the 'swiss cheese' areas, "and several charges were taken out with the explosion..."

Reva did watch and learn. Taking lessons from Vazquez had been one of the highlights of her service on the Montague; the man was simply easy to watch. For many different reasons. Building off of Lieutenant Cole's question, she asked, "So the charges require a certain catalyst to set them off? Do we have a way to create that catalyst from here?"

Antonio turned to her and smiled, pleased with her input. "Yes on both questions. Even without a computer core, a secondary auto destruct command can be given to any memory alpha ODN relay, but the damage to the ship knocked out the relays, and they are unable to transmit the auto destruct command to the remaining charges. We can create a substitute relay, and compensate for the missing charges. It's an easy solution." He folded his arms, and looked intently at the engineer in the group, "We just need someone to go install the substitute relay and charges."

Jess nodded her understanding "You tell me the best places for the charges and I can get them there."

"Wait..., why bother?" Reva's brow wrinkled as she grasped the concept Vazquez was putting forth. It seemed overly complicated to her. "Why can't we just toss a few torpedoes at it and destroy it that way?"

"If I understand correctly ... one it would be use of torpedoes we may need to use later ... and two it may not destroy all the technology we need it to?" Jess looked at Vasquez for confirmation.

"Correct." Antonio agreed.

"Torpedoes would only shatter it into smaller pieces." Brown said. "Our plan will destroy the saucer completely and won't deplete any ship resources."

"Exactly.."

"Ah. I see." The green one in the room nodded in understanding. With that question shot down, Reva didn't have much else to say about or to contribute to the plan.

Mark pulled out a PADD. "Commander Phoenix-Patil has set the time for destruction at 0800 tomorrow. All teams need to be off the Ballard by then, which means this trigger needs to be set soon." He said.

"Understood", Antonio replied, and placed his hands on his hips as he stared momentarily at the the image of the ship. "We'll need the ODN relay's commands routed through the Achilles' computer." he added, glancing back at Mark and then back to the computer image.

Mark smiled. "I'll have it done within the next three hours."

The damage reports, the Southerner's viewport image of the Ballard upon arrival all streamed through Antonio's mind. Sometimes missions like this felt personal, and now his facial muscles tightened as he pushed those feelings back.

He pointed up to the screen, "Chief Cole, what would be the most vulnerable areas based on the damage done? Specifically those areas missing charges."

Jess looked at the areas and then nodded as she pointed "There, there, there and there ... THe structure has already been weakened under attack ... A charge in those four places should be enough to cause crumple zones to implode on themselves and start a cascade."

"And with life support cut off", he looked over to her, "will she have enough power to run from the relay lines to the charges?"

Peering at the boards Jess frowned "If we can get one or two set off the others should cascade ... We can reroute power through the tertiary relays in order to do that but this will be a one chance operation."

Brown looked over toward Lieutenant Cole. "Ma'am, I'll need a list of all materials you need. I'll check it in with Logistics and clear it with the right people in Ops."

Nodding absently Jess kept staring at the plans with a nagging feeling she was missing something "Can you bring up the overlays please?"

Antonio obliged, a moment later the overlays were up. "What are we missing, Chief?" he inquired, as he continued to study the screen along side her.

The vague sense Cole had impinged upon Reva's empathy. She hadn't a clue what the Chief might be missing, but she, too, started looking. "The teams that just went over, are they wiping the computer cores? Or is that something an engineering or ops team should do?"

"All information from the attack has been gathered already." Brown said. "But whipping the core wouldn't be necessary since we'll be blowing it up."

Jess frowned "I honestly don't know what we're missing ... " She scanned through the plans and her eyes widened "Oh shit ... there ... the secondary junction on axis 3. Dammit ... if we blow it up the easy way we could set off a chain reaction that will take out half the planets in this sector ... We have to take that off first." Shaking her head she apologized "Sorry I forgot that they older ships had a hidden fail-safe ... sort of like a doomsday device."

"Yet...you caught it", Antonio nodded, looking at her pleased. And then he stood back, it was time to get the plan in action, "What is the time factor, Chief, on taking care of the junction?"

"About 20 minutes tops ... as long as nothing is melted." Jess checked it to be sure and nodded.

He repositioned his hands on his hips again and looked at each one, "Okay, this is it. Take this moment to run this plan through your head with what you have been trained for. In your gut...with how it feels. Anything else feel amiss? Anymore questions?"


"Okay", Antonio finalized, "All that's left is to get final approval. Meanwhile, we have work to do."

"Yes, we do," Reva spoke up and, meeting Antonio's eyes, nodded at the box she'd brought him.

Antonio nodded back, smiling. He had not forgotten...

OFF


Lieutenant JG Antonio Vazquez
Weapons Specialist
USS Achilles

Lieutenant Jg Mark Brown
Operations Officer - NPC
USS Achilles

Ensign Reva Madhava
Science Officer
USS Achilles

Lieutenant Jessica Cole
CEO

 

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