Captain to Captain

Posted on Sat Sep 12th, 2020 @ 4:33am by Captain Taiga Aisaka & Captain Minori Kushieda

1,459 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: The Elachi Return
Location: USS Myogi

Minori arrived at the quarters where Admiral Miyahara was holding Captain Aisaka. Two armed guards were standing watch outside the door. She approached them and looked at each of them. They opened the door for her and allowed her to enter.

The quarters were small, even for a New Orleans class. No doubt they were for junior officers and not the VIP or guest quarters. They were dark, no lights were on and Minori couldn't see anything. "Taiga?" she asked simply calling out.

A single lamp switched on to reveal Taiga sitting in one of the arm chairs.
"Minorin" Taiga said simply using Minori's nickname. "What are you doing here?" she asked.

"I managed to convince that idiot to allow me to come see you" Minori said approaching slowly and taking the seat opposite. She eased herself down into the chair and leant forward. "What the hell happened out there Taiga?" she asked.

Taiga sighed. "I see you're the first to actually ask me what happened? Everyone else only seems to be interested in keeping the peace with the Romulans. No one seems to actually want to find the damn truth". Taiga paused as she sat back in her chair. "Minori, we didn't attack that Colony. We responded to a Distress Call from it" she explained.

"A distress call?" Minori asked.

Taiga nodded. "Yes. We picked it up whilst on regular patrol of our side of the Neutral Zone. The colony reported being under attack by an unknown ship" Taiga began. "I thought at first we shouldn't respond, we are Starfleet afterall. We could have happily left it to the Romulans to deal with. However"

She looked away staring out of the large windows at the stars zooming by. "I couldn't just sit there whilst innocent Civilians were being slaughtered. Therefore I ordered the Tokyo into Romulan space to assist"

"You know that crossing the Neutral Zone is against treaty violations?" Minori explained simply. "Could you not have classed it as an internal affair, didn't you think of it like that?"

"Yes I did" Taiga replied. "However, its my understanding that we help people in need. Lives were being lost. We scanned for Romulan ships. We couldn't detect any" she took a deep breath. "I thought that a Starfleet ship responding to a Romulan Distress call was enough to warrant crossing the Neutral Zone and might even strengthen diplomatic relations between The Federation and the Star Empire. I wasn't however, expecting the Alien ship attacking the colony to be that heavily armed"

Minor pondered over her words for a few seconds. "I see. So you were outgunned when you got there. Why did the Romulans claim that you had done it?"

Taiga shrugged. "We managed to divert the alien ship away from the colony to a nearby moon. We couldn't penetrate its shields for long. The only thing we could do was to punch a small hole, long enough to take a scan of its interior" Taiga explained. "The only conclusion we could think of was to get a strike team aboard. Then hopefully they could disable the ship long enough to end the hostilities"

Minor said back in her chair, placing her chin between her forefinger and thumb. "Did it work?"

"I have no idea" Taiga replied. "Commander Knight and the strike team launched from the Tokyo to sneak aboard somehow. We lost sensor contact with them shortly after they began their approach" she said. "We were playing cat and mouse around that moon to get them away" she paused again. "However when we reappeared the ship and the away teams runabout was gone. We couldn't find their warp trail. Neither could we find any wreckage or debris. The only thing we could find was some sort of 'jump' propulsion technology"

"So you think the ship had some sort of jump drive?" Minori asked. She was an engineer at heart, so this was starting to sound interesting for her. If the alien ship could essentially jump it could be much faster than conventional warp drives.

Taiga nodded. "They had just gone. We sent out probes to try and locate them. With the damage the ship had taken we couldn't trust our long range sensors"

"Then what?" Minori asked curiously.

"We returned to the colony. I was hoping we could render some aid to the colonists. However the colony had been destroyed, we discovered no life signs on the planet whatsoever" she looked down at her legs. "We could only determine that the ship had abducted them, we saw ships going back and forth on our entry into the system. However, the weapons signature on the colony was Federation"

"How is that possible?" Minori asked. "Are you sure you didn't hit it accidently when in battle? Could you have mis-fired?"

Taiga shook her head. "Not a chance. That ship used some sort of disruptor style weapons. I have no idea how the colony was destroyed by Federation weapons. Thats why when the Romulans arrived we were instantly blamed and attacked. The rest you know from there"

It took a few seconds for Minori to assimilate what Taiga had told her. "How come then, Admiral Miyahara believes that you did this because of some Lieutenant?"

"Are you talking about Lieutenant Nakazato who came from this ship?" Taiga asked.

"He never specified. But apparently you ripped his position from under him. According to Miyahara, he see's you as some sort of tyrant commander who does whatever she wants... I mean its not far from the truth. You've always been a free spirit and all..."

"Yes, I demoted him" Taiga said. "He abused his power as the Tokyo's second officer to ground all of my pilots for making him look stupid even though it was him that made himself look like a child" Taiga explained simply. "How can I operate a ship when all of my pilots are grounded, therefore taking out most of my ships arsenal and defensive power?"

"I can see that..." Minori said. "However, from what I can gather, Admiral Miyahara doesn't like you at all"

"I don't like him. Its not my fault he's an asshole. He runs this ship like a dictator. He had his security officers point phasers set to kill at me on arrival. He seems too paranoid and power hungry for his own good. I spoke back to him yes, but he deserved it" Taiga told her. She crossed her arms. She didn't like the Admiral. In her books he wasn't a man whom she would consider honourable.

"I can see that. He's as arrogant as they come from what I've seen" she replied.

"Thats an understatement. I think he's a coward. He's either a fool or too scared and paranoid that someone wants his precious command chair" Taiga explained to her simply. "He needs a wake up call, frankly he should never have got past Lieutenant with his attitude"

Minori sighed. "Well I can agree with you on that, but he is the one in charge here unfortunately. Where is the evidence of what happened? Was the Tokyo taking active scane during the battle?"

"Everything you need should be on the Tokyo. However the ship was damaged, I don't know how much was recorded. But I'm sure my crew will testify that we did what I thought was the right thing" Taiga stated. "We did what we thought was our duty to do. Protect those who need protecting. I couldn't sit there and let innocents die just because they were Romulan"

Minori nodded. "I probably would have done the same thing. But could you not have waited for orders from Command?"

"There wasn't time for that. It was respond there and then or wait hours for them to make up their decision. In that time it might have been too late. Although we were too late regardless by the looks of it" Taiga looked over at the window again. "What happens now?"

"From what I understand you're facing a trail and we're facing a huge diplomatic incident" she responded. "However I can't possibly say because I don't know" Minori paused. "However, I want to let you know that I have your back on this. I will look into what you've told me and I will get to the truth of it all. I believe there's more than meets the eye here. But for now, please, try and behave"

Taiga nodded. "Thanks Minorin"

With that, Minori stood up and walked over to the door. "Keep your chin up" she said simply as she knocked to let the guards let her out. "We'll get to the bottom of this"

Posting by

Captain Taiga Aisaka
Commanding Officer
USS Tokyo

Captain Minori Kushieda
Commanding Officer
USS Armitage

RSS Feed