Preserving The Past (Part 4)
Posted on Tue Sep 30th, 2025 @ 5:41pm by Captain Taiga Aisaka & Petty Officer 1st Class Yoshika Miyafuji & Commander Thomas Johnson & Commander Jennifer Daxer & Commander Chisato Nishikigi & Lieutenant Commander Casey Washburn & Lieutenant Commander Talia Johnson & Lieutenant Jasad Yuvek & Lieutenant Nezuko & Lieutenant Teneca Quinn & Lieutenant Nyxala Valentine & Lieutenant Ralen Trellis & Lieutenant Takina Inoue & Lieutenant Mizuki Nakahara & Lieutenant JG Connor Carey
Edited on on Tue Sep 30th, 2025 @ 5:50pm
1,961 words; about a 10 minute read
Mission:
Preserving The Past
Location: Various
Timeline: January 26th, 2397
Previously on Star Trek Tokyo:
Half our size, half our shielding capacity Yuvek's mind calculated grimly as he watched the Nova-class vessel banking hard to avoid another barrage. At this rate of fire, their shields would not hold for more than a few minutes against concentrated Iconian assault.
"Our away teams are dispersed throughout the Amerind village - some crew members are likely in close proximity to the native population." Yuvek said as he studied the sensors as he tried to refine the data.
"At this range and with the electromagnetic interference from Iconian weapons fire, our transporter targeting sensors cannot effectively distinguish between Starfleet personnel and Amerind natives." Lieutenant Yuvek said as his attention switched between the helm control to the viewscreen as he observed the Kanna taking direct hits.
They don't have the structural integrity to sustain this much longer.
And now the continuation...
"Ma'am, the transporters are having difficulty locking onto specific individuals. We may have no choice but to extract everyone in the immediate vicinity of our people and sort them out afterward. The alternative is potentially losing crew members we cannot clearly identify through the interference." he yelled over the voices on the bridge.
"Nezuko?" Taiga called out looking over to the Operations console where her Amphea Operations Officer sat. Luckily she had returned to the Tokyo with some 'Computer Upgrade' information last night. Right now Taiga was glad to have her skills at Ops where they were most needed.
Yuvek’s announcement about the Transporters had prompted Nezuko to bring transporter controls to her console. He was right; they couldn’t lock on to any individuals, but they could lock on to areas and beam everyone in at once. The Tokyo and Kanna away teams plus all other lifeforms, totaling 2,179 individuals. A little over the ship’s emergency carrying capacity but they would manage. They’d need to. She nodded to the Captain.
"Do what you can Nezuko!" Taiga ordered quickly. "Make it count!"
Lieutenant Yuvek's eyes darted between his helm controls and the sensor display as he fought to maintain their precarious position. He was able to hold the ship as steady as possible, but any significant maneuvering during the transport cycle would disrupt the process he thought as his hands making minute adjustments to their orbital position.
The gravity well is working in our favor, he noted with grim satisfaction as another volley of Iconian fire passed wide of their position. The purple beams, meant to compensate for the Tokyo's movement, were being pulled slightly off-target by the planet's gravitational field.
"The planet's mass is creating targeting difficulties for the Iconians," he reported, allowing himself a moment of tactical optimism. "Their fire control systems aren't fully compensating for gravitational lensing effects at this range. It's buying us a few moments."
But his expression darkened as he watched the power readings fluctuate dramatically across his console. The massive energy drain from the emergency transport was affecting his maneuvering thrusters and impulse engines.
Graceful Amphea fingers moved up the transporter activator with a distinct sound. The ship’s power surged as an immense amount of energy, much of which Nezuko had to manually reroute from other systems. The away team from the cave were the easiest to pick up, and indeed the Kanna seemed to quickly lock on and grab their own people, so it was trivial to collect Chisato and Takina; they were already in transporter room one before the transporters started to pick up people from the village en masse.
"The transporters are drawing significant power from propulsion systems," Yuvek announced, his voice tight with concern. "I'm losing maneuverability with each transport cycle. If we take a direct hit while the transporters are active..." but Lieutenant Yuvek was interrupted before he could finish.
But then a shot from the Iconian dreadnought hit them just right, causing a feedback pulse which completely destroyed all of the ship’s transporter transceivers midway through beaming.
Nezuko’s eyes went wide as her console went crimson. Her fingers raced across the controls. She had to do something. Anything. There were…oh gods, there were over fourteen hundred people in the buffer, and the power surges were only spreading. They would all be lost in seconds.
A tear ran down her cheek as she realized the only solution and acted to implement it right away.
The computer knew how to recognize the people it was familiar with. Commander Johnson and the rest of the village away team had been in the transporter recently. Their patterns could be pulled out in milliseconds.
And so the Tokyo away team materialized in cargo bay four. Alone. While the people of Amerind suddenly ceased to exist as the transporter buffers collectively failed.
"How many did we get?" Taiga called out.
Nezuko looked in wide-eyed horror at her Captain and then as quickly as she could typed into a voice panel on the edge of her console. “Thomas Johnson, Yoshika Miyafukji, Mizuki Nakahara, Connor Carey, Ralen Trellis, Teneca Quinn, Casey Washburn, Chisato Nishikigi, Takina Inoue…that is all. None of the people from Amerind. None.”
There was a moment of silence on the bridge. The ship shook again as another volley of weapons fire struck against their shields. "Take her up! Jen, all weapons hot. We're going to have to break through those ships before we can jump to warp!"
At Taiga's order, Jen targetted the nearest enemy vessel, and began lancing them with phaser fire. She also let loose with a few torpedos, hoping to disable at least one of their ships. "Shields are down to 18 percent, Captain. We can't take too many more hits." She said as the ship was hit hard. "We definitely can't handle a direct assault."
[Cargo Bay 4]
The familiar tingle of transport faded, leaving Ralen standing in the sterile confines of Cargo Bay 4. But something was wrong—terribly, fundamentally wrong. The silence around him felt hollow, incomplete. His counselor's instincts immediately picked up on the absence, the wrongness of their small group standing alone in the vast space.
"Where—" he started, then stopped as the implications hit him like a physical blow.
The villagers. The families they'd been trying to save. The children who'd looked at them with such trust. The Elder who'd shared stories of Kirok and welcomed them into his tent.
His previous host, Thessian, archaeological sensibilities recoiled at the loss of an entire culture, while Jaret's military experience recognized the cruel arithmetic of combat triage. But it was Ralen himself who felt the crushing weight of survivor's guilt settling on his shoulders.
Counselor Trellis paused, swallowing hard. "We couldn't save them, but we're alive. Right now, that has to be enough." he said aloud.
Yoshika eyes opened wide in disbelief. "Wait... We couldn't... save... them?" The ship suddenly shook as the Tokyo recieved more assault from weapons fire. Several sparks showered from the one of the lights in the ceiling, a sign that the ship was taking damage.
[USS Tokyo Bridge]
Over a thousand lives lost, Lieutenant Yuvek's analytical mind noted clinically, but dwelling on casualties during active combat gets everyone killed.
"Acknowledged, Ma'am," he replied tersely, his hands already moving across the helm controls. "Beginning emergency ascent - full impulse burn in three seconds."
The ship groaned under the sudden acceleration as Yuvek pushed the Tokyo's engines to their limits. On his tactical display, he could see the Kanna struggling to maintain formation as Iconian fire concentrated on both vessels.
"Kanna is reporting successful extraction of their personnel," he called out, I'm trying to open a channel to coordinate their escape. =/\= "Tokyo to Kanna - we're breaking orbit on heading 127 mark 85. Match our ascent rate and stay in our shield shadow until we clear the gravity well."=/\=
Forty-three seconds to reach minimum warp threshold, his mind calculated as purple beams lanced past the viewscreen. The Nova-class couldn't take much more punishment.
[USS Tokyo Sickbay]
The ship shuddered from another series of impacts on the shields, but still caused Nyx to stumble in the main sickbay area. There were only a handful of nurses present and minor casualties had been coming in ever since the ship was under attack. Sprains, a couple of electrical burns, but nothing serious. Even with that, Nyx already decided she was happier with Kanna's sickbay design, a much more open space. Then the first real casualty came in.
The Operations Ensign was being guided by a junior NCO because his face was blistered, fragments of what used to be a console sticking out of the burns. Nyx evaluated him at a glance and pointed towards the hallway that led back to the surgical suite. Back. Through a hallway. That was ridiculous. "Akawa, you're on triage duty, keep me updated on anything that comes in that's critical. Fletcher, with me. She grabbed a white lab coat that was just hanging as apparent decoration and slipped it on even as she made a whistled tone that made her drakeling vacate her shoulders and flop to the ground to follow behind her.
In the surgical suite, the doctor prepared a hypospray rapidly and handed it to the nurse that had come with her, "Give him this and lay him down. Ensign, we're going to reduce your pain level and knock you out, you're not going to want to be awake for this, but you're going to be just fine." She flashed him a smile she knew he couldn't see with one eye swollen shut and the other... There wasn't anything she could do for that right now. The hiss of the hypospray sounded and she reached for a surgical tool kit, "You, PO, you're going to assist, Fletcher, drape the patient's neck, then head back out to Akawa, I can handle this."
A tricorder filled her hand and she made a scan of the wounded area, "PO, he's going to need some help after this and unless he's got someone else on board already, you're going to be it. He's got some deep lacerations and second degree burns, but some serious damage to his eye socket and the eye itself is shredded, the other is intact." She handed the tricorder to the Operations NCO, then picked up some forceps and started to pull some of the fragments carefully out of the Ensign's face, already thinking about how she would be able to remove the young man's eye but protect the ocular nerve. War sucked.
[USS Kanna Bridge]
Shauna rushed out of the turbolift, her hair a mess and her uniform damaged and dirty. However it wasn't out of place. The bridge of the Nova Class was badly damaged. Consoles smouldered, smoke rolled through the air. Debris and parts of the small bridge littered the floor. The Kanna had taken a beating, yet her crew still worked diligently.
"Captain, its good to see you. We've taken a lot of damage..." Lieutenant James, who usually manned Operations reported from Tactical.
"Where is Commander Jameson?" Shauna asked.
"Dead Captain. He took a direct blast to the face three minutes in." James responded his hands running over the small tactical console. "We're down to six torpedoes, and only two functioning phaser banks. Shields at four per cent..."
"Captain!" Ensign Thornton from the helm called out. "The Tokyo has altered course, its heading back for high orbit. I believe they're trying to break through the Iconian Blockade and make a run for it..."
"Take us up Ensign! Follow their lead! Push those engines, we need to get out of here!" Shauna ordered.
To be continued...
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