TFV - Operation Vanguard (Chapter 7)
Verrik’s first volley of photon torpedoes rifled from the launch tubes barely two seconds after Europa had dropped out of warp in the midst of the battle. Vexam’s spirited defense had already battered the shields of two of the En-Il-Que warships, and the crimson flight of torpedoes shredded their more primitive deflection grids which were woefully unprepared for such concentrated destruction.
This was followed by a flurry of phaser strikes that lanced from the starship’s emitter strips in quick succession to blast weapons ports, missile batteries, sensor nodes and the engine mounts of the boxy, modular looking En-Il-Que vessels. Sandhurst was momentarily shocked by the volume of fire they’d disgorged against the threat craft, as he’d long since grown accustomed to Gibraltar’s more limited tactical capabilities.
Sandhurst was about to turn and instruct Verrik to reign in the enthusiasm of their attack when Europa was buffeted once, then again. The captain found himself quickly scanning the engineering readouts on his armrest display. “Engineering,” he called, “are you reading a problem with the inertial dampeners?”
“Sir,” Verrik said from behind him as discretely as possible under the circumstances. “That’s enemy fire impacting our shields.”
Sandhurst blushed fiercely, thankful for the red glow of the alert lighting. “Of course,” he said in a muffled voice from behind one hand. The attack had not been accompanied by the bone-rattling jolts that he’d come to expect.
“Two of the threat vessels have been neutralized,” Juneau observed. “The third is turning hard about and accelerating away.”
“Cripple her,” Sandhurst commanded. “I don’t want any operational enemy ships in range when we lower shields to render aid to Vexam.”
Another storm of phaser beams slashed out to sunder the retreating warship’s defensive grid. Thus compromised, Verrik launched three photons set for electromagnetic pulse detonation that exploded fifty meters aft, port, and starboard simultaneously. The resulting EM burst fused every active electronic component aboard the vessel, leaving her adrift with only minimal emergency power.
“Europa to Vexam,” Sandhurst hailed the warbird. “We’ve dealt with your attackers. Lower shields for transport of our emergency teams.”
An image of Vexam’s smoking bridge took shape on the viewer. The soot-smudged face of the ship’s commander came into focus. “You have our thanks, Europa. We stand ready to accept your assistance.”
“Commander T’Ser, you are clear to energize,” Sandhurst addressed the intraship.
“Transporter control to bridge, rescue teams are away. All teams signaling safe arrival.”
Sandhurst sat in the eye of the storm for the next ten minutes, listening to status reports from various bridge stations and T’Ser’s initial damage assessment from Vexam. Romulan casualties were beaming into Sickbay where Taiee, Dr. Multorlo, and the LMH programs set to work assessing and treating a host of battle-related injuries.
He’d worried that their clash with the En-Il-Que ships would bring others to their rescue, but the aliens’ main force was now engaged in a planetary assault on the Deobeen homeworld. Sandhurst guessed that any relief force would have to wait until the invaders had established a firm foothold on the planet.
“Captain,” Shanthi called from the Science station atop the bridge’s starboard ‘wing.’ “You’ll want to see this, sir.”
Sandhurst stood and made his way to stand alongside the lieutenant’s workstation. “What have you got, Kuenre?”
“That last flight of torpedoes we launched at the fleeing warship was set to give off an EM pulse. It looks like the object the Romulans originally struck while under cloak was within the blast radius of the EM shockwave.” Shanthi pointed to an image of a visibly wavering field, not unlike a mirage, that was distorting the stars behind it. “It’s becoming partially detectable.”
Sandhurst scowled at the anomaly. “I don’t like it. It appears to have been phase-cloaked, and it’s obviously not Romulan or Federation in origin. Now we’re sitting here naked without shields engaged in SAR ops while there’s something potentially dangerous sitting next to us.”
“Klingons?” Shanthi posited.
“Doesn’t smell like Klingons,” Sandhurst observed. “Though I’m sure they’d happily sit back and watch a Romulan ship get pasted, it’s not like them to miss out on a battle and let their puny Federation allies claim all the ‘glory.’”
The two men turned to face Verrik at his Tactical station. “Lieutenant, did you overhear—“ Sandhurst began.
“Vulcan,” Verrik offered, gesturing to his ears. “And yes.”
“Opinion?”
“It presents an unknown variable in an already less-than-optimal scenario, Captain. I suggest another torpedo set to EM burst targeted directly on the object.”
“Not especially subtle,” Shanthi pointed out, “but given our circumstances it’d be the fastest way to determine its threat potential.”
Sandhurst nodded curtly and pointed toward Verrik. “Do it.”
While Verrik was preparing the warhead yield, Sandhurst had Juneau notify Vexam to raise their shields as a precaution while Europa did the same.
Sandhurst gave the order to fire, and the missile raced away to detonate in a bright wash of light. Slowly, almost reluctantly, an artificial structure of some kind wavered into existence. Great solar-panel like arrays fanned out from a central core. Two fractured arrays, presumably caused by the collision with Vexam, disturbed the otherwise elegant symmetry of the device.
“Reading some highly exotic constituent elements, sir. It… appears to be a probe of some kind, perhaps a communications relay.”
“Does it conform to Deobeen or En-Il-Que designs?” Sandhurst inquired.
“Negative,” Shanthi and Lascomb answered in concert, which resulted in a scowl from the young engineer answered by a smirk from the science officer.
Juneau turned in her chair from the nearby Ops station to join the discussion. “It’s broadcasting something into the extreme high-end of the subspace bands, but our signals decryption programs can’t identify any referents for decoding the signal.”
“Engineering to bridge,” Ashok’s voice issued from the overhead speakers.
“Go ahead, Lieutenant.”
“Sir, we’ve found microfractures in the dilithium crystal. I believe it’s due to the stress we subjected it to during the nine-point-nine run into the system.”
Sandhurst winced perceptibly, knowing full well the difficulties that presented. Ultimately there was no one else to blame but himself, as the design of their increasingly troubled propulsion system was his ‘masterpiece.’
“There’s no way we can pull the crystal, replace it, and initiate a cold-startup of the reactor while in proximity to hostiles,” Sandhurst noted.
“Agreed, sir.”
“Reduce reactor output to the minimum required to sustain shields and weapons. If we have to leave in a hurry, what speed do you judge ‘safe’ under the circumstances?”
“No more than Warp five, sir.”
“Acknowledged,” Sandhurst sighed. “Bridge, out.” He turned to regard Juneau. “Put me back on with Vexam’s commander.”
After a moment the warbird’s bridge appeared on screen, this time absent the smoke from earlier, but still looking a shambles. The officer Sandhurst had spoken with previously was standing to one side of the bridge, in conference with T’Ser as they examined a cross-section diagram of the Valdore-class ship.
T’Ser stepped away and the viewer centered on her. “Captain Sandhurst, may I introduce Sub-Commander Chalois, acting commander of the warbird Vexam.”
Sandhurst inclined his head towards the Romulan as she moved into view beside his XO. “Hello, Sub-Commander. Given the circumstances, I’ll dispense with the pleasantries.”
Chalois was a striking Romulan female, with unexpectedly soft facial features bounded by flowing auburn tresses. There was no sign of the severe militaristic hairstyle favored by most female naval officers. She bobbed her head in reply. “Agreed, Captain. You have my thanks for the timely rescue.”
“You’re welcome,” he answered. “Sub-Commander, we’ve disrupted the phase cloak of the object you struck. Do you recognize it, by chance?”
Chalois moved to one of her bridge’s few operable consoles, calling up an image of the device. “Our library retrieval system is presently offline,” she remarked, “but it does not look familiar to me.”
“It appears we may not be the only ones who had this system under surveillance,” Sandhurst offered. “What's the status of your ship?”
“We are without warp power and our impulse reactors are overtaxed from the strain of defending against the aggressors. Our starboard nacelle is heavily damaged, our torpedo systems are inoperative, and we have multiple hull breaches across all quadrants of the ship. Nearly a third of our crew has been killed or wounded, including Commander Ennig.”
“Understood. Many of your crew are being treated aboard Europa, and I can dispatch additional engineering teams to assist, should you wish it. I understand there are areas and systems where you likely don’t want Starfleet personnel poking around, but my people can patch hull breaches and attend to other non-sensitive systems.”
“Yes,” Chalois said, a hint of relief in her features. “That will be acceptable.”
“Excellent, I’ll begin dispatch—“
“Captain!” Juneau called from Ops. “Subspace fissure bearing two-five-zero, mark one-three-nine, distance seven-hundred twenty kilometers!”
“Jesus, that’s right on top of us,” Lightner hissed through gritted teeth.
“Red alert,” Sandhurst barked. “Put it on screen,” he called as he retreated to his command chair. “And patch our viewer image through to Vexam.”
A brilliant white light appeared to be burning through the fabric of space itself, a growing, tumultuous fracture spilling unknown energies into the void.
Pell stepped onto the bridge from the turbolift, shielding her eyes from the glare with her hand as the viewscreen began to dim the image. “Oh, this can’t be good,” she remarked dryly as she slid into her chair to Sandhurst’s left.
“The alien array is now transmitting its signal into that aperture, Captain,” Shanthi offered.
“Bring us around to face the fissure,” Sandhurst ordered. “Route auxiliary power to forward shields and weapons. Verrik, get some quantums in the tubes.” He activated the comms. “Sub-Commander, given the state of your shields, I suggest you maneuver behind us.”
“Something’s emerging from the fissu—“ Juneau began, but her words were drown out by the warbling annunciator from the Tactical console indicating Europa’s weapons had been unleashed. A brace of quantum torpedoes and streamers of phaser fire tore into the open maw of the phenomenon.
Sandhurst spun halfway around in his chair, fixing a furious look on his security/tactical chief. “Verrik, what the hell?”
“OH MY GOD!” Juneau gasped from her station, prompting Sandhurst to glance back at the viewscreen.
The blinding storm of energy dimmed as if choked by the sheer mass of the enormous metallic cube that seemed to be extruding through into normal space. The side of the gigantic hexahedron facing Europa was blackened and pitted in places, courtesy of Verrik’s preemptive salvo.
“Borg!” Shanthi shouted unnecessarily.
Sandhurst stared numbly at the screen, utterly dumbfounded by this turn of events. After what felt like an achingly long moment, he found his voice. “Continue firing, all weapons!”
A cascading wall of weapons fire belched from the cube, bathing Europa’s shields in a storm of multicolored energy blasts, accompanied by an eclectic mix of exotic missiles.
Sandhurst was still trying to decide how he might manage to attenuate their shields to get a tractor beam on Vexam when the sledgehammer blow of the cube’s massed weaponry struck. The bridge seemed to drop out from beneath Sandhurst and blackness claimed him.
*****
Sacrificing some of their own lives for honor would not be un-Romulan to do, in the payment of an honor debt.
