Captains Log 9
Star Date 10040.3
It is with a heavy heart that I add this entry to my log.
It started with my intention to confront Lee about the letter I had discovered. I went to the holo deck where he and Tarra were relaxing, and found that Tarra had picked my daughters fishing program. I found and was ready to confront Lee when the bridge called to say that they had repaired the scanner malfunction and that the planet was giving off large amounts of radio and radar. I ordered Yellow Alert and that Lee accompany me to the bridge to assess the situation.
On the way to the bridge, I stopped the turbolift and confronted Lee . He said he didn't know anything about the letter and his honesty was quite evident. That eased my mind as I had begun to like the man. He has a good heart and, well, I've grown lonely for good company. I told him that I would like to go over the situation later and he agreed, bless him.
When we arrived on the bridge, it was chaos! A Klingon ship had just decloked ahead of us and from the hull color and what I could make out of the markings she was a Kzin ship! I took us from yellow to Red Alert, and before I could hail them, they contacted us.
Sitting there on the bridge was the individual that had haunted my dreams from the time Lynx told me of her agreement. My son the Kzin. He seemed totally self confident, so much so that he offered to have tea with me. Goddess what does he think I am, a dithering old crone that would happily talk the day away while he takes one or both of my daughters into slavery? The arrogant bastard!
I told him if he dropped his shields to take her that I would kill his ship and him as well if I could. He failed to heed my warning and dropped his shields anyway provoking my immediate response.
We unloaded on his ship and it made a very satisfactory pile of scrap metal, though I must say I found my first chance to fire the Freedom's photon torpedoes a shocking experience. Whoever designed this ship with the launcher behind the bridge should be fired out of one of them! I nearly had a heart failure!
Unfortunately the boy truly didn't think like a Kzin and did something that no real Kzin would ever do, he abandoned his ship and ran from the battle. I wasn't ready for that, and he got away to the planet with a good portion of his crew, and somehow got Lynx in his clutches.
As this was happening, two more Kzin ships decloaked. I warned them and the boy that I would destroy them as I had the first ship if they dropped shields to beam those on the ground out. To my sadness my daughter, likely under coercion from her brother, told me that she would be one of the first out with him. I figured he would not place himself and his prize in jeopardy and I was right. Rather than risk the possibility that I would fire, he ordered one of the ships to ram us while the other would bring them up. I did what I had to do to save the Freedom and it's crew and used the wreckage of the first ship as cover from the one attempting to ram us.
I fired on the approaching ship blowing out her number one shield, but this gave the second ship the chance to bring the boy and his prize up. By time the Freedom's weapons had cycled and was ready to fire again, we were hitting a restored shield on the second ship and did little more than blow out most of it. I would have given a lot to have had the old Tang then. With her I would have slapped a tractor using her huge supply of reserve power and pummeled the ship till I could put a contingent of marines aboard, but this is a science ship and lacks the raw power of a warship. They would have just cut the tractor, and the power that could have been better used to reinforce our rather less than adequate shields would have been wasted.
It was then that things went from bad to worse. Someone dropped the #4 shield! Here we were doing better than this misbegotten pile of junk had any right to with three Klingon built warships and someone does that! When I find out who did it, I will rip out their liver and strangle them with it! Anyway this gaff was just what they needed. We were scanned, but rather than than a boarding party I was expecting, they beamed out the entire sickbay with Tarra and Cosmos in it!
They then cloaked, their objectives met with the loss of one ship and another damaged. We continue to try to slow them down, but I know it is a lost cause. The chances of a crippling blow are vanishingly small and this ship is not truly outfitted for war. Soon we will run out of photons, and they have now have decoys littering the system. They may even have more ships somewhere, but if so, they are not showing themselves.
I must admit it to myself. My daughters are both gone, and I will likely never see them again. Poor Cosmos will likely be dead by now, killed by the bloodthirsty brutes for sport, but he would be the lucky one. I know what the bastards will do to the two girls, and I would see them dead before I would let them go through what I did. May the Goddess keep their souls.