Thrang was in a foul mood, muttering to himself and periodically typing things into his command console. Angelica knew each command set in motion a crisis, somewhere in the quadrant - an equipment failure, a vehicle crash, a cybervirus outbreak, anything that would cause disruption and divert resources. For some reason, he was starting a lot of these things just now.
"In position," Tom Tallidge reported. He sounded nervous. He'd borne the brunt of Thrang's anger when the protomatter weapon hadn't been ready in time. Angelica almost felt sorry for him - she knew, better than anyone, that it hadn't been his fault.
"About time," Thrang snapped. "We're on a deadline, here. I almost wish she hadn't taken the bait. It'd be easier to take her out the same way we took Hengest. But, well, she knows her two gentleman friends are at risk.... It would have been better to have the bomb ready," he added, glaring at Tallidge. "To detonate it when she died... oh, she'll know it'll happen, she'll realize she's failed... but to detonate it just when her ship went, to know that her ultimate failure was the last thing she'd ever see... it would be more artistic. I like artistry."
"Sorry," said Tallidge. In his position, Angelica thought, she'd have kept her mouth shut.
"Druzga," Thrang snapped. "Confirm those movement orders from ESD."
"I did that already!" the Tellarite protested.
"Confirm them." Thrang's voice was ominously calm.
"Admiral Shohl is outbound for the Vel Tarsus system. In her personal vessel, it says here. No escorts."
"Exactly as I anticipated." Thrang frowned. "Except she's dawdling. The King Estmere's drive should have had her here hours ago. As things stand... it's uncomfortably close to my deadline. I do like to leave a little slack in these things." He leaned back a little in the command chair. His face was pensive.
"I have a sensor contact," the Vulcan Turet announced. "A vessel just dropped out of warp, position consistent with an inbound vector from Sol System."
"Finally," said Thrang. "Helm. Get us in there. Special board -" he glanced at Angelica "- ready on my command."
"Everything's ready," said Angelica. She hoped Admiral Shohl was, too.
There was a dot on the tactical display. It was at extreme range, there was no way to resolve details... but it could only be Shohl's ship. Thrang was smiling again.
"Only a few minutes left. We'll give her time to close in... then we'll send our little surprise." His gaze flicked over towards Angelica again, confirming that she was ready.
"Do better to kill her now," Druzga muttered.
"In my own time," said Thrang. "I like these things to be artistic.... It's unfortunate, I suppose, that so many of them are on their guard, now. The first ones worked out to perfection, it was exquisite. This one, I fear, won't be exquisite. Merely satisfying."
"Something is wrong," said Turet. "Emissions profile is not as predicted."
Thrang raised an eyebrow. "Maybe she thinks she has protection," he said. "Well, let's test that. Angelica, enter the prefix codes, please."
Dutifully, Angelica tapped out a series of numbers on her board. Her finger hovered for only a fraction of a second before she pressed the TRANSMIT icon.
And it was only a fraction of a second before the board flashed red. "Prefix codes rejected!" she said.
"What?" Thrang reached for his own console. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the data stream. "Those were the right codes. King Estmere's prefix codes. So why -?" He turned to face Angelica. "Never mind the codes. Switch the resonant field through the main deflector dish. At the very least, it will shake those Jolciot alloys of hers severely - we'll finish her with conventional armament."
Again Angelica's fingers danced rapidly across the console. And, again -
"Resonant field's being emitted... but there's no feedback," she said. "It's as if - I don't think that ship has any Jolciot alloys."
"I have a transponder ID reading," said Turet. "That vessel is not the USS King Estmere. I have an NCC number...." His emotional control slipped enough for disbelief to creep into his voice. "NCC-1934?"
Angelica was using the sensor functions of the special board, now. "That's - that's consistent. The configuration - that ship looks like a twenty-third century Constitution-class cruiser. It's not the King Estmere, that's for certain. But the power levels, the emissions profile, they're very high -"
"We're being hailed," Druzga said.
"Very well," said Thrang. "We still have a couple of minutes in hand. On screen."
And the viewscreen filled with a face, a scarred Andorian face, and behind it the distinctive look of an antique Starfleet bridge. "Kalevar Thrang. This is Admiral Tylha Shohl aboard the temporal light cruiser USS Gustav Holst. You're wanted on a charge of genocide. Surrender. Now."
Thrang laughed. "Just the genocide? Admiral Shohl, you wound me."
"I'd list everything else," said Shohl, "but, as you keep on reminding me, I don't have all day. Now, you've already seen that you can't make this ship fall apart at the press of a button - so, are you going to surrender, or do I have to do this the hard way?"
"You're very confident in that little antique of yours, aren't you?" said Thrang. "All right. Show me what it can do. Screen off." And the tactical display flicked back into place.
"That only looks like a Constitution-class," said Angelica. "Maybe we -"
"Maybe we should take precautions," said Thrang. "Bring the drones online."
Despite herself, Angelica shuddered. The modified cannon drones were among Thrang's most effective weapons - robot weapons with self-aware AI. Self-aware, and homicidal.
She keyed in the commands, and guttural synthetic voices spoke along the comms channels.
"Moloch online. I hunger for destruction."
"Astaroth online. My enemies shall know fear and death."
"Lucifer online. Death follows where I walk."
"Azrael online. All who face me shall perish."
Thrang smiled. "I love it that they're task-focused."
The four drones shot out from their launch bays and corkscrewed erratically towards the Gustav Holst, swerving and jinking in rapid evasion patterns. The cruiser was making no attempt to avoid action, barreling straight in towards Thrang's ship. A multi-coloured nimbus flared around it as the drones' phaser cannon blasts savaged its shields.
"Forward tetryon arrays, fire as they bear," said Thrang. He sounded almost bored.
Then Cherenkov-blue light slashed across the sky as the Holst's phasers opened up. Astaroth emitted a metallic screech as a phaser beam found it and tore through its shields; on the tac display, damage icons blossomed around it. And then the cruiser spat out a volley of quantum torpedoes, and Moloch erupted into white-hot fragments, its appetite for destruction permanently sated.
Thrang swore under his breath. "Update the evasion patterns. Remaining drones, go wide, bracket her with fire. Weapons. Double-shot the torpedo launcher."
"We're hurting her," said Druzga. "I'm reading hull damage, atmosphere leaks -"
The Holst changed direction, just a trifle - enough to bring its main deflector square on with Thrang's ship. A brilliant beam of light shot out to envelope the Hirogen battlecruiser in a glowing fog. The ship lurched.
"Some kind of quantum phase effect," said Angelica, reading off the special console. "It's inhibiting our power generation - and I'm reading distributed damage to all systems."
"War of attrition," said Thrang. "She can't afford a war of attrition, she hasn't got time. Drones, close in."
The remaining three drones spiralled inwards, towards the Holst, their cannons hammering at her wavering shields.
"She's rotating shield frequencies," said Druzga.
"Like a good little engineer," said Thrang. "All she's doing is prolonging the agony. Helm -"
Then alarms shrilled as something shot out from the Holst. The special console display was almost unintelligible, flashing warning icon after icon - radiation, subspace interference, gravitic disruption -
"Evade!" shouted Thrang. "Hard about, one niner five mark six! Run evasion pattern Iota!"
The ship turned sharply and jinked from side to side - not fast enough, though, to avoid some phaser shots from the Holst that made their own shields flare and shiver. "Get me a readout," said Thrang, firmly. "I need to know what that weapon is -"
"Working on it," said Angelica. "But it doesn't make sense - it's radiating on all frequency ranges, but I'm not getting any power readings from it -"
Thrang swore, aloud this time, and slammed his fist into the arm of his chair. "It's nothing but a decoy!" he shouted. "Hard about! Drones, back into range!"
But the damage had already been done. The drones had broken formation to flee the sudden threat - and their escape courses had been sadly predictable, and the Holst's gunners had taken full advantage. Astaroth was dead, Lucifer was a smoking hulk with wrecked drives, and even as they came about, they saw the cruiser's phaser banks lock on to Azrael and blast the drone into cinders.
"Roll replacement drones!"
"That's a negative," said Tallidge. "We're getting some sort of interference on the EPS grid - precision fabricators are offline. Working to clear it -" Then he jumped out of his chair, as his console shot sparks and smoke from a transient overload.
"This is becoming annoying," said Thrang. "All right, we'll do this the straightforward way. Helm, get us in close. Maximum power to all forward weapons. Synchronized fire on my command." He smiled. "The full firepower of an Apex battlecruiser at point-blank range. Try decoying your way out of that, Admiral Shohl."
The ship rocked, and more flash-bangs sounded on the bridge, as the Holst fired again. "She's not attempting to evade," Druzga said. "She's closing fast. We're taking damage. Shields are down to twenty-six per cent. We have a hull breach on deck six."
"EPS grid keeps going out of sync," said Angelica. "She's doing something to take it out of phase."
"Good little engineer, again," said Thrang. "Ignore it. It'll stop when we blow her out of space."
The shape of the Holst began to expand, on the screen. The cruiser's shields were patchy and wavering, fire was bleeding from her saucer and secondary hull from a number of breaches... but her power levels were still high, Angelica noticed, and her weapons were still hot.
"Range three thousand and closing," said Druzga. "Two thousand five hundred. Two thousand."
"Ready," Thrang whispered. "Ready...."
"One thousand. Five hundred."
"Fire!"
And the ship shivered as the torpedoes screamed out of the launcher, and the full fury of the tetryon beam arrays lashed out -
At nothing. Where the Holst had been, a moment before, was only empty space.
"What the hell - ?" Thrang shouted.
"Subspace jump!" yelled Druzga. "She's behind us!"
And then the ship rocked, and Angelica felt a sick sensation as the gravity plating wavered, and there was no light on the bridge except the white sparks flying from the exploding consoles. The Holst had cut loose with her full armament against the weakly shielded stern of Thrang's ship, and the results were devastating. Angelica held tight to the arms of her chair, and waited, either for death, or for an end to the barrage.
Red emergency lights flickered on. The deck steadied. The air was full of smoke.
"Starboard nacelle is down." Tallidge's voice, weakly.
"Get it back online!" snapped Thrang.
"She severed the pylon! It's gone!"
For an instant, Thrang's face and body were completely still, the only point of stillness in the chaos on the bridge. Then he rose from his seat.
"I'm going to main engineering," he said. "I'll fix the fabricators and get a set of replacement drones up. Keep us alive until I've finished that. You." He gestured to a bulky Hirogen Beta. "Take the conn."
The special console was still working. Unobtrusively, Angelica tapped in a command sequence as Thrang strode off the bridge.
The Holst had passed over them, was circling, coming about. Deciding, no doubt, if there was even any point in making another attack run.
The results from Angelica's command sequence flashed up on her console screen. She took a deep breath of smoke-scented air, and stood up.
She crossed the deck to the command chair in three quick steps, grabbed the Beta by his armoured collar and snarled, "Move." The Hirogen resisted. Angelica slapped him, backhand, across the face. "Move." This time, he complied.
Everyone was looking at her. Angelica sat down, checked the command console, saw what little was still working. She thumbed the open-hail icon.
"This is Angelica Moreno aboard Thrang's ship," she said. "We're dropping shields and ejecting our warp core in token of surrender. Be aware, the core's been damaged by a chemical explosion, approach it with caution." She ran her hand through her hair. "I already siphoned the antimatter out of Thrang's scuttling charge. Thrang's running, he's armed, and he has a Tzenkethi protomatter device on the planet's surface which he'll try to use, somehow. I've got his beam-down coordinates. Transmitting them now."
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