Post Number: 291 *A Flight Full of Questions*

Posted on Thu Sep 25th, 2025 @ 3:01am by Captain Marius Pontmercy & Major Charlotte Thrace

2,241 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: A New Beginning

On:

The Captain did not often find an excuse to make it to the Marine Barracks onboard the Obsidian, and knew that that was something needing changing. He took the turbolift from the Operations Center, and while he waited for it to descend the decks found himself reflecting on all that had happened these past few weeks. So much death, sadness, fear, and desperate struggle. He was thankful that he had a crew of strong and talented people that were able to weather the storms.

As the turbolift came to a stop, he exited and scanned the large room before him. He spotted Charlotte talking to a subordinate, and crossed the distance.

Charlotte wasn't the average marine, she'd been in the rank and file and had decided that she'd be a different type of leader, she was no drill sergeant, she wasn't a shouter, she wasn't the type to demand the highest standard, no she was more like a sports coach, she trained her marines to meet the highest standard possible, she wasn't a demander she was an enabler. But she was also at this point one of the busier officers aboard the base, with a schedule to match, she handed a PADD back to the corporal she'd been talking to with a word to get engineering to take a look at it before turning her attention to the Captain, who she'd seen coming out of the corner of her eye. "Captain what can we do for you down here?" she asked

Marius held his hands up in an 'I surrender' gesture.

"Nothing serious, don't worry. I wanted to come down and see how things were going. I know that you have a lot on your plate these days, and with everything going on with the Ocampa, I know that we will need your teams to provide extra security."

"For what it's worth things are going as well as can be expected." Charlotte said "Though the sooner V'Lar figures out the means to get the cadet stream flowing the sooner we potentially get more strength in the ranks." she sighed "I was about to bring the base defence perimeter online, fancy a shuttle ride?" Marius' eyebrows lifted.

"You know what, that sounds great," he said with a surprised chuckle. "Lead the way," he said. "Getting new crew is going to be a challenge. I think an expedition back to the Alpha Quadrant once all of this has died down may be necessary. Finding survivors, recruiting, and generally getting a sense of how the Quadrant is after the attack."

"That's the hope." Charlotte said leading the way down to the nearest shuttlebay, which wasn't that far, once there it was into a shuttle and then out into space. "The one good thing about defending a position is that it doesn't matter whether it's medieval Europe or right here in the 25th century, castle warfare is still castle warfare, the same principles apply." she looked at Marius before looking back out at where they could see the base and what was around it "Everything has a comparative piece in the equation."

"True enough," the Captain agreed. "We are in rather uncharted waters here, or at least a position that the Federation hasn't seen in hundreds of years. I wish we had some sort of a roadmap instead of making it up as we go along, but alas- we don't. We can only do the best we can with what we have."

Charlotte knew the look the Captain was giving her "And you're wondering exactly what we've got." she said with a slight giggle "I swear sometimes you, Jordan and Mike are like kids in a candy store who think Christmas has come early." she began to pivot the shuttle slightly "But in all seriousness Captain have you ever known me not have a plan or at least the pieces of a plan? Even the ones you didn't like?"

"Honestly...no." Marius had to give a small smile. "One of the reasons I rely on you so heavily." He watched out the viewscreen for a moment. "So tell me, then, what plans do you have?"

"Ok so sticking with the castle analogy let's start with the base itself, that's our gatehouse." Charlotte said "It controls access to the planet by virtue of being in orbit so it has a commanding position, we'll deploy three clusters of orbital weapons platforms at other points in planetary orbit, those are our towers." she gave Marius a second to take that in "We've got a small number of capital ships those are our trebuchets, our catapults, our ballista - they're our big guns if we have to defend our position they'll be taking most of the strain while our fighter squadron, being mobile and fast is our cavalry. We haven't got a lot of capital ships and we haven't got access to the raw material required in enough quantities to build more of them, what we can do is build more fighters. With me so far?"

"I believe so," Marius said after a moment. "It makes sense, and uses what resources we have to good advantage."

"We've then got our archers, those three Cardassian made ATR-4107's that we salvaged a while back." Charlotte said pointing at the three Cardassian constructs that were flying around. "They've had the Cardassian computers stripped out of them, Federation stuff put in and we've mixed in some phasers along with the Cardassian particle beams and a greater variety of torpedoes. They've been given defensive programming and if we were attacked there's a remote link to the base where we've got a control room under construction that can fly each of them. We also have two NCIA-93 type Starfleet vessels, by making use of their holographic masking technology we give ourselves some sentry posts, we're going to disguise them as comets and put them on a consistent patrol route in the space outside the system, they won't be any real use in a fight but they'll be decent training mission vessels. If we can see the threat coming we can get things ready." she took a breath while she adjusted the shuttles path again "Closer in we're taking a leaf out of Deep Space Nine's book remember the cloaked minefield with self-replicating mines? Well we're doing that but on two levels and not with mines. We've got a cloaked sensor grid so we can monitor the whole system and tie that into our various sensor systems but we've also got cloaked tachyon emitters, that allows us to disrupt subspace communications, that's our moat." she smiled before pointing to a number of smaller vessels, about the size of fighter craft that were carefully positioned around the base exterior "That's our portcullis, have you ever heard of the Tholian Web?"

Marius was impressed, and was sure it showed on his face.

"I've read about it, but never have seen one in action. It's a tractor field, right? Basically an energy net created by a number of ships around an enemy vessel, if I remember correctly."

"Yes." Charlotte said "Energy field created by smaller vessels designed to trap a single vessel and prevent it from escaping. We're taking that idea but inverting the field so rather than stop something getting out it stops things getting in. This is essentially an outer shield for the base that an enemy attack would have to get through before it places any strain on the bases actual shields, and for an added bonus those little craft do have their own shields and weapons so it's a little more support fire." she relaxed a little in the seat "Eventually once the terraforming is done we'll be looking at planetary shielding which to use the analogy is the castle wall and building a ground based facility that will be the keep that will include things such as weaponry that can hit an enemy vessel from the surface, be a command centre and if it becomes necessary be the getaway car."

"Do we have enough pilots and crew to man these defences? Honestly it sounds like an enormous undertaking, but something we desperately need."

"At the moment to an extent we do. It's helps that we're able to tie most of these systems into the tactical systems on the base which is no doubt causing Josiah, Jude and Mike a few headaches." Charlotte said "We can cover the orbital defences right now, but we'll need personnel for the ground positions, the good thing there is that we can't establish those until the terraforming is done. The other good news is that there's only one place we're going to get the ideal keep and that brings with it the potential of getting more personnel if they're prepared to do it."

"Meaning the Ocampa?" Marius thought for a moment. "They've been secluded for so long, and I'm sure that some would be willing." He began to form an idea in the back of his mind, something that seemed so obvious and yet had the potential for significant danger. They were lacking in personnel, decimated after the Synthulan attack, and even if they were able to rescue some of who remained in the Alpha Quadrant, it would be years before they had a full crew compliment. "What if we had a way to fill out ranks quickly," he asked, almost to himself? "It could work, but there are so many potential issues... I don't know "

"Not the Ocampa." Charlotte said "They could get involved and I hope they do but I leave the diplomacy to Celine for a reason." she paused "If we got attacked and needed to run we need the means of evacuating quickly, that means a fast ship that can carry thousands of people, on top of that we need more personnel." she sighed "There's only one place in the whole quadrant we can get both of those at the same time and it's not here." Marius turned to look at her.

"Where then?"

"I'll stress that I don't believe we're ready for this yet but..." Charlotte said "How do you feel about stealing a Borg cube and all the drones aboard it?"

Marius blinked.

"That's... That's an idea. There's a lot that would go into that... Do we even have the firepower to manage that?"

"I think we do." Charlotte said "Between the Angel, the Renee Picard and the Harbinger we can knock one out if we have to but we do it right and we won't need to fire a shot. It's not going to be about outgunning a Borg cube it's about knocking out the cubes connection to the collective."

"I'm sure we have some information in the database from Captain Hanson, Admiral Picard, and others who have dealt with a cube. That's going to take some careful planning."

"Exactly." Charlotte said "That's why we're not ready because the high risk for high reward of getting a cube and potentially a thousand or so highly skilled personnel is going to require us being across everything. We've done a fair few operations over the years but this one would need to be perfect." she sighed as she began to turn the shuttle back towards the base "We need victories whether they're the scientific ones like terraforming that planet out there or the military ones like stealing a Borg cube or the medical ones like reintroducing so many victims of assimilation back into society."

"We will have them," Marius said, his gaze drifting over the Obsidian as it orbited the planet. "We've come so far, endured so much. We have to succeed. I'd like you to start working on this. Maybe loop in the Science team; we would need to find trans warp conduits and they could be useful."

"It's going to take more than just the science team. We're at conventional warp three years out from Borg space, we have slipstream so that's maybe a day or two for us." Charlotte said "Finding a transwarp conduit is going to take the science team and the fighter pilots. We have to be very careful, the Borg are still the Borg, even with everything we've been through they are the most dangerous threat out here."

"I know, Major. It will be a full crew effort. I was just saying that gathering the Science team to start planning out the mission, and when we have details we can have a staff meeting to discuss what needs to happen. Bring in whoever you feel you need."

"Oh I will." Charlotte said "Give me a couple of days to figure out the logistics and potential challenges and then it can go in front of the staff."

"Good enough for me," Marius said as the shuttle flew into the hanger. "Please keep me updated."

"I will." Charlotte said before she cracked a grin "Thank you for flying Thrace airlines please remain seated until the shuttle has come to a complete stop."

Marius chuckled, and sat back as Charlotte expertly guided the craft, and landed it smoothly. He stood once it had been turned off, and the pair exited the shuttle.

"Alright, Major," he said, "I'll leave you to it. Get back to me as soon as possible." With a nod, he turned and headed out the shuttlebay, towards the nearest turbolift.

Off:

Captain Marius G. Pontmercy
Commanding Officer
Starbase Obsidian

Major Charlotte Thrace
Marine CO
Starbase Obsidian

 

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