Sitting Ducks

Posted on Mon May 24th, 2021 @ 12:54am by Lieutenant Kara Danvers & Lieutenant Morgan Drysdale

2,570 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Shake Down Mission
Location: Aldrin Proximity/Intel Ship
Timeline: Current

Morgan stared at the screen, watching a sensor blip in and out of existence before he turned his head and looked at Kara. “You seem like the willing sort...Want to do something a bit dangerous?” He said with a devil may care grin.

“Just what exactly are you getting on about?” Kara tilted her head a little bit giving a look over to him.

“I plan on assaulting a location and I have read in your file you are pretty good in a scrap.” He nodded at the rest of the bridge and turned towards the lift. “If you want to go on an adventure, meet me in the shuttle bay in fifteen minutes.” And exited the bridge.

Kara thought a moment and then turned to follow, getting into the Turbolift. “Okay, I’ll bite. Not because I like fighting for fighting, but I can help and it must be important.”

“If it pays off, like I think it will it will greatly increase our odds of surviving abs winning this scenario. “As he exited on the deck for his quarters. “I need to go grab a few things from my room and will meet you in the shuttle bay.”

“Um..okay..” Kara continued on the Turbolift for the Shuttlebay.

Morgan headed to his room at a light jog and ducked inside of it. He quickly changed into a slightly up armored flight suit and grabbed a modified phaser rifle and a few tools before he departed to the shuttle bay and began the power up sequence on one of the shuttles.

Slips in behind Morgan and to the co-pilot seat. “So now are you going to tell me, also, has this been cleared?”

“More or less cleared. We are going to assault a listening ship, ship being a relative term as it only is slightly bigger than us and only has a bridge crew of four. I plan on either crashing into it, or once it powers up since it’s passive at the moment of boarding it with the transporters as it has to cycle the shields and taking the bridge.”

“More or less huh? Better not be getting us into trouble.” Working the rest of the start up sequence and the safety checks. “Where are the specs and why would we crash into it? That’s not going to hurt me, but you..”


“It was a joke. We only care about the bridge and knocking them off line for a few seconds. Long enough to download the current nav data and a back up of active personnel files.” As he signaled for departure and powered the ship through the air locks.

“Okay. That’s not to hard, though we could just shoot them. Except there’s not any ships around, I’d have noticed that. So..cloaked isn’t it. How’d you find it?” Nodding and she made sure they had clearance to take off.

“So it’s not cloaked per say. Just in a passive sensor state running at minimal power and just listening. I saw on our screens a visual distortion. So it’s either the recon ship I think it is. Or a micro black hole and this is going to be a very short trip. “

“Well..if it’s a ship, they, one would think, are going to see us coming.”

“That’s the plan. We have been sending the shuttles abs fighters out randomly at times while we have been engaged. So the trick is for them to think we are just doing another round of that” as he tapped commands in and sent the shuttle into a ‘standard’ recon pattern in that general area. “The idea is to force their hand when we are close enough.”

Kara checked on things from her side as far as the shuttle goes. Also watching the radar and sensors. Giving a thoughtful look a moment. “I could always go out there instead of ‘nudging’ it with the shuttle. You transport us on to the Bridge after that.”

“We can always do that.” As he rolled his neck out and began to take calming breaths. “We have time. I want as much of a surprise as possible.“

“I’m pretty sure that me shouldering it like breaking in a door would be a hell of a surprise. Not to mention..I do have that really cool cloak cape that Mardel got me for Christmas.”

“I’m sure it might come to that. We are scanning also and I’ve detected no changes from them so it might need to get physical.” As he tapped a few more commands in and began to program in the teleportation sequence.

“Alright then.” Standing up and moving from the station. Starting to get out of her uniform. Which of course under it was her ‘other’ suit. Wrapping the cape around her to make sure it was still working. Not that she understood how Mardel managed to get it in the first place.

Morgan glanced back at some point during that and then turned back to the front and reached for a device that he snapped into the collar of his flight suit. “Still got a few minutes till we are in range..”

“I really have got to figure out some way to have this on and not under the uniform. I still like the skirt instead of wearing slacks.” Moving to lean a little against his chair. “Okay..so you should be able to notice when I hit it.” Having put her comm badge on the underside of her wrist. “I’ll ‘unwrap’ after in case you need to visually tag me.”

“Aye. Yer speaking to a fellah that spends ninety percent of his off time in a kilt, I too hate pants.” He said with very near a chuckle. “I have the scans up. I should be able to see it in scan but the idea has merit in case I can’t pick up your comm badge for some reason.” As he powered the shuttle through a ‘random’ preselected flight path bringing them closer still.

Giggles just a little bit, moving over to the hatch and turning on the force field. “Tell me when, and, Morgan? Thanks for bringing me.”

“Be safe lass.” He said pressing a button and deactivating the force field so the shuttle would decompress when she exited. A helmet appeared around his head, to protect him in case of emergency ev activities as he detonated the locks on the hatch nudging the shuttle to almost a collision course. “And your welcome…” he said after she was pulled out and then concentrated on the scans.

Before that, she pulled the cape over her head and then around her. Wouldn’t exactly work if all but her head was cloaked. She could see through it now, mostly. Still learning to use that ability but it worked well enough for this. Tapping the badge, “Heading that way.” Shooting off straight for the bow of the ship.

Morgan watched, sensing things and scanning before he started a count down and walked to the back of the shuttle to build up as much speed as possible. “Twenty seconds and counting…” as he keyed commands into his wrist computer.

“Three...two….” pushing her one speed and leaning her right shoulder into it right before she hit the hull. It was definitely noticed since the whole ship just shifted a good 10 meters and turned 15 degrees.

Morgan watched as the ship powered up its deflector and fought to stabilize, counted down an additional four seconds and took a few running feet of motion as the shuttle stopped in mid air and they were teleported onto the bridge. Morgan arrived first by a split second , long enough for a sonic pulse to cause the bridge crew to wince in pain before Kara arrived.

Kara glances real quick to get the location of the crew so she knew where, also where Morgan was before she shot over to two close together and just knocked them into each other. Flopping the cape back over into it’s proper location.

Morgan hit the deck running, and promptly crashed into the science officer whom was at a station not where Morgan remembered it. A quick grapple later, a soft emission of a stun shock from his hand phaser and he got to his feet, bringing his rifle up to stun the security officer and then scanning the bridge for any threats.”ow…” he muttered under his breath.

While he was doing that, and she was keeping an eye on him also. When he turned around he’d catch Kara literally flick the last one in the forehead with just her index finger. Sending him half way across the Bridge. “You okay?”

“Bridge secure….” He said looking around as the helmet retracted back into his flight suit.”I’m fine. It’s not the way I remember it is all. This should be in the back wall.” As he checked on all the officers to make sure they were okay and then looked over to her. “Can you grab the navdata?” As he went to ops and began to override any security they might of had to start getting the archived data directly from the mainframe.

“They’re fine, one thing I’ve always had control of is my strength. I just thought that last one flying looked fun” Kara smirked a little bit. Nodding and switching ‘modes.’ Moving over to Helm and logging in quickly to connect it to the shuttle. “Download starting. Come to think of it..you know what we could do right now also. Play a bit of their little game.”

“Force of habit to check.” He said as he keyed in more commands then looked over at her. “Oh?”

She nodded again, “Well considering all this messing with us they’ve been doing. Why don’t we do it back. Since we’ve got some time, I can program in a virus that will be sent to the rest once they get found. We know they’re going to, and we both can alter the information they have on us. They’ll have completely false information on us, while we have all of their real information on them.”

“Devious I like it. I was hoping this was going to be a snatch and grab but they have a bit of security up. Maybe one of them saw I like to do reckless assaults…” he joked as he started to restore the archives and transfer the data.

While that was running, Kara moved over to one of the Auxilary Operation consoles. “I can get through that. Now just what kind of false information do we want to add. I’m going to say to start, location, ships status. Get creative while I write this virus?”

“Well, yes. Known heading would be good. We can’t make it too ostentatious or they might catch on too fast. I’d love to just get us a shift or two to get some rest and repairs done.”

“Right, because the Admiral is very smart. She’d catch something to elaborate. If we do it with something she’s seen us try and maybe think if we do again though..which we know better, it might throw into her figuring the same thing. She will think just that. That we’ll do it again, because she won’t think we will. We can put in something like that for our heading, status, look more wounded than she was lead to believe. Even, as far as that we haven’t cleared out those imposters, or at least not as many as we really have.” Still typing fast on the console buttons.

“Indeed. I’m hoping once I have a copy of the correct personnel files I’ll be able to index the differences and start rounding up some of them. Remember the idea is once we are gone from the bridge abs back on the ship we don’t want them to realize we were here as long as possible.” As he looked between her and the downloads they were doing.

The console beeped from Helm that the Nav-data transfer just finished. “About done here, I have to mask it though so that’s going to take a bit longer. However, about them not knowing we were here? When they wake up they’re going to know and start looking for what we’ve done.I think..I can mess with security and the core to show we only got the personnel files.”

“That’s a good plan. I also plan on uploading a lock out program that hopefully will take several hours to break.” He nodded. “Should buy us enough time..”

“Wouldn’t,” looking over her shoulder, “That do expressly what you just said you don’t want? Know that we got into more than they think we did?”

“No. Because they can’t communicate until it’s already to late. We can just attach the false data with their routine report. Lock the system out before the next upload and skate on out. By the time anyone’s aware we are in the fens.”

“I guess that’s true. This virus will have already taken hold long before then and the false data. That works. Can you scrub the last ten minutes feed from there, you know..considering it’s being recorded. I already shut off the data feed transfer so any other ships aren’t getting this. If we had more time, between the two of us, we could reconstruct the feed but, we don’t have it.” Finishing up the last part of core to only show what they wanted them to see was stolen.

Morgan nodded and his fingers danced across the controls as he finished the transfer, scrubbed the parts they wanted and installed the lock out timer program. “Think that about does it.”

Kara moved over to join him, “Well..lets get out of here then and go home shall we?”

Morgan nodded again and engaged the seals on his suit before he activated the recall feature he programmed and they appeared on the shuttle. Morgan walked over and activated an emergency field on the hatch then took his seat in the pilots chair. “Not a bad day for pirates.” As he shook his head as the helmet retracted.

“You know..by the way..” Giggling a little as she sat down next to him, pushing the skirt under her legs first. “You didn’t have to actually have to blow the hatch..it does just open.” Plotting the course for him back to the Aldrin. “So what are our pirate names? I’m not sure that Supergirl works as one.”

“But it gave me an excuse to play with explosives…” he said with almost a smile as he disconnected the collar and unzipped the suit a little to breathe easier. “And I dun know. I’ve not thought that part out yet.” As he settled back into the chain and sent the shuttle back to the Aldrin.

“Uh huh...You know, I’m not even sure who on the crew even gave me that name. We can always figure out pirate names later. Lets get back and report in, get these files uploaded for review. See how they like it.”

 

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