Star Trek: Mariner
Episode 005:
Wrong Us, Shall We Not Revenge?
by Bodie A. Ashton
(uss_mariner_01@enterprise.startrek.org)
Episode 005: Wrong Us, Shall We Not Revenge?
PROLOGUE
On every Federation starship of adequate size, there is always some form of communal lounge area. Usually, it is located somewhere close to the bows, and is always adorned with huge transparent aluminium viewing ports, gazing out into space. It is the same the fleet over; on the Enterprise-D there was Ten-Forward. The USS London had The Tavern, whilst Ankara had The Ottoman Bar.
On the Sovereign-class starship USS Mariner, those large windows could be found between the bulkheads in The Lipton Room, named after the famed Irish sailor, Sir Thomas Lipton.
Ensign Tolian Brenkar had visited the Room, as it was known, only twice since coming aboard. He had never much cared for synthehol, nor did he relish the opportunity to fraternise with other members of the crew. Nonetheless, on this day, he felt the need to sit at one of the tables on the threshold of the marvellous panorama that is the universe.
The automatic doors of the Lipton Room were transparent aluminium, adorned with a frosted blue depiction of Shamrock, Lipton's faithful yacht. As the portals slid open with a barely audible hiss, Brenkar caught sight of a lone figure at the farthermost table, in the corner looking out into the stars. He immediately recognised the man as Patrick Coleman, the Twenty-First Century mathematician and warp theorist, who had constructed the first genuine Earth warp ship, but who had been lost to history when that ship, the X-100, had become lost, stuck fast in an anomaly known as the Averskod Belt. It had been Brenkar who had pinpointed the final position of that vessel, and, as a result, Mariner had discovered the genius in stasis and recovered him. It had been less than two weeks since he had embarked, yet he had already shown a desire to remain aboard the Starfleet vessel. Brenkar guessed that this was due to some feeling of loyalty, but he had not asked. In any event, as he had pointed out to himself many times, he was no counsellor.
The young El-Aurian, walked to the bar. It was a quiet night for the Room staff, so Brenkar immediately, and timidly, ordered a glass of Bromian Sea Pineapple Juice, before making his way to the table where the human sat, poring over several PADDs, and at the same time taking occasional sips from a cup of very black coffee.
Coleman looked up as he noticed the science officer approach. He smiled faintly.
"Ah, Mr Brenkar", he acknowledged. "Please, have a seat."
"Thank you, sir", Brenkar replied politely. "I hope I'm not disturbing you."
Coleman took another sip of the steaming beverage before him.
"Not at all. I was just looking over some basic introductory notes about the Federation. It's heavy going. It's mind-boggling to think that there are so many species out there…"
"All you need to do is look at this ship's personnel", the science officer suggested. "The majority of the crew is human, but there are also Bolians, Vulcans, Betazoids, Andorians, Bajorans, a couple of Tarkaleans…"
"You're not human, are you?", the mathematician interjected. Brenkar shook his head.
"No sir. I'm El-Aurian."
Coleman puzzled for a moment.
"I don't think I've seen anything about El-Aurians yet…"
Brenkar looked down into his pale blue juice.
"We're not so much a race anymore, as a scattered nomadic culture. Parasites, living off the charity of others. Yes, we once had a homeworld. In it's day, El-Auria was known as a cultural hive. My people got our reputation as sagely listeners on that planet. "Then, one day, it was all gone."
"What happened?" Brenkar looked up with a pained but angry fire in his eyes.
"The Borg."
When Coleman made to ask the obvious, Brenkar explained.
"The Borg are the most destructive race known to the Federation. If we are the parasites of the galaxy, the Borg are the malevolent bacteria that take control of a host's body and will. They do not destroy in the sense that you and I know. They assimilate. They forcibly infect people with tiny probes, which turn them into more Borg drones.
"They made an exception in El-Auria's case, though. I suppose it was a blessing, really. They assimilated only a few hundred, and then they laid waste to the planet. Now it is only remembered in the hearts of those refugees who somehow escaped, as well as their offspring."
"I see", nodded Coleman slowly. He had compassion written on his face, but curiosity got the better of him. "Has the Federation ever gone to war with the Borg?"
"You can't call it war", the ensign muttered. "The Federation wouldn't dare conduct an offensive against the Collective. We would lose very quickly. But the Borg have come into our space a couple of times. One time, a Borg Cube, which had on board an assimilated hero of Starfleet, was intercepted by forty of our most powerful starships at a place called Wolf 359. By the end of the battle, thirty-nine Federation ships were wrecks, and the Cube continued to Earth. Luckily it was destroyed by the Enterprise."
"Enterprise is a name which often comes up in these texts", observed Coleman.
"It would. The name has been given to seven Starfleet flagships over the past two centuries."
Brenkar suddenly remembered what had brought him to this deck in the first place. He looked to his feet, where a satchel lay. He opened the flap at the top, and pulled out three PADD computers.
"Here", he said to Coleman, handing the first two over. "The first PADD is some basic information about the Mariner; crew numbers, arrangement of decks and so forth. The second is a brief introduction to some of the major worlds of the Federation."
He hesitated with the third one. Finally, he relented, and passed it to the human.
"This is some cursory information about the Third World War. I thought it might help you understand what happened and why after your…er…departure."
Coleman took the final PADD, and took a swig from his coffee. "Thank you, Ensign."
Brenkar nodded automatically, then made to leave. Coleman grabbed his sleeve just as he arose.
"One more thing, if I may", he blurted. Brenkar looked round.
"Yes, sir?"
"I noticed that some of the crew, when they saw me, often mentioned the Mathematical Singularity Doctrine. Tell me, what is it used for in this day and age?"
Brenkar allowed a tight, albeit weak smile.
"It's an advanced course taught at the Academy. It's used for calculating warp field intensities, energy outputs, the cartographic computers use it to triangulate positions…what did you use it for?" The question brought a broad grin to the lips of the thirty-eight year old man. He got up from his chair and gazed out at the stars whizzing by the enormous panoramic viewing windows.
"I used it simply as inspiration", he explained. "When I first created it, I discovered that, in certain cases, one can equal zero."
Brenkar looked bemused. Coleman pressed on.
"Any school student can tell you that one is one, and zero is zero, but they should never be able to form a common number. Zero should never be one, and vice-versa. Similarly, when science finally agreed that faster-than-light travel was possible, the prevailing minds of the time said that warp speed was possible, and subwarp speed was already being utilised, but both speeds could not be obtained by one vessel. The ship either had to travel at warp and never decelerate below that threshold, or it had to travel at a lower speed than three-by-ten-to-the-eight-metres-per-second. The view was that a warp drive would destabilise a conventional engine, or that the use of a normal engine in conjunction with warp drive would create spatial rifts, which would inevitably tear the universe apart. In any event, Einsteinian physics convention said that objects can travel at sublight, or objects can theoretically travel at superlight, but a sublight object cannot accelerate through the light barrier, and a superlight object cannot decelerate under the speed of light. "But I knew differently, because I knew that one equals zero."
Brenkar slowly nodded his head. He almost had to laugh out loud at the irony of it all. Mathematical Singularity, the vertebrae of modern interstellar travel, had been used by the greatest mathematician in Terran history to prove a practical impossibility. He cleared his throat, suddenly realising that he had Bridge duty in a few short hours, but he hadn't slept.
"I shall leave you to your reading, Dr Coleman", he declared, stumbling away from the table with all the grace of a man with a clubbed foot. Coleman chuckled, shrugged, then returned his attention to the PADD on top of the pile, marked EARTH AND THE THIRD WORLD WAR.
* * * * *
Captain Simon Anthony of the Federation starship Mariner sat in the Big Chair on the Bridge of his Sovereign-class explorer. The scene on the viewer before him was monotonous, as it had been for the past eight hours since he had come on duty. The responsibility heaped upon him for this mission was enormous. He had just a simple knowledge of the Perovina III weapons programme, but what he did know was enough to significantly trouble him. Perovina III had been the laboratory which created the tri-cobalt warhead, the quantum torpedo, and the new Federation-type gravimetric torpedoes, a reverse- engineered weapon based on the typical weapon of choice of the Borg. Anthony well knew that Perovina III had been working on something even more powerful, so the difficulty Starfleet had in accounting for all the material there was a matter of grave concern. Yet in the back of his mind was another nagging fear, which simply would not desist.
What has happened, he wondered morbidly, to the Eleventh Fleet?
In the time since he had learned of their disappearance he had replayed several scenarios in his head, none of which seemed to make much sense. All in all, it was too much of a coincidence that a whole fleet, as poorly-equipped as the makeshift and slowly recovering Eleventh was, could be sent to a sector in space, and then dramatically disappear, while a mystery assailant attacked a weapons laboratory in the selfsame sector and pilfered—what? A gravimetric torpedo? A subspace weapon? A temporal device? Perovina III was an outpost shrouded in secrecy, but Anthony knew that at certain times in its existence it had worked on all the aforementioned munitions and technologies. He hoped to the gods of Earth, Andoria and even Romulus that the stolen apparatus would not turn out to be something stepped in the recesses of temporal science. The last thing he wanted was to see the known universe torn apart by a suddenly-contrived new timeline.
Then again, I wouldn't see it, because I would probably not have existed in that timeline, even though I do.
The thought gave him a headache, so he focused instead on subspace weapons and gravimetric explosives. He ran the possibilities through his mind, but still he did not find solace in his conclusions. No one would.
* * * * *
The operations centre of the Federation space station Deep Space Nine was a hive of activity. Colonel Kira Nerys, the station administrator, was making certain that everything on the station was pristine and to specs. Once the Bajoran woman had a moment to take a break from touring the station to check up on the cleaning and decorating, she allowed herself a slight grin of amusement. The station was not being visited by the staff of Starfleet Command, nor was it the site of a first contact ceremony, but, to her mind at least, the circumstances called for the station to be sparkling. Two arrivals were due today.
One was the USS Voyager, the starship which had set out from the station seven years earlier to hunt down a Maquis raider, only to be kidnapped by a being known as the Caretaker and hurled seventy thousand light years into the Delta Quadrant. She had made a triumphant return to the Alpha Quadrant less than a month ago, but Starfleet had already decided to parade the Voyager crew as heroes, which, Kira had to concede, they were. Deep Space Nine, one of the farthest outposts from Earth, had been chosen as the first destination for a four month long tour of the Federation, boosting morale after such sobering events as the Borg incursion, the Sona'a attempt to destroy the peace-loving Ba'ku, and, paramount, the Dominion War, the most bloody in the history of the United Federation of Planets.
The other arrival was the passenger liner Euphoric, of the Federation Star Line, which was making a stop of less than five minutes at the station, to allow one passenger to disembark. Bajor was hardly en route to the pleasure planet of Risa, but Starfleet Command had insisted that their chief civilian engineering consultant be transported in style to DS9 in order to begin upgrading the obsolescent Cardassian sensors. Kira was very much looking forward to welcoming the consultant on board the station, but she doubted very much whether she would be alone in doing so; Miles O'Brien had been on the station for seven years, and in that time he had created friendships with even the most surly and antisocial people.
Kira walked through the centre of ops, where the chief of operations, a Bajoran Militia officer by the name of Gerud Tormay, called her.
"Colonel", he reported. "The starship Voyager reports they will arrive in approximately one and a half hours." "Thank you, Sergeant", she acknowledged. Somehow, the title 'Chief' had only ever suited O'Brien, and she had never allowed herself to address Gerud in this manner. "If there is anything else, I will be in my office."
She quickly climbed up the steps leading to the station commander's office. Previously, it had been used as the office for the Prefect of Bajor under the Cardassian occupation, Gul Dukat. Later, Captain Sisko had set up his headquarters there. After his disappearance at the end of the war, it had become her domain.
The doors slid open, but immediately Kira could tell that something was amiss. For one thing, she had not left the high-backed chair facing the viewing port, as it was now. She distinctly remembered adjusting it so that it faced the door. For another thing, the baseball was gone from its usual perch. Sisko had brought that baseball to DS9 on his first day all those years ago, and it had only left the station when he had returned to Earth briefly. When he disappeared, the ball remained on the desk in the office. Now, it was nowhere to be seen. Silently, Kira bent down and removed a small panel from the wall. The reason for stealth seemed lost on her, for the clicking and whirring of the doors had already betrayed her presence to anyone in the office, but her instincts from the days of the Resistance overrode this logic as she reached inside the small hollow and pulled out a Federation-type hand phaser, one of the additions added to the office during the war. Straightening, she pointed the phaser at the back of the chair.
"Whoever you are, turn around slowly", she commanded in an authoritative but threatening voice. "Put your hands up."
Gradually, the black executive chair rotated. The first thing Kira noticed was that the man in the chair was tossing the baseball up and down in his right hand. Then his face came into view, and Kira stumbled backwards in shock and surprise. The man in the chair smiled.
"I see you've done well for yourself, Colonel."
Kira lowered the phaser slowly, and clicked her commbadge.
"Kira to Bashir."
The reply was instantaneous.
"I've almost finished swabbing the biobeds, Colonel", Julian Bashir replied.
"I don't care about the biobeds, Julian", Kira declared in a tone still holding authority, but now with less surety. "Get up to my office right away, and bring a tricorder with you."
The puzzlement was clear in Bashir's voice, but he did not ask unnecessary questions.
"I'll be up immediately, sir."
The figure in the chair still smiled, his mouth framed by a moustache and beard.
"A wise precaution, Colonel, to get the doctor up here to scan me."
"I thought so…", Kira began, but realised who she was talking to and stopped immediately. This isn't possible, she thought. It can't be.
* * * * *
Doctor Bashir exited the turbolift and hurried up the stairs to the office, but Sergeant Gerud did not notice, nor did any of the other officers on watch; they were too busy wiping the consoles clean or checking that all the equipment in ops was in order. Bashir saw Kira just inside the door, standing stock still, a phaser in one hand. He was about to turn and call for Gerud to contact Security, but he checked himself just before he did so. He reasoned that, if there were any danger, Kira would have somehow gotten the attention of the ops staff, but not him, not the CMO of the facility. He clicked the door chime, and the twin doors at once slid open. He stepped inside. The doors closed behind him, but he didn't notice. His mouth hung open and he almost dropped his tricorder as he gazed on to the visage behind the desk.
"What are you waiting for, Doctor? I won't bite", the man said warmly. Bashir shook his head, activated the tricorder and shuffled over to the desk. He scanned the figure once. Twice. Thrice. Finally he turned to the Bajoran colonel.
"Colonel, this man is—"
"—Exactly who I look like", finished the man behind the desk. He grinned again. Bashir nodded, slowly closed his tricorder and placed it on the desk. Kira dropped the phaser on the floor by her right boot. She took a few steps until she was at the edge of the desk. She held out a hand and cautiously stroked the coarse beard and dark brown skin of the man's face. Eventually she took a step back.
"Captain! You're back!", she exclaimed. Her face finally contorted into a mask of joy.
Captain Benjamin Sisko stood up from the chair. His face lost the omnipresent smile for the first time since he had shown himself to the colonel.
"Yes", he said in a much darker tone, "and I'm here because Bajor is in grave danger."
CHAPTER ONE
Anthony gripped the armrests of the captain's chair as the viewscreen depicted the scene ahead of Mariner. He had expected terrible damage at the weapons lab, but the ship was still eight hours away, and yet here was a debris field, dead in the centre of the Fel'ra Corridor, a sliver of space between Perovina III and the rest of the Alpha Quadrant. A tight feeling began to develop in his stomach; he glimpsed a small piece of duranium fly across his view, and he thought with sickening conviction that it held two letters which would identify it as a Federation vessel: NC.
He stood and turned to Alexandra Lane at ops.
"Alex, display the map Starfleet sent us regarding the search patterns of the ships sent to look for the Eleventh Fleet."
The screen flashed to a stellar chart, and Anthony read the information given about the vessel which was supposed to be patrolling the Corridor. He swallowed hard, then turned back to Lane.
"Are we detecting the Hubble on long-range sensors?" Lane looked at her console.
"No, sir", she replied. "The only thing I'm detecting within thirty light years is a Mutara-class nebula, about three parsecs away, which is blocking my scans, but if the Hubble is looking for the fleet, it wouldn't make sense to station in a nebula which would hinder their sensors."
"Captain", Tasek hailed from the tactical station. "The volume of debris is consistent with a Constellation-class vessel. Also, I am detecting residual weapons signatures."
"Can you identify them?", Anthony queried. Tasek frowned and looked up at the human captain.
"They are Federation. It appears that photon torpedoes were used to destroy this ship." Anthony furrowed his brow. This didn't feel right to him. Something was very, very wrong. A second later, Lane's console beeped. She called the captain.
"Sir, sensors have locked on to a piece of debris for identification."
"On screen", Anthony ordered.
He recoiled as if punched. On screen was a severed warp nacelle. The identification placard held the name of the vessel which had been destroyed.
FEDERATION STARSHIP USS HUBBLE NCC-9012-B Anthony turned to the Vulcan tactical officer.
"Analyse every millimetre of that wreckage, Tasek. You have to verify whether or not Federation weapons were used to destroy the Hubble."
"Sir", the Vulcan protested with an even voice, "I have already ascertained that the weapons used were Starfleet-issue photon torpedoes…"
"Just do it", Anthony interrupted. He addressed Ramelow.
"You have the bridge, Commander."
So saying, Simon Anthony retired to the ready room.
* * * * *
The large cog-shaped docking bay door rolled open as the arrival of the cruise ship Euphoric was announced to the populace of Deep Space Nine. Stepping out of the airlock and into the structure which had previously been his home for seven years, Miles Edward O'Brien was vaguely surprised to find the people, or rather the lack of people, who met him as he disembarked the liner.
Miles O'Brien was a legend in the ranks of Starfleet engineers. Several times in his career, his name had been bounced around with those of other celebrated engineers—Tucker, Torres, La Forge, Brahms, Gomez, Scott. The latter two had pursued him to join the elite Starfleet Corp of Engineers, or SCE, after he returned to Earth, but O'Brien opted instead to become a civilian technical consultant to Starfleet. It had been in this capacity that he had been able to develop an avant-garde approach to developing booster programs for obsolescent sensor arrays. Having served on DS9 for so long, he had made it his pet project to find some way to enhance the old Cardassian sensors he had been forced to struggle with.
The Irishman shrugged. For all he knew, Colonel Kira was extremely busy; he remembered hearing that Voyager was making her visit to DS9 today. No doubt the red carpet would be rolled out for Captain Janeway and her crew. Nonetheless, he would have at least expected Julian to meet him outside the airlock, to invite him to Vic's, or the Alamo, or to the airfield of 1940, or simply for a beer at Quark's. Come to think of it, he thought after a moment, there's a conspicuous absence of anyone.
He shrugged off the feeling. Carrying his bags through the hatch leading to the Promenade, it came back to him. The whole deck seemed deserted. Frowning, he clicked the commbadge on his left breast.
"O'Brien to Ops", he called. "I've arrived on the station, and I'm on the way up."
"Stay where you are, Chief", the familiar voice of Kira Nerys replied, unconsciously adding the rank of 'chief' to the transmission. "We'll beam you up."
O'Brien was about to protest, when he was surrounded by a gold aura.
* * * * *
He rematerialised on the transporter pad in Ops, in the middle of forming a sentence of objection. He uttered the first syllable, before realising where he was. He saw the Bajoran colonel, and began to stride towards her.
"Colonel, why couldn't I just take the turbolift like any normal person?", he demanded. Kira bent her mouth into a lopsided smile.
"Sorry Chief, but all the turbolifts are out of action at the moment", she explained. "We're not allowing them into this part of the station."
"Why not?"
"The Bajorans on the station are trying everything to get to Ops", she extrapolated. "The sheer number of them is staggering." O'Brien shook his head.
"But why are they trying to come up here anyway?" He heard the doors of the station commander's office slide open with their characteristic click. Before O'Brien could turn, he heard a voice he hadn't heard for two years, not since that night at Vic's at the end of the Dominion War.
"That would be my fault", Benjamin Sisko boomed as he strolled out of the office. He walked in front of the bewildered Irishman, before clasping his hand on his shoulder.
"It's good to see you again, Chief", he grinned.
It took O'Brien several moments to comprehend the situation.
"The Emissary of the Prophets returns", he remarked, tongue firmly in cheek. "No wonder the Bajorans have all gone stark staring."
Sisko grinned broadly.
"That's more or less the situation, Chief." O'Brien raised a quizzical eyebrow.
"If you don't mind me asking, sir", he said cautiously, "why are you back?"
Sisko's face fell. He took a couple of steps, in the direction of the large viewscreen in the centre of Ops. He turned back to O'Brien.
"The Prophets have warned me that Bajor is in grave danger", he finally announced. "I don't know why, I don't know how, and I certainly don't know from whom, but the gist is, I have to rectify the problem."
O'Brien let this sink in.
"If that's true, I'd better stay on", he decided. "you never know when a washed-up ex-chief of operations may come in handy."
* * * * *
"Enter."
The doors of the ready room had chimed, and promptly, Tasek entered the room, carrying a PADD.
"It is confirmed, sir", he said without a preamble, "that the Hubble was indeed destroyed by Federation weaponry, of a type only fitted to Starfleet vessels." Simon Anthony rubbed his eyes.
"I was afraid you would say that", he said.
Tasek hesitated.
"Captain, may I enquire why you ordered me to rescan the area? Did you believe I was at fault?"
Anthony was silent for a moment. He had not expected this question. Finally he grinned ruefully.
"I have complete confidence in your abilities, Lieutenant-Commander", he said at last. "But on this occasion, I hoped that you were wrong. I hoped to Hell that the weaponry used was Ferengi or Romulan or something else. But a Starfleet vessel attacking another is almost unheard of!"
"It was fortunate that you did order me to conduct my scans again", Tasek conceded. "Because of those efforts, we now know what tactics were used to overwhelm the Hubble. More to the point, though, is that we may have identified the ship that destroyed it."
This caught Anthony's attention. "Please, explain."
Tasek spun the desktop computer to face him, and keyed in a sequence. In an instant, a blueprint of a standard Constellation-class ship flashed on to the screen. A series of red shadings appeared.
"From my analysis", explained the Vulcan, "I have concluded that the first shots were three photon torpedoes, which simultaneously hit and destroyed Deck One, but also ruined half the ship. It seems that the shields were either not activated, or else out of action at the time.
"The second attack was by one torpedo to the lower section of the saucer. This destroyed most of that part of the ship, as well as the engineering assembly. "A final torpedo struck in between the two port nacelles, but it did not explode. It disintegrated on impact, which is the reason why the nacelle we used to identify the Hubble was not vaporised."
He stopped for a moment, to allow the captain to absorb this data.
"It also explains why we have recovered a sizeable section of the torpedo casing, intact and complete with an armoury serial number", he finished. Anthony nearly jumped at this final revelation.
"You mean, we can cross-reference the number with the vessel the torpedo was assigned to?" Tasek nodded.
"Indeed, Captain. The computer is currently completing the task as we speak."
As if on cue, the computer spoke through the desktop console.
"Assignment entry found."
Anthony rubbed his hands.
"Computer, what ship's complement was that torpedo a part of?"
"Photon torpedo, Mark Seven-type, serial 71638/AP0976.128 was fitted on stardate 54552 at Starbase 129 to the Excelsior-class vessel USS Tikriti, of the Eleventh Fleet."
There was a stunned silence in the ready room. Anthony sat in his chair, mouth agape.
"The Tikriti", he murmured. He shook his head, and returned to his senses.
"Tasek, am I right in saying that the Tikriti destroyed the Hubble?"
"It would appear to be the most logical assumption", agreed the tactical officer.
A million questions ran through Anthony's head. Why would the Tikriti destroy a fellow Starfleet vessel? Why hadn't the Tikriti reported the battle?
Even as he though of the questions, the answers, incomplete as they were, began to take their places. He clicked his commbadge.
"Anthony to Lane."
"Ops here, Captain."
"Mr Lane", Anthony ordered, "get back on the communications channels with the investigators at Perovina III, and find out exactly what was taken from that laboratory. Make it clear that this is Priority One."
"Aye, Captain."
"Should we not inform Starfleet?", Tasek asked.
Anthony nodded slowly.
"We should, Mr Tasek", he acknowledged. "For now, though, we're loaded down with questions and very few answers. I want to know more about what's going on first.
"However, once you get back on to the Bridge, I want you to take the ship to red alert. We don't want to be another Hubble."
Tasek nodded and strode out of the ready room. Less than a second later, the alert bars on the walls began blinking crimson, accompanied by the ubiquitous klaxons. Anthony rose from his chair. With purpose, he exited the room.
* * * * *
Alexandra Lane was exhausted. Her inquiries were getting nowhere. The investigators at Perovina III were taking a very long time processing evidence, and every request from Mariner, Priority One or not, were being deferred. Captain Anthony had noticed her tired appearance, and suggested she retire to her quarters for an hour or so.
On a whim, she decided to pay a visit to Patrick Coleman. She drew up to the door of his living quarters on Deck Seven and pressed the chime. No response.
She tried again, to the same result. She shrugged. Perhaps he was in the Lipton Room.
"Computer", she said. "Locate Patrick Coleman."
"Patrick Coleman is in his quarters", the computer replied.
Lane was about to decide to give up, when out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a small dent in the door. Hardly substantial, yet it had been made from the inside. A great amount of force had to have been implemented to make a dent, even that small, in the strong entry. She thought for a moment.
"Computer, override all locks on this door, authorisation Lane Two-One-Five-Lambda."
The computer beeped, and the doors hissed open.
* * * * *
The room was a shambles. As she cautiously stepped through the portal, she saw what had made the dent; a broken metallic desk lamp lay in pieces in front of the doors. Lane picked her way though the mess of broken furniture and smashed pot plants, until with horror she saw two legs protruding from under a coffee table. Manoeuvring to get a better view, she found Coleman, unconscious beneath the table, a bloodied table-leg beside a gash on his forehead.
She clicked her commbadge.
"Lane to Sickbay, medical emergency. Beam Patrick Coleman to Sickbay immediately. Security to Deck Seven, living quarters."
As the mathematician dematerialised in a pale blue glow, Lane gazed around Coleman's abode yet again, wondering what had happened to cause such damage, to cause such an injury. That was when she found the discarded PADD, it's screen splintered. The title was still on the screen.
EARTH AND THE THIRD WORLD WAR.
CHAPTER TWO
"Lie still, please", Doctor Taryll commanded Coleman. "You won't have as much of a headache if you stay lying down."
Coleman raised his head slightly. The room seemed to tilt, then spin crazily in a flurry of brilliant lights. He wisely decided to take the doctor's advice. Looking from out the corner of his eye, Coleman noticed red flashing bars near the ceiling. He also noticed two security officers, flanking Captain Anthony. Anthony stepped closer. Coleman raised a hand, which shivered as it hung in the air.
"Please, Captain. I know why you are here. If I may, could I explain why I am in this Sickbay?"
Anthony's right eyebrow slid upwards as he considered the request. Finally, he nodded.
"I was given some reading material by Ensign Brenkar", Coleman explained, "while I was in the Lipton Room. I decided to return to my quarters to read it all. I began with a brief synopsis of the member nations of the Federation, but my curiosity was perked by a history of the Third World War, so I opted to read that instead."
His eyes fogged as he recalled the events.
"I discovered that I caused the war."
Anthony looked up. He frowned.
"No, Doctor, you did not", he argued. "A terrorist action was by no means your doing, nor could you possibly have—"
"Captain", interjected Coleman aggressively. He rose to an upright position on the biobed, choking down a wave of nausea which washed over him. "My funding for the X-100 project came through the United British War Commission, a martial administration. I only got my funding because I claimed that the technology I was developing could be used against our enemies."
Anthony took another step forward.
"That may be, but I still don't see where the connection is."
"The technology being developed", the shorter man persisted, waving his arms to emphasise his points, "was inevitably going to be used in anger. Warp drive, state-of-the-art guidance computers, antimatter reaction chambers…all of it could be used to seek out and destroy the New Justice Action Group, as well as the others responsible for August 10."
He stopped, and registered the confusion on the captain's face.
"August 10 2024 was the day nuclear weapons destroyed London", he explained. "I…I lost my fiancé in that attack. I wanted revenge, which is why I initially began the project. I wanted to build satellites which could somehow pinpoint those terrorists, and I wanted to build warp-capable missiles which could approach their target at unimaginable speed, and obliterate them.
"As I worked further on the X-100, however, I realised that I didn't want that at all. I wanted peace. "After Juliana's death, everyone I cared about were the X-100 and the X-100 technicians, like Tamsyn McBride and all the others. But don't you see, Captain? I caused their deaths!"
Again, Anthony's face registered bemusement.
"Captain, my project was ostensibly a missile test venture. The only reason the NJAG would attack South Ronaldsay would be if they thought there was a strategic target there. A missile installation would constitute a strategic target. My drive for revenge gave the NJAG an opportunity to kill anyone else I had any kinship with."
Finally, the captain caught on. Before he could speak, however, Taryll cut in.
"Mr Coleman, do you know my species?", he inquired. Coleman though for a moment.
"Bajoran, or something like that, I think", he ventured at last. Taryll nodded.
"For about forty years, Bajor was under the occupation of a militant and brutal race known as the Cardassians. They seemed to have only the objective of exterminating us, like unwanted and disease- ridden vermin. "My father was a member of a resistance cell, and he fought valiantly to restore Bajor to independence. When I came of age, I joined him. I was only thirteen, and there were a great many Bajoran freedom fighters who were even younger.
"One night, while I was standing guard at our cave base, a unit of Cardassian special forces raided us. I didn't see them coming until they were only a few metres away. When I saw them, I fired my phaser rifle like a madman. I killed at least six of them, but I was under heavy attack, and the blast of a phaser bolt nearby made me jump just enough that I lost my footing and slid down the hill. The Cardassians thought they'd killed me, and left me for dead.
"By now, the fighting had alerted other members of our cell, who armed themselves and set out. When they got near the mouth of the cave, the enemy cut them down with ease.
"We were housing a group of labour camp escapees at the time; most of them were elderly men, women and children. The Cardassians stormed the cave and slaughtered them to the man. I could hear the screams, but I had smashed my kneecap, and I could not get back up the hill.
"In the morning, after the Cardassians had left, I made a walking stick out of a felled tree-branch, and I hobbled up the slope. I found all ten resistance fighters, as well as the refugees. They were all dead. Some of the women and the little girls had obviously been raped before they were killed."
The Bajoran sniffed. His eyes were glassy as he recalled the traumatic history.
"For a long time after that, I blamed myself for their loss. If I hadn't been startled by that blast, or if I had had the fortitude to get up that slope, or if I had shot more of them to start with…maybe my father, as well as those other brave ones, would have survived.
"Eventually, I realised what you must realise now. The Cardassian attack, like the terrorist strike on Earth, was inevitable. Granted, in your case, it may not have hit the X-100 program if it had not been listed as missile project, but who knows where else might have been targeted? A civilian centre, maybe?
"Besides, what is done is done. It cannot be reversed."
The words had been spoken with true feeling. Taryll was suddenly overcome with emotion. Mumbling his apologies, he escaped to the sanctity of his office, where he replicated a handkerchief to blow his nose and dry his eyes.
Coleman appeared stunned. He did not move. Eventually, he began to speak again. His voice cracked and faded many times.
"My belief in my culpability led me to lash out on everything in my quarters. I tried to break everything I could find." A ghostly smile flashed across his ashen face.
"When I tried to throw the coffee table, I lost my balance", he chuckled, his laughter forced and painful. "I slipped over, and the table leg hit my head. That's all I remember."
Anthony came level with the Twenty-First Century scientist. He squeezed his shoulder.
"Get some rest", was all he could think of. "I'll come by later to check on you."
As the captain left Sickbay, his commbadge spoke.
"Lane to Captain Anthony", Alex Lane hailed. "Please report to my quarters, sir."
* * * * *
Anthony entered the decorative living quarters of Ensign Alex Lane, gazing thoughtfully at the wall adornments. In particular, a painting caught his eye. He studied it, and realised that it was an original by Franke de Groot, the celebrated Lunan artist. He recalled that the operations officer's father was an acquaintance of de Groot, and he wondered if the painting, depicting New Berlin in the most colourful and abstract forms possible, had been a gift. Lane approached, still in uniform, and he cleared the query from his mind.
"What's up, Alex?"
Lane arrived at her personal computer terminal, and spun it to face both Anthony and herself.
"The theft manifest finally came through from the investigator on the Hokkaido", she reported. "Apparently, a cache of brand-new and experimental torpedoes, called 'dutonic torpedoes', were taken, though none of the authorities are certain what they can do; most of the lab technicians were murdered, and the four survivors are in a coma."
"Any idea what the warheads of these torpedoes are consisted of?", Anthony enquired. Lane nodded.
"It's a new warhead, composed of two compounds: hydrodemarutane and moratillium oxide."
Antrhony shook his head.
"I'll ask Tasek and Davies to work out what these things can do", he decided. "Anything else?"
"Just one thing", Lane added. "According to the Hokkaido, those torpedoes require a different launch system than that of normal photon or quantum torpedoes. By their estimates, it would take about a week to make the enhancements necessary to fire dutonic torpedoes out of an existing standard tube."
Anthony cocked his head. He clicked his fingers as a memory of an earlier report resurfaced in his mind. He clicked his commbadge.
"Anthony to Bridge."
"Bridge", Commander Jakob Ramelow replied immediately.
"Commander, there is a Mutara-class nebula about three parsecs from our current position. I want you to set a course and engage at warp eight."
"Aye aye, sir", the executive officer replied, not questioning his captain's orders. Anthony spoke again.
"Commander Tasek, Lieutenant Davies, what can you tell me about either dutonic torpedoes or the compounds hydrodemarutane and moratillium oxide?"
There was a pause, then the chief engineer spoke.
"Sir, those compounds are artificially created. On their own, they're stable enough, but moratillium oxide produces small amounts of theta radiation.
"Together, those compounds are very unstable. Conceivably, a few grams of both could severely damage this ship, and half a kilo would destroy it."
"Captain." This from the Vulcan tactical officer. "Dutonic warheads have been in the experimental phase for several years. The Perovina III laboratory was still in the process of researching their viability, and though their exact constitution is unknown, each warhead is thought to contain approximately three kilograms of both the compound hydrodemarutane and the substance moratillium oxide."
Anthony looked to Lane.
"It's a planet-killer", he said with visible and audible concern. He addressed his commbadge again.
"Helm, increase speed to maximum rated warp. I'm on my way to the Bridge."
* * * * *
The starship Voyager gently glided into position on one of Deep Space Nine's upper docking pylons. The ship rumbled slightly as the Intrepid-class docked, but Kathryn Janeway was pleased with the smooth procedure. She put a hand on the shoulder of Lieutenant Tom Paris, who was seated at the helm console.
"Nice flying, Tom", she said, before turning to the rest of the bridge staff.
"We'll probably be very busy over the next few days, meeting and greeting the crew of DS9. I hear they went through Hell and back during the Dominion War, so be courteous."
Her mouth crept into a smile.
"Above all, though, I order you all to have a good time…and that includes you, Tuvok."
The senior staff laughed, while Tuvok bobbed his eyebrow in puzzlement. The human preoccupation with 'fun' was often a source of mystery to him.
Ensign Kim, Voyager's operations officer for the past seven years, was about to step away from his station, when the comm. panel beeped, the light flashing.
"Captain, we're receiving a transmission from the station", he reported.
"On screen", ordered Janeway, before turning to the screen.
The visage of Benjamin Sisko appeared on the large viewer in the centre of the forward wall of the Bridge.
"Captain Janeway", he welcomed. "It is an honour to meet you again. I believe I must congratulate you for your safe return."
"My pleasure, Captain Sisko. I would like to congratulate you on your actions during the war", Janeway responded, a little perplexed, "but I was under the impression you were missing in action."
"It's a long story", Sisko said. "Unfortunately, Captain, I must ask Voyager to leave. I believe that this station and Bajor are in imminent danger, and I cannot allow a ship and a crew who have only just returned home from the Delta Quadrant to remain in the way of that danger."
Janeway looked to Commander Chakotay, who shrugged.
"What kind of danger?", Chakotay asked. "How do you know this?"
"Please, Commander. I would explain completely if I could, but I don't have all the answers. I believe Bajor is under threat from an unknown force, and you wouldn't believe how I know this information if I told you. Please just trust me."
Janeway thought. It seemed fantastic, utterly implausible.
But he is a war hero, she considered, and you don't live long enough to be a war hero by being wrong.
"Captain Sisko", she hailed again. "I understand your concern, but if this station is in danger, then I believe we have an obligation to defend it. Voyager is staying."
Sisko made to protest, but he visibly changed his mind.
"I can see there's no arguing with you, Captain", he sighed. "If you are staying, though, I insist that your crew spend at least a short time on the station as a temporary shore-leave. I recommend Quark's bar for the best spirits this side of Earth."
Janeway acknowledged this with a minute smile and a curt nod. The screen returned to the view of the station before them.
CHAPTER THREE
Captain's Log, Stardate 54977.4
It has taken us thirty-two hours, but we are at last at the edge of the nebula. If I am right, we shall soon determine whether or not the USS Tikriti was responsible for the destruction of the USS Hubble.
"Alex", Anthony called. "How big is that nebula?"
"Only about sixty thousand kilometres, sir", Lane responded. "However, our sensors will be more or less inoperative when we enter."
"Very well", the captain acknowledged. "Mr Tanier, take us in, at one-third impulse."
The huge Sovereign-class vessel edged through the outer perimeter of the spatial anomaly, her main deflector shoving aside any matter posing a threat to the ship. On the Bridge, Jakob Ramelow rose from his chair, to stand beside his commanding officer.
"You seem certain that they're in here", he observed quietly. Anthony did not turn to look at the First Officer. Instead he scanned the deteriorating view on the screen, observing with keen eyes, trying to find some indication of his quarry.
"Consider it, Jakob. You've just stolen a massively powerful weapon, but you require lengthy modifications to use it. Starfleet is out in force, searching for the perpetrators of the theft. Do you risk slipping through the lines of Federation ships looking for you, or do you take advantage of the sensor- scrambling nebula nearby?"
"A logical conclusion, as Tasek would say", Ramelow smiled. "They will be hard to find without sensors, though."
He paused for a moment, possibly because of the delicate nature of the next question.
"Do you think it was the Tikriti?"
Anthony deliberated for a second.
"In honesty, yes. There's been a notable change in the attitude of Admiral Courtenay in the last couple of months. Surely you've noticed."
Ramelow nodded.
"His personality has changed a great deal", he agreed.
"Then, all of a sudden, he leaves on an unscheduled exercise with most of the Eleventh", the captain continued. "Then a weapons lab is raided, and the Eleventh disappears. In the middle of all this, the Hubble is destroyed by a torpedo from the Tikriti. My gut tells me the Tikriti, and maybe even the entire Eleventh Fleet, is up to something very shady and not in the best interests of the Federation."
"Sir!"
The call came from Lane, behind the ops console. Anthony turned.
"I'm picking up a very faint displacement compression, about ninety kilometres to port."
"All stop", Anthony ordered. The ship ground to a halt. Anthony walked to the ops station to see the scan himself.
In a dense particle nebula such as the Mutara-type, a ship inside it has a certain displacement. If the particles are sufficiently dense, the displacement causes a compression of particles around the hull. A large compression has a small profile on standard sensors.
What Anthony saw on the sensor readouts was inconclusive, but he had to take the chance.
"Helm, alter course to three-two-zero mark three. Take us to nine hundred kph."
The ship lurched almost imperceptibly as she swung to port. Almost immediately, a faint blue shape appeared in the lower centre section of the screen. Anthony pointed.
"Magnify and enhance grid F-9", he told the ops officer. The screen pixellated for a brief moment, before being replaced by a blurred image. Anthony squinted.
"Can you enhance that any more?"
Lane tapped at a couple of panels. Presently, the edges of the object sharpened. Anthony stared at the image, mouth hanging open for a brief moment. He recovered quickly.
"That's a warp nacelle, and it looks like an Excelsior's", he stated. "Tactical, lock phasers on that nacelle, if you can. Helm, down angle. Bring us closer by three hundred feet."
Amid the static on the screen, the ill-defined boundaries of an Excelsior-class starship suddenly took shape. Anthony doubted the vessel needed an introduction.
The comm. beeped.
"We're being hailed, sir", Lane reported. "Audio only."
"Open a channel", he ordered.
The speakers in the Bridge buzzed and screeched with static, but that quickly cleared.
"To the vessel above and to the right of us, disengage your engines and prepare to surrender your ship."
Anthony looked up, hearing the familiar voice. Evidently, the Mariner had not been identified.
"To Admiral Geoffrey Courtenay of the USS Tikriti, this is Captain Simon Anthony of the USS Mariner. I will take no such action. Please be advised we have our weapons locked on you."
There was a slight pause.
"Ah, Captain Anthony", Courtenay replied in a jovial nature. "Glad you could join us. We have been conducting war games out here, and we weren't sure—"
"That's rubbish and you know it!", Anthony shouted, causing a surprised glance from Lon Tanier and a cautionary glare from Ramelow. He continued unperturbed.
"Admiral, I know that you perpetrated the attack and looting of the weapons installation on Perovina III, and I also know that you destroyed the USS Hubble, for the loss of all on board. It is my duty to take you and the crew of the Tikriti into custody, on the charge of high treason."
It was a gamble, he knew. However, he also knew that, if he was wrong, then the universe was governed by a series of outrageous coincidences.
To his surprise, Courtenay burst into laughter.
"You worked that out on your own? Well done, Captain", Courtenay replied. His speech was liberally laced with sarcasm. "In that case, I shall drop the charade. "The Celestial Temple is about to enter the golden age of our tenure, Captain. This ship is a tool of that age."
Anthony looked around the Bridge with overt confusion. The rest of the senior staff wore similar expressions.
"I'm sorry, but I don't understand."
"I thought as much", the admiral replied with a sigh. "I learned long ago that corporeal beings are not near our level of intellect. However, you should know the names of us, the perpetrators of the new Bajoran—what would the humans call it—renaissance. We are the true gods of Bajor. We are the Pah- wraiths."
Anthony had heard the name 'Pah-wraith' before, from a philosophical discussion he had had with Taryll Kalis when he first came aboard. They were the demons of Bajoran theology, as opposed to the Prophets—the gods of Bajor, who resided in the Bajoran wormhole and were classified by Starfleet as 'wormhole aliens'. From what he understood, though, the Pah-wraiths had been destroyed by the Emissary of the Prophets. He had been Captain Benjamin Sisko of Deep Space Nine; his disappearance at the end of the Dominion War had been officially listed as 'missing in action', but the Bajorans believed that he now resided with the Prophets.
Whether he believed in the Bajoran religion or not, Anthony now contended with a man who at least thought he was one of these anti-gods. More unsettling, he was in command of a very powerful starship.
"A Bajoran renaissance", Anthony said conversationally. "That would imply the survival of Bajor. That begs the question: why do you need dutonic torpedoes?"
A snigger permeated through the audible static.
"It is a new era for Bajor, Captain", Courtenay reiterated. "Unfortunately, the majority of the Bajoran citizens are misguided. They follow the infidel Prophets, and as such, they must be punished for their ignorance.
"You mentioned the Hubble. An apology from the Pah-wraiths, Captain; we did not set out to destroy that ship, but it obstructed us. Just as you obstruct us now."
The channel closed, and immediately, Tasek called calmly from tactical.
"I am detecting several more displacement compressions approaching our position, Captain. It would be logical to assume that they belong to the other ships of the Eleventh Fleet."
Anthony thought for a moment.
"We're out of our league here", he decided. "Tasek, target the Tikriti's warp engines. I want them disabled."
Tasek nodded. At once, Mariner's phasers cut through the nebula's particle atmosphere, impacting on the shields of the Tikriti. Before the Excelsior ship could respond, a quantum torpedo slammed into the depleted shields, temporarily disabling them. A final phaser volley sliced into the unprotected starboard nacelle. It exploded in sparks, but remained essentially intact. Tasek was about to fire again, when an impact rocked Mariner.
"Report", shouted Anthony.
"We have been hit by a photon torpedo from one of the other ships", Tasek reported. "Our aft shields are holding at ninety percent."
"We're done here", Anthony muttered. "Lon, get us out of here at full impulse."
Expertly handled by Lieutenant Tanier, the Sovereign-class ship gracefully spun towards the way she had come. Then she sped away from the crippled Tikriti, just as a second photon torpedo shaved past the aft shields of Mariner. In a matter of moments she had powered out of the nebula and into normal space. Anthony looked to the stars.
"Lon, take us to DS9", he said. "This is a problem for Bajor as well as us. Get us there at our best speed."
He turned to Lane as the ship jumped to warp.
"Alex, contact Admiral Paris at Starfleet Command. Tell him what's happened, and request reinforcements to meet at Deep Space Nine."
He looked back to the stars.
"Let's hope that Colonel Kira and Admiral Paris can help us", he murmured. "This may be the best ship in the fleet, but not even we can stop an entire armada of enemy ships.
* * * * *
Admiral Owen Paris sat in his frugal office at Starfleet Communications, overlooking San Francisco Bay. It had been a trying day; he had just fielded the report from the science vessel Hokkaido, which was orbiting Perovina III. The details about the stolen weapons were concerning. What was also troubling was that both the USS Hubble and the USS Mariner had failed to report to Starfleet, although the Hokkaido reported communicating with the latter on a few occasions.
He was just about to step out of his office, when the comm. beeped.
"Admiral, are you still there?", inquired a female voice.
"Yes, Darmal. I'm still here", Paris replied gruffly. He had been just about to sign off for the day.
"Sorry, sir. I know that it's late in the day, but a Priority One delayed subspace message has just arrived from the USS Mariner. It's labelled 'Admiral Paris, Eyes Only'."
Mariner. That caught Paris' attention. He returned to his desk.
"Put it through."
The desktop computer screen flickered, and was replaced by the attractive face of a Starfleet officer. She wore the yellow tunic of an engineering, security or operations officer, and the single gold pip of an ensign.
"Admiral Paris", she opened respectfully. "I am Ensign Alexandra Lane of the starship Mariner. I have been authorised by Captain Anthony to appraise you of our present situation."
* * * * *
When the message finished, the normally ruddy features of the admiral were ashen. He keyed the comm.
"Yeoman Darmal, what battle-ready starships are in the vicinity of Bajor?"
There was a pause. "Besides the Defiant and the Voyager, there are only two vessels within a week of Bajor, sir", came the reply. "The Akira-class cruiser Thunderchild is in sector 3217 on a routine training mission for a group of cadets, and the USS Hydra, of the Miranda III variant, is on a routine Cardassian border patrol."
Paris grimaced. If what Lane had told him was true, and the Eleventh Fleet was bent on destroying most of Bajor, he would have wanted at least a Galaxy-class starship turning up for the inevitable fight. He sighed heavily. The weight of the world, as well as Bajor, Deep Space Nine, and several thousand Starfleet personnel, not to mention millions of civilians, had just been placed squarely on his shoulders.
"Very well", he said. "Contact both ships, and order them to rendezvous at Deep Space Nine. Emphasise that this is Priority Alpha."
There was a gasp on the comm.
"Priority Alpha, sir?", Darmal asked, shocked. "Isn't that the—"
"Isn't that the signal for emergency on the scale of imminent planetary destruction?", Paris pre-empted her. "Yes, it is, and if they don't arrive on time, Bajor will signal Priority Alpha-Three—the planetary avoidance call."
He caught his breath.
"Just signal them, Vara", he ordered. "Signal them now."
CHAPTER FOUR
"The Pah-wraiths", Sisko alliterated, annunciating every syllable with distaste, as one would do when reporting a mortal enemy. "I might have guessed."
"Captain Sisko", the Starfleet captain on the ops screen urged, slightly impatiently. "My crew has just faced an entire fleet, the commander of which believes he is one of those things. We'll inevitably face them again, without the luxury of being able to run. Would you care to explain?"
Sisko nodded quickly, as if remembering the situation at hand.
"When I was brought among the Prophets after the war, the Pah-wraith threat had been vanquished. The Prophets, in their merciful way, decided not to destroy them outright, but to banish them to space, as an immobile matter cloud. The Prophets are not wanton destroyers. They vindicated the evil ones, but banished them for the second time, this time to the vacuum.
"Evil is not easily quashed, though. If the Pah-wraith are as motivated to get back to the Celestial Temple as they were before the final battle, then they are a very dangerous force indeed."
The man on the screen grimaced.
"Captain, this sounds really out-there. I don't like placing stock in religion."
He stopped as he noticed a scowl enveloping the face of Colonel Kira, who stood alongside Sisko.
"However", he continued, "I don't seem to have much choice. I'd like a scientific explanation, but I doubt I'm going to get one.
"We'll be arriving at the station in a little over four hours. Mariner out."
Simon Anthony blinked off the screen.
* * * * *
The Deep Space Nine conference room was more full than it had ever been since the end of the war. At the head of the table sat Captain Sisko, flanked by Captain Anthony and Colonel Kira. Further down the table sat Commander Ramelow, Captain Janeway and Commander Chakotay, who sat opposite Captain Brinna and Lieutenant-Commander Farigo, both of the Hydra, and Captain Zebidee and Commander Ghor'tiege of the Thunderchild. Sisko opened the meeting.
"Gentlemen", he began. "Bajor is in immediate danger from an enemy who have hijacked the ships of the Eleventh Fleet."
He looked to Anthony. "The officers of the vessels seem to have been…possessed by non-corporeal beings", he went on, "whose aim is to destroy the majority of the Bajoran population and kill the wormhole aliens.
"I will now hand this briefing over to Captain Simon Anthony of the Mariner."
Anthony rose from his chair and made his way to the wall-mounted computer console. He pressed a button, and diagrams of six ships appeared on-screen.
"The ships of the Eleventh Fleet", he announced. He pointed to the one at the top.
"The Excelsior-class ship USS Tikriti seems to be the flag of the enemy fleet approaching. Commander Ramelow will brief you on the stolen dutonic torpedoes stolen, but it is my belief that the Tikriti is being converted to fire them, primarily because she is the most heavily-shielded ship in the force, so it makes sense for her to have these weapons on board. We engaged the Tikriti three days ago and damaged her starboard nacelle, but our simulations project that she is underway by now. "The Foley is an Intrepid-class. There are also two Norways, the Warsaw and the Sacramento, as well as a Saber, the Rapier, and the USS Oberon, which is a Miranda II. All in all, we're outnumbered, but we barely outgun them.
"Any questions?"
Lieutenant-Commander Farigo raised her hand.
"Sir", she asked, "isn't Mariner part of the Eleventh Fleet? If so, why aren't your crew possessed?" There was a quiet murmur from Zebidee, Ghor'tiege and Brinna. Anthony waved his hand.
"In answer, commander; yes, we are the flagship of the Eleventh Fleet. However, we have been charting the peculiarities of the behaviour of the commander of the Eleventh, Admiral Courtenay, and we believe that the fleet encountered the non-corporeal beings while they were on exercises around stardate 54740, while Mariner was under maintenance at Earth Station McKinlay."
The room was quiet, so Anthony took his place back in his seat, to be replaced by Jakob Ramelow, who came to the computer and exchanged the image of the six starships with a rough diagram of a torpedo.
"Gentlemen, this is a dutonic torpedo", he introduced dramatically. "The warhead is composed of the substances hydrodemarutane and moratillium oxide, and we are reliably informed that the amount of these compounds equals roughly three kilos. According to our chief engineer, this weapon would cause an explosion to the magnitude of about five quantum torpedoes. We believe that the Tikriti is equipped with six of them. That's more than enough to lay waste to most of Bajor."
"My God", whispered Janeway. Similar reactions rippled through the briefing room, as Ramelow replaced himself in his seat.
Sisko stood.
"By our estimates", he closed, "the enemy fleet is no more than three days away. In the meantime, we want to engage them before they come into range. With that in mind, we are to leave the station and proceed at best speed to an interception point." "Excuse me, Captain", Brinna called. "I assume you have command of this mission."
"Why do you assume that?", Sisko replied, voice neutral. Brinna shrugged.
"Well, it's either going to be you or Ari", Brinna said, gesturing to Zebidee. "You two have seniority."
Sisko came around the table until he was in between Anthony and Ramelow.
"That may be true", he conceded, "but regulations say otherwise. All the commanders of our ships are captains; no one can pull rank. Starfleet guidelines stipulate that overall command be given to the captain with the tactically superior ship. In this case, I believe that Captain Anthony is now the flag officer of our task force."
Brinna twisted his face into a disapproving scowl. Anthony did not notice.
"Before we leave", Mariner's captain said, "we will need to assign targets. I think it is evident that we should assign each ship a vessel to attack."
Brinna interrupted.
"I disagree", he said sulkily. "Shouldn't we all focus our firepower on the Tikriti?"
"No", Anthony replied, equally as blunt as the captain of the Hydra. "This isn't supposed to be a suicide mission, Captain, and while a concerted attack on the Tikriti would probably succeed, we would be at the mercy of the other five Eleventh Fleet ships. No, we want to survive this engagement, Captain Brinna, not throw away our lives."
Brinna sighed aggressively, but remained silent.
"Now that that's sorted", Anthony carried on, "our primary target is, as Captain Brinna pointed out, the USS Tikriti. With that in mind, I will be taking Mariner against her. The Hydra can take the Rapier, while I want Thunderchild to deal with the Sacramento and the Oberon. Defiant will take on the Warsaw, and Voyager will target the Foley. Any problems?" Janeway spoke up.
"Suppose one of our ships needs assistance", she said. "Do we have permission to help, or do we pursue our targets regardless?"
"A good question", conceded Anthony. "As I said before, this isn't a suicide mission. Therefore, if you are in a position to assist, please do so. It will enhance our survivability."
No one else seemed to have anything further to say, so Anthony closed the meeting.
"Captain Janeway, can I see you for a moment?", he requested as the officers alighted. Janeway obliged. As Brinna passed the pair, however, he stopped and turned to Anthony.
"I don't like you being in command, Captain", he sneered. "I have it on good authority that you had a nervous breakdown earlier this year. Your record shows you to have lost several crewmen over the course of your career. I think your tactics are flawed, Captain, and not only are we going to suffer for it, but so will Bajor." He was about to begin walking again, but Anthony spoke.
"Let's make one thing clear, Captain Brinna", he growled. "I don't like your attitude. I know of your record as well. Need I remind you of the Gavlan II mission? You led an away team straight into a trap. Now, I am not here to make friends or curry favour; I am here only to fight for Bajor and Starfleet, and if you don't like how I run this task force, I suggest you grow to like it quickly. We will be depending on you out there, and I can't have you performing below your very best just because you have a problem with me."
Brinna made to reply, but thought better of it, and instead stormed out of the briefing room. Anthony turned to Janeway.
"It's good to see you again, Kathryn", he said, kissing her on her cheek. She smiled.
"And you, Simon."
Anthony looked into her eyes. They showed the strength of character he knew she had.
"Kathryn, you don't have to do this", he stated. She looked at him strangely.
"What do you mean?"
"This mission", he clarified. "It's dangerous. Too dangerous for Voyager. For Christ's sake, Kathryn, you just got back from the Delta Quadrant!"
"That's true", she admitted "but Captain Sisko just returned from two years with the wormhole aliens. You should tell him that it's too dangerous for him."
"That's different. He's—"
"He's a colleague, not your lover", Janeway finished. Anthony smiled weakly.
"Am I that transparent?"
"As glass, but it doesn't make you any less a good man", she told him. "But you can't talk me out of it. You need all the help you can get, and we're here. We might as well lend a hand."
She kissed him, lingered for a moment, then slowly walked majestically out of the area. Anthony remained for a few moments longer, considering the coming battle. Then he strolled out of the room, a wan smile on his face belying his growing unease.
* * * * *
As he made his way to the lower pylon where Mariner was docked, Anthony caught sight of a tall human, wearing the aqua tunic of a science officer, striding through the corridor. Anthony hurried to catch up.
"Doctor Bashir?", he called. Julian Bashir turned, his face immediately changing as he recognised the man behind him.
"Captain Anthony, isn't it?", he said. "We met during the war, when you were brought in with…Tabrenian 'flu, if I recall correctly."
Anthony nodded with a grin.
"Your memory is impeccable, Doctor."
"A present from the genetic engineering labs", Bashir replied. "Can I help you, sir?"
Anthony chuckled quietly.
"Actually, I remember a holosuite program I tried while I was here, one of yours, I believe. It was set in a Twentieth Century jazz lounge—"
"You mean Vic's", Bashir clarified. "If you're wondering if I've still got it, the answer is yes. In fact, the program is permanently running in Holosuite One at Quark's."
"Excellent", Anthony smiled. "I'll have to visit it when we get back.
"Incidentally, Doctor", he went on, "I believe my CMO is an acquaintance of yours: Doctor Taryll Kalis."
"Ah yes!", Bashir exclaimed. "I remember Taryll. He was a nurse of mine for a while in the war. How's he doing?"
"Very well. He's had his hands full on Mariner, though."
"So I've heard", said Bashir, instantly regretting it. "I'm sorry, sir. I certainly did not mean to say that Mariner—"
"Don't worry about it, Doctor."
Anthony had taken no offence at the inference, intentional or otherwise. He knew very well that Mariner had been involved in too many firefights since being put under his command, for the loss of more than one crewman. Soon, she would be streaking into space to again defend the Federation. Again, the chances were great that not everyone would return.
Despite the reassurance from Anthony, Doctor Bashir still looked ill at ease. An uncomfortable silence developed between them, before Bashir finally broke it after several unpleasant moments.
"Well, sir", he said in stilted speech, betraying his embarrassment, "I had better get to Defiant. I don't want Captain Sisko to leave without me."
He hurried off, giving Anthony the chance only to nod his goodbye.
Shaking his head in slight amusement, the captain of the Mariner made his way to a turbolift. He entered the Cardassian-built transportation device.
"Lower Pylon B", he ordered. The lift jerked into life, whizzing through the space station towards the USS Mariner, flagship of the anti-Eleventh Fleet squadron.
* * * * *
"Captain", said Commander Jakob Ramelow as Anthony entered the Bridge. "You're the last man aboard. Once you embarked, I ordered Lieutenant Tanier to clear our moorings."
"Very well, Commander", Anthony acknowledged. He had known Ramelow only for eight months or so, and yet they had already grown to know each other intimately; Ramelow had the knack that only excellent First Officers have of being able to predict the wishes of his captain. They had fought—and nearly died—side-by-side against the Klingons, the Ta'ga and the Borg, and not once had Ramelow flinched under fire. Anthony had to unimpressively admit that he had been less than the impeccable commander on two of those occasions, but Ramelow had always backed him to the hilt.
One day, he thought, he's going to need my help, and he can count on me to deliver.
"Helm, half thrusters ahead. Clear the station and hold position four hundred kilometres away."
Tanier moved his hand across the panel dexterously.
"Half thrusters, four hundred kays clear. Aye, sir."
The USS Mariner drew away from the lower pylon with grace contradicting her great size. Slowly she passed under the station, then away from it, before slowing to a complete stop exactly four hundred kilometres away.
Ensign Lane called from her station.
"Sir, the Defiant is entering formation on our port beam, and Voyager is drawing alongside our starboard quarter. The USS Hydra and Thunderchild are both entering position above and astern of us."
"Right then", Ramelow said, lowering into the seat reserved for the executive officer. "Lon, set a course for the projected line taken by the hostile vessels, and engage at warp nine."
In the formation assigned, each ship of the fleet suddenly sped ahead at faster-than-light speeds, to meet their destiny.
CHAPTER FIVE
"I thought I'd find you here."
Patrick Coleman looked up from his light beer, to see the smiling face of the captain. He gestured to a
chair.
"Please sit down, sir."
Anthony took the seat just opposite the mathematical prodigy. Coleman's head wound had been
repaired by a dermal regenerator, but he had dark circles under his eyes, which indicated to Anthony
that Coleman was suffering from a lack of sleep.
"I'll come straight to the point, Patrick", he said to him. "I want you to head up the internal security
department on this vessel for the next few days."
Coleman raised a perplexed eyebrow.
"Sir, with all due respect, I don't think I'm the man for the job."
"You're familiar with our personal weaponry?"
"Well, yes, but—"
"And you can calculate the probable locations for an enemy boarding?"
Coleman put down his beer.
"Captain, that may be, but you have security officers on board for this kind of assignment. Surely they
are better qualified than me."
Anthony leaned towards the mathematician.
"Patrick, please. I do have security officers, and I don't know if we will be boarded when we engage
the enemy. They have so far shown themselves to be very clever, to pull off a raid like Perovina III,
destroy a Federation starship, even to pose for so long as Starfleet officers without being detected. If
they do board, we need to be ready, and that doesn't mean ship-wide, because we don't have the time. I
need someone who can decide, based on the numbers, where a boarding would take place, and what
defences should be ready."
Coleman considered the problem for a moment.
"I can already tell you that Deck Twelve would be the place I'd board."
It was Anthony's turn to look confused.
"Why is that?"
Coleman took a sip of his drink.
"Deck Twelve has only got a cargo bay, escape pods and waste processing. It's a big, open deck, and as
such it is perfect for a boarding en masse. On top of that, it gives easy access to the deuterium pumps
and forward torpedo bays, which are just a deck below, and it's about halfway between the Bridge and
Main Engineering on Deck Eighteen. It allows a force to get from tactical targets quite easily."
"I see", said Anthony, impressed with the flawless reasoning. "What do you think would be the target
of their weapons in order to drop our shields and get aboard that deck?"
"That's simple", replied Coleman. "They will try and attack from underneath, to knock out our ventral
shields. Then they can space their attacking force between starboard and port sides far more easily."
Coleman was obviously warming to his new assignment, and was enthusiastically pointing out what the
enemy would statistically do.
"Can you mount a defence of the deck?", Anthony asked. Coleman nodded.
"It's possible, but I'd need supplies from the cargo bays: barrels, crates and so forth; anything that I can
use to make a few barricades."
Anthony got up.
"I'll get the cargo handlers to beam it all down to Deck Twelve."
Coleman also stood up, gulping down the last of his schooner.
"I'd better get down to Deck Twelve, then."
He was just about to leave, when Anthony remembered that he had two hand phasers clipped to his
belt. He took one off and handed it to Coleman.
"I almost forgot that. Good shooting", he said, winking at Coleman. Coleman shrugged.
"If this all goes well, Captain, I'll shout you a beer."
Anthony laughed as he strode out the doors of the Lipton Room.
"I know just the place!"
* * * * *
Anthony had just walked out of the Lipton Room, when the red alert bars in the corridor pulsated,
followed by a warning alarm.
"Captain Anthony to the Bridge", blurted a voice over the comm.
"I'm on my way", he shouted, sprinting for the nearest turbolift.
The turbolift door swished open on to the Bridge, and Anthony burst out. The moment he set foot in the
command centre, Tasek spoke to him.
"Captain, long range sensors are picking up a group of six ships. It is logical to assume that they are the
Eleventh Fleet."
Anthony took his place in the Big Chair.
"Time to intercept?"
Tasek consulted his console.
"At current speed, we have approximately forty minutes before we are in weapons range."
Anthony settled into the chair. He rubbed his chin.
"Mr Lane", he said to the ops officer. "Hail the task force, and tell them to prepare for battle."
* * * * *
The Bridge of the Defiant was manned by one of the most battle-experienced crews in Starfleet.
Captain Benjamin Sisko sat in the centre, with the small warship guided on her course by Lieutenant
Ezri Dax, a beautiful female Trill and girlfriend of Doctor Bashir. The ship was held together by the
expert engineering knowledge of Chief Miles O'Brien, who had been temporarily reinstated as the
Defiant's chief engineer by Sisko. On top of these duties, O'Brien also complemented ops and tactical,
by monitoring the sensors. Colonel Kira Nerys manned tactical, while Ensign Nog, the first Ferengi in
Starfleet, sat in front of the operations console. Doctor Julian Bashir was the only senior officer not on
the Bridge; his place was in the miniscule Sickbay.
"Sir", Nog reported to Sisko. "The Mariner signals, 'standby for battle'"
Sisko nodded. Kira fingered several panels.
"Pulse phasers are ready, sir", she reported. "Quantum torpedoes are loaded and primed. Shields are
performing at peak efficiency."
"What I wouldn't give for a cloaking device right now", Dax murmured, recalling the previous Defiant,
which had been fitted with a Romulan cloaking device. She had been destroyed by a Breen warship in
the Battle of Chin'toka, and her replacement, the Sao Paolo, renamed Defiant by special dispensary,
lacked that added extra.
"A cloaking device won't help when the fight starts, old man", Sisko reminded her. "Besides, if there's
one fight that I want to openly show power in, it's this one."
* * * * *
On board Voyager the tension filled the artificially-created atmosphere, but the senior staff had had
their fair share of tension and stress over the past seven years. Captain Janeway was certain they could
handle it.
"Time to weapons range", she called.
"Twenty-two minutes, thirty seconds", responded Lieutenant-Commander Tuvok, vigilantly
monitoring the situation.
Janeway, who had been standing, returned to her seat.
So, she thought, we wait.
* * * * *
"Time to intercept?", Captain Javiega Brinna asked his tactical officer. The lieutenant responded
quickly.
"About ten minutes, sir", the young man reported. Brinna rubbed his hands together.
"Lieutenant Hofmann", he ordered, "when the enemy ships are within weapons range, target the
Tikriti."
The blond tactical officer looked up.
"Sir, isn't out assigned target the USS Rapier?"
Brinna smiled.
"There's been a change in our assignment, Lieutenant."
* * * * *
"Anthony to Coleman."
The voice blared through the corridors of Deck Twelve. Coleman shoved one last Starfleet-issue cargo
barrel to one side, before clicking his commbadge.
"Yes, Captain?"
"How are you going down there?"
"We've just finished setting up the barricades, and I'm instructing the security officers to take their
positions now, sir", he replied.
"Excellent", came an obviously relieved response. "We are about to engage the enemy. Standby."
* * * * *
"Mr Tanier", Simon Anthony commanded his helmsman. "Take us to impulse, and take us towards the
Tikriti."
Tanier did not respond. Instead, Alex Lane interjected.
"Captain, the Eleventh has dropped out of warp and is heading this way."
Anthony gestured to Tasek.
"Target the Tikriti."
Tasek did so, but he looked up very quickly.
"Curious", he said. "The Hydra is also targeting the Tikriti."
Anthony jumped out of his chair.
"What? That isn't right!"
"Nonetheless, sir, they have a weapons lock."
Anthony balled his fists.
"That damned Brinna! I knew that something like this would happen."
"Sir", interrupted Lane again. "The Warsaw, Sacramento and Oberon are all breaking formation.
They're powering weapons."
The two Norway destroyers, as well as the Miranda-class ship, could be seen on the viewer, speeding
towards Task Force Bajor, intent on wreaking damage and destruction upon the Starfleet vessels.
Ramelow pointed to Lane.
"Open a channel to the task force."
The comm. chimed, indicating an open link.
"This is Commander Ramelow of the Mariner", the XO said. "All ships, assume defensive attack
formation Gamma-Six."
The gap closed between the eight vessels. Anthony sat back down and gripped the armrests.
"Tasek, lock torpedoes on the lead vessel."
The screen depicted the Sacramento bearing down on the Sovereign-class battleship, her phasers and
torpedoes obviously locked on Mariner.
"Fire."
CHAPTER SIX
Admiral Geoffrey Courtenay stood on the Bridge of the USS Tikriti. In actual fact, it was not really Courtenay per se, but rather a Pah-wraith in the form of Courtenay. It had been several months since the Eleventh Fleet had happened upon the cloud whilst on routine exercises in sector 2120. By unhappy chance, the fiery mist containing the Bajoran anti-gods had been attracted to the Federation vessels by their magnetic hull polarity. When it came into contact with the vessels, the wraiths permeated through, breezing through the bulkheads unhindered, until finally they came across a corporeal life-form to possess.
The Pah-wraith population had been decimated by the Prophets and their pugilists, among them the Emissary. They had also lost some of their number whilst drifting in the inky blackness of space, either from natural causes, such as solar flares, asteroids and so forth, or from choice; sensing the impossibility of regaining the Celestial Temple, many wraiths had terminated themselves. Thus when the fleet encountered them, there were not enough Pah-wraiths to each possess a single Starfleet crewman. Instead, they divided, as a cell or bacteria would, in order to spread their influence enough to control the corporeal creatures.
This had an advantage, in that the body maintained intact memories, thought processes and knowledge for the infesting wraith, but there was also a disadvantage, which at this point in time was weighing heavily on the Courtenay-wraith. In the cloud, the Pah-wraiths had developed a group consciousness, a type of 'hive mind' made infamous by the Borg. When they were forced to divide to control the Starfleet crews, the collective awareness was lost, and each wraith was forced to act as an individual. Thus the response by the Courtenay-wraith to the appearance on his sensors of Task Force Bajor more than half an hour ago had been sluggish. It had taken several moments to even realise that he needed to actually physically contact the commanders of the other ships in his fleet, in order to command their answer to the threat. It had taken even longer to convey those commands, and even then, he knew that his orders would not be carried out in the exacting manner he had envisaged.
"The Sacramento has been hit by quantum torpedoes", the woman at ops reported, in a voice devoid of
emotion. "They are ignoring the ship firing on them."
"Good", replied Courtenay. "Order the advance force to target the…"
He paused, trying to remember the name of the vessel he was about to consign to a fiery death. His lips
curled up into a cold and vindictive smile.
"…the Hydra. Also, order the rest of our fleet to turn to intercept the other enemy ships."
If the corporeals can fight with the hindrance of this clunky and imprecise vocal language, he thought,
then so can we.
* * * * *
The USS Sacramento, like all ships of her class, was a tough little ship, as Anthony well knew. She had
taken two quantum torpedo hits to her forward shields, depleting them by more than forty percent, yet
still she powered on. For a brief moment, Anthony considered that the Norway-class destroyer's
mission was to ram the Mariner, and he was about to order violent avoiding action, but then the
excitable cry of Lon Tanier stopped him.
"Sir! She's breaking to port, and she's targeting the Hydra!"
"Confirmed", Tasek agreed. "The other two vessels are also preparing to attack the Hydra."
Anthony pounded the armrests. He had hoped they would not employ a strategy such as this.
"Lon, when the Oberon comes past, bring us about in a pursuit course. Tasek, once we're behind them,
fire on her. We can't let them get Brinna."
Mariner entered a very tight and rapid bank to starboard, missing the starboard under-slung nacelle of
the Oberon by no more than five metres. Immediately, the Type XIII phasers blasted against the aft
shields of the smaller enemy vessel, but her commander did not seem to notice. Instead, he continued
on a straight-and-level approach for the more advanced variant of his Miranda-class ship. To
Anthony's consternation, Brinna remained on his original course, not even attempting to evade the two
ships, one friend, one foe, coming at him from his forward port quarter. Nor was he trying to get away
from the two Norways approaching from astern. He seemed oblivious to the danger.
"Sir, Oberon is firing", shouted Lane, half expecting a brace of torpedoes to fly out of the Miranda II's
aft tubes and detonate against Mariner's forward shields.
But it did not happen. Oberon launched three photon torpedoes and fired all of her phasers, but the
target was not the attacking battleship behind her. It was the Hydra.
The Hydra visibly rocked with the explosions of the weapons. The first two torpedoes hit the shields,
but the third ripped through them, colliding with the unprotected hull and blasting away a large section
of the port beam. The phasers sliced into the duranium alloy as surgically as a laser scalpel of a
surgeon.
Now she veered away, gaining speed as she turned. Brinna was finally trying to run. Oberon fired her
torpedoes again, this time at the stern of the fleeing Starfleet vessel. The torpedoes were preceded by
phaser strikes from the two destroyers, which flashed past just behind and below the Hydra. When the
photons struck, they again had no shields to halt them or diminish their effect. Hydra bucked as her
photon torpedo module, mounted atop the saucer, was blown apart. Her impulse engines flared, and she
shuddered to a terrible stop.
Oberon banked to starboard, in order to avoid the immobilised starship. As she did so, her ventral and
aft shields were pounded by the full force of Mariner's arsenal of quantum torpedoes and phasers. The
Sovereign-class, the most powerful vessel in Starfleet, followed her into the turn, her energy weapons
striking the diminishing shields each time they were fired.
Anthony could smell blood. He leaned forward in his seat, eyes keenly observing the screen, watching
for any advantage he could gain. He was about to give the order to fire again, when Tanier alerted him.
"She's peeling back towards Hydra!"
Sure enough, the Oberon suddenly reversed her course, catching the Mariner unprepared and in a bank
away from her.
"Bring us about a full one hundred and eighty", Anthony yelled. "Tasek, fire aft torpedoes and
phasers!"
Oberon rocked again under the impact of the high-yield weapons, but she continued on course, leaving
Mariner languishing behind.
* * * * *
Brinna picked himself up off the deck of the Hydra. He felt the searing heat of a fire raging out of control behind him, and he had to choke back the vomit as he glimpsed the body of Lieutenant Hofmann, the tactical officer, lying crumpled on the deck to the left of him. His face had been blown apart by the plasma conduit explosion that had destroyed his station.
He turned to his left, only to find that Lieutenant-Commander Farigo lay with charred face next to the
helm console, where she had been when that console had also erupted into flames.
The operations officer was the only other crewman on the Bridge still alive.
"Captain Brinna", he called out, his voice broken in morbid terror, "they're coming back for another pass!"
Brinna turned to the screen, just in time to see the photon torpedo burst against the Bridge. He did not witness the phaser shot which penetrated the forward torpedo bay and detonated the armoury of photon torpedoes, nor did he see the blast which blew open a bulkhead in Main Engineering, propelling thirty-three crewmen into the vacuum of space, but he did see the death of his ship.
* * * * *
Mariner jolted as the shockwave hit her, but her shields were more than up to the task of protecting her from it. On the Bridge, Anthony and the rest of the Bridge officers had just witnessed the loss of almost three hundred and fifty men and women in an explosion that tore apart the Miranda III-class vessel, but Anthony knew that they needed to stay sharp if they were to succeed. Mariner sliced through the debris cloud -—thankfully with no sizeable pieces to cause damage—- to burst through on the other side, at the
exact moment that the Tikriti and the Foley both fired on her. The bump was far more noticeable this
time, as two photons and various phaser shots collided with the underside of the ship.
"Report", shouted Anthony above the din.
"Ventral shields are down to fifty-two percent", reported Tasek, but another jolt, which caused a
console behind him to billow with sparks, caused him to correct himself.
"Thirty-eight percent."
"Return fire", ordered the captain.
Mariner's powerful ventral phasers delivered pinpoint blows to the Tikriti's dorsal shields and the
former soared over the latter. The Excelsior ship pitched downwards, exposing her aft torpedo tubes.
Two bright red bolts erupted from them, both colliding with the energy-based armour protecting
Mariner's belly. Immediately, the Foley skimmed just beneath the massive vessel.
"Ventral shields have failed", deadpanned Tasek again. A flat tone permeated through the Bridge.
"Warning. Intruder alert on Deck Twelve", blared the monotonous feminine voice of the computer.
Despite the dire situation, Simon Anthony allowed himself a tiny grin.
Coleman had been right.
"Bridge to Coleman. Heads up, you've got enemy troops landing on your deck now."
"Understood", came the terse reply.
* * * * *
Crewman V'Nushku popped up over the top of the crude barricade of barrels, crates and empty probe
and torpedo casings, and fired another shot with her phaser rifle. Her comrades, all eight of them,
simultaneously joined her, levelling their weapons against a horde of what must have been at least two
hundred Starfleet-uniformed invaders, all armed with hand phasers or phaser rifles. With a sickening
crunch, nine of the boarding party collapsed to the floor. V'Nushku winced. Her phaser, like those of
the other security officers, was set to kill, and while she found it unsettling to be firing on people who
were once her Starfleet brethren, she knew that the logistics of keeping several hundred hostile troops
at bay with the stun setting were unfeasibly difficult.
What was odd was that none of the intruders were firing. They were all equipped with weaponry, yet
they had only marched towards their deaths, never once returning—
—then it began. A line of the boarders, six or more deep, raised their weapons and fired at the
defenders. V'Nushku's razor sharp instincts told her to duck at exactly the right time, but as she did so,
she saw Crewman Kutlaka blown against the nearest bulkhead, struck by the death-blow of a Starfleet-
issue sidearm. The survivors popped up again and returned fire, dropping six this time, but the heavy
fire which had commenced just a few seconds ago from the enemy felled another two of the security
officers. Still the enemy advanced, stepping over their own dead comrades.
"Crewman V'Nushku to Coleman", V'Nushku shouted into her comm.
"Go ahead."
"Sir, Barricade Alpha is becoming indefensible. We've already lost three."
There was a very minute pause, then Coleman responded.
"Understood, Crewman. Withdraw to Barricade Beta."
V'Nushku needed no more prompting. She tapped the shoulder of the security officer nearest her, and
relayed the instructions to him. He nodded and passed it on to the other four. They fired off one last
salvo, before commando-crawling away from the lost barricade.
Behind them, the enemy could not get a clear shot at the retreating Mariner crewmen. Instead, they
lowered their phasers. Some of the more able-bodied of the group managed to clamber over, but the
majority began deconstructing the rudimentary barrier, piece by piece, until their passage was no
longer blocked.
The eight intruders who had been able to vault the blockade continued to advance without the others,
but the internal sensors gave Crewman V'Nushku plenty of warning. As the boarders rounded a corner
in the corridor, the survivors of Barricade Alpha, ambushed them, expertly cutting down all of them,
before making a much more hurried, sprinting retreat.
* * * * *
The Oberon had survived her encounter with Mariner, but only just. Her warp core had nearly gone
critical after the last quantum torpedo ruptured the plasma injectors in both warp nacelles, but it had
been successfully shut down. The ship had also taken damage to her impulse drive. The crewman-
wraiths frantically worked to repair the damaged systems, and, according to the one whom the wraith
commanding the Oberon had made chief engineer, the impulse drive would be back to full capacity in
five minutes.
* * * * *
Captain Ari Zebidee of the famed and celebrated USS Thunderchild was unaware of the maintenance
being done on the Oberon, but he certainly wasn't willing to give the enemy ship the five minutes she
needed. Before this fight, he had sided with Captain Brinna because he had previously been acquainted
with him, but Brinna had not followed the plan outlined by Captain Anthony, and despite the gallant
efforts of Anthony's ship, Brinna had been killed by the very ship Thunderchild was tasked to assail.
Her continued existence, combined with her success against the Hydra, shamed Zebidee. He wasn't
about to allow the proud Thunderchild to have her name further sullied.
"Mr Connolly", he said to his helmsman. "I want you to give me a forward overhead pass of the
Oberon at maximum impulse."
Connolly smiled.
"Boom-and-zoom, sir?"
"Precisely", replied Zebidee. Standby to fire all weapons."
* * * * *
The Oberon was still stationary when the Thunderchild screamed through space like an avenging
demon towards the crippled ship. She was almost on top of the enemy vessel when she let fly with a
terrible barrage of phasers and photons. She streaked overhead, launching two more torpedoes. The
Oberon did not move. Instead, her lights began to blink out on all decks as large pieces of debris drifted
away from her. Then she split straight down the middle of the saucer, disintegrating silently, spilling
crew and equipment into the void.
* * * * *
"The Foley is making another pass under Mariner", observed Chakotay. "Simon's ventral shields are
still down; they may be trying to board."
"Pursuit course, Mr Paris", ordered Janeway from her chair. "I don't want them to have the chance to
come around for pass number three."
* * * * *
The Warsaw was twisting and turning in an attempt to shake the pursuing vessel, but the Defiant stayed
right with the larger destroyer. Sisko knew he had the advantage over his adversary; the Defiant was
faster and more heavily armed and armoured than the Warsaw.
Besides, she's the Defiant, the best ship in the fleet.
"Weapons lock", Kira called.
"Fire pulse phasers", came the order from her captain. She complied, and at once, pulses of phase-
modulated energy chewed into the aft shields of the Warsaw like a hungry wolf.
Defiant suddenly shook with a blast. O'Brien cursed.
"The Rapier's right behind us, sir", he reported. "I didn't see her coming."
"Evasive manoeuvres, Pattern Gamma", yelled the heavy-set commander as Defiant was hit again by another photon torpedo from the Saber-class frigate.
* * * * *
Courtenay continued to watch the screen intently. The loss of the USS Oberon was an unexpected setback, but the rest of the fleet was behaving well. His ship, the Tikriti, was coming about to attack the Thunderchild, for he did not wish to destroy Mariner. He had ordered troops to board the ship because, as an immensely powerful vessel, she could assist in the Pah-wraith's plans, once the current crew were eliminated and replaced by wraiths.
The USS Thunderchild appeared on screen, her belly exposed as she banked for a pass at the Sacramento, which was in turn attempting to follow Voyager.
"Fire", he ordered, condemning the crew of the Akira-class cruiser to a salvo of two torpedoes and
several phaser blasts.
* * * * *
A console exploded into flames in the engineering section of the USS Thunderchild. Commander Rhys
Soames, chief engineer since before the Dominion War, let out a cry as his hand was burnt wickedly by
the conflagration. He stumbled backwards, but was caught by the second engineer, Uys Retarax.
"Commander, the impulse reactors are going critical and the coolant valves have been jammed closed",
he reported. Despite his agony, Soames turned to Retarax, an Antarean with a shock of white hair on
the crown of his head and a worried expression permanently planted on his face.
"Shut it down, Uys", he instructed his subordinate. "It's the only thing we can do."
Then the chief engineer lost consciousness amid the acrid smoke and heat, while his ship slowed until
she was dead in space.
* * * * *
Smoke wafted through the air from the ops console as Voyager took another hit from the Foley's
rearward-firing torpedoes. Harry Kim had almost been knocked off his feet, but he steadied himself
against the rear wall.
"Forward shields are down to twelve percent", informed Tuvok. "Captain, our shields will not sustain
another hit."
Janeway turned to Chakotay. She had placed her trust in him ever since he had come aboard as a
Maquis commander seven years ago, just after both Voyager and his raider had been abducted by the
being known as Caretaker. Now she needed his guidance, the guidance he had readily and sagely given
when the ship had previously faced the Borg, the Vidiians, the Kazon, and many more hostile Delta
Quadrant species. Chakotay was her stabilising off-sider, who would always present the option best
suited for the situation.
"Harry", the commander called. "How does their weapons array look at the moment?"
Kim examined his console.
"Despite our attacks, it's still performing at normal parameters", the younger man responded. It was
true; the multiple photon torpedoes launched by Voyager had almost all hit their marks, but Foley was
still packing almost the same punch she did before the engagement.
Chakotay thought for a moment.
"A dekyon pulse", he said at last. Janeway looked at him queerly.
"Why would a dekyon pulse help?", she asked.
He grinned.
"It's an old Maquis trick I loved to play on Cardassian frigates", he replied. "If we direct a dekyon
pulse at the main plasma junction in either one of the nacelles, it should cause a momentary power
drop. It should weaken their shields for two seconds or so, but no more."
Janeway considered the proposal, and then nodded to Kim.
"Do it."
Kim did as he was ordered.
"Firing dekyon pulse", he said. Voyager's deflector audibly hummed as the pulse was channelled
through the array, before beaming at the Foley.
"Fire now!", Chakotay growled. Tuvok tapped in the commands at lightning speed. Two photon
torpedoes leapt from their tubes and dashed the short distance between the two Intrepid-class ships in
less than a second. There was a large explosion on the screen, then the Foley swerved away. Kim
yelped with joy, but quickly remembered where he was, and retained his professional manner.
"The Foley's weapons are down. She's…"
He halted mid-sentence, stared at the ops console with mouth agape. Janeway craned her neck to look
at the ensign.
"She's what, Harry?"
"Captain, she's…she's…". He stuttered for a second, however it did not take long to collect himself
again.
"She's heading on a collision course with the Thunderchild."
* * * * *
Captain Zebidee saw the Intrepid-class cruiser approaching fast on a direct course for his ship even
before his ops officer even drew attention to it. With nauseating knowledge that the crew of the Foley
were intent on destroying a Starfleet vessel, even without their weapons online, even with a target
unable to resist, he keyed the internal comm.
"All hands, this is the Captain."
All on board the proud and brave vessel collectively held their breath, awaiting the captain's next
words. They came soon enough.
"Abandon ship."
* * * * *
The Warsaw was aflame, finally disabled by Sisko as she attempted to come about. The pulse phasers
gnawed at the dorsal shields until they failed, and then they began mercilessly pounding the hull of the
destroyer until, at long last, she shut down her power plant and drew to a halt, dormant and irreparably
damaged. Just a thousand kilometres behind them, the Rapier lay in pieces, devoid of life as a result of
Defiant's deadly accurate quantum torpedoes, not to mention an errant Warsaw photon, which had
struck the hull-buried port nacelle of the trim frigate.
Sisko steepled his fingers.
"Let's get back to the fray", he said. It was then that Nog noticed the new contacts on the aft sensor
array.
"Sir", he called intensely. "The Thunderchild is launching her escape pods."
Sisko stood from his chair and put his hand on the back of the chair that seated Dax.
"Get us back there, old man", he said. "Something tells me the Pah-wraiths don't spare escape pods."
* * * * *
The bow of the Foley dug into the saucer assembly of the Thunderchild with an ear-splitting crash. Her
momentum carried her through the stationary starship, but the hull could not stand the fantastically
large stresses placed upon it. The structural integrity field of the Foley collapsed, and the vessel ripped
through the entire saucer section of the powerful cruiser, tearing itself and the Thunderchild to pieces.
Then the torpedoes on both ships exploded, and the hulks were all but vaporised in the blast.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Coleman fielded the reports from the security staff by the minute as he crouched beneath Barricade
Echo, the final of the barrel-and-crate obstacles devised by him. There had been two sets of boarders
beamed aboard while the ventral shields had been down, and the internal sensors counted a grand total
of three hundred and eight left aboard. The security officers had done a superlative job in defending the
ship for so long, but now Barricade Delta had been abandoned, the defenders hurrying back to the final
line at Echo, awaiting the onslaught to follow. At his command were some thirty courageous men and
women who would sacrifice themselves for the ship, but he had hoped that there wouldn't be this many
of the enemy aboard.
He had tried force-fields as well as the cordons, in an attempt to halt their advance. However, the Pah-
wraith-controlled personnel seemed to have no reluctance in dying for the cause; he had heard how
groups of five of them would throw themselves against the force-fields until the emitters would
overload and die. By that stage, the five who had pummelled the field itself would have received
enough shocks to cook their internal organs, and they were left to die.
We're outnumbered by more than ten to one, he realised. No amount of bravery will stop them from
punching through Echo.
And yet Echo had to hold together. Behind the barrier was the entrance to the turboshaft and the
Jeffries Tubes, allowing access to the rest of the ship. There were no more blockades, no more security
officers. USS Mariner would be at the mercy of the invaders.
A landmine would be good about now.
That thought stopped Coleman in his tracks. He considered it, ran the numbers in his mind. He looked
over the top of the barrels at the corridor walls. Satisfied, he clicked his commbadge.
"Coleman to the Bridge."
"Go ahead, Patrick", came the immediate response from Captain Anthony. His terse tone betrayed his
level of stress as being very high. Coleman guessed the captain was in pursuit of the Tikriti, a suspicion
which seemed to be satisfied when he heard the muffled voice of Tasek in the background, mentioning
the Tikriti's shield grid.
"Captain, could you deactivate the structural integrity field around Deck Twelve, section A-45?"
"Deactivate…why would we—"
"Captain, I don't have time to explain", replied Coleman in an exasperated tone. "Now deactivate the
field!"
There was a lengthy silence, then finally:
"Field deactivated. I hope you know what you're doing."
Coleman didn't bother to respond. Instead he leapt to his feet and grabbed three photon grenades from
a knapsack beside one of the officers. Climbing over the barricade, he sprinted as quickly as he could
manage to the outward-facing bulkhead at section A-45. He set the photon grenades to remote
detonation. Then, using their magnetic clamps, he carefully placed them in equidistant positions down
the wall.
Thirteen Starfleet crewmen ran around the corner just ahead of A-45.
"Mr Coleman", yelled Crewman V'Nushku. "They're only about thirty seconds behind us!"
Coleman planted the last mine, then ran back towards Barricade Echo.
"Computer", he called. "Establish security force-field at section A-45."
There was a shrill hum just behind him as the force-field, glowing pale blue, appeared in front of the
grenades.
Coleman jumped over the barricade, knocking his ankle on the top crate, and fell on his face on the
other side. He raised his head, crimson trickles of blood pouring from his nose. He fumbled around for
the tactical PADD in the knapsack from where he had taken the grenades. He managed to grab it, and
he looked up over the top of the barrier.
Behind the force-field, a line of men from the boarding party rounded the corner. Soon they would be
alongside the grenades…
Coleman jabbed a button.
* * * * *
The three photon grenades exploded with a mighty force, killing at least twenty of the enemy who were
in the detonation circle. The blast smashed through the duranium alloy of the bulkhead, blowing it off
the ship and exposing the interior of Mariner to a vacuum. The security personnel at Barricade Echo
watched in awe, protected by the force-field, as several intruders, originally blown backwards by the
explosive blast, were now sucked bodily out of the battleship as the corridor equalised pressure with
the universe. After almost forty seconds, no more of the enemy were ejected through the gaping wound
in Mariner's side, as the pressure matched that outside the vessel.
Of the three hundred-strong boarders, roughly half remained, but, without oxygen, they quickly
asphyxiated in the barren corridor.
Five morose minutes later, Coleman spoke to the computer for the last time as a defender of Mariner
from the threat of the Pah-wraith away team.
"Computer, establish an emergency force-field around the hull breach at section A-45, and drop the
security force-field."
* * * * *
The phasers sliced again into Tikriti's rear shields, but she showed no signs of slowing. Behind her,
Mariner chased, a foxhound after the wily prey.
"Her aft shields are at nineteen percent, and she's lost impulse", Lane informed Anthony, who was now
standing beside Tanier at the helm. He could sense victory. All that stood in the way was the USS
Tikriti and the overall commander of the Pah-wraith plot to lay siege to Bajor.
Then Lane's voice rang out again, more shrilly and alarmed.
"Captain! Behind us!"
The Sacramento zoomed over the top of Mariner from astern. All at once she fired her loaded
torpedoes, and jettisoned the remainder, on top of the Starfleet ship. Nine photon torpedoes detonated
against the dorsal shields, punching through them and permeating to the warp core.
* * * * *
The USS Defiant rolled past the Mariner, now slowing to a stop and venting drive plasma as a result of
the immense explosion as a result of nine matter/antimatter warheads igniting just above the ship. As
the Sovereign-class passed to the port side, the escaping USS Sacramento's stern quarter filled the
screen. The destroyer had snuck up on Mariner by running in her impulse wake, but Sisko was well
aware of that tactic, and, by poetic justice, was about to use the same tactic to make them pay.
"Colonel, do you have a lock?", he asked the Bajoran. She nodded grimly. His lips curled into a wicked
dark smile.
"Fire everything we have."
The crew of the Sacramento didn't even have time to react to the threat. The first they knew of the
presence of the Defiant was when a quantum torpedo punched through the minimal aft shields and
blew away half a nacelle pylon. The barrage of pulse phaser and torpedo strikes following it
methodically tore through the Norway-class ship, and in a matter of seconds she exploded in a brilliant
ball of light and metallic alloys.
* * * * *
"Captain, we're facing a core breach down here. If we don't eject the warp core, the ship will be
destroyed!"
Henry Davies, the chief engineer of the Mariner, sounded frantic over the comm., but Anthony
reasoned that he had a right to be. The surprise attack from the Sacramento had destroyed several key
containment systems, causing the warp core to overload. If the core remained on board, the resulting
explosion would shred the ship from the inside out.
"Understood, Chief", he replied. "Standby."
Ramelow turned to his captain.
"Sir, I have a suggestion."
Without waiting for Anthony's acknowledgement, he continued.
"What if we use the core as a weapon against the Tikriti? She's dead in the water just ahead of us, but
her weapons are still online, and they can still do a lot of damage. Compare that to us for a moment; all
of our weapons systems are inoperable. Voyager's busy picking up Thunderchild escape pods, and the
Defiant is about to do the same."
Anthony thought about it. It was a scheme which he would bet Javiega Brinna would have referred to
as 'reckless'. Nonetheless, Mariner's pride was on the line, and, from what he had learnt from scans,
both Voyager and Defiant would not survive much more damage, a commodity which the Tikriti,
though immobile, could serve up with interest.
He nodded.
"Lon, take us on a pass three kilometres above the Tikriti. Henry, prepare to eject the core on my
command."
Mariner, still trailing a thick purple stream of plasma, eased ahead at one-third impulse power, closing
the distance between herself and her nemesis. The Tikriti's phasers blazed through the space between
them, impacting with the forward shields, draining them further. On a couple of occasions Tanier
almost instinctively took evasive action, but a steadying hand on his shoulder from his captain steeled
him in his deed.
The white-grey hull of the ship glided above the crippled Excelsior-class vessel, still the backbone of
the fleet after almost a hundred years.
"Now!"
As Anthony gave the order, in Main Engineering, Lieutenant Henry Davies punched a coloured panel
on his console. As he did so, the great tower of energy that is the warp core rapidly slid through an
opened hatch on the belly of the ship. Mariner soared away as the core's momentum carried it towards
the Tikriti. Then, with an almighty blast, it blew up. The Tikriti's structural integrity had been
compromised by Mariner's phasers beforehand, but the combustive energy from the core slammed the
Pah-wraith's vessel with such force that half the saucer section was ripped off the ship.
* * * * *
On the Bridge, Admiral Courtenay lay on the floor, covered in debris from the walls and ceiling. Simon
Anthony's voice suddenly erupted from the Bridge speakers through a communications link which had
somehow been activated in the maelstrom.
"Admiral, this is Captain Anthony. If you wish to proffer your surrender, we will accept. You've lost.
You can't get to the Celestial Temple now; why resist?"
Courtenay struggled to his feet, and shuffled painfully to the tactical console, beneath which the dead
body of the female possessed officer was huddled. He keyed in a few sequences.
"You underestimate me, Anthony", he said with a horrible laugh. At once it filled Anthony with apprehensive dread.
"Was it not Khan Noonien Singh who told Kirk, 'with my last breath I spit at thee'? I am about to emulate Khan, Captain, and you just wasted your warp core."
He punched a final button.
"Dutonic torpedo self-destruct activated", said the computer. "Detonation in one minute, thirty seconds."
* * * * *
"Shit", Anthony muttered, one of the few times he had ever sworn in the presence of his crew. He patted Tanier's shoulder.
"Get us out of here the best you can, Lon", he said. He turned to Lane.
"Hail Defiant and Voyager."
The familiar faces of Sisko and Janeway appeared on the split screen.
"Captains, I thank you for your fighting spirit today", Anthony said, with sincerity that even surprised
him. "The dutonic torpedoes on the Tikriti are about to go up. I suggest you get the Hell out of here
once you've got the Thunderchild survivors."
Sisko raised an eyebrow.
"We've got all the survivors there are to get. But what's going to happen to you?"
"We can't outrun this, Captain", Anthony replied. "We'll divert all power to the shields, and hopefully
we'll ride it out."
"The Hell you will", Janeway interjected. "Get your crew ready to beam over to Voyager."
"There isn't time, Kathryn. You're just going to have to love me and leave me", he replied, keeping a
steady voice despite his emotional state. "Now go, both of you. Or do I have to fire on you to get you
out of here?"
Both the captains on the commlink grimaced, but the channel closed, and Mariner's sensors reported
them jumping to warp.
"Time to detonation", requested Ramelow. His normally cheery face had gone very pale.
"Ten seconds", replied Tasek.
"Shields up", ordered the captain, in what he believed would be his last ever command. "Divert power
from everything you can."
* * * * *
The USS Tikriti was vaporised before it had a chance to burst into flame as the immensely powerful
warheads burst into space. Nearby, the carcass of the Sacramento suffered a similar fate a split second
later. The shockwave travelled almost nine hundred thousand kilometres. Then everything was silent.
EPILOGUE
"Anything on sensors, Ensign?", asked Sisko, desperately hoping for some sign that Mariner was still
in one piece.
"No sir", replied the Ferengi dejectedly, shaking his head. "The residual moratillium oxide is still
reflecting our scans.
Dax spun in her chair, to look on the saddened face of her dear friend.
"Benjamin, it's been five days now", she said. "Face it, they're probably dead by now, even if they did
survive the explosion.
"Besides, without sensors, a search across the volume of space where that ship could be will take
weeks."
Sisko looked to his shoes.
"Perhaps you're right, old man", he conceded. He sucked in a deep breath.
"Nog, signal Voyager, Darling and Hokkaido that the search is postponed indefinitely."
* * * * *
"You heard what they said, Kathryn", Chakotay said gently to Janeway. "They are probably gone, but
the search is only postponed, not cancelled completely."
Janeway shook her head.
"I'm not ready to give up yet, Chakotay", she insisted. "We can still find them."
She was interrupted by a beeping from Paris' helm console.
"Captain", he said, "I'm picking up a weak Starfleet transponder signal, bearing zero-five-zero mark
three, range forty thousand kilometres."
Janeway visibly perked.
"Take us there, Mr Paris."
It only took a matter of minutes for Voyager to traverse the distance, but to Janeway, it seemed an
eternity. She heaved a sigh when Tuvok called from tactical.
"I have a visual."
"On screen."
The screen flickered as a result of the moratillium oxide interference, but the computer automatically
compensated.
Janeway rose from her seated position in unison with her First Officer. She stared at the view ahead of
the ship.
A sea of Starfleet-issue escape pods dotted the area of space. Janeway clapped her hands in joy.
"Mr Kim, beam the survivors to Cargobay Two and Sickbay. I'm going down to see who we're
bringing aboard. Oh, and contact the Defiant and give them our coordinates."
Kim beamed.
"Yes ma'am."
* * * * *
The door of the cargo bay whirred as it opened, and Janeway looked into an expanse of tired, bruised
and war-weary faces, all complemented by their dirty and torn Starfleet uniforms. She was about to try
and squeeze inside the large but crowded room, when a man sidestepped from behind a wall, narrowly
missing a few toes. He smiled faintly.
"Permission to come aboard?", he requested, his face grimy and dark with grease, soot and bruises.
Despite the widespread discolouration and unpleasant odour emanating from him, probably due to the
lack of sonic showers or a change of uniform aboard the escape pod, Janeway embraced him without a
second thought and kissed him on the lips.
"Granted, Captain Anthony", she whispered.
* * * * *
The door chime rang through the guest quarters. Drying his hair after an indulgent bath, Patrick Coleman opened the portal. Simon Anthony stood on the other side.
"Captain", Coleman said with a spark of joy. "I haven't seen you for quite a few days."
Anthony shook his head wistfully.
"I've been locked in my quarters. I needed to write some reports for Starfleet."
He opened his hands.
"Chief O'Brien, Doctor Bashir, Chakotay, Kathryn and myself were planning to have a get-together
this evening, and I was wondering if you'd like to join us."
Coleman shook his head.
"I wouldn't want to intrude…"
"You wouldn't", assured Anthony. "Besides", he added with a sly grin, "I believe you owe me a beer."
Coleman returned the grin.
"Okay", he said, caving in. "I would like to know though, exactly where I'm getting you this beer
from."
"Oh, you'll love it", Anthony promised him. "It's a neat little lounge I know. It's called Vic's."
Our makeshift fleet, which has been dubbed 'Task Force Bajor' by the crew of the Defiant, is now
on course to intercept the enemy fleet. Our best estimates, computed by Patrick Coleman, who has
just been released from Sickbay, indicate that we will meet the Tikriti and Co. in the next five hours.
We are currently at yellow alert, pending a sensor contact of the enemy.
Captain's Log, Stardate 54978
After being picked up by Voyager, I was able to give Starfleet the coordinates of Mariner, which we
abandoned after life- support began failing soon after she survived the dutonic blast. I am told by the
captain of the Hokkaido, the first ship to rendezvous with my adrift command, that she is not only
salvageable, but also safe to tow at warp. This doesn't look like a job for Kalak Morkal on McKinlay
Station, though; Lieutenant Davies' best estimate says that Mariner won't put to space again for at
least another six months, for she will need extensive repairs at Utopia Planitia to patch up the
myriad of holes, cracks and other damage. She will also need a complete systems overhaul, as the
main computer was damaged beyond repair.
On a brighter note, Admiral Paris has granted us eight weeks' shore-leave. I plan to spend at least
the first week on Deep Space Nine.
search