Time To Take Action

Stephanie walked out of the conference room to the bridge crew working quickly at the tasks she had ordered. She looked at her science officer, "Have you completed the long range scans?" she asked calmly as she took her place in the center chair. She knew that the probe would be next on her agenda if the scans showed them that they were alone.

 

"Give me one minute to get the power transferred," the Chief Engineer yelled instead. "Almost ready. Okay, the sensors should be up to maximum now."

"Scanning now," the Science Chief said. "Scans are coming in much clearer now, but that ship and the new metal are the only things out of the ordinary that I'm picking up."

"Intruder alert!" yelled the Security Chief. "Two beings just beamed aboard in engineering. They're huge. They came from just off our port bow; there must be a cloaked ship there!"

 

Stephanie reacted instinctively, "Red Alert!" She tapped her com badge, "Security teams report to Main Engineering, secure all critical ship areas. This is not a drill." She opened the secured locker beside the captains chair and retrieved the hand phaser. Standing she turned to the Ops officer, "Get me shields!" She looked to the security officer, "Get whoever that is off my ship."

 

She turned to face the view-screen, "Open a channel, all subspace frequencies." She waited for the comm officer to acknowledge before speaking, "This is the U.S.S. Renegade to the vessel off our bow. Your actions are a perceived as a provocation. Please respond immediately, we do not wish for this incident to turn into a conflict."

 

"You started a conflict when you invaded the Homecloud," came a deep, raspy voice over the comm channel. "Now we will ensure that you don't return to your people and tell them of us."

As this message ended, another came in from the security teams in Engineering.

"Stun is having no effect on these things. They look like grizzly bears with armor. We've distracted them from damaging any systems, but I don't know how long we can hold them."

 

 

She rushed over to the Comm station, “Re-open that channel… To unidentified vessel, we apologize for intruding into your territory. We did not know that this are of space was claimed by anyone and believed there to be a ship in distress in the cloud and were attempting to assist. We are explorers and we mean you no harm. Our mission is to seek out new life and civilizations to make peaceful contact. If we are not welcome we will turn around and leave you to yourselves.” As she finished she nodded, signaling the Comm officer to send the message out to them again before her head raised to look at the Tactical Officer, “Status report.”

 

As soon as the Captain had sent her message, the vessel in the cloud came to life and began speeding towards the Renegade. At the same time, an identical vessel appeared just off the bow and began firing.

"The good news is that our shields are back up," the Tactical Chief reported. "Unfortunately, they managed to beam aboard more troops."

As if on cue, a huge crash came from the conference room as the doors began to buckle.

 

She turned to face the conference room door, raised her phaser and tapped her comm badge, "All hands, prepare to repel boarders. Stun settings appear to be ineffective. Use of lethal force is authorized." She tapped the badge again to end the transmission and set her own weapon to maximum. Her next words were directed at the Helm officer, "Get us out of here, Go to warp."

 

"Yes sir," replied the helmsman as he turned to his console. The rest of the bridge crew was still staring at the conference room door as the ship warped out of the cloud. "We're clear of the cloud."

"We're not clear of anything yet," stated the Security Chief as another bang came from the door. "We've still got intruders on our ship. And that one is one hit away from bursting onto the bridge."

 

 

“Seal off the conference room with a level 10 force-field.” Stephanie ordered, her phaser still trained on the door, prepared to fire should the force-field fail to keep the creature at bay. “Send an emergency signal to Starfleet. Let them know we’re under attack by a force of unknown strength following a failed first-contact event. Transmit the results of our scans with the signal.” She took a ragged breath, “Are the aliens perusing?”

 

"Level 10 forcefield is up," reported the Security Chief. "That should hold them for quite a while. And no, their ships have not entered warp."

Just then a gasping voice came through the combadge.

"Sir...we stopped one of them, but...but two more came up behind us. They've taken Engineering."

The ship suddenly dropped out of warp as the main power came offline. Emergency power kicked on immediately, returning lights and life support. The brief second that power was down was enough for the creature in the conference room to burst through onto the bridge. It stood well over six feet tall and weighed twice as much as anyone else on the bridge. Many of the bridge officers cowered and a couple even jumped away.

 

Stephanie aimed and fired her phaser. She held a sustained beam of her weapons maximum output on the creature, more than enough energy to vaporize most known species.

 

The bear-like creature stopped after a few seconds of Stephanie's phaser burst; it was clearly feeling pain. Just as it seemed as if it was finished, a second creature charged out of the conference room, knocking the first out of the way. The new creature turned and jumped on the Science Chief, swatting  her with his claws. The first creature, now clear of the phaser charge, took his chance to charge towards the Security Chief.

 

Stephanie reset her phaser as she took a few steps back. She saw her XO preparing his own side arm, "Fire Together." She said, the stress of the situation clearly showing in her voice. The two aimed at the creature charging the security officer and fired. "Pick up your weapons!" She shouted to the rest of the bridge officers, hoping that they would get the point and coordinate their fire so she could at least secure the bridge...even if only for a few moments.

 

The Security Chief leaped over his console to avoid the oncoming creature. He pulled his phaser as he landed and took aim alongside the Captain and XO. The other officers on the bridge all followed the Captain's example and opened fire on the creatures. It took several seconds, but eventually both creatures went down.

The Security Chief moved quickly back to his console to check on the remaining boarding parties.

"The bridge is clear, but Engineering is completely lost," he reported. "There are two boarders there and four others roaming the corridors. We've lost at least a dozen officers so far. To make matters worse, the two enemy vessels entered warp while we were fighting here and they will be upon us momentarily."

 

 

As soon as the creatures went down she rushed to the science officer to see if she could do anything to help. She listened to the status report and shook her head before heading to the helm control station, “I’ll take it from here Ensign.” She told the Conn officer. She sat down and tapped the console putting her on speakers throughout the ship.

 

“All hands, this is the captain speaking. I am ordering an immediate evacuation. All hands are to report to the launch bays. If you encounter the intruders, focus your weapons fire on them. Evacuation procedure is in effect. Get to the shuttles and runabouts. As soon as you clear the ship enter warp and set course for Starbase 10.”

 

She killed the channel and began seeing what she could do what emergency power at the helm. As she started maneuvering Renegade she spoke to her XO without looking, “Commander, get the crew off the ship. I’ll buy you whatever time I can by giving them a target and hopefully a little distraction with whatever is left in the phaser banks.”

 

"Aye sir," the XO responded without hesitation as he began moving to the door. When he noticed that the other bridge officers were hesitating to leave he turned and said sternly, "You heard the Captain. It is time for us to leave."

That last order was all that the crew needed to get them moving; everyone stepped onto the turbolift. The XO boarded the lift last. He stared at the Captain, nodding just before the doors closed. The bridge officers soon met the rest of the crew at the shuttlebay. The last group of crewmen came running around the corner followed closely by two of the creatures.

The XO turned to the Security Chief and said, "Chief, I need to distract these things until the shuttles have launched. Will you join me?"

The Chief simply nodded and pulled out his phaser. The two officers fired at the attackers, which got their attention even if it didn't hurt them much They fell back a few feet and fired again, then turned and ran away from the shuttlebay with the creatures close behind.

As the last of the shuttles departed and sped away, the two enemy vessels dropped out of warp on both sides of the Renegade. They quickly saw that their boarding parties had done their job and dropped the ships shields. Each vessel erupted with more than enough disruptor and torpedo fire to destroy the Renegade two times over.

 

 

Staphanie returned her XO’s nod as the turbolift closed. She took a deep breath as she set to work at the helm. In seconds she had tied in external sensors and saw the two ships coming at her at warp speed. Another few taps and she had internal sensors, specifically the main shuttle bay. Next was weapon control.

 

She was disappointed to note that the phaser banks had almost no charge left in them and sighed, “Ok.”

 

Quickly she formulated a plan and projected the course of the closest ship and mapped out where she believed it most likely to drop out of warp. She shook her head as the Klingon saying ‘It is a good day to die’ went through her mind as she diverted all the power from the phaser banks into impulse engines. She sapped the emergency batteries to give what boost to structural integrity she could and waited as she monitored the situation. She counted each shuttle and member of the crew that left the ship. She knew the standard compliment was 150 and wasn’t naive enough to think that every one of them would make it.

 

As she watched shuttle after shuttle launch and immediately go to warp she used maneuvering thrusters to drift the ship closer and closer to the path of the closest incoming ship. She saw the last shuttle leave and just as it warped out her attackers dropped from warp. She was grateful that just over 100 of her crew had made it off the ship. Whoever was alive and still on board would unfortunately share her fate…but if she planned her move correctly….the shuttles would be safe. As soon as she saw the ships drop their warp power, signaling them falling to impulse she charged the impulse engines to full giving the Renegade a violent burst of speed. The ships fell out of warp, the closer of the two was firing point blank at her.

 

She fired the ships thrusters to take Renegade into an evasive spin. She knew it wouldn’t be very effective, but it didn’t need to save the ship for more than a second. The impulse engines pushed the hulk of Renegade into the path of the disruptor fire, aimed right at the nearby ship. She smiled as the enemy vessel started slowly moving to avoid her collision, “Let’s see how tough that ship is…” She said under her breath as she felt the first of the disruptor shots tear into the hull. She was at full impulse and the ship started to buckle and shake violently with the impact from the incoming weapons fire. She had evaded enough of the first volley to keep the ship together for the seconds she needed.

 

She took her hands off the panel and braced herself instinctively right as Renegade slammed full-force into the enemy ship. She was thrown from her seat and flew forward into the viewscreen. The impact and explosion would be enough to completely disable the enemy ship, Renegade would be completely destroyed, but her plan had worked. And she knew that the other ship had already fired…the torpedoes would be guided to the remnants of Renegade still locked into the hull from her collision. In effect, the second ship would only damage her sister ship eve more. If they cared anything for their brethren they would render aid to the soon-to-be destroyed vessel instead of following after the shuttles.