Last flight of the SS Lagrange - Sequus lore series

Posted on Tue Jun 20th, 2023 @ 10:05am by Lieutenant Commander S'hib

Mission: MISSION 0 - History Speaks
Location: Uncharted star system
Timeline: 2157 - Earth-Romulan War
3832 words - 7.7 OF Standard Post Measure

"Samuels to bridge, that last shot overloaded the eps relays and damaged the injectors, the reactors shutting down..." He grimaced at his own words, knuckles turning white as fists clenched the railing beneath the warp core system diagnostic screen.

"...nothing I can do about it. So, you might want to hold on to something."

The Lagrange shuddered as Samuels spoke as if to emphasize his point, then shuddered again as the blue and red glow of her nacelles sputtered and began to dim.

Her battered hull lurched, the sudden and uncontrolled exit to sublight speed throwing everyone forward.

"Elizabeth! Get us stabilised!" Shouted Captain Ciobanu, his thick Eastern European accent challenging the alert klaxons for the loudest noise on the bridge.

"I'm already on it," Ensign Thompson groaned as she dragged herself back into the Helm, wiping away blood and sweat from her brow in equal parts before trying to coax the Intrepid class from spinning bow to stern.

"Any sign of the Romulans?" Ciobanu growled, spinning around in his seat to face his science officer.

"No," Lieutenant Richards exclaimed with an exasperated sigh "They must have cloaked as soon as they left warp."

"Then keep looking..." Ciobanu huffed, turning back to face the viewscreen as the stars continued to trail vertically on the viewscreen "We put just as many holes in them as they did to us, they gotta be leaking something." Then his eyes caught a glimpse of a planet, its deep red landscape enveloping the viewscreen briefly.

"Eli, we're still spinning..."

"I know," She replied with a vexed smile. "But the navigation computer still thinks we are at warp, so the manoeuvring thrusters won't..."

She was cut short as the Lagrange groaned once more, her orientation levelling out and the sudden change in velocity shoving everyone into their seats.

"Ah, there we go... switching to impulse power." Eli chirped happily.

"Good, now get us moving," Ciobanu said softly as he leaned on his left arm and hit the comms button with his right hand. "Engineering, come in... Samuels what's the damage."

"Not good cap. Warp cores dead... but, there is good news."

"Go on?" Ciobanu asked nervously, a frown forming as he awaited his chief engineer's reply.

"Well, she ain't gonna explode on us..." Samuels sighed, audibly slamming a panel.

"Just get up here..." Ciobanu growled, flicking the comms off.

"Sir, I'm picking up something... I think they're decloaking!." Richards interjected suddenly panicked by his display readings.

"Brace!" Ciobanu barked just before sparks erupted on the bridge as the bright green disruptor fire struck the Lagrange.

"Return fire! Eli get us near that planet, we may have to abandon ship."

"...Aye sir" Elizabeth shouted back as another hit caused the lights to flicker, the realisation they were still losing this fight not lost on her.

Another explosion riddled the charred and pot-marked hull of the Lagrange as she fired back, green and orange hues exchanging rapidly between the two vessels.

"Do we have any torpedos left!" Ciobanu yelled as the Lagrange shook again.

"Yes, but the aft tubes are still jammed... damage control teams are working on it." First Officer Daniels shouted from tactical as another disruptor struck the ship. "That last hit took hull plating down to sixteen per cent!"

"And they aren't going to let us turn to face them either, they know what happened the last time." Ciobanu spat back, hating the Romulans as much as he respected them.

It was then Eli squealed as she quickly fumbled at the controls, sending the Lagrange diving down as a large asteroid drifted above them, splattering the hull with a field of fist-sized rocks.

"Hold on!" She shouted, yanking the Lagrange back up and tilting to port, attempting to avoid as much as possible. "I think this planet's got a ring, why didn't we see it sooner."

"Not quite..." Richards interjected as he held onto his station as Eli through the ship this way and that. "Sensors are still a bit spotty but I believe we are inside the remnants of a small moon. And judging by this cloud's density it fell below the Roche limit in the last few thousand years, maybe less."

"That's interesting but keep the sensors on the damn Romulans!" Ciobanu huffed, an irritated frown across his brow. "Eli, get us closer to some of the bigger ones," He added, pausing as another disruptor bolt struck the Lagrange. "I have an idea..."

"I don't like the sound of that..." Samuels scoffed jokingly as he pushed past the turbolift door that had stopped halfway in its alcove.

"Samuels, shut up and get on station. I need the grapplers online."

"Grapplers?" Samuels questioned as he hurried across the bridge, steadying himself while the Lagrange was weaving amongst rocks. "Are you going to do what I thin-"

"She's got more teeth than us..." Ciobanu grumbled, cutting off Commander Samuels. "So we're going to knock'em all out."

Behind them, the Romulan vessel followed as best as it could, swaying up and around the asteroids, attempting to get a clear shot yet still firing even when it couldn't.

"Captain, we're running out of rocks..." Eli noted, finding herself having to dodge less and less as they approached the upper atmosphere.

"Samuels?" Ciobanu asked, pressing his Commander for time.

"They're coming online now... But I had to reroute power, from phasers... and life support."

Ciobanu raised an eyebrow but didn't question his Chief Engineer, he knew he wouldn't make a call like that if things weren't well and truly desperate. "Eli, that one... fly us underneath it as close as you can. And I mean close."

"Yes sir." Eli replied, pivoting the Lagrange to starboard.

"Daniels, soon as we pass under, hit them..."

micro fragments of the moon continued to pepper the Lagrange, each impact leaving a small divet and shattering into a puff of dust and pebbles. It sounded like they were in a rainstorm, with each disruptor bolt that hit them echoing like thunder.

If this didn't work, they'd be nowhere else to hide.

"Fire!" Ciobanu shouted, gripping the arms of his seat.

The Lagrange dived under the asteroid as its grappling guns fired, its cracked and dusty bulk casting a brief shadow over the small Intrepid.

A dense cloud of rock and dust shotgunned her hull, peppering the bridge with fist-sized dents that cracked the viewscreen multiple times even as the two clawed cables unravelled behind them.

The Romulans never saw them, too focused on keeping sight of the Earth vessel, too determined to keep firing.

Thum Thum

Magnetic claws thudded heavily against the green hull, buckling metal and cloaking emitter alike as they clamped down, locking into place just before the lines went taught.

"Up Eli! Up!" Ciobanu instructed as the Lagrange lurched, shifting from the sudden weight added to her rear.

Thrusters fired from both ships, one attempting to keep the momentum while the other desperately slammed on the brakes. But it was too little too late for the Romulan ship, the cables pulling her into the large asteroid even as one snapped from the tension.

Everyone on the Lagrange was thrown forward, the second line wrapping underneath the asteroid as the Romulan ship exploded on the other side. small at first, her hull buckling and breaking apart just like the asteroid. But then her core breached, imploding violently before erupting in a bright flash that shattered what remained of the asteroid.

The silent explosion was oddly brief, but it was enough to shower the Lagrange with a clatter of rock and slag, rupturing her nacelles and impacting her port impulse engine.

The ship groaned, the pot-marked lettering of her name falling into darkness as her running lights flickered offline.

"Main power is failing. I'm trying to reroute to secondaries but the grid is overloading, Captain."

"Helms not responding either! we've lost impulse power!"

"Captain without impulse power we won't be able to escape the planet's gravity, and we are rapidly approaching the upper atmosphere." Richards noted, the stress in his voice palpable.

"Understood Lieutenant, coordinate with the rest of the crew, if we're going down we need to evacuate decks five, six and seven," Ciobanu called out to Richards, trying to quell the rare tinge of panic in the pit of his stomach as he looked about the near pitch-black bridge.

"Aye, sir." It was a simple reply, but for a man who often over-embellished everything he spoke about. It only served to point out the severity of the situation they all found themselves in.

"Samuels, seriously this time, give me some good news please." Ciobanu sighed wearily as he watched the viewscreen, a faint glow rippling over the stubby spade-shaped saucer section as her hull contacted the upper atmosphere.

"Honestly, I got nothing, Cap... maybe some landing thrusters but nothing that's going to slow us down."

Eli spun around in her seat at this, looking back at Ciobanu. "I can work with that, I think... but it's going to be a very bumpy landing."

He smiled back, his eyes flicking briefly between her eyes and the scarlet-red landscape. "Any landing we can walk away from is a good landing Eli, I trust you can do it."

It was then the Lagrange started to shake, the violent turbulence of the planet's atmosphere truly buffering her hull. Intense flames licked at her wounds, melting what remained of the grappling cable and pealing away more panels like flaking scales on a dying dragon.

She wasn't alone though, flanked on all sides by asteroid and Romulan debris alike, all burning brightly as they fell towards the alien world below.

Down she plummeted, belly first now with sections of her hull glowing a dull orange. Steam and smoke trailed behind her as she tore through what little scattering of clouds there were.

"I should also point out she's not exactly designed for unassisted atmospheric flight..." Eli hummed nervously as she ran her hands over the analogue controls, teasing what little the Lagrange had left in her to work.

"Working on it!" Samuels grumbled, clutching onto his terminal while trying to work.

The Lagrange rumbled again, this time from dozens of micro explosions ejecting panels on her ventral hull, the synchronised flurry of grey metal blasting away from her like confetti.

Then the small reaction engines sputtered to life, tilting her half-saucer down in an attempt to force the Lagrange into a glide.

"Sir, we still don't have enough forward thrust and were dropping like a rock, I don't know what else to do!" Eli shouted out, desperately trying to maintain an angled approach to the surface.

"I got it! I got it!" Samuels shouted back in triumph as the bridge lights flickered alive. "Auxillary power is coming online, but it's not the best... I've got you-"

Samuels paused for a moment as he looked over the data pouring in from systems coming back online, a mixture of relief and trepidation strung across his features. "Partial power to the starboard side impulse drive... but I don't know for how long, she ain't happy I can tell you that much."

"Eli, if we go down hard, we go down fast and we'll slide the ship to a stop." Ciobanu remarked, starting to think that maybe perhaps they had a chance.

"Got it, fast and low... ok, I got this..." Eli replied, more to herself as the Lagrange picked up speed, her one sputtering impulse engine forcing her out of the near-flat spin she was in.

"One hundred and thirty thousand feet and falling rapidly" Eric sounded off, continuing to relay their altitude.

"Is it all just, desert?" Eli remarked, concern growing for their survival as the endless expanse of red sand stretched as far as they could see.

"No, no I saw water... when we were still spinning, it's a massive land mass but I did see what looked like an ocean on the edge, maybe some green but only briefly," Ciobanu replied, his voice unusually soft and unsure.

"We gotta try, Eli keep us in the air as long as you can... I know it's going to be difficult, but without power, this ship's going to turn into a hot box sitting in this desert."

"Out of the frying pan and into the fire eh?" Samuels jested as everyone pivoted to look at him with disapproval. "Alright, just tryin' to lighten the mood."

A low distant rumble echoed over the hot red dunes, the sand shifting as the smouldering Lagrange flew high above, barely casting a shadow. Still, she was incredibly loud, her now solitary impulse engine normally confined to the soundless void scape that was space growling now in atmosphere.

Her thrusters too burned brightly, dozens of jet engines whirling away though not nearly as intensely now.

"Twenty-six thousand, twenty-five, twenty-four..."

"There!" Eli squealed, pointing over her console at the viewscreen. "Do you see it, the horizon's green!"

"Eric, how far away is that, roughly..." Ciobanu asked as he rubbed the stubble on his tired face.

"At this altitude-" Eric paused, looking back at his console. "It's about a hundred and fifty kilometres away, but we're dropping too fast... we won't make it another fifty at this rate."

Ciobanu paused, mulling over what Eric had said. "Do what you can Eli... we're almost there, just a few more minutes."

Thrusters sputtered as their fuel reserves dwindled, tipping her somewhat to port for a moment.

"Keep her steady, Eli... almost there..."

"seventeen thousand feet..."

"Captain, we may need to put her down early..." Samuels said cautiously.

"What? why?"

"I'm getting some weird fluctuations in the grid, it's the starboard impulse drive... I don't think I can keep her online much longer." Samuels replied as the colour left his face.

"No, we gotta keep going!"

"But sir..."

"Thats an order Samuels! I don't care what you gotta do, you keep that thing online!" Ciobanu yelled.

"Ten thousand, we're still dropping too fast."

"Thats because I'm saving fuel on the thrusters, we wanna be as low as we can when we run out... not ten thousand feet up in a free fall," Eli shouted, chastising everyone. "Just let me fly the damn ship."

Everyone else was stunned into silence, giving each other interesting glances before looking back at the viewscreen as she mumbled the word sorry.

"Lower decks have been evacuated, Captain." Richards huffed as he pushed his way past the turbolift door that was still jammed. "But we got a lot wounded and at least a dozen fatalities."

"Understood," Ciobanu said grimly; This war had already cost him most of his original crew... either transferred to newer vessels or replaced with nothing but memories of their outstanding service to remember them by. It had become par for the course for Starfleet and her Captains of late, and he hated it.

"Help Samuels regulate the power grid." He motioned with a flick of his head.

"Yes sir."

Everything was shaking now, not by much but the vibrations still drilled into everyone's bones as the Lagrange barreled over the red dunes... a few hundred feet now and holding steady despite listing to port.

"Sir, I'm reading a power cascade forming in the Impulse manifolds, it's gonna keep building and eventually snap back into the impulse reactors. When it does the magnetic constrictors won't be able to stop the cores from breaching, it'll tear the ship apart."

"Alright, shut them down... we'll have to make do with the speed we got." Ciobanu finally conceded with a tired sigh, part of him wanting to put the Lagrange down right then and now, get it over and done with. It was the anticipation and the stress, they were starting to get a little too much.

Samuels on the other hand let out a sigh of relief as he executed the commands, watching as the power levels began to dip.

"Uh oh... oh no," Eli muttered quietly, noticing before everyone else as the Lagrange began to tilt even harder to port.

"Eli?" Ciobanu asked cautiously.

"Hold on... as in actually hold on" She muttered as the Lagrange thrummed over the tall dunes, kicking up a storm of sand in her wake.

He said nothing else as he leaned over and chimed the internal comms, hoping they still worked despite the bleep stating that they did. "All hands, brace for emergency landing."

Ahead of them the pinpricks of exotic and tall trees rapidly came into view, the thought that they might actually make it filling everyone's minds.

Thrusters fired brightly once more, shouldering the immense weight that had been carried by the lone impulse engine. Though they sputtered desperately to keep all one hundred and sixty-five meters of battered metal in the air, whirling and screaming loudly as the saucer skimmed the top of a tall dune.

Another, then another they shot underneath the Lagrange, each one seemingly closer than the last with everyone wondering which one they'd actually hit.

When they finally did, they barely felt it... the edge of their half saucer clipping the very top with a puff of red sand, scooping off the very top of the dune.

Then the thrusters began to shut off one by one in rapid succession, their fuel reserves completely spent.

A brief and eerie silence befell the landscape as the Lagrange flew over the next three dunes, just the rumble of air picking up sand as they went.

The fourth dune, however, was not so kind.

Her long oval deflector dish was the first victim of this strange new world, torn clean off in the impact as she skipped, briefly gaining a few metres before hitting the next, and then the next.

Each dune thudded the ventral hull every half second, tearing free parts of her ventral hull and leaving a scattered trail of ruin behind her.

Sand erupted over the top of the Lagrange as she finally fell low enough to no longer be skipping, ploughing now firmly into one after another.

Her aft section dipped as her speed began to violently drop, the next dune clipping her port side stabilising fin with a horrendous rend of metal that twisted her nacelle pylon off-kilter.

Everyone lurched forward as the ship groaned, her momentum shifting as she began to glide more towards her starboard side.

The next dune they hit robbed them of all momentum altogether, her buckled super structure groaning as she came to a violent stop amongst an explosion of sand.

all around them the hull moaned and creaked as it settled, listing backwards as the sand shifted around them.

Then the port nacelle twisted further before falling, the pylon breaking apart at the base before the tip of the nacelle came crashing down on top of the half saucer. The sound was horrendous, metal rending and buckling under the stress of all that added weight even as it slid down the hull, rolling over somewhat before coming to a stop on the sand that had shifted over the now partially buried ship.

"Is everyone alright?" Ciobanu called out as he helped Eli up off the floor, the poor girl was shaking so fiercely he dared not let her go.

"I'm alive if that's what you mean." Samuels strained, climbing up onto his feet before dusting himself off.

"We're all good Cap." Eric added as he helped Lieutenant Richards up off the floor.

"Elizabeth... you ok?" Ciobanu asked quietly, still holding her firmly.

She didn't reply, but she nodded and that was enough for him. "Good, let's all just take a moment... then we gotta make sure everyone else is ok."

Even as he spoke his eyes were transfixed on the viewscreen, staring off into the wilderness they had come so very close to crashing into. And he wondered just how lucky they were... come down a minute earlier and they'd have been stranded half a day away from here, come down a minute later.

He grimaced at the thought, the sheer size of the trees, just one alone would have split the Lagrange in two at the speed they were going.

"You did good Eli, you saved a lot of lives today..."

"Thank you..." She finally said before leaning away, wanting to sit down at her station.

-----

A few hours later and the crew were all outside the ship, those that had lost their lives were lined up in rows on the red sand, covered by blue sheets that bore the Starfleet insignia.

Nobody knew if they should bury them yet or not, all they knew was the prospect of rescue anytime soon was highly unlikely.

Mostly because they, nor Starfleet had any idea where they were. And hopefully, neither did the Romulans.

They had sent out a distress call, but that was before they were forced to make an emergency jump to warp... blindly throttling up the warp drive in an attempt to avoid a plasma torpedo.

"Cap, It's gonna take days, maybe even a week to get some partial power restored to critical areas... but even then she is royally buggered. I'm gonna have to butcher a lot of parts to get the subspace antenna working, but I could really go for fixing the coffee machine in the mess first."

Ciobanu stared at Samuels as he spoke, his expression shifting very little. "Just... get it working, either one..." He sighed, shaking his head. "Coffee first though..." He grumbled, conceding twice in one day.

It was then everyone stopped what they were doing as the low thrum of phaser fire echoed in the forest.

Ciobanu paused, staring at Samuels in disbelief as they both turned to face the forest only to hear another shot and then an ear-piercing scream.

"Scout party, come in! Daniels?" Ciobanu yelled after flicking his communicator open. "What is going on!"

"We're under attack! Daniels is dead! Argh!!" shouted the panicked crewman over the sounds of phaser fire.

It sounded like they had said something else but it was distant and interspersed with deep animal-like howling.

"Is it the Romulans?!" Ciobanu called back as he motioned for people to retreat back to the ship.

There was no response and the forest had fallen quiet once more, he stared in disbelief as the remaining crew ran back to their ship. What the hell was going on, how did the Romulans find them so quickly?

But then he saw them... running from the tree line. It wasn't the Romulans, they weren't even humanoid.

"Get inside! move, move, move!" He bellowed to his crew, stepping towards the Lagrange himself before looking back.

It was a stampede of mammalian primitives, howling and bellowing their war cries.

That was when the spear-sized arrows began to fall dozens impaling crew and Lagrange alike.

Ciobanu would never make it back to his ship, nor would he witness his crew being dragged out of the Lagrange and butchered on the red sand by hoof and spear.

That fate would go to another.