The viewscreen switched back to the schematic of Support Station 9-214; a cluster of habitation modules, the framework of the dry dock, the ranks of supply canisters and deuterium tanks floating free nearby.... The station was a hastily assembled structure, out in interstellar space, supporting Starfleet vessels as they tried, with increasing desperation, to hold open the breach in the KDF front lines made by the fall of the Klingon fortress at Aznetkur.
And the support station was still incomplete - once the engineering module was fully assembled and armoured, and the twin phaser lances were operational, it would be able to fight off any random Klingon privateers. At the moment, though, it had only a secondary phaser array and a scattering of armed defence buoys to support it, and it needed the protection of the battlecruiser USS Eire....
Okamoto frowned. There was another ship, of course, the star cruiser USS Manassas, in the station's one operational drydock for minor repairs. Possibly Commander Graves on the Eire might have thought the Manassas could hold the fort, while he took the Eire off to... something. But Graves should have reported in by now -
He gazed disconsolately out of his viewport. That was another problem; the admin and service module had been temporarily detached while new EPS runs were installed; right now, there was no way for him to get from his office to the ops centre, unless he spacewalked or used point-to-point transporters. Well, comms were still up, he could talk to Xagyaer at least -
Something caught his eye.
He looked twice, to be sure. One of the stars was moving, slowly but surely, across the viewport. Okamoto's pulse raced. He keyed his comms console. "Ops. There is a ship out there. Get sensor lock and confirm."
Xagyaer stared at him from the screen. "We have nothing on sensors...."
"It's there." Okamoto oriented the star field in his head. "Roughly in the direction of Nu Pegasi. I have visual on it." There was a set of binocular imagers in his desk drawer, he remembered. He pulled them out. "Attempting a visual ID now, get those sensors fixed!"
Stars swirled vertiginously before his eyes as he aimed the imager, then a blurred shape swam into view, and resolved with cruel clarity.
The thing reminded him, Okamoto thought, of some sort of barbarian head-dress. But instead of being rendered in feathers or fur, this one was made of great slabs of armour plating, in which deflectors and Bussard collectors glowed with a bile-green light.
"Elachi Monbosh battleship!" he yelled.
"The Elachi? Here?" Xagyaer said. "Still cannot confirm on sensors -"
"Half the quadrant has captured Elachi ships. But we don't know it's ours, we must presume it hostile. Red alert!"
The sirens sounded at once. Okamoto raised the imager to his eyes again. The battleship was moving in at an almost leisurely pace - but it was quite definitely closing. Okamoto groaned inwardly as its cannons began to spit out crescent-shaped bolts of green disruptor light. A defence buoy shattered into flaming debris.
"Confirmation!" Xagyaer shouted from the screen. "Hostile confirmed! Arming phaser array!"
"Get engineering teams, skip all safety checks, get one of the lances online!" Okamoto ordered. "Alert the Manassas!" With the star cruiser's firepower - if they could get a phaser lance working - if the enemy captain played things wrong - they might yet survive. "Patch in tactical displays and visuals to my repeater screens." Along the length of his desk, screens brightened into life.
Okamoto's mind raced. The battleship was moving in methodically, blowing the defence buoys as it came... but something was wrong, somewhere else. The tactical readouts seemed - patchy, incomplete. His gaze flicked from the tac display to the station schematic -
And he saw it. "There are defence buoys down on the other side of the station!" he yelled.
"Sir?" said Xagyaer.
"There's another hostile out there! They're spoofing our sensors - run visual checks, and emergency intrusion countermeasures on our electronics!"
Even as he gave the orders, he saw the other ship, in one of the display screens - and his heart sank further. The ominous insectile shape of a Guramba Siege Destroyer, its weapons spines already facing forwards in offensive mode, was swinging in towards the drydock, where the Manassas was bringing her engines up to full power. If the Nausicaan ship had had time to charge its disruptor javelin -
It had. Before Okamoto's horrified eyes, the siege destroyer flared with green light, and the javelin beam snapped out, catching the Manassas just aft of one nacelle pylon, and impaling the star cruiser, the beam emerging again out of the forward saucer section. One brief flick of the beam before it winked out - and the Manassas yawed and rolled wildly, spouting air and warp plasma from a half-kilometre gash in her side. The Guramba's secondary disruptors were hammering away, but they were scarcely needed; the star cruiser's warp core breached, and the ship was gone, in a white-hot flash that demolished the dry dock around her.
The deck shuddered beneath Okamoto's feet. The Monbosh had cleared its path through the defence buoys; it was closing for the kill. Crescent bolts scythed into the unfinished engineering hull.
"Shields at forty-one per cent!" Xagyaer reported. "Phaser array is online - we're hitting them - not reading any damage -" Another shudder. The Rigelian swore. "Power spikes in the EPS grid -"
Then the deck lurched again, violently, and the lights died. Okamoto's feet left the floor, and didn't come back down again. The desk screens blanked out, leaving nothing but after-images in Okamoto's sight. The gravity was gone. He hung weightless in the dark, and knew a moment of panic. Was this how he was going to die? Helpless, in the black, sealed in a metal tomb?
The lights came back, and the gravity. Okamoto fell, crashing into the desk with force enough to wind him. He struggled back to his feet. The display screens were nothing but white noise - then one of them cleared, and Xagyaer's face came into view.
"Commander Okamoto, respond, please! Commander -"
"Okamoto here." He felt strangely calm, now.
"Sir, main power is out. We have partial auxiliary only. Weapons and shields are offline. Sir, the battleship is hailing -"
"Of course," Okamoto said, resignedly. "On screen."
The screen blurred, came back into focus. The enemy commander's face was dark green, sharp, feral, with swirling silvery eyes and an elaborate crest growing from the forehead. It was nearly the same shape as her ship, Okamoto thought, absurdly.
"Station commander." The alien's voice was a harsh rasping whisper. "I am -" it made a rasp, a squelch, and a series of clicks, sounding something like R'j Bl'k' "- commanding officer of the Goroke. Your station is no longer defensible. Surrender. Now."
Okamoto swallowed hard. "I am not familiar with your species," he said. "I do not know how you treat prisoners of war -"
"S-s-s-s-s," said the alien. "Surrender now, and judge for yourself. Otherwise, my next barrage will breach your antimatter containment. If any of your crew survives the resultant explosion - well, my Ferasan colleague will be keen to know how, and she is an expert vivisectionist."
The silver eyes burned into him. In any case, he had no choice. "We surrender."
---
R'j Bl'k' settled back contentedly on the Goroke's command couch. "If only it were always this easy," she said. "The Feds' current disorganization is an immense help.... Still. Besides that, breaking their comms and sensor protocols was - neatly done. A very creditable effort, Lieutenant Siowershoe."
The little alien caught the implication at once, and was on her feet in an instant, rigid at full attention. "Sir! Thank you, sir!" Then she glanced down at her console. "Signal from the Anar, sir!"
R'j smiled. "On screen."
Rrueo's face appeared on the main viewer. "That went well," she said.
"Indeed. Our prize crews should exercise some caution, though. With the Feds' communications so badly scrambled, some of them may not know they have surrendered yet."
"Rrueo will tell her marines to be careful. And the next step?"
R'j considered. "We can scarcely conceal what has happened here, so there is little point setting booby traps. Salvage anything of value, then place antimatter charges to destroy the rest of the station."
"Rrueo concurs. And afterwards? It must surely occur, eventually, even to the captain of the Eire, that he is chasing sensor ghosts...."
"S-s-s-s-s. The Eire was tasked to defend this station. It is now superfluous to requirements, and should be retired from service. Since Starfleet's administration is in a state of confusion, we will attend to that matter for them. Perhaps they will give us a commendation for it."
"Rrueo would like that. By the way -" The Ferasan's whiskers bristled, and her ears folded flat to the side of her head. "That crack of yours - about Rrueo vivisecting helpless prisoners -"
R'j was unmoved. "Yes?"
Rrueo grinned. "Nice touch."
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