"Captain, should I maneuver within transporter range as soon as we sap their shields?" Carter asked, slightly nervous about the stickiness of the situation but confident that they could pull it off.

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=/\= ==================================== =/\=
Captain C'hael Hunter
Medical Division, Zeta Squad
12th Fleet, United Federation of Planets
=/\= ==================================== =/\=

The Gorn ship was clunky and cumbersome compared to the nimble federation shuttlecraft. Jovus had barely made it to the old boarding-craft before the first shots had impacted the habitat.

Some stray energy had clipped the shields, destabilising it breifly. Bringing the wobbling vessel back into rein, Jovus brought it about to protect the shuttle as it powered up. The weapons onboard were typically Gorn. Heavy torpedoes and overpowered surge cannons, innaccurate but powerful.

They'd have to do.

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Kris nodded at the Executive Officer and headed for the turbolift. Before the doors closed behind him, he had already opened a communications channel to his First Sargeant. "Top, notify 3rd Platoon Leader to select a squad for a possible boarding party. Inform 1LT Josk that he will be accompanying them, as will you and I. I want them assembled and at the ready in 5 minutes."

[Yes sir, Major.] Came the reply of the seasoned non-comm. Kris and Sato Kurasaki had seen plenty of action together in the past year, and Kris knew that he could count on his senior NCO to get everything prepared and ready for him.

The Major headed directly to the armory, and checked out his MACO phaser battle rifle, along with a satchel of various grenade charges. Mostly he was taking smoke and stun grenades. He made sure that his MACO armor and shield system was prepped and fully charged before he donned it, and grabbed a disruptor pistol and a mek'leth blade as backups.

As he made his way to the transporter room, he saw that 2LT April Davis was waiting, along with 1LT Josk, 1SGT Kurasaki, and three other MACO's whom had just recently transferred in. They were all wearing their full MACO gear, but two of the enlisted men present looked a bit nervous.

*I hope they know what they are doing.* He thought to himself.

"Silliskan to Bridge. Boarding party prepared and waiting in transporter room for your orders."

_________________

=/\= ====================== =/\=
CAPT (LT) PJ Blazer
MACO Division, Echo Squad
12th Fleet, United Federation of Planets

=/\= ====================== =/\=

[IC] = Tracy

"Yes helm, keep us along side them." She said in response to the helmsman's question.

"Weapons firing." The tactical officer announced as a stream of quantum torpedoes and an accompanying volley of phasers impacted the Romulan ship's shields. It turned hard, dodging the asteroid habitat and bringing it's main weapons to bear on the Tempestas.

Around the same time, the Birds of Prey decloaked again, firing from all sides. The Tempestas shields held, but the entire ship shook with impact after impact.

The shields on the Mogai collapsed under the fire, leaving them with their opening.

"Helm, bring us alongside. Tactical, drop the shields facing them."

She hammered the comm unit. "Major, go now."

"Take out their engines... and clean up those Birds of Prey."

Whatever game was afoot, the Romulans were acting erratically. With any luck however, the Major would find something on board the Romulan ship. Something to clear up the mystery of what in the world was going on.

[OC] = Tracy

[IC] = Klena

"LCDR Amberose is in the Gorn shuttle." FCol Davis replied.

Klena took a seat at the console, forcing herself to focus despite the fatigue. "We need to get back to the Tempestas."

As the Tempestas flew alongside the Romulan ship, Klena saw the opening. "They're dropping shields. Col, get us on board the ship."

"Yes mam."

The shuttle raced out of the debris field, past the Romulans and slipped in under the Tempestas' now restored shields.

Klena activated the comm unit to the bridge. "Ops, requesting clearance to dock in the shuttle bay."

[OC] = Klena

_________________

[center] | Siruzu's Biography | Klena's Biography | Ayira's Biography | Star Trek Guenidier

Elysia was surprised when the call came over the comm. but she was focussed now and quickly relayed the request. "Sir, the Captain is requesting clearence for docking!". She was quickly told to hurry up and grant it and she replied to the shuttle "Shuttlecraft, you are cleared for docking!". She almost added a "and Captain, you're needed on the Bridge!" but in the end she didn't say it. The Captain knew that and she did not want to question the First Officers authority either...

_________________
=/\= ====================== =/\=
Commander Asklepian (Miana, Alexa)
Medical Division, Delta Squad
12th Fleet, United Federation of Planets
=/\= ====================== =/\

Kris nodded to the transporter chief when the order came through for them to beam over to the Romulan ship. They were transporting in to the cargo hold, according to Star Fleet Intelligence records. As the team materialized on board, something appeared very wrong. The cargo hold was empty. Eerily empty. There was not a single cargo container in sight. The lighting was muted, as one would expect during a space battle, but Kris would have expected someone to be on duty in the cargo hold.

The team spread out, as 1LT Josk started punching keys on his tricorder. "Major, I'm reading some residual energy signatures that indicate our equipment was indeed stored here, but has been moved recently. I'm trying to narrow down the sensor data to pinpoint the location."

2LT April Davis, the Company Commander of the Spec Ops company attached to the 440th Strike Group, was decked out in an Operative field kit, complete with tactical stealth module and enhanced targeting optics. She quickly scanned the room, motioning for her team to spread out and take flanking positions on the door leading into the ship.

Kris was impressed by how well they meshed together into a cohesive team, immediately adopting to hand signals and movements that could only have been synchronized with innumerable training sessions. As the point team cleared the doorway and corridor beyond, Kris couldn't help but feel something was definitely wrong. The entire situation didn't feel quite right. He nodded at 1SGT Kurasaki and pair broke off from the main group to take a position at a nearby computer access terminal. "Top, you think you can hack into this?"

"It's been a little bit, sir, but I can do it." Sato replied, as he linked his tricorder to the terminal and started punching in commands. After a minute, he smiled. "I've gotten in, sir. It's not command-level access, but we can see what is going on here." He said, showing the tricorder screen to Kris.

"I knew something was wrong!" He said, looking at the information on the screen. "Silliskan to Tempestas. This is some kind of a ruse, Captain! This ship is entirely automated! There's not a single living soul on board, aside from my team! We're attempting to locate the missing items. Should we try to disable the ship from Main Engineering?"

_________________

=/\= ====================== =/\=
CAPT (LT) PJ Blazer
MACO Division, Echo Squad
12th Fleet, United Federation of Planets

=/\= ====================== =/\=

[IC] = Klena

With permission to dock received, FCol Davis brought them into the shuttlebay. She paged a medical team to take care of the Leathan in their care, and began running for the Bridge. It was already clear something was going on.

She entered, demanding an immediate report from Tracy. The woman's reply was brief, straight to the point, covering everything she needed to know in a few short paragrahps. Klena then took her seat.

At that point, Major Silliskan's report came in. "Major, find out what you can. We're having trouble disabling them from out here."

The ship shuddered a bit more. A thought occurred to her, if one ship was automated, what about the others. "Captain Wellingford, perform a detailed scan of the other Romulan ships, are they automated as well?"

"Lt. Signer, keep a transporter lock on the away team."

Meanwhile, mostly defensive phaser fire continued from the Tempestas, keeping the remaining Romulan ships at bay.

[OC] = Klena

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[center] | Siruzu's Biography | Klena's Biography | Ayira's Biography | Star Trek Guenidier

"Yes Captain!" Elysia replied when the Vulcan gave her order. Elysia was determined to stay focused on the task at hand. If any of the bridge crew lost their concentration during something like this, it was potentially very dangerous to the rest of the crew on the ship and she was not going to be the weak link in the chain. No way!...

_________________
=/\= ====================== =/\=
Commander Asklepian (Miana, Alexa)
Medical Division, Delta Squad
12th Fleet, United Federation of Planets
=/\= ====================== =/\

Kris and his team carefully and quickly dashed through the corridors, finding more and more emptiness ahead of them. The feeling that they were being watched definitely kept nagging at him, although he wasn't certain if there was someone watching remotely, or if it was just the AI that ran the ship.

"Silliskan to Tempestas. We've encountered no automated defense systems as of yet, and life support does appear to be functioning normally. We're nearing Main Engineering right now." He said, as he nodded to the Spec Ops company commander.

The pair of MACO soldiers moved slowly towards the door leading to main engineering. They let their weapons hang from their slings and started connecting a tricorder to the access panel. After a minute of scanning, they both looked at the Major. "Sir, I think we can disable weapons and shields, but if the ship is run by an AI, it may be more difficult than expected. I'd suggest simply blowing the entire computer core."

Silliskan tapped his commbadge again. "Admiral, we have two options. We could try to disable weapons and shields, but may run into problems with the controlling AI. Second option is to try and blow the entire computer core. I'd opt for blowing this nasty beast to kingdom come, but there may be something of interest here that Fleet Command may want to look at. "

_________________

=/\= ====================== =/\=
CAPT (LT) PJ Blazer
MACO Division, Echo Squad
12th Fleet, United Federation of Planets

=/\= ====================== =/\=

Jovus swung the shuttle about. It was like piloting a greasy elephant, the mass of the armour and oversized torpedo pod made it heavy to maneuver, nonetheless he locked its weapons on the nearest hostile.

The Tempestas was keeping the enemy at bay but it was still outnumbered and disadvantaged in position.

A burst of data came across his comm, the main vessel was automated?

Localised control by Semi-intelligent computing was all well and good, but Jovus would have someone nearby to coordinate in case it failed....something was off kilter in this whole setup.

He quickly re-locked his weapons onto all of the remaining wrecks. A debris and plasma field would help reveal anything lurking in the area.

A salvo of torpedoes and disruptor pulses sailed out, vapourising the remaining hulks and sending metal, gases and plasma in expanding clouds. Gorn sensors were not as fine as Federation ones, but they should be able to detect any fragment collisions with unseen objects.

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