OLD:

[1] …Positioning herself at the broken window, she looked out. By the fighting there were two or three drones, she guessed. The addition of green to the red and orange told her there were Romulans too. My what a strange mess, she thought to herself. She tapped her combadge, “Mez to all away members. Move cautiously to the cover around the faded green building and form a circle to take down the drones,” she said…

[2] …Admittedly limited in number (there were merely four survivors) and capability (none were combatants), he [erei’arrain Lannar i-Baratan t’Vora] nevertheless ordered the team, “Render assistance and bring the lloann’na here.” He then withdrew his weapon and raced out of the building and toward the weapons fire…

NEW:

<The Dead Planet>

The pieces of what had been a drone had scattered upon explosion, reduced to assorted bits of hull and circuitry. Until they weren’t. Within moments, each piece slowly melted, reverting into a quasi-liquid metallic state, drawn toward the largest accumulation of like matter. It was a relatively slow process, yet the discarded remains would continue to coalesce until enough nanomaterial was present to allow the drone to be reformed from the nanocomponents that had made it in the first place. In essence, the self-replicating nature of the drones, themselves, made it the perfect tool to destroy life on the planet, and to prevent any repeat of what had come before.

Some meters away from the firefight, the first reconstituted drone lifted from the rubble and scanned for organic targets. It would be joined by others until the life forms did what they always did: fight until they were too worn down to continue. It was only a matter of time.

Briar’s eyes went especially wide as she peaked and witnessed the broken elements liquefying and animating themselves, reuniting and flowing back together in a slow stitch. It was just completing its rebirth and rolling itself upright, testing its systems with the small foils and thrusters cycling through an auto sequence of tiny movements.

“Holy sea stars.” Said Briar as she ducked back behind her cover, which no longer felt any more reassuring as cover than pulling a blanket over your head at night could keep out actual werewolves. This was self healing technology on a level Briar had never seen fully operational before. It didn’t seem real. There was no piece of fallen concrete that would ultimately stay between her and these things.

Equally shocked that these enemy drones could self-resurrect, erei’arrain Lannar shouted, “This way,” in his best ‘Starfleet’ speak. He had no way of knowing if they would follow, yet he hoped that they would. By the same token, he was unsure that the drones would continue to give safe harbor to the presumed security station, yet he also hoped that they would.

To Briar, it seemed as good a solution as any other idea. She hadn’t any of her own, anymore. So she dashed out after the Romulan with her best speed.

Gavin gulped, then blinked. His Spidey Sense had been right all along, this planet was a regular deathtrap.  And Romulans to boot!  Not having a better option, he bumped up the settings on his rifle, aimed at the slippery-looking yet almost completely re-formed whatever it was, and ran after Briar laying down fire as they went…

<Hiroshima Shuttle Bay>

LTJG Jenny Hanmore had the shuttle up and running, before the evacuation team had assembled and boarded. Having learned that time was of the essence, and critically so, she dispensed of the formalities, and barked, “Strap in,” as she was wasting no time on this exit.

As soon as the shuttle had lost touch contact with the shuttle bay deck, Jenny performed a hard pivot to port and began goosing the impulse throttles the moment the bay doors crossed the left edge of the viewing window. This merely started their exit route, but she was hardly done. When the center of the viewscreen aligned with the edge of the bay door, she immediately punched up half impulse, and rotated for a maximum g-force turn toward the bay door centerline, blasting the bay with a sonic boom as they raced out into the cold emptiness of the surrounding space.

From shuttlebay control, ENS Taylor Shaw took a deep breath and tried to wrap his mind around what he’d witnessed. He could manage a tactical launch in six or seven seconds, which was well within the Starfleet expectation of ready to space in ten. Knowing that he was (by his own estimation) a good, if not great, pilot himself, he’d expected the resident expert-in-name-only to, maybe, shave a second off of that, but not this… “Computer,” he gasped. State the ready to space on that launch.”

Three point two seconds.

ENS Shaw grimaced, before deciding to find out what protocols she had to have violated in the process. He didn’t like his boss at all, a feeling that grew stronger at being made to look bad in comparison. In short, she had to go down…

…On the planet, another drone climbed into view above the wreckage of the Lorrenz, guided to the fleeing figures by sophisticated sensors and data from other units. Designated as targets because they had not only drawn too close, but had lingered beyond all good sense, the figures would have to be destroyed or driven away. And the drone was entirely capable of destroying them.

Arcing around a distressed duranium column, it angled its powerful energy weapon towards the back of one of the new arrivals. It only took a moment for a sufficient charge to build and be funnelled through its prismatic focusers. Less than a second later and the figure would be—

A phaser blast punched through the drone’s shell and scattered its parts smoking across the narrow valley formed by the ship wreckage…

…Noting that somebody on the ground had the good sense to pack a Type III phaser rifle, or, possibly the upgraded Type III-C Compression-type phaser rifle, Jenny noted that the groundfire was making her job infinitely easier. “McWest,” her brain surmised, as he seemed the sort to bring more of an arsenal than a loadout, which was silly until it wasn’t; case in point: this mission.

Racing toward the surface, she pulled back at the last minute to use the high-drag flat bottom of the shuttlecraft to rapidly bleed speed and allow for a surprisingly gentle touchdown. Jenny was hardly the master-of-all-trades sort of Starfleet Officer, but was confidently content to be somewhat of a specialist.

She heard the security personnel tactically disembark, while she maintained ready to lift off. Ideally, she would only do so with the evacuees onboard, but knew that she might, instead, need to take flight in response to a renewed effort by the drone assailants.

Unbeknownst to her, or anyone else, some drone debris began to coalesce near her starboard nacelle. Rather than forming anew, the viscous metallic fluid drew toward the collector housing, attempting to snake through any opening it could find in the hopes of compromising the foreign system…

OFF:

Joint Production

CAPT Yearling, LCDR Elin, LCDR Darney and LTJG Hanmore

USS Hiroshima (NCC-70157-B)