Flight of the Pegasus - Take-Off! "
By: Bart "Burner" Reed, Co-pilot , [RNPC]
M'Ressha Mihkat , Pilot , [NPC]
R.A.H.W. , Holographic AI Avatar , [NPC]
Randi Dorton , Warp Specialist , [NPC]

Stardate: 58207.24 1300

Blitzer produced a small circular device which played music. "Do you know what this is?" he asked Burner.

Burner prepped the computer for take off, "Will it get me drunk?"

"No," said Blitzer shaking his head.

"Will it make me a lot of money?" asked Burner.

"No."

Burner shrugged, "Let's go Blitz, we can listen to music later."

"Oh, Come on man, this is classic," said Blitzer, as he turned on the device which began to play "Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf. "Its the song that Zephram Cochran played when he launched the Phoenix," explained Blitzer sentimentally.

With that he put his paws on the console. The Pegasus levitated off the flight deck and turned toward the hanger door.

Blitzer applied the forward thrusters causing the small ship to bolt out into space. "Giddy-up," yelled Blitzer, "going to full impulse!".

Randi Dorton hailed the Pegasus, "let's set a course for the Arius asteroid belt and see how it handles."

"Yes, Ma'am," replied Burner, "Catch us if you can."

Burner turned to Blitzer, "Well, this is a shake down, what are you waiting for. Let's go fast!"

"Just what I was thinking," said Blitzer, "...going to warp 9.5"

The nacells of the Pegasus glowed with a brilliant flash and the ship took off.

Before Blitzer could say anything the small ship was already topping warp 3.

Blitzer called it out, "Warp 4, 6, 8, 8.5, 9.1 9.3...9.5".

He looked over at Burner, "Wow."

"Oh yeah," said Burner with excitement, "Arius asteroid belt coming up." Burner flashed Blitzer a sideways grin. "You sure you can handle it?"

"Cutting warp...sure," said Blitzer as he cut in full impulse, "remember the..."

The ship swung sharply to port and veered gracefully around on of the first large asteriod.

"...Lydrian system?" Blitzer said, slightly bitting his tongue as he concentrated on zig-zagging rapidly through the field.

"...the one where we chased the bogies through all but one crashed into something or another?" Blitzer glanced at Burner to see if he was enjoying the ride. It was always different for the one who was piloting.

"How could I forget," said Burner. "You were a maniac." He looked at the readouts at the co-pilots station. "Shields are holding steady at 98 percent." A large asteroid zoomed past them, "Wow, that was cutting it close Blitz."

Blitzer flatten his ears as he circumnavigated several more asteroids of various sizes. "And then there was the time we...Whoah!"

As Bltizer rounded the backside of a particularly large boulder, their course was littered with a field of millions of smaller rocks all in very tight formations.

The deflector shield of the Pegasus caused the tiny ship to jump and jar enough that the internal dampening field couldn't keep up as it plowed through the plume of rocks. Those rocks that were too large bounced off the ship's forward shields.

A few moments later the Pegasus was clear of the field and Blitzer leaned back in his chair. His fur was standing on edge as adrenalin rushed though his body. "Hooo-yaah!"

"Nice run Blitz," said Burner.

"Did I break anything?"

"Shields are down to 40 percent,"said Burner. "Wanna make another run?"

"Hmm... better let the shields charge up a little, you want to fly it? Its a sweet bird"

"As a matter of fact," said Burner, "I do, but not just yet." Burner tapped a few keys on his console, "Computer, initiate weapons targeting system."

The lighting on the bridge dimmed and the panoramic view was overlaid with a grid and a targeting sight. Burner carefully locked the targeting sight on a small asteroid. "Watch this," he said pushing a button on his console.

In rapid succession, six torpedoes launched from the Pegasus and slammed into the asteroid which exploded in an impressive display.

Blitzer's eyes darted back and forth as the minuscule pieces of rock scattered in all directions. "nice.." he said folding his arms across his chest and leaning back as he studied damage.

"Ok, I'll fly now," said Burner.

Blitzer got up, "It's all yours," he said with a gesture.

Burner sat down and reconfigured the controls for human hands. Once, he had tried to fly with Blitzer's configurations and found it a challenge. "Alright, let's fly," said Burner and he launched the Pegasus back into the asteroid belt.

Blitzer checked out the systems display. All systems were functioning within normal parameters.

Next, Blitzer checked out the weapons system for himself, "Very cool," he said, "like the first time I sat in a Peregrine fighter."

"What do you think?" asked Blitzer, nodding at the controls.

For Burner, it was love at first flight. This ship was a maneuverable monster. He weaved in and out of the asteroids, a huge grin forming on his face. "This baby rocks!" said Burner clearly enjoying himself. It was at that moment when an alarm sounded. It was just a simple beep and then it expanded and several alarms sounded. "Um Blitz, what's going on here? The controls are getting sluggish."

"Ugh," sighed Blitzer as his paws padded all over the display, "I'm a pilot, not an engineer, but uhm... It looks like a malfunction in the driver coils. The Anti-matter injector shutdown causing the intermix chamber to flood with deuterium."

Rawh cleared her throat as she materialized on the bridge. "The intermix chamber is being purged and the anti-matter injector is being reinitialized," she announced. "The event is an automatic shutdown that was triggered when the field harmonics exceeded the tolerance of the antimatter focusing aperture," she finished and grinned at the two pilots.

Blitzer looked at Rawh, "Is that bad?"

"It sure sounds bad," said Burner, now struggling to get them safely out of harms way.

"Yeah, really bad," said Blitzer as he powered up the weapons system.

"It was a potential problem that was documented by Dorton, the Warp core specialist," The AI nodded. "The potential for the failure exists because of the curvature of the induction system." She sounded like she was giving a lecture as she calmly relayed the facts. "Compensation fields failed when they exceeded their tolerance parameters at key mark 33 minutes 17 seconds, due to excessive gravitational fields caused by the high ferarium magnesite concentration of an asteroid in close proximity to the flight trajectory."

Blitzer scratched his whiskers back as he tried to figure out what Rawh was saying. "Can you fix it?"

"Of course I can fix it," she snorted softly as if there was never any doubt. "The system will be operational in 4 minutes."

Blitzer looked out the window, the view was getting busy with several large asteroids. Blitzer launched a volley of torpedoes at several targets that were on a collision course.

Fortunately console also indicated power levels were increasing. Suddenly the com station lit up too. "Pegasus, this is Dorton, what did you break?"

After looking over at Burner, Blitzer leaned forward and tapped the com, "Nothing Ma'am. uh... just resting."

Dorton's voice responded, "Rawh?"

The AI quickly regurgitated the exact same technical jargon he had just heard.

"Very Good," said Dorton, "I'll make some computations to auto correct variance toleration parameters. See you boys back at base, good job. USS Monitor out."

With final assessment, Blitzer announced, "Rawh has fixed everything, let's go!"

"You don't have to tell me twice," said Burner firing up the impulse engines. "Heading back to QulTuq."

Blitzer folded his knuckles behind his head and leaned back as Burner flew the Pegasus toward home.

Log Index | Go to Stardate 58209.17