Bandits on the Surface

The Sull Path

After the repairs to the USS Boudicca performed at Starbase Geneva following the fight with the Borg at Dovek II the ship is finally assigned a new mission.

With an almost entirely new crew, commanded by the combined command team of Captain Calvin Capps and Lt. Commander Thomas Jackson, the ship was assigned to patrol an area of space, known as the Sull Path, currently being plagued by pirate attacks.

With as many as eight different species, including the United Federation of Planets dependent upon the lifeline of trade, and with no real leads as to the culprits identities, the Boudicca crew begins their 10-day journey towards the last reported incident.

The Sull Path

Upon her arrival at the Sull Path the USS Boudicca began conducting patrol scans in an attempt to locate or identify any information that may lead them to the location of either a pirate stronghold or a pirate vessel.

The Sull Path Minefield

Due to the very long nature of the Sull Path, it quickly became apparent that the ship would be required to spend several days on patrol in order to cover the entirety of the afflicted area.

As it happened, however, the crew was not forced to wait very long before they made contact with the pirates. On their second day in the path, while patrolling, the ship suddenly jolted.

With the crew rushing to their red alert stations, it was quickly ascertained that the ship had blundering into an undocumented minefield filled with mines that were armed with cloaking devices.

Although they had struck several of these mines, they proved to be superficial impacts as the ship suffered no damage. However the order was given to come to a full stop, only to find that the ship continued to be pulled along the path, albeit slowly.

A reading on the Subspace Current found in the Sull Path

Scans indicated the possibility that a Subspace Current was also present, and while this accounted for the unexpected movement of the ship, there was still reason to worry due to the presence of the mines.

Ensign Henry Jacobs using a suggestion put forth by Detron Trei and Thomas Jackson utilized the Bussard Collectors to emit a specially ionized gas that caused the cloaked mines to become visible. initial scans indicated that there were nearly half-a-million of the devices with in span of roughly a quarter of a light Year.

Before any further action could be taken however, a sudden loss of power plagued the boudicca, caused by some sort of massive power drain, which rendered all the ship's primary and secondary systems, including tactical useless.

Lieutenant Deynyk Rinn quickly placed the ship on Emergency power. Only a few moments later, the pirates led by the unseen Captain Toulin hailed the Boudicca and ordered her to turn over their cargo. In exchange the pirates agreed to release the Boudicca.

Boarded

The Boudicca's Brig

Toulin and a number of his pirate crew, including a woman named Becks, beamed abaord the Boudicca, with the intention of taking the Boudicca's medical and other cargo by force from her Cargo Bay.

This attempt was foiled by Detron Trei and Captain Calvin Capps who led a counter-boarding party into the compartment. A heavy firefight took place, and Only Toulin managed to escape capture.

With the majority of his men captured, Toulin had to develop a new plan to acquire the goods that he wanted.

The Mine Field Revealed

A Hazmat suit

Henry Jacobs and Deynyk Rinn managed to figure out a way to detect the individual mines that encompassed the minefield that threatened the Boudicca. They also managed to develop a method to restore power to the Boudicca.

The mines had relatively low explosive yields, but they flooded the ship's EPS Conduits with a type of radiation called Transitional Balyric Radiation. The radiation has the affect of creating a magnetic charge in the casings of an EPS Conduit, which in turn constricts the flow of Electro-plasma through the conduits. This is akin to constricting a water pipe to the point that no water or very little water can flow along the conduit.

The solution to this problem is to bombard the EPS conduits affected by Balyric Radiation with a Saltoric Radiation burst. The later causes the rapid decay of the Balyric radiation, and releases the constriction of the plasma flow.

The drawback is that this process is hazardous to personnel, and must be carried out using a hand-held emitter by personnel wearing HazMat suits. It was also determined that using a sheathing of Tricobalt-carbon ceramic alloy will protect the conduits going forward. Repeated exposure of the alloy to Baylric Radiation creates a Subspace charge that can be tracked effectively over long distances. The Charge interacts with a warp capable ship's Warp Coils and warp field.

Clearing the Minefield

The Cartecay

A runabout was modified to use the specialized EPS Conduit shielding to allow Henry Jacobs and Deynyk Rinn to sweep a path for the Boudicca through the mine field. With Jacobs piloting and Rinn helping to plot the path of the runabout, the two managed to guide the Boudicca through the minefield without incident.

This had occurred after Toulin managed to acquire the cargo from the cargo hold after threatening to destroy the helpless Boudicca. He also managed to recover all of his crew except Becks, who remained a prisoner in the Brig.

Once they were clear of the minefield, Becks managed to effect her escape from the Brig and made her way down to the shuttlebay.

There, Deynyk Rinn was in access crawl space of the Cartecay, while Jacobs was working in the primary compartment. becks entered the compartment and using a stolen phaser managed to stun Jacobs.

Rinn trapped in the crawl way and unarmed, was unable to act, and decided that he should remain hidden when he realized that the shuttlecraft was in motion.

Using a computer virus uploaded to the USS Boudicca's main computer, Becks managed to shut down the ship's warp systems, rendering any attempts at pursuit moot at this juncture.

The Forlorn Hope

The Cartecay managed to gain a significant lead on the USS Boudicca, but the quick thinking of Ensign Henry Jacobs allowed the Boudicca to overtake the cartecay just as they were arriving at the Pirate base. Jacobs had managed to create several warp signatures, which he did to convince becks that he was aiding in their escape, while in reality he was directing the Boudicca along their actual course.

Just as the runabout was arriving at the Pirate stronghold, the Boudicca launched a Marine Drop Shuttle, to overtake the Cartecay. Fearing capture, Becks beamed herself and Jacobs abaord the bridge of the Broken Wing, the pirate vessel aboard which she served.

Jacobs was ordered to the brig. Becks, in the meantime, uploaded a virus into the cartecay's computer and set the runabout on a collision course with the marine ship.

Deynyk Rinn, now managing to escape the crawl space for the first time since his capture moved into the cockpit in time to realize what was happening. Unable to take control of the ship's helm controls, he instead locked out the weapons locker and the transporter.

Betting everything on a slim chance that Becks had not altered the transporter settings when she and Jacobs had beamed off the ship, Deynyk copied the transporter settings into a tricorder which he beamed aboard the marine ship. They contained the shield modulations for the Broken Wing's Deflector shields.

Then using a photon grenade set on a timer, he prepared to destroy a magnetic constrictor in the runabout's warp drive in order to prevent it from colliding with the Marine Drop ship. Then Deynyk sent another grenade, set on stun through the runabout's transporter to the bridge of the broken Wing. He followed it a moment later.

If the first grenade had detonated before the transporter sequence could be completed, the Broken Wing had chanced their shield modulations, or if Deynyk had arrived too early or late on the heels of his distraction grenade, the entire assault would have failed. As it was, Deynyk was fortunate, because he completed the transport before the runabout was destroyed. In addition his photon grenade went off at exactly the right moment, stunning a good number of the bridge crew on the Broken Wing.

Charge!

When Deynyk materialized, he immediately engaged the remaining personnel still functional on the bridge of the Broken Wing. He suffered phaser burns from the fire fight, but was otherwise uninjured.

The Marines, led by major Joel Kilowa arrived to provide reinforcements. Their timely arrival forced Becks to withdraw, giving the team an opportunity to complete the lock-down of the bridge.

The marines and Rinn, turned the bridge over to Detron Trei for security and followed Becks to the Broken Wing's Brig. There they discovered that she had implanted a photon grenade with a Deadman's Switch inside Henry Jacobs.

While the marines distracted Becks with talk, Deynyk managed to find and reproduce the communications signal that the detonator produced. Once he had it isolated, he fired on and stunned Becks. His reproduced ignal prevented the weapon from exploding and Jacobs was rescued. Becks was arrested.

Aftermath

After the battle with the Broken Wing and her support ships, Captain Calvin Capps met with the Elder of the colony, Mok. it was agreed that starfleet would assist the colony, who seemed unaware that Toulin and the broken Wing were acting as Pirates. Toulin was to be tried and punished by the colonists, the Boudicca would provide raw materials to the colony to aid them in repairing their damaged ships and Becks would be tried by the Federation for her various crimes.