2416.04

Stardate: 2416.04 Captains Log: The dinner on S'Task started out well enough, until a poorly cook bird derailed the meal.  The Romulan chef survived the fiasco, and Ryn and Willow got a gourmet meal out of it.  However, the Orions decided that would be a good time to attempt an ambush or trap.  First the captains and the first officers disappeared, then the Legion commander literally disappeared stealthily following, and t'Khellian herself finally followed.  Dinner broke up precipitously quickly with Cromwell crew returning their ship to effect a 'rescue' of the orion ship that had sent out a distress signal with S'Task on overwatch.  Sesgaard was warned by Riov t'Pal, she thought this likely a trap.

     Lt. Emganwini lead the first contact away team to the Orion Ship, with Dr Shran and Crewman Wells, to make contact, and ascertain what assistance would be needed.  Jinx sends a Computer hacking program with them.  However, someone else had similiar ideas and inserted a computer virus into Cromwell's computers with the away team mission already beamed over.  The enemy had taken advantage of the early confusion by beaming an intruder to Cromwell.  Banor, in defense of the ship immediately moved to counter the threat.  In hard fought combat, Banor prevailed.  In an effort to prevent information from leaking out as to the why, the agent committed seppeku.

     Cromwell fighter pilots Ginger and Shamrock team up with their counterparts Anvil and Angel from S'Task to scout the area as confusing information begins coming in from everyone's data gathering scans.  Several voids of data were found, which were fired upon, but phasers did not seem to affect anything within or be affected by it. S'Task R&Ds cold fusion torpedoes were able to bring the hidden Romulans back in phase and the combined firepower of fighters and capitol ship fire were able to bring down three of four targets.  Steath out of phase Romulan ships.  The fourth Romulan is making a suicide run towards Cromwell.

     Aboard the Orion Syndicate Ship Enterprise (OSSE), a survivor was found, an Orion girl and her dog.  She was in critical condition, but with the fourth Romulan out there, Cromwell could not drop their shields to transport.  But staying aboard was not conducive to the away teams own health.  Besides the radiation leak in Engineering, they discovered a Roluman bomb on countdown.  Martis tried to talk them through it, but the efforts by Cromwell to locate the last Stalking Romulan prove counter productive.  A tachyon pulse does force the Romulan back into phase with Cromwell, who they find stalking them from behind, maneuvering into firing position, but systems reset from the deflector dish tachyon overload.  One of those systems is the transporters.  With thirty seconds left to reset the transporters, and 27 seconds left on the bomb countdown, the away team has to be abandon as Cromwell reinforces shields and moves away.  A log Buoy is deployed by Cromwell.  One log entry is as follows;

Captains Log, Stardate 2416.04     The Orion Syndicate ship may have saved Cromwell from the Romulans, even if it were a Romulan trap.  Cromwell, in moving to assist and rescue an Orion ship, was ambushed by 4 'invisible' Romulan ships.  They were using cloaking technology by taking their ships out of phase with our universe.  The Nal'Gaharay, and now Romulans?  Our Hosts, and escort, cloaked and instead of laying off as the Riov said she would, followed Cromwell closely behind us.  She has not made any aggressive moves to us, but may have purposely, (or was it inadvertently?) placed her ship between Cromwell and the attackers.  Cromwell fighters and S'Task fighters working in conjunction destroyed one attacking Romulan ship.  S'Task destroyed two others.      Cromwell is not without damage.  An intruder beamed aboard, and introduced a virus into our computer systems.  Gravity and sensors are affected, and the virus is running and hiding within our systems.  Commander Banor has neutralized the intruder threat, but the damage may already have been done.  Jinx is fighting the virus and wants to isolate sections.  I had to override that course of action and risk the computer core.  We have significant amounts of data incoming from the away team consisting of Lt Emganwini, Dr Shran, and crewman Wells.  I am attempting to beam them aboard, but until Cromwell can drop her shields, the three are trapped aboard the Orion Derelict.     Cromwell is tracking the away team.  The Orion ship is a derelict, the crew murdered and the automated emergency beacon activated.  The perpetrators also left an explosive device in engineering.  There are only a couple of minutes left before the ship implodes.  If Lt. Martis aboard Cromwell, and Lt Emganwini, leading the away team cannot defuse it, they will need to escape out of engineering.  The radiation leak is preventing a transporter lock on them.  Dr Shran has moved to the edge of transporter lock.  If we can drop shields, we can get her out.  Cromwell was using the ship as a shield against the multiple attackers, with us not knowing what Riov t'Pal would do, especially after cloaking and changing her own course of action, have to keep our shields up.  I can only wonder what what happen if her honor is released, would she have sided with the other Romulans?  That, and they hold Arrian t'Kheall.  If the Orion ship explodes, Cromwell is very close, and we need full shields to survive the blast.  It is past time to utilize lifepods, they would not survive the blast at this range.     There is still the last Hidden Romulan out there.  Jinx and M'Riss have a plan to force the ship back into phase with a wide burst tachyon field.  But they need to know where the ship is.  Where is the last stalker?  One of S'Tasks pilots, hints it should be stalking us, but we have no confirmation as of yet.  The tachyon burst may well disable the deflector dish, we only have one shot at this...     Time is no longer on our side. <End Transmission>