YE/D01 - Bridge

[GM-04]

==Chertstone/All==

The Delta-series maneuvers were useful in combat against similar-sized combatants; they would have been perfect had the Yeager only been facing the Os'rusa. As it stood, however, the Yeager was also being pursued by Jem'Hadar Attack Fighters, and they outperformed the larger ship in both acceleration and agility. As the Yeager banked and dropped into a dive, both ships raked it with phased polaron fire. The shields held, barely, but conduits overloaded throughout the ship.

The old Yeager was neither as fast or agile as the Yeager Chertstone was used to, and the maneuver seemed to take twice as long as it would have were the crew in their own timeline.

As the Yeager came up in a roll to get behind the Os'rusa, the Jem'Hadar fighters bore down on them again. This time the beams pierced the shields, shattering hull plating and vaporising organic material. The console behind the auxiliary science station exploded, pitching a young Benzite officer over the console to lay at an awkward angle, open eyes staring unseeing at the ceiling.

Though the Yeager was now in a better position to deal with the Cardassians, they were easy pickings for the Jem'Hadar.

==Qi==

Theoretically, yes. The wormhole could be the key to returning to the present. But with time travel/time shifting, it was never an exact science. There could be any number of phenomena that would return the crew to their own time, or trap them in the current one.

[T'Lari]

T'Lari crawled back to her seat and felt deep confusion. The whole console had changed. It was still somewhat familiar in its basic setup and functions, but she recognized it. This was the old Yeager, at least that was her position. The console she'd been so familiar with from her time on the ancient ship looked new, but was clearly an older model. That ship, like all modern Starfleet vessels, had had its components swapped out repeatedly. She looked at her refection in the monitor. Human. Female. Red hair.

What? This makes no sense. Is this a distortion? Time travel? A projection?

It couldn't be a trick. She felt different, her thoughts slower and filled with flashes of unconstrained emotion... fear, anxiety. And now deep confusion. Her people didn't consider her to be much of a Vulcan, and her self-control had been a problem since her escape from the Romulan mining facility as a child, but she had at least made some progress and mostly kept herself in check. Now? There was none of that, and she struggled to reestablish control. 

As she looked at the viewscreen and then her terminal she saw that the ship was in the middle of a battle. The legendary USS Defiant led the charge. And there was the Os'rusa. That helped her focus. She knew of this. Like most Tactical officers she was something of a history nut. This was "Operation Return," the battle where the Yeager and the Os'rusa had faced off for the first time. Both ships had taken a beating but the Yeager had come out on top. Taking a moment she reacquainted herself with the station layout. It wasn't much different.

The Vulcan Science officer said something that at least showed she wasn't the only one swapped out. 

“We should still be charged with chroniton particles from the anomaly on the race track. If we pass through the wormhole, we might be able to snap back to our proper spacetime position.”

Commander Qi. The helm officer is likely Chertstone. And the Captain...

"Let's focus on surviving the next ten minutes, first. We don't have any Dominion War veterans aboard, so we're seeing something from the Yeager's own memory. We don't know what's going on; we may only need to witness events, or we may need to ensure they happen."

Captain Braggins.

Knowing she wasn't alone also helped her reestablish control, as did the next order. 

"Tactical, lock aft weapons on the Jem'Hadar fighters. Full torpedo spread. We can't manoeuvre with them so let's clip their wings before we tangle with the Os'rusa." 

"Aft weapons, full torpedo spread aye. Targeting fighters." She repeated the order as she was trained to do as a Weapons Officer. Her voice was so odd, much higher in pitch and with a distinct and nasal accent. New Jersey? She wasn't sure. Not all officers actually repeated orders, especially as they grew more familiar with their captains, but T'Lari had always been a stickler for protocol. 

She tapped in the command and was gratified to see the console respond quicker than the future version of the Yeager had. This ship was new, and it had been built for this. Lock acquired, she launched a full spread at the Jem'Hadar fighters

The console showed weapons lock and she fired. The ship shuddered violently as it took weapons fire that tore through its shields. Nearby a Benzite officer went flying, falling in a lump behind her. 

Clear away the chaff.

== GM Input: Where are the fighters now? And results of the shots, if you please?  Can T'Lari target them with any of the the primary hull weapons? ==

== Tags ==

[Flint Chertstone]

The Yeager didn't like it as the delta manoeuvrers were initiated one after the other. Flint could feel every panel and subframe straining as they finally came about and positioned themselves perfectly for a retaliatory strike against the Os'rusa. If only then, her two Jem'Hadar escorts didn't already have designs on them also. It would have worked.

Their polaron beams making short work of both the shields and hull in only a couple of short blasts.

Flint broke his pursuit of the larger Cardassian to try to evade the pair who could easily cut them to pieces without a second thought.

The voice of the Andorian cut through the sirens like a knife. "Tactical, lock aft weapons on the Jem'Hadar fighters. Full torpedo spread. We can't manoeuvre with them so let's clip their wings before we tangle with the Os'rusa."

It was true. There was no way this Intrepid class Yeager could hold its own toe to toe with the more agile fighters. But they could give them one one hell of a bloody nose if they could get them off their arse, and bring their main weapons to bear.

He'd read the reports. It was required reading after all. And he had managed it once in his own racer. The principle was sound. He felt confident. Or as confident as anyone could be who was about the pull off what he had in mind.

“Initiating Tellar Roll, Mark.” He called out forcing the light cruiser into the tight 90º roll manoeuvrer so that when T'Lari's weapons fired, the Jem'Hadar took it as close and personal as was physically possible.


== Brownie Points, and brown trousers for everyone! ==

[Jadaris]

A higher pitched voice came over the comms to the science station.

[Jadaris to Qi, assuming you're actually the Chief Science Officer still. I think we've encountered a temporal shunt that's temporarily collapsed our timeline with the ship's earlier timelines. If we can find ourselves a new chroniton source and get hit with polaron weaponry while irradiated by said source, it might be enough to shock ourselves out of this timestream and back into our original one. But we'd need to do the same to the Cardassians if they're here with us, as timeline contamination should be avoided.]

[Jennifer Braggins]

Jenny's knuckles turned a lighter shade of blue as she gripped the armrests of the command chair; Chertstone's evasive action wasn't working, the Yeager's impulse drive having been constructed from components left over from the Defiant prototype - engines that were dangerously overpowered for such a small ship were woefully under-powered on a ship the size of the Yeager. The Jem'Hadar craft were agile and well-armed, and trying to fight them in a manoeuvre battle was a losing proposition; something that became self-evident as they battered down the Yeager's shields and shattered hull plating.

T'Lari's reply, Earth American East Coast, sounded utterly alien to Jenny as the torpedoes fired. More blasts rocked the ship as Chertstone tried in vain to get into an advantageous position over the smaller ships. Not for the first time, Jenny wished Theresa Black were at the helm; Chertstone was a better pilot, but the older officer had the combat experience to not try what the NCO was trying.

“Initiating Tellar Roll, Mark.”

There was no further warning as the Yeager heeled over into a tight banking turn, and Jenny was pushed into her chair by the sudden change in vector while the inertial dampeners attempted to compensate. The newer Yeager would have handled such a manoeuvre with relative ease, having more powerful (and numerous) engines with improved vector control, attitude thrusters with higher outputs, and a structural integrity field so reinforced that theoretically the ship would hold together if it were sawn completely in half. The original Yeager lacked all of those things beyond the enhanced SiF.

She'll tear herself apart if we keep this up.

"Belay that! Omega-Four, Starboard!"

Jenny just hoped the delay between Chertstone's implementation of the manoeuvre and her countermanding wasn't so long that they were fully committed, and that they didn't present an easy target or rip themselves to pieces before they figured out exactly what was going on.