Scotty Reade - The Return

[+ Scotty Reade]

Amelia looked into the mirror as she fasted her combadge onto her uniform. She looked at the red uniform on her and paused momentarily. It had been a few years since she wore a uniform. She lost her whole starship the last time she wore one of these. Even though she was cleared of any wrongdoing by Starfleet, something just felt like she would be questioned again. 

 

As she stepped back into her room, she looked out the window and noticed the planet Gentry-1 out in the distance. The first part of the mission was to deliver some critical supplies. 

 

“Captain, we should be arriving in Gentry-1’s orbit within the next few minutes. “ said the HCO officer. 

 

“Understood, Lieutenant,” said Amelia. As she closed the comms connection, she grabbed the PADD from her desk and looked over the ship's specs again. Her new command was the recently delivered USS Phoneix. The ship was designated as an Odyssey-class explorer. It had equal amounts of firepower and shielding. 

 

After looking over the specs, she grabbed her cup of coffee and walked onto the bridge. As she entered the bridge, some of the officers glared at her.

 

“Ignore them; focus on your job,” she told herself. 

 

“What is our position?” she asked the helm officer. 

 

“We are just arriving in the planet orbit now.” said the helm officer. 

 

She sat in the command chair and asked all her bridge officers questions. 

 

“All stations, reports, please,” said Amelia. 

 

As all other officers reported, she checked off her commands in her PADD. The only thing that seemed off was the envoy from Gentry-1 did not report in at the time they stated; now, sometimes things happened, but normally contact would be told ahead of time. 

 

“Raise shields; something feels off,” said Amelia. 

 

As the ship's shields came online, the ops officered yelled. 

 

“Captain, a ship just de-cloaked on our port side. They have targeted us.” 

 

Amelia closed her eyes again; it was happening again how she lost her first ship.  This is how it started exactly. 

 

“Lock weapons and try to hail them said Amelia “ 

The officer nodded and tried to open a link, which was successfully connected. 

 

This is Amelia Von, Captain of the USS Phoneix. Why are you locking on to my vessel? We have not violated any laws or done anything to harm you. We are just here to provide materials to the inhabitants of Gentry-1. “ she spoke calmly. 

 

“You have to pay a bounty; this is pirate territory.” said the grubby-looking pirate. 

 

“I am not paying you anything; that is unfair,” rebutted Amelia. 

 

“You’re lost,” said the pirate. 

 

Amelia issued the command to bring the ship up to red alert. 

 

As the crew brought the weapons systems online. Amelia paused again, thinking about what had happened the last time she was in this predicament. That time the enemy was vastly stronger, and the other ships in my command withdrew before we could put an actual chance of battle. 

 

Status report! She said. 

 

Each station reported in. So far, the damage was minimal, and the Phoneix threw out some good damage to the enemy. But Amelia knew she was not out of the woods yet. 

 

“Let's try to swing around for our own attack; we can use the planet to our advantage; let's do Gamma-Beta-2 as the invasion pattern,” she told the helm officer. 

 

As the helm officer nodded, the ship sped up as the officer manually piloted the ship toward the planet. 

 

“Do it,” she said. The ship got the advantage of being behind the planet. The ship rocked as a volley of quantum torpedoes chased toward their target. 

 

“4 hits, ma’am; it seems we have disabled the ship,” said the operation’s officer. 

 

“Hail them,” Amelia said. 

 

“So, do you yield?” said Amelia. 

 

The captain of the enemy vessel threw up a white flag. 

 

She told the transporter officer, “Beam them over and place them in the brig; we will bring them to Genty-1’s leadership team to see what they want to do.”

Amelia rested back in her chair after confirming the pirates were in the brig. She now felt she was back in her form, and as a bonus, she got the crew to smile at her.