"Come about, seven five mark two three! Overcharge the plasma launcher!"
Spirits of Earth rocks and judders as another barrage of phaser fire splashes off her Borg-enhanced shields. The phaser turrets spit defiance back at the Vulcan cruiser, but our main armament is aimed forward, at another target - the hulking shape of a freighter, black against Andoria's snows.
"All cannons rapid fire!"
The spaceframe shudders again as bolts of blue-white fury streak out from our cannons, slamming hard into the freighter's shields, hammering away as we bore straight in. My face is set in a rictus snarl, and I can still taste the burned air of Storm Command in my antennae. The freighter's shields are down -
"Fire torpedo!"
The eldritch bolt of plasma fire streaks out of the launcher; Spirits of Earth turns sharply aside as the torpedo strikes home. One second, the freighter is there - then, it is an eerie auroral shimmer, a field of glowing light in the approximate shape of the freighter - and then it is gone, faded away into the void, and its cargo of death with it.
"Come about, all cannons sustained fire."
The Vulcan cruiser is coming up on us again, phasers blazing. Our cannons roar back, blue-white light piercing the cruiser's shields, tearing that elegant red hull into a tangled mass of jagged, flaming, broken metal. A plasma torpedo hits the Vulcan's drive ring. Shields failing, warp plasma gushing out from ruptured conduits, the cruiser veers off, staggering away to die somewhere in Andoria's rings.
Part of me still wants to believe this isn't happening. That this is some page of history turned into a nightmare, this image of Vulcan and Andorian ships ripping at each other in our planet's skies. But it is real, this nightmare. Space is full of a vast tangled web of ships, weaving trails around and around each other, spitting phaser and plasma fire - The situation is scrambled, confused. The comms channels are full of voices -
Like the Andorian voice shouting, now, "- freighter on approach run in zone three, moving to engage - Infinite protect us! Scimitar decloaking!" The transmission cuts out abruptly.
I curse. "Get me a line on that one!"
"On it," says Anthi tersely. "Range... six five two, bearing one one niner mark three three four." Too close to Andoria's atmosphere... too far for us to reach? Maybe, maybe not.
"Flank speed on that heading. Roll wing cannon platforms."
"I have a visual," Zazaru says. The viewscreen changes, shows the wreckage of a Kumari burning to nothing, the bulk of a freighter moving, the larger bulk of a Scimitar shimmering and fading from view as it cloaks. No other Imperial Guard ships close enough. Nothing to stop that freighter releasing - whatever it's carrying - into Andoria's air. I grit my teeth. Nothing but us.
"I'm not sure we can -" Anthi begins, and F'Hon interrupts her.
"Skipper. All-bands broadcast from that freighter."
He hits the console, and a new voice fills the air.
"- aboard the VSS Sharukh. We are on approach to Andoria, and I realize now that Starfleet's message was correct, and that this action cannot be allowed to continue. I have sealed myself in the engine room and am engaging appropriate measures. Ships in the vicinity are advised to evade the resulting radiation hazard. I repeat. This is Chief Engineer Silan aboard the VSS Sharukh -"
The freighter explodes. First, the eye-hurting flash of a core breach; then, the roiling blue flares of tricobalt explosions, blast after blast turning space into a storm of violent energies. No complex poisons in that freighter's holds, then - just explosives enough to reshape a small continent.
And another good man blows himself to hell. There has already been too much of that today.
"Scimitar has decloaked," Anthi reports. Caught in the fringes of the blast, the Romulan battleship is wallowing with its shields in tatters. "I have a targeting solution."
"Hit it."
Once again, our cannons roar, the kinetic cutting beam lashing out, the plasma launcher spitting its bolts of death towards the Hegemony ship. The Scimitar turns, swiftly for a ship of that bulk, its massive weapons arrays sending a storm of plasma fire that batters my shields, rocks my ship, sets alarms wailing and damage control lights sparkling on the bridge. But my shields hold - just - and the Scimitar's were failing already. The cutting beam carves deep into the armoured hull, gutting it. Bolt after bolt of phaser fire crashes home, blasting the grey-green armour apart, smashing into the Scimitar's interior. Air and flame escape in huge gouts from the rents in the battleship's hull - and suddenly, the enemy is gone, swallowed up in the green-black flash as its singularity core implodes.
"Steer two two seven mark one two. Rotate shield frequencies. Roll replacement wing cannon platforms." The cannon drones didn't survive the Scimitar's plasma barrage. "Where's the next nearest freighter?"
"Scanning," says Zazaru. The space battle is one enormous zone of confusion... but it is a steadily, relentlessly contracting one, as - despite our frenzied efforts - the Hegemony's freighters get closer and closer to Andoria. That last one made it as far as zone three - zone two is the planetary exosphere, and zone one is the ionosphere, where the freighters could release their Pasicide-7 safely, without it degrading in the solar wind... clouds of death that might kill millions when they settle.... "Got some odd readings in the atmosphere, sir," Zazaru says.
"What is it?"
"Metallic objects... and low grade power sources.... Sir, I'm not sure what to make of this." My science officer frowns.
"Patch it through to my tactical display. Let's have a look at it." Another Hegemony weapon?
The tactical display, already confused and overcrowded, flickers as Zazaru transfers the data from the main science console. There are contacts there... all over Andoria... rising into the upper atmosphere. But what are they? My antennae twitch... and I have an idea.
"Computer cross-reference. Check for civilian transponder codes - and tie in Andorian historical databanks while you're at it."
The display flickers again, goes ominously blank for half a second, then comes back with a positive forest of ID tags in the planetary atmosphere. "Shuttles?" says Zazaru, incredulously. "Cargo haulers?"
"And private yachts, and research vessels, and even air trams," I say, "not to mention museum pieces."
"Is that the original IGS Kumari?" Anthi asks.
"No, that ship was destroyed... must be another of the same class. Everything that can fly... they've sent up everything."
Everything with a drive capable of reaching orbit, or even the upper atmosphere, is in Andoria's atmosphere right now. A last-ditch, desperate effort to create a wall of steel in the sky, to block the approaching cargoes of death from the Hegemony. A lump forms in my throat as I look at it.
We will win this fight, I tell myself silently. We will win it, because we must.
And then there comes a shriek from behind me: Klerupiru's voice, almost unrecognizable with emotion. "I've got it!"
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