Carolyn Caird's exec is a harassed-looking bald chap with an elaborate earring in one ear and an extraordinarily thick and bulbous nose. I can't blame him for looking harassed, just now. I'm feeling that way myself.
"Hov'etlh is inbound to your coordinates," I tell him, "ETA about fifteen minutes. I'd try and catch up, give you a hand, except I can't match that souped-up impulse drive of Kirza's." At least, not without doing something... that I may need to do anyway. "In any case, I doubt we'd make much difference. Can you handle them?"
He gives a glum nod. "Probably. We got enough of a read during our last encounter to assess her capabilities... and our modifications should give us enough of an edge. Probably." His glum voice strengthens as he adds, "In any case, sir, you should probably warp out and get backup from Starfleet Command."
"Probably. Yeah. OK, Commander Igoolet, I'll see you on the flip side. Harrier out." I don't know what sort of a name "Igoolet" is... Turkish, maybe? His face vanishes from the screen, to be replaced by the image of Priyanapari. He doesn't look Turkish. But, then, what would I know, anyway?
I know one thing; I'm not going to be peacably firing up the warp drive and skedaddling back to K-22 for the cavalry. "What's the status of the Na'kuhl ship?" I ask.
Win bends over the scanner readout. "Drives are online. Raising shields, coming about... heading isn't clear yet...."
"Straight for us, and loaded for bear," I say. "Damn. I think we're out of options here. Go to red alert, and, well -"
I pick Caird's data cart up, weigh it in my hand, then decisively ram it into the reader slot in my armrest.
For a moment, nothing seems to happen, except the wailing of the red alert. Then Thiras Ythill turns his head sharply towards me, his antennae stiff and standing out like ramrods. I've never seen Andorian antennae do that. "What in the Infinite's name did you do?" he asks.
"Having an effect, is it?"
"Warp core just overrode all safeties... but the coils are transferring power to the main grid at about sixteen times higher than normal design spec. Sir, the drive readouts are going off the clock -"
"Phaser banks are fully charged," T'Pren reports.
"I didn't ask for that!" Though, mind you, nice to have, with the Na'kuhl battlewagon rattling its sabres at us.
"No, sir. Automated. I think, sir, they will remain fully charged for... numerous normal firing cycles. Shield frequencies, too, are...." She quirks a blonde eyebrow. "Fascinating."
"Sensor range just tripled," says Win. "Targeting locks for the torpedo tubes...." His voice trails off.
"Structural integrity is off the clock too," Ythill reports.
"Oh, boy." We just got a massive, and I mean massive, boost to my ship's capability. And I figure we have about thirty seconds left to work out how to use it.
"Kara. Send a signal to the Na'kuhl ship, standard Starfleet make-nice-and-what-are-you-doing. Stulk, T'Pren, bring us about, at half our usual impulse speed and thruster capacity. After which -" I fiddle with the little console repeater on my chair, sketching in a course on the tac plotter. "Let's try this."
"Hailing on all frequencies," Kara Grant reports. "No response -"
Below me, the engines have woken up with their usual rising hum... only, this time, the tone keeps on rising, increasing to a sort of wail that resonates throughout the ship.
"Weapons range in ten seconds," says Stulk.
"And those plasma banks are hot," Win adds.
"OK, so let's hope this works," I mutter. On the screen, the Na'kuhl battlecruiser is an ominous bat-winged blood-red blotch. I count down in my head. "Lock phasers, fire as they bear. Hit it."
The Na'kuhl ship's plasma weapons flare green across the sky -
- and the Harrier is already moving, surging forwards at her suddenly enormous full impulse speed.
The Na'kuhl plasma beams burn through empty space, and the ship explodes towards me in the viewer. For a moment, I think we're going to collide. Then T'Pren hits the phasers, and the grunt and hum as the banks discharge is a sudden shriek instead. Bolts of golden light stand out against the enemy ship's red hull, and there is a sudden glare as the Na'kuhl's shield wavers and fails. The golden beams reach through, to rake white-hot molten scars across the enemy hull.
Harrier hurtles past the Na'kuhl. "Hard about! Ready photon torpedoes!"
"Fascinating," says T'Pren. "The increased field-jacketing on the phaser beams has reduced the frequency of the Cherenkov side-emissions -"
"Later." I think she's trying to explain why our phasers are suddenly orange instead of blue. I'm sure it's very interesting - fascinating, even - but I don't need to know about it just now. The Na'kuhl were going for a quick kill, diverting most of their power output to weapons, leaving their shields comparatively weak. Only now their quick kill has missed, and they'll be reconfiguring for a slugging match, instead. And, even with my ship's new power levels, we're still smaller and more fragile than a stonking great Na'kuhl warship. If we get in a slugging match, we're going to lose.
Our photon torpedoes streak out of the tubes - to crash into the Na'kuhl's aft shields, and stop dead. Figures. Software hacks can't boost the output of a photon warhead - I start to rack my brains. Or can they?
Green flames lick towards us from the Na'kuhl ship's aft arrays. Now, it's the turn of our shields to flare. I check the readings. Under that barrage, they should have gone down instantly - as it is, they're holding, just, though some energy's bleeding through -
There is a sudden bang, and a shower of sparks shoots from one of the bridge consoles. "Damage control!" I yell.
"It's OK." Ythill's antennae are still stiff and outstretched. "The energy from the Na'kuhl's shots - it's being dissipated, spread through the power grid. That was just a transient overload on one relay. Resetting now. It's... fine." He doesn't sound like he believes it.
"Phasers. Fast as they can cycle. Keep hitting them."
"We can target individual subsystems on their ship," says Win. "If we can knock out their shield emitters -"
Green flames stab at us again, and the Harrier shakes and lurches. "Try it!" I yell. Another bang from another console. I don't know if I'll ever get used to this. Freaky golden phaser beams claw at the Na'kuhl's shields, but I was right, they've reinforced them, and we're not punching through to the hull any more.
The constant wailing from the engines, the screams of the phaser discharges, aren't making it any easier to think. But I have the vague shadow of an idea -
Then the wailing gets worse, with a buzzing, grating tone underneath it, a vibration which runs through the ship and makes my bones judder inside me.
"Uh-oh," says Ythill.
"Uh-oh what?"
"It's the Na'kuhl weapons," says Ythill. "They've got a temporal component - it's throwing off the timing on the new set-up. The structural integrity field is starting to desynchronize with the warp relays -"
We are starting to shake ourselves apart. Just great. "Hard about, one eight zero mark three. Come in on his flank. T'Pren, target those shield emitters. Stulk, ramp up the compression fields on the photon launchers - override the safeties, crank up the coils as high as they'll go."
"You want me to supercharge the next launch?"
"It should be enough to punch a torp through their shields!"
"Or rip the launchers right out of the saucer!" the Tellarite snaps back at me.
"Yeah, well, we ran out of safe ideas a while back!"
Stulk shakes his head in disbelief. But his thick fingers are moving swiftly on the weapons controls -
"Turn completed. Locking phasers on the enemy's shield emitters." T'Pren's Vulcan calm is very welcome, just now.
"Let 'em have it!"
The phasers shriek once more. There are more spatters of sparks from different parts of the bridge. On the viewer, the Na'kuhl ship is haloed in brilliant light.
Then the halo turns into an expanding shimmer of auroral light - and is gone.
"Torpedo! Now!"
The noise is heart-rending. Harrier bucks and jumps, and for a moment I think Stulk was right, that the overload has torn the torpedo tubes right out of the ship.
But a point of dazzling light streaks across the screen, and into the hull of the enemy ship.
There is a brief pinpoint of light, and then a tiny dark circle on the red hull - and then the Na'kuhl is backlit by a blast of flame and light. The entrance wound of the overcharged torpedo is tiny - but the detonation, deep inside the battlecruiser, has torn a chunk of its guts out, spraying flame and debris and escaping atmosphere through an exit hole I could fly my ship through without touching the sides.
But the Na'kuhl ship is still moving - somehow. It's not dead yet. And the grating scream that surrounds me... sounds as if the Harrier is coming apart.
"Na'kuhl is turning," Win reports. "I'm getting energy readings - I don't recognize them -"
But it's clear what the Na'kuhl is doing, now. Ahead of the ship, a funnel of blue-white light is forming. They've triggered a temporal portal - they're trying to escape into time.
I blink at the whirling lights on the screen. "Full power to shields!" I yell. "And dump whatever we can into structural integrity!"
The battlecruiser is visibly struggling to reach the portal - struggling, and failing. Tremors run through the ship, lightnings crawl along the blood-red hull. The bow of the ship touches the edge of the portal... and visibly deforms, twisting and stretching, streamers of fragments breaking away from it. Another convulsive shudder runs through the Na'kuhl ship's hull - and then it goes, breaking apart in a cloud of flame and shrapnel that suddenly flares white-hot as the core blows.
The viewscreen whites out. The Na'kuhl ship is dead. The problem now is not to follow it.
"Scram the warp core!" I yell. "Shut it down! Open the vents on the Bussard collectors! Vent the warp plasma to space!" If we can clear that colossal overload by blasting the energized plasma out of the nacelles -
The Harrier jolts. All the lights go out. The shrieking engines suddenly die. For a moment, I'm sitting in the dark, wondering if I'm dead too.
Then red emergency lights come on. There's a fair amount of smoke on the bridge, but no more exploding consoles. "Status?" I manage to ask.
"We're -" Ythill swallows, and starts again. "Main plasma manifold blew. We're... We don't have main power, but the overload cleared itself. Like you said, sir, the plasma vented to space. We can replace the manifold, step the core back to normal output...."
"How long?" I ask.
"Hours, sir," says Ythill gloomily.
"OK." I feel light-hearted. And light-headed. "That's fine. We've still got auxiliary power, right? And it's going to take a lot more than a few hours to fix the Na'kuhl ship." I turn to Win. "If the Leacock can handle Kirza, we should be fine, right?"
"I'm trying to get a scan reading now, sir," says Win. "So far.... This is weird."
Uh-oh. "Weird how?"
"I'm not reading any traces of combat. No energy discharges, no debris...." Win's face clears. "I have one ship on positive track. Confirmed ID. It's the Leacock."
"One ship? So where's the Hov'etlh?"
Win shakes his head. "No idea, sir."
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