Star Trek: Intrepid
Pre Emptive Maneuvers - Part 3
by Galen Holcomb
(intrepidlogs@hotmail.com)

Pre Emptive Maneuvers - Part 3

Forward from the author:
This tale is the second part of a story arc that began with "The Double Edge." This story, and the preceding one, take place during the Dominion War. The final chapter will be chronicled in "Inevitability."

Chapter 3

Rodriguez frowned over his tactical board. "Sentry is being fired on," He reported. "and I show another contact at bearing nine zero four degrees mark zero. It looks like a big cruiser, roughly twice the firepower of a Nebula class starship. They're on an intercept with us."

"How long before their weapons come to bear?" Captain Aubrey asked.

"We'll be under their guns in 18 minutes."

Aubrey barely restrained a curse. Could anything else about this mission go wrong? With nearly every major power in the Alpha Quadrant looking for his ship, he had had to maintain COMM silence for the last six hours-----which meant flying blind into Gorn space and hoping he could find his old ally from the past. It had been a calculated risk, but it was now apparent that he had lost the gamble. Currently, they would all be lucky to escape with their skins. To make matters worse, another Starfleet ship was now in danger.

He eased into his command chair, which was starting to feel more and more like a hot seat. "Helm, bring us about. Plot a course back to the Sentry." He tapped a panel on his armrest. A moment later, his voice echoed throughout the ship. "All hands, go to battle stations. I repeat battle stations."

Lieutenant Commander Adol leaned close to the captain. His voice was just loud enough for Aubrey to hear, but no one else. "Sir, we won't survive another battle in our condition. You're not thinking of using the Inth weapon are you?"

"Hiroko's ship may be our only other option for getting our repairs made." He nodded at the forward viewscreen. "If those cruisers try to block our exit-----"

"Sir, Captain Hiroko was sent here to arrest you, not help you."

Aubrey didn't reply.

Adol stepped away, seeing the rock solid determination in Aubrey's expression. He wondered if he had waited too long before having the captain relieved.

Sentry rocked to port as another salvo hit her amidships. Her shields absorbed most of the impact, but energy output was now down to 42%. With each new strike, deflector strength fell off dramatically. The stealth cruisers had weapons mixed into their standard warheads that were specifically designed to dismantle shields. Captain Hiroko had to admit that the technology was admirable-----but when it came right down to it, she would have preferred to admire it from a distance. Say, San Francisco for example.

"Any response to our hails?" She asked quickly.

"Negative, Captain." The CON officer replied, and then bit his lip as he read a text report that appeared on his board. "Engineering reports the warp core is offline. Those last few hits must have slipped through."

"No quick exit for us, then." Hiroko said grimly. . "Ship number two is moving in front of us again. They're not letting us withdraw. Should I plot evasive?"

"No. If they want a fight, they're about to get one. Fire a full torpedo spread and then move towards them at flank speed."

"Ma'am, we only have nine torpedoes left."

"Hand them out like candy, Ensign."

The torpedoes were already away. On the main viewer, Hiroko watched them burst across the Gorn shields in a series of dazzling flashes. The image doubled in size as Sentry bore down on her attacker at one quarter the speed of light.

Ensign Manta went pale. "Captain, should I-----"

"Hold your course, Ensign."

"But we're-----"

"I said hold your course. Tactical, ready on ventral phaser cannons. Target rear engine ports."

There was a barely audible response from the young woman manning the weapons board to her right. The Starfleet ship continued its journey, seemingly on a suicide mission as it came within seconds of crashing into the stealth cruiser.

At the CON station, Ensign Manta froze in horror as the enemy ship filled the entire screen. He knew with complete certainty that they were all about to die. He only wished that it were a Jem'Hadar fighter before them and not a Gorn ship.

"Helm, six degrees elevation!" Hiroko barked at the last minute. "Bow thrusters to full!"

The helm officer almost didn't execute the order in time. Her hands shakily slapped her console-----luckily, each of her fingers found their marks. The Nebula class starship blasted upward with only meters to spare. Her shields raked across the Gorn's upper deflectors causing electrical arcs to dance between the ships as the energy fields collided.

Sentry careened past the Gorn vessel, her inertia barely slowed by the impact. Before the Gorn could come about, a torrent of phaser fire struck them from behind. The Gorn had routed their shield power forward to ward off the collision as Hiroko had anticipated, leaving their stern less protected. The phaser beams were directed not at the other ship's heavily armored hull, but rather at the open exhaust ports, which ringed the crescent's inner curvature. Two beams penetrated the rear shields at close range and stabbed into the inner guts of the Impulse engines. A chain reaction of explosions rippled across the opposing ship.

"I GOT 'em!" The young tactical officer had no qualms about singing her own praises.

But Hiroko knew better than to start opening champagne. "Where's that other ship?" She demanded.

It was then that half the bridge seemed to explode around her. Most of the crew was thrown from their stations as Sentry's remaining shields were shattered by a wave of torpedoes.

"Still no response to our hails." Rodriguez intoned darkly.

Aubrey knew he would soon have to cross yet another line in the many that lay before him. If they went to warp now they could escape without further incident. It was unlikely the Gorn would chase them beyond their own space. But Hiroko's core was damaged and the Gorn were pursuing their attack on her ship aggressively. Despite her orders to arrest him, he couldn't just leave her stranded in hostile space.

The Gorn destroyer sailed towards them menacingly-----it was an enormous black and gray boomerang that was twice Intrepid's size.

"Put me back on an open channel." He said quietly.

"You're on." Adol said.

He stood up. "This is Jason Aubrey again. We request permission for both our vessels to withdraw from your space. We have no quarrel with your government."

At tactical, Rodriguez wiped sweat from his forehead. "Sir, they're responding." He couldn't help a tiny smile. Maybe there was hope.

The thick guttural voice played over the speakers once more. The universal translator was able to decode the Gorn language, but not perfectly. "Ah-bree. You were warned," the voice growled. "but you come with more ships. You come to interfere as you did before. We will make an example. We will punish you for past crimes-----and we will punish all who would follow you."

Before a response could be made, the channel snapped off.

The crew was silent, their momentary hopes dashed before they had even been realized.

Then Adol broke the thickening gloom. "What did you do to make them hate you this much? Steal one of their eggs?"

Spontaneous laughter erupted around the bridge, allowing some much needed stress relief.

For the first time in two weeks, the captain laughed as well. "It's a long story." He said. "Suffice to say, a long time ago I helped someone in need. That individual is no longer popular. And now, neither am I."

Adol checked data from the freestanding station he was manning. "They'll be in weapons range in seven minutes."

Many decks below, in the Excelsior ship's engineering section, Lieutenant (j.g.) Cal Benjamin was doing his best to get his heart racing. He was working in a state of near exhaustion and would have welcomed an adrenaline rush to keep him alert. With the ship once again in imminent peril, this should have been a snap. The trouble was, his fear generator seemed to be malfunctioning. It seemed that human beings could adjust to any situation, no matter how awful, given long enough exposure. Even the hell of war. After a time, the quaking decks, burning control panels and the hovering specter of death all attained a certain familiarity. Like the soldiers of ancient wars that slept soundly in foxholes with shells exploding around them, so it was now with the reluctant warriors of Starfleet.

Benjamin stifled a yawn.

"Sir," an engineer yelled down from a ladder she was hanging on. "we have full volume on the EPS grid again."

"Good job," he said automatically. "see if you can lend a hand to Penny and Will. They need help with the emergency shield generators."

The engineer dropped down from the ladder and grabbed her tool case, trotting across the deck towards crewmembers that stood around the systems display table.

Benjamin himself headed towards another section. He noticed the officer hadn't even bothered to acknowledge his order. Maybe she was too focused on her job. And time was of the essence, after all.

Or maybe she was thinking about the fact that she was two years older than he-----and of a higher rank. It seemed everyone else under his command was older-----and they weren't always thrilled about taking orders from a 'whiz kid' with less experience-----even if he was considered one of the most gifted engineers in Starfleet.

He was amazed that his mind could process such trivial thoughts at a time like this. But before he could contemplate the matter further, the sight of the warp core jolted him back to reality.

It offended him with its very presence. The clean sharp angles of the core were now shrouded in swaths of alien tissue-----some kind of organic material that was, according to the captain, all that remained of the Inth creature that had held him captive in the Kokala nebula. Tentacles of the stuff were connected to various engineering consoles and a few redundant power sources.

He nearly jumped when his chief assistant spoke from behind his shoulder. "Sir, when are we going to get that thing off the ship? It's getting harder to work around."

Benjamin shook his head. "I don't know. That's up to the captain. In the meantime, just keep working around it."

The assistant grumbled something under his breath and Benjamin nearly missed his remark.

"What did you say, Lieutenant?"

The man let out his breath in a weary gust. "Never mind, sir. Forget I said anything. The way things are on this ship right now, I should be careful about popping off."

Benjamin turned to him. "Never mind the paranoia. I just want to hear what you said."

"About the core?"

"Yes, about the core." He snapped impatiently.

The assistant jabbed a rigid finger at the offending sight. "I said that stuff is growing so fast my repair teams are now cut off from three different junction points. If it keeps up, pretty soon we won't even have access to the plasma injectors."

Benjamin felt his stomach slowly twist itself into a knot. His adrenaline, whose loss he had been lamenting a few moments before, returned with an ugly vengeance. His heart lurched over like a tired engine, causing a sudden headache.

"You mean it's GROWING?" But even as the words left his mouth, he knew it to be true. The mass of alien material was noticeably thicker. It was a blue green cocoon, wrapped around the warp core a like massive web. The nest of tendrils attached to adjacent equipment could now be estimated in the hundreds, not just the few dozen that had been present six hours before.

His assistant was right. If it grew much larger, they would soon be cut off from at least one quarter of the engineering section, a section where vital systems resided. Some of those systems could be accessed remotely. Others could not.

"SON of a..." He gasped out. "Why didn't you report this?"

"You mean you didn't know?"

The young chief engineer's face became a dark shade of red. "Of course I didn't know." Benjamin's anger was due partially to embarrassment. He had been working near the core for most of the last six hours, either directing repair teams or making repairs himself. In all that time, he had not noticed the alien tissue's growth. He chalked it up to fatigue, lack of sleep and an intense schedule that had left no time for outside distractions. But he felt annoyed with himself nonetheless. What good would it do to repair a ship that had some kind of monster growing inside of it?

"I'm sorry sir, since you were in this section the whole time, I figured-----"

"Never mind." Benjamin interrupted. "Get me an estimate on its growth rate immediately. I'll inform the captain."

He quickly forgot about how fast the material was growing. He was too busy shielding his eyes from the sudden glare that was bathing the engineering room. "Oh no," He whispered. "Not again."

He called out to the intercom. "Benjamin to Aubrey. Sir, the-----whatever it is, that stuff around our core...it's radiating again. Just like it did-----"

"Understood." Aubrey responded. "Stand away from it. Aubrey out."

Benjamin's chief assistant and most of the engineering crew on duty had not witnessed the first occrenance. They were all looking at the warp core with fear.

"It's okay," Benjamin yelled. "Just stand clear everyone, step back as far away as possible."

The engineering crew followed their orders enthusiastically.

On the bridge, Aubrey tried again. "I repeat: we have a powerful alien weapon aboard. Your hostility will provoke it. Please stand down and let us withdraw."

On the forward screen, the Gorn ship moved closer. Its gun ports began to light up as power flooded its disruptor cannons.

"Mr. Pal, auxiliary power to the shields." Adol ordered.

"Rodriquez, can we take a hit?"

"Maybe just one, Captain." The tactical officer replied. "but our shields are only at 33%."

At OPS, Lieutenant Pal was astonished. "Sir, I'm showing a power surge cascading through our shield generators. Harmonic output is oscillating at an unknown frequency."

"Captain," Adol said. "We can't use this against the Gorn. Maybe the Dominion, our real enemy. But-----"

Aubrey hit his fist against his armrest. "I know, Adol. Helm, full reverse. Evasive pattern Theta Five. Give me some distance. Maybe I can save the lives of those idiots."

The mighty starship dove away just as a plume of disruptor energy scored a glancing hit off her port shields. By Gorn definitions, the impact might loosely be described as a love tap. But because of Intrepid's dilapidated state, the blow was significant. Shield generators all over the ship shut down from the energy back flush. Like a house of cards knocked over by a stiff breeze, Intrepid's shield matrix collapsed in its entirety.

Aubrey straightened in his chair, but not with the fear of impending death.

He was afraid for his opponent. "Warp us out of range!" He almost yelled.

The CON officer tapped out a sequence. A second later, his eyes went wide. "Warp is not engaging, Captain!"

Lieutenant Pal spun around from his OPS station. "Sir, there's a strong subspace field building around the ship. It's destabilizing our warp envelope before it can form!"'

"What's the source?" Adol asked.

Pal stroked his blonde goatee. "Our own warp core." He looked between Aubrey and Adol. "It's the Inth weapon. That oscillation I reported is now being generated from our core and then resonating outward through the hull."

The bosun whistle piped over the bridge speakers. "Benjamin to Aubrey." The young engineer's voice carried a note of dread. "Sir, we've lost shields. All but four generators were destroyed by that attack."

"What about emergency shields?" The captain asked.

"Sir, those WERE the emergency shields."

"Give us what you can for impulse. We need to-----'

"Jason an' Rhonda sittin' in TREE, K-I-s-s-I-n-G,

First comes LOVE, then comes MARRIAGE, then comes RHONDA

with a BA-by CARRIAGE."

The three girls followed up their chant with a spat of cackling laughter that was meant to cast shame upon its recipients.

Jason sneered at his hecklers. "Yeah? Guess what? You all suck the big wiggy 'cause you LIKE it!"

"You ARE a big wiggy!" They yelled back. The three girls turned a corner, still laughing as they shared their mutual disapproval of the young boy and his apparent girlfriend.

Rhonda found the courage for a parting shot. "You all have CHICKEN LEGS!" She squealed beside Jason. She illustrated her observation by hooking her hands under her armpits and flapping her elbows like wings. "Buc-buc-buc-buc-buc-buc-bu-CAW!" She quailed.

Both her and Jason could no longer contain themselves. They laughed hysterically for what seemed like hours. Rhonda spilled most of her coke on the sidewalk, which made them both laugh all the harder.

It felt good. Especially for Rhonda. Those three witches had tortured her mercilessly since the third grade. It was liberating to tell them off.

Eventually, they caught hold of themselves, which was a good thing, since their stomachs were aching from the exertion.

Jason had a sudden thought. "Hey Rhonda, if you were bionic you could run them over like a car."

The red haired, freckly-faced girl took a moment to ponder the vision of her stick like legs propelling her at sixty miles an hour. She tried not to think about what might happen if she tripped. "That's a dorky TV show. I dunno why you like it." She concluded.

Jason shrugged. He inconspicuously turned over the folder he held with actor Lee Majors on the cover so that it was not visible to her. "I don't like it that much. I was just joking."

She looked sideways at him, but decided not to pursue the matter. Boys tended to like dumb things even if they tried to deny it. If Jason were like most boys, he would soon be trading in the bionic man for Sunday night football. But who cared? It wasn't like they were gonna get married or anything. His future viewing habits would be the bane of some poor woman down the road.

A spark of emotion surprised her. Had she just felt jealous? He wasn't even a boyfriend for heaven's sake. Why would she care who he married some day?

"You okay?" He asked. "You look mad."

"I'm not mad!" she snapped defensively, as if he had somehow invaded her thoughts. "I was thinking about all the homework I have to do, that's all."

That's when a note of sheer genius touched Jason. "Hey," He began innocently. "are you any good at arithmetic? 'Cause I could use some help with my homework."

She stopped dead in her tracks and looked at him warily. "Jason Daniel Aubrey," she scolded just like she heard her mother do when speaking to her brother. "Are you asking me to do your homework?"

"Uh, no." he said meekly. "Just help me with it. You know, 'cause you're smart."

Strangely, this compliment appeared to make her even angrier. "So THAT'S why you walked me home?" she demanded.

"No, no of course not." He said nervously. "It was just an idea. I'd walk you home anytime."

Yeah, as a favor to the poor ugly girl, she thought savagely. 'Smart' was another way of saying not pretty. Of course she was smart, but boys only said that when there was nothing else complimentary they could come up with. When was the last time anyone accused the popular girls of being smart?

"I wouldn't do your homework if you PAID me!" She announced with indignant anger.

Before Jason could comprehend how events had turned upside down with such dizzying speed, Rhonda Kerry turned on her heel and stomped away from him.

He was left standing alone on the hot sidewalk; Seattle's unseasonably warm air blowing around him like the ethereal caress of a ghost.

For him, this childhood incident had been a harbinger of misfortune. In some ways, it foreshadowed everything that had come afterward. His life would be one in which fortuity would reverse itself without warning-----almost as if bad luck masqueraded as prosperity just to sneak past his defenses and attack him after his guard was down.

Alone.

And suddenly he wanted to run away from where he stood and where he might be standing in the future. He wanted to run 60 miles an hour after Rhonda like Colonel Steve Austin-----because even though he was only nine years old, he felt in his bones that Rhonda Kerry walking away was more than Rhonda Kerry.

It was a normal life that was receding into the distance. A happy life.

He wanted to scream her name. To scream his outrage over the hand that fate would soon deal him. To-----

"-----Destroyer is locking on target Captain."

The hot sidewalk, the warm breeze and Rhonda Kerry were gone. The bridge of the USS Intrepid surrounded him. On the main viewer, a huge boomerang was growing larger by the second.

Everything blurred, went dark, then snapped into focus with gritty detail. Waves of dizziness assailed him. Aubrey clung to his command chair, certain that it might fall out from under him at any moment.

What the hell is wrong with me? He thought miserably.

Adol was looking at him with great concern. "Sir, are you feeling alright?"

Aubrey forced himself to release the death grip he had on his armrests. "I'm fine," He managed to get out. He tapped his combadge. "Mr. Benjamin, we need shields. I don't care where you get the power, but get it."

But time had run out. The warship was launching another onslaught of disruptor fire. On the main viewer, the crew could see a blossom of energy racing towards them.

And then, without warning, something reached out and grabbed that energy before it could strike.

Aubrey bolted to his feet. "NO!" He bellowed.

A tendril had slithered away from Intrepid's hull and was now enveloping the Gorn ship in a shimmering sphere of blue and green light.

"Helm, pull us away. Full impulse!" Aubrey demanded.

"Impulse engines are offline. Drive systems won't engage."

Adol ran to the engineering station. "Adol to engineering. See if you can interrupt power to the core. Maybe that will shut off the weapon."

When Benjamin's voice came back, he sounded like he was in the midst of a tornado. A great whooshing noise was heard in the background along with a buzzing that was reminiscent of a beehive. "Sir, something is pushing us away from the core. My whole crew is being held against the bulkheads by some kind of pressure wave. We're paralyzed down here."

"I'll try it from up here." The Andorian said as he went to work on the engineering board.

The Gorn destroyer fired again and again on the blister that held it captive. Each time, the shots dissipated against the barrier harmlessly.

The flickering envelope began to contract. As the bubble made contact with the destroyer's wings, the structures folded back on themselves and broke into pieces. The compression continued, crushing the warship into a small lump of twisted metal. The energy sphere was now the size of a small shuttlecraft and still it shrank. Within seconds, it became something far too small to see with the naked eye. Then it disappeared altogether from the known universe.

The Gorn ship was gone as though it had never existed.

There was no cheering on the bridge. No one so much as smiled.

"Lieutenant Pal, how many crew were aboard that ship?" Adol asked in a thick voice.

"I can only estimate. Our sensors couldn't penetrate their armor or shields. I'd say about 1,000 based off of past intelligence information."

Aubrey turned from the main viewer but had trouble meeting the eyes of his crew. "I need a status report." He ordered.

Lieutenant Pal took a moment to compile the reports on his screen, as all departments throughout the ship responded to his query. "Engineering reports that their situation is under control again. All propulsion systems are back on line and the subspace interference around the ship has diffused enough for warp. Shield generators are down but repair teams are working on them."

"What about the Sentry?"

Rodriquez answered from tactical. "Sir, they've taken heavy damage. I'm reading a large number of casualties. One of the Gorn ships is adrift. The other is-----sir, they're withdrawing."

"They must be having second thoughts after what just happened."

Rodriguez had more news. "Captain, they're ordering both our ships to leave their space immediately. They're also calling for reinforcements."

"Acknowledge the massage. Helm; lay in a course for the Sentry. Mr. Adol, have Doctor Kella ready with medical teams."

With the ship now out of immediate danger, Lieutenant Commander Adol realized that the moment had arrived. He signaled Doctor Kella through his combadge. A moment later, she contacted the captain.

Aubrey was busy reviewing the damage report at Pal's station when his combadge chirped.

"Kella to Aubrey."

"Go ahead, Doctor." His first thought was that she had a report on the medical teams she was assembling for the Sentry. This notion was dispelled the moment he heard her voice.

"Captain, I need to speak with you privately. Would you mind stepping into your ready room?"

Pal overheard the exchange but tried to disguise his interest.

The captain frowned. "Very well." He responded. "Mr. Adol, you have the bridge."

A moment later Aubrey stood alone in his private office at the rear of Intrepid's control room.

"What can I do for you, Doctor?"

"Jason," there was a telltale pause after she spoke his name. He knew in that moment what was to follow. "Under Starfleet General Order 104 section C, I'm temporarily relieving you of command. I'm ordering you to report to sickbay for a full pysch exam."

Kella had thought that saying it all in a rush would make it easier. It didn't. She felt the taste of her own words with no less bitterness.

. "On what grounds?" He asked as a formality.

"Captain, you've been-----"

"Never mind." He interjected before she could begin. "It was really more of a rhetorical question."

"Jason, I'm sorry."

"You shouldn't be. You're doing your job. I've asked a lot of this crew lately. Maybe more than I had a right to."

"We-----just have to be sure there's not another influence at work here."

His ready room doors hissed open to reveal Adol. The young Andorian's face was set in a grim mask.

Aubrey approached him. Adol didn't look away. He squared his shoulders and met his captain's gaze.

Jason Aubrey would have expected no less.

"The story is: you're being treated for a wrenched back." Adol stated. "We're keeping this from the crew until Doctor Kella's exam is complete."

"Until she decides whether or not to permanently relieve me, you mean."

"Yes."

Aubrey folded his arms. "I have only one request."

"Sir."

"Don't turn the ship around until Kella has made her decision. Whether you choose to believe it or not, all life on Betazed will become extinct in 28 hours if we fail our mission."

Adol didn't hesitate. "Betazed is not the only world in danger right now. I hope you haven't forgotten that, sir."

"Hardly. But it won't end there. The catastrophe that comes afterward will make Betazed's destruction and the Dominion War seem like a minor inconvenience."

The security chief hesitated. "Afterward? You never mentioned anything about this before."

"Adol, as time goes on, more details are becoming clear to me. I'm beginning to see that there's more at stake then Betazed." He turned away to look at the stars sliding past his window. "If the evolutionary forces of the Inth are not brought into balance soon, we could be looking at a disaster that's beyond our ability to imagine."

Adol regarded the deck. "How bad?"

The captain stayed quiet for nearly a minute. He was groping for words that could describe the images in his mind. But there were no words. There never would be. He knew things that would have driven the average person to suicide. Finally, he turned back around-----and the haunted look on his face caused the hair on Adol's neck to stand up. "Tell me, Mr. Adol; in your native language, is there a word for 'hell'?"

"There's no religious meaning associated with it, but we have something similar. Ironically, the word originated from early legends about the Inth."

Aubrey smiled despondently.