Cerulean Stars - Chapter 61

Cerulean Stars - Chapter 61

Stardate 48118.9 - February 13, 2371, Time: 09:33:00

Before Wolf 359 Elizabeth Shelby had been one of Starfleet's big up and coming officers, and their foremost expert on counter Borg tactics. Mainly because Raine had resolutely refused to utilize her metaknowledge about the Borg in any sort of capacity out of fear that they would assimilate that information from a Federation or other source.

After Wolf 359 Elizabeth Shelby had been reassigned to being in charge of a task force dedicated to rebuilding their fleets with the functional idea of being able to take on the Borg when they inevitably returned. 

Which Raine knew from studiously following all things Borg related through her nepotism powers, had lasted about a year before Shelby realized that she had been 'rewarded’ with a makework position where her task forces findings were almost constantly 'taken into consideration’.

At which point Raine suspected Shelby had called in a number of favors to return to being a general floating officer so she could try and get the stink off her career of being unofficially known as the woman that had fucked up Starfleets Borg response. Something the human woman had continued to do until Raine had asked Admiral Toddman if he had any suggestions for help putting together her Jem’Hadar tactical simulations.

“This isn’t a sigma class station.” One of the officers muttered as nearly the entire group with her in the holodeck looked around Deep Space Nine’s promenade in confusion.

“Welcome to Deep Space Nine.” Raine told the group, not having known Shelby was planning to change the location, though she supposed her not knowing was probably a part of the point. 

“Did anyone here put off reviewing the station’s layout after receiving their transfer orders?” She continued, looking over the group hopefully and then letting out a sigh of relief when nobody spoke up. “Great, in which case–”

The holographic station shook with the distinct feeling of an energy weapon impact and Raine had to hold back a curse, because of course Shelby wouldn’t even give them five minutes to set up for their first attempt.

“Red Alert!” Sisko’s voice called out over the station’s communication system as holograms of various other officers and civilians began running around in a panic.

“Everyone group up with your partners from yesterday’s last sim.” Raine snapped out, heavily suspecting there wouldn’t be time to set up new one’s. 

“Mendez, Cuellar, Lutrell you’ll be going with me to ops.” She continued, singling out the odd group of three as she started barking assignment orders. 

“Groups two and three, you're covering the reactor. Groups four through six I want one of you at each of the sail towers so decide on your way. Groups seven and eight shield and environmental controls respectively. Group nine, sickbay. Groups ten through twelve you’re on promenade defense, it’s the most open target to beam into outside of the cargo bays so be ready.”

“And remember.” She added in with a grimace as the groups began to spread out. “Whatever kept them from just beaming torpedoes onto the Odyssey isn’t at play here. So as far as we know the Jem’Hadar should be able to beam in anywhere on the station that there isn’t a physical obstruction preventing it.”

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Tactical simulations might as well have been Elizabeth Shelby’s bread and butter, so when Admiral Toddman had approached her with the idea of putting together a series of Dominion based training scenarios, she had honestly jumped at the chance to put those skills to use.

Unfortunately she had been paired up for the start of that with Lieutenant Commander Brooks, a woman who’s only redeeming quality as an officer seemed to be a somewhat respectable attention to detail. Something that had manifested in her spending a significant portion of the time they were supposed to be fine tuning the generalized training program adjusting the Jem’Hadar’s physical specifications instead.

“And there we go.” Shelby muttered to herself as she watched the Jem’Hadar begin beaming onto the station from the training holodeck’s control room. 

“Um… Ma’am?” One of the others working with her on the design portion of the simulations, a Lieutenant Densely if she remembered right, asked her in a concerned tone. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to put them up against three full ships worth of Jem’Hadar to start with?”

“Three ships are what they sent to attack the Odyssey.” Shelby informed the other woman in annoyance. “Which means until we have information suggesting otherwise, that’s what we need to assume is the standard makeup of their combat wings.”

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Grabbing the Dax hologram and pulling her down behind the science station, Raine had to wonder just what it was that she had done to piss Commander Shelby off so much that she would open the attack by having nine Jem'Hadar beam into Ops.

Both sides began firing the moment the transporter beams finished resolving, and the Asari had to beat down her sudden urge to lash out with her biotics when the holographic version of O'Brien went down after taking a pair of polaron pulses to the chest.

Phaser beams and polaron pulses continued to fly back and forth across ops, the Jem'Hadar thankfully falling faster than the defenders due to their lack of cover. And in less than a minute the station's command center was clear of enemies.

“Report!?” Raine yelled out as she took stock of the damage with a wince.

“Lutrell's down with second degree burn through.” Mendez reported after a moment as the woman in question gave a shaky thumbs up as a holographic limiter covered her chest.

“Looks like the armor worked ma'am.” Lutrell offered with a somewhat pained smile that made Raine instantly concerned

“Did you land wrong?”

“No.” Lutrell answered with a shake of her head as Mendez grabbed one of the Ops medkits and began running the fake dermal regenerator inside over the woman. “Just wasn't expecting the training shock.”

Raine blinked at that, opening her mouth to swear when she felt something slam into her back as a recognizable feeling of pain radiated out from her back.

The sound of phaser fire rang out, and Raine fought against the restrictive force emulating the wound she would have had if she were a normal person, to turn herself over so she could see the now dead Jem'Hadar that had apparently stealthed out of Sisko's office.

“Commander Brooks!” Cuellar exclaimed in surprise as he ran over to her with the med kit. “Are you all right? I'm reading third degree burn through.”

“She overwrote my personal response settings.” Raine muttered in angry disbelief at the greater than expected damage, the only explanation for which being that the computer wasn't taking her biotic barrier into account when it calculated damage. 

An unfortunate requirement given the complete inability of biotics to interact with the massless photonic fields which made up most holograms.

“Yea, well.” Mendez offered as he tossed the dermal generator over to Cuellar who immediately started using it on Raine. “Shelby's kind of an asshole like that.”

The restraining field loosened up somewhat as Cuellar ran the device over Raine's back, but the Asari knew that with third degree burn through it wouldn't go away completely till she got to sickbay and had it properly treated.

“Computer.” Raine called out, giving the woman an honest point for dropping a single Jem'Hadar into the commander's office so it could perform a stealth ambush. “Isolate the commander's office with a level eight force field.”

A yellow holographic force field snapped into existence across the open doorway to Sisko's office. As she dragged herself back over to the primary control console and brought up the internal sensor overview to see just how bad those elsewhere had fared against what had almost surely been a multipronged attack.

“Looks like we've lost the promenade, sickbay, sail towers beta and delta, and main environmental control.” Raine told the others with a grimace. “Some minor good news though, it looks like three survivors from the two lost towers are making their way to alpha.”

She checked which of the three groups had ended up defending alpha so she could give them the proper kudos after everything was finished, only to let out a snort of amusement upon seeing that it was once again the one with Sera in it. 

“Give me a numbers report.” Raine ordered as she tapped in a command that would relay her voice to the various surviving members of her teams.

Over the next minute of reports coming in an unfortunate picture painted itself of the Jem'Hadar hitting everywhere but reactor control. A worrying exception given her own scenarios usually had the Jem'Hadar try to destroy a location if they thought they didn't have the ability to capture it.

“I've lost control of the station's environmental systems.” The Dax hologram announced in a worried tone as Raine turned a confused look to the hologram.

“Why would they…” Raine began, only to trail off as the sudden realization hit her that Shelby didn't know how much of a blunt instrument the Jem'Hadar could be.

“Masks!” She yelled out over the security channel as she yanked her own off her belt and secured it over her face. Just in time it turned out as a cloudy gas began to spew out of the vents.

A multitude of thuds rang out, and Raine muttered a curse at the realization that they had just lost the entirety of their non-security support.

“Lutrell.” Raine said, looking towards the dark skinned woman. “Take over for Major Kira on tactical control. Try to keep the Jem'Hadar ships off us as long as possible.”

“Cuellar, you're at Dax's station.” She continued, knowing the man in question had scored the highest among them in data security. “Try to keep them out of as many systems as possible and report immediately if you think one's about to be compromised.” 

“Mendez.” She finished with a grimace to the man for what she was about to say. “Help me coordinate the remaining defense teams. Because unless Shelby forgot to add them, we just have to hold out another four or so hours before Bajoran reinforcements should be able to arrive.”

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“I'll admit, I'm impressed.” Shelby offered to Raine with a happy smile as the Asari did her level best to glare daggers at the blond woman who didn't even seem to notice. “I didn't think your teams would be able to last a full two and a half hours against the three to one odds they were facing.”

“Yes, well.” Raine ground out with more than a little salt in her tone. “I didn't think the Jem'Hadar would depressurize most of the station after we went to ground in the maintenance conduits. So I suppose that makes us even on the surprise front.”

“How did you survive that anyways?” Shelby asked her in interest.

“Asari are vacuum resistant.” Raine answered in a deadpan, which was technically true, though it was more that they instinctively tended to use their biotics to keep a pressure envelope around themselves in such situations. 

Which Raine supposed explained the vague memory she had of seeing Asari in the games run around places they shouldn't have been able to with only a well secured breathing mask as protection.

“Well, for the simulation score I would say you got a 78 out of a 100.” Shelby continued with an acknowledging nod of her head. “More importantly however, you showed us a number of places where we can further fine tune the training scenario for its general deployment.”

It was there as the woman continued to give an unsoftened technical breakdown of her and her team's many failures, that Raine decided that she, like she suspected a good many other officers had over the years, really didn’t like Elizabeth Shelby. And she heavily suspected that feeling would only get worse over the following weeks of training under her.