NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: Little backstory. Lately myself and a few of my friends at school have been partaking in the tabletop Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator. As many of you probably know, tabletop games often lend themselves to hilarious antics in and out of character. After a particularly successful session, I resolved to do two things: Continue to use the ship and it's crew for various sessions, and to record the accounts of the evening from the perspective of the ship captain.

I do this mostly for story telling purposes and to practice writing. Maybe I will convince my fellow players to post their in-character stories as well.

At the very least, I hope you'll find it entertaining.

P.S. I'm not really a Trekkie (I often ask what are probably dumb questions pertaining to the ST universe), so my ST knowledge will be somewhat limited...for now.

As always, feedback is welcome, as long as it is civil.

Stardate: 9493.46.

Ian vonDarius
Comrade Commissar’s Log:

This mission started like many others. Someone wanted something…and they were willing to pay for it.

Lately a few of the noble families of the holy roman…err; Romulan Empire had their greedy little eyes on the emperor’s daughter. (Lovely girl, for a Romulan…if you’re into that sort of thing).

So did the Tal Shiar apparently. Granted, the rommy didn’t say he was from Tal Shiar, but he walked, talked, and stank like one. And chances are, if you walk, talk, and smell like a Tal Shiar agent, you are on. Being the good folk we are, we offered to retrieve the young gal…for a price of course.

The guise was this: They would supply us with one of their nice Winged Defenders in exchange for the junker my crew called home. They’d let us go under the premise that we stole it from under their noses, and were quite the skilled and dangerous pirates. We’d run out grab the princess, come back and get our junker back. They could claim that nefarious pirates did the whole action but that they got us in the end. A little convoluted if you ask me. I still think that we could simplify the entire plan by keeping this bird.

Anyways, turns out our mark was on a tour of the territories and would be returning to her dear old Praetor in a couple days. Escorting her private Graceful Flyer courier would be a nice old Gallant Wing. (Paid for by the Praetor of course…the things we men do for love.)

So we set out to intercept her near in one of the more cluttered systems. We arrived about a day before she did, so we spent the day preparing for battle. (A long, complicated process, involving much wine and food.)

Punctual to a fault, long range sensors detected her and her escort approaching the system. I sent up the order to raise cloak and begin our little game of cat and mouse. They came out of warp near one of the planets, moving at a good clip. The princess must have been bored with the scenery, (can’t say I blamed her) because she wasn’t wasting time in that system, definitely faster than I’d hoped. It was no good, the Rasputin is a fine ship, but she’s no match for a courier when it comes to speed, especially when cloaked. So we ran for an asteroid that was in their path. Once in its sensor shadow, we dropped cloak and waited.

Our timing was impeccable, because moments later that Gallant Wing came round the asteroid and boy were they surprised to see us. They didn’t have time to respond before a couple of disruptors and a trusty old plasma torpedo fragged their ship. Of course the courier did the only thing it could do, run.

Her crew must have known what was coming, because she moved like a bat out of hell. I yelled at Tiberius for letting them get as far as they did, but the kid pulled through with a wonderful shot that cored their drives just before they could warp out of there.

We pulled up alongside the ship, our tiny contingent of marines ready to grab the package; little did we know just how tenacious these guys would be. They fought tooth and nail for what seemed like an eternity, and to make matters worse, we got our own little surprise.

Apparently someone decided to send one of its ships out to grab the girl too, because the next thing we know, a Bird of Prey is sitting off our aft, POINT BLANK RANGE, and us with our pants down transporting marines to and fro.
So we slam the Rasputin hard starboard, bringing our powered shields to face the new ship and allow a good full broadside. We exchanged fire, and hulled them with three well placed disruptors. Unfortunately they also got off a few shots. They knocked down a shield with disruptor fire, and there was nothing between us, and a very mean looking plasma torpedo. Fate must have been smiling on us though, as the thing glanced off our hull, only taking with our aft shield generator with it.

Right about this time, the marines finally grabbed the girl and wanted to come back over (22 left out of the 50 we sent). So we simply turned so they could beam through the now dead aft shield. Unfortunately, the Bird of Prey wasn’t dead enough at this point, as sensors showed they were rerouting emergency power to their mass transporters. While I’ve every faith in my crew, we’re at a slight disadvantage in numbers against the 250 or so crew of a Bird of Prey. However, the solution was easily at hand as I realized that we were near their maximum transporter range. So, we simply ramped the engines to full and got out of there. Now all we have to do is pick up the rest of the money.

Addendum:
The Rasputin proved itself quite the capable bird, and Pinarus will be able to brag to his friends how the Rasputin withstood a plasma torpedo with minimal damage.
In fact, I think we may have to keep the ship due to “unforeseen events.”

As my father and his father before him used to say, “Another day, another credit.”