The Battle of Lazzaro: The Space Campaign (Part 1)

Posted on Mon Jul 28th, 2025 @ 2:13am by Captain Patricia Cooke & Lieutenant Charlotte E. "Charlie" Yeager & I-400 & Lieutenant Commander Joseph Nixon & Lieutenant Commander Andrew Star

1,150 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Impending Midnight
Location: Romulan Neutral Zone
Timeline: Concurrent with The Ground Campaign, immediately following "Tardy to the Party"

Boots were on the ground. The Icarus and Apollo had also deposited away teams on the planet's surface. However, the three Starfleet vessels had elected to remain on station in the system and represent the Federation while waiting for the rest of the fleet to arrive.

Patricia was on the bridge in her chair. Deep inside, that young XO of the Sandusky was still there, screaming that she should be the one down there leading the away teams instead of Commander Chance, as this fight had been hers from the off, and she should be the one down there to finish it. However, she understood the importance of command, and hadn't objected to her new XO taking charge of the ground campaign, as there was still much she could do from orbit:

"Ops, get me in touch with whoever the on scene commander is..." Patricia began to order.

"Um... Captain?" Charlie interrupted. "Detecting multiple objects of Borg origin dropping out of warp: Consistent with the cubes encountered at System HW-35 and the Mutara sector:"

As Charlie rattled off her report, the main viewscreen showed several vessels of Borg design appearing in the middle of what had been an orderly evacuation:

"Red alert:" Patricia ordered. "All hands, battle stations!"

Joe's eyes flicked over to Charlie’s report, his mind already anticipating the next moves. As the Borg vessels appeared on the viewscreen, his voice took on a sharper edge.

"Captain, I'm adjusting our fleet's position to intercept and maximize shield coverage. Redirecting power to combat systems now—shields are going to be fully reinforced within moments. I’ll keep monitoring incoming ships and adjust our approach as necessary."

Joe was already coordinating with the tactical officers, his mind racing to keep the situation from spiraling into chaos. There was no time to waste—battle stations had been called, and now it was up to Ops to ensure the ship was ready for whatever came next.

"You really think you can stop me?" A menacing voice suddenly boomed throughout the ship. There hadn't been any sign of a hail from the vessels, and yet a shipwide comms channel had been opened. "My plan is already in motion, and your friends will be crushed. All you're doing is prolonging the inevitable."

"Not on my watch, you digital bitch:" Patricia responded. "Nixon, close that channel: Yeager, full impulse. Let's draw their attention."

Joe Nixon’s hands didn’t pause as the voice echoed through the ship—cold, mechanical, taunting. His eyes narrowed as he kept one hand on the ops console and reached across to mute the shipwide channel at Patricia’s order.

“Aye, Captain,” he snapped. “Channel closed.”

Fingers flew across the controls as he spoke again, calm and clipped despite the fire building in his chest.

“I’m initiating a comms lockdown protocol. Rerouting external input channels through encrypted filters—no more surprise broadcasts unless we authorize them.”

"Full impulse, aye sir." Charlie responded, her fingers dancing over the smooth surface of the CONN station and setting the Missouri in motion.

No sooner had the Missouri started moving when the ship was suddenly rocked by a blast by the I-400 fleet.

Joe braced against the jolt, one hand gripping the console as the deck shuddered beneath his boots. Warning lights strobed across his display—localized shield failure, minor hull stress along the port nacelle, a spike in EPS fluctuations across auxiliary systems.

“Impact registered—looks like directed energy fire from the I-400 group!” he reported sharply. “Shields down to 78%, minor structural stress along the port side. Rerouting auxiliary power to compensate—damage control teams are en route.”

Although Andrew had been extremely quiet in his cubicle, he was still present, lording over the science department. Reports flooded in regarding interstellar chemistry from the I-400 group. "Icarus is being bombarded by carbon monoxide... She's bumped into an extremely high pocket trying to avoid the cube!" Icarus was a Vesta class, a class that's been in service for 20 years now, and wasn't exactly evasive... Why Starfleet loved to produce capital ships, Andrew didn't know, nor had time to question. "She's dragging her feet, crew evacuating parts of the ship, their Chief Engineer is on the ground team..." He suddenly stopped, but he was still tapping away at his console. "Engineering is in anarchy, Captain."

"Damnit." Patricia cursed. "Helm, get us closer to the Icarus: Ops, inform them we're sending Lieutenant Ventari over to help sort out their mess."

"Aye, sir." Charlie said, tapping away at the CONN station to change the Missouri's course to aid their distressed fleetmate.

Joe's brow furrowed, eyes flicking rapidly between sensor telemetry and internal diagnostics. He barely paused to acknowledge the captain’s order before responding, already five steps ahead.

“Course to the Icarus confirmed. Message relayed—they’re expecting Lieutenant Ventari. I’m preparing a priority transport corridor now—locking onto Icarus’s functional pattern buffers and isolating a safe materialization zone near their auxiliary control.”

His fingers danced across the console again, diverting more power from secondary systems to reinforce the transporter buffers and stabilize the corridor through the CO-saturated region.

“Environmental variance is high—venting pockets of carbon monoxide across her dorsal sections. I’ll coordinate with their emergency teams to keep the corridor open long enough to get Ventari in and maybe start pulling critical personnel out.”

A burst of data flickered onto his screen—Ventari’s biosignal now marked as en route to the transporter room.

Joe tapped his combadge. “Ventari, this is Ops. You’re about to beam into a warzone with failing systems and an unstable atmosphere. Their engineering’s in chaos. You're going in hot, but I've cleared you the safest vector I can. You’ll have ten seconds of clean corridor—make every one count.”

He glanced over at Patricia. “If Icarus loses main power, I can try to bridge power systems from our EPS manifold—short term only. But it might buy them just enough time to stabilize.”

Joe’s jaw clenched. He knew Vesta-class ships could take a beating, but they weren’t built to dance with cubes. Not without help.

“Captain…” he said, quieter now but deadly serious. “If we don’t pull her back from the brink, Icarus is going to break in half.”

"How much time does she have left?" Patricia asked. If this transfer wasn't going to be possible, they needed to break off ASAP.

Another "Captain" cropped up, coming from the Science cubby. Something the CO probably started to hate to hear every time a problem showed its ugly bald head. "I can reconfigure the tractor beam into a cannon... Shoot our Chief Engineer to Icarus." He stated, saving the story of shooting 91-year-old Laura out of a tractor beam at ¼ impulse at another starship back in 2330 for a more important time... Like dinner.

To be continued...

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