Pt 8 - Time to run

Posted on Sun Apr 12th, 2026 @ 9:07pm by Commander David Wallace

Mission: CAPERNUM: {CD&MISSION} On Duty
Location: USS Cascade
Timeline: ====

On:

David walked into engineering to find his engineer at a monitoring station making an adjustment to something he looked up "What can I do for you Captain?"

David waited until the engineer mates were far enough away to speak "I need you to purge any secondary and redundant memory of that away mission."

"The family?" He remarked

"Yeah, some kind of witness relocation." David said

"Done, the science and medical stuff have to be done...." The engineer started

"Already taken care of, get the cloak and our other toys ready in case we need to run, I'm waiting on Dad to get back too me." David said in a lower voice.

"Chapman! run a diagnostic on the drives now!" the Chief engineer barked then lowering his voice "I assume the old man is going spy craft on getting back too you?"

"Yeah, I'm going to talk to the geologist's about parts of the situation that Ms Clark knows about." David said

"She's a smart bird, it might a good thing to hold on to her." Greg said then added "We'll be ready."

Up in the situation room the tree geologists were sitting at the table when David walked in, Connor spoke up first "What's going on?"

"We inadvertently stumbled on a witness relocation and things could get rough." David said

Morgan spoke up "Sara said it was important to not reveal that farm house so we made it look abandoned in the record, how dangerous can this get?"

"I'm waiting on the information but let's not rule out anything including a quick exit." David said

"We can do the rest of our study after the eruption ends or should we relocate too the other ship?" Sara asked

"I've sent a discrete message to leave, they'll be gone before we can rendezvous, I've got a few things in my back pocket if we need to make a run for it." David said "This ship has a few things under the hood that'll keep us safe."

David left the situation room walking back too the ready room, he sat down to discover a message on his screen:

David: The ship named Black Wave may be enroute too your location, be ready to run for it. Your not out gunned but it's not worth the risks, meet me at mom's house if you get away undetected.

dad

David erased the message, he turned to stand. 'here we go' he thought "Chen are we the only ship in the system?"

"Yes...wait...no another ship has just warped into the system, an old Klingon B'rel class." Chen said

"Yellow alert, bring shields online, cloak to standby." David said as he entered the bridge.

"Helm be ready to break orbit, soon as we're on the other side of the planet cloak the ship." David ordered.

The alert lighting turned purple as the ship cloaked behind the planet, David watched as the ship broke orbit at a slow speed, the main display showed the pirate ship entering orbit and accelerating to catch up to where the Cascade would have been, David waited counting down in his mind "once we're near the sixth planet drop the cloak and punch it too slipstream speed, set the course for the Corsica Colony."

"Sir?" Ensign Bear said

"I know it's at the extreme range of our drive but we need to push it." David said

"Aye sir." the helmsman said

David turned to Sara who'd taken up a spot at the science station, her hands were flying across the controls "Ship is still in orbit, they're aggressively sweeping with sensors looking for us, thirty seconds too the sixth planet, we'll need to keep clear of the rings or the cloaking device will be useless."

"Helm adjust heading as needed." David said

"They're adjusting orbit, they might be looking for us thinking we're in a polar orbit." Sara called out.

David looked at the count down too the slipstream jump point, "We can't jump with the cloak up, if they know about this ship they'd be trying to track us, we'll use the warp drive for thirty minutes then jump up to slipstream to give us that extra range."

"Recalculating now sir."

"Punch it" David said

The screen transposed into the starfield of a warp drive engaging David sat back, not quite relaxing but feeling that they had enough time to make a run for it, "Are we being followed?" he asked.

"They're still banging away at the planet based on our last scan, even if they clue in we're gone and where we won't know until we drop the cloaking device, we're limited to passive scans." Chen said

"Switch to low intensity active scan see if they did follow." David said

"Scanning..." Chen called out as she ran her scan. "They broke orbit but are heading one eight zero from us, at half impulse."

David let out a slow breath as he weighed the options, "Time to jump?"

"Nineteen minutes." The helm called

"Maintain course." David said as he stood up, he looked over too Sara "What do you have?"

"They banged away at the house then started scanning for us. I used to probes that are in orbit to keep tabs on them, they made two more full sweeps for us then realized that the eruption resulted in us leaving they followed the warp trails of the evacuation fleet, not us."

"Keep an eye on them, good work." he said

David wanted to relax but his instincts left him thinking he needed to keep alert, he looked at the count down as it rolled down too zero, "Slipstream jump in three...two...one...."

David finally let out a breath, "Good work, estimated time too Corsica colony?"

"Eleven hours forty eight minutes." Ensign Bear said.

"Beta watch comes on in five minutes, let's stand down and get some rest." David said he slumped back into the command chair "I need a moment." he said standing to walk into the ready room. Soon as the door closed he keyed in a text message too his father:

Escaped the bad guys, doing a sprint to home, turn the porch light on

David

David sent the message then stood to leave, he was in it much deeper than he wanted and now he was going down the slope his parents went down all those years ago, he didn't want to make the same mistakes they made, he stood about to exit the door opened revealing Sara, he smiled "You okay?"

"That was absolutely insane, are we out of danger?" She asked

"Sort of, if they try to chase us we have quite a lead on them as is, the best that ship could do is maybe warp eight." David said attempting to be reassuring.

Sara just pulled in close hugging him.

End