Fluid Solutions

The Alsea shuddered again under another volley of plasma beam fire and Jureth gripped the sides of the command chair tightly.

"Shields at sixty percent, enemy shields at eighty five percent" Cat reported

Suddenly she practically shouted because she couldn't believe what she was seeing

"Captain, there's another ship coming in! It's one of ours! Akira Class, USS Spectre. They're hailing Sir."

"This is Captain Summers. We're here to offer assistance, but it's your lead, Captain. Just tell us what to target."

"Captain Summers, this is Captain Oseno and are we ever glad to see you. Target is the vessel at our three o'clock, it's an Undine vessel of unknown make. They destroyed one our shuttles and made off with another. Near as I can tell they want the containment effort to fail so we will be destroyed. I'd prefer we don't let them succeed."

"You got it, Captain," replied Summers and after closing the channel, addressed his senior officers before him on the Bridge. "Let's send out the rest of our fighters, give them something else to shoot at. Deploy the DYCEP and go in dark. Come around their starboard beam and hit them from behind while the Alsea has their attention from the fore."

"Aye Sir," came various replies as the orders were carried out.

Rogers spoke up. "Captain, there may be another way around fighting if we can make it work."

They may have outnumbered the ship, but they didn't appear to have the edge, so Summers was open to any alternative suggestion. "I'm listening."

"Well we know that they are highly xenophobic, despite regularly assuming our form, and want our space to fall because they're paranoid about an attack. They think the Azimuth Horizon will do it for them, but there's no reason to directly assume that their fluidic space would be safe. If we could somehow convince them of that, through some sort of evidence it won't be safe, then perhaps they'd even be willing to help us to stop it."

Summers nodded. "Maybe we can't prove it, but there's a chance we may not have to. We have the technology from Voyager to open a portal into fluidic space, correct?"

"If we do that, we'll just enrage them further..." Rogers answered, but was cut off by the Captain.

"Yes or no is sufficient, Commander."

"Yes, Sir."

"How is it done, and can we do it with just the Spectre?" Summers asked.

Rogers moved to the nearest console. "Computer, pull up ships logs, USS Voyager, circa 51000. Search for terms 'fluidic space' and 'ship modification'."

The computer displayed a series of text-based entries which were transcripts of Captain Janeway's logs all dealing with both fluidic space and modifications made to Voyager. With a quick scan he found what he was looking for.

"Here it is," said Rogers at last. "Seven of Nine modified the navigational deflector to generate a series of graviton beams that opened a specific artificial singularity. This singularity was an interdimensional rift to fluidic space. However, many of Voyager's systems were actually a more modern design than our current ones, and I'm not sure we can pull it off."

"What about the Alsea?" Summers asked.

"They should be able to make the same modifications. The Prometheus-class is in many ways designed off of the Intrepid-class. The best bet would be the Lotus, of course, but out of the two of us, the Alsea would be better."

"Open an encrypted channel and send them this data."

"Aye Sir, channel open, data sent."

"Captain Oseno. We're making our way around to flank them, but we have another idea that may get their attention even more and possibly make them stop fighting. Have your engineer take a look at the modifications we sent. Would that be doable?" Summers asked.

Jureth looked down at Ensign Wynn who nodded "receiving data Sir."

"Send it to Command Lire down in engineering."

"Aye Sir."

Jureth then addressed the Spectre

"Understood Spectre, I will have Commander Lire get on that immediately."

Unfortunately, they didn't have the luxury to just wait for Commander Lire to study the details. The Undine vessel continued its full-on assault on the Alsea as the Spectre deftly and quietly snuck around the rear of the large ship.

"Can we get a lock on their weapons systems?" Summers asked.

"Sorry Sir, I'm having trouble isolating any of the systems," responded Tritter. "The vessel composition is too unusual."

"Very well, fire on their aft port, full spread. Let's see what we can get," Summers said.

As the phaser fire flashed out on the viewscreen it darted between the various fighters swarming the ship and impacted the Undine's shields one at a time. It was clear that Tritter was having to manually target each blast to avoid hitting the fighters, the pilots of which all implicitly put their trust in him.

The Undine ship was not as discerning and fired back with plasma beams that burned through two of the fighters that got caught in the crossfire.

"Shields at ninety-three percent, Captain," reported the Tactical Officer.

"Rogers to Alpha Squadron leader, stay on their starboard side," ordered the First Officer.

"Full spread of photon torpedoes," ordered the Captain.

Four of the light-emitting projectiles hurled out of the Spectre and partially impacted the Undine shields while also exploding on the hull close to its engines. It was enough that they shut down and the ship's movement became just a drifting motion in the direction it was previously headed: toward the Alsea.