Log 30
SD 10040.3
I’m really glad to be Riit of him, or mirror mirror on the wall:
What a day, I think…..
We were all giving up hope of stopping Riit’s ship. I couldn’t put a good pattern of photons out with the Freedom’s limited firepower and the guesswork on where his ship was from radio leakage did help either, rendering our attack mostly inconsequential. I say inconsequential, but Riit’s other ship did decloak in an attempt of draw us off. I guess that’s something.
I might as well have been shooting spitballs at that ship for all the good it was doing to stop it though. I even considered offering Riit a challenge for Lynx to get him to come out, but he was likely too smart to take that up with his mom so hot to turn him to dust.
On a personal note, I wonder if Lera was really trying to get a lock on them. My doubt stems from the fact that what the Freedom lacks in the way of weapons, she more than makes up for in scanning capability. That, coupled with the doubt that the Klingons would sell their latest cloaking devices to the Kzin, make me think she may not have reported all that she was seeing. I will check the sensor logs later to see what they report.
Anyway we were finally out of options, so the Captain decided to use the ultimate weapon recently developed for use against the Kzin, the Barney song transmitted at full power.
Problem was it seemed to have limited effect. I say limited because shortly after we started broadcasting we did get our first lucky strike. My weapon sensors locked onto a cloud of censorship on the Kzin ship!
I guess Tarra becoming needy at just the right time was a lucky strike. I locked on to the signal and using every bit of my skill fired a full volley of phasers and photons into Riit’s ship.
The result was far better than I dared hope. We scored a critical hit on their power systems knocking them out of cloak and rendering them defenseless!
It felt like victory was in our hands. I was readying another volley of phasers to strip his ship of warp nacelles when the remaining echoes all decloaked. They were Kzin ships of unknown design and they were all firing weapons something like Hydren fusion lances at us! In moments our shields were down and main power had failed.
I expected to die at that point, but just as I was bracing myself for them to rip our hull to bits, they stopped firing. Instead they launched a cloud of boarding pods at us, and surprisingly at Riit’s remaining ships as well.
I had little time to wonder at this, though I figured that it was another house taking revenge for something Riit had done.
The boarding pods latched on and burned through the hull in a matter of minutes. Our security met them, but rather than the fight I had expected to hear reported, I got oddly disoriented reports back of female Kzin dressed in uniforms that looked something like a cheerleader and using gas grenades to knock out our crew.
Knowing that it was just a matter of time before we were overwhelmed, the Captain did what she didn’t have time to do the last time. She initiated self-destruct, though Lera again seemed to lag behind.
We hunkered down covering the door, ready to defend the bridge to the last and I said what I figured would be my last prayer to the Goddess. There was a BOOM, and the door blew apart. This was closely followed by a gas grenade. I grabbed the grenade as it rolled to my feet and tossed it back and started firing at the door.
I saw movement and fired as one of our security people being used as a human shield was pushed through the door. Unfortunately I couldn’t pull the shot and the poor fellow went up in a puff of green smoke.
Then a volley of grenades came pouring through the door, and things get a bit hazy. I seem to remember a wonderful girl coming to visit with me, and seeing the Captain looking far more fit and well than she had since the Tang standing in the door.
Then I wandered off looking for that wonderful girl.
When I finally came around again, I found myself in K’s quarters with Tarra and the kittens curled up around me.
Tarra told me that K was back, and now I've got to figure out how I'm going to respond to her when I see her. She ran off and abandoned me and her kittens. Should I be cross with her, or take her back? She has been the only good thing in my life in quite a while, but now I see in her what I expected all along. That I would be used and thrown away when the time was right. I'm glad the world is back in order again.