This is intended as a ST: Gibraltar short story... well, certainly shorter than the ones I've written so far. 
Thanks go to TheLoneRedshirt for the use of Captain Akinola and the crew of the stalwart ship USS Bluefin.
USS Bluefin
Sector 21509
Alliance Occupied Cardassian Territory
“Code One-Alpha-Zero!” Commander Inga Strauss announced from where she examined the Ops board over Lt. Commander T’Ser’s shoulder, “Ship in distress.”
Captain Joseph B. Akinola sat forward in his command chair, suddenly imbued with a sense of urgency after days of relative quietude on patrol in occupied Cardassian space. “Specifics,” he ordered.
T’Ser answered promptly, “It’s from the starship Gibraltar, sir. Records show she’s tasked to escort duty, one of four ships sitting watchdog on a convoy of freighters bearing relief supplies to Cardassian colonies in Sector 21508.”
Strauss resumed her seat, initiating a Level-4 diagnostic on all ship’s defensive systems. “Stats on the Gibraltar?” she inquired of T’Ser.
The Vulcan quirked a dubious eyebrow as the starship’s information scrolled across her display. “Upgraded Constitution-class, ma’am, reactivated and refit during the war. Moderate armament, maximum speed rated at Warp 8.2.”
“Can you say ‘sitting duck?’ muttered Senior Chief Solly Brin, a burly red-skinned Orion, from an auxiliary station aft.
“What’s her situation?” Akinola pressed.
T’Ser delved into the encoded substrate of the distress call, decipherable only to those in possession of the proper Starfleet encryption matrices. “It appears she was sent to investigate a suspicious distress call from a Kriosian freighter in the E’Mdifarr Belt some .7 lightyears off the convoy’s course.” She paused, gleaning additional information from the brief text message. She turned, fixing a serious look on the captain. “They’ve been ambushed, sir. At present, they’re fighting four ships that look to be cargo haulers modified for combat, and a number of smaller fighters and corsairs.”
“Set an intercept course for those coordinates at maximum warp and engage,” Akinola ordered, watching the starfield on the main viewer shift as the Albacore-class Border Cutter came about and engaged her faster-than-light engines. “Then send an encrypted burst message… let them know we’re on our way.”
“Aye, sir.” T’Ser acknowledged as she carried out the order. She glanced back at Akinola, “Sir, what about their fellow convoy escort ships? Wouldn’t they be able to respond more quickly?”
Akinola nodded somberly, “They could, Commander, but they won’t. Gibraltar is buying time for the convoy to get away. That’s their job.”
“Bait, sir?”
“Precisely, Mr. T’Ser.”
*****
USS Gibraltar
E’Mdifarr Asteroid Belt, E’Mdifarr system
Sector 21508
Alliance Occupied Cardassian Territory
“Shields down to fifty-three percent!” shouted Master Chief Tark from the Tactical station over the crash of another barrage against Gibraltar’s shields.
“Helm, tighter turns.” Captain Donald Sandhurst urged from the command chair, watching the starship slalom between enormous chunks of asteroidal debris that loomed large in the viewer.
They’d come to the asteroid belt in response to a distress call from a freighter claiming to be under attack by insurgent vessels. Though suspicious that an emergency should occur so close to the path of the convoy, the crew had at first sensed nothing out of the ordinary as the handful of armed shuttles attacking the freighter scattered upon their arrival.
But as soon as Ramirez’s away team had beamed over, all hell had broken loose. The damaged freighter had been a ruse, in fact the ship had been retrofit to carry capital weapons and shield generators, making the humble looking cargo hauler into a formidable warship.
The supposedly routed fighters had returned with a vengeance, accompanied by three more of the faux-freighters, a force clearly capable of inflicting great damage on the unsuspecting convoy. So, the Gibraltar had fled deeper into the asteroid field, drawing the pirate vessels into a pursuit to ensure that the isolated starship would not have the opportunity to call for help or warn the convoy.
“Communications?” Sandhurst asked.
“Still being jammed,” answered Lt. Commander Pell Ojana, the ship’s Bajoran second officer and diplomatic specialist.
Looking over to his young science officer, Sandhurst inquired, “Status of the IFEW?”
The ebony skinned Zulu, Ensign Kuenre Shanthi, clung to his console as Ensign Brett Lightner’s wild maneuvering at the helm pushed the inertial dampeners to their limits. Shanthi finally found his voice, answering, “The Ionization Field Effect Weapon is primed and ready for deployment, Captain.”
“Good, just make sure all our new friends are in close proximity when we set it off.”
From Ops, Lieutenant JG Olivia Juneau piped up, “Two of the freighters are lagging behind, sir. We’ll have to either slow down or double back to maneuver them in range of the device.”
“Mr. Lightner, hook us around smartly, one-hundred eighty degree turn beneath that big monster bearing 173-mark-008” Sandhurst commanded.
Beaming like a kid in a candy store, Lightner responded in the affirmative, throwing the old workhorse into a tight turn, utilizing the gravitational field of the asteroid to sling-shot the starship back in the opposite direction of their pursuers.
As Tark lay down a fusillade of photon torpedo and phaser fire, Juneau opened the aft shuttlebay doors, exposing the large cylindrical device in its launch cradle that now monopolized most of the bay’s space.
*****
Kriosian-flagged freighter SS Draskaar
E’Mdifarr Asteroid Belt, E’Mdifarr system
Sector 21508
Alliance Occupied Cardassian Territory
Gibraltar’s away team sat in sullen silence, held at gunpoint by members of the freighter’s crew. Two Humans and a Zaranite kept watch over the Starfleeters as the freighter shuddered under fire from the starship as well as the stress of High-g maneuvers within the asteroid field.
“This sucks,” Commander Liana Ramirez announced definitively but quietly, her small frame dwarfed by the enormous Bolian lieutenant seated next to her on the deck of the cargo bay.
They’d been surrounded and captured almost instantaneously upon beaming onboard the supposedly stricken cargo ship. Their captors, whoever they were, had done an admirable job of feigning damage through the creative use of localized subspace fields and thoron emissions.
On the other side of Ramirez sat the Gibraltar’s El Aurian chief security/tactical officer. Leaning in towards the first officer with an ironic smirk gracing his deceptively youthful feature, Pava Lar’ragos chimed in, “Would this be a bad time to reflect on how your security chief voted for transporting stun grenades over prior to beaming in?”
Ramirez scratched idly at her temple with her middle finger, “Bite me, Pava” she offered in a subdued voice.
“Providing we survive this little excursion, sir, I’d be only too happy to oblige.”
Ramirez rolled her eyes as the ship’s chief medical officer, Lieutenant JG Issara Taiee grinned despite the seriousness of their situation.
“We can’t just sit here, Commander” rumbled the large Bolian engineer, Ashok.
“For the time being, Lieutenant, we have a dearth of options,” Ramirez sighed.
“Enough talking!” barked one of their jailers, emphasizing his point by waving the barrel of his Klingon disruptor rifle at the group.
She and the others obligingly fell silent, all of them still contemplating some kind of escape strategy.
The ship rocked again, the sensation accompanied by the screech and hollow thump of a hull breach somewhere nearby.
A moment later, an Andorian in smudged coveralls walked briskly into the compartment, escorted by two more armed Humans. Regarding the captured Starfleet personnel coolly, he asked, “Which one of you is the engineer?”
Lt. Ashok began to rise and was startled when Lar’ragos jumped to his feet. “That’d be me.”
The Andorian looked at Lar’ragos skeptically, then gestured to Ashok. “Then why is he getting up?”
“Him?” Lar’ragos looked to the Bolian, “Look at him, the big bruiser’s the security officer. He’s just trying to protect me.”
Ashok reluctantly resumed his seat, and Ramirez patted his arm in silent encouragement.
Lar’ragos offered the XO a discrete wink as he turned back toward the Andorian, whom he presumed to be the freighter’s engineer. “Can I have my equipment?”
Looking to one of the guards, the Andorian dispatched the man to collect the engineering kit Ashok had brought over. Holding on to the briefcase-sized kit himself, the Andorian gestured for Lar’ragos to follow, flanked by the two armed men.
Moving down a narrow dimly lit corridor, the four arrived at a dilapidated looking turbolift car. Entering the turbocar, the Andorian stepped to the side to allow Lar’ragos and his escorts room. The Andorian thought idly that it was strange for the Starfleet engineer to be wearing a disturbing little smile.
“What’s so damn funny?” the Andorian asked hotly as the doors slid closed.
Lar’ragos said nothing, but his eyes narrowed and the smile grew wider.
*****
USS Bluefin
En route to Sector 21508, Warp 9.2
Alliance Occupied Cardassian Territory
With over an hour before their rendezvous with the besieged Gibraltar, Akinola had moved to his ready room in an attempt to gauge the likelihood that Bluefin would find survivors upon their arrival.
Taking a seat at his desk, he called up the general specs of the old Connie, reflecting that Starfleet had done an admirable job in restoring the ship, taking so much time in fact that she’d slipped from her drydock moorings only after the end of the Dominion War.
Her captain, Sandhurst, had been an engineer of some renown who’d somehow been talked into accepting a captaincy. That was the thing about long wars, Akinola mused, they created many opportunities for upward mobility through the ranks. Scanning the bullet points of the Gibraltar’s recent history, Akinola noted that Sandhurst had occupied the center seat for less than a year, but his ship was already gaining a reputation for finding itself in the eye of the storm. Having cut his teeth on the fiasco at the Cardassian colony of Lakesh in the Crolsa system, Sandhurst had followed months of routine escort missions by joining up with Jean-Luc Picard’s ill-fated mission of mercy into the Briar Patch.
Despite their widely divergent career paths, Akinola felt a growing sense of kinship for the man who, like him, commanded what many saw as an outdated vessel fated to carry out the kinds of mundane missions that nonetheless kept the Federation functioning.
Switching off his terminal, Akinola vowed that if at all possible, he would deliver Sandhurst and his crew safely from this most recent trouble. ‘We old bucket captains have to stick together, after all.’
*****
Kriosian-flagged freighter SS Draskaar
E’Mdifarr Asteroid Belt, E’Mdifarr system
Sector 21508
Alliance Occupied Cardassian Territory
The doors parted to reveal a scene of absolute carnage. Lar’ragos limped out of the turbocar, holding a rifle in each hand. His face was cut and bruised, but the smile remained. He spat wetly, dislodging the severed Andorian antennae that had been clutched in his teeth.
He emerged from the shadows behind the two guards watching over the remaining away team members. Triggering both rifles simultaneously, Lar’ragos sent hyper-kinetic streams of pulsed plasma into the backs of the men, turning both into smoking piles of charred flesh and fragmented bone.
Rising to her feet, Ramirez caught one of the rifles out of the air as Lar’ragos threw it to her. Looking the El Aurian up and down, she shook her head in a mixture of disbelief and resignation. “Do I want to know, Pava?”
“Almost certainly not, sir” he replied gravely.
Hefting the rifle, Ramirez motioned for the others to get to their feet. “We'll need to get to the bridge on this heap.”
*****
Thanks go to TheLoneRedshirt for the use of Captain Akinola and the crew of the stalwart ship USS Bluefin.USS Bluefin
Sector 21509
Alliance Occupied Cardassian Territory
“Code One-Alpha-Zero!” Commander Inga Strauss announced from where she examined the Ops board over Lt. Commander T’Ser’s shoulder, “Ship in distress.”
Captain Joseph B. Akinola sat forward in his command chair, suddenly imbued with a sense of urgency after days of relative quietude on patrol in occupied Cardassian space. “Specifics,” he ordered.
T’Ser answered promptly, “It’s from the starship Gibraltar, sir. Records show she’s tasked to escort duty, one of four ships sitting watchdog on a convoy of freighters bearing relief supplies to Cardassian colonies in Sector 21508.”
Strauss resumed her seat, initiating a Level-4 diagnostic on all ship’s defensive systems. “Stats on the Gibraltar?” she inquired of T’Ser.
The Vulcan quirked a dubious eyebrow as the starship’s information scrolled across her display. “Upgraded Constitution-class, ma’am, reactivated and refit during the war. Moderate armament, maximum speed rated at Warp 8.2.”
“Can you say ‘sitting duck?’ muttered Senior Chief Solly Brin, a burly red-skinned Orion, from an auxiliary station aft.
“What’s her situation?” Akinola pressed.
T’Ser delved into the encoded substrate of the distress call, decipherable only to those in possession of the proper Starfleet encryption matrices. “It appears she was sent to investigate a suspicious distress call from a Kriosian freighter in the E’Mdifarr Belt some .7 lightyears off the convoy’s course.” She paused, gleaning additional information from the brief text message. She turned, fixing a serious look on the captain. “They’ve been ambushed, sir. At present, they’re fighting four ships that look to be cargo haulers modified for combat, and a number of smaller fighters and corsairs.”
“Set an intercept course for those coordinates at maximum warp and engage,” Akinola ordered, watching the starfield on the main viewer shift as the Albacore-class Border Cutter came about and engaged her faster-than-light engines. “Then send an encrypted burst message… let them know we’re on our way.”
“Aye, sir.” T’Ser acknowledged as she carried out the order. She glanced back at Akinola, “Sir, what about their fellow convoy escort ships? Wouldn’t they be able to respond more quickly?”
Akinola nodded somberly, “They could, Commander, but they won’t. Gibraltar is buying time for the convoy to get away. That’s their job.”
“Bait, sir?”
“Precisely, Mr. T’Ser.”
*****
USS Gibraltar
E’Mdifarr Asteroid Belt, E’Mdifarr system
Sector 21508
Alliance Occupied Cardassian Territory
“Shields down to fifty-three percent!” shouted Master Chief Tark from the Tactical station over the crash of another barrage against Gibraltar’s shields.
“Helm, tighter turns.” Captain Donald Sandhurst urged from the command chair, watching the starship slalom between enormous chunks of asteroidal debris that loomed large in the viewer.
They’d come to the asteroid belt in response to a distress call from a freighter claiming to be under attack by insurgent vessels. Though suspicious that an emergency should occur so close to the path of the convoy, the crew had at first sensed nothing out of the ordinary as the handful of armed shuttles attacking the freighter scattered upon their arrival.
But as soon as Ramirez’s away team had beamed over, all hell had broken loose. The damaged freighter had been a ruse, in fact the ship had been retrofit to carry capital weapons and shield generators, making the humble looking cargo hauler into a formidable warship.
The supposedly routed fighters had returned with a vengeance, accompanied by three more of the faux-freighters, a force clearly capable of inflicting great damage on the unsuspecting convoy. So, the Gibraltar had fled deeper into the asteroid field, drawing the pirate vessels into a pursuit to ensure that the isolated starship would not have the opportunity to call for help or warn the convoy.
“Communications?” Sandhurst asked.
“Still being jammed,” answered Lt. Commander Pell Ojana, the ship’s Bajoran second officer and diplomatic specialist.
Looking over to his young science officer, Sandhurst inquired, “Status of the IFEW?”
The ebony skinned Zulu, Ensign Kuenre Shanthi, clung to his console as Ensign Brett Lightner’s wild maneuvering at the helm pushed the inertial dampeners to their limits. Shanthi finally found his voice, answering, “The Ionization Field Effect Weapon is primed and ready for deployment, Captain.”
“Good, just make sure all our new friends are in close proximity when we set it off.”
From Ops, Lieutenant JG Olivia Juneau piped up, “Two of the freighters are lagging behind, sir. We’ll have to either slow down or double back to maneuver them in range of the device.”
“Mr. Lightner, hook us around smartly, one-hundred eighty degree turn beneath that big monster bearing 173-mark-008” Sandhurst commanded.
Beaming like a kid in a candy store, Lightner responded in the affirmative, throwing the old workhorse into a tight turn, utilizing the gravitational field of the asteroid to sling-shot the starship back in the opposite direction of their pursuers.
As Tark lay down a fusillade of photon torpedo and phaser fire, Juneau opened the aft shuttlebay doors, exposing the large cylindrical device in its launch cradle that now monopolized most of the bay’s space.
*****
Kriosian-flagged freighter SS Draskaar
E’Mdifarr Asteroid Belt, E’Mdifarr system
Sector 21508
Alliance Occupied Cardassian Territory
Gibraltar’s away team sat in sullen silence, held at gunpoint by members of the freighter’s crew. Two Humans and a Zaranite kept watch over the Starfleeters as the freighter shuddered under fire from the starship as well as the stress of High-g maneuvers within the asteroid field.
“This sucks,” Commander Liana Ramirez announced definitively but quietly, her small frame dwarfed by the enormous Bolian lieutenant seated next to her on the deck of the cargo bay.
They’d been surrounded and captured almost instantaneously upon beaming onboard the supposedly stricken cargo ship. Their captors, whoever they were, had done an admirable job of feigning damage through the creative use of localized subspace fields and thoron emissions.
On the other side of Ramirez sat the Gibraltar’s El Aurian chief security/tactical officer. Leaning in towards the first officer with an ironic smirk gracing his deceptively youthful feature, Pava Lar’ragos chimed in, “Would this be a bad time to reflect on how your security chief voted for transporting stun grenades over prior to beaming in?”
Ramirez scratched idly at her temple with her middle finger, “Bite me, Pava” she offered in a subdued voice.
“Providing we survive this little excursion, sir, I’d be only too happy to oblige.”
Ramirez rolled her eyes as the ship’s chief medical officer, Lieutenant JG Issara Taiee grinned despite the seriousness of their situation.
“We can’t just sit here, Commander” rumbled the large Bolian engineer, Ashok.
“For the time being, Lieutenant, we have a dearth of options,” Ramirez sighed.
“Enough talking!” barked one of their jailers, emphasizing his point by waving the barrel of his Klingon disruptor rifle at the group.
She and the others obligingly fell silent, all of them still contemplating some kind of escape strategy.
The ship rocked again, the sensation accompanied by the screech and hollow thump of a hull breach somewhere nearby.
A moment later, an Andorian in smudged coveralls walked briskly into the compartment, escorted by two more armed Humans. Regarding the captured Starfleet personnel coolly, he asked, “Which one of you is the engineer?”
Lt. Ashok began to rise and was startled when Lar’ragos jumped to his feet. “That’d be me.”
The Andorian looked at Lar’ragos skeptically, then gestured to Ashok. “Then why is he getting up?”
“Him?” Lar’ragos looked to the Bolian, “Look at him, the big bruiser’s the security officer. He’s just trying to protect me.”
Ashok reluctantly resumed his seat, and Ramirez patted his arm in silent encouragement.
Lar’ragos offered the XO a discrete wink as he turned back toward the Andorian, whom he presumed to be the freighter’s engineer. “Can I have my equipment?”
Looking to one of the guards, the Andorian dispatched the man to collect the engineering kit Ashok had brought over. Holding on to the briefcase-sized kit himself, the Andorian gestured for Lar’ragos to follow, flanked by the two armed men.
Moving down a narrow dimly lit corridor, the four arrived at a dilapidated looking turbolift car. Entering the turbocar, the Andorian stepped to the side to allow Lar’ragos and his escorts room. The Andorian thought idly that it was strange for the Starfleet engineer to be wearing a disturbing little smile.
“What’s so damn funny?” the Andorian asked hotly as the doors slid closed.
Lar’ragos said nothing, but his eyes narrowed and the smile grew wider.
*****
USS Bluefin
En route to Sector 21508, Warp 9.2
Alliance Occupied Cardassian Territory
With over an hour before their rendezvous with the besieged Gibraltar, Akinola had moved to his ready room in an attempt to gauge the likelihood that Bluefin would find survivors upon their arrival.
Taking a seat at his desk, he called up the general specs of the old Connie, reflecting that Starfleet had done an admirable job in restoring the ship, taking so much time in fact that she’d slipped from her drydock moorings only after the end of the Dominion War.
Her captain, Sandhurst, had been an engineer of some renown who’d somehow been talked into accepting a captaincy. That was the thing about long wars, Akinola mused, they created many opportunities for upward mobility through the ranks. Scanning the bullet points of the Gibraltar’s recent history, Akinola noted that Sandhurst had occupied the center seat for less than a year, but his ship was already gaining a reputation for finding itself in the eye of the storm. Having cut his teeth on the fiasco at the Cardassian colony of Lakesh in the Crolsa system, Sandhurst had followed months of routine escort missions by joining up with Jean-Luc Picard’s ill-fated mission of mercy into the Briar Patch.
Despite their widely divergent career paths, Akinola felt a growing sense of kinship for the man who, like him, commanded what many saw as an outdated vessel fated to carry out the kinds of mundane missions that nonetheless kept the Federation functioning.
Switching off his terminal, Akinola vowed that if at all possible, he would deliver Sandhurst and his crew safely from this most recent trouble. ‘We old bucket captains have to stick together, after all.’
*****
Kriosian-flagged freighter SS Draskaar
E’Mdifarr Asteroid Belt, E’Mdifarr system
Sector 21508
Alliance Occupied Cardassian Territory
The doors parted to reveal a scene of absolute carnage. Lar’ragos limped out of the turbocar, holding a rifle in each hand. His face was cut and bruised, but the smile remained. He spat wetly, dislodging the severed Andorian antennae that had been clutched in his teeth.
He emerged from the shadows behind the two guards watching over the remaining away team members. Triggering both rifles simultaneously, Lar’ragos sent hyper-kinetic streams of pulsed plasma into the backs of the men, turning both into smoking piles of charred flesh and fragmented bone.
Rising to her feet, Ramirez caught one of the rifles out of the air as Lar’ragos threw it to her. Looking the El Aurian up and down, she shook her head in a mixture of disbelief and resignation. “Do I want to know, Pava?”
“Almost certainly not, sir” he replied gravely.
Hefting the rifle, Ramirez motioned for the others to get to their feet. “We'll need to get to the bridge on this heap.”
*****
