Red alert, never my favourite way to wake up. I reach the bridge at a breathless run, and leap into the command chair. "What's the situation?" I demand.
"The Goroke moved to investigate what they thought was a derelict ship," Tallasa reports, "and got jumped by Fek'lhri." She brings up the tac display. "Reading one Kar'fi class carrier, three K'Norr escorts, two frigate groups and - not sure we can track all the fighters and - and other things."
Tortured Souls, the Klinks call them. Living beings welded, somehow, to a force-field matrix that works like an impulse drive... letting them fly free in space under their own power. Sometimes I wonder what that must feel like... then I reflect on the names, and their attitude, and I guess it can't feel good.
"Awright. We are outnumbered, they are outclassed, let's make the class bit count. Get me the Goroke, and patch in King Estmere and the Anar if you can."
"Already linked to your console, sir," says Leo Madena. Oh, yeah, I was forgetting, he pretty much got the hang of this stuff already. I thumb R'j's icon. "What've we got?"
"Fek'lhri battle group inbound," the */*species 10118*/* rasps back at me. "I assume your executive has already given you the details."
"Right. Right. Fair point. OK, so... do you still have the old Khitomer Accord tac coordination protocols?"
"Naturally. We can interface with your tac network as necessary." She makes a hissing noise. "I am glad you are not prey to any nonsense about 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'. The Fek'lhri will happily disabuse you of any such simplistic notion."
"Gotcha. Right. Yeah. Feks are equal opportunities killers... I've met them myself. The hoarse and heavy and carnivorous breath was hot upon me from deep jaws of death." Go on, Zodiri, place that quote. "So. You want to handle fire coordination, while I do the combat vector plots?" Both the Falcon and the Goroke have command and control routines that can put a decent edge on everyone's system efficiency in battle. Another thing a Fek'lhri */*species designation indeterminate*/* mob can't do....
"Confirmed," rasps R'j. Numbers and vectors are coming alive on my tac display already. The battleship is swinging around, putting some distance between herself and the incoming force, getting closer to the cover of Falcon's and King Estmere's guns. Makes sense - we don't want the Feks to split us up and destroy us in detail.
"Signal from King Estmere, sir." The carrier's comms icon is flashing. I punch it.
Tylha's exec appears on the screen: something Vihl, I think the name is. Another Andorian, anyway. "Sir," she says, "we should beam up Admiral Shohl -"
I take one look at the tac display and decide. "No. We don't have time to arrange a secure transport, and I am not dropping all screens for a standard beam-out while there are Fek dimensional rifts about." Last thing I want is a bunch of Fek sabre-toothed bimbos running wild on my ship, thank you very much.
"Sir -" Vihl looks distinctly mulish.
"You can handle King Estmere, Tylha wouldn't have you as exec if you couldn't. Reminds me." I hit another button. "Anar. We don't have time to recover your CO before the Feks get too close to the planet. Confirm you're combat ready, please."
"This is Commander Oschmann on the Anar." I jump at the sight and sound of her, because she is hard-faced, blonde, and undeniably human */*species 5618*/*. A Moabite renegade, maybe? No time to ask. "Confirm we are ready for battle."
"OK. Set up with our tac nets. We're going to use the superior mobility of the KDF ships to try and funnel the Feks into Falcon's and King Estmere's killing zones." Not that the Fek'lhri */*species designation indeterminate*/* need much encouragement to come charging at us, and will you stop doing that, Two of Twelve?
*/*---reviewing organizational roles
---confirming hierarchical values
---information follows
---you are not the boss of me*/*
I so totally do not need this right now. All right. Follow Doc Zodiri's prescription, Ronnie, self-medicate with adrenaline. "King Estmere, deploy your frigates on our starboard flank. Anar, come about and hit them from the opposite side to the Goroke. We've got minutes at best before they're in transport range of the planet, so let's do this, people, now." I look up at Tallasa. "All tetryon banks and plasma torpedoes, stand ready. Ahead flank speed."
Falcon leaps forward, with King Estmere only a little way behind, spitting out her Mesh Weaver frigates - compact starships in their own right. The Anar scorches off like a scalded cat, her weapons spines swinging round into full offensive configuration. The cloud of demon warships is terrifyingly close now, so close I fancy I can hear the thunder of their drives.
"Incoming fire," Tallasa reports. "Coming from their forward fighter groups... standard Fek antiproton weapons. Shields holding." So far. The Tortured Souls and the S'kul fighters don't pack enough punch, individually, to worry me. It's when we get in among them that things are going to get fraught. "One K'norr coming in fast. Anar is moving to intercept."
"OK. Hold fire until we can make those refracting weapons count." Warning lights glitter on my console as Fek'lhri antiproton bolts claw at our shields. The K'Norrs are dangerous - Rrueo's ship should be able to handle one, but everything will depend on whether we can keep the fighter swarm off her back. I count off the steadily decreasing range in my head. "All right. Close enough. Hit 'em."
Brilliant beams erupt from the Falcon's tetryon banks, stabbing in all directions as our guns fire independently. Tetryon beams suppress energy - including, at high enough frequencies, the binding energies that hold matter together - and these Nukara-designed weapons create local energy imbalances that send secondary tetryon pulses leaping across space to nearby ships. So we fire, and space becomes a glaring web of Cherenkov light, a deadly cat's cradle holding the enemy fighters in its destructive tangle.
"Tricobalt warhead inbound!" Tallasa yells. "Brace for impact!"
Falcon rocks from stem to stern as the missile punches into our forward shield. I swear freely. "All right. I'm not having any more of that. Give 'em the works - invert the weapons stabilizers, and then use the tetryon cascade." The tetryon banks come with a formidably complicated stabilization system that keeps their energy flows regulated - a trick you can do, with the right equipment, is turn this setup inside out, broadcasting a tetryon imbalance into nearby space. "Now!"
Blue energies crackle and leap around us. Tortured Souls, stripped of their force shields and integral drives, spin away to freeze in the emptiness of space; the S'kul fighters simply disintegrate in bursts of foul flame. Beside us, King Estmere is spitting out her own brand of hellfire: Romulan-designed plasma beams, burning into the approaching Fek frigates while her own Mesh Weavers slam thermionic torps into them -
I frown. Something is wrong here.
"Fer'jai frigates swinging round behind us," Tallasa reports.
"Right. Ahepkur, discourage them. Release warp plasma... and drop some web mines."
The sickly light of energised plasma spreads out from our engines, almost concealing the compact units that drop from Falcon's engineering hull. Something is telling me that things are still wrong, somewhere. Caught in the warp plasma, the enemy frigates lurch and roll, their shields sizzling; then suddenly two of them are caught in cages of golden light - modified Tholian web weapons. The web cages don't last long... but when they fail, they implode, violently, cutting and crushing their captives into so much scrap metal. Our aft beam arrays finish them quickly....
Not enough enemy firepower. That's what's wrong. Anar has engaged one K'Norr, her disruptors are smashing it to ruins quite effectively. Goroke is fighting a nasty little battle of her own with the other two... the battleship is holding her own, but -
I hit the comms channel. "The carrier isn't supporting the fighters." The big Kar'fi is out of position, way out, on the fringes of the action. "Either it's being driven by an idiot, or -"
"Or it has another objective," R'j whisper-snarls at us.
"Right. And whatever it wants -"
"We do not want it to have it," says R'j. "The fighters are down. Take these pests from me, and I will deal with the carrier."
She's right - she's closest to the errant Kar'fi. I sketch in a course on the tac console, and Falcon and King Estmere turn. The Anar flares with brilliant green light, finishing her opponent with one savage thrust of her disruptor javelin; the black hull of the K'Norr seems to implode around the impaling green beam for an instant, before flying apart into a million flaming fragments. The Anar writhes in space, switching configuration.
We have one K'Norr in range; I don't even need to give the orders. Tetryon beams lash out, and plasma torpedoes scream out of our launchers. The escort turns away from the Goroke to meet our new threat. R'j has already run its shields down to a tattered remnant, and our tetryon beams bring them down to nothing, letting the million-degree hammerblows of the plasma torps strike home unimpeded. The Fek ship explodes in a cloud of flame; behind it, I can see the goat's-skull shape of the Goroke coming about onto a new heading. The last K'Norr blazes antiproton fire at us, spits out tricobalt missiles with insensate fury. King Estmere's frigates pick off the incoming missiles with pinpoint-sharp tetryon fire, while we burn the escort down with our main beams -
- and suddenly the tac display is clear, except for debris and the carrier. "Come about, heading niner seven mark two," I order. The Goroke is closing on the Kar'fi fast, her Elachi weapons sending scything crescent bolts into the carrier's aft superstructure. The Kar'fi, though, is built to stand punishment. "King Estmere, hold your frigates back for intercepts - Anar, stay with them." The carrier could still launch a fresh wing of fighters - could, and should - I don't know why it hasn't already. Falcon's impulse engine eats up the kilometres as we drive headlong towards it, King Estmere on our flank. The carrier looms, black and red and ominous, in my viewer. Tylha compared the Kar'fi, once, to a cooked lionfish: me, I think it looks like someone tried to put oars on a cathedral. It is ugly. And dangerous.
"Weapons range... now," Tallasa reports.
"Hit it. All banks, all tubes."
The tetryon banks glare with killing light again, and more plasma torps spill from our launchers. King Estmere is firing, too, and I am chagrined to note just how many plasma torps she is spitting out, compared to the Falcon. Of course, Tylha's torpedo crews have had longer to practice... and she has a bigger crew than me anyway.... Excuses, Ronnie, excuses. I resolve to do better.
But we've done enough. Under my tetryon beams and the carrier's withering plasma fire, the Kar'fi's screens go down, and the plasma torps strike home. The entire armoured flank of the Kar'fi suddenly erupts into a white glare of flame and boiling armour, even as the ship's drives fail at last, bludgeoned into wreckage by the Goroke's guns. A few fighters fly from the Kar'fi's launch bays, but too few, too late; the Anar and the waiting frigates gun them down relentlessly and quickly. A dazzling finger of light reaches out from King Estmere - a Romulan hyperflux beam. It probes into the burning entrails of the Kar'fi, and suddenly the light grows a thousand times brighter, and the Fek ship dissolves in the fatal brilliance of a warp core breach.
"No enemy units on sensors," Tallasa reports.
"Scans are clear of Fek'lhri energy signatures and dimensional rifts," says Saval.
"Shields at eighty-five per cent," says Ahepkur. "Structural integrity nominal; damage control parties moving to minor impact damage sites on decks four, thirteen and seventeen. Sickbay reports seventeen casualties, all minor injuries, no fatalities."
"I think we got 'em, then," I say. "Whew. Nice work, boys and girls." At the back of my mind, though, is a nasty little voice saying too easy. Feks are dangerous... they should have taken more of a bite out of us than they did.
"I have something else on sensors," Saval reports. "I think it is the derelict that the Goroke reported, earlier. Now that the Fek'lhri debris is clearing -"
"We can get a look at it. All right. Let's see what the fuss was about... only, slow and careful, right, guys? I'd rather not summon up another lot of Feks." Opening the door to Gre'thor is not on my to-do list, and I don't care what that book of prophecy says.
"Passive scans show... metallic construction," says Saval. "Trying for a visual now." On the screen, a dot expands against the backdrop of stars. "Running profile against main databases," Saval continues. He quirks his eyebrow. "I have a possible configuration match."
"What with?" I demand.
"Cross-referencing historical databases." Saval's eyebrow is staying quirked. "Sir... I have a positive match in Starfleet records... pre-Federation Starfleet."
"What?" I stand up. "Let me see that thing. Magnify."
The shape on the screen blurs, expands, settles back into focus... and my jaw drops.
"Early Earth Starfleet vessel," says Saval imperturbably. "I believe we can read the hull number and nameplate... NX-76. USS Chloe."
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