Time To Strike

Posted on Sat Feb 21st, 2026 @ 9:24am by Captain Taiga Aisaka & Commander Thomas Johnson & Lieutenant Commander Devon Hunt & Lieutenant Commander Talia Johnson & Lieutenant Commander Nyxala Valentine & Lieutenant Jasad Yuvek & Lieutenant Nezuko & Lieutenant Teneca Quinn & Lieutenant Takina Inoue

2,725 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Flight Of The Valkyries
Location: USS Tokyo Briefing Room
Timeline: March 11th, 2397

[Briefing Room]

The door to the conference room opened as Lieutenant Commander Devon Hunt entered the room. In one hand was a cup of coffee and in the other was a PADD that he was looking down at. The last ten days had been an adjustment, getting used to his new position on the Tokyo and getting his children situated. As of the last three days, Devon found that he was finally able to sleep for the most part without having to take a sedative. Finding a seat, he sat down.

Nezuko was next in, her bridge relief having come quickly enough that she could get away sooner than normal. She had time to replicate a raktajino with a straw and sit down. She raised her cup toward Devon in acknowledgement.

Nyx entered from the other door, uniform neat and precise, though the skirt was likely shorter than it should be, though the black stockings she wore hid most of that fact. The drakeling on her shoulder watched while she moved to her spot at the table, though upon sighting Nezuko, the head raised in a clear motion and a low chirrup came out, forcing Nyx to smile, "Only if she wants to." She told the drakeling.

Shortly after Nyx had gotten herself situated, the doors to the briefing room opened and in stepped a stone-faced Lieutenant sporting a grey tunic that denoted her as a member of the Tokyo's intelligence department; slung over her back was a Herald antiproton staff, fastened in place with a custom holster that allowed her to quickly access the weapon in a pinch- with the Iconians, you could never be one too sure.

Quickly observing the weapon, Devon raised a curious eyebrow. "Where's Chisato?"

"She's not coming," the intel officer stated plainly as she took a seat. "Can't go into details, but she's currently away on a confidential assignment."

"You look pretty comfortable carrying that thing around," Hunt replied. "Learn anything new about it?"

The newcomer raised an eyebrow. "Uh... it's made to kill?"

Thomas walked in reading a padd. The next mission was a big one, going over reports from all over, there was some promise. The Klingons had agreed to send over several fleets, including some of their more powerful ships to aid in the battles. Looking around he nodded to everyone before taking his seat.

Talia wasn’t too far behind her husband, having dropped their son off at nursery for all intents and purposes she was on maternity leave still recovering from her emergency delivery, and getting used to getting up for overnight baby feeds. To say she was tired and feeling sore was an understatement. She took a seat grateful to sit down.

Lieutenant Yuvek entered the briefing room precisely at 0900 hours, a PADD tucked under his arm and a cup of Tarkalean tea in his uninjured hand. His left arm was no longer in the bulky treatment device, replaced by a lighter compression sleeve that allowed for better mobility. The burns had healed enough that he could perform his duties without limitation, though the skin still showed faint discoloration where the plasma had seared deepest.

He acknowledged the assembled officers with a brief nod - Commander Hunt looking more rested than he had at the memorial, Nezuko with her raktajino, Valentine with her drakeling, and the stone-faced intelligence officer whose presence meant Chisato was elsewhere on classified business.

Confidential assignment. That's never a good sign.

Teneca entered the Briefing Room, PADD with her current research in hand. Acknowledging those present with a series of nods, she took her seat.

Once everyone had assembled, the last one to enter the briefing room was Captain Aisaka. She made her way to the end of the table and instead of sitting, opted to stand. Her eyes were full of fire and determination as she held a PADD in her hand, her fingers drumming on the back of it as she held it. A smile was stretched across her face and she stood proud and straight. This was like a blast of fresh air, she was motivated and looked ready to fight instead of the constant defeat and running they had been doing for weeks now.

Taiga continued to smile with determination as she glanced at every one of her officers. Finally she spoke. "Its time." she said to them. "We're no longer on the defensive. Starfleet is finally going on the Offensive against the Iconians and their Heralds. And we're going to be leading the first of many surgical strikes that will be occurring all across Federation space simultaneously." she told them all. "We're going to show them that we are more than capable of striking back, and we're going to hit them where it hurts."

Hunt leaned forward with a very curious and eager look on his face. "I'm all for going on the offense. "

"I couldn't agree more," Taiga replied. She leaned over the table and tapped a few buttons on the inset control panel. The room darkened and a holographic star system appeared floating above the table.

"This is the Atarilla system." Taiga explained. "Or at least it was as of three days ago."

She tapped another button. The system instantly changed. Three of the planets were now gone, and a dense field of asteroids now sat in the middle of the system like a huge cloud gathered together, far from where the planets once were. "Atarilla, two, three and four have not only been destroyed, but ripped apart. That field is what remains of them."

"If I recall, Captain, the Atarilla system was home to at least three major Federation-affiliated settlements?" the Lieutenant calmly pointed out.

"Yes, unfortunately those three planets each had established colonies on." Taiga said her tone sadder and more remorse. "Reports state that all subspace comm traffic ceased three days ago. The Starship Horizon was sent to investigate. They managed to transmit these scans before the ship was destroyed by a Herald ambush."

“All those people, families..” Talia shook her head. “How are we supposed to fight them? We barely got away by the skin of our teeth last time.”

Lieutenant Yuvek studied the holographic display, his pale eyes tracking the impossible configuration of the asteroid field. Three entire planets destroyed and somehow gathered into a dense cluster that defied natural orbital mechanics. He leaned forward, gesturing at the hologram. "That takes time and energy. Which means they're using those destroyed planets for something." His head cocked to the side as he continued to study the presentation. "The question is what. Construction? Resource gathering? Some kind of strategic fortification?"

"If we're going on the offensive against whatever they're building there, we'll need to account for the gravitational instability that much concentrated mass will create." The Helmsman said, taking into account how difficult it would be to navigate a carrier the size of Tokyo through there.

"Indeed it will." Taiga replied. She tapped another button which zoomed into the dense 'cloud' of Asteroids. The actual center was hollow, and inside was a clearly Iconian structure. "From the latest Intelligence Reports. The Iconians are constructing a starbase in the middle of this asteroid 'cloud'," Taiga said. "Long range probes have also detected higher than usual subspace signals and disturbances from this field. We believe that this starbase is some sort of hub, or staging area. The readings we have discovered are consistant with hundreds if not more gateways in the area."

"In just three days?" The Lieutenant remarked with an air of skepticism.

"Any idea how far along they are with the completion of this Starbase?" Devon inquired as he jotted down some notes. "It seems the Iconians have tech to get things done quickly."

"We're not one hundred per cent sure. Our sensors can't get past their hull. But we do know that they did all this in just under three days." Taiga explained. "Which in itself is faster than even The Borg can achieve."

Nyx had been studying the images as they came up, eyes narrowed at the casualties that had clearly been taken on the planets that had been destroyed. But hers were the eyes of someone who had helped plan out attacks against difficult targets as well, "Do we have any sort of imagery from before this, from different stages of the construction? I know the mass is going to mean that a general assault will just ding the outside, but if we can identify weak points, perhaps carefully placed explosives may do some critical damage, with the right types of explosives."

"Unfortunately thats all we have. However, Starfleet has provided me with a plan of attack." Taiga stated. She leaned forward and pressed another button on her control panel. On the edge of the system six holographic Armitage Class starships appeared. Each one was labelled. USS Tokyo, USS Armitage, USS Ark Royal, USS Broadsword, USS Akagi and USS Graf Zepplin.

"We are going to be leading a carrier task force and using all three hundred and sixty of our combined Starfighters to fly through that Asteroid Field and launch a full on scale assault." Taiga stated. "Starfleet have left the finer details up to us as of how we do this from what we find there."

Jasad's expression became darker as he processed the plan in his own mind. "The fighters will be surrounded. No fallback position. No heavy fire support. And if the carriers are holding position at the system's edge..." he paused as he tried to go a quick estimate in his head, "response time to extract damaged fighters or provide reinforcement would be 8-10 minutes. . .at best." The Helmsman pointed out.

"From our past encounters, there usually are no damaged fighters left. When the battle is done its usually hoping they had a quick death." Thomas replied, it wasn't something he was keen on, but at this point, it was an offensive the federation needed. "There will be no rescue until the battle is over."

Taiga nodded. "You're both correct. However, I've given it some thought." She explained. The holographic image changed again, showing a zoomed in version of the Asteroid field. Marked were the Starfighters which were positioned in a triangular vector formation.

"We're going to send the Starfighters in ahead of the main ships." Taiga explained. "An initial scout group will fly ahead and mark the asteroids which are too big for the ships deflectors to deal with. We'll then have three waves or rows. Wave one will hit the asteroids with weapons, whatever they miss or don't fully destroy will be hit by wave two and wave three will be the rear guard that will hopefully finish anything else off." The image showed four waves of Starfighters flying into the field, the front wave was dodging and weaving, whilst the three behind were systematically destroying asteroids.

"Our ships will then follow behind the rear guard. Once we've blasted through the field, we'll assault the starbase together." Taiga explained. "Thoughts?"

There was a moment of silence before the intelligence officer shifted in her seat.

"Do we know if using all six Armitages for a single assault is necessarily a wise idea, Captain?" she inquired, carefully analyzing the scenario as Taiga had relayed it. "It does strike me that we're essentially putting all our eggs in one basket and hoping this doesn't descend into a bloodbath."

"Starfleet thinks that we have enough combined firepower and ability to do this." Taiga stated. "Plus, we will be recieving these..." she tapped another button. The star system was replaced by the image of a torpedo. "Tricobalt Torpedoes. Each ship will be armed with six each. If you remember your Starfleet history, the USS Voyager used two similar devices to destroy the caretaker array. These are the improved version. We're going to use these to destroy that starbase."

Nyx gave a low whistle that perked the head of the drakeling up briefly, "Ouch. Well, those'll definitely hurt. Hopefully they won't have anything that can act as a counter to them."

"Strategically, it's a very sound plan and could work," the security chief spoke up. "But if we're honest here. Those fighters are looking at a suicide mission. Those fighters will be alone before we can fully breach."

Teneca took a deep breath, before adding her two cents. "I've been studying the energy frequencies of both the Heralds' staff weapons and ships weapons, I believe I've discovered a shield frequency that will dissipate some of the weapons energy, it won't stop it all, but it will make a potentially lethal blast, at least survivable." She frowned. "At least that's the theory, I haven't been able to perform a live-fire test, yet."

Devon nodded his head as looked around the table. "Perhaps things will go in our favor."

Taiga looked over towards Teneca and back to Devon at the news of this new development. "I believe we have a Herald staff weapon on board. I want you two to test this with the real thing. If it works then work with Engineering to adapt all our shields. On our Starfighters and on the Tokyo."

"Understood, Ma'am." Teneca replied adding a note to her PADD.

"Yes, ma'am," Hunt added.

“What about all our families onboard ship? And the other ships as well?” Talia added as she got a moment. “I don’t want to see our children moved off ship, but if things don’t go as planned…” she let the sentence finish itself.

“If things don’t go as planned, is there anywhere in the Federation that they’d be safer?” Nyx asked rhetorically, “These things are clearly planning a war of extermination, or they’d have taken hostages from the Starbase and colonies they’ve destroyed. I think moving them off ship and away from the combat zone would be the best option we have if we think this is going to go sideways. But speaking for my opinion,” She gave a sideways glance at Taiga, because as far as she knew, the Captain was the only one who knew about her, “I’d rather have my family here with me if it came down to it.”

Talia nodded thinking of her newborn son. “So would I.”

"Well, if we succeed at destroying this base, we will be securing hundreds if not thousands of planets from potential invasion." Taiga stated. "That in itself is worth the risk."

She tapped another button on the panel. "We are to set a course for the Latroux System. Its aboit ten lightyears away. There we will rendevous with the other ships before we commence the operation." Taiga stated. "We should be there in eighteen hours at maximum warp, all ships will be assembled and we attack in four days. You all have until then to brief ypur departments and prepare them for the upcoming battle."

Taiga looked around at them each in turn. "Anything else?"

Lieutenant Yuvek pulled up his navigation display on the PADD, already plotting preliminary courses to the Latroux System. Eighteen hours at maximum warp was straightforward enough - the real challenge would come when they had to coordinate six carriers and three hundred sixty fighters through that asteroid field. He glanced at the holographic display one more time - that impossible asteroid field, the Iconian station lurking in its center, the carriers forced to hold position millions of kilometers away while the fighters went in alone.

Four days to prepare three hundred sixty pilots for a mission most of them won't survive. Jasad thought to himself.

Even if the mission was a long shot, at least they were hitting back. A plan with low survival odds was still better than just watching starbases burn.

With no responses Taiga turned off the holo display. "Dismissed."

Posting by:

Captain Taiga Aisaka
Commanding Officer
USS Tokyo

Commander Thomas Johnson
Executive Officer
USS Tokyo

Lieutenant Commander Devon Hunt
Chief Security/Tactical Officer
USS Tokyo

Lieutenant Commander Talia Johnson
Chief Counsellor
USS Tokyo

Lieutenant Commander Nyxala Valentine
Chief Medical Officer
USS Tokyo

Lieutenant Jasad Yuvek
Chief Flight Control Officer
USS Tokyo

Lieutenant Nezuko
Chief Operations Officer
USS Tolyo

Lieutenant Teneca Quinn
Chief Science Officer
USS Tokyo

Lieutenant Takina Inoue
Acting Chief Intelligence Officer
USS Tokyo

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