From: Naomi Lara (naomi.lara_at_gmail.com)
Date: Tue Dec 18 2007 - 21:41:18 PST
"Eye of the Storm." Con't from Katrina's "An Engineer's Thesis on Interior Decorating" Stardate: 191207.1638 Location: USS PATRIOT Scene: ILO Office =/\= Lawrence's jaw worked as he mulled over the latest status reports. "Are you sure about this?" He asked briskly as he folded his arms across his chest. Next to him, Drake softly paced as he considered the information. "I'm not sure, but I'm basing that assumption on previous encounters." Catherine replied as she watched them both. She was tired, and really wasn't in the mood to deal with Lawrence, but they were forced into an impromptu meeting to debrief and collate their information prior to another meeting with Kenta and Davidson. "How did you get that information?" Jaxsper frowned. "Downloaded all the sensor data from every ship and fighter that has docked with Gateway since the blockade broke." Everyone was trying to get to the station to get family and their property off the station. Catherine was using that to her advantage. Every ship coming into the Gateway became a sensor for her to use. "Good thinking." Drake had to give her points for creativity. He hadn't heard of that technique for information gathering being used before, but it seemed to work. Although no one had directly come across the Dominion fleet, there were enough sensor readings to give them an indication as to where the fleet might be congregating. "But inconclusive." Lawrence retorted. "Inconclusive or not, it's the best we've got." Catherine was getting a little tired of Lawrence. "The Dominion are building up a massive fleet and waiting for more ships. It'll take them a week to reassemble, and when they come this time, they won't negotiate. The time for that is long gone, their goal is to destroy this station and the fleet." She insisted. Drake cleared his throat before either one of them lost their cool. "Why wait a week?" He asked, catching her eyes and making her focus on him instead of Lawrence. "This defeat was an insult to them, this time they want to make sure they can do the job." Lawrence unfolded his arms. "Come on, Sterling, if they really wanted to, they could have wiped us out earlier." "Maybe so, but the cost would have been so high, that if another Federation fleet came through in a transwarp conduit, we could have easily won it back." Catherine reasoned. "They didn't know only one armada was coming." "Everything here is assumptions based on assumptions, I can't go to the commanding officers with hunches and best guesses!" Catherine's fingers twitched, out of sight under her desk. "That's all I have." All she wanted to do was wrap her hands around his throat. He was rude, condescending and hostile, and she was trying so hard to please everyone, and he was flippant of it. Drake felt the tension leap up and figured it was time to separate the two before something happened. "Come on Lawrence, give her a break." He sighed, it was time anyway for the next meeting. "Thank you, Lieutenant. We'll take your 'insights' to the COs." Lawrence couldn't resist a final dig as he left the room, with Drake behind him. "Is there any particular reason you're driving her so hard?" Drake asked as they walked down the corridor towards the docking area that held the Patriot to the Gateway. Lawrence shrugged. "No, not particularly." "Could have fooled me. Here I was thinking that you hated her." =/\= Location: GATEWAY Scene: Medbay =/\= Niala sat down in a chair and exhaled the breath she had been holding for an eternity. It was finally quiet, the medical doctors had treated and released all but the most severely hurt persons. And they were so drugged they were unconscious. Tam realized it was the absence of noise and chaotic activity that made her enjoy the peace and quiet all the more. She looked up as another person came and sat down next to her. "It's been a difficult couple of days." Mowree said as he took a few moments to relax next to her. This was probably the first time they had a chance to catch their collective breaths. "It's going to get worse." Tam replied matter-of-factly. "Probably." Mowree replied. They had a lot of death notifications, and both of them were stalling in that regard. There were too many for Davidson to do, which mean that the majority fell to Tam and himself. Nurunyon certainly had one that he didn't want to do, but he owed it to McInnes to follow through. It had been heart wrenching to tell the children, and there was still Bonviva. If they ever rescued her. They just sat there in silence, taking a few minutes of precious time to enjoy the solitude. =/\= Scene: CO's Office =/\= Drake cleared his throat in the dreadful silence that followed their report to Davidson and Kenta. The two commanding officers sat and contemplated the information. "We're not going to be ready in a week." Daisy said softly. Repairs would take over a month, even with all of the extra personnel. To get the station up to the level to take on another bombardment was going to require a miracle. "We can't ask for reinforcements either." Lawrence said. "We won't have enough time to get the message to Starfleet." "The Borg won't help us either." Daisy frowned as her mind tried to deal with the news. She didn't like feeling so helpless, but the news just kept getting worse. They just didn't have the infrastructure to deal with such a massive movement against them. "Is anyone in this Quadrant not happy with getting overrun with the Dominion?" Kenta asked Drake, if he could get more ships in his armada, it might be enough to turn the time. But how much was enough? Superior numbers didn't always mean victory. "A few small independents, but no major players." The intelligence agent informed them grimly. There were only two options open to the commanding officers. Stay and fight where they were outgunned and outmanned, or pack up and leave Gateway to the Dominion. Neither option was particularly palatable. =/\= Location: USS PATRIOT Scene: ILO Office =/\= The door to the office opened and Daniel strode in with a big, goofy grin on his face. "Good evening!" He called out cheerfully before he came to a stop. He wasn't expecting to see his wife glaring death in his direction. The man raised an eyebrow and walked over to her and kissed her on the forehead. "You lost the ability to frighten me when you married me." "Sorry." Catherine apologised as Clarkson slipped around her desk and rested his hands on her shoulders. He could feel the tension in her body, her muscles were as hard as steel and she was coiled to pounce. "What's going on?" Daniel asked as he kissed the top of her head. Catherine sighed as he began to knead her shoulders. "Nothing much, just banging my head against a wall." She replied as she slowly relaxed and closed her eyes. "I haven't seen you for days, you been here all that time?" Clarkson asked. He had been going to their quarters whenever he could spare a few hours to catch up on sleep, but hadn't seen her there since the Patriot arrived at Gateway. "For the most part." "Have you slept?" Daniel asked, and groaned softly when she didn't answer. "Catherine." He chided her softly. "Too many things to do." She protested weakly. Daniel let her go and sat on the edge of the desk facing her. "You've been up for what...three days?" He asked her with a faint look of disapproval. Sometimes she didn't know when to let go of things. Catherine smiled and patted him on the knee. "I can do it." She was exhausted, but she had been up for longer stretches in the past and had been quite willing to do so again. There really was so much work to do, sleep was a luxury. "I have no doubt, but its quiet now, and it's the best time to get some rest. You may not get another opportunity for a while." Daniel grabbed her hand and hauled her onto her feet and escorted her from her office. "Come on. I'm off duty and you're coming with me." "You're pushy, you know that?" Catherine didn't fight him, she just let him take the lead. Daniel was even more stubborn then she, and it just didn't pay to fight with him. "You don't scare me anymore, you know that?" He draped an arm across her shoulders. "I'll still flatten you in a heartbeat." "I love you too." =/\= Location: GATEWAY Scene: Engineering =/\= Crichton had given himself a few minutes of celebration before returning back to the task at hand. The amount of work he had in front of him was about as large at Mt. Everest, and although no one was telling him, he knew there was a clock ticking away somewhere. After those few minutes, his time had been taken up with stabilizing fluxes in magnetic constrictors, figuring out why the pistons to open one of the shuttle bay doors wasn't working properly and getting a fix for it. He concentrated hard on the things that couldn't wait, and ignored the ones that could. That meant that most people were on emergency rations and not on replicator food, but it was a minor inconvenience compared to getting their shields fixed in time. At the moment, Jake had his head in a small opening, and was crammed in there awkwardly on his side. "Lieutenant Crichton?" The muffled voice from the corridor side of the bulkhead came through and Jake rolled his eyes. "Be with you in a minute!" He called out as he tried to quickly tweak a few wires into their respective slots. Satisfied that they were secured in place, Jake wiggled himself out of the opening and turned over to find Maverick peering down at him. "Whoa, Colonel, no fair sneaking up on the natives." The marine ignored the smart remark. "I've got a job for you." He said. Jake shook his head, there was no way he was doing the man a favor, not when he was up to his eyeballs in work. No one was getting preferential treatment. "Take a number and get in line, last I looked it's a long one." He stowed his tools into his kit and checked the padd for the next job. Strangely, it was blank, except for one name. "I think that Commander Davidson gets kicked to number one." Maverick smiled as he gave Jake time to read Daisy's name. The young man looked at the colonel quizzically. "Alright, alright. What do you need?" "We've got to give the Dominion a homecoming that'll go off with a bang." Bret finally smiled slightly. "We need you to help design some space mines with what we have spare in the arsenal." =/\= Scene: ExO's office =/\= Kor was struggling to keep up with the requests of the station civilian occupants. Most of them were trying to get passage off from Gateway now that the Dominion blockage had gone. Some of those leaving were station personnel who couldn't cope any longer and had tendered their resignations. A tiny part of Kor couldn't blame them, but mostly she was just angry. Angry that they were being abandoned by some of their own. But she didn't have time to demand explanations. In the end, she just let them go. She couldn't force them to remain back and fight, however much she had wished to. Eishnala sh' Kor's head jerked up when her door chime sounded. "Enter." The woman said as she set down the data padd in her hand. Kathryn entered the ExO's office. "Is this a bad time?" MacNeil asked. Kor shook her head and gestured for the doctor to come in and sit down. "Never seems to be a good time. What can I do for you doctor?" The woman asked after Kathryn had seated herself. The doctor presented the ExO with the data padd in her hand with a verbal report. "An updated list of casualties and fatalities. We could identify most of them, but some bodies were vaporised so it's unlikely they'll ever be positively IDed." Kor glanced at the numbers. "How many missing?" She asked. "Twenty eight at last count." The woman sighed, in this situation missing people were usually dead people whose bodies hadn't been found or identified. "Fatalities?" MacNeil glanced at Kor, trying to read the ExO. "Seventeen." While high, it wasn't huge considering the battle they had just survived. "I have another five on the critical list." Most of those people on that list would die too. In all, they had lost some sixty persons in the last battle throughout the fleet. ~~~~~~~ NRPG: I've tried to touch on most people's characters in this post, so I can only hope that I've done most people justice. Joy, and anyone else I've missed, I'll get to you in the next post. ;) If you're on MSN, you can add me to your contact list (naomi.lara_at_gmail.com) Naomi Lara Lt. J.G. Catherine Sterling-Jade ILO USS PATRIOT and Commodore Teneill Danara-Bennow Deputy Chief of Starfleet Intelligence From HyperNews_at_youth.net
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