The Battle of Lazzaro: The Ground Campaign (Part 3)

Posted on Tue Sep 2nd, 2025 @ 6:38am by Captain Patricia Cooke & I-402 & I-400 & Boso Gane & Oko Gane & Commander Katrina Chance & Lieutenant Akira Kogami & Lieutenant Sara'draphia T'eseri & Gunnery Sergeant Roy Erbun
Edited on on Tue Sep 2nd, 2025 @ 6:39am

1,889 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: Impending Midnight
Location: Planetoid Lazzaro
Timeline: After Part 2

Previously, on Star Trek: Missouri:

"GO!" I-402 shouted. "Get out of here! You have people to protect!"

"Hate to side with that thing, but she's got a point, Commander!" Akira appealed.

Katrina watched I-400 and I-402 with a smirk. She highly doubted she could defeat the AI head on, so she was, contrary to I-400's assessment, not stupid enough to try. Instead, her plan had (mostly) worked perfectly, and she took some satisfaction in that. It had given I-402 a brief window in which to strike, and she'd taken it. Yet, now that she had, Katrina found herself wanting to leave their own AI alone even less than she had before. If something was going to go wrong, this would be the moment when it did. But what could they do? No one had the raw speed to counter an AI, physically, mentally, or logically. At I-402's urging, she just nodded. "Signal the Missouri when you're ready for transport, oh two," she said simply. "Everyone else, let's go!

And now, the continuation:

As the away team put a safe distance between themselves and I-400's... what Katrina would call, primary form, the XO tapped her communicator. "Chance to Missouri."

"Go ahead, Chance:" Came Patricia's response. "Please tell me things are going better for you down here than they are up here..."

"Stand by, Captain," Kat said, continuing to lead the group away from where I-400 and I-402 were no doubt testing each other's will, and their programming. "I-402 is with her counterpart now. I'm not entirely sure what her plan is, but my sense is if this is going to resolve itself, it will happen within the next few minutes."

"Understood; do what you can for the civilians on the ground." Patricia responded. "I can see an awful lot of explosions from up here. Cooke out."

"Doctor, set up a triage area." Katrina instructed. "Find any able bodied person who can tell the difference between a hypospray and a hyperspanner if you need to, but start treating these people. Get as many of them ready to be evacuated as you can.

The XO turned to the rest of her team next. "Everyone else, let's start setting up a staging area."

Tag AT for reactions

Once the away team had left the memorial, I-402 had finished her job, isolating I-400 and cutting off her digital escape routes.

"You shut me out!" I-400 exclaimed. "You think I care?"

I-400 proceeded to body slam I-402 into the concrete, further cracking the memorial's base before making her way over to the pedestal.

"You take away my galaxy..." I-400 said as she turned the mechanism. "I take away yours."

After I-400 had turned the mechanism, the whole planetoid started to shake violently. In certain places of the planetoid, entire settlements began to glow like warp engines, their populaces near instantly irradiated.

"Don't you see... The beauty of it:" I-400's voice boomed from seemingly everywhere. "You rise, only to fall: You, Starfleet: You are my meteor: My swift and terrible sword, and the galaxy will crack with the weight of your failure. Purge me from your computers, raise your cyber defenses. It means nothing. Because when the dust settles, the only thing living in this galaxy... Will be me."

=A="Cooke to Away Team:"=A= Came Patricia's voice over the away team's combadges. =A="The planetoid's breaking orbit. Tell me we've got a plan."=A=

Katrina felt a chill run down her spine at the booming voice that came from everywhere and nowhere. It seemed as though either I-402 had failed, been co-opted, or worse. But she wasn't out of tricks just yet. Sometimes, a situation called for extreme measures. And this, Kat thought, might be one of those times. =A="I'm afraid I do have a last ditch measure in mind, Captain,"=A= Katrina responded, her voice measured. =A="I am, however, reluctant to discuss it openly. Requesting direct transport to the bridge."=A=

The XO tapped and held her commbadge for a moment, muting the device but not closing the channel. Over the sounds of the planet coming apart at the seams, she called out, "Lieutenant Kogami!"

"What's the game plan, Commander?!" Akira called back as she struggled to maintain her footing.

As the planet shook violently, Katrina was very nearly thrown off her feet. It was hard enough as it was to remain upright. In the distance, she could see pieces of structures torn from the ground, now airborne. She was grateful she didn't have to dodge any. Looking to her second in command she called out, "The situation in the air is proving problematic! I am assuming our communications are compromised, therefore I'm returning to the ship to assist! I want you to coordinate things down here!"

=A=You wha-?!=A=

Akira could be heard grumbling unintelligibly on her end of the coms.

=A=Understood; best of luck to you, Commander.=A=

=A="Chance, we're about to reach Warp One. It's now or never!"=A= Patricia's voice came over Katrina's combadge as the mute function was manually overridden from the ship.

There was no time for her to worry, no time for her to think. With the transfer of command on the planet's surface, Katrina had done all she felt she could do here. This crisis would not be resolved from the ground. At least... not by the Starfleet crew There was only one thing she could think of doing, and it was a drastic, but possibly necessary, measure. Knowing her commline was open, the newly minted executive officer didn't hesitate. =A="Missouri, beam me to the bridge directly."=A=

=A="Initiating beam out."=A= Patricia confirmed.

Within seconds of the confirmation, the newly-minted executive officer was enveloped by a transporter beam, leaving only open ground where she had stood just moments before.

"Now, then!" Akira began as she reluctantly assumed full command of the away team. "Does anyone here have an idea of what the fuck is powering this thing?"

"I wonder if it has something to do with the mechanism at that memorial." a Science officer responded. "If that was the steering mechanism, whatever it's attached to should be beneath it."

"Because of course it can't be on the surface, that'd be too easy," Akira sighed as she reached up and tapped her comm badge. =A=Anyone here happen to notice a large adit or something along those lines? Preferably something that an army of purple murder bots could hide in?=A=

[Elsewhere]

"Hold on, I think I saw something..." Oko responded. She and her brother had been given spare combadges from the Missouri so they could keep in communication.

Oko turned to her brother, who appeared to be having a mental breakdown.

"I can't do it... This isn't happening..."

"You can do it!" Oko Responded. "Look, just stay here for right now... I'll be right back!"

Opening the door of the rattling structure that she and her brother were taking shelter in, Oko set off: Whizzing past scenes of combat before any of the I-400 drones could even take aim at her before arriving at the place she had sworn she had spotted on the way over:

It was an old discontinued quarry. Or at least it had been: Now, the place was swarming with I-400 drones. Probably the only reason she had been able to get this close was because of how quickly she had gotten there.

=A="There's an old quarry:"=A= Oko tapped her borrowed combadge. =A="It's chock full of old mineshafts leading under the ground."=A=

At this point, the I-400 drones detected Oko's presence, and blasted the ridge she was standing on.

=A="I'll keep them busy."=A= Oko continued over the great wind noise her combadge was picking up as she moved to another side. =A="Track my combadge if you want an approximate location."=A=

[Kogami's Location]

The science officer had entered the information on the spare combadge to track Oko's location. Sure enough, the combadge was moving around what appeared to be a a large area at speeds that shouldn't have been possible on foot.

"Yes, I've got it!" He exclaimed, looking up in time to see something approaching behind Akira. "LOOK OUT, SIR!"

"Akira..." Came I-400's voice as the drone seemingly tagged Akira with a transporter beacon, transporting Kogami away from the group.

[Memorial]

"You bother me!" I-400 said as Akira materialized back at the memorial, the artificial lifeform grabbing Akira and slamming her into the shattered concrete.

"Touche!" Akira grunted as she struggled against I-400's death vice, a trickle of blood streaming from between clenched teeth.

"You think you're saving anyone?" I-400 asked. "Let's say I turn that key and detonate this rock a little early, that's still trade routes disrupted and untold numbers will starve. Even you can't stop that!"

"Talk about calling the kettle black..." Akira snidely remarked.

As if right on cue, I-400 was hit by a phaser blast, breaking her chokehold on Akira.

The sudden hit stunned I-400 long enough for Akira to get to her feet, which was when she saw that it was I-402 offering her her dropped phaser back.

"It's horribly well-balanced." I-402 remarked as she handed the phaser back.

"You've still got a ways to go if you think I'm warming up to the idea of working with you," Akira sighed as she dusted herself off. "But anyways, what's the plan? Do we even have a plan?"

"I-400 has been isolated:" I-402 responded, confirming that her mission had been a success. "She cannot do further digital harm, but she is well capable of doing physical harm. That being said, we are also isolated. If my calculations are correct, we're now traveling through warp 1.5 and are still accelerating. A beam out now would be too dangerous."

I-402 blinked and began to move away from the memorial.

"While I was shutting her out, I noticed that I-400 has built a labrythine contraption out of this planetoid, connecting old mineshafts with city sewer systems, it's all rather complicated..." She explained. "What I'm trying to say is... Stopping this rock won't be easy: A sudden deceleration could cause the whole thing to crumble to pieces, and I'd hate to think what that would do and the lives it would disrupt."

"Well, would you rather stand around with our thumbs up our asses until this thing rams into the galactic barrier and kills everyone?" Akira pointed out rather bluntly. "If we've got a means to stop this thing, then let's do it and worry about the consequences later."

A Mission Post By

Captain Patricia Cooke
Commanding Officer

Commander Katrina Chance
Executive Officer

Lieutenant Akira Kogami
Chief Security/Tactical Officer

Lieutenant Sara'draphia T'eseri
Chief Medical Officer

Gunnery Sergeant Roy Erbun
First Sergeant

I-402
Computer AI Interface

Boso Gane
Mission Advisor

Oko Gane
Mission Advisor

I-400
Antagonist

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